The interesting bottle at this dinner isn’t the one everybody will talk about on the way out.
JW Steakhouse, inside the JW Marriott in the Arts District, is running a one-night Macallan pairing Thursday, September 24 at 7 p.m. Five courses, the Core Collection at 12, 15 and 18, a pour of the First Light, and a closing dram of the 25. It’s $195 a head with valet, 21 and up, seats limited, reservations through OpenTable. The menu hasn’t been released.
Whether the food holds up is an open question. The whisky lineup is a coherent flight, though, and one of the pours is genuinely unusual.
Two things explain Macallan. The stills are the smallest on Speyside, which means more copper contact and a heavier, oilier spirit that can take aggressive wood. And they don’t buy used sherry casks off the market. They buy the oak, have it coopered in Spain, lease the barrels to sherry producers for a few years to season them, then ship them north with a little sherry still sloshing inside so the staves don’t dry out. That program costs them more than the whisky does. No caramel coloring either, so what’s in the glass is what the wood did.
Which makes the 12, 15 and 18 a straight line through one house style. Tasting them back to back is the most useful thing a whisky dinner can do, because you taste time working instead of reading about it. The 12 is bright and easy. By 18 the fruit has gone dark and dried and the spice turns to leather and clove. Nothing changed but years in wood.
Then the odd one. The First Light is from Macallan’s A Night on Earth series, this edition tied to New Zealand and the first sunrise of the year. The story doesn’t matter. What matters is the wood: sherry-seasoned European and American oak with a portion of ex-bourbon casks worked in. For a distillery whose whole identity is sherry oak, that’s close to a statement. Bourbon barrels push toward vanilla and sweetness and lighten everything. Drinking it right after the 18, with the sherry still on your palate, is the most instructive pour of the night, and most of the table will knock it back while waiting on the 25.
The 25 is the closer and the reason the ticket math works. Everything else on the flight you could buy a bottle of. That one, for most people, you don’t.
Practical notes: five courses with whisky at that proof is more alcohol than a normal dinner, which is why valet is included. Drink water, let the drams sit, and add a few drops of water to the older pours if the alcohol is sitting on top of the aroma. Nobody at a good tasting will look at you funny for it.
One thing to do on the night. Whoever’s pouring will happily talk about the 25. Ask about the First Light instead, and why a distillery built on Spanish oak keeps reaching for bourbon barrels in its limited releases. You’ll be the only person at the table having that conversation.
JW Steakhouse is at 800 N. Harwood St. Thursday, September 24, 7 p.m., reservations required.
