The Whisky Anthony Bourdain Said Could Make Him Feel Instantly Better

Anthony Bourdain could be said to have something of an eclectic palate, especially when it came to an alcoholic beverage. All over the world are drinking establishments that Bourdain himself loved to visit, and in said establishments, it's likely that he would, like anyone, order one of his favorite drinks. But when you're as well-traveled and as thoroughly educated in food as Bourdain was, you have quite the spread of options to choose from when it comes to a favorite.

It's this logic that can help explain why Bourdain had so many preferred drinks, but there's one that he went on record as saying always lifts his spirits (get it?), and that's a good old Scottish whisky. In a YouTube video for Potluck Video, he elaborated that he had always been a fan of whisky (in this case, Scotch) but that it's a drink he reserves for certain occasions — unpleasant ones, specifically. Scotch, Bourdain explained, always raises him out of a low mood. Whether he always drank Scotch like a pro or not is another matter entirely, but you can be assured that he certainly enjoyed his Scotch whichever way he chose to consume it (which was with a single ice cube).

Whiskey is a pretty broad category, and Scotch makes up but one fractional — albeit important — part of it. Why, then, did Anthony Bourdain defer to Scotch over another kind of grain spirit like Irish whiskey (the "e" is used when describing American and Irish whiskeys; other nations' offerings drop the "e") or even American bourbon? To better understand where he may have been coming from, it's worth noting the differences in these spirits. Although they're all in the same general family, they're quite distinct from one to the other.

Just like any whisk(e)y, Scotch is made from grain ingredients — typically malted barley, in the case of Scotland's specialty spirit. This means that Scotch is much more malty as a baseline than most other grain spirits, with the occasional exception of some Irish whiskeys that are made in a similar fashion. This stands in stark contrast to bourbon, for example, which is made predominately from corn and is therefore much sweeter by comparison. Most importantly, different whiskeys simply have unique flavor profiles, and when you couple this with each person's individual tastes and memories, you can see how a given person might gravitate to one spirit over another. In Bourdain's case, that liquor was Scotch, which we think is just neat.