In the past few years I've become a whisky fan boy, buying bottles in most styles, including Scotch. This question pertains mostly to Scotch, but other styles can be included too.
One problem I've found is that I'd like to buy more upper tier bottles (in the 100+ Canadian) range, but I'm hesitant to do so without actually sampling these whiskies first.
This poses a problem because the city in which I live doesn't give me much opportunity to sample whiskies in this range. The end result is that I can't really know if that 150 dollar bottle is worth it, or if I'm just burning my money.
With that in mind, I wonder if there is a common way to determine the objective quality of a bottle in this range, without actually trying the bottle first?