The rise and rise of blends, part 5: the blast from the past

Campbeltown Loch blendend scotch whisky. 40% ABV, natural colour, UCF, 2009 release.

(Disclaimer: Review of a sample kindly provided by Jonas from The Whiskybarn. Was around €50-€65 on release, now app. €600-€700 on secondary.)

To end this series on blended whisky, I thought it would be appropriate to take a step back from focusing on recent releases and zoom out a bit to look at a blend from the recent past. Because it’s easy to be singing praise to the quality and affordable blends from today, especially as they provide much needed and appreciated alternatives to the often quite ridiculous price hikes of recent. Just last weekend, to ‘celebrate’ World Whisky Day, Diageo deemed it appropriate to contribute to the festivities by releasing a £1000 pound, NAS, 40% ABV blend. ‘The Master’s Cut’ is the last farewell from now retired master blender Jim Beveridge, and to celebrate his legacy, he created a blend consisting of just two whiskies: Roseisle and Cameronbridge. So essentially the malt whisky component in here (the grain-malt proportions remain, obviously, undisclosed to us pitiful mortals) is as old (or young) as 13 or 14 years, as Roseisle started production as recent as 2009. We can only assume (and hope) that a shitload of very old and rare Cameronbridge went into this. I’m not even going to rant about this, as those advocating the idea of a £1000 for a NAS, 40% blend, are frankly beneath my contempt. Don’t get me wrong, I fully support the idea of giving someone like Jim Beveridge a worthy farewell as this man is likely to forget more about whisky than I’ll ever learn, but I feel I’m being extremely mild in saying that there are mixed messages being sent here. You’d at least think that a master blender with accolades like mr. Beveridge would like to see his final gift to the whisky community being celebrated by people who know and love whisky for what it is – a (granted: luxury) consumer product, people who would actually be tasting and enjoying what he created, rather than it becoming yet another ornament sitting on a mantepiece for the happy few, or even worse, being locked up in a safe by those looking to sell it on with a big profit later on. Because believe you me: that’s exactly what will happen to most of the 1000 bottles that are available.

Now on the other hand of the spectrum, there’s a company like J.&A. Mitchell, owners of Springbank and Kilkerran, who, ironically around the same time when the 10 million LPA whisky factory that is Roseisle came into being, released a 30 yo blended whisky – charging you roughly £50 for it. I know this was 14 years ago and the times have indeed changed since, but even back then this would have been considered ‘very reasonable’ to say the least. The brand ‘Campbeltown Loch’ has been around for a long time. Springbank started releasing blends with various age statements in this series as far back as 2000 and kept things going until 2016, but even before that, there was a ‘Campbeltown Loch Whisky Company’ dating back to at least the 1970’s. So when it was ‘revived’ again as a blended malt in 2021 – this time purely consisting of malt whiskies from Campbeltown, it could lean back on quite a bit of pedigree. Again it speaks volumes in my opinion that Springbank release these latest incarnations at affordable prices (€40 or there about), at decent ABV and without adding colour or chill filtering it. Lead by example and what not. Yes, it might be ‘fun’ to see these appearing with various age statements somewhere in the future, but for the time being, rest assured that it’s a NAS rock solid whisky.

So why am I discussing a now near impossible to find, and these days alas very expensive blend from more than a decade ago? For starters, to emphasize the fact that decent, affordable blends are nothing new. Apart from all the cheap mixing supermarket fodder we’ll always see, be it today or decades ago, there have pretty much always been quality blends around. Heck, before the concept of single malt whisky took lift off somewhere in the 1960’s, blends, poor and good, were pretty much the be all and end all when talking whisky. So to avoid tunnelvision, I thought it would be nice to ‘dust off’ an oldie. And while it would now of course seem impossible for any producer to release a 30 yo blend for €50, that same company did recently release a 30 year old blend for what should still be considered a very fair price – I’m talking of course about the Seven Star from Cadenhead’s (which I briefly covered in last week’s review). Furthermore it’s worth pointing out that, despite this particular whisky being an example of a bottle becoming ‘unobtanium’, you should on occasion be willing to take a punt on older blends. Auctions and whisky festivals are ideal for this. The higher end ones will not go cheap, but there’s plenty of very decent older stuff to be found at bargain prices. And finally, whiskies like these are the exact opposite of what those greed driven releases from Diageo represent, and therefore deserve to be talked about and celebrated.

Nose

Liquorice wood, marzipan and confectionary notes. Heathery honey and wood (‘young’ and vibrant though). Fresh lemons and oranges. It doesn’t immediately nose like a 30 year old whisky, but give it time to breath in the glass and it ‘catches up’ so to speak, with notes of leather and wood polish.

Palate

A great balance of older (wood and leather) character and those ‘fresher’ citrus and vanilla notes from the nose. There’s some salinity happening as well, with dried oranges and dried nuts. Despite the 40% ABV it’s by no means ‘thin’ or watery, making for a medium full, slightly drying mouthfeel.

Finish

A tad short, all things considering, dominated by those woody notes.

Final thoughts

This is a proper good blend. No, let me rephrase that: this is a proper good whisky. It’s miles away from its current incarnation and I obviously wouldn’t want to pay the secondary prices it goes for these days, not only because it’s seriously overpriced, but also because that’s just not fair on this whisky. I’ll argue that, while it was a different time and place, at £50 or there about they were pretty much underselling it even, but by no means it’s worth forking out tenfold that original RRP. As this was a (generous) heel sample gifted to me by Jonas from The Whisky Barn, I can’t give it an proper, honest score, but if it had been my own bottle it would definitely be well north of the 80 points mark.

So looking back on this series, I’m really glad to have dedicated some time to blends and blended malts. To be honest, I didn’t see the current (re)focus on blends coming, where more and more producers are choosing to release quality, affordable blends to counter the current price hikes of a lot of single malts. 2 years ago I was very pessimistic about the future of whisky as I saw it clearly heading in a direction where it would become harder and harder for most people to actually afford not even the higher end releases, but standard core range products as well. While I remain sceptical and critical for the most part, the fact that there’s quality combined with affordability, at least means there’s reason to be hopeful. Are we at the dawn of a new blend revival – be it blends or blended mats, I think that remains to be seen, but if you look at what North Star, Loch Lomond (Noble Rebel), Ardnamurchan (Maclean’s Nose), Dràm Mòr (Dumbarton Rock), Thompson Brothers, Springbank and indeed Douglas Laing and others are doing with the concept of blended malts and blends, there’s no denying the trend. So if you feel like celebrating and enjoying these, you are absolutely right to do so. I even feel some sort of ‘taboo’ has been lifted as it’s no longer ‘bon temps’ to just shit on blends. And while a lot of them are indeed subpar to say the least, there just might be a modal shift happening here. I’ve talked about it with James Angus who runs the whisky punks facebook page, and here’s a guy who not fully embraced and appreciated a quality blend long before I even took notice, but promotes it proud and loud. So if you ever feel like celebrating the fact that you are utterly enjoying your blend, know that you are definitely not alone. Bottom line: if it’s good, it’s good, and if it’s affordable and available, we’ll talk about it and sing its praise. And from a personal point of view, while 90% of my selection consists of single malts, I ‘ve come to understand that with what’s going on today, we should put these 3 factors at the heart of things: quality, availability and affordability. This may in some cases imply that we shouldn’t always except to see the words ‘single malt’ on a label, but as money talks and bullshit walks, truth be told, I’m actually not at all too bothered about that.