When Do We Have Enough?

One of the questions I see asked very infrequently in the spirits community is "Do I already have enough?" The almost unquestioned assumption is that more is always better. When individuals are receiving literal pallets of whisky, it's time to serious ask ourselves where the line should be drawn.

There seem to be a number of factors driving this unrestrained acquisitiveness, but social media is a major piece. Before ubiquitous internet connectivity someone who accumulated a significant collection might be able to impress friends or family after a fashion, but beyond a certain point they would have seemed, at best, eccentric. With the advent of spirits blogs, forums, Twitter, and Facebook groups, the bragging not only reaches a wider audience, but makes it possible to show off for a selective audience who will appreciate and validate increasingly large collections. During my time participating in online spirits groups, I have almost never seen anyone asking how people with vast collections will manage to drink everything they have bought, even when they reach a level where it becomes infeasible for the owner to consume everything during their lifetime. We're talking about collections that go beyond the hundreds of bottles and into the thousands. Many of those bottles owned by serious enthusiasts will be cask strength, representing upwards of 50-60% more alcohol than the standard 80-proof spirit and thus far more units of alcohol.

These online groups seem to create a cycle of validation where people convince themselves that their own acquisitiveness is justified by praising others who are doing the same thing. I have witnessed this go to astounding and genuinely harmful lengths, as some folks purchase spirits in volumes that negatively impact the rest of the life, all the while being praised by their peers. And much like the social pressure to omit negative opinions, there is pressure against questioning the volume of those purchases, even when they are clearly pathological. While some of it is the general caution of calling people out, it is also difficult when so many of us are following the same path to one degree or another.

Another major driver is the fear of scarcity. People hunt down 'limited' releases or buy cases of expressions they believe will change or become unavailable over time. But for many it's not enough to buy one bottle and enjoy it, they have to get as many as possible. For some that's to resell to the highest bidder, either to make money in general or to fund their habit. For others it's creating a 'bunker' to ward off the possibility that they will never again be able to buy good spirits at reasonable prices again. For others it's simply the ability to gloat at the 'suckers' who weren't bright enough or lucky enough to stock up.

The question we all need to be asking ourselves is how much we're really going to be drinking. Can we consume what we're buying in a reasonable timeframe without putting an undue burden on our livers? Do we host enough events to share our purchases with likeminded friends? There will always be more that you want to drink than you have time, money, or liver for.

State of the Booze Union

It's a tricky time to be a spirits enthusiast in America.

While spirits are more popular now than they've been since the 1970s, the last handful of years have created a lot of new wrinkles.

First, the good. In some respects, there are more options than ever. Distillers are releasing new expressions on an almost daily basis and (some are) paying far more care and attention to their products than they did when they were effectively producing commodities. Entire categories of spirits that would have required huge amounts of legwork to source fifteen years ago can now be found on back bars and liquor store shelves across the country. Many retailers have expanded their exclusive release programs, offering options that can't be found elsewhere and increasing diversity. The internet is full of people talking about spirits, which makes finding information easier than ever. Clubs and tasting groups have sprung up in every state. And for those who care about such things, spirits are cool, giving the drinkers a caché that hasn't existed since the Mad Men era.

But not all is well. Popularity is a fickle beast. For those who had knowledge and connections during the 1990s and early 2000s, options may seem extremely closed off as stocks of old spirits have become severely depleted. What once went for a song is now many times more expensive as competition increases. But these are the effects of the market - large, primarily impersonal forces outside of individual control.

More complex are changes made at the level of state and national governments shaping the American market. While many more American liquor stores now sell their stocks online, shipping them across state lines has become an increasingly fraught task. Many states flatly refuse imports into or exports out of their borders. In some cases this is due to state monopolies on liquor sales that do not want to give up control. In others it is about protecting the interests of local distributors, who wish to ensure that they get their cut from liquor sales. In 2010 efforts were made at the national level to tighten these regulations further and make it easier for states to restrict cross-border sales, but thankfully the bill did not pass. In the meantime, some states, such as Kentucky, have taken it upon themselves to restrict internet sales, closing off once-popular stores such as The Party Source that previously shipped across the country. Binny's Beverage Depot, a major Chicago area chain that has a vast exclusive single cask program, announced that once again it was no longer able to ship spirits outside of its home state. While a previous clampdown on interstate shipping was resolved, it's currently unclear if or when this will be reversed. From this vantage it is not clear whether the issue is state regulations or the national logistics companies, but either can be a problem. Even the much-vaunted K&L Wines in California, which has a significant local market to sell to, is fairly restricted in which states it can ship liquor to (for better or worse, Oregon is not on that list).

The lack of a legal secondary market for spirits has also complicated the situation. While there are compelling arguments that secondary markets only serve to encourage speculators, the demand for limited releases, especially of bourbon and rye in the States, is practically insatiable. While any number of attempts have been made to localize and regularize these sales in some fashion, whether through Facebook groups or auction sites, many have foundered on the fundamental fact that liquor sales through any channel other than an authorized retailer are flatly illegal throughout the country. So far many the more visible efforts have either shut down or folded on their own. This is in stark contrast to Europe where numerous auction houses and websites host sales on a regular basis. There are hints that this may be changing, with Kentucky now allowing licensed retailers to buy and sell 'vintage' spirits, though it is unclear how that market will evolve. While this makes life more difficult for flippers and drastically reduces the liquidity (heh) of the market, it also means that getting ahold of limited releases is often more about legwork and relationships than money, because even the biggest bank account may not let you find someone willing to part with a particular expression for cash.

On an international level, January 2013 saw the temporary cessation of spirits shipping from the United Kingdom to the United States, due to a change in Royal Mail's policies. While workarounds were eventually discovered, shipping prices rose dramatically as a result and have remained high ever since. To cite one example, shipping spirits from a well known store like Master of Malt to Fiji costs the same as shipping to the United States. While this does not entirely foreclose that source of spirits (I have heard suggestions that this has become a more popular source for American enthusiasts), it does make them much more expensive and difficult to justify as values, even after the post-Brexit tumble in the pound.

The fractured nature of the liquor market in the United States and frequent lack of alternative channels can make it difficult to sustain enthusiasm. Especially for folks living in control states with limited selections, the itch to try new spirits can be extremely difficult to scratch without creative legwork. Even for those in broader markets like California, it can feel increasingly difficult to find bargains as prices rise and once-prized expressions disappear from circulation. On the flip side, there are some, especially bourbon fans, who find that the chase (even when it slips into quasi-legal territory) is now a big part of the fun. The thrill of slipping one past the powers that be is not insignificant, but trying to evade regulations comes with a host of risks ranging from packages impounded by customs, to buying fakes from unlicensed sellers, to criminal prosecution in the most egregious cases. Knowing where to draw the line, especially when official standards are hazy, is difficult.

Unfortunately it appears unlikely that this situation will change anytime soon. While there are some efforts to legalize direct sales across state borders, there are a large number of interested parties vested in the status quo, ranging from distributors to state monopolies. It will take pressure from below to budge lawmakers into loosening the grip of distributors and other intermediaries in the three-tier system, let alone making legal alcohol shipments from other countries easier and cheaper.

Does Anyone Actually Want Complexity?

When people bemoan how much whisky has changed over the last few decades, one of the points that often comes up is that modern spirits aren't as complex as they used to be. This raises two important questions - how much have they actually changed and how much is driven by changing tastes?

The mostly commonly cited factor for why spirits used to be more complex than they are today is

A decidedly uncontrolled washback at Springbank

production methods. What most of them come down to is less control - more fallible humans operating maltings, washbacks, and stills, strains of barley less optimized for yield, more floor maltings, longer fermentation times in wooden washbacks, direct fired stills (especially if they were heated with coal) instead of steam coils, stillmen making cuts by feel, more dunnage than racked warehouses, etc. Compared to modern methods that have relentlessly focused on increasing yield and consistency, older methods were more prone to mistakes - floor maltings could operate at the wrong temperature or turn the germinating barley at the wrong time, insufficiently clean washbacks could introduce bacterial infections into the wash, direct fired stills could burn the wash and create off flavors, and improperly timed cuts could let heads or tails into the hearts.

To quote Bill Lumsden of Glenmorangie and Ardbeg and Ed Dodson of Glen Moray:

"The ‘good old days’: ‘A large proportion of the whisky made 30, 40 and more years ago was horribly inconsistent… Ed Dodson, the former distillery manager at Glen Moray, laughs and says: “Bill, you know, the reason we closed the floor maltings down was because the malt we made was [crap], because we couldn’t do it properly, we just didn’t have the facilities to do it.” The whisky was all over the place.’"

At the same time that variability could occasionally come together to produce accidental brilliance - uncontrollable factors that made a uniquely good cask or batch that would be less likely to happen in today's far more controlled environment. This creates a trade-off - we're less likely to drink overtly flawed whisky now because there are fewer dud casks, but there are fewer of the soaring accidents of yesteryear.

With all that said, there is nothing stopping modern distilleries from reverting back to previously used production methods. Many distilleries retain these kinds of features - floor maltings, worm tub condensers, direct-fired stills, and the like. There were rumbles a few years ago that Ardbeg might rebuild its floor maltings, which have been silent since the early 1980s, but it appears that the powers that be decided not to greenlight the project. All of this suggests that distillers do not believe that the costs of less efficient production will be offset by increased sales of higher quality products.

If anything, the malts that have become popular over the last decade suggest that less rather more complexity is what many drinkers want. In 2008 Bruichladdich kicked off the Peat Wars with Octomore, which featured higher phenolic PPMs in the malted barley used to make the whisky than anything that had come before. Ardbeg responded with Supernova in 2009, which, while somewhat more modestly peated than Octomore, more than held its own. Since then an increasing number of distilleries have released heavily peated whiskies, often following in the footsteps of Octomore and Supernova by being NAS and likely young, thus retaining more of the peatiness that drinkers are looking for. While these whiskies can be good in their own terms, I have joked that the only way for them to push the envelope would be for the next release to be a ticket to Islay where someone would shove your face into a peat bog.

We have seen similar trends when it comes to sherry maturation. While it is unquestionable that many of the whiskies that led this trend, including Aberlour A'Bunadh, Glenfarclas 105, and Macallan Cask Strength, were and often are quite good, the singular focus seems to have led to increasingly unidimensional whiskies. They are bombastic and often enjoyable, but the combination of more and more first-fill sherry casks coupled with increasing youthfulness as stocks are strained means that they often end up being little more than high-proof sherry, with much of what we think of as malt whisky character subsumed by the wine. I think this can also be seen in the rapturous praise that is heaped on extremely dark whiskies that have not been colored with spirit caramel, as many believe this suggests a particularly active sherry cask. In my own experience these are often too sherried, with little else to recommend them.

My personal feeling is that the decreases in complexity are driven by both of these factors. Tighter stocks and more consistent production methods have decreased the scope for complexity, leading to few complex whiskies available on the market. At the same time, the influx of new drinkers has brought in many people who are looking for bold, comparatively simple flavor profiles, which has encouraged producers to cater to those tastes. While this is good for distillers, who can now move younger whisky more easily and a happy coincidence for the drinkers who enjoy those spirits, it leaves the people who are looking more more complex, subtle spirits in a bind without clear solutions.