Regular readers of Whisky Magazine will no doubt be familiar with the growing number of whisky brands gaining the attention of, and in some cases being founded by, celebrities. From Hollywood A-listers to Grammy award winners, owning a piece of a whisky brand has become a big deal in the glamorous world of show business, which, ironically, seems miles away from the often rustic, historic, and crafted origins of the spirit. Head back to London in the early 1920s, though, and a whisky revolution was starting to take shape amongst high society at the time, paving the way for the celebrity attraction we are witnessing today.
Created in 1923, Cutty Sark was designed to be a game changer in the appreciation of Scotch whisky. Deliberately smooth, mellow, and delicately blended, with a hard-to-replicate, bright golden colour previously unseen in blended Scotch, Cutty was the pioneering and accessible choice for new whisky drinkers who previously found the often robust, smoky Scotch whiskies of the time to be too heavy on the palate. Cutty’s unique and inimitable flavour profile found immediate favour in many of the fashionable bars, clubs, and restaurants of Mayfair and Belgravia, and it was heralded as the whisky of choice for discerning, affluent young drinkers.
Over in Paris, France, in 1928, the first recorded exports of Cutty Sark were to Princesse Eugénie Murat, the granddaughter of Napoleon III and a well-known socialite who was part of the Paris and Harlem jazz scene, asserting the whisky brand’s celebrity status in the country.
As the Roaring Twenties roared on, so did Cutty’s global appeal, especially in New York’s Manhattan — the spiritual soul sister to London’s Mayfair — where the Bright Young Things, or ‘fast set’, of the Art Deco era chose Cutty Sark as a smooth and highly mixable blended Scotch, enjoyed with wild abandon, as they danced the Charleston.
While the US was firmly in the grip of Prohibition (1920–33), it was Cutty Sark’s blending credentials which kept its sales healthy and its reputation in high esteem, the brand’s now-iconic yellow label becoming a symbol of integrity and quality when other Scotch brands of the time were falling foul of the bootleggers. Its clandestine transportation into the US via Nassau by Captain Bill McCoy, a noted raconteur and smuggler, led to Cutty being generously poured in many of the known 32,000 speakeasies and illicit drinking joints in New York alone.
This mark of quality helped to cement Cutty’s American legacy when Prohibition ended. Sales jumped from 7,000 to over 80,000 cases and the brand officially became America’s best-selling blended Scotch whisky. By 1961, it reached yet another milestone: one million cases, which was seemingly the marker for celebs of the time to get firmly behind it. Just as the brand’s sales went stratospheric, so too, did the whisky. Astronaut Gordon Cooper smuggled a 5cl bottle of Cutty Sark onboard the 1963 Mercury 9 mission, making Cutty the first whisky in space.
From 1965, Cutty began a glorious association with the silver screen. It was sipped over ice with soda by Sean Connery as James Bond in Thunderball (appearing again in 1989’s License To Kill, sipped by Roger Moore) and graced the back bar in Steve McQueen’s iconic thriller Bullitt in 1968. In the mid-1970s, Cutty began a fond kinship with director Martin Scorsese, who was reputedly a huge fan. Cutty Sark appears in three of Scorsese’s classic celluloid masterpieces: Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), and then as the mobster’s whisky of choice in his gripping epic Goodfellas (1990).
Director Martin Scorsese discussing the filming of a scene in Raging Bull featuring Cutty Sark.
Continuing with the gangland theme, Cutty Sark also played a prominent part in key scenes of the near-perfect TV show The Sopranos (1999–2007) and in HBO’s Prohibition-era Boardwalk Empire. Perhaps more poignantly, fans of Jon Hamm will remember the stylish actor portraying the suave-yet-ruthless Don Draper, who enjoyed countless whisky highballs (generously mixed using the unmistakable, yellow-labelled Cutty Sark) in the groundbreaking Mad Men (2007–2015). Dig a little further, however, and it turns out that the Cutty association runs deeper than simply its time on-screen. The character Draper was reportedly based on real-life advertising executive and maverick George Lois, whose creative ideas gave birth to Cutty Sark’s landmark advertising campaigns in the US.
The worldwide influence of the show and the continued presence of iconic brands like Cutty Sark thrust whisky back into the collective consciousness of the bartending community, who, looking for authenticity, sought to revive the classic cocktails of the era, such as the Highball, Rob Roy, and Old Fashioned — all are now more popular than ever.
As Cutty Sark’s fame grew during the 20th century, so did its inimitable spirit of adventure. Cutty Sark had a long association with the Tall Ships Races: audacious sailing events which see crews piloting iconic, historical vessels pitted against one another across the sometimes-treacherous high seas. This spectacle harks back to some of the intrepid and truly spirited journeys that saw the very first Cutty Sark whisky travel across the Atlantic a century ago.
Today crafted by master blender Stephen Woodcock, the heart of Cutty Sark resonates with a fine balance of acclaimed single malt whiskies matured in American oak and first-fill sherry casks, harmoniously married for an additional 21 days before being carefully blended with delicate grain whisky to achieve the unmistakable smooth and mellow Cutty Sark style.
There’s no doubt that without Cutty Sark’s pioneering beginnings as an innovative, progressive, audacious, and highly drinkable blended Scotch, the landscape of whisky and its impact in popular culture would be very different. It’s the same spirit of adventure which will keep Cutty Sark in the limelight for decades to come.
For more information, see Cutty Sark's official Instagram page.
