The Harmonic Resonance of Peat: An Ardbeg Vatting Mystery

I had the sublime pleasure of dramming the other day with one of New York's greatest whisky enthusiasts: Peter Silver, aka The Jazz Dentist, Malt Maniac, & PLOWED dude.  He is one of the most erudite, knowledgeable, experienced, generous, story filled, and whisky geekiest people I've ever met or even imagined.  To say I was in hog heaven at our dram session at "Dram Central Station" (his house) would be an understatement.  Among the wonderful things that went down that night and that blew my mind was an incredible vatting of two fierce drams... but, wait.  I should start the story a little earlier... 1803 to be precise...

Peter Silver at Dram Central Station (in the midst of post move unpacking)

In 1803 English genius polymath Thomas Young performed an interesting experiment on harmonic resonance.  You know, that phenomenon where waves can interact either constructively - via positive feedback - or destructively via negative feedback to yield either an increasing power or a decreasing one; a cancelling out.  You run into this a lot in situations like using a microphone too near a speaker, where positive feedback turns a sound into a howl, or in the corner of a swimming pool where the little waves might slap together and form a spout that soaks you in the eye.  Anyway, Thomas Young proved the wave nature of light using a clever experimental arrangement that looks like this:

(from wiki article on Young's Interference Experiment)

The two slits create a zone of raking interaction angle where the wave fronts alternately reinforce and and cancel each other out - producing a characteristic comb-like pattern.  The wave like nature of water waves was shown and then light was tested and the wave nature of light was empirically proven.  Of course, when most people see the double slit diagram they don't think of this vital and important piece of 1803 science.  They think of a later and perhaps even more important piece of science - the one performed in 1909 by G. Taylor and many times since showing wave particle duality in quantum physics.  In that experiment single particles going through twin slits build up over time to show the same comb shaped diffraction interference pattern as water or light.  This means that each particle goes through both slits  and interferes with itself - its own wave-like nature.  Einstein showed that matter and energy are different manifestations of each other. Wave particle duality shows that matter itself is inherently unlocalized.  Spooky - mysterious - inherently incomprehensible. 

Dr. Silver executes the vatting.

But what does any of this have to do with whisky?  This is where Dr. Peter Silver proceeded to blow my mind for the umpteenth time that night.  He replicated an experiment that a friend had shown him where two powerful expressions of peat, slightly out of phase, largely cancel each other out - just as two waves out of phase annihilate each other.

The two slightly out of phase powerful peat expressions are Arbeg Airgh Nam Beist and Corryvreckan - the two expressions I reviewed head to head earlier this week. (Thanks, Peter, for those samples!)

The story was that Dr. Silver's friend loved old expressions of Ardbeg that were more floral and fragrant and more gently peated than the current NAS monsters.  These old expressions have become virtually unobtainable however.  Being a serious whisky scientist, however he had figured out that vatting together Nam Beist and Corryvreckan at a 1 to 1 ratio (1/2 and 1/2) produced a product that, paradoxically, was dramatically less peated than either of its component whiskies and tasted, to the educated palate, remarkably like those old Ardbegs.

Full disclosure: I wouldn't know an antique Ardbeg if it shot me in the knees (Ardbegs typically bear loaded firearms and blast you with them so I figured this was an appropriate metaphor here).  Nevertheless I figure I could say whether vatting together these two peat monsters could somehow - magically, and in violation of all sense or reason - produce a lightly peated dram.

I tasted this vatting that night and was astounded.  Intelligently I took a sample to put under the intense scrutiny of a Jason Debly style "slow whisky" examination later - i.e. here:

A 50-50 Vatting of Ardbeg 2007 Airgh Nam Beist and Corryvreckan

Color: full gold

Nose: Damp clay, and sea airs yield to floral roses, and blackberry and strawberry fruits. These aromas float over a dark and complex backdrop that has me stretching for metaphor: hemp rope, clams, pitch and distant burning earth. Rich, delicious and heady. Loaded and 100% Ardbeg.

Palate: The entry is initially briefly off dry and loaded with sea salt up front. But this rapidly gives way to polite, elegantly rich malt sweetness with clover honey and white cane sugar elements. There is the fierce filigree of high proof white pepper heat and then a gentle stillness. This is the moment where Ardbeg's monster peat normally arrives with fierce dark tar and burning smoky hot ash. But now, this moment never arrives.

The mid palate grows juicy with lime that makes my saliva squirt and a distant warming earthy peat that brings a subtle tingle rather that a fierce burn. There is dark and dusty ash in the turn to the finish - but no wallop. The dominant flavors are herbal bitters, salt crust and sea weed and iodine. More than anything this mix of tar, lemon-lime acid, herbal bitters, and salt reads as high quality kalamata black olives. Delicious, gentle, warming, and ultimately mystifying. This is a vatting of a floral off-dry mature peat monster and a fierce, sharp sugared full bore peat monster. Yet their combination is not a peat monster at all. It is a gentle, richly complex subtly peated dram. The finish is long and gently subtle with malty berry sweet and a lingering earthy tar glow of peat. It's quite a bit sweeter and less "skinned palate" than the usual Ardbeg finish.

Is this a faithful replica of antique Ardbeg? I cannot say. What I can attest is that the spectacle of the cancellation of peat is a stupefying miracle. I'm dazzled and delighted. As a bonus, the resulting spirit is so delicious I could see deliberately vatting a pair of bottles and drinking this smooth, rich, and complicated concoction on a regular basis.  So what is happening on a molecular level?  How is this incredible phenomenon really taking place?  I have not the slightest idea.  Yet I have tasted it myself and can attest it is real.  I believe it is intimately connected with wave-particle duality and the deepest mysteries of the universe but I cannot say precisely why.  I cannot, indeed, even say extremely roughly why.  Frankly, it's really the whisky doing the talking here, completely.  Let it speak and listen to it and maybe we'll all learn something.


Update 8/17/12: This post has led to some lively debate - both in the comments section and on twitter.  Some folks took me literally with the harmonic resonance and quantum physics arguments.  I assure you these are metaphors.  However, what can possibly account for two powerful peat monsters to mix together to combine into a much less peated dram?

When I referred to Oliver Klimek and Bozkurt Karasu "backing" me I was referring to this conversation:

Thanks, Peter!