Today, Northern German spirits mailorder Whisky Südholstein announced the final results of this year’s WSH Cup, a blind tasting competition open for all whisky fans looking for a fun but also pretty tough challenge. For the registration fee of EUR 40, each team received a set of four 5cl samples via snail mail. As the bottles did not contain any references other than a number from 1 to 4, we had to guess their content with almost no additional information given. The only clues we received beforehand were the notions that each sample covered a different whisky region in Scotland and that we had to identify three independent bottlings and one estate release. For each sample, we had to name the distillery (10 points), region (5 points), age (6 points), ABV (3 points), cask type (5 points) and – if given – finish (3-6 points).
All in all, nine teams participated in the WSH Cup 2017, one of which answered to the name of BarleyMania and consisted of Aaron and myself as well as our two better halves Nicole and Nadine. We had a total blast analyzing the drams in our glasses and making all kinds of guesses, which surprisingly have not been that far-off. Because by a series of inexplicable but fortunate events we ended up winning this thing, scoring 78 of 140 possible points! Who would have thought that?
Needless to say, we are really proud that we did so well and that our guesses were not completely off the track. As this was such good fun, we will definitely give it another shot next year. Until then, a big thumbs up to the fine people of Whisky Südholstein for carrying out this cool event and to Whisky Wölfe Wolfsburg, Super Malt Brothers and the other six teams for being such good competitors. For more information on the challenge in general and the whiskies we had to identify in particular, please visit Whisky Südholstein via the links below.
by Tobi
WSH Cup 2017 @ Web: http://www.whiskysuedholstein.de/[…]ergebnisse-wsh-cup-2017/
Whisky Südholstein @ Web: http://www.whiskysuedholstein.de/
Whisky Südholstein @ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/whiskysuedholstein/
BarleyMania | Whisky & Whiskey 
Congratulations!
Blind tastings are always a head wrecker.
You and your team did well!
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Absolutely. At least for me, it also changes a lot from day to day. There are times when I easily confuse a rum for a whisky and then there are times when I come pretty close. In this particular case, we did surprisingly well, getting all the regions right plus two out of the four distilleries. In regard to the ages, we were never more than 2-3 years away and we came close to every ABV but one. Regarding the cask types and finishes, we did okayish, I would say. ;)
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Congrats! I’m particularly poor at mysteries, so I’m in awe of anyone who can do this well! What’s the prize?
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