So short, and yet, so wrong

Here's something that's sad, yet funny. And made sad and funnier still, by something I'll reveal in a bit.

The following little snippet appeared in the online version (and appears in the January 23rd print version) of Time Europe.

Life Style Easy Drinking
A round up of the latest rounds. What's new at the bar for 2006

By Lisa McLauglin

Thursday, Jan. 12, 2006
Say goodbye to single-malt snobbery. It's time to toast the arrival of more approachable — and affordable — blended whiskeys. Scotland's Jon, Mark and Robbo's Malt Scotch Whisky blends — the Smokey Peaty One, the Rich Spicy One and the Smooth Sweeter One — are already hits with the 18-to-35-year-old set in Europe.

Now American distillers like Phillips Union are hoping to crack open the U.S. market with vanilla- and cherry-flavored blends.

OK, let's get started.

• Don't know why they switch back and forth between whisky and whiskey spellings.
• Smooth Sweeter is 70% Irish (Cooley's) and 30% Scotch (Bunnahabhain) so it isn't a blended Scotch whisky (much less a "Malt Scotch Whisky blend")
• Phillips Union does make a line of flavored, blended whiskies, but as it is made in the US, it is certainly not Scotch.
• What's so snobbish about Single Malt anyway? Why are blends more approachable. Or affordable for that matter?

ANYWAY
Ok, that's a lot of grief I'm giving to a (barely) 2 paragraph piece of filler. BUT (and here is the sad/funnier thing I mentioned earlier) THE SAME EXACT little snippet appeared in the December 19th issue of the US version of TIME magazine.

But here is the kicker...I KNOW FOR A FACT that someone - a person in the Scotch whisky industry - sent a letter to TIME to point out the flaws. I know, because they copied me:

Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2005 8:15 PM
To: 'letters@time.com'
Subject: Re: "Your Time" -19th December edition

Last week the venerable Wall Street Journal put its foot in it in a big way with a dreadful and inaccurate article about Scotch Whisky, and now TIME follows suit with the (thankfully) short article by Lisa McLaughlin.

For start, will someone out there please take on board the long established fact that Scotch whisky is not spelled WHISKEY ?  We Scots dispense with the E, while others prefer it (eg. American, and Irish whiskey). TIME displays a penchant for carelessness… in the lead paragraph of the article you use the correct spelling without the E, and then in the lower section headed “Big Spenders” the dreaded E shows up !  I offer my services as an eagle-eyed proofreader at a very modest fee.

While I’m at it, would you kindly explain to me, and the great unwashed out there, why blended Scotch malt whisky is necessarily more approachable and affordable than the far more distinctive single malts that abound ? The world of blended Scotch whisky, a product consisting of a mixture of single malts and grains Scotch whiskies, has been around since time immemorial, and I am at a loss as to why your writer has decreed that a mix of single malts to the exclusion of grain is magically cheaper and/or approachable than single malts, which can be had at prices below $20 and upwards.

While confessing that I have a vested interest in the issue at hand, as one who has had the good fortune to have thus far spent almost thirty years in the Scotch whisky industry, I have to say that I find your assertion that it is time to “…Say goodbye to single-malt snobbery”  (by the way – the hyphen is superfluous) absurd and wholly unsupported by any logical argument. Single malts are thriving in the U.S., consumers are undoubtedly enjoying them as growth in sales of these nectars is running well ahead of growth in blends’ sales, and the plethora of different distilleries’ wares at  prices that cover a wide spectrum which is in many instances at or below the level of many a blended Scotch, attest to the splendour of single malt which is enjoyed by people from all walks of life who harbour no sense of snobbery whatsoever when they imbibe what they simply enjoy.

There is a viable market for blended Scotch whisky (the mix of malts and grains), single malt Scotch whisky, and what we used to refer to as “vatted” malt which is now known as a blend of malts, and your publication does our industry a disservice with ill informed musings of the sort that you have just published.

Yours in some displeasure,

An industry guy I know.

So, these guys write something bad, ignore feedback from an industry person, and then reprint the same wrong stuff one month later. Funny. And sad.