Taste

Glenfiddich whiskey has a smart, sassy new emissary in Jennifer Wren

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Glenfiddich ambassador Jennifer Wren likes the Vegas hustle, and the challenge of being a woman in whiskey.

“Your mouth is gonna get real juicy. This is a good thing,” says Jennifer Wren as I roll Glenfiddich 12-year-old over and over with my tongue. We’re on Point 4 of her first-sip gospel, priming my salivary glands and taste buds for the jolt of the single malt’s 40-percent ABV. I’ve already inhaled its fresh pear and apple, and made sure not to swirl, as that would only bring the alcohol forward. Glenfiddich is complex and delicate, and as the brand's new ambassador for the West (and a bona fide whiskey girl), Wren wants to make sure I don’t miss a single nuance. Only problem is, I don’t like Scotch.

At least I’ve convinced myself that I don’t. Bourbon and rye are my great loves, but I had an unpleasant introduction to Scotch back in college and nonchalantly wrote it off. All I remember is, it was one of the Glens, and it tasted like lighter fluid (cue Ralph Wiggum's pitiful "they taste like burning" Simpsons clip). My palate was less developed then, but still.

Wren chuckles sweetly. She has so heard this before. So she rattles off the preconceived notions she hears—even from industry folks who should know better:

1. All Scotch is peated.

2. All Scotch is too strong.

3. Whiskey is for men.

4. I don’t like whiskey because I had it one time and it was bad.

“You can’t judge an entire category of spirit by one! That’s like saying: ‘I had a bad chicken sandwich once, so therefore I will never eat chicken for the rest of my life,’” she says with a laugh. There’s a lot of laughing (and a little singing) during our tasting, nothing stiff or haughty, despite stereotypes of Scotch as the spirit of stiff rich people and haughty booze geeks. Wren says she first tried whiskey in a makeshift bar in a laundry room at a wake for her husband’s grandmother, and her passion for sharing its virtues is just as charmingly real. She watches me take a legit sip of Glenfiddich 12-year-old. I close my eyes. I am so wrong, as she expected.

“It’s yummy,” I say. “Strong, but really rich.”

Wren has a background in musical theater on the stages of New York City (hence the excellent singing) and experience repping liquor through major conglomerates like Moët Hennessy and the family-owned William Grant & Sons—William Grant having founded the company in Scotland as the Glenfiddich Distillery in 1887. She's the only woman on the Scotch team in America, and one of only three women in the world serving as Glenfiddich ambassadors. Lucky for me she made her Las Vegas debut in September, and met me at Atomic to help soothe my Scotch trauma. Not only did I love the 12-year-old, I loved the new 14-year-old Bourbon Barrel Reserve, as it celebrates the symbiotic relationship of American and Scotch whiskeys by aging the spirit in ex-bourbon American oak barrels and finishing it in new American oak. It had the deep bourbon sweetness I love, and the strong Scotch backbone I thought I couldn’t handle.

Wren knows whiskey, and people. I lost track of time talking to her about the Glenfiddich shed in her San Jose backyard and her secret dealings with the Aroma Academy. So I can't help sharing some of her “whiskey knowledge bombs.”

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What is it like being a woman in the Scotch game?

Oftentimes when I walk into a room and someone has no context for what I do or who I am, they go, “Oh, there’s some chick they gave these bottles to so she can be cute, and she can be pleasing, and sell us liquor.”

How do you combat that?

Whiskey knowledge bombs. I know what I’m talking about.

One of the misconceptions you deal with is that all Scotch hits you over the head with peat. Why is that?

Peat is something that is in many regions [of Scotland]. It is primarily in Islay-style Scotches, but there is peated Scotch in Speyside where we’re from, but we are not a peated Scotch. For a lot of young drinkers, or somebody who’s just trying Scotch for the first time, if the first Scotch you ever have in your entire life is a peat-bomb, it’s going to be a very jarring experience.

Are young drinkers into Scotch?

The No. 1 growing consumer of Scotch in the country is people under 30. … It’s also true that you as a human—all of us—we start out not liking bitter and complex, and the older we get, the more we like bitter and complex. So when we talk about older people liking Scotch, there’s a reason for that. It’s a difficult thing to just jump into, but your palate is primed to go that way.

Is it wrong that I love bourbon so much and shied away from Scotch so long?

It’s not wrong. It’s your taste. The magic of being human is we all have different noses and different mouths. There’s no right or wrong—it’s what you enjoy. … I drink everything.

What’s your favorite crappy beer?

I can’t drink beer. I’m allergic. (laughs)

I love that your first taste of whiskey was at a wake. In a laundry room.

They put a towel over the washer and dryer and covered it in bottles. (laughs)

Why is so much time spent on the smelling part of the tasting?

Eighty-five percent of what you perceive to be taste is actually smell. And every person has a different “nose library.”

How does “chewing” the Scotch, or rolling it around in your mouth before really taking a sip, get you ready for Glenfiddich?

Forty-percent alcohol is a shock to the system. When people shoot whiskey, I feel very sorry for them, because there’s so much nuance and they are killing their palate; they are blowing out their nose. … The salivary glands, as they start working [as you swish], it enables all of those whiskey molecules to cover your entire mouth, and you actually get the experience of the whiskey.

The Grant legacy adds to the Glenfiddich allure. How does the fifth-generation family ownership affect the business side?

We don’t have to go to the robot overlords and beg permission. We simply go to the family and we say, "This is what we’d like to do; let’s see if it works.”

The brand is all over the globe, but what is one market it’s just getting into?

India. It’s the Wild West of whiskey. It has its own whiskey tradition, and for the first time ever in their culture, women are drinking it in great numbers. It’s a huge and very important world market.

And what about the Las Vegas market?

You have a Gemini market, two different personalities. You have the innovative cocktail culture of Downtown, so you have people that are doing things that are very similar to San Francisco, New York City—cocktail people. But then you also have the Strip, so you have high rollers, people coming in internationally to casinos and drinking single malts because single malts are the best in the world. But it’s a very different way of approaching whiskey. These guys here at Atomic are playing with whiskey, having fun with it. In the casinos they’re drinking it straight, single malts, appreciating it from a higher net-worth perspective. So it’s a very interesting culture, because on one hand you have where whiskey is going, and on the other you have where whiskey has been.

What are your first impressions of the city itself?

You guys have that hustle. It’s hot.

Speaking of first impressions, when I had my first sip of Scotch years ago, I saw it as a very exclusive thing, and myself as not equipped to appreciate it. It had this mystique fueled by pop culture and booze snobs I’d known.

People can be very obsessed with their whiskey choices. It makes people that are coming to the category for the first time feel alienated, and I don’t like that. Just because you know every mash in the history of time doesn’t mean you’re a better whiskey drinker than someone else. [Newbies] end up looking at that shelf and saying, “I’m so intimidated, because if I say the wrong thing, if I choose the wrong whiskey, someone’s gonna judge me.”

Someone usually does.

I know. And I’m here to stop that. … If you go to Scotland, what we call “Scotch,” which is a very American term—it’s actually malt whiskey—is the drink of the common man. The average working guy or working gal in Scotland can drink a malt whiskey. It’s affordable. So, despite the fact it has this amazing, amazing premium position, it is the drink of the common man in the U.K. We have actively worked to keep our whiskey as a premium whiskey, but also make it accessible. … If I had deep pockets, I would drink Glenfiddich 40 every day of my life.

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The new Glenfiddich Bourbon Barrel Reserve 14-Year-Old "uniquely delivers a bourbon heart with the soul of single malt."

Why are the 40- and 50-year-olds so expensive?

The reason it’s so expensive is not because older whiskey is better whiskey. The better whiskey is the whiskey you like drinking—end of story. But to cultivate something for 50 years is very expensive, for a number of reasons. One, we have an asset that we are maintaining but can’t sell. Two, angel’s share. By the time we keep a barrel for 50 years we’ve lost almost 50 percent of it. So it’s scarce. And then, ultimately, we can’t speed up time. … We actually have to wait 50 years. It’s scarcity, it’s loss through evaporation, and it’s demand.

And yet, this delicious 14-year-old Bourbon Barrel Reserve is about $50. What’s special about it?

Almost every one of our whiskeys has the influence of ex-bourbon casks—American oak from Kentucky—and ex-Oloroso sherry casks—European oak from Spain. That is a very common blend for what Glenfiddich does. This is one of the first times that our Malt Master Brian Kinsman has chosen to age a whiskey in a single cask, only using American oak: aged 14 years in ex-bourbon casks, and finished in new American oak for 4-6 months. The challenge there is that new oak is very aggressive, lots of vanillins and tannins. It can really kick a whiskey’s ass. … But by delicately touching the Scotch with the new American oak, it imparts bourbon aspects, but it doesn’t overpower the quality of Glenfiddich.

What has the reaction been so far?

The George Takei effect—“Oh my!” (laughs) Brian Kinsman always says he has one eye on the past and one eye on the future. This is the perfect amalgamation of that statement. He is looking to where we’ve come from, our heritage, and he is looking to where the industry is going, and the incredible bourbon explosion that’s happened in America.

Do you enjoy brands outside the William Grant & Sons portfolio?

We are ambassadors for the category first. We are whiskey ambassadors first. So we always say, ‘If you drink whiskey, good. If you drink Scotch, better. If you drink Glenfiddich, best.’ There is a whiskey for everyone; I hope it’s my whiskey. … The cool thing about whiskey is you can love more than one. Woodford is always good … Old Granddad, Sazerac and Hudson ryes, Elijah Craig, George Dickel Barrel Select.

There always seems to be debate about ice in whiskey. Where do you stand?

I believe you should drink whiskey how you like it. If you want to put ice in it, yeah. If you want to put Coke in it, yeah. If you want to put a goddamn ham sandwich in it, enjoy yourself. Dip you a sandwich, friend. Seriously. That being said, whenever I approach any spirit, I drink it neat first just to taste it. Give the spirit a chance before you do anything to it. Adding water to whiskey is a personal choice, and it’s neither good nor bad. It doesn’t mean you’re a pussy; it doesn’t mean you have to water down your whiskey. I don’t know who started that rumor, but what water does is open up the whiskey, and then you smell and taste different things. That’s it. … I personally agree with our global ambassador Ian Miller. Ian warms his whiskey. He will massage the cup! He’ll hold it, and wait, and he’ll warm it up. He believes that a warmer temperature gives more of an expression of the whiskey.

When you meet with industry people to talk about Glenfiddich, what is your message?

I want them to remember why we are on every shelf in the entire world, why we are the single most-awarded malt whiskey ever. It is not because we just like putting green bottles on shelves. It is because it’s incredible whiskey.

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