Toasting Colin Scott

When I meet Colin Scott at the Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi, on a lazy Thursday morning, a nasty bout of cold is plaguing his best asset—his nose. Scott clearly has a good one, as more than half of his judgment is based on aroma. But, he laughs off reports of having got his insured for a whopping $1 million. “It’s not just enough to have a nose in our business,” says Scott, settling down. “What you need is an above average sense of smell.”

And the smell must give way to palate, experience and memory. Using all these, Scott evaluates, identifies and combines the various single malts and grain whiskies with the “right formula” to be able to create the Chivas Regal blend. Chivas Brothers’ extensive inventory is known to house more than 100 aged whiskies, and the Master Blender must be able to remember the characteristics of each one of them. “A lot of whiskies are from distilleries that aren’t in existence anymore. What we have today, might be gone in few years from now. The art lies in maintaining the consistency of taste, flavour, and character of each of our blends, with and without those combinations.”

His extensive knowledge of whiskey, its taste and characters could be partly attributed to his genes. A Chivas Regal loyalist for the past thirty-five years, Scott is following a family tradition of devoting his life to the scotch whiskey industry. His father and grandfather were in the whiskey business too, and it didn’t take too long for Scott to get hooked to the world of spirits. “I dabbled in a bit of accounting before joining Chivas in 1973 and have never looked back since then.” As a blender, he noses the new spirits for Chivas Regal to ensure their quality and character and also monitors the ageing whiskies as they mature to perfection before selecting them for the right blends.

So, what are the right blends and what’s all the brouhaha about ageing? Is Chivas Regal 25 year old, their latest offering, a notch above 18 and 12? While he’s not up for a tell-all on the various permutations and combinations, what he does dwell upon is the inherent difference between each one of them. “25 year old is definitely different from 18 and 12, but not necessarily better. The age of the whiskies vary with the combinations and the formula and cannot be considered a benchmark for superiority.” Instead, Scott suggests treating whiskey like food, where personal preferences guide people to take a call. So, while 12 has notes of apple and pears, 18 is more like a “Christmas fruit cake”, and 25 boasts a nutty, orange palate.

To get a whiff and taste of the latter, he pours it out for me, adding a spoon or two of water. “Purists insist on taking it neat but this is my style. The flavours and characters come alive with water,” he trails off, amidst clinks.