When Jim Murray speaks, the Scotch whisky world stops in mid-sip — and drinks in his words. Murray, who spends his life jetting around the world, sipping whiskies as he goes, is the Grand Guru of whisky connoisseurs. His Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible ratings, which are published every year, can boost sales and make or break distilleries.

“I speak two languages only: English and whisky. And I’m just translating what the whisky is saying to me into English,” says the large, jovial and very bearded Murray, who had his first sip of whisky at the tender age of 10.

Murray was in Mumbai recently to conduct a tasting at the invitation of Bangalore-based Amrut Distilleries to mark 10 years since it launched India’s first single malt, Amrut. Amrut wasn’t really taken very seriously until Murray startled everyone and rated Amrut Fusion as the third-best whisky in the world in his Whisky Bible 2010.

“People in India are much more willing to investigate whiskies now,” says Murray, who’s been conducting tastings in far-flung corners of the globe from Malta to Montreal for over 20 years. India, he reckons, has progressed hugely since his first visit back in 1993-94, when “Johnnie Walker Black was it”. “That was the finest it got. People would stroke their Johnnie Walker Black like it was something to be cherished,” he says.

He adds: “I love doing tastings as I get to learn how people enjoy whiskies. Also, I can get the word out there because I just feel that they’ve been fed so much rubbish from the industry that it’s nice to give a little antidote.”

That’s just what sets the spirited Murray apart from other whisky experts. For, he isn’t afraid to stir up controversies — or champion the unknown. Most recently, the man who helped revive Ardbeg distillery and who renewed the interest in Irish single pot still whiskies, startled everyone by not including a single Scotch whisky in the top five of his Whisky
Bible 2015 awards. Instead, Murray hailed a Japanese whisky, Yamazaki Single Malt Sherry 2013, as the World Whisky of the Year. Two American whiskeys, William Larue Weller and Sazerac Rye 18-year-old, came second and third.

“The Japanese didn’t even know that I’d tasted their whisky. I only told them two days before so that they couldn’t up the price,” says Murray, who tasted 4,700 whiskies for the Whisky Bible 2015, which sells nearly half a million copies.

Murray chose Yamazaki because, he says: “It was fabulously distilled spirit, put into fabulous casks and it was the way whisky was supposed to be. And it used to be. It’s the whisky I grew up with, and regrettably, it’s the whisky that a lot of people in the industry in Scotland today have never worked with or seen.”

He’s referring to his pet crusade against sulphurisation in the sherry casks that the Scotch industry uses to age its whisky. It’s an issue that Murray’s been raising for nearly 10 years.

“The big problem with the Scotch whisky industry is that no one dares to tell them that they’ve got a problem,” he says. That’s not to say there aren’t good Scotch whiskies. There are, says Murray, but he feels that “there’s more bad Scotch now than there has been for a long, long time”. In contrast, the fan of American distilleries like Buffalo Trace believes that “the majority” of the Kentucky distilleries “make outstanding whiskey”.

Murray fell in love with whiskies at age 10. At 16, he got “to try out different whiskies” during a stay in the US. “I got the differences in flavours and textures and I thought this is fascinating stuff,” he says. So in 1975, at 17, he visited his first distillery, Talisker.

“After that, every whisky I could afford, I tasted. And I did tasting notes, really simple ones because I didn’t know what I was doing but it affected me to the degree that I had to do it,” says Murray, who also embarked on his journalistic career then.

He spent the next 15 years learning about whiskies, visiting distilleries and even working with blenders. “I learnt so much behind the scenes. And I spent 15 years writing notes without giving an opinion,” he says. It was only in 1990 that he wrote something “which had an opinion” on it and got a Scottish newspaper to publish it. Then in 1992, he turned a full-time whisky writer, going on to launch his Whisky Bible in 2003.

The whisky world everywhere has changed enormously, he says. So India is producing single malts like Amrut and Paul John — he’s a consultant to the latter. “This is what the Indian industry needs,” he says. And yes, it was Amrut, three, the rest of the world, nil, in his blind tasting of six whiskies at Mumbai. Murray’s tip to Indians is: “Taste both with an open mouth and an open mind.”