Glass envy

A few more thoughts about the difference between how whiskey tastes and how we taste whiskey:

First, the better you understand why you're tasting this whiskey, the better you can adjust the experience to meet your end, and the better experience you'll have. If you're simply after enjoyment of this whiskey right here in this glass, then it would seem you'd want to think it's a highly valued whiskey. Best, perhaps, to drink it with someone who really likes it, since their enthusiasm will add to yours.

Blind tastings, on the other hand, are ill-suited to maximizing the pleasure of drinking a particular dram. They can, though, help you think about what you do and don't like, apart from the opinions of everyone not tasting along with you. They're also pretty good at humbling you.¹

Understanding why you're tasting this whiskey might include the realization that the reason you're tasting this whiskey is dumb. More than one enthusiast has discovered that his hobby has become a chore, an obligation to chase after the latest whiskey because it... well, because it's the latest whiskey, and if you haven't tasted this latest whiskey then you aren't on the cutting edge of whiskey tasting and you'll lose the respect of, you know, those weirdos down at the worm store.²

Even worse, perhaps, than chasing after a whiskey because it's new! is chasing after it because everyone else is chasing after it. I might be able to keep up with the Jones' whiskey collection, but there's no way I can keep up with the Internet's whiskey collection.

Nor would it make any sense for me to try. Here's where I remind myself, not only of the difference between envy -- which is wanting someone else to lose something good that they have, preferably to you -- and zeal -- which is wanting something good that someone else has, without them losing it as well -- but of the difference between healthy and unhealthy zeal. Unhealthy zeal is when you adopt someone else's zeal for something good simply on the basis of the zeal, not on whether the thing they're zealous for would actually be any good for you.

A final thought: While knowing that a whiskey is highly thought of may improve the experience of tasting it, that doesn't mean it makes sense for me to taste the most highly thought of whiskey I prudently can. Like the old Stanford marshmallow experiment trick, the experience of tasting the really good stuff will be much better if I delay it until I know more about whiskey³, and my palate, and what makes really good stuff really good. Sure, I can try it both now and later, but if the cost is the same and the delayed enjoyment greater, why not save the cost of the lesser enjoyment now? (With "save the cost," I kid, of course. Nothing would be saved, it would merely be spent more efficiently.)

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1. I should say that I have not ever done a blind tasting myself. I'm incompetent at sighted tasting, so there wouldn't be much value added. That said, it wasn't too long ago that I ordered a new-to-me Irish whiskey at a bar, which I thought was quite nice, and didn't find out until I ordered a second one that the server had misheard me the first time and what I'd drunk was a Macallan 12. Scotch, Irish, what the hell do I know?

2. In the Simpson's episode, "The War of the Simpsons," Homer explains to Marge why it's so important he catch General Sherman, the legendary catfish of a local lake. " If I catch this fish, I'll be a hero, respected and admired for years!"

Marge asks, "By whom?"

Homer answers, "Those weirdos down at the worm store!"
How much, O Man, is done in your life for just this reason!

3. Like, for instance, the difference between Scotch and Irish whiskey.