Eric Felten, the venerable Wall Street Journal’s reporter of the booze and bars beat, rang Alex recently to get his view on the Vatted/Blended stromash.
And a very nice chat it was too, with Alex providing Eric with his take on the issue.
Unfortunately, (because Eric only had old product), Alex’s insights and qoutes didn’t make it to the final article, (what’s more the WSJ article is only available to paid subscribers), however, if you are interested in the issue, here’s how Alex feels about the whole Vatted/Blended debate.”In a nut shell its just confusing – everyone understands blended whisky is a blend of grain and malt whisky.Single malt is just that a malt whisky from a single distillery; traditionally a vatted malt is many different single malts put into a vat left to marry then drawn off and bottled. Refering to a blended malt will only lead to further consumer confusion and the SWA proposals for renaming Vatted to Blended malts is madness”
Bonus link: Here’s a scan of the WSJ article if you’re not a subscriber.
