I tell you: it is a great feeling having the time and headroom again to share some blends with you all. This first one of (hopefully) a new series is made up out of 3 components which I have reviewed in separate posts: Kilkerran WIP IV, Linkwood 17yo WhB and Clynelish 7yo TU. I chose these malts because they would seem to complement eachother: all are fruity, but in different ways. The blend ratio is not based on any testing but rather on some informed guesses as to how the malts will behave and a whole lot of wishful thinking. Let’s see if the union of these three malts is […]

The second blend in my Maker’s Mark miniseries is ‘Make Mor(angie)’ (the names will only get sillier as we go along I’m afraid). I picked the Glenmorangie as I figured its notes of banana and other fruit would mesh well will the orangy notes in the bourbon. I expect this will be the most candied and sweet of all blends, but as always the proof is in the tasting, so let’s go! 50% Maker’s Mark 50% Glenmorangie 10yo The Original Straight from the top the nose lives up to my expectations, it is almost all fruit that I smell: fried banana, heavy tropical fruit and a hint of orange. Under […]

Welcome to a new mini-series in which I will be blending the classic bourbon Maker’s Mark with a few Scotch whiskies. The Anglo-American marriage of bourbon to scotch whisky is one of those things of which many so-called whisky-afficionados disapprove. I don’t buy it. My blends with bourbon in them have for the most part had great results (one particularly good example being The Meady Blues). So, two months ago I crated five blends of Maker’s Mark (a gentle bourbon with a big influence of corn and wheat) and some of the big Scottish names. Here is the first of those blends: The Whinniemaker: 50% Maker’s Mark 50% Dalwhinnie 15yo […]

The Living Bottle Project is slowly picking up steam. In the last iteration we ended up just a tad too much peat, as expected. This one, then, is all about bringing balance back to the Force. To this end I have chosen from among the ranks of sherried whiskies (I’ve checked, the ingredients say nothing about Midi-chlorians, but I guess it’ll have to do. Those of you who get that reference, congratulations, you are just about as nerdy as I am. Those who do not get it, you lead blessed lives). This is partly because I would like to get some of that sherried nature from the first version back and partly […]

In the Introduction I mentioned going one of two ways: towards the peaty end of the spectrum or towards a broadening of the existing flavours. I’ve chosen to go for peat and I’ll explain why: if I add a peated whisky this early in the Living Bottle now it will gradually dissipate and become just one of several notes whereas if I add a peated whisky later on I may obliterate the carefully crafted flavours from previous iterations. So I’ve decided to get it over with, rip off the band-aid, hit the gas and blast forth into the unknown by adding… Caol Ila 12yo. Yes, I know. I’ve used this one before on […]

Since my living bottle (or ‘Ampulla Vivens’ as I have pretentiously labelled it), in which I put the last dram out of every bottle,  is working quite well I figured: why not start another one.  This time however, I’m making a few changes. I’ll be logging the malts I put in so as to be able to reproduce a particularly good result (and to allow you, the reader, to follow along precisely should you want to). I’ll also stick to a rigid regime where it comes to adding a new malt to the blend. I’m starting with two malts in a 10cl bottle, and will sample a quarter of said bottle, posting […]

The first Scottish blenders used peated whisky sparingly to give their mellow blends a bit of a ‘kick’ and this time I’m looking to bring this type of blended whisky into the 21st century. I’m not using grain whisky, just malts, to get a fuller taste and upping the amount of peated whisky to match. Caol Morclas is a new version of Far Mor Peaty (which only managed to get 3 drams), containing Caol Ila instead of the more powerful Laphroaig and Lagavulin. I also tweaked the ratio of Glenmorangie to Glenfarclas to allow more of the gentle sweetness in the Glenmorangie to poke through the sherried nature of the Glenfarclas. […]

Very early on in my whisky education I stumbled across a vlog by Ralfy, in which he described a rum tasting with the Glasgow whisky club. His own contribution was a blend of whisky and rum he called ‘rumsky‘. Intrigued, I vowed to myself to try this one day. And, as you may have guessed, that very day has at last arrived! Ralfy actually aged his rumsky for one and a half years as well as using cask strength spirits. I decided to start a little simpler by simply pouring a rum and a whisky together. Doesn’t really get much easier. Since the rum I selected (Appleton 12yo) is a […]

Like the name? I think it’s a new high in my search for unpronounceable mash-ups. But anyway, to business: today’s blend is a bit of a fluke. I got a bottle of Glenrothes Select Reserve for my birthday and decided to blend it with the closest thing on my whisky-shelf. That turned out to be one of the stars amongst peated whiskies: Lagavulin 16yo. In light of previous experience I thought better of making it a 50/50 blend and instead went for 75% Glenrothes to 25% Lagavulin. It was at this point that I needed to come up with a rationale for putting these two whiskies together. You know, being a […]

As I have hopefully conveyed in the title of the blend, this one is supposed to be quite a bit more peaty than most of the blends on this blog. To achieve this goal I have selected two peated whiskies: Lagavulin 16yo, the sophisticated but savagely peated malt from the southern coast of Islay and, from a few kilometers along that same coast, Laphroaig Quarter Cask. This very medicinal single malt has been aged a further while on small quarter casks, which serves to couple the peat to a strong wood influence. To counterbalance the peat I based the blend on a sweet speysider: Glenfarclas 10yo. And last but not […]