Good taste

Global whisky ambassador Ewan Gunn has to have one of the most enviable jobs in the world

Man has been making whisky for centuries, yet the industry is ever innovating

and evolving. That includes the prestigious Johnnie Walker stable of whiskies, what with the re-launch and re-packaging of Johnnie Walker Blue Label late

last year and the make-over that Johnnie Walker Gold Label (soon to be Johnnie Walker Gold Label Reserve) will be undergoing.

Taking full advantage of the ride is Diageo’s global whisky ambassador and category training manager Ewan Gunn. He’s certainly come a long way from

his blissfully sleepy childhood in Bower (a tiny hamlet near the Scottish town of Wick), and as he sips a cappuccino in Nelson Mandela Square, just hours before

the opening of the FNB Whisky Live Festival, he talks me through the beautiful marriage of travel and tasting that makes up his job.

“The main focus is always on the whisky, but it’s a great benefit that whisky allows me to travel as much as I do,” he says, shortly after confiding that he has already clocked up over three million air miles (visiting 45 countries across

six continents) in his career. “I developed a thirst for seeing new places from a fairly young age. My parents would also take us on these very untraditional holidays when we were kids. I went to Iceland, Norway and the Faroe Islands, which is a bit different to Euro Disney and all those places my friends were

going,” he laughs. “At the time I was quite jealous of my friends, but looking back, it opened my eyes to the bigger world out there.”

The more Gunn has travelled, the more he has seen just how global a love and appreciation for the liquid gold has become. He has enjoyed whisky mixed with

green iced tea in China, whisky and Coca-Cola in Spain and most recently, a whisky with a dash of water while enjoying the sunshine and purple jacarandas colouring Johannesburg’s streets.

For Gunn, it doesn’t matter how you drink your whisky, as long as you appreciate the time and skill that has gone into defining its flavours.

“Whisky is an aspirational product, so initially there may be that aspect behind its consumption, but once people develop a taste for the flavour, they fall in love with it. I remember drinking my first whisky and being surprised at the intensity and complexity of it. There’s so much depth and so many layers to a good whisky; that continues to surprise me and that’s what keeps me so interested in the industry.”

Countries such as South Africa (which boasts one of the fastest rates of growth when it comes to whisky drinking nations) also keep Gunn inspired and  enthusiastic, and he derives great joy in sharing his knowledge and expertise with anyone thirsty enough to ask questions. One of the most common misconceptions that he finds himself addressing all over the world is the myth that an old whisky equals a good whisky.

“Age isn’t the most important factor. How a whisky has been made, how it’s been matured and how it’s brought together with other whiskies are all much more important factors regarding a whisky’s quality, as is how long it has matured in the cask.”

A case in point is the soon to be released Johnnie Walker Gold Label Reserve. Previously, with Johnnie Walker Gold Label, the distillers were restricted because the label only allows whiskies that are 18 years and older to be used in the blend.

“With Johnnie Walker Gold Label Reserve, we are actually opening that up a bit, giving ourselves a larger field of whiskies to play with in the blend. This widens the palette of choice, making it more interesting to our consumers. You see, as an industry we’re actually getting better at what we do all the time, and we’re discovering that mixing whiskies of all ages can give you a bit more

depth and balance.”

As it stands now, Gunn says that the most memorable place he’s ever drunk a whisky is outside the highest restaurant in the UK (the Ptarmigan Restaurant on CairnGorm Mountain in Scotland) watching the sun go down. The day is young, however, and three days of quality whisky tasting in Joburg lie ahead of him. If any place can melt his resistance and crumble his patriotism, it’s the City of Gold.

Slainte!

Think you have what it takes to become a global whisky ambassador? The following knowledge and experience criteria have to be strictly met before anyone is considered:

● 5 to 10 years of drinks industry background, on-trade or off-trade

● Degree or equivalent

● In-depth knowledge and understanding of the Scotch Whisky production process

● Extensive and up to date understanding of the Scotch industry and current industry issues

● Experience in presenting to audiences, and media handling

● Clear understanding of Scotland, its culture, history and geography

● Hands on Scotch Whisky industry experience in operations or sales

and marketing

*Article first appeared in Sandton magazine's January issue. Photo supplied.

Advocates of change

Three thought leaders’ predictions on the end of the world as we know it and what the year 2012 will bring

Alison Deeb

Tune in to Talk Radio 702 every Friday morning, and you’ll hear comedian Nik Rabinowitz waxing lyrical about “the week that wasn’t”. Applying his formula to 2011, there are various milestones that made last year the year that wasn’t, from the global economic meltdown and Julius Malema’s disciplinary hearing to the passing of the Protection of State Information Bill and the post-Fifa Soccer World Cup hangover that loomed over the country.

If any sentiment defined 2011, it would have to be that of uncertainty. And to a large extent, that uncertainty has journeyed with us in the new year, but there were significant lessons to be learnt from the year that wasn’t, and applying these hard earned nuggets of wisdom in the months ahead could possibly turn 2012 into one of the most successful years yet.

Chaos and change have always inspired new eras – all we need to do is embrace and harness them in our favour. Thought leaders Alison Deeb (CEO, The Jupiter Drawing Room), Michael Jackson (professional speaker) and Professor Nick Binedell (Founding Director and Sasol Chair of Strategic Management of the Gordon Institute of Business Science) unpack the year that was and the year that is to come, giving valuable advice for how best to take on 2012.

Business unusual

Michael Jackson’s first piece of advice for the year ahead is to approach it with a completely different mindset.

Michael Jackson

“Don’t set a New Year’s resolution, set a life resolution. Think differently about where you are and where you’re going. We tend to sit back and become very passive, but we need to constantly reinvent ourselves and our circumstances. That’s my goal for 2012 – doing what you did this year is not going to help you next year, not if the world is changing as fast as it is.”

Alison Deeb applies the same mindset to doing business in 2012. “Business as usual is not business as usual; we need to work smarter and faster and use the power of creativity to make a real difference.” That’s the advice of a woman who has climbed the ad agency ladder by living the slogan “Make ideas happen”, which hangs prominently on her pinboard.

“There’s no doubt that 2011 was tougher than 2010,” she says. “For me the key word in 2011 was value, and this applied across all industries. Was the consumer seeing value in the offering? ‘Do I have the right product, at the right time, in the right place and at the right price?’ were the vital ‘back to basics’ questions business was asking. Business was also evaluating their value chain in the process – ‘Do I have the right people, the right partners, the right suppliers, and am I ahead of my competitors?’ More than ever, as a nation we need to be spirited, competitive, astute, and a lot more proactive going forward.”

South Africa may have been somewhat shielded from the recession, but businesses operating in 2011 felt the ripple effect that is now flowing into 2012. As change speaker Michael Jackson points out, people expected a recovery in 2011 and that recovery was slow in coming. South Africans grappled with the bank crisis and then the government crisis, causing instabilities in the market that nobody really understood.

“What we saw in 2011 was stagnation,” he says. “There was no moving forward, we were all just treading water. Even the Chinese are being forced to slow down, and it looks like they might have to bail out Europe, as they did America, so they will become the most dominant force on the planet.

“We also had the situation in Greece, which is kind of ironic to me: the first civilization in the Western world was really Greek, and they may very well have caused the death of the current Western civilization, as Europe cannot withstand the debt they’re in.”

As the balance of world superpowers sway their way into 2012, South Africa too finds itself swaying from reliance on government and the powers that be towards self sustainability and entrepreneurship. This country has quite a unique history and track record where entrepreneurship is concerned, and as far as doing business in 2012 is concerned, this is an area that everyone should be focusing their energy on.

“There are very few countries of our size that have produced the kind of world champion companies that we have – like SAB Miller, MTN, Discovery, Bidvest. Entrepreneurship is in our DNA, and it’s crucial in South Africa,” explains Binedell, who firmly believes that South Africans should be talking less about job creation and more about business creation.

When we’re talking about entrepreneurship, economics and education closely follow suit. For all of his shortcomings, the spirited Julius Malema placed these three intertwined issues firmly on the agenda in 2011, raising questions about

the future facing South African youths that few were brave enough to answer.

Nick Binedell

“There’s an absolute link between being employable and being educated, but you can also be educated and unemployable,” says Binedell. “That’s one of the biggest challenges facing young people. Education is the ticket to the game, and the quality of the education you receive largely determines where in the stands you sit. The world around us is changing very fast, and thanks to technological advances and the knowledge economy, as we call it, the focus is on adding value to any job you do.”

So what exactly does that mean in a country whose matric pass rate in 2010 stood at a dismal 67.8%? In a country that didn’t have nearly enough jobs for those select few students that did manage to graduate and faced nothing but disillusionment upon trying (and failing) to enter the workplace?

“We’re facing a fundamental crisis, and it’s one that will really explode on us in 10 to 15 years time,” cautions Jackson. “It’s easy enough to turn a blind eye on this now, while things seem to be working, but you cannot keep growing and developing a burgeoning population without educating them.

“I don’t want to paint a picture of doom and gloom, however, and I believe that entrepreneurship is going to the new lifeblood of our economy. I don’t see many factories being built as we’re past that industrial age; so growth in

entrepreneurship is crucial. Every entrepreneur can employ two or three other people, which may well be where our solution lies.”

Adapt or die

More than ever before, the youth will have to be the masters of their own destiny and carve their own niche in the job market. Technology may have forever after blurred the boundary between life and work, but it has also enabled anyone with a smartphone and Internet access to sharpen their competitive edge and offer future employers another dimension to their job description, setting themselves above the rest. As Jackson points out, there are over one and a half million job descriptions in the world right now, and the average teenager will have 11 jobs and three career changes before the age of 35.

“There is no substitute for hard work and being the best you can be,” says Jackson, who travelled to 15 countries and worked 160 events (delivering keynote presentations) last year alone. You have to strive hard to be noticed and think differently, and you have all the mobile tools you need in your pocket.”

Creative, innovative ideas have never kept office hours, and rather than rebel against the idea that work is ever chasing you down on your smartphone, Jackson advises young and old to embrace technology and use it to their advantage.

“Change doesn’t come easy to humans, but we need to be aware of what’s changing around us all the time. Read about technology and become interested in it. Like it or not, it is the future.”

In closing

Highly successful in their own right, Jackson, Bindedell and Deeb’s advice for the year ahead shares striking common threads. Hard work and genuine passion for what you do will go a long way, especially in a world where we are all constantly connected and “on duty”, and setting yourself apart from the pack is the only way to survive and thrive. You will be hard-pressed to find three people more enthusiastic about the future of South Africa, and where others see problems and issues, they see business opportunities and room to innovate.

“I wish I was 20 again,” Binedell laments. “When I was in my 20s, there was quite a dark uncertainty facing this country, but the uncertainty we face today is a good uncertainty. Young people are going to be looking to Africa for business opportunities, they’re going to be working in different countries and doing different jobs. What a brilliant invitation!

“I read a lot of economic history books, and I’m reminded of Germany in the 1930s. The country was a mess and its people lost everything, but for the rest of the world, it was the beginning of a great creative era. The conflict in Germany was really the precursor to America rising and becoming a technical power, giving rise to the Silicone Valley and Apple.

“None of us know what will happen next, but we should all know what we will do tomorrow.”

*Article first published in the January issue of Sandton magazine. Photos supplied.

Secret Joburg

Award-winning restaurateur Michel Morand bypasses the CBD and shows us his secret Joburg

It’s almost twenty years to the day that Michel Morand (of Auberge Michel fame) has lived in Johannesburg, and a very long time since he has called France home. If any city represents the rainbow nation for Morand, it’s Johannesburg, and this is clearly where his love affair with the City of Gold first took root.

“I keep discovering Joburg,” Morand tells me, as we take a sharp shot right out of Sandton and head towards some of his favourite haunts. “From jazz in Yeoville to eating and drinking in shabeens in Soweto and Alexandra, I love that interaction. That cross cultural thing is what Joburg is, we are a cosmopolitan city.”

Ask Morand to take you on a tour of his secret Joburg; to those favourite places that he loves to frequent, especially when half of Gauteng has migrated towards the ocean for their December holidays; and he refreshingly foregoes all of the usual suspects. Armed with only his iPad and an impeccable internal GPS of the city, it’s towards the no-nonsense streets of Alexandra that we commence our afternoon.

Deli delights

Being the inspiration behind the renowned restaurant Auberge Michel (which closed its doors in August) and now most recently behind the sensational new a la carte restaurant at Emoyeni heritage site in Parktown, it’s no surprise that my tour of Morand’s Joburg is essentially a culinary one. We get to Corne Delicatessen Cape, and within minutes Morand and esteemed food supplier Thierry van den Bosch are talking “product” – what’s fresh, what’s seasonal, what wine they would pair that with, and whatever else they can squeeze into the strict schedule of the itinerary that Morand has lined up for me.

The way that they first met is a delightfully French cliché – Morand met Thierry and his father searching out a good foie gras supplier in Joburg many moons ago – but their thoughts about food and the restaurant industry in Johannesburg are just the opposite.

“We are nothing without our products,” Morand tells me sternly in the midst of a conversation with van den Bosch about how so many Joburg restaurants fall prey to putting aesthetics and decor trends above good quality ingredients and real food.

“Our suppliers are our partners, we are bringing in partners to make sure we can grow and satisfy our clients, and I will never compromise on the quality.”

Cyrildene secret

In a city which is built on good relationships and networking, Morand has worked very hard to source only the best suppliers across the country. It’s no surprise that he has become firm friends with them too, and again, not surprisingly, it’s a friendship that first brought him to the next stop on our tour: Sai Thai thai restaurant in Cyrildene.

Morand first met Micky when he was at a function which was serving such delicious food that he insisted on tracking down the chef responsible for the catering. He found out that Micky and her husband Dennis owned a restaurant in Cyrildene, and Sai Thai has since become a regular feature in the Morand family’s weekend outings.

“I enjoy that they serve real food,” he says, telling me that should I visit Sai Thai over the weekend, I would likely see many a well known local chef enjoying Dennis and Micky’s food. “They use great products, and the products are prepared in a different way to what we are used to. When I go out, I don’t want to eat French cuisine, I can prepare that at home.”

The congestion building up on the roads outside of Sai Thai is indicative that although we have really only conquered two of his favourite places, it’s time to make our way home or suffer the wrath of a typical traffic ridden Joburg afternoon. Morand laments that he also wanted to take me to Wandies Place in Soweto, even though it’s possibly less off the beaten path than Corne and Sai Thai, and a few other names of places that he rattles off in a hurry.

Although I get the sense that there’s a much longer list to his “secret Joburg” than what any afternoon could possibly encompass, perhaps there are some hard earned and eagerly discovered eateries that are best kept secret. Half their charm lies in their anonymity and lack of pretention, and half the fun for Joburgers lies in their own discovery of them. 

Details: Corne Delicatessen Cape cc is situated at 64 5th Street, Marlboro, Sandton, tel: 011 444 7391. Sai Thai Thai Restaurant is situated at Shop 1, Cyrildene Centre, corner Marcia Street and Derrick Avenue in Cyrildene, tel: 011 615 1339.

* Article first published in the December issue of Sandton magazine. Photos of Michel Morand and Emoyeni's Nonhlanhla Mavie and Emoyeni Estate courtesy Debbie Yazbek.

The Edith evolution

Edith Venter talks A-lists and event etiquette

When Edith Venter dropped off the events map in 2009 because of a partnership turned ugly and a resulting court interdict, the industry lost a critical barometer of style and standards. An Edith Venter event is the one event on your social calendar that you do not say “no” to. With Venter and her many years of moving in high circles comes a formidable guest list and an impeccable fusion of fashion, food, entertainment and, more often than not, support of a worthy cause while you wine and dine the night away.

To borrow the tag line from her company, Edith Unlimited, which was launched just over a year ago, Venter’s guests have come to “expect the unexpected” and nothing less. Her rebranding of what used to be Edith Venter Promotions is a celebration of both the reclamation of her good name and her right to practise in the industry again, as well as the result of the growth that her business has been experiencing.

“When the interdict was issued, I wasn’t allowed to use my name or my company, and I had to get special permission to work any charity events,” Venter explains. “It came as a huge shock to me: it was as if I had been kidnapped and had to pay ransom.

“I had to settle, and I am still paying back bank loans. It could have been devastating, but I am just not the kind of person to lie down and die. Sadly this world has become very materialistic, and maybe this was a lesson I had to learn; I learnt it well and I learnt it the hard way.”

Her comeback has been truly phenomenal. Edith Unlimited launched in September last year, and Venter says 2011 has been her busiest year since she first entered the events industry more than 10 years ago.

The work that she does focuses on both charity and corporate events. Venter supports the Red Cross, Reach For A Dream, Cotlands Baby Sanctuary, JHB Child Welfare, the SA Guide Dogs Association and, ever since losing her father to cancer, she is also a dedicated patron of the Cancer Association of South Africa.

No matter what the cause or occasion, however, the cream of South African society is ever at Venter’s side. In fact, if anyone knows the in and outs of SA’s A-list, it’s Venter. Although from the comfort of her couch (bolstered on either side by two of her five adoring cats) she is quick to jokingly ask why anyone would want to be in such demand night after night, the politicians, CEOs, celebrities, diplomats and thought-leaders filling up her weighty contact book are proof that this social butterfly has a magnetism that few can resist.

When it comes to events, Venter practises what she preaches. Her policy is to give priority to whichever event invitation she accepted first. If she promised to attend the Saturday church fete down the road and then suddenly an invite to meet Prince William and Kate popped into her mailbox, she’s adamant that she would stick to her original commitments.

This unwritten rule is one that Venter says has served her very well over the years – unlike many fickle celebs who fabricate excuses, are caught red-handed at another event on the same evening and as a result are deftly erased from Venter’s future guest lists.

Another of Venter’s unwritten rules is that whenever she attends an event she always remembers that she is there for her name and that she is there to work; be it to spread the word about the good work that a charity or its sponsors are doing or to network with people and make them feel included and special on the night.

The celebrities on Venter's personal A-list are those people that Venter says she knows she can always count on and that she will always invite to all of her events as a result.

Venter’s last gripe is about that thing called “African time”. Too many celebs, she says, have an inflated sense of self-importance and think Joburg’s biggest event won’t start without them. Not only does Venter pride herself on always arriving at an event on time, but if she’s running the event herself she has a strict rule to never wait for someone for longer than half an hour, if that. Time is money, lateness is asking for a culinary disaster, and her respect and consideration lies firmly with the guests who have arrived on time and are looking forward to commencing with the celebrations.

Talking events with Venter offers you an insider’s look behind the social scenes that few will ever experience. She tells amusing anecdotes about rotund gentlemen stealing their partner’s food when they aren’t looking and shocking stories about naughty grandchildren of the rich and famous pinching goody bags. But her best stories by far are those that keep her firmly grounded and humbled by her own successes and achievements, like the one about the enthusiastic man from a very small town who responded to the dietary requirements request by reciting exactly what he would like to eat for breakfast.

*Article first published in the December issue of Sandton magazine. Photo courtesy Craig Heath Photography.