Coldorak's whisky blog.
After an unplanned hiatus lasting a few weeks due to personal circumstances, it’s time to dive back into the world of whisky. Blends have always been an integral part of the Scotch whisky tradition, particularly in earlier decades when the concept of single malts may not have even crossed minds. Today, we’ll be reviewing several old Scotch whisky blends, ranging from the 1980s to one whose components were distilled before 1939.
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We’ve covered these last couple weeks quite exclusive and rare whiskies and a couple brandies, with lost distillery after hyped distillery. So let’s get back down to earth, shall we? The Scotch Whisky world is still led, in terms of volume, by blends. And one of the most famous amongst them is Johnnie Walker. So let’s review two of their entry/mid-level blends: the Johnnie Walker Black and Green Label.
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The General is unusual as far as how expressions are made at Compass Box. Usually, and as we’ve seen in previous Compass Box reviews here, John Glaser or his other whisky makers select single malts of different profiles and assemble them themselves. Here, Glaser bought casks of whiskies already blended at a young age and left to marry in those casks for a very long time. Two parcels were bought, one being 33 years old at the time of The General’s final blending, and one rumoured to be 40 years old. John Glaser describes the whisky as having an “antique character lovers of old whiskies will seek out”. So let see what we think of this Compass Box The General.
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The Whisky Cellar is back with its fourth series of Private Cellars Selection bottlings, but not only. Keith Bonnington, The Whisky Cellar‘s founder and ex-Edrington employee, bought, a few months ago, from his former employer, the Brig O’Perth blend brand. One of his other projects, Scalasaig, also is not only an island whiskies blend, but also now a bottler, with, I imagine, single malts coming from all the distilleries making up the Scalasaig blend. So for this fourth Whisky Cellar Tweet Tasting, we’ll try the Brig O’Perth, a Tobermory bottled under the Scalasaig brand, and three single malts and one single grain part of the Whisky Cellar Private Cellars Selection Series 4. We enjoyed a lot Keith’s selection during the first three Tweet Tastings, so I think we can have high hopes for this Whisky Cellar Fourth Tweet Tasting.
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In 2011, William Grant & Sons released a first expression under the Hazelwood brand called Janet Sheet Roberts 110th Birthday Edition in 2011 (that’s a mouthful!), after William Grant’s granddaughter name. Mrs Roberts died in 2012 as the oldest woman in Scotland, aged 110 as the name of the first release suggested. Four years later in 2015, William Grant & Sons announced a new trio of whiskies under the House of Hazelwood brand, three blends aged 18, 21 and 25 years old, to be released first in the travel market early 2016 before general availability.
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Behind the ninth window of That Boutique-y Whisky Company’s 2019 Advent Calendar we will be reviewing each day until the 24th of December was hidden a Blended Whisky #2 22-year-old batch 3, bottled at 41.8% abv by that Boutique-y Whisky Company. The black and white label seems to show a white glove going through a barley field. This batch was released in May 2018 with an outturn of 1650 bottles. It is still available at Master of Malt for a mere £63.95.
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