Blends: The Backbone of Scotland's Whiskey Industry

we've got to talk about Blends the backbone of Scotland's whiskey industry for nearly 2 centuries blended Scotch makes up around 90% of all Scotch whiskey sold today many of Scotland's most famous whiskey brands are Blends and yet they're often overlooked by whiskey enthusiasts single maltt is having its moment in the Sun but slowly and quietly a blended Scotch Renaissance has begun and a new wave of Blends is emerging join me Christopher coats as I speak to the experts about Blended scotch's fascinating history and complex production process and find out how Blends are being served and enjoyed today we'll be exploring the world of Blends through the lens of our partner arre one of the newest and most intriguing New Wave Blends on the scene inspired by the blended Scotch whiskies of the early 20th century arre is malt Rich lightly peed and bottled unchill filtered at 48% with only its natural color together we'll look behind the label and learn how this exquisitely balanced blend is sparking new Delight in blended Scotch but before we get started let's remind ourselves of the basics what is blended Scotch blended Scotch whiskey is made by combining two categories of whiskey single malt and single grain by law single malt whiskey must be made entirely at one Distillery from 100% molted barley and distilled in pot Stills single grain Whiskey on the other hand is the name given to Scotch whiskey made on a single site from other cereal grains in addition to molted barley or using other types of Stills usually this means a mash of wheat or corn and molted barley distilled continuously on column Stills but that's not all single grain can be for instance a mash of 100% molted barley distilled on one site in a column still would also have to be labeled as single grain an example of this is lo lomman single grain but column Stills don't Define the category for instance a whiskey made from a mash containing other grains such as Rye in addition to molted barley even even if they were distilled on one site in a copper pot is still called single grain an example of this is araki Highland Ry all you have to remember is that as soon as these two categories of whiskey combine a blended Scotch whiskey is born I'm beginning my journey into the world of blended Scotch in Le now part of Scotland's capital Edinburgh this bustling Port Town was once home to a multitude of Scotch whiskey blenders bottling halls and Bonded Warehouse houses those days may be long gone but if you look close enough you can still find signs of leth's whiskey Heritage hidden in plain sight some distillers are even bringing whiskey back to understand how Blends got to where they are today I'm meeting Justine Hazelhurst an expert on Leaf's whiskey history and its links to blended Scotch it's a story that began in the early 1800s with the birth of grain whiskey and blended Scotch as we know [Music] it today there's a bottle of blended Scotch whiskey in every barath are in every city in every corner of the world but it wasn't always that way where does the story of blended Scotch whiskey begin I think if we look at what blended Scotch whiskey actually is it's uh a blend of several different components from different distilleries from two different Scotch whiskey categories so single malt whiskey and single grain whiskey single grain whiskey is usually the product of a different method of distillation so if we rewind back to the 1800s and try to work out how and why this alternative method came about essentially we can understand what blended Scotch whiskey is because without it blended Scotch whisky as we know it today wouldn't actually exist and you're talking about column Stills right column Stills so the 1823 Exile Act was a big game Cher for the Scotch whiskey industry we could probably say that it um allowed legal whiskey production to expand and so as a result of that you had more distilleries cropping up not all of them survived but a lot more distilleries cropping up the big Lan distilleries obviously found that they their space was a little bit more competitive so they were looking for ways to produce larger quantities of of spirit at more cost-efficient prices and so they essentially looked at ways they invested time and energy and of course money into experiments into the process of continuous distillation and then in 1831 anas coffee the Irishman he paint ATT his continuous still and it was that still that was installed across the stories in Ireland in England in Scotland simply because it was a safer method but it was also more cost efficient so this allowed the production of a palatable appealing spirit that was also cheap to produce and that was incredibly significant right yeah certainly far more drinkable than previous efforts we know that the 1823 excise Act made life a lot easier for distillers but how did it impact the blenders well one of the implications was the reduction in Duty which made whiskey cheaper and so the demand for whiskey increased and as a result the number of spirit retailers that popped up across the country also increased and it was essentially the spirit retailers that became the blenders later on they wanted to create their own recipes their own sort of house styles and Tred to ensure consistency so that when their customers came back to the shop the product that they were buying was exactly the same as the previous one so in 1860 the spirits act essentially allowed the blending of different Spirits from different distilleries to be undertaken under bond which essentially meant that you didn't have to pay the duty until it was removed from the Bonded Warehouse and that in turn removed a huge financial obstacle for them because if you imagine they had purchased all of this stock they were paying Duty on it all the while that it was sitting there in the shop so obviously there was an incentive to sell it quickly so the upshot of that led to the fact that these blends could mature longer in the warehouse this was a great way for Spirit retailers to buy whiskey when prices were low it also ensured consistency they had the same products for their recipes and essentially that was the start of building Brands so things were really looking good for the Scotch whiskey industry at this point and boom time was beginning and then in the 1870s a Calamity befell its major competitor the CNAC industry what happened essentially felx so felx tiny little aphid had been imported through the importation of American vines in France the American Vines were immune to ferous poison but unfortunately the European Vines weren't and so Vineyards across France and then later on across Europe were pretty much decimated production of wine ceased production of conac ceased the conac industry had plentiful stocks of of of Brandy so it wasn't a question of overnight suddenly there was no Brandy but people started to panic because they didn't really know what the problem was therefore they didn't really know how to solve the problem so people were maybe a little careful with their stocks and that as a result pushed the prices up that worked wonders for the scotch risky producers they were like hey we've got something you might like so the demand for Scotch risky increased hugely many Scotch whiskey blenders had their fortunes made at this time are there any names that became big at that time that we'd recognize today absolutely Tommy duer obviously from duers was a huge name James Buchanan with his blend black and white Andrew us Ria possibly not so well known today but back in the Heyday a huge name here in Edinburgh William Sanderson big big name here in LEF with the Vat 69 blend and of course John Krabby also a LEF blender whose brand has recently been revived what with the new bonington discovery so from the 1870s and the 1880s onwards this was a boom period for Scotch whiskey and especially the 1890s that was an extraordinary decade for um sales of Scotch whiskey to all corners of the globe Australia South Africa what we would today call the Commonwealth so many new distilleries had been built brands that still exist today had been founded whiskey could now be found all around the world most of it Blended but what goes up must come down right things were too good to last what happened 1898 it all went horribly wrong with what people often refer to as the Patterson crash but it actually started with another company J G Stewart one of the oldest blending houses here in Edinburgh they were operating a lot on credit and when the bank refused to advance them any more credit they had no alternative but to stop payment prior to that the banks were advancing money and the entire industry was really operating on credit but because of J&G Stewart the banks got a little panicky and so when a debt was called in for the pans and they didn't have enough money to pay it the bank refused to advance them any more credit and that was the stoppage of the company now with the Pattersons being one of the biggest whiskey firms not just here in leth but across the whole country when they had to stop payment the domino effect on lots of other smaller companies meant that they also went busted and so here in leth and across Scotland the repercussions of the pisans going busted were huge after the Patterson crash then we come into the beginning of the 20th century and we had the triple threat of World War I prohibition and World War II how did that impact the blenders well hugely because especially during the two world wars distilling operations were reduced the distilling that took place was primarily for the production of Munitions so without the St taking place the blender stocks were obviously also reduced prohibition was a little different for some Blends simply because it was an opportunity to build the brand if you imagine that some of these Blends were being smuggled into the United States once prohibition was over these were the names that people remembered but then in the second half of the 20th century it was boom time again and things were going well for the blenders absolutely so the ' 60s 50s 60s and first half of the' 70s the Scotch whiskey boom was apparent Brands were being sold all over the world a huge demand for Scotch whiskey and this mid-century boom period saw the building of many new distilleries and a massive ramping up of production volume which led to the creation of what we now know as the whiskey Lo yeah and of course the Lo then needed to be drained so everything in anything was being bottled so here on on the supermarket shells you saw a whole bunch of new brands appearing and you saw the start of single malt bottling starting to emerge prior to the 1980s very little of Scotch whiskey was actually bottled as single mle but after 1980 with the draining of the whiskey Lo essentially the single malt Market started to begin for about 120 130 years people had been drinking blended whiskey and suddenly these single malt bottlings were appearing on the shelves so how do you convince people to change from drinking blended whiskey to single malts well it's my opinion that you tell them it's a superior product and for there to be a superior product essentially have to have an inferior product and unfortunately Blends bore the brunt of that and th since the 1980s and into the 1990s and into the 2000s malt whiskey has been getting the Lion's Share of the column inches in in the Press but also capturing the attention of connoisseurs so for a lot of people who now see New Wave Blends coming into the market Mt drinkers sometimes say oh the Blends are coming back but they never really went away yeah they still form about 70 80% of all the Scotch whiskey that is sold around the world so they most definitely are the backbone of the industry and so what these uh enthusiastic whiskey drinkers are looking for now is something with a little bit of inconsistency something a little bit different and so for me when you look at the price of whiskey these days it's very difficult to find single sing Le Cask bottlings limited editions distinct Cask finishes for maybe under £100 but with these new Boutique Blends they offer the I'm going to say seasoned whiskey Drinker that's something a little bit different but they really offer great value for money so they're ticking all of the boxes there so we've seen the reputation of Blends rise and fall from the 1830s to the 21st century and though single malt is undoubtedly the post child of Scotch whiskey today ever so slowly a fresh interest in Blends has begun to sprout among both whiskey makers and whiskey drinkers the trend started in the early 2000s with the founding of compass Box by John Glazer and the launch of his asyla blend the following year though now best known for its Blended malts asa's success prompted Glazer to release the great King Street artist blend and the Glasgow blend which are still released to this day but Compass box wasn't alone atam Brands launched its ped Green Isle blend in 2018 then came Leaf blend blending Studio woven whiskey in 2021 and the following year saw the launch of a blend by Thompson brothers at dooro Distillery Billy Walker resurrected the white Heather brand and George kakis teamed up with F1 driver Jensen button on Coach built 2023 saw independent bottler adelphie launch McLean's nose Leaf Distillery Rift on the idea of a living blend with perpetuity turntable Spirits in Glasgow linked blending to music and now we have our Dre the latest creation from s T's blenders in Scotland and Japan but what sets new wave Blends like arre apart from Legacy blended Scotch whiskies to understand more about the art of blending and the Fresh Approach of these new Blends I'm heading north to gleni dillery in abedine sheer I'll be talking to the innovator whose job it's been to bring arre to life and a master blender who understands the intention and process behind crafting both single malts and Blended whiskies Richard Bates is the senior director of innovation for Sor Scotch whiskey portfolio for the past 4 years he's had the enviable task of leading the development of rre and that Journey started with a [Music] vision with any of our Spirits we start first and foremost with a vision of creating uh a spirit that will Delight the Drinker that's always the number one goal beyond that what we set out to do is in in trying to bring a new blended Scotch to the market we want wanted to really highlight uh and shine a light on the Excellence of blended Scotch it's a much underrated sometimes forgotten sometimes misunderstood category and alongside many other new new age Blends we really wanted to bring something new and interesting to to the category and help people understand uh the history of blending that's sort of ties our Japanese and our Scotch whiskies together and how has the history of blended Scotch whis whiskey and also Japanese blended whiskey informed the creation of our Dre we kind of realized that in in trying to shine a light on this wonderful blended Scotch category we were effectively setting ourselves a goal of creating a whiskey that would that needed to stand up there against any scotch and to do that we needed to come at this with a a fresh angle and what we realized is is that the outside perspective or at least the outside perspective on Scotch that came from the Japanese blenders was something that we uniquely could bring it's something that hasn't been done before and so that's where we started now there's a wonderful tie up that that arre is almost a story coming full circle back in the early 1900s shinjiro Tori who is widely known as the father of Japanese whiskey and the founder of sorri scotch coming into Japan is what inspired him to create his own whiskey to create whiskey for the Japanese pallet now of course that Scotch at that time would have been a blend so that's that was our starting point really is is to look back at that period look back at the scotches of the early 1920s looking at the idea of sort of very characterful malts um malt Rich content and get the Japanese blenders to look at scotch and the history of scotch Blends and and reimagine it and re interpret it um for the modern drinker so in the centor portfolio you have a number of Blends already in Japan you have very famously hiiki in Scotland you have teachers so why did you decide to create arre as something completely distinct in and not sort of have it live within one of those Blends when we were looking at well how do you stimulate the conversation how do you get people to look again you know to take a fresh perspective to find new Delight in something that is very familiar it's very hard to do it with something that is familiar so that's why we didn't create a new variant of teachers for example we still do create new variance of teachers but we felt for this particular task and to really sort of challenge people a little bit we wanted to do something different and that's why with arre it looks different um hopefully it tastes different when you try it later but also you know it stands out and and you know and some of the decisions we made are all about challenging some of those preconceptions you know it's very light in color but hopefully you'll agree it's it's got incredible depth and complexity to it it's non- AG statement and yet you it's very rich it's very you know indulgent and folsome on the taste so it it's designed to stimulate conversation so AR is very new it's been in the market for a year at this point so when you look back in 10 or 20 years what do you hope that arre will have achieved we'd like to see certain things change so when we started this project we would go to bars and you would have long lists of single malts of Irish whiskey of American whiskey of Japanese whiskey and you'd have four solitary Blends we'd love to see arre and other you know new Blends and Legacy Blends being heroed being being used not just being Bas cocktail whiskies but actually being celebrated we'd love to see people you know writing and blogging and and talking about Blends as much as they do around single malts and other categories of whiskey we hope that in 10 years time we've not just started that conversation but that that conversation is flourishing we really want arre to be a tri if you like to the quality and Excellence that comes from blending and blending the superb character for whiskies that we have in Scotland so that's the vision but the job of making that Vision a reality fell to master blender Callum Fraser and his colleagues on some tor's Scottish and Japanese blending teams throughout his career Callum has worked with some of Scotland's most iconic Master blenders including Dr Jim beverage at Johnny Walker and Sandy Hislop at Valentine's together they crafted Blends using some of Scotland's most well-regarded single malts and Grains this means [ __ ] is ideally placed to not only tell us how our Dre is made but how it compares to Legacy Blends famously blended Scotch whiskies are Blended to a particular flavor profile and a particular recipe and they can include a huge array of different malt and grain whiskies can you tell me a bit about sort of the profiles of some of the different blends that you've worked on and how they're different from one another so if I take Johnny Walker which I I first worked on when I entered the industry was very much based on around the smoke the west coast of Scotland so very medicinal um fullon smoking character then you had you know more delicate tones of fruit body from Rich fruit from European o maturation Valentine's is arguably on the other side of things it's more refined fru almost Floral in terms of the characters the Pete is there but it's lowered down with an overall flavor profile and it's very much underpinned by American Oak maturation so two Global icons that are you know very different so you told me about how blended Scotch whiskies are made up of all these different components but can you tell me a little bit about what those components are and how they perform in a blend I see all the malts and all the grains as equal Partners within the blend in terms of grain very sweet and delicate and it very much can open up all the flavors of the the various malt Styles in terms of malts you get you do get more variety we can have whiskies that have a very fresh fruit character nutty character and more heavily bodied almost sulfury type character which maybe doesn't sound too pleasant but matur properly can create a fantastic single malt and within a blend it very much gives body to the overall to the overall blend and last but by not means least Pete more medicinal richer Pete from the the islands and then you've got Mainland PT twisky that's slightly more hay Floral in character we've established that it's really important for you to have these distinctive Distillery styles to make a complex blend but what are the factors that go into creating a distinctive and characterful Distillery style we go all the way back to the raw material that's used from The Barley to create the M it's not just one method that we use to to create them all it can be done commercially but also um it can be done by traditional floor Mings which was how it was done well in excess for 100 years ago there are only a handful of distilleries now that have traditional floor Mings on site such as here at gleni the commercial molting is very standardized the level of modification of the The Barley towards the malt is very un form across the patch so that that very much will drive a standard flavor profile whereas with a floor mold thingss because it's traditional and the floor may not be even and there may be different levels thermally F spots versus cool spots you get a bit more variability across the floor we think that does drive an element of complexity and depth of the character in terms of going forward you know the the Milling the mash ton type of mash ton can make an influence on that you can have some distilleries that create a clear W some that create a cloudy water and that will impact the flavor profile and then moving on to the the fermentation the length of the fermentation time some distilleries will ferment for about 55 to 60 hours whereas others will have elongated fermentation times 72 hours and Beyond and that allows an addition to converting the sugar to the alcohol which happens at the 55 to 60 hour stage allows for further development of fru and more complex and complicated flavors and characters the very important stage after that is either the double or triple distillation part of the process and again there's variables within there I've just mentioned you can double distill which the majority of M distilleries in Scotland do or in the case of L Vol contortion triple distillation which gives a very different flavor profile in the in the new mate distillate the shape and size of the St is a very important factor in terms of the flavor profile of what's produced the majority of STS now are heated by steam so indirect fired distillation traditionally that wasn't always the case it was usually direct fire distillation but over time a lot of distilleries tending to work towards uh indirect fired distillation which does give you a different character however some distilleries and such as here at GL again that direct fire distillation of at the wash still stage was re-engineered through a mayard reaction allows further complexity in terms of character to be built up during the distillation process itself so combined with the different reflux the different H shape and size of the still will help all Drive um a very different Distillery character in terms of not only the Flor but the depth and complexity of the new M so we've talked about the production process of the Legacy Blends that callum's worked on but arre is a little different it took the scotch and Japanese blending teams at centuri three years and hundreds of iterations to land on what finally became the arre recipe so after all these different trials you settled on the final blend for arre and I understand that some of the components are here so what am I looking at we had whiskies from all across Scotland whiskies from the centu element of the business so whisky such as bamore Lefroy walk and toan arore and gleni we also were fortunate to have access to whiskies from Edrington such as the Macallan Glenn Rosses and Halen Park and on top of that we had access to some third party single malt whiskies and also green whiskies as well so out of all those distilleries we were able to almost categorize to get styles that were reasonably similar and allowed us to easily create a building block philosophy that we've used towards it so what you have in front of you it's four building blocks four elements that have a a defined flavor that we have used to to blend together in specific proportions to create the AR which is the fifth class that's in front of us here these are samples from real onscale fatting we have a Sola system that's in place for AR so we have a blended grain building block and then we have three distinct Blended mop building blocks you mentioned the word salera there and you know I'm very familiar with the salara systems that are used in bodas in Spain for the maturation and fractional blending of cherry but what do you mean by that word so for um AR it's a similar idea what we will do is um through the building blocks the four building blocks and actually the final Blend itself so in essence it's a double CA system we will never fully exhaust any of our components or the blend itself we will continue to top up elements that make up the four building blocks and also top up the blend itself what we aim to do that is consistent batch to batch but also further develop complexity we're currently just done batch one once we get to batch 50 we we'll have that further complexity that taken place over the previous 49 batches and it does create a link all the way back to the original so after the final Blend has been brought together does anything else happen before it sent down the bottling line when we draw off the the the volume of our final BL we will not straight away reduce that to to bottling strength of 48% and then bottl we will reduce it down to a strength in between cast strength and bottling strength and marry that for at least one month we were drawing off a sample of the marrying blend and what we were seeing week by week was further Evolution integration and refinement so tell me what exactly are each of these building blocks that come together to build our Dr so if I first of all could ask you just to take the glass on your your far right there this is a blended grein building block um a combination of different grain whiskies um some of which have wheat as a raw material mainly quite sweet cleaning character and one of which has maze as a raw material very much is more of an oily heavier character so we Blended those together to create the the Blended grein building block so if we could ask you just to have a nose so very sweet absolutely sweet in character but almost a slight sweetness quite bubble gum for me but overall relatively delicate again we have made sure that the new mate thislet was paired with casks that weren't too active so it's American Oak and it's refill American Oak casks cuz we don't want the the wood to overpower The Distillery character the whole ethos behind AR is to make sure that we celebrate whiskies at their optimal point of maturation so again for me very much echo in is very sweet on the palette but one of the you know the key things for me for a grain within the context of a blend is the smoothness that it has it very much has a a nice smooth volumptuous character on the palette and that very much works well when we we add on the various different types of M fantastic so that's absolutely delicious and what's what about this next component so this first one is is a blended Mal element fully American Oak matured there's an array of fruity notes coming through for me fresh fruits crisp green apple but there's also complexities such as honey coming through here as well very much a combination and a celebration of the real top notes that we tend to Showcase within Blends you're completely right that's incredibly fresh I think a lot of people would be very happy if you bottle that on its own right yeah for for me I've very much got a sweet tooth and this very much plays into not only fresh fruits but confectionary type notes it really reminds me of being a kid in a sweet shop and now we have the sherid element yes so visually amongst the five classes that we have in front of is this is the one that probably stands out the most it's probably not a huge surprise that this contains whiskies that have been matured exclusively in ol Roso Sher season Spanish Oak Hogs heads and butts this one has a fru element but it's it's more about the rich fruit elements it it is teetering on showcasing The Cask influence but again we have made sure we've selected whiskies that are heavier and Bolder in character to complement the more intense maturation that the whiskey is undergoing for me it's a very much a richer more indulgent Blended malt component it just reminds me of Christmas time it's like Christmas in a in a glass so you're playing with fruity flavors there's indulgent notes like chocolate and a spice in there lots more of those candid citrus peels lots of cinnamon sweet sort of cinnamon sugar dark chocolate notes as well but still lots of fruit underneath it and just add to that in terms of the mouth feel it's quite different from the the first two building blocks this one's slightly more drying more tanic and again because it's all the whiskies within this building block have been matured in European Oak cast Spanish Oak cast they are more naturally more tanic and that comes through in the whiskey and then last but not least we have this ped building block so how would you describe it so for this we haven't just focused on what everyone considers PT whiskey all being from AA which infuses onto the more more Maritime Rich PT character but we also use Mainland ped maltt which has a more heathery floral more delicate P character we've actually used whiskies that are 100% floor moled as part of the production process that elevates complexity and elevates the pettiness within the the whiskey that is part of this building block this one is incredibly complex I mean all of them have been but the balance between the fresh fruit and confectionary flavors with the delicate Pete it's incredibly well balanced yeah I mean for me it's almost a soft pee and it's almost getting Savory you know smoked ham but yet again you've got underlying to that you've got some fresh fruit flavors coming through as well so I total Echo your point so how would you describe the flavors and Aromas that we're finding in the final arre Blend overall I would describe this as a subtle refine jet complex whiskey so for me very much on the nose you've got that soft Savory smoke that's ever present then you've got notes of fresh fruit you citrus fruit almost like a tangerine skin coming through and you've got little hints of pepper coming through there as well now I've tasted this I can definitely Identify some of the components but overall it's an incredibly well integrated uh refined experience you can tell that that in process has done a lot to bring these components together one of the big things that we were consider not only the nose and The Taste but the overall experience we really wanted to get the mouth feel to really work and what we've we believe we've made with arre is something that's really accessible and smooth in character and as you see the marrying process very much help us and it's definitely I mean I think it's aided a little bit by the temperature in this warehouse but it's incredibly viscous as well absolutely yeah but the mouth feel was a very important part of the the the blending process when we're looking to develop Ary I leave Glen giri with a deeper understanding of blending Distillery character and the immense amount of time consideration and expertise that went into the creation of arre but is the world ready for New Wave [Music] blends to find out I'm heading to one of London's leading cocktail bars to meet two people who can give me insight into how Blends are perceived by bartenders whiskey Drinkers and the whiskey curious Andre's UK Ambassador Stephanie peek is at the spear tip of the new wave blend scene Steph gets to spend every day talking to Whiskey fans and bartenders making her the ideal person to tell me about how Blends are perceived today so how's the reaction been so far I would say overall the response has been amazing there's of course that section of the industry where people are coming to the conversation with preconceptions so when I walk in with my brand new uh no age statement blend there can sometimes be resistance but overall really really positive a lot of the narrative around whiskey right now is around malt whiskey although obviously in the US bourbon is also having its moment maybe blended Scotch while such an important part of the of the whiskey scene is perhaps not getting as many column inches so has that come with challenges when you've been speaking to Whiskey fans it has come with challenges cuz yeah as I said some people do have these preconceptions and so there is that element of trying to encourage people to come into the conversation talk to them about it and just shine a light on blend as a category on arre and kind of come with a a fresh idea and fresh perspective really to the category they are also are curious right whiskey drinkers love trying whiskey it doesn't take long really to engage them to to to give it a try and and once they've tried the whiskey and the glass they you know they can see where we're coming from with Blends and why why Blends are beautiful and they're sort of there to offer you a different drinking experiences to single Mals I just think it's such a shame when people just disregard a whole category like they have done previously with Blends so I think with Andre we just want to encourage them to look again and and try it open their mind be curious uh and just dig deep into what flavors can be discovered really audre really is a blend from malt whiskey drinkers I completely agree something that I hear a lot from whiskey fans and read online is people being like Oh I like this one because it really like has really strong Punchy notes of this and things but I think this uh this idea that you know everything just has to hit you around the head and give you you have to be able to take an instant opinion away from it you know I'm not sure that always necessarily goes hands in hand with considered complex whiskey right I I completely agree and there's always different whiskies for different times right and sometimes you do want one that just knocks you you know socks off and knocks you on the head and that's fine but I don't really want to drink that regularly I sometimes find those interesting to try um but they're not what I go back to I completely completely agree and I think it's always it's always about looking at a whiskey and going okay is it complex is it balanced is it good quality is it free from fault and that can tell you you know help you score a whiskey but you know at the end of it you also have to go is somebody going to want to drink this does it you know because if if a whiskey doesn't tick the box of I want to keep going back and drinking this then it's probably failed right why does it exist yeah Steph introduced me to Swift's manager Rachel Reed Rachel is a self- declared whiskey fan and like most Scots grew up in a household where there was always a bottle of blended Scotch on the Shelf I grew up uh in a family of of big whiskey Drinkers and blends kind of ran through that like my my granddad always drank white and Mai you know that was that was his blend and then my dad had a different type of blend cuz they were from different parts of Scotland Blends give you something so different that you just can't really get from a single mall or a single grain whether that's texture whether that's taste it's been part of my life since I can remember I also grew up in a blend's household but of course most of the focus of bars including here is single malt whiskey so how have you seen Trends change throughout your career I've seen the change of the whiskey Drinker people are a lot more open to trying different finishes now um cocktails have massively changed the whiskey Drinker is a lot more willing to listen to the the bartender and let them kind of go on like almost like a guided tour whether they come in they're like I only drink spaced whiskey I'm like what do you actually mean what what do you actually want and then when whether that means that I offer up a blend or something like that where everything that they've asked for I'm like this blend does exactly that and they're a lot more open and a lot more willing to just try things which is really really nice especially for me we're also seeing a big change in the way that whiskey is presented to Drinkers and particularly how blended Scotch is presented so as well as adre you've got the context of sort of compass box and turntable Spirits you've got woven how do you think people are responding to this new way a new way of talking about whiskey it is something that I have noticed a lot of maybe like the younger generation being a lot more into rather than say the older generation my dad's a big whiskey collector um and whenever I talk to him about kind of like the new age where it's a lot more based on kind of flavor like I'm a big fan of what woven does um I love that they put what it tastes like I think I think the last one I tried was like peachy something but then trying to explain that to like my dad who's a little bit older he's a bit more of the I don't know if that's quite for me and I have seen a lot more people literally ask for those brands in particular they're like do you have any Compass box do you have any woven and it's really exciting to see though I'm totally focused on Whiskey all of the time whiskey is just one of the many drinks that one would use behind the bar um to make a great cocktail how does this changing perception about whiskey and particularly about blended Scotch fit into the evolution of cocktail culture you can do a lot more fun things I would say with blend blended Scotch people are a lot more open to it whereas if you if you whack a 25-year-old single Mal into a cocktail people out what you doing with blended Scotch people are like oh okay cool you've you've done this fat wash you've done this like mation with that wh oh my God that's amazing that's so that's so fun and I think people are understanding how useful blended Scotch can be in cocktails blended Scotch is made for a specific flavor which you can then use to your advantage when you're making whatever cocktail it is I would say you never want to put something in your cocktail that you wouldn't want to drink neat right perhaps it's a case of getting people out of the mindset of oh well I'll just put a blend in it because it's a cocktail and into the mindset of I'm going to use this particular whiskey whether it is a single M Ora Blend or a single grain because it particularly suits my tastes and the cocktail right with using a blend such as arre like there's a reason for it there's a reason why you've put that in the drink and it's because it goes so well with whatever you've you've matched it with with arre it stands up in a whiskey soda which we've seen is now so popular you know that 48% ABV helps with that absolutely how do you think highball culture sort of took off and why did it take off in the way it has right now well I think we have to kind of look at um Japan it's what kind of made it I guess fashionable again to drink whiskey not just neat but as a highball honestly you can't get anything better than a whiskey highball it's so clean and it's so fresh and yeah we've definitely seen it really really take off and I think it's very interesting that arre has also been informed uh by Japanese blending principles as well and something that I was told when I was on a recent trip in Asia by a whiskey expert there he was talking about how in his view Japan became an archive of drinks history because there was such an interest in traveling and and and preserving late 19th century and early 20th century uh cocktail bartending principles service principles and obviously Japan then added its own flare on top of that and now it's sort of coming back to us so you know the scotch and soda used to be one of the most popular popular drinks you know on the planet it then fell out of fashion it was preserved in Japan and elevated in Japan and now we're getting it back from them and and obviously adre there's a very similar story with that because it was informed by the old blends of the early 20th century and now is coming back to sort of reinvigorate interest in blended Scotch have you seen other elements of bartending culture that have been influenced by Japan clear ice is I think the biggest thing that I that I've noticed um since being um down in London it's weird now to see a bar that doesn't use clear ice and there's obviously a reason for that it is superior it does make your drink colder it doesn't dilute as quickly especially in London we've taken little bits from all around the world in kind of the bar world to kind of make it our own uh and I love that do you think whiskey is going to have a place in other styles of cocktails sort of like apparao style Co cocktails tropical sort of beach cocktails you know where where else do you see whiskey going I 100% see it going down there and I think actually The Whisky Drinker wants that sort of mix up but sometimes I want something that's like light maybe it's like you know really hot outside I'm looking for like a nice fruy number but I still want Scotch when you look at people's cocktail menus uh it's no longer whiskey being reserved for the the oldfashioned variant that they have on their menu it's now maybe like a cherry cobbler as much as everyone loves an oldfashioned there are kind of more things you can do with whiskey that isn't just just that as well as opening up avenues for new styles of whiskey cocktail Andre's creators have also come up with a Twist on a familiar serve they call it off the Rocks so what we're doing is challenging that age-old question with whiskey do you have water do you have ice do you have it neat uh as we all know used to have whiskey however you like and what we want to do is encourage people to find how they find our Dre perfect so with this it's off the rock so we're pouring the whiskey over the ice instead of putting the ice in the glass now of course that contact with the ice will of course give you some chill and some dilution but how quickly or slowly you pour it will obviously affect both of those things we think around 8 seconds will give you that perfect amount of chill and dilution and really just change the flavor and the texture of AR jve so what we want to do is we want to take this pop it on top of the glass and then you're going to take this dram and pour it over the ice okay Christopher you're aiming for eight seconds let's see if I can count to eight so one two 3 4 five 6 7 eight and a bit you're forgiven I'm forgiven okay well I can safely say I don't think I've ever had whiskey like this before okay let's let's compare so this is the the neat arre here this is neat here so the nose is a little bit more subdued which I think is what you'd expect from a from a whiskey when it's been chilled let's try the taste what okay the mouth feel has completely changed this is suddenly way more viscous which again I think you'd expect but like it's significantly more viscous right I always think it's like turning the volume up yes it's really interesting it's dialed down some of the sweetness dialed up some of the smokiness massively change the viscosity but it's still it's not actually cold cold very slight chill to it but will of course have some sort of effect you know I actually think I think I prefer it like this that's amazing which which is great because it's a signature serve but like I I was not expecting it to be that different that is blown my mind well I think I've learned something which is I didn't know what to expect from this serve I think I now need to go away and try every Whiskey in my house like this now because this is yeah I think people need to know about this since the narrative flipped in favor of single malts in the 1980s blended Scotch has been gradually sidelined by whiskey enthusiasts now it's time to see if this next generation of New Wave Blends like our Dre can spark new Delight in blended Scotch on this incredible journey into the past and present of Blends I've met an expert an innovator a maker and those who speak to Whiskey fans about Blends every day the facts tell us that the blend never went away but I keep wanting to say Blends are back at the very least they're back in my [Music] glass for

we&#39;ve got to talk about Blends the backbone of Scotland&#39;s whiskey industry for nearly 2 centuries blended Scotch makes up around 90% of all Scotch whiskey sold today many of Scotland&#39;s most famous whiskey brands are Blends and yet they&#39;re often overlooked by whiskey enthusiasts single maltt is having its moment in the Sun but slowly and quietly a blended Scotch Renaissance has begun and a new wave of Blends is emerging join me Christopher coats as I speak to the experts about Blended scotch&#39;s fascinating history and complex production process and find out how Blends are being served and enjoyed today we&#39;ll be exploring the world of Blends through the lens of our partner arre one of the newest and most intriguing New Wave Blends on the scene inspired by the blended Scotch whiskies of the early 20th century arre is malt Rich lightly peed and bottled unchill filtered at 48% with only its natural color together we&#39;ll look behind the label and learn how this exquisitely balanced blend is sparking new Delight in blended Scotch but before we get started let&#39;s remind ourselves of the basics what is blended Scotch blended Scotch whiskey is made by combining two categories of whiskey single malt and single grain by law single malt whiskey must be made entirely at one Distillery from 100% molted barley and distilled in pot Stills single grain Whiskey on the other hand is the name given to Scotch whiskey made on a single site from other cereal grains in addition to molted barley or using other types of Stills usually this means a mash of wheat or corn and molted barley distilled continuously on column Stills but that&#39;s not all single grain can be for instance a mash of 100% molted barley distilled on one site in a column still would also have to be labeled as single grain an example of this is lo lomman single grain but column Stills don&#39;t Define the category for instance a whiskey made from a mash containing other grains such as Rye in addition to molted barley even even if they were distilled on one site in a copper pot is still called single grain an example of this is araki Highland Ry all you have to remember is that as soon as these two categories of whiskey combine a blended Scotch whiskey is born I&#39;m beginning my journey into the world of blended Scotch in Le now part of Scotland&#39;s capital Edinburgh this bustling Port Town was once home to a multitude of Scotch whiskey blenders bottling halls and Bonded Warehouse houses those days may be long gone but if you look close enough you can still find signs of leth&#39;s whiskey Heritage hidden in plain sight some distillers are even bringing whiskey back to understand how Blends got to where they are today I&#39;m meeting Justine Hazelhurst an expert on Leaf&#39;s whiskey history and its links to blended Scotch it&#39;s a story that began in the early 1800s with the birth of grain whiskey and blended Scotch as we know [Music] it today there&#39;s a bottle of blended Scotch whiskey in every barath are in every city in every corner of the world but it wasn&#39;t always that way where does the story of blended Scotch whiskey begin I think if we look at what blended Scotch whiskey actually is it&#39;s uh a blend of several different components from different distilleries from two different Scotch whiskey categories so single malt whiskey and single grain whiskey single grain whiskey is usually the product of a different method of distillation so if we rewind back to the 1800s and try to work out how and why this alternative method came about essentially we can understand what blended Scotch whiskey is because without it blended Scotch whisky as we know it today wouldn&#39;t actually exist and you&#39;re talking about column Stills right column Stills so the 1823 Exile Act was a big game Cher for the Scotch whiskey industry we could probably say that it um allowed legal whiskey production to expand and so as a result of that you had more distilleries cropping up not all of them survived but a lot more distilleries cropping up the big Lan distilleries obviously found that they their space was a little bit more competitive so they were looking for ways to produce larger quantities of of spirit at more cost-efficient prices and so they essentially looked at ways they invested time and energy and of course money into experiments into the process of continuous distillation and then in 1831 anas coffee the Irishman he paint ATT his continuous still and it was that still that was installed across the stories in Ireland in England in Scotland simply because it was a safer method but it was also more cost efficient so this allowed the production of a palatable appealing spirit that was also cheap to produce and that was incredibly significant right yeah certainly far more drinkable than previous efforts we know that the 1823 excise Act made life a lot easier for distillers but how did it impact the blenders well one of the implications was the reduction in Duty which made whiskey cheaper and so the demand for whiskey increased and as a result the number of spirit retailers that popped up across the country also increased and it was essentially the spirit retailers that became the blenders later on they wanted to create their own recipes their own sort of house styles and Tred to ensure consistency so that when their customers came back to the shop the product that they were buying was exactly the same as the previous one so in 1860 the spirits act essentially allowed the blending of different Spirits from different distilleries to be undertaken under bond which essentially meant that you didn&#39;t have to pay the duty until it was removed from the Bonded Warehouse and that in turn removed a huge financial obstacle for them because if you imagine they had purchased all of this stock they were paying Duty on it all the while that it was sitting there in the shop so obviously there was an incentive to sell it quickly so the upshot of that led to the fact that these blends could mature longer in the warehouse this was a great way for Spirit retailers to buy whiskey when prices were low it also ensured consistency they had the same products for their recipes and essentially that was the start of building Brands so things were really looking good for the Scotch whiskey industry at this point and boom time was beginning and then in the 1870s a Calamity befell its major competitor the CNAC industry what happened essentially felx so felx tiny little aphid had been imported through the importation of American vines in France the American Vines were immune to ferous poison but unfortunately the European Vines weren&#39;t and so Vineyards across France and then later on across Europe were pretty much decimated production of wine ceased production of conac ceased the conac industry had plentiful stocks of of of Brandy so it wasn&#39;t a question of overnight suddenly there was no Brandy but people started to panic because they didn&#39;t really know what the problem was therefore they didn&#39;t really know how to solve the problem so people were maybe a little careful with their stocks and that as a result pushed the prices up that worked wonders for the scotch risky producers they were like hey we&#39;ve got something you might like so the demand for Scotch risky increased hugely many Scotch whiskey blenders had their fortunes made at this time are there any names that became big at that time that we&#39;d recognize today absolutely Tommy duer obviously from duers was a huge name James Buchanan with his blend black and white Andrew us Ria possibly not so well known today but back in the Heyday a huge name here in Edinburgh William Sanderson big big name here in LEF with the Vat 69 blend and of course John Krabby also a LEF blender whose brand has recently been revived what with the new bonington discovery so from the 1870s and the 1880s onwards this was a boom period for Scotch whiskey and especially the 1890s that was an extraordinary decade for um sales of Scotch whiskey to all corners of the globe Australia South Africa what we would today call the Commonwealth so many new distilleries had been built brands that still exist today had been founded whiskey could now be found all around the world most of it Blended but what goes up must come down right things were too good to last what happened 1898 it all went horribly wrong with what people often refer to as the Patterson crash but it actually started with another company J G Stewart one of the oldest blending houses here in Edinburgh they were operating a lot on credit and when the bank refused to advance them any more credit they had no alternative but to stop payment prior to that the banks were advancing money and the entire industry was really operating on credit but because of J&amp;G Stewart the banks got a little panicky and so when a debt was called in for the pans and they didn&#39;t have enough money to pay it the bank refused to advance them any more credit and that was the stoppage of the company now with the Pattersons being one of the biggest whiskey firms not just here in leth but across the whole country when they had to stop payment the domino effect on lots of other smaller companies meant that they also went busted and so here in leth and across Scotland the repercussions of the pisans going busted were huge after the Patterson crash then we come into the beginning of the 20th century and we had the triple threat of World War I prohibition and World War II how did that impact the blenders well hugely because especially during the two world wars distilling operations were reduced the distilling that took place was primarily for the production of Munitions so without the St taking place the blender stocks were obviously also reduced prohibition was a little different for some Blends simply because it was an opportunity to build the brand if you imagine that some of these Blends were being smuggled into the United States once prohibition was over these were the names that people remembered but then in the second half of the 20th century it was boom time again and things were going well for the blenders absolutely so the &#39; 60s 50s 60s and first half of the&#39; 70s the Scotch whiskey boom was apparent Brands were being sold all over the world a huge demand for Scotch whiskey and this mid-century boom period saw the building of many new distilleries and a massive ramping up of production volume which led to the creation of what we now know as the whiskey Lo yeah and of course the Lo then needed to be drained so everything in anything was being bottled so here on on the supermarket shells you saw a whole bunch of new brands appearing and you saw the start of single malt bottling starting to emerge prior to the 1980s very little of Scotch whiskey was actually bottled as single mle but after 1980 with the draining of the whiskey Lo essentially the single malt Market started to begin for about 120 130 years people had been drinking blended whiskey and suddenly these single malt bottlings were appearing on the shelves so how do you convince people to change from drinking blended whiskey to single malts well it&#39;s my opinion that you tell them it&#39;s a superior product and for there to be a superior product essentially have to have an inferior product and unfortunately Blends bore the brunt of that and th since the 1980s and into the 1990s and into the 2000s malt whiskey has been getting the Lion&#39;s Share of the column inches in in the Press but also capturing the attention of connoisseurs so for a lot of people who now see New Wave Blends coming into the market Mt drinkers sometimes say oh the Blends are coming back but they never really went away yeah they still form about 70 80% of all the Scotch whiskey that is sold around the world so they most definitely are the backbone of the industry and so what these uh enthusiastic whiskey drinkers are looking for now is something with a little bit of inconsistency something a little bit different and so for me when you look at the price of whiskey these days it&#39;s very difficult to find single sing Le Cask bottlings limited editions distinct Cask finishes for maybe under £100 but with these new Boutique Blends they offer the I&#39;m going to say seasoned whiskey Drinker that&#39;s something a little bit different but they really offer great value for money so they&#39;re ticking all of the boxes there so we&#39;ve seen the reputation of Blends rise and fall from the 1830s to the 21st century and though single malt is undoubtedly the post child of Scotch whiskey today ever so slowly a fresh interest in Blends has begun to sprout among both whiskey makers and whiskey drinkers the trend started in the early 2000s with the founding of compass Box by John Glazer and the launch of his asyla blend the following year though now best known for its Blended malts asa&#39;s success prompted Glazer to release the great King Street artist blend and the Glasgow blend which are still released to this day but Compass box wasn&#39;t alone atam Brands launched its ped Green Isle blend in 2018 then came Leaf blend blending Studio woven whiskey in 2021 and the following year saw the launch of a blend by Thompson brothers at dooro Distillery Billy Walker resurrected the white Heather brand and George kakis teamed up with F1 driver Jensen button on Coach built 2023 saw independent bottler adelphie launch McLean&#39;s nose Leaf Distillery Rift on the idea of a living blend with perpetuity turntable Spirits in Glasgow linked blending to music and now we have our Dre the latest creation from s T&#39;s blenders in Scotland and Japan but what sets new wave Blends like arre apart from Legacy blended Scotch whiskies to understand more about the art of blending and the Fresh Approach of these new Blends I&#39;m heading north to gleni dillery in abedine sheer I&#39;ll be talking to the innovator whose job it&#39;s been to bring arre to life and a master blender who understands the intention and process behind crafting both single malts and Blended whiskies Richard Bates is the senior director of innovation for Sor Scotch whiskey portfolio for the past 4 years he&#39;s had the enviable task of leading the development of rre and that Journey started with a [Music] vision with any of our Spirits we start first and foremost with a vision of creating uh a spirit that will Delight the Drinker that&#39;s always the number one goal beyond that what we set out to do is in in trying to bring a new blended Scotch to the market we want wanted to really highlight uh and shine a light on the Excellence of blended Scotch it&#39;s a much underrated sometimes forgotten sometimes misunderstood category and alongside many other new new age Blends we really wanted to bring something new and interesting to to the category and help people understand uh the history of blending that&#39;s sort of ties our Japanese and our Scotch whiskies together and how has the history of blended Scotch whis whiskey and also Japanese blended whiskey informed the creation of our Dre we kind of realized that in in trying to shine a light on this wonderful blended Scotch category we were effectively setting ourselves a goal of creating a whiskey that would that needed to stand up there against any scotch and to do that we needed to come at this with a a fresh angle and what we realized is is that the outside perspective or at least the outside perspective on Scotch that came from the Japanese blenders was something that we uniquely could bring it&#39;s something that hasn&#39;t been done before and so that&#39;s where we started now there&#39;s a wonderful tie up that that arre is almost a story coming full circle back in the early 1900s shinjiro Tori who is widely known as the father of Japanese whiskey and the founder of sorri scotch coming into Japan is what inspired him to create his own whiskey to create whiskey for the Japanese pallet now of course that Scotch at that time would have been a blend so that&#39;s that was our starting point really is is to look back at that period look back at the scotches of the early 1920s looking at the idea of sort of very characterful malts um malt Rich content and get the Japanese blenders to look at scotch and the history of scotch Blends and and reimagine it and re interpret it um for the modern drinker so in the centor portfolio you have a number of Blends already in Japan you have very famously hiiki in Scotland you have teachers so why did you decide to create arre as something completely distinct in and not sort of have it live within one of those Blends when we were looking at well how do you stimulate the conversation how do you get people to look again you know to take a fresh perspective to find new Delight in something that is very familiar it&#39;s very hard to do it with something that is familiar so that&#39;s why we didn&#39;t create a new variant of teachers for example we still do create new variance of teachers but we felt for this particular task and to really sort of challenge people a little bit we wanted to do something different and that&#39;s why with arre it looks different um hopefully it tastes different when you try it later but also you know it stands out and and you know and some of the decisions we made are all about challenging some of those preconceptions you know it&#39;s very light in color but hopefully you&#39;ll agree it&#39;s it&#39;s got incredible depth and complexity to it it&#39;s non- AG statement and yet you it&#39;s very rich it&#39;s very you know indulgent and folsome on the taste so it it&#39;s designed to stimulate conversation so AR is very new it&#39;s been in the market for a year at this point so when you look back in 10 or 20 years what do you hope that arre will have achieved we&#39;d like to see certain things change so when we started this project we would go to bars and you would have long lists of single malts of Irish whiskey of American whiskey of Japanese whiskey and you&#39;d have four solitary Blends we&#39;d love to see arre and other you know new Blends and Legacy Blends being heroed being being used not just being Bas cocktail whiskies but actually being celebrated we&#39;d love to see people you know writing and blogging and and talking about Blends as much as they do around single malts and other categories of whiskey we hope that in 10 years time we&#39;ve not just started that conversation but that that conversation is flourishing we really want arre to be a tri if you like to the quality and Excellence that comes from blending and blending the superb character for whiskies that we have in Scotland so that&#39;s the vision but the job of making that Vision a reality fell to master blender Callum Fraser and his colleagues on some tor&#39;s Scottish and Japanese blending teams throughout his career Callum has worked with some of Scotland&#39;s most iconic Master blenders including Dr Jim beverage at Johnny Walker and Sandy Hislop at Valentine&#39;s together they crafted Blends using some of Scotland&#39;s most well-regarded single malts and Grains this means [ __ ] is ideally placed to not only tell us how our Dre is made but how it compares to Legacy Blends famously blended Scotch whiskies are Blended to a particular flavor profile and a particular recipe and they can include a huge array of different malt and grain whiskies can you tell me a bit about sort of the profiles of some of the different blends that you&#39;ve worked on and how they&#39;re different from one another so if I take Johnny Walker which I I first worked on when I entered the industry was very much based on around the smoke the west coast of Scotland so very medicinal um fullon smoking character then you had you know more delicate tones of fruit body from Rich fruit from European o maturation Valentine&#39;s is arguably on the other side of things it&#39;s more refined fru almost Floral in terms of the characters the Pete is there but it&#39;s lowered down with an overall flavor profile and it&#39;s very much underpinned by American Oak maturation so two Global icons that are you know very different so you told me about how blended Scotch whiskies are made up of all these different components but can you tell me a little bit about what those components are and how they perform in a blend I see all the malts and all the grains as equal Partners within the blend in terms of grain very sweet and delicate and it very much can open up all the flavors of the the various malt Styles in terms of malts you get you do get more variety we can have whiskies that have a very fresh fruit character nutty character and more heavily bodied almost sulfury type character which maybe doesn&#39;t sound too pleasant but matur properly can create a fantastic single malt and within a blend it very much gives body to the overall to the overall blend and last but by not means least Pete more medicinal richer Pete from the the islands and then you&#39;ve got Mainland PT twisky that&#39;s slightly more hay Floral in character we&#39;ve established that it&#39;s really important for you to have these distinctive Distillery styles to make a complex blend but what are the factors that go into creating a distinctive and characterful Distillery style we go all the way back to the raw material that&#39;s used from The Barley to create the M it&#39;s not just one method that we use to to create them all it can be done commercially but also um it can be done by traditional floor Mings which was how it was done well in excess for 100 years ago there are only a handful of distilleries now that have traditional floor Mings on site such as here at gleni the commercial molting is very standardized the level of modification of the The Barley towards the malt is very un form across the patch so that that very much will drive a standard flavor profile whereas with a floor mold thingss because it&#39;s traditional and the floor may not be even and there may be different levels thermally F spots versus cool spots you get a bit more variability across the floor we think that does drive an element of complexity and depth of the character in terms of going forward you know the the Milling the mash ton type of mash ton can make an influence on that you can have some distilleries that create a clear W some that create a cloudy water and that will impact the flavor profile and then moving on to the the fermentation the length of the fermentation time some distilleries will ferment for about 55 to 60 hours whereas others will have elongated fermentation times 72 hours and Beyond and that allows an addition to converting the sugar to the alcohol which happens at the 55 to 60 hour stage allows for further development of fru and more complex and complicated flavors and characters the very important stage after that is either the double or triple distillation part of the process and again there&#39;s variables within there I&#39;ve just mentioned you can double distill which the majority of M distilleries in Scotland do or in the case of L Vol contortion triple distillation which gives a very different flavor profile in the in the new mate distillate the shape and size of the St is a very important factor in terms of the flavor profile of what&#39;s produced the majority of STS now are heated by steam so indirect fired distillation traditionally that wasn&#39;t always the case it was usually direct fire distillation but over time a lot of distilleries tending to work towards uh indirect fired distillation which does give you a different character however some distilleries and such as here at GL again that direct fire distillation of at the wash still stage was re-engineered through a mayard reaction allows further complexity in terms of character to be built up during the distillation process itself so combined with the different reflux the different H shape and size of the still will help all Drive um a very different Distillery character in terms of not only the Flor but the depth and complexity of the new M so we&#39;ve talked about the production process of the Legacy Blends that callum&#39;s worked on but arre is a little different it took the scotch and Japanese blending teams at centuri three years and hundreds of iterations to land on what finally became the arre recipe so after all these different trials you settled on the final blend for arre and I understand that some of the components are here so what am I looking at we had whiskies from all across Scotland whiskies from the centu element of the business so whisky such as bamore Lefroy walk and toan arore and gleni we also were fortunate to have access to whiskies from Edrington such as the Macallan Glenn Rosses and Halen Park and on top of that we had access to some third party single malt whiskies and also green whiskies as well so out of all those distilleries we were able to almost categorize to get styles that were reasonably similar and allowed us to easily create a building block philosophy that we&#39;ve used towards it so what you have in front of you it&#39;s four building blocks four elements that have a a defined flavor that we have used to to blend together in specific proportions to create the AR which is the fifth class that&#39;s in front of us here these are samples from real onscale fatting we have a Sola system that&#39;s in place for AR so we have a blended grain building block and then we have three distinct Blended mop building blocks you mentioned the word salera there and you know I&#39;m very familiar with the salara systems that are used in bodas in Spain for the maturation and fractional blending of cherry but what do you mean by that word so for um AR it&#39;s a similar idea what we will do is um through the building blocks the four building blocks and actually the final Blend itself so in essence it&#39;s a double CA system we will never fully exhaust any of our components or the blend itself we will continue to top up elements that make up the four building blocks and also top up the blend itself what we aim to do that is consistent batch to batch but also further develop complexity we&#39;re currently just done batch one once we get to batch 50 we we&#39;ll have that further complexity that taken place over the previous 49 batches and it does create a link all the way back to the original so after the final Blend has been brought together does anything else happen before it sent down the bottling line when we draw off the the the volume of our final BL we will not straight away reduce that to to bottling strength of 48% and then bottl we will reduce it down to a strength in between cast strength and bottling strength and marry that for at least one month we were drawing off a sample of the marrying blend and what we were seeing week by week was further Evolution integration and refinement so tell me what exactly are each of these building blocks that come together to build our Dr so if I first of all could ask you just to take the glass on your your far right there this is a blended grein building block um a combination of different grain whiskies um some of which have wheat as a raw material mainly quite sweet cleaning character and one of which has maze as a raw material very much is more of an oily heavier character so we Blended those together to create the the Blended grein building block so if we could ask you just to have a nose so very sweet absolutely sweet in character but almost a slight sweetness quite bubble gum for me but overall relatively delicate again we have made sure that the new mate thislet was paired with casks that weren&#39;t too active so it&#39;s American Oak and it&#39;s refill American Oak casks cuz we don&#39;t want the the wood to overpower The Distillery character the whole ethos behind AR is to make sure that we celebrate whiskies at their optimal point of maturation so again for me very much echo in is very sweet on the palette but one of the you know the key things for me for a grain within the context of a blend is the smoothness that it has it very much has a a nice smooth volumptuous character on the palette and that very much works well when we we add on the various different types of M fantastic so that&#39;s absolutely delicious and what&#39;s what about this next component so this first one is is a blended Mal element fully American Oak matured there&#39;s an array of fruity notes coming through for me fresh fruits crisp green apple but there&#39;s also complexities such as honey coming through here as well very much a combination and a celebration of the real top notes that we tend to Showcase within Blends you&#39;re completely right that&#39;s incredibly fresh I think a lot of people would be very happy if you bottle that on its own right yeah for for me I&#39;ve very much got a sweet tooth and this very much plays into not only fresh fruits but confectionary type notes it really reminds me of being a kid in a sweet shop and now we have the sherid element yes so visually amongst the five classes that we have in front of is this is the one that probably stands out the most it&#39;s probably not a huge surprise that this contains whiskies that have been matured exclusively in ol Roso Sher season Spanish Oak Hogs heads and butts this one has a fru element but it&#39;s it&#39;s more about the rich fruit elements it it is teetering on showcasing The Cask influence but again we have made sure we&#39;ve selected whiskies that are heavier and Bolder in character to complement the more intense maturation that the whiskey is undergoing for me it&#39;s a very much a richer more indulgent Blended malt component it just reminds me of Christmas time it&#39;s like Christmas in a in a glass so you&#39;re playing with fruity flavors there&#39;s indulgent notes like chocolate and a spice in there lots more of those candid citrus peels lots of cinnamon sweet sort of cinnamon sugar dark chocolate notes as well but still lots of fruit underneath it and just add to that in terms of the mouth feel it&#39;s quite different from the the first two building blocks this one&#39;s slightly more drying more tanic and again because it&#39;s all the whiskies within this building block have been matured in European Oak cast Spanish Oak cast they are more naturally more tanic and that comes through in the whiskey and then last but not least we have this ped building block so how would you describe it so for this we haven&#39;t just focused on what everyone considers PT whiskey all being from AA which infuses onto the more more Maritime Rich PT character but we also use Mainland ped maltt which has a more heathery floral more delicate P character we&#39;ve actually used whiskies that are 100% floor moled as part of the production process that elevates complexity and elevates the pettiness within the the whiskey that is part of this building block this one is incredibly complex I mean all of them have been but the balance between the fresh fruit and confectionary flavors with the delicate Pete it&#39;s incredibly well balanced yeah I mean for me it&#39;s almost a soft pee and it&#39;s almost getting Savory you know smoked ham but yet again you&#39;ve got underlying to that you&#39;ve got some fresh fruit flavors coming through as well so I total Echo your point so how would you describe the flavors and Aromas that we&#39;re finding in the final arre Blend overall I would describe this as a subtle refine jet complex whiskey so for me very much on the nose you&#39;ve got that soft Savory smoke that&#39;s ever present then you&#39;ve got notes of fresh fruit you citrus fruit almost like a tangerine skin coming through and you&#39;ve got little hints of pepper coming through there as well now I&#39;ve tasted this I can definitely Identify some of the components but overall it&#39;s an incredibly well integrated uh refined experience you can tell that that in process has done a lot to bring these components together one of the big things that we were consider not only the nose and The Taste but the overall experience we really wanted to get the mouth feel to really work and what we&#39;ve we believe we&#39;ve made with arre is something that&#39;s really accessible and smooth in character and as you see the marrying process very much help us and it&#39;s definitely I mean I think it&#39;s aided a little bit by the temperature in this warehouse but it&#39;s incredibly viscous as well absolutely yeah but the mouth feel was a very important part of the the the blending process when we&#39;re looking to develop Ary I leave Glen giri with a deeper understanding of blending Distillery character and the immense amount of time consideration and expertise that went into the creation of arre but is the world ready for New Wave [Music] blends to find out I&#39;m heading to one of London&#39;s leading cocktail bars to meet two people who can give me insight into how Blends are perceived by bartenders whiskey Drinkers and the whiskey curious Andre&#39;s UK Ambassador Stephanie peek is at the spear tip of the new wave blend scene Steph gets to spend every day talking to Whiskey fans and bartenders making her the ideal person to tell me about how Blends are perceived today so how&#39;s the reaction been so far I would say overall the response has been amazing there&#39;s of course that section of the industry where people are coming to the conversation with preconceptions so when I walk in with my brand new uh no age statement blend there can sometimes be resistance but overall really really positive a lot of the narrative around whiskey right now is around malt whiskey although obviously in the US bourbon is also having its moment maybe blended Scotch while such an important part of the of the whiskey scene is perhaps not getting as many column inches so has that come with challenges when you&#39;ve been speaking to Whiskey fans it has come with challenges cuz yeah as I said some people do have these preconceptions and so there is that element of trying to encourage people to come into the conversation talk to them about it and just shine a light on blend as a category on arre and kind of come with a a fresh idea and fresh perspective really to the category they are also are curious right whiskey drinkers love trying whiskey it doesn&#39;t take long really to engage them to to to give it a try and and once they&#39;ve tried the whiskey and the glass they you know they can see where we&#39;re coming from with Blends and why why Blends are beautiful and they&#39;re sort of there to offer you a different drinking experiences to single Mals I just think it&#39;s such a shame when people just disregard a whole category like they have done previously with Blends so I think with Andre we just want to encourage them to look again and and try it open their mind be curious uh and just dig deep into what flavors can be discovered really audre really is a blend from malt whiskey drinkers I completely agree something that I hear a lot from whiskey fans and read online is people being like Oh I like this one because it really like has really strong Punchy notes of this and things but I think this uh this idea that you know everything just has to hit you around the head and give you you have to be able to take an instant opinion away from it you know I&#39;m not sure that always necessarily goes hands in hand with considered complex whiskey right I I completely agree and there&#39;s always different whiskies for different times right and sometimes you do want one that just knocks you you know socks off and knocks you on the head and that&#39;s fine but I don&#39;t really want to drink that regularly I sometimes find those interesting to try um but they&#39;re not what I go back to I completely completely agree and I think it&#39;s always it&#39;s always about looking at a whiskey and going okay is it complex is it balanced is it good quality is it free from fault and that can tell you you know help you score a whiskey but you know at the end of it you also have to go is somebody going to want to drink this does it you know because if if a whiskey doesn&#39;t tick the box of I want to keep going back and drinking this then it&#39;s probably failed right why does it exist yeah Steph introduced me to Swift&#39;s manager Rachel Reed Rachel is a self- declared whiskey fan and like most Scots grew up in a household where there was always a bottle of blended Scotch on the Shelf I grew up uh in a family of of big whiskey Drinkers and blends kind of ran through that like my my granddad always drank white and Mai you know that was that was his blend and then my dad had a different type of blend cuz they were from different parts of Scotland Blends give you something so different that you just can&#39;t really get from a single mall or a single grain whether that&#39;s texture whether that&#39;s taste it&#39;s been part of my life since I can remember I also grew up in a blend&#39;s household but of course most of the focus of bars including here is single malt whiskey so how have you seen Trends change throughout your career I&#39;ve seen the change of the whiskey Drinker people are a lot more open to trying different finishes now um cocktails have massively changed the whiskey Drinker is a lot more willing to listen to the the bartender and let them kind of go on like almost like a guided tour whether they come in they&#39;re like I only drink spaced whiskey I&#39;m like what do you actually mean what what do you actually want and then when whether that means that I offer up a blend or something like that where everything that they&#39;ve asked for I&#39;m like this blend does exactly that and they&#39;re a lot more open and a lot more willing to just try things which is really really nice especially for me we&#39;re also seeing a big change in the way that whiskey is presented to Drinkers and particularly how blended Scotch is presented so as well as adre you&#39;ve got the context of sort of compass box and turntable Spirits you&#39;ve got woven how do you think people are responding to this new way a new way of talking about whiskey it is something that I have noticed a lot of maybe like the younger generation being a lot more into rather than say the older generation my dad&#39;s a big whiskey collector um and whenever I talk to him about kind of like the new age where it&#39;s a lot more based on kind of flavor like I&#39;m a big fan of what woven does um I love that they put what it tastes like I think I think the last one I tried was like peachy something but then trying to explain that to like my dad who&#39;s a little bit older he&#39;s a bit more of the I don&#39;t know if that&#39;s quite for me and I have seen a lot more people literally ask for those brands in particular they&#39;re like do you have any Compass box do you have any woven and it&#39;s really exciting to see though I&#39;m totally focused on Whiskey all of the time whiskey is just one of the many drinks that one would use behind the bar um to make a great cocktail how does this changing perception about whiskey and particularly about blended Scotch fit into the evolution of cocktail culture you can do a lot more fun things I would say with blend blended Scotch people are a lot more open to it whereas if you if you whack a 25-year-old single Mal into a cocktail people out what you doing with blended Scotch people are like oh okay cool you&#39;ve you&#39;ve done this fat wash you&#39;ve done this like mation with that wh oh my God that&#39;s amazing that&#39;s so that&#39;s so fun and I think people are understanding how useful blended Scotch can be in cocktails blended Scotch is made for a specific flavor which you can then use to your advantage when you&#39;re making whatever cocktail it is I would say you never want to put something in your cocktail that you wouldn&#39;t want to drink neat right perhaps it&#39;s a case of getting people out of the mindset of oh well I&#39;ll just put a blend in it because it&#39;s a cocktail and into the mindset of I&#39;m going to use this particular whiskey whether it is a single M Ora Blend or a single grain because it particularly suits my tastes and the cocktail right with using a blend such as arre like there&#39;s a reason for it there&#39;s a reason why you&#39;ve put that in the drink and it&#39;s because it goes so well with whatever you&#39;ve you&#39;ve matched it with with arre it stands up in a whiskey soda which we&#39;ve seen is now so popular you know that 48% ABV helps with that absolutely how do you think highball culture sort of took off and why did it take off in the way it has right now well I think we have to kind of look at um Japan it&#39;s what kind of made it I guess fashionable again to drink whiskey not just neat but as a highball honestly you can&#39;t get anything better than a whiskey highball it&#39;s so clean and it&#39;s so fresh and yeah we&#39;ve definitely seen it really really take off and I think it&#39;s very interesting that arre has also been informed uh by Japanese blending principles as well and something that I was told when I was on a recent trip in Asia by a whiskey expert there he was talking about how in his view Japan became an archive of drinks history because there was such an interest in traveling and and and preserving late 19th century and early 20th century uh cocktail bartending principles service principles and obviously Japan then added its own flare on top of that and now it&#39;s sort of coming back to us so you know the scotch and soda used to be one of the most popular popular drinks you know on the planet it then fell out of fashion it was preserved in Japan and elevated in Japan and now we&#39;re getting it back from them and and obviously adre there&#39;s a very similar story with that because it was informed by the old blends of the early 20th century and now is coming back to sort of reinvigorate interest in blended Scotch have you seen other elements of bartending culture that have been influenced by Japan clear ice is I think the biggest thing that I that I&#39;ve noticed um since being um down in London it&#39;s weird now to see a bar that doesn&#39;t use clear ice and there&#39;s obviously a reason for that it is superior it does make your drink colder it doesn&#39;t dilute as quickly especially in London we&#39;ve taken little bits from all around the world in kind of the bar world to kind of make it our own uh and I love that do you think whiskey is going to have a place in other styles of cocktails sort of like apparao style Co cocktails tropical sort of beach cocktails you know where where else do you see whiskey going I 100% see it going down there and I think actually The Whisky Drinker wants that sort of mix up but sometimes I want something that&#39;s like light maybe it&#39;s like you know really hot outside I&#39;m looking for like a nice fruy number but I still want Scotch when you look at people&#39;s cocktail menus uh it&#39;s no longer whiskey being reserved for the the oldfashioned variant that they have on their menu it&#39;s now maybe like a cherry cobbler as much as everyone loves an oldfashioned there are kind of more things you can do with whiskey that isn&#39;t just just that as well as opening up avenues for new styles of whiskey cocktail Andre&#39;s creators have also come up with a Twist on a familiar serve they call it off the Rocks so what we&#39;re doing is challenging that age-old question with whiskey do you have water do you have ice do you have it neat uh as we all know used to have whiskey however you like and what we want to do is encourage people to find how they find our Dre perfect so with this it&#39;s off the rock so we&#39;re pouring the whiskey over the ice instead of putting the ice in the glass now of course that contact with the ice will of course give you some chill and some dilution but how quickly or slowly you pour it will obviously affect both of those things we think around 8 seconds will give you that perfect amount of chill and dilution and really just change the flavor and the texture of AR jve so what we want to do is we want to take this pop it on top of the glass and then you&#39;re going to take this dram and pour it over the ice okay Christopher you&#39;re aiming for eight seconds let&#39;s see if I can count to eight so one two 3 4 five 6 7 eight and a bit you&#39;re forgiven I&#39;m forgiven okay well I can safely say I don&#39;t think I&#39;ve ever had whiskey like this before okay let&#39;s let&#39;s compare so this is the the neat arre here this is neat here so the nose is a little bit more subdued which I think is what you&#39;d expect from a from a whiskey when it&#39;s been chilled let&#39;s try the taste what okay the mouth feel has completely changed this is suddenly way more viscous which again I think you&#39;d expect but like it&#39;s significantly more viscous right I always think it&#39;s like turning the volume up yes it&#39;s really interesting it&#39;s dialed down some of the sweetness dialed up some of the smokiness massively change the viscosity but it&#39;s still it&#39;s not actually cold cold very slight chill to it but will of course have some sort of effect you know I actually think I think I prefer it like this that&#39;s amazing which which is great because it&#39;s a signature serve but like I I was not expecting it to be that different that is blown my mind well I think I&#39;ve learned something which is I didn&#39;t know what to expect from this serve I think I now need to go away and try every Whiskey in my house like this now because this is yeah I think people need to know about this since the narrative flipped in favor of single malts in the 1980s blended Scotch has been gradually sidelined by whiskey enthusiasts now it&#39;s time to see if this next generation of New Wave Blends like our Dre can spark new Delight in blended Scotch on this incredible journey into the past and present of Blends I&#39;ve met an expert an innovator a maker and those who speak to Whiskey fans about Blends every day the facts tell us that the blend never went away but I keep wanting to say Blends are back at the very least they&#39;re back in my [Music] glass for

Transcript for:Blends: The Backbone of Scotland's Whiskey Industry

Transcript for:
Blends: The Backbone of Scotland's Whiskey Industry