Apart from the obvious pleasures of eating Garth Schnier’s amazing food and sipping a wee dram of 50 year old Balvenie, the highlight of yesterday’s Sandton Sun tasting was meeting a brace of bloggers: Marc from Whisky Brother and Mark from Whisky Tasting Fellowship.  While it is well known that most people in wine are called Thys, seems that Marc/k is the whisky world equivalent.  Which reminds me of how a single malt column for late, lamented Wine magazine had me enthusing about a fabulous single malt from Mark Alan (Macallan, geddit?)

Well SA whisky writing really needs a whole barrel full or Marc/k’s if the double page spread on what to drink at Whisky Live in the BA in-flight magazine High Life, is any indication.

Five whiskies are recommended:

Johnnie Red (I kid you not);

Jameson (served in poverty class on BA, so that one’s a no-brainer);

Michel Couvreur (imported by “whisky whiz” Patrick Leclezio who wrote the story, so that one’s a no-brainer too, although a disclosure would have been nice, if not essential);

Ardbeg, claimed to be the most peaty malt at “an eye-watering 55 ppm” of phenol even though the Ardbeg site claims only 50 ppm;

60 year old Macallan in Lalique crystal decanter.  The third edition is recommended and the second went for R139K.  A decade older than the Balvenie and half the price, it sounds like a deal to me.

This is worse than that old fraud Mr. Min alliterating all over the place in Sawubona.  Come on, BA, pull up y’re socks!  I bumped into an old friend on the 7:45pm BA flight to Cape Town who told me that if you export SA brandy to France and keep it there for six months, it miraculously becomes French brandy.  As the Chinese word for luxury is “French”, this sounds like a plan for Distell.  How about it, Dr. Caroline Snyman, queen of brandy?