When you ask whisky blender Oliver Chilton about “the art of blending,” he usually chuckles. For him, blending isn’t mystical or poetic, it is practical work and often surprisingly straightforward. He says the magic people talk about usually comes down to patience, a good nose and knowing when to leave something alone. Still, he admits that when everything falls into place, blended whiskies, including blended malts, can become greater than the sum of its parts.

“At Elixir, what we are looking for in any whisky,” says head blender Oliver Chilton, “is balance, and that’s especially true in blends. You don’t want lots of disparate elements, you want a harmonious beginning, middle and end. That’s not the same as perfect equilibrium, because a balanced whisky can lean towards a particular character, but that character is consistent from the nose, onto the palate and through the finish. Blending allows the whisky maker a greater chance to achieve that balance.”

Anyone who has tried their hand at a blending workshop knows how easily things can go off track! Add a touch of something interesting, then try to correct it, then correct the correction - like steering on ice, you jerk the wheel and suddenly you are bouncing from one curb to the other. That is why experienced blenders like now-retired Jim Beveridge earn such respect. Steady hands are rare.

In the latest edition of Elixir Whisky Trails, we see the release of two blended malt Scotch whiskies (see the panel on the right for an explanation of the different types of blend). They are a 16-year-old blend of Islay malts and a a 40-year-old blended malt. So where did these aged blends come from?

THE INDUSTRY SECRET BEHIND BLENDED MALTS

Oliver explains that often, blended malts start life as something highly functional: “Often, they are component blends to be blended further with other parcels and with grain whisky. So you might blend two or three sherried malts, and also create a smoky component, a floral component and so on, with the intention of blending it further.”

But why is it not bottled when it is first blended?

“Big companies plan limited editions all the time,” he says. “A run of two thousand bottles, maybe. To get ready, you vat some malts together, let them marry for a few years and then bottle them. But you always over-vat. Always. You make more than you need because, if you end up short, if 2,000 specially designed bottles have been ordered and you can’t fill them... unuseable bottles are a waste. Extra whisky, on the other hand. is never a problem! You can simply combine it with another parcel, or leave it to mature for longer. Or, as in the case of this 40-year-old blended malt, an independent bottler such as ourselves might acquire it, move it to a more neutral cask and save it for the right moment to bottle it.”

BLENDED MALTS DESIGNED AROUND CHARACTER

Over time, these leftover parcels can take on their own character. The 40-year-old was a 36-year-old blended malt when Oliver first encountered it, and it had detailed records going back decades. “The youngest whisky in that blend was distilled in March 1985. Part of it had been used down the years, with some of the liquid last drawn off in 2019, a couple of years before we purchased it in 2021. You get these fascinating histories built into them.”

So what is an independent bottler looking for when purchasing an already long-aged blended malt, then and how do you decide when to bottle it? For Oliver and Elixir Distillers there are two main considerations. First, Sukhinder Singh’s and Elixir’s philosophy is to always strive for balance and harmony in the whisky - Oliver uses this as a guiding principle for every project. And second, particularly when acquiring a parcel that has been maturing for a long time, the question is always the same: does it tell a story?

“We are interested in whisky with a bit of narrative,” Oliver says. “When I tasted this blended malt at 36 years old, it had this big, waxy density to it. It felt like an old-fashioned whisky. You could taste that oxygen had done its work slowly over the decades, but it had not tipped over into being tired or woody. It tasted very much of the 1980s.”

The team samples parcels regularly to avoid over-aging. “You do not leave something in cask just to get an impressive number on the label,” Oliver says. “The older blend is sitting at 46% ABV now and the balance is just right, so it’s time to capture that.”

BLENDED MALTS DESIGNED AROUND LOCATION

In the case of the 16-year-old blended Islay malt, the original blender was actually... Oliver Chilton. He was combining peated malts from different distilleries to create a balanced impression of the region.

“While those component blends I mentioned have a general character, for example a smoky component,” says Ollie, “different distilleries and individual casks provide different nuances of that character, and you can blend them together in harmony to create the specific profile you’re looking for. Often people think all peated whiskies are the same; but they are not. Take Laphroaig for example. You get this phenolic, medicinal ash. Then compare that to Caol Ila, which is fresher and cleaner with a citrus edge. The smoke feels more like coal than iodine.”

Give the blended malt time and the cask will add another dimension. For this project, Olver vatted the whisky entirely in first-fill oloroso sherry butts sourced from a bodega in Jerez. These casks were built from both American and European oak, and their influence was unmistakable. “The tannic effect is like a stewed tea – lapsang souchong, particularly.”

In that particular case, most of the blend was bottled in 2023, but some liquid was left over, so it went back into wood for further aging. Three years later, it has returned as something even richer and more flavourful for this special Whisky Trails release.

And once again, the reason it existed at all was a simple and practical part of the business of blending: over-vatting.