The Last Sipper with Kiefer Sutherland
Guitar man: Kiefer Sutherland at the Gibson Garage, London, May 2024
The Canadian actor and guitar-mad musician tells Barley about his new whisky — and reveals what Picasso taught him about tasting notes, his love of drinking ‘Cutty Sark in dive bars’ and who he’d invite round for an all-night session (clue: a famously wild rock star could be on the guest list). By Gordon Thomson
The Gibson Garage in the West End of London is a cathedral to the most famous rock guitar of them all. The vast nave and adjoining transepts are all kitted out with patterned vintage rugs and battered leather sofas. On the walls and from the ceilings hang endless racks of colourful, shimmering Les Pauls, Flying V’s, Epiphones, Firebirds and any other conceivable model of Gibson guitar you care to shake a sunburst plectrum at. Framed prints of the players who made the brand and dazzling fluorescent signs complete the fantasy rock star crash pad look. Wide-eyed Jimmy Page and Slash wannabes wander around in a kind of religious reverie, most of them too nervous to touch let alone ask to play the objects of their desire.
Upstairs from the main shop is a private VIP lounge reserved for Gibson artists. Beyond that lies the inner VIP sanctum. Rather wonderfully, you can only reach this guitarists’ Narnia by stepping through a fake red London phone box. Fittingly, a great acting Anglophile (and born Brit) waits within. Kiefer Sutherland greets me. He is relaxed, dressed down in skinny black jeans and boots and a dark hoodie, strumming away on a gorgeous black acoustic Epiphone that has caught his eye. He sits down on a vast corner sofa, where he picks at a small bowl of popcorn as he talks, which he does quietly, with a soft lyrical cadence and an endearing fluty chuckle. This is his happy place.
Sutherland is 57. A star of Hollywood. Most famously perhaps he was Jack Bauer in the Emmy and Golden Globe winning series 24. He’s the singer and guitar player in his own country band. He is also the son of Donald Sutherland, who named him after Warren Kiefer, the man who directed him in his first film. And now to this list he can add ‘whisky maker’.
Last year, Sutherland and three friends launched Red Bank, a premium blended Canadian whisky produced on the rugged coast of Nova Scotia. It’s no sideline or celebrity wheeze. Yes, Sutherland’s name is going to help sell it it to the world, but he’s got proper skin in the game and clearly knows his stuff when it comes to the world of distillation processes and grain varieties. First and foremost, he’s a fan, which makes him the perfect man for our regular Last Sipper interview.
‘Shall we talk about whisky?’ he suggests, offering me a seat and kicking back onto the sofa. And so off we go…
Barley:
Do you remember the first whisky you ever tasted?
Kiefer Sutherland:
It would have been J&B. That was the first whisky I ever had when I was young. I remember feeling all warm inside after that first sip and thinking, this is awesome, now I get what the fuss is about. And I’ve drunk J&B on and off ever since.
Barley:
What about single malts?
KS:
The Glenlivet was the first single malt that I remember having. Living in Los Angeles and New York, you could get that in the bars, Glenfiddich too, those were all accessible. I didn’t drink at home. The only time I drank was if I went out. After a while those single malts started feeling quite heavy to me and I went back to the blended whiskies.
The one whisky that I remember being just mesmerised by was Uisge Baugh [Tullamore Dew Blended Irish Whiskey from the eighties, good luck getting hold of a bottle today]. It felt like it was beading on your tongue, like mercury beads, does that make sense? It came in a stone jar. You could never find it. But every once in a while you would see it in a nice high end liquor store. And I always bought a bottle when I found one. I loved giving it as a gift to friends because people would go, ‘Oh my God! Where did you get that stuff?’ It was very special. An extraordinarily balanced, beautiful whiskey. And very different to anything else that I’d tried.
Sutherland singing during the launch event for his new whisky
Barley:
What’s your go-to whisky today?
KS:
A lot of the places that I like to visit are old school dive bars. Dewars, Cutty Sark, those kind of everyday blends. I’d be very happy drinking those somewhere scuzzy.
Barley:
Would you class Red Bank as an everyday whisky?
KS:
It’s a Canadian whisky which means it has to have a wheat profile, it has to have a rye profile, but it’s flexible in terms of the alcohol content. For instance, the top end could be up to 45% ABV, but we’ve kept ours at 40%. I never understood why Canadian whiskies claimed to have a flavour profile that was aligned to sour mash whiskeys or southern state American whiskeys. It makes no sense. Because, historically, our allegiance is with the UK and in particular Scotland. I wanted to tap into that. Red Bank is made in Nova Scotia. Literally New Scotland. Now, clearly it’s not a Scotch, but it lends itself to that tradition.
Barley:
How involved were you in the make-up of the spirit?
KS:
I had input. As I say, I knew the profile I wanted. And so we have a much higher wheat content than in most Canadian whiskies, and we have a much lower rye profile. And our burn process is shorter. We also have a very low carbon part per volume. I remember finding out about that after a hard few days tasting the first spirit. You do these tastings for three or four days in a row, and it’s exhausting! I was cooking breakfast for three or four of the team after this marathon tasting session and I looked at my friend and said, ‘I feel a lot better than I should!’ At that moment, our master distiller Michel Marcil walked by and in his very thick French accent said, ‘That’s the low carbon output, Kiefer. Very, very low carbon is not going to give you a hangover, you’re going to remember what she said last night.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s a change of pace!’ I love how refined this whisky is. And it has a very kind of smooth finish. It’s got those great caramel notes. It’s not too spicy. I just think it’s really balanced.
Barley:
I can’t wait to try it. Especially now I know it’s not going to give me a hangover.
KS:
Right! And you can get it here in the UK now, but not where I live in the States. We launched last year in Canada. And then UK was always going to be our next stop. Next we’ll do the rest of Europe and then back to the States.
‘My allegiance is with Scotland. I wanted to tap into that. Red Bank is made in Nova Scotia, literally New Scotland. Now, clearly it’s not a Scotch, but it lends itself to that tradition’
Barley:
Talking of the world of whisky, what’s your favourite whisky destination?
KS:
It has to be Scotland. My band has played there a lot, as far up as Inverness, but the two places we normally play would be either Edinburgh or Glasgow. And I love both of them and for very different reasons. Edinburgh’s one of the most beautiful cities in the world as well. So, I’d go with that.
Whisky. Guitars. And one contented man.
Barley:
What’s your favourite whisky cocktail?
KS:
First up, I’m not a cocktail drinker. But we had these contests with bartenders in Nova Scotia using Red Bank. And they were fantastic. Great nights. They came up with phenomenal cocktails, the best one that I tasted was a version of a Paper Plane [whisky, Aperol, lemon juice]. And what I really loved was that even though I think this is such a smooth whisky, it will still poke through a cocktail. And you’ll know that it’s a Red Bank Manhattan, or it’s a Red Bank Whisky sour, or it’s a Red Bank Paper Plane. But it also blends so beautifully. I’d never actually had a Paper Plane before but it made me think, if I ever wanted to drink whisky and feel like I was drinking a bottle of juice, this is it! There was a woman who came to one of our tastings in St. John’s, Newfoundland. And she said she didn’t really drink whisky. We said, that’s fine, you don’t have to, have whatever you want. But she was curious, so we suggested she try a cocktail. There were around 300 people there. Anyway, the event finishes and everyone goes into the bar and this woman is sprawled out on the bar. And the bartender is giving her another Paper Plane! And I said ‘What’s going on here?’ And they said, ‘It’s alright, she’s staying here.’ She didn’t look alright. And then she kind of reared up, looked at me said ‘Oh, I LOVE whisky!’
Barley:
That’s a wonderful story. The Paper Plane as the gateway drug. You’re not a cocktail man, so how do you like to take your whisky — neat, with ice, with water?
KS:
Neat. Always neat. I’m an economist.
Barley:
You must have drunk in some great places. Do you have a favourite whisky bar?
KS:
In New York City, there’s a bar called Smalls. It’s not a whisky bar, it’s a jazz bar, but they’ve got a great whisky selection. Because I’m on the road a lot with the band, I’ve started going to hotels that have great bars. I love the bar at China Tang in the Dorchester in London. It’s one of the most beautiful looking bars you'll ever see, with gorgeous Art Deco lighting, and you walk down the stairs to step into it. They’ve got an incredible selection of whiskies.
‘I like dive bars. I drink in places like Sweaty Bettys in Toronto. Not sophisticated at all, but a great place to drink a lot of whisky’
Barley:
What about back home in Canada — is there a cool place you love to go there?
KS:
Cool? No! Because I drink in places like Sweaty Bettys in Toronto. It’s not sophisticated at all. But it’s a great bar.
Barley:
What are you drinking when you’re there?
KS:
A lot! [Laughs loudly] That’s what happens there.
Barley:
I think I get the picture. What’s your whisky collection like? Do you like to buy special bottling, exclusives, that kind of thing?
KS:
I’m not a collector. I’m a drinker. I went to the Whisky Exchange shop yesterday and saw bottles going for $60,000. I was talking to a guy in the shop about it and he said the way people rationalise spending that kind of money on a bottle of whisky is by telling themselves that you’ll probably never run into someone in your life who’s ever had a sip of it. It’s that exclusive thing. And I thought, Oh shit, I’m going to start rationalising buying this! I’ll just start off small with a $600 bottle of whisky…but that way madness lies. Anyway, I don’t have any bottles like that. But I do like to have a variety for guests to drink when they come to my house. So obviously I have some Red Bank. I do like some of the Japanese whiskies. My favourite is Suntory Toki. It’s very smooth and easy drinking. I like that one a lot. Red Bank and Toki actually have a lot in common. Irish whiskies are a little sweet for me. But in all fairness, it’s always best to have a bottle of Bushmills on the shelf at home.
Barley:
Do you have a view on tasting notes? Do you think they add to the experience of drinking whisky?
KS:
If you know the vernacular, I think they can be really helpful. I did not know the vernacular and I still don't really know the vernacular. But somehow I managed to convey my thoughts about what I like about whisky, and how I wanted ours to taste, to our master distiller Michel Marcil. And he nailed it. So it is nice if there’s a way to communicate something that’s so intimate as a palate. It’s a bit like someone trying to explain to you why this painting is more valuable than another painting, and this is what you should be looking for in the art to tell you that. I was never a fan of Picasso and Cubism. I was a huge fan of Rembrandt and the master painters and what they did. Then I went to see a fantastic exhibition at the Met in New York, and the top floor was all Picasso. They had all these paintings that he started when he was 14 or 15 years old, and those were all the master paintings. And you walked through his career. And all of a sudden, I could see the progression from Portrait of a Woman, which looks like a classical Rembrandt kind of style painting. And now here’s his Cubist version. I could see how he was morphing into this new style and growing. At the every end of the exhibition there was a quote: ‘When I was a child, they made me paint like an adult. So as an adult, I learned to paint like a child.’ And I fell in love with that. I just needed to know why. Someone had to explain that to me. Thankfully, it was him. And so it’s the same thing with whisky. This is why this is so special. And this is what they had to do to accomplish this. And now I know what I’m looking for. ‘Oh, yeah, I can taste that.’ So I suppose what I’m saying is that in the end the language used to talk about whisky is helpful.
‘I love those evenings where three friends go into a bar and leave with five. You’ve made two friends’
Barley:
At the risk of putting morbid thoughts in your head, let’s just presume your time is up. You’ve got one last one whisky to drink. What are you having? What’s your last sipper?
KS:
I’m going to go for Red Bank.
Barley:
I thought you might!
KS:
For very selfish reasons. Because I’m part of that. The bottle of J&B, the Uisge Bauch, if I’m being nostalgic I might choose those, but the the only thing that I contributed to those whiskies is that I bought it, and then I brought it home and drank it. With Red Bank, this was six years of watching something grow from the seed of an idea. In all fairness, I just wanted to get involved with a project that meant I could work with three of my friends. I didn’t expect that that bottle would be here now in front of us, and we'd be having this conversation.
Whisky pals: Sutherland with the team behind his whisky - Mangrove’s Nick Gillett (left) and Red Bank Co-Founder’s Gary Briggs and Shawn Hiscott
Barley:
I want you to picture your fantasy whisky party. You can invite anyone alive or dead. Who’s coming to drink with you?
KS:
I’d love to invite my granddad. But he didn’t really drink. Except every once in awhile, and he’d have a sherry. But I miss him. So I’d invite him anyway. I’d love to have a drink with my dad. But he doesn’t drink either, so that’s not going to happen. I better pick some drinkers. I guess I’ll go with historical figures. I think the idea of having a drink with Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein and Keith Richards would be fun. I’d love to see how they all got on.
Barley:
That sounds like it would be quite the night. Talking of which. What was your wildest night out on whisky?
KS:
[Laughs] I can’t remember that! I've had some very, very funny nights, when I was much younger, when I was much stronger. I had a proper constitution in my twenties. The nights could go on quite long. All my memories of that kind of frivolity was that everybody was happy, everybody was having a good time. They all paid for it the next day. But at that moment, whatever you were joyous about, whether it was because you were friends, or because you got a great new job, or because you were just happy. And to see everybody and to not be alone and to feel like the bar was this great community — those moments are the best moments I’ve had in my life, the ones that make everything else kind of worth it. So it’s not so much about the crazy times as much as it is the joy of being with friends. Usually the magic happens when there’s a combination of great whisky or whatever you like to drink, and great music. Those two things are great uniting forces. I love those evenings where three friends go into a bar and leave with five. You’ve made two friends. And the next time you see each other, all you’re going to have to talk about was that last time you were together. And that becomes the story and you laugh about that story as you’re creating another one. That’s good enough for me.
Red Bank is available to buy at Master of Malt
Quickfire Kiefer
Everyday whisky: J&B
Single malt: Glenfiddich
Destination: Edinburgh
World whisky: Suntory Toki
Whisky bar: Smalls, New York; China Tang, London; Sweaty Bettys, Toronto
Cocktail: Red Bank Paper Plane
Fantasy party guests: Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Keith Richards
