Whisky Knowledge

The first part of the series explained the reasoning behind rating whisky. Now let’s get down to business and start rating!

As explained in the first article, it does not make sense just to give a score to a whisky without further explanation. This is why you always should write down tasting notes when you want to rate a whisky.

Requirements

Rating whisky is not a one-shot deal. I will only be useful if you sample as many whiskies as possible and compare them to each other. The keyword here is consistency. You should try to do all your tasting sessions in the same setup, so there will be as few factors as possible that could influence your rating in one or the other way.

1. Always do your tastings in the same environment, alone and in a place where you are comfortable and undisturbed.
2. Always use the same type of glass. Glass selection is not covered here, but if you choose your favourite nosing glass, it will be just fine.
3. Don’t eat anything before the tasting that impacts your taste buds for a long time, like garlic or chili.
4. If you have the flu or a bad cold, leave it for today. What you will taste will not be representative.
5. If you want to taste several whiskies, choose some that are not too far apart in their profiles. This will make it easier to compare them. The optimum would be several expressions from the same distillery.
6. Prepare some still spring water to add to your whisky. You can use a jug, or a pipette or anything else you feel comfortable with. Just make sure you cannot easily overdose the water.
7. Have a small “calibration dram” of a standard whisky that you know quite well. At some days, taste buds do not work as they should, and this is how you can notice it. If it tastes different, skip the whole session!
8. Pour yourself a dram, not too little to get a decent impression, and not too generous if you plan to taste more than one or two whiskies.
9. Let it rest for a few minutes, so the whisky can react to the air. Most whiskies take a while until they release their full flavour.

Nosing

It is common knowledge that the nose plays a major role in tasting anything. Tongue and nose work closely together, and it is said that the nose is even more important than the tongue.

1. Hold your glass by the base or the stem, but do not cover the bowl so it won’t get too warm.
2. Gently swirl around the whisky in the glass to cover the surface and to release the flavours. Swirling to vigorously my cause too much alcohol evaporation, though.
3. Bring the glass to your nose and sniff gently, wait a few seconds and then repeat a few times. Usually, one of your nostrils will give you a stronger sensation, so make sure you use the “better” one
4. Write down your impressions.

Tasting

Now time has come to take the first sips

1. Take a decent sip, more than just a few drops but not too much either
2. Leave it in your mouth for a few seconds and move it around with your tongue. All parts of your mouth should have been touched by the whisky before swallowing it.
3. Swallow and notice how your palate reacts and how long the taste stays in your mouth.
4. Write down your impressions.
5. Add a little water.
6. Go back to nosing.

It is essential that nosing and tasting work hand in hand (I know it’s a bad metaphor…). You are by no means finished with nosing when you have your first sip in your mouth! You can even continue nosing while tasting to get the full experience. Both nose and palate can evolve over time, so you should do both until you have finished your dram.

How to deal with cask strength whiskies is a matter of debate. Some people dilute right away, but I prefer to taste any CS whisky neat first and then slowly add water to find out the best ratio.

In his numerous videos (always good fun to watch) Master Blender Richard Paterson (“The Nose”) from Whyte & Mackay consistently suggests diluting to 38% ABV which he considers to be best for not letting the alcohol “burn away” your sense of taste. I am not really convinced of this. I think with the alcohol content you feel comfortable with, it is not unlike how much chili you can take in your food. Some people can stand enormous amounts and some get runny eyes with just a few drops of tabasco. Everyone should find out their perfect ratio.

How to Write Tasting Notes

At the risk of disappointing you, I am not going to tell you very much about this because this is an entirely subjective thing. First and foremost, tasting notes should be for yourself. If you want to share them with others – preferably on this site – even better. But what you put down, how detailed your notes should be, is entirely up to you. Just let the whisky “work” on you, and your mind will automatically create associations with aromas you know.

Of course, you can make a science out of nosing and tasting. You can get “nosing wheels” with basic aroma descriptions or diagrams where you can connect lines, or even sets of little bottles to sniff on. But I am all for straightforwardly writing down anything that comes into your mind.

Here are just some hints that might help you a little to understand what certain aromas can mean.

1. Vanilla is a good sign for maturation in a bourbon cask. Bourbon whiskey is matured in charred fresh oak casks (or barrels as they call them over there). The process of charring sets free vanillin from the lignin of the wood.
2. Citrus fruit notes can be found also in bourbon casks, it is more prominent in refill casks where the vanillin is already mostly leeched out.
3. Sherry matured whiskies often have aromas of dried fruit or cherries, sometimes also of chocolate and toffee. Port and Madeira casks have a similar effect but are more on the fruity side.
4. Spice aromas are an effect of long cask maturation. Predominant are ginger, nutmeg and pepper. But some whiskies, like Talisker, have a natural “chili catch” that is already present in the new spirit.

Finding out exactly what in the production process causes which aroma is an extremely complex topic as quite a lot of chemistry is involved here.

Let me close this article with a warning: Try not to let yourself influence by other people’s tasting notes! If someone tastes “wet dog” or “baby vomit” and you can’t possibly pin it down, there is no need to worry. Who knows whose palate worked better, yours or theirs? Maybe they just had a bad day, or maybe it was just so faint that it really doesn’t matter.

The final part of this series will deal with the actual rating or giving a score to a whisky.

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This series of three articles should give you the neccessary foundation to do your own whisky ratings. This first part will explain the philosphy that is behind rating whiskies (a pretty controversial topic, by the way), the second part will deal with how to assess the characeristics of a whisky, and the final part will be about giving a score to whiskies.

What is Whisky Rating?

To make it short: Rating a whisky means giving it a score that indicates how well you like it. You can use 1 to 5 stars or a certain range of points or whatever. In the whisky world, a 100 point system is predominant which was adopted from wine rating by Michael Jackson. As most of the people who rate whisky use this system, it should be an obvious choice for novices to apply it as well.

How can I rate whisky?

The easiest way to rate a whisky would be to drink a dram and just give a score to it. If you do the ratings just for yourself, this might be sufficient. But as soon as you publish your rating in any way, be it on a website like this one, in a forum or just by telling it to a friend, you will run into problems. Tastes are different, you might like peaty whisky, your reader might prefer sherry monsters. Now a peated whisky that you scored let’s say 90 points might be unacceptable for that person.

This is why it is tremendously useful to add tasting notes to your ratings. In these you basically write down what kind of aromas you can detect in a whisky. This helps the reader to put your rating into the right perspective.

Why Should I Rate Whisky?

I already covered this question in this blog post. To sum up the points:

1. You can develop your own taste by comparing as many whiskies as possible
2. It is fun to compare your ratings to others
3. You keep track of the drams you have enjoyed
4. Sharing your ratings helps others, shared ratings help you

How Can I Stick a Number to Something as Subjective as Whisky?

If whisky should be rated all has always been a source of discussion among whisky lovers. Every time a famous whisky writer comes out with a new book of ratings, there is an upheaval within certain parts of the whisky community. Just recently Jim Murray issued the latest version of his Whisky Bible which prompted a heated debate in the blogosphere, like on the Edinburgh Whisky Blog.

The main argument of the adversaries of giving scores to whisky is: I can’t attach something as objective as a number to something inherently subjective as a the taste of a whisky. They tend to think that taste is something you can’t measure.

Of course, they are right in a way. There is no such thing as “the best whisky”. Everyone has its own taste and will prefer whiskies that others may dislike.

But in my opinion, “rater haters” make a critical mistake. They are blinded by the seemingly objective point rating, assuming the writer intended to cast an ultimate verdict on the whisky by sticking the number X to it. They neglect the important fact that a rating for a whisky is only an expression of the writer’s subjective feelings about the whisky. And I am convinced that nobody who seriously rates whisky will insist that his ratings are the True Whisky Gospel.

Quite a few of those who are opposed to rating whisky on the internet publish their own reviews and tasting notes, just without a point score. Is there any difference?

I think: No! Giving a point rating to whisky is just another way of saying: “I like whisky A more than whisky B” or “Whisky C is one of my all-time favourites”. For me personally, a point system just has the advantage of having a finer gradation than words can put it, but some people may prefer words over numbers. But just like with your tastings notes, it is always advisable to wrap up your point rating in an verbal summary as well.

In the end it does not matter at all. 95 points from Jim Murray are worth just as much as when Joe Schmoe says “Now, THAT’S a great dram”. Any whisky review, be it verbal or numerical, is just one person’s subjective view.

The next part of this series will deal with nosing and tasting whiskies.

Read on…

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In my last post about bastard malts I touched the question how difficult it is to recognize the distillery of an undisclosed malt. Taking this thought a step further leads to an interesting conclusion about cask management.

Let me pick up and recapitulate that point on a broader basis: A distillery standard bottling gains its distinctive character by careful selection of the casks that are used for mixing the batches that are to be bottled. The distillery master blender might for example choose 20% refill oloroso sherry butts and 80% first fill bourbon hogsheads for their 12yo. If the distillery manages to maintain the supply of casks and to ensure continuity in their new spirit production, it should not be difficult to minimize batch variation over the years. All standard bottlings put together, this is what whisky drinkers will recognize as “distillery profile”.

Now every distillery has their own “recipes” for making their standard bottlings, which often leads to clearly discernible distillery profiles. For example it’s fairly easy to tell an Laphroaig 10 from an Ardbeg 10 or Caol Ila 12.

But as soon as random batches or single casks are sold to the independents and bottled as undisclosed malts, things are not so obvious anymore. Almost certainly a debate will evolve which distillery the malt might be from. This means nothing less than this: Whiskies from different distilleries whose basic production parameters differ not too much are to be considered equivalent.

Still we have some distilleries that are constantly rated higher than others on their original bottlings, Ardbeg and Caol Ila being a prime example for this. What is the reason for this?

In my opinion, cask management makes all the diference. Proper cask management is twofold: At first, it is about selecting the best possible casks for storage after distillation in the first place. The second aspect is selecting the best casks from the aged stock for bottling.

It is the second point that is most crucial for the final quality of the bottled whisky. A good selection makes or breaks it. Connected to this is also the decision which casks are to be sold to blenders or independent bottlers. With all due respect to the role of the master distiller, the job of a distillery master blender is just as important. And only god knows how many fabulous casks may have been drowned in blends because the contents often is only nosed and not tasted. John Hansell recently had an excellent blog post on that topic.

If both master distiller and master blender are good at their jobs, they team up to create a work of art called whisky.

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In my last post I wrote about the different types of the so called Bastard Malts, Scotch single malt whiskies with undisclosed origin. Now let’s take it a step further: How do we react, when whe drink a malt that we don’t know what distillery it is from?

With the cheap supermarket malts this is not much of a a problem. You get a whisky that is just about drinkable, and it’s not really important to know if it’s from Glen X or Glen Y. Of course even in this case there can be long forum discussions about who might be the culprit, but I can hardly imagine any whisky lover wanting to hunt for the original stuff be cause he liked that fantasy malt so much.

But with the bastard brands or independent bottlings, things are a bit different. These usually are good whiskies, some of the are even excellent. And so, many people will want to find out where the dram was distilled. This is more out of curiosity than everything else, because most of them will already know the standard bottlings of the distilleries that come into mind. But this burning curiosity leads to a wealth of speculations that sometimes can even turn in to good old-fashioned flame wars, especially if an Islay malt is the subject of discussion.

One person may insist “This definitiely is a Lagavulin. My local dealer told me they’re not allowed to write it on the label, but he knows it for sure”. Another one replies “Lagavulin hasn’t sold casks to indies for ages. I know that for sure because I talked to the manager last summer. I bet this is a Coal Ila” And so on ad nauseam. One can note that especially distilleries with prolific names like Lagavulin or Ardbeg are very often cited as probable provenance.

What can we learn from that?

1. Big Names Sell Better

I think it’s not a surprise that bastard malts are often connected to high profile distilleries. Spreading a little rumor here or there will make sure that some of the distillery’s splendor will also shine on the little bastard. And of course there is an awful lot of whishful thinking included on the buyer’s side. The chance to get a high class malt at half price somteimes seems to blind the view a little. Now what if it turned out that this great cheap Islay malt really “only” is a Caol Ila? I could bet that some buyers even might feel a bit tricked and disappointed.

2. There Really is not Much of a Difference

From the sometimes heated debates about what’s in the bottle there is another conclusion to be drawn that is not quite so obvious: If even experts can’t tell for sure which distillery produced a specific malt, the difference in profile is not really backed up by a difference in quality.

To stay with the Caol Ila / Lagavulin example: It is not difficult to tell a Lagavulin 16 from a Caol Ila 12 or 18. The reason for this is that these standard bottlings are vattings of carefully selected batches to ensure that the whisky gets the desired character. If batches are mixed differently or even a single cask is bottled, the “house style” or intrinsic distillery character is far more difficult to detect.

So do we really need to know what’s in the bottle? I don’t think so.

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In the last decades, single malt Scotch whisky has gained an ever growing popularity among whisky lovers, mainly because it shows the character of a single distillery, sometimes even from a single cask. This is opposed to blends or blended malts where the master blender tries to create an specific taste by combining whiskies from different distilleries. Comparisions are made with wine, where single malts are considered the equivalent of “chateaux” wines and blends more like “vins de pays” or even table wines.

Now imagine a bottle of wine labeled “Château Fantôme – Cru bourgeois – Appellation Haut Médoc Controllée – Mis en bouteille en château”. You want to know where the chateau is situated but no trace can be found, neither in maps, telephone directories nor the internet. Such a thing would be unthinkable in the wine world because it violates the law.

In the whisky world, things are different. There are lots of bottlings on the market with fantasy names like Ben Bracken, Smokehead or even Braven of Claymore Rose, all bearing the quality label “Scotch Single Malt”. This is perfectly legal because whisky laws do not require to name distilleries on the bottle, not even for single malts. The Malt Maniacs have coined the term Bastard Malts for such whiskies because of their unknown origin.

Now what is the reason for making such a secret of the origin of a whisky? We have to make a distinction between three different types of such undisclosed drams that all exist for different reasons:

1. Cheap Supermarket Malts

Many retail chains have their own brand of single malt that is priced well at the bottom level, usually around EUR 15 to 20 per 0.7 l bottle. A typical example is Ben Bracken from Germany’s LIDL chain.

Why are they so cheap? Because these bottles are from the casks that distilleries don’t want to have their names connected to. Third or fourth refill perhaps with almost “dead” wood or casks that didn’t meet the quality standards for the regular distillery bottlings for any other reason. Usually these casks end up in the cheap bottom shelf blends after having been mixed with 90% grain whisky that is 3 years and a day old.

But some of these casks can make a bit more money if sold to the chains under the strict rule that the name of the distillery must not be mentioned under any circumstances.

The bottom line here is: There’s a reason that they’re cheap, and you get what you pay for. It’s all drinkable whisky, but don’t expect high quality at a bargain price.

2. Bastard Brands

Further up the quality scale there are some well-established brands of bastard malts, especially from the Isle of Islay, like Finlaggan, The Ileach or Smokehead. Traditionally, these are good drams for a reasonable price. Nothing earth-shattering, but good value for the money.

Usually these bottles have no age statement, so it is fair to assume that they are younger than the standard bottlings of the distillery they come from. But the quality indicates that no “trash” casks are used in the bottlings. It seems that at least some distilleries are willing to sell good casks at a younger age to generate cash flow.

By not naming the distillery, the bottlers have the option to switch between suppliers at will according to supply and demand. And the distilleries can make sure these brands are no direct competitors for them.

3. Independent Bottlers

Sometimes, independent bottlers sell whiskies of undisclosed origin. Mostly these are high quality single cask whiskies. The reasons for disclosure in these cases mostly are of a legal nature.

Many distilleries now refuse independent bottlers to use their name although they had them sold the cask years before. As a reaction to this practice, bottlers sometimes invent fantasy names that allude to the distillery name like Leapfrog or Tactical.

Independent bottlers are having harder and harder times today finding good casks because many distilleries fear to lose profit. Some have stopped selling casks to independents altogether.

Conclusion

Bastard malts can be found over whole quality range of single malts. Generally, quality rises with the price, so if one is careful with cheap supermarket malts, there is no reason to avoid them altogether.

Read on

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When you plan to invite some friends to a whisky tasting there are quite a few things that should be considered. After all, you and your friends want to have the best possible experience with the offered drams. And there are some pitfalls you should avoid.

1. Start with a Meal

You are going to consume a decent amount of alcohol, so it is best to set a solid foundation by eating enough before you start with the tasting. With an empty stomach you are much more likely to encounter the undesirable effects of alcohol when you’ve had a few.

No Chili, no Garlic!

The meal should not by overly spiced, and you should refrain from using garlic as well. Chili paralyses your taste buds, and the taste of garlic is so persistent that it will be with you for the rest of the tasting which clearly is not something we want to happen.

Little or no Alcohol

You want to enjoy the tasting with clear senses, so try to hold your horses before. A glass of beer or light wine with the meal is OK, but don’t overdo it.

2. Water and Bread.

Prepare jugs of cooled still spring water, both for adding to the whisky and to drink in between. Don’t use tap water as it might be contaminated by chlorine.

To neutralize your senses between drams, serve bread. Other light snacks are also possible, but make sure they are not too spicy (see above).

3. Less is More

Even if you are convinced in your drinking capabilities, it is better to restrict the amount of whiskies in a tasting. Sooner or later you will notice the effect of the alcohol, and you don’t want your senses to be dimmed to early.

The number of whiskies in a tasting should not exceed five or six, even if you are tempted to show off all the great whiskies you might have in your collection.

4. The Right Order

There are some useful rules of thumb when choosing the order of the whiskies in a tasting session. All can be summarized by the musical term crescendo:

From Low to High ABV

When you begin your session with a cask strength whisky, your taste buds might be numb from the start. So it is best to start with the “normal” ABV of 40+ and them work your way up to the cask strengths (if planned at all)

From Young to Old

The older a whisky becomes, the more complexity it gains. It is therefore advisable to help your palate adapt to the growing complexity.

From Mild to Strong

This does not mean ABV but the general character of a whisky. If you have heavily peated, sherried or otherwise finished drams on your list as well “untreated” ones, save the strongest ones for later.

From Cheap to Expensive

Sounds a bit cheesy but has its justification. If you are lucky enough to serve a dram of Black Bowmore, you don’t really want it to be followed by a Grouse, no matter how famous.

Compromises

When trying to follow these rules, you will likely run into dilemmas like “cask strength 12yo lowland or 40% 18y madeira finish first”? In these cases you have to make a decision to break one or more rules. The rule of thumb for this kind of situation might be: break as little rules as possible but be careful with early cask strengths. In this case I would actually prefer to take the finish first.

But then again, a whisky tasting is not a Japanese Tea Ceremony. So, if in doubt, just take one first and then the other.

5. Set a Theme

The right choice of whiskies is very important for the success of a tasting session. It is not just about quality, though. If you’re on a tight budget, you can have a great session even with entry level whiskies only. More important is that the choice is balanced.

It is easy to get lost in the whisky world with its thousands of available bottlings. But even when you narrow down the choice to the dozen or so bottles on your shelf, you should think of a red line to follow.

Here are a few starting points for your inspiration:

Example 1: World Wide Whisky

1. Quality blended Scotch (12yo or older)
2. Quality bourbon
3. Irish pure pot still or single malt
4. Japanese vat or single malt
5. Typical Islay
6. Speyside sherry monster

Example 2: Islay

1. Bunnahabhain 12
2. Bowmore 12
3. Caol Ila Distiller’s Edition
4. Lagavulin 16
5. Laphroaig 18
6. Ardbeg Lord of The Isles

Example 3: Scotch Regions

1. Lowlands: Glenkinchie 12
2. Highlands: Dalmore Gran Reserva
3. Islands: Highland Park 18
4. Islay: Port Ellen n-th Release
5. Speyside: Glenfarclas 30yo

6. Don’t Drink and Drive!

flickr picture by tienvijftien

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Now here is a question that has been buzzing in my head for a while, and I have not found a statisfying answer to it yet.

We know that the shape of a pot still has a lot of influence on the distilled spirit. The still shape determines how aromatic components are separated from the water together with the alcohol and transported through the lyne arm and the condenser. It is also a well-known fact that copper is the best material for a still because it acts as a catalyst for favourable chemical reactions between the many substances that are present in the mash. So it is obvious that the still as a whole “does something” to the taste of the whisky.

It is also basic whisky knowledge that the size of a cask determines how quickly a whisky matures. The smaller the cask, the higher the ratio between surface and volume, so wood components and liquid remnants from the pores are diffusing into the whisky at a higher rate.

Now let’s combine these facts: Smaller stills have a higher ratio between surface and volume, so the catalytic reactions that happen during distillation should have a stronger influence on the spirit. Still sizes vary a lot between different distilleries. The Caol Ila spirit stills hava a volume of almost 30000 l whereas the Edradour still is just over 2000 l.

I am convinced that there is an influence, just because of the geometric fact. But how it can be nailed down escapes my grasp.

If you can shed light on this topic, please add a comment. If you know someone who could, please ask him.

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Many people do not realize that whisky and vodka are actually two different sides of the same coin. In a way they are completely different, but both are made from grain – if you don’t take into account some weird vodka varieties made from potatoes or even molasses.

There is a fundamental difference between whisky and vodka not only in production but also in philosophy. The rule of thumb for vodka is “the purer, the better”, and top notch vodka producers go a very long way to make sure that every “impurity” is eradicated from the final product. Quintuple disitillation in column stills, charcoal filtering, reverse osmosis and whatnots are applied to bring it as close to pure Ethanol + H₂O as possible.

Whisky is totally different. Every step in whisky production tries to maximize flavour components in order to make the spirit as complex as possible. The concept of cask maturation takes this even further by letting the whisky leech aromatic components both from the cask wood and from the liquid previously contained therein. So as opposd to vodka, whisky is considered best when it is as old and complex (but of course also balanced) as possible.

What is the reason for this paradox? I think it lies in the way both spirits are consumed. I am simplifiying a bit, but in general, whisky is mainly drunk for enjoyment, whereas vodka is drunk for its effect on the body. In western countries, vodka is almost entirely used for longdrinks or cocktails. When drunk neat, it is done to “lift the mood” or even get drunk on purpose. The common habit of binge drinking among young people takes this to an extreme. And vodka certainly is a drink of choice there. Its “purity” is a neccessary feature needed to minimize the suffering in a hangover.

When we drink whisky, we want to taste it. Of course it is also used for mixing, but most whisky is drunk neat, with water or sometimes ice (please don’t!). The enormous bandwith that exits in the whisky world is caused only by the quest to keep as much “impurity” in the whisky as possible that is dismissed in vodka. Furthermore I doubt that most whisky lovers like getting drunk. After a certain number of drams it just keeps you from enjoying it.

What is your take on this? Can you actually enjoy both whisky and vodka? Or ist this really an “either/or” thing?

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This is small and subjective selection of websites that I think are improtant for whisky lovers. Of course there are a lot more of interesting sites out there, but this is what I regard as essential, if you have more than a causal interest in whisky.

1. Malt Maniacs and Malt Madness

Malt Maniacs evolved from Malt Madness, a site where Dutch malthead Johannes van den Heuvel started to publish his ratings, tasting notes and other thoughts about whisky back in 1997. Soon a circle of maniacs with similar interests began to form. I treat the sites as one, as they are both maintained by Johannes van den Heuvel.

Malt Madness features extensive tasting notes and ratings as well as a very useful section about whisky distilleries. A well-made beginner’s guide rounds off the site.

The Malt Maniacs site has three main pillars. The first is an more or less regular e-zine where the maniacs contribute articles, or “e-pistles” as they call them. Topics cover anything from tasting notes to thoughts on the whisky business to in-depth whisky knowledge and more. And then there is the famous “Monitor”, a huge list where all the ratings of all maniacs are compiled.

The Malt Maniacs Awards are an institution since 2003 and are now considered to be among the most prestigous whisky awards.

The sites have a nice hand-crafted layout and are easy to navigate, but I have found that on certain systems it may get messed up a bit.

Go there…

2. Whisky Fun

This is the private site of French Malt Maniac member Serge Valentin. The site’s main attraction are thousands of whisky ratings and tasting notes from the last seven years. This is accompanied by concert reviews and music listening tips (mainly of a rather offbeat nature) as well as interesting recipes for single malt cocktails.

The sheer number of whisky reviews is overwhelming. But many of them are about quite elusvive bottles, old, expensive and/or hard to get. But also standard drams are covered well.

On first sight the site looks like a blog, but it is not. There is no possibility to leave comments and postings are only ordered chronologically on fixed pages. To make up for the lack of blog comfort there is a fairly good categorization of the ratings ordered by distillery.

Design-wise is ist intergrated into the Malt Maniac look but also has blog-like sidebars. Sadly these are quite cluttered and it is not easy to find your way around.

Go there…

3. What Does John Know?

John Hansell is publisher and editor of the US-based whisky magazine Malt Advocate, and this is his personal blog. For me this is the whisky blog on the net, altough others may have other favorites.

Posts cover a wide range of topics. Whisky reviews, busisnes news, general whisky questions and also a bit of whisky philosophy. As this is an American site, there is also a very good coverage of US and Canadian whiskies.

A strong point of the blog are the lively discussions that unfold after many postings. Also quite a few important whisky people sometimes join the discussion.

Go there…

4. The Scotch Blog

The Scotch Blog is another important whisky blog run by Amercan whisky expert Kevin Erskine.

Focus is more on whisky business than on the actual liquid itself, but if you are interested in the whisky world beyond the bottles on your shelf, this is a place to find valuable information. And Kevin is not shy to pick up controversial themes either.

Go there…

5. The Buxrud Collection

This site is not included because it contains great whisky information, in fact it is part of a quite amateurish hodgepodge of “family pages”.

But Swedish Malt Maniac Ulf Buxrud has compiled what has to be the most comprehensive collection of whisky links on the net. Distilleries from huge to tiny, whisky clubs, collectors, general information sites, magazines,etc. etc. You name it, it’s there.

So despite the “unorthodox” design, this is a premier whisky location on the net.

Go there…

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