Behind the Scenes Blending
The Lost Lantern Blend Series brings together whiskies from multiple distilleries into one unique, harmonious whole! With each blend, we explore new flavors and push the boundaries of American whiskey, all from the Lost Lantern perspective. It’s our way of giving you our bird’s eye view of the industry.
Curious about what that looks like? Lost Lantern’s Head Blender, Nora, sat down to answer some questions about the actual process!
Blending Q&A With Nora
What is the first step of your blending process?
The first step is to decide what I want to highlight with the blend: am I trying to showcase a distillery, a region, or a flavor profile? Everything builds from there!
What are the next steps after you know what the goal is?
After we know what we are going for, the next step is tasting whiskey. I taste through all of the barrels eligible for the blend and decide which are potential candidates. I’m generally looking for something consistent across a number of barrels while also keeping the intention in mind. I might end up with complimentary flavors, structural elements, or a combination that I just want to experiment with.
Do you always blend with whiskey that you already have or do you sometimes source for a blend?
We generally blend with whiskey we have on hand, that’s the goal, but there are times where we need another component and we will go out and find that. Sometimes we know exactly what we need and we will source a particular whiskey – we did that with a Cedar Ridge barrel for our first Far-Flung Rye blend. There are other times where we know the flavor profile we want and we go out seeking that. That’s never the goal, because it creates some additional complication, but if the blend needs it, we will do it.
How much of blending is intuition versus training?
I am not a formally trained blender, by the standards in Scotland, but I have a trained palate, and I do rely on that when it comes to understanding what to do with a blend. And then so much of what I do is barrels and see if they have resonance with each other. So, it’s both training and intuition!
Once you have selected the potential components, how long does the blending process take and what are the day to day steps?
Every blend goes through an iterative process where we build a series of prototype blends. That can take anywhere from one day to two months. One day means I got it right the first time – that’s super rare! When it takes closer to two months, that means there’s either a ton of pieces to the puzzle, a lot of whiskies, or it was really difficult to pinpoint the exact profile I was going for.
What blend are you the most proud of?
I am most proud of our Shadow & Light blended malt! It’s a blend of peated American single malt and mesquited American single malt. The project excited me from the very beginning because I was blending a traditional style with an innovative stlye. When blended, it became something completely different. I personally love smoky whiskey, especially smoky single malts, and so it’s a blend I love drinking as well!
What is the most difficult blend you have ever made?
I can’t actually tell you about this one yet! It’s way more components than I have ever blended before. The number of iterations I had to go through to get a cohesive whole was a totally different level than anything we have done before. I can’t wait to tell you more!