Royal Canadian Small Batch

Now that's what a review should look like: comprehensive, thoughtful, informative, credible and not based on a hasty first impression. Excellent as always @Victor. This is why I don't bother doing reviews, you've set the bar too high, I'm not worthy. Cheers.

^ Agreed!

@BlueNote, @michaelschout, thank you for appreciating this multiple format review. This review is meant to roll out for public display these alternative review formats, so that they will be introduced and explained for reference, when I or others use them, or some other similar formats, for future reviews. It would be nice to do this detailed and thorough a multiple format work-up for every review, but it would also be incredibly time-consuming. This review required the same effort that would typically be required for me to write three separate reviews. Despite great care and a great deal of time, I still also managed to have some typos and spacing irregularities by the time I did the final posting of the review. It is great fun, though, and I think quite informative, to look at these whiskies through these sorts of alternative lenses.

Extremely enjoyable, the three formats. Your hard court talents are evident; trey and a bonus (successfully hitting the category after being fouled by a cold) for a rare four-point play! I happen to be quite fond of RCSB, it reminds me of older expressions of Crown Royal and V.O. Thanks for the treat.

What @BlueNote said. Your reviews, @Victor, are one of the main reasons I'm thankful to have joined Connosr.

Very interesting review @Victor. I am trying to wrap my mind aorund what you are doing here. Your new system seems to incorporate ideas associated with Quantum Mechanics, as you are observing the subject through several different lenses. The non-time-space-sequential rating system combined with the in-genre comparison system seems to offer better comparison of intrinsic quality across whisky and less of subjective tasting experience. With this system it almost seems you begin to look at "forms" of whisky as the criteria. I think it might be interesting to eleborate a bit more on the characterists of S-C-V-H within the non-time-space-sequential rating system.

@NAV26, to further describe the ideas behind the non-space-time-sequential review (S-C-V-H), I would start off by saying that this approach views the sensory experiences from a frame of reference which is both more abstract from the individual parts of the tasting experience, ie avoiding the 'play-by-play' description of "first we smell the whisky, then we put it into our mouths, next we notice what we experience 5, 10, 20, 30, 60 seconds later....", thus a-temporal, but which simultaneously integrates in its discussion all of these phases of tasting together.

After much thought on the subject, I decided that the four categories of Strength, Quality, Variety, and Harmony, summed up all of the important and necessry parameters by which to evaluate the characteristics of the individual flavours and of the whole of the flavours contained within whisky.

These three different formats, taken together, represent to me the three main parameters going into the evaluation process of the whisky review: 1) the compilation of all of the sensory and affective data during each and all of the temporal-sequential stages of the whisky tasting, 2) the classification of the primary parameters for the evaluation of characteristics of the flavours, both as individual flavours, and as flavours taken together forming a larger whole, and 3) appraisal of the relationship of the flavours encountered during the whisky tasting with the component elements within the whisky from which they derived.

Because whisky is by definition concentrated spirit made from grain and aged in wood, it seemed logical to structure the Component Element classification according to whisky's most basic elements: the flavours derived from grain, the flavours derived from the wood, and the flavours derived from all other sources, e.g. yeast, peat, smoke, brine, wine or other cask-finish, and any additives like caramel, maple syrup, wine, etc.

In overview, these three formats are complementary to one another, and each gives a differeent and useful perspective on the whisky being reviewed. The first format is a play-by-play time-sequenced review of the taste parameters and component elements within each sequential stage of the tasting. The second format summarises the categories of flavour elements across the stages of tasting, making appropriate references to the stages and component elements of the whisky within stages of tasting as appropriate for clarity. The third format presents the experience of tasting from the standpoint of the component parts of the whisky, while giving any necessary details on differences within stages of tasting, and making within it general observations on the characteristics of the flavours among the various components, as necessary.

Thank you Gene for this nice idea and for sharing it with us. Really a 3-point-game :D

But I think the main difference to the regular nose-palate-finish(-body) reviews is the fact that you aren't used to taste whisky like this. So you are breaking borders. You have to really think more about it. You miss the standardisation which may be good for some, but because of the increasing work it won't be good for others. For a broader look on whisky reviews I really support your idea. I guess the mix of different styles is a real good thing. I will try to make one too. I really like the Strength-Quality-Variety-Harmony idea.

On the other hand I don't like the idea of that wood-grain-yeast classification very much because it is too one-sided for me. I think it is indeed often useful and informative to say 'I can taste the vanilla of the ex-bourbon-casks' but as taste is very subjective you can't assign everything you find/notice in a whisky to the producing process. It is possible to get an aroma because you associate something with the whisky like your personal situation or your mood on that specific day or you remember something you had with the first dram of the bottle 10 years ago. As an additional information I like this producing-info like we already see in good reviews. I won't go with this new classification at the moment. But this is just my first impression.

Thx and have a nice weekend!