Wine snobs can be pretty boring, debating years and cultivars. Scotch snobs are a different breed entirely, writes Justin Pearce
IT was one of those perfect spring evenings, the sunlight casting a golden sheen on the waters of Table Bay. Suddenly the peace was ripped by a sound normally associated with mists and soggy heather: bagpipes. The piper was wandering aimlessly on the quayside outside the Dock Road Venue where the opening of the Bell’s Scottish Festival was taking place. He’d been cast out on to the quay, the publicity person whispered, because the sponsors didn’t want that noise spoiling the party.
A youth in baggy tartan shorts stood at the door — if you half-closed your eyes you could almost imagine he was wearing a kilt. Inside there was free whisky (naturally), a lot of shiny salmon and roast beef, a display by the Clan Macleod Society of South Africa (one settler one sporran). There was a computer with a database where those of not only Scots but also English, French, German and Lithuanian extraction could check on the origins of their surname. They’d even managed some soggy heather, courtesy of some or other nursery.
The most genuinely Scottish presence was Mike Nicholson, master distiller and “brand ambassador”, brought to South Africa by Bell’s for the festival which had been organised to mark the 500th anniversary of the first distillation of Scotch whisky. He was dressed in a blazer and tie as the airline had managed to lose the suitcase with his Scots get-up. (“He doesn’t always look this normal,” the ever- helpful publicity person had confided.)
As a “brand ambassador” whose job includes travelling to far-flung places where whisky is drunk, Nicholson is disarmingly polite about occasions such as the one at which he now found himself.
“Being a Scots person is not a thing you always think of at home,” he says. “When you see the enthusiasm the expatriate community has, it’s charming.”
Nicholson’s real job is distilling. He manages the 200- year-old Blair Athol distillery in the Scottish Highlands: the distillery which produces one of the spirits that go into the blend which is bottled with the Bell’s label. The brand-name whiskies you are likely to buy are all blends of malt and grain whiskies which come from distilleries all over Scotland.
“The variation is too much for most of us to understand,” he says. “And I have the privileged position of being in the business.”
That’s the difference between the marketing of whisky and the marketing of wine. Both are liable to an infinite range of variation according to the raw ingredients and the fine details of the production process. But while in the case of wine these variations are exploited (enabling people to get boring on the subject of years and cultivars), with whisky the processes of distilling and blending are designed to keep the product identical to what drinkers have known for decades.
“My job is to ensure that the quality of spirit remains unchanged during my tenure,” Nicholson explains. “I’m at Blair Athol perpetuating the legacy of the booze that went before.”
In that sense, a bottle of whisky is a safer buy than a bottle of wine. Although there are a few connoisseurs (most of them in Scotland) who will drink the unblended malt spirits straight from the distillery, most whisky drinkers are content to buy a reliable blend. Consequently, he says, whisky drinkers are less likely to be snobs than wine drinkers.
`We’ve all stood in a pub next to the guy who knows it all, but at my end it’s not like that. We are less affected by that syndrome than the wine producers” — although, he adds hastily, “I’m not saying that our customers are not meticulous about quality.”
Neither is he didactic about how whisky should be savoured: “We can’t afford to be holier than thou,” he says; if people really want to mix their whisky with Coca-Cola, then it’s not for him to try and stop them.
Still, “there’s a magic around the product”, and he’s adamant that Scotch is a product that can only come out of Scotland. When you mention Irish whiskey and American bourbon, he doesn’t hesitate: “Whisky must be distilled in Scotland and matured in old casks.”