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Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Dewar's master blenders make monkey out of clueless mixer

I've just capped off two weeks in Great Britain by touring Dewar's
World of Whiskey
at their Aberfeldy Distillery in Scotland. They
let me taste their famed White Label blended brand, which
according to Dewar's "Never Varies." I must say that I could not
tell the difference of it versus their Aberfeldy Single Highland
Malt or the 12 year old Special Reserve -- they all burned me
through and through (I do not normally drink hard liquor). This
lack of subject matter knowledge may explain why I flunked Dewar's
computerized blending challenge and prompted the software to say
that my whiskey would be good for "stripping paint" and that "a
monkey could do better and would probably be easier to train!" If
only I had brought my computer along to use Design-Expert
software's marvelous statistical mixture design features. It
would have helped me match White Label with the correct blend of
the six components: Highland earthy malt, Island salty malt, Islay
peaty malt, Lowland malt, Speyside sweet malt and the spirit base
-- raw grain whiskey. I wonder how long it would take a monkey to
uncap a beer -- I think I could top it at this task. Anyways,
after this debacle trying my hand at blending whiskey, I may have
a brew or two.

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