When you face the problem of buying a great whisky either for your pleasure or as a gift for husband, father or friend, you always have the problem of a huge selection from where to buy.
There are bad whiskies, mean booze, decent whiskies, good single malts and awesome stuff that can turn anyone into whisky. How to know about them?
So why not listen to what the experts say about them? Here you have most relevant and independient whisky awards in the world.
May these awards help you chose!
Malt Maniacs Awards is a fierly independent whisky Awards where a team of twelve certified malt maniacs members taste blindly whiskies submited by distilleries and bottlers, with a limit of 3 per distillery.
There are heavy weights on the tasting panel with Serge Valentin and other great whisky bloggers.
The whiskies are scored between 0 and 100 and assigned a gold medal to those above 90 points which it is still a great rare honor. Those between 85 and 90 get a silver and those between 80 and 85 get a bronze medal. They also highlight daily drams whiskies, which it is a very nice thing as most of the gold medals are beyond a common budget.
From one of the best-selling whisky writer. Jim Murray's choosen whiskies usually have a boost in sales after nominations, which it is a great thing.
But sometimes I keep asking myself if is there any other deeper connection... not that they are not great whiskies, I enjoyed most of them myself... but I always have the feeling that there is something else.
A good resource for knowing what the stuff is about anyway. Just take it with some caution.
World Whisky Awards are organized by Whisky Magazine, and looking to the trophies year after year I suspect sponsored by Suntory.
World Whisky Awards has a shorter list of awards that highlight only the best of the best of world whiskies and Scotland regions.
Very interesting awards.
San Francisco World Spirits Competition has more medals that participants. When I browse the listing I can't stop asking if there is a single bottle that doesn't get a medal.
I just added here the Double Gold Medal and the Gold Medal.
Another San Francisco based spirits competition and also very relaxed medal requirements.
Anything that doesn't get Gold Medal Best in Class isn't worth much of your time.
IWC goal is to bring as many whiskies from around the world to be tasted and rated by their professional tasting panel.
These single malts are your best safe bet for a gift, you can't go wrong with any of them.