Whiskiesl I WHISKY N L V L E Y R G a R R AY a REVIEW
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H FY C N SCOTCH O E whiskiesL I WHISKY N L V L E Y R G A R R AY A REVIEW EDITION 2 AUTUMN 1994 BIG BROTHERS AND OTHERS TOP OF THE TOTS H FY A cynic reviewing this journal C N Autumn 1994 price might conclude that Loch Fyne O E 1 Oban 14yo ........................ £23.70 L Whiskies is the poodle of United 2 Glen Moray 15yo Distillers. whiskies Presentation Tin .............. £22.20 I N L In the last edition we featured their V L 3 Glen Moray 12yo* ............ £20.60 £2.00E OFF!Y Master Blender and in this issue we R G 4 Inchmurrin 10yo* ............ £18.90 A R devote two pages to the Chairman your nextR ApurchaseY A of 5 Cragganmore 12yo ........... £22.20 responsible for all whisky production in 6 Port Ellen CC 1977 .......... £25.50 the group. The fact is that United cask strength whisky 7 Lagavulin ......................... £24.60 Distillers have devoted a considerable 8 Springbank 15yo* ............ £26.90 amount of time to our fledgling business CHRISTMAS LAUNCH 9Talisker 10yo .................... £23.90 without making any demands in return. FOR LONG-TERM OFFER 10 Highland Park 12yo ........ £21.30 Surprised by this (it would be easy to This edition of SWR announces a long- * Features on the original tasting tray. throw money at us—time is far more term offer and gives you the opportunity Analysis of this summer’s Tasting Room precious) we enquired of one executive, to start sampling our huge cask strength league table produced some surprises. “Why devote so much time to a small selection, now with £2.00 off. Oban rose from ten to the number one outlet?” The reply gives us great heart: For the foreseeable future, all our slot. Co-incidence that this is Mark’s “We just thought that if we couldn’t look independent cask strength bottlings will preferred dram? The new reduced price after the small independent we might include a voucher worth £2.00 off a and great packaging of the Glen Moray as well pack up and go home.” future purchase of a similar bottling. 15yo has proved very successful—in Occasionally a customer pronounces: As a bonus to launch this offer, if you with a bullet, as they say. “I don’t want any whiskies from Big place an order for a cask strength bottle Distillers plc.” Generally they are un- before December 10th you can deduct EARLY CHRISTMAS SET aware of the degree of the big players’ £2.00 from the list price with our com- TO SHOCK THOUSANDS! ownership and ignorant of just how few pliments—and get your voucher as well! Our customers are reminded that this whiskies they are limiting themselves Offer applies to Cask, C, JM or S labels year Christmas falls earlier than many to. Four companies dominate the of over 46%Alc. Does not apply to MH would want—on December 25th! industry, producing 80% of all Scotch. bottlings or those 46% and under. Orders received on or before December They employ thousands of Scots in 10th will be guaranteed. We will do our rural distilleries or inner-city bottling very best up to December 17th, which is halls, places that need employers ICHAEL JACKSON S also our deadline for guaranteed desperately. Avoiding their products M ’ hogmanay orders. deprives both these industry employees ALT HISKY We wish all of our customers a very and also oneself of the many M W happy Christmas and as good a New magnificent whiskies they produce. Year as the one we hope for. We are very proud of this edition of SWR Companion and sincerely thank all contributors for lending their name, thoughts and time. INSIDE All elected to help our business because DIFINITIVE BOOK OFFER Mr Whisky they recognised our desire to promote If we ever produced a full, all-singing The top man in whisky production talks Scotch Whisky to a wide audience in a all-dancing catalogue of our whiskies it to us ............................................Page 2 responsible manner reflecting the would look like Michael Jackson’s Malt Labels respect and heritage it has earned. Whisky Companion, now available in a An explanation of your bottle ............. 4 We hope to see more contribution from third fully revised and expanded edition, Casks, vatting and filtering ............... 5 other distiller groups in the future, many price £12.99. Michael Jackson of which have made little attempt to Order the Companion from us before Pros and cons of a score system ......... 6 recognise us yet (they’ve all had the December 10th for only £11.99 post free. WhiskEy anyone? opportunity), or have only given us an If we can despatch it with two or more Gavin Smith globe tots ....................... 6 account in the last month after 18 bottles then the price is just ten quid! ¡Buenos Dias! Ted Thompson months intense lobbying. Perhaps they Nae-bad! Eh? Our new-age whisky baron ................ 7 are busy packing up and going home. Michael Jackson writes for SWR, page 6. Tasters & Snippets ...................... 7, 8 SCOTCH WHISKY REVIEW — LOCH FYNE WHISKIES, INVERARAY, ARGYLL, PA32 8UD PAGE 1 pering is very important. Even as recently Glenkinchie as it has a more Scottish name as the late ‘70s an over estimating of whisky and the location in a very nice part of rolling Mr. WHISKY future sales caused the so-called “Whisky East Lothian countryside is far more attrac- Loch” and the subsequent down turn in pro- tive than a busy junction in Falkirk! Those duction that we see now. two reasons alone swung it. I’m not saying Up to that time we had experienced a growth Glenkinchie was inferior to Rosebank—both for twenty years of 6% each year which en- had their defenders—but a decision had to be couraged the production of an awfully large made and in this case marketing factors won amount of whisky—particularly when an al- the day. lowance for evaporation of 2% per year is LFW: Have you considered changing added in. Nowadays the industry is geared the rate of peating to create a differ- to avoiding such errors, there are fewer key ent style? players, information on stocks and production A Lowland distillery is capable of producing levels is shared through the Scotch Whisky a heavy, peaty whisky just as Jura can pro- Association and producers are much more in duce a light whisky. We once made some control. unpeated Caol Ila, owing to a surplus of The Whisky Loch is historically interesting, peated whisky at that time and to keep the but it will not happen again. We’ll never get distillery open. Very nice whisky it was too! it right—you can’t forecast twelve years Heritage and continuity of peating is impor- ahead—and we’ll always get a surplus but we tant and there is no reason to change. have ways of dealing with that, such as tweak- LFW: Couldn’t you keep more distill- ing our blends. eries open? The marketeers create well thought through Ideally we would keep them all going and just and developed marketing concepts for the wind them down a bit, which is what we do whiskies. For the malts there are The Clas- most of the time. sic Six—the regional malts, Cardhu—the af- In Scotland there have been 750 distilleries ter dinner malt, Royal Lochnagar—the exclu- since Ferrintosh was burned down in 1689 Dr. Alan Rutherford is Head of the sive ‘Royal’ malt, Glen Ord—our mainstream (that’s legitimate distilleries!). At the present production subsidiary of United Dis- malt for Europe and finally Royal Brackla— there are 95 malt and 7 grain distilleries. In tillers, the worlds biggest spirit and our price-positioned fighting brand. 1886 there were 150 distilleries who collec- Scotch Whisky producer. After a life We came late into malts. The Distillers Com- tively produced just over 3 million cases that time in the industry he is now Chair- pany as was thought that malts would detract year—a figure now possible in two months at man and Managing Director of from the image of the blends and that people Cameronbridge. In those days they were tiny United Malt and Grain Distillers Ltd would become confused in their minds that distilleries, with additional limitations. Cus- and one of the most influential men blends are inferior, which of course they are toms & Excise would only allow either mash- in the world of Scotch Whisky. not, they are a different sector. Now we’ve ing or distillation under the supervision of the Loch Fyne Whiskies met with Dr. Rutherford got going with malts we’re extremely pleased, officer, never both at the same time. in his office in Edinburgh just after his com- particularly with the Classic Six and Cardhu. It’s not big business that is closing distiller- pany had announced the sale of Bladnoch dis- LFW: Do you ever fear running out ies, it’s an industrial Darwinism. tillery for purposes other than distilling. of a whisky? We recently closed four distilleries after we LFW: What is your job? If I had taken the growth of Lagavulin sales looked at the output that we needed in the I run the process of Scotch Whisky produc- in the early nineties and extrapolated that years ahead and we realised we had exces- tion for United Distillers—everything from for sixteen years, (the age at which it is bot- sive capacity. We looked at our portfolio and cereals procurement to the warehousing of tled,) in order to achieve the “forecasted” ca- divided them into groups.