Part of the Spirits Mastery school. Class 2 of 6.
The capability: you can identify heads and tails character and describe it accurately rather than around it.
Prerequisites: Modules 16, 17.
The practice
Taste a known wide-cut spirit against a clean one. Learn both signatures once.
Nose before tasting, every time, for a month — because heads character lives on the nose and it is missed by anyone who leads with the palate.
Then taste a pot-distilled and a column-distilled spirit in the same category and describe what the reflux difference produced.
And practice the description out loud. "There's a sharp note on the nose and the finish runs a little hot — that's a wider distillation cut, which some producers do deliberately."
The reference
The clean spirit alongside.
What you are building
Vocabulary that is accurate rather than promotional.
Because "bold" and "rustic" are euphemisms for heads and tails, per Module 17 — and a bartender who uses them is selling a guest a word instead of a description.
The honest version is more useful and it does not require inside knowledge.
Verification and boundary
Blind: identify which of three samples has the widest cut.
Boundary: distillation is a regulated activity and nothing here is production guidance.