Flavour is the key theme at this year’s FNB Whisky Live Festival, which will run from 18h00 to 22h00 daily in Cape Town at the Cape Town International Convention Centre from the 4th to 6th November and in Johannesburg at the Sandton Convention Centre from the 11th – 14th November.
For any whisky novice, and even many seasoned whisky veterans, there are still a number of whiskies out there that totally perplex the palate – leaving them completely at a loss for words to describe what just happened in their mouths.
But as Dave Broom, international ambassador for the FNB Whisky Live Festival points out, even the most complex whiskies can be simplified through the common denominator of “flavour”.
“Making the complex simple is the issue which lies at the heart of great bartending and, similarly, should lie at the heart of writing and communicating about spirits,” Broom says.
“It’s easy to complicate matters: adding too many ingredients to make a drink look more impressive, doing the odd flair technique to amaze the punters, or your ability to use long descriptors as if the more words there are in a tasting note is somehow a help. In my experience it simply baffles people,” he explains.
Flavour, Broom says, is something that anyone can identify, and it is also the very essence of what makes us love or hate food, drinks, and, yes, whisky as well.
All whisky may “taste” like whisky, but all whiskies do not taste the same, and it’s the element of flavour that helps us differentiate one malt form the next.
Loosely defined, flavour is the sensory impression of a substance, and is determined mainly by the chemical combination of taste and smell.
Believe it or not, of the main senses, smell is the main determinant of flavour. While the taste of food or drink is limited to sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and savoury, the smells of a food or drink are potentially limitless.
“There are close on 90 distilleries in Scotland each making an individual and clearly differentiated product. You can either tell people these differences lie in levels of reflux, amounts of peat, fermentation times, the dark arts of wood management, or you can simply say they taste different. What’s easier?” Broom asks.
Rynard van der Westhuizen, the chairman of the local chapter of the Keepers of the Quaich (the world’s most exclusive whisky society) agrees, saying that the “quest for flavour” in the whisky world is becoming a huge talking point in the industry and around whisky dinner tables, as new and veteran whisky lovers attempt to bring simplicity to the world’s most complex malts.
“There are so many ways to unlock the flavours of a whisky. And depending on what method you use, you’re bound to unlock a different flavour,” he says.
“Take Johnnie Walker Black Label, for example. This whisky is a virtual treasure trove of flavours. Water releases the smokiness while the addition of a single block of ice, releases the fruity, vanilla and Christmas cake flavours – it’s uncanny.
A map of flavour
Broom explains that malt, in pure flavour terms, is what blenders have long done, so it was no surprise when he discovered that Jim Beveridge of Diageo and his colleagues had created a simple matrix onto which they could plot different whiskies by flavour.
“Over the past year we have tweaked this in order to produce a Malt Flavour Map, onto, which, every single malt can be plotted. It gives everyone the chance to steer their course through malt,” Broom says.
The horizontal axis runs from ‘Light’ on the left hand side to ‘Rich’ on the right. Here, the flavours move (from extreme right to the centre point) through green apples, grass, malt, soft fruit, honey.
On the right hand side of the line they shift to vanilla, coconut, toast, then into dried fruits and finally woodiness.
“The vertical axis runs from Delicate at the bottom to Smoky at the top. Clean, fresh relatively simple flavours are at the bottom end and as you work up the line so the whiskies build in complexity. Any smokiness puts the dram over the horizontal line moving from just a wisp to the full-blown peatiness at the very top,” Broom adds.
He says that each whisky is different. There are similarities between some, and differences between others.
“A case in point would be Ardbeg and Lagavulin. They are equally smoky, but the map shows you Ardbeg is lighter and fresher while Lagavulin is richer in character,” Broom continues.
The thing about flavour, however, is that the experience that one person may have could be totally different to the experience of another. Where one person may pick up a butterscotch flavour, another may pick up vanilla. This doesn’t mean any one of them is wrong, or that they flavour does not exist.
But what it does mean is that each person can make up their mind whether they like it or not based on the flavours that they discover. It’s a lot easier to say, yes I like the flavour than to try and describe the exact sensations on their palates.
Broom says that anyone can plot their own preferences and find alternatives, or even – more practically – work out where your malt collection has holes and where it might be overloaded.
“Use the map as your starting point for further exploration and go plot!” he concludes.
Taking place at 
Whisky, like many other alcoholic beverages, is an acquired taste and can be very overwhelming if you jump into the deep-end and start taking on the big, bold and full-bodied whiskies of the world.
