Coming Soon: a review of Johnny Walker Gold.
Some snobs refuse to even consider Scotch blends. The fact is, it's possible to blend several flawed (or just one-dimensional) distillations and come up with something quite drinkable. It's also possible to blend some good scotches and discover something very nice. I understand blenders do their job strictly by smell (no tasting).
There was a time that blends were all that were available to the market outside of Scotland. Single Malts lacked commercial backing for marketing, and only corporations with the advertising dollars and purchasing power were able to bottle and sell substantial amounts of Scotch outside the UK. Since product consistency, low cost and mild flavor were seen as paramount, only blends fit the bill. Small-time bottlers and wealthy connoisseurs had to make their own bottling arrangements, and competed with the high-volume blenders for the Single Malt production of the many small distilleries.
Glenfiddich, followed by other Single Malt brands, broke this pattern by showing that there was a market for Single Malts outside of Scotland. I guess it's no coincidence that Glenfiddich is a mix of different years production, aging time, sherry-cask and non-sherry-cask aged cuts. They can call it a Single Malt because there is no grain and it all comes from the same distillary. It strives to achieve blend-like consistency with the blending techniques.
Blends come in an infinite variety. Grain alcohols are an ingredient of any bottling that just says "blended whisky". If it says "blended Malt whiskies" then it's a vatted Malt, or blend of only malts. According to Poirier's excellent "Whisky with dinner", blends are 65 to 85% grain whisky and only 35 to 15% Malt whisky This is reason enough (for me, anyway) to stick with Vatted and Single Malts.
I find I don't like the blends with grain. Blenders also mix in caramel for consistent color batch-to-batch. I think this is illegal/immoral with Single Malts (correct me if I'm wrong.) If no more information is given, a blend is probably made up of 3 year old malts and grains. In Scotland, it can't be called "whisky" until it's 3 years old.
Has anyone out there tried Johnny Walker Blue? It seems to be a very high-end blend created primarily for the upscale Asian market. A local store has a bottle for $179, at that price you can buy any 21 year-old Single Malt and have change left for a 12 or two. I think it'll be there for a while. For anyone interested, this would be the ultimate blend.
I think I'll e-mail Ken about my latest Scotch discovery!
Back to the Scotch Page.
My head feels woozy, I'd better go home.