The right way to drink Scotch

A friend, who has just returned from Australia, came over to my pad last night and we presumed the evening (for journalists 11 pm is about dusk) would start the usual way: a debate over which of the three is better for whiskey: soda or water or half-soda-half-water? One part whiskey, two parts water; two parts whiskey, one part soda, one part water; well the dilutions are endless. But we believe in getting down to work without any delay whatsoever. So we did start with that debate, only that my friend revealed a fourth way: on the rocks, which, for the benefit of ignorant souls, is taking a bottle, two plastic glasses and some salted potato chips to a hillock on the JNU campus. No sir, ignorance indeed is bliss, because on the rocks, on the other hand, is what people on Parthasarathy Rock indulge in after the soda bottle has rolled down owing to gravity and the lack of it among the handlers. This involves one part whiskey and one part whiskey. The users may or may not decide to blame the capitalist government for the bottle’s heinous act.

So anyway, we were there discussing drinking neat which is sort of a neat thing to discuss. He started with his great adventures Down Under. By the way Australia is called so because it’s not up above the rest of us, though Ricky Ponting believes this on and off the cricket field. Ricky Ponting is relevant here because this friend was Down Under to cover the India-Australia Series, where he had a great time drinking Australian wine, which is very different from the wine sold on the roadside on the road to and back from Himachal Pradesh.

Australians make wine out of grape and like the rest of the world prefer to call it red wine, because of its dark burgundy colour, which is Australian for red. Then they bleach half of that and call it white wine, because it’s off-white, yellowish water, another White word for white. Anyway, they also make pink and green wines but since these taste hideously horrible they make their wives drink it. When renowned Indian actor witnessed this phenomenon, he said, and I quote: “Eggjakly.”

Well, so my friend being a wine enthusiast, just two glasses short of a wine connoisseur, visited a Wine Clearance Sale in Hobart and picked up the best he could for as little as a dollar and that too Australian. He wondered why anyone in his right minds would hold a clearance sale of wine! Isn’t wine supposed to get better with age? Then he realised that Australians are not really famous for using their minds or the seller may have downed a glass too many down in the cellar. There were wine bottles that cost as much as 50 Australian but since my friend is just short of a connoisseur he knows the basic law of wine-tasting: the sweeter the better.

Anyway, this conversation was supposed to be about whiskey and we shall stick to scotch brewed in Behror and matured in the godowns of East Delhi. He revealed another major bit about drinking neat. One should not drink it like we drink.
“You should sip and then roll the liquid on your tongue and let all corners of your mouth savour the taste of the malt (single, like yours truly), let your nostrils be swayed by its complex notes, let your tastebuds relish the woody top note and pit-smokey mid note and the coal-sour aftertaste.”

My god! He had complicated a very simple swig into a giant corporation’s accounting department.

“How can you relish the taste of whiskey? It all tastes really bad to the Indian tastebud. Just watch the average Indian man downing that. We flinch, close our eyes and take that thing like medicinal fluid, only that medicinal fluid tastes better. It goes in one gulp, onomatopoeically called gatagat gatagat. And just to make sure there is no trace of an aftertaste we immediately thrust enormous amounts of snacks called chakhna (near onomatopoeically called so) down our palate.

"In fact, the majority of us keep a handful of nuts, gram, chicken tikka or mutton chop in one hand while we assemble the courage to down another glass. Some times the chakhna hits our tastebuds even before the alcohol rolls down to aesophagus. Heck, alcohol never touches our tongues, then what for god’s sake can we roll on them?”

He said just try. Take a swig. So I did. I poured one part Scotch in the glass. Picked it up. With a fistful of roasted cashewnut in one hand, I counted three and yes! Hurray! The Scotch went straight to where it always goes. It did however tingle my tastebuds on the way. And it tasted like medicinal fluid alright. Thank God for the freshly roasted cashew from Kerala.

“That’s not how you drink Scotch!”

“I am from Delhi.”