Latest / Whisky Stories Podcast / Flora Outram: Old Pulteney, Scottish Prohibition and a Single Malt from Thailand

Transcript

Flora Outram: Old Pulteney, Scottish Prohibition and a Single Malt from Thailand · Whisky Stories Podcast

• 0:00
  Right, I guess you know what to do.
• 0:02
  Collapse in. Welcome to the Whiskey Stories
• 0:06
  podcast. And they came back and said good
• 0:09
  news, you're going to Hong Kong. Oh well.
• 0:11
  And. I kind of thought, well, I think
• 0:14
  the location for Old Company is so, so significant, more so than
• 0:19
  I would wager almost every other distillery in Scotland.
• 0:21
  But in the past, Old Fortney has been referred to as the Manzania
• 0:24
  of the North. Which I think.
• 0:26
  Is. Really.
• 0:28
  Sweet and generous. Yeah, because I mean, Manzania
• 0:31
  is not known as the Wicker, the side.
• 0:35
  That it. Should be welcome along the
• 0:37
  Whiskey Stories podcast, myself. Graham Kogar.
• 0:39
  We are back in the athletic arms, back in the Digger's
• 0:41
  dungeon and we are sandwiched nicely underneath the gents
• 0:44
  toilets and the bar upstairs. Angus.
• 0:47
  I'm very good, thank you. I've got driving one hand, water
• 0:49
  on the other so. That's exactly, yeah, Combining
• 0:52
  the two of you, being responsible, being responsible.
• 0:55
  Absolutely. Chuck, how are you?
• 0:57
  I'm all right, man. Yeah.
• 0:58
  I feel like I should have. I have more plan to say at this
• 1:00
  point when you ask me that question, but I just haven't.
• 1:02
  You just haven't panic every single.
• 1:04
  Time that's what he is is Mr. that's that's what he is.
• 1:07
  You get what you say is he is. He's cast strength, Chuck.
• 1:12
  I'm exhausted about being myself.
• 1:14
  Single cast, single cast Chuck. Single cast Chuck, nothing.
• 1:18
  Nothing added No, no filtration. There's no blood, Yeah.
• 1:22
  Yeah, but we are joined Angus where I'm excited about this
• 1:25
  Angus because couple weeks ago we had Ross on the podcast,
• 1:29
  Timothy Walker. Tim was great, brilliant,
• 1:32
  brought a lot of lovely dramas. It was a great episode and
• 1:34
  thanks for all the feedback on that.
• 1:36
  But we mentioned that bar at that hotel on Princess St.
• 1:41
  That Ross is the manager of too many times.
• 1:44
  Too many times mention it too much.
• 1:45
  You know, so that. Bar so we're getting the
• 1:48
  mentions out of the way. Earlier, well, we mentioned it
• 1:50
  once and that's it, right. So that bar at the Balmor at
• 1:53
  that hotel, are you? Ruined it now that Ross.
• 1:57
  Barrages we were at a taste like through the Masters, the club
• 2:00
  membership that we get, we go along to and you were you were,
• 2:04
  you were Flora Uttrum. Flora was hosting us and I knew
• 2:09
  that we'd already booked Flora to come onto the podcast, so
• 2:12
  this was it was great to actually see Flora delivering A
• 2:16
  tasting for Old Poultney. And with plenty of time to
• 2:19
  cancel just. Yes, well, no, we would never do
• 2:21
  that because we knew you would probably bring grams.
• 2:24
  But but I, I, Flora Trump, welcome along the Whiskey
• 2:27
  Stories podcast. How are you?
• 2:28
  I'm so well, thank you. I can't believe I'm in the
• 2:30
  engine room of the diggers. Yeah, this is that.
• 2:32
  This is where all the magic literally happens.
• 2:33
  Yeah, Yeah. This is, this is it.
• 2:35
  Quite remarkable, yeah. And it's, it's great to have
• 2:38
  have you here. And like I was just saying that
• 2:40
  tasting that we're at it was it's up there.
• 2:42
  I'd say it's in the top three, I would say.
• 2:45
  For it was an excellent taste thing.
• 2:48
  And what was your highlight of the evening, Graham?
• 2:50
  I'm trying to think back now. There was it was the second drum
• 2:54
  that was on the lineup was actually my favorite of the
• 2:57
  night. I think that was the one we went
• 2:58
  for. I can't that's gone the.
• 3:00
  Single cast bourbon. Single cast Bourbon.
• 3:02
  Yeah, because you came on and you start.
• 3:05
  You had a single cast Suburban. You had a single cask from
• 3:07
  Sherry. Started with a French oak
• 3:09
  distillery exclusive. That's right, bourbon and Sherry
• 3:12
  single casks around 14 years. Each.
• 3:15
  Yeah. Then there was some pretty, I
• 3:15
  mean the 1989 one at the end. Yeah.
• 3:18
  Year of our birth, Angus. Of course it was going to.
• 3:20
  Be it was going to be a cracking bit of liquid.
• 3:23
  It was only good stuff happened in 1989, I think you know.
• 3:27
  Berlin Wall came back. Yeah, there's actually quite a
• 3:29
  lot of bad stuff that happened, but I just had to kind of.
• 3:32
  But the Whiskey Stories podcast was effectively born.
• 3:34
  In 1980. 9 Because that's where that's where Angus and I were.
• 3:37
  That was it. We were just little babies.
• 3:39
  My, my, because I was born very close to the Berlin Wall, coming
• 3:42
  down only two or three weeks later.
• 3:43
  Apparently, my dad once revealed.
• 3:45
  I thought you meant like, no, no, no, I came out the cold or
• 3:51
  finish. No, no, no, my dad did say.
• 3:54
  He didn't think about. Putting Berlin as a middle name
• 3:57
  for me and. I was a bit like, oh, don't
• 4:01
  dodge the bullet there. Yeah, we've talked because
• 4:05
  you're you're Now let me to get this right.
• 4:07
  You're the European brand ambassador for international
• 4:10
  beverage, correct Now international beverage just
• 4:13
  sounds like a beverage company that operates internationally,
• 4:18
  operates internationally. Ding Ding, absolutely.
• 4:20
  And we've already had they're on seal of of whiskey companies.
• 4:25
  They do exactly what they say on the dead.
• 4:28
  But we already had Stuart Barley Baxter on on the podcast.
• 4:32
  He also gets a lot of mentions by the way he does listened
• 4:36
  along. He does he he he gave us a
• 4:37
  really good insight. He was a I mean, he's an
• 4:40
  award-winning brand ambassador. He he sold us Spayburn.
• 4:44
  He did. He really did.
• 4:45
  He we went up to Spayburn and I think we had him on about this
• 4:48
  time last year and he taught wax lyrical about Spayburn as a
• 4:52
  distillery. We talked a lot about Spayburn,
• 4:55
  the drummole things, worm tubs, etcetera, etcetera.
• 4:58
  And and and when we had a wee opportunity in the summers to go
• 5:01
  up to it was like top of the list of where we're.
• 5:03
  Going it was. It was actually, it's not
• 5:05
  frustrating. In hindsight, it wasn't
• 5:07
  frustrating, but I remember leaving that podcast and being
• 5:10
  like, these guys have access to so much whiskey while big, big
• 5:16
  distilleries. And with the greatest respect to
• 5:19
  Spayburn, it was a bit like we spent a lot of time talking
• 5:22
  about Spayburn when we could have been talking about some of
• 5:25
  the other. But then it worked out so much
• 5:28
  better because I didn't know a single thing about Spayburn
• 5:31
  before we got speaking on that episode.
• 5:33
  And now I could tell you all the stuff about it where the drum
• 5:35
  Maltese because we took the trip up there and it worked out
• 5:38
  really, really well. So then it's like, OK,
• 5:41
  international beverage, talk us through the portfolio of whiskey
• 5:45
  that you guys have at your disposal.
• 5:47
  There OK, more than just whiskey, international beverage,
• 5:50
  of course. So.
• 5:53
  Yeah. So the international kind of
• 5:55
  spirits of the company, we are actually owned by a larger
• 5:59
  parent company based in Thailand, but the international
• 6:03
  beverage portfolio contains 5 distilleries in Scotland.
• 6:07
  So the aforementioned Spay burn, we've got old Port me that you
• 6:10
  can see in front of you, knock do Balblair and Balmanic.
• 6:15
  We also make Karun Gin Balmanic, which many people in Scotland
• 6:19
  will know. Not necessarily in other
• 6:20
  countries, but it's very popular gin.
• 6:22
  Here good with Apple. Very good.
• 6:24
  Yes, like. That I've never had it.
• 6:26
  Yeah, you've. Got red apple.
• 6:28
  It's the garnish, yeah. Guys, you've got some bars.
• 6:31
  Yeah. And beyond that, we also own a
• 6:35
  cognac house in France. We have a beautiful distillery
• 6:38
  in New Zealand which produces whiskey, vodka, gin and
• 6:41
  liqueurs. And we have a number of
• 6:44
  distilleries in Thailand. Yes, whiskey and rum.
• 6:47
  When Stuart Baxter was on, he bought on her.
• 6:49
  They brought a new. Zealand New Zealand Vodka.
• 6:54
  Cardrona. Cardrona I was going to say
• 6:57
  Corona, but I knew that was wrong.
• 6:58
  Cardrona Yeah, there was an extra violin there.
• 7:01
  Yeah, yeah, he brought the Reed vodka, which is really, really.
• 7:04
  Special, Yeah. Depending on how this
• 7:05
  conversation goes, I might have some Cardrona whiskey in my bag.
• 7:09
  We'll behave ourselves, we'll get a treat in the head.
• 7:13
  But yeah, so, so when Angus and I were discussing when you're
• 7:16
  coming on the podcast, it's hard when you do have somebody brand
• 7:20
  ambassador like yourself who comes on and works for a brand
• 7:22
  that has such a multitude of hats to wear.
• 7:25
  And that might, we'll talk about that as well, how difficult or
• 7:27
  how, how fun it is to be able to do that.
• 7:29
  But we also said we wanted to hone in.
• 7:31
  And one of the distilleries that we really wanted to hone in on
• 7:33
  was was Old Pultney. Because hearing what you were
• 7:36
  talking about or how you spoke about Old Pultney that night at
• 7:39
  the tasting was absolutely fantastic.
• 7:40
  Old Pultney has been something that's popped up on the podcast
• 7:43
  quite a lot. A lot it.
• 7:45
  Has, yeah. What 3 dramas?
• 7:46
  Like licking a pretzel. There you go, a pretzel.
• 7:48
  So that absolutely. Brings in my ears.
• 7:51
  Yeah. And, you know, so that was
• 7:53
  Angus's tasting note there it was, yeah.
• 7:55
  Yeah. At the time you said that's
• 7:56
  probably the most incredible thing you've ever said it.
• 7:59
  Probably still is, yeah. But there's other there's other
• 8:03
  distilleries which I want to cover.
• 8:04
  But at the same time, probably 17 was a big thing on the
• 8:07
  podcast. So a lot of people's what, 3
• 8:08
  drams. And then we had the, we, we, we
• 8:11
  were part of the Poultney 17 bonanza with Glenmore Spirit
• 8:15
  rare find with Greg Urquhart picking the, the winner of the
• 8:18
  whiskey Fringe drama, the drama, the Fringe.
• 8:21
  And then of course, that's been able to bottle a Poultney 17.
• 8:23
  So for us all, poultney really does ring as a, as a.
• 8:27
  So we want to look at that, but we also want to talk about some
• 8:29
  of the other stuff they did. But first of all, how did you
• 8:31
  get it yourself in a whiskey? Well, I mean, as I kind of
• 8:35
  always say, I've actually only been in the whiskey industry
• 8:38
  less than three years. So if I was a cask of whiskey in
• 8:41
  a warehouse, I actually couldn't be called Scotch whiskey.
• 8:43
  Yeah, it could be. No, Well, that's not.
• 8:45
  We've been in the West. We've been even a lot less.
• 8:47
  Yeah. So I kind of like weaved around
• 8:50
  a bit in my early 20s. I wasn't entirely sure which one
• 8:53
  I wanted to go. COVID came along and kind of put
• 8:56
  a pause on a lot of things. I did a bit of further study
• 8:59
  after my undergrad and I found myself doing a heritage degree,
• 9:04
  heritage studies, which kind of I tell people that and they're
• 9:08
  like, sorry, what does that mean?
• 9:10
  Where did you think that was going to get you?
• 9:12
  Well, it got me to whiskey because heritage is basically
• 9:15
  like the study of why we have the past in the present.
• 9:19
  So it's not like history. It's like, why have we kept
• 9:23
  this? Why have we preserved this?
• 9:24
  And what is the story we tell about it?
• 9:26
  That's interesting. And around that time, my
• 9:29
  parents, who until that point were living in the South of
• 9:32
  England, hence the accent, the accent.
• 9:35
  They retired and they moved up to space side of all places,
• 9:39
  basically put a pen in the map. They want, they knew they wanted
• 9:42
  to be in Scotland. Unbelievable.
• 9:45
  Unbelievable. Because their decision to move
• 9:48
  there then kind of like diverted my life course, you know, and I
• 9:52
  was living with them temporarily after uni.
• 9:55
  And you just, you just, you guys know it.
• 9:58
  You walk down the street, you walk into a pub and you're just,
• 10:00
  oh, there's someone who works in whiskey.
• 10:02
  Oh, there's another distillery. Was whiskey on your radar before
• 10:04
  this at all? Yes, so my, my mum's family's
• 10:07
  all Scottish and I've spent a lot of time.
• 10:09
  I grew up going on holiday on the West Coast of Scotland.
• 10:12
  My grandfather was a big whiskey drinker, though it didn't serve
• 10:14
  him very well, but whiskey has always kind of been there.
• 10:19
  But as a something that you bring out when you're on holiday
• 10:21
  in Scotland, maybe something at Christmas.
• 10:24
  I knew about it. I never really drunk it, but I
• 10:27
  was in, I was at home and I went to the pub.
• 10:30
  We tend to go to the physics side in Craigaloke.
• 10:33
  If you know it, a room about this big on the bend near the
• 10:37
  bridge just as you're leaving Craigaloke.
• 10:41
  Very brilliant, very very basic pub.
• 10:43
  A couple of taps, a few whiskeys.
• 10:45
  Great chat. Is this?
• 10:46
  Just down the road from the Highlander is it?
• 10:48
  Yeah, basically. Really.
• 10:50
  You take a left out the Highlander.
• 10:51
  See, we didn't get beyond the Highlander.
• 10:53
  There we go, I realized. But I can't believe there's a
• 10:55
  third pub that we didn't even get a chance.
• 10:57
  To go take, I'll take you guys there at this point.
• 10:59
  It's a special place, but it's because it's a room like this
• 11:01
  size. You talk to everyone who's in
• 11:03
  there. Yeah.
• 11:03
  Yeah. So I was, I think I was writing
• 11:05
  my dissertation actually at the time where I'd just finished it.
• 11:08
  And because I was studying heritage, my thesis was on like
• 11:12
  Canadian heritage. I'd zoned in on something there.
• 11:16
  And I walk into the pub and one of the five people in the room
• 11:18
  is this clearly Canadian guy wearing a Blue Jays cap.
• 11:22
  And I started chatting to him and he said, oh, I used to work
• 11:25
  for National Parks Canada. I used to work in Canadian
• 11:28
  heritage. I thought, amazing, sit down,
• 11:30
  let me take notes. And then I said, anyway, what do
• 11:32
  you do now? And he said, oh, I'm the head
• 11:34
  archivist for Shivers Brothers Whiskey Company.
• 11:37
  And my brain just went, what the hell you can do like the history
• 11:41
  heritage thing, but also work in the whiskey industry.
• 11:44
  And he told me about the Shevis Brothers graduate program, which
• 11:48
  you will have heard of. It's a two year program.
• 11:51
  You apply. If you get in, they train you up
• 11:52
  to be a Brown ambassador and they send you to some market in
• 11:55
  the world. So I applied and I got it and
• 11:59
  that set me on my course. So you're the I think you're the
• 12:01
  third person to have been on that.
• 12:02
  So we. There are lots of us.
• 12:03
  Around Stuart Baxter and then it was Fraser.
• 12:06
  Morris Morrison. I don't know if you knew this,
• 12:09
  but I was actually over in India.
• 12:10
  You were in India? Really.
• 12:12
  I must have missed. This Yeah, so Fraser and I
• 12:15
  caught up and so he's on that at the moment.
• 12:18
  So shout out to Fraser because he's actually in the top
• 12:20
  percentage percentile of our listenership.
• 12:24
  So Fraser, if your last name hi and just get yourself this.
• 12:29
  But yeah, so that is, I mean the heritage, heritage probably is
• 12:34
  the thing that brought us pass into, well me in particular in a
• 12:38
  Westgate. Well, not me, because I did
• 12:39
  history at university, so I'm not interested in the present
• 12:42
  today. I'm interested in the past.
• 12:44
  I'm just interested in the past. That's all I did.
• 12:47
  But The thing is, for me, it was heritage.
• 12:50
  It was there was a family connection.
• 12:53
  Now more people have listened to this podcast for enough to hear
• 12:55
  that, but there is there is something really nice about
• 12:59
  that. And actually something that
• 13:00
  we've spoken a lot of people on the podcast they've they've
• 13:03
  they've talked about that they didn't get into whiskey until
• 13:05
  maybe they started travelling around the world and they
• 13:07
  realised that when they go anywhere in the world as a Scots
• 13:10
  person, Scotsman and Scotsman, whatever, and someone says
• 13:14
  you're from Scotland. So yeah.
• 13:15
  And one of the first questions they'll ask them was like
• 13:16
  whiskey. Do you like whiskey?
• 13:18
  Yeah, and a lot of people have said it's actually really
• 13:20
  embarrassing when you go all the way to and you have an
• 13:23
  Australian, an American, a Canadian, someone from Hong Kong
• 13:26
  or whatever asking you about Scotch or.
• 13:28
  Who knows more about Scotch than you?
• 13:30
  Yeah, I. Don't.
• 13:30
  I don't even like the stuff. Yeah, and well, you don't.
• 13:33
  Drink much of that, yeah. Yeah.
• 13:34
  And it's it's that then people start realizing maybe from
• 13:38
  yourself, Chuck, working in the bar industry, the bar trade on,
• 13:41
  you know, having people coming in and wanting to talk to you
• 13:44
  about whiskey and realized, you know, you could.
• 13:46
  Well, you did out a spite, really.
• 13:48
  Yeah, but no. But it was, it was really
• 13:50
  flattering to be have people come all over from the world
• 13:53
  just to be like, what do you recommend?
• 13:54
  It's a pretty class situation to be in.
• 13:56
  Yeah. But yeah, like mainly out of
• 13:59
  rage. I got into whiskey.
• 14:00
  So, yeah, yeah. To screw over a boss.
• 14:02
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's different ways to get in
• 14:05
  it and you found your way found. My niche, but.
• 14:09
  But yeah, so that I mean, well, actually say the heritage side
• 14:12
  of it for me, actually finding Old Poultney, because Old
• 14:15
  Poultney has been a drama that you'd see all the time.
• 14:17
  I've. Never.
• 14:18
  It was a drama. I used to be able to get it on a
• 14:23
  deal in the Co-op for a very, very reasonable price.
• 14:26
  Old Poultney 12. So it was actually very much for
• 14:29
  me and a bit of a gateway DRAM because I had a bottle in the
• 14:31
  house very early on that I was dipping into early COVID times.
• 14:36
  It's the same for me as well. It's probably one of the 1st 70
• 14:39
  sales I bought. Yeah.
• 14:41
  And I mean, I know we'll get into it a wee bit later, but
• 14:44
  when we're talking about the kind of Cody Reynolds circle of
• 14:46
  whiskey, I mean, he mentioned, you know, and I'll actually add
• 14:50
  a third arm to this circle. He mentioned when you get into
• 14:54
  whiskey, you're, you know, you're looking for pizza, you're
• 14:56
  looking for Sherry, and you can differentiate that there was
• 14:59
  something about Old Pulteney that was different from the
• 15:02
  other two. And it was, it was, it was good
• 15:06
  old sodium chloride. Not.
• 15:10
  Wine not. There was a bit of a maritime,
• 15:13
  yeah. And it was like, I can taste
• 15:15
  this, this, this tastes different from other whiskeys
• 15:18
  I've tried. Therefore I like this.
• 15:19
  Like I kicked it a lot later than you too then, because
• 15:22
  basically I was early days. I remember it sat there on the
• 15:25
  shelves and I always bypassed that and I don't know why.
• 15:27
  Probably because I didn't know enough about it, but I don't
• 15:30
  know what it was about, you know, what have you.
• 15:32
  And as I've said before was for me the story's always attracted
• 15:36
  me to the whiskey first. So it was always a case of like
• 15:38
  then I realised on my flavour wheel or whatever it was shade
• 15:42
  stuff. So again I just looked at old
• 15:44
  poultry and just thought it's not for me until doing a lot of
• 15:46
  research I realised that actually it popped up as a
• 15:48
  distillery that my grandfather's maltings used to actually supply
• 15:51
  Malta. So suddenly I was like, right,
• 15:53
  I'm going to go to the Co-op and buy or one of the shops and
• 15:55
  bought. The 12 year old had it and I was
• 15:57
  a bit like that's different at the time was like, OK, it's,
• 16:01
  it's not bad different, but it's also I need to be in the right
• 16:05
  mood for a Poultney old Poultney 12.
• 16:07
  Yeah, I think it's, you know, it's one of those great drams
• 16:09
  that because it stands out. If you're in a like the
• 16:13
  saturated whiskey market that we're in or a pub that's got so
• 16:16
  many bottles in the back bar or in the supermarket, if you know
• 16:20
  that the flavour is good, you know that it stands out.
• 16:22
  It's quite an easy thing to connect to.
• 16:24
  But also the bottle, like I know that we've got the.
• 16:27
  Oh yes, I've mentioned this. I really love old Pulteney and
• 16:31
  Glen Murray bottles and I've mentioned it on the pod because
• 16:33
  they've got that shape of a still.
• 16:35
  I just like that. Interestingly, or not
• 16:37
  interestingly, but a fact for you, before I was in whiskey, I
• 16:42
  I recognized Old Poultney. But before I was in whiskey, I
• 16:46
  didn't see that and think, oh, what a lovely bottle I was.
• 16:49
  I would kind of skim over it. I think I listened to one of the
• 16:52
  earlier episodes and you said something about Glenn Scotia and
• 16:55
  how the bottle had never particularly attracted you
• 16:58
  originally. And that's kind of how I felt
• 17:00
  about Old Poultney at 1st. And then as soon as I got into
• 17:02
  the industry, I realized kind of all the different niches about
• 17:05
  the spirit, the different ways in which different companies
• 17:08
  show up. It was just suddenly like this
• 17:10
  beacon of of more interest. And then until you hear people
• 17:14
  like, you know, suddenly you hear Mark Thompson talking about
• 17:18
  it and really talking and you go, oh, wow.
• 17:21
  But I would say even I would say I went up to a couple weeks ago
• 17:25
  your tasting. I hadn't tried very large
• 17:29
  variety of aid statement and. Types of and I would actually
• 17:33
  say the same. I hadn't tried a lot.
• 17:34
  I've tried the 12 plenty of times, but actually beyond that
• 17:38
  I hadn't. I mean, I'd tried the 17 once
• 17:40
  before and a couple of other things, but not gone all the
• 17:44
  way. Through all the way through.
• 17:45
  But what we're drowning just now.
• 17:46
  What are we? Because we're.
• 17:48
  So I picked up a single cast Glenn Grant upstairs and it's
• 17:52
  surprisingly not at all like I was expecting it to be.
• 17:56
  I think it's it's a wee bit peated actually, which I know,
• 17:59
  which is a wee bit smoky, which is not.
• 18:01
  I'm used to, you know, I've only really, I'm not too much Glenn
• 18:04
  Graham, but I'm used to the 10 year old.
• 18:05
  So I was expecting it to be something similar to that, but
• 18:07
  maybe dialed up in a kind of single cask fashion because it
• 18:10
  is an American oak single cask. But yeah, there's definitely a
• 18:14
  bit of beating there and it's very nice.
• 18:16
  I really like it. Nice.
• 18:18
  Love yourself, Charlize. I got The Art of American Cherry
• 18:21
  Cask, which I'm enjoying very much.
• 18:23
  Yeah, yeah, they're just had an Arden American tasting here last
• 18:27
  week. The shelf looked good.
• 18:28
  So the shelf, all the Arden mark has been brought to the front
• 18:32
  because I've got an Arden mark in peated saw turns, which is
• 18:37
  classy dragon. It's 50% ABV, so it's a bit
• 18:40
  punchier than I'd kind of like to start on a a lower ABV, but
• 18:44
  it's it's cracking. I took.
• 18:45
  I took a bottle of that to my friends when we were doing Burns
• 18:49
  Night and I left it with him and I was like, that's, that's just
• 18:53
  been a really, really nice guy actually.
• 18:55
  And I've regretted so much. You go home.
• 18:58
  And I was like, fuck, I could have actually gone through that
• 19:01
  ball quite nicely. Arden American is a crack.
• 19:02
  I mean, we've got some big Arden American stuff coming.
• 19:05
  Your eyes peeled, peeled for Arden American stuff, but and
• 19:09
  and flow up you've got a wee drama out of it.
• 19:11
  It's. Very special staying on brand
• 19:13
  your own old Pulteney rare fine. Pop game here.
• 19:16
  That's that. What is the SO?
• 19:17
  OK, amazing. Because that's 54.8%.
• 19:20
  I would say that does not feel as hot as it is as you would
• 19:23
  expect. Yeah, And I don't know whether
• 19:25
  that's my own problem being. So accustomed to drinking.
• 19:29
  Whiskey but. No, I said that's a really good
• 19:31
  thing. It's a drinkable.
• 19:32
  It's a drinkable drum at that beautiful color.
• 19:35
  As. Well, at that ABV, but yeah, but
• 19:38
  you've brought other stuff because you want to, you want to
• 19:41
  talk a little bit about what I'm interested to hear actually
• 19:44
  about Thai whiskey because we've just spent, there's still some
• 19:48
  remnants of cartoons of whiskey, but.
• 19:50
  Actually, that's been open for like a month.
• 19:52
  Yeah, probably would still be fine, but it's not great.
• 19:58
  You know, international whiskey is something that we've really
• 20:01
  opened up to a lot more on the podcast and trying, trying from
• 20:04
  different countries. We've hit the big ones that
• 20:06
  already, you know, we've had the Japanese whiskeys, Australia
• 20:08
  whiskers had the Indian whiskeys.
• 20:11
  I don't know where else if we've had English whiskey.
• 20:13
  Yeah, we have. We we were trying some more of
• 20:17
  that. You remember you brought in some
• 20:19
  Bakery Hill ages ago. Yeah, that's Melbourne based,
• 20:22
  Yeah. Like.
• 20:23
  Graham still had some samples of that.
• 20:24
  We went on a little excursion. Oh yeah, and our and I get non
• 20:28
  podcast live stuff and I was tucking into that beated Helen,
• 20:32
  absolutely enjoying everything that was really cracking.
• 20:35
  That was a really cool and that's probably some of the last
• 20:37
  stock still using Aberdeen. Aberdeenshire based Pete.
• 20:43
  Yeah, because it's closing down, isn't it?
• 20:44
  No bakery have moved from using Aberdeenshire.
• 20:48
  Pete, Yeah. They're using New Zealand Pete
• 20:50
  now instead. Really.
• 20:51
  Yeah. So they're trying to figure out
• 20:52
  how the flavor profile change from that, which I thought was
• 20:56
  super, super cool. I hadn't really thought about
• 20:58
  cool. Yeah, that's.
• 20:59
  Southern Hemisphere. That is a really interesting
• 21:01
  link because I've brought you the first Pracan expression
• 21:05
  today, which is our Thai whiskey.
• 21:06
  We do have two others. There's a Sherry cask and
• 21:09
  there's a petered expression and that petered expression uses
• 21:12
  Aberdeenshapeet. There we go.
• 21:14
  So this is Pracan whiskey then? So shall we get some glasses?
• 21:16
  Let's try. Let's just try whiskey.
• 21:18
  So I mean, I wanted to start with this one because it's a bit
• 21:20
  more of a lighter, more of a kind of breakfast whiskey style,
• 21:23
  but obviously you've all had other drams already, so
• 21:26
  whatever. Yeah, just pretend it's a
• 21:28
  brunch. It's a brunch.
• 21:29
  This. Is the first time I'm trying
• 21:33
  whiskey with Thailand? Yeah.
• 21:34
  The thing, yeah, I don't think I've tried it the.
• 21:36
  Thing to remember if you remember anything about this
• 21:39
  podcast is that Prakan is the first Thai single malt whiskey.
• 21:43
  Is that right? Which?
• 21:43
  We're very, very proud of. So when was how big?
• 21:46
  Am I doing this? Yeah.
• 21:47
  Well, I mean, that's fine. Yeah.
• 21:48
  Yeah. Ross isn't on the podcast.
• 21:51
  No, we're gonna be OK. When was the distillery founded?
• 21:53
  Then IS. It so it started operating in
• 21:56
  2018. Thank you very much.
• 21:59
  And the first whiskeys were released in 2024.
• 22:05
  So we launched in Asia first, I think it was Japan in 2024 and
• 22:10
  then we launched in the UK and in Europe in 2025.
• 22:15
  S pretty much just as I joined this company, Rakan was going
• 22:19
  out to shelf. So it was a really big thing for
• 22:21
  me this summer. Well, just, you know, over and
• 22:24
  put that. Down well, swadi ka or swadi
• 22:26
  kapitu or tie, Yeah. Is that what you say?
• 22:30
  Is there a tie? Is there a tie for?
• 22:32
  Is that cheers or? It is.
• 22:34
  You've made twenty ways of saying cheers, but that's the
• 22:36
  one. We'll go.
• 22:37
  For there we go, there we go. So when you got them, that's
• 22:45
  very nice. When you got your job with the
• 22:48
  Sheevis, with the Sheevis guys in the graduate program, then
• 22:51
  you were sent, where were you sent to or where did you go?
• 22:54
  It's not a case of you get a stamp.
• 22:55
  Sent away. You're right away you go.
• 22:57
  You've got to spend 2 years. What do I see you again?
• 22:59
  Your comeback battle scar. And do you get much of A saying
• 23:01
  where you go or is it literally? You get you get you.
• 23:04
  Get there's a form posted on the wall and you see where you're
• 23:06
  posted. So when you apply, you kind of
• 23:08
  give an indication of where you'd like to go and.
• 23:11
  I suspect, I suspect if you've got kind of foreign language
• 23:14
  skills etcetera. So it has to be founded in
• 23:16
  either you've lived in this place, you have a network, maybe
• 23:18
  you've worked there before, or you speak a language.
• 23:20
  So I speak a little bit of Italian because I was an au pair
• 23:24
  in Italy for a few months. And I just had this idea of, I'm
• 23:27
  going to go back to Italy and be the whiskey girl and my Italian
• 23:30
  will become perfect and I'll travel all around.
• 23:33
  It'll be amazing beach parties in the summer.
• 23:36
  And they said, what do you have a European passport?
• 23:39
  And I said, no, they were like, well, have you heard of Brexit?
• 23:43
  Oh, what's that? And so they said, don't worry.
• 23:48
  We'll you know what? They didn't say don't worry.
• 23:50
  They just went away. And I wasn't sure what would
• 23:52
  happen. And they came back and said,
• 23:53
  good news, you're going to Hong Kong.
• 23:54
  And I kind of thought, well, that's a good backup.
• 24:01
  I never, never would have considered living in.
• 24:03
  Hong Kong. Very different style over there,
• 24:09
  but yeah, so I went out. I mean, I'd been to Asia couple
• 24:13
  of times before, but kind of as a late teenager backpacking, you
• 24:16
  know, very different, very different style of things.
• 24:20
  And yeah, within two months I was on a plane to Hong Kong, a
• 24:23
  few suitcases and I think I landed on the Saturday afternoon
• 24:27
  and I started in the Hong Kong office on the Monday morning.
• 24:31
  Jeez. And then was that purely based
• 24:33
  out of Hong Kong or were you all over the all over that sort of
• 24:36
  part of the continent? So I actually had, I had the
• 24:39
  kind of this slightly strange job within the Shivers Brothers
• 24:41
  program. So they kind of hire a load of
• 24:43
  people each year and they tend to send you out to the normal
• 24:46
  markets. So there's always people in
• 24:47
  Latin America, there's always people in Thailand, maybe you're
• 24:51
  lucky and you get to go to Australia or whatever, and then
• 24:54
  there's always one person each year or every two years who is
• 24:57
  chosen to do the travel retail position.
• 25:00
  And that's what I got. So rather than cocktail bars and
• 25:03
  on trade and living in the city, you are airports, airports,
• 25:07
  airports. Really.
• 25:08
  So you fly in and you've already arrived at the place you need to
• 25:12
  get to, in a way. Airport hotel, you're right, but
• 25:14
  listen, listen, sorry I shouldn't start that way that it
• 25:17
  was the most I was there for a year.
• 25:19
  It was the most incredible year of my life, the most
• 25:22
  unbelievable experience, amazing kick start to my career in the
• 25:26
  industry. But.
• 25:27
  Yeah, it was a. Lot.
• 25:28
  But it should be said, East Asia does have some pretty special
• 25:31
  Hong. Kong, Yeah, Hong Kong, What a
• 25:32
  city as well. It's amazing.
• 25:34
  It is the most. Did you have a favorite airport?
• 25:38
  It's a really good question. Probably actually Hong Kong
• 25:40
  airport. Most people say Changi in
• 25:43
  Singapore, but I spent so many hours inside that place not
• 25:48
  seeing daylight. Yeah, I just.
• 25:50
  I'd never want to. Go.
• 25:51
  Great food. Yeah.
• 25:51
  Yeah. So I'd say Seoul as well is a
• 25:55
  good airport. Yeah, that's what I said.
• 25:56
  There we go. Airport Stories podcast.
• 25:58
  Airport Knowledge. But and when you're when you're
• 26:02
  going in, when you're going into these places, then what?
• 26:07
  Because you're a brand ambassador.
• 26:09
  So I picture a brand ambassador is they go out and they're
• 26:12
  delivering tastings to groups of people for the brands.
• 26:15
  But also a big part of the brand ambassador job is also actually
• 26:18
  delivering training to staff. Yeah.
• 26:20
  So was that more on the trainings?
• 26:21
  Because I can't imagine people are arriving going.
• 26:23
  Well, look, there's a tasting. Yeah, exactly.
• 26:26
  I mean, it's very. That would be great though if.
• 26:28
  You it would be imagine. Away.
• 26:30
  And it's like, well, I've got two hours for my flight.
• 26:33
  Oh wait, there's a whiskey tasting.
• 26:34
  Yeah, that'll be great. Yeah.
• 26:36
  So your bag on it was the like, the vast, vast majority of my
• 26:41
  time was giving airport staff training on how to sell
• 26:44
  products, which is necessary. And I worked hard to do it
• 26:48
  really well. And I have a bit of a background
• 26:50
  in education. So I was like, yeah, I can do
• 26:52
  this. I can make a difference.
• 26:54
  But ultimately it was rinse and repeat, same decks, same
• 26:57
  trainings, and almost always through a translator, which is
• 27:04
  amazing. I mean, translators are, I don't
• 27:06
  know how they do it. It's the most incredible skill.
• 27:09
  And they were all so grateful that having an English accent,
• 27:13
  but it meant that, you know, I love talking to people.
• 27:16
  The reason I wanted to be in this industry is because it's
• 27:18
  fun. It's social.
• 27:19
  You network, you communicate. And pretty much the whole year,
• 27:22
  like my ability to connect with people was just stunted by the
• 27:25
  fact that I don't speak Asian languages.
• 27:27
  But they, you know, they told me when they sent me out.
• 27:29
  No, it's English. Don't worry.
• 27:31
  You don't need to speak any other language.
• 27:33
  But actually it would have been so valuable.
• 27:36
  So you know how sometimes when people go away for a wee while,
• 27:38
  they come back and they've got a little bit of a twang in their
• 27:40
  accent and stuff like that. Did you come back with just
• 27:43
  loads of pauses in your sentences so you would start
• 27:45
  speaking because you were just so used to it you would be
• 27:48
  treated somebody you know, You then waver.
• 27:52
  I would say, I mean, no, but I kind of took that lesson into
• 27:58
  whatever I do now. Yeah, so it's always, always
• 28:02
  valuable to slow down your your speech when you're presenting or
• 28:05
  when you're teaching someone something and to make sure
• 28:07
  you're, you know, you can't just speak and stop.
• 28:09
  You have to think ahead and think, what is this sentence
• 28:12
  going to contain? And then not like repeat
• 28:14
  yourself or not contradict yourself.
• 28:16
  So it was a really good training in just general public speaking.
• 28:21
  But I could have been out there for two years.
• 28:24
  And sometimes I think why, why did I choose to leave Hong Kong?
• 28:28
  You know when it's February in Scotland and it's freezing and
• 28:31
  I'm driving to Airdrie, to the Office.
• 28:35
  Wonderful, Airdrie. No shape.
• 28:37
  Sometimes I think I can't. Believe I.
• 28:39
  Can't believe I have that. But actually the job itself was
• 28:43
  an amazing opportunity, but it wasn't going anywhere for me.
• 28:46
  There was no step up. There was no next step.
• 28:48
  And you know, I wasn't coming at it as a pure graduate.
• 28:50
  I wasn't like 21 on this scheme. I was 26 when I was there and I
• 28:55
  wanted to make sure that my next step was going to be.
• 28:58
  Building and that's I suppose from a graduate program.
• 29:00
  That's what they're all about. You know, they are the graduate
• 29:02
  program is a case of it's the entry level into into a
• 29:06
  particular environment or a career that you want to move on
• 29:09
  from. But it's a great one.
• 29:11
  And, you know, Fraser Morrison did talk up a lot saying what
• 29:14
  they do for so many people to get themselves sort of
• 29:17
  passionate about it and what you have to go through to become
• 29:19
  that kind of candidate that then gets to take to go through.
• 29:22
  So it's fantastic. So tell us a little bit more
• 29:24
  about this DRAM that we're drinking in, because it's very,
• 29:26
  very tasty. The Asia link, yeah.
• 29:28
  So, so Prakan, the first Thai single malt, we're very, very
• 29:32
  proud of it. We started producing in 2018.
• 29:35
  The distillery is located in the northwestern part of Thailand,
• 29:39
  so sort of halfway between Bangkok and Chiang Mai in the
• 29:43
  western forest complex. So it's a very, very lush area,
• 29:47
  very verdant at slightly cooler temperatures than what you might
• 29:50
  usually associate with Thailand, but still.
• 29:52
  Nice. And I suspect that was a
• 29:54
  specific decision. Yes.
• 29:55
  I mean, it's still mental hot, I'm sure.
• 29:58
  But the main decision for building it there, well, it's
• 30:00
  twofold. It's the heritage of the place,
• 30:02
  which I'll talk about in a moment and the unbelievably pure
• 30:06
  ground source mineral water, which is our water source, It
• 30:09
  all comes from kind of 2 to 400 meters deep in the ground.
• 30:13
  It's filtered through through the rock.
• 30:15
  It has quite high pH level, which yields a lot of fruitiness
• 30:19
  during fermentation. And Prakan, the name means
• 30:23
  fortress or loosely can translate as fortress.
• 30:27
  I don't speak Thai, but there's a connection there.
• 30:30
  It is located in a region called Kampang Pets, which is a kind of
• 30:35
  ancient fortified city. So the city is now in ruins.
• 30:39
  It's more of an archaeological site, but we're sort of within
• 30:42
  the region of Campan Pet. And this was a really important
• 30:45
  city back in the kind of 13th century in Thailand.
• 30:49
  A very like city of education and learning and trade and a
• 30:55
  really kind of a sign of sort of elevated culture in the country,
• 30:59
  which, and we like to draw that link because Prakan is very much
• 31:02
  an elevated whiskey in Thailand. As you'll definitely know,
• 31:06
  Chuck, having spent time in Thailand, I don't know if either
• 31:08
  of you have. Been.
• 31:08
  I've been. I've been to.
• 31:09
  Thailand. OK, so Thailand is the most
• 31:12
  beautiful country. Incredible food, incredible
• 31:14
  drink, so much fun. The aromas there are just
• 31:18
  powerful and beautiful, but the spirits they produce in Thailand
• 31:22
  aren't necessarily the kind you would find on the international
• 31:25
  market. No, I mean, I think this is
• 31:27
  probably. I'm trying to think if there's
• 31:28
  anything else from Thailand that I've had to drink even when I
• 31:33
  was out there. Like I suppose it was probably
• 31:35
  like a Thai rum or maybe something like that.
• 31:37
  Yeah. And it was probably like sugar
• 31:39
  cane style type thing. I was going to ask what is this?
• 31:42
  Sort of. Is it malted?
• 31:44
  It's malted. Malted barley.
• 31:45
  Really. So it's malted barley, water and
• 31:47
  yeast. We have effectively followed all
• 31:50
  of the rules set by the SWF. Oh really?
• 31:52
  Effectively, we're not. Where does the barley come from?
• 31:55
  Barley comes from Scotland. Barley is from.
• 31:57
  Scotland from Fife. No, it does.
• 32:00
  It's it's yeah, Scotch barley. The climate in Thailand is not
• 32:05
  exactly. No, I was going.
• 32:06
  To say no, I was going to say. I can't actually.
• 32:08
  Barley. Would be able to exactly,
• 32:10
  exactly. So what we've really done with
• 32:12
  Prakan is we've taken the kind of the expertise from different
• 32:16
  arms of our business, right. So it's a Thai business, you
• 32:19
  know, at the top level with a deep Thai heritage and lots of
• 32:22
  expertise in distilling. I mean, in Thailand you can find
• 32:26
  a whole host of different spirits, white spirits, brown
• 32:28
  spirits, spiced sugar cane based, you know, rice based, so
• 32:32
  many, there's a huge amount of expertise in terms of
• 32:35
  distilling. But Scotch whiskey is still
• 32:38
  considered at this level. It's still considered the more
• 32:41
  elevated product. And since we as a company have
• 32:44
  this arm of international beverage, which owns 5 beautiful
• 32:48
  distilleries in Scotland, effectively we sent our team,
• 32:52
  our distillery team from Thailand over to Scotland to
• 32:54
  study the kind of traditional Scotch whisky ways of making
• 32:57
  whiskey and then brought that knowledge back to Thailand.
• 33:01
  But very much are driven by their own local kind of
• 33:05
  expertise in managing the effects of the climate.
• 33:07
  Because the heat is quite. Sure, the climate is probably
• 33:10
  the thing. I'm probably really interested
• 33:12
  in for maturation purposes because you said you started in
• 33:15
  2018. Yeah, first, probably 2024, so
• 33:18
  six years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we don't.
• 33:21
  These all of the whiskeys from Prakan are non age statements.
• 33:23
  Yeah, which would make. Not gonna nod or shake my head
• 33:25
  but. But I mean I.
• 33:26
  Think you can? No, the only thing I can.
• 33:28
  Compare it to like maturation wise would be like Kavan and
• 33:31
  stuff from Taiwan. Yeah.
• 33:32
  And they're working on crazy, the rates of like the rates of
• 33:36
  evaporation. So there are ways we manage it.
• 33:39
  So yeah, all of our products are non age statement.
• 33:41
  They're going to be up to six years old, let's say in this
• 33:46
  part of Thailand. As I've said, it is a slightly,
• 33:48
  slightly cooler environment compared to the South compared
• 33:51
  to Bangkok region. But the main thing we do to
• 33:53
  manage the climate is our warehouses are dug 4 meters into
• 33:57
  the ground. So we effectively they're big,
• 34:01
  they're kind of large scale warehouses, but they almost are
• 34:05
  able to produce a Dunedy feeling in the lower levels by being
• 34:09
  deep in the earth. And there's earth and roofs as
• 34:11
  well. So what we're able to do is
• 34:15
  we're able to produce a whiskey which has all of the kind of
• 34:20
  like cooling points of quite an elevated whiskey from
• 34:23
  traditional markets. But with, I think you'll find in
• 34:26
  this whiskey, there's quite a, there's a lot of tropical fruit
• 34:28
  and there's quite a soft like citrus lemon top note.
• 34:31
  There's a real freshness and vibrancy to it, which we wanted
• 34:35
  to curate to evoke that feeling of kind of Thai aromas and Thai
• 34:39
  ingredients. And actually, it doesn't have
• 34:43
  any of the harshness that you might associate with
• 34:46
  preconceived notions. It's fun of that.
• 34:48
  Age, it does not feel the way. It's often gentle and easy
• 34:51
  going. Very really really drinking.
• 34:53
  Very, very. Unheardly.
• 34:54
  And what's the ABV 434343? Yeah, I mean, honestly, really,
• 34:58
  really nice draft. It's a I mean, as I say, it's a
• 35:01
  really great way to start. And is this available, sorry, is
• 35:04
  this available in all international markets like so?
• 35:07
  Not all markets, but it is. It's available here.
• 35:09
  It's available. Right, so someone listening
• 35:10
  could so how much that what's that drama?
• 35:12
  What was it about on that site? Man, I believe is around the
• 35:15
  5859 LB mark. We then have a peated, lightly
• 35:19
  peated expression which goes up to more like I'm sorry to my
• 35:25
  sales team for what I'm about to say.
• 35:26
  I think it's about early to mid 60s and then we have a double
• 35:31
  matured. So this is refill bourbon.
• 35:34
  We also have a bourbon and Sherry matured expression, which
• 35:36
  is a little bit. More, it's funny because like
• 35:38
  you go back in time, Angus, to a time when I would have been
• 35:41
  guilty of it. A lot of people, people who
• 35:44
  probably still listen to the podcast as well, who maybe go.
• 35:46
  There'll be some people who turn their nose up a little bit.
• 35:48
  International whiskey or different whiskey from different
• 35:51
  countries. I've really tried hard.
• 35:53
  To there would have been a time I would have done that as well.
• 35:54
  Yeah. And The thing is, you can say,
• 35:58
  oh, this is Thai whiskey and people will instantly, I'm not
• 36:01
  drinking that, but actually you. It's really summer.
• 36:04
  You can put that in front of somebody and they can say try
• 36:07
  that and it would be difficult to say that's rubbish.
• 36:10
  That's not nice. You might not, you might go not
• 36:13
  much for me. There's not, you know, it's just
• 36:15
  there's, it's not much to it. There's not major complex, but
• 36:18
  some that's a good sign as well because actually it's just it's
• 36:21
  a very drinkable drum. It's not challenging as.
• 36:23
  Such as Made, Yeah, it's got nice flavour, yeah.
• 36:26
  It's easy. And then you just go, by the
• 36:27
  way, these. Oh, it's barley.
• 36:28
  Yeah. And you know.
• 36:31
  It's done. This is what's nice about it is
• 36:34
  everything you were saying for it.
• 36:36
  It may be produced with Scotch barley and to the kind of
• 36:39
  constraints of the SWA effectively, but it's got enough
• 36:44
  local character that it could never be something that you
• 36:47
  could produce in Scotland, you know?
• 36:49
  So yeah, that's good. It's incredible and it's
• 36:52
  wonderful to try these things. I'm glad you like it.
• 36:54
  I mean, I when I first joined the company I actually had some
• 36:58
  of those preconceived notions too.
• 36:59
  And the more people I've introduced it to almost never
• 37:02
  get negativity. No, it's a very, I'd actually
• 37:06
  really like to have tried the repeated one as well because it
• 37:08
  suddenly opens you up going that's another, that's a
• 37:10
  distillery that you want to maybe look at a bit more.
• 37:14
  It's great. But but I mean, and in all the
• 37:16
  you know, visibility is always the key because I mean, if I'd
• 37:19
  seen Pecan let's you know, without hearing that story about
• 37:25
  it, what it is, what it does, I could have looked at that
• 37:28
  bottling on maybe not bother. We're trying that.
• 37:30
  I'll try something else. But now if I see another, if I
• 37:32
  see a beaded Bracan on the shelf some.
• 37:34
  Might go special offering Morrison.
• 37:37
  I like to try that. And that's the key thing.
• 37:41
  When you're doing because you're Brandon.
• 37:42
  So we'll talk about the brand ambassador role that you're in
• 37:44
  now. It's European brand ambassador
• 37:47
  and obviously this is part of the the whiskey that you'll be
• 37:50
  covering for sure. Does that come out regularly
• 37:53
  when you're doing your brand ambassador roles?
• 37:55
  We've mentioned about the tasting that you did.
• 37:57
  It was purely old Pompney. When you travel around and do
• 38:01
  your brand ambassador jobs around Europe, are you pulling a
• 38:04
  whole lot out of the of the OR are you doing specifically will
• 38:08
  you come out and go bulb layer old bolt name spring stay burn
• 38:14
  it went nice adnoc and. Bellmanic.
• 38:17
  Not do. Is it not?
• 38:18
  Do not do. Well, no, it's Anoch.
• 38:20
  Anoch, the brand, right. Anoch and right there, right
• 38:23
  done all right. I've done very.
• 38:24
  Very. Well.
• 38:26
  And that's really well in France.
• 38:28
  Doesn't it? It's main market is actually
• 38:29
  Scandinavia. Pagan Scandinavia.
• 38:32
  I remember I was when I was traveling around a bit.
• 38:34
  I remember like going into bars and like seeing an Arc 18 and
• 38:37
  I'd be like all right, there's like 3 whiskeys in this bar and
• 38:41
  an Arc 18. Is not what you thought it.
• 38:42
  Was amazing, yeah. It was amazing.
• 38:44
  So is it more honed in then? Yeah, I mean, people can do it
• 38:48
  however they want to, right? People have different style in
• 38:51
  international beverage. We have a fairly small
• 38:53
  ambassador team. We have the aforementioned
• 38:56
  Barley Baxter, who is my boss. He's the global manager of
• 39:00
  education and experience. Now you know, he won that award
• 39:03
  and he was like, cool, done it. Take me up a notch.
• 39:05
  Wow. I'm joking, suitcase.
• 39:08
  Yeah. That was great, wasn't he went
• 39:11
  what was what was Joe Special I? Think it was like best
• 39:13
  international brand ambassador and by the way he won that about
• 39:16
  two weeks before I joined the company, which was incredibly
• 39:18
  daunting Can. You imagine does he walk about
• 39:21
  my wee medal? Everything.
• 39:23
  It just means the calibre of guests we got on this podcast,
• 39:27
  that's. Exactly, they have a mug with it
• 39:29
  on the title and everything like that.
• 39:31
  He's. Very helpful.
• 39:32
  He's got. Someone who you easier gaffer.
• 39:33
  We could slaughter him. He will be listening.
• 39:36
  We've got a translator with him at all times, they just.
• 39:38
  Translated different languages, but I.
• 39:42
  Yeah. I mean, so we've got a small
• 39:43
  team. So it's him up top and myself.
• 39:45
  We have a bran ambassador in Thailand, my colleague Paul,
• 39:48
  who's fantastic. He's been with the company for a
• 39:50
  long time. And we have a bran ambassador in
• 39:52
  New York, but he's a bit more specialized on the New Zealand
• 39:56
  portfolio. So it's a small theme.
• 39:57
  So I cover Europe, but like, I can't be everywhere.
• 40:01
  No, no, absolutely not. Not just physically, but like
• 40:05
  for my health. I can't travel for a single day,
• 40:06
  whatever. So in the company we have to be
• 40:09
  quite strategic and quite targeted.
• 40:10
  So it's kind of a question of right, is this an event that we
• 40:14
  need flora to come and do? Is it a beautiful tasting at
• 40:17
  that place We. Were at the bar the bar at the
• 40:20
  hotel where Ross is Amanda. It's basically like, do we need
• 40:25
  a deeper level of storytelling, of education and what brand are
• 40:28
  we going to hone in on? I don't mind doing a couple of
• 40:30
  brands, but I think every brand is distinct and deserves its
• 40:34
  time to shine. I don't, I mean, except for
• 40:36
  right now when I've got so many bottles in my bag.
• 40:39
  But you guys are, you guys are a special case.
• 40:42
  I prefer to kind of focus in on one because it's about
• 40:45
  experience as you say, like education comes through
• 40:48
  experience. From that you get better
• 40:50
  understanding, greater appreciation.
• 40:52
  So I don't like to dilute it too much.
• 40:54
  I was in the office yesterday doing a tasting for some clients
• 40:58
  that we work with and they don't really know much about whiskey
• 41:00
  and they just wanted to try loads of our brands and they had
• 41:03
  like 10 whiskeys. Yeah.
• 41:04
  Where do you go on the brand on that front?
• 41:06
  Like because because of The thing is all your distilleries
• 41:10
  that you have in your sort of in your catalog, there's so much
• 41:14
  difference between them all. So which is great.
• 41:17
  Yeah, it's great. It means.
• 41:18
  There's a space for each, right? Yeah.
• 41:20
  So it's it's like if I'm at a whiskey show, I'll have a stand
• 41:24
  for certain whiskeys. Maybe we'll have Pracan, maybe
• 41:26
  we have old faulty. If I'm doing a specialist
• 41:28
  tasting at a special bar or a special shop, it might be bar
• 41:32
  Blair, right? If we're doing something a bit
• 41:34
  more on trade, then I'm probably bringing out Karun Jin, maybe
• 41:39
  Anok. I think Anok has great space to
• 41:41
  play in the on trade, you know, so you can choose.
• 41:44
  Yeah, she's your fighter and she's.
• 41:46
  Well, it's just like, it's like you coming on this podcast, we
• 41:48
  had to, you know, we had to make an active decision on it to say,
• 41:51
  you know, we want to focus on one particular or, you know,
• 41:54
  cover most, but focus on one because I mean, we would need
• 41:58
  two or three episodes and we're going to cover everything in the
• 42:00
  portfolio because there's so many different things.
• 42:02
  But you mentioned about, you know, with the with the Thai
• 42:05
  whiskey there a city in ruins and things like that.
• 42:07
  And WIC is. What a transition.
• 42:15
  Shout out there if they have podcasts in WIC.
• 42:20
  Shout out to dial up listeners, yeah.
• 42:22
  Hello weakers. You're not welcome.
• 42:27
  No, I, I've driven annoyingly, I've been to WIC once and
• 42:33
  actually, do you know, I didn't, we didn't tell the story.
• 42:36
  Well, I did minister first aid to somebody in WIC on the way
• 42:39
  out of WIC. You know what, if you're going
• 42:41
  north out of Wick, there's the hospital on the left hand side.
• 42:44
  So basically we were, we were doing the North Coast, an ex
• 42:48
  current girlfriend, a current ex, an ex current girlfriend of
• 42:51
  mine. We're doing well.
• 42:52
  Just an ex-girlfriend. An ex-girlfriend it.
• 42:53
  Was current about? Yeah.
• 42:55
  She's currently my ex former current girlfriend.
• 42:58
  Yeah, my current wife's not listening, but but anyway, we
• 43:01
  were on the North Coast 500 and we stopped and we decided we'll
• 43:06
  stop in WIC and that at the time, annoyingly, I was slightly
• 43:12
  on my skate, but I didn't, I wouldn't have been able to tell
• 43:14
  you the old partly distillery that was in Wick.
• 43:17
  And at the time I didn't realise that old partly distillery was
• 43:20
  there. Otherwise it would have been
• 43:21
  something to actually do. But basically we stopped over,
• 43:24
  we stayed the night. We woke up, we went to the Co-op
• 43:27
  and we kind of started passing through.
• 43:29
  I think maybe we stayed outside of it.
• 43:30
  Anyway, I don't remember it because there was a, there was a
• 43:32
  game of football on that. It was an early kick off.
• 43:35
  It was a Sunday and we were driving out of WIC and it was
• 43:39
  maybe about 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon at this point.
• 43:42
  Sure. And I just looked and I just as
• 43:44
  I was driving on my right hand side, this older gentleman who
• 43:48
  had his hands in his pockets was like is the top half of his body
• 43:52
  was going faster than the bottom half of his body.
• 43:54
  And it just like in slow motion, just face planted.
• 43:57
  Geez. Oh.
• 43:58
  So I stopped, went across the road and went to help him.
• 44:04
  The first thing he said is I've had a drum, son.
• 44:11
  Let me tell you this listeners, he was not drinking responsibly.
• 44:14
  And. He wouldn't have been drinking
• 44:16
  at Old Poultney because. No, he wouldn't have been the
• 44:17
  top. He'd been at the pub watching.
• 44:19
  He'd been at the pub watching the football.
• 44:21
  And I said, all right, OK. And his face was in a bit of a
• 44:23
  mess. So basically we're trying to
• 44:25
  work out what to do. Then a police car actually
• 44:26
  stopped and they were like, right, OK, what we're going to
• 44:29
  do? And then someone, someone had
• 44:31
  ran across to the hospital and we were like, instead of trying
• 44:33
  to get an ambulance, this guy made no sense.
• 44:36
  So they actually, we just had to get him in a wheelchair and
• 44:38
  wheeled him 100 yards up the road in the hospital.
• 44:40
  But that was my experience of WIC.
• 44:41
  That was the last. That was the first time and the
• 44:43
  last time I've ever been. There, that deserves A rerun I.
• 44:46
  Think but now knowing about all pulpony and the distillery and
• 44:50
  hearing the stories about it so you'll you'll tell a lot more
• 44:53
  nice. Thanks for setting me.
• 44:55
  Up. But it's it's, it's an
• 44:58
  interesting place, WIC the history of the area as well.
• 45:01
  But at the same time, the distillery being there must be
• 45:05
  such a big part of the whole town.
• 45:07
  It is, I think the location for Old Portney is so, so
• 45:11
  significant, more so than I would wager almost every other
• 45:14
  distillery in Scotland. All single malt whiskey, as we
• 45:17
  know is three ingredients. 3 is maturation.
• 45:21
  You know, the same process. And when you deal with things
• 45:24
  like wine or cognac or even agave spirits, like you can talk
• 45:28
  to a sense of place. Sure.
• 45:30
  Because the soil that that raw material is grown in has an
• 45:33
  impact on the result of flavour. And we don't really talk about
• 45:36
  that in whiskey because barley's just barley, right?
• 45:38
  Yeah, Yeah. It's just it's. 55 Barley's
• 45:40
  Actually, it's right. Or you Slothian barley.
• 45:42
  Rajasthan. Barley, barley, I'm sorry, I'm
• 45:45
  sorry. Let's not bring into your
• 45:46
  interest. Yeah, not again.
• 45:48
  Not not once per episode. But at Botany Distillery in WIC,
• 45:56
  the location has a really, really big impact on our
• 45:59
  whiskey. Because here it comes.
• 46:01
  The whiskey has an unmistakably salty.
• 46:03
  Character, yes. Now when I first go back to that
• 46:06
  time I drank that old poultney the first time I had the old
• 46:09
  poultney and I said to Angus, and I'm like, Oh my God.
• 46:12
  And I messaged Angus, have you heard an old poultney?
• 46:14
  And he's like, yes, yes. It's like an A pretzel.
• 46:17
  But you used the phrase brainy. Brainy.
• 46:20
  Yeah, yeah, I remember that. And actually it's funny because
• 46:24
  brainy can I find brainy as a as a description of whiskey similar
• 46:30
  to farm Yardy, right? Well, you see, well, not flavour
• 46:35
  wise, but briny and farm people can like your reaction if
• 46:38
  someone said farm Yardy, people could look at that as a
• 46:41
  negative. I actually I'm drawn to the farm
• 46:44
  Yardy style. Of course I like that.
• 46:47
  I like farms. Yeah.
• 46:49
  So like if someone could say I've done it before where I've
• 46:51
  gone, there's a bit of farmyard in there and you see people
• 46:54
  being about farm yard. What do you mean by that?
• 46:56
  I'm like no no I like that but brainy as well I think.
• 47:00
  I think briny to me, it conjures up the image.
• 47:03
  Well, it conjures up the kind of the olive jar, Yeah.
• 47:05
  And the brine and that kind of thing.
• 47:08
  Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 47:10
  So I. Think you're you've hit the nail
• 47:11
  on the head good. I like to use briny.
• 47:14
  It doesn't translate all that well in certain different
• 47:17
  markets, but. I mean, your translators, if you
• 47:19
  were out in Asia, would have a nightmare of that.
• 47:22
  But, you know, we talk, we talk about our unmistakably salty
• 47:25
  character. We are unashamed of the fact
• 47:27
  that ultimately does have a saltiness to it.
• 47:30
  But the thing that we want to be clear about is that there is no
• 47:33
  salt in the whiskey. There is no sodium fluoride.
• 47:35
  It's not been added and it hasn't been absorbed.
• 47:38
  The story. It's not, it's not like Graham
• 47:40
  with his dowry milk where he said they've definitely been
• 47:43
  great in a bit of chocolate. I'd had a good.
• 47:47
  There's no, there's no. There's no whiskey because I was
• 47:51
  so impressed. I was like, tastes like
• 47:53
  chocolate. There's no one at the still just
• 47:55
  on the slide, just chucking a bit of salt.
• 47:57
  Salt. No.
• 47:57
  Exactly, exactly. The gritters aren't too heavy on
• 47:59
  the. Edge.
• 48:00
  Well, no. No, exactly.
• 48:02
  Just. Lost my face.
• 48:04
  There you go. Yeah.
• 48:06
  So Brian Innes is, I think, a great way to describe it
• 48:08
  because, you know, from the more storytelling perspective, what
• 48:12
  we say is that ultimately whiskey is matured in warehouses
• 48:16
  by the sea. We have no windows on our
• 48:19
  warehouses, meaning as in there are gaps in the walls so the air
• 48:22
  can come whistling through and it lends our whiskey and
• 48:25
  unmistakably salty character while it's maturing.
• 48:28
  But then you're bound to invite the question.
• 48:30
  Well, the Senate, well, the question is, I mean, we know
• 48:34
  that not all whiskey is going to be matured exactly at the places
• 48:39
  the Stellate will go off to, you know, central locations and
• 48:42
  other warehouses and so forth. So there must be old Pultney in
• 48:47
  the central belt somewhere, maturing or.
• 48:49
  So we have a, we do have big warehouses in Airdrie, which is
• 48:53
  our kind of headquarters in the center.
• 48:55
  All old Pultney that is destined for single mole is matured in
• 49:00
  WIC, right? At least for the majority of.
• 49:03
  Its life you might have. To take some classes away at
• 49:06
  some point, but all of the old Poultney in your single mop, Old
• 49:10
  Poultney bottles will have spent time maturing in Wick taking on
• 49:13
  that. Case because that I mean that's
• 49:15
  where because there's a lot like well.
• 49:16
  There's probably not a not a lot of distilleries that could make
• 49:20
  or claim. But also there's a lot of
• 49:21
  distilleries that they, they, they use the and we'll go back
• 49:25
  to the heritage stuff. They use the heritage of where
• 49:28
  they are and that the old, you know, everyone always makes the
• 49:31
  joke of the still game filtered through the Heather, you know,
• 49:34
  where our water comes from, our water sources and all this kind
• 49:37
  of stuff. But at the same time, you know,
• 49:39
  like, for example, Talisker, yeah.
• 49:41
  How many, how many casts of Talisker are getting stored on
• 49:44
  Sky versus how many of them get moved to the mainland?
• 49:46
  But they play on a, they play on a similar.
• 49:49
  Well, Flo Flo used a great word in the tasting was a terroir.
• 49:52
  Terroir, Terroir, terroir. Which is it's, that's quite an
• 49:56
  industry word. I don't like saying because like
• 49:58
  you have to say it in a French accent and it makes it sound
• 50:00
  like a. Yeah, that is one of.
• 50:02
  Them yeah, I was like the place in which it imparts the maybe
• 50:07
  your minerality from your saws is more linked to wine than
• 50:09
  Yeah, exactly. But I think you can adopted it.
• 50:11
  Yeah, but you can link that to the whiskey industry from the
• 50:13
  get go. I mean the regions effectively
• 50:16
  were us trying to take on some of the French influence.
• 50:19
  An idea of that, an idea of that where you belong to influence is
• 50:21
  your favour, your flavour. But the regions are all just
• 50:24
  kind of like traditionally space side makes fruity whiskeys,
• 50:27
  right? And traditionally ILA makes PT
• 50:29
  whiskeys whereas in work or tawar.
• 50:32
  Yeah, you're technically yeah, because you're.
• 50:34
  The salty air, yeah. Because you're technically
• 50:35
  Highland, which should technically be like a florally
• 50:38
  honey whiskey, which is not really what all part is, but
• 50:41
  it's quite. Interesting when you were
• 50:42
  talking about your warehouses and how there's like the well
• 50:45
  the windows are effectively open to the sea air.
• 50:47
  It seems kind of in link with Manthania Sherry production in
• 50:52
  Spain. Like I manella to say this.
• 50:56
  One of the one of the words you have to say where Spanish
• 51:01
  you've. Absolutely nailed it.
• 51:04
  You've nailed it. Maybe Manzania or also maybe
• 51:07
  Fino Sherry. No.
• 51:08
  No, no, no, Fino isn't by the sea, no exactly, but it's the
• 51:13
  same. No, I remembered this but got it
• 51:16
  all wrong. So Manzania and Pheno are kind
• 51:20
  of the same thing, but one is. Exactly the same.
• 51:22
  One is Manzania, coastal pheno, not coastal exactly.
• 51:25
  Yeah, that's exactly it. So got.
• 51:27
  My hole there. Gosh, you nailed it.
• 51:28
  So yeah, so the coastal element gives us that kind of salinity
• 51:33
  or minerality. Ross is drinking Every time I
• 51:36
  say salinity or minerality, they.
• 51:38
  Just drink. It in a way.
• 51:40
  In. Fact in the past.
• 51:41
  In the past we don't use it anymore, but in the past Old
• 51:43
  Portney has been referred to as the Manzania of the North Which?
• 51:47
  I think is really. Sweet and generous.
• 51:51
  Yeah, because, I mean, Manzania is not known as the Wick of the
• 51:53
  South. But it should be maybe one day.
• 51:59
  We we have a go there on the Whiskey Stories podcast.
• 52:01
  We'll we'll campaign for. It town West Wick in the South,
• 52:06
  but yeah. Because to be fair, if there was
• 52:10
  a signpost in Manzania too Wick and the same, that would be
• 52:14
  really, really sweet. Yeah, that'd be great, Yeah.
• 52:17
  Because I did. When I went to cognac, they had
• 52:19
  a signpost which told you how many miles I was to Dalkeith in
• 52:24
  Scotland. Yeah.
• 52:25
  And I, I saw that and I was like, why?
• 52:27
  Why is that? I think.
• 52:29
  Really. Yeah, Yeah.
• 52:30
  In Cognac. Outside, it's a Courvoisier
• 52:35
  it'll be. Is it a twin town something?
• 52:37
  That they own, Yeah. Dalkeith.
• 52:39
  That's the way. Don't own Dalkeith.
• 52:41
  God, I wonder how many people that's helped more.
• 52:45
  Confuse me than help me if I want to see you.
• 52:47
  Yeah, because, I mean, look, I guess we we've we've met, in
• 52:51
  fact, we talked about it not that long ago.
• 52:53
  And I can't use the phrase that was used on the podcast, but we
• 52:55
  met a couple from WIPT. Thank you.
• 52:58
  When we were up in there, we were up.
• 53:00
  We were very careful in your language.
• 53:02
  Now. Yeah, I'm not going to, I'm not
• 53:04
  going to say what that person said on the podcast.
• 53:06
  No, No. Yeah.
• 53:07
  To his to his wife. No, it was, it was, it was.
• 53:09
  It wasn't innocent, but it was. It was.
• 53:11
  It was. It wasn't innocent, no.
• 53:13
  But at the same time. At the same time, it's not like
• 53:15
  we witnessed something terrible happening, but it's.
• 53:18
  Just it's just a broadcast able. Correct.
• 53:20
  But they were nice people. They were very nice people.
• 53:23
  And actually they held it very close to them that they.
• 53:26
  It was a puff of the chest. Yeah.
• 53:29
  I'm Faywick. I'm Faywick.
• 53:31
  We were in a whiskey. We were on the Highlander then.
• 53:33
  Then they were very quick to say we're in a whiskey bar.
• 53:36
  You guys like a whiskey? Well, we're Faywick and we have
• 53:39
  Old Pulteney as Powers. Yeah.
• 53:40
  Because actually, when you, I've never heard of it.
• 53:42
  Yeah, they were. And when you look up that, you
• 53:44
  know, I, I mentioned this when we were speaking to you about it
• 53:47
  is it's hard to actually find the closest distillate.
• 53:50
  You know, there's a lot of places that you see now whiskey
• 53:53
  regions in particular space side being one of them and even Fife
• 53:57
  now and Campbelltown you're always quite close to other
• 54:00
  distilleries, whereas you guys are right out there on your own
• 54:03
  well for a long. Time they were right out there.
• 54:05
  Exactly. For a long time we were the most
• 54:07
  notably distillery on the UK mainland.
• 54:11
  Of course, once you go out to Orkney, things change.
• 54:13
  But yeah, now there is 8 doors at John O'Groats.
• 54:19
  There's Dunnett Bay, which primarily make gin, but they're
• 54:21
  soon going to be making whiskey, which is kind of slightly to the
• 54:24
  left. And Wolfburn.
• 54:26
  Is that North Point as well? I think is this is distillery
• 54:29
  called North Point which is near Thursday.
• 54:31
  But how close, I mean, are we when we talk about
• 54:34
  geographically, how close are we talking?
• 54:35
  About like. 8 doors for example. That's about 25 kilometers away.
• 54:41
  Right. So it's not like, it's not like.
• 54:42
  It's not like Faber. No.
• 54:44
  Being next to Glenn. Grant yeah, because that's it's
• 54:47
  pretty close and does that make it but.
• 54:48
  But there aren't many up. There No.
• 54:50
  No. Does that make it big?
• 54:51
  Does that make it difficult? Because we speak to brand and
• 54:53
  bastards and brand and bastards often.
• 54:55
  Tacos. Sorry.
• 54:55
  First of all, sorry. What are we drinking?
• 54:57
  What's? This and towards the whiskey, I
• 54:59
  just thought I'd take, I'd take charge there.
• 55:01
  Sorry. What is this?
• 55:02
  This is Old Portly 15, since we've been talking about
• 55:05
  selenity, minerality. Yeah, you mentioned Old Portly
• 55:08
  12, which many people will have tried.
• 55:09
  It's that very accessible price point, very kind of salty
• 55:12
  character. The 15 year old I think is
• 55:15
  probably the best example of balance in an Old Portney W15
• 55:19
  years. About 12 of those years are in
• 55:21
  refill bourbon and then three years in Firstville Olarosso
• 55:23
  Sherry. And here you've just got the
• 55:25
  perfect balance of spirit style, which for us is fruity but quite
• 55:29
  robust. But then also that beautiful
• 55:32
  influence from the cask and that salinity works not like it's not
• 55:35
  like a salty flavor here. It's more like kind of seasoning
• 55:38
  lift. Yeah, it lifts all the other
• 55:40
  flavors. And this is fairly successful
• 55:43
  for purchasing this. Yeah, I think this is around the
• 55:45
  80 LB mark. Yeah.
• 55:47
  It's like the salt in the salted caramel.
• 55:49
  It's not at the front, it's just over there and.
• 55:52
  It's doing the background work. It's instead of like nuts, it's
• 55:55
  kind of roasted salted nuts, a little bit of salted chocolate.
• 55:57
  That's really, really nice. That's excellent.
• 55:59
  So anyway, as we were saying, as we speak to brand ambassadors
• 56:03
  and they talk about the value and the importance of the brand
• 56:06
  home. How how is it a challenge to
• 56:11
  have old Poultney being your brand home where it is and
• 56:13
  getting people up there? Is it something that you do a
• 56:16
  lot of that you you're travelling around Europe?
• 56:17
  But what we also know is that brand ambassador teams like Mark
• 56:21
  Thompson, for example, used to talk about, he said we used, you
• 56:25
  know, throughout the whole of the UK and wider use the
• 56:27
  Glenfedic brand home to get people to it.
• 56:29
  Because it isn't until you can. How many things have I said on
• 56:32
  the podcast? I guess I'm the most
• 56:33
  impressionable person in the room usually.
• 56:36
  So usually, and I've said it to Fraser Morrison, in fact,
• 56:40
  usually the last distillery I've visited is my favorite
• 56:42
  distillery because I'm like, oh, absolutely love that place and
• 56:45
  they're the best. And, but so when you do get an
• 56:48
  opportunity, so do you get people up to the distillery a
• 56:51
  lot? Is it something somewhere people
• 56:52
  can go? I am honestly gobsmacked every
• 56:54
  single time I'm in France or Germany or the Netherlands, I
• 56:57
  always ask at the beginning of a tasting, has anyone been to WIC?
• 57:00
  And there's always one or two people.
• 57:02
  It's absolutely remarkable. And it begs the question why?
• 57:06
  But they've been, you know. But it's the the North Coast 500
• 57:11
  has done and. That must have done it.
• 57:13
  Oh great. It does wonders for us in the
• 57:14
  sense that you're up there, there's not much going on.
• 57:17
  You pull into WIC, oh, there's a distillery, let's go see.
• 57:19
  But equally, there is an absolute, you know, army of old
• 57:23
  Poultney fans out there across the world who really love it as,
• 57:26
  you know, an old school something that's that never,
• 57:29
  never misses something with such a distinct character.
• 57:32
  So people will travel to come and see us.
• 57:34
  The difficulty is that we were built in 1826 right in the
• 57:38
  middle of what was then called Poultney Town, which is now now
• 57:42
  just a southern part of Wick. But it was built, you know, in
• 57:45
  the middle of effectively a residential area.
• 57:48
  And so we can't expand the distillery.
• 57:50
  There is absolutely we're not in the middle of the countryside.
• 57:52
  There's. 0 space and then with. So we cannot change much.
• 57:57
  And when the, you know, when we stopped doing moulting on site
• 58:00
  all those decades ago, we suddenly had more space that we
• 58:03
  could turn into a visitor center.
• 58:05
  So we do have a lovely shop and a tasting room and some space to
• 58:09
  welcome people, but it's a little bit rough around the
• 58:12
  edges. And actually you'll be pleased
• 58:14
  to know that in the next couple of months Poultney is undergoing
• 58:18
  a little bit of a facelift and by the summer you will be able
• 58:21
  to visit and sit and enjoy some drums in a little bar.
• 58:25
  Very nice, which I think will really change the fate of.
• 58:28
  So let's talk through it, Right. You're better at your geography
• 58:31
  than I am, I guess. That's great.
• 58:34
  It's the only thing. We sat beside each other in
• 58:36
  geography at school. I got AC, He got AD.
• 58:40
  Yeah, I Shanga got AB. Yeah, really, I did.
• 58:43
  But I got enough. I got.
• 58:45
  I passed it on. I've actually done.
• 58:46
  Better than I remembered. I got on an appeal, but
• 58:49
  basically North Coast 500 then yes, right.
• 58:52
  Talk us through because basically the two ways of doing
• 58:55
  it is you're either going, you're starting outgoing up that
• 58:57
  neck of the wind. So you're either coming back
• 58:59
  down that neck of the wind I started, which is why, to be
• 59:02
  honest, you're like, let's get to John O'grove.
• 59:04
  You went up and. Then take a left and then then
• 59:06
  you really start to go yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 59:08
  But So what was a way of doing it?
• 59:11
  What is a way if you were to say to us, right.
• 59:13
  Whiskey Stories podcast. Well, I tried to probably.
• 59:15
  Distillate, I would say this, that there's actually, there's a
• 59:18
  second way you could do it because I well, I just asked
• 59:22
  what are the roads? Like on the way to wake.
• 59:24
  They're not bad Windy, they're not bad honestly, because it's,
• 59:26
  I mean, after about, you know, it's the a nine obviously.
• 59:31
  And then we've, we've been up to Dornoch and that that is the
• 59:33
  same Rd. that carries on. And it does get a bit more windy
• 59:37
  once you get past Canberra because you're on the cliffs.
• 59:40
  But first. I've got is Belle Blair.
• 59:41
  But it's still a good a road up there.
• 59:43
  Yeah, like I say, you don't really know you're in the North
• 59:45
  Coast 500 usually until you saw it, But I asked John O'Groats as
• 59:49
  you're going to the. Left but I.
• 59:50
  I've driven loads of German, loads of German copper.
• 59:54
  But I've driven through it when I've been on my way to Orkney
• 59:57
  because you get the ferry from Scrabble.
• 1:00:01
  Up to Stromness and Orkney. So you could, I mean there's a
• 1:00:05
  whiskey trip in there. If you were to go to, if you
• 1:00:09
  were to go to WEC, you could then carry on to Orkney and then
• 1:00:12
  visit all the salaries. That's a big year visit all the
• 1:00:15
  other key things and salaries as well.
• 1:00:17
  And I mean, I the way we usually do it when we go up there for
• 1:00:20
  work purposes is we'll go all the way up to Portney and we'll
• 1:00:24
  have the day up there and then we'll usually come a bit further
• 1:00:27
  South and stay somewhere like Dornick.
• 1:00:29
  Right. Have you ever flown?
• 1:00:30
  Halfway to no. Right, so.
• 1:00:33
  You can fly from. Glasgow.
• 1:00:35
  Now, now, now, here's the trip. Now there, here's the trip.
• 1:00:38
  Okay, okay, right. Okay, private jet.
• 1:00:41
  Well, yeah, jet take the jet out.
• 1:00:45
  OK, Small aircraft that doesn't have to go above the cab.
• 1:00:49
  I think there's a there's a type of aircraft and a type of
• 1:00:52
  license that you don't have to breach the cloud line.
• 1:00:55
  So if you fly under the crowd, No, no, there is it's basically
• 1:01:01
  it's like if you've got because right.
• 1:01:03
  So as well as having some of the best barley in the world, Fife
• 1:01:07
  also has an airport. I know.
• 1:01:10
  Yeah, it's terrifying. Fife also has an airport, which
• 1:01:12
  is a stone's throw away from Ensteirney Distillery.
• 1:01:16
  And my work. And yeah, where do you work?
• 1:01:17
  Yeah, there we go. I've.
• 1:01:19
  Seen planes and ducks? Flying from?
• 1:01:21
  Flying from, yeah, that's because you're rocking.
• 1:01:24
  So why? But that's probably needing a
• 1:01:27
  license for the cloud line, it said.
• 1:01:29
  But flying from Glenrothes to WIC probably wouldn't actually
• 1:01:33
  be that difficult. Have you spoken to?
• 1:01:36
  You'd have to charter a plane, but yeah, you.
• 1:01:37
  Can. Well, I know somebody that's got
• 1:01:38
  a plane, all right. Let's talk.
• 1:01:43
  Richard, he's got Richard Branson there.
• 1:01:45
  All right. No, no, no.
• 1:01:46
  I know there's, I know well, I know mutually somebody who has
• 1:01:50
  an aircraft. OK, who?
• 1:01:52
  Flies hobbyist outside or he flies his plane from Glenrothes
• 1:01:56
  airport. As a hobbyist he wants actually
• 1:01:59
  to take the Mac. He has to.
• 1:02:00
  You have to if you sounds. Like the end of the whiskey
• 1:02:03
  stories bug. He.
• 1:02:05
  Should also enter this point. Game has a few reply.
• 1:02:08
  But yeah, very bad one. But he has.
• 1:02:12
  But just a quick one. You have to, if you have a plane
• 1:02:17
  license, you have to record a certain amount of emergency
• 1:02:20
  landing practices to maintain you.
• 1:02:22
  It's like, so you're doing your CPD effectively, you're doing
• 1:02:24
  your development all the time. And the best place that they do
• 1:02:27
  is they usually plan it to do it on a golf course.
• 1:02:28
  They always tell you find a golf course because you'll have a
• 1:02:30
  nice big open fairway that you can put a land on.
• 1:02:33
  And the people around you will be raging well.
• 1:02:35
  He's done it before while his pals are playing, so he'll he
• 1:02:38
  times it basically flying around until they're on, let's say the
• 1:02:41
  5th at Duddock here, the Golf Club.
• 1:02:42
  And then they'll be like, right, I'm coming in and basically just
• 1:02:45
  lands of play, lands of play and then just quick the taxis and
• 1:02:47
  takes off. Again, that's it.
• 1:02:48
  Just avoids the bunkers. Are you?
• 1:02:50
  Suggesting an emergency landing at WIC.
• 1:02:52
  I'm just suggesting a flight to WIC.
• 1:02:54
  We we, we go instead in a couple of drums, pick truck up from
• 1:02:58
  work, whatever. A couple of drums clean up to
• 1:03:02
  work, the plane up to work for tea and crumpets.
• 1:03:05
  Yeah, piece of cake, piece of cake.
• 1:03:07
  So. You don't.
• 1:03:08
  You don't want to stay on work and experience.
• 1:03:09
  No, we'll stay on work. Coastal conditions.
• 1:03:11
  Yeah, we'll stay on work actually.
• 1:03:12
  I think I'll get that one of them back on the plane.
• 1:03:15
  Yeah. We, I'm just driving.
• 1:03:17
  Yeah, that would be. That's a way of doing.
• 1:03:19
  Something it's worth going. I would love to genuinely do one
• 1:03:22
  take because I mean, what's a drive to work from Edinburgh
• 1:03:24
  you're talking about? 6 1/2.
• 1:03:25
  Hours. Yes.
• 1:03:26
  Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a long old drive to
• 1:03:28
  get. There depends how quickly
• 1:03:29
  you've. Hit yeah, but or or where how
• 1:03:31
  often you stop got a slightly you've got a slightly heavy
• 1:03:33
  right foot so I yeah, please drive on it too.
• 1:03:35
  You're distillerated responsibly, yeah.
• 1:03:37
  Or flying. Back, yeah.
• 1:03:38
  But more importantly back, but yeah, so, so the history of the
• 1:03:43
  distillery because you're you're fast approaching 200 years, it's
• 1:03:45
  a 200, 2 year old distillery. Absolutely.
• 1:03:48
  And is it, has there been periods of mothballs and
• 1:03:52
  Closings and stuff like that as well?
• 1:03:53
  So. I mean, we operated continuously
• 1:03:56
  until 1930, right? And then we started back up
• 1:03:59
  again in 1947. And I don't think I need to tell
• 1:04:01
  you what happened in between those years.
• 1:04:02
  No, it's all right. You don't have any Germans in
• 1:04:04
  the. Room.
• 1:04:06
  Yeah, is it your middle name? Berlin, but no the.
• 1:04:10
  Distillery was, yeah. The distillery has been, you
• 1:04:13
  know, working hard producing whiskey since 1826, even
• 1:04:19
  continued operating after prohibition came into effect in
• 1:04:23
  WIC for eight years. It only closed down in 1930
• 1:04:27
  because of wider socio economic pressures.
• 1:04:30
  But yeah, really amazing. I don't know anything about
• 1:04:34
  prohibition in WIC. OK, no one does come.
• 1:04:37
  On. No one does.
• 1:04:38
  So how about American prohibition?
• 1:04:40
  So. Prohibition in America lasted, I
• 1:04:42
  think, just under 13 years. Prohibition in WIC 25 years.
• 1:04:47
  Yeah, yeah. Isn't that mental?
• 1:04:49
  And it's one of there were a few places in Scotland that did have
• 1:04:51
  prohibition, but I don't think any distillery was affected the
• 1:04:54
  same way we were. Wow, We I love saying that.
• 1:04:57
  Well, there used to be a real fan.
• 1:04:59
  What was it real? Was it not like a Sunday you
• 1:05:02
  weren't allowed to drink locally?
• 1:05:04
  Scottish prohibition. You couldn't drink on Sundays.
• 1:05:07
  No, but there was like a rule you couldn't because my dad's
• 1:05:11
  explained this to me. This.
• 1:05:13
  Is part of the Temperance Act. It might have.
• 1:05:15
  Basically what it was, was unless you were a traveller to
• 1:05:17
  the area, yeah, you weren't allowed to.
• 1:05:20
  You couldn't drink locally. So.
• 1:05:22
  So for example, on a Sunday, my grandfather used to always take
• 1:05:25
  the family to a restaurant, a hotel, sorry, in Thornton, which
• 1:05:30
  is just outside the Kirkcaldy. Yeah.
• 1:05:32
  And that was because he could have a drink with it.
• 1:05:34
  He could go for a drink on a. Sunday.
• 1:05:35
  But if he went any further, he couldn't, no.
• 1:05:37
  No, he could if he's stayed. In Kirkcaldy he couldn't he.
• 1:05:39
  Couldn't. So basically what he would do is
• 1:05:41
  he'd drive to Thornton and it was, there's a hotel, so you can
• 1:05:43
  go to the hotel and you say, well, we're, we've travelled to
• 1:05:45
  get here and we're, we're. Travelling so OK and when?
• 1:05:47
  And when was this well? It would have been in like the
• 1:05:49
  60s and 70s. Maybe some weird bylaw.
• 1:05:52
  OK, Yeah. Yeah, well, it's but prohibition
• 1:05:55
  in this. All, All in the effort to.
• 1:05:56
  What is it in the kind of brand notes?
• 1:05:59
  It's like people were seeking to protect themselves both
• 1:06:02
  physically and morally. Yeah, because.
• 1:06:04
  I mean, I mean, you can imagine the scene like the early 20th
• 1:06:08
  century. WIC is, for all intents and
• 1:06:10
  purposes, a fishing town. Yeah.
• 1:06:13
  A macro capital or herring cap? Herring Capital.
• 1:06:15
  Herring capital of Europe, yeah, yeah, wow.
• 1:06:17
  Which is insane to think about. The herring were really kicking
• 1:06:19
  off and there were there was basically everyone in the town
• 1:06:23
  was there for the fishing. They were either seasonal
• 1:06:25
  workers or they'd moved there from the Highlands like to to
• 1:06:29
  set up shop and be a fisherman. There were over 1000 boats at
• 1:06:32
  one point operating in and out of the harbour and.
• 1:06:34
  Which is incredible, I think those.
• 1:06:35
  Of like 6 to 8 men and all of those, those people would have
• 1:06:37
  had wives and families in the town.
• 1:06:40
  The town was effectively built to house this new fishing
• 1:06:43
  community. Unfortunately, these people
• 1:06:46
  would go out, these guys would go out on fishing trips hard in
• 1:06:49
  the North Sea. You know, you can imagine that
• 1:06:51
  any time of the year that's going to be a hard job.
• 1:06:53
  You come back into port, There's nowhere really undercover to go
• 1:06:56
  except for let's go to the pub with the gaffer and he'll pay
• 1:07:00
  us. So you get your wage or weekly
• 1:07:03
  or your monthly wage in cash in the pub and you.
• 1:07:05
  Think it's a great system. What should we do?
• 1:07:09
  Let's have a little drink to celebrate, and if you're in a
• 1:07:11
  crew of six or eight people, you think, okay, let's just do
• 1:07:14
  rounds. And then after 8 pints, they're
• 1:07:16
  heading home to their very, very unhappy wives who haven't seen
• 1:07:20
  them for a few days and who aren't getting the paycheck they
• 1:07:22
  were expecting. Yeah, so.
• 1:07:24
  They're getting 1 servers left, which is I.
• 1:07:26
  Mean it was, which was very detrimental to them.
• 1:07:28
  There is, there is another track to that in the sense that it's
• 1:07:31
  because again there was areas of Fife like I'd rather pick it
• 1:07:34
  would drive you towards temperance.
• 1:07:35
  No, but but but basically there was also the element that a lot
• 1:07:38
  of the guys that had shares or ownership of these fishing boats
• 1:07:42
  also owned some of them, the posterity and pubs.
• 1:07:45
  So there was there was. Almost like it's a method to the
• 1:07:48
  madness. He's never met a gaffer like a
• 1:07:50
  library. Yeah, so I'm, I'm they weren't
• 1:07:52
  getting paid on the boat. It was like, right, guys, you
• 1:07:54
  need to go and meet the guy who's going to pay us.
• 1:07:56
  He's going to pay us at the pub. And it was almost like, right,
• 1:07:58
  well, you might as well get a drink while you're here.
• 1:08:00
  This is exactly it. This is why kind of legal action
• 1:08:02
  had to happen to make a big change.
• 1:08:05
  It was in, I think it was 1918 that women got the vote.
• 1:08:09
  So they could, you know, vote in these elections.
• 1:08:12
  And in 1922 or 1920 actually there was a vote for
• 1:08:16
  prohibition, for the Temperance Act and 62% of the population of
• 1:08:20
  WIC voted in favour of going dry.
• 1:08:22
  It came into effect. I don't know why there was a
• 1:08:24
  gap. It came into effect in 1922 and
• 1:08:27
  then. Everyone kicked off.
• 1:08:30
  Had to enforce but every three years during that period of
• 1:08:34
  prohibition the vote re happened and they continued to vote for
• 1:08:37
  prohibition for 25 years until basically 1946 when everyone was
• 1:08:43
  like Nah. I.
• 1:08:45
  Don't know, let's let's have a drink.
• 1:08:47
  So, you know, 1922 prohibition started 19 and the distillery
• 1:08:51
  kept operating for eight years. And everything was going
• 1:08:55
  presumably just leaving on a truck and, well, not.
• 1:08:57
  Necessarily a truck, The harbour was the beating.
• 1:09:00
  On a ship, yeah. Exactly.
• 1:09:01
  Wick was also famous for a time of for its barrels of silver and
• 1:09:04
  gold. That's the phrase, barrels of
• 1:09:07
  silver, silver and gold coming in and out of the harbour.
• 1:09:09
  The silver being the barrels of herring.
• 1:09:11
  Oh yeah, the gold being the barrels of whiskey.
• 1:09:13
  Because there was a bit of smuggling that would go on.
• 1:09:15
  Right, I don't want you to say that the whiskey was in a
• 1:09:17
  herring barrel. No, I would not.
• 1:09:18
  No herring casks. There was, there is.
• 1:09:20
  Leak There is red ledgers with pickled fish casks listed as
• 1:09:25
  wood types. That's mental, yeah.
• 1:09:27
  Yeah, yeah. But Ronnie, yeah, that really
• 1:09:29
  right. But the 30th anniversary,
• 1:09:32
  because I was that because like this is the thing was I've done
• 1:09:34
  a lot of I did a bit of research.
• 1:09:36
  I did this in the I wrote about this in the newsletter, early
• 1:09:39
  doors in the newsletter about the prohibition.
• 1:09:41
  And, and there's, there's a few different sort of sub categories
• 1:09:45
  of the story. There's a story about how one of
• 1:09:47
  the big drivers was there was some sort of American evangelist
• 1:09:50
  family that were in this sort of area who was really driving this
• 1:09:53
  sort of thing. That was the element of the fact
• 1:09:55
  that they're really targeting the females in the town because
• 1:09:57
  they were good. Your husband's coming back
• 1:09:58
  drunk. Every time he comes back
• 1:10:00
  offshore, he's come back with no money.
• 1:10:01
  You, you have now you have because it, like you're saying,
• 1:10:04
  timed it perfectly with the with the vote for the women in the
• 1:10:07
  191918. And so they're being able to say
• 1:10:09
  you have the chance to actually change something here.
• 1:10:11
  So there was that element. There's also some stories and
• 1:10:13
  again, I don't know how much of you can, you don't know how much
• 1:10:16
  of it's just filtered through and come down through here
• 1:10:19
  saying what have you. But again, a lot of cynics would
• 1:10:21
  say that the vote was actually they waited till a lot of the
• 1:10:25
  men weren't actually able to see.
• 1:10:28
  But that was an element of the Yeah.
• 1:10:32
  So to to make to get this through because it was again,
• 1:10:35
  this is where from the brand side of things, what the brand
• 1:10:37
  will tell the story about versus what, what, what, what are
• 1:10:40
  things. But I did a big deep dive into
• 1:10:42
  it because we'd heard it was Shannon Buchan shouted to Shann
• 1:10:45
  who she she used to work up the distillery.
• 1:10:47
  She talked about some of the interesting things about the
• 1:10:49
  Pulitney distillery or Old Pulitney Distillery, and one of
• 1:10:52
  the things was this prohibition, because she saw this, you know,
• 1:10:55
  there's prohibition in Scotland. What?
• 1:10:56
  But it's it that is interesting you say it that way because that
• 1:11:00
  going back earlier to what I was saying about heritage, like
• 1:11:03
  heritage is effectively the stories you're choosing to tell
• 1:11:05
  from the past. Like.
• 1:11:07
  History is the things that are written down.
• 1:11:08
  Heritage is what is being taken into the present.
• 1:11:11
  It's not about like eliding stories.
• 1:11:13
  It's not about changing the past.
• 1:11:14
  But ultimately, certain stories ring truer for different
• 1:11:17
  audiences. Right.
• 1:11:18
  And The thing is as well, one of the things from a heritage
• 1:11:20
  perspective as well with old Boltney is, you know, with being
• 1:11:23
  a fishing, a heavy fishing town, there'll be a heavy emphasis and
• 1:11:28
  a lot of heritage in the sort of safety and regard of fishermen.
• 1:11:33
  And from yeah. And I probably do all probably
• 1:11:35
  do a lot of work with yeah, yeah.
• 1:11:37
  Is it the RNLI and stuff like that?
• 1:11:39
  Because it's a. It's a big part of.
• 1:11:40
  History. A lot of the people who have
• 1:11:42
  historically worked at the distillery have either been part
• 1:11:44
  time fishermen or boat builders or something like that.
• 1:11:47
  Our distillery manager Malcolm Wiring, he used to build boats.
• 1:11:50
  Yeah. You know, there's this, there's
• 1:11:51
  like a we are the maritime malt. And the way I like to put it is
• 1:11:56
  we didn't choose to be the maritime malt, but our
• 1:11:58
  environment makers that way, our environment and our people it's.
• 1:12:01
  And you guys have been part of you because you've sponsored
• 1:12:03
  sailing events and stuff like that as well.
• 1:12:05
  Yeah. Past before my time, yeah.
• 1:12:06
  Yeah, yeah. Because I suppose when you have
• 1:12:09
  that element. You want to use it you.
• 1:12:11
  Want to use it and because there have been I think there was 1
• 1:12:15
  here, I've had it here and it was like an RNLI special
• 1:12:18
  bottling that was done. You any you go to any fishing
• 1:12:21
  village in Scotland or all over the UK or an island.
• 1:12:24
  So you go to any fishing village there will be a memorial
• 1:12:27
  somewhere. Oh yeah or there will be a story
• 1:12:29
  of a disaster. There will be a story of the
• 1:12:32
  time a boat went out or a storm came in whilst there was men at
• 1:12:35
  sea and there was X amount. And when you think about it,
• 1:12:38
  what suddenly if 5 or 6 boats that are carrying six or eight
• 1:12:42
  people per time are wiped out, then that damages they caught
• 1:12:45
  the. We, we, we had a chuckle because
• 1:12:48
  we went down to on Sunday, Lauren, my wife, current wife,
• 1:12:52
  we're down in Newington and there was a the lighthouse in
• 1:12:55
  Newington, but they built flats across the road that are higher
• 1:12:58
  than the lighthouse. Obviously Laura was just like
• 1:13:01
  that. Lighthouse isn't going to save
• 1:13:02
  any chips, now is it? So they're just in their living
• 1:13:05
  room? Yeah, because they're they're
• 1:13:07
  like flats across the road that are now close.
• 1:13:09
  To the shore that are hired and I mean not that lighthouse is an
• 1:13:11
  operation anymore, it's just the kind of yeah, you know, but it's
• 1:13:14
  still there but it's like, well that's no.
• 1:13:16
  Not much use now, is it? Yeah.
• 1:13:17
  I mean, those with those points that's relevant to old pony
• 1:13:20
  because in the past we've released like non age statement
• 1:13:24
  bottlings. We don't have them anymore.
• 1:13:26
  But past releases that were either named after kind of
• 1:13:29
  significant vessels from the Port of Wick or lighthouses
• 1:13:32
  around Scotland, there's we're always trying to kind of draw on
• 1:13:36
  that maritime collection. And even though the core range,
• 1:13:39
  I mean we are all about our core whiskeys.
• 1:13:41
  We're very proud of them. They will be here for a long
• 1:13:44
  time. We know we're not just trying to
• 1:13:46
  kind of flourish with new releases all the time, but we
• 1:13:48
  did a few years ago release a couple of whiskeys as part of
• 1:13:52
  the Coastal series. I bought one of them along for
• 1:13:55
  you today. One of them is is finished in
• 1:13:59
  podcasts, but I didn't bring that one because I need it.
• 1:14:02
  This this big man was here, but I brought on the first release
• 1:14:06
  from the Coastal series, which is the old Poultney Pinot de
• 1:14:09
  Charant cast. A little bit special.
• 1:14:12
  Wow, thank you very much. It's.
• 1:14:13
  Not around really anymore if you'd struggle to find it.
• 1:14:16
  This is the only bottle I have. It's a non aged statement, but
• 1:14:20
  basically the idea is, yes, we're up in Wick.
• 1:14:23
  We're, you know, closer to Norway than we are to London.
• 1:14:27
  We're three degrees further north than Moscow.
• 1:14:29
  We're in a pop Scotland. It used to be Viking.
• 1:14:31
  We're very far away. But actually in some ways we're
• 1:14:33
  connected to everywhere by the sea.
• 1:14:36
  And Pinot de Charente is a fortified sweet French wine from
• 1:14:40
  the Charles Maritine region of France, which is a coastal
• 1:14:44
  region. So kind of sweets to what you
• 1:14:45
  were saying about Manzania earlier.
• 1:14:48
  So this whiskey's matured in EX bourbon and then kind of further
• 1:14:52
  matured in XP edition. Because the other thing is with
• 1:14:55
  it being a fishing village instead of a port, Yeah, sure.
• 1:15:00
  Glen Murray, for example. It's fun when you go to Elgin.
• 1:15:04
  I didn't realise how close you are to the sea when you're in
• 1:15:05
  Elgin. Sure you're not far?
• 1:15:06
  Yeah. And it does have a sort of.
• 1:15:08
  You see it from Elgin? Yeah, well, you.
• 1:15:10
  It does feel, it feels a little bit coastal.
• 1:15:11
  Yeah, it feels coastal, but at the same time, you're waiting to
• 1:15:13
  go around the corner and see a sea front, but you don't really
• 1:15:16
  get the sea front because you have to go a little bit further
• 1:15:17
  out of town. But when we went to Glen Murray,
• 1:15:19
  one of the things they've talked a lot about is the fact that,
• 1:15:21
  you know, Elgin used to be a very thriving port town.
• 1:15:25
  And that helped with Glenn Murray.
• 1:15:26
  When we looked through the Ledger.
• 1:15:28
  Angus, you particularly look through the Ledger.
• 1:15:30
  And so. Oh.
• 1:15:30
  Absolutely. I mean banked.
• 1:15:32
  I mean, I thank you. There was early 20th century or
• 1:15:36
  late 19th century and Madeira casts, I think it was
• 1:15:40
  particularly Madeira cast. But these kind of casts that you
• 1:15:43
  would assume would be, you know, people might think this is a new
• 1:15:47
  phenomenon, these kind of wine casks, fortified wine casts.
• 1:15:50
  No, no, no. This is something that was
• 1:15:51
  skiing over 100 years, doing for 100.
• 1:15:53
  Years, yeah by. Comedians.
• 1:15:54
  Yeah, but I suppose the difficulty would have been like
• 1:15:57
  you've already said, you know, herring casks are not a thing
• 1:16:00
  for, for old bulk and what have you.
• 1:16:01
  But will there have been an an option for, you know, you're
• 1:16:05
  doing a lot of you're doing a lot of stuff with casks from
• 1:16:08
  other parts of the world And and it's it's we love to see it all
• 1:16:11
  and all that. Will there have been a bit of a
• 1:16:13
  tradition in with the history and the heritage of the of the
• 1:16:16
  distillery being in a sort of coastal area area, getting these
• 1:16:19
  casks coming in, do you think? Yes and no.
• 1:16:22
  I mean, WIC was very much a fishing town.
• 1:16:24
  It was very much shipping things out.
• 1:16:27
  It wasn't exactly a hub in north of Scotland back then.
• 1:16:30
  There were not a lot of people up there in that part of
• 1:16:32
  Scotland, so we wouldn't have necessarily been shipping a load
• 1:16:35
  of wine up there. But maybe it doesn't, Maybe
• 1:16:37
  potentially. I can't really speak to.
• 1:16:39
  That I think more historically like even Sherry casts were just
• 1:16:43
  designated as Sherry like generic all.
• 1:16:46
  Yeah. So we're kind of in this, we're
• 1:16:48
  in the time now really where we're I guess showcasing what
• 1:16:51
  we're bringing in more focal points.
• 1:16:53
  Yeah, education on what you're using with your.
• 1:16:55
  Work. Yeah, we're drilling down,
• 1:16:56
  right. I'm just saying yeah, yeah,
• 1:16:58
  right. I'm just saying it's a Sherry
• 1:16:59
  cast. We're saying it's a.
• 1:17:00
  Middle cast we are now, you know, we are getting manthaneer
• 1:17:03
  cast. That's an that really is more
• 1:17:05
  palaquette. We had super.
• 1:17:07
  It was the IT was the fragrant drops independent bottler
• 1:17:11
  spotlight that we did yes. And we had the inch Gower that
• 1:17:15
  was finished and I saw was it Saught Downs?
• 1:17:17
  Calf it was. Yeah, there was a saught.
• 1:17:19
  Downscour being another one that's quite often Manzini out
• 1:17:22
  of space act. Well, yeah, it's like, yeah,
• 1:17:25
  it's, it's well, it's seen as a sort of like there is a bit of
• 1:17:28
  salty and salinity and then scour.
• 1:17:29
  It's a coastal one. But one of the things, I think
• 1:17:32
  it was George or Rachel, whichever I think it was George
• 1:17:34
  actually, that said it is like, well, actually, you know, your
• 1:17:37
  taste buds are naturally drawn too sweet and salty.
• 1:17:41
  Exactly. So it's almost like a perfect
• 1:17:43
  combination when you get that sweetness and you get that
• 1:17:46
  saltiness. It's and we've all been there
• 1:17:48
  where there are people who like to eat crisps and chocolate at
• 1:17:50
  the same time. There you go, I.
• 1:17:52
  Put chocolate in my salted popcorn at the.
• 1:17:54
  Cinema. There you go.
• 1:17:55
  And then on the subject of popcorn, you know, it's like
• 1:18:00
  peanut butter and chocolate. Yeah.
• 1:18:02
  Sweet and salt, yeah. And then there's people who
• 1:18:03
  again dip their chips in their milkshake and, and McDonald's
• 1:18:08
  because it's, it's, it gives it. So there is a, there is a want
• 1:18:11
  and a tendency from a human point of view that we want that
• 1:18:15
  saltiness and we want the sweetness.
• 1:18:17
  So I suppose when you get the opportunity to do these casks
• 1:18:19
  and what were these casks, it's great.
• 1:18:21
  Although, you know, like I say, a bourbon can give you just as
• 1:18:24
  much sweetness as something from and it's.
• 1:18:26
  Again, it's again to your point about like old point, you being
• 1:18:29
  briny. Really what you're tasting is
• 1:18:31
  flavours which make your brain associates with briny flavors.
• 1:18:35
  And it's the same in whiskey. Like when it's not sugary
• 1:18:38
  liquid, the sweetness it's either vanilla sweetness, honey
• 1:18:41
  sweetness, dried fruit sweetness, Pinot de chaurant
• 1:18:43
  sweetness. Like it's, it's all about what
• 1:18:45
  it's conjuring for you. But it's amazing the way that it
• 1:18:48
  can, yeah, interplay on your tongue.
• 1:18:51
  Right, let's talk about. So let me talk about the
• 1:18:54
  elephant in the room a little bit, OK?
• 1:18:57
  I. Would like to say this is great.
• 1:18:58
  It's lovely. So that's fantastic.
• 1:19:00
  What's the ABV on that as well? 4646, Perfect.
• 1:19:02
  It's a great drink of drama, really.
• 1:19:04
  Lush. This came back quite a few years
• 1:19:05
  ago now, didn't it? Couple of things in exactly.
• 1:19:09
  How many? But I think it might.
• 1:19:10
  How about? Within maybe four years ago,
• 1:19:12
  yeah, yeah. So we've had the 15 and you
• 1:19:16
  mentioned it. How many things do you get asked
• 1:19:19
  about the faulty, old, faulty 17?
• 1:19:21
  How many things do people say bring it back?
• 1:19:24
  Why? Why do you bring it back
• 1:19:25
  constantly? Right?
• 1:19:26
  So when you go through your core range right now you've got the
• 1:19:28
  12, you've got the and then is it all Pulp Me 15 is the next
• 1:19:31
  one. Yeah, it's 12/15/18 and we've
• 1:19:34
  got 25. Is it 1825?
• 1:19:35
  We've had the 18 and we must have had the 18.
• 1:19:38
  Yeah, I was talking it up actually.
• 1:19:40
  Sure, we've had the 1818, but that's very good when people
• 1:19:44
  talk about it and there's people hold it so close to them, like
• 1:19:47
  Mark Thompson said about reminds them of going to his
• 1:19:50
  grandmother's and what have you and, and things like that.
• 1:19:53
  What what, what do you say to people?
• 1:19:56
  Because how do you say to people, well, try the 15 or try
• 1:19:59
  the 18? If people tell me I love the Old
• 1:20:02
  Portney 17, I say I'm so glad. Yeah, a fantastic whiskey.
• 1:20:07
  That's brilliant. Do you have any bottles?
• 1:20:08
  Great. Hold on to one of them because
• 1:20:09
  that's that's really special. But I'm so sorry.
• 1:20:12
  Things change. Yeah.
• 1:20:13
  Yeah, and not, you know, I get really excited when I see Old
• 1:20:17
  Portney 17 in a bar or in a shop if you get built all right here.
• 1:20:24
  I got excited when I saw that little Peck to up, but it was
• 1:20:26
  empty. I was like.
• 1:20:28
  But you know, people love to hang on to the, I'm sorry, I
• 1:20:32
  keep going on about the heritage thing.
• 1:20:34
  People love to hang on to the past and people have this
• 1:20:37
  relentless idea that things from the past are better than things
• 1:20:39
  for now. But in 15 years time if we were
• 1:20:42
  to discontinue on a broad. Yeah, people will be told.
• 1:20:44
  Oh. I can't.
• 1:20:45
  Believe you've. Discontinued it.
• 1:20:46
  People are obsessed with this idea, but things are special
• 1:20:50
  because they're finite. We're still making the whiskey
• 1:20:54
  the same way, at the same distillery, same type of cars,
• 1:20:56
  same warehouses. It's brilliant juice.
• 1:20:59
  It's just a slightly different expression.
• 1:21:01
  And actually, there are so many ways you can make whiskey, why
• 1:21:03
  not explore it differently? But the other thing that's
• 1:21:06
  happening is we touched on it a little bit earlier as you're
• 1:21:09
  coming up to you, you are in your 200th anniversary year.
• 1:21:13
  So is is there anything exciting happening at this?
• 1:21:15
  Point. That's a very good question.
• 1:21:16
  I. Guess.
• 1:21:17
  Well, it's not centenary, it's a bicentenary.
• 1:21:19
  A bicentenary? I already mentioned that our
• 1:21:22
  distillery is getting a bit of a facelift, which will be huge for
• 1:21:25
  us. There are going to be some
• 1:21:27
  special releases later this year.
• 1:21:29
  That is all I can say. But definitely keep your eyes
• 1:21:33
  peeled because it's really exciting. 200 years of making
• 1:21:37
  whiskey is remarkable at the best of times, but in a place
• 1:21:40
  like Wick on the Northeast coast, you know, pinned up
• 1:21:44
  against the North Sea and Caithness Cliffs, amongst those
• 1:21:47
  really, really intense conditions, that is really
• 1:21:49
  something to have gone through so many hardships. 25 years of
• 1:21:53
  prohibition. It's what we're doing this year
• 1:21:55
  is we're really celebrating 200 years of such amazing heritage.
• 1:21:59
  There will also be, so you guys were lucky enough to try the
• 1:22:02
  French oak distillery exclusive that I brought to the tasting a
• 1:22:06
  few weeks ago that is almost out of stock that.
• 1:22:10
  Was a really great it's. Been an absolute favorite.
• 1:22:13
  I think it's 53% really, really spicy, smooth, sweet, just
• 1:22:16
  beautiful. Only available at the
• 1:22:18
  distillery, almost out of stock. So we are replacing that with a
• 1:22:22
  200th anniversary distillery exclusive which is going to have
• 1:22:27
  a little bit of Manthania going on call back to our Manthania
• 1:22:32
  and. North, get your pilot friend on
• 1:22:34
  the phone, mate. Yeah, there.
• 1:22:35
  You go and will that be available online or just
• 1:22:38
  exclusively? I believe it will be at the
• 1:22:42
  distillery and on the distillery website online shop but I would
• 1:22:46
  have to confirm. That no and OK and it'll be a
• 1:22:48
  very. It'll be a limit.
• 1:22:49
  I don't know the price but it will be a limited run.
• 1:22:51
  Keep your eyes What was the price of the What was the price
• 1:22:53
  of the distillery of the previous one?
• 1:22:54
  What was that? It was the French.
• 1:22:55
  It was 88. Yeah.
• 1:22:56
  It was like it was really, really, really reasonable.
• 1:22:59
  Yeah. And it was great because I mean,
• 1:23:00
  we, we, we talk about it in taste things the first round.
• 1:23:03
  It's almost got the hardest job. And but that that was a real
• 1:23:07
  straight away. You were like, right, we're
• 1:23:09
  tasting something here and wasn't like, right, this is the
• 1:23:11
  first try and. Also it's, you know, there was a
• 1:23:15
  there was a worry when you look at it because the lineup that
• 1:23:19
  you put out was actually the majority of them were actually
• 1:23:21
  not cast strength. They were, they were, yeah,
• 1:23:24
  really drinkable. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:23:25
  But actually I sometimes you go to a tasting and you're ready to
• 1:23:30
  be OK. We're going to try some
• 1:23:32
  interesting stuff here and it's all going to be cast trend.
• 1:23:34
  And see if you 61 and a 62. Yeah, and we, we talked on the
• 1:23:38
  podcast about the water conversation when we had Greg
• 1:23:40
  Urquhart on about adding water and when to do it.
• 1:23:42
  And I always find that really challenging sometimes when
• 1:23:44
  you're a taste it because you've got literally 1 drum in front of
• 1:23:47
  you, you've got to make it. And Greg gave a great tip.
• 1:23:49
  If you're not sure, put a bit of water, just a tiny bit of water
• 1:23:52
  in your mouth and then take a step.
• 1:23:53
  But it'll just give you an idea of what it what it'll be like
• 1:23:56
  because you just don't know. It's a great deal.
• 1:23:58
  But then sometimes it's Friday night and you're like, I just,
• 1:24:00
  I'm just out and I just want to have a nice relaxing evening.
• 1:24:03
  And you put on some really. Well, all the drums are
• 1:24:06
  absolutely fantastic. But they were, they were nice
• 1:24:09
  and enjoyable and they were challenging at a point, but they
• 1:24:11
  weren't like, no, I wasn't. We could sit back and relax and
• 1:24:14
  just go. I could enjoy this and not have
• 1:24:16
  to worry about. I usually like to.
• 1:24:18
  I don't like to do linear tastings.
• 1:24:20
  I probably said this on the night I don't like to do it
• 1:24:23
  because I don't like to suggest that actually the older you get,
• 1:24:25
  the better it is. Yeah, you don't want to go,
• 1:24:27
  right? Here's the 12.
• 1:24:28
  Here's the 15 years. 18 But in this case, unfortunately, it
• 1:24:32
  ended up being a linear tasting. I usually want to do it more in
• 1:24:35
  terms of ABV and more in terms of how it weaves into the story.
• 1:24:38
  But we we had a good night that night because you have a break
• 1:24:41
  in the middle. So we got all the heavy hitters
• 1:24:43
  out the way at the beginning. So your taste buds are really on
• 1:24:45
  fire ready to go. And then we got back to I think
• 1:24:49
  the last three drams are 46%. So it's not, it's not soft, no,
• 1:24:53
  but it's, it was just nice. You were like, you just, you
• 1:24:56
  could sit back, relax and enjoy the drams without actually
• 1:24:59
  having to think about, oh, taste spicy, but maybe what's it like
• 1:25:03
  with a bit more water? And yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:05
  It was very nice. Now one of the things questions
• 1:25:07
  that I had on the night and I want to ask you like for example
• 1:25:11
  the Pulp Me 15, the old Pulp Me 15 that we brought out there and
• 1:25:15
  some of the other ages in the core range.
• 1:25:18
  We see the 12 everywhere, but it's actually quite difficult to
• 1:25:21
  find on trade and also in the in the in the retail market all
• 1:25:27
  companies interesting. Yeah.
• 1:25:29
  Yeah, like because, and the second part of that question
• 1:25:32
  would be which I ask a lot of people, we spoke about it two
• 1:25:35
  weeks ago with with Tim Walker about how do you have, how do
• 1:25:38
  you cope with being like Glenfiddich?
• 1:25:41
  Or you can find, if you can find an old Pulteney in a Co-op,
• 1:25:44
  you'll find a Glenfiddich if you see.
• 1:25:45
  And nine times out of 10, if you can find a Glenfiddich.
• 1:25:48
  And there's a few other dramas that.
• 1:25:49
  Percent off deal. Or something.
• 1:25:51
  But yeah, Glenn, you'll find the Glenn Murray, you'll find an old
• 1:25:53
  Pulteney. Now we've had Stephen Woodcock,
• 1:25:56
  who we love, Glenn Murray on the podcast, and he said, you know,
• 1:26:00
  everyone asks why is Glenn Murray always so cheap?
• 1:26:01
  And he says, well, everyone makes it the same way.
• 1:26:03
  There's regulations. Why is everyone so bloody
• 1:26:05
  expensive like the same? But how do you find that when
• 1:26:08
  you become that supermarket brand, but at the same time
• 1:26:14
  there's a wealth and a width of portfolio that if you opened up
• 1:26:18
  to, then it'd be people? Can enjoy it.
• 1:26:20
  I think the first thing to say is there's absolutely no shame
• 1:26:23
  in being prominent in supermarket.
• 1:26:24
  Of course not. And it's fantastic that a lot of
• 1:26:27
  people out there can access our some of our entry level
• 1:26:30
  whiskeys. So we actually have a non age
• 1:26:32
  statement called Harbour, which is quite prominent in the kind
• 1:26:36
  of grocery supermarket channel now, which is, you know,
• 1:26:40
  slightly lower price point than old Putney 12.
• 1:26:43
  And that's fantastic. If you're seeing the bottle, if
• 1:26:45
  you're trying it, if you're tasting unmistakable salty
• 1:26:48
  character, that's brilliant. We're happy about that.
• 1:26:51
  We then have so many people across the globe who are huge
• 1:26:54
  old Puntney fans, whether it's from the 17 or whether it's
• 1:26:57
  because they've tried one of our more, you know, more recent
• 1:27:00
  releases or even maybe they love the 25 year old and they own a
• 1:27:04
  bottle, then that's fantastic. But you're right, it's slightly
• 1:27:07
  less prominent because the truth is we are a small, we're a small
• 1:27:10
  brand. We don't produce.
• 1:27:11
  We produce about 1.2 million litres a year, which in the
• 1:27:15
  scheme of things you can FedEx that's.
• 1:27:17
  What? 24 million or something, you
• 1:27:19
  know, it is a completely different conversation, but the
• 1:27:23
  thing that I love so much about old pulp me and I know that I am
• 1:27:27
  the brand ambassador. So obviously I'm going to say
• 1:27:28
  this, but I genuinely feel that it's such a great whiskey to
• 1:27:32
  work with because if you give it to a bartender, they'll say, oh,
• 1:27:36
  that's fun. Oh, there's a lot I can do with
• 1:27:38
  this. Let me make you a really fun
• 1:27:40
  cocktail with the 15 or let me do some crazy like salty seaweed
• 1:27:44
  riff on the 12th. Or you find it in a very
• 1:27:47
  reputable whiskey specialist shop and it stands out.
• 1:27:51
  It's still you do a tasting. It still stands out with its
• 1:27:53
  flavor. And if you go into the more
• 1:27:57
  higher age items, it can hold its own.
• 1:28:00
  What's an 18 Corson? Testing me I am going to say
• 1:28:05
  around 140 lbs but it might be more.
• 1:28:07
  When you look at the well, we're not going to hold you to it, but
• 1:28:10
  at the same thing when you guess, it's when you start
• 1:28:13
  looking at the difference of the the core range and when you
• 1:28:15
  start actually seeing special releases as well.
• 1:28:18
  Because there are people that are tuned in to distilleries
• 1:28:21
  when they bring out special. You were you were talking about
• 1:28:24
  Glen Scotia and Loch Lomond special releases when we had
• 1:28:28
  Shona Gillespie on and. Right.
• 1:28:31
  Yeah, exactly. When you're, when you're honed
• 1:28:32
  in to distillery and you start to see special, special releases
• 1:28:38
  and you know, there there's people that are able to do like
• 1:28:40
  you guys will have it with Saber, you'll have that spirit
• 1:28:43
  space site, but release coming out, which I'm sure will be an
• 1:28:47
  absolute cracker. And then you've got like Glen
• 1:28:49
  Scotia, they'll be able to do a Campbelltown festival release.
• 1:28:52
  Yeah, of course. How do you do it with Old
• 1:28:53
  Pulteney? There was because you're waiting
• 1:28:55
  for, obviously you're not going to wait every 100 years.
• 1:28:57
  But at the same time, how do you you don't have that opportunity
• 1:29:01
  to go, oh, there's a festival or so we can bring out a festival
• 1:29:04
  or there's, you know. I will say when I was in old
• 1:29:08
  Pontney's, a distillery, that was, as I say, was one of the
• 1:29:10
  first bottles I bought, but I kind of overlook it a lot.
• 1:29:12
  Yeah. What kind of kind of got me to
• 1:29:14
  look at it again was when I was in Melbourne and I think there
• 1:29:17
  was a single cask release that was done for the bars in
• 1:29:19
  Melbourne. So it was like pretty small
• 1:29:22
  release. I think it was like a 14 year
• 1:29:23
  old first fill of refill bourbon.
• 1:29:26
  Stunning. Yeah.
• 1:29:27
  Do we take bourbon? The 14 year old refill bourbon
• 1:29:29
  or the first filled bourbon refill was on, but that's on.
• 1:29:32
  The other side of the planet and I went to Elysian and yeah, he's
• 1:29:36
  going. This is great it.
• 1:29:38
  Is great well that's you've kind of hit the nail on the head
• 1:29:41
  there of course we're going to release some stuff to celebrate
• 1:29:43
  200 years of course and it's going to be remarkable so stay
• 1:29:48
  tuned but yeah what we do is old Putney we kind of speak more to
• 1:29:53
  that crowd people who who love old Portney who can appreciate
• 1:29:56
  it who can appreciate the difference.
• 1:29:57
  So we did an A single cast bottling for the independent
• 1:30:01
  whiskey bars of Scotland. So it was only for the
• 1:30:04
  Highlander in Dornock, Whiskey Castle, the Malt Rooms in
• 1:30:08
  Inverness and some others great places don't really care about
• 1:30:13
  it and are gonna talk to people about it for the for the Galaxy
• 1:30:17
  Hotel as well. Yeah, for the fake part, you
• 1:30:18
  know, So we do it that way. We also have the the one that
• 1:30:23
  you liked from the tasting, that second DRAM that was an
• 1:30:26
  exclusive bottling for the Cinderella Whiskey fan.
• 1:30:28
  Well, that's just finished. Well, as we're recording, this
• 1:30:30
  is just finished. Shout out to anyone who's still
• 1:30:33
  got their ceilings. There you go.
• 1:30:35
  Can you? Imagine, I'm very glad I'm in
• 1:30:37
  this basement. Yeah.
• 1:30:39
  But like, you know, for for the Scandinavian market, they
• 1:30:42
  absolutely level importantly as well.
• 1:30:43
  So we just, we tap into the people that recognize us and
• 1:30:47
  care about us and we do something special for them.
• 1:30:49
  But ultimately we back our core range.
• 1:30:52
  Yeah, and we. Do not need to just be releasing
• 1:30:55
  special stuff all the time to get attention.
• 1:30:57
  It is good whiskey, and it's been there for a long.
• 1:30:59
  Time. And when you do, you're just
• 1:31:01
  holding in on the people that you know well because you're a
• 1:31:03
  brand ambassador. But we've talked about it so
• 1:31:05
  many times, Chuck being one of them.
• 1:31:08
  You know, Cody Reynolds said the best brand ambassador you can
• 1:31:10
  get is a, as an educated and an enthusiastic bar person, work of
• 1:31:14
  mine bar, you know, and suddenly, like what you're
• 1:31:17
  saying, trucks gone to Australia and somebody's in a bar is
• 1:31:20
  going, you need to try this. It's all bulky.
• 1:31:22
  But it also goes to the bar people you were speaking to.
• 1:31:25
  They're going, this is great. I know I can do a really cool
• 1:31:29
  cocktail with this, you know, and soon as you know, right,
• 1:31:33
  they're using old Poultney in a cocktail that's cool.
• 1:31:35
  Yeah, and The thing is, it goes back to like, like the like the
• 1:31:38
  success of Poultney Seventeens and I'm touching our bottle as
• 1:31:42
  if it was a huge success, but massive success.
• 1:31:45
  Well, I was, but the big success was the rest.
• 1:31:47
  Of the foil off this for like the entire.
• 1:31:49
  But Greg Urquhart, Greg Urquhart been able to get that.
• 1:31:52
  But but because it's not something that you see in a lot
• 1:31:54
  of I've not seen a lot of Poultney independently bottled.
• 1:31:57
  So what you're doing what what you get is you get people who
• 1:32:01
  maybe know what Poulton is like, all Poulton is like and go.
• 1:32:08
  I've not had an awful lot of opportunity to try it at a
• 1:32:11
  different format like like in whiteboard or Ruby port and
• 1:32:14
  stuff like that. But yeah, it's fantastic.
• 1:32:16
  But we are fast approaching that time of the evening where we ask
• 1:32:19
  our guests for your what 3 drams.
• 1:32:22
  Now we always say you're like one on brand if you want to go,
• 1:32:25
  but any 3 whiskeys that have a meaning, story or some sort of
• 1:32:30
  association with yourself. Well, I'll preface this with
• 1:32:33
  obviously all of my brands are my favorite whiskeys, but
• 1:32:36
  actually my what three are not from my brand?
• 1:32:38
  That's OK. Oh, you're, you're, you're.
• 1:32:41
  No, no. No, that's fine.
• 1:32:43
  So OK, let's start. One of the best whiskeys I've
• 1:32:48
  ever tasted was at a whiskey fair in Hong Kong and it was
• 1:32:54
  Arden American, 5 year old finished in Madeira and it was
• 1:32:59
  unbelievable. I drank it and I was just, I was
• 1:33:02
  kind of brought back to the present because I thought why am
• 1:33:05
  I drinking chocolate coffee? It was unbelievable and it was
• 1:33:09
  such a good example of like, such a clear example of younger
• 1:33:13
  whiskeys being incredible. Those guys, I mean, we're going
• 1:33:16
  to, I mean, when Carl Crafts was on the podcast, he, he brought a
• 1:33:20
  kind of selection of whiskey with him and he was very, very
• 1:33:25
  generous. And that there was kind of, I
• 1:33:27
  think he'd been to a few places before with these bottles and
• 1:33:31
  what was left was kind of down at the kind of, but he actually
• 1:33:34
  said, which one do you like the most, Angus?
• 1:33:36
  And I said that one, he said, take the rest of that home.
• 1:33:39
  And it was a Madeira cask. I don't think it was a 5 year
• 1:33:42
  old. I don't think it was an age
• 1:33:43
  statement. And they've got it upstairs as
• 1:33:46
  well on the market in Madeira is just incredible.
• 1:33:50
  Do you know it was, it was, it was Charlie Hume?
• 1:33:54
  Shout to Charlie. He's basically kicked our
• 1:33:57
  socials in the next level with his story about Charlie in the
• 1:34:02
  McAllen. But he was the first person to
• 1:34:05
  reference Arden Merkin on the podcast.
• 1:34:07
  And I walked three drams. I was raging for two reasons #1
• 1:34:12
  spelling it. I didn't have a, I've never
• 1:34:14
  heard of it. Oh, I've heard this like prison.
• 1:34:16
  I was like, in fact, I could probably go through this book
• 1:34:18
  and find that and you can see my, it was a ball noir again.
• 1:34:22
  It was Arden American ball noir. Oh yeah, great drop.
• 1:34:25
  But he Charlie. Yeah, our number.
• 1:34:30
  Oh wow. Sounds like a Perkin.
• 1:34:32
  Yeah, yeah. Paul Noir, champagne AD Paul
• 1:34:35
  Louise release cask. It was a cast sample.
• 1:34:40
  But. But the thing was, that's the
• 1:34:42
  first reason. I'm second reason.
• 1:34:43
  I actually never heard of these guys.
• 1:34:45
  I was like, yeah. And then I heard of the new
• 1:34:47
  distillery. I was like, God, I was.
• 1:34:49
  For somebody who works at the Malt Room at the time, he's
• 1:34:52
  about to go to the Cayman Islands, set up a whiskey bar.
• 1:34:55
  Surely we must have tried a better drum than a distiller
• 1:34:59
  that's barely even put in and out.
• 1:35:00
  How naive was I? And then suddenly what Arden
• 1:35:04
  Mark kind of brought out. I mean, we've, I think it was
• 1:35:06
  mentioned, Simon Smith said annoyingly good because they'll
• 1:35:11
  just constantly put that, put the stuff out.
• 1:35:13
  It's really. Irritating, sorry, irritating
• 1:35:16
  independent bottler because I've tried to buy loads of their
• 1:35:19
  stuff and it's just gone before. The yeah, that's the thing.
• 1:35:21
  This whiskey was incredible and it was gone.
• 1:35:26
  It was gone. And you know, when they've done
• 1:35:27
  like a collaboration bottle, it has that sort of like, and
• 1:35:30
  again, it's the colour I've just drawn to it, that sort of
• 1:35:33
  turquoisey blue on the bottle. It's like if they do, if they do
• 1:35:37
  a collaboration bottling with so not an independent bottling.
• 1:35:40
  Oh yeah. So it's like the one that we
• 1:35:42
  did. It's not a clear bottle.
• 1:35:43
  It's got that kind of. It's got that sort of, yeah,
• 1:35:45
  it's not frosting, but it's like, it's almost like a sleeve
• 1:35:47
  of blue. It's.
• 1:35:48
  More of a kind of Russian. Blue or something?
• 1:35:50
  Yeah, there's an American. The ARD Knock as well, that was
• 1:35:57
  quite a huge and great label on that.
• 1:36:01
  Well, great. Great honestly in the world.
• 1:36:02
  Like I say, stay tuned. For keep your eyes peeled for
• 1:36:05
  some hard work in content, yeah? Yeah, OK, brilliant.
• 1:36:09
  Great. That's a great start.
• 1:36:11
  Happy. The most?
• 1:36:12
  Western #2 number. 2 would be complete change of scene, which
• 1:36:18
  Jack and I were talking earlier upstairs when you guys were
• 1:36:20
  setting up of drinking whiskey in Japan.
• 1:36:24
  And I know that there's a huge amount of amazing Japanese
• 1:36:26
  whiskey out there, but my all time favorite is a Santori
• 1:36:30
  Kakabin highball. You know the bottle a kind of
• 1:36:34
  rectangular yellow, like almost crisscross like quilted.
• 1:36:38
  Is it just a Yeah, I'm. Sorry, 1 you will find the
• 1:36:41
  iconic Japanese bar. And you can share.
• 1:36:43
  If you order a highball, they'll pull out some frosted tankard
• 1:36:47
  from the freezer, fill it with delicious ice.
• 1:36:49
  Quite often you get it in like a stainless steel glass as well.
• 1:36:53
  I've not had a highball nice and all, right?
• 1:36:56
  Yeah, I've had it sometimes in Japan, but I've been to Japan
• 1:36:58
  once or twice. He drinks most of his stuff at a
• 1:37:01
  dug bowl. What?
• 1:37:04
  Was that vessel they gave me before?
• 1:37:06
  But no, you get sometimes I've had it like sometimes in Japan,
• 1:37:10
  I've got like they've served me highball in like a stainless
• 1:37:13
  steel glass. Really, right.
• 1:37:14
  And it's just like what? It's just like because it's
• 1:37:16
  always cold as well. It's just like, like Cold Steel,
• 1:37:19
  just like, wow. All the highballs I had came out
• 1:37:24
  of like 7 elevens and well, not 7 elevens.
• 1:37:27
  Yeah, but the Santori and highball from 711 is.
• 1:37:31
  Fantastic. So is that, is that, is that
• 1:37:34
  from a Because this is what's funny when you look at like an
• 1:37:36
  ex, it went from experience of drinking whiskey versus the
• 1:37:39
  flavours and stuff like that. Obviously, it'll taste nice, but
• 1:37:41
  was it more about the situation of being where you were and
• 1:37:45
  drinking that versus actually because you're talking about
• 1:37:48
  standard release of some sort? Yeah.
• 1:37:50
  Oh yeah, standard, standard. But I think number one, for me,
• 1:37:53
  a highball is one of the most amazing ways you can drink
• 1:37:55
  whiskey, and I advocate for it across the board.
• 1:37:58
  Whatever you want to put in there, it's up to you.
• 1:38:01
  Like it doesn't just have to be a standard blend.
• 1:38:03
  Actually, old Poultry 12 is cracking in a highball as well.
• 1:38:07
  If you make it, if you use good ice, a nice cold glass, and not
• 1:38:11
  shitty soda water, then all it does is it opens up the whiskey
• 1:38:16
  and makes it vibrant. But you are right, I was
• 1:38:18
  probably like having the best day of my life in Japan and
• 1:38:21
  drinking 2 LB highballs so it could have had something.
• 1:38:25
  That's good. I mean when, when we what?
• 1:38:26
  Here's the lads up at the Highlands are there?
• 1:38:30
  That's a yeah. Yeah, and there's another who's
• 1:38:32
  the other lad that works there as well.
• 1:38:33
  There's two. I don't know, actually.
• 1:38:34
  There's the Garrett wounds it, and then there's yeah.
• 1:38:36
  Well, I've I've never had a drink out.
• 1:38:38
  Of the how you're in, well, we were.
• 1:38:40
  Well, first of all, we were up there.
• 1:38:42
  I guess we talked about this in Japan.
• 1:38:43
  He went to us. I was in Japan and what
• 1:38:46
  happened? I've never had a drink in the
• 1:38:48
  Highlander Inn but when I was at Chichiboo Fest.
• 1:38:50
  You've been to the Highlander Inn and Chichiboo.
• 1:38:52
  Yeah, but I've been to that one. You've never been to that one
• 1:38:54
  more. Even worse than that is I was at
• 1:38:56
  Chichiboo Fest and he did a talk at Chichiboo.
• 1:38:59
  Fest, Really. Yeah, well, and I saw, I saw him
• 1:39:01
  there and I was like this is weird thing.
• 1:39:05
  Well, those guys. So the moment that we got that
• 1:39:09
  night, not long, in fact not long before we met the guys from
• 1:39:13
  WIC actually that same night in the Highlander in ties it up
• 1:39:15
  nice. A nice closed loop we're getting
• 1:39:17
  here was basically, first of all, it was that period in last
• 1:39:21
  year, was it July? Oh, it was a hottest day of the
• 1:39:23
  year. Basically, we were up and we.
• 1:39:25
  Were in the state we'd be in the spaver that day.
• 1:39:27
  I mean, I mean, we were indignant.
• 1:39:29
  It was one of those days. It was kind of like
• 1:39:30
  uncomfortably warm. Yeah.
• 1:39:32
  And we were sat outside and sweating buckets.
• 1:39:35
  We sat inside the Highlander in but we got and it was highballs
• 1:39:38
  and it was Japanese eyeballs and they were absolutely fantastic.
• 1:39:41
  Yeah, but that was also when he said, oh, you guys are you guys
• 1:39:46
  do the podcast And because we've gone in low profile Incognito
• 1:39:50
  baseball cap, baseball cap, baseball caps.
• 1:39:54
  Sorry, we worked at baseball caps.
• 1:39:56
  Big, heavy sunglasses. You've never been low.
• 1:40:00
  Like low profile, I've even said before, we're not going in
• 1:40:04
  here's grab an Angus podcast coming.
• 1:40:07
  I haven't done it in Angus. Yeah, so you didn't do it in
• 1:40:09
  German accent? We just we went in quietly and
• 1:40:12
  we were having a couple of it was the second highball and he's
• 1:40:15
  mentioned, in fact, it was Vicky Elliott.
• 1:40:17
  Vicky Wicky Elliott mentioned Vicky Wicky Elliott and he's
• 1:40:20
  you've been on yours. Did the podcast with that.
• 1:40:22
  We got really excited about it. And then what was his name?
• 1:40:25
  I've got his number. I need to find the laddie that
• 1:40:27
  sat down. Oh, is that Ross Blair's whiskey
• 1:40:30
  podcast? That's rubbish.
• 1:40:32
  Well, listen, let me tell you, we.
• 1:40:33
  Made it came to our. Ross Bar was Ross Bar was just a
• 1:40:37
  barman before he came on podcast.
• 1:40:39
  Now he's running the Gap. But he was.
• 1:40:41
  Our Thompson brothers. Lovely guy so apologies for
• 1:40:45
  alcohol. You get he's that's that's
• 1:40:47
  terrible. He treated some lovely drafted
• 1:40:49
  Inverness fan as well so he but. But apart from that, he's all
• 1:40:52
  right. But but it was it was, it was.
• 1:40:55
  It was great. But to sit outside in the sun.
• 1:40:58
  Yeah. And drink Japanese whiskey and
• 1:40:59
  highball. Yeah.
• 1:41:00
  I remember the highballs that the Thompson brothers made us
• 1:41:02
  when we went. Oh yeah, Phil.
• 1:41:03
  Simon, they do that little dried slice of orange on.
• 1:41:06
  It well they had there was a buried one.
• 1:41:07
  It was like a mixed buried. That was incredible.
• 1:41:09
  Yeah, there's. A couple of different ones I
• 1:41:11
  can't remember. Well, up at Dorner Castle, the
• 1:41:14
  Japanese whiskey that I've got there, it's fantastic, right?
• 1:41:16
  Great DRAM #3 Then I'm looking forward to this DRAM. #3 is
• 1:41:20
  probably Stratheiler 18 all right because I when I was on my
• 1:41:26
  Shivers Brothers stint after I came back from Hong Kong, I had
• 1:41:29
  the biggest cultural shock of my life.
• 1:41:31
  I left my amazing flat in Hong Kong with a balcony with a sea
• 1:41:35
  of U and I came back and I lived with my parents in space side
• 1:41:38
  and I worked at Strath Isla for a year.
• 1:41:39
  Did you were there? Did.
• 1:41:41
  You is that where they keep the Perno is Strath Isla Distillery
• 1:41:45
  not where they have the headquarters of or not that
• 1:41:47
  headquartered by where they have all of their?
• 1:41:50
  History home of shivers. So it's like yeah, it's
• 1:41:53
  considered the home of shivers, but Strath Isla single malt is
• 1:41:56
  separate to the shins blend blend, but they also keep it's
• 1:41:59
  kind of like the brand home for royal salute as well.
• 1:42:02
  So they've got a lot of, they've got like the their vault of
• 1:42:07
  casks there. Well, but but like is a
• 1:42:10
  historian, not insight for. Yeah, the archive is.
• 1:42:12
  There archive. That's yeah, the full archive,
• 1:42:14
  yeah, because that's a meaning to like from a from a personal
• 1:42:18
  point of view is like Valentine's was owned by Aaron
• 1:42:21
  Walker when when my grandfather had them all times.
• 1:42:24
  So it's that they will have they've contacted people.
• 1:42:28
  Sandy Hyslop in fact, who said the best person to speak the
• 1:42:31
  best people to speak to is the people up at Strath Island
• 1:42:33
  because they. And it was I think it was what
• 1:42:34
  was it? Yeah, that's the person.
• 1:42:36
  I'm not actually. Well, let me yeah, yeah, let me
• 1:42:38
  think you up. You have that right.
• 1:42:39
  You're getting one on brand if you were to pick.
• 1:42:41
  Well, yeah, I'm going to do it for you because I want you.
• 1:42:43
  I want you in fact. Shall we just go Pultene?
• 1:42:45
  Shall we go Pulteney, or shall we go the full?
• 1:42:48
  Full Booner, the No give her the full.
• 1:42:50
  National International. Honestly.
• 1:42:53
  Honestly it would be old portly 15.
• 1:42:56
  Crack and drop, yeah. I don't, I mean, I wouldn't.
• 1:42:58
  I wouldn't argue against it. To be honest, I don't think I've
• 1:43:02
  ever had the 15. It just showcases everything
• 1:43:04
  that we do well. And what does that retail for?
• 1:43:07
  I mean to annoy you again. Around 80 lbs. 80 lbs Yeah.
• 1:43:11
  That's it's, it's, it's good. And I mean that you so in terms
• 1:43:15
  of so people can walk into any pretty much supermarket or, or
• 1:43:18
  shop around the UK and in Scotland in particular and be
• 1:43:20
  able to pick up the 12. Well, if they wanted to pick up
• 1:43:23
  the old Portney 15 where they look at what they can.
• 1:43:25
  Go online, you can go to the whiskey exchange, you can go to
• 1:43:27
  multiple. So there's plenty of.
• 1:43:28
  Specialist stores. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:43:30
  Well worth it, well worth it. Absolutely fantastic.
• 1:43:33
  Thank you for having me. Guys, that was absolutely
• 1:43:35
  brilliant. All the very best.
• 1:43:36
  Thank you to everybody for taking part and listening.
• 1:43:38
  Thanks to everyone for all their interactions.
• 1:43:40
  Big shout out to to all our listeners.
• 1:43:43
  And we've got the Tampa Bay Whiskey Club are coming back
• 1:43:46
  over. Oh, really?
• 1:43:47
  Yeah. So stay tuned for that.
• 1:43:48
  There's lots and lots going. Like I say, keep your eyes
• 1:43:50
  peeled for what's going to be happening with Arden Merkin.
• 1:43:52
  Anyway, guys, we've done it again.
• 1:43:53
  Absolutely fantastic. Thank you for that.
• 1:43:55
  Flow all over. The best.
• 1:43:56
  All done. All right.
• 1:44:01
  Along I do actually.