April Madness 2020

It bothers me that the losing team in a tournament championship game is crowded the second place team.  The only thing you can really say about the team that loses the championship game is that they are better that their half of the bracket.  For example, Breckenridge Port Cask lost to Cragganmore Distiller's Edition in my 2020 March Madness Whisky Bracket (here).  But had the draw been different, maybe it would have lost to the Cragganmore in the first round.

To do determine the second place, I'm going to do another bracket with all 15 that didn't win my March Madness Bracket, minus the Loko Viski, and adding in the other three on my shelf I didn't do in the 16 whisky region bracket.  Certainly isn't the most efficient, but it is certainly the most entertaining!  Without further ado, here it is!

Look at that!  Willett's 4 Yr Rye beat Breckenridge for 2nd!  Any match ups and rankings from the first bracket continue into this round.  In other words, because Willet's already beat Nikka and Penderyn in the first round it gets the wins here too without a second chance.  The seeding represents the closest neighbor to make the elimination process more efficient.

Now for the real madness.  Who's third?  Probably Breckenridge... but the only way to tell is to do another bracket with all remaining whiskies!  But before jumping into the third place bracket, I'm going to do a losers bracket to determine my least favorite of these whiskies and eliminate that one from the competition.  That way my whisky sampling will converge on the average whiskies rather than my favorites.  The losers of the matches above are placed into the losers bracket below... only the loser moves forward in this bracket.  (Updated periodically.)

So, now that Willett's and Devil's River are removed... let's do it another winner and losers brackets for 3rd and 17th!  Sheer madness.

Breckenridge PX cask takes third and the District Made Bottled-in-Bond Rye is eliminated in the loser's bracket:

After this set of brackets, there were only a few more spots that were undetermined - not enough for  a full bracket.  Finally!  The table below has each of the competing whiskies in order of of their tournament rank, followed by their current overall rank in my ratings (see here for the full list).  The  big winner is the Teeling Rum Cask Finish which scored an early round upset over the Caol Ila Distiller's Edition.  Before this tournament, I hadn't compared the Breckenridge, Penderyn, and Mackmyra much, and such whiskies are prone to large swings as more wins and losses are added.  The biggest loser is the Nikka from the Barrel which dropped from my top ten down to number 36.  Still going to replace that bottle when I'm finished though! 

Tournament Rank	Colley Rank	Whisk(e)y	Score	W - L		SOS Score	Change
1	8	Cragganmore Distiller's Edition	95.2	24	0	84	11
2	18	Willett's Rye 4 Yr	94.1	83	13	79	5
3	28	Breckenridge Port Cask	92.8	20	3	78	38
4	68	Penderyn Tan y Ddraig (Vom Fass)	90.3	14	4	71	47
5	36	Nikka from the Barrel	92.2	21	5	76	-28
6	96	Tomatin 15	88.0	11	5	65	NR
7	147	Knockdhu 6 (Carn Mor)	85.5	18	11	58	-9
8	259	Teeling Small Batch Rum Cask Finish	80.1	10	18	43	70
9	91	Caol Ila Distiller's Edition	88.4	22	9	65	-33
10	199	Mackmyra Valbo (Vom Fass)	82.7	8	9	50	43
11	253	Bastille 1789	80.6	7	10	44	NR
12	224	Laphroaig PX Cask	81.6	15	21	47	-19
13	289	Singleton House Tully	78.7	11	28	40	-24
14	335	After Dark	75.7	4	14	33	NR
15	342	Wieser Wachau 8 Yr Gabarinza Cask	75.4	3	16	30	8
16	351	Jack Daniel's Rye	74.6	3	27	29	4
17	334	One Eight Bottled In Bond Rye	75.7	6	25	32	-18
18	241	Devil's River	81.1	0	17	19	NR