Against a lacklustre spirits market backdrop, the numbers coming out of India continue to astound. So much has been made of the opportunities for Scotch whisky that the exponential growth of other categories can sometimes be forgotten. For instance, the fact that the value of Irish whiskey exports to India more than doubled last year, according to Bord Bia figures, has almost gone unnoticed.
That stellar performance means that, in terms of scale, India already rivals some of Irish whiskey’s leading markets, such as the UK, Ireland, Germany and Poland – undoubtedly positive news for an Irish whiskey category buffeted by a number of headwinds after decades of uninterrupted growth and the Covid-19-induced sales bubble of 2021-22.
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But, for all the impressive gains made in recent years – the Irish whiskey industry is more than twice the size that it was a decade ago – this still doesn’t feel like a truly global, mature category: the US still accounts for 40% of export value (Bord Bia figures, 2024), while no other destination can get close to double figures.
As so often in the past, Jameson is the brand building a bridgehead into the Indian market, which others will be anxious to follow. The Irish Distillers juggernaut – now worth 11m cases worldwide, according to company figures – is the best-selling bottled-in-origin (BIO) spirit in the country, which is its second-largest global destination behind, you guessed it, the US.
Where does Irish whiskey’s impressive growth in India leave Scotch whisky? There’s been understandable joy on Speyside and Islay over the free trade agreement (FTA) signed between the UK and India, which will see import tariffs lowered from 150% to 75% immediately and reduced to 40% over the next decade. There’s plenty of devil lurking in the detail – not least the fiscal policy of individual Indian states – but it’s still highly positive news for what remains a hugely aspirational category for whisky-mad Indian consumers.
However, the news coming out of Ireland should put Scotland’s distillers on their mettle. India’s increasingly affluent, urbanised and demographically diverse premium spirits consumers aren’t all content to simply upgrade from IMFL to Scotch – they’re curious and experimental, many of them as keen to drink agave as they are Ardbeg.
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By GlobalDataThe competition between in aged spirits in India is increasingly hot and diverse. Not just Irish whiskey but US and Japanese too; not just imported either, because India’s own whisky industry is premiumising and tapping into a consumer base that doesn’t automatically equate domestic with cheap and imported with expensive. After all, in India, Indian single malts outsold their Scotch rivals in volume terms in 2024, according to leading domestic player Radico Khaitan.
While Scotch considers the undoubtedly lucrative, but definitely complex, opportunity offered by India, the industry should also be assessing where things have gone wrong on the other side of the world. True, the value of export shipments to the US was essentially flat last year (down 0.7%, according to HMRC figures) but that was more than 9% below 2019, before Covid-19 sent the market haywire.
Even that 2024 performance is open to question. The year ended positively but how much of that was frontloading inventories ahead of President Trump’s second term and his widely trailed tariffs? I’m yet to see official shipment figures for the first half of 2025 but I’d be surprised if the US market numbers were especially positive for Scotch.
Blends shouldn’t just pursue celebrity tie-ups
For the past generation or more, there’s been a perennial disconnect in the Scotch whisky category: while single malts hogged the headlines and the glory, blends – even when they were declining – were doing a disproportionate part of the heavy lifting, typically accounting for 11 out of every 12 bottles of Scotch sold around the world. But that’s changing now, and it’s partly because of the difficult trading conditions experienced in the US.
Bottled blended Scotch posted a healthy (given the prevailing market conditions) 4.4% increase in terms of global shipment value in 2024; single malts, meanwhile, were down by just over 17%. Look at sales, rather than shipment, trends in the US market alone (as per Distilled Spirits Council of the US numbers), and single malts were down 16.8% in volume, and 14.1% in value.
Single malts have done a great job of trading Scotch consumers up over the past few decades, creating a buzz about the category and driving engagement and interest. But something has gone seriously wrong, and I suspect that something is price. As whisky writer Dave Broom points out, the median price of single malt Scotch aged for 21-25 years has risen by £280 ($377) in five years. In this post-Covid, cautious-consumer landscape, it may well be pricing itself out of the market.
What’s the answer? Beyond a more rational approach to pricing for aged single malt, there should be a concerted effort to reframe the image of blended Scotch as a product with every bit as much quality, heritage and provenance. Distillers have made some efforts with this in the past – Diageo with Johnnie Walker springs to mind, albeit about a decade ago – but most of the recent brand activity I’ve seen has majored on celebrity gloss, rather than giving people a qualitative reason for purchase.
There’s no reason why Scotch can’t do both: by all means partner Ballantine’s with Gorillaz, or Johnnie Walker with Sabrina Carpenter. Such populist marketing may well drive recruitment and sales but will it create a lasting bond between product and consumer? Not so much. More and more, people want to feel a real connection with what they’re being asked to buy.
In many ways, the challenges facing the Irish and Scotch whisky categories, for all their differences of scale, are similar. Both are facing up to a changing world, where the old market certainties can no longer be taken for granted – but where there are still lucrative opportunities for those who adopt the right strategies. By no means is today’s global spirits marketplace all doom and gloom – it’s just bloody complicated.
