Photo Credit: Bourbon Culture
Hey mates – just wanted to take a few moments to introduce a product extension of our flagship whisky comparison functionality that enables you to manually choose any two whiskies and compare them. In the preceding link we’ve started you off with the two above, but all you have to do is type in any two you’d like to compare, and voila, you instantly see overall match %, detailed stats behind that percentage (e.g. nose, palate, finish flavor/aroma matches, ABV, mash bill, barrel type(s), price, ratings, and more), flavor commonalities, and a detailed profile of each whisky. Prior to this, we served up the most similar whiskies automatically whenever you view a whisky’s profile page. It’s the same beefy algorithm in the background comparing and analyzing the DNA of each whisky, only now we’ve taken the training wheels off and given you full control.
How Does Whisky Matching Work?
For those interested in how we actually make the matches, here’s an overview. Whisky Mates was built to be an objective source of information: it leverages data generated by the pros in the industry – the folks that create whisky, produce it, blend it, and taste it, among other things. We collect this information, organize it, normalize it, and display it in a way that is (hopefully) easy to digest, helping you learn about whisky.
Our algorithms combine the tasting notes from several reputable sources into a cross-section Nose, Palate, and Finish to find the commonalities between two whiskies (or a composite whisky in the case of our Custom Recommendations). We use the Aroma Wheel with its concentric circles of increasingly specific tastes and smells (general in the center; more specific the further out you go) to find Exact, Secondary, and General matches between two whiskies. We also take into account other important factors like mash bill, barrel type(s), ABV, region, ratings, price and more. We then weight each factor based on what we believe to be the approximate importance it has in determining whether two whiskies are similar.
Maybe most importantly, we recognize there is no substitute for experience, and that every palate is different. Parts of the matching algorithms are objective – things like ABV, barrel types, or mash bill. However, parts are also subjective – things like tasting notes and ratings rely on the opinions of experts; but even experts frequently disagree. So while we believe our tools will go a long way toward helping you identify new whiskies to fall in love with, they are not perfect, and you will still have to try lots of whisky to figure out what you really like (bummer).
Enjoy, mates!
