Big MacWhisky vs. a single cask for 100.
I’ll take the single cask.
Would you rather have a Big Mac or a Waygu steak?
The steak. Because real flavor comes from a place and a time. Nobody really knows where that Big Mac came from or what’s in it.
No matter how much bioengineering they put into it, it’s not real.
So allow me to translate that into whisky.
I’ve been to giant distilleries turning semi-trucks loaded with barley into oceans of whisky that get dumped into vast plains of whisky casks that get stacked into Mt. Vesuvius-like cask stacks, and nobody pays attention until the day it’s scheduled to get put into Big MacWhisky bottles.
Is this any way to run a madhouse?
People collect whisky and pay big money for uniqueness. Nobody collects Big Macs. They’re all the same. Sure, if you’ve been hiking across Tibet and not eaten in a week and don’t have a taste for yak milk fritters, then maybe that Big Mac will hit the spot. You know what it’ll taste like, and there are no surprises, and there could be plenty wrong with yak milk fritters. I get that.
But c’mon. Live a little. Try new things. Expect the unexpected. Embrace the kismet of surprises because predicting everything is so boring, even Nostradamus mixed it up in his writing. And really, did he predict anything? He was so elusive that it could have all been utter BS, and nobody would have known.
That’s a long-winded way of saying that small whisky is better than Big MacWhisky.
The small distillers that will never sell a million bottles a year.
They’re the ones that are doing the interesting stuff, and they’re the ones you should find.
I’ll help.
The Big MacWhiskies don’t care about some dork from Texas coming there, getting in their chili and telling their story. They don’t have a story. Not one they want told anyway.
It’s the small shops that are doing the cool work, and those are the stories I seek.
And I find unique stories everywhere I go. I’m currently in Australia, and the stories here are plentiful.
Beyond the wacky-ass animals I see and hear every day, the people here are doing some interesting things with barley, water, and yeast.
Speaking of animals, I’ve seen ravens, cockatoos, eagles, wombats, wallabies, kangaroos, and Tasmanian devils. I’ve yet to see a koala or be threatened by a Drop Bear, but I’m hoping to. I even saw a platypus, and many Australians haven’t seen one. They’re smaller than I expected. Little thing, around a foot long, and that was a Tasmanian platypus, and they’re supposed to be more robust than their cousins on the mainland.
But no koala or Drop Bears yet.
OK, back to whisky.
I’ve discovered some amazing bottles in my time here. I can only bring one liter of whisky back home to the US, so I’m thinking it’ll be a gaggle of mini bottles in my carry-on and hope to not repeat the scene in customs after a trip to Spain.
I’d bought some fantastic Spanish chorizo and olives in the duty-free shop at the Barcelona airport, and was a good citizen and put that on my declaration when I got back to the States. They pulled it all out and said, “No way, Jose.” Can’t bring it in, even though it came from Duty Free in the airport?
I opened the olives, ate a few, took big bites of the chorizo, and dropped the chewed-on sausage on the counter. If I wasn’t taking my chorizo home for dinner, nobody was.
So hoping I’ll get some little sample bottles home with me without having to open them all, drink them down at customs, and cause a scene.
I’ve figured I can bring around 20 of the little airline-sized bottles to stay under the one-liter limit, so I’ll pack them in my dirty socks in my checked bag. If a customs agent wants to dig through my bag to find them all, no point in making it pleasant. And since we’re not allowed to have opinions anymore when they dig through your social media to see if you’re good enough to come into the country, I’m looking guilty already.
So be it.
These great small-distillery whiskies are coming with me.
And I do feel bad for the small whisky makers when it comes to shipping some product to the USA.
Shipping whisky to the USA is the same as shipping to 50 different countries. Each state has its own rules, and you have to get label approvals in each state, which is nuts. Big MacWhisky doesn’t care. They have great herds of people to take care of that stuff. Small Whisky doesn’t. Big guys don’t want competition from small makers that are making better stuff.
That’s why it’s important for those of us who are fans of great whisky to seek out these makers. They’re worth supporting because they’re putting more into each bottle. More research. More experimentation. More thought. And they’re making more interesting choices.
Big MacWhisky is fine if you’re having a party and guests will be pouring splashes into ginger beer. No surprises needed. Just something doused in sugar to make it less awkward. But it you’ve got good friends coming over to solve the world’s problems, bring out the good stuff.
Good whisky makes for gooder conversations. I’m pretty sure there is a scientific study that proves this. If not, I just said it on the internet just now, so it must be true.
Australian whisky is doing great things. So far, I’ve spent time at McHenry and marveled at the remote location and fresh-water spring that comes right out of a mountain, visited Belgrove and watched Peter Bignell craft magic out of old car parts, spent time at Clyde Mill and watched the pet platypus frolic in the pond next to the distillery, walked the amazing grounds of Lawrenny and found inner peace, had the BBQ and rainwater whisky at Tin Shed in the Adelaide Hills and today, I’m hanging out at Tria Prima and marveling at how Paul Shand has a supernatural understanding of the magic that happens inside the casks. All of them are making better juice than most of us have ever poured from an expensive MacWhisky bottle.
So if you can’t hop on a flight halfway around the world to taste these great whiskies, come by my house when I get home and have a sip from my little airline samples, then book the flight.
Or, if we get lucky, these bottles may find their way to America with some inventive and far-sighted importers and distributors. And if they do, life in America will get a little less bleak.
And a little less MacWhiskyish.
Single cask for 100, Alex… And skip the ice.
