Today Blended Scotch whisky is a luxury good enjoyed around the world both for its character and as a status symbol. Some brands like Johnnie Walker are super massive, producing more than 130 million bottles a year. These blends are put together with consistency in mind, can consist of multiple grains and malts from 20 to 50 or even more distilleries. For Johnnie Walker’s top of the line Blue Label blend, only 1 out of every 10,000 of the company’s casks is considered worthy enough to be used in its creation. And the Scots aren’t the only ones to blend their whisky, much Canadian whisky is blended, as is most Irish Whiskey, and some of the world’s finest blends are produced in Japan. The concept behind blending whiskies is that the end product is superior to its constituent parts. I have long struggled with this concept, finding most blends blander and less interesting than the average single malt. But this trend may be changing, smaller players
56 • November 2012
like Compass Box have entered the fray creating boutique blends, and the bigger players are doing a better job of creating interesting smaller batch and premium releases. Jim Murray named Ballantine 17 Year the finest whisky in the world in his 2012 Whisky Bible. It is a pleasant enough whisky, but the finest in the world? I am a malt man, a devotee of single malt whiskies. I’ve tasted whiskies from every operating malt distillery in Scotland and most of the closed ones, further I’ve paid homage at more than 70 of them. For the longest time I had written off blends as being less interesting, plainer and uninspired. In the last year however, a couple of blends have turned my head and given me cause to reconsider my past bias. Whiskies like the Cutty Sark Tam O’Shanter, Nikka Tsuru 17 Year, Compass Box’s Great King Street and even Johnnie Walker’s Gold Reserve and Platinum bottlings have given this malt man new hope, and a reason to take another look at blended whisky.