Who looks the plonker: the whisky bore who drinks the oldest single malt within reach or the person who likes it with a splash of coke?
Well here’s a thing. The guys who make the world’s whisky when down the pub have a choice of mixer on the bar: a jug of water or a bottle of lemonade.
They choose, of course, the lemonade because that’s what they like best, according to whisky maker Ian Williams manager of Home of Johnnie Walker at the Cardhu distillery.
Williams himself has been mixing coke with his whisky since the 1960s. But that doesn’t mean he’s averse to sitting down with a ten year old Talisker (which is about as good as you’ll get) with a dash of water.
Scots have been muddling herbs, fruits and other concoctions into their whisky since they first invented it. At first it was to make their backyard brews palatable. They used to drink it young and raw out the cask. But one ay one day one was left in a forgotten corner for a year or two maturing into something altogether more drinkable.
Now we are back adding coke to whisky with every year more people drinking premixed whisky in coke than ever before and trading up to the posh premium brands.
So there I was earlier this year at Circa The Prince in St Kilda icing my hands with a Mint Juleps, followed by an Old Fashioned while Williams held forth.
Why, he says, should people be snobby about blended whisky when the finest champagnes in the world are in fact blended?
“Eighteen whiskies. A record, I think,” poet Dylan Thomas 1953 before he slipped into a coma at the bar White Horse Bar in New York. He died shortly after from alcoholic poisoning.
I tried a similar number of whiskies in another century and another country. I just survived, waking up the next morning with an unfortunate amount of haggis deposited up my nose, down my lapels and, don’t ask me how it got there, in my jacket pocket.
But it was enough to keep me away from the stuff for more than a few years.
What surprised me at Circa was how I could face this old adversary without a bucket by my side.
Whisky is usually 40 odd per cent alcohol, which means it isn’t the kind of drink to take neat. The blenders themselves drink it at 23 per cent alcohol, which means diluting it with an equal amount of water.
Whether it should come from the tap or not depends upon where you live. Williams himself living in Scotland rates Sydney’s water but was disappointed what came out of this St Kilda tap.
Bottled water is perfectly acceptable as is filtered water, which might also be used to make ice cubes if you are in the inner Melbourne locale.
Diluting the whisky first off all stops the tongue from feeling like it is being burned by the alcohol. Alternatively, especially if you are tackling it, the tongue can be anaesthetised with iced water – it works.
Age isn’t important in choosing a whisky.
Up to and including 2002, Talisker won six gold medals and four trophies. It was rated as far superior to anything older by those who know. Johnnie Walker Blue label is pretty superior at $280 a bottle and doesn’t date it self. that’s because the blenders mix the best of the millions of barrels they have in store.
That’s a Johnnie Walker Blue please. And plenty of coke.
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