Black & White (whisky)

Black & White Whisky Drey, Riverside Museum, Glasgow

Black & White is a blended Scotch whisky. It was originally produced by the London-based James Buchanan & Co Ltd founded by James Buchanan. Originally known as House of Commons (after the British House of Commons), its nickname, referring to the black and white labelling, was eventually adopted as the official brand instead.^[1] The brand's motif (featuring a black Scottish Terrier and a white West Highland White Terrier) was conceived by James Buchanan himself during the 1890s.^[2]

In 1968 the Black & White brand featured in an important trademark infringement case, Maier Brewing Co. v. Fleischmann Distilling Corp., 390 F.2d 117 (9th Cir. 1968) when a brewing company started manufacturing beer under the brand name "Black and White". After a series of mergers and acquisitions involving Dewar's (1915), Distillers Company, and Guinness (forming United Distillers), the brand is now owned by Diageo. It claims to be the most successful in France, Venezuela, and Brazil.^[2] At present, the brand is sold within the United Kingdom.^[1]

In popular culture

• A bottle is seen on a table in a bar somewhere in the Congo in Tarzan Escapes (1936).
• Dick Diver, the main character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1934 novel, Tender is the Night, orders "The Blackenwite with siphon", symbolising clarity, but the French barman only has "Johnny Walkair", symbolising business as usual. He is later reported to smell of whiskey rather than whisky.
• James Bond drinks Black & White in the Ian Fleming novel Moonraker.
• Tom Rath drinks Black & White in the Sloan Wilson novel The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.
• Black & White is the whisky Cary Grant was fond of in the 1964 movie Father Goose.
• Marcello Mastroianni drank Black & White with his father and his friend Papparazzo in the Fellini film La Dolce Vita.
• In Some Girls Do (1969), the British spy film, Bulldog Drummond (played by Richard Johnson) orders Black & White with water several times.
• Physicist Richard Feynman drank Black & White, as described in his book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!.
• Herbert Kilpin, co-founder and first captain of football club AC Milan, claimed that "the only way to forget a conceded goal was to drink a sip of the hard stuff"; he reportedly kept a bottle of Black & White whiskey in a hole behind the goal for such an occasion. ^[3]
• Black & White whisky was featured in the film Dolores Claiborne.
• The drink is featured in the novel Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, in which the narrator orders a Black & White and water.
• One of the biggest hits of the Polish band Kombi is dedicated to and titled "Black & White".
• In the early opening credits of the Alfred Zeisler movie The Amazing Adventure (1936), and Louis King's Bulldog Drummond in Africa (1938), a neon sign can be briefly seen advertising Black & White whisky in the evening London cityscape.
• In the Czech movie Kamarád do deště II – Příběh z Brooklynu a bottle of this whiskey was present in the hotel room and later Marek Vašut took it home.
• Frasier Crane's friend Dr. Lawrence Crandell orders a Black & White neat in season 7 episode 22 of Cheers
• When the antagonist in Paul Auster's 1986 novella, Ghosts (which was published as the second part of Auster's The New York Trilogy), orders a Black and White on the rocks, he is effectively revealing his identity to the novella's protagonist.

References