A limited-edition Johnnie Walker Blue Label celebrating Chinese New Year. This is the Year of the Pig, the twelfth animal in the Zodiac which is a sign of good fortune, great personalities and enthusiasm for life.
Chrissy Lau adds her creativity to Johnnie Walker's Chinese New Year limited edition bottle design. Inspired by the Pig's qualities of generosity, prosperity and abundance for her art which looks glorious and exotic on the bottle. She explains, "This Johnnie Walker BLUE Label limited edition bottle celebrates the Year of the Pig for the Lunar/Chinese New Year....There is a sense of celebration and elegance, a perfect luxury keepsake."
Vanilla fudge, caramel, honey, and warming dry peat smoke are the first to arrive. Gentle spices sit in the background with the sweet fruity smell of raisins and the delicious baking flavours of glazed Danish pastries rounding it all out.
My goodness that is a soft delivery. There is a rich toffee silkiness and soft vanilla ice cream set of opening flavours and texture. It is joined by a gentle wood and peat smoke balance. It has a real dessert feel with crème caramels, honey, and milk chocolate all springing to mind. Not that it’s all sweetness and dairy-like. There’s a really gradual build of peppery oak spices. Some soft and sweet fruit notes in there like ripe peaches and some red berries, plus some toffee apples. The Danish pastry note is there again with the little raisin fruitiness and a vanilla custard filling.
Well yes… you won’t be surprised to see that this very “smooth”. Almost ice-cream like. It leaves a soft lingering oak spice and peat smoke trailing behind.
Johnnie Walker is one of the most instantly recognisable whisky names in the world, and the brand is the global best-selling Scotch, retailing close to 20m cases per annum, and being declared the most valuable premium spirit brand on the planet.
For many years Johnnie Walker offered Red Label and 12-year-old Black Label variants, but more recently the portfolio has been significantly expanded, and now also boasts Double Black (richer and smokier than Black Label), Gold Label Reserve, the 18-year-old Platinum Label and Blue Label. Blended malt Green Label has been reintroduced, and a succession of experimental releases under the Blender’s Batch has been seen in recent years.
Johnnie Walker Blue Label is the rarest and most expensive expression in the range, and a number of variants have been produced, including a King George V edition and Blue Label 2015 Limited Edition Design. Closed distilleries have been explored via Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ghost & Rare releases.
Johnnie Walker also has ‘Houses’ in a number of key Asian cities, such as Shanghai, Beijing, Mumbai, Seoul and Taipei, described as ‘multi-sensory embassies for luxury blended Scotch whisky’.
Taken at face value, the much-used advertising strapline ‘Born 1820 – still going strong’ implies that the whisky originates from that date, but it was actually a year earlier that 14-year-old John Walker made his first steps towards building an iconic whisky brand when he sold the family farm.
Walker opened his first grocery business in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, with the proceeds and eventually began to sell and make whisky, but it wasn't until 10 years after his death in 1857 that his son Alexander introduced the company’s Walker’s Old Highland Blend, the whisky that was the forerunner of Red Label and Black Label, created in 1909.
By that time, the unusual square bottle, introduced by Alexander Walker in the 1860s, and its slanting label were already familiar to consumers, and in 1908 cartoonist Tom Browne drew the ‘striding man’ figure which through various incarnations has remained a key element of the brand’s imagery.
John Walker & Sons acquired Cardhu distillery on Speyside in 1893, and the firm became part of the Distillers Company (DCL) in 1925, with DCL being acquired by Guinness during 1986. Guinness subsequently merged with Grand Metropolitan to form Diageo in 1997.
During the mid-1950s Johnnie Walker took its place as the world’s best-selling whisky, a position it has occupied ever since thanks in part to major investments in marketing. These have included the £100m ‘Keep Walking’ campaign.
Blue Label was added to the Johnnie Walker line-up in 1992, with Blue Label King George V introduced in 2008. Double Black was released in 2011, followed a year later by the Gold Label Reserve and Platinum Label variants. Having been absent from UK outlets since 1977, Red Label made a return to its home market in 1983, and was relaunched in 2013.
Johnnie Walker had retained a link to its ‘home’ town by being bottled in Kilmarnock, but Walker’s bottling plant there closed in 2012, with production switched to Diageo’s bottling facilities at Leven in Fife and Shieldhall in Glasgow.
In September 2015 Diageo unveiled Johnnie Walker's biggest global marketing campaign to-date. Named 'Joy Will Take You Further', the campaign is based on months of commissioned research into consumer behaviour and builds upon the brand's long-running 'Keep Walking' message.
In early 2016, Johnnie Walker Green Label – a blended malt aged for 15 years – was reintroduced four years after being axed from the range everywhere except Taiwan.
Recent years have seen a spate of new releases under the Walker name, including White Walker in association with TV show Game of Thrones, a series of ‘experimental’ Blender’s Batch launches, and an exploration of closed distilleries under the Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ghost & Rare banner.
In 2018, Diageo revealed plans to spend £150m on upgrading tourism facilities, including a new brand home for Johnnie Walker in Edinburgh, and improved visitor centres at Clynelish, plus Glenkinchie, Cardhu and Caol Ila, representing regional styles present in Walker.
The three-storey Johnnie Walker Experience, located in the former House of Fraser department store on Princes Street, will include facilities exploring Walker’s history, a rooftop bar, an events space for cultural activities and a hospitality academy.
