Welcome


Welcome


tum within the industry and has become an event eagerly awaited by afi cionados and occasional ‘drammers’ alike. The reason for the success of the Scottish Field Whisky Challenge from its inception has been its unimpeachable credibility. We only appoint the most respected fi gures in the whisky world – men and women whose credentials, nose and provenance are impeccable – to be our judges. We then ask these yodas of whisky to nominate the


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malts and blended whiskies that have impressed them the most in the previous year. The nominations are then blind tested and each whisky given a fi nal score. An exhaustive process – but then it needs to be if we’re to stand in judge- ment on the best examples of our national drink. Once again this year, we have a fabulous panel of ten


judges, who have used skills built up over a lifetime to bring you the nominees and the winners in fi ve categories: under £35, £35-£80, over £80, blend of the year and independ- ent bottling of the year. This then leads to our overall win- ners. Any whisky that appears in these pages is guaran- teed to be a top quality dram. Finally, stellar whisky deserves writing and analysis to


match so we’ve asked the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) to fi ll us in on what’s been happening in the whisky world over the past year. All in all, we think it’s an unbeat- able package, and hope you’ll agree.


With forty of Scotland’s top whiskies going head to head in a battle to be crowned Scottish Field Magazine’s ‘Whisky of the Year 2011, the pressure was really on our judges. This year we said goodbye to Richard Joynson and Keir


Sword, who had been with us from the start, and wished them luck on new ventures. We welcomed new judge, Mark Connelly, from the Good Spirits Company (Glasgow), and Ewen Mackintosh (Gordon & Macphail) stepped in to cover for Elaine Cruickshank, who is on maternity leave. So our team of experts were ready and raring to go. This is what we had in store for them...


Nominations We asked our six merchant judges – Mark Connelly, Ewen Mackintosh, Darren Leitch, Robin Russell, Mike Lord and Duncan Ralph – to nominate fi ve whiskies – one from each of the three price categories: under £35, £35-£80 and over £80, plus one blended whisky and one independ- ent bottling. The winners of our summer whisky challenge, and last year’s winners, were automatically entered into this year’s line up. Scottish Field also nominated a few whiskies which we felt deserved to be in the mix, leaving us with forty whiskies spread over the fi ve categories.


Blind Tasting What makes this competition so unique is the fact that our judges taste the whisky completely blind. The branding


www.whiskychallenge.com 3


elcome to Scottish Field’s annual Scotch Whisky Supplement. Now in its eleventh year, the Scottish Field Whisky Challenge is really gaining momen-


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and packaging is stripped away, leaving the whisky to be judged solely on taste. At the Scottish Field offi ces we decanted the for- ty 70cl bottles into four-hundred 10cl sample bottles with only a number for identifi cation. On the day of the tasting, these bottles were shipped up to the Scotch Whisky Experience to await the arrival of the judges.


Knockout round The fi rst stage of the tasting is the knockout round, when all for- ty whiskies are subjected to a ruthless tasting from all ten of the judges, with only the top twenty across the fi ve categories making it through to the afternoon tasting. This year twenty three whiskies actually made it through because of tied scores.


Scoring In the afternoon session we then asked the ten judges to conduct a second, more in depth, tasting of the remaining twenty-three whis- kies. They had to score each whisky a mark from 1 (should never have been bottled) to 10 (whisky heaven) and write brief tasting notes. This is no easy task but our experts were more than capable of doing it.


The results Once all the judges’ scores have been counted and verifi ed, we can then work out who the winners were from each category. We work out an average team score and Gold, Silver and Bronze badges are awarded. We then have to analyse the results further and push the Gold winners just a little bit more to decide who will be crowned ‘Whisky of the Year 2011’.


This year’s awards were presented to the whiskies at our fi rst annual whisky awards dinner, which took place on 3 November. So many thanks to our expert judges and our loyal readers for what was another fantastic whisky challenge, and see you all again next year for the Scottish Field Whisky Challenge 2012.


Slainte Scottish Field Whisky Challenge Team


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