When whisky price leaves a bad taste

For many years I have urged distilleries to open visitor centres and do everything possible to encourage whisky tourism. So I am delighted to see many new distilleries opening with visitor centres as their main focal point, and to see long-established distilleries turning unused warehouses or offices into visitor centres.

Informative tours, often in foreign languages, followed by a good dram or two and even a complementary etched glass are increasingly the norm and popular they are, too. However, on a recent tour of several distilleries scattered

across Scotland, I was dismayed by one thing – the steep, occasionally eyewatering prices all of them charge for a bottle of the house nectar.

OK, excise duty and VAT on spirits in the UK are high, and Scotland has the

added burden of minimum pricing, but I could hardly believe the prices of the in-house malt at all the distilleries I visited. The cheapest I saw one no-agestatement malt was £39.50 at a muchvisited distillery, with £45, £49 and more than £50 more the norm.

Most of these can be seen in supermarkets for around the £30-£32

bracket, often less if they are on special offer. Older or higher-strength malts at distillery shops are proportionately expensive, with many offering a “distillery exclusive” bottling – presumably low-volume or even single cask – at a

frankly exorbitant £90 or more.

Once you move into 20-year-plus or very rare bottlings, the prices are far into three figures or beyond. Similarly, distillery-exclusive merchandise, generally T-shirts, baseball caps, keyrings and golf paraphernalia, are also extremely dear for what they are.

The consequences were there to see. The visitors loved the tour and the dram but rarely if ever bought a bottle of the single malt, probably reckoning they could find it much cheaper in their own countries or possibly at the airport duty-free shop.

I appreciate that distillery visitor centres have a short tourist season (although it is getting longer) and are not in the “pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap” bracket, but I feel their high prices are a turn-off. I also believe much keener prices would produce a higher turnover even if the profit margin per bottle is lower. In the long run, you get more golden eggs from the goose.

Whisky-tasting tours are a great idea, but prices are way too high at distilleries.