We’re gonna rock the foundations of All Things Whisky very soon. Big, big news in the coming days. Stay tuned. And…
…start the speculation machine!
All Things Whisky
Breaking The Internet Since 2009
We’re gonna rock the foundations of All Things Whisky very soon. Big, big news in the coming days. Stay tuned. And…
…start the speculation machine!
All Things Whisky 
Bet he’s found his Angus. Except the ATW guy’s name is loin…. Sir loin
Change comes from within… but not always quickly.
Sláinte!
Hi there,
same changes take time…. but then! But good to know that we are still here.
Greetings
kallaskander
Good to hear from you. While we wait to have our foundations shaken, do you have any recommendations for $100 USD or less? Personally, I’ve been liking Old Ezra 7 (regular and cask) and Knob Creek 9 (regular and cask), even though I don’t find very much variation in the bourbon profile overall.
Sláinte!
Hi there,
hi Jeff
I am more into Scotch single malts but I find the offerings by Michter’s worth the while… but no idea what they ask for their whiskies where you live.
You know that I think that whisky especially the Scotch variety has become very boring. Either it is overpriced mediocre standard fare or it is so old that you can not afford these interesting older whiskies anyway nor are you willing to pay that kind of money.
The newest fad here in Germany is pressing 3-4 3rd fill or plain oak casks into PX sherry hogsheads and sell the result as single cask for the colour blind. And it works at three times the price of a 10-12 year old standard bottling. People buy that naff.
I think we are on the way towards whisky as a drink for rich old man in their club armchairs again…
and to be honest I miss good exchanges about whisky and whiskey in blogs or forums like we had them here.
whiskywhiskywhisky.com has become rather flat in my view and many other bloggers have stopped posting or post very irregularily. That is what I perceive.
The boom has not gone bust yet but the balloon is losing air gradually.
Greetings
kallaskander
I think that, fundamentally, blog exchanges about whisky were killed by two trends:
– Pressure to accentuate the positive
– A short supply of positive to accentuate
It’s true that you can still find decent whisky that falls within the average punter’s budget but
– Much of it is at least somewhat overpriced for what you get, because of increased demand… and generally increased tolerance for overpricing.
– None of it really lives up to the physics/production-resources-defying hype that has been the hallmark of the “age is overrated/doesn’t matter” era. Recent “innovation” in whisky was primarily achieved though convincing people that it existed where little or none of the genuine article could really be found. Nobody really reinvented the whisky wheel, yet there’s supposedly always something “exciting on the horizon” from those who sell excitement… but very little improved whisky.
As always in whisky, you pay to play and caveat emptor and all that, but real change in whisky and its market will really only be driven by consumers in piecemeal fashion against an industry that seems will always steadfastly oppose it out of obvious self interest.
Sláinte!
In light of Jeff’s post I’m going to be a wee tad arrogant and pat myself on the back.
Some time around 2014 I had the opportunity to travel a bunch because of my kid playing sports. I was very fortunate in that I most often ended up in markets that were vastly superior to my own and I opted to take advantage of it. Even to the point of calculating that I had 4-5 years to stock up, what my average consumption was and the point at which my dad and uncles declined in their alcohol consumption.
I ended up buying about 120 bottles of whisky over that time period (which may be few for some around here but it was a good number for me). They were whiskies I really liked and some I’d never tried. Most of them were in the 12-15 year age range but a fair smattering of 18-21 were slotted in there. I got a Parliament for $135 (should have bought more) that retails now at over $300. Should have bought 2. Or 8.
I’m at the point now where I maybe buy 4-5 bottles a year (Irish, Clynelish) if anything interests me. Most whiskies are out of my price range that I’m comfortable with, even though I can afford more now than then.
A blind squirrel…
Fair enough, but what strikes me, and that’s been echoed by a lot of other posts in various locations over the years, is that citing the value of bunkered bottles is usually done in the context of now largely being priced out of anything really exceptional in a practical, if not absolute, sense. Sure, many people could spend the now far bigger sums required, but they just won’t… much less to drink.
And understand that that isn’t criticism of those who make those posts, or who bunkered those bottles – sincerely, good for you – but it isn’t a sign of a market that’s trending up in terms of quality and value either.
For those of us who probably overbought earlier during the craze, there’s a lot of to be said for drinking/sharing that stuff before buying anything else (or it somehow otherwise goes to waste), even if the quality of the earlier bottles is only level with, let alone better than, what you can now buy for more money.
Because, year by year, and drink by drink, it’s also about opportunity cost – why do I knowingly drink worse when better, and cheaper, is close to hand?
Sláinte!
Think your post at the end sums it up nicely. I basically through planning and luck got myself to the point of not having to pay more for lower quality. There’s definitely a good aspect to it, but it certainly takes away a lot of the fun.
I certainly understand that; once you really don’t have any skin in the game anymore, even theoretical winning and losing doesn’t really matter much. I can, and do, bemoan the direction that whisky took, and that we collectively helped it to take, but… it’s difficult to finish the sentence because, now, it is what it is and that ship, for me, has largely sailed in a practical sense. At some point, not (and never) being able to turn the tide gives way to just moving to drier ground and leaving others to swim as they like.
And as probably always was the case, the new whisky enthusiast of today could well be just as happy as I was starting out without any real knowledge, or access to, the greater, and wider, whisky world which came before my arrival – and for the same reason: ignorance, I think, can well be bliss. You can’t really miss what you never had. Instead of talking about how vanilla a lot whisky has now become, the whisky debates of the future will probably focus on the quality of vanilla involved and whether it’s French or Venetian.
Sláinte!
Hi there,
well said and let us not forget the re-education programme the whisky industry started 10-15 years ago. If you started drinking whisky in this period you most probably just can not know better. Or be more knowledgeable because the narrative is such that you are not supposed to know more or deeper. Damn… just drink our stuff an be contend!
Greetings
kallaskander
Thanks, kallaskander – it’s true, if consumers let themselves down, they also had a lot of help doing it, both from producers and from commentators who either knew better and said nothing or who actively supported nonsense narratives while pretending to be in the consumer’s corner.
“Education” in our era has largely meant leading people away from common sense because it was the way it “had” to be to ready them for products steadily younger, more expensive, generically casked and with fantasy-based “product information” while those who promoted this stuff didn’t care because they drank better anyway.
Whisky probably didn’t invent the concept of the frenemy, but it might have perfected it.
Sláinte!
Hi there,
absolutely yes. Why anybody is willing to pay the prices that are asked for overoptimised flawless but boring standard offerings without much character is beyond me.
I am not a collector but fortunately I am way behind drinking what I bought years ago.
Greetings
kallaskander