JW Blue ABV?

Hi,

What is the correct ABV of JW Blue? I have seen some bottles with 40%, while others 43%. Is it possible there are two kinds?

Thank you.

[Jojo]

Pretty sure the 43% is from duty free. Let me check on this.

Thank you I appreciate your quick reply. If that is so, i wonder why they would produce a higher ABV just for the duty free shops?

best regards,

[blenderm]

There are normally at least 4 strengths, 40% 43% 43.2% for S Africa and 42.8% for India. Normally 40 and 43 have about 97%+ of the market and the only difference is what that countries laws are. In the past the US had strengths of 80 proof, 86 proof and 86.6 proof i.e. 40%,43% and 43.3% but I never knew why.
The only difference is a drop of water, the whisky's the same

[Dale]

In the U.S., ABV is controlled by local legislation - similar to why there are still dry counties in certain states. That said, generally for wine, beer and spirits, ABV categorization is set at the state level. U.S. brewers, like Anheuser Busch, Miller... will produce different levels of alcohol beer for certain local markets, assuming they want to be in those markets. The joke here is not all Budweiser is the same.

To further confuse things, our federal BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms) supports local legislation, as is ideally the role of the federal government, though also dictates some things with their heavy hand. Bottle size is one. For spirits, 50ml, 100ml, 200ml, 375ml, 750ml, 1.0L and 1.75L are currently the standard and have been for about 30 years. Thus, all those glorious malts bottled in 700ml bottles cannot be legally imported into the U.S. Thus Scottish bottlers must make special bottle runs if they want to export to the U.S.

Another control of the BATF is the back, or strip, label which requires the brilliant Surgeon General warning that goes something like this: Drinking too much alcohol can increase your chance of crashing your tractor into your barn and can cause pregnancy by making pretty girls out of dogs.

[Jojo]

We found out from our contact at Diageo (JW parent company) that originally the difference in ABV was to help catch fraud. There were lots of shipments from Duty Free that would go missing and end up in the general market -or- people would purchase in Duty Free and attempt to sell in the general market.

It appears that all Diageo's brands will be 40% ABV - but haven't confirmed as of yet. If I do, I'll post.

Jojo,

Interesting to learn that they actually made a version of different ABV for security reasons mainly.

Thank you for the information.

Best Regards.