The UK has ditched Scotland – at least in terms of its drinking habits. The nation’s most popular whisky to drink at home is no longer a Scotch, after Jack Daniel’s outsold The Famous Grouse in the past year. Sales of Jack Daniel’s in shops and supermarkets have risen by 9.3%, according to trade magazine The Grocer, while The Famous Grouse’s sales have tumbled by 14.3% in the same period.
Alwynne Gwilt runs the Miss Whisky blog. She sees the change as a sign of our post-recession shift in drinking habits. “There has been an upsurge in the number of people drinking at home, and Jack Daniel’s is a party drink,” she says. The Scotch, a traditional favourite, “just doesn’t have the same excitement”.
The “excitement” associated with Jack Daniel’s comes down to its relentless advertising campaigns. And several decades of photographs of Keith Richards and Slash with bottles of Jack haven’t hurt in making it “cool” either. The rise in popularity of American barbeque food has also helped fuel the sales of Jack Daniel’s (JD is not technically a bourbon but a Tennessee whiskey, though it serves the same purpose for most drinkers) in bars and restaurants, but when they are in the supermarket, they plump for the familiar black and white label. Others are careful not to overstate the implications of these findings. Rosemary Gallagher, of the Scotch Whisky Association, is keen to put the figures into context. These figures only concern two brands – “The UK is the third biggest market for Scotch and volume of sales increased last year. Interest in the entire whisky category is welcome, and Scotch leads the way. Globally, it sells three times the amount of American whiskey.” In fact, the world’s largest market for Scotch is the US.
The “Famous”’ in the Scottish distillery’s name was added precisely because of its popularity boom in the late 19th century. If this sales trend continues, though, it may not be too long before we have to revert to simply calling it Grouse.
