By Richard Thomas

Until word that Jim Murray had swept Scotch off the top of his rankings for Whisky Bible 2015 broke, two news stories last week had whiskey circles abuzz, and it is those two stories that will prove to have further reaching implications than anything Jim Murray could ever say or do: Diageo is going to scale back its planned Scotch whisky expansions and is trading Bushmills to Jose Cuervo.

Both separately and combined, the moves have left many industry observers scratching their heads, and some wondering if the choice to cancel the Scotch investments in particular doesn’t signal an end to the world whiskey boom. Yet in reality the two moves fit in nicely with a larger current of Diageo’s actions regarding its whiskey holdings, one consisting largely of blunders and divestments. Collectively, they paint a picture of what, outwardly anyway, appears to be a very strange and incoherent business strategy for this year.

In fairness, Diageo has a lot more in its portfolio than just the whiskey trade. The company owns Guinness, Smirnoff, Captain Morgan, Tanqueray, Gordon’s and numerous other drinks brands. Obviously some of the company’s choices are meant to favor other aspects of its business. The Bushmills trade was designed to accomplish the company’s goals of having a firm stake in the premium tequila sector, for example.

Yet taken together, almost everything Diageo has done this year has had a decidedly anti-whiskey color to it. Even their acquisition of India’s United Spirits forced them to sell off Whyte & Mackay so as to avoid anti-trust complications in Britain. All Diageo would need to do is cancel their plan to build the Bulleit distillery before the end of the year, and the picture of the company running away from whiskey as fast as the legs of Ivan Menezes, its CEO, could carry it would be complete.