Home blending.

[cheekobonavista]

I know this may seem like sacrilege, but I've just blended 3 Glenmorangie whiskies, LaSanta, Quinta Ruban, and Nector d'Or, in equal parts. It tastes good.

Background, I bought a Glenmorangie tasters pack. 100ml of each whisky, plus 100ml of "The Original". I tasted 30ml of them separately, and decided that "The Original" was best suited to my palette.

On my second tasting, after "The Original" had mysterious disappeared, I decided that I liked Quinta Ruban, was neutral on Nector d'Or (although not at that price), and didn't care for Lasanta.

This evening, I decided 15ml of LaSanta, Quinta Ruban, and Nector d'Or would be a good idea, and it was. Does that count as a Glenmorangie 12 year single malt?

This was all spawned by an article I read, influenced by Chivas Regal, about blending.

After reading the article I blended, 45ml of Balvenie Single Barrel 12 with 5ml of Redbreast 15, and vice versa. Obviously neither of these were single malts for a variety of reasons. I liked the 90% Balvenie best, but both blends were good. Each mixed well, and added something to whiskies I though needed a little extra spice.

Has anyone else experimented with blending different whiskies?

Sincerely,

Closet Blender

[MW Plaster]

I've tinkered with this. Not very often, though.

A few weeks back I added a little Lagavulin 16 to a dram of Macallan 12. Pretty tasty.

[Acksboy]

I tried blending together Laphroaig 10 and Auchentoshan American Oak a while back. About 3:1 ratio in favour of the Auchentoshan. It really worked quite well I thought. It’s your whisky at the end of the day and you know your palate well enough to decide on what you think you’ll like.

[hotshothamish]

A lot of people operate a "Solera" bottle where they keep an empty bottle and ad a little bit from a lot of different bottles, or the dregs at the end. Mine has around 20-25 diffterent whiskies in it and the beauty is that it changes subtly each time you have a dram and top it up with something different.

The downside of course is that it's too random to ever recreate the same recipe again

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[Brummie]

I have dabbled with blending, usually bottles which are coming to an end. I had varied results but it can work well to make an underwhelming single malt such as a young Auchentoshan more interesting.

[Alexppp]

A tip that almost always works is to blend malts with cask strength versions from the same distillery. Try a Caol Ila 12 with any young Caol Ila from an independent bottler for example - that's always a success. This summer I've been finishing my bottle of Balblair 1983, which had seen better days - but I blended it with a Balblair 2006 that I had bottled myself, and it worked wonders.

Things like that, in general - they're practically guaranteed to produce a good result.

[hotshothamish]

Agree with that, I've had great results with a Caol Ila mix and currently have a few different Glengoynes marrying in a mix too