A Dram with Charlie Maclean

One of the great characters in Scotch whisky, Charlie Maclean is admired for his warmth, wit and walrus moustache. With a dram in one hand and a fag in the other, he shares a few tales from his forty-year career with Tom Bruce-Gardyne …  

There was a buzz of activity in Charlie Maclean's Edinburgh home when we met a few weeks ago. His three sons, Lachlan, Ewan and Jamie were making final preparations for an epic journey. Having done the Atlantic in 2020, the Maclean brothers are off to row the Pacific from Lima, Peru to Sydney, Australia, and are hoping to raise a million pounds for their water aid charity in Madagascar while smashing a few world records in the process.

It goes without saying, their dad is immensely proud if a little apprehensive. Only recently, someone in a kayak was swallowed by a humpback whale off the coast of Chile. Fortunately, the Macleans' boat is somewhat bigger, and the kayak and its occupant were quickly spat out.

Sadly, Charlie's own father missed the crowning glory of his whisky-writing career in 2021 when he was awarded an MBE for services to the Scotch whisky industry and charity. Having studied law after graduating in History of Art, Maclean Snr, was unimpressed with this move into whisky.

"My dad, who was a pragmatic Glaswegian surgeon, thought I was a complete failure. I'd abandoned the law, and failed to get a proper job," he says. "I was really unemployable. My only ambition in life was to be independent and work for myself." So, trading any semblance of job security for the freedom of being freelance, he began with some copy-writing for the Bells blend in the mid-1980s. Whisky books soon followed, and he now has eighteen under his belt with two more in the pipeline.

His first was a pocket guide to Scotch published by Mitchell Beazley in 1988. It was originally going to be on blends, but he was told it would have to include malts. "They were beginning to take off if viewed by the number of column inches in the press, but they were still very small," he says. That year Diageo's predecessor, UDV, launched the six Classic Malts, one for each of the whisky regions.

Though less popular now, this regional approach caught on. "Publishers loved it because it gave structure to a book, and consumers loved it because it gave them an entrée," he explains. "It was a way to display the fact that not all malt whisky was the same in a market where blended Scotch was becoming increasingly unfashionable."

Had he stuck to blends, it might have been a short career. Instead, he surfed the great malt boom and helped propel it onwards and upwards with his books, articles, tastings and stories. I have been lucky enough to know Charlie for years, and he is a wonderful raconteur. Perhaps, in another life he could have been treading the boards.

The chance came in 2010, when the scriptwriter Paul Laverty turned up to pick his brains over a few drams long into the night. "What I loved about Charlie is that he's a real enthusiast, and wasn't a whisky snob," Laverty told me of that first meeting. "There was a real kind of joie-de-vivre in how he treated whisky."

The film was 'The Angels' Share', directed by Ken Loach. Charlie was hired as 'whisky consultant' and, having read of an auction scene in the script, he invited some of the film crew to Bonhams to witness him auctioning some bottles for charity. It must have been a bravura performance because the very next day he was offered the part of 'whisky expert' Rory McAllister.

"But I'm not an actor!" he protested. "But that's the point," he was told. "Just be yourself." Which he did right down to his trademark monocle and walrus moustache. The film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2012. Has it led to further roles?  "No, not yet," he laughs. "But I'm open to offers."

Back to single malts, he says: "In retrospect, it was the salvation of the Scotch whisky industry, but it's come back to bite them on the bum. The industry sort of implied that malt whisky was more exciting, or even better than blended Scotch and differentiated them in price. This was picked up by consumers in the leading malt markets of America, the UK and Northern Europe."

Can this be mended? "I think there is a potential way ahead," he replies. "Once people become 'malt heads', many of them scorn blends, but over time they increasingly recognise the quality and skill that goes into making them."  That sounds optimistic. Such a progression in taste is unlikely to rescue the fortunes of Bells, The Famous Grouse, Dewars and other mass-market blends.

But it bodes well for those niche blends produced by Compass Box, James Eadie and Adelphi among others. Charlie consults for a number of smaller players, including Adelphi which launched its Maclean's Nose blend as a tribute to him, and because it's the name of a headland near its Ardnamurchan distillery. Apparently "it's doing phenomenally well, and is selling in 46 countries."  

Scotch lost out to vodka during its downturn in the 1980's and 90's. This time the competition appears to be from other whiskeys, though Charlie disagrees. "No, my feeling is Scotch has a desirable cachet. It has the history, the craft, the backstory, the skill and the variety."

And yet perhaps too much variety when it comes to 'special releases'. He is particularly critical of the endless churn of supposed 'one-offs' in travel retail. "In my experience many of them are not as good as the standard stuff you can buy in the shops, and they're sold at inflated prices and are over-packaged."

The diversity of Scotch is all around him with samples spilling from the surrounding shelves onto his desk to be nosed, sipped and assessed. Growing up amidst the bottles and whisky fumes, his three boys all have "very good palates," he says. Any day now they will be setting off on their Pacific adventure. "Can you imagine!" splutters Charlie in disbelief at the sheer scale of the endeavour. "Can you imagine rowing day and night for 9,000 miles!"  

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