Originally published in the print and web version of Whisky Magazine

Blended World Whisky is exactly what it sounds like – a whisky blend made up of whiskies from different parts of the globe which has allowed producers in countries like Japan to cope with the huge demand for their ever-popular and celebrated blends and malts, as well as bringing something really unique and exciting to the market.

There is great potential to create new and diverse flavour profiles in this way by combining cultures, flavours and spirit styles from countries thousands of miles apart as each produces whisky that tastes very different, since maturation quirks like climate will effect the flavour of grain and how the whisky matures. Maturation is a very delicate process and many brands have studied what small changes in things like temperature and humidity can do on flavour.

For example, whisky is Scotland matures at a much slower pace than that in India. The climate difference, where Scotland is quite cold compared to the heat in India, means that Whisky will mature faster, at a rate of about three years to one. The Angels’ Share is also different; in Scotland the average is 2% per annum of evaporation per cask per year, whereas in India that can be as high as 14 – 15% meaning after three years around half the spirit in every cask has evaporated. 

Bringing together whiskies from all over the world shows the dexterity, the skill and the prowess of a whisky blender as they will have to strike a balance between the competing flavours, whilst also creating harmony and balance in the resulting product.

So far there have been a handful of Blended World Whisky products, many of which have come form Japan.

Suntory stole the headlines recently with the announcement that due to dwindling Japanese stock levels, they have released a new product called AO, a reference to the colour of the ocean and the journey the whiskies within the blend have made across the seas, which blends together whiskies from the five major whisky regions of Japan, Ireland, America, Scotland and Canada. In true Japanese craftsmanship style, the bottle has five sides to celebrate the five locations the whisky hails from. 

Within the blend, which is blended together at the Yamazaki Distillery in Japan and initially limited to 30,000 cases – or around 360,000 bottles, the component parts from from the Yamazaki and Hakushu distilleries in Japan, the Ardmore and Glen Garioch distilleries in Scotland, the Cooley distillery in Ireland, the Alberta distillery in Canada and the Jim Beam distillery in the USA. 

Another great example, which follows a similar path of using whisky from Scotland, Ireland, Canada and America is Ichiro’s Malt & Grain whisky, with the main malt component coming from Chichibu Distillery in Japan. It was created by Ichiro Akuto, who owns the distillery who crafted the blend while he was building up his brand. Akuto is well known in the Japanese whisky scene, although his malts are only just becoming established in other territories around the world. This blend is full of flavour and very sweet, with big notes of malted grains, caramel and vanilla.