Whisky almost everywhere is usually one or more of two types of blend: first, it is nearly always the blend of different casks and batches of casks of the same whisky; second, it may also then be further blended with different whiskies. The former would be a bourbon, a single grain, a single malt or an Irish pot still whisky. The latter takes many forms, but is normally and officially known as a ‘blended whisky’.
AN UNFEASIBLY LARGE CURRY
The task of the distiller – or in the case of large operations, the master blender and his or her tasting panel – is hardly finished once the wood and warehouse have had their way. In order to produce enough of a specific brand, and to ensure a uniformity of flavour, different casks or batches of the matured whisky are mixed or blended together. This is a perfectly normal and overwhelmingly usual practice, but can seem to the outsider a tad confusing, given that some whiskies are labelled as blended and some are not. Let me explain – by way of a cooking analogy.
Imagine every week throwing a wonderful dinner party. Every Saturday you make the same curry, taken from a single recipe. Only, given your excellent cooking, you no longer have a pot large enough to feed your growing party of guests, so you end up making multiple batches, throughout the week, freezing them, then, on the big day, defrosting and mixing them together. In doing so you’ve achieved one of your aims, which is to ensure that there’s enough to go round.
However, you have a problem. Your guests are an old bunch of friends who have come to love a specific curry, and want it to taste exactly the same every dinner party. In order to ensure that they get what they want, you follow the recipe slavishly, doing your level best to source the same ingredients. You test-taste each new batch against a batch kept over from the last dinner party. You discard any batch that’s either too strong or different and that you think might spoil or alter the final curry’s taste. Some of the new batches may be different, but not so much as to threaten the final taste, and these you portion off among the batches deemed ready. Only then do you mix the whole lot together.
The result: an unfeasibly large curry that tastes, you tell your guests, exactly the same as the unfeasibly large curry they all so enjoyed last week.
THE HEGEMONY OF THE BRAND
As with your mythical curry, so the same of all whiskies, except of course those bottles whose contents are sourced exclusively from a single cask. Despite the distiller’s best efforts, there is no guarantee that, say, two casks barrelled on the same day, from the same batch of new make, and aged for the same time, in the same spot in the warehouse, will produce whiskies with the same taste and character. You would think so, but whatever the variables foreseen, whatever the hypothesis, there will always be discernible differences.
In this respect, every barrel of whisky is unique, and as such a source of wonder if your interest as a producer or consumer is always the quality of difference, the joy of specialising in the one-off, the highlighting of an essential truth: that is, every barrel or batch of whisky is a physical moment in time, never to be repeated. This is the provenance of the independent bottler, the aficionado, the hunter, the collector, the super-enthusiast.
It is not, however, how distilleries generally make their money. Whether making malt, bourbon, grain or Irish pot still, the blender and his or her tasting panel will blend various barrels or batches of the same whisky in order to iron out perceived differences and so recreate a product considered exactly the same as all previous batches that went out bearing the selfsame brand name – and enough of it to reach as much of the market as physically possible.
Of course, there is in all this a good bit of marketing guff. You may tell your guests that this week’s curry tastes exactly the same as last week’s, and the vast majority of the table would agree, unable to discern any differences, but analysed in a laboratory or tasted by a curry super-taster, previously indiscernible differences would begin to surface.
And if true of your curry, then even more so for whisky, which rather than sitting for a week in your freezer has spent perhaps decades maturing in wood. Owing to anything from a switch in grain varietal to unexpected changes in process to the tiny batch-by-batch differences in the oak sourced for ageing, a particular line will inevitably taste ever so slightly different, whatever the mastery of the blender. Thus, while imperceptible when set against, say, last year’s release, when compared across the years, the differences become more and more apparent – in some cases, startlingly so. Enthusiasts love this sort of thing, and are right to call brands out on claims for the impossible.
THE BONZA BLEND
A ‘blended whisky’ is a blend of two or more different whiskies, which brings me to the story of the Bonza Blend. In Australia, ‘bonza’ has various ultra-positive meanings – great, excellent, brilliant etc. – and ‘beauty bonza’ is reserved for verging-on-godly outcomes. The Bonza Blend is the name I gave to the first sample bottle of Scotch blended whisky I ever had a hand in making. It is also the last – and for good reason. I share the following piece of humiliation as a means of illustrating how very bloody hard it is to blend two or more whiskies.
The Glengoyne Distillery is one of Scotland’s most beautiful distilleries. It’s situated north of Glasgow, and considers itself the southernmost Highland distillery, its warehouses technically in the Lowlands. As well as operating long fermentation times and one of the slowest distillations in Scotland, Glengoyne hosts a fine tour, one which invariably ends with the opportunity not only to taste its wares, but also to have a go at making a blend of several different whiskies, hailing from all five of Scotland’s whisky-making regions. It is here that the only bottle of Bonza Blend the world has ever known was born.
While I have no idea as to where exactly each of the whiskies came from, other than their regions, I remember enthusiastically matching the lighter, more floral-smelling whiskies with a touch of the heavier peated offerings, and being possessed of the belief that I was on the way to making a cracking blend. I think I blended seven whiskies, of different amounts, before writing, in my very best handwriting, ‘Bonza Blend’ on the label provided, dating and, I confess, even signing it. Revelling in the depths of my laboratory-fuelled fantasy, I think I thought I might be on to something.
Later, I presented the Bonza Blend to my wife, who took a sip, and made a face and many unprintable suggestions as to what I ought to do with it. I took the path of least painful resistance and put it in a kitchen cupboard, where it sits today, usually between a bag of flour and some tins of beans, a salutary reminder of my propensity for absolute vanity, and of the fact that blending whisky really is an art form, one that, like any art making, requires talent, knowing one’s tools, a certain compulsive focus, and the willingness to practise, endlessly.
In Scotland, the blending of different whiskies results in one of three types of blends: ‘blended malt’, ‘blended grain’ and ‘blended Scotch’, the last of these – a blend of malt and grain – representing some 90% of Scotland’s output. Unless prefaced by the word ‘single’, all scotches are blends made from whiskies sourced from two or more distilleries. Note: ‘single’ means single distillery, not single grain.
Ireland has a similar style, but is limited by distillery choice. Japan is also a producer of multi-distillery blends, if limited, like Ireland, by its relatively small number of producers, and also by a general reluctance (among distilleries) to trade styles – hence the likes of Suntory sourcing malt from abroad. Both Canada and Japan have developed single distilleries with the capacity to create different styles from which to create blends. If in Scotland, these would be called single blends, at which point we would need to call time on all whisky glossaries.
In the US, the majority of whisky is American straight whisky, meaning it is vatted batches of whisky made in a single distillery. An American blend, however, is altogether different, being a mix of a normally minority portion of straight whisky and a neutral unaged spirit – that is, vodka.
A well-blended whisky is a work of works. Like a perfumer combining perfumes, it’s turning the unexpectedly new into the wanted old; or it’s twisting a variety of the familiar into something unexpected, new or pleasantly different. Either way, the blend is a build, a splicing together of structures, tastes and characters, a work requiring an intelligence born of two polar opposites: a desire for chaos and a desire for order; a curiosity that revels in the knowledge that solutions are nothing without problems.
Obviously, when it comes to simply ensuring that a product adheres to a specific and already established profile, then the chaos – the fact that a given cask or batch tastes different, or that a whisky previously used can’t be sourced – is righted as a matter of brand-conscious priority. Order – balance, harmony – is brought by the blender and his or her tasting panel, a task that might, for example, involve solving a batch’s surprising dry, astringent mouthfeel by adding in whisky sourced from second or third fill casks.
However, when bringing balance to a blend of different styles of whiskies, such as in the case of a blended scotch, then the chaos or problem is more than just knowing the flavour profiles of the grain and malt whiskies you might choose to use. A blender understands, first, how a grain whisky’s natural creamy sweetness informs – adapts, changes, smoothes – the malts; second, that it and its few fellows are both base and glue for the largely headstrong and skittish malts; and third, that the ratio of grains to malts might be in the region of one to eight, such is the former’s subtle strength. The grain knits the malts together, and to itself, and in doing so, helps create something else – balance, harmony, a new order. Something, then, unlike the Bonza Blend, which was, is, and will always be a big old bottle of mess.
OLD DOG, NEW TRICKS
If the blend as an enthusiast’s whisky is once again on the up, then so also is the interest in those single malts originally made exclusively for blends. It’s a real turn of events. The party line has long been that malts designed for blends are either not good enough or too specific to stand on their own two feet. Given this, the cynical view would be that the reasons for their sudden appearance are a matter of market economics: greater single malt consumption + rapidly depleted ageing stocks = release of whiskies previously deemed fit only for blends. Truth is, that’s not wholly fair – on producers, consumers, blends or history. Every distillery possesses its own distinct personality. Some possess extraordinary character, character that has hitherto only been properly understood in relation to how the spirit they produce might fit with other whiskies. Given time, the odd tweak, a helping hand in the warehouse or in the quality of wood, a number have shown that they are more than capable of rolling out world class whiskies. Watch this space: this is just the beginning.