The last review was of the Chivas Regal 12 and that miniature was from a special kit I got for Christmas. The Chivas as home blending experience takes an idea you get at a few distilleries into the comfort of your house so you don’t need to visit Scotland (although do give it a go at least once).
The kit includes a pipette, mixing vessel, 4 malt whiskies, 1 pre blended grain and the 12 year old Chivas as an example.
With Mrs Malted we spent a great evening trying it out and sampling lots of different variations of blended whisky. The whiskies come with helpful descriptions and break down the components quite easily to include base, depth and top coat.
The first thing I looked at was the individual components and made some notes on those. Overall I thought the whiskies were actually pretty decent on their own and I would be happy to buy at least two of them as single cask full size bottles.
Grain Whisky Blend – Floral is fair with sugary ripe exotic fruit notes. The sweetness is pretty cloying.
Fruity Single Malt – Sherried single malt for sure with all the dried fruits and fruit bread notes you would expect. I would bottle and buy this on its own. A favourite between Mrs Malted and I.
Citrus Single Malt – very soft nose. I got a lemon rind and citric note on the finish but little on the palate. Mrs malt found no citrus but a lot of heat and chemical spirit notes. Our least favourite of the 5.
Creamy single Malt – full fat butter and cream pastries. Thickest texture of them all and really coats the mouth.
Peaty Single Malt – A youthful and woody peated whisky. There isn’t much vegetation it is more all wood fires and smoke than coastal brine laced peaty.
The next step was to try the Chivas 12 blend and make some notes on that. My thoughts on that whisky I have already written about on Tuesday which you can go back and look at here.
The point of the kit is to use this as inspiration and create your own bespoke blend. The Chivas blend will use a large range of different whiskies so recreating it with the 5 provided wouldn’t be possible.
However, I wanted to give it a go.
I think we got pretty close in the end actually. All the main notes were there of the sharp spiky spirit notes and the short abrupt finish. The only main difference was the nose which wasn’t really as interesting.
From there we developed our blend be being out own special concoction. I will keep that a secret for another day but all in all this was a great way to spend an evening. I really enjoyed playing around with different whiskies and seeing what happened and challenging my senses. There is a lot of whisky in the kit for you to play around with and do this a few times which is good as well.
I am not sure if they are still for sale or it was just for Christmas but I would recommend you give it a shot if you see it on a dusty shelf somewhere.
Malted 