A longtime customer and friend of mine sent me an email this morning lamenting the days when he could read a new article (sometimes one of mine) and find out about interesting, new, affordable whiskies.
“I miss this kind of whisky writing,” he wrote at the end.
Agreed.
The hang-up with writing about new whiskies right now is that you need new whiskies worth writing about to make it interesting! And right now there’s very little worth writing about (unless you want to write about brands that have been on the market for decades and are mostly known to everyday consumers).
That’s also not to say people aren’t doing it. Because they are.
Here’s the current booze marketing formula:
Write about new product from large company = clicks for advertising (often paid for by that same company)
Start a blog to write about new products = receive free booze samples from that company
Start an Instagram site about whisky = combination of the above two
Hence, plenty of people out there willing to take that deal.
But to write a truly exciting article about a truly exciting new whisky requires the latter of those two things.
Unless you want to fake it.
Which I don’t.
-David Driscoll