SB interviews… Ken Grier, The Macallan

If the Macallan has become the ultimate luxury whisky brand, Ken Grier is the man to blame. Edrington’s director of malts spoke to Tom Bruce-Gardyne

Ken Grier, Edrington’s director of malts

The last time I spoke to Ken Grier on the phone was in October when he was at the London premiere of Skyfall. He wasn’t on the red carpet, but his company’s flagship brand could well have been.

The appearance of The Macallan 50 year old is no mere product placement in the latest Bond extravaganza, and in one scene it plays a starring role. That is not something you could ever say about Heineken for example.

It has been quite a journey for “Big Mac” and its Speyside distillery that was family owned until 1996 when it was bought by Highland Distillers, who were subsequently swallowed up by the Edrington Group a few years later. First released as a 10-year-old single malt in 1978, The Macallan went on to became the most expensive whisky ever sold when a Lalique decanter of the 64-yearold was knocked down for US$460,000 (£291,000) at a New York charity auction in 2010.

When Grier became brands director in 2000, Macallan was selling 100,000 cases a year with over a third of production disappearing into blends. Its sister distillery, Highland Park on Orkney, was doing around 30,000 cases. “Macallan was relatively limited in its market footprint and had quite a small range,” says Grier. “It was a brand that never anticipated it would get to more than 250,000 cases, and was seen as being a very small, boutique, high-priced product.”

While the last part of that statement holds true, Macallan is hardly a boutique distillery these days. In 2008, after a series of expansions, Edrington spent £20 million to boost capacity to 9.5m litres. Only Glenfiddich and Glenlivet were bigger at the time. Yet for all its size, the whisky has somehow retained its aura of exclusivity.

For Grier it’s a question of self-perception, and a belief that your competitive set is more about Lalique crystal, Leica cameras and Bentley cars. “We don’t see ourselves as being ‘just another Speyside malt’. We see ourselves as a true luxury brand that just happens to be a spirits product.”

He believes the whole concept of “luxury” has become increasingly polarised. “It’s either about people who can afford the best and don’t care what they pay, or about people who are more into affordable luxury. What’s happened at Macallan is that we very much appeal to über-collectors, to people who are real connoisseurs for whom price is no object. Once you’ve crossed that rubicon into the Macallan franchise it’s difficult to go back.”

Annie Leibovitz’s photograph for The Macallan Masters of Photography series

At the same time Grier and his team have a lot of whisky to sell. According to Impact Databank, the brand sold 146,000 cases in the US alone in 2010, up 9% on the previous year. The secret to expanding the market has been Fine Oak, which has gone from a standing start in 2004 to over 25% of total sales.

The decision to release a lighter, more accessible Macallan partly matured in Bourbon casks was controversial to say the least. The insistence on using nothing but Spanish sherry butts had always been a defining character of the brand. As its owners repeatedly explained, such casks cost 10 times as much as those American hand-me-down barrels favoured by the rest of the industry.

Yet for any old-time fan who felt betrayed and gave up Macallan as a result, there were plenty of eager recruits to replace them. Grier has no doubts that Fine Oak opened up Macallan to a much wider audience. “We don’t ever want the brand to be seen as elitist, or arrogant, or only for the few. Fine Oak is about bringing people in. It’s given us so much more scale, but in the right way.”

From a reported marketing spend of just £25 in 1974, budgets have expanded somewhat and in 2008 Grier was able to commission the Scottish-born fashion photographer Rankin to take a series of Polaroid pics at the distillery. The subject was mostly Rankin’s muse in the nude. These limited-edition prints were packaged up with a bottle of 30-year-old Fine Oak and sold for £899 in the first of Macallan’s “Masters of Photography” series. The latest features the photographer Annie Leibovitz and was shot in October. Meanwhile the bijou, collectable side of Macallan has been further reinforced by the Fine & Rare range, and the steady release of one-off expressions in bottles and decanters whose opulence would make the Sun King blush.

The other single malt Ken Grier looks after is a very different beast. While Macallan has broken free of its Speyside roots, at least in image, Highland Park is firmly rooted in Orkney. “It is a whisky that uses sherry casks and the island’s heather peat which is less phenolic and much more aromatic,” says Grier. “It gives you a completely distinctive character and a real rational reason to love the brand.”

By playing on the island’s Viking heritage with special bottlings like Thor and Lief Erikson, the idea is to “bring forward the brand’s darkly masculine character”. Among single malts, Highland Park enjoys cult status and is growing “well into double digits”, says Grier. Back at Macallan, his latest move has possibly been the most controversial yet – this being the move to separate the range of single malts by colour rather than age.

Grier is “inverting the pyramid” with the release of the 1824 Series

The sanctity of the age statement was set in stone by Chivas Regal 12-year-old, which became the benchmark for first the deluxe blended category, and then single malts. Anything less than 10 years old simply wasn’t whisky. According to Grier it was Macallan’s whisky maker Bob Dalgarno who first broke ranks in 2009 with the launch of the 1824 Collection in travel retail.

“Bob had this crazy idea of inverting the pyramid. Instead of taking the old ‘say’ about age, he thought why not look at the whole spectrum of colour. We were very much of the view that age in itself is no guide to the quality of our products. Bob was both frustrated about the shackles of age, and excited by what we had achieved with the 1824 Collection.”

The collection has since broken free of its travel retail exclusivity and evolved into the 1824 Series, featuring Gold, Sienna, Amber and Ruby. Gold was released in the UK in the autumn and is currently being rolled out into other markets. The next three will start appearing from April onwards. In Britain, age statements will disappear for anything younger than the Macallan 18-year-old which retails for just over £100.

Elsewhere “it will vary from market to market”, says Grier. “For both Macallan and Highland Park we will continue, for the greater part, to be selling products that carry an age statement. I don’t really know where this will go – that’s the joy of it. There’s no way we could have foretold that over a quarter of everything we make at Macallan would be Fine Oak.”

Inevitably many people have assumed the real reason for embracing colour is down to a scarcity of old whisky in Macallan’s warehouses given how “demand is still massively outweighing supply”, to quote Grier. He concedes it was a factor, but not as important as the desire to challenge the Scotch category. “It’s in our DNA to be innovative. Gold is a very strong luxury proposition. What it wasn’t was ‘Oh God we’ve run out of stock! What’ll we do?’”

Other Scotch whiskies have since followed suit, and Grier mentions Glenlivet, Glenfiddich and Johnnie Walker’s new Double Black release amongst them. As for the integrity of his rivals, he doesn’t believe anyone will “debase the category by putting in poor quality spirit and colouring it up”.

Of course the real billion dollar question is how much Edrington paid for Macallan to star alongside 007? Grier gives a weary laugh. “You know 50 people have asked me that including Alexandre Ricard. Maybe in my dotage, when I’m long out of the industry, we can have a chat.“