Reviews of scotch and world whiskies by a history professor, his wife, bird, and three cats.
Reviews of scotch and world whiskies by a history professor, his wife, bird, and three cats.
Taste is individual. We may not agree on all the notes, grades, or scores. Enjoy the drams you enjoy without fear or embarrassment.
I only hope that the reviews hosted here can help if you are ever stuck staring at bottles in the store or bar and you need the opinion of a friend.
10 : Perfection, nothing better.
9 : Exceptional, a memorable dram.
8 : Excellent, well above most whiskies.
7 : Great, I would seek this out.
6 : Good, dependable with minor flaws.
5 : Okay, roughly average with a few issues.
4 : Alright, flawed but still acceptable
3 : Acceptable, I would accept a pour but never order
2 : Passable, deeply flawed, probably intended as a mixer
1 : Undrinkable, I would rather not drink
As a history professor I am naturally inclined to follow the American grading schema and assign letter grades from A to F. However, I switched off of this system in the Winter of 2020 and began shifting all of the grades to a new system. I am inherently unhappy with all grading systems as they always feel too individual and distill down a whisky review into a score which fails to capture all the reasons why a whisky might have one score or another. While letter grades worked for me, I found that too often people misunderstood the meaning of the grade and took serious issue with grades in the C range. In the context of education in the United States too many people assumed that a C grade was garbage and indicated a poor or failed whisky. This was never my intention, so I switched to a numerical spread that I hope is more clear.
As I have not adjusted every review— it takes time to go through them all, I have included the letter grade scale for clarification.
A : one of my favorites of all time.
B : something I would buy for my cabinet.
C : something that's good or interesting, but not good enough that I have to buy it; this is the middle ground for most scotch.
D : acceptable and something I would drink if offered, but not something I would seek out or order otherwise.
F : outright undrinkable, I'd rather just not drink
The plus/minus system offers a bit of range to indicate how close a whisky is to being at the next level. If that is not enough I assign two grades with a slash (ex; A-/B+) to indicate that the dram falls on the razors edge. Being generous, it’s typically a grade I would round up.
