The fifth meeting of the Virtual Whisky Tasting group took place on Friday, May 1st at 9pm ET. This meeting focused on something that doesn’t get as much press – blended whisky. While aficionados talk about single malt and the exclusivity surrounding it, blended whisky still makes up the lion’s share of sales globally, and is spearheaded by some landmark brands.
About Blended Whisky
A single malt whisky would traditionally be made from malted barley from a pot still in a single distillery, and would be the combination of various barrels. The term you would often hear for this is “vatting” – the process of combining whisky from separate barrels to give a consistent taste. Age is also an important factor with single malt whisky – with the youngest whisky in the vatting process generally determining the age statement on the bottle.
A blend, on the other hand, can be a combination of different grains – barley, wheat, corn etc. and can use whiskies from different distilleries. Using different grains means that blended whisky is often cheaper to produce, because some of those grains might be less expensive than malted barley. A second factor is the age – blended whisky doesn’t have the same requirements around aging of the spirit, so it can be produced in higher volumes much more quickly.
In fact, until the 1980s blended whiskies made up most of the volume of whisky sold, with single malts only really starting to take off and gain market share at that point.
Some key brands in blended whisky include Johnnie Walker, Chivas Regal, Ballantine’s, J&B, Grant’s, Dewar’s and many more. Johnnie Walker has about 20% of the market share with its range of colors, Red, Black, Green, Gold and Blue.
It will be interesting to see what our VWT members bring along on Friday.
Drinking – Blends
Johnnie Walker Gold Label 18yo
