NAS WHISKY: A RETHINK

THE RETURN OF THE AGE STATED WHISKY BOTTLE

Why Did NAS Whisky Become Popular In The First Place?

Whisky as a whole has seen a surge in popularity in the last 10 to 15 years. As a result, once-plentiful supplies of aged whiskies have dwindled. Moreover, numerous distilleries have started up in the past decade and are now rolling out their brands, from young (3 YO) to not so young (7+YO).Because fewer aged whiskies can be found on the shelves, NAS whisky has become more common.

At the very beginning of Scotch whisky when there were farm distilleries, people didn’t put an age on their whisky. There are some extraordinarily fine whiskies that don’t carry an age statement, and just because one doesn’t have an age label doesn’t mean there aren’t some old and rare whiskies in the bottle. What it means is that one has greater scope and a bigger palette – like an artist, there is a broader canvas to play on.

Second, it’s very much about maturity, not age. If one is using the very finest wood, some casks will reach a peak at different times from others. Macallan, with their 1824 Series and 1824 Collection, really took the shackles off their Whisky Maker Bob Dalgarno. He could pick any whisky out there and use it at the peak of perfection, just like picking an apple off a tree when it’s perfectly ripe and not on some given date.

Given carte blanche, he did so. For instance, the Macallan Rare Cask is about extremely rare whiskies chosen from 256 casks a year for a specific character or colour, irrespective of age. It’s about changing the paradigm and opening up endless possibilities for whisky makers to make beautiful whiskies.

Scotch whisky must be about supreme quality. It must be about the producers, as guardians of that facet, making sure that the right quality goes into the right bottle. It’s in everybody's best interests to have superlative whiskies on offer, whether they carry an age statement or not, and there is genuinely no indication people in the industry are trying to hoodwink the consumer in any way.

On the contrary, everybody is trying to make the best use of their stocks to produce interesting, innovative new products at a very high quality across a broader spectrum than hitherto. “Non-age” does not equate to young whiskies. Some of the whiskies may be incredibly old and rare, and some may be more youthful to give vitality and zest to the whisky. It is taking the category back to its roots. It is another innovation to make sure Scotch remains relevant, interesting and the best spirit in the world. And, above all, it’s about maturity, not age.

That may sound like a letdown to those who are accustomed to drinking aged whisky, but there’s no need to blame whisky newcomers for depleting supply. NAS whisky can be every bit as tasteful and sophisticated as aged whisky, and it has opened the floodgates for whisky distillers to experiment with new blends that can revolutionise the whisky-drinking experience!

Although NAS whisky has experienced a popularity boom in recent years, it’s actually been around for a long time. Glenmorangie, Ardbeg, Kilchoman, Glenfiddich, Laphroaig, Johnnie Walker and a host of Blended Scotch in the 3-8 YO Whisky group are well-known examples of an NAS whisky that has been around for a good while. None of these have suffered a loss of reputation as being among the world’s popular whiskies.

How Is NAS Whisky Different From The Standard?

When people see a NAS whisky available for sale, they often assume that it hasn’t aged at all. Well, when it comes to whisky, matters of age are a little more complicated than may be thought of. It is very likely that a bottle of NAS whisky actually contains a blend of multiple different whiskies of different ages. Variety can inject the perfect amount of flavour into the glass. The increase in the popularity of NAS whiskies has given distillers and mixologists more liberty to innovate in creating different blends. While the lack of emphasis on the age of the whisky may get some of the most stringent purists worked up, it’s an opportunity for whisky fans to move beyond age as the sole indicator of quality. Why be constrained by a traditionalist mindset that doesn’t actually reflect the quality of the drink?

The Problem Of Marketing

Ultimately the issue is one of marketing. Having spent decades convincing drinkers to opt for older bottlings over younger ones made consumers favour older expressions; a change of tune understandably concerned those very consumers that a young age was unfavourable. To overcome this disadvantage, many distillers have opted to forego the age indication in favour of a memorable name such as Talisker Port Ruighe, Ardbeg Uigeadail, Ledaig Sinclair Series, Glenmorangie Nectar D'or, Laphroaig PX Cask, Glenfiddich XX or Glenlivet Alpha. Coined “flavour-led expressions” by the marketing departments, distilleries argue that the benefits of NAS outweigh the risks:

• More leeway for the master blender

• More variety and more choice

• Younger whiskies are given a chance

• Prices are lower than longer matured equivalents

Advantages Of NAS Whisky

How have distillers used the rise of NAS whisky to their advantage, you may ask? Blending whiskies of different ages enable them to focus on other aspects of a quality spirit. These special elements include relevant issues like colour, flavour, and technique. Increased attention to flavour never goes unnoticed by discerning drinkers. Moreover, a wider range of colour possibilities opens up new aesthetic avenues for distillers and bartenders. If one has ever wanted to see how two or more of one’s favourite whiskies taste when blended together, the movement toward NAS provides more opportunities than ever to do just that.

Removing the age statement from whisky labels is proving controversial, not least because it goes against received wisdom. For decades the industry promoted an 'older the better' mentality and backed it up with pricing. It became set in stone that single malts and posh blends begin at around 12 years old, and steadily improve further thereafter.

There has been an explosion in demand for premium aged whiskies that few in the industry were able to predict. Malts like Macallan have become a victim of their own success. So it has been slowly erasing the digits from its labels to become a NAS whisky, with its 1824 Series based on colour – starting with 'Gold' from where you can trade up to 'Amber', 'Sienna' and 'Ruby'.

The official line is that it's not about any shortage of whisky stocks, but about releasing the creativity of Macallan's whisky maker from the shackles of age. And it is perfectly true that age is no guarantee of quality, because that depends on the quality of the wood used during maturation. Spirit filled into a knackered barrel with nothing left to give will never properly mature. A barrel fresh from Kentucky after two years full of Bourbon, in contrast, will age a Scotch whisky much better and faster.

Today most single malts have NAS variants, from Jura to Talisker. In some duty-free shops they apparently account for half the sales. Macallan's colour-coded approach feels more mainstream in its home market too. So much so, that today the cheapest age-statement Macallan left in the UK is the 18 year-old retailing at £135.

Yet in Asia and America, most bottles still carry a number. There are dark mutterings on the whisky panoply about 'age drift' – where a premium blend or malt will gradually reduce the average age of its whiskies while retaining the same label and price. There's an obvious incentive to bottle younger, with those pesky 'angels' at Scotland's cask warehouses hoovering up the equivalent of 150 million bottles of Scotch a year through evaporation. But how far distillers can push it will depend on the strength of their brands. There are certainly reservations in the industry about all this. To abandon the well-accepted, if imperfect, benchmark of age demands huge trust amongst consumers.

ARE WE IN AN ERA OF AGE STATED SCOTCH?

Following a flurry of no-age-statement releases a decade ago, the past 12 months have produced multiple age-statement bottlings – and significant ones at that. Ten years back, many brands peddled the ‘flavour-forward’ message as a good thing in regard to the development of NAS bottlings. Removing age statements, they argued, afforded blenders greater flavour potential. However, more cynical drinkers loudly lamented the lack of double digits adorning their favourite bottles.

Consider the popular single malt, Talisker. This dram has always been great value. Usually bottled at 45.8%, it offered more bang for a buck in the old days. Back then, it was offered as an 8- or 12-year-old for the trade. But that was before the sales of single malts took off. Effectively, as of now, there are 16 ‘standard’ expressions, 12 bottlings with age statements, and four with NAS.

Of these 16 expressions, however, only three meet my personal expense ceiling and of these, two are NAS malts: Talisker Skye and Talisker Storm. Only the 10-year-old trade bottling exists in this group. The other bottlings are priced from just below £50 (another NAS) to £699 for a 35-year-old distilled in 1977. And the portentous news that Talisker is to undergo a complete transformation, from the floor upwards! Clearly the average buyer cannot figure greatly in the future marketing plans for Talisker, but many other distillers are not adopting NAS for their core ranges. Arran is a great example.

Avid fans will likely recall the uproar that surrounded the discontinuation of The Glenlivet 12 in 2015 in Germany and the UK, which was replaced by a permanent NAS whisky, Founder’s Reserve, to alleviate pressure on the distillery’s dwindling aged stock. It was several years before the 12-year-old made a reappearance, with a limited number of bottles reintroduced in the UK in summer 2018, ahead of other markets, an example of the long-running age versus no-age predicament.

One school of thought feels that industry moved into NAS because it didn’t have enough 10-year-old, 12-year-old, or 15-year-old whisky to supply those sorts of brands. The move wasn’t quality driven or specifically on purpose; it was need-driven and time would sort matters out.

But change has been afoot in the past six to 12 months. A plethora of aged whiskies – starting from the high teens and climbing up to 50-plus years – have joined portfolios, not just as limited releases, but as permanent additions. First, Speyside distiller Longmorn committed to only bottling whiskies aged for 18 years or more as it introduced two new single malts: Longmorn 18 Years Old, and Longmorn 22 Years Old. Then, Islay’s Bruichladdich launched its first high-age-statement whiskies as the first bottlings in its Luxury Redefined range: an 18-year-old Bruichladdich and a 30-year-old, the latter priced at £1,500 (US$1,935), along with the fully sustainable recycled paper outer wrap-can Bruichladdich Twenty One. In April, William Grant & Sons debuted blended Scotch brand Wildmoor, a seven-strong set of whiskies aged between 21 and 40 years, before The Glen Grant unveiled The Glasshouse Collection in June, comprising 21-, 25-, and 30-year-old whiskies. 2024 has welcomed age statements galore.

This recent development is an indication that stock management has improved across the board. There is a reservoir of aged stock now so The Glenlivets of this world can move back to the 12, Glenmorangie can move from 10 to 12 years, indeed move back to a little older stock. Pernod Ricard’s release of an 18- and a 22-year-old Longmorn was quite unusual when they didn’t even have a 10 or 12 on the shelves already.

Longmorn’s higher-aged releases appeal to the collector. The collectors are experts and epicureans, established professionals who are interested in learning more about rare spirits and love to be seen as ‘in the know’. They have high standards and expectations, and want to keep exploring their passions – arguably cementing that this is a new era of whisky appreciation where age statements are more understood and appreciated than ever, while reinforcing the fact that age is not the only marker of quality.

While older Scotch whiskies do spell good news for consumers, they present their own challenges, too. Stock inventories have, perhaps, tipped too far into a surplus, which could present problems for producers. Owners have full warehouses and are not able to sell. As the stock gets older, there’s always the drive or potential to increase the price. But if there is excess stock, some 13-, 14-, 15-year-olds may have to be used in 10-year-old or 12-year-old releases, and that’s not realising the full value of that stock. It’s a balancing act in how far one can go to realise the potential of one’s stock.

There is also the risk that the category’s work to democratise Scotch – by dispelling past narratives about who a Scotch whisky drinker is, and rules about how it should be enjoyed – could come undone. It is widely agreed that age is no indication of quality. However, age does, understandably, command a higher price tag. With a strong focus on older, aged whiskies, Scotch brands must be careful not to confuse consumers away from their core message that Scotch is a spirit for everyone. 

The Glen Grant camp is a great example that there is a whisky for everyone. They offer a permanent collection of six exceptional age-statement whiskies that range from a 10-year-old to a 30-year-old. They are committed to maintaining a strong core range, and, at the same time, expanding their luxury offerings, which helps to ensure that they have an offering for the collector’s and luxury market, while also providing high-quality options that are accessible to a wider range of whisky enthusiasts. Their Gift Packs with the Glen Grant 18 are excellent, with either a crystal decanter or two whisky glasses added.

With the rising interest and growth coming from newer whisky-producing regions, age is currently Scotch whisky’s ace card. Distillers want to introduce products with higher age statements because it’s their current advantage in Scotch. This has forced new products to be introduced at greater age statements. That also hopefully has a halo effect down to younger expressions too, but it does differentiate them from all the upstarts in America, Australia, or [the rest of] the UK.

That is one heck of a racist statement. India is the largest producer and consumer of whisky, importing the largest quantity of Scotch whisky. Taiwan and Japan are major players, with better products, albeit at higher prices. The Scotch industry is trying to stay ahead of the rest of the world. Quality products are coming out of other countries. Scotch whisky cannot live off history and tradition, which they’re great at; they need to have a premium product that is quality, and, to do so, they have to manage their stocks well. But if you look at the world today, you don’t know what’s going to happen. Another Covid? Another Ukraine war? Can anyone predict two days ahead, let alone plan for 10 or 12 years?

The years will tell whether producers can, and will, produce age-statement whiskies at pace. I carry an age statement and would like my whiskies to carry their too. But, answering the original question: are we in a new era of age-statement Scotch whisky? Yes, we are.