ScotchTalk Vol. 5: The NAS Debate

NAS ("No Age Statement") refers to whiskies that decline to provide an age statement (10 years, 12 years, et al) for reasons that remain under intense debate. As a reminder, Scottish law requires that if a whisky distiller provides the age of a whisky, it must provide the age of the youngest whisky in the bottle. As many have noted, a bottle might contain 99% 50-year whisky and 1% 3-year whisky, and yet it must be marketed as a 3-year whisky. Which is misleading in its own way, and a little ridiculous. 


A rather inflexible law, but it means well - imagine the alternative, in which consumers would buy a bottle labeled as 50-year old whisky, only to find out that it's 1% 50-year old and 99% 3-year old. Or, worse, contain no 50-year old whisky at all. It's designed to protect the consumer, but is inflexibly written. Ideally, distillers should provide the youngest age at a minimum, but be allowed to reveal all the various ages contained within. 

One one side of the coin, an optimist might say that the single malt popularity boom in the last couple decades has resulted in dwindling reserves of the very old whisky that used to be found in some single malts. Thus the ages in the bottle shift downward - what once was 10 year, 15 year, and 25 year is now 7 year, 10 year, and 20 year, and so on. But most people looking at Scotch on the shelf at the liquor store would see "7 year" and pass it right by, no matter how little there might be. 

One the other side of the coin, it opens things up for distillers to monkey around with fancy marketing and create these imprints with only a single name (Laphroaig Lore, Ardbeg Uigeadail, Talisker Storm, Macallan Gold, the list is very very long) that have totally mysterious contents. Instead, they sell you the brand, using very fancy packaging and clever marketing and - hopefully - intriguing whiskies. This is a pretty capitalist end-around the rules, and within the rights of the distillers, but also to the clear disadvantage of the consumer - you and me - who knows much less about what is crossing their tongue than before. 

Rather than write much more here, I'm going to provide a few links to people who know more much than I do. The comments sections of these articles can be very colorful indeed.  Think and enjoy!

ScotchWhisky.com

ScotchNoob

Mixology

Inside the Cask