A New Whisky Crisis Looms – Scotch Distillers Running Out Of Names

We haven’t quite digested yesterdays’ news of Diageo freezing some of their expansion investements yet, and now another blow is hitting the Scotch whisky industry. The names for Scotch whisky are running out faster than expected.

The first sign of the crisis was overlooked by many, when Ardmore announced their new Legacy bottling that is destined to replace the successful Traditional Cask. Only a few whisky geeks remembered that Tomatin had launched a bottle with the same name back in March.

But yesterday events culminated in a climactic product launch by The Glenlivet. To celebrate 1 million sold cases in the past 12 months the Founder’s Reserve was introduced, a No Age Statement whisky that will sell for around £30. Nobody present at the launch event knew for certain if Glenlivet were aware of the fact that there is already a Founder’s Reserve by Glen Garioch on the market. But what stupefied all in the room was the fact that Glenlivet had already launched a whisky named Founder’s Reserve in 2011 to commemorate their distillery expansion.

The naming problem of the Scotch whisky industry is made staggeringly obvious here. There simply are not enough names around for the ever increasing number of NAS whiskies the producers have been unveiling in recent years at a frantic pace.

Experts of the Munich Rubble Plain Institute For Guessing The Future Of The Whisky Market have calculated that if distillers keep on launching NAS bottlings at the current rate, multiple name occurences will become the norm by late 2017 and the last unique non-Gaelic whisky name will be used up by early to mid 2019. Computer models are still undecided if “Collector’s Reserve” or “Investor’s Reserve” will come last, but with a 99%+ certainty, a “Janitor’s Reserve” will come onto the whisky market shortly before these two.

The reservoir of Gaelic names for Scotch whisky will be able to extend the grace period for about another 18 months. But by the end of 2020, previously used names will have to be recycled over and over again.

It is still time to act. But we need to act fast and determined.