hello malty mephitic ministers of manifolds and thank you to france larsen for providing
the malt mansion for ralphie review 919 extras in which having reviewed a single malt whiskey
which i usually do but not always i then move on to other topics of conversation which malt mates
including yourself are going to find useful helpful and informative and my topic for ralphie
review 919 extras is to do with something which affects us all and irritates us enormously and
it's to do with batch variation and i'll start by just explaining batch variation
batch variation is when you buy a whiskey or you're given a sample of whiskey
and you particularly enjoy it so you go to buy a bottle or
another bottle and it may be a few months later it may be a year later and when you buy that bottle
you get home you take the top off you pour a glass and immediately your smile turns to a frown and
you're a little bit puzzled because the whiskey doesn't quite taste like it did the last time
and what's confusing you initially is you're under appreciation of just how
good an archivist your sense of smell and taste is even for someone relatively experienced they
can have one bottle of a single malt followed by another bottle of a single malt a month later a
year later two years later and immediately spot that it's not quite what it was now
there's two reasons that a whiskey can change it can change in quality or it can change in flavor
but maintain the quality and this is something that we gain with experience we start to notice
this for example with spring banks and it's really to do with small batch variation
single cask variation or cask used variations due to the signature that casks impose on a single
malt as it's maturing for example sherry madeira port bourbon white wines red wines marsalas
all these permutations are the combination of casks in permutations and if the casks have
been good and if they've worked with the single malt we'll taste a version of the
whiskey which confuses us initially but once we get to know it we find that the quality is fine
the taste is different but the quality is good whereas there's some other whiskies we buy which
is a lot more concerning because it looks the same it seems to be the same same kind of bottle same
color but it tastes not as good it is rarely that you get a whiskey that tastes significantly better
than the first time round because it's the nature of the challenges within the scotch
whisky industry in accessing obtaining and paying for good quality casks these days
is something that the smart distilleries have spent a lot of money years ago investing in
getting quality oak properly coopered into casks specifically for their own use and it costs money
but having said that the actual cost of producing whiskey in relation to the price that it goes on
sale for is pretty small in fact it's very small the big costs are in duty paid to the government
and taxes if you're in the uk are importation duties and bureaucratic duties if it's whiskey's
getting imported to another country like australia and canada sweden norway great example um that can
really affect the the price of a whiskey and how much of that whiskey when you're
paying for it is not actually in anything related to how much actually cost to produce
they used to be let me see about 10 years ago that you could produce a liter of single malt scotch
whiskey in a pot still for two pounds 50. very reasonable money in at that point but it's more
than doubled now i mean the cost of energy alone is just eye-wateringly outrageous and this creates
a dilemma for the for the distillers they want to keep hold of the customers but who are they
catering for what do they need to do can they cut costs and use cheaper casks or use the same casks
more often scrape out the inside re-toast re-scorch re-bake the casks recharge them
to try and get a little bit more life out of them can they reduce energy costs by
speeding up the still slightly making it run faster getting a more efficient alcohol yield
out the grain that they're using by a few more percentage points in terms of volume
you can only go so far and the more you
sanitize the product the more you turn the whiskey into something more like vodka
it loses i it loses its identity it loses its signature and we we remember this the smell and
the taste are very acute senses that we have they're very good librarians and archivists
and a few months later a year later a few years later we'll come back to whiskey and we'll say
oh oh it's a bit younger tasting why would that be higher proportion of refill casks
secondary fill casks third full even fourth fill casks are being used for maturation to cut costs
so it cuts down in the volume and the quality of the flavor but it's not as if they reduce
the price is it well not initially although latterly when you have brands which are
of less substance that you'd see i'm using my pick mortgage carefully brands which are of less
substance than they used to be you'll increasingly see that people are not interested in them they're
not flying off the shelves like spring banks kill cairns and daft mills although within that mill's
case it's because they're so little produced but it's still a damn good single malt whiskey
and it's authentically presented for quality for integrity for smell and taste but there's other
brands out there that you look at them i mean i saw recently a 21 year old bushmills 21 year old
40 volume looked like it had caramel in it asking 200 odd pounds too expensive no sale even even
when you go out to buy now the experiences of disappointment which have registered
from previous purchases leave you weary defensive and more easily disappointed next time around i've
seen it happen with highland park you get to get fabulous highland parks you really really do but
some of the official bottlings are just they are not doing that distillery any justice whatsoever
and it's not just highland park glenn mornigie had a very very good example of that recently with a
a harshly oaked permutation called cognac cask matured 13 year old and it was an absolute
brand killer of of cask influence and it really i mean fine if you if you like harsh oak notes but
even people that don't have have maybe have just a few years experience are really going
to pick up in that and be disappointed particularly in relation to the price
and perhaps this is one reason why people are exploring further afield non-scotch whiskies
like for example cavallan which is still got a growing reputation it's a taiwanese whiskey
um another example would be some of the french whiskeys the peated ones
they're getting a a research of interest happening now as people start to explore further
afield because they don't anticipate the sort of disappointment that they've had from a bad batch
always recognize in terms of smell terms of taste and importantly your own reaction
always trust your own instincts and if you're not sure hand a sample to a friend to verify
or not verify whether you're right sure now and again your pilot can be out of synchronization
due to medication or due to just how you're feeling maybe you're getting over a cold
maybe you've had an injection of some vaccine or something
perhaps you've had some steroid ointment all these things can factor in so just be aware of that but
how do we respond when we've had a bad batch well it's buyer take care and buyer beware simple as
that put it down to experience but make sure you log that experience and keep it in your archive
follow the information online i'm doing my best to help some whiskeys are good some seriously
i'm increasingly disappointed in one of those will be coming up shortly i'll tell you all
about it but hey ho it's all part of the journey and part of the mission is to sift out the best
from the rest and then to share it because in doing so producers will make better whiskey
and producers who will make who are making less whiskey must be prepared to make less profit to
discount the whiskey and spend more in marketing them and then dealing with people's disappointment
there you have it mates have a good one