Yes, it actually tastes good.
Now, we must qualify the situation: bad, cheap, nasty whisk[e]y tastes... well, bad, cheap and nasty. And most whiskey/whisky out there is cheap, nasty crap.
Take a top-shelf vodka and take a low-end nasty vodka - side by side. Put a little splash into two glasses. Taste them side-by-side.
All that crap you can taste in a cheap vodka? Now put that into a cheap whiskey, and add some straw/oak sort-of color and add in some even nastier crap for the ‘nose’ and aftertaste of the drink, and you have the cheap whiskey experience. Cheap whiskey tastes like paint thinner and iodine.
Most cheap whiskey/whisky is not MALT whisky. This is an important differentiation - cheap, “vat” whisky is often made from corn spirits, and then blended with ever so little malt whisky to attempt to give it a hint of the ‘nose’ and taste of real single-malt scotch. It doesn’t work. Put a fine, 100% single malt side-by-side with a cheap, nasty blended whisky and you can see a) that there IS a difference, b) that you don’t need to be some hoity-toity whisky snob and self-styled ‘expert’ to identify which one is the “real” scotch, and c) there is a point in drinking real single malt whisky, and there’s no point in drinking the cheap nasty crap once you’ve tasted the Real McCoy.
Now, in American whiskeys or whiskey-like spirits, you have the same situation. You have the vast preponderance of mass-produced paint thinner and varnish removers posing as a drinkable spirit, and then you have the really good stuff.
In all things, quality costs money. For a bottle of whiskey/whisky, quality starts at about $30/bottle (750ml) and goes up. That said, there is little point in paying huge money for a bottle of single malt that has been aged more than about 18 years. Most all the character of a good whiskey has been sorted out somewhere between eight and 18 years in the cask. 12 to 15 years appears (from my observation, which is not complete - I’ve had only about 35 single malt whiskies in my day) to be optimum. 25 years and up seems to me to be an exercise in spending exponential increases in money for sub-linear increases in character or quality.
Bourbon is corn whiskey aged in oak barrels. The difference between real bourbon and nasty bourbon is that the real bourbon is distilled, then put into barrels and aged for several years. Jack Daniels is one such product, and their single barrel product is the “real” deal. (I’m not shilling for them, just pointing out that they’ve cottoned onto the single malt idea in bourbon - and they’re marketing it effectively).
Nasty corn squeezin’s is industrial corn mash distilled into a clear alcohol, then blended with a hint of bourbon to get some flavor. Again, the cheap, nasty character comes through all too often.
See where I’m going here? The secret to good spirits in general (whether whiskey, whisky, bourbon, rye, gin, vodka, tequila, whatever) is to pay for quality, which necessarily costs more because there’s so much less of it. Tequila is another spirit where the mass-production stuff tastes horrible, but the real, 100% blue agave tequila — ah, that’s a whole different experience entirely.
I’ve seen several women drink whiskey/whisky, but many women seem to prefer watering down their drinks. A couple drams of whisky and most women are tottering on their feet, whereas guys my size aren’t even noticing the effect yet. Watering down whisky/whiskey is something of a sin among whisky drinkers - a little water added to cask strength whiskies (approx 60 to 65% alcohol is cask strength) is useful for allowing more of the aromatics to escape to your nose, but watering the drink down the way too many people do with “scotch on the rocks” (scotch, ice and water — and when the ice melts, you have merely disinfected water) is just criminal. For “proof” (43% alcohol) whisky, I drink it straight (”neat” in whisky lingo) and for 55%+ cask strength, I’ll add a little dollop of water to my glass — but never ice.
Why is blended whiskey never mentioned in these threads? Scotch and bourbon, Scoth and bourbon. What’s wrong with Canadian Whiskey?
Your post should have a “sticky” as they call it on other forums - It should stay near the top. Great post. I learned a lot.
This for all you barrel lickers out there;
“Woodford Reserve Personal Selection Program
The Woodford Reserve distillery takes a number of Bluegrass State traditions and wraps them into one. (They are, after all, the official bourbon of the Kentucky Derby.) Through their Personal Selection Program, bourbon drinkers take a pilgrimage to the distillery, which is set amid bucolic rolling hills. Driving along the winding roads, you’ll spot far more horses than humans. The Woodford Reserve program is distinct because instead of selecting a single barrel bourbon to be bottled, you select from ten casks, each of which has a distinct flavor profile. Your final spirit will be a blend of two. It’s a tricky process, but don’t worry: master distiller Chris Morris will guide you—and your palate—the whole way. “You go to the auto dealership and say ‘I want that red car,’” Chris explained to us. “What we allow you to do is go to the auto factory and pick out your engine, your transmission, your upholstery. We pick barrels that represent the five bourbon flavors—sweet aromatics, wood, grain, fruit and spice, so we have this whole array of flavors and we sit down and taste and rate each barrel.”