Having revived the struggling Islay single malt, Hamish Torrie wants aficionados to say slàinte to very young whisky. Ian Fraser reports
Hamish Torrie, international marketing manager at Glenmorangie, has never been afraid of turning conventional marketing wisdom on its head.
Torrie and his Broxburn-based team are behind the renaissance of the whisky group’s Ardbeg single Islay malt brand. It was virtually defunct when it was acquired by Glenmorangie in 1997 but has since been reinvented without the use of much advertising as the recherché choice for Islay connoisseurs.
Last week, the process of reinventing Ardbeg continued with the launch of Very Young Ardbeg, a new version of the distinctively peaty Scotch.
In a first for a single malt, this attempts to make a virtue of its youth. It is a risky step in the Scotch whisky market where, traditionally, age and maturity are what earns the respect of afficionados and the payment of premium prices.
But, believing whisky drinkers are shaking off their fustiness, and banking on the fact Ardbeg has in four years built a loyal following of around 28,000 people who are members of its “committee”, Torrie saw it as a risk worth taking.
Glenmorangie, which is itself in the process of being sold for around £300 million after the Macdonald family chose to sell off its controlling stake in the company, has priced Very Young Ardbeg at £28 per 70cl bottle. That is a premium of around 10%-12% to the price commanded by its older stablemate, Ardbeg 10-year-old. The price of the 17-year-old has risen from £29 in 1997 to £49.99 today.
The uisge beatha in Very Young Ardbeg bottles was distilled in 1998, the first year that the distillery was reinvigorated under Glenmorangie?s ownership. To emphasise its youth, the bottle comes without any gift box or carton.
Torrie, an Elgin-born son of the manse who has also held marketing roles at The Macallan, United Distillers, Antigua Brewery and Grants of Dalvey, must also have thought the scarcity factor would make such a radical pricing policy possible. This year, only 1900 nine-litre cases of Very Young Ardbeg are being made available to a range of international markets. The next batch will not be distributed until April 2005.
The approach appears to be be paying off. Speaking at the Whisky Live! event in Glasgow’s George Square, Torrie said: “It’s flying off the shelves. Retailers are crying out for more, but there isn’t much we can do.”
There may also have been some degree of pragmatism in Glenmorangie’s decision to launch the new drink. While the Islay-based distillery was owned by Hiram Walker and Allied Domecq, its output was very low.
The distillery was mothballed in 1981-89, with only intermittent production in 1990-96. The distillery, overlooking the North Channel just to the east of Lagavulin and Laphroaig, was then mothballed again for a few months prior to being bought by Glenmorangie for £7m in 1997.
Distillery manager Stuart Thomson says the place was in the worst state of any distillery he had seen when Glenmorangie took it over. Torrie says: “The distillery was dying. It was in awful condition having been semi-mothballed for 15 years.”
As a result, stocks of anything between six-year-old malt – which dates from after the stills became active again under Glenmorangie’s ownership, and the much older casks – tend to be in short supply.
This was partly because, during the 1990s, Allied Domecq had no real interest in marketing or stockpiling any malt other than its Laphroaig brand – another pungent and peaty number produced on a nearby coastal site. Most of the Ardbeg that was produced ended up being used in blends such as Teacher’s and Ballantine’s.
To give the committee – a large group of Ardbeg enthusiasts who maintain a regular dialogue with the distillery through the internet and through quirky mailshots – a say in Ardbeg?s future, members’ views were sought before Very Young Ardbeg was launched. Each was given the chance to sample the first few thousand bottles of the youthful vintage, and they appear to have been given a near universal thumbs up.
Torrie explains: “The idea was to let Ardbeg committee members have an early opportunity to sample some ‘work in progress’. The response was so positive we decided to make Very Young Ardbeg available to a wider audience. From now on we intend to follow the path to Ardbeg 10-year-old with a limited annual release of 1998 Ardbeg at seven, eight and nine years old.”
Once members had given it their blessing, they were mailed a postcard showing a bottle of VYA in a pram with the tagline “It’s got your nose.”
Devised by the Leith-based advertising agency Story, this included the phrase: “Now, as a result of your affection for it, we’re sending this youngster into the wider world from September.”
The bottles have a stamp across the rear label which reads ‘Committee Approved’. Dave Mullen, creative director at Story, says one reason behind the launch of the committee was that committees are rife on Islay.
He says: “Despite a population of 3,000 there are an astonishing 150 committees on the island.”
In 2000, existing Ardbeg drinkers were targeted with carefully scripted invitations to join distributed within cartons of Ardbeg 10-year-old.
Once signed up, members are urged to do their bit to ensure the distillery is never shut down or mothballed again – by drinking more Ardbeg themselves and recommending it to their friends.
The committee has now built up a membership of 28,000 people who are treated as real stakeholders in the brand. Momentous Minutes, the committee’s newsletter, is meant to be quirky, irreverent and fun, in the hope of forming a bridge between Ardbeg’s worldwide army of fans and the distillery itself.
Nearly half its members are in the UK (12,000) with significant numbers also in Sweden, Germany and the US.
The current invitation to join says: “Now you can help to ensure that the doors of this unique distillery will never close again. Slàinte!”
Torrie says: “Rather than run a big advertising campaign the idea is to talk to the club and ruthlessly deliver against this bunch of enthusiasts.”
The direct marketing campaign has already won numerous awards including five gold medals at the UK direct marketing awards in 2003.
It appears to be working. In the UK, sales of Ardbeg have grown from around 1500 nine-litre cases in 1998 to nearly 12,000 today. Worldwide it will sell 35,000 cases in 15 countries this year.
Torrie says: “Before 1997 it wasn’t a brand, it was a cult. Allied were only selling 200 to 300 cases a year.”
It obviously also helps that the brand, which Torrie calls the “Krug of Islay malts” is revered by connoisseurs including whisky noses Michael Jackson and Jim Murray.
Other special bottlings include Ardbeg Lord of the Isles and Ardbeg Uigeadail.
Mullen adds: “Glenmorangie is quite a progressive organisation, but its core people want to be a bit different and stand out from the crowd. They’re turning received wisdom on its head.”
This article was published in the Sunday Herald on 19 September 2004