Latest / Whisky Stories Podcast / Whisky Stories Grand Tour Dornoch Episode 2 - Dornoch Distillery and HUGE plans

Transcript

Whisky Stories Grand Tour Dornoch Episode 2 - Dornoch Distillery and HUGE plans · Whisky Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Previously on the Whiskey Stories podcast you just
• 0:07
  finished recording. This is a post recording
• 0:11
  impromptu. Drink this.
• 0:13
  Is like a. This is like a reward for
• 0:15
  getting all the way up to. Donna.
• 0:17
  This is that was fantastic, Great, great first episode.
• 0:20
  This is what's at the end of a long day.
• 0:22
  So we're Dangus and I are having a 20 year old Alta Vanya.
• 0:26
  Which I'm about to take. Peter the run, Peter, that's the
• 0:29
  question. Could you do me a favour and?
• 0:30
  I think unbeaten. I don't think there's also
• 0:34
  another fantastic thing, at least I'm not into any.
• 0:37
  Teamwork on that one, I'll join you in a wee bit.
• 0:40
  Yeah, because I think it's 50% unbeaten malt, 50% unbeaten
• 0:43
  malt. So this is unbeaten.
• 0:44
  It's it. It smells unbeaten to me.
• 0:46
  And it was 40. 9. .1 and this was 1996 and then had four years
• 0:55
  in an all of those with Bob's head all.
• 0:57
  Right, let's see what I'm just going to need a couple of
• 1:01
  things. That's sensational.
• 1:02
  I also. Meant to ask you, but your
• 1:04
  favorite Thompson pros was. That the could I could I get
• 1:07
  something? Are we drawn your glasses?
• 1:09
  I don't know. Just any I'll do.
• 1:10
  I think I'll clean out. Have you had any kind of soup?
• 1:13
  Why don't you have the same as? This I think I had Kanasuki.
• 1:19
  Right, we're all on the author venue.
• 1:21
  Why not let's we can all talk about it.
• 1:24
  I'll put right in this side. You'll enjoy that.
• 1:27
  I suppose I didn't say my mine. The the Thompson was have done
• 1:31
  some phenomenal really good like well, I've.
• 1:35
  Been 32. Yeah, that's what I'm just going
• 1:37
  to mention. Yeah, they, I think it was
• 1:39
  either 31 or 3230. One or 30.
• 1:41
  One, yeah, I managed to, I sent a bunch of samples.
• 1:45
  So Tom Vinson have mentioned the podcast before moved to
• 1:47
  Melbourne yeah and I gave him some parcels of minis to drop
• 1:52
  off at bars and I think sent about, you know, 100 and 5200
• 1:57
  miles of that 31 year old Gervin from Thompson Brothers to them.
• 2:00
  Because I just thought it was like fantastic showcase of well
• 2:04
  matured and well bottled like grain I.
• 2:07
  Mean we've made I can't it's it's a bit surreal that we've
• 2:10
  it's right. It's only, it's only 5:00 on a
• 2:12
  Friday after we've done, we've done it distillery.
• 2:14
  We're on 2 as well. We've done 2.
• 2:16
  Recordings 2 podcasts for a bacon roll.
• 2:18
  Yeah. I've.
• 2:23
  Had more Percy pigs than you guys.
• 2:26
  You refuse the Percy pigs. I'm not really a fan of Percy
• 2:28
  Pigs from my. I wouldn't get you something
• 2:30
  else. I don't know.
• 2:31
  I wanted the real Percy Pig, which is the bacon roll.
• 2:34
  I Yeah, but. We're all gonna be Thompson,
• 2:37
  bro. Altovania, 1996.
• 2:39
  Well, we've had some really cool drams.
• 2:41
  We all had a wee taste of the spring.
• 2:42
  Like 1950. Nineteen. 40.
• 2:45
  Bottled in like 1950 to 1978. Absolutely ridiculous.
• 2:50
  Insane. That's liquid that people would
• 2:51
  fly around the world for, you know?
• 2:54
  We just had to drive up there. I don't know you.
• 2:58
  I was really impressed with the art in American Donna.
• 3:00
  Splendid model, that was. Yeah, that was lovely.
• 3:02
  They are. I'll need to retaste that
• 3:04
  because I I had it in Chichibi when they had their stall there.
• 3:08
  Yeah, but you? Literally did fly halfway around
• 3:10
  the world. For that, they were like one of
• 3:12
  those stalls I was most excited to go to.
• 3:15
  Tomorrow, tomorrow we didn't want to, I didn't want to talk
• 3:18
  too much whilst they were there. But tomorrow we are going to, we
• 3:21
  are going to see the distillery. I mean, we we could, we could do
• 3:24
  it right now. We could go outside in the
• 3:25
  backyard. We've done it already.
• 3:26
  We've seen the yeah, but I'm really looking forward to seeing
• 3:29
  the the distillery that they talked about, but also
• 3:31
  absolutely the plans that they've got for Stray and I
• 3:33
  think that's I'm. Looking forward to for you guys
• 3:36
  seeing their warehouse, it's it's just amazing garage.
• 3:39
  It's just. Nice.
• 3:41
  And yeah, you know, it's been our first ever whiskey stories
• 3:44
  road trip. That's right.
• 3:45
  I mean, it's gonna be a tough one to be.
• 3:48
  Yeah. You're excited to find out about
• 3:50
  the distillery. What?
• 3:51
  The plan are what what it's going to be like, what it
• 3:54
  compares to in terms of where it will sit in the whiskey world,
• 3:57
  all that sort of and. I'll also say we've all
• 4:00
  travelled all over the world, the hospitality we felt since we
• 4:03
  got here as. Well, and actually I've just
• 4:06
  nipped up to the to the bar and it's very, very that reminder.
• 4:12
  Have another drum, but I've just, I've just been up to, it's
• 4:17
  very busy now in the bar. Yeah.
• 4:19
  So there's a lot of people coming in 5:00 now.
• 4:22
  But yeah, it's been great. It's been a great day.
• 4:24
  It's been a really good whiskey day.
• 4:25
  But hearing the guys stories is fantastic.
• 4:28
  And I'm really looking forward to like what we're going to be
• 4:30
  looking, looking at tomorrow. Yeah.
• 4:32
  Well, we've still got these drums to get through because he
• 4:35
  just said, just said, look, this is our room for the night.
• 4:38
  We'll just fill up full of whiskey for you.
• 4:40
  I think we should definitely try well a couple of it's.
• 4:44
  Something I didn't want to admit to them on the pod is I've never
• 4:46
  actually tried anything produced by the door.
• 4:48
  No, it's not about. Experience it's it's a hard it's
• 4:51
  hard like I mean, just looking at these, but one of 89 how many
• 4:56
  well. Yeah.
• 4:57
  And also these are both like sample bottles because this is
• 4:59
  the four that was just probably the last 400 miles, right?
• 5:03
  Yeah. So that's why it's been.
• 5:04
  So they've actually scored out 50 CL.
• 5:06
  Yes, what? He was the same.
• 5:08
  It's obviously the last of it so they put it in samples.
• 5:10
  I had no idea but the error 502 was because their site was
• 5:14
  crafted. Yeah, I didn't.
• 5:14
  I'm. So glad you asked.
• 5:16
  That right, yeah, they've been like the bottles that for some
• 5:18
  reason that I've always I entered the ballots in so many
• 5:21
  times. I actually so I entered one of
• 5:25
  the doughnut, I entered most of the doughnut bottle of ballots
• 5:28
  even when I'm like I really can't afford it 11 once.
• 5:32
  When you've been having cash flow problems.
• 5:34
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, when the spreadsheets look
• 5:36
  at Grimm, Yeah, absolutely. 11 once.
• 5:40
  And then like went to like get it delivered and nothing
• 5:42
  happened. So I called them up and they
• 5:44
  said, oh, there was an issue with the ballot system.
• 5:47
  It said everyone What? No.
• 5:52
  I've never actually entered that ballot for a bottle.
• 5:54
  I don't know, yeah. But I I have you have over over
• 5:58
  ordered on an auction before. I've absolutely done that.
• 6:00
  But what I would say though is that, and it's interesting you
• 6:03
  made that point, Ross, is the fact that like the only reason
• 6:08
  Daft Mill really flew up on my radar.
• 6:12
  Is because people said it was. The 15 year old ballot and it
• 6:16
  was basically it just popped up on like my thank you.
• 6:18
  It popped up on my, yeah, Instagram feed or Facebook feed
• 6:23
  or whatever it was at the time was like Fife whiskey that was
• 6:28
  like Fife distiller, like a sort of clip bait type thing.
• 6:32
  Like an article in Five today, something like, I was like an
• 6:35
  article about this Fife distillery and I was going, who
• 6:38
  the hell are these guys? And it was Daft Mill, never
• 6:40
  heard of them. Like what is Daft Mill?
• 6:42
  But all of a sudden I'm looking, I go how that, how on earth is
• 6:45
  this tiny little distillery that I've never heard of?
• 6:47
  Yeah, having over like 6-7 hundred people entering A ballot
• 6:51
  for, you know, less than 300 bottles.
• 6:54
  It was on their first age state. It was a 50, their first age
• 6:56
  statement bottle. And that was it.
• 6:58
  And that triggered the whole that basically thing for, we've
• 7:02
  talked about in the podcast before, but it really does show
• 7:04
  that there's a yeah, a. 100% like last Tuesday, your first
• 7:08
  taste of Dornoch. Yeah.
• 7:09
  And so we have a A7 year old just as some of the oldest stock
• 7:13
  they've they've ever had. I mean, the oldest stocks are 8
• 7:15
  years old now. That's right.
• 7:16
  I'm really looking forward to exploring it tomorrow.
• 7:18
  But made this is the. Old made in the shed outside.
• 7:20
  This is it made in the shed outside.
• 7:21
  This is the oldest Dornoch I've ever had.
• 7:23
  I've only ever seen fives. I've never really seen a. 100
• 7:25
  yards from where we are. Yeah, 58.5%.
• 7:28
  I also think, I mean we will obviously I don't.
• 7:33
  I'll let you guys talk about. Afraid on my street that.
• 7:35
  Yeah, the nose. This got you.
• 7:37
  Farmyardi. Yeah, that's very nice.
• 7:40
  Some people often say it's not a kind of funky saving note to it
• 7:43
  I. Really like that savory?
• 7:44
  I'd agree. Yeah, it is almost, it's almost
• 7:48
  a bit like kind of rye whiskey's I've had before that.
• 7:51
  Space. That far, Minister?
• 7:53
  Hey, I saw. I think Rye's a really good
• 7:55
  compared does have does have a space to it.
• 7:57
  It is like a rye whiskey. Lovely, isn't it, Tickety Boot?
• 8:01
  But yeah, I think it's an exciting project if you're
• 8:03
  getting involved to try and fundraise and stuff like that.
• 8:06
  And I know that there's a lot of distilleries that have done this
• 8:08
  in the past and had relative success out of it as well.
• 8:11
  Because if you see what cats it's been, they're maybe going
• 8:13
  to explain it. Does, but this doesn't.
• 8:16
  And maybe explain a little bit more tomorrow about it all.
• 8:18
  But like, you know, by getting involved, I think there's
• 8:20
  something really, really nice about we've seen it so many
• 8:23
  times getting involved at the ground level effectively by
• 8:25
  putting in and being becoming part of it.
• 8:27
  And one of the things that I really, really, really rate and
• 8:30
  admire about them is I've always thought when we've had Thompson
• 8:34
  Brothers and I've ordered it from Digger.
• 8:35
  So it's like it's exceptionally plot priced.
• 8:39
  Yeah, Yeah. You know, you're talking about
• 8:41
  345 pound of DRAM, 35 mils at the Diggers.
• 8:44
  So, you know, then it's it's it's a good place there.
• 8:46
  And you speak to them and you hear their story.
• 8:49
  And I think it's always about like, we just want the the the
• 8:53
  price of whiskey to be priced right for people in that.
• 8:55
  Yeah. And I think that's what's done.
• 8:57
  I mean, it's what you've heard from them, You know, throughout
• 9:01
  that podcast we just recorded, they talk about value.
• 9:03
  Yeah. Value is what they want to
• 9:05
  provide for their exporters, their consumers.
• 9:08
  And you know that that that's, you hear when they've had
• 9:11
  opportunities to buy this class, other casts and they passed up
• 9:15
  on it clearly because it's like, well, that's not something we're
• 9:17
  able to provide value. Yeah.
• 9:19
  And the interesting thing about as well, like talking about the
• 9:21
  price of casks that they've maybe paid that they just can't
• 9:24
  afford to put it into glass, which sounds ridiculous, but
• 9:27
  what you've got to think, I mean, it's just sounds so easy
• 9:28
  to think that I'll just stick up.
• 9:32
  I've got I've got a 15 year old single cask, whatever.
• 9:35
  I should just be able to put that in a bottle and it should
• 9:37
  sell at a price that is what I think it should be worth, which
• 9:42
  covers the cost and and making a bit of money on it.
• 9:44
  But the issue with that is in fact, it's like why?
• 9:48
  And we've talked about it so many times, why should I buy an
• 9:50
  independently bottled bottled whiskey that's maybe like from a
• 9:54
  certain distillery that's £30 forty pound more expensive than
• 9:58
  another one. Now there's an element of
• 10:01
  because it's an independently bowled bottle whiskey as a one
• 10:04
  off or 1 of 250. Balls.
• 10:06
  However, it's still within the independently bottled whiskey
• 10:09
  market. Might be just that little bit
• 10:12
  too expensive. Like what's a you look at like
• 10:15
  what Woody's maybe charging for an Aberliver 12 and you're
• 10:18
  saying that's that's that's more expensive than you would expect
• 10:20
  to pay for a standard Aberliver 12.
• 10:22
  But you're you're getting a single cast.
• 10:23
  Fine, Yeah. But if there's three or four
• 10:25
  different, there is a, there is a cap, isn't there what people
• 10:29
  watch? I mean, yeah, I think.
• 10:30
  Spring Bank's a really interesting one and obviously
• 10:32
  they mentioned that they've got like it's just too expensive.
• 10:35
  But you've seen, you know, you've seen 30 year old Spring
• 10:38
  Bank sell for £900 a ball and then you've seen another person
• 10:41
  do it for 450. Yeah.
• 10:43
  You know that is and that might just be when they acquired the
• 10:46
  cask and you know they matured it.
• 10:48
  It's a really interesting market and.
• 10:51
  I think these guys are in a position that they are, they are
• 10:53
  pretty much buying finished products as you asked about the
• 10:56
  yes, but they're buying cask. They find fault provoking.
• 10:59
  They think works for the brand. I think when I think the
• 11:01
  Thompson Bros, So where do we don't use in listing very often,
• 11:04
  but they're trendy, all right. They're the trendiest
• 11:08
  independent bottler. So it's interesting that they
• 11:10
  still have this set of morals. They go, they are so trendy
• 11:15
  people. There will be people that will
• 11:16
  buy everything that they produce because of the labels, because
• 11:19
  of the quality of the product, because they trust on Simon.
• 11:22
  Yeah, as bad because they are involved as as we heard all the
• 11:27
  way through the process, they're absolutely.
• 11:28
  Amazing, I know. This is where it comes down to
• 11:30
  trust. And I think you could say about
• 11:32
  them that, yeah, they are very trendy and and with that means
• 11:36
  that. If.
• 11:38
  If they didn't want to provide value and go down that route,
• 11:42
  then for a certain amount of time they probably could and
• 11:44
  people would buy them a habit. But but clearly.
• 11:49
  At a point that. Trust would be lost and also the
• 11:52
  fact that about the trust in the bar like I love that I love the
• 11:55
  fact that it's like awesome bar because it's yeah and it yeah,
• 11:58
  it really does show you and I think I think it's a fantastic
• 12:01
  option opportunity there where it's like.
• 12:03
  If you already. Have a core fan base, yeah, of
• 12:08
  people coming into your bar for one particular reason really is
• 12:11
  the fact that they're going. But you know, you get good
• 12:14
  whiskey in there and coming what we'll talk just we I guess we
• 12:17
  talked about last week a whiskey destination bar hotel in an area
• 12:22
  that brings people to it. 5 doesn't have it And and and
• 12:25
  donut does have it because not only I mean, that's the thing
• 12:27
  about that it doesn't have it. But let's let's but there really
• 12:31
  will be one in Saint Andrews, right?
• 12:32
  What we want to say is. It doesn't have it's not going
• 12:34
  to be recently prices I I suspect it's.
• 12:37
  Screaming out for one. That's it.
• 12:39
  And you know, whoever whoever grabs the bull by the horns
• 12:43
  might be. Well, I think it's it's it's
• 12:45
  it's it's just if I. Could open up a bar in Fife.
• 12:47
  Is that is, that is, that is. That not the.
• 12:50
  Hotel. 5W Margarine. We will tell you.
• 12:53
  Because you're quite impulsive. I'll do it.
• 12:55
  I'll do it. I'll.
• 12:56
  Do it, I'll do it, but I'll tell you a funny story about a
• 12:59
  whiskey. On the, on the on the
• 13:02
  spreadsheet. Come on me, I'll.
• 13:03
  Tell you about a whiskey? A whiskey story, right?
• 13:06
  Carpets the whole thing. But I'll tell you about doughnut
• 13:11
  being a whiskey destination, and it absolutely is because I've
• 13:14
  come here for the whiskey. That's what we have, because
• 13:17
  not, not to Dornick specifically, but I stayed just
• 13:19
  outside Dornick for a couple of nights.
• 13:21
  I visited Belle Blair, I visited Glenoranjay, and then I was on
• 13:24
  my merry way. But equally, I've come to this
• 13:26
  exact area partially just because it's a nice place to
• 13:31
  come, but also because I knew that there were a couple of
• 13:34
  whiskey discoveries. I was very interested in how you
• 13:36
  drove past Glenoranjay. You brought me so I can see my
• 13:39
  great, great grandfather. Well, that's exactly what it
• 13:41
  was. We're going to have to do there.
• 13:45
  And I also think to add to that point, I could all of us as
• 13:49
  individuals will be back. Oh yeah, and it's one of those
• 13:52
  things. It's your first time being here,
• 13:53
  your second, our second. I already know that even if it
• 13:58
  wasn't wishing related that my wife would love to come up.
• 14:01
  Yeah. Well, I mean, I mean, I'm in the
• 14:04
  I'm in the sort of different situation from you 2.
• 14:06
  Whereas my wife actually likes whiskey.
• 14:08
  So I've actually got grief from coming up here because I was
• 14:11
  like, well, I remember when I remember when you used to take
• 14:12
  me on whiskey traps, angers, and now you've got your whiskey so.
• 14:19
  Hot tub guys. Yeah.
• 14:20
  Oh yeah. So maybe I will have a nice big
• 14:24
  double edged bath with a shower. We swirl around inside.
• 14:28
  Can I ask? You have also done Japan.
• 14:32
  I know you've had lots of kamasuki.
• 14:35
  This is a collaboration bottling.
• 14:37
  I'm trying to selected by Thomas and Bros single casts and
• 14:40
  Kamasuki and it's absolutely bloody delicious.
• 14:42
  Yeah, it's. Fantastic.
• 14:43
  And the scene, it's four years old.
• 14:45
  Can you tell me about Kamasuki ship?
• 14:46
  Because, well, I've got you. I feel like that.
• 14:49
  Usually I'm gonna I'm gonna have another 558.
• 14:51
  Percent one years old. Why is that so delicious?
• 14:54
  They've their stills are based, they've got, they're using a mix
• 14:58
  of like really oily and you make and then also really skinny
• 15:03
  stills. They've got that still quite
• 15:05
  similar I guess to Glenmore and McAllen.
• 15:07
  OK those are the 2 spirit stills you work.
• 15:09
  They are also really S main islands.
• 15:13
  They're in Kagoshima area, so much more aggressive summers it
• 15:17
  gets up to like. Well, I'd say it's a really warm
• 15:20
  and humid climate. Yeah, I mean, very much.
• 15:22
  Even Japan's got contrasts of climate.
• 15:25
  And if you're down at the South Kishu, you're, you're, you're
• 15:28
  not going to see a frost. Because this is what it.
• 15:30
  Yeah, yeah, it's going to say. I mean, it's going.
• 15:31
  To be it's in the summer, you're talking 40° and you know.
• 15:35
  Stretch so when it went to the. Japanese which can be richer and
• 15:38
  smoother. That's what it says.
• 15:39
  So when I went to the soothing when I was there last year,
• 15:43
  they're I think they're probably about 12% rate of evaporation
• 15:47
  per year. So like they and even initially
• 15:49
  where they were situated, I think they were struggling.
• 15:52
  It was like 17%. And so he's also probably
• 15:55
  accelerating the vaccination, Yeah, by this 4 year old's
• 15:57
  bloody Yeah. So you're.
• 15:58
  Getting a lot more wood influence over a shorter period
• 16:00
  of time. But to bring it back to the
• 16:02
  donut guys, I also think after having tasted donut liquids,
• 16:07
  what Phil and Simon were talking about, that's how they made
• 16:10
  these connections across Europe with wholesalers and importers.
• 16:15
  Yeah. One, they knew they loved
• 16:18
  whiskey from the stuff that they were wanting to show in case
• 16:20
  people want to talk about people.
• 16:22
  They were then bottling stuff that they thought was incredibly
• 16:24
  exciting and wanted people to taste it at a price.
• 16:28
  So when they opened Dornak and as Ross and I have seen like
• 16:33
  it's, it makes no sense, like what they're doing, it's amazing
• 16:39
  what they're doing. But you when you see it, you'd
• 16:41
  be like, OK, what do you mean? Well, I said.
• 16:44
  Well, Spirit. From this like how I.
• 16:45
  Really like about that, what was what they were saying was when
• 16:48
  when they talked about like we didn't do it the conventional
• 16:51
  way by like we didn't we we kind of just said, let's just start
• 16:54
  and see how it goes. Yeah.
• 16:55
  And to the agree, there's I, I think, I think, I think the
• 16:58
  thing with these guys and you see it in the way they come
• 17:01
  across. And it may be, it may be that's
• 17:03
  very good at it. We're getting along into the
• 17:04
  state. But from what I get, money's not
• 17:07
  the main motivator to the money's a problem for them, but
• 17:10
  it's not the motivator. The motivator is producing a
• 17:12
  quality liquid that people will talk about.
• 17:14
  And it's almost status within the world of whiskey that these
• 17:19
  guys probably are motivated by. They want to produce the best
• 17:23
  liquid and they want to, you know, have that rather.
• 17:28
  Than give value to it. Rather than say we want to make
• 17:31
  the most money we possibly can out of this.
• 17:33
  I will argue that they might not even be thinking that we should
• 17:35
  make the best thing with it's the most interesting liquidation
• 17:39
  they're using like barley varietals from the 1700s
• 17:42
  they're. Like, well, less bespoke.
• 17:45
  Like unusual. Characteristics, we're gonna get
• 17:47
  into that to tomorrow. Yeah, sorry.
• 17:48
  Sorry. Yeah.
• 17:49
  Chuck's just getting excited. He's had a, he's had a, he's had
• 17:51
  a drama. There's a couple of bangs for
• 17:53
  the hedge. Everything's a bit upstairs.
• 17:57
  And for them, just be like, thanks so much guys.
• 17:59
  I run off at a really important meeting.
• 18:02
  Enjoy another DRAM. That's for yourself.
• 18:03
  We'll see you tomorrow morning. Brilliant.
• 18:05
  Yeah. Well, listen lads, we've had one
• 18:07
  bacon row, I'm starving. It's been absolutely fantastic.
• 18:11
  But like we're sitting here on our at the end of day one of our
• 18:15
  first ever grand. Tour, Grand Tour.
• 18:17
  I'm sitting here feeling. Like Ross Barr's bad starving.
• 18:23
  I will not appreciate that. Wow, He's lost 6 stone.
• 18:28
  He's lost 6 stone. He's gonna he's gonna have been
• 18:31
  hungry. It's.
• 18:31
  Also dead for. Sure.
• 18:34
  It's also mental thing. It's like 5:15, like like like
• 18:38
  how much we've done to. I had a.
• 18:40
  Bacon roll at 8:00 in the morning, right guys?
• 18:43
  Have a very good let's enjoy the rest of our night and we'll
• 18:46
  maybe we've got to make it to breakfast tomorrow morning when
• 18:49
  you're ready to rock'n'roll, Chuck.
• 18:50
  Right, I'll say it right. So this is it lads, this is it.
• 18:53
  This is it. Now I see.
• 18:54
  Here back entrance. On your garden fence it says
• 18:57
  notice these premises are approved by HM Revenue Customs.
• 19:00
  I guess. Have you got any of that on your
• 19:02
  garden shed at home? No, no, I just do it illicitly.
• 19:05
  Right. So lead on please lads, take a
• 19:08
  second. So this is just, this is tiny.
• 19:11
  This is absolutely tiny. Have you ever seen still pots
• 19:13
  like them? Wow and you were learning what?
• 19:17
  That was the other day as well. Yep.
• 19:22
  Confidently. Is that condenser it?
• 19:25
  Might just. Be there you go.
• 19:26
  This is mental. This is.
• 19:30
  Is it? Is it the smallest?
• 19:31
  You could squeeze in here. You would.
• 19:32
  Never make that claim fair. Yeah, other people can make.
• 19:35
  The claim? Well, the West, you're going to
• 19:37
  make the claim right now. This is this could be.
• 19:39
  This. Could be, I mean what this may
• 19:44
  or may not be, yeah. What's fascinating is you've
• 19:46
  effectively got in here in one room what other distilleries
• 19:49
  have across multiple, multiple buildings.
• 19:52
  Yeah. So it, it's like a kind of, it's
• 19:55
  a fantastic pocket distillery And, and, and actually I think,
• 19:59
  you know, in terms of seeing the production cycle in terms of
• 20:05
  malting, mashing, etcetera. Not malting obviously, but
• 20:09
  you've got it all in this one room.
• 20:11
  That's what we have. First of all, before before we
• 20:13
  go on, what? Was this?
• 20:14
  Yeah, exactly what was this before?
• 20:16
  I am. So it used to be Dornix fire
• 20:18
  Station. That's unbelievable.
• 20:22
  Yeah, yeah. It's helicopter and then then it
• 20:26
  was used to so I think they stopped using it in the 1960s
• 20:28
  and then it was just used for junk storage ever since.
• 20:32
  And at what point? So you guys are so how old were
• 20:34
  you? We talked last week about on the
• 20:36
  podcast about you, your parents coming in to Donna Castle and
• 20:41
  you guys are. So what ages were you when the,
• 20:43
  when you first moved into the castle?
• 20:46
  That was a part of the the family business then. 25 years
• 20:49
  ago, so you would have been. 14/14/15 Right. 1617 for me.
• 20:54
  So at that stage then this was just a dumping ground where was
• 20:58
  an area that you guys would come in as kids and sort of muck
• 21:01
  around a little bit or no, just it.
• 21:02
  Was just it was literally packed.
• 21:04
  Like a garage. Yeah.
• 21:05
  And then at what stage did you guys suddenly go, You know what,
• 21:09
  that would be great for sticking a distillery in.
• 21:12
  The idea had been kicking around for for quite a wee while.
• 21:16
  I think what Strathairn did when they kind of pushed through and
• 21:21
  they got the exemption. So there used to be a minimal
• 21:24
  minimum still size that you're allowed in Scotland.
• 21:27
  That was based on an old law which you're still had to be
• 21:30
  past a certain size. So like 4 people couldn't just
• 21:32
  carry it so. Yeah, you argued that as well.
• 21:37
  Yeah. I don't think they've ever
• 21:40
  released so. They're not.
• 21:42
  They're not. Verified.
• 21:43
  They've made. They've made spirit, Yeah.
• 21:45
  So that was So what, where, So what?
• 21:47
  So when was that and then what stage were you?
• 21:49
  Strathairn. Would be about 11-12 years ago.
• 21:51
  You were right. Yeah, yeah.
• 21:53
  No, Strathairn. Strathairn would have been
• 21:55
  operational in 2013 and then yeah.
• 21:59
  And we were, we well had a tiny, tiny involvement there as well.
• 22:05
  So yeah, we tried to, we tried to petition them to do some more
• 22:09
  older style production and you know, provided a lot of
• 22:12
  information, spent a bit of time with Tony both on the setup and
• 22:16
  then went there to work for a bit when it was.
• 22:19
  So for just so I'm right, Strathairn was another
• 22:21
  distillery that you guys were there isn't Yeah, right.
• 22:24
  And so you had a connection with the distillery then?
• 22:26
  Well. We made, we made a connection,
• 22:28
  right? Yeah.
• 22:29
  We're, you kind of petitioned them, petitioning them to do
• 22:31
  some more older style stuff and did a little bit of work there
• 22:36
  as well. And in exchange, we got to do
• 22:38
  our first experiments of our own, I mean.
• 22:41
  There's something traveling through, well, there's wash
• 22:44
  backs above our heads. Well, that's what I want to do,
• 22:47
  right? What I'd like you to do is if
• 22:49
  Chuck can manoeuvre himself point in the direction of where
• 22:53
  the process starts, all the way through through here.
• 22:56
  Mash Mash ton in the corner here.
• 22:58
  Similar to mash ton, we usually do anything from 225 kilograms
• 23:04
  to 250 kilograms. She can she's she can handle a
• 23:08
  bit more, but we tend to find we get better results with a with a
• 23:10
  lower charging to her then we've got underback here.
• 23:16
  Kick off 100% with Heritage. Oh yes.
• 23:18
  Yeah, only, only heritage varieties of barley.
• 23:22
  Majority's floor malted, the majority's organic got an
• 23:26
  underback here of our own design.
• 23:28
  So we've just got the one hot liquor tank here.
• 23:32
  So we run rather than running multiple waters.
• 23:35
  We don't recycle our third water.
• 23:37
  Instead we run something more akin to like a fly sparge.
• 23:42
  This underback's of our own design.
• 23:44
  It's got a it's got a guillotine filter here that we go up and
• 23:49
  down and can be removed for cleaning.
• 23:53
  So when you go when you go back in time before semi outer mash
• 23:57
  tons, you had full outer mash tons or they're being hand
• 23:59
  mixed, which gets a lot of like the a lot of the small
• 24:03
  particulates will make their way to the bottom because you're
• 24:05
  mixing around and around instead of sidey sidey.
• 24:09
  So lots of little bits drop through.
• 24:11
  So older style mash tons had a much finer mesh on it.
• 24:14
  So this got like modern style quite wide gaps.
• 24:17
  Yeah. Well, yeah, the whole the holes
• 24:19
  are quite large. You can.
• 24:20
  Open up. Be careful because Chuck might
• 24:24
  want to go in there and then he might bag his head on the way
• 24:26
  out as he did at the Tomato Distillery just.
• 24:28
  One hand. Yep.
• 24:30
  There we go, seats. Clean this is amazing it.
• 24:39
  Works so so we were. Just stood and.
• 24:44
  Now getting our own like swim rank style patina and everywhere
• 24:47
  you know, yeah, I think. It's so, so clean.
• 24:50
  So. So oh wow.
• 24:52
  Can you write in there? Chuck, Chuck, how are we getting
• 24:54
  that in there? Yeah.
• 24:57
  Nice. So she's yeah, so.
• 24:59
  She's got an unusual feature where she's got a slightly
• 25:01
  concave plate as well. Which is which?
• 25:06
  Which was an, Which was an early early accident?
• 25:08
  All right, so not by design then?
• 25:10
  No, no. So yeah.
• 25:12
  So yeah, we had, we had, we had a little issue and it got, so
• 25:15
  it's been reinforced now. Good.
• 25:19
  In terms of OK, right. So before we move on then
• 25:21
  sourcing this equipment and buying it all in and was it a
• 25:25
  case of now we can afford this, so let's get it in or did you go
• 25:29
  let's just get everything in at once or, or was it a sort of
• 25:32
  build your own distillery bit by bit by bit?
• 25:35
  Well, all need to be to be here to to make to make whiskey It's
• 25:39
  but it's quite you'll see everything's held together with
• 25:42
  modular parts, these stainless, stainless steel pipes, valves
• 25:46
  and they've all got dry clamped lunges.
• 25:49
  So it's like a big, it's like a big Lego set.
• 25:51
  So it's changed. So it's changed a bit over time
• 25:54
  and been. Reconfigured, it's a bit more
• 25:56
  than a Lego set, more mechano than a mechano.
• 25:57
  Yeah, Mechano and did you so they did it all arrived in
• 26:00
  pieces and like part of it or did did companies come and help
• 26:04
  install? We looked at, yeah, we bought
• 26:05
  the different elements with what we were doing here a lot.
• 26:07
  Kit was kind of off the shelf, so.
• 26:09
  Or yeah, off the shelf or semi semi custom for a lot of it
• 26:13
  initially. I'm getting that.
• 26:14
  For the space. I'm so I take it, I mean, what
• 26:17
  was the challenge in trying to get that into that corner then?
• 26:19
  Because yeah. The the the the motor sort of
• 26:24
  top hat agitator bearings a bit that with the shaft that that
• 26:27
  can all come out so. I'm assuming it came through
• 26:30
  that door there and you had to carry and yeah, we.
• 26:32
  Cut the beam there, lifted the plate up the motor elsewhere,
• 26:36
  brought it up on a pulley, then the motor back in with the dry
• 26:40
  shaft as well. So that went back and.
• 26:42
  The way Irvin, have you felt it has been the most efficient way
• 26:45
  to fill this room because obviously you've got to meet
• 26:47
  that decision. Simon wanted another wash back
• 26:48
  here, but we. We had, we had one more wash
• 26:50
  back, so we did. So we bought 7 and the original
• 26:54
  plan was to have #7 wash back here.
• 26:59
  And yeah, we had to, we had to give that one up.
• 27:01
  It was just too tight. And above us, all right, so hang
• 27:04
  on, let's carry on the. Photos from Heat So crashing.
• 27:08
  We circulate out here. The heat exchanger wait where
• 27:13
  it'll then be pumped into. It will be cooled and then
• 27:16
  pumped to any one of the six wash backs.
• 27:19
  Simon said everything's modular still using just disconnects,
• 27:22
  reconnects, OK, you know when we're when we are filling wash
• 27:24
  backs, we disconnected. So you just.
• 27:26
  Plug it out to one, wash back, plug it into another.
• 27:28
  Yeah. Everything's kind of modular, so
• 27:31
  a lot of brewery hosing. Things yeah So what yeah so wash
• 27:33
  backs we usually fill 88 hundred 850 liters that about 1000 total
• 27:38
  capacity but we never fill them up yeah isn't poke your head in
• 27:42
  Oregon pain I. Hope you are.
• 27:44
  And. So do you feel that must make a
• 27:46
  dramatic difference? What's?
• 27:49
  Not, not, not in terms, not in terms of flavour.
• 27:51
  It's just, it's just that surface area that you can never
• 27:54
  clean that that allows. Builds that character.
• 27:57
  Yeah, allows your kind of native colonies of wild yeast, lactose
• 28:01
  acid bacteria, fermenting bacteria at all just get stuck
• 28:05
  in here forever. And yeah, above us then, yeah.
• 28:08
  To get them up for for above us. Yeah.
• 28:12
  So there's a mezzanine. Power.
• 28:13
  So before any of this was built in, we basically put them up
• 28:17
  there through over the mezzanine and built them all.
• 28:19
  So like they're there forever. Our repairs need to be done in
• 28:22
  place. You know, like I said, when
• 28:24
  we're doing this, it wasn't we weren't thinking super, super
• 28:27
  long term with it. It's all about kind of just that
• 28:30
  proof of concept showing what we could do.
• 28:33
  So it wasn't, you know, weren't considering.
• 28:34
  How did you get the wash backs? Set up and change with no debt,
• 28:38
  no shareholders, yeah, so. The wash backs were basically
• 28:41
  off the shelf wine vats. So they came for off the shelf
• 28:44
  and they weren't manufactured for us, but it was like a
• 28:45
  standardized design. Yeah, came from Serbia, so
• 28:49
  Eastern European oak. And you can see here, we, we
• 28:52
  basically kick it, cut the back, the cut the bands.
• 28:56
  The bands were a little bit higher and you can see that
• 28:59
  original. Yeah over there.
• 29:00
  So that's where the drain was. So it was never a total drain.
• 29:02
  So we had to redo do that core that interesting to re band.
• 29:05
  And then obviously build it up from.
• 29:07
  There. So I know that was, yeah, we
• 29:09
  just had to kind of learn as we're going.
• 29:10
  And then with these things getting installed, then you're
• 29:13
  sort of saying earlier on about some of the characters that
• 29:15
  you've come across with the installation and having enough
• 29:18
  sources. What?
• 29:18
  What? What was that then?
• 29:20
  Well, I think the well, the mash done, for example, we, you know,
• 29:23
  we literally went on Alibaba and found like a manufacturer of
• 29:26
  brewery equipment. So if anyone's in the ceiling
• 29:29
  industry and there's some LinkedIn, you'd probably get
• 29:31
  approached by like people or or glass manufacturers from from
• 29:35
  mainland China and that's kind of where we went with it so.
• 29:37
  And it's actually a really great.
• 29:38
  Piece of kit like the design, it's really quite well made and
• 29:42
  there's a few flaws with like where the, you know, side glass
• 29:45
  is on the other side of like where you want the side glass.
• 29:48
  Yeah, the other side that we ordered.
• 29:51
  Some sort of mirror system might work.
• 29:53
  There. Yeah, it all works and works
• 29:56
  well. Wash backs, we had the duty
• 29:58
  delivered them, drove them all all the way over from from
• 30:00
  Serbia. And he's ended up, for some
• 30:02
  reason, he stayed in Dorney for like two or three days while I
• 30:04
  was waiting for like another job to drive back into Europe.
• 30:06
  And he was just like, he had all of his own booze and stuff.
• 30:09
  To me, he's like his own. What do you call it?
• 30:11
  Snekia. Sort of it, yeah.
• 30:15
  And he was just like, pretty hammered and kind of hanging
• 30:17
  around for a bit and like blinding a bit.
• 30:20
  Of just a long drive after a long drive from Serbia, 2 two or
• 30:23
  three days of convalescence. I yeah, absolutely.
• 30:25
  And he was just. Waiting for work to, you know,
• 30:27
  drive back, Yeah. And then in these wash backs,
• 30:30
  fermentation time, is that something you play around with?
• 30:32
  Yeah. So, so with the wash backs, so
• 30:33
  minimum kind of seven days is standard for us and we'll local
• 30:38
  Brewers yeast. Yeah.
• 30:39
  And then there's no chemical cleaning on the on the wash
• 30:40
  bags. Yeah.
• 30:41
  So we try and kind of maintain sunset like the ghost of every
• 30:45
  yeast that's ever been in there and your own like micro colonies
• 30:47
  of the building. So, so, so what's what's?
• 30:49
  Cleaning these like without chemicals then is it, is it, is
• 30:52
  it, is it kind of hose in a very liquid or I mean?
• 30:55
  Pressure washer? Yeah, pressure.
• 30:56
  Definitely not hot water, no. Jump, jump, jump inside and
• 31:00
  scrub that you get like the ring of like dried yeast at the top
• 31:03
  and that that just needs a really good scrub with some hot
• 31:05
  water. The shelf life these are small
• 31:09
  and you're doing really long fermentation how how much you
• 31:12
  know these six are how long are they gonna last you I.
• 31:14
  Mean these are all kind of thick as thick as hell.
• 31:16
  I mean, they'll last good long time, yes, I mean.
• 31:18
  Yeah. So that's long as you look well.
• 31:19
  Yeah, yeah, as long as you leave.
• 31:20
  Liquid in them and you're not leaving them empty for too.
• 31:22
  Long. Yeah, yeah.
• 31:24
  They're really good, Yeah. I mean.
• 31:25
  Oaks Robust. I mean, now that, you know, you
• 31:28
  think of sailing ships that lasted hundreds, 100 years from,
• 31:31
  you know, 17th, 18th century. Yeah, exactly.
• 31:41
  The Chuck knows how. I just want to know it's the
• 31:43
  barley you're talking about heritage.
• 31:46
  I've got echo on the headphones. Heritage in.
• 31:49
  The camera as well. Got so much to do, Heritage
• 31:53
  varieties, not organic. What was kind of like the big
• 31:56
  reason you went down that route? Obviously people talk about
• 31:59
  golden promise, I see, but you guys have done some really
• 32:02
  strange varieties. For Oh yeah, for, for barley,
• 32:06
  for barley, we're looking at varieties that that were used in
• 32:11
  the 1960s and earlier. So 60s is kind of our, our cut
• 32:15
  off point. So like you just mentioned
• 32:17
  Golden promise that that's about as far as we go and we'll use
• 32:22
  any, any old for any old barley varieties that have a connection
• 32:25
  to historic brewing and distilling.
• 32:28
  So. And is there any reason for
• 32:29
  that? Yeah, you can't you can't make a
• 32:33
  whiskey in the style of the, you know, 1960s or 1950s, like about
• 32:37
  using the appropriate ingredients.
• 32:39
  You know, if you're going to use, if you're going to use
• 32:41
  modern molting variety, modern distillers yeast, you know
• 32:46
  you're going to get modern results, so.
• 32:49
  Yeah. So that's a conscious effort
• 32:51
  from yourselves to create a whiskey that would take you back
• 32:54
  to. I mean, you mentioned in the
• 32:56
  episode last week when we recorded that one of the things
• 32:58
  that you guys started out by doing is like loving buying old
• 33:01
  bottles and opening old bottles and having it.
• 33:03
  So having that that old style flavour profile.
• 33:05
  So what kind of old style flavour profile do do you get
• 33:09
  that would be different from what we're what we're getting?
• 33:12
  Modern. Yeah, we weren't, We weren't
• 33:14
  deliberately. There was things we were
• 33:15
  seeking, but we were just trying to build in precursors.
• 33:18
  So as many like precursors for more potential flavour creation
• 33:21
  as part of the process or whether it's the barley, the
• 33:23
  fermentation, the wash backs, the fermentation, slow
• 33:26
  distillation, the cut points. All we're trying to do is
• 33:28
  relieve as much room as possible, to build as much
• 33:30
  flavour and character and build our own kind of little house
• 33:32
  style that we have here really. Championing the spirit that
• 33:35
  you're creating rather than. Spirit first.
• 33:38
  And what when we we talk, talk about what we had Stephen
• 33:40
  Woodcock on from Glenn Murray and one of the things that he
• 33:44
  said is, you know, distillery character is what where he had
• 33:47
  sort of managed to create a career on going into a
• 33:50
  distillery, stripping it all back and then rebuilding it, but
• 33:53
  maintaining A distillery character.
• 33:55
  So what would you what is it from here from in this tiny
• 33:58
  little distillery? What is the distillery character
• 34:01
  that you guys are looking for? Yeah, so, so, so for starter, we
• 34:05
  we get quite, quite a quite a thick spear, quite heavy
• 34:09
  spirits. That's important both, you know,
• 34:13
  it's a pleasant, it's a pleasant mouthfeel, a texture, but acts
• 34:17
  as a carrier for all the other flavors that you're able to get
• 34:20
  in there. It's able to coat your mouth.
• 34:23
  It also seems to like reduce the the sensation of the alcohol as
• 34:27
  well kind of camouflage. Is it in that thickness?
• 34:30
  And then you get a really long finish with a good mouth
• 34:33
  coating. So you know that that's that's
• 34:35
  the base you're building from. Then with these extra long
• 34:38
  fermentations with a lot they're, you know, highly
• 34:42
  biological. So you get this really high
• 34:43
  level biological complexity. So the flavors aren't, you know,
• 34:49
  it's straight, straightforward engineered feeling.
• 34:51
  It's like a, it's like a thick, rich tapestry of many, many
• 34:55
  different things all, all interwoven.
• 34:58
  And then we'll look to kind of top line peak on kind of
• 35:02
  different types. Of and so obviously then talking
• 35:05
  about the texture as it takes. Well, you guys come in this way?
• 35:08
  Sure. I.
• 35:08
  Know Dan's probably on his cut points.
• 35:11
  I have been. Oh right, we've got.
• 35:12
  I have been here before, remind me, where did you get these
• 35:18
  stalls from? These are these are Hogus from
• 35:20
  Portugal. So these come up Alibaba as well
• 35:25
  then? No.
• 35:26
  Yeah. Well, hang on a SEC.
• 35:28
  So we've actually now we're getting a cup, but we're taking
• 35:30
  cut points right now. That's the money.
• 35:33
  Sure. Yeah.
• 35:33
  Chucky, are you getting all this?
• 35:34
  Are you I guess? It's going to be a good point,
• 35:36
  but they can. Guarantee No.
• 35:39
  What are you looking for? You'll you'll kind of know when
• 35:42
  you when you knows it, it's it's kind of a fine balance when you
• 35:44
  reach the the tails where you want that kind of oiliness.
• 35:47
  We get a bit of this like cherry note that comes through, but
• 35:49
  then you don't want it to be like too vegetable and overly
• 35:54
  oily as well. So it's also thinking about the
• 35:56
  whole mix. So it's like if you're drinking
• 35:58
  a meal and you're like, when you add salt to that, it's like
• 36:01
  you're not going to take a handful of salt and be like, oh,
• 36:03
  I'm definitely not adding salt because of the salty flavour.
• 36:05
  You, you know, that the additive of it throughout the bit mix of
• 36:08
  the spirit or mix of the meal that you're making is going to
• 36:11
  enhance it. So when you're smelling this
• 36:13
  kind of tailsy bit, which you guys can smell just now, it's
• 36:17
  about identifying flavours. So you go, OK, I wouldn't drink
• 36:20
  that as is, but mixed with, you know, as a component of the
• 36:23
  whole spirit. How does that taste and what,
• 36:25
  what is it like? So.
• 36:26
  What strength are you coming out of the wash bag set?
• 36:28
  Very. Oh what current wash back
• 36:32
  strength Stan are you circa 5? What about?
• 36:36
  Strength, yeah. Abd 4.5.
• 36:42
  All I'm looking at is the I'm sorry.
• 36:45
  All I'm looking at is just what I get in terms of low wines.
• 36:49
  No, the gravity, yes, but there is a I'm sorry, there is a.
• 36:54
  There is not a strong correlation between my gravity
• 36:56
  and my output in terms of low wine, so I rely more on my low
• 37:01
  wines ABV than what comes before.
• 37:05
  Interesting. Yeah.
• 37:07
  But we're on the low end. So again in in line with sort of
• 37:11
  1960s and earlier production where where you're more
• 37:15
  especially pre war where you're more like you're more in that
• 37:19
  kind of like 5% range, whereas nowadays 8910 percent is, is the
• 37:23
  kind of range strength of the wash back.
• 37:28
  Really, we've got, we've got, we're actually getting sampling
• 37:32
  tastes. So so now you're you're.
• 37:35
  Not far away. 63.6 So that's close, yeah.
• 37:40
  Have a have a nose? You'll see what I mean about
• 37:42
  that kind of. Oiliness and fattiness that
• 37:44
  that's good, but also it's like you wouldn't want to drink that
• 37:47
  just as is we can we can have a try of the mints.
• 37:50
  Of the spirit so what's we we've recently so.
• 37:53
  That's a 63.6% alcohol, so we we might take it a little bit
• 37:57
  further, but not too much longer.
• 38:00
  No, we tend to slow down as well.
• 38:01
  As we Yeah. Sorry, no.
• 38:04
  Throughout the kind of the the cut points and the run.
• 38:07
  So especially towards the cut points, we'll slow down so we
• 38:10
  can be really accurate, but then smell the difference of this,
• 38:12
  which is the combined spirit that we've been drawing off
• 38:17
  today. This is amazing.
• 38:18
  So let's so let's we tank here. This.
• 38:21
  Is where all your spirit is kept and you've just kind of taken
• 38:24
  this had a little swirl around because.
• 38:25
  You may not. Yeah, usually notice having been
• 38:27
  typical salaries now there is no big boxes for the measuring
• 38:30
  high, low. No, one of the things is we had
• 38:33
  the Ian Forteeth on the podcast and he talked about blinding and
• 38:37
  stuff and he said them drilling down for flavour.
• 38:40
  So you what? So what when I'm smelling this,
• 38:43
  what is the flavours that I'm looking to try and get that
• 38:45
  you're wanting to make that right, just in the spirit.
• 38:47
  I've not noticed it yet, so I don't know.
• 38:50
  But for for when it yeah. So we'll be looking.
• 38:52
  Yeah, we'll be looking for sort of that balance of of fruit and
• 38:56
  wax. There's always this little kind
• 38:57
  of I always find the sort of Chari notes mezcal note at the
• 39:00
  end of obviously there's no, no peat in the process.
• 39:02
  We always have that kind of chari mezcal note on it.
• 39:05
  So I'm looking for that kind of bright green fruits.
• 39:08
  Which you're buying yourself, absolutely.
• 39:09
  And. So I've never, I've never seen
• 39:12
  these kind of styles outside of here.
• 39:14
  How how hard are you running the styles?
• 39:16
  Like what is What are hoga styles used for in Portugal?
• 39:19
  Yeah, you can see, you can see how slowly they're, she's coming
• 39:22
  off there. So these guys get run, you know,
• 39:25
  pretty slow by industry standards.
• 39:29
  So there's a few, there's a few whiskey facilities in Scotland
• 39:31
  and Europe that use the these kind of styles.
• 39:34
  And mainly it can comes down to, you know, for me, you know,
• 39:39
  everything's important, but your, you know, your stills,
• 39:44
  it's kind of what you put in it and how you run them is much
• 39:47
  more important than shape or. Size.
• 39:49
  Yes, so, so they're so they're fairly so they're fairly
• 39:53
  standard design. Strathairn used to save ones,
• 39:56
  but when you were sitting up here.
• 39:58
  We could get. We could get those relatively
• 40:00
  quickly, but it was kind of like a big crunch in the distillery
• 40:03
  bolts in like 20/16/2017 so. Lots of other people after the
• 40:08
  same thing. Yeah.
• 40:09
  So if you were to go to, I think at the time the likes of
• 40:11
  Forsyths were like a three-year wait.
• 40:15
  So whereas. We're not good to go.
• 40:18
  Sorry, but our knees stills aren't for spoken anyway.
• 40:22
  They're kind of off the shelf. Yeah, just sort of likely
• 40:25
  modified because. I would suggest I'm the most
• 40:27
  casual whiskey drinkers, just most whiskey drinkers in
• 40:29
  general. So OK, you're looking for
• 40:32
  texture. It makes sense you've got small,
• 40:33
  small stills because people focus on that.
• 40:35
  But you're really saying that the fermentation and the barley
• 40:37
  variety is is a massive part that's adding to your texture,
• 40:40
  making your spirit unique? Oh yeah, yeah absolutely.
• 40:43
  For for me it's a top priority. I do have a preference for
• 40:46
  shorter. Dump your stills if they run
• 40:48
  slowly. To give you that viscus, So
• 40:51
  what? What happens?
• 40:52
  So this container now of, of spirit, what what's happening
• 40:56
  with that? What's the plan for that now?
• 40:58
  So that that's that's that's going to get gauged and then
• 41:00
  transported over to. The.
• 41:02
  Warehouse and either it'll just go straight into a cask or it'll
• 41:07
  go into a stainless steel contain, a larger stainless
• 41:10
  steel container until we've got enough to fill a larger barrel,
• 41:13
  right. So yeah, that's like Ade's
• 41:14
  production that so that basically it's enough to fill an
• 41:18
  octave per day roughly. So what's that that mean about
• 41:21
  in litre terms? Is that 60 odd?
• 41:23
  Yeah. Probably.
• 41:25
  Probably that. Must be. 45 yeah .55.
• 41:28
  Litres like 70% so by the time you by the time you take that to
• 41:31
  60 or 63.5 you could fill. Do you generally drop you will,
• 41:35
  you will fill it 63 or 63.5, Yeah.
• 41:37
  Do you have kind of industry stand on that or something?
• 41:39
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We, we sometimes do some
• 41:41
  different filling strengths, more lower filling strengths.
• 41:43
  We don't higher filling strengths and such like things
• 41:46
  that we're definitely leaving for a very, very, very long
• 41:48
  term. We've done high step building
• 41:49
  strengths and things for shorter term.
• 41:51
  We'll look at 5860% alcohol. Yeah, dropping.
• 41:54
  The strength a little bit for shorter term maturation, smaller
• 41:58
  casks is is quite a good move, but generally 63.5 everything
• 42:02
  goes goes in that with. I'll come in this way, Chuck,
• 42:04
  you come in this way. What the hell have we brought
• 42:06
  in? Here and you.
• 42:07
  And you come and you come, you stand over there and just get
• 42:10
  that. We'll just get the full run
• 42:11
  through of where it goes, where it comes from and what what this
• 42:15
  sort of process is then, yeah. Because you can point to all in
• 42:18
  one room. OK, so, so hot water mashed
• 42:22
  tongue barley goes in there too. So hot water mashed tongue under
• 42:29
  back heat exchanger wash back seven days that then goes to
• 42:35
  this wash charger. So that's.
• 42:38
  The one in the corner there, yeah.
• 42:39
  Yeah. So we use, we use that as a, we
• 42:40
  use that as a wash charger. So we'll, we'll do an energy
• 42:43
  exchange when we're finished sealing with this, we'll use the
• 42:47
  next batch to cool it down. We'll transfer some of that
• 42:50
  energy over. Then that goes to the wash tool.
• 42:54
  So, you know, quite, quite a slow sort of 7-8 hour process
• 43:00
  there that it goes into the low wounds and fence receiver and
• 43:04
  then low wounds and fence receiver will then go to charge
• 43:07
  the spirit still in the corner. So yeah, that's 600 litre
• 43:11
  capacity spirit still. And again, we run that pretty
• 43:15
  slowly, especially while running the, the, the first part that
• 43:19
  well, when running the heads and the heart, we run it quite
• 43:23
  slowly and then we'll speed her up for the rest of it.
• 43:26
  Is that, is that the total? Yeah, yeah.
• 43:30
  So right now, yes, you're as well as giving us a tour of
• 43:32
  this, you're now just judging the spirit, judging the spirit
• 43:35
  and almost signing off, I think no.
• 43:37
  Not judging or signing off. I think we, you know, with, with
• 43:39
  Dan and Connor in production, we, we give like full agency
• 43:42
  trust on these guys to brilliant.
• 43:44
  Electricity. Oh, you said about 9 employees,
• 43:46
  but in terms of operators? Yes, we mainly Dan and Connor in
• 43:50
  here. So this is Dan here is it Dan?
• 43:52
  How have how have you managed to get yourself such a hard?
• 43:54
  What did you do in a previous life to get such a hard job?
• 43:57
  Whether you have to sample whiskey or spirit coming out.
• 44:03
  Moving. Moving to another country and
• 44:05
  where? Are you from?
• 44:06
  France. Brilliant.
• 44:08
  And where you whiskey? Are you whiskey drunkard or?
• 44:10
  This is why I moved to to Scotland.
• 44:13
  I mean, that's the main reason me moving to Scotland was
• 44:16
  whiskey. So yeah.
• 44:18
  A hard job on a Saturday morning have like come in here and
• 44:21
  sample would. Still prefer to stay in bed in
• 44:23
  the morning than coming here for 7:00 or so, but I mean, that's
• 44:27
  still part of the job so I still enjoy it.
• 44:30
  Well. You did a great job by looking
• 44:31
  at things. It's fantastic.
• 44:33
  Nice to see it in action. That's fantastic.
• 44:34
  I mean tiny. So you're.
• 44:36
  Amazing, incredibly unique, but then also it is still just a
• 44:40
  more artisanal way that you know, then it's more obviously
• 44:44
  it's strange not seeing a spirit safe, but that's but that's
• 44:47
  interesting, isn't it? What is your total aiming
• 44:50
  capacity? What are you aiming for?
• 44:52
  So if everything goes perfectly, nothing breaks and then she's
• 44:59
  capable of around 12,000 litres of alcohol.
• 45:02
  So that's about 18,000 litres into cask a year.
• 45:05
  That's based on our style of production.
• 45:08
  If you wanted to absolutely RIP the arse out of her and not make
• 45:12
  Dornick style whiskey, she's probably capable of up to 30,000
• 45:17
  litres. About OK if if you went.
• 45:20
  Like you're doing 50 hour fermentation.
• 45:22
  Yeah, yeah. If we went, you know, a height,
• 45:24
  height modern barley, modern distillers yeast after
• 45:29
  fermentation time went and moved to double shift.
• 45:32
  Everything's a deliberate choice for for the Spirit.
• 45:35
  Great, you're making deliberate choices too.
• 45:36
  What's? A great say about having been
• 45:38
  two brothers that own your own stellar.
• 45:39
  Ah, from that honestly, OK, this is this has been such an I
• 45:42
  really, really looking forward to this.
• 45:44
  So, so basically I think what we'll do is we'll maybe head to
• 45:46
  the warehouse now. Except for the process.
• 45:48
  Yeah, absolutely brilliant. Thanks guys.
• 45:53
  So you have to do a Mitsubishi in there with your the author.
• 45:55
  Mitsubishi's a solid. Three Wheeler, here we go.
• 46:00
  There we are. It's a warehouse, warehouse #2.
• 46:04
  There is, yeah. We're.
• 46:06
  I guess we I guess we skipped them do it has number.
• 46:09
  One. Oh yeah, yeah.
• 46:10
  Warehouse. One's a shipping container,
• 46:12
  yeah. Whiskey storage truck whiskey
• 46:14
  storage last time as well know what warehouses do to me.
• 46:17
  I've said it before, warehouses make me horny and this, this is
• 46:21
  a different type of warehouse that we've seen.
• 46:23
  I can see very small. Well, what sort of square
• 46:28
  meterage, square footage would be looking at here?
• 46:29
  Well. What's this about 400 square
• 46:31
  meters? Maybe.
• 46:32
  Oh, is it even that? Honestly?
• 46:34
  Well what I do know is I think if anything over I think is it
• 46:38
  usually anything over 10,000 square meters requires a fire
• 46:41
  1000 square meters. Square.
• 46:43
  Meters, 10,000 square feet. Yeah, so requires a firewall, so
• 46:46
  yeah. And having anything underneath 5
• 46:47
  hundreds are fancy. Cells of 1000 or 900 and.
• 46:50
  Nine, yeah. And so this isn't just a
• 46:51
  warehouse, Graham. This is also the bottling hall.
• 46:54
  Bottling plant, warehouse bottling logistics straight to
• 46:57
  direct to customer export. Everything happens here.
• 47:00
  Well, I've looked for context as well.
• 47:02
  We've just walked from the decelerate.
• 47:04
  It's taken us about 5 or 6 minutes.
• 47:06
  Yeah, easy peasy. Right, Shall we go in And yeah,
• 47:08
  that's give some casks A sniff. A lovely forklift there as well.
• 47:12
  Listeners will know how keen I am on forklifts and plant and
• 47:15
  machinery in general. So great 3 Wheeler there.
• 47:17
  The electric Mitsubishi number Good.
• 47:19
  Turning circle. Lovely that's enough of that
• 47:21
  chat cause well so the cast in here how what percentage is your
• 47:25
  own spirit that's come out of the distillery?
• 47:27
  What is Thompson? Thompson brothers?
• 47:30
  Any question we. We tend to we tend to build up a
• 47:32
  bit of Thompson Brothers stock and then send off usually third
• 47:35
  party warehousing. Sure.
• 47:36
  Just 'cause we, we are really are stuck on capacity and
• 47:39
  storage capacity here. So we do try and prioritise
• 47:43
  third party stock in here, but we'll build up.
• 47:45
  We have to build up Dornick and then send it off.
• 47:47
  So to make it kind of a bit more efficient.
• 47:48
  So we'll probably try and build up like steak with, yeah.
• 47:51
  Like 20 years. So, so, so a cask filled with
• 47:54
  spur from Dornick might stay in here for a little while and
• 47:57
  then, yeah, carry on this journey somewhere elsewhere.
• 47:59
  Yeah, mostly like things like the hoggies and barrels kind of
• 48:02
  standard size stuff. We might keep some butts and
• 48:05
  octaves and quarter casks here just cause it's a bit more on
• 48:08
  the good store than elsewhere. Yeah, they were on the left
• 48:10
  specifically designed to hold octaves and US thir US15 and US
• 48:16
  30 gallon casks. So they're all Dornix.
• 48:19
  But then this is more kind of like our more shorter term
• 48:21
  independent stuff. OK, So I'm not quite sure how
• 48:24
  many casks we have here, but it's kind of the the minority of
• 48:27
  it. So this is kind of like our
• 48:29
  working capacity, yeah, anything for long term storage is in what
• 48:33
  the either the warehouses at the castle or offsite.
• 48:36
  Yeah, so as I. Guess as well.
• 48:38
  Sorry, Ross, there's been your bottling plant as well.
• 48:40
  If you've got casts and 3rd party storage that you know or
• 48:44
  you're wanting to bottle soon, you'll call them back here,
• 48:47
  store them here for a little while and then before you bottle
• 48:50
  it. Yeah, yeah.
• 48:51
  We, we, I mean, we've, we haven't called anything back yet
• 48:53
  from Corning stock, which is kind of it's quite nice because
• 48:57
  you know, you're not, you don't well, it's also nice, but also
• 48:59
  you don't know how your stuff is maturing.
• 49:00
  But sure, sure it should be, should be okay.
• 49:03
  But when we do build out the new distillery, we'll probably bring
• 49:06
  everything back on site. We'll have the storage capacity
• 49:09
  to be able to do that. Fantastic.
• 49:11
  You said I'm looking at your racking system here.
• 49:13
  Then are you happy to say who put your racking system in or is
• 49:17
  that, is that Thistle racking or is it the Thistle racking?
• 49:19
  Yeah, there you go. Pretty, pretty flexible.
• 49:22
  Yeah, because that style of racking is really interesting
• 49:25
  with the fact that because I mean, this is where things you
• 49:29
  guys like to get nerd and geeky over yeast strains and copper
• 49:32
  contact and all that. This is your favorite part of
• 49:34
  the process. For me, you know, there's a big
• 49:35
  debate, particularly just now with bonded warehousing, where
• 49:38
  they're saying like now would you prefer to have your casks
• 49:40
  lying on their side like they are just now, Yeah.
• 49:43
  Or do they mature differently if they're standing upright?
• 49:45
  Because from a space point of view, what you can do is you
• 49:47
  could palletise casks and then you can have them on standard
• 49:50
  palletised racking. Go as high as you like.
• 49:52
  Yeah, it's kind of, well, there's, there's a bit of a
• 49:54
  false economy there because there's there's a much bigger
• 49:56
  upfront cost for the for the racking process, but then you've
• 50:00
  got much better accessibility for your stock.
• 50:02
  Yeah, for checking your casks and for moving them around if
• 50:06
  you need to take some out. But with palletised when the
• 50:10
  casks upright and you've got all that weight going from the top
• 50:13
  down, your cask does most of its breathing in the gaps between
• 50:18
  the staves. Yeah, not, not like through the
• 50:20
  woods, most of most of its breathing comes.
• 50:22
  So when you've got all that pressure on top and you've got
• 50:24
  staves, they're kind of getting slightly compressed.
• 50:27
  So you get higher level of losses from palletized that
• 50:33
  you're also more likely to get leaks.
• 50:35
  The buns are quite often on on their side.
• 50:37
  That's a weak point as well. So it's more likely to leak
• 50:39
  through the bun. And then if you do get a leak,
• 50:41
  because they're so tightly packed in there, you might not
• 50:44
  see it. And if you do see it, you might
• 50:46
  not be able to access it without moving, you know, literal tons
• 50:50
  and tons and tons of pallets around and reorganizing the
• 50:53
  warehouse. I think it makes sense if
• 50:54
  you're, if you're filling like 100,000 casks or X spirit from
• 50:58
  wide distillery and it's you know, you know, the accountants
• 51:02
  will calculate out what the potential losses are and just
• 51:04
  accept that they're going to lose casts along the way.
• 51:07
  And it's just the volume. It kind of makes sense you get
• 51:09
  away with it. But on the smaller scale like
• 51:11
  ours, I think it's, you know. It's much better.
• 51:13
  I've got something that I think people would like to hear.
• 51:15
  If you come in here, Chuck, explain vatting, explain their
• 51:19
  vatting system, the target strengths and what you're doing.
• 51:21
  This is something that most people will never see.
• 51:24
  Move on, there's a. Few different vats here so we've
• 51:28
  we've got SRV 5 which is station road that five yeah that's
• 51:32
  behind Chuck that's our basically our spare wash back
• 51:35
  from the store we talked about earlier.
• 51:37
  So basically we put off to where to put that space like Cooperage
• 51:40
  had a charred toasted so some European that for basically a
• 51:44
  marrying vessel. Yep, resting and you can see on
• 51:47
  the top it's not a mega seal and there is no seal on the top.
• 51:50
  So you get do get a bit of evaporative losses, but that's
• 51:52
  something we're kind of OK and embracing I.
• 51:54
  Think it's probably something people have no idea.
• 51:57
  OK. How do you target for your
• 51:59
  bottle etcetera, natural cash strength, how are you going to
• 52:01
  alter that, How you're going to make that work for your market
• 52:03
  or work for the product? Do you think it would benefit?
• 52:06
  We're able to see what's in this.
• 52:07
  So we've got like a glimmer office and you've got a target
• 52:11
  strength. So that's.
• 52:12
  The target strength is usually from from our perspective, we
• 52:15
  tend not to do anything bang on what we'd say is the cash
• 52:18
  strength. There's always like a point one
• 52:21
  point 2.3° minimum dilution because like we order labels in
• 52:24
  advance. We do larger batches of labels,
• 52:27
  you know, we're trying to build a degree of economies of scale
• 52:29
  with that. So there's always a little touch
• 52:31
  of dilution. So like from when the regauge
• 52:33
  takes place, Yep, to when the cask is tipped, when the cask is
• 52:36
  put into the vats to ordering the label.
• 52:38
  We wanna make sure that we're we're kind of like maybe
• 52:40
  ordering a wee bit ahead of ourselves, yeah.
• 52:42
  OK. And so, so you're happy with the
• 52:43
  product and the cask, you're ready to just get it fit for
• 52:46
  bottling. How long will it spend in these
• 52:48
  vats? Usually not too long unless it's
• 52:51
  like a mega batch of something that's like, you know.
• 52:53
  We're we're sex or something like that, yeah.
• 52:55
  Certainly for space, we'll generally like put it in an IBC,
• 52:58
  put it away, hold it for a little bit short period of time.
• 53:02
  So for example, if we do like a bottling run of something from,
• 53:05
  we might do the UK stock 1st and then we're like OK, we're going
• 53:08
  to do the German stock, we're ready to ship to Germany.
• 53:10
  We might go do Taiwanese stock. We need to ship to Taiwan
• 53:12
  because we are restricted on space.
• 53:14
  The ideal situation is you bottle everything, you put it in
• 53:16
  glass, you put it on a pallet, it sits in the corner.
• 53:18
  You put it off when it's ready to, yeah, but you just don't
• 53:20
  have enough space for that. So stuff sits, but it doesn't
• 53:22
  sit for too long. We try not, and if it does,
• 53:25
  we'll try and keep it in these stainless steel ones.
• 53:28
  Yeah, I think that's something nobody we've seen before, but
• 53:30
  very unlikely to have had explained to them before.
• 53:32
  Well, it's not the system here. So you've got, you know, are
• 53:35
  they separate or will it go from, will it go from 1:00?
• 53:38
  1123, we've got an option of four we can bring in.
• 53:41
  That's been, that's been. Moved outside, yeah.
• 53:43
  Out for the moment and so. They're all individual.
• 53:45
  They're not connected or anyone. That's all individual
• 53:47
  everything. As we is kind of built on a kind
• 53:50
  of modular system so we can connect the hosing.
• 53:53
  So we'll do things like primary filtration.
• 53:55
  So these chronicles here, we'll tip the cask in, we'll put it
• 53:57
  through a filter and then we'll probably filter out any char
• 54:00
  that settles out the following day from the bottom there.
• 54:03
  So we'll sit into that cone, into that cone, and then we'll
• 54:05
  just pull that off naturally and then run a base filter on it.
• 54:08
  And basically all we're doing is trying to save our own filters
• 54:10
  and save our own machines from being chewed up.
• 54:13
  And we can do the dilution in place there, connecting the
• 54:16
  housing. The housing runs through into
• 54:17
  the bottling hall. We take a look at that in a
• 54:19
  minute. So everything is modular,
• 54:20
  disconnected, reconnected, cleaned down, stripped back.
• 54:23
  So that was kind of. It's amazing able to do this
• 54:25
  all, all on site. And as we said last week, just
• 54:28
  it does save costs. You're not waiting around for it
• 54:31
  to go somewhere else and come back, et cetera, having that
• 54:33
  total control. And yeah, time control, stock
• 54:38
  management, interactivity, you just have such a big advantage
• 54:41
  where it's all on your doorstep. Yeah, you're you're not waiting
• 54:45
  weeks or months for something to happen.
• 54:46
  You just go and do it. Well, we're at the story.
• 54:49
  We talked a lot about how you're kind of targeting that kind of
• 54:52
  1950s, nineteen, 6 days just for it and everything, you know,
• 54:56
  using old barley strains, et cetera, et cetera when it comes
• 54:59
  to sourcing casks and you know, maturation process.
• 55:04
  Is that something you have in mind as well when it comes to
• 55:06
  that side of things? Well, we, we favour traditional
• 55:08
  cask types. So for Dornick, it's, you know,
• 55:13
  the vast majority is, you know, refill first of all, bourbon
• 55:19
  first, first fill all the raw. So first fill Pedro hybrids.
• 55:23
  Generally older old woods. And so I thought so because you
• 55:26
  it's. Unlikely.
• 55:27
  You'd have kind of tequila casks and these sorts of things.
• 55:30
  That's very much. Ask me a question.
• 55:32
  I've let Phil do a couple of experimental beer casks along
• 55:35
  the way, but that's about it. And the beer casks kind of links
• 55:38
  back to the same brewery that we're getting east from for the
• 55:41
  processing. Yeah.
• 55:42
  So we just have a natural link back.
• 55:44
  Yeah. Yeah, so, and a lot, you know,
• 55:46
  we do a lot of our, all our ozone Pedro Jimenez casks are
• 55:52
  ancient solera casks from Montia.
• 55:54
  So they're not. So we've got a a really big Bank
• 55:57
  of all our ozone, Pedro Jimenez butts, but they're not from
• 56:01
  Hereth, they're from Montia, but they're very old solera wood,
• 56:05
  which. Is 60 to 80 years old.
• 56:07
  Yeah. So they're not so the the Sherry
• 56:09
  seasoned versus actual Sherry casks versus if they've been in
• 56:12
  a solera, they're actually. They're they're they're really.
• 56:14
  Yeah, yeah. Not seasoned person.
• 56:16
  No, I'm gonna, I'm gonna. If you don't mind, I've spot
• 56:19
  something because we talked a little bit yesterday.
• 56:21
  Mystery malt, right? Is this, what is this?
• 56:25
  So if we can see here, mystery malt, it's a we, we something
• 56:31
  that we talked about last night while we're having dinner.
• 56:33
  And I found it fascinating. I think by the time this
• 56:36
  recording goes out, Mystery Malt might be on its way.
• 56:39
  It might be starting to look like it could be a new product
• 56:42
  for the Thompson Brothers Dornik Distillery.
• 56:44
  Yeah being bottled just now depends on what's this when this
• 56:48
  goes out but we're. Probably.
• 56:49
  This is going out in two weeks and two.
• 56:51
  Weeks. So we might be putting some
• 56:53
  teasers out of that at this point, but yeah, we can probably
• 56:56
  stop it. Yeah, we can probably make a
• 56:57
  little stop on this. So yeah, Mystery Malt customer
• 57:02
  doesn't know what they're getting until they've bought the
• 57:05
  bottle, taken it home and uncapped it.
• 57:07
  So this is series one, but for Series 1.
• 57:11
  Who's only series one? Yeah, it's important to say that
• 57:13
  they won't know until they uncap it exactly what it is, but they
• 57:17
  can check their odds on the QR codes.
• 57:19
  So OK, I'll give them a breakdown of what we've put in
• 57:22
  it. So basically they know you're
• 57:23
  not going to basically fill it with like dog shit whiskey.
• 57:25
  And you guys just. Spent so long about that, that
• 57:28
  trust. Well, that's exactly what goes
• 57:29
  back to what we talked about, you know, in the, in the
• 57:31
  previous episode is that we, we actually were talking on the way
• 57:34
  up about the, the debate over whiskey tastings and it's been
• 57:38
  something, and we talked to Justine Hazlehurst about it.
• 57:40
  And there's been a few of do your release.
• 57:43
  What is going to be on the tasting?
• 57:44
  Or do you have the trust where if you're asking people to pass
• 57:47
  over £50 to come to a tasting, but you're going to get 5 blind
• 57:51
  drums picked by somebody. Now a lot of people might go, I
• 57:53
  don't know what you're going to give me.
• 57:54
  So I don't know if I'm happy to hand over 50 lbs yet or you get
• 57:58
  summations. Going to be the key 100.
• 57:59
  Percent. Yeah.
• 58:00
  I mean, do you want to go? And you're kind of, Oh yeah,
• 58:02
  passing over that. Yeah, sorry.
• 58:04
  Yeah. So, so you can scan the QR code,
• 58:06
  it'll tell you, you know, Series One has, you know, so many
• 58:10
  bottles of. Architecture.
• 58:11
  And so many bottles of Glen with us.
• 58:13
  There's a lot more, a lot, probably the majority of the new
• 58:16
  wave guys that we've got stock from for the early batches of
• 58:18
  this, some Dornix going in there as well.
• 58:21
  Or you could get a single malt from established distilleries at
• 58:25
  12 years, 14/18/2020, 5:30 years old.
• 58:29
  So the idea is that at 65 lbs a bottle, whatever you get
• 58:34
  represents fair value. Yeah, I feel like I said, it's
• 58:37
  got a few. You're getting fair value.
• 58:38
  Yeah. But if you get if you get a
• 58:39
  single cask, you know rassay you'll be.
• 58:42
  It's not bad for that, I guess, but you know, if you get
• 58:44
  yourself, you know, a 28 year old author of Royce, Yeah, I've
• 58:48
  done not too. It also moves kind of shelf bias
• 58:51
  as well. So like, yeah, you know, the
• 58:52
  consumers not be like, I'm not going to drink that clean.
• 58:54
  Well, all these bottles at the same strength.
• 58:55
  Four years old. Yeah, everything.
• 58:57
  Everything's at 48.5%. It's good for the new guys, it's
• 59:01
  good for us, it's good for like, you know, a lot of the larger
• 59:05
  companies, it gives them the ability to kind of provide some
• 59:07
  good stock to go into it as well.
• 59:09
  So because it's kind of like a, an exposure, it's like a
• 59:11
  marketing thing. So it's like a cost of like, say
• 59:14
  I don't we've mentioned Rassie, say Rassie, give us a cast for
• 59:17
  this and we buy a cast for this. And somebody might say, well,
• 59:20
  I'm not trying that Rassie. So they're five years old.
• 59:22
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 59:23
  Then all of a sudden they open the bottle blind.
• 59:24
  They try it and they like what they taste.
• 59:25
  They're gonna follow up and be like, who is this salary?
• 59:27
  What do they do? Where are they from?
• 59:29
  And we'll, we'll provide all that detail on the website as
• 59:31
  well so people can hyperlink back to.
• 59:33
  Yeah, really different. Something different.
• 59:35
  And again, with their bottling weight, with the marketing side
• 59:37
  of it, you know that that just the dark bottle with a question
• 59:40
  mark on it on the other side. I think it's fantastic.
• 59:43
  And but one of the things as we've talked about is with the
• 59:46
  labelling that you do on your Thompson brothers batches and
• 59:50
  your releases and that trust that you you've built up right
• 59:53
  from the days of the bar, right? You know, trust us coming to the
• 59:56
  you come all the way to the Dornik Hotel, the Castle Dornik
• 59:58
  Castle hotel, come to the bar for a drum.
• 1:00:00
  You know, there's going to be decent stuff lined the bar.
• 1:00:03
  Then it's the bottle like trust us by our independently bottled
• 1:00:06
  bottles of of whiskey, because they're going to be good.
• 1:00:09
  So now absolutely that and in terms of.
• 1:00:11
  With regards to like buying boxes, is that something that a
• 1:00:14
  consumer could do? If someone said listen I might
• 1:00:16
  buy a case of 6 I want. I want a random 6.
• 1:00:18
  So the big thing for us is the logistics on this, just like how
• 1:00:21
  do you manage the logistics of something that you might have, I
• 1:00:23
  don't know, Ben Nervous 96, you might only have like 20, 20
• 1:00:27
  bottles going into a batch of 1500.
• 1:00:29
  So how do you make sure that they're fairly mixed?
• 1:00:31
  Yeah, through the cases. And then how do you make sure
• 1:00:33
  that your, you know, your retailer doesn't put 6 bottles
• 1:00:36
  on the shelf and it turns out to be 6 of the same bottles?
• 1:00:38
  Yeah, of course. So we've designed system that
• 1:00:41
  we're going to implement that'll be for for that.
• 1:00:42
  Picking system packing. So yeah, picking and packing
• 1:00:46
  systems. So each case has roughly a
• 1:00:49
  similar, you know we assign like an in house value to each
• 1:00:52
  bottling and then each case will have and a roughly average
• 1:00:56
  value. Except for the whiskey stories
• 1:00:58
  case, there's. There's, there's, there's
• 1:01:02
  nothing bad going in there. No, of course.
• 1:01:04
  Yeah, we've kind of. Thought provoking conversations
• 1:01:06
  and we've. Almost tiered it into like 4
• 1:01:07
  tiers yeah. So you get 2 of like say ABCD
• 1:01:11
  and you'll get 2 of tier D2 of tier C of course a mix of like
• 1:01:15
  one or one not not from the same yeah liquid.
• 1:01:18
  And then you might get one of tier B and one of tier but.
• 1:01:20
  Also, yeah, I just, I just say like, sorry, but yes, of course
• 1:01:24
  from from a consumer's point of view and they'll say our value,
• 1:01:27
  value, value, but at the same time the value is also in the
• 1:01:29
  quality of liquid, so it doesn't matter.
• 1:01:31
  Yeah, exactly. So like.
• 1:01:32
  You know, experience is a really difficult thing to place a
• 1:01:35
  pinpoint of value on, but yeah, so it's experience and value for
• 1:01:39
  us. And value is going to be key for
• 1:01:40
  like, you know, if I'm going to sell it to a whiskey person,
• 1:01:42
  they've got to know that they open up that bottle and it's
• 1:01:44
  like, OK, cool, yeah, we'd have paid like, whatever, £70 for
• 1:01:46
  that. So yeah, that feels good.
• 1:01:47
  That's £150 for that. That feels great.
• 1:01:50
  So that's the value. I love it, yeah.
• 1:01:52
  And the initial element is like, you know, give the ball to him
• 1:01:55
  and yeah. That's a bottle of whiskey from
• 1:01:58
  Thompson. So.
• 1:02:00
  Yeah, so on the on the on the label as well, we put we put
• 1:02:04
  with thanks to our distillery friends big and small and
• 1:02:07
  because it's been quite collaborative because it's not
• 1:02:11
  competitive. So, you know, it's not like
• 1:02:14
  someones going to, you know, if you put, let's say a Thompson
• 1:02:16
  Brothers cling least 14 year old single cask and a shop shelf and
• 1:02:20
  there's the official bottle from Diageo, you know, then you're
• 1:02:22
  kind of in competition. But this is, you know, non
• 1:02:25
  competitive. And then if anything, it's the
• 1:02:27
  opposite. It's potentially a random
• 1:02:29
  introduction to. Some of those companies will
• 1:02:31
  say, for example, of naming rights.
• 1:02:33
  Well, nobody knows until they buy it, so we'll be happy to be
• 1:02:37
  more transparent because that's a customer who's buying for the
• 1:02:39
  liquid. Yeah.
• 1:02:40
  So in this experience for them, it's it's it's equivalent of
• 1:02:42
  like a marketing spend, you know, so and it's not shelf, you
• 1:02:45
  know, that's just sometimes you might find with with distillery
• 1:02:47
  companies and larger companies is like the guys on the bulk
• 1:02:51
  side, they're they're they're worried about the sales guys
• 1:02:53
  being protective of the brand. Yeah.
• 1:02:55
  So if this is something that will allow them to sell stock to
• 1:02:58
  us and allow us to use the brand, but the brand is hidden.
• 1:03:01
  Yeah, they're not cannibalizing their market.
• 1:03:04
  Yeah, of course. And then from the new guy's
• 1:03:06
  perspective, it's basically the same thing.
• 1:03:08
  So it's like if our mystery mall and it turns out to be an ardent
• 1:03:11
  American, if it was like Tom's brothers, ardent American, hard
• 1:03:13
  American on the shelf. It's like you are competing for
• 1:03:16
  shelf space with ardent American and yourself.
• 1:03:18
  It might be a nice introduction for people who have picked up an
• 1:03:21
  ardent market for the 1st and then you tried to study for the
• 1:03:23
  first time. And the great thing as well is
• 1:03:25
  about and, and something that's really somebody who's kind of
• 1:03:28
  come into whiskey and this element of whiskey, you know,
• 1:03:31
  fairly recently is that the ABV is well-being.
• 1:03:34
  They're fifty. Yeah.
• 1:03:34
  Because sometimes cast Strength whiskey for a non whiskey
• 1:03:38
  drinker can be quite an intimidating, you know, suddenly
• 1:03:41
  if you say, I know someone who likes a DRAM, but they like
• 1:03:44
  their core ranges, but that would be a perfect gift for
• 1:03:46
  them. Yeah.
• 1:03:47
  If I've given them a cast Strength one and it's sitting at
• 1:03:49
  565758 percent, they might go. That's rocket fuel.
• 1:03:53
  Because for them, Cast Strength whiskey isn't something that
• 1:03:55
  they drink very regularly. I also say we're built
• 1:03:58
  rebuilding Bobby bars whiskey collection be quite good to
• 1:04:01
  finish with one of them in a few weeks time.
• 1:04:03
  So he's got his, he's got his whiskey built up, build that
• 1:04:06
  collection back up a variety of distilleries and then one
• 1:04:08
  mystery ball at the end. That's the experience that is
• 1:04:10
  that. And I'm already thinking like,
• 1:04:12
  and you know, I would love because of the logistics for you
• 1:04:15
  being up there, up here and has been down in Edinburgh.
• 1:04:17
  Imagine if we did an indie bottler spotlight mystery malt.
• 1:04:21
  We mystery malts turn up and we at Diggers and we don't know
• 1:04:25
  what they are until we literally open them.
• 1:04:26
  And then we've got to then bluff our way through that
• 1:04:28
  conversation. But right, let's go through the
• 1:04:31
  bottling part. We've seen the bottles.
• 1:04:36
  Final part of production. Fantastic, So.
• 1:04:40
  You can see the. We'll move down this way.
• 1:04:43
  Wait, Chuck up. This this.
• 1:04:45
  Is very. Familiar.
• 1:04:54
  From the labeling in here too. Yeah, labeling, yeah, we've got,
• 1:04:57
  we've got 22 bottling machines, 11 just for gin, one for brine
• 1:05:02
  spirits, got capsule spinner in the corner.
• 1:05:06
  And then we've got two different labeling machines.
• 1:05:08
  We've got our first one that we kind of keep as backup Slash.
• 1:05:11
  It's actually better for doing the Dornoch label.
• 1:05:13
  So it's it works better with tapered bottles and then we've
• 1:05:16
  got a slightly more industrial one that does a better job than
• 1:05:19
  the tall rounds. Well, that's perfect.
• 1:05:21
  And everything's in tall rounds. So you they still need to get
• 1:05:23
  another labeling machine in our etcetera, etcetera.
• 1:05:26
  Fantastic. I tell you what, Graham, just to
• 1:05:28
  your left there, that looks like something you'd like for sure.
• 1:05:31
  What's that bring liquid? Shredded.
• 1:05:34
  Thanks though I. Like it looks lovely.
• 1:05:36
  So much way to be labeled. Yeah.
• 1:05:38
  So this is just on Friday. They'll be labeled on labeled on
• 1:05:41
  Monday. So that's so how many people
• 1:05:43
  would you have in here that once?
• 1:05:45
  Usually a couple of guys and Jack and Jack and Josh generally
• 1:05:49
  take care of everything in here. I think in early on it was very
• 1:05:52
  much like me and Simon and me and Simon and Jack and Barry and
• 1:05:55
  basically a combination of yeah, but yeah, we'll all come in and
• 1:05:58
  pull together if we need to get like a big run done or something
• 1:06:01
  finished off. But that's the sort of thing,
• 1:06:03
  you know, once we come to the end of this fundraising, it'll
• 1:06:05
  be nice to be able to get back into the operational stuff
• 1:06:07
  again. And really mapping and planning
• 1:06:09
  ahead a bit more. Just looking at some of these
• 1:06:11
  labels, like I'm seeing fantastic Drampton Abbey.
• 1:06:14
  Yeah, that was. So that was.
• 1:06:16
  These are all labels that have made it out onto Yeah, it's on
• 1:06:18
  the. Shelf actually as well, Graham,
• 1:06:20
  we've got a just behind the behind.
• 1:06:21
  Oh yeah, the private, yeah. That that was, that was.
• 1:06:24
  Fantastic. Yeah, Tinton's made it onto that
• 1:06:27
  label as well, which is that was the.
• 1:06:28
  That was the Strathur, and we we made ourselves our own recipe,
• 1:06:32
  kind of like a prototype for Dornik back in 2014.
• 1:06:35
  Right, Tin Abbey. That was fantastic.
• 1:06:36
  That was, that was never. Released.
• 1:06:38
  I heard someone asking at the bar, he said look cats on your
• 1:06:41
  label. Any any reason just so far just
• 1:06:44
  like? Cats.
• 1:06:45
  Yeah, Phil. Yeah, Phil likes cats.
• 1:06:47
  Phil likes cats. There you go, you.
• 1:06:49
  Have these relationships with Japan you reckon is influenced
• 1:06:54
  by your love of cats? Yeah, yeah, I do love cats and
• 1:06:56
  Andrew as well. Andrew's one that does a lot of
• 1:06:58
  design work for us. And Andrew loves cats, so yeah.
• 1:07:02
  And the one that I saw very recently was your 1996 Ben
• 1:07:04
  Nevis. It's got a character on the
• 1:07:05
  front then. So who?
• 1:07:06
  That's massive Takatakatsuru. So he came to the UK and
• 1:07:11
  founded. Well, he came and learned about
• 1:07:13
  whiskey production. He founded eventually what came
• 1:07:16
  Nikka, right? Yeah.
• 1:07:17
  So you've got that Nikka link back to.
• 1:07:19
  That yeah, fantastic. I gotta do a bit of a but Nikka
• 1:07:21
  tribute. Yeah, he didn't work a bit.
• 1:07:23
  Never he worked, but so yeah, somewhere.
• 1:07:25
  In Campbelltown, he had a green distillery in the.
• 1:07:27
  Yeah. And then founded Yamazaki and
• 1:07:29
  Yoichi. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:31
  Well, yeah, he was. He didn't.
• 1:07:32
  He didn't. Employ the Yamazaki and then
• 1:07:34
  Yoichi. Yeah, then he went off to set,
• 1:07:36
  set up his own really company, which was Nikka.
• 1:07:38
  You can almost do it like I'm I'm, I mean, I'm just thinking,
• 1:07:41
  I mean sticker collections or cards because I'm just looking
• 1:07:45
  at this wall and I'm going you should see your toilet really.
• 1:07:49
  But I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm just looking at I'm going.
• 1:07:51
  I've tried that, I've tried that, I've tried that one.
• 1:07:53
  It's almost. Like a casual.
• 1:07:54
  Moment that's I know it's like a collect genuine, genuine feels
• 1:07:57
  like if you because I mean, I'm an adult that will still
• 1:08:01
  sometimes buy football sticker books and the collectible
• 1:08:05
  element of that. I just think it's fantastic.
• 1:08:08
  Thompson Thompson Brothers Top Trump's.
• 1:08:10
  Yeah. Thompson was your ABV.
• 1:08:13
  But that before what 11 label I've noticed and it was one we
• 1:08:17
  were actually I think Ross you're a question you're
• 1:08:19
  desperate ass is the Sutherland yes label the bottling and.
• 1:08:23
  Then we're going to see, we're going to see it in the bottle
• 1:08:24
  shop and have that kind of concept.
• 1:08:25
  We could explain it here. I guess.
• 1:08:27
  Sutherland is something that me and Chuck found in Edinburgh in
• 1:08:31
  our bars. 5 year old Sutherland, old retro label, looks very
• 1:08:35
  similar to an old kind of 70s style from a from a nearby
• 1:08:38
  distillery. Yeah.
• 1:08:40
  And tell me about it and what's the what's the long term plans
• 1:08:42
  for Sutherland? Yeah.
• 1:08:43
  So blend blended malts, I am I, So if we call it Sutherland,
• 1:08:49
  we're only allowed to have malts in it from Sutherland.
• 1:08:52
  Currently there's only three operating distilleries in
• 1:08:54
  Sutherland, which is Cline Leash, Dornick and Bora.
• 1:08:57
  So that tells you what's in there mostly Cline Leash.
• 1:09:00
  So yeah, the proportions kind of 70 something percent up to 80%
• 1:09:07
  climb leash, 20% Dornick and the two mix really nicely together.
• 1:09:12
  And then, you know, a token, yeah, drop of drop of Broa just
• 1:09:16
  from a bottle for now. Maybe one day we can get ahold
• 1:09:19
  of new Broa and for for blending with.
• 1:09:22
  I tried yeah, that's maybe one day.
• 1:09:24
  That's it. But what?
• 1:09:24
  What? What cool product to bring Yeah,
• 1:09:26
  at a really good price. So that for which?
• 1:09:29
  Market ride in the area you're from as well, which is.
• 1:09:31
  Nice as well. Someone's a huge region with a
• 1:09:34
  really small population. We've only got through up until
• 1:09:37
  recently only one distillery. Of course you.
• 1:09:39
  Know you're up to three, which is.
• 1:09:41
  Great. Since 64, since before, before
• 1:09:43
  and yeah, so we've been doing annual releases of that.
• 1:09:47
  We work quite far ahead. Give it a really good time to
• 1:09:49
  that and cask, but then when we have the street distillery and
• 1:09:53
  who knows if we can never get get a hold of some new broer.
• 1:09:57
  There's some different plans for like how we want to do it in the
• 1:09:59
  future. So we all, I really like the
• 1:10:00
  idea of it being 5 because I think it's obviously a lot of
• 1:10:03
  the client leash is much older. So we're usually 8 or 9 for the
• 1:10:05
  client leash and dawning because the minimum wage at 5:00.
• 1:10:08
  But we've got plans in the future to try and do some
• 1:10:10
  blended at birth and then like further mature those for
• 1:10:13
  different series in the future. But yeah, we see it being part
• 1:10:16
  of our kind of core range moving forward like an annual release
• 1:10:19
  that will do forward, I think this.
• 1:10:21
  Year. So at birth.
• 1:10:22
  Spin it at birth. Yeah, because a couple of people
• 1:10:26
  done it in the past, but it's been a long time since.
• 1:10:28
  Yeah, you get a bit of it. So I think famously Ben Nevis
• 1:10:30
  used to do it with their Malton Grain Spirit.
• 1:10:32
  Yeah, Locks did it with the Malton Grain Spirit.
• 1:10:34
  So Hazel, we've done a really high end kind of experience of
• 1:10:37
  that great liquid. So that that's kind of one of
• 1:10:40
  the plans we've got for it, but it's, again, it's time and
• 1:10:42
  space-time, space money. And so we might see a fourth
• 1:10:46
  some of the distillery equipment to that recipe in the.
• 1:10:48
  Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:50
  We'd love to build it out with with Strewy and we'd like to do
• 1:10:52
  different proportions and different styles and so on.
• 1:10:55
  So, but yeah, we wanted, you know, we're really lucky.
• 1:10:57
  I mean having like Clingly shut the road and bore up the road,
• 1:10:59
  these are amazing. I don't.
• 1:11:01
  Want to go into clingly too much but clingly famously waxy
• 1:11:05
  texture, You guys new experiment.
• 1:11:07
  You're looking for a vintage style.
• 1:11:09
  You're looking for texture. Do you?
• 1:11:10
  You must feel it compliments that that recipe.
• 1:11:13
  Yeah. I mean, on paper you wouldn't
• 1:11:14
  have thought it compliments, you know, but it does.
• 1:11:16
  It's like waxy cubed, you know, it kind of starts looking that
• 1:11:18
  way, waxy squared at the moment. Yeah.
• 1:11:20
  Come on then, every waxy cubed. Waxy cubes.
• 1:11:23
  Another thing that's. It's another problem.
• 1:11:26
  There. That's another one in
• 1:11:28
  development. Let's move on to our next part
• 1:11:30
  of the yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:11:33
  Yeah, let's move on, right? Well like every good distillery
• 1:11:36
  too, it always sort of ends up in the shop at the end.
• 1:11:39
  And this is this is where we are.
• 1:11:40
  You, you not only have you got your own distillery 5 minutes
• 1:11:43
  away from your bonded warehouse, but another just across the
• 1:11:46
  road. The stones are away.
• 1:11:47
  There is a shop. A bottle shop.
• 1:11:49
  And this is a yeah. Yeah, we have to swing by.
• 1:11:51
  So we needed more office space. So there's an office round back
• 1:11:54
  and we ended up putting a little shop in here.
• 1:11:56
  So it's a little bit different because this is our offline
• 1:11:58
  shop. So anything that's on our
• 1:12:00
  website are on ballot. This is entirely separate stock,
• 1:12:04
  so the idea is that there's always something in stock.
• 1:12:06
  Interesting if anyone gets lost and find themselves up here.
• 1:12:10
  And if they are opening hours Monday to Friday?
• 1:12:13
  It's currently Monday to Friday. We can't sell alcohol before 10,
• 1:12:17
  so 10 till 4:50, Yeah. But yeah.
• 1:12:20
  So there's lots of things that have been and gone long since
• 1:12:22
  sold out, but can be found here. And you know, something that
• 1:12:26
  maybe disappeared ages ago might crop up again because, you know,
• 1:12:29
  we'd have it allocated for like bars or export and then the
• 1:12:33
  export order changes and you find yourself an extra case.
• 1:12:35
  So we just stick it here. So there's always interesting
• 1:12:38
  stuff turning up. We did have this last release of
• 1:12:42
  Darnik as well. We, we, we stuck what 2436
• 1:12:46
  bottles up here. So we're down to 11 left one of
• 1:12:50
  us, yeah, one left that that won't last long.
• 1:12:52
  These are. Great.
• 1:12:52
  I mean, I'm, I'm already seeing it might not last the next 10
• 1:12:54
  minutes. I've already seen a few bottles
• 1:12:56
  that we're going to be tapping into and I think we're going to
• 1:12:58
  take something back from Diggers as well.
• 1:13:00
  Yeah, now let's so we'll head off to the the the new
• 1:13:03
  distillery. Yeah, yes, the site.
• 1:13:05
  Yeah, right. And and you guys can do your
• 1:13:07
  shopping. That's absolutely.
• 1:13:08
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So every time here.
• 1:13:12
  Yeah, everything's going here. I'll get this.
• 1:13:16
  Bag. Out of shop.
• 1:13:19
  Put this bag down here. You sure?
• 1:13:25
  Yeah. Well, that's all standing.
• 1:13:27
  Standing. Yeah, well, you've got the
• 1:13:29
  you've got the street hill over there as well, so.
• 1:13:32
  The rain is coming. Yeah, there we go.
• 1:13:35
  Right, we're ready, I guess. Clap us in.
• 1:13:42
  Very well, here we are lads in the field in the Highlands.
• 1:13:45
  I remember when this was all distilleries.
• 1:13:47
  This is this now, guys, this is exciting, but because where we
• 1:13:50
  are standing, this is to be the site for the new distillery,
• 1:13:56
  yes. Believe it or not, it is here.
• 1:13:58
  Yeah, in the future. Yeah.
• 1:14:00
  And and warehouses as well. So I mean this is going to be
• 1:14:04
  the Stree is going to be the name of the yes, talk us through
• 1:14:07
  that. Yeah.
• 1:14:08
  So, so on the on the site down here, we're on the South side of
• 1:14:10
  Dornick. So Dornick just there.
• 1:14:13
  Then just over there on past these fields, you've got the
• 1:14:16
  Stree Golf Course and then you've got the Stree Hill out in
• 1:14:19
  the distance there. And yeah, This site is about 8
• 1:14:24
  1/2 acres, 32,000 square metres. So a fair chunk of space to to
• 1:14:28
  play with this. Is like the this is like The
• 1:14:30
  Lion King. With it.
• 1:14:31
  Everything the sun touches is our distillery.
• 1:14:34
  And this is considerably bigger than where we just were.
• 1:14:36
  Oh yeah, yeah, we've got got a chunk, chunk of size.
• 1:14:39
  So yeah. So currently site planning,
• 1:14:41
  permission, building warrant, that little cap just over there,
• 1:14:45
  that's the, that's the borehole that's been sunk, goes 80 meters
• 1:14:48
  down. Wow.
• 1:14:49
  Plenty of water, good quality. And yeah.
• 1:14:52
  So this summer we'll start digging properly and laying
• 1:14:55
  foundations. Distillery, 2000 meters squared
• 1:14:58
  of warehousing, new bottling logistics facility.
• 1:15:04
  We've got about a MW peak of solar capacity on the go here.
• 1:15:08
  So it's. Yeah.
• 1:15:10
  So she'll be able to do off off grid from our own energy, about
• 1:15:15
  250,000 litre of alcohol. Considerably.
• 1:15:18
  Just considerably. I mean you it was 15,000 wasn't
• 1:15:21
  it at the OHH? Well, yeah, 12 is 12 is what we
• 1:15:25
  can, what we can do with our with our style there.
• 1:15:27
  And is there gonna be a significantly different style of
• 1:15:29
  spirit? Yes, so we're we're not taking
• 1:15:33
  Dornick and upscaling it. The original Dornick still
• 1:15:35
  restays to keep going. No compromise doing Dornick
• 1:15:39
  style. This guy is going to be more of
• 1:15:43
  a balancing point. So we've been running
• 1:15:44
  experiments, other distilleries already trying to find those
• 1:15:47
  sweet spots between what Dornick does and what modern, modern
• 1:15:51
  production does. And just trying to find the
• 1:15:54
  point where you're bringing the most of that texture of that
• 1:15:56
  mouth feel of that complexity, minerality of those fruity
• 1:16:00
  essays, and just finding those sweet spots where you're really
• 1:16:06
  raising it up. But while also being conscious
• 1:16:09
  that we want to have something that's at like a normal
• 1:16:11
  competitive price. At the end of the day, you know,
• 1:16:13
  it's going to be it's going to be in a fair volume and it needs
• 1:16:16
  it needs to be a competitive price.
• 1:16:18
  So we need to be, you know, don't the cost productions
• 1:16:22
  almost ignored, you know, the place is a bit scrappy, but then
• 1:16:26
  we're using, you know, probably the highest cost, you know, the
• 1:16:29
  deliberate choices for the highest cost production of any
• 1:16:31
  liquid. Whereas here we're we're being a
• 1:16:34
  bit more considered and finding those balance points.
• 1:16:37
  So far those experiments have looked good where we're we're
• 1:16:40
  getting something that does cost a little bit more than standard,
• 1:16:42
  but not too much more, yields a little bit less, but not that
• 1:16:45
  much less. And you're really finding those
• 1:16:47
  flavour sweet spots. So over the course of the year,
• 1:16:50
  we'll do multiple seasons of different styles so that we've
• 1:16:54
  got kind of an in house, you know, colour palette or
• 1:16:57
  components to draw from for making larger battings for a
• 1:17:00
  final releases. A little bit like the Japanese
• 1:17:04
  distilleries, how, you know, for their own internal blending
• 1:17:07
  purposes, they make a a basket of styles or the Jamaican Robin
• 1:17:11
  distilleries with multiple marks for internal blending.
• 1:17:14
  So that's, that's that's the intention.
• 1:17:16
  So that's drawing drawing on our drawing on our blending
• 1:17:20
  experience. You know, we really want to be
• 1:17:23
  able to pull those levers and to make those tweaks and to fine
• 1:17:26
  tune it in. Whereas Dornical continue being
• 1:17:28
  mostly very individual batches, mostly single casks, this this
• 1:17:34
  will be something that's a little bit more designed I
• 1:17:39
  guess. And the distillery itself, when
• 1:17:41
  it's built, will it be open to visitors at all?
• 1:17:43
  Yes, it will be. Will it be kind of glass and
• 1:17:45
  steel type modern, very modern looking distillery or the
• 1:17:48
  traditional nods to? Oh yeah, so nothing nothing too
• 1:17:52
  fancy on on the builds. It's basically just, you know,
• 1:17:55
  tarted up steel frame. Yeah, bit of glass, but if we'd
• 1:17:58
  we'd thrown in there. But you Yeah, we've been very
• 1:18:00
  considerate over the the function of the form.
• 1:18:02
  Yeah, yeah, we yeah, we're giving ourselves all the space
• 1:18:05
  and all the tools we need. And we're not, we're, you know,
• 1:18:08
  we're not going to spend an extra million to make an
• 1:18:10
  architectural wonder that doesn't.
• 1:18:11
  That's what you hit on an interesting point because Phil
• 1:18:13
  has mentioned for the last two days that time and money has
• 1:18:16
  been quite difficult for the the bottling and for Dornex
• 1:18:20
  Distillery. I know you've got to this stage.
• 1:18:22
  How the hell are you gonna fund us?
• 1:18:23
  This is gonna. Yeah.
• 1:18:25
  So, yeah. So we, we took it.
• 1:18:27
  So we, yeah, yeah. So we, we, we took the, we took
• 1:18:31
  the project really far from cash flow, which is why we were tight
• 1:18:34
  because we're, you know, doing the hotel, doing the independent
• 1:18:37
  bottling, funding Dornic Distillery and the excess
• 1:18:41
  profits were basically getting absorbed into this project for
• 1:18:45
  architects design a million professional fees, et cetera.
• 1:18:49
  Just just to get to the starting line where you're allowed to
• 1:18:52
  build. It's a huge.
• 1:18:54
  Taking a long time. It does.
• 1:18:55
  And we've heard that. We've heard that with poor, at
• 1:18:57
  least it's still array. We heard that, that challenge,
• 1:18:58
  everyone thinks about the construction of it.
• 1:19:01
  Yeah, everyone thinks about one. Wow.
• 1:19:02
  But you know, to get to the point where you could actually
• 1:19:04
  put a shovel in the ground and go, we have broken ground.
• 1:19:08
  It's it's huge. To get even, to get to that
• 1:19:10
  point there, we've been pretty lucky on our journey, I think
• 1:19:12
  comparatively. But we've, yeah, we've got got
• 1:19:15
  some good funding secured privately at the moment,
• 1:19:17
  obviously moving towards a crowdfunding campaign.
• 1:19:20
  And then after that, along with the private funding, we'll kind
• 1:19:22
  of see how we're positioned and that'll determine kind of what
• 1:19:25
  we do, what we do next. And of course from, from like
• 1:19:27
  from an open and honesty point of view as well, which you
• 1:19:29
  mentioned last night, which was last week's recording, was that,
• 1:19:33
  you know, you, it would have been very easy to start and go,
• 1:19:36
  let's get all the costs covered by as many people as possible
• 1:19:39
  with the crowdfunding. But the danger would have been
• 1:19:41
  that people might have put their money into the project and then
• 1:19:44
  find out actually there's a problem with the site and we're
• 1:19:46
  going to have to hold on. So from that point of view, what
• 1:19:48
  we can now see and because of as this recording is going out, the
• 1:19:52
  crowdfunding has been open for for about a week, is this, yeah,
• 1:19:56
  fingers crossed and we can edit this out.
• 1:19:57
  But but the point is, is that that what people who are
• 1:20:00
  investing in the crowdfunding know, everything is going into
• 1:20:04
  the bricks and mortar and the work that's going on in the
• 1:20:06
  distillery. Exactly.
• 1:20:07
  Yeah, it's all, it's all the kind of big CapEx to build out
• 1:20:09
  the distillery project, you know and we've already Simon kind of
• 1:20:12
  touched on we had kind of de risked it as much as possible.
• 1:20:15
  So the water sources secured archaeological trenching and
• 1:20:18
  surveys have we've done, we've done testing for the foundation.
• 1:20:21
  So you know what what you're getting into once you start
• 1:20:23
  getting the building up and going, because that is a risk as
• 1:20:26
  well, of course, you start getting into the ground works.
• 1:20:28
  So we've tried to do risk it as much as possible.
• 1:20:30
  Building warrants, planning permission.
• 1:20:33
  So yeah, it's been a a long MEP engineering, all of that stuff's
• 1:20:37
  been done. And any, anything that could
• 1:20:38
  cause either massive delays or be a project killer, We've been
• 1:20:42
  across those marks under our own steam before we've gone, you
• 1:20:46
  know, you know, given the current whisky environment, you
• 1:20:48
  know, maybe the, your best option would have been to Yolo a
• 1:20:51
  crowdfunding a year ago, but then we'd be putting a lot of
• 1:20:54
  risk on other people. And so you spoke.
• 1:20:56
  Where's the best? About the trust that you're
• 1:20:58
  building up with all of your brands.
• 1:21:00
  And so obviously investment is risk, but you're going to keep
• 1:21:04
  communicating with people that do decide to invest in Stray.
• 1:21:06
  There's going to be lots of collaborative ideas.
• 1:21:09
  Yeah, yeah. Which, you know, I think it's
• 1:21:11
  all down to individuals to kind of do their own due diligence
• 1:21:15
  and make sure they have comfort with whatever it is that they
• 1:21:17
  choose to do. You know, we're just presenting
• 1:21:20
  that this is a project and this is what we're doing.
• 1:21:21
  We're excited about it. And these are the reasons that
• 1:21:24
  perhaps you might feel that you're excited and you want to
• 1:21:26
  kind of get involved in the. Project.
• 1:21:27
  Could they do that? Well, with the crowdfunding, it
• 1:21:30
  is kind of, you know, you get funnelled through the platform
• 1:21:32
  into Crowd Cube and then you obviously have various
• 1:21:35
  questionnaires on your own, due diligence to do and you'll have
• 1:21:37
  service to take, you know, verify your identity and all of
• 1:21:41
  these sorts of things. But it'll be really, you know,
• 1:21:43
  for as we are presenting that this is something and this is
• 1:21:45
  something that's happening, then it's up to the individual to
• 1:21:47
  ensure that they're, you know, doing their own due diligence.
• 1:21:50
  I'm sure it's so comfortable you're not looking.
• 1:21:51
  For individuals to come in, we got massive sums of money you.
• 1:21:55
  Know that sounds great, but you're saying God?
• 1:21:58
  Yeah, we'll see. I'm still playing a lottery, but
• 1:22:02
  it's he's. Getting on, he's out.
• 1:22:04
  We got him. He's a big man, eh?
• 1:22:06
  Well, you said that a little too Stigree, but you know, people
• 1:22:10
  can get involved for as little as 1020 lbs like it's it's.
• 1:22:13
  Yeah, we want we want people to feel that sense of kind of
• 1:22:16
  ownership and they're part of something.
• 1:22:17
  And that's kind of where crowdfunding's great, you know,
• 1:22:19
  allows lots of people to get that sense of involvement and be
• 1:22:23
  really invested in a project. And both when I say invested not
• 1:22:26
  just financially, but they really get behind it.
• 1:22:28
  Like I want this to succeed. Perhaps it's the environmental
• 1:22:31
  aspect of what we're doing or perhaps it's a community aspect
• 1:22:34
  where we are positioned in in this part of the world.
• 1:22:36
  So whatever the reason is that you want to get behind us if
• 1:22:38
  you're customer Thompson Brothers that you know, we're
• 1:22:41
  just presenting that and giving people as many reasons as
• 1:22:43
  possible to try and get involved in project coming Ambassador.
• 1:22:46
  Yeah, well, that's what we want. And I think if we're good to any
• 1:22:48
  crowdfunders, you know, it's kind of reciprocal arrangement.
• 1:22:52
  And with a project like that, and that's where whiskey takes
• 1:22:54
  its sweet time effectively, isn't it?
• 1:22:57
  And it's very easy to fall into the thing of I'm investing to
• 1:23:00
  get the building up. But at the same time, no,
• 1:23:02
  because there is the business plan, the game plan for you
• 1:23:04
  guys. What is it?
• 1:23:05
  You've you've mentioned a little bit more of, of where you see it
• 1:23:09
  going and what you want. But you know, this is this isn't
• 1:23:12
  a, a nice little project for the town of Donna.
• 1:23:14
  This is a business. Oh, yeah, that's, that's what it
• 1:23:16
  is, isn't it? It's a business that will
• 1:23:18
  benefit the local community. And it is a business that will
• 1:23:20
  create another distillery in Scotland and a distillery in an
• 1:23:23
  area of Scotland, which, which in Sullivan that would want it.
• 1:23:25
  But, but at the same time that you, it's not, you're not just
• 1:23:28
  investing in to see a building getting put up here, you're
• 1:23:30
  investing in the longevity of a business and and a business in
• 1:23:33
  the whiskey industry. Yeah, well, I mean, a big
• 1:23:35
  difference here is that it's a, it's a big new distillery that's
• 1:23:38
  getting tacked onto an existing business.
• 1:23:40
  It's part of the whole group with Thompson Independent
• 1:23:43
  Traders, which is Dorner Castle Tell.
• 1:23:45
  It's Dorner Distillery. It's Thompson Brothers Indie
• 1:23:48
  blends and gin and the new distillery projects is all
• 1:23:52
  together. So in the way that the Thompson
• 1:23:55
  Brothers Independent bottling has supported Dornik Distillery
• 1:23:58
  production of the last eight years, the last eight years of
• 1:24:01
  Dornik Distillery production plus an expanded Thompson
• 1:24:06
  Brothers Indie blends because we're we're currently maxed out
• 1:24:09
  our existing facilities and we've got significantly larger
• 1:24:13
  storage warehouse distribution, bottling all going in here.
• 1:24:16
  So that rejected should comfortably cover the cost of
• 1:24:22
  the cost of production here. So it's so we're not coming in
• 1:24:25
  from a cold start. We don't need to go and raise
• 1:24:26
  another million every year or do too many or do too many cask
• 1:24:30
  sales or do further rounds of dilution or get ourselves into
• 1:24:34
  trouble with too much stock financing or debt.
• 1:24:38
  The yeah, the idea is that we can, we can run this from cash
• 1:24:42
  flow where it's the CapEx to get up and running is where we need
• 1:24:45
  to help. Fantastic.
• 1:24:47
  No, we are sitting here at the distillery.
• 1:24:49
  They're standing here in the distillery.
• 1:24:51
  The water sources obviously work out because it started to rain.
• 1:24:54
  I'm wearing my OH. Yeah, there's no shortage of
• 1:24:56
  water. I'm wearing my I'm wearing my
• 1:24:58
  Thompson Bros, the towers of an outside broadcast.
• 1:25:01
  I was in Scotland exactly. I was gifted by my current wife
• 1:25:04
  Harper. She gave me a lovely hip flash
• 1:25:07
  there and we have some what we got in here.
• 1:25:09
  What was what was the oh? Yeah, so it's a 7 year old
• 1:25:13
  Oliver also hogs heads of Dornik.
• 1:25:16
  Well, some. Early work.
• 1:25:17
  I think we should die. Oh yeah.
• 1:25:19
  Good girlfriend. Cheers.
• 1:25:20
  Good luck. Lovely is.
• 1:25:25
  This like you stood at the train station in Dingwall?
• 1:25:27
  Yeah, this. Is the night.
• 1:25:29
  No one drinking I know in 2009 whiskey.
• 1:25:34
  On the street we. Are we certainly are.
• 1:25:37
  Then I don't think I've drunk. Whiskey down.
• 1:25:43
  Lovely. Absolutely.
• 1:25:44
  Here's to the street distillery. Thank you very much for having
• 1:25:46
  us, guys. Now one of the features on the
• 1:25:48
  podcast is what, 3 drams and what we're going to do is as
• 1:25:52
  your brothers. I think you're actually the
• 1:25:53
  first first brothers we've had in the possibly what a couple's
• 1:25:56
  little brothers. Yeah, we've had brothers, but so
• 1:25:58
  as as brothers yet to get Rudy first alarm to come up.
• 1:26:02
  What we'll do is we'll we'll do one each and then we'll do a
• 1:26:06
  brother what 3 drama. So who wants to go first with
• 1:26:08
  our what 3 drama? Any any whiskey any any whiskey
• 1:26:11
  with any story or meaning behind it.
• 1:26:13
  Which one who wants to go first or Simon.
• 1:26:15
  Oh. Right.
• 1:26:18
  Oh, yeah. Tricky one.
• 1:26:20
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you, Are you ready to roll,
• 1:26:22
  Phil? Yeah, I think you're thinking of
• 1:26:24
  a throwing straight in 10 year old Lefroy Bonfanti import for
• 1:26:29
  Italy, kind of mid 70s, just lush tropical fruit, brilliant
• 1:26:32
  cherry. It's for me.
• 1:26:34
  If that was your if you could go into shop and buy that as your
• 1:26:37
  everyday drama is like one of the best whiskies I've ever had
• 1:26:40
  in my life. Where did you have it?
• 1:26:41
  I've had that a couple of times from Marcel and Gills, who was
• 1:26:44
  famous Lefroy collector and wrote the the book on Lefroy.
• 1:26:48
  He's you know, he was a guy introduced it to me for the
• 1:26:51
  first time. In fact, it was maybe Hideo
• 1:26:53
  Young Mocha tried it with the scheme.
• 1:26:54
  Yeah, Whiskey Mu himself and Marcel.
• 1:26:58
  But I've been lucky I had it. There's a few different
• 1:26:59
  versions, quite a few different glass variations, but the
• 1:27:01
  earlier ones that are dark, they're just so good.
• 1:27:05
  Tropical fruit and balanced beat so.
• 1:27:06
  When was that bothered? So probably mid 70s are the ones
• 1:27:09
  you want to look for, yeah. Yeah I'm probably thinking about
• 1:27:15
  one of the ones we opened in 20/20/14 was a pre war whiskey
• 1:27:20
  tour where we went round Scottish distilleries, a bunch
• 1:27:24
  of friends. We all had bottles of whiskey
• 1:27:25
  which were distilled and preferably bottled before the
• 1:27:29
  outbreak of World War 2. So one of the one of the ones we
• 1:27:32
  managed to find was a private bottle of Ardmore.
• 1:27:39
  Was it 20 years old? Just like a typewriter label?
• 1:27:43
  You know the the very early because teachers were the first
• 1:27:46
  company to do this Stopper Cork way back in the day.
• 1:27:49
  So I worked, worked with the guy Oster Longwell.
• 1:27:54
  He was manager of Ardmore at the time.
• 1:27:56
  We took, we took the, we took the bottle there to open at the
• 1:27:58
  distillery. And that was an amazing day.
• 1:28:01
  We had some old teachers, old Ardmores.
• 1:28:04
  And yeah, we did a bit of research on it.
• 1:28:06
  He was, he was able to track down the signature on the label
• 1:28:10
  to match up with someone who was like a director for three years,
• 1:28:13
  which then placed the distillation at the very, very
• 1:28:16
  early 20th century, just not long after the distillery open.
• 1:28:20
  But it was private directors stock, so it was a good stuff.
• 1:28:22
  Wow. And your little typewriter label
• 1:28:25
  on there. Yeah, the bottles in the cellar.
• 1:28:27
  I can't remember the wording but it's a private internal bottle
• 1:28:29
  and. Your joint Thompson Brothers
• 1:28:32
  story, What's the best you can? Go on brand if you want.
• 1:28:34
  Yeah, I absolutely, yeah, there. Was only one on brand.
• 1:28:37
  I think it's yeah, we're. Getting we're well, we're
• 1:28:39
  getting there with with our with our own stock Dornick.
• 1:28:42
  You know we'll be hopefully competing with with these
• 1:28:46
  amazing ancient drams in a few years with a bit more age under
• 1:28:48
  our belt. I.
• 1:28:49
  Think the cast we did for the Chichi Boom Matsuri cast 136
• 1:28:52
  that has that Canyon balance of tropical island.
• 1:28:54
  Yeah, that was a good one. That was a fair.
• 1:28:56
  That was one of my favourites so far that the one we did for
• 1:28:59
  Lindbergh Whiskey Fair was I think on a par with the with the
• 1:29:02
  chichi boom one. Was another donut but for
• 1:29:05
  Lindberg. Yeah.
• 1:29:06
  Well, I think what they represent for us is a lot of the
• 1:29:09
  things we've bottled so far have been small casks, buybacks from
• 1:29:12
  crowdfunders and from that first year of production where we're
• 1:29:16
  testing a different recipe, you know, it's all still within
• 1:29:18
  that, you know, you know, maybe like almost 40 different brewing
• 1:29:22
  varieties used. And then in different
• 1:29:24
  combinations of of yeasts, lots of variations are changed.
• 1:29:29
  And then those 2 releases represent when we kind of
• 1:29:32
  narrowed and going right, OK, from all this year long of like
• 1:29:35
  constant experimentation, what direction are we choosing?
• 1:29:39
  So both the TTP bottling and the Limburg bottling were from that
• 1:29:44
  time where we'd kind of like chosen this is this is the path.
• 1:29:48
  You know, we still, yeah, we still experiment.
• 1:29:50
  You wanted to pursue. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:51
  It's the direction we continued moving and we still
• 1:29:53
  experimented, but that was like gone from quite a wide, a wide
• 1:29:57
  range of experiments to a more narrow range of experiments.
• 1:30:02
  Well, listen, guys, we'll have to say thank you so much for
• 1:30:04
  having us here. This has been our first ever
• 1:30:07
  series with a distillery series. We've had a great time.
• 1:30:11
  Our road trip has taken us. Yeah, well, our double header
• 1:30:14
  has taken us to standing in the middle of a field in a in a bit
• 1:30:17
  of a rainy afternoon. Everybody's been fantastic on a
• 1:30:19
  drum. But look, I know that as this is
• 1:30:21
  going out, we we won't know what where the crowdfunding situation
• 1:30:24
  is at this point. But for people who are listening
• 1:30:27
  and going, this is something I would really, really like to get
• 1:30:29
  behind. They've tried the Thompson
• 1:30:30
  brothers. How can they actually find
• 1:30:32
  anything about you guys? Where can we look our?
• 1:30:34
  Social media Dorney Distillery on Instagram and Dorney
• 1:30:37
  Distillery on Facebook and LinkedIn.
• 1:30:40
  Yeah, LinkedIn or just have a look at our website, which is.
• 1:30:44
  Yeah. And yeah, and two months, we've
• 1:30:46
  only just started the the socials for Stree as well.
• 1:30:50
  So yeah, get get on. Stray spell?
• 1:30:52
  How do you spell stray? STRU i.e. right?
• 1:30:55
  Easy to say, easy to spell. Yeah, get follow the straight
• 1:30:58
  and, and, and in terms of like the with the with investing in
• 1:31:02
  it, of course you mentioned it's very important people do their
• 1:31:04
  own due diligence on this. And and you know, whilst the
• 1:31:07
  project, what we're listening about sounds absolutely
• 1:31:09
  fantastic and things it's, you know, it's important to know
• 1:31:12
  people should, you know, invest in their own, in their own risk.
• 1:31:14
  Yeah. There is risk, Yeah, of course.
• 1:31:16
  Risk of anything. You.
• 1:31:17
  Yeah, as, as you might know, it's yeah.
• 1:31:20
  It's yeah, it's it's a lot, you know, I'll.
• 1:31:22
  Never get those Marconi shares back, yeah.
• 1:31:25
  Amazing. But well, I said thank you so
• 1:31:27
  much for for a couple of and also big thanks to Chuck Kerr,
• 1:31:30
  who's made it man. I'm going to give you 4 of Chuck
• 1:31:33
  standing in a field holding a camera there because he looks
• 1:31:35
  absolutely fantastic. It's been great.
• 1:31:36
  And also, you know, you're mentioning the, the, the, the,
• 1:31:39
  the, the Thompson brothers bottling the
• 1:31:41
  dormockdistillery.com. You're mentioning stray.
• 1:31:43
  But also the hotel has been fantastic.
• 1:31:44
  We had a great night's sleep. Even Angus's snoring last night
• 1:31:47
  couldn't keep me from having a wonderful easy night's rest.
• 1:31:51
  I have a man that's got a six month old baby in the house.
• 1:31:53
  It's been it was a lovely night's sleep last night and the
• 1:31:56
  drums were behind the bar, The food absolutely fantastic.
• 1:31:58
  Couldn't have looked after tomorrow.
• 1:31:59
  And we're going to enjoy a Glen Alex OK tasting this evening
• 1:32:02
  that you're putting on in the bar as well.
• 1:32:03
  Really look forward to that. But give us five stars on the
• 1:32:06
  podcast. Listen, you know, watch us on.
• 1:32:08
  This is going to be a great one for the YouTube channel.
• 1:32:10
  If you're listening thinking right, hang on a minute.
• 1:32:11
  I need to see what this is like. Well, you're.
• 1:32:13
  Worth a Really. In a field, Yeah.
• 1:32:15
  You're ready to rewatch? That, but basically it's been
• 1:32:17
  fantastic. Thank you so much for the for
• 1:32:18
  everybody who who tunes in, follows us.
• 1:32:20
  Give the guys a fall, give the guys a check out, see what the
• 1:32:22
  project's all about. Thanks for Chuck coming up
• 1:32:24
  holding the camera. It's been great fun.
• 1:32:26
  We're going to have some more drams.
• 1:32:27
  Cheers, everyone. Cheers, lads.
• 1:32:29
  Yeah, cheers. Thank you after a long.
• 1:32:32
  Days filming, we have retired to the Donut Castle Whiskey Bar got
• 1:32:35
  a hell of a lineup and guess what, you driving?
• 1:32:38
  I have got. A donut Castle.
• 1:32:42
  So about Castle Exclusive Blend, Yeah.
• 1:32:45
  I'm on that 1-2 year old. Northern.
• 1:32:48
  Highland, I says. Northern Highland blend so.
• 1:32:51
  Yeah, that's right. It's a blended as well, Not a
• 1:32:54
  Sutherland blend but Northern Highland.
• 1:32:55
  Yeah, maybe a touch of all of that.
• 1:32:57
  You never know. Potentially.
• 1:32:58
  Yeah, I think it's a refill. I was only gambler at the back
• 1:33:02
  of the label to refill bourbon barrels and some Hogs Heads in
• 1:33:06
  there. I've got I've got this.
• 1:33:09
  I've got the same a blended balling for Donic as well, But
• 1:33:12
  it was done about a year and a half ago.
• 1:33:13
  So it's a different makeup. I didn't see the back of the
• 1:33:16
  ball, so I couldn't tell you what it's a little.
• 1:33:17
  Retro, doesn't it? And I'm actually the same as
• 1:33:19
  Angus, but I've got an amazing flight of an example of what you
• 1:33:22
  can get here that you wouldn't get elsewhere.
• 1:33:24
  Yeah. Take us through.
• 1:33:25
  It we're we're we're. Travelling the world here.
• 1:33:27
  We've gone, we've gone a pack and a pack flight.
• 1:33:32
  I would say yeah, basically 3 Japanese whiskies, 1 Australian.
• 1:33:36
  Unbelievable. I just mentioned so phones, I
• 1:33:38
  would have been phenomenal and I said I was going to grab a
• 1:33:42
  measure of that. Shizuka, they've got in.
• 1:33:44
  And he was. Like, oh, here's the flame for
• 1:33:48
  you. So we have we have a Mars sneaky
• 1:33:51
  bowling like a bottle by whiskey Mew.
• 1:33:54
  So they look. Delicious.
• 1:33:55
  Independent. It's really nice, very drinkable
• 1:33:58
  at 61%. That was my favorite.
• 1:34:01
  From bananas, Ross was. Very common.
• 1:34:05
  And then he's put a three-year old.
• 1:34:08
  OK, which I I really enjoyed that.
• 1:34:12
  It's probably probably my favorite out of this fight.
• 1:34:14
  I repeat the Japanese. I really repeat.
• 1:34:16
  I found it very similar to the like locker room kill home and
• 1:34:21
  that sort of style, just like light young.
• 1:34:24
  But yeah, that Pete. Yeah, very.
• 1:34:26
  Nice, very nice front and forefront, but really very much.
• 1:34:30
  Three years old, 50. PPM.
• 1:34:32
  First of all, bourbon matured. And then another.
• 1:34:35
  One this is this is the sausage supper drum.
• 1:34:38
  Yeah. This is the, this is OK, the one
• 1:34:42
  you originally wanted to try. It is, it's really interesting.
• 1:34:45
  It's, it's definitely, it's quirky.
• 1:34:49
  I. Think.
• 1:34:50
  It's. It does.
• 1:34:52
  I mean you mentioned, I think on a previous pod Chuck, it may may
• 1:34:56
  have been post recording you were talking about Shizuoka
• 1:34:59
  Discover and you're saying, you know, you do get these kind of
• 1:35:01
  slightly salty. You know the whiskeys.
• 1:35:04
  From them and the. Most of the ones I've had, so
• 1:35:06
  that one is all also octave and they've even stayed like the
• 1:35:12
  Angel share on it. So it's about 20% or 23% of
• 1:35:16
  operation in a year. And I've not had most of the
• 1:35:21
  Shizuka and that not many I've had are expired matured.
• 1:35:25
  So a very different showcase from them, but funky.
• 1:35:29
  Yeah, really funky, really funky whiskey.
• 1:35:32
  And I do quite like. I do like the odd funky whiskey
• 1:35:37
  after Met sometimes. It's quite nice to have
• 1:35:39
  something to say. I would say that one I I didn't
• 1:35:41
  love them really. Quite like feel it wasn't.
• 1:35:43
  Really. For me.
• 1:35:44
  Yeah. No, no, it's for everyone.
• 1:35:46
  With the solvents cool, which is obviously the biggest, most
• 1:35:49
  established Tasmanian whiskey. That's right, yeah.
• 1:35:51
  Which one did we have in your truck?
• 1:35:53
  So bought by Cast Amigos, a really great bottle shop in
• 1:35:56
  Melbourne and they do loads of independent bottling so a cast
• 1:36:01
  bottle by them. 14 year old refill bourbon barrel.
• 1:36:05
  Sullivan's Cove. Is they've got like the oldest
• 1:36:07
  liquid releasing out of Australia as far as I'm aware.
• 1:36:12
  And they quite often talk about like their sulfur characteristic
• 1:36:15
  that they say it's kind of like anchovies, which isn't
• 1:36:18
  particularly present in this one.
• 1:36:22
  That's an interesting look for them.
• 1:36:23
  Yeah, they're quite, they're really quite proud of it because
• 1:36:25
  it's characters of that. But I mean, a lot of people are
• 1:36:28
  very self adverse. Yeah.
• 1:36:32
  I managed to cut about 6 minutes of me chatting about warehouse
• 1:36:35
  cask brackets. You're interested over there,
• 1:36:40
  You've got the, you've got the antlers there.
• 1:36:42
  And we were sitting there last night having a couple of drams.
• 1:36:45
  We were and a local lad came in and he sat down and said well
• 1:36:49
  you've just got a bed Chuck and you were you were long in your
• 1:36:52
  bed. How was Ross?
• 1:36:53
  And the local lad came in, He's a bit of an older guy and he
• 1:36:55
  ordered the drum and he said the one that you sit with, you said
• 1:36:57
  I don't bother Angus. And I actually sat down at the
• 1:36:59
  drum and he went see that of that And he pointed to the
• 1:37:03
  antlers up there. Ross Right.
• 1:37:04
  And he said see that there? That killed my grandfather.
• 1:37:09
  Yeah, that beast. Killed my really like.
• 1:37:12
  I like 6 months ago he was sitting over there and fell off
• 1:37:15
  the wall. Actually you add extra Buster to
• 1:37:25
  your croissant, which I've. Never thought I was interested
• 1:37:28
  too. I've been decked up on my
• 1:37:29
  croissant eating. My cousin's wife is French and
• 1:37:35
  she genuinely, genuinely was insulted by the way, if we ate a
• 1:37:42
  croissant, make it a big lump of butter, right?
• 1:37:44
  Put it on one side and invite into it.
• 1:37:46
  No, no, What's what you done The way to eat a croissant.
• 1:37:49
  I don't know how you should eat a croissant.
• 1:37:50
  Normally I'm not French. Oh really, right.
• 1:37:54
  But basically what I do, I do is take the croissant, right?
• 1:37:59
  Many of the recorders tomorrow morning at breakfast and I'm
• 1:38:01
  going to talk you through it is basically pastry stories
• 1:38:03
  podcast. You get a croissant, your
• 1:38:06
  butter, and you just stick it on top of the flatten it down.
• 1:38:12
  Why else are you going to do it? Because I've seen somebody just
• 1:38:15
  made the bus stick to the croissant.
• 1:38:16
  I've seen somebody cut the croissant open once.
• 1:38:19
  You can have squash or sandwiches.
• 1:38:21
  Butter it and then put their jam inside, then close it and have
• 1:38:24
  it as a sandwich. Yeah.
• 1:38:25
  That's a fact. It's still weird, but it's not
• 1:38:27
  as weird as either. No, I just make an open top
• 1:38:29
  sandwich. So basically just slap the
• 1:38:31
  butter, get your jam and strawberry jam, slap that on top
• 1:38:36
  and then bug it in your cup. And that there is exactly how
• 1:38:40
  you should eat across whiskey is whiskey has to be drunk in the
• 1:38:44
  way that the consumer would like to drink it.
• 1:38:45
  If that is with ice, so that is with water.
• 1:38:47
  If that's with Coca-Cola, if that's in a cocktail, then so be
• 1:38:49
  it. And I would say the same should
• 1:38:51
  be said with cositus butticeries.
• 1:38:54
  Cositus all. Patisseries.
• 1:38:57
  Yeah, it's eaten the way you want in it.
• 1:38:59
  What you doing with my chocolate clear?
• 1:39:02
  Looking all the looking all the choke off the top kind of choco
• 1:39:06
  this morning. How?
• 1:39:07
  Did you consider? That knife and fork, Yeah, knife
• 1:39:11
  and fork. Got it.
• 1:39:12
  Emphasizable chunks. There you go.
• 1:39:15
  And we have crazy croissants. Responsibly.
• 1:39:18
  Yeah, the French would say that I do not eat them responsibly,
• 1:39:21
  No. However, I think I would say no
• 1:39:24
  responsibly. I.
• 1:39:34
  Guess 5% in homelands I. Mean there's always the
• 1:39:48
  excitement coming up. Unfortunately, there's.
• 1:39:51
  A drink back, aye. I've had a great time.
• 1:39:57
  That's in the past or jaded. We're not we're not operating
• 1:40:01
  100% here. Nope.
• 1:40:04
  So we stuck in, we didn't know where where to go, where's,
• 1:40:08
  where's home because we're spread out across Edinburgh.
• 1:40:12
  So we're just stuck in the athletic arms diggers and it's
• 1:40:16
  telling us that we've got 195 miles to go until we're there.
• 1:40:21
  But by the. Time we're there, we might just
• 1:40:23
  want to have another. Could have been.
• 1:40:26
  Right, well done lads.