All you need for a tasting are:
- a selection of fine malt whiskies (we can help you out with this part)
- glasses with curved sides to gather the aromas (e.g. brandy snifters or Glenmorangie Tasting glasses which can be ordered from our online shop)
- a jug of water
- maybe some dry biscuits or oat cakes to clear the palate
- and ideally, a few friends of similarly discerning tastes as yourself.
After you've poured the first glass, hold it up to the light and consider its colour. Is it bright and translucent? Is it amber or more copper tinged? Or how would you, precisely, describe the colour?
Next, take some time to ‘nose' your dram. To the uninitiated, the idea of 'nosing' whisky may seem a little eccentric, but it's worth noting that a master-distiller can judge by sense of smell alone when a malt is ready for bottling. So it's worth thoroughly exploring this part of the tasting experience. Take short, sharp sniffs rather then a large overpowering inhalation and you'll pick up more notes. Try to identify them and separate them from the overall aroma.
Next, add a drop of water and give the glass a gentle swirl to free the fragrance. It's amazing what's released when a little water goes in. In fact, one leading connoisseur once wrote that "nosing is no less than forty percent of the pleasure". Indeed, while our mouths can only detect bitter, salty, sweet and sour, our descriptions of smell are almost limitless. That's why whisky tasting is done principally with the nose. Without smell, taste loses its depth and richness. For malt whisky, a subtle and well-balanced bouquet means a smoother, more rounded taste.
Perhaps the best way to approach nosing is to compare Glenmorangie's bouquet to an orchestra. To the uninitiated listener, it produces a unitary noise. The trained ear, meanwhile, can pick our every single instrument, right down to the subtleties of the first and second violins.
The trained 'nose' works in much the same way. Certainly, some people have more sensitive equipment, but just as with music, the beginner can soon learn to detect the basic elements. Nosing is not an art restricted to an exclusive cadre. So, take in the aroma and start by enjoying the overall impression of a fragrant harmony. If you can pick out separate smells that combine in the overall bouquet, so much the better. But don't worry if you don't pick up what you're supposed to pick up - part of the pleasure in a tasting is that every individual's palate is different, so different people will detect different things. (And part of the fun is arguing about it afterwards).
Next take a sip and let it lie on your tongue and coat the sides of your mouth. Roll the whisky around so it can get to all your taste buds. Sweetness will reveal itself at the tip of the tongue, saltiness along the sides, sourness on the edges and bitterness at the back.
At this stage, try to concentrate on how the flavours develop. Try to decide whether the taste comes all at once or if it unfolds in complex layers. What subtleties are trying to break through? Make notes and try again. It's interesting to note how the flavours have changed from what you detected on the nose. Sometimes you'll encounter a lot on the nose and very little in the mouth. Other times it's the opposite – while some, like Glenmorangie, are fascinatingly complex at every stage.
Once you've swallowed the whisky wait to see how the aftertaste develops. Do the flavours linger in the mouth or do they fade quickly? Sometimes at this stage, you'll pick up some hints of the aromas you detected on the nose and some whiskies leave a very pleasant aftertaste while others are much more challenging. The great thing is you can experiment and analyse to your heart's content – just make sure you enjoy!
That's how easy it is to organise a tasting. The only other things to bear in mind are that it's a good idea to make notes as you go, you shouldn't really smoke or eat while tasting and trust your instincts, because what you find pleasant is all that really matters.
What the experts say
We always knew how great Glenmorangie was - but we thought we would ask some neutral observers for their impressions too.
The named aromas
We invited Parisian perfumer, Christian St Roche, to 'nose' Glenmorangie and confer his opinion on its bouquet. Certainly, as a man whose working life had been dedicated to the art of perfumery, he was uniquely qualified to examine Glenmorangie. What is more, he could draw on a perfumery vocabulary to describe the whisky fragrances.
However nobody was prepared for the results of M. St Roche's sensory evaluation. To say that in answering one question he posed another would be something of an understatement.
Instead of the subjective, descriptive appraisal we had expected, he discovered no fewer than 26 named aromas in Glenmorangie's bouquet, from almond, bergamot and cinnamon to quince and vanilla.
Here is the full list of aromas: Algae, Almond, Ambergris, Apple, Bergamot, Orange, Cinnamon, Fruit Stone, Genista, Gentian, Geranium, Ginger, Heather, Iodine, Lemon Peel, Liquorice, Mango, Narcissus, Nutmeg, Peat, Peony, Pepper, Pine Resin, Quince, Vanilla, Verbena, Wild Mint
Linking Aromas to Creation
We asked the Scotch Whisky Research Institute (SWRI) to attempt to link the origin of certain aromas to the steps in Glenmorangie's creation and thus to the materials or methods used. To accomplish this task, they analysed samples taken from successive stages of our production process.
This involved tests on 'wort', 'fermented wash' and 'new make spirit' - along with samples of the more familiar Ten Year's Old and 18 Year Old Glenmorangie (which is partially matured in ex-sherry casks).
More of the strange-sounding liquids later, but for the meantime, what did the eagerly awaited results hold?
As we had hoped, the SWRI was able to correlate the first appearance of most of the aromas to a particular stage in the manufacturing process. In particular, our unique conditions of fermentation, distillation and maturation appear to contribute successive aromas to Glenmorangie's increasingly complex bouquet.
In the table below, we have listed the 20 aromas identified by SWRI, alongside the step of the process where each aroma was first detected. (They may become more pronounced at later stages).
Malting
Almond, hazelnut
Fermentation
Apple, banana, hay, rose
Distillation
Honey, juniper, lemon, geranium
Maturation
Cade, cinnamon, clove, coconut, vanilla
Sherry Wood
Blackcurrant, brown sugar, orange, plum, raisin
This just goes to prove that the care we take over our whisky comes through in the depth and character that it exhibits. Of course it doesn't matter if you can detect 26 aromas in your Glenmorangie or not (we certainly can't!) what matters is that you enjoy this beautifully complex work of art as much as we do.
... und nicht zu knapp