The Wild Drink Blog

A week in to the new job and already i’ve been fortunate enough to spend the day in Bristol (…keep reading, it gets better) at a Johnnie Walker Blue Label tasting with Ian Williams the master distiller.

If you want to know a bit more about Johnnie Walker feel free to contact me, but the general gist is this: John Walker started blending whisky back in 1820 in his grocers shop in Kilmarnock, his son and grandsons were the ones that really set the bussiness going though, blending Johnnie Walker Black Label (43% ABV) in 1867, known at the time as ‘Old Highland’.

In around 1910 ‘The Striding Man’ logo was introduced along with the iconic square bottle (for more efficent shipping) and the coloured labels. The gold and blue label varieties were introduced in the early 90’s, the blue being the top of the range and the one which we tasted today…

I learnt a few interesting things today and i’ll share a few of them with you guys.

Some folk like to add a drop of water to their whisky, I prefer mine neat though. Ian Williams told us he likes to drink whisky with water, but in the case of Blue Label some of the whiskys in the blend are up to 60 years old, this means that the flavour compounds are in a very delicate state of alcoholic stasis. Adding water to the whisky can, for want of a better word, bugger up the fragile flavour compounds, so with Blue Label we have to drink it neat.

The next interesting tid-bit I learnt is a trick for drinking neat spirit.

The main problem with neat spirit is the burn. That heat you get in your nose/lungs/throat which tends to overpower the actual flavour of the drink. What do you do to combat heat? Cold water of course! Before drinking your whisky pour yourself a glass of very icy water, take three large sips so your teeth hurt then try the whisky. You will be baffled and confounded with how well the icy water smoothens the whisky and dulls the heat, try it.

How does it taste? Well I enjoyed it, very well balanced with a sweet floral aroma and just a hint of sea air and peat. Smooth and silky in the mouth, some spice, dried fruit and a nice long finish.