Are we finished with "finishes"?

[David Stirk]

Hi Folks,

this is quite an interesting thread and as someone who actually performs 'finishes' (and has been involved with the development of a few) I felt the need to give my tuppence worth.

Firstly, finishes are not new and to take Bev's point about the Balvenie Classic, who is to say that the whisky that went into the make-up were not finished - or married perhaps. Finishing has been going on for ages. In one of the interviews for my first book, the interviewee told me that it had been common practice (for decades) for distillers to use Port-pipes to give whisky a quick hit of colour.

Secondly, there is a lot of mediocre whisky out there. And again to come back to Bev's point about the 'distillers art' - this is only part of the reason for the mediocre whisky. With beer it is easy to change the flavour of the end result by changing the brewing techniques and ingredients. As we all know, whisky flavour is 20% ingredients and plant and 80% cask. Most of you will have drunk a great many great whiskies that were finished that you did not know were finished. The mediocrity of the whisky is predominantly down to the old, over-used casks. Not that I have a problem with their use. There aren't enough first-use casks out there. By finishing whisky, the industry has a chance to turn something substandard into something very interesting - and a small premium for the cost of the finishing cask shouldn't frowned upon too much (as long as it is a small premium).

Finally, the point about Arran (or any distillery) having a large array of different whiskies. I side with them entirely. What else can Arran do short of buying a handful more distilleries? To simply release a 10yo and perhaps a cask strength version would not be sufficient for the small independent distiller to survive. Let me put it another way: How many of us would pay to go to a tasting that only had 2 whiskies - that were almost identical (although I do believe Arran made a huge mistake by not making a peated version of their whisky - they are an island whisky after all)?

To sum up, finishes are not new, they are often very good (but even when they are bad they still offer us extra insight into the world of whisky) and they ensure a constant stream of new and interesting whiskies on the shelves of the good retailers.

Finally a comment heard from one retailer 'I won't sell cask-finished whiskies in my shop. How can you call it whisky if the cask they matured it in had already matured something else?'

Oh, and Bev, I was by no-means having a go at you personally, it is just that you got me interested with your comments.

Regards,

David


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Bev D. Blackwood II 
  To: MALTS-L at LISTS.UNI-KARLSRUHE.DE 
  Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2006 11:14 PM
  Subject: Re: Are we finished with "finishes"?


  Sorry to chime in late... :-) My profession is now brewing beer and that leaves precious little time for everything else I participate in!
  ----
  My personal "loss" from the proliferation of "finishes" is the Balvenie Classic (in the still-shaped bottle.) I have about 3/4 of a bottle of that remaining and it's my "go-to" malt for those who love sherry in their whisky, even over various Macallans.  All of the newer Balvenie offerings cannot hold a candle to it.  They lost the work of art for a handful of coins there, IMO.
  However...
  I have had an exceptional Calvados finished Imperial from G&M and have several other "finished" whiskies in my library that I return to again and again... (I still have the 17 YO (and the "evil" 18) Cadenhead Talisker sherry finish I enjoy and the original rum-finished Springbank is a taste i will never forget!  (Haven't clooped the recent version of that yet...)
  What really gets me upset is to walk into a retailer and see 10 Isle of Arran offerings.. differing ages, finishes and strengths.  To me, the beauty of the distiller's art is finding the flavor you want and then perfecting it.  That's what I try to do every day at the brewery.  Yes, you can do "special editions" but they shouldn't become a way to occupy more shelf space on a nearly permanent basis.  More often than not, I see these finishes as a means to disguise flaws in the original dram or enliven a boring whisky and charge a premium besides.  I trust some distillers and IB's more than others to bring something worthwhile to the table in this regard, but I've also been burned by some with "finishes" that "finish" my interest in their product.


  -BDB2


  Bev D. Blackwood II
  http://www.bdb2.com



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