Kevin Balmforth. As Master Blender I work with samples from across all of our distilleries.
I moved to Scotland after university and signed up with a job agency. They called me one day with a role in the blending department at Chivas Brothers. At the time, I had no idea it would become such a pivotal moment in my life.
It’s not really a route into the blending that anyone could take nowadays, but through a bit of luck – and maybe a bit of fate – it all worked out.
I really learned to love whisky once I started working alongside the Masters and Blenders. Being able to learn the craft directly from experts and develop those skills on the job is what truly grew my passion for it.
In 1998, I moved to Scotland because my girlfriend at the time got a job on Bute, a little island off the west coast of Scotland. Ten months later I found myself at Chivas Brothers as a sample room assistant.
My first interview was with Colin Scott, and it included a nosing test. The girl didn't work out. The whisky, as it turned out, did.
It didn't take long to realise that nosing and tasting were my strengths, though it took a while longer to understand quite how fortunate I'd been to end up there.
At some point I realised: this is it. This is what I want to do. I've spent the quarter of a century since trying to make the most of the opportunity.
I'd say it's our approach, and the amount of responsibility the team holds end to end.
People assume we influence flavour decisions - that part is obvious. What's less obvious is just how hands-on we are with quality control, and everything else along the way.
We're a small team, just eight of us, but we have full authority over spirit quality from start to finish: distillation, maturation, blending, bottling. All of it.
Every drop of whisky we produce gets assessed by the team, and we do it blind too (which means we code the samples, so we don’t know which is which). We know what's riding on getting that right, and we've built rigorous processes to make sure we do.
As I said, this role means being accountable for maintaining the quality of blends like Chivas Regal, Ballantine’s, and Royal Salute. That responsibility is so significant. I have to make sure that they’re living up to the brands people have come to know and love.
It goes beyond that, though. With spirits coming from distinctive distilleries like Aberlour, Glen Keith, Allt-A-Bhainne, Braeval, and Strathisla, I’m aware of the responsibility to make sure that each distillery is properly represented in the final blend
I couldn’t tell you definitively, but my first real memory of whisky was during my first week at Chivas Brothers, trying Chivas Regal 12 and The Glenlivet 12.
We’re working on lots of exciting new releases across the brands, although we obviously can’t reveal too much before they launch.
Recently though, we released Chivas Regal 16 in collaboration with Charles Leclerc, which was a really exciting project to work on. We increased the sherry influence, which worked really well. We also created Chivas Regal 22 to commemorate Arsenal’s Premier League win.
Another exciting release is a special edition celebrating Scotland qualifying for the World Cup. We’re releasing just 28 bottles to mark the 28 years since Scotland last appeared at the tournament. It’s a Strathclyde 17 Year Old finished in virgin oak casks – a really lovely whisky. The bottles won’t be available for sale, so they’ll become a rare collector’s item.
When I first started, there was a master blender and chief blender called Abby Stevens. Everyone loved Abby – he was approachable, likeable and he really took me under his wing.
He gave me so many opportunities and experiences early on, including sending me to Speyside for six weeks to visit distilleries, coppersmiths and maltings. It’s difficult to give people those kinds of opportunities nowadays, but he made sure I experienced every part of the craft.
Abby taught me the nuts and bolts of blending, guiding me through the core skills and helping shape my understanding from the very start. He’s a bit of an unsung hero because many people won’t know his name – it wasn’t on a bottle and he wasn’t travelling the world talking about whisky. But behind the scenes, he was working hard every single day, and he had a huge impact on me.
I’m a big believer in drinking whisky the way you enjoy it, not the way someone tells you to drink it.
I’ll quite often add water, which not everyone does, and I’ll also drink whisky with ice. Adding ice changes the sensation and mouthfeel, giving you a completely different experience from drinking it neat.
I’d go with Keanu Reeves. He became a huge star in the 90s with films like Point Break, Speed and The Matrix. Similarly, Chivas 18, one of my favourite whiskies, was launched during the 90s too. His films from that era became cult classics, just like Chivas 18 has.
Craft, balance, delicious.
Passionate, honest, kind.
