A master distiller, Michael D’Souza, visited South Africa
recently to share a few notes with whisky connoisseurs on the great Indian
single malt.&nbsp; 



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When a master distiller arrives in South Africa from a part
of the world that is equally diverse, the result is a spirited confluence of
cultures and expressions.



On Michael D’Souza’s first trip to the ‘Rainbow Nation’ from
India, he was pleasantly surprised that besides the weather and the people,
even the local food reminded him of a vibrancy he thought was only to be found
back home. The similarities made him instantly feel at home.&nbsp;&nbsp; 



“India is a massively diverse nation. There are different
religions, cultures, colors and different foods. It is very vibrant; the
vibrancy is what we wanted to have inside the bottle,” he says, when we meet
him on a balmy Friday evening in November in Sandton, Africa’s richest square
mile. 



D’Souza has been making single malt whiskies for John
Distilleries since 2008 in Goa, the Indian destination deemed a tropical
paradise the world over for its sandy beaches, swaying palms and uber-cool
vibe. 



Inspired by this trip to South Africa, D’Souza now wants to
create a fusion that combines unique tastes from both regions. 



“After tasting a couple of South African gins, and to be
honest, I have always thought about creating craft gin, I am thinking of making
a South African botanic infused gin. It can be an infusion of Indian spices and
botanicals mixed with South African botanicals. India is famous for its own
spices, especially coriander and cumin. I can infuse this with some of the
South African botanicals like rooibos.”



D’Souza, who has been in this profession for 25 years now,
enjoys traveling the world to explore drinking cultures whilst offering his
palate a taste of different blends. 



Founded in 1992 by Paul P. John, Paul John Single Malt
Whisky has won over 200 international awards in six years and is present in 35
countries around the world.The company distributes about 40,000 cases of
whisky.



For D’Souza, the shift in India’s drinking culture can be
judged by the increasing demand for single malt whiskies despite being 15 years
behind the western and European markets. 



“India is one of the world’s emerging economies and the
buying capacity of people is increasing. They are gradually shifting from
cheaper whiskies to premium whiskies. A lot of youngsters travel the world and
once they come back, they change their drinking preferences.”



The man who enjoys his whisky neat says the company decided
to grow into international markets faster. 



Paul John Single Malt Whisky has been distributed in South
Africa for over a year. 



On his recent two-week tour, D’Souza visited Johannesburg,
Cape Town and Durban. 



“Johannesburg is one of the biggest markets for us… I found
that it is a mix of quality and cost-consciousness. I have been to a lot of big
retailers and I saw a lot of Irish and blended whiskies selling.” 



Back home in coastal Goa, the climate not only adds flavor
to the fusion but allows the spirit to mature faster.



“India is a different region altogether. The beauty of
whisky is that each and every whisky will have its own regional characteristics
because once distilled, the spirits go inside the wooden cask. Once it is
filled, it not only interacts with the wood, but also with the world,” says
D’Souza. 



The distilled barley, found at the foothills of the
Himalayas, absorbs the saltiness through the pores of the oak cask adding more
character to the whisky. 



D’Souza, who presented a whisky masterclass at the 2018
Whisky &amp; Spirits Live Festival in Sandton, Johannesburg, attests:&nbsp; “Our whisky has been received very well by
South Africans.”

michael2

Indian master distiller gets a taste for South Africa

On a cool April afternoon in Johannesburg, we are at 4th Avenue in Parkhurst – a charming suburb with stylish resto-bars, Afr0-chic boutiques and eateries spilling on to the streets – for a rather heady experience in the middle of the day.
Every tipple, every bit of trivia is crucial for this entrepreneur on the block. At the Bottega Café, which gets full on weekends and most weeknights, owner Saverio Cardillo is always present to offer customers a hands-on experience and bespoke tastings of whisky.
He pulls up a chair and gets talking animatedly about the bottles of the fermented beverage that imperviously fill the glass showcases lining all the walls of his café.
For starters, he says there are two ways to spell it – and that could be a conversation starter at any party. The Irish spell it ‘whiskey’ and the Scots ‘whisky’.
“I call it the heaven journey. It is a little point that no one knows about. Every single person that walks in here and does not know about it, they walk in and say ‘wow!’ because it is like a little onion, that you can just exfoliate all these layers,” says Cardillo.
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The restaurant is small and intimate but the umpteen bottles of whisky in every crevice and the cabinets behind you, make it akin to a distillery, minus the bulky barrels.
Cardillo’s love for whisky started only over eight years ago when he was first gifted a Glen Ord by one of his suppliers.
“I tasted it and it was phenomenal. That is how I got into single malts and started dabbling in all the Ireland malts&#8230;”
A South African with Italian heritage, Cardillo says he has a palate for Scottish whisky. And for this interview too, whisky-tasting is a prelude.
He gets us to taste the Pogues Irish Whiskey, which is very gentle, soft and easy. My colleague tasted the Jameson Distillery Edition with the orange, brown sugar, ginger, peach and salt taste.
As a first-time whisky-drinker, I understood that not all whisky tastes bad, thanks to Cardillo, who knows how to pick the right taste for different palates.
“This is what it’s all about. People come in, sit down and drink their whisky and they don’t get intimidated when they come to my restaurant,” he says.
The Bottega Whiskey Club, which he started in 2013, boasts of over 2,000 members, mostly from the financial sector, lured to the club through word of mouth.
“We have four types of clients – those that know nothing about whisky and we try and educate you and try and accommodate your palate. Then we get the guys that have been to Scotland and have been collecting for years and years and only buy limited editions. Then you get the guys who buy whisky to stock up their bars. Then you also get the collectors that will drink their whisky,” he says.
The restaurant has over 700 malts, which they use for their whisky-tasting events. They pair the whisky with cigars and sometimes come up with different food pairings.
Surprisingly, for a self-taught whisky expert, Cardillo says that he is not a collector.
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“I am not like that. I am the type that needs to know what is in that bottle. I would hate to die one day knowing that somebody is going to be drinking my collection not knowing what was in that bottle,” he says.
But for those that do like to collect their whisky as a form of investment, Cardillo believes they could earn significant returns.
“We have bottles that we bought for R500 ($40) or R600 ($49) and now they are worth a lot of money. The increase in value of the whisky depends on if the distillery closes down. If they are no longer making any more of it, then the demand for that bottle of whisky increases,” he says.
Currently, the Jameson Gold Reserve has been discontinued, so he advises whisky drinkers should buy as many as they can of it, as the value of the bottles are bound to increase by 10%-15%.
“It currently retails at R893 ($73)… So you could look at doubling your money in a couple of years. For example, the Compass Box, they made just over 5,680 bottles; I was retailing them at R2,000 ($163), but I see now three years down the line, they are auctioning them and selling them at R4,800 ($392) to R5,000 ($408),” he says.
However, a whisky club as a business is not as lucrative.
“We turn a lot of stock [from the business], but if I had to do it purely as a business, no, I would not make any money from it. Not when you consider the rentals and other expenses. The club is purely for coming to see what we have and tasting the different kinds of whisky,” says Cardillo.
There is no right or wrong way to drink whisky.
“What you like and what the next person likes are two different things. You can’t get intimidated. You are only supposed to drink the whisky with ice or you are not supposed to drink the whisky with the ice. There are so many rules that are just falling away now,” he says.
The best way to put this to the test is to pour a neat whisky in a glass and drink it. You will be able to taste all the different aromas. Thereafter, pour yourself another glass and pour a bit of water and you will be able to taste the barrel’s wood. It will become spicy as you see the whisky open up, as it becomes cloudy, and you will be able to see the oils release.
<div id="attachment_36577" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36577" class="wp-image-36577 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Saverio-656-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Saverio-656-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Saverio-656-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Saverio-656-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Saverio-656-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Saverio-656.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Saverio Cardillo. Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla.</div>
“This is why I say when people ask me ‘how are you supposed to drink your whisky’, I say ‘it depends entirely on your palate’,” says Cardillo.
“I once had a gentleman who walked in here the other night and he ordered a Johnnie Walker Blue Label and he drank it with cream soda. I didn’t even cringe.”
His is not limited to just tasting whisky, he also resells whisky for collectors hoping for returns on their long-held bottles.
“…[I] am a little bit sceptical about selling their collections. I sell on behalf of them, and I don’t put my name behind it and I don’t sell it using the name of Bottega. I let everyone know that it is somebody else’s collection,” he says. Cardillo receives the commission from the proceeds of the sale.
“If something goes wrong with the lid or counterfeiting in whisky or it leaks, that is my reputation at stake, and that is what I have to be careful about,” says Cardillo.
Cardillo took his hobby and turned it into a calling imparting knowledge to discerning drinkers, making him a limited edition among restaurateurs.

Saverio-663

The Whisky Whiz On How His Whisky Took Him Far

Rowan Leibbrandt trained as a scientist but he ended up selling beer and whisky  in Africa.
A younger Leibbrandt, from the rural Matubatuba, outside Richards Bay in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, did everything right. He was a maths and science whizzkid and earned a university degree. But a career in science was not what he had in mind.
It was in 2012 that an epiphany in Nigeria changed everything for Leibbrandt. At the time he was heading Pernod Ricard’s marketing department, selling whisky brands in African emerging economies.
“Time and again I was with these young and rich Nigerians in focus groups. They were amazed by these whisky brands they had never experienced before. There were two things going on there, these guys attracted to international brands and there was this man with a briefcase representing these companies. I said, ‘hang on, I can be that man with the briefcase’. That was my real epiphany,” says Leibbrandt.
A year later, Leibbrandt found his first business partner in South Africa and he quit Pernod Ricard to return and form a company – Truman &amp; Orange. Jason Duganzich, a former brand ambassador for Glenfiddich, and Leibbrandt launched their distributing business in South Africa with a Scottish blended beer Innis &amp; Gunn.
By 2015, Truman &amp; Orange gained two more partners, an incognito financier in Zurich and Robert Hill, a brand specialist based between India and Britain.
“My insight was that in a lot of these African countries, some of the bigger companies are taking their eye off the ball. Things in Africa are happening far quicker than they anticipated. I thought that’s an opportunity for us. In the spirits front, Africa hasn’t really been there with the rest of the world. So, we have a 10 to 15 year window period while these guys are trying to set up in Africa for formidable businesses,” says Leibbrandt.
The journey began when Leibbrandt made his career switch from science.
“I probably wanted to work with people, so I found advertising quite captivating and I started my career in advertising. At that stage, the advertising agency I worked for managed a very small account for Glenfiddich in the early 2000s. The whole whisky phenomenon was not as big as it is now in South Africa,” says Leibbrandt.
He landed a marketing post at Glenfiddich in London in 2005. After three years, the company sent him to Moscow to set up a joint venture marketing business, which encompassed brands such as Glenfiddich; William Grant &amp; Sons; Remy Martin; Campari and Russian Standard Vodka, in a vodka country.
While he was in Russia, juggling work and an MBA at Warwick Business School in England, Leibbrandt met his wife Nadya Surikova.
“My wife Nadya comes from Russia, a country where the idea of working for one company your whole life is absolutely zero. The safest thing for them is to start your new business. One of the things young entrepreneurs often struggle with is the partner who feels security and safety when they are starting a business,” he says.
It was in Moscow where the idea of entrepreneurship took root in Leibbrandt.
“In many ways Russia was quite similar with South Africa, they had enormous political disruptions in the nineties, and later a mass emancipation of people with money that had been put into the system. You had a drinker who didn’t have a role model, like a father who had money, but is suddenly learning to drink these western products that are affordable to him because he’s making money. I started gradually to get the sense that I wanted to do my own thing. Each time I got promoted in the business, I started to realize that it doesn’t matter how high you get but you are still going to be answerable to somebody,” says Leibbrandt.
Leibbrandt says the craft beer revolution in South Africa taught a few lessons to Truman &amp; Orange.  Innis &amp; Gunn is a hybrid of beer and single malt whisky.
“Innis &amp; Gunn is the cornerstone of our business at the moment, but although it is the important part of our story, it’s by no means the most important part,” says Leibbrandt.
By the end of March, Truman &amp; Orange will be shipping its first sparkling wine and whiskies in Angola, Nigeria, Ghana, Congo and Kenya.
And he could have been a scientist.

Tag: Whisky

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Indian master distiller gets a taste for South Africa

The Whisky Whiz On How His Whisky Took Him Far

A Scientist With Spirit