If really you want the negativity to stop, my sincere recommendation is that you stop sending press releases regarding hyper-expensive whiskies to media outlets that serve people who aren’t hyper-wealthy. Here’s why:

You justify your hyper-expensive whisky with a gesture to your hyper-wealthy clientele. You praise economic diversity as if it were ethnic diversity.

As compelling as this argument is, most folks experience it as both overwhelming and irrelevant. No sooner have whiskybloggers sworn to eachother that they simply must agree with it, than they have furiously banged out a hundred comments expressing their disapproval of the absurdity of the pricing on recent bottlings from Dalmore and other distilleries.

Why?

The reason is that most whisky bloggers are strictly middle class and half the bottlings that they hear about are aimed strictly at the hyper-wealthy. The dissonance this produces is too overwhelming to be brought back into harmony by the reminder that “these bottles were never meant for you.”

You’re right about simply responding to demand regarding upmarket whisky. As long as you have good, affordable whiskies for us regular folk–which you do–then I personally see nothing wrong with bottling some whisky for the ultra-wealthy too.

And you’re also make a very good point about whiskies without age statement. It does give you more flexibility to make good whisky, but also gives you (and other producers) the opportunity to charge a lot of money for younger whisky. As long as it’s the former and not the latter, we’ll all be happy and no one will be complaining.