World Whisky Award confusion



There is a bit of confusion out there about exactly which 20-year old Yoichi single malt won the World Whisky Awards 2008 prize. I have seen at least one online store saying that the standard Yoichi 20 was the winner. I have not received final confirmation but my impression is that the winner was the 1987 Yoichi 20-year-old that Nonjatta covered here.

There is absolutely no suggestion here that the retailers are making anything other than an honest mistake here. The award announcement is a little confusing and I apologise if Nonjatta's early coverage did not make this distinction sufficiently clear. On a broader point, there can be a real problem in clearly identifying particular whiskies in a market in which producers are putting out hundreds of specialised bottlings with overlapping designations. On Nonjatta, I try to clearly distinguish different products without weighing the posts and indexes down with multiple line titles which I feel would just put-off newcomers and make the site unusable. So, for instance, I called the 1987 20-year-old "Yoichi 1987" to distinguish it from the "Yoichi 20" of the standard range. In the end, I think the photos can be as useful in correct identification as the written detail. This is always a bit of a trade-off between usability and nerdiness and I would appreciate feedback from readers.

Comments

Anonymous said…
You are absolutely right about the problem with the 20 years Yoichi 1987.

I tried it in Limburg, Germany, at a tasting from Maison du Whisky. After the tasting I tried to get a bottle and found the description as 'best whisky of the world' etc. at some shops but never with the difference between the 'normal' 20years old and this one from 1987. Even if you see the different labels you are not sure, if you can get the right one.
I made a private tasting with the same announcement 'best whisky bla bla bla but unfortunately it was not the right Yoichi.
I made also a mark at whisky-magazine forum but never get an answer.
The problem could be, that both have the same alcohol %.

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