Today, I was rummaging through my cupboard, and found a a bottle of "black bottle" a blended whisky, supposedly composed largely of Islay whisky.
It is a fine whisky, but I haven't touched it in a long time. It is a very cheap bottle, less than 30€, and it logically doesn't measure up to some of slightly more fancy bottles I have. that being said, in it's price range, you couldn't get a better product. (I also want to note that this is not due to it being a blend,... blends are just mixtures of whiskies from different distilleries. just as most single malts are mixtures of different barrels produced by the same distilleries. You can make blends which can rival the finest single malts, but their pricepoint will be comparable)
I decided to try and see whether I could improve this whisky, by adding some port. (I love port barrel aged, or finished whiskies).
In order to do this, I first poured a small bit of port
Than drank most of it, since I really only wanted something like a drop, not a 50/50 mixture
Than I poured both a "pure" dram:
And added a dram to the glass containing the remains of port (on the right)
It is hard to see in the picture, but the one on the right is just slighly darker due to the Port.
The taste comparisson was interesting.
At first the glass containing the Port-enhanced whisky was uncomparable, due to the aroma of the Port being present everywhere (this was due to me drinking the Port first, and thus coating the glass in it). After a litle while, and a forceful "blow" into the glass resolved this problem.
I had forgotten that the Black Bottle is already a fairly sweet whisky, and the Port only added to the sweetness, but that isn't really a problem. The Port nicely smoothed out some of the rougher edges of the black bottle, and a more threedimensional flavour profile, which as a whole improved the whisky. I might repeat this in the future.
I'm also interested to see how this technique would work with cheap whiskies which aren't as sweet as the black bottle, but I'm not interested enough to buy a bottle of cheap whisky just for that experiment :D
If you have some cheap whisky, and some port, give it a try.
2 notes:
1: my bottle of black bottle is 4 years or so old, I've heard that since the blend has changed, so if you have a recent bottle, it might taste differently to what I described here.
2: I used a somewhat upscale Port, a 10 yr old tawny, but I believe that this would work with any (red) Port wine imaginable, since the amount added is so minuscule that it is more about the broadening of the profile rather than the specifics of the Port used.