Many whisky experts and bloggers try to capture as many malts from former glorious times as possible. Of course I agree that there have been incredible whiskies in the 60ies, 70ies or partially also in the 80ies of the last century - who would not think of 64 Bowmores or 70ies Arbegs (just to mention two examples). But trying to get a bottling of these gems has become very difficult (and for reasonable prices even impossible). Additionally I will never be able in dramming my way through all these malts from the former times or in discovering all their beauty... I would surely be frustrated soon ;-) So why not focus on today's whiskies or at least bottles from the last 20-30 years that can still easily found and are affordable? I am future orientated, my whisky life has only started ten years ago and there is a lot to discover... maybe one day I will tell my grandchildren of the 2020ies Glenwhatsoevers that have been truly great. So I decided to not wasting time, money and too much nostalgy into the golden former times but to rather focus on the incredible number of good malts that we can choose from every day and in the future - this is the first thing you can expect. Addtionally you will mainly find independent bottlings as I fell in love with these fellows due to the (mainly) cask strengthed and unchillfiltered characters that still many official bottlings lack. Last but not least I can only invest "small" money due to budget reasons (I told you I was married ;-)). This means that I concentrate my search for THE one single malt rather mainly throughout the whiskies which offer very good "bang for your buck" as our American friends would call it. You will never find any bottling in here that I spent more than 200 Euros for (ok, sometimes I get cheaper samples and not the whole bottlings - but you can do that as well, can't you?). Most of the bottles are even between 60 and 100 Euros - a category which often offers excellent quaility. Stop, enough said - I think you got the message: Recent bottlings mostly from independant bottlers and great quality for reasonable money are the key drivers I am interested in when it comes to scoring single malts.

Throughout the whisky world there are many different ways of scoring whisky. The most common one is the 100 points scale. Many of the most important bloggers and whisky experts use this system, dedicating up to a maximum of 25 points for each the nose, tongue, mouthfeel and aftertaste. This score is reasonable and quite fair I must say, as even a whisky with a weak nose eg can get a good score if it scores well in the other categories. But it is also complicated and quite complex as it requires a quite professional way of tasting and a very systematic approach in order to fulfill to the system. Too complicated for me as I want to enjoy whisky on a more easy and unconventional way. I rely much more on my first impressions once I got a whisky in my glass. I rather judge the overall impression and the combination of nose, taste and aftertaste - only a good balance of these three make a whisky a good whisky - in my personal view, of course. This is why my scores go up to a maximum of 20 points and are not divided into different criteria. I give comprehensive scores and divide whisky into the following five categories:

Up to 10 points: whisky worth trying but no more
10,5-12 points: quality is ok, solid
12,5-14 points: good whiskies
14,5-16: very good whiskies
16,5-18: excellent to stars
Above 18: megastars
I have to admit that so far I have never given a score higher than 19 - the journey of finding THE whisky of my life is still going on... Maybe one day I will score the 20, we will see. So please don't take my score for serious, it's just a way of evaluating what I got in my glass :-)