Whiskey Flavor Profile: Build a Long Finish

Whiskey gets interesting when it keeps talking after you swallow. A good whiskey is not just “smooth”. It evolves: a beginning, a middle, and a finish that can last 15 to 30 seconds.

Use the tasting grid to define what a whiskey should look like, then consider two common problems: very old whiskey losing its front end, and modern whiskey losing its back end.

Quick summary

The expected whiskey grid

A classical whiskey profile is medium at the beginning, strong in the middle, and strong at the back end. The back end can show up after second six or seven and can last 15 to 30 seconds as a throat and back-palate sensation.

Third and last one, third and last one for today. Hey, a three-dimensional product that highlights the back-end flavors. Front of mouth, middle of mouth, back of mouth.

This should be, by looking at the axis, a taste experience that probably takes 15 to 25, maybe even 30 seconds. There's a lot happening after seconds six and seven. There's a lot of flavor intensity in the middle, and there's a medium flavor at the beginning.

A practical tasting set

To train, a practical suggestion is tasting across styles. One example set is a non-peated single malt, a regular bourbon, and other whiskeys. The goal is to use the same grid and see which products actually show a third dimension.

First second, seconds two to six, and then everything after second seven or eight is tails associated. If we go back a little bit to the Holy Trinity of distillation, that basically means that in their cutting, they went into that direction to incorporate quite a few tails, quite a lot of tails, in order to have those earthy and rooty flavors that you cannot just taste as earthy and rooty, but that you also can identify because they hit you back of mouth, transition towards your throat. This is the classical design scheme, the classical grid for a whiskey.

Two common whiskey problems

Not talking whiskey with an E in there, but whiskey with a Y, like the stuff they make in Scotland. And the stuff for a large time that they actually used to make in America. Medium beginning, a lot of flavor in the middle, a lot at the back.

Go for a single malt, non-peated one, because that will sort of overpower your palate. So maybe a highland one that isn't peated from Scotland, maybe have a bourbon, a regular bourbon, maybe have a Woodford Reserve bourbon, and maybe some other whiskeys. The fun about whiskey is that because there is three-dimensionality and a lot of flavor, it starts to become more and more interesting and more and more challenging to sort of find the mistakes, but not really challenging if you started with vodka and learned about wrong head cuts, dived into fruit brandies and probably identified mistakes made on the tail's cut.

Problem 1: the beginning disappears in long aging

A claim here is that heads-associated fruity notes can age out faster than tails notes. After 12 to 15 years, some whiskeys can have almost nothing happening in the first second. The argument is blunt: long aging can turn whiskey into a two-dimensional product.

So now you have both dimensions to play with. When I look at whiskeys, I see often two mistakes appearing. And they're mistakes, so they can be adjusted.

You can use your eye still for it, maybe. Or you can use fermentation protocols for it, maybe. We're going to dive into fermentation a little bit later if you scroll down.

Problem 2: the third dimension is missing

The second problem is a missing finish: the back end is gone. This is not caused by aging (tails notes recombine and then stabilize rather than oxidize away). Instead, it points at still design: systems that suppress tails carryover can produce a sweet two-dimensional whiskey that is “what we nowadays tend to call bourbon.”.

Bubble caps are used as the example of a built-in tails trap bubble caps as a built-in tails trap.

So the two mistakes I see if I go to very old and aged products is that basically the X, front of mouth, the first second, is very low or it is not there at all. And that has to do, and there is a video out there that we already placed online, that has to do with the fact that aging-wise, the head C factors age out faster than the tail C factors. So after three, four, five years, head C fruity flavors are aged out.

What this suggests you can change

Treat these as adjustable problems. You can change how far you go into tails during distillation, and you can change what you create during fermentation. The next module on fermentation turns this tasting grid into a controllable formula linking fermentation controls to the Holy Trinity.

Then they just continue to oxidize and oxidize and oxidize, and basically there's nothing left after 12 to 15 years. So if you have a 15-year-old Scottish whiskey, don't be surprised if this X is there. Actually, don't be surprised if it isn't there at all.

Nothing happens in some whiskies in the first second. In reality, you've just turned by aging, over aging, that whiskey as a distillery into a two-dimensional product. I understand that there's a benefit to longer aging, but if it's good, it's good.

Key Takeaways