So, what exactly does a Scotch blender do, anyway? A Q&A with Johnnie Walker's Andrew Ford

Sniff and taste Scotch all day and get paid for it? Hello, dream job.

That's at least in general what Andrew Ford does as a Scotch blender for Johnnie Walker in central Scotland. He's one of four blenders who work with master blender Jim Beveridge at the world's most widely distributed brand of blended Scotch whisky. A single malt is whisky from one distillery; blended Scotch is a mixture of grain whisky and single malts from various distilleries throughout the highlands, lowlands, glens and islands of Scotland. A blender ensures consistent flavor and quality so that, for example, your Johnnie Walker Blue Label (or Chivas or Cutty or Grouse for that matter) tastes the same 20 years from now.

Johnnie Walker is sold in just about every country, with annual sales of more than 130 million bottles. That's a lot of Scotch to blend. And somebody has to help make sure it remains consistent. Ford was in L.A. recently to explain the art of blending and kindly answered a few questions.

What are the day-to-day duties of a blender?

We do a lot of nosing and some tasting. Some is to check maturing malt and grain whiskies and, of course, we check every batch of blended whisky before it is bottled. ... We also create new blends or re-create old ones and that's the best part of the job, I think.

What are the challenges of blending?

We have to be very careful not to allow drift in the flavor.  We always compare the latest blend batch with previous batches. We have to look out for the possibility that each batch is the same as the previous one, but over months or years the flavor could drift. So we must check against batches from a long time back to ensure we do not get drift.

Another difficulty is ...

The Chartreuse Sweet 16 Competition: 16 bartenders, four rounds, 30 cocktails

The Carthusian monks who produce Chartreuse might not blanch at the prospect of having to taste 30 cocktails made with their secret-recipe herbal liqueur. I, on the other hand, wasn't so sure about my capacity to drink that much. But heck, if I've tasted my way through scores of Slovenian wines, witbiers and tequilas, what's 30 Chartreuse cocktails?

Besides, I love Chartreuse (check out this Chartreuse souffle recipe) and am happy to see it showing up on more cocktail menus, along with the herbalicious likes of Cynar and Fernet-Branca (though I'll pass on Branca Menta). So when I was asked to be a judge at the Chartreuse Sweet 16 Competition, I was pretty thrilled.

It went down Monday at the Doheny downtown, in a single-elimination tournament where 16 bartenders went head-to-head, creating Chartreuse cocktails on the fly. It was a blind tasting, so us judges (myself, Bar Keeper owner Joe Keeper, and Chateau Marmont chef Carolynn Spence) were sequestered behind black velvet curtains. We tasted cocktails in pairs and picked which was the better of the two to decide which bartender would advance to the next round. We were stumped at the end of the round of 16, when we couldn't choose between a Champagne cocktail with a huge curl of lemon peel (which we later found out was made by Matty Eggleston of Wurstkuche) and an intriguingly cloudy, lime peel-garnished drink that nicely highlighted the Chartreuse (made by Damian Windsor of the Roger Room). It was a tough call, but it ended up going to Eggleston.

In the quarter-final round, the standout was a cucumber-Chartreuse drink from Chris Bostock of the Varnish. And in the semi-final round, we couldn't stop drinking a gin-Chartreuse-Concord grape concoction from Matthew Biancaniello of the Roosevelt Hotel (which he has named the Grapes of Wrath; see the recipe after the jump). 

The championship round came down to Biancaniello and Eggleston, with an unlikely but well-balanced bell-pepper drink and a not-too-ginger-y ginger cocktail, respectively. It was another tough call.

But after some back-and-forth between the judges, the winner was ...

Beer of the month: Buffalo Bill's Orange Blossom Ale

Those crazy Belgians are always adding orange peel to their wheat beers.

An East Bay brewery goes them one further — it puts the juice and the flowers into an ale, giving it a little orange juice tang, as you’d expect. Surprisingly, though, the sweet orange blossom scent shows up more in the palate than in the nose. The nose actually suggests a fruity white wine, perhaps a Semillon, rather than an ale.

RECENT & RELATED

PHOTO GALLERY: More beers, handpicked by the L.A. Times

Beer's getting sour. So pucker up

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Photo: Richard Derk / Los Angeles Times

Summer of little joy

According to a story in the Louisville Courier-Journal (and who is in a better place to know?), there may be a shortage of Knob Creek bourbon this year.

 Fans of Knob Creek bourbon may find their favorite whiskey in short supply this summer as the brand's bottle warehouses near Clermont, Ky., are empty and the next batch of aged whiskey won't be ready until November.

The culprit? A failure to anticipate the drink's popularity. Of course, it's somewhat understandable given that aged bourbons such as Knob Creek need to spend nine years in the cask. And nine years ago, who could have foreseen the situation we'd be in today, or the need for liquid refreshment to ease the pain.

-- Russ Parsons

Photo: PRNewsFoto/Knob Creek

Justin Timberlake's tequila makes backs sexier, love stoned-er, and that which goes around, come back around

Justin Timberlake is about to release a new tequila, called 901 (like the area code of his Memphis hometown), and the New York Daily News ran a story about how surprisingly good the product is. However, the story features quotes from three tequila aficionados who insinuate that the tequila might fare better if Timberlake's name weren't associated with it.

But this isn't the first time Timberlake has stepped outside his musical pursuits.

Other pet projects include his clothing line William Rast and the Manhattan restaurant Southern Hospitality.

The Timberlake name lent those efforts a bit of cachet, but the Death & Co. tasters said it could hurt his foray into the tequila biz.

"If I heard all the details and geeky talk and someone didn't mention Justin Timberlake, I would take this very seriously," Kaplan said. "Automatically, we have a preconceived notion of what he's coming out with and we were wrong."

Good thing he didn't name the liquor "Timberlake's Tequila" then.

"Oh yeah, without a doubt."

Oh no they didn't. Everything JT touches is classy. We would pay extra to have the agave imprimatur of the man who coined the term "LoveStoned" with nary an azure-eyed blink. Timberlake's tequila probably has hints of vanilla, rosewater and teenage girls' tears. Why wouldn't that sell itself? Celeb cachet didn't stop Sammy Hagar, Maynard James Keenan or Danny DeVito from marketing tasty tipple. The Dish positively yearns for the day it can roll up to House of Spirits and ask for "a bottle of your finest Timberlake vintage, good sir" while fielding three successive booty calls on three different Swarovski-encrusted iPhones. Because that's how we roll.

-- Jessica Gelt and August Brown

Photo: Jessica Biel gets a shot of Justin Timberlake at a Lakers game at Staples Center in April. Credit: Noel Vasquez / Getty Images

Beer festival bonanza

 

Cheers! Prost! Salud! Dude? An ascendant craft-beer culture is brewing in Southern California. If there was any doubt about that after the rise of Father’s Office, Lucky Baldwin’s and their ilk, now the Los Angeles area has two (count 'em, suds sippers, two) beer festivals taking microbrews macro over the next two months.

The first, the L.A. Beer Festival, raises its glass this Saturday and Sunday afternoons at Sony Studios in Culver City. Then, on May 9, the Los Angeles Craft and Artisanal Beer Appreciation League’s (LA CABAL) Craft Beer Fest L.A. pops its tops at the Echoplex.

The two first-time events developed independently of each other. “I had no idea [Craft Beer Fest L.A.] even existed,” said L.A. Beer Festival organizer Dan Silberstein. LA CABAL member Kevin Kansky, of craft-beer boutique distributor Artisan Ales, said his group scheduled its festival before it heard of the other event, but he isn’t worried. “I don’t think there’s going to be beer festival overload,” he said.

This weekend’s L.A. Beer Festival involves more than 50 breweries. Each day’s $40 admission covers unlimited four-ounce tastings and live music (tribute bands rule the weekend: Petty Cash --  that’s right, Tom Petty and Johnny Cash -- plays Saturday, and Hollywood U2 gets epic on Sunday).  Food items --  including wings and other finger foods from Wolfgang Puck Catering, and pulled pork sandwiches, Italian sausages and meatball skewers from Cannoli Kings Catering, plus desserts by 2008 Cupcake Challenge “best original” winner Sugar Jones-- will be in the $5 to $10 range, Silberstein said.

Recession? What recession? Make ours a double

How about a $3,000 shot of cognac for your recession wallet?

In a darkly comedic twist on the current State of the Cocktail Hour, the PR folks at Rémy Martin seem to have confused the word “recession” with “reduction.” Or maybe the French cognac producer simply hired a bad English translator.

Normally a 750-milliliter bottle of its Louis XIII cognac retails for $1,800 and a 1.75-L. bottle of its Louis XIII Black Pearl Magnum is a cool $32,000. (For the record: An earlier version of this post said that a 1.75-milliliter bottle of Louis XIII Black Pearl Magnum cost $32,000. That is incorrect, and would also be insanely expensive. In fact, it is the 1.75-liter bottle that carries that price tag.)

But wait! Now you can taste them both for an amazing low price. According to a news release seemingly sent without a shred of irony, Rémy Martin is launching a “Perfect Pour” program that offers the cognac in smaller portions, “allowing more guests to enjoy this legendary elixir.”

Translation: Now you can saddle up to your participating swanky restaurant bar and order a 2-ounce pour of the Black Pearl Magnum for the one-time-only price of just $3,000! If that’s still a little out of your price range, don't worry. You can taste a half-ounce sip for the low, low price of $750. (Does a half-ounce even count as a sip?)

If you’re still waiting to see whether your rent check clears, you can always stick to the standard Louis XIII. He’s a mere $50 for the half-ounce dribble. Note that these are suggested retail sipping prices and actual retail prices vary. A half-ounce will set you back $70 at the London Hotel’s Gordon Ramsay restaurant in West Hollywood and $75 at the Esquire Bar and Lounge in Pasadena. The $3,000 shot of Black Pearl? Like Ramsay, nowhere to be found in Los Angeles.

-- Jenn Garbee

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Photo credit: Rémy Martin

This week's L.A. Times recipes

All recipes that appear in the L.A. Times' weekly Food section are tested and perfected in our test kitchen before they're deemed fit to print. (That means you don't have to worry about a trial run before serving one of our recipes to company. Rest assured, it should work the first time out of the gate.)

Here's a look at this week's recipes:

BLD's hot fudge brownie sundae

Kushary (rice, lentils and pasta with tomatoes)

Turkish doughnuts with rose hip syrup (Check out the video above)

Nancy's chopped salad

Herbed pork chops with tomatoes, potatoes and spinach

Canton ginger kick

-- Rene Lynch

Liquor sales slump -- with the exception of whiskey

As the economy turns down, Americans are cutting back on their liquor -- with a major exception: whiskey.

Sales of bourbons such as Jack Daniels and Maker's Mark are bucking a slump in demand for distilled spirits that set in during the final months of last year, according to industry officials.

Read more here.

Photo: Bloomberg News

Wine judges are rather unsteady, study finds

Does this story in today's Business section surprise you?

A study by retired Humboldt State professor Robert Hodgson found that judges at the California State Fair wine competition scored poorly at giving the same wine an identical rating when they tasted it multiple times in a blind tasting.

"Consumers should have a healthy skepticism about the medals awarded to wines from the various competitions," he said.

What criterion do you use to buy wines? Are you swayed by medals, ribbons? (Me? I drink whatever S. Irene Virbila is drinking.)

-- Rene Lynch

Photo: Victor Jose Cobo / For The Times