Erikka Askeland: Dram shame not to enjoy glass of malt

WHISKY is not for cocktails and not for women, was what the bartender told my friend at the Scotch Whisky Association when he was introducing a taste of Scotland’s finest to some female visitors from abroad.

As I write this, yes, as perhaps you can tell by the picture accompanying this article, I am a woman and, would you believe it, I’m sipping a single malt. Albeit it’s straight, with a little water added, because I’m probably with the bartender on the abomination of mixing it with fruit juice or glace cherries.

Perhaps that’s just what all journalists do anyhow, you might be thinking, writing and drinking, and I’m not sure it is in my gift to craft an argument that will knock that stereotype on the head. For not only am I fond of a wee dram – or three – every now and then, but I even sometimes carry a small, lady-like flask with the stuff in my handbag. Lady-like because it’s pink with shiny doo-dahs in the shape of a heart on it, a gift from my sister-in-law which seems churlish to leave at the bottom of the drawer that has all the odd things in it such as balls of string, bamboo skewers and boxes of thumbtacks.

I once forgot I had it with me when I was due for a meeting at the airport. Going through security to go airside meant it was confiscated, with an amused “aye, right lass, you appear to be a journalist” look on the face of the man searching my bag for contraband. He was so amused, I even got it back when I returned.

It used to be that whisky was solely a man thing, a stiff drink in its no-nonsense tumbler with clinking ice cubes (and yes, before you write in, I do know that ice “bruises” a single malt), and advertising still sometimes panders to this image. It was probably what attracted me to try it in the first place – a grown up and slightly transgressive thing to order at the bar. But women appear to be drinking it more. A recent survey by a supermarket found one in three women like to drink it, although it suggested most adopted the taste having hit the bottle stashed away by their husband or father.

Even my sister likes whisky now. It started when a well-meaning guest thought he should bring something as an appreciation of her hospitality, and being a whisky buff, he produced a 12-year-old Laphroaig. Ideally, if you are starting someone out on whisky, the throat-raping peatiness of one of these babies may not be your best bet. And indeed, on her first sip she hated the stuff. But give my sister and her indomitable will her due, she continued to hate it over the months it lasted until she finished the bottle, by which time, of course, she loved it. I’m now not allowed to visit unless I bring something cask-strength with me.

Looking at the tottering, high-heeled evidence on any given high street on a Saturday night, it could just be the case that women are drinking as much if not more than men, which might be deplorable but is not that new.

Women getting blootered is not a new thing – just look at Hogarth’s wonderful 1751 prints, Gin Lane and Beer Street – but hysteria about it seems to be on the increase.

The public hand-wringing even prompted me a few years ago to give up boozing for Lent, just to see if I felt better, or smarter or thinner. What I did discover during that six weeks was the unsurprising realisation that drinks parties are dull if you are sober. Also, because I had time on my hands to look it up the sort of health advice that was extant, that two normal glasses of wine for a woman constitutes binge drinking. Having seen, and even occasionally indulged in, the sort of real binge drinking that ends up in a calamity that comes back in remembered snatches the following day alongside increasing feelings of horror, that seems rather po-faced and far too prescriptive.

This may be exactly the sort of argument you might expect from someone in smudged mascara sloshing their drink about while jabbing at you to emphasise their point. But it is actually quite hard work killing a bottle of whisky, as that wee dram demands to be savoured and thought about and enjoyed. It’s sensible, so why shouldn’t women enjoy it?