Tasting notes / FILM 05 / 44 SECONDS
No Hard Edges
The flavors should have room for each other.
By Old Treasure · September 7, 2026
From our recorded conversations at The Pearl.
BEHIND THE CONVERSATION
The flavors should have room for each other.
Larry and Susie listen for how a whiskey comes together. Alcohol, spice, sweetness: each can have a place without crowding out the rest. The experience they describe moves and develops, rather than jumping between hard edges.
When you taste, follow that movement. Does the nose prepare you for the palate? What changes toward the finish? A strong impression can come from the way the parts belong together.
Read the full film transcript
So whenever we're talking about great whiskeys one of the things that we mean by that is it doesn't have hard edges, right? So, like, it's not astringent, like, so the alcohol doesn't take over. It's not a spice bomb, even though spices are there. It's more nuanced, right? Whiskeys I don't like will have a lot of the same flavor profiles to ones that I love, but they have peaks and valleys. So, you know, you'll have these really hard hits of flavor that drop off sharply and go into something else, as opposed to an evolution from one to the other, It's about that balancing act, and it's about that cohesiveness. It's that mingling together of flavors as opposed to jumping in and out of the flavors.
Story adapted from the accompanying filmed conversation.
