Tomatin 30 Year Old

Honest review. As @paddockjudge often reminds us, price has no bearing on the taste.

I have often thought that my $80 Tempest or Amrut Fusion would give me greater enjoyment than Johnnie Walker Blue.... And having tasted all three I now KNOW it.

(mind, you, if you can FIND Tempest, it probably goes for more than $80 nowadays)

I’ve had a half full bottle of 25 YO Tomatin kicking around for about 2 years. It is so cloyingly sweet and syrupy that I just can’t drink it. And it wasn’t cheap by any means.

@Nozinan My kingdom for some Tempest. And I’ll throw in my other kingdom for some Laimrig.

@McGrain what would be your number score for this whisky if it had cost 60 or 90 GBP?

For many of us your numbers become completely irrelevant if they are based on personal subjective value for money. We have no way to compare your financial values to our own.

@BlueNote Just the cost of a ticket to Toronto and you can enjoy that and more...

@Victor, I believe a rating influenced by value determination is an unduly biased score; price does not change the taste. Good is good, regardless of the price.

I'm not sure that the reviewer is suggesting the score would be higher if the price were lower. I think the suggestion is simply that this is a drinkable but not stellar whisky and that whisky of the same quality can be had at a lower price.

I could be wrong of course, but that was my take on it.

@paddockjudge EVERY rating based on subjective criteria is a BASED score. There is no unbiased score on Connosr.

@Nozinan unduly, unduly, unduly, to be clear, unduly biased.

@Nozinan the big clue is the title of this review, and the title and text of the accompanying review of Glen Scotia 18 yo by the same reviewer.

Is 'bias' the correct word to describe the subjective? I don't think so. "Prejudice" is the word most associated with dictionary definitions of 'bias'. Prejudice = pre-judgment. An honest subjective appraisal and preference made after experiencing the product is not pre-judged and therefore not biased. The subjective remains unique to the individual experiencing it, and therefore cannot claim any form of universal application to the tastes and experiences of others. Where you use the word "biased" I would use the word "subjective".

When @OdysseusUnbound says that he is biased toward Lagavulin I reply to him that his love of the Lagavulin products which he has tasted makes him biased toward Lagavulin only if he says that one of its products is great without he himself actually having tasted it. A subjective personal preference is an entirely different thing than is a pre-judgment without experience of the product under discussion.

Perhaps a more useful way of assessing value for money is to state whether you think it's worth the cost? In this case, clearly not

We've probably all bought bottles that were not amazing but decent and reliable simply because they were cheap. That says a lot to me.

And, for my other cent's worth, I'm convinced knowing we've got a good deal affects the taste; even if it is psychological the effect is tangible. Subjectively, of course

Thanks for the review @McGrain.

I don’t think getting something cheap improves the taste. What I think it does is increase enjoyment.

Cracking a great bottle of OGD 114, knowing I paid $30 for it, is a load of fun. But it still tastes the same, which is great.

I liked the Amrut Single Cask bottles the LCBO brought in but would, at the time, not pay $125 for them. I did get them when they were reduced, buttery tasted the same.

@Victor I think we all show bias when we score and review whiskies here. If you don’t like sherry maturation, you will score A’Bunadh lower Han I would. Someone who does not like peat will not score a peated whisky as high.

@Nozinan I would never call what you describe "bias".

Hello all.

I score whisky (find it a bit awkward tbh anyway) relative to each other - not relative to the price. So how much i've paid for whisky matters to me and so I record it accordingly but it's how good this one "feels" in an overall sense compared to others. So if it matters, the cost is nothing to do with the score.

As to the wider argument, score it as you see it I say. The idea that taste is objective, or that objective criteria can be mined and some wider experience of the whisky is therefore invalid doesn't appeal to me personally.

Much love.