The "Ruine" Whisky Collection

• Single Malt Whiskies
  A single malt whisky is a whisky made from pure malt (from malted barley - no unmalted grain components) and from one single distillery. It is additionally a "Scotch" whisky if it was produced in Scotland.
• Vatted Whiskies
  A vatted whisky is also a pure malt whisky, but with components from several distilleries.
• Blended Whiskies
  Blended whiskies are composed from many carefully selected components from different distilleries. Besides the malt components there are some or many unmalted grain whiskies used.

References

The facts for writing the contents of this site were gathered from the whiskies ;-) introduced here, and from the following excellent books:

1. Stefan Gananyi: Schumann's Whisk(e)y Lexikon W. Heyne Verlag, Munich, 1996
   A general whisky encyclopaedia. Complete and concise. All whisky classes including Bourbon, Tennessee, Canadian, Irish, ...
2. Michael Jackson: Michael Jackson's Malt Whisky Companion Dorling Kindersley, 3rd ed. 1994
   A standard in its own. While the scoring is arguable, the robust complete information is invaluable worthful.
3. Michael Jackson: Michael Jackson's Malt Whisky Companion Dorling Kindersley / Edition Olms Zürich, 4th ed. 1999
   Significantly expanded and also revised. IMHO a must-have.
4. Walter Schobert: Single Malt Notebook The House of Whiskies, 1996 (ISBN 3-00-000763-6)
   This book is my favorite for tasting notes. For each Single Malt in the book it contains notes for the pure whisky and notes for the changes, if some or more water is added. For most distilleries, it discusses two different bottlings.
5. Walter Schobert: Malt Whisky Guide - Führer zu den Quellen Hädecke, Weil der Stadt, 1994
   The subtitle is important: Not the whisky itself, but the distilleries are the main subject of this guide, with visiting suggestions and background info about the sources of the Malts.
6. Walter Schobert: Das Whisky Lexikon Wolfgang Krüger Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1999
   A great, new, comprehensive encyclopaedia about all kinds of whisk(e)y. The preface was written on Isle of Islay... more than 600 pages in rather small typeface.

Links

I confess I am too lazy to provide an excessive list of links, there are some very good link lists to be found on the web.
Instead of compiling my own link list I just point you to a nice compact Austrian link list:

• Herbert Schatzl's Whisky Link List (in German, but I think it is usable for English speaking people as well)