MEMBER PROFILE: PETE BEGG
From studying engineering, Pete Begg found himself drawn to the world of cooking, working in various restaurants before becoming friends and subsequently business partner with Jamie Oliver. Now Head of Food Development with Jamie’s organisation, Pete is also a devoted member of the SMWS. Our master brand ambassador John McCheyne caught up with him for a dram in our London Members’ Room at 19 Greville Street to find out more about his journey and whisky passion
A taste for it...
PHOTOS: ANDY BARNHAM
So how did you first get into cooking, Pete?
I made a pizza out of a Blue Peter annual when I was six, and I thought: ‘This is really good!’ I realised that I could make things taste better if I cooked them myself, so I started making stuff when I was around 14 and then when I went away to university, I had to cook for myself then.
This was in Scotland?
Yes, I went to Edinburgh University to study engineering, but I was getting more interested in food and less interested in engineering as I went through, so I ended up going to a restaurant, asked for a job and started cooking. I then spent time in Italy teaching English as a foreign language and was totally bitten by the food bug there as well. When I came back to London, I trained as a chef and worked in restaurant after restaurant, until I started at the River Café, which I loved. Jamie [Oliver] started working there the same week that I started, so we were the two new boys. He used to give me a lift home ‘cause we both lived in north London. We became friends and worked together for a number of years. When he got his break with The Naked Chef he said to me: ‘I can’t do this on my own, I need somebody who knows about food to help me.’ So that was my job really, and it still is 20 years later. I help him across all of his different businesses.
And where did whisky start for you?
Well, as anyone growing up in Scotland would say, whisky was all around me, but it didn’t really agree with me.
The real moment came when I was invited to go stalking in Scotland. I went off up the hill and I managed to get this great, big 14-point stag.
It was fantastic, it was October, snow on the mountains and it was really cold. We pulled this stag all the way down to the bothy, and then the stalker pulled out this fabulous fruit loaf his wife had made, and from his other pocket he took a bottle of Famous Grouse.
He went out the door with a jug and went up onto the hill and scooped up this jug of water from the burn and brought it back in – it was the same colour as the whisky, an amazing pale, brackish brown, and he said: ‘Now, this is the water you wanna be drinking with your whisky,’ and he lit a fire.
There I am with this fruitcake, this bottle of Grouse, water from the mountain, the smell of the fire, outside, it’s just wild and it’s beautiful and the colours are amazing, and the air was incredible, and I just started drinking this stuff, and all the planets aligned. This was the flavour of Scotland in a glass! I’ll never forget it.
That’s fantastic! And how did you come across the Society?
My brother bought me a membership for Christmas, but I didn’t know that much about it. But by that time, I was just jabbering about whisky, you know: ‘It’s incredible, it’s the smell of the wind and the rain and the sun and the barley in the field.’
I remember coming to Greville Street for the first time, and I stood there, and the barman said: ‘What would you like, sir? Do you like fruits? Do you like smoke? Do you like leather?’ He pitched all these things at me. It was a whole new way to drink. You never get asked that question at a bar, it’s a totally new way to approach drinking.
I loved the way there were different colours, and they had the codes on the front, I thought: ‘That’s great’, and you can look them up if you want to, to find out where they were from. But you find that a lot of distilleries don’t normally sell their whiskies to the public, they’re not branded, so you get to taste things that aren’t out there in any other way.
Then you realise that there’s a different Outturn [of SMWS whiskies] every month, so when you take more than 140 distilleries in Scotland, suddenly you multiply that, multiply that, multiply that, and there’s a whole world of different tastes and experiences you can have.
Any favourite flavour profiles?
I drink them all, ‘cause they’re all extraordinary, but I’ve never really thought of whisky divided up into those categories before, and it’s a really interesting thing. So when the Outturn comes out, I’m always looking at each section and thinking and reading the little blurb about how they taste. Old & Dignified is always good, I love it.
But it’s not the most interesting for me – I like the Young & Spritely ones.
And it’s something that I’ve learned since coming here, that people are drinking whisky younger now, and there are some wilder flavours and some more interesting things to taste, and that’s new for me, and I’m really excited by that. I started giving Jamie some Society whiskies, and he also thought they were great. He was saying: ‘Where is this place? Where is this place?’ So, I told him and he joined and started ordering bottles, and I’ve taken him to the bar a few times and he loves it. I’ve just texted him a picture of this glass and the dram we’re having, to say: ‘Wish you were here!’