End of taster's comment.Well. What is there to say when your positions have been so thoroughly vanquished?
I could of course point out that my favourite was exactly what I thougt it was, and the whisky I put second was one of the more expensive ones. But that does not redeem the eternal shame of rating an "Old Keeper" from Aldi, aged "3 years and more", for a rock-bottom 10 €/l (i.e. the bottle is only 7 €!), "very good"... I cannot put up with that, I'll go and drown myself in 30 year old Bruichladdich for 150 € a litre, that I rated a mere "upper middle class". Goodbye, monstrous world.
Even without consulting statistics, after this test I can clearly see that price and taste rating do not bear a correlation. This was at the core of the dispute; I was of a different opinion, and have learnt something. It would be interesting to know what the verdict would have been had I known what was in the bottles - whether the mere knowledge of the "150 €/l" price tag would really have the awestruck taster sing praise.
The most interesting question however is: Which consequences are to be drawn from the results? Should I now resort to buying discount retail whisky only (after all, both Aldi and Lidl scored "very good") - or should I ignore it and go on as before? Or maybe ignore everything but the rank #1 whisky and buy nothing but 18 year old Macallan - for 115 € per litre?
In any case, I'll be at Aldi and Lidl tomorrow and get myself a "Ben Bracken" as well as an "Old Keeper". I'll see whether the magic still works - and if not, pouring whisky down the drain doesn't hurt too much at this price... and the next thing I'd like to do is a blind test for wine, I guess there's a big potential for savings there.
It was a good idea anyway, I had fun in taking part.
PS: The single most surprising result was that the "A" whisky which I so strongly disliked should have been a Glenfarclas 105. I cannot really believe this because it was not so long ago that I opened the miniature I brought from Scotland. In this case - as well as in some others on the list - I'll get some miniatures myself and try them. I am really interested whether a piece of paper (i.e. the label on the bottle) can make that much difference.
The taster has, after the results were out, bought his own bottles of some of the whiskies involved to double-check the results. I have not yet had the time to translate his findings (his version is on the German page) but he largely found that everything went right and the whiskies still taste the same even if he sees the label.
A similar experiment with 56 participants was conducted in late 2006.