Whisky: Collaborate to prosper
The statistics do not bear good tidings for the whisky category right now.
As you will see in the panel on this page (bottom), in an on-trade environment in which spirits are struggling across the board, imported whiskey and blends are declining ahead of the market as whole. The more premium category of malts, meanwhile, is faring relatively well, albeit from a much smaller base.
These are not new phenomena, and the reasons are well-documented. Blends are perceived as the more traditional end of the category, a core product for pubs, and one drunk generally by older consumers. This age group is the one most likely to switch to drinking at home when faced with the smoking ban and cheaper off-trade prices. However, younger pub-goers are increasingly likely to trade up.
As Gareth Brown, commercial manager at Beam, the company responsible for Maker's Mark, Laphroaig and Teacher's, among others, says: "If any category is going to give you an indication of declining footfall, it would be blended whisky because it's a mainstream pub product that has tended to be robust when pubs do well.
"Malt, on the other hand, is a category with a wealth of opportunities for premiumisation and experimentation. These trends help malts more than other whiskies because the category has the most focus on ingredients and quality."
Backing the big brands
So what are the drinks companies doing about this? They all point to marketing backing for their big whisky brands, and attempts to push mixer combinations. If blends are having a negative impact on whisky's decline heaven knows what the figures would look like without the likes of Diageo and their advertising.
Many point to the need for more collaborative initiatives to be run across the whisky industry. Diageo's Malt Map is an attempt at this. Launched last autumn, it is based around a chart that maps the flavour profiles of an array of single malts - not just Diageo's own brands, but those of competitors.
Diageo is planning to distribute a fresh wave of point-of-sale material based around the Malt Map to pubs after Christmas. Crucially, Diageo says, there are no barriers to launching a similar concept for blends.
However, for now drinks companies seem to be putting most of their eggs in the basket of malt whisky, and opening up the category to new consumers by making it more accessible.
Pernod Ricard has its own alternative to the Malt Map. Based more on categorising whiskies by consumer groups such as "whisky beginners", rather than flavours, it is currently being trialed in advance of a full-scale launch.
Diageo's new mass-market single malt The Singleton entered the on-trade earlier this month after research established three million untapped UK consumers would consider malt if it was "smoother".
Diageo senior brand manager for malt whisky Steve Wood says: "We all have confidence that the global growth in blends will make its way back into the market." But the point when this happens seems a long way off.
On-trade volume to July
Imported: down 7.4 per cent in volume and 9.4 per cent in value
Blends: down 8.1 per cent in volume and 10 per cent in value
Malts: down 4.2 per cent in volume and 1.8 per cent in value
Actual value
Imported: £320.8m
Blends: £341.7m
Malts: £62.4m
Total spirits down six per cent in volume and two per cent in value
Source: Nielsen MAT to July in on-trade
