It was with some sadness that I read the March 28 posting on Ryan’s website, Value Whisky Reviews. (As far as I know Ryan never posted his last name on his website, so I shall not do so here.) Value Whisky Reviews was an apologetically honest website, where Ryan, a self admitted amateur, posted his mix of views and reviews regarding whisky, blogging and how these two passions of his affected his spirituality.
I said Ryan’s website was apologetically honest, and it was. His reviews were accurate and his reflections on the relative value of the spirits with relation to cost versus scoring were always well thought out and worth reading. But what I liked about Ryan was his reflections on not the spirit of whisky, but rather his own spirit. The angst he felt with respect to how his hobby was affecting his relationship with God clearly came out in his writing. His articles, What the Bible says about drinking and Whisky: a golden calf? were each very well thought out and in particular the latter article was extremely heartfelt.
This is Ryan (hopefully he doesn’t mind me borrowing his picture from his website).
Ryan seems to have no problems writing about his own spirit, and in fact he unabashedly placed his own Christianity on his website for all to see. While other spirits writers would use the side columns of their website to promote articles on their site, Ryan first placed this quote from Romans 10:9:
“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
and then this one from Luke 24:47:
“There is forgiveness of sins for all who repent.”
He wanted to be true to his own beliefs and ensured he exalted God and Christ before he exalted himself. Yet, it was this conflict between his love of Christ an his love of his website that led to the his decision to shut things down. I was saddened. I felt that Ryan was contributing something special, and I don’t think you had to be Christian to appreciate the message he was trying to promote or to appreciate the angst that he felt when he found himself guiltily checking his web stats everyday to see how his website was fairing.
In the end, Ryan decided that he was too close to putting his own personal satisfaction ahead of his spirit. I cannot judge that, I am incapable. But I can say, that it is unfortunate to see such an honest person leave the blogosphere. I hope he comes back!
Good Luck Ryan
My heart is with you!
The profile of the Canadian Whisky Awards has grown considerably over the past year. So this past fall when I was asked to participate with Davin and five other North American judges to evaluate the state of Canadian Whisky in 2011, I jumped at the chance to be involved. So it was that with Davin De Kergommeaux acting as Chairman of the Judges (and Lead Organizer), and with six more of us helping out as best we could, we set ourselves to the task of evaluating and judging Canadian Whisky for the year ending in 2011. Blind samples were sent out across Canada and into the United States for judging. We all sipped and sampled and marked down our scores. The scores were checked closely and then tallied, and of course the winners were selected.
First the yolks
All of these awards are based upon side by side tasting sessions held over a period of several weeks. I began at the start of September slowly tasting different whiskies from my private collection of bottles and bringing only the very best forward for the final tastings which took place over the last two weeks. Only spirits which I had tasted in the past year (between October 1, 2019 and September 30 2011) were considered.
The Rum Howler Award for Best Whisky Value
The Rum Howler Award for Best Whisky Value
The Rum Howler Award for Best Blended Whisky
The Rum Howler Award for Best Single Grain or Single Malt Whisky
and the winner is
The Rum Howler Blog 