Most people who love wines have probably opened a number of bottles to sip and compare across styles and grapes. But while you occasionally hear of an expensive scotch, tequila or cognac dinner at a nice restaurant, you rarely hear of people hosting informal tastings at home.
Given the growing popularity of spirits, I think it’s high time for enthusiasts to consider hosting a tasting party.
There’s not spitting at a spirits tasting (more about that in a minute), so they’re much more raucous affairs than wine tastings. At the wine school where I teach, it’s almost always the same: My students look at the flights of liquors before them and their eyes widen, but by the end of the second round, the sommelier in the next classroom knocks on the door and asks us to settle down.
Fun, yes, but here’s a major geek alert: An undertaking like this is for people who have been getting deeper and deeper into the world of spirits and cocktails. Maybe you’ve got a growing collection of bitters and foreign bottles, and have started making special cocktails at home.
If this describes you — and there are definitely more and more of us — I can assure you there is no better way to ramp up your knowledge than a comparative tasting around a category or theme.
My most recent rum tasting was a great example. Over the past few years I have collected rums of varying ages, styles and geographic locations. I was interested in how aging affected different rums, so I put together several rounds of tastings, or flights, based on age. Four friends and I tasted from youngest to oldest, taking our time, writing notes and discussing the rums after each flight.
In the end, we came away with a better understanding of how different rums age and how it affects tastes. More important, we learned our own preferences.
There are several key differences between a spirits tasting and a wine tasting. The first is how one actually tastes. Unlike at a wine event, where you vigorously swirl the liquid in your glass to release aromas and “open up” the wine, you don’t want to agitate spirits so much. If you vigorously swirl a 100-proof rum or bourbon, all you’re going to get is a face full of alcohol.
Instead, gently twirl the glass, allowing the liquor to coat its sides. For me, the ideal glass for whiskey or rum is a nosing glass that’s bulb-shaped and tapers to a narrow rim.
Next, it’s important to begin with a tiny sip that clears the palate. Follow up with a larger sip that coats the mouth.
As previously mentioned, this is key: Don’t spit.
The reason: The finish is so important. Fine spirits should have a long, pleasant, lingering finish, not a hot, kerosene-like burn.
Because professional spirits tasters almost never spit, we always sample with much less liquid than we would with wine: about a half-ounce. A taste of wine would be about an ounce. I can taste 50 or more wines in an afternoon, spitting them as I go, but once I taste a dozen or so spirits, my palate starts to get overwhelmed. For a newbie, the number is more like eight.
Another issue with a fine spirits tasting is that the expense can be much greater than that of a wine tasting. To keep costs in check, I’ve chosen to focus on rum for our sample tasting, because rum is comparatively cheaper than whiskey, brandy or tequila.
I’ve mapped out an eight-rum tasting, divided into four flights. The cost to do this entire tasting is around $250. Not cheap. But if you organize a party with six to eight friends, no one should spend more than about $40. To keep costs down, you could taste four rums, one from each flight.
To make a tasting party even more festive, I always make some kind of punch, to serve either as everyone arrives or as a palate cleanser after the tasting. In this case, keeping with a rum theme, I choose the classic Jamaican Punch. Save the aged rums for the tasting, and use a good-value light rum, such as Chairman’s Reserve Silver, in this punch.
Jason Wilson is the author of “Boozehound: On the Trail of the Rare, the Obscure, and the Overrated in Spirits” (Ten Speed, 2010).
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