Here's Johnnie

Or, with apologies to Amy Winehouse (or her estate), we could have called the evening "Black to Black, Back to Back". The Cabinet met last Thursday evening and considered the Johnnie Walker range of blended scotch whiskies. With characteristic generosity, Al donated a gift pack containing small bottles of the Red, Black, Gold and Blue Label Johnnie Walkers. He had been given this a good ten years ago and was looking for exactly this kind of opportunity to open it.

But first a word on blends. Blended whiskies far out-sell single malts and chances are if you order a "scotch" in most bars in the world you will automatically be offered a blend. For example, there are two things you can count on in just about every tin-roofed road-side bar in rural South East Asia: (a) they will playing vapid pop from the '80s with Bananarama and Hall & Oates predominating ("She's a man-eater..."), and (b) a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label will have pride of place on a shelf above the bar, waiting to be bought and consumed entirely in one session by the traveling fertilizer salesman and the customers he's entertaining. They will get maudlin while singing along to "Summer of '69" and that's generally the cue that it's time for one to leave the premises. But I digress.

Some may be surprised to learn that blends are also more popular in Scotland itself. An argument can be advanced that in drinking a blend you are appreciating the art of the master blender who has taken the raw ingredients, a disparate range of single malts, and mixed them in such a way so to as to create something new and, some would argue, something better. It has even been argued that historically many single malts were never meant to be drunk on their own, but really only exist as a component of a blend and that drinking them is a kind of misplaced modern snobbery.

Perhaps. We shall see. We approached the evening with fully open minds, prepared to be wowed by the higher end Johnnie blends that cost as much or more than the best single malts.

I will leave to others to share their sip-by-sip discoveries of vanilla, pears, pepper, rutabagas and whatever else, but I think I am correct in reporting that the consensus opinion on each of these four blends was, in a word, "underwhelming". In more words it is safe to say that the range does improve as one ascends the ladder from the $28 Red up to the $195 Blue. And when I say "improve" it is largely in the drinkability and smoothness. The Red especially was quite rough, thin and had very little in the way of mouthfeel or finish. What we look for and enjoy in our whiskies at The Cabinet is complexity - not wild and random complexity mind you, but complexity that is also well balanced - and such complexity is entirely absent from these Johnnie Walker products. The Gold and Blue were certainly very pleasant to drink, but predominantly tasted of caramel with little else to interest the palate. Given that the 21 year old Old Pulteney sells for $40 less than the Johnnie Blue one is very hard pressed to understand why someone would buy the Blue. Unless it is out of snobbery. For that is true snobbery - conspicuously high expenditure on something that is intended to convey an image of some sort of elite connoisseurship. Drinking odd single malts that most people haven't heard of because we actually enjoy the taste is the antithesis of snobbery. Incidentally, a final note on the high end Johnnies, we could detect very little difference between the Gold and the Blue, so if you are still keen on trying one, save $95 and pick up the Gold.

But what about the Black? I haven't mentioned the Black except in implying that it fell between the Red and Gold in terms of drinkability. This is true. We did, however, have something special planned for the Black. Al's from the gift pack was at least 10 years old, so we bought a new bottle to do a side-by-side comparison and test the much vaunted consistency of the blender. Whiskies do not change once in the bottle, especially when still sealed as these were, and Johnnie Walker makes quite a big deal out of their consistency, so we should not be able to tell the difference between the two.

But we did. And how! Right from the nose there was a dramatic difference. The newly purchased Johnnie Black hit us with heavy alcohol vapours, while the older bottle was much more subdued on the nose. The taste too was remarkably different. The new Black was rough and sharp, much like the Red, whereas the old Black was mellower and had more of that caramel palate that we picked had up in the Gold and Blue. We are at a loss for an explanation. The only possibility seems to be that either there has been a gradual drift in the blend or that sometime between circa 2000 and 2011 the blend was suddenly changed, perhaps due to the pressures inherent in ramping up production to meet ever escalating demand? We will be writing to the distiller to ask.

Beyond the whiskies we enjoyed fine snacks of figs with cheese and honey, and garlic stuffed olives and brie and, as always, excellent conversation.

Slainte!