What is this all about?
It's a very simple idea for sharing good bottles of whisky...
The short explanation:
Jonathan does the research, finds the deals throughout the year, buys the whisky and then you pay him what you might pay for one bottle in the run up to Christmas and New Year. Perhaps your long-suffering nearest and dearest might even buy this for you for Christmas. However, instead of getting one bottle, you get the same overall volume of 70cl but of five different contrasting whiskies, carefully divided into neat smaller glass 15cl bottles. These will be gorgeous whiskies that are hopefully new to you and that you will love. Normally miniatures are (a) a bit too small at 5cl to really get to know a whisky and (b) way more expensive than they should be. With the Gadsby Whisky Collective you get more discovery but no extra cost and so does Jonathan, who won't make a profit but will be able to try more whiskies because of your contribution. A once-a-year happy event to get us all through the winter.
The very long explanation with accompanying waffle/quasi-philosophical BS:
Whisky adds a certain quality to life. I find that the best way to enjoy whisky is to have several bottles on the go, drinking small drams and appreciating their differences. There are so many different distilleries, each releasing several ‘expressions’ and it is bizarre (and intriguing) how different they can be. See this map, for example.
A 70cl bottle of wine is six or seven drinks (it is supposed to be, anyway) and it costs - well, for most mortals, somewhere between £0.90 and perhaps up to £1.70 per drink. A 70cl bottle of whisky contains 28 drinks (that's 28 x 25ml, which is one shot or one single measure), and each of them costs anywhere between £0.90 and perhaps up to £1.60 per drink (of course, the sky is the limit with both wine and whisky, but it is quite possible to drink very nice whisky in that price range).
The trouble is that, unlike wine, you often want three or four bottles on the go at once. While they should last a long time and don't go off, that is a rather hefty outlay of somewhere between £100 and £160. That seems to make drinking good quality whisky very extravagant indeed, even though the sums show that it is really not more expensive per glass than many other drinks. In fact, considering the age of whisky (involving storage space, care and a significant loss to the atmosphere through the barrel walls) it really shows up many other drinks as very over-priced. Gin, for example, is usually something like £0.70 per single and that is without any tonic water added. Even a single Gordon’s and cheap tonic mixed at home is therefore very likely to be over £2 (and Gordon’s is one of the cheapest). And gin can be taken straight from the still to the bottle to the shop without a single week in an expensive handmade wooden barrel shipped from America or Spain stacked in a purpose-built warehouse. Most good whisky has been in just such a barrel for over ten years, and some a good deal longer than that. Considering how easy it is by comparison to make beer, it is stranger still that a decent beer is often more expensive per drink than any of these. Puts a can of coke into a different perspective, too.
The other trouble is that whisky fluctuates in price greatly. Over the course of a year, the same bottle may be £28 but then rise to over £40 and back again, so waiting until you have finished a bottle before buying the next is not necessarily going to get you a good price; it is better to buy it when it is cheap, but again, that can feel a bit extravagant.
Finally, what if you buy a bottle that you then find you don’t particularly like? You don’t want to have paid for 28 drinks to sit on your shelf when you have decided after just 2 that you don’t want any more. One answer is to buy smaller bottles. However, smaller bottles (when available) work out much more expensive, usually over £2.50 per single. Another answer is to frequent a bar that sells a diverse range of whisky (if you can find one). Although your barman will certainly appreciate you, this is by far the most expensive way to experience new whisky, with many bar prices being over £4 per single.
Into this gravest of life’s difficulties steps The Gadsby Whisky Collective.
For the price of one mid-priced bottle, just over £30, you can have 28 drinks comprised of five different whiskies in five 150ml corked glass bottles. These will represent a carefully chosen set of contrasting whiskies, generally either single malt or occasionally blended malt (that is, an independent bottler's blend of single malts; not the same as blended whisky which tends to be of lower quality comprising whisky made in a 'coffey still' - a sort of conveyer-belt continuous process often leading to pretty bland stuff), and go on a fascinating fact-finding and experiential tour of world whisky, from the largest to the smallest of distilleries. There will be an emphasis on Scotch whisky, but other countries will be occasionally included - Ireland, Canada, America, perhaps Japan and others. My brother-in-law and I recently had an Indian single malt at a blind tasting session that was really excellent. Requests are possible - perhaps something you have wanted to try but haven't wanted to risk a full 70cl bottle on. This website will tell you all about the selection and give you a chance to compare tasting notes with others. My aim would be to drink the most interesting and highest quality whisky possible to obtain for that price (of course!).
What does Jonathan get out of this? I get the same advantages as you, and nothing else. I get to spend about £30 of my money and get five different tastes instead of one. Like you, I get to indulge the hobby of whisky adventuring with less financial outlay and I get to share my experiences and my fun fact-finding research with others. In fact, all the income and expenditure will be here on the website so that you can see exactly how money is spent. My aim is that you’ll be impressed at how little we end up paying for good quality whisky, because I have ways and means (an array of many on-line price alerts, basically) to ensure buying when the price is lower. Sometimes the price is only reduced for a day or two before being raised again (in fact, that seems to be a frequent marketing strategy). By buying in this way we can effectively get a considerable discount on many whiskies. Our money will therefore be getting us some more expensive (which means more complex, more interesting, more unusual and often older) drams than you might otherwise expect.
What is the commitment? None. The club will operate just once per year and it is not any kind of commitment. You will generally need let me know in January or February if you want to be part of it that year (because planning ahead is how I'll get good deals, but I probably won't turn away anyone later in the year). I won't have invited you to view this if you are not someone I see fairly regularly because I doubt I want to get into the business of sending out your whisky in the post. You can return the glass bottles to me at some point in the New Year when they are empty. The first time you are part of the collective I will need to charge each person £3 for the bottles (to cover their initial cost and to encourage people to take care of them).
Will the whisky be harmed in any way by being shared into smaller bottles? Whisky does not age in the bottle and does not go off. Leaving a bottle less than half full for, say, several years, may lead to a small losses of aromas and taste (and even a loss of volume if the cork is not tight) but essentially whisky may be carefully shared into smaller vessels without any loss of quality, providing that the vessels are perfectly clean. I guess it would be nicer to have the original packaging and that is the one downside of all of this. However, you do get to do a blind taste test (I will label the bottles with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 and put lots of information about each online) which is fun and can lead to surprises - if you genuinely like a £20 bottle more than a £38 one - which can happen - then it is good to know that. I hope you will be more than recompensed through the information on this website, which will include all of the same information as on the packaging and a lot more, including location maps, links to online reviews (I have found they do enhance appreciation) and more.
Is it strictly legal?
Absolutely no idea. I'm not making any money so the way I see it, it isn't that I'm selling you anything. In effect we are each buying a bottle of whisky and then sharing it with each other. It's just that one of us is organising everything.
Examples
In two examples below I have personally tasted about half of these and read reviews of the others. If you already know anything about whisky you’ll see that these are a mixture of peated (smokey) and un-peated (not smokey), some sherry cask finishes some not. Neither price nor age are the only indicators of quality - the Old Pulteney 12 Year Old is very pleasant indeed (salted toffee, anyone?!) and can sometimes be bought for even less money than below, and the Kilchomen is one of the top whiskies I have ever had (curls of sweet vanilla-flavoured smoke that almost floats across the room!) and yet probably contains a lot of whisky that is less than 8 years old (partly because the distillery is too young to have released many age-statemented bottles yet). The same is true of the English Whisky Company Chapter 15, which is a 5-year whisky and is just lovely. It is doubtful that with an average price of £32 we’ll ever afford anything older than 10 or 12 years (unless we get a stunningly good deal) but that really does not mean we are missing out. It is rarity rather than just quality that pushes up the price of older whisky. That said, if anyone wants to offer me a Talisker 25 year at any point the answer is definitely going to be yes.
The following examples are with current prices in early April 2018, but don't forget, I may well beat these prices during the year. 150ml of each.
Example 1
1. Aberfeldy 12 year
£27
Highlands Single Malt
2. Bowmore 12 year
£30
Islay Single Malt
3. Glenmorangie 10 year
£26
Speyside Single Malt
4. Arran 10 year
£33
Islands Single Malt
5. AnCnoc 12 year
£34
Speyside Single Malt
Example 2
1. Old Pulteney 12 year
£25
Highlands Single Malt
2. Douglas Laing’s Rock Oyster
£36
Lowlands blended malt
3. Aberlour 12 year
£25
Speyside Blended Malt
4. Green Spot Single Pot Still
£39
Irish Single Malt
5. Kilchomen Machir Bay
£44
Islay Single Malt
Of course, if you have any questions, feel free to email me. If you want to opt in to this year's collective, email me.
The short explanation:
Jonathan does the research, finds the deals throughout the year, buys the whisky and then you pay him what you might pay for one bottle in the run up to Christmas and New Year. Perhaps your long-suffering nearest and dearest might even buy this for you for Christmas. However, instead of getting one bottle, you get the same overall volume of 70cl but of five different contrasting whiskies, carefully divided into neat smaller glass 15cl bottles. These will be gorgeous whiskies that are hopefully new to you and that you will love. Normally miniatures are (a) a bit too small at 5cl to really get to know a whisky and (b) way more expensive than they should be. With the Gadsby Whisky Collective you get more discovery but no extra cost and so does Jonathan, who won't make a profit but will be able to try more whiskies because of your contribution. A once-a-year happy event to get us all through the winter.
The very long explanation with accompanying waffle/quasi-philosophical BS:
Whisky adds a certain quality to life. I find that the best way to enjoy whisky is to have several bottles on the go, drinking small drams and appreciating their differences. There are so many different distilleries, each releasing several ‘expressions’ and it is bizarre (and intriguing) how different they can be. See this map, for example.
A 70cl bottle of wine is six or seven drinks (it is supposed to be, anyway) and it costs - well, for most mortals, somewhere between £0.90 and perhaps up to £1.70 per drink. A 70cl bottle of whisky contains 28 drinks (that's 28 x 25ml, which is one shot or one single measure), and each of them costs anywhere between £0.90 and perhaps up to £1.60 per drink (of course, the sky is the limit with both wine and whisky, but it is quite possible to drink very nice whisky in that price range).
The trouble is that, unlike wine, you often want three or four bottles on the go at once. While they should last a long time and don't go off, that is a rather hefty outlay of somewhere between £100 and £160. That seems to make drinking good quality whisky very extravagant indeed, even though the sums show that it is really not more expensive per glass than many other drinks. In fact, considering the age of whisky (involving storage space, care and a significant loss to the atmosphere through the barrel walls) it really shows up many other drinks as very over-priced. Gin, for example, is usually something like £0.70 per single and that is without any tonic water added. Even a single Gordon’s and cheap tonic mixed at home is therefore very likely to be over £2 (and Gordon’s is one of the cheapest). And gin can be taken straight from the still to the bottle to the shop without a single week in an expensive handmade wooden barrel shipped from America or Spain stacked in a purpose-built warehouse. Most good whisky has been in just such a barrel for over ten years, and some a good deal longer than that. Considering how easy it is by comparison to make beer, it is stranger still that a decent beer is often more expensive per drink than any of these. Puts a can of coke into a different perspective, too.
The other trouble is that whisky fluctuates in price greatly. Over the course of a year, the same bottle may be £28 but then rise to over £40 and back again, so waiting until you have finished a bottle before buying the next is not necessarily going to get you a good price; it is better to buy it when it is cheap, but again, that can feel a bit extravagant.
Finally, what if you buy a bottle that you then find you don’t particularly like? You don’t want to have paid for 28 drinks to sit on your shelf when you have decided after just 2 that you don’t want any more. One answer is to buy smaller bottles. However, smaller bottles (when available) work out much more expensive, usually over £2.50 per single. Another answer is to frequent a bar that sells a diverse range of whisky (if you can find one). Although your barman will certainly appreciate you, this is by far the most expensive way to experience new whisky, with many bar prices being over £4 per single.
Into this gravest of life’s difficulties steps The Gadsby Whisky Collective.
For the price of one mid-priced bottle, just over £30, you can have 28 drinks comprised of five different whiskies in five 150ml corked glass bottles. These will represent a carefully chosen set of contrasting whiskies, generally either single malt or occasionally blended malt (that is, an independent bottler's blend of single malts; not the same as blended whisky which tends to be of lower quality comprising whisky made in a 'coffey still' - a sort of conveyer-belt continuous process often leading to pretty bland stuff), and go on a fascinating fact-finding and experiential tour of world whisky, from the largest to the smallest of distilleries. There will be an emphasis on Scotch whisky, but other countries will be occasionally included - Ireland, Canada, America, perhaps Japan and others. My brother-in-law and I recently had an Indian single malt at a blind tasting session that was really excellent. Requests are possible - perhaps something you have wanted to try but haven't wanted to risk a full 70cl bottle on. This website will tell you all about the selection and give you a chance to compare tasting notes with others. My aim would be to drink the most interesting and highest quality whisky possible to obtain for that price (of course!).
What does Jonathan get out of this? I get the same advantages as you, and nothing else. I get to spend about £30 of my money and get five different tastes instead of one. Like you, I get to indulge the hobby of whisky adventuring with less financial outlay and I get to share my experiences and my fun fact-finding research with others. In fact, all the income and expenditure will be here on the website so that you can see exactly how money is spent. My aim is that you’ll be impressed at how little we end up paying for good quality whisky, because I have ways and means (an array of many on-line price alerts, basically) to ensure buying when the price is lower. Sometimes the price is only reduced for a day or two before being raised again (in fact, that seems to be a frequent marketing strategy). By buying in this way we can effectively get a considerable discount on many whiskies. Our money will therefore be getting us some more expensive (which means more complex, more interesting, more unusual and often older) drams than you might otherwise expect.
What is the commitment? None. The club will operate just once per year and it is not any kind of commitment. You will generally need let me know in January or February if you want to be part of it that year (because planning ahead is how I'll get good deals, but I probably won't turn away anyone later in the year). I won't have invited you to view this if you are not someone I see fairly regularly because I doubt I want to get into the business of sending out your whisky in the post. You can return the glass bottles to me at some point in the New Year when they are empty. The first time you are part of the collective I will need to charge each person £3 for the bottles (to cover their initial cost and to encourage people to take care of them).
Will the whisky be harmed in any way by being shared into smaller bottles? Whisky does not age in the bottle and does not go off. Leaving a bottle less than half full for, say, several years, may lead to a small losses of aromas and taste (and even a loss of volume if the cork is not tight) but essentially whisky may be carefully shared into smaller vessels without any loss of quality, providing that the vessels are perfectly clean. I guess it would be nicer to have the original packaging and that is the one downside of all of this. However, you do get to do a blind taste test (I will label the bottles with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 and put lots of information about each online) which is fun and can lead to surprises - if you genuinely like a £20 bottle more than a £38 one - which can happen - then it is good to know that. I hope you will be more than recompensed through the information on this website, which will include all of the same information as on the packaging and a lot more, including location maps, links to online reviews (I have found they do enhance appreciation) and more.
Is it strictly legal?
Absolutely no idea. I'm not making any money so the way I see it, it isn't that I'm selling you anything. In effect we are each buying a bottle of whisky and then sharing it with each other. It's just that one of us is organising everything.
Examples
In two examples below I have personally tasted about half of these and read reviews of the others. If you already know anything about whisky you’ll see that these are a mixture of peated (smokey) and un-peated (not smokey), some sherry cask finishes some not. Neither price nor age are the only indicators of quality - the Old Pulteney 12 Year Old is very pleasant indeed (salted toffee, anyone?!) and can sometimes be bought for even less money than below, and the Kilchomen is one of the top whiskies I have ever had (curls of sweet vanilla-flavoured smoke that almost floats across the room!) and yet probably contains a lot of whisky that is less than 8 years old (partly because the distillery is too young to have released many age-statemented bottles yet). The same is true of the English Whisky Company Chapter 15, which is a 5-year whisky and is just lovely. It is doubtful that with an average price of £32 we’ll ever afford anything older than 10 or 12 years (unless we get a stunningly good deal) but that really does not mean we are missing out. It is rarity rather than just quality that pushes up the price of older whisky. That said, if anyone wants to offer me a Talisker 25 year at any point the answer is definitely going to be yes.
The following examples are with current prices in early April 2018, but don't forget, I may well beat these prices during the year. 150ml of each.
Example 1
1. Aberfeldy 12 year
£27
Highlands Single Malt
2. Bowmore 12 year
£30
Islay Single Malt
3. Glenmorangie 10 year
£26
Speyside Single Malt
4. Arran 10 year
£33
Islands Single Malt
5. AnCnoc 12 year
£34
Speyside Single Malt
Example 2
1. Old Pulteney 12 year
£25
Highlands Single Malt
2. Douglas Laing’s Rock Oyster
£36
Lowlands blended malt
3. Aberlour 12 year
£25
Speyside Blended Malt
4. Green Spot Single Pot Still
£39
Irish Single Malt
5. Kilchomen Machir Bay
£44
Islay Single Malt
Of course, if you have any questions, feel free to email me. If you want to opt in to this year's collective, email me.
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