This a whisky blog, but as we all know whisky and haggis gang thegither, so I am sure you will excuse this little deviation.
Burn’s Night is around the corner which means a lot of haggis and obviously also whisky will be consumed to celebrate the inofficial Scottisch national holiday. Right in time for this year, Macsween’s, probably the best-known producer of haggis in Scotland, has presented a luxury version that will set you back £4000 for 4 kilograms.
What makes it so expensive, you might ask. Actually, I am not quite sure. There is Perthsire wagyu beef in it, which of course is a lot more expensive than regular beef. But then again, 1 kg of the finest wagyu cuts will usually not cost you more than £150. And the ingredient list for Macsween’s Traditional Haggis only lists beef suet and stock as bovine ingredients of this primarily sheepy staple.
I am sure that Macsweens would not go as far as completely negating the haggisness of their famous Traditional Haggis (which is indeed very good for an industrial product), so I assume the amount of wagyu beef will not be very high. And should there indeed be substantial amounts of beef in it, it would be closer to a beef pudding than to haggis.
The luxury haggis also includes white summer truffles from France. Now summer truffles are the cheapskate’s choice of truffles. Anything else than black Périgord (tuber melanosporum) or white Alba (tuber magnatum) can not honestly be labelled “luxury” because it is simply too cheap – and not as good. But even with expensive truffles £100 go a long way, if you use them for seasoning only and not as main attraction of the dish.
Telicherry pepper is mentioned as another special ingredient. But how special is it really? A 399 gram jar currently costs £10.78 on Amazon.
And finally we have gold. Real authentic genuine gold “to sprinkle on top” which is of course perfectly safe to eat because it will pass your body unaffected by digestion. Gold currently costs around £80 per gram, but the few sprinkles will weigh only a fraction. Gold leaf can be made extremely thin weighing next to nothing. For example a pack of 10 edible 24 carat gold leaf sheets will set you back a whopping £1.36 on Amazon.
In other words, it’s a classic rip-off. The profit margin for Macsween’s will be gigantic, and it does not take much brain power to see that the real purpose of this luxury haggis is to create a lot of free publicity shortly before Burn’s Night so they can sell more real haggis.
The “world’s most expensive haggis” is just your typical marketing bullshit. Even wagyu bullshit is still bullshit. But if you really buy into it, on the next day your will have the added value of admiring glittering turds in your toilet bowl.
