



As a renegade from the culinary establishment and a critic of the food industry, brand partnerships go against his whole ethos. So it came as something of a shock when Bourdain announced last month that he was going to become the public face of The Balvenie, a Scotch brand produced by the family-owned William Grant & Sons company. “As you would expect, he was very skeptical of the proposition when we first brought it up,” says Andy Weir, senior brand manager at The Balvenie. “We knew that he hadn’t done an endorsement before, so we were prepared for a difficult conversation.”

To get him on board, Weir and his team at The Balvenie suggested that instead of just shilling Scotch, Bourdain could focus on American craftsmanship: he could create a video series in the style of his Parts Unknown and No Reservations where he would travel around the country to meet artisans at work. The pitch worked. The first episode of this new series, Raw Craft, has already been released: in it, Bourdain hangs out with a pair of metalworkers who make cast-iron skillets by hand in Syracuse, New York. It is a painstaking process that results in only eight or nine skillets a day. “Craftsmanship is about doing things the old-school way, the slow way, the long way, the stupid way–the way that may not be the most profitable, commercial, or efficient,” Bourdain tells me over email. (We couldn’t chat over the phone, unfortunately, because he was en route to Beirut when I was reporting this story.)

Craftsmanship is about doing things the old-school way, the slow way, the long way, the stupid way.

The Balvenie is never explicitly mentioned in the episode, but when Bourdain decides to make a steak au poivre in the crucible furnace (a classic Bourdain move), he uses The Balvenie to make the reduction sauce. The video also ends with all parties involved downing glasses of The Balvenie, as one does, apparently, after a long day of iron working. It’s not a particularly subtle endorsement, but then again, Bourdain is not shy about his love of Scotch. “It’s a serious drink for serious moods, in my case,” Bourdain says. “I tend to drink Scotch when I’m feeling sentimental, reflective, retrospective.”

Bourdain represents a new generation of Scotch drinker. For centuries, Scotch was the beverage of choice for a particular kind of gray-haired gentleman who liked to sit by the fire in a smoking jacket with his trusty dog. Then, riding a nascent artisanal wave, Scotch suddenly became young and edgy. In the mid-2000s, old Scotch whiskey brands with difficult-to-pronounce names–Laphroaig, Caol Ila, Lagavulin, Glenfiddich–started showing up in the liquor cabinets of hip, urban twenty- and thirtysomethings. In Brooklyn, a whiskey and grilled cheese joint called Noorman’s Kil opened in 2011; hipsters in skinny jeans pedaled over on their fixed-gear bikes to order $120 glasses of Scotch that were older than they were.

The Scotch industry was perplexed. “It wasn’t a conscious decision for Scotch makers to attract a younger audience–it had to do with a change in consumer taste,” explains Michael Giardina, senior brand manager at Glenfiddich, another William Grant label. Ten years ago, Scotch’s youngest consumers were around 45; today, Giardina says they’re as young as 25. And even though these younger drinkers discovered Scotch on their own, the Scotch makers are investing heavily in learning about this new demographic and catering to their tastes. The Balvenie partnership is a good example of this strategy at work, since Anthony Bourdain is a household name with the millennial set. But Scotch brands are doing a lot more: they’re making sure their products are available at the right kinds of bars and restaurants. Brand ambassadors are inviting twentysomethings to parties where they can play ping pong while learning the difference between single-malt and blended-malt whiskies.

These efforts appear to be paying off. Consider the story of Michael Fearon, a devoted Scotch fan. In 2008, when Fearon was 25, he attended a Laphroaig tasting at a restaurant near Boston. His first instinct was to be skeptical: How the heck do you even say the name? (He points me to this video of people trying to pronounce Laphroaig, which mainly comes out sounding like “Lap Frog.”) But Laphroaig’s approach is to encourage new drinkers to be totally honest about how it tastes to them–inviting answers like “pee,” “smoked fish,” and “seagull’s armpits”–which makes the whole process less intimidating. And the strategy worked. Scotch is now part of Fearon’s life: he buys a new bottle every couple of months, he’s bonded with other Scotch drinkers, and he even went on a tour of Scottish distilleries in November. His friends throw Burns night parties, in honor of the Scottish poet Robert Burns, where they drink Scotch, eat haggis, and recite poetry. “It’s kind of like a book club, but for Scotch,” he says.