Unless you haven't been paying attention recently, you will have seen that Master of Malt recently held their annual Whisky Championships.

It's a simple contest, it see's the most popular distilleries from across the United Kingdom and Ireland go head to head in a knockout tournament.

From the end of July and for a couple of weeks in August this year, visitors to the Master of Malt website together with those on Instagram and Twitter could vote for their favourite distilleries.
You can read the announcement here (link new window).

This year, Master of Malt controversially introduced an additional category - Brands and Independent Bottlers.

There is nothing wrong with having  Brands and Independent Bottler as an additional category, except, the execution in hindsight, may have not been the best, more of that in a moment. We do need to remember thought, that this was all for fun, it helped brand awareness and from Master of Malts perspective assisted in sales.

Back to the execution. It was observed that some Independent Bottlers who happen to have successful brands had multiple brands in the tournament, for example Douglas Laing had Scallywag, Wee Beastie and Big Peat all in the running but they were in the same lineup as an entire independent bottlers such as Gordon & MacPhail.
Surely an Independent Bottler should go up against another Independent Bottler? and a brand against a brand?
Just a thought.

But this wasn't the controversy I alluded too, no, it was the entry of a single celebrity brand whisky, The Sassenach.
Briefly, The Sassenach is Blended Scotch Whisky, bottled at 46% and the only whisky in the range offered by the actor (from popular shows such as Outlander) Sam Heughan and his company Sassenach Spirits, they do have a Gin and a Tequila.
It is produced by Loch Lomond Distillery and is technically a Single Distillery Blend, I have several bottles of this type of whisky by Loch Lomond and they are all consistently good.

The official website for the whisky is and there is no simpler way of saying this, poor, you can take a look for yourself

https://www.sassenachspirits.com (link new window)

The site provides no bottle information, there isn't even a picture of the bottle, but there is a looping background video of Sam himself enjoying the whisky out of a tumbler. The website has a newsletter signup box and 3 (three) link boxes for the territory you may be in, which take you to the official retailer for that territory, for the UK it happens to be and you may guess correctly here, Master of Malt. It is only after following the link to Master of Malt do you find out some whisky information, so what is the purpose of the official website? oh yeah, to collect your signup details and provide links to their social accounts.

The Sassenach Whisky as mentioned is bottled at 46% ABV, is a blended scotch whisky, there are tasting notes provided by Master of Malt, not even official notes, there is no further information, we do not know if it is chill filtered or coloured. Priced at £81.95, it is, for a blended scotch, a premium price. It is a good looking bottle with a big sturdy looking stopper.

But I can't helping thinking that the premium price isn't quite justified by what we have seen.
The Website is poor, the product information non existent. A good looking glass bottle isn't enough to justify, for a blended scotch whisky with no age statement a price of over £80, the same would apply if it was a Single Malt Whisky, we have seen it before with blended scotch whiskies, such as Johnnie Walker Blue Label, another no age statement blended scotch, however, in the case of Blue Label, the owner Diageo at least explain it is a blend of rare and well aged malt and grain, no such statement from The Sassenach -  If such a statement has been released, is it the responsibility of the buyer to go hunting for it or is it the responsibility of the producer to make it accessible? via, I don't know, a website? Marketing 101, unless you are a celebrity of course, the celebrity is its marketing, that seems to be the case here.

Even visiting the product page on the Loch Lomond Website doesn't reveal any extra information.

https://www.lochlomondwhiskies.com/products/the-sassenach-blended-scotch-whisky (link new window)

So who is the Sassenach whisky targeted at? at this point I may need to get a lawyer or need to choose my words carefully. Instead I will look to the Sassenach website, nope, drawn a blank there also.

I'm stumped, I can only assume the whisky is aimed at Whisky Drinkers who believe a higher priced whisky must be worthy of such a high price or I could take a look at the official social media accounts. I will leave it up to you to decide who the target audience is, but I will say one thing, I honestly do think it is great, that a whisky, has successfully managed to break into a demographic that whisky producers have tried and failed to gain for many years. Lets just hope that demographic expands their whisky exploration beyond just the Sassenach.

Since some key whisky details are missing,  I will do what I do here at Whisky Resource and provide some information to fill the gaps that Sassenach Spirits, Loch Lomond and Master of Malt have all not managed to provide;

The Sassenach Whisky is non chill filtered, natural colour and is a blend of whisky from Loch Lomond including some older (20 Year Old) Malt and Grain. Now we have a bit more information to justify the price. Of course the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) rules mean that they are unable to publish this information on the bottle due to age statement rules. But by alluding to it, which they can do on their website, they will potentially capture traditional whisky drinkers who want to know what they are getting for their money.

Looking once agin at the Master of Malt page for the whisky, you will see that the overall rating is (at the time of writing) 5 Stars over 275 reviewers.
This is one popular and successful whisky.

At this junction of my ramblings, it is probably worth trying the whisky for myself. So I bought a sample from Master of Malt Drinks by the Dram having paid £7.06

I wanted to try the whisky by removing any subjectivity, any preconceived ideas or bias, so of course I wanted to try it blind. To achieve this, I purchased for £2.50 another Celebrity whisky, Coachbuilt, which is a partnership between former Formula 1 (F1) driver Jenson Button and George Koutsakis, you can visit the Master of Malt Coachbuilt page (link new window).

The Coachbuilt website, is, in contrast to the Sassenach, full of information, but typically, I could not find any statements about Chill Filtration or colour. You can visit the site with the following link

https://coachbuiltwhisky.com (link new window)

The Coachbuilt whisky is a blended scotch whisky using whisky from 5 (five) regions of Scotland and married in sherry casks, the whisky has some peat smoke. It is bottled at 46% ABV and retails at master of malt for £43.49 which is a little more of a realistic price for many whisky enthusiasts. Like the Sassenach it comes presented in a good looking bottle.

As a control for the tasting I opened a bottle of a budget blended scotch whisky, Loch Lomond's High Commisoner which retails for £15.99 on master of malt (link new window)

My wife happily poured the three whiskies into coloured glencairns, labeled each glass with a numbered sticker on the underside and the corresponding bottle.

I proceeded to try each dram without knowing which was which recording my ramblings for nose, taste and a guess as to which was which. Here are the results.

1. Green Glencairn - Coachbuilt

2. Red Glencairn - High Commissioner

3. Blue Glencairn - Sassenach

To summarise, the Sassenach and the High Commissioner, from my point of view, are very similar on nose and palate, this is understandable as both came from the same distillery, however, the Sassenach has a higher ABV and more aged components, while the High Commissioner is a much more immature whisky at a lower ABV. There would be similarities, they did come from the same stills and composed by the same blender. It is disappointing that the Sassenach wasn't released with an age statement, it may alleviate some of the negative comments about its price.
It would be good, if there are plans for a second Sassenach if it were to have an age statement or be cask strength, it may help bring in the wider whisky drinking demographic, because, as it stands, in my opinion, it offers very little appeal to the wider audience, or maybe that is the intention.

The Coachbuilt while I'm sure is a great whisky, just didn't suit my palate. The price is more reasonable if not overpriced by around £10, without know more about the component whisky. Since the current Coachbuilt Whisky indicates it is the first release, I look forward to seeing what the next release brings.

Should you wish to watch my ramblings the recording is available on YouTube

Back to the Master of Malt championship, if you want to see the official result announcement follow this link (link new window).