Whisky born from lockdown and local liquor industry's ills

A chance to taste an inventive whisky and discover its story leads to insight into the problems facing small breweries in South Africa. By Lindsey Schutters

- By Lindsey Schutters

Darling Brew managing director Tewie Roos remembers the day the pandemic lockdown’s unintended consequences arrived by the truckload. Retailers, barred from selling alcohol under Covid-19 regulations, sent back perfectly good beer, demanding credit. It stacked up on the brewery floor, eating into cash flow.

Some of it was days from its best-before date; some had passed it. Excise officials, locked down like everyone else, weren't around to supervise destruction. The only legal path to recovery was to spend even more money and turn it into something else.

Recalling his plan to distill the beer into whisky, Roos says people thought he was crazy. “Here we were, making a loss, and I wanted to incur more costs. But I saw a long-term opportunity.”

Partnering with master distiller George Dalla Cia, Roos shipped 30,000 litres of beer to a still in Stellenbosch. The result, five years later, is Reminisce — an unfiltered, naturally coloured, limited-edition whisky, packaged like a storybook (library card and all) and sold in numbered bottles.

Roos tells the tale of regulatory reality facing small brewers: “The challenge we see in the market is that legislation and excise is driven so high that about 20% of liquor in any store is illicit liquor, not paying excise.

“If we take a bottle of brandy... your excise tax component at 42% will be in the region of R92 a bottle. Then you get guys who sell brandy at R90. How do you do that? It’s not possible unless you don’t pay excise tax.”