What makes whisky so special? Well, for some people–poor, benighted souls!–nothing at all. They don’t drink, for whatever reasons, or if they do drink, they prefer wine or cognac or beer, or they drink anything that gets them where they’re going–a Jack and Coke, a shot of vodka, or copious amounts of the cheapest beer they can lay their hands on. 

But if you’re even bothering to read this, chances are it’s because you care about whisky. Even if it’s not your preferred tipple, it’s something you like. Maybe you already know a lot about whisky, or maybe you’re curious to learn more. Maybe you’re an avid whisky lover with a sizable collection and you’ve already read every word you could find from Jim Murray, Michael Jackson, Dave Broom, et al. Or maybe you’ve only recently tasted a whisky that got you thinking it was something you wanted to taste more of and learn more about.

I certainly love whisky, and I think it is a special drink full of flavor and intriguing associations and mystique.

I’ve been drinking whisky since a little before my 19th birthday. My earliest experiences were with blended Scotch (a blend I don’t even remember, and then lots of Famous Grouse), but I quickly–as in, within several weeks!–became principally a single malt drinker. The type of whisky I have known longest and loved best is single malt Scotch. It’s my benchmark in the whisky world, and the whisky I am most devoted to and most knowledgeable about.

I’ve been keeping track of what I drink since the beginning–somewhere, I still have an old page from a notebook listing the different whiskies I had tried. But while I enjoyed Scotch, was interested in trying new kinds, and picked up bottles here and there through the first half of my twenties, I didn’t attempt tasting notes, nor did I really try to build a collection, nor did I have anything but the most basic grasp on how whisky is made and what makes it different from other spirits.

In the second half of my twenties, I started–at first rather slowly–to build a collection. I also bought a few books that improved my understanding of whisky-making, and piqued my interest in whiskies I’d never even seen or heard of before. Somewhere around then, I decided I should try to make tasting notes when I tasted something new so that I could better remember which whiskies I enjoyed and which I found a little underwhelming. The initial impetus for this was trying to systematically decide which whiskies I liked enough to justify buying an entire bottle, and which I could take or leave.

I quickly discovered two things. The first was that there were many whiskies I wanted to sample and write notes on that I simply couldn’t try without wholesale investing in a bottle. The second was that trying to focus in on a whisky and parse aromas and flavors in order to write tasting notes actually enhanced my enjoyment of whisky. While I started tasting carefully in order to decide which whiskies I actually wanted to buy bottles of, tasting ended up becoming an end in itself–and in fact, I found myself buying bottles in order to write up careful tasting notes.

So, since the latter half of my 20s, I’ve been carefully compiling tasting notes every time I try a new whisky. 

My methodology and the level of detail in my notes has evolved over time–I’ve gone from tasting from straight-sided tumblers to using Glencairn glasses, from writing short, telegraphic notes in the style of the late whisky writer Michael Jackson to more elaborate notes similar to more recent writers like Dave Broom, and from tasting and scoring in a single session to scoring independently in a separate session. 

Some things haven’t changed. For one, I never add water for a tasting (in fact I rarely ever add water to whisky, and never add ice to Scotch). Another thing that hasn’t changed is my overall philosophy for tasting and scoring whisky.

I make no pretense of objectivity in my tasting. Taste–in both the literal and the figurative sense–is essentially subjective, and there is no sense in pretending otherwise. 

I say this because I often see indications of a sort of desperate urge to objectify and quantify the experience of tasting–blind tastings, carefully scoring each constituent part of the tasting, speaking of “technical perfection” in a whisky. 

Blind tastings are meant to remove elements of bias from tasting. If you don’t know where the whisky is from, you’re freed from prejudices that, say, Scotch is superior to Japanese whisky, or that Macallan is always better than Jack Daniels. If you can’t see a vintage or an age statement, you’re freed from the belief that older whisky is better than younger whisky. And if you can’t see the packaging the whisky comes in, you’re freed from prejudices about prettier packaging meaning better spirit. These are all fair considerations, but I have a different perspective on each of them. 

I’ll gladly admit to prejudices about whisky, so when I see that a whisky comes from a certain country or a certain distillery, it creates certain expectations. However, I’m open-minded enough to not let those expectations define the experience, especially in a negative way. I have similar feelings about age, and in fact I’ve had extraordinary whisky experiences at both ends of the age spectrum, and some underwhelming whisky experiences at both ends of the age spectrum.

And as far as I’m concerned, the visual experience of packaging, labeling, and bottling are another part of the enjoyment of whisky: I prefer to buy bottles of whisky that look good to me! That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a whisky that comes in a bottle that I consider ugly, and it doesn’t mean I love a whisky because I love the bottle, but to me, packaging is a part of the overall whisky experience.

And then there is what is actually in the bottle.

For me, what makes single malt Scotch exciting is the breadth and strength of flavor. It’s flavors that are bold and varied, and even sometimes flavors and aromas that you wouldn’t think would be appealing in a drink. It’s distinctiveness and idiosyncracy. It’s the way one Scotch can taste radically different to another. It’s subtlety and nuance, but also bombast.

I’ve seen whiskies described in terms of “technical perfection” by professional whisky critics. When I think of technical perfection in a whisky, I tend to think of the Macallan bottlings I tasted in the aughts. And to me, although that kind of character–everything carefully polished and balanced, everything in its right place, no obvious flaws or off notes–can be admirable, it also feels a little dull, a little mannered. I’m really glad when I come across a whisky that strikes me as technically perfect, but I’m just as glad with whiskies that are just plain delicious on their own weird terms.

I have a similar relationship to the term “balance” (and I would generally incline to describe “technically perfect” whisky as likewise balanced). I think balance is very important in life, and balanced whisky can be excellent. But I often get great enjoyment from drams that I would struggle mightily to describe as balanced. For me, balance isn’t necessary for a great, or even an exceptional, whisky.

So when I taste and score whisky, what I’m looking for is something distinctive that I enjoy. I make no effort at being objective, and no pretense that I can be. And I prefer a whisky that I really enjoy, warts and all, to one that feels overly fussy and careful. That is very much reflected in the way I score: if I give a whisky a high score, it’s because I had a memorable and enjoyable experience drinking it, not that the smoke was perfectly offset by a fruit note, or that there were no hints of bitterness or sourness or sulphur or some other flavor that some critics might describe as “off notes”. If I find a whisky that has notes of burnt plastic to be enjoyable, I will rate it according to my enjoyment rather than docking points because the stillman didn’t cut soon enough. If I find a whisky that has a distinctive struck match note pleasing overall, I’m not going to dock points because the distillers didn’t adhere to the strictest quality control in selecting their sherry butts. And if I taste a whisky where every flavor seems to perfectly compliment every other flavor but the overall effect is to bore me, I’m not going to score very generously.