On this episode of Scran we're fully embracing this time of year and investigating some of the more macabre elements of Scottish food and drink history.
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00:00 Okay, I'm joined by Christine and Jane and we're going to talk about whisky and winches.
00:09 Earlier in the summer during the Fringe I went to your show called Whisky and Winches
00:14 and I really had a really good time.
00:17 So since it's almost Halloween I thought I'd get them back and we'd have a chat about the
00:22 links that whisky has to winches.
00:24 So how are you both?
00:25 Good, thank you.
00:26 Thanks for having us.
00:27 Yeah, thank you.
00:28 Nice to see you.
00:31 So we'll just sort of start off by introducing you and who you are and what you do.
00:37 So we'll start with Christine.
00:39 All right, hi everyone.
00:42 My name is Christine Camara and I'm originally from Denmark.
00:46 I've been in Scotland for about a year and a half now and I am a singer and composer.
00:52 So for the past six, seven years I've specialised in Viking Age music and the music between
00:58 Scandinavian and Celtic folk music, which is what we've composed quite a bit here in
01:03 the show.
01:04 And so apart from that I also work in whisky.
01:09 I'm a Whisky Experience Ambassador and at the moment also part of our Whisky Foundation
01:15 in the City of Scotland.
01:17 And so when I moved to Scotland I was so lucky I was running into this lady.
01:23 And then we had this idea of whisky and whisky.
01:30 And Jane, what about you?
01:31 What's your story?
01:32 Hi, I'm Jane Ross.
01:33 I'm originally from Ireland.
01:34 I've lived in Scotland for just under 15 years, which is why my accent sounds a bit
01:38 diluted.
01:39 I've been working in the whisky industry since 2009 and I now own my own whisky bar
01:52 which I opened in 2020, which is called the Mother Superior.
01:56 I've always just done weird and wonderful whisky tastings and experiences and I've always
02:02 tried to kind of advocate for the woman in whisky and try and bring new pride to whisky
02:08 I suppose.
02:09 So I suppose the first key question is what are the main links to witchies from whisky
02:19 or whisky to witchlies?
02:21 I mean it's whether rightly or wrongly thought of, maybe not so much now, but it's historically
02:26 been a man's drink, thought of as quite a masculine industry.
02:29 So I think people might be quite surprised to know that it does have a history of women
02:33 making it, possibly even coming up with how to distill.
02:36 But what are the links to the sort of mythology around witchies?
02:40 I can, I can, so basically it all begins with alewives and brewsirts and these were really
02:52 pinnacle women in society who were creating essentially beer and spirits which were quite
03:00 nutritious compared to the darky water that was available at the time, particularly in
03:05 Scotland.
03:06 And basically people started giving any money that they had to buy what these women had
03:13 because it was safer and this includes children, children were drinking beer and spirits but
03:20 not that they were going to drink it.
03:22 And basically they were making more money at pulling the audience from particularly
03:28 the Protestant church and they didn't like that.
03:31 So they decided to villainise these women and create images of them with the devil and
03:39 yeah basically from this story that the women that were once hoping to be safe were suddenly
03:44 the ones that were giving them something to make them feel a little bit funny.
03:49 Something that goes all the way up to, if we go into the later centuries, around the
03:55 15th century, this thing of the healer, the female healer, not only women but men and
04:06 women, was just kept spinning out of control and leading up to the wolf-type vials that
04:11 came in, especially in the latter part of the 17th century.
04:15 And way before then, doing it was such an integrated part of the household, of what
04:25 women did in the home.
04:29 It was also something that they said would make a living off but the more profitable
04:36 it seemed to become, the more licensing laws were put in place that women, mostly widowed
04:44 supporting a family, single women who tried to support themselves, the licenses became
04:50 so clear that they couldn't afford them.
04:53 And actually several women were profited across images for the simple risk.
04:59 The first one was Bessie Campbell in 1506.
05:03 Apart from that we see different court writings, we also see one that mentions another woman
05:11 who was got the vial because someone claimed that she got herbs from the fairies that she
05:17 put in the spills of spirits that then corrupted the vines and the parts of men around her.
05:25 So it's something, that link has been going on for about a thousand years now and it's
05:31 still something that's stopping women to do it.
05:37 So basically it was a way to keep women down, they were making money, they were providing
05:44 a service but they were getting above their station as to say.
05:48 Do you think it set women back in that industry quite significantly because of the witchcraft
05:54 element?
05:55 Oh yeah, totally.
05:57 Even, well as Christine mentioned, women were actually executed for the still and whiskey.
06:06 And actually, weirdly when I looked into it, the laws were never actually taken away.
06:10 Realistically they are laws today that we could be tried and executed for the still
06:19 and whiskey.
06:20 And obviously no one has that figure at the moment, although I wish I never said it publicly
06:24 because maybe the politicians would change their minds.
06:28 But definitely as a woman who's been in whiskey since 2009, that's when I was 19 years old,
06:35 20 years old, and you know, even when I went to Dunwall for experience recently at the
06:41 moment in my 30s, and some man asked me, he said, "Oh how do you know so much about whiskey?"
06:47 And I said, "Oh I own a whiskey bar."
06:50 And he didn't believe him.
06:52 He asked me probably a dozen times, he was like, "No but who's behind it really?"
06:56 "Oh you want to know the man behind it?"
07:00 And he was pretty much like, "So it's just you."
07:02 So it's still ingrained in society that women shouldn't be or can't be a part of this industry.
07:10 But then again, it's ingrained in generational over a thousand years that women shouldn't
07:15 be distilling and producing alcohol.
07:18 And it's something that is very hard to work against because it doesn't only come down
07:25 to an industry of still and whiskey, it comes down to power structures and society in general.
07:32 Which is, all this, and licensing laws especially, but not only that, the trail of women who
07:40 were drinking throughout the centuries, going all the way up to the 20th century, was portrayed
07:47 as her essentially disrupting social structure, this idea of a poor family.
07:53 So it wasn't just a problem in society to have a woman who sold you to put alcohol in
07:57 the way, it's something that in a certain bar in New York for instance, it wasn't even
08:05 legal to have a female bartender until the 1970s, I believe it was.
08:10 So when you think about it, we don't have to go far back for women to not even be allowed
08:16 to put in the industry.
08:18 Luckily we have amazing initiatives today like our Whiskey Foundation for instance,
08:23 to help women in the industry, we have fair places like David McGraw Whiskey Bar, Becky
08:29 Wilkinson's from Lafroide, and we have so many different women to help move us forward
08:35 again and take our rightful place in the long term.
08:39 Apologies if you mentioned this earlier, but the sort of things that we recognise of witches
08:47 like the pointy hat, the broomstick, the cat, that all has its links back to sort of brewing
08:51 and distilling doesn't it?
08:53 Yeah, so when you look at the alewives and the brewsters, the way that they could be
08:58 recognised in society and in markets was they wore a tall pointy hat, so their hat could
09:04 be seen above the crowd, and they also had a broomstick outside of their residence to
09:11 let people know that there was alcohol involved, and then that was images the Protestant church
09:18 used, Westonburn, and used almost as a costume for these women.
09:23 It's got a wood carving, I think it's, I can't remember if it was the church that did it,
09:31 that really has, like Gina said, all the women with the pointy hat mounted on a broomstick
09:38 being chased by the devil, and that's from the 14th century.
09:42 Yeah, and also then the Protestant church made, the only way that to protect yourself
09:49 from witches was that you have to wear little wooden beads made of round grain, which is
09:55 one of the songs Christine sang a year ago, on a red ribbon.
10:00 Now I don't know if you know much about religion, but red is a very significant colour, especially
10:04 for the Protestant church, and these beads were suspiciously, well, sex things.
10:11 So it's almost a thing of save your soul from these women, come back to the church, we will
10:18 save you, wear some beads to protect you, and obviously rosary beads are still very
10:25 prolific in the Catholic and Protestant church.
10:27 Yeah, and I think that's that one that's come to the fore though.
10:31 Yeah, which when it comes to a lot of things with Christianity and folklore and pagan religions,
10:37 they're so over the point, there's so much that's floral, so to speak, or taken from
10:42 folklore that belongs to Christianity.
10:45 Yeah.
10:45 So if you're dressed enough as a witch this Halloween, you're actually dressed enough
10:50 as an alewife and you will well be able to serve some whiskey.
10:52 I think anyone who's dressed up as a witch, obviously if they're over 18,
10:58 they'd have to wear it on the scale of a witch.
11:01 Exactly.
11:02 As a way of passage to these women.
11:03 I think that's funny because when you dress up as a witch, you're dressing up as a very
11:11 powerful woman who was apparently instructed to function because of her…
11:26 So could you tell us a little bit about your show as well, sort of how you came up with
11:30 the idea, what people can expect, and if you're bringing it back either now or in the future?
11:36 Oh yeah, so we laughed when you said how we came up with the show because the show was
11:42 created because me and Christine, so basically I met Christine a couple of days before Covid,
11:47 obviously Covid kicked off, honestly never thought I'd see her again now that we're
11:52 dining with and then I was looking outside my bar window, Christine was just standing
12:00 outside the window, so obviously, well she came in and obviously I had to stay and have
12:05 a drink with her because that would have been rude, so we were drinking whiskey,
12:09 bar was bustling and we were laughing away, having our whiskeys and some man walked past
12:13 and said "oh you're like a bunch of cackling witches" and then we went "whiskey am I a
12:18 bit of a wimp" and we were like "oh my god" so it was literally born out of a drunk idea,
12:24 that was I suppose a slagging off from a line.
12:27 Very, very…
12:30 It's a very average show.
12:31 Thank you.
12:33 For choosing that line.
12:34 We've completed 16 shows, we are all in for 11 of them,
12:41 and we're in Denmark next week actually, so take a bit of time.
12:48 And we have a few more shows, so we're going to have to put on the next show because the
12:53 first one just went quite quickly.
12:55 Yeah, so when we are…
12:58 We're bringing back this history, so it's going to be…
13:01 I've got an idea right now, if Carol's got it,
13:09 so we'll do it in different ways, but bringing whiskey in that format is something we will…
13:16 Oh, totally, so we were going to do one for Halloween because obviously fitting,
13:21 but we got books for a corporate gig and we said "oh my god, we could get the real result".
13:27 So we're excited for the corporate event we're going to be doing, it's our first one,
13:35 and people are coming from London for it, so it's very exciting for us and we
13:42 didn't want to turn it down, but we will be doing another one.
13:44 Yeah, honestly the response we've gotten is quite humbling, so lovely,
13:50 and obviously we're going to do the Fringe next year, definitely, we're talking to…
13:56 We have a few more ideas, but we don't want to say anything in case it doesn't happen,
14:01 and then we'll be all sad.
14:02 Okay, so it's a bit of a hard question, and I do apologise because you must get this all the time,
14:07 but do you have a favourite whiskey or a favourite drink that you're going to be
14:10 enjoying this sort of autumn Halloween time?
14:14 That's hard.
14:14 Yeah, I started loads of whiskey, probably…
14:20 Not quite those, probably.
14:24 My go-to dram all the time is The Handmaid's Tale.
14:29 It's a core range on Smartbait and it is absolutely incredible, I like the changes,
14:38 the location, and honestly, it's just one of my…
14:41 My all-time favourite is the Botany and the Marble Whiskey and I still love it to this day.
14:45 But recently I did have a Lagerbill and a Cache out in my wine, and
14:49 even nearly 12 for the wine.
14:52 I would say our favourite.
14:55 Oh,
14:57 I heard lots of thoughts when people are from the peak of their skis as well.
15:04 I don't know how it was when I was 18, I'm sort of bored,
15:07 and I think I just fell into the pot of Peter Whiskey's there,
15:11 and that's one of the few whiskeys I was drinking then, that was real.
15:15 I would say one of my favourites is the Bourbon, I think.
15:19 I really enjoy that one.
15:22 Yeah, especially in the summer.
15:24 I love that one though.
15:26 I don't know if you can see it, but I'm actually about to say it.
15:29 Yeah, yeah.
15:34 Let's be honest, I don't drink any drums.
15:36 No.
15:37 Like, bring us one, bring us something, we'll taste it and…
15:41 Yeah.
15:42 I'm thinking, should we have a look more into what whisky which is actually is and what is your, you know.
15:49 We haven't said that much about that.
15:57 Yeah, we can just very shortly say that it's a musical whisky experience,
16:05 where we tailor whisky to the salt and to the whisky.
16:09 Do you want to just, yeah.
16:13 Yeah, there's a lot of folklore there as well, isn't there?
16:18 So there's witches, but there's also mythical creatures and folklore and music and whisky and…
16:24 it's a good night out.
16:25 It is.
16:26 Well, and what it is in general, it is a musical whisky experience, very immersive.
16:37 So we tailor each of the whisky from different regions, we tailor two songs to them, two
16:45 memories and then this woman does a tasting like you would not do.
16:50 It's a bit strange.
16:54 But what whisky and witches is, the fundamentals of it is, is to create an experience for people
17:00 who either want to delve into a little bit of whisky or into a little bit of culture or,
17:06 you know, just have a really nice night out.
17:08 That's something different.
17:10 All the whisky tasting, it seems to be the same stuff over and over again.
17:14 And yes, they're great, they're perfect, they have their place, don't get me wrong.
17:20 But it's nice to offer something to people that's a bit more accessible to a mixed crowd.
17:26 I don't think I've ever done a whisky tasting that's had such a varied audience.
17:30 And that's what excites me when we get people coming up and saying,
17:34 "We need to get into folklore."
17:35 And then they go, "Yes, yes, yes."
17:38 And I'm like, "Perfect."
17:40 You know, so the shows can go into many different regions, from theatre to people who like
17:46 storytelling, to people who just want to drink, you know, it's, and then it brings all these
17:52 people together.
17:52 And, you know, many times after the shows, we've actually stayed around with quite a
17:56 few of the audience members and, you know, just chatting, got to know them.
18:00 And it feels so personal, all these different people from different places all coming together.
18:06 And especially like the whisky and the stories.
18:08 And yeah, their music is phenomenal.
18:12 I'm getting really, oh my God, like, the thing.
18:15 Well, thank you very much.
18:19 It's been a really interesting chat and good luck with the rest of the shows and Halloween.
18:25 And yeah, cheers.
18:26 Thank you.