Wizards Of Whisky: Serge Valentin

If you know whisky, you’ll know of Serge Valentin, the mind behind Whiskyfun.com. Started way back in 2002, Whiskyfun has become part of the fabric of the whisky community, with the website and Serge’s extensive tasting notes receiving critical acclaim and huge numbers of hits. He was one of the first few people to start posting tasting notes online and has been extremely consistent ever since.

Serge’s pocket sized reviews and commitment to the website mean that he publishes hundreds of notes every month. New reviews are published pretty much on a daily basis. Accurate, interesting tasting notes and an almost immediate assessment has ensured the sites popularity.

He has sampled over 18000 different whiskies. His relentless schedule of tasting and publishing his notes has also made Serge one of the most experienced and knowledgeable tasters in the world and one of the most influential voices in Whisky today.

His website has an almost anarchistic and yet endearing quality to it. Unlike the vast majority of other blogs that have become globally popular.

Valentin reviews all spirits in a strikingly honest, informal, and often amusing tone. It is clear once you have read a number of his reviews that Serge’s palate is a consistent one, and there are certain qualities to spirits that will earn it a higher score on his scale of 100.

He warns the readers of his blog that what he writes about spirits is “not the gospel, but is based on personal experience and feelings, with no pretensions to be ‘the truth.” Nevertheless, his opinion is a highly regarded one and goes a long way in impacting both the sales and price of spirits.

With the new age of technology and the internet, it is thanks to the hard work and modern thinking of people like Serge Valentin, who have brought the world of whisky online and made it easier for all of us, no matter where we are from, to learn about whiskies and perhaps maybe even get a little teaser by reading his reviews before we actually get to try the whisky itself. (Credits – whiskyshow.com, whiskymywife.pl, thefatrumpirate.com)