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Garvin Brown's avatar

If Scottish whisky is under 6 years old, it’s fine to mix it, and thus pursue a volume led growth strategy. Anything north of 6 years old, however, requires proper pricing; the balance sheet would otherwise crush the P\L, destroying value. At Brown-Forman we agonised over Jack & Coke for decades. But our whiskey matures earlier (those TN summers explode the alcohol into that charred new American oak … you get 12 years of “Scottish” aging in 4-6 years, depending on the weather and warehouse), and we finally agreed that it would be best to recruit consumers into the franchise via a mix that they had authored themselves.

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Gabriel's avatar

I think the move towards cocktails and mixing is largely a financial one. After all, these are large multinational conglomerates whose only interest is growth. The single malt market has largely come to its max, you can't really convince more people that single malt scotch is the best, everyone already "knows" that, regardless if they drink it. How many rums, mezcals, brandies etc.. have marketed themselves as being the single malt of the rum/mezcal/brandy world?

So where can large volume growth come from? Cocktails. If more bars put Scotch on their menus, they'll sell far more cases than they would simply neat. The vast majority of the industry has pivoted towards large scale yield and efficiency to match the continued growth of single malts during the 2000s & 2010s in Europe, N America and Asia.

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