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Single Malt
For a whisky to be called a single malt, it must
have been made using malted barley (see 'Making
Whisky') and come from one distillery, although
single malts will most likely have come from more
than one cask within the distillery. These whiskies
are the most prized by whisky drinkers and Royal
Mile Whiskies specialise in single malts.
Single Cask Malt
Due to the individual nature of each cask, a whisky
from one cask can differ quite dramatically from the
next. In a typical single malt, what you are
drinking is from a group of casks that have been
combined to provide the flavours that best match the
character of the malt named on the label. Achieving
a consistency over the years is one of the great
skills of the master distiller – the customer needs
to know that when she enjoyed 10 year old Talisker,
if she buys a bottle again, it’s going to taste as
expected.
The other side of the coin is the individuality of
single casks. Some selected casks will have unique
characteristics that make them ideal candidates for
single cask bottlings. As a result, you will often
see limited edition bottlings with the bottle number
and cask number on the bottle, offering something a
little more unique than standard bottlings.
Vatted/Blended Malt
Simply a combination of single malts from different
distilleries in a single bottling. Following
controversy in late 2004, the Scotch Whisky
Association changed the category of Vatted or Pure
Malt to Blended Malt, supposedly to avoid future
confusion. Not everyone was happy about it, but
hopefully the name Blended Malt will stick! The key
point to remember is that a Blended Malt contains no
grain whisky, whereas a traditional blend contains a
combination of malt and grain whisky (see below).
Johnnie Walker Green Label and Compass Box’s
Eleuthera are both excellent examples of vatted/blended
malts.
Grain Whisky
While malt whisky is made using purely malted
barley, grain whisky uses only a small proportion of
barley, together with other cereals such as wheat or
maize. This has the first effect on the whisky
produced. The second difference is the way it is
then made. Malt whisky is made using the pot-still
for distilling whisky (see 'Making Whisky' for a
description and a picture of pot-stills), which,
while it produces great whisky, is quite
inefficient. Grain whiskies, on the other hand are
made using the more modern, efficient system of the
'Coffey', or 'Patent' still, which works
continuously rather than in batches. It is therefore
cheaper and quicker to produce grain whisky than it
is to produce malt whisky.
Blended Whisky
Most whisky drunk across the world is blended
whisky. Famous Grouse, Bells, Teachers, Whyte and
Mackay and Johnnie Walker are a few of the most
famous names. The whisky blender will use a base of
perhaps 50%-60% grain whisky then add a combination
of malt whiskies from several malt whisky
distilleries. It allows the blender to combine
different elements of various whiskies together to
create a flavour he is looking for. While blends
tend to be viewed as being inferior in quality to
single malts, there are some excellent blended
whiskies available that should not be ignored.
Age
An often recognised mark of a whisky is its age.
Marketing men use the age of an older whisky as a
badge that somehow indicates its quality. What it is
more likely to indicate is the effort spent in
making it (time) and the rarity value that it holds
however. 12 year olds will sometimes be chosen over
an 18 year old, while in other cases, a 25 year old
might have flavours and qualities that its younger
counterparts cannot get close to. Whether the older
the whisky is automatically better varies from one
whisky to the next, depending on the individual
qualities of each whisky and the way that they were
made, before being bottled. On the whole, it's best
not to make the mistake of assuming that older
whiskies are always better.
Vintage
The year that the cask has been filled is
increasingly being seen on packaging, so that you
know what you year the whisky in the bottled was
produced. Macallan Gran Reserva, the Classic Malts
Distillers Edition bottlings and all single cask
bottlings and many others display the vintage.
Cask Strength/Regular ABV
Before most whiskies are bottled, water is added to
bring the alcohol content down to a level where it
can be drunk without inflicting pain on yourself.
Just try drinking a cask strength malt at around 60%
ABV (alcohol by volume) and see for yourself! As a
result, most whiskies are bottled at around 40% or
43% ABV. Some whiskies are bottled at cask strength,
however. If you do buy a cask strength whisky, it
will tend to be more expensive, to reflect the
increased volume of whisky there will be once it is
watered down.
Chill-filtration
Before being bottled, most whisky is chill-filtered.
This process involves (as the name suggests) cooling
the whisky and straining out trace elements. The
result is that no sediment or particles can then
find their way into the bottle. Also, whisky will
naturally go cloudy when water is added
(particularly as the alcohol volume drops below 46%
ABV). Chill-filtration prevents this clouding. By
removing these trace elements, you may end up with a
whisky that is easier on the eye, but you also lose
some of the flavours of the whisky. As a result,
many single cask bottlings available are non
chill-filtered and some distilleries have moved over
to using no chill-filtration at all, such as Ardbeg.
Volume
The standard size of whisky bottling is 0.7 of a
litre, or 70cl in the UK. Half sizes at 35cl are
also produced as are 5cl miniatures by most
distilleries. More unusual sizes you will find are
20cl, 50cl, 75cl 1 litre and 2 litres amongst
others.
Single/Double Matured
All Scotch must be matured in oak casks for a
minimum of three years. Using casks made from newly
cut oak is not an option however. New casks give off
strong woody flavours that can ruin the flavour of
whisky. Therefore the casks used are 'second hand',
most having been used to store either sherry or
bourbon first for a good period of time. In some
cases, the distillery will buy the wood that is used
to make the casks, then ‘rent’ the casks to bourbon
or sherry producers before taking them back, the
casks having spent the first stage of their lives
with bourbon or sherry maturing within them.
Glenmorangie are one of the companies who do just
this in order to ensure that they achieve the level
of quality they are looking for in their casks.
A whisky may sit in the cask it was initially poured
into for its lifetime before being bottled. The life
of a whisky may not end once it leaves its first
cask mind you. More and more distilleries are now
experimenting with casks that have been used to hold
other spirits as a second stage of the maturation
process. Casks that have once held chardonnay, port
and madeira are just a few of the options that
distilleries have tried successfully.
Distillery Bottled/Independent bottled
Most bottles of malt that you find are bottled by
the distillery that created the whisky. There are
also numerous independent bottlers, including Royal
Mile Whiskies, that will buy casks of whisky from a
distillery in order to bottle it themselves. The
result is that as each cask varies slightly, each
individual bottling is slightly different from the
next, each having their own character. Other major
independents who we buy whisky from include Gordon &
MacPhail, Signatory, Compass Box, Murray McDavid,
and Hart Brothers. We feature whiskies from all of
these independents on the site, especially our own!
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