Now & Then: Comparing old bottlings with today’s counterparts

Now and then.  Ah, the joys of nostalgia.

If there’s a topic guaranteed to start an argument around the table, it’s when sports enthusiasts try to pick or assert that a particular sporting team from one era was superior to the team from another era.  For example, is the Hawthorn team from the 1980’s better than the Hawthorn team from 2013-2015?  Was Don Bradman’s 1948 “Invincibles” side a better cricket team than the all-conquering Steve Waugh side of 1999-2001? If the two teams were to compete against one another, who would win?

Sadly (or happily?) in the case of such arguments, it is all speculation and conjecture.  For, quite simply, we will never know.  And how do you compare teams across different eras when rules were different, playing conditions differed, and the level of athleticism and professionalism was different.  The discussion is nothing more than hypothetical amusement.

Increasingly of late, similar discussions and assertions are translating across into whisky circles.  For example, a commonly-seen thread in many online whisky groups or forums is the assertion that the whiskies of today are not as good as what they were 20 years ago.  Or that whiskies have changed over the years.

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Some special drams from the house of William Grant & Sons

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of William Grant & Sons.  As I’ve penned in numerous articles and blog posts previously, it’s not just their whiskies, but also their people, and how they move & operate in the whisky world.   Courtesy of the good folks at WG&S Australia (thanks Mark, Laura & Richard), I recently experienced yet another great example of this.

Ludo Ducrocq would be known to many whisky drinkers around the world as one of the most knowledgeable, likeable and agreeable brand ambassadors.  Ludo started out as a distillery tour guide for William Grant & Sons, but his passion for whisky and his love for telling other people about it quickly saw him move into more ambassadorial roles.  In 2009, he was appointed as Grants’ first Global Ambassador (for the Grants’ range of blended whiskies), and today works with the title of “Head of Brand Ambassador Advocacy”.  In other words, he’s the Brand Ambassador to the Brand Ambassadors!

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