Official Bottling | 46% ABV

Flogging the horse

I know the Springbank anti-hype rant has been done to death, and really this whole article is just flogging the poor horse’s dusty skeleton. That said, the topic is fresh in my mind and I want to express a few personal views and opinions from the other side of a retailer’s counter.

It’s again the time of the season that the store I work at receives their Springbank allocation. Our policy for the last few, given the increase in demand recently, is to put the allocation to a ballot system. Basically, for every given amount of money spent in the whisky category, the customer receives a ballot.

This is to encourage growth in our whisky category, but also to randomise the selection of people that end up with bottles from a pool that necessarily become our customers. As much as possible, we prevent known flippers from entering the ballot in the first place. It’s not perfect, but it’s about as fair a system as we could come up with while promoting the growth of a small, family owned business. It is what it is.

Naturally, advertising this ballot promotion causes a massive surge in the number of customers that call or come into the store for the purposes of obtaining Springbank. The majority of them have read the conditions of the ballot and are simply there to purchase other whiskies so they can go into the draw.

There are some, though, that only care about one thing; we have bottles of Springbank, and they’ll try almost anything to obtain them. In particular, there’s a demographic or two that seem to make up the majority of this bell curve, and indeed that seem to go above and beyond in the dogged pursuit of these bottles. I’ll be absolutely no less vague in that statement, but I can guarantee if you ask pretty much any other retailer that gets a Springbank allocation, they’ll know exactly what I mean. It is what it is.

These people can be incredibly pushy; many offer well over the retail price we ask. A retail price that’s continued to inflate due to increases in wholesale via distribution networks, though nowhere near the proportions of the local secondary market. They’ll then try to wheel-and-deal their way into circumnavigating the ballot system.

There are perhaps one or two instances where the individual has a high disposable income and is simply looking to stick the bottles in a glass cabinet to collect dust, which is still appalling of course, but the vast majority are looking to flip the bottles for a profit. Many make no secret of it; some will admit to not drinking much whisky, to reselling bottles, and some even go as far as to describe the prices they can get for certain bottles, especially overseas. 

As an aside, since we’re yet again discussing flippers and whisky “investment”, I’d like to make a note about my personal stance on the matter, and draw a bit on our Views From A Scapegoat article too, since it covers so much of the discussion.

First, if you profit from flipping whisky at all (purchasing with the express intent of reselling bottles at a profit greater than the cumulative rate of inflation over any period in time) then you are part of the problem. The legality of the action is variable depending on geography, but here in Australia if the sale isn’t going through an auction or similar with a licence to sell alcohol, then it’s illegal and I believe the same should be true pretty well everywhere.

It’s a controlled substance after all. Purchasing whisky on behalf of someone else for their convenience or access is one thing, but to make a profit from the action is reselling. I believe that should be enforceably prosecutable without licensing.

Second, I abhor the notion that the morality of flipping whisky is ameliorated by someone’s “meagre income”, and that flipping is a means of offsetting the costs of a whisky hobby. News flash; there are plenty of us on mediocre incomes and there are many of us that’ll never flip a bottle on principle.

No matter how it’s rationalised, the existence of flipping facilitates prices, even at retail, which preclude many from affording those flippable bottles even if people had the chance to access them at retail. I’m incredibly lucky to have access to some of these bottles by virtue of where I work, and even at wholesale cost I can barely justify their cost these days - hence the bottle splits within my whisky club. These also allow people that otherwise maybe couldn’t afford or access bottles to at least taste some of the whiskies they remember from days now long gone.

If you flip bottles, you are passing on the costs of whisky which you cannot afford to the entire whisky community by scaling the income of average drinkers against the income of those more wealthy to whom cost is no concern. It destroys any notion of equity in opportunity to obtain bottles. There are no free lunches, flippers just expect someone else to pay for their meal. Frankly, it’s despicable.

Last, I would say that if someone wants to justify their flipping through any analogies to other “commodity” products, remember that J&A Mitchell & Co. want bottles of Springbank to be drunk. Not collected to accumulate dust - and definitely not to be flipped. They’ve gone on record about this, made displays through direct retail at Cadenhead’s stores to make the bottles affordable and accessible to the drinker, while attempting to suppress flipper mechanics and otherwise do their best to get whisky in the hands of those that want to appreciate its intrinsic value. How many other “commodity” products can you say that for?

Perhaps, one could draw parallels to some popular artists; those that would like their works to be appreciated by the masses rather than privately owned, stored and never publicly viewed or heard except by auction attendees looking to snag another fiscally appreciating piece.

No, I’d say that almost every artist worth their salt would want their music released and toured/attended as widely as possible, to have their paintings hung in galleries, statues to be displayed in public places so people can enjoy the fruits of their labour. Yes, I do condemn art collectors and scalpers that keep their collections and tickets private, art flippers and flippers of basically any goods meant to be used, consumed or otherwise enjoyed by people.

Back to the main thread. Little of this information, nor my opinions are going to be much news to anyone, except perhaps how brazen some can be about their actions. At some level I appreciate the honesty of such honest flippers; it doesn’t make them any less dislikable, but I like the tautological naming of spades as it were.

So why am I bothering to write this? Because I think we should discuss what I believe to be a strong correlation between some of those more persistent flippers, their customers and the viewed importance of reputation.

Reputation

Some groups place more emphasis on reputation in making purchasing decisions than others. For instance, the mega-wealthy seem more inclined to rely on reputation to guide their purchases, given that certain brands fall well inside the realm of luxury lifestyle consumer goods, and so the product itself becomes almost entirely secondary to the emanative clout of owning such a bottling. Notice I say owning, not drinking. It’s a quasi-maniacal egotism for which I cannot fathom a single redeeming factor.

An obvious example of this is Macallan. The whisky community, and certainly most of the Dramface subsect of that community, seems to have little interest in the distillery and its whiskies, and I would argue that’s for very good reason. Many of us would proffer explanations that the whisky simply isn’t worth the money the distillery is asking for, and most of us seem uninterested in the phallic-metrication that is collecting them. Of course that doesn’t phase Macallan in the least, given they still sell bottles to those who rely only on reputation to guide their purchases. Obviously that’s a profitable business model for them, and so it’s the same for flippers.

Essentially, I’m saying that luxury lifestyle statements and other vapid shenanigans are all emetic vanities fuelled by the pursuit of reputation.

Hype culture

This is one of the only major issues I take with our globalised, interconnected whisky community. It’s reasonable that anyone looking to explore whisky should want to draw on as many resources as possible. It’s commendable to seek information and make educated purchasing decisions, especially when the category continues to become premiumised and prices continue to inflate. Naturally though, as more people are brought into whisky, looking for opinions and guidance for what to buy and drink, a certain amount of self-reinforcement is unavoidable.

All it takes is someone senior in the whisky community (take for instance people like Ralfy, or indeed our very own Roy) to endorse a product, and the chain reaction of people responding to that praise can build like a resonant frequency all the way up to some shattering point.

Even without the explicit influence of a senior figure, various brands, trends and other focal points can become fashionable in the community. Accordingly, there’s an almost exponential growth in the interest in those foci, and this drives a certain degree of internally reinforcing public opinion about a given product, a bit like a mass-event confirmation bias.

Regardless of the reasons for a product’s increased notoriety, it generally becomes less available as demand increases, then the price inevitably increases because of supply/demand mechanics, which in turn inflates its perceived quality to the uninformed (the basis for premiumisation). What otherwise might have been a passing fad can escalate into a positive feedback loop of hype.

What’s particularly disturbing about this is the increasing rate of growth of new whisky fans participating in these fad-driven hype-culture swells. Because of the resultant dilution, there’s an ever decreasing percentage of the community that are veteran whisky fans with the experience and length of memories to counteract this hype culture with practicality and sensibility. After all, one of the results of maturity and experience in pretty well any consumer category is the profound acceptance that the enjoyment of a product is an individualistic experience. That sentiment is frequently touted as some carte blanche for expressing any and all opinions in social whisky settings, but I feel the message rarely sinks in any deeper than the bromidic intent with which it’s usually delivered.

Seriously though; regardless of a whisky’s reputation, whether it be positive or negative, the only opinion that should matter to you is your own. If you happen to like something that’s generally perceived as a fault (sulphur, butyric acid, over-oaking, immaturity, whatever) then good for you; own it. Likewise if you don’t like something that’s generally adored by the community, all the better- you’ll probably save money by not enjoying or buying those bottlings.

The prevalence of the internet, particularly the aspects which promote the sharing of unqualified opinions rather than data, information and facts, has just as many drawbacks in the whisky sphere as it does in any other realm. Don’t get me wrong, I think the sharing of experiences and opinions is important; it would be pretty massively hypocritical to write for a whisky platform like Dramface otherwise.

But I think the value of having these (hopefully well qualified) opinions presented in a manner such as Dramface’s format is that you as an individual reader get to determine which of us have tastes, opinions and beliefs which align with your own, based on your experiences. I disagree with some of my co-writers fundamentally on certain topics and opinions, and I’m confident many of them would say exactly the same about me. And you know what? That’s a wonderful thing.

When it comes to opinions of taste, I couldn’t care less about non-individualised (ie popular) consensus, and frankly I don’t think anyone else should either; it’s by definition a group-think mentality that basically seeks to fit in with the crowd above all else. I think we should concern ourselves more with alignment. Find those with opinions and tastes which align with your own, no matter how niche, then leverage them to find bottles that suit your palate at that moment. Your tastes will almost inevitably evolve with time anyway, and so too will those others with whom you align.

So, speaking of consensus, let’s get to scoring; specifically, one kind of scoring.

Average scoring and data processing

I’ll get this out of the way quickly; I’m not a fan of peer averaged scores. At least not without a healthy degree of moderation, contextualisation and guiding parameters. There are a number of apps and sites out there which utilise peer averaged scores, though I think many of us could agree that the primary resource is Whiskybase. There’s a staggering amount of whisky reviews to peruse, many of which include some varyingly useful tasting notes.

Don’t get me wrong; I use the site on a regular basis for research while composing reviews. Occasionally, I’ll even skim over some reviews prior to purchasing a new bottle. But when I do, it’s not the average score at the top of the page that I care about; it’s the users which I have come to find alignment (or indeed anti-alignment) with. It’s the frequency of use of certain key terms and language; ie sulphur, fruits, peat, oak etc. There is a mind boggling amount of rather useful data to be mined from the platform. It’s just the scoring that bothers me.

There are three primary mechanics which devalue the scoring of such sites for me. Firstly, the aggregation of different sub-categories of scorers; what can basically be thought of as selection bias. Consider for a moment the categories of people that are (hypothetically) most likely to post reviews on Whiskybase. They are much more likely to be an informed enthusiast than the average whisky punter by virtue of the fact that they’re familiar with the site.

Even more so, the fact that they are confident enough to so publicly announce their opinions about a whisky, then quantise them. Now of course enthusiasm doesn’t necessarily predicate experience or knowledge in whisky, but it may well be an indicator of likelihood to engage in whisky enthusiast pop culture, such as blogs, other review sites and YouTube channels.

That propensity makes them more likely to run into whisky tropes, pieces of news and/or publicly accepted information on given topics. A fairly ubiquitous truth of the internet is that the regurgitation of inherited “knowledge” without original thought and input appears wise and esteemed only to the inexperienced.

So we have a selection bias; what of it? Well, for example, consider the core Glendronach 12yo . At the time of writing, I found 54 scores of 2022 bottlings of Glendronach which averaged out at 81.47 points. Compare that to the 112 scores I found for the 2021 bottlings with an average of 83.74. Not only was there a noticeable decrease in the scores over this period, but there were less than half the number of scorers. I’m no data analyst, and thus unqualified to answer any analytical questions regarding this, but doesn’t it appear at first glance like there was a decrease in both the perceived quality of the whisky, as well as interest in the whisky from an enthusiastic community? A community which would largely have been aware of the change in Glendronach’s pronouncement of chill filtration status? A change which was, as we now know retrospectively, a pure act of administration, rather than any change to production processes? I hope you see what I’m getting at here.

The groups that opt to review whiskies in spaces where their scores are averaged are, in all likelihood, inherently biassed by selection criteria. Sherry fans are more likely to review sherry bombs, and the same is likely true for peat heads, fans of fruity whisky, dirty whisky, loyal fans of niche distilleries and even those that pursue bottles from certain vintages.

What’s as bad as all this selection bias? The fact we have functionally no meaningful way of estimating the impact that this selection bias has. The only exception that comes to mind would be if we were to use big data to map each user on these sites and applications, collate their proclivities based on frequency, type and categories of reviews, then use that data to compare users to one another to establish individual bias according to some statistic metrics, then calculate the resultant cumulative bias for each bottling. That is a huge undertaking which requires Diageo-or-similar levels of corporate funding.

The second issue I have with averaged reviews is that, much like whisky opinions in general, they are biassed by one another. If enough people rate a whisky highly enough (for whatever motivation) it increases the odds that others that review the whisky will follow suit and contribute to some nucleating growth. This is only compounded by factors which correlate to hype-status.

There is a certain clout to drinking or reviewing a whisky which most other people can’t, much the same as there is clout in owning something others can’t find or afford; arguably the origin of social media brag-post culture. To review such a whisky favourably only heightens the degree of, “look what I have that you don’t”. That isn’t to say it’s what people explicitly intend to do when posting about their drams, but for some it’s an obvious component of the decision making.

Whisky socialites posturing for jealousy derived gratification is just the kind of behaviour that can lead to brands transitioning into luxury lifestyle status. To be avoided.

The third and final issue I have with averaged scores is the loss of subtlety and nuance. Even if we assume that the motives of all the reviewers contributing to an averaged score are pure of intent, that they are earnest in their views, minimally biassed and thus independent data points, what do we get? A mix of bright colours ultimately leads to greys and beiges. Imagine if the Dramface review for the Springbank 15yo piece had been reduced down to the rounded average of our scores (a 7, by the way). How much less impactful would the piece have been had we simply plastered that score at the top for people to nod at with barely roused interest? Of course our individual scores would have remained, but the average would be the figure most people thought of relative to that review.

Again; a loss of subtlety and nuance.

Naturally, the leveraging of scores on such sites as a reference for popular opinion on a given bottling inevitably becomes feed for the flipper fire too. The higher the score across a wider audience of reviews, the higher the flipper’s expected ROI.

I don’t want to be entirely negative; averaged scores can be useful, but as stated above, I believe they need to be used in conjunction with other information, context, reasonable interpretation and a bunch of other prerequisites which I just don’t see that many others utilising.

As always, just my two cents.

Review

Springbank 18yo, Bottle date 11/07/2022, 65% bourbon casks, 35% sherry casks, 46% ABV

Australian market £210, £160 (AUD$300) paid. Your mileage may vary.

Right, enough of all that pessimism, grouchiness, doom and gloom. Let’s do something useful and actually contribute an opinion.

Nose

Some identifiable distillery character, partially occluded by cask. Muddy farmyard, silage, game meats and alliums, then a little flinty sulphur (the kind that might stir approving nods from some Chablis fans) and rubbed coins from the sherry casks, but globally it's lead by the organosulfurs from the distillate. Some mango chutney and dark stewed fruits, subtle strawberry lolly, maple syrup, a good worty malt with some light toastiness, integrated cask spices and touches of earthy/wood smoke driven peat.

Palate

Many of the same things as on the nose, though the maturity is more appreciable here; we see a little lychee and passionfruit join the mango. The sherry also pokes up a smidge more with moderate rancio at the beginnings of mushroom; just on the far side of my limits of enjoyability. Some umami (the sherry again) playing off more puffs of earthy/dirty/chimney peat smoke, some cooked plum, white pepper, toffee, baking spices and a growing impression of smallgoods through the finish with a wee nudge of tannic astringency.

The Dregs

It's not quite as apparently mature as the Longrow 21s I've reviewed recently, but it feels a bit older than the Longrow 18 and markedly more so than that silly Springbank 15. The sherry casks are still a bit louder than I’d like from the perspective of rancio, sulphur and distillate suppression, but globally this is a good whisky. It’s not the sort of thing I’d be reaching for multiple drams of, nor would it be poured daily even if it was a quarter of the price paid. That said, as a mood pour, it’s balanced enough for me to enjoy certain facets very well. All of that filters down to the score below, which does include a knock due to pricing.

Score: 6/10

Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. TK

Other opinions on this:

Whiskybase

The Whiskey Novice (video)

Vintage Ralfy (video)

Got a link to a reliable review? Tell us.