Was There A Heyday of Scotch Whisky?

I have a 40 year old Glenfarclas that I'm dying to open, but it's hard to do. Not sure when it was first put in the casks. Maybe around 1970? Once it's open, well, the life of that bottle is limited.

I have never tasted a whisky from the 1950s or the 1960's. I have only read about them. It would surely be a special occasion to taste a good one, even one that was only 10-15 years old when it was bottled. Then again, it's hard to tell how the whisky tasted back then since sitting in a bottle for a long time can change the way it tastes. And it's worth remembering that scotches being drunk in the 1950's that were, say 25 years old, had oftentimes put in the casks in the 1920's, depending upon how long they were sitting around in the bottles before they were consumed.

@rigmorole I think it depends on the style you like. I would suggest that the best may still be yet to come. The money is flowing back into the distilleries. They can't meet demand and there are new distilleries popping up all over the world. Yes, there will be some knowledge (and farmy flavours) lost but I imagine there has also been a lot gained and shared.

It is impossible to tell at this point in time if the spirit produced now is going to be better than that of 40 or 50 years ago. I suspect some of it may well be. You could drink a 1970's bottle of Laphroaig 10 yr and compare it to a current bottle. Would this tell you if all Whisky from the 70's was better? No, only those bottles from those batches.

The Shackleton's that they found was perfectly preserved but from what I have heard it wasn't head and shoulders above current malts. Good yes, a game changer...no.

I suspect the rarity and nostalgia encourage us to think it was better in the past but I suppose we will never know. There is so much more analysis, experimentation, investment and research now that surely the best years lie ahead.

I had a conversation with Igor the Mad Russian Whisky Man in Toronto in February about the differences in recent Scotch production and that from prior to the 1980s. Igor is very much a traditionalist, and doesn't like much of the malt made in the last 10-15 years, or more. I asked him point blank, "Do you think that the differences in the Scottish malt whiskies is due primarily to the quality of the barley?" He answered without hesitation, "Yes." In other words, he believes, as do I, that the homogenisation and mechanisation of the widespread use of mass commercial maltings has produced barley which is the equivalent of "mass-produced processed food", compared to lovingly tended and subtly charged barley-malt produced by hand.

There really is a quality from the barley distillate coming from the 1970s and prior which tastes completely different to me from anything I taste today. Can some of this difference be due to Old Bottle Effect? Perhaps, but I think that that is a relatively small part of it.

@rigmorole, your Glenfarclas 40 will hold up very well if you decant it into smaller bottles with very small air spaces. I wouldn't be afraid to open it up when you are ready to drink it. No air in the bottle= good as new.

Every generation will at some point look at the past with rose coloured glasses. My grandfather used to talk about life in the old country and how wonderful it was, with no electricity or running water, of course.

I don't think I've had a chance to taste any distillate from the 70s, except for a Macaulay 25 that was bottled in the 90s, before I really knew anything about scotch.

I have a couple of bottling a from the 90s that were laid in casks in the 60s but no plans to open them any time soon. I need to learn more. And I'll need the right people to be here to share...

We may look back at the 2000s as the best years for Bladnoch. The A'Bunadh seems to be slowly declining even ( 48 got a mediocre reive online today...). But in 29 years when the bubble has burst and stocks lie a little longer because the demand isn't there, there may be a new heyday.

For Amrut, at some point they will have to stop "moving up". Maybe this decade is their heyday.

Maybe we have to look at each distillery separately for their own time of glory. But one thing for sure, the internet has made it possible for this to be the heyday of whisky appreciation....

oh my...iPad woes. I promise I've never tasted a Macaulay, just a Macallan or 2.

@Victor , always great to hear from you, sir! You raise some points that caught me completely off guard. Wow, the barley? Never even thought of that. You know, I tasted the Bruichladdich Islay and Scottish Barley whiskies side by side. The Scottish one was nicer, IMO. They are both NA.

Great other responses, too. Keep 'em comin'. I'm learning more and more about older scotches.

Bruichladdich are certainly going into the barley discussion - terroir for whisky now? It'll be interesting to see what they do with it in the long term.

No chance of at least Islay distilleries going back to malting their own barley - the maltings at Port Ellen are much more efficient, especially (and importantly) in their use of peat. There's a finite source of the stuff, and the chaps at Port Ellen are able to get the most out of it.

Well first of all we'll need to differentiate between just old whisky and old long matured whisky. When you talk about Ardbeg from the 70's are these the classic 10yo or where they matured some other way. I believe I can say that the whole older=better discussion is largely a myth. There were a lot of bad whiskies in the old days, most of their output was only matured for a limited time and mostly sold in blends.

So if they decided to bottle it as a single malt, that would mostly mean that these were some exceptional batches. It is a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy, if you destine your best whisky to become your best whisky, it probably will be. And you will most likely sell it under your own name.

During the whisky crisis of the 80's and 90's a lot of the bad weeds were removed from the whisky industry. Due to the release of a lot of special well matured bottlings by independent distilleries, one would start to believe that we've lost quite a few irreplaceable distilleries, while a lot of these were a disgrace for the name whisky.

Survivors who were saved by their reputation, like Ardbeg have become victims of their own success. I believe they haven't really lost the ability to produce excellent whiskies, it's just that they're releasing more "cheap" derivatives of their initial products and the "good stuff" has become almost too expensive for us regular jack-offs. For example, most of the Lagavulin output is nowadays being bottled as a single malt. In the past they could make clear distinction between the good and the better batches and which ones they could bottle as a limited edition single malt, and which casks would become fodder for cheap Johnnie Walker blends. While for other mediocre distilleries this has been a good evolution. They had to raise their standards in order to conquer a part of the single malt market. For example look at Tomatin, in the 70's and 80's the largest distillery out there, pumping millions of liters of cheap whisky into the blends market, but now a small-scale distillery that is increasingly able to put decent single malt s out there on the market, other examples are Glengoyne, Benriach, Edradour, Glendronach, Benromach and Bruichladdich. (Well probably the fact that these distilleries, except for the latter one, are currently owned by smaller corporations)

As for the mechanization and harmonization, well they don't necessarily imply a decrease in quality. What they mean for the industry is the elimination of the "chance"-factor, smaller human errors, like a overheating or under-heating the direct-fired stills, more or less peat to dry the barley, changes in frequency of turning the malted barley,... Whisky is a product where small changes in the production process can have extraordinary effects on the general outcome, for better or for worse.

I believe a relatively unknown evil might be situated in the new ways of maturing. Whisky is often transported across the country in large tank trucks across the countries to the the new maturation warehouse of Diageo. For example: a regular Lagavulin, only saw the light of live as a young spirit on Islay, but never matured there. whilst a Tobermory for example gets its barley from Port Ellen, is distilled on Mull, but matured at Bunnahabhain on Islay, so which of these two can we really call the true Islay malt here? What ever happened to terroir matters?

PS, never heared anyone complain about the newer Springbank batches. As they didn't change anything in their production process and are still one of the most authentic distilleries out there, nothing should have changed.

I think the past 5 years may have been, unbeknownst to all of us, the most recent heyday of Scotch Whisky, one which will probably repeat in 30 years, if history is a predictor of the future.

There are current trends that make me pessimistic:

• The NAS trend is the most obvious one. What bothers me is not NAS, per se, but the fact that these Whiskies which were much cheaper to bring to market (because they were immobilized in a warehouse for a shorter time) are being sold at ultra-premium prices.

• The trend, possibly due to NAS, to give ever more bizarre names to Whiskies. I do not know any Celtic language, but if any of you do, I'd be interested to know if all these NAS pseudo-Celtic names really make any sense at all.

• The trend to mature into ever more bizarre types of casks, and often (as is the case for the Laphroaig Select) into 3 or 4 different types of casks ... for a few weeks or months at best.

• The trend by mainland distilleries to start producing peated Whisky (Tomintoul being the latest). Just like finishing is an art derived from years of experience and trial and error (with Glenmorangie being an example of how it can be done well), peat is also something that cannot just be "added" to one's house brew. Most of the "new" mainland peated expressions I have tasted, tasted really bad, with, at best the peat seemingly an afterthought.

All these trends make me fear that at one point there will be a backlash from consumers who feel that they are taken for pigeons.

@olivier I don't agree on the with your statement that more distilleries have started to use peat. Out of the top of my head I can only think of Tomintoul, Glen Moray, Knockdhu, Arran, Edradour and Ben Riach, that have added a new peated or a more peated expression to their range, but they have not replaced the classic product. But than again, one could also argue that peat-dried barley was the traditional method used and that this is more like a return to the roots. Plus, there are a lot of distilleries that use peated water sources for their whisky production, like Clynelish, though they do not use peated barley.

Distilleries like Bunnahabhain may have added a limited edition peated malt to their range, but given that this distillery used to produce a peated malt in the past. It's hard to argue that the distillery changed its profile to appease the public with more peated whisky. Similarly, one could argue that if generally unpeated distilleries like Bruichladdich and Clynelish would add or have added peated whiskies to their range, they are just returning to their traditional recipe.

Bear in mind, apart from the occasional heavily peated new Ardbeg, Octomore, Port Charlotte and BenRiach, we've not witnessed the birth of any new peat monsters in the past years. Quite the opposite actually, we've seen the release of Ardbeg Blasda, Coal Ila Moch, decreasing peat levels in Lagavulin and quite recently the Laphroaig select with a less distinct peated profile. Other releases like Hazelburn and Moreover new distilleries like Wolfburn, Daftmill, Rose Isle and Ailsa Bay seem to concentrate their main production on whisky with an un- or low peated profile.

So in short, I don't think there are too many new peat releases, I would actually love some more reasonably prices peat monster on the market right now. But yes some distilleries are trying to add some more peat to their expressions, to mask the lower quality of their product. It's like adding some tabasco to a soup. Making a decent unpeated whisky is much more demanding and time consuming. But it might also be related to the fact that most distilleries with an unpeated profile like Glenfiddich, Glenlivet, Cardhu,... are too often megadistilleries, targetting the general public with cheap single malts and blends.

I do however agree with you, when it comes to cheap finishes on whiskies, a quick rinse with sherry for some colour and flavour is absolutely not the way to go. But is again related to the flux of young NAS whiskies that need to gain a lot of flavour in a limited amount of time.

/RANT

I quite like the "peatiness" in your typical Benromachs, Benriach and Longrows which I find is different to the Islay "peatiness" - sort of like an earthier "peatiness" as compared to the smoky "peatiness".

Glenfiddich, despite the "mega-distillery" designation are still capable of producing some gems. For me, some of the recent ones that come to mind are the peated 125th Anniversary, the 15 Year Old Distillery Edition and to some extent, the 14 Year Old Rich Oak.

I'm just now getting into a bottle of Longmorn 15. What a fine "old style" whisky it is. I'm so glad that I bought a few bottles before this classic "hey day" style scotch sold out. So delicate and sophisticated without the extremes we find in many whiskies of today. Delightful.

The angle that I've heard on changing barley varieties over the past few decades is that distilleries now use the varieties that produce the maximum amount of alcohol, not those that produce the best flavor.

I'd have to do some online digging to remind myself where I got that idea.

The History of Scotch in four minutes, if you haven't already seen it... Many thanks to @JasonHambrey for sending this my way... youtu.be/IT-tvQEdJuo

@YakLord that’s pretty good haha