Finishing school

Malt whiskies have had a makeover in recent months with different finishes - now blended whiskies are getting in on the act. Dave Broom asks, is it innovation or a gimmick?

Imagine you are a whisky distiller and you want to keep people interested in your brand. How do you do it? A new age statement? Hardly innovative. A new strength? Already been done. What about subtly altering the whisky's flavour without losing its character? Brilliant, but how?

Well, you take a malt whisky that's been aged in one type of cask (usually ex-Bourbon) for a set period, then decant it into another cask which has previously held a different liquid (say, port or sherry) for a short period of secondary ageing. Result: a malt with a makeover.

Finishes are hardly news. Glenmorangie, Balvenie, Bowmore and UDV's Classic Malts have all successfully been sent to finishing school over the past decade, as have Auchentoshan, Bushmills and Aberlour, but until the past few months the initial buzz seemed to have gone out of the category. While Glenmorangie and Bowmore have kept up a steady stream of new finished products, the rest of the industry has gone quiet.

Then, out of nowhere, a new raft of products has appeared. Balvenie launched its Islay finish, Glenlivet weighed in with a 30-year-old US oak finish, Glengoyne has a Scottish oak example and, most radical of all, now blends are getting in on the act. Highland Distillers has given Famous Grouse two finishes, Islay and port, while William Grant has opted for sherry and, in a move which is causing some ructions in the industry, the first whisky to be finished in beer barrels, Grant's Ale Cask Reserve.

"Finishes appeal to the experimental nature of drinkers of blends who may not wish to move to malt," says Highland's Ian Grieg. "It gives the reassurance of the brand and offers them variety." But why has the firm given Grouse an Islay finish when it already has an Islay-heavy blend in Black Bottle? "It's a different proposition and a different flavour profile," says Grieg. "Our master blender, John Ramsay, believes that on a finished whisky you only get the flavour of the finish at the end, so Grouse Islay finish has the properties of Famous Grouse but with a finish that has a hint of an Islay. That's totally different to Black Bottle."

Blended Scotch is hardly the most exciting spirits category, so could finishes be the innovation that's needed to give it a shot in the arm? Perhaps surprisingly, rather than seeing them as ways of rekindling interest in blends, William Grant and Highland saw them as ways of poaching drinkers from other brands.

"The focus is on existing blended drinkers, to get them to drink Grants," says David Hume at the firm. "Blended drinkers are looking for excitement, so this brings a sense of excitement to Grant's."

Grieg had a similar viewpoint. "I'd love to say this will grow the category," he says, "but the honest answer is, only 10% of drinkers come to finishes from outside the whisky category. But the new brands have had a huge uptake already without Grouse itself taking a hit."

Both firms know their markets well, but you can't help feeling that the effort might have been better spent on innovations to bring in that elusive new consumer.

In a wider sense, there are also mutterings that the finish category - in effect, a collection of tiny niches - is in danger of being seen as the realm of short-term gimmicky products. Not so, says Glenmorangie's Michael Jarvis. "It's certainly going to get more difficult, and there are fewer finishes which are genuinely different," he admits, "but we have always been careful to ensure that any of our finishes show the the malt with a hint of the finish, and not vice versa."

Self-selecting

Grieg agrees. "It's important we don't go too niche," he says. "Port and Islay are big categories; Grouse white port finish would be too niche. At the end of the day, restaurateurs, bartenders and consumers will see right through the product if it is gimmicky, so in many ways it is self-selecting what you can and cannot do."

Ironically, while everyone agrees that there's a danger of gimmickry entering the equation, it's always someone else's brand which has gone that one step too far. "We've always believed that the brand is key to this," says Hume. "The finish has to reflect on the brand and not just be innovation for innovation's sake. It must be based on the integrity of the brand."

Ultimately, the bottom line is whether the product works, and while many of the new arrivals do - such as Grouse Islay and Grant's sherry - many others don't.

There's innovation, stimulating the market, and gimmicks. It's a tricky road, and the further down it you go, the more difficult it becomes. That sound we're hearing may be the bottom of the finish barrel being scraped.