Tasting and rating whisky is an inherently subjective business. What one person may find wonderful, another may loathe; and where I may taste cinnamon, another may detect no such flavor. Bearing this in mind, the tasting experience may be, to a very considerable extent, untranslatable. And yet nonetheless, I’ve found the tasting notes of others to be informative and often entertaining, and have found ratings to be a rough guide of whether or not to bother trying something, and I hope that my own notes may fill some similar function for anyone who troubles to read them. In order to help readers better understand where I’m coming from, I have a post that describes my tasting philosophy (link) in depth; below, I will explain my methodology for tasting and scoring whisky.

Over the years, both how I actually taste and how I write notes has evolved.

I’ve always realized that ice, cola, and so on were inappropriate for rigorous tasting. But I didn’t used to be especially picky about glassware, and my earliest tasting notes followed the late whisky writer Michael Jackson in being quite telegraphic. As time went on and I tasted more and learned more, I became pickier and pickier with respect to glassware, and gradually became more expansive in my actual notes.

My current methodology is as follows:

I use a Glencairn glass. I do not add any water, and I avoid tasting when I’m sick or have just eaten something with strong flavors. Likewise, I avoid an environment with strong scents. If I’m tasting more than one whisky, I generally taste whiskies that I anticipate being milder and more delicate first, and those with overpowering flavors like heavy sherry influence or strong phenols last. Although it’s not always possible, I usually have had a whisky at least once before I sit down for a more formal tasting session. 

When it comes to the actual tasting session, I don’t pay any particular attention to color. That is because many whiskies, unfortunately, are still colored with neutral spirit caramel, meaning that describing color has little meaning with regards to maturation in many cases.

I sit down with my tasting notebook and I always start with nosing. I can take anywhere from a couple of minutes to an hour just nosing a whisky (depending on my mood, and my impressions of the spirit) before I even take a sip. When I do finally take my first sip, I try to focus mainly on the body of the whisky, while forming a very general, overarching impression of the palate. With the next several sips, I really try to pin down the full array of flavors on the palate, looking for things that I might not have noticed on the first sip. Sometimes, as I’m trying to make sense of the palate, I find something new to say about the nose, or in rare cases, the body. Finally, I look at the finish, evaluating the flavors and how long they seem to linger.

For the sake of clarity, here is a little more detail on each stage of this process:

Nosing: This is the act of carefully smelling the whisky, and trying to tease out the different aromas that you sense. I usually try to work from the general to the specific, noting the broadest scents first (e.g. sweet fruitiness) and picking out the more specific scents as I go along (e.g. stewed peaches).

Discerning the Body: Noting the texture and body of the spirit. Body, as I define it, is both the texture and the weight of the spirit in your mouth—the relative viscosity, how heavy the spirit feels on your tongue, and any other points relating to texture.

Discerning the Palate: The act of teasing out the different flavors that you can taste while the whisky is actually in your mouth. As with the nose, I usually work from the general to the specific, trying to capture broad characteristics first before focusing in on more specific flavors. But unlike with the nose, I’m more likely to add additional general descriptors to the end of my summary of the palate.

Discerning the Finish: To my mind, this is one of the hardest and most vague points in a tasting. I measure the finish from the point when I’ve completely swallowed a sip of whisky, so it is roughly the aftertaste, but it is often a little difficult to quantify, and can be hard to distinguish from the palate, at the front end, and from the last echoes of lingering sensation at the back end. In my reckoning, the finish is best understood as how long the whisky stays with you after the last drop has been swallowed, and in what form, flavor-wise, it lingers. 

This yields tasting notes with four distinct sections: nose, body, palate, and finish. Most tasters these days make no hard distinction between body and palate, and some condense things further, making body, palate, and finish a single category which they divide in the actual narrative of their notes. Clearly, I prefer my way of doing things!

Once I’ve written initial tasting notes, I generally don’t give a score (unless I’m trying a sample, or revisiting a mostly empty bottle). Rather I revisit the whisky later for a scoring session. I even have completely separate notebooks that I use for scoring! 

My scoring notebooks give me enough space to write brief, and far more general tasting notes, which I do before finally assigning a score.

I score holistically. My score reflects how I rate the entire experience of the whisky, which means that in my estimation, even flawed or unbalanced whiskies can score quite highly because I often find that an excellent palate with a good mouth feel can make up for a rather uninteresting nose, and that a good nose can make up for a short, insubstantial finish. 

There are some whisky writers who assign each component–e.g., the nose–a subscore. Then they add up the subscores of each component of the tasting for a final, total score. Such a methodology strikes me as frankly silly, a category mistake, an attempt to impose a sort of pseudo-scientific rigor on a process that is not remotely scientific. 

Arguably, any scoring at all is pointless precisely because tasting is so subjective–what I love, you may hate, merely like, or be entirely indifferent to, and vice versa. Worse, a whisky I might score one way on one occasion, I might score differently on another. That said, I think a score is a nice way of summarizing how much one likes a whisky and giving others some sense of how strongly one recommends it. 

My scoring scale runs from 0 to 100–at least in theory. In practice, I have (so far) never given a score above 97, and the low end of the scale is even lonelier. Here is a rough guide to what my scores mean:

95-100 Anything in this range is true nectar of the gods stuff. This is rarefied air–incredible and truly memorable whiskies that are among the best I’ve ever tasted. If you like whisky, you should run, not walk, to try some.

90-94 Superior whisky that is either great on its own merits, or such an exemplar or its style that it deserves attention. You definitely want to try it, and it’s a must-have for any whisky collector who can afford it.

80-89 Excellent whisky. I’d strongly recommend that you try it, and it’s probably something you’ll want to have around if you’re a serious collector.

70-79 Good to very good whisky. It may not be extraordinary, but you’ll probably enjoy it. I’d recommend that you try it, especially if you’re a serious whisky enthusiast looking to taste as widely as possible. It’s worth buying a bottle if the price is right.

60-69 Decent whisky. It may be a little uninspired, or have some noticeable flaws, but the overall experience will probably be pleasant, if not memorable. I’d recommend trying it if you’re an enthusiast who wants to try everything. I wouldn’t recommend buying a bottle unless you’re a serious whisky collector who wants a little of everything, or unless budget is a significant factor and it’s cheap.

50-59 Flawed whisky. Whisky scoring in this range either has flaws that are impossible to ignore, or is severely lacking in personality and character. The experience will be, at best, pleasant. I can’t, in good conscience, recommend whiskies scored in this range, although the serious enthusiast may find moments of enjoyment or interest.

40-49 Mediocre whisky. Whisky scoring in this range is either so bland and anodyne that it might as well be vodka, or the flaws are becoming so severe that the experience is no longer especially pleasant. Drinkable, but just barely. I do not recommend anything in this range, even to completionists: if you want to ignore my rating, do so at your own risk.

30-39 Bad whisky. Possibly acceptable if mixed, but definitely not for drinking straight. Avoid outside (possibly) cocktails.0-29 Where angels fear to tread. This is whisky bad enough to detract from a cocktail, and you definitely don’t want to drink it straight.