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Independent Bottlers Roundtable
Part II

In our continuing series of whisky roundtable interviews, we pulled together five independent bottlers at WhiskyFest New York. Independent bottlers: a breed apart, and a business cloaked in a certain amount of mystery. Last issue, in Part I of the interview, we found out where the whisky comes from—secret sources—how it gets chosen, and how wonderful it is when you find the perfect cask. Part II explores unusual bottlings, the challenges to independent bottlers, and why they don’t need an association to keep them from bottling ‘crap.’

Andrew Gray: sales director, representing Murray McDavid and Jim McEwan’s Celtic Heartlands, both owned by Bruichladdich

John McDougall: bottling Bladnoch, and in partnership with Jay McDuff with the Golden Cask range

Michael Urquhart: representing Gordon & MacPhail, 3rd generation, been bottling single malts longer than some of the distillers

Brett Pontoni: Binny’s, representing Cask & Thistle

Lorne Mackillop: representing Mackillop’s Choice, also has a brand called Montgomery’s

John Hansell and Lew Bryson, Malt Advocate

Michael Urquhart: John was referring to some bottlers earlier on, and a fact you have to watch out for, is that you get some people who might go and buy a cask that is not of great quality and go and bottle it. It could be a wrong age profile, it could be over-matured. And people who’ve had a five year old blend, and see a bottle that’s 40 years old or 30 years old, and think it must be great. What you’ve got to watch is that it gives the wrong impression.

Lorne Mackillop: That sort of haphazard bottling does give independent bottlers a bad name.

Malt Advocate: There’s no uniform group, like OPEC or something, where you all get together and say, you know, we have an agreement that we’re not going to bottle anything that’s crap. There’s much more variability with independent bottlings than there is with distillery bottlings. There are some really good ones, and there are some really bad ones.

John McDougall: I’ve often wondered if it would be in the best interests of a lot of people if there was a loose arrangement of independent bottlers, rather than we all sort of do our own thing. Because we all sort of take care of our own little areas, what we’re doing. But there must be some common ground.

Lorne: If the Scotch Whisky Association can’t agree with the big boys, how are we going to agree with the small boys?

[laughter]

John: I would have thought there’d be more chance of the small guys agreeing than the big guys!

Lorne: You’re probably right.

Andrew: But to me, that’s just having another Scotch Whisky Association, where you have a club that some are part of and some are not. I don’t think it’s necessary.

Michael: The ones who are serious about it will put out quality product. If you don’t put out a quality product, people aren’t going to buy your product.

Brett Pontoni: I can tell you that right now. Adam Smith will decide. The market will decide whether you’re going to be successful.

Michael: It’s more a ‘paddle your own canoe’ type thing, isn’t it? I think that the over-riding aspect of what we do is creating quality product. That’s what it’s got to be about. The acid test of that is whether people buy it. And if they don’t buy it, hey, that’s telling you something.

Malt Advocate: If, for example, with regards to Mackillop’s Choice bottlings, if there were two or three bad ones or something like that, and they started getting a bad reputation, it’s definitely going to hurt Lorne. But it also hurts the entire independent bottling concept in general.

Michael: Depends. There’ll be an 80/20 rule, somewhere. There always is. If you get a bad bottling and someone starts talking about it, they’ll be the 20%. The 80% who taste a bad bottling, they simply won’t buy that product again, or that bottler’s product again. They’re not going to make a fuss about it, they’ll just start picking up something else. They may have had the thought that independent bottlings are a second-class bottling, and have confirmed that view, but that’s why it’s important to go and keep the quality up. Because that reinforces the fact that the independent bottler’s just giving another expression of that particular whisky.

Andrew Gray: I don’t have as much experience as you or John, I’ve only got 15 years in the industry. But in that time, I’m not really conscious of any independent bottlers, or even distillers, bottling something they know is crap.

Brett: There are gaps, there are stops all along the way, and I would agree with you: most of it gets stopped. I’m probably the last line of defense before it gets to consumers, because I have to try everything before it goes out.

Malt Advocate: I taste a lot of whiskies myself, and I’m not on the business side like you are, but I’m on the other side, the consumer side. And without any doubt, there are independent bottlings that come out tasting too old and woody, bad cask, too sherried. The reality is…I don’t know if you’d call it crap, but there’s some bad whiskies coming from independent bottlings.

Andrew: I know you are a reviewer, and taste is subjective. But there are other reviewers whose palate reacts to heavily peated, heavily sherried…and misses everything in between.

Malt Advocate: There was one independent bottler who had a ‘fresh sherry’ bottling, and that was practically all you could taste, the sherry. I went to them, and asked, why did you bottle this when it was inundated with sherry? And the response was that there are a lot of people out there who like sherried whiskies. So I know that it’s subjective, and some people would be happy to go out and buy your product if sherry was all it tasted like. I agree that ‘crap’ is a relative term.

Lorne: It’s a great term. I’ve tasted some distillery bottlings and deluxe blends that were, quite frankly, not worth the money.

Malt Advocate: Distillery bottlings try to be consistent from one bottling to the next. As a consumer, one of my biggest challenges when I go out to get a bottle of any of your whiskies, the toughest part, is that I don’t know exactly how that’s going to taste. And if I take the risk of buying the entire bottle, and don’t like it after two sips, then I’m stuck with the bottle. The fun part is that every bottle’s different, but it’s a two-edged sword. I may not like it. It seems that is your advantage and disadvantage both. How do you get around that?

Andrew: We offer miniatures, but commercially, they don’t do as well as I thought they would do. I would have thought that, for the very reason you mention, if you’re going to pay $80 or $90 for it, if you’d have the opportunity to pay $5 for a miniature first, it makes a lot of sense.

Lorne: But is the quality of the whisky in a miniature the same as in a 750 ml?

Andrew: In our case, yes, it’s taken from the same batch bottling. But we’re just not finding enough interest.

Malt Advocate: When you have a “try before you buy” situation, everybody wins. That’s what makes WhiskyFest so popular. [general agreement, a feeling of the love in this room] It puts the seller in front of the consumer, and they can taste it.

Lorne: In true terms, consistency is impossible. If you take a major distillery over the 1970s decade, the 80s, the 90s, they will be substantially different as you taste blocks within decades. Again, I don’t think the average consumer could tell the differences, but obviously I’m quite certain the people in this room could.

Malt Advocate: We all agree that even distillery bottlings change. But there’s a certain amount of comfort for the consumer between going and getting one bottle of 12 year old Glenlivet and another bottle of 12 year old Glenlivet that it’s going to taste relatively the same, whereas if you buy from an independent bottler, you get one Caperdonich one time, and a different one the next.

John: That depends on whether you’re bottling a single cask or you’re vatting several casks together. If you’re bottling a single cask, of course you’re going to get differences. That should be explained to the consumer.

Lorne: If anything, it’s the inconsistency you want in a single cask product.

John: But Lorne, that’s the stretch of single-cask bottling: they’re different.

Michael: But is that part of the education of the consumer, to say, when you’re buying an independent bottling, and it’s a single cask, you are going to get variations coming through? There will be an element of consistency–I try not to use that word–you will get something that joins them together.

Andrew: I think we’ve been looking at the negatives of independent bottling. I’d like to look at the positives. I’ve just come from a tour down South, which is generally known as a malt blank spot, in Florida and the hotter states, because of the weather. But I see a big change. Fifteen, ten, even five years ago, you’d see maybe three malts, five malts, ten malts, twelve malts. Now I’m seeing 40 different brands of malts.

What I was finding in these shops down South was that they were actively encouraging independent bottlers. They love independent bottlers! Because they’re getting new product from them all the time, and they see new product as driving the industry. Yes, they’ve all got the Macallans, the cask collections, and various other new distillery bottlings. But they love independent bottlings, because their customers are coming in and saying, “Right, what’s new?’

Lorne: It reminds me of a quandary I was in three or four years ago. I had two casks, as it happened, of Laphroaig in my inventory from the early 1980s. One was pale, and typically astringent, and had that Islay characteristic we all know and some love…and some don’t love. The other one was much more colored, it was honeyish, soft. It had a little bit of iodine and seaweed behind it, but it was a great, to my mind, honeyish, rich whisky. Now, my thinking was, the first one was obviously right for Laphroaig, and a consumer picking up a bottle of Mackillop’s Choice Laphroaig would want it to be like Laphroaig. The second one was much more my style of whisky, which I would personally prefer to drink myself.

If there is a degree of expectation, seeing a distillery name on a label, if your bottling is substantially different from that expectation, that is going to be a negative thing, even if the whisky may be a better whisky. Going back even further, the U.S. market is a much more brand-driven market. People drink the labels, they don’t really drink with their taste buds. It’s a much more difficult thing, and as Michael said, the education process is really about what kind of bottlings can go forward. Having said that, given the size of the population here, there is that 1% who have read every single book by Michael Jackson, by every single author, and will know every single thing about malt whisky, even more than you do…and want to tell you about it.

[laughter]

John: They’d be delighted to tell you. And their forebears came from Scotland, too!

Andrew: “And you probably know them.”

Brett: But what you’re saying is okay, because I will pick bottlings that aren’t necessarily typical of a distillery style, very much on purpose, and be very up-front about it. If someone wants to try something, the Laphroaig, for example, I say, ‘Look, this isn’t...Do you like this?’ And then I describe a certain taste profile, and if you like that, good, but if you’re looking for a mimic of a ten or fifteen year old Laphroaig, this isn’t going to be it. But it is damned good whisky, and you ought to try it.

Michael: Variety’s the spice of life. If you look back to the 1980s, when new world wine started coming out, people would still just kind of hop out to drinking French wine, Chateau So-and-so, and not knowing what was actually in them. The new world wines were great for coming along and saying, well, here’s a cabernet sauvignon, here’s a pinot noir, here’s whatever. They gradually opened up everyone’s mind-set.

I remember when my father would taste a whisky. [mimes sniffing and sipping] ‘That’s good.’ [sniff, sip] ‘That one needs a bit longer in cask.’ Whereas now you come at it with quite flowery tasting notes. What’s quite funny sometimes, is that you often write down tasting notes of tastes that you remember as a kid. You say, ‘Ah, tastes of McCowan’s Cream Toffee Chews!’ And then you’ll go to some market where they’ll say ‘What the bloody hell are McCowan’s Cream Toffee Chews?’ It’s all relative.

But the boundaries have been pushed back, people are more adventurous in what they’re prepared to do.

Malt Advocate: That plays into your advantages, you have variety.

John: If we were all the same, it would be bloody boring. If we all had the same taste buds, and sense of smell, what a bloody boring world. We could close down 85 distilleries in Scotland and build a big booze plant in Glasgow.

Brett: Sure, build one in the Highlands, one in Speyside, one on Islay, one on another island, and you’re done!

Malt Advocate: There’s a lot of independent labels on the market right now, probably more than there ever has been. Is that a good thing or a bad thing for the consumer, is it a good thing or a bad thing for you?

Andrew: I think it’s a good thing. For the consumer.

[general agreement]

Brett: It’s good for the consumer, but from the retail perspective, there will be a shakeout. It’s just like anything else. There’ll be a shakeout, and there will be things that aren’t necessarily poor, but are not good enough to stand on their own. This is the problem you have when you have proliferation like this. It’s been building, but I think it’s exploding in the last few years.

Andrew: I would disagree. Yes, in your store, there probably will be a shakeout. You’ve got excellent contacts, excellent knowledge of the industry, and you will select the bottlings that reflect your customer profile the best, and you think live up to the quality standards that you want. But a retailer a mile or two away may look at your range and think, right, he’s got this brand and this brand and this brand, so I’m going to choose some other brands, because I want to give my customers something different.

Lorne: Globally, the only growth in brown spirits is in top-end Scotch whisky. The bottom end of Scotch whisky is in decline. Therefore, that is the only area where growth can happen: the top end of Scotch whisky. Independent bottlers are very much in that top end.

Malt Advocate: But if you have too many of them, don’t you run into the problem of a retailer only having so much room on the shelf, a bar only has so much room on the back bar?

Lorne: They can’t have them all.

Andrew: They all make their own choices, they all decide that this brand is better than that brand for whatever reasons.

Malt Advocate: So are you saying ‘the more the merrier’ when it comes to independent bottlers?

Andrew: I personally believe that.

John: I’m in the smallest end. We don’t have any problem selling our 7,500 bottles, but a lot of it is what I call personal sales. I go to Scandinavia at least six times a year, next week I’m going up to the Arctic Circle. I’ll be sitting with the Lapps, with the reindeer sitting outside. Seriously! I’m pouring drams and drinking whisky at 10 AM!

Andrew: And Lapp dancing?

[laughter]

John: The point I’m getting at, every independent bottler is different. Lorne’s different to my business, Michael’s different to my business, and that’s the strength of it.

Andrew: Absolutely, we’re all different.

Malt Advocate: If you do think the more the merrier, but on the other hand you tell me that sourcing casks is becoming more and more difficult…Don’t those collide? Doesn’t that inevitably mean either a shakeout or a decrease in quality in the product in the market?

John: There might be a shakeout.

Michael: This goes back to the concept of the quality of the product that the bottler actually does will fall through to whether he can actually sell his product. That’s where you get the fall-out coming through.

Brett: What I’d ask people is, what is your ambition? You, John, you said you did 7,500 bottles. What do you want to be doing in 2008?

John: I’ve no idea, but it won’t be less. I don’t set targets. Where we moved from two years ago is 5,000, to just over 7,000. If you’re asking me where we’ll be in 5 years time, I can’t really say.

Brett: But you don’t really have an ambition, a hard-set business plan where you absolutely for your purposes have to be at 20,000 bottles in five years.

John: No!

Andrew: But I don’t think anybody does. I don’t think anyone has a business plan where they have to achieve certain bottle sales.

Brett: Would everyone be willing to take a decline–

John: No!

Brett: – a decline in sales–

John: No!

Brett: –if you didn’t have the proper whisky to put in the bottle?

John: Ah! If the proper whisky wasn’t available, then I’d be disgraced with myself for choosing it.

Malt Advocate: We have to wrap up, so we’d like to take it around the table once and ask each of you, singly: what is the biggest challenge, going forward from here, to independent bottlers?

Lorne: Again, the point of education is the big problem. We can only spread ourselves so thinly. I’ve already flown 67 flights on planes this year, and I’ve got another to get back to London…so I’m an armchair bottler, I’m in seat 37K. There are so many people who want to talk to you, quite right. They want to talk to the man who’s making the whisky, who’s making the decisions as to what goes to bottle. But when you start to speak, you can’t have 100 people in the room who are wholly ignorant of what you’re trying to do, and you’ve got that hour or two hours to take them through a selection of whiskies to try to get across to them what you’re trying to do. By and large, it comes out very well, and it’s quite popular. I’ve never had anyone come up to me afterwards and say, I think you’re absolute rubbish and I don’t want to buy your whisky because I think they’re crap. It’s just getting the message across, being in the right place at the right time, time and time again.

Brett: I have some concurrence with that, although that retail side of me is always going to creep in. Education: you have to make people understand what they don’t understand to have business success. It’s not just loving the whiskies. What we deal with on an everyday basis is why we do this; I don’t think anyone here is involved with this to get rich. I certainly am not. I’m involved in this because I happen to be dealing with something whose nature is 100% subjective, really. Everyone implies dollar values, and 1-100 rating scales, but it’s subjective. There’s passion for it, and the only way you can spread your passion.

Which is why I’ve got 100 bottles open in my office. Because when somebody comes in and says, well, I’m kind of interested… I can say, hey, you gotta try this. It’s one of those things: that is part of education. The passion is important, but the education is critical. What we do, from an independent bottler’s perspective, that is the only way. When you purposely buy something that has a distillery name, that was made by that distillery, but you bought it because it’s a different take on what’s coming from that distillery. If you don’t get that, you’re putting the bottle back down, saying…this isn’t that distillery.

Michael: I’ll echo the education part, but the other thing is to make sure you continue to get variety to the consumer. Life ain’t a dress rehearsal, so enjoy it while you can. It is really about giving lots of variety to people. Some of the spirits that we are filling today will be bottled when I’m pushing the daisies up. It is a long-term commitment. We’ve got one main ambition: to remain a family independent business. We see that as the best way to continue what we’re doing just now, so that hopefully in the generations to come, the consumers can continue to get the variety of whiskies in the future.

John: As some of you may know, I’ve had my ups and downs in this industry.

Michael: Never. [laughter]

John: I’ve enjoyed it, I’ve been in it for nearly 44 years and I intend to stay in it as long as I can. For two reasons. One, my wife doesn’t like me at home too much because I get very difficult to live with…

Malt Advocate: It’s because you keep asking her for money! [laughter]

John: Right! But I just want to get out there and spread the gospel, to tell it like it is, not like the books would maybe have people believe. I don’t mean that in a disparaging way against the guys who’ve written the books, but just tell it like it is. What you see is what you get: enjoy it.

Andrew: I would say a number of things. Sampling, giving your customers a chance to taste the whisky. Whether we can help you, in supplying miniatures, we want to help. Whatever happens, it’s the right way to sell it. It’s a hand sell, it needs someone to taste to understand it better. Even more important than education, I would say that from the retail side, it’s even more important to give the opportunity to taste. Whatever you say about a particular distillery, or being aware of the process in non-chill filtering, not adding caramel, or whatever, they may understand that, but if when they actually taste it they don’t like it, well, so what? Sampling is very important.

I also think stock will become an issue, unfortunately, as the industry gets smaller. There’s always a risk that it will become more of an issue.

Finally, I’d say the media. I think this is an area that the media has largely glossed over. I’m not blaming Malt Advocate, but… Most of the books that are written concentrate on distillery bottlings. When they’re rating distilleries, it’s only Gordon & MacPhail’s that make it in, because they have such a wide range, sometimes Signatory’s, where they have a bottling of a distillery that’s closed down. But generally, people set out to write a book about distilleries, more than distillery bottlings. But the magazines themselves: if we were talking about beer and microbrews, they’ve received more attention than the independent bottlings have. In addition to independent bottlings, you have distillery bottlings. There’s so much going on with distillery bottlings that, for whatever reason, that seems to be more exciting. But I think there’s a lot of excitement about independent bottlers. I go back to what Brett was saying: you’re exactly the kind of store I want, a thousand SKUs is great. I don’t want a wallpaper whisky shop. That’s the last place in the world I’m going to go. And I think more and more people are beginning to change their view because of the wine industry. So hopefully, even these wallpaper whisky shops will be encouraged to think laterally and get some other whiskies in just to offer some choice.

Malt Advocate: Well, thank you very much. And it’s time to go set up for WhiskyFest and do some educating and some sampling.

Other Interviews & Round Tables Classics:
Rye Roundtable | Bourbon Roundtable