Latest / Whisky Stories Podcast / Drag me to the Scotch Malt Whisky Society with Andrew Murphy

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Drag me to the Scotch Malt Whisky Society with Andrew Murphy · Whisky Stories Podcast

• 0:00
  Right I guess you know what to do welcome to the whiskey
• 0:06
  stories podcast. Gay man and whiskey you know
• 0:12
  what can I say a really big one for me was for pride month last
• 0:15
  year I managed to convince. And the higher ups here within
• 0:20
  the venue and the society to let me do what we coined the drag me
• 0:25
  to the whiskey tasting and that was a stupendous fabulous
• 0:32
  flamboyantly fantastic evening. Welcome along to the whiskey
• 0:36
  stories podcast myself Graham kogar and we are back Angus.
• 0:40
  But we're not in diggers we're not underneath diggers.
• 0:42
  No we're not we're back out on our our on our.
• 0:44
  Our our journey our venture around different areas aye we're
• 0:48
  in the library. But we're not surrounded by
• 0:49
  books Graham we're surrounded by by drums balls of whiskey.
• 0:54
  We've made in Scotch malt whiskey society the SMS loads
• 0:58
  and loads of people. Well I've heard us talking about
• 1:00
  this SMWS the Scotch malt whiskey Society of course we are
• 1:04
  as we're recording this this will be going out in the second
• 1:07
  week in January I think if our recording schedules kept up to
• 1:10
  date but there'll be loads of people who have woken up on
• 1:14
  Christmas morning ran excitedly down the stairs to unpack their
• 1:19
  presents and see what Santa brought them in they'll have
• 1:21
  realised to have a nice green bottle.
• 1:24
  With wrapped up with a membership for another year at
• 1:27
  the SMWS absolutely it's it's now we'll talk about it when we
• 1:32
  speak to our guests here Mister Andrew Murphy but SMWS Scotch
• 1:36
  malt whiskey society memberships just must just get given about
• 1:40
  at Christmas and but I mean it's been a long time coming here as
• 1:44
  I'd say we've had. Couple of former employees on
• 1:47
  I'm thinking Jan Damon. Well we have a former employee
• 1:49
  that usually hosts the show with.
• 1:51
  Us well we do but we do in Ross Barr but I mean Ross Barr 's
• 1:54
  worked for everyone. Anyone watching on the on the
• 1:57
  YouTube channel he's underneath the table yeah he's he's not
• 2:00
  here this evening so we're all going to be able to get a word
• 2:03
  in and jolly. Topher as well mark Davidson who
• 2:06
  just just. Started working here because he
• 2:08
  decided he wanted to work here I think rather than a formal
• 2:11
  contract of employment. No exactly I think no if I
• 2:14
  remember correctly he he at the time he stayed did he stay
• 2:17
  across the road from the the venue down in Lee he did yeah I
• 2:21
  think he enjoyed going in so many so much yeah I think it was
• 2:24
  the. I think it was a story that they
• 2:25
  went on a Christmas party and they needed someone to cover the
• 2:27
  but that's exactly the word back where the bar when they were the
• 2:30
  the actual employees were away and yeah I sat foot in the door.
• 2:34
  Well we are at the Queen Street venue and we are enjoyed as you
• 2:37
  may. By our guest this evening Andrew
• 2:39
  Murphy Andrew how are you I'm. Good thank you thank you for
• 2:42
  having me. Now you're very welcome thanks
• 2:43
  for having us I mean this this circular room for people if
• 2:47
  you're wondering why it sounds different or where we're
• 2:50
  recording tonight get yourself on the YouTube channel and check
• 2:53
  it out because as as Angus has said the library we've been
• 2:56
  treated to a drum down the stairs you've been upstairs at
• 2:59
  the members bar we didn't have our lapel badges on Angus no
• 3:02
  they'll let us in no. Absolutely a couple of a couple
• 3:05
  of couple of dodgy looks. You know.
• 3:07
  I've got my whiskey stories T-shirt on so everyone is like
• 3:10
  well no we should. Actually mention the bar
• 3:12
  downstairs is open to the public yeah so you don't have to be a
• 3:16
  member to come along here and enjoy a DRAM.
• 3:18
  But yeah but we're in the library we've got our own little
• 3:20
  private room lovely setup loads of bottles on the table we've
• 3:23
  got drams in front of us I would normally ask you I guess what
• 3:26
  are we dramming. But the the great thing about
• 3:29
  the Scotch malt whiskey society is often with the way the
• 3:32
  bottles are in the labels it's very difficult to actually know
• 3:35
  what your drama. It is yeah so sure we'll talk
• 3:37
  about the flavours most important but do you remember
• 3:40
  what bottles we did have no but I do remember I do remember the
• 3:45
  first drama I had downstairs was a linquid right because I looked
• 3:49
  it up. But did you but it was but I.
• 3:52
  Didn't order it knowing that I I ordered it.
• 3:55
  I thought I'll I'll go for what I'll go for what I'm feeling
• 3:58
  like and then I'll look it up because I do like to know but I
• 4:01
  thought I'll I'll do the right thing here I'll just go for what
• 4:05
  I want I ordered it and then I can't remember the name of it it
• 4:08
  was something tasty it says. That's always a good.
• 4:14
  I'd like to say having tasty and the name was what swayed me
• 4:18
  towards that but no no genuinely I just wanted something bourbon
• 4:21
  and yeah look really nice. Well that's it was very nice
• 4:24
  indeed but Andrew been able to help us I think I still have.
• 4:28
  I think I have a DRAM that you gave me when we walked in I
• 4:29
  didn't ask what it was Oh yes I've still got that to have I
• 4:33
  think have you still got that as well.
• 4:34
  I've got that here yes. So I'm I'm hoping that you know
• 4:37
  what we're drinking Andrew because we've done a great job
• 4:39
  of not knowing what we're drinking but wait what what was
• 4:43
  the first DRAM that you gave us. So first DRAM that we've got for
• 4:46
  the evening is this we bad boy here this is the spruce on the
• 4:49
  loose it is one of our heresy ranges it is a combination of
• 4:53
  first fill and and second fill hex bourbon barrels and.
• 4:58
  Spruce tip stout casks so this was a partnership with the
• 5:03
  wasted degrees brewery that actually started when I first
• 5:07
  started in the company so wasted degrees brewery fantastic run by
• 5:13
  2 brothers and Jack used used to work for the SMWS Scotsman
• 5:19
  whiskey say abbreviated to SMWS you'll hear me mention that a
• 5:23
  lot out of your habit and. Back when I first started in the
• 5:28
  society I originally worked on the vaults before I moved up
• 5:31
  here to Queen Street and we had quarter casks on the bars that
• 5:35
  we would fill with spirit and then allow them to mature and
• 5:39
  take on the different profiles of whichever casks we brought in
• 5:42
  and a couple of the casks we sent off to Jack and the guys at
• 5:46
  wasted degrees and they filled them with their beers they did
• 5:49
  barrel aged a barrel aged stout which we then sold off and sold
• 5:53
  in the venues it was stupendous. And that's coming from someone
• 5:59
  that drinks more whiskey than beer so but it was phenomenal
• 6:03
  and then we got those casks back and then we popped them into
• 6:09
  this bed boy and it is part of our heresy ranges it is a small
• 6:13
  battery leases with more of a focus on the experimental aspect
• 6:17
  of whiskey as the society is all about focusing on the flavour of
• 6:22
  the drams and. Rather than the actual
• 6:25
  distilleries themselves that we want to focus on making sure
• 6:28
  that people get the best flavour out of each and every glass.
• 6:32
  Yeah can I I mean because the interesting thing about this
• 6:34
  bottle yeah first of all is that.
• 6:38
  You can see here that the bottles are completely different
• 6:40
  fabulous everyone is familiar with the Scottish what whiskey
• 6:42
  now we are going to probably start abbreviating that the
• 6:46
  society as as the podcast goes on but normally it's expected
• 6:50
  dark green bottles. That's right so this.
• 6:52
  Is clear clear bottle and also the label on the front you
• 6:55
  actually have a lot more artwork on there than you would normally
• 6:57
  have? And the the dark green bottles
• 6:59
  you have your lovely logo and gold and then you have a sort of
• 7:03
  black background black or dark and grey and gold whatever it is
• 7:06
  but just with the information on there on this one there's a
• 7:09
  little bit of artwork on that so what's the reasoning behind the
• 7:12
  artwork and the change of the bottle so for this one versus
• 7:14
  the other ranges. Differentiate the heavy sea
• 7:17
  ranges from our standard releases so all of these
• 7:20
  standard bottlings from the SNWS will come with the classic white
• 7:24
  label that's for any of our single malts.
• 7:28
  And then anything that from now anything that's 18 years or over
• 7:33
  will be a black label that's seen as our premium range of
• 7:36
  bottlings however originally it's used to be down to price so
• 7:41
  you will occasionally see some bottles on the bars that will be
• 7:43
  sort of 5 years old and have a black label and you'll go what
• 7:46
  the hell what's that about and that's for some of our more
• 7:49
  expensive bottlings that we get in from the stories such as Paul
• 7:52
  John over in India obviously discussed briefly as we were
• 7:54
  setting up and that's down that was down to the price.
• 7:58
  Now it's down to age. So is that part of the IMWS
• 8:01
  instead of SM. Because I think yeah I mean
• 8:05
  maybe that leads us into maybe a first discussion point is you
• 8:08
  are the Scotch milk whiskey society but you do bottle a lot
• 8:12
  of wild whiskey or you know I mean yeah I don't know if whilst
• 8:16
  whiskey you could count as wild whiskey it's only down the road
• 8:19
  isn't. It.
• 8:23
  But you know you know and some very I mean.
• 8:27
  Again I feel like I'm saying you know something before I should
• 8:30
  actually but when we talk about S and WS very well known for
• 8:33
  your codes so every there is a number on every bottle that
• 8:38
  corresponds to distillery but some we'll talk about that maybe
• 8:41
  a bit later but even. Some of your early codes are not
• 8:46
  Scotch with Scottish distilleries so and and and that
• 8:51
  must make me think that even since kind of early days as some
• 8:55
  of us you've been bottling things that aren't technically
• 8:57
  Scotch. So.
• 9:00
  Background to the society founded back in 1983 down in the
• 9:03
  vaults in Leith to one of our venues and members rooms now and
• 9:08
  it was the original inaugural home of the society it's where a
• 9:11
  man named pills or Phillip pills and a group of his friends got
• 9:15
  together and decided you know what we're going to do this
• 9:17
  thing we're going to bring this to the world so story goes that
• 9:23
  the. It knew a guy that knew a guy
• 9:26
  that knew a guy that was able to roll a cask out of the warehouse
• 9:30
  from a certain distillery first distillery we have a ball from
• 9:34
  throwing some cash and go Yep good done sweep and then the
• 9:38
  story goes he had it hanging out the back of his car tied down
• 9:42
  out of his boot with a piece of string all the way back to leaf
• 9:45
  back to the vault got the cask out of the car cracked it open
• 9:49
  took a sample to reward himself for a long drive home and.
• 9:53
  And there went that's good gave it to his friends and they went
• 9:56
  yeah that's great and then the idea started to form to what is
• 10:01
  now the society. And and this was interesting
• 10:03
  sorry. Was that 1983?
• 10:05
  Or 1983. So this is 19. 83 so 40th
• 10:08
  anniversary. So single cast single cast cast
• 10:13
  strength malt West single malt whiskey was not the you know the
• 10:17
  dirigor drink at the time people.
• 10:19
  Were? Distilleries were scared by the
• 10:25
  concept because as you mentioned there the idea of cast strength
• 10:29
  single cast single malt whiskeys was really unheard of outside of
• 10:33
  distillery doors you know stillman they'd have their
• 10:36
  samples here and there but everything else was put into
• 10:40
  blends primarily. But then the pip got together
• 10:47
  and they started bottling single cast cast trends single model.
• 10:49
  And this is what was quite interesting because I mean when
• 10:51
  I was reading about you know I was having a little look before
• 10:54
  you know doing a bit of research would you believe it.
• 10:57
  I know you did a lot. But you know it seems very much
• 11:00
  the case that you know your your your founder was on the case of
• 11:03
  these distilleries well why don't you release this single
• 11:05
  cast yeah. Cast strength malt whiskey and
• 11:08
  it was well known who's going to buy it and it was a case of well
• 11:11
  I'll kind of show you you know a little bit of well you know what
• 11:15
  I know there's an audience for this it might be a niche
• 11:18
  audience it might not be an audience that the big
• 11:20
  distilleries are prepared to cater for but actually what's
• 11:23
  happened is by forming the society by growing the society
• 11:28
  you know nowadays you'll you'll you'll see single cast cast
• 11:32
  strength bottles from all the big distilleries yeah so.
• 11:37
  Many other indie bottlers independent bottlers that have
• 11:41
  sprung up over the years even in more modern times just here in
• 11:44
  Edinburgh alone I know you guys have spoken to a few of them
• 11:48
  yourself some great people producing some fantastic liquids
• 11:53
  but with ourselves when we were when we first started out
• 11:56
  distilleries were really saying to us.
• 11:59
  Yeah you can have our casks we'll sell them to you but we
• 12:02
  don't want to be associated with you we don't want our names on
• 12:05
  our bottles anything in this sort and that's where what we
• 12:08
  what's known as the cask number system came about so for
• 12:12
  instance I'll grab this bottle just here that I lifted up
• 12:14
  earlier it's 53.457. So that's for for the listeners
• 12:19
  so for people because going back we will just just briefly go
• 12:23
  back a step here is we had Jan Damon on the on the podcast who
• 12:28
  who's you know what one of the direct director level I think it
• 12:31
  was for the SMWS and it was quite funny because Jan and Ross
• 12:38
  Ross obviously haven't worked I think it was here he actually
• 12:41
  worked yeah I think it was yeah briefly but that's when they had
• 12:45
  to bring in the ladders but basically.
• 12:48
  But Ross Ross Ross was said about that the the numbers and
• 12:51
  the coding system and he was talk about this the worst kept
• 12:54
  secret and whiskey and stuff and I had to actually say hang on a
• 12:56
  minute guys what are you talking about yeah because I didn't
• 12:59
  actually know now well actually even more embarrassing I think I
• 13:02
  asked the question Deanna said well.
• 13:05
  Do you know which distillery it comes from was like well yes we
• 13:07
  do it's on the label you know it's on the label so that you'd
• 13:10
  given me a bottle of SMWS whiskey I don't you know you had
• 13:13
  a bottle and I drunk it kind of looking around the bottle to try
• 13:17
  and work out if there was a clue I think?
• 13:20
  It was an island I think it. Actually was actually it was a
• 13:23
  Pete it was a Pete because I did look it up later on it was a
• 13:26
  pitted. Soon having yeah which is which
• 13:30
  is fantastic I think it's called shiver my Timbers.
• 13:32
  I know the ball. He knows the ball.
• 13:34
  Delicious yeah. So but this is The thing is and
• 13:38
  if I'm being honest with my limited but limited knowledge of
• 13:41
  it so basically for people who are listening and people who
• 13:44
  maybe have come across these green but iconic green bottles
• 13:47
  now you know there is a society. And now where is it where where
• 13:51
  am I looking here is it the society cast so society cast
• 13:54
  number 53.457 now for anyone who's looking at that you might
• 13:58
  just think that's information about cask or whatever it is but
• 14:01
  actually there is a code and that code will determine what
• 14:06
  distillery that comes from so go back to where 53.457 is.
• 14:10
  Society codes. They're like our own secret
• 14:13
  little language to signify what distillery is and a lot of the
• 14:17
  teams within the venues can kind of look at the bars at a glance
• 14:20
  and go OK I know that's from that distillery that's from that
• 14:23
  distillery that's from that distillery and this instance
• 14:25
  53.457 signifies it's the 53rd distillery we've ever taken
• 14:30
  whiskey from 457th cask we have ever balled from that distillery
• 14:35
  in the 41 years that the society has been running wow that's a
• 14:38
  hell of a lot of booze. Yeah yeah.
• 14:41
  But. That's a good thing because this
• 14:43
  is actually from the kalila distillery on Isla right of
• 14:46
  course known as the workhorse of Diageo 6.5 1,000,000 tonnes of
• 14:50
  Ross Perot every year it's a hell of a lot of booze.
• 14:54
  And the thing about these labels as well which everyone is drawn
• 14:57
  to is which again from my point of view and what I mentioned
• 15:00
  earlier on is on the label what you what you see is first of all
• 15:03
  you can see the 9 year old there so it's a 9 year old whiskey
• 15:05
  you've got the distilled date region.
• 15:08
  Initial cast it was in an ex bourbon hogs head and the final
• 15:10
  cast first of all the Russell hogs head but the names on it
• 15:14
  are the sort of way of defining what the flavour profile are so
• 15:18
  we've got cold shards on clotted cream so there you go and then
• 15:21
  there's a sort of a sort of a writing of a basically so that's
• 15:24
  what's really really interesting for me and that's what's
• 15:27
  completely even since we started doing this podcast it's
• 15:29
  completely open mind up to the fact that it actually put me off
• 15:32
  when I when I first started drinking whiskies I became a
• 15:35
  member. And I found that there I was
• 15:39
  where I was in my whiskey journey it was stick to what you
• 15:42
  like stick to what you know OK so I knew I liked that brand
• 15:46
  that brand and that brand independent bottlers full stop
• 15:49
  were a completely new thing in fact it wasn't until we really
• 15:52
  went to the first ever our first Edinburgh whiskey festival which
• 15:54
  was last year where indie bottler will really kind of open
• 15:57
  me up opened up to that but I will say this is up until within
• 16:01
  the last 3 or 4 months. The SMWS the swiskey society has
• 16:04
  been something that I've stayed very clear of because I didn't
• 16:07
  know that you could actually look at that Fast forward to now
• 16:12
  we walked into the bar and we were said we'll get another few
• 16:14
  drums and I was able to just say between Angus and we said like
• 16:19
  some of your share impeded. And something bourbon and sweet
• 16:22
  yeah and what's great is your staff and yourself were able to
• 16:25
  go OK give them give them that ball there that ball there and
• 16:28
  that ball yeah now we didn't ask what the distilleries were but
• 16:31
  we will. This one is one of the ones that
• 16:33
  we've got. So there's I'll call you a yeah
• 16:36
  call you a 9 year old and and so it's been finished or it's final
• 16:39
  cash which is. Matured as we call it.
• 16:41
  Extra mature I think there's a great benefit to that because I
• 16:44
  mean the other you know. The other place we're recording
• 16:46
  the the athletic arms they got a huge selection of whiskey but
• 16:51
  but sometimes you're kind of browsing and you go I'm not not
• 16:55
  maybe not that distillery maybe not that distillery but having
• 16:57
  the flavour and the colour coding is probably something we
• 17:01
  should mention as well so the colour coding how many different
• 17:04
  colour codes so. The colour coding you'll see
• 17:07
  around the rims of the bottles and also on the pages of the out
• 17:11
  turns when you come to venues. Those are relevant towards our
• 17:16
  flavour profiles. Yeah so this breaks down from
• 17:19
  others right. They're really there as a guide
• 17:21
  they're not there to tell you this is what you must taste from
• 17:24
  this bottle they're there to tell you this is roughly what
• 17:27
  you should get from it this is roughly the line that it's on
• 17:31
  yeah but The thing is there's times where you'll have a bottle
• 17:34
  and you'll go. You know what this was deep rich
• 17:37
  and dried fruits profiled and you can taste the Sherry but
• 17:39
  actually you feel it's a lot drier so you might then think to
• 17:42
  yourself OK I would maybe put it in spicy and sweet or spicy and
• 17:46
  dry or any of the other numerous profiles we had as I said we've
• 17:49
  got 12. There so I think this one is
• 17:51
  lightly. Beaten this one 's just standard
• 17:54
  peat standard beated and then deeper green is heavily beaten
• 17:58
  and light sort of pale green is lightly beaten.
• 18:00
  So there's what 1212 did you say. 12 of it yeah.
• 18:04
  So I mean I have to. Ross bar our colleague
• 18:08
  occasionally associate associate partner in crime he said is it
• 18:14
  true that you occasionally put really really good drums in a
• 18:19
  flavour profile that maybe isn't quite so popular this was a
• 18:23
  rumour. I'm going to choose to neither
• 18:25
  confirm nor deny this statement because it wasn't.
• 18:30
  Anything to do with me. I I have.
• 18:32
  No say in what gets bottled and what doesn't I am you're really
• 18:37
  good to run the menus and make sure people get served and we'll
• 18:42
  get what I'll come and drunk. But I I no let's let's talk
• 18:47
  about you yourself there Andrew because I mean there's there's
• 18:51
  loads my mind 's racing already I'm already trying like.
• 18:53
  If we know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who could roll a
• 18:55
  casket oh I think we're nearly there I think we're nearly what
• 19:00
  well well what we do? I mean once we get your child
• 19:04
  seat out of the car that's right for a cask isn't it?
• 19:06
  What we do is we do we have we we don't even know a guy who
• 19:09
  knows a guy who grows a guy we had a guy on the podcast he's
• 19:13
  now moved over to the Cayman Islands big shout out to Charlie
• 19:16
  Charlie managed to bring us a bottle off a back of a lorry
• 19:18
  that was that was what it was what 3 drabs we're nearly there
• 19:22
  but Andrew? Talk about yourself then like
• 19:25
  what was your journey like to get into whiskey what what got
• 19:29
  you started what was it that can you remember trying a whiskey or
• 19:32
  was it ever did you grow up wanting to get into the whiskey
• 19:35
  industry or did it just fall in your lap.
• 19:37
  I had a bit of A to me it's just my journey is my journey I got
• 19:42
  here and that's what matters but.
• 19:45
  I remember you know my dad giving me a drama when I was
• 19:47
  younger and me going oh God that was strong no not for me right
• 19:51
  now and then I went off went to college studied fashion design I
• 19:56
  know stereotypical gay but did that and then decided you know
• 20:02
  what not for me started working in bars.
• 20:06
  And because I was working in bars, I went, OK, this is my
• 20:09
  back bar, what I forgot on it, OK, bits of gin, vodka, rum, et
• 20:13
  cetera. And I wanted to learn more about
• 20:15
  what I was doing, what I was selling.
• 20:17
  But the big one that intrigued me was always whiskey because of
• 20:20
  how varied it can be and how every bottle is different.
• 20:23
  And over on, there's so many different gins that are
• 20:26
  different vodkas, tequilas, but the one that always struck me as
• 20:31
  like, I want to learn more about this is whiskey.
• 20:33
  So I ended up working in the Almanac Whiskey bar.
• 20:36
  Oh yeah. On the Royal Mile, top of Coburn
• 20:38
  Street, right in the corner. Fantastic bar.
• 20:40
  I'd recommend going in. But I remember my first day, I
• 20:42
  walked onto the bar and there was at the time about 350 malts
• 20:46
  on the bar. And it was like full back bar,
• 20:49
  full wrap around. And I just sort of stood there
• 20:51
  and I looked at it and went and I was just, I was so overwhelmed
• 20:55
  by all that was there. And I was just like, I'm never
• 20:57
  going to get this. I'm never going to know it.
• 20:59
  And then Fast forward, you know, a year or so and I knew exactly
• 21:03
  where every bottle was on that bar.
• 21:05
  I knew a wee bit about the majority of the distilleries.
• 21:09
  Thank thankfully through fantastic colleagues I had, I
• 21:13
  would with this amazing woman called Julia, who was a wealth,
• 21:16
  a fountain of knowledge. And she just teach everything
• 21:18
  and give you all the little nibbets, Nuggets of information.
• 21:23
  And then from there, I'd sort of run my time there and I went,
• 21:27
  you know what, I want to move on to something else, but I want to
• 21:28
  stay in whiskey. By that point, I developed a
• 21:31
  passion for it and I love for it as a spirit.
• 21:33
  And I want to know more. I want to do more.
• 21:35
  And that's when the manager at Vaults approached me because I
• 21:40
  was a member before becoming staff.
• 21:43
  And he approached me and he said, do you want to come work
• 21:45
  here? And I went, yes.
• 21:48
  So started down at Vaults, worked there for about a year
• 21:50
  and a half. And then the team here at Queen
• 21:52
  St. approached me and said, yeah, do you want to come work
• 21:55
  for us and do these things and more for us?
• 21:58
  I was like, absolutely, I would love that.
• 22:00
  And yeah, and now I'm here, I've had the chance to run some
• 22:03
  fantastic tastings. A really big one of note for me
• 22:07
  on a personal journey is, as I mentioned, very gay gay man, gay
• 22:12
  gay man in whiskey. You know, what can I say?
• 22:14
  I. Know.
• 22:17
  I know, but a really big one for me was for Pride month last
• 22:22
  year. I managed to convince the higher
• 22:26
  ups here within the venue and the society to let me do what we
• 22:31
  coined the drag me to the whiskey tastings.
• 22:34
  And that was a stupendous, fabulous, flamboyantly fantastic
• 22:42
  evening of five DRAM whiskey tasting, which I ran alongside a
• 22:46
  drag show. Oh wow, within the venue.
• 22:50
  And it was it was phenomenal. It was an amazing night.
• 22:53
  The energy was high, Everyone loved it.
• 22:55
  We're planning on doing a few more next year.
• 22:57
  And it was just so much fun to bring both my passion for
• 23:02
  whiskey and also to bring the like, LGBTQ community into this
• 23:08
  space and to show people that, yes, we are the Scottish Small
• 23:13
  Whiskey Society. Yes, we are a primarily members
• 23:16
  only whiskey club, but we are here for everyone.
• 23:21
  We welcome everyone regardless of your, you know, race, gender,
• 23:26
  sexual orientation, anything. You are always welcome here
• 23:30
  within the society, within our venues and within our
• 23:33
  international partner bars. That's was just such a great
• 23:36
  evening and I would highly, highly recommend that.
• 23:39
  Drag us along next time. I've got a couple of questions
• 23:43
  on the back of the free. First of all, good.
• 23:45
  Tell me about Angus's. Get up and tell me what you
• 23:47
  think. It's someone who's someone who's
• 23:49
  studied fashion design. First of all, can you give us a
• 23:53
  market? Oh.
• 23:55
  Please. Don't I think if I gave my
• 23:57
  opinion, you'd ask me to leave the room?
• 24:02
  We'll take that. Secondly, what's really
• 24:04
  interesting about, you know, we, we, we've had no worries.
• 24:08
  I don't care. I'm just there anyway.
• 24:12
  How? But you talk about the, the vast
• 24:15
  flavour profile and it ties back in with how the the societies
• 24:18
  run with regards to flavour first.
• 24:20
  Yeah. And you're mentioning about how
• 24:23
  you're not the first person. You won't be the last person
• 24:25
  that we've had on this podcast. That's a going through a journey
• 24:28
  of working through, you know, the bar bar scene and working in
• 24:32
  the trade and then just being obsessed with what you can do
• 24:35
  with flavour when it comes to whiskey.
• 24:37
  And one of the guys, I forget his name now by he, he, he, he
• 24:41
  was telling me years ago and I liked the drama at that point.
• 24:44
  So it wasn't like, and he was sort of saying, Oh, you know,
• 24:46
  it's quite nice seeing a young, young man sort of getting into
• 24:49
  whiskey and what have you is it's got this perception of
• 24:51
  being an old man's drink, etcetera, etcetera.
• 24:53
  This is an old man telling me this.
• 24:54
  But one of the things is he, he sort of has converted a lot of
• 24:57
  people to whiskey and he didn't do whiskey taste.
• 24:59
  He didn't work in whiskey, but he was just so a guy that knew
• 25:02
  about whiskey and would happily try and introduce somebody to
• 25:05
  it. And what he used to say is if
• 25:06
  you tell me somebody, someone says to him, sorry that I don't
• 25:10
  like whiskey. He would then say, well, do you
• 25:12
  like ice cream? And if they were going well, I
• 25:15
  obviously like ice cream. It says, well, just like ice
• 25:17
  cream, whiskey has a flavour for absolutely everybody.
• 25:20
  You know, if there will be a whiskey that somebody could go
• 25:23
  to and say. Mint choc chip.
• 25:25
  Yeah, Mint choc chip. You'd give me a mint choc chip.
• 25:27
  Oh, I don't like it at all. No.
• 25:29
  Right. But you know, and there'll be
• 25:31
  people. Rum and Raisin, can't stand it.
• 25:33
  No, there are whiskeys out there that will be like, there will be
• 25:36
  whiskeys out there that I'm exactly like that with.
• 25:39
  But there are also plenty of whiskeys that I'll go actually,
• 25:41
  you know what, quite enjoy this. Or quite like that.
• 25:43
  And then obviously then sometimes you'll be in a mood
• 25:46
  actually, you know what? I'll just have a vanilla with a
• 25:48
  99 and you know, there's a drama out there that could be just
• 25:51
  that's your go to drama. Yeah.
• 25:52
  And I think that's what's really, really interesting about
• 25:55
  when you get people that are very interested in whiskey
• 25:58
  because it's flavour, but then you also get people that are
• 26:01
  just dead against whiskey because it's the flavour they
• 26:04
  have in their mind is what it is.
• 26:06
  And that's what I think. It's the two way attack of going
• 26:10
  into whiskey. There's obviously plenty of
• 26:12
  different ways you can do it is I was drawn into whiskey through
• 26:17
  the heritage of stories. I love the idea.
• 26:20
  That's why brands were drawn to me, because I'd hear about a
• 26:23
  brand or I'd read about a brand. The Glenfiddich brand was the
• 26:26
  sort of, I went to a Glenfiddich taste and I was very, very like
• 26:29
  18 years old sort of thing. And you get the story and you
• 26:32
  believe in the story, you fall for the story and you become
• 26:35
  obsessed with the Glenfiddich brand.
• 26:37
  And you know, you end up like Big Cameron and you but.
• 26:41
  I want, I want a ball like that. But then but but then and that's
• 26:46
  the way it works. But then you get other people
• 26:48
  with approach whiskey from a completely different way Where?
• 26:50
  And that's what's fascinating. We've seen it.
• 26:53
  How many women, yeah, have been on the podcast, females on the
• 26:55
  podcast who have all gone. I mean, I've not done it yet,
• 26:59
  but they're what, few drams. There's I off the top of my
• 27:02
  head, I'd have to look back, but off the top of my head more
• 27:05
  women have put Smokey pitted whiskey in the watery drams and
• 27:07
  men. And that tells you something
• 27:09
  that and I think it was Tom and Monique were talking about it
• 27:12
  and they both worked at the whiskey shop.
• 27:15
  And at the time Tom and Monique were together or the still are
• 27:18
  together hopefully, but but we were, they were they were going
• 27:21
  out with each other. They both worked together and
• 27:24
  Tom would get all these tourists.
• 27:26
  A lot of the men would come in and say I need a whiskey to take
• 27:30
  home, but I'd better take something home for the wife.
• 27:32
  What's a good whiskey to take for a woman?
• 27:34
  What's a good whiskey for a woman?
• 27:36
  And The thing is Monique's flavour profile, she loved
• 27:39
  peated whiskey. So he would be going, well,
• 27:42
  that's my girlfriend over there and she loves peated whiskey.
• 27:45
  So there's a good chance that your your wife might, but at the
• 27:47
  same time you take peat. You don't know.
• 27:49
  You just don't know and that's it.
• 27:50
  So when it came to working down at the Vaults, then this is a
• 27:55
  we've, we've heard a lot of people talk about the vaults and
• 27:57
  we've mentioned it earlier on. You know, the vaults is where it
• 27:59
  all began. And of course, the, you know,
• 28:02
  the, the idea of the vaults down in Leith keeping their, I'm
• 28:06
  assuming that the casks aren't all kept in the vaults anymore,
• 28:09
  but that will have been the original place.
• 28:11
  I'm assuming that the casks were sort of kept the vaults of the
• 28:14
  bottles that were kept down there.
• 28:15
  So the Vaults gets its name because about what's it 2-3
• 28:20
  storeys underneath our members room.
• 28:22
  There is actually an original 1700s vault.
• 28:25
  There's four separate vaults. They're originally owned by wine
• 28:28
  merchants and are still owned by wine merchants today.
• 28:31
  We we do not own vaults and there's still 1 to this day from
• 28:36
  recollection that you that they don't have access to can't get
• 28:39
  into. It's also a protected site.
• 28:41
  It's one of two places in the world you can find and I the
• 28:44
  name escapes me. There's a certain fungus on the
• 28:47
  wall of the vaults down there you can only find in two places
• 28:49
  in the world and that's one of them from massively say Paul
• 28:53
  Shabang. But that's where he gets his
• 28:55
  name from. And to my knowledge, other than
• 28:57
  the early, early, early days, the casks themselves were never
• 29:01
  stored there and they were stored at warehouses that we
• 29:06
  leased out until recently. We're in under current
• 29:10
  leadership and we founded our own donnage warehouse over in
• 29:16
  Glasgow where we do a lot of our own bottlings and and we rack
• 29:22
  all of our very nice casks of all the delicious liquids.
• 29:26
  But it's still not everything. We have stuff scattered all over
• 29:31
  to my to my knowledge anyway, but I mean when you're.
• 29:34
  Looking when you look at it. Fair bit.
• 29:36
  The volume here, I mean, I'm looking at this and you're
• 29:38
  saying this was cast, this is cast #53.457 so that the 457.
• 29:45
  So that means in the in the 40 odd years, 41 years, 457 casks
• 29:50
  you have been bottled just from this.
• 29:51
  Now if you pick another bottle around, I pick this bottle
• 29:54
  around them here. That's actually a rum.
• 29:56
  I've picked I've picked a rum, but R89, there's only 9 bottles.
• 29:59
  But a point being, and we've talked about this and you
• 30:01
  mentioned independent bottlers. And one of the things that we
• 30:03
  talk about on the podcast quite a bit is indie bottlers versus
• 30:07
  independent bottlers, because you do have Gordon Macphails and
• 30:10
  your cabin heads and yourselves SMWS and you the volume that you
• 30:14
  guys must be so that the the amount of casks that must be
• 30:18
  owned from 1983, from 1 cask in the back of somebody's car being
• 30:23
  rolled out with distillery to to now to now.
• 30:25
  I mean, how many releases? How many releases are you do do
• 30:29
  the society put out every month? Is it?
• 30:31
  Is it monthly? Returns.
• 30:32
  So currently for, and I can only speak for the UK as we do, we
• 30:37
  are international all over the world and get into that a wee
• 30:41
  bit more in a wee bit, but currently for the UK it's
• 30:43
  between sort of 25 to 35 releases every single month.
• 30:48
  I think the 35 releases every single month, bottles and
• 30:50
  bottles now bearing in mind better spoil the bottles.
• 30:53
  So, so, but I mean, for example, you're talking here that this is
• 30:56
  a a Hogs Head. Now, Ross will be over the moon
• 31:00
  with me and patting on the back, but you're looking at, yeah,
• 31:02
  approximately 250 litres for a full Hogs Head.
• 31:05
  Yeah. Over 29 years.
• 31:06
  There'll be a little bit of Angel sharing a bit, a bit of
• 31:08
  loss there. Yeah.
• 31:09
  You're still talking about over 200 litres.
• 31:12
  Yeah. Of liquid.
• 31:13
  Yeah. Now how many bottles would that
• 31:15
  that equate to? So that would be 100 and 165
• 31:17
  bottles. So hundreds is like that.
• 31:19
  That's one. That's one. 11 of 20 or one.
• 31:22
  Of 25. Or over 12.
• 31:24
  Times 12 for a year so. The amount of tasks that you
• 31:27
  guys must have and be still trying to acquire and.
• 31:31
  Says we are. Again, I can't speak fully on
• 31:34
  it, but we are, to my knowledge, continually purchasing new casks
• 31:39
  to keep up with the supply and demand.
• 31:41
  We're actually now selling casks through the SMWS as well, so
• 31:45
  that's in celebration. It was released last year as
• 31:49
  part of our 40th anniversary celebrations ahead of our 50th
• 31:53
  anniversary celebrations. It's what we're calling our 50th
• 31:56
  Casks Club and that is where you can buy a cask of, of spirit
• 32:02
  from ourselves, not always new make, but it's in several
• 32:06
  different cast types from ourselves and then store it for
• 32:10
  the 10 years and then on the 50th anniversary or thereabouts,
• 32:14
  you will then get your cast back.
• 32:17
  It's a fantastic programme. And so we can done in bottles
• 32:21
  and then in the cask as well. So again, it's something
• 32:24
  definitely worth looking into. All the information is on our
• 32:26
  website, but it's really interesting to see the way in
• 32:29
  which the business has developed and grown over the years.
• 32:33
  As a lot of businesses, you don't need to to survive.
• 32:36
  Well, you call it business now, but was it started as a business
• 32:41
  because you, I mean, with there being a society and you have
• 32:44
  people, you know, as you said, a small group of guy people, you
• 32:49
  know who obviously we're at a time and we've had apologies for
• 32:54
  putting them into his bracket by like Paul Mann, one of our older
• 32:58
  guests that we've had on. Sorry, Paul.
• 32:59
  You can give me a shout out on the Facebook group for that
• 33:03
  later on when you hear this. But, but, but you look at being
• 33:07
  a whiskey geek now and being a lover of Scotch whiskey and you
• 33:10
  look at like people. I mean, how old are you, Andrew,
• 33:13
  2424? Yeah.
• 33:14
  So you're same age as Ross. You had a much harder paper
• 33:17
  round, if I'm being honest. You're not wrong.
• 33:20
  But but The thing is like, you know, for a 24 year old to get
• 33:25
  into whiskey and that's you've been in the industry for what, 3
• 33:27
  or 4 years now? Whiskey.
• 33:30
  Yeah. General bar and hospitality
• 33:32
  since always 16. Right.
• 33:34
  Yeah, so you look at it and you say, and for us now, yeah, I
• 33:37
  mean, there's a pod, we're a podcast, there's tech talk
• 33:40
  pages, there's YouTube channels, there's Facebook groups or all
• 33:43
  Paul Maine was talking about. And we had them Batiki Dave as
• 33:47
  well talking about. Well, we were whiskey geeks when
• 33:50
  you you literally had to go to whiskey events and whiskey shows
• 33:54
  and even look at whiskey shows now versus what would have been
• 33:56
  out there. And we've talked about the fact
• 33:58
  that like everyone got excited because Aaron was a new
• 34:01
  distillery and everyone was buzzing about Aaron.
• 34:04
  And that was like 1995. And you look now and you see
• 34:07
  that there's new distilleries popping up year after year after
• 34:09
  year. But you know, when you look back
• 34:11
  in 1983 and we've talked a little bit about, you know,
• 34:14
  Angus was saying whiskey wasn't singing, what whiskey wasn't
• 34:17
  what it was back then. You know, you look at that and
• 34:21
  you say, well, these people started it because they were a
• 34:23
  niche. They were a small collective
• 34:25
  group, A society. And obviously the romantic side
• 34:29
  of me would like to believe that it was set up as a collective
• 34:33
  group of people that go, this is a great wee thing that we're
• 34:35
  doing. But I'm pretty sure there will
• 34:37
  also be a point where it went, this isn't a business.
• 34:40
  And now it's like, you know, you're a public.
• 34:43
  Yeah, Public limited trading on the stock markets.
• 34:47
  Yeah, we are a business nowadays.
• 34:50
  There's no getting around that fact.
• 34:53
  We. Are.
• 34:54
  Risky. We're risky, yeah, but we're a
• 34:58
  fantastic business to do some amazing things for the wider
• 35:02
  industry. As I said, trying to
• 35:04
  consistently push boundaries and be progressive is and
• 35:09
  continually pioneer the flavour over everything else.
• 35:13
  And we bought from 160 different single malt distilleries
• 35:17
  nowadays globally. But yeah, there was, I do
• 35:21
  believe when Pip first founded the society probably was an
• 35:26
  aspect of the romantic side of it.
• 35:29
  And then it will have gotten to a point, I don't know when that
• 35:32
  point was, but it will have gotten to a point where he
• 35:34
  eventually will have gone, OK, we need to, we need to do
• 35:37
  something with this. And it's interesting like
• 35:39
  discussing the like my journey in whiskey, My dad was actually
• 35:44
  a member back in the 90s. He's got like some of the
• 35:46
  original bottles and the original membership packs.
• 35:49
  And when I started working for the society dug it all out and
• 35:53
  he showed me all he was like, this is this was this, he did
• 35:56
  this. And you know, and it's so it was
• 35:58
  interesting for me to see his experience as a member back then
• 36:02
  to the experiences for members. Well.
• 36:05
  My, my, my dad was a member as well.
• 36:07
  I don't remember much about it. I just remember it was, you
• 36:11
  know, because it was, again, it was kind of mid 90s.
• 36:13
  So it was like, I just remember a form that you kind of ticked
• 36:16
  the box and put a check in and sent it back and you got a
• 36:20
  bottle. And I mean, I don't think my dad
• 36:22
  was particularly active as a member.
• 36:24
  I think he had it maybe for a year and let it lapse and he got
• 36:26
  a couple of bottles and that was it.
• 36:27
  And they're long gone now, but. Well, this, this, this actually
• 36:30
  brings me to a really interesting, Yeah, I'm mad for
• 36:33
  all this stuff. In fact, I'll talk about this
• 36:35
  actually because right there is a running thread theme that goes
• 36:41
  through through the Whiskey Stories podcast and guests that
• 36:44
  we have on people who become obsessed with whiskey.
• 36:46
  I'm hearing that your dad was a member.
• 36:48
  So was your dad a big Is your dad a big whiskey fan or was he?
• 36:53
  Yeah. So I would kind of not thank,
• 36:58
  but I would say blame my dad for a lot of the whiskey obsession I
• 37:02
  have nowadays. As I said, he was a member back
• 37:05
  in the 90s and and then, you know, as I was growing up, we
• 37:10
  always have a wee drama. We temple here and there, but
• 37:13
  and he knew bits and pieces, but it was really interesting as I
• 37:16
  started to work for the society and develop my knowledge more
• 37:19
  and more, how the knowledge level kind of shifted over time.
• 37:24
  So now it's really interesting. Like he comes to tastings of
• 37:27
  mine. My mum dad came to the drag me
• 37:28
  to the whiskey tasting and in support and it was really
• 37:32
  interesting because came up to me afterwards.
• 37:34
  Anyway, I learned things in that tasting that I never knew before
• 37:38
  and he'd been drinking whiskey since the 90s.
• 37:40
  So that's always really amazing to hear and to see.
• 37:43
  And it's when people come into the venues and they talk to the
• 37:46
  team and we go, you know, we tell them something about one of
• 37:49
  the distilleries or we show them a bottle that they hadn't seen
• 37:52
  before. Or sometimes as you say, you
• 37:54
  know, like some like and diggers, you go across the back
• 37:56
  bar, you go maybe not them day, maybe not empty, maybe not end
• 37:59
  today with us, we're focusing on the flavour.
• 38:02
  If you come to us and say I normally like these things.
• 38:04
  Yeah. It's always fun because a lot of
• 38:07
  times we have people come in and they go, I like a Macallan above
• 38:10
  any, any of the big, big names. And you don't always see those
• 38:14
  names from us because we, you know, we only get so many
• 38:18
  bottles from the task and they will sell.
• 38:22
  But it's interesting because then we can find alternatives.
• 38:25
  And then from that you can open someone's world up to a whole
• 38:28
  new realm of whiskey they didn't realise existed, distilleries
• 38:32
  they didn't know, you know, the spirit and the level of the
• 38:36
  quality that they produce from. Yeah, you know I'm.
• 38:39
  Doing I'm doing it was a great. I know there's very many people
• 38:43
  like but but going back to my point, you know, sorry, right.
• 38:46
  So what the the The thing is, and this is a running thread is
• 38:49
  you we talked earlier about about your background before we
• 38:52
  start recording this and you're saying that you travelled around
• 38:54
  a lot because your parents were engineers.
• 38:55
  Yeah, and they also travelled around.
• 38:57
  Now that is another common thread.
• 38:59
  The amount of people that we've had to podcast, we are becoming
• 39:03
  a a fan of whiskey through an engineering background.
• 39:06
  I don't know what it is. I don't know how it works.
• 39:08
  I don't know whether what it is about somebody with an
• 39:10
  engineering background that finds skates.
• 39:13
  Immediately puts you in a whiskey.
• 39:14
  But then and then on the other side of it, as well as like as
• 39:17
  Scotsman and Scott Scott Scott, people who travel the world, you
• 39:21
  know, we're a small nation and we're a very proud nation.
• 39:23
  You know, we like to put our kilts on, like to do this, we
• 39:25
  like to do that. And but you, you can go anywhere
• 39:28
  in the world and you'll see a bottle of Scotch and there is
• 39:30
  such a nice feeling. And I always feel that people
• 39:32
  that have travelled. Yeah.
• 39:34
  And but I think there's. Also like you wear it.
• 39:36
  Yeah, like I feel, I feel a foot dollar.
• 39:38
  Then somebody who is not from Scotland that likes whiskey,
• 39:42
  'cause I'm like, huh, Well, actually you like, you like this
• 39:45
  stuff, actually live in the place where it's made me.
• 39:47
  'Cause this is, I think we've all been in situations on and
• 39:50
  we've all mentioned the podcast where we've been abroad
• 39:52
  somewhere there's been a bottle of Scotch whiskey and you're
• 39:55
  able to say, well, I'm actually from Scotland.
• 39:59
  And it's like, why? There you go.
• 40:00
  Yeah, people, you know, it's, it's a conversation.
• 40:02
  So there you go. That's another one.
• 40:05
  Vicariously, we've never had anyone who has done fashion
• 40:10
  design I. Know I am a niche.
• 40:14
  I am the Unicorn. On that subject, I will say
• 40:17
  after it was a, it was a little bit of a hazy conversation, but
• 40:21
  there was a guy and I'm terribly sorry, but I've I've forgotten
• 40:25
  his name. I hope he is listening.
• 40:27
  I hope he's not affected that I forgot his name because he's
• 40:30
  from Glenrothes and he lived over in America.
• 40:33
  He was at our latest, our last indie bottle Spotlight, all
• 40:37
  right. And he got to be able to talk in
• 40:39
  it. And he, he works for
• 40:41
  universities. And he was talking about, you
• 40:43
  know, actually it was quite a drunken conversation at this
• 40:47
  point. He was saying, and if the
• 40:49
  analysts said, please drop me a message like you promised me you
• 40:51
  would. He was saying that he could get
• 40:53
  funding for side for for researchers to look into the
• 40:58
  psychology side of things. About what is it about people
• 41:01
  that why is it that people from an engineering background become
• 41:04
  more interested in whiskey? Why is it that, I mean, it's as
• 41:06
  I say, we've probably just saved them a quid or two by by talking
• 41:10
  about it. But why is it that when why is
• 41:12
  it people become more drawn to whiskey when they travel the
• 41:14
  world As a Scotsman, when you go abroad and you see it, we know
• 41:18
  it's that sort of element of pride, but he was talking about
• 41:20
  that and we found that very interesting.
• 41:22
  So there you go vicariously, your dad as an engineer, like
• 41:25
  this whiskey got you into it got you into that.
• 41:28
  But going back to talking about how the, the the society is, we
• 41:31
  eventually being a bit of a machine and we talked a little
• 41:34
  bit about global and stuff like that.
• 41:35
  I mean, I don't know the exact numbers, but what kind of
• 41:38
  membership numbers are they actually look like globally?
• 41:41
  Over 40,000. Over 40,000 people and you know
• 41:46
  that that's an incorrect now they'll be active members and
• 41:48
  they'll be inactive members. And that, you know, I'll be at
• 41:51
  first to admit I was an inactive member for, for a good couple of
• 41:54
  years, where as I say, I got gifted the, the, the stuff and I
• 41:58
  was a bit like, thanks for that. But I really, the society is not
• 42:00
  for me and such because of that. Now we've mentioned it.
• 42:04
  Yeah. And you see, I find myself under
• 42:06
  a bit of pressure when we go to Diggers now.
• 42:08
  Well, listen, because there was a period of time when we were
• 42:10
  recorded where everything I was drinking was Glencadam.
• 42:13
  And it was like the first thing I was looking at when Glencadam,
• 42:15
  Glencadam. Unfortunately, we're not
• 42:17
  sponsored by Glencadam. So I stopped drinking in the
• 42:20
  podcast. But it's nice to go in and say
• 42:25
  feeling like I just want something normal.
• 42:26
  But normally like, what do you normally like?
• 42:28
  I like bourbon. I like it sweet and I like it
• 42:30
  nice and smooth. You'll know exactly what to get
• 42:32
  or I'm chatting. One challenge to you.
• 42:34
  I want a bit of complexity. And I think that's something
• 42:37
  I've maybe yourself noticed in particular agreements, maybe
• 42:40
  when we started doing the podcast, if someone came on,
• 42:42
  they said, oh, this is 56.7% ABV, you'd go, oh, I don't know
• 42:46
  if I'm actually that kind of maybe frightens me a little bit.
• 42:49
  Whereas I think now yourself and especially me, when I'm looking
• 42:54
  at a bottle of whiskey, now I'm almost, you know, and I hear
• 42:57
  Ross saying it and I almost find myself saying it.
• 42:59
  So it's all. In this trap where?
• 43:01
  You say, what's the ABV on that? Because it's like, that's what
• 43:05
  I'm interested in. And it's like, oh, if that's
• 43:07
  53%, I'm going, Oh, well, that'll be great.
• 43:10
  Ross is going to the habit of sometimes going to 40%.
• 43:12
  You go, oh, that's. A bit well, this is exactly we
• 43:15
  were Andrew and I were talking about this before even you
• 43:17
  turned up Graham is where if you have a 40% whiskey now there's
• 43:23
  an element where you're sometimes like this is just
• 43:25
  juice because you know, we remember there's a podcast
• 43:30
  episode we recorded and we never actually released.
• 43:32
  It's terribleness. But you bought an 18 year old
• 43:36
  Jura for Ross on the podcast and he he he.
• 43:40
  He felt like a sponsorship and we won't mention what Ross said.
• 43:43
  No, we won't mention what Ross said, but I think you thought
• 43:46
  you bought him a a glass of tea, cold tea or something, but it's.
• 43:50
  One percent 18 year old Jura. And he did say and he was
• 43:54
  disappointed that it was at 40% because I mean, yeah, I suppose
• 43:59
  if you haven't, if you're if you're taking the the the
• 44:02
  whiskey, right. I mean, 43 seems to be the sort
• 44:04
  of appreciated level 4346. But yeah, I mean, is everything
• 44:09
  that is brought out cast strength from the society?
• 44:11
  Yeah. So primarily the bottlings from
• 44:14
  the society, specifically the single malt, single cast moans
• 44:18
  will be cast strength. Things like the Hennessy ranges
• 44:21
  like the one we had there, spruce on the list that is 50%
• 44:25
  it's taken down to, but everything else is primarily
• 44:30
  single test cast strength. So.
• 44:33
  So a fair whack of percentage there.
• 44:35
  But I agree with what you're saying.
• 44:37
  It's interesting coming from where I am where, you know,
• 44:40
  drinks cast, rent stuff so frequently that you know, I get
• 44:45
  sticks in my mind, you know, went catch up with some old
• 44:48
  friends the other day, had some drams as you do, and they're
• 44:51
  all, you know, it's, you know, fantastic bottlings from the
• 44:55
  likes of Jura, Glyphetic, etcetera.
• 44:57
  But they're core ranges. It's 40 percent, 45%.
• 45:00
  And we're, you know, 5-6 trams in, and this is going to make me
• 45:04
  seem like a questionable person, but we were 5-6 trams in and
• 45:08
  they were all starting to get a bit WAVY, starting to see the
• 45:11
  fairies a wee bit. And I'm just sitting there
• 45:12
  going, I'm fine. Yeah.
• 45:16
  You know, and it wasn't even that like level of I'm fine when
• 45:19
  you're not fine. Yeah.
• 45:20
  Yeah, it was. I'm so used to drinking a higher
• 45:22
  percentage. Yeah, it was just, it was.
• 45:24
  But there's also a danger. I do.
• 45:26
  It was dangerous. There's a danger that also, like
• 45:30
  we were in the company, somebody was just a socially event.
• 45:33
  Actually, they were. They were putting a lot of water
• 45:36
  in the whiskey and they worked in the whiskey industry.
• 45:38
  Yeah, I can't. Remember whether it was Danny
• 45:40
  Dyer, might have been Danny Dyer, former Grants.
• 45:44
  Yeah, I was. I thought you were there.
• 45:46
  But he was putting a lot of water into his his whiskey.
• 45:49
  And it was a cast strength whiskey that we had.
• 45:51
  I think it's a Cadenheads Milton Duff that Ross had brought
• 45:54
  along. And he was saying, oh, you put
• 45:57
  plenty of water in there. And I said, look, you know, when
• 46:00
  you drink a lot of Cast Strength whiskey, there's always a danger
• 46:03
  that eventually your taste. We were like that, a numb.
• 46:06
  To it, yeah. The whiskey Festival.
• 46:08
  And obviously we're drinking responsibly.
• 46:10
  Yeah, it should when you're a whiskey festival, of course, but
• 46:12
  your tongue does start to go. It does.
• 46:15
  I remember being at that festival, Graham, and you'll
• 46:17
  remember at the very, very end, there was somebody passed this a
• 46:21
  whiskey and it was like 30 year old something.
• 46:25
  And it was like, I mean, I can't remember a single thing about
• 46:28
  that, which is a discrete, you know, it's unfortunate because
• 46:32
  you know, it could have been anything, but it was like, oh,
• 46:34
  try this, by the way. It was like, that's great.
• 46:38
  But it was like by that point, the taste buds, the taste buds
• 46:41
  are left and gone back home. You're absolutely right.
• 46:45
  But moving on to like a little bit of whiskey chat.
• 46:49
  And this is where Ross isn't here.
• 46:50
  So we're going to sound like we actually know what we're talking
• 46:53
  about. Well, I'll say Andrew.
• 46:54
  Do a bit of acting now. You'll probably limit it to what
• 46:57
  you can and can't see on this front because because that, but
• 47:01
  it is very notable. You go back to like 1983 and you
• 47:05
  look at the the timing of your guy Pip here going and buying a
• 47:09
  casket whiskey out of a distillery.
• 47:11
  And also through the 80s Angus and into the sort of 90s.
• 47:14
  What we know is famously this was the sort of downturn of the
• 47:16
  whiskey industry, the whiskey lock and at the time they're
• 47:19
  distilleries. We are holding onto a lot of
• 47:21
  stock and needing rid of it. And it has been a conversation
• 47:25
  that we've had over the last few episodes, a few weeks in fact,
• 47:29
  where you look at where the industry is right now.
• 47:32
  And I think the industry is in a perfect place for a consumer.
• 47:35
  From a consumer's point of view, albeit I will say as we are
• 47:38
  recording and this will date when we are recording this, I
• 47:42
  see that the Talisker 18 has jumped up even higher.
• 47:44
  It's not up to 200 and over 200 and. 70 lbs I think, yeah.
• 47:48
  So about that, yeah. Which is, which has been a sort
• 47:52
  of indicator from people on the podcast, guests who have talked
• 47:55
  about over the period, look, the very recent period of time, how
• 47:58
  much of a jump we've seen in the whiskey pricing.
• 48:00
  I feel, I feel like instead of, you know, the in economics, they
• 48:03
  have the kind of the Big Mac inflation tracker, which is
• 48:06
  where they kind of they take the price of a Big Mac around the
• 48:09
  world and they kind of square it off with exchange rates and
• 48:11
  that's how they track inflation. I feel like we do the Talisker
• 48:14
  18. Inflation rates, I think.
• 48:16
  I think. Either Talisker 18 or Alfredo.
• 48:20
  Alfredo yeah, I remember when it was 5P.
• 48:22
  Yeah, but I mean, it's like. A pound nowadays.
• 48:26
  I think the Talisker 18, I think a lot of people will probably
• 48:28
  say that it was probably underpriced for so long that the
• 48:31
  jump went so quickly that it caught a lot of people off.
• 48:34
  But the fact that they've done it again would show you that and
• 48:37
  what line is. People are buying.
• 48:39
  People are still buying it, which is why it justifies the
• 48:41
  price rise. Look, we know the whiskey
• 48:43
  industry is changing in the sense that the cost of sourcing
• 48:47
  wood now has become really, really expensive.
• 48:50
  The cost of fuel to transport the cost of even just like
• 48:54
  simple things and without getting too political, but you
• 48:56
  look at like National Insurance rates rising up in the UK.
• 49:00
  So that means that wages are going to going to be higher that
• 49:02
  that companies have to pay out. There's a whole host of
• 49:05
  different reasons, energy bills, all these kind of things that
• 49:08
  are going to be part of the the fact that the the the cost of
• 49:12
  whiskey will will increase. But what we're also seeing is
• 49:16
  that, you know, people are now your cynics and maybe not so
• 49:19
  cynics, people who are being part of the, the the industry
• 49:22
  for a while starting to come out now and say maybe it's not the
• 49:25
  very good. I spoke to somebody a few months
• 49:27
  ago and they've been in whiskey for 2530 years.
• 49:30
  And he said people always look at this as a downturn.
• 49:32
  He said, I've been in whiskey for over 2530 years.
• 49:34
  He said, yeah, whiskey has 2 levels.
• 49:36
  It has very good and it has good.
• 49:38
  And he says what we're seeing right now is we're probably
• 49:40
  dipping into the good part, whereas we have been in the the
• 49:43
  very good, the very good section.
• 49:46
  But it is going to be a challenge and it is going to be
• 49:48
  difficult. But what that does mean is, and
• 49:49
  I think we talked about it with Greg Arcker on the on the Indie
• 49:53
  Ball spotlight, is how old distilleries will they keep
• 49:57
  producing what they do with their stock.
• 50:01
  But what it will help is having people like the SMWS who are
• 50:04
  able to go to distilleries that we can actually, you know, take
• 50:07
  stock off you, you know, you've got a powerhouse like D'aggio
• 50:10
  here with Khalila. People would often think that
• 50:14
  the relationship, well, we know its relationships are building.
• 50:16
  Yeah. Between and you've got a company
• 50:19
  that's been going since 1983 and industry, the relationships will
• 50:21
  be pretty tight with a lot of these distilleries.
• 50:24
  So imagine that it probably makes it even easier now
• 50:28
  potentially for SNWS to be able to get hold of stock and which
• 50:33
  which can only benefit members, can only benefit the consumer.
• 50:36
  Because we know there's going to be a potentially another another
• 50:39
  like in the next 10-15 years, we're going to see better stock
• 50:43
  coming or not better, but good stock coming back into into the
• 50:48
  circulation as well. Of course, the thing to remember
• 50:50
  with this society is we will only ever bottle something when
• 50:54
  we feel it is right for members. So when it passes our tasting
• 50:58
  panel and they say, yeah, this is up to standard.
• 51:01
  So we may have, and I don't know this for certain, but we may
• 51:04
  have casks from desired distilleries, but we may not
• 51:07
  necessarily release this right now because in our opinion it
• 51:11
  may not be ready. It may not be to that quality,
• 51:14
  to that standard that we want our whiskeys to be at.
• 51:16
  So you might have a cast that you look at it and you say,
• 51:19
  look, we know what distillery that's come from.
• 51:21
  We know that's going to just sell, but in our opinion, we
• 51:26
  need to let that when that's not ready to be bottled yet.
• 51:30
  Whether or not it will sell, of course there's a business as a
• 51:35
  factor, but for us the big factor is making sure that we
• 51:38
  deliver that flavour and that quality to our members, right?
• 51:43
  It's why the members join. They join for, of course, the
• 51:48
  amazing experiences of joining the venues, attending the
• 51:51
  tastings, coming into places such as Queen Street or the
• 51:55
  Vaults. But the other hand is, of
• 51:59
  course, the spirit is the whiskey itself.
• 52:02
  Yeah. And it's interesting to see the
• 52:05
  way in which that develops over time.
• 52:07
  Yes, we have amazing relationships with a lot of
• 52:10
  these companies, but there are still a lot of companies that
• 52:14
  even though we've been around for this long, still, you know,
• 52:17
  won't necessarily sell casks because or they're from, you
• 52:21
  know, distilleries that are maybe too small to sell out
• 52:25
  casks. They want to keep it all to
• 52:26
  themselves. You know, I when, when I worked
• 52:30
  at the Vaults, we had to go home and then from Isla, they did a
• 52:34
  distillery visit with us and they talk about how when they
• 52:40
  first started, they sold off loads of their casks just to
• 52:43
  keep the lights on, which is also quite normal within the
• 52:46
  industry. But then it got to the point
• 52:50
  where they went that we have no more of our original spirit left
• 52:53
  and they peeled it all back and they they bought casks off of
• 52:56
  these people that bought the casks.
• 52:58
  Really have to buy back. Double Trip, yeah, Retail value
• 53:02
  bought it all back just so they could have some of that original
• 53:04
  stock, and now they don't. They don't sell to anyone again.
• 53:10
  There may be people with casks, you know, squirreled away, but I
• 53:14
  can't speak on our own behalf. I've certainly never seen a
• 53:16
  Cocoman from ourselves, but I have had some fantastic whiskeys
• 53:20
  from them and from. Us and it's I mean we spoke
• 53:24
  about it a little bit when we had Ken Lagerfeld on and it's
• 53:28
  not a you know there, there are some distilleries and you'll
• 53:31
  know, you know, even in SWSNWS, but other independent bottlers,
• 53:36
  there are some distilleries. Coalila, I mean just from sheer
• 53:39
  amount of volume you do see again and again independently
• 53:42
  bottled Coalila Kill Holman, not one, you generally see two
• 53:46
  regularly or. Two and then the protection of
• 53:49
  the, you know, when you look at backdated agreements as well and
• 53:56
  that's what's you know nowadays you'll see you go back to 1983
• 54:00
  and you look at conversations that were being had with
• 54:03
  distilleries or you or even who owned what distilleries.
• 54:07
  And you, you know, your guy Pep here could have had a great
• 54:11
  relationship with I don't know. Well, let's just say for I would
• 54:14
  say Macallan, right? And at the time Macallan where
• 54:18
  the Macallan that they are today.
• 54:20
  I can't remember what date it was when it probably.
• 54:23
  Wasn't it was 80s? It was 80s.
• 54:26
  Finn Thompson we had on the spotlight has the minutes of the
• 54:31
  meeting with his grandfather and the guys from the Macallan
• 54:34
  Distillery. They'd come down and at this
• 54:36
  point, 1983 Katie rings a bell there.
• 54:40
  But basically the date of it was sort of the 80s.
• 54:43
  And it was the guys from the Macallan Distillery were saying
• 54:45
  to his grandfather, who had, you know, they were a distribute
• 54:49
  whiskey distribution company. He was getting the contract to
• 54:51
  distribute Macallan as a single malt.
• 54:53
  And at the time he was saying, in the minutes it says that
• 54:56
  these guys, Macallan distillers were saying, you know, we're
• 54:59
  going to be the Rolls Royce of Scotch whiskey.
• 55:03
  And to their word, they were absolutely spot on.
• 55:05
  They they ended up becoming and above.
• 55:06
  Yeah, although I think the Bentley isn't it.
• 55:11
  But the point being is, you know, that's not that long ago,
• 55:14
  40 years, OK, But in an industry that's overwhelmed over nearly
• 55:17
  200 years from a lot of distilleries, you know, 1983,
• 55:20
  you imagine there'd be some relationships that were made by
• 55:24
  the society back then, which would never be allowed past the
• 55:28
  sort of top end of the companies now.
• 55:31
  But at the same time, you've got that and you're able to put
• 55:33
  that, put that stock out. When having spoken to a lot of
• 55:36
  people within the industry, a lot of global brand ambassadors
• 55:41
  and such like, it's amazing to see that the society's
• 55:46
  reputation still it stands for a lot of the industry where they
• 55:52
  know that the stories know if they're selling a cask to us,
• 55:56
  they're selling a cask to the to the society that we will look
• 55:59
  after. We will do well by Amiibo only
• 56:02
  bottle and we feel it's ready because, as I said, we want to
• 56:06
  make sure that we give our members the best flavour, the
• 56:11
  best bottles and the best experience possible.
• 56:13
  And I guess this is one of the benefits of membership is that
• 56:16
  people, you know, when the quality and the flavour of what
• 56:19
  you're bottling is on display, that that's the incentive to be
• 56:24
  a member, of course, because you know, that, I mean, we've had
• 56:27
  bottles, you know, as I said, I'm not a member, I never have
• 56:30
  been a member, but we've, I've had tastings from bottles and I
• 56:33
  have to admit really, really, you know, impressed with most of
• 56:37
  the stuff I've tried from you. So it's it speaks volumes that
• 56:43
  you know, you know, from that bottle, from that label, you're
• 56:46
  getting something that you know, you're yes, of quality.
• 56:49
  Mm hmm. And when you look, when you look
• 56:51
  at the the core values and that must that's always a difficulty.
• 56:56
  This the Scotch Malt Whiskey society has changed hands quite
• 56:59
  a few Times Now. Yeah, it to be where it is
• 57:01
  today. And holding on to those core
• 57:03
  values must be so important. And, you know, having a the sort
• 57:09
  of values there where it's flavour, it's less.
• 57:11
  It's that because you say, I bet it wouldn't be very difficult
• 57:16
  for the society to actually go, do you know what we could do?
• 57:17
  50 releases a month as we could can't because we've got the
• 57:20
  stock and we've probably got the finance behind us with we've got
• 57:23
  over you know, we've got 40,000 members around the world.
• 57:26
  We could if we wanted to and we could Chuck anything into these
• 57:30
  bottles and they would still sell because as Angus has said
• 57:33
  as well sometimes or even just doing that, you know,
• 57:35
  occasionally put in the name of the distillery on it because you
• 57:38
  know, it doesn't matter what's in that.
• 57:39
  There will be people that buy a 20 odd year old.
• 57:42
  If it says Spring Bank, yeah. You know, and suddenly go with
• 57:45
  that, right. And, but then being able to be
• 57:47
  not be greedy on that front, hold back, make sure that
• 57:50
  everything's done to the right way of the way that it was
• 57:52
  supposed to have been done. And we talk about, you know,
• 57:55
  sort of tongue in cheek a little bit.
• 57:56
  Did they set it up as a society first or did they set it up as a
• 58:00
  business? I would probably say if you look
• 58:02
  back in your history, like we had a chat, I, I got very lucky
• 58:07
  to be able to have a chat with Stuart Urquhart, who's the, the
• 58:11
  4th generation of the Gordon Macphail family.
• 58:14
  The Urquhart's there and he was talking about his great, great
• 58:17
  grandfather's business model And you know, and we were, we were
• 58:20
  saying like, did you ever think about becoming blenders?
• 58:23
  Because in this fifties, 60s, even further back than that, the
• 58:27
  40s, fifties, 60s with the casts that they were buying, it would
• 58:31
  have made the business sense to go will be blenders versus and,
• 58:36
  and using the stock they had to make blends.
• 58:38
  And he said, well, he said, you know, our family were green
• 58:41
  grocers up in Elgin and there was also a family of green
• 58:44
  grocers in Kilmarnock. And one of them went down our
• 58:47
  groceries. One of them went down the route
• 58:49
  of blending and we've got Johnnie Walker and.
• 58:51
  One of them didn't have my goal. Thankfully for everybody, the
• 58:55
  government feel family, the government feel business is
• 58:57
  still growing in the the whiskey that they're producing.
• 58:59
  They've got their their their still isn't what have you, but
• 59:01
  they'll show you. And so to to me, for me, if, if,
• 59:06
  if, if you had a financial advisor as a mate or a business
• 59:09
  advisor as a mate. And you're saying in 1983, I'm
• 59:11
  thinking about setting up a site, a whiskey company that
• 59:13
  specialises the most nichest of niche things right now.
• 59:16
  Yeah, most people would say you're an idiot, don't bother.
• 59:19
  But. Look at it now.
• 59:19
  Yeah, well, this is and, and, and the fact that it's worked
• 59:22
  and it continues to work means that, you know, you still know
• 59:26
  that from the Scotch Malt Whiskey Society, you're getting
• 59:30
  single cast. So, you know, and, and actually
• 59:32
  I think what's really interesting when we're talking
• 59:35
  about that designation, single cast, single malt, Scotch
• 59:39
  whiskey, cast strength, you now look at a distillery like
• 59:42
  Annandale and that's a distillery and they're only
• 59:45
  bottling single cast, cast strength malt whiskey.
• 59:49
  And it's it's almost a kind of full circle now where it's like
• 59:52
  you, you know, you know, bottlers like S and WFS LED away
• 59:57
  and now the distilleries are saying, you know what, we're
• 59:59
  going to have a distillery, but we're going to going to release
• 1:00:02
  whiskey of this variety. It's interesting, it's
• 1:00:05
  remarkable, kind of leads back to what was saying earlier about
• 1:00:08
  how back when the site was first founded, the concept of Castro
• 1:00:13
  and whisky to the general public was really unheard of.
• 1:00:17
  No one was doing it. A lot of the distilleries that
• 1:00:20
  were in existence were in existence purely to supply the
• 1:00:23
  blends that then you know some fantastic blends, amazing
• 1:00:28
  blends, but single cast cast strength was really not a thing.
• 1:00:34
  Whereas nowadays you look at any of the major distilleries and
• 1:00:38
  all of them will have at least one bottling that is cast
• 1:00:41
  strength because there is an increase to demand for it.
• 1:00:46
  And I think that is only proven, only more proven by the society
• 1:00:52
  and their continued success. Yeah, you look back.
• 1:00:57
  Here 41 years later. Exactly.
• 1:00:59
  And it's education as well as you look at it and say you go
• 1:01:02
  back 2530 and 40 years, you know, what was the education
• 1:01:06
  like for people or how did you find your information on
• 1:01:09
  whiskey? How did you because there
• 1:01:10
  weren't pubs like athletic happens with over 800.
• 1:01:14
  I mean, that's what we we we're, we're in such a spoiled
• 1:01:17
  situation where, you know, what we drink in Scotland is next to
• 1:01:21
  nothing of what is exported around the world.
• 1:01:24
  And yet when we go to a pub like Diggers, when you come here and
• 1:01:27
  you've got the walls of whiskey and stuff like that, is that
• 1:01:29
  there's like people have said that we had Brandon Masters have
• 1:01:32
  said there is more whiskey in this pub.
• 1:01:34
  And this is just one of a pub. And this is not even the biggest
• 1:01:38
  whiskey collection in Edinburgh. And Diggers second biggest, they
• 1:01:40
  believe, but. It's not BeenVerified yet.
• 1:01:44
  It's not BeenVerified, but but the point of the matter is, is
• 1:01:47
  that that's just one pub in Edinburgh.
• 1:01:49
  And he said then, and we've had brand ambassador saying you put
• 1:01:51
  this pub in a lot of countries around the world, This would be
• 1:01:54
  the biggest whiskey collection in that whole country.
• 1:01:57
  Yeah. And this is just one pub in
• 1:01:58
  Edinburgh. And then you got other hotels in
• 1:02:00
  Berry Berry Hotel. Ohh.
• 1:02:02
  We've got all, all, yeah, places, all these different
• 1:02:05
  areas that the Highlander and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:02:07
  And you see, you know, we're we're so lucky with that.
• 1:02:11
  And yet, you know, as I say, we're not even scratching
• 1:02:13
  service of what whiskey is being exported in and around the
• 1:02:16
  world. But when you when you when you
• 1:02:17
  think about. And I've lost my train of
• 1:02:20
  thought. Yeah, where?
• 1:02:20
  It was. I've got a good example of this
• 1:02:22
  because I'm, I'm, I've mentioned it to you, Graham, but I'm going
• 1:02:26
  back to Japan in the new year for another long weekend, but
• 1:02:30
  for another long weekend, Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully.
• 1:02:32
  I managed to stay longer than three days there this time.
• 1:02:35
  But I was looking on the last night there, I was looking to
• 1:02:38
  book a hotel in Tokyo for one light one night and I thought
• 1:02:41
  we'll go. I was kind of swithering between
• 1:02:43
  about two or three different hotels and in the end I picked 1
• 1:02:46
  and I went great, that looks great, lovely, happy days.
• 1:02:49
  I went two days later. I was on the SMWS website and I
• 1:02:52
  was looking at your partner locations just out of curiosity
• 1:02:55
  in Japan and one of those. Went to wangle off free
• 1:02:59
  membership and. One of one of the hotels, one of
• 1:03:02
  the hotels that I was thinking about but didn't book have a bar
• 1:03:06
  that's a partner of the SMWS and I went, oh, that's that would
• 1:03:10
  have I should have booked there. That's really annoying.
• 1:03:12
  And I thought, what the hell am I disappointed about?
• 1:03:14
  I live, you know, in the city with. 3.
• 1:03:18
  SMWS bars and no less. And I thought, why am I
• 1:03:21
  disappointed that because I'm flying 5000 miles ago as well
• 1:03:25
  that I could have stayed at something?
• 1:03:26
  Well, I mean, this is just really again, this is it this.
• 1:03:29
  Point I was actually going on to the fact that the global market,
• 1:03:32
  the global membership here, you know, Angus has mentioned there.
• 1:03:36
  From your own perspective, when you're working here, is it
• 1:03:39
  locals that are coming in? Is it do you get a lot of
• 1:03:42
  tourists that are coming and going?
• 1:03:43
  Well, I'm a member and I thought this would be a great
• 1:03:45
  opportunity to come. Or is that nice mix?
• 1:03:46
  What's the set of vibe in here then?
• 1:03:48
  Here in Queen St. we get a great mix.
• 1:03:51
  So as we mentioned earlier, ground floor bar here it's named
• 1:03:55
  the Kaleidoscope bar that is open to non members.
• 1:03:58
  Anyone can come in even without membership.
• 1:04:01
  You don't need one to come into the Kleidoscope bar.
• 1:04:03
  I would recommend booking as it is a very small room as we saw
• 1:04:06
  with only about 46 tables, but definitely come down and pay us
• 1:04:11
  a visit if you want to experience the Society before
• 1:04:15
  you become a member. But we are the only one of the
• 1:04:19
  venues that has a space like that.
• 1:04:21
  There's only four venues that are owned and run by the Society
• 1:04:26
  in the world and they're all here in the UK.
• 1:04:28
  So there's two here in Edinburgh, The vaults down in
• 1:04:30
  wheat, of course, the original home.
• 1:04:33
  There's ourselves here at Queen St. in the centre of Edinburgh,
• 1:04:36
  then there's Glasgow on Bath St. and London on Grenville St. in
• 1:04:40
  Farringdon, all fantastic venues in and of their own right.
• 1:04:45
  Globally, we have what's called our partner bars and I can't
• 1:04:50
  remember the exact number off the top of my head, but it is,
• 1:04:53
  it's over 150 or so partner bars now.
• 1:04:57
  And we've got our like big sort of regions that we operate in as
• 1:05:04
  well. For instance, Australia is a
• 1:05:06
  really big market. Yeah, Denmark, Japan, China,
• 1:05:10
  Asia, of course, the Americas. We recently bought over at the
• 1:05:14
  beginning of this year, the parent company to the Scotch
• 1:05:17
  Malt Whisky Society, it's the Artisanal Spirits company.
• 1:05:21
  They purchased the Single Cask Nation, who are another bottler
• 1:05:31
  based out of America, and that was again in an effort to bring
• 1:05:38
  more value to our members globally, to show them that we
• 1:05:41
  can offer so much to them and to really bring that level of
• 1:05:45
  experience and value for membership.
• 1:05:48
  And these sort of in these areas, like if Angus was to go
• 1:05:50
  into this hotel across the road from wherever, where in Japan
• 1:05:53
  will they find? There'll be, I'm sure there'll
• 1:05:57
  be a range of different whiskey, different drinks on the bar, but
• 1:05:59
  will they find the green bottles, SMS bottles there?
• 1:06:02
  Yeah, so different bars will have different amounts.
• 1:06:05
  Some of the bars have more of our bottles than others.
• 1:06:08
  It is always a very fun game I play whenever I go on holiday or
• 1:06:11
  hunt. SMS parts bar.
• 1:06:13
  Yeah, I not quite to Japan, but I took a long weekend to Paris a
• 1:06:19
  couple months ago and I just played Hunt the S and WS Partner
• 1:06:22
  bar, and it was so much fun. I got to find all these cool
• 1:06:26
  hidden. Like one of them was down the
• 1:06:29
  street that I just thought was a residential St.
• 1:06:31
  It was a barbershop in the front and then the back of it was a
• 1:06:35
  specialized whiskey bar. You had to go through this
• 1:06:38
  barbershop. But I walked in all like, this
• 1:06:41
  is where Google Maps has told me to go.
• 1:06:43
  Google Maps has been wrong before.
• 1:06:45
  What am I doing? And I sort of went in and then
• 1:06:47
  the woman looked at me and she went whiskey and I went, yeah,
• 1:06:51
  we, we, we see the play and she went that door.
• 1:06:56
  I was like, OK. And then I walked in and it was
• 1:06:58
  fully like stepping into another world.
• 1:06:59
  It was great because I've seen that with a lot of our partner
• 1:07:02
  bars. They are phenomenal locations
• 1:07:04
  that again, bring that level of experience and of knowledge to
• 1:07:10
  the bottles. And will you find like well, you
• 1:07:14
  well, if they bring out a release like so we've seen here
• 1:07:16
  165 bottles of this orchard beef beehive here.
• 1:07:20
  Okay. So, well, well, SMS, they'll put
• 1:07:23
  some of them up for sale and imagine, but at the same time,
• 1:07:27
  they'll have to hold back some stock that they need to put in
• 1:07:29
  now. And imagine the four British
• 1:07:32
  bars, home bars, take priority over what gets to stop.
• 1:07:36
  Or well, there's some earmark to go.
• 1:07:38
  We'll send all that over. We'll send the crux of that over
• 1:07:41
  to France. We'll send a lot of that over to
• 1:07:44
  Asia or anything like that will be sort of balanced like this.
• 1:07:46
  So as we are an international company, of course, if you're
• 1:07:50
  only getting 100 and 65250 bottles from the cask that
• 1:07:55
  that's not going to. Supply though, no, I am.
• 1:07:58
  So you do get, you do get different allocations and
• 1:08:03
  depending on your country. So like the UK where we've got
• 1:08:07
  the venues, we do have the out turns that do release 2535
• 1:08:10
  bottles every month. Whereas if you go to a partner
• 1:08:14
  bar over in, for instance, we've got one of the team here that
• 1:08:17
  used to run one of the partner bars in New Zealand and they'll
• 1:08:21
  say they only got like a few sort of here and there when they
• 1:08:23
  could. And it's always interesting to
• 1:08:25
  hear about what some countries get that other countries don't,
• 1:08:28
  things there's some countries that get bottlings that I've not
• 1:08:32
  seen. So they'll be exclusive, yeah.
• 1:08:33
  So we we get exclusive. I think that bottlings aren't in
• 1:08:36
  the UK then they'll be bottlings that maybe are exclusive, I
• 1:08:39
  think. I think that's an habit you.
• 1:08:40
  Was an exclusive French boon of habit.
• 1:08:43
  I think that's why OK popped up on the on the on the auctions.
• 1:08:47
  Ah, it was. Auctions.
• 1:08:48
  You got it. You get.
• 1:08:50
  On one hand we do have exclusive bottlings to each of our venues.
• 1:08:53
  So you can only buy here in venue, you can't buy them
• 1:08:57
  online. You up until actually last month
• 1:09:02
  we kind of skirted that rule and we gave all the venues a wee bit
• 1:09:06
  of each of them so we could give everyone a wee try.
• 1:09:09
  But that was the first time they'd done it before.
• 1:09:11
  But we get an exclusive bottling route to the venues, exclusive
• 1:09:16
  bottlings for all of the major countries that we operate in,
• 1:09:20
  from France to Denmark to Japan, China, America and so on and so
• 1:09:25
  forth. And those tend to come out in
• 1:09:27
  September as part of what we call our social gathering
• 1:09:30
  festivals. And that is really trying to tap
• 1:09:33
  back into the idea of, you know, we were started as a society, as
• 1:09:38
  a group of friends. And whiskey is a fantastic
• 1:09:40
  spirit that's meant to be drunk with friends, sharing stories,
• 1:09:44
  drinking good drams, and we wanted to bring it back to that.
• 1:09:47
  So we do this, and that's where each of the countries gets their
• 1:09:50
  own exclusive cask just for that country.
• 1:09:54
  And then occasionally some of the bottles will make it to the
• 1:09:57
  venues for celebrations that we do around the social gathering.
• 1:10:01
  It's always really interesting to get the opportunity to try
• 1:10:04
  those products when they come in and to go.
• 1:10:06
  This was really tasty, but I want one.
• 1:10:08
  I have to go to Denmark to get it, damn it.
• 1:10:11
  How much is a flight going to cost?
• 1:10:13
  There have been a few of the ball.
• 1:10:15
  For a flight well, I mean, well talking about sharing drams with
• 1:10:20
  friends you've you've you've ticked the box of being a good
• 1:10:23
  guest because you you didn't come empty handed and to be
• 1:10:27
  honest, I was hold it up to the camera for those I can see when
• 1:10:29
  you see one of these bottles that a guest has brought on a.
• 1:10:31
  Clear glass bottle. Clear glass bottle.
• 1:10:34
  This I score though that it was. Scribbled.
• 1:10:36
  This has been scribbled. There's been, there's been
• 1:10:37
  writing on all of this. I'll let you introduce this what
• 1:10:40
  we got here. What have we?
• 1:10:42
  Brought I brought from my home stash.
• 1:10:44
  Wow, which is at this point over, you know, 200 bottles.
• 1:10:50
  Wow in the house. Yeah, yeah, it's it's, you know,
• 1:10:53
  covered into the hallway for to see when and you open it up and
• 1:10:55
  it's just whiskey. Brilliant.
• 1:10:57
  So one of my wee party tricks when friends come over, I'm
• 1:10:59
  like, look at them covered, look at the whiskey.
• 1:11:01
  And they're like, yeah, Andrew, we can tell you work for we
• 1:11:04
  work. You work in whiskey.
• 1:11:05
  Well done. What, what, what?
• 1:11:06
  What's RAM? Now what?
• 1:11:07
  Percentage are SMWS bottlings do you think?
• 1:11:11
  There's 4 shelves and 2 1/2 of them are SMWS.
• 1:11:14
  Staff. This guy staff.
• 1:11:15
  This guy, Yeah. Not always my bank account
• 1:11:19
  wishes, but yeah, this is the Seaside server.
• 1:11:24
  It is a Glenn Scotia. Yeah, it's a young one, but a
• 1:11:27
  good one. Eight years old, entirely
• 1:11:29
  matured in a first felt ex bourbon barrel and it was 60.3%
• 1:11:33
  was all that delicious, spicy. A good example of what a good
• 1:11:38
  classic bourbon cask and what a fantastic Glenn Scotia.
• 1:11:41
  Brilliant. Wonderful.
• 1:11:43
  I'll crack this. Yeah, I feel for you.
• 1:11:46
  I just pours it. I'll be right to the Brahma.
• 1:11:48
  So I guess another question when we're talking about the venues
• 1:11:51
  and the four venues you have in the UK, and it's again goes back
• 1:11:54
  to what Graham posed at the beginning.
• 1:11:56
  If you've woken up on Christmas morning and underneath your
• 1:12:00
  trees of membership to the SMWS, one thing that you know you do
• 1:12:05
  in particular a lot here is kind of events and taste things.
• 1:12:09
  And down at the vaults there's different events.
• 1:12:10
  It's kind of live music nights and things.
• 1:12:12
  So I mean, maybe just give us an overview of the kind of things
• 1:12:16
  that you do here and the kind of taste things you do here.
• 1:12:18
  What you can can you expect from a taste so?
• 1:12:24
  I am biased since moving to Queen Street.
• 1:12:27
  If you'd asked me when I worked in the Vaults I would have said
• 1:12:29
  the Vault is the best venue. We do the best tastings.
• 1:12:31
  I know we're in Queen Street. So now my opinion is Queen St's
• 1:12:34
  the best and we do the best tastings.
• 1:12:35
  But the truth is that all the venues do amazing tastings and
• 1:12:40
  experiences for everyone. I know that the Glasgow venue
• 1:12:44
  did a cigar and whiskey tasting just the other month.
• 1:12:48
  The Vaults did a full market thing the other week where they
• 1:12:53
  had like different food vendors and whiskey and spirits vendors
• 1:12:57
  in and you know, took over the whole venue and you just sort of
• 1:12:59
  made your way around. We did a big full venue party
• 1:13:03
  celebrating our 20th anniversary as Queen Street just earlier
• 1:13:08
  this year where again it was vendors author at the venue.
• 1:13:11
  We did have different things in each room and it was great
• 1:13:15
  experiences and great times. But here in Queen St. we have
• 1:13:19
  several different weekly taste things that happened same day,
• 1:13:23
  same time, same place. So Tuesdays we do our IG Malice
• 1:13:28
  tasting which is a tasting along 3 drum tasting alongside AIG
• 1:13:34
  Malice cheese board. OK so each drum is paired to the
• 1:13:37
  cheeses. Wednesdays is our meat and malt
• 1:13:39
  tastings and then on Saturdays we alternate week On week one
• 1:13:46
  week we do our steak and whiskey tasting which is A5 DRAM tasting
• 1:13:50
  alongside a full steak dinner and then the following week it
• 1:13:53
  will be what we call our master class tasting and those are our
• 1:13:59
  SO. It's 5 drams, but not all of
• 1:14:01
  them are whiskey. So the first 3 primarily will be
• 1:14:05
  single malt Scotch whiskey. The 4th and 5th one, however,
• 1:14:10
  that is up to the ambassador on the day's discretion.
• 1:14:13
  So if I was running a master class, I'd kind of do the first
• 1:14:16
  3 as single as single malt. Good Scotch whiskeys.
• 1:14:21
  Sometimes the 4th 1:00 will be a variation of whiskey because we
• 1:14:25
  don't just bottle single malt whiskeys at the society,
• 1:14:28
  although we're called the single Malt Scotch Whiskey Society.
• 1:14:31
  We bottle single malt from all over the world and we bottle all
• 1:14:34
  various manners of spirits. Yeah, she got.
• 1:14:37
  Grain whiskey, corn whiskey, rye whiskey, gins, rums, cognacs,
• 1:14:42
  Armeniacs and bourbons, and so very much more.
• 1:14:45
  So sometimes for the 4th or 5th you'll have like a bourbon and
• 1:14:48
  then your fifth one will be something completely left field
• 1:14:51
  like a gin or a rum or an Armeniac from us.
• 1:14:54
  Really to try and showcase that we do so much in the society, we
• 1:15:01
  bought some fantastic and amazing single malt spirits,
• 1:15:05
  single malt whiskey, but we also bought some amazing army acts
• 1:15:09
  from rums. In fact, I found out the other
• 1:15:12
  day that our rum portfolio is actually the second best selling
• 1:15:17
  aspect of our spirits portfolios behind the single malt.
• 1:15:21
  So it goes like single malt whiskeys and then it goes to the
• 1:15:24
  rums and that's been about since the since the 90s we've been
• 1:15:29
  bottling different rums and then over time we've started bottling
• 1:15:32
  different things. So this isn't a new thing at
• 1:15:35
  all. I mean, I did wonder if, you
• 1:15:36
  know, I think the perception was, you know, Scotch malt
• 1:15:39
  whiskey society. I mean, again, this is maybe
• 1:15:42
  going back in my perceptions was maybe a bit of a kind of stuffy
• 1:15:45
  organization, you know, I can imagine.
• 1:15:47
  Well, it's my fault I. Can imagine as soon as the
• 1:15:50
  decision to bottle runs or kind of members up in arms and things
• 1:15:53
  like that, but it's just isn't the case is it?
• 1:15:55
  Yeah, I wasn't there for it, but I remember I've, I've heard
• 1:16:01
  stories from colleagues of when we first released the heresy
• 1:16:05
  ranges, which are blind and, you know, members coming up to the
• 1:16:09
  bar, cutting up their membership cards and throwing it at the
• 1:16:11
  staff and, you know, people doing the same thing when we
• 1:16:15
  started, you know, people exactly.
• 1:16:18
  And you know, the Scotch Milk Whiskey Society, when we started
• 1:16:21
  bottling stuff that wasn't Scotch, like when we bottled our
• 1:16:23
  first Japanese people were doing the exact same, you know,
• 1:16:27
  cutting up the cards, throwing in the bartender's face as well.
• 1:16:30
  I remember, again, fuck the Japanese whiskey.
• 1:16:34
  But now look at what Japanese whiskey's doing.
• 1:16:36
  Look at the stage. They're all not.
• 1:16:38
  And we've done some phenomenal bottlings from Japanese to
• 1:16:41
  sterilies, Two of our most recent additions to the bottling
• 1:16:46
  codes where Japanese. Which distilleries are those?
• 1:16:50
  Because there's a there's a lot of new Japanese distilleries,
• 1:16:53
  so. You are testing my knowledge
• 1:16:55
  now. It is the oh fudge.
• 1:16:59
  I knew you were going to ask her.
• 1:17:00
  That there you go tell you. The distillery, one that the
• 1:17:07
  most recent distillery we bought from was the hardest distillery.
• 1:17:12
  Yeah, very. Interesting that was the 163rd
• 1:17:16
  bottle we bought distillery we bought from and it was the first
• 1:17:19
  bought first Casper released actually just this month.
• 1:17:22
  So that's the noted as the 163.1 at the so sorry.
• 1:17:26
  What was it? Distillery 1/6.
• 1:17:28
  The Harris Distillery. So I mean, that's quite
• 1:17:29
  interesting because I mean, apart from the hero, the core
• 1:17:32
  releases from the Harris Distillery itself that.
• 1:17:34
  I. I haven't seen independently
• 1:17:37
  released Harris, sorry. So what, what, what?
• 1:17:39
  What was that release then? What, What age?
• 1:17:41
  What cast? I've got on the bar, so if you
• 1:17:45
  want to try out, come here. I'm kidding, I.
• 1:17:48
  Think. No, it was lightly pitted and
• 1:17:54
  yeah, just delicious Bourbon. Younger, of course, but still
• 1:17:58
  just really nice to see Harris in that aspect.
• 1:18:02
  Of it, yeah. And so I guess this is, again,
• 1:18:05
  you know, maybe one of the benefits S and WS, where you're
• 1:18:07
  getting independently bottled stuff from distilleries like
• 1:18:10
  this maybe before you'd see it. Of course, because of the Yeah.
• 1:18:13
  But I think the point I was going back to actually, I just
• 1:18:16
  remembered about the educational side of things.
• 1:18:18
  And it's just like what you were saying about doing delivering
• 1:18:21
  your tastings and things. And when you when you look at
• 1:18:26
  the you're talking about your dad, I guess having a wee
• 1:18:29
  booklet that you'd have to take a little box and that'd be your
• 1:18:31
  bottles and stuff. But you know, there are so many
• 1:18:34
  other aspects to being a member other than just being able to
• 1:18:36
  turn up and visit different society venues or partner
• 1:18:40
  partner bars and things like that.
• 1:18:42
  You've also got the fact that you've got like newsletters
• 1:18:44
  coming out. You've got this sort of
• 1:18:45
  educational side event that is important.
• 1:18:47
  But I think because that's a bit that has opened us up through
• 1:18:50
  doing this, this podcast, the amount of people we've spoken
• 1:18:52
  to, we've been educated ourselves.
• 1:18:54
  And here we are right now. If you're going to me with the
• 1:18:57
  greatest respect a year ago, and I'm not just saying this, if you
• 1:18:59
  said to me a year ago by the SNWS, I probably would have just
• 1:19:02
  got that. Not for me, not for me.
• 1:19:04
  I prefer to see brands. I prefer to now actually the,
• 1:19:08
  the, you know, going into a bar and being able to just look at a
• 1:19:11
  back bar and saying to somebody who knows, I'm just saying,
• 1:19:13
  look, challenge me tonight. I like this, like that.
• 1:19:16
  And you'll have your regulars where you'll know if, if a
• 1:19:18
  regular walks in, you'll know, I know exactly the type of whiskey
• 1:19:21
  that they like. So I'll be able to get in that.
• 1:19:22
  But you'll also be able to maybe say, actually, do I try
• 1:19:25
  something that could be on your street, but a little bit to the
• 1:19:28
  right instead of, you know, straight down the middle.
• 1:19:31
  And that that must be really, really pleasing to do very
• 1:19:34
  quickly because we are I'm conscious of time here.
• 1:19:36
  A couple of things here. Number one, we talked to Simon
• 1:19:39
  Smith the first time, most we had an episode out in December,
• 1:19:44
  but the first time we did Simon Smith, he talked about curating
• 1:19:46
  a bar and he talked about how he sets the bar up.
• 1:19:49
  Now, what you'll tend to see when you go into most bars is
• 1:19:51
  you'll see it structured in a way where it's like lowlands,
• 1:19:54
  Highlands, base size, peated eyelids, islands and stuff like
• 1:19:57
  that. But he was talking about when he
• 1:19:59
  curated the bar at the Inveraria Hotel was it was Inveraria
• 1:20:02
  Hotel. It's like a sliding scale where
• 1:20:04
  it's like cherries or that it was like cherries to bourbon and
• 1:20:11
  you know, sweetness to Pete and it's sort of scale of that.
• 1:20:14
  So you would actually, if you were to look at the bar, you'd
• 1:20:16
  go, why the hell have they got Isle of Whiskey all the way up
• 1:20:20
  there, but the other Isle of Whiskey's all the way down
• 1:20:22
  there. How do you guys?
• 1:20:24
  Structure of the back bar then in terms of making it easy for
• 1:20:27
  the staff and knowing where everything is.
• 1:20:31
  Yeah, it's a lot. Because to anyone who's been in
• 1:20:34
  any of the venues, you go to the bars and it is just a wall of
• 1:20:36
  whiskey facing you and you go. That's a lot of booze.
• 1:20:41
  And because it's all that iconic bottle and we're talking about,
• 1:20:44
  it all looks the same. Yeah, effectively from.
• 1:20:46
  It all looks, it's all in the same bottle shape.
• 1:20:49
  It's, you know, for the most part the same style of labels as
• 1:20:53
  we discussed. You know, some are white labels,
• 1:20:55
  some are black, and then some are pictured and those can
• 1:21:00
  relate to the Heresy ranges or to specific special releases
• 1:21:04
  we've done. But in terms of actually
• 1:21:06
  organising the bars, they are primarily organised numerically
• 1:21:10
  by the cast members. All right.
• 1:21:12
  So at least for here in Queen St., it starts, our bottom left
• 1:21:16
  is sort of number 12345678910 and so on and so forth with
• 1:21:21
  things like our vaults collections peeled away and
• 1:21:24
  stored separately on their own shelf and on by gain ordered
• 1:21:27
  numerically there, but they're not sort of filtered in with
• 1:21:29
  everything else. So what are the vaults
• 1:21:31
  collections? Because this is something I've
• 1:21:33
  heard about in relation to SND people have, you know, it's just
• 1:21:36
  one of these things I've heard people said, oh, the vaults
• 1:21:37
  collections, the vaults collections.
• 1:21:40
  What? What is the Vaults?
• 1:21:41
  The Vaults collections are as I put them at the they are the
• 1:21:46
  finest casks hand selected from our warehouses from some of the
• 1:21:51
  finest and at times the rarest distilleries.
• 1:21:55
  So the average sort of, you know, anywhere between 27 to
• 1:21:59
  3530 to 35 years old, that's where you'll see a lot of your
• 1:22:04
  really old Mcallen's spring banks, things like old
• 1:22:09
  distilleries. As.
• 1:22:10
  Well, yeah, Capodonics we've released quite a few times, but
• 1:22:15
  of course closed and now demolished Spaceside Distillery.
• 1:22:19
  You'll see the likes of we've got a beautiful 32 year old Ben
• 1:22:24
  Riak on the bar just now, some phenomenal bottlings and within
• 1:22:29
  the Vaults collection, but they do come at a heavy.
• 1:22:32
  Price. Tag to match?
• 1:22:33
  Yeah, it's a price tag that I feel matches the quality of the
• 1:22:37
  Age of the Spirit itself. Sure.
• 1:22:39
  Well, I'll tell you what. I'm this this is my favorite of
• 1:22:42
  the night. Yeah.
• 1:22:43
  It's an absolute bang. Thank you so much for that.
• 1:22:45
  Yeah. Well selected and I.
• 1:22:47
  Think it's water very well with the sherbet, you know, it's it's
• 1:22:50
  one of the ones. What was the?
• 1:22:51
  What was the naming of it? Seaside sherbet.
• 1:22:54
  It it it it very, very rarely. And I'm we, we've coined them.
• 1:22:59
  I don't think SNWS would agree, but we've coined them.
• 1:23:03
  Wanky tasting notes in the podcast.
• 1:23:05
  We are not the SNWS 1 specifically, but I attended.
• 1:23:09
  Seaside sherbet so you're going to go down at Kirkcaldy promo at
• 1:23:12
  the weekend where? Sherbet did.
• 1:23:14
  No, I'm getting that's the thing.
• 1:23:16
  I'm getting that yeah, right. The last question I want to ask
• 1:23:19
  me, you mentioned earlier on about this drag situation there
• 1:23:23
  sounds absolutely fantastic. The SMWS Angus has mentioned
• 1:23:27
  about this sort of stuffiness and, you know, it's a society
• 1:23:31
  and it's a closed society. And we also, we've talked a lot
• 1:23:33
  about the, the sort of diversity within the the whiskey industry.
• 1:23:37
  Yeah. And, and the importance of it,
• 1:23:40
  We, we, we've had females talking openly about the, the,
• 1:23:43
  the challenges in there. You're mentioning that yourself
• 1:23:45
  as part of the LGBTQ community as well, which is really, really
• 1:23:49
  important. Talk me through this drag thing.
• 1:23:51
  And also what are you dressing up as?
• 1:23:55
  What Angus and I what's? Graham's drag name gonna be.
• 1:23:59
  Drag us up here because I want to get in the dragon drag.
• 1:24:03
  So contrary to popular belief is not myself or any of the guests
• 1:24:09
  that get into drag. No, I did have quite a few
• 1:24:12
  people turn off and go, Andrew, you're not in drag, what the
• 1:24:15
  hell, what have you done? And I'm like, no, I think this
• 1:24:18
  is skinny enough at the time. No.
• 1:24:22
  So we do get a local drag artist that comes in and they'll
• 1:24:25
  perform alongside myself on the team as we do the tasting.
• 1:24:29
  But it I suggested it because the society is actually, it's as
• 1:24:35
  a company, very inclusive. It's extremely progressive in
• 1:24:39
  those regards. They've been amazing for myself
• 1:24:43
  and in accepting me as someone within the LGBTQ who works
• 1:24:48
  within the whiskey industry. And whiskey still gets a
• 1:24:52
  reputation as you'll know yourselves for being sort of a
• 1:24:55
  stuffy old man's drink. But I wanted to sort of put that
• 1:25:00
  event forward as a way to show people that it's not just that,
• 1:25:03
  that the industry is not just that, but also the society is
• 1:25:07
  not just that. That as I said, we are open to
• 1:25:10
  everyone. Everybody is welcome here.
• 1:25:13
  And you know, I want people to know that our venues, the
• 1:25:18
  society and with the whiskey industry as a whole is and
• 1:25:22
  should be a safe space for, you know, LGBTQ people and also of
• 1:25:28
  course, for women. There's so many amazing women
• 1:25:30
  that work in this industry. I am very, very honoured and
• 1:25:35
  blessed to work alongside some fantastic women within this
• 1:25:38
  company and also within this venue who are consistently
• 1:25:43
  inspiring me more and more every day to be my true authentic
• 1:25:48
  self. Because because you see you,
• 1:25:53
  there are still moments where you get people that come in and
• 1:25:56
  not so much you're in the society.
• 1:25:58
  But like when I worked in the Almanac, there's people that
• 1:26:00
  come in and go Oh no no, I want him to serve me.
• 1:26:03
  Because they didn't think that my female Co worker could
• 1:26:07
  request or recommend any whiskey.
• 1:26:12
  As I mentioned, a colleague of mine from when I was there, her
• 1:26:15
  name was Julia. She was a fountain of knowledge,
• 1:26:17
  knew so much and was not to be messed with.
• 1:26:20
  And but there was still moments where you know, I would hear
• 1:26:26
  that. And then I'm just like, well,
• 1:26:28
  hold up because she knows 10 times more than I do.
• 1:26:30
  There's and I will openly admit there are, there are people,
• 1:26:34
  there are women in this industry.
• 1:26:35
  There are other people within this industry who do know more
• 1:26:38
  than me. There will always be someone who
• 1:26:40
  knows more than you. The big caveat is to make sure
• 1:26:44
  that you always want to learn and especially learn from
• 1:26:48
  someone and take on that wealth of knowledge regardless of their
• 1:26:52
  gender or sexual orientation or any of those factors.
• 1:26:56
  One of our team here, Nicola, she is phenomenal.
• 1:26:59
  Again, a fountain of knowledge and she quite frequently runs
• 1:27:03
  tastings for us. He or she helps out a lot with
• 1:27:06
  the events and things as well. And she's a like, just an
• 1:27:11
  inspiration for me on a note as a friend and seeing her do these
• 1:27:17
  things and share her knowledge with the world.
• 1:27:19
  But also on note as someone who is a minority within the
• 1:27:23
  industry, to say like, you know, I am a gay man that works in
• 1:27:27
  this industry that, you know, whether you want to put it any
• 1:27:32
  other way is a minority. And to see people still going,
• 1:27:35
  well, no, I still know my stuff. And you're going to listen and
• 1:27:38
  I'm going to teach you these things and you're going to love
• 1:27:40
  it. And you will.
• 1:27:41
  And you do. And it's like for me with the
• 1:27:44
  drag tastings, that was my whole yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm gay, you
• 1:27:48
  know, But that doesn't form my whole personality.
• 1:27:51
  Does them for my own identity. Just because I feel that way, it
• 1:27:55
  doesn't mean that I don't know stuff about whiskey.
• 1:27:58
  Let me show you what I know. Let me share these.
• 1:28:01
  Things with you as well. I'm with it I.
• 1:28:05
  Bet your lipstick smudge. I just came prepared.
• 1:28:10
  But no, I mean, that sounds absolutely fantastic and I'd
• 1:28:12
  love to come along and see something like that.
• 1:28:14
  But we are fast approaching the, the sort of final area of our,
• 1:28:18
  our, our podcast where we do ask our guests for their what, 3
• 1:28:20
  drams? So Andrew now, well, we always,
• 1:28:24
  we always allow you could at least go one on brand if you
• 1:28:26
  wanted to. We are looking for sponsorship
• 1:28:29
  if anyone yeah is this thing or if anyone at Artisanal Spirits
• 1:28:34
  company has enjoyed this so much let's slap our name on it.
• 1:28:37
  A couple 100,000 lbs maybe able to do that but no Andrew for
• 1:28:41
  yourself. Any 3 whiskeys that have any
• 1:28:42
  story or meaning towards them? What's your drama #1?
• 1:28:47
  OK, first stop time to 12. That's a that's a drama after
• 1:28:54
  Graham's heart. Whiskey.
• 1:28:56
  That got me into whiskey. Just good.
• 1:29:00
  So delicious. I've had some time dues from
• 1:29:02
  ourselves recently again. Phenomenal Glenfiddich Grand
• 1:29:09
  crew 21 year old. Your second one, second one.
• 1:29:13
  So for your time to 12 going back, is there a particular
• 1:29:15
  story or anything associated or is it just was?
• 1:29:18
  When it was the whiskey that got me into whiskey, as I said.
• 1:29:22
  Was it was bought yourself? Oh yeah.
• 1:29:25
  I bought and continued to buy, Yeah, but it was a DRAM on the
• 1:29:29
  bar, back bar, the Altmac that I had.
• 1:29:33
  And I and this was when I was just kind of, you know, I wanted
• 1:29:36
  to learn more about whiskey. I was trying to learn and, you
• 1:29:38
  know, force myself to drink more and more of it, really get into
• 1:29:41
  it. And then I had this.
• 1:29:42
  I went, OK, I'm sold. Yeah.
• 1:29:44
  And then from there, my palate developed over time.
• 1:29:46
  And, you know, I've been to Iowa, Camel Tire and Space side
• 1:29:49
  over to learn more and more and more.
• 1:29:51
  Have you? Been to time do this.
• 1:29:54
  So when I went to space site, I, I went up with my parents
• 1:29:58
  because they did the whole family bonding.
• 1:30:01
  We, we could do this now and I'm like, cool, but you guys are
• 1:30:03
  driving and I'm drinking as much whiskey as possible.
• 1:30:07
  And I made them drive me to as many distilleries were in space
• 1:30:11
  site as possible. And there was quite a lot of
• 1:30:13
  occasions where you sort of drive up to the gates and go.
• 1:30:16
  This isn't open to the public weekend.
• 1:30:18
  And Tandu was one of those. Have you had to go up during the
• 1:30:21
  Space Side Whiskey festival? We're.
• 1:30:22
  Desperate for our to our big show to Dana Crombie, actually.
• 1:30:27
  Who? Oh yeah, she's somebody I know
• 1:30:29
  quite well, actually. Yeah.
• 1:30:31
  So she's. Been along to our one of our.
• 1:30:33
  Indie ball and well, experience. As well and I think.
• 1:30:36
  She she could probably Wang us a week trip.
• 1:30:38
  She listens there. So yeah, we definitely get that.
• 1:30:40
  But you go back to Tandu, you talk about, you know, we had
• 1:30:45
  Mike Brown. Yeah.
• 1:30:48
  He talked about how he said, you know, Tam Do, it was owned by
• 1:30:53
  Edgington. And it was like McAllen was the
• 1:30:56
  show pony, but Tam Do was the workhorse.
• 1:30:58
  And he talked about how, you know, when the guys at Ian
• 1:31:01
  McLeod, you know, looked at purchasing Tam Do they went,
• 1:31:04
  they looked at the distillery and thought, well, it's a bit a
• 1:31:07
  bit of rough around the edges, a bit of a work in distillery.
• 1:31:10
  But it was also the stock of inventory that they they already
• 1:31:13
  had kid in a candy shop stuff When you walk into their
• 1:31:15
  warehouse and you look at what they've got.
• 1:31:17
  And of course, you know, I've, I've seen it first hand.
• 1:31:20
  Fraser Soon as working as magic down at the down at Scotch at
• 1:31:26
  the Balmoral. And, you know, an American
• 1:31:29
  tourist who stayed in Edinburgh comes in first thing.
• 1:31:32
  Fraser. Good evening, Sir.
• 1:31:34
  Can I help you? Yeah, I'm looking for a Scotch
• 1:31:37
  whiskey. Well, you've come.
• 1:31:38
  You've come in the right place. And he said, what do you
• 1:31:41
  normally like? And he said, I like Macallan.
• 1:31:44
  You're like, well, here we go. The Americans walked in a Scotch
• 1:31:46
  basket. Scotch Frisky says he likes
• 1:31:47
  Macallan. He says, well, I'll tell you
• 1:31:49
  what time do 12 straight off the bat.
• 1:31:51
  Yeah, try that. And you can't go wrong with
• 1:31:53
  that. And.
• 1:31:54
  Yeah, Time do is terrific. I think.
• 1:31:56
  I think as well, Graham, after we had Mike Brown on maybe the
• 1:31:58
  second time, I think it was, I think the two podcasts after
• 1:32:01
  that are Tam, Do 18. It was just.
• 1:32:04
  But the thing about I love about it's a bit of a a tiny flex as
• 1:32:08
  such, is that you do get a lot of people with having done the
• 1:32:11
  podcast now for over a year, and there's a few people that say,
• 1:32:14
  Oh, you guys don't know your whiskies.
• 1:32:15
  And I start and I say I hate it when people say, Oh, you know
• 1:32:18
  what, what should I drink? What should I drink?
• 1:32:20
  Tammy is a great one because it's not a very well known
• 1:32:22
  whiskey outside of people who drink the whiskey whiskey.
• 1:32:25
  So if you as somebody who likes a whiskey, but they've net they
• 1:32:28
  will make, there's a good chance.
• 1:32:29
  Never have a Tam do and it's a cracker where you can say are we
• 1:32:32
  drama rest? And you know that if they like
• 1:32:34
  the standard whiskey, if that's a flavour profile, nine times
• 1:32:37
  out of 10, it takes every single box of whiskey drinker.
• 1:32:40
  And it's a great, as you said, entry level DRAM, but it's just
• 1:32:43
  a great DRAM and DRAM it's. Just a fantastic DRAM, yeah.
• 1:32:48
  And then? So #2 we're on the Glenfeddrum
• 1:32:51
  crew. Grand Crew it is, I would say
• 1:32:54
  one of my happy drams, OK, It's, you know, if I'm having, you
• 1:32:58
  know, a good day, a bad day, anything.
• 1:33:01
  I walk into a bar and they've got that, I'm ordering one.
• 1:33:03
  It's just superb. And then, and I'm giving you,
• 1:33:08
  I'm giving you 33 commercial releases, 3 SMWS releases, by
• 1:33:11
  the way, all right. OK, So what sex drafts?
• 1:33:14
  Sex through you we're. Coming along your job and we're
• 1:33:19
  and we're putting all. That oh, absolutely.
• 1:33:22
  And then #3 would have to be Spring Bank.
• 1:33:26
  OK, Spring Bank any? Particular.
• 1:33:29
  It's gone ass and somewhere like you've got a cage ball.
• 1:33:34
  It was. So I was in Campbell down
• 1:33:36
  recently and I went and did the spring bank bottle to barley
• 1:33:42
  tour. Anyone that hasn't done it would
• 1:33:44
  recommend? So is this is this?
• 1:33:48
  Your own blend of Spring Bank, it's phenomenal.
• 1:33:52
  And at the end of it, I went up and I bought myself a cage
• 1:33:55
  bottle and it was a Spring Bank in Firstville PX.
• 1:34:01
  And I would say that's my #3 because it just holds a lot of
• 1:34:03
  good memories to it. You know, whiskey can also be so
• 1:34:06
  nostalgic and bring back a lot of those memories.
• 1:34:08
  And for me, every time I have that DRAM, I remember being in
• 1:34:11
  Campbelltown. Yeah, you know, I went down with
• 1:34:14
  my dad and actually, believe it or not, Danny Dyer.
• 1:34:17
  Yeah. Oh yeah, you.
• 1:34:18
  Went down with it. You came down with us and we
• 1:34:19
  went on Spring Bank and you know, we were just like kids in
• 1:34:22
  a candy shop. Like Oh my God, look at the.
• 1:34:24
  Post definitely try. We need to try and.
• 1:34:26
  Get out to Camel to. Anyone at SMW, anyone at Spring
• 1:34:29
  Bank listen wants to pay for that.
• 1:34:33
  And Glenn Scotia was also amazing, team were fantastic.
• 1:34:37
  And you know, this drama is no exception.
• 1:34:40
  Right. So we're going to give you SMWS,
• 1:34:42
  what, 3 drafts? SMWS OK.
• 1:34:46
  Three on brand. OK, first one is a CLEA 53476
• 1:34:58
  and that was the stop the Clocks.
• 1:35:01
  Is this year's venue exclusive for Queen St.
• 1:35:04
  So you can only get it here. I can only get it here as I
• 1:35:07
  said, like drabs of it. Yeah, I was like make sure it's
• 1:35:13
  not, I've not just quoted the other bulk of there so.
• 1:35:16
  There's a stop the clocks, it's called so.
• 1:35:17
  It's called Stop the Clocks and it was was past tense.
• 1:35:22
  We have since sold out and sold out on the bars, but it was a
• 1:35:25
  Kalila 12 year old 1st 10 years spent in bourbon.
• 1:35:30
  The last two years were in all Rosso.
• 1:35:32
  But it was super dark and it was delicious.
• 1:35:36
  Fantastic, beautiful balance of Pete and Sherry sweetness,
• 1:35:39
  country that beat and still getting a really well balanced,
• 1:35:42
  well-rounded drum from it. Very happy with it.
• 1:35:46
  Following on from that, I would have to say it was the Negroni
• 1:35:50
  riff it was called. It's Blairathol, so distillery
• 1:35:55
  68 and and I say this ball because again, actual is a lot
• 1:36:01
  of sentimentality for me. The first tasting I ever did for
• 1:36:05
  the society wasn't weekly tasting.
• 1:36:09
  It wasn't just a, you know, small private tasting.
• 1:36:11
  It was for a wedding. Oh.
• 1:36:13
  Yeah, so 2 very good friends of mine, Ben and Kat, they actually
• 1:36:18
  got married at the vaults and when they were getting married
• 1:36:21
  they specifically requested that I host and run the wedding for
• 1:36:26
  them on terms of the society side of things running service,
• 1:36:30
  but then of but then also that I run their wedding tasting.
• 1:36:34
  So I did. And was that tasting with a meal
• 1:36:37
  and like. There's a full tasting
• 1:36:39
  apparently that was phenomenal. And yeah, it was.
• 1:36:43
  Just how many people show? It was in the vault, it was only
• 1:36:47
  10 of them because they wanted something very small.
• 1:36:49
  But in Queen St., we can do it. I managed to get something
• 1:36:51
  smaller. Yeah, but in Queen St. we can do
• 1:36:56
  events, up to 40 people for all manner things.
• 1:36:59
  We do private dinners, tastings, pairings.
• 1:37:02
  We do events, canopies, champagnes.
• 1:37:06
  We do a taster menu which is £120, six courses and five of
• 1:37:11
  those courses are paired with whiskey.
• 1:37:13
  That sounds great. And all the food is made from
• 1:37:16
  scratch, fresh and house fire chefs.
• 1:37:17
  It is phenomenal. But yeah, and that would be #2
• 1:37:23
  because it holds up a good place, you know, brings me back
• 1:37:25
  to those memories. And I actually at the end of the
• 1:37:27
  taste and gifted Ben and cat bottle of the Negroni red.
• 1:37:33
  And then I would say #1 DRAM for me is an inch Marin.
• 1:37:37
  So to study 112 it was called Vinda custard.
• 1:37:41
  And this is a story I often tell it.
• 1:37:43
  Tastings by people note to me that.
• 1:37:45
  Was it called? Sorry.
• 1:37:46
  Vinda Custard. Vinda Custard.
• 1:37:49
  It was an inch Marin initial matured in bourbon, extra
• 1:37:52
  matured in HTMC. HTMC.
• 1:37:56
  Heavy toast, medium char cast. There.
• 1:37:59
  He is for the abbreviation. Ross would have been
• 1:38:02
  straightened or Ross would Ross would not have allowed you to
• 1:38:05
  answer that question. Are you for the HTMC?
• 1:38:08
  And before you even start Ross with that heavy toast, what was?
• 1:38:12
  That heavy toast Medium. Toast medium char.
• 1:38:15
  And it genuinely smelled and tasted as if you've taken a
• 1:38:21
  fresh vanilla vanilla bean bought and just scraped off the
• 1:38:24
  inside and put it into liquid form in a drum.
• 1:38:27
  It was superb. But it also reminded me a lot of
• 1:38:30
  like custard as well. It had a lot of that aspect to
• 1:38:33
  it. And you just reminded me of a
• 1:38:34
  story when I was a kid of me and my brother being gifted like the
• 1:38:38
  little ambrosia snap pots of the custard.
• 1:38:40
  And we went into the living room and me and him just looked at
• 1:38:42
  each other. And by the way, heavily neuro
• 1:38:45
  spicy ADHD to hell. And he's autistic to hell.
• 1:38:47
  So we both started to look at each other, gave each other that
• 1:38:50
  wee devilish Wick and went, it's been sitting in the pot for a
• 1:38:53
  while. We need to just give it a wee
• 1:38:54
  shake. It'll be fine.
• 1:38:55
  So we we stood there in the living room and we just shook
• 1:38:58
  the pots for a bit. And then we got kind of like
• 1:39:01
  lost in that action. And then and then all of a
• 1:39:04
  sudden, the little film lid didn't hold out and the cluster
• 1:39:08
  went everywhere. I'm talking, it was on the roof,
• 1:39:13
  it was on the sofa, it was behind the, it was on the wall,
• 1:39:16
  it was on the TV. And worst of all, it was on the
• 1:39:20
  dog. But it was on the dog.
• 1:39:22
  The dog at all? No.
• 1:39:24
  No, no, the worst it was, it was on the dog's arse.
• 1:39:27
  So it was the dog was chasing. It's on that, Yeah.
• 1:39:34
  He's just to say I've never seen steam come about.
• 1:39:36
  That's years faster. So yeah, that was the day that
• 1:39:41
  my brother and I learned truth here.
• 1:39:43
  There we go, the dogs there's while we finish it.
• 1:39:47
  Well, listen, Andrea, thank you so much for having us.
• 1:39:49
  Thank you so much for the drafts.
• 1:39:50
  But more importantly, thanks a lot for your whiskey stories.
• 1:39:52
  It's been absolutely fantastic. It's been great, great hearing
• 1:39:55
  them. How could people find out a
• 1:39:57
  little bit more about yourself or about the the the Scotch malt
• 1:40:00
  whiskey? Society yeah, So you can find
• 1:40:02
  out a bit more about the society, about Queen St. myself
• 1:40:06
  through smws.com. It's our website and and then
• 1:40:10
  you are, as I said, more than welcome to come down and visit
• 1:40:12
  the venue and visitors in the Cloudscope Bar.
• 1:40:15
  If you are a member, please come visit us in the Members Room
• 1:40:18
  and. Of course Whiskey Story is
• 1:40:20
  podcast, that's all. Get a free membership.
• 1:40:21
  I think that's what we agreed before.
• 1:40:28
  And yeah, and then just in regards to myself, I'm always
• 1:40:32
  here. So please come in, come say hi,
• 1:40:35
  come greet myself and you know, let's talk whiskey.
• 1:40:38
  Tell me what sort of things you like, tell me what you're
• 1:40:40
  looking for, and I'll be more than happy to find your drama
• 1:40:43
  for Bar Bar. And if you want to see a couple
• 1:40:45
  of hot heavies and wigs and lippy Angus and I'll be every
• 1:40:49
  second sound. Well, it's fun of mine season as
• 1:40:52
  we're recording, I think the dress.
• 1:40:53
  Is the warmer fact. Like every second Saturday we
• 1:40:56
  will just turn up for a steak and five drums.
• 1:41:01
  Delicious. We'll, we'll put our high heels
• 1:41:03
  on Kinky Boots. That'll be great.
• 1:41:04
  But listen, thank you so much for coming for for hosting us.
• 1:41:08
  Thanks for thanks for the drama. It's been fantastic.
• 1:41:09
  You've been listening to the Whiskey stories podcast here at
• 1:41:12
  the Scotch Malt Whiskey Society in Queen St. been great.
• 1:41:15
  We've been in the library room. I haven't been quiet.
• 1:41:16
  I haven't been told it SH no yeah, you know, but it's been
• 1:41:19
  great. Don't forget to keep following
• 1:41:21
  us with the YouTube channel is growing and growing and growing.
• 1:41:24
  It's been it's been great. We've got this brilliant
• 1:41:25
  community on the Whiskey Stories Facebook page.
• 1:41:29
  Your. Friday night.
• 1:41:30
  Friday night. What's your DRAM roll call
• 1:41:32
  weekend DRAM roll call. Fantastic.
• 1:41:34
  I love on, on a Monday when I'm feeling really miserable, back
• 1:41:38
  to the beginning of a week, just scrolling through and just
• 1:41:40
  seeing what everybody's been drinking.
• 1:41:42
  And what's great is sometimes if you see maybe a connection
• 1:41:45
  through, oh, someone's opened that.
• 1:41:47
  I think in a recent one it was a scalper bottle I guess.
• 1:41:50
  That's right. Yeah.
• 1:41:51
  And I, I didn't have the exact same bottle, but a very similar.
• 1:41:54
  Yeah, Glen. Gear.
• 1:41:55
  Or David Line, similar exclusive scalper.
• 1:41:58
  Big shout that David Line loves is Glen Geary and I just want a
• 1:42:02
  community. We've got the YouTube channel
• 1:42:03
  growing. You can watch these episodes
• 1:42:06
  because as I've said before, the, the, the metrics tell us
• 1:42:10
  that more people are watching us on their tellies on the YouTube
• 1:42:13
  channel. So I just love the idea of sit
• 1:42:16
  down, pour yourself a drama too, and just sit and watch us talk
• 1:42:19
  absolutely nonsense with somebody who knows what they're
• 1:42:21
  what they're talking about. As well as that, you know, we
• 1:42:24
  think we still have, there may be a few bottles of our, of our,
• 1:42:28
  of our whiskey, I guess. Yeah, it's going faster.
• 1:42:32
  Well, there's less than half the bottles left, so there may may
• 1:42:35
  still be some available for you to get if you're doing dry
• 1:42:38
  January. Why are you doing it?
• 1:42:43
  Just stop and get yourselves into some whiskey.
• 1:42:45
  But listen, thank you so much. Thanks very much.
• 1:42:46
  All the very best and have a great 2025 for everyone.
• 1:42:50
  Slandra, cheers.