Tasting Success

Perfectly Balanced: The 2013 Ballantine's Championship Blend

In addition to taking home the Ballantine’s Championship Trophy, Rumford also took away a prize money cheque for €367,500 (about US$487,000) and a rare bottle of Ballantine’s 2013 Championship Blend, co-created by 2012 champion Bernd Wiesberger and Ballantine’s Master Blender Sandy Hyslop. Rumford received the first of only 10 bottles produced, none of which will be sold.

Since the inaugural event in 2008, Ballantine's has established the unique tradition of producing an exclusive Championship Blend each year, with Hyslop guiding the previous winner through tasting of extremely rate and high quality grain and malt whiskies to assess which flavours he prefers before carefully blending the golfer's selection – and it will be Rumford's turn in 2014.

Wiesberger aside, Lee Westwood, Graeme McDowell and Marcus Fraser have all been granted the same privilege in previous years.

Austrian Wiesberger, who claimed the Ballantine's Championship by five shots last year for his first European Tour victory, said of his whisky creation: "It was really interesting. A lot like learning about wine and tasting different flavours. They let me pick whichever flavours I wanted and I went with something rougher, more rustic, with an oak-flavour. Nothing too fruity. They just bottled them recently, so I'm hoping to get mine soon, but I don't plan to ever open it. It's something so unique and special to keep that I can't see myself ever wanting to open it."

Ballantine's official tasting notes describe Wiesberger's creation as "silky smooth with fantastic creamy toffee / fudge flavours complemented perfectly by a delicate nutty, oaky background."