2019 Distilleries and Brands of the Year

I rarely spend more than $80 per bottle and don't take time off work to stand in line to win a whisky lottery.  My focus is on finding the available whisky that I like at affordable prices.  In other words, I want to be able to walk into a store and either pick out something I know I'll like, or have confidence that if I lay down 50+ for something I'll like it.  The three main questions I ask are - Is it from a distillery I like?  Is it from a brand I like?  Or is it from an owner I like?  This leads to a common theme with the distilleries of the year – distinct and consistent flavor profiles in their affordable and available core bottlings.  This also extends to my Brands of the Year which, to my surprise were also the same as my distilleries of the year after crunching the numbers.  The only difference between the two is that brands only include whiskies put out by the distillery and do not include independent bottlers.

For the process behind the awards see the page 2019 Awards Overview and check out my Whisky of the Year and favorite Owners of 2019! Without further ado... out of the 100+ different distilleries and nearly 200 Brands I've tried, the Whisk(e)y Ranker Top Distilleries and Brands of 2019 go to:

Gold Medal:

Bunnahabhain
Rank	Whisky	W	L	SOS Score	Colley Rating	Page Rating	Total Rating
7	Bunnahabhain 12	42	7	81.7	88.8	72.6	161.4
14	Bunnahabhain 1997 (MacPhail's)	24	4	77.2	82.6	62.8	145.4
19	Bunnahabhain 19 (Carn Mor)	12	1	89.6	93.8	48.4	142.2
43	Bunnahabhain Erigh Na Greine	7	2	81.2	83.3	35.6	119.0
72	Bunnahabhain 18	5	3	76.3	77.5	23.9	101.4
242	Bunnahabhain 13 Sherry Cask (Adelphi)	1	1	47.3	50.5	2.5	53.0

Last year Bunnahabhain earned a Honorable Mention due to high marks but because I had only one expression in 2018 I didn’t give it a medal. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to try more of their brand bottles and I am very glad I did. It started off with one of the best Christmas gifts I’ve ever received – a bottle of Bunna 12. Fruity sweet, slightly smoky, and briney, this whisky was a delight to drink neat or with ice. But I absolutely loved pairing it with desserts – ice cream, cookies, grilled fruit (and ice cream). Another lovely gift was a dram of the 18 Yr when some friends took me out for a farewell drink. This one probably has a slightly lower rating than it should because it was pitted against some very rare Willett’s, High West’s A Midwinter’s Night Dram, and my all-time favorite Port Charlotte PC:01. Finally, I was also able to sample a dram of the Erigh Na Greine at a whisky tasting – the same whisky tasting in which the Oban’s took 6th and 7th. The Erigh Na Greine ranked 3rd. Similar to Lagavulin, Bunnahabhain has a distinct, and extremely consistent flavor profile in its core bottlings. And as you can see in the rankings, the independent bottles don’t disappoint either!

Silver Medal:

Lagavulin
Rank	Whisky	W	L	SOS Score	Colley Rating	Page Rating	Total
2	Lagavulin 12 Yr CS	48	3	87.9	96.4	92.4	188.7
5	Lagavulin 16	81	6	80.4	87.9	77.9	165.8
114	Lagavulin 10	4	1	70.7	69.9	14.2	84.1
127	Lagavulin House Lannister (9 Yr)	5	4	66.0	68.0	13.6	81.5
194	Lagavulin 18	2	1	64.0	62.2	5.2	67.4

Last year’s Gold Medal winner maintains its strong position with a Silver this year. The quality and consistency of its products are best reflected by the simple phrase people use to describe a Lagavulin: “It’s a Lag.” That phrase sums up Lagavulin’s ability to make wonderfully smooth whisky dominated by peat and accentuated by fruit. You know what you're going to get with Lagavulin, which makes it easy to confidently lay down some cash to try something new.

This past year I had the pleasure to try drams of the House Lannister 9 Yr expression, a 10 year expression, as well as the a dram of the bottle everyone should have on their shelves - the 16, and finished off a bottle of the 12 Year Cask Strength, 2017 edition.  The highlight was an evening where a friend brought over his bottle of 16 year old and we enjoying a head-to-head  of the 16 and 12.  I preferred the 12 Yr CS for its strength; he preferred the 16 for its more muted flavors (relative to the 12 of course)!  The 12 CS is one of my all time favorites with a record of 48-3 and is currently ranked 3^rd overall.  Say what you will about the Game of Thrones releases, I enjoyed the House Lannister edition – it’s a solid Lag.  The 10 year old was surprisingly fresh for a Lag with a burst of citrus and relatively muted peat.  Overall Lagavulin has a combined 140-15 record and an average score of 90.6 in the Colley Rankings.  In 2020, I’m going crack open a bottle of Lagavulin 8 to celebrate my daughter turning 8. Really looking forward to that one.

Bronze Medal

Oban
Rank	Whisky	W	L	SOS Score	Colley Rating	Page Rating	Total
9	Oban 14	38	6	82.9	90.1	69.3	159.4
41	Oban Night's Watch	26	12	70.6	75.5	46.5	122.1
130	Oban Little Bay	8	5	63.6	66.2	14.4	80.6

Oban is an excellent example of such a distiller with distinct and consistent flavor profiles in their affordable and available core bottlings.  Fruit, brine, a little smoke, robust, you’ll know an Oban when you try one.  Last year Oban earned an honorable mention solely on the score of Oban 14 so I made a New Year’s resolution to try other expressions.  This past year I thoroughly enjoyed a full bottle of Oban Night’s Watch and tried drams of Little Bay on a couple different occasions.  One occasion pitted the Little Bay and the Night’s Watch against eight other whiskies, including Nikka from the Barrel and a few of the Game of Thrones expressions.  Little Bay ranked 6^th and Night’s Watch ranked 7^th on that delightful evening.  While these expressions are very good, they pulled down Oban's score in 2019.