The Problem with ‘Gateway’ Whiskies
How to Evangelise Whisky in a Secular Age
Whenever I mention my involvement in the whisky world to a new group, as often as not a milieu of largely young, cosmopolitan and English university graduates, I get the same question. “But do you like whisky?”
There are several outdated assumptions at play here. I am a woman, and whisky is a man’s drink. And I am relatively young, and whisky is an older person’s drink.
Curiously, the perceptions of several other drinks are rapidly changing. The natural wine movement is reinventing wine as an eco-friendly, often funky and certainly trendy tipple, more kombucha than corner-shop Casillero del Diablo; meanwhile, ever-more inventive gin replacements swap alcohol for purely botanical bitterness in the hopes of attracting the health-conscious. My non-whisky friends would expect me to like orange wine and gins that aren’t Gordon’s. Even my interest in real ale and cider is reasonably innocuous. Whisky, however, is more of a surprise.
We at Dramface like to evangelise about whisky. We want to spread the word and bring ever more interested and excited people into the fold – engaged consumers, rather than sheep swallowing marketing waffle or insanely wealthy investors with no interest in the actual spirit, if you will. So naturally, my instinct is to try and convert those fellow young people questioning my love for a dram of the good stuff.
Conventional wisdom would have it that I need to go to the supermarket (or to Wetherspoons), get them a taste of Famous Grouse or Jameson or Glenmorangie or any other relatively dilute and widely available 40% whisky, and thereby somehow show them that whisky isn’t nasty after all. Show them that it certainly isn’t harder to swallow than any other cheap-ish spirit they’re in the habit of necking in the interest of inebriation.
But I would like to challenge the idea that we need to rely on so-called gateway whiskies (or indeed follow the supermarkets’ dodgy pricing, as elegantly summarised by Wally Macaulay in a recent Dramface review). There’s nothing wrong with having enjoyed such whiskies at the start of one’s whisky journey, or even continuing to dabble with them now. However, they are not what creates the deeper fascination that grips so many of us, and I would argue they are not an effective way of evangelising. I would bet a large number of drams that few have been brought into the whisky world with a transcendental glass of Sainsbury’s Basics Blended Scotch. Or if they were, it wasn’t about the whisky itself.
One of my whisky pet peeves – though not quite as egregious as the marketeer’s notion that whisky can be aged for “long [as opposed to short?] years” – is the idea, often touted, that lower-quality, pedestrian whisky is necessary for recruiting new fans of our favourite spirit. Of course, affordability and value should always be considerations, but there are ways to acquire a good entry-level single malt for the same price you’d pay for a big-name blend with far less to offer a curious palate. And anyway, why should there be one kind of gateway whisky for all tastes?
Getting someone new into whisky requires a certain level of empathetic ability – you need to think about their tastes. Some people are immediately drawn in by the phenolic weirdness of peat, others find it repulsive. Equally, some will be delighted by something light and smooth, while others will take a while to become accustomed to distinguishing between whiskies of greater subtlety and therefore find them boring at first. Everyone is different. Rather than buying into mass-market whisky’s homogeneity problem, we should embrace the variety present among our friends and acquaintances as well as the variety of whiskies they might like.
My problem is with the notion of ‘accessibility’. Clearly, a price can be accessible, but what is an accessible taste? The reason tasting notes are so subjective is that we all have different backgrounds and draw on different references. We all have basically the same facility to smell and taste things – it’s our facility to name and identify what we’re perceiving that develops over time. We take it for granted that someone unacquainted with whisky would prefer something smooth and ‘inoffensive’, but why is that? Isn’t so much of the enjoyment of whisky in the discerning of interesting and surprising notes?
Indeed, whisky is primarily about sharing experiences with other people. If people see you enjoying something and getting excited about it and hear you talking about it a lot (but not too much, perhaps), they’ll be intrigued enough to try it too. It’s a human connection that counts more than a particular whisky’s flavour profile. When coconuts first came to England in the Middle Ages, it’s likely that those who tried them would have thought the taste reminiscent of the smell of gorse flowers. You never know what’s lurking in someone’s taste and smell reference library. There is no reason to assume the same isn’t true in whisky.
What’s missing is the story, the guidance on what to look out for in smell and taste, the encouragement that the tongue will acclimatise to the ABV in a while.
Not everyone is going to have the predisposition to become a fan of interesting and challenging single malt. It requires the allocation of a certain amount of time and disposable income, an enjoyment of strong alcoholic drink, and the inclination to sit and ponder something that might feel a bit impenetrable at first. And given the high incidence of whisky lovers also loving Star Wars (I confess I am not one of them), perhaps a general nerdiness helps? Some people have other priorities, and more power to them.
I am consequently of the opinion that, if someone in possession of the traits outlined above tries a complex whisky and is put off, it’s not that they can’t take the ABV – or just “don’t like whisky”. What’s missing is the story, the guidance on what to look out for in smell and taste, the encouragement that the tongue will acclimatise to the ABV in a while. Often, it’s just about people getting their hands on something at the extreme ends of whisky – extra-peaty, cask strength, heavily sherried, and so on. In that way, they come to realise what whisky can be (even if it often isn’t). They realise that it’s anything but bland.
My own experience of falling in love with whisky involved someone giving me several peat-bombs to try, along with an explanation of their provenance. Even as my tongue was being weirded out by a flavour it had never encountered before, my brain, which is always interested in history and culture (interests in, for instance, chemistry, food science or politics would have been just as useful as ways in), was being beguiled by learning about a new process and place. From there, I was quickly sucked into the online whisky world – the perfect lockdown solace. If someone had tried to recruit me with E150a-flavoured, vanilla-scented water, I doubt I’d be writing this today.
I’m not simply criticising the use of mediocre whiskies for introducing new people to the drink – even perfectly well-made ‘softer’ dram might be unable to grab the uninitiated. When people want to learn about wine, it’s always about comparison – this is white, this is red; this is dry, this is sweet; this is floral, this is fruity; and so on. With whisky, too, I think all you need something with one characteristic or flavour beyond what the newbie would describe as “generic whisky flavour”. Really, it’s not about the gateway whisky – it’s about the second whisky. If you don’t get an inkling of the variety and complexity of what’s out there – if you don’t notice the difference from one to the next – what’s the point of exploring further?
You could say we’ve largely solved the problem of getting the right info and guidance widely available. Indeed, I would certainly direct any whisky-curious friends to various YouTube channels and websites rather than a supermarket whisky shelf. Feeling like you’ve fallen into a special-feeling yet accessible club is a great way in. Again, I’m not saying you won’t necessarily find anything good at that supermarket, but rather that you need the content to understand what’s worth picking up. Okay, 46% may be slowly becoming the new 40%, but knowing why the former is preferable is a good place to start.
The question looms: what about price? Certainly, price is a greater barrier to entry to the world of compelling, high-quality single malts than the ABV that’s often baulked at. And true, new distilleries are bringing out their first NAS expressions at £50 or often more – that’s simply a lot of money for one bottle of liquid, especially for a young person whose future (job, house, pension…) is completely insecure. Avocado toast is pittance compared to that. But then, those new distilleries are, for the most part, not massive operations, and they need to dig themselves out from under a Munro of debt once they come on stream. It’s not surprising that there’s a premium attached to that liquid.
Pricier but higher quality whisky is probably in a better position than ever with young drinkers these days, especially if it has sustainability credentials, given how these consumers – or at least a certain class thereof – are increasingly willing to pay more for better quality, more environmentally friendly products. And of course, there are good single malts out there for what we’d call semi-reasonable prices, such as Glencadam 10, Benromach 10, Ardbeg Wee Beastie, Ledaig 10 and various Campbeltown products (when you can get ahold of them) – to name a few.
Let’s face it: whisky is a luxury good. Someone who can’t afford a £50 bottle of liquid can’t really afford one that’s £40; someone who wouldn’t spend £30 is unlikely to want to spend £20. Indeed, first deciding to spend double figures on a bottle of any fleeting, drinkable liquid seems to me as much of a leap as starting to spend more than £50 on whiskies once you’ve got into them. Why do we assume that someone, once they’ve tried their cheap gateway whisky, will suddenly have a much bigger budget to spend on the really good stuff? Those without this kind of disposable income – and many potential new recruits to whisky are in this category – need not be unable to participate. Miniatures seem to be the ideal solution: the reward of trying the new liquid without the risk of sinking a great deal of money into a full bottle. Perhaps we should promote miniatures as the real gateway in.
It should be noted that when whisky geeks complain about the price of a whisky, they are usually complaining that the price is unjustified given the quality of the product. They might compare the product to other whiskies in the same price bracket, and tell you to take your business elsewhere. They might bemoan how a particular product used to be made or presented with more integrity, but now commands a higher price. They see brands hiking their prices for no discernible reason other than, in a whisky climate hotting up, they assume – often rightly – that they can get away with it, and are disappointed.
Naturally, what something should cost is a construction based on common practice. The question is, what did it cost to make? Without digging into that at this point, I will quote what was so shrewdly pointed out by Roy in Dramface podcast episode 3: There’s no way that Springbank, a small business which does things more labour-intensively than basically anyone else, is not making a profit. And yet, Springbank whiskies cost less than so many others.
The Glasgow Whisky Festival’s programme from 2014 lists Springbank 10, Hazelburn 10 and Longrow NAS all at £39. These retail prices basically haven’t changed since – though the markup in certain stores and by flippers certainly has…
thanks to Scott Munro for the vintage price list
If good single malt is going to stay either super expensive or incredibly difficult to get hold of, we need more bottle shares and more samples divvied up. For instance, Dunkeld Whisky Box gave many people a chance to try the latest Springbank 25 by selling it in samples at adjusted retail price. There are lots of ways of trying that don’t involve full-on buying. As stated, purchasing miniature bottles instead of full ones is a good tactic (though we all know the ritual of pulling that cork out is part of the fun). One would hope that, eventually, the presence of a well-informed consumer base dedicated to good products will create demand for just that and drive prices down. Like so much in whisky, it’s a waiting game.
These retail prices basically haven’t changed since – though the markup in certain stores and by flippers certainly has…
In whisky, the consumer plays the long game as much as the producer – if we want to create demand for more Springbanks by bringing more young people into the fold, we need to educate/evangelise about what is good, share treasures with the whisky-curious if we are lucky enough to remember the good old days, and not support whisky we don’t think is worth any money for the sake of a dubious ‘gateway’ effect.
There’s nothing wrong with keeping certain widely available bottles around to pour dependable drams from when you want to entice someone new or just have an inoffensive drink with a pal. It’s just the concept of ‘gateway whisky’ that’s a bit problematic – we don’t mean a gateway to all whisky when we say it; rather, we want to provide a gateway to the kind of whisky we think is worth drinking. We don’t want people to stick to Bulleit or entry-level Old Pulteney.
And what if that potential new recruit loves the more accessible gateway? If they love it, they might just stick around inside the gateway rather than walking through it and be richer for it (in the monetary sense, anyway). There's no reason to assume a consumer will move on from something good in order to look for something ‘better’ at a ‘worse’ price point. Indeed, perhaps the type of person who becomes a whisky nerd is likely to be the kind of person who orders something new every time they go to a pub (I wonder what percentage of the population is like this). They're change-focussed, rather than change-averse.
Ardbeg’s advertising really is a rollercoaster
To hook such people on to a new category, knowledgeable word of mouth is needed. As such, many whisky brands attempt to circumvent the need for a person-to-person connection, cutting straight to the chase by advertising a particular lifestyle. But what information are brands actually sharing with younger/would-be consumers? Hint: It’s almost never about the flavour. And it’s certainly not about how they should be using an ‘integrity presentation’ of an ABV of at least about 46%, a lack of chill filtration and an absence of added colouring as a benchmark of quality. While still maintaining a balanced view of what’s possible, taking various distillery’s production methods and capacities into account, and bearing in mind the myriad laws and regulations applied in different whisky-making countries, of course.
In terms of advertising, it’s interesting to compare the stories a few of the bigger whisky brands tell about themselves. Based on a brief survey of relatively recent advertising campaigns, it is clear that the brands are anxious for their whisky not to appear as an old man’s/alcoholic’s/traditionalist’s drink. And there are many different ways of showcasing whisky, new and improved.
Glenmorangie’s ‘It’s kind of delicious and wonderful’ (2020) tried to turn whisky into an extra-shiny Wes Anderson film, while the equally aspirationally quirky Willy Wonka-isation of Dr Bill Lumsden is ongoing. Meanwhile, Glenmorangie-owned Ardbeg is torn between trying to appear punk in its labelling (indeed, quite a few heavily peated whiskies seem to want to cultivate a heavy-metal persona), cultivating a year-round celebration of Halloween, and flirting with the steampunk and the twee (in the An Oa short from 2017). Jameson now wants us to #WidenTheCircle, appealing not to a particular aesthetic but rather to trendy sensibilities of inclusiveness, while Laphroaig is also implicitly saying “it’s okay to be weird” by leaning into the supposed ‘weirdness’ of its whisky.
You rarely see wine – a ‘traditional’ drink if ever there was one – anxiously advertising in this way. Whisky knows it has an image problem among many young people, but I think that problem is not quite what the brands think it is. The people who ask if I really like whisky are assuming I drink it in the way they generally drink spirits – to get a night out more quickly underway. On the contrary: I drink whisky as a hobby; I treat it as an interest – primarily from the comfort of my own sofa, but that’s perhaps a side effect of my lockdown-induced whisky fascination.
There is so much more to whisky than the alcohol – heck, I’m even fascinated by the auctions of whisky I’ll never have the money to pay for. Many of the whiskies I would like to buy are being priced out of my reach, but that just means I have to look elsewhere. And there really is so much whisky out there. To me, whisky means intellectual stimulation, unusual flavour experiences, and warm camaraderie. There’s a plethora of gateways in there.
GM
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