Fixing a hole

I hate being asked what I want for my birthday. I don’t usually give it much thought in advance and, when asked, I genuinely can’t think of anything. The person asking (my wife) should, of course, know me well enough to think of something that I might want for my birthday without the need for suggestions, but this rarely happens. Last year my wife asked me the dreaded question and, to her surprise, I provided a fairly quick response. I had already decided that I would quite like some pyjamas and a dressing gown. I honestly don’t think I have ever bought myself pyjamas or a dressing gown. As a child I would receive these items every year as standard from my grandparents, so I never needed to worry about them. But since then I don’t think I have worn pyjamas or a dressing gown and it occurred to me that I would quite like to. So I was pleased to finally be able to answer the question of what I wanted for my birthday with something that I actually wanted. I think my wife was a little surprised by my wishlist - apparently requesting these items suggested that I am getting old. But I couldn’t really argue with that - I am getting old.

This triggered my overactive mind to contemplate how we change as we get older and how everything around us changes during the time that we have been getting older. I concluded that during childhood we realise we are getting older without paying much attention to how the world is changing around us. When we become adults, we pay far more attention to everything that changes around us and sometimes neglect the fact that we are, ourselves, getting older. Then one day we realise we will be 40 years old next year.

When I was younger I could answer the question of what I wanted for my birthday fairly easily. As a child there was always a new toy I ‘needed’ to have. As a teenager, as my love of music developed, there was always a new album I was keen to listen to. Music albums made perfect presents. They were easily-obtainable from HMV or Virgin Megastore, they demonstrated that some thought had gone into the personal taste of the present receiver and, with their simple, regular shape, they were also very easy to wrap up.

I became proud of my ever-increasing music collection, which I displayed in racks of varying shapes and sizes; the centre-piece of which was a stunning, curved chrome rack with space for 100 CDs. The CDs themselves fulfilled a dual purpose in my life - through listening to them, they were things I would use and enjoy, but they also made me happy as a collection of physical objects to display and be proud of.

Fast forward to today and physical media has pretty much died out, apart from the occasional brief resurgence in popularity for nostalgic reasons. We now stream everything and store our collections digitally rather than physically. I’m not saying this is a bad thing. As a wannabe minimalist I am excited that, where rows and rows of disks and cassettes once stood, there is now empty space. I say ‘wannabe minimalist’ in this case, as it is impossible to practise minimalism when you live with two small children. However I do sorely miss the excitement of experiencing music as we did in the golden days of the cd album. This has probably left a void in my life that I needed to fill by spending my money on something that exists and can be appreciated in physical form. Maybe that was one of the reasons for getting into whisky as this fulfils this role perfectly and is currently not something that can be replaced by a purely digital version. As far as I know there is still no way of streaming the tastes and smells that one experiences while drinking a glass of whisky directly into the brain.

People undoubtedly enjoy collecting things. You name it, there will be someone somewhere who collects it. Normally we collect objects because we are interested in them, enjoy using them, or find them beautiful, and we have fun building up our collection. However there is another reason for people to collect things, and this is for pure financial gain. I used to collect model cars when I was a lad and I used to love playing with them and rolling them around every available surface of our house. But there would always be another kid who left their toys in the box without opening them because their dad had told them it would be worth a lot more money one day if it was still in perfect condition. It would sit on the shelf with the other unopened toys, gathering dust, destined for a life of not being played with.

This is what has happened with whisky of course. It is well known that whisky has become a valuable commodity for people to invest in and trade, often for incredible amounts of money. The fact is that there are now many bottles of whisky that will never be opened, but will forever be passed from rich person’s collection to rich person’s collection and will never fulfil their purpose of being consumed and enjoyed. This means, of course, that these bottles are taken out of general circulation and effectively made unavailable to all the people who may have actually enjoyed drinking them. It is a strange idea and it will undoubtedly be debated for many years to come. I am personally against the idea of investing in whisky as a valuable commodity as it just furthers this exclusivity and makes certain whisky unavailable to most whisky drinkers.

I admit that I have not yet had the time to do much research into this topic but I am genuinely puzzled by the idea of whisky being a highly valuable, tradeable commodity. There are many other examples of things that people invest in such as art, antiques or vintage cars, but in all of these cases, the objects are still able to be used by the person who has bought them in the way they were intended, be that by displaying a beautiful piece of artwork above the fireplace, eating from an antique dining table or taking a vintage sports car for a spin on a sunday afternoon. In other words, they have some useful purpose in addition to being valuable objects. On the other hand, an old bottle of whisky does not fulfil any purpose if nobody is able to drink it and, as soon as the bottle has been opened, it is suddenly worth nothing. An 18 year old whisky that was bottled in 1971 and sits on a rich man’s shelf is probably not particularly beautiful to look at (a bunch of flowers will cost considerably less money) and depending on who produced the whisky, it may be worth tens of thousands of Pounds. This will likely be a very nice whisky (not that anybody will ever find out) but, following 50 further years of experience and innovation in the whisky industry, you could reasonably expect that the equivalent 18 year old whisky bottled today would be just as good as, or even better than, the old dusty one on the shelf.

It seems that whisky from certain producers has become particularly collectable and none more so than Macallan. If you read about a bottle of whisky changing hands for an obscene amount of money then it is most probably an old bottle of Macallan. There have been numerous stories in the press about bottles changing hands for record prices or people selling collections of Macallan for enough money to buy a house. In every case, it is likely that these bottles of whisky are destined never to be opened or enjoyed as they were originally intended and, therefore, more bottles of interesting whisky are taken out of circulation and will never be available to be enjoyed by those who would most like to enjoy them.

This steady stream of stories of how valuable certain brands of whisky are, combined with prominent product placement in film and television, where expensive whisky is often drunk by wealthy and powerful characters, has another knock-on effect. It convinces the consumer that they should strive to obtain this particular whisky. I have no doubt that these expensive whiskies are very good, but the distilleries must produce higher volumes as quickly as possible to meet the growing demand for their product. In the context of whisky this is not really a good thing and speeding up production will undoubtedly have some detrimental effect on the quality of the whisky being sold. New versions of younger whiskies will appear with exotic sounding brand names to cover up the fact that they do not have an age statement, and people will buy them, in spite of their sometimes questionable quality.
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Anyway, back to the original topic of my ever-increasing age. I, like most people, often imagine what my life may be like in my later years. Although the world changes quickly, we still base our ideas of what we might be doing in the future on the way things are now. When we look forward in time we do not necessarily take account of the huge technological, medical, environmental or political change that is likely to have happened between now and then. I still imagine kicking a football around in my garden with my grandchildren in 40 years’ time, but that is what I might do if I had grandchildren now. Perhaps I should imagine my life 100 years from now, because the advances in life-prolonging medicine and technology will mean I comfortably live until I’m 150 and I will be kicking around a virtual football with my grandchild who lives on Mars because the world has become largely uninhabitable for the next generation.

Maybe that’s why we buy and collect things to hang on to. We want to ensure that some part of that vision of our future will actually contain something from today. Drinking whisky has become part of my vision of growing old. I enjoy it now and I think I will continue to enjoy it throughout my life. So I have decided to start my own collection of whiskies. This is not influenced by the idea they might be worth something in a few years. I collect whiskies that I have tried and enjoyed and hold some significance for me. I want to make sure I will have the chance to enjoy them again. When I hear a once-loved song for the first time in many years, it triggers an unexpected hit of nostalgia and transports me emotionally back to the time when I first heard it, often bringing a lump to my throat. I want this from the whiskies in my collection. When I eventually get round to drinking them I want to feel the emotion I felt when I first experienced them. I want to be reminded of the buzz of trying these things for the first time. And, besides, who knows if I will even be able to get hold of these whiskies in 20 years’ time?

I hope that things will not progress so quickly during my lifetime that I will be lying down at the age of 150 on my levitating mattress while my favourite album, book, film and whisky are simultaneously streamed directly into my nervous system. Instead I hope the vision I currently have will be closer to reality and I will be sitting in front of my fireplace, rocking in my rocking chair, wearing the pyjamas and dressing gown that my wife gave me for my birthday that year (without asking). I am listening to a CD, reading a book and have just poured myself a glass of limited edition, distillery exclusive, 21 year old single cask whisky, having finally decided to open the bottle. This evokes memories of a wonderful family holiday in Scotland, during which I visited the distillery and tasted this exciting whisky for the first time... Or maybe, in the meantime, I decided to sell the whisky to an investor and I am sitting counting the obscene amount of money I made.

Written by Peter on 23 May 2021