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I wonder if this is the market reacting to a difficult regulatory environment. When you consider the laws pertaining to production, distribution, and sales of s
by yock 12y ago
I wonder if this is the market reacting to a difficult regulatory environment. When you consider the laws pertaining to production, distribution, and sales of spirits, It seems like it would be darn near impossible to bootstrap such a business without significant outside investment. And who would invest in a company that has no intention to take a single dollar of revenue for years to come?
- tptacek 12y agoYou might think that, but practically the entire Scotch whiskey industry also rolls up into Diageo, Bacardi, and Pernod, and it might be hard to argue that the regulatory environment in Scotland disfavors distilleries.
- yock 12y agoI think it disfavors new distilleries.
- tptacek 12y agoYou mean like Benromach and BenRiach? It's maybe a little tricky to see the entrepreneurial activity in Scotch whiskey at a distance, because there are so many silent distillery sites throughout the country. People gut and rehab mothballed distilleries rather than build new ones. But the Benromach distillery, for instance, is entirely new on the inside; and it was started by a Scotch retailer.
- dnr 12y agoDon't forget Kilchoman! They built it from scratch!
- mturmon 12y agoSome sample Pernod-Ricard Scotch brands: Aberlour, Chivas, Glenlivet, Longmorn, Royal Salute (Chivas premium), Scapa, Ballantines, Laphroaig, Teachers.
- tptacek 12y agoTo be clear, most of these (Aberlour, Glenlivet, Longmorn, Laphroig, &c) are totally separate distilleries run in some cases by people who were involved in the process since before Chivas bought them out. There are also several distilleries operated by Pernod that don't sell direct to the public, but instead contribute to Chivas blends (the Craigellachie distillery grounds were literally our backyard on vacation a few weeks ago, and despite it being essentially an industrial distillery, you wouldn't really have been able to tell it apart from Benromach by the exterior). So this is a situation not at all like the MGP product situation. Aberlour and Longmorn aren't selling the same distillate (although they probably source the same malt).
- mturmon 12y agoThanks for the clarification. That's an important distinction.