Finish anxiety

In this year's whisky bible Jim Murray expresses serious concerns about finishes. He acknowledges the marketing potential and the fact that great new products may come from it. But he laments the fact that a lot of bad finishes are being brought to the market. At the same time he fears finishes may distract from the true distillery product.

There is indeed much ado about finishes lately. But I think the anxious standpoint of Jim Murray may just be a bit too negative. It is true that bad finishes are being brought to the market. But distilleries who do this will soon face the commercial consequences, because the malt market is one of malt lovers who know what is good and what isn't. The larger problem is those independent bottlers, who seem to have no qualms whatsoever to bottle anything they can get their hands on, slapping on a finish just to make it seem a bit more special. Of course I am aware that certain independent bottlers are quite careful about what they bring to the market, since they know their reputation is very important. Nevertheless there seem to be bottlers who don't seem to care as much. They are the larger part of the problem, because they also hurt the distilleries, who never have consented to how their product was marketed.
The consequences are already becoming obvious : distilleries grow more and more protective of their brand name, and I expect more and more distilleries to protect their brand names more rigorously. This may hurt the malt market more than the finishes themselves. For any connoisseur the output of independant bottlers forms a major part of their interest, mainly because it greatly expands the available flavours of whisky.

Finishes themselves aren't a bad thing. It's the bad publicity an independent bottler may bring upon a distillery which may lead to a much more narrow market. Purer, yes, but also poorer.

I'm sure the last on finishes hasn't been said.

Just Finish

In recent years whisky makers have been experimenting with finishes, i.e. maturing a whisky on a different cask for a relatively short period of time. The types of cask used for finishes are most often not traditionally used for maturing whisky : rum barrels, cognac, champagne, port, ... anything seems crazy enough to add a weird twist in the end. This practice is met with quite a bit of scepticism from malt lovers and connoisseurs, because it seems whisky makers will do anything to sell their product.
It indeed seems a strange idea to do something so novel in an industry which prides itself for its loyalty to traditions and craftsmanship. Whisky marketing always focuses on the years of slowly maturing, on the old-fashioned way in which their malts were distilled, on quality rather than quantity.
But the truth is that the whisky industry, although its image may be old-fashioned, must survive in a modern-day market, where efficiency and profitability are the key words. And the reality of marketing a malt is quite daunting. It requires not only the skill of making a good product, but also to accurately guess what the demand on that market will be by the time the spirit has matured enough, which can easily be a decade from now.
The economic forces cause new trends in the whisky market. One such trend is that official distillery bottlings become younger. Ardbeg Very Young, Still Young and Almost There are such examples, another trend is that whisky is less and less matured on expensive casks, such as Sherry casks. Macallan, for instance, the malt that traditionally was always matured on sherry casks, now switched to their 'fine oak' series, which is a blend of their Bourbon and Sherry oak maturations. Another trend is to sell the stuff for more money, just pop to your favourite shop and compare the current prices to what they charged a few years back, for the same bottle.
I believe that wood finishes are also a product largely inspired by economic forces. Firstly it allows you to mature the whisky on a relatively cheap cask, and then differentiate it, by adding the effect of a more expensive cask at the end. Secondly it allows you to tailor for the current demand. What you didn't know ten years ago, you may know now, and after maturing your product a finish could allow you to then change your product in the direction of what is popular today. Furthermore a finish allows you to bring more people to try and appreciate your whisky, by associating it with a drink that is popular to non-whisky drinkers. If you enjoy a claret wine, you might be curious what a whisky matured on a claret cask tastes like, even though you don't really care about whisky. Lastly it is something new and exciting to those who already know their way around the whisky world.
So there is a lot to be said for a wood finish. I am always eager to try these, and see how it affects the malt. Currently there is still a lot of experimenting going on, and some of them turn out bad, others turn out magnificent. In several years finishes will still be around, but distillers will have found out which are successful, and which aren't, and they mill be used with more consideration and moderation, and I am sure the product will benefit from it. Nevertheless, the classic maturation will not be wiped away, especially because of the traditional image the whisky industry still upholds.
We should embrace the finishes with an open mind, and give earnest feedback of how we like it to those who make it. If its no good they should know it, and if it turns out to be great, they should definitely know it. This can only help to make whisky a more accessible, yet highly qualitative product, which can be enjoyed by many.