Last Night's Tipple

The Aberfeldy distillery is owned by Dewar's, one of the great Scotch blenders which is in turn owned by Bacardi. Dewar's owns several other distilleries (Aultmore, Craigellachie, Macduff, and Royal Brackla), but Aberfeldy was the first of Dewar's distilleries and remains the heart of Dewar's blended whiskies. Dewar's White Label is Dewar's flagship product and is the sixth-best selling blended Scotch whisky in the world, but its popularity varies greatly from country to country. If you go to the Dewar's website, you'll have to enter your date of birth and country of residence before you're allowed to see the content; and the countries listed at the top of the dropdown list are the UK, the US, Greece, Lebanon, Spain, Venezuela, and China. It's a good bet that Dewar's sells more Scotch in those seven countries than anywhere else. The UK and the US make a lot of sense -- both have been huge consumers of Scotch for over a hundred years. But what do the other five have in common? As far as I can tell, not much. I have no idea why Dewar's would have taken off in those five countries to the exclusion of the many others whose residents have plenty of surplus income to spend on luxury spirits.

Blended Scotches, particularly entry-level blended Scotches like Johnnie Walker Red Label and Dewar's White Label, are generally smooth and gentle; and it's entirely appropriate that Aberfeldy would form the heart of blend. It's sweet, inoffensive, and unaggressive. There's a place for that, I think, and I enjoy drinking it. It just wouldn't make my list of the the best Scotches I've tried.

Last Night's Tipple

Jim Murray hates spirit caramel. He's a prominent whisk(e)y critic and one of the guiding lights behind The Malt Advocate magazine, and he has been known to rant about the use of spirit caramel as a coloring agent in Scotch. It mutes the nose and the flavor of the whisky, he says, overpowering it with toffee and vanilla. Well, it makes sense that it would have that effect: spirit caramel is, well, caramel. That is, caramelized sugar. Scotch producers claim that it's just a coloring agent and has no effect on flavor, but I don't see how that can possibly be accurate. Caramel is a strongly-flavored substance. How could it not effect the flavor of a spirit that it's added to? Scotch bottlers have found that their buyers like darker whiskies better than paler ones and that they tend to associate a dark color with quality. Darkness is no problem with Bourbon because it's aged in new charred oak barrels. The char easily gives up its color. But when you reuse that barrel (and the vast majority of Scotch is aged in used ex-Bourbon barrels), there's not a ton of color left for the barrel to give up. Ex-sherry butts makes coloring easier, but ex-Sherry butts are becoming rarer and are certainly more expensive. And so Scotch producers are left with spirit caramel, particularly for the younger whiskies that make up the bulk of the market. It's so pervasive now that some malts (Bruichladdich, for example) make a big deal about the fact that they don't use it.

So why do I bring spirit caramel up when writing about the Aberfeldy 12 year old? I should say that I have no definitive evidence that Aberfeldy uses spirit caramel. Indeed, I don't really have the experience or the quality of palate to be much of a judge. However, I will say that it's pretty dark in color, even though it doesn't have many sherry notes; and that what I mostly get on the palate is one-dimensional honied sweetness. It's a tasty whisky, and I like the strong orange notes on the nose. Still, I would be very interested to know for sure whether they use spirit caramel in it.

Last Night's Tipple

All major Scotch blenders have a core malt around which to base their. For Johnnie Walker, that malt is Cardhu. For Civas Brothers, it's Strathisla. For Dewar's, it's Aberfeldy. The Aberfeldy distillery was built by Tommy Dewar, the marketing genius behind Dewar's, in 1898, during the golden age of Scotch distillery construction. Before building Aberfeldy, Dewar had to buy his malt whiskies from other distilleries, and doing that was always a risky proposition: there could be no guarantee that he could get the whiskies that he needed to keep his blend consistent. Owning his own malt distillery solved that problem.

Such was Dewar's need for malt whisky (and such was the state of Scotch marketing) that Aberfeldy has until recently been almost unavailable as a single malt. Recognizing which way the luxury liquor winds were blowing, Dewar's began bottling a 12 year old of Aberfeldy in 1999 and an 18 year old version a few years later. The bottle classifies Aberfeldy as a Highlands malt, and I suppose that's accurate. The nose has a bit of orange and a hint of sherry sweetness. The palate has some honey overtones on some malty sweetness. It's a clean and enjoyable whisky. It's not earth-shaking or mind-altering, but I would never turn down a bottle.