Jim Murray

Jim Murray's Whisky Bible is an ongoing project, with the first of the series having been published in 2003. It is a compact guide containing every whisky that Murray and a team of researchers are able to source from the worldwide market. Each whisky is tasted by Murray alone and graded out of an overall score of 100. This total is reflective of the four key criteria: nose, taste, finish and balance, each awarded marks out of 25. With every new edition of The Whisky Bible, Murray provides tasting notes and ratings for around 1,000 newly released or previously obscure whiskies, with nearly 4,000 brands being reviewed overall.

As well as writing and broadcasting on whisky, and being a chair judge at the International Wine and Spirit Competition, Murray has also worked as a consultant blender with both whisky and rum. He claims one of his achievements includes playing a major role in resurrecting Ardbeg distillery in Islay after it closed in 1996. Murray has also become well known for his championing the cause of American whiskey and Canadian rye whisky, Japanese whisky, and Irish single pot still whiskey, all of which had fallen out fashion when he first began writing about them.

1994 saw the release of Jim Murray's Irish Whiskey Almanac, the first of many popular whisky books that he would go on to write in securing his place as possibly the world's leading authority. This book was revised and extended for a re-release three years later as Classic Irish Whiskey (1997). Other publications include Jim Murray's Complete Book of Whisky (1997), Classic Bourbon, Tennessee & Rye (1998), Classic Blended Scotch (1999) and The Art of Whisky (1998).

As a national newspaper journalist with the Sunday People and Daily Star in 1992, Murray left Fleet Street after 13 years to become the world's first-ever full-time whisky writer. Having visited his first distillery, Talisker in 1975 it is believed that he has since visited more distilleries globally than any person. He had used his secondments to Scotland in the early and mid-1980s to visit as many distilleries as possible and even work in them during his free time.

Murray was born in Merstham, Surrey, UK. A keen journalist from a young age, he wrote for his local papers while still at school and presented his own television show in Northamptonshire, Murray on Monday, at the age of sixteen. Murray would report and comment on local sporting events. His passion for writing and sport, specifically football, culminated in his first book Millwall: Lions of the South (1988), a history of Murray's beloved and unfashionable Millwall F.C.

Jim Murray (born 13 November 1957) is an English writer journalist, and a well known whisky critic. He is best known for his observations on whisky and his annually updated book on the subject, Jim Murray's Whisky Bible.