In the 2020s, it feels like whisky is going from strength to strength, with incredible tasting spirits available for affordable prices as well as highly collectable exquisite drams breaking price record after price record.
Part of the reason why whisky cask ownership is so desirable these days is it allows people to be part of that history, a history that in a surprising number of cases involves distilleries that closed for a long time or that simply no longer exist.
As a spirit, whisky has seen its fair share of highs and lows. However, one of its lowest points came in the 1980s, when the market for whisky collapsed entirely and a period known as the Whisky Cull of 1983 took place.
Whisky Loch
There have been quite a few slowdowns in the production of whisky, typically as a result of tumultuous economic climates or the march of war. One of the most notable shutdowns for the industry as a whole was the Second World War, where the energy-intensive industry as it existed simply could not function.
Before that was a mass closure in the 1920s, and an infamous cull in the mid-19th century.
However, the Great Whisky Cull, also known as the Whisky Loch of 1983, was caused for a very different reason, with ramifications that affect the industry at large to this very day.
From the late 1950s until the 1980s, there was a boom period for blended whisky, as it became
a very popular drink internationally, although one that by design was relatively nondescript.
It was a commodity rather than an art form, and commodities are vulnerable to the whims of the market in a way that artful spirits such as single-malts are not to the same degree.
The problems that led to the 1983 cull started in the 1970s. The Oil Crisis that gripped Scotland and most of the countries whisky was exported to in those days affected distilleries more than most manufacturing industries.
At the time, many distilleries were told to keep producing because the issues would pass, but these troubles coincided with a sudden shift in customer tastes away from blends and towards light spirits such as vodka and white rum.
In 1981, distilleries started to lower production, but by this point, the die was cast. Whisky distilling requires a degree of future sight, with even the freshest, youngest whiskies taking at least three years to properly mature.
In 1983, a great cull of dozens of distilleries took place, and The Distillers Company alone closed 12 distilleries before being bought by Guinness in a controversial manner later ruled to be fraudulent.
The whisky loch severely harmed the whisky blend market through oversupply, which led to bottles of own-brand whisky costing obscenely low prices at one point in a desperate attempt to drain the loch, as well as the loss of distilleries such as Port Ellen.
However, this also had the rather unusual effect, once the whisky market came round to the artful joys of single-malt whisky, of creating an aura around ghost distilleries which produced single-malt spirits from casks designed to be used in blends.