...where distraction is the main attraction.

Friday, January 15, 2016





Tiers of Scotch, Tears of Grief









And now, some 2015 stats


I'll start this section over again.

Welcome back to 2015!






Overall 2014 vs. 2013: -5.8%

Spain: -19%
Singapore: -8%
Japan: -13%
Mexico: -15%
France: -4%








  1. I've seen a number of arguments that new drinkers will have adjusted expectations, but I have to believe two things: that quality is still an inherent property and that new drinkers are likely to be more fickle. The boom was built on the quality established during the early-2000s. While those stories were enough to bring people in, that doesn't mean they'll shell out forever as quality drops. Second, if something can become hot that quickly, it can also fade just as quickly. There's nothing stopping tequila, brandy, or rum from becoming the new hotness to the point that people stop thinking or caring about scotch again. Looking at an even more compressed situation, will anyone care about Japanese whisky in another five years when the country still has basically nothing to offer?

    1. You make a lot of good points and I want to agree with your main statements, but the increase in malt export volumes caught me off-guard and left me wondering......are these all newbies? 2010-2013 showed the expansion of whisky clubs and blogs, and great growth in the diversity of single malt selections on retailer shelves in the US. Having attended a lot of whisky club events in the last five years, I'm no longer seeing the enthusiasm and (especially) attendance there once was, consistently. And those are the die hard nerds. So, is this new crowd drinking alone? Getting advice from retailers? Anyway, my bet is that malt volumes will give back some or most of that gain in 2015. If it drops again in 2016 then the market will too unless China starts buying a lot of blends.

      I fully agree with "if something can become hot that quickly, it can also fade just as quickly". I think that's why the US numbers dropped. And I don't think the industry is going to find any additional growth in this country, especially as bourbon thrives. And if more companies pull age statements off the shelf, replacing them with NASes, then that's going to be a major problem. Just look to the Japanese whisky market which looks screwed now and possibly screwed later.

    2. I also think that the structure of US liquor sales makes it inherently more difficult to build up a solid enthusiast base here. The fragmented nature of the market means that in many states someone getting into whisky will have a very limited selection to choose from and in control states there is no competition to hold down prices. The situation has been getting actively worse over the last couple of years, as many of the stores that were bastions of individual cask selections have lost the ability to ship, on top of the increases in shipping costs for most UK retailers, which have both drastically limited the availability of single cask bottlings. While enthusiasts always have and always will make up a limited section of the market, it means that there are fewer advocates to get new people into the hobby or to encourage people with a passing interest to go more in depth.

      That's not the fault of the industry, since they're beholden to the whims of state governments and federal regulations, but it does mean that there's more of an uphill struggle compared to places like Europe.

    3. Well put, sir. It's an odd time to be a whisky fanatic in the United States.

  2. Really appreciate the work you did in putting this series together; there are whisky enthusiasts and there are whisky ENTHUSIASTS. You, sir, are certainly a member of the latter group.
    I won't pretend to have been into whisky as a hobby for a long time; I got into it a few years ago while in the planning stage of opening my pub. I still find myself looking back at my ideas, tastes, etc... of 6 months ago and thinking, 'God, I'm still such a noob.' However, the dramatic change in the industry worldwide just over the last two years has been easy to see, and I'm glad you've helped to make some sense of it.

    Also, Cheers to Jordan for putting it bluntly (and correctly, IMO) that basically Japanese whisky is way overrated and will come to be recognized as so over the next few years.

    1. Thanks, Will! Hopefully, I'll get another opportunity to visit Tokyo during this decade. Then we can both have a pour of Talisker DE and forget about the tragedy that is the Japanese whisky industry.