Spirits
BRING IT ON!
IN 2020 THE CORONAVIRUS TURNED THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN AND FORCED US TO RETHINK HOW WE LIVE OUR LIVES IN EVERY WAY. BUT AS WE MOVE THROUGH 2021, THE WORLD OF WHISKY ISN’T JUST OPTIMISTIC. IT’S POSITIVELY BULLISH. DOMINIC ROSKROW REPORTS
Iain Stirling
It is a vast understatement to say that rarely has a New Year been more welcome than that of 2021. The second decade of the millennium began with a nine month long tsunami, as coronavirus wreaked havoc across the world, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, destroying entire industries, causing mass unemployment, and changing the way we live our lives forever. The hospitality industry had a particularly hard time during 2020, with pubs, bars and restaurants across the world forced to close their doors for long periods. Many will never reopen. International travel all but ground to halt and passenger numbers went in to freefall. That in turn ripped the floor out of the travel retail market. For smaller distilleries relying on tourists to provide cash while they waited for their spirits to mature, the year was
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particularly difficult. But no area was left unscathed, as producers struggled to get their casks out of their distilleries, and bottling plants were closed. “It only takes one bottling hall worker to test positive for the virus and all the other 30 or so employees working there have to selfisolate for two weeks,” one distillery manager observed. As a result there has been a backlog of companies wanting their whisky bottled, with the larger companies ensuring that they are first in line. We’re not out of the woods yet. The virus hasn’t gone away and the fallout from it will influence events for months or even years to come. But there is light at the end of the tunnel. In mid-December the United Kingdom became the first country to authorise a vaccine and began inoculating its health service employees and care workers.
Matt McKay
It’ll take time before the virus is properly tamed. And yet overall the whisky industry is highly optimistic – bullish even – that 2021 will be a succesful year, if the first five months are anything to go off. We took an industry snapshot in December. And this is what we were told: IAIN STIRLING ARDBIKIE DISTILLERY, ARBROATH, SCOTLAND: “We are very optimistic about 2021 as the world hospitality industry starts to recover from the pandemic and with global consumers more likely to buy sustainable and premium spirits. We are introducing our rye whisky to new markets on-going and with a number of other major distilleries due to launch their own rye whiskies soon, a new rye whisky category will be created and create an exciting event for the global whisky industry..”