We originally created Whisky Mates as a way to understand what made our favorite whiskies great. From there we used those characteristics to find other great whiskies. 4 years later, the features have expanded considerably, as have the use cases. Based on what we see from others, and our own habits, these are the most popular ways folks are using the app:

• Discover New Whiskies and Save Money while Ordering at a Bar or Restaurant. We know many of you know your stuff cold and may not need a knowledgeable companion to help you find what you want to order. We felt the same way, and had initially built this product for folks who are novice to intermediate whisky enthusiasts. Now that it's working, we have been consistently surprised with how helpful it can be, even for those who really know their stuff. All you have to do is scan the menu or whisky list with MenuScan and we do the rest for you. We'll quickly determine which whiskies are a good deal or overpriced, so you spend your hard-earned whisky money efficiently. In terms of discovering new pours, if you've Favorited some whiskies we can also tell you which ones you might like best based on your taste profile. Value explosion.
• Save Time and Money on In-store and Online Purchase Decisions. It's fun to drop into Total Wine or your local liquor store on a Friday afternoon and stare at literally hundreds of whiskies stacked 6 feet high, or browse a seemingly limitless supply of choices while shopping for whisky online when you're while at work. But sometimes it can be overwhelming, especially if you're earlier on your whisky journey, you're pressed for time, or you're shopping for a gift for someone else. Enter BottleScan. Just snap a quick picture of the whisky bottle and we'll quickly determine whether a whisky is worth it or overpriced. And if it's the latter, we'll help you find some great alternatives that are very similar, but meet your exact whisky profile and price parameters.
• Lists.Whether you're scanning bottles or menus, or simply adding the whiskies you already love, Whisky Mates is your central whisky tracking repository. Tap Favorites on the whiskies you love most to add them your Favorites list (this also helps us tune your future whisky recommendations), add the bottles you covet but don't own to your Whishlist (and share it with buddies so they know what to get you for your next birthday), and mash that Collection button next to any whisky you currently own to keep track of your growing whisky cellar. Lastly, you can personally Rate any whisky (doesn't have to be on any list) with a numerical score, your own Nose/Palate/Finish tasting notes, tasting description, and more, so you never forget that first experience. It's all about the memories, man!
• Personalized Recommendations We serve up whisky recommendations completely specific to you in two ways: 1) on the fly, generating customized recs based on the profiles of whiskies you already like, or flavors/aromas you love, and 2) based on whiskies you "Favorite". For the latter, you will have to create a free account but it only takes about 10 seconds. Then, once you've favorited some whiskies, we classify them and create a "Composite Whisky" based on more than 25 matching factors for each type of whisky you like (Bourbon, Rye, Speyside/Islay/Highlands/etc Scotches, etc.) which we match up with other whiskies to provide you with recommendations (see the FAQ below "How do you match whiskies together?").
• Improving your palate. This is where it all began, it's probably the most nerdy use case, and probably also not for everyone. But when we taste, we like to examine the tasting notes, studying the aromas and flavors while we smell, sip, and finish. This aids muscle memory, helping you pick up on tastes and smells, remembering and attributing them to certain whiskies. Over time you'll begin associating these smells and tastes with other whiskies and building up what we like to call the "Whisky Network" inside your mind. Not only does developing a Whisky Network help you discern what you like and why, it really helps you enjoy whisky more, which after all, is the most important part. Well, that and impressing your friends, boss, or significant other with your incredible knowledge and refined palate. Let's blow the bloody doors off 'em.

There are a variety of methods of whisky discovery depending on what drives your decision making. The simplest, most guided path is probably our Personalized Recommendations tool, but there are plenty of other ways to find great brown liquid:

• Aromas and Attributes. Curious about whisky flavors in general? Amble on over to Whisky Flavors to figure out which whiskies contain which flavors and aromas, and how intense their presence is. Or, let's say that you love raisins and their close cousins, dates and sultanas. Just search it up to be taken to the specific Flavor Attributes page, which serves up all the whiskies that contain the attribute you like, along with the intensity level. You'll need to create a free account for the good stuff.
• Similar Whiskies. Perhaps you already know which whiskies you really like. Type those suckers into any search box and you'll be taken to the Whisky Profile page which will show you all of the whiskies that are similar, and why. If you see a similar whisky that looks intriguing, tap on it to view more detail on exactly why it's similar (flavors, aromas, price, ratings, ABV, etc.)
• Ratings.You'll see little green (top 70th percentile), blue (top 50th percentile), or black (everything else) boxes included with nearly every whisky and distillery on Whisky Mates. Any single rating source is going to have a different opinion than the next (sometimes quite different), and they all use different scales and calibrations. Therefore we've gathered ratings from a broad set of reputable sources, both professional and crowd-sourced, normalized them (i.e. a 93 point rating on Whisky Advocate is a lot different than a 93 on Wine Enthusiast!) and aggregated them into composite ratings. You may have different opinions than the critics, just like with movies (we frequently disagree!) but generally speaking, the normalized, aggregated scores are a pretty decent barometer for quality. The center of the Ratings solar system is aptly at the Ratings page, FYI :)
• Value. As a fitting follow-up to 'Ratings' above, Value is the other critical piece of the puzzle. Sure, The Macallan Sherry Oak 30 Year Old is one of the highest rated whiskies on Whisky Mates. But have ya seen the price? Bang for Buck, or value, is arguably as important - or more so - than pure quality. Plus, some brands are just priced way higher because of their reputation, age, or ability to market and package the hell out of their products. You want to find a good balance based on what you can comfortably afford. In those same green, blue or black boxes, at the bottom you'll see a little metric like "$3.50 / pctl". If you assume a percentile is a unit of quality, then this metric illustrates how much you're paying per unit of quality. Generally speaking, the lower the better, but it's important to keep the quality and price in check with what fits your drinking style and price point.

If you've ever seen one of those whisky Aroma Wheels or continuums, these are pretty similar to the fundamental building blocks of Whisky Mates. Basically we codify a whisky using it's primary and secondary Nose (smell), Palate (taste) and Finish (a bit of both, plus sort of an aftertaste) profiles. For example, let's say you're nosing (smelling) a whisky and you detect dried fruit. This would be the secondary aroma. Then, if you're really good, you might be able to identify the primary aroma as dried apricot. You would use these observations to develop the Tasting Notes. As the inputs for this codification, we gather Tasting Notes from the producer and other reputable sources of tasting information and create an amalgamation of tasting notes for each whisky. Outside of Nose/Palate/Finish, we also look at other attributes like barrel types, mash bill, composite ratings, ABV, price, and many more. Lastly, we use intensity levels to indicate how 'fruity', 'smokey' (whatever the case may be) a whisky is (i.e. an Islay Scotch may have a small amount of fruit and a ton of smoke while a Speyside may be quite fruity with a touch of smoke; in other words, all flavors and aromas are not of equal punch). Once a whisky is codified, we run it through a matching algorithm that weights the various attributes (just like flavor intensities, some factors - like barrel / maturation process or mash bill - have more effect on a whisky's ultimate flavor than others) against all of the other whiskies and produces the match percentages you see. Lastly, we look at all of the matches across all of the whiskies to understand what level of match percentage should be considered a Strong, Good, etc. match (think mean / standard deviation / bell curve).

Incidentally, this is also a great way to taste whisky and improve your palate. Starting with broad characteristics and drilling down is a great way to pinpoint aromas and flavors. For example, if you're like, "wow, this really tastes like oak and vanilla, and it singed my nostrils and burns my throat!" you might assume that what you're drinking is a barrel strength Bourbon. From there you can zoom in further to figure out which region (this is more for Scotch) it's from, the distillery where it's produced, and maybe even which whiskey it is. Maybe Bed, Bath & Beyond, I don't know. I don't know if we'll have enough time.

It's pretty similar to how we generate matches (see explanation above), except for that the "subject" whisky (the one to which we're comparing other whiskies) is a composite made up of whiskies you've selected (see Personalized Recommendations page) or "favorited". Once you select or favorite whiskies, we categorize them by type and subtype to produce recommendations specific to these types of whiskies. We do this so as not to muddy the waters of our whisky recommendations too much. For example, say you had favorited a few American Ryes, a couple of Islay Scotches, and a few Japanese Whiskies...the recommendations of that composite would be a pretty strange mix! It could definitely work on certain levels, but more often than not, it doesn't. So instead of mixing a bunch of potentially incompatible source whiskies together, we enable you to filter the whisky recommendations we generate by whisky type and subtype. For example, if you had several really peaty, smokey Islay Scotches in your favorites, you could still filter by just, say, Highlands Scotches, and find those that have peaty / smokey characteristics.

Well, it's tricky. What you smell and taste in a whisky is highly subjective, and is likely going to be different than the person you're drinking it with. Even the pros don't always agree on the tasting notes. That being said, after testing our matches hundreds of times (fun stuff) we believe the matches and recommendations are generally pretty good. We develop a composite of the most common tasting notes, while also using a whole bunch of other factors to try and triangulate in on what makes whiskies similar. Whisky Mates is meant to be a guide to help you find what you like drinking, within the price range that is comfortable for you, using the best methodologies available. So unless you know a whisky sommelier who has a firm understanding of what you like drinking, we think using our recommendations is a great way to meaningfully increase the chances you try a whisky you might like, as opposed to reading dozens of tasting notes or sifting through a bunch of reviews and write-ups.