I heard about The Balvenie Whisky Academy from both Liquor Snob and John Hansell’s blog for Malt Advocate, What Does John Know?. The Whisky Academy is a collection of 35 video clips, about 2-5 minutes each, that are collected into 4 modules covering:
1) The History of Scotch Malt Whisky
2) Scotch Malt Whisky Production
3) Whisky Nitty-Gritty (A FAQ of miscellaneous whisky-related questions)
4) Nosing and Tasting
Enrollment at The Whisky Academy can be had for the low price of registering for Warehouse 24, which is The Balvenie’s mailing list. How’s that for cheap tuition?! I signed up a week ago and I’ve yet to get any unwanted emails, which is great. There’s even a cool “Geek Meter” for each video that rates each video on a scale of 1 to 5 with a 1 for whisky fans and a 5 for whisky geeks.
I just finished watching the first 10 videos that comprise Module One, and I learned a lot about the history of Scotch, all the way from the early days of distillation (think Arab scholars and chemists distilling for medicinal purposes) to the arrival of distillation in Scotland, to the ups and downs in the 20th century, including the down years after World World II and in the 80s and 90s, and the boom years of the 60s and 70s as whisky was glamorized by Hollywood and single malts began to hit the market.
One of the most interesting things that I learned about was that single malt whisky wasn’t really a phenomenon until the 80s and 90s. Even during the boom years of the 60s and 70s, single malts still only comprised less than a fraction of 1% of whisky sales. Glen Grant was popular in Italy, Glenlivet had started to market itself as a single malt in the US after Prohibition, and Glenfiddich was quietly gaining popularity. But still, <1%? Amazing. Basically, the demand for blended whisky was so large that there was never anything left to product single malts. It was only with the boom of vodka and gin, and the dark years for whisky, that single malts started to make sense. For one, there was production available because demand died and many distilleries had expanded and sprung up during the boom. Another reason was that the small success of Glenfiddich made other distilleries think “Hey, maybe we should be doing this too…”
Okay, typing that last paragraph is making me question the integrity of their Geek Scale, because Module one got a geek score of 1, but that last paragraph was ultra-geeky.
Trust me though, there’s really something for everyone, from the newcomer to the enthusiast to the whisky aficionado.
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