A CHEQUERED HISTORY DAVE BROOM It was a beautiful day on the Dufftown golf course. Grant Grant-Grant (though it might have been Gordon Gordon, historians disagree) was on the 17th fairway. “Pass me m’two wood,” was what he meant to say but, mind already on the 19th hole and the reassuring comfort of leather armchair and tweed carpet, out came: “Make mine a double wood, caddy!” With that, the ‘finish’ bandwagon began to roll. Balvenie (owned by a distant relative) latched onto Grant-Grant’s idea and Glenmorangie followed soon after. UDV sought out the most obscure types of fortified wine in the world. Allied started a programme then forgot the question, while Bowmore sent Ginger Willie out in a rowing boat to try and salvage the wine barrels that had fallen into Lochindaal after Jim McEwan had shown everyone the correct way to load a puffer. Like all great ideas the principle was fiendishly simple. Take a mature malt whisky aged in bourbon cask and give it a glossy new coat by finishing it for a short period in a cask that had previously held another liquid [sherry, port, Madeira]. You got the character of the original malt, but with a new twist. Those sun-dappled days of joyous optimism have long gone. Those fresh-faced youths who so happily skipped down the finish lane have become haunted figures, obsessed with finding new barrels to finish their product in. “Just one more”, they are heard to whisper to their MDs, “I promise, it will be the last”. The addiction is so far advanced that rumour has it that Glenmorangie has placed security guards outside Bill Lumsden’s bedroom after he was caught trying to smuggle a consignment of Zimbabwean Gewurztraminer barrels into Warehouse No1 under cover of darkness. The situation is now so out of control that barrel dealers, taking their inspiration from Burke & Hare, are breaking into the warehouses of famous chateaux, port lodges and sherry bodegas and making off with their stock. Every night, the residents of Jerez are woken by cries of “Get yer hands off my butt!” There are armed patrols on the streets of Vila Nova de Gaion the lookout for suspicious Scotsmen with large bulges under their jackets. Colombian cartels are rumoured to be trying to muscle in on the action. And still they come. Finished whiskies of every hue, of every age, doubly matured in dubiously acquired barrels from the world’s wine regions are flooding the market. These days it’s ‘unfinished’ products which are the innovative newcomers. The industry is in the grip of a weird madness. Don’t get me wrong. I too like finished products, but Grant-Grant’s slip of the tongue on the Dufftown golf course opened up a Pandora’s box. Not only must every firm have a finish, but must have a finish that no one else has tried before. The problem is that in this relentless push for the new frontier the original principle of finishing has been forgotten, namely putting a different spin on the distillery character. Now the finish has become more important than the whisky rather than the other way round. Fact is, while some—indeed many—work beautifully, you can cover up a lot of faults with a finish: refresh a woody old malt for example, while there are some which simply don’t work. If I want the flavour of new American oak barrels then I’ll buy a bourbon thank you very much. Neither do I want a whisky that tastes (and looks) like you’ve accidentally poured a dram into someone’s half-empty wine glass. What started off as a production-led innovation has become marketing madness. It’s been said that finishes are a way to stimulate the market, to attract new drinkers yet when I talk to brand managers they admit, somewhat sadly, that the people who buy finishes aren’t new consumers but existing whisky drinkers. This isn’t about ‘growing the category’ it’s about ensuring that people keep buying your brand. Hard-nosed marketing lies behind the two new Islay finishes, hybrids which combine two strong brands ‘Balvenie/Grouse’ and ‘Islay’. Another box has been opened. A source has told me that one distiller is working on a Port Ellen Speyside finish, while new independent bottler Alba Quercus is currently taking a malt on tour around Scotland, finishing the whisky for six months in each of the regions, ending it with a period in herring barrels to capture the original Campbeltown reek. The German market is reportedly very excited by this innovation. What we've ended up with here is the whisky finish whisky, which I'm sure you'll agree is a wonderfully post-modern notion, though one which isn't that distant from that unfashionable old-time concept, blending. Maybe we could have coped with our credulity being stretched that little bit further had Grant Grant-Grant not sat down at the 19th hole, once again within earshot of local distillers and asked for “A Family Reserve and a Caley IPA”. “What a combination”, he cried to no-one in particular. “Someone should bottle this.” You know the rest and you also know that it won’t stop there. As soon as one firm brings out a new finish all its rivals have to trump it. There are currently research teams in Edinburgh’s Diggers dribbling McEwan’s 80/- into nips of White Horse. There’s a Fowler’s Wee Heavy and Tennent’s Super finish in development. There’s even talk of the half an a half an a fish supper finish. I can reveal that Jim Beam trying to force Richard Paterson to make an Aftershock finish triggered the MBO at Whyte & MacKay. That’s not all... Last week I heard of plans to use ex-Finlandia vodka barrels to do a Finnish finish!