Want zero alcohol or some chocolate in your Scotch? Distilleries test whisky’s limits

Demand for more variety in Scotch whisky from fast-growing emerging markets and the request for lower alcohol varieties among health-conscious drinkers are challenging a closely guarded centuries-old tradition. “There is a lot of interest in lower alcohol spirit drinks across the spirit sector to do with things like the Dry January craze and minimum pricing of alcohol,” said Matthew Pauley, an assistant professor at Heriot-Watt University’s International Centre for Brewing and Distilling. Whisky with a hint of chocolate “Johnnie Walker can’t suddenly make strawberry whisky and send it off to China,” said Pauley. “Some of the easy wins have been won, so people naturally start to look at some of the more left-field suggestions and line extensions, and we get back to the issue of how you make a line extension without harming the core brand.” A spokesman for the SWA said there is no bar to producing new products based on Scotch whisky but “the marketing of such products must not confuse consumers in any way -- in particular they must not suggest the product is Scotch whisky when it is not”. “My own preference would be that we don’t see any dilution of the Scotch whisky brand, and we therefore need to be careful about going down the route of innovating too quickly,” he said.