A NOTE FROM OUR CELLARMASTER When I was very young, my parents would always make a point of sitting down to watch the news on television when it came on at 6.00pm. To a five year old whose experience with television was limited to Play School and Sesame Street, “the news” was a very strange, boring, and staid piece of viewing.
“WHAT IS ‘THE NEWS’?” I ASKED ONE DAY. MY DAD REPLIED, “IT’S THE SAME STUFF HAPPENING EVERY DAY, JUST TO DIFFERENT PEOPLE.”
Each year as I reflect back on the whisky year that was, it occurs to me that my dad’s sage observation about the news is equally applicable to the whisky industry: The same stuff happens each year, it’s just the names that get adjusted. New distilleries will open. Some distilleries will change ownership. New releases will appear, and some old favourites will be discontinued and disappear. Old brands will be resurrected; new independent bottlers and labels will be established. Distillery managers will move on or retire; brand ambassadors will swap places. There will be outrage as distilleries launch new NAS releases at high prices, and there will be a new record set at auction for the world’s most expensive whisky. It’s so predictable, you could almost be forgiven for thinking it’s all boring. But the reason it isn’t boring is because the names do change. The industry is wide enough and dynamic enough that there is interest, investment, and – to be honest – gossip about what’s happened, who did it, why they did it, and how it was done. And each little move on the chess board of whisky – whether by a pawn or a queen – has a ripple that impacts the industry and the consumer in some way. The fascinating thing, to me at least, is that some of these ripples don’t get felt for a long time. If the ripple has something to do with a distillery’s production, it could be 10-15 years before consumers experience
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