Many times, when visiting a specialised wine and spirits shop, or even a supermarket, one can be a bit overwhelmed by the selection and wildly varying prices of whiskies. Therefore, I have written this guide so that no matter what price point you are looking at, you can narrow and identify which whiskies can give you a better quality-to-price ratio and experience.

The first hallmark of a good whisky is the level of alcohol by volume. Usually, a higher ABV indicates a higher quality whisky. This is because the alcohol is what gives flavour to a whisky, as alcohol extracts oil and other natural chemicals from the barrels. Therefore, when you have a whisky at 46% ABV, it is delivering more flavour and complexity than a whisky at 40% AVB. Also, higher ABV gives more mouth feel due to being more viscose leading to a more rewarding experience.

The second hallmark of a good whisky is the sign on the label reading non-chill filtered. In simple terms, chill filtering is when whisky is cooled down to around 5 degrees Celsius, where it is then passed under pressure through filters. This removes oils i.e., flavour and reduces the mouth feel. The reason the industry does that is that it had some complaints from people that thought that the whisky went bad as it turned cloudy, but this could not be further from the truth. When whisky is unchill filtered it becomes cloudy, due to the oils reacting to water and cooler temperatures since it is a natural product. So, when you see a whisky that states that it is non-chill filtered on the label you can assume that the whisky is of higher quality.

The third hallmark of a good whisky is the text ‘natural colour’. Caramel colourant is widely used in the industry for two primary reasons. The first is that it gives consistency of colour from batch to batch and the second reason is to satisfy the misconception that, the darker a whisky looks the older and more flavour it has. The reason that natural colour is better is that you are receiving the product in its most natural form but also sometimes the heavy use of caramel colourant can give the whisky a bitter taste. The way to identify that whisky is coloured is that either natural colour is not stated on the label, or it has an orangey hue that almost shines in the bottle a bit like the colour of the popular
Maltese soft drink Kinnie. Natural colour is always better, and it allows you to appreciate the wide variety of colours that comes from this natural product.

The fourth and final hallmark of a good quality whisky is an age statement on the bottle. The addition of an age statement gives transparency to the customer, this is because the customer knows, that the youngest whisky in that bottle is the number stated on the label. This enables a better ability to judge the quality-price ratio. Non-age-stated whiskies do not say the age and more often than not the bottle contains young whisky. So, when spending money on a whisky it is always better to go for an age statement as you have a guarantee of what you have in the bottle. These are fantastic guidelines that can be used to draw out a high-quality whisky.

My last tip which ties everything I have said is that the more a whisky label has detail and gives you more information the producer has less place to hide and in turn gives you a higher quality product.

A Fantastic example