The rise and rise of blends, episode 1: the one that set the bar

If I were to ask you how many bottles you own, I ‘m pretty certain I would get a wide variety of answers. Depending on where you are in your whisky journey, what your budget is and how much shelfspace you (‘re allowed to) have, chances are it would be a number anywhere between a few dozen up to several hundreds. However, regardless of the total amount your collection mounts up to, if I were to ask you how much of your collection consists of blends, be it blended malts or blends in the traditional sense of the word, I fancy my chances of the number being fairly consistent, in terms of percentages. I’d wager it to be - at best – roughly 10% of most people’s collection at any given time. By and large: single malt is where it’s at for most of us. And generally I would agree, as for the vast majority of blends out there, there is indeed very little that we tend to engage with, as it’s simply not aimed at people considering themselves enthusiasts. Which doesn’t mean they don’t serve a purpose when it comes to appreciating whisky, quite the contrary in fact. Be it a Johnnie Walker Black or Green, a bottle of Chivas Regal 12 or any of the other usual suspects, likely they will have occupied space in anyone’s cabinet during the earlier days of appreciating whisky. But once you’ve dipped your toe into the vast pool of whisky and gotten a taste for it, it’ll often turn out to be a case of been there, done that, moving on. Single Malt geekery awaits. There’s Glendronachs and Ardmores to explore, Balblairs and Tomatins to analyse and Kilchomans and Linkwoods to rave about, after all, so …

*Press pause button here

In my opinion, we’re starting to see a shift. A slow one, but a shift none the less. We’re seeing an increasing amount of blends out there, aimed not solely at the occasional customer who tends to pick up his or her bottles from the supermarket, but which are also taking the more ‘dedicated enthusiasts’ into consideration. Now, blends aimed at enthusiasts are of course nothing new as such. Duncan Taylor has since long been releasing blends in different shades and sizes under the ‘Black Bull’ label. Compass Box’ entire business model is pretty much built around it, and Douglas Laing has been using, with great success at that, their remarkable regional malts to build their brand much in the same way a distillery would do so for its single malts. But in recent times, we ‘re noticing an increase in brands and distilleries who are not generally associated with or known for blends or blended malts, who have been tapping into precisely this category. Recently, Loch Lomond released the first of 3 blended malts under the ‘Noble Rebel’ name, indie bottler Dràm Mòr, who tend to focus entirely on single cask bottlings, created a blended malt labelled Dumbarton Rock, which, if I’m not mistaken, is said to become a core range release. A long established brand of blended whisky, Black Bottle, has been recently revamped by owners Distell. And last but not least, arguably the most celebrated and respected distillery of the lot, Springbank, has done the same with their Campbeltown Loch brand, which used to be released as a budget friendly blend and has now been revived as an equally budget friendly blended malt. The plot thickens…

In my opinion, that’s far from a coincidence: a lot of these relatively new or relaunched and revamped brands are released in a budget friendly range of somewhere between €35 and €50. As such, it stands to reason, as with the ever increasing prices for single malts we are currently facing, catering to that segment of your clientele with a disposable income of roughly €40-€50 a bottle, helps to keep them connected. When it’s become impossible (or at least very hard) to keep the price of your core range, entry level 10 or 12 yo under a certain price point, chances are some of your returning customers will be looking to take their business elsewhere. One way to prevent this, is to offer them something else, which is not only retailing at an accessible price, but is also on par with those entry level expressions in terms of quality. Obviously the same applies to the ever growing number of people who are starting to explore whisky. Would you really expect someone to cough up £60 or more for a Springbank 10 when they just bid farewell to that JW black which set them back £25? This, I feel, is where a lot of those recently released blends and blended malts have a huge part to play: ‘luring’ in newcomers eager to try quality stuff without scaring them off by bridging that gap between what may actually be considered budget whiskies and those more expressive expressions of single malt. The fact that more seasoned whisky enthusiasts also will connect with these bottles, is what I like to consider as one of life’s little bonusses.

So is it a coincidence that people like Roy and Jim have been zooming in on blended malts recently? I think not. I too had been planning this series for a little while and initially it was meant to be the topic for February, but because I was hoping to get my hand on 2 of the aforementioned examples (Noble Rebel and Dumbarton Rock) I pushed it back a bit. Alas, I’m still on the lookout for these, but fret not: plenty of recent (and less recent) examples of blends and blended malts to go around for the purpose of this series.

So, for the coming weeks, I’ll be talking about several whiskies, all of them blends or blended malts, to see if they’re worth trying, punching above their weight in terms of quality to price ratio. And to kick things off, there’s only one place to start, really…

Compass Box Great King Streat Artist Blend

43% ABV, natural colour, Unchill Filtered, 2019 release, paid €36

When talking about blends and blended malts catering for an enthusiast’s market, it’s clear that we need to talk about Compass Box. I’ve talked about them at the start of this year, so I won’t dwell too long. When literally no one could be even half bothered to pay any attention to blends or blended malts, along came this renegade company. I mean, when your first ever release is a whisky made from blended grain whiskies – a category which was basically non-existent at the time, you’re bound to have people take notice and raise a few eyebrows. They seem to have taken it upon themselves, especially in their earlier years, to challenge the sometimes counterproductive or even borderline idiotic rules and regulations laid down by the SWA, and seemed to revel even in their role and position as fly in the proverbial ointment – both their 3 yo Deluxe whisky and their banned original Spice Tree which used inner staves inside the casks to enhance the wood influence did seem to annoy the powers that be for all the right reasons indeed, not to mention the fact that through their website they were among the first to offer as much factual information and details on the contents of their whiskies as legally possible.

I could have literally picked out any whisky from the Compass Box range, but as I want to try and bring you a mix of both blends and blended malts for this series, I deliberate chose one from their blended whisky range.

Nose

Fruit jumping out of the glass – mango, grapes, oranges, unripe banana ad apples: it’s all there. Lactic notes, vanilla and a sugary – grainy/cereal note, this noses almost like an archetype of what you’d expect whisky to be. Good, well balanced, yet also pretty straightforward.

Palate

Again, all of the nose translates on the tongue: very fruity with clear notes of grain, cereal and vanilla, but now with some hints of wood shining though as well. If you’re looking for a point of critique: the mouthfeel is a bit thin in my opinion.

Finish

Medium long, with a hint of wood and dried oranges.

Final thoughts

Easy sipping, perfectly decent whisky, which makes for a good palate starter. This won’t set your world on fire, and it may not be the most exciting bottle to have on your shelf, but for less than €40, you could do much, much worse indeed. 82/100

Next week: a blended malt from one of the new wave of distilleries out there.