Johnnie Walker Blue Label 1990s

Blended Scotch Whisky
Johnnie Walker & Sons  75cl / 43%

An old bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label blended Scotch whisky bottled soon after it was launched in the 1990s, back when the single malt market was in its infancy and this blend really was made with the oldest and rarest whiskies available to owners United Distillers (who soon morphed into Diageo) and could comfortably claim to be the world's best blended whisky. 

Contemporary rumours suggested that Blue Label and its predecessor Johnnie Walker Oldest (which stated that it was made with whiskies aged 15 to 60 years old) were created to use up long-aged casks of single malt that had gone under the minimum 40% strength.

Whatever the truth of the rumours, these early 1990s editions of Johnnie Walker Blue Label are light years ahead of their modern-day counterparts, as the stocks used in the assemblage were genuinely long-aged whiskies, many distilled in the 1960s and 1970s (or even earlier) at distilleries including the likes of Caol Ila, Cragganmore, Blair Athol, Royal Lochnagar, Brora and Clynelish. 

Many of the whiskies used here were made in much more traditional times and were aged for considerably longer periods, with the quality of the sherry casks filled in the 1960s and early 1970s obviously far higher than those available nowadays. The resulting Blue Label blends were noted for their luxurious, oily, waxy richness and silky mouthfeel, and still hold up incredibly well today.

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