What does a master blender do?

A master blender selects and inspects the casks, composes the recipe from them, determines the strength and keeps track of the stock over several years.

The assessment is done by nose and by tongue, cask by cask. That sensory work is not a side issue of the trade but an examined part of it: in the Diploma in Distilling of the Chartered Institute of Brewers and Distillers, maturation, preparation for bottling and quality management with sensory analysis fall under module 2. The programme is aimed at the technically responsible person in a distillery.

Then comes the arithmetic. The blender decides which casks go in and in what proportion, and at what strength the batch goes into the bottle. For Scotch whisky, this lower limit is set by law at 40 percent ABV in the bottle.

And there is the planning. Scotch whisky must lie in the cask at least three years before any of it may be bottled, so what is laid down today can only be used years later. Anyone who wants to maintain a recipe must have reserved the casks for it years earlier.

Every cask matures differently, so without blending every bottling of the same brand would taste different.

The Scotch Whisky Association describes the blender's goal as making a whisky with a clear and recognisable character, where the blend may never deviate from that standard. That is precisely what a single cask cannot deliver on its own.

The law leaves room. Maturation must take place in oak casks of at most 700 litres and last at least three years, but within those limits each cask differs from the next. The Scotch Whisky Association names the age of the oak as one of the factors in the flavour the wood gives the spirit.

By choosing from many casks and adjusting the proportions, the blender balances those differences against each other. The Scotch Whisky Association speaks of up to sixty different Scotch whiskies in a blend.

Blended Scotch whisky mixes malt with grain, blended malt only malts from more than one distillery, and blended grain only grains from more than one distillery.

Article 3 of the Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009 puts it this way. Blended Scotch whisky is a combination of one or more single malt Scotch whiskies with one or more single grain Scotch whiskies. Blended malt Scotch whisky is a combination of two or more single malts distilled at more than one distillery. Blended grain Scotch whisky is the same, but with single grains.

The word blend on the label therefore tells you which kinds of whisky are in it and how many distilleries they come from. Blended Scotch whisky is the most widely drunk form: the Scotch Whisky Association cites nine out of ten bottles of Scotch drunk worldwide.

European legislation uses the word in a broader sense. Regulation (EU) 2019/787 defines blending as combining two or more spirit drinks of the same category that differ only in minor respects, such as method of preparation, stills used, maturation period or production area. The result falls in the same category as the drinks you started with.

With a single cask nothing is blended: the bottle comes from a single cask, exactly as that cask is at that moment.

That removes the correction a blender applies. Two bottlings from two different casks of the same distillery can therefore differ from one another, and when the cask is empty, that batch is gone.

Single cask is not a legal category name. The Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009 name five kinds: single malt, single grain, blended malt, blended grain and blended Scotch whisky. A single cask usually falls under those as a single malt or single grain; the word cask only describes that a single cask is behind the bottle.

The minimum requirements apply in full. A single cask too must have spent at least three years in Scotland in oak casks of no more than 700 litres and must be in the bottle at a minimum of 40 percent by volume.

Of the 145 bottlings with blend or blended in the name, 103 come from Scotland, 20 from Japan and 8 from Ireland.

The rest is spread over seven countries: 5 from the Netherlands, 2 from England, 2 from France, and 1 each from China, Canada, Belgium and Taiwan. Together ten countries, from 92 different brands.

The whisky stock in the shop at Brink 2 in Bathmen comprises 3,882 bottles. Note what has been counted here: it is about what is on the label, so about bottlings whose name mentions blend or blended, not about every whisky that is legally a blend. Many blends do not carry that word in their name.

The alcohol percentages within those 145 range from 40 to 58.6 percent. The lower limit is exactly the legal minimum for Scotch whisky; the upper limit shows that blending and a high strength do not exclude each other.