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Kavalan racked up the gold medals in the 2016 Malt Maniacs Awards. I have a couple of thoughts about that:
1) Considering how many medals Kavalan won, its total number of entries must have been very high. This would seem to really increase the chances of winning multiple medals, especially in light of thought #2 below. Does anyone know whether there is a cap on the number of entries from one distillery?
2) The Malt Maniacs who do the judging seem to usually prefer heavily-sherried whiskies, and Kavalan seems to be right in their sweet spot. If Kavalan enters multiple, nearly identical, sherry-monster bottlings, they seem assured to get several gold medals. That would seem to undermine the validity of the awards to a certain degree.
Thoughts?
@Carlton
All rewards show some bias. When I am announcing the best whiskies of the month, then it is clear to everybody, that this is my personal feeling.
If Jim Murray has not crowned any Scotch for several years, then there might be a bias there as well.
Who are the Malt Maniacs? They are more than one (which is good to give some average) but they are extremely keen on specialties. A well made distillery bottling with 18yrs will have very few chances to earn a flowerpot with them. So their bias is the necessity for being a specialty.