Whisky Magazine July 2021

the new wave

In case you haven’t noticed, there are one or two new kids on the whisky block of late. And I’m not just talking about the usual street corners where one might expect to find distilleries loitering about. Sure, the usual suspects of Scotland, Ireland, America, and Japan are all going through a distillery-building boom, and there are certainly a lot of new faces. But further afield we’re seeing what can only be described as a sort of mass birth in almost every corner of the globe, and you know what they say about kids: they grow up fast. A lot of these new whisky-producing countries, such as France, Spain, New Zealand, Australia and Mexico, have climates that are prone to what some might call ‘accelerated maturation’, while others have simply been around…

drams in america

After a two-year hiatus, Whisky Live, the world’s premier whisky experience, is back in the USA and Canada. Whisky Live brand owner Paragraph has partnered with Bevridge LLC to deliver new events across the two countries, aligned with Paragraph’s global portfolio of drinks publications, awards and websites. Founded by influencer Nate Ganapathi of @SingleMaltDaily and Chris Nelson of Nelson Investments Inc., Bevridge LLC is a marketing company that connects spirits brands with enthusiasts through exceptionally produced educational events and content. Nate and Chris have also announced that Liz Brusca, formerly the marketing director at Hotaling & Co., has signed on as president and cofounder of Bevridge LLC and will lead business operations. Combined with Nate’s incredible social media influence, the partnership will provide unrivalled access for the drinks industry to reach…

american whisk(e)y

Any discussion about the history of whisk(e)y in the United States tends to turn to a discussion about current trends and the future. We can learn a lot about where whiskey is headed by examining its past, and what comes next has the potential to be a golden age. In the United States, the distilled spirits industry has been through a lot. Unscrupulous businessmen first threatened a fledgling industry with tainted whiskeys that contained additives to grain neutral spirits or unaged whiskeys that could be harmful, to make the whiskey seem aged. The idea was to capitalise on the growing popularity of commercially produced whiskey without the headache of waiting for it to mature. This spurred the first consumer protection laws in the United States, preventing people from being able to…

things we don’t discuss in bars

It’s a commonly known pearl of wisdom and, generally speaking, a widely accepted practice that there are three things you never talk about in bars: politics, religion and race. When with friends or even strangers and within earshot of anyone offering alcohol in exchange for money, avoid anything that falls within those broad controversial territories and you’ll decrease your chances of getting into a screaming match. Or worse. Over the last decade, as my journalism work got me entangled in the drinks industry, I came to learn there was a fourth thing you shouldn’t talk about in bars: the meaning of ‘craft’ in the alcohol business. I’ve seen a few too many people – bartenders, distillers, brand owners, ambassadors, ardent drinkers sporting Bud Light t-shirts (both ironically and not) – get…

quantitative easing of whisky

Since the GFC, central banks have used quantitative easing to purchase large-scale government bonds and assets to inject money into the economy. The whisky industry has used similar quantitative stimulus measures over the past 150 years to grow consumer sales through product development, bringing hundreds of thousands of new products to market. In the last Mythbusters column, the quantum world of drinkers revealed the chaos of consumption that freely forms into self-organising groups, clustering into sets of classifications identified by consumer needs and wants. At the macro level, market dynamics are aroused by the manufacturers, who create demand by injecting supply to excite drinkers and consumption. Predicting and creating demand with product variations brings risks, especially as inventory forecasts for straight Bourbon are four years or more and often more than…

mexican terroir

The story about Mexican whisky that you’re about to read would have turned out very differently if Iván Saldaña wasn’t infatuated with agave. For Iván, distiller of Abasolo Ancestral Corn Whisky, making whisky in Mexico is just another chapter in his epic exploration of how to bring an agricultural soul to spirits. For him, distilling is not just about honing technical skills and making great-tasting spirits. It’s about taming wild natural elements and displaying their flavours and workaday glories on an alternative stage. Sound whimsical? Absolutely, but this is no overwrought sales pitch. It’s the work of a committed, if not obsessive, scientist whose laboratory is Mexico’s vast landscape. “My love for agave is love for understanding how it works, the chemistry of how plants bring flavour to spirit. I love…