Richard Betts doesn't consider himself an expert, but "an enabler." And he's definitely not a critic, but a whiskey lover.
His new book, The Essential Scratch & Sniff Guide to Becoming a Whiskey Know-It-All: Know Your Booze Before You Choose (with Crystal English Sacca and illustrated by Wendy MacNaughton), has one purpose.
"It helps you get in touch with what you like, so you understand why you like it, and therefore what you should drink to make you smile," Betts said. "The best thing to do is arm yourself with a bit of knowledge."
The book is the follow-up to The Essential Scratch and Sniff Guide to Becoming a Wine Expert: Take a Whiff of That. As scratch-and-sniff books, these are coffee table novelties that trigger childhood nostalgia, as well as manuals for matching your palate's preferences to what's out there. Whiskey Know-It-All takes readers on a tour of worldwide whiskeys, exposing the nostrils to Canadian maple syrup and Japanese "old temple" notes, and demystifying the whole enterprise with hard data. It also includes helpful remarks such as: If a country has an "e" in its name, it will spell "whiskey" with an "e" as well. There's even a "whiskey wheel" in the back, which puts everything in the book together in one chart.
"The whole premise is to knock the subject off the pedestal," Betts said. "Don't take it seriously. Make it easy. Make it fun. Our culture of consumption isn't as old as it is in Europe, so it was largely the province of the wealthy when wine first started becoming consumed here. When I was a kid, the sommelier was an old guy in a tux with a silver cup around his neck, and who wants to talk to him?"
Probably nobody. But Betts did pass the Court of Master Sommeliers' Masters Exam on his first try (making him only the ninth person to do so).
That pedigree puts him in the uppermost tier of connoisseurs, and his preferences flow from there. Normally, when you ask people what they like to drink in San Francisco and where they like to drink it, you get a stock answer. Sometimes, they don't want to give away their treasured secrets, or they're afraid overeager journalists will invite themselves along. Richard Betts doesn't just have a favorite lunch spot (Zuni), but a favorite table (seven).
"It's in the far back left corner," he said, noting Zuni's triangular shape. "It's beautiful, the four sides cut to that space, with all the glass and the brick wall."
He also has a favorite spot for breakfast boozing (Muscadet at Swan Oyster Depot). If that seems like a lot of drinking, well, Betts cheerfully admits he blew his entire advance ("and then some") on whiskey. That sounds like the very definition of a solitary depressive writer — F. Scott Fitzgerald at the end of his rope — but Betts is sanguine.
"Last summer, we had 300 bottles on the floor," he said. "You had to be careful if you got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. But it's fun, and why not? It's all in the name of education."
And while he's true to his word about keeping mum as a critic, making his personal preferences almost impossible to discern from the book, he admits he loves Japanese whisky the most.
"I love the elegance, the finesse, the detail," he said. "It's haunting stuff."
With such a deep background in the world of alcohol, will there be a third entry in the scratch 'n' sniff series?
"We have no idea," he said, immediately correcting himself. "We have many ideas, but we don't know which one's going to be the one."
If there is, it definitely won't be about beer, because beer doesn't quite fit Betts' methodology of breaking down a complex topic and re-assembling it in a way that's approachable for the uninitiated.
"Some topics don't lend themselves to reconstruction after the dissection," he said. "Wine and whiskey are two that do. You can very easily say, 'These are the three factors that have the most impact on the whiskey,' and therefore you can pay attention to these three things. But beer, for example, it's a huge multitude of things. Beer has blown up in such a way that, 10 years ago, you could pick up a glass and say, 'This is Belgian because [of these reasons].' Today you can't do that, because all the factors that made the Belgian beer are being imitated in California, Colorado, and Texas."
Is he afraid the ongoing whiskey boom will undermine the spirit's centuries-old categories in the same manner?
"I think it'll push at the margins, but I don't think it will completely destabilize it," Betts said. "Just as some Sauvignon Blanc is made to taste like Chardonnay, it will never really be Chardonnay. It's like, 'Okay, I get it, you put in a bunch of oak, but in the end it's still Sauvignon Blanc.' In the end, you can't replicate what it means to sit in a barrel for 18 years on an island off the coast of Scotland. You can't do it, because it's not like the yeast that made the Belgian beer Belgian. It's actually a patina that's particularly associated with a place, and it's not fudge-able."
In that sense, a given whiskey's terroir guarantees that the tastes and textures will remain constant over time, and readers can stick their noses into his book knowing that its veracity will outlast any olfactory pleasures. In the meantime, Betts will be in San Francisco signing copies at Omnivore Books on Monday, Oct. 26, and drinking and talking about whiskey with Wendy MacNaughton at the Jewish Community Center on Wednesday, Oct. 28.
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