Every single second you spend reading this, roughly nine bottles of Johnnie Walker are being sold somewhere in the world. Based on last year’s figures, that is 8.64 bottles a second, a volume that is frankly mindblowing.
In this second part of my deep dive into the brand, I wanted to move past the history and get my hands on the bottles themselves. And to do it properly, I brought out my kitchen scales. Yes, really. Because the most revealing thing about the Johnnie Walker core range is not always what is in the bottle, but how much the bottle itself weighs.
Let us start at the bottom with Red Label, one of the OGs, introduced in 1909. It has been the world’s best-selling Scotch since 1945 and is available in 180 countries. Here is where I lose people: on its own, let’s face it, it is not the best whisky. But that is the fundamental misunderstanding.
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Red Label was never made to be sipped neat. It is a cheap, value-based mixer, and once you account for the fact that over 50% of the UK price is tax and duty, there is precious little left for the actual liquid. Stick it with a mixer, and you cannot go wrong. On the scales, it comes in at 1,071 grams.
Black Label, by contrast, is probably one of the best whiskies in the world. Do not be put off by it being a blend. Speak to any master blender, and you will often hear that a 12-year-old Black Label is one of their go-to bottles. At around £25-£30, it is an absolute steal, and yet it weighs exactly the same as the Red Label. The liquid is what matters here, not the glass.
As we climb the range through Double Black, Green Label and the superb single malt-only Green, something curious happens. The bottles get heavier. Green and Gold Label both hit 1,419 grams. The 18-year-old reaches 1,462, and the daddy of them all, Blue Label, tips the scales at a whopping 2,070 grams.
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READ THE STORYThat is a full kilogram of extra glass compared to Red Label, and here is the punchline. The 700ml of liquid inside weighs the same in every bottle. That mountain of glass at the base of the premium bottles is pure marketing. You cannot taste the whisky when you pick it up, so they give you heft instead, because heavy feels expensive. It is the same trick used across the super-premium market.
So the whisky in Blue Label is genuinely sensational, but you are also paying to knock someone out with the bottle. It makes me wonder: how often do we let the packaging do the tasting for us before the whisky ever hits our lips?
To see every bottle and hear more about their histories, check out my YouTube video.
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