Not all malt maniacs believe that the multimedia experience of a good whisky can be expressed in a simple score.
That did not stop the others from trying, though... It all started with the Malt Maniacs Matrix in the late 1990's.
At the time that was a relatively simple table in HTML with the scores of a handful of malt maniacs, but soon
after Serge Valentin joined our team in 2002 he decided to lift things to a whole new level with the monitor.
The matrix just lists the whiskies that were scored by at least four maniacs - the monitor lists ALL of them.

You can now push the Big Red Button if you feel ready for the monitor.
Keep in mind that the PDF file has grown quite massive over the years (circa 2 MB now),
so downloading or opening the file might take a while without a broadband connection.
The monitor now includes more than 20,000 scores for more than 7,000 different malts.
Remember that some of those whiskies were sampled by just one or two of the maniacs.

The monitor offers a complete overview of all the whiskies we've seriously sampled and scored so far - around 7,000 and counting.
As such, it's excellent resource if you want to know which bottlings were released by each distillery or bottler. Of course the monitor doesn't list all the tens of thousands of whisky bottlings that were ever released. Nevertheless, we think it it may be the largest overview of 'tested' whisky bottlings that is publicly available at the moment. We take great care to make sure that all the data on the monitor is complete and correct; in 2006 we undertook a thorough 'cleansing' of the old monitor and removed hundreds of bottlings where details were missing.

The original matrix was all 'handiwork' in HTML and for a while the
matrix (which focused on 'the big picture' and our average scores)
and the monitor (a full overview of bottlings) existed side by side.
It finally dawned on me that I could have spent all the hours of
'double bookkeeping' on the MM Matrix much more productively.
Nowadays the matrix is extracted from the data on the monitor.
 
Please note that the matrix & monitor don't include scores for
ALL the whiskies we ever tried. Only whiskies that we sampled
seriously enough to come up with a fair & solid score are listed.
And speaking of scores... Click here for more info on our system.

March 31, 2008
 
10,204
 
31,116

The focus of the MM monitor is on single malts, but a number of blends and grain whiskies are listed as well.
The new monitor is in PDF format for easier printing & downloading. I used to hate PDF, but the improved integration
with modern browsers (especially if you use Mozilla FireFox and a few extensions) have finally turned me around.
I plan to add some 'technical tips' about the PDF format (both on the screen and on paper) in the foreseeable future.
And if you're thinking of printing the monitor: remember that the MM Matrix offers a more 'condensed' perspective.
The matrix doesn't list as many different whiskies (around 2,000 at the moment) as the monitor, but all entries have
at least four scores, so you can compare the opinions of various people on a certain whisky before you buy a bottle.

You can print the monitor on A4 or A5 format paper (the latter makes a nifty booklet) to take it with you on your next shopping spree.
If you're interested in statistical analysis... On WhiskyFun Serge Valentin plays around with the monitor data on his 'Statistics Shack' pages.
Last but not least: Keep in mind that the MM Monitor and MM Matrix are something DIFFERENT than the Malt Maniacs Awards - we use the
same scoring system but the 'rules' are different. Scores given in the blind tastings for the MM Awards can not be changed afterwards.
However, we include those scores in the matrix and monitor. It is possible that a maniac encounters a whisky that was submitted to the MM
Awards at another occasion and comes up with a higher or lower score. In those cases the score on the matrix or monitor may be adjusted.

Whenever a whisky received scores from four or more maniacs we deem the average score 'solid' and add it to the matrix.
The background colour of the cells with the names of the whiskies has a meaning as well; yellow cells indicate whiskies that were recently added or modified (for example because they received an extra score) while the pink cells indicate entries we're not quite sure about.
In many cases we still need to retrieve some missing data, like the exact ABV or the year of bottling.