Major Scotch brands are increasingly focused on younger audiences. We want to get our brands front and center in the whisky repertoire at bars.” “I’m also trying to get bartenders to use more blended Scotch in cocktails. “We have to become more relevant and do a better job of educating young people that not all Scotch is peaty and smoky,” he says. “Our research shows the sort of millennials who attend Pitchfork are willing to experiment with our higher-end blended Scotch,” he says.Ĭhris Vogt, brand manager for Edrington Americas’ blends Cutty Sark (the Original is $21 a 750-ml.) and Famous Grouse ($24), is targeting the under-35 set. But they are discovering the mid-tier 12- and 15-year-old Dewar’s, priced at $27 and $45, respectively, according to Dewar’s brand director Michael Calabrese. Young people aren’t necessarily drawn to the Dewar’s White Label at $21.95 a 750-ml. When not listening to Angel Olsen and Parliament Funkadelic onstage, the young crowd thoroughly enjoyed the Scotch vibe. Thus it was that the brand manager for Bacardi-owned Dewar’s was at the Pitchfork Music Festival recently in Chicago, with the Bacardi booth sponsoring chef Michael Voltaggio’s Scotch eggs and the mixologist Gn Chan’s cocktails made with Dewar’s Scotch. The drinkers who once kept the biggest blended brands afloat are aging and dying, pushing Scotch marketers to find a new audiences for blends. Even at current levels, it’s worth noting that blended Scotch still outsells its celebrated single malt cousin by nearly 4 to 1 in case volume.īuchanan's touts the La Conquista cocktail, comprised of its blended Scotch, sweet vermouth and chocolate bitters. The growth came after a decades-long decline for the category, which has lost volume ever year since 1983. It certainly isn’t a groundswell yet, but blended Scotch sales in the United States eked out a nearly 1-percent gain in 2016 to 6.19 million nine-liter cases, according to Impact Databank. When they aren’t engaged in falconry lessons and hunting for deer on the resort’s sprawling grounds, Gleneagles’ guests are tastemakers who know their way around a well-stocked back bar. Gleneagles, which reserves one lounge called the Blue Bar as a showcase for the prestige blended marque Johnnie Walker Blue Label, caters to a substantial American clientele that can afford $150 pours of Scotch, rooms priced at $800 or more a night and its tournament-level golf courses. That movement could well cross the Atlantic. They’re sipping blends, they’re drinking them in highballs with soda and they’re asking us for new cocktail recipes. “I see it in what my customers, many of whom hadn’t tried blended Scotch in a long while, are ordering here. “Blended whisky is becoming popular again,” he says. In the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire, Scotland, the beverage manager, Tom Jolly, is about to double his offering of blended Scotches at the velvet- and marble-rich Century Bar to 20 labels. Perhaps the future of Scotch whisky in America can be best discerned by going to the source. After a long decline, blended whisky sales are on the rise.īuchanan's (Diageo's Dalwhinnie Distillery pictured) was a pioneer of blended Scotch whisky.
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