What is a blended whisky?

Blended Scotch Whisky is, under rule 3 of the Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009, a mixture of one or more single malts with one or more single grains.

The law knows five categories:

• Single Malt: distilled at one distillery, from water and malted barley without other grains, in pot stills
• Single Grain: distilled at one distillery, but not a single malt and not a blend
• Blended Malt: two or more single malts from more than one distillery
• Blended Grain: two or more single grains from more than one distillery
• Blended Scotch: malt blended with grain whisky

All five must meet the same basic requirements: at least three years of maturation in Scotland in oak casks of at most 700 liters, distilled at less than 94.8 percent and bottled at at least 40 percent.

According to rule 3, malt whisky is distilled only from malted barley in pot stills; this requirement does not apply to grain whisky, where the continuous still became the standard.

Aeneas Coffey applied for that apparatus in 1830; patent 5974 was granted on 5 February 1831, when he owned the Dock distillery in Dublin. Coffey lived from 1780 to 26 November 1852.

The continuous still made grain whisky possible on a large scale and thereby became the foundation of Scotch blends. Legally the same limits apply to grain whisky as to malt: at least three years of maturation and bottling at a minimum of 40 percent.

Blends gained their legal right to exist in 1909, when a British royal commission decided that whisky did not necessarily have to come from a pot still.

In 1903 Islington borough council prosecuted two traders under the Sale of Food and Drugs Act 1875. The judge then ruled that Scotch or Irish whisky meant a spirit from a pot still.

The Royal Commission on whisky and other potable spirits was set up in February 1908, held 37 sittings and reported in July 1909. It defined whisky as a spirit made from a mash saccharified by the diastase of malt, with no mandatory maturation period and no minimum share of malt. For blenders and patent-still distillers that meant a complete victory.

In 2024, bottled blend accounted for 3.2 billion pounds of Scottish exports, or 59.4 percent of the value.

In that same year single malt came to 1.7 billion pounds (31.0 percent) and the other categories to 0.5 billion pounds (9.6 percent). Total exports came to 5.4 billion pounds and 1.4 billion bottles of 70 cl, about 44 bottles per second.

By value the United States was at the top with 971 million pounds, followed by France with 419 million and Singapore with 310 million. By volume India came first with 192 million bottles.

If an age is stated on a blend, then according to regulation 12 of the Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009 it refers to the youngest whisky in the bottle.

That age must be expressed in years. A distillation year may only appear on the label if all the whisky was distilled in that one calendar year and the label states the bottling year or the age in the same field of vision.

Rule 12 further prohibits any number that could cause confusion about maturation, age or distillation year. The lower limit remains three years of maturation, and bottling may not be below 40 percent.