We, the SCWC (Southern California Whiskey Club), have done several blind whiskey tastings over the years, but our virtual tasting of 20 blind ryes was our most ambitious yet. We held our first big blind tasting in 2016 to see how people would talk about various rye whiskeys when we removed bias by removing the labels.
That night we had folks talk, not rate, about their favorite, least favorite and make some guesses about what they were drinking before the reveal at the end of the night. The majority of the group ended up listing the Pikesville Rye as their favorite and the majority listed the Highspire Rye as their least favorite – though by no means was it unanimous. However, no one listed Highspire as their favorite nor Pikesville as their least either.
My main takeaway from that night was that while people’s palates differ, general levels of perceived quality seem to be fairly universal amongst seasoned, nerdy, whiskey drinkers. In 2017 we repeated the experiment, but this time with bourbon.
For the 8 blind bourbons, we had the members rank them and we took a tally of votes, you can find the results in the linked post at the beginning of this paragraph. The rank was our way of getting people to think hard about the quality of the whiskey they were drinking and not wonder WHAT they were drinking. And for a very good reason, we hid a Van Winkle Special Reserve Lot B 12 Years in the flight.
The rest of the whiskeys were easy to find, right-off-the-shelf, bourbons on the upper end of every-day quality. The hope was to prove you don’t need to camp out overnight or pay hundreds, for a “pappy” when you can get whiskey at your local bottle shop that’s just as good, if not better. And it worked. The Van Winkle came out dead in the middle with no one reporting it as their favorite or least favorite.
After that, we did 2 blind spirits tastings where people were encouraged to rate and give their guesses of what spirit and/or distillery it was from. One of which featured all SMWS bottle and the other a wide range of spirts going from Armagnac to Rum. We also did a blind mash bill guessing game with all the Jim Beam Harvest collection where members guessed the flavor grain, but that was purely for fun.
These events have always been wildly entertaining, and at least mildly educational, and we missed doing them. And while this ongoing pandemic has interrupted our regular gatherings it did create an opportunity for us to do something we couldn’t, or might not, have done otherwise: up the ante from 8 to 20 blind ryes.
Moving to a virtual format allowed us to make it a larger event and break it into two separate evenings spread a week apart. This gave the members time to taste and rate the whiskeys at their own pace. The live event was more-or-less just for getting together, having a discussion, collecting the votes and doing the reveals, but doing it this way allowed the members to come to the meeting with their opinions and ratings intact and without influence from anyone else.
While these virtual tastings are fun… they’re just not the same. I don’t leave them with the same feeling of satisfaction and sense of community that we’ve built over the years with SCWC. But we’re trying our best to make lemonade from the giant ugly lemon that is 2020.
In addition to breaking this down into two rounds and we structured the tasting so the whiskeys were ordered by proof to prevent a cask strength rye from overpowering a 42% rye sitting next to it. For the voting portion, we asked the 24 SCWC members in attendance to rate the whiskeys based on their personal enjoyment of the whiskey with a rating from 1 to 5 with 5 being they loved it and 1 being they loathed it.
At the end of each round we tallied up the results, did the reveal and now I’m sharing those results with the world because I thought y’all might find it interesting. Below is what was in each round and how they scored.
While looking at these keep in mind that Round 1 had 24 voters so the min aggregate score (i.e., all 1 star) would be 24 and the max 120 (all 5 stars). Round 2 only had 22 voters so the min aggregate for round 2 is 22 and the max is 110. Results listed from lowest score to highest.
SCWC 20 Blind Ryes Round 1
- 35 Leopold’s Maryland-Style Rye
- 47 A.D. Laws Secale Rye
- 59 Corsair Dark Rye
- 62 High West Double Rye (2015)
- 64 Woodinville 100% Rye
- 64 Woodford Reserve Rye
- 67 Clyde May’s Rye
- 68 Michter’s SiB Rye
- 72 Elijah Craig Rye
- 79 Rabbit Hole Boxergrail Rye
SCWC 20 Blind Ryes Round 2
- 57 Old Portrero SiB
- 59 J.E.P 1776 Rye
- 60 J.E.P 1776 Rye Barrel Proof
- 60 Wilderness Trail Rye
- 68 Piggyback rye
- 69 Knob Creek Barrel Proof
- 69 Old Overholt Bonded
- 72 Rarebreed Rye
- 72 New Riff SiB
- 74 Kentucky Owl
SCWC 20 Blind Ryes Total
Raw Total- 35 Leopold’s Maryland-Style Rye
- 47 A.D. Laws Secale Rye
- 57 Old Portrero SiB
- 59 Corsair Dark Rye
- 59 J.E.P 1776 Rye
- 60 Wilderness Trail Rye
- 60 J.E.P 1776 Rye Barrel Proof
- 62 High West Double Rye (2015)
- 64 Woodinville 100% Rye
- 64 Woodford Reserve Rye
- 67 Clyde May’s Rye
- 68 Michter’s SiB Rye
- 68 Piggyback rye
- 69 Old Overholt Bonded
- 69 Knob Creek Barrel Proof
- 72 Elijah Craig Rye
- 72 Rarebreed Rye
- 72 New Riff SiB
- 74 Kentucky Owl
- 79 Rabbit Hole Boxergrail Rye
HOWEVER…
Since there were two people who couldn’t make it to the second meeting, and so couldn’t vote, it threw the numbers off. Going back and normalizing the data to reflect their absence, the end results actually look like this.
Adjusted Total (22 min, 110 max points)
- 29 Leopold’s Maryland-Style Rye
- 42 A.D. Laws Secale Rye
- 53 Corsair Dark Rye
- 56 High West Double Rye (2015)
- 57 Old Portrero SiB
- 58 Woodford Reserve Rye
- 59 Woodinville 100% Rye
- 59 James E. Pepper 1776 Rye
- 60 Wilderness Trail Rye
- 60 James E. Pepper 1776 Barrel Proof Rye
- 62 Michter’s SiB Rye
- 62 Clyde May’s Rye
- 66 Elijah Craig Rye
- 68 Piggyback rye
- 69 Old Overholt Bonded
- 69 Knob Creek Barrel Proof
- 72 Rabbit Hole Boxergrail Rye
- 72 Rare Breed Rye
- 72 New Riff SiB
- 74 Kentucky Owl
Because I picked the ryes, placed the order and had the bottles in front of me for the reveal I didn’t vote, but I’ve already reviewed many of them and for the ones I hadn’t, I made notes and scores. But if I had voted, my votes would have kicked the Rare Breed Rye to 1st place, Kentucky Owl Rye to 3rd, New Riff to 2nd and the Leopold’s would have stayed exactly where it is in dead last.
Looking at the results, and the raw numbers, a couple of interesting things popped out at me. The reason Rabbit Hole Boxergrail Rye scored so high is not because it got the most 5 star ratings, it didn’t, but because it was the least divisive whiskey in the group. Most of the whiskeys had a good spread from 2-4 stars with a 5 or a 1 in there too, but the majority of Rabbit Hole’s scores were in the 3-4 range. It ranked so high by being solidly “above average”.
This is very interesting and might say a thing or two about whiskey competition rankings when you’re averaging out votes in a group. The whiskey that gets the most 5/5 votes might not win the award, but the least divisive whiskey that got the most “above average” votes could. Which is exactly what happened in our tasting.
There was a 3-way tie when it came to getting the most 5 star ratings: Old Potrero Single Barrel, Knob Creek Barrel Proof, and New Riff Single Barrel. What brought the Old Potrero’s score down is that it was VERY divisive and had the second most 1-star ratings. One man’s trash is another’s treasure and all that.
Was this completely and utterly scientifically sound? Not really. Was this a fun and interesting way for people to explore different profiles of rye, find new favorites and surprise themselves and take a stab at their preconceptions? Yes, definitely. And because it was so much fun we’re doing it again, this time with bourbon. Same format, same idea of ranking based on taste and once we get it all tallied over the course of 2 events I’ll share the results here.
Cheers!