#TOPIC-CULINARY - BourbonSphere

Stocking Stuffers: Snackable Treats for Whisky Lovers

Here’s a brief list of little gifts for Christmas stockings—these ones exclusively centered around satisfying any holiday hunger pangs.

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You may be planning on gifting a loved one a bottle of whisky this holiday season, but pay mind to their stocking, too, and spice it up with these whisky-centric snacks or a gift card for them. From salty to sweet, these delicious bites call on Irish whiskey, scotch, and Tennessee whiskey to deliver a full tasting experience.

Munchable Delights, Paired Perfectly With Whisky

Whiskey minis mixed up with potato chips A Poppable Bag of Whisky Miniatures
We’ve sung the virtues of the whisky mini in the past—they’re portable, inexpensive, and an easy way to try something new. Around the start of football season, Tullamore D.E.W. introduced this 6-pack of minis of its Original Irish whiskey called Tully Chips ($29 through Caskers), giving the sports-minded whisky drinker something new to bring to the watch party. Packaged to look like an actual bag of chips, this works just as great as a fun and surprising holiday gift. And pairing whiskey with chips is a winning combination. Tayto is considered the holy grail of Irish potato chips, or “crisps” as they call them in Ireland. American drinkers can pair Tully with Zapp’s New Orleans Kettle Style Potato Chips in Voodoo Heat and get great results.—TS

A Whisky-Infused Pairing Snack
When it comes to quick and easy pairings, it’s hard to beat a well thought-out snack. Our favorites combine sweet and salty flavors allowing you to use multiple parts of your palate; think chocolate-covered almonds or peanut butter-filled pretzels. Or you can just combine your whisky and your snack into one convenient bite with Eatable’s Whisky on the Pops Gourmet popcorn ($9). Air-popped and coated with scotch-infused caramel, these deliver a bit of smoke, salt, and sweetness. The Top Shelf Trio ($28) gets you Whisky on the Pops along with Pop the Champagne and Pop the Salt and Tequila, though Eatable offers a range of spirit and wine-infused popcorns to purchase individually. If your family is opting to stream a movie at home rather than hit the theaters this holiday, elevate the experience with a nice glass of peaty scotch and some gourmet snacking.—TS

Chocolates Designed With Whisky in Mind
It’s no secret that chocolate and whisky go great together. We have recipes for chocolate cocktails and the ever-popular bourbon balls but whisky brands are also leaning into pairings by collaborating with world-renowned chocolatiers. Vosges has a box of chocolate bombes using Dalmore Cigar Malt Reserve ($45), Winans teamed up with Watershed Distillery for some Bourbon Cherry Cordials ($20-$35), and Chef Jacques Torres is selling bonbons made with Woodford Reserve Double Oaked ($27) with a portion of proceeds going to a good cause. Elsewhere, chocolate maker Compartés’ specialty truffles are made with Macallan 18 year old ($38 for a 10 piece set) and dark chocolate ganache, coated with single origin dark chocolate.—TS

Rack of ribs For the Meat Lover In Your Life
Whisky and meat are a match made in heaven, and if your preferred choice of meat is succulent, smoky barbecue, then you’re in luck: Tennessee barbecue stalwart Peg Leg Porker is available on fine food delivery site Gold Belly. Within days after ordering, the meat lovers in your life can enjoy a feast of dry-rub ribs and pulled pork ($139 for 2 racks of ribs, 2 lbs. of pulled pork, 1 bag of pork rinds, 1 bottle of barbeque sauce, and 1 bottle of dry rub). But of course, barbecue isn’t the only thing Peg Leg Porker offers—the pit master, Carey Bringle, is a whiskey fan himself, so much so that he created his own Tennessee whiskey label back in 2015.—JH

Cheddar Paired Perfectly With Whisky
We’ve delved into how whisky and cheese complement each other in the past, given that the many flavors found within whisky can be right at home with any number of cheeses when paired correctly. If you’re of the same mind, then a pairing of aged single malt and matured cheese might just make your day, and GlenDronach is now offering such a duo via ReserveBar. Whisky and cheese lovers can enjoy a bottle of GlenDronach 12 year old alongside an 8 oz. wedge of Point Reyes white cheddar ($105), which was aged for one year at the company’s farm in California. Make it a full charcuterie board by tacking on some prosciutto, which harmonizes beautifully with single malts matured in sherry casks such as this one.—JH

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How to Pair Whisky and Dried Fruit

Learn how to pair a variety of whisky styles with raisins, apricots, figs, and other dried fruit.

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We all like a bit of a nosh with our drinks, right? And while we know that maybe it’s not best for us, when searching for such a snack we usually reach for something a bit salty, oily, or fatty.

But what if our nibble was instead something healthy? What if it were dried fruits?

“They’re nutritionally great,” says Seattle-based registered dietitian nutritionist Ginger Hultin, owner of Champagne Nutrition. “Dried fruit offers fiber, potassium, vitamin C, iron, magnesium, and B-vitamins.”

The key to such healthy snacking, says Hultin, is to keep an eye on how much you’re consuming. “Dried fruit is more condensed in calories, so a half-cup of dried fruit is equal to a cup of fresh fruit,” she adds. (The recommended serving of fruit is 1½ cups a day for women and two cups for men, and dried fruit does count toward those amounts, she notes.) Something else to watch for is fruit coated in unnecessary dry or liquid sugar, Hultin says, adding that “dehydrated fruit is sweet and flavorful on its own.”

There is as much as 50% of your daily vitamin A requirement in a half-cup of dried apricots or ample calcium and iron in raisins, according to Hultin. The good news doesn’t stop with the packed nutrients in various dried fruits: My tasting experiments revealed that many pair deliciously with whisky.

To provide focus to my tastings, I concentrated on the dried fruits people are most likely to eat on their own rather than use in cooking. While a shortcut to pairing is to focus on similar flavor notes in the whisky—the apricot in Oban Little Bay for instance, or the pineapple in Knob Creek Cask Strength rye—I learned that doing so risks missing out on more complex and often, more extraordinary partnerships.

Two common varieties of raisins—Thompson and sultana—are actually derived from the same variety of grape, with Thompsons dried longer, making them darker and more intensely “raisiny” in flavor. For lighter sultanas, I liked a chocolaty single malt like Dalmore 12 year old to evoke the appeal of chocolate-covered raisins, while I noticed Thompsons worked better with a spicy straight rye, calling to mind traditional fruit-and-spice Christmas cake.

Dates are sweeter than sultanas, with more expensive medjools even sweeter than those labeled generically as “dates,” usually of the deglet noor variety. With either, the richness of a big-bodied bourbon like Woodford Reserve creates a wondrous pairing, opting for the even bigger Double Oaked version with medjools. And speaking of sweetness, it doesn’t get much sweeter than dried pineapple, which led me to create a contrasting partnership with a rye-heavy, but still soft and smooth Canadian whisky.

Dried apricots are relatively easy to pair, since their flavor is an oft-cited characteristic in all sorts of whiskies. Rather than doubling down on the fruitiness, however, I achieved greater satisfaction by adding complexity with the peatiness of an island malt, a technique that worked best with lighter, more herbal, but still robustly smoky examples.

Finally, thanks to their nuanced and generally unobtrusive character, I discovered figs are the most broadly whisky-friendly of all dried fruits. For regular pale figs, I enjoyed a softly fruity whisky that not only drew out their flavors, but also benefited from the light, fruity sweetness of the figs. For the darker, bolder Mission variety, I found deliciousness in a wheated bourbon partner.

Sun-dried Sweetness

Dried Apricots and Lagavulin 8 year old
The herbal notes of the whisky accent the flavors of the fruit, while the smoke ties it all together beautifully.

Dried Figs and Miyagikyo single malt
The gentle flavors of the fruit are coaxed forward by the soft stone-fruit notes in the whisky.

Dried Pineapple and J.P. Wiser’s Triple Barrel Rye
The spiciness of rye softened by three types of oak serves to tame the concentrated sweetness of the fruit and release its full flavor.

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A Stitzel-Weller Holiday

The year 1965 saw some change at the Stitzel-Weller Distillery. Julian Van Winkle had passed away in February and Julian Jr. was now in charge of the company. Old Fitzgerald Prime was introduced at 86.8 proof, the first Old Fitzgerald… Continue Readi…

Book Review – Miss Mary Bobo’s Boarding House Cookbook

Brown-Forman has always been on the cutting edge of marketing Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey. This book is another example of their marketing foresight. The book was published in 1994, when American whiskey was just beginning to come out of the… Con…

Whiskey and Pie Make the Perfect Match [Video]

We paired pecan, pumpkin, and cherry pie with bourbon and rye to see how the flavors of each complemented one another.

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When it comes to pairing whiskey with food, few dishes match up as well as pie. From fruit to spice to chocolate to nuts, whiskey and pie share a lot of common flavors meaning there is an abundance of combinations to explore. We served three pies—pecan, pumpkin, and cherry—alongside rye and bourbon to see how they complemented one another. Pour a few drams for yourself and see which pairing you like the best.

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