Haig Club ‘Clubman’

Bought: Tesco, 6^th October 2016

Ratings:
4/10 – Whisky Wednesday (video review below)
2/5 – Master of Malt (from 9 reviews)
0/100 – Whiskybase (no member votes yet)

It’s been over 2 months since the Clubman was added to Whiskybase but still no reviews. If it were a new bottle of Ardbeg there would be over 100 ratings by now but that’s because Whiskybase is more about single malts. The Clubman on the other hand is a cheap single grain and, unlike the original Club, the Clubman is priced correctly for its use in whisky-based cocktails. At £15 it’s a bit more expensive than a Lidl or Aldi basic grain but you’re paying more for the marketing and stylish blue bottle. Indeed, comments on Amazon suggest it’s being bought as a Christmas present, which has more to do with the presentation. In fact, stick a light in an empty Clubman bottle and you’ve got a festive bauble for Christmas 2017!

Although scores from most whisky drinkers aren’t great there are some fans of the Clubman. Comments online include “superb for a mixer drink”, “smooth, sweet and light” and “not particularly complex or deep in flavours, but just a really nice light whisky to sup.” Remarks about the taste say it’s sweet and the bourbon ageing give it vanilla notes so it sounds perfect to mix with cola, lemonade or ginger ale.

Here’s Whisky Wednesday with their review on You Tube (October 2016):

Haig ‘Club’

Bought – The Whisky Shop, 14^th October 2014

Ratings:
89/100 – Whisky Bible 2015 (added after my comments below)
62.93/100 – Whiskybase (average from 56 member votes)
88/100 – Scotch Test Dummies (their video review below)

And before you ask, no I’m not a fan of David Beckham. I wasn’t aware he was part of Haig’s marketing strategy for the ‘Club’ until after I’d purchased my bottle. I must confess, I fell for the bottle shape and colour. If I’d read any reviews about the ‘Club’ before seeing it, I might have shied away. Comments have not been very favourable. But it’s almost as if Haig don’t really care what it tastes like, it’s more about the imagine. The ‘Club’ is single grain whisky from the Cameronbridge distillery. Generally speaking you can find independent bottlings of Cameronbridge, matured for 20+ years, for about the same price as the ‘Club’. But it seems the ‘Club’ is NAS (non aged statement), exactly like a bottle of ‘Cameron Brig’ from the same distillery. The ‘Club’ comes in a funky blue bottle and is drunk by David Beckham with actors paid to be friends, all for the princely sum of £45. A bottle of ‘Cameron Brig’ is £21, less than half the price.

Not that the idea is for people to purchase the ‘Club’ by the bottle. This whisky is clearly designed to catch the punter’s eye in trendy bars and to be drunk with mixers in a variety of different ways. The Haig Club website (here) says the whisky can be enjoyed neat (we’ll see about that!) or as part of several cocktails, the recipes for which they supply on their “Drinks Menu” page. To be fair on Haig, they’re doing their best to try and change their image. I generally think of the Haig Gold Label blended whisky as old fashioned, so who better than David Beckham to inject a bit of modern TOWIE-style appeal?! Watch out for next year’s release of the Haig ‘Spice’ fronted by Victoria Beckham. You read it here first!

Here’s Scotch Test Dummies with their review on You Tube (June 2015):