Whisky Online Blog

In my office at work I have a selection of bottles open for ‘official research purposes’. Some of the most interesting’ research’ I conduct, usually with visiting dignitaries and fellow whisky academics, is the comparison between two particular bottles. These bottles are both Glenmorangie 10yo, the difference being one was bottled last year and one was bottled in the late 1970s. Above all other distilleries I think Glenmorangie’s current house style best represents what I mean when I talk about a ‘modern’ style of whisky. I think it works because it is so clearly in this vein of up-front, wood-dominated distillate but, most importantly, it is also of a good, generally consistent quality. This makes it strikingly obvious when you put it side by side with an older version just how much the style has evolved in the space of 30 years. Time to finally write some notes on these two long distance siblings.

Glenmorangie 10yo. OB. Rotation 2011. 40%. 70cl. 

Colour: Straw Gold

Nose: At first its these slightly over-heady aromas of paint, turpentine, wood resin, lactones, sap and a rather acidic vanilla note. Lots of wood shavings, saw dust and fresh workshop notes, like sniffing a freshly used belt sander. This is so typical of these, modern whiskies that are full of wood technology, all that first fill bourbon comes right to the fore. It’s not unpleasant but it seems a little uncomplicated. Given some time though there is also some very pleasant fruits starting to emerge. Notes of green apple, kiwi and juicy fruit bubblegum all come through with further hints of dried spices, crushed banana skins, dried mint, furniture oils and something quite milky. Its the kind of nose that rewards patience and a very fresh palate.

Palate: The sweetness is first as expected but it’s very luxurious and quite mouth-coating. All the usual suspects of creme brulee, vanilla essence, pear drops and cocoanut are there. But also the sharpness of green apples, hints of black tea, more quite heavy wood lactones, brown sugar, hints of young rum and more of these pine and sappy notes. The palate is very much in keeping with the nose, very concise in its directness and composure. It is also somewhat lacking in complexity in the same way but it is super easy and very quaffable. Goes on with a little herbal note like herb liqueur and touches of buttered toast.

Finish: Surprisingly good length with more butter, generic vanilla, creaminess and some notes of sour apples.

Comments: I think this batch is probably quite a bit better than other versions I’ve tried in recent times. I think it is a very well composed ‘statement’ bottling by the owners. It’s not my style of whisky, as any brief perusal of the back pages of this blog will tell you, but it is a good example of that modern style. whenever I want to illustrate that modern/old style divide in a tasting I tend to use Glenmorangie 10yo and that is not about to change any time soon. The question is though, does the excessive wood cover the distillery character in the distillate or is there any distillery character left to cover? This makes me want to try a modern Glenmorangie from refill wood asap…

Score: 78/100 (That’s an improvement upon recent batches I’d say)

Glenmorangie 10yo. OB. Screw cap. Rotation late 1970s/early 1980s. 40% 75cl. 

Colour: Straw Gold (interestingly identical)

Nose: This is a different animal entirely. Whereas the stickiness of the wood in the first one was the dominant factor, with this one its all about the drier qualities. Loads of wax, shoe polish, mineral notes, limes and many other citrus notes. Wild flowers, butter, herbs, different kinds of fruits come through with tropical leanings of banana puree and melon, then slightly greener aspects like peach tea, chamomile and nettles. With time there is more of this flinty minerality and also some slightly metallic touches of peat. Whereas the first one was very direct, compact and modern this one is in almost another dimension. A perfect example of the old highland style, very naked, very distillate driven, highly aromatic and elegant. Not easy or sexy like the 2011 version but much more beguiling, complex and charming.

Palate: Again this is in keeping with the nose, lots of of delicate heathery smoke, old wax, soft peats, touches of metal, motor oil, caraway seeds, fennel, chamomile tea, olive oil, wood resins, more wild floral qualities and even something slightly coastal. Hints of waxed lemons, bubblegum, treacle, oatcakes and an elegant savory spiciness. The palate is not without traces of OBE but it is in no way tired and it certainly retains its bite. Quite beautiful really.

Finish: Soft but long and fresh. Lots of fresh herbs, citrus fruits, whiffs of dunnage, smoke, mustard seed and coal.

Comments: I love this style of whisky and to taste it side by side with the modern version with a fresh palate in the middle of the afternoon is just quite gobsmacking. It never ceases to amaze me how much changed in whisky production over the last 40 years. This is one of the most illuminating tastings you can to do see the effects of these changes laid bare before you. I urge to try and do a similar tasting if at all possible. You can still find old bottles of Glenmorangie 10yo for pretty good prices so give it a whirl. You’ll be amazed at what you find.

Score: 88/100

If you were to travel back in time to 18th century Scotland and explore the pandemic culture of illicit distillation that ran through Scotland like a spine in those days what would you discover? No doubt a fledgling industry that was almost completely underground and rural in its nature. You would taste a different drink, one more potent and unforgiving than anything produced in the modern distilleries of today. A drink made by different people, surprisingly few of whom would speak much English. What reasons would these people give for their distilling practices? They might enjoy the thumb-biting aspects of their endeavors towards the Gaugers and men from the revenue, a trait that remains embedded in the Scottish character like a meteorite even now centuries later. They would also say it brought financial reward as they could smuggle it down to Glasgow, Edinburgh or the northern cities of England where they would receive good money for their methanol-laced, liqueur-like wares. What you might also discover as the central reason for their distilling efforts, though it may be harder to pin them down upon, is that they did it because it brought them joy. It may have been a useful way to use up the left over grains from a harvest and to fortify their beer so it might last longer or go further. But the fortuitous result was that it produced a liquid of intense potency that could hold sway over the senses and steel a person’s body to the cold (it would be a number of decades before the link between alcohol and hyperthermia was established). It gave them a drink that went some way to alleviating the harshness of life in the face of Scotland’s unforgiving landscapes and the cruel, fairness-starved society men had built there. Whisky’s invention may have come about as a series of accidental discoveries, happenstance and quirks of history but its purpose was both clear and almost instantaneous once it had arrived. It got you pished, and when life was that hard, it felt good to get pished on the frequent side of moderation.

Jump forward through the centuries and what has changed? On the face of it everything is different. Whisky as drink has not only a new  definition by grace of evolution, it has a language and a respect afforded it as one of the world’s great artisanal beverages. What would the crofter of the 1700s make of our world of tasting notes, single casks, vintages, regional classifications, brand ambassadors, science, marketing, nerdy fervor and collecting? I’m sure they would be deeply perplexed by it all. But look a little deeper, while the drink itself may be vastly different, has its purpose altered all that much? Why do we drink whisky? The most basic answer can only be that we enjoy it, we drink whisky because it makes us happy. It’s just that life is more luxurious for the majority of us these days and thus more complicated, and with that complexity comes a new variety in the ways we define that happiness.

Today's whisky tastings would no doubt be a thing of utter mystery to the crofters and distillers of the 18th century.

The most obvious way we garner enjoyment from whisky is through the sharing of it. The passion we hold dear for its flavour, power and character, shared and communicated with those of like mind throughout the world, the subsequent memories and friendships it nurtures and the good times that ripple forth through the years. Those are the most commonly lauded foundations of a love for whisky. But whisky’s power lies not only in the creation of joy, it is equally a master at the staving off and prevention of sorrow, the absence of pain can be the presence of relief. The numbing of a tired soul, the smothering of regret, resentment and anguish, these are all weapons in whisky’s armory, ones that harken back to the reasons of the distillers and drinkers of centuries gone by much more directly than our more commonly acknowledged celebratory patterns of consumption.

In moments of despair whisky can soothe you at a base and dark depth more so that any other drink. It reaches down your throat into the pit of your being like a loving hand decked in gloves of velvet fire. It calms the swell on oceans of thought and inner turmoil and holds at bay the monsters at your mind’s door. Of course it’s all well and good to write so poetically or romantically about the process of seeking solace in the bottom of a glass of spirits. It’s very easy to write such things but the fact is we all know that such a path leads to alcoholism if left unchecked. A story that has been repeated ad nauseam throughout Scottish history. From the glory days of illicit distilling in the early 1700s, throughout the clearances, then urbanisation, industrialisation and the days of empire, war, factories, shipbuilding, tenements, poverty, class-segregation and post-war rejuvenation. Scotland holds an embarrassed and fragile veil over the darker angles of its domestic history. Peel away at the edges and you will find a bottlomless pit of the same stories and their all too repetitive buzz-words: poverty, alcoholism and domestic violence. Women racing to the pub to stop their husband spending every last penny of his wages on drink only to receive bruises and slurred vitriol for her efforts.

A cartoon from 1825 depicting a Glasgow couple fighting whilst unaware that their child drowns in the dishwater. This was an all too common domestic scene throughout the 1800s.

This is an extreme I’m talking about but the fact that it has been such an undeniable blight on this country for hundreds of years cannot go ignored. Yet despite all the ruin that whisky (and alcohol in general lest we be unfair to just whisky) has wrought over the years through those that turned to it or made it as a source of escape and solace, despite all that it still has the power to comfort us in a more decent way. If I feel down I tend not to drink so much purely because I am out socialising less, I steer clear of the pubs and clubs out of a desire not to inflict my misery guts tendencies on others who are having a perfectly good time. When I do drink it is almost always a dram, not many of them, but one or two different ones. It is in these times that the flavours of whisky can be at their most comforting and nourishing, the distraction they offer, the quiet contemplation of their character, poise and beauty is something I find quite positive and uplifting to focus on. To simply be at peace and let the vapors, textures and flavours wash through you feels somehow cleansing and relaxing. As if each sip of flavour dissolves with its passing another tendril of tension. In fact I might go as far as to say that the happier I am the less often I drink whisky. I wonder what that says about it’s power and effects? Is it by nature the toast of the miserable? Or am I simply a bit of an enigma wrapped up in a blithering twit?

I must have been particularly miserable on this occasion. The twit theory clearly holds quite some water as well.

A love of whisky knows many avenues and reasons. I think for all our focus upon it as a social drink, and rightly so in light of the chronic negative aspects of its various darker histories and domestic associations, we should not be ashamed to acknowledge the more traditional restorative powers with which it is imbued. Not necessarily physical, but emotionally and spiritually it can have a powerful and positive effect upon a person. We rightfully celebrate whisky as a social drink, but we should not be afraid to acknowledge the other strings it bears on its bow. To take a drink in quiet solitude has negative connotations, some not unfounded but there is room here for reclamation. Whisky is not without guilt, it has been the spark to many a fire of violence, the call to addiction and the rot of physical ruin. But these are not its true purposes or aspirations as a drink, it is an intellectual spirit, wild with complexity and bearing a stamina of character that few other drinks can match. It lends itself to a multitude of moods and circumstances, that it can be equally a drink of comfort as it can of joy is something truly worth remembering and celebrating. After all, the joy of friendship, love and good society is not always appreciated without the heavier moments of loneliness, sadness and loss in our lives. That we have a drink that can bend to the needs and nuances of both instances is a remarkable thing indeed.

What is the value of whisky to you? There is much talk of whisky speculation, investment, expanding markets, developing markets, collecting, consumption, branding and super-premium these days. Is it a coincidence that it all seems to have come at a time when I’ve just started a new job in a relatively youthful auction house? Or is my position a symptom of circumstance or, worse still, the ‘market’? I know for a fact that my job exists because its existence facilitates profit. We talk a lot about value these days. I see all the rants, raves and comments about it coagulating like puddles on the shores of social media. I hear it when I speak to the retailers. Margins, allocations and profits are getting tighter and tighter, the auctioneers are winning and the retailers are fighting up hill. Is this all because there is less and less of the old stuff to go around, the juicy old bottles that everyone wants. The spiraling auction prices and the increasing feeling that the old bottles and new releases are two separate worlds would seem to suggest so.

The star bottles in our latest auction. How many of us can now afford to obtain, let alone open, bottles such as these?

But there is a bigger picture here I think. All this increasing talk of value or perception of value seems indicative of a trending change in the way many of us think about whisky. How many of us can now afford to open old 1960s Laphroaigs or 1950s Macallans? These bottles have become tokens, they are symbolic of their perceived worth, in short, they are currency. Ten years ago there was McTears in Glasgow, they held whisky auctions no more than four times a year. Christie’s and Sotheby’s did fine wine auctions but that is something still far divorced from whisky in terms of the truly astronomical prices and quantities, it was then and it still is. Now we have the online specialist aucitoneers Whisky Auction, Scotch Whisky Auctions and more on the horizon no doubt. We have McTears (now on ten auctions a year), Bonhams and, most recently, Mulberry Bank Auctions, where I work. There will almost certainly be further additions to this list in the next year and I haven’t even mentioned all the smaller auction houses in Britain that do occasional whisky auctions or specialist sections of larger auctions dedicated to whisky. There has been an explosion of whisky at auction over the past decade, in both prices achieved and quantity sold. But what does it all mean?

One of the best illustrations of why whisky has value is Ardbeg Manager's Dram. Bottled in 1999 it was a single cask of astonishing quality and character. The bottles were practically given away at £69 a piece. Now enough people want one of these incredible bottles that the price is nudging £2000 a pop.

With straightforward analysis it means that the desire to drink great whisky, coupled with the cumulative effect of three decades worth of cheap to fairly priced, good to outstanding quality whiskies being steadily released around the world, has created a huge demand and an ever dwindling supply. Their inevitable consumption means there are more people who want to hoard/collect and drink than there are bottles left to satisfy these demands. It also means there are many people who kept or own these bottles, for whatever reason, and are increasingly persuaded to part with them, almost always because they seem too valuable to justify keeping. Or they were keen eyed enough to spot an opportunity and played it with an eye to raw investment. The bottom line is money has the power to exert influence over our perceptions of what something is for and what we are willing to do with it. I swore I would never part with the small selection of very special bottles I had gathered throughout the previous decade, but then in 2010 I had an overdraft and I badly wanted to go traveling . Needless to say I soon found out that I wasn’t so attached to them after all, I could no longer justify sitting on several thousand pounds worth of bottled liquid. Do I miss those bottles? No, not really, one or two that were unique and I’ll never see again, but I’ve been fortunate enough to taste most of them already in my lifetime and I’ll taste many more great drams so I don’t feel too precious about it. But the point is they evolved in my mind from potential bottled memories and stored olfactory beauty into the achievable fantasy of black ink on my bank statement instead of red and a few more stamps in my passport.

Unlike Whisky, it's impossible to put a price on the best experiences in your life. After the time I had in South America I'll never regret selling my bottles for a second.

People rant and rave about whisky being for drinking a lot these days, it is the understandable and ill informed reaction to the many discussions about collecting/investing/speculating (call it what you will). People seem awfully proud to blurt out their philosophy that ‘Whisky is for drinking not for collecting’ every time they hear of a bottle being stored in a dark cupboard rather than immediately cracked open with pristine abandon while the cork burns in the fire. Of course whisky is for drinking, it is after all a drink, that is the very reason these bottles are expensive. Forget the artificially expensive Dalmore (insert ludicrous latin name here) for a minute, these are different beasts altogether. I’m talking about the vast majority of older bottles and the more desirable, modern independent bottlings, these whiskies acquire great expense because people want to own and drink them (because word spread out from the many that already have). The number of people acquiring them for purely monetary purposes is nothing like the number of people who want to keep them with a view to one day drinking them.

There are more of these old bottles getting opened than you might imagine. That's another reason for their ever increasing value. (And yes I know it's a Cognac but give me a break.)

However, if you’ll allow me to play Devil’s advocate to myself for a moment there is a flip side. Whisky is for drinking. I come back to my original question, what is the value of whisky to you? Is it a drink that stokes the fires of great company and friendship? Is it grease to the cogs of late night imagination? Is it the ink that outlines and shades your greatest and darkest memories? Is it a liquid bound up in tears and laughter, one that toasts the fortunes and mourns the people and joys that happenstance cuts out of your life? This is where our passion for whisky often lies, it is born in the avenues of surprise and exploration and it is a glorious journey. But we are changing, these perceptions are being all too often forgotten and swept away in the face of the behemoth of money and its sticky fingers that latch onto every corner of our lives. We have made an enemy of our own passions. ‘Whisky’ is now an industry with sub-markets, markets forged by the very love we feel for the drink that started us on this journey in the first place. The prices now paid for the great bottlings are a measure of the length to which we are willing to go for our love of ‘the hard stuff’. At the end of the day these prices are paid because there are more than enough people with the money and the will to pay it who want these whiskies. The same money and keen willpower that has fired this expanding market for rare and desirable bottles.

When we speak of wine nowadays it suffers from an image of middle-class, Guardian-reading, bourgeois association. It is linked with wealth, food matching, Michelin stars and snobbery. The mainstream press chooses to forget in these instances (whenever it suits them) the vast quantities of people who nightly chastise their innards with litres of putrid Blossom Hill swill. The predominant and popular image is of finery and privilege. A shame that, amongst these two ends of the spectrum, is often lost the truth that wine was, and often remains, a grassroots, agricultural industry. One that requires great skill and offers simple and delicious reward beyond the obvious financial return. Wine’s rustic origins and proud role in the history of human decadence, zest for life and earned indulgence is often lost or forgotten amidst a global industry hell bent on image, price control and premium products aimed at premium clientele. Whisky it seems, in this sense, is not far behind. The only difference is whisky will never be as big as wine. The idea that a case of old whisky, even something like Malt Mill (God willing!) would match the price at auction of a case of 1870 Latour (if one should ever come up for sale), is somewhat ludicrous. Whisky is acting bigger than it is, and therefore it feels like it is bursting at the seems a little bit. It makes you wonder how much longer these markets can sustain themselves. How much higher in price can these top end Ardbegs and Port Ellens go? Whisky as an industry has always had its big ups and very big downs. It has also quite noticeably always failed to learn from its own history. Probably something to do with it being a long term product that requires great age and, as a result, the people that sell it are often replaced every ten-twenty years with a new set of people with big wide dollar signs in their eyes, all looking straight ahead into developing markets and never glancing over their shoulder to what has gone before. This specialist and rare whisky market is still a relatively new beast, I wonder how long before it, like the the rest of the industry at large has several times already, takes its first tumble? Is it just me or does it feel like we’re in those slow, steep, up-hill moments before the roller-coaster plunges…

A visual history of the Whisky industry.

I know that we all love whisky, with great passion. All this social media debating and all these blogs (including this one) wouldn’t exist without that love. I’ll be honest right now and say I’m not a fan of capitalism and the vast profiteering its structures can facilitate, despite the obvious fact that I am one of many who has undeniably reaped more than my fair share of its spoils over the years in the guise of privilege. With this in mind I have often struggled to reconcile my love of an increasingly expensive drink and the money I’ve paid for it on many an occasion, with the vastly unfair distribution of wealth on this planet. I suppose my musings today have been largely driven by these internal conflicts. Whatever it is, I am increasingly having to remind myself that whisky is, first and foremost, a source of joy, along with art, music, love, sex, films, expression, adventure, exercise, food of greater extravagance than is considered essential, literature and general festivities. These are the apps of life, not just to alleviate pain but to actively provide joy and decadence, to make life worth living. We have an abundance of them here in the west which is partly why so many of us are curdled by gnawing guilt. But the fact is we have them and we should not be ashamed to enjoy them so long as we appreciate our incredible good fortune to have them. I’m just sad to see that whisky is being transported ever upwards and away from these more humble spheres into realms where it is often all too easy to forget (or just to fucking expensive to remember) why we truly love it.

So, what is the value of whisky to you?