As Burn’s night approaches my mind has turned towards whisky and the fact that I have an excuse to indulge in a few glasses of the stuff tonight. While I am a drinks analyst whose job is to know about different alcohol products, I’ve also hit that mid-thirties lifestage when I’ve suddenly become interested in beverages that never appealed to me before – especially discerning ones. And malt is near the top of that list, especially given my love of HBO series Mad Men.
Whisky Market Trends
In my experience, malt is desirable – even revered – among many UK drinkers (and certainly not just Scots) so I was surprised to find, when writing the Dark Spirits market report in August 2011, that supermarket sales had declined by 7% in the past year – particularly given that Jack Daniel’s is leading such impressive growth in the US bourbon/whisky sector.
When I think of my own experiences of buying whisky though I can’t say I am that surprised it is not performing better. Going to a supermarket, the choice of malts is endless and with bottles being around