{"id":289,"date":"2020-05-20T20:04:54","date_gmt":"2020-05-20T20:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwyc.org\/demo\/?p=289"},"modified":"2020-05-20T21:10:02","modified_gmt":"2020-05-20T21:10:02","slug":"when-johnnie-walker-blue-was-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwyc.org\/demo\/when-johnnie-walker-blue-was-king\/","title":{"rendered":"When Johnnie Walker Blue Was King"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Story: Aaron Goldfarb<\/a>
Illustration: Nick Hensley<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Johnnie Walker Blue Label lacks most of the attributes that excite today\u2019s whisky geeks. It\u2019s blended Scotch, not single-malt. At 40 percent ABV, it\u2019s relatively low-proof. It\u2019s available on shelves year-round. It retails for less than $200. And it has absolutely no secondary market value. But back when it debuted in 1992, none of that mattered. It may be difficult for twentysomething Pappy stans to believe, but there was a time when Blue Label was the most aspirational whisky one could drink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lovely, luxurious whisky,\u201d wrote drinks critic Michael Jackson in a 2001 review for Whisky Magazine<\/em>. \u201cI imagine a restaurant called caf\u00e9 Opera. First, a little foie gras, then a couple of Maine lobsters, Marron glac\u00e9\u2026.and Blue Label?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Americans spent the 1960s, \u201970s and \u201980s spurning whiskey in favor of vodka and peach schnapps, in the late \u201980s and \u201990s they refocused, led by the charge of Wall Street and Madison Avenue businessmen who were investing in status-symbol drinks, including expensive California chardonnay and cabernet. It was around that time that the first brand ambassadors from Guinness UDV (the corporate predecessor of Diageo) began to key in on this demographic through market studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhiskey dinners were [held] all over the place and the marketing executives brought back a lot of data,\u201d says Robin Robinson, a longtime whiskey salesman and the author of The Complete Whiskey Course: A Comprehensive Tasting School in Ten Classes<\/a><\/em>. According to research, the ubiquitous Johnnie Walker Red and Black Labels were considered entry-level and a little too harsh for the \u201cfinance guy\u201d palate. When Blue Label hit the market, Robinson says, it appeared to have been developed specifically for them, though the brand would point to its history as the source of inspiration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnnie Walker master blender Jim Beveridge says he took inspiration from Old Highland, the brand\u2019s inaugural product, released in 1867. (Starting in 1987, Johnnie Walker sold a somewhat similar-looking product, with a blue label and box; \u201cOldest,\u201d<\/a> a blend of 15- to 60-year-old whiskies, was phased out when Blue Label debuted.) According to product specs, only 1 in 10,000 casks are \u201csuitable\u201d for Blue Label, and it\u2019s rumored to contain single malts as old as 60 years with none younger than 28. Blue Label offers no age statement, however, which naysayers suspect was a method for unloading stock that had over-aged during the whisky category\u2019s fallow period from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was fucking brilliant in its concept and its execution: bold enough to be Scotch but mellow enough that it didn\u2019t offend,\u201d says Robinson. \u201cIt was the most perfectly engineered whisky ever created to that point, a triumph of marketing and production.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, the 1992 marketplace Blue Label entered into was a whole lot different than today\u2019s. The low-priced Red Label had been the world\u2019s best-selling whiskey since 1945 (and still is). Pappy Van Winkle didn\u2019t arrive until 1994 and wouldn\u2019t become a sensation until two decades later. Blanton\u2019s, positioned as a luxury bourbon, cost $24, and was considered exceedingly expensive. When the blended whisky\u2014with a Pantone 289 C blue label slapped on a square-shaped, late-19th century-style bottle in a silk-lined box with a certificate of authenticity\u2014landed on shelves, it was, at nearly $150, five times more expensive than anything else on the market. Its only true competition was XO Cognac, the only spirit to command more than $100 a bottle at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Longtime whiskey writer Lew Bryson admits he was dismissive of Blue Label when it first hit the scene. \u201cNot because it was blended, not because it was Johnnie Walker and not even because of the price,\u201d says the author of Whiskey Master Class: The Ultimate Guide to Understanding Scotch, Bourbon, Rye, and More<\/a><\/em>. \u201cIt was because it was so obviously, blatantly, a play at being aspirational.\u201d At such an elevated price point, did the taste even matter?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in 1992, before bourbon had boomed, before Japanese whisky reoriented the geographical boundaries of luxury production, the idea of a status whisky was relatively new. Only Dalmore and The Macallan were attempting to release products of such prestige, though as Bryson notes, they hadn\u2019t yet resonated in America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWas Blue one of the \u2018most luxury\u2019 whiskies you could buy then?\u201d says Bryson. \u201cDefinitely, the presence in first-class airline beverage carts nailed that.\u201d It was offered gratis on Singapore Airlines and British Airways Concorde flights alongside Dom P\u00e9rignon, and its positioning as a status symbol remains paramount. In a \u201cBrand Identity Summary\u201d<\/a> Diageo released internally in 2018, the company delineates the ideal Blue Label consumer as \u201cdriven by prestige,\u201d worthy of \u201chis hard-earned position and wants to live life to the fullest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And to men of a certain age, Blue Label will always represent a specific pinnacle. It\u2019s even become a trope of 21st-century television. In season one of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David\u2019s then-wife Cheryl gives their agent friend Jeff Green a bottle for landing her a role in a staging of The Vagina Monologues<\/em>. In 30 Rock<\/em>, Jack Donaghy<\/a>, Alec Baldwin\u2019s conservative network head, stocks Blue Label on his office bar cart. And in Billions<\/em>, Showtime\u2019s drama series about hedge-fund hijinks, <\/strong>Blue Label is situated in the modern whiskey pecking order. Where the young hotshots drink Michter\u2019s Celebration<\/a>, a $5,000 bottle released in limited supply every three years, the older businessmen like Chuck Rhoades, Sr., still clink glasses full of Blue Label<\/a>, a reference that is lost on some younger viewers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBlue Label to celebrate a huge IPO?\u201d tweeted<\/a> one man at the show\u2019s creator, Brian Koppelman, after an episode back in 2017. \u201cI would have to imagine Charles drinking much better than $100 scotch.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many Blue Label drinkers, the selection isn\u2019t necessarily about price\u2014Johnnie Walker produces rarer, higher-priced bottles: the $700 King George V<\/a>, packaged in a flint glass decanter, and The John Walker<\/a>, a $4,500 whiskey in a Baccarat crystal decanter with a 24-carat-gold-plated neck\u2014but the label\u2019s connection to class, money and masculinity that they grew up chasing after.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s surely one reason Blue Label continues to be the quintessential Father\u2019s Day gift; Johnnie Walker even positions it that way<\/a>, offering monogrammed bottles each June. (An early print advertisement<\/a> proclaimed, \u201cMen are judged not by their words, but by their actions.\u201d) The last time I tasted it, in fact, was on Father\u2019s Day. And, I have to admit, it was pretty good. No serious critic has ever derided it based on flavor. In 2018, Whisky Advocate gave it a score of 97\u2014one of the highest ratings ever awarded. \u201cMagnificently powerful and intense,\u201d wrote Jonny McCormick. \u201cClose to perfection.\u201d Bryson, however, intentionally avoided tasting it until he came upon a free sample at WhiskyFest in the mid-aughts. For him, the liquid was good, but it still rubbed him the wrong way. \u201cI never got over that annoyance about its positioning, and it\u2019s never been a whisky I\u2019ve been able to warm to.\u201d For many others, however, Blue Label is still a peak worth striving toward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Johnnie Walker Blue Label lacks most of the attributes that excite today\u2019s whisky geeks. It\u2019s blended Scotch, not single-malt. At 40 percent ABV, it\u2019s relatively low-proof. It\u2019s available on shelves year-round. It retails for less than $200. And it has absolutely no secondary market value. But back when it debuted in 1992, none of that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food-beverage"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwyc.org\/demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwyc.org\/demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwyc.org\/demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwyc.org\/demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwyc.org\/demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dwyc.org\/demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292,"href":"https:\/\/dwyc.org\/demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions\/292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwyc.org\/demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwyc.org\/demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwyc.org\/demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}