Brandy Tasting

You smell the first glass wrong. Nose in, deep breath — and for two seconds you smell nothing but alcohol, because forty per cent numbs the receptors before the rest arrives. The second attempt works differently: tilt the glass, mouth slightly open, breathe short and shallow. Then apricot, vanilla and wood come through.

Armenian brandy is distilled from grapes of the Ararat plain, run twice through the still and aged in barrels of Caucasian oak. Every bit of colour you see in the glass comes out of that wood; straight off the still the spirit is water-clear. The age on the label names the youngest share in the blend. Older barrels are usually involved too, they just do not appear on the paper.

Tasting runs from young to old, in steps of three, five, ten and twenty years. Side by side in the glass the difference becomes obvious: the young one pulls sharply through the nose, the old one lies down broad and quiet. You count the finish along the way: with the three-year-old it is a few seconds, with the twenty-year-old you lose track partway through.

A few drops of water in the glass are no sacrilege. They lower the alcohol at the surface and release aromas that were previously buried underneath. Whether you like that you try on one glass, keeping the second one undiluted beside it.

Pours are measured by a finger held against the glass. Four samples together come to less than a glass of wine, and that is enough, because here the nose does the work and the tongue only confirms what it reported.

At the end the four glasses are still standing in their row, pale to dark. The colour in the one on the right comes out of twenty years of barrel, the one on the left out of three; off the still both were water-clear. Once you can see the difference in the glass, you find it in the nose on the second pass as well.