[em2vn]

It's good to see national pride. Enough already of the world economy cookie cutter.

[Wolverine]

Apparently China is drinking more scotch than anyone else.

[Last Dakotan]

Mmm mmm peat.

[neocon1984]

As someone who is half Scots, we don't need more national pride. We need more affordable single malts. Make mine a Bowmore Darkest Sherry (the best value in an Islay malt).

There is also an American made whiskey (which cannot be called scotch) named McCarthy's, which tastes like a good Islay malt.

[NonValueAdded]

We have the freedom to do things how we want, rather than be dictated to by a manager in an office in Paris or Tokyo." The company plans to make environmentally friendly whiskey distilled from organic barley. Even the machinery for the plant was acquired from a closed distillery on the mainland.

Sooooo the company's operations will instead be dictated to by local whackos in a hut in Edinburgh

[antiRepublicrat]

Not too hot on Islays, but please open a few more highland distilleries. The market's so hot right now that they're having problems keeping it around long enough, making highly-aged ones way too expensive. Too bad no one will get to see if their scotch is any good for at least a dozen years.

[Kimmers]

I raise my glass... to sip a Cardhu

[razorback-bert]

Bruichladdich 80 years old.

[Daffynition]

Seven of the eight distilleries now on Islay are foreign-owned.

A few words from the Scotch Whiskey Review about this mess [the boys at the distillery]:

The acquisitions, mergers and manoeuvres continue in the Scotch Whisky trade as each egotist jockeys to produce an other unwieldy brand-dominated monolith. Rumours and speculation make for interesting dramming but this column believes that the whisky enthusiast is going to suffer.

The combined editorial might of the specialist whisky press (!) is unlikely to in fluence the strategies of the world’s great brand owners so perhaps we should try to educate the marketeers of the benefit of the independent bottler.

There are industry elders who are happy to tolerate the apparent conflict between their trademark distillery bottling and an ‘independent’ selling with the same precious name. This tolerance has a long historical precedent but is mince as the new breed of brand manager seeks to stamp out competition, especially those ‘parasites feeding off his marketing budget!’

The smug new-breed brand manager must learn that it is the independents who have created the highly profitable niche market of malt whiskies—profits that he is in danger of destroying. Once the profits go, so does the excitement and, eventually, the interest; all branded toilet paper is the same.

We accept that there have been some diabolical bottlings from independents, both respected and other and this col umn hopes that these guys will learn the importance of policing themselves.

Only the independent bottler has the flexibility to deliver single cask bottlings for a cost that enables a novice connoisseur (yucky word but none better) to develop the all important interest in the artistic output of the distiller.

Producers, of which there are increasingly few, should look upon the inde pendent bottler as a new canvas, an alter ego, and through them grant the in formed consumer exceptional and extraordinary drams for us all to enjoy rather than to see them disappear into another routine vatting.