What Does John Know?

Welcome to 2008 everyone. The whisky industry is booming. Distilleries are working at full capacity. New distilleries and new warehouses are being built.

But guess what? None of this is going to help us (the consumer) in 2008. All this will be great in a decade or two, but demand out-stripping supply in the short term is going to make it rough for us in several ways.

• Prices will continue to rise much faster than inflation. You think whiskies are expensive? Just wait.
• Some expressions will be phased out due to lack of stock. Expect to see a continuation of the trend of new expressions lacking age statements, allowing the distiller more latitude in cask selection.
• Independent bottlers will continue to struggle accessing stocks of quality whisky. My advice here: try before you buy to make sure you know what you’re getting.

There is a silver lining in this whisky cloud. As companies adjust their portfolios to supply us whisky driven by the strained stocks they have, they will introduce new expressions over the next several years to replace existing ones for which they can’t fulfill the demand. This should be exciting.

(A more detailed discussion of this topic appears in the upcoming 1st Quarter 2008 issue of Malt Advocate magazine)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 2:50 pm and is filed under Opinions. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.