World Whiskies Awards - Final Winners !

[Matt2]

We are pleased to announce the final winners for the World Whiskies Awards 2007.

The Winners

World's Best Single Malt Whisky
Talisker 18 Year Old

World's Best Blended Malt Whisky
Taketsuru Pure Malt 21 Year Old

World's Best Blended Whisky
Suntory Whisky Hibiki 30 Year Old

World's Best American Whiskey
Baker's 7 Year Old

World's Best New Release
The Balvenie Vintage 1972

World's Best Whisky Liqueur
Arran Gold

The World's Best Whiskies

[jmputz]

I was really surprised by the results. I consider Talisker as a very great distillery, and I do not dislike the 18 years old. However, it would have been much more honest to nominate it as "the best whisky from the tasted panel"...
Who dares really to claim it is the best whisky in the world...
Looking further within the results, I'm more and more surprised...
I have personally tasted (and noted) a bit more than 500 Scotch single malts, from rather cheap (if this still exists in the world of whisky) to more expensive... (not exaggerated, as my most expensive bottle is about 250 euros). So I have made for myself quite a good idea of what is commonly available on the market, in all kinds of ranges.
So I was surprised by the nomination of bottles like the 10 yo Aberlour, the 10 y.o. Glengoyne and last but not least, the 16 y.o. double matured Aberlour. The 10 yo Aberlour is typically a bottom of the range (of course it is good stuff, but...), Glengoyne has produced some marvelous things (for instance the 12 yo Cask strength -to remain in the price class-), but again the 10 yo is very ordinary compared to many other bottles of the range...
I really liked the double maturation in the 12 yo version of Aberlour, but also hated the 16yo... after several tastings (also blind ones).
So I was quite shocked by the results.
Would it be possible to find somewhere the list of the concurrent bottles?
I was also surprised to see the quality of the jury (internationally recognized specialists), so I wander where the problem is coming from...
Were there only official bottlings?
No independent bottlings?

How can the "Best Whisky in the World" be choosen out of 155 bottles...? How was this first selection made?
I could agree if the title of the mail I got from Diageo was: "Winner of the Whisky Magazine Awards 2007", but I got a mail claiming it was the "Best Whisky in the World"...
So I immediately tasted it again... For me it is clear it isn't the best, but this is only my personal taste!

[Deactivated Member]

Best not to take such awards too seriously. There isn't any malt that could be named "best in the world" without a lot of people saying "You've got to be kidding." It's all for fun, to promote discussion and generate interest.

[jmputz]

It's all for fun, to promote discussion and generate interest.

I wish you are right...
Thing is that my post was the first on this topic, and nearly one month after it was posted. So it does not really generate interest and discussion.
I have been notified about the result by a mail from Diageo (friends of Classic Malts), so it promotes something indeed, but not really discussion.
If I compare this to the Malt Maniac Awards, I see a lot of differences. The thing is that half a dozen of Malt Maniacs were in the jury.(may be a little less).
I just wander if they were aware of the fact they were nominating "The Best Whisky in the World".
I'm also disappointed to see a serious magazine as Whisky Magazine is could organize a challenge under this motto!

[Deactivated Member]

We had a bit of discussion about it in the Issue #63 thread. Note especially Frodo's citation of Chuck Cowdery's comments.

I would agree that surveying 155 bottles and declaring one "the best in the world" is a bit of an overreach. But even if they surveyed 3,000 bottles, I wouldn't take the results very seriously. (You could scan Murray's Whisky Bible and pick out the high scores for a survey, if you wanted to...well, that's the beginning of a much-too-lengthy and already well-traveled digression.) I don't think it fosters too much discussion amongst those of us here, because we already talk about whisky all the time, and don't really need the stimulus. It's a blip on an already-full radar screen. As well, most of us have our own ideas about what we enjoy most, and how to judge and enjoy whiskies.

I don't mean this to sound cynical, but the publishers of a specialist magazine like Whisky must constantly be thinking up ways to fill their pages, with an eye toward attracting new readers, as well as holding the interest of longtime ones. Something like this is an eye-grabber, and if it doesn't particularly resonate with me, it strikes me as preferable to putting, say, Madonna on the cover (which has been done). Cover stories especially are designed to attract attention on the newsstand. Those of us who know the kind of goodies we are going to find inside don't need to be drawn in by such, and it may be sometimes that the cover story is the one we find least interesting. If I don't much care what a distinguished panel selects as "best in the world" from a choice of 155 bottles, I at least appreciate that the focus is on whisky, and not on celebrity worship.

[jmputz]

Shame on me... I do not read this forum very regularly, so I did not see this other topic.
I'm much too busy with my own forum (in French) and I really should come more often here. Probably I would have posted my reaction 3 weeks earlier. But I would not have change a letter in what I have written...
For those who are interested to know what my forum (in French is), just click on the button "www"beneath. I do not want to spam this forum with links to others...
And you are probably right, it can help to sell the magazine, and probably take people to another opinion about whisky... And find out there are so much better young and cheap things than Aberlour 10 years or Glengoyne of the same age.

[Deactivated Member]

No shame--there are but a few of us who are so lacking in real lives that we can keep up with everything here. Well, Les and me, really. (And since he claims that I am actually him, I'd say that he's very lifeless, indeed!) Anyway, I'm always happy to be able to collate information for those who may have missed something.

[les taylor]

No shame--there are but a few of us who are so lacking in real lives that we can keep up with everything here. Well, Les and me, really. (And since he claims that I am actually him, I'd say that he's very lifeless, indeed!) Anyway, I'm always happy to be able to collate information for those who may have missed something.

Lifeless Lifeless!!!!!!!!! There's plenty of life in the younger brother of Mr T.

[jmputz]

No shame--there are but a few of us who are so lacking in real lives that we can keep up with everything here. Well, Les and me, really. (And since he claims that I am actually him, I'd say that he's very lifeless, indeed!) Anyway, I'm always happy to be able to collate information for those who may have missed something.

Lifeless Lifeless!!!!!!!!! There's plenty of life in the younger brother of Mr T.

And I understand both of you are on this forum all day long, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.
Exactly what I do on my French forum...
And you certainly could not manage this if you were not both plenty of life

[Deactivated Member]

Les is actually my evil twin. Or maybe I'm his.

[les taylor]

Les is actually my evil twin. Or maybe I'm his.

Mr T lets tell everyone! I'm the younger twin

[Iain]

Like Mr T I wouldn't want to sound cynical, but a tasting team that lines up as

Rob Allanson
Thierry Benitah
Dave Broom
Charles Maclean
Annabel Meikle
Martine Nouet
Dominic Roskrow
Keir Sword

reads more like a list of WM contributors and their buddies than a carefully-assembled and balanced team of experts on whiskies from all parts of the globe. Nothing wrong with that of course, so long it's clear it's a bit of fun, and it's the Whisky Mag World Awards.

Jim Murray, Michael Jackson, Paul Pacult et al are free to disagree - as are we all!

[BourbonDrinker]

Although not my 'world-favorite' bourbon, I tried the Baker's 7-Year Old for the first time last weekend and much to my surprise, it was superb! It has quickly moved to the top of my must-have list!

[bamber]

Although not my 'world-favorite' bourbon, I tried the Baker's 7-Year Old for the first time last weekend and much to my surprise, it was superb! It has quickly moved to the top of my must-have list!

It is good - possibly my favourite JB product.

[Frodo]

Although not my 'world-favorite' bourbon, I tried the Baker's 7-Year Old for the first time last weekend and much to my surprise, it was superb! It has quickly moved to the top of my must-have list!

Interestingly I had a similar reaction when I tried it.