Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ghost and Rare Port Dundas

Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ghost and Rare Port Dundas is a blended Scotch from John Walker & Sons, marrying malt whiskies for character with grain whisky for a smoother, lighter frame. Grain from distilleries such as the closed Port Dundas often forms the backbone of blends like this. The closed Port Dundas was one of the grain distilleries whose stock fed such blends.

A blended Scotch combines malt and grain whiskies of different ages and origins. Drawing on well aged stock, the malt lending depth while the grain gives a creamy, rounded base. Ex-Bourbon oak held the spirit, the cask adding sweetness rather than weight. Long, cool warehouse ageing lets cask and spirit knit slowly rather than forcing the flavour. The blender's craft is to balance the parts into one whole.

At 43.8% it is creamy and gentle. The malts bring honey, dried fruit and orchard sweetness, the grain a creamy vanilla and coconut, with broken down lignin lends vanilla and oak lactones a gentle coconut, with a butterscotch and toffee sweetness adding its own note. Banana and pineapple flicker through the creamy body. The finish is long and softly drying. A rounded, approachable blend in the house style.