Do you have a preferred liquor brand?  I think that most real liquor drinkers have identified their favorite brands and they tend to stay fairly loyal to those brands. 

I’ve never been much of a liquor snob. My preferred liquors had always been mid-level brands like Skyy Vodka, Jack Daniels whiskey, Patron tequila, Bombay Sapphire gin and Captain Morgan’s spiced rum. 

I’ve never thought of these as the best tasting liquors in their respective categories (although I believed Patron and Sapphire to be close), but I believed that they were all a good value for the money. 

Several years ago things started changing with the liquor market.  Dozens of ultra premium brands started hitting the shelves and suddenly Grey Goose had replaced brands like Absolut and Skyy as the new standard for premium vodka.  People were now ordering Gentleman Jack or Jack Daniels single barrel whiskey instead of my standby, Jack Daniels Old No.7.

It was evident how much things had changed when I was gambling at Mandalay Bay in Vegas a few years ago.  I was sitting at a table and I tried to order a double Skyy and tonic.  The waitress said, “Are you sure?  We have GOOD vodkas like Belvedere and Grey Goose.”  I thought to myself, since when is Skyy not good vodka… And how does this lady know that Belvedere or Grey Goose is any better. 

It upset me that the waitress decided that she was the authority on good vodka.  I sat and though about it for a while and then I realized that I had never sat down and tried Skyy against Belvedere or Grey Goose in a taste test.  As a matter of fact, I had never tried Skyy against any vodka in a taste test.  So even though I still doubted that the waitress had any idea which vodka was better, I realized that I definitely didn’t have any idea which was better.

So that’s when I decided to start doing some testing.  A few weeks later I was over at a friend’s house and he had a bottle of Skyy, a bottle of Grey Goose and a bottle of Kettle One.   We decided to do a blind taste test to see which one was the best and I was happy (and somewhat surprised) to see Skyy come out on top. 

From that point on I was hooked.  I started testing whiskey, and tequila… every liquor I could get my hands on.  I recruited friends and started documenting the results.  We had refined our testing methods and I believe that the more we tested, the more sophisticated our tastes had become. 

I soon realized that some of my old favorites weren’t nearly as good as I had thought and as my ignorance faded, so did my loyalty.

This website is the culmination of all of our testing efforts to date and we will continually be adding more liquor tests to the site.

If you’ve found this site then you probably share my fascination with liquor.  Please take some time and look around.  I encourage you rate the liquors yourself and add your comments to the site.  I’m confident that our rankings are good representations of the tastes of the average liquor drinker but if you disagree, please let us know.  I’ll be reading and addressing your comments in this weekly blog.