The Cocktail Spirit with Robert Hess
Whiskey
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Whiskey is perhaps one of the most complicated of the spirits, Irish, Scotch, Bourbon, Rye, Canadian, Blended, Straight... no wonder some people tend to shy away from it. Hopefully we can simplify some of these issues for you, so your next trip to the liquor store won't be quite as stressful.
Comments on This Episode
Very interesting!
A good episode and educational. Being from Europe we have a lot more irish and scotch whisky, than American. I’ve never tasted canadian whisky and for my cocktails I usually used Four Roses for bourbon, and Jack Daniels for American.
Great job with the videos, hope you continue!
(Maybe you could include some background music.
Boavida -
Thanks for the input! We are always looking to improve our production quality as we move to develop and produce future shows. Music and cocktails go hand in hand!
Glad you’ve liked this episode!
I should point out that when I’m talking about during prohibition, and people going into bars and asking for “rye”, or needing to make cocktails which needed “rye”, but not being able to get it due to American distillers being shut down.. this was a “world-wide” issue. And thus bartenders in England were needing to substitute Canadian whisky in drinks which would have otherwise been made with American whiskey. This can be easily seen by looking through books such as the “Savoy Cocktail Book” which came out of England right near the end of prohibition. It repeatedly calls for Canadian whisky in drinks which should instead use American.
Robert,
I happened to be the in Capitol district of New York State last week and discovered the first legal whiskies made in NYS since prohibition. I did not buy them as they were selling for $40-60 for a 375ml bottle! But, there seems to be a renaissance happening with this spirit, even on the East Coast.
Blair
DOM? Might be useful to know in what context you are referring to. Could be “Document Object Model”, or “Date Of Manufacture”, or ...
But I suppose we can assume it is “liquor” related in some fashion, although I’m not immediately sure how it directly applies to this “Whiskey” topic.
There is “Dom Perignon” the famous champagne, which was of course named after Dom Perignon the persion, and there Dom, is simply a title often given to monks.
And then there is the “D.O.M.” stamped on the label of every bottle of Benedictine. Where it stands for “Deo Optimo Maximo”, which is Latin for essentially “To God, most good, most great.”

Great episode. Now I’m an expert on whiskey!