The water of life  2 April 2007

The wineloving Tim James pays his due respects to whisky, but returns from fermented barley to the admittedly more confusing world of fermented grapejuice with a sense of relief...

Realising that I should turn from wine to whisky in the edition of Parade focusing on the J&B Metropolitan horserace in Cape Town somehow led what passes for my mind to churn around a few quotations from Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth century English writer and dictionary maker. In case that sounds pretentious as well as peculiar, I should quickly admit the relevance of what Johnson replied to the know-it-all who rebukingly asked why he had defined “pastern” as “the knee of a horse”:  "Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance", he admitted.  

It’s an admission that, sadly, I have to make only too often in connection with matters of wine – and one that’s inevitable when it comes to taking a position on whisky and horses. Another Johnson quote had occurred to me when I was idly pondering possible connections between these two splendid topics (apart from Kenilworth, that is). Oats, perhaps? In his Dictionary, Dr Johnson had been unable to resist defining oats as “A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland appears to support the people.”

One-nil to England. But Johnson was talking about the Scots eating oats, not drinking a fermented mash of the grain, otherwise, I thought, he might have been less sneery. In fact (my pure ignorance, madam), while whisky can be produced from any grain, it is mostly barley, rye and corn that are used. Oat-based whiskey was also made in Ireland until not long ago, however, and I have been told that American distilleries (the other source of whiskey-with-an-e, of course) sometimes used to blend oats and maize – but this made for a rather sticky mixture and sometimes the stills clogged up and exploded.

Dr Johnson wouldn’t have known anything about American spirits, and claimed to have only once tasted the Scottish water of life. He had an ambiguous respect for spirit originating in grapes rather than grain, however – though little for the intermediate wine stage: Bordeaux he called "poor stuff’. “No, Sir, claret is the liquor for boys; port, for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.”

Our Samuel was clearly more of a party-pooper than a drinker (can we forgive him for pointing out that “Wine makes a man better pleased with himself; I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others”?), and I am obviously not going to join him in denigrating wine. It must be admitted, though, that not all that many South Africans are necessarily on my side in this. If the national hard stuff under the old regime was brandy (with or without coke), it seems that for the rising black moneyed class the main tipple of choice is whisky.

The signs are, literally, all over the place – not least in Soweto’s trendier bars and restaurants, with umbrellas promoting whisky brands, and an enormous advertisement at Pimville’s Backroom reportedly costing J&B some R30 000 per month…. What wine or brandy company could compete? According to a recent Business Day article, South Africa (and notably Soweto) is the world’s fastest-growing market for Johnnie Walker Blue Label - the premium-brand whisky selling at about R1200 per bottle retail, and costing even more as a good-drinking status symbol when the well-heeled flourish their credit cards at Sakhumzi’s or Robby’s Place.

Brandy’s image is old-fashioned and a little tarnished, it seems, while whisky is probably the drink most associated with the yachts, polo-fields and après-ski chalets of the international rich elite – not as flashy as vodka, but a little classier and more aspirational, with even elements of mystique (those single malts!), and price tags at the top, rare end calculated to satisfy the most ambitious. The standard blended Scotch, or bourbon or Tennessee mash, has sufficient jet-set flavour to make it safely chic.

Safe’s the word, the wine-devotee might grumble. Sure, there are the big-brand wines, but when you realise that there are not many more than a hundred distilleries in Scotland – less than a fifth of the number of wine-producers in South Africa alone – it’s clear that things are not only much easier for the whisky-marketers, but also for the whisky-drinkers. Especially as the whisky lover comes to know exactly what to expect: your next glass of Macallan 25 year old or Jack Daniels or Jamieson’s should taste as near as dammit to your last glass. Satisfying, but not exactly exciting, surely?

They try to play the consistency game with the likes of Tassies and Graça, but seldom fully succeed even there. Remember too that, unlike spirits, wine continues to develop (for better or for worse) in the bottle. The glory of wine is its infinite variety – when, at its best and most interesting, a glassful tells the story of a summer’s rain and sunshine, of soil and slope, as well as of the skill and care of workers in the vineyard and the cellar. A bewildering, exasperating glory sometimes, but one that spirits, for all their virtues, can only dream of….

As for connections between horses and whisky, here’s another: swirl a dash or two of Angostura bitters around a glass; add ice and a generous tot of bourbon (preferably), then ginger ale to taste, and a lovely curl of lemon. Why this highball should be called a Horse’s Neck, I have no idea: pure ignorance reveals itself yet again.

• This article first appeared in the February 2007 edition of Parade, a magazine showcasing South African horseracing and breeding. It is reproduced here with permission.