tail box/tailbox A colloquial term employed in US column-still distillation.
'This is the tail box or the spirit safe, where the fresh distillate emerges from the still for the first time'. (www.waterloo.ca referring to the former Seagram distillery in Waterloo, Ontario)
'The function of the tailbox is conventional, that is to provide final control of the alcohol content ... '. (www.freepatentsonline.com)
tapping The now rare practice of hitting casks in a warehouse with a wooden mallet, known as a tap-stick, in order to ascertain the amount of spirit in them.
The OED defines the transitive verb to tap as 'To strike lightly, but clearly and audibly', and dates the first usage of tapping to Thomas Fuller's 1650 A Pisgah-sight of Palestine. 'Here ... the beating Hares [are said] to forme, the tapping Conies to sit'.
During warehouse tapping activities, if the contents of a cask had fallen significantly, the tap-stick would produce a more hollow note. Casks which were losing spirit were known as 'leakers' or 'criers.' At one time 'tapping' was a regular part of the warehousemen's duties, and allowed them to ascertain if spirit had been illicitly removed from a cask or if it had developed a leak. Today, the practice is all but redundant.
As Eric Stephen, Warehouse Team Leader for William Grant & Sons Ltd in Dufftown, explains, 'In the old days we used to have a tapping squad ... Two men going round every week and checking every cask for leaking. If they found any leaking they repaired or patched them. Now they just fill the warehouse, shut the door and leave it. If you find an empty cask the excise just waive the duty and that's it'. (TWM)
'I beg to state that today during normal warehouse tapping operations the Distillery Cooper discovered the undernoted Scotch whisky casks empty … '. (Letter of 10th April 1976 from JR Scott (general manager) Ardbeg Distillery to a Customs & Excise officer)
tasting The action of the verb to taste. With the sense of trying or testing, the first attestation occurs after 1300, 'It is ywrite þt euery þing Πym self sheweþ in þe tastying'. The OED notes a specific sense of tasting as a small portion taken to try the taste, especially of alcoholic liquor, and in this context taste is first recorded in 1530, 'He sent for the tast of wyne ... dew to him of every hoggshed'. The word taste has its origins in the Old French tast - touching, touch.
Cooper suggests that the correct procedure when sampling whiskies is first to nose the spirit, then taste it neat, and finally take it with the addition of some suitable water. (CCtW) Writing in his Malt Whisky Companion, Jackson points out that 'A tasting note cannot be definitive, but it can be a useful guide', and he breaks his notes down into colour, nose, ⇒body, ⇒palate and ⇒finish.
The language employed in relation to whisky tasting can often be self-indulgent. Grindal inveighs against pretentious description:
From the pages of the many books on Scotch that have been published one can compile a litany of curious nouns and adjectives used to describe the flavour of different single malt whiskies: marzipan, linseed, bitter chocolate, peppermint, flowering currants, orangey, buttery and the evocative 'wet grass on a rainy day'. They say much for the inventive imagination of the authors, but one doubts whether after reading them the whisky lover is any the wiser. (SoW)
McDiarmid was very much of the same opinion, declaring 'I have little patience with the pseudo-poetical attempts to describe the differences in flavour of the various malts'. (quoted in MSW)
Within the whisky industry a 'flavour wheel' exists for use by professionals, designed in the late 1970s by a working party from Pentlands Scotch Whisky Research Ltd. The aim of the group was to 'devise a vocabulary which would enable blenders and distillers to communicate flavour descriptions more accurately than had been possible in the past', as Cooper puts it, though he goes on to point out that 'Blenders have tended to use their own repertoire of words; ambiguity has reigned'. (CCtW) Russell Sharp explains that 'In the whisky industry, systems for describing the taste and smell of whisky have been developed, which use terms standardised against particular chemical compounds. Staff are trained to use these terms together with scales of intensity to describe whiskies'. (SoS)
The problem of finding a useful vocabulary remains. This was something addressed by Phillip Hills and the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, whose aim was to make new converts to the cause of good whisky. Writing of what he calls 'good drink', Hills explains that 'The only problem is that we don't have an adequate vocabulary to talk about it with, much as desert dwellers don't have a lot of words for fish'. (SoS)
The Society decided to ignore the language of wine tasting and every- thing else that had gone before: 'We had to create the language we required, or rather to adopt plain English, but in a way that would allow most reasonably sensible people to gain access'. (ibid.) Hills offers a selection of the Society's tasting notes as examples of what its tasting committee has come up with, including such comments as 'Golden in colour it has an estery, fruity, citrusy aroma and a delicate, smooth flavour - a memorable dram'. (Bladnoch), and 'Pale gold, this is slightly peaty, with a cut barley, grassy aroma. Exceptionally smooth and mellow with a slightly winey, raisiny flavour'. (Royal Brackla)
In the early 1990s, United Distillers produced a list of 50 'Tasting Vocabulary Descriptors' to guide members of the public when holding 'Classic Malts' tasting sessions, and the list contains such sensible and useful offerings as 'hint of peat', 'full bodied', 'good aftertaste', as well as the slightly less taxing 'delightful', 'pleasant' and 'attractive'.
Capitalising on the sometimes esoteric and rather startling similes and metaphors of tasting, the Oddbins chain of off-licences ran a newspaper advertisement in late 1992 to promote a free tasting day in which they offered 'Jetty sheds, oily ropes, rotting bladder-wrack, Dundee marmalade and even dead hedgehogs ... All available when you taste Lagavulin, Laphroaig, Talisker, Highland Park, Glenkinchie, Dalwhinnie, Bunnahabhain, The Balvenie, Oban, Bowmore, Aberlour and Cragganmore at your local Oddbins this Saturday.'
te bheag This 'is used widely in the Hebrides as an affectionate term for a dram' according to Morrice (SGtS) Literally, it translates from the Gaelic as 'little lady', and is also a contraction of the brand name Te Bheag nan Eilean, 'Little Lady of the Islands'. This is a superior blended whisky with an all-Gaelic label, produced by Iain Noble's Skye-based Praban na Linne Ltd, and a stablemate to the ⇒blended malt ⇒Poit Dhu. Writing of time spent on Skye, Morton suggests that 'If any of my new acquaintances had been Gaels, they would perhaps have ordered a "wee one" - te bheag. Hence the name given to Sir Iain Noble's Talisker-based blend'. (SoA)
Tennessee The DoD defines Tennessee whiskey as 'A straight Whiskey distilled in Tennessee with no specific grain criteria', but rather than just being defined by geographical boundaries, Tennessee is one of the three distinctive, stylistically orientated classifications of American whiskey, along with ⇒Bourbon and ⇒rye. Jackson notes, 'In practice the famous Tennessee whiskeys are in the bourbon style, using the sour mash process, with charcoal filtration'. (PBB)
The best-known Tennessee whiskey is Jack Daniel's, and the distillers proclaim 'Jack Daniel's is not a bourbon. While it has some of the characteristics of bourbon, it falls in a distinctive product classification called Tennessee Whiskey. Like bourbon, however, it's strictly a product of the United States ... and more specifically, the hills of Tennessee'. (See also sour mash under ⇒mash.) Jack Daniel's distillers note that if their whiskey was simply casked and matured directly after distillation it would be just another Bourbon. 'Our whiskey is trickled very slowly through 10 feet of hard maple charcoal, right after distillation. It's this extra step in the whiskey-making process that makes Jack Daniel's more than a bourbon ... and provides the special character known only to Tennessee Whiskey.' They explain that 'the Charcoal Mellowing process removes the unpleasant congenerics and harsh fusel oils which are always present in any grain alcohol. We like to think of this old process as giving our Jack Daniel's Whiskey a "head start".'
Jackson points out that the Tennessee method of filtration is unique in that it is done before barrelling, which means that a 'cleaner' spirit goes into the barrel, and because it is 'such an exhaustive process', lasting for ten days in a ten-feet-deep filter. 'This is not so much a filtration as leaching out of fusel oils', notes Jackson. (WGtW) Most of these have already been eliminated during distillation, however, and Jackson muses on whether some flavour characteristics and texture are actually lost in the filtration process. He also considers whether the charcoal filtering adds to the taste, noting that 'Some drinkers find in Jack Daniel's a faint but distinctive smokiness'. He notes of Jack Daniel's that it 'has the intensely dry, aromatic lightness that makes Tennessee whiskeys so different'. (ibid.)
Jack Daniel's became the first registered distillery in America in 1866, when the Federal Government introduced a whiskey tax, but whiskey-making in Tennessee dates back at least until the late 18th century, when some of the state was settled from North Carolina, and the settlers brought the secrets of distillation with them. In the 19th century there were hundreds of stills, but Tennessee became 'dry' in 1910 and distilling remained illegal until 1938, so the existence of just two distilleries in the state today - Jack Daniel's at Lynchburg and George Dickel's at Tullahoma - is hardly surprising.
Jack Daniel is thought to have been born in 1846, and at the age of seven he went to work for a preacher and distiller called Dan Call, who apparently employed charcoal leaching. The Jack Daniel's Distillery literature mentions 'an old leaching process that had traditionally been used in Lincoln County to smooth the new-made whiskey after it came from the still'. The charcoal leaching process was actually invented in 1825 by Alfred Eaton of Tullahoma, close to where the Dickel Distillery operates today.
The formal adoption of the classification of Tennessee whiskey as a distinctive style of whisky can be dated to 1941, and a United States tax authority letter to Jack Daniel distillers.
tight ⇒Drunk. Partridge (DoHS) notes the use of tight in America in 1843, and its first British attestation occurs a decade later, 'For the one word drunk, besides the authorised synonyms tipsy, inebriated, intoxicated, I find of unauthorised or slang equivalents ... thirty-two, viz: in liquor ... half-seas- over, far-gone, tight ... '. He suggests the origins of 'tight' in relation to drunkenness are to be found in the slang synonym screwed, first attested in 1838, '(lit. screwed tight, hence) drunk'. 'Screwed' probably developed as a synonym for intoxicated from its sense of twisted round or awry, particularly in relation to the face when contorted and the eyes when contracted. The expression 'tight as a drum' also occurs, first being attested in 1908, according to Partridge (DoHS), and clearly deriving from the tension essential to a drum skin.
thief See ⇒valinch.
three sheets to the wind Also three sheets in the wind. Slang synonym for ⇒drunk, sometimes shortened to 'three sheets', and first recorded in 1857, 'He said "A man will do anything when he is tight, or three sheets" - he had been drinking.' According to the DoD, in the expression the state of intoxication 'Is likened to the sails (sheets) of a ship that are flapping around in a variable wind', though Gyles Brandreth (Modern Phrase and Fable) writes that 'The expression is a nautical one, a sheet being a rope attached to a sail. If the sheet is not tied down to secure the sail it flaps freely in the wind'. He considers the phrase to connote a state of extreme drunkenness, noting that ' "a sheet in the wind" is applied to someone who is tipsy; one who is three sheets in the wind has had more to drink'.
thumper In North American double pot-still distillation, the thumper is the second still, equivalent to the Scottish ⇒spirit still. It is similar to the ⇒doubler still, but lacks the heating coil characteristic of a doubler.
'The fabled still is really a pressure cooker. It is made of copper because the mash won't burn as easily. Out the conical top, a copper tube arches out and downward to what is called a thumper barrel which is a secondary cooker. Old timers called it a thumper barrel because this water pipe design would 'thump' as the forced ether bubbled through the water and out the exit tube. It is said that this thumping could sometimes be heard for miles, attracting the attention of law enforcement officers or "revenuers" as the Old Timers called them - federal revenue agents in search of illegally brewed whiskey'. (Fred Roe, 12th December 2002, www.tuppenceworth.ie). See also ⇒doubler.
tipple As a noun tipple is a slang term for a drink. According to the DoD it 'Usually denotes a persons [sic] favourite drink'. The first attestation occurs in 1581, 'Of pleasant wine their tipple in they take'. The agent noun tippler occurs as an established and apparently legal term in 1396, having the sense of a retailer of liquor, an inn-keeper, and from 1580 it took on the additional meaning of one who tipples. The implication of 'tippler' is of a habitual drinker, one who frequently drinks small quantities of alcohol, with an element of excess, though full-blown drunkenness is not usually implied.
As an intransitive verb, to drink intoxicating liquor, 'tipple' is first recorded in 1560, 'In this conflict was hurt Albert Brunswick, the sonne of Duke Philip, going vnaduisadly after he had well tippled'. The original sense in this usage was to drink freely or hard, to booze, but the modern implication has shifted slightly to mean to indulge habitually and to some degree of excess in strong drink. Used transitively, the verb tipple first occurs in 1581, 'Tippling the pleasant wine they downe to table sit'.
Partridge (DoHS) notes the existence in the 18th century of tippling-ken for a tavern, and tipply for unsteady (1906), 'Lit., apt to tip over1, though this is not necessarily intoxicant-related. It does, however, suggest a derivation similar to that of ⇒tipsy.
tipsy A slang expression for ⇒drunk or partially intoxicated, though the usual implication is of relatively good natured and perhaps even humorous or comical inebriation. Tipsy is 'often euphemistic for intoxicated, inebriated, drunk', according to the OED, which also suggests an element of unsteadiness due to the amount of alcohol consumed. 'Tipsy' was used as a synonym for a less than 'good-natured' state of drunkenness in a Daily Telegraph report of a court case (December 1992), where the prosecuting counsel was quoted as saying the defendants were 'tipsy' prior to an alleged assault which led to charges of causing grievous bodily harm with intent to assault. The story was run under the headling 'Man "injured in attack by tipsy PCs".' The first attestation occurs in 1577, 'About ten of the clock whenas they were somewhat tipsie ... ' and the adjective has its origins in the sense of tip to fall by overbalancing, to tumble or topple over. This use is first recorded prior to 1530, 'His carte typed over ... '.
tired and emotional Euphemism for ⇒drunk. First attested in 1981 (The Daily Telegraph), 'Sensing that Penrose's efforts might have left him tired and emotional ... '. The euphemism is based on Private Eye's 1967 use of tired and overwrought: 'Mr Brown had been tired and overwrought on many occasions'. In August 1992 in a Sporting Life feature on racing at Deauville in Normandy, William Hughes writes 'Chat among the Brits was more down to earth: it concerned the extremely "tired and emotional" behaviour of a Newmarket trainer ... '. (See ⇒sensation)
toasting First attested in 1541-2 (Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland) as 'For ... ane kais to ane toysting pan, and for ane kais to four ladillis', toasting with reference to whisky is the practice of softening the oak staves of a barrel in order to bend them into a curved shape ready for assembly.
Traditionally, this was done over a fire, but modern cooperages use infra-red heating equipment. Apart from allowing the staves to be bent, toasting also has a beneficial effect on the spirit which is filled into the cask for maturation. Lignins in the wood are broken down into phenols, which may impart a smoky character to the whisky, and vanillin, which can give a vanilla note to the spirit. Additionally, hemicellulose is broken down into simple sugars which caramelise in the heat of the toasting process, affecting both the colour and flavour of the whisky.
The business of toasting has lent itself to the formal names of several Scotch whisky ⇒expressions, including Glenfiddich 12 Year Old Toasted Oak, which ' ... has been matured in specially toasted 195-litre American oak Bourbon barrels. This has given the whisky a very sweet caramel flavour with a spiciness in the background'. (www.royalmilewhiskies.com)
As with ⇒charring, there are different levels of toasting, and Compass Box offered its Canto Cask blended malt whiskies with a variety of toasting levels ranging from '4' to '8' in intensity. After a period of traditional maturation, the whisky was 'finished' in new ⇒wood for 18 months, and, according to Compass Box founder John Glaser, 'The French oak heads have been given one of four custom toast levels, each specified to bring out specific flavours, which you will taste in the whisky. The American oak is likewise of the same quality and grade, and is also custom-toasted for us. These whiskies have been aging in these special casks for at least 18 months'.
'European casks are 'toasted' to bend them into shape … '. (MMoW)
toddy In Britain toddy is traditionally a mixture of whisky, hot water and sugar, commonly known as a hot toddy, though the drink has a number of permutations and can be served either hot or cold. Grindal's recipe for toddy specifies 'Scotch, Lemon juice and honey, with perhaps a stick of cinnamon'. (SoW) Cooper considers the toddy to consist of three or four lumps of sugar dissolved in boiling water in a tumbler, to which lemon juice and 'a well matured malt' are added, though he notes that 'purists of the old school would regard lemon juice as a blasphemy'. (LBoMW) Marshall Robb is blunt: the toddy is 'A terrible waste of good whisky!' (SW3) Some recipes recommend the use of blended whisky, which may seem a prudent alternative to Cooper's 'well matured malt', but when mixed with hot water blended whiskies do tend to give off rather unpleasant fumes, and the economy is probably not worthwhile.
The chief use of toddy in modern times is to relieve the symptoms of a cold', writes Daiches (SW1), and most commentators repeat the hoary old dictum that one should hang a shoe, bowler hat or other object over the end of 'the bed before retiring to drink toddy until two shoes, hats etc appear. Cooper writes that 'Of all the rituals associated with whisky none is more civilised than the making of toddy'. (LBoMW) Grindal writes of toddy, They say it should be drunk out of a silver mug and never a glass'. (SoW), whilst Daiches considers that the drink should be stirred with a silver spoon, noting 'There used to be an elaborate ritual in both making and drinking toddy'. Toddy is a close relation to whisky punch, with which it shared great popularity amongst Lowland Scots during the second half of the eighteenth century. Toddy was drunk by gentlemen', notes Daiches.
The drink can appear quite perverse to those outwith the Caledonian tradition in terms of its ingredients and the way they interact, and Lockhart quotes an old Russian friend, M. Baleiev, to very good effect in this respect, 'First you put in whisky to make it strong; then you add water to make it weak; next you put in lemon to make it sour, then you put in sugar to make it sweet. You put in more whisky to kill the water. Then you say "Here's to you" - and you drink it yourself'. (Sc)
The first attestation comes in the Edinburgh poet Allan Ramsay's 'The Morning Interview'. (1721), where he writes of 'Kettles full of Todian spring'. In a note to the poem, Ramsay explains that by 'The Todian spring' he means Tod's Well on the slopes of Arthur's Seat, which supplied Edinburgh with much of its fresh water. Ramsay thinks that 'when it is borne in mind that whisky derives its name from water, it is highly probable that toddy in like manner was a facetious term for the pure element'. The first use of the term whisky toddy occurs in 1812, 'I sat down with some whisky toddy … '.
An alternative explanation for the word's origins lies in the fact that toddy is also the name given to the sap obtained from some palm-trees, especially the caryota wrens, also wild date, coconut and palmyra, which is used as a drink in some tropical countries. It is also the name given to the intoxicating liquor produced by its fermentation, extant in India, Sri Lanka, the East Indies and South-East Asia. The DoD notes that in the United States toddy was 'originally the fermented sap of palm trees. Now classed for a tot of spirit'. With the palm-related sense, 'toddy' is first recorded in 1609/10, being adapted from the Hindi tan, from tar, palm-tree.
The term toddy kettle occurs, McNeill explaining that the 'special equipage' that went with toddy-making, 'included a toddy-kettle, usually made of copper, a spatula of glass or metal for stirring, and a small deep ladle for serving the brew ... On Hogmanay the toddy-kettle was used for the brewing of Het Pint ... '. (SC)
Toddy was also the name given to a small measure of drink, a nip, from which the term toddy lifter developed. The first toddy lifter was manufactured c.1800 and the implement is described by the DoD as 'a bottle-shaped glass with a hole at the base so that when placed in a cask of spirit the thumb is placed over the top to prevent the contents returning to the cask'. The toddy lifter could also be a metal or glass cup fixed to a long handle, used for extracting a toddy from a cask.
top dressing A blending term used to denote high quality ⇒malts which are known to ⇒marry well and are used to give the blended whisky a depth and a veneer of character, hence the use of the word dressing. Cooper quotes Barnard's use of the term in 1887, 'When blending it is always as well to have a proportion, even if it be small, of very old for "top dressing" and giving the appearance of age; while it improves the bouquet it also adds to the average age of the blend'. (CCtW) Writing of The Edradour malt whisky, Lamond notes 'The output of the single malt is 2,000 cases a year, the balance being kept as "top dressing" principally for the House of Lords blend'. (MF)
top notch/top notcher Excellent, the best. The expression top notch is of American origin and follows the earlier, British, word 'topping'. The US also later adopted 'the tops'.
The earliest example in print occurs in a letter to the Huron Reflector, May 1845. 'Now, Messrs. Editors, perhaps I have lived too long in the woods, to know exactly what makes good manners in the very top notch of society'.
In relation to whisky, the term 'top notch' is used to denote the most desirable grouping of malt whiskies in the document 'Classification of Scotch Whisky Distilleries', source unknown, c.1930. The classification, used by blenders, contained a dozen malts, and was followed by 1st Class, 2nd Class, 3rd Class, Lowlands, Islays, Campbeltowns and Grain. See also ⇒crack.
top notes A term used in Scotch whisky sensory analysis in relation to single malts and blended whiskies. It is common to the vocabulary of both whisky blenders and perfumers. Whyte & Mackay's master blender Richard Paterson says 'From a blender's perspective, all whisky, but in particular a single malt, will normally display a "top note" or character, like a perfume. These can vary from light floral notes to heavy peat smoke. From these recognisable characteristics the blender can craft his art'.
With the sense of 'a component of the aroma or flavour of a food or drink, esp. of a wine', note is first attested in The Wine Spectator, 31 August 1989 as, 'Lavishly oaked, with herb and spice notes'.
In tasting notes for a 30-year-old ⇒expression of Glenfiddich, www.whisky.com states 'The Taste: Expect a companionable silence as the complex nose is inhaled and the woody essence, with sweet floral top notes is savoured until the final fading moments of a honeyed finish'.
tot A small quantity of alcoholic liquor, invariably ⇒spirits, of no specific measurement, though a single measure is usually implied in a bar. Tot is first recorded in relation to a quantity of alcohol in 1857, and the reference is to whisky, 'We jabbed the stopper down the whiskey-tin and gave you a tot of it'. In contemporary usage, Daiches (in a BBC Radio 4 broadcast of January 1981) talked of, 'A tot of whisky followed by a pint or half pint of beer'.
Partridge (DoHS) dates tot with the sense of 'A very small quantity, esp. of liquor", from before 1828, noting that from the same time it also had the meaning of a child's drinking vessel. He suggests that the drink-related usage emanates from tot as 'a very young or small child', an application first recorded in 1725. Tottr occurs in Icelandic as the nickname of a dwarfish person, and tommel-tot is Danish for Tom Thumb, but no connection between these forms and the English 'tot' has been established.
trestarig When writing about the Outer Hebridean island of Lewis, Martin Martin (A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, 1703) noted that 'The air is temperately cold and moist, and for the corrective the natives use a dose of trestarig or usquebaugh'. He describes trestarig as 'aquavitae, three times distilled, which is strong and hot'. It was apparently made of oats rather than barley, and Daiches notes that 'trestarig' comes from two Gaelic words meaning 'triple strength', and in fact it is an anglicisation of treas-tarruing. (SW1) Daiches also writes that very little is known of the drink called trestarig or of the even more fearsome usquebauch-baul which Martin also describes. In Jamieson's Dictionary of the Scottish Language, trestarig is defined as 'A kind of ardent spirits distilled from oats', and its origins are ascribed to the Isle of Lewis. Clearly the term had currency outwith Lewis and the Hebrides, as McHardy comments whilst writing about mainland ⇒peatreek production during the 18th and early 19th centuries that, 'The double- distilled spirit was the Tarraing dubailt, and being distilled again would become Treasturring, or triple-distilled'. (ToW&S)
tun In the lexicon of brewing and ⇒distillation, a tun is the vessel in which ⇒mashing takes place, usually known as a ⇒mash tun. The area in which the mash tuns are situated is known as 'the mash house', though, somewhat perversely, what is usually called the tun room is the place where the ⇒washbacks are situated. 'When things have quietened down a bit, it is a trick of some of the tun-room men to slide back a section of the wooden lid and ask a visitor to sniff the aroma'. (W&S) 'The process [mashing] is carried out in a large cylindrical tank (often 20 feet across) called a mashtun. The more modern covered, or roofed tuns are usually constructed of stainless steel ... '. (S&W)
With the sense of a large ⇒cask or ⇒barrel, 'tun' is first attested prior to c.725, and as a large vessel, a tub or vat, the first record occurs prior to c.1205, 'Heo makeden ane tunne of golde al of imme'. As Neil Wilson explains, tun also had the meaning of a cask of specific capacity, 'Duart, MacLeod and Gorm were all restricted to four tuns of wine a year, amounting to the not inconsiderable sum of over 1,000 gallons (4540 litres)'. (S&W) According to the DoD a tun is 'an old cask of 250 gallons' or 'A wine cask, 9454 litres, 210 Imp. gallons, 252 US gallons'.