by gillmang » Thu Sep 29, 2005 3:22 am
I think this is very rare or non-existent in North America. Blends are the area where one can find cheap whisky at a low price but it is all real whisky. I have heard that in some parts of the world however, counterfeiting of famous brands still goes on, e.g., Johnnie Walker or another famous brand may still be sold under a false label where the contents are not genuine and may be some kind of coloured or flavoured vodka. This problem seems to recur from time to time in some emerging economies. In Wiley's time, what he referred to as non-genuine was not just bad whisky (cheap blends made mostly from grain, as opposed to malt, whisky) but non-whisky that was flavoured in some way to mimic whisky. That kind of fraud on the market surely does not exist today even where counterfeiting occurs. National Prohibition had brought back the era of imitation whisky but again that would be a rare thing to see today, I think.
Gary