THE GLENLIVET CAPSULE COLLECTION

 SINGLE MALT DIEHARDS RAISE PATRONISING EYEBROWS

The Scotch Whisky world was stunned and did not quite know what to think of this new idea: Glenlivet presented a Capsule Collection at the 2019 London Cocktail Week, held between 04-13 October. The Brits do seem to have long weeks! These were three whisky cocktails based on the Single Malt Glenlivet Founder's Reserve, specially presented in eco-friendly see-through capsules. They elicited what could be called, at best, a mixed reception. The non-conformists and disruptionists were thrilled, but the stiff-upper-lip Single Malt community just frowned and dismissed the “gimmick” as a one-night stand, actually ten nights.

Glenlivet created three different recipes in collaboration with Alex Kratena and Monica Berg of Tayēr + Elementary Bar, who expected it to be the standout during Cocktail Week. The award-winning bartenders were reportedly inspired by the defining elements and flavours of Glenlivet: citrus, wood and spice, represented individually in the capsules. The capsules' casings came courtesy Notpla, a sustainable packaging start-up, made from seaweed.

Billy Abbott from The Whiskywash castigated those who decried it on the blind metonymic Internet, calling them ‘dicks’. He listed the most common complaints before rebutting some in his caustic style: 

• It’s blasphemy to mix whisky in a cocktail
• They look like Tide pods ( laundry detergent packs) 
• These will be bought by kids
• A glass is better for the environment
• You can’t nose them, so they are pointless
• People will put these up their bums

His confutation of the fifth point “You can’t nose them, so they are pointless” is educative. This quibble only goes to show that most of us are not truly aware of how our own sense of taste works – you smell from both inside and outside your head. Traditional smelling involves sniffing something directly, one of the great pleasures of whisky. Inhaling the aroma of a great dram is a key part of consuming it. However, it’s not the only way you use your nose.

The tongue can only distinguish wide categories of flavour. The standard five-point sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami approach to describing how the tongue tastes, while certainly inaccurate, is a useful approximation. Complex flavour comes from the nose, with vapours travelling around the back of the palate, into the back of the nose and onto the medical fraternity called the olfactory epithelium in their "specialist jargon", where smell is sensed. This is where you get the interesting flavours of a dram when you drink it, and it’s why you still get the full range of flavours from these capsules even though you can’t sniff them before they go in your mouth. And this is the area affected by the common cold, temporarily rendering most of the 40-odd olfactory receptors hors de combat. Your food tastes flat whenever you have a cold or the flu.  

Claire Lower, writing for Skillet/Lifehacker, titled her piece: Don't Drink Whisky From a Glorified TidePod! She said, “These whisky pods are not a hack, and in fact emblematic of the worst kind of hack—the kind that nobody asked for. These pods seek to solve a non-existent problem, to elevate something that was already esteemed, and fix that which wasn’t broken. In short, it is wack (sic).” I quite liked her choice of words, even though she misspelt the brand name of the second most purchased Scotch with a production of over eight million litres per year Glenlevit. But then she is American, so, judging by the torrent of political tweets from there, all’s well. Hold on, she's corrected it!

Forbes' Felipe Schrieberg said that that brand’s video announcement about its new whisky cocktail capsules drew a lot of attention, not necessarily the good kind. He then went on to praise both the concept and the product, even calling the unfortunate-looking packaging "pretty nifty.”

Amanda Mull, reporting forThe Atlantic, gave it a totally American twist. She felt that the “Whisky pods are tailor-made for American drinkers, and that Americans will use anything to hide alcohol,” at one time harking back to her college days. She opined that many other people looked upon the Scotch pods and saw nothing but pure, open-container-law-circumventing brilliance; The capsules seemed perfect for sneaking booze into nearly anywhere, a trend made fashionable in the absurd Prohibition Era (1920-33). 

I had to give this Cocktail Week a miss and vicariously use my son-in-law's descriptions of the Week. I have been writing about whisky for nigh over half a century, when Phipson's Black Dog ruled the world east of the Mediterranean. I've survived simply because I have learned to ride the tide-drink Single Malts with Coke in Spain and France, with ice and soda in Japan, with a pint of beer as a chaser in Australia and more. I drink it the way I want to-its my money and my taste. I am definitely not averse to this experiment. The capsules may be ephemeral today, but are a harbinger of the changes that are a'comin. 

Diageo, under the Whiskey Union banner, gave us an Atlantic Ocean-spanning expression in 2015, the Huxley Rare Genus, made with a blend of whisky from America, Canada and Scotland! This Feis Ile, I saw Lagavulin buck the trend with Smokey Cokeys! I don't think I'm way off mark in prophesying that distilleries like The Macallan will be overtaken by upstarts like crowdfunded Steven Kersley and his Lone Wolf Distillery.

Image courtesy CPG Photography