My Take On This Whole Ratings Hoo-Hah

17 Comments on My Take On This Whole Ratings Hoo-Hah

Right, a quick disclaimer first: I’m stuck at home with a rotten cold (that won’t go away, curse it) and a slightly light head after our triumph at last night’s International Spirits Challenge awards bash – where we picked up Best Spirits Retailer (Huzzah!).  The trophy is very cool – it’s a massive Glencairn.

Check it out - ISC champs!!

Check it out - ISC champs!!

Anyway, I’ve watched Sky Sports News until the same stories came round for the third time, changed channel, paid scant attention to an episode of The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes that probably deserved better, lost track of a film while checking my email etc etc.  In other words, I hate being ill.  So apologies if this post doesn’t contain many photos (it’s fiddly on WordPress and I can’t be bothered); and if I come across as a bit grumpy and this post turns into a long rant.

Forgive me.  Consider that this was a man who was so bored at one stage this morning that he nearly watched Bargain Hunt, and feel a moment of sympathy.

To business, then, if anyone’s still reading.  Over on What Does John Know this week, a debate kicked off after the announcement of the malt gongs in Angus W. Apfelstrudel’s Whisky Torah The Gospel According to St. Jim.  As is customary at this time of year, Ardbeg received World Whisky of the Year from the whisky world’s Jeremy Clarkson [Edit: Actually, this year it was ‘only’ Scotch Whisky of the Year, but you get my drift]. As is equally customary, this has prompted furious knee-jerking and splutterings of outrage from the self-righteous know-it-alls that clutter up the comments pages, accusing His Holiness of being a corporate shill because he has given his top award to a company that he has done consultancy and promotional work for.

At the same time, those of us with more than the cursory number of braincells required for a functioning pulse are engaging yet again in the wider debate on the merits, or otherwise, of rating whiskies.  This is a circular argument that breaks out sporadically every few months.

mobius_strip

That ratings argument, yesterday

There does seem to be a lot of bile directed at Jim Murray.  Leaving aside anyone’s personal feelings about the man, let’s consider the following salient points:

  • Er, it’s Jim’s book.  He can write whatever he likes and he can give his gongs to whichever whisky he likes.
  • Is it really surprising that a professional whisky writer has done consultancy for a big whisky company?  The man has to make a living.  Believe it or not, there’s not a great deal of money in printed media unless you’re Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling.
  • Should Jim perhaps exclude all whiskies that he has any prior connection with from the Bible?  It might be quite a thin book if he did.
  • No-one is putting a gun to anyone’s head and forcing them to read Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible.  Moreover, those people who do read it are not morally obliged only to drink those whiskies awarded 90 points or more and can make up their own minds.
  • A lot of the people who do buy and read the Bible do so more for the OTT comments, subtle and not-so-subtle digs and lascivious boasting about his pretty young ladyfriend than the actual ratings.
  • Many of these readers also have brains of their own, know how their palates compare to Jim’s and adjust the scores accordingly.
  • Despite the title, the Whisky Bible is, at the end of the day, a guide.  It’s not actually Gospel.
  • If you don’t like it, you are free not to buy it and equally free not to pay any attention to it at all.

I hold no brief for Jim Murray, and I don’t sit down and read the new edition from cover to cover.  But it’s still on my desk.  It’s a useful reference work.  A lot of people I know can’t be bothered with him and accuse him of being thin-skinned, pompous and egotistical.  He’s also been accused of acting like he invented Ardbeg, pure potstill and rye whiskey.  I’m sorry, but so what?   The amount of graft he must have to put in for the Bible is mind-boggling and a lot of people find it very useful.  Ergo, the Whisky Bible is a good thing.  If you don’t like it, it’s your God-given right (see what I did there?) to simply ignore it.  Move on, life’s too short to get pissed off at something that does you no harm, and too long to hold a grudge.

Next, the broader ratings debate.

*Sigh*

Why do people get so wound up about this?

The Whisky Bible ratings debate (Blogger kneeling)

The Whisky Bible ratings debate (Blogger kneeling)

Now, I’m not one for rating whiskies myself, for myriad reasons which I can’t be bothered to go into here.  Personally, I prefer to simply describe my own experience of a whisky and hope that anyone reading will have a fair idea of how I feel about it by the end.  I also hope that they understand that what I’ve written is just my experience on that particular day and that they won’t hate me forever if they rush out and buy it and then don’t like it.

Yet despite all of the above, I don’t go onto other people’s websites and think “Oh Hell, he’s only gone and given it a bloody rating!  Now my day’s ruined!”.  I just don’t understand how this can be an emotive issue.  Nonetheless, from some of what has been posted on WDJK and elsewhere, it would appear that some people do take it very seriously.

Personally, I have the greatest respect for my fellow bloggers who rate whiskies.  It demonstrates the kind of analytical thinking, dedication and scientific approach that I myself lack due to my feckless Arts-student nature.  I enjoy reading ratings reviews and will confess to the occasional thrill of schadenfreude when I see something get a slating, in the same way that I like the catty woman who reviews the restaurants for Metro (apologies to non-Londoners, but you get the idea).

But the truth is that whisky ratings blogs, just like the Whisky Bible, are not actually meant to be definitive pronouncements.  Most if not all of their authors are modest people who would probably be pretty uncomfortable with the thought of wielding that kind of influence.  But they, like Jim Murray, can’t control who reads their output, and so you get the unfortunate sheep that end up paying silly money for the likes of Ardbeg Still Young on eBay.

Personally (again), I just don’t see why folk get so worked up.  This issue has got some people angrier than a sore-headed bear that’s just dropped a bottle of Black Bowmore on its favourite tasting glass.  Even the most acclaimed reviewer, Serge Valentin at Whiskyfun, has had to go onto WDJK in the last few days to try and calm things down and explain that Whiskyfun is just his online tasting diary and not the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Why does it matter if someone gives a whisky a score or not?  Surely the main thing is to get your point across.  The problem is with the people who obsess on these scores, not the reviewers or how they review.  It’s a sad fact (and not confined to whisky by any means) that these types of reviews can unwittingly attract unimaginative idiots who swear by them and refuse to countenance drinking anything that hasn’t got a ninety-point score from their messiah of choice.

This was something that I encountered on almost a daily basis during the five mostly happy years that I spent with Oddbins (a UK wine retailer for our overseas readers).  Tim Atkin or Oz Clarke or Malcolm Gluck recommended something.  We’d have people marching in at 10 o’clock on the same day with a page torn from the magazine demanding a case of everything on the list and getting very upset if we didn’t have one of the products.  This would happen every Saturday and Sunday in some of the shops I worked at.  We’d then get people phoning up during the week, who’d only just got round to reading that bit of the paper and wanted to know if we still had a bottle of that nice pink Grenache that Victoria Moore recommended…

A typical Oddbins Saturday morning when Malcolm Gluck recommended a good cheap white

A typical Oddbins Saturday morning when Malcolm Gluck recommended a good cheap white

In my view, the whole thing boils down to this:

  • We should all be happy and grateful that we have such a bewildering array of whisky to select from;
  • We should explore those choices for ourselves, as our individual budgets allow – and we should trust our own conclusions.
  • If one reviewer decides to use ratings and another doesn’t, it’s not a hanging matter.

The underlying issue is that the whisky market is getting too faddy.  It is very easy to get caught up in the hype generated by ninety-plus scores from our favourite reviewers, and lord knows I’ve been suckered in myself more often than I care to remember.  But frequently when one comes back to a sixty or eighty quid bottle six months later one wonders what the fuss was all about.  It’s still a good whisky, but was it really worth all the drama?

Here’s the rub: there are dozens of equally worthy, time-served, reliably excellent whiskies out there. So many times when I come in from a hard day’s bumf-writing, all I want is a beer with a healthy dram of Power’s or Redbreast on the side.  Straightforward excellence. We’re spoiled rotten with all these new releases, and it has blinded us to the real, everyday brilliant whiskies that don’t cost the earth and never let you down.

It’s great to try new stuff.  Very occasionally a really sublime, show-stopping whisky is released at an affordable price, and the inevitable scramble ensues.  But a lot of the time this happens because certain sheep-like whisky drinkers panic that their lives will become meaningless if they don’t get hold of a bottle of the latest headline-grabber.  And let’s face it,  the scrambles occur a lot more often than the affordable, sublime whiskies do, meaning inevitable disappointments.

Anyway, enough already.  All of the above is an unforgivably long way of saying that ratings are useful and worthwhile for those that choose to read them, but they shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all.  As has been said by various voices of reason elsewhere, taste as much as you can yourself and make up your own mind (I paraphrase).  If you miss out on the newest GlenWonka, don’t get upset or feel like a failure.  There’ll be something else to get excited about next week.  And please, never forget – you’re only ever thirty quid away from some of the best whiskies in the world.

Right, sermon over.  Time for my Lemsip.

Posted in WHISKY & WHISKEY

Comments

Forgive me being picky, but I thought that JM’s Bible 2010 whisky of the year was a “Sazarec 18yo Fall 2008”. The “Ardbeg Supernova” was only runner-up.

C57 says:

Nice blog Tim. I agree with almost everything you say.
In fact, scratch the “almost”.

[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Colin Campbell and Colin Campbell. Colin Campbell said: RT @TWEBlog: My take on the whole whisky ratings hoo-hah: http://tinyurl.com/yd9dtb4 – just tried to comment and it said I’m a spambot ??? […]

Gordon says:

Hi Tim ,
Nice piece , cheered me up while suffering from a dreadful cold (or is it man flu ? 🙂 ) . I never give a score to any of the whisky i taste , well apart from when Eddie forces one out of me at his Whisky Lounge Tastings and then i don’t take it too serious but i did give Renaissance 9.90 at one , well he did ask and it is nearly the most perfect Ardbeg in my opinion….
I never take anyones ratings serious well apart from when Jim Murray gave my Port Charlotte Bloodtub 96/100 in the 2007 WB (why shouldn’t he , it’s a bloody good whisky and beats any of the distillery bottlings…..Nahnahnahnah…..)and the Malt maniac guys gave it an equally high Score !

Anyway less of my highly superior PC Bottling…..
I think everybody should adapt my way of evaluating whisky , a simple 3 question method…..
1)Do i like it or not ?
2)If i like it do i like it enough to buy a bottle?
3)If it is that good Do i need to buy Multiples ?
Easy Peasy !
Basically it all comes down to personal preference and anyone elses recommendations/notes should be taken with a pinch of salt as one Swedish Whisky forum said about my Ardbeg notes……
Now i think i need some medicine for my cold and it won’t be lemsip , the ABV of it isn’t high enough…..

Funnily enough Tim N , so did i ! But then again they are saying Top “Scotch Whisky” for the Nova……

Tim F says:

Tim N, Gordon – You’re right, of course, the Supernova did come second in the world, but it’s still highest ranking Scotch of this year, which is what has prompted the normal outcry. I’m blaming this slip on my cold fuzzing up my head 🙂

Tim N, in the spirit of pickiness, you’ll forgive me pointing out that it’s Sazerac rather than Sazarec (sorry).

Tim F

Apologies. I’ll freely confess that I’d never even heard of Sazerac until the Bible arrived.

Tim N

Tim F says:

It’s terrific stuff, Tim. You should check out What Does John Know, he’s just done a comparison of the last few year’s releases of it.

Gordon says:

I think the Sazerac is the only BTAC i haven’t tried , WillieJJ praises it to the hilt but i always look at the prices and pass on it , mind you BT do a pretty good range as it is .

If i was to pick a “Whisky of the Year” i think the front runner at the moment would be a Certain Glenmorangie from the Society , 125.18 “Chocolate Valentine” , a superb Morangie that does as it said on the label and fitted in with question 3…..
As usual i will be doing my awards at the end of the year……

butephoto says:

Mmm, Lemsip… 93/100

Par says:

The beast stuck its head up again – I do wholeheartedly agree with the funny comment on “unwitting idiots” or a similar theme, i.e. the mindless, unknowing sheep mentality thingy.

However, if one says to oneself, “do I like or dislike this whisky?” then one is also scoring (albeit in a very crude manner). So we are almost all scoring, in a sense. It’s just the superior and analytical elitist bastards among us who break it down to a level which some people seem to feel offended by…that seems to be a problem. I just can’t get it.

However, I can’t get why on Earth Jim M would go to the stupid lengths of promoting his brand (that’s what it sounds like) every year? He is just loosing credibility from those that has read his writings more than once.

Nuff said, time for a dram!

Angus says:

Well…I agree with you Tim, good post. I have made rantings about Jim Murray in the past but there is only one thing I’d point out here. Putting aside the ratings debate and his holiness himself for a while, my problem is that I’ve seen so many people getting into whisky carry around a copy of the mans scores and scribles and just buying based on what he’s written. Its a sad and negative thing that people aren’t encouraged to make decisions on their own merits more. Anyway I’m sure it all works out in the end somehow or other, I’m a bit bored by Jim and score debates and all that stuff these days. I agree wit par, time for a dram.

John Hansell says:

I always enjoy reading your posts, Tim, and this one is one of your best. In fact, I give it a 97.5! 🙂

Tim F says:

Thanks for your kind words, everyone! Glad I’m not the only one who’s thinking this way.

I’ve decided that this post will be my last words on the subject of whisky ratings. We’ve been over it all before enough times now and I think that everything that can be said has now been said. The next time this becomes the topic du jour I’m just going to refer m’learned friends back here :).

John says:

Hi Tim

I think a lot of what you say is right, but people have a right to say what they think about the book. Personally, I’m a fan of the Whisky Bible, but I know it has its flaws.

And it can be hard to pick up people’s tone from text typed into a browser. Some people are merely commenting.

Just as Jim Murray is entitled to comment, or rant and rave, when he talks about someone else’s work – i.e. the distilleries and the whisky industry – we are entitled to comment about his work.

I do object to some of the personal comments I read on the discussion boards, however.

John

John says:

And regarding the detailed ratings… out of 100. I don’t care about them, but I think they are an exercise in spoofery. It’s humanly impossible to accurately score out of 100. You might as well go to a fortune teller or an homeopathy practitioner as take these scores entirely seriously. But they do serve as a guide.

Thomas B Cohoon says:

I enjoy reading and even listening to whisky reviews. But I drink what I can more or less afford and like what I like. I sort of am able to align my buying by tasting notes from others who are similar to mine to try different whisky. Often I think does any of it need to be any better than say a Bunnahabain 12, (the only one I’ve bought multiples of). I enjoy the journey, the experience and the taste. I’ve never read Murray’s book, not plan to do so. Likewise I keep occasionally trying a bourbon, but always return to Scotch. I know my preference is just that mine. At the end of the day the score someone else gives a whisky is their opinion and how much Creed I give it is up to me.

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