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Who are the world’s most avid drinkers of fine scotch whisky? Well, they’re not in Scotland; in fact, they’re nowhere near the home of the drink. Reporter Tim Lester found them while on assignment in South America. He sent this postcard on the whisky drinkers of Caracas.

Building in Caracas

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18:00

Lester: Dusk in a city that doesn’t stop – not even at red lights.

18:18

Arturo in car

Arturo: If you stop, you’re running an unnecessary risk, but you see he’ll stop, and everyone, everyone somehow finds their way.

18:25

Lester: Arturo Sarmiento says he runs the red because in crime-wracked Caracas to stop is to be a target.

18:37

Arturo: We’re about to jump another one now, but you know, you’ve got to be careful about it.

18:44

Lester: But there’s a sense it’s just as much about the reckless pursuit of a good time.

18:50

Scotch on ice

In Venezuela few can afford it, but plenty party; the chase for the high life is unstoppable; and the most potent symbol of high-living …

18:56

… sits with ice in the bottom of a glass.

Arturo in car

Arturo: To me it’s almost unreal how people will spend disproportionate amounts of their income on alcohol and partying.

19:15

Lester: Unreal, and profitable. Arturo Sarmiento came home from his British education with an inkling to import scotch whisky.

19:24

His first deal made him a fortune. At home in the leather of one of his two luxury cars, the twenty-nine year old takes us around the nightspots that make him his money.

Arturo: It’s a very restaurant society. People go and will have a meal. You see, there’s a couple here arriving at. It’s eleven pm. They’re arriving at a restaurant.

19:43

Fabiana

Fabiana: You’ll always have an excuse to go out and drink and eat -- business, fun, whatever.

19:53

Lester: Fabiana Bertolani and Arturo are a couple to be seen with...

19:59

Arturo: What whisky you selling?

*: Huh?

Arturo: What whisky they selling?

Lester: …around the Whisky Bars of Caracas.

Fabiana

Fabiana: Venezuelan people are definitely party people, friendly people, warm people, loving people.

20:17

Caracas at night

Lester: And scotch drinkers – at least since the seventies when an oil boom brought extraordinary wealth from the West.

20:22

Hall

Hall: When Venezuela was passing through its most prosperous times in the 1970s, Scotch was the international drink of status.

20:29

And at that time, Venezuelans adopted not only Scotch, but expensive Scotch, deluxe Scotch, twelve-year-old Scotch.

And that, that tradition has continued for the last thirty years, and grown.

20:52

Lester: Melbourne born Peter Hall admits he has one of the World’s easiest jobs – marketing whisky in Venezuela.

21:00

Hall: Any excuse is Okay. Salud. Salud. Salud.

Lester: A country that spends two hundred and twenty million dollars a year importing the stuff.

21:14

Hall: People know twenty brands. You can stop someone in the street and they can name you fifteen to twenty brands of Scotch whisky. Venezuela is, in terms of deluxe scotches, the highest per capital consumption in the world – of twelve year old and above, so of the finer scotch whiskies.

21:20

Arturo in bar

Lester: Wonderful whisky, but never too good to stick your finger in it.

21:41

Arturo: Stir your finger around in there, yeah?

Venezuelan countryside

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22:09

Lester: But the whisky phenomenon is more that odd; it’s remarkable given how few in Venezuela cab afford to drink from the top shelf.

22:18

Travel to the suburbs where most of the city’s six million live and the spin offs of the oil boom vanish.

22:29

Eighty percent of Venezuelans are in poverty, or close to it.

Hall

Hall: You will go to a poor family’s wedding or first communion, or baptism and you will see twelve-year-old Scotch being consumed as an extreme sacrifice by that family for a special occasion.

22:40

Lester: Whisky defies wealth, yet at times signals it.

22:57

Lorena

Lorena: It’s very important because it signifies status.

23:03

Lester: Twenty-six year old Venezuelan, Lorena Infante, who just married whisky promoter Peter Hall, says the drink is key to dating in Caracas.

23:10

Lorena: A woman interprets a man by what type of whisky he’s drinking; especially by how old it is. There are many Venezuelan men who go out of their way to conquer women by buying the older whisky – eighteen years old, and if they can, older than that, which is much more expensive and therefore impresses women more.

23:18

Arturo in car

Lester: Here, the sexes battle around a bottle in other ways. There's the pushers.

23:44

Arturo: You see the girl in the mini-skirt. That’s a whisky pusher, or she’ll be pushing some kind of liquor. It’s a brand loyalty thing. So if you turn up to a restaurant they may not be offering your specific brand. How do you get someone to switch brands? Put a beautiful woman in front of them that says why don’t you drink this whisky.

Hall

Hall: And it still works. It gets, it gets volume. We think that it tends to not create any long-term loyalty for a brand really.

24:10

Arturo in car

Arturo: We’re gonna try and pop in here. Looks fairly busy. This is somewhere that, that is heavily promoted by whisky.

24:22

Inside bar

Lester: In here, they buy scotch a bottle at a time for two hundred dollars.

24:34

Wealth on display, as much conspicuous consumption as enjoying a drink.

Hall: You very, very rarely see people falling over drunk. That is considered the worst.

24:50

Lester: In many other markets, it’s faded. Not in the bars of Caracas. Here, scotch whisky remains the drink of status.

24:58

Caracas at night

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WHISKY KING POSTCARD

Reporter: Tim Lester

Camera: David Martin

Editor: Woody Landay

Producer: Vivien Altman

25:13