HOW THE READERS’ WHISKY CHALLENGE WORKS

We open the competition to all the whisky distilleries in Scotland, inviting them to send in any new expressions or old favourites to take part in the Challenge.

Then we find ten Scottish Field readers who know their drams to form an incomparable panel of whisky knowledge.

We decant the bottles into sample bottles adorned with only a number before sending them out to our judges.

This year’s Challenge included bottles that retail from between £15 and £300. But without the ceremony of opening the fancy box, there was no telling which was which.

The first round is a knock-out round and our panel whittled the list of 32 whiskies down to 16. The top 16 were taken forward for the scoring round in the afternoon. Each whisky was tasted for nose, palate and finish and given a decimal score out of 5. We then took away the highest and lowest scores and used the remaining marks to produce an overall score for each expression.