Whisky Business

ZOOMING IN: WHISKY BUSINESS

What has the age of COVID meant for the whisky industry, and has it changed the world of whisky forever?

DOMINIC ROSKROW REPORTS

If they ever make a film about the world in 2020. REM’s It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) will demand to be on the soundtrack.

They won’t though. After all, who wants to sit through a stultifying, boring, and endlessly repetitive series of lock downs, chronic illness, death, and social distancing? And you can’t even see the enemy. What sort of spectacle would that be?

Whatever else happens, though, our world has been well and truly rocked. And as some of us emerge on the other side, and others get dragged back in to the morass, the world will probably be very different. Almost overnight our world was turned upside down.

Dave Worthington, brand ambassador for That Boutique-y Whisky Company, recalls vividly how events unfurled rapidly.

“At (parent company) ATOM Brands the message came through to avoid any nonessential travel more or less as I landed in Edinburgh for a short trade visit in early March,” he says. “I decided to continue with plans, seeing as I’d already landed in Edinburgh, and I followed guidelines of washing hands and using hand sanitisers and minimising physical contact with people. I got home late afternoon on Friday 13th March and have remained here since, venturing out only for food supplies and exercise.

“I’m fairly active on social media anyway (well Twitter certainly) so nothing really changed on that front. Initially I spent my time looking at what we had for our sales team, and what we needed, and started to create documentation I thought necessary for our team.

“Being a ‘remote worker’ I was already familiar with online meetings, it’s a regular occurrence anyway, we just have to do all meetings that way for the time being.

“I was asked to go live on Twitter/Instagram, something I wasn’t particularly keen to do at first. It’s an odd experience, talking to a camera and not knowing if anyone is even watching. However, it’s gone much better than I anticipated. I’ve been hosting online tastings with our partners around the world, as well as whisky clubs, via the Zoom meetings.”

For companies such as The Whisky Lounge, which stages live events around the whole of the United Kingdom, the effect of the virus was severe. The United Kingdom has had among the worst experiences of the virus, and weeks of lock down quickly turned in to months .

“It has been difficult,” says Whisky Lounge founder Eddie Ludlow. “We cannot do festivals at the moment so finding ways to get larger numbers together online seems challenging. However, we are trying.

“It has forced us to completely change the way our business works. - from being a business in the business of ‘physical’ events and promoting the ideal of getting together over a few drams, to being one that is completely online. Instead of festivals and tastings at venues, we are now running virtual tastings with special guests and supported by tasting packs we are putting together and sending out.”

On the face of it, the words ‘virtual tastings’ would seem to be a contradiction in terms. They have, however, been one of the surprise success stories during the pandemic.

Billy Abbott an ambassador, writer and educator of leading on line operator The Whisky Exchange.

“We’ve been running a programme of virtual tastings since April 2020, with a new one taking place every Thursday evening,” he says. “We started with rum – we were already celebrating it as rum month – and then moved on to world whisky in May, before a more eclectic lineup leading up to Father’s Day in June. With announcement of the next month’s tastings happening towards the end of the previous.

“Outside of our own tastings, I’ve been involved in a number with brands, whisky clubs, and charities – the genie is very much out of the bottle.

“In the main, they’ve been very good. There are lots of different ways of running them, from the pure presentation to the interactive free-for-all, and, as someone who’s hosted a few, it can be a bit of work to keep them on track and fun.

“However, people have definitely risen to the challenge, both as presenters and participants. There are tales of Zoom hijacking and other problems, but they are rare and with a small amount of care those issues are avoidable and solvable.

“I’ve really enjoyed on-line tastings, and I suspect I will continue doing them in some form even beyond the end of the current situation.”

Dave Worthington’s experience of on-line tastings is just as positive.

“I’ve hosted a number of on-line whisky tastings with our partners around the world, including three very successful tastings in Sydney, Australia,” he says. “While sceptical at first, I must admit I’ve really enjoyed the tastings that we’ve done. The feedback has been superb, and for many the option of attending a tasting on-line has been a welcome addition to their calendar.

“It’s brought a new audience to the industry; people who ordinarily can’t make it to a store tasting for various reasons, can now join in from their own homes. I’ve also hosted tastings for local whisky clubs who have bought a lineup of Boutique-y Whiskies and then messaged me on social media, asking if I could introduce them. It’s been great meeting new people this way.”

Tastings are one thing, but the big whisky festivals and shows across the road are the industry’s lifeline. Has it been possible to recreate them? As a member of The Three Drinkers, who present television shows from different locations, Colin Hampden-White has had to deal with more change than most. But, he says, there is an upside.

“I have taken part in a bunch of virtual tastings, seminars and chats,” he says. “The two best have been the Summerton Whisky festival where I chatted with two brands and another presenter to a crowd which was more than double what it would normally be at the physical festival.

“The virtual festival was able to attract higher profile presenters. I was presenting with Matthew Wright from television’s The Wright Stuff, and Joe Wadsack, from BBC’s Food and Drink

programme. Festivals can’t afford such presenters in normal circumstances, but with a virtual festival, there’s less input of travel time etc. so everyone was happy to take part.

“Effectively the consumer is able to take part in many masterclass sessions in one day rather than just one or two, depending on one’s budget. People can much more easily ask questions and get to know brands in depth. In a normal festival one has to queue at a table for five or ten minutes to get a brand representative’s time. One’s own home is definitely more comfortable than a humid town hall or event space!

“The obvious downside is the social interaction one gets at a physical show with your friends, and the ability to try many more whiskies. I do believe both have their merits.”

With distillers and whisky producers finding new ways of reaching their consumers, it may well be that the role of the global brand ambassador might never be quite the same again. Dave Worthington thinks so - but he says that it was a trend that was already developing before the pandemic. It’s just happened more quickly. “I think International travel could have restrictions in place for some time, and my guess is the days of relatively cheap international flights may certainly be numbered,” he says.

“The whisky community has been a global family for a long time, and just like our family gatherings have moved to online calls, so has the whisky industry with online collaborations for events and discussions. The way the industry quickly focussed attention to making hand sanitiser for the front line workers at the beginning of the pandemic was a remarkable success. The industry has also come together to support other key charities such as the Drinks Trust here in the United Kingdom and The Bartenders Guild Foundation in the United States.”

Colin Hampden-White agrees.

“From a personal point of view, with the number of tastings we were having to attend at certain times of year, the Zoom tasting has been a blessing,” he says. “They save me hours of traveling around the country! However, much of what we learn about new products and what people think about them is discussed, and questions asked, during the informal part of press tastings. And I am sure it is the same for consumer events. There are pros and cons for both. I can see a world where both are used in the future.

“Zoom does have the advantage of bringing people together who would normally not get the chance to talk much. I’ve been to wine events with people joining from all over the world.

“This is one of the pros of Zoom, however I think it needs to be mixed, when we can mix, with live events. Whisky is a social hobby and social interaction with consumers and press alike will still be needed. Dram drinkers have an emotional attachment to whisky, and that is difficult to fulfil through a screen.”

So do we simply write off 2020 as an anomaly, or is there a happy ending?

The Whisky Lounge’s Eddie Ludlow isn’t sure.

“I would like to say there will be, and maybe there will be in years to come, but I truly believe this is going to leave a deep scar,” he says.

“THE PHRASE ‘THE NEW NORMAL’ ... IT’S A TAUTOLOGY - THE NORMAL IS ALWAYS NEW, AND IS ALWAYS CHANGING”

“People will have trepidation about getting together in large numbers for some time to come, understandably. Our business will have to continue to evolve to survive.

“I honestly don’t know what it is all going to look like in the next few months, never mind years. Scary times but we all just have to stay strong and roll with the punches.”

Billy Abbott argues that the pandemic has merely sped up existing trends.

“I see mostly exaggerations of the good and bad things of our normal lives,” he says. “People who didn’t get out much are increasingly isolated; people who embrace technology are often doing better than those who don’t; people who want to get involved with whisky things have more opportunity with a lower barrier to entry. Lockdown has turned everything up to 11, with the good and bad things that come from that.

“The future is just getting here faster than it was before. The pandemic has accelerated the use of tools, processes and ideas that were already growing, and there’s no turning back the clock. Life never goes back to how things were: there are always learnings and advances, and good and bad things fall by the wayside. The phrase ‘the new normal’ shouldn’t only be banned for its clichéd nature, but because it’s a tautology – the normal is always new, and is always changing. We’ve just had a push towards the future in some places that we didn’t necessarily expect.”

Which just leaves Colin Hampden-White, a renowned bon viveur, to make the case that as long as there’s whisky, we’ll be right.

“I don’t think life will ever be the same,” he says. “Humans are ingenious and we will find ways to make the best of what is available. I hope when the film production world starts up again that we will be able to make the same great programmes and I can see this being backed up by even more digital content and engagement with consumers.

“A world with more direct engagement can’t be a bad thing. Whether glasses are clinked for real or in a virtual world, as long as we communicate in any form with a dram in hand, we’ll be okay.”

Let’s drink to that. See you on the other side.