A Pinnacle of Desire
For many years now we’ve been actively engaged in building desire for our clients’ brands. We’ve done this on the back of seven core principles which we believe are key to making a brand desirable: positive heritage, authenticity, purpose, exclusivity, single-mindedness, detail and distinctiveness.
It was therefore interesting to read in an article by Masters of Malt on the £16million sale of a cask of 1975 Ardbeg this quote: “This particular cask has the triple threat: it’s incredibly rare, it’s very old, and it houses a unique, almost lost flavour. (Charles) MacLean (MBE) points to that provenance and history, commenting that, while £16m seems a “breathtaking price for a cask of whisky”, ultimately what works out at £36,000 per bottle is “not unexpected for whiskies of that age and rarity”.
The elements that make Cask No.3, to give it its distillery name, so desirable illustrate some of the seven principles of desire in action. Founded in 1815 Ardbeg built a reputation for producing a fine blending whisky over the decades until the 1980s when the distillery closed; seemingly for good in 1996. However, the distillery was bought by Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) and under its stewardship has gone from strength to strength. Its fans, of which there are legions, value its unique heritage and its particularly peaty, smoky and complex style of whisky.
Its exclusivity comes from its rarity. Given it was produced in the past as a blending whisky only a few casks were laid down as single malts. Cask No. 3 is one of these. It demonstrates detail through the care that been lavished on it. Originally distilled on Tuesday, 25th November 1975, the spirit was laid down in two casks - a bourbon and an Olorosos sherry - where it matured for 38 years. Then in 2014 Dr Bill Lumsden, LVMH Head of Distilling & Whisky Creation, expertly married the two casks together and transferred them into a single refill Oloroso butt. Here it has lain and been cared for the last eight years.
And last but not least Cask No.3 is distinctive because of its taste. To quote Master of Malt again, “Cask No. 3 is an extraordinary taste of Ardbeg’s past. Its aromas are nutty, herbal, and smoky, while its tastes of tar, espresso coffee, and spearmint have an astonishing finesse for a whisky of such age. So little stock survives from this era, that this cask really is one of a kind,” says Dr. Bill Lumsden, who will oversee the cask’s ongoing maturation. MacLean adds that the single malt offers an “evocative taste of what Ardbeg was like when it malted its own barley. Many old whiskies can go flat with age. But Cask No. 3 is a really lovely whisky, hugely complex, still having vitality after nearly half a century.”
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