Let Them Drink Whisky

In the Bond Street offices of London's famed wine merchants, Justerini & Brooks, a member of the firm winced as he recalled the time an American matron served him a chilled claret. "Unfortunately," he said, "my hostess saw my grimace and quickly apologized, explaining that the butler must have left the bottle in the refrigerator too long. What can you do with people like that but sell them whisky!"

Justerini & Brooks has sold Scotch whisky to the Americans so vigorously that its J. & B. is now one of the fastest-moving brands on the U.S. market--up from 70,000 cases in 1954 to an expected 700,000 this year. Largely as a result of this successful invasion of the U.S., Justerini & Brooks's 1960 pre-tax profit topped $1,000,000, and its stock has jumped in the past seven years from 70-c- to $399 on the London Exchange.

Light Switch. Prime secret of J. & B.'s success has been an inexplicable shift in U.S. taste from heavy to light Scotch.* Though the heavier Black & White and Ballantine brands are still the nation's best sellers, the lighter Cutty Sark and J. & B. have been gaining on them fast, and J. & B. now leads all others in New York City.

The man behind Justerini & Brooks's U.S. venture was Managing Director Edward Tatham, who abbreviated the name of the whisky to J. & B. on finding that Justerini & Brooks was too much of a mouthful for U.S. bartenders and elbow benders. Tatham, now 63, has passed active management to Co-Managing Director Ralph Cobbold, 55, a brush-mustached, ex-Coldstream Guards officer who was captain of cricket at Eton and won his blue at Cambridge. Though a four-way fight for first place in the U.S. Scotch market is shaping up. Cobbold is certain that there is one tactic he will not use: price cutting. "We insist," says he grandly, ''on being the most expensive nonaged Scotch on the market." And J. & B. is just that, usually selling at about 20-c- more per fifth than competing brands in the big four.

Lush Market. With its U.S. Scotch profits, Justerini & Brooks can afford to treat its British wine customers in Bond Street fashion. At its Georgian-style shop, a customer is greeted with a glass of dry sherry and made to feel, as one well-aged J. & B. executive puts it, that "we have all the time in the world and want to spend it only with him. If a customer wishes, we will gladly spend an hour discussing the relative merits of Romanee-Conti and the first growth of Bordeaux.''

Justerini & Brooks is trying to step up sales of its Scotch at home. Paradoxically, J. & B. is known in only a few London bars and hotels. But the biggest target remains the drinking American, wherever lie may be. Hoping to tap the U.S. tourist market, J. & B. last week was lining up distributors from Athens to Amsterdam. "We are aiming,'' declared a director, "at a chain so great that no matter where an American goes in Europe, he will never be without his J. & B."

*Lighter as applied to Scotch blends is a term that owes something to jargon, something to a drinker's subjective mood, and something to fact. The alcoholic content in light or heavy Scotch is the same (43%). Heavier Scotch is generally darker, but color does not affect taste. Scotch spirits are almost clear; it is caramel, added after the whisky has aged, that provides the amber hue. Lighter blends contain more grain spirits; heavier blends contain more malt, thus tend to be more "mellow," less "dry."

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