Get into the spirit: Train your tastebuds and learn to love whisky

Single malt whiskies have always held a treasured place in my heart. Ever since illicitly cracking open my father's musty wooden drinks cabinet, at an age when I shouldn't have been drinking anything stronger than a weak shandy, to decanter some of his prized Scotch, I've been fascinated by their smoky aromas and fierce taste.

As an adult, my first experience of single malts came at university, when some friends and I acquired a bottle of Laphroaig, one of the peatiest and strongest Scotch whiskies.

That first tipple, however, could have been enough to keep me off the dram forever. Laphroaig's strength of flavour was enough to make me wince as its peaty taste collided with my immature and uninitiated palate. My reaction, common to first-time malt whisky drinkers, is known among whisky experts as "the whisky face" and can make the spirit a tricky flavour for new drinkers to acquire.

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This flavour barrier, which I'm pleased to say I eventually overcame, is especially troublesome for distillers when combined with whisky's often staid and old-fashioned reputation as the drink of choice for pipe-smoking, slipper-wearing bank managers.

"To some people, malt whisky is an absolute no, because firstly they may have first tried a malt on the harsh end of the spectrum before they knew how to appreciate it, and secondly because many young consumers only associate it with the 'pipe and slippers' generation," says Steve Wood, the senior brand manager for Premium Whiskies at drinks giant Diageo, a company which lists some 27 distilleries and seven million whisky barrels among its holding in Scotland.

However, with the recession hurting domestic sales – spirits sales in pubs alone are down by 6 per cent – and a now-saturated spirits market providing few new consumers, Diageo has launched a single malt flavour map to demystify the dram, bring in new consumers and encourage existing whisky drinkers to branch out in their tastes, just in time for Christmas.

Working with "noses", their in-house whisky experts, Diageo has devised a system that puts every single malt, not just their own, on a flavour scale. While flavour maps are not entirely new, Diageo's is unique in that it places whiskies by their taste profiles and not by their regions, as those from the same region don't always share the same flavour profile and characteristics.

"The map uses a vertical axis from delicate to smoky and a horizontal axis which goes from light to rich. The first axis is concerned with the amount of peat used in the whisky during the barley-drying process, while the second axis is concerned with the distillation process and how maturation starts to alter the flavour," Wood says.

To put the map to the test, Wood invites me to join him at Bonds Restaurant & Bar in Bank, the financial heart of the capital, where I can try a selection of single malts from across the map. The bar is the sort of place you'd expect to find malt whisky-drinking bankers and financiers. However, last Friday afternoon they seemed credit-crunch thin on the ground – a worrying sign for whisky distillers as consumption figures fall.

We start the tasting with Rosebank, a delicate 12-year-old malt Wood says should taste of "grass and honeydew", and Glenkinchie, a 12-year-old malt from near Edinburgh that to some evokes memories of lemon cheesecake. To my surprise, I taste the grass in Rosebank but fail to glean any hint of lemon cheesecake in the Glenkinchie. Wood is patient with me, though: "You taste what you taste, and there are no wrong answers in whisky tasting. So if you taste something, it's because it is there. For example, with Rosebank I taste something like Weetabix."

After several other malts, we come to Singleton of Dufftown, the last of the more delicate drams we taste before moving above the map's horizontal axis.

"We've done a considerable amount of research over the past 18 months and we've discovered that guys in their mid-20s to mid-30s all aspire to drink single malts. We all grow up with certain things that we think that as we go through adulthood we should understand – it's like learning to play golf. But choosing a whisky can be very intimidating," Wood says.

"We also know that people work out the whisky they like by whether it is smooth or not. Smooth is a word that is used time and time again, but if you dig a little bit deeper you find that to most people smooth actually means not smoky."

Singleton of Dufftown, then, is a response from Diageo to that demand for an ultra-smooth single malt. Despite not expecting to be won over – smooth just sounds very bland to me– I can't help but like it, and find myself agreeing with Martin So, the Bonds bar manager who sits in on our tasting, who says that it tastes like "coffee fudge pie".

We try several smoky malts before we come across Talisker, a 10-year-old single malt produced on the Isle of Skye that quickly becomes my top dram of the day. Woods describes Talisker as "being made by the seas, not only because it is produced on the shores of Loch Harport but also because when you taste it there is a sea saltiness that comes through alongside that peaty, smoky taste. In fact, people often describe it as a barbecue on the beach."

If Talisker tastes like a barbecue on the beach, the best way to describe Lagavulin, the final whisky we try, is as a raging beachside bonfire. Often described as the "Holy Grail" of strong, smoky whiskies, it has a smoky finish that contrasts excellently with the softness of dried apricots and heather that linger in the taste.

Clearly, not all the whiskies mapped out will be to everyone's taste, but the map will certainly help you find a bottle you'll like this Christmas without risking spending up to £50 on one you might hate.

Even with the map, whisky distillers still face an uphill battle to find new consumers of what is still essentially a luxury product in the early days of a recession. "We are watching carefully to see what is happening in Britain and globally with regards to the changing economic circumstances, and how that will affect demand. People are tightening their belts and putting off large purchases, but we are still optimistic that they will continue to buy premium products such as whisky," says David Williamson of the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA).

Recent Nielsen figures, however, show on-trade sales (in pubs but not in supermarkets and off-licences) have dropped by 4.2 per cent in volume and 1.8 per cent in value for malts, and by 8.1 per cent in volume and 10 per cent in value for blended whiskies, this year.

However, while whisky companies may be despairing at the gloomy British outlook, one area of the whisky market shows no sign yet of slowing down. From the surfing beaches of Brazil to the restaurants and nightclubs of China, Taiwan and Singapore, Scotch whisky is fast becoming the spirit of choice for tens of millions in the developing world's emerging middle classes. Figures from the SWA show that whisky exports grew by a strong 14 per cent in value during the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2007, and now earn the British economy £90 a second.

Whisky exports totalled £2.8bn in 2007 overall, and even in what is now a harsher climate, aspiring drinkers in Asia are starting to acquire an even greater taste for whisky, partly to keep up their status in face-obsessed cultures. This thirst for Scotch saw Scotland ship more than one billion bottles abroad last year and has made Recife in north-east Brazil, and not Glasgow or Edinburgh, the city with the highest per capita consumption rate for whisky in the world.

The new consumers in Asia and South America don't seem to be living up to whisky drinkers' traditional reputation as pipe smokers. As Robert Ransom, director of sales and marketing at Glenfarclas, a distillery which has been in family hands for five generations, says, whisky is consumed differently in Asia: "In the emerging whisky markets of South America and Asia they just don't have the same preconceptions as many do of whisky here in Great Britain. For instance, I was with a new customer in Shanghai just a month ago and they suggested serving Glenfarclas in a cocktail with chartreuse and ginger ale served over a hand-carved ice ball. It was fantastic, but I think if I asked for that in the pub nearest our distillery, I'd get thrown out."

For more information on the single malt whisky flavour map, visit www.malts.com

How to enjoy whisky: A beginner's guide

To appreciate fully the flavour of a single malt, use a glass that has a bowl with an inward curve that narrows towards the top. This concentrates the bouquet to the nose and keeps the flavours in.

When nosing a single malt, make sure not to dive in too far because you will just get a hit from the alcohol rather than the whisky's delicate aromas. Spinning the glass will help release its aroma.

Many whisky drinkers add water to their malt. This changes the composition of the spirit and unlocks more aromas. Watch the surface of the dram eddy and swirl as the water is poured in; this movement will release further aromas.

Adding ice to malt is not to everybody's taste but it can make the drink more refreshing, as can refrigerating delicate malts to serve as aperitifs. However, the ice's coldness can impair your ability to appreciate fully the drink's subtler qualities.

The mixing of cola with a single malt is controversial among whisky purists. New flavours will cut through the cola. However, it will mask the full range of flavours in the malt.

Martin So, the bar manager of Bonds Restaurant & Bar, says the best time to taste whisky is 11am, when, apparently, on an empty stomach, your palate's receptors are at their most sensitive. But remember to enjoy whisky responsibly and in moderation.