1. 100 october 2011 MW MW october 2011 100
LLet’s assume you are this old
woman in Australia who comes across a nearly
100-year-old whisky bottle. Now, since you don’t
drink whisky — no, you don’t! — what is the next
best thing you could do with it? Well, you contact
the London-based The Whisky Exchange.
That’s exactly what a frail old woman
in Australia did recently. “It was a beautiful
Laphroaig from the 1930s,” says Sukhinder Singh,
owner of the TWE. Probably not a drinker herself,
the woman approached TWE. Singh was, of
course, interested. He paid £3000 (Rs 2,10,000)
for it, but hasn’t picked it up yet. “I don’t want
to take the risk of shipping it. I’m waiting for
when I or someone I know goes next to that part
of the world for it to be picked up.”
The theGENIE BOTTLERare whiskies, old bottlings,
casks. Regardless of what you
are searching for, chances are
that Sukhinder Singh, owner
of UK-based The Whisky
Exchange, the world's largest
online specialist e-tailer and
an authority on drams, can
get it for you.
By Monica Bathija
The whisky is only one of the latest to go
into the 5000-strong single malt collection of
the world’s biggest and best specialist online
whisky retailer. “An old man was turning 80
and his son was looking for a particular whisky
that he used to drink. It had to be the same one,”
says Singh, because obviously memories don’t
make do with just something similar. “And 50
to 60 per cent of the time, thewhiskyexchange.
com will have it.”
We’re sitting in a café in Mumbai, an unlikely
place to be talking about whisky but as the
unassuming Mr Singh talks about his 12-year-old
website, about buying and selling whiskies, and
about drams and the lost distilleries of Scotland,
a particular passion of his, you might be forgiven
for thinking that the coffee you’re drinking has
turned a bit Irish.
Singh has an almost encyclopaedic knowledge
of whiskies and older bottlings, a familiarity
acquired over years and years of buying, selling
and collecting whiskies from around the world.
“I don’t pick up thousands of bottles, just five to
ten a year… old whisky, old bottlings, they are
very different. The new stuff is very consistent,
the production is much better today but the way
to look at it is it was artisanal. There was no
pressure to create this much,” he says, adding
that just as fruits and vegetables had more flavour
years ago, old whiskies too just taste better. “The
water was cleaner, the wood was better…”
Singh and his brother Rajbir started
thewhiskyexchange.com, a portal where whisky
fans can buy, sell or swap the bottles listed just
12 years ago, but their story goes back years,
and like a well-aged whisky, has been 35 years
in the making. The story actually starts with
what was possibly the first Asian off-licence
shop in the UK. “The Nest in Hanwell (in west
London), which started out in the drinks trade
in 1973, was a normal off-licence shop, but then
my parents started making a bigger selection
available and over time it became a specialist
shop,” says Singh. So much so that if luxury
store Harrods ran out of a particular whisky
or beer, they would recommend The Nest to
their customers.
Singh had no intention of continuing in the
family business and actually took a degree in
the “property field” but fate had other plans. His
graduation coincided with the biggest property
crash in 30 years and he decided to help his
parents for a year before reapplying for a job
in his chosen field. “My parents were typical
migrants who made sacrifices, sent us to the
best schools and had never taken a holiday in
years. That year they took their first holiday
together after 15-18 years,” he recollects.
By the time he reapplied for another job (and
still got nothing) the genes had kicked in and he
had become interested in whiskies. What started
out as a hobby and interacting with collectors in
the back office turned into a passion. “It was all
interesting and eye-opening. And we realised
we were quite good at what we do. We did a lot
of interesting things and learnt and bit more
and got a few awards.” It was also at this time
that he started collecting miniatures as a hobby
and over time amassed 4,500 miniature single
malt bottles. “It was the biggest collection in
the world. After this I started collecting big
bottles,” says Singh.
T
he going was good, in
1992 the store was even named
‘Off-Licence of the Year’, but times
were changing. Supermarkets
were offering cut prices, the
hours were long and the seven-
day week was too much. So when his parents
retired in 1999, the brothers decided to shut shop.
It wasn’t the end of their love affair with whisky,
though. Within two months, at the beginning
of the dot com boom, the brothers were back
with thewhiskyexchange.com and an exhaustive,
exquisite collection of whisky operating from a
trading estate tucked away on the outskirts of
Hanwell. The supplier relationships that had
been built up over decades at The Nest came
in useful since any supplier with a new product
would contact them first. The technology was new
and people were putting in millions of dollars
into the boom, but the Singhs adopted a wait-
and-watch policy. “We decided we would try
it for a year and if it didn’t work out we would
look at something different.” Singh’s brother has
studied information technology so had it not
worked out he would have done something else,
says Singh. But he himself had no clue what he
would have done. Luckily for him he didn’t have
to find out. Business, as Singh says, took off. The
Whisky Exchange has won a string of industry
awards and is the current Whisky Magazine’s
Online Retailer of the Year (Icons of Whisky
2011), an award it has won three years in a row.
Besides it is also Independent Spirits Retailer
of the Year (Drinks Retailing Awards 2011) for
The Whisky Exchange’s retail shop at Vinopolis
Wine Tasting Attraction on London’s Southbank.
Yes, five years ago, the brothers also opened the
brick and mortar version of their online store at
Vinopolis near London Bridge, with the venue’s
beautiful vaulted arches providing the perfect
TWE's brick and mortar
version in London
also stocks casks
of

2. 100 october 2011 MW MW october 2011 100
sukhinder singh
showcase for the company’s dazzling offerings.
“We decided we needed a store. Because people
buy online but there are people who want to come
and look at the bottles, sample whiskies,” says
Singh of the store that soon became a treasure
trove for visiting whisky connoisseurs — so
much so that in less than three years they had
to be relocated into a bigger space within the
venue to accommodate the ever-increasing range
demanded by customers.
It is also a place to make people appreciate
whisky, make new converts and rise to the
challenge of figuring out what someone would
like, a challenge that, you can tell, still excites
the 43-year-old Singh. “If a couple walks into
the store, and the man is looking for a whisky
and the woman is not a drinker, I go ‘oooh’,” he
says, rubbing his hands. “And my people too,
they are so good at this. We’ll fill them a bottle
from a cask and 70 to 80 per cent of the time
the woman will say wow, I never thought whisky
would taste so good.”
While the online store stocks over 2,500
whiskies, of which about 1,900 are Single
Malt Scotch whiskies, the remainder is made
up of Bourbon, Blended Scotch, Grain, Irish,
Japanese and other whiskies from countries
including Wales, South Africa, India, Sweden
and Australia, the shop also has new and varied
casks sought out by customers travelling from
mainland Europe just to fill their own bottle of
whisky from them.
Even as long-term clients who wish to sell
their personal collections or customers who have
found or inherited an old bottle from a relative
head for The Whisky Exchange, auction houses
refer people to TWE or visit Singh themselves
to determine the worth of a bottle. “Whisky
is collectible because of a number of reasons.
There are whiskies from lost distilleries, from
regions, from hot distilleries…” In the 1800s, there
were over two hundred distilleries in Scotland,
but by 1945 the poor economic and political
circumstances of the previous three decades had
taken their toll and around seventy of these had
closed, writes Singh on thewhiskyexchange.com.
After the war, sales of whisky increased virtually
every year until 1980, but for the next few years
sales dropped dramatically, leaving a whisky
surplus and, inevitably, this led to the closure of
many more distilleries by 1984. “When Diageo
closed its distilleries, they had distillations from
’81, ’80… all the way back 20 years. Now these
casks have been used and there’s very little stuff
left so the price just goes up and up since these
vintages are getting rarer and rarer. Port Ellen,
Brora, Rosebank, St Magdalene… for drinking
today they are absolutely beautiful but stocks
are disappearing. Like four to five years ago
you would have got a Port Ellen for £50 to £60,
today it’s 150,” says Singh who keeps track of
how much stock is left to determine pricing.
“We pretty much dictate global prices,” says the
whisky king who last year bought a bottle of
a 64-year-old Dalmore for £1,00,000 pounds
to add to his personal collection. How did that
happen? “I knew they had some liquid. Prior to
that they had just released 12 bottles of 62-year-
old… they had put one into auction to see what
W I S E A D V I C E F R O M S U K H I N D E R
three whiskies perfect for the indian palate
clynelish 14, glenmorangie and rosebank
price it would go for and they got about 28,000
to 30,000 so they set that as the price for those.
They had liquid for about three bottles left to
carry on maturing and they told me it would
take a lot of money to bottle that. So I said cool.
It had to be spectacular so I said 1,00,000. I was
involved in the packaging etc which I wanted
to be classy and simple. They'd told me it’s your
bottle, do what you want. Initially I didn’t intend
to buy one, but then I fell in love with it and
said I was keeping one,” says Singh whose usual
advice to collectors is to buy two bottles, one to
keep and one to drink and who currently has at
least 100 to 150 bottles of his collection open
that he consumes on and off.
T
WE also create its own
brands.“Becauseofourexperience
we have seen certain gaps in the
market and we’ve started creating
our own products and brands.”
TWE did a range of whiskies
called Elements of Islay, which is an island in
Scotland. “Very peaty, smoky and very popular.
It was really well received. Port Askaig, an Islay
malt, again is doing very well. Our next product
is a blend — Clan Macdonald, which in Scotland
is a family name, the most important clan so it
has a lot of history to it.” He is also in talks to
set up a distillery in India. “If I do a whisky it
has to work for the Indian palate.”
If you go to thewhiskyexchange.com you will
find that it’s not just about whiskies. In addition
to the huge range of whiskies, there are over 275
rums, around 200 vodkas, over 300 cognacs/
armagnacs, 100 gins, 120 tequilas and over 400
specialist liqueurs. Even this addition of other
spirits to their repertoire has a story behind it.
When they decided to sell other spirits, they
initially went with a different website.
“We had a customer base already but we
knew that a whisky drinker doesn’t drink other
products. So this was a new website but then
we found it wasn’t working.” So they decided
to bring them to thewhiskyexchange as well.
“We found that non-whisky drinkers actually
trusted a whisky website. Whisky is so complex,
but the other way round doesn’t work. A whisky
guy wants to buy from a whisky shop only. It
brought in a new audience to us.”
Singh is passionate about wines as well,
“but the two don’t mix. It’s dangerous,” he says
with a laugh, adding on a serious note that the
wine market is too big. Besides, he says, there’s
something about whisky. “It’s the most amazing,
complex, diverse spirit. Cognac is lovely but not
diverse in flavour… vodka has no flavour, rum
not much either. You taste this whisky yeah?”
he drawls, “It’s different each time… in the
morning it’s different, in the evening it tastes
different, in India it tastes different, in London
it tastes different, it changes with your mood,
with the weather, the ambience, it changes when
you are drinking with friends and when you
are alone…”
Before
you turn
collector
Think about what
you really want
to achieve. Think
about your budget,
what you would like
to spend per annum
There’s no point
in collecting
standard stuff. Go
for special limited
editions and small
batch whiskies
Remember that
famous distilleries
are big because they
are good
Decide on
what you want
to collect… for
me there are two
best things — lost
distilleries, one
from each and one
from each decade
lesser
know
whiskies
every
man
must try
clynelish:
A Highland malt,
light, fruity, waxy,
very good
aberlour:
A sherried
Speyside malt
caol ila:
An Islay malt,
most perfect
Islay malt, good
balance of peat,
smoke and fruit
springbank:
A Campbeltown
single malt. A
coastal distillery,
with salty coastal
characteristics
glenfarclas:
A sherried malt,
a family-owned
distillery, quality
and value for money
Apart from stocking thou-
sands of whiskies, TWE
also has its own range
Singh has a collection of
nearly 5,000 single malts
The Nest, an off-licence,
was started by Singh's
parents in 1973
“We found that
non-whisky
drinkers
actually trusted
a whisky website.”
TWE often holds
whisky tastings