Table Of Scores

Distillers' Edition Challenge Tuesday January 12, 1999 United Distillers took their "classic malt series" scotch whiskies and aged all of them for a few extra years in different oak barrels and packaged them as the Distillers' Edition (DE) series. We took it upon ourselves to find out if the resulting "usige beatha" (gaelic for water of life) was in fact an improvement over their regularly bottled offerings. Four of the six brands were examined at a tasting on Tuesday January 12, 1999: Cragganmore 12 yr and DE 1984, Dalwhinnie 15 yr and DE 1980, Glenkinchie 10 yr and DE 1986, Talisker 10 yr and DE 1986. Age, oak, and expense were smiled upon once again with all of the Distillers Edition whiskies finishing with equal or higher scores to their regular counterparts. Whether the improvement was worth the 50% price premium is open to discussion. The Cragganmore 1984, Talisker 1986, and both the Dalwhinnies were well appreciated by the assembled tasters, all finishing with median scores above 20 out of 30 possible points. Scores posted are median results

	Nose	Body	Palate	Finish	Likability	Total	Rank
	out of 4	out of 4	out of 6	out of 8	out of 8	out of 30
Cragganmore 1984	3.0	3.0	4.5	6.0	5.5	22.0	1
Talisker 1986	3.0	3.0	4.0	5.5	5.5	21.0	2
Dalwhinnie 15 yr	2.5	3.0	4.5	5.0	5.5	20.5	3
Dalwhinnie 1980	3.0	3.0	4.5	5.0	5.0	20.5	3
Talisker 10 yr	3.0	3.0	4.0	5.0	5.0	20.0	5
Glenkinchie 1986	2.5	2.5	4.0	5.0	5.0	19.0	6
Cragganmore 12 yr	2.0	2.5	4.0	5.0	5.0	18.5	7
Glenkinchie 10 yr	2.0	2.0	3.0	4.0	5.0	14.0	8

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