Now look at you, you’ve gone from novice to the Sherlock Holmes of whisky deduction in five minutes. This is where you’ll notice sweeter scents like vanilla or maple.Īnd guess what, if there’s lots of vanilla, that’s a pretty good indication that it was finished (or aged) in a bourbon cask. Next, tip the glass away from you and dip your nose into it. You see? From just detecting a few notes, you’re now able to deduce what kind of barrel it was aged in. Well, if you can detect melon or citrus notes, the chances are your whisky was matured in an American oak barrel, while apricot or peach notes are indicative of a European barrel. Remember when we spoke about the importance of barrels? Does it smell more like lemon or lime? Apples or melon?Īha. Is it citrusy or does it smell like berries? Then try and narrow it down. (The glass should rest on your chin.) This helps funnel the fruity smells to your nose, letting you pick out different notes. We work (that’s a Whisky Foundation promise).įor the fruity notes, hold the rim of the glass to your bottom lip, keeping the glass straight. Now, these tips are going to sound a little odd, but bear with us and try them out. A Lagavulin 16, for instance, whacks your nose with a huge sock of peaty smoke.)Īfter that comes the trickier part looking for fruity notes, sweet notes and grainy notes. (They’re often the smells that are hard to ignore. You should notice any spices or smokiness right away. There’s no real technique to this, it’s a first impressions thing. Now, there are four stages to this sniffing.įirst up, the initial whiff. This stops the alcohol in the whisky burning the inside of your nose, which stops you from smelling all of the individual notes.) (Before you sniff, here’s a pro tip: keep your mouth open slightly when you’re smelling the whisky. Step #2: Sniff, sniff and sniff again (and, well, sniff once more) This releases the aromas of the whisky, and will let you pick out different notes when you nose your whisky. ![]() Once the whisky is in the glass, give it a swill. (Like we said before, a glass that’s thinner at the top than the bottom (like a glencairn) is perfect for funnelling those all-important smells up your hooter.) We also said that most whiskies are going to reveal their characteristics on the nose right away, and that the taste of the whisky should only confirm what you’d already picked up with your nose.Īnd although we went into a bit of detail on how to nose whisky, we think there’s a lot more to be said. We said that learning how to nose whisky is probably the key step in whisky tasting, and the one that you’ll want to practise lots. In that article, we spoke about the importance of nosing your whisky. (And not just in a ‘oh yeah, that tastes like whisky’ way.) A few months ago, we did another post in the Whisky Bluff to Whisky Buff series that looked at the first steps in learning to taste whisky.
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