Foreign News: Water on the Side

The interruption was as welcome as a short snort at sundown. All day the Council of Europe, meeting in Strasbourg last week, had been debating Europe’s chronic dollar deficit, and at length Britain’s Scottish-born Robert Boothby took the floor: “We can expand, I think, the export of certain specialties to the U.S. . . In this respect my own country is rather fortunate. In Scotland we manufacture the highest quality tweeds and we make the highest quality whisky, the best whisky in the world . . .”

“No!” cried Ireland’s Gerald Boland.

“With all due apologies to my Irish friends,” Boothby went on, “I stick to my opinion.”

Bubbling like a vat of mash, Boland retorted: “I cannot let that pass. We produce as good woolens as any—every bit as good as those of Scotland … I do not drink whisky and I am not a judge of it, but I am told that Irish whisky is as good as any in the world—every bit as good as Scotch.”

Up jumped Britain’s Alfred Robens with a suggestion to Assembly President François de Menthon: “Representatives will find themselves in great difficulty in determining which is better—Scotch whisky or Irish whisky.* Could you use your presidential influence to get both countries to send a case of their product to each representative so that we might have our views properly defined when we meet next time?”

Scotland took the hint. From Edinburgh the Scotch Whisky Association dispatched twelve bottles of “genuine Scotch whisky” to Representative Boothby. Dublin’s Irish whisky distillers sent two cases of its finest to Representative Boland. Asked to preside over the High Authority of a European Whisky Pool, Boothby eagerly accepted. There will be further (informal) deliberations just as soon as the stuff arrives in Strasbourg.

*Scotch is made primarily from barley and gets its flavor from the soft water of Scotland’s heather-clad hills, the peat which is burned beneath the green malt, and the sherry casks in which the spirit is matured. Irish whisky is also made from barley (not potatoes as is commonly thought) but with an admixture of other grain, rye, wheat or oats. It is not “smoke cured” and thus keeps its smooth malty flavor.