Caol Ila 25yo

Look, despite what I’m about to say, there is a place for it: just judging whisky purely on the liquid, allowing the reader, consumer, listener, what-have-you, to thereafter decide for themselves what a fair price is, based on their own perspectives and financial mobility. Really, I understand the opinion of those who think in such a way.

But that isn’t here.

Not because we have a policy or anything, in fact our scoring system is actually wide open and without guidance on price at all. It doesn’t happen here because we harness individual opinion. Much like tasting notes or any other aspect, it’s entirely up to each individual reviewer to share what they’ve paid and decide if it should be a factor in their judgement of the whisky. Through their words, they may then rationalise and contextualise to best convey their experience.

I am also mildly aware that, as we sit in January of 2024, many of you will may be approaching price discussion fervour, or fatigue. It’s a hot topic and the general sentiment is that we’ve had enough. To those of you who are indeed tired of price complaints, you should probably settle in for the long haul, because these chants from the galleries are very disgruntled and they grow louder. Whisky folk are protesting with turned backs. Admittedly, they can do so with the added padding of months-worth, and perhaps years-worth, of stashed whisky, but who can be surprised about that?

Buying whisky isn’t exactly the same as buying a yacht, but it is still a luxury and not a cheap one either, so for many it amounts to the same; a true indulgence. Some of it is expensive enough to elevate it to exclusive privilege, especially when it comes to the stuff that folk are lamenting, celebrating, hyping or otherwise amplifying in some way. But, as it’s affordable for some, it encourages others to push their spend further.

There are today, and hopefully always will be, entry-level, great quality bottles. At Dramface we strive to unearth exactly those, but the older age statements and mythical bottles will always be sought after and seen as something of a rite of passage, at least for those aware and able. We all want to try the legends, we all want to taste the old stuff.

However, the gap between entry level and aged whisky today, is woefully huge. In my opinion, it’s also contrived and deliberate.

Anecdotally, it doesn’t really cost that much more, per litre, per year, to mature whisky. The majority of the cost is in the manufacture and capital costs. Thereafter, its nurture alone is much lower. Ignoring the mess of cask investment we find ourselves in at present, the main reason old whisky has been typically more expensive is that there’s a lot less of it. It’s been plucked and pillaged over its years in warehouses and eventually it gets to the point where each parcel or cask will only be parted with when the price is attractive enough to permit. I’ve heard this time and again, but since I can’t share calculations or reliable reference sources, it remains anecdotal. 

However, if you’ve ever seen the price lists of the past, they very much back up this theory; older is more expensive, but not by factors of two, three or more with each step up in age statement. Not like we see today. Why is this? Well, it’s a great topic for a lengthy future feature piece perhaps, but today, let’s blame Macallan.

Their 12yo Sherry Oak is around £90 RRP, it can be bought for less right now, but when I needed one for a special project a while ago, I had to pay £90. That really is already absurdly expensive. Paying that was not pleasant. But whatever, their 18yo version of the same is £350. More than triple the price of the 12yo. Can we just think about that for a second?

That’s how much money you are asked to pay for a bottle of 18yo Speyside whisky that, for this commenter, is actually pretty good and yet also pretty unremarkable. That’s around a 25% increase per each additional year of maturation from 12 years to 18 years. The 12yo is 40% ABV, with the 18yo you do get an additional 3% ABV, but it’s still chill-filtered. 

For kicks, let’s look at the 25yo version of the same: £2,100 RRP. Six times the price of the 18yo, or around 30% added for each year of additional maturation. Luckily, everyone in the know is utterly bored of Macallan and their antics these days and the word is gradually seeping into the greater whisky consciousness. There’s a thing called the internet and folk seem fond of it.

I don’t hate Macallan for this, I’m ambivalent, which I’ve written about, but their policies and contrived positioning has had an effect on the wider whisky plain.

There remain arguments to support their strategy alongside more to rail against it, but these are the facts. Does it sell? Well, Macallan goes to great lengths to make it appear so. Although, in January 2024, the 2023 releases are still for sale on the official Macallan site. Regardless, it sets a tone.

How can any other 18 or 25 year old whisky compete? On price alone, to the inexperienced, it’s deemed a budget version and on brand they don’t (yet) have the pedigree to take on the original luxury whisky. So, what do other producers do? It would seem they arbitrarily move their prices closer. 

This isn’t unique to whisky, of course not. It’s Business 101 and it’s everywhere. But whisky is business-to-consumer and calling it out should also be everywhere. So permit me to call some more of it out.

Diageo has given us drop after drop of hilariously high, scarily arbitrary price increases in recent years. Dramface pages are littered with examples of nonsensical and random behaviour. Originally it was their yearly hike in their Special Releases, then also pathetic attempts to fleece folk through aspirational but clumsy, short-cut Mortlach revamps. Soon selected core ranges such as Oban, Lagavulin and Talisker saw huge overnight positioning price hikes, as well as some completely random oddballs such as this 17yo Teaninich and this shockingly contrived attempt to celebrate Jim Beveridge and World Whisky Day. But today, I have one that’s new. At least to the Dramface pages: Caol Ila. Beautiful, elegant, reliable – and plentiful – Caol Ila. 

And we absolutely will be considering the price in the scoring for this one, even though its clumsy price ramp presents difficulty. Have a look at this wee Google-y mess:

Not entirely sure what the RRP is here, but we see a confusing range of £224 to £450, with Diageo’s own malts.com site listing it at £450, so let’s go with that. But clearly, the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. It’s all over the place. We’re not talking a fiver here or a tenner there, we’re in the realms of hundreds of your hard-earned Sterlings.

Royal Mile Whiskies are currently offering it on sale with £89.99 off, but it’s still £359.96. If I bought at the cheapest online place, I’d save a further £136 on that and £226 on RRP.  So, truly a mess. I really do feel sorry for retailers, but I suppose some may bunce with incumbent stocks at times too so, Yin and Yang.

Worse, the bottle you see open in the photos below was purchased for less than €100 in 2019. The back-up bottle was bought, by me as a birthday gift to myself, in May of 2021 at an RRP at the time of less than £150. In the intervening two and a half years, Diageo has tripled that. My purchase was from TWE, who have doubled their retail and currently sit in the middle of the mess above at £295; I’ll guess that’s based on some older stock on hand.

Let’s forgive, for a moment, that this malt is chill-filtered, perhaps coloured and presented at 43% ABV, and consider its proposition at £150. Honestly, it’s rather compelling. Clearly so, I bought a bottle. Delightful Islay single malt at twenty-five years of age. I’m scoring it an 8/10, it really is Something Special, based on the Dramface Scoring Guide. Now, let’s consider it at £224. No surprise; it drops. A lot. It would ask the whisky to act up to such a point I think it may only score a six; Good stuff. 

At £450 there is only one word in the scoring system for it – Disappointing. It can’t live up to a £450 outlay, it absolutely cannot. If we, at Dramface, after nigh-on two years and over 750 reviews, chose to ignore the price here and score this on the liquid alone, we would lose our voice, our integrity and our place among our daily readers. And rightly so. We’d have ignored our responsibilities as real-world, enthusiast reviewers, which will always lie with the real world enthusiasts who read and support us.

That renders this Caol Ila 25, which I do actually love – a 3/10. Someone dropping £450 on this, in light of everything else in that price band that might rock their whisky world, would be left wanting. This would, surely, disappoint any Dramface reader with a £450 hole in their pocket.

So let me ask, how should we score this? Based on the price originally paid in 2019? Based on what I paid in 2021? Based on the cheapest online UK price today? Based on secondary? Or based on the RRP today? Your answers, I guarantee, will vary.

We need to remember, it’s the producer who has given us this quandary; these are consequences of decisions they’ve made. So the only thing to do is for me, as the reviewer today, to choose what to do and explain why I’ve done so. This is 8/10 whisky that can easily be demoted if the price has placed it in competition with things much, much better.

Let me now try to articulate the whisky experience, which is, on the whole, a lot more positive.