Two friends of mine are single malt Scotch
connoisseurs/mavens/fanatics. They go to Scotland every year to tour
yet another distillery. One is committed to visiting every last one of
them before he croaks. Whence cometh this fervor over single malt
Scotches, and do Scotch experts believe they are in some sense
"better" than Scotch blends?

When I was at the liquor store today, stocking up for house
guests (three old high school classmates in their mid 60s, one of whom
is of the pair that goes to Scotland), I noticed single malts from $30
to $315, the latter a 25 year-old Glenmorangie. A few feet away was a
bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue at $200.

I realize, of course, that taste in Scotch, like taste in anything, is
purely subjective. But I'm interested in knowing whether reputed
Scotch connoisseurs find anything more desirable in these single malts
than in blends and, if so, why. (After the first or second glass of
the stuff, I shouldn't think the difference would be detectable!)

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Clarification of Question by nautico-ga on 02 Mar 2005 15:42 PST

I guess it's the margins one pays for. Sorta like those high end audio
systems: few can detect the differences. Oh, just had two glasses of
the 15 year-old Glenmorangie, then compared it to Johnny Walker Gold.
The latter now seems to be dribbling down my chin. Nuff said.

I suspect that the single-malt cult is largely based on snob appeal.

When I was in college in the '60s, a fraternity held a Scotch-tasting
contest as a fundraiser. Much to the chagrin of some of the
contestants, even those who claimed to be single-malt aficionados
chose blends as their favorites when presented with a blind taste
test. This wasn't a very large sample (about fifty people, most of
them males in their early twenties).

Its like champagne,(some) expensive wines and bottled water.

All emperors new clothes.

Some are without doubt nicer, but only marginally. Especially when,
after enough, you could be drinking Draino for all you can tell!

Well, many blends are bouwfin. Not as bad as bourbon of course and
certainly good enough for export. We (Scotland & UK) in turn import
ghastly German wine which they wouldn?t deign to quaff. Single malts
though, as opposed to blends, exhibit a greater sympathy of experience
as they pass from the lips to tongue to gullet, wafting major chords
to the nostrils on their way to that warm contented deep down glow.
And you are damned certain to enjoy it at the price. However (big
however) some malts are an acquired taste and one wonders why one
would want to acquire the taste anyway. Pure phenol. But some
connoisseurs adore the stuff.

Generally a binge starts off with ?the good stuff? and migrates to the
mundane as ones senses become dulled. The ?cold tea? to the inebriated
is not apocryphal -- I have done it. Admittedly it was after many
bottles of Grouse (one of the more acceptable blends) but they didn?t
notice.

So, as in all art, what you like is good. I may add that ?youngsters?
tend to be imperceptive in their appreciation but paying $200 for a
bottle of anything is just plain daft -- and Johnny Walker, I?d rather
have a bottle of Irn-bru and a deep fried Mars Bar.

Ochone

I think single malt whiskies are one of the better marketing gags of
the 20th century.  Sure, I've bought and drunk them, and still have a
couple of bottles somewhere, but not of the 100+ $ stuff.  I just
refuse to believe anything can be that much better, like your high end
audio comparison.  When it comes to spending that kind of money, I get
real modest in my opinion of the quality of my senses and become an
inverted snob about my preferring The Old Grouse.

Admittedly, the distillers do now give more care in the production of
single malts than they did 100 years ago, but there was and is a good
reason for blending (Guzzi's point about an acquired taste and the
results of Pinkfreud's college experience).  And, of course, after the
first couple of glasses, no one can tell the difference, unless they
spit the spirits out, like serious wine tasters do, and I bet even
then that the taste buds and olfactory nerves get blunted by the
alcohol.  If someone invites me, I'd love to test this, though, no,
I'd cheat and drink it.  Fifty years ago  -and probably several times
since- "Consumers Report" ran such a test. After the second or third
round, none of the experts knew what he was drinking.

My suggestion is to find an up-market bar and get a couple of empty bottles ...

Personally I find the main difference is between 'standard' Scotch and pure malts.

Your 'standard' Scotch is a smidgeon of malt whisky, topped up with
vodka and given a caramel colour and flavour.

Give me a bottle of Black Label and I'm perfectly happy.

Black Label? Gimme a break! BLACK BOTTLE is the stuff. A blend of all
the Islay malts, this whisky is a pure delight. And as for Grouse - it
makes a fairly good paint stripper.

A thought about those 25 and 30 year-old single malts:
are the contents of the bottles all really 100% that old?
What controls exist?  Do they even have to be 100% from barrels of
whisky that have been that long in storage?  Every now and again we
hear about scandals in the wine industry, and the European laws on
wine allow quite a lot of leeway in what can go into a bottle with a
specific label.  Certainly no customer is in a position to know if a
"25 year-old" Scotch may not just have a jigger of that in the bottle.

I've heard tell that JW Black Label was Churchill's fave whiskey. If
Winnie liked the stuff, hey, that's good enough for me.

@myoarin-ga 

I know about the French wine scams ... well warming wine ages it nicely

As for Scotch, I don't think so, my understanding is that there are
huge stocks of it laid down - and that it is really rather inexpensive
if you know the trade.

A few years ago there was a 'Scotch scam', but that was a boiler room
operation flogging barrels kept on site ie: 'in the distillery'.
- a variation of the gold deposit scam

Ahem, one of the reasons I know about it was that I was in a meeting
in their recently vacated serviced office, and the 'phones kept
ringing and ringing.
- so with the agreement of the guys I was talking to (the office
owners) I pulled out the jacks.

I must ask X & Y what happened.