Chivas Regal unveils clear spirit drink Crystalgold
Crystalgold is Chivas Regal’s first clear spirit drink, which the brand has described as an ‘innovation and technical breakthrough’.
Chivas Regal’s master blender, Sandy Hyslop, created Crystalgold using a bespoke filtration process that extracts colour from golden, oak-aged spirit.
A clear spirit deviates considerably from what Chivas Regal is known for, making it a high-risk project for Hyslop. The brief was to create a crystal-clear liquid that could cross over into white spirit occasions, while still staying true to the flavours and quality that define the brand.
Speaking to The Spirits Business, Hyslop said: “The flavour needed to be 12 out of 10, the whole way through.
“It needed to be way above expectations because people are going to look at it with a really critical eye. You want them to be pleasantly surprised.”
Crystalgold has an ABV of 40% and retails for £51 (US$68). On the nose, apple pie, vanilla fudge and creamy butterscotch aromas can be found, plus hints of orange zest. Meanwhile, on the palate, drinkers may find notes of red toffee apple with pears and hints of cinnamon and ginger.
Technical breakthrough
“We wanted to get away from clear liquid stereotypes,” Hyslop said at the product’s first unveiling and tasting in London earlier this month.
The idea was to create a clear spirit that maintained the classic Chivas Regal flavours – creamy and smooth, delicate but still complex.
Versatility was a priority, Hyslop explained: “We want it to work really well in high-energy environments. If you’re bringing a bottle to the table, everybody can drink it in a different way. We’re super confident that nobody’s going to be alienated. It can be in different cocktails, but if you’re a traditionalist, you can drink it neat. I wanted it so you only buy one bottle for the party, and it’s Crystalgold – that’s where I wanted to be.”
Crystalgold was the first collaboration between Hyslop’s expert blending team and the technical laboratory team at Chivas Brothers. It took nearly three years to create.
The brand said Crystalgold’s foundation is a bespoke, exclusive blend, refined through a process involving special temperature conditions and precisely measured flow rates.
A bespoke filtration system was developed in-house, which Hyslop underlined was key to hitting the sweet spot for flavour. “We built a miniature plant in our laboratory. We managed to change each parameter and work on each to get the maximum flavour retention,” he said.
“It is the easiest thing in the world to make a clear spirit, but to make a clear spirit with the proper flavour retention takes a lot of work – a lot of experimentation and umpteen trials of trying it at different flow rates.”
Every processing parameter used for Crystalgold – from the filter medium to the temperature and flow rates – is different to other products in Chivas Regal’s portfolio. No one else in the industry has the exact filter they used to process the spirit.
Not a Scotch
Hyslop worked closely with the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) from the start of Crystalgold’s production, who pressed the brand hard on Crystalgold not being portrayed as Scotch whisky.
He said: “To be open and transparent, the SWA insisted we add a tiny amount of new distillate. We’re talking 0.0001% – a thimble.
“There is no category for a spirit that has been filtered clear, and we wouldn’t have been able to call it a spirit drink, because a spirit drink says you need to add something to it.”
Hyslop noted the communication with the SWA was healthy. “We didn’t make it to the final flavour and go ‘that’s amazing’, and then knock on their door. We brought them on the journey with us. It was a collaboration of saying: ‘This is what we’re trying, this is what we want to get to, this is where we want to be’.
“The SWA does an amazing job of protecting Scotch whisky and keeping it at the amazing status that people perceive it.
“We need to give them credit where it’s due, but we also need to innovate. We need to push boundaries as well. We explained to them earlier that we weren’t just knocking out any old spirit here. At the end of the day, do we really want to risk the Chivas Regal brand? We wanted everybody to taste it and go: ‘Wow, there’s loads of flavour here’.”
Blurring the line between white and dark
Explaining the decision to bring a white spirit into the Chivas Regal portfolio, Nick Blacknell, global marketing director at Chivas Brothers, who was on hand at the London unveiling, reasoned: “People aren’t going out as late post-Covid, which in turn has had a knock-on effect on those Prohibition-style bars we all used to know and love. That’s had an effect on that short, sharp cocktail craze that really served whisky.”
The release of Crystalgold looks to move the Chivas Regal moment much earlier in the evening, for lighter, longer, and more citrus-driven drinks. The product’s hero cocktail, the ‘Leclerc Spritz’, was created with Chivas Regal brand ambassador and Ferrari Formula One driver Charles Leclerc.
“People are drinking earlier in the day, they’re looking for lighter spirits. There’s the rise of the Spritz and Tequila-style cocktails. It’s something in the industry as dark spirit producers that we can’t ignore,” Blacknell said.
The idea is to give bartenders a spirit for making modern and creative cocktails, with ‘multi-layered’ profiles that dark oak-aged spirits deliver. Other serves that showcase the expression’s versatility include a Crystalgold Agave – inspired by Tommy’s Margarita and Picante – a Gimlet-style drink, and a clear Old Fashioned.
While the release was driven by changing drinking habits, there was also a desire to showcase the brand’s technical prowess, Blacknell said. “Everyone thinks of a blender as the guy in a suit with a glass in hand in front of the barrels, in a dusty old cellar,” he continued. “Being a blender has been portrayed by the industry as something very traditional. Of course, that is part of blending, but what really impressed me with Sandy is the science and technical side.
“He’s super keen to showcase that whisky production is actually highly technical as well. Crystalgold was driven by trends, yes, but it is also supposed to be a product that showcases us as cutting-edge and technically proficient, driving change in the industry – half vanity project, if you like, and half marketing, or driven by consumers.”
Blacknell recognises that shifting the Chivas Regal moment will be a challenge, but it’s not a new challenge. He believes the only way the brand will do that is through trial and error: “When people are just presented with a product, it’s intriguing, but it’s not conversion. When we researched in groups, it was the moment of consumption that the lightbulb came on.
“I don’t think this is going to be an overnight success. If it works, it’ll be a long change. On the other hand, what’s exciting is that the Scotch industry is evolving and changing.
“Innovation is so difficult because – and I can’t remember the stats, but it’s something shocking – like 98% fail. Crystalgold is a big bet for the group, a long-term bet, and something that’s going to take a lot of time and effort.”
Unlocking new occasions for Chivas Regal
The original idea for Crystalgold came from Chivas Brothers’ new global innovation team. Previous innovations for Chivas Regal have been more scoped towards brand extension.
Blacknell said: “We had a new team come in and they reversed the innovation process. [They asked:] what are the global trends? And then retrospectively apply them to brands. They gave us a list of possible innovations, and why Chivas Regal [and not other Chivas Brothers brands, such as Ballantine’s]. If I were to post-rationalise it, truthfully, Chivas Regal needs freshening up in this new consumer base.
“I was also interested in crossing boundaries because, in most people’s eyes, Chivas Regal is quite a traditional, classic brand. From a marketing perspective, it would bring a spirit of positive innovation to the brand.”
Launching officially today (September 30), ahead of this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix with Charles Leclerc as its ambassador, Crystalgold will have a global rollout. Blacknell noted that 27 markets have expressed interest in launching it – “probably a first in the group to have that many”.
He admitted there was less interest in Europe, with interest weighted more towards what he terms the “new, more dynamic Scotch markets”.
“It will launch in pretty much the whole of Asia,” he said. “Latin America as well, which is quite surprising, because traditionally it’s viewed as quite a classic whisky market. In Mexico, you’ve got the cristalino phenomenon, so there’s a lot of interest there. Then also in Dubai.”
He adds that the high temperatures these countries experience make them interesting for Crystalgold. “You want a nice profile of Scotch, but 4pm in Dubai is not exactly refreshing. I think a lot of those markets see Crystalgold as a way of delivering Scotch profiles with drinkability in hot and warm climates.”
Blacknell admitted that Crystalgold could have done “a ton of damage to the Chivas brand”, if it had been done badly. However, he’s confident Hyslop and the team have created something that resonates with the Chivas Regal house style, while also bringing something bold and exciting to the table.
Hyslop is well aware of the risk too, but maintains: “For me, it’s something innovative, it’s something new, and it’s something groundbreaking.
“You’ll achieve nothing by not being high-risk at some point. We’ve all done it in our careers. You’ve got to take a bit of risk somewhere along the line.”
“It’s versatile and it stays true to that Chivas Regal character – the last thing we wanted was for you to get nothing but smoke, or get a great big load of cereal. We wanted it to be that sweet profile, with ripe orchard fruits. There’s absolutely no sugar or flavouring in there. This is quite pure.”
Is this the brand’s biggest innovation? “I would say so, for me, in my 42 years in the business,” Hyslop states. “It’s high stakes, but we wouldn’t have released it if it wasn’t right.”
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