Preparing Your Children to be Whiskey Enthusiasts

My word!  What are you doing?!  How can you be so irresponsible?! 

I’m talking about adult children who are interested in getting into whiskey.  Relax and read on.

In college binge drinking was a part of life.  And like so many others, my binge drinking lead to irresponsible behavior and poor health results. (We joke about spending a night bent over a toilet, but that really sucked).  I’ve often counseled against binge drinking.   Sure, the chaos can be entertaining, but the aftermath? Not so much.  And yes, I drank whiskey in college, but with the same sophistication as choosing between brands of generic beer.   It wasn’t until my late thirties that I really discovered whiskey’s charms.  Now, it’s all about protecting the liver.  I regret the damage caused and the opportunities missed.  

Let’s talk about prepping someone new to enjoy whiskey responsibly. As with your underage kids, if you want to teach them to enjoy alcohol responsibly, then enjoy alcohol responsibly yourself.  What they observe will be the greatest teacher.  With the exception of vodka which is more about what you don’t smell than what you do, most alcohol relies heavily on the sense of smell.  And that sense of smell is what’s important to develop early.  

Our sense of smell is critical to enjoyment of whiskey. And, of course, it’s critical to enjoying life in general.  The sense of smell is important also for wine, coffee, tea, and other beverages.  I’ve often mocked people who say they detect cardamom in whiskey, but perhaps they do.  Having a jar with a small amount of cardamom that you can sniff is a pretty good idea.  It’s common for whiskey experts to tell us they smell and taste caramel or cherry, but common descriptors often also include fresh-cut grass, iodine, and asphalt. There's a large list of wonderful aromas that await you when you enter the world of whisk(e)y.

For a more structured approach, you can buy a whiskey aroma kit that has the different common aromas known to whiskey tasting. You can find them here for about two hundred bucks.  Or you can make your own.  A DIY aroma kit could be a fun family project. It’s like a fun interactive science project!  Getting a bit of fresh-laid asphalt might be a challenge, but it could also be an adventure.

Nurturing your sense of smell isn’t just about enjoying whiskey. It’s about savoring life’s flavors and fragrances in general. So, start sniffing, and let the olfactory adventures begin!