So what was this all about, this loggerheads over liquor? Well, it’s an endless debate over which is better, scotch or bourbon. Very difficult to answer, but the contenders, brought to us by Beam Global Spirits & Wine, which in addition to its eponymous Jim Beam bourbon distillery and several others, owns scotch labels, as well, do a good, humorous job of it.
First, there was Bernie Lubbers, of Kentucky, a “whiskey professor” introduced as a man who “sweats bourbon.”
“Bourbon is in our blood in Kentucky,” said Lubbers, who wore a giant gold belt buckle and dark blue jeans and swirled a healthy shot of amber liquid in a tumbler as he spoke of his mother and many uses for the local whiskey. “When we got sick, she’d give us whiskey and honey lemon.”
Then Simon Brooking, of Scotland, took the stage, but only after running through the audience with a Scottish flag held flapping behind him like a cape. Brooking is Beam’s “master ambassador” of Laphroiag and Ardmore scotches. After his colorful entry, Brooking first discussed his kilt, addressing long-held bawdy rumors, and then went right into his life’s mission, “spreading world peace through Scotch.”
So, as if it were any mystery by now, these men like their liquor.
The debate, a lighthearted affair moderated by Steve Cole, another whiskey professor, kicked off with a question inspired by the rebate checks mailed out to taxpayers to give the economy a good kick in the pants.
“How would you stimulate the economy?” Cole asked Lubbers.
“Bourbon,” Lubbers said. “Bourbon is a very stimulating drink. I’ve been drinking it for an hour now.”
Brooking said it was the American people that would stimulate the economy, and not the drink itself, but they would do it with the help of scotch.
The humor in the debate was palpable, and some of the stories apocryphal at best, but some were true-blue facts about the two whiskeys. Bourbon, for instance, was first distilled in the 18th century by Kentucky settlers. And it is bourbon only if it is made in the United States, (not, as the story goes, in Bourbon County, Kentucky) contains at least 51 percent corn, is aged in charred oak barrels and cut only with water.
Scotch, much older than its American cousin, is made of pure malted barely (and only in Scotland), distilled in copper stills and aged in, oddly enough, Bourbon barrels. And while Kentucky has 10 distilleries, Scotland has 93.
But the debate was as interactive, and intoxicating, as it was informative. As the two men made their arguments, the audience joined in, tasting four whiskeys before the night was through. Two scotches were toted by Brooking, the smoky, peat Laphroiag Quarter Cask, and elegant, creamy Ardmore. Lubbers walked the crowd through tastings of woody, sweetish Knob Creek bourbon and light, peppery Basil Hayden’s.
And whether the audience, comfortable at their tables full of whiskey, truly couldn’t side with one or the other or was too happy to care will probably not be known anytime soon. And so the debate, unanswered, will burn on.
