Back in September, we began offering some pointers on blending your own whisky to help you get the most out of the marvellous Home Blending Kits we have bestowed upon the world (we’re good like that) as well as explaining a little about how whisky blending came about. Now, we left that post on a bit of a cliff-hanger I’m afraid but fear not! We didn’t forget about this, good heavens no! Time to re-cap/catch up on How To Blend Whisky Part I because herein lies... Part Deux!

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Ask most people what their first experience of whisky was and you will be greeted with a shudder, the questionee’s face will turn a charming tinge of green and they’ll reply, “A cheap blend out of my dad’s drinks cabinet, frankly it tasted vile and it made me do things I’d really rather not talk about here.” Fair enough. We all have to start somewhere.

However, this common experience of blended whisky —plus the ready availability of the stuff on the shelf at the supermarket—has led to blends getting a reputation on a par with that of Hollywood diva Lindsay Lohan, some say worse... This has propagated the fallacy that ‘single malt is good, blended whisky is bad’ which is repeated like Animal Farm’s ‘four legs good, two legs bad’ mantra until everyone is bored and has moved on to the Tequila and lime. However, I am here to put the case forward for blended whisky and then, through bravely/foolishly attempting it myself, I will try and give you some tips on how to create your very own blend!

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If you haven’t yet discovered Compass Box whisky it’s high time you did because the company produces some of the best Scotch blends on the market today.

And this month, the raptor-retinaed among you will have noticed we are running a really rather brilliant competition, and all you have to do is buy a bottle of Compass Box to enter!

The prize is superb – a bottle of the original, illegal Spice Tree, plus two very different whiskies from the company’s intriguing Canto Cask Range; Canto Cask 48 and Canto Cask 20 to be exact. 

And even if you don’t win, every bottle of Compass Box you buy will be accompanied by a free dram of another Compass Box whisky. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m just off to buy a bottle of Flaming Heart and… what’s that? I’m not allowed to enter? 

Ok, unfair as that seems (there are only 250 chances after all) instead I’ll tell you a bit about Compass Box.

The company launched in 2000, the vision of American blender John Glaser, ex-marketing director at Johnnie Walker. 

John started his career in the wine trade where blended products are celebrated as much as their single varietal cousins. With whisky however it was, and to an extent still is, single malts that get all the glory.More...

The votes have been counted, the results are in, and we can now reveal the winning blend from the Bloggers’ Blend Competition. If you’re just tuning into this now and haven’t read our previous posts about the competition, allow us to fill you in…

We asked ten top whisky bloggers to create their own blends, using pipettes, measuring cylinders (and other scientific accoutrements) and a selection of malt and grain More...