My heart’s in the Highlands

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: Age has nothing to do with quality. Not in whisky anyway, says Ian Williams, ambassador and master blender of Johnnie Walker Blue Label who was in Mumbai recently to address a select club of Scoth drinkers.

Johnnie Walker scotch whiskies have various colour codes to distinguish one from the other: red, green, black, gold and blue labels. Blue Label is the most exclusive. “You drink it on special occasions only,” pronounces Mr Williams, “On closing a business deal or to toast a special celebration.” He should know, as an employee of Johnnie Walker’s for over two decades.

The master blender’s schoolboy love of bagpipes almost ruined his academic performance. A love for his native heath, Scotland, gave him enough reason to stay put and ‘hear the bagpipes and earn a living too’. Joining Johnnie Walker as a clerk, Mr Williams worked his way up. “I’m good at playing the bagpipes too,” he grins, though it’s been a long while since he piped a Scottish air.

This job offers him the quiet and beauty of the Scottish Highlands. Mr Williams say his is a job that any country lover would jump at. “And what more could a Scotsman ask for than to be in his country and with the most reputed drink worldwide, Scotch whisky?”

Introduced in 1992, to encapsulate the essence of Victo- rian times, Johnnie Walker Blue Label won the gold medal for the “Best Blended Whisky in the World” the following year. The bottle for Johnnie Walker Blue Label was cast from an 1870’s Johnnie Walker bottle mould in pale green flint glass, with a stopper cork and a little lead seal on the neck. To date, each bottle is individually numbered as a guarantee of authenticity from the Walker distillery.

Created from the rarest and most expensive whiskies in the world, Blue Label has the authentic character and flavour of a traditional nineteenth century blend, just like those that John Walker and his son Alexander developed for their most valued customers.