Master Blender Kevin Balmforth, Chivas Regal
What were the challenges related to the creation of Chivas’ latest innovations –Mizunara and Chivas Regal Ultis?
Creating any new Chivas Regal is certainly a challenge, but also a very exciting time in the blending dept; it’s not every day you get to create a new Chivas Regal. The first challenge for any new product is to ensure the signature house style is maintained. It’s important that from the first taste, you can recognize the Chivas style, even when incorporating new flavors and experiences. We achieve this by building any new blend from the ground up, combining flavors one at a time until we are happy we have achieved the profile we are searching for. That sounds fairly straightforward, but when you think about all the variables and flavor combinations, it becomes a very challenging prospect. It would not be possible at all without a blender’s three greatest assets: their nose, their knowledge and what I call the ‘blenders legacy’, more commonly known as the cask inventory. Within the inventory, we have in excess of 6 million casks and a massive array of flavors to work from. Just a few of the considerations that give different flavors we have to think of when constructing a blend are: which of the large range of different products to use; the various cask types within those products; how many times each of those cask types have been previously filled and then multiply that flavor creation by all the varying ages! I think it’s safe to say we are never going to run out of ideas or new Chivas Regal expressions.
What have been some of Chivas Regal’s most significant innovations in the last five years to ensure you meet new and changing demand?
We are constantly experimenting and trying out new flavors, such as rare oak species and new types of cask finishes. In fact, I can tell you that just last week at the blending dept. we were currently working on in excess of 40 new projects and within those projects there is often more than one new whisky expression. All in all, we are actually working on in excess of 100 new whisky expressions. So while not all these trials and experiments make it to the bottle, you can certainly expect more leading innovation from Chivas Regal. Our goal is to provide exciting new products and flavors, but crucially, not at the expense of our traditional methods.
Chivas Regal has lent its support to the mixology community with their Masters program. What can you tell us about that?
Blenders are essentially flavor experts and mixologists are flavor experts, so we have a lot in common. It’s pretty incredible what the top mixologists can achieve using fresh local ingredients and combining these with a whisky like Chivas XV. I am a big supporter of drinking Scotch whisky the way you want to drink it, whether it’s neat, with water, with ice or in a cocktail. For me, there are few better drinks than a really well-made Chivas Sour! Like blenders, mixologists never stop learning, it’s a big world and there are many flavors out there. The key is to experiment. The Masters program identifies and celebrates the array of talent and expertise in the mixology community; together, we are breaking those old barriers of how scotch should be drunk.