William Grant & Sons will introduce the third edition in the Glenfiddich Experimental Series, Glenfiddich Winter Storm, at next month’s TFWA Asia Pacific Exhibition (stand N19, basement 2).
Winter Storm is a single malt whisky finished in Canadian ice wine casks. To create the whisky, William Grant teamed up with Peller Estate winery in Niagara to create a 21yo whisky finished in French oak ice wine casks.
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Winter Storm is the creation of Glenfiddich Malt Master, Brian Kinsman, following a trip to Canada in January 2016. During the trip he toured the Peller Estate vineyards where grapes are picked at night when temperatures can drop to -10˚C. Back at the Dufftown distillery he experimented with the casks, filling them with various Glenfiddich aged malts and discovering that only rarer whiskies aged for 21 years could cope with the extra ice wine intensity.
The whisky’s taste profile includes Glenfiddich’s signature notes of candied sweets and oak plus flavours of tropical fruit and wine. Winter Storm is housed in a white ceramic bottle and embossed presentation box. It joins Glenfiddich IPA Experiment and Glenfiddich Project XX, which both launched in global travel retail in 2017.
William Grant will also highlight the travel-exclusive Glenfiddich Cask Collection Finest Solera, the first in a series of rare whisky expressions developed in collaboration with crystal glassware manufacturer Baccarat.
The latest Monkey Shoulder and Hendrick’s activations will be featured on the William Grant booth, the latter in the lead up to this year’s World Cucumber Day on 14 June. Key airports globally will be using interactive promotional tools to bring the Hendrick’s brand to life to support this annual event designed to honour the cucumber – considered a key ingredient for the ‘perfect’ Hendrick’s and Tonic.
William Grant & Sons Global Travel Retail Managing Director Ed Cottrell said: “This is an incredibly exciting year for WGS. We plan to continue winning and to ‘win bigger’ with our customers through resourcing and aligned planning, continuing to be best known for our disruptive creativity through brand activation and product innovation. There are ongoing challenges in the channel, of course, but we will see huge potential for growth and new business.”
William Grant & Sons Asia Pacific Global Travel Retail Regional Director Matthew Williams commented: “One of these growth areas is North Asia. Following our strong performance in South Korea, new distribution agreements in Japan and a changing landscape in Greater China the GTR APAC team has been making significant progress in growing our footprint across these markets as a whole.
“We continue to see huge potential for WGS brands in Asia Pacific and, with our ability to bring fantastic theatre and consumer engagement to the airport environment, we predict a very exciting time ahead for us in a region leveraging the massive growth in tourism over the next few years.”
