Whisky and Witches: Another form of whisky tasting

The „Whisky and Witches“ – Interview with Christine Kammerer

A few days ago, you could read an interview with Christine Kammerer here, in which I talked to her about her new album „Echoes of North“.
And also the review of „Echoes of North“.

Christine is not only a singer, composer and musicologist, but also a whisky lover.

Together with Jane Ross, who has opened her own bar (The Mother Superior in Leith) after many years in the whisky industry, she has launched „Whisky and Witches“. In short, it is a whisky tasting that brings together whisky with history and stories about whisky and the role of women in the making of whisky, songs about the area it comes from and songs that describe the whisky itself.

Whisky – and witches?

And what do the witches have to do with it? Christine answers that in the following interview.

When I read the title, many things came to mind: when and why women were called witches, that women – before they were forbidden – were responsible for making beer and spirits. Herbal distillates were used as remedies. I also thought of women who played an important role in the structure of their community.
But how did you come up with the idea for „Whisky and Witches“?
I think the first thing I thought about doing music and whisky together was actually in 2019 when I had a meeting with a whisky company in Inverness.In 2020 I met Jane Ross when she was the manager of the “Black Cat”, which is a whisky bar in Edinburgh.Then the lockdown happened and we met each other again in 2022 when she opened her bar, “The Mother Superior” in Leith.And we got to talking, we got to drinking whisky and I told her that I really want to do this kind of ‘music and whisky thing’. And she said, oh, she had some of the same thoughts.  And then we started sharing stories and we started talking about the women in the whisky industry. And then at some point, I can’t remember what order things happened in because there were a lot of whiskies, but there was a guy that came up to us and said: “You sound like a bunch of cats and witches”.

And the title was born.
Yeah, and we started talking more about folklore, how we could weave that into.
And then we started talking about witches at some point and how we could weave folklore and witches together and that grew into becoming more and more about how women in the alcohol industry from a very early age were demonized for their connections to alcohol.

Women were demonized for their connections to alcohol

Was it about the women who were brewsters and alewives in the 13th and 14th century?
Yes, and all the way up to women in whisky, Aquavitae-women. And we also talked about some of the witch trials in Germany and how that affected witch trials in Denmark and how that connected to Scotland. So we made that full circle and talked about how the possession and production of alcohol could actually be a contributing factor in abusing a woman of witchcraft and how it was. And you can see that in stories, you can see that in the depictions in different churches, in law texts, in witch trials.

And these are the stories you tell about the whisky at the tasting?
So, what we wanted to do was to convey the story of this, but we also wanted to make the whisky come alive. The way it works is that we interweave stories and music into your experience of the whisky and we will make bespoke to each of the whiskies that you try and the story would tell with it. So it’s my compositions or it’s Scottish folk songs that we use for it, and Nordic folk songs.

What response and feedback have you received so far?
The feedback we’ve had on it has been a lot that people have never, even from big figures in the whiskey industry, like the global brand ambassador of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, John McCheyne, said he’d never been to anything like that, that ours was hands down one of the best whisky tastings he’s ever attended because we tell the story that’s in the whisky. We make the tasting notes come alive.

How do you approach things when you’re writing a song to a whisky?
Yes, I taste a whisky and then write a piece of music that captures that flavour. And I add the notes that Jane makes during her tastings.

Aquavitae -the water of live- and ‘witches’

The word „witch“ has a rather negative connotation. It only came about with Christianisation. To cut a long story short, it was a way of excluding women who produced beer, alcohol and aquavitae.
What do you tell the audience about witches? How do you portray them?
Yeah, so what we say is that, very much what you just said there, that the term ‘witch’ is something that has become kind of a curse word for people, especially women who had a deep sense of connection to nature, who had knowledge about natural medicines, medicinal herbs, and knew how to, for instance, distil them into different types of aquavitae, water of life. And they could also have been, to go back to Brewsters in the 13th and 14th century, there are different depictions of brewsters and alewives being in cahoots with the devil in different churches around in Scotland and England.

It was another point at which the church demonised women who played an important role in their community.
Yes, woman who used to have a central role in their community and be of high importance to the health of the community, someone you sought advice with. In Nordic mythology, you’ve got the Völva. She was an important figure in all society. And she was highly respected for her advice. She could foretell how the harvest would be, how winters would go, what we needed to do in order to secure society for winter, why things went wrong.

And then people went from valuing these women and particularly their connection to gods and goddesses to demonising them for it.
It’s also the time around where, when the whisky starts to come more forth. In the end of the 15th and 16th century, you start to see a turning point, where things become worse. And it’s not that wise women who had these capabilities were, you know, all at the same time, demonized.

Dangerous times for woman to be associated with spirits

People then had an ambivalent relationship with these women. On the one hand, they needed their knowledge, but on the other, they were blamed when things went wrong.
We’ve got several different cases, especially in Denmark, and also in Scotland, of cases where perhaps people in local communities came to these wise women for healing sanctuaries, healing activities, or to help make their cows give milk again.  And then all of a sudden, if that went wrong, she would be the first one to blame.So it was an extremely dangerous time for a woman to be associated with spirits, whether it was alcoholic spirits in the form of healing potions, elixirs, or it was other spirits around you.

What role did economic change play in pushing women out of these areas?
When apothecaries started popping up more and more, led by men, these women who were doing this Aquavitae in rural communities, it became illegal for them to do that, because everything was institutionalized and moved into the apothecaries.
So as a woman in 16th century Germany, and in Scotland as well, if you had a bottle of Aquavitae in your procession, and it wasn’t licensed, that could be used as direct proof of you being a witch in a witch trial. It is not entirely clear whether women were condemned as witches because they made whisky, a drink for everyday consumption, or whether it was the women who made aquavitae.

Women were the first distillers

It is certainly difficult to separate this exactly, because in the past both ‚whisky‘ and aquavitae were made from grain, potatoes and herbs.
Yes, and the question is whether this distinction is important. We are interested in understanding why women were demonised in this context.When the production of spirits was institutionalised, women often could not afford to stay in the business. Or women were pushed out systematically because an industry was seen where, as it became more and more profitable, women were pushed out. Even though women were the first distillers, women were the first brewers, so many different important discoveries were made by women in alcohol. And what we’re seeing now, especially in Scotland, which is a joy to see, is that that is flipping, the balance is starting to get back now.

That means that there are more women in the whiskyproduction now?
I was part of a mentorship programme called “Our Whisky Foundation Mentorship”, and you really see that the forces are changing. My mentor said, it has never been a better time to be a woman in the whisky industry, because a lot of people want to work with women in the industry to show that they are supporting this development. And hopefully it is. It’s not a question about women, having to take anyone’s place. It sounds weird. It’s a matter of recreating a balance that should always have been there, because men and women have been equally part of the industry.

Women have been involved in the whiskyproduction before it became an industry. Brewing beer and distilling alcohol was a domestic activity.    The women were the ones who had to perfect how to do that to a degree where it tasted well and had the medicinal qualities it had to have. So it’s mainly about reinstating a balance that should always have been there.

And that is, what you will say with you show?
That’s what we want to do with the show.

How the audience reacts

And how about the listeners in these shows? How do they react on this information and this kind of presenting whisky?
We’ve had mainly really positive reactions. We’ve had people come up to us after the show and said, I have two girls at home. After witnessing your show, I will never look at them the same way. We’ve had one of our shows at the Fringe [The Frings Festival in Edinburgh] last year, that was quite interesting actually. We had a group of five young men, like early twenties, sitting at the back and we thought, they were a bit rowdy, they had a couple of drinks before the show. And we thought, okay, are they going to be a problem? But they were just completely taken in by what we were telling, by the music, by the way of experiencing the whisky. And one of them  came up to us afterwards and said: “Thank you. This was so much more than we thought it was going to be and I’m deeply moved by it.”
And I remember I’ve had so many instances with talking to men after performances, especially where it seems like we’ve entered the same space. There is no distinction between genders anymore. It’s just that they understand that our ambition is to create balance and be understood and understand why these stories are important to tell, why these women are important to name. People know of patriarchal society, people know what it does to both men and women and has done through history.

Are there more men or are there also women at these tastings shows?
That’s the amazing thing because it has been almost 50-50 the entire way through our shows. And we’re seeing a lot more. And I think what we’ve created here as well, it’s a safe space for women to enter whisky. A lot more women enjoy whisky than we think. A recent study from 2022 showed that 40% of whisky drinkers are women. And we don’t see that represented that much in different tastings, because it can be a bit of a difficult environment for women to enter. And we’ve had ages from, honestly, we’ve had people from 20 years old to 85.

To approach not only the whisky but also their own history  in a different way

What do you think is the most important experience that people take away?
What I hope is that the experience they get with us gives them a sense of agency to go into the world and approach whisky in a different way and approach their own history in a different way. Really what I hope.

And which types of whisky are you presenting at these shows? Do you have different types of whisky according to where are or do you have same? Because I’m thinking about how to find the right songs for each whisky.
Well, for the first couple of „Whisky and Witches“ we did, we did by whisky regions. And then I found different folk songs that fit from those regions In other cases, I found folklore creatures that were very prevalent in those specific regions.
With the “Whisky and Witches” we’re doing for the Fringe-Festival , we’re doing it in collaboration with a sponsor called Spiritfilled, who has some amazing whiskies. They have whiskies from different regions and different folklore creatures on their bottles. So I wrote a manuscript that spoke to the creatures they have, then found music that interlinked the cultures that the folklore creature was from and the Scottish folklore realm.Put that together and then found some of my own songs that underlined and played into the storytelling about them. So it’s constantly figuring out how do I, for instance, they had a creature called Nyamnyami, which is actually an African water god from Zimbabwe. They had that on one of their Scot whiskies.So I took that and I linked it up with the Mermaid in Scottish Folk Mythology. And there’s a song called “The Mermaid’s Croon”, Scottish folk song. So I rearranged “The Mermaid’s Croon” with traditional African instruments from Zimbabwe and Zambia and interlinked that in my arrangement of it.

From first whisky tasted like liking an ashtray to  having a lot of favourite whiskies

That is a kind of a way of bringing those two cultures together. You told a lot about different whiskies. But do you have a favourite whisky?             Oh no, I have a lot. I really like Ardmore, which is a Highland heated whisky, Glen Scotia and a lot of others. Some great Irish whiskies. And Stauning is one of my favourites from Denmark.

What was your first whisky?
Yeah. My first whisky was the Laphroaig 10. I was 18 years old, and it tasted like licking an ashtray. But I liked it.

When you come to Germany, you have to look after a whisky called “Harzer Hexenwhisky”. II doubt it’s drinkable yet, as it was only barrelled last year. But I thought about you, when I read about it.
Thank you for the interview about „Whisky and Witches“ and the insight into the different backgrounds.
Thank you very much. It was a pleasure

More about Christine Kammerer and „Whisky and Witches“ you can find HERE.
„Whisky and Witches“ at the Fringe
And HERE you can find her new album „Echoes of North“