Whisky Classified: Choosing Single Malts by Flavour

This book on single malt whisky makes an excellent guide for all whisky drinkers, from the novice to the connoisseur. Single malt whisky is the fastest expanding sector of the booming whisky market. Over half of Scotland’s whisky distilleries are open to visitors and visitor numbers reached record numbers of over 1.7 million in 2016.

Whisky Classified has revolutionized our appreciation of single malt whisky. David Wishart cuts through the confusing jargon often used to describe single malts and replaces it with an objective and easily applied guide to taste using his easy to understand system of flavour profiles. He identifies twelve dimensions to the aroma and taste of a single malt whisky: body, sweetness, smoky, medicinal, tobacco, honey, spicy, winey, nutty, malty, fruity, floral.

In this fully revised and updated edition, David Wishart has included all new UK and Irish producers of single malt whisky. The author has also updated the taste profiles for each selected malt 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 flavour profiles according to this innovative classification. The history of whisky-making and production methods are clearly explained, and the author also explains how to organize a whisky tasting.

David Wishart became interested in malt whisky when, as a mathematics undergraduate at St Andrews, he was first introduced to cask-strength Laphroaig by his father. Following his father into the Scottish Office, David qualified as a Chartered Statistician and served as Director of Statistics. He gained a PhD in classification methodology and is Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Management, University of St Andrews. Dr Wishart has published the technical aspects of Whisky Classified in international journals and presented it widely at scientific conferences, seminars and whisky festivals. His recent work includes conducting surveys in the whisky industry to validate his classification, designing software and lecturing in the UK, Europe and North America.