Outcomes from one of many world’s most rigorous spirits competitions are in, and a Taiwanese single malt has been awarded the title of greatest whisky of the yr. 

Kavalan’s Solist Fino Sherry Single Cask Power Single Malt Whisky earned the very best rating of 97.04 factors on the 2025 Worldwide Whisky Competitors (IWC). The competitors is judged in a double-blind format, with just one spirit evaluated at a time. No details about origin, class, or ABV is offered throughout judging. Scores are based mostly on sight, nostril, style, and end.

Kavalan Solist Fino Sherry Single Cask is distilled, aged, and bottled in Taiwan, with flavors influenced by the Spanish Fino Sherry casks utilized in maturation. The whisky is bottled at cask power, usually between 50 and 59.9% ABV. It’s non-chill filtered and bottled in its pure shade. With its prime rating, this expression within the Kavalan Solist line additionally acquired awards for Greatest World Whisky and Greatest Single Malt Whisky.

Based on model tasting notes, the whisky begins with a “wealthy aroma of sherry, with its creamy toffee and wealthy fudge qualities and the slightest trace of chocolate.” The palate displays an early pure sweetness and flavors of fudge, alongside complicated fruit notes together with mango, ripe citrus, and inexperienced apple. The end is lengthy and rounded. 

Along with Solist Fino Sherry Single Cask, Kavalan’s Solist Manzanilla Sherry Single Cask additionally made it into the highest 10 of the competitors, ending ninth total with 95.78 factors. Because of its high-performing entrants this yr, Kavalan acquired the distinguished Distillery of the Yr award, “[a]warded to the distillery with the very best total rating, based mostly on a weighted system that components in each product high quality and portfolio illustration.” And Zerose Yang, Kavalan’s head of analysis and growth, was awarded Distiller of the Yr. 

IWC judging befell earlier this yr in Louisville, Kentucky, on the Evan Williams Bourbon Expertise and Louisville’s Thoroughbred Society. The competitors began in 2010, with the present format launched in 2015. IWC judges award solely three medals — one every of Gold, Silver, and Bronze — per class. 

The second-highest-ranked whisky of the yr was A. Smith Bowman Cask Power (Batch #4), a Virginia straight bourbon. The highest 10 whiskies from this yr’s competitors are listed beneath.