Excuse me for butting in here, but does anyone have any views about what is going on with Bruichladdich?
I've never had the pleasure of trying any of the malts they produced in the days before their closure, but the 10yo that they marketed after they re-opened was, I thought, an extremely fine dram. And I would go so far as to say that their Full Strength is the best malt I have yet come across, bar none.
Then they started to experiment a bit and we got the peated versions, the 3D and the Mòine Mhòr, which were interesting, but for some reason I can't quite explain, struck me as slightly gimmicky. For me they didn't match up to the other peated Islays.
But now what on earth have they done? Our local supermarket (I'm in the UK) has stopped stocking the 10yo and replaced it with "Rocks", a blend of various cask types, some of them presumably rather young since there is no longer any age statement on the bottle. This malt was designed specifically to be drunk "on the rocks" (or so we are told) and, in my view, that is the only way to make it at all palatable: I thought it the most unpleasant malt I have ever come across.
Now I know that the 10yo is in short supply, so it is not too difficult to see the driver behind all this. But, at the same time, I have noticed how during the last two or three years the price of Bruichladdich has not kept pace with those of other malts. THey have changed from being one of the mid-price malts to being one of the cheaper ones.
So I have to ask: are they deliberately repositioning themselves towards the bottom of the market? Are they thowing quality out of the window?