Nose: Mild malt and cereal aromas wrapped in grain whisky. Some ultra light sweet orchard fruit notes and with time a few brown sugar/syrup aromas arise that are supported by a bat-squeak of ashen smoke. After a long time some light citrus is noticed. [Interestingly, the dry-glass aroma is quite leathery and smoky].
Palate: A sweet arrival with dilute barley sugar and overcooked caramel sauce drizzled over thin porridge. The merest hint of dusty malt, a faint echo of cardboardy ash and a dusting of white pepper. There is no development.
Finish: Short and fast, leaving a sweetish aftertaste from the grain whisky.
The nose is not unpleasant at all, but it is very thin and soft. It seemed to me like a potentially good nose that has been over-diluted. You keep nosing it more and more deeply in the hope that something exciting will appear, but it always seems just out of reach.
The palate is simplistic, fast and again tastes very much like the blend contains too much grain whisky in relation to malt, although both components are of good quality.
I remember drinking White Horse back in the day but I've not seen it on the local shelves for a long time now. This bottle from which I'm tasting is a 750ml US specimen and was obtained from a supplier who has contacts in the TRE grey-market. I bought it for old time's sake and to refresh my memory, but I would not bother again.
Like Teacher's, this was once a hefty and characterful blended scotch that is now only a shadow of its former self. It is, however, benign and very easy to drink and would probably suit someone who is looking for an extremely mild and friendly sipping blend.
"Adequate" : 70/100 (2 stars)
47.0
AUD
per
Bottle
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@Ctrexman Interesting idea, I hadn’t considered that before and it’s hard to say for certain. What is definite is that around 90% of malt whisky goes into blends rather than single malts, and there are long-term blending contracts involved. I’d imagine that one of the many reasons why NAS whiskies started to proliferate a decade ago was a shortage of aged malt whisky due to blending contract commitments, however there may also have been industry-wide effects in the opposite direction. There are certainly some formerly well-known blends that have disappeared over the last 20 years.
Im imagining the explosion of whiskey popularity had a huge impact on blends. The good stuff was no longer easy to get for these low cost blends so they had to up the grain content to compensate
@cascode back in grad school for chemical engineering, I bet I could’ve run a mass spectrometry to figure out if any Lagavulin is still present in White Horse, and by how much.
@WhiskeyLonghorn Old-time blends were different to modern blends. Generally speaking they were richer and softer - all about texture and ease of drinking rather than bold character as we think of it now. Some modern blends that retain an old-school style are Old Parr, Black & White, Ballantines (in some expressions), Hankey Bannister, Haig and McCallum, but none taste as rich as they used to. However if you are asking about highly characterful and recommended modern blends I'd suggest Compass Box, any Black Bull, any North Star, Cutty Sark Prohibition, Ballantine's 17, Dewar's 25, Campbeltown Loch 21, and the upper-shelf Johnnie Walkers.
@PBMichiganWolverine Yes and no. The White Horse brand is old, dating back to the 1880s, but in the 1920s the producers changed the name of the owning company from Mackie & Co. to White Horse Distillers. They also owned Lagavulin & Craigellachie (and later Glen Elgin), and Lagavulin was always the top-dressing malt for White Horse. The company was bought by DCL in the late 20s but continued to operate as an entity for a long time and was the token "owner" of Lagavulin. Diageo acquired all these distilleries and brands when it was formed and then in 2010 they dissolved White Horse Distillers as a company. It is not clearly known whether White Horse still contains any Lagavulin, but it might. Diageo owns Lagavulin, Talisker and Glen Elgin and all three are supposedly found (in trace amounts) in modern White Horse.
@WhiskeyLonghorn when I think of good quality and affordable blends...it’s Compass Box’s core range ( great king, oak cross, etc). Maybe Wemyss comes next...but those are harder to get in US
Do y’all think there are any blends out there that Cary the character and heft of famed blends of days long before I drank whisky? All I can think of is the Compass Box Great King St. or some of the upper level JW blends.
This isn’t from the same group that had the fabled Lagavulin White Horse, is it?