Justerini & Brooks Whisky

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J&B bottle

Justerini & Brooks (commonly known as just J & B) is a scotch blended whisky. The company is owned by multinational Diageo plc.

J&B Rare Blend, the standard J&B whisky brand, is a blend of 42 Scottish malt and grain whiskies.

Furthermore, J&B's portfolio includes:

J&B Reserve 15-year old,
Jet 12-year old and Exception (a pure malt limited to France)
J&B Select and Ultima were discontinued.

It is aimed mainly for the export market, and is available in a few different variants in Europe, America and Korea among other places. The company, originally Johnson & Justerini was founded in 1749 in London, delivering fine wine and spirits to various up-scale aristocratic households, as well as supplying King George III. In 1910, Johnson & Justerini was bought by Alfred Brooks and renamed Justerini & Brooks.

[edit] History

In 1749, Giacomo Justerini, from Bologna, fell in love with an opera singer and followed her to London, bringing with him a number of recipes for liqueurs created by his uncle, who was a distiller. He found an English partner, George Johnson, and together they set up as a wine merchants. In 1760, Justerini returned to his native land, and the same year, King George III honoured the firm with the first of its eight Royal Warrants.

In 1831, the business was bought by Alfred Brooks, a gentleman of means - it was said that his St John's Wood gardens were sufficiently large to include a snipe shoot. The firm became Justerini & Brooks, and its headquarters were established in Regents Park.

Seeing the potential of blended whisky, J & B was one of the first London spirits merchants to buy up stocks of mature malt whisky and create its own blend. This was named Club (and is still available from J & B's shops in St. James's Street, London and George Street, Edinburgh). During Prohibition the company were promoting a brand they had created specifically for the American market, J & B Rare, and when Prohibition came to an end in 1933, their activities began to pay dividends in and around New York City.

In the early 1950s J & B merged with another company to form United Wine Traders Ltd,and by the end of the decade it had conquered America. From this sound base, and helped by merger with W A Gilbey Ltd, the London Gin makers, the brand went on to win over the world. Today it is the second best selling blended whisky in the world after Johnnie Walker.

[edit] In popular culture

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The German dramatist and writer Heiner Müller drank J & B Whisky exclusively.
Maurice Castle, the main character in Graham Greene's 1978 novel, The Human Factor, drinks J & B for its light colour, so that it appears as though he is drinking a mixed drink, when it is actually straight.
The main character of Bret Easton Ellis's famous generation X novel American Psycho, Patrick Bateman, almost exclusively drinks J & B on the rocks.
The main character MacReady in John Carpenter's 1982 motion picture The Thing exclusively drinks J & B on the rocks or straight from the bottle.
Muppet master Jim Henson is seen drinking straight from a bottle of J & B in his experimental short film, Timepiece.
J & B whisky is widely used in the 1992 film adaptation of the Michael Frayn play Noises Off. It is used as a prop on the set of the play being produced and also plays a role in the plot.
J & B whisky appears at least once in most of the Italian giallo films of the 70's. Often it is seen very clearly, being consumed by at least one main character.
According to George Plimpton's biography "Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career," one of the writer's eccentricities was to walk into a liquor store and ask for a bottle of Justerini and Brooks scotch. The alcoholic beverage is better known by its colloquial name J&B, which is one of the most famous brand name in the liquor business. Even if a merchant told him they did not carry the brand (as most people didn't know what the initials stood for), even when it was likely they did carry the brand, Capote would not call it "J&B", even if it meant that he went without.
A bottle of Justerini and Brooks is on display in many of the scenes from John Cassavetes' films Shadows and Opening Night.
The character Sheldon "Shelly" Levine orders a double J & B in the film Glengarry Glen Ross.
In the film Goodfellas, Ray Liotta's character receives a bottle of J & B smuggled into prison.
In the TV series Oz, various prison staff personnel can be seen drinking J&B in their office in several episodes.
In the film Once Upon a Time in America , by Sergio Leone, Robert De Niro as Noodles drinks J & B.