Latest / Whisky Stories Podcast / How to start a distillery - the Isle of Raasay Story

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How to start a distillery - the Isle of Raasay Story · Whisky Stories Podcast

• 0:00
  All the very best guys, your starts are coming along.
• 0:01
  That's all. Cheers.
• 0:02
  Great stuff. Cheers.
• 0:03
  All right. There's worse ways to spend
• 0:10
  Monday nights then very. Much so very.
• 0:12
  Much so right? I guess you know what to do.
• 0:14
  Clap us in. Welcome to the Whiskey Stories
• 0:19
  podcast. So I'm the Co founder and master
• 0:22
  distiller I so I Co founded Andy Distillers back in July 2014
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  with Bill Dobby. Brilliant and I am masters of
• 0:31
  stellar, whatever that means. But I sat there with the seller
• 0:34
  book, my bottle of Tweedale and my business plan, My idea for
• 0:38
  the board is the story and pitched it as best I possibly
• 0:41
  could. So I thought it's a no then.
• 0:49
  Welcome to the Whiskey Stories podcast.
• 0:50
  Myself, Graham, Koga And we are back in the athletic arms, back
• 0:53
  in the Diggers and back in the dungeon, nicely sandwiched
• 0:58
  underneath the drinks, toilets and the and the bar.
• 1:02
  We've got a couple of guests, but Chuck, how are you?
• 1:04
  First of all, all right. I'm good, yeah.
• 1:06
  Not bad. Feeling better after Friday
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  night, but yeah, good. Yeah.
• 1:09
  Well, as we are recording this, it's the Monday after the Friday
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  before, Yeah, where we had, well, we had our big birthday
• 1:16
  bash and that. Was a great night and fantastic
• 1:21
  to meet everyone as well. Lots of listeners, lots of
• 1:23
  former guests, and just a really good.
• 1:26
  Party games and fun. Party games are fun.
• 1:28
  Most of it went to plan. And if I get the editing sorted,
• 1:32
  because as we are recording, I've, I've, I got home on Friday
• 1:37
  night, nearly Saturday morning. And I did think to myself, I'm
• 1:41
  just going to double check I hit record on where I where I should
• 1:44
  have hit record because I believe a lot we do have
• 1:47
  previous for that. So, yeah, I did check the audio
• 1:51
  coming through. OK.
• 1:52
  And I looked today at the footage and there's going to be
• 1:55
  a bit of editing to go through that.
• 1:57
  But if I get my editing right as you're listening to this, last
• 2:01
  week's episode will have been the big birthday bash.
• 2:05
  You've been playing Ally Baxter's bedroom.
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  Yeah. Ally Baxter's bingo with people
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  shouting to us. Ally Baxter's bedroom window.
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  Yeah. There's got that amazing wood
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  cut. We didn't bring the.
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  Piggy Hoose. Yeah, yeah.
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  Yeah, I forgot that that's in my house right now.
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  Lovely, because I would have been very appropriate for
• 2:26
  tonight. A lovely block, like a chopping
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  block of wood that had been made by Johnny of Heiggy Hoos or
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  Higgy Hoos. Higgy Hoos.
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  I shout to Johnny for that. He made it himself, turned the
• 2:36
  wood and it was lovely resin inside with the Whiskey Stories
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  logo and like. 5 glasses for glasses and then a perfect place
• 2:42
  for a bottle as well. Perfect.
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  And he said he did that because he says this thing when he
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  watches, looks a little bit rickety and I forgot, I forgot
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  it tonight, right. Anyway, lads, there's another
• 2:51
  podcast episode and we are joined by two guests today.
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  We're joined by Gregor Hunter and Alistair Day of Rassie.
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  I love Rassie distillery. I love Rassie distillery.
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  Yes, Gregor, you're Alistair's agent because it's you that put
• 3:06
  all. This yeah.
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  I just thought he's available so I not have the the expert to
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  come along and tell a few stories as well as me.
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  Yeah, because I, I, I've, I've been badgering you for well over
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  a year now. So why do you come on the
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  podcast? It's.
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  Just the calendars couldn't get the calendars working they.
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  Didn't say that, you said your chat's rubbish that.
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  Goes without saying so. What do you do with Isla Lassie
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  Distillery? So I managed the sales within
• 3:32
  the UK or that's what I do now. I've been with the company for
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  just over three years, a bit, in fact closer to 3 1/2 years now.
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  Kind of started in a brand ambassadorial role and then
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  moved more into the sales role and yeah, now managed the UK
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  market, which is based in Edinburgh, but kind of all over
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  the shop. Fantastic, great and Alistair
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  welcome along. Welcome to the Diggers dungeon.
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  This is, for some people, the pinnacle of their whiskey life,
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  that they've made it it. Can only go up from here.
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  Well, actually, absolutely. You don't want to go any lower.
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  And it was a graveyard. We don't know.
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  It's something bigger. Well, welcome.
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  Well, what do you? What's your title at Isle of
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  ratio? So I'm the Co founder and master
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  distiller Iowa. So I Co founded R&B Distillers
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  back in July 2014 with Bill Dobby Brilliant.
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  And now I'm master distiller, whatever that means, but.
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  I think you're the first master distiller.
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  Quite possible, yeah. We've had, we've had master
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  blenders, we've had distillers, but I don't think we've ever had
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  a master distiller. Well, I mean, Craig Johnson is
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  one of the only people in the whiskey industry who's been a
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  master distiller and master blender of a distillery.
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  But that was that wasn't a Scotch one.
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  That was one in Australia. So we're giving you that.
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  You're taking that podcast, right?
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  How does that all start? Talk us through how do you well,
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  distilling and things. Let's say it was a passion
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  beforehand. Yeah, well, it's so I guess I
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  can trace my connection to my family connection to whiskey
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  back to 1820. Oh, really?
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  A company called J and A Davidson, we're establishing
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  Coal stream in 1820. They were licensed grocery shop.
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  They were whiskey blenders and they had the Colstein Brewery.
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  And my great, great grandfather left.
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  No, my great grandfather left school in 1895 and joined as an
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  office boy. And then in 1923, he took over
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  the whiskey blending side of the business and the licensed
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  grocery shop. So it changed name from Janie
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  Davis to Richard D Unfortunately for me, he retired after the
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  Second World War and obviously, but that they had had to run
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  things down. The company had kind of been
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  split up into various things and the Coldstream brewery was its
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  own entity. It got by bought by Vox and he
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  was at retiring age and he decided that was that he was
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  going to retire and my granddad and his two sisters, we would
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  have had to start again from scratch.
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  Yeah. So that wasn't it.
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  And so my granddad actually went off and became a customs officer
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  or something about as far away as you can get from being a
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  whiskey blender. And it was 2009.
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  I was it was my mum and dad's. My dad said, you know, why don't
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  you have the book? So the book is the seller book.
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  It's, it's actually a sales Ledger for 18811882.
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  But at the back of the book, it's got all the blends from
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  1899 to 1916. And I had been working in the
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  food industry and I was like, I'd quite like to work for
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  myself. I'm old business.
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  And I was thinking like, you know, do I do haggis or, you
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  know, sort of cheese? I was working in the dairy
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  industry. Do I do something like that?
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  And my dad's like half a book, do something with a book.
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  So in 2009, I decided to recreate one of the whiskeys
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  from the book, which is called the Tweed Deal.
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  So Tweed, literally liver Tweed. So coal seams on the river Tweed
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  in Dale Valley. So in the book it's got all the
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  all the recipes for tweeding from 1899 to 1916 and.
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  How detailed are the recipes going to types of casks or
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  distilleries? So it's it's got the distillery,
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  the quantity only after 19, only in the last year of the book has
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  it got year of distillation really.
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  Because it was 1914 when you had to 1st right record the age
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  because that's when two years old came in.
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  And by 1916 it was three years old.
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  So everything prior to 1914 doesn't have a year of
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  distillation on the book, but it does have wonderful things like
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  Sherry for colour. Yeah.
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  So because they were licensed grocery shops, so they obviously
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  they bottled cherry, they bottled claret, they bottled rum
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  and they blended rum as well. And so yeah, they would just to
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  keep the consistent colour, they'll just add a bit of.
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  Sherry So how faithfully were you able to recreate?
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  Well, I didn't add any Sherry. Yeah, no.
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  So what I always say is it's the recipe from the book.
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  So it's the same quantities, same distilleries.
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  Yeah. OK.
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  So luckily all open still. Well, no.
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  There's a few interesting ones in the book that are long gone.
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  There's one called PO PO Double LO and I can, I'm thinking
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  chicken that's this. So anyway, there's a book called
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  Scott's Mist and if you look in there, Paul was near Ball Blair
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  and it was the same Ross family that owned it and when Paul
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  closed they moved to Ball Blair and it had a very similar
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  flavour profile to that. So it's things like that in the
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  book and then things would be scored out and he'd write other
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  things in and he obviously couldn't get that into that.
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  So there's 9 whiskeys in the blend, 1 grain, 8 malts, low and
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  highland space hiding Isla, just one Isla and by there's probably
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  16 different distilleries that you used.
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  So that was actually great. So I did the very unsexy thing,
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  put it on a spreadsheet and grouped it into like, oh, well,
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  obviously that's these are these and these are those and you
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  know, this is the, this is the core malts that we built off.
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  This is and was able to kind of work out what I was looking for
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  so as faithfully as I could. It wouldn't taste anything like
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  my tweed deal that I've made, wouldn't taste anything like his
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  tweed deals because the distillery character then would
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  be way different to the production process.
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  From the 1800s to 2020. It's slightly different unless
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  you're spring back and then it's the same.
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  I mean, I've got a couple of questions on that front.
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  First of all, did you have any connections within the whiskey
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  industry at this point or were you literally sitting there with
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  your spreadsheet going? Now I need to try and find this
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  liquid. So no, I had no connections in
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  whiskey in 2009 at all. I like to drum, obviously and.
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  How do you? Because, I mean, that's a.
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  Crazy network to put together in five years as well.
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  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was a steep learning
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  car. Yeah.
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  I mean, when you think about it like there's even today, we
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  still learn things about like how you can contact people and
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  how you go about is it through brokerages or how do you build
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  relationships with distilleries and you'll know that yourselves
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  with a disorder which will come later and even from your point
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  of view with sales as well, Gregor, But like where does that
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  start then? So I mean, I was fortunate.
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  So if you think about it, when my great grandfather joined the
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  business, it'd been going for 70 odd years.
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  So there's, there's 70 years of knowledge even when he started
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  as an office boy and and then you know the recipes from 1899.
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  So there's over 100 years of, of whiskey, 130 years of knowledge
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  and recipe captured in that book.
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  So by just as faithfully as I could recreating that recipe and
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  it was 9 discoveries bought 9 casks and put the quality
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  together and I bought the 9 casks 2000 and nine 2010.
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  When I bought the 9 casks I bought them through a broker.
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  In those days they were still careful how I phrase this but
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  still reputable brokers with good connections that were
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  buying new make and good cast and maturing it on.
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  They weren't what you think of a.
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  Whiskey broker. That was that the whiskey
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  broker. Term is so this was back in 2010
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  that there were still people who had bought new make, who had
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  bought cast, who had matured on lying in bond that were then
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  able to, you know, they were able to go, right.
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  Well, you know, I'll get you a sample of this, get you a sample
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  of that. I could put it together in the
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  kitchen at home and go, this is going to work.
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  I'll buy those casks and that's how I stand there.
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  I mean, it was a kind of very much a home spun thing.
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  Were you bottling at home? So I was still working full time
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  in the dairy industry at that time and it was very much
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  evenings and weekends. And if you meet my wife Sharon,
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  she will tell you that I was literally in the kitchen mixing
• 11:55
  things up and made the whole family taste them blind and all
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  the rest of that. So and, and and so that's how it
• 12:01
  that's how it started. When you see the dairy industry,
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  is this dairy farming or? So it was cheese.
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  Cheese. Yeah.
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  So at that point, I want to come.
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  So originally it was Mcclellan's cheese.
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  So if you've heard of Seriously Strong, that was Galloway.
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  Yeah, Galloway. And then they got bought by like
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  Talus, who owned President. So you might have President
• 12:24
  Brie, President Butter. So I got to go round the world
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  and do cheese stuff. And so, yeah.
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  So, right, so that did the family name have a carry into
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  what's like. Well, had the generations been
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  so distant that, you know, because you know, the whiskey's
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  a tiny little industry. And if your grandfather like, I
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  was like, my grandfather worked in whiskey and there's still a
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  few people in the industry that will say, oh, I remember your
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  grandfather. Whereas, you know, now you're
• 12:57
  when you were in 2009, the gap, was it too big?
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  So you, you know, able to phone up and say, oh, it's so and so's
• 13:02
  laddie. And they'll go, oh, I will give
• 13:03
  me, I'm sorry, it was some cash or anything like.
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  That there's no cash for you. I mean, if you, it's quite, it's
• 13:08
  quite interesting when you look at Jamie Davison's, they were,
• 13:12
  they were, you know, a proper whiskey blending company went
• 13:16
  round the world. I mean, if you think about it,
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  they would establish the same year as John Walker and son.
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  So that was, that was the era of it.
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  And every town had a licensed grocer shop.
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  Every town had maybe more than one.
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  And, and, and that was, you know, you the distilleries
• 13:31
  didn't bottle whiskey. These distilleries didn't blend
• 13:34
  whiskey. You know, it was it was the
• 13:35
  licensed grocers because of the legislation at the times of the
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  licensed grocers that bought cars and did the blending.
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  So that heritage has existed. But when I went, Oh yeah, JA
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  Davidson, Richard Day. And they're like, what?
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  Yeah, yeah. So no, there was, there's no
• 13:50
  cache for that. It was just a bit of graft and
• 13:54
  good fortune. But I guess you know from from
• 13:57
  blending in Coldstream, yeah. How does that lead to distilling
• 14:01
  in Rasi? Yeah.
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  So basically what happened was, as I say, when I started to the
• 14:07
  2000 and nine, 2010, there was you could still get good quality
• 14:13
  casks at reasonable prices. By 2012, you couldn't.
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  So if you think back to 2012, that's when distillers were
• 14:22
  taking their age statements off. That's when the Kalan Gold
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  appeared. And that was because the
• 14:28
  industry was victim of their own success.
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  Stocks became incredibly tight. You couldn't get stocks.
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  So I'm like, OK, this isn't going to work.
• 14:37
  Buying cast and mature whiskey is not going to work.
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  So I'm going to have to do what the brokers were then doing.
• 14:44
  I was going to have to buy new make, buy casts and wait.
• 14:47
  Now I did the sums to do that. When I added them up, I thought
• 14:52
  you build a small distillery for that amount of money rather than
• 14:57
  buying someone else's new make and casts.
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  And why don't I try and raise the money, the investment to
• 15:03
  build a small distillery. And of course, I'm thinking cold
• 15:05
  stream the borders and cut a very Long story short through
• 15:09
  that process of talking to people who might be interested
• 15:12
  in investing in distillery. I met Bill Bill Dalby and Bill
• 15:17
  was looking to get into whiskey And he basically he's a serial
• 15:22
  entrepreneur, made all his money from from tech businesses.
• 15:26
  When I met him, he said, yeah, I'm thinking of getting into the
• 15:28
  industry. I want a legacy business.
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  I want something from my family and a long term thing.
• 15:32
  And of course I'm well, here's a plan for a Borders distillery.
• 15:36
  And first time I met Bill was in Manor Place where our offices in
• 15:41
  in Edinburgh. It was November 2013.
• 15:44
  It was absolutely. It was just one of those really
• 15:47
  cool days. And I sat there with the seller
• 15:49
  book, my bottle of Tweedale and my business plan, my idea for
• 15:53
  the Borders distillery and pitched it as best I possibly
• 15:56
  could. And Bill, that's interesting.
• 15:57
  I'm thinking of Rassie. So I thought that's a no then,
• 16:04
  however, it wasn't, it wasn't a no.
• 16:07
  So Bill bought the disused hotel on Rassie the the February after
• 16:12
  that. And and then he said to me, why
• 16:16
  don't you come up? Why don't you come up with that?
• 16:17
  I went up May 2014 and we both stood outside this this used
• 16:22
  hotel and he's going, what do you think?
• 16:24
  And I'm looking at the view of sky and the whole journey of
• 16:28
  getting there and just thought, you know, this is the right
• 16:30
  place. This is the right place to build
• 16:32
  the story. So.
• 16:33
  Wow, did. You did you have a connection
• 16:35
  to? Russell yeah.
• 16:35
  So so when Bill was exiting his this business and they were all
• 16:40
  his mates were all kind of pulling his leg about what
• 16:42
  you're going to do next and all the rest of it.
• 16:43
  Is it like, is it Harris Tweed bobble hats or is it, you know,
• 16:47
  what is it? And they started talking about
• 16:49
  whiskey. So his oldest friend from
• 16:51
  school, Ian Hector Ross, who who still works for us, went well.
• 16:56
  Does this just use hotel on Rasi?
• 16:58
  You should maybe come and have a look at it.
• 16:59
  So that was the connection. So Ian's wife's family's from
• 17:03
  Rasi, that was, that was. That's the sort of line.
• 17:05
  That's where the the and it was just one of those conversations
• 17:08
  and a bit like me going I'm going to buy a new making Matuna
• 17:11
  and go. Well, actually the small
• 17:13
  distillery bill was like, oh, actually.
• 17:15
  Yeah. And that's where it came.
• 17:17
  Again, that's. Fascinating.
• 17:18
  Going back to the to the blinding, Yeah, it's really
• 17:21
  interesting, though. It's really good, in fact, with
• 17:23
  the exception of us trying to do bongos, bingo meats, whiskey
• 17:29
  tastings last Friday. But the episodes that we've
• 17:33
  recorded recently are all accidentally following in line
• 17:37
  with conversations going back to you, talking about what grocers
• 17:40
  were doing and things like that. Chuck, when we sat with Dougal
• 17:42
  Gordon, he explained how Glenfiddich were actually one of
• 17:45
  the first to get licensing for bottling on site and which was
• 17:49
  the sort of real starting point of single malt as we know it
• 17:52
  today. And 1963.
• 17:54
  Yeah, Yeah. We talked about the distiller
• 17:57
  how back then. And it's something that it's
• 17:59
  really difficult to get your head round because we all
• 18:02
  picture through the marketing that we get seen looked at for
• 18:06
  the last 2530 years that are, you know, everyone was these use
• 18:11
  quite, quite as an example, the green triangular bottle, it's
• 18:15
  iconic, yada, yada, yada. But actually, yeah, like it was
• 18:18
  the 50s and 60s where they actually first began bottling on
• 18:21
  site and they were one of the few to get grandfather rights
• 18:24
  was why they were allowed to do it.
• 18:26
  Then we got Arthur Motley on the week after and Arthur was
• 18:30
  speaking about, and we've talked about it really recently
• 18:34
  actually, and saying about how he said tasting notes never
• 18:37
  really wear a thing up until like the 90s, you know, and it
• 18:41
  backs it up where he said you've got blending documents from the
• 18:44
  old grocers that go all the way back and even up to like the.
• 18:47
  Tasting note was add Sherry. Yeah, you got for a color, for a
• 18:52
  color. It's all, I mean, it's like what
• 18:56
  you're looking at. So you're saying what was it, 12
• 18:58
  different distilleries, but nine would?
• 19:00
  Would 9 actual yeah distilleries, so 9 if you like
• 19:05
  casks for the size I was in it but a pool of 16.
• 19:09
  Different distilleries, yeah. So no, again, then it comes back
• 19:12
  to what Craig Johnson was talking about, how like actually
• 19:15
  for the blending it's all about, it's not really about the
• 19:18
  flavour in the cask, it's about the distillery character.
• 19:21
  So you're getting because the distillery character, and I've
• 19:24
  said it 100 Times Now, I have, I still think about it and it's a
• 19:27
  great wee bit is like the Highland.
• 19:29
  You said Highland Park was brilliant to blend with if you
• 19:32
  had it because it was one of the few spirits in the whole of
• 19:35
  Scotland that hit the front and back of your tongue at the same
• 19:37
  time. But you said but it was a
• 19:39
  nightmare if you didn't have it because you needed to get 2
• 19:41
  separate distilleries to be able to hit that hit that same thing.
• 19:45
  So was that what it was like in those documents where you're in
• 19:49
  the back of that? Book that's exactly that's
• 19:50
  exactly what it is and exactly what they were doing and what
• 19:53
  all licensed grocery shops were doing in the time it's like.
• 19:55
  And of course, they all wanted to have their, you know,
• 19:58
  everybody's blend was different. Yeah, you know, And, you know,
• 20:02
  and it was, again, it was about, well, this is the video blend
• 20:04
  from this area, but the whiskeys were from all round in Scotland.
• 20:10
  And I think that whole thing about distillery character is
• 20:12
  really important. And it's really important when
• 20:14
  it came to. Been given a blank sheet of
• 20:16
  distillery, a blank sheet paper to design a distillery is that
• 20:21
  we didn't have to have a distillery character because we
• 20:25
  weren't ever going to supply blenders.
• 20:26
  So, you know, designing Rassie, we've been able to design the
• 20:31
  liquid, the process, the oak policy literally was a blank
• 20:35
  sheet of paper because we didn't have to have.
• 20:37
  There's never been a distillery on, never been a legal
• 20:39
  distillery on Rassie before. So we didn't have to have, we
• 20:44
  didn't have to have a Rasi character.
• 20:45
  So that's, it's an interesting twist on exactly the same thing
• 20:49
  when you, because when you're blending you, you have to, if
• 20:53
  you're supplying the blending mark, you have to have a
• 20:55
  distillery character because it's so reliant on.
• 20:58
  And when I was going through that book and that pool of 16,
• 21:01
  the reason I could put them into different groups and see what he
• 21:04
  was my great grandfather was doing because they had this, you
• 21:07
  knew what their distillery character was.
• 21:09
  Yeah. And that I suppose, would back
• 21:11
  then, you know, cast quality would have been so varied so
• 21:16
  that a good strong distillery like, you know, Scott's then
• 21:19
  said it on on the big birthday bash when he produced the the
• 21:24
  oat whiskey and refill bourbon. And he's like, you'll never like
• 21:27
  this is where you'll find mature whiskey, mature dye.
• 21:30
  It's almost purest form where you'll say that it's not going
• 21:33
  to be nothing can hide in a refill bourbon cast, but.
• 21:36
  Then I guess was it in prior to 1914?
• 21:39
  How long were you spent some time in that cast?
• 21:41
  Exactly so. If you didn't have good.
• 21:43
  Character restricted Fire water. Exactly.
• 21:45
  Yeah. So, so having, you know, getting
• 21:47
  that opportunity as a blind back in those days, fascinating then,
• 21:50
  right. So at this point you said you
• 21:52
  like to DRAM, but you're working in cheese.
• 21:55
  How and after you start then deciding distilling.
• 21:59
  Well, yeah, how how'd you start designing that?
• 22:02
  I just design, yeah, that's, that's a brilliant question
• 22:05
  because like. Creaminess or.
• 22:06
  Is it, well, it's, it's almost, it's almost that exactly that.
• 22:10
  So, so see also, you know, we had basically given a black
• 22:17
  sheet paper so we could have made anything we wanted to make.
• 22:20
  But we're on a Hebridean island, often other Hebridean islands.
• 22:24
  We're an island off an island in the Hebrides.
• 22:26
  So, you know, the first question would be, well, what is he going
• 22:31
  to make? Well, we want to make a
• 22:32
  Hebrewdeen whiskey. And then you go, what's a
• 22:33
  Hebrewdeen whiskey? And at the time you had Talisker
• 22:37
  Tobrew, Bori and Judy, and that was Jura.
• 22:38
  And that was about it. And they're not that similar.
• 22:43
  But the bit of that I was thinking that that came to my
• 22:46
  mind was this lightly peated. So not not heavily peated, no
• 22:50
  Isla peat, A lightly A lightly peated element.
• 22:53
  And then it was like, but what else, you know, so you've got
• 22:57
  lightly peated, but that's in itself not enough.
• 23:00
  And about that time. So this is, you know, if you
• 23:02
  think about it, this 2014, two 1015, there's a lot of chat
• 23:06
  about Bulmore, you know, and, and how the character changed
• 23:10
  70s and 80s and how it had all this dark fruit character and
• 23:13
  then they changed the process and all this.
• 23:14
  And I was thinking like dark fruit.
• 23:16
  Dark fruit's really interesting because when we talk about fruit
• 23:20
  flavours in whiskey, we tend to talk about apples, pears, maybe
• 23:23
  banana, maybe some trouble. But very rarely do you go, Oh
• 23:27
  yeah, it's a dark fruit. Can it tell, you know, oh, it's
• 23:28
  blackcurrants there or whatever. So that was, that was the kind
• 23:32
  of, in very crude terms, like we're going to make a lightly
• 23:35
  peated Singamol with dark fruits.
• 23:38
  But then the big hurdle was I knew we were going to release it
• 23:43
  345 years old. So that's where the old, right?
• 23:48
  How do you make an excellent whiskey at 345 years old?
• 23:52
  So to answer that question, to me, what is an excellent
• 23:55
  whiskey? An excellent whiskey has
• 23:56
  complexity, depth and balance. So how do we create complexity,
• 24:00
  depth and balance? And to me that was like we
• 24:03
  needed to design and still it could be lots of different types
• 24:05
  of new make spirit because by making lots of different types
• 24:08
  of new make spirit, we can build up complexity.
• 24:12
  So again, in basic terms, we do six months of plain multi barley
• 24:16
  and six months of PT multi bar. So there's two new mixed spirits
• 24:19
  and they're matured separately. And then you bring the oak
• 24:23
  policy into that. So we use X-ray cast, chincumin,
• 24:25
  oak connects, Bordeaux red wine. So you know, there's three cast
• 24:28
  types, 2 spirit types. So essentially we've got six
• 24:31
  different cast types at the end of it.
• 24:33
  But then you start thinking about, well, what, what in the
• 24:35
  process can we have offer on? So we've got cooling jackets on
• 24:38
  the on the wash backs, stainless steel wash backs 'cause I came
• 24:42
  from the dairy industry and I like to clean stuff.
• 24:43
  Yeah, stainless steel wash backs with cooling jackets, which
• 24:46
  means we have a bit of control over the fermentation
• 24:49
  temperature. Now that's important because the
• 24:51
  higher the fermentation temperature, the more fusal oils
• 24:54
  produced. The more fusal oils, the higher
• 24:55
  alcohols you get, more viscosity, more mouthfeel and.
• 24:59
  Your fermentation times like kind of 90 hours.
• 25:01
  So we, yeah, we're, we're three days and five day fermentations.
• 25:06
  Oh, right. OK.
• 25:07
  Five days really long. Times, yeah, yeah.
• 25:09
  And again, so by having two different fermentation times,
• 25:13
  you get two different types of wash before it goes into the
• 25:18
  still. So the temperature's a big
• 25:20
  factor in that, as I say. So if we're on, if we're on
• 25:23
  plain malt, we tend to stop the fermentation somewhere between
• 25:26
  30 and 32. If we're on pitted, we let it go
• 25:29
  as high as it as it wants. So we're trying to build more
• 25:32
  viscosity with more fusil oils, more higher alcohols, more of
• 25:36
  that mouthfeel and that's in the wash.
• 25:38
  And then three day fermentations at 70 hours, at 40 hours you've
• 25:43
  got all the alcohol you're ever going to get.
• 25:45
  At three days, 70 hours, the yeast dies off, the cells burst
• 25:49
  open, a process called lysis that creates this buttery, oily
• 25:54
  mouthfeel. So that again builds up
• 25:56
  complexity. And then you're thinking, well,
• 25:58
  why are you still fermenting if the yeasts all died off?
• 26:00
  Well, we get into Lactobacillus development.
• 26:02
  So Lactobacillus, again very common in the dairy industry,
• 26:07
  but comes in naturally on the malted barley.
• 26:10
  And when the yeast dies off, the Lactobacillus start to grow.
• 26:16
  So the Lactobacillus produce lactic acid.
• 26:18
  Lactic acid lowers the pH, so the lower the pH, the better the
• 26:22
  interaction with copper and the wash.
• 26:23
  Still, it's a catalytic reaction that's worked better at a lower
• 26:27
  pH. That lactic acid also reacts
• 26:30
  with the esters that they used to produce.
• 26:33
  So you get longer chained esters, which lean more towards
• 26:36
  those dark fruit flavours that we're looking for.
• 26:38
  So by having temperature cold 3 days and five days, Yeah, yeah,
• 26:42
  tracks. Getting excited?
• 26:43
  Here. So I just say when you're trying
• 26:45
  to get this like 2 days into the job before saturation.
• 26:50
  So that's what it's. It's quite hard.
• 26:51
  I remember showing Gregor and Lucy round the distillery.
• 26:54
  I think day 2, day one, can't remember.
• 26:57
  And this is what we want to use like quick.
• 27:00
  Did you learn your production of cheese?
• 27:01
  Well, I was going to say, did you do any professional,
• 27:04
  professional courses in distilling or is this no also
• 27:08
  thought and is there stuff like Graham was saying, is there
• 27:10
  stuff you've learned from the cheese industry that you've
• 27:12
  taken? Yeah, so I at this point, I
• 27:15
  always confess I did a degree in botany at Glasgow.
• 27:17
  So technically I'm a botanist. So things like oak species,
• 27:22
  barley variety, yeast, rains, all that kind of biochemistry
• 27:27
  side of stuff I just love, right and I guess.
• 27:30
  You wouldn't be. Able to tell?
• 27:34
  No, I mean, because that's, I mean, hearing you speak there,
• 27:36
  you're going, I'm trying to keep up with what you're saying about
• 27:39
  all that. And there are people who watch
• 27:41
  this are absolutely like, they'll go bananas for hearing
• 27:45
  about that because that's that. For the whiskey geek side of
• 27:48
  things like geeking out on new strains and everything, it's
• 27:50
  fantastic. But I'm trying to picture it in
• 27:52
  my head going. It's why we brought that,
• 27:54
  actually, because that's 100% champagne.
• 27:56
  You said that, man. Is it?
• 27:57
  Well, we'll be. Come on to that in a minute.
• 28:00
  But just hearing you speak, I'm trying to work out like, how can
• 28:03
  you go? Because we that's gonna be so
• 28:06
  easy, very, very easy to go, right.
• 28:08
  I like the idea of starting a distillery and I've got somebody
• 28:11
  who's going to back us and we can get this distillery built.
• 28:14
  We've found this area and we're going to Co found it together.
• 28:17
  But also go and there's plenty of distilleries who have done
• 28:20
  it. They just go find the guy who is
• 28:22
  an expert on that side of the business and get them in.
• 28:26
  And who is it that we called? It was the Pep Guardiola of oh,
• 28:31
  it's the guy that time do I can't remember anyway, but
• 28:36
  basically we're sort of saying get them in and get them get
• 28:40
  somebody who could do that. And even things like Paul Main
• 28:43
  said about Arden Ho and he said, you know what you're going when
• 28:46
  you're building a distillery for the very first time, you can
• 28:49
  literally manipulate and manufacture how flavour will be
• 28:52
  like what you just said through understanding what your
• 28:54
  distillation, what your what your fermentation things would
• 28:57
  be and things like that. But also copper bends, you know,
• 29:00
  just suddenly going. Well, I haven't supported a bit
• 29:02
  stills yet. Yeah.
• 29:04
  But from your point of view, you're obviously got a passion
• 29:07
  in this because you did say before maybe modestly now
• 29:10
  looking back on I like to DRAM, but I mean, were you were you
• 29:14
  geeking out on whiskey before you started even getting into
• 29:19
  into this level of it? Where are you sitting there with
• 29:21
  it? Because you're mine Early to
• 29:24
  early to mid 2000s, two, 1010. Up to that point, I don't know
• 29:28
  if there would have been as much information about yeast strains
• 29:31
  and fermentation times as there is.
• 29:32
  Now, yeah, so I don't want to ask your question.
• 29:35
  I was going to say, it also seems like you've gone in to a
• 29:39
  blending process and you've kind of picked that hat up and then
• 29:43
  gone into opening distillery and kind of almost gone in with the
• 29:45
  same business mindset with the new make.
• 29:48
  We have to have a variation and in a market at the time, 2014,
• 29:53
  two thousand. Well, you guys start production
• 29:54
  in 2017. Yeah, there's quite a lot of new
• 29:57
  kids on the block who were starting to release stuff.
• 30:00
  I mean, Kilkomen obviously doing well, they've been on the go for
• 30:04
  a few years. So to come out and be like,
• 30:06
  well, we'll do it. Six months of impetus, 6 months
• 30:08
  of repeated and then do very strict cast maturations.
• 30:12
  See how these this liquid it's it's a pretty ballsy move.
• 30:17
  Yeah. I mean, I never thought about it
• 30:18
  like that, to be honest. It was just the my thought
• 30:20
  process was, and I guess it is because I started blending first
• 30:25
  and that was my thought process and I knew we were going to be
• 30:28
  slung whiskey. So I'm like, how, how are we
• 30:30
  going to create like in a blend? Complexity, depth, balance,
• 30:33
  Right. Yeah.
• 30:34
  How are we going to create that from 1 distillery?
• 30:37
  And it was by not having a distillery character when we do
• 30:40
  have a distillery character, but thinking, well, let's not do
• 30:45
  that. So we've talked about the
• 30:47
  fermentation, talked about the cooling jackets on the wash
• 30:51
  still we've got a cooling jacket on the line arm and we can get
• 30:55
  into all of that stuff. But basically it was about, so
• 30:59
  it's about having different things that can be off or on.
• 31:01
  And when they're on, they do one thing.
• 31:03
  When they're off, they're not doing that.
• 31:04
  So we've got that on the wash backs, We've got that on this
• 31:08
  wash still and we've got that on the Spirit still.
• 31:10
  And. What does a cooling jacket do
• 31:12
  when it's on? So this is this is the counter
• 31:14
  toothpick, because as soon as I start describing this, everyone
• 31:17
  goes, oh, it's a purifier. And it's like, well, hold on a
• 31:19
  minute though. So in the wash still you don't
• 31:21
  take a cut. We run right down to water.
• 31:23
  So if you hold that thought, we've got a slightly declined
• 31:27
  line arm. So obviously the steeper the
• 31:28
  decline, the heavier the spirit is.
• 31:31
  Generally speaking, the more inclined it is, the lighter it
• 31:33
  is because you get more reflux and natural cooling.
• 31:36
  So we put a cooling jacket on the line arm.
• 31:38
  So basically what that does is it takes that slight decline
• 31:44
  into a much steeper decline because basically you're densing
• 31:48
  the vapours early, but that's always on.
• 31:54
  But we've got hand valves. So immediately after the the
• 31:58
  cooling jacket, there's a collection pot and it's a
• 32:00
  stainless steel pipe, brings it back down into the pot still,
• 32:03
  but only if the valves open. So it's a hand valve open or
• 32:06
  closed, right? So if it's closed, it's that if
• 32:12
  you open it, all the heavy vapours are going back into the
• 32:15
  pot. For completely new SO.
• 32:17
  Only the lighter stuff ends up going.
• 32:20
  Until, until the end of the wash, that'll run when you're
• 32:25
  just about in water and all these heavier compounds that
• 32:28
  you've just built up come over right at the end.
• 32:30
  So we get a much heavier, more viscous low winds with the hand
• 32:36
  valve open. That sounds awesome.
• 32:39
  I don't think I fully understand.
• 32:40
  No, no. People are pulling over their
• 32:44
  cars right here. What you need?
• 32:46
  Is a pen and a bit of paper. So the the only way to truly
• 32:50
  understand it is taste and you make with a valve shot in the
• 32:53
  valve hole. Really.
• 32:54
  Is is how common is that in the whiskey industry?
• 32:57
  Or it's not totally uncommon. I don't think anyone's got it
• 33:02
  the way we've got it. But if you think in Fetter Cairn
• 33:04
  in the shower that runs down the neck and I think, I think
• 33:08
  Dalmore have got then their flat stills, I think they've got some
• 33:11
  condensation in the neck of the still.
• 33:13
  So it's not totally uncommon. It's just the way we're what
• 33:17
  we're trying to do is just like simple things like that, a valve
• 33:21
  that's open or closed. So we get different low wines.
• 33:26
  Yeah. And then on the wash still you
• 33:29
  look at the wash still it's a sworn neck wash, still slightly
• 33:32
  inclined line arm. You're thinking that's going to
• 33:34
  produce a fairly light kind of spirit, because then before it
• 33:39
  gets the condenser, there's two valves.
• 33:41
  I won't talk about the first one yet because that's a different
• 33:44
  spirit altogether. But if you open the second valve
• 33:48
  before it gets the condenser, it converts it through, which is a
• 33:51
  purifier. It's a little column with six
• 33:54
  copper, copper bubble cap plates on it and a deflag and topical
• 33:59
  spirit coming in the top and it comes up.
• 34:01
  So if you took that and put it where the swan neck is, that
• 34:05
  would be a Carter head still. So we can change from having a
• 34:09
  swan neck to a carton neck by opening a valve.
• 34:11
  So we've only got 2 stills, but we can open and close it.
• 34:15
  So that then gets you so off the swan neck would be about 70% ABV
• 34:21
  roughly. Yeah.
• 34:23
  By opening that valve and running through the purifier,
• 34:25
  you get to 80% on one pass, much lighter, much more focused than
• 34:29
  that black current note. So, so if you take those three
• 34:33
  things that can be off or on, you've got all the combinations
• 34:36
  of them being off or on, then you've got peated and unpeated.
• 34:39
  So you're probably about 6 to 9 different types of mimic spirit.
• 34:43
  You might. And then your cast and your
• 34:44
  cast. And then your oak policy and.
• 34:46
  And before that, you've also got the different.
• 34:48
  And then you've got. All these variables you can do,
• 34:51
  you know, and each one you add adds another, Yeah, double S it
• 34:55
  basically. So what's?
• 34:57
  The production size for us. So we're a one ton mash.
• 35:01
  So our biggest year was last year and we did just over
• 35:03
  220,000 litres of pure alcohol. Right?
• 35:07
  OK of that was 2 shifts, 60s a week.
• 35:09
  Wow. OK, yeah, it's, I mean, it, it's
• 35:13
  tiny. It's tiny in the grand series,
• 35:15
  but it's to have that much of A variety as well.
• 35:18
  It's insane. And you're storing everything on
• 35:20
  on. The aisle, everything's,
• 35:21
  everything's matured on Rasi. We've got 2 warehouses
• 35:23
  currently. We've got a palletised warehouse
• 35:25
  and a Dunwich warehouse. And.
• 35:27
  And I think the oak policy's the next bit that that really leans
• 35:31
  into that. So again, 2000 and I guess from
• 35:36
  2012 to 2015 when I was kind of putting all this together, I was
• 35:41
  getting really frustrated with people saying bourbon and people
• 35:43
  saying Sherry and I'm thinking I'm a bot nest, right?
• 35:46
  It's like it doesn't cut it. I need to know more.
• 35:50
  So we I made the decision not to go bourbon cast.
• 35:55
  It is Quercus Alba, but so it's not I.
• 35:57
  Was going to say, you're going to be somebody who refers to the
• 36:00
  Latin names of the. I'm sorry, sorry.
• 36:03
  This is North American way. Yeah, Yeah.
• 36:06
  So the most bourbon castle made from kurka Salma, but XY.
• 36:12
  So the reason there's two reasons we went XY cast instead
• 36:15
  of bourbon. One is rye brings this really
• 36:18
  black peppery spice note. So you've got all the vanilla
• 36:20
  and butterscotch from the queer Salma, but then you've got this
• 36:24
  extra layer, this extra complexity of the peppery spice
• 36:28
  from the rye. And then we used trinky pin oak
• 36:33
  cast. So these are fresh casts.
• 36:34
  Never heard anything. Before and trinky pin comes from
• 36:37
  the states. North American white oak quirk
• 36:39
  is Mullenberg, not quirk is Alba.
• 36:41
  So a different variety. Different varieties are.
• 36:44
  Tasting. But this is this is the one
• 36:47
  that's kind of Mullenberg sounds.
• 36:49
  Like a cousin. This is the kind of Ozark region
• 36:53
  of America. So it's it's it's all of the
• 36:55
  same for us. Like queer Casalba growing, in
• 36:59
  fact, yeah, for a long time. I don't think everyone.
• 37:01
  All right. So it's not different parts of
• 37:02
  America, right? No, it's no in this case, no.
• 37:05
  Gary Anna is Gary Anna, which is over in the kind of Washington,
• 37:11
  Oregon. All right, OK, that's that's a
• 37:15
  different a different story, but queer Casa Alba's question will
• 37:18
  only grow in the same part. But we're probably never
• 37:20
  segregated. So the Berman Cass and whiskey
• 37:23
  cast out that we've got both species in them.
• 37:25
  But the the what I guess the issue was again, at that time
• 37:30
  everyone was like, oh, you can't use Vertran oak for Scotch
• 37:33
  Biscay. It's going to overpower the
• 37:34
  spirit. And I'm like, but we need
• 37:38
  something that's really, we need a really active cast.
• 37:40
  We need something that's, you know, getting back to this 345
• 37:42
  year old. We need something that's going
• 37:43
  to bring along, but just being really, really recognizing that
• 37:48
  we don't want it to overpower the spirit.
• 37:50
  And that's really where Chinkapin, the question the
• 37:52
  running comes in because it doesn't overpower it in the way
• 37:56
  that to me it brings more richness to a lot more richness
• 38:01
  to the cask. And then this is where we
• 38:03
  specify the Cks are made. So we ask for 36 months, three
• 38:08
  years air drying of the timber before they make the cask.
• 38:11
  So the longer the air drying, the more the lignin breaks down.
• 38:14
  South lignans in all plants. Health makes plants strong.
• 38:18
  When lignan breaks down, it turns into volatile phenols.
• 38:21
  So by having a longer air drying period, it's further down that
• 38:25
  route of briefing the lignans down and then we use a very high
• 38:28
  toast. Now most people are like, wow,
• 38:30
  you don't use a high toast. It's always a medium toast.
• 38:33
  The longer you do the toast, the more the lignans breakdown as
• 38:36
  well. So as well as caramelizing the
• 38:37
  natural sugars in the oat, the semihelios, and getting that
• 38:41
  caramel flavor, you're breaking the lignans down into volatile
• 38:43
  phenols. Now that's important in years to
• 38:46
  come because as the, as the phenolic, the phenols from the,
• 38:52
  the, the peated barley degrade, we start to get them back from
• 38:56
  the cast and then a very high char.
• 39:00
  The, the high char obviously increases the surface area of
• 39:02
  the cast, but the charcoal itself removes the impurities
• 39:05
  which are again for a young whiskey.
• 39:07
  So, so those chinkapen oak casts in that specification.
• 39:10
  So the the oak species and how the casts are made to our
• 39:13
  specification are hugely important in our recipe.
• 39:19
  I mean, Greg, how difficult from from your point of view then,
• 39:23
  because this is what like Chuck said it as well, there's,
• 39:28
  there's a lot of new kids on the block, so to speak.
• 39:31
  What happening around about this time?
• 39:33
  And I suppose you what you don't have in terms of the history and
• 39:37
  the stories to fall back on. You have to come up with
• 39:41
  marketing and you have to be able and liquid to lips or as we
• 39:45
  like to see pieces of liquid in people's mouths on the podcast.
• 39:50
  I mean, I, I, I make no apologies for that on that.
• 39:54
  Whatever. We do have guesses.
• 39:56
  I've known Rassie and I've I've seen Rassie everywhere.
• 40:00
  I've tried that a few times. I'm no bit yeah, but I know
• 40:03
  very, very little about Rassie itself.
• 40:06
  But then when you're also talking.
• 40:08
  Yeah. And I'm going.
• 40:09
  I'm just desperate to get finished what I've got in my.
• 40:12
  So I could try that. I go now, I totally get it.
• 40:15
  But at the same time, is that a challenge or has it been easy to
• 40:20
  get that marketing out to people?
• 40:21
  Because once you hear somebody explain it like what you've just
• 40:24
  said, you can suddenly instantly go right now I need to try that
• 40:29
  and just see if I can get, do I get the black curtain or that
• 40:32
  fruits flavours and can I understand This is why it works
• 40:36
  like that. Yeah, No, I think, well, yeah,
• 40:39
  you're right saying there's a lot of new kids on the block.
• 40:41
  And I think the way that a lot of my time has been taken up is
• 40:46
  telling people how we're different, what we're doing
• 40:48
  that's different. We don't have hundreds of year
• 40:50
  history. We've only got 7 year history.
• 40:52
  So it doesn't take that long to go through it.
• 40:54
  But what can we do that's different?
• 40:57
  And it's in our in our corporate speech, you know, stand out from
• 41:01
  the crowd. What can we actually do to do
• 41:03
  that? And so firstly, when you tell
• 41:05
  people about the island and you know, where is island population
• 41:09
  of 161 and really tell people that, you know, we do everything
• 41:13
  there. And it's not the easiest way of
• 41:15
  doing something. But something I always say in
• 41:17
  tasting or from telling people is, you know, if something's
• 41:19
  worth doing and you know, do it right kind of thing or do it, do
• 41:23
  it the way you want to do it. And so, you know, people really
• 41:25
  come on board with that. And then it takes a bit of
• 41:28
  explanation. It's a difficult, it's not
• 41:31
  difficult, but it's not the easiest way.
• 41:32
  You could produce a whiskey or a young whiskey.
• 41:35
  And yeah, logistically, financially every way.
• 41:39
  And it's not, it's not the easiest way.
• 41:41
  But once you have two minutes, 3 minutes to explain to someone,
• 41:45
  the spirit, the spirits that we can produce, the cast program
• 41:48
  that we do, why we do it the way we do it, people really come
• 41:51
  around to it And, and it's, yeah, it, it's been really
• 41:56
  successful. And what's the population of RA
• 41:58
  say? A. 160. 100 and. 61 Well, so I.
• 42:01
  Apparently was I I would assume you're now probably which is
• 42:05
  what's remarkable is obviously before 2013 weren't there now I
• 42:09
  would assume you're probably the biggest employer on the island.
• 42:11
  That may be wrong. Single employer, yeah, we've
• 42:16
  spoken a lot. It's.
• 42:17
  About 50% of the working. Population, yeah, we've spoken
• 42:20
  very reminiscent of when we've had the Isle of Harris on.
• 42:23
  They've spoken a lot about the amount, about the about the
• 42:27
  amount of kind of native Islanders that they employ in
• 42:30
  the distillery. Is that something you're very
• 42:32
  focused on yourself? Yeah.
• 42:33
  I mean, I mean, perfectly honest out of necessity, absolutely.
• 42:37
  I mean, the island population is just under 200 now.
• 42:42
  You know, we employ 40 people at the distillery and some of those
• 42:46
  are seasonal, obviously, but that's because we do everything
• 42:49
  on Russia. You know, we've got our own well
• 42:51
  on site. We use that water for
• 42:52
  everything. We use it for cooling, we use it
• 42:54
  for mashing, we use it for fermentation.
• 42:57
  Most importantly, we use it for cast reduction.
• 42:59
  We use it for bottling. So although we distill it out,
• 43:02
  we're adding it back in. So the fact it's and that's why
• 43:04
  the bottle looks like this, because we're trying to talk
• 43:06
  about the geology of the island and how the geology influences
• 43:09
  the water from our well. I feel that I would be remiss
• 43:11
  not to mention a guy I work with at my current job.
• 43:15
  He used to work for Nesbits. I think during COVID he was
• 43:18
  delivering casks to you up to Rassie and he said it was great.
• 43:23
  Unless you missed the ferry. Yeah, so and.
• 43:24
  Then it. Was like, it's like 24 hours.
• 43:27
  Really. Yeah, so.
• 43:28
  It's. Like once a day is.
• 43:29
  It no, no, no. We've got the ferries.
• 43:31
  The ferries take 25 minutes where COVID was very different.
• 43:36
  Right? OK, it varies. 25 minutes from
• 43:37
  Scones for Tarassi and it runs pretty much every hour.
• 43:41
  OK. Stocks for lunch, obviously,
• 43:43
  but. 1. Question I wanted to ask you is,
• 43:46
  you know, you talked very about the importance of creating a
• 43:49
  very good young spirit, about creating something in three
• 43:52
  years, five years time tasted very good.
• 43:54
  But you know, you mentioned your fellow founder, yes, Bill, and
• 43:58
  this is something he wanted in his family.
• 44:00
  There's obviously longer term ambitions there.
• 44:02
  So what have you changed? How your your production with AI
• 44:08
  as time goes on with an eye to 20 years, 30 years down the line
• 44:12
  and what might come out? Yeah, I mean, I think that's
• 44:14
  that's things because obviously as soon as I start talking about
• 44:17
  we're going to produce three or five year old whiskey and we
• 44:20
  talk about 6 cash recipe, you know, so Nasira and garlic
• 44:25
  people are like, oh, right. And you know, eventually, you
• 44:28
  know, people get it, but then immediately also.
• 44:31
  So how you're going to have a 10, 15?
• 44:34
  Well. That's one of the like the most
• 44:37
  popular questions. You'll get asked, it's like, so
• 44:39
  the great thing about having a recipe and the other great thing
• 44:43
  is that we refill casks. So like we've been bottling
• 44:49
  whiskey since November 2020. So we've been bottling whiskey
• 44:53
  for five years, which means we've been emptying casks for
• 44:56
  five years, which means we've been refilling for casks for
• 44:58
  five years, which means that we have.
• 45:00
  If you're buying virgin oak casts, you know that that's
• 45:03
  maybe got several lifetimes. Well, Even so, we've got these
• 45:07
  fresh casts that we then refill. So technically they're a first
• 45:10
  fill. And then we've got the XY and
• 45:15
  the Export O red wine cast that we refill that our second fill,
• 45:20
  but they've only had spirit in them for three, 4-5 minutes, so.
• 45:26
  That's fantastic. I just have to say, this is the
• 45:28
  first unpeated Rassie that I've ever had.
• 45:30
  Yeah. So what we're having here, this
• 45:32
  is. One of my favourites, I think
• 45:34
  it's ever. As we've just said, it's just
• 45:37
  our unpeated spirit. Yeah, but it was fermented with
• 45:40
  100% champagne yeast, and it was matured in, I think, 4 Roses
• 45:46
  bourbon cast. So not rye cast.
• 45:48
  Yeah, bourbon cast. So the champagne yeast does
• 45:51
  exactly what you expect. You get all these kind of
• 45:53
  biscuity, malty things from that, but you kind of get an
• 45:58
  effervescence as well. There's kind of this weird kind
• 46:00
  of, it's not fizz, but it's got that, you know, that the
• 46:04
  champagne brings, and then you've got the vanilla
• 46:07
  butterscotch, queer cisalba. That's yeah, that's absolutely.
• 46:12
  And it's also the oldest thing we've bottled at seven years
• 46:14
  old. Another question I had, you
• 46:16
  mentioned there's no legal history of distilling on?
• 46:19
  Rally. Yeah.
• 46:20
  Do you have any knowledge of the legal stuff that was going on?
• 46:22
  I mean, I just for anecdotal, I read a book, something my dad
• 46:25
  picked up in a second. Yeah.
• 46:26
  And it was about a teacher and he'd gone up to South East in
• 46:30
  the kind of 1880s and an illegal distilling was happening in
• 46:33
  every house. So, you know, I take it Rassie
• 46:35
  was. No.
• 46:36
  Different, there's there's some great stories on the island and
• 46:38
  there's there's one particular place.
• 46:39
  So if you go South of the distillery, past the old iron
• 46:44
  ore mine and the old pier down to iron, and then you follow the
• 46:48
  burn up through the woods, there's a little clearing and
• 46:51
  there's a kind of stone ruin. And you can see where the burn
• 46:54
  was diverted to the stone ruin. And you can virtually see where
• 47:01
  the pot still sat and where it would have been condensed in the
• 47:03
  woods, in the woods. And there's another story of the
• 47:06
  North End of the island that someone actually diverted the
• 47:09
  bun through his house to condense the spirit.
• 47:14
  And the the other part of that story is that the the families
• 47:17
  and relatives on Sky always hung just white, washing out when the
• 47:22
  ex man was coming. Oh really?
• 47:23
  So they were all in on everyone. So, so you went to this guy who
• 47:26
  diverted you still through his house, went ahead you still.
• 47:29
  See the whitewashing on the washing so he's right.
• 47:31
  Grabs his style ring. Goes hides it in the bog.
• 47:34
  Never found it again. They're still are still out
• 47:37
  there. Somewhere, I mean, there's some
• 47:39
  fantastic. Definitely.
• 47:40
  Is it, is it difficult going into a community like that with,
• 47:46
  with this idea because you know, for a population that size and
• 47:50
  dare I say it without being any showing any disrespect to the to
• 47:54
  that, to the locals of Rassie, but was there, you know, was
• 47:58
  there any kickback? Was there anyone saying this
• 48:01
  isn't going to be good for the island because we don't want
• 48:03
  this kind of thing happening here?
• 48:04
  I remember myself and the architect Dolly, we were like at
• 48:10
  that point where we were going to go and start speaking to
• 48:12
  planning and all the rest of it. So we had, we had the plans at a
• 48:15
  fairly developed point and and Dolly was living on the island
• 48:18
  at the time. And he said what what do you
• 48:21
  think about calling a island meeting in the community hall?
• 48:26
  And you stand up and present and I'm like, really?
• 48:31
  But it was great. It was fantastic.
• 48:32
  We stood up and exception was was great.
• 48:35
  Some really good questions, you know, just obvious things that
• 48:39
  people wanted to know and at the end I remember like people
• 48:43
  coming up, but you didn't want to ask questions, you know where
• 48:45
  they come up at the end. And really the kind of summary
• 48:49
  of that was the older generation going.
• 48:51
  This is fantastic. If you can bring young people to
• 48:54
  back, if you can bring people back to the island, if you can
• 48:57
  bring young people to the island, if you can start
• 48:59
  families, if we can have more people in the primary school, if
• 49:01
  we can have other people who then start businesses off the
• 49:05
  back of this. That's that's why we will
• 49:08
  support this project. And this is before we'd even got
• 49:10
  into planning. And what's, I guess pleasing now
• 49:13
  is being in a position where we employ 40 people.
• 49:16
  We've brought people back to the island, We've got people to the
• 49:18
  island. There are now more people in the
• 49:20
  primary school, slowly will be in the next couple of years.
• 49:23
  Enough said. So you know, it's just, it's
• 49:27
  just nice. There's been one girl, one girl,
• 49:31
  Callum Callum Gillis. How do we get a first girl for?
• 49:36
  17 years, 17. Years, but of course, when you
• 49:40
  mention all that. Here's my fun fact.
• 49:43
  We're talking about all the benefits.
• 49:44
  One of the benefits we know about the Scotch whisky industry
• 49:47
  is there's a tourism angle to it.
• 49:49
  Yeah. So you've not only been able to
• 49:50
  bring jobs down, you've been able to bring visitors to the
• 49:53
  island as well. And we know, you know, you
• 49:56
  talked about the derelict hotel that was bought over that now is
• 50:01
  a business attached to the distillery.
• 50:02
  I might like to. Say, yeah, so now it is.
• 50:04
  And we actually call it island experience.
• 50:06
  It's a completely it's about getting people to come and stay
• 50:10
  with us, but it's getting people to go and see the island.
• 50:13
  Because a friend of the show, Vicky Wicky Elliott, went up, I
• 50:16
  think about six months ago. She went up and she stayed on
• 50:18
  the island and, you know, was following her socials at the
• 50:20
  time and she looked like she had a fantastic time in there.
• 50:23
  Absolutely beautiful. Well, we, we had like the word
• 50:27
  Stewart beat your Dick from Torreve.
• 50:29
  Yeah. And I, I sort of asked, I mean,
• 50:32
  yeah, great, honestly. Oh yeah.
• 50:34
  And I asked him about, you know, and this is, this is, you know,
• 50:37
  fairly early on the podcast. And what got me was we always
• 50:41
  talk about like the sharp elbows in the industry, how there never
• 50:43
  seems to be it, you know, and it isn't until you speak to the
• 50:46
  guys that are in the sales where they go.
• 50:48
  No, we're all very friendly until we get out of the pub and
• 50:50
  see the next one coming and we'll let the tyres down.
• 50:53
  But I'm sure you don't but but. On Monday.
• 50:57
  Friday exactly. I asked, I said, you know,
• 50:59
  surely you know, Tornavigg Taliska having Sky wrapped up
• 51:05
  and saying suddenly after all these years, there's going to be
• 51:10
  another distillery on the island.
• 51:11
  And he's like, well, no, because now the island itself are
• 51:15
  delighted. Because instead of coming to Sky
• 51:18
  for one day and seeing one distillery, there's a, you know,
• 51:20
  if we were to go now, we would say we're going to have to go to
• 51:24
  Sky, but we're going to have to maybe spend 2 days or, you know,
• 51:26
  a couple of days because. And then he said, And we're
• 51:28
  Rassie being so. Close to spending, he.
• 51:29
  Said Now. It's like the three distilleries
• 51:32
  on that trail have certainly created a situation where you
• 51:36
  can spend it. Four days and that's what we
• 51:39
  wanted to be and that hopefully that's what people want because,
• 51:42
  you know, go all that way and see one distillery.
• 51:43
  I mean, you know, go and see 3. Yeah, I mean, I was up this guy
• 51:46
  a couple of weeks ago, I went up with my dad and unfortunately I
• 51:50
  didn't get to go to Rasta because we were only there for
• 51:51
  one night. So we drove up and he, you know,
• 51:56
  let me go see. The two didn't have time to tour
• 51:58
  anything and then. Drive to the gates and you go.
• 52:03
  Out, Yeah. Took a picture outside.
• 52:06
  Yeah, don't smell on those casks.
• 52:14
  Excuse me with that. No, we went up and did get up.
• 52:18
  How do we look around and he's but we stayed the night in
• 52:23
  Portree and met up with a bus tour and it was like all these
• 52:26
  people are doing a three day bus St. tour, a four day bus tour.
• 52:30
  And I think they were going up to Rassie.
• 52:31
  I think they were going to go to Mole as well.
• 52:33
  It's kind of that whole surrounding area.
• 52:35
  And then I mean, people from down South America, everything
• 52:40
  that all really, really pumped and like couldn't believe the
• 52:43
  scenery. Well, they say, they say like
• 52:44
  here they say it as well. Like again, same thing asking
• 52:49
  and I'm going to talk about it in a minute.
• 52:51
  Actually, Ali Baxter saying where the guys at Scotch Whiskey
• 52:55
  experience started to panic a little bit when the Big Diageo
• 52:58
  came in and said, we're going to put a brand home on Princess St.
• 53:00
  and make it a Johnny Walker experience.
• 53:02
  And he's like, no, because what will happen is a tourist might
• 53:06
  arrive and say, oh, we'll do the Johnny Walker experience and go,
• 53:09
  I need to find out more about whiskey, what else can I do?
• 53:13
  And then the Scotch whiskey experience.
• 53:15
  And he also mentioned about how Swee is effectively owned by the
• 53:18
  industry. So the Azure a big help
• 53:20
  supporters of that. But that'll be the same as
• 53:21
  again, there'll be people that may be the same, oh, you know,
• 53:25
  we're going to Sky. We're in the area and they go to
• 53:28
  Talisgar and go, God, suddenly just, you know, people take that
• 53:31
  and go, is there more? I want more?
• 53:34
  And then there's totally and you go.
• 53:36
  They're on the trip anyway, so. Yeah.
• 53:37
  Well, what I would say is something that's been grown over
• 53:39
  the last couple of years going back to your point is the
• 53:42
  Hebride and Whiskey Trail is or Hebride and Whiskey Festival has
• 53:46
  kind of started up over the last few years.
• 53:48
  More and more distilleries are are joining it now and we each
• 53:51
  have a day. Granted, it's not like either or
• 53:54
  Campbelltown where everything is pretty concentrated.
• 53:56
  You have to travel a bit. But you know, you there's a day
• 53:59
  on Jura, there's two days on Sky Day on Razi, over to the Outer
• 54:03
  Hebrides and you've got Harris and I think they're South
• 54:06
  Houston as well. Yeah, North Houston.
• 54:07
  North Houston. As.
• 54:09
  Well, and you know, there's opportunity for more people to
• 54:12
  join as well. There's a few other distilleries
• 54:14
  that can can take days and you know before you know it, you
• 54:16
  have this whole packaged tour that you when is that?
• 54:20
  When is next year? September I.
• 54:21
  Think September. September we, we've got the
• 54:23
  final day next year and we're planning quite a big, we've got
• 54:26
  a plan, quite a big knees up, yeah.
• 54:28
  We did a we did a festival bottling this year as well.
• 54:31
  We'll do one next year. I've heard a few murmurs for for
• 54:35
  next year. It sounds pretty.
• 54:36
  Good. And going on to the bottling
• 54:38
  then? Well, what I will say first of
• 54:40
  all, I mentioned them earlier there, Ally Baxter, 19th of
• 54:43
  March 2024. Ally Baxter is the first and
• 54:46
  only person. And by the way, that's not to
• 54:49
  say that's a great he put Rassie inaugural down as his what, 3
• 54:54
  drams. Really it was number two of his
• 54:56
  what, 3? Drams good man nice.
• 54:59
  I've got a little point of order at Allie Baxter as well as I was
• 55:01
  after the during the event. I was speaking my brother-in-law
• 55:03
  Joseph and and he's mentioned that he could actually see the
• 55:06
  Brazil going a little bit distillery from his bedroom.
• 55:08
  Window. Well, there you go.
• 55:09
  So he can see, so if. Anybody else, if anybody else,
• 55:12
  can see a distillery from the bedroom window?
• 55:14
  Do let us know. Yeah, just distillery in his
• 55:16
  mind. Well, but.
• 55:19
  I can see port release oh there. You go that's.
• 55:22
  Quite. Wrong.
• 55:22
  It's like right in front of me and if you love the king on and
• 55:25
  fight you, but in terms of the right.
• 55:30
  So we talked about the you're going through the production
• 55:34
  side of it, right? And what I really like as well
• 55:36
  is it's, it's not like unapologetically of like we need
• 55:41
  this. We need a whiskey out in the
• 55:43
  next in five years, you know, because there's a lot of places,
• 55:47
  a lot of distilleries who open and say we've no plans to
• 55:49
  release anything. No, it's ready.
• 55:50
  Well, that's ready. And that's an economic decision
• 55:53
  sometimes as much as it is a. Yeah, Well, 100%, but also just
• 55:56
  being upfront and open and going, we need to make money out
• 55:59
  of this because I the next question I'll have for you is,
• 56:03
  and you don't have to say exactly, but the hole that a
• 56:07
  distillery can burn in your pocket can can be quite
• 56:10
  substantial. You're employing all these
• 56:11
  people. I'll also say like the marketing
• 56:15
  as I've mentioned before, even I remember being all the casks of
• 56:19
  that body and wild for a while were all rassays still there,
• 56:24
  Still there. Yeah.
• 56:25
  So it's all cost. Yeah, it's all cost.
• 56:29
  But what it does do is it gets gets you to the forefront of
• 56:32
  people's eyes. But you know, that must have
• 56:34
  been an easy decision then just we need something out because we
• 56:37
  need to get money. Yeah, I think, I think it was
• 56:39
  always a plan to release at three years old and four and
• 56:42
  five. It's always, always a plan.
• 56:43
  And my job was to design A whiskey that would be good
• 56:47
  enough at three years old. So, you know, hopefully we've
• 56:50
  done that and it was by doing all these different things.
• 56:53
  And, you know, we're, we're a brand new distillery.
• 56:57
  If you look at the building, it's a contemporary building.
• 57:01
  We're kind of, you know, proud and honest about being a new
• 57:04
  distillery. And, you know, I think now, I
• 57:08
  think now people are kind of more open to trying the whiskey
• 57:12
  and not so hung up in the age. And I think we're, we've kind of
• 57:15
  got there. And I think the next thing is to
• 57:17
  demonstrate that this recipe is going to be like 10:15.
• 57:23
  You know, it's like it's designed to do that.
• 57:25
  And I think that's the important thing.
• 57:26
  It was designed to be like this. Yeah.
• 57:29
  But I think for us, it was important to to make a whiskey
• 57:33
  that is ready to be released at 3:45.
• 57:34
  Yeah. Because there's a challenge, I
• 57:35
  suppose. Gregor Neil, maybe see that is,
• 57:38
  you know, it's very easy when you're in a room.
• 57:40
  We've talked about this a lot now.
• 57:42
  It's very easy to be when you're in A room of like minded people
• 57:44
  like ourselves who are whiskey enthusiasts.
• 57:46
  We're actually seeking out a new distillery is something that you
• 57:50
  want to do. But when you look at the general
• 57:52
  market of the whiskey drinker, there are still people to this
• 57:56
  day who will sit there and go. If it's under 10 years old,
• 57:59
  that'll be naked. I've seen the I've seen the
• 58:01
  change in that from even when I first started in whiskey, not
• 58:03
  with not with Razi to, to now, there's been much more of an
• 58:07
  interest in, you know, not necessarily non age statements,
• 58:11
  but like what makes this one different?
• 58:13
  You know, is it a different task?
• 58:14
  Is it? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 58:16
  Yeah. And I think there's a lot of
• 58:17
  distilleries out there that are doing interesting things in
• 58:20
  order to be different. And the first thing that popped
• 58:22
  in my head there is Holy Rood with all the different.
• 58:25
  Yes, and all that. Sort of thing.
• 58:27
  And but I've only been in whiskey about 4 1/2 years
• 58:32
  before, so three years at rising a year elsewhere.
• 58:34
  And I think the difference in that sort of even time frame has
• 58:39
  changed away from, oh, I'm not drinking this because it's under
• 58:42
  12. And don't get me wrong, there's
• 58:44
  still people that say, oh, that's still quite young and all
• 58:46
  that sort of stuff. It's like, well, get, you know,
• 58:48
  give it a try, see what you think, I think.
• 58:50
  If you if people are willing to. Not everything.
• 58:53
  To to taste whiskey that's that's the first step.
• 58:56
  I did a tasting recently down in London.
• 58:58
  It was a whiskey dinner and I was asked to pick 3 whiskeys
• 59:02
  that the establishment had currently in their bar and I
• 59:06
  presented 3 rassies. So I mean it was an opportunity
• 59:10
  for me. So we had.
• 59:11
  Just so you know, you cannot go three.
• 59:13
  What rasses were you what, 3 drafts today?
• 59:15
  I'm not going to and this, this isn't a Rassie.
• 59:17
  I'll have to be honest. I'll tell you what this is in a
• 59:20
  minute. But what was nice is like we we
• 59:22
  we put the drama against the 10 year old Taliska.
• 59:25
  We had Duncana, which is our our Sherry finished Rassie against
• 59:31
  our 15 year old Dalmore. And then we had our with 100%
• 59:36
  Abiki barley with, with a knocking, tossing at the end,
• 59:40
  all much, much older whiskeys. And yeah, well, I won't tell
• 59:44
  you. I won't tell you the result, but
• 59:47
  you can guess. Yeah, Yeah.
• 59:48
  I'm going to, I'm going to ask from your point of view as a
• 59:50
  botanist then, because this is a question I've been thinking
• 59:52
  about recently. Yeah, I remember the whole story
• 59:56
  about Unilever having a problem with an issue with their powder
• 1:00:02
  systems. And they got 2 separate people
• 1:00:05
  to come in. They got mathematicians to try
• 1:00:07
  and solve this problem out. And the mathematicians came up
• 1:00:09
  with this great thing that theoretically worked really,
• 1:00:13
  really well. But the problem was that it it
• 1:00:17
  they got all the sums, they got all the angles, they did all
• 1:00:18
  that, and it was to stop the powder from congealing when it
• 1:00:21
  was getting run through their system.
• 1:00:22
  But the problem was that despite all their work, they spent hours
• 1:00:26
  and well, days, weeks, months, whatever it was then thousands
• 1:00:29
  of pounds changing the system and it still didn't work.
• 1:00:32
  So then what they did went to a bunch of biologists and they
• 1:00:35
  said, I want you guys to come up with a process and they did
• 1:00:39
  something like 185 prototypes until they got the exact right
• 1:00:42
  one. But then The thing is the right
• 1:00:43
  one that worked when they went back to the mathematicians and
• 1:00:46
  said this is what this is what works.
• 1:00:49
  The mathematicians said it makes absolutely no sense because it
• 1:00:51
  doesn't, it shouldn't work like that.
• 1:00:53
  But the whole point of this was like the biologists go through
• 1:00:55
  evolution, whereas the mathematicians went to here's
• 1:00:58
  the maths, right? So what we've seen in history is
• 1:01:00
  there's 200 years of distilling and distilleries that have
• 1:01:05
  learnt from mistakes and learnt from things and prototypes and
• 1:01:09
  all the way up to where we are today, which is why we can have.
• 1:01:11
  So when you look at the heritage brands, like the big brands that
• 1:01:14
  we see, what do you think the mistakes could be or are going
• 1:01:19
  to be? Or how are we learning as new
• 1:01:21
  distilleries? What kind of things are you
• 1:01:23
  going, right? Because you know, they're going
• 1:01:26
  to at some point or other, there's going to be points where
• 1:01:28
  there's have to be high bits or changes made.
• 1:01:30
  Yeah. So I think for, for me, I can
• 1:01:32
  only answer from a personal point of view, but for me
• 1:01:36
  designing Rassie, it was like, well, you know, First things
• 1:01:41
  first, Scotch whisky regulations, fully believe in
• 1:01:44
  them. I wouldn't have it anywhere.
• 1:01:46
  They think they were a great thing.
• 1:01:47
  And anyone says you can't innovate with within them is
• 1:01:50
  just not working hard enough or thinking hard enough.
• 1:01:53
  So 2 of that's read, but then looked at what else was
• 1:01:59
  happening around the world. So if you looked at what
• 1:02:01
  happened in the United States where the craft just still is
• 1:02:05
  there, it's part of the reason we use rye cast because they
• 1:02:08
  made rye very cool. Again, it was a very unloved
• 1:02:10
  thing. So that that was a big learning
• 1:02:13
  from from what the KAF distillers had done there as
• 1:02:15
  they'd take something that was very traditional, unpopular and
• 1:02:20
  made it cool again. So that's there's a big lesson
• 1:02:22
  in that. And then looked at some of the,
• 1:02:24
  you know, Japanese distilleries. And at that point, Japanese was
• 1:02:27
  some of the most expensive and probably best whiskey in the
• 1:02:31
  world. So if you want to take my view
• 1:02:33
  on it, they took looked at Scotch whiskey made it better.
• 1:02:36
  So let's learn from what they did and and in that whole thing
• 1:02:39
  about having lots of different new make spirits maturing the
• 1:02:42
  serpent. That's a very Japanese
• 1:02:44
  philosophy. And then looking at places like
• 1:02:47
  those guys doing. Like 3 or like 5 different PPM
• 1:02:52
  installations and then all this. Kind of stuff.
• 1:02:54
  So, so there's, there's, there's a big learning there.
• 1:02:56
  And then looking at places like Tasmania, you know, didn't
• 1:02:59
  really have a history of distilling, but you know, thanks
• 1:03:02
  to, to Bill Mark and the likes of really, you know, like from
• 1:03:06
  crazy, you know, not crazy, but from very different principles.
• 1:03:09
  Yeah, you take all of that, bring it back to Scotland and
• 1:03:12
  then hopefully, you know, so it's a combination to me, it's a
• 1:03:15
  combination of actually embracing, enhancing the 200
• 1:03:21
  year old legal tradition that we've got of whiskey, plus what
• 1:03:25
  was done before that. And it's great to see other new
• 1:03:28
  distilleries like Kaif looking at, you know, making whiskey's
• 1:03:32
  from 56 again. That's, that's really
• 1:03:34
  fascinating. But for me, it was like, let's
• 1:03:38
  be a modern contemporary, you know, single malt Scotch
• 1:03:44
  whiskey. I was suppose in a in a market
• 1:03:46
  like this, there should be enough space for both of those
• 1:03:49
  as well there should be appreciation.
• 1:03:50
  Well, there is absolutely industry and there's plenty
• 1:03:53
  space. For everyone, I think.
• 1:03:54
  Well, I mean that and it's the only people that are really the
• 1:03:58
  people that really win are US, the consumer.
• 1:04:00
  The consumer yeah, because we suddenly go brilliant because
• 1:04:02
  like yeah you know you've got there's you look at the Thompson
• 1:04:05
  brothers fellow Simon and you look at what they're doing and
• 1:04:07
  they're saying like let's look at traditional, let's look at
• 1:04:09
  traditional. Let's get you mentioned it heart
• 1:04:11
  back to the 50s fifties and then.
• 1:04:13
  But do it sustainably. What they're looking at for
• 1:04:15
  their distillery, that's sustainability.
• 1:04:17
  That's fantastic. And like we spoke to Scott
• 1:04:20
  Sneddon about it on the Big Birthday Bash.
• 1:04:21
  And it's like they look at and go, let's look at old ways of
• 1:04:27
  doing things, but try and do it in a modern twist, a modern
• 1:04:29
  take, but different things. And then you've got yourselves
• 1:04:32
  that are going like, let's just let's just do it our way and
• 1:04:37
  doing it. And there's no one can sit there
• 1:04:40
  and go, you're no doing it right because you're making whiskey at
• 1:04:42
  the end of the day. And as long as if people can
• 1:04:45
  drink it and must say, as I say, I've not drunken awful lot of
• 1:04:48
  Rassie, but the ones that you've brought in with us.
• 1:04:49
  So the second one, Yeah, the second.
• 1:04:51
  Yeah, so it's slightly pizza cask.
• 1:04:53
  It's slightly very, very lightly.
• 1:04:55
  Peter, I'll tell you why in a minute.
• 1:04:56
  But this is fully matured in ex Marsala cast.
• 1:05:00
  Now masala everyone immediately when you say masala everyone was
• 1:05:04
  oh, OK. It says sweet Sicilian fortified
• 1:05:07
  wine. This is not this is bone dry.
• 1:05:09
  This is this is masala vagini from Fazita.
• 1:05:15
  It's absolutely, absolutely bone dry.
• 1:05:18
  It's and it's oxidised as well and they use the celerosive.
• 1:05:22
  So it's in the cast for a minimum of five years, sometimes
• 1:05:27
  10, sometimes 30 years. So it's it's in oak, the masala
• 1:05:31
  itself, so. So immediately I'm thinking
• 1:05:33
  expensive casks. As Gregor said, it's not the
• 1:05:37
  easiest way to make no, but something's worth doing.
• 1:05:40
  Yeah, something's worth doing, so sure and go.
• 1:05:42
  Back to the population, sorry, you you print the pop the island
• 1:05:44
  population on the on the bottle of them as well.
• 1:05:47
  Yeah, so. We're waiting for the next
• 1:05:49
  census and. Well, 20. 31 can't come soon
• 1:05:52
  enough. To I think.
• 1:05:54
  Now it's 18. The official census 184 and 2,
• 1:05:57
  2022, so it may change. So where are babies and Rassie
• 1:06:01
  born? Are they born on the island?
• 1:06:02
  Well, me, you don't know now. Inverness.
• 1:06:05
  No. And yeah.
• 1:06:06
  So the nearest the nearest hospital's Regmore.
• 1:06:08
  So you're sitting there, you could be sitting there and
• 1:06:10
  getting ready to get that the labels off the print.
• 1:06:12
  Because I'd imagine that, you know, the things that people
• 1:06:15
  forget is that we did a, we did a handful bottling at the, at
• 1:06:18
  the, you know, mass of the big birthday bash and people were
• 1:06:20
  able to stick their labels on there and then.
• 1:06:22
  But when you're looking at some of the outcomes that you guys
• 1:06:24
  will be doing, I mean, how far ahead are you looking for urine
• 1:06:26
  sales? It's like 6 months, six months
• 1:06:30
  so and only. The year, to be honest, we sit
• 1:06:32
  down every January, we go up to Razzie as a big team and we stay
• 1:06:36
  there for two days and we sit in the boardroom on Razzie for two
• 1:06:40
  days and plan everything for the year.
• 1:06:43
  And you know, we try and stick to that best we can, just like
• 1:06:46
  every other distillery will be able to.
• 1:06:48
  But like everything takes like a week and a half labels wise to
• 1:06:53
  get to Razzie, then we have to to our own bit to bottle it.
• 1:06:57
  They're ready to go. And then most of the time
• 1:07:00
  shipments will head from Razi over to Portree, spend the day
• 1:07:04
  in Portree because for some reason that's what they have to
• 1:07:07
  do. And then from there they will go
• 1:07:09
  to wherever. They.
• 1:07:10
  So if a female Islander is sitting there eight months and.
• 1:07:15
  Helicopter. Job.
• 1:07:16
  How many days pregnant are you guys on the phone?
• 1:07:18
  Goodnight. She's either got to cross her
• 1:07:19
  legs now or she's got to get this thing out, otherwise it's
• 1:07:22
  not going to be in the. Label This wasn't in the six
• 1:07:24
  month plan. No, so we, we basically based on
• 1:07:27
  that. It's always going to be based on
• 1:07:28
  the census. Yeah, because because we can't,
• 1:07:31
  it's just not practical to go oh, there's another baby girl.
• 1:07:35
  So so it's 161 at the minute. It will change at some point and
• 1:07:39
  then. When we ran out of labels.
• 1:07:42
  Some point in the mirth? Yeah.
• 1:07:44
  At some point in the future, it could be 184.
• 1:07:46
  It hurts back to like being feeling like part of the island
• 1:07:49
  community. That's that's the the point is
• 1:07:51
  that we thought that that was. Takes 2 seconds to do that.
• 1:07:54
  Yeah, I joined in 2022. I was up there for less than 5
• 1:07:58
  minutes and I was like, wow, this is the most amazing place
• 1:08:01
  ever. Yeah.
• 1:08:03
  And The thing is, it is, it is about, you know, the the harsh
• 1:08:07
  reality of is the a new, relatively new distillery,
• 1:08:11
  relative new brand. We have to stand out.
• 1:08:13
  Yeah. So we can stand out about
• 1:08:15
  telling you about Rassie and whether that's the population or
• 1:08:18
  the geology or the water and the bottle looks like that because
• 1:08:21
  it literally is the geology of Rassie.
• 1:08:23
  So the designer sent modelling clay up to Rassie and said go.
• 1:08:27
  And, you know, so they spent three days on Rassie, myself and
• 1:08:31
  Bill and the team and heard everything that everyone had to
• 1:08:34
  say about the stories and all the rest of it.
• 1:08:35
  They sent us modelling clay. There's one particular rock that
• 1:08:39
  we really liked that had this kind of purple running through
• 1:08:42
  it. And they'd go and push the
• 1:08:45
  modelling clay into that rock. Right.
• 1:08:47
  All right, OK, push the model into that rock.
• 1:08:49
  And then they said, remember, on the East Coast of the island,
• 1:08:52
  the beach just at Halle below Duncana, there's fossils in the
• 1:08:55
  beach. Go get some of those fossils.
• 1:08:57
  So these are the fossils from the beach in the East Coast.
• 1:08:59
  And they he pushed it in and then he made the bottle mould
• 1:09:02
  out of the. So that's the mould directly
• 1:09:04
  from, yeah. So that that that's all the
• 1:09:07
  plan. So there was some, some some
• 1:09:08
  ammonite 350 million years ago. They didn't realise it.
• 1:09:11
  Was going to 66 million. Or 66,000,000 years ago, didn't
• 1:09:14
  realise it was going to appear on it.
• 1:09:16
  And The thing is you talk about the purple, it's interesting
• 1:09:18
  because as soon as you said like the, I'll think about your, I'll
• 1:09:21
  think about your branding. Yeah, I think about branding
• 1:09:24
  quite a lot because I am not you.
• 1:09:25
  See the the purple with the gold?
• 1:09:27
  Yeah, well, I'm not. I'm not a I'm the I've said it,
• 1:09:31
  I'm the marketers dream right impressionable and then I am, I
• 1:09:36
  am. And it's funny because I've
• 1:09:38
  looked at your branding for a lot because I'll be honest, I
• 1:09:42
  would, I would say like from, I don't know for the last two or
• 1:09:45
  three years and like, is there a new distillery?
• 1:09:48
  But there pushing out all the time so you're being seen and
• 1:09:52
  it's important because like you say, there's so many other
• 1:09:55
  whiskeys on the shelf. So yeah, first of all, bottle
• 1:09:57
  side bottle type bottle this and anything.
• 1:09:59
  But it's interesting because I always like the purple side of
• 1:10:02
  the Albert. And when you said dark fruits?
• 1:10:05
  Yeah. I instantly went that's probably
• 1:10:07
  why they have that colour on the on the bottle genuinely because
• 1:10:11
  it's. Got nothing to do with Bill
• 1:10:12
  being a Heart fan either. Well, there you go, a different
• 1:10:16
  story altogether. But I I must say like that, you
• 1:10:20
  have to stand out, right? That's our number one like
• 1:10:23
  that's the easiest part of the sales job is to tell.
• 1:10:26
  Them about the bottle and the reason it looks like the geology
• 1:10:29
  is because we've got our own well on site and where the
• 1:10:31
  distillery is the distillery is built on Jurassic sandstone,
• 1:10:34
  which happens thank goodness, to be a porous rock.
• 1:10:38
  So we're sat on top of a big sponge, but everything around us
• 1:10:42
  is volcanic rock, is granite or basalt.
• 1:10:44
  So obviously it rains a lot. And Rassie, yeah, water runs off
• 1:10:47
  all the car. It just gets fun.
• 1:10:48
  Yeah. Ends up ends up underneath the
• 1:10:50
  distillery. But your your tweed Dale, that's
• 1:10:54
  just a standard tall round, is it not?
• 1:10:56
  Pretty boring, have you asked? Me, it may look like a standard
• 1:11:01
  tall round, but but but for those who's really keen
• 1:11:04
  eyesights that it's slightly tapered.
• 1:11:06
  It's got the RRB in the neck. It was actually a A mould that
• 1:11:11
  the agile were no longer using that we were able to oh so.
• 1:11:14
  We were able to go to the agile we were.
• 1:11:15
  Able to buy and modify, yeah, to make an RB bottle out there.
• 1:11:20
  And so when you go back to it, so I'm assuming when you were
• 1:11:23
  blending Tweedale then? So this isn't actually the
• 1:11:27
  Tweedale blend. The reason?
• 1:11:28
  No, that's got single grain on. It this is a single grain and as
• 1:11:33
  far as I am aware peted single grain.
• 1:11:35
  This is the first ever peated single grain bottled.
• 1:11:39
  Good Lord, So which? So this is from Loch Lomond
• 1:11:42
  Distillery, right? Yeah.
• 1:11:43
  And I think, I think they were very kind and they allowed us to
• 1:11:48
  bottle this first is one way of looking at it.
• 1:11:51
  The other was they just wanted to see if it would fly before
• 1:11:53
  they bottled their own somebody else.
• 1:11:55
  So they obviously Loch Roman and I bottled their own.
• 1:11:58
  Yeah. This is their peated single
• 1:11:59
  grain. But I was, I was just absolutely
• 1:12:04
  fat. I mean, Loch Lomond is an
• 1:12:05
  amazing distillery. The different, I mean, I talk
• 1:12:07
  about flexibility and stills. We've got when you look at Loch
• 1:12:10
  Lohman stills and what they can do everything from Lohman stills
• 1:12:13
  to column still to pot stills and the fact that we're doing
• 1:12:16
  malted barley and column stills. I just thought.
• 1:12:21
  In a copper plated column still as well.
• 1:12:22
  It's just awesome. So this this was the first ever
• 1:12:27
  peated single bean whiskey Scotch whiskey to be bottled and
• 1:12:30
  it's well worth trying. It's very.
• 1:12:32
  Different. I mean, I mean how common is
• 1:12:35
  beeted grain spirit? It must be like hens teeth.
• 1:12:38
  I mean, even historically going back years, I mean.
• 1:12:41
  Well, how far back do you go? If you go back far enough, you
• 1:12:45
  will find everything in Scotland was made from a mash bill.
• 1:12:47
  Yeah. So if you think about the two
• 1:12:49
  grains that grow best in Scotland, oats and barley, Yeah,
• 1:12:53
  to a certain extent. Rye, that's not really wheat.
• 1:12:56
  No. So way back in your elicit the
• 1:13:00
  Salinas and and before that it was whatever, whatever the
• 1:13:04
  harvest was. So the barley, the oats, the
• 1:13:07
  rye, the wheat. They would all just get chucked
• 1:13:09
  into SO. So the Irish and the Scots had
• 1:13:12
  mash bills and when the Highland clearance had happened and the
• 1:13:17
  potato famine and everyone emigrated round the world, they
• 1:13:20
  took the mash bill with them. And now in the States, everybody
• 1:13:24
  knows about a mash bill because bourbons and rye are made to a
• 1:13:27
  mash bill and and we've gone completely the other way and
• 1:13:30
  just gone. There's only one grain.
• 1:13:32
  So for me, this is where it gets a bit more interesting and I'd
• 1:13:36
  love to. Funny story about this one in
• 1:13:40
  particular. So my first job in whiskey
• 1:13:44
  industry was at 3. All right here.
• 1:13:46
  It's called trusting experience. But yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:48
  Another one. Another one.
• 1:13:49
  I had tell listing. Another one.
• 1:13:51
  Yeah. Another graduate.
• 1:13:53
  I was going to shy away from this story because I feel like
• 1:13:56
  you've had about 40. Million.
• 1:13:57
  No, I love it. No, no, no.
• 1:13:59
  But my, one of my for some reason, I remember it my first
• 1:14:05
  day or week at Swee. There must have been an R&B
• 1:14:09
  delivery because I was in the shop early morning.
• 1:14:13
  In the shop, everyone helps with deliveries and you pack away
• 1:14:16
  whatever arrives that day. And there must have been an RB
• 1:14:18
  delivery because I packed away about 1,000,000 bottles of this
• 1:14:20
  and 1,000,000 bottles of Razzie while we wait.
• 1:14:22
  And I was looking at Razzie being like, never heard of this
• 1:14:25
  place in my life, What's this? Bear in mind I'd never worked in
• 1:14:28
  whiskey before so I was still quite new to it, but I always
• 1:14:32
  remember this going back to the bottle and how unique and
• 1:14:35
  different it is compared to everything else.
• 1:14:37
  What's R&B then? That's the.
• 1:14:39
  So R&B came from Bill and I's initial discussions.
• 1:14:43
  So when the company was incorporated, it was actually
• 1:14:46
  incorporated as Canny Distillers.
• 1:14:48
  And then we very quickly thought what we really going to call it.
• 1:14:51
  And so obviously Bill was talking about Rassie and my
• 1:14:55
  family heritage is Co streaming the borders.
• 1:14:57
  So R&B, it was Rassie and Border.
• 1:15:01
  So MyHeritage Bill's vision of Rassie.
• 1:15:04
  It's nothing to do with the Robertson and Baxter.
• 1:15:09
  It's just nice to be RB. What was your job at Scotch
• 1:15:13
  Whisky Experience and were you? I was a tour guide.
• 1:15:18
  I started in, well, a bit of a funny story with, with how I
• 1:15:23
  started. So I, I was studying at Napier
• 1:15:26
  University and I was doing tourism and airline management
• 1:15:29
  was my course and I was going on to graduate in 2020.
• 1:15:34
  So terrible time to graduate into tourism.
• 1:15:37
  But as part of a course I had, I had to do a placement within the
• 1:15:42
  field of I guess tourism or something.
• 1:15:45
  And so I had a friend who was working there at the time and
• 1:15:49
  she was like, well, why don't you, why don't you do this?
• 1:15:52
  And so I just applied on the basis of, well, it's a job in
• 1:15:55
  tourism. It gives me something to write
• 1:15:57
  this report about. Literally nothing to do with
• 1:15:59
  whiskey and. Or airlines.
• 1:16:01
  Or airlines. No, no, nothing.
• 1:16:02
  There's not many planes there. And so I started and I on my
• 1:16:08
  first day, I met Cody. Cody's one of my good pals.
• 1:16:10
  And so he was one of the first people I met in the whiskey
• 1:16:13
  industry. And so worked there for 22 days
• 1:16:17
  and then locked in happened. Wow.
• 1:16:21
  And at the time I was, so I was on further for ages and people
• 1:16:25
  were unfortunately later down the line had to, had to be let
• 1:16:29
  go. And so I was, I was one of
• 1:16:31
  these, one of these people because I was, I'd only worked
• 1:16:33
  there 22 days. I couldn't do anything.
• 1:16:36
  And, and then, but within those 22 days, I really, really fell
• 1:16:41
  in love with the Scots whiskey industry.
• 1:16:43
  I found it really, really interested in the history of it
• 1:16:45
  fascinating and shamefully being from East Lothian, I've not
• 1:16:49
  really seen much of Scotland. So I thought, wow, what a great
• 1:16:53
  way to to go around. Who needs to see the rest of
• 1:16:55
  Scotland when you're from East Lothian?
• 1:16:56
  Yeah, no, you live in Huntington.
• 1:16:57
  There's like not much to not see, else you know you've seen
• 1:17:01
  it all. Medium sized swimming pool.
• 1:17:03
  Yeah, there's an All right, so. You're from Huntington, are you?
• 1:17:05
  Yeah, I'm from Huntington. Yeah.
• 1:17:06
  Oh, you're right. Not everyone else is outnumbered
• 1:17:08
  by people from Chuck and I Broke Crock.
• 1:17:11
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you.
• 1:17:13
  Go to Knox. I didn't know.
• 1:17:15
  No, I didn't know we went. To Gifford.
• 1:17:17
  Oh, you're not really. From yeah, I, I went to yes as
• 1:17:20
  well. So.
• 1:17:21
  Oh, really? I like finding the gardener's
• 1:17:23
  arms. Or what was the gardener?
• 1:17:24
  'S arms a little longer. Of course, then I guess I had a
• 1:17:27
  couple. Of the Tweedy alarms wasn't too
• 1:17:29
  far I mean. Tweedy alarms.
• 1:17:30
  That's where my mom and dad met. Really.
• 1:17:32
  Yeah, Tweedy alarms. Yeah, my granny.
• 1:17:33
  'S Lord, this is just a couple of very well, I was gonna I was
• 1:17:38
  gonna say that it was some of my great.
• 1:17:40
  Had our funeral and. All that you know the way we're
• 1:17:44
  getting very local here. Have you ever had a bottle I.
• 1:17:46
  Never realized you went to Esther, Chuck.
• 1:17:48
  Have you ever? Had that's not good at this
• 1:17:50
  river at home further. No, no, no.
• 1:17:53
  I genuinely didn't realize that. I tell you what though, because
• 1:17:56
  I heard you talking about. It Harrington.
• 1:17:58
  House. There's a in that suite.
• 1:18:00
  There is a bottle of Haddington House in the yes.
• 1:18:02
  There is, there is. We've seen it.
• 1:18:03
  Every time I go in on a tour I'm quite sad.
• 1:18:06
  I calculated one day, I think I've done 900 tours, 22 days.
• 1:18:11
  No, I forgot. I've not even gone back to the
• 1:18:17
  first part of that story. And every time I go in, I would
• 1:18:19
  see, I would look at that bottle of Addington house.
• 1:18:21
  Yeah, Yeah. Is that actually a house from
• 1:18:22
  Addington? Well, technically there is one
• 1:18:26
  on the side gate that. Is.
• 1:18:28
  I thought it was the one. That is Huntington House, the
• 1:18:29
  big White 1. You know the one.
• 1:18:33
  What's it called? Like Lady Paddington?
• 1:18:37
  I don't know. I don't know that name.
• 1:18:40
  Because it's got kind of like a. Stag on the front and I I'll.
• 1:18:42
  Tell. You why it's it's probably
• 1:18:45
  because Harrington is the capital of East.
• 1:18:47
  Lolier it is. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:18:49
  That must. Be respectable time.
• 1:18:51
  So another another bottle in this wee collection is a bottle
• 1:18:54
  of strath filling and it's the recipes of my great grandfather
• 1:18:57
  so. Really.
• 1:18:58
  That's way more interesting. Way more interest.
• 1:19:00
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know a lot for that.
• 1:19:06
  Anyone had any barley from Fife recently?
• 1:19:09
  Yes. No, Angus, no, but I mean.
• 1:19:13
  I was going to say anywho, I ended up going back-to-back to
• 1:19:16
  Sui and actually get a job back eventually and worked there for
• 1:19:18
  a year and met. I worked with Jake as well.
• 1:19:22
  Who, you know, yeah. Yeah, we do.
• 1:19:24
  That's How I Met. Jake, there's so many like the.
• 1:19:28
  Never worked Valley Baxter, though, Did you know?
• 1:19:29
  I've never worked. I know him, obviously, and he
• 1:19:31
  knows me, but I've never, never worked, never worked together.
• 1:19:34
  I've heard it's about my nightmare but it's just been too
• 1:19:36
  nice. But this is what, 3 DRAM?
• 1:19:38
  Exactly a bit brassy and opera. Oh, he's not a nightmare, he's a
• 1:19:44
  great guy. But the I find it.
• 1:19:47
  So is Tweedale still going? Is that?
• 1:19:49
  Yeah. So we've currently got a 30 year
• 1:19:51
  old Swedel available through cashier.
• 1:19:53
  So it was 28 years in ex bourbon and two years in Amanteado.
• 1:20:00
  This last two years in Amanteado.
• 1:20:01
  So this is still a independent bottler.
• 1:20:04
  Yeah, it's, it's it's, it's still still available.
• 1:20:07
  Within the brand. Within that, cashiers like our
• 1:20:10
  indie bottle. It's part of R&B, right?
• 1:20:12
  Part of R. And B, yeah.
• 1:20:14
  Yeah, yeah, no, no, no. So what, what, what we're
• 1:20:17
  looking at plans wise for assay in the future.
• 1:20:20
  What does, what does the future hold for?
• 1:20:22
  Because look, let's, yeah, let's talk about the we, we've had a
• 1:20:26
  good few people on the podcast where you have to talk about it.
• 1:20:30
  Everyone's saying it's a difficult time at the moment.
• 1:20:32
  It's a really difficult time, particularly export, and
• 1:20:37
  everyone's got a different view on it.
• 1:20:38
  But in my view, we've had like at least 15 years, great years
• 1:20:44
  for Scotch whiskey. So there's probably going to be
• 1:20:48
  7 to 10 not so good years in Scotch whiskey.
• 1:20:51
  And I think, you know, my view would be let's plan for that.
• 1:20:55
  And you know, if you plan for the worst and Gregory and the
• 1:21:00
  team work as hard as they work, and then we think sales every
• 1:21:03
  minute of the day, then you know, hopefully, hopefully we'll
• 1:21:06
  see the other side of it. And do you have to look at does
• 1:21:09
  that, you know, again, one of the things that Arthur Motley
• 1:21:12
  spoke a lot about was saying that it it was he said he he was
• 1:21:16
  saying so much that maybe like what you're saying is he saw,
• 1:21:19
  you know, for 10 years, no one really had to set WW told
• 1:21:22
  itself. And he said, so now we're having
• 1:21:24
  to see people working really hard, but also probably not
• 1:21:28
  agreed. He's the wrong word.
• 1:21:30
  But I think when times were good, everyone was quite happy
• 1:21:32
  to go yeah, we could make instead of it being AI don't
• 1:21:35
  know what your out turns of your bottles.
• 1:21:37
  Every single you know, their numbers are like, but you know,
• 1:21:39
  let's just say for argument's sake, instead of a 5000 bottle
• 1:21:43
  run, go in, let's do a 10,000 bottle run because it's selling
• 1:21:47
  Andrew's sell. And of course when it's selling,
• 1:21:49
  sell it. But at the same time.
• 1:21:50
  Yeah. I mean, I think we're, we're
• 1:21:51
  just at a very different stage because I'd say we're a young
• 1:21:54
  business. We're we're kind of, you know,
• 1:21:55
  we're, we're going from an L base to it's, it's all about,
• 1:22:01
  it's all about that growth and trying to sustain that growth.
• 1:22:04
  But I think, I mean, it was a really interesting, I've
• 1:22:10
  listened to some really interesting discussions.
• 1:22:14
  And some of the things that come out of that is that if you think
• 1:22:16
  about 80 years ago, 40 years ago, 20 years of the kind of
• 1:22:21
  boom and bust that have been in the past.
• 1:22:22
  There's there's nobody about it at senior level in any of the
• 1:22:25
  big international listening companies that remember
• 1:22:27
  anything. Yeah, right.
• 1:22:28
  Because that, you know, that's not your working lifespan.
• 1:22:31
  So there's that. Then to your point is in recent
• 1:22:35
  times, and I think it, I think it was Dawn from, yeah, excuse
• 1:22:42
  me, something we said we've just forgotten how to tell.
• 1:22:45
  And I think there's a certain amount of truth in that.
• 1:22:47
  What I would say as a as a young business who's been unknown and
• 1:22:52
  trying to build a brand is like, I think we've got a team of
• 1:22:55
  people who know how it sell. Yeah.
• 1:22:57
  And I think, you know, Bill's big thing from day one is we
• 1:23:00
  have to sell every minute of every day.
• 1:23:01
  Well, he's coming from an entrepreneurial background.
• 1:23:03
  You know from from that perspective, he's got to.
• 1:23:05
  Know so I think I think it's it's it's incredibly valid and
• 1:23:11
  if you don't think sales. Yeah, I always think of a a
• 1:23:15
  hospitality background for myself for a long period of
• 1:23:17
  time. And I always think if you get
• 1:23:18
  people in bars who are really excited about your product, I
• 1:23:21
  always think of with you guys, I always think of N Sign Yurt,
• 1:23:24
  Yeah, 'cause Amazon Day are like absolute Rassie champions.
• 1:23:29
  And whenever I go in there, they're like.
• 1:23:31
  Well, The thing is like, again, they redid A cask for, yeah, a
• 1:23:35
  single cask for them. And we have done that for for
• 1:23:38
  the bars as well. Yeah.
• 1:23:39
  Yeah. Well, it's Cody.
• 1:23:40
  Cody. I think it was Cody Reynolds who
• 1:23:41
  said, you know, there's no better.
• 1:23:44
  It was a query that said it on the podcast.
• 1:23:46
  There's no better brand ambassador for anyone than
• 1:23:48
  somebody working behind the bar for you.
• 1:23:50
  Absolutely. So if you can get into the.
• 1:23:51
  Main thing is staff education if you can get people definitely in
• 1:23:55
  bars but also shops or anyone that will be willing to listen.
• 1:23:58
  But if you can get bartenders. Knows about that.
• 1:24:01
  Yeah, yeah. Or if you can just get your son
• 1:24:04
  employed behind. Exactly.
• 1:24:06
  So this one, this one is because your lady's actually served us a
• 1:24:10
  drama or two over because he works upstairs with it and.
• 1:24:13
  He keeps sending me bottles of like, he keeps sending me
• 1:24:16
  pictures of this and good. It's nearly empty down.
• 1:24:18
  So is this it? Now you just got to put the
• 1:24:20
  family to work and get them all working behind bars around
• 1:24:22
  Scotland selling Rhapsody I. Think it all helps, but I think
• 1:24:25
  in in seriousness, like it is about, you know, it's like.
• 1:24:28
  We staff education is key. Staff education too, but but
• 1:24:30
  also collaboration. So like working with the
• 1:24:33
  Thompson brothers and and doing the whiskey bars.
• 1:24:35
  I called and well. The Thompson brothers, we, we
• 1:24:37
  the, the, the mystery mall, you know, that's been a big success,
• 1:24:40
  young, younger distilleries. And I watched a video with them.
• 1:24:44
  We talked about it on the podcast, like watching the video
• 1:24:47
  where Phil is trying to open a flagging.
• 1:24:51
  Yeah. And Simon's talking.
• 1:24:53
  But one of the things that they were saying is like, you know,
• 1:24:55
  the feedback has been that more new distilleries want to work
• 1:24:59
  with the mystery mall angle because it's probably an
• 1:25:04
  opportunity for a lot of people to get a chance to drink
• 1:25:06
  something that they would maybe never have drunk before.
• 1:25:08
  That's a new distillery. It's just a brilliant idea.
• 1:25:10
  Yeah, yeah, they've done and did you did you have to plan Like
• 1:25:15
  you don't get into whiskey, you only have to you speak to
• 1:25:19
  someone that's maybe worked in whiskey for 10 years, 15 years
• 1:25:21
  Max and they'll tell you how cyclical whiskey can be.
• 1:25:26
  You know, there's there's good times and then there's not so
• 1:25:28
  good. Or as somebody said to me,
• 1:25:30
  there's very good times and then there's good times.
• 1:25:32
  So he was sort of saying, I'll put it in perspective, but
• 1:25:34
  that's maybe working at the top, a bigger brand level.
• 1:25:39
  You know, companies aren't recording the same level of
• 1:25:42
  profits anymore, but there's still companies report, you
• 1:25:44
  know, they're not reporting major.
• 1:25:46
  The big guys aren't reporting Major.
• 1:25:47
  Losses. You just have to leave it.
• 1:25:49
  I think you're, but you have to. Plan are you when you're sitting
• 1:25:51
  down and you're looking at the the business model and you're
• 1:25:55
  going right. I'll tell you what we're going
• 1:25:56
  to start something now. It's going to take X amount of
• 1:25:58
  years to build this thing. It's then going to take X amount
• 1:26:01
  of years before we can actually put anything out that calls it
• 1:26:04
  whiskey. Yeah, you can't you don't have a
• 1:26:06
  crystal ball. You can't suddenly say when
• 1:26:09
  things are going to go good and when things are maybe going to
• 1:26:11
  take a downturn. But you're obviously going to
• 1:26:13
  have to take that into consideration when you're
• 1:26:15
  starting a distillery that there will be UPS and there's going to
• 1:26:18
  be downs. In the industry, absolutely.
• 1:26:19
  And you know, like the again, the facts matter is we have a 10
• 1:26:22
  year plan, a three-year plan, a one year plan.
• 1:26:24
  That's that's how it works. And that's again structured
• 1:26:27
  through Bill and William and it's absolutely right.
• 1:26:30
  That's what I need. And I think the point is that,
• 1:26:34
  that hopefully because of the way they make whiskey, we've
• 1:26:39
  we've got flexibility and we can, we can address changes in
• 1:26:43
  the market hopefully. I suppose Woody and Megan, we
• 1:26:48
  were in Edinburgh we ever had in their warehouse a couple of
• 1:26:50
  weeks ago. And that's what they said is
• 1:26:51
  they said, well, actually, you know, we're only three years old
• 1:26:55
  as an independent bottler, but they said, like all week because
• 1:26:59
  they've not known a time where they've not had to sell whiskey
• 1:27:02
  because they're so new. Yeah.
• 1:27:04
  I suppose that would probably similar from your front is the
• 1:27:06
  fact that you've not actually known enough of we don't need to
• 1:27:10
  worry about selling it. Yeah.
• 1:27:11
  No, we've not. We've not ever been in that
• 1:27:13
  position and and won't be for a long time.
• 1:27:15
  Is, is, is the honest answer. And I think, yeah, I mean, I
• 1:27:20
  don't know if you've got a different view on it, but.
• 1:27:22
  No, I, I think all I would say is I think it's generally the
• 1:27:27
  whiskey industry right now is a bit of a difficult time.
• 1:27:30
  It's maybe in the good time rather than the very good time
• 1:27:32
  is what you say. But I think it's very easy to
• 1:27:36
  get caught up in, in that mindset.
• 1:27:38
  But realistically, there's always going to be people that
• 1:27:42
  drink whiskey and ultimately want to buy whiskey.
• 1:27:45
  And so, as I said before, like you need to look at different
• 1:27:49
  avenues that you maybe didn't look at before or maybe haven't
• 1:27:52
  considered, you know, you take the Indian market, for example.
• 1:27:57
  I know you, I've seen your pod when you were out there.
• 1:27:59
  It's like it's the biggest market for Scots right now, but
• 1:28:03
  yet still such a minimal amount. And you know, even if that grows
• 1:28:07
  by two or three percent, all new distilleries are laughing if
• 1:28:12
  they're drinking our stuff. And so it's it's.
• 1:28:15
  A good problem to. Have yeah, there's plenty,
• 1:28:17
  plenty of room to grow. It's just need.
• 1:28:19
  You just need to be able to pivot.
• 1:28:21
  Can I can I ask about markets for yourselves?
• 1:28:23
  I was in Japan in February and I was so shocked to see how many
• 1:28:30
  of rasi like boss things I've seen for like for like botting
• 1:28:34
  like forget the name of the this shop.
• 1:28:39
  But Liquor Mountain? Liquor Mountain.
• 1:28:41
  Yeah. And then there's another one
• 1:28:43
  that they do like the chess pieces on.
• 1:28:45
  It's like Shizola. Well.
• 1:28:50
  You. You.
• 1:28:50
  Yeah. But is there quite a, is there
• 1:28:52
  quite a good market there for you so or is there any markets
• 1:28:54
  globally that? So we're in, we're in 52
• 1:28:57
  different markets around the world now.
• 1:28:59
  UK, Gregor, what Gregor's saying the UK is, is great.
• 1:29:03
  You know, it's good. And, you know, obviously we, we,
• 1:29:07
  we built out, you know, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness,
• 1:29:11
  the Highlands and Islands. You know, there are definitely
• 1:29:13
  our stronghold. You know, Scott Fraser moved
• 1:29:16
  down to London. You know, we're trying to grow
• 1:29:19
  that in, in the UK, but it is important to like have all these
• 1:29:24
  different markets. And yes, China's down, yes,
• 1:29:27
  Germany's down. France has been pretty steady.
• 1:29:31
  And you know, Adele's out there now.
• 1:29:35
  So, yeah, it's about I guess there's, there's, there's five
• 1:29:40
  key markets that we want to focus on.
• 1:29:43
  But at the same time having Japan and South Korea, Sekia are
• 1:29:47
  distillers from Korea. So that's great because he can
• 1:29:51
  go and do his tastings when he goes home.
• 1:29:52
  It's all handy. But it is about having that and
• 1:29:56
  trying to grow that number of markets.
• 1:29:58
  I think there's. Well, we get ourselves about.
• 1:30:01
  So if you're never looking for anyone, you're never looking for
• 1:30:03
  anyone to do a better work with. You that's a.
• 1:30:05
  Tasting in Korea? Oh, absolutely it would be.
• 1:30:08
  Fine, but we would do a whiskey. We could do it.
• 1:30:10
  We're still at a spotlight in Seoul.
• 1:30:12
  We would. Yeah.
• 1:30:13
  The. Last, I'm going to be in Seoul,
• 1:30:15
  then in January we're going to February, yeah.
• 1:30:18
  That's great to see some of the bottles around.
• 1:30:21
  Yeah, I'm, I'm headed to Japan, not for work, but in January, so
• 1:30:24
  that's OK. That's.
• 1:30:24
  Exciting. He'll be working.
• 1:30:25
  He doesn't know he's doing taste.
• 1:30:27
  We go with that bag full of. Bottles.
• 1:30:29
  Now the last thing you brought us is this new make spirit.
• 1:30:31
  New make. Spirit, yeah.
• 1:30:32
  Take us through this thing. Because I just saw, I just saw,
• 1:30:35
  Chuck said it, swirling water around his glass and then taking
• 1:30:37
  a big go. Like another Chuck said, this
• 1:30:40
  was dangerously drinkable. I've not tried it, but no.
• 1:30:42
  I think, I think going back to the design of the story, right.
• 1:30:45
  So, yeah, I made the mistake of sitting in a very early meeting
• 1:30:50
  with with chemical engineers talking about process design and
• 1:30:54
  they said, what do you want to make?
• 1:30:55
  And I said, I want it to be an elegant spirit.
• 1:30:57
  Now that means nothing to a process engineer, but hopefully
• 1:31:01
  this is elegant. So we take very narrow cut
• 1:31:03
  points. This is our pitted spirit.
• 1:31:06
  So we call in at 72 and we come off at 65.
• 1:31:10
  And so it's quite a narrow cut. We're not trying to get into
• 1:31:13
  those big heavier funerals. We it's Hylan Peat.
• 1:31:15
  So we're looking for that aromatic fragrant wood smoke.
• 1:31:19
  But our new makes merit is actually quite sweet.
• 1:31:23
  Yeah. And it actually does have that
• 1:31:25
  dark fruit black current thing going on.
• 1:31:27
  So at this stage that can only come from the fermentations and
• 1:31:32
  the the lactic fermentation. You can smell that.
• 1:31:35
  The reason our new makes sweet is our waters very ever so
• 1:31:39
  slightly hard. So obviously most distillers in
• 1:31:43
  Scotland, the water soft. The harder the water, the
• 1:31:45
  sweeter you mean it's. It's really nice.
• 1:31:49
  It makes you wonder why we bother maturing.
• 1:31:51
  Maturing, right? Don't tell anyone that guy.
• 1:31:59
  I know we don't usually do anything with so thought we'd
• 1:32:03
  bring it along. For lovely well, thank you for.
• 1:32:05
  That, that's terrific. I put your nose on it.
• 1:32:07
  It's lovely. Lovely, right lads?
• 1:32:08
  What we're going to do is we're going to do what, 3 drams?
• 1:32:10
  So we'll do 3 drams each. If you want to do 3 drams each,
• 1:32:13
  you do want to do 1 each and then one.
• 1:32:14
  One, I have two drams. I could probably come up with a
• 1:32:18
  third one if you've got 3I. Can find 3 drams.
• 1:32:21
  For three drams, Well, what I'll do is if Gregor's already got
• 1:32:24
  his. Lined up?
• 1:32:25
  Definitely. You can go.
• 1:32:27
  We'll do one for one. OK, so Gregor will come with you
• 1:32:29
  for your first one then. Right, I'm going to get the
• 1:32:32
  brand one out the way, but it's it's not because just to be on
• 1:32:35
  brand is because of where we are.
• 1:32:37
  So the first time I ever drank Razzie was in this pub with my
• 1:32:41
  pal and where, I don't know, even three years ago, four years
• 1:32:47
  ago when I was working at SUI and I was just getting into
• 1:32:49
  whiskey industry and he lived just on Gorgie Road there and he
• 1:32:52
  was like, I think there's a pretty good whiskey pub around
• 1:32:54
  here and I'll follow you. And so when we came here and
• 1:32:58
  Razzie was on that little sheet that's on the side of the bar,
• 1:33:01
  yeah, Cliffy sheet. And I was like, I've seen that
• 1:33:03
  at my work. I'll try that one.
• 1:33:05
  And so that's that was the first time I ever tried Razi.
• 1:33:08
  So just the the normal Razi which is now called the DRAM.
• 1:33:11
  Back then it was DRAM the. DRAM.
• 1:33:14
  And back then wasn't called the DRAM, but now it's called the
• 1:33:18
  DRAM. That would be my first one, but
• 1:33:20
  that's the that's the brand one out the way.
• 1:33:22
  Brilliant. So you've got the DRAM, the.
• 1:33:24
  Job is safe, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:33:27
  Yeah, if the bosses are all listening ones here, but the
• 1:33:29
  rest of them? Great Alastair, what about
• 1:33:32
  yourself? So I'll tell you about the one
• 1:33:34
  I've got my glass. So this is this is kind of one
• 1:33:36
  of my go to whiskeys. It's yeah, could be responsible,
• 1:33:41
  could could have some influence in the design of Rassie.
• 1:33:45
  This is a young Kalila. This is a six year old Kalila,
• 1:33:49
  interestingly fully matured in Cheri.
• 1:33:51
  So first Phil Cheri. So it's it's, it's sold from
• 1:33:55
  Pete basically. And Khalila is one of those.
• 1:34:00
  God, we'd almost got that. Well, I was surprised because
• 1:34:03
  when you ordered that and that you specifically asked for like
• 1:34:05
  a Khalila, but you also specifically asked for, like a
• 1:34:08
  young one. Yeah.
• 1:34:09
  So what is it about a young Khalila that you like so much?
• 1:34:12
  I think so. I think it, it's so it's more
• 1:34:17
  back to the distillery character.
• 1:34:18
  I think you get more of the distillery character at a
• 1:34:20
  younger age. You get more of the Pete at a
• 1:34:22
  younger age. So we talked briefly about
• 1:34:25
  Cashier earlier. We we did a 5 year old Kalila
• 1:34:30
  under the the cashier and I selected the cask.
• 1:34:33
  And I think at that age, Kalila just shines for me.
• 1:34:37
  It just, you know, it's it's yeah, it's one of my favorite,
• 1:34:45
  favorite island. Excellent.
• 1:34:47
  Brilliant, thank you. I got grand #2.
• 1:34:49
  Grand number 2 is another pretty standard one.
• 1:34:53
  I'm a big fan of Open 14. I just one that I first sort of
• 1:34:58
  came to like it's not the first drama ever had, but it's one
• 1:35:00
  that I've just really enjoyed and my missus also happens to be
• 1:35:05
  from Open so so you've. Got one on brand and one
• 1:35:10
  sticking in with the family. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:35:14
  But yeah, no, it's one, I just think it's solid.
• 1:35:16
  It's one that I would buy for my mates who I'm kind of getting
• 1:35:20
  into whiskey. They weren't particularly into
• 1:35:21
  whiskey before before my job, but I'm getting a few of them on
• 1:35:25
  site now and Open 14 is one of them that's kind of getting.
• 1:35:29
  Terrific. Something you drink a bit of
• 1:35:30
  open, you look a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Open 14 is
• 1:35:34
  nice. Yeah, I really like the the one
• 1:35:37
  from open I really like is like I like the distillers of the
• 1:35:39
  distillers one. Yeah, they're always very nice.
• 1:35:41
  Yeah. It's just, I think it's, I think
• 1:35:43
  it's just pretty solid all round.
• 1:35:45
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's not, it's not an
• 1:35:47
  exciting no, that's as a choice is like a younger Khalil, but.
• 1:35:51
  No. Can I just before we finish, can
• 1:35:54
  I, can I have another one of these because.
• 1:35:55
  Yeah, the police do I. Just I've broken the promise to
• 1:35:59
  myself that I wasn't going to have too many.
• 1:36:00
  I'm going. To finish this and I.
• 1:36:03
  Want to? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:36:05
  I mean, after the weekend I've had, I've sort of said like I
• 1:36:08
  did say to the current wife when I was leaving, like the.
• 1:36:11
  Current life. Yeah, there's a trope with the
• 1:36:13
  pod. It's not.
• 1:36:18
  I did say I'll have a couple of drums and I'll be home.
• 1:36:23
  Just you make now. Yeah, but but crack and drop
• 1:36:28
  there. And very, very, very It is,
• 1:36:29
  right, Alistair, drama #2 for yourself.
• 1:36:31
  Drama #2 would be above Venny. Well, Venny was one of the first
• 1:36:36
  whiskeys that I ever kind of when I drank it, I thought
• 1:36:39
  that's that's elegant that that elegant element coming back in.
• 1:36:42
  And this is when it was still in that.
• 1:36:44
  Remember that Brandy dumpy Brandy bottle used to be in SO a
• 1:36:48
  few years ago. Time, age, statement or type or.
• 1:36:51
  Just just this kind of probably just a straight ball of any 10
• 1:36:55
  from that either when it was in that bottle, that was just to
• 1:36:58
  me, it was just. Like.
• 1:37:02
  The Glenfiddich triangular, it was to me, it was like a cognac
• 1:37:05
  bottle. It had a long neck on it and it
• 1:37:07
  was just, to me, that was just an amazingly lovely, elegant
• 1:37:12
  drinking. I think I, I think I've never
• 1:37:15
  done it. I've got a book here of all the
• 1:37:16
  episodes that we've done and all everyone's, what, 3 dramas?
• 1:37:19
  Balveni might be one of the. Most I think Balveni's probably
• 1:37:21
  one of the ones that's popped up so many times.
• 1:37:24
  Balveni 14 Caribbean Caribbean cars.
• 1:37:27
  But at the same time, I think Balveni there must be it's it's
• 1:37:30
  a drama. I don't drink an awful lot of
• 1:37:32
  no, but at the same time. It's what I meant when I was
• 1:37:35
  talking to the chemical engineers and I said elegant.
• 1:37:37
  That's what I meant. That's something where it's like
• 1:37:40
  a just an elegant space side. It's actually well made.
• 1:37:44
  Yeah, whiskey that. Maybe it's overlooked.
• 1:37:47
  Right, right drum #3 for. Yourself.
• 1:37:51
  Great drum #3 for myself. This is my favorite whiskey of
• 1:37:55
  all time in Valentine's 17. Oh, you're speaking to the
• 1:37:59
  speaking to. The women in Glen Talkers.
• 1:38:02
  Yeah, the reason I started liking it is because it was,
• 1:38:08
  you'd know, the amber bar that's in.
• 1:38:10
  Yeah, since we when it was, I don't think it's produced
• 1:38:12
  anymore. No.
• 1:38:14
  Was that not like was that? I think I bought a few bottles
• 1:38:18
  of that to. Lock down.
• 1:38:20
  Yeah. Well, that must have been when
• 1:38:21
  it went out because that's when I was at 3:00 because it was on
• 1:38:24
  the shelf all of a sudden and then it wasn't on the shelf.
• 1:38:26
  Yeah. Anyhow, Graham came in and.
• 1:38:30
  And so it was a cheap DRAM in the amber bar.
• 1:38:32
  So I started drinking it then because it was still, but I just
• 1:38:35
  finished uni at the time, so I was not as yeah.
• 1:38:39
  Yeah, not as flush as you are now all your Commission.
• 1:38:41
  No, no, no. That's not the case at all.
• 1:38:46
  Anyway, so I really enjoyed that.
• 1:38:48
  And then the last time I had it, I was in Latvia with my pal
• 1:38:52
  quite recently and I I saw there and then with the same pal I
• 1:38:57
  went to Bulgaria with and it was there.
• 1:38:59
  So it seems to be in Eastern. Europe, that's where we need to
• 1:39:02
  go for the Ballentine 17. There you are.
• 1:39:04
  Yeah, that's the only places I see it anymore.
• 1:39:06
  Because I think that I'm not even saying they like used to
• 1:39:08
  bottle Ballantine 7th was it was a sort of core arranged, but
• 1:39:13
  then did it go away and then it came back again.
• 1:39:16
  Yeah, it's one of these things we've said on the podcast if
• 1:39:18
  you've got a favorite release, and favorite because it might
• 1:39:21
  not be here tomorrow. I don't generally don't see it
• 1:39:23
  anymore. I mean it's on the auction sites
• 1:39:25
  and things like that, but like generally around even on bars, I
• 1:39:29
  don't really see it apart from. Because they brought a Glenn
• 1:39:33
  Burgie release around the same time.
• 1:39:35
  Was it a Glenn Burgie 21 or something at the same time Did?
• 1:39:38
  Like 3 different ballentines of ballentines, melting Duff, Glenn
• 1:39:42
  Talkers and. There's a Melton Duff one as
• 1:39:44
  well. Yeah, I think Ballentine 17 is
• 1:39:46
  still available, but it just might depend on the territory
• 1:39:49
  you're in. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:39:50
  So after Eastern Europe. Serbia and Latvia you can.
• 1:39:54
  Melton Duff is an interesting 1. Milton Duff is one of the single
• 1:39:58
  malts and the 2 when I was making the two one.
• 1:40:01
  It's just. Amazing whiskey that people just
• 1:40:04
  don't think about. Can I just say I just had some
• 1:40:07
  of this and it is. Class Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we
• 1:40:13
  did. We yeah.
• 1:40:14
  I didn't mention my opinions on it, but yeah, it's absolutely
• 1:40:17
  super. Yeah, it's like super.
• 1:40:19
  So I mean, to me, what that does is like for all these people who
• 1:40:23
  go turn their nose up at single grain, you just give them that.
• 1:40:26
  And because it's pitted and they don't know what it is, they
• 1:40:29
  disco, they start naming Ilas. Yeah.
• 1:40:32
  It's such, it's such an interesting twist into that,
• 1:40:35
  Pete as well. Yeah.
• 1:40:35
  It kind of goes like, yeah, here's fresh citrusy notes.
• 1:40:39
  It's like, and there you go. Yeah.
• 1:40:40
  But it's still super super light as well.
• 1:40:43
  And it's refill bourbon, so you're just getting what's.
• 1:40:45
  Gonna happen tiny. That's so.
• 1:40:47
  Good. Well, thank you very much.
• 1:40:48
  Right. They asked.
• 1:40:50
  The final one, final one is, is is more an aspirational
• 1:40:53
  category, but I once bought and I think it was a Flora in Fauna
• 1:40:58
  bottling. It was a Glenuity Royal.
• 1:41:00
  Oh wow. And I think of all the whiskeys
• 1:41:03
  I've ever drunk. I drank it thinking wow really,
• 1:41:08
  but didn't unfortunately at the time twig that I should have
• 1:41:11
  gone immediately and bought another 3-4 or five bottles.
• 1:41:13
  Well, do you know what you've done the exactly same thing as
• 1:41:15
  my dad, because my dad, my family through my dad are from
• 1:41:19
  Stone Haven originally, although I grew up in Allington.
• 1:41:21
  And when that distillery closed, the shop that my great uncle
• 1:41:27
  worked in at the time had stock and stock and stock of Glen Erie
• 1:41:30
  Royal and my dad bought several bottles and just they'd all just
• 1:41:33
  disappeared. And threw the kind of whiskey
• 1:41:35
  and I went back to went back to buy a bottle man actually
• 1:41:38
  managed to find a bottle and it was 2 grand and at that time I
• 1:41:43
  was like I just but I still should have done this.
• 1:41:46
  Wow, that's. Just.
• 1:41:49
  Wow, I think the original bottle I bought was like £50.
• 1:41:53
  Yeah. Yeah, it's mental, I mean.
• 1:41:56
  But it was, it was genuinely such an amazing affair.
• 1:41:59
  But this is interesting because I, I mean, my dad isn't really a
• 1:42:03
  big whiskey drinker or a bit. And he said I think Glen Erie
• 1:42:05
  Royal, you know, it was closed. It was a fairly average whiskey
• 1:42:08
  from what I, you know, reputationally from what I, you
• 1:42:11
  know, from what he heard. So, you know, he just, he just
• 1:42:13
  drunk it and it was just, it was gone.
• 1:42:15
  But in any you've seen the prices, he said maybe I should
• 1:42:17
  have. Yeah, I'm.
• 1:42:18
  Going to do the balls. But you know, it's interesting
• 1:42:21
  someone coming with such high praise for Glen.
• 1:42:23
  Erie Robs. So I was mentioning.
• 1:42:24
  First mention on the first mention on the pod.
• 1:42:26
  I've mentioned it on the pod. Well, first.
• 1:42:29
  First, what free drams, but I have mentioned it on the pod
• 1:42:32
  when there was talk of what distillery would you reopen, I
• 1:42:35
  said Glen Erie Royal. There you go.
• 1:42:36
  Because. I write enough.
• 1:42:37
  But although it's completely demolishing now, but.
• 1:42:40
  Yeah, and how well did I do not mention it?
• 1:42:42
  RAC Yeah. Yeah, if you've got.
• 1:42:45
  It I got it. Got it, got it Brand, got it
• 1:42:47
  there. But how can guys, how can people
• 1:42:49
  who are listening to this find out more?
• 1:42:51
  I mean, we've got, we've got Scott Moore coming over in the
• 1:42:54
  next couple of weeks from Memphis.
• 1:42:56
  TN's coming over. Oh yeah, he's doing the eat,
• 1:42:59
  sleep, drama, repeat experience. He's, he's and then he's coming
• 1:43:04
  over to Edinburgh. We've got, we've got two big
• 1:43:07
  days lined up actually with them because we've got a Friday day
• 1:43:11
  out with Scott Moore. And again, that will finish, I'm
• 1:43:14
  pretty certain it will finish here.
• 1:43:16
  Not in the dungeon, but basically you never know.
• 1:43:20
  But but basically. So it's an open invitation.
• 1:43:23
  Scott has said to me, please put out to the podcast listeners,
• 1:43:27
  pals of the pod, there is an open invitation.
• 1:43:29
  Scott Moore is in town on the. 21st Friday the 20.
• 1:43:33
  Friday the 20. First we'll be out and about and
• 1:43:35
  then I think on the 22nd we're going to be if whatever state we
• 1:43:39
  are in, I've hired a driver. I can't.
• 1:43:42
  I can't. Well, I'm not going to be there
• 1:43:43
  for that. We've got a mystery driver
• 1:43:45
  lined. Up right, OK, yeah.
• 1:43:47
  So we've got party here, we've got a Tam do tasting.
• 1:43:50
  I think we're going to. Tam do on the 21st.
• 1:43:52
  On the on the Friday evening, right.
• 1:43:54
  And then we've got a few other things lined up.
• 1:43:57
  But basically, yeah. So that's that's what so, But
• 1:43:59
  yeah, Scott will be listening to this over in the States.
• 1:44:02
  He'll drive quite easily, travel six hours, cross borderlines to
• 1:44:07
  get to another liquor store that he knows is a different
• 1:44:09
  importer. You'd be more than welcome.
• 1:44:11
  You'd be more than welcome. To come up to Razi, well, but,
• 1:44:13
  but just can you get hold of that Razi, we have room.
• 1:44:17
  States you definitely can. Yeah, so he's got that, but what
• 1:44:19
  about other? How can people find out more
• 1:44:21
  about Razi Distillery Aisle Razi What's?
• 1:44:23
  Going on basically school, our website, yeah, Instagram.
• 1:44:27
  And you guys are on? Soldiers as well.
• 1:44:29
  Oh. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:44:29
  Yeah. Yeah, we have a, we have a free
• 1:44:32
  a club called the Slans Club. Just sign up right online,
• 1:44:35
  you'll get all the all the updates and some special offers
• 1:44:39
  as well here. Special special access to
• 1:44:41
  special bottlings. As well.
• 1:44:42
  Yeah, and how can people keep up to date on the census of the
• 1:44:46
  Isle of Rats? You know well, he's Rasi.
• 1:44:49
  Rasi residents Facebook page. But I think you have to.
• 1:44:51
  Be you have to be invited and you have to be arrested.
• 1:44:53
  Yeah, other than that, because I keep up to date, but the Max
• 1:44:57
  girl is going to be born on the Isle of Rasty is going to be.
• 1:44:59
  Slans Club, that's the that's the answer.
• 1:45:02
  That's the key Slans Club keeps you keeps.
• 1:45:04
  You thank you very much guys for coming on and thank you very
• 1:45:07
  much for the fantastic whiskeys and the conversation as well.
• 1:45:10
  Give you a little whiskey stone this podcast.
• 1:45:11
  We're absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for everybody
• 1:45:13
  who likes and shares and gets involved in the podcast.
• 1:45:16
  Don't forget there are still bottles available of our Glen
• 1:45:19
  Elgin Spirit drink bottle that Uno Mass for our big birthday
• 1:45:22
  match. You're getting a cracking deal
• 1:45:24
  there, £65 plus post your postage and packaging.
• 1:45:27
  You'll get it on the Woodrows of Edinburgh website.
• 1:45:30
  We've got loads of other stuff going on.
• 1:45:31
  Guys say we've got, like I say, Scott Moore coming over on the
• 1:45:33
  21st, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
• 1:45:35
  Keep up to date on The Whiskey Story's Facebook page.
• 1:45:38
  We've got weekend DRAM roll call going on.
• 1:45:39
  I want to see this. This will be going out on
• 1:45:42
  Thursday. Let's see loads of Rassie
• 1:45:44
  bottles on the Friday. Yeah, so that they can
• 1:45:46
  eventually convey or any Tweeddale bottles, Tweeddale or
• 1:45:49
  Rassie. Tweedale go on cashier for
• 1:45:51
  Tweedle. Cashier cash by.
• 1:45:53
  The way I highly recommend that paid.
• 1:45:56
  Yeah, Chuck's tail. Ross isn't here, but Chuck's
• 1:45:59
  tail. Is don't give an argument.
• 1:46:01
  Everything we've had is great. I am genuinely concerned that
• 1:46:06
  he's got talk. I think how drinkable the new
• 1:46:09
  make spirit was is worrying at 63 1/2%.
• 1:46:12
  Yeah, no, everything was great. And that Tweed deals class.
• 1:46:16
  Well I'm I'm going for the Drammers cast #300.
• 1:46:19
  Percent champagne, yeah. I I absolutely love that,
• 1:46:22
  absolutely love it. It's it's a crack and drop.
• 1:46:23
  Well, anyway, guys, thank you very much for coming along.
• 1:46:25
  Thank you very much. All the best, Slangema.
• 1:46:27
  Cheers Slanger.