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Whisky Stories Grand Tour Dornoch Episode 1 - The Thompson Brothers · Whisky Stories Podcast

• 0:01
  There it is. There it is, I have some man.
• 0:05
  I guess the W5. Double S your head into Dormix,
• 0:09
  then again. Welcome to the Whiskey Stories
• 0:15
  podcast. What's the?
• 0:19
  Favorite thing you've bottled personally?
• 0:21
  I think privately the sort of little Glenn.
• 0:25
  Vore Flagons. Glenn vor spring line to be sort
• 0:27
  of flag. It's the same kind.
• 0:29
  No, it doesn't count, but it's. Probably it's.
• 0:32
  Balding on my mum's dad's tuition table.
• 0:37
  Yeah, the Spring Bank in the the Glenn Faller.
• 0:39
  And then there was a Glenn Liver.
• 0:40
  Came from the 19371130. 7 Glenn Faller I mean, it's we could
• 0:43
  never commercially sell it because it's like, it's an epic
• 0:46
  old Highland whisky. It's amazing.
• 0:48
  You are listening to episode 1 of Dornoch Distillery, Thompson
• 0:53
  Brothers. Extravaganza.
• 0:55
  Extravaganza series. That's about this N we've ever
• 0:59
  been to record, and maybe the first N will ever go to record
• 1:02
  because I feel massively out of comfort.
• 1:05
  But in a dungeon. We're back.
• 1:07
  We're we're in another, we're in another sort of whiskey.
• 1:09
  What are we calling this? A whiskey vault?
• 1:11
  Like we've been in the Diggers vaults, We've been down there,
• 1:13
  but we have made it. The Whiskey Stories Whiskey
• 1:15
  Wagon has finally made it to its destination this afternoon.
• 1:19
  We've been on the go for a while.
• 1:20
  It's Friday the 21st as we're recording.
• 1:23
  We left Edinburgh at 7:00 this morning.
• 1:24
  Had a quick stop in at Timatton Distillery for a wee drama or
• 1:28
  two. Truck drove the rest of the way
• 1:30
  without a drama number. Yeah.
• 1:32
  Only nearly crashed once we. Did OK?
• 1:34
  Yeah, we did OK. But this was the whole point of
• 1:36
  this journey. We've been kindly invited up.
• 1:38
  We're in Dorn Castle and we're here with the Thompson brothers.
• 1:42
  We've got Phil and Simon. How are you, lads?
• 1:45
  Oh. I think we're going to survive
• 1:46
  the week. It should be.
• 1:49
  It's 5:00 PM. Yes, well, it's Friday after
• 1:51
  all, you know, we're, we're nearly there and you know, it's
• 1:54
  been a fantastic afternoon that we've had so far.
• 1:56
  We've we've enjoyed sort of being in the bar looking around
• 1:59
  the the whiskey selection is just mental.
• 2:02
  We, we, we're, we say that we're lucky in Edinburgh with the
• 2:05
  athletic arms with over 800 bottles of open whiskey and the
• 2:09
  pricing and stuff like that. But I mean, when, when Angus and
• 2:13
  Chuck walked in here, I think you should have like, please
• 2:15
  don't touch the glass. So we're just looking at, Oh my
• 2:18
  God, look at that one. Scottish guys that have a slight
• 2:22
  affinity of Japan just. Brilliant.
• 2:24
  Heavier and heavier the further. Look at that one that there is
• 2:29
  that they were, they were, I mean that I think.
• 2:32
  It's worth saying obviously Thompson Bros have had quite a
• 2:34
  lot of mentions in the podcast, a lot of 70 odd episodes.
• 2:38
  Took your time to get back to us last but I don't know how many
• 2:42
  times it has to say but no. Honestly, even people from all
• 2:44
  over Scotland, all over the industry brought down, I brought
• 2:46
  you by something one of six it in my head is Charlie Hume from
• 2:49
  Inverness handing does the 34 year old Jura.
• 2:52
  Yes, right. I mean, being really a bit of a
• 2:55
  deck about it being like, oh, you're not going to convince me
• 2:57
  of that and then going Oh my goodness, that's bloody
• 2:59
  delicious. Yeah, and that's what it's all
• 3:01
  about, right? That's the one that just tastes
• 3:02
  like kind of diesel and like mutton and stuff like that.
• 3:05
  Diesel and mutton when? We picked up the cask it was we
• 3:09
  cracked it open and I was like because I took the heads off it.
• 3:11
  I looked at the cask and said there was no char and what I
• 3:14
  could you probably just toast it, but there's nothing.
• 3:16
  It's nothing. So it was like the most refill
• 3:18
  refill cast you could find for 34 years.
• 3:20
  It's completely neutral. It's just like you make spirit
• 3:22
  this softened. And Dura, you should give them a
• 3:26
  little look back in that, I think.
• 3:28
  I don't know exactly what's happened, but possibly there's
• 3:34
  been a change in in who's making the blending decisions.
• 3:37
  You see the the the no chill filtering arriving the blend
• 3:41
  compositions different. I think Greg's probably.
• 3:43
  Driving Greg glasses really like I went over actually phase last
• 3:47
  year and now they're playing. Obviously we know they're
• 3:49
  playing about the Scottish hawk and trying to experiment as
• 3:51
  well. And so like I certainly go in
• 3:53
  the right direction for for reconvincing me of of JIRA.
• 3:56
  But anyway, we're here to talk about you.
• 3:57
  Last time we all started Well, what I'll say is I I remember
• 4:00
  was it the there's a blend or and there's.
• 4:04
  Thompson Bros Over six the over six.
• 4:05
  So that was you. You messaged me very early on,
• 4:08
  right Ross? I'm in the bar.
• 4:10
  Want something cheap and cheerful and something you'll
• 4:12
  enjoy? A.
• 4:13
  Blend. It was a blend.
• 4:14
  That was it. Something.
• 4:14
  Different half a second-half a second later and like Thompson
• 4:17
  Bros over six. Yeah, it is the best value
• 4:20
  bottle in whiskey. Yeah, it has been since it was
• 4:22
  released. Yeah.
• 4:23
  I've still got maybe 4 bottles or so in the flat.
• 4:26
  Yeah, from my whiskey. So I think I was getting £28.00
• 4:28
  X fat and I remember being here when you just got that parcel of
• 4:34
  stock about two years ago and me and my dad being like, well
• 4:37
  that's really cool. They're like you've been over
• 4:40
  sex and entirely going. That is bloody delicious.
• 4:43
  Well, the thing about it was was and then what happens now?
• 4:45
  I mean, you know, I do apologize, but I sometimes try
• 4:48
  not to apologize for my ignorance when it comes to this.
• 4:51
  I like whiskey, but I don't know an awful lot about whiskey,
• 4:53
  which is why we started the podcast so that Angus and I are
• 4:56
  whiskey novices. Whiskey novices.
• 4:58
  Unfortunately, the only guy that knew something about whiskey was
• 5:00
  Ross that we knew he had to come along.
• 5:02
  We're still trying to find a replacement for like trucks.
• 5:05
  On trial. But but the thing was I need
• 5:11
  nothing. And so of course, first thing I
• 5:12
  do is I try and find like Thompson brothers or Thompson
• 5:15
  Bros on on Instagram, couldn't find you.
• 5:17
  And then I was looking and I still couldn't find you.
• 5:20
  And then basically then it was the the buck fast logo that
• 5:26
  there was not much fat, the quantified wine, Yeah.
• 5:29
  Yeah, the red, the red wine cask Altmore.
• 5:31
  That was right, yeah. And then there was the the Tesco
• 5:34
  Club card. The the Tesco two strike one
• 5:37
  again. Something like very similar to
• 5:39
  that, yeah. Yeah.
• 5:39
  So. We call that trademark.
• 5:41
  Yeah, we, we, we've got a trademark.
• 5:43
  On that was. Well, you've got the trademark
• 5:45
  of. That Tesco value, yeah, we told
• 5:47
  the world not. That.
• 5:51
  Really. Yeah, we didn't.
• 5:53
  We didn't know that we put the first release I, I was like, oh,
• 5:56
  it must have been like 10 or 12 years ago that they did that.
• 5:58
  So we just rolled with it and then we checked the trademark I.
• 6:01
  Was like Phil, you need to start double checking for these things
• 6:04
  so. We don't, yeah 'cause.
• 6:06
  I was like, oh OK, let the. Trademark go dead.
• 6:07
  My theory with it is it's easier to ask for forgiveness.
• 6:10
  Yeah. Let let's let's rewrite, Let me
• 6:13
  just start 'cause we're already getting we're we're already
• 6:15
  seeing how much fun you guys are and also the dynamic in the
• 6:18
  business you 2 running up foot. Well, that's that was it.
• 6:21
  So that that popped up, you know, you guys and then we're
• 6:25
  lucky with that, that the Diggers in Edinburgh, they get a
• 6:27
  lot of good stock from you guys in.
• 6:28
  So it's been something that we go to very regularly in terms of
• 6:31
  that. But Dornoch Distillery, that's
• 6:33
  when I started finding out what you guys are all about and what
• 6:35
  you guys do. So tell me, right, we're sitting
• 6:37
  here in Dornoch Castle, but let's start with that.
• 6:40
  What was the sort of starting point for you guys?
• 6:43
  What are you from? No, we're from.
• 6:46
  We're from the Black Isles, so about 38 miles South.
• 6:50
  But yeah, the starting point was probably just a few metres above
• 6:53
  her head, yes. So.
• 6:58
  We're we're we're kind of in the dungeons just now and the the
• 7:00
  floor above here. It's a bedroom now, but used to
• 7:03
  be the original bar of the castle.
• 7:06
  So, you know, working in hospitality, family business,
• 7:10
  people come, people go. And all of a sudden you find
• 7:12
  yourself at quite a young age temporarily managing a bar
• 7:16
  making at which when, when we took place over it's 25th
• 7:20
  anniversary this year when, when our parents took place over, you
• 7:24
  know, they had a decent whiskey selection.
• 7:26
  And that was our first bit of education that you'd be, you'd
• 7:29
  be tasting things, deciding what to order next.
• 7:31
  You, you finish one bottle, you get the Gordon Macphail
• 7:34
  catalogue out and you decide what's going on in the next
• 7:36
  order. So yeah, that that was that was
• 7:40
  kind of the that was the starting point.
• 7:42
  People don't know Donna and know the area.
• 7:46
  Your family have this. Castle decided this, this is a
• 7:48
  business we're going to go in. Hotel, restaurant, bar.
• 7:51
  It's an area with great beaches. Got Madonna, got married across
• 7:56
  the roads. Great good shops grandfather.
• 8:01
  A bit of a boy around here. Known for known for like world
• 8:05
  class golf course, etcetera. So you're already attracting
• 8:08
  kind of high end American clientele that are coming up to
• 8:11
  the Scottish Highlands. And that's the business kind of
• 8:13
  Elon Musk got married. To Foster Rd. as well, but I
• 8:15
  don't know if you want to talk. In my great great.
• 8:19
  Grandfather's church. Sorry, I just got a reference.
• 8:23
  Actually we've talked about Chuck's found out recently.
• 8:26
  Is was it your granny? I I met I said when I was coming
• 8:29
  up here I emailed my Gran about emailed.
• 8:32
  Your Gran. Yeah, she's she emails me
• 8:35
  regularly and she doesn't normally read what I reply with,
• 8:38
  so this is quite surprising. I said I was coming up to
• 8:40
  Dornick and she was like, oh, your great, great grandfather
• 8:43
  was Doctor Well, Reverend John Bentig and he was the Reverend
• 8:49
  of the Dornick Cathedral. Do you remember, do you remember
• 8:52
  the Only Fools and Horses episode when they go back to
• 8:54
  visit France for Uncle Albert's like, and everyone suddenly
• 8:58
  looks like Uncle Albert? What was this guy getting up at?
• 9:02
  I think if we start walking around Doric today, we're like,
• 9:04
  Chuck is that is that cousin is everyone's gonna look.
• 9:07
  Well the the e-mail was like 4 lines about him and then
• 9:11
  underneath it just said he had ten children and then like.
• 9:15
  I think everyone's going to look like you tonight, right?
• 9:18
  Right. So so your your parents buy a
• 9:20
  castle. Yeah, I think you need to put it
• 9:21
  into context. So our our parents, my mum and
• 9:24
  dad, they came through in hospitality and I think they
• 9:26
  left hospitality. But dad famously said he'll
• 9:28
  never go back to hospitality. And a couple of his friends that
• 9:32
  he was working with basically told him this, this hotel,
• 9:36
  amazing hotel. And darn, it was for sale.
• 9:37
  It's very close to you, you should go and look at it.
• 9:40
  So he came up and looked at it and it was like clothes for the
• 9:43
  sea, clothes for the winter season.
• 9:45
  It's pretty dilapidated, really rum down and, you know, not
• 9:49
  really on the market for a lot of money.
• 9:50
  So yeah, it's not like we need to be careful to our parents.
• 9:54
  Of course, of course it's. Not bad.
• 9:58
  Yeah, yeah, I think, well, you're a married man now.
• 10:00
  She can't. Strategically use it as well,
• 10:02
  yeah. Probably won't listen to this.
• 10:04
  It's like you. Start working in their business.
• 10:07
  And how, how old are you guys at this point then when you're when
• 10:09
  you're sort of in and around a hotel bar, hospitality?
• 10:14
  1517, that kind of age, yeah, right.
• 10:17
  Yeah, we're, we're kind of born and raised in hotels and
• 10:21
  hospitalities. We we had a few, we had a few
• 10:23
  years off where our parents had sold their hotel and I would
• 10:27
  never to do it again. But yes, it sucks.
• 10:29
  Sucked them back in. So yeah, they ended up ended up
• 10:33
  here working behind the bar tasting whiskies.
• 10:36
  And then it just kind of slowly grew out of control, became the
• 10:41
  drink preference, started learning, started collecting,
• 10:45
  reading books, some of the early websites.
• 10:47
  Kind of early 20s accelerated, yeah.
• 10:49
  Yeah, yeah. So it just kind of gradually
• 10:52
  snowballed and like a logarithmic effect until it'd
• 10:56
  grown out out of control. I I was collecting.
• 11:00
  Simon was like an Edward Dower collector.
• 11:02
  Oh. Yeah, I'm serious.
• 11:05
  I I just the only person in the world.
• 11:09
  Is is that Bilekin as well or just Edward Dower?
• 11:11
  I did. So I did.
• 11:12
  I did a pretty good collection of Edward had a massive ball
• 11:17
  Blair collection and then just other bits and pieces.
• 11:20
  And then that started drifting into going off to auctions.
• 11:25
  This before all the online auctions or even online bidding,
• 11:27
  I would go off to live auctions and it was a bit of a mixture
• 11:30
  because I would I'd write out all the all the lots, do some do
• 11:35
  some price history research. And I also know trade prices for
• 11:38
  things as well. So like, oh great, I can buy
• 11:41
  this bottle of, you know, whatever distillery 10 year old
• 11:44
  from the from the 1960s and look, I bought it for below.
• 11:49
  But that's below. Trade price for the current.
• 11:51
  And so these these kind of things you're picking up and
• 11:53
  then you start getting a taste for the old stuff, the
• 11:56
  distillates from the 1960s, seventies, 50s and yeah, just
• 12:02
  kind of got out of control there.
• 12:03
  We find that the people turned up to the bar as well.
• 12:05
  We started having more and more people coming who were like, oh
• 12:08
  wow, you've got this open. Then all of a sudden it kind of
• 12:09
  snowballed and that's that at the time was that European kind
• 12:12
  of geek circle. And I, I, I mean that in the
• 12:15
  most endearing way because I'm definitely part of that.
• 12:18
  And these guys are coming in. So like Lindores Whiskey Society
• 12:21
  and some of the guys are in the Malt Maniacs.
• 12:23
  They'd travel around Scotland and then they they'd hear that
• 12:27
  we'd have to, yeah, sorry, I'm just getting an investor call.
• 12:29
  I can ignore that. And then it's not happening.
• 12:33
  Yeah, well, we found. Yeah, we found these guys were
• 12:37
  like travelling for the bar and they were like asking for the
• 12:40
  cool stuff and they weren't just going.
• 12:41
  I want to go and watch 10 year old as a lot of like the
• 12:43
  Americans were coming through in the summer.
• 12:44
  So we're like, oh, this is great.
• 12:46
  This allows us to basically like, you know, open our bottles
• 12:49
  and we want to open and it's like, you know, pulls us in for
• 12:52
  more and we just kept buying and buying.
• 12:54
  We spoke, we spoke last last week with Justine Hazlehurst on
• 12:58
  the on the podcast about Fife and Fife becoming a sort of
• 13:02
  recognised region and things. And one of the things that we
• 13:04
  talked about for all the distilleries that are now
• 13:05
  opening up in there is that they don't have, I'm a fifer myself
• 13:10
  and we don't have an area, a hotel or anything like that
• 13:13
  where you can say a destination. Yeah, exactly.
• 13:16
  A whiskey bar where. And, you know, and we've talked,
• 13:19
  talked to Simon Smith, it was a George Hotel.
• 13:21
  And. And really winning awards.
• 13:26
  Did you, did you guys then see that and where like people
• 13:30
  aren't just coming out? We'll stay at the Dorna Castle
• 13:32
  because we're on our way or we're in Dorna and it's got a
• 13:35
  nice bar where people actually starting to come here to go.
• 13:38
  This is the whiskey. It's really.
• 13:39
  Yeah, Yeah, we found that. So we found I think probably a
• 13:42
  few, there's a few people on the journey that kind of helped with
• 13:44
  this. So we kind of we were going to
• 13:46
  going to the options, MC Tears and bonds were kind of the two
• 13:48
  main hammer options that we were going to send.
• 13:50
  In some of the best stuff in like small provincial options.
• 13:53
  We'd pick up some loads of great bottles and then kind of by
• 13:56
  coincidence we met John Beech who's got fiddlers at Loch Ness
• 13:59
  and John had won like SLT and Whiskey Bar of the year for like
• 14:03
  3 or 4 years in a row and just stopped entering that, that kind
• 14:06
  of thing. And then we met Angus as well
• 14:08
  from decadent drinks, obviously now decadent drinks.
• 14:11
  And we became kind of a little bit of a drinking circle and we
• 14:13
  were used to buy all bottles. We tried to find an used to open
• 14:16
  old bottles. Obviously for Angus it's like
• 14:18
  any used to open an old bottle. It's a good one.
• 14:19
  Yeah, but with John. Angus, you know.
• 14:23
  This one, yeah. Any so I, we found found
• 14:26
  ourselves really getting close with these guys.
• 14:28
  And John had what was kind of the destination bar with
• 14:32
  Fiddlers So and it, you know, we didn't design it based on what
• 14:35
  John was doing. It was just like, oh, that's
• 14:36
  natural progression for us. So John is kind of on the Great
• 14:40
  Glen, you know, he's out on Loch Ness.
• 14:41
  So it's like if you're going from like sky to space site and
• 14:45
  you're a whiskey cake, Yeah, you're going to drop by Fiddlers
• 14:47
  of Loch Ness. Yeah.
• 14:48
  And there's nothing else in and around Inverness.
• 14:49
  So you're generally. Wasn't there at all.
• 14:51
  Yeah. So you're generally starting to
• 14:52
  see that your rooms are filling up, your restaurant's busier,
• 14:55
  etcetera, etcetera, because of the offering you've put in the
• 14:57
  bar. Yeah, I mean, Dorne, as you
• 14:59
  covered Dorne, such a busy tourist time.
• 15:01
  Yeah, it's all about South for us.
• 15:03
  From a business perspective, it's all about filling.
• 15:04
  Filling those shoulder months. Yeah.
• 15:05
  How do you feel in the winter? How do you feel the shoulder
• 15:07
  months? And like, whiskey gives people
• 15:08
  that excuse to come up. Yeah.
• 15:10
  And it's like you can base yourself in Dorn.
• 15:11
  If you can get to Old Poultney, you can get to Wolfburn, you can
• 15:13
  get to 8 doors, you can get up to Orkney I.
• 15:15
  Mean I've heard of some amazing kind of offerings you put on
• 15:18
  like in the early months of the year as well where you can come
• 15:19
  and stay and then spend X amount of it back in back in the bar
• 15:23
  tab is that? Right.
• 15:24
  Yeah, we do. Know that that's.
• 15:26
  I know the Highlander does similar to that.
• 15:28
  Yeah, we do, yeah, yeah, Highland Highland is great, one
• 15:32
  of my favourites. But yeah, we do basically for
• 15:36
  whiskey people extra that you know, pretty cheap rooms.
• 15:40
  We do 20% discount on our already very fairly priced.
• 15:44
  And then we also last two winters we've done an exclusive
• 15:48
  Dornik bottling for the hotel that's just available for people
• 15:50
  who come and stay on that deal. And so we, you know, for the
• 15:54
  winter in the Highlands of Scotland, you just need to
• 15:56
  present people with an absolute no brainer.
• 15:59
  It's weird in Scottish Austin, it's actually really difficult
• 16:01
  to get people. You know, it's such a huge
• 16:03
  swathe population South of the day.
• 16:05
  Yeah, like it's really difficult to get people N like they think
• 16:08
  like, you know, Dunkel's doing a good job to drag people up.
• 16:10
  It's like what, an hour and a bit from Glasgow.
• 16:12
  Yeah, it's not that far, but like we're another like 2 1/2
• 16:15
  hours N from there. It's like, so we really need to
• 16:17
  drag people up here. So that's why with like the
• 16:19
  whiskey bar, and that's kind of applied to our philosophy with
• 16:22
  the independent bottling. It was all about, you know, we
• 16:24
  don't have the footfall just to basically charge whatever we
• 16:26
  want to charge. And we were never like that
• 16:28
  anyway. Of course.
• 16:29
  It was all about offering good liquid, fair price, and that's
• 16:32
  what we always did in our bar. That's what we continue doing
• 16:34
  with our independent bowling. It's always like how much would
• 16:37
  I pay? Like how much would I like to go
• 16:39
  to a bar and pay or how much would I like to go to a shop and
• 16:42
  buy a bottle of that for? How?
• 16:44
  How did that initial conversation start?
• 16:45
  Where did you say independent bottling?
• 16:48
  Was it, was it a happy accident or was it an intention?
• 16:50
  Because I mean, we have we, you know, we've had independent
• 16:52
  bottlers on before. And sometimes people maybe just
• 16:56
  think, oh, I'll buy a cast that'll be great.
• 16:58
  And then it's like, well, what would I do with it?
• 16:59
  Or people get given casts or people do go out intentionally
• 17:03
  and say, right, I'm going to start bottling and a bit and
• 17:06
  market and whiskey. So pre, yeah, pre, pre Thompson
• 17:10
  brothers as as we are now, we've done a few, we've done a few
• 17:13
  bottlings, but nothing, nothing particularly serious or
• 17:17
  commercially minded. You know, we did, did one for
• 17:20
  own bar. We've done a couple.
• 17:22
  We do like an annual sort of whiskey holiday with friends.
• 17:26
  So our, our drinking club plus friends will go around and do a
• 17:29
  thing. We've organized little bottlings
• 17:30
  for that. So before we had the distillery,
• 17:33
  it wasn't anything serious. Independent bottling wasn't in
• 17:36
  the business plan. We just got, we got asked by our
• 17:41
  Japanese importer for the gin if we could arrange something.
• 17:46
  I'm like, yeah. They've got the relationships,
• 17:49
  except I'm sure we could do something.
• 17:50
  Because I mean, I suppose it makes a huge difference from
• 17:53
  your like we've spoken to as Angus has said.
• 17:55
  And it's like that jump when an investment into a cask.
• 17:59
  And then it's the prices of the associate costs associated with
• 18:02
  the whiskey is expensive in itself.
• 18:03
  But then it's like the bottling and all that that goes along
• 18:05
  with it marketing things. But I suppose if you've already
• 18:08
  got your own bar which has a whiskey, which has whiskey in
• 18:12
  it, we already have a mark where you can say, well, it doesn't
• 18:14
  matter because if we could, we could bought our own stuff.
• 18:17
  And it's just if, if we only ever sell it behind the bar,
• 18:20
  then we just have a large amount of cases.
• 18:24
  That's what Cerebank's taking on that first out turn.
• 18:26
  Yeah, you can certainly say that. 200 and 230 litres, right?
• 18:32
  And suddenly go, how many cases of whiskey am I going to get
• 18:35
  stuck in? The house, we could never do
• 18:36
  that. I mean, you could sell like a
• 18:38
  few cases in the summer, you could just never go for a full
• 18:41
  out turn. So like for us, it was always,
• 18:43
  we focused really heavily on export early on.
• 18:45
  So we built up some good relationships and we looked at
• 18:47
  exporting, did a lot of exclusives.
• 18:49
  And again, we, we didn't really know what we're doing.
• 18:51
  So we weren't coming. And that I mean that in a really
• 18:54
  kind of positive way. So we weren't coming from
• 18:56
  another company. I was going, that's your set
• 18:57
  margin, that's what you work for, that's what you should be
• 18:59
  looking for. That's your important margin,
• 19:01
  that's your retail margin. I was going OK, basically soon
• 19:03
  as my important's been like, what's fair for you?
• 19:05
  Yeah, what's fair for us? And we just basically worked our
• 19:07
  way through it and kind of, you know, I say used it quite a lot.
• 19:11
  It's like fumble their way through and we've just kind of
• 19:13
  there was an intention there, but it wasn't like grand plan.
• 19:16
  And then I think because we didn't have that exposure to the
• 19:18
  rest of the industry and that experience, then we weren't
• 19:21
  applying the same methodology that everyone else was applying.
• 19:24
  Yeah, that's your margin, that's your importer, that's your
• 19:26
  retailer, that's your distributor, allocate that for
• 19:28
  marketing, allocate this. We were kind of like can can we
• 19:31
  turn it over quickly? We value in our business and we
• 19:33
  still do. It's like the because we never
• 19:35
  had any money and we still until recently through the investment
• 19:38
  haven't had any money really through the business.
• 19:40
  Everything's gone back into door now.
• 19:42
  It's it's all been about the velocity of the money.
• 19:45
  So it's not just about putting out a really expensive bottle
• 19:48
  and it kind of digests its way through really slowly and
• 19:50
  constipated through the system you know will work, you will.
• 19:53
  Sell it always work. Take ages for us.
• 19:55
  We're kind of like, right, we want to sell this quickly.
• 19:57
  I want my important picking up the phone and saying I'd love to
• 19:59
  another cast. Cool, that's the price.
• 20:00
  Probably have the space as well, Phil.
• 20:02
  We'll see it tomorrow, but I remember going to because I'm a
• 20:05
  right insane organic warehouse was was what you had for a long
• 20:08
  time or when you were bottling stuff.
• 20:09
  It was this space across the other side of the town.
• 20:13
  And at the same time, because we call it a warehouse with being
• 20:15
  warehouses today, it's not. It was a big it was kind of like
• 20:18
  a bigger garage, which also doubled up as a bottling plant.
• 20:21
  Yeah, it's, it's everything it's been, it's been maxed out for a
• 20:24
  few years now. So yeah, where Thompson?
• 20:28
  Brothers lose 60,000 balls a year.
• 20:29
  That's kind of those. 60,000 bottles, yeah, I mean.
• 20:32
  It was amazing out that space, but yeah.
• 20:34
  There's not a bit of issues with flooding at the very beginning
• 20:36
  like. Flooding at Christmas.
• 20:38
  Yeah, Hogmanay this year. So I woke up at like 7:00 AM and
• 20:41
  I was like, oh, it rained a bit last night and we're going to
• 20:45
  the warehouse and it was like slightly creeping into the back.
• 20:48
  And I was, I was like, OK, that's not too bad.
• 20:50
  Doesn't you know, it stopped raining?
• 20:51
  I don't think it'll, you know, forgetting that it takes a while
• 20:54
  for the, you know, everything's in a day.
• 20:56
  And I came to the hotel, had a coffee.
• 20:57
  I don't think right here because this is the place I worry about
• 20:59
  it. There's really heavy rain,
• 21:01
  cracks and gaps and stuff like that.
• 21:02
  And then I went back to the warehouse.
• 21:04
  I was like, ah, it's creeped inside, time to get some
• 21:05
  sandbags. So I started building up
• 21:07
  sandbags. And then Anna, who works with
• 21:09
  me, she basically came over and helped me.
• 21:11
  Then all of a sudden it was like, I think at one point it
• 21:13
  was like 15 centimetres and it was getting pumped out trying to
• 21:16
  pump it out. A few local folk came in so
• 21:18
  that's the first thing you'll have last 2007.
• 21:21
  But we kind of knew it was inevitable.
• 21:22
  Yeah. And my priority when I went in
• 21:24
  there was basically get the stalk off the ground as quick as
• 21:26
  you can. And then I think the only major
• 21:28
  issue we had was like some of the load cells on the scales got
• 21:32
  wet and need to be still need to be replaced.
• 21:34
  Yeah, but that's that was it. But yeah, that's the risk you.
• 21:37
  In terms of in terms of, you just set up.
• 21:39
  See, the fact that you're so isolated in comparison to other
• 21:43
  bottlers, when you start bottling regularly, is there any
• 21:47
  decision at all other than you've got?
• 21:48
  OK, we're going to bottle it ourselves as well.
• 21:50
  We can't outsource that. It's gonna take too long to send
• 21:52
  stuff down. I didn't pass.
• 21:53
  Back up and I was like, fucking hell yeah, it's ages and we're
• 21:57
  they charge us this and it takes ages like what's going on?
• 22:01
  We're just gonna have to learn to do it ourselves.
• 22:02
  Yeah, well, we're bottling already with the gin, so we're
• 22:04
  already doing it. We.
• 22:05
  Know So you started with ginses. Yeah.
• 22:07
  I mean, yeah. That's that's exactly.
• 22:09
  Yeah, we're we, we've all, yeah. We've always bottled the gin in
• 22:12
  the house. In the early days of the
• 22:14
  independent bottling, it was all it was all outsourced.
• 22:16
  There's a bit of a process to get it 'cause you can't use the
• 22:19
  same equipment for gin as you do whiskey, right?
• 22:22
  People have, but it causes problems, You know, it should be
• 22:27
  entirely separate, separate lines, separate equipment.
• 22:30
  No, no shared hoses or anything. So we needed needed a whole
• 22:35
  separate line for that and more space.
• 22:37
  So when we're able to get that site up there, get bonded, get
• 22:40
  bonded transportation, then then we had everything we needed to
• 22:45
  bring everything in the house. The the maths made sense on it.
• 22:48
  But what really helps is it's all everything's fast.
• 22:53
  It's all as what is as fast as you are.
• 22:55
  Yeah. You're not, you're not sending
• 22:56
  an e-mail and receiving samples three months later and then
• 22:59
  sending another e-mail. Yeah.
• 23:00
  Can we recast this one and or whatever, whatever process or
• 23:04
  having it sent to bottling hole and the bottling hole is like,
• 23:06
  oh, it's 2-3 months, No. It just sends like so many that
• 23:09
  it's incredibly complicated. Well, kind of a couple of cash
• 23:11
  flow dents like you need so much cash to be able to kind of do
• 23:14
  that. Yeah.
• 23:15
  Well, couple, couple of questions on that then.
• 23:16
  First of all, then we'll talk about the cash flow side of
• 23:18
  things. And, and when you're
• 23:20
  independently bottling and stuff are are you, when you're when
• 23:23
  you're doing that and you obviously will start probably
• 23:26
  without laying casks down, especially with space, are you
• 23:29
  literally buying to to bottle as quickly as possible or?
• 23:32
  Did you spreadsheet buying effectively picking samples from
• 23:35
  a spreadsheet, kind of filling out?
• 23:37
  See if there's something there. Are you going there?
• 23:40
  Ends? Yeah.
• 23:40
  Yes and no. I mean, there's, I think we've,
• 23:42
  we've kind of worked our way up the rungs over the past few
• 23:44
  years and I think there's a lot of trust capital now, especially
• 23:47
  we have a distillery. I think that's really, really
• 23:49
  helped with with the kind of primary sources in the industry.
• 23:52
  But yeah, I mean. Having your having your own
• 23:55
  warehouse and bottling facility, even their own bunch of
• 23:57
  transportation means that we're we're super low friction because
• 24:00
  because you're not relying on all these other parties to yeah,
• 24:03
  right. Getting queues, which means you,
• 24:06
  you're much. We're probably the smallest
• 24:09
  entity that some of the biggest companies deal with directly.
• 24:12
  And that's because we do all ourselves, which makes us very
• 24:15
  low friction for them to deal with us.
• 24:17
  No problems, no hassle, minimal. Maybe apart from payment Like
• 24:21
  yeah. Minimal middle men.
• 24:25
  So we've made ourselves very, very easy.
• 24:28
  I imagine being well-being Thompson's brother, like I mean,
• 24:32
  whiskers across the globe are all super excited, all enter the
• 24:35
  ballots, all these kind of things.
• 24:36
  And we were already talking about before we were recording
• 24:39
  like what? Giving distilleries a chance.
• 24:41
  You maybe would have written off like dura, like the 3041 euro
• 24:44
  had even. There's a couple other ones.
• 24:47
  But actually the ballots, the ballots, the ballots quite a
• 24:50
  good note because initially when you're starting to build up a
• 24:54
  slight following, as you're saying, you're trying to get
• 24:56
  your exports to take X amount of every year perhaps already, but
• 25:00
  then you say, OK, it's a ballot that kind of builds up a bit of
• 25:03
  excitement. You you ballot a release, even
• 25:06
  if it's not the most remarkable it code in the world, You're
• 25:09
  going to get some people go, Oh, I'd quickly to be a part of this
• 25:12
  and and and try and get one of those.
• 25:13
  It's not by design, to be honest.
• 25:15
  It's really. It's just easier to manage.
• 25:18
  It was a bit easier to manage that way.
• 25:19
  I mean, you know, we might find that we have, we might only have
• 25:22
  48 volts on the website or 60 volts on the website or some,
• 25:25
  you know, direct sales on a cast because by the time you
• 25:28
  distribute it amongst all of our markets plus UK retailers, then
• 25:31
  you're like, OK, well, you barely got any left for your own
• 25:34
  website. So balancing it was the right
• 25:36
  way to do it. But again, it's sort of adds
• 25:37
  another. We didn't expect our website to
• 25:39
  be as popular perhaps net that was net.
• 25:42
  None of this was ever really designed.
• 25:44
  It's just kind of happened and our websites ended up being
• 25:46
  really kind of popular people. I know it's expensive to ship
• 25:49
  from but people who are coming to US direct, which is because
• 25:51
  most. People rely on getting into
• 25:53
  Invari Morton or Roma W keys and say OK we'll be able to get but
• 25:58
  people going well. So you're so most of that stuff
• 26:00
  so, so direct you guys will sell.
• 26:02
  Exported and then. So yeah.
• 26:04
  It's a fine balance. So like you, you, I want to
• 26:06
  support more UK retail. We definitely do decent volumes
• 26:10
  with UK retail. I think part of it has been and
• 26:13
  you know, with complete candor is over the past couple of years
• 26:15
  we've been putting so much money as a new distillery project.
• 26:18
  So and that's all been done. We haven't taken investment
• 26:20
  until recently. So it's been kind of all done
• 26:22
  from cash flow. So there's always been like, OK,
• 26:25
  we should we, we ended up selling a bit more than probably
• 26:28
  other independent bottlers would sell direct, but we found there
• 26:30
  was appetite for it. But then also it's about you
• 26:33
  need to, it's a bit of politics, you need to make sure you drop
• 26:35
  in sweep with different importers and retailers and
• 26:37
  things like that. So the.
• 26:41
  Exporters. Well, hang on two seconds.
• 26:42
  The second question I was going to ask was basically, was it a
• 26:47
  blessing or a curse having another business that you're
• 26:51
  running, but like with the hotel behind you because you, you, you
• 26:55
  say it yourself. Well, it might not be a
• 26:58
  situation where you guys had to actually say we're all in this
• 27:00
  is our full time job right now and if it syncs, we've sync with
• 27:03
  it or if it goes successful, we'll we'll go with it.
• 27:06
  Or was it really? Has it made it even harder
• 27:09
  going? Now we're effectively spinning
• 27:10
  even more plates that that that we're doing.
• 27:13
  Yeah. Well, it's a bit, it's a bit of
• 27:14
  a mixed bag because the on the hotel side of things.
• 27:17
  So, so that, that was our, our parents business or family
• 27:20
  business. And so that gave us a nice
• 27:23
  booster in the early days because we were we, we got the
• 27:26
  old building that was in the back of the garden there turned
• 27:30
  turned that into the into the distillery.
• 27:31
  So that was a good little boost. Having the the ability to do
• 27:34
  something there reduced our start up costs.
• 27:37
  Sure. And then now as of late October,
• 27:42
  November last year, the, you know, Thompson Independent
• 27:47
  Traders Limited, which is as of today fully owned, still fully
• 27:51
  owned by me and Phil. Yeah, I was gonna say.
• 27:57
  That in the chat, in our. WhatsApp chat before we went, I
• 27:59
  said. That's got to be an only person.
• 28:01
  Also to watch lawyers abbreviate it.
• 28:03
  Yeah, it's so good. You're just like so we so we
• 28:06
  thought. We we formed, we formed that
• 28:08
  that that's what that's what we do in the the fundraising into.
• 28:12
  But that owns 100% of Dormitory Company Limited Plus in the
• 28:15
  independent bottling on the stock.
• 28:17
  Yeah, in terms of brothers in the gym, every, everything's in
• 28:21
  there. And then it also owns now Dornak
• 28:25
  Castle Hotel Limited. So the whole thing's.
• 28:28
  Together, it's kind of going full circle and now, I don't
• 28:30
  know, pressure with the Garcia parents.
• 28:32
  Then like so I've got, I've got a brother, a younger brother
• 28:34
  there for quite close in age and stuff like that.
• 28:37
  We were always mucking about together and things with you
• 28:41
  guys, then with the parent, with your parents, where they're
• 28:43
  like, oh, the, the boys are in the back garden distilling again
• 28:47
  and all that kind of stuff. Or, or they when they like when
• 28:50
  you went to them and said, we want to take because there's a
• 28:53
  family business at the end of the day and you have to have
• 28:54
  gone to them at some point and said this is the direction we
• 28:56
  want to go in and where, where they yeah, go for it or where
• 29:01
  they be like, oh, come on. Stop rolling blood tubs in the
• 29:03
  garden. Too much on that, but I mean,
• 29:09
  we'd, we'd already been doing some distilling experiments.
• 29:13
  We did our first legal, you know, proper whiskeys at
• 29:17
  Strathairn and winter of 2013 early 20, 14.
• 29:25
  So that was kind of testing some of our principles of, you know,
• 29:28
  what we're thinking about old style production.
• 29:31
  Yeah. So we were already kind of
• 29:32
  messing around filled in some work experience.
• 29:34
  I did as well, actually at at ball Blair as well, just to.
• 29:37
  You were the biggest customer by the sounds of it.
• 29:43
  Did we ever get a bottle is our bottle?
• 29:44
  Still there, did you still still still still there?
• 29:47
  Just reminding me I've got a very old bottle ball Blair which
• 29:49
  is on on display there. So we're.
• 29:52
  Gonna be just worry with like companies that people come and
• 29:54
  go and they're like. Yeah, because he just took his
• 29:56
  John. John McDonald's has gone now.
• 29:58
  He knew all about it, but you know, they probably don't have
• 30:00
  it written down anywhere. Yeah.
• 30:05
  So, yeah, so you mean that's that's quite a unique situation.
• 30:09
  But in terms of then, as Ross was sort of alluding to with
• 30:13
  building relation, because this is a part that we really didn't
• 30:16
  understand fully about independent bottlers, to then
• 30:21
  suddenly see this sort of the journey that they can go on
• 30:24
  where we just think about independent bottlers as well as
• 30:26
  these guys up in Dornoch and we see their bottles in our little
• 30:29
  boozer to be drinking in Edinburgh.
• 30:30
  We don't appreciate that your whiskey goes right the way
• 30:34
  across the world. And as as we were talking about
• 30:36
  in the car, Chuck was saying just back from Japan and it's
• 30:39
  like there is a massive following of, of people over on
• 30:42
  the other side of the world who are drinking your whiskey and
• 30:45
  absolutely loving it. So how did all that come around
• 30:47
  and how do you start getting yourself into that position?
• 30:50
  So, so most of it's when we started up the distillery, you
• 30:53
  know, we're looking for sales channels, you know, very early
• 30:56
  business plan, OK, don't spend too much setting it up and make,
• 31:01
  make a good gin and get out to market.
• 31:04
  We'll, we, we kind of focus more on, on export through most of
• 31:08
  our initial export contacts were from the sort of European and
• 31:13
  global connoisseur scene. Either you know, you knew
• 31:16
  someone who was an importer and, and you know, in our country and
• 31:21
  your whiskey's their hobby, but it's also part of their job and
• 31:23
  they import some brands and independent bottlers.
• 31:27
  So we had it with a lot of and or one step removed for someone
• 31:31
  we knew quite well from the global whiskey scene.
• 31:34
  You would importer or you would talk to someone in the country.
• 31:36
  It's like who's the good guys? Who's the bad guys?
• 31:39
  Who's bringing in stuff and being fair with the prices?
• 31:42
  Who's taking the piss? So we're able to get a good view
• 31:47
  of of a lot of different markets, either direct contacts
• 31:51
  or one step removed. And we still do that.
• 31:54
  Now, as we're thinking about expanding, you're talking to
• 31:57
  whiskey enthusiasts in different countries, different states, so.
• 32:01
  He's doing it well. He's not doing.
• 32:03
  It, well, it's funny because I get a picture as okay, I'm an
• 32:06
  independent bottle. How do I get them to import my
• 32:09
  bottlings? But you're coming from a really
• 32:11
  good point of view. We're often in quite a unique
• 32:13
  product. We're going to work with the
• 32:15
  selected importance that we want to work with.
• 32:17
  Was that straight when you're looking at those?
• 32:19
  You ordered this audience, Gemini Holland, as you said, the
• 32:22
  kind of whiskey. I think there was trustee
• 32:24
  capital already there from from the bar.
• 32:26
  So the guys we were speaking to, they're like, Oh yeah, I know
• 32:28
  these boys from the bar. You know, they knew who were
• 32:30
  already, right. So it's like already that
• 32:32
  relationship being built up. Oh, yeah.
• 32:33
  Because a lot, what you might find is a lot of importers,
• 32:36
  they're like, they're geeks. And they and they come to
• 32:39
  Scotland with their pals and others.
• 32:41
  Yeah. And if they come?
• 32:42
  Into the door here then, yeah. Yeah, they know we open the old
• 32:45
  stuff. They know we're into the old
• 32:47
  stuff. They, you know, they, they like
• 32:48
  to see that sort of side of things.
• 32:50
  So that's kind of where a lot of the relationships were built up.
• 32:52
  And I suppose there was trust already there that like, I trust
• 32:55
  that they'll do the right thing at Dorney Distillery.
• 32:57
  And yeah, I'll support them early on.
• 32:58
  So I don't want a gin, but I will support you because I'll
• 33:01
  help the boys out. And then from there, the
• 33:03
  independent bombing just kind of grew on top of that.
• 33:06
  So yeah, I think it's just, you know, it's, it's, it's looking
• 33:09
  at the bigger picture that like the castle and what we did.
• 33:12
  You know, the and I, I do ponder on this because there's probably
• 33:15
  times where I definitely hated it, you know, definitely hate
• 33:17
  it, you know, hated what you were doing.
• 33:19
  But then you're also like, all of that was building for now.
• 33:23
  You know, the hard yards were one deck scrubbed in the bar at
• 33:26
  1:00 in the morning after you stayed up chatting to somebody.
• 33:28
  You know, that that's the the shitty stuff that you go through
• 33:31
  at the time. In hindsight, you're like, oh,
• 33:34
  actually, yeah, it's worth chatting, standing and chatting
• 33:36
  to that guy at the bar. It was worth like taking the
• 33:37
  time of that. Person because I mean, what's
• 33:40
  really nice about the story so far is that you can see like a
• 33:43
  progressive stepping stone where it's like like what what you've
• 33:46
  just basically said there is you know, we we you've seen the bar
• 33:51
  work, create the create a name and a reputation and trust.
• 33:54
  We've heard of so many times in the industry.
• 33:57
  Everything is built on trust with with with the whiskey side
• 34:00
  and it's when you're purchasing casks, Peter from Woven said the
• 34:04
  gatekeepers in Scotch whisky are some of the nicest people that
• 34:07
  you could meet. Everyone thinks of gatekeepers
• 34:09
  as the big bad guys are keeping the gates closed.
• 34:11
  But on the flip side of that, I said make one mistake with those
• 34:15
  people misplace their trust with you and you're you're finished.
• 34:19
  You won't be able to buy any more stock.
• 34:20
  So, but the the bar become trust, you know, if you walk
• 34:24
  into the bar, you don't know what's going to be behind the
• 34:26
  bar potential, but it's going to be good stuff, rare stuff,
• 34:29
  unique stuff, a very, very good price.
• 34:32
  Then all of a sudden it's like, right, well, if you're going to
• 34:35
  these guys are bottling and they like what you said, I know
• 34:37
  there's I know the bar, I know what they're like.
• 34:39
  So I know that they're going to put good liquid and I'm not.
• 34:41
  Going to take that. Yeah, put liquid in the glass.
• 34:43
  Don't take the piss on the price.
• 34:45
  It's genuinely that's, yeah. So now, so, so again, I don't
• 34:48
  want to lead on too much because as this is going to be a 2
• 34:50
  parter than tomorrow, we're going to be sort of seeing it.
• 34:53
  But you've mentioned it a few times.
• 34:54
  But what we're seeing now is like people like maybe myself,
• 34:57
  who'd never really heard of who you were at the time, I've
• 35:00
  really, really enjoyed the stuff that you've been putting in
• 35:02
  here. Your, your independently bulk
• 35:04
  stuff. But of course, Dormick
• 35:06
  Distillery is, is, is the next step.
• 35:08
  So suddenly, now the exciting part is, well, hang on a minute,
• 35:13
  it's that step again. It's like I built you built the
• 35:15
  trust with me as a consumer going all your stuff.
• 35:18
  Presenting other people's liquid and making.
• 35:20
  So well. Enjoy it then.
• 35:22
  Oh, this is your you've decided to ferment this this spirit for
• 35:28
  how you know how much longer etcetera, etcetera and using
• 35:31
  different yeast rays and different Bali strains.
• 35:33
  Being. So transparent because you are
• 35:35
  the source where? It's coming from so I don't want
• 35:37
  to go too and too deeper because that is what we'll be doing
• 35:39
  tomorrow. But I take it I'm assuming when
• 35:42
  you're starting out it was always about a distillery?
• 35:45
  Yeah, yeah. It was always about a
• 35:47
  distillery. I think Dornick was, you know,
• 35:49
  that was always the the goal was to make her own spirit.
• 35:53
  And yeah, the the independent bottling kind of just was a
• 35:57
  piece of the puzzle that fell in place.
• 35:58
  Yeah, you know, not by design. It just kind of fell in place.
• 36:01
  Yeah. And there's a, there's a lot
• 36:02
  that you know, to kind of link the bar and the independent
• 36:05
  bottling. There's a lot they got kind of
• 36:07
  transplanted from the way we ran the bar.
• 36:10
  So we're less focused, the more expensive a bottle gets in the
• 36:15
  bar for us to buy. We're pretty flexible on the
• 36:18
  margins. So we tend to run reducing
• 36:20
  margins and more expensive the bottles get and we see it as you
• 36:24
  see as a as a cash transaction. I guess you also want to turn
• 36:27
  these bottles over. There's nothing worse than going
• 36:29
  to a bar. Bottle's been there for three
• 36:31
  years. Yeah, for £20 less I would buy
• 36:33
  it. And maybe he didn't have another
• 36:35
  couple of drams afterwards, so. There's a few, there's a few
• 36:38
  value, there's values there. I mean, I, I, you know, I've
• 36:41
  probably said it before, but I remember going into a whiskey
• 36:44
  bar with two guys who are very wealthy, had a, had a browser on
• 36:49
  the shelf, look at the list and you could see that their, their
• 36:52
  pricing was the opposite. It was like standard margins for
• 36:55
  standard things. And the more expensive the
• 36:56
  bottles got, the bigger the margins got.
• 37:00
  And these guys, you know, you know, multi millionaires and,
• 37:04
  but they, their whiskey was their hobby, the new whiskey and
• 37:07
  they ordered, well, the three of us, we just ordered, you know, I
• 37:11
  think it was like Talisker 10 and moved on.
• 37:13
  Whereas if fair value was being offered, they probably would
• 37:17
  have spent, you know, hundreds. I mean, we've spent time I.
• 37:21
  Mean value for money is a huge, I mean, it's a huge thing and
• 37:24
  it's easily lost. Yeah, that we were talking about
• 37:27
  it. We've talked about it in the
• 37:28
  podcast before We were talking about it.
• 37:30
  We were driving up and I said, you know, I did the NC 500 a few
• 37:33
  years ago with, with, with an ex-girlfriend.
• 37:36
  And I just said, like, it's the most ripped off I've ever felt
• 37:42
  in my own country was doing stopping off a different place
• 37:45
  and just finding like people are just putting margins, Mark.
• 37:48
  And what they're doing is they're attacking, they're
• 37:50
  attacking tourist trade. And they're saying that I.
• 37:53
  And so when you do come across a place where or you know, where
• 37:57
  with that action, Oh yeah. Look, we the more expensive this
• 38:01
  whiskey that we bought to put behind our bar means that we'll
• 38:04
  be attacking a much more, you know, a clientele that will have
• 38:08
  money, which means that they probably won't mind if we just
• 38:11
  bump the margin up a lot a bit more.
• 38:12
  And as you've said, you know, it just it can be how you.
• 38:16
  Get repeat custom is it you know?
• 38:19
  If you're an accountant on a spreadsheet, sure.
• 38:21
  It looks better if everything on that kind of, you know, your
• 38:24
  flat margin or increasing margin basis.
• 38:26
  But we're looking at the at the turnover.
• 38:28
  We're looking at getting business that you wouldn't
• 38:30
  otherwise have because you lose these people and you wouldn't
• 38:33
  know that you're losing them. You wouldn't because they just
• 38:35
  go and order a you see, you know, in Freud le Freud 10.
• 38:38
  And so it was. Exactly the same, like again,
• 38:40
  Scotch at the Balmoral, like it was OK, it's £750 for McAllen
• 38:44
  40. It is a ridiculous price, but
• 38:46
  it's also the cheapest price for that DRAM in the UK because see
• 38:49
  somebody comes in and buys that then we can just into loads of
• 38:53
  amazing stuff lying the bar maybe still two £300 a jam.
• 38:56
  We're talking about the 1% of whiskey bars, but they go well
• 39:00
  I've seen the bottle in duty free for X amount you're not
• 39:03
  we're it's our worst margin in the bar for example, etcetera
• 39:06
  that but that's how you get somebody to come across the
• 39:08
  world. You see them again yeah.
• 39:10
  We. See.
• 39:11
  Yeah, you see our break evens in bars?
• 39:12
  Sorry. You see, like someone will come
• 39:14
  up front and centre. Whoa, what's that?
• 39:16
  Oh, it's a really fancy whatever type of bottle, but it's a break
• 39:18
  even. So you're on, it's £20, but
• 39:21
  it's, you know, you're not going to get cheaper anywhere else.
• 39:23
  Yeah. And then but you're going to sit
• 39:25
  there and go, oh, that was lovely.
• 39:26
  What? What else could I have next?
• 39:28
  To yeah, to open that, you're probably going to stay and spend
• 39:30
  more and you've just become a mouthpiece for the brand.
• 39:34
  You will be a brand ambassador and be like go down a castle or
• 39:37
  go to where whichever part you see value in because they're
• 39:40
  good value. 25 or 35 mils. 25 here.
• 39:44
  We'll let you. Tell me, when did it become a a
• 39:51
  movement for you guys? Because you're already selling a
• 39:53
  lot of bottles, you're exporting a lot.
• 39:55
  You decide, OK, we need to get Thompson Bros.
• 39:58
  I base into bars into the on trade because that really is how
• 40:01
  you get all these brand ambassadors.
• 40:03
  Have you tried this? It's available here, blah, blah,
• 40:05
  blah. How did you make that?
• 40:07
  Move. So we I mean it's really
• 40:09
  interesting. So we actually, I mean, you can
• 40:11
  sum this up, but we always say we never really spent on
• 40:12
  marketing and we didn't, it was all kind of natural and organic.
• 40:15
  And of course, like me taking time to whatever an Instagram
• 40:20
  post up, that is a marketing spend because my time could be
• 40:22
  elsewhere. So the accounting will always
• 40:24
  tell you that, you know, that you do have a marketing spend.
• 40:26
  Yeah. It's just like you're not
• 40:27
  quantifying it because you're not paying somebody to do it.
• 40:30
  We just tried to be kind of, we wanted to kind of offer
• 40:32
  something back. And I think during COVID, just
• 40:34
  when the bars reopen, we did a break even cask into the
• 40:37
  Edinburgh bars, yeah, which was like.
• 40:39
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 40:40
  So yeah, start cask in shower. I think some of that and it was
• 40:44
  really good liquid and we just did a break even cask basically
• 40:47
  covered the cost of the glass. The course capsule seals the you
• 40:50
  know the boxes never tax people like yeah, this bottle is
• 40:55
  costing you like wherever 18 by the way, most of its tax sorry,
• 40:57
  but yeah, but yeah, it was really good.
• 40:59
  Got support of raw my whiskeys on that.
• 41:01
  So I think things like that you, you put on its head and you go,
• 41:04
  okay, well you could have sold it, you could have made like, I
• 41:07
  know a bit of a margin on it, but the value was to us that
• 41:12
  you've done the right thing by the bars, which is the priority.
• 41:14
  Yeah. So like it's just ended up being
• 41:16
  on bars that otherwise we'd never take your products or
• 41:18
  weren't, weren't aware of you. And now it's giving somebody an
• 41:21
  insight. Yes, but we did not need another
• 41:23
  inch cover 14 in the Balmoral Hotel.
• 41:25
  But we had that breaking ball. Yeah.
• 41:27
  And we got and we reordered it every single time we finished
• 41:30
  it, it was, it was, it was a conversation piece as.
• 41:32
  Well, and now we're saying that you're talking about marketing
• 41:34
  spend and you're saying, you know, but the the labels, right,
• 41:38
  that has been we've I've already sort of discussed some of the
• 41:41
  highlights and. Talking points and.
• 41:43
  I think I think you can get because that's the other thing
• 41:46
  as well as if you can get on a shelf at any bar and you've got
• 41:51
  your standard and particularly if what is it purposeful?
• 41:57
  Did you deliberately decide to not make any bottle really stand
• 42:01
  out as a Thompson Bros W like ball shape?
• 42:05
  Yes, you can tell where you can pick out a Glenfinnic bottle
• 42:08
  shape. Yeah, but also label branding,
• 42:11
  all the different things. Because quite a lot of the time
• 42:13
  when you look at the different labels that you've put on,
• 42:15
  there's a lot of inconsistencies in there, which makes them stand
• 42:19
  out. Yeah, a branding person will
• 42:21
  probably say you've done it all the wrong way because your
• 42:22
  brand's nowhere to be seen. Yeah, but the brand is, you
• 42:27
  know, you look at it and the first thing you can do is want
• 42:29
  to look at, you know, pick it up.
• 42:30
  Yeah, touch it and see what it is.
• 42:32
  And then all of a sudden, you're reading the label, try to
• 42:34
  understand what it is. And again, it wasn't by design.
• 42:36
  It was just kind of like we wanted to make art from the
• 42:38
  center of what we're doing. It came from I think my first
• 42:42
  trip to Japan a long time ago. I was looking, I was going round
• 42:45
  whiskey bars. I had this huge list and I was
• 42:47
  just going round bar after bar after bar and there's so many
• 42:49
  bottles I'd never seen before were like so many things.
• 42:52
  And I was picking up and like the art was so much as much part
• 42:55
  of the bottle as the liquid in the glass.
• 42:57
  And I can see behind your camera there.
• 42:59
  There's one on the right. This lady in the Unicorn by I
• 43:02
  think it's Chin annoy. It's like a 1993 Bulmore.
• 43:05
  It's absolutely excellent. But like, from a distance,
• 43:07
  you're like, I know that's a bottle of whiskey, and now you
• 43:11
  want to pick it up? Yeah, we were.
• 43:13
  Discussing this and they're going running up.
• 43:14
  It's almost outrageous because you're going to Japan and it
• 43:18
  could be anything on the bottle. It could be an anime series, It
• 43:20
  could be a really rogue reference.
• 43:22
  Yeah, it could be a cat from Ida Yamoka Whiskey Mew.
• 43:25
  It could be. What was it?
• 43:26
  The series of dinosaurs and the series.
• 43:28
  Is often. Ridiculous.
• 43:30
  It could be old, it could be old bourbon clay leash and it's got
• 43:34
  a clown on the label. But there's something that
• 43:38
  appears to it like us us whiskey there it's on broken that makes
• 43:42
  it cooler it. Makes it, well, I'm just
• 43:44
  thinking of like a few of the pubs that I would go to in
• 43:47
  Edinburgh stuff and as a whiskey drinker, I think thanks and I,
• 43:50
  we've done, there's plenty of times you go out, we have you
• 43:52
  maybe turn up. I drink a few pints, but I do
• 43:55
  like to move on from a beer very quickly onto a drum.
• 43:58
  So when I go to a pub that I'm maybe not too familiar with, the
• 44:00
  first thing you're looking actually, right.
• 44:02
  So let's spring 10. Let's see what we've got.
• 44:07
  Yeah. And you're sort of looking
• 44:08
  around. OK, bit Corey, but you know,
• 44:11
  there's but there's maybe I know I can drink that most of the
• 44:14
  night or whatever. Or if you, if you go in a bar
• 44:17
  where there are a few whiskies, you know, but sometimes you went
• 44:20
  in and doing that break even cast a stroke of genius.
• 44:22
  Because if I go into a bar and I'm looking and I see the usual
• 44:25
  suspects and then I just go, what is that?
• 44:28
  What, what is that there? And of course with the labels
• 44:31
  and stuff. And if it's a break even as
• 44:33
  well, the, it's every chance the bar, the the bar themselves
• 44:36
  aren't going to be charging a fortune for it.
• 44:38
  It's new, it's different, it's independently bottled, it's
• 44:41
  single cast, it's reasonable price.
• 44:43
  And that's the one you go for, Yeah.
• 44:45
  Straight away. Another question I've got about
• 44:47
  labels and I maybe the answer is very simple, but the like the
• 44:50
  failed to load website label. You guys do what was the five?
• 44:54
  Yeah, two. I those.
• 44:56
  I mean, you used to do the golden cork relation before the
• 44:58
  golden cork. Yes, the other five or two came
• 45:01
  from and this is the reason we got ballot system is like stuff
• 45:04
  in our website. Our website should crash.
• 45:09
  Yeah, you go on like whatever forum or like R slash scorch and
• 45:12
  everyone was just like a fucking website.
• 45:13
  It's like and there was like really a kind of peak whiskey
• 45:18
  time when everyone was just being so stupid.
• 45:20
  There's like. All right.
• 45:21
  Yeah, Yeah, I definitely. Kind of like 2 fingers up to
• 45:24
  those guys yeah they're like your website shits yeah yes it.
• 45:27
  Is so it was directed towards me.
• 45:35
  Really like looking for those ones as well.
• 45:36
  Like there was a certain stuff in there, yeah.
• 45:38
  Kalila. I had a Kalila it was, which was
• 45:40
  brilliant. It was an arcane, which I'm
• 45:41
  assuming must have been a having for a 17 year old.
• 45:44
  Yeah, we've never bottled a Scapa and.
• 45:50
  We've done a lot of. When we're talking about labels,
• 45:52
  anyway, we've had George and Rachel Keeble from We should
• 45:55
  also. Pour one because we've got about
• 45:56
  half, half an hour less than episode 1, so pour something
• 45:58
  that you think's interesting. From this we've got glasses we.
• 46:01
  Didn't. Want to?
• 46:03
  Be somebody. Do you want to ditch that?
• 46:05
  You want to consume that? But it's the.
• 46:07
  Second time I've had it with. George with George and Rachel,
• 46:10
  like they they they put on fragrant drops labels they put
• 46:13
  off like there's some things, the artworks.
• 46:15
  A little bit of a nod with your stuff, is there?
• 46:17
  Nods like how do you select the liquid?
• 46:20
  If you say right, we're going to select that liquid and that
• 46:23
  label that goes together. Yeah, I think unless, unless
• 46:27
  we've got a very specific idea about what we want to achieve, I
• 46:31
  pretend to leave the artist to like whatever I think Katie, and
• 46:34
  I'll pass that. But Andrew, Andrew just going to
• 46:36
  leave 2X Andrews just like. There's a couple of different
• 46:38
  artists use. Yeah, there's a few different I
• 46:40
  can work with. There's a couple of
• 46:43
  conversations going on here. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
• 46:45
  Sorry, what do? You guys want to?
• 46:48
  Taste, so I'll pass up the dealer.
• 46:49
  'S choice, whatever, whatever. So yeah.
• 46:51
  A really cool example. The label here is what I would
• 46:55
  expect to the Japanese IB like pink big massive robot cat
• 47:01
  obviously. Love the.
• 47:02
  Still. Inside the amazing.
• 47:04
  Ardnuck, so Ardn, American and Dornoch.
• 47:07
  Some landed malt here. That's the perfect example of
• 47:09
  like lighting an artist be an artist and like Katie is.
• 47:14
  So this was done by Andrew actually.
• 47:15
  But like when I went to Andrew, I was like, tracking, explaining
• 47:18
  some musical Annie. Yeah.
• 47:21
  So like it's an ARD? Knock.
• 47:24
  And like I had it in my head, we talk about these things like
• 47:27
  these diamond and Jack and the guys, and still they're just
• 47:28
  like Ardnoc was going to be it. So we did Knick knock with
• 47:31
  nickname and then we did Ardnoc with Alfred American.
• 47:34
  So that was always going to be the name was Ardnoc.
• 47:35
  So I was always like, right, I'm going to do it's an Ardnoc life.
• 47:38
  My goal was to do like Connell as Annie Graham is the dog from
• 47:45
  I Need a Musical, but then I was like really niche with it.
• 47:48
  It's a hard knock life life anyway, but I'll still.
• 47:53
  Do that you would you pair like when you look at some of these
• 47:57
  labels, you know, you you drink eat with your eyes a lot of
• 48:01
  thing. You it's harder to drink with
• 48:03
  your eyes as such, isn't it? Yeah, I wanted to ask you about.
• 48:05
  This and this is this is this is the one you're a very new
• 48:08
  release. It's another which doesn't look
• 48:11
  similar to anything whatsoever for the audio listers.
• 48:16
  A nice bottle of water on the table that looks very similar to
• 48:18
  a really. 1990s style. Yeah, it's all completely
• 48:22
  unrelated and it's a taller Barton, something recently
• 48:25
  bottled. Also red wine break.
• 48:28
  Like all the info's there. You're always using new stuff,
• 48:31
  see. Has there been any highlights
• 48:32
  from the lights from what you've bottled so far?
• 48:34
  I mean how? How long is?
• 48:36
  How long is it? Yeah, there was a 2000.
• 48:38
  That was the Arthur, Russian and Dornish blended.
• 48:40
  No, no. No, I think we had that.
• 48:42
  That was the first one. That's the one with the goose
• 48:44
  on. So the first one's.
• 48:45
  Bricklady, Bricklady Wrens. Is one of their life I haven't.
• 48:47
  Tried it right that was 1 yet I passed it to you but I haven't
• 48:50
  already, sorry. Yeah, so sorry.
• 48:54
  How? How long has the bottling been?
• 48:55
  Going oh, so the oh, it's bottling as as it is now 7 years
• 49:02
  going on eight years. Which actually it's been so many
• 49:05
  new Ivs come up. These are pretty established.
• 49:08
  These are bottling a lot as you say.
• 49:10
  Well, this one here is from 2014, but that was just that was
• 49:13
  just for our own bar. Yeah, I mean we try and come up
• 49:17
  with some cool ideas. I think like like I said, I tend
• 49:19
  to leave the artist to it. So like Andrew with the yard Nog
• 49:23
  start, you know, we're talking about like Jager suits and stuff
• 49:26
  and like Power Rangers and pulling to get so you're pulling
• 49:29
  the two entities together to become like one bigger, better
• 49:32
  thing and. Your importers know you guys,
• 49:36
  they must like that and to and so you know, perhaps this this
• 49:39
  will work this really good team and also our German market
• 49:44
  aren't going to go crazy for that.
• 49:45
  Yeah, it's a bit of a generational thing as well.
• 49:47
  So like, you know, we've obviously we go to like
• 49:49
  Lindbergh Whiskey Fair every year.
• 49:51
  We love it there. And like so many, like older
• 49:53
  German guys come over and be like, will tell you, Oh yeah,
• 49:56
  this is I hate your labels. That's so.
• 50:01
  Thank you because I get I get slaughtered for doing my German
• 50:04
  accent. Well, that's not as good as it
• 50:06
  is. They probably love the Tally
• 50:08
  Bardeen label. Yeah, because it's very
• 50:10
  traditional. You got the tartar and you got
• 50:11
  the Thistle and stuff like that, right?
• 50:13
  Whereas like the younger generation, you know, guys in
• 50:15
  their 30s going into early 40s of drinkers who are new into
• 50:19
  whiskey, they're the ones that are kind of definitely finding
• 50:21
  picking up our. Yeah, because I mean, I was.
• 50:23
  In Europe, anyway. Asia.
• 50:25
  Bit different is there? Do you ever think of, well,
• 50:28
  maybe we'll deliberately cause a bit of controversy here and
• 50:31
  that's a good thing? Or is it?
• 50:33
  Is it just Nah, this is going to just be a laugh and we don't
• 50:35
  really care. Or.
• 50:36
  Oh, press is good press. Well, yeah, yeah, it's certainly
• 50:40
  having a bit of fun. I don't think there's, I don't
• 50:42
  think there's anything. There's nothing really
• 50:43
  offensive. That's no well.
• 50:45
  This is going to get upset. I can honestly tell you that
• 50:48
  whether it was related or not, that the monks at Buckfast Abbey
• 50:51
  are probably not arsed. Lawyers.
• 50:54
  A morator. But I suppose it's, it is an
• 50:57
  interesting 'cause I, it is interesting that you do have a
• 51:00
  group of like a section of the whiskey drinker that will look
• 51:04
  at these and be like, you're not taking it seriously enough.
• 51:08
  No, no, you should, You should, yeah.
• 51:09
  Like there'll be people that go. A whiskey bottle should look
• 51:12
  like a particular, like a whiskey brand, a whiskey label.
• 51:15
  Did I suggest you're the people that are not buying
• 51:16
  independently bottled whiskey? No, but I just find it
• 51:18
  interesting that it's like there, there is, there is that
• 51:21
  there where people will look and go.
• 51:22
  That's honestly you can't put cartoons and you look.
• 51:24
  If I, if you, if you were expensive and you had really
• 51:27
  like funny labels, you know, people could maybe complain a
• 51:31
  bit, but you know, we're we're really conscious on the value
• 51:35
  proposition and the selection. The quality and price to quality
• 51:41
  ratio is super important to us. But also talking about being
• 51:44
  flexible margins there one of the things we do when we're
• 51:49
  pricing, you know, OK, you've got your, your rules, you'd like
• 51:51
  to make this da da, da, da. OK, now check it off against,
• 51:56
  you know, we'll, we'll go on the various whiskey websites and
• 51:58
  look at recent independent releases from the last couple of
• 52:02
  years and then kind of get the range as to what people come in
• 52:04
  and say, OK, can we make this work at at the lower end of
• 52:07
  this? Yes, we can.
• 52:08
  Great. OK, let's do it.
• 52:10
  So you're, you know, so you're also offering a really good
• 52:12
  value proposition. It's not like you're asking them
• 52:15
  to spend loads because it has a fancy label.
• 52:17
  Yeah, yeah, the, you know, the quality to price ratio of the
• 52:20
  liquid kind of sells itself and the labels a bonus or some
• 52:23
  people might pick up because the label.
• 52:24
  And it's not too painful to do that because it's you're getting
• 52:28
  good value on the liquid and. When it when it, when it comes
• 52:31
  to them working together as brothers?
• 52:34
  Do you have both a different angle and skill sets that you
• 52:38
  bring to the business side of it?
• 52:39
  Is there's one, is there 11 of you that's more into the right
• 52:43
  into the whiskey side and the other one that's more into like
• 52:45
  the sales and the marketing or or do you both sort of split the
• 52:48
  split the the work? I mean, yeah, I think we're both
• 52:51
  into all elements of the business and probably more so
• 52:54
  with the actual business side of it.
• 52:56
  The past two years in particular with the kind of restructuring
• 53:00
  and so on, because we've kind of had to really both understand
• 53:02
  that fully. There's always been a kind of
• 53:05
  natural division. I'll kind of be more in the sort
• 53:07
  of marketing sales product side of things for the independence.
• 53:10
  And Simon's definitely got his head more, you know, you, you
• 53:14
  understand the production side of things a lot more than I do.
• 53:17
  And certainly in the more technical detail of that, the
• 53:20
  engineering, the production, the planning process.
• 53:23
  So that kind of works fairly well.
• 53:25
  Do you like distillery engineers as well?
• 53:27
  Pretty much. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 53:28
  But I mean, you know, we could leave Phil alone in the
• 53:31
  distillery. And even distillery, yeah.
• 53:34
  By the way, do you realize how cool that is is both able to to
• 53:38
  run your own distillery most of the most most owners of
• 53:41
  distilleries. So and considering we have a
• 53:44
  hands on. You're so and the team.
• 53:47
  How big is the team now? So we're seven, we're we're kind
• 53:49
  of less. So that like I said, the past
• 53:51
  couple of years with with what's happening with the business,
• 53:53
  it's been less. So you've been in the distillery
• 53:56
  or less so we've been in the bottling?
• 53:57
  Or you're not. You're 9 film 9/9 full time, 9
• 54:00
  full. Time and then when as brothers,
• 54:03
  you know, does it get does it ever get a little bit well when
• 54:07
  heated together you have to go into the garden of a little
• 54:09
  wrestle to establish it was right in that situation or what
• 54:14
  decision needed to be made. No, I think we kind of we're
• 54:16
  fairly complimentary. I think there's usually, I think
• 54:19
  if there's Simon can talk me down from a ledge and you know,
• 54:23
  sometimes you know, the scalpels not necessary and the hammer's
• 54:27
  necessary and sometimes the, you know, the scalpels necessary and
• 54:30
  the hammer's not. Yeah, I mean, yeah, a lot of the
• 54:32
  time my my default is if Phil wants to do something and I'm
• 54:37
  like, maybe not, I'll just let him do it.
• 54:43
  Do you go? And then I knew that would go.
• 54:47
  Honestly, he's he. It usually works out from
• 54:50
  pretty. Funny laddies, both absolutely
• 54:52
  great minds to have done what you've done so far.
• 54:54
  I know you have got a lot going on at the moment and this is the
• 54:57
  next big step, but to have done and want to achieve what you've
• 55:00
  done so far with even just the boss links.
• 55:03
  And what about then if we, you know, you've talked about how
• 55:07
  things have gone and you mentioned about the hard yards
• 55:09
  when you're saying about the, the difficult nights and
• 55:11
  different nights when and you, you look back, it was well worth
• 55:14
  it. What have been the biggest
• 55:16
  challenges that you've had to face?
• 55:18
  Money, yeah. Always money.
• 55:20
  The whole, yeah, the whole thing, whether it's the hotel,
• 55:22
  whether it's distillery, whether it's the bit and bottling,
• 55:24
  that's the thing that will be like, you know, it's, it's you
• 55:28
  have to kind of stay grounded in like what it is that really
• 55:30
  drives you to do it and why you're doing it.
• 55:32
  Because like it is tough. Like it is tough and the
• 55:35
  landscape is tough. And, you know, we've done so
• 55:37
  much of it with a kind of, you know, with quite a, you know,
• 55:40
  we've dealt with so many issues that we kind of, yeah, it's
• 55:43
  pretty, that would be the thing for me.
• 55:44
  I know it's very kind of like it's not what you want to hear
• 55:46
  because it's like you want to say, oh, the pump breaks
• 55:48
  sometimes. No, no, it's the part that you
• 55:51
  don't appreciate. But it is the part that everyone
• 55:54
  can relate to, Yeah. Because like everyone will have
• 55:57
  some form of shit that they have to deal with, with money that
• 56:00
  you have to. It's unexpected or whatever.
• 56:02
  You cash flow is not right in your personal circumstance.
• 56:05
  Everyone will go through your own that shit.
• 56:07
  It's just relating on a larger scale.
• 56:09
  And and when it when you when you look at that, the financial
• 56:13
  challenges that that you have, then has it got to a stage ever
• 56:17
  where you're going? This is this is getting to the
• 56:19
  stage where we literally are. And has there ever been a moment
• 56:22
  where something just pops up because you also you talk about
• 56:25
  Thompson Independent Traders Limited, how candid you want us
• 56:28
  to pay them? Well, I don't know, but I just
• 56:30
  love the fact that, you know, we the Prince only fools and horses
• 56:34
  a couple of times. Yeah.
• 56:35
  And you, you've mentioned about your, your company name and
• 56:38
  stuff. And if, if we were to look at
• 56:39
  that every now and then, just when you think Rodney and Dell
• 56:42
  Boyer, they've ran out of ideas, something happens or something,
• 56:46
  you know? Yeah.
• 56:47
  It genuinely has been like that for the probably the past well,
• 56:49
  we've been funding this salary project in cash flow and then
• 56:52
  bringing the hotel into the holding company and all these
• 56:54
  things with restructuring didn't take on debt.
• 56:56
  We're so Dornick is really in comparative terms.
• 57:00
  So it's quite expensive to produce.
• 57:02
  Yeah. And everything's always gone
• 57:03
  back into Dornick like no matter what independent bottling, we've
• 57:05
  not invested heavily in inventory.
• 57:07
  We're not sitting on a huge we are sitting on a diesel.
• 57:09
  Let me check the spreadsheet. No, yeah, he's always, he's
• 57:14
  always no cash plan. Yeah.
• 57:16
  No, he's almost comparison. To to probably have it not a lot
• 57:20
  of. Independent ball in comparison,
• 57:22
  it's a signatory, yeah. We've we've done, we've done all
• 57:26
  right. Yeah, we've done all right.
• 57:28
  From like pure hard graphic. When you had your.
• 57:31
  Freshness. Few CAS bottled.
• 57:34
  Yeah. You're like, OK, we need to, we
• 57:35
  need to sell these so I can buy the next four or five casks.
• 57:39
  Yeah, the first few casks were the easiest.
• 57:40
  They're the easiest to buy in bottle, but they're the most
• 57:43
  difficult to sell. Yeah.
• 57:44
  And the first ones, because you had we had cash post
• 57:46
  crowdfunding. So we're like, Oh yeah, this
• 57:47
  makes sense to do that. Don't have a sick in the bank.
• 57:49
  And yeah, but they were the most difficult.
• 57:52
  What was your? First bottling?
• 57:53
  Thompson Bros bottling is it? Isn't that first?
• 57:55
  Yeah, as it is now, it's just 72 in the Gordon so which amusingly
• 57:58
  I bought for me and crucially when we worked at AD Rattery.
• 58:01
  Yeah, which is? It's actually a lot of 7072 got
• 58:04
  in recorded feet and bolts. Yeah, it was good and it wasn't
• 58:07
  wasn't expensive. Then we followed up, we did some
• 58:08
  Corones, which is like, oh, right.
• 58:11
  But nobody was doing that. So Europe, you know, guys like
• 58:13
  Belly and things were doing it, but we were trying to sell 18
• 58:17
  year old heavy style Corone. And do you still bottle run?
• 58:20
  Not in the past year or so, because I just found the market
• 58:22
  went mental. It was stupid.
• 58:24
  It was just really. Small.
• 58:25
  He just wasn't there for a while.
• 58:27
  Yeah, so there was. The value was there.
• 58:28
  Didn't align with what you guys were looking for.
• 58:30
  Yeah, it wasn't. We didn't align with what people
• 58:32
  were actually willing to pay for them.
• 58:33
  And that's as simple as that. And it's like, it's not, you
• 58:36
  know, wasn't being treated like, but I know there is people who
• 58:38
  will sit and drink rum like they we drink whiskey, but there's so
• 58:41
  few compared to whiskey drinkers.
• 58:43
  So like when it comes to like 203 hundred, 405 hundred, 600 LB
• 58:47
  bottles, which is where these like 90s cronies would have to
• 58:50
  be, which is the stuff that everybody wants is the sexy
• 58:52
  stuff. It was getting super difficult.
• 58:55
  We were £70 for our first crony and we couldn't.
• 58:57
  Sell. Yeah, you didn't sell it. 972717
• 59:00
  year old. Yeah, great.
• 59:02
  Really cheap and yeah, two gauges to sell.
• 59:04
  And then we did, we followed up with a, we did an 18 year old
• 59:06
  straight after 'cause I. 'Cause I bet you were so excited
• 59:10
  at the time going, oh, this is gonna be a massive success.
• 59:12
  This is we weren't. Thinking success, we were
• 59:13
  thinking does it taste good? Do we get So we put a cool label
• 59:16
  on it and does it taste good and we is.
• 59:17
  That in, yeah. No, I don't think there is, but
• 59:19
  there's. Yeah, well.
• 59:20
  That was a great. Were you surprised that
• 59:22
  struggled to sell though? No, no, no.
• 59:24
  Because we nobody give a shit about that.
• 59:26
  Sort of. Stuff we did.
• 59:27
  Yeah, literally overnight the whole stock in the website.
• 59:29
  Because yeah, I know, I know two or three people who buy and
• 59:32
  collect Caroni, but I'm only ever going to know two of these
• 59:35
  two or three people that buy and collect Caroni because.
• 59:37
  It's like, how much Caroni can you drink?
• 59:40
  Like how much Caroni can you actually drink?
• 59:41
  It's a beautiful, beautiful spirit, but like how many balls?
• 59:44
  Can you like that moment then when things start to tick over
• 59:49
  and you're going like, oh, wait, this is actually working?
• 59:51
  What was that like then? What did it feel like when you
• 59:54
  and what was this, our moment, this?
• 59:55
  Kind of seems like you're still waiting for that moment.
• 59:57
  It's. It's it's, it's always working.
• 1:00:00
  It was actually doing really well, super comfortable, but
• 1:00:04
  just yeah, the the kind of the stretch point was funding the
• 1:00:07
  street distillery project through planning permission
• 1:00:11
  design architects. Then going through the building
• 1:00:14
  warrant phase of that. So effectively, before we wanted
• 1:00:17
  to get anyone else involved, we wanted to have a heavily de risk
• 1:00:19
  because there's a whole bunch of speed bumps along the way.
• 1:00:21
  What are you getting back at? Planning archaeology, what they
• 1:00:24
  do, archaeological trenching, they find a Pictish for it's
• 1:00:27
  pass, game over. What is what?
• 1:00:29
  You sink your borehole and the water's no good.
• 1:00:31
  So we wanted to get past all of these ourselves from cash flow.
• 1:00:36
  And that's probably the stretch point where making all that
• 1:00:38
  progress. And we didn't really want to
• 1:00:40
  take other people's money until you'd gotten over all those
• 1:00:44
  potential speed bumps. That could be a project killer
• 1:00:48
  or it could be a massive project delayer.
• 1:00:50
  So we wanted to go as far as we could doing that.
• 1:00:53
  And so like all that extra funding into that, plus doing
• 1:00:56
  the hotel takeover at the same time.
• 1:01:00
  That's for professionals. Yeah, I mean, that is a boring,
• 1:01:02
  boring part of a story. How would it take to get
• 1:01:06
  planning permission for something like a second
• 1:01:08
  accelerate? Why did we?
• 1:01:09
  Start. So we got caught in the change
• 1:01:11
  of Scottish planning framework as well.
• 1:01:14
  Yeah, great fun. Yeah.
• 1:01:15
  So because I think, I think maybe the last thing I was here
• 1:01:17
  two years ago. Did you already apply for
• 1:01:20
  planning? Permission, probably, yes.
• 1:01:21
  We got it in like October 23. We actually got planning
• 1:01:25
  permission, yes. 18 months later and we're still you should be
• 1:01:30
  breaking ground in the summer. That's what we're looking
• 1:01:33
  forward to. By the way, in terms of if, if
• 1:01:35
  you were talking about spreadsheets and stuff like
• 1:01:37
  that, I, I find that interesting.
• 1:01:39
  I am, I have a brother who is the sort of we're, we're
• 1:01:43
  slightly, we, we get on very, very well, but we're also, yeah,
• 1:01:47
  so occasionally, but we're also like very different in terms of
• 1:01:51
  I'm very impulsive. He's very calculated.
• 1:01:54
  So we work quite well together. Maybe interesting to see if you
• 1:01:56
  guys have that, but. So we looked at Phil, just gave
• 1:01:59
  Simon, it looks like. When you're looking at buying
• 1:02:02
  casks then, because I would be a nightmare, right, I'd be going
• 1:02:05
  to buy it. I know, but it's a bit pricier
• 1:02:08
  that how would we manage to make the mark?
• 1:02:10
  No, just get it. It'll be cool.
• 1:02:12
  Imagine having that. Do you have a do you have a
• 1:02:14
  dynamic there where repaired? You have to look at that.
• 1:02:17
  Do you have a process where you'll say, because you might
• 1:02:21
  come across a cask in a spreadsheet that you could buy
• 1:02:25
  in a parcel and go, wow, that is the cash we're looking for.
• 1:02:28
  But as you've just said, cash is the biggest issue.
• 1:02:30
  You then look at it go, but we do need to pay the lawyers for
• 1:02:34
  the borehole planning permission or the the water board had to
• 1:02:38
  come out and we're just we have to pass.
• 1:02:40
  On that, can I just add on top of that, sorry, can I just add
• 1:02:42
  on top of that question like how much are you buying much just
• 1:02:45
  new make spirit and then completely laying it down
• 1:02:47
  yourself or is it all? No, not a lot Dornix or new
• 1:02:51
  make. We are, we are buying some, some
• 1:02:53
  new make, but only if it's, well only if it's like an opportunity
• 1:02:56
  to get to get something that isn't normally available.
• 1:03:00
  Yeah, OK. You know, there's, you know, if
• 1:03:01
  we're from something we know is still going to be around fairly
• 1:03:05
  available in a few years. So there's a, there's a so our,
• 1:03:08
  our new fillings, you know, is Dornick 8 years of production,
• 1:03:12
  40 something weeks a year, six days a week laying casks down.
• 1:03:16
  So that's our new fillings, normally an independent
• 1:03:19
  bottlers, you know doing a mixture of you know mature, semi
• 1:03:22
  mature and new fillings and getting that kind of stream in
• 1:03:25
  behind and. It's the difference.
• 1:03:27
  You spoke a bit about an indie bottler and an independent
• 1:03:29
  bottler. Yeah, some indie bottlers are
• 1:03:31
  massive, massive multimillion corporations that can do
• 1:03:34
  whatever. So well, go on then who's who's
• 1:03:36
  the impulsive one? Who's the one that let's do it?
• 1:03:38
  Another one that goes well, let's just I think.
• 1:03:40
  I think with the independent I'm pretty balanced, like I'm quite
• 1:03:43
  impulsive. I know if it's a good deal, I
• 1:03:45
  know if it's good liquid, I'll know if we can get out a good
• 1:03:47
  price, but I'll always run my margin to make sure the cheque
• 1:03:50
  it works out. And I think, you know, hearing
• 1:03:52
  you say that, that you would be like that, I think I would be.
• 1:03:55
  But when you look at the bank balance and you're like, OK, no,
• 1:03:58
  actually we only have this. So is it quite easy for you to
• 1:04:00
  pass up, if you could say? Right, 100%.
• 1:04:03
  Actually, it's worked out really well for us in the past 18
• 1:04:05
  months where we've like been super tight for cash, ultra
• 1:04:08
  selective because there's been so much stuff that's been way
• 1:04:11
  overpriced in the market and like it's totally OK, just about
• 1:04:15
  it's been really good. So like coming round full
• 1:04:17
  circle, you know, we're we're actually we've done all right,
• 1:04:21
  because we've not put loads of money into like junk casks or
• 1:04:23
  really expensive casks over the past couple of years because
• 1:04:26
  there was a period where like you just had to, you don't have
• 1:04:28
  a choice. The broker would be like that's
• 1:04:30
  there. Do you want to?
• 1:04:31
  It's either you want to, you don't want to or give me an
• 1:04:32
  offer. Whereas now it's like, oh, hi,
• 1:04:35
  hi, perhaps. Yeah, we can.
• 1:04:37
  Yeah. Maybe you could just pay a
• 1:04:38
  deposit and then like six months later, you could pay, you know,
• 1:04:41
  loads of negotiation and stuff now.
• 1:04:43
  Whereas, you know, before they were just like, it was money.
• 1:04:47
  I think one guy said, you know, some of that to me.
• 1:04:49
  He's like, oh, I'm actually having to work now.
• 1:04:50
  And it's. There's a point where it's just
• 1:04:52
  like, I have casks. You're like casks, whiskey.
• 1:04:54
  That's going to make me. Yeah.
• 1:04:55
  And they could just sell it. And then the other, the other
• 1:04:57
  thing is we had Paul Main from Hunter Lang on the and he was
• 1:05:01
  talking about being at a show and it was a Fort with a 40 odd
• 1:05:05
  year old 46 or something like that.
• 1:05:08
  And someone said, ah, well done on bottling that at 46.
• 1:05:11
  And he said no, well done to the company for not bottling it
• 1:05:15
  earlier. So in terms of, I mean, I don't
• 1:05:17
  know how much casks you have laid down and how often you
• 1:05:20
  visit them to go and has there ever been a point where you're
• 1:05:24
  going, we should put that out now because that'll be great.
• 1:05:27
  But at the same time going or we can fold it back a little bit
• 1:05:30
  longer. Yeah, I mean that's.
• 1:05:31
  Always been our door, Nick, really isn't it?
• 1:05:33
  That's yeah, there's a few bits in the warehouse, but not much
• 1:05:35
  that we're sitting. On you just have the space to
• 1:05:37
  like you're re racking and playing around with lots of
• 1:05:40
  stuff for the I. Think there's, I think our last
• 1:05:42
  cask of was it 1990 like you know, secret Isla, which same
• 1:05:49
  source as all the other stuff. So people probably know what
• 1:05:51
  that is. Phils very keen to try and get
• 1:05:55
  that to 40 and whereas whenever money gets tight I'm like well.
• 1:06:01
  We could, but. I suppose that's also the
• 1:06:05
  problem, your own new mate, because it's like, well, we're
• 1:06:08
  only going to have the oldest stuff as long as we keep keep it
• 1:06:12
  getting older. If we start to bottle it, then
• 1:06:15
  the oldest stuff is. Talking about like the size of
• 1:06:18
  casks and like the way that it kind of set up.
• 1:06:21
  I've tasted you guys can probably try some later.
• 1:06:23
  It was a Sherry hogs head of Dornik.
• 1:06:25
  It was like cask 44 and it's like the first time I've had
• 1:06:28
  I've had it a few times, not that, but this little parcel of
• 1:06:31
  CAS over the past few years and it's been like, oh God, it's
• 1:06:33
  like it's a million miles away. It's actually like I'm now
• 1:06:36
  feeling like this is amazing. I'm still going to give it as
• 1:06:38
  long as we can possibly give it, but it's tasting incredible.
• 1:06:42
  And so just before we kind of. Well, I want to ask I want to
• 1:06:45
  ask a couple more questions. We have fast and fruits that I.
• 1:06:47
  Need to get away and. You're in the bottle what your
• 1:06:49
  favorite 1 is. Well, I was literally saying
• 1:06:53
  tell me before we finished. That's what three other better
• 1:06:57
  was like. I love.
• 1:07:02
  You What's the favorite thing you've bottled personally?
• 1:07:05
  I think privately the sort of little Glenn Voor Flaggings,
• 1:07:10
  Glenn Voor, Spring Bank, these sort of flaggings, the same
• 1:07:12
  kind. No, it doesn't count, but it's
• 1:07:13
  privately. It's bald on my mum and daddy's
• 1:07:16
  kitchen table. Yeah, the spring rank in the the
• 1:07:22
  Glenn Faller. And then there was a Glenn Lemon
• 1:07:24
  came from. The 1937. 37 Glenn Vour I mean,
• 1:07:26
  it's we could never commercially sell it because it's like proved
• 1:07:29
  to me it's 1937. Glenn Vour Yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:32
  Yeah, so. But you taste it and you're
• 1:07:33
  like, it's an epic old Highland whiskey.
• 1:07:36
  It's amazing. OK, but from a from a from.
• 1:07:38
  AI there's been a lot of cool stuff.
• 1:07:41
  I think we're I was delighted to do the first we're to do so kind
• 1:07:44
  of OB IB Panoski was really cool.
• 1:07:48
  We did the first ever independent bimber back in the
• 1:07:51
  day. That seems like a long time ago.
• 1:07:53
  We missed an opportunity with a couple of Kalashnikovs on the
• 1:07:55
  label. That's it.
• 1:08:02
  You won't be. You won't be hearing from AS.
• 1:08:05
  Long as. Honestly, I'm, I'm a, I'm a
• 1:08:07
  super fan of Darius and I miss him from the whiskey space.
• 1:08:12
  So yeah, I think, I think he was doing great stuff.
• 1:08:14
  And you know, yeah. Whatever.
• 1:08:15
  Yeah. If you, if you grew up in, you
• 1:08:18
  know, post Soviet Poland, you know.
• 1:08:20
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 1:08:22
  And so what's your favorite thing about salmon?
• 1:08:25
  Oh that's really pipped me too a little.
• 1:08:27
  Bit there I, well, I, you know, I've got a real soft spot for
• 1:08:30
  the, the, the series of Strathairns we did, which was
• 1:08:36
  kind of kind of ours, kind of not kind of Tony Reiman Clark's.
• 1:08:40
  So yeah, I had a soft spot for that.
• 1:08:43
  So Tony's personal casks we bottled and sold them on his
• 1:08:46
  behalf. And yeah, just got a real soft
• 1:08:49
  spot for the distillery for the early work we did there, getting
• 1:08:53
  involved a little bit when they were setting up.
• 1:08:55
  So yeah, that was pretty cool. Including Strathairn and cast
• 1:08:58
  number one. We bottled too.
• 1:08:59
  That's it and. Is there anything you've not
• 1:09:02
  bottled that you'd like to bottle?
• 1:09:03
  Obviously spay burn. Yeah.
• 1:09:06
  Yeah, silence. Yeah, there's, there's a few,
• 1:09:10
  there's there's things we we could have bottled but just.
• 1:09:12
  Went too expensive, yeah. When?
• 1:09:13
  When they were in Spring Bank, yeah.
• 1:09:16
  Yeah, yeah, Bowman and Spring Bank are just the the prices are
• 1:09:19
  just we we couldn't put it in glass and I'm totally.
• 1:09:22
  Happy about yourself? I'm I'm put it out to customers,
• 1:09:24
  that price we're happy with. It's just the the right stocks
• 1:09:27
  never turned up for that. I don't.
• 1:09:30
  Think it ever will for a while, that's for sure.
• 1:09:33
  Well. Let.
• 1:09:33
  Me know. What's your favorite Thompson
• 1:09:37
  robot line? It's hard.
• 1:09:39
  I mean, I tell you what, there was what was the pitted one that
• 1:09:43
  we just literally had the Rinz. Brazil.
• 1:09:45
  Yeah, from the fantastic. First of all, bourbon barrels,
• 1:09:47
  ah. Fantastic.
• 1:09:50
  I probably the over the over six year old the the blend what?
• 1:09:54
  I, I, I've, I've had it'd. Be hard for me to argue against
• 1:09:57
  that. The Tesco, the Tesco one did pop
• 1:09:59
  up. I, I, I'm terrible at it when I
• 1:10:01
  go to Diggers, when we record and it's like, what do you want?
• 1:10:04
  And I can, I just know if I know, I'll look up there and
• 1:10:06
  the, the Thompson brothers I can picture on the shell.
• 1:10:08
  I know exactly where it is. But the problem is if I see one,
• 1:10:11
  I've already had it, I know I like and it's got, I'll just get
• 1:10:13
  that one done again. But one thing I do want to say
• 1:10:15
  is you've invited us up here. It's been absolutely fantastic.
• 1:10:18
  This is day one. We've had a good day already,
• 1:10:21
  but we have a Friday night enjoying Dornick.
• 1:10:24
  So give us the highs and lows. What are we looking at doing
• 1:10:26
  here? What what we what can we enjoy
• 1:10:28
  behind the bar? What what are we looking to
• 1:10:30
  trying to Is there a few other bars in the town that we should
• 1:10:32
  be visiting? And the mini dormant pub crawl
• 1:10:35
  before our the trip just for the distillery to war, Yeah.
• 1:10:38
  I, I mean, obviously you, you want to be in here, but the Eric
• 1:10:41
  who's got the Eagle down down the street there is quite a,
• 1:10:44
  quite a good weed pub and he's actually got a really decent
• 1:10:46
  little whiskey selection. He's also got quite a few rums.
• 1:10:48
  He likes his rums. Yeah.
• 1:10:50
  So there's like so a few anomalies there you wouldn't
• 1:10:52
  expect in that, in that. Sort of, yeah.
• 1:10:53
  And he does. He does the occasional little
• 1:10:55
  independent bottling himself as well.
• 1:10:57
  He's got a few of those in the barn.
• 1:10:59
  And obviously in here, you know, the hang out in the bar is a
• 1:11:01
  good place to be. There's quite.
• 1:11:03
  What? We've got to look forward to
• 1:11:04
  that. What?
• 1:11:05
  What's that? Where, Where?
• 1:11:06
  What? Depends on how much you want to
• 1:11:07
  spend. Well, there's.
• 1:11:09
  Some really cool stuff, yeah. There's a really, there's one of
• 1:11:11
  the highlights for me at the moment, there's a 69 dura, which
• 1:11:14
  is for Lord Astor and it's a private cask probably filled in
• 1:11:17
  the 80s. I checked the ABV with our
• 1:11:19
  hydrometer and it was like 5455% ABV, right?
• 1:11:22
  Little Sherry hoggy, just very little out there about that
• 1:11:26
  liquid that's open by the DRAM. There's loads a great cheap
• 1:11:30
  there's. Also, your best chance ever to
• 1:11:32
  try a variety of donors? Yeah, because just you're not
• 1:11:36
  going to find it. No, just finally before we do to
• 1:11:40
  lead on to episode 2 of this series that we're doing
• 1:11:44
  tomorrow. You've mentioned it, there's a
• 1:11:46
  distillery on site here and we're looking forward to seeing
• 1:11:49
  that. But you've also talked a little
• 1:11:51
  bit about the big plans. So the big plan is that you're
• 1:11:55
  now crowdfunding for a new new development of a of a second
• 1:11:59
  distillery. Are we?
• 1:12:01
  Are we live? I don't.
• 1:12:03
  I'm not sure we're live yet. This will go.
• 1:12:06
  When are you going live? 'Cause we can release this.
• 1:12:09
  Either to run it tonight or tomorrow morning.
• 1:12:12
  We're actually in the future right now.
• 1:12:17
  You've made it. Your money problems are over.
• 1:12:23
  Doctor here, at least coming out soon.
• 1:12:25
  Wow, you've managed to sell everything in 24 hours.
• 1:12:29
  The fastest whiskey crowd funding ever.
• 1:12:32
  That's it going great. Or it's or it's not.
• 1:12:34
  Going well, look if it it's about to go even better when
• 1:12:37
  this is. Released so people need to
• 1:12:39
  listen so for. People who are listening to this
• 1:12:40
  now before they can't wait until next week's episode, which will
• 1:12:44
  be the distillery episode. How can people find out about
• 1:12:47
  the crowdfunding? How can people get involved?
• 1:12:49
  Oh yeah, so just jump on the Crowd Cube website and type in
• 1:12:53
  Struy or Dornik and we'll turn up or.
• 1:12:55
  Look at our socials. LinkedIn.
• 1:12:57
  LinkedIn. I know.
• 1:12:58
  Oh God, that's what. #Crowdfunding.
• 1:13:07
  Socials 'cause I made that mistake I spent ages looking for
• 1:13:09
  Thompson Brothers Dorf distillery Dorf distillery on
• 1:13:12
  Instagram. What and and what's it what is
• 1:13:15
  it Crowd what is it? Crowd cube, Crowd cube Go to
• 1:13:19
  crowd cube type in dorf straight now straight.
• 1:13:22
  How do you spell straight? CRUI.
• 1:13:24
  E straight, nice and easy there we follow.
• 1:13:26
  We'll be pushing this everywhere.
• 1:13:28
  You'll see it on our socials and things like that as well and.
• 1:13:30
  We'll see you every day next week for the and we'll.
• 1:13:32
  You guys see you guys at breakfast.
• 1:13:36
  I just like to also say thank you very much for putting Angus
• 1:13:39
  and I in the penthouse. And I would say that the the hot
• 1:13:44
  tub definitely has more than space for more than two.
• 1:13:46
  So Ross, I'll. Leave you 2, you've got a.
• 1:13:51
  Sleeping bag in the corner. I'll leave you 2.
• 1:13:56
  All the very best and yeah, we'll see you tomorrow morning
• 1:13:58
  and. Animal was it?
• 1:14:00
  Animal Parties Limited? What was it?
• 1:14:02
  Party animals limited you sit for all occasions have.
• 1:14:04
  You still got that? On no, no, yeah, no.
• 1:14:08
  Sure, that. Takes your character.
• 1:14:10
  Party Animals Limited Have you got the domain at least?
• 1:14:12
  No, have you? Recorded now.
• 1:14:15
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:14:16
  Alright party. Animals limited party Animals
• 1:14:18
  limited music for all occasions. I can't believe I was in bed
• 1:14:20
  first last. Night.
• 1:14:20
  Yeah, I know. Anyway, Angus, you know what to
• 1:14:23
  do. Right?
• 1:14:26
  Here we are, lads. The morning after, the night
• 1:14:28
  before. Well, The thing is, this time
• 1:14:33
  yesterday we'd already arrived at the Tomato Distillery.
• 1:14:35
  We were giddy. I predict in a future episode we
• 1:14:38
  will feature the tomato distillery.
• 1:14:39
  Yeah, I think I so it's the morning after that.
• 1:14:42
  It's the first two day event of the Whiskey Stories Podcast
• 1:14:47
  Grand Tour. Grand Tour double header.
• 1:14:51
  And what a backdrop we've got. Hello.
• 1:14:53
  Well, I thanks. Are decent.
• 1:14:54
  Thanks are very. Decent.
• 1:14:55
  Absolutely Fine. We'll get Chuck to do his camera
• 1:14:57
  work. Oh yeah.
• 1:14:59
  We had a nice evening in the castle last.
• 1:15:01
  Night we did. Fine, a fine selection of malts
• 1:15:03
  behind the bar. Too many.
• 1:15:05
  Yeah, like we. Tried.
• 1:15:06
  Some too many. We tried Donic exclusive the
• 1:15:09
  hotel on a castle exclusive Arda marking which was very.
• 1:15:12
  That was lovely. You'd go to bed.
• 1:15:13
  By the point we're asking that at this point we had to go to
• 1:15:16
  bed. Every man, every man had a
• 1:15:18
  really big day. He did.
• 1:15:20
  He'd been really, really good. It's all Tucker.
• 1:15:22
  Now he was he was shattered. We just thought, you know, we'll
• 1:15:24
  get him. Go Chuck, man, Chuck and I will
• 1:15:26
  tuck him in. He.
• 1:15:27
  Needed his TikTok time to be. Fair.
• 1:15:29
  Don't accuse me of that. Snag with the screen light of
• 1:15:33
  his phone. I'll tell you.
• 1:15:34
  What I was excited for the best time at staying in a hotel.
• 1:15:37
  Breakfast. Breakfast was good.
• 1:15:39
  But he says a lot about me, I. Was going to say the other thing
• 1:15:42
  last night. Chuck was quite surprised as he
• 1:15:44
  asked for a Dornak. Any Dornak.
• 1:15:47
  There was a range of about six or seven dornaks.
• 1:15:51
  And I got in here actually. The the woman behind the bar
• 1:15:54
  said, well, this is probably the ordinary Dornak.
• 1:15:56
  Yeah. So you got, you got the, you got
• 1:15:58
  the bog standard. Dornak, I think, yeah, I did.
• 1:16:00
  I did color. I was like that.
• 1:16:02
  It's like the most humble brag of all.
• 1:16:03
  Time. But you're like, Oh, yeah.
• 1:16:05
  This is a very, this is a very standard release from Dornak.
• 1:16:07
  I was like, hi, how can you be in a position to say that?
• 1:16:11
  You mentioned like being a father of some and everything
• 1:16:14
  and then coming to you've been to lots of distilleries.
• 1:16:16
  Yeah, it does just feel a bit different for you.
• 1:16:18
  I mean, it just they're like, I think the thing with felon
• 1:16:23
  Simon, what they do is like it's just they're really focusing on
• 1:16:25
  like the my neat, my new details.
• 1:16:28
  Yeah. We've been spared.
• 1:16:29
  Like we've gone to tomato and we've when we were there, enjoy
• 1:16:32
  that episode when it comes out, but it's.
• 1:16:35
  That's that's, that's gonna be a fun episode.
• 1:16:36
  Yeah. Edit Yeah.
• 1:16:39
  Yeah, I'm worried about how I'm going to come out in that cup.
• 1:16:41
  It's not. Like.
• 1:16:45
  But you're not. You are here like, yeah, we use
• 1:16:47
  yeast, we use barley and very specific about fermentation
• 1:16:51
  times. And then what what we're going
• 1:16:52
  to hopefully see from these guys is just a different view.
• 1:16:56
  Yeah, I'm looking forward to that.
• 1:16:58
  But I mean, I think looking back yesterday, it was a, it was a
• 1:17:01
  big blur really, because it was an early start, 7:00 in the
• 1:17:05
  morning. How, bearing in mind if you're
• 1:17:06
  listening to this, it's now, but we're like 2 and a bit weeks
• 1:17:09
  after where we are in the future of where we are right now.
• 1:17:12
  Exactly. So, you know, we left Edinburgh
• 1:17:15
  7:00 in the morning. We drove up Friday morning,
• 1:17:18
  stopped it to Matt and had a great day there.
• 1:17:19
  As I say, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck's has it.
• 1:17:21
  That is probably one of the Chuck's best performances of the
• 1:17:23
  Whiskey Studies podcast. We look forward to that episode.
• 1:17:27
  But we came up and Phil and Simon, the hospitality we've
• 1:17:31
  received, first and foremost, absolutely fantastic.
• 1:17:33
  It took us down into this little room.
• 1:17:35
  You'll be able to see that that was last weeks episode and they
• 1:17:38
  they treated us and I I was sort of like, I mean, when you look
• 1:17:41
  at the whiskeys on the table, yeah.
• 1:17:43
  And I'm I'm sort of looking at pictures here of it.
• 1:17:45
  There's one, the one, I mean, it kind of passed us by because
• 1:17:49
  there's so many bottles of whisky on the table, so much
• 1:17:50
  getting poured and passed around and I I couldn't, I couldn't
• 1:17:54
  remember too much this morning. Thankfully, I recorded a lot of
• 1:17:57
  it on my phone and a spring. Thompson Brothers Dorner Spring
• 1:18:00
  Bank, 1950 to 1978 I know. Drawn 15/8/1986.
• 1:18:06
  I was like, we we drank some of that.
• 1:18:08
  Yeah, yeah, we drank. That yeah.
• 1:18:11
  What? Was it tomato that we got passed
• 1:18:12
  around? Tomato 1976.
• 1:18:15
  Jesus Christ, it was 6:00. So it was bottled successfully
• 1:18:18
  for a Japanese whiskey club. Yeah.
• 1:18:20
  And so again, just bonkers that even exist here.
• 1:18:22
  That's the second bottle I'm aware of in Scotland.
• 1:18:25
  I've seen it about 3 years ago at Whiskey Fringe.
• 1:18:28
  Yeah. It was delicious.
• 1:18:29
  Phenomenal. Really, really delicious.
• 1:18:31
  I would have loved a second sip, Russ.
• 1:18:35
  I feel bad before, but he decided I'll carry on drinking
• 1:18:38
  that. His exact words as he like
• 1:18:40
  finished the glass. It was like, I've already had
• 1:18:42
  this, but Oh well, I'm sitting there, you did.
• 1:18:47
  Get a little. Yeah, I did that.
• 1:18:49
  We tried to hitch, but you finished it.
• 1:18:51
  Well done. That would have been our first
• 1:18:52
  bit to mount another day. I was.
• 1:18:53
  I was simply. Just of course you got your
• 1:18:56
  drivers dropped in my back and I was really, really tempted to
• 1:18:58
  just keep hold of them and not letting hopefully I was.
• 1:19:01
  Simply following the orders of our gracious host Phil, who said
• 1:19:04
  somebody finished that and he handed it to me.
• 1:19:06
  It's my duty at that. But the boys looked after saying
• 1:19:08
  afterwards, after we finished recording.
• 1:19:09
  Well, first of all, you'll, you'll the, the, the sort of
• 1:19:12
  first time we've ever done it where we've had guests have to
• 1:19:14
  leave early. They had a very important call
• 1:19:17
  and they left, but they just said, look, you guys are welcome
• 1:19:19
  to stay down here with all this whisky that have been provided
• 1:19:21
  you on the table. Yeah, I always enjoyed that.
• 1:19:25
  That was, that was good fun. And then we went upstairs and
• 1:19:28
  they we, we had another few, it was highballs we had.
• 1:19:31
  Yeah, yeah, we went on the highballs.
• 1:19:33
  Pizza Stories podcast. The pizzas we had, who knew that
• 1:19:36
  Dornex, you could get this guy, yeah.
• 1:19:38
  Very good. If there is a pizza region in
• 1:19:40
  Scotland, it's exclusively in that hotel.
• 1:19:43
  Absolutely. This is this is sounding like a
• 1:19:46
  massive ringing endorsement for them.
• 1:19:48
  But no, we have genuinely had a very good time here so far.
• 1:19:50
  So far it's only been 50% of our trip, but like I said, what the
• 1:19:55
  high balls we had. I can't.
• 1:19:56
  Remember, but they were purple. So great Berry and soda with
• 1:20:00
  whiskey it was. Delicious.
• 1:20:01
  It was very, very nice. I think cordial fellowed mate.
• 1:20:04
  Yes, yeah, it was. Salt and well, there was some
• 1:20:08
  salt in it. I, I really, I'll be honest, I
• 1:20:10
  really needed the pizzas at the time.
• 1:20:11
  So it's more for. Yeah, but I would say like, I
• 1:20:13
  think it was, it was. We'd had a fair bit of whiskey
• 1:20:16
  up till that point. Yeah, yesterday.
• 1:20:19
  And basically that highball was this perfect sort of like palate
• 1:20:23
  cleanser just we're going into a pizza to then be able to build,
• 1:20:26
  build. And we did a little mini, I say
• 1:20:28
  pub Crawl and Dornick, three pubs I think you can count
• 1:20:31
  because we went to we'd start here, went to another one.
• 1:20:34
  Yes, I think you had to you had to wipe your feet on the way
• 1:20:37
  out. Big big shout about that pub
• 1:20:41
  will not be named and there. Was another warned that maybe
• 1:20:44
  wouldn't be for. Us.
• 1:20:44
  Then we went to another bar. No, I enjoyed it was nice.
• 1:20:47
  The people were friendly enough anyway.
• 1:20:48
  Look. They go completely silent when
• 1:20:50
  we walked in. Yeah.
• 1:20:51
  Conversation picked back up. They never heard that's it
• 1:20:54
  picked up. I heard like there was a
• 1:20:56
  podcast, boys, that's what we are, that's.
• 1:20:59
  The same voice with the mics. There's a voice, it's like a
• 1:21:02
  there's anger. So whiskey, there's an A reset,
• 1:21:06
  but I never went to the other one, the Eagle, which was which
• 1:21:09
  was nice to have the drum in there.
• 1:21:10
  I never came back in to March. Yeah.
• 1:21:15
  And then we came back, Yeah. And Carrigan, I mean, I think, I
• 1:21:18
  think what did you mention? You mentioned the Arden.
• 1:21:21
  Market that was absolutely delightful again.
• 1:21:23
  There was an old bottling of Glen Elgin we had as well, which
• 1:21:26
  is very nice. And an 8.
• 1:21:28
  Year old Beau Moore, which I think was distilled in 1992.
• 1:21:32
  That. Was very nice.
• 1:21:34
  That was lovely. I love that nice almost kind of
• 1:21:36
  clear liquid as well. One of those ones, it's just.
• 1:21:39
  And then it was. You know, the liquid's almost
• 1:21:41
  clear, but I mean the flavour. And as we talked about, as we
• 1:21:44
  talked about on the Justine Hazlehurst episode where where
• 1:21:49
  she brought her book opening the case that the affairs of the
• 1:21:51
  Pattinson brothers, I got treated to bedtime stories with
• 1:21:55
  Angus the whiskey fan last night.
• 1:21:57
  We were bunking up. Yeah.
• 1:21:59
  And there was. It was.
• 1:22:00
  Two of you sad stuff in the hot tub was.
• 1:22:02
  It Yeah, we were yeah, because apparently your your hot tub in
• 1:22:05
  your room isn't working it's. Just not big enough for the both
• 1:22:09
  of us. Yeah, it's just a walk in
• 1:22:12
  shower. It's been labeled as a bidet,
• 1:22:14
  but I'm really saying we can. Well, however I lovely swimming
• 1:22:18
  this morning in the pool. At.
• 1:22:20
  The spa, it was great for a spa. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:22:25
  Really really sorted you out. Yeah, Scottish Highlands.
• 1:22:28
  Just breathe in the air mate. Actually, slowly, there is no
• 1:22:30
  spa. I was hoping one of you went
• 1:22:31
  what? There's a spa, but no, I mean,
• 1:22:35
  you guys bumped up last night. Yeah.
• 1:22:37
  How was it it? Was fine, nothing crazy.
• 1:22:41
  No, it's certainly not something like to.
• 1:22:43
  Bring out any of his Japanese drums.
• 1:22:46
  You know, we actually have brought so much whiskey between
• 1:22:49
  us. Yeah, not.
• 1:22:50
  Touch any. Of it.
• 1:22:51
  Any of it? I've got 2 empty flashes that I
• 1:22:53
  was hoping to get filled. How are you going?
• 1:22:55
  To do that, just scrounging, being a FIFA.
• 1:22:57
  I thought like, you know, might get good, some good.
• 1:23:01
  I might get some good drams by then.
• 1:23:03
  Like I guess I had a great time. They woke up, woke up back at
• 1:23:06
  6:00 this morning, didn't we? I think so.
• 1:23:08
  You had a lovely little. Other podcast pretty much.
• 1:23:12
  Yeah, here's the boys. Morning.
• 1:23:14
  Good morning, I'll. Give you a mic over to how?
• 1:23:16
  Are you guys hand the? Mic over to you.
• 1:23:21
  Thank you There you go. So we'll get you around this way
• 1:23:23
  we're. Just explaining our our donut
• 1:23:25
  pub crawl last night. No, no, he's going to.
• 1:23:32
  He's got. He's our cameraman.
• 1:23:34
  Yeah. Last night was, we were just
• 1:23:37
  couldn't compliment you, the hospitality that received
• 1:23:39
  enough. And we were just saying that we
• 1:23:40
  could maybe probably start another podcast called Pizza
• 1:23:42
  Stories based on last night's set.
• 1:23:45
  I mean, who knew that Doris was the place to get in Scotland?
• 1:23:47
  Yeah. Possibly find your hotel.
• 1:23:49
  It was, it was lovely good and I only said.
• 1:23:51
  Hotels for the breakfast. That was.
• 1:23:53
  Fantastic as well it's going to be.
• 1:23:54
  Safe we were. We were trying to remember the
• 1:23:57
  high balls, grape and Rosemary. Sea salt syrup that we make and
• 1:24:01
  then we infuse black skin grapes with whiskey, kind of bake it
• 1:24:06
  off Well, souvie it off nice low temperature and get the grape
• 1:24:10
  infuse and Tana popular up here. Yeah, yeah, bring in that
• 1:24:14
  Japanese. Culture that highball, it's
• 1:24:16
  funny, we were talking about it just recently.
• 1:24:17
  It was highball culture, like in the 19th century.
• 1:24:19
  Yeah, Soda that. Was a big thing.
• 1:24:21
  You're quite a punist as well. You are a whiskey soda fan,
• 1:24:23
  aren't you? A big.
• 1:24:24
  Whiskey soda fan. Love it.
• 1:24:25
  Yeah, I'm a tart for a whiskey ginger ale, but.
• 1:24:27
  That just keeps it's my blood goods.
• 1:24:28
  You know I like the. Soda because it's like you get
• 1:24:30
  the clarity of the wind. Yeah.
• 1:24:31
  True. Absolutely right.
• 1:24:33
  So I believe. We're here today for you guys to
• 1:24:36
  show us around the distillery, how far we got to go.
• 1:24:39
  Where is it? OK.
• 1:24:41
  Just there, that building there, that building there, that's the
• 1:24:46
  building I could see. When I was showering this
• 1:24:47
  morning, so. I think that's the first time
• 1:24:49
  I've taken a shower in view of a distillery.
• 1:24:52
  There you go. There we go.
• 1:24:54
  Yeah. So we just redirect the water
• 1:24:55
  for process worker. Exactly.
• 1:25:00
  Ohh, well I hope you've got a good filtration system, right?
• 1:25:02
  Well, let's go, let's go take a look at it, alright.