hello you multi million manufacturing millennials and thank you to willem killian
for that malt mention introducing here in the bathy let's move this out the way for safety
rafi review 915 extras in which having reviewed a single malt whiskey or any other quality spirit
i'm now giving you more generalized information which i believe in my experience
is going to be helpful and useful and empowering your experience and in particular in identifying
what is good value for money and in narrowing down your purchasing list as to what are good whiskeys
where do you get good whiskeys um and excuse me a second i had a poll on my um patreon channel
ralphie ralfy and patreon for my subscribers they're uh giving about nine options
for a topic for a live stream i'd do a bi-annual a dry trade by monthly livestream and the topic was
signs of a good distillery because quite simply if you know the signs of a good distillery
you know the signs of a good malt because that's what these distilleries produce
and basically what i did was i itemized it into the mission statements that the distillery
managers engage with how they conduct their business and the principles by which they they
set their standards the grain yeast fermentation yields distillation protocols cask policies
warehousing bottle intake bottling integrity promotional integrity quality of rapport with
customers and consumers and also the effect of this is supply and demand and quite simply
one of the best base indicators of the signs of a good distillery is when
there's high demand for the product it's getting talked about regularly online and
um it's when it goes on sale it doesn't tend to hang about in shelves gathering dust you see
the thing is and i don't understand the economic thoughts about this where some distilleries will
bottle inferior versions of their whiskey and present them in inferior versions
and they put the bottles out there and then they sit for months if not years on shelves and shops
and that is basically your cash flow tied up for a very long period of time and frankly that's no use
cash flow and liquidity is the lifeblood of any business i run a business i know this to be true
and if you are producing mediocre bottlings when you don't even have to
and they're sitting in shelves you're just relying on the ignorance of consumers
and the misguided goodwill that the purchaser has towards the integrity of the producer that the
bottles are going to sell and then you're going to get your money but you walk into any spirit shop
there are the spirits that sell fast the big demand and then there's others that
don't they sit and they linger now two reasons for that is people just maybe not aware of it
and another reason is blind loyalty to certain brands which used to be good but now become
increasingly mediocre and the price does not reflect the quality of what's in the bottle
but i'm going to stick with the fact that many reasons one for in many situations the reason that
a whiskey sits on a shelf for a long long time gathering dust taking up space for the retailer
not appealing to the customer even even when it goes to special offer it's because of
the mediocre presentation and it's not just of the whiskey's of the integrity of presentation
it's it's of the honesty of presentation if people look at something and it looks cheesy and flippant
that's the way people are people are going to interpret it if it's full of humor humanness right
and given a daft name people will walk past it because they think it's a daft product
um but the internet changes everything it really does it's not just the proactive whiskey customer
who spends time sifting through online reviews to find out what is the best compared to the rest
it's the more passive consumer now who's bought something and just been disappointed and doesn't
know why and time and time again i hear from people that i know you know and out with the
whiskey scene oh yeah you're the whiskey guy and i bought a bottle of such and such a brand and
it's not what it used to be it's just not as good as i remember it back in the old days and do you
know what they're right they're absolutely right you know there are good whiskeys out there but
there's also whiskey slits which are not good and there's no reason why they shouldn't be
it's all down to the policy it's all down to the integrity it's all down to the business
practicality and competency really of the onus of distilleries and some independent bottlers
it's an issue if you know it's interesting that with nine options this is the one thing
that experienced whiskey drinkers wanted discussed in a live stream was signs of a good distillery
and if you're talking about a good distillery you might as well be talking also about the
signs of a bad distillery so i'll just rattle off a few signs for about of a bad distillery
bottles of whiskey that need to be discounted and heavily marketed to sell
in other words the money that the distillers when they were producing the whiskey
should have spent in quality casts to get good results but they didn't they trimmed the sales
they said you know the owner said no this is your budget this year uh you know we can just
we'll cover it over with marketing yeah the marketing doesn't work so the marketing team
very well paid people by the way they're out and about banging the drum and people are listening
to the script and they're saying i can hear that from any distillery this is getting boring
that's the signs of a bad distillery when you don't have faith in the product but
you look at the brand and say well which one i choose which is the best one that's available
is it really have you really got to say that to yourself about any brand it just
shouldn't be the case this should all be competent not every whiskey can be five star
but every whisking can be three and a half stars plus and four every whiskey can be there's no
excuse for two star whiskies one star whiskies zero star whiskies no excuse for it at all
and we're seeing that in some blends the quality of some blends i'm noticing it's just terrible
and this is why i avoid them now occasionally i taste them
i'm in a bar or alfie what do you think of this and i'm handed a fairly prominent heavily
promoted marketing blend and it's not good it's chemically that's why we describe it chemically
the signs of a bad distillery indifferent laser management poor cask policy unmotivated staff
constant cost cutting harassment of staff to do extra for
to basically earn their corn quote unquote um heavy marketing use of consultants
blingy bottles showy packaging all costs money and then these contracts these poor return
contracts where you've got to sell so much of a volume of your product to secure the contract on
very very specific terms and conditions with great big multiple outlet retailers
some in the real world and some online and eventually you get paid for your product and
then they decide if they're going to discount it or not and you don't get much of a say in the
matter so they discount your brand and it makes it look cheaper because it is cheaper because it's
been cheapened sign of a bad distillery sign of a good distillery glenn cadam aaron arden marking
spring bank glen gile all you have to do is look at the good distilleries and
then say right what other distilleries do it their way which other distilleries out there
produce whiskey properly which other kiss which other you know there's going to be
a website soon that comes along with a grading system that does an annual review
based on on numbers and actually rates every single scotch whiskey distillery
in terms of competency and delivery it's not my channel but in the next generation that that will
get a huge audience a huge audience ultimately people come along to a whiskey channel to be
mildly entertained and mildly informed and all the rest of it and a wee bit of virtual company
when you're on your own in the house with a weed drum but there's another more important reason
that people come along and that is because the people really want to know whiskey fans really
really want to know that their next purchase of whiskey for the money they pay is not going
to be a huge catastrophic disappointment that leaves them feel cheated and robbed
this is why we always go out there and we look for the signs of a good distillery
because the discovery distillery will not do that to us they will not commercially harm us
they will endorse us with the quality of what they produce and the price at which this deliver it to
us and fair enough prices will go up when it's small distilleries and demand outstrips supply
that's market forces and there's nothing we can do about it malt mates i'm just sharing
hope you found this interesting i'm ralphie in the bothy if you haven't subscribed please do
and click away likey and if you dislike it you know click that as well i don't care
really i don't and um if you're interested in my patreon channel go along to patreon.com
there's a link underneath in the description and check it out
um i don't i don't ask much just buy ralph a wee drum per month
um a cheap drama will do and uh join the additional conversation with the extra videos bye