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White Horse

Wheat and Lagavulin

0 583

@VictorReview by @Victor

4th Dec 2014

0

White Horse
  • Nose
    20
  • Taste
    22
  • Finish
    21
  • Balance
    20
  • Overall
    83

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Distribution of ratings for this: brand user

Diageo's White Horse blended Scotch whisky is based on Lagavulin malt and is 3 years old. The reviewed sample is from a freshly opened bottle

Nose: yep, White Horse smells just like dilute Lagavulin malt...and dilute wheat whisky. There is very soft peat in the Lagavulin 16 style, with no real smoke, nice,... but you wish the wheat whisky just weren't there

Taste: just like the nose, only a little fuller, with black licorice from the peat. There is some good bite on the palate which does not present in the nose. Despite some strong flavours in the mouth the mouthfeel remains thin

Finish: flavours last medium long and then just slowly fade out

Balance: the Lagavulin tastes fine here. I just don't think it harmonises very well with the flavours of wheat grain whisky. In my book, dilute wheat whisky is the bane of failed blended Scotch whisky. White Horse would only serve for me either as a substitute for either pure Lagavulin malt or pure wheat whisky. Lots of malt lovers claim blended Scotch whisky to be inferior, but they rarely give any coherent reasons why. For me it is clear: WHEAT. It clashes with both peat and wine. Sometimes it works. Usually it does not work so well

Nose:

Body:

Palate:

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5 comments

@Ol_Jas
Ol_Jas commented

How typical is it for the grain in Scottish "grain whisky" to be wheat?

10 years ago 0

@Victor
Victor commented

Scottish 'grain whisky' is usually a combination of both corn and wheat. The corn just doesn't have much taste and blends in, really without being noticed. The wheat, on the other hand, has a good bit of flavour, even at the 90+% abv at which Scottish grain whisky is distilled...before being diluted to 40% abv. Most blended Scottish whiskies will contain some wheat 'grain whiskies' within them. For me it is very easy to taste the wheat in blended Scotch, and I usually don't like it.

10 years ago 0

@Ol_Jas
Ol_Jas commented

Interesting. Thanks, @Victor.

And if the grain is typically distilled to such a high ABV, is it matured at that high strength too? I would think so. That must mean that blended whisky contains a lot more tap water (or "the finest highland spring water" or whatever) added right at the point of bottling—more than malt whisky that's diluted down to 40% from the much-closer 60% or so. Is that right?

10 years ago 0

@Victor
Victor commented

As far as I know the grain whiskies are barrelled at their distillation proofs. My understanding is that the Scottish blenders dilute both the malt and grain whiskies prior to blending them together with one another, viz. they make one or more diluted malt whiskies, they make one or more diluted grain whiskies, and then they blend them all together, in whatever proportions they choose. This procedure especially makes sense if they are 'blending by the nose', as they are reported to do. The nose for making the decisions would not be the same if the component whiskies were not nosed together at their final proofs.

10 years ago 0

@Ol_Jas
Ol_Jas commented

That makes sense.

So for a bit of easy (simplified) math: A blend-bound grain whisky that's still at 80% ABV in the barrel is mixed 1:1 with tap water before going into a 40% ABV bottle along with its malt counterpart. Man, that's a lot of water. I wonder how much all this bottling water—more than I realized—contributes to that thin feel that blends have. It's not just the grain. It's all that water to dilute the grain's high stength. Yowza.

10 years ago 0