Whisky Classified: Choosing Single Malts by Flavour

by David Wishart

Cutting through the confusing jargon often used to describe single malts, this book, now fully updated, replaces it with an objective and easily applied guide to taste using a new flavor profile
 
Rigorously researched with the cooperation of the whisky industry, this classification of single malt whiskies by flavor has been totally revised and updated to include all the newest single malts from the UK and Ireland. The author has identified 12 dimensions to the aroma and taste of a single malt whisky: body, sweetness, smoky, medicinal, tobacco, honey, spicy, winey, nutty, malty, fruity, and floral. For this edition, the author has also updated the taste profiles for each selected malt and reviewed previous entries to ensure that this book remains the definitive guide to tasting malt whisky. Each entry includes a short description of the distillery, information for visitors, the author's own tasting notes, and his flavor profiles according to this innovative classification. The history of whisky-making and production methods are clearly explained, as is how to organize a whisky tasting.

Genres: Nonfiction, Food and Drink, Food, Reference

272 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2003

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Patrick Book]

A good starting place for those who are just beginning their whisky journey; the focus on flavour profiles makes good sense, and is likely more helpful than subjective and meaningless scores and rankings. The single-minded focus on Scottish single malts, however, is at best selective and at worst elitist. There's literally a world of experiences not even considered here.

[David Mosley]

In Whisky Classified, David Wishart gives you nearly everything you need to know about uisge beatha (pronounced ooshgy-bay) the Gaelic form of aqua vitae or the water of life. The first half of the book takes you through the history, production, and drinking vessels and techniques for best appreciating what most of us outside Scotland call single malt scotch. Wishart then gives you a variety of terms to help you describe the taste, nose (smell), colour, body, etc. of whisky, as well as introducing you to the cluster system whereby various types of whisky can be grouped together. Wishart then spends the rest of the book giving some detail on the major Scottish distilleries which put out a single malt between 10 and 15 years old. The book does not cover American, Irish, or any other version of whisky and only makes fleeting reference to some Scottish blends. Nevertheless, this book is useful in understanding the history behind whisky and gives you tools to help enjoy it even more. This book is certainly for the neophyte and includes a glossary at the end. It is certainly not intended for those whose only interest in whisky is how many shots they can do before falling down.

[Tomasz Stachewicz]

Great book. The information about distilleries might be outdated here and there due to many undergoing rapid expansions in the last years, including change in their official whisky bottlings (or at least change in the label design). But the introductory chapters and especially 12 flavor groups classification are priceless for every beginning and intermediate whisky enthusiasts.

[Mark Stockford]

Beatifully organised, really liked the way it gives you others that are similar to allow you to develop your tastes and search for new whiskeys to try.

[Jukka Kuva]

Whisky Classified offers a pretty basic and quite extensive look into the world of Single Malt Whisky. David Wishart is very analytical in his writing so that's why I'm a bit disappointed that there's so little general knowledge about whisky and how you should enjoy it. When it comes to specific information though, this book should be enough for most people. Wishart lists dozens of distillieries, each with a location on map, a one page introduction and a taste classification of their most popular whisky. If you buy a Scottish single malt whisky and can't find it in the book, you've most probably been scammed.

It's a bit boring to read since over a half of the book goes to the distillery introductions but it's a good information package to keep under your whiskies.

[Min]

The problem with whisky guides is that they make me want to taste all of the whiskies reviewed. On the plus side, however, is a handy guide to pronouncing many of my favourites which, up until now, I've basically pointed to and said, "That one, please."

[Henning Hj]

Great guide!

[Gregg]

An interesting take on profiling whisky and a useful one.