"The Cabinet" is a Winnipeg based scotch whisky tasting club that meets every two months to sample, discuss and enjoy scotch and occasionally other related malt-based beverages.

Monday, September 23, 2013

The Value Proposition

If you have been following this blog carefully you will have observed the evolution of our scoring system. The Cabinet was originally founded to allow the members to taste the very best whiskies, regardless of cost, so "value" was never really part of the formal discussion. The scores you see on the right allow us to say that anything in the "good" range (5.0 - 6.9) is recommended and everything above 7.0 is highly recommended from a pure enjoyment perspective.
Realistically, however, the reader may not have a limitless scotch budget (unjust!) so somewhere value does have to be addressed. A simple way to do this is to look at the cost of the bottle and divide it by our point score. In other words, how many dollars does does it take to buy one point of enjoyment for a given malt. The math geeks among you (Trevor...) will immediately recognize the flaw in this approach which is that it assumes a linear arithmetic relationship between score and enjoyment when the relationship is probably somewhat more geometric, but that aside it is an interesting and, I think, illuminating exercise. On this basis, here are the top thirteen whiskies from our recommended list (i.e. scoring 5.0 and higher; highly recommended whiskies scoring 7.0 and higher are marked with an *):

Springbank 10* = $9.28 / point
Old Pulteney 12 = $9.67
Laphroaig Quarter Cask = $9.78
Laphroaig 10 = $10.28
Talisker 10* = $10.46
Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban = $11.28
Balvenie Doublewood = $12.70
Stronachie 12 = $14.60
Highland Park 18* = $18.46
Macallan 15* = $18.62
Oban 14 = $18.66
Laphroaig 18* = $21.27
Old Pulteney 21* = $22.59

I should mention that there were a few recommended whiskies that I was unable to find a price for and there are of course many whiskies in our stocks that we have yet to score, so this list will continue to evolve.

Slainte!

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