The drama busters
It comes as a surprise to many that one of the best-selling and most-preferred whisky brands in South Africa is made in the Cape winelands. Joanne Gibson visits the James Sedgwick Distillery in Wellington.
It’s a dreadful spring day complete with intermittent rain, a hail storm and heavy mist obscuring the surrounding mountain peaks. There’s trout in the dam, an emerald-green golf course across the road and a wee dram of whisky in our tumblers. We could easily be in Scotland. “But our whisky distillery is in Wellington, South Africa, and we’re very proud of that,” says Andy Watts, master distiller and only the sixth manager at Distell’s James Sedgwick Distillery since it was established in 1886. “Working here seems to be a life sentence,” he laughs. “But there are defi nitely worse places to be…”
Watts should know, having grown up in Penistone, Yorkshire. A professional cricketer with Derbyshire CCC, he arrived in South Africa in 1982 to spend six months of each year coaching Boland. Within three years, he had not only met the “Afrikaans meisie” he would marry, but landed a job at Stellenbosch Farmers’ Winery (SFW) where he got involved in the spirits blending side of the business.
In 1988, a technical agreement between SFW and Morrison Bowmore Distillers led to an invitation for Watts to visit Scotland for six months: “Probably because I was the only one who could speak English,” he jokes. (His Afrikaans, by the way, is fluent with Yorkshire inflections…) He worked “hands on” at Auchentoshan in the Lowlands, Glen Garioch in the Highlands and “magical” Bowmore on the island of Islay, an experience he describes as “invaluable”. And he returned determined to prove that producing good whisky was not the prerogative of the Scots. “After all, up to 95% of Scottish grain whisky was made from South African maize until the mid-1980s,” he reveals, “We’ve always had the raw materials to make great whisky; we just haven’t had the 500 years of tradition.”
On his return, Watts oversaw the movement of SFW’s whisky operations from “friend and mentor” Dave Acker’s R&B Distillery in Stellenbosch to the century-old James Sedgwick Distillery in Wellington, soon converting it into arguably the most advanced distillery in South Africa: “A perfect mix of automation and the human touch,” is how he describes it. “Everything is strictly controlled, from fermentation and distillation to the casks we buy, but when it comes to blending we certainly rely more on nose and taste than lab analysis.”
When Watts succeeded Acker as manager in 1991, James Sedgwick produced just one premium whisky, now called Three Ships Select. Pale gold and slightly sweet with a hint of oak, this is now one of the country’s bestselling whiskies – and make no mistake, South Africans enjoy their whisky. Only France, the USA, Spain and Thailand are bigger markets for Scotch than South Africa, with some 43-million bottles imported last year and the market continuing to show strong growth.
But commercial success wasn’t enough for Watts, who wanted to indulge his passion for the smoky, heavily peated style of whisky that he had come to love on Islay.
The result was Three Ships Five Year Old, launched in 1995 and winner of a gold medal at Concours Mondial 2007. “Obviously it’s a robust blend rather than a single malt, but my aim was to give consumers a hint of that Bowmore style.”
As it happens, Watts made SA’s first single malt in 2003 – a limited-edition 10 Year Old made from an “incredible” batch of malt distilled by Acker for blending purposes but chanced upon and kept to one side by Watts. A gold medallist and class winner at the 2007 International Wine & Spirit Competition (IWSC) in London, only 6 000 bottles were made available to the public. “I’d have liked to make 60 000 bottles,” says Watts. “They went like hotcakes!”
More recently, he has launched the Three Ships Bourbon Cask Finish, the first 100% South African blended whisky. “It’s a light whisky with sweet vanilla spices thanks to spending six months in first-fill American bourbon casks,” he explains. “In the beginning, we followed the Scottish style because that’s what South Africans were used to. But now they’re much more open to different styles of whisky, from Irish and Japanese whiskies to American Bourbon and Canadian Rye.”
It seems the world is equally open to South African whisky these days, with the Bourbon Cask Finish winning gold and being named best of class at this year’s IWSC. “In the past, South African whiskies might have been perceived as inferior. But we’ve now won several international awards and whisky authority Jim Murray gave our Bourbon Cask Finish 91 points (“brilliant”) and our Five Year Old 89 (“very good to excellent, definitely worth buying”) in his 2007 Whisky Bible. If nothing else, we have proved that we can sit on the same shelf and around the same table as the bigger, better-known international brands.”
Humbly describing himself as “the one-eyed man in the land of the blind when it comes to making whisky”, Watts is determined to continue spreading the word about whisky in general and Three Ships in particular. “I remember something I heard years ago, that in a golf club there are two things you can never tell a guy about: sex and whisky. Well, I’ve done a lot of tastings in golf clubs, and I can only hope these guys know a bit more about sex!”
His greatest pleasure at these tastings, always conducted blind, is the surprise on people’s faces when their favourite is unveiled as a local Three Ships whisky. A couple of years ago, even a WINE magazine tasting panel was taken aback when the Five Year Old rated ahead of four of the most famous blended Scotches. “We do taste with our eyes,” sighs Watts, adding that there is no better example of brand power in this country than the emerging black middle class drinking super-premium, super-expensive whiskies to show they’ve arrived.
He concludes: “Whisky is without doubt the aspirational drink at the moment.”
WHISKY BASICS
• The name WHISKY comes from the ancient Scottish and Irish Gaelic names for “water of life”. Evidently uisge beatha and usquebaugh sounded to the English ear like “uishgi”…
• MALT WHISKY is made from malted barley. The malting process causes the barley to germinate, converting the starch into sugars which make fermentation possible. The malt is then dried over a furnace, which imparts a distinctive peaty aroma if the furnace is laced with peat. After fermentation, distillation traditionally takes place in a pot still.
• GRAIN WHISKY is made from unmalted barley or other malted or unmalted grains such as wheat and maize and is typically distilled in a continuous column still.
• SINGLE MALT is malt whisky made in only one distillery and not blended with any other product from elsewhere. It may however contain whisky from several production batches made over a couple of years.
• BLENDED WHISKY contains a variable proportion of blended malt and grain whiskies. A good-quality blend may contain more than 40% malt, a cheap one much less. “The grain provides the canvas on which the master blender then paints his various malts,” is how Andy Watts puts it.
A BEGINNERS GUIDE TO ENJOYING WHISKY
Master distiller Andy Watts has a soft spot for the smoky, heavily peated style of Islay single malts, but advises the novice whisky drinker to start with something more neutral, such as the Three Ships Select (around R70 a bottle).
When tasting, Watts recommends a 50:50 blend of whisky and water. “But after travelling so much throughout South Africa, I’m very wary about two things: ice and tap water. If you’re going to pay so much for a good whisky, either filter your water or use bottled water. And remember that ice does pull in the flavours a little bit.”
Using the Three Ships range to illustrate whisky styles, Watts says the easygoing Select goes with anything from orange juice to a fizzy mixer. “In Spain, 99% of whisky is consumed with coke,” he reveals. The Bourbon Cask Finish (approximately R85 a bottle) is also pretty flexible: “On a hot summer’s day, try it in a tall glass with some ice and Sprite Zero. In the evening, simply drink it from a tumbler with a dash of water.” But don’t mess with the Five Year Old (up to R105 a bottle). “Presumably you want to experience the full, mystical impact of earth that has been decomposing over thousands of years! Those unbelievable flavours shouldn’t be mixed with anything.”
The James Sedgwick Distillery is currently not open to the public. For more information, call 021 873 1161 or email awatts@distell.co.za.
