Getting into whisky

For most of my drinking life I have been a beer drinker. I drank beer in the pub, beer at parties, beer with food and beer at Christmas. You get the picture. As I got older I somehow had the idea it would be nice to drink something other than beer and I liked the idea of finishing off a night out with something stronger. I had dabbled in port a few years earlier but the port they were serving in the pubs was always the extremely sweet ruby port that never quite hit the spot after a few pints and you could feel it rotting away your teeth after a couple of glasses. I’d never really enjoyed spirits to be honest. However, I was convinced I needed a new drink.

When I moved to Germany, being a beer drinker made sense again. Germany’s beer culture is fantastic - beer gardens, beer festivals, one litre glasses and, of course, good beer. I abandoned my quest for a new drink temporarily.

One evening, during a business “team building weekend” in a Potsdam hotel, I was having a drink with my colleague, Jens. We both decided we should try a whisky from the bar menu. Neither of us knew much about it so Jens insisted I pick one off the menu. Glenlivet sounded good and I’d heard of that before so we ordered a couple. We had a sip, but neither of us seemed blown away by it. Jens just said “kann man trinken” (one can drink it). I was a little disappointed, as this was the kind of occasion that perfectly suited my idea of rounding off the evening with something other than beer. Nevertheless, despite not really liking it (and having just paid about 8€ for it) I had still enjoyed the experience.

A few months later it was my birthday. My present haul suggested that I must, at some point, have mentioned to my wife that I would like to start drinking whisky. I got a whisky guidebook, whisky glasses, a decanter, vouchers for a whisky tasting evening and, of course, a bottle of single malt. The only thing missing was the “I love whisky” t-shirt. That evening I excitedly decanted my whisky into my decanter, poured a double measure into one of my new crystal glasses and had a sip. However, as I feared, I didn’t really enjoy it. I think I even used Jens’ phrase “kann man trinken”. My wife wasn’t impressed. Still I had enjoyed the ceremony of it all and I came to the conclusion that I’d just have to keep on trying until, at some point, I would grow to like it. This is, after all, what happens - our taste buds change and mature as we get older. In any case I’d have to at least finish off the bottle of twelve year old Glen Moray that my wife had bought for me.

The real turning point came when I redeemed the whisky tasting vouchers. They permitted two people to a beginners’ whisky tasting evening at the Union Jack pub in Berlin Charlottenburg. My wife didn’t want to go so I asked my friend Morten to come with me. The Union Jack is a serious whisky pub with over 850 different whiskies on offer. This impressed me as I was used to there being two or three whiskies available in the pubs I went to. I wondered how many we’d get through that night. The tasting started at 7pm - I turned up at around 6.15, thinking I’d pop in for a beer or two beforehand. But when I got there I found the pub didn’t actually open until 7. Having worked in London for so long, I was used to having a beer after work on a Friday. But this wasn’t London, this was a back-street in Charlottenburg in January and it was pretty cold. I walked around for half an hour to keep warm but this just raised my excitement about getting into the nice, warm pub to drink some cockle-warming whisky.

The pub opened at 7 and the small crowd that had gathered outside filed in to take their places at carefully arranged tables. I was impressed with the organisation. On each table were four place mats, each with six numbered circles printed on it to show you where to place the whiskies you would be sampling. How drunk were we going to get that we would need such assistance? There were also a few little bowls of snacks, presumably to help soak up the copious amounts of alcohol we would be consuming. The owner was setting up his Powerpoint presentation above the bar - the title slide was complete with a tartan background for effect. It all looked pretty professional. There was a short introduction to tell us how whisky is produced. The ‘teacher’ passed around various little tubs of grains and a piece of dried peat for us to sniff and look at. It was good fun. I think I even have a photo of me sniffing the peat somewhere; Pete sniffing peat!

We sampled six different whiskies, which, to be fair, got us a little tipsy. I can’t remember exactly what they were but there was definitely a Glenmorangie 10 year old, a Tomatin 18 year old, something smoky, something ridiculously strong,… and two others. They told us how to drink them, how to sniff them, how long to leave them in your mouth. There was a lot to take in. I wish I’d brought a pen and paper with me. But the amazing thing was that the whisky was starting to taste better and better.

The one thing that really stuck in my mind was that the teacher had, at some point during the evening, explained how he first got into whisky. He had, at some point, got the urge to drink it but, unfortunately at first, he really didn’t like it. He decided to persevere and to just keep drinking until he did start to enjoy it. This all sounded very familiar to me and I was convinced I was going about this in the right way. Well at least I think that was what the bloke said. After all he was speaking in German, and I was pretty pissed by that point.

All in all it was a great evening and, after all that whisky, I needed a beer.

Written by Peter on 29 April 2021