12/08/2018 What is an encyclopedia?

Yep, another book review. This one is a big one too: at 6.4kg, it is probably the heaviest book on tOMoH's shelves. It was sold at the Whisky Show Old & Rare this year, and sell it did! Sold out in record time. It was probably the best place to sell it, of course, what with all the world's geeks assembled in one single space for a weekender. Every one of those geeks noted how large and heavy the object is, and wondered how they would be able to travel back with it.
No doubt most will have returned home with the book intact, possibly sacrificing a couple of bottles in the process, that could not be carried.

The book in question is Emmanuel Dron, Collecting Scotch Whisky, An Illustrated Encyclopedia Volume I, 19th & 20th Century, self-published.

Impressions?

Well, at almost nine hundred pages, it took a little over a month's evenings to read it, cover to cover. See, if the volume is thick and heavy, it is mostly full of images, with comparatively little text.

The short version is this: although it stems from passion, it sometimes comes across as a vanity project. The topic of this book really is: "Here is my collection and these are my mates, who also have formidable collections."

As such, it works beautifully. However, it is called, and aspires to be, an encyclopedia. As an encyclopedia, it falls short in several ways.

If you are annoyed with my review already, you will probably not like what follows. I am a hopeless perfectionist hidden behind a keyboard and the convenient anonymity that t'Interwebs grants us all.
Take the below with a pinch of salt... and get over it.

Still there? Let's go!

The book's structure is not very rigorous

• Sometimes, Dron writes about a bottler, sometimes about an individual (Signatory Vintage vs. Ernesto Mainardi, who has bottled under several company names, i.e. several bottlers)
• The distinction between bottler and importer would deserve more explanation. It becomes particularly confusing where an importer became a "bottler" in their own right, yet still had to go through a physical bottler, because that importer/"bottler" was not based in Scotland
• Several bottles are shown multiple times, under the different sections (bottler, importer and collection, for example)
• Elsewhere, the author explains that, in the United States, Corti Bros and Whyte & Whyte were very important, early actors. In the section about US bottlers, the reader can find many pages on the Corti Bros offerings, niente on Whyte & Whyte. The latter is partially and counter-intuitively covered in the section about English bottlers, seeing as a Bristol-based company did the physical bottling for Whyte & Whyte. Duthie from Aberdeen did the physical bottling for Corti Bros, yet the Corti bottlings do appear in the US section regardless. That double-standard simply seems inconsistent and confusing

The author does not stick to his own rules

The volume is explicitly meant to deal with bottles from the nineteenth and twentieth century, yet there are a number of exceptions: many bottles from post-2000 are shown "for the sake of continuity." Usually with a disclaimer, but still.

There are more than one factual errors

For example, the author claims the bottler First Cask did not pass the 1990s. Firstly, First Cask is a collection, not a bottler: the bottler is Direct Wines Ltd.; secondly, my First Cask bottlings from 2013 say otherwise.

The book is crippled with spelling mistakes and inaccurate captions

"Copper's Choice" instead of "Cooper's Choice," "Clynelish 1966" under a picture of Jura 1966, "Macallan 1973" when the label clearly reads 1976 are but a few examples. It reads as though there was no proofreading of the finished product, or the proofreader read the text without the pictures. There are also common words which are incorrectly spelled and that any word processor will have underlined. The icing on the cake is Dron's insistence on writing "Macphail," even under an order form clearly signed "MacPhail." That is MacPhail from Gordon & MacPhail, only one of the most well-known names in the whole industry.

This
is annoying.

Generally speaking, the level of language is pretty poor

Yes, I do realise English is not Dron's mother tongue, but he chose it for his Encyclopedia. For the record, it is not mine either. More than once, I had to do a literal translation into French to understand what a sentence in the book meant.

The writing style does not work for me

The author takes shortcuts, assumes he will be understood and struggles to convey his passion via the stark accuracy geeks tend to display when debating their favourite subject (guilty as charged!) In that regards, it is on par with Ulf Buxrud's RMS book or Brossart's Brora book: lots of interesting, insightful information, but the presentation is not the best -- or, at least, it does not work for me.

For an encyclopedia, it has gaps

It has lots of pictures of bottles and lists of releases, which is in keeping with the spirit of an encyclopedia, but if the point was to show all the existing bottlings (according to the definitions on thefreedictionary.com, an encyclopedia deals with a subject exhaustively), then it is incomplete, sometimes admittedly ("Hard to list them all, as there are so many," "There is also another version at 43%" etc.) The most striking illustration is the "definitive" list of old Irish whiskeys bottled by Cadenhead in 1991 for their 150th Anniversary Commemoration collection that contains "all" said bottlings... except for a couple that are pictured in the same section of the book.

The very idea of an encyclopedia as a book is outdated

As Emmanuel Dron rightly points out, it is almost impossible to be exhaustive on a subject that is decades old and for which there are mostly no reliable records. Exhaustive lists of bottlings today belong in online databases, where any missing reference can be added by another contributor. Cue whiskogs (RIP), whiskybase, connosr and others.

A bottle of Rare MossTowie looking at a family picture

What is the verdict, then?

The above probably all reads rather negative, I know. This is a thoroughly enjoyable book all the same, mind you. It contains, in no particular order:

• Excellent pages on how to spot fakes and how to date a bottle
• Enlightening and entertaining interviews (of which Diego Sandrin's is possibly the best, again -- read his interview on scotchwhisky.com for a cathartic moment)
• Old newsletters and price lists to provide a good giggle (or a good facepalm, depending on which angle you look at them from)
• Many, many pieces of information thus far unknown to me, pieced together over twenty years of collecting and forging relationships with influential people of that world

Really, it is a good book, if one sees it as a collection of pretty pictures to show off a collection. Is that a bad thing? Of course not. Every collector wants to show off their collection; otherwise, what is the point? However, showing off a collection an encyclopedia does not make. Both Zagatti books, The Best Collection of Malt Scotch Whisky and The Best Collection of Malt Whiskies and Whiskeys Part Two, Formagrafica Edizione, carefully avoided that trap. This one walks straight into it.

In terms of encyclopedia and in the humble opinion of someone who has not written a book, Dron probably had better focused on a narrower scope for this first volume. There is too much in this book and, as a result, a lot of it is wishy-washy. A book focusing on Italian bottlers would have been more adequate to develop even further what is already the richest section of the current work. In fact, I had the fairly clear impression the author started his journey wanting to write a book about Samaroli, then widened the scope... and probably ran out of time to polish some sections before the February festival, which was the big launch.

By all means, read it and make your own opinion. Buy it, even. But if you are like me, a nitpicking perfectionist, almost unable to see the large contribution for the small flaws, you will likely be annoyed by petty details.

Now, I want to stick to my own unspoken rule of not posting anything here without a tasting note. I will therefore taste a whisky; an Italian bottling from the 1980s that appears in the aforementioned book.

Rare MossTowie 18yo (40%, Gordon & MacPhail for Sestante, b.1980s): the label does not state it, but it was bottled by Gordon & Macphail MacPhail for Sestante, as confirmed by il Signor Mainardi, founder of Sestante, in the book. I do not know of any Mosstowie bottled earlier than the ones in this series. That makes the "Rare" adjective of this particular one rather fitting -- you know, as opposed to "Common" MossTowie. No idea why they capitalised the 'T' in Mosstowie. Nose: light and biscuit-y, the nose has custard cream, cream soda, kumquat, boiled apple peel, cider in the making, Dundee cake, all sorts of jams and waxy plants. Shortly afterwards, it becomes "darker," with whiffs of treacle, raspberry jelly and then, pipe tobacco, plum liqueur and polished mahogany. Finally, cardboard and shaving foam manifest themselves. Mouth: the palate is soft, with apricot juice, a drop of lukewarm cider, tinned-pineapple syrup, Macadamia-nut butter, lots of soft, juicy plums and polished desks. A bit later on, at second sip, malted milk seems to appear too, not overpowering at all. In fact, this is civilised and elegant. Finish: meow! The finish shows plum liqueur, with the thickness and the creaminess of molten butter, or almond butter. A discreet touch of wood, butterscotch, creamy custard, fresh figs, tamarind purée, Christmas cake, Chinotto, melted milk chocolate, milk-chocolate coulis, even, and a drop of squashed raspberry. This is pretty sweet, without ever crossing the boundaries of the unacceptable. I would say it contains E150, unfortunately, though I have no way to prove it. Regardless, it is a cracking dram, well worth procuring. 8/10

Bah! Let us have another.

Bruichladdich 19yo 1989/2009 (46%, Signatory Vintage for Direct Wines Ltd. First Cask, C#90, b#87, L09/205): if one needed proof that First Cask did, in fact, survive the turn of the millennium, here it is. Nose: very fresh, with seaspray, green-grape juice, crisp apple, yet also some butterscotch. Soon, it has baking soda, a few drops of strawberry juice, lemonade, pineapple cubes, kiwi skins, warm cushions on a rocking chair, left in the sunny conservatory. After a minute or five, citrus shows up more prominently (satsuma peels, pomelo), toasted bread, and still that wonderful, crisp apple. Is it a whisper of smoke, in the back? Yes. That and sweaty socks. Mouth: acidic without being astringent, it has lemon juice, apple peels, custard powder, mead, pineapple cubes, crystallised oranges, mixed peel. Peppermint, maybe, lemonade again, mojito, tangerine, baked banana, Chardonnay. The banana grows in intensity, ending up coating the whole palate -- which is delightful... if one likes banana. I do. Finish: violet boiled sweets. It is the first time this dram gives me that impression, I think, but it is very clear, today! Once that dissipates, it is back to the fruity onslaught, with lime, grapefruit, dried apricot, dried-mango slices, bubble gum, some sort of citrus-y fudge, tablet. Baked banana is here again, perhaps sprinkled with droplets of rum. This is a light, ester-y and fruity number, not extraordinarily complex, but superb nonetheless. Again, well worth tracking down. 8/10