Good Spirits Co. 8yo North Highland
Thompson Bros Highland Blended Malt | 48.5% ABV
Score: 6/10
Good stuff.
TL;DR
A summer dram from the land of no summer
What Makes A Good Hunter?
There’s a very famous group of three French comedians from the 1990s called les inconnus. Every one in France, knowingly or not, has some of their one liners engrained in their memory from birth. It’s almost a societal genetic evolution.
One of their famous sketches is one where they impersonate drunk hunters being interviewed by a TV crew. Here it is if you’re curious… and understand French close to perfectly. In the sketch the reporter ends up asking :
“So what’s the difference between a bad and a good hunter?”
And then the first guy answers :
“Well, it’s simple: a bad hunter, he’s got his rifle, he sees something moving, and then he shoots. The good hunter though, he’s got his rifle, he sees something and only then he shoots.”
As the answer is pretty vague, another one chimes in, repeating exactly the same thing, as does the third one. It’s hilarious. I promise.
So, what’s the difference between a good and a bad whisky retailer? A bad one sees a customer, asks for the price range and hands out a bottle. A good one though… You get the idea.
As mentioned in my previous review, I recently left the wine and spirits shop I worked at for close to five years. It’s a job I’ve absolutely loved, despite of course there being some boring and sometimes stressful aspects. Those five years really have made me realise how important and useful a great retailer is, be it for wine, beer or indeed spirits.
Now, I’m not pretending that I am omniscient on all things booze retailing. This is, as most things written on this website, a personal opinion. It is also heavily centered on the French, and maybe British perspective. I’m sure though that there are things that will resonate with you, even if you stem from far flung lands.
The obvious first: a great retailer is someone who will be able to guide the customer towards the best bottle, relative to their initial demands, in terms of style, preferences, price range and eventually pairing if we’re talking wine. It’s always a good sign if you ask for a specific style of whisky for around £50 to £60 and the retailer gives you a bottle in the lower end of your price range. I believe a good retailer should know better than to extort every single penny a customer’s initially willing to pay. He should do so only if the bottle best meeting the demands of the punter is indeed the one in the higher price range. All of this while of course smiling and being welcoming.
More controversially, I believe that when someone intends to pay say around £50, a good retailer shouldn’t really push a £30 bottle. The consumer, when stating his or her comfortable price range, is in fact telling the retailer the rough quality level he or she expects. Now, I know there are some banging £30 bottles, and some questionable £50 ones, but I think we can all agree, that if you steer clear of overpriced marketing stunts, on average, the more you pay for a whisky, the higher quality it’s likely to be; i.e. a £75 whisky is going to be more engaging than a £35 one. Again, most of the time.
What should a good retailer do also? A key aspect for me is selection. Unless the shop is the size of a football pitch, stocking every single core range from every existing brand is pointless in my opinion. What I appreciate in good retailers, and what I tried to do when I was looking to stock my shelves, was to find value and choice at every price point. Some clients want to spend £30, some don’t mind spending more than £100. Both kinds need to have at least some semblance of choice in their price range.
In the shop I used to run, I had room for about fifty whiskies at any given time (we were mainly a wine shop - we’re French after all). I wanted my selection to reflect my drinking preferences. Not as much in terms of style or brands, but rather in presentation: I wanted the whiskies I sold to mostly be 46% and above, natural colour and ideally not chill-filtered.
Of course, some exceptions had to be made, but I did manage to have interesting whiskies from about 40€ (which is dirt cheap in France for something drinkable) to around 150€, because I didn’t really have the clientèle for more expensive drams. But in tailoring my selection that way, it meant I didn’t have any Lagavulin, or Macallan, and I focused more on ‘new wave distilleries’, like Ardnamurchan, Raasay or Torabhaig.
I also was always on the hunt for undisclosed peated whiskies like ‘Smoky Scot’ from Aceo, or Mr Peat. I also didn’t shy away from selling blended malts. For the more expensive stuff, rather than focusing exclusively on core range 15yo and 18yo from known brands, I sought out interesting Independent bottlings, from Cadenhead’s, Signatory, Claxton and Càrn Mor for example. The key thing for me was not brand; it was value.
Another thing a good retailer should do is to educate their customers. I can confidently say, having spent five years doing this job, that most people who don’t know anything about booze actually enjoy learning about it. Be it in the form of barrel-top tastings, more elaborate events on a specific theme over an evening, or simply by taking the time to explain something when you see that a customer didn’t properly understand what you stated.
As a wine example: I could sell you a nice Morgon, say it was made from Gamay and produced using the carbonic maceration method. Some clients I had knew perfectly what that was. Most didn’t though, so when I sense that the customer was interested, and when there weren’t ten people waiting in line, I’d usually take the time to explain that carbonic maceration means sealing the grapes still on the stems in a tank and saturating it with CO2, thus inducing the migration of colour and flavour compounds from the skin to the inside of the grapes, producing light and fruity wines. I write that to say that an important thing is to adequately judge if the person in front of you actually has the time and wants to hear your explanations.
Otherwise, simply stating the wine is light and fruity will be enough.
Review
North Highland Blended Malt 8yo, Good Spirits Co./Thompson Bros, Blended Malt Scotch Whisky, 48.5% ABV
£36.50, now sold out
A great example of a good retailer in the UK is - in my opinion - the Good Spirits Co. in Glasgow.
A lot of you already know this shop, and for good reasons. It ticks all the boxes.
The staff, firstly, are composed of people who present this rare combination of being knowledgeable and friendly. Their selection is extremely well tailored considering that, while they aren’t small, they aren’t big either. They have tasty whiskies for every price range, and for every request. Want a £25 blend to gift to your dad because you smashed a bottle of his? They’ve got it. Want an indie bottling of an unknown Speysider finished in an unusual cask? Got it. In search of a 20 plus age-stated malt from a reputable distillery? Got it as well. Want to dip your toes in the craft cocktail world? They’ve got both homemade ready to drink cocktails and everything you could possibly need to recreate them at home.
They also host weekly tastings, often fronted by prestigious industry people. Two years ago I attended a Kilkerran and Springbank tasting hosted by my pal Andrew Wallace, and that tasting… well let’s say it didn’t suck.
They also always have a small collection of single cask or small batch whiskies bottled exclusively for the shop, in collaboration with very reputable producers. They also always have a bottle of each of these open on the counter for anyone to try before they buy.
The bottle under scrutiny here is part of their shop exclusives. It was made in collaboration with the Thompson brothers, and while it is said to be a ‘North Highland Blended Malt’, the little pictogram on the back tells us it is actually Clynelish, teaspooned with the smidgiest of smidges of Glen Ord (apparently).
The only thing that is not perfect about the Good Spirits Co. is that it’s in Glasgow and I’m in Paris.
Score: 6/10
Good stuff.
TL;DR
A summer dram from the land of no summer
Nose
Clean, sharp and lively. Lime peels, green apples and lemon juice. Mineral, limestone, white wine (Muscadet). A discreet saline edge. Fresh cream and herbs, or maybe tzatziki. A bit herbal as well with a hint of horseradish. Very close to the spirit.
With water: hear me out - egg mayonnaise, but in a good way. As in it smells more of the mayonnaise than the eggs. The citrus veers towards fresh orange. More orchard fruits as well.
Palate
Taut, fresh and highly mineral. The salty element kicks in. It’s the perfect summer whisky really. Delicate highlights of citrus. Not much complexity, but crisp and enjoyable.
With water: The texture impressively moves from crisp to creamy. Still very centered on minerality though. It’s much ‘smoother’ in the delivery.
The Dregs
There is nothing easy about being a booze retailer in 2026. The demand for whisky, rum or wine is decreasing, while rent, price for goods and taxes are increasing. The margins for selling whisky these days are atrociously small. When you buy a £50 whisky at RRP, the retailer actually only makes £8-10 on it, at best. These people do it because they love it, not to become millionaires; trust me.
So if you’re blessed with an independent, local, bricks-and-mortar whisky, wine, or beer shop, go and give them some love. Without them, a lot of people wouldn’t become whisky nerds like us. Without independent shops of any sort, the city centres we know will soon be exclusively reserved for big chain fast foods and clothing stores. We don’t want that. At least, I don’t.
Support your local shop as much as you can. Provided it’s a good one!
I propose, while you do so, you might listen to Woodkid’s In Your Likeness, if you haven’t already. Well even if you have, in fact.
Score: 6/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. AF
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Other opinions on this:
Good Spirits Co. official launch video (YouTube)
Got a link to a reliable review? Tell us.
