Killing Whisky History, Episode 28: Black & White blended whisky, bottled 1975-1977 (One Quart)

Presenting the second of three Black & White video reviews! And in a different location, with a better comparison whisky! Exciting!

It's a big old quart of '70s scotch this time, so it's a good thing I like the stuff. Oops, I spoiled my take. I guess I'll have to list a rating for it now as well:

Rating - 84

Black & White blended whisky, bottled mid-1970s (1/10 pint)

Next stop on the Black & White Time Train: The 1970s!

I have a mini and a not-so-mini from a similar time frame. Today it's the 1/10th pint.

Liquor bottle liquid volume measurements went metric in 1980, so this 'un is from 1979 or earlier:

The IRS is given a shoutout on the federal tax stamp. That practice ended in early 1977.

Because the bottle's front label style began at some point after 1974, as per print advertisements, I can say with moderate comfort that this whisky was bottled in 1975 or 1976.

The metal cap was fastened very very tightly, which was a positive sign...

Brand: Black & White
Owner at time of bottling: Distillers Company Limited
Type: Blended Scotch Whisky
Age: minimum 3 years
Bottled: sometime between 1975 and early 1977
Alcohol by Volume: 43.4%
(from my purchased 1/10 pint bottle)

NEAT
Another lively, pretty nose! Overripe stone fruits, apple peels, vanilla bean, guava juice and celery juice. With time it shifts towards orange and lemon peels, watermelon juice and a pear pastry. Meanwhile, the palate is bitterer and sharper than expected. Very tart citrus and tart berries. Tartness. Not much sweetness. Needs air. Then there's bread pudding with salty caramel sauce. Just a hint of wet cardboard. The finish keeps that bread pudding & caramel sauce note, while adding in almond brittle. Yet it's somehow not too sweet.

ON THE ROCKS
A couple of ice cubes neutralizes it, and it tastes like nothing. Boo.

WORDS WORDS WORDS
Firstly, this whisky's sparring partner was the 2018 bottling. I'm not sure how much more often I'll haul out that current version. It's a very different whisky than all the older bottlings. And it's losing what little charm it started with.

Now back to the '70s bottling. The palate is more blend-y than I'd expected, raw at the edges, mix of vivid and flat casks in the center. But the nose is a pure delight. If this fruity, floral style is what blenders meant by "light" in decades past, then I'm sold, at least as far as the sniffer goes. I wish the flavor met it half way. Also the damn thing died on ice, instantly.

On Friday, it's the big bottle...

Rating - 79

Black & White Scotch Whisky print ads, a brief commentary

Every bio about James Buchanan says he was an animal lover. But the following sentence, in every bio, states that he raised racehorses from which he gained considerable financial return. Does that not sound like a man who rather loved money and exploited animals for profit? I don't know, but he did put horses in some of his advertisements. I mean, not wild or free horses, but draught animals:

circa 1903

He did like dogs — as far as I know he did not raise them to race or fight — and per the brand's myth, he got the idea of using wee terriers as part of Buchanan's advertising after attending a dog show in 1920. Though this ad, my favorite, is from 1914:

Though it would be a few additional decades before they graced bottle labels, the black and white terriers, Blackie and Whitey, were the focus of Black & White's print campaigns by World War II. Here are two ads, ca. 1942, that help promote the war effort. Note the terriers' shaded ad space features larger than the bottle itself.

The company went with the "The Scotch with Character" slogan for at least two decades as well. And by the 1950s, the advertising campaigns committed to fully establishing the terriers' adorable, playful characters. I mean, look at these little faces:

And now they're playing American football!

And baseball!

And celebrating Christmas, of course!

Here, in a 1957 ad, they are at the beach:

Now, note that the dogs are portrayed as lifeguards. They're positively dependable, like the whisky. Keep that in mind when you look at this beach-themed ad from 1974:

So, comedy(?), I guess?

Either the dog is turned on by human women, specifically human women who have undergone the sexual humiliation of a suit top slipping in public. Or that humiliation is seen as funny? Or women are being lowered to the level of dogs. Or all the above? And why? And how does that sell whisky?

Not all of their '70s ads were this baffling, but with the whisky industry's historical and current abysmal treatment of women, I thought I'd just dump this one onto the fire.

Let us now cleanse our palate with an image of happy doggos.

We can ignore the awkward cutting and pasting within the image. And the weird background. And that either the dogs or the bottles are in the wrong order. Let us instead focus on the simplicity of the idea. Two dogs, two whisky expressions.

The Extra Light version didn't last long, even in dog years. But Blackie & Whitey live on.

A cheesy hashtag as well as awards won by everything in a bottle, yes. But at least Whitey isn't chasing someone else's tail.

Image sources:

--http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/

--https://www.etsy.com/

--https://www.ebay.com/

--MacLean, Charles. Scotch Whisky, A Liquid History. London, UK: Cassell Illustrated, 2005.

Killing Whisky History, Episode 27: Black & White blended whisky, bottled 1980-1983

Here it is! The first of three Black & White video reviews. It's a few minutes shorter than other K.W.H. episodes since I already covered Black & White history here. Enjoy the reverb!

This is a 750mL bottle filled sometime between 1980 and 1983. The liquid within weighs in at 43.4%abv. Per the reviewer, "This is a crisp, clean, well-made blend." And if you need a rating to go with that, here it is:

Rating - 82

Black & White blended whisky, bottled late 1980s

Neither of these mini bottles show even a hint of a tax stamp, yet their alcohol volume is still measured in proof. That would put their bottling after 1985, but before 1990.

One important observation. Whitey looks a lot happier on these '80s bottles:

Than he does on the 2018 bottle:

Is that loyal pup trying to tell us something?

Brand: Black & White
Owner at time of bottling: United Distillers
Type: Blended Scotch Whisky
Age: minimum 3 years
Bottled: sometime between 1985 and 1989
Alcohol by Volume: 43.4%
(from my purchased 50mL bottles)

NEAT
Oh, the nose is fruity! Peaches, apricots, roses, grapefruit and sour apple candies. There are also moments of toasted grains and yeast. The fruit trends more towards a flower blossom note with time. The palate is much simpler than the nose. It's mostly tart citrus, jalapeño oil and toasted nuts with hints of wheat and barley. Straightforward, spirit-forward. Not much going on in the finish. Soft pepperiness and herbal bitterness. A slight BBQ smoke note.

ON THE ROCKS
The nose's fruits and flowers are gone, replaced by caramel, maple syrup and young malt whisky. The inoffensive palate is mildly sweet and very reminiscent of Glenfiddich 12yo.

WORDS WORDS WORDS
As with all the other Black & Whites I'm reviewing this month, I tried this whisky alongside the 2018 version. This one is certainly a step up from the current B&W, but not much more than that. Yet, once again, I find no connecting threads between the two eras. They feel like very different whiskies produced from different recipes. Perhaps the ingredients are similar, but older, and with greater emphasis on malt whisky. While the nose is quite pretty, the palate is......agreeable. Nothing off. Nothing on. It wouldn't surprise me if this late '80s mix is similar to the version of Black & White I first tried nearly two decades ago.

Rating - 76

Black & White 12 year old Premium blended whisky, bottled 1990s

With just a few exceptions, Black & White has been just Black & White, a single expression brand. There was an Extra Light version for a brief time around the '50s-'60s. That was preceded by a 12 year old De Luxe version in the '30s-'40s. But it was just Black & White NAS for decades after that until another 12 year old appeared at the end of the twentieth century.

The exact start and end dates of the more recent 12 year old have been difficult to sort out. I've seen Italian import bottles with post-1991 tax stamps, and (from what I've been able to gather) it hasn't been produced during this decade or possibly the previous. So I'm going with the broad "bottled 1990s" designation.

Sometimes this 12yo came in a creepy decanter which required the drinker to pull Whitey's head off to access the booze within. But most of the time it was sold in a bottle-shaped bottle.

Brand: Black & White
Owner at time of bottling: United Distillers
Type: Blended Scotch Whisky
Age: minimum 12 years
Bottled in: 1990s (probably)
Alcohol by Volume: 40%
(from my purchased 50mL bottle)

TASTING NOTES
It has a rich, fudgy, toffee-filled nose. Dried cherries, leather, moss, ocean water. Hints of dunnage and dried apricot. Lots of black raisins and carob in the palate. Molasses, salt and a hint of tannin rest beneath. After 20 minutes, notes of golden raisins and honey emerge, sweetening things up. Raisins, salt, lemons and honey in the finish.

WORDS WORDS WORDS
This whisky bears no resemblance to the current NAS Black & White. If whisky could be humiliated, then contemporary Black & White would pour itself into the soil and disappear in shame. The '90s 12yo Black & White is loaded with sherry cask-influenced malt whisky. In fact, it seems like a cousin to 10-12 year old Glenfarclas, except it reads even older.

Of my reviews this month, this is the last Black & White to be bottled at 40%abv. Everything else is going to be 43.4%abv (or 76 UK proof) going forward. And it's that low abv that holds the 12yo back from soaring. That extra dilution thins out the palate and shortens the finish. At 43.4%abv it may be a 87-90 point whisky.

As it is it's still a heck of a lot better than any current 12-year-old blend from a major producer. If or when a future whisky glut hits, I hope this whisky, or at least this style, returns.

Rating - 83

Black & White blended whisky, bottled 2018

I always keep one open bottle of a current blended whisky in my cabinet to...

Okay, I can't keep that lie going even one sentence. The quality of mid-shelf blends right now is so awful, and life is so short, that I don't waste money or anything else on blended scotch. There were quite a number of blends to recommend as recently as six years ago, but even those are approaching undrinkable.

But it's Black & White Month here, and I'd like to establish a point of reference before we drift back to the past, so it's best to start with the current iteration of this big bright shining star. Black & White and I go back 17 years, so I hold no illusions that it is heaven's nectar in a green bottle. But it used to be very reliable on the rocks or as a highball.

Let's get these reviews started off with today's Black & White.

Brand: Black & White
Owner: Diageo
Type: Blended Scotch Whisky
Age: minimum 3 years (and probably not much older)
Bottling code: L8275CP007
Bottling year: 2018
Alcohol by Volume: 40%
Chillfiltered? Yes
Colorant added? Yes
(top third of my bottle)

On the rocks:
The unmistakable bitter sharp woof of bottom-shelf plastic-bottle whisky, which should be (literally and figuratively) beneath this brand. Once the ice melts the resulting water tames the bite, making the whisky much more drinkable.

As a highball:
Painless, though also tasteless. A blank canvas for whatever bitters one chooses to add.

Neat:
The nose is the best part. There's a sugar, mint and copper combination that reminds me of Midleton's Irish blends for some reason. There's also raspberry candy, vanilla and a slight floral note. Most of the palate is vanilla-ed grain whisky with black pepper. It's sour and ethyl-loaded like cheap Canadian and American blended whiskies. The finish is Black pepper & White dog.

WORDS WORDS WORDS
You may look at the rating below and say, "Damn, that's cold." But really, it's a higher score than I'd give Johnnie Walker Red, Dewar's White and Cutty Sark; and just about where I'd put Chivas Regal 12yo, Ballantine's and J&B. But that says more about the state of blended whisky right now than it does about Black & White.

This is the roughest, grittiest, yet blandest Black & White bottling I've yet tasted. The palate reads like it's about as young as a Scotch whisky can legally be, with something close to 20% malt / 80% grain in the mix. The nose also seems barely legal, but it's helped by some of the pretty aspects of new make.

Here's to hoping I'm starting at the bottom.

Availability - All over Europe (minus the UK), but getting scarce in the USA. More recently it's been widely available in Brazil, Mexico, India, South Africa and Colombia
Pricing - $8-$12 in "emerging markets", $15-$25 elsewhere
Rating - 68