AS you may be aware, given the blanket coverage in the media and the fact it’s showing in virtually every cinema in the country, James Bond is back. But, in what may be a slightly sinister development for the Scotch whisky industry, in Spectre he’s back on the vodka.
In his last outing two years ago, the producers of Skyfall chose Scotch and gave Macallan a starring role in one scene. This brief glimpse of fame earned the brand a staggering $9 million worth of exposure worldwide, according to the research company Front Row Analytics. What Macallan paid is a closely guarded secret.
Skyfall marked the spy’s 50th anniversary, so a Macallan 50-year-old seemed like an apposite choice, especially since the film was partly shot in the Highlands. At more than £4 billion in 2012, the value of Scotch whisky exports had never been as high, so Bond appeared to be on trend. Now the spirit has slipped from its peak and 007 is drinking something else.
In the books by Ian Fleming, the spy drank a wider variety of spirits than on screen. In the films he would sidestep the Scotch and soda or gin martini he might have enjoyed in print in favour of vodka, which promoted itself as a cool, urban spirit for the modern age – much like Bond himself. Whether he reflected a trend or propelled it along is moot, but from that first vodka martini in Dr No in 1962, the great vodka wave took off.
Of course behind the scenes the owners of Smirnoff were writing big cheques to bankroll the Bond flicks. Today 007 needs something slightly more classy than Smirnoff, so I guess the producers of Spectre simply auctioned the slot to the highest bidder among the so-called super-premium vodkas. The winner was the Polish brand Belvedere, owned by the French group, LVMH.
Yet the glory days of such vodkas appear to be over. The craze for expensively-packaged, neutral grain spirit all started with Grey Goose, a brand distilled out of thin air in 1996 by the late Sydney Frank and sold to Bacardi for $2.3 billion eight years later. For a while every aspiring spirits tycoon sought to fill Frank’s boots, but the old bling doesn’t wash any more and I doubt that’s a trend even James Bond can reverse.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here