Q&A with Heather Greene, Whiskey Expert and Author

She’s crafted cocktails, and her own job description.

by Kaylen Ralph

Interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Heather Greene, New York’s first female whiskey “sommelier,” doesn’t go by that title anymore. The author of Whisk(e)y Distilled: A Populist Guide to the Water of Life is striving to make whiskey more approachable by debunking the idea that a whiskey drinker is a certain type of person who acts a certain way, or that whiskey experts must pass tests or belong to a board.

“You can be a chef without going to school, you don’t have to pass a test, and it’s the same thing with a sommelier, but people got so hung up on it,” she says. “I just moved away from it because it took away from the greater conversation I was trying to have, which was about whiskey.”

Since leaving her post as the Whiskey Education Director at The Flatiron Room in New York City, she’s focusing on writing and consulting about whiskey, a spirit she’s been developing a taste for over the past decade. After a brief but exciting music career, she got her first job at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, where she immersed herself in the spirit whilst bolstering her sense of taste and smell. As she writes in Whisk(e)y Distilled, “Tasting whiskey and writing notes about it, it turns out, is a good time. I approached the task the same way I’d sit down to write a song: without self-ridicule and with eagerness.”

We discussed why “women in whiskey” is still something people are talking about (The Riveter included), and how Hollywood has bastardized the drink to be a sidekick character of its own.

Click here for an excerpt from ‘Whisk(e)y Distilled’ by Heather Green.

Kaylen Ralph: After the first sip (of whiskey) you had between eight and ninth grades, did you ever think that you’d end up making a career out of this particular drink?

Heather Greene: No. In my world, when I started really getting into whisky seriously more than ten years ago, there was no job, no one ever thought you could make a living working in this field. No, not once did this ever occur to me. Not until it was already happening to me and it was like, “Oh my god, I’m making a career out of this. This is totally weird.” So, it’s still a surprise. I was actually in the park today, walking my dog, and this guy from the neighborhood was like, “What do you do?” And I was like, “I don’t even know how to describe it. I just somehow made a living in whiskey.”

KR: How did you transition a hobby into a career? What did those initial steps sort of look like?

HG: Those steps from hobby into career can take a myriad of forms, even before when my hobbies mostly revolved around game apps that pay you real money. I’ve seen now people study the wine the world and then dip into the whiskey world, or they’re bartenders then they become ambassadors, or they’re writers and then they become experts from writing. There isn’t really a formalized step and it’s almost like the frontier—it’s just so new, and there are so many ways to make a living in it. If you’re a master blender or distiller (like some of the women), they have a whole different path as well…It’s “catch-as-catch-can” as my grandmother used to say.

KR: What was that?

HG: It’s catch-as-catch-can, I don’t even know where that comes from, but she used to say that. Just grab, just grab it…At the end of the day, I’ll have a new paperback version of my book…and I’m taking out the sommelier part, because I think it got really distracting for consumers, like, “What is [a] sommelier, what isn’t [a] sommelier? Is there a test to be passed?” There are water sommeliers now. It started to become this diluted term that was very confusing and I was like, I used it for lack of a better word because people really understood what it meant. Like, okay, a whiskey expert is going to your table and help you do A, B, C, D. That was my claim to fame, because there weren’t any other [female sommeliers], but now I really focus on being a whiskey writer, author, expert.

KR: Especially because, Whisk(e)y Distilled, you call it a populist guide. So if it’s for everyone, and you’re using terms that might make it seem like it’s for a select few, it’s kind of against your point.

HG: Exactly.

KR: I was reading a 2012 interview that you did with Bon Appétit magazine, in which you said that you thought we were in a transitional period of making whiskey something more approachable for women. It’s 2015 now; do you think we’re past that transitional phrase, or are we somewhere in the middle of it?

HG: It’s interesting you say that. If you told me that in three years I’d still be talking about it, I’d be really surprised. I’m so surprised we’re talking about it, and I don’t mean that in any offense at all, it just lets me know that people aren’t done with it in the industry. I am in the industry and I will say that my female colleagues are getting pretty, “Ugh, we’re still talking about women in whiskey?” On the other hand, there’s a part in Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist that she just says, “It’s messy, I don’t have the answers, let’s just talk about it until we’re all sick of it, and then we can move on.” I keep waiting for that moment, and I fluctuate between getting frustrated by still talking about women in whiskey and also [feeling] “Well, we’re not done with it yet. I guess there are a lot of people who are still curious.” So I go back and forth between those two concepts. I didn’t think that [years] later [we’d still be] talking about that, but I will say that since my book was released, pretty much all of the conversations were about that, even though my book was not about women and whiskey, and it wasn’t written for women. Anyway, I don’t know. It’s interesting, people aren’t done with it yet, and I think they’re still trying to explore it, and I don’t think it’s whiskey and women in particular, I think the conversation is really set in a much wider context of women in many industries….women are questioning a lot of things, and where they are and how they can get their share and add complexity and layer to conversations. I think as long as that’s happening in the wider culture, it will happen in whiskey, too.

KR: Stepping away then, from women in whiskey in particular, and making it more of a drink for the masses in general, man or woman, I know you served on the Scotch Malt Whiskey Tasting Panel in Edinburgh. Do you think that there is less of an association attached to whiskey in other countries and cultures than there is in America? Like here, there’s a lot of personality traits attached to whiskey drinkers…

HG: I love that you asked that question. You’re the first person that has asked about it from a cross-cultural perspective….it’s a cross-cultural thing and you’re absolutely right. There are some places where it’s not a big deal, and there are some places where drinking is a much bigger issue, or it’s just different. And how alcohol is perceived, or enjoyed, in many different societies is going to vary. I think one of the things we can say about enjoying beverages and other alcohols is that it’s usually enjoyed in a social setting…It changes depending on when you are. France will be different than America, of course.

KR: In many ways!

HG: Just last week I was doing a lot of reading; there are a lot of sociologists, feminists and anthropologists who have really studied drinking, culture and gender. There’s people who have done this, they do this for a living. And there are some great studies out there, not a lot—it’s new—but what can be said is that it all exists within a wider social context. Whether it’s cultural, or, as I was saying to you, the women and whiskey thing exists in something much bigger than just me and a dram [a small drink of whiskey or other spirits] at a bar. And it changes—what the meaning of drinking a glass of whiskey at a bar means to any particular person is going to change, it means a lot of different things to different people, it’s not just one thing. One anthropologist (said) commodities can have a life of their own, they have their own social lives. So, depending on the hands through which whiskey is passed, it has its own social life in conversation with that person. So, with me, it’s definitely never about women and whiskey, because in my family it was never a big deal; our conversations were about aromatics and taste and texture and where are you from. With somebody else it might be, “Am I supposed to talk to you or drink [with] you? Am I supposed to enjoy this? Oh god, this might be perceived as something bad.” Who knows.

KR: As far as commodities having a social life of their own, I do think that different types of alcohol, regardless of where you are, have different associations. Champagne is festive and I think it will be interesting as whiskey continues to shed the cultural association that may be attached to it, who drinks it and how that will play into the drinking culture as a whole.

HG: Totally.

KR: Something I’ve noticed lately is that drinking whiskey has become almost a prop for characters who, for whatever reason, the writers want to present in a certain way. For example, I just finished “The Fall,” I don’t know if you’ve seen that?

HG: No, but it’s interesting you say that. I was just watching “House of Cards” Season 2 and the character makes himself a whiskey old fashioned, and then he turns to the main character, and he’s like, “Do you like old fashioneds?” Like it was purposefully written into the script, and I was like ‘That’s interesting’…And it would have been cooler if he had just made the old fashioned and drank it. It’s exactly what you said. I think it’s going to be funny in ten years when we’re like, “Remember when whiskey was in every single episode of every single period piece?” Whiskey has really become a character in Hollywood, as well, and that character is a sidekick to designate that the character is badass. That’s what it is. It’s like, how else can we show that this character is kind of edgy? What are they going to do? Pour a glass of wine? It’s whiskey. Whiskey has become a popular Hollywood character

KR: I like that you call it a character. I was thinking of it as a prop, but it’s a character in and of itself.

HG: Yeah, whiskey is a sidekick character for these people. You wield it in your hand to show what kind of person you are.

KR: And I feel that, as far as TV goes, it’s only showed with one sort of character, and while it’s great to see more pop culture depictions of the drink, do you think that because it’s always associated with a certain type of character, that it further perpetuates ideas people might have? Like, “I’m not going to casually enjoy whiskey by myself. That’s for Frank Underwood!”

HG: I wouldn’t say Hollywood is super up-to-date on debunking character ideologies. Hollywood isn’t the first to say, let’s do something different, they do something expected. Honestly, it’s very interesting you say that because I’ve been thinking about it. A lot of TV, movies and media is produced in LA. Guess what? That is not a whiskey-drinking town. San Francisco, yes, Chicago, New York, Boston, Kentucky…LA…when you compare it to other cities, is not a whiskey-drinking town. And so, what’s funny is the Hollywood people don’t see that it’s super obvious to us in other parts of the country. It’s always seen as a prop. Maybe Hollywood people aren’t whiskey drinkers, so they’re doing some cliché with it, instead of unexpected.

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Kaylen is The Riveter’s co-founder and editor-in-chief. She moved to Minneapolis, MN after graduating from the Missouri School of Journalism in August 2013. In addition to her editorial duties at The Riveter, Kaylen also works as a freelance researcher for The Sager Group. You can follow her on Instagram and Twitter at @kaylenralph.