I hosted a whiskey tasting party for my brother's 50th birthday, and it was a blast. Since I spent quite a bit of time in preparation, especially in researching and creating materials, I thought I'd share.
I decided to serve 6 whiskeys, which turned out to be a good amount in terms of time and flavors. Knowing very little about whiskeys, I went to my friendly guru of all things alcohol, Rishi, and asked him to pick out 6 different kinds of whiskey, all from different places and all about the same price point.
That was almost a great idea, but if I would do it again, I'd vary the prices on two bottles to create a little interest and competition. I'd have four around the same price, let's say $50. Then I'd have one about double that, about $100, and another about half, around $25. Now everyone is guessing both the region (which most people won't know but that was still fun) and even better, they're guessing which two were the price outliers.
For this tasting, I bought all the bottles because it was my brother's birthday, but next time I'd assign bottles for people to bring. Technically it's best to have new bottles or ones that have been open bout the same time, i.e., don't mix new bottles with ones that have been in a bar for a while.
Most of us were whiskey new-bees, so I created this Basics sheet which included information and graphics I pulled from different sites.
Next, the table set up. I had 6 sheets of labeled paper and placed all the poured sample shots on those sheets before hand. Those numbers corresponded to the numbers on my tasting sheet. I got my shot glasses from Rishi's, but there available online as well.
Also on the table was a dispenser and mini ice cubes, which are needed because each whiskey is scored both neat and with water or ice. I used the white ceramic dispenser for the water, which worked well, and found an ice tray for making small rounded cubes that fit perfectly in the shot glasses.
In the middle of the table was a small charcutier board with shaved dark chocolate and a selection of cheese, crackers and nuts. The two foods that received the most compliments were these two, both from Trader Joe's. The foods were helpful as cleansers between tastes, but more importantly, the tasting took longer than I anticipated, so we needed those substantial appetizers because we didn't eat dinner till we were finished.
For the scoring I created both a Tasting Guide and Scorecard, had them available at each seat. I've included printable versions if you'd like to use them. The first is a Tasting Guide for people who hadn't tried whiskey before.
The second is scorecard with two sections. In the first, the whiskeys are rated individually on different characteristics, and the second is a flavor map where all the whiskeys are plotted together for comparison. I created my Flavor Map by combining several flavor maps I found. I wish it more definitive and distinct descriptors, so let me know if you have ideas. It did work well, however, and was by far the most interesting to compare at the end with everyone else.
After we were done with all 6 tastings, I brought out the opened whiskey bottles, placing them on the appropriately numbered paper, and let the discussion begin. This was really fun. We quickly went around the table indicating which bottle had received our best and worse ratings, and where we had placed those two on the flavor map.
Many whiskeys were sampled again, of course.
We had dinner after, which I now realize gave everyone time to decide whether to drive home or call an Uber.
We had 9 people total. This was a good number but I think it would have been fine to have a few more. Let me know how it goes if you host one!
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