An excerpt…In the realm of American whiskey, the term blend is a dirty word. Americans prefer to use “mingle” when referring to joining one barrel’s whiskey with another’s. Although the anti-blend movement has subsided in recent years, American distillers once fought rectifiers who created undesirable blends (as well as the Canadian and Scotch blended whisky producers) for market share.

The term “blend” remains undesirable, but mainly to those who turn their noses up at anything not labeled “single malt.” The fact is, no category offers more bang for your buck than Scotch whisky blends. The Scotch Whisky Regulations of 2009 formally gave the short definition of blended Scotch whisky as “A blend of one or more Single Malt Scotch Whiskies with one or more Single Grain Scotch Whiskies.