If you’re visiting this site, chances are you already have more than a passing interest in whisky/whiskey. You either actively want to learn more about whisky, or you already know quite a bit and just can’t get enough whisky content.

If you’re a whisky expert, you probably already have pretty clear ideas about how to buy and what you want to buy. 

If you’re a casual drinker just looking to score a bottle so that you can say “Look, I have a bottle of Scotch on my shelf!” you’re going to do fine just walking into a liquor store and picking up whatever or taking a recommendation from the first sales rep who speaks to you.

But if you’re more in the curious/learning more camp, you might want some general pointers for what to look for when you shop for whisky.

Do your research

If you’re interested enough in whisky to be visiting a whisky website, it behooves you to learn as much as you can before you hit the liquor store looking to buy.

Learn about different kinds of whisky and their flavor profiles.

Read or watch some reviews–mine, other people’s, professional whisky writers’ and see what sounds interesting or appealing.

Learn your distilleries

If you’re interested in single malt Scotch–and since this is a website mainly about single malt Scotch, I’m going to assume that you are–you’re really going to want to learn distillery names. In recent decades, Scotland has typically had somewhere between 90-130 operating malt whisky distilleries. That might seem like a lot to keep in your head, but there are plenty of books and websites that can help you keep things straight.

Different distilleries produce whiskies with different character, and if you’re going to get into Scotch, you’re going to want to have a ballpark sense of what to expect of a whisky depending on which specific distillery it comes from.

Shop around

Whisky is generally expensive, but prices do vary by non-trivial amounts. Drive around and check out more than one local store, and you can often save up to $10-15. Also, just because one store has better deals on one thing, it doesn’t mean it has the best deal on everything.

Try before you buy, or buy to try?

Whisky is expensive. A decent bottle of bourbon or other American whiskey is probably going to set you back at least $25-30, and many are far more expensive. A decent bottle of Scotch is going to cost you at least $50-60, and likely much more. So should you sample a whisky at your local bar before investing in a bottle?

Well…

Ideally, you have a way to get your hands on a sample. You have a friend with a good collection of bottles who is glad to share pours with you, or you’re a member of a group where people regularly trade samples.

If you’re not, you can go to local tasting events where you pay to taste some samples, or you can go to your local bar and pay for a pour. However, if you really start getting into Scotch–or really, any kind of whisky–chances are you will start to find bar pours getting prohibitively expensive, or you won’t be able to find what you want to sample at a bar even if you want to taste it.

Sometimes, buying a bottle in order to try it is your best–or even your only–option.

Shop Around, Part II

If you’re still relatively new to Scotch, I’d recommend doing all your buying locally and avoiding online purchases at least to start. I would, however, recommend going to sites like The Whisky Exchange just to browse and get an idea of what’s out there and what different things cost. They also have a great resource for browsing bottles, A to Z of Single Malt Scotch Whisky; taking a look at that will help you learn your distilleries as well as giving you a sense of what’s out there in the great wide world of Scotch.

Be careful with advice from store reps

Some liquor stores have sales reps wandering the floor who will be eager to give you advice on what you should buy. Your local specialty shop (another shout out to Jubilation here in Albuquerque) may have some knowledgeable people who can recommend something great; other places, less so. Get to know the store and its staff some before you start taking advice.

Be careful with advice in general

Whisky enthusiasts can be…well, enthusiastic. Chances are you’re going to hear people–whether among your friends, or in the whisky community at large–raving about such and such a whisky. Don’t buy on hype alone. Try to get a sense of what it is about a whisky that someone likes, see if that strikes a chord, and if it does, then you might want to consider buying. But don’t buy something just because someone else can’t stop talking about it. Whiskies come in a dizzying array of flavors, and someone else’s enthusiasm isn’t going to make you love a whisky that doesn’t suit your palate.

This applies to this site as much as anywhere else. Unless you already know your tastes align with mine, don’t just run out and buy something because I rave about it–be sure something in the actual tasting notes I provide sounds appealing.