Last Night's Tipple

Scotch whisky was transformed from a regional specialty to the most popular spirit in the world in the second half of the 19th century by blenders who realized two things: first, that many malt Scotches were too strongly-flavored to appeal to a mass audience and second, that many malt Scotches didn't have the consistency necessary to make them successful brands. In other words, when a consumer buys a bottle of Brand X whisky, he expects it to taste like the last bottle of Brand X that he bought. There was too much variation in the quality and flavor of different barrels of many malt Scotches for that to be the case. Blenders would buy Scotch in barrel from many different distilleries and blend it (sometimes) with grain whiskies that were more mildly flavored, and sell the resulting product under their own label. Their products were smoother and had more mass appeal than single malts and, more importantly, the blending process insured that bottle after bottle of their Scotches tasted the same. Many of these blenders were Scottish grocers, and the most famous of these were Johnnie Walker and the Chivas brothers. (As an aside, at one time, the Chivas brothers' grocery store was known as the Harrods of Scotland.) Not as famous, but still prominent, was Matthew Gloag, whose store was in Perth. He called his blend The Famous Grouse, and today it is the eighth best-selling blended Scotch in the world.

In addition to their various Scotch blends, The Famous Grouse also has a number of vatted malt Scotches. A vatted malt is produced from all malt whisky (ie, no grain whisky blended in) but from various different distilleries. The Famous Grouse 12 year old vatted malt's label says that among the distilleries used are Highland Park and Macallan, but I'm sure that there are many more than that: blenders typically use dozens of malts for each of their blends, and I would imagine that they would do the same for their vatted products. In any event, the Macallan character is more prevalent than the Highland Park character in this product. It is malty, smooth, and has sherry overtones. It tastes like a nice sherried Speyside single malt, and I would imagine that that's mostly what goes into it. A very enjoyable dram for a very good price.

(And yes, that picture is of a mini, not a full 750 ml. bottle. It's the only decent picture that I could find.)