mandag 11. november 2013

Why we must not blindly trust a whisky review?

A bit of shooting my own foot here, but it seems that these days, points from outer references are becoming more and more important when one wants to buy a new bottle of whisky. Popular Whiskyfun.com of Serge Valentin is often used, also the Malt Maniacs and Whiskybase.com, Ralfy deserves a mention, and so on. I myself often read those reviews after first having tried the whisky. I mean, a whisky at 93+ points anywhere is usually a universally good whisky, but that's not always the case with lower scores. The reasons can at times be pretty simple. I believe that  the elite of whiskies, those that score 93+points is of the kind, and often price range, that it justifies such a score. When you drink whiskies that fetched scores in the 80's and 70's I believe personal taste play a bigger roll. Is the taster a sherry or bourbon fan, is he/she a peat-head? Does he/she love oaky notes, young spirits, wine casks, high strengths or others? (one does not exclude another, I know). Does the taster use little, non or lots of water, lets he the whisky breath for a short or longer period? All these things are factors that can affect a persons opinion of a whisky. I myself try each whisky both with and without added water. I try to taste every whisky from an as newly opened bottle as possible. (That is hard to pin when tasting samples).
One thing conserning many whiskies is that a drop of whisky from a newly opened bottle taste quite different than what the last drops from a bottle that's opened a couple of months ago does. I mean, every so often I get a whisky that I initially find extremely good, often from port wood or heavily peated youngsters. Then I find it more or less faded just within a week of opening the bottle. So, to be fair with the score I would have to try the whisky at at least two stages of fill level to catch the whisky's lifespan quality from when opening the bottle till its empty.
Another is the batch differences. I once had a HP 18 that I scored about 5/10 points, which came from an ill batch. I've since tried it from other batches and found its a solid 8/10 in my book. I know Ardbeg is one of those distilleries where batch differences can be recognizable. There must be many more shades of this issue to enlighten, but I will leave you with this last comment:

Your best scale will always be yourself.

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