The Challenge
We aimed to go through the blurb on the label of an SMWS whisky, and ‘roll back’ the notes by one rewrite, leaving an unfiltered, under-edited and probably less marketable version of the tasting notes, but hopefully achieving a slightly more honest and accurate representation of the whisky.
Do SMWS clean up their descriptions to make the whiskies sound more palatable?
We wondered if there was anything they really wanted to put in there but couldn’t on the grounds of making their whiskies appealing, and perhaps more broadly on the grounds of public decency.
Moreover, we considered the following question:
Can we give the notes the rhyme scheme of a limerick?
NB. This question was not considered on the night, but has been added in the editing process due to almost being satisfied by accident.
Results
Here is what we came up with:
The nose exudes melodies of cif lemon, soft-scoop, nectarines, and a flowery meadow,
but also subterranean gravy granule burps and Play-doh.
The intensely fruity palate shelters a darker nutty side
(cacao nibs, scorched lemon meringue, pecan pie)
and a cinnamon baseball bat tornado.
Analysis
We’ve given the original notes, and our roll-back ones underneath in italics for the sake of comparison:
The nose offers bright notes of lemon puffs, vanilla, nectarines and grass,
The nose exudes melodies of cif lemon, soft-scoop, nectarines, and a flowery meadow,
but also deeper rumblings of sea-chests, Bisto and Plasticine.
but also subterranean gravy granule burps and Play-doh.
The snugly comforting palate has appealing nutty sweetness
The intensely fruity palate shelters a darker nutty side
(toffee, treacle, walnut fudge, pecan pie)
(cacao nibs, scorched lemon meringue, pecan pie)
and satisfying warm woody spices.
and a cinnamon baseball bat tornado.
Nailed it.
Well, nailed the second question at least.
The main thing to note is that tastes such as ‘gravy granule burps’ and ‘cinnamon baseball bat tornado’ would probably have been sanitised for public consumption. Similarly ‘cif lemon’ would have been replaced by the altogether more edible ‘lemon puffs’.
What did we learn
Concise, serious tasting notes without use of extended metaphor are hard to write, especially after several drams of 60+% whisky.
We also learned that 4.205 is a very tasty dram indeed.
What didn’t we learn
On this occasion we didn’t really have anything actually bad to say about the whisky, so we were unable to answer the first question fully. Obviously SMWS doesn’t necessarily want to convey things that might be considered negative, but there are only so many euphemisms along the lines of “packs a real punch (no seriously, it really really does pack a punch)!” that can be used to mollify a baseball bat tornado.