Two charts show the top 20 blended whisky and  single malt whisky brands as published in the  2010 Scotch Whisky Industry Review.

The blended whisky figures are in millions of cases; the malts are as stated, so the biggest selling single malt sells somewhere between the volume of Old Parr and High Commissioner blended  whiskies.

In the Single malts chart you will note two blended whiskies, one vatted malt and one pure malt, rather crudely underlined I'm afraid. Since they are not single malts, one wonders why they are included in this chart - but there you are. From the 23rd November these four brands will all be known as Blended Malts. Nothing wrong with vatting single malts together of course.

You can see the attraction for the big brands: how can we make more money out of a brand that is so successful that it sells almost 15 million cases? De luxe bottlings? Sure - done that. But how can we get some of the margin we earn from single malts with the volume of blended whisky - the Holy Grail. 

The answer is to combine the credibility - and authority - of a new category with a name which sounds like the best of both worlds.  Hey presto - blended malt.