Last week when some people on Twitter started discussing tasting blind versus not blind when trying new whiskies. It got me thinking on this subject and I thought it good material for a new post.
Of course, both ways of tasting a whisky have their merits, but the purpose of either way is different in my opinion. To me, tasting whiskies blind is very nice to do with a flight of whiskies when you try to find the best of a certain predetermined category.
With that I mean that I like tasting blind when I’m looking for the best in a series of Springbanks, or the best 18 year old among several varieties. When you don’t know what is what you more or less pay a lot more attentions to smaller details and pick up on off-notes and different nuances.
I do believe, however, that tasting blind is quite useless when there is no theme in the whisky you try. To start comparing whiskies that do not have any similarity at all is quite ridiculous. To compare a Talisker 18, Hazelburn 8 and a Glenfarclas 105 40 year old doesn’t make any sense since the tastes will be so incredibly different its like apples and oranges. Both are fruit, but that’s about it.
Be prepared that, when you taste some drams without knowing what they are, you might find some unexpected and surprising (and sometimes embarassing) results. At some point I blind tasted the Longrow CV. I didn’t know anything about it at all, and didn’t think it a very good whisky. Usually, at home, I quite like this one.
I think the cause of this is that the Longrow CV is a rather simple dram with a pretty small taste variety. Nothing wrong with that, especially for a daily dram of which you don’t really expect much. It has some great briny smokiness and what it does, it does very well. But at the tasting I was looking for complexity, for layers of flavour, for depth and balance. In my opinion it didn’t do that very well and I scored it only ‘two stars’. I thought it wasn’t bad, but I didn’t particularly like it either. And as most people know, I can be quite vocal about my opinion…
The result of the Twitter discussing is the first Dutch ‘Blind Twitter Tasting’, hosted by Passie voor Whisky (passion for whisky), a very large Whisky Specialist in Rijswijk, The Netherlands. It will be held on May 31st at 8pm (CET), hashtag #BWTT.
Malt Fascination 
Sjoerd,
what you say is in many ways true, but tasting blind can be fun too. Especially when swapping samples ‘blind’ with whisky friends. Tasting blind does indeed make one look more closely at the whisky but the most important detail is that it blocks the preconceptions we all have about certain distilleries. We all have our favourites and are in danger of perhaps ‘talking them up’ whilst decrying those we feel to be inferior. The blind session removes these temptations and creates an even playing field.
In addition, tasting blind is the only way to run a competition, so this is necessary when formally judging whiskies.
Regards, Keith.
I can follow you both. For me it usually doesn’t matter so much (yet) if it is a tasting with the brand name showing or not (in fact I never had a blind tasting before). Since I’m only one year active in the whisky tasting business there are still many brands/labels (esspecially within the Highland/Speyside/Lowland area) which I never tasted before (expectations are absent) so in a way I’m still tasting them more or less in a blind way.
I’m also participating in the blind twitter tasting as mentioned, but I have no hope in guessing the brand right ;-). It will be a very interesting experience for me, so I’m looking forward to it. I have a long road ahead for me in studying and tasting whisky before I have somewhat the same experience as you two (luckily it is a very pleasent road (not spending wise though ;-))
@Keith:
I wholeheartedly agree with you. I agree that tasting blind is a lot of fun, but for me there are some constraints. Although I really like tasting blind with random whiskies as well, but to ‘formally’ compare one to the other I would like to have at least semi-similar references.
I just don’t like comparing one whisky to the other if I’m not sure it makes any sense. When I know I’m tasting random stuff, I don’t have a problem with it 😉
@GJR:
The tasting is going to be fun!
I think your example of the Longrow says it all – when you didn’t know what it was you didn’t think it was all that interesting. If you are tasting just to think about the taste (rather than factoring in prices and the like) then that is the important bit.
I also think that tasting blind isn’t a bad thing with a range of unconnected whiskies as long as you are focusing on the flavour rather than any other factor. If you really want a known point to compare to then take along a reference dram – something you know well and know where it sits in your rating scale.
I go to http://WhiskySquad.com each month and we always taste blind. The whiskies often follow a non-flavour related theme and all the blind nature of the tasting does is mean that we don’t pre-judge and also often get a surprise when the least favourite whisky of the night is the most expensive…
That said, I rather like tastings when I do know what the drams are, but for truly working out whether you enjoy a whisky’s flavour I would say blind tasting is the way to go.