Johnnie Walker Double Black Going Global

by David Kiley (RSS feed)
Sep 29th 2010 at 7:00PM

Spirits giant Diageo says it will launch its Johnnie Walker Double Black beyond the travel retail channel next year, broadening the Johnnie Walker lineup for consumers worldwide.

Double Black, which has extra smoky flavor than Johnnie Walker Black, was launched last January in six airport duty-free channels. It was well received, and was then made available globally in travel retail.

But response to Double Black, which costs about 20% more than Black, has been so positive that the company has geared up to distribute globally starting in March 2011.

The whisky was created by taking Black as a blueprint and adding heavily peated malts and aging some of the whisky in deeply charred oak casks. There is no age statement.

The move is being made to counter some of the growing interest in Islay single malts such as Ardbeg, Laphroaig and Lagavulin.

Tags: Ardbeg, Johnnie Walker, Johnnie Walkr Double Black, Lagavullin, Laphroaig, peated whiskies, whiskey, whisky