FELLOWSHIP in whisky

Whisky is the most romanticised and mythologised of alcoholic drinks. Its public personifications are familiar archetypes portrayed in popular culture and as caricatures in advertising tropes. However, rarely do consumers rub shoulders with rebellious rock stars, Hollywood celebrities, royalty, bad bikers or fictional and historical characters like the warrior clansman or gun-slinging cowboys who make up some of the most recognisable whisky personas. Behind these media stereotypes, a more private, contemplative, even banal relationship leads adults into whisky. It is a fellowship where friends and strangers share the same interest or aim, the pleasures of whisky and its camaraderie. For whisky binds and instructs us through small gestures of hospitality and communion, as whisky serves the “oil of conversation, a philosophical wine, the ale consumed when good fellows come together” (Noah S ‘Soggy’ Sweat, Jr., The ‘Whisky Speech’ to Mississippi state legislature, 1952). But behind this feeling we all know is the complex psychology of the ‘whisky drinker’ and a whole world of influences that help this most complex of spirits draw us irresistibly towards it.

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