It was pretty hard yesterday to be unaware that something called Mad Men had come to a halt.
Everyone was talking about it. The chatlines on the cobweb were full of it. Even those of us who’ve never owned a television knew Mad Men was over, although there was still plenty of sickening madness being wrought by men.
Particularly diligent twitter cruisers without televisions seemed to think this closure had something to do with Coca Cola but I can’t tell and I may never know. It wouldn’t surprise me.
I’ve never seen Mad Men. Or Game of Thrones, for that matter. Instead, I read books or stuff on the net. When I asked the famous US Wine Spectator scribe Harvey Steimann what the Game of Thrones actually was, he thought I was joking. I hear that it’s like The Hobbit with a bunch of soft-core porn but you’d know better than me.
Hairy toes never were my favourite suck.
One thing I do know a bit about is international booze sales and as far as I can see, Game of Thrones hasn’t done anything to the sales of anything other than maybe home-delivered pizza, especially when compared to what the Mad Men did to whisky sales.
While these new TVs Joe Hockey bought us are too thin to have pizza dribbling down the front, I know from the bean counters and television product-placement doctors that Mad Men was responsible for an unprecedented surge in the international sales of whiskies. Not only did the world rip into scotch whisky like never before, but Irish whiskey, as in Jamieson’s, suddenly boomed in the US, followed by an astonishing guzzle of bourbon whiskey, rye, like Canadian Club, and anything else called dark spirits or the even more sinister bastards like black spirits, as in rum.
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This fever for the drinks that eventually make you sweat and that sweat stink like acetone was so intense, thanks to Mad Men, whoever they were, that the world began to run out of cheap barrel oak. The white oak, Missouri oak, Quercus alba – it’s all the same thing – that grows like balsa wood in the US is suddenly a threatened species. Those who have never really had to fight over it before are fighting over it, and US whiskey makers are beginning for the first time to establish their own cooperages and plant tranches of forest just to guarantee barrel supply.
This is a very big deal. It’s never happened before.
It even looks like the whiskies will soon be outselling vodka. This, of course, will depend on the cheap oak forests of the US being able to keep up with the barrel supply. Whiskies are basically wood-aged vodka but the makers of them buy only cheap oak. The slower-growing, denser-grained French oak is beyond these blended whiskies; it’s reserved for extravagent pure malts, and even then, only the very few at the absolute peak of that seductive but treacherous mountain.
Because it needs no oak maturation, and can be sold pretty much straight off the still, vodka should be considerably cheaper than the whiskies. And overall, like right across the world, it usually is, although you wouldn’t think so in many Australian shops or bars.
About a year back the vodka world breathed easier for a while, imagining they’d begun to stem the flow of their customers to the whiskies, but thanks to Mad Men, that respite was short-lived. The whisky thing was on – there was no stopping it.
Whisky, mainly the scotch sort, dominated world spirits consumption for hundreds of years. For a while in the swinging ’60s, white rum looked like giving it a bit of a run, led by the Cuban Bacardi family, who understood marketing. Vodka was mainly locked behind the Iron Curtain in Russia and northern Europe – it was a communist drink. Then when Fidel Castro’s Catholic socialist revolution in Cuba turned communist when Raoul came back from Moscow and told his big brother he’d just swapped their idealism for armaments Fidel nationalised bloody everything quick smart.
After the Bacardis ran for it to put their money in Bermuda and re-estabish their manufactory in Puerto Rico and Mexico, drinking Bacardi became a sort of cool anti-communist activity.
But vodkas like Smirnoff became prolifically manufactured in the west and rum never really got another look in. When the Swedes invented Absolut in 1981, vodka just creamed it. When Gorbachev dismantled the USSR it looked for a time that Russian vodka would surge fashionably, but nah. Instead, vodka from nearly everywhere else boomed, being manufactured, because it’s easy, everywhere from New Zealand to Alaska. Countries that can put a dinkum marketing plan together and stick to it. Russia can’t market. And it obviously hasn’t got the right sort of Mad Men.
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Now, the biggest-selling spirit in the world is China’s baijiu, the deadly sorghum-based white spirit we see here in the white Moutai bottle. China makes about 5 billion litres a year. Internationally, vodka’s on about 3.5 billion litres. After Russia, the US is the biggest vodka drinker, thanks to non-soviet brands like Absolut and Smirnoff.
Then come the whiskies at around 2.9 billion litres and climbing. Until the Mad Men went away.
When they were going nuts, Mad Men saw the Irish Jameson’s whiskey growing at an astonishing 21 per cent per annum in the US; Johnny Walker whisky was not far behind, although I think the Johnnies Red and Black Label still outsell Jammo’s in volume. This US surge was mirrored in Australia, especially in the hipsters. Between the beginning of Mad Men in 2007, and the end of 2013, Australian 25-35-year-olds doubled their whisky/whiskey consumption.
It will be very interesting to see what happens now.
At Casa Blanca, we like to keep a foot in each camp when it comes to the vodka-whisky war. Apart from the odd stray shot of Jammo or Canadian Club, it’s all scotch here.
Well, not quite. I’m convinced now that the best luxury malt whisky, like around $100 and up, comes from Tasmania and Japan. In both places, malt is made by design, while in Scotland it’s made by default. Suntory Yamazaki is exemplary; in Tassie, Lark and Hellyer’s Road are on par.
But as far as everyday winter dramming goes, like realistically, it’s the bargain blended scotch that’s the staple. The favourites are Teacher’s Highland Cream or The Bailie Nicol Jarvie, both of which you’ll get at modest rates in BWS or Hungry Dan’s. Call it perverse, but I find their flavours a bit coarse and caramel, so I cut them with Absolut vodka, which is often on discount, too, but is extremely clean spirit, as Finlandia once was. I drink this considered blend with a splash of soda. Which I wouldn’t do with a Suntory or Tassie dram.
Another wickedly cheap low-cal tincture is Absolut with a dribble of Bickford’s Essence of Coffee and Chicory and a shoosh of 75 cent soda. If that’s still too sugary, chill espresso coffee and use that in your vodka. Somebody’s gotta maintain the capitalist madness lest Putin take over.
As for baijiu, nah. I can’t see it. I’ve sunk it from one end of China to the other as the officials hopelessly queue up to outdo me, but nah. Not needed Down Under. We’re not that mad.
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