The legislation around cask ownership means private individuals in the UK usually own one, or sometimes up to five casks of whisky. The rules are slightly different for non-UK residents but most cask owners still tend to own a few casks at most. Similarly if you’re a small or medium size business you may want to bottle one or two casks for an exclusive run of gifts, or similar. The larger whisky industry by contrast is usually set up to bottle hundreds of casks at a time. The Scottish Edge award received by Tailored Spirits Co recognises the work they’ve done to make bottling accessible at smaller scales.
Who Are Tailored Spirits Co.?
“Let’s say you own a whisky cask and you want to bottle it,” Tom Costello, co-founder and creative director of Tailored Spirits Co. explained to me when I met him at the Port Of Leith Distillery in Edinburgh. “You may want to commemorate a personal event with something super special and bespoke, perhaps a daughter’s wedding or son’s 21st birthday? Or you’re a small business and want to create something really bespoke for corporate gifting, celebrate a company anniversary or even launch a new brand. Where do you start? Most bottling companies just don’t have the time or inclination to look at single cask bottling runs. That’s where we come in.”
It’s a difficult task to distill the complexities of bottling spirits into something concise and that a private individual can understand. As a cask broker myself I often get asked about bottling spirits. The answer is always, “yes of course you can, but…!” The “but” is the long bit, because there are all sorts of costs and considerations that the average individual just wouldn’t know they need to think about. Costello’s plan at Tailored Spirits is to turn that “but” into a straight forward “and this is how.”
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Private cask ownership is a fraction of the larger whisky industry. That means that for the big players—and even the small independent bottlers who are trying to work to tight margins in an increasingly challenging industry—bottling the odd cask is just not worth the effort. Sometimes it’s not even that they won’t, but that they can’t. The machinery at some larger facilities use more than a single cask worth of whisky just in the pipework of their bottling equipment, which makes single cask runs impossible.
While the number of privately owned casks may not be much in the grand scheme of the inventory of a company like Diageo or the other big spirits producers, it is a growing sector. Running a few conservative numbers around publicly available figures of privately owned casks under management gives us values into the millions for just one cask investment company. That doesn’t account for the people and businesses who don’t own a cask right now, but who would still love to bottle something unique to them.
The end point for all casks of whisky has to be a bottle at some point. That’s fine if you’re an independent bottler, but if you’ve never bottled a spirit before and don’t plan to again, it’s important to have the guidance of someone with experience. Tailored Spirits Co. are embracing that niche and are already excelling.
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What Do They Do?
“There has often been a disconnect between all of the moving parts of a whisky bottling project,” Costello says as we chat about how Tailored Spirits came into being.
“You can find a cask broker, but the service stops with the cask purchase. You can find a designer to produce an idea but not necessarily understand the viability of manufacturing. You can find a bottling hall and they’ll handle the bottling but can’t source a variety of bottle shapes, packaging or design and typically will expect you to handle the logistics of getting everything to them and ensuring it all fits together. And finally, if you’ve been lucky enough to navigate your way through all of this, you’ve then got a pallet of bottles and likely very little avenue to ship them around the world or find buyers for them.”
It’s an explanation that I’m familiar with, having discussed it with plenty of individual cask owners and small businesses over the years. Ultimately you can do it yourself, but it isn’t easy and it can be stressful keeping all the plates spinning. Tailored Spirits’ plan is to solve the issue by bringing all the solutions in house: “A complete end to end, white glove partner to take your whisky all the way from the warehouse, to your house.”
How It Helps The Industry?
Changes in the whisky industry over the last 30 years have created issues on both sides of private cask sales. Many distilleries sold casks to private individuals in the past, either direct to the public or through brokers. While that setup may have worked for them 10, 20, even 30 years ago that’s not always the case now.
When customers come back to distilleries asking to bottle a single cask they’re not set up to offer the level of advice and hand holding the consumer needs. Ultimately it causes a disruption for the warehouse/distillery and often the consumer ends up with a negative experience.
Now distilleries and warehouse have the option to work alongside a business like Tailored Spirits Co. to help make the process easier for everyone.
“We help distilleries by supporting their private cask programs,” said Costello when I asked for his insights on how they were hoping to help the industry as a whole. “Not every distillery is set up to handle their own bottling in house. If they are then a single run of 250 bottles is not typically the best use of their resources. We are here to support the eventual bottling of their private cask owners and take the projects off of their plates so they can focus on producing more great spirits.”
The Future Of Private Cask Bottlings
It’s clear to see that Costello and the rest of the team behind Tailored Spirits are passionate about what they are doing. They have created some really inspiring bottles, but even their more “cost effective” designs have a high-end polished look.
“Fore! was definitely a favorite project so far,” Tom answered when I asked about highlights. “The ability to pull so many elements together to create a truly special experience for the client was something I personally am really proud of.”
It’s an exciting new space, and with all the things Costello and the team at Tailored Spirits already have lined up I’m excited to see what they announce next. For now their services fill an important gap in the industry by aiding consumers to make educated, cost driven decisions when they get to the point of wanting to sell a cask. In my opinion anything that makes the private cask ownership space more transparent and consumer friendly is welcome.
The original version of this article was written by me for Forbes.com.
