Exploring The High Price of Sustainable Whisky With Nc’Nean, Godawan, Springbank and Johnnie Walker

Sustainability is increasingly quoted as an important consideration for modern consumers, especially with Gen Z and young Millennial drinkers. These groups are also increasingly likely to experiment with sobriety. The combination means sustainability has become a key way distilleries look to maintain appeal with modern whisky drinkers. However while sustainability might be good in some ways it often comes with a high price tag.

The Price Of Protecting The Planet

On paper sustainable practices make sense for consumers and producers. However when it comes down to the reality of implementing changes sustainability often comes with increased costs. Many of those costs cannot be absorbed by the producer, which means it is a premium choice for drinkers too.

“It was hard to make the maths stack up initially,” Thomas explained over email when I asked her about her first steps toward sustainability when planning Nc’Nean. An industrial scale biomass boiler set them back over half a million dollars, compared to $100,000 to $150,000 for a more conventional option. “However, since oil and gas prices have gone up so much, it has become much more attractive because timber prices have not gone up so much.”

It is this double edged sword of initial cost while hoping for long term saving that creates a barrier to entry for many. Thomas assured me that her team was no different.

“The cost of organic barley is around 25% more than conventional, though that varies significantly year to year. Our master distiller, Dr Jim Swan once described organic barley as ‘an expensive waste of time’—but it has been anything but!”

It’s hard as a business to have the dedication to your vision when the risks are so much higher for that route. Especially when you are looking at the bottom line and the experts you paid are telling you it’s a waste of money. For Thomas her dedication—and risks—paid off.

“The use of rotational cropping and animals on the land create incredibly healthy, diverse soil, with lots of carbon sequestered in there. The impact of the diverse soil transfer to the plant.” The enrichment from soil to barley and finally to the spirit in your glass is one of the benefits supporters of sustainability feel strongly about, and Thomas is confident of the positive effects at Nc’Nean. “It comes through in our spirit as texture and butteriness.”

Preserving Water With Godawan Indian Whisky

One aspect of sustainability that is less of an issue in Scotland is water scarcity. This is something that is a significant issue in more arid whisky distilling regions, especially if you’re a new distillery trying to justify opening. For Godawan Indian Whisky, sustainability helped them to create a brand that is sympathetic to its location.

The official press release introducing Godawan to the world explains that the brand is “inspired by and dedicated wholeheartedly to the Rajasthani ethos – of beauty in scarcity and sustainability.” They have worked hard to begin at the bottom with water sustainability practices, from replenishing water resources to selecting a local barley that adds distinctive flavor and benefits from needing less water.

It’s hard to escape that these impressive decisions might not have been possible without the backing of a global brand owner like Diageo. Sustainability should be about preserving resources for everyone, but ultimately it is expensive, and that means sustainability is becoming a premium feature. 

Breaking The Glass Mold

When whisky was first made it was bought and sold locally. In Scotland landowners encouraged whisky making because scotch was easier to transport to market than the barley it is made from. When that evolved whisky was transported to merchants in ceramic jars and customers would bring their own vessels to fill them up (and no, I don’t mean sideways bottles, they just weren’t predominantly glass until around 1850).

Most whisky producing regions now have rules about bottling in-situ. This means transporting often chunky glass bottles around the world, add in boxes and you’ve got even more space and weight.

In 2021 Springbank announced that it was removing boxes for some of its core range releases. These so-called “naked” bottles were thought to be “amongst the first, if not the very first, distilleries to present our products in that way,” explained Springbank in the official announcement. Twelve months later Diageo also announced that it would remove gift boxes from some of its premium releases.

As an almost 200 year old distillery and one of the few independently owned distilleries in Scotland, Springbank has to balance cost and effectiveness. Their official announcement is clear about the difficulties in retrofitting sustainable practices while maintaining the standard of their spirit. For a drinks giant like Diagoe this sustainability initiative could easily be rebranded as cost cutting.

Shared Responsibility

In reality sustainability is as important for Diageo’s bottom line as any other. It may save them money in the short term, but they have also spent five years paying a team to develop ways to create lighter bottles as a way to reduce their emissions.

The limited edition Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ultra is thought to be the world’s lightest bottle. Developed over five years the super lightweight bottle used for the limited edition blend showcases the pinnacle of the team’s work. The findings are already helping to make other Diageo bottles lighter and better for the environment.

In addition, while Diageo has the patent for this luxury vessel (there’s that term again) they have said, “a license to the patent will be offered on a royalty-free basis to anyone in the world who wishes to share in these discoveries.” This ethos of shared responsibility and shared development is as important as any other aspect of sustainability.

I commend the effort and the research that has gone into Blue Label Ultra. However there will be just 888 of Blue Label Ultra available, at $1,300 (£1,000), which once again brings me back to the increasingly premium status of sustainability.

It is encouraging to see brands new and old take sustainability practices seriously. It is important for the preservation of resources, but also the sustainability of the industry itself in terms of the image it projects to future drinkers. I do think it is important that sustainability doesn’t become a kind of green-washing requirement for premiumisation. Sustainability is expensive, unfortunately while it is the premise of the few there is no avoiding that, but brands need to work hard to ensure that their customers are not excluded from being able to make sustainable choices based on price.