Bold statement ahoy – I don’t really believe in tasting notes.

Let that settle, and please keep reading.

Its not that I don’t believe that they summarise the possible flavour and taste notes you may experience and enjoy with each sip of a malt, be it single or blended.

It is that I don’t think that tasting notes alone should dictate anyone’s whisky experience.

People get quite hung up with trying to find the tasting notes suggested in reviews, on pack and in official product details but in truth we know that the people who decided on the words used to describe the flavour profiles have highly tuned taste buds, work with whisky every day and know a lot more than us. In other words, they create an aura of what a whisky may taste like but they don’t often manage to deliver an explanation as to what the overall emotive experience of drinking their whisky will be.

But we are all unique, all taste differently and all understand flavours differently.

Bold question ahoy – Is there a redundancy of tasting notes as each person’s experience is so unique and varied and practically incomparable?

One of my frustrations in life is that my taste buds are not that well developed, or at least have taken a battering over the years through a tendency to powerful flavours that often mean the delicacies are overlooked or, simply, not understood.

But what I am highly attuned to is the experience of what I’m consuming.

I am a highly visual person, working to build and fix brands all over the world is what I do, and to do that well you need to ground the rational with the emotional in order to foster something worth buying into and sharing with others.

Something that became a pretty strong talking point whilst at a recent event at SMWS was how whisky tasting is so subjective.

One night you can love and appreciate a specific whisky you’re sampling as you’re in the moment, surrounded by good people but go back to the exact same liquid three days later and you have a completely different feeling. Why?

Because the ambiance, the surroundings, the people, the occasion are all emotively driven factors that directly affect the consumption ritual and the enjoyment factor of any event.