The Scotch Blog

More peat! Less Oban? Powered by Aberlour. Better Excuse?

More Peat

The crazy bastards at Bruichladdich are getting ready to fire up the stills for a new expression of yet another heavily peated mash.

This one, to be called Lochindaal (after the large body of water just yards from the front gate - and also one of the names that the now long gone Port Charlotte distillery went by) will be peated to 50 ppm +/-.

That's a bit higher than the recently released Port Charlotte (40 ppm) and much lower than the yet to be released Octomore (80 ppm +/-).

The first distillation is planned for October 26th 2007 and  the first 100 casks of the distillation will be offered for sale to the public at £1850 a cask.

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Less Oban?

A reader wrote to ask about rumors regarding Oban 14 year old being in short supply.

I pinged my contact at Diageo who denied this rumor:

Thanks for your question about Oban. I've checked with the brand team and they have confirmed that we will have the same quantity of Oban in the coming year in the US as we've had in the past couple of years.

Subsequently, some non-Diageo sources told me otherwise.

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Powered by Aberlour

Apparently Aberlour is the "un-official" favourite whisky of British troops in Iraq.

An Irish soldier, who formerly lived in Elgin, started recommending (and providing) it to his colleagues.

Officially speaking these soldiers aren't supposed to have whisky whilst "on duty", but whose going to deny them?

Maybe Gordon Brown can make friends among the troops and support Scotland at the same time by air-dropping a couple of casks?

No, I did not get this rumor from Aberlour ;)

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Better Excuse (than the last few?)

"The current plan to build a distillery at Catfirth, Nesting, has been delayed because of Blackwood chief executive Caroline Whitfield's personal circumstances regarding her divorce."

Later in the story...

"The shareholder added that following speculation that Blackwood may go into liquidation and then reinvent itself, he felt the company would be unlikely to attract local investors a second time."

Shetland Today (Thanks, Brian M.)

Crown Royal Cask No. 16

Crown Royal, everyone's favorite Canadian blended whisky, is getting the special treatment. Or at least a single expression of it is.

Crown Royal Cask No. 16 begins with a blend of more than 50 different aged whiskies. The blend is then placed in French oak casks which had previously held cognac. There is no age statement associated with the bottling.

Marketing Bull Alert: Despite the name, there's no indication that this is the product of a whisky finished in a single cask.

This new expression should be available across the US by the third week of October, but I had a chance to try it early.

Mine came is a small sample bottle - but when you buy yours, it will come "in a faceted 750ml decanter-style bottle, which is wrapped in a black velvet bag with gold stitching. The bottle is then encased in a black and gold gift tube."

Sounds very posh.

But what about the taste?

Bags and decanter-style bottles aside, this is good stuff.

Nose: The winey notes on the nose are unmistakable, with a good dollop of oak (maybe a little too much?) - but all in all the entire nose is very subtle, very clean and very pleasant.

Taste: Oh yeah, that characteristic Canadian rye bite is there, but much more subtle than your standard Canadian. The cognac has done a good job of taming the rye.

First you get hit with a fruit-sugar sweetness - followed by the bite. Complexity? Medium, but often complexity is lost in favor of smoothness. And Cask No. 16 is very smooth. Most of the complexity is contained in the finish.

Finish: The rye comes back in a long finish with which turns slightly bitter at the very end. Late finish is very much like cognac or a dry white. Wait a second. What's that? Irish Soda bread!?! Yeah that's it. I get the dryness and sweetness (and occasional raisin) one gets in a bite of Irish Soda Bread. Damn it, I love Irish Soda Bread!

All in all, this is an excellent premium whisky and Crown Royal gets a fair shake from the cognac finish.

Crown Royal Cask No. 16
SRP: $100 (USD)
40% abv

Here's Johnnie

I always look forward to pieces by Will Lyons in Scotland on Sunday.He recently did a piece on Johnnie Walker that goes beyond the usual reporting on facts and figures and gets to the heart of the real story.

Love it or hate it, Johnnie Walker is the face of Scotch whisky to much of the world. And as much derision as I give Diageo for some of their marketing practices, the JW brand follows the "Erskine Prescription" for whisky marketing - desist "castles and kilts" marketing and focus on lifestyle and taste - and Diageo has done a bang-up job of this over the years.

Here are the first few paragraphs of this great story....

Here's Johnnie

Sunday, September 2, 2007
William Lyons

IT WAS a damp, bleak November morning seven years ago when Ivan Menezes, global marketing director for Diageo's spirits division, unveiled a £100m marketing push for the group's flagship brand.

It was to be the group'€™s first ever global advertising campaign and came on the back of a lengthy period of stagnation for Johnnie Walker and a fall in sales. The new adverts marked a significant departure from the traditional Scotch advertising that relied on Highland glens, roaring log fires and cut-glass tumblers full of whisky. In their place were images of Harvey Keitel confronting his stage-fright and Ramon Kelvink, a French tightrope walker, crossing from one New York skyscraper to another.

Fielding questions from the assembled press pack, Menezes denied that the new campaign, which was to focus on South America, was taking Scotland out of Scotch.

€œ"We are losing older drinkers by the bucketful," he fulminated, "but only gaining new ones by the thimbleful. We will all benefit from everyone focusing on building brands and making their brands relevant to younger consumers. We are going to revitalise the category by relevant brand building."

Fast forward to last Thursday morning and it was very much mission accomplished. Delivering full-year results to the City, Paul Walsh, Diageo's chief executive, bullishly announced that Johnnie Walker had enjoyed a record year. Exceeding all expectations he told the market that whisky drinkers had spent £3.5bn on more than 15 million cases in the past year.

This one brand now accounts for half of Diageo's Scotch whisky sales and £1bn of £7bn group turnover. At any one time there are seven million bottles waiting to mature at its 27 distilleries in Scotland, making it the third largest spirit and wine brand in the world. To put it another way, 178 glasses of Johnnie Walker are now consumed every second.

A day later, speaking by telephone from Amsterdam, Johnnie Walker'€™s global brand director, Ben Anderson, echoed his sentiments.

"It now truly is a global brand. It is drunk in more than 200 countries and is the number one selling Scotch by a country mile. With our sponsorship of Lewis Hamilton's Formula One team we are exposed to more than four billion people around the world every year. It is fair to say Johnnie Walker sits firmly alongside the world's iconic brands. You see this in people's reaction to Johnnie Walker from Sao Paulo to Shanghai. It'€™s just phenomenal; there is a real passion for this brand."

Read the rest of the story at Scotland on Sunday....