Peated whisky’s missed opportunity

A friend of mine loves hot sauce so much he’ll drink it out of the bottle. Seriously. His worrying love for spice moved him to establish a hot sauce subscription service, delivering carefully selected products to other insane heat-seekers. Inevitably, I now have a collection of scary-sounding, unopened bottles at the back of my kitchen cupboards named ‘Ass Reaper’, ‘Rectum Ripper’ and ‘Annihilation’. All selected for their complex flavour rather than their crude names, of course.

Of the hottest varieties a handful proudly state the sauce’s spiciness in Scoville heat units (SHU), a measurement of capsaicin concentration. The higher the number, the spicier the sauce. The SHU varies due to the types of chilli used, how said chillis have been prepared, how much is contained in each bottle and the amount of dilution.

In many ways, peat is the chilli of whisky. It’s polarising, some can only handle it in small quantities, and brands often brag about being ‘the peatiest’, with bold names to match. It’s become a contest of sorts: the higher the ppm, the more street cred earned among peatheads. But there is one striking difference between whisky and hot sauce: the latter gives its capsicum measurement as a reading of the liquid itself, not of the base ingredient.

Scoville scares: Chilli extracts will communicate the capsaicin content of the liquid, rather than the pepper (Photo: Grim Reaper Foods)

Imagine if hot sauce manufacturers adopted whisky’s approach, and only stated the SHU of the original chilli pepper used to make the sauce. Very little of that pepper may actually be in the bottle, resulting in a mild-tasting product that hardly reflects the impressive SHU on the label. Said product would be misleading to consumers, no? So why do we continue to perpetuate the practice in Scotch?

As we’ve covered many times before on Scotchwhisky.com, a whisky’s ppm figure relates to the degree to which the barley is peated. Phenols that attach themselves to the barley grain during malting are lost throughout the rest of the whisky production process – in the mash tun, the washback, the still and during maturation. Barley that’s peated to, say, 40ppm will simply not appear in your glass at home at that level.

Up until this week, anCnoc was one of only a couple of Scotch brands stating its ppm as a reading of the phenols in the bottled whisky itself, rather than the barley. News this week, then, that the brand had abandoned its laudable stance was nothing short of disappointing, particularly as the change was made to ‘fall in line with industry standards’.

A spokesperson told us: ‘We were one of the only brands to communicate the ppm of the whisky as opposed to the barley, yet the consumer understands the industry standard better, which is the ppm of the barley.’ The situation reminds me of that classic parental one-liner, put best by Mike’s dad in the first episode of Stranger Things 2: ‘If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?’

AnCnoc Peatheart: The single malt brand has changed its ppm stance to ‘fall in line’ with industry standards

In ‘falling in line’, anCnoc has missed a massive opportunity to educate consumers about how peated whisky gains its smoky flavour; an extremely important aspect to communicate when peated single malts are growing in popularity among whisky fans, and bartenders are increasingly requesting peated malts behind the bar.

At the same time, the response from our readers to peat-related articles on Scotchwhisky.com lately has demonstrated an alarming lack of knowledge of phenols and smoke, and precisely what that ppm figure refers to. Continuing down a path of miseducation will only be more difficult to claw back from, as transparency becomes a major concern among consumers. There is a massive opportunity here for a brand to step up and become the real champion of peat education. To lead the way.

How best to explain to the uninitiated what it all means? Our Whisky Professor has suggested brands lose the ppm figure altogether, describing whiskies instead as light-, medium- or heavily-peated – just like the three chilli peppers used to denote spice. Another option would be to print both the reading of the barley and the liquid on the label (in the spirit of transparency, right?). Of course our perception of ‘smokiness’ is subjective, but some form of signpost – whether a figure or relative marker – will only aid whisky drinkers in their navigation of peated Scotch.

Whatever the approach, the Scotch industry could learn a thing or two from the hot sauce guys. But please, just leave the ‘ass ripping’ references to them.