Blended Whisky

Blended Whisky

Whisky education from Whisk(e)y Advent 2025 (2025-12-04). Summary below; full write-up with sources and images: calendar/2025-12-04.qmd.

A blend mixes single malt and single grain whisky. Grain whisky (often wheat/corn on continuous column stills) is lighter and cheaper; blends are consistent, often 40-50 components. Dave Broom’s image: malts are solitary peaks, blends are rolling hills.

Verbatim source text

Reproduced from calendar/2025-12-04.qmd (Whisk(e)y Advent 2025).

As the name suggests, blended whisky is a mixture of whiskies— specifically single malt whisky and single grain whisky. Grain whisky is usually made from wheat or corn along with some malted barley, while we already know that malt whisky is made only from malted barley. Grain whisky is also usually made on column stills, which can run continuously (unlike the pot stills which single malts are run on), but column stills often strip out more of the complex-tasting compounds from the whisky.

For these reasons, grain whiskies are usually cheaper to produce, and have a gentler and lighter flavor that malt whiskies. Most of the whisky coming out of Scotland are blended whiskies, but it’s typically single malt whiskies that get all the glory¹. From Dave Broom’s 2014 Whisky: The Manual,

“A single malt is like a solitary mountain peak. There are supporting flavors, but the peak rises above them. Blends are like a range of rolling hills. They are beautiful to look at, but part of a wider landscape. They are not better, or worse. They are different.”

Blended whiskies are also more consistent; often blends will contain up to 40-50 different malt and grain whiskies, and the recipes are closely-gaurded secrets. A lot of work goes into making sure these whiskies, which are often main offerings in the distillery’s lineup, are consistent in flavor.

Our blend today has some unique characteristics, however— it has an age statement of 8 years (meaning that every whisky that makes up the blend is at least 8 years old), and after blending it’s been finished for six months in ex-Caribbean rum barrels. Bacardi is the company the currently owns Dewar’s, so that’s probably where the rum barrels came from. Likely it’s the finishing barrel that sweetens up today’s whisky.

Not every day can be mountainous and extraordinary, and most extraordinary lives are made out of ordinary, rolling days. That’s our blended whisky today— dependable, consistent, and an invitation to look a little deeper and delight in the ordinary.

Footnotes

1. But remember, a single malt whisky is just a blend of malted whiskies from a single distillery.