Johnnie Walker, the world’s biggest selling Scotch whisky, has opened up access to its award-winning master blender for an exclusive in-person blending session that sees participants leave with a one-off, bespoke blend. This new, luxury experience is one for any true Scotch whisky fanatic, and it takes place inside the Johnnie Walker Vault, a hidden, secretive subterranean space under the streets of Edinburgh that honours the roots of the iconic label.
It has been more than 200 years since John Walker opened his shop in Kilmarnock, Scotland selling a range of goods from tea and coffee to spice and Scotch whisky. Back in the early 1800s, whisky was something of a contrary product, made mostly on farmsteads by a disparate collection of distillers. As such whisky was inconsistent at best. Taking inspiration from tea and spices, John Walker started to blend barrels of Scotch whisky together to the taste of his customers, designing bespoke blends for his best patrons, later creating his own enduring labels which today are found in bars from hotel to homes the world over, famed for their consistency and quality.
Over two centuries later, it is with great anticipation and a real sense of history, that I find myself stepping into the Vault, a newly dedicated space at the Johnnie Walker Experience on Princes Street, Edinburgh, to have my own bespoke blend made by the whisky’s master blender.
The Johnnie Walker Experience, housed in a vast building that was once a bank and then department store, is now home to visitor centre that showcases the artistry of whisky-making and whisky-blending in an interactive encounter. Open to the public since 2021, the site has welcomed more than one million visitors from over 140 different countries to take their regular tours.
However, on this visit I am not just another name to add to the million-strong whisky-curious throng; I am here to discover the Vault. Hidden in the bank’s former strongroom, deep beneath the historic cobblestones of Edinburgh’s streets and not open to the public, the Vault sees a return of bespoke blending by Johnnie Walker to Scotland’s capital, through an exclusive new programme. Today is my turn to have a blend made for me by Johnnie Walker master blender, Dr. Emma Walker.
Dr. Walker, no relation to the original John, has the overall responsibility of ensuring consistency and quality across the Johnnie Walker range of releases. Drawing on stocks of 10 million casks, the largest inventory of mature Scotch in the world, it is Dr. Walker and her team’s work to ensure that every bottle of Red, Black, Green, Gold or Blue Label Johnnie Walker holds the same profile batch after batch, even with a constantly evolving palette of flavours to use from her vast collection of casks.
This selection comes to life as I step out of the elevator, which has delivered me from a private apartment space with views of Edinburgh, into the bowels of the Johnnie Walker Experience, where I am greeted by walls groaning with whisky. Over 500 small, square bottles, each filled with interesting samples from the 10 million casks available to Dr. Walker, some aged for over half a century, cover the space floor-to-ceiling.
‘Our inventory is a living beast,’ Dr. Walker tells me as I step inside this small but beautiful space. ‘It changes and it grows; it does different things at different times. What you see here is a snapshot in time and just a portion of some of our oldest and rarest casks.’
Not only is Dr. Walker focused on continuing the legacy of the world’s best-selling Scotch whisky labels, she is also adept at building blends from scratch. This latest project gives her free rein over some of the jewels in the collection, fittingly from the safety of a former bank vault.
The journey to get to this meeting started with a questionnaire, as it will for anyone who chooses to invest in this experience. Questions were asked about my favourite foods, memorable places, the songs or musicians that most resonate with me; I was asked to list any special dates that matter to me, along with other illuminating and interesting lines of questioning. The purpose is to guide Dr. Walker in crafting a bespoke blend to reflect my own personal journey in life.
The purpose of the questionnaire is to guide Dr. Walker in crafting a bespoke blend to reflect my own personal journey in life
Dr. Walker starts by showing me her musings in a notebook, littered with detailed scribbles drawn from my answers, and a flavour wheel, in the form of a spider diagram, of how she has visualised the evolution of my very own blend.
‘I’ve used the different answers from your question to see what notes I should call out in your blend,’ Dr. Walker explains, hiding nothing of the process from me. ‘I like to build a flavour map with distillery style at the top and maturation elements at the bottom, so I can picture the whisky coming together. Yours is very round and balanced,’ she notes reassuringly.
I’ve had a go at blending before, and I keep an infinity bottle at home filled with the scraps of samples and ends of bottles I have decanted away into an ever-evolving demijohn. This clunky curiosity of a blend is occasionally sampled and shared with friends. However, a blender I am not. A master blender, even further away from. If Dr. Walker is an artist, I am a painter and decorator. She creates masterpieces; I colour-drench the walls.
Yet what I do know is my own palate, my own taste and my own experiences, and I am a little nervous as to how this might be interpreted – not just in a blended Scotch whisky but in a Johnnie Walker expression.
One of my reference points noted on my questionnaire is a small cottage on the western Norwegian coast, a family home on my mother’s side, which has a boat house that smells of old rope, tar, fishing nets, petrol engines and firewood. It is where I used to visit my late uncle, and we’d go fishing in the fjord before returning back to drink smoky Scotch whisky and warm ourselves by the fire. How, I wondered, would Dr. Walker bring this to life?
‘Your answers really gave me a scene, particularly the sense of place,’ Dr. Walker tells me as she hands me a small sample bottle. ‘I wanted to drive in that concept of the fishing hut and the firewood with this, a Brora from 1982.’
As I lift this small bottle of incredibly rare whisky to my nose, it takes me right back fjord-side, sea spray and wood smoke in the air. Other bottles start coming thick and fast: old tar notes from a 1979 Port Ellen (with no coincidence that this is also my year of birth) and a springtime sweetness from a 16 year old Cardhu, finished in rum cask.
The price tag seems reasonable for not just a one-of-a-kind whisky but a whole experience with one of the world’s great whisky-makers
Next up is rich Clynelish and a Cragganmore, malts I’ve long admired and adored, as well as a grain whisky from the now-closed Caledonian distillery in Edinburgh, all three distilled in the 1980s.
Eventually, after chatting through each sample as well as Dr. Walker’s thought process, I get to try the finished blend. The result is an assemblage that slowly develops in the glass. It starts with fresh notes of lavender and earthy tones, and develops into an oily, tarry, smoky postcard from my past. This is a true portrait of my palate and a genuine experience of a lifetime, visceral and emotional.
This new programme, called the Johnnie Walker Vault doesn’t come cheap, with a starting price of £50,000, which will bag you the bespoke blending experience and a full (70cl) bottle of your private blend in a Baccarat crystal decanter – along with a two-night stay at the Gleneagles hotel for two and a Michelin-starred dining experience. In a world where the price of rare and exclusive Scotch has reached new, astonishing heights, this price tag seems reasonable for not just a one-of-a-kind whisky but a whole experience with one of the world’s great whisky-makers to boot.
With each blend kept on file, future bottles can be ordered, the costs of which are built into each individual contract. Every bespoke blend created in The Vault will be recorded by Dr. Walker in a dedicated book housed in the Diageo Archive, immortalising each blend in the annals of Johnnie Walker’s long history.
Registration for the Johnnie Walker Vault opens on 12 March here.
