The Art of Blending Scotch Whisky

Blended Scotch whisky accounts for the great majority of all Scotch consumed in the world. Its familiarity has, paradoxically, sometimes obscured the extent to which it is a genuine and demanding craft. To assemble a blend that tastes consistent bottle after bottle, year after year, decade after decade, from the ever-changing raw materials of forty or fifty individual whiskies, is one of the more remarkable feats of sensory craftsmanship in any industry.

Blending as a discipline emerged in the middle of the nineteenth century. Before that, whisky was almost always sold as the product of a single distillery, and its character varied considerably from cask to cask. It was the merchants and grocers of the period — John Walker in Kilmarnock, James Chivas in Aberdeen, John Dewar in Perth, Arthur Bell in Perth, Matthew Gloag in Perth again — who first developed the practice of combining whiskies from many sources to create a consistent, reliable product with a distinct house character.

The tools of the modern master blender have not fundamentally changed since. At the heart of the blender's work is the tulip-shaped nosing glass, in which small samples of individual whiskies are assessed by smell rather than by taste. A working blender will assess many hundreds of samples in a typical week, and will maintain a mental library of the character of each contributing distillery through its various ages and cask types.

The blender's work is not to invent a whisky but to preserve one — the same character, in every bottle, for a century.

A typical blended Scotch may contain forty or more single whiskies. Some contribute weight, some brightness, some smoke, some sweetness. The malt whiskies provide character; the grain whiskies provide a smoother, more neutral canvas against which the malts can express themselves. The proportions are the blender's decision and are guarded closely.

The consistency required is remarkable. A great blend such as Johnnie Walker Black Label or Chivas Regal 12 must taste, in every bottle sold anywhere in the world, precisely as it tasted the year before and the year before that. Yet the individual whiskies drawn upon may not be available in the same quantities as before, or may have matured differently, or may need to be substituted. The blender's task is to preserve the character even as the components change.

For a companion account of the category of blended malt Scotch — which contains only malt whiskies and no grain whisky — see our related article on understanding blended malt Scotch whisky.