What Does John Know?

What do you do when demand is great and your supplies are low—or you have gaps in your production?

In other words, what are so many whisky companies doing right now?

They’re introducing new expressions without age statements. Just look at some of the recent releases: Laphroaig Quarter Cask, Tomintoul Peated, Ardmore Traditional, Longrow CV, Benromach Organic. All of these are whiskies with no age statements. Whiskies with no age statements allows the producer the most flexibility possible—much more than whiskies with a vintage, or even an age statement.

Why do this? Well, realizing both the existing and projected demand for whisky, along with supplies that won’t come close to meeting demand, whisky companies have been cranking up production. But it’s a long time before this spirit can become  a 12, 15, or 18 year old expression.

What do you do in the meantime? You introduce a new expression with no age statement. This solves four problems for the whisky company:

1. It introduces a new expression, creating excitement for the brand.
2. It allows the company to begin using the stocks of whisky as young as three years old (the legal requirement), which they can blend in with older whiskies.
3. It allows them to dance around gaps in production.
4. It takes some of the pressure off of existing age-defined expressions which they know are, or will be, in short supply.

Of course, it’s not like this has never been done before. Remember Drumguish, which was the younger version of The Speyside whisky. Or how about Springbank CV, which came out when the distillery had really young whiskies and really old whiskies, but not much in the middle. And there was The Macallan Cask Strength, which was introduced after the distillery dropped the 15 year old expression(realizing that selling a 15 year old will delete 18 year old stocks three years later–duh!).

Now, I don’t expect companies to start putting three year old whisky on the market with no age statement. They don’t want to tarnish their reputation by selling an inferior product.

But, I do think we need to be cautious of any whisky introduced lacking an age statement. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding (or in this instance, the “proof” is in the bottle.)

Bottom line here: taste before you buy.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 7:00 am and is filed under Opinions, Scotch whisky. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.