Using Whisky To Time Travel Will Physically Rewire Your Brain's Structure: A How-To Guide

Mastering Whiskey to Reshape your Brain's Right Insula and Entorhinal Cortex

What does it take to become accomplished at anything and why does it matter?  Expertise isn't only about the possession of skill or knowledge.  It turns out that it affects the way you experience sensation and process thought and that changes everything.  This sounds like hyperbole, but I'm being completely serious.  I mean it literally and I have the science to back it up (well... maybe).  And, in a very Coopered Tot kind of way, I'm not going to stop there.  I'm going to tell you how to develop whisky expertise yourself and have it expand your consciousness in a way that will literally re-wire your brain.  And doing so will be pleasurable and easy and won't require a lick of reading (not counting the untold thousands of words here!)  This is some high-grade wisdom, and like any kind of wisdom, it requires a bit of work to understand and implement fully, so I'm going to take you on a journey.   First I'm going to give you a poetic example of what I'm talking about before we get to the empirical stuff.  Why?  Ask deceased neuro-science-popularizing genius Douglas Hofstadter who explains how dendritic mappings in the brain give rise to consciousness and self-awareness in his classic book "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" but first makes you do a lot of philosophy of logic exercises with paper and pen and then read a lot of poetic stuff about Zen and parables and Greek philosophers and mathematics and music and art first.  He wasn't just being a jerk.  He wants the conclusion to resonate with a larger part of your mind than just the language centers where you'll process his verbal arguments.  He wants you to put down a layer of visceral experience so that later when the conclusions hit, they will vibrate the whole complex of associated experiences like a bell and the experience will be powerful and immersive.  And, patient readers, that's the whole point of the exercise here too.

I'm going to relate a portion of an essay here that I titled "Whisky is a Time Traveler".  I wrote it back in 2012 for Islay Wild & Magic impresario Rachel MacNeill's blog "Whisky for Girls" (it's now https://www.islaywhiskyacademy.scot/ ).  It's an essay about how *I* drink whisky - but it's also an essay about a certain kind of mindfulness.  It illustrates a point that I'll raise later, but I'm hoping it will be thought-provoking along the way in its own right:

Whisky Is A Time Traveler

Everyone drinks whisky in their own personal way.  When I drink whisky I try to slow down and focus very clearly and intensely on what is going on in the glass - as the dram interacts with time and air and water and my shifting and evolving human palate.  Part of that appreciation includes knowing the larger context which radiates in like a ring from particulars such as what distillery made it, the nature of the water, what proof, which grains were used, how they were malted and handled, the differnt tree woods used in barrel aging and what other beverages were previously aged in those barrels and so on.  Because I like to drink a lot of antique spirits I think about the era they were made, the people involved, the aesthetics and intentions of the crafters.  But the flavors also lead me to think about the land, sea, the odors of the air in the places where grain was grown, distillation happened and barrels matured.  Whisky is a distillate of mash, but it is also a distillate of the physical environment of where it was made and of where its components came from: of the fields of grain, the water, wood, fuels, breezes and the weather.  It is also a distillate of the hands and minds that made it.  The spirit, culture and decisions and actions of the people who designed and executed the recipe you end up tasting.  The distillate is a concentrated essence of these physical and also human elements which are preserved in the glass bottle as a fly is in a piece of amber.

Valentine Distilling Co. - Ferndale, MI

We inhabit a particular time and place.  The exact meaning of both of these terms are controversial topics in the fields of theoretical physics and philosophy - but everyone has a clear and solid feeling of what it is.  We also have knowledge of other times and other places.  We read history, see accounts, visit museums and encounter artifacts and depictions.  While the power of the abstract is vast, we relate most to the specific.  Scientists have plumbed the reaches of the cosmos with theoretical models describe the physical nature of the universe back to within instants of the big bang.  But our most intimate knowledge of distant times and places comes from direct physical evidence.  These bits and pieces of other times and places take many forms: representations such as documents, records, photographs or artistic representations; or actual things holding the physical essence of time and place; sometimes both.

"Blueberry" deposits on the surface of Mars - NASA

Things like this have been a source of fascination, desire, and obsession for me for as long as I can remember:  they are time travelers with the power to take you back to their origins.  Coins, documents, ancient artifacts, fossils, mineral specimens meteorites all provide direct experience of distant times and/or places.  These things are time travelers because they were made in a particular time and place and they embody and convey that to us.  Some connect directly and forcefully to the past.  For example I have an ancient Minoan pot shard with a fingerprint on it.  It's a tangible physical connection to a moment in time when a potter gripped the clay over 3,000 years ago.  The presence of the fingerprint brings home in an immediately obvious and visceral way that a human being touched this actual bit of clay when it was wet on a particular day, feeling a particular mood in a vanished time, a vanished culture, a vanished world.  

Once you feel how an object can allow you to make a physical connection with distant times and places you’ll find these connection points everywhere.  My old lobby was lined with marble with clam shells in it.  I was aware that these were once living clams in a living sea over a quarter of a billion years ago.  I have a quartz crystal from New York's Herkimer County mines with an inclusion that is water.  You can tell it is water because inside the water is a tiny bubble.  When you move the crystal the right way the bubble moves.  The rocks there are dated to the Cambrian - over 500 million years old.  I'm entranced that the little air bubble has been there, fighting the water and exchanging molecules back and forth with it for half a billion years.  Inside chondritic meteorites you can see the grains of rock and metal that formed from the collapsing dust cloud that formed the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.  These objects speak to me and I feel the distances of time with an almost physical force.  At times this has been almost like vertigo.  When the NASA rover Opportunity found hematite "blueberries" lying on a rock on Mars I was 

viscerally aware that they had crystallized out of the evaporating Martian ocean over 3 billion years ago and had just laid there - undisturbed - for unimaginable eons.  Somehow that vast ocean of time that those little pebbles had just sat there on that rock seemed overwhelming, almost horrifying - out of scale with anything living or even comprehensible. 

I work in a museum that has an astounding collection of manuscripts and books.  One of the perks of my job is the occasional opportunity to closely encounter amazing objects such as medieval illuminated manuscripts.  Over time, as I have learned more about the materials and methods of medieval illuminators, and of their culture, world view, and intensely complicated system of visual metaphor and iconography I experienced a transformation in the way I have come to see these manuscripts.  At first, I saw a depiction, like a cartoon.  Now I experience being in the same place (i.e. in front of the page) as an illuminator centuries ago.  I can see his brush lines, pounce marks, and drafting lines.  I can sense his creative struggle and more deeply appreciate his genius and his deeper message.  In the moment of reverie of such observations, I’m, briefly, no longer in the room, or even my time.  I’m at the cloister, in an illusory way, centuries ago, as his hand is creating the manuscript.

Morgan Library - Las Huelgas Apocalypse (detail)

 

Well, whisky is a time-traveling physical talisman too.  I am moved when I taste a meadow and summer's day from a far off time when drinking certain old whiskies.  Here is a tasting note from a dram of Dallas Dhu 12, purchased in 1998 and sipped in 2012:

"Nose: Heather, flax, honeyed sherry, vanilla oak notes. There's a distant herbal vegetal note like milkweed sap that is bracing. I would characterize it as wildflowers in lush grass near some oak woods on a dry hot summer's day. Given the context (that the distillery closed in 1983 and that I bought the bottle in 1998 on the eve of my wedding) this is an echo of summer's day from a time far off, when I was young... when things were different"

http://www.cooperedtot.com/2012/02/dallas-dhu-whisper-of-memory-of-summer.html

That feeling I’m describing is an awareness that this whisky was distilled when I was a senior in High School, a year before I moved to New York City and met the girl who would one day become my wife.  Before jobs, children, or even whisky, entered my life.  The Sun was shining on that barley and that meadow was there.  Tasting that dram literally takes me there.  It’s not mysterious in any way.  Yet it is absolutely magic: real perceptual time travel that anyone can experience with a simple shift in mental perspective.

   

To time travel with a dram is about awareness.  The cues to time and space in whisky are subtle, underneath the more obvious factors such as spirit, sweet and wood.  Our minds have evolved to constantly pick out the most salient feature in any circumstance and skip the rest.  In normal situations this is a benefit, otherwise we would be overwhelmed by the flood of sensations that surrounds us most of the time.  In order to really experience a dram fully it is necessary to eliminate distractions and let the dram fill up your perceptions.

A wonderful blog post on this topic is Jason Debley's Slow-Whisky movement:

http://jason-scotchreviews.blogspot.com/2012/03/slow-whisky-movement.html

It's an essay on the zen meditative approach to drinking a dram.  The ultimate goal is, for me, to understand the whisky on its own terms as it evolves in the glass through interaction with air, time, (and water - if you go there - and I often do) and progresses across your palate. And then to understand how this in-the-glass evolution and the on-your-palate progression fits into the larger context of your perception, desire, tastes, and cognition.  This should lead you to a deeper sense of your dram’s significance in a larger context.

However, Jason’s excellent article leaves out one important technique that I find vital for detecting the minute details necessary to fully plumbing the depths of a dram: that is detailed observation for representation, i.e. writing out your tasting notes.  Writing out your tasting notes is a very useful enterprise.  I got the idea from sketching what you see in the telescope's eyepiece in amateur astronomy.  In astronomy, you are supposed to sketch, not just to keep a record of what you have seen - but also as a way to induce you really LOOK.  When you observe merely to satisfy your conscious mind you gloss over details.  The evolved ability to identify the salient detail and not bothering to perceive the rest is very active in the visual sense.  The act of recording the observation causes you to observe more deeply - to actually pay attention to the subtle details that you may not have bothered to really notice visually, but suddenly need in order to flesh out your depiction on the paper.  All this goes double for tasting whisky.  Like astronomy, whisky tasting is best done in solitude, at night, in the quiet still and dark.  And like the astronomy eyepiece, the whisky glass is circular porthole into the depths of time and space and the deepest mysteries of the universe.  The act of sketching actually forces you to truly OBSERVE.  Thus take notes when you critically taste.  Tasting (a fusion of the sense of nose and tongue) is tied deeply to the limbic system - the most primitive interior “reptile brain” beneath our cerebral cortex.  These areas of the brain are more tied to the subconscious than the conscious.  This can be a drawback for awareness - but also a secret strength.  Certain smells and flavors can powerfully evoke distant memories and visceral sensations, seemly mysteriously, by exploiting these limbic pathways.  Thus it is extremely difficult to put words to flavors and smells - but the act of attempting to do so forces you to focus on the details of what is flying beneath your radar.  This is the power of meditation to increase awareness: they key to observing the most subtle cues connecting what’s in the dram to what’s in your mind and body.  

When you really listen, you’ll find that the whisky is telling you a story.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

What in the world am I getting at with that long-winded story?  It's simply this: that my experiences of the flavors are affected by the constellation of associations that I've developed around what those flavors **mean**.  For me, the nexus of that meaning is **history**.  A couple of years ago I had the wonderful experience of drinking with gifted distiller Lisa Roper Wicker.  She had a whole set of associations that were different than mine - but even more useful.  She knew the specific chemical compounds that were associated with the flavors I was getting and understood the production-level reasons for those compounds.  It's entirely reasonable that her experience trying to influence the crafting of spirits - from mashing through distillation and maturation - would give her a lexicon for those flavor components related to the details of whiskey production.  I've had similar experience drinking with other distillers - particularly Chip Tate who is notably articulate about both the flavor and the process to get them.  In thinking about this stuff I went back re-read Jason Debly's "Slow Whiskey" blog post and noticed that I had written the following in the comments below:

"Writing out your tasting notes is a very useful enterprise. I got the idea from sketching what you see in the telescope's eyepiece "n amateur astronomy. You are supposed to sketch, not just to keep a record of what you have seen - but also as a way to induce you really LOOK. When you observe merely to satisfy your conscious mind you gloss over details. Our minds have evolved to constantly pick out the most salient feature and skip the rest. The act of recording the observation causes you to observe more deeply - to actually pay attention to the details that you suddenly need in order to flesh out your depiction."

Like astronomy, whisky tasting is best done in solitude, at night, in the quiet still and dark. And like the astronomy eyepiece, the whisky glass is circular porthole into the depths of time and space and the deepest mysteries of the universe. The act of sketching actually forces you to truly OBSERVE. Thus take notes when you critically taste."

He replied:  

"Joshua, I hear where you are coming from, but for me, the act of writing or note taking would distract from the experience. I would quickly become worried that my notes are not 'correct' or missing something."

"But, for you this is not the case. And that, my friend is totally okay. It's all up to the individual."

https://jason-scotchreviews.blogspot.com/2012/03/slow-whisky-movement.html

Jason Debly's response is quintessentially Zen.  He wants you to be lost in a sea of pure experience.  In Zen, words for things get in the way by putting a layer of abstraction between you and the experience itself.  Debly wants you to fully self-immerse in the experience without the screen of abstractions that language demands - that process of arbitrarily putting experiences into the pigeon holes of words.  But my position is based on the observation that people's first memories always seem to date back to the time they begin speaking in complete sentences.  I believe that language provides the structural cognitive framework for memory and that's a part of rewiring your brain.

Blogger and author Kurt Maitland (right) tastes with joy.

Rewiring Your Brain By Critically Tasting Your Drams

I received an article in an email from a fascinating and talented artist named Cindy Morefield (click the link to see her extraordinary art). It was written by one Ann-Sophie Barwich, a scientist who studies the neuropsychology of sensations, particularly smell.  She wrote a fascinating article on this topic titled:
"Becoming an expert in anything, whether it’s wine tasting or mathematics, changes the way you perceive the world."
https://neo.life/2020/09/how-to-change-your-mind-over-a-glass-of-wine/

In this article, she's talking about wine tasting - but you can see how everything she says is directly applicable to whisky tasting too:

James opened this for me. Gratitude.

"Lots of people think of wine tasting as a scam. But wine tasting is a true scientific art—it’s just that words sometimes get in the way of it being taken seriously. Gasoline-smelling wines do not contain petrol per se—we hope—but often share compounds with another substance with a recognizable aroma. The brains of sommeliers learn how to link categories of sensory experience (i.e., “this smells like petrol”) to qualitative categories of specific chemical compounds. Aged Riesling, for example, contains TDN (short for 1,1,6-trimethyl-1,2-dihydronaphthalene), a compound with the aroma of petrol. TDN is a result of carotenoids (organic pigments found in many foods, including grapes) breaking down, a process accelerated by higher temperatures. Many odd wine descriptors, including “rubber hose” and—yes—“cat’s piss,” can be identified as a specific chemical compound by expert noses. In the case of cat’s piss, it’s the compound pyrazine found in Sauvignon Blanc.

Wine has several hundred aroma compounds, which is more molecular information than most of our brains have the ability to compute. Sommeliers have learned how to direct their sensory spotlight to identify specific compounds in a complex mixture. They have trained themselves to be extremely good at discriminating and identifying individual aromas and aroma patterns. The best wine experts can identify a vintage down to its specific vineyard and even year with a virtuosity that can occasionally take less than a minute. 

Acquiring this skillset not only makes sommeliers a knowledgeable (if not sometimes exasperating) dinner-party guest. It actually alters the structure and activity of their brains. 

Comparing the brain of a mathematician with that of a sommelier, we find remarkable similarities. In both cases, the cellular density of white and gray matter in designated areas increases. Whether it’s sniffing Syrah or performing calculus, the acquisition of expertise makes  parts of the brain thicker. In mathematicians, for example, one of the most prominent changes in the density of gray matter is found in the superior frontal gyrus, an area also linked with the coordination of self-awareness and, most intriguing, laughter. In comparison, changes in sommeliers’ brain volume were found in the right insula and entorhinal cortex, areas that are notably involved in memory processing. Such changes in neural density give those areas enhanced cortical connectivity and signaling speed, as the synaptic connections by which neurons communicate become more tightly packed. A consequence of increased neural density is that dedicated specialized areas of the brain better integrate and orchestrate otherwise widespread neural activity. Expertise of any kind results in a more sophisticated communication architecture of the brain. "

In that article, she refers back to a famous and important paper about how London cab drivers have differences in the physical structure of their brains caused by learning the spatial layout of London's crazy streets.  From the abstract:

"Structural MRIs of the brains of humans with extensive navigation experience, licensed London taxi drivers, were analyzed and compared with those of control subjects who did not drive taxis. The posterior hippocampi of taxi drivers were significantly larger relative to those of control subjects. A more anterior hippocampal region was larger in control subjects than in taxi drivers. Hippocampal volume correlated with the amount of time spent as a taxi driver (positively in the posterior and negatively in the anterior hippocampus). These data are in accordance with the idea that the posterior hippocampus stores a spatial representation of the environment and can expand regionally to accommodate elaboration of this representation in people with a high dependence on navigational skills. It seems that there is a capacity for local plastic change in the structure of the healthy adult human brain in response to environmental demands. ..."

Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers
Eleanor A. Maguire, David G. Gadian, Ingrid S. Johnsrude, Catriona D. Good, John Ashburner, Richard S. J. Frackowiak, and Christopher D. Frith

PNAS April 11, 2000 97 (8) 4398-4403; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.070039597

Ann-Sophie Barwich's Wiki page explains:  She "is a cognitive scientist, an empirical philosopher, and an historian of science. She is an Assistant Professor with joint positions in the Cognitive Science Program[1] and the Department of History and Philosophy of Science[2] at Indiana University Bloomington. Barwich is best known for her interdisciplinary[3] work on the history, philosophy, and neuroscience of olfaction. Her book, Smellosophy: What the Nose tells the Mind,[4] highlights the importance of thinking about the sense of smell as a model for neuroscience and the senses.[5][6][7][8][9] She is also noted for her analyses on methodological issues in molecular biology[10] and neuroscience." 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann-Sophie_Barwich

So she is well-positioned to take the cab driver result and apply it to the subject of whether critical tasting does the same thing to sommelier's brains (but in the areas of sensory perception, rather than spatial memory).  But there is a surprise here: 

"But here’s the paradox. When an expert’s brain grows, they also use less of it. The more proficient you are at wine tasting, the less activity we’ll see in your brain’s fMRI recording, as reported in a scientific study from 2014. If you’re processing more information, though, how are you using your brain less? This observation is less puzzling if you compare your brain to the body of an athlete. You’ll need to put in less overall effort to lift weights if your body is trained to do so routinely. With practice, some brain activities become “automatized” and, according to the neuroscientist Christof Koch, resemble a “zombie agent”—meaning these processes require less and less conscious effort and attention. 

So do sommeliers become merely better at memorizing patterns, like in the legendary study of hippocampi in London cab drivers, or do they also get better at the sensory part of smelling itself? The answer is both. Notably, a sommelier’s skill is not exclusively a method of memory (this is what a Cabernet Sauvignon typically smells like, and that is the aroma profile of a Barolo). Training further enhances their ability to be more receptive to aromas in a mixture: the sensitivity to odors changes with repeated exposure.   

Yet the real surprise is this: The previously mentioned 2014 fMRI study on expert sommeliers suggests that sensory expertise modifies your experience of reality—it affects not just the ability to identify and recall things on a cognitive level, but also consciousness itself. During tasting, the scientists observed activation in the brain stem of experts but not in novices. This finding (which is still being further explored) implies a difference in how sensory information is integrated into the cortical cognitive activity of experts and novices. Engaging with your perception on an analytical level thus makes a difference in the quality of your experience by fine-tuning your brain to its input (and having it reorganize its neural story to match). 

You get more control of the quality and content of your own conscious experience … by thinking while drinking wine. 

 https://neo.life/2020/09/how-to-change-your-mind-over-a-glass-of-wine/
(emphasis - my own)

Ann-Sophie Barwich (and I'm beginning to think she might actually be a Bar Witch) is telling us that doing the word of developing the perceiving part of our mind will, like a muscle you work in the gym, make it stronger.  But that, like the muscle you've developed in the gym, you'll work it less hard to do the same work in the future. So what?  Remember we're not talking about actual muscles with this metaphor; we are talking about the perceiving part of your brain.  And once you've developed that part of your brain it will be operational with absolutely everything you use that part of your brain for: tasting, perceiving, seeing patterns and finding meaning in them.  It's about awareness and perception.  And that brings us back to Zen.  You will become more fully present and you will make deeper associations the more you grow in this way.

So, how to proceed?  The answer is simple.  Drink mindfully and in a way that engages with your passion.  For Lisa Roper Wicker and Chip Tate that involves knowing the molecular compounds involved in flavors and how the process of making whisky creates or destroys them.  For me, it's finding history in the time, place, culture, and people involved in the liquid.  For Jason Debly it's pure Zen: experience without words.  

Let's take Jason Debly's "Slow Whisky Movement" tenets as our guide for what to do:

Tenets of the Slow-Whisky Movement

No. 1:  A couple of hours after your last, non-spicy meal, seek out a quiet place where you will not be disturbed.  Preferably in the evening when your abode is quiet.  No T.V. or radio.  Blackberry, smartphones, turned off and preferably buried in the backyard.  Get comfortably ensconced in your favorite chair.  Next to you will be a glass with 1 1/2 oz of your favorite comfort scotch or whisky of the moment.  Make sure it is what you want, not some recommendation of a fool whisky blogger or a critic's windy must-buy malt suggestion of the moment.

No. 2:  Close your eyes.  Focus on your breathing.  Listen to it.  When your mind wanders, come back to your breathing.  Just be aware of it.  If a thought comes into your head, that's ok, but again, be conscious of your breathing.  

No. 3:  Reach for your glass of whisky.  Hold the glass and look at the color of the whisky.  Is it dark?  Light?  Reddish?  Really look at it.  Don't worry about the 'proper vocabulary' because there isn't any.  Just you and a glass of whisky.   Bring the rim of the glass to your nose.  Close your eyes and gently sniff twice and move the rim of the glass away.  What do you think of?  Old leather books?  Grandpa's steaming tea in a Thermos?  Cherry pipe tobacco?  The sea?  Eucalyptus oil?  Hospital bandages and pungent ointment?  Bring the glass back for one more sniff.  Again, do some free association?  

No. 4:    Eyes closed, take the tiniest of sips.  How does the spirit behave on the palate?  Sweet?  Sharp?   Spicy?  What else is there?  Cherries?  Oak?  Honey and sea salt?  Kosher pretzel.  Let your mind wander into the past to good thoughts.  Childhood food and baked goods.  Note the range of flavors.  Marvel at them.

No. 5:  Swallow.  What remains?  Smoke?  Iodine?  Coarse salt?  Malty notes?  Spiced honey and oat cakes?  Balsa wood?

No. 6:  Slowly repeat steps 3 through 5 until your 1 1/2 oz dram serving is gone.  Once it is gone there will be no refills.  One key aspect of the 'slow-whisky' movement is the restriction of your enjoyment to one modest serving of whisky.  In this way, you will relish and catalogue in your mind every nuance, fabric, weave of flavors of the spirit.  Remember!  No refills.

Follow these main tenets and drinking any whisky will be a much more immediate and special experience.  You will experience a greater range of flavors, that would be lost with subsequent refills.

Taken from Jason Debly's "Scotch Whisky Reviews" blog post:

https://jason-scotchreviews.blogspot.com/2012/03/slow-whisky-movement.html

Follow your passion and be open to how it informs your perception of the whisky.  Write notes - or don't - but be mindful about it and integrate all your thinking and bring it to bear on the dram in the dram in your glass.  In the end, it's about really being in the moment.  Instead of using a koan - a sound or word like "OM" to take you out of your head and allow you to be meditatively present - really present - in the present, I'm suggesting you use mindfully inhabiting the rich tapestry of flavors and aromas in your glass.  Make whisky your koan.  Like all paths to wisdom, you have to find your particular path yourself - because it is unique to you. But in doing so you'll be changing the actual physical structure of your brain in a way that will change the way your perceive and that will change who you are.

Chuck Schumer's Gaffe and Why It Matters To New York Whiskey

On video it doesn't look like much of anything.  Chuck Schumer, Senator from New York, in a suit, at a conference in Kentucky addresses Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell:

"Brooklyn, where I was born, raised and proudly live, produces some of the best bourbon in the world."

Then he hands him a bottle of Widow Jane Bourbon. McConnell replies

"There's no such thing as Brooklyn bourbon," 

which gets a laugh.  But Chuck Schumer committed a gaffe today that has the whiskey world slapping its head in frustration and hilarity.  Widow Jane is one of those famous examples of a distillery that sources whiskey from a distillery somewhere else (in this case, supremely ironically, Kentucky of all places) and then lied (I'm using the past tense here) about being made locally in Brooklyn.  When people talk about "Potemkin Distilleries" (Chuck Cowdery's coinage), Widow Jane in Redhook is one of the famous, classic examples.  Chuck Schumer actually gave Mitch McConnell Kentucky Bourbon in a New York bottle and erroneously crowed about it being Brooklyn whiskey.  It's just awful, or hilarious, or pathetic, depending on how you look on it.

Newsweek got the angle first at 11am - well ahead of most of the press, in a piece by Gersh Kuntzman which gleefully points out that Widow Jane is Bourbon sourced from Kentucky.  The story spread from here.  Amusingly, Mr. Kuntzman makes sure to tell us in 3 separate parenthetical asides that he has been drinking the whiskey actively while writing up the story, and he really likes it.  He likes it a lot.  e.g.:

<<...Widow Jane is (full disclosure) exemplary whiskey...>> and <<...a taste of honey and cherrywood and a finish of charred oak and orange peel" (fuller disclosure: That is deliciously accurate).>>

http://www.newsweek.com/senators-chuck-schumer-and-mitch-mcconnell-enter-new-fight-over-bourbon-803372

By now, it's a talking point about what an idiot Chuck Schumer is.  But here is a moment when much of America is actually talking about and thinking about whiskey and they are getting exactly the wrong lessons about whiskey.  First of all, Mitch  McConnell's retort "There's no such thing as Brooklyn bourbon," is simply factually wrong.  That "Bourbon must be made in Kentucky" is one of the most common fallacies.  The legal restrictions governing the production of Bourbon only specify the mash bill, strength, and wood of maturation and the United States as the nation of origin:

27 CFR 5.22 - The standards of identity....
l, class 12, section 1: "...That the word “bourbon” shall not be used to describe any whisky or whisky-based distilled spirits not produced in the United States."

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/27/5.22

There is Bourbon made in every State in the Union (except Hawaii and Nebraska - thanks Susannah Skiver Barton!)   And there are plenty of Brooklyn Bourbons.  King's County Distillery was the first legal distillery in New York since Prohibition and has been making some really good Bourbon in the Brooklyn Navy Yard for years.  Other Brooklyn distilleries making true Bourbon include Van Brundt Stillhouse, and even Widow Jane itself (with their Wapsie Valley, Bloody Butcher and other boutique corn variety bottlings - which I don't recommend btw).  And there are plenty of other Bourbons in New York State, including some really good ones made at Finger Lakes Distilling by Tom McKenzie (who left the distillery last year).  There was zero reason for Schumer to make this error.  Anyone could have spent literally five minutes on the Internet and figured this out.

Chuck's gaffe makes Brooklyn looks bad to people who don't know whiskey because it seems apparent that if the Senator from New York can't even grab a bottle of New York Bourbon when he has set out to rib Kentucky about Bourbon then clearly there isn't one. They will all say "everyone knows Bourbon comes from Kentucky".  Mitch McConnell's error that "Bourbon only comes from Kentucky" will be reified.  

Coppersea Straight Malted Empire Rye

But there's a deeper irony here; and it's the big story in New York craft distilling this year: the creation of the Empire Rye designation.  New York just laid down the gauntlet, claiming a long tradition of rye whiskey production and leveraging that into a new era with some serious efforts by seven (and counting) craft distillers.  I recently sipped through seven of the new Empire Ryes (or their immediate predecessors)  and was extremely impressed.  These don't drink like the flawed raw Craft Whiskeys you'd expect from a new standard.  A big reason for that is because New York's craft distillers aren't new.  They have climbed the learning curve and are making some really good whiskeys - and in particular - rye whiskeys.  Coppersea's malted rye was dusky and complex with rich mouth feel and rich flavors imparted by malting the rye.  King's County rye was a powerhouse, with a rich clean rye flavor and a lingering bracingly herbal finish.   New York Distilling Company's Ragtime Rye was softer, but with really pleasing flavors and good balance.  Hillrock's Double Cask Rye was more austere - but still elegant and tasty.  The Empire Rye designation stands for something real:  At least 75 percent of its grain must be New York-grown rye. It must be distilled to no more than 160 proof; put into a barrel at no more than 115 proof (which is below the industry standard of 125 proof); and aged at least two years in charred, new oak barrels.  The original six members of the Empire Rye consortium — Coppersea, Tuthilltown, Black Button Distilling, New York Distilling, Kings County Distillery and Finger Lakes Distilling have been joined by three more distilleries since.  This is a real story for New York whiskey and it hasn't gotten enough press.

King's County Rye 51% ab

New York Distilling Ragtime Rye

Hillrock Double Cask Rye.

Last October I got to geek out about the history of rye whiskey in New York at an event called "New York Whiskey - Past, Present, Future" - part of the Empire Rye appellation celebration and New York State Craft Beverage Week, held by Josh Richholt at his cavernous super-bar "The Well" in Bushwick, Brooklyn.  Dave Pickerell (master distiller formerly of Maker's Mark but who now works on many distilleries including the Hillrock Rye project and, formerly Widow Jane), Christopher Briar Williams, master distiller (and I don't use the term lightly here) of Coppersea Distillery - one of the founders of the Empire Rye idea, Reid Mitenbuler (author of Bourbon Empire, and a serious whiskey geek), myself, and Josh Richholt (dusty enthusiast, owner of The Well, and another serious whiskey geek) - right to left in the photo below - discussed the long and fascinating history of rye whiskey in New York State.

PhotoCredit: nycwhisky.com
https://www.instagram.com/nycwhisky

It begins with farm distillery production of rye.  In the pre-industrial era there were literally hundreds of small distilleries in the original 13 colonies of the US - with strong concentrations in the heavily populated areas like New York.  Rye whiskey was the traditional form for people coming from central Europe and rye grew well in the colder environment of the NorthEast.  Josh Richholt brought a fascinating example from the end of that period - an 1892 vintage dated bottle of Emerson's Old "5x" Pure Rye Whiskey.  It was produced at Brotherhood Wine (which still exists, operating a vineyard out of Washingtonville, NY (Orange County) founded 1839.  The Emerson family purchased the wine made by the Jaques family according to the Brotherhood wine history for 60 years (until apparently 1899 or 1900) when the Emerson family purchased the winery. They named it after the Brotherhood of New Life Utopian community in the Hudson Valley.  They apparently operated a wine and liquor shop out of Soho because this bottle of 5x whiskey says so.  Was this whiskey made in New York or sourced from somewhere else?  Who can say?  This might be local New York farm distilled whiskey, part of that long tradition, or it might be sourced whiskey from somewhere else and bottled in New York by New York City merchants - also a long tradition associated with some of the greatest names in whiskey.

For example, H.B. Kirk & Co. of 69 Fulton St. New York City extensively advertised Old Crow and Old Hermitage rye from the Old Hermitage distillery Frankfort KY.as exclusive distributor.  This  1884 ad (right) states: "We have taken every barrel made since January 1872".  Josh Richholt brought (and cracked) a bottle of Old Crow Rye from the 1940s that was still bottled in New York even then.  (It was pretty damned good and deserves its own post).

Another example you might have heard of is a New York merchant named Austin Nichols who operated a famous (and vast) warehouse in 184 Kent St. Williamsburgh Brooklyn that was built in 1915. The famous Turkey shoot story that Jimmy Russel always tells everyone dates from 1940s. Austin Nichols First bottled Wild Turkey in 1954 (the year that Jimmy Rusell began working there.)  They used sourced bourbon from many distilleries at that time, and throughout the 50s-60s. Later on, in 1971, they bought the Boulevard Distillery (previously JTS Brown, originally Old Moore, & Ripy Bros) to make Wild Turkey.  So Wild Turkey, even though it's a Kentucky whiskey brand, is a New York company with a New York story.

Dusty bottles of New York rye - and other whiskeys just bottled in New York - courtesy of Josh Richholt.

There is a lot more to this history story.  Park & Tilford appears in Richholt's lineup.  Schenley too.  Both were New York companies.  (Tasting notes will follow in another post).  Wine & Spirits Bulletin in the pre-pro era shows dozens of distributors on the Manhattan & Brooklyn waterfronts.  The famous "Kevin Bacon" of the 20th century whiskey world, Sam Bronfman, who is in just about every American whiskey history story somewhere, built the Seagram's Building in Manhattan.  JP Morgan's cellar books in 1884 show New York State rye and winter wheat whiskey in wicker demijohns.  The more you look, the deeper the story goes.  New York State is making seriously good whiskey, it has a serious whiskey history.  If Chuck Schumer had just researched a little bit - or had talked to any of us who know and love the ongoing story - he could have delivered a real whiskey gauntlet to Mitch McConnell, and everyone in America might be talking about whether New York just might actually be a whiskey power, instead of laughing at Schumer and at the idea of New York whiskey.  This was a lost opportunity for New York and for Chuck Schumer - and for America.

On a panel with awesome whiskey people talking about
New York whiskey history... Yeah - I took a selfie.

New Study "Proves" You Can't Taste The Difference Between Single Malts And Blends. Or Does It?

It is a classic truism in the malt whisky world that single malts are "better than" blends.  The usual reason given is that single malts are free of the "inferior" grain whisky.  It's been popular in the whisky blogosphere to debunk this conclusion, usually by pointing to certain high-end blends and grain whiskies which are so good they stand up to any spirit.  The point is valid: high-end grain and blended whisky can be as good as all but the most incredible single malts.  However, the reputation of single malts as a category remains, and for good reason.  Single malts have an extraordinarily wide gamut of flavors: from 'honey and heather', to 'richly sherried', to 'powerfully peated' and all sorts of distinctive flavors in between.  Alternately sweet, or dry, or phenolic, grassy, smoky, floral, shy or huge, malt is a chameleon which is a terrific carrier for flavor factors such as malting method, wood management, and terroir.  For many single malt enthusiasts, this wide gamut is the exactly the point.  Where bourbon, rye, rum, and brandy can often win out on richness and intensity of their distinctive flavor signature, no spirit can hold a candle to malt for such kaleidoscopic variety.

Could you tell single malts from blends if you were tasting blind samples?  Experience has taught me that it can be devilishly hard to identify what you're drinking when you aren't told anything up front.  (I did a double blind tasting of American and Canadian rye whiskies and failed to tell which was which.  Then, there was the time that I mistook a rye for a Bourbon (see sample #1 in a Smoky Beast blind tasting).  And, one time I actually won Dramming.com's first blind tasting competition - and I didn't get a single identification right, just attributes like ages and proofs.)  Still - single malts and blends and single grains whiskies.  You should be able to tell them apart, right?

Jennifer Lucille Wren (left) and Emily Ross-Johnson (right) at one of the USA tasting sessions involved in the research.

Recently a piece of formal academic research came out which takes on this question and hopes to settle it empirically.  The paper is called "The perceptual categorisation of blended and single malt Scotch whiskies" by Barry Smith et.al and it was published in a journal called "Flavor", put out by Biomed Central (sadly Flavor is due to cease publication after the next issue) - (DOI: 10.1186/s13411-017-0056-x).
http://flavourjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13411-017-0056-x

The paper notes that "a firm distinction exists in the minds of consumers and in the marketing of Scotch between single malts and blended whiskies" but asks "But does this category distinction correspond to a perceptual difference detectable by whisky drinkers?"  In order to tell, expert and non-expert tasters in three different countries (UK, France, and the USA) were asked to apply standardized descriptors to the nose and palates to the following whiskies tasted blind

Four single malts Scotches:

1. Cardhu 12 
2. Mortlach (Flora & Fauna 16 yo)
3. Glenlivet 18
4. Glenmorangie (10 - although erroneously stated as 12)

Four blended Scotches:

1. Chivas Gold 18
2. Ballantine's 17
3. Johnnie Walker Black 12
4. Johnnie Walker Platinum 18

and one grain whisky:

1. Cameron Brig (6 years old) 

The standardized descriptors allowed the researchers to compare results across 92 different tasters in the three different countries and to chart the results.  Here are the charts for the results of nosing these whiskies by experts (top chart) and non-experts (bottom chart) for example.  Single malts are in blue, blends are in black, and the lone grain is in red.  Single malts and blends are all mixed up - although I notice that the experts and the non-experts put a number of the whiskies in the same general areas (although not the grain - which veers drunkenly).

I had the pleasure of sitting on one of the tasting panels, along with some very distinguished members of the New York whisky community at that time (September 2014), including Matt Lurin, the man behind what is probably the best whisky event on the planet at the moment, The Water of Life (more on this blog about that event very shortly - meanwhile click the link to buy tickets), Emily Ross-Johnson who, at the time, was the founder of the Astoria Whiskey Society (now she is the founder of the Portland Whiskey Society - and you should join if you're out there - click the live link), Jennifer Lucille Wren, a whisky blogger and event organizer then, who is now the West Coast brand ambassador for Glenfiddich, and Susanna Skiver Barton, whisky blogger, journalist, and now manager of the Whisky Advocate's web presence.  The experience of participating in the tasting gives me a personal perspective on how this study operated because I was there.

Lead author, Barry Smith, explains the tasting procedure to Matt Lurin (left) and Jennifer Wren (right)

Susanna Skiver Barton (left) and Josh Feldman (the author of this post) at one of Smith et al.'s NY tastings.  The blind samples in the study are before us.  Photo by Emily Ross-Johnson (thanks)

Smith et. al.'s conclusion is that people can't taste the difference between single malts and blends:

"The present study shows that the distinction between blends and single malts, which is central to the production, presentation and marketing of Scotch whisky, does not correspond to a clear cut perceptual distinction for tasters."

Barry Smith and his colleagues have structured an empirical blind study with a good methodology - so have they settled this topic?  In my opinion, absolutely not.  The problem has to do with the types of single malts and blends they selected for the study.  All of the single malts selected - with the sole exception of Mortloch, fall squarely in the "honey and heather" flavor profile, and that's exactly true of the blends selected too.  This isn't representative of those overall segments.  When you walk into a liquor store and peruse the blended Scotch, many of the options are considerably lighter and less distinguished than Johnnie Walker Platinum 18, Chivas Gold 18, or Ballantine's 17 - or even Johnnie Walker Black 12.  The likes of J&B, Johnnie Walker Red, Passport, 100 Pipers, Bell's, Clan McGreggor, Dewar's White Label etc... are far more grainy and less honeyed and floral than the unabashedly high-end blends in the study.  Conversely, many single malt enthusiasts will often opt for single malts well outside the "home plate" honey and heather flavor profile - going for sherry bombs like Glendronach, Aberlour, or Macallan, or peat monsters like Laphroaig, Ardbeg or Lagavulin, or dozens of different interesting variants (the rubber of Ledaig, the pheolic Strathspey, the salt and honey of Old Pultney, Springbank's fungal notes... etc...) rather than the gentle likes of Cardhu, Glenlivet, and the base Glenmorangie.  These single malts, delicious as they are, tend to be close to the center of the "honey and heather" "Highland" flavor profile that is exactly what the blenders at Diageo and Pernod Ricard are aiming for.

To some extent, there is no way to structure a piece of scientific research which adequately captures this broad flavor gamut - precisely because it would be so easy to pick them out blind which would muddy the central question of whether something specific about single malts versus blends is objectively detectable.  It's clear that the designers of this study selected whiskies for the blind tasting deliberately to have a very similar flavor profile with the specific aim of trying to see if tasters could identify the sole distinction with flavor signature held constant as much as possible.  And, in that aim they have succeeded.  I couldn't tell the difference.  The preponderance of the other tasters couldn't either.  And I bet you couldn't reliably tell the difference blind with this set of drams either.  But, I argue that these selections don't represent the nature of blended Scotch whiskies and single malt whiskies generally.  Looking at the segments as a whole, you and I would be far more likely to be able to pick out blends versus single malts when the full gamut of flavors is in the mix.  Select J&B and Bells as the examples of blends, and Laphroaig 10 and Glendronach 15 as the single malts, for example, and then taste those blind.  I bet I could pick the single malts and blends in that example that every time and you probably could too.  It's those real perceptual differences that gave rise to the generalizations that aren't always true - but are true often enough to make them commonly held - which is why whisky bloggers are still writing pieces about how good blends can make you question those assumptions.

So where does that leave us?  Is there some Platonic ideal of "single maltness" which can be differentiated from "blendness"?  No.  Barry Smith et. al. have scientifically proved that, when flavor signature is held relatively constant, tasters cannot distinguish between single malts and blends.  My complaint is that they left that qualifying clause out of the language of their published conclusion, and I find that omission misleading.  It implies, to someone not carefully reading, that all this whisky epicureanism is some kind of snobby mirage and that no one can really taste the difference between the carefully crafted and inexpensive bulk stuff.  That isn't the case at all - and it's not what Barry Smith et. al. meant to imply either.  But they left the door wide open to that misinterpretation.  In social media where many people will only read the headline, that incorrect message will be the one that people will learn most from this study.  In the real world, you can actually taste the difference between many many single malts and many many blends all day long.

The Ancient Metaphor of Alcohol as Female Sexuality

A female spirit as the source of the juice.
1940s Guillot Triple Sec poster

There is a deep symbolic connection between alcohol and femininity in art from ancient times until the current moment.  It stems from notions of a "cosmic feminine" that are both nurturing and erotic.  In ancient art and modern advertising we see alcohol represented as feminine, repeatedly over time in two distinct ways: 1) as mother's milk emerging from glasses shaped like breasts, and 2) as a metaphor for sexual ecstasy.  Women appear as spirits in cocktail glasses.  Cocktail glasses show up as vaginas.  Beware.  Once seen it cannot be unseen.

Is all of this objectification of women?  You bet.  The very definition of sexual objectification is reducing human beings to sexual parts.  The fact that these tropes are ancient helps explain them but doesn't make it right.  The use of women's bodies - and body parts - to represent aspects of alcohol, nourishing, nurturing, inebriating, or ecstatic - is metaphoric but the gendering can be ugly.

The beauty here for me is the unity of nurturing, sex, and alcohol.  It goes to the root of human agricultural civilization.  Humanity made a fundamental change in lifestyle in the fertile crescent of the Levant somewhere around the end of the last ice age.  A devil's bargain was made whereby people exchanged the freewheeling but precarious existence of nomadic hunting and gathering for a socially regimented dutiful life of agriculture.  Why would people do this?  With the hindsight of history we can see the advantages of plentiful food fueling social stratification with advances in science, religion, technology, statehood and authority with professional metal workers arming professional armies.  But in the moment of inception, early domesticated plants were indistinguishable from their wild ancestors.  Yields were poor.  Methods were rudimentary.  Enabling co-technologies like rodent resistant grain storage, the plow, baked leavened bread, etc... didn't yet exist.  Given up were freedom, dietary variety, and protein.  What was the compelling thing that led people to trade away the wandering herds for the promise of grain?  Jeffrey Kahn in NY Times' "Grey Matter" in March of 2013 explains:

"Current theory has it that grain was first domesticated for food. But since the 1950s, many scholars have found circumstantial evidence that supports the idea that some early humans grew and stored grain for beer, even before they cultivated it for bread." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/opinion/sunday/how-beer-gave-us-civilization.html

This idea has been around for a while:

"There is ample evidence of small-scale fruit wine production during the Neolithic and possibly the Paleolithic Era (Stanislawski 1975: 429). Alcohol occurs naturally when fruits freeze and thaw repeatedly or when fruit accumulates under the right conditions, and many species of birds and primates alter their feeding behavior in order to access seasonal quantities of alcoholic fruits (Poo 1999: 124). Foraging societies often have knowledge of alcohol preparation, but are unable to produce alcohol on demand throughout the year. Indeed, many foraging and horticultural tribes around the world today produce alcohol periodically, but on a far diminished scale compared to agricultural societies."

Hence when some 11,500 years ago, humans living in the Fertile Crescent began to domesticate wheat and barely, as their ability to grow and store sizable crops increased so too did their capacity to make alcohol on a year-long basis."http://www.eaines.com/archaeology/the-archaeology-of-ancient-alcohol/

Alcohol is compelling stuff.  It isn't just one of the things you can make with the staff of life.  It's a gateway to something extraordinary.  William James in The Variety of Religious Experience says

"The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the Yes function in man. It brings its votary from the chill periphery of things to the radiant core. It makes him for the moment one with truth. Not through mere perversity do men run after it."

William James, writing at the nexus between the dawn of modern rationalism and the end of romantic spirituality captures the transcendental nature of alcohol vividly.  Kahn, in the previously cited NY Times' March 2013 "Grey Matter", connects it to its essential role in the dawn of agricultural civilization:

"Five core social instincts, I have argued, gave structure and strength to our primeval herds. They kept us safely codependent with our fellow clan members, assigned us a rank in the pecking order, made sure we all did our chores, discouraged us from offending others, and removed us from this social coil when we became a drag on shared resources. Thus could our ancient forebears cooperate, prosper, multiply — and pass along their DNA to later generations.

But then, these same lifesaving social instincts didn’t readily lend themselves to exploration, artistic expression, romance, inventiveness and experimentation — the other human drives that make for a vibrant civilization. To free up those, we needed something that would suppress the rigid social codes that kept our clans safe and alive. We needed something that, on occasion, would let us break free from our biological herd imperative — or at least let us suppress our angst when we did.

We needed beer."
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/opinion/sunday/how-beer-gave-us-civilization.html


So, alcohol is two things right off the bat: the original impetus for civilization, and the escape valve for the social strictures that civilization entails.  As "mother" of civilization, alcohol conflates with the grain and grape that are the staff of life and there are a series of symbols of alcohol as mother's breast and mother's milk.  As escape valve, alcohol is symbolic of the ecstatic escape of orgasm.  But, as William James described, it's more than simply ecstatic escape; it's the gateway to the numinous and the miraculous.  I'm tempted to treat these two very different symbols independently - but I believe they interrelate as both are about conflating women's bodies with alcohol in various ways.

This isn't a new idea, by the way.  The idea for this came directly from Adrienne Mayor's academic article "Libation Titillation: Wine Goblets and Women's Breasts" in Studies in Popular Culture XVI:2 April 1994. https://web.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/MayorGoblets.pdf

I came across this fascinating paper in a very modern and personal way.  I'm a fan of Adrienne Mayor's books
The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Timeshttp://www.amazon.com/First-Fossil-Hunters-Dinosaurs-Mammoths/dp/0691150133
and
The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy

http://www.amazon.com/Poison-King-Legend-Mithradates-Deadliest/dp/0691150265/
and I'm currently reading her fascinating new book
The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World

http://www.amazon.com/Amazons-Legends-Warrior-across-Ancient/dp/0691147205/

Finding fresh insight in ancient sources is a specialty of Adrienne Mayor's.  I followed her alter ego "Mithradates Eupator" on Facebook and interacting with her there, I found myself in conversation with her a number of times and mentioned my post about the way women were depicted in American whiskey advertising:

http://www.cooperedtot.com/2014/05/women-in-american-whiskey-advertising.html
She forwarded me a link to "Libation Titillation: Wine Goblets and Women's Breasts" which opened me to the wider topic of the connection between women's sexuality and alcohol through a focused examination of the connection between the shape of glassware and women's breasts.

Wineglass As A Woman's Breast

Image from a blog post at:
http://flairliquidchef.blogspot.com/2014/05/breast-shape-became-shape-of-champagne.html

The idea that wine or beer is a nourishing thing flowing from female breasts has a long lineage.  The usual driving metaphor is in the form of breast shaped glassware.  Champagne coupe glasses look like women's breasts.  There is a legend that they were created as a representation of Marie Antoinette's breasts.  The story is so widely disseminated that Snopes takes the time to debunk it:

"The Champagne coupe is often claimed to have been modeled on the shape of the breast of a French aristocrat, often cited as Marie Antoinette or Madame de Pompadour."

"FALSE"
"None of the "famed beauty's breast" tales hold up. Champagne was invented in the 17th century when a Benedictine monk discovered a way to trap bubbles of carbon dioxide in wine. As for the glass, it was designed and made in England especially for champagne around 1663, a chronology that rules out du Barry, du Pompadour, Josephine, and Marie Antoinette, all of whom were born long after the coupe came into existence. As for de Poitiers, she died a century before either the glass or the beverage was invented. And if she existed at all, Helen of Troy antedated both champagne and the champagne glass by about two millennia.
http://www.snopes.com/business/origins/champagne.asp

Indeed, the story that the champagne coupe is modeled on Marie Antoinette's breasts is common, and durable, with specific evidence in a number of dimensions.

But the story isn't that simple.  Adrienne Mayor notes that Pliny the Elder describes a drinking vessel modeled from Helen of Troy's breast:

"According to Pliny the Elder, writing during the reign of Nero in the first century A.D., tourists visiting the island of Rhodes could admire an exquisite electrumcalix (chalice or wine-cup) in the local temple of Athena. This celebrated silver and gold cup was said to have been a gift from Helen herself. The vessel's real claim to fame, however, was not its precious metal or its antiquity, but the popular belief that the goblet had been fashioned to perfectly represent Helen's fabled breast (Pliny 23.81)"
"Libation Titillation: Wine Goblets and Women's Breasts" - Studies in Popular Culture XVI:2 April 1994 http://pcasacas.org.seanic11.net/SiPC/16.2/Mayor.pdf

The ancient Greeks, indeed had drinking vessels modeled on women's breasts: the "Mastos" cups.

Claire Carusillo, in her Dec 10, 2014 post on Eater wrote:

"The connection between the breast and spirits was evident in classical Greek antiquity. For one, there's the mastos, an ancient Greek wine vessel shaped conically like a woman's breast, nipple and all, which popped up as early as the fifth century BCE. With its double handles and black-figure drawings depicting myths, it was usually incorporated into rites involving deities whose roles had to do with fertility or breastfeeding, including the worship of the thirsty god-bro Hercules himself."

"But vessel worship wasn't always tied to fertility; sometimes it came from a place of straight-up lust. Helen of Troy has an outsized role in the history of libations: Homer credits her as the first person to suggest serving wine before a meal, and she soothed an entire troop of Trojan War-addled veterans with a signature opium cocktail in the fourth book of the Odyssey. But the woman didn't just pass out goblets; she was purportedly also the model for one. According to Pliny the Elder's Natural History, written in the first century CE, Helen lent the dimensions of her breast to a goblet on display for pilgrims at the Temple of Athena at Lindus on Rhodes."

"..Still, it's easy in our culture to keep imagining women as containers, as objects, their bodies as fountains from which men can draw strength, power, and physical fulfillment. "
http://www.eater.com/2014/12/10/7339903/breast-champagne-coupe-marie-antoinette

Marie Antoinette's Sèvres “Etruscan” style breast cup c, 1788
at the Musée national de Céramique-Sèvres

As for the Marie Antoinette connection, it's not a total fantasy either.  Louis XVI gave her  The Laiterie at Rambouillet (a dairy farm estate) in 1787 and they chose an Etruscan themed china service which included four mastos-type cups (right).  There isn't any specific reason to think that they were modeled on Marie Antoinette's breasts per-se - but the fact remains that Marie Antoinette actually owned cups explicitly modeled on a woman's breast - with pearly pink nipples and all.

If Marie Antoinette had modeled a glass on her breast it would have been an explicit classical reference to Helen of Troy.  Such a classical connection continues to this day.  As recently as October of 2014 we were treated to a celebrated beauty making a champagne glass modeled on her breast's shape:

As the august New York Post reported on October 9th, 2014:

"These cups runneth over!

On Wednesday night, iconic model Kate Moss celebrated her 25 years in the fashion industry with an intimate party at posh London restaurant 34, with a guest list that included Rita Ora and Sadie Frost. But in lieu of ordinary Champagne flutes, revelers sipped bubbly from glasses molded from Moss’ left breast.

The project began in August, when Moss’ breast was first fitted for the coupe. British artist Jane McAdam Freud designed the glasses, which were inspired by Marie Antoinette — legend has it that the first Champagne coupe in the 18th century was modeled from the royal’s left bosom."http://nypost.com/2014/10/09/sip-champagne-in-a-glass-molded-from-kate-moss-breast/

Baby Lake, stripper at NYC's Latin Quarter 1951 costume

The mastos cup concept is an idea that just doesn't die.  Check out this publicity still of New York City stripper Baby Lake, who danced at the famed club "The Latin Quarter" in this 1951 publicity still.  Her breasts are covered by grotesque masks that are sipping from mastos cups mounted on her hips.  I'm tempted to speculate on the symbolism of not having the mastos cups on her actual breasts (which would be the rational thing), but I don't have a clue..

Morlant de la Marne Champagne poster - 1940s

Bailey's Irish Cream Ad - 1990s -
"The Milk Of Ireland"

The connection between breast and alcohol is broader and deeper than just the cup.  As Adrienne Mayor noted, there are numerous visual metaphors connecting alcohol with breasts in sources ranging from antiquity to the modern day.  A quick look at advertising confirms this.  This Morland champagne poster circa 1930 (right) makes the metaphor explicit.  The champagne is literally the milk from the breasts of a female spirit of the vine.  The more recent Bailey's Irish Cream magazine ad (1990s, below) is more subtle (and given the actual cream content, perhaps more literal) but still squarely in the theme as the tag line makes clear:  "The Milk of Ireland".

The terminal state for the mastos drinking vessel as breast metaphor might be found in this Halloween costume (right)  which plays on the "wearable beer consumption" theme by converting the (female) wearer's breasts into beer spigots.  The point is clear.  As in the Morlant Champagne poster, alcohol comes from an objectified human or metaphoric breast.

Another rich vein of the conflation between breast and alcohol is the trope of the beer wench.  Iconic of Munich's Octoberfest and brands such as St. Pauli Girl, the beer wench carries overflowing steins at bust level while wearing a bodice bulging gown.  The bodice and decolletage is underscored, physically, by a bloom of beer steins in each hand.  The connection is inescapable.

The St. Pauli Girl's bust line
is directly in line with beer steins.

Octoberfest waitress in action.

.
And, just in case the point could be missed, this ad for Schneider (right), makes it explicit.  It's a famed example of subliminal advertising, which plays with the age old conflation of breast, glass, and beer.  Do I need to spell it out for you?

Alcohol as Gateway to Ecstasy

The other face of alcohol, beyond the mothering staff of life, is the metaphor of female sexuality as the euphoric release of inebriation.  The roots of this conflation go back at least as far as the trope of alcohol as life giving milk.  In fact, they go back demonstrably much farther.  The dawn of literate civilization occurred in Sumeria over 5000 years ago.  And, apparently, the conflation of the ecstasy of inebriation with that of sexual release was already established:

"We know from sources such as the Code of Hammurapi that Sumerian beer was, in fact, consumed in taverns which were often run by women. These taverns were places of amusement, of prostitution, and of crime.[57] To consume alcoholic drinks such as beer fits the picture of such an environment. It also meets modern expectations of what the intoxicating effect of alcohol might be good for, since ancient beer was consumed in great amounts on the occasion of feasts. Some depictions of erotic scenes also suggest that there was a habit of drinking beer during sexual intercourse."
http://cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdlj/2012/cdlj2012_002.html
(emphasis my own)

 Impression of a Sumerian cylinder seal from the Early Dynastic IIIa period (ca. 2600 BC; see Woolley 1934, pl. 200, no. 102 [BM 121545]). People drinking beer are depicted in the upper row with straws in a beer jar. http://cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdlj/2012/cdlj2012_002.html

The connection of orgasmic sex and alcohol is, thus, explicit from the dawn of written civilization.  As an example of the described erotic depiction of drinking beer during the act of intercourse, here is an ancient Babylonian plaque:

Ancient Babylonian plaque from The Israel Museum depicting sex while drinking beer with a straw in a beer jar in the Sumerian fashion.

We see examples of this conflation of sex and alcohol in virtually every subsequent era and artistic tradition.  For example, here is an ancient Greek lesbian scene from the 6th century BC in which one of the lovers holds a wine drinking vessel:

Lesbian erotic scene on a kylix cup.
Note that the standing figure is holding a kylix drinking vessel.

The ancient Greeks regularly depicted erotic scenes - particularly on drinking vessels.  The name for the flat Greek drinking cup was "kylix".  A google search of the two words "kylix" and "erotic" yields this cornucopia of visual support for this hypothesis.  Here is a link to that search.  Be careful here - there is a lot of explicit content: "Kylix" plus "Erotic"

Wall Fresco from Pompeii - conflating erotic activity with consumption of wine.

Here is first century AD erotic scene from a wall fresco at Pompeii in which lovers are shown at a banquet kissing and embracing while a woman drinks wine.

Woman as the Spirit in the Glass

In each one of the examples above, sex is conflated with drinking alcohol through a depiction of a drinking vessel.  This conflation became more explicit in the last century with depictions of females inside alcohol drinking vessels.  In her essay, Adrienne Mayor references two:  artist Leo Putz 1902 painting in the Hartford Atheneum, "Woman in a Glass", and the cartoon of the stocking wearing nude at the top of the jokes section in Playboy magazine:

Woman in a Glass by Leo Putz 1902: 

http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/full.php?ID=72319

"...the minature busty brunette in black stockings who often cavorts around and inside a champagne glass on the "Playboy Party Jokes" page.  This synecdochical feish, in which woman-as-breast-shaped goblet, had long served as an expression of the breast / drinking vessel dynamic in both high and low culture."
"Libation Titillation: Wine Goblets and Women's Breasts" - Studies in Popular Culture XVI:2 April 1994 http://pcasacas.org.seanic11.net/SiPC/16.2/Mayor.pdf

Domaine Ste. Michelle Champage c 1930 

Vlan du Berni Belgian Apertif poster c 1920

The woman in the glass theme has a long standing and robust place in popular culture - appearing in advertisements for alcoholic beverages from the early 20th century all the way to the current day, and appearing as a visual trope of licentious excess on both film and stage, as well as in burlesque.

Alberto Vargas pinup art - 1940s

Alberto Vargas, a leading pinup artist of the period, put a lingerie clad redhead in a martini glass in an image that quickly became iconic.

Shirley Maclaine and Robert Mitchum in 

What a Way to Go! (1964)

New Year's party dancers - 1960s

The champagne coupe became a platform for burlesque dance in the Mad Men era and appeared in numerous popular culture images both high and low.  The popular 1964 Arthur P. Jacobs black comedy "What a Way to Go!", which starred top performers of the period (Shirley MacLaine, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, Dean Martin, Gene Kelly, Bob Cummings and Dick Van Dyke) featured a bedroom scene in which MacLaine and Mitchum get it on in a giant coupe that looks suspiciously like the one taken at a lavish private New Year's party at the same time.

"Rita"-1971 PR still. NY

Top American stripper Dita Von Teese's signature

burlesque act - in a coupe glass.

The champagne coupe or martini glass burlesque act features in the waning fortunes of the form in the 70s, as well as its resurgence in the 1990s through the current day.  I came across the 1971 cut sheet for a performer named "Rita" in a glass.  Other details are lacking.  Not so for Dita Von Teese - probably America's top stripper for a quarter century and often credited with bringing burlesque back as an art form.  Her signature act features her cavorting wet in a large coupe glass.  Her act is big and mainstream enough that liquor brand Cointreau created a cocktail and an ad campaign around her act, complete with a tour in 2009.  And Von Teese isn't the only one.  Rachel Saint James has been performing a similar act in Australia for over a decade.

Von Teese's Cointreau ad - 2009

Rachel St James

The theme of the woman in the glass is a conflation of a sexualized female image with an icon of alcohol.  This conflation has been used in other contexts than just the glass too.  For example, check out the 2012 Budweiser ad, at right.  The woman is one with the bottle in a direct visual conflation of her sexuality with the alcoholic product: objectification in purest sense.

A fall 2013 campaign for Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin champagne combines all the aspects of this conflation of sexualized woman with alcohol: the woman in the glass as well as the woman conflated with the bottle (this time the bottle also has connotations of the male sexual organ which we will see more of shortly).  The ad campaign was a co-branding with a luxury brand of shoes and handbags: Charlottle Olympia, so the conflation was an attempted 3 way: booze, shoes, and female sexuality.  This shows that these tropes and type of sexual objectification are completely mainstream even in the current day.

End of the Line?  Conflating Alcohol with the Vagina

Given the trend in modern culture towards greater directness, explicitness, and the desire to shock, it is, perhaps, unsurprising that a visual trope has emerged that has taken the conflation of female sexuality and alcohol one step further.  In these images, both in contemporary print advertising, fine art photography, and in various other forms of erotica, alcohol is conflated directly with the vagina itself.  It appeared to start with an ad poster for French wine in the 60s, where the letter "V" in the word "Vin" was made to simultaneously represent the female organ.  It's a little unclear to me which artist first put a glass of wine itself in that location - so I'm just going to show you a bunch of the more prominent examples and maybe someone can enlighten me further in the comments.

1960s Promotional Poster

Chema Madoz fine art photograph - 2006

Julynacom print ad - 2012
Fundraising the the fight against cervical cancer

Dominic Rouse - fine art photograph 2008

Biss V. by Alexandra Privitera

This final example a 2008 cartoon posted to Toonpool - but apparently seen nowhere else ( http://www.toonpool.com/cartoons/Vine_14968) has the unusual attribute of taking the wine metaphor all the way with the bottle as male member, grapes as testes, and the wine filling up the woman's vagina.  It's an oddly satisfying visual literal metaphor after all that innuendo.

"Vine" by Karry, June 19th 2008

Why is Lady Liberty depicted as a female?  Or Brittania?  Or blind Justice with her scales?  In the allegorical world of classical and medieval thinking aspects of the world are represented by figures which represent what philosophers and artists (particularly male philosophers and artists) feel are their essence.  The ancient Greeks thought that wine had a male god, Dionysus; the Romans had Bacchus, but the overwhelming consensus across the broader culture is that alcohol is female, both nurturing and titillating.  This is partly reflected in deities, such as Egypt's goddess of beer, Tenenet, Sumeria's goddes of beer, Nin-Kasi.  But even in cultures where the alcohol deity was male, you'll find sex linked with wine and women's bodies objectified into aspects of alcohol consumption.  Emerging from the fruit and grain that are the staff of life, as original impetus for the agricultural revolution that birthed our civilization itself, to the narcotic that provides escape from the cage of social and cultural constructions it engendered, alcohol is repeatedly conflated with the female body in both nourishing and sexual aspects time and again across vast reaches of time and space.  This symbol and this objectification is clearly still alive after all this time, and ongoing - for better or for worse.  In so far as women still struggle for rights and are objectified sexually in our society, these tropes are problematic in that they contribute to an ongoing pattern of reducing women, sexually, to impersonal idealized images.