What Was the Scotch Whisky Boom? Part 1: Value vs. Volume
thekrav.blogspot.com
thekrav.blogspot.com
On a somewhat related note, it's interesting to see how small and simple some of these world-famous distilleries are. I visited Islay last summer and toured Ardbeg, Laphroaig, Lagavulin, Kilchoman, Bowmore, Bruichladdich, and a few others. Bowmore is definitely the Walmart of the bunch, while Kilchoman was more like a mom-and-pop operation.
It's worth knowing that most of the famous distilleries roll up to one of a couple mega-corps --- Diageo, Ricard, Suntory. Lots of those distilleries are small operations. It's the same in the US: the best known, best regarded bourbons are almost uniformly owned by giant companies.
There's an interesting comparison between the tours at, say, Aberlour (a mega-corp-owned large-scale distillery) and Benromach (an independent small-scale distillery). I'd rather tour the small operations. But honestly, I'd (mostly) rather drink the products of the larger ones.
(A warning: I'm more inclined to nerd out and even less qualified to hold forth on this topic than I am on criminal law or cryptography. Sorry!)
[0] http://recenteats.blogspot.com/p/the-complete-list-of-americ...
NDP practices are most notorious in American rye, where the majority of products come from a single ex-Seagrams distillery in Indiana called MGPI. Templeton is an NDP infamous for carefully concealing the fact that they're reselling commodity rye spirit. Chuck Cowdery, whose blog is well worth a read, calls them a "Potempkin Distillery".
But there are a lot of top-shelf brands that don't fit that description at all. The Buffalo Trace antiques --- Thomas Handy, for instance --- are genuine serious products. Of course, they trace back to Sazerac, which is a pretty big company; just look at all the stuff Barton Brands (also owned by Sazerac) sells.
That said: don't pay good money for Pappy. It's hugely overrated. A $25 bottle of Willett will give you a substantially similar spirit (also KBD), and one I like better than Pappy.
Unfortunately: the local, small operations tend to produce inferior products. Whiskey is a very difficult business to get good at. Among other things, it seems to be the case that you need to use gigantic barrels to produce top-quality whiskey, which favors companies that have a direct pipeline to large numbers of consumers.
Chuck Cowdery has a pretty good list of cheap bourbons you can't go wrong with, including Very Old Barton, Old Forester, Jim Beam Black Label, and Old Grand-Dad. I've been working my way through his cheap bourbon list and it's been pretty great.
As for the cheap bourbons, be careful, several have changed recipes recently or more troubling done away with their traditional age statements in shady ways (I'm looking at you Very Old Barton). Due to the demand for whiskey right now, anything with any age at all is being snapped up for NDP sale. Leaving the bottom shelf in worse shape than it used to be.
For inexpensive stuff look for Bottled in Bond (legally at least 4 years old, 100 proof, single distilling season). Still some real gems there, mostly from the good folks at Heaven Hill.
I know that the WL Weller 19 year that BT bottled years ago was my favorite of all time and the price for that has become obscene.
Looking forward to the general public moving on to whatevers next in the alcohol world. Fingers crossed it'll be tequila as that will never interfere with my tastes :)
After an hour we were ready and got taken around by a suited guide with gilded lapel badge. She took us through the usual history, distillation process and then to the tasting: a nice range of their ages and brands.
A slick, well-packaged distillery.
A few days later we arrived on Mull and toured the Tobermory Distillery. Small and cute just like the town. The tweeded master distiller had so many stories, transporting us back through its varied history.
That history sure made the dram taste great.
Looking forward to making it onto Islay next time.
Slàinte!
The big difference I noticed between big and small distilleries was automation. A large-scale distillery still has a blinged-out spirit safe, but the LCD screen showing the stats on the stills is more important, because it's what's making all the decisions. The Benromach people were doing all that stuff by hand and eyeball.
On the other hand: I'll probably drink 4 bottles of Balvenie for ever 1 bottle of Benromach I drink. I'll let you know when I manage to finish the first bottle of Benromach I bought. It's good stuff, but the big distilleries can produce stuff that's better.
NB When I was a student in the 1980s I used to work in the summers at one of the large industrial maltings.
[NB The automated titration machine they used as a reference for nitrogen levels was quite scary - all flames and concentrated acids being squirted about.]
Obviously a scotch drinker is going to want to stick to scotch, but there are very fine examples of other distilled beverages (rum, cognac/armanac, bourbon, anejo tequila/mescal) that are going to be as complicated on the palate for fractions of the price. At some point people will switch. The reason I haven't, honestly, is that there are still "bargains" in middle market scotch... it's not clear that intrinsic quality is driving market, as opposed to scarcity or marketing.
EDIT: sorry, got back to this thread a bit late. I echo the other commenter on the Ron Zacapa 23 or Centennario. That was specifically what I had in mind, and is a great launching point for exploring them. https://www.masterofmalt.com/samples/ will let you get 30ml samples for a modest markup and is a great way to try a lot w/o ruining your finances or liver. Astonishingly high end single malts available that way, too (I have no incentive to promote them whatsoever)
As for cognac, bourbon and tequila, I can definitely see your point there.
But you're right that there is a whole, wide world of high quality drinks to explore. High-end rum, tequila, even gin have a lot to offer in terms of slow, thoughtful consumption. [0] http://www.templetonrye.com/home/
You should avoid Templeton just because of the douchebag factor.
TR is a bit disingenuous, but not evil. It's a decent tasting product run by a small company in the middle of nowhere; certainly it was damn near impossible to get rye a few years ago and TR's marketing helped to change that. But like most whiskies, take the marketing with a demijohn of salt.
+1 to Willett.
Regarding Templeton, here's a decent reported source:
http://chuckcowdery.blogspot.com/2014/10/templeton-tale-gets...
I read several years ago that Templeton bought its rye from a distillery in Indiana and it wasn't much of a secret that it wasn't distilled in Iowa. So, maybe not the MGP name was known, but the name is kind of meaningless.
Further, they are walking a very tight line with regard to what additives they are using. In some places they are adamant that they are following "traditional" processes, and in others they happily invoke the additive to side step allegations of fraud/false advertising.
Personally, I have no problem with NDP brands, and think that the mixing of the various ingredients goes a long way to determining the quality of the final product. So even coming from a distillery in Indiana is not a problem (or even having a compelling Col. Sanders character sell your sauce).
But Templeton really does take it to another level. Not sure if that level is "evil" or not. But certainly douchbaggy.
What you're seeing in the Scotch boom isn't the sudden uplift of a formerly humble drink; it's the discovery and rediscovery of a noble drink by new markets. When and where rum has seen boutique, high-end mini-markets, they are usually driven by the marketing efforts of a firm or two, and they are usually impermanent. Even these usually promote rum as a mixing component -- which is a good way to remind people to consider rum as a vital component of the liquor cabinet, but not a great way to get them to appreciate it.
Now it's all a matter of taste but when it comes down to it, would you rather have a cheaper good quality rum or an average/poor scotch for the same price?
Scotch distillers are increasingly putting out non age statement bottlings of younger Scotch for prices that they once charged for 10 or 12 year matured Scotch, I think if they continue to do that those who've developed a taste for good spirit will look elsewhere and find Rum which is a very handy replacement.
The global rum market is dominated by a handful of huge beverage companies, all of whom have historically marketed their rum as a mixer. The two forces working to counter this image are the small-batch importers and the internet rum-aficionado community. In time, they may prove successful.
I will say this much, at least: there has never been a wider selection of great rum so readily available in the United States in my lifetime. Anyone whose opinion of rum has been colored by the paint thinner that Bacardi puts out should consider a bottle of Diplomatico, or aged Flor de Cana. The prices and quality go up from there, but for my money, those are some very good and very approachable sipping rums.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/11/05...
Although, I don't know about moderating prices. Finding a bottle of the Yamazaki has not been easy (particularly at a reasonable price).
EDIT: the Diageo special release pricing has gotten almost insulting.
EDIT: yup, tpacek, couldn't agree more. The Robert Parker of Whisky, to be taken with a grain of salt... but I'd say it's at least correlated with quality and an indicator of where the market is headed.
The problem, of course, is that the rest of the market tends to treat Murray's ratings as objective fact, so, for instance, when he declared Thomas Handy the best whiskey in the world a few years back, bottles became impossible to find. So maybe it's a blessing that Scotland has been demoted. :)
Aside from consumer demand, other production issues come up, like the fact that white oak casks/barrels are actually in such high demand that America is having a hard time keeping up the supply (basically everyone gets their high quality barrels from us).
And in general, the global market continues to increase due to new markets [developing countries], which is going to at least marginally drive the price up (because there aren't a flurry of new distilleries popping up).
www.gastrograph.com JasonCEC [at] the above url