Here’s a fun way to get into homevatting: start a living bottle. A living bottle is a bottle into which you decant small amounts of different whiskies, and in which you always leave a decent level. The nose, taste and finish of the drams you pour from it change with every new whisk(e)y you add. After a while, there may be dozens or even hundreds of different whiskies in the bottle. One of the good things about this (besides it being a hoot) is that the whiskies get the time to grow accustomed to one another, to marry together.

There are a few reasons why you would want to blend your own whisky. I’ve come up with these categories as a guide: Enhancement This is adding just a touch of other whisky to a base whisky. The intent here is to subtly alter the character of the base whisky without meddling with the original taste too much. Recovery Sometimes you buy a bottle of whisky that turns out to be bad or bland. Recovery is adding other whiskies in an attempt to improve the characteristics up to the point that it either becomes drinkable (yay!) or even quite good (double yay!). Creation This is where master blenders for the […]