SHORT RAMBLINGS (too long for Twitter! ;-))

Tasting: how to make your inherent subjectivity a little more consistent

Friends, every once in a while, someone who’s usually charming but more or less anonymous appears on some forum or blog or else and claims that scoring whisky (or any other thing) is totally subjective thus irrelevant. That, by the way, seldom happens on Facebook, for instance, nor on mailing lists, maybe because most people using those platforms don’t do that anonymously. Ha, anonymity!
 
So, here’s my take again. First, what’s subjectivity? According to a dictionary and in this context, something subjective is something that’s ‘based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.’

I won’t argue. Maybe except if you’re a professional taster or blender, you’ll indeed be influenced by your tastes when assessing a whisky. A score isn’t anything else than a way of expressing how much you enjoyed a particular whisky and your enjoyment depends on your tastes. Case closed? Not quite…
 
… Because what some good people will add ad libitum is that your ‘tastes’ or ‘feelings’ cannot be consistent as they depend on a variety of factors, including time, mood, shape, location, glassware, food and so on. In other words, that Monday’s 80 points will be Thursday’s 87 points. In my opinion, that’s correct as well, even if a trained taster should be a little more accurate than that (by the way, I’ve seen a famous master blender (not from Whyte & Mackay’s!) who, after having nosed a very peaty malt whisky (around 35ppm), claimed that it was a Lowlander and no, he wasn’t evoking one of these excellent peated Bladnochs!)
 
Anyway, so, scores are meaningless because no taster will be consistent enough, at least not as consistent as a machine such as a mass spectrometer, right? Yes and no. There are many ways of lowering your inconsistency, no matter how experienced you are. It’s not a matter of skill, it’s simply a matter of organization. The first thing that, in my opinion, is very important is that a score should always be comparative. You cannot indeed just quaff a single whisky and claim that it’s worth 85 (why not 80? Why not 90?)  Well, you can, but by doing so you’re indeed also scoring your mood, the place where you are, the friends who are around and the pepperoni pizza that you just wolfed down.
 
So comparison is paramount in my opinion, even more so than ‘consistent settings’ (place, time, glassware and such). The first thing you’ll have to do in my opinion, and I find it funny that no naysayers ever talk about that, is to use ‘reference’ or ‘benchmark’ whiskies to check whether your senses are in good shape or not, to calibrate them and to readjust your ‘internal scale’ before any new tasting session. Find a few rather consistent (avoid whiskies that are subject to too much batch variation) and popular malts, score them several times and then use them as benchmarks, that is to say malts you’ll always have a few drops of before any session, for instance Laphroaig 10 for a ‘peated’ session. Of course, using Octomore at cask strength won’t quite work ;-). So, does your Laphroaig 10 taste different than usual? You’d rather score it 78 or 92 instead of the expected 85? Cancel your session, you’re not in good shape! This is a main difference between tasting and scoring wine and tasting and scoring spirits. Using benchmark wines is much harder to do, as wines change a lot and as it’s not easy to crack open a new bottle of, say Chasse Spleen 2000 every time you’re having a few cabs ;-).
 
So, I tell you, whether you’re a beginner or a dedicated imbiber, you’ll improve your consistency by using benchmark whiskies. That quite a few old drinkers do not believe in ‘consistency’ at all mainly comes from the fact that they were never organized enough to do that, or never thought about that, and when they criticize others, it’s in fact themselves that they bash ;-).
 
Now, there’s also the issue of the 100-scale. I agree it’s not perfect, and 5 stars, for instance, can be enough for some tasters (that’s why I’m using both), but I must say I do need the 100-scale for my own use. Why? Because, again, I believe in comparisons and only in comparisons. Not only comparisons with a benchmark whisky this time, also comparisons with similar whiskies. No matter your tasting abilities, if you try, say two young Macallans ex-bourbon head-to-head, you’ll almost always like one a little better, even if both are very similar. That’s where the 100-scale comes handy! ‘A little better’ may translate into a difference of only one point.

So to sum things up and provided you’d be willing to score your whiskies as well (and were not traumatised by your school days), I humbly think that a fairly good solution is this:

Constant settings (location, glassware and such)
Benchmark whiskies (sets scale, check senses, makes relations and proportions between many scores a little more accurate)
Compare similar whiskies (fine tuning, nuances)

I believe that won’t make your scores any more objective, because your tastes and sometimes your emotions will always rule, but I think this wee method should make them more consistent and maybe less irrelevant both to yourself and to your friends if you’re mad enough to publish them (and are ready to take some flak!) Having said that, we’ll never be machines even we tried hard, and that’s very good news if you ask me.
 
Oh, one last thing and as I wrote several times before, I believe scores should always come with tasting notes that will explain why you scored The GlenWonka 100 years old only 39 points. But in all cases, everything will always remain personal opinions and the only thing we can maybe achieve is some kind of ‘fairly consistent subjectivity’. – Serge

Visit Serge and the excellent Whiskyfun at www.whiskyfun.com