Sherried blends, light on the peat/smoke

Why does it have to be a blend. Blends are designed to be... well... bland, with a little bit of everything. If you're looking for specific characteristics like heavy sherry, you're better off with a sherried malt. It doesn't have to be very expensive.

If you do want a blend, try to find the Black Bull deluxe blends by Duncan Taylor. All sherried and very beautiful.

Just get a bottle of Aberlour 10 or 12 and call it a day. Sherried, delicious, non smoky, and not expensive at all.

Can we please get away from the idea that blends are designed to be bland?

Absolute poppycock.

It seems less likely that you'll get a blend made of only sherried casks because it's a fairly strong flavour profile and could easily get out of balance, but maybe try White & Mackay 22yo or 30yo (depending on your price range). Or their 19yo is finished in Matusalem sherry casks - maybe that'll be up your street?

Blends ARE basically made to be more bland than Single malts... The reason they blended was because the flavours in single malts were too strong for most people.

I'd be interested in seeing your evidence for that. Please forward any links to interviews/articles and soforth that you've got with any master blenders saying, "What we really had in mind when we assembled this parcel of 25-30 different casks was making a whisky that was as bland and nondescript as possible. Don't bother trying to write any notes, because all you'll come up with is 'This tastes and smells like whisky'".

There are lots and lots of stunning blends out there - to discount the entire category would be doing your personal whisky journey a great disservice.

A good example (but by no means the only one) was Jim Murray's awarding Ballantine's 17 year old the 2011 Whisky Bible award (reference: arseh.at/li4), saying it was "one of the most beautiful, complex and stunningly structured whiskies ever created.". Now, whether you agree or disagree with JM's opinion is another thing, but it's useful to keep your eyes open.

Some stunning blends I've had include Ardbeg Serendipity, Grant's 25yo, Compass Box Hedonism, Compass Box Peat Monster, TWE's 46yo Lochside Single Cask Blend, Hibiki 17yo, Whyte & Mackay 40yo, Berry Bros & Rudd's Blue Hanger, Grant's 18yo, Mackinlay's Rare Old Highland Malt... There's heaps of them, at all manner of price points.

Go forth & experience!

@jasonbstanding: Maybe "bland" was not the right word. It seems to have different connotations anyway, from "pleasantly gentle" to "dull". I didn't mean "dull", I rather meant that blended whisky is designed to be "harmless". Blends are 95% of the whisky market, so you don't want to take any risks when it comes to shocking your clients with excessive smoke, sherry, wood, etc.

I don't know if you've ever tasted a single grain whisky? They're all extremely similar, certainly when they're under 15 years old, which is the age for most blends. If you then know that blends are made up of 50 to 80% of grain whisky, you understand that there's simply limited ways to make a blend focused on peat (which is used to dry malted barley) or sherry (which is an expensive type of cask - not common in the blending market which is all about lower prices).

I'm not saying there are no good blends out there. Sure there are - I've already mentioned the Black Bull blends as my preferred choice. It's no surprise they contain just 10-50% of grain whisky and a higher percentage of malt whisky. Your White & Mackay blends are also a decent choice, but all of your suggestions are in the upper price regions of the blend market (W&M 40yo is £ 600). For the same amounts of money you can find malt whisky which offers you a more "focused" flavour profile (more smoke, more sherry or whatever you're looking for).

Oh, and quoting Jim Murray is not the best way to convince whisky enthousiasts. It's true that Ballantine's 17yo is a good whisky, but it's also clear that he was talking about one specific batch but sadly he "forgot" to mention the batch reference in his book (a trick he already played with Ardbeg 10 and Uigeadail in 2008 and 2009). Now everyone thinks he's drinking the best whisky in the world while in fact it's not the same batch Jim Murray's has described.

Also, Mackinlay's Rare Old Highland Malt is indeed one of the best "blends". That's because it's a vatted (blended if you like) Highland MALT whisky with 0% of grains!

Let's not get into a fight about malt whisky or blended whisky. It's true that there are very good examples of both types. I think Bigtuna was looking for a daily dram with a price tag similar to JW or Famous Grouse and I'm afraid he won't find heavy flavours in that part of the blend market.

I was trying to demonstrate that if you have a "rule" with that many exceptions, then perhaps it's less of a rule, and more of a hackneyed cliché that people trot out without considering what effect it has (similar to people immediately dismissing Jim Murray, but that's a separate topic).

If you're equating "bland" with "appealing to a lot of people's palates", then perhaps you need a better thesaurus. It's tempting to show off your knowledge of the arcane esoterica of whisky by dismissing "mainstream" products as being boring, however JW Black Label has been on the market roughly since 1865 and is one of the world's biggest selling whiskies - a mediocre product just cannot survive that long or prosper like that without there being something distinctive about it (otherwise people just sub in cheaper but comparable goods).

At Whisky Squad we did a dedicated blend tasting session, and at the end of the blind tasting the room was nearly unanimous about preferring the £18 J&B blend to the 34yo Ben Nevis single cask blend (at around £140). When we featured JW Black in another blind lineup the group were surprised that the liquid they'd been evaluating the complexities of was something so ubiquitous.

My point is - by people claiming expertise & giving advice dismissing whole swathes of whisky as bland (or harmless) you're discouraging people from bothering to try things which they might actually personally enjoy (or, might not, but hey).

To answer @Bigtuna if you're after a sherry-influenced blended whisky in the £20ish price range, have a look at Grant's Sherry Cask Reserve:

masterofmalt.com/whiskies/…

As @WhiskyNotes says, sherry casks are more expensive for distilleries to buy, so as far as I can tell it's harder to find cheaper whisky with big bags of sherry influence. Will ask some people and come back if I find anything. Although if you're just looking at what's available in supermarkets or corner stores then you may have less luck than in a speciality whisky store.

I'm not even going to reply in depth, I've said that there are very good blends but that you will never find heavy flavours in blends (compared to let's say Aberlour A'bunadh or Glenfarclas 105 if we're talking about sherried whisky). That's basically all I wanted to say.

Just one general remark. I wasn't not dismissing Jim Murray per sé, I was trying to say you shouldn't rely on awards too much. So many whiskies win an award these days that it's making me rather insensitive for it. You could even claim Indian whisky is better than Scotch based on awards.

I'm not a native English speaker by the way, sorry for that.

@Bigtuna, "blends that are heavy on the sherry and light on the smoke and peat?" Oh yes, there are a few of them. They are called Canadian Whiskies. Malt whisky is not a major component in those blends, however.

@Bigtuna At the lower end of the scale I recently bought Whyte & Mackay's The Thirteen which is OK when you look at what it costs.

I managed to get Berry Brother's Blue Hanger 4th release (as mentioned by @jasonbstanding ) on offer a while back and I think this is a really good example of how nice a blend can be.

Most Compass Box bottlings are really good offering everything from blended malts to blended grains.

I recently purchased The Tweeddale Blend batch 2 which t think is really good at it's price point (£30 in the UK). It is comprised of a fifteen year old sherried grain and eight other single malts twelve years old and above (see link stonedean.co.uk/the-tweeddale-blend/ ).

Another blend to maybe try is Famous Grouse's "The Naked Grouse". I have not tried this but it seems to have generated positive responses and I believe is comprised of, among other things, Highland Park and Macallan. If done right that should be a nice light peat/sherry combo.

Hope that helps a bit. I'm keen to know what is worth a shot too, I'm hoping to try The Black Bull sometime soon.

Not sure if its available were you are but Famous Grouse also puts out "Black Grouse" which is similar to the baseline Grouse but with a little added peat and viscosity. My guess it's the baseline with a slightly higher concentration of Highland Park.

As @cowfish helpfully corrected me this evening - it was BNJ (Bailie Nicol Jarvie) that they liked at our blends night, not J&B.

Apologies - must've been a little bit of pissedlexia going on ;)