This is called Talk Whisky To Me, but I haven’t been doing much talking lately. So in lieu of a conversation, and as an inquisitive science nerd with an interest in the creative bigger picture and the structure of the spirits industry generally, here are some things I have been wondering about.

~ What does innovation actually look like, for whisky? Is it even important, when the most commanding examples of whisky – and other spirits – appear to be produced under kind of basic, everyday conditions? Is it like Italian shoes – just use good materials, your imagination and skills, and build them to last?

~ is wierdness in whisky like wierdness in fashion, or music? That is, that bleeding-edge concepts must exist so that broader tastes and ideas have room to change and grow?

~ Is the industry big enough to accommodate everyone? (It has to be. And there’s this.) The recreational whisky lovers (me I suppose), the sartorially inclined whisky-gentleman, and those who live on some kind of whisky dark-web and communicate only behind locked doors in search of that last independent bottling from closed XYZ distillery that tastes like some combination of spring flowers, religious sacrifice, and dark, beautiful romance? (also what is that whisky, i want to drink it so I can write that exact tasting note)

~ What if the guy who paid $60,000 for a bottle of scotch whisky that he will never drink, bought 60 x $1,000 whiskies and helped others share the passion and expand their awareness of incredibly gorgeous examples of single malts? (It’s not his job to do that, unless it is. Too bad for us!)
~ What is exclusivity, anyway?
~ What is the role of conspicuous consumption in the whisky industry? Is the existence of the ‘luxury’ concept in fact alienating? Why do women pose in their underwear with whisky? Am I missing a promotional opportunity here (pls comment y/n)? On that note, why do men not do this? Can I even ask this? I mean, it’s all right there in my Instagram feed…
~ Scarcity. Is it all about the limited releases?

~ what actually happens, when you’re re-opening a closed distillery? Do you start from scratch but with a solid grasp of the distillery’s … raison d’être? Strive to re-create a product which was simply the result of a unique constellation of circumstances and people? Consider the relaunch of the (yes, fashion) Elsa Schiaparelli label when the woman herself is long gone. INXS after Michael Hutchence, maybe. Don’t scoff, but I was thinking that Walter Benjamin’s ideas about aura and authenticity might apply.

 

~ Is access to genuinely interesting whisky really only about who you know? (Not really, and being lazy certainly won’t help)
~ Do more bars sell expensive whisky in half pours yet?
~ Do we get to find out for ourselves how micro gravity influences spirit maturation?  Can us mere mortals taste it one day? Or do Ardbeg and the laboratory instruments have all the fun?

Also I dare someone to send a cask to (1) the moon and (2) mars but also how would an oak barrel cope with the G’s, would you have to test various casks at NASA first? Wait – I know someone who is working on the Mars mission…  #spacecooperage also surely it’s not just microgravity. What about the effects of atmospheric pressure, humidity, temperature, … we’re talking organic substances in a place where such things are unwelcome.  (also, #spacecooper should be a thing)

~ Back on Earth, in the meantime do I simply satisfy myself with learning more about distillery character and the myriad cask options and IBs that are available to me, without going broke? (easy answer: yes.)
~ Who actually invests money in new distilleries? How much money is being made, and lost? How long does it take to make money? is making whisky like being an artist? (no.)  How do you decide on the balance between bottle price, sales and distribution, and getting your whisky into as many hands as possible? Will gin always be the way in?
~ What sort of marketing budget do people have, more importantly if it’s a re-birthed cult distillery do you even need a marketing budget outside of an internet connection and a reasonable imagination? (“Reasonable imaginations cost money these days, Steve,” sighed Mel, as she stood leafing through a magazine in his office.)

~ New distillers. Whose advice do you seek? Whose opinions do you court, and why? How do you critique your efforts? Are you forgiving, open, brutal, goal-oriented?
~ Is all this just me? Honestly for TWTM I just want to sit by a river or on a beanbag or a lounge somewhere, with friends, and talk about stuff like this. With a nice whisk(e)y in hand.

The end.

 

Top photo: Educating Rita. Poppy field: Dave Shrubb. Walter Benjamin: these guys

I’m fairly sure that there’s a word for the moment when you start to evaluate how much you don’t know about something. Specifically, whisky. Was it the US Defense Secretary Colin Powell with his “known unknowns”? Waking up and smelling the espresso martini?

Earlier in the timeline I didn’t mind how much or how little I knew, because I was having fun and learning as I went. But things change, I’m still having fun ( + learning) but others seem to be having more professional fun and now it seems to matter because life moves pretty fast, as Ferris Bueller – a famous 1980s life coach – once observed.

I got to thinking that maybe I’m going off track. Should my enjoyment of drinks with a very high ABV simply remain a recreational habit? At what point does my liver resign because it knows alcohol can be a poison?

Is my aim to earn money in the realm of the (distilled) spirits? With whisky specifically, although I could live with rum, or cognac?

So in the interests of freedom, here is my cut-through no-holds-barred, fearless, based on nothing other than the concept of whisky, career options brainstorm list. It’s a work in progress.

1. Work in a bar that serves whisky. (I promised myself that my next career move would very specifically not involve me filling in a timesheet, and I last worked in a bar when I was 24.)
2. Work in a bar that serves only whisky. (but pouring whisky for people who are curious and nice & brainy + cool enough to come to a whisky bar would be so much fun. Plus, all that whisky)
3. Own a bar that serves whisky (I could really make it my own and I could even open one in Finland or France or northern Italy, and the margins might be OK if it wasn’t in Sydney).
   

   The interior of the Smallest Bar in the World, in Milan: unfortunately it was full on the night I wandered past 🙂

4. Manage a bar that serves whisky. (own and manage?)
5. Create whisky-related commodities. (could be fun, and does not appear to involve timesheets.)
6. Make whisky. (may I please borrow $500k and a small team of dedicated individuals, I will have a crack at the planning approval)
7. Work in a place that makes whisky. (I believe it’s called a distillery.) (timesheets maybe, but there’s chemistry and, well, everything else, so that’s actually fun)
8. Own a place that makes whisky.  (in art and film, a ‘still’ is a frame capture from a moving image:  But in whisky world, a ‘still’ is a mysterious copper orb made of steamy magic). (not sure how this is different from #7, other than the steamy magic bit.)
   

   H. Heijenbrock, 1905.

9. Own a company that owns a place that makes whisky (well it never hurts to have goals. Or …revenue. Hi Diageo, Chivas Bros, Beam Suntory, Remy Cointreau, William Grant, Edrington, et al., like I know all about them)
10. Work with a company that owns a place that makes whisky (timesheets though) (nice budgets though.)
11. Be a cask broker. (Like magical networking with whisky as the result.  Talking to winemakers and whisky makers. These would be nice conversations)
12. Get academic. (research funding y/n)
    

    Edouard Manet, The Absinthe Drinker, 1836. Back then, you could still enjoy your drink outside the bar.

13. Alcoholic. (It’s a little out of fashion, and not really my style anyway: I’m no good with hangovers. Also a bit tricky to make a living.)
14. General Hedonist. (I can’t work out if it is the Italian sensualist in me or the Viking genes or just an aussie upbringing. Either way it’s a part-time volunteer gig.)
15. Talk to people about whisky. (there are some seriously talented people out there who have drinked and talked more whisky than I have drunk water and talked about .. anything, which is hard to imagine as I talk a Lot)
16. Write about whisky. (writing is fun. I’m not sure if I’m ready for more than a current audience of about 31, but what an audience: you’re here reading my errant take on things, and by the way you look super-hot today. If you’ve read this far, the whisky’s on me)
17. Just keep drinking whisky.  (“Look at more art.” An artist/lecturer once gave me this advice when I – a grown woman returning to undergrad study – confessed my fear that I had no idea what I was doing. I had thought this was rubbish advice, and later came to understand that I’d wanted her to solve all my problems: the definition of not taking responsibility for myself. Later realising that deep down, I was also facing a lot of self-doubt. You certainly can’t make good art (or music) by ceding to other people’s directions all the time and avoiding your self, and I definitely won’t get any further with whisky by not tasting it.)
18. Relax. Even if I’m clueless and remain forever so, I still really love talking, writing, and thinking about everything to do with the whisky. Magic is just the things we don’t yet understand.

Images:

The Gold Room in The Shining, 1980  –  Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, 1986 – Dangerous Goods transport placard  – Smallest bar in the world – Rachael from Blade Runner, 1982 – Copper still painting – The Absinthe Drinker, Edouard Manet  –  Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, 1977