Keep track of your taste – The Single Malt Whisky Database

It was in 2006 at the Islay Festival where Tim Hudson first thought of the Single Malt Whisky Database. (SMWDB)

He spent a groggy morning (after the night of the Bowmore midnight tour) at the Laphroaig distillery where he met with David Wishart, who introduced to, and sold Tim his book on choosing whisky by flavour.

Included with the book came a small database program which really wasn’t very good or user friendly.  Tim being an internet applications developer decided he could not only do it better but also provide a public database for sharing and comparing whisky flavour profiles.

So, in that instance the project SMWDB started.

Tim found it very difficult to compare say what Michael Jackson though of an expression against what the distillery or anyone else told me about it. Some books (Wishart) don’t have many expressions in and new expressions are very difficult to find in books until after a year or so.  The obvious thing was to put the info on the net in a succinct manor.  The advantage Tim’s system has is that we designed the system to allow users to see an Average of what everyone thinks about an expression.  This is unique to Tim’s system. 

Basically he built a tool that he himself wanted to use and thought it would be useful for other whisky enthusiasts.  Tim has lots more ideas for the SMWDB of which some are already on the development table and others in the pipeline. 
The site, that is built in Flash Flex 2.0 technology went public beta in February and it’s open for everyone to sign up and use the tool.

When Tim is not working on the SMWDB he is a flash developer and is running small company here Amsterdam. Tim is originally from England, but has been living in Amsterdam for the past 10 years. 

“What we need now is users and user input.  It is a non commercial site and because of this there is no budget for marketing etc.  Work is progressing on the site albeit a little slowly but the intention and passion is there.  I want to create a useful tool for the community and this requires the community to tell me what is important to them both on the enthusiast and distillery level.” Says Tim.

WhiskyGrotto checked out the site and it looks promising. Right now there arent that much data, but hopefully as more people discover the SMWDB the site will become a goldmine for whisky lovers.

Check out the Single Malt Whisky Database and see if you can ad to the stats.