Categories: Lifestyle

Whisky Ratings

For all my ‘Whisky of the Week’ posts, I publish a review and a rating for every whisky. These whisky ratings are based on my personal whisky rating system. There are many whisky rating systems in use.

The two that my audience is most familiar with are those used by Jim Murray and Serge Valentin. Jim Murray publishes the annual Whisky Bible and has reviews and ratings for more than 4,500 whiskies.

Serge runs the WhiskyFun site and lists more than 8,500 reviews and ratings. Both Serge and Jim use a 100 point scale that takes factors like nose, taste, balance, complexity and finish into account and determines a score using a formula.

Whisky scores can differ by half a point in these schemes. These guys are legends, and John and I are just ordinary folks that like whisky, so we wanted a simple system that could convey our impressions.

How the Whisky Ratings work

The great thing about any whisky is that one person may love it, and another may think it ordinary. It often happens with John and me! We don’t always agree. John prefers peaty full-bodied whiskies, and I prefer sweeter Speyside whiskies. A complicated whisky rating system makes no sense for us, so we came up with a simple whisky rating system.

The whisky rating is assigned based on our reaction. It is broken down as follows:
– ORDINARY if we look at each other and go “oh dear”. We usually don’t finish the glass.
– GOOD when it’s enjoyable but forgettable. One of us sometimes doesn’t finish the glass.
– VERY GOOD when it’s enjoyable and memorable, and we don’t mind having another glass later in the week,
– EXCELLENT when we want to pour a second and third round,
– DIVINE when we both go “OMG!!” and try not to finish the bottle.

When we disagree on the rating, we will take an average of both our scores. It may make Jim and Serge cringe, but it’s good fun for us! And at the end of each year, we look back at the EXCELLENT and DIVINE ratings and choose our favourite.

Some of my favourite drams during the last couple of years include:

These “divine rated” drams are a combination of expensive and affordable. They are from not only Scotland, but other countries as well. There are affordable whiskies that are delicious, and not all expensive older drams are good.