Fred Minnick - Bourbon Curious: A Simple Tasting Guide for the Savvy Drinker

A SIMPLE TASTING GUIDE FOR THE SAVVY DRINKER

FRED MINNICK

P lease treat yourself. Pick up a bottle of bourbon, twist the cork off, and smell those sweet and succulent vanilla and caramel aromas. Delight in the cinnamon and nutmeg notes. Pour the russet-colored elixir into your glassadd ice if you likeand let this glorious bourbon journey begin.

Bourbon transcends ingredients and brand names. It embodies a culture, a feeling, and a sense of unity that draws friends together and brings foes to peace.

But with greatness comes misunderstanding. Despite being a core piece of Americana and instrumental in the US tax economy, bourbon is the most misunderstood product on liquor store shelves. Fantastic legends have misinformed consumers for more than a century about who, exactly, invented bourbon; distillery tours often misinform visitors with incorrect regulations and terms.

Then couple these troubling details with the macho know-it-all bar boor. You like bourbon? Let me tell you about bourbon! It has to be made in Kentucky. This guy takes a dominant posture, because hes in the professor role, and he spewsand in some cases, spitsblatantly wrong information in your ear when all you want to do is drink the damn bourbon in peace. He educates bartenders, random people on the subway, and his mothers friends with atrocious facts hes unearthed on Wikipedia.

Bourbon professionals spend a lot of time cleaning up this arrogant guys messes, and what amazes me is how sure some of these people are that theyre right. At a neighborhood cocktail party, I approached somebody parroting the blatantly wrong fact that bourbon must be two years old. As he slammed his red Solo cup down and tried to get tough, I realized two things: one, he had stinky breath, and two, he wasnt a guy who liked being told he was wrong.

The truth is that bourbon can be made anywhere in the United States, not just Kentucky, and in fact comes from New York, Wyoming, Indiana, and many other states. For a five-decade stretch in the twentieth century, Mexican distilleries also produced bourbon, which is one of the reasons US distillers pursued geographical protection in Congress. Bourbon itself has no age requirement, but to be labeled straight bourbon it must be at least two years old.

Because of bourbons continued growth in popularity, the misinformed malcontents are spreading like a bad virus. Hopefully, this book will reach you before they do.

I hope Bourbon Curious will become your guide to this wonderful liquor, as well as to a tasting journey that pairs brands to the four most common flavor notes found in bourboncaramel, cinnamon, grain, and nutmeg. Its my goal to give you information about bourbon you wont find on the Internet or on a label. Even if youre a longtime bourbon aficionado, I hope youll find yourself saying, I didnt know that.

Lets begin at the beginning. What is bourbon?

All bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon. If this doesnt make sense to you, dont worryyoure not alone. The most common question in my Bourbon 101 classes is Whats the difference between bourbon and whiskey? Ive found the best way to answer this question without watching my audience fall asleep is to give a simple analogy. In the same way the word car covers a broad range of motor vehicles, from a slick cherry-red 1965 Ford Mustang to a dilapidated blue 1982 Nissan station wagon, whiskey is a broad term that can be further broken down into categories dictated by country of origin, grain, and aging process. In short, whiskey is just distilled beer that has been aged in barrels.

Scotch and bourbon are both whiskeys, but the similarities stop there. Scotch must be made in Scotland, and its celebrated grain is barley; bourbon must be made in the United States, and its primary grain is corn. Scotch whiskeys regulated categories are single malt, single grain, blended malt, blended scotch whiskey, and blended grain whiskey; bourbons regulated categories are straight, blended, blended straight, and bottled-in-bond.