Single Malt vs. Blended Whiskey: 3 Key Areas of Difference

A single distiller makes single malt whiskey from malted barley. Note that it is distinct from single grain whiskey—which a distiller derives from other types of grain, rather than barley—and from single barrel whiskey, which ages in only one barrel rather than in multiple barrels at the same distillery.

People make blended whiskey—or vatted whiskey—from a variety of different malt and grain whiskeys that brew and age in a panoply of distilleries. A professional known as a master blender oversees this blending (or vatting) process to attain ideal flavor and smoothness. A common misconception is that blended malt whiskey and blended grain whiskey are one hundred percent malt or one hundred percent grain. In reality, even spirits that bear the label of blended malt whiskey contain a low amount of blended grain whiskey, and vice versa.

Single malt and blended whiskey might taste similar, but there are important differences between the two styles of distillation. Consider these three areas of distinction:

1. 1. Aging requirements: You can expect at least a three-year-old whiskey when buying a single malt. Most blended whiskeys age for at least five years.
2. 2. Flavor profile: Expect different whiskeys to taste unique, regardless of whether they’re single malt or blended. Single malt whiskey will likely have a more uniform taste because of its single origin, while blended whiskeys might mix a variety of flavors. Still, there are many more factors that go into a whiskey’s flavor profile; for instance, a spirit that brews or ages in oak casks (or oak barrels) will taste different than one that ages in sherry casks.
3. 3. Number of distilleries: Single malt whiskeys are always the product of a single distillery. Blended whiskeys combine aged and fermented barley and grain from many different distilleries.

Distillers begin preparing whiskey by soaking and grinding barley or other types of grain in water. They proceed to ferment the sugars in these grains with yeast. The distilling process itself consists of separating the alcoholic portion of the fermented yeast and grains from the rest of the mixture in pot stills or column stills. After distillation and maturation (or aging), producers package and denote whiskeys by their ABV (alcohol by volume). Producers follow the same basic process for other spirits—like cognac or tequila—but with different bases besides barley and grain.

Every type of Scotch spirit is whisky, but not all types of whiskey are Scotch spirits. The difference is in the spelling, too: Scotch whisky omits an “e” from whiskey, while other types of whiskeys retain that vowel. Scottish whisky drinkers can therefore usually rely on the spelling on a bottle to determine whether a whisky is a Scottish-made type of whisky—for example, a spirit with the label “single malt Scotch whisky,” “single grain whisky,” “blended malt whisky,” and so on.

To qualify as Scotch rather than just whiskey, a single malt Scotch or blended Scotch whisky must be from Scotland. In other words, you can consider a single malt whisky from the Scottish Highlands or a blended grain whisky from the Scottish island of Islay to be Scotch. By comparison, a blended whiskey from Dublin is Irish whiskey, and single malt whiskey from Nashville is Tennessee whiskey—and neither one is Scotch whisky.

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