Friday, August 17, 2012

The Harmonic Resonance of Peat: An Ardbeg Vatting Mystery

I had the sublime pleasure of dramming the other day with one of New York's greatest whisky enthusiasts: Peter Silver, aka The Jazz Dentist, Malt Maniac, & PLOWED dude.  He is one of the most erudite, knowledgeable, experienced, generous, story filled, and whisky geekiest people I've ever met or even imagined.  To say I was in hog heaven at our dram session at "Dram Central Station" (his house) would be an understatement.  Among the wonderful things that went down that night and that blew my mind was an incredible vatting of two fierce drams... but, wait.  I should start the story a little earlier... 1803 to be precise...

Peter Silver at Dram Central Station (in the midst of post move unpacking)
In 1803 English genius polymath Thomas Young performed an interesting experiment on harmonic resonance.  You know, that phenomenon where waves can interact either constructively - via positive feedback - or destructively via negative feedback to yield either an increasing power or a decreasing one; a cancelling out.  You run into this a lot in situations like using a microphone too near a speaker, where positive feedback turns a sound into a howl, or in the corner of a swimming pool where the little waves might slap together and form a spout that soaks you in the eye.  Anyway, Thomas Young proved the wave nature of light using a clever experimental arrangement that looks like this:


(from wiki article on Young's Interference Experiment)

The two slits create a zone of raking interaction angle where the wave fronts alternately reinforce and and cancel each other out - producing a characteristic comb-like pattern.  The wave like nature of water waves was shown and then light was tested and the wave nature of light was empirically proven.  Of course, when most people see the double slit diagram they don't think of this vital and important piece of 1803 science.  They think of a later and perhaps even more important piece of science - the one performed in 1909 by G. Taylor and many times since showing wave particle duality in quantum physics.  In that experiment single particles going through twin slits build up over time to show the same comb shaped diffraction interference pattern as water or light.  This means that each particle goes through both slits  and interferes with itself - its own wave-like nature.  Einstein showed that matter and energy are different manifestations of each other. Wave particle duality shows that matter itself is inherently unlocalized.  Spooky - mysterious - inherently incomprehensible. 

Dr. Silver executes the vatting.
But what does any of this have to do with whisky?  This is where Dr. Peter Silver proceeded to blow my mind for the umpteenth time that night.  He replicated an experiment that a friend had shown him where two powerful expressions of peat, slightly out of phase, largely cancel each other out - just as two waves out of phase annihilate each other.

The two slightly out of phase powerful peat expressions are Arbeg Airgh Nam Beist and Corryvreckan - the two expressions I reviewed head to head earlier this week. (Thanks, Peter, for those samples!)

The story was that Dr. Silver's friend loved old expressions of Ardbeg that were more floral and fragrant and more gently peated than the current NAS monsters.  These old expressions have become virtually unobtainable however.  Being a serious whisky scientist, however he had figured out that vatting together Nam Beist and Corryvreckan at a 1 to 1 ratio (1/2 and 1/2) produced a product that, paradoxically, was dramatically less peated than either of its component whiskies and tasted, to the educated palate, remarkably like those old Ardbegs.

Full disclosure: I wouldn't know an antique Ardbeg if it shot me in the knees (Ardbegs typically bear loaded firearms and blast you with them so I figured this was an appropriate metaphor here).  Nevertheless I figure I could say whether vatting together these two peat monsters could somehow - magically, and in violation of all sense or reason - produce a lightly peated dram.

I tasted this vatting that night and was astounded.  Intelligently I took a sample to put under the intense scrutiny of a Jason Debly style "slow whisky" examination later - i.e. here:

A 50-50 Vatting of Ardbeg 2007 Airgh Nam Beist and Corryvreckan


Color: full gold

Nose: Damp clay, and sea airs yield to floral roses, and blackberry and strawberry fruits. These aromas float over a dark and complex backdrop that has me stretching for metaphor: hemp rope, clams, pitch and distant burning earth. Rich, delicious and heady. Loaded and 100% Ardbeg.

Palate: The entry is initially briefly off dry and loaded with sea salt up front. But this rapidly gives way to polite, elegantly rich malt sweetness with clover honey and white cane sugar elements. There is the fierce filigree of high proof white pepper heat and then a gentle stillness. This is the moment where Ardbeg's monster peat normally arrives with fierce dark tar and burning smoky hot ash. But now, this moment never arrives.

The mid palate grows juicy with lime that makes my saliva squirt and a distant warming earthy peat that brings a subtle tingle rather that a fierce burn. There is dark and dusty ash in the turn to the finish - but no wallop. The dominant flavors are herbal bitters, salt crust and sea weed and iodine. More than anything this mix of tar, lemon-lime acid, herbal bitters, and salt reads as high quality kalamata black olives. Delicious, gentle, warming, and ultimately mystifying. This is a vatting of a floral off-dry mature peat monster and a fierce, sharp sugared full bore peat monster. Yet their combination is not a peat monster at all. It is a gentle, richly complex subtly peated dram. The finish is long and gently subtle with malty berry sweet and a lingering earthy tar glow of peat. It's quite a bit sweeter and less "skinned palate" than the usual Ardbeg finish.



Is this a faithful replica of antique Ardbeg? I cannot say. What I can attest is that the spectacle of the cancellation of peat is a stupefying miracle. I'm dazzled and delighted. As a bonus, the resulting spirit is so delicious I could see deliberately vatting a pair of bottles and drinking this smooth, rich, and complicated concoction on a regular basis.  So what is happening on a molecular level?  How is this incredible phenomenon really taking place?  I have not the slightest idea.  Yet I have tasted it myself and can attest it is real.  I believe it is intimately connected with wave-particle duality and the deepest mysteries of the universe but I cannot say precisely why.  I cannot, indeed, even say extremely roughly why.  Frankly, it's really the whisky doing the talking here, completely.  Let it speak and listen to it and maybe we'll all learn something.


Update 8/17/12: This post has led to some lively debate - both in the comments section and on twitter.  Some folks took me literally with the harmonic resonance and quantum physics arguments.  I assure you these are metaphors.  However, what can possibly account for two powerful peat monsters to mix together to combine into a much less peated dram?



When I referred to Oliver Klimek and Bozkurt Karasu "backing" me I was referring to this conversation:





Thanks, Peter! 

16 comments:

  1. If your knees are getting shot by the flavor of Ardbeg, it's probably time to call it an evening.

    Now I wonder if in fact the peat was being diluted in the vatting? Oftentimes I've noticed peat becomes muted when water is added (well too much water in some cases).

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    1. I keep saying things like "Ardbeg with pistols" in these reviews. I just mean that Ardbegs are big and powerful. I like it. There's no water in this vatting - just Corryvreckan which is a big big peat monster and ANB which is a smooth elegant peat monster. Vatted together they are much less peaty than either of the components and it's not dilution because the only things in the glass are big peat monsters. It's a mystery.

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    2. Eric might be on to something there - wonder if the peat cancellation holds with extended vatting time? Did you actually carry the vatted sample from Mr. Silver's house, or did you vat and drink immediately?

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    3. I did both. I mixed and drank immediately and then took a sample of this vatting with me and drank it over a week later. The "missing peat" effect was indistinguishable. Water integration takes time as we found empirically. This particular vatting effect does not - and no water is added or used in this vatting in any way.

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  2. There's no doubt Ardbeg will give your tongue and taste buds a beating. It's why I love this whisky.

    Anyway I was saying that any vatting will introduce water to the whisky (since all whisky contains water whether they are watered down to 40% or bottled at cask strength).

    Ryan may also be onto something too. Did you drink right away or let the whiskies marry for a little while? Giving the whisky vatting some time will probably change the chemical bonds or structure. Granted it's been a few years since high school chemistry...

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  3. Even though you didn't add additional water, the water already present in the whisky should also integrate in the vatting and it might have an effect on the flavor.

    Wonder how one would set up an experiment for this?

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    1. Except that the water already present in the whiskies has been integrating with the component whiskies for months already. However, these two expressions are at different concentrations. Nam Beist is 46% and Corry is full cask strength so Corry is being diluted a bit by the addition of lower strength spirit. However, the fact that Nam Beist has a much more powerful peat flavor that the resulting vatting seems to contradict the water integration angle - particularly since the effect is noted immediately following mixing and remains unchanged when tasting the vatting even over a week after the initial mixing.

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  4. Ah, the power of blending whisky! Is it no wonder that blends rule the world?

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    1. Indeed, this experience shows me a side of blending I had not heretofore considered. Interactions among whiskies can profoundly affect the flavor profiles - not only in additive and "mixed" ways - but also in subtractive ways as well. It's not something I would have ever suspected possible. It's something that I would trouble believing if I hadn't experienced it myself and I'm still at a loss to explain.

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  5. Josh, in the name of science, I vatted together some Corryvreckan with Oban 14 (the only other scotch I have at the moment). This 50/50 vatting retained almost all of the sharpness and fieriness from the Ardbeg peat (which I was hoping to tame a bit). If there was any cancelling going on, it was on all the other flavors. It seemed almost sharper and hotter than the Corry all by itself, and definitely not as flavorful. This is not a recommended vatting :-P

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    1. You are truly a brave man, Ryan. Anyway - it proves that simply vatting with any lower proof spirit doesn't produce the effect. That is actually very valuable information. The effect is some more specific interaction.

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    2. Very brave, or very foolish ;-)

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  6. A minor quibble, if I may: electronic feedback is a separate and distinct phenomenon from wave interference.

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  7. Before I read this blog, I had tried Corry Vatted with Uigie and I did not notice a drop in peat. It was more like I just had an additional expression of Ardbeg in my house. And a pretty good one.

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  8. That's a fascinating vatting which I will have to try. I tried Corry with A'Bunadh. It was good, but not a keeper (better was A'Bunadh with Bruichladdich rocks). I wrote about Glenfarclas 25 and Auchentoshen Valinch. I've also written about mass vattings of whole flights - which oddly work sometimes. Certainly the business of mating a sherried malt with an unsherried one works often - but usually seems to end up spicier than each component. The disappearing peat heat of this weird vatting is, in my experience, unique.

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