Blended Scotch Whisky: Everything You Need To Know From 1823 To Ardray

We've got to talk about blends. The backbone of Scotland's whisky industry for nearly two centuries, blended scotch makes up around 90% of all scotch whisky sold today. Many of Scotland's most famous whisky brands are blends, and yet, they're often overlooked by whisky enthusiasts. Single malt is having its moment in the sun, but slowly and quietly, a blended scotch renaissance has begun, and a new wave of blends is emerging. Join me, Christopher Coates, as I speak to the experts about blended scotch's fascinating history and complex production process, and find out how blends are being served and enjoyed today. We'll be exploring the world of blends through the lens of our partner, Ardrey, one of the newest and most intriguing new wave blends on the scene. Inspired by the blended scotch whiskies of the early 20th century, Ardrey is malt-rich, lightly peated, and bottled un-chill filtered at 48%, with only its natural colour. Together, we'll look behind the label and learn how this exquisitely balanced blend is sparking new delight in blended scotch. But before we get started, let's remind ourselves of the basics. What is blended scotch? Blended scotch whisky is made by combining two categories of whisky, single malt and single grain. By law, single malt whisky must be made entirely at one distillery from 100% malted barley and distilled in pot stills. Single grain whisky, on the other hand, is the name given to scotch whisky made on a single site from other cereal grains, in addition to malted barley, or using other types of stills. Usually this means a mash of wheat or corn and malted barley distilled continuously on column stills. But that's not all single grain can be. For instance, a mash of 100% malted barley distilled on one site in a column still would also have to be labelled as single grain. An example of this is Loch Lomond single grain. But column stills don't define the category. For instance, a whisky made from a mash containing other grains, such as rye, in addition to malted barley, even if they were distilled on one site, in a copper pot, is still called single grain. An example of this is Arbeekie Highland rye. All you have to remember is that as soon as these two categories of whisky combine, a blended scotch whisky is born. I'm beginning my journey into the world of blended scotch in Leith. Now part of Scotland's capital Edinburgh, this bustling port town was once home to a multitude of scotch whisky blenders, bottling halls and bonded warehouses. Those days may be long gone, but if you look close enough you can still find signs of Leith's whisky heritage hidden in plain sight. Some distillers are even bringing whisky back. To understand how blends got to where they are today, I'm meeting Justine Hazelburst, an expert on Leith's whisky history and its links to blended scotch. It's a story that began in the early 1800s with the birth of grain whisky and blended scotch as we know it. Today there's a bottle of blended scotch whisky in every bar, in every city, in every corner of the world. But it wasn't always that way. Where does the story of blended scotch whisky begin? I think if we look at what blended scotch whisky actually is, it's a blend of several different components from different distilleries from two different scotch whisky categories. So single malt whisky and single grain whisky. Single grain whisky is usually the product of a different method of distillation. So if we rewind back to the 1800s and try to work out how and why this alternative method came about, essentially we can understand what blended scotch whisky is. Because without it, blended scotch whisky as we know it today wouldn't actually exist. And you're talking about column stills, right? Column stills. So the 1823 Excise Act was a big game changer for the scotch whisky industry. We could probably say that it allowed legal whisky production to expand. And so as a result of that, you had more distilleries cropping up, not all of them survived, but a lot more distilleries cropping up. The big lowland distilleries obviously found that their space was a little bit more competitive. So they were looking for ways to produce larger quantities of spirit at more cost-efficient prices. And so they essentially looked at ways, they invested time and energy and of course money into experiments, into the process of continuous distillation. And then in 1831, Anais Coffey, the Irishman, he painted into his continuous still, and it was that still that was installed across the stories in Ireland, in England, in Scotland, simply because it was a safer method, but it was also more cost-efficient. So this allowed the production of a palatable, appealing spirit that was also cheap to produce. And that was incredibly significant, right? Yeah, certainly far more drinkable than previous efforts. We know that the 1823 Excise Act made life a lot easier for distillers, but how did it impact the blenders? Well, one of the implications was the reduction in duty, which made whisky cheaper. And so the demand for whisky increased. And as a result, the number of spirit retailers that popped up across the country also increased. And it was essentially the spirit retailers that became the blenders later on. They wanted to create their own recipes, their own sort of house styles, and try to ensure consistency so that when their customers came back to the shop, the product that they were buying was exactly the same as the previous one. So in 1860, the Spirits Act essentially allowed the blending of different spirits from different distilleries to be undertaken under bond, which essentially meant that you didn't have to pay the duty until it was removed from the bonded warehouse. And that in turn removed a huge financial obstacle for them. Because if you imagine they had purchased all of this stock, they were paying duty on it all the while that it was sitting there in the shop. So obviously there was an incentive to sell it quickly. So the upshot of that led to the fact that these blends could mature longer in the warehouse. This was a great way for spirit retailers to buy whisky when prices were low. It also ensured consistency, they had the same products for their recipes. And essentially that was the start of building brands. So things were really looking good for the Scotch whisky industry at this point and boom time was beginning. And then in the 1870s, a calamity befell its major competitor, the cognac industry. What happened? Essentially, Phylloxera. So Phylloxera, tiny little aphid that had been imported through the importation of American vines in France. The American vines were immune to Phylloxera's poison, but unfortunately the European vines weren't. And so vineyards across France and then later on across Europe were pretty much decimated. Production of wine ceased, production of cognac ceased. The cognac industry had plentiful stocks of brandy. So it wasn't a question of overnight, suddenly there was no brandy. But people started to panic because they didn't really know what the problem was, therefore they didn't really know how to solve the problem. So people were maybe a little careful with their stocks and that as a result pushed prices up. That worked wonders for the Scotch whisky producers. They were like, hey, we've got something you might like. So the demand for Scotch whisky increased hugely. Many Scotch whisky blenders had their fortunes made at this time. Are there any names that became big at that time that we'd recognise today? Absolutely. Tommy Dewar, obviously from Dewars, was a huge name. James Buchanan with his blend Black and White. Andrew Usher, possibly not so well known today, but back in the heyday, a huge name here in Edinburgh. William Sanderson, big, big name here in Leith with the Vat69 blend. And of course, John Crabby, also a Leith blender whose brand has recently been revived, what with the new Bonington Distillery. So from the 1870s and the 1880s onwards, this was a boom period for Scotch whisky and especially the 1890s. That was an extraordinary decade for sales of Scotch whisky to all corners of the globe, Australia, South Africa, what we would today call the Commonwealth. So many new distilleries had been built, brands that still exist today had been founded. Whisky could now be found all around the world, most of it blended. But what goes up must come down, right? Things were too good to last. What happened? 1898, it all went horribly wrong with what people often refer to as the Paterson Crash. But it actually started with another company, J&G Stewart, one of the oldest blending houses here in Edinburgh. They were operating a lot on credit. And when the bank refused to advance them any more credit, they had no alternative but to stop payment. Prior to that, the banks were advancing money and the entire industry was really operating on credit. But because of J&G Stewart, the banks got a little panicky and so when a debt was called in for the Patersons and they didn't have enough money to pay it, the bank refused to advance them any more credit and that was the stoppage of the company. Now with the Patersons being one of the biggest whisky firms, not just here in Leith but across the whole country, when they had to stop payment, the domino effect on lots of other smaller companies meant that they also went bust. So here in Leith and across Scotland, the repercussions of the Patersons going bust were huge. After the Paterson Crash then, we come into the beginning of the 20th century and we had the triple threat of World War One, Prohibition and World War Two. How did that impact the blenders? Well hugely, because especially during the two World Wars, distilling operations were reduced. The distilling that took place was primarily for the production of munitions. So without distilling taking place, the blender stocks were obviously also reduced. Prohibition was a little different for some blends, simply because it was an opportunity to build the brand. If you imagine that some of these blends were being smuggled into the United States, once Prohibition was over, these were the names that people remembered. But then in the second half of the 20th century, it was boom time again and things were going well for the blenders. Absolutely. So the 60s, 50s, 60s and first half of the 70s, the Scotch whisky boom was apparent. Brands were being sold all over the world, huge demand for Scotch whisky. And this mid-century boom period saw the building of many new distilleries and a massive ramping up of production volume, which led to the creation of what we now know as the whisky loch. And of course, the loch then needed to be drained. So everything and anything was being bottled. So here on the supermarket shelves, you saw a whole bunch of new brands appearing and you saw the start of single malt bottling starting to emerge. Prior to the 1980s, very little of Scotch whisky was actually bottled as single malt. But after 1980, with the draining of the whisky loch, essentially the single malt market started to begin. For about 120, 130 years, people had been drinking blended whisky. And suddenly these single malt bottlings were appearing on the shelves. So how do you convince people to change from drinking blended whisky to single malts? Well, it's my opinion that you tell them it's a superior product. And for there to be a superior product, essentially you have to have an inferior product. And unfortunately, blends bore the brunt of that. And thus since the 1980s and into the 1990s and into the 2000s, malt whisky has been getting the lion's share of the column inches in the press, but also capturing the attention of connoisseurs. So for a lot of people who are now seeing new wave blends coming into the market, malt drinkers sometimes say, oh, the blends are coming back. But they never really went away. Yeah, they still form about 70, 80 percent of all the Scotch whisky that is sold around the world. So they most definitely are the backbone of the industry. And so what these enthusiastic whisky drinkers are looking for now is something with a little bit of inconsistency, something a little bit different. And so for me, when you look at the price of whisky these days, it's very difficult to find single cask bottlings, limited editions, distinct cask finishes for maybe under £100. But with these new boutique blends, they offer the, I'm going to say, seasoned whisky drinker something a little bit different, but they really offer great value for money. So they're ticking all of the boxes there. So we've seen the reputation of blends rise and fall from the 1830s to the 21st century. And though single malt is undoubtedly the post-child of Scotch whisky today, ever so slowly, a fresh interest in blends has begun to sprout among both whisky makers and whisky drinkers. The trend started in the early 2000s with the founding of Compass Box by John Glazer and the launch of his Asyla blend the following year. Though now best known for its blended malts, Asyla's success prompted Glazer to release the Great King Street Artist blend and the Glasgow blend, which are still released to this day. But Compass Box wasn't alone. Atom Brands launched its Peated Green Isle blend in 2018. Then came leaf blending studio Woven Whisky in 2021, and the following year saw the launch of a blend by Thompson Brothers at Dornoch Distillery. Billy Walker resurrected the White Heather brand, and George Koutsakis teamed up with F1 driver Jenson Button on Coach Built. 2023 saw independent bottler Adelphi launch McLean's Nose. Leaf Distillery riffed on the idea of a living blend with perpetuity. Turntable Spirits in Glasgow linked blending to music. And now we have Ardrey, the latest creation from St. Torey's Blenders in Scotland and Japan. But what sets New Wave blends like Ardrey apart from legacy blended Scotch whiskies? To understand more about the art of blending and the fresh approach of these new blends, I'm heading north to Glengarry Distillery in Aberdeenshire. I'll be talking to the innovator whose job it's been to bring Ardrey to life, and a master blender who understands the intention and process behind crafting both single malts and blended whiskies. Richard Bates is the Senior Director of Innovation for St. Torey's Scotch Whisky Portfolio. For the past four years, he's had the enviable task of leading the development of Ardrey. And that journey started with a vision. With any of our spirits, we start first and foremost with a vision of creating a spirit that will delight the drinker. That's always the number one goal. Beyond that, what we set out to do is in trying to bring a new blended Scotch to the market, we wanted to really highlight and shine a light on the excellence of blended Scotch. It's a much underrated, sometimes forgotten, sometimes misunderstood category. And alongside many other new age blends, we really wanted to bring something new and interesting to the category and help people understand the history of blending that ties our Japanese and Scotch whiskies together. And how has the history of blended Scotch whisky, and also Japanese blended whisky, informed the creation of Ardrey? We realised that in trying to shine a light on this wonderful blended Scotch category, we were effectively setting ourselves a goal of creating a whisky that needed to stand up there against any Scotch. And to do that, we needed to come at this with a fresh angle. And what we realised is that the outside perspective, or at least the outside perspective on Scotch that came from the Japanese blenders, was something that we uniquely could bring. It's something that hasn't been done before. And so that's where we started. Now, there's a wonderful tie-up that Ardrey is almost a story coming full circle. Back in the early 1900s, Shinjiro Torii, who is widely known as the father of Japanese whisky and the founder of Suntory, Scotch coming into Japan is what inspired him to create his own whisky, to create whisky for the Japanese palate. Now, of course, that Scotch at that time would have been a blend. So that was our starting point, really, is to look back at that period, look back at the Scotches of the early 1920s, looking at the idea of very characterful malts, malt-rich content, and get the Japanese blenders to look at Scotch and the history of Scotch blends and reimagine it or reinterpret it for the modern drinker. So in the Suntory portfolio, you have a number of blends already. In Japan, you have very famously Hibiki. In Scotland, you have Teachers. So why did you decide to create Ardrey as something completely distinct and not sort of have it live within one of those blends? When we were looking at, well, how do you stimulate the conversation? How do you get people to look again, you know, to take a fresh perspective, to find new delight in something that is very familiar? It's very hard to do it with something that is familiar. So that's why we didn't create a new variant of Teachers, for example. We still do create new variants of Teachers, but we felt for this particular task and to really sort of challenge people a little bit, we wanted to do something different. And that's why with Ardrey, it looks different. Hopefully, it tastes different when you try it later. But also, you know, it stands out and some of the decisions we made are all about challenging some of those preconceptions. You know, it's very light in colour, but hopefully you'll agree it's got incredible depth and complexity to it. It's a non-age statement, and yet it's very rich. It's very indulgent and fulsome on the taste. So it's designed to stimulate conversation. So Ardrey is very new. It's been in the market for a year at this point. So when you look back in 10 or 20 years, what do you hope that Ardrey will have achieved? We'd like to see certain things change. So when we started this project, we would go to bars and you would have long lists of single malts, of Irish whisky, of American whisky, of Japanese whisky, and you'd have four solitary blends. We'd love to see Ardrey and other new blends and legacy blends being heroed, being used, not just being base cocktail whiskies, but actually being celebrated. We'd love to see people writing and blogging and talking about blends as much as they do around single malts and other categories of whisky. We hope that in 10 years' time, we've not just started that conversation, but that conversation is flourishing. We really want Ardrey to be a tribute, if you like, to the quality and excellence that comes from blending and blending the superb character for whiskies that we have in Scotland. So that's the vision, but the job of making that vision a reality fell to master blender Callum Fraser and his colleagues on Centauri's Scottish and Japanese blending teams. Throughout his career, Callum has worked with some of Scotland's most iconic master blenders, Together, they crafted blends using some of Scotland's most well-regarded single malts and grains. This means Callum is ideally placed to not only tell us how Ardrey is made, but how it compares to legacy blends. Famously, blended Scotch whiskies are blended to a particular flavour profile and a particular recipe, and they can include a huge array of different malt and grain whiskies. Can you tell me a bit about the profiles of some of the different blends that you've worked on and how they're different from one another? So if I take Johnny Walker, which I first worked on when I entered the industry, it was very much based around the smoke, the west coast of Scotland, so very medicinal, full-on smoking character, and then you had, you know, more delicate tones of fruit, body from rich fruit from European oat maturation. Ballantine's is arguably on the other side of things. It's more refined, fruity, almost floral in terms of the characters. The peat is there, but it's lower down within the overall flavour profile, and it's very much underpinned by American oat maturation. So two global icons that are, you know, very different. So you told me about how blended Scotch whiskies are made up of all these different components, but can you tell me a little bit about what those components are and how they perform in a blend? I see all the malts and all the grains as equal partners within the blend. In terms of grain, very sweet and delicate, and it very much can open up all the flavours of the various malt styles. In terms of malts, you do get more variety. We can have whiskies that have a very fresh fruit character, nutty character, more heavily bodied, almost sulphury type character, which maybe doesn't sound too pleasant, but matured properly can create a fantastic single malt. And within a blend, it very much gives body to the overall blend. And last but by no means least, peat. More medicinal, richer peat from the islands, and then you've got mainland peated whisky that's slightly more heathery, floral in character. We've established that it's really important for you to have these distinctive distillery styles to make a complex blend, but what are the factors that go into creating a distinctive and characterful distillery style? Go all the way back to the raw material that's used, from the barley, to create the malt. It's not just one method that we use to create the malt. It can be done commercially, but also it can be done by traditional floor maltings, which was how it was done well in excess of 100 years ago. There are only a handful of distilleries now that have traditional floor maltings on site, such as here at Glengarry. And commercial malting is very standardised. The level of modification of the barley towards the malt is very uniform across the batch, so that very much will drive a standard flavour profile. Whereas with our floor maltings, because it's traditional and the floor may not be even, and there may be different levels thermally, hot spots versus cool spots, you get a bit more variability across the floor. We think that does drive an element of complexity and depth of the character. In terms of going forward, you know, the milling, the mash tonne, type of mash tonne can make an influence on that, and you can have some distilleries that create a clear wort, some that create a cloudy wort, and that will impact the flavour profile. And then moving on to the fermentation, the length of the fermentation time. Some distilleries will ferment for about 55 to 60 hours, whereas others will have elongated fermentation times, 72 hours and beyond. And that allows, in addition to converting the sugar to the alcohol, which happens at the 55 to 60 hour stage, allows for further development of fruitier and more complex and complicated flavours and characters. The very important stage after that is either the double or triple distillation part of the process. And again, there's variables within there. I've just mentioned you can double distill, which the majority of malt distilleries in Scotland do, or in the case of Lakes of Auchentoshan, triple distillation, which gives a very different flavour profile in the new mate distillate. The shape and size of the still is a very important factor in terms of the flavour profile of what's produced. The majority of stills now are heated by steam, so indirect-fired distillation. Traditionally, that wasn't always the case. It was usually direct-fired distillation, but over time, a lot of distilleries tended to work towards indirect-fired distillation, which does give you a different character. However, some distilleries, such as here at Glengarry again, that direct-fired distillation at the wash still stage was re-engineered through a Maillard reaction, allows further complexity in terms of character to be built up during the distillation process itself. So combined with the different reflux, the different shape and size of the still will help all drive a very different distillery character in terms of not only the flavour, but also the depth and complexity of the new mate distillate. So we've talked about the production process of the legacy blends that Callum's worked on, but Ardrey is a little different. It took the Scotch and Japanese blending teams at Suntory three years and hundreds of iterations to land on what finally became the Ardrey recipe. So after all these different trials, you settled on the final blend for Ardrey, and I understand that some of the components are here, so what am I looking at? We had whiskeys from all across Scotland, whiskeys from the Suntory element of the business, whiskeys such as Bemore, Laphroaig, Hawkintoshan, Ardmore and Glengarry. We also were fortunate to have access to whiskeys from Edrington, such as the Macallan, Glenrothes and Highland Park, and on top of that, we had access to some third-party single malt whiskeys and also grain whiskeys as well. So out of all those distilleries, we were able to almost categorise to get styles that were reasonably similar and that allowed us to easily create a building block philosophy that we've used towards Ardrey. So what you have in front of you is four building blocks, four elements that have a defined flavour that we have used to blend together in specific proportions to create the Ardrey, which is the fifth class that's in front of us here. These are samples from real on-scale battings. We have a Solera system that's in place for Ardrey, so we have a blended grain building block and then we have three distinct blended malt building blocks. You mentioned the word Solera there, and I'm very familiar with the Solera systems that are used in bodegas in Spain for the maturation and fractional blending of sherry, but what do you mean by that word? So for Ardrey, it's a similar idea. What we will do is through the building blocks, the four building blocks, and actually the final blend itself. So in essence, it's a double Solera system. We will never fully exhaust any of our components for the blend itself. We will continue to top up elements that make up the four building blocks and also top up the blend itself. What we aim to do that is consistency batch to batch, but also further develop complexity. I've currently just done batch one. Once we get to batch 50, we'll have that further complexity that's taken place over the previous 49 batches and it does create a link all the way back to the original. So after the final blend has been brought together, does anything else happen before it's sent down the bottling line? When we draw off the volume of Ardrey final blend, we will not straight away reduce that to bottling strength of 48% and then bottle it. We will reduce it down to a strength in between cast strength and bottling strength and marry that for at least one month. We are drawing off a sample of the marrying blend and what we're seeing week by week is further evolution, integration, and refinement. So tell me, what exactly are each of these building blocks that come together to build Ardrey? So if I first of all could ask you just to take the glass on your far right there. This is a blended grain building block. A combination of different grain whiskies some of which have wheat as a raw material, mainly quite sweet cleaning character and one of which has maize as a raw material very much as more of an oily, heavier character. So we blended those together to create the blended grain building block. So if I could ask you just to have a nose. So very sweet, absolutely sweet in character but almost a slight sweetness, quite bubblegum for me. But overall, relatively delicate. Again, we have made sure that the NuMate distillate was paired with casks that weren't too active. It's American oak and it's refilled American oak casks because we don't want the wood to overpower the distillery character. The whole ethos behind Ardrey is to make sure that we celebrate whiskies at their optimal point of maturation. So again, for me, very much echoing the nose, very sweet on the palate. But one of the key things for me for a grain within the context of a blend is the smoothness that it has. It very much has a nice, smooth, voluptuous character on the palate and that very much works well when we add on the various different types of malt. Fantastic. So that's absolutely delicious. And what about this next component? So this first one is a blended malt element, fully American oak matured. There's an array of fruity notes coming through for me. Fresh fruits, crisping an apple, but there's also complexities such as honey coming through here as well. It's very much a combination and a celebration of the real top notes that we tend to showcase within blends. You're completely right. That's incredibly fresh. I think a lot of people would be very happy if you bottled that on its own, right? Yeah, for me, I've very much got a sweet tooth and this very much plays into not only fresh fruits, but confectionery type notes. It really reminds me of being a kid in a sweet shop. And now we have the sherry element. Yes. So visually amongst the five classes that we have in front of us, this is the one that probably stands out the most. It's probably not a huge surprise that this contains whiskeys that have been matured exclusively in Oloroso, sherry season, Spanish oak, hogsheads and butts. This one has a fruity element, but it's more about the rich fruit element. So it is teetering on showcasing the cask influence. But again, we have made sure we've selected whiskeys that are heavier and bolder in character to complement the more intense maturation that the whiskey has undergone. For me, it's a very much a richer, more indulgent blended malt component. It just reminds me of Christmas time. It's like Christmas in a glass. So you're playing with fruity flavours. There's indulgent notes like chocolate and there's spice in there. Lots more of those candied citrus peels, lots of cinnamon, sweet sort of cinnamon sugar, dark chocolate notes as well, but still lots of fruit underneath it. And just to add to that, in terms of the mouthfeel, it's quite different from the first two building blocks. This one's slightly more drying, more tannic. And again, because all the whiskeys within this building block have been matured in European oak casks, Spanish oak casks, they are more naturally more tannic and that comes through in the whiskey. And then last but not least, we have this peated building block. So how would you describe it? So for this, we haven't just focused on what everyone considers peaty whiskey, all being from Islay, which infuses onto the malt a more maritime rich peaty character, but we also use mainland peated malt, which has a more heathery, floral, more delicate peaty character. We've actually used whiskeys that are 100% floor malted as part of the production process. That elevates complexity and elevates the peatiness within the whiskey that is part of this building block. This one is incredibly complex. I mean, all of them have been, but the balance between the fresh fruit and confectionery flavours with the delicate peat, it's incredibly well balanced. Yeah, I mean, for me, it's almost a soft peatiness. It's almost getting savoury, you know, smoked ham. But yet again, you've got underlying to that, you've got some fresh fruit flavours coming through as well. So I totally echo your point. So how would you describe the flavours and aromas that we're finding in the final Ardrey blend? Overall, I would describe this as a subtle, refined, yet complex whiskey. So for me, very much on the nose, you've got that soft, savoury smoke that's ever-present, but then you've got notes of fresh fruit. You've got citrus fruit, almost like a tangerine skin coming through, and you've got little hints of pepper coming through there as well. Now I've tasted this, I can definitely identify some of the components, but overall, it's an incredibly well-integrated, refined experience. You can tell that that marrying process has done a lot to bring these components together. One of the big things that we were considering, not only the nose and the taste, but the overall experience, we really wanted to get the mouthfeel to really work. And what we believe we've made with Ardrey is something that's really accessible and smooth in character. And as you say, the marrying process very much helped us. And it's definitely, I mean, I think it's aided a little bit by the temperature in this warehouse, but it's incredibly viscous as well. Absolutely, yeah. But the mouthfeel was a very important part of the blending process when we were looking to develop Ardrey. I leave Glengarry with a deeper understanding of blending, distillery character, and the immense amount of time, consideration, and expertise that went into the creation of Ardrey. But is the world ready for New Wave blends? To find out, I'm heading to one of London's leading cocktail bars to meet two people who can give me insight into how blends are perceived by bartenders, whiskey drinkers, and the whiskey curious. Ardrey's UK brand ambassador, Stephanie Peck, is at the spear tip of the New Wave blend scene. Steph gets to spend every day talking to whiskey fans and bartenders, making her the ideal person to tell me about how blends are perceived today. So how's the reaction been so far? I would say overall, the response has been amazing. There's, of course, that section of the industry where people are coming to the conversation with preconceptions. So when I walk in with my brand new no-age statement blend, there can sometimes be resistance, but overall, really, really positive. A lot of the narrative around whiskey right now is around malt whiskey, although obviously in the US, bourbon is also having its moment. Maybe blended scotch, while such an important part of the whiskey scene, is perhaps not getting as many column inches. So has that come with challenges when you've been speaking to whiskey fans? It has come with challenges, because yeah, as I said, some people do have these preconceptions. And so there is that element of trying to encourage people to come into the conversation, talk to them about it, and just shine a light on blends as a category, on Ardray, and kind of come with a fresh idea and fresh perspective, really, to the category. They also are curious, right? Whiskey drinkers love trying whiskey. It doesn't take long, really, to engage them to give it a try. And once they've tried the whiskey in the glass, they can see where we're coming from with blends and why blends are beautiful. And they're sort of there to offer you a different drinking experiences to single malts. I just think it's such a shame when people just disregard a whole category like they have done previously with blends. So I think with Ardray, we just want to encourage them to look again and try it, open their mind, be curious, and just dig deep into what flavours can be discovered, really. Ardray really is a blend from malt whiskey drinkers. I completely agree. Something that I hear a lot from whiskey fans and read online is people being like, oh, I like this one because it really has really strong, punchy notes of this and things. But I think this idea that everything just has to hit you around the head and you have to be able to take an instant opinion away from it, I'm not sure that always necessarily goes hands-in-hand with considered complex whiskey, right? I completely agree. And there's always different whiskies for different times, right? And sometimes you do want one that just knocks you, you know, socks off and knocks you on the head, and that's fine. But I don't really want to drink that regularly. I sometimes find those interesting to try, but they're not what I go back to. I completely agree. And I think it's always about looking at a whiskey and going, okay, is it complex? Is it balanced? Is it good quality? Is it free from fault? And that can tell you, you know, help you score a whiskey. But, you know, at the end of it, you also have to go, is somebody going to want to drink this? Does it, you know, because if a whiskey doesn't tick the box of, I want to keep going back and drinking this, then it's probably failed, right? Why does it exist? Yeah. Steph introduced me to Swift's manager, Rachel Reed. Rachel is a self-declared whiskey fan and like most Scots, grew up in a household where there was always a bottle of blended scotch on the shelf. I grew up in a family of big whiskey drinkers and blends kind of ran through that. Like my granddad always drank White and Mackay. You know, that was his blend. And then my dad had a different type of blend because they were from different parts of Scotland. Blends give you something so different that you just can't really get from a single malt or a single grain, whether that's texture, whether that's taste. It's been part of my life since I can remember. I also grew up in a blends household, but of course, most of the focus of bars, including here is single malt whiskey. So how have you seen trends change throughout your career? I've seen the change of the whiskey drinker. People are a lot more open to trying different finishes now. Cocktails have massively changed. The whiskey drinker is a lot more willing to listen to the bartender and let them kind of go on almost like a guided tour. Whether they come in and they're like, I only drink Speyside whiskey. I'm like, what do you actually mean? What do you actually want? And then whether that means that I offer up a blend or something like that, where everything that they've asked for, I'm like, this blend does exactly that. And they're a lot more open and a lot more willing to just try things, which is really, really nice, especially for me. We're also seeing a big change in the way that whiskey is presented to drinkers and particularly how blended scotch is presented. So as well as Ardray, you've got the context of sort of Compass Box and Turntable Spirits. You've got Woven. How do you think people are responding to this new wave, a new way of talking about whiskey? It is something that I have noticed a lot of maybe like the younger generation being a lot more into rather than say the older generation. My dad's a big whiskey collector and whenever I talk to him about kind of like the new age, where it's a lot more based on kind of flavour, like I'm a big fan of what Woven does. I love that they put what it tastes like. I think the last one I tried was like peachy something. But then trying to explain that to like my dad, who's a little bit older, he's a bit more of the, I don't know, that's quite for me. And I have seen a lot more people literally ask for those brands. In particular, they're like, do you have any Compass Box? Do you have any Woven? And it's really exciting to see. Though I'm totally focused on whiskey all the time, whiskey is just one of the many drinks that one would use behind the bar to make a great cocktail. How does this changing perception about whiskey and particularly about blended scotch fit into the evolution of cocktail culture? You can do a lot more fun things, I would say, with blended scotch. People are a lot more open to it. Whereas if you whack a 25-year-old single malt into a cocktail, people are like, what are you doing? With blended scotch, people are like, oh, okay, cool, you've done this fat wash. You've done this like maceration with that whiskey. Oh my God, that's amazing. That's so fun. And I think people are understanding how useful blended scotch can be in cocktails. Blended scotch is made for a specific flavour, which you can then use to your advantage when you're making whatever cocktail it is. I would say you never want to put something in your cocktail that you wouldn't want to drink neat, right? Perhaps it's a case of getting people out of the mindset of, oh, well, I'll just put a blend in it because it's a cocktail, and into the mindset of, I'm going to use this particular whiskey, whether it is a single malt or a blend or a single grain, because it particularly suits my tastes and the cocktail, right? With using a blend such as RJ, there's a reason for it. There's a reason why you've put that in the drink, and it's because it goes so well with whatever you've matched it with. With RJ, it stands up in a whiskey soda, which we've seen is now so popular. You know, that 48% ABV helps with that, absolutely. How do you think highball culture sort of took off, and why did it take off in the way it has right now? Well, I think we have to kind of look at Japan. It's what kind of made it, I guess, fashionable, again, to drink whiskey, not just neat, but as a highball. Honestly, you can't get anything better than a whiskey highball. It's so clean, and it's so fresh, and yeah, we've definitely seen it really, really take off. And I think it's very interesting that RJ has also been informed by Japanese blending principles as well. And something that I was told when I was on a recent trip in Asia by a whiskey expert there, he was talking about how, in his view, Japan became an archive of drinks history, because there was such an interest in traveling and preserving late 19th century and early 20th century cocktail bartending principles, service principles. Obviously, Japan then added its own flair on top of that. And now it's sort of coming back to us. So, you know, the Scotch and soda used to be one of the most popular drinks on the planet. It then fell out of fashion. It was preserved in Japan and elevated in Japan, and now we're getting it back from them. And obviously, RJ, there's a very similar story with that, because it was informed by the old blends of the early 20th century, and now is coming back to sort of reinvigorate interest in blended Scotch. Have you seen other elements of bartending culture that have been influenced by Japan? Clear ice is, I think, the biggest thing that I've noticed since being down in London. It's weird now to see a bar that doesn't use clear ice. And there's obviously a reason for that. It is superior. It does make your drink colder. It doesn't dilute as quickly. Especially in London, we've taken little bits from all around the world in kind of the bar world to kind of make it our own. And I love that. Do you think whiskey is going to have a place in other styles of cocktails, sort of like aperitivo style cocktails, tropical sort of beach cocktails, you know, where else do you see whiskey going? I 100% see it going down that. And I think actually the whiskey drinker wants that sort of mix up. But sometimes I want something that's like light. Maybe it's like, you know, really hot outside. I'm looking for like a nice fruity number, but I still want Scotch. When you look at people's cocktail menus, it's no longer whiskey being reserved for the old-fashioned variant that they have on their menu. It's now maybe like a sherry cobbler. As much as everyone loves an old-fashioned, there are kind of more things you can do with whiskey that isn't just that. As well as opening up avenues for new styles of whiskey cocktail, Ardray's creators have also come up with a twist on a familiar serve. They call it Off The Rocks. So what we're doing is challenging that age-old question with whiskey. Do you have water? Do you have ice? Do you have it neat? As we all know, you should have whiskey however you like. And what we want to do is encourage people to find how they find Ardray perfect. So with this, it's Off The Rocks. We're pouring the whiskey over the ice instead of putting the ice in the glass. Now, of course, that contact with the ice will of course give you some chill and some dilution, but how quickly or slowly you pour it will obviously affect both of those things. We think around eight seconds will give you that perfect amount of chill and dilution and really just change the flavour and the texture of Ardray. What we want to do is we want to take this, pop it on top of the glass, and then you're going to take this dram and pour it over the ice. Okay. Christopher, you're aiming for eight seconds. Let's see if I can count to eight. So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And a bit. You're forgiven. I'm forgiven. Okay, well, I can safely say I don't think I've ever had whiskey like this before. Okay, let's compare. So this is the neat Ardray here. So the nose is a little bit more subdued, which I think is what you'd expect from a whiskey when it's been chilled. Let's try the taste. What? Okay, the mouthfeel has completely changed. This is suddenly way more viscous, which again, I think you'd expect, but like it's significantly more viscous, right? I think it's like turning the volume up. Yes, it's really interesting. It's dialed down some of the sweetness, dialed up some of the smokiness, massively changed the viscosity, but it's still, it's not actually cold, cold. Very slight chill to it, but will of course have some sort of effect. You know, I actually think, I think I prefer it like this. That's amazing, which is great because it's a signature serve, but like I was not expecting it to be that different. That is blown my mind. Well, I think I've learned something, which is I didn't know what to expect from this serve. I think I now need to go away and try every whiskey in my house like this now because this is, yeah, I think people need to know about this. Since the narrative flipped in favor of single malts in the 1980s, blended scotch has been gradually sidelined by whiskey enthusiasts. Now it's time to see if this next generation of new wave blends like Ardray can spark new delight in blended scotch. On this incredible journey into the past and present of blends, I've met an expert, an innovator, a maker, and those who speak to whiskey fans about blends every day. The facts tell us that the blend never went away, but I keep wanting to say blends are back. At the very least, they're back in my glass.