A pint of cola and a glass of pure malt whiskey, please

It looks like 2003 will end on a relatively happy note for the Scottish whiskey industry. Feelings have been running high for most of the year because multi-national booze company Diageo -- who also own Guinness -- had pulled the wheeze of subtly changing the description of their Scottish Cardhu whiskey from single malt to pure malt -- meaning that it still had no grain alcohol but that it was a mixture of several barley malts, and not just one, as the single malt designation would require. Diageo had the problem that Spanish yuppies were falling over themselves in the rush to the bar for more of the stuff, to the point where they were running low on enough malt from the source distillery -- the necessary 12 years of ageing means that responding to increased demand is not just a matter of speeding up the assembly line.

Now, we're not huge fans of Diageo, not least because of those periodic rumours that Guinness operations in Ireland could be scaled down in a cost-cutting move. But in this case, it's hard to see how any company could resist the temptation to increase supply of such a lucrative product. And the uproar from single malt distillers, worried about brand dilution, has resulted in Diageo doing the sensible thing and changing the packaging of the whiskey as well the designation, so that anyone remotely serious about their whiskey purchases can tell that the pure malt is a different product. And what of the potential taste difference between single and pure malt? Well, as the Wall Street Journal reports (subs. req'd), it would require quite a lot from the taste buds of the average Cardhu drinker to distinguish them because:

In particular, Cardhu has become an enormous hit in Spain, where young club goers mix it with -- purists, avert your eyes -- Coke.