Welcome to the new malt order

‘To make a quality cocktail you need to start with quality ingredients,’ a bartender explained to me at Imbibe Live in London this week. ‘Of course,’ I agreed, ‘it goes without saying that a drink is only as good as the sum of its parts.’

Imbibe Live was not short of quality ingredients – or boozed-up bartenders taking advantage of free entry and over 100 exhibitor stands for that matter. The UK’s largest – and loudest – bar show showcases spirits of every ilk from around the world, from Japanese-inspired American whiskey to Spanish vermouth, sweet potato spiced rum and German vodka, as well as beer, wine, sake, juices, purees and barware. Quite simply, this was bartender heaven. An all-you-can-drink (responsibly, of course) buffet.

Though something was missing. One particular spirit didn’t seem worthy of a place among the cocktail ingredient elite, despite being arguably the most aspirational, high quality spirit in the world.

It was easier to inadvertently bump into a new brand of tonic water than it was to track down a Scotch whisky. Where had all the Scotch brands gone? Either they’d spent their annual budget on stands at consumer whisky shows, or British consumers have become so entrenched in Scotch snobbery that brands have given up promoting their place in cocktail culture. Is Scotch forever fated to be sipped neat from cut crystal tumblers while imbibers bemoan the lack of an age statement?

Auchentoshan's bartenders represent Scotch cocktails at Imbibe Live

Auchentoshan’s UK brand manager told me a focus group with UK consumers found they weren’t interested in malts at the moment (need I say the G word?). If that is the case, some serious work needs to be done – by brands and bars – to bring malts back into the minds of consumers, particularly when they’re ordering cocktails. They are the vessels that will encourage a new generation of whisky drinkers to the category.

Blends have become the defunct option when making cocktails, even though malts offer so much diversity of flavour, and are often so much more robust.

But, I hear you gasp, why waste a perfectly good single malt Scotch in a cocktail? We’ve established that to make a quality drink you need to start with quality ingredients, and be honest, you weren’t really going to drink that NAS anyway, were you? (Generally) youthful, flavoursome and affordable, NAS is as good a place to start as any, though the chaps at Whisky Blasphemy over in Philly are using top shelf expressions in their Old Fashioneds and jelly shots.

Made in Glasgow: Drygate stout and Auchentoshan malt shake up Imbibe Live

We’ve grown so obsessed with putting single malt on a pedestal that it’s become taboo to taint it with anything (just ask Dave Broom and Colin Dunn about the virtues of mixing Lagavulin 16 with Coke).

Of the three Scotch exhibitors with their own stand at Imbibe Live (we counted only an additional three brands hidden among the confines of distributors’ sprawling portfolios), only one proudly promoted whisky’s mixability in cocktails. Auchentoshan – which was showcasing its relatively new American Oak expression – went so far as to mix stout and IPA (from Drygate Brewery) with its single malt.

‘Welcome to the new malt order’ the bartenders’ T-shirts stated. If this is the new way of things, I thought, sipping on my Scotch ’n’ Stout cocktail, you can count me in.