AW: Are we finished with "finishes"?

[Horst Luening]

> 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.

Hello David!

I agree, this is very difficult for a young distillery. If you are going too
broard in you portfolio, then customers show renitence. My wife sees, that
she is not able to sell all the different Arrans or malts from a longer
existing distillery like Bruichladdich to her customers. If a customer has
too many choices, s/he will refuse to buy at all. Too many questions, too
uncertain. She therefore has to narrow the portfolio.

Going for peated malts with other names? Multiply the products of the
distillery by factor two or three? Some independent distilleries go for
this. No smoke, medium smoke, extreme smoke ...

But what does the SWA say to this? If I remember the new codex right, then
they want to have only one Single Malt Whisky name from one distillery. If
these startup distilleries grow bigger and want to join the SWA, then they
would have to change their portfolio resp. names - which is close to
impossible then without harming their business severely.

Benriach shows a better matching strategy. They bottle peated and unpeated
malts under its own single name.

Regards,
Horst

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