The Blind Date, The Flavor, The Real Identity!

It was a different kind of winter night. 7 Decanters – no names, just numbers were lined up, secretly mocking us to “figure it out”.

We were ready to play a game – a game of hidden identity, unfiltered social perceptions and untabooed by price ranges. This was going to be a game of blind tasting - what we should or should not choose, was not quite the game. We had to taste them all. I was ready for it, yet I was dealing with apprehensions to taste so many – for it excited me to give it a real blind shot.

I was not alone that night, I was with four others.

Now before you folks go down that imaginary trip, the 4 were the family of course! Son, Son by love (not just law), Daughter, and Wife. They were all in it!

The rounds began.

Each took a blind shot in tasting - Three high-end, imported, single-malt and blended scotch whiskeys and four Indian single-malt and blended whiskeys.

Just so that we don’t fall off the table, we restricted the size of each drink to 10 ml servings. It went down either neat, or with a dash of water or on the rocks. The way we do whiskey on a normal day. And we savored each flavor, one by one.

As is done in all blind tastings, each one of us rated the flavor on a scale of 1-5, tried to guess the make and brand of whiskey and penned down the experience of each flavor. Try it – you will understand how hilarious it gets – we had a riot at home trying to write down the taste of whiskey!

Then I added another twist. The List of Seven whiskeys got added with two “blinder names” – just to mislead the crowd and it became a List of Nine from which the family had to guess the whiskey they were savoring! The 7 decanters were still unlabeled and now you had two more names to confuse the participants, but a narrower list from which one could guess.

Cycle 2 of tasting commenced and each one tried to match the name to the flavors and rated the whiskies again. We felt even more confident and closer to solving the problem.

As the flow continued, the atmosphere and animated participation, if nothing else, became more chaotic, if I may say so. One could attribute a part of it to the influence of the multiple 10 mls that were part of this game.

The Mind, The Tongue and The Perceptions were entangled in their own waltz of discovery.

I am sure you want to know what came out of it?! ?Believe me, we were!

As you may have guessed. The answers, the guesswork, the ‘oh I know this’ turned out to be completely inaccurate. For all the years of whisky drinking some of us had done, once u cover the name and pour it into an unnamed decanter, I realized we end up having no clue. Most of the time.

Macallan Sherry Oak Cask came out on top with the highest rated scores, followed by the less-known Facewood from Goa. Now that was a utter surprise! Godowan from Rajasthan took third place, with Glenfiddich 18, McGlenn of Goa, JW Black Label, and Baliwada rounding out the top seven in that sequence.

There were many others that we wanted to try. Indri, Rampur, Amrut, Yamazaki, Hibiki, Toki, American Bourbons – the list is long. But we couldn’t do it all obviously on the same day. So, we will have a sequel to this experiment someday soon.??

It's great to see Indian whiskeys making waves. When we remove the branding and try them blind, we truly appreciate the quality without the influence of created by marketing and the colonial baggage of the bias for the “imported”.

I have started asking for Indian Whiskeys at the watering holes that i go to. Unfortunately and ironically, very few carry our own Indian brands on their shelves. Maybe it is time we get together and change that ?!

But forget the whiskey – The fun we had, as a family, was a high that no alcohol could provide.

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Note: For those who don’t drink, no worries! We did a similar blind tasting with 7 different Hyderabadi Biryanis. An equally crazy, exciting experiment. But that story is for another day!?