I can highly recommend becoming a member of SMWS, if they're in your area. They have some extremely interesting bottlings, and everything is presented in natural style, cask strength.
My experience is as above, though. I've been searching for something a little more affordable as a "go-to" and I've been hard-pressed to find something.
The last is obviously a privileged thing that not many can do, but if you are traveling, absolutely ask the locals what regional wines you should try, and what years. The weirdest & best wines I've had so far were in Delaware, Central California, Spain, Israel, South Africa, and Central France.
For example, I did a tour of some of the dozen wineries in Delaware (who knew?) and tried a varietal I hadn't heard of before: Norton. It's basically the only native American grape which is practically suited for winemaking, and has been in use since the 1700s. It was once so popular that a Missouri wine using it won "Best Red [Wine] of All Nations" in a competition in Vienna in 1873. The one I had was really weird tasting, and I highly recommend it.
Or so I thought. It turns out that even going to weekly tastings you don't stumble into the funky stuff. You'd never stumble into dessert wines or wines made with wild yeast. You'd rarely stumble across their barrel-aged whites. They knew what sold, and they'd highlight that.
I still order a case (12 bottles) or so a year from my favorite winery in southern Germany, where I met the vintner in said department store. I've even stumbled across one of their bottles from the sommelier in my favorite restaurant in Berlin. But it's truly only from high end restaurants (and their drink pairings) that I've discovered how wide the palette for wine goes. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I've been to Noma, mentioned in the lead to the original article, and their wine selection, like with most top end restaurants, is genuinely palette-stretching.
The spouse and I did a blind test on about 20 beers sold in mixed six-packs in the grocery store, and as a result switched our staple cooking-and-drinking beer from Yuengling Lager (amber lager) to Dos Equis Ambar (another amber lager), with the North American (Coors) version of Killian's Irish Red (actually another amber lager) also beating the incumbent. We both hated the pilsners and the IPAs, but disagreed on the darker varieties. We did agree that Guinness Blonde (an "American" lager) was the worst thing ever sold anywhere. We awarded it last place, and someone else ought to take mercy on its soul, because we will damn it forevermore whenever we hear its name (torment be upon it).
It's a bit more difficult to do wines, because it's really hard to find them in 12oz. bottles. So the wines get a series of "challenger versus incumbent" blind comparisons, between only two wines at a time. We have progressed as far as determining that we both prefer sweet to dry, and that some of the cheap stuff is better than some of the mid-priced stuff. The current champion is a sparkling fruity wine from Costco, which isn't always in stock. That said, some cheap wine is truly awful. Plenty of the stuff we try gets immediately demoted to cooking duty.
It's a lot more difficult to test distilled liquor, mainly because critical judgment deteriorates when you're drunk, and it wouldn't really be cost effective for us, unless we went to a bar with a half-dozen different brands on the bottom shelf. Six 375mL bottles of vodka would last us about 2 years. Some of the cheap brands don't sell in smaller bottles. And we would have to retest each after putting some through the pitcher filter.
If everyone did blind taste tests, I think the market for expensive "premium" liquor would collapse. So much of what you pay for at the upper end of the scale is just brand posturing and vapor.
I like really peaty, smoky whiskies. What would you recommend on the cheap end?
Another old standard of mine is the Talisker 10 year old. It's about the same price. It's not very complex, but has a powerful single taste. (When booze tasters say "complex", what they mean is that the taste changes over time from the moment it hits your tongue to the last bit of aftertaste. Something that "only has one note" isn't complex -- it means that it tastes the same in the aftertaste as it did the first moment. But "complex" isn't a euphemism for "good" -- it just means "changing".)
If you want to splurge a bit, two whiskies at about double that price are:
- Ardbeg Corryvreckan: in my not-so-humble opinion, better than Uigedail (that exelius remommends below; I have open bottles of both). It's so packed with flavor that it's a bit overwhelming. Also bottled at cask strength.
- Ben Riach 17: Not from the islands, like most peated whiskies, but has a mix of tastes of Speyside and Islay. Sadly, looking now, this has also recently gotten a lot more expensive. A couple years ago it was about €55, now it's €95.
A young-ish but well dressed lad next to me was eyeing off the selection. Clearly wanted "a whisky" but had no idea what.
"Talisker is an excellent choice", I said, knowing that some of the heavier stuff – I go for a Lagavulin – would probably be a bit too much for his uninitiated palate.
He looked at the bottle. He realised it was "only" ten years old. And he said "no, I need something older".
I let the foolish young chap make his own decision.
(Oh, and curse you Americans for your ludicrous booze prices. A bottle of Lagavulin 16 here is $75.)
But beyond that, Scotch ages particularly slowly, because it, by law, can only be aged in reused barrels. A 10 year old bourbon is as old as the stones, because the barrels are, unsurprisingly, most reactive before being soaked with spirits for several years. Scotch, uniquely, mandates that the barrels cannot be first-use -- they have to be reused barrels from something else, which necessitates the very long aging times.
Edit: I don’t believe there is a requirement in the law to only use previously used barrels. They are just cheaper (boubon IS by law required to use only new casks, which results in a lot of availability), and aren’t quite as active, allowing for more gentle maturation.
For sure the 30 year old bottle is €300 compared to €30 for the 8 year old, and it is hard to rationally say that it is ten times better, but it is _different_ and it tastes great.
I'd never pick a bottle based purely on the age, but there are differences and I personally tend to gravitate to the 18+ ages when I'm picking my single-malts.
I'll readily admit the heavier cost is easier to swallow given our petrol and electricity prices.
edit: petrol instead of gas
If you're willing to scoff at the law, you can get something that tastes similar to a well-aged bourbon from an unlicensed distiller at a very low (relative) price, and any time you might have to wait for it is mostly because their trustworthy high-volume purchasers can jump ahead of you in line at any time. The moonshiners use tricks to flavor their product that are prohibited by law to anyone that wants to sell "bourbon" or "Tennessee whiskey", but since they're already outlaw, it doesn't cost them anything extra to put charred wood splints in a vat instead of using whole wood barrels, and forcibly cycle temperature and pressure to simulate the barrel-aging processes.
This area is just swimming in cheap grains, especially feed corn (aka maize), soft red winter wheat, barley, rice, rye, and sorghum. You can make beer out of any of it, and distill any beer into hard liquor. If you strip it down to pure azeotropic grain alcohol, you can dilute it back to 80 proof and add whatever flavors you want.
Some of the old-school outlaws have "gone legit" and sell their stuff (largely outsourced to one big industrial distillery, with one tiny local distillery kept mostly for show) as "flavored vodka" now. But that's just as expensive as anything else, because now they pay their taxes and comply with the laws and regulations.
It really is ludicrous. It is so cheap to make liquor here.
What do you think about Bruichladdich (sp?) ? Edit: I see /u/YeGoblynQueenne just suggested the Port Charlotte; that's the only one I've tried.
Actually, I now remember, I once saw Laphroaig's "Black Adder". It was so peaty, that they actually had pieces of charcoal in it! Didn't get a chance to try it though.
(If anyone saw an earlier version of this comment, I'd written it about Bunnahabhain, another Islay whisky, and one of my favorites.)
What would you recommend for smoky scotches that don't have much iodine? (Talisker is on my short list right now.)
The cheaper versions of that would be, for example, a Redbreast 12 (Irish) or a Glenmorangie 10. The only Highland Park that I have sitting around is an 18 year old, and I just compared them to that (again, the nice thing about whiskies is that you can put a few drops in a glass for comparison), and while they both have a little less to them than the 18 year old, they're also less than half the price. If you're feeling like branching over to the fruitier side, something like a Glendrodach 15 would be worth trying. It's not soo far off from the others, but tastes a bit sweeter and is a bit more complex.
If you're committed to smokey, non-iodine-y whiskies, Talisker is good, as noted. Maybe a Bowmore 12 (a little sweeter), or, if you find it, Ardmore or a Ben Riach. But again, it sounds more like your tastes go away from the smokey stuff to subtler whiskies.
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A thing I'll note for the uninitiated here is that another nice feature of whisky is that there are literally only dozens of distilleries. There are something like 80 in Scotland. For a whisky nerd it's entirely possible to have a good 1/2 to 1/3 of them on a reasonably sized shelf. And since bottles take several years to go off, you really can have a huge percentage of the total range represented in a moderate whisky nerd's collection.
However, I love wood smoke, so I'm intrigued enough to keep at it. I'm trying out some non-smokey whiskies too; I had a glass of Macallan 12 that I enjoyed quite a bit.
The last few glasses I drank were really disappointing compared to the initial fanstastic glasses. I can't describe the tastes, but it was simply not good anymore. When too much air gets into the bottle, the Whisky can oxidize, changing its taste (usually for the worse).
I haven't attempted whisky much yet, but I believe that you trained your taste to appreciate the domain and recognize the subtleties within that domain enough to appreciate something you didn't immediately.
I say this as someone who's gotten into music genres I hated 10 years ago, forced myself to try cilantro, olives, more pickled food, and regional cuisines to a point where I appreciate all of it, and can tell well from poorly executed within those areas. I'm not sure we can force ourselves to like everything, but I'm living proof that we (sample size of one) can force ourselves to recognize quality in every domain.
I would be keen on whisky if it wasn't for the fact that I rarely drink to begin with, and the price is non-negligible.
I started trying out whisky when I realized that for the amount I drink, the price even of fairly expensive whiskies didn't add up to all that much each month.
So you're in the same situation as me, yet arrived at the opposite conclusion, and I think you're probably right. :)
I'll reconsider my stance and will pick up a couple of bottles and dip my toe.
But seriously. My Irish mate started me on it and I really didn’t enjoy it at the start. But he kept buying it for me. And I kept drinking it. And now I love it more than words.
I like super smoky whiskies and unfortunately it’s hard to find anything under $50.
This is very controversial, but have a go at Black Label. In my opinion, it is one of the heavily undervalued whiskeys. Otherwise, I found Scotch to be expensive in the US, but I got a bottle of Monkey Shoulder for around 30 bucks which did Okay. Not very peaty, but it does the job on a budget.
If you don’t mind going a little higher, Laphroaig, Caol Ila, Lagavulin, Talisker are the usual suspects. On a budget I would say don’t worry about age too much. 10y Laphroaig is fine! Age is easily overvalued (because it markets easily with people who are afraid to admit they don’t know), as is single malt. Not saying it doesn’t matter; I just find it hard to justify the price hike, sometimes. Although for peat, single malts do tend to be better, unfortunately. :)
You'll do much better in the US with a Rittenhouse Rye, or Buffalo Trace bourbon. Hell, even a basic Jameson is better than Johnie Walker Black.
The Johnie Walker Green is a respectable whisky, but like so many high-brand respectable whiskies, it can't punch its weight with other things in its price range. (I've never tried the Blue, admittedly.) That's the same issue with e.g. the Jack Daniels range. It's not that it's bad for mixed drinks, but you can get some genuinely good stuff for cheaper -- stuff that'd so good you'll feel bad about pouring it into a cocktail.
Obviously this is subjective, but I disagree so completely I can't even imagine how anyone could think this.
Connemara Irish whiskey is also peated. It's also a respectable whiskey, but I think you can do better for cheaper with Scotch island whiskies.
For all-out smokey power, the (Texas-made) Balcones Brimstone is a bit of a mind-fuck. It's dried with mesquite wood fire (i.e. the thing used for good bbq). It's not their best whiskey, and it's not well balanced by any means, but it is unique and very, very smokey.
Edit (after walking through the kitchen): Nikka (Japan) and Kavalan (Taiwan) also produce excellent peated whiskies, genuinely competitive with great Scottish whiskies (unlike Connemara, in my opinion), but they wouldn't be any cheaper than Scottish whiskies in the US.
How "cheap" is the cheap end? If you're fine with about 100 quid, have a look at the Bruichladich distillery. They have three whiskies; the Bruichladich is unpeated (and quite good); the Port Charlotte is sold as "heavily peated" and the Octomore as "super heavily peated". I expect the latter will probably be to your liking - yours for just £125 a bottle.
I didnt find port charlotte very peaty at all, but its been a while.
Agreed, Talisker Storm is interesting for the price(~$50). (is there a dark storm & storm? i've only seen storm in the usa).
More in the $50 range, but delicious. If I still drank whiskey it’s what I’d drink.
also, at that price point, they all contain sulphites.
I've tasted some great Japanese whiskies, but I don't know the range of stuff there well at all. Nikka has a bar under their office in Tokyo, and I went when I was in town last year to try their range:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6jzabttfzjyk0ea/nikka.jpg?dl=0
I left the country with a bottle of Nikka Yoichi, which is good, but not nearly as good as some of the ones from that tasting, most of which I believe are exclusively bottled for exactly that menu item. So if the question is, "Do I like Japanese whisky?" I can roundly say, "Yes." If the question is if I can recommend any, I'd have to say, "Not really."
Got a bottle of Suntory Yamazaki 12 Year as a gift a while back and really enjoyed it, although it was a bit sweet.
Laguvulin 16, Talisker 10, Glenmorangie 10, Aberlour 10
For bourbon, Buffalo Trace is a great deal (it's not an amazing whisky, but it's great for its price). 1776 Bourbon is quite good, and not very expensive. Bushmills 10 is a nice, relatively cheap, Irish single malt.
Getting out into more exotic stuff doesn't make sense until you've developed your taste for the stuff a bit more since it's expensive. If there's a whisky festival of some sort in your area, at least if they work like the one in Berlin, they're a great place to try a bunch of stuff since 2 cl costs about 1/20th of the bottle price, so you can try a jigger from a €100 bottle usually for €5, or low-end stuff for €2. It's very rare that I'd drop €100 or more on something I hadn't previously tasted, and at said festival, I'll usually try 6-8 exotic whiskies, and then buy a bottle or two.
I can't remember if I've tried the Suntory Yamazaki, but several of the Japanese (and Taiwanese) whiskies I've tried are a bit sweeter; a bit more like a good bourbon.
https://www.nikka.com/eng/products/grain/coffeygrain.html
(Though personally I still gravitate toward Scotch if I have a choice)
For beer, especially, the main distinction between basic German pilsners (I live in Berlin) was the social class that they're marketed to. Price is a pretty poor predictor of quality or taste, but you can choose to spend anywhere from about 50 cents to €1.20 to get almost indistinguishable beers. That doesn't mean to say that some aren't better than others, but that price isn't a good predictor of where they fit on the quality scale. (With craft beers things are pretty different, however.) There are very obviously working class beers, professional beers, etc.
With wine, my impression that almost everything that was sold at a grocery store broadly fit into the category of generic cheap wine. There is a weak correlation between quality and price, but if you sampled a bunch of them, it wasn't hard to find bottles at €3 that were better than the average bottle at €6, and bottles at €6 that were as good as the average bottle at €12. (They don't get much more expensive than €12 in grocery stores here. Note, wine is about twice as expensive for the same quality in the US, in my experience.) Notably, none of those wines would be truly interesting, just better expressions of their archetype.
The most interesting way to taste wine that I've found is at high-end restaurants that do pairings. Having a professional that just picks out interesting wines that they think fit with particularly quirky dishes has yielded more interesting results for me than the handful of wine tastings I've done. They'll bring out stuff that's truly weird and interesting if you're used to grocery store wine. And here at least, once you've, ahm, stomached, what you're paying for the meal, the glasses of wine aren't exorbitant -- about €8/glass, even at a place with a couple Michelin stars.
Relative to the other categories of booze, the place where I have genuine expertise is whisky. I have a large collection that's, well, worth more than my car. The beautiful thing about whisky, however, is that you can keep bottles of different things open for years and compare them to each other. That makes it pretty easy to figure out where you get the best bang for your buck. Over about €35/bottle, there's not a particularly strong correlation between quality and price. There are even some fantastic whiskies below that that punch way above their price-class (e.g. Laphroiag Quarter Cask, or Rittenhouse Rye). While there are some particularly unique and great expensive whiskies, even for a trained tongue and nose, it's absolutely no guarantee that a €100 bottle will be better than a good €40 bottle. Often it will just be rarer, and stroke the whisky-nerd ego to a greater extent. ;-)