Edward Burns - Bad Whisky: The Scandal That Created The Worlds Most Successful Spirit

BAD WHISKY

The Scandal That Created the Worlds Most Successful Spirit

Edward Burns

Introduction

BE in no doubt, this is an important book. It is not as other whisky books. In fact, Bad Whisky is that rare thing: a challenging and thus refreshing point of view, based on original research (rather than the cut-and-paste seen so depressingly often) and expressed in plain language.

Edward Burns has done drinkers a favour. To quote Pip Hills (founder of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society and legendary scourge of the lazy and complacent) this book is a welcome antidote to the heritage crap with which some distillers adulterate the history of whisky.

Today, much whisky marketing is concerned with heritage and authenticity. We should be careful what we wish for. The Scotch whisky industry has been adept at re-writing its own history, carefully sanitising the past and wrapping it in a misty tartan nostalgia.

But how much of the heritage were sold today on corporate websites and in slick visitor centres and brand homes is authentic anyway? And what do we really mean by authentic? Scotch whiskys history was turbulent, often violent and subject to the vagaries of fashion and capricious chance. No doubt it had its fair share of villains, corporate chancers, rogues and the simply incompetent. Their stories should be told as well.

This book takes us into a seamy underworld, now largely forgotten. With Edward Burns as our guide we visit depressing tenements, squalid pubs and even more sordid illegal drinking dens bringing the largely unwritten history of 19th-century Glasgows teeming underclasses into vivid and sharp focus.

The 1870s was a pivotal decade for whisky, which was on the verge of respectability for the first time. With the advent and rapid adoption in Scotland of the continuous still and important changes in legislation, the newly fashionable blended whiskies were beginning to gain acceptance. Their uptake was assisted by a perversely purist attitude adopted by the Irish distilling industry, major representatives of which regarded the mixing of pot still whiskey with the product of the grain still as adulteration and nothing short of fraud, and by the enforced failure of brandy producers to supply their markets due to the devastating impact of the phylloxera aphid on wine production.

Shrewd and far-sighted men such as John and Tommy Dewar, Arthur Bell, James Buchanan and others saw the potential for great fortunes to be made. However, whisky could not make the progress they dreamed of if its good name was tainted. Hence much Victorian advertising lays great stress on the quality of the brand being promoted. Independent endorsement was everything. Following on from the success of the 1851 Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations a series of international exhibitions, fairs and expositions proved immensely popular.

All held competitions for products of various classes and the more reputable distillers were quick to enter them and then feature the various medals and trophies on their packaging and in their advertising (an echo of which carries on to this day). Other endorsements were also sought, Royal Warrants from the worlds various royal families, then prolific, being greatly prized.

Finally, the word of medical men and analysts was accorded great weight throughout this period. An advertisement from 1907 for Greenlees Brothers Claymore whisky features an analyst (looking rather more as we would imagine an alchemist) in his laboratory under a poster giving his verdict Absolutely Pure; Old Bushmills cleverly exploited the evidence of AH Allen, Public Analyst, to a Parliamentary Committee on bonding of spirits and John Dewar & Sons even issued a promotional pamphlet apparently written by A Medical Man.

Not to be outdone, the roguish Pattison brothers called one of their brands The Doctor and a number of 19th- and early 20th-century brands were promoted with variations of the theme not a headache in a gallon, or dram, bottle or barrel. As the Pattison scandal showed, unscrupulous publicans were not alone in profiting from padding out whisky, though the Pattison brothers did no more than pass off grain whisky with a dash of Glenlivet as pure malt. How innocent that seems in the light of Dr Grays revelations!

The endorsement of doctors seems distinctly perverse to todays audience, more familiar with dire warnings and pious injunctions to enjoy our product responsibly. Now we take the quality of our whisky today absolutely for granted, so what was going on? Perhaps, we might conclude, they doth protest too loudly.

The answer, as Burns makes clear, lies in how much whisky was dispensed, especially in the less reputable end of the trade. Bottles were expensive and bottling was labour-intensive. Accordingly, much whisky, even from prominent houses, was sold in bulk with the publican responsible for putting it on tap. In more salubrious premises it would be dispensed from large glass samovars, elaborately decorated with the name of the distiller (as can still be seen on the gantry of the famous Horseshoe Bar in Drury Street, Glasgow); elsewhere it was normal for it to be dispensed from the wood.

In the all-too-real-battle for survival (no welfare or benefit handouts from Victorian governments, let it be remembered) the temptation to spin out the whisky with a little water was all too obvious, tempting and easy. And, from water, to more sinister additives was but a small step, when the alternative was a step towards the Poor House.

That this occurred cannot be doubted. One of the more curious aspects of the decline of the major Dublin distillers was their reluctance, despite recognising that their empty casks were being filled with inferior stuff and passed off as Irish whiskey, to abandon the practice. In their 1878 campaigning book Truths About Whisky the principal Dublin distillers meticulously detailed the damaging use of Hamburg sherry, prune wine and cocked hat spirit in adulterating whisky. Today, such memories have been consigned to the dark cellars of whiskys history and are no longer mentioned in polite company, though if one was feeling mischievous they might be considered traditional practices. Indeed, it is not so very long ago that dosing casks with Paxarette (a very sweet, dark, sherry-based product) was considered perfectly respectable practice in preparing them to receive Scotch whisky.

Perhaps at this distance in time we can look at the sound and fury described so convincingly by Burns and conclude that it signifies nothing. Perhaps we can regard it with mild detachment, as irrelevant to us today, or perhaps even smile indulgently at it. But it was no laughing matter at the time: adulteration was killing people. To take another example, the sale of contaminated milk and meat products was a major source of tuberculosis (TB), a disease greatly feared by the Victorians because of its high mortality rate. Indeed, in 1870, Professor William Gairdner of Glasgow University reckoned that one-third of deaths in the city were due to respiratory disease, of which TB was a significant component. The contemporary Sanitary Journal commented on the sale of tainted food to the poor, crowded into Glasgows teeming and insanitary tenements: Unscrupulous butchers are only too ready to dispose of unsound meat, disguised in mince and sausages. From meat to whisky: it is not a great leap.

Eventually, of course, these practices were stamped out. Trading standards were more strictly enforced, the distillers gradually moved to selling sealed bottles rather than casks and legislation both general and specific was introduced. Social conditions improved in Glasgow and in the country as a whole and greater discernment followed increased affluence. Truly, drinkers could be said to drink less but drink better.