Review 253. Ignored and overlooked, part 2: distilleries that make no sense to me.

Maybe I should reconsider?

I like to think of myself as a whisky curious person. If there’s someone out there, anywhere, making whisky (however broad that definition sometimes tends to be), I’d be up for at least giving it a try if it crosses my path. At the same time, I’m also quite scrutinous as to what I’ll be actually chasing down and spending my money on. This may seem like a paradox, but I rather think the two approaches or mindsets work together quite well. Keep an open mind and a broad horizon to try new and/or unfamiliar stuff, but be critical with regards to what you actually buy. Festivals, tastings, sample swaps… are a great way to try new things, but even vacations or business trips can be an excellent way to see if the local poison is up to snuff. And when abroad and the local stuff is retailed anywhere between a bargain and reasonably priced, I could be persuaded even to take a (semi)blind punt at a Glen Foreign. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you end up with something to top up your highballs on hot summer evenings. C’est la vie.

Yet when I’m on more familiar ground (which by and large means Scotch single malt), I’m usually less ‘gullible’ to gamble my money on something I’m less sure about. Particularly when it’s a bit on the pricy side. The reasons are obvious. For starters, I feel I have a pretty good idea of what’s when talking about Scotch whisky, meaning I know most producers, if not from personal experience, then definitely by reputation: what they stand for, how they treat their whisky, and, equally important, how they treat their customers. So it gives me the benefit of being able to compare, put things in the balance and make purchases driven by a certain context and background.

The downside, if you can call it that, is that some producers or distilleries tend to remain in a bid of a blind spot as I might sometimes dismiss or ignore them for reasons that are probably more to do with a certain bias than anything. Today’s distillery is a clear cut example of how this prejudice stops me from truly engaging with what they’re doing and I owe a bit of gratitude towards Thomas who pretty much showed me the way to Inchdairnie (or at least to their table at Spirits In the Sky).

Kinglassie 8 yo RAW edition (heavily peated +50 ppm Inchdairnie). 2017 – 2025, ex bourbon casks. NC, UCF, 46.3% ABV, £79/€90

Lovely pale colour from 8 years in ex- bourbon casks - right up my alley...

I picked up this sample last weekend at the  Spirits In the Sky festival in Brussels. (Pro tip: take some empty sample bottles to festivals and bring them back home filled up – provided they allow you to bring some obviously. Your palate will be pretty much blown to pieces in any case, so those you really want to give your due attention might be worth sampling to save for later. Also your liver will thank you if you save 5, 6 or 7 wee drams for a later moment). ‘Kinglassie’ is named after the namesake road near the distillery and is Inchdairnie’s peated expression (more about that in a bit). For more facts about Inchdairnie there’s always the ever reliable Malt Whisky Yearbook, but I would also recommend tucking into David Stirk’s rather excellent ‘Pioneering Spirits’, where he tours Scotland’s 21^st Century distilleries.

Nose

Pleasant bag of perfumy – florally- citrus notes with a decent dose of ashy peat in the mix. This is produced using local peat and it reminds me

somewhat of Port Charlotte 10 – which in my book is never a bad thing. With time in the glass it eventually settles on a 60-40 -ish balance between citrus (oranges, but mainly sweet lemon) and ashy peat.

Palate

Quite ashy on the palate, but it doesn’t block the citrus notes from making their mark. It’s ever so slightly oily-dirty with a hint of an oily rag or lamp oil. It’s interesting and solid, and I quite like it.

Finish

Medium long and mostly ashy

Final thoughts

On paper, this ticks a lot of the boxes. Natural colour, non-chill filtered, decent ABV… and the extras are nice too: this was made from locally sourced (in Fife), heavily peated barley. And equally in theory, there should be plenty about Inchadairnie as a distillery that gets an enthusiast like me excited. They use a hammer mill and a Meura mash filter, rather than the traditional mash tun, their traditional stills are complemented by a Lomond still (to give them more options, like triple distillation and some leeway to experiment as well), they use unique yeast strains and they are focused not entirely on single malt, but also produce the RyeLaw ( 50-50 barley and rye, distilled using their Lomond still) and this heavily peated Kinglassie (which they only produce for two weeks a year). The majority of what they produce, however, is sold to trade customers (mainly for the blended market) and/or ends up in either their own blend Strathenry.

This is essentially tapping right into my whisky curiosity and geekiness. So why did I never really connect with Inchdairnie?

Well first (and probably foremost) there’s the issue of price. While I get that doing things  differently will impact prices, upon release the core range RyeLaw was retailing around £90 or even more. Any way you look at it, that’s a lot of money for 5 yo -ish whisky. And maybe it is possible that what they release at the price they release it for, is necessary to allow the margin profits needed to cover expenses and help them develop and grow further. But in that case I can only hope the majority of their revenue comes from producing spirit for others, as my limited brain has a hard time understanding how a business model like that would be sustainable in the long run. And even though the next releases of their flagship expression settled on a more reasonable £70 (for a slightly older - 6-7 yo -  whisky at that), I get the feeling they have a hard time shaking off that label of  ‘expensive new distillery’. The specific bottle design and the very hefty metallic bottle cap furthermore suggests that quite a significant bit of the money you pay ends up in branding and presentation. And while it’s important to stand out and be noticed, it’s obviously more important to be bought, opened and talked about. Overpricing doesn’t help in that regard. Now to be perfectly clear about this, with Inchdairnie  I don't necessarily feel as if it's a case of ‘deliberate’ premiumization. There’s too much willingness to innovate and experiment. The way I see it, every brand tries to promote and sell itself, but premiumization comes into play when the branding seizes to be  means to an end and becomes the actual purpose of the whole endeavor and everything else is of secondary importance as a consequence. In those situations, I think ‘money talks and bullshit walks’ is  a healthy attitude to take, as there usually is an awful lot of bullshit happening to distract you from the fact that the content is pushed to the back seat and if you would kindly just look and notice at how gorgeous the bottle looks – it was designed by a prestigious artist (who we paid a truck load of money, but let’s not get into that)  who was inspired by the local butterflies that dance and fly around on the spring meadows just next to the distillery and bla bla the bla…

There is none of that with Inchdairnie. Yes, the branding is unnecessarily exhaustive, but overall I really feel like they are giving it their all to make something very much their own, with a strong focus on locality and  provenance yet without making a huge song and dance about it (well maybe a little song and dance, though). Which brings me to…

Secondly, those who did cough up the money (or were sent or given one) were pretty unisonous and sounded something down the lines of “it’s nae bad, it’s  good even, if you don’t mind paying over the odds…”.

Combine those two and add to that the issue of availability/scarcity/distribution (Inchdairnie  has a 2 mio LPA capacity and the ability to double up if needs be, but as said above: a lot of what they produce goes into blends) and producers like Inchdairnie but also the likes of Annadale or Arbikie (for pretty much the exact same reasons), quickly fell of my radar. And while I should know better than to be led by bias or prejudice, I can’t help but feel like the fault doesn’t entirely lie with me.

To conclude… This is well made, interesting, characterful whisky with the story to match it, and while this is simply put ‘good stuff’, I feel it does struggle to live up to a €90-€100 price tag for 8  year old whisky. Shave off €20 or so and I’m pretty much all ears. Because everything about this screams ‘embrace’, yet so far I haven’t. And that’s all to do with what the whole ‘do you get your money’s worth?’ question. Right now, for the same money, I could get a core range Ardna AND a bottle of Maclean’s Nose or two bottles of Cambeltown Loch, or a duo of Loch Lomond and Inchmurrin 12, and I would probably enjoy all those alternatives equally if not more than this one. Which pretty much seals the deal. There’s nothing wrong with trying to punch above your weight class, provided you have an irresistible hook no one sees coming. Inchdairnie to me is coming along nicely, but it’s not entirely there yet, and the presentation and branding is part of that problem. To be continued…(?)