Santé! as French get a taste for whisky

Cognac distilleries are being forced to lay off their workers because of poor sales as young drinkers and women turn to Scottish whisky in their millions.

The demand for Scottish whisky has increased by over 300% in the last three years in response to a marketing campaign depicting it as a cool, sophisticated and sexy drink.

And now entrepreneurs are cashing in by building their own ‘le single malt’ distilleries that use exactly the same techniques as their Scottish counterparts.

Earlier this month there were smiles all round as staff at the Guillon distillery in Champagne celebrated the launch of France’s second malt whisky, called Le Single Malt Champenois.

The first French whisky, manufactured at the L’Armorik distillery in Brittany, now sells a respectable one million bottles of single malt and blended whisky a year.

But L’Armorik and its Champenoise rival, Guillon, have a long way to go before they reach the same league as Label Five and William Peel, cheap blended Scotch whiskies bottled in France, which sell an astonishing 30 million bottles each in French supermarket chains.

Cheap blended whisky is now available in French supermarkets for as little as 10 euros (6.30) a bottle compared with 20 euros for the cheapest Cognac, leading to a huge boom in sales. For every one bottle of Cognac sold in France, French drinkers buy 10 bottles of whisky.

Little wonder that Pernod Ricard, the French drinks group, is now the third-largest owner of Scottish whisky distilleries and includes brands such as Aberlour and Glenlivet within its product range.

Patrick O’Driscal, Pernod Ricard’s commercial director for Europe, explained: "The French market is a real success story. France is now the largest market for Scotch whisky . In one year Pernod Ricard sold nine million cases of Scotch in France, which is in excess of 100 million bottles of Scotch, two bottles per head of population.

" France is unique in that it has seen growth in every sector of whisky sales, from low-price Scotch up to prestigious malts."

He added, "In France, Scotch is not seen as a dusty old grandfather’s drink. Whisky is very, very trendy, and it appeals very much to the younger end of the market. Our Clan Campbell brand is what people drink when they are going out to party. They drink it in nightclubs, mixed with coke.

"We have developed Clan Campbell over the years with a marketing plan aimed at seizing the 18-30 market and that campaign has been successful."

The rise in the popularity of single malt whiskies has been no less exponential, with the Scotch whisky companies playing on the French love of good food and wine and presenting malt whisky as a connoisseurial luxury of infinite complexity and sophistication.

In the process they have dealt another killer blow to Cognac, dislodging the brandy from its after-dinner slot and forcing Cognac to attempt to recreate itself as a long drink suitable for night-clubbers.

O’Driscal continued: "France is also our largest market for malt whisky, appealing to the upper end of French consumers. Due to their wine culture, and the tradition of identifying tastes and regions, the French are unintimidated by the malt market, and have the confidence to be connoisseurs.

"In this very dynamic market, the malt has taken the place of Cognac. It is taking the mantle of the after-dinner drink. The malt has definitely taken a large share from Cognac because of the French consumer’s romantic and popular view of Scotch whisky as a high-quality product."

Whisky’s Gallic success has taken the country’s premier supplier of quality malts, La Maison du Whisky, somewhat by surprise, but managing director Thierry Benitah is not complaining. His company, founded by his father in 1956, now markets 800 brands of Scotch whisky across France. Sales have risen 30% a year for the last seven years. The print run of the firm’s catalogue has doubled in two years to 40,000 and this year it will sell 400,000 bottles of malt.

He said: "In the last seven years our sales have risen five-fold. The popularity of malt whisky among young people and women is amazing. People graduate from the blended varieties to the malts and then find it very difficult to return to blended whisky.

"The huge rise in whisky sales has been achieved despite strict advertising constraints which prevents the use of people in drinks advertising and thus rules out sexy images. It is a remarkable achievement. The Scotch whisky industry listens to consumers. It is more innovative than Cognac, which is terribly conservative and has done little to develop beyond the XO and VSOP brands with their overly luxurious, dated packaging."

Benitah added: "When the Cognac producers do try to innovate, they tend to copy what the whisky industry does instead of having the confidence to do their own thing"