Blend 'er

"Blended whiskies are too often dismissed as the poor relation of single malts, but as Dr Jim Swan reveals, their creation is extraordinarily complex." 

So said Whisky Magazine in April 2000. 

"Blending whisky is a considerable art acquired only after years of experience."

Concurs The Scotch Whisky Experience website.

Most of us will agree with the first part of Whisky Magazine's statement. If you're reading this blog I will assume that you have a general preference for single malts over blends. And that is, generally speaking, right and proper, although, as the statement implies, we should all be alert to the exceptions. But the other stuff merits a little more discussion. The Cabinet met last night to conduct a small experiment regarding the complexity of the creation of blends and the amount of experience necessary to acquire the art.

We began the evening with a nice baseline blend, Dewar's "Aged 12 Years - The Ancestor - Married in Oak Casks". It would have been unsporting to roll out a nasty cheap blend, so we went for the best blend in our stocks. And it did not disappoint. The full name may provoke a curious mental image, but the whisky itself is solid and not curious in the slightest. It clearly shows its Aberfeldy heritage. There is caramel and toffee on the nose, heavy malt and a touch of sweetness on the palate and a pleasant, if not overlong, finish. Fine, fine. 

This was followed by an entirely different sort of blend, a private label bottling from Vom Fass in Minneapolis (https://www.vomfassusa.com/). On offer was their somewhat more prosaically named "Two Casks Blended Scotch Malt Whisky". It is apparently a combination of Speyburn (Highland) whisky and Caol Ila (Islay) whisky. Interesting. The first sip was a chaotic and, it must be said, wholly unpleasant experience. Simultaneous feinty funky Islay and sweet floral Highland. Both at once and distinct from each other. It was like placing a stanky tomcat in a sack with a Persian kitten. But then after a few more sips it happened, the flavours merged and mingled and somehow, entirely unexpectedly, became harmonious. To extend my weak metaphor a little further, a sleek, attractive and friendly black cat emerged from the sack. We liked it.

The Dewar's and the Vom Fass were to establish what the best in blends can be. We wanted to demonstrate what years of experience and an extraordinarily complex creation process can produce. And with that out of the way, now we wanted to demonstrate what wanton randomness can produce. 

With nothing more than a funnel and a clutch of unloved bottles I mixed the back row of our stocks and produced the "Coimeasgadh A Dh'aona Ghnothaich A 'Chaibineit 2017", which means something like "Random Bespoke Blend For The Cabinet 2017" in Scots Gaelic. See, I can come up with pretentious names too. But let's abbreviate it as the CADGAC '17. The members were not told what specifically went into it or how it was produced, other than that it involved whiskies we generally didn't enjoy. I told them that it would likely be terrible. And I had fermented Icelandic shark at the ready to blot out the taste if needed. 

So...? They liked it. They liked it a lot. It's a little rough up front, but then opens into fruit and leather and maybe creamed honey. The finish is astonishingly long.  I don't know why any of this happened. It was truly random. The formula was roughly 40% Glenmorangie (we needed to get of it as we had two bottles and nobody was asking for it), 20% Aberlour 16, 20% Stronachie 10, 5% Glendroach Parliament 21 and 5% Smokehead (the smoke didn't come through at all).

Go figure.

We finished with the most excellent Vom Fass "The Gentleman 35 Year Old Blended Scotch Whisky", at probably $20 a sip. Thank you Michael!

And to round out the evening in an entirely random fashion I passed around the aforementioned fermented Icelandic shark. There were only two takers and they split one cube.