Does blended scotch still have a place for itself in the modern bar?

My parents did not drink much, but they maintained a full liquor cabinet, either out of a sense of hospitality or because they received a lot of nice gifts. Not surprisingly, the array of spirits fascinated me. I remember the red-velvet-covered bottle of cherry heering, the coffee-scented Kahlua and the herbal Dubonnet that my father liked. But what most impressed me was the Scotch, and the famous, evocative names like Cutty Sark, Dewar’s and Chivas Regal. Later on, as I started to work and came to understand that bars were an essential companion to the newspaper business, I saw how people adopted specific brands of Scotch as their own, drinking solely J & B or Ballantine’s, just as one smoked Marlboros or Salems. Personally, I preferred beer. Those names do not mean as much today, at least to those who are drawn to whisky by the flavours rather than the brand connotations. Any discussion of Scotch whisky nowadays is dominated by the single malts, which hardly existed as a category back when I was stealthily sniffing from the bottles in my parents’ cabinet. When we think of Scotch whisky today, it’s to compare, say, the smoky, complex malts of Islay with the fruity, spicy malts of the Highlands. The blended Scotches of yore seem like such an afterthought that it’s a bit of a surprise to learn that they still vastly outsell single malts, though their proportion of the Scotch market has dwindled since 1990, the first year for which statistics differentiating between single malts and blends are available. Back then, according to the Distilled Spirits Council, a trade group, blends accounted for 98 percent of the Scotch market in the United States, about 13.1 million cases against just 240,000 cases of single malts. By 2017, that proportion had dropped to 77 percent of the Scotch market, which had dwindled in total to about 9.3 million cases. During that time, sales of blends dropped to about 7.2 million cases in 2017 while sales of single malts rose to about 2.1 million, an increase of almost ninefold. Nonetheless, a lot of blended Scotch is sold in the United States, nearly twice as much as Irish whiskey, which over the last few years has been the fastest-growing spirit in the country. Largely out of curiosity, the spirits panel recently tasted through 20 bottles of blended Scotch in an effort to see what they offered. For the tasting, Florence Fabricant and I were joined by two drinks writers, David Wondrich and Robert Simonson. First, some definitions.

All Scotch whisky must be made in Scotland. Single malts come from a single distillery and are distilled entirely from malted barley. Malting simply means soaking the barley until it germinates, which releases enzymes that convert starches to fermentable sugars. The germination is stopped by heating the barley, sometimes over peat fires, which impart a smoky aroma. Blended Scotch combines malt whisky, either a single malt or many, with grain whisky. The whiskies must be aged at least three years in oak barrels, and if a bottle carries an age statement, like “8 Years Old,” it means that the youngest whisky in the blend is that old. While the malt components are the crucial elements, the grain whisky is not just neutral spirit, like vodka. It, too, takes on character as it ages. One other important Scotch category exists, blended malt whisky, a combination of two or more single malts. These whiskies, which used to be called vatted malts, can be wonderful and complex. But they differ from blended Scotch as they do not contain any grain whisky. It’s tempting to think of blended Scotch as diluted malt whisky. There may be some truth to that, but it’s not the whole story. In his excellent guide, The World Atlas of Whisky, Dave Broom asserts that in good blended Scotches, grain whisky coaxes out the complexities of a malt by emphasising secondary characteristics that might otherwise be hidden. “Malts are about intensity of character,” he writes. “Single-malt bottlings are about maximising this singularity. Blends are about creating a totality.” Nonetheless, Broom’s book devotes just three pages to blended Scotch and more than 150 to single malts. “They don’t get a lot of celebration,” Robert said. David noted that efforts are made periodically to talk up blended Scotch, but they never really take hold, particularly among younger consumers. “Blended Scotch doesn’t have the craft imprimatur,” he said, “even though some are really good, like Pinch, if you can even find it.” Sadly, we did not have Pinch among our 20 bottles.