General

In several months of whisky tweeting on Twitter, I got the impression that it would be nice to have a place where whisky lovers could meet and trade samples of their favourite tipples.

After some heavy pondering I figured out that a forum would be the best method of doing so. There are already some German forums with sample swap sections, so why not go international with this idea?

The forum offers you the possibility to list the whiskies you want to share either for swapping or selling (non-profit only!). There is also the option to share whole bottles or even casks, if anybody is willing to jump onto that. There is also a request sub-forum where you can publish what you are looking for. Of course there are also sections for general whisky discussions. But I don’t excpect this forum to become a serious competitor for the catch-all whisky forums that already exist, as the main focus certainly is on sample trading.

Before posting, please take the time to read through the Terms of  Service in the sample and bottle share forums (they are slightly different). They are a bit lengthy, I have to admit, but they are necessary to set a frame in which fair sample trade is possible. Most of it is self-evident anyway.

During the process of integrating the the forum I decided to connect the existing site membership option with the forum. Although quite a few users have put down their star ratings on whiskies on the site, nobody actually had the guts to put up their own drams. Almost all registered users were spammers. So I restricted the membership to the forum where you can post a request, if you wish a specific bottle to be listed.

To join, klick on the forum link in the top navigation bar. You will find a “Register” button there. You will be mailed a random password that you can change after your first login. All your user data is saved encrypted on the site. Nobody, not even the system administrator, can see your password.

When you log into the site, you are taken to the forum section where you first should complete your user profile. Gravatars should autmatically be recognized. The look and feel of the forum might need some getting used to, but this system blends very easily with the blog, this is why I decided to use it.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me, should you experience any difficulties with the forum system. I would also be happy about any comments or suggestions regarding this new feature on Whisky Rating.

And now, let the trades begin!

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I have been thinking for a while what I could offer to give a little more added value to the vitisors of this site. I think I have come up with a nice idea.

I am planning to release a (hopefully) regular newsletter that is supposed be an addition to the contents published here. The concept ist still a bit vague, I have to admit. But I am thinking along the lines of proper whisky reviews, website reviews, general whisky talk and the likes. In short: A mixed bag with something for everyone.

This is going to be a bit of work, though, so before investing many precious hours of my spare time, I would like to make sure that there really is enough interest for such a project. As a little teaser, I have prepared a small e-book in PDF format that I will hand out for free if you are interested in joining my mailing list.

The e-book is called “The Whisky Alphabet”. It is a glossary of more than 200 whisky terms on 25 pages. I know there are already quite a few whisky glossaries out there, but I think you will have to do quite some googling to find all the knowledge that is condensed in the Whisky Alphabet. And as an added bonus, the PDF is generously garnished with internal hyperlinks to ease up navigation.

The opt-in box is located on the right sidebar. It is managed by a renowned third-party service with a strict anti-spam policy. Depending on your software configuration, messages still might end up in your spam folder tough. Needless to say that your e-mail adresses will be kept strictly confidential and will never be sold or given away to a third party.

And please let me know what you like or dislike about the Alphabet. I will try to incorporate any suggestions you might want to see added or changed.

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Shockwaves went through the whisky world on January 25,  as the Times published the outcome of a blind tasting of five whiskies that they had arranged. The results were stunning: the Taiwanese Kavalan nonchalantly beat three Scotches and an English whisky.

News agengy AFP also jumped onto the bandwagon and reported that the Kavalan beat “a trio of top Scottish blends”, and so the news spread around the world, propagated by online news services, blogs and Twitter users.

Now which Whiskies got Hammered?

If you look a little closer, the news loses much of its spectacular appeal. The contenders were:

• The already mentioned Kavalan
• Langs, “a three-year-old Scottish premium blend” as AFP put it (from Ian Macleod)
• King Robert Blended Whisky (also from Ian Macleod…makes you wonder)
• Bruichladdich X4+3 (not a blend but a quadruple distilled experimental whisky that has already been used to fuel a racing car)
• St George’s 3yo whisky from England

Panel members were

• Charles MacLean, prolific whisky writer
• Geraldine Coates, expert on gin (sic!)
• Zubair Mohamed, wine and spirits dealer
• Paul Laverty, screenwriter of the Ken Loach film Looking For Eric (“a relative newcomer to whisky”)

Is this a Serious Threat for Scotch?

The Times obviously selected only three year old competitors, and admitted themselves that maturation in the subtropical climate of Taiwan is much faster than in cool Britain, so this is not really a good base for comparison. Also including blends and the X4+3 which is more an aged vodka than a whisky is not really fair.

The Times even admitted that the tasting “was a piece of mischief-making”. In other words, it was deliberately set up to give the Scottish a whack. And without a doubt the choice of Burns Night – sort of like the Scottish natonal holiday – for publishing the results was not accidential either.

Anything to Learn?

If you pass on such a news, please read it carefully and don’t just thoughtlessly trumpet out the headline. In a way it’s funny, but this is how false rumors are created.

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A great tool to find interesting websites is stumbleupon.com. Some of you might already know it, but let me explain it to those who don’t.

Stumbleupon lets you install a toolbar on your browser that you can use to do three things:

1. Submit a web page you like and add keywords and a small review
2. Klick on the “stumble” button to be presented with a random page matching your interests or keywords you have specified
3. Rate the stumbled site with “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”

You can use stumbleupon to discover sites you might not yet know and to rate sites you want to share with other because you like them. To get enter discovery mode, just do a search for “whisky” on the stumbleupon homepage and start stumbling.

I have been using it for quite a while now for several topics and have found a lot of useful information. Some pages you come across will be rubbish, but when you give them thumbs down, they are less likely to appear in the future.

Whisky still is a bit underrepresented, but both publishers and readers will benefit from submitting new pages. So if you like any whisky page, submit it or give it “thumbs up”.

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I wonder if anybody noticed this banner on the Laphroaig website:

Apart from the fact that it is entirely subjective how richly flavoured a whisky appears to the drinker, I had a good laugh when I read it for the second time.

Here we learn that the Laffie is not only the richest Scotch in all of Scotland, it is even the richest Scotch in the whole world. I dare say it is even the richest Scotch in the whole universe! Of course this includes Ireland and Kentucky as well. Blimey.

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In the past two months, more than 800 different search terms brought visitors to this site. It’s always interesting to see what people are looking for. Here is a selection of the funniest:

• how to get drunk off of whiskey
  Get a glass, fill it with whisky, drink, repeat. Do I really have to tell you?
• why now a days whisky is important
  Well, whisky is always important
• difference between vodka and whiskey drunk
• how is a whiskey drunk different from a vodka drunk
  Oh dear…
• how much whisky to get drunk
  Not again
• how to make legal whiskey the easy way
  There ain’t no easy way
  
• which brand wisky is good to health
  Any or none, depending on your intake
  
• get drunk on whisky or vodka
• getting drunk off whiskey
  Stop it! Please!
• how to cover up the taste of canadian whiskey
  Coke? Root beer? Tabasco?
• i want cake in a whisky shape picture
  Beg your pardon?
• xxx 7yo.8yo.9yo.10yo.
  Go play somewhere else

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In order to make this site even more useful, I added information about the prices of the whisky bottlings and my personal opinion about the value you get for your money.

Price levels are indicated by dollar signs as follows:

Price Tag $$$$$ - under € 20
Price Tag $$$$$ - € 20 to € 40
Price Tag $$$$$ - € 40 to € 80
Price Tag $$$$$ - € 80 to € 120
Price Tag $$$$$ - € 120+

Prices are approximations for 0.7 l bottles at internet retailers in Germany. Of course there may be large differences in pricing by region and type of business.

My assessment of the relation of price and quality is purely subjective. I take into account the real price and not my dollar sign levels. This means a €42 bottle will get a better value rating than a €78 bottle, even though both have the $$$$$ price tag.

Value for your Money $$$$$ - Avoid!
Value for your Money $$$$$ - OK as a present
Value for your Money $$$$$ - Only if you really want to try it
Value for your Money $$$$$ - Reasonable
Value for your Money $$$$$ - Good deal
Value for your Money $$$$$ - Stock up!

You can search for price and value labels by klicking on the appropriate tag in the tag cloud.

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You will have noticed that I have made substantial changes to the look of the site. I think it is now easier to navigate and generally looks “cleaner”. I might continue to change a little bit here or there, but basically this will be the setup for the forseeable future.

Feel free to comment about what you like or dislike on the site, not nessessarily restricted to the layout.

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