Some thoughts after a recent venture to my local liquor store:
Twenty years ago about the only single malt that could be found in a liquor store here was Linkwood -- and that only rarely. Then the aging yuppie crowd apparently summered in Scotland one year and disconvered that there was a whole world of SMS, and we began seeing the likes of The Glenlivet, The Macallan, Bowmore, Laphroaig, and a handful of others.
Eventually, stores in which the most expensive Scotch on the shelves used to be J&B "Rare" for $20/bottle began stocking malts in the $40-$90 range. And even the liquor store in the seedy part of town started carrying about a dozen "name" single malts.
Recently, I've noticed a new phenomenon. All of a sudden various malts of odd (9, 17) and sometimes extreme (25, 30, 40) age have been appearing, at prices of $180-$300/bottle. Well, OK. Distilleries sometimes close and reopen years later under new management, and sometimes there's some old stock in the warehouse that's never been bottled, and it gets put on the market to kick-start the new phase of operations. And it makes for an interesting find for dedicated malt-heads.
But it seems to me that in last couple of years there have been an inordinant amount of distilleries that just "happen"to find a couple of "forgotten" old casks under the malthouse back steps, that were left there for 37 years. The number of these oddball, theoretically ancient malts appearing on the top shelves of my local suppliers seems to multiply each time I visit. I can't help but wonder if all of these malts are really what they claim, or if the industry isn't just cashing in on the current high-level of interest in single malts, and perhaps cheating a little on the rarity and/or age statements on these bottles. It seems passingly odd that /every/ major distillery should be coming across misplaced 40-yo casks at roughly the same point in time.
The other aspect of this phenomenon is the boosting of prices to as much as the market will bear. I've had $8/bottle Scotch and I've had $300/bottle Scotch, and a pretty fair sampling of what lies between. In general, most $30 malts are hugely superior to $8 blends; I find 16-yo Talisker 16-yo at $80 to be far more complex than 10-yo Aberlour at $30, though each has it's place.
But from that point on there seem to be diminishing returns. The 21-yo Macallan Fine Oak ($300) is a little smoother, and a little more complex than the 17-yo Macallan Fine Oak ($150), but at twice the price I can't honestly say I find it twice as good. And it's certainly not three times as good as the 15-yo at $100.
So what is going on here? Does every distillery really have 50 or 100 casks tucked away in odd corners that they just happen to "lose" for
17, 29, or 47 years? Or are they scamming the market while it's hot? And are these fortuitously re-discovered malts that go for $200, $300, $600, or more really worth the money to anyone but a collector?I know people who collect wines as an investment, who don't even drink the stuff themselves. This has always sturck me as a bit odd (especially with wine, which can and will eventually go bad in the bottle). I suppose there's a rarified crowd that does this with malts as well. But as a malt -drinker- is there really any point in shelling out several hundred dollars for a single bottle, other than to achieve some sort of dubious status by advertising the fact that you /can/? And is there a $600 malt that's -really- $500 better than a well-made 18-yo $100 malt?
Dr H