About Johnnie Walker Blue Label Year Of The Rat Limited Edition Blended Scotch Whisky
Upon his father's death in 1820, a young grocer named Johnnie Walker invested his £417 inheritance into a grocery and spirits shop on High Street in Scotland. While Walker himself was a teetotaller, he sold a popular single malt whisky under the name Walker's Kilmarnock Whisky. When Walker retired from the store in the 1850s, whisky sales represented just 8% of the store's business.
In 1857, Alexander Walker — Johnnie Walker's eldest son — inherited the store and began improving its selection of single malt Scotch whiskies. In addition, Alexander had apprenticed with a tea merchant in Glasgow and there, had learned the art of blending tea. Under his stewardship, the House of Walker began blending whisky and bottling it in an iconic, square bottle adorned with a slanted label. By the time Alexander Walker retired in the 1880s, whisky sales represented over 95% of the store's business.
Johnnie Walker Blue Label Blended Scotch Whisky represents the epitome of blending and the pinnacle whisky of the House of Walker. The blend was personally created by James Beveridge, Johnnie Walker's Master Distiller, and is crafted to reflect the style of whiskies produced by Johnnie and Alexander Walker in the 19th century.
"I think of blending as being like the process of writing," says Beveridge. "Is the final book just a series of words, a lot of facts and information, or has it been put together with care and attention so that the end result will relate to the person who reads it? If it does, then that, you could argue, is magic blending, like writing, like any creative process, is much more involved in the world of ideas, with trying to connect with the whisky drinker. I like to think that we have made that connection."
Johnnie Walker Blue Label Year Of The Rat is the latest release from Johnnie Walker’s Zodiac Collection. This limited edition design was created in honor of the “Year Of The Rat” a celebration of the traditions of Asian culture and incredible longstanding heritage of the Chinese Zodiac.
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About Scotch
Scotch is the most popular whisky in the world and is considered the king of them all! There are five whisky regions in Scotland (six if you count the not officially recognized Islands), and each of them produces spirits with unique properties and distinct tasting notes. (The type of grain used determents the type of the scotch.)
Malt whisky is made of malted barley, and grain whisky uses other grains like corn or wheat. Most of the time, a whisky is blended from different distilleries hence the name blended scotch, but if a malt whisky is produced in a single distillery, we get something extraordinary called a single malt.
Check out our impressive selection of scotch whiskies, find your new favorite in the Top 10 scotch whiskies, or explore our treasury of rare & hard to find scotch whiskies.
