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Whisky Stories Live — Adelphi & Ardnamurchan Take Over Mother Superior · Whisky Stories Podcast

• 0:00
  Pray Angus, you know what to do. Clap us in.
• 0:03
  Welcome along Whiskey Stories podcast live at Mother Superior
• 0:06
  with Adele. That is the bet that keeps me up
• 0:18
  at night. I know once I've got through
• 0:21
  that, everything's going to be great.
• 0:22
  I guess we're down here in Mother Superior.
• 0:24
  I've never been here before. Yeah, no, until 20 minutes ago I
• 0:28
  hadn't either. Well, I say 20 minutes, about 40
• 0:30
  minutes now. Yeah, Yeah, what a fantastic.
• 0:33
  Place brilliant. Absolutely fantastic room.
• 0:35
  It's great. Nice and nice and cool as well,
• 0:37
  yeah. Very nice.
• 0:38
  And we've got an audience, a room full of people here to see
• 0:40
  us. And we have Callum and Connie
• 0:42
  all the way from Arden American. Well, 50% of euro move, hard
• 0:47
  working. Callum, you've headed down
• 0:48
  today. Yeah, I had a nice.
• 0:51
  I think I've done it in about four hours, actually.
• 0:53
  That's a heavy right foot you've got there.
• 0:54
  It's. A new, new electric car, you
• 0:57
  know, good. It's yeah, it moves.
• 1:00
  Brilliant. Well, thanks for coming down,
• 1:01
  Connie. You, you don't you don't live up
• 1:03
  in the western peninsula. I.
• 1:05
  Live 5 minutes away from here. Brilliant.
• 1:07
  There we go. Happy days.
• 1:09
  Well, look, let's get stuck at the drama.
• 1:10
  It's Friday night. What's the first DRAM on the
• 1:12
  lineup that you guys have brought along with you?
• 1:14
  You got a 10 year old. Excellent start.
• 1:16
  Strong. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:17
  So this is Arne Mercken 10, yeah.
• 1:19
  Yeah, an age statement and the only so is this.
• 1:23
  This is the This is the inaugural core release 10 year
• 1:27
  old Arne Mercken. Yeah, I think that's the best
• 1:29
  way to put it. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:30
  Because we've done a 10 year old when we first.
• 1:33
  So there was an Adelphi bottling of 10 year old.
• 1:36
  Yeah. And it was never an, it was
• 1:37
  never really an intention to go straight away again another 10
• 1:40
  year old. So and there was a lot of
• 1:43
  discussion between the age statements on one of our
• 1:45
  ballings. A lot of their whiskey now is
• 1:47
  getting up to a decent age. So it's like do we put an 8 year
• 1:51
  old on the label or looking at our stocks, we kind of thought
• 1:55
  maybe we could actually get away with putting a 10 year old on
• 1:59
  one of our core releases, which is quite a big deal I think for
• 2:01
  a distillery that's just about to turn 12.
• 2:04
  So we don't have that much of the stock, but we have enough to
• 2:07
  go out with like a core offering of a of a 10 year old.
• 2:10
  Well, Solangeloar, everyone, cheers.
• 2:12
  Cheers. Yeah, it's, we've talked about
• 2:15
  this before in the podcast about new distilleries.
• 2:18
  And one of the things that we've said is we live in a great
• 2:21
  period of time as whiskey drinkers where there's been this
• 2:24
  sort of, you know, so many new distilleries coming out and
• 2:27
  there's some distilleries that haven't released anything yet.
• 2:30
  There's guys like yourselves who've put loads.
• 2:31
  In fact, we had the episode with with Alex Bruce on and Alex
• 2:36
  actually said you guys were putting out spirit, you know,
• 2:39
  before it even turned 3 years old.
• 2:41
  But Graham, what's? What's the line that a new
• 2:42
  distillery will say when you ask about whether you're going to
• 2:45
  release an age statement or a whiskey at all?
• 2:46
  Well. We'll release it when it's
• 2:47
  ready. That's that's what that's what
• 2:50
  they say. But.
• 2:51
  When the finances are ready. Well, there is that, but we I've
• 2:57
  said, you know, there's nobody alive today that tried spring
• 3:00
  Bank when it was new and went can't wait to see what it tastes
• 3:02
  like when it's 10, you know, or anything like that.
• 3:05
  So for that for us to be here and for you guys to be, I
• 3:08
  suppose you still technically at the back of the the whiskey
• 3:12
  yearbook as the new distillery, but are you a new distillery
• 3:15
  with a lowercase N now, because you have age statement whiskey
• 3:18
  out and is that a big milestone moment for a distillery?
• 3:22
  I think. 100% I think it's one of those moments when you're
• 3:26
  doing a new venture of any sort that when you get to an age
• 3:29
  where you kind of dream of being able to put numbers in a bottle,
• 3:32
  that means you did it a certain extent, right.
• 3:37
  But I think with our American as well, it's, it's not by the
• 3:40
  numbers, it's about the liquid at the end of the day.
• 3:42
  So as long as you've got a good quality of liquid, it doesn't
• 3:44
  really matter whether it's a 5 year old, 15 year old, what have
• 3:47
  you, as long as it's good, it will be bottled and it will be
• 3:50
  released. That's.
• 3:53
  Great afternoon. Well, it's, I mean, look, we,
• 3:55
  we've look, I have said on the podcast that I wanted to fill a
• 3:59
  bath full of Arden Mark and Sherry and bathe in it.
• 4:03
  And we've just become obsessed with the distillery.
• 4:06
  And I'm, and again, I'm not just saying that because he's sitting
• 4:08
  beside us on the podcast. And Jeeves, Jesus here you, what
• 4:13
  did you remind us? What did you pour us that day
• 4:15
  when we didn't know what you were pouring?
• 4:16
  But you're walking around Edinburgh Whiskey Festival at
• 4:19
  Murrayfield, pouring drams out of your own bottle.
• 4:22
  For legal reasons, I can't say it was.
• 4:24
  But no. Well, for legal reasons, Jeeves,
• 4:27
  you weren't pouring anything. But what did you not pour for
• 4:29
  us? Basically it was.
• 4:33
  Being the on the mirror bowling from 2024. .25 which was Cherry.
• 4:41
  And it caught us, but like we've we've as a as a distillery and
• 4:45
  the whiskey that you guys have put out and like you say, a lot
• 4:48
  of this stuff is non age statement.
• 4:50
  It's not it's not had an age on it.
• 4:52
  But at the same time, you've built up very, very quickly this
• 4:55
  following of people who are obsessed, me being one of them.
• 4:58
  And I'm sure there's other people in the room who are the
• 5:01
  same with Arden American. So how?
• 5:03
  Because Callum, you've been at the distillery from.
• 5:06
  No, I've, I've been at the distillery of becoming four
• 5:09
  years, four years. I came up to the distillery for
• 5:12
  three months four years ago. Well, so you came up as a what
• 5:18
  to? Be a tour guide right?
• 5:19
  I was working for Bricklady as a tour guide there.
• 5:24
  Went travelling for a bit in my camper van that.
• 5:28
  Was what are the market? No.
• 5:31
  All. All around, all around the
• 5:33
  place, all around the country, over to Europe.
• 5:36
  And then I got as far as Croatia and realized we're doing our
• 5:39
  finances, realized we were out of cash so much so we actually
• 5:43
  couldn't afford to get home. And so he's where's messaging my
• 5:47
  brother saying you want to buy any whiskey office, we need
• 5:49
  money for fuel to get back. But in the process of this, I
• 5:53
  knew Graham Mackay who works for us.
• 5:56
  I messaged him and say you're working for Arnon Murkin now, is
• 6:00
  there any jobs going? And he said yes.
• 6:03
  He put me in touch with the the visitor centre manager had a
• 6:06
  phone call on top of a mountain and they're like, yeah, when can
• 6:08
  you come? I was like, it's about I don't
• 6:11
  know how many 1000 miles away, but I'm on my way and I started
• 6:15
  running, working as a tour guide.
• 6:16
  Really, and from a tour guides perspective then, because
• 6:20
  visiting the distillery, it's not big, you know, it's there's
• 6:24
  a lot of cool things at the distillery.
• 6:26
  One of the things that Chuck care who?
• 6:29
  Well, we don't know where Chuck is, right, But Chuck did say it
• 6:34
  reminded him a lot of the of Japanese influence, right, of
• 6:38
  the distillery, having visited Chichibu in different places
• 6:41
  like that. And I know that Alex said on the
• 6:42
  podcast when they were talking about the distillery, they
• 6:45
  weren't going to go there. So what for you was the standard
• 6:47
  point when you decided to become a distillery tour guide there?
• 6:50
  And what still to this day, something that you really hold
• 6:52
  on to? I think this is quite easy to
• 6:55
  answer. So if I take way back, I was
• 6:58
  working the Whis, the whiskey trail on the Royal Mile whiskey
• 7:00
  shop. Yep, there.
• 7:03
  Nah de cantos. Aye, so a lot of quality stuff
• 7:07
  there. We'd often drink in the Ensign
• 7:13
  Yurt. Yep.
• 7:13
  Yep. Came in there one day.
• 7:16
  I'd already tried Artemark and a bunch of us had tried our
• 7:18
  inaugural stuff and it was already the moment you poured
• 7:21
  it, everyone's nose in it and look at each other and go, OK,
• 7:24
  OK, this is interesting. But it was actually when I came
• 7:28
  in and the guys behind the bar poured me something, said
• 7:30
  Callum. I'm not going to charge you for
• 7:31
  this, just want you to your opinion on it.
• 7:34
  Smelt it and I was like, Jesus, that smells like blue cheese.
• 7:38
  And for those who have some idea what I'm talking about, the
• 7:42
  Arden Merkin or Adelphi should say released a whiskey called
• 7:45
  the Arden Mcgurkin. And it was a whiskey that was
• 7:48
  absolutely hoching. It was stinking.
• 7:51
  It was a weird cast and the fact that they took a they took a
• 7:56
  whiskey that was deemed to be, let's say, interesting and.
• 8:01
  Funky. Funky.
• 8:03
  Yeah, funky is a nicer word. And thought it would be funny to
• 8:06
  put it in a bottle and call it the Ardner McGurk.
• 8:10
  And that must have sat in my head for a bit and thought,
• 8:12
  yeah, the whiskey is good, but they obviously have pretty good
• 8:15
  crack and don't take themselves too seriously.
• 8:17
  And obviously being there at the distillery, the community there,
• 8:21
  not to mention the liquid is just honestly, it's the best
• 8:23
  place in the world. Do you live up there now
• 8:25
  yourself? I literally live next door to
• 8:27
  the distillery. But you're not local to.
• 8:29
  I'm not, no. I'm local to Ayrshire.
• 8:31
  All right. OK, Ayrshire originally.
• 8:32
  But you were in the panto. I was in the panto.
• 8:35
  Yeah, yeah. So.
• 8:35
  So when we went up there was a panto going on, I think.
• 8:39
  Here's why that wasn't a Christmas, no.
• 8:40
  Yeah, which wasn't the Christmas at all.
• 8:42
  It's like everybody else that I'm gonna get there late.
• 8:44
  So they have their they have their Christmas panto in April.
• 8:48
  It felt it felt like Christmas because there was a bit 3 inches
• 8:51
  of snow. On the road, on the road.
• 8:52
  Did snow the night we were there?
• 8:54
  Yeah, yes. So what?
• 8:55
  What was your role in the panto? I had a very small role as a a
• 9:00
  knight that was more like a Jacobite than anything.
• 9:03
  It was a bit off period, but yeah.
• 9:06
  Good. Well, I had a line or two, so a
• 9:08
  big a big deal. You're one of those actors,
• 9:10
  aren't you? Yourself, you're, you're fairly
• 9:19
  new in the in the in the role. So you've only been Ardemarker
• 9:23
  and Adelphi for a wee while now. Not not long at all.
• 9:26
  Barely a month, yeah, yeah, Super, super fresh in the tour.
• 9:32
  I was Yeah. Well, previously this, I've been
• 9:34
  in the industry for quite a while, but as September was
• 9:38
  taken aback by Ardemark Hin. It's kind of one of those
• 9:41
  brands, I think hopefully all of you will agree.
• 9:44
  Just you knew what you were getting when you got the ball.
• 9:46
  You knew it was going to be good.
• 9:47
  You know it's going to be solid DRAM but also exciting.
• 9:51
  It wasn't boring, like it wasn't kind of oh God, it's just
• 9:56
  another one of the same kind of thing.
• 9:58
  Every single release is different.
• 10:00
  It's all got reason find it and it like as Callum says, it's a
• 10:03
  bit of fun in there as well. Like the next one, we're going
• 10:05
  to have the labels, like, why the hell not?
• 10:10
  And it was fun. It's kind of new, but it wasn't
• 10:13
  trying to horse. Yeah, it was just kind of
• 10:15
  unapologetically doing your thing.
• 10:17
  And was it you do it the for the company now then what's your
• 10:20
  what's your role? I'm the UK sales manager.
• 10:22
  UK sales manager So how easy is it driving up and down the
• 10:26
  country? Because it's when you you know,
• 10:27
  it's albeit it's easy for us. We're in a pub in Leith that's a
• 10:30
  great whiskey collection and we mentioned diggers loads of
• 10:33
  times. You go in there and there's
• 10:34
  there's a lot of places that you'll probably know I can go in
• 10:37
  there and I know I'll sell whatever it is.
• 10:39
  But what about when you're in Carlisle and you're trying to
• 10:43
  well, like, because how far and wide does ardent American travel
• 10:46
  to the general whiskey drinker versus You really have to know
• 10:51
  ardent American to understand what it is and to enjoy a drama
• 10:53
  a. Bit of both to be honest.
• 10:57
  I think we now distribute to 50 countries around the.
• 11:00
  World most of that. Yeah, yeah.
• 11:02
  Which is, which is decent, but the UK is still still huge for
• 11:06
  us. I think it's kind of like
• 11:07
  there's two kind of camps there. There's there's a the whiskey
• 11:10
  guys who super excited about the next release, know the back
• 11:14
  catalog ABS incredible music to my years doing sales.
• 11:17
  Like you just say you're releasing something like cool, I
• 11:20
  just get that. I'm like, Oh my God, that's
• 11:22
  great. Whether you do have to introduce
• 11:25
  people to the ground, but I think it's so easy to fall in
• 11:27
  love with as well. It's it's not reinventing the
• 11:30
  wheel. It's just having a bit of fun
• 11:31
  with it. Pretty much.
• 11:32
  That's kind of the way I think about it.
• 11:33
  And then and I think using the really kind of like pretentious
• 11:37
  like trait things like liquid to limps.
• 11:39
  But like as soon as you try it, it's kind of the main thing,
• 11:43
  isn't it? Yeah, you just enjoy it.
• 11:45
  Like it's it's give somebody a little drama, hard working.
• 11:49
  That's kind of them. So to a certain extent.
• 11:52
  Well, I've said it myself on the podcast, and I'm unapologetic
• 11:55
  about it, is that was the first ever mention of Arden American
• 11:58
  properly on the podcast was on, it was Charlie Hume that his
• 12:04
  episode is what, 3 drams? What 3 drams that that night.
• 12:08
  Actually, in terms of what 3 drams we've had in the podcast,
• 12:10
  his three were absolutely crackers, but one of them was
• 12:15
  Arden, Arden American, Paul. Now I can never pronounce that.
• 12:19
  Paul in. One Paul in one, but it was
• 12:21
  before it had been released. It was the first before the
• 12:23
  release. And I can show you my book.
• 12:25
  Well, I'll show you at some point.
• 12:27
  Wait, I've got, I write down everyone's what, 3 drums?
• 12:31
  And this is very early on in the podcast and very early on in my
• 12:34
  whiskey journey and being like what?
• 12:37
  And I don't like the spelling of it in one, one sense is
• 12:40
  absolutely shocking. But I remember being really
• 12:43
  disappointed because I was like, of all the drams that you've
• 12:47
  tried and all those whiskeys that you've had and all the
• 12:49
  stories that you've told to tell to pick that one of you've got 3
• 12:54
  whiskeys that you can pick as you, you've got any story
• 12:57
  association or meaning with them and you've picked a distillery
• 13:01
  this brand new and barely has anything out.
• 13:03
  I was a bit disappointed because I didn't know who you were.
• 13:06
  And then it was that situation as you get to try it and you go
• 13:09
  actually I totally, totally get it.
• 13:11
  But again, you know, CC worked up at the Malt Room at the time
• 13:15
  before he buggered off to where is it is now.
• 13:18
  He's still got an ease in Cayman Islands, like the Cayman
• 13:20
  Islands, but. Someone said pretending to run a
• 13:22
  whiskey bar or. Yeah, All right, Charlie.
• 13:25
  But, but basically like for him to pick that and it was
• 13:28
  basically said it was a day at the distillery.
• 13:30
  Connell took us into the warehouse, started popping casks
• 13:34
  and we can speak now from our own experience.
• 13:37
  Yes, I get it. I totally get it because it's
• 13:39
  absolutely fantastic. So what's, what's your job then?
• 13:42
  Callum at the distillery? Varied.
• 13:46
  I do some tastings now and then, but it's not my bread and butter
• 13:49
  I'm my day-to-day is marketing. Right.
• 13:53
  Yeah, it's Instagram, man. I'm Instagram.
• 13:54
  See I'm on Instagram seeing the videos.
• 13:56
  I am the guy that some people come up to and see you're the
• 13:59
  guy that came out the law with a bottle of whiskey.
• 14:03
  I have done that, yeah. My job is mostly social media,
• 14:09
  but any kind of marketing related stuff.
• 14:11
  And I'm Cascurator and the distillery as well.
• 14:14
  Cascura, So you're part of the Cascuration team or is there or
• 14:16
  are you are the cascurator? For Arden Marketing, it's just
• 14:19
  me. Just you.
• 14:20
  So when it comes to cask curation, then what does that
• 14:23
  actually mean? Sounds good, doesn't?
• 14:24
  It it does really does. Essentially, I kind of can look
• 14:32
  at casks feedback to the blending team if they want me to
• 14:35
  look at anything, kind of checked progress of casks.
• 14:38
  But the main thing is supporting the sales team if they want to
• 14:42
  select a single cask for certain markets, markets that maybe
• 14:47
  can't come to the distillery. Because normally if, if I say a
• 14:50
  bar or a or a shop wants to do a single cask, one of the criteria
• 14:54
  normally for us is that they come to the distillery and they
• 14:56
  pack it themselves. But obviously if you're in
• 14:59
  Taiwan, that's maybe challenging.
• 15:01
  So the last need to do that, yeah, I'll select the the some
• 15:05
  samples and send them away. And having that opportunity,
• 15:07
  because one of the things that you mentioned, Connie as well,
• 15:09
  is like the amount of variation in the releases.
• 15:12
  It's a conscious effort that you're going.
• 15:15
  We're not peered, we're not UN peered.
• 15:16
  We're not just bourbon matured, we're not a Sherry matured.
• 15:19
  We, we, you have so many different tasks and, and, and
• 15:23
  variety and variety as well. So does that make your job
• 15:27
  easier or harder? I will both of you for that one.
• 15:29
  So like Connie for yourself, picking a market and picking
• 15:32
  people to sell something too. Is it making it easier because
• 15:35
  you've just got such a wide portfolio, But then would you
• 15:38
  rather hone them in on one thing, or or or or or is it just
• 15:41
  nice to be able to just have different things for living,
• 15:44
  living people? I feel spoilt with might we
• 15:46
  have. So it's like want to show
• 15:48
  everybody everything, but it really like, I want to say like
• 15:52
  a retailer in Glasgow or somebody wants single cask you,
• 15:55
  you tend to know what they're what what kind of get them like
• 15:59
  what they like, whether they want like a chewy drum.
• 16:01
  They want something super sherried, something kind of
• 16:04
  funky, like we've kind of got the full spectrum to choose
• 16:07
  from. So being able to hone down on
• 16:10
  that and, and kind of give them exactly what they want is a huge
• 16:13
  kind of part of the job is that we're not just Sherry, we're not
• 16:16
  just weird yeast, We're not just whatever it's, you can kind of
• 16:21
  tailor it to whoever you're choosing for, which is really
• 16:24
  fun as well. And there's so much in there as
• 16:26
  you guys probably saw that, yeah.
• 16:27
  Yeah, like, can't remember much of it.
• 16:31
  You were just like jumping around casks when I was up a few
• 16:33
  weeks ago. And it was like, I just feel
• 16:34
  like, I wonder what this one is. You're like, oh, this is a weird
• 16:36
  thing that we've got here. And those giant casks as well.
• 16:40
  What are they called? Oh my God, they've got a really
• 16:42
  weird name. Gourdas.
• 16:43
  Gourdas. Do you see them?
• 16:44
  Gourdas. Oh no, I don't think we did see
• 16:46
  these. What are?
• 16:47
  They like 7. 100 litres, Are they 700 litres?
• 16:50
  They're masters. They're they're vigorous in
• 16:51
  cherry butts. Right.
• 16:54
  Yeah, there's some weird funky bits going around.
• 16:56
  And yeah, and do you see, do you see trends as well then from a
• 16:59
  sales perspective? Like for instance, I had a chat
• 17:02
  with Woody, good pile of the pods.
• 17:04
  Most people, you know, get Woody Woodrows of Edinburgh and stuff
• 17:06
  like that. And Woody actually said, if I
• 17:09
  wanted to, I could just put out 5 or 6 releases of just Sherry
• 17:15
  peated whiskey every out turn and it would sell.
• 17:18
  Because when you look at an out turn that that most independent
• 17:21
  bottlers will do if it's peated, if it's Sherry, it goes.
• 17:25
  And that's what people that there's a market for people that
• 17:27
  just love that dark Sherry Twiskey and Pete, he's like, I
• 17:30
  could just like it was Williamson, which I think is the
• 17:33
  name for Lefroy that the, that the, the independent.
• 17:36
  It would just be Williamson Sherry.
• 17:38
  I was like, would you? Why are you telling me this and
• 17:40
  not doing it? That'll be boring.
• 17:43
  Wouldn't it? Well, it would by the same time
• 17:45
  it's funny when you look at the commercial element versus the
• 17:48
  the craft and experience. So from your perspective, do
• 17:51
  you, and I know you're only in the door very early, but is
• 17:54
  there numbers that we'd show you that actually our pitted stuff
• 17:57
  shifts more than our unpeted stuff, our shared stuff shifts
• 18:00
  more than than the mixtures or or anything like that?
• 18:04
  And maybe you think we get off with it because we don't say
• 18:07
  peated around peated on the label as such.
• 18:09
  So I think we kind of get around it.
• 18:10
  And I was actually doing a tasting last night and this guy
• 18:12
  was quite vocal in his dislike of anything even slightly
• 18:15
  peated. And he, his favorite was our
• 18:18
  kind of most peated release. I had an offer.
• 18:21
  I was still doing a tasting with Graham the other night and it
• 18:23
  was Adelphi's and. Did did when he found out it's
• 18:26
  peated, did he accept that it was beated or was he like no,
• 18:29
  no, no, I actually didn't like that very much.
• 18:31
  He was. It was not coming through.
• 18:33
  Well, this is interesting. Are you sure it's peated?
• 18:35
  I'm not. This is my grandfather disliked
• 18:39
  cauliflower, hated cauliflower. And we were at a hotel somewhere
• 18:43
  and, and he got, he got the soup and and he's this, this soup's
• 18:47
  incredible. So there's a taste to this soup.
• 18:50
  It's delicious. And anyway, waiter came over.
• 18:54
  OK, what was the soup we had in the cauliflower soup?
• 18:57
  Oh, I didn't really like it that much.
• 19:00
  Only see, that's happened so many times for me doing these
• 19:02
  things. But yeah, Graham Hussein, really
• 19:05
  interestingly that a kind of last release like 2 times ago
• 19:10
  kind of had some more funkiest stuff, kind of international
• 19:13
  ones as well. Whereas the latest release, it
• 19:15
  was a very conscious decision to make.
• 19:17
  It kind of reminiscent of the times where everything was kind
• 19:20
  of under 100 if possible, and things were kind of accessible
• 19:26
  to a certain kind of thing. So like cost of living and stuff
• 19:28
  like that comes hugely into it. So like price points are a huge
• 19:32
  thing. We want people to drink our
• 19:33
  American. It's not there to sit fancy on
• 19:35
  the shelf. It's there to be drunk.
• 19:37
  And so pricing yourself out the market I think is the biggest
• 19:41
  kind of trend right now is that you have to have things that
• 19:44
  people will drink. They want to treat themselves.
• 19:47
  And like I will say this thing is like I've always got like a
• 19:49
  whiskey that's like not paying any like drams saying that it's
• 19:55
  just like anything whiskey. But I always call like my
• 19:58
  favorite drams, Gogglebox drams, the drams you can sit down on
• 20:00
  Friday night at 9:00 and just drink and like it feels like
• 20:04
  that we treat on a Friday night. And I think for me, that's what
• 20:07
  I think our American is that I know I'm going to get a really
• 20:09
  banging DRAM. And but yeah, in terms of kind
• 20:13
  of what we do, it's yeah, there's some funky yourself.
• 20:15
  Actually, the funkier stuff tends to be limited releases.
• 20:17
  So that's. Well, they'll sell.
• 20:19
  Peeling as well. Well, they'll sell to 1 market,
• 20:21
  but it's just more about like what, what?
• 20:24
  What the general whiskey drinker like what you're bourbon cherry,
• 20:27
  bourbon cherry. OK, very good.
• 20:29
  Right, So the few empty glasses on the first one, we'll move on
• 20:31
  to the second drama actually. So the second one, you've
• 20:33
  already kind of mentioned the fun side of things, Callum, and
• 20:38
  this is the Aldermark and midgie.
• 20:39
  The midgie. Now you guys do this as a
• 20:42
  special release every year, isn't it?
• 20:44
  Yes. So what 1's this one?
• 20:45
  Is this the most recent? This is batch 2.
• 20:47
  Yeah, the most the most recent match.
• 20:50
  This is actually my favorite whiskey to release.
• 20:54
  Yeah. Not necessarily my favorite
• 20:56
  whiskey of the line up, but it's the, it's the release I get the
• 21:02
  most pleasure out of marketing, so to speak.
• 21:05
  It's the again, it's just another sign that even now, I
• 21:09
  mean, Arne Merkin's coming into a new phase of we're well into
• 21:12
  being 10. We are kind of young, but we're
• 21:17
  old young, but we are still having fun every day, but
• 21:20
  particularly when it comes to this.
• 21:22
  So the midgie is an annual release, but it's a release that
• 21:26
  we don't stick to the usual recipe.
• 21:27
  So we can, we can play around with things, we can change cast
• 21:30
  types, change the amount of peat and unpeated spirit in there.
• 21:34
  So last year's release, this one here is predominantly port cask
• 21:40
  matured Ruby port. So this was the first time we
• 21:43
  used port casks, not a CAS. Type and any release.
• 21:46
  And any release, yeah, yeah, not a CAS type that I'm normally too
• 21:49
  enamoured by. I think sometimes it can be
• 21:51
  overdone. But another thing that's really
• 21:54
  nice about any really ardour marking expression is that the
• 21:58
  cask is it's not taking anything away.
• 22:01
  The the spirit itself is pretty robust.
• 22:03
  So we can actually use these fun casks or turns and mezcal and
• 22:08
  and port casks and ardour marking spirit will always come
• 22:11
  through pretty strong. And it's also a big portion is
• 22:15
  bourbon. So the bourbon is in a lot of
• 22:16
  the way. Yeah, yeah, the port's adding
• 22:18
  something. It's not taken away, which I
• 22:19
  think is really, really. Important and is there peat in
• 22:21
  this whiskey? And there is 25% peat is better,
• 22:24
  75% unpeated, that's 48%. So our standards are normally
• 22:31
  46.8. We wanted to make a whiskey with
• 22:34
  a bite. Yeah.
• 22:35
  So this was $0.40. .8 I take. It That would take way too long
• 22:38
  to last, yeah. No worry.
• 22:41
  Sorry. That's that's after everyone's
• 22:42
  just had 1 1/2 draft. That would have taken a lot
• 22:45
  longer than when we were in the seventh draft.
• 22:47
  They've had their sixth draft because everyone got what right.
• 22:49
  But well, you talk about, I mean, you're the only
• 22:53
  distillery, only whiskey brand to have ever teamed up with an
• 22:57
  insect repellent company. You know what?
• 23:01
  It's so delicious. But I I love that that that's
• 23:05
  the thing. You don't take yourselves too
• 23:06
  serious seriously. And we had Carol crafts on the
• 23:09
  pod last year. That's what he said.
• 23:11
  He said, look, you know, there's distillery, there's there's
• 23:14
  whiskey brands and distilleries that use stags.
• 23:16
  There's whiskey brands and distilleries.
• 23:17
  They use, you know, birds and eagles and all this kind of
• 23:21
  stuff. We reached out to Ferrari but
• 23:24
  they wouldn't. They wouldn't do it.
• 23:25
  They wouldn't. So you went with the mid chain
• 23:27
  instead? I don't know.
• 23:28
  For a guy. But does that, does that can
• 23:32
  that work two ways though? Because there are whiskey
• 23:35
  drinkers out there that will look at a brand and there are
• 23:39
  the traditional whiskey drinker that will sit there and go, I
• 23:42
  know what Scotch whiskey is. Scotch whiskey is this Scotch
• 23:45
  whiskey is that you are just running amok there.
• 23:48
  That's not that's not whiskey. And does that mean that there's
• 23:51
  a world there where there might be a whole load of whiskey
• 23:53
  drinkers that bypass the major release because they'll be going
• 23:56
  well, that's not, that's silly. That's a gimmick kind of thing.
• 23:58
  Because what we know is that it's like when we had Sam
• 24:01
  Simmons on the podcast talking about the Dalry Milk.
• 24:04
  And you look at that release and you would say to yourself that
• 24:07
  is that just master remote? Just chucking out a funny label,
• 24:11
  putting anything in the bottle and doing that.
• 24:13
  But there's a lot of story behind the the Dalry Milk.
• 24:16
  Good, good whiskey. An amazing whiskey.
• 24:18
  Yeah. Really, really good whiskey.
• 24:20
  So what you want is you want people to buy it and open it and
• 24:23
  drink it but and realise it's actually very, very good.
• 24:25
  So how does does that? Can that work against you in
• 24:27
  some cases? Maybe.
• 24:30
  Probably, I think. It was more of a concern to
• 24:32
  begin with. Really.
• 24:34
  So at the time it was, but then I suppose having the other
• 24:37
  releases around it, people just know what hard the market is.
• 24:39
  So it's whatever you're putting in the bottle, it's a bit better
• 24:41
  possibly. Yeah, it's been fun.
• 24:44
  I think people, I think it really took on the international
• 24:47
  credit, I think the first one, because people didn't know what
• 24:50
  images were. They had had the pleasure of
• 24:52
  knowing what images. Whereas Scottish people were
• 24:55
  like, yes. What you what you need is
• 24:59
  somebody from far afield to come to the distillery to say I
• 25:03
  wanted to experience the midges because I've heard so much about
• 25:06
  it and I've no idea. That's the story I really want
• 25:10
  is that somebody turned up to ARN Demarkin because of the
• 25:13
  Midget the. Midges get a bad press, so we
• 25:15
  just want to do something to put a wee bit of, you know, a
• 25:17
  positive spin on. Them on the midges.
• 25:21
  I would suggest as well, Graham, that the kind of whiskey drinker
• 25:23
  you're suggesting that might be turned off by the Midget.
• 25:26
  Well, that's kind of half the point in a way is maybe that
• 25:28
  isn't actually really the drama for them in the 1st place.
• 25:31
  And I know self deprecation doesn't always work, but I think
• 25:35
  with the Midgie it really does. You know, we've got a man in the
• 25:38
  midgie T-shirt there. So it's it's clearly, it's
• 25:41
  clearly working. Somewhere and like having the
• 25:43
  ability to have a bit of fun that must take the reins off
• 25:46
  because it's a new brand. So there'll be people that have
• 25:49
  maybe come from fun and entertaining marketing roles in
• 25:54
  other industries and moved into the Scotch whiskey industry and
• 25:57
  then work for a brand that's very traditional, has this in
• 26:00
  front of and that in front of it and had to have somebody go.
• 26:03
  Listen, we like what you're doing and you're bringing
• 26:05
  energy, but there is absolutely no way our brand could be
• 26:07
  associated with something like that versus for you, Callum, if
• 26:11
  I mean is it how much free rein do you get when you're doing
• 26:14
  social media posts and all that kind of thing?
• 26:18
  Full free range, right? I got.
• 26:20
  We never had them. The knuckles wrap for anything
• 26:22
  you've done. Nope, not that you're willing to
• 26:25
  admit in a way. But 8 is still young.
• 26:27
  Angus. Something from Alan America is
• 26:31
  good. You were doing what before you
• 26:32
  were on stage. Put it this way, I managed to
• 26:35
  get Graham Mackay, Alex Bruce, Connor Mackenzie standing
• 26:41
  outside the distillery just below our wash backs.
• 26:44
  A lot of CO2 during fermentation, Maggie's love CO2.
• 26:47
  So I got the three of them standing outside.
• 26:50
  It was teaming with Maggie's and I got them to introduce this,
• 26:54
  the last year's midgie on camera with the swarm of midgies
• 26:58
  absolutely chewing every. You're there to fill Midgie.
• 27:02
  Mat No, I was actually getting eaten as well.
• 27:04
  I I did have, well I had some smidge on so it was fine.
• 27:06
  Well thankfully it was pissing down the rain when we went so we
• 27:08
  didn't get any midgies. Yeah.
• 27:11
  So yeah, I could do that. Yeah, I mean, Alex, Alex talked
• 27:16
  about the, the, the fact that when, when they were building
• 27:20
  the distillery and one of the things that they, when the
• 27:24
  grants were available and there was lots of happening to build
• 27:26
  the distillery And they said they, they, I think the
• 27:29
  consultant that we're using was we build a, make a visitor
• 27:31
  centre. And Alex said, no, that's the
• 27:33
  last thing we want. We don't want people coming up
• 27:35
  here. We just want to make whiskey.
• 27:36
  And I think what was, it was clear that basically, first of
• 27:40
  all, the more you can do to help the local economy, creating
• 27:44
  local jobs, it's more than there's more finance available.
• 27:48
  And I think the expert said that, you know, after the 1st 10
• 27:50
  years, you'll be lucky to hit 10,000 visitors.
• 27:53
  But Alex said, you know, within the first two or three years
• 27:54
  you've managed to hit 10,000 visitors.
• 27:56
  So what is it that people who haven't been up to the
• 27:59
  distillery, when they go up, what is it they're getting?
• 28:00
  What's the first thing? And how many nationalities are
• 28:04
  you getting as well? All over the world, all over the
• 28:07
  world, what people are getting is honestly the warmest welcome
• 28:12
  you'll get in just about any distillery.
• 28:16
  We were whiskey fans. In fact, Connor, you can speak.
• 28:18
  You came up last year as a hunter.
• 28:20
  Hunter Yeah, came up with fun. Right loved it and that was you
• 28:23
  hooked get. Me a job.
• 28:25
  Yeah, it worked. No, no, it.
• 28:28
  Didn't, it's just, I've done tours at countless places.
• 28:32
  I remember going when I joined to be a tour guide, going on a
• 28:35
  tour with the with the staff. They were doing tours and was
• 28:38
  just like, you know, brilliant. No2 tours were the same.
• 28:43
  The numbers might have varied a little bit.
• 28:45
  Who cares but the passion? Everyone who works there, and
• 28:49
  this is no exaggeration, everyone who works that
• 28:52
  distillery drinks the stuff. Yeah, they're passionate about
• 28:55
  it, they enjoy it. And I don't think a lot of
• 28:57
  distilleries could say that. And how often does Mr. Bean come
• 29:00
  in? I've never seen him.
• 29:02
  Have you not? No, he was in a couple of months
• 29:04
  ago, I know that. But yeah, he's got house.
• 29:06
  Mr. Bean has a Rowan Atkins. On the peninsula I'm.
• 29:12
  Doxing I'm here. But basically, you know, if
• 29:17
  you're going to see Ardemark and distillery pop in and see Mr.
• 29:20
  Bean as well. But like it's, it's a beautiful
• 29:23
  part of the world. But what I would say is it's a
• 29:26
  long way to go for a for a Now, I would say that if I was being
• 29:31
  perfectly honest with you, you're going to have to go and
• 29:35
  do two or three other things. There'll be people who drive all
• 29:38
  the way up to go to Ardemark and distillery, but at the same time
• 29:41
  it's four or five hours, you're half an hour away from really
• 29:44
  any sort of main towns and other areas there.
• 29:47
  So it's not like you can say, oh, we'll park the car here.
• 29:50
  There's a hotel, a couple of pubs and we can walk along and
• 29:52
  do the distillery. You once you once you get to the
• 29:54
  you're at the distillery and then once you leave the
• 29:56
  distillery, you're invited around to Callum's for, for
• 29:59
  dinner next door. That's right.
• 30:01
  Yeah, that's what you're lot that's.
• 30:05
  True. I think it's I think there's a
• 30:09
  few reasons why people go up. I think hopefully touch rude
• 30:12
  people go up for the distillery, but it's on the way to Mallow as
• 30:14
  well if you're getting. Freddie Well, this is what I'm
• 30:16
  saying. It's a known loot you can do
• 30:18
  where we didn't have time, but you can go.
• 30:20
  You can get the ferry from the peninsula on to Mall Tobermory.
• 30:25
  Well, you guys do your weekly shops or not?
• 30:27
  That's somewhat easier sometimes, is it?
• 30:30
  Yes and not I wouldn't say I do my weekly shops.
• 30:32
  It depends where you are. So I'm basically distillery.
• 30:36
  Yeah, it's an I don't have to Fort William.
• 30:38
  Yeah, where you get substantial shops.
• 30:41
  We also get like home delivery, believe it or not, from
• 30:44
  Morrison. Let's.
• 30:45
  Take it in three weeks, I. Mean yes, that's really that's
• 30:48
  why I don't do it. Your toilet roll.
• 30:50
  You're like right, how much? How much have I got?
• 30:53
  But. If you're really short and you
• 30:55
  just want to get a few things you can, there's a few local
• 30:57
  shops that will really be absolutely perfect.
• 31:00
  Or you can take a 40 minute ferry across the mall and you've
• 31:04
  got the pub and you've got the Co-op, so you know.
• 31:08
  And how often is that ferry running?
• 31:10
  Is that fairly? All the time, yeah.
• 31:11
  Yeah. Because we on the way up.
• 31:12
  Another interesting fact about the way up is you get to
• 31:14
  experience if you if you don't want to go the full way around,
• 31:18
  there is a tiny little ferry service that shuttles you
• 31:20
  across, which I've been told is the most expensive.
• 31:23
  The most expensive method of transport, public transport,
• 31:26
  public transport in Europe are kilometre travel.
• 31:30
  That's 12 lbs. And I think it's, I mean, you
• 31:32
  can't believe it, You can Chuck a rock from one Bank of the the
• 31:36
  the lock to the. Other.
• 31:37
  But it's good. I mean, there's a lot of talk
• 31:39
  about should we build a bridge and maybe a tunnel?
• 31:41
  No, keep the ferry. Because when you take a ferry,
• 31:43
  you feel like you're going somewhere.
• 31:45
  Yeah. It's almost, I mean, I know
• 31:47
  you're not an island, but I mean, we talk about sky and the
• 31:49
  bridge and it's like you want to keep that island. 100% and then
• 31:53
  I like. It So what is the what's the bet
• 31:56
  when tourists come and or people travel to the distillery and
• 32:00
  they see it? What's the bet that really
• 32:02
  stands out for them? What's there is there a what's
• 32:04
  the moment that they go Oh my God, because there's different
• 32:06
  places that have wow factors. We've talked about them on the
• 32:10
  podcast steep line arms or the the the 33 stills at Rosebank or
• 32:16
  even the the mill that they've got.
• 32:17
  What's the sort of bet that you can show people?
• 32:19
  That's the bet of a showpiece of the distillery, which?
• 32:23
  10 for me personally, I think it's different for everybody.
• 32:28
  I think it's the warehouses. So 100% of the stock is kept on
• 32:33
  site and nothing's, nothing's kind of closed doors.
• 32:36
  If you want to see it, go see it and people will see casks from
• 32:41
  all over. They'll see, I don't know,
• 32:44
  exadelphy casks are put up their night.
• 32:46
  Does that have hard market spirit in it?
• 32:47
  It's like, yeah, sure. Most of the time you team tend
• 32:50
  to just crack them open and be like let's see what it tastes
• 32:52
  like. Not on standard tours.
• 32:55
  But if you use if you use the discount code WSP 15 the thing.
• 32:59
  The thing that really impressed me on the turn we, we, we were
• 33:02
  lucky enough to see it was there was a delivery of wood chip to
• 33:05
  the biomass when when we went there.
• 33:07
  So we got to see the truck reversing through.
• 33:11
  I mean, I don't know what the tolerance was between the, the
• 33:13
  buildings pretty tight and then just lots of wood chip falling
• 33:18
  into it. I mean, it was like Tracy
• 33:19
  Island, the flat. It opened up and then the wood
• 33:22
  chip went down. That's amazing smell and it
• 33:24
  smelt like you a play park. Yeah.
• 33:27
  Well, when when I went, I was a punter, I went with my husband
• 33:30
  who's a distiller also and he loves the boiler.
• 33:35
  Is that why he called you? He, the guys were in service in
• 33:44
  the boiler and I think Roxana was like, be warned, the boiler
• 33:48
  guys don't shut up. And then Cal Cal went down to,
• 33:54
  was trying to Alister one of the distillers, which you may have
• 33:56
  met. And Alister loves this kind of
• 33:59
  stuff as well. And I just lost them for like 2
• 34:01
  hours and they were like, we're chatting to the wood chip guys.
• 34:04
  And I was like, Oh my God. Like, so they, it depends kind
• 34:07
  of what, what parts of the distillery you're into.
• 34:10
  But for me, I think it's a full transparency and everything.
• 34:12
  I think it kind of ticks, ticks muscle boxes.
• 34:14
  You've got like the wooden wash backs, like stainless steel wash
• 34:18
  backs. I think the part I love is how
• 34:22
  manual the whole process is. You think from a new distillery
• 34:25
  you'd kind of make it easy like you might have like some touch
• 34:28
  screens, you might have some pumps that might automatically
• 34:31
  flow through. You might have some sensors and
• 34:33
  no, they're keeping an eye. They'll be like walk and talk
• 34:37
  with me. I've got to open the steam
• 34:38
  valve. It's it's so manual, which I
• 34:42
  think is a very conscious choice and from being a new distillery,
• 34:44
  it's the financial choice as well means that you've got full
• 34:48
  control over ABS everything and kind of minimise is room for
• 34:50
  error in terms of like tech going down.
• 34:53
  Well, the better I loved my favorite part and then echoes
• 34:56
  what you've just said is we were we were there.
• 34:58
  And I do have the video of this and I do want to put it probably
• 35:00
  needs a stand alone video but basically.
• 35:03
  What did you? Break well, no, nothing, but we
• 35:05
  were there and I just went what is that for right and you know
• 35:08
  the dog throwing the dog ball throwing things right, there's
• 35:12
  one of them right and it's on it's got a lot it's been taped
• 35:15
  to a long bit of wood and I'm like Connor, what's that?
• 35:19
  And he's looking at it and he goes good question.
• 35:21
  I don't know what that is and they just shouts over what
• 35:23
  exists. The guy goes, oh, we use that in
• 35:26
  the mash done to take samples of the samples of the mash out of
• 35:30
  the, of the draft out of the mash done.
• 35:32
  And it's just a dog walking and it's like it's distillery
• 35:36
  ingenuity. It's just absolutely fantastic
• 35:38
  where someone's gone. How do we get samples of that
• 35:40
  out? I don't know, but I've got a dog
• 35:42
  and we can use this and it's great.
• 35:43
  And The thing is, it's, it's like what we said about the when
• 35:45
  we went on the Glen Cadham tour, you know, you go, people forget
• 35:49
  and there'll be tourists that forget.
• 35:52
  A story always comes to me with speaking to somebody who worked
• 35:56
  in Saint Andrews and they had, and I'm sorry for generalizing
• 35:59
  here, but an American was in Saint Andrews and was basically
• 36:04
  talking to this person and said, I can't believe that they built
• 36:07
  this town for the for the university.
• 36:11
  They were like, yeah, yeah. They even put the ruin of a
• 36:13
  cathedral there just to add a little bit, just a bit of a
• 36:17
  effect for them. But it's because this, this
• 36:19
  American just thought I like the authenticity of the town.
• 36:21
  And there's just normal people walking around.
• 36:24
  There's normal, normal shops and stuff.
• 36:25
  And it's like when we went to Glencadam Distillery, there'll
• 36:28
  be people that go to these distilleries and forget that
• 36:31
  they're not just visitor centres that have been built to show you
• 36:33
  how whiskey is made. They are working distilleries.
• 36:35
  There are people walking around doing a job at the Glencadam 1.
• 36:38
  You know, the guy's lunch bag was just there's a wee chair,
• 36:43
  like an old school chair right beside the still with a lunch
• 36:46
  bag right beside it. And you're on a tour and you
• 36:48
  forget like that. That's because there was a
• 36:50
  there's a stillman that has to come and work here, right.
• 36:52
  What we're thinking to the drums in guys, if I pick a favorite
• 36:56
  out of the first two, what we got going over the 10?
• 36:58
  What about the Midget? We've got the Midget.
• 37:00
  Any Midget fans? Well, it's an equal split,
• 37:03
  right? What we'll do is we'll stop
• 37:04
  there. We'll get our glasses refilled,
• 37:05
  take a wee toilet break and whatever.
• 37:06
  Brilliant. Absolutely fantastic.
• 37:08
  Thank you very much. You've been listening to the
• 37:09
  Whiskey Stories podcast live. Delphi Erard de Mercen.
• 37:13
  Here we go. OK, right, Angus, you know what
• 37:21
  to do. Clap us in.
• 37:23
  Welcome back to Whiskey Stories Live without Delphi Erard de
• 37:25
  Mercen. There we go.
• 37:33
  Now I'm going to I'm excited for this DRAM, the the next DRAM
• 37:37
  that we've got. So lead us in.
• 37:39
  Callum, what is this next DRAM? I know.
• 37:44
  He doesn't want to say it and he doesn't want to spell it.
• 37:46
  Tell me what this tell us about this drama.
• 37:48
  I can say it, I very much can't spell it either.
• 37:50
  So I'm with you there. So next drama is probably the
• 37:55
  most sought after Arden Merkin expression that we do year on
• 37:59
  year. We release this whiskey and it
• 38:03
  disappears and people message me on social media going where can
• 38:07
  I get that someone? Anyway, it's the pollen, the AD
• 38:11
  pollen law. So we have this great
• 38:14
  collaboration with great family run Champagne House in Laminio
• 38:20
  and they send us not that many casks every year that we fill
• 38:26
  our beautiful Arnamarkan spirit. And in this case, we're filling
• 38:30
  these casks with X American bourbon and then we're finishing
• 38:34
  it in these pollen law casks. And these casks are doing some
• 38:38
  heavy lifting in terms of like, they're definitely adding an
• 38:42
  extra dimension. And probably for that reason,
• 38:45
  that's why you're finishing around doing.
• 38:47
  Oh, 100. Percent.
• 38:47
  And this is, this is 57.4%, Yeah.
• 38:50
  So it's a big jump from the last one that we've just had there.
• 38:52
  So now, Graham, this is, this is, this is that, that is the
• 38:55
  bottle you came home from Arden. American so that now we we.
• 38:59
  We were very lucky. We were.
• 39:00
  This is where we just say, right, we're spoiled because one
• 39:03
  of the casts that we sampled in the warehouse where Connell, he
• 39:06
  said, whoa, do you want to try some of these Paul Noir casts?
• 39:10
  And we said OK then. Alright, I suppose.
• 39:15
  When in Rome, you know, And yeah, there was a real treat to
• 39:20
  try this straight from the cask and I didn't Graham you.
• 39:23
  Well, yeah, very much. Connell's a sly dog.
• 39:28
  He's a great guy. I'll have to say.
• 39:30
  Connell looked after us, and Connell's background is
• 39:33
  hospitality, and he gave us some absolutely fantastic as, as I'm
• 39:37
  sure other people at the distillery would have given us.
• 39:39
  But, you know, we were very lucky.
• 39:41
  We got a chance to stay in the staff quarters.
• 39:43
  Callum wouldn't let us in as cottage.
• 39:46
  Yeah. I had stories so.
• 39:49
  Well, what I would say is what was, it was a Friday.
• 39:51
  We headed up early morning on the Friday, got there and we
• 39:54
  were, we did the distillery tour and like I said, I've got
• 39:56
  content. I need to try and get out for
• 39:58
  this. But we were taken down to
• 40:00
  Mclean's nose and we'll talk about that.
• 40:02
  And we're given a chance to have a drum on the peninsula with of
• 40:05
  Mclean's nose looking out to Mclean's nose, take it back up
• 40:08
  and then we were taken into the warehouse.
• 40:10
  And we're in the warehouse, must have been about an hour.
• 40:12
  And we're in a bit in the warehouse and Cornell's freely
• 40:14
  popping casts open and saying try this, try that, try next
• 40:16
  thing. And then he goes, oh, listen,
• 40:18
  lads, whilst I remember it's 4:30, the distillery is about to
• 40:21
  shut at 5:00 and the shop will shut, which means that you'll
• 40:24
  not get an opportunity to buy anything if you want to buy
• 40:26
  anything. Now, by this point we're about 6
• 40:28
  1/2 cash straight grams deep, and I don't know whether Coral
• 40:34
  planned this or not, but basically we walked in there and
• 40:37
  you know, that was the problem was suddenly everything just
• 40:40
  looked amazing. Well, this is I would very much
• 40:43
  say for anyone that's wanting to go up to Arden American, that's
• 40:46
  a real handfuls into the story, you know, and some great we both
• 40:51
  came away with AT shirt. T-shirt.
• 40:53
  Well, it was. Curtis, who was with us, got a
• 40:55
  hoodie. Pink hoodie, pink hoodie.
• 40:56
  But Chuck, poor Chuck, right? And Chuck was Chuck's on the way
• 41:00
  up and he's like, listen guys, I really can't spend any money
• 41:03
  here. I'm going to really need to be.
• 41:07
  Strict myself, strict myself. We let Chuck left with like 4
• 41:10
  bottles and then on the way home Chuck was just like Oh my God
• 41:16
  what am I doing? Chuck, Poor Chucks had two weeks
• 41:20
  of beans on toast after that. But one of the bottles I got was
• 41:24
  the Paula Noir and it's it is a crack and whiskey.
• 41:28
  It's it really is. There's there's something just a
• 41:30
  little bit different about that which which which adds to again,
• 41:34
  just that Arden Merkin spirit coming through.
• 41:36
  And we were lucky enough to try the cast samples and stuff like
• 41:38
  that. But there was there was a
• 41:39
  handful. I think actually Uno Mas Curtis
• 41:42
  bought a handful for Uno Mass. So you can get a handful from
• 41:46
  that work. It was with the sharing.
• 41:47
  Handwriting on the label, yeah. So Peter Cherry Uno Mass if you
• 41:51
  want to get a drama from that stuff, it's there was just so
• 41:53
  much to choose and just so a little space in the boot of my
• 41:56
  car. But it's but it was it was great
• 41:58
  and. So do we know how long this has
• 42:00
  had in the Pollen Noir or is it not?
• 42:03
  It's not really declared, is it? But it's a seven years in
• 42:08
  bourbon. Yes, we reacts for 18 months. 18
• 42:11
  months. Yes.
• 42:13
  Good Asia. Yeah, I think that's the sweet
• 42:15
  spot. You saw that the patient cream
• 42:17
  coming through, but it's not overwhelming.
• 42:19
  It's a bit like the art American kind of coastal spirit that
• 42:22
  comes through as well, which is really good as it is hasten and
• 42:25
  Saturday and be described as fizzy and I found good my mind
• 42:29
  another cat. Really.
• 42:31
  So you got a better fit, You always.
• 42:33
  Thought it's an effervescent. Yeah, it's the first.
• 42:35
  Like an effervescent whiskey. Oh, they are effervescent.
• 42:42
  Yeah, I don't even know what that means.
• 42:44
  Fizzy, fizzy but like an Adele free tasty note, right?
• 42:49
  There. Yeah, because I mean there's
• 42:53
  been, we've had, we had Alice today from Rasi on and we know
• 42:56
  that Rasi have used champagne yeast right in their production,
• 43:00
  which it doesn't. Give you a bit of a similar
• 43:02
  effect. Yeah, I reckon there is
• 43:04
  something in that. It's almost like flat fizzy
• 43:07
  water. Yeah, there's just something a
• 43:09
  wee bit. Delicious.
• 43:11
  No, I mean, that's a really bad way of describing it, but but
• 43:16
  you. Woke it up with a truth and
• 43:18
  you're like, what have I got that flat fizzy water from?
• 43:21
  From Glass. Because it's obviously not
• 43:23
  carbonated, but there it's just like a wee bit of like, oh,
• 43:26
  there's something there, are we? But.
• 43:27
  It's also important to say that it's we're we're using these
• 43:31
  casks from a Champagne house. Yes.
• 43:33
  They're not champagne casks. No, no.
• 43:36
  They're you can be very careful about that and a legal one.
• 43:38
  Don't you? But essentially, I think we
• 43:42
  didn't mention this with the other two.
• 43:45
  We talk a lot about, you know, or what kind of cast we're using
• 43:48
  or the ABV's or batch sizes, all these different numbers.
• 43:53
  And we like to talk about them because we know them and we're
• 43:55
  happy to share them. But if you're ever like curious
• 43:57
  about any expression bar in the marking, if you don't know this,
• 44:01
  see the QR code in the back. It's not everyone gets super
• 44:05
  excited about QR codes, I must say.
• 44:07
  But that QR code will tell you absolutely anything you would
• 44:12
  want to know about our release. A bottler who bottled it?
• 44:15
  Really. The person who bottled that
• 44:17
  bottle? Jimmy.
• 44:18
  Yeah, we'll give you the number out of the batch as well, what
• 44:20
  number your bottle is. Wow, it will tell you it gives
• 44:23
  you APDF. Pretty much of every cast goes
• 44:25
  in there as well. Full transparency, it's super
• 44:28
  geeky. Some people just like drinking
• 44:29
  it, but that is the but there is that.
• 44:32
  Sure, there's a few in here that quite like to know every detail
• 44:35
  well. We live in that world now where
• 44:38
  you know, I was, I was talking earlier today about how master
• 44:42
  blenders, you go back maybe 2530 years ago and master blenders
• 44:46
  would have been people that were in lab coats that were kept well
• 44:48
  away in the lab that nobody really feel like there was maybe
• 44:52
  probably still names around like David Stewart Balverney and
• 44:55
  things like that. But what we live in now is
• 44:58
  social media has grown and the need for information is grown
• 45:01
  and and it now it's created a a network of people who are so
• 45:05
  excited about whiskey and they want to find everything out.
• 45:07
  I mean, if either people are. Full complete transparency
• 45:10
  because I mean I've done the QR code just to give you an
• 45:13
  example. So I can tell you that this is
• 45:14
  bottle 1232 out of 5726. I can tell you that it was
• 45:20
  bottled 34% by Kelly Coombe, 33% by Holly McCaffrey and 33% by a
• 45:26
  certain Reece Davidson. Reece Donaldson.
• 45:28
  Reece Donaldson. Yeah, OK.
• 45:29
  And it was bottled on the 10th of February this year.
• 45:32
  So there you go, we are probably paid.
• 45:36
  Up for me to write a room close. Yeah, I know it's but is this
• 45:41
  world that we live in now from a marketing perspective, it does
• 45:43
  help, doesn't it? I mean, how much does it really
• 45:46
  sell or change? Let you know that it was Reese
• 45:48
  Donaldson bottled the last little bit of this.
• 45:50
  But at the same time, but we've had, we were having a discussion
• 45:54
  before we started a social media clip that we've had a better
• 45:57
  discussion about with the barley variety.
• 46:00
  How important is the barley variety for the whiskey drinker?
• 46:03
  But how important is it that the distilleries can tell us what
• 46:06
  that is? Cast types, wood types, all that
• 46:08
  kind of thing. We live in that world where we
• 46:10
  can do it. And I suppose as a newer
• 46:12
  distillery, you can start by that from that point rather than
• 46:16
  having to worry about, you know, if you're a distiller that's
• 46:19
  been going for hundreds of years, like for example, even
• 46:23
  just being able to know that there's over 5000 bottles of
• 46:26
  this stuff in circulation. We've asked people from other
• 46:29
  distilleries, do you mind asking how much was in that release?
• 46:32
  And they'll go, can't really tell you that whether they know
• 46:35
  or not. It's just more we don't really
• 46:37
  want to make it public knowledge that there's X amount of these
• 46:40
  bottles being released. Can the older distilleries brand
• 46:43
  names that you recognize that's kind of enough leverage to a
• 46:46
  certain extent, like I'm sure we all know that drinker is like, I
• 46:48
  only drink McAllen, I only drink this and that kind of has enough
• 46:52
  weight to for them just to trust in whatever release that that
• 46:55
  distillery comes out with. Whereas new distilleries in
• 46:58
  terms of the last 1520 years, we don't have any leverage.
• 47:02
  So if we can put it all out there, spell it out.
• 47:07
  Hopefully that will start to kind of whether the barley is
• 47:10
  something that somebody's somebody's interested in,
• 47:12
  whether it's the percentage of the recycled glasses in their
• 47:15
  bottle where there's a fact that Mcleans nose labels made out
• 47:18
  thoroughly like those small things.
• 47:20
  That's a little bit. So people might kind of just
• 47:23
  jump on and go, ah, that's kind of pricked me a little bit.
• 47:26
  So you kind of just to things that have to tell everybody
• 47:30
  everything. And I think just whiskey
• 47:32
  knowledge in general over the last decade or two is so much
• 47:36
  more than what we used to. So you've got to work a little
• 47:38
  bit harder. And with all these releases,
• 47:41
  let's. Get some.
• 47:42
  Real. Let's kind of just literally.
• 47:45
  And as a consumer, we feel better knowing everything.
• 47:47
  Like we don't feel like we're being we're not feeling
• 47:50
  anything's being hidden from us or anything like that.
• 47:52
  It's I was on a taste thing with I feel guilty about the brand
• 47:56
  tell it's in the brand, but it was a tasting with Glenn Scotia
• 48:00
  and they were very open about saying these these four in the
• 48:03
  lineup that you're trying right now are chill filtered and
• 48:05
  colored and that the whiskey consumer can sometimes feel like
• 48:11
  a dirty word to talk about like you're adding artificial
• 48:14
  colouring to it. But that was the same.
• 48:15
  I said, well, people who know know.
• 48:18
  So the bottom line is we would rather be the ones telling you
• 48:21
  that have people whispering about it going do they don't
• 48:23
  they do they don't they? What we know is artificial
• 48:25
  colouring offers consistency in all markets.
• 48:28
  And if you can keep that consistency going and that's
• 48:31
  fine. But what they also said is like
• 48:33
  the brand ambassador was tournament said, we, I want to
• 48:36
  get us away from that. And as a brand, we we want to
• 48:39
  get away from that. But at the end of the day, this
• 48:41
  is where you have when you have a whiskey maker sitting beside
• 48:43
  someone who's selling the whiskey.
• 48:45
  Sometimes that's just the way that's that's the way it has to
• 48:48
  be. You know, if, if, if a market
• 48:50
  likes that colour, then you to keep that consistency, you have
• 48:53
  to use that. But at the end of the day,
• 48:54
  that's what sells the bottles when it comes to your job.
• 48:57
  Callum, what do you prefer more cast curation or the social
• 49:02
  media side of things? What do you think?
• 49:06
  I don't know. I don't know.
• 49:08
  Stripping your colleagues off to stand outside eating alive by
• 49:11
  midges could be a little bit fun.
• 49:12
  I wasn't that evil. They had clothes on, right?
• 49:14
  OK, well, we're wearing shorts. Right.
• 49:17
  Some T-shirts. You can do that for the.
• 49:18
  Next I was. Thinking, you know, a Midget
• 49:20
  release coming up, you know, probably not that far away.
• 49:24
  I think I like the freedom on both sides of, of my, of my
• 49:31
  role. But the creative side obviously
• 49:35
  is what everyone sees, you know, because it's on social media.
• 49:38
  But there's quite a lot of behind the computer, which is
• 49:42
  less glamorous. And obviously going into the
• 49:45
  warehouse it's quite a lot of hard work actually climbing up
• 49:47
  and down stores and taking samples and really difficult.
• 49:55
  We're getting a lot sympathy tonight for that one.
• 49:58
  But social media is a great way for, I mean, some say social
• 50:03
  media is going to be a big thing suit you had.
• 50:08
  It here first. So I think social media is a big
• 50:12
  thing, but it's, it's quite difficult to take our social
• 50:16
  media say it's from my perspective and go, does this
• 50:19
  contribute to sales, right, Because we rely on bars and and
• 50:24
  on trading off trade. We're not we're not selling
• 50:26
  direct sales. So I can't say like I've done
• 50:30
  this promotion of the art number content and then we gained X
• 50:34
  number of sales from it. That doesn't happen.
• 50:35
  We're just kind of relying on engagement and luckily we're
• 50:40
  getting good engagement, but it's not necessarily salesy.
• 50:43
  What we're really trying to do is promote the distillery, not
• 50:47
  always just the products. Yeah, which I think is
• 50:49
  important. Program How is our social media
• 50:52
  doing? Well, today's we had 10,000
• 50:55
  followers tonight on Instagram for their ledges, which is
• 50:57
  great. Yeah, so I'm still skint a
• 51:06
  pound. A follower would have been
• 51:07
  lovely because you're right, it's it's we, we can sometimes
• 51:13
  see it where you'll have a you'll have a video that maybe
• 51:17
  peaks and then you'll see a spike in listeners.
• 51:20
  So what you're seeing is you're you can see a direct route.
• 51:23
  And actually there was one with Alex Bruce episode, the hard
• 51:26
  Markin brand. People saw the saw the clip so
• 51:31
  that there was an episode and we can see a journey that someone's
• 51:34
  gone on. But for you guys, you can't see
• 51:35
  that as such because there's no direct sales.
• 51:37
  But at the same time, you also know for two things.
• 51:41
  Number one, it's the the ability to get the brand to people so
• 51:46
  they can see it might attract somebody to it going.
• 51:48
  These guys are doing something completely different because
• 51:50
  let's be honest, if you follow a lot of when you work in the
• 51:53
  alcohol industry, there's only so much that you can be allowed
• 51:56
  to be putting on before you start working towards what are
• 51:59
  the parameters of where we can advertise realistically?
• 52:03
  I mean, there's please advertise responsibly.
• 52:05
  Yeah, exactly. Well, that yeah, there's,
• 52:06
  there's, there's distilleries that have social media accounts
• 52:09
  that barely post anything on their Instagram accounts.
• 52:13
  Some of them even like you can't repost it unless you're age
• 52:15
  verified and all this kind of stuff because.
• 52:18
  A hierarchy to approval. Yeah, for example, I was just
• 52:21
  saying to client before we started those like how many
• 52:24
  distilleries do you think post at least 5 posts a week?
• 52:27
  Because that's what we do, you know, it's quite, Yeah, maybe,
• 52:30
  maybe 5. Reels this week as well, right?
• 52:33
  44. Yeah, it's a graph reels.
• 52:35
  And it's trying to work that. It's trying to work out what is
• 52:38
  the means to an end and they'll that this is what's when we go
• 52:41
  back. You're a new distillery, so
• 52:43
  there'll be the likes of somebody at maybe at William
• 52:46
  Grant and Sons is going, do we really need to be putting
• 52:50
  anything out on social media for the Balveni because we know it's
• 52:53
  going to sell anyway? Yeah.
• 52:54
  Do you know, like we're already an established brand, whereas
• 52:56
  for you, you're in the you're in the fight to try and get eyes on
• 53:00
  the brand all the time. So you can do that.
• 53:02
  You've got to be in mind, Arnimarkin.
• 53:03
  If you go to whiskey festivals, you it's not unusual to see, you
• 53:08
  know, three people deep. Yeah.
• 53:09
  And we dramaard marking is our bread and butter is whiskey
• 53:12
  enthusiasts, you know, such as yourself.
• 53:14
  But you've either heard of us and you're a fan normally or
• 53:19
  they're like, who is Arne marking?
• 53:21
  So I guess social media is really good for hopefully
• 53:23
  putting some eyeballs on the distillery.
• 53:26
  Never heard of us or intrigued about us.
• 53:28
  And that's that's also true for whiskey festivals as well.
• 53:31
  So working then with Adelphi Connie on your side of things,
• 53:37
  you'll see a complete difference in being able to have over 5000
• 53:41
  bottles of a special release that you know will sell very
• 53:43
  well versus having, you know, is there a bottle 44477 on this and
• 53:50
  cast numbers as well. So first of all, what is it
• 53:52
  we're drinking right now? You're.
• 53:53
  Drinking a coin leash? Start and set it.
• 53:56
  You got 9 year olds. Coin leash X olaroso.
• 54:01
  Refill. Yeah, refill Olaroso. 54.5% as
• 54:04
  well, so a little bit punching there.
• 54:05
  So yeah, the first two drams were deleted down to kind of
• 54:10
  desired strength where it's the last three flash four that
• 54:13
  you're going to have are all cast trends.
• 54:14
  So Adelphi's terms of these releases are always cast through
• 54:18
  as well. They're they're WL fish, so are
• 54:22
  an American if you talk about the core and we can kind of roll
• 54:25
  them out and keep them a consistent on the shelves.
• 54:28
  That's kind of my job to keep it on the shelf.
• 54:29
  He'd be consistent like in a new releases, limited editions,
• 54:33
  mezcals, whatever, they're in an allocation basis, but they're
• 54:37
  slightly larger. So let's say like 6 to 8000.
• 54:41
  When it comes to Delphi that is, that's a passion project because
• 54:45
  I don't think people like us for the allocations that go out.
• 54:49
  It's fair to say it's no exaggeration.
• 54:51
  Say that a shop that you think might get 3-4 cases might be
• 54:55
  lucky to get 3-4 balls. We're tight these releases in
• 54:58
  the most part and with this being the exception and go
• 55:03
  international. So the UK we get a little pot
• 55:07
  which then I distribute and then the guys will distribute and
• 55:11
  amongst those kind of Fair, we can swap the one you're trying
• 55:14
  isn't was an expert only from last year things last year and
• 55:20
  we think it was Germany. Don't quote us on that.
• 55:23
  The guys are in Germany right now and couldn't really reply to
• 55:25
  me and they think it was Germany very fame.
• 55:29
  Maybe it's just. Basically what you're saying is
• 55:31
  that if anyone likes this, it's going to be difficult to get
• 55:33
  their hands on a bottle because they might start in Germany.
• 55:39
  So Klein leash, 9 years old, single cask, one of only 477
• 55:47
  bottles. There's still 2015 bottled in
• 55:50
  2025. So I can look.
• 55:52
  I'm looking at Jake. I was looking.
• 55:53
  At Jake, I was looking at Jake and Jake was looking at me and
• 55:56
  he was he was giving me approval, approving look.
• 55:59
  Starting approval. This is this is this is nice.
• 56:01
  This is very, very nice. If you're an independent
• 56:03
  bottler, you're always going to have that comparison against the
• 56:07
  core range because we know a lot of people will know client Leash
• 56:11
  14, for example, very, very well.
• 56:13
  So there's, there's maybe a bit more pressure as an independent
• 56:17
  bottler where it's a case of, right, we're going to have to do
• 56:20
  offer something different here. Because at the end of the day,
• 56:22
  if we just release a client release 14, then what we really
• 56:25
  do, you know what I mean? So there's an element where it's
• 56:27
  like, no, we're going to have to do something different.
• 56:29
  We want to do something different.
• 56:31
  It's not a trust factor when it comes to an independent bottler.
• 56:33
  And I suppose it comes to every whiskey.
• 56:35
  If you're, if you're making a commitment to purchase a bottle
• 56:38
  and particularly that the independent bottler side of it
• 56:41
  is because it was Mark Thompson talked about it on on the
• 56:46
  podcast, saying it's when guys have skin in the game, when it's
• 56:50
  like if you're an independent bottler and you know that I need
• 56:52
  to sell this cask because sell. And that's what Alex talked
• 56:55
  about is the fact that Adelphi still is very lean on on on the
• 56:59
  on the independent bottlers. See, there are independent
• 57:02
  bottlers, people that we've had on the podcast that have
• 57:05
  warehouses full of stock and that can go.
• 57:08
  It'll be far more releases than. It and they can say that, you
• 57:11
  know, they've got more stock than they need for every out
• 57:14
  they they've seen that we can put if we wanted to do an out
• 57:17
  turn of 15 bottles this quarter, we could do 15 bottles, but we
• 57:20
  know that would be silly to do commercially.
• 57:22
  But that's that's what the kind of stock they've got.
• 57:24
  Whereas what it seems with Adelphi, which makes it even
• 57:27
  more kind of you need to get your hands on a bottle because
• 57:31
  it's basically a case of when we've got good cast and we put
• 57:33
  them in the glass, they're going to go out the door.
• 57:35
  Once they're at the door, they're going to be snapped up.
• 57:37
  And if you don't get one, there's not, there's not going
• 57:39
  to be much of A life. I do wonder if people think
• 57:41
  we're more strategic than we are.
• 57:42
  I mean, like Brett Fish, we hardly have any.
• 57:47
  Like it's like a like a ploy. I wish it.
• 57:50
  Was, I think it's just that the Delphi point of view we're super
• 57:53
  picky, yeah, really picky and we're not And the we're not
• 57:58
  buying bulk spirit, aging it and then we're stuck with that
• 58:02
  spirit. We're hand selecting
• 58:04
  predominantly well aged casks for the purpose of bottling them
• 58:08
  as soon as possible. So we're really picking stuff
• 58:10
  and buying stuff that we think is of a certain quality.
• 58:13
  So, you know, people are or do tend to be quite comfortable.
• 58:18
  If it's Adelphi bottling, then it's probably going to be pretty
• 58:22
  good. It might not be to your tastes,
• 58:25
  but but you can see why we picked up.
• 58:27
  Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's an absolute cracker
• 58:30
  by the end, I'd say. And if you're getting the Jake
• 58:32
  Adkook nod of approval, then you're doing well.
• 58:36
  What about the last two drums in what we're saying with the Paul
• 58:38
  and wire what we say in favourites part show of hands
• 58:41
  for that one verse or I mean, it's up against the it's up
• 58:43
  against the Klein leash 9 there. So you guys, Paul, Paul and
• 58:47
  Wire, Paul and Wire hands. OK, good split, good split.
• 58:49
  And then and then the Klein leash.
• 58:51
  I've heard, still don't know what I mean, but there we go.
• 58:54
  Well, we're going to take a quick break, get the next drum
• 58:57
  port and then see where it takes us.
• 59:00
  OK, guys, cheers, right? We've got drums in front of us.
• 59:07
  Everyone, you know what to do. Clap us in.
• 59:11
  Welcome back to the Risky Story. That was great.
• 59:17
  Yeah, it's Friday night. We're all four drums deep.
• 59:22
  Absolutely tell brilliant. Like now that kind leash is
• 59:29
  fantastic. I've I've still got the taste of
• 59:32
  it going on in my mouth. It's tropical fruit, everything
• 59:34
  like that. And I think when you go around
• 59:35
  the room, that was I was a special drum.
• 59:38
  Buttery, buttery. Buttery.
• 59:39
  Yeah, very, very nice there. I think it.
• 59:41
  Was the last one I got from the cupboard as well.
• 59:43
  I literally got this morning from our like bits and bobs
• 59:46
  covered. Yeah, I don't.
• 59:47
  There's no more of it. So well, that's, that's, that's
• 59:49
  the sad reality of it. But and it comes back to things
• 59:52
  like we, we've talked about age on bottles and whether it
• 59:56
  matters. And we talked a bit with Arden
• 59:57
  American. And you know, it's great if
• 59:59
  you're a distillery and a brand to have a core range age
• 1:00:02
  statement because we we're, we, there are the whiskey consumer
• 1:00:07
  that you have to push towards. And what we do know is that the
• 1:00:10
  general whiskey consumer we are all being.
• 1:00:14
  Geared up and trained through whatever it was that age is what
• 1:00:17
  matters when you when you start your whiskey journey.
• 1:00:20
  So then you start going, why have a 12 when you get a better
• 1:00:25
  age, whiskey cost more money and because it costs more money,
• 1:00:28
  it's premiumized because it's premiumized, you automatically
• 1:00:30
  think, well, that means it's best and things like that.
• 1:00:32
  But that's what's really cool about independent bottlers when
• 1:00:35
  you can go down. And one of the ones I've used,
• 1:00:37
  an example of it was when we had the guys from the Tampa Bay
• 1:00:39
  Whiskey Club on and I did a tasting for them.
• 1:00:43
  And on the tasting, the last DRAM was Diggers bottling with
• 1:00:47
  Woodrow's of Edinburgh of Highland Park 7, a crack and
• 1:00:50
  crack and whiskey. But one of the guys on the taste
• 1:00:53
  thing was like, why would I drink a 7 year old whiskey?
• 1:00:57
  And I was like, well mate, it's, it's #1 it's a single cask.
• 1:01:02
  It's bottled exclusively for these guys.
• 1:01:04
  It's very rare, very unique. And then he showed me a picture,
• 1:01:07
  went on to show me his whiskey collection.
• 1:01:08
  Now, his whiskey collection in his house over in Florida was
• 1:01:13
  like a shop, right? And then he showed me the
• 1:01:16
  Highland Park shelf that he had. And it went from everything from
• 1:01:19
  12 all the way up through all the special releases up to
• 1:01:21
  Highland Park. And it's 30.
• 1:01:22
  So that's great. But you've got nothing on that
• 1:01:24
  shelf that you can say that you've tried Highland Park under
• 1:01:29
  12 years old and this is an opportunity.
• 1:01:31
  And Angus mentioned the Klein Leash 14 and we've seen very
• 1:01:34
  well aged Klein leashes have actually to get an opportunity
• 1:01:36
  to try a whiskey like Klein Leash.
• 1:01:38
  At that age. And that cash, that cash friend,
• 1:01:41
  single cask and get that flavour from there.
• 1:01:43
  Absolutely fantastic. And I guess one of the other
• 1:01:45
  things we're also when we're talking about perceptions and
• 1:01:48
  we're talking about age and that's some barometer farm, is
• 1:01:51
  it good? Is it not good?
• 1:01:52
  One of the other things, particularly in this country
• 1:01:55
  where we are right now, people say Scotch whiskey if it's if
• 1:01:58
  it's not Scotch whiskey, not interested.
• 1:02:00
  So that maybe leads us quite nicely into what you've got next
• 1:02:04
  in the lineup. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:08
  You're not drinking Scottish whiskey, you're drinking
• 1:02:10
  American. This is Westland.
• 1:02:12
  This is what sorry. Westland from Seattle.
• 1:02:15
  Wow. OK, Single malt American
• 1:02:18
  whiskey. Yes.
• 1:02:20
  So this is. 8 year old. Thank you. 8 years old full
• 1:02:25
  maturation in PX. So this is there's a reason why
• 1:02:29
  this comes later in the in the tasting.
• 1:02:31
  So it's a big sticky, kind of. Yeah, the colour, the colour is.
• 1:02:36
  I mean, somebody said when I was pouring it, here comes the
• 1:02:38
  Coca-Cola because the colour, I mean, it's dark.
• 1:02:43
  That's good. And, and I, I, I was boring.
• 1:02:47
  So unfortunately not everything made it into the glass.
• 1:02:50
  And I get sorry, sorry, apologies.
• 1:02:54
  But I I came back and I took one whip of my hands and I just was
• 1:02:56
  like, my hands just smell of raisins.
• 1:02:58
  Yeah, 50.9%, so a little bit lower, but and a nice drinking
• 1:03:03
  strength for calf strength whiskey, yeah.
• 1:03:06
  But yeah, that is that's different.
• 1:03:09
  It's a it's a dessert strand, that's for sure.
• 1:03:13
  It would go well on a dessert. It would, yeah.
• 1:03:16
  Yes. Now obviously not being Scots
• 1:03:19
  whiskey, you said something about the wood that this has
• 1:03:21
  matured in Callum, didn't you? Yeah.
• 1:03:24
  So, so this distillery, does any, does everyone know
• 1:03:27
  Westlands, right. They're quite when it comes to
• 1:03:31
  American whiskey. They're kind of forefront of the
• 1:03:33
  single malt movement in America. So they're owned by Remy Kontro.
• 1:03:37
  So the same guys that own Eliza Bracladi and they're deep diving
• 1:03:42
  into the ingredients, as you would imagine.
• 1:03:45
  So not only the barley that they grow on their own farms in
• 1:03:48
  Seattle, but also the wood that they're using.
• 1:03:51
  There's a local variety of oak. Do you remember the name of?
• 1:03:54
  That Gary. Gary, Gary.
• 1:03:57
  Gary. Gary.
• 1:03:59
  Gary. Gary Oak.
• 1:04:01
  You still have 3 doors, don't you?
• 1:04:05
  So they do a lot of these cool things and if you want to geek
• 1:04:08
  out on whiskey, you should really look into them.
• 1:04:11
  It's not necessarily the most typical whiskey that you would
• 1:04:14
  expect from Adelphi because this whiskey is cask dominant.
• 1:04:21
  But what Corey said earlier, it's like either Adelphi is
• 1:04:25
  going to be, you know, more geared towards distillery
• 1:04:29
  character, good quality spirit and letting the cask, you know,
• 1:04:33
  add something. In this case, it's just a really
• 1:04:36
  interesting. And and maybe being very, I mean
• 1:04:40
  you might not know is it, is this American oak even though
• 1:04:42
  it's Sherry or do you know if it's European oak or that's?
• 1:04:45
  A good question, a good question, good question.
• 1:04:47
  I'm not sure I did see the battle though, because the
• 1:04:50
  battle came up to the distillery and to be filled with Arden
• 1:04:53
  Merkin and I've never seen a Sherry butt as big in my life so
• 1:04:58
  I don't know. To my to my mind it looked like
• 1:05:02
  more like a Gorda than than a box.
• 1:05:05
  But this massive cask, beautiful looking cask that weighed a ton.
• 1:05:12
  Even the warehouse team were looking at it thinking, geezo,
• 1:05:15
  how are we going to store that because it's bigger than
• 1:05:17
  anything else. I, I, I must admit I'm, I was
• 1:05:21
  expecting a full on Sherry bomb out of that drama.
• 1:05:25
  Cheeks in and maybe a bit of tannic, you know, just that tree
• 1:05:30
  kind of and you don't get that there's a smoothness to that
• 1:05:32
  There's a really sort of roundness.
• 1:05:34
  Sweet, really sweet. I just.
• 1:05:36
  As soon as you, as soon as the raising things into my head, I
• 1:05:39
  can't get it out of it. I get it on the palate as well.
• 1:05:42
  Grape juice. Grape juice.
• 1:05:43
  Yeah. Really, really, really fruity.
• 1:05:46
  And has anyone, how many people have tried American single malt
• 1:05:50
  before in the room this? One changes every time.
• 1:05:53
  The glass rummy today and it was nutty the last time I tried,
• 1:05:56
  Right, Right. We're saying that earlier that
• 1:05:58
  we both had Westland, OK, nothing this bottle and is
• 1:06:04
  really kind of progressing for us.
• 1:06:05
  I think the first time we had it maybe wasn't our favorite one,
• 1:06:10
  but actually really, it kind of really matures into it now.
• 1:06:12
  I think it's. Really interesting this I.
• 1:06:14
  Think we have maybe had a Westland on the pod I think Ross
• 1:06:17
  came back with. I can't remember I.
• 1:06:19
  Lost came back on American single malt from kind of Seattle
• 1:06:22
  area and I remember it tasting very kind of herbally.
• 1:06:25
  So again, completely different. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:28
  Such a big cask though it's it's got a lot to compete with which
• 1:06:32
  is interesting. Right.
• 1:06:33
  So you mentioned that that cask has now since come up to the to
• 1:06:38
  the distillery and you're using that for Arden American.
• 1:06:41
  So when you're working with Adelphi and having that
• 1:06:43
  opportunity, because first of all, Arden Market, you don't
• 1:06:48
  store enough, You store casks up at Arden American, Yeah, but the
• 1:06:52
  majority of this stuff comes down to you're sighting them
• 1:06:54
  firmly and it's bottled there. Is that correct?
• 1:06:56
  It's all bottled. It's all bottled there.
• 1:06:57
  Unless it's a handful that's. In the but what's the story,
• 1:06:59
  what's the what's the storage situation?
• 1:07:01
  Is it all the casks or majority of casks come down or do you
• 1:07:04
  store a majority of casks on site up in North American?
• 1:07:07
  Yeah, some pretty 99.9% of our casks spend their whole
• 1:07:11
  maturation at the distillery right Sex warehouses when it
• 1:07:15
  comes to bottling. They're then taken down to Fife.
• 1:07:17
  They'll not spend more than a month or two in Fife before
• 1:07:20
  being bottled. Fife is predominantly filled
• 1:07:22
  with casts are going to be bottled as the Delphies.
• 1:07:26
  Right. And then so when it comes to
• 1:07:28
  those casts then, because in our last in the bottler spotlight or
• 1:07:31
  in the bottler blinder distiller, it was Morrison's old
• 1:07:36
  Perth Carmore Aberrargie. And what they were saying is
• 1:07:41
  like having that, having an independent bottler and the
• 1:07:44
  distillery now is, you know, if you're we had a talk, I like a
• 1:07:49
  link with talk I release from car more.
• 1:07:52
  But then they were sort of saying, well, this is all done
• 1:07:54
  in the same area. So you know what we're what do
• 1:07:57
  we do with that cask once we've emptied it like that, like
• 1:08:00
  liquid out of that talk I cask. You know, we could use that for
• 1:08:03
  Aberraggie or, or we could use it for another finishing for
• 1:08:06
  another release. Is that what you've said that
• 1:08:08
  that the cast from this has come up to Arden American?
• 1:08:11
  So now what we know is there's Arden American spirits sitting
• 1:08:13
  in the cask. Yep.
• 1:08:14
  That's how done warehouse sets. Got a question in the back
• 1:08:18
  there. You'd like that.
• 1:08:21
  We've got a question in the back there.
• 1:08:23
  Is there a chance there that you.
• 1:08:25
  Could taste a cast that Arden. American.
• 1:08:28
  I think that's great. And then by the time it's been
• 1:08:30
  put in the back of a wagon ribbon across to the wee ferry,
• 1:08:34
  not across the ferry, the ribbon all the way down to them fairly.
• 1:08:38
  But the Shukel in the boot in that cast makes it slightly
• 1:08:42
  different by the time you get into.
• 1:08:44
  The bit no, don't be sorry. I don't know, I guess.
• 1:08:50
  I guess it could be. I mean and I.
• 1:08:51
  Guess part of the question is does spending time in Fife ruin
• 1:08:54
  the whiskey? Because when you had a sentence
• 1:08:59
  there where you said Fife was predominantly filled with and
• 1:09:02
  I'm really worried where that sentence was going.
• 1:09:07
  No, I don't know. The moral to the story is come
• 1:09:11
  to the distillery and buy a handful.
• 1:09:15
  That's the only way you can buy Arden American that's never
• 1:09:18
  touched five, you see. But the coming to the distillery
• 1:09:21
  we're going back to you guys are part of the festival up there.
• 1:09:25
  There's a W What is it? A West Coast festival?
• 1:09:27
  It's West Highland Festival. First ever.
• 1:09:31
  First, everyone. When is that then?
• 1:09:34
  Middle of June. 19th, 19th, 19th, 19th.
• 1:09:37
  So you get to the 19th. So wait, what?
• 1:09:39
  Who's all involved in the West Highland Whiskey Festival?
• 1:09:42
  Is there? So we go starting with nickname.
• 1:09:47
  Am I correct? Yes, and nickname, which is
• 1:09:49
  totally, as crow flies, quite close to us over the.
• 1:09:52
  Other side of that hill. What's can I say that hill?
• 1:09:54
  Right. Have you had to drive it?
• 1:09:55
  How far is it? 2 hours?
• 1:09:58
  2 hours to your. Neighbors 2 hours away just out
• 1:10:01
  of the hill. It looks really close.
• 1:10:04
  He's got a boat. He's fine.
• 1:10:07
  I'm not. I'm not kidding about that
• 1:10:09
  either. And then you come to Arne Merck
• 1:10:12
  the next day where we're doing a couple of fun events, got live
• 1:10:16
  music, got a local brewery involved.
• 1:10:19
  Some of you guys might know this if you've been to the disorder.
• 1:10:20
  But some of these guys are signed up already.
• 1:10:23
  Who's Robert? You sign up.
• 1:10:24
  Are you It's? Difficult.
• 1:10:28
  Oh, that wasn't difficult to get there.
• 1:10:30
  There's a bus. Not for the not for the
• 1:10:34
  vecherous thing. Jenny assure me you will figure
• 1:10:37
  something out. There's also 10 by 10.
• 1:10:39
  How's your? Boat it sleeps, 5I heard.
• 1:10:48
  So is there people in the room here booked up for the for the,
• 1:10:50
  for the going up, not neck of the woods, are you?
• 1:10:51
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK.
• 1:10:54
  So, yeah, some of you guys might know this, but we've actually
• 1:10:56
  got a kiln and we've got a malt for Aard Merkin.
• 1:10:59
  It is not in use as yet, no. So that's what we're kind of
• 1:11:03
  hosting a few of the events, events on kind of a range of
• 1:11:06
  events. Next day you then hop on the
• 1:11:09
  ferry, go over to Tobumori. Yeah.
• 1:11:12
  And then the next day is open. So you're doing a recircular
• 1:11:15
  route? So for for distilleries and all
• 1:11:17
  nickneen yourselves tobermory and open, yeah.
• 1:11:20
  So, yeah. And is that 1 ticket, 1 ticket
• 1:11:22
  job or do you, can you pick and choose?
• 1:11:24
  You can say, right, I've just got up for Ardenmark.
• 1:11:26
  Is it like that phase situation where there's Arden Mercken day,
• 1:11:28
  there's Tobermory day, nickname day?
• 1:11:31
  We're each taking a day, we're each doing slightly different
• 1:11:34
  things in terms of ticketed events.
• 1:11:38
  We're we're selling tickets to the event that it's free, just
• 1:11:44
  so we get engaging numbers because if anyone's been to the
• 1:11:48
  distillery, you got an understanding of location.
• 1:11:52
  If we can get 100 people to that distillery for an open day, we'd
• 1:11:56
  be like site, I think I'd be, yeah.
• 1:11:59
  Because, for example, Oban is far more accessible than
• 1:12:02
  yourselves. I mean you you'll have.
• 1:12:03
  Hawkins. Yeah, you're getting trained.
• 1:12:05
  So I mean, I mean, are they selling tickets for, for, you
• 1:12:08
  know? I'm not actually sure what Oban
• 1:12:10
  are doing, but we're just we're actually site the opener
• 1:12:12
  involved as. Well, yeah.
• 1:12:14
  Well, I'd say, because I mean obviously in Diageo Distillery,
• 1:12:16
  so having a big company like that involved in the festival,
• 1:12:19
  that must be again. The same as Tobermory like in
• 1:12:21
  terms and. Tobermory as.
• 1:12:22
  Well, in terms of their reach, they're like scratching our
• 1:12:25
  backs in a way. And when it comes to that?
• 1:12:27
  That's great. I mean, and that is what it's
• 1:12:29
  doing is it's back to what we're talked, talked about with Alex
• 1:12:33
  about bringing people to the area and given the area.
• 1:12:36
  I had no idea that place like that existed, you know, until
• 1:12:40
  you heard about Arden American. There's a distillery.
• 1:12:42
  Where is it? No idea what a peninsula,
• 1:12:46
  western peninsula is in Scotland or anything like that, but being
• 1:12:49
  able to go right, Well, I know where mullahs and I know where
• 1:12:53
  open is and I can. And nicknames in that sort of
• 1:12:56
  same demographic as Arden Mark. And as such, yeah, getting an
• 1:13:00
  opportunity to be on that route makes a huge difference.
• 1:13:02
  And having that festival and it's year 1, so hopefully, you
• 1:13:05
  know, it'll grow and grow and grow.
• 1:13:07
  And that's, that's the big part of it.
• 1:13:08
  So that's really, really exciting. 100% So we're going to
• 1:13:10
  have live music, we're going to have local beer, food and just,
• 1:13:15
  I think Connell said it good crack.
• 1:13:17
  And everyone back to everyone back to callums, but after.
• 1:13:24
  Let's not tell anyone or address.
• 1:13:26
  They'll never find it. Right, Well, one of the things
• 1:13:30
  was you actually, I think it was one of you guys said that was a
• 1:13:36
  really, really good idea when I, when we talked about this is
• 1:13:40
  there's a mystery DRAM on the table, ladies and gentlemen.
• 1:13:46
  And I played it out pretty well to make it sound like it was
• 1:13:51
  pretty planned. But basically once we'd left the
• 1:13:54
  shop at the market and went back into the warehouse and I
• 1:13:59
  thought, right, we've just dropped a fair bit of cash in
• 1:14:02
  your place. I've never got Cornell where I
• 1:14:05
  want them. And I said, listen, Cornell,
• 1:14:07
  what do you reckon that we could draw a cash sample from the
• 1:14:11
  warehouse today that we could put in the line up for the
• 1:14:15
  people that are coming along? So the next drama that you've
• 1:14:17
  got this unmarked bottle which has been hiding behind the plant
• 1:14:21
  here is an unmarked, an unnamed bottle.
• 1:14:25
  It's a cast sample that was selected and drawn by Chuck
• 1:14:31
  Curtis, Angus and myself after a very long afternoon.
• 1:14:36
  Well, what I should say is actually, so I don't know how
• 1:14:38
  good this is because I can remember, I remember, I remember
• 1:14:41
  at the time going this is this is good.
• 1:14:43
  Yeah, so, So what we did now how, how, how old is that cask?
• 1:14:47
  Graham? Have you got the detail there?
• 1:14:49
  2015, two, 1015, it's peted. It's fully bourbon cask with a
• 1:14:54
  fire fill refill. Does a first fill of the.
• 1:14:56
  Leaf first fill, first fill. So I think the first cask we
• 1:14:59
  tried in the warehouse, it was a, I think it was a refill
• 1:15:04
  bourbon beated. And then we've tried that.
• 1:15:07
  We said, right, that's really, really good.
• 1:15:09
  That's the benchmark. So we have this idea Graham had.
• 1:15:13
  So it was like we just tried loads and loads of other casts
• 1:15:16
  and we went, it's not, it's not quite as good.
• 1:15:19
  And we said, right, we need to try some of the Sherry stuff
• 1:15:22
  because we really want to try that.
• 1:15:24
  Don't know about that. We need to try some Pete and
• 1:15:27
  Sherry stuff, right? OK, we tried the Paul Noire
• 1:15:30
  stuff. We went not sure.
• 1:15:34
  And then we were like, right, we actually need to pick something
• 1:15:36
  now. And it was like, we can't just
• 1:15:38
  go back and pick the first guy. And we said, well, can we try
• 1:15:41
  another Pitted bourbon Cassie? So well, I've got a first fell.
• 1:15:44
  Let you try that. And the four of us, we all, I
• 1:15:48
  mean, we're exhausted by this. We're knackered.
• 1:15:52
  It's been a long day. 4 glasses, we all tried it.
• 1:15:55
  We all went, yeah, that's the one, that's the one bottle that
• 1:15:58
  Connell. We'll see that in a couple of
• 1:16:00
  weeks time. So that that is what we're
• 1:16:02
  drinking. I don't know.
• 1:16:02
  Is there a strength to this Strong, strong It's.
• 1:16:07
  About it's I'm just just guessing I'll be around about
• 1:16:10
  the kind of 57 ish. 57 Mark And I think what I always get with
• 1:16:17
  are the mercury is that sweetness that comes off and
• 1:16:20
  it's funny walking into the dunnage warehouse the dunnage
• 1:16:22
  warehouse set up at the distillery smells completely
• 1:16:24
  different from any dunnage warehouse I'd ever been in and
• 1:16:26
  it did smell it was like a candy smell inside the warehouse it's.
• 1:16:31
  Like dunnage smell on this glass?
• 1:16:32
  Yeah. I would say, but I just there's
• 1:16:35
  something that really you do built Eric that puts me on to
• 1:16:38
  Rd. Merkin as a just across the
• 1:16:40
  board that sweetness that comes through, but there's also
• 1:16:43
  salinity as a saltiness. Well, I.
• 1:16:45
  Was going to say that because it's interesting you play on the
• 1:16:47
  sweetness, because I do get that salinity.
• 1:16:49
  I get that brininess. Yeah.
• 1:16:52
  And and and, you know, we've talked about the the combination
• 1:16:56
  of sweet and salty, especially in whiskey.
• 1:16:58
  It's just a magic combination and it's an absolute winner.
• 1:17:01
  And with the bourbon and the the peat, you get that that
• 1:17:04
  sweetness that comes through balanced out with the smokiness.
• 1:17:06
  So we've done a good job. Is, is this all right?
• 1:17:08
  Is everyone here? Is that all right?
• 1:17:10
  Is that quite a good drama? Is that?
• 1:17:11
  There we go? Sounds like we know what we're
• 1:17:13
  talking about now. And The thing is, if it were to
• 1:17:19
  show you, we'd have just played Curtis and Chart, certainly.
• 1:17:22
  But. Listen guys, from, from the,
• 1:17:27
  the, the distilleries point of view, what else can people be
• 1:17:29
  looking? We've, we've talked about the,
• 1:17:31
  the festival. What else can other people be
• 1:17:33
  looking forward to? What's coming from Arden Market
• 1:17:35
  this year? Can we tell them?
• 1:17:37
  If this goes out in two weeks, we can tell you.
• 1:17:40
  We is this going out in two weeks?
• 1:17:41
  Is it is. It is going out in two weeks,
• 1:17:43
  yes. We're listening to talk, I
• 1:17:45
  finish. Robert.
• 1:17:52
  No, that's embargo, right? Someone pulled their phone out.
• 1:17:54
  All right, right. OK.
• 1:17:56
  To be to be for a Connell and Graham habit and Limburg
• 1:17:59
  tomorrow. So that's why all right, it's
• 1:18:01
  pretty good. It's pretty.
• 1:18:01
  Good. So there you go.
• 1:18:03
  So yeah, we even, we tried it for the first time today as well
• 1:18:06
  when we're at Nocus doing the shoot for it.
• 1:18:08
  And yeah, it's it's interesting, isn't it?
• 1:18:12
  Yeah, it's kind of more farmy than I thought it would be.
• 1:18:14
  So it's a really, really interesting release.
• 1:18:16
  We've never done a Tokai before, so it's something new to add to
• 1:18:21
  the mezcal ROM blah blah kind of fence.
• 1:18:25
  Does everyone know what Tokai is?
• 1:18:28
  I used to call it Tokaji. The same coins Kaji as a wee bit
• 1:18:33
  the dog, so they spell it. Who's just been called until I
• 1:18:35
  was. Correct.
• 1:18:36
  Tokai Tokai, the new. Tokai the new.
• 1:18:39
  No, I can tell you it is a Hungarian sweet wine.
• 1:18:43
  Yeah, it's delicious stuff. You can buy it in Liddles, by
• 1:18:44
  the way. Pretty.
• 1:18:45
  Good. Do you guys know how they
• 1:18:47
  measure the sweetness? Does anybody?
• 1:18:48
  Know. No, I have no idea.
• 1:18:50
  In baskets. Baskets.
• 1:18:51
  How do you measure sweetness in baskets?
• 1:18:56
  So it says on a if you buy a bottle of Takai it says 5
• 1:18:59
  baskets of sweetness. In a different language in.
• 1:19:02
  Hungarian. In Hungarian I wouldn't ask you
• 1:19:04
  to, although we should say it in Hungarian.
• 1:19:06
  Egg sugar. All I know, all I know about
• 1:19:09
  Hungarian is the word for cheese in Hungarian, right?
• 1:19:13
  Do you know what that is, Graham?
• 1:19:16
  Does anyone know cheese? No, it's shite.
• 1:19:21
  So if you ever meet a Hungarian, say what's what's the Hungarian
• 1:19:24
  for cheese? And they'll laugh because I'm
• 1:19:25
  shite. What is the Hungarian word for
• 1:19:28
  cheese? What is your?
• 1:19:29
  Pattern in Hungarian cheese. Well, wait, let's do the draft.
• 1:19:36
  Let's do the vote in the drums, right.
• 1:19:37
  OK, what are we going? AD 10?
• 1:19:39
  Let's see a show of hands for that for tonight.
• 1:19:41
  In fact, you know what? You get 2 votes.
• 1:19:43
  That's where we go. 2 votes, so we go.
• 1:19:45
  So AD 10, show of hands for AD 10 solids, right?
• 1:19:48
  OK, good. What about the what about the
• 1:19:51
  mid Jay? OK, what about what about the
• 1:19:55
  Paul and what it's a good one there, right.
• 1:19:59
  Let's move on to the Adelphi then.
• 1:20:00
  What about the coin leash? Coin leash is looking good.
• 1:20:04
  What about the American single malt?
• 1:20:06
  The Westland? Westland really, really, really
• 1:20:08
  nice. Really enjoyed that right.
• 1:20:10
  I want to see every hand up here.
• 1:20:12
  OK, what about the cast sample the Whiskey Stories podcast
• 1:20:17
  pulled? Hey, brilliant guys.
• 1:20:20
  Well, look, I hope you've enjoyed yourself tonight.
• 1:20:21
  It's been absolutely fantastic. Let's hear it for Callum and
• 1:20:24
  Connie who've going to have travelled all the way from Arden
• 1:20:26
  American and Leith to be here. Absolutely fantastic.
• 1:20:39
  You have been listening to Whiskey Stories Live in the
• 1:20:41
  Delaware with Arden American. One, there we go.