E-Signment #5
(Contributions by Klaus, Louis, and Craig)

'Malts for nothing - Peat for free?' by Klaus Everding

You want to have excellent malts but you want to pay as little a possible. In other words, you want to know the malts with good value for money relation. Ok, maybe I can help you. But before I give my recommendations I will have to tell you something about my preferences, the situation in Hamburg/Germany from the malty point of view and the money which I am willing to spend for malts.

- Preferences: I like the Islay malts. Heavy and peaty malts. That's the kind of stuff I prefer. Lowland malts are not my cup of tea. Speysiders - well some of them are excellent, but many of them taste more or less the same.
- Hamburg/Germany: It seems that I live somewhere near paradise. I have a shop with more than 500 malts available ranging from 13 Euro (Glen Grant n.a.s.) to 1500 Euro (Bowmore 1957) just 20 minutes away with public transportation. I really like to explore the shelves. The prices are reasonable and the shop assistants are competent. Liquors are taxed on the amount of alcohol. Nice - booze or single malts are taxed the same.
- My available money: the last year I had no job and that meant not too much money available for malts.  I had to keep the price in mind always. 50 Euro was personal my limit. Everything above that had to be really great.  Now I have a job but less time to enjoy malts. It could be that  my point of view might change. Anyway I don't think it is reasonalble to spend large amounts of money on malts when there are so many nice malts below the 50 Euro limit. You can explore these expensive regions when you are ambitious to become a malt master.

And now here are my recommendations. 10 only. No complicated formulars, although I could enjoy it (I am a physicist you know). I will not prentend to be objective.

1-3 my three true loves (excellent malts which are widely available):
Laphroaig 10y - 32 Euro for this heavy peated malt (1 litre bottle) - my score 95
Macallan 12y - 36 Euro for one of the best Speyside malts (1 litre bottle) - my score 92
Highland Park 12 y - 30 Euro for the this wonderful malt (0.7 litre bottle) - my score 90

For the small purse:
Glenfarclas 10y - almost as good as the Mac 12y but only 21 Euro (0.7 l bottle) - my score 84

Also good value for money:
Glenmorangie 10y - 28 Euro for the 0.7 litre bottle - my score 85
Lagavulin 16y - the symphony in peat for only 31 Euro (0.7 litre bottle) - my score 84
Bowmore 12 y - 35 Euro  for 1 litre of Bowmore, nice - my score 84
Dalmore 12 y - 31 Euro  for the 1 litre bottle of this nice malt - my score 79
Balvenie Double wood - don't spend your money on the Founder's Reserve; the few bucks more for the DW are worth it. 38 Euro for the 1 litre bottle - my score 83
Ardbeg 17y - almost at my limit with 48 Euro for the 0.7 litre bottle but I really enjoy it - my score 92

The prices I mentioned are based on the latest pricelist of my shop www.weinquelle.com. They deliver everywhere in the world, but the fools haven't built an international website yet.

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'The Magic Price Point' by Louis Perlman

Value, typically means getting the most for one's money.
So that means the cheapest whisky, right? Or maybe the one with the best price/rating ratio, if someone could ever come up with a formula that is understandable to non-Nobel prize winners. I'd like to propose therefore, that value as it applies to the world of single malt scotch whisky depends on each individual's level of involvement, along with the amount of disposable income at the moment. So then, value is that magic price point that will maximize the enjoyment of one's purchase, while minimizing the detrimental effect on other acquisitions.

It seems to me that there are four stages of the life cycle of involvement in any hobby. The first is discovery, just finding out what all the fuss is about. The second is branching out, figuring out what the 'universe' of the hobby or interest is made up up. The third stage is avid enthusiasm, otherwise know as sheer lunacy. This is the point where pretty much anything goes. And finally comes retrenchment, settling down after the wild abandon of the previous stage.

So by examining the appropriate level of expenditure at each level, I believe that sort of value system will emerge. For SMS beginners, the obvious candidates for purchase are the standards, the Classic Malts, Highland Park, Macallan, etc. Now, spending $30-40 on a bottle of whisky may seem like quite a lot of money, considering that the popular 12 year old blends such as Chivas Regal and Johnnie Walker Black Label typically go for around $25. And there certainly inexpensive single malts, Dalmore 12 for $20 and Speyburn 10 and Glen Garrioch 8 both going for a mere $15. But while these are surprisingly good at first sip, they are fairly simple malts, and not likely to be satisfying over the long term. Best idea, if on a tight budget, use the savings from the budget bottles towards the better ones.

Moving up to the next step, we can assume that the older (15-18 year) expressions are within reach. At this point, some of the private bottlings come into the picture as well. So it is possible to assemble a nice rotation without going broke. It's also starting to be tempting to move up the ladder and try something even more expensive. Here is where I would advise caution. While many expensive bottles are well worth the money, some only represent a small improvement over the $50 18 year old expression. Best advice is to get opinion of someone who's judgment you trust, be it someone you know in person or thru the internet. In any event, two to three medium price bottles probably represent more value here than one expensive one, unless it's to celebrate something like a significant birthday or anniversary.

But at stage three, all the stops come out. Anything goes now. The biggest change from the previous two stages is that pride of ownership becomes a factor.
And how can anybody state definitively what the value of that is. So it's up to each whisky lover to make that decision. Obviously, an Islay lover wouldn't pay a premium for a specific vintage Macallan, and a Speyside afficianado won't be doing backflips for a 1974 or earlier Ardbeg. And you'll have to decide for yourself what the value quotient is for something long since discontinued, or from a silent or dismantled distillery.

But after having a lot of fun, it's time to settle down a bit. The cabinet is full, and there are several cases in various closets. Things are starting to fall of the car. Or maybe your spouse or significant other wants to know why they shouldn't be be buying any more shoes or sweaters, while your whisky acquisitions outnumber bottles consumed by a 3 to 1 factor. At this point, it's possible to look at something and say 'that's nice' instead of 'I've got to have it'. Value now means making each bottle really special.

And now, two related thoughts. As I mentioned above, it can be a good idea to purchase bottles at different price points, to maximize value. This is what the investment world calls dollar cost averaging, and what airlines call yield management (how the dirt cheap non-refundable 30 day advance purchaser sits next to the mega-price ticket business traveler). You really don't want to be drinking your most expensive stuff all the time, so save that for special occasions. You also don't want to waste the 'good stuff' on blend loving guests, so the standards are fine for them. And keep an eye open for budget sleepers. One budget stretching trick that I've mentioned before is to drink something cask strength from the same distillery 'shotgun' with a more expensive bottle. That way, the alcohol from the cask strength kicks in before I put away too much of the expensive stuff.

And now for my closing point. It pains me to see someone say that $50-60 is way too much to pay for a 10 or 12 year old whisky, typically in reference to Springbank or Glen Rothes. Well, in my formative years, I passed on the Glen Rothes 1979 at $42.95, and the Sprinbank 12/100 at $49.95. So I ended up missing out on the former, and paying an average of $65 for each of my bottles of the latter. The just discontinued but still available Springbank 12 year old gives me more enjoyment than most of the bottles in my collection. Whatever your budget is, drinking by the label isn't really a good idea.

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'Malt Whisky and Value for Money' by Craig Daniels

In the decade that I have been a serious malt devotee, there has always been something that has bothered me about scoring systems for malts. And this annoyance persists regardless of whether the scoring lists are put together by gifted amateurs or industry mouthpieces of varying degrees of independence; no-one ever mentions the price of the whiskies they score so you can't really determine "value for money" or a Quality Price Ratio (QPR).

I have attempted to do this so that anyone in any market in the world can plug the data in and come up with a number that equates price to score and allows maltsters to compare whiskies in different countries, of different alcoholic strengths and bottle size. I am about as far from a statistician or mathematician as you could imagine so if any people with such expertise can recommend refinements, I'd be pleased.

Before I tell you my formula and my best value for money whiskies I have to make a few comments. I have tasted lots and lots of great whiskies, but I won't score or recommend a whisky that I haven't bought for my shelves. In my system money matters; that is I am not a 'price is no object' kind of a guy. I'd rather spend my money on two bottles that I rate 85 than on one that I rate 89. I can't and won't evaluate malt whiskies independent of their cost. This is because I wouldn't feel right recommending someone to buy a whisky that I didn't immediately go out and buy myself. Of course this also means that some stellar malts can't be rated because my 'parsimony meter' kicks in at around AUD$150 and I wouldn't spend more than that on any whisky not scoring at least 90 on the Malt Madness Matrix. Of course it doesn't preclude someone else who has bought a Macallan 25 or a Macallan 1874 from plugging their price and score into the formula and coming up with a QPR. I also know that my formula disadvantages very expensive whiskies, as technically the maximum a 700ml whisky at 40% that costs US$100 and scores 100 points could score is .89. But for me the QPR only delivers truly meaningful data with MMM scores below 90 as the 'parsimony factor' is discarded above 90MMM points.

Secondly I won't recommend whiskies that score below 75 on the Malt Madness Matrix to a third party on any basis, let alone that of value for money. As I said money matters, but quality matters more. Thus me recommending you to spend your money on a whisky that scores less than 75 is unacceptable on two grounds; one I wouldn't buy the stuff myself and two you no longer have that money to put towards a bottle that does score 75 or more. My formula also doesn't allow for the 'pride of ownership' factor, which while undeniable, is even more in the eye of the beholder than most other things about whisky.

OK here's my formula:
QPR = (50/USD per 700ml) x (alc%by volume/40) X (MMMscore/75) 2 X (MMMscore/100)2

I use US dollars for convenience and because most maltsters all over the world can't avoid knowing the US dollar exchange rate with their own currencies. You could use any currency really and obviously while currency exchange rates do fluctuate and thus the raw scores would change, the relativities within of your own personal QPR list would not. For me using US dollars means that a QPR below 1 is a 'not recommended' signal and a QPR over 1.25 is a 'buy' signal. Feel free to play around with it as you see fit. Plug in a whisky that scores 95 at 46% and costs US$100 and see whether it's a better value for money whisky than a whisky that scores 88 at 40% and costs $US52.
Following are some of my personal favourites with acceptable to great QPRs;

Aberlour a'bunadh (AUD62, US32)
QPR = (50/32) x (59.9/40) x (85/75) 2 x (85/100)2 = (1.5625 x 1.4975 x 1.2844 x .7225) = 2.17
Lagavulin 16
QPR = (50/32) x (43/40) x (88/75) 2 x (88/100)2 = (1.667 x 1.075 x 1.377 x .7744) = 1.91
Laphroaig 10
QPR = (50/33) x (43/40) x (85/75) 2 x (85/100)2 = (1.5151 x 1.075 x 1.284 x .7225) = 1.51
Macallan 12
QPR = (50/32) x (43/40) x (84/75) 2 x (84/100)2 = (1.5625 x 1.075 x 1.2544 x .7056) = 1.49
Laphroaig 15
QPR = (50/55) x (43/40) x (93/75) 2 x (93/100)2 = (.9091 x 1.075 x 1.5376 x .8649) = 1.30

And finally everyone's benchmark malt:
Glenlivet 12
QPR = (50/20) x (40/40) x (76/75) 2 x (76/100)2 = (2.5 x 1.00 x 1.027 x .5776) = 1.48

Anyway, that's it. Have fun.

Slainte

Craig