Look up any whisky review on the internet and around 99% of the time you are going to scroll right down to the bottom line to see what is ‘scored’.
8/10
87%
88/100
All sites and reviewers have their own way of scoring things and I too when I started this blog have adopted a x/10 scoring system. But the problem is it’s not very transparent for me. If you have read any of my previous blogs I do like to use my words and experiences and the history of the whisky to tell a story and my x/10 score is always an afterthought almost, tacked onto the end of the blog because I feel obliged to give it an arbitrary number as all other reviewers seem too.
My other struggle has been that I recently tried a Macallan Concept #1 at a club tasting; and I scored it a 5 or 6 out of 10. It’s quite an expensive bottle of whisky but pleasant enough to drink but because it was expensive and a no age statement I scored it down quite harshly. My scoring system, to be quite frank; is crap!
But no more!
I have delved deep into this internet and cherry-picked ideas from a few of my favourite reviewers to come up with a way of scoring my reviews that will be clear to the reader and actually make sense to me too!
Firstly, Roy at Aqavitae and Ralfy at ralfy.com are great believers (as am I) in the intrinsic quality of a whisky. And for that to hold true for me it needs to have the following
An Age statement
No Chill Filtration
Above 40% abv
No Caramel Colouring e150A
There’s no half marks here. If it ticks all these boxes it will get an INTEGRITY STAMP, See below. . .
This is to tell you the reader that it follows my ‘code of conduct’ for a whisky as it were!
Next up is that all important factor of price. We all know Scotch whisky is an expensive commodity so it’s important to spend your money wisely. We all have varying budgets when its comes to buying whisky so I’ll be completely transparent and tell you exactly how much it cost me, either as a dram or as a bottle depending on where I’ve had it.
So this is what you’ll see if I bought a bottle. . .
. . .and this is what you’ll see if I bought it as a dram
Naturally the prices in the glass and bottle will change with each review!
With regards my tasting notes; that will not change; I’ll still be giving you the Nose, Palate and Finish in my usual descriptive style.
Finally I’m going to have a simple 5 star rating system(No halves or quarters); and this will be based on flavour and flavour alone. How much I personally enjoyed the whisky. I won’t muddy the waters by taking into consideration the price or its abv or how readily available it is. Except it won’t be stars, it’ll be Glencairn glasses. Because let’s face it; that’s so much cooler.
So I am going to busy myself going through my old reviews and scores and update them all with this new system as well as creating a new page on the site that collates all this information for you to access easily; if you don’t want to scroll through a whole article to find out the scores a whisky receives.
Hopefully this all makes sense to you; it will certainly make my interpretation of a whisky alot clearer anyway. Slainte!
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