I'd agree with that. There are some amazing NAS whiskies around, Laphroaig QC, Ardbeg Uigeadail and Aberlour A'Bunadh spring to mind immediately and I'll be on the look out for Talisker Port Ruighe. The problem as I understand it is if you're buying a whisky you haven't tried. The minimum maturation time for scotch is only three years. After that you can legally call it scotch as long as you also meet the other criteria. Any less and you can't call it scotch. With an age statement the youngest whisky in the bottle has to be that age. It can contain older whisky but nothing younger, so you have some clue about what to expect. I you can still get age statemented whiskies that aren't much good.

I believe Laphroaig QC is 8 years old. It makes sense to avoid mentioning that on the label since so many people assume older = better. The smaller casks mean more interaction with the wood for the volume of whisky and therefore a faster maturation. Call it 8 year old and you won't be able to sell it for the price it deserves, so you give it a nice name instead.

You also don't want to give an age statement if it's young and not really ready, but you need to sell it off quick because you've hit a bit of a cash flow crisis. No one would buy 5 year old whisky at 50 quid a bottle, but call it something fancy instead (ideally something Gaelic) and you're laughing.

I'm wondering if there are any distilleries taking old mellower whiskies and mixing a little of a younger more fiery whisky in to give it an extra dimension of flavour. If you mixed 99% 25 year old with 1% 5 year old you'd still have to label it 5 year old. Or call it something like Stag's Bagpipes or whatever. I have no idea if anyone's doing that, I'd be interesting if anyone's heard of it.

One more reason for NAS whiskies could be that it's just becoming a bit of a fashion thing at the moment. I'd recommend reading a couple of reviews and ideally trying a sample before buying a whisky you've never heard of. This was fun to write, I might do a blog post about this subject at some point.