Why a Rare Single Malt is a sign of Success, (as is the Marshmallow)

To start with, the the idea spawned in many-an-advertisement, of single malt being a sign of success, or successful people, looks ridiculous. That bottle can signify success as another cola bottle signifies happiness. But then in the course of a recent conversation, I happened to think more about why some whiskeys are expensive. 

Expensive whiskeys, by-and-large, are expensive because they are old. Distilleries keep aside stock and age it over long years in oak barrels, and then connoisseurs and collectors buy these whiskeys and carefully store them for more long years (though they say that the taste doesn't improve on storing once bottled, it still gets rarer). All the dollar value the whiskey accumulates, on other words, is because it is not sold in the first year by the distillery and it is not drunk by the collector. And because it is not over-produced. The world's best whiskey it seems, is the Japanese Yamazaki. Just 18,000 bottles of the winning Yamazaki Single Malt Sherry Cask 2013 exist. Now if the whiskey is supposed to be that good, it'll take a lot of self-control for it to get old and not sold, and more for it not to be drunk. Incidentally, this was exactly what they tested in the marshmallow test. 

I'm sure you've heard about the Stanford Marshmallow Test, and in case you haven't, do read up on it. It seems researchers gave a marshmallow to children who had a choice of eating it immediately or waiting, in which case they got another marshmallow. The few children who could control and resist temptation went on to become successful people. The core variable is deferred / delayed gratification. If we substitute these children with distilleries and collectors, you can imagine how the logic can hold. 

Can you not kill your golden goose too soon, uproot your plants to check if they have grown, not spend your money just on traffic and advertising but build a better product, spend time on planning the next year versus this quarter, hold your card and not throw it at first chance, resist the party invitation the night before exams? It's probably the same question asked in different ways. 

Now can you resist drinking the Single Malt - provided you are successful enough to be rich enough to buy it in the first place ;-)