Snobbery Strikes Back! Apr 10 '01    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet The Bottom Line Whisky snobbery is serious business! (And don't put ice in Whisky.) The Empire of Snobbery requires your services. We have been informed of a rebel faction attempting to undermine our unquestionable authority over all that pertains to scotch whisky. This transgression shall not be overlooked. Only the Dark Side shall decide what liquids our subjects may find acceptable, and which ones are to be sneered at. The punishment for this violation shall be swift, harsh and without mercy. No dissenting voices are to be allowed in the Empire of our exalted leader, he who is master snob and top connoisseur over all that is Beer or Whisky - Darth Michael, also known as Michael Jackson. You, Darth Jarno, have been assigned the task of damage control. Our forces are already on their way to apprehend the rebel leader, but the rumours must be cut short, the ripples this rebel left must be smoothed out! Use any means of our most sinister whisky propaganda to achieve this task. Succeed, and you may live to taste another malt. Fail and you will regret the day you picked up that tulip glass. We trust that our faith in your meagre abilities is not misplaced. You will locate the rebels at Epinions. Our scanners have confirmed the exact location of their leader at http://www.epinions.com/content_1286381700 . Study the enemy carefully, before embarking on your mission. Do not disappoint me. Signed, Emperor Darth Michael Holy Laphroaig! Having received this order just this morning, I am still trembling. Such a frightening honour to have been singled out as the propaganda champion for the Dark Side! Without further hesitation, I check my supply of tulip glasses and brandish my best bottle of Lagavulin. Stopping by the mirror one last time to practice my eye-rolls and my most sophisticated icy looks of disdain, I feel ready to defend the honour of the Evil Empire. On to the counter-attack! The rebel leader: Some people worship single malts as though they are some type of sacred liquid. Darth Jarno: The Empire categorically denies any involvement with ritual exercises involving single malts. Also you should forget about anything you may have heard of sadistic whisky tastings involving reluctant participants. The rumours of assimilation and taste-bud reorientation camps are also... what? You haven't heard of those... well, never mind then. Forget what I said. Really. We are your friends. Secondly, about mass production of single malts - naturally this is only rebel propaganda. You see, as all true whisky snobs know and accept, single malt producers are a bit like Santa Clause. Sure you can find that bottle of Laphroaig just about anywhere in the world, and sure there are huge quantities of this liquid around, but naturally we all know that this is done by magical means. Your favourite whisky is still produced in the basement of a bearded old man with a heavy Scottish accent, using only the time-honoured older-than-life-itself methods, with the only quality control (bah! I say to such modern concepts) being the taste buds of this aforementioned whisky master. And that the small stash of barrels in the corner of the room is where all single malt comes from! You've heard of warehouses with thousands of barrels? Ha! The rebels are simply trying to deceive you to believe that to produce enough whisky to satisfy the demand of the entire world, you need large distilleries, and improved production methods! What silly nonsense. Next they'll be telling us that Santa Clause doesn't exist either! The rebel leader: Some people sneer at blends and blend drinkers; to them, blends are the drink of poor, unenlightened fools who just can't handle the real thing. Darth Jarno: Sneering at blend drinkers is strongly discouraged by the Empire. Blend drinkers must be re-oriented and assimilated, not sneered at. Blends, however, in general, do deserve some tasteful sneering, for reasons that were not stressed on the rebel attack… Before my explanation, I'll remind you of the rebel claim: "Third, the price of single malts is artificially HIGH: "artificially" here meaning "as an artifice"; it's just good marketing art. They sell the bulk of their produce to blenders, who in turn make the low- to mid-range product (blended Scotch), while the distillers themselves release single malts as premium products." To reply to this claim, I will have to impart on you some knowledge from the archives of the Evil Empire. Bear with me! The production time of a single malt whisky is typically about 10 to 15 years, though many are matured longer - true most of it is sold to blenders. Now are the blenders really selling the similar stuff cheaper, thus being more modest with their profits? Although the Dark Side has no real objection to such a deviously delightful idea as raising the respectability of single malts by artificially high prices, I regret to say that the difference in the price is not going to the dark Emperor's pocket. This time, the rebel side has outwitted us in consumer deception, I'm afraid…. Let me tell you a story... you see, a long time ago, there was nothing else but single malts. Now whereas the Dark Side may not find that to be a tragedy, there was a serious problem of demand. To make single malt whisky is a long arduous process, involving expensive malted cereals, and a whole lot of time of waiting it to mature. Furthermore, to make some single malts, you may need rare, very specific types of casks, which are not readily available. In these times, if the demand went up, there was no way to compensate - you would have needed to know demand for more of the good stuff ten or more years ago! So what is a whisky producer to do? What they did was invent grain whisky - now, unlike malt whisky, grain whisky was cheap to produce, as it used unmalted cereals instead of malted ones. The cheapest cereals at any given time, whether they be wheat or corn or something else, are typically used for grain whisky, and it's not aged in a cask as long as malt whiskies. Also with the invention of Coffee Stills (no, not stills for making coffee - the still is named after the last name of the inventor), the production of grain whisky could be done with industrial efficiency, unlike the single malt production which still requires quite a bit of craftsmanship. In other words, you could get a lot of grain whisky in a very short time, very cheaply. The downside? It either tastes awful, or has very little taste except for the alcohol. But that's ok…. we can always fix that by spicing it up with a selection of single malts! That's how blended whisky was born - unlike the popular misconception, blended whisky is not a blend of single malt whiskies. Now if that was the case, I'd be joining the rebel side immediately, protesting the prices of single malts! But no - blended whisky is typically made of 85 to 90% out of cheap grain whisky! Only the remaining small percentage is made up of a selection of single malts. And that's were the difference in price comes from. And there in lies the reason for the sneer and indignant looks - at least in the case of this particular whisky nerd. The producers of blends are not that eager to reveal this composition - no, they'd rather let the poor consumer hold on to his/her erroneous belief that it's just a blend of single malts, and that they sell it cheap simply out of the kindness of their heart. *snif* Also, the truly disgusting deception, worthy of a look of admiration on the Evil emperor's face: the age you see displayed on that blended whisky bottle is not the age of most of the liquid inside - it's only the age of the youngest single malt used in spicing up the grain whisky… most of the stuff, the grain whisky, is very young even in "older" blends. Talk about taking the consumer for a ride! Actually it's a brilliant marketing trick really... delightfully dishonest without actually lying... hmm... why didn't the Dark Side think of something like this... What about the better blends then? Yes, there are some blends that are quite smooth and drinkable. There are even some blends that surpass the less impressive single malts in taste. But when you know the composition, you tend to find, unsurprisingly, that the better tasting blends are the ones that use more single malts and less grain whisky than blends in general - Johnnie Walker black label is about 35% malts, and Shivas Regal is about half and half. If you do like blends, that's ok... the Dark Side will tolerate you... But remember, your friend Darth Jarno just wants you to know what you are drinking… The rebel leader:: "Thus, fourth, single malts are over-marketed, over-packaged products, just what you'd expect from big companies. All the blurbs about the distilleries, the spring water that they use, and so on, is really just a bunch of poppycock designed to create an image" Darth Jarno: Hmm... As intriguing as the idea sounds to our dark warped minds, I'm afraid that outright lies about the ingredients used in the making of a whisky would probably not be something that a whisky producer could get away with for long. And besides, if you've got that Loch with an exotic name right there, why not draw the water from there? And what's wrong with indulging your customer with a bit of sense of history? And about marketing - to this day, I've only seen a couple of billboards marketing single malts and that was in Scotland. I don't know about the US, but in Europe, the blends are the ones that really have that marketing machine behind them. I've never seen a single malt commercial on TV, yet blends appear on the screen quite often. Rebel propaganda say I! The rebel leader:: Still, malt partisans worship these things. They insist that a fine malt should never be defiled with an ice cube or any water other than that shipped in from a Scotland spring. Hogwash. Sip them straight, drink them on the rocks, add all the water you like. Darth Jarno: Do not listen to this insidious rebel! Remember - the Dark Side is your friend…. Repeat with me... The Dark Side is your friend... And our friends don't put ice in fine single malt scotch…. EVER. Rebels shall be punished! Other abuses do not result in immediate extermination, and using whisky in drinks may even sometimes be... bearable, but ice... I shiver at the thought! And sneer at it! With a distinguished look of indignation too! So there! The rebel leader:: 3. Some people see certain malts as "beginners' malts" and other malts as challenging, difficult, advanced, and what have you. Naturally, they see themselves in command of the advanced malts, since they're experts of a sort. Darth Jarno: You are required to report all self-proclaimed experts to our Emperor. Only the Emperor of the Dark Side has the right to bestow the title "expert" on any subject he deems worthy. Other titles that are exclusively bestowed by His Eminence include "Exalted Whisky Nerd", "Insolent Noser" and "The Superior Sneerster", all given out only to a select few deemed worthy. The descriptions like "beginners' malts" and "not for newbies" are acceptable should the writer actually have some experience of subjecting innocent test subjects to various sorts of whisky, and scientifically observing their reactions to various malts. This highly rigorous method produces beginner suitability ratings based upon the extremity of the reactions from the test subjects, ranging from "The subject made strange faces, coughed and gasped for air. Death ensued in a matter of minutes." all the way to "The subject fell on his/her knees with tears of joy, singing in praise of our great Emperor of Snobbery, vowing to devote his life to the Dark Side. Immediate assimilation.". (Of course, these "not for beginners" type recommendations are not fool-proof, statistical deviations always exist.) Recovering from the battle Whew, that was quite a task. I know there was probably something there I forgot to address.. but what's done is done. All that is left to do is to wait for the verdict of my Master. Will I ever taste a fine malt again? Will I be trusted to defend the Empire on later occasions? I wait in restless anticipation... At least I hope I have restored some order here, and convinced you to regard the Dark Side with due seriousness. So wipe that smirk off your face!

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