The final blend I bottled I think is not a bad little dram at all. Its mostly single malts which makes it out of the Chivas 12 bracket probably and certainly wouldn’t be on sale for under £30.

So we are comparing apples and oranges but what did i come up with?

The final recipe was:

• 40% grain
• 26% fruity single malt
• 16% citric single malt
• 14% creamy single malt
• 4% peaty single malt

Tasting Notes

Colour – whisky coloured

Nose – quite sharp and spiky. citric peel and sharp apple cider like notes. A touch of vanilla and butterscotch to a more creamy sweetness. In the background is a gentle clove spice.

Palate – A slick texture which has body but not much. Cloves, vanilla come back from the nose. There is a new note of milky coffee and advent calendar chocolate.

Finish – The finish is much longer than the regal 12 in this blend. The spiced chilli heat lingers for a decent amount of time. The chemically chocolate note of cheap chocolate takes the edge of somewhat though.

Final Thoughts

In comparing my blend to the mass market version there is some obvious differences. Mine is more interesting to me and has a spiky nature. If mine went on sale against the Chivas though even with people tasting before they bought I would still not sell as many cases.

Mass market blends is the money market for the whisky industry. Part of how it does this is by being insipid and inoffensive to be added to mixers and bought by those who buy occasionally. To sip on their own though they are just not very interesting and don’t appeal much to me. Having said that though I have tried older versions of these mass market blends from the 70’s and 80’s. Those are more interesting and closer to the kind of thing I knocked together in this kit. So while my point on mass market appeal still stands there is clearly less of an interest in using lots of well aged stock in blends now single malts and single grains can be bottled on their own.