Does age really matter?

1910 advertising

By 1910 the Pattison crash had helped to bankrupt many Scottish & English distilleries. Four years later World War was declared and in 1916 was in full swing. Troops on the front line and in Blighty were drinking heavily. Whisky at this point didn’t have to be aged at all and could be taken straight from the stills, blended and bottled. As a measure to stop the binge drinking which was effecting troops, Parliament passed an act stating that whisky has to be aged for a compulsory period of 3 years.

When you look back this decision has impacted today’s industry in a big way! Suddenly a steady supply of casks were required (and good wood management), greater warehousing and a bigger infrastructure to manage and over see the process of cask ageing and selection became key to a distilleries success.

Many of the older distilleries had realised that ageing was a key component of the whisky production process, but without modern science it wasn’t fully appreciated why.

From the 30′s/40′s onwards some distilleries started to indicate on the label and advertising that a whisky was guaranteed to be a 5 or 7 years old. As we jump forward to today we see most, if not all distilleries have an standard product which has an age statement around 10 years old.

So, when I heard that Chivas had a campaign to educate customer on the virtues of age statements I was a little surprised at the simplicity of their marketing thinking, but had to give them credit for a great idea!

If your a die hard whisky drinker you know that age means nothing it as the wood type (American, French, Mongolian, etc…), location of bond and spirit type (peaty, sulphury, etc…) impact the flavours. However, as a person new to whisky or a casual drinker what impact does age statement have?

According to new research commissioned by Chivas Brothers, 94% of consumers believe the age statement serves as an indicator of quality, 93% believe that older whiskies are better quality and 89% actively look for an age statement when making a decision to purchase.

However, there is a global lack of knowledge about what the age statement actually means: only 10% understand that it refers to the youngest whisky in the bottle, nearly half (48%) believe an age statement refers to the average age and 35% believe it signifies the oldest whisky present. The Scotch Whisky Regulations (2009) make clear what an age statement means – the age of the youngest whisky in the bottle.

The aim of the campaign is to highlight the impact of ageing, but to what end? This isn’t all about a noble campaign to educate us; the consumer. Chivas and others at the end of the day want us to buy their products. Oak has an amazing level of influence on the flavour of whisky, both Positive and Negative.

The video below states, look for the number, a guarantee of age, a guarantee of quality.

This isn’t always true and as a whisky drinker you have to be careful that you don’t fall into the trap of believing age means better. I agree that a majority of us (be it as high as 93%) really believe that older whiskies are better quality. Working at SMWS many members, although educated to some degree about whisky would still relay on higher age statements despite the panels selection process (n.b. a 6yo Arran ranks as one of my top whiskies from SMWS).

The Chivas marketing campaign reinforces the message buy older whiskies because there better! In my opinion I’ll continue to buy what interests and intrigues me, but the ultimate goal of this is for Chivas to sell more premium whisky -Chivas Brothers chairman and CEO Christian Porta said:

“the travel-retail channel was chosen as the launch platform for the campaign, which will be rolled out to domestic markets in the near future, because a “significant proportion” of the company’s high-end Scotch whiskies is sold in duty-free. “Our ultra-premium and prestige products such as Ballantine’s 17yo and Chivas Regal 25yo and well represented in travel-retail, so we will start with this channel and after about three months we’ll move into domestic markets. (DFNI)

What would have been interesting is for Chivas to release a range of 100ml age sets of the same cask, showing the differences of age and flavour profile. A graph of the favour compounds and the increase and decrease of key flavours would be great too, but I guess selling lots of old expensive whiskies with a great margin keeps the shareholders off your back!