WHISKY RATINGS RIGHTS AND WRONGS
Critical thinking
If there’s no such thing as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ when it comes to our personal preferences and evaluations of whiskies, then how much does an evaluation or rating matter? Tom Bruce-Gardyne weighs up the pros and cons of paying attention to point systems and other people’s tasting notes
“The richness, complexity, freshness of the aromatic profile, the balance between nose and palate, the texture, the mark of the distillery character ... I would not say that these are 100 per cent ‘objective’ criteria, but they support the so-called ‘subjectivity’ in the sensory description”
Every spring the good chatelaines of Bordeaux would hold their breath as ‘the great man’ rolled into town for the en primeur tasting. He liked to taste alone in his hotel room, furiously sniffing, chewing and spitting his way through hundreds of bottles. Each mouthful would be measured against a vast memory bank of previous vintages and the wine’s entire peer group. Then, as it hit the spittoon, a score of between 50 and 100 would be calibrated deep inside his brain. Such was the power of the critic Robert Parker, whose 100-point system crossed into whisky with Michael Jackson’s first Malt Whisky Companion in 1987.
“I hate them. I think they’re completely reductive,” says the drinks writer Dave Broom of such scores. “It’s like you’re trying to be digital in an analogue world.” Indeed, to reduce something as subjective as taste to numbers does sound strange. We don’t judge paintings or plays out of 100, so why wine and whisky? Possibly because of the way it serves publishers and the drinks trade. Big Parker points were invariably hyped to charge higher prices, which was ironic for a self-professed consumer champion.
SENSORY RATINGS
Of course, you could argue that 100 points is simply an inflation of the five-star system widely used for films, music and stand-up comedians. And yet we are talking of smell and taste, which account for less than one per cent of the cerebral cortex as the experimental psychologist Professor Charles Spence explained in February’s Unfiltered. The net effect, in his view, was that we live in our own individual taste world.
“We assume we all taste the same thing, but we don’t,” he said. The whisky writer, Martine Nouet is sceptical, and she doesn’t believe the professor’s comments undermine the relevance of the critic. “What do we evaluate when we sample a whisky?” she asks. “The richness, complexity, freshness of the aromatic profile, the balance between nose and palate, the texture, the mark of the distillery character...I would not say that these are 100 per cent ‘objective’ criteria, but they support the so-called ‘subjectivity’ in the sensory description.”
Fellow scribe Richard Woodard agrees, and feels there’s definitely a demand out there. “Whisky’s quite a complicated and potentially intimidating area of knowledge and people want a bit of guidance,” he says. “And, whether it’s a good or bad thing, they want to be told what’s good, and they want it simplified.” Personally, he thinks “far too much time is spent trying to identify individual flavours, and not enough in talking in general about balance, complexity and texture.”
“Far too much time is spent trying to identify individual flavours, and not enough in talking in general about balance, complexity and texture”
“If you’ve got a dozen whiskies in front of you, and three or four have elements of citrus, you can’t just write ‘citrus’ each time”
Every booze critic should remember the line in that famous James Thurber wine cartoon – ‘It’s a naïve, domestic Burgundy without any breeding. But I think you’ll be amused by its presumption.’
IN DEFENCE OF EXUBERANCE
One of Richard’s bugbears, which I share, is those tastings put on by whisky producers where some brand manager starts saying – “and, now you’ll be getting mango, ugly fruit and manuka honey…” before anyone has had a chance to nose the dram for themselves. The shopping list of ingredients can feel like showing off, but Dave Broom makes a plea in defence of funny fruits in tasting notes.
“If you’ve got a dozen whiskies in front of you, and three or four have elements of citrus, you can’t just write ‘citrus’ each time. So, you subdivide and, in that attempt to be accurate, you can veer off into fantastical realms,” he says. You need a degree of self-restraint and not to take yourself too seriously. Every booze critic should remember the line in that famous James Thurber wine cartoon – ‘It’s a naïve, domestic Burgundy without any breeding. But I think you’ll be amused by its presumption.’
When hosting a tasting, Dave says: “I always start with the basics – is it light or heavy? Sweet or dry? And then build on that to the feel and texture of the whisky. Everyone’s nose is different, but everyone’s palate is kind of the same.” He reckons that “where the subjective element really comes in depends on your mood and how it makes you feel. I think whisky has this unrivalled ability to place you somewhere. Pick up a glass of Caol Ila, and you’re standing on the shores of the Sound of Islay with the cold wind flipping off the sea, and there’s a dead crab sitting next to you.”
Charlie MacLean, another great wordsmith, has no truck with 100-point scores and any ratings he gives are kept to himself. He says he prefers being on a panel of experienced tasters where the aim is to reach a consensus. Years ago, he was invited to chair the Society tastings having done a week’s sensory evaluation course with the then-MD, Richard Gordon. “The Society’s tasting notes had always been somewhat exotic and had become somewhat random,” he says. His brief was to marshal the Tasting Panel’s thoughts, but to keep it fun. And that’s still the case, with the descriptions as exuberant as ever.
One of Richard’s bugbears is those tastings where some brand manager starts saying – “and, now you’ll be getting mango, ugly fruit and manuka honey…” before anyone has had a chance to nose the dram
Charlie MacLean, another great wordsmith, has no truck with 100-point scores and any ratings he gives are kept to himself. He says he prefers being on a panel of experienced tasters where the aim is to reach a consensus
EVERYONE'S A CRITIC
Meanwhile today’s professional pundit has to navigate the world of TripAdvisor and Rotten Tomatoes, where everyone is a critic. If a single malt has twice as many ‘likes’ as the next one, it takes a certain confidence to swim against the majority. “But,” says Dave Broom, “if it’s your job to taste and analyse whisky, that comes with training and experience. You have to put in the hard yards to be confident enough to express an opinion.”
Clearly everyone’s view is valid, but it is funny how reticent people can be if offered a blind tasting to compare two drinks. “Oh, but I might say the wrong thing,” is a typical response. The realisation that there’s no such thing as ‘wrong’ can be quite empowering. Putting flavours and aromas into words is notoriously difficult, but for all their flaws words are better than numbers, be they out of 100 or in pounds and pence. As part of his scoring system, the guru we met at the start measured the length of the wine to the nearest second. If you ever find yourself alone in a hotel with a glass in one hand and a stopwatch in the other, you probably need to get out more.
“If it’s your job to taste and analyse whisky, that comes with training and experience. You have to put in the hard yards to be confident enough to express an opinion”