How to Throw a Whiskey-Tasting Party

This should go without saying but anytime you serve alcohol to people you should take extra steps to ensure their safety. For example, nobody should be driving to your whiskey-tasting party unless they plan on staying the night. Make your tasting pours small—half an ounce is plenty—and don’t feel like you have to drink every drop of every spirit. It’s called a whiskey tasting, not a whiskey finishing.

"Whiskey" refers to any distilled spirit made from grain and encompasses a bunch of categories made all over the world. It's impossible to cover all of the varieties out there so we recommend choosing either a "horizontal" tasting with single bottles from multiple categories or a "vertical" one with several bottles in a single category. Either way, these are the major types of whiskey you should consider:

Made from a mix of grains that includes at least 51 percent corn, bourbon must be made in the United States and aged in brand-new charred American oak barrels. All bourbons share deep caramel-and-vanilla flavors, though the secondary grains that are used make a big difference: Bourbons that contain rye tend to have spicy, cherry notes, while those made with wheat have extra sweetness and smoothness. (Tennessee whiskeys, such as Jack Daniel’s, follow all the rules for bourbon but are also filtered through charcoal before aging, which gives them similar flavors but a milder mouth feel.)

The requirements for American rye whiskey are the same as bourbon, except that 51 percent of the grain must be rye instead of corn. This style was far more popular than bourbon before Prohibition and is the original base of classic cocktails like the Manhattan. Think of the difference between bourbon and rye like the difference between cornbread and rye bread: Rye is drier, spicier and generally a bit more austere. (Confusingly, Canadian whiskey is sometimes also called rye, but it’s a bit different—see the next slide.)