A vintage tale — low on proof

Press, 12 May 1981, Page 17

A vintage tale — low on proof

By

ANTONY TERRY

and ROY PER-

ROTT, “Sunday Times,” London

There are plenty of drinkers, it seems, who enjoy a splash of legend with their liquor — and are prepared to pay for it. Newspaper advertisements in the United States, West Germany, and Switzerland are offering for sale about 40,000 bottles of rum, whisky, and cognac. They are, the advertisements explain, the remains of “genuine war booty of the Desert Fox Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s legendary Afrika Korps and captured from the British at Tobruk.”

It is a colourful claim, and there are prices to match. The cost of a litre bottle of “Rommel whisky” ranges from $45 to just over $240, depending on where it is sold and the state of the label. No less than $l4OO is being asked for a four-bottle mixed case, packed in a replica of an Afrika Korps ammunition chest lined with uniform khaki.

In spite of such price-tags, more than 6000 bottles of the Rommel liquor have been sold in the United States, and a similar quantity in West Germany. The remaining stock stands in a bonded customs shed in the remote Bavarian town of Hengersberg. It is being marketed by the soft drinks firm of Wilhelm Philipp, which says it bought the hoard at an auction in Frankfurt in 1979.

Our inquiries have revealed serious flaws in the offer. There never was any such “Rommel booty.” The garrison of Tobruk was

known as one of the most drink-deprived of outposts, and no extravagant stocks existed there. And what is labelled as “matured old Scotch whisky” is not Scotch at all. According to tests made for us, it is an artificially coloured, immature spirit. Rommel liquor customers are sent a 30-page, hardbacked booklet which details the drink's supposed historical significance. This claims that a huge stock of liquor was captured by the Afrika Korps when it took Tobruk in June. 1942, and says it amounted to 1.9 million litres in casks (equivalent to about 2.5 million bottles of spirit). This precious booty _ was shipped from North Africa to the Italian port of Anzio. In January, 1944, the account continues, the fortunes of war brought this booty back into allied hands. Troops of the United States Fifth Army, advancing after the Anzio landings, discovered it stored in a brewery. By this time the stock had been reduced to 380,000 gallons. In 1945, a local Italian company, Delva Ltd, was engaged to bottle the stuff* Because of shortage of materials the 1,420,000 bottles filled from the casks of whisky, brandy, rum and

gin were of a variety of shapes. To compensate for this, the company used “distinctive and artistic labels.” The whisky bottles were styled “Special Brand . . . Finely matured old Scotch whisky ... guaranteed genuine and wholesome,” with the Delva signature in a flourish beneath.

The bottled booty was next moved to Linz in Austria by the United States military. Though stored for safety deep in the vaults of the Linz monastry, it suffered -steady attrition from the depredations of thieves and blackmarketeers who managed to burrow into the vaults, as well as from steady sales through American Army PX stores.

How much of this story stands up to scrutiny? The idea that such booty was captured in Tobruk is quickly exploded — from both sides of the barbed wire.

Rommel’s son, Manfred now Mayor of Stuttgart, dismisses the W’hole tale as “pure speculation; there never was such a thing as Rommel liquor.” Count Peter von Puttkamer, who’ was Rommel’s supplies officer, is equally scornful; “We found

some Scotch when we captured Tobruk, but nothing like these quantities. What we had was dished out to our retreating troops after Alamein and not a drop was sent to Italy.” British veterans of Tobruk gasp at the idea that Scotch was plentiful in the garrison. “I got one bottle a month if I was lucky and shared it around,” said one former tank brigadier. The manager of the N.A.A.F.I. canteen at the time recalls that he had precisely 24 cases of whisky left when Tobruk fell. “My Nissen hut had a direct hit and even that booze went up in smoke in the last bombardment.”

So where did the liquor originate? Clues might lie in its age and quality. We arranged a tasting of a bottle of “Rommel Whisky,” supervised by a London whisky merchant and senior executives from two prominent Scotch distilleries.

The fragility of the cork suggested considerable age and the somewhat gingery colour increased the experts’ curiosity. The peppery flavour and bouquet, “with a sort, of whisky taste under-

neath it,” teased their palates with doubt. The addition of water, which genuine Scotch very adequately stands, greatly deflated the liquid's appeal. We then sent samples of the liquor to two Scottish laboratories experienced in whisky and its imitations. Their independent reports agreed: “definitely not Scotch whisky”. The first described it as a highly’ immature spirit and commented that “it would be surprising if this had matured in cask for more than six months” compared with the minimum three years required of standard Scotch. The flavour, it said, was reminiscent of imitations made in Portugal and India. The second analyst disdainfully described it as “an alcoholic drink artifici-ally-flavoured and coloured with dyes.” Since even a whisky-type spirit does not mature after bottling, it is possible that the liquor might genuinely have originated in Italy in 1944. The booklet contains the photocopy of a statement made in 1975 by a Dr M. Zanchi, a former executive of the Delva company, confirming the bottling of the spirit in 1945 and its shipment to Linz. United States Army

sources partlv confirm this. Col John M." Gaustad, now retired, was concerned with marketing the liquor to American servicemen through the PX stores. In 1976, he wrote a sales promotion booklet called “A Legend of Lost Liquor.” Though

this relied on the Tobruk myth, it also gave some convincing colour to the story of the 1945 shipment to Austria. “No one is sure how. or why,” he wrote, “but before the end of 1945 a train arrived at Linz rail depot

bearing all that was left of the Afrika Korps liquor. Freight handlers of the time recall more than half a million litres (110,000 gallons)

There are documents to support, the rest of the story. In 1947, after steady PX sales had much reduced the stock, the Americans passed it to Austrian customs which for some reason found it hard to dispose of. The bottles were gradually dispersed in large lots, some to-a .merchant in Liechtenstein, some (again) to American PX stores, and the remainder to an auction in Frankfurt where Philipp bought it in 1979. The best guess about the origin of the whole “booty” is that of an Austrian ministry official who wrote in 1976 that' it was “probably of Italian origin” — possibly distilled for the Italian forces. When we told Armin Philipp, head of Wilhelm Philipp, about the analysis reports, he commented: “We do not advertise the whisky as being Scotch merely as a product consumed by troops in the Second World War.”

In London, the Scotch Whisky Association said the German courts had shown serious concern about any cases of labelling which might be considered deceptive — such as labelling local spirit with tartan or Highland scenery design. Even the use of English working bad been restrained.