The Origins of Blended Scotch

“When was Blended Scotch invented, who invented it and why did it become so popular?”

Let me start at the beginning. To blend is to combine one substance with another in an attractive or harmonious way in order to create a product which is more than the sum of its parts. A leading master blender defined his task to me as: “A search for balance through complexity”.

In relation to Blended Scotch, the ‘substances’ are simply malt and grain whiskies – the former being distilled only from malted barley, the latter from a mix of un-malted grains, typically wheat, with around 20% malted barley. All the component whiskies have their own character, and the blender’s job is not only to combine them in an ‘harmonious’ way, but to be able to re-create the flavour of the blend from batch to batch. Another leading figure in the Scotch whisky industry famously remarked simply: “Distilling is a science; blending is an art”.

The earliest purveyors of Scotch whisky were wine & spirits merchants, many of whom were also up-market grocers. It is safe to suppose that they mixed whiskies – old with young, cheap with expensive, malts with grains from several distilleries – in the same way that they blended wines and tea, in order to create decent beverages at acceptable prices. Their customer base was local and no attempt was made to achieve consistency from one batch to the next.

Many of the great whisky houses began in this way in the early decades of the nineteenth century - John Walker, John Dewar, Arthur Bell, George Ballantine, James Chivas, Matthew Gloag, William Teacher – but it was only in the 1860s that some set out to create consistent blends which could be branded: consistency is essential if a product is to be branded and promoted.

The man generally credited with being ‘The Father of Blended Scotch’ is Andrew Usher, agent for a handful of Highland malt whiskies, who, in 1853, took advantage of an Act of Parliament which allowed the blending of malt whiskies before excise duty had to be paid, to create Usher’s Old Vatted Glenlivet. He operated his business from Pear Tree House, West Nicholson Street, Edinburgh (now The Pear Tree pub). A family tradition holds that he learned the art of blending from his wife, Margaret Balmer, who was an expert maker of cordials – so ‘The Father of Blending’ may in fact have been a woman!

Andrew Usher’s son, also named Andrew, went on to take advantage of another measure, The Spirits Act of 1860, promoted by W.E. Gladstone as Chancellor of the Exchequer, which allowed the blending of malt and grain whiskies under bond. This important measure really marks the beginning of Blended Scotch as we know it today.

Winston Churchill, a great supporter of Scotch whisky - his favourite was Johnnie Walker Black Label - remarked: “My father would never have tasted Scotch, except on a moor or some other damp and dreary place. His generation drank brandy”. This is a telling comment, for it was the devastation of the French vineyards by the aphid Phylloxera vastetrix, which arrived from America in 1863, which played a key role in expanding the English market. By the early 1870s French brandy was unavailable, but blended Scotch was ready to take its place.

Cognac was invariably drunk with soda water and the whisky blenders soon set out to create a spirit which would appeal to the southern market. In the 1860s Scotch whisky was heavier and smokier than cognac and was usually drunk as punch or ‘toddy’ – i.e. mixed with sugar, water, lemon juice and optional spices. Now the blenders sought lighter, less pungent, well-aged malts, and often advertised their blends as suitable for mixing with soda.

Other factors helped. The romantic novels of Sir Walter Scott and Queen Victoria’s love of Scotland, combined with the kilted glamour of Highland regiments, the extraordinary achievements of inventors, businessmen and colonial administrators from north of the Border to cast a warm glow over all things Scottish. As J.M. Barrie wrote in the 1890s “A Scots accent is as good as a testimonial”.

All things Scottish were fashionable and from the 1890s were cleverly deployed by the leading blending houses to promote their products - indeed ‘The Big Three’, John Walker & Sons, James Buchanan & Company and John Dewar & Sons, commissioned some of the earliest and most iconic advertising campaigns of the day. Socialite and wit, Tommy Dewar, wrote “Keep advertising and advertising will keep you”, “If you don’t advertise you fossilise” and “Advertising is to business what imagination is to poetry”. He also commissioned one the first ever promotional movies, which was projected onto a huge screen on the roof of a building in Manhattan in 1897, stopping the traffic!

Inevitably, the huge success of blended Scotch in the late 19th century totally eclipsed sales of malt whisky; in effect, all but a miniscule amount of the malt whisky made went into blends. Many distillers resented this dominance and purists maintained that only whisky made from malted barley in a pot-still was worthy of the name. ‘Whisky’ made in patent stills from other grains was merely ‘grain spirit’, and this applied also to blended whisky.

In 1905 an action was raised in a London court against a number of spirits retailers who were offering blended whisky which was almost entirely grain spirit. The court found that this was ‘not in the nature, substance and quality demanded’ to be called whisky. Backed by the blenders, the grain distillers immediately appealed the decision and the result was A Royal Commission to inquire into ‘Whiskey [sic] and Other Potable Spirits’.

The Commission released its final report in July 1909, concluding that grain whisky was perfectly wholesome even if made in patent stills: “The market for blended whiskies is greater than that for individual whiskies; so much so , that it would probably be safe to say that the majority of Englishmen who drink whisky seldom drink anything but a blend”.

Blends had triumphed, and single malt whiskies became “relics of a vanished age of gold when the vintages of the north had their students and lovers” [Aeneas MacDonald, Whisky (1930)]. I will explore their renaissance in another article.