Hi Kevin,
Hope you're doing well. Here's a column I did for The Wall Street Journal trying to explain independent bottlings to those who might be understandably confused by the proliferation of bottles labeled with the same distillery names.
cheers,
Eric
The Single-Malt Independents
By ERIC FELTEN
The Wall Street Journal
July 12, 2008; Page W7
The Macallan is one of the best-known and best-loved
single-malt whiskies, with prices to match. A bottle of The Macallan
18-year-old Scotch generally retails for around $140. So it must have
been distressing for the distillery's management when Costco started
selling 18-year-old Macallan-made whisky for $60. The bottles are
labeled with the discount house-brand "Kirkland" at the top; but just
below, in letters nearly as large, are the words "Macallan Distillery."
Plenty of chatter on Web bulletin boards has
questioned whether the Kirkland malt could be proper Macallan whisky --
perhaps, some speculated, this was a batch gone wrong that the
distillery offloaded at a discount. Not so. It was just that 20 years
ago, Macallan had excess capacity. "We were still producing more liquid
than we could sell," according to Patricia Lee in Macallan's marketing
department. "We sold the surplus new-make spirit to independent
bottlers to store and bottle in their own time under their own label."
![[Drinks photo]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PT-AJ046_Drinks_20080711190035.jpg) |
| Dylan Cross for The Wall Street Journal
|
This might seem like shocking carelessness with one's
brand equity -- imagine if Coke sold off excess syrup, letting anyone
and everyone market independent versions of Coca-Cola. Ms. Lee allows
that "it does cause some confusion." But Scottish distillers have been
doing business this way for well over a century.
Scotch distilleries traditionally did not themselves
bottle or market their whiskies. They sold it by the barrel to brokers
and blenders who mixed them to create blended whiskies such as Chivas
Regal, Johnnie Walker and Dewar's. For decades, just about the only way
to get a bottle containing whisky from an individual distillery -- that
is, a single malt -- was from an independent bottler. Many of these,
such as William Cadenhead, were liquor and wine merchants who bought
barrels of whisky for their shops and offered them, unblended, to their
customers. Savvy Scotch drinkers learned to look for these single malts
because they had quirky and compelling character lacking in even the
best blends. Were it not for independent bottlers, there might never
have been a single-malt revolution. Thanks to the success of the
independents, the distillers realized they should start bottling their
malts and create marketable brands of their own. "Independents molded
the industry," says Euan Shand, managing director of one such firm,
Duncan Taylor & Co Ltd. "Multinationals who bought into it are
reaping that benefit."
And reaping a few headaches too. Take Caol Ila
(pronounced cull-EE-la), a lovely, well-balanced malt from the peaty
island of Islay. It's only in the past five years that drinks giant
Diageo has decided (and a very good decision it was) to make the whisky
one of its core, premium brands. But Diageo has had to contend with a
surfeit of Caol Ila on the market: In the 1970s, the distillery
expanded to six stills from two, and it long had plenty of excess
spirit to sell to the brokers. Now that Diageo is investing serious
money to promote the malt, umpteen independent bottlings have hit the
market.
I had to visit only two local liquor stores to come up
with three independent bottlings of Caol Ila, a 10-year-old version
from Gordon & MacPhail's "Connoisseurs Choice," and 14-year-old
versions from Murray McDavid and the Signatory Vintage Scotch Whisky
Co. Ltd. None were Costco-style bargains -- in fact, the 12-year-old
official distillery bottling was the best buy. Nor were any of the
bottles second-rate examples of Caol Ila. They were like fraternal
twins -- not quite identical, but with interesting personalities of
their own. The Gordon & MacPhail was slightly drier than the
official Caol Ila; the Murray McDavid, stored in sherry casks, was much
sweeter and fruitier; the Signatory had a bright, fresh quality.
The official bottling remains the best bet for "the
majority of our drinkers [who] look for consistent character and
quality," says Diageo's global malt director, Nick Morgan. And there's
a lot to be said for consistency. When you're spending $50 or $60 for a
bottle, you may not want it to be a crap shoot. But the risk is small
-- most of the independent bottlings I've bought over the years have
been perfectly worthy. Not that I haven't run into the occasional
stinker -- pallid stuff from an exhausted barrel that had been recycled
too many times. Even so, if there is a single malt you love, it's well
worth exploring the variations to be found in independent bottlings of
the brand.
But do it while you can: As demand for single malts
has grown, distilleries have become shy about supplying intermediaries.
"It's a sign of the times that major distillers are no longer willing
to sell casks to the independents for private bottling," says Mr. Shand
of Duncan Taylor. "I believe the multinationals will slowly squeeze the
lifeblood out of the independents." Diageo's Dr. Morgan doesn't
disagree: "As distillers recognize the importance of their single-malt
brands," they will increasingly want "to protect their brand equity and
control the quality of the final product."
Anticipating a drought, the middlemen are looking to
guarantee their supply. As Alistair Hart of the independent bottler
Hart Brothers slyly puts it, the "poachers have turned game keepers."
Gordon & MacPhail led the way, buying the Benromach distillery in
1993; Signatory now owns tiny Edradour; Bruichladdich is humming under
the ownership of the Murray McDavid crew; and independent blender and
bottler Ian Macleod Distillers Limited is proprietor of the stills at
Glengoyne.
Now that bottlers are on the other side of the
branding divide, how eager are they to do business with other
independents? Not very. Says Gordon & MacPhail marketing manager
Ian Chapman: "Production of Benromach under Gordon & MacPhail's
ownership is owned and bottled by Gordon & MacPhail."
