The Essential Scratch & Sniff Guide to Becoming a Whiskey Know-It-All: Know Your Booze Before You Choose

The Sniffs Don’t Work But the Book Stinks By Bill Marsano. This book is aimed at the sort of person who believes he can become a whiskey expert--as the author glibly promises--simply by reading a 10-page book that is 95 percent pictures and (this is what's called the beauty part) without taking the trouble to actually TASTE whiskey. If you are that sucker, this is your book. But it’s hardly a book. It’s really what’s known in the trade as a “board book” because its pitifully few pages are pasted onto thick slabs of cardboard to make them suitable for children. If you think of "Goodnight, Moon," you've got the picture). Author Richard Betts says he is an MW, or Master of Wine, and his big idea, couched in gushing, cheerleader prose, is that if you smell the various grains whiskey is made from and decided which smells you like, you will then know which whiskey you’ll like. Well, that’s poppycock, but never mind: the scratch-sniff dots, of which there are a dozen scattered around the book, didn't actually give off much smell to me or to three friends who tried them. And there’s a weird inconsistency: there are smell dots for corn, rye and barley, but not wheat, for example. Then there’s a tendency to dumb-down to the point of actual error. Richard Betts MW says that single malts are made 100 percent malted barley, which is true, but critically forgets to say that each is made by a single distillery. THAT'S why they are called SINGLE malts. He notes that blended scotches contain other grains but entirely overlooks the category of Pure Malts (aka Vatted Malts), which are blends of single malts. In sum: the way to learn about whiskey is to taste it, preferably with friends, and to explore such far-better books as Fred Minnick’s “Bourbon Curious” and Lew Bryson and David Wondrich’s “Tasting Whiskey: An Insider’s Guide.” Both are worth reading, whereas Betts’s wasn’t worth writing.—The former wine & spirits editor of Hemispheres magazine, Bill Marsano posts fitfully to his blog, pouredwithpleasure.