The International Whisky Competition is one of the most anticipated awards on the whisky calendar, judging every entry through double-blind tasting where the panel doesn’t know the brand, age, or strength of what’s in the glass. This year’s results were announced yesterday (July 7).
Dewar’s was handed a full sweep of the blended Scotch categories, with the brand taking first place in all seven age classes. This is not the first time Dewar’s has done well here. The brand has won top blended honors at the IWC across several recent years, and its master blender, Stephanie Macleod, was named Master Blender of the Year for six (now seven) consecutive years.
So, today we’re looking at each of the seven winners below, how each one is made, where it comes from, and how Dewar’s managed to achieve a clean sweep at the International Whisky Competition 2026.
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READ THE STORYDewar’s NAS Portuguese Smooth
Award: 1st Place, Best Blended Scotch NAS (No Age Statement), 87.27 points
Tasting Notes: Ripe stone fruits, red berries, vanilla, honey
Find Your Next Bottle: $24 / £19
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Dewar’s was founded in 1846 by John Dewar, who opened a wine and spirits shop on Perth’s High Street and began blending his own whiskies in the 1860s. It has been owned by Bacardi since 1998, and Dewar’s describes itself as “the World’s Most Awarded Blended Scotch Whisky”, with over 1,500 international awards to date.
Portuguese Smooth is the third release in Dewar’s cask-finished Smooth series, after Caribbean Smooth and Ilegal Smooth. The double-aged blend gets a second maturation in ruby Port casks and is bottled at 40% ABV.
There is one oddity here: the IWC listed this win under No Age Statement, but Dewar’s own product information describes Portuguese Smooth as an eight-year-old Port cask-finished blend. We aren’t sure whether this is a categorization choice by the IWC or whether a separate NAS version was entered. If you’ve come across an NAS bottling, let us know in the comments.
Dewar’s 12 Year Old Mizunara Oak Cask
Award: 1st Place, Best Blended Scotch 12 Year Old, 89 points
Tasting Notes: White peach, apricot, orange peel, sandalwood, vanilla
Find Your Next Bottle: Exclusively for the Japanese market
This one is a Japan-exclusive release, and it is a different product from Dewar’s more widely available Japanese Smooth, which uses the same Mizunara finish on an eight-year-old blend. For the 12 Year Old Mizunara, all the component whiskies are aged 12 years or more, then finished together in Japanese Mizunara oak casks after blending. It is distributed by Bacardi Japan and bottled at 40% ABV.
Mizunara is a Japanese oak, Quercus mongolica, that distillers prize and dread in roughly equal measure. It is porous, slow-growing, and difficult for coopers to work with, which makes the casks rare and expensive. The wood is associated with sandalwood, incense, and spice notes, which sit on top of the honeyed Aberfeldy character that runs through Dewar’s blends.
Dewar’s 15 Year Old
Award: 1st Place, Best Blended Scotch 15 Year Old, 87.30 points
Tasting Notes: Honeyed fruit, vanilla, soft florals, green apple, citrus, toffee, nuts
Find Your Next Bottle: $35 / £54
The 15 Year Old, known as “The Monarch,” has a personal connection to the woman behind all seven of these wins. It was the first blend crafted by Stephanie Macleod, who has been Dewar’s Master Blender since 2006, and she created this 15-year-old blend originally for the Chinese market, where it was introduced in 2010 before becoming more widely available. She is only the seventh person to hold the Master Blender position in the company’s history.
The name comes from Dewar’s history rather than the whisky itself. Tommy Dewar, one of the founder’s sons, was a keen art collector, and the company bought Sir Edwin Landseer’s 1851 painting “The Monarch of the Glen”, which depicts a stag in the Highlands and now hangs in the National Galleries of Scotland.
As for the whisky, its component malt and grain whiskies are matured for at least 15 years in ex-sherry and bourbon casks, then married together in oak casks for the secondary maturation that Dewar’s calls double aging. It is bottled at 40% ABV.
Dewar’s 16 Year Old
Award: 1st Place, Best Blended Scotch 16-17 Year Old, 88.57 points
Tasting Notes: Apricot, grilled peach, heather honey, toasted clove, nutmeg, caramel, candied nuts
Find Your Next Bottle: £75 or at Travel Retail
The full name of this one is Double Agent 16 Year Old, and it started life as a travel retail exclusive that launched at Singapore’s Changi Airport in May 2022. It has since become a little easier to find, including at the Aberfeldy distillery shop.
The “double agent” name refers to what happens to the whisky after Dewar’s usual double aging. The blend is split into two batches, one finished in Oloroso sherry casks and the other in ex-Islay casks that previously held peated whisky, before the two are reunited. The sherry side brings dried fruit and toffee, while the Islay side adds a thread of peat smoke to a house style that is otherwise unpeated. It is bottled at 46% ABV.
Before its IWC win, it also took Gold at the 2025 San Francisco World Spirits Competition and the International Spirits Challenge.
Dewar’s 18 Year Old
Award: 1st Place, Best Blended Scotch 18 Year Old, 87.33 points
Tasting Notes: Honey, toffee, dark chocolate, perfumed, floral, nutty, creamy, herbal notes
Find Your Next Bottle: $65 / £75
To understand any Dewar’s blend, it helps to know about Aberfeldy. The brothers John Alexander and Tommy Dewar built the Aberfeldy distillery in 1898 in rural Perthshire, close to their father’s birthplace, to guarantee a steady supply of single malt for the blends. It draws its water from the Pitilie Burn, and its honeyed malt has been the heart of Dewar’s ever since.
The 18 Year Old, crafted by Stephanie Macleod, is matured for at least 18 years in oak casks, then rested again in oak for around a further six months after blending, following the double aging method the company has used for more than a century. Beyond Aberfeldy, the blend draws on the other malts in Dewar’s stable, and reviewers regularly pick out dark fruits, toffee, and marzipan.
One thing worth mentioning: the bottling strength varies by market. Some sources list it at 40% ABV and others at 43% or 45%, so it’s worth checking the label where you are.
Dewar’s Double Double 21 Year Old
Award: 1st Place, Best Blended Scotch 19-24 Year Old, 92.77 points
Tasting Notes: Honeyed malt, cocoa, tropical fruit, citrus peel, warming spice, dried fruits, toasted nuts, caramel liquorice
Find Your Next Bottle: $100
This is the whisky that earned the highest score of Dewar’s seven wins, and it comes from the range where Stephanie Macleod took the company’s double aging and, as the name suggests, doubled it again. The Double Double range launched in 2019 and uses a four-stage process.
The malt and grain whiskies are first aged separately in oak casks. The grain whiskies are then blended together and rested in neutral oak casks, and the malt whiskies go through the same step on their own. Third, the malts and grains are combined into the final blend and aged again in neutral oak. The fourth stage is a finish in a different cask type, which varies across the range.
For the 21 Year Old, that final stage is a finish in Oloroso sherry casks, which brings dried fruit, nutty, and spice notes. Unlike most of the core Dewar’s range, it is bottled at 46% ABV, non-chill filtered.
Dewar’s Double Double 32 Year Old
Award: 1st Place, Best Blended Scotch Over 25 Years Old, 92.23 points
Tasting Notes: Treacle, dried fruits, vanilla, exotic spice, orange peel, brown sugar, clove, smoke, coffee, oak
Find Your Next Bottle: £410
The 32 Year Old is the oldest of the Double Double range, and it goes through the same four-stage process as the 21 Year Old, though the final finish is different. Where the 21 gets an Oloroso finish, the 32 is finished in Pedro Ximénez sherry casks, a sweeter, richer style of sherry that brings treacle, dried fruit, and a soft smokiness. It is bottled at 46% ABV.
This bottle is also the clearest sign that Dewar’s success at the IWC is nothing new. Back in 2020, the Double Double 32 Year Old won Whisky of the Year at the competition with a score of 96.4, which made Stephanie Macleod the first woman to blend a Whisky of the Year at the IWC.
At the same event, Dewar’s took the top three places in the Best Blended Scotch Over 25 Years Old category, and Macleod picked up Master Blender of the Year for the second time.
Final Thoughts
Seven categories, seven first-place finishes. Dewar’s clean sweep of the blended Scotch classes at the International Whisky Competition 2026 is striking, and it follows a pattern that goes back several years, including the Double Double 32’s Whisky of the Year win in 2020 and Stephanie Macleod’s consecutive Master Blender of the Year awards.
It is worth being honest about what we don’t know. The competition doesn’t publish how many other blended Scotch brands entered each category, so it’s hard to say how crowded the field was. Whilst this context matters, it isn’t the whole story either. These whiskies are the product of a consistent house style built on Aberfeldy malt, the double aging process, and the four-stage method behind the Double Double range, and they have collected awards well beyond this one competition.
Have you tried any of these Dewar’s expressions? Are there any on the list you’d like to seek out? And what do you make of a single brand taking every category? Let us know in the comments.
