By James Lunt
The late author and journalist Christopher Hitchens gave a prudent recommendation regarding Scotch: “Be careful about upgrading too far to single malt Scotch; when you are voyaging in rough countries it won’t be easily available.” Those of you who have travelled in Cambodia and seen the Mad Max-esque sight of the strong midday sun winking off rows of Johnnie Walker bottles (a blended Scotch) lined up and filled with petrol at the ‘petrol stations’ will know this to be true.
The advice is sound, insofar as it is advisable to be comfortable with blended Scotch to avoid the disappointment of a single malt not being available. For those of us in the drinking class, as Oscar Wilde put it, it is sensible to be at ease sipping a Chivas Regal when in remote regions of the globe — whether you’re on the fringes of Maputo or in a dive bar in Detroit with a poorly stocked back bar.
However, one can quarrel with two points here. First, it’s an error to see blended Scotch as necessarily inferior. All Scotch used to be blended — that is to say, they were all blends of malt whisky and grain whisky. Single malts, with no grain, were thought to be too rough and potent and were consigned to limited bottlings. It wasn’t until the 1980s that single malts boomed and came to the forefront.
And that brings me to my second quarrel: it’s a bad mistake not to upgrade to single malts. To upgrade, as it were, is to embark on a real journey of discovery.
In his famous 1946 essay “A Nice Cup of Tea,” George Orwell gave his own advice on making a good cup of tea. Now, our topic is Scotch, but here was his point:
But still, how can you call yourself a true tea-lover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.
The Complexities of Scotch
And therein lies the window into the world of Scotch — a world of flavour, texture, and taste. Orwell’s imperishable point highlights how little we focus on taste. Tea with sugar is permissible, but it does objectively miss the point. It is an illuminating exercise to drink a Coke and realise how overrated it is as a drink — sip, and you will merely taste sugar.
Beginner Scotch drinkers will famously often describe a whisky at a tasting as simply tasting of “whisky”… nothing could be further from the truth. I encourage you (if you’ll forgive the cliché) to go down the rabbit hole and discover what is universally recognized as the most complex spirit in the world.
In the same way that watches can hold memories and experiences for a man, Scotches — and indeed whiskies in general — when imbibed at important moments (or, to pinch from Christian theology, kairos moments) can watermark your memories. A taste of a Scotch sipped at a special moment can take you right back to that moment, that place, that feeling — in the same way that handling, or even glancing at, a watch can.
Our sense of smell is strongly linked to memory — especially emotional memories — due to the direct connection between the olfactory system and the limbic system, which processes emotions and memory. This is why the scent of a particular grandpa’s cigars or the whiff of the perfume of a long-passed mother can induce such evocative and potent memories. To anyone who has been stunned by them, “olfactory memories” hit hard.
Now, Scotches — if you’ll allow me to use the commonplace phrase — really do become like old friends. You know their character, their personality, their flaws, and their quirks. And like seeing a very old friend, you don’t “catch up” with each other — you just pick up where you left off. And similarly to people, they can, in fact, sometimes change. There is something in the industry known as “flavour drift,” whereby changes in a flavour profile can occur over time. I am told, on good authority, that bottles of Johnnie Walker Red Label from the 1980s — essentially a mixer, not a sipping whisky — are sensational.
Be a Badass, Drink Scotch
I will conclude by coaxing you into the gentlemanly habit of sipping aqua vitae with a little nod to popular culture and a little dash of history. I’m sure there won’t be a single reader unaware of the 2009 Quentin Tarantino war film, “Inglourious Basterds.” There is a scene where Lieutenant Archie Hicox, a British commando, finds himself in a Mexican stand-off. Knowing he is about to perish, he picks up a glass of Scotch, takes a long pull, and says with triumph: “There’s a special rung in hell reserved for people who waste good Scotch,” before being killed by Major Dieter Hellstrom.
Well — cheers, or slàinte, to that.
Finally, then, to our touch of history: to Winston Churchill, who liked to enjoy a restorative dash of Black or Red Label with water in the morning. One of my favourite Churchill stories involves our man inspecting the Siegfried Line in 1944. He’s with 20 or so generals, a journalist, and a photographer. He may perhaps have been a Scotch or two deep at this point. At some moment he paused and declared: “This is one of the operations connected with this great war that must not be reproduced graphically.” He then proceeded to piss all over Hitler’s defenses.
You get the point. Be a badass and treat yourself to a bottle of Scotch.
