I want to try and aim to do a special review once a quarter. What makes them different to a typical review of mine is that I want them to be a head-to-head of instead of a one bottling review. I’ve managed to get my hands on some interesting classic whisky and it’s the only real way to tell if a newer bottling is as good as an older bottling… Johnnie Walker Green Label, you’re up first.
I managed to cop myself a lovely bottle of 1990’s Johnnie Walker Pure Malt at auction. I’ll be pitting it against its rival as of tonight: a 2020s bottling of Johnnie Walker Green Label. Johnnie Walker introduced Pure Malt in 1997 before it was renamed to Johnnie Walker Green Label in 2004. Both of these offerings, all things considered, are supposed to be the same product – they are both made with a blend of malt whisky only (no grain whisky) and those malts have been aged for at least 15 years before being bottled. This is special because I get to do a very cool test; I get to taste a bottling from sometime in the late 90’s. The malts in that blend would’ve started their aging as far back as 1982-1984 (and likely older). In the same session, I’ll compare side by side a bottle whose contents had started their aging as late as 2007.
Will they be that much different? Hopefully not.
Firstly, the visuals: The branding has changed between the bottles; the older bottling is called ‘Johnnie Walker Pure Malt’ while the younger is titled ‘Johnnie Walker Green Label’. They both have age statements of ‘at least’ 15 years, and the labels are both – you guessed it – green. The shade of green is totally different between them though – in low light, the older of the two almost looks black. The bottle sizes look physically different, although both contain 700ml of liquid. The newer branding nods to some distilleries on its packaging that the older bottle doesn’t. It boasts of containing single malts from Tallisker, Linkwood, Cragganmore and Caol Ila. This makes sense as they are all Diageo owned brands, as is Johnnie Walker. It’s likely that my older bottling also contains single malts from the same distilleries as those brands were also transferred over to Diageo when the merger between Guinness and Grand Metropolitan happened in 1997.
NOSE:
1990s Johnnie Walker Pure Malt: Berries, sherry and raisin are the main notes – some vanilla underneath with a hint of banana-ish ethanol. There’s a touch of wood smoke in there, but it really is faint. Same with the peatiness – I feel there is a subtle hint but not much more than that. The smell is thick and rich and complex compared to the modern bottling – more on that below…
2020s Johnnie Walker Green Label: This is interesting. Compared to the 90s bottling, the main overpowering difference when directly comparing the two is that this modern bottling carries a, wait for it, Cool Original Doritos smell. What? The 90s dram doesn’t have any of that at all. I know that sounds crazy, but there’s almost a cooling, creamy, sweetness on the nose that really isn’t there at all on the 90s. It’s more syrupy, the vanilla is sweeter, and there’s an even tinier hint of wood smoke and no peat at all. In general, it smells a lot lighter and cleaner than the 90s offering. There’s a hint of apple in there, but the complexity really doesn’t carry the same depth at all. It’s by no means unpleasant, but they smell like completely different drams.
TASTE:
1990s Johnnie Walker Pure Malt: I tasted this after the 2020s. Immediately different to the modern bottling, there’s orange peel, apple, I can’t taste any berries which were on the nose, wood smoke is definitely there and so is the sherry. There’s a touch of banana ethanol in the background and it finishes with a slight leathery afterthought. The vanilla is in it, but it’s not a typical creamy vanilla – it’s much more subdued and tangled within the other flavours. The finish isn’t particularly long, perhaps 8 seconds or so. I’ve now added a drop of water to see if it changes the profile. Yes it has – much sweeter but in a delicious way. The peat smoke has really opened up now too – it has come alive and the Islay flavours are making themselves more known. The leather on the finish has become more tarry but also more acrid.
2020s Johnnie Walker Green Label: I’m surprised and a bit disappointed to say that I can’t pick much out from this blend. I started the tasting with this dram before the 90s. I’ve added a drop of water to try and tease something out of it and unfortunately, it hasn’t changed much for me. It’s a bit buttery – like a Chardonnay white wine. I’ve just blown my nose just in case it’s me. I’m purposely not trying the 90s yet as I don’t want it to colour my initial opinion. All I can say is that it’s giving me a non-descript sweetness on the tongue initially, a very faint peatiness in the middle and then a very acrid, almost bitter finish. it’s very non-descript. Its like I’m tasting it with a cold. After tasting the 90s blend and coming back, it’s almost refreshing – it reminds me even more of a Chardonnay now. The buttery sweetness is welcome and it carries a slight cinnamon note that pushes through. The flavour profiles couldn’t be any more different to each other. I’m at a crossroads with this one – I’m not sure whether I’m the problem and my palate just isn’t refined enough to truly appreciate Johnny Walker Green Label, or if my palate is fine and 2020s Green Label is just not for me.
SUMMARY: After trying the 2020s dram first and being very underwhelmed, I then started to sip the 1990s bottling and my night was redeemed. The complexity, depth, and saturated tastes in the 90s bottling are completely juxtaposed to the 2020s bottling of Johnny Walker Green Label which was thin, uneventful and lacking any real flavour focus. Out of the two bottlings, I much prefer the Johnny Walker Pure Malt from the late 1990s. That being said, I’m not going to run out and watch auction houses like a hawk for another bottling to show up. Yes it is nice, and yes it’s now fairly rare, but it still doesn’t sing and dance so much that I want to buy another bottle. I wonder why the blend has changed so much over the years – is it simply due to palates changing and focus groups prefer the current offering? Is it simply because it’s impossible to recreate the same cask flavours that the single malts produced back in the 80s? Perhaps it’s just cost cutting and bottom line driven? Tonight’s tasting has made me want to enable comments on my blog posts; I’m curious as to whether others think the same as me or think I’m totally wrong. A job for another day perhaps.
2020s Johnny Walker Green Label – 1/10
1990s Johnny Walker Pure Malt – 5/10
Finally, please read my other blog posts. If you want to read my highest rated dram so far, then start here.
