‘It wasn’t always champagne and roses…I haven’t spoken about it until now. It still angers me about the unnecessary waste of talent and experience of the DCL boys. All just to settle a schoolboy’s feud.’ The final edition of Memoirs of a Whisky Salesman lifts the lid on what life was really like when the chips were down.
Memoirs of a whisky salesman Roger Mallindine was promoted to the West End after being presented with a pair of gold engraved cufflinks. He was Salesman of the year in the UK for selling Haig.
In our fifth instalment of our memoirs of a whisky salesman Roger Mallindine fondly remembers one particular episode that changed whisky history.
Roger Mallindine had been selling blended whisky for decades and understood how the luxury whisky business worked. Now it was time to sell single malts. He suddenly found himself in a world of many privileges and memorable events.
It’s the late 1980s and Roger Mallindine had spent 20 years working his way up the Trade. He’s now in United Distillers post the Guinness/DCL merger, looking after whiskies for luxury outlets.
By the age of 19, Roger Mallindine had become shipping clerk at Bass Charrington Vintners. He soon left the shipping business and joined Showerings as a Rep for Babysham and Britvic juices which he sold out of army surplus ammunition boxes.
The tell-all memoirs of a whisky salesman are serialised every day this week. Here Roger Mallindine chronicles his arrival into the drinks trade in the tumultuous 1960s.
