What's the difference between a Single Malt & Blended Whiskies

OK let's get into this. You may have seen recently on Instagram my jaunts aboard the Glenfiddich Express. More on that later. For now I wanted to cover some basics about Whisky. Whisky 101 if you will. It's amazing no matter how much people love whisky, they still don't know the fundamentals. Such as who invented Whisky? How to spell Whisky/Whiskey and the reasons for the differences. 

Anyway, in this mini blog I wanted to cover what are the key difference between a difference between a Single Malt & Blended Whiskies. 

Single malt is synonymous with Scotland, and Scotch Whisky. This is not always the case. Single malts can be made anywhere. A blend can be two malts from different distilleries blended together. 

Back in the 1700s no one was blending. Blending came in the late 1800s when people figured out they make a bigger profit on whisky by blending them. Manufacturers would buy say one barrel of Dublin whisky and then 10 barrels of country whisky. Dublin whisky was the high water mark at the time because it was industrialised and made to a good consistent quality. 

Photo by Thomas Park on Unsplash

Malt whisky is made from malted barley and nothing else while a single malt is made in only one distillery from malted barley. On the other hand pretty much every " blended whisky " there ever was contains some amount of corn and every bottom shelf bar whisky you ever saw is a blended whisky. 

When Johnnie Walker got into the market they did something clever. They pitched the idea to the masses of why drink just one malt from one distillery, you should go to the best five distilleries in Scotland and make the mega Whisky! The Avengers of Whisky if you will. That was their marketing pitch, sounds great in theory, and that's how people fell in love with blended whisky for a time. It was great for consumers and for brands. Brands were making money and consumers could drink whisky for cheaper. 

There are some fantastic blended whiskies on the market that I'll come onto over time. Although at the time of writing people are returning to single malt whiskies and blends are not hitting the same popularity levels that they once were. Perhaps that might change now due to the cost of living crisis. Will peoples preferences in whisky have to be compromised? 

I'll leave you with a quote I found online, that I think sums it up nicely.

The complexity and character come from the quality of what goes into the cask and the cask itself, whether from a single distillery or from more than one. Both can be excellent and both can be poor.