Latest / Whisky Stories Podcast / Our FIRST Distillery Tour - Ian Stirling Co-Founder of Port of Leith Distillery

Transcript

Our FIRST Distillery Tour - Ian Stirling Co-Founder of Port of Leith Distillery · Whisky Stories Podcast

• 0:00
  We put them on the map with this podcast.
• 0:01
  Yeah. Before before you started, you
• 0:03
  were you were struggling. Rasty for about a year.
• 0:07
  You were struggling to reach you struggling to reach the top
• 0:10
  shelf, struggling to reach the top shelf in the back bar in the
• 0:13
  bar models, we took them from that place and put them on the
• 0:16
  map that was. Part of the took me from LA with
• 0:19
  Roccofort Hotels. Yeah, to places like the Cellar
• 0:22
  and Diggers. Aye, and now, and now.
• 0:26
  He's got like, I mean, I've been here before.
• 0:29
  Aye, right. We've got our drinks, we've got
• 0:32
  their microphones. We're ready to rock'n'roll.
• 0:35
  You know what to do? Pop us in.
• 0:38
  Come on. Come on.
• 0:41
  Right. Give it big.
• 0:44
  Welcome to the Whiskey Stories podcast.
• 0:48
  Buying a store was easy and, and then for your mashing equipment
• 0:51
  and stuff like that, you know, we used a cool box essentially
• 0:54
  as our mash ton so we can control the temperature.
• 0:57
  And you have a big muslin bag and you, we put our molt in that
• 1:00
  and basically dumped it in like a tea bag.
• 1:02
  And that was the mashing, that was the mash ton.
• 1:04
  And then we from a brew shop, we bought just a fermentation
• 1:08
  bucket, you know, with a valve on the top, bought some brewer's
• 1:10
  yeast, Chuck that in and let it ferment for a while.
• 1:14
  Welcome along to the Whiskey Stories podcast, myself, Graeme
• 1:17
  Cogar. And we are back.
• 1:19
  But we are not in our usual surroundings.
• 1:20
  We are not nicely placed between the the bar and the gents
• 1:24
  toilets in the athletic arms. No, we're, we've gone.
• 1:26
  We're literally up in the world. We are in the boardroom.
• 1:29
  We're in the boardroom. Yes, for a couple of
• 1:31
  distinguished gentlemen like ourselves, Ross.
• 1:33
  We've made it to the boardroom with some fantastic views,
• 1:36
  albeit it's dark now, overlooking the Kingdom of Fife.
• 1:39
  Yeah, because we are a port of leaf distillery.
• 1:42
  Yes, we are technically, I mean technically able to keep Chris,
• 1:47
  we are happy at Eden Mill. Technically it's our second
• 1:50
  distillery podcast recording. However, this is a working
• 1:54
  distillery and the last time albeit Eden Mill has has has
• 1:58
  jumped massively since we were there I guess.
• 2:00
  Yeah, it was a hole in the ground effectively when when
• 2:03
  we've effectively last year, I think almost a year ago, almost
• 2:05
  exactly a year ago. But we are, well, portly
• 2:08
  distillery. We're joined by the main man
• 2:10
  selfie installing. Ian, how are you?
• 2:12
  Very well indeed. Pleasure to be here.
• 2:13
  Welcome to the boardroom. Thank you very much.
• 2:15
  I can only imagine the conversations that have happened
• 2:17
  in this room of the, the, the, the foundation of Port Leith
• 2:22
  Distillery. But it's great to be here.
• 2:23
  We've got Ross. What you ordered these, you told
• 2:26
  us that we should have these in front of us.
• 2:27
  What are what are we drinking here?
• 2:28
  Lucky. Enough to have visited the
• 2:30
  distillery bar before. It's an excellent bar.
• 2:32
  This is your table whiskey highball, so I'm assuming it's a
• 2:35
  soda. A nice bit of lemon table
• 2:37
  whiskey. Been an amazing product.
• 2:38
  Fantastic success for the brand. What is table whiskey?
• 2:42
  And then? Well, what is table whiskey?
• 2:44
  Well, it's Paddy. And I always had this idea that
• 2:47
  we'd want to make something called table whiskey.
• 2:48
  And you know, you get table wine in France.
• 2:50
  And the idea was the idea that you, you'd have something that
• 2:52
  was unassuming, really approachable, really easy to
• 2:54
  drink and, and, you know, it didn't have any pretensions to
• 2:57
  it. And we were, we actually just
• 3:00
  came across this amazing stock of North British.
• 3:04
  Yeah. You know, single grain matured
• 3:05
  mainly in, in newer casks. We we mix it with a bit of stuff
• 3:09
  that's also been in, in ex Sherry casks.
• 3:11
  And it's just the most delicious, easy sipping drinking
• 3:15
  whiskey in the world. It's and that's what I blame.
• 3:17
  It no, it's a single grain. Single grain.
• 3:19
  Yeah. Exceptional value.
• 3:21
  Yeah, you know, and it looks. Fantastic.
• 3:24
  Pick a bottle. A bottle of Roma Whiskey's.
• 3:25
  Pick a bottle up here at the Celery.
• 3:26
  'S table whiskey. It's it's in a wine bottle.
• 3:30
  Yeah. And it just looks fantastic.
• 3:33
  Drinks very well have it neat. Great.
• 3:35
  Have it a highball. That's lovely.
• 3:36
  Very refreshing. Absolutely just.
• 3:38
  Don't get sad drinking it just. After what we made it from
• 3:40
  climbing all those bloody stairs together.
• 3:44
  Yeah, so people that don't know Port of Leaf Distillery, unlike
• 3:47
  any distillery we've ever visited, which would be we're
• 3:49
  gonna get, we walk around later on, really exciting.
• 3:51
  I think we might, yeah. This, this distillery is the
• 3:56
  only vertical distillery now really malt distillery in
• 3:59
  Scotland. Macmeara was the only distillery
• 4:01
  I knew of that was definitively vertical before this, so really
• 4:07
  different. And we're in the city centre of
• 4:09
  Edinburgh. We're just, well, I mean, there
• 4:11
  are people who would argue that we're not even in Edinburgh
• 4:13
  anymore. The city of Leith, I guess, is
• 4:15
  the way a lot of people would. View it.
• 4:16
  Well, I mean, the city, the city centre of Edinburgh doesn't have
• 4:19
  a coastline, but we're in, we're in Leith.
• 4:23
  We, we, I took the tram. Angus I.
• 4:26
  I did take the tram do. You take the tram.
• 4:29
  I'm doing. My driver took me down.
• 4:31
  Oh yeah, that's great. I but I mean, yeah, great.
• 4:35
  We're we're literally on the shore front of of leaf and it's
• 4:40
  it's, as I say, I was here when it was light and there were some
• 4:43
  fantastic views, but a really interesting distillery for from
• 4:47
  our point of view, because one of the things we've talked a lot
• 4:49
  about on this podcast, we've championed Edinburgh as a
• 4:52
  whiskey destination. We've strictly we've talked a
• 4:54
  lot about that, mainly because we've never really had the time
• 4:56
  to get out of Edinburgh. So we've really decided that,
• 4:59
  but some great whiskey bars, some great WW history that a lot
• 5:02
  of people forget. And of course, we've been a very
• 5:04
  prominent part of that history, but it's a distillery on
• 5:08
  effectively our doorstep. And that's one of the main
• 5:10
  things we wanted to try and say. We, what we've, we've, we, as I
• 5:13
  say, without, without the exception of no, we've never
• 5:15
  done a distillery trap, no. And I feel it was a crime that
• 5:18
  for so long you couldn't do a distillery tour in Edinburgh.
• 5:22
  Yeah, N British is an industrial site.
• 5:23
  It's not meant to be pretty. It's meant to be a working
• 5:26
  distillery. And before holy rood, of course,
• 5:29
  we've had Hollywood on the podcast in a port of Leaf.
• 5:31
  There was never something for your tourists to do.
• 5:33
  They were getting the shuttle bus out to the magnificent Glen
• 5:35
  Kinche. That was really their own
• 5:36
  opportunity which I I did build and as Glenn Kinchy was actually
• 5:40
  for a long time, it still says in the bottles known as the
• 5:42
  Edinburgh Malt really, which is also quite fun there because now
• 5:45
  we've got 2 distilleries in Edinburgh.
• 5:46
  Well, that's interesting. Yeah, so 3 we've got Bonington.
• 5:48
  As well. Well, Bonington as well, yeah.
• 5:49
  Absolutely. Well, so Ian, talk us through.
• 5:52
  First of all, you're, you're the man who sits at the top of the
• 5:56
  board table. You've mentioned Paddy as well.
• 5:57
  So I take it don't. Worry about that.
• 5:59
  You are you. Yeah, you are Co founder.
• 6:00
  Co founder of a distillery. So first of all, talk us through
• 6:03
  how did you get into whisky first?
• 6:06
  Yes, yeah, well, I guess going back quite a way.
• 6:10
  So I went straight out of uni. I, I'd started working actually
• 6:14
  in PR originally, but then I ended up in the wine industry
• 6:17
  and, and it was sort of around that time, you know, began
• 6:19
  tasting my first whiskeys and Patty and I, we, we shared a
• 6:23
  flat. Patty was going into
• 6:25
  accountancy, I was going to the wine tree and we used to just
• 6:28
  buy a bottle of whiskey for the flat, you know, and drink and
• 6:31
  chat and talk about it. And it was normally whatever
• 6:33
  resort on offer in Sainsbury's, you know, nothing too smart, but
• 6:36
  basically just began to get quite into it and talking about
• 6:39
  it. And then I think it was Paddy's
• 6:41
  girlfriend bought us both a tasting at at Milroy's in London
• 6:45
  and that really got us going. And, and you know that like, you
• 6:49
  know, that slightly sort of elevated standard of whiskey.
• 6:51
  And then we started paying to go to some of these ourselves.
• 6:53
  And then we got deeper and deeper into it.
• 6:56
  And, and I think it was, yeah, it was sort of 2013 when my wife
• 7:00
  was pregnant with our with our first child that Paddy and I
• 7:03
  spent the summer actually just having a go at making whiskey
• 7:05
  ourselves in in his back garden. The.
• 7:08
  Time you're drinking for two, so.
• 7:09
  Well, you know, I, I, I guess there's some sort of crisis
• 7:12
  before fatherhood. I, I, I had to do something.
• 7:14
  So yeah, it was, it was a sort of 10 year kind of to, you know,
• 7:18
  dive into into whiskey. It was a very slow process, but
• 7:21
  then it got really out of hand, so.
• 7:22
  During the summer, presumably you had a little still and you
• 7:25
  were just playing around trying to distill spirit.
• 7:27
  Yeah, just not more ambitious than that.
• 7:30
  Exactly. Yeah, we, we, we found a little
• 7:32
  40 litre still that we bought from Portugal and imported and
• 7:35
  you know, it's a bit of a legal grey area of distilling.
• 7:38
  You know, we've had like, still responsibly.
• 7:39
  Well, indeed. But this is quite interesting
• 7:41
  because I'm just to connect to something else that years and
• 7:44
  years ago I went down to. I was in Cornwall and it was
• 7:47
  Tarquins and Tarquin himself. They told the story that he just
• 7:52
  kind of had one of these small skill stills and just started
• 7:55
  playing around, putting in different obviously ingredients.
• 7:59
  You know, gin's a completely different kettle of fish to
• 8:01
  whiskey, but you know, in terms of kind of flavourings you're
• 8:04
  putting in, you know, all sorts of things you can pick in the
• 8:07
  countryside. And he was just playing around
• 8:08
  with that, and it took him kind of a year to get where he wanted
• 8:12
  to get to thinking, right, I could actually do something with
• 8:15
  this, now this. Is, well, I mean, yeah, yeah,
• 8:17
  we'll, we'll probably be able to come onto it.
• 8:19
  How do you buy a stall from Portugal?
• 8:22
  But his his was also a Portuguese stall, no?
• 8:25
  No, no. But I like this is just.
• 8:27
  Online there the website. Basically.
• 8:29
  Yeah. It was, it was as simple as
• 8:30
  that. And, and what, what, what wasn't
• 8:33
  hard was buying a stall was easy.
• 8:34
  And, and then for your mashing equipment and stuff like that,
• 8:37
  you know, we used a cool box essentially as our mash ton so
• 8:41
  we could control the temperature.
• 8:43
  You have a big muslin bag and you, we put our malt in that and
• 8:45
  basically dunked it in like a tea bag.
• 8:47
  And that was the mashing. That was the mash done.
• 8:49
  And then we from a brew shop, we bought just a fermentation
• 8:53
  bucket, you know, with a valve on the top, bought some Brewers
• 8:56
  yeast that in and let it ferment for a while days.
• 9:01
  Yeah. Trying to, I think, I think it
• 9:03
  was over a weekend basically. And, and, and left that friend,
• 9:05
  you know, opened up God, that smells awful and then got it
• 9:09
  into the stone. And we, we set off the store.
• 9:11
  Remember in his back garden, you know, we were a well ventilated
• 9:14
  space basically. And, and, and we had to get a
• 9:17
  gas burner underneath it and add a little thermometer inside.
• 9:19
  And, you know, if you come to the distillery, you can see all
• 9:21
  this. We use the equipment to, to sort
• 9:23
  of explain how whiskey's made. And yeah, just started
• 9:25
  distilling. And it was, it was first of all,
• 9:29
  really exciting, really good fun, very difficult because
• 9:32
  there wasn't much information out there as to how the, you
• 9:34
  know, there's not many books like Home Distiller.
• 9:37
  Or anything like that. Funny enough, there was, there
• 9:39
  was one in the bootleggers guide actually, from, from America.
• 9:43
  There was some guy, you know, like a moonshine.
• 9:45
  Yeah, yeah, exactly. So there are a few things you
• 9:47
  could find there, but we were cobbling, you know, info
• 9:50
  together. And then, yeah, we, we did a few
• 9:54
  batches basically. And you know, I remember the
• 9:57
  first time we, we got some spirit and I was like, OK, you
• 9:59
  taste it first. You do.
• 10:02
  It's almost like, I mean it is a terrible reference but it's The
• 10:04
  Simpsons episode where he makes the flaming the flaming.
• 10:07
  Homer No, it was it. Passed the 1st test, I didn't.
• 10:10
  Go by I. Don't see, I always love that
• 10:11
  line. Yeah, they've always stayed with
• 10:12
  me. So as I was looking at, I was
• 10:15
  thinking of that episode. I think so.
• 10:18
  But I, I think the main thing, you know, we didn't make
• 10:20
  anything that you'd ever want to drink in that process, but it
• 10:23
  taught us so much. And, and actually the key thing
• 10:25
  that really taught us was the distilling bit was relatively
• 10:28
  simple. You know, the parameters were
• 10:30
  quite simple. You, you need to sort of, you
• 10:31
  know, collect the, the, the spirit between certain
• 10:34
  temperature margins. But it was the fermentation bit
• 10:38
  that was actually really quite difficult.
• 10:40
  And there were all sorts of questions we were asking
• 10:42
  ourselves, like what, what temperature should it be at this
• 10:45
  stage? How long do we ferment for?
• 10:46
  What yeast should we use and all this stuff.
• 10:48
  And we'd by this stage been on a lot of distillery tours.
• 10:51
  Like we were really into whiskey.
• 10:52
  We're like, no one really focuses on this there, but this
• 10:55
  is where you're creating the flavour, all the flavour that's
• 10:58
  going to be distilled into the spirit.
• 11:00
  And so we began to think, God, you know, if we can make our own
• 11:03
  whiskey, this is something we could really lean into, you
• 11:05
  know, this fermentation piece. So that was the first sort of,
• 11:08
  you know, grain of the idea. And the other bit being by this
• 11:11
  stage, I guess, you know, we're in early 30s.
• 11:13
  I mean, maybe I was 30 and where we're in London, but both of us
• 11:18
  were kind of wanting to get back home to Scotland and I was in
• 11:21
  the wine industry. That's not an easy thing to do.
• 11:23
  And and so we were going, you know, there isn't a whiskey
• 11:25
  distillery in our home city of Edinburgh, the capital city of
• 11:27
  Scotland. And that in itself feels like a
• 11:29
  business opportunity. So it was kind of the two things
• 11:32
  of like distillery in Edinburgh, fermentation focus.
• 11:35
  We've got product ID, a bit of a business concept.
• 11:37
  And and of course that, you know, the last piece is, you
• 11:39
  know, starting a new whiskey distillery is obviously
• 11:42
  notoriously very difficult. You've got massive cash flow
• 11:44
  hurdle. You need loads of money to build
• 11:46
  a whiskey distillery and you can't sell anything for years
• 11:48
  and years. And Edinburgh could be the
• 11:49
  answer to that because you get 5 million tourists a yard coming
• 11:52
  to Edinburgh. As you were saying there
• 11:54
  weren't, you know, Glenn Kinche was the nearest distillery
• 11:56
  could. I mean, there's the Scotch
• 11:57
  whisky experience was the main, but, but you know, still there
• 12:00
  was an opportunity for an actual distillery experience, we
• 12:02
  thought. And, and so that could give the
• 12:04
  earlier revenues and that could give, you know, quite a
• 12:07
  distinctive business plan to put in front of investors.
• 12:09
  And, and so it's those three things that that that set us off
• 12:12
  on this road. Oh, I guess.
• 12:13
  Sorry. Sorry.
• 12:14
  I was. Yeah, Ian, this just made you
• 12:15
  and I look so lazy. Oh.
• 12:18
  Yeah, we've had a couple of folk.
• 12:19
  We've had we've, we've had the guys from Blind Summit.
• 12:23
  They have two, two good pals that decided let's get into
• 12:25
  whiskey and they've become bottlers.
• 12:27
  We've had George and Rachel, who are a couple.
• 12:29
  We've had Woody and Megan are a couple.
• 12:31
  They've become bottlers. Yeah, we're best pals.
• 12:33
  I was similar to Ian and Buddy. We just thought, no, I saw that
• 12:36
  we would just pick up some micro podcasts.
• 12:37
  We would just start a podcast at the back of our passion for us.
• 12:40
  But I mean, it's true when you think about it.
• 12:42
  I mean that for it's in itself. We've had a lot of people, we've
• 12:45
  had a lot of bottlers on the podcast and you talk to them and
• 12:48
  a lot of the stories have been very similar.
• 12:50
  In fact, I think James and Jamie at at Blind Summit, they looked
• 12:55
  at they, they did look at a distillery in New Zealand.
• 12:58
  Yeah, yeah. But they decided against it.
• 13:01
  So I mean that that in itself as a jump is massive because you
• 13:04
  can look at if you similar to us, I guess.
• 13:07
  Yeah, to a degree. And Ross as well with had.
• 13:09
  A friend. You've got freezer soon as which
• 13:13
  is but but the point is, so that is the top level to decide to go
• 13:20
  to right where you could say used to write.
• 13:22
  Let's look at the whiskey industry.
• 13:24
  I like whiskey. There's a potential business
• 13:26
  model there. Where do you want to fit in?
• 13:28
  And you just go, Booth, let's start distilling and build a
• 13:31
  distilling. And that's massive.
• 13:32
  Fascination with production there, yeah.
• 13:35
  We have. To come from a fundamental etch,
• 13:37
  that's like, OK, I actually need to do this myself.
• 13:40
  Yeah, because you go, I have loads of different distilleries.
• 13:43
  I think I want to say even Dorner, which is a small system
• 13:47
  I've been to. I think they bought their stills
• 13:49
  from Portugal too. Actually did.
• 13:52
  Portuguese stone. Yeah, yeah.
• 13:54
  Yeah, apparently they still. Go online, Yeah.
• 13:57
  But I think it's really interesting to go, yes, it's
• 14:00
  interesting to go to every different places.
• 14:02
  Oh, you went Oregon Pain or you went for a long fermentation?
• 14:05
  What would I do? And even if you're new to
• 14:08
  whiskey, even if you can learn a lot about whiskey the last year,
• 14:10
  even if you worked in whiskey entire career, See if I win the
• 14:13
  EuroMillions tomorrow for one 200 million, I'm going to give
• 14:17
  it a go. Everybody's got absolutely.
• 14:20
  Really ask yourself that. Would you like?
• 14:22
  To start at no, OK, I've got if I won the oh, I was always.
• 14:25
  In Fife. Well, if I know if I won the
• 14:27
  two, if I won that money, I'd be bonded warehouses and you know,
• 14:31
  and you know, because as I've said before, warehouses make me
• 14:33
  horny. And that is the.
• 14:35
  Picks in the gold rush, yeah. Exactly, I'd be saying I bonded
• 14:39
  warehouse going back. What's very interesting about
• 14:42
  what you were saying there and it leads on and it's very
• 14:44
  topical from last week's episode that Stephen Woodcock on from
• 14:47
  Glen Turner and his career has been made.
• 14:51
  He he's become almost like an industry expert from from what
• 14:54
  he was talking about on distillery, distillery
• 14:56
  character. He talked about when he was,
• 14:58
  when he caught the job interview with Distelle and the question
• 15:01
  he was asked was if you were to strip the whole distillery back
• 15:06
  piece by piece and have to rebuild it, what would be your
• 15:08
  number one focus? And he said maintaining
• 15:10
  distillery character, talked about all these things that
• 15:13
  raised experience through working through the Bells
• 15:14
  distilleries with the Azure, etcetera.
• 15:16
  And I'm really looking forward to finding out about that.
• 15:18
  But one of the interesting things that he said was when we
• 15:21
  were talking about the price of whiskey and he said that the
• 15:24
  Scotch whiskey industry is so heavily regulated, which we'll,
• 15:27
  I'm sure we'll hear challenges that you've had to come through
• 15:29
  from that. And he said, but you've only got
• 15:31
  3 main core ingredients. So really it's like, how can
• 15:36
  it's, it's what you can do with that process.
• 15:38
  It's different and hearing what you're talking about with the
• 15:41
  fermentation because we, we. And yeast strains and barley
• 15:44
  strains. Everybody says water, yeast and
• 15:45
  barley, and most of the established distilleries talk
• 15:48
  about our water. How often do you go to a
• 15:51
  distillery or I guess it's with a loads of distilleries, They're
• 15:55
  tourist scriptures and that's where the yeast gets fed
• 15:57
  through. And that's what that's it.
• 15:59
  That's the east part done. Yeah.
• 16:01
  And there is no conversation of even barley really.
• 16:03
  It's been quite an edgy thing for new distilleries to start
• 16:07
  talking about. Oh, we're not using concerto
• 16:09
  anymore. Diablo's the King, Golden
• 16:11
  Promise and all the rest of it. And people really trying to
• 16:14
  experiment and seeing if this does make a difference in 10
• 16:17
  years time. Well, then we can say we've done
• 16:19
  it. Yeah.
• 16:19
  And if it doesn't, then we'll just call it water, yeast and
• 16:21
  barley again. The interesting thing is, is
• 16:25
  from the cynic side of things is people talking about our water
• 16:28
  sources, what gives us our, our, our flavour profile and things
• 16:31
  like that. And we, we discussed it last
• 16:33
  week and we've had discussions loads and loads of times as the
• 16:35
  8020 principle of production versus the maternation process.
• 16:40
  Once you take that and it's clear spirit and put it into the
• 16:42
  casks, surely that is what gives it so much influence.
• 16:45
  However, as Stephen rightly said last week as well, if that was
• 16:48
  as simple as that, why not just have one massive distillery in
• 16:51
  Scotland that produces the exact same type of thing and puts it
• 16:54
  all in the different casks? And that's instead of having all
• 16:56
  the stories we've got. But is it a little bit of the
• 17:01
  filter through the header patter that you can give the tourists
• 17:04
  and say, oh, see that burden out there?
• 17:05
  That's been there since the the study was over hundreds of years
• 17:08
  ago. That's what gives us a flavour
• 17:10
  proof of verses. Actually, no, it's adding the
• 17:12
  fermentation time and it's the type of use that we're using.
• 17:14
  And is that how you looked at it then?
• 17:16
  Yeah, I think so. I mean, you know, we, we knew so
• 17:19
  little, genuinely, we knew so little.
• 17:21
  And but, but we had the suspicion, I think.
• 17:24
  And, and actually as we as we took this point about
• 17:27
  fermentation and began to reach out to other people in the
• 17:29
  industry about it, they said, yeah, you know, there is
• 17:31
  something here because actually go back 50 years, you know,
• 17:35
  distilleries used to have symbiotic relationships with the
• 17:37
  local brewery and they'd go and pitch they, you know, get bucket
• 17:39
  yeast from the brewery and that's what they'd be pitching
• 17:41
  their fermentations with. And then over time, you know,
• 17:44
  the the innovation of distillers yeast happened and, and it's
• 17:46
  amazing, you know, distillers yeast is actually a scientific
• 17:49
  marble. It's like incredibly efficient
• 17:51
  and, you know, producing to the maximum amount of spirit, but
• 17:54
  there's an argument that potentially that's caused some,
• 17:55
  some sort of homogenisation in, in terms of spirit style.
• 17:59
  So it was actually people in the industry who are really
• 18:02
  encouraging us with this and going there is something here.
• 18:05
  And, and it was actually, we ended up at the door of Harriet
• 18:06
  Watt University and, and sort of, you know, outlined this to
• 18:10
  them and they're like, we really want to explore this with you.
• 18:14
  You know that there's a research program to be done here.
• 18:17
  And so if their help, we actually managed to get this
• 18:19
  funding from a a body called Innovate UK and embarked on this
• 18:23
  three-year research program with them where we we took all these
• 18:25
  yeast strains, some of which were normally used in, in wine
• 18:28
  making, some in brewing, some in sake production.
• 18:31
  And over over the painstaking process of created scores and
• 18:35
  scores of tiny samples of spirit with, you know, individual
• 18:38
  fermentations and distillations of each yeast type to see what
• 18:41
  different and, and and it was amazing because you know, same
• 18:44
  barley, same fermentation temperature, everything the same
• 18:46
  except the yeast and the variety of flavour in the spirits was
• 18:50
  just extraordinary like. Completely different and, and
• 18:53
  where, where did I mean, I take it in that process as well.
• 18:56
  You probably had the standard kind of brewer's yeast and where
• 18:59
  did that come in the spectrum in terms of, you know, flavour or,
• 19:02
  you know, how did it compare? With well, I mean, I would say,
• 19:06
  you know, you can make a very nice spirit with distiller's
• 19:09
  yeast. It's not to diminish it, but I
• 19:13
  think for, for me, you know, the, the wonder of whiskey is
• 19:17
  the, the sheer variety that is capable of, of, of conveying.
• 19:20
  And you know, it's the same thing we, we had in the wine
• 19:22
  industry. And you know, that, that to me
• 19:24
  that there's no point. There's no, there's no
• 19:27
  excitement in creating something unless you bring something new
• 19:30
  and interesting. You know, it's a landscape.
• 19:31
  So I think, you know, going away from, from the, the, the path
• 19:36
  well trodden and looking for new flavour opportunities and, and,
• 19:40
  and genuinely like that, that there's one new strain that we
• 19:43
  identified called Vos Creek, which is a Norwegian alehouse
• 19:45
  strain. It's very expensive yeast, but
• 19:48
  the new make it produce the spirit it produces.
• 19:50
  You know, is is just so unlike any other spirit I've ever
• 19:53
  tasted from any other spirit. Unique, yeah.
• 19:57
  And is that something you've used here?
• 19:59
  Yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah, right.
• 20:00
  So let's let's go to the point where you and Paddy, now I I
• 20:04
  know it's that you mentioned Paddy the accountant.
• 20:05
  I suppose it's always a good idea to get into one of these
• 20:07
  sort of business ventures with someone who already has an
• 20:10
  absolutely bag. But better than and that
• 20:12
  actually, Patty had started off training as an accountant, but
• 20:14
  then he'd started working for various tech startups.
• 20:18
  So he worked for a taxi app and then for Y Plan, and then he
• 20:21
  worked for a company called Wework, you know, Yeah.
• 20:23
  And he actually became finance director for Europe for Wework.
• 20:26
  So Patty was doing really well in his career, but more
• 20:27
  importantly, he was working for a startup company.
• 20:30
  So he was learning how to start a company, you know, and, and
• 20:33
  going through that fundraising process and all these different
• 20:35
  things. So I, I, on the other hand, you
• 20:37
  know, having them from adjusted one, I worked for this London
• 20:39
  merchant called Robertson Wine, where I was just given the job
• 20:42
  of a lifetime. Like really, you know, long rope
• 20:44
  to hang myself to, to go off. And, and well, I was basically
• 20:47
  representing wineries around the world, selling their wines into,
• 20:50
  into Marks and Spencer's and other retailers in the UK, but
• 20:53
  also to importers around the world.
• 20:55
  And so I was learning how to sell drinks, but also how to
• 20:58
  create brands and all these things.
• 20:59
  So the two of us were actually picking up the skills that we
• 21:03
  thought, you know, could, could make, could make a go of this
• 21:05
  business. And it's actually, you know,
• 21:08
  really, you know, with, with these ideas and I had about
• 21:10
  Edinburgh fermentation and, you know, tourists.
• 21:13
  One day I was having lunch with my biggest client at the time,
• 21:16
  who was a guy from China who was ordering like a container loads
• 21:20
  of wine from me. And we, we we'd had lunch and
• 21:23
  then we got talking about like, you know, future ambitions and,
• 21:25
  and I said to him, well, you know, what I really want to do
• 21:27
  is build a whiskey disturbly in Edinburgh.
• 21:29
  And he went, Oh, I'll fund it. I was like.
• 21:32
  All right, excellent. Yeah, great.
• 21:34
  I was like, OK. And so, so I phoned Paddy and I
• 21:37
  said, you know, that whiskey thing, I think I've got a guy
• 21:39
  who who'd invest and make it happen, but he was like, shit.
• 21:42
  So he was actually just going on holiday at the time, and he
• 21:46
  spent almost the whole holiday putting together a massive Excel
• 21:49
  sort of business plan model for how this thing could work.
• 21:53
  And that set us off, basically, yeah.
• 21:55
  And. So is that original big customer
• 21:58
  who invested in in you and Paddy, he's still involved in
• 22:01
  the business. Now, no, he totally vanished.
• 22:02
  He never invested so generally he but.
• 22:05
  It gave you the current investors appeared, but.
• 22:07
  Him, but him saying that gave you the confidence.
• 22:09
  I will be forever grateful to that guy.
• 22:11
  So. So with him behind us, it's it's
• 22:13
  crazy. So that this is probably 2014
• 22:16
  maybe by this stage with him behind us.
• 22:18
  Yeah. You know, we had 10,000,000 lbs.
• 22:20
  So like, we found a site actually quite quickly, not this
• 22:25
  one, but another one about 1/2 mile away.
• 22:27
  And, and we appointed an architect and we had a
• 22:30
  contractor and the Scottish Government was getting really
• 22:32
  excited about what we're doing. This investor was also getting
• 22:34
  involved in renewable energy and stuff.
• 22:35
  We ended up at a dinner at Edinburgh Castle with Alex
• 22:38
  Salmon and all those people. Got rested, so yeah, well.
• 22:41
  I was crazy, like it was like, what's happening here?
• 22:44
  This is what we're going to do. And then it was not long after
• 22:47
  that dinner that that investor just stopped answering emails.
• 22:49
  But like we were like, Oh well, but we've got a great business
• 22:52
  plan. We've got a site, we'll find
• 22:54
  another investor. And actually not long after
• 22:56
  that, through my wine work, we found a trio of, of investors
• 22:59
  from Southeast Asia again, who are going to back the project.
• 23:01
  But then we lost the site that we had because we'd never really
• 23:04
  had it and a house builder got it and and then we lost those
• 23:07
  investors and we were right back to square 1.
• 23:08
  And that by that point it was like 2015.
• 23:11
  And that took us a long year to find another site because we had
• 23:14
  no money behind us and that. Site is really unique.
• 23:17
  I think that I've never been to the distillery.
• 23:19
  You are on the water, as in you can go out the distillery doors,
• 23:23
  take three stop three steps to the left and you're in water.
• 23:26
  Yes, Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're not floating, but
• 23:29
  we're nearly. I've actually since learned,
• 23:31
  never build anything this close to the water.
• 23:32
  It's a nightmare. But, you know, if you learn,
• 23:35
  yeah, no, I, I, I think I've spoken to the economic
• 23:37
  development team at Edinburgh Council saying, you know, I'm
• 23:39
  trying to find a site to build a whiskey distillery.
• 23:41
  They said, have you spoken to Ocean Terminal?
• 23:42
  I went no, because I don't want to build a distillery in a
• 23:44
  shopping centre. But then the owner of Ocean
• 23:47
  Terminal sent me the sign. So I just have a look at it.
• 23:49
  And I looked at that is absolutely perfect.
• 23:52
  It's tiny, but it's 20 meters away from the Royal Yacht
• 23:54
  Britannia. And they got, you know, 300,
• 23:56
  almost 400,000 visitors a year. So we knew that business case to
• 24:00
  investors would make sense and that that got a so just.
• 24:03
  Just Peter at the time, you know, we're going back a long
• 24:06
  time now when you start looking at 2013, 1415, that's a long
• 24:10
  time of 10 years. You're still obviously working,
• 24:13
  I imagine. So you're trying to do this and
• 24:17
  of course, I'm assuming your wife who was pregnant after the
• 24:20
  when you bought the stills that they'll the stills and we're
• 24:22
  doing in the back garden. You're now juggling children.
• 24:25
  Yes, yeah, yeah. Jobs and and also all of this at
• 24:28
  the same time. Yeah, yeah, I did.
• 24:30
  It was sort of everyone to be honest, like getting to work
• 24:33
  really early and like build our website and stuff and then do my
• 24:35
  job. And every weekend we were
• 24:37
  getting up here, you know, to, to meet with land people or
• 24:40
  whatever it might be so. And was it always going to be
• 24:42
  because I know that was it always going to be port of leak
• 24:44
  because you're the way that you're talking to the business.
• 24:46
  I'm assuming you start you started a business.
• 24:48
  Muckle Brig is a business brand, a business that you you guys are
• 24:51
  that own the Port of Leith Distillery.
• 24:54
  Yeah. So I'm assuming that yeah, the
• 24:56
  Port of Leith Distillery was never the dream.
• 24:58
  It was the distillery was the dream in Edinburgh.
• 25:01
  Yeah. But was it always going to be
• 25:02
  called Port of Leith or did it happen to be Port of Leith
• 25:04
  Distillery because of where the location?
• 25:05
  Is, yeah, the evolution of that, I think, I think it began that,
• 25:08
  you know, it would be in Edinburgh, and then it became
• 25:10
  quite clear after a while that Leith was going to be the
• 25:14
  opportunity, I think. I think, you know #1 Leith at
• 25:18
  the time was still a site that had the brownfield sites where
• 25:22
  you could hope to build like a brand new industrial facility.
• 25:26
  It also had that connect, you know, Britannia actually being
• 25:28
  here was a massive help, you know, in terms of like the
• 25:30
  visitor draw. But then, of course, the more
• 25:33
  you dug into it and you found out the incredible whiskey
• 25:36
  heritage that existed here, all those three things together
• 25:39
  meant we honed in on Leith quite quickly.
• 25:41
  Yeah, actually. And, and it was, it was actually
• 25:45
  one of our earliest investors. One day, you know, I was talking
• 25:47
  about Leith and he went, yeah, I mean, you know, it'll be the
• 25:49
  Port of Leith Distillery. And I went, Oh yeah, that's a
• 25:51
  good name. I told, I told him actually a
• 25:53
  couple of years ago, you know, you came up with the name.
• 25:55
  You didn't. He didn't realise it at the
• 25:56
  time, but yeah, that was that, that really.
• 25:58
  Fast with us. I mean, I have to say I don't
• 26:00
  want to give too much away to to our listeners and what have you,
• 26:03
  but I have one higher on appeal from my quote from school.
• 26:07
  So you got. One higher on appeal when I was
• 26:10
  at school, my parents who paid for private lege education,
• 26:13
  private education, they were very disappointed with a life
• 26:16
  skill with one higher which I got an appeal and that higher
• 26:19
  was in geography. Alright.
• 26:20
  One of the projects I actually worked on, which would have been
• 26:23
  2004, 4005 was the regeneration of leaf.
• 26:27
  All right. And you know, when you look at
• 26:29
  it and for people who over in America or or whatever, and
• 26:32
  you're, you're looking at leaf as a as an area.
• 26:34
  We've talked a lot about leaf. We've had, you know, a lot of
• 26:37
  people, Glenmore spirits who started the leaf whiskey row.
• 26:40
  You've had we've had woody and Megan.
• 26:42
  They're leaf woven Peter from from woven.
• 26:45
  They're leaf based and leaf has a very rich history and, and,
• 26:48
  but also what people maybe don't understand.
• 26:49
  And I'm, I'm, I'm really showing my school work that I was doing
• 26:53
  here because it start with me was the regeneration project.
• 26:56
  Leith was for for better was it was a dump up until late 90s,
• 27:01
  early 2000s. And Angus also sat beside me in
• 27:03
  geography and probably also got that high.
• 27:05
  We, we, you know, the, the regeneration project was
• 27:08
  massive. And when you actually look at it
• 27:10
  at the time, when you're talking 2014, 1516, it's not actually
• 27:15
  that long that they know that the regeneration project hadn't
• 27:18
  finished. It was still ongoing.
• 27:20
  It was all about trying to drive people to Leaf, Dr. businesses
• 27:23
  to Leaf. And you then had the tram
• 27:25
  project that went on and on and on and on and on and on and on,
• 27:28
  but is now finished. But that was also about creating
• 27:31
  a connection between Edinburgh city centre and Leaf as well.
• 27:35
  So really, it was, it was almost like the perfect storm it was.
• 27:39
  Perfect timing. Yeah.
• 27:40
  I mean, when I was young, so in Edinburgh, so the 80s and 90s,
• 27:44
  yeah. Like Leith was absolutely down
• 27:46
  on its heels. You know, you could wander
• 27:47
  around the harbour here and you could go wherever you wanted
• 27:50
  because it was just basically derelict.
• 27:51
  And and I genuinely remember as a boy looking at some of these
• 27:54
  like old rusting cranes and going, God, something exciting
• 27:57
  used to happen here, you know, you had that sense.
• 28:00
  And my mum was Italian, so we came down to Leaf very regularly
• 28:03
  to go to Favo and I crawl and and a restaurant down here.
• 28:06
  But when I came back to Edinburgh, so I, you know, I, I
• 28:08
  lived in London for 15 years from university until we came
• 28:11
  back. And when I came back, it was
• 28:13
  just transformed already then, you know, like all these
• 28:16
  creative businesses that had set up here, it had such a buzz to
• 28:20
  it. And, and actually it was amazing
• 28:22
  as we started sort of trying to establish ourselves, like we
• 28:25
  ended up with working with so many other companies in Leith,
• 28:27
  you know, because they were right here on our doors.
• 28:29
  So. Collaborative as a
• 28:31
  collaborative. It was a very big community.
• 28:33
  Proud of. Yeah, we we kind of talked there
• 28:35
  will there will. I mean, ironically, last year,
• 28:38
  two years ago, I actually worked for Portly Housing Association.
• 28:41
  All right, Yeah. And, and you get to know the
• 28:43
  people of Leith. And like, I was kind of joking
• 28:45
  earlier. I was like the.
• 28:46
  City of Leith. There are people that argue
• 28:48
  still to this day, No, no, I'm not.
• 28:50
  I'm not from Edinburgh, I am from Leith.
• 28:52
  Yet people will say, and that that tram project was so big
• 28:57
  because it was the point. Now even I think the best way
• 29:01
  people can actually gauge what Leith was like was that through
• 29:05
  Trainspotting, the movie. Yeah, I mean, it was, I mean, if
• 29:07
  you actually it gave a it gave a reflection of what Leith it was.
• 29:10
  It was a very you're talking about you could just wander
• 29:12
  around. Yeah, you.
• 29:14
  Might know what? No, you would have wanted to.
• 29:16
  It was, it was a sort of area that people did say stay with.
• 29:19
  Now you've got the shorefront. Yeah.
• 29:20
  And I think. I think start starting from
• 29:22
  businesses like The Kitchen, Tom Kitchen down here and Snow.
• 29:25
  And actually, this can be trendy.
• 29:27
  Yeah. And now it is the trendy part of
• 29:29
  Eden. Absolutely.
• 29:30
  Forward and a whiskey like that that that Hazel Justine
• 29:34
  Hazlehurst who's been on yeah she the the whiskey history that
• 29:38
  leaf actually has yeah with it being a port and I'm sure I
• 29:41
  can't remember what the what the number of were but there were
• 29:44
  only so many bonded sort of certified ports in the whole of
• 29:50
  the UK and Leith was one of the biggest in the UK all these
• 29:54
  years ago so all whiskey going into all all casks there was
• 29:59
  used to be there was cooperages here in Leith there was bought
• 30:01
  low I mean the past well. I mean, yeah, there was the
• 30:04
  export really of of whiskey that was so huge here.
• 30:07
  And that was obviously, you know, cast going from across the
• 30:10
  country in entirely thousands of casts departing, going off, yes,
• 30:16
  South Africa, across the Atlantic.
• 30:18
  So even casks coming in, port casks coming in.
• 30:20
  Oh, yeah. Well, this is this is of course,
• 30:22
  Yeah. The the other side of it port
• 30:24
  cast coming in. Yeah, Sherry and all that kind
• 30:27
  of stuff. Yes, that brings us 10 interest.
• 30:28
  It was a real hob in the kind of late 18th century, early 20th
• 30:30
  century, for that sort of thing, yeah.
• 30:32
  I guess, I mean, there's an interesting point of products
• 30:34
  that you have released a little a year into production.
• 30:38
  Hmm. You've bottled plenty of liquid.
• 30:40
  Yeah, but not so much Scotch Quest, you know, Scott, Scottish
• 30:43
  liquid. What have you been bottling?
• 30:45
  Yeah, yeah. So, so the probably one of the
• 30:47
  craziest things we ever did is our very first product that we
• 30:50
  ever launched was an Olarosso Sherry.
• 30:51
  So that was back in 20/17/2017. I think it was, it was actually,
• 30:57
  you know, you know, we also launched a gin called Linden
• 30:59
  Lime, which has become a big business.
• 31:01
  Yeah. But actually just before that we
• 31:03
  launched our all of us to Sherry.
• 31:05
  And the, the, the reason for that was I, I guess partly, you
• 31:08
  know, feeding through my, my, my, my wine work.
• 31:12
  I love cherry so much and it plays such an important role in
• 31:15
  the whiskey industry. And as I discovered, just
• 31:17
  talking about, actually that was all about Leith because it was
• 31:20
  in Leith where you had the bonded warehouses where the
• 31:24
  spirit merchants were maturing their spirit blending and
• 31:26
  bottling it. And the meantime, you had all
• 31:28
  the wine merchants who were shipping in Brandy from France,
• 31:32
  port wine from Portugal, Sherry from Spain.
• 31:34
  And the merchant would take their cask of Sherry to count it
• 31:38
  into bottles that were made locally at the leaf glass works.
• 31:40
  And then the whiskey merchant would go, oh, I'll take your
• 31:42
  empty cherry cask and put put my spirit in it.
• 31:44
  And it's in leaf where really the whole practice of maturing
• 31:47
  whiskey in cherry casks emerge. Yeah.
• 31:49
  And we thought that was an incredible story to tell, you
• 31:51
  know? And is this something you've
• 31:53
  kind of tried to create, recreate really where is our is
• 31:58
  the liquid Sherry that you've bottled coming out of casts of
• 32:02
  whiskey that you will then produce go into?
• 32:04
  Or not quite no. I wish it could be as neat as
• 32:07
  that. I really do.
• 32:08
  In the 1980s, they changed the law so the old Sherry has to be
• 32:11
  bottled in Spain. But the idea for us was rather
• 32:14
  than in the future, buying Sherry casks from just a, you
• 32:17
  know, broker where you're just, you know, getting all any old
• 32:19
  casks without much sort of knowledge where they come from.
• 32:22
  We would create this direct relationship find find an
• 32:25
  amazing producer making amazing wines and create a lifelong
• 32:29
  relationship with them. And they will appreciate that
• 32:32
  their, their, their product is not the byproduct for the cast
• 32:35
  that you're going to buy. Yeah, yeah.
• 32:36
  Their. Product is a product that you're
• 32:38
  proud to put your label on and sell and then also have the
• 32:41
  byproduct of the wood, which I think, yeah, there's certainly
• 32:45
  seems in her F they're making more money from casts than they
• 32:48
  are from the. Absolutely for.
• 32:50
  Quite a while, yeah. Yeah.
• 32:51
  But I think if my I can imagine if your family is from the
• 32:54
  region, as you've always been a Sherry producer, you're going to
• 32:57
  bite your hand off for that and say, yeah, we'd love for you to,
• 33:01
  of course, take our gas, but also celebrate.
• 33:03
  The product, well, I've got to hand it to Bodegas Baron, who we
• 33:06
  ended up working with because, you know, when we approached
• 33:08
  them, you know, we were still APDF presentation with like a
• 33:12
  few. I think we may have had one
• 33:14
  investor behind us, very small scale, you know, they took a big
• 33:17
  leap, leap of faith in working with us.
• 33:19
  But you know, I'm very proud today.
• 33:21
  You know, every visitor who comes on a tour and tasting in
• 33:24
  Puerto Vite Distillery will have a sample of Sherry, like as part
• 33:26
  of our tasting on the tour, you know, because we want to
• 33:28
  explain, you know, this is Sherry.
• 33:30
  This is how the cask is going to influence the spirit in the
• 33:32
  future. And they also have because we
• 33:34
  then a couple of years later did the same thing with port.
• 33:37
  So we, we found a port producer whose casks we're going to use
• 33:39
  to mature some of our spirit and we, we import their tawny port
• 33:43
  and we sell that as well. So.
• 33:44
  So yeah, you taste both of those when you come here.
• 33:47
  Because I remember going to a whiskey show in the city centre
• 33:49
  of Edinburgh during the French festival.
• 33:51
  RPK had put it on. It's the first year doing it and
• 33:54
  I've seen this Port of Leaf distillery stand, so that's odd.
• 33:57
  They're not in production yet. Yeah.
• 33:59
  And I went over and there was a Manfini, a port and all that
• 34:01
  also for me to try. And I thought, well, regular
• 34:05
  listen to the pod, we'll know that.
• 34:06
  I was delighted. Yeah, I do like a Sherry also.
• 34:10
  I didn't realise how much like Manfini or Matthew is quite a
• 34:13
  sexy Sherry. Yeah, sexy Sherry.
• 34:17
  I tell you it is. It's nutty and citrus and all
• 34:20
  the good things. And I remember thinking that is
• 34:23
  totally bonkers. Yeah, but you've got my
• 34:25
  attention. I mean, I won't lie, that was
• 34:28
  the game. It was actually about getting
• 34:29
  attention because at that stage in the game, so much of it was
• 34:32
  just about getting attention so you could find investors and,
• 34:36
  and for people to go, oh, they're doing something a bit
• 34:37
  different. It you know, I wouldn't lie.
• 34:39
  The Olarosso it took us 2 years to sell enough Olarosso Sherry
• 34:42
  to pay for the label design. Now, in actual fact, now it
• 34:46
  actually makes money it. Generally does, but my goodness
• 34:48
  it took a long time to pay off. I've got a couple of points
• 34:53
  here. First of all, I want, I want to
• 34:55
  talk a little bit about that. Now.
• 34:56
  I can imagine that we, we've, we've talked in this podcast a
• 34:59
  lot about the sort of new distillery scene.
• 35:02
  And it's great as it from a whiskey consumer because it's
• 35:05
  new whiskey that we get to try all the time.
• 35:07
  And if you're excited about it. And one of the things I'll be
• 35:09
  perfectly honest was we've talked about our power, our
• 35:11
  perceptions have changed. And I'll be honest, before I
• 35:14
  really got into really looking at whiskey, before we started
• 35:17
  doing this podcast, I purposely avoided new distilleries because
• 35:19
  there was this perception, like if they're new, IT can't be any
• 35:21
  good. I'm just going to stick to the
• 35:23
  the trusted brands. The audience, if you knew the
• 35:25
  name and it was recognisable, that's what you.
• 35:27
  Yeah, If I went to whiskey, if I went to whiskey Festival, which
• 35:30
  I had never been to one, but if I did go to Whiskey Festival,
• 35:32
  I'd be very keen to stay away from newer brands because I'd be
• 35:36
  going if they're new, it can't be any good.
• 35:39
  I. Love it.
• 35:40
  Stick to stick to the stick to the brands I know.
• 35:42
  But what I'm interested to know is that when you're and Paddy
• 35:46
  are putting your business plan together and you're thinking
• 35:47
  about right, we're going to we're going to launch a
• 35:49
  distillery and stuff like that. So are so many other people at
• 35:53
  that time. And where are you looking around
• 35:55
  and suddenly seeing news of OHH, so and so is just open a new
• 35:58
  distillery going shit, that's another new distillery is open
• 36:01
  and there's another distillery here.
• 36:03
  Another was that was that a challenge as well?
• 36:04
  No, not at all. I I think, you know, partly I'd
• 36:08
  come from the wine industry where, you know, in Border you
• 36:10
  have thousands of producers now it's different game.
• 36:13
  But I, I was still like, you know, we at the time, I guess
• 36:16
  there was 120 distilleries in Scotland, something like that.
• 36:19
  There were more distilleries in New York State alone than there
• 36:22
  were in Scotland, you know, producing.
• 36:24
  We see now volume wise, Scotland is a lot bigger.
• 36:26
  But, you know, in terms of brands, yeah, in fairness,
• 36:29
  America's having a bit of consolidation in that regard.
• 36:31
  But I felt there was really, it didn't take that long in the
• 36:34
  Scotch whiskey world before you started hitting the the edges of
• 36:37
  it. You know, And I, I thought there
• 36:39
  was definitely scope and actually there needed to be a
• 36:41
  new wave for Scotch whiskey because if you go back to, you
• 36:45
  know, twenty 10s or, you know, around then when Paddy and I
• 36:48
  were getting into whiskey, it felt like everything that was
• 36:50
  happening, exciting in the whiskey world was happening
• 36:52
  outside Scotland. You're having this like
• 36:54
  distilling boom in America, new distilleries opening in
• 36:56
  Southeast Asia and Australia. And the World Whiskey Award.
• 37:00
  Everybody goes, Oh my goodness, how is Japan?
• 37:02
  All this stuff, yeah and, and Scotland, which, you know, still
• 37:05
  had, you know, amazing whiskeys, but it was, it was still, it was
• 37:08
  fairly static, yeah, you know, and, and it really felt like
• 37:11
  there was an opportunity and a need, I reckon for, for, for,
• 37:15
  for some new and, and exciting things happened then there.
• 37:17
  So, no, I, I think it's, it's been awesome to sort of grow up
• 37:21
  with this new cohort of, of distilleries and, and if
• 37:23
  anything, it sort of helped, I guess prove the case to, to, to
• 37:26
  some of the other. People are doing it, yeah.
• 37:28
  And then when, when it gets sort of, I only go, yeah, well.
• 37:32
  I was just going to ask, you know, once you, you know, you've
• 37:34
  obviously getting investors once, once that's in place, once
• 37:37
  you've got the site, once you've got the architect, what, what
• 37:40
  are the kind of the loopholes, the, the, the challenges in
• 37:43
  terms of how do you get the kind of permission to say right, you
• 37:46
  can build a Scotch rescue distillery and you can do spirit
• 37:50
  here. What's the kind of?
• 37:51
  Weights who, who's who? Kind of rubber stamps the legal
• 37:54
  side of it. So, well, I, I guess you know,
• 37:57
  there's, well, you know, to, to go back a step in terms of the
• 37:59
  investment. So, you know, having, having
• 38:01
  lost these really big scale investors, we actually said, OK,
• 38:04
  let's stop this with the big ticket thing.
• 38:06
  And we said we'd raise the money incrementally instead.
• 38:08
  So we haven't got this site. We raised £400,000 and we said
• 38:12
  with that money we will design the building, secure planning
• 38:16
  permission and set up the gin distillery and then we'd have
• 38:19
  something to show. And so that was the first key
• 38:21
  permission we needed planning permission basically.
• 38:23
  And, and then you've got a site with planning that's got some
• 38:26
  value and then, you know, you, you, you, you could, you could
• 38:30
  carry on. And then, you know, fortunately
• 38:33
  Linda and Lyman Arjin did very well.
• 38:35
  Investors grew their sort of their belief in us and we were
• 38:38
  able to raise the next 5 million.
• 38:39
  And with that we could get to site and we finally got to site
• 38:43
  in 2019, start construction, but but then keep raising money.
• 38:46
  And so, so we, we had to basically most of the last six
• 38:51
  years has just been raise money, raise money, raise money.
• 38:53
  That's all I was ever doing was raising money.
• 38:55
  It's like a big episode of Grand Designs, really.
• 38:57
  You're able to build something at the same time and you've had
• 39:00
  a kid during. Yeah, yeah.
• 39:02
  There was a few other things going on as well.
• 39:04
  Yeah, so. When did you break ground then?
• 39:06
  When was the? Social.
• 39:07
  It was right at the end, it was December 2019.
• 39:10
  One of our biggest challenges is in 2016, we've got a lease on
• 39:12
  the side. First investment came in in
• 39:14
  2017, but then we discovered as we were trying to raise money,
• 39:17
  people investors didn't like a lease.
• 39:18
  They wanted us to own the site. And so it took us about two
• 39:21
  yards to actually get the purchase of the site through.
• 39:23
  So it's very slow. So this has been happening.
• 39:25
  So when, what? When was the moment that Paddy
• 39:27
  and yourself made the official like instead of let's just talk
• 39:29
  about. So what was probably was the
• 39:31
  meeting that you had with this investor that disappeared?
• 39:34
  No, no, I, I think it was, I think it was 2016.
• 39:38
  So my, my son had just been born in the summer of 2016 and I said
• 39:42
  to Patty, I'm going to go back to Edinburgh and just get on the
• 39:45
  ground. And, and because this isn't
• 39:46
  going to happen unless one of us is on the ground.
• 39:49
  And so I moved up in the autumn of that year and I was still, I
• 39:52
  managed to get an arrangement for my company that was sort of
• 39:55
  working for them from Edinburgh a little bit.
• 39:58
  But then that wound down. And to be honest, I had a year
• 40:00
  and a half where I, I couldn't pay myself a salary.
• 40:03
  You know, you just had to sort of go at it and.
• 40:07
  And it was finally in, well, I guess when that investment came
• 40:10
  in, in 2017, no, in fact, I didn't take a salary for a
• 40:12
  while. Then it was only in 2019 when
• 40:14
  finally we got the next transfer investment, then we're paying
• 40:17
  ourselves a salary. So yeah, I don't it's.
• 40:19
  A long time. It was a long time, yeah.
• 40:21
  I mean, I, I was fortunate we had a place in London that we we
• 40:23
  sold. And so I just paid myself off,
• 40:25
  off that, which is a really bad thing to do, but we did that
• 40:28
  and, and, you know, and got through it.
• 40:30
  So, yeah. And then, yeah.
• 40:32
  And, and you know, that, that thing about like, you know, the
• 40:34
  big. I do still think though, you
• 40:36
  know, that the process of raising that money and you know,
• 40:39
  in the end we raised about £20 million from over 1000
• 40:42
  investors. And that was endless meetings
• 40:45
  with investors, just endless, endless, endless meetings of
• 40:47
  investors. But when I think, you know, the
• 40:49
  process of doing that was obviously very long, very slow,
• 40:51
  very stressful. But compared to the business
• 40:53
  we'd have had with just taking 10 million from 1 one guy, the
• 40:58
  the ultimate consultancy, the ultimate sort of critique you
• 41:01
  can have on your business is is running it through scores of
• 41:03
  investors because each one of them like finds a different
• 41:06
  thing about your business plan that they want want to focus on
• 41:08
  like that your tourism plan, your construction, your risky
• 41:10
  forecasts. And every time it's being stress
• 41:12
  tested, stress tested and it and it and it just makes your
• 41:15
  business so strong as a result. It's the ultimate sort of MBA
• 41:18
  going through. Yeah, you know, all these
• 41:19
  different people. So it was very long, it's very
• 41:22
  stressful, but it was invaluable in the other thing.
• 41:24
  And, and I think if there's one thing that's really strong about
• 41:27
  our business, actually it's the, it's the, it's the cohort of
• 41:30
  investors we ended up with, you know, they all, they all had to
• 41:32
  see this is a long term investment.
• 41:34
  It's long, you know, it's growing trees and they're in it
• 41:37
  for that. They they got on board with the
• 41:38
  vision. They love it, they're incredibly
• 41:40
  supportive and that they're just so much fun to work with in that
• 41:43
  regard. So.
• 41:44
  And what was that like You're talking about each person honing
• 41:46
  in on on that. But what is the selling point
• 41:48
  when you sit down in front of somebody and say, listen, we're
• 41:53
  we're thinking about we're going to build a distillery in
• 41:55
  Edinburgh and there'll be so many different things that you
• 41:58
  can hone in and focus on. But what what is if you can
• 42:02
  remember when you're sitting there going, we have the sort of
• 42:04
  moment where someone might be sitting backwards, sitting there
• 42:08
  listening to you. And then you say, was there a
• 42:10
  particular thing you said where an investor might go, OK, and
• 42:13
  sit forward a little bit and go, I'm interested now.
• 42:15
  What was there something about that?
• 42:17
  Well, I think, I think, you know, there's a very clear
• 42:20
  division even before you get the meeting where if they're
• 42:23
  interested in theory and whiskey and, you know, actually we
• 42:25
  raised a lot of money going on touring America and meeting lots
• 42:28
  of some investors out there. You know, there's places where
• 42:30
  just the idea of having a stake in a Scotch whiskey industry,
• 42:33
  that alone kind of captures someone's imagination.
• 42:36
  But then, you know, I, I guess we're very fortunate to be
• 42:39
  raising investment during the whiskey boom.
• 42:41
  You know, like, you know, the Azure share price was going up
• 42:43
  like that, you know, talking and, and so we're able to paint
• 42:46
  quite a positive economic picture about, you know, Scotch
• 42:48
  whiskey and his fortunes. And you're able to say, well,
• 42:51
  you know, honestly, we told investors, we're not looking to
• 42:55
  build this business and sell it in five years.
• 42:57
  We want this to be a lifetime investment and grow and grow and
• 42:59
  grow it. But you also use in your deck,
• 43:02
  you sort of show previous examples of people who've sold
• 43:05
  distilleries and you're able to go, well, you know, Enrique, et
• 43:08
  cetera, et cetera, sold for this, for this.
• 43:12
  And so they get an understanding of, well, I'm investing in a
• 43:15
  business that currently values itself at 10 million or whatever
• 43:18
  it is. It has the potential one day to
• 43:20
  be worth this much because I've seen that happen elsewhere.
• 43:23
  And, you know, so they they can see I'm going to put it in 1 LB
• 43:26
  and hopefully get 10 out. Yeah.
• 43:28
  We're really looking forward to getting into the details of
• 43:32
  production and what makes the spirit unique and show your
• 43:34
  enthusiasm, why you've made this distillery, how you've made it,
• 43:38
  but you're in the location we're talking about least and how how
• 43:43
  accessible it is now. Glen going for a long time was
• 43:46
  the most visited distillery in Scotland because it was the most
• 43:50
  successful from a major city. There you go.
• 43:52
  And that's that's mad. And you can.
• 43:54
  That's 45 minutes out of Edinburgh Glasgow City centre,
• 43:57
  isn't it? You're going to have to wait.
• 44:00
  Yeah, You've got a minimum three years.
• 44:01
  Maybe you wait 10 years for for distillery, at least the first
• 44:04
  whiskey. This place is going to be so
• 44:06
  busy every August. How often do you're on tours?
• 44:09
  What's What's the plan for running?
• 44:11
  I mean, we're seven days a week now they're.
• 44:13
  Every hour, aren't they? They're pretty, Yeah.
• 44:14
  Every hour. I'm speaking to the people that
• 44:17
  are. And the weekends it's every half
• 44:19
  hour. As as an education centre and as
• 44:21
  an advertisement for the Scotch whiskey industry, people that
• 44:24
  come here is their first whiskey experience.
• 44:26
  Yeah. And that's so exciting.
• 44:27
  Well, Stewart there. If I'm sort of a, you know, we,
• 44:29
  we, we talked about this, you know, whiskey is multifaceted
• 44:33
  business now. It's, it's not a production
• 44:36
  company anymore. You're not just making a
• 44:37
  product. And that's one of the things is,
• 44:39
  and I suppose, and I can remember when the, the, you
• 44:42
  know, the, the project was starting and the, the
• 44:44
  construction started and everyone was saying that this is
• 44:47
  going to be a, a, a massive beacon of tourism and leave a
• 44:52
  destination. And that's what you have to work
• 44:54
  off, isn't it? Because ultimately, and I
• 44:57
  suppose from your business model, it's, it's one thing to
• 44:59
  say we're going to make whiskey and that's going to be a product
• 45:02
  and that product will sell. But the, the other thing is, is
• 45:04
  that you can, you could have done that and you could have
• 45:07
  just been a warehouse and a little factory area, a little
• 45:10
  unit where nobody really knows where you are.
• 45:12
  Instead, you're this massive tall building.
• 45:14
  You've got the you've got what we'll talk about.
• 45:16
  I'm sure you'll explain more during the two act, but you've
• 45:19
  got the sort of the uniqueness of being a vertical distillery
• 45:22
  as well. But also as we were, as we were
• 45:25
  alluding to and talking about earlier on, you know you're on
• 45:28
  that it's tourism is the market as well.
• 45:30
  So is there a balance that when you were making your business
• 45:32
  model was there like it's 5050, it's 60407030 on tourism versus
• 45:37
  production or is it always going to be, you're always skating
• 45:40
  distillery, so you have to have the product, but at the same
• 45:42
  time you're a tourist destination as well?
• 45:44
  Yeah. Listen, it's not something every
• 45:46
  new distillery has done there. A new distillery is a a big
• 45:49
  gauge do not enter. And you can have a little peek
• 45:51
  over the outside, but you can't. And these are new distilleries
• 45:54
  that are opened up. So it's not something every new
• 45:56
  distillery saying we're opened about, you know, people coming
• 45:58
  in. So it's, yeah, I mean, you know,
• 46:01
  you know, the close gates option is, you know, very enticing to
• 46:05
  some extent. But, but you need an awful lot
• 46:07
  of money if you're going to do that because you, you, you're,
• 46:09
  you're just funding your whiskey production.
• 46:11
  You know, we, we are spending, I don't know, just over £2,000,000
• 46:13
  a year producing whiskey. You know, if we release a
• 46:16
  whiskey in eight years time, that's £60 million that we've
• 46:19
  spent making whiskey without selling a drop.
• 46:21
  So you, you need another revenue stream in our instance because
• 46:25
  we're not billionaires. So I mean the, the tourism thing
• 46:30
  definitely, you know, part of it is profits that you can plow
• 46:34
  into, into whiskey production. So it's, it's efficient like
• 46:38
  that. And you, you know, obviously we
• 46:41
  did our best guess in terms of this location, Britannia there 5
• 46:44
  million in Edinburgh. We think we'll get this many,
• 46:47
  they'll spend this much in the shop, we'll have a bar on top,
• 46:49
  etcetera. And you kind of forecast like
• 46:50
  that, I mean, to some extent that income is going to be
• 46:53
  capped at some point. There's only a certain number of
• 46:56
  people you can feed up. There is only a certain number
• 46:57
  of tours you can actually facilitate in the area.
• 46:59
  So we'll get capped at some stage.
• 47:01
  The whiskey, on the other hand, has the potential in the future
• 47:05
  to become far more significant in terms of a revenue stream.
• 47:08
  But I, I actually think one of my, the best thing about the
• 47:12
  tourism is that we are, you know, we've got this opportunity
• 47:16
  to become one of the most visited distilleries in Scotland
• 47:18
  and therefore make a personal connection with so many people
• 47:20
  who've come here to see our story and, and, and, and, and
• 47:24
  learn about us. And that's, you know, invaluable
• 47:26
  marketing. Really.
• 47:27
  I mean, the, this building was very expensive to build.
• 47:30
  You know, if we built that, that, you know, found a nice
• 47:33
  rural location, built a nice distillery in a warehouse, that
• 47:35
  would have cost probably 1/5 of the price.
• 47:37
  Yeah. But would any of anyone have
• 47:40
  heard of us, you know, where, where, where do you start?
• 47:42
  So the, the investment in this. Well, yes, yeah.
• 47:46
  So it, it was a, it was a huge investment in a production
• 47:48
  facility, but also a huge investment in a massive piece of
• 47:50
  marketing basically. We, we've talked on this podcast
• 47:53
  quite a lot about how, you know, when we were talking about there
• 47:59
  was a Scotch whisky experience and we were talking about when
• 48:01
  the Johnnie Walker experience decided to open.
• 48:03
  Could even have been with Ally Baxter.
• 48:04
  Maybe Ally Baxter first time round and we were saying about
• 48:07
  how, you know, did that worry was was that concern?
• 48:11
  And then Ally pointed out the Scotch whiskey experience is
• 48:13
  owned by the whiskey industry. And everyone's like brilliant
• 48:15
  because they're like snow. You've got someplace else where
• 48:17
  you can go. So basically the point of the
• 48:19
  matter is they know each other's going to help each other out.
• 48:22
  You're a tourist, you've come to Scotland and you want to do the
• 48:25
  whiskey thing, right? You walk in, you think, right,
• 48:27
  Scotch whiskey experience will go to that.
• 48:29
  You suddenly go, that was really, really interesting.
• 48:32
  I've got the core level of it. Oh, guess what?
• 48:34
  I know Johnnie Walker, the Johnnie Walker experience is
• 48:36
  just a few miles away. I'll go to that on top of that
• 48:39
  now, I mean that that's the other thing.
• 48:41
  Tourists can now look at it and say just jump on a tram and I'm.
• 48:45
  I'd like to see how it's made. It's the best way to educate it
• 48:47
  It's. It's and Rossly, you know, we've
• 48:50
  we've had, I must admit, it's been something we've should have
• 48:54
  done a lot since we started the podcast, but we've had so many
• 48:57
  people talking about the whiskey scene in Leith.
• 49:01
  What's the what's the really popular the Nauticus Nauticus
• 49:04
  bar great bar, very well known for its whiskey and people will
• 49:08
  tell you like. They've topped 50 cocktail bars
• 49:10
  in the. Yeah, and we've had so many, I
• 49:11
  mean, people have worked in Nauticus that have been on the
• 49:14
  podcast and it's been an entry level into whiskey as well.
• 49:17
  Talked about the whiskey history in Leith too.
• 49:19
  You look at the bar here there's you've got even modern in terms
• 49:22
  of whiskey industry, you've got malt whiskey society bottlings
• 49:24
  in the back of that bar. Massively scintitude.
• 49:27
  Yeah, it's a they've got 40,000 members globally.
• 49:30
  Obviously just done their recording at Queen St.
• 49:33
  Yeah, that's a massive, massive whiskey business started at
• 49:36
  least in the. 80s they've. They've got woven, we've had
• 49:40
  Pete the owner and blend their woven on.
• 49:42
  This is the thing I love coming to a place.
• 49:44
  It's genuinely collaborative, clearly very proud of where
• 49:47
  they're from, because it's easy to put a bar and a distillery
• 49:50
  has been open since 1820s because you've got lots of
• 49:52
  liquid to put behind that bar. But actually you're kind of
• 49:55
  celebrating your neighbours, you're celebrating whiskey,
• 49:57
  you're celebrating the flavours. And actually, this is a great
• 50:00
  place to come, even if you're not a hardcore whiskey person.
• 50:03
  Yeah, come and learn about whiskey.
• 50:04
  And like, yeah, it's, it's, it's a great place to see.
• 50:07
  And do you know what? I think that probably no better
• 50:09
  way than for Ian to actually take us around, take us around,
• 50:12
  show us around and actually let us see what is what it's like in
• 50:15
  this distillery and for people who are interested in coming
• 50:17
  along, what what they could expect to see.
• 50:19
  Absolutely. Off we go.
• 50:20
  Right, let's go. So, Ian, this is the milling
• 50:23
  floor of the production and I'm, I'm.
• 50:25
  Looking down with these mesh flooring and I'm starting to get
• 50:28
  a little bit of apical because you suddenly realize how high up
• 50:31
  you are when you look down the way.
• 50:32
  You can see everything below us. Yeah, some people really do get
• 50:35
  the heebie jeebies in this room. So yeah, we, we're, we're kind
• 50:38
  of in a four story void and this is basically the production bit
• 50:41
  of the, the distillery. So, you know, it's a vertical
• 50:44
  distillery. So you have to get water and
• 50:46
  molt up to the 4th floor and then it works its way down the
• 50:49
  building and you get spirits out at the bottom.
• 50:51
  So we, we have a 27 ton, well, it's a 30 ton grain silo just
• 50:56
  outside here. And the, the, the molt gets
• 50:58
  lifted up. There's a little chain of disk
• 51:00
  mechanism in the pipe there that lifts the molt up and takes it
• 51:03
  over to our mill where it's milled.
• 51:04
  But I should say, first of all, you can, I don't know if you can
• 51:06
  see behind us the, the, the mat there that shows where our molt
• 51:09
  comes from just out in East Lothian, just outside
• 51:12
  Haddington. Yeah, yeah, indeed.
• 51:15
  We, we wanted to try and, you know, have a strong Providence
• 51:18
  angle there and try and make a whiskey of where we're from as
• 51:20
  much as possible. It's keeping this the, the, the
• 51:23
  food miles as slow as possible. You know, it's just going from
• 51:25
  Paddington to Alloa back to us. So that's just 90 mile round
• 51:28
  trip, which we think is amongst the shortest food miles of any
• 51:31
  distillery. And and although we're not
• 51:34
  really doing this yet because we've got plenty of other things
• 51:36
  to occupy us in the future, that means we can talk into how our
• 51:39
  grain has grown, you know, what kind of varieties of body
• 51:41
  species, etcetera. Fantastic.
• 51:43
  We also have a little bit of debate on the podcast about
• 51:46
  Fife. Barley, I'm, I'm adamant that
• 51:48
  Fife, Fife Barley is the best ballet in the world.
• 51:50
  But I mean, and in terms of the mileage, you know, if they still
• 51:53
  had the hovercraft that was going across from Kirkcaldy to
• 51:56
  maybe. You would you would have even
• 51:57
  less bring it on. We need one of them.
• 52:01
  We're I mean, we're mature, bring our spirit in five Carney
• 52:04
  Glenrothes. Oh yeah, yeah.
• 52:05
  So that beautiful 5 climate. Yeah, I mean, worked in the only
• 52:11
  distillery in the Garden of Scotland, E Lothian.
• 52:13
  Obviously, I think the best ballet is very slowly, so you've
• 52:15
  done very well. And when it comes to the
• 52:18
  challenge, you know, we talked earlier about the the way that
• 52:22
  the the distillery started and the Germany that you guys have
• 52:25
  been on. But when you decide let's make a
• 52:28
  vertical distillery and then when it comes down to the point
• 52:31
  of actually building a vertical distillery and then having to go
• 52:34
  through, well, wait a minute, how do we get the water up to
• 52:36
  that level? I think like, do you start
• 52:38
  scratching head to go, why did we ever bother thinking about
• 52:40
  this in the 1st place? Well.
• 52:43
  To be honest, it in terms of like the the process design, it
• 52:46
  wasn't that complicated. It's absolutely gravity, I
• 52:49
  guess. Well, yeah, you.
• 52:50
  Use for the gravity to be to be honest, you do still need quite
• 52:53
  a lot of pumps. You know, there is a bit of
• 52:54
  pumping here or there. I mean, we we probably have
• 52:56
  fewer pumps than most distilleries.
• 52:58
  That's that's definitely true. I mean, I should say the reason
• 53:01
  this is vertical is 100% because we had a small site, we never
• 53:05
  set out to build a vertical distillery, but we wanted to be
• 53:08
  in central Edinburgh small site. So the only way to build those
• 53:10
  up. But we have found, you know, now
• 53:13
  a Urines production that it actually has lent itself itself
• 53:17
  quite well to, to, to our whiskey production.
• 53:20
  One thing you'll also find we've got far less air handling than
• 53:23
  most distilleries. Distillers get really hot.
• 53:25
  But because of the verticality of our building, we have this
• 53:28
  natural heat diss heat dissipation.
• 53:30
  So up here is about 8° warmer than down at the still floor.
• 53:35
  You know, the heat immediately rises up to here.
• 53:37
  It gets really cold. You're going to be cold in your
• 53:38
  T-shirt. And that's actually giving some
• 53:42
  sort of character to our whiskey.
• 53:43
  And it's great for our fermentations.
• 53:44
  We can pitch our fermentations at a higher temperature because
• 53:47
  they cool so quickly with the ambient temperature.
• 53:49
  So the verticality has had some unintended consequences and is
• 53:53
  actually giving something to the character of our spirit.
• 53:56
  And distillery DNA, distillery character is what we talk about.
• 53:59
  Whatever we get a new distillery on.
• 54:01
  Yes. You don't have whiskey yet, but
• 54:03
  this is going to be a little bit patient, but you can already see
• 54:06
  you're going to have something that's unique and it can't be
• 54:08
  recreated. Somebody can do the same
• 54:10
  fermentation time. They can do the same size as
• 54:13
  cells if they wanted to. Yeah.
• 54:14
  You can't recreate this. I've never been in that cell
• 54:16
  like this ever. Right.
• 54:18
  And all I do is distilleries. So we're we're in the milling
• 54:22
  area, am I right? So you said that right now my I
• 54:24
  think it was Steven. No, it was Steven.
• 54:26
  It was Jake. I could who gave us that instum,
• 54:30
  which is to try and remember the process of whiskey.
• 54:32
  So is what's that? Milling, mashing, fermentation,
• 54:37
  distillation, maturation. There you go away.
• 54:40
  And see, it's funny. It's funny how.
• 54:42
  That made you remember. Yeah, that would be really
• 54:45
  confusing to me. So, so this, so we're on the
• 54:49
  what floor are we on? Here, 4th floor. 4th floor.
• 54:51
  So this is the starting process there, yes.
• 54:53
  So this is the starting. Process.
• 54:55
  Yeah. This is milling.
• 54:55
  Yeah. So.
• 54:56
  And the other thing you have here are these water tanks, the
• 54:58
  processed water tanks. So, you know, you need a lot of
• 55:01
  water to make whiskey. And we are.
• 55:02
  We are plumbed into Edinburgh's finest tap water.
• 55:04
  But we also, when we were building the distillery, we
• 55:06
  drilled a borehole underneath us.
• 55:07
  So that goes 120 meters underneath the building and
• 55:10
  tapped into our very own water source.
• 55:12
  And it's perfect soft water, perfect for fragmentation and
• 55:16
  loads of it. So.
• 55:17
  So yeah, it's just getting those things up here ready to work
• 55:20
  their way down the building. I guess make sure you don't put
• 55:23
  your hand in your pocket, drop any of your loose change because
• 55:26
  if it goes down these floors, it's it's going right the way to
• 55:28
  the bottom. So, so the next floor down and
• 55:30
  then what's the what's the process going on when?
• 55:33
  We got the mashing. So we can actually see.
• 55:37
  This is Bunker. It's.
• 55:38
  Wild that we're standing above. It yeah, yeah, it really is very
• 55:40
  strange. You can see down there.
• 55:42
  Well, these are what we can see down there.
• 55:44
  They're mashed tons and I think and there's wash backs, wash
• 55:47
  backs that the mashed tons. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 55:49
  You can see it's actually. They're not very big for mashed
• 55:52
  tons. But then they make sense of it.
• 55:54
  Yeah. So it's the mashed tongue is
• 55:55
  actually directly underneath the grain hopper there, so.
• 55:57
  That's what I'll do is we'll do we do it actually, I'll grab the
• 56:01
  camera. And I'll do that.
• 56:03
  Just we'll talk about because we want to know about the.
• 56:06
  So what we got? So these these, so these are our
• 56:07
  water tanks right here. Yeah, exactly.
• 56:09
  Process water tanks and you've got your hot liquor tanks and
• 56:13
  then down here we've got this is actually a heat exchanger as
• 56:17
  well, so the capturing heat from the process.
• 56:20
  And then, yeah, here we have our mill.
• 56:23
  And so where the barley works its way along these pipes and
• 56:27
  into the mill, that's where we grind it, always checking the
• 56:29
  consistency of our grist. And you can see some of it here
• 56:32
  because the distillers always have to check that it's coming
• 56:35
  out, right, essentially different.
• 56:36
  Sometimes different batches of body have different sizes and
• 56:39
  they're producing different grist sort of ratios.
• 56:41
  So we have to keep an eye on that.
• 56:42
  And then it gets stored in the hopper here and you can see at
• 56:44
  the moment we have 1513 kilos of malt of grist waiting to be
• 56:50
  dropped to the floor below. This is where we actually really
• 56:52
  do use gravity that. Yeah.
• 56:53
  So that just drops straight down there.
• 56:55
  Yeah. And that's we have barley there,
• 56:57
  yeah. Into the into the mash tum
• 56:59
  below. So.
• 57:00
  So there we go and. That's our floor for people who
• 57:03
  are watching, you can see all they don't.
• 57:04
  Well, if you like verticality, if you come around this way, so
• 57:07
  this is where you really get a sense of it.
• 57:09
  And this is where if you do have Vertigo, you really do get the
• 57:12
  kibi jeebies. This is where you can see down
• 57:14
  to the stills. That's a couple of stills.
• 57:16
  Yeah, what the hell on the? Round floor isn't that amazing
• 57:21
  to look at? Yeah.
• 57:22
  I know it's quite, quite yeah for someone.
• 57:24
  Who does suffer a little bit of it It is.
• 57:28
  I'm not scared of the heights, I'm scared of falling down them.
• 57:30
  That's the main thing. Don't worry, unless here is
• 57:32
  another Watertown Catholic. Yes, yeah, exactly.
• 57:35
  I don't know what if I'm quite honest, I never remember which
• 57:37
  ones for what, but they're they're all water basically so.
• 57:40
  Do you have a? Different one for the stuff that
• 57:41
  comes from down. Below or is it?
• 57:44
  No, that's there is a blending sort of tank for to sort of
• 57:48
  blend our tap water and our. You blend your tap water before
• 57:51
  you meet the West, Yeah. Basically, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 57:55
  But yeah, you don't have to worry about falling out.
• 57:57
  One thing I can say about this building is it's insanely
• 57:59
  strong. Because.
• 58:02
  It is having to put up with all these forces of like tons of
• 58:05
  liquid moving from one side, yeah.
• 58:07
  Yeah, lots of things. When you're vibrating Exactly.
• 58:11
  Yeah. But when you actually think
• 58:12
  about it, yeah, when you when you look, look at the flooring
• 58:14
  that we're standing on and you're thinking about not just
• 58:16
  the weight of the tanks and equipment, but with the weight
• 58:19
  of the tanks and equipment when they're full as well.
• 58:22
  We had the recent storm Brown station goes against me.
• 58:27
  What was it? Storm Eon Eon, your Galax?
• 58:29
  Metlin Mango No. Any any damage or the the the
• 58:32
  distillery survival. No, I mean, we were a bit
• 58:35
  worried, but to be honest, where we are in Leith, you know, we
• 58:38
  already get battered by the winds anyway, so it's been
• 58:40
  pretty much stress tested as in that regard.
• 58:43
  Oh, instantly we've dropped down a level.
• 58:45
  We've only come down a few flights there and as you
• 58:47
  mentioned, with my T-shirt on, you're feeling it.
• 58:49
  I'm already noticing a massive difference in the temperature
• 58:52
  already just going one floor down.
• 58:54
  Yeah, it's quite striking and you'll feel it a lot when we get
• 58:56
  to the stills. I mean, I think it's one of the
• 58:58
  coldest still houses in Scotland and so.
• 59:01
  And it's busy. This floor is busy.
• 59:02
  Yes, you've filled the space very, very well.
• 59:05
  Yeah. What what kind of capacity are
• 59:06
  you looking for as you're filling Spirit right now?
• 59:09
  Obviously the final products a few years off.
• 59:12
  Yeah. And I don't know if you're
• 59:13
  planning to get gradually get yourself in there, but how's it
• 59:16
  started this first year? In terms of production, yeah.
• 59:18
  So I mean here we have the MASH time which essentially sets our
• 59:21
  capacity to a large extent so. Only the one.
• 59:24
  We've only the one. Obviously for a lot of people
• 59:26
  would go that's very different, but again, it's a different
• 59:29
  distillery. I guess so, yeah.
• 59:30
  So, I mean, we, we, you know, we, we knew we were always going
• 59:33
  to have a limited capacity. We, we didn't want to be
• 59:35
  massive. Yeah.
• 59:37
  You know, there was a real sort of quality over quantity focus,
• 59:40
  I guess for us. And and so you saw there was
• 59:43
  1500 kilos of of malt obsession. This is a 1.5 ton mash ton ready
• 59:48
  for that. And yeah.
• 59:50
  So with that, we, we decided it was a tricky thing to sort of
• 59:55
  figure out in the startup phase, but yeah, how much whiskey do we
• 59:58
  want to make and. In the end, 1.5 ton mash ton 2
• 1:00:02
  shifts a day, seven days a week that can produce 400,000 litres
• 1:00:07
  pure alcohol. OK, so you know, roughly
• 1:00:09
  speaking, that could equate into a million bottles, you know,
• 1:00:12
  roughly a year. So that, that's basically our
• 1:00:14
  volume, yeah. So and.
• 1:00:15
  Against Edinburgh as, as a city that has well, that's going to
• 1:00:19
  be so busy with the transfer. We'll go into why this has been
• 1:00:21
  such an amazing success before the Whiskey because of what you
• 1:00:25
  guys have got here in the location you're in.
• 1:00:27
  But artisanal spirits are in demand in a city like this.
• 1:00:30
  And so if you produce an artisanal spirit that you can
• 1:00:32
  come into the city from all over the world and pick it up that
• 1:00:35
  day and take it back over, it's it's amazing.
• 1:00:37
  It's a great opportunity. How long is your fermentation
• 1:00:40
  here in the distillery? Well, it depends on EU strain a
• 1:00:42
  little bit, so. Can I answer that straightaway
• 1:00:45
  and? And don't ask me which U strain,
• 1:00:48
  that's OK. What's exactly which
• 1:00:49
  fermentation, but I think it's that's been a real learning
• 1:00:51
  process for me actually. I mean, during that, you know,
• 1:00:54
  we started out making whiskey in our back garden and learning a
• 1:00:57
  lot from that. But my gosh, we knew nothing,
• 1:00:59
  you know, and it's, it's been even in the last year, you know,
• 1:01:03
  seeing just the difference, for example, the rake speed in our
• 1:01:06
  mash tunnel makes of the character of the spirit that
• 1:01:08
  we're creating. But you know, with fermentation,
• 1:01:11
  there's a bit of an orthodoxy out there amongst, you know, the
• 1:01:13
  newer distilleries that long fermentations are good.
• 1:01:16
  You know, that's going to make a difference to character.
• 1:01:18
  And you'll find distilleries saying, oh.
• 1:01:21
  We. Are we just sell for 100 hour?
• 1:01:24
  Yes, Exactly. Yeah.
• 1:01:25
  Yeah. Whereas in fact, the truth is a
• 1:01:27
  lot more nuanced than that, is what I've discovered.
• 1:01:29
  Because, you know, different processes happen during the
• 1:01:32
  phases of fermentation. And, you know, at some point the
• 1:01:35
  yeast stops working and at that point it begins to die and you
• 1:01:38
  get yelatolysis. And that creates specific
• 1:01:41
  flavours in its own right. So different yeasts have
• 1:01:44
  different lifespans. They prefer different
• 1:01:46
  temperatures, different fermentation times, and really
• 1:01:49
  need to get to know them and discover like what fermentation
• 1:01:53
  time is giving you the spirit character you want.
• 1:01:54
  The key thing for us is we definitely put flavor quality
• 1:01:59
  over efficiency. We're not looking to to, you
• 1:02:01
  know, for the sake of efficiency to have a fast fermentation, but
• 1:02:04
  if it's making a better spirit, we will have a shorter.
• 1:02:07
  Fermentation. And it also seems that you're
• 1:02:08
  open minded to do that kind of risk experimenting, play with
• 1:02:12
  barley species, play with yeast species.
• 1:02:14
  That's something that you've mentioned already.
• 1:02:16
  Not often. When you come to a decelerator,
• 1:02:17
  they say, well it changes depending on what we use is
• 1:02:21
  genuinely artisanal. You're trying to do something a
• 1:02:23
  bit different, which is interesting.
• 1:02:25
  I'm assuming it's almost always got to be liquid E because of
• 1:02:28
  the way this is set up. No way.
• 1:02:30
  So we are using rehydrated yeast.
• 1:02:34
  Yeah, dried yeast, yeah. In fact, the two key strains
• 1:02:37
  that we're using. So we do use a distiller strain.
• 1:02:41
  But then beyond that, we're actually using 2 brewing strain,
• 1:02:45
  Yeah. And that has so so we buy those
• 1:02:48
  dried the IT has quite a significant impact on cost.
• 1:02:52
  A standard M strain distillers yeast is about 8 lbs.
• 1:02:56
  A K1 of our brewing strains is about 4050 lbs a kilo and the
• 1:03:00
  other one's 130 lbs a kilo. So I've never, you go to any,
• 1:03:05
  you know, larger distillery. It's Brewers E, Yeah.
• 1:03:08
  And you're told, of course it's Brewers E because it's
• 1:03:10
  consistent and it's what we're used to.
• 1:03:12
  But this is a bit different. And that was always a massive
• 1:03:14
  sacrifice for you in the long run.
• 1:03:16
  Again, potentially very exciting that could.
• 1:03:18
  Come from that and we've got no doubt after a year of working
• 1:03:22
  with these things and you know, we, we did a this research
• 1:03:24
  program beforehand. We're really excited about the
• 1:03:26
  spirits that they're producing and that that is, that's
• 1:03:29
  definitely one of our key points of difference and something that
• 1:03:33
  we're so excited about how that whiskey is going to mature and
• 1:03:36
  dessert because we, we really wanted to create a distillery
• 1:03:38
  where a whiskey where, you know, it's made in the distillery.
• 1:03:41
  I, I know a lot of people sort of can see new make spirits as a
• 1:03:44
  as a blank canvas and it's all about the cask for us.
• 1:03:47
  It really is about the spirit character.
• 1:03:49
  It's something we we've had blenders on, we've had operators
• 1:03:52
  on, we've had whiskey makers, very rarely distillery owners.
• 1:03:55
  But you sound just like an operator or blender to me.
• 1:03:59
  You wouldn't want to drink anything I made.
• 1:04:01
  But it's it's something that people are always discussing.
• 1:04:05
  How influential is the cask? The cask is as influential as
• 1:04:08
  you want it to be is my opinion. Yes.
• 1:04:10
  Well, I hope so. And So what we like and what
• 1:04:13
  we've really discovered from different backgrounds in whiskey
• 1:04:16
  is finding a nuance and distillate profile is where you
• 1:04:18
  get your favourites from. And that's exciting because you
• 1:04:21
  want something that's different. Sounds like you're going to have
• 1:04:23
  some really interesting, beautifully inconsistent
• 1:04:26
  consistent. Something a lot like our
• 1:04:30
  distiller with some of those words.
• 1:04:31
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, really, you know,
• 1:04:34
  there's so many levers that you can pull.
• 1:04:36
  You know, we speak of the barley that you know, will work on that
• 1:04:39
  in the future with the farm, the yeast, the casks.
• 1:04:43
  But really for our first year, more than anything else has just
• 1:04:45
  been learning what spirit does this distillery make?
• 1:04:49
  Because actually, you know, you design the layout, you've got
• 1:04:51
  this verticality, you you can't fight your equipment really to a
• 1:04:55
  large extent. So actually when you turn it on
• 1:04:58
  for the first time and you start making spirit, what does it
• 1:05:00
  produce? And only once you've sort of set
• 1:05:03
  that that sort of base layer that can you begin to start
• 1:05:07
  tweaking things and sort of adapting from there.
• 1:05:09
  So that's really been the story of 2024 for us is just learning
• 1:05:13
  what's the DNA of this building? What does it?
• 1:05:15
  What does it make? And has the seasons and the
• 1:05:17
  weather, for example, on the wind, has that, has that changed
• 1:05:20
  they they has an impact? It has an impact.
• 1:05:22
  I mean, you see around us in the walls, you've got these black
• 1:05:24
  panels on the walls. Those are louvers.
• 1:05:27
  And we've got them all around the building on every floor.
• 1:05:29
  And it's one of the reasons why it gets so cold in here.
• 1:05:31
  It's a very well ventilated space.
• 1:05:34
  And that means that depending on the direction that the wind's
• 1:05:38
  blowing really affects the temperature in this space.
• 1:05:40
  This isn't that interesting. So you know, if you've got a, a
• 1:05:44
  typical southwesterly is one thing, but then a northerly just
• 1:05:47
  blows through like anything and you really, really feel it.
• 1:05:50
  And so actually we've got 7 wash backs around here and the ones
• 1:05:55
  in the corner over there on certain days will get really
• 1:05:58
  impacted because of the wind coming through the distillery.
• 1:06:00
  So yeah, the, the, the weather has a very significant impact
• 1:06:04
  and. I know there will be some people
• 1:06:05
  that listen because we have a lot of industry listers.
• 1:06:08
  You will be delighted to hear that kind of thing because it
• 1:06:10
  get really narrowed out and something I mean that's.
• 1:06:13
  Just the kind of thing that just adds to the kind of the
• 1:06:15
  character and the lore of a distillery, you know, these kind
• 1:06:18
  of, Oh well, you know, they've got these wash packs that have a
• 1:06:21
  different thing because of the wind.
• 1:06:23
  And yeah, you know that. I guess, I guess at some stage
• 1:06:25
  we'll have. To do a special edition wash
• 1:06:26
  back number seven, you probably. You know, that's it.
• 1:06:31
  The Wednesday Edition Whiskey is getting busy.
• 1:06:35
  I only drink 4 leaf whiskey from the wash back number.
• 1:06:37
  Three exactly exactly. Did you mention something about
• 1:06:40
  having a a farm as well? Did you just?
• 1:06:42
  Well, as I, no, we we don't have our own farm, but we work with a
• 1:06:45
  single farm. So, so you have a single estate,
• 1:06:48
  Single estate party? Exactly.
• 1:06:49
  Yeah, that's exciting too. Yeah, no, it's, it's awesome and
• 1:06:52
  quite a unique relationship, I think, and, and one, one that,
• 1:06:55
  you know, we're not leveraging right now.
• 1:06:56
  They, they, the Clark brothers who run Upper Bolton Farm, they
• 1:07:00
  make beautiful laureate barley. They've got fantastic climate
• 1:07:02
  there. The, the rain sort of shadow of
• 1:07:05
  the, the llama Muir Hills. And they, it just, it's a
• 1:07:07
  fantastic growing, you know, landscape.
• 1:07:13
  We it's, it's, it's something that we intend to leverage in
• 1:07:15
  the future. Yeah, but you can't do
• 1:07:17
  everything at once, of course, so.
• 1:07:19
  I think it's something that a lot of new distilleries are
• 1:07:20
  looking at can be. Obviously it's different you're
• 1:07:22
  in the city centre, but what we were trying to do single estate
• 1:07:24
  production, single estate you know strengthening growing trees
• 1:07:28
  and barley on the on the distillery grounds there to try
• 1:07:30
  and do that whole you know that that interesting product and RV
• 1:07:34
  key are doing a lot of different variety of Barley's they've been
• 1:07:38
  growing on their farm and they can point to the field etcetera.
• 1:07:41
  Somewhere like Lofly? As well.
• 1:07:43
  Oh yeah, great, great example. Yeah, great example.
• 1:07:45
  There we go. Well, it's getting too hot here,
• 1:07:47
  really. Yeah, let's have a look this
• 1:07:49
  way. I mean, you can, you can just
• 1:07:56
  peek in there. It's it's, this is our lab.
• 1:07:58
  It's not looking quite so exciting at the moment.
• 1:08:00
  And it's, it's really the, the key thing here is just analysis
• 1:08:03
  of the spirit that we're making. But in due course, we we intend
• 1:08:07
  to get like a pilot still in there.
• 1:08:09
  You know, if there's one thing we learn from our research into
• 1:08:11
  yeasts, it's like how much more there is to discover.
• 1:08:14
  So. So we want to keep those trials
• 1:08:15
  going, keep experimenting. Exactly.
• 1:08:17
  Yeah, yeah. That's the idea is to just never
• 1:08:20
  stop learning, experimenting and evolving essentially.
• 1:08:23
  So, so come back here in, you know, six months a year and.
• 1:08:25
  Look a little bit more labby if you like, but.
• 1:08:27
  It still is. It still is one of my favorite
• 1:08:29
  rooms to go in and sniff whatever.
• 1:08:31
  'S come off the still that week. That's a.
• 1:08:33
  Few interesting looking sample bottles.
• 1:08:35
  Yeah, yeah. That's exactly the kind of thing
• 1:08:38
  we'd. Expect to see and it was very
• 1:08:39
  exciting, you know. I think it.
• 1:08:41
  Was back in the summer, we got our first cast samples back from
• 1:08:43
  the warehouse as well. So you're seeing the, you know,
• 1:08:45
  the first colour in the spirit. It's kind of exciting.
• 1:08:47
  Nine months old or whatever. Yeah.
• 1:08:49
  Well, yeah, six months at that stage.
• 1:08:50
  I mean, we're getting on to, you know, nine months, well, exactly
• 1:08:53
  in fabric. It'll be long before I have our
• 1:08:54
  first one. Year old.
• 1:08:55
  So it's yeah, that's so exciting.
• 1:08:58
  So now another two stories down to the stool floor.
• 1:09:03
  We should say it's fantastic. This content is for everybody
• 1:09:05
  that's watching your listing. You have to come down to Port
• 1:09:08
  Leith Distillery. It's so easy to get to, you have
• 1:09:11
  no excuse. So easy to get to.
• 1:09:13
  From the centre of Edinburgh. Well, yeah, but from.
• 1:09:15
  Exactly, Edinburgh is easy to get to Edinburgh from Edinburgh
• 1:09:18
  as well. Thanks.
• 1:09:18
  Waverly. Tram from the centre and you're
• 1:09:20
  right. Here, yeah, Tram Street from the
• 1:09:21
  airport. Also, Hey Rocky.
• 1:09:22
  Hi there. So here we go.
• 1:09:25
  We're on the the 1st floor and this is the the still room.
• 1:09:30
  Hey, hey, Cole, just. Hey here.
• 1:09:32
  We come a crew with you. There we go.
• 1:09:34
  Wow. So here we are on the still
• 1:09:37
  floor. So there is still action going
• 1:09:40
  on right now. That's how much cool is it down
• 1:09:42
  here, Jen? It's much colder and I'll be
• 1:09:45
  honest with you, right. We've talked about this at the
• 1:09:48
  podcast before. That still is actually working.
• 1:09:51
  Yeah. Was it Steve?
• 1:09:55
  Steven. Steven, I started Steven
• 1:09:57
  Woodcock. Friendly Maria, Right, Right.
• 1:10:00
  Well, he was talking about tapping the stills.
• 1:10:02
  For fresh, that's. A very old school method.
• 1:10:07
  What I think is really interesting, if you came here
• 1:10:10
  five years ago, your distiller operator would say what the hell
• 1:10:14
  is on those stills because of the glass doors.
• 1:10:17
  This is something that really wasn't done until the kind of
• 1:10:19
  new age of these distilleries in the last kind of five years or
• 1:10:22
  so. But what a genius thing to do
• 1:10:24
  for your tour. Somebody can actually see to
• 1:10:26
  actually explain how it still works to people?
• 1:10:28
  That don't write if you're listening to this podcast.
• 1:10:31
  Well, if you're listening to this podcast, you need to go
• 1:10:33
  into the YouTube channel. Because you can.
• 1:10:36
  Actually, see what we're doing here.
• 1:10:37
  You can see the, you can see the still.
• 1:10:40
  And I've suddenly just realized that I've found myself on.
• 1:10:44
  I've been very open and honest about this.
• 1:10:45
  This is one of the 1st most distillery tours I've ever done.
• 1:10:51
  The last distillery tour I did was God.
• 1:10:55
  I may probably the the Grouse experience.
• 1:11:00
  Wow. So the grouse experience, but I
• 1:11:04
  wasn't old enough. I was nowhere near old enough to
• 1:11:06
  have a drum And the most exciting thing at the time, and
• 1:11:08
  I do apologise for everyone editing is listening, was the
• 1:11:11
  was the keyboard on the floor? Anyway jump.
• 1:11:14
  On that was actually my first ever router as well.
• 1:11:17
  Yeah. It's one of these things where
• 1:11:19
  we were talking earlier, before we got recording was basically
• 1:11:22
  that my dad worked in whiskey, but not really worked in
• 1:11:26
  whiskey. But he he at the time through
• 1:11:27
  the 80s, found whiskey really, really, really boring.
• 1:11:30
  And one of the things that we've already talked about, you know,
• 1:11:34
  is the fact that this isn't just a working distillery, but it's
• 1:11:37
  also a visitor centre. Yeah.
• 1:11:38
  And I think at the time through the 80s when my old boy was
• 1:11:41
  working there, it was for being made.
• 1:11:44
  It wasn't for people coming in tourism or anything like that.
• 1:11:47
  So one of the things that he said is that you've been in one
• 1:11:49
  distillery, you've been in them all.
• 1:11:50
  You've heard one tour guys talking about this is where the
• 1:11:54
  Martians are nowadays. It's such a big thing.
• 1:11:57
  And as Ross has just said there, you know, we've got, we've got
• 1:12:01
  stills here, a glass fronts, you know, glass panels on them.
• 1:12:04
  So and is that, was that by design then?
• 1:12:06
  Is that so that for the people that are on the doors?
• 1:12:08
  Can actually see exactly, I mean, you know, it's, it's not
• 1:12:11
  unhelpful as well for the distillers to be able to see,
• 1:12:14
  you know, what stage it's, you know, how it's propping up,
• 1:12:18
  etcetera. In fact, you know, at some stage
• 1:12:19
  that there's that prop's going to reach the, the upper window
• 1:12:22
  there and that's, that's quite useful.
• 1:12:24
  They want to make sure it's not, you know, rising too high.
• 1:12:26
  So actually Windows have a have a use, certainly.
• 1:12:30
  But yeah, no, there's nothing like being able to come in here
• 1:12:32
  and see it bubbling away as a visitor as well.
• 1:12:34
  But just going back to the point Graham was making, I believe the
• 1:12:37
  celery you know to pick you up is almost a perfect example of
• 1:12:40
  if you have been through the story tour before.
• 1:12:42
  You haven't seen it all because you know you are undeniably
• 1:12:47
  different from any other distillery I've been inside.
• 1:12:50
  And you know, I think. As well with other.
• 1:12:52
  Modern distillery sometimes. You know, you kind of see the
• 1:12:55
  exterior. Of the distillery and then?
• 1:12:57
  You know some of them. Try to kind of heart back and
• 1:12:59
  they play on that. History, whereas you're just
• 1:13:01
  kind of unapologetically modern year and it's it's glass, it's
• 1:13:05
  steel, it's just 100%. As kind of, you know, you're not
• 1:13:10
  saying, right, This is how a distillery should like, that's
• 1:13:13
  how. It can look.
• 1:13:14
  Yeah, I think that's always a temptation with the new
• 1:13:16
  distillery to to try and look all and and you never thought
• 1:13:21
  about putting a little. Well, actually we had a few
• 1:13:24
  people suggested, but I, we never set out to build a
• 1:13:27
  vertical distillery, but we definitely set out to build a
• 1:13:29
  modern piece of architecture. We, we wanted the building to
• 1:13:32
  reflect what we want to be as a company.
• 1:13:34
  Definitely so. And so your stills, where do
• 1:13:36
  your where have your stills come from?
• 1:13:38
  So these were made-up in Elgin at the space side copper work.
• 1:13:41
  Because I see the space side on on the on the door of your
• 1:13:43
  watch, Yeah. Exactly.
• 1:13:44
  Yeah. So it's now actually been, I
• 1:13:47
  think they've been bought by Precise, the main still still
• 1:13:50
  manufacturer in Scotland, so and so for.
• 1:13:52
  People that don't know how, how long does that take?
• 1:13:54
  You know you it's massive waiting list for sales at the
• 1:13:57
  moment. Well, I think we were lucky that
• 1:14:00
  we came in as sort of a window in between that because I think,
• 1:14:03
  oh, there we go. I think McAllen had finished and
• 1:14:07
  that was a massive project that had so dumped so much stuff and
• 1:14:11
  Precise was focused on that. And so they couldn't do anything
• 1:14:14
  else and all the other manufacturers were busy.
• 1:14:17
  But we, we, yeah, we seem to fall in this window.
• 1:14:19
  And actually the stills were made way before we got the
• 1:14:22
  building finished. In fact, there was just sitting
• 1:14:24
  in their yard and going, are you guys ever going to pick these
• 1:14:26
  up? And we're like, well, you know,
• 1:14:27
  we're getting there, we're getting there.
• 1:14:29
  The, the construction unit was complicated.
• 1:14:31
  So yeah, they were, they were, it was all the easier bits
• 1:14:34
  actually, genuinely. I mean, one, one of the key
• 1:14:37
  things about our stills, I guess, you know, for anyone
• 1:14:39
  coming here compared to most stills, you'll see is we haven't
• 1:14:42
  lackered them up. We haven't made them look
• 1:14:43
  pretty. No.
• 1:14:44
  And that, that was a very conscious decision.
• 1:14:45
  We like everything in the building.
• 1:14:48
  We, you know, it's really about the whiskey and how we make it
• 1:14:51
  and, and we wanted that sense. And actually I, I just love the
• 1:14:54
  honest look of the stills, you know?
• 1:14:56
  There's not many discoveries that don't I mean been having
• 1:14:59
  the other example there. I say themselves are mock it.
• 1:15:02
  They look really dirty. They look well seasoned and
• 1:15:05
  these look well seasoned, but it gives that authenticity.
• 1:15:08
  They're before we've got condensers as well.
• 1:15:13
  Line arms are not very long or too dramatic.
• 1:15:15
  So again, we're not increasing copper contact too much, but a
• 1:15:18
  really interesting big boil ball on your wash shell as well.
• 1:15:22
  So not a master spirit, still not a massive spirit, still here
• 1:15:26
  in this boil ball. The often people maybe know it
• 1:15:28
  from the old Poultry distillery. They look at the bottle old
• 1:15:30
  Poultry that just increases that copper contact and gives you
• 1:15:33
  lighter spirit. So really interesting to see
• 1:15:36
  from a low wind distillery whether we can talk about
• 1:15:39
  regions, whether we think that's relevant nowadays.
• 1:15:42
  You think a lighter, sweeter spirit you want to be the extra
• 1:15:45
  copper contact and that'll do that for you.
• 1:15:47
  Interestingly though, the way we've actually run this is that
• 1:15:51
  we actually run this still quite fast.
• 1:15:52
  OK, so we we, we run it hard and as a result, even though we got
• 1:15:57
  that boy ball and that increased copper contact, it's it's.
• 1:16:02
  It's. Yeah.
• 1:16:04
  And so that is achieving quite a medium bodied spirit for us.
• 1:16:08
  And the most exciting thing for us is we're finding this
• 1:16:11
  oiliness in the spirit. Yeah, which which just is that
• 1:16:15
  sort of alchemy you didn't know was going to happen, but it's
• 1:16:17
  there. And that's been the big
• 1:16:19
  revelation, I think, from the last year.
• 1:16:21
  Allison I I I'm a massive advocate for texture and
• 1:16:23
  whiskey. If you can chew a whiskey,
• 1:16:25
  you're on to where and then the spirit safe.
• 1:16:28
  This is the most unique looking spirit safe I've seen because it
• 1:16:32
  just. It's not.
• 1:16:34
  It's not. It's not.
• 1:16:36
  No, indeed. Yeah.
• 1:16:37
  Well, again, we thought it was a bit in Congress, you know, with
• 1:16:40
  everything about the building to have your normal sort of
• 1:16:43
  Victoriana spirit safe. So this was literally designed
• 1:16:47
  by by our operations manager at the time and just to be as sort
• 1:16:53
  of minimalist and utilitarian as possible.
• 1:16:55
  And yeah, we love it. In fact, the the glazing up here
• 1:16:59
  was actually done again, by one of our distillers because we
• 1:17:01
  couldn't get anyone to make it for us.
• 1:17:02
  So you just hate it? Yeah.
• 1:17:03
  To some extent, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:17:05
  Yeah. No, I did say so.
• 1:17:07
  It's a beautiful damn. I mean, just seeing spill,
• 1:17:10
  seeing the spirit flowing off there is absolute magic to me.
• 1:17:13
  It's incredible to see. Yeah.
• 1:17:15
  That's an accomplishment in yourself and that's an
• 1:17:17
  accomplishment. It's lovely to see you.
• 1:17:19
  I imagine that's that's been a long time coming.
• 1:17:21
  Well, the big day you started from the back garden, yes?
• 1:17:24
  Yeah. Yeah, here we are.
• 1:17:25
  I mean, it's quite incredible, but.
• 1:17:27
  And one last question, what is, do you have a set of filling
• 1:17:30
  strength to cast here or are you?
• 1:17:35
  Yeah, I need, I need to check exactly.
• 1:17:37
  We do have a set. I think we're, we're, we're
• 1:17:39
  filling and I should know this better, but I think it's around
• 1:17:42
  65%. So yeah, we, we wanted a
• 1:17:44
  slightly lower filling strength. So but yeah, I, I probably need
• 1:17:48
  to check that with beta exactly where we are.
• 1:17:50
  It's one of those numbers that never quite stick to this well.
• 1:17:52
  All they say up and down the steps is got Angus pretty
• 1:17:55
  thirsty. Now we do know that the podcast
• 1:17:58
  Simon Smith was part of the curation for the bar.
• 1:18:00
  Yeah, it'd be quite nice to to pop up there.
• 1:18:05
  Yeah, sure. So we're now standing above the
• 1:18:08
  bar. Yes.
• 1:18:08
  Area, yeah. And then so this is a spillover
• 1:18:10
  for the budget you. Could buy that bed sucky and
• 1:18:12
  stuff as. Well, yeah, exactly.
• 1:18:13
  They're just setting up for a private dinner tonight.
• 1:18:15
  And yeah, this is the bar Mezni. So you're on the 9th?
• 1:18:18
  Floor of the building. Here at the very top floor.
• 1:18:19
  And you're looking across, I mean, I'm, it's, it's, it's,
• 1:18:22
  it's the evening time now. During the day, it's stunning.
• 1:18:25
  And all you can see is beautiful Fife.
• 1:18:27
  Yes, hi, the Kingdom. This is a great new addition to
• 1:18:31
  the Edamer Bar scene. Yeah, there's not just a whiskey
• 1:18:34
  bar either. It's full cocktail menu.
• 1:18:36
  You've got your local pilot brewery on draft down here as
• 1:18:40
  well. Like, I love this space.
• 1:18:41
  It's the other side of town for me.
• 1:18:43
  Yeah. But if I'm in this area, I have
• 1:18:45
  to come here for a drink. And friend of the pod.
• 1:18:48
  As I say, it's. Simon, it's a bar curating this
• 1:18:49
  bar. Yeah, not, not, not only created
• 1:18:51
  this bar, but he set out, I remember him talking on, I mean,
• 1:18:55
  keen listeners will maybe remember this that he set out to
• 1:18:58
  kind of provide when he created the bar.
• 1:19:01
  It was all about young spirit, it was all about really nice
• 1:19:04
  whiskeys with kind of lower age statements if they had them, and
• 1:19:08
  that was the whole kind of ethos.
• 1:19:09
  Yeah, bar, but we. Are setting to setting out and.
• 1:19:12
  That was part of the discussion we had.
• 1:19:13
  I mean, that was over a year ago now that Simon was talking about
• 1:19:16
  this. And I think one of the things
• 1:19:17
  that we've talked a lot about and well, you know, the
• 1:19:20
  perception of whiskey and perceptions within whiskey.
• 1:19:23
  And I think there is people that will say like, oh, if it's under
• 1:19:25
  10, it can't be any good. And, and The thing is, we've
• 1:19:27
  seen such a a burst of new distilleries coming through.
• 1:19:31
  Producing quality spirit. That's it.
• 1:19:32
  And I think that's what Simon was saying, is that it'd be very
• 1:19:34
  easy for in a whiskey bar to have a nice back bar with
• 1:19:38
  eighteens, 20 ones, 20 fives and north of that.
• 1:19:41
  And of course, I'm sure you probably do have some absolutely
• 1:19:43
  fantastically aged whiskey. But at the same time, yeah, you
• 1:19:46
  have to remember that for the next 10/12/15 years, you guys
• 1:19:50
  were going are going to be promoting young age whiskey.
• 1:19:52
  Yeah. And trying to encourage people
• 1:19:54
  to say, look, it's not about our non age statement whiskey.
• 1:19:56
  It's not about the number on the on the label.
• 1:19:58
  It's about the quality of the liquid.
• 1:19:59
  Yeah, absolutely. And I think we just saw an
• 1:20:01
  opportunity, you know, Well, first of all, you build a tall
• 1:20:04
  building, you've got to put a bar at the top.
• 1:20:06
  But rather than making it all about our products, actually
• 1:20:08
  just trying to make an amazing whiskey bar.
• 1:20:10
  And there's so many places to go and have the greatest hits, you
• 1:20:13
  know that there's, you know. If you want those aged whiskeys,
• 1:20:16
  etcetera, there's no shortage of fantastic barskin and do them.
• 1:20:21
  So so we thought, let's try and get something quite distinctive
• 1:20:23
  in that range. And we're part of a new wave of
• 1:20:24
  whiskey. And so we wanted to celebrate
• 1:20:26
  that here. And actually they cannot even
• 1:20:29
  just Scottish centric look at some interesting whiskeys from
• 1:20:31
  around the world. You know, just people are doing
• 1:20:34
  really interesting things that particularly like trying to
• 1:20:36
  think about who's doing something interesting with
• 1:20:38
  barley, who's doing something interesting with fermentation.
• 1:20:40
  You know what, what's a really interesting example of this cast
• 1:20:43
  finish and and those pieces and it's amazing fun.
• 1:20:46
  I mean, this is really the bit, you know, it's a long time until
• 1:20:48
  we're going to have our single malt ready.
• 1:20:50
  So for the time bit time being, this is the sweetie shop for us
• 1:20:52
  and it's so much fun. What we should also say is that
• 1:20:56
  this is your first bar. Well, yes, yes, indeed.
• 1:21:00
  I, I, I probably jumped the gun a little bit and told you about
• 1:21:03
  our ambition for the for the second gun.
• 1:21:04
  We have to get, you know, dot the IS and cross the T's.
• 1:21:06
  But central Edinburgh location is coming.
• 1:21:08
  So that's why I think that, I mean, we've talked about it with
• 1:21:12
  other people at work in whiskey and we've, we talked about it
• 1:21:15
  earlier on about business models.
• 1:21:16
  When you're trying to get into the whiskey industry and when
• 1:21:19
  you look at trying to keep a, a distillery running, it has to be
• 1:21:22
  through other avenues of you can't just suddenly wait and
• 1:21:25
  say, right, we're going to, we're going to have a whiskey in
• 1:21:28
  three to five years time. And, and, and also, as you've
• 1:21:30
  alluded to earlier as well, it's not necessarily, it's not going
• 1:21:33
  to be as soon as you start having a three-year old whiskey,
• 1:21:36
  it's going to start putting bottles out.
• 1:21:38
  It could be a case of one. We've seen that with other
• 1:21:40
  distilleries. One of the things we talked Daft
• 1:21:42
  Mill, for example, not a much smaller scale in terms of
• 1:21:45
  distillery size and production and, and location and what have
• 1:21:48
  you. But one of the great things that
• 1:21:50
  they they did was just no, it's not an idiot.
• 1:21:52
  Yeah, you know, and we'll just hold.
• 1:21:53
  Fine. What was it?
• 1:21:55
  Yeah, this is. Almost like kind of the catch
• 1:21:57
  phrase of the new distilleries. Our, our whiskey will be
• 1:21:59
  released when it's ready. Yeah.
• 1:22:00
  Yeah, absolutely you. Know but but I mean that that is
• 1:22:04
  kind of the challenge because you know I mean, you know for
• 1:22:06
  your financial planning you need you need something in your
• 1:22:08
  spreadsheet that says, you know, this is when we will release a
• 1:22:10
  whiskey. But ultimately you do want to be
• 1:22:13
  product LED, you know, and, and I won't lie, there may come a
• 1:22:16
  time in six years time where, you know, we're really feeling
• 1:22:19
  the pressure may go, you know, we need to sell something that
• 1:22:21
  you know, that may be the rate, the commercial reality, but the
• 1:22:24
  the endeavour is always to be product LED and, and and make
• 1:22:27
  the very best product you can release it when it's ready you.
• 1:22:30
  Know that that. But what you are selling is
• 1:22:32
  casks. We yes indeed.
• 1:22:34
  Yeah, I know casks are for sale and yeah, so.
• 1:22:38
  So if you really wanted a taste of the spirit you're making in
• 1:22:42
  three years, the only way to do it is to actually just buy a
• 1:22:44
  cask, isn't it? I mean, that's a, that's a very
• 1:22:46
  effective method, but there's two things you can, you can buy
• 1:22:49
  a cask, which I would argue is of a very sound decision if you
• 1:22:52
  were to do that. But there's a, we also created
• 1:22:54
  something called the quality control division, which is quite
• 1:22:56
  unique. And, and it's, it's sort of our
• 1:22:58
  version of a founders club, if you like.
• 1:23:00
  That's basically the fact that Paddy and I, when we went around
• 1:23:02
  distilleries, you always look in the, in the, in the, you know,
• 1:23:04
  in the lab, in the blending room and all those samples from
• 1:23:07
  casket going, I want to taste those.
• 1:23:08
  And so we, we created a subscription whereby every year
• 1:23:12
  you get, you start off with our new make in the in the first
• 1:23:14
  year, then you get the one year old, the two year old, the
• 1:23:16
  three-year old, the four year old in, in 200 mil bottles.
• 1:23:19
  And each one is made with a different yeast strategy
• 1:23:21
  following that evolution of that yeast strain.
• 1:23:24
  And it was just that journey that we as whiskey fans would
• 1:23:26
  have loved to go on. And so that we've created it
• 1:23:28
  and. There's something really nice
• 1:23:30
  about that if you're in at the ground level, pardon the pun, on
• 1:23:32
  a, on a massive story building like this, but I mean, from from
• 1:23:36
  that point of view, then how can people do that?
• 1:23:38
  And how can people get what's that cost?
• 1:23:39
  What's the cost for being in the control quality control club?
• 1:23:42
  Also how getting cash for? Cash golfing for 2025.
• 1:23:46
  So 2025, we, we actually, we haven't quite launched it yet.
• 1:23:51
  We, we just polished off 2024. So 2025 will be, there'll be
• 1:23:57
  bourbon casks and cherry casks available and, and we, we just
• 1:24:01
  have to figure out how many we can make available and.
• 1:24:03
  What Desco and Husky still this podcast?
• 1:24:06
  That's really holding that the release at the moment.
• 1:24:08
  It's a tense negotiation, but but then the, the quality
• 1:24:12
  control division, you've got 2 levels of membership.
• 1:24:14
  You've got analyst and archivist.
• 1:24:18
  Analyst is 500, archivist is £900, but that's an 8 year
• 1:24:21
  subscription. And, and actually it's like
• 1:24:24
  genuinely, and I would say this, it's very good value because you
• 1:24:27
  get a discount, you get an 8 year discount off all our
• 1:24:29
  products and in the bar and in, you know, in the shop and the
• 1:24:31
  tourist. So and, and we actually bring
• 1:24:33
  everyone back to the distillery every year for tasting as well
• 1:24:37
  as the spirit mature. So it's a private tasting with
• 1:24:39
  our distiller. So it really is kind of an
• 1:24:41
  insiders club. I was genuinely one of my
• 1:24:43
  favorite things as getting all the QCD members together and
• 1:24:45
  doing that. It's some because they all
• 1:24:47
  really deeply care about what we're doing and they're
• 1:24:50
  passionate about it. It is like all the people who
• 1:24:52
  care as much as you do in one room.
• 1:24:54
  It's amazing. And it, it does help.
• 1:24:55
  I mean, I've done it myself with Lindor Abbey.
• 1:24:57
  And, you know, previously they've done a done a little bit
• 1:25:00
  of stuff with Glenn with this distillery as well.
• 1:25:01
  Yeah. And you suddenly see that buy in
• 1:25:03
  model and people suddenly from all over the world suddenly.
• 1:25:06
  And we've we've, we've talked about it on the podcast a lot
• 1:25:08
  about how people can have an affiliation, how people can hold
• 1:25:12
  a distillery close to them. Truck Care with Glenn Talkers.
• 1:25:16
  Yeah, you know Cam, I'm with Glenn Finish and Michelle.
• 1:25:19
  Milton Duff. Yeah, David Lines with Glenn
• 1:25:22
  Geary on, on the Facebook group and stuff like that.
• 1:25:24
  There are people who and so if you can get somebody who buys
• 1:25:28
  into the distillery at the very beginning, and we've said it
• 1:25:31
  before as well there we're living in a great world right
• 1:25:34
  now in the whiskey world where there was no, there's nobody
• 1:25:38
  alive that tried Spring Bank when I can't wait to try that at
• 1:25:42
  10. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:43
  You know, whereas now we are, we are getting to live through the
• 1:25:46
  next generation of whiskey distilleries that are being
• 1:25:48
  built. And it's great.
• 1:25:50
  And it's so much, so much excitement where you get to say,
• 1:25:52
  right, try new make spirit at a year old.
• 1:25:54
  Let's see what it's like one year that's really, really
• 1:25:56
  exciting to then 35 and what have you.
• 1:25:59
  And it's, it's really, really exciting.
• 1:26:00
  But we are getting that stage as we are quite fast approaching
• 1:26:03
  the end of the podcast where we have to do our What 3 Drams
• 1:26:06
  feature any 3 whiskies that have any type of story or meaning to
• 1:26:10
  you standing in your whiskey bar as well.
• 1:26:12
  I wonder if there's any on the on the back bar there.
• 1:26:15
  But Ian, tell us, what is your first drum of your What, 3
• 1:26:18
  drums? OK, right.
• 1:26:19
  I, I guess, I guess, you know, I kind of think of whiskeys in
• 1:26:23
  terms of like where I was and what happened and stuff, you
• 1:26:26
  know, more than the spirit itself.
• 1:26:27
  So, you know, I'm ashamed. Well, I hope it's okay that my
• 1:26:30
  first whiskey is actually an Irish one because it was
• 1:26:32
  actually absolutely, it's the first whiskey that was ever
• 1:26:34
  given to me. Me.
• 1:26:35
  My first job at a uni, I was working in arts PR in London for
• 1:26:39
  like West End shows and, and this, this producer, I'd, I'd
• 1:26:42
  like to work for her. And she and she, she was Irish
• 1:26:44
  and said, you know, good job, Ian, thank you so much.
• 1:26:46
  And plump. This bottle of Black Bush on my,
• 1:26:48
  on my, on my table. I was like, oh, what's that?
• 1:26:50
  That is literally the first time anyone had given me a bottle of
• 1:26:52
  whiskey and really probably the first time I ever contemplated
• 1:26:55
  drinking whiskey. And so it always stays with me.
• 1:26:57
  And I was just so taken with the bottle and yeah, I think
• 1:27:00
  something, something ignited at that point, so.
• 1:27:02
  Very adult the first time somebody puts a bottle of
• 1:27:04
  whiskey in front of. You.
• 1:27:05
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you feel.
• 1:27:08
  Grown up, yeah. So it was something about.
• 1:27:09
  It, that's our second Irish whiskey.
• 1:27:11
  Irish whiskey on the the what, 3 drums?
• 1:27:14
  Oh, excellent. Where's the second?
• 1:27:16
  To Powers. No, sorry.
• 1:27:17
  Third Irish whiskey then. Oh, really?
• 1:27:19
  Powers? Powers from From.
• 1:27:23
  Yeah, yeah. Jameson from Team Slange.
• 1:27:27
  They did that because the the. John Jameson.
• 1:27:29
  John Jameson from Gallo. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:27:31
  And Clackmannish Whiskey Festival.
• 1:27:33
  And now Blackfish with yourself. There you go.
• 1:27:36
  I'm actually doing that without having a little book in front of
• 1:27:38
  me. By good.
• 1:27:38
  Work there we. Go, that's a good story.
• 1:27:42
  So there you go. So that's your, that's your
• 1:27:43
  first one on it. So, so.
• 1:27:44
  Second one so, so that's when I was like 2021.
• 1:27:46
  So shoot forward to maybe I'm 28 by this stage.
• 1:27:48
  So I'm working in Majestic wine on the shop floor.
• 1:27:50
  I've got into the wine industry and I'm, I'm learning about
• 1:27:53
  winding on my exams and learning about the complexity of wine.
• 1:27:55
  But also Paddy and I are going to take these things at
• 1:27:57
  Milroy's. And I remember there's 1W and I
• 1:28:00
  think it was the Scottish Liquor Company or something like that.
• 1:28:03
  Like I don't know if they still exist, but they were bottlers,
• 1:28:05
  you know, and I think, I'm not sure of the distillery.
• 1:28:09
  I think it was an Aberfeldy. But the key point about it is it
• 1:28:11
  had been finished in a talk and be an Auschlaser cask, you know,
• 1:28:15
  which is like German, German. And I always just love talking
• 1:28:19
  be an auschlaser. And I remember just God, God,
• 1:28:24
  this stuff like the complexity, like I was getting like so many
• 1:28:28
  different flavours from 1 spirit.
• 1:28:30
  I was going this is alchemy, this is magic.
• 1:28:32
  That was really my moment when I when I really saw what whiskey
• 1:28:36
  was capable of doing because you know, I was, I was, I was
• 1:28:38
  fortunate in my wine job. I was getting to taste so many
• 1:28:40
  great wines. And you know, I love wine very
• 1:28:41
  much and it is capable of great complexity, but not to the
• 1:28:44
  extent the scotches. So that's a that's a German wine
• 1:28:47
  cast finished. Yes, exactly.
• 1:28:48
  Yeah, yeah. So who?
• 1:28:49
  What was the? Schliers, Slayers, Slayers,
• 1:28:53
  Slayers distillery, Bavarian distillery that we, we kind of
• 1:28:57
  ran into that kind of promotional staff in the summer
• 1:29:00
  in Munich and we, we did get to sample some of there was.
• 1:29:04
  I mean German when you you you've mentioned you weren't.
• 1:29:06
  I don't. Think that was finished in wine
• 1:29:07
  cast? No, no.
• 1:29:08
  But I mean it must be. It's another interesting area.
• 1:29:11
  We've had blueberry lectins, Lithuanian blueberry wine.
• 1:29:16
  We've had some good whiskey and some bad whiskey in the.
• 1:29:18
  Yeah, I. Think it's what you're trying.
• 1:29:21
  Was that? Was that a blue?
• 1:29:23
  Blueberry. Wine, yeah.
• 1:29:25
  Lithuanian grain whiskey perhaps?
• 1:29:26
  Finishing a no. Finishing a blueberry wine cast.
• 1:29:29
  Gosh. Unleash.
• 1:29:30
  We didn't have the moment that you had with.
• 1:29:32
  That yeah, that's definitely not legal in the UK, but it was.
• 1:29:35
  A thought provoking product. So that was that was, that was
• 1:29:37
  your first moment where you realised.
• 1:29:39
  Yeah, that was that was a real moment where a bulb went off in
• 1:29:41
  my head. And one more time, sorry.
• 1:29:43
  Basic wines then. So that's again very early.
• 1:29:45
  Yeah. And so it must have been maybe
• 1:29:49
  your first experience with using different casts in Scotch as
• 1:29:51
  well. I I guess so, yeah, I think, I
• 1:29:53
  think until that stage, you know, overworked and underpaid
• 1:29:56
  in London, Paddy and I were buying whatever was an offer in.
• 1:29:58
  Sainsbury's, you know. And, and and suddenly we're
• 1:30:00
  going to Miroys and tasting interesting.
• 1:30:03
  Fantastic, a whole step up. And one more thing.
• 1:30:05
  So what was that cast finished there?
• 1:30:08
  Talk and beat an auschlaser. Oh.
• 1:30:09
  There we go. But that accent is I'm.
• 1:30:11
  Looking forward to watching you try and write that down.
• 1:30:14
  It's so satisfying to say. And then, yeah, my final one is
• 1:30:19
  an easy one. It's it's brick Laddie, the the,
• 1:30:21
  the laddie. And and it is just a company and
• 1:30:24
  a whiskey that's meant so much to me.
• 1:30:26
  When Penny and I first put together our business plan, we
• 1:30:30
  we actually reached out to Mark Rainier, you know, one of the
• 1:30:32
  one of the guys who who who re established Brocclady and had a
• 1:30:35
  meeting with him and he said, yeah, fine, I'll meet you.
• 1:30:38
  And we had lunch and he just tore our plan to shreds over the
• 1:30:40
  over the course of an hour. Go hell, you're mad.
• 1:30:42
  This is stupid. This won't work.
• 1:30:44
  And, and this company, Mucklebrig, it sounds like
• 1:30:46
  something from Harry Potter and you look like Harry Potter and
• 1:30:48
  all this stuff. And it was.
• 1:30:50
  It was just. Insane.
• 1:30:51
  But But at the end of the meeting, he said, you know what,
• 1:30:52
  you might be on to something. And then a couple of years
• 1:30:55
  later, I met his business partner, Simon Coughlin at a
• 1:30:57
  conference and Simon actually became a massive mentor to us.
• 1:31:00
  And actually you, you know, we'd meet all the time, He'd give us
• 1:31:04
  advice, became an investor in our business.
• 1:31:06
  And, you know, Bricolati was, I think that, you know, on the
• 1:31:09
  cusp of that new wave, you know, they really set the tone.
• 1:31:12
  And so I also do genuinely love the spirit they create.
• 1:31:16
  And but it's, it's a company and, and people who mean an
• 1:31:19
  awful lot to me. So that's an easy one.
• 1:31:20
  Fantastic. Well, you know, tremendous.
• 1:31:22
  Thank you very much. It's been an absolute pleasure
• 1:31:24
  getting to come around here and see the distillery.
• 1:31:26
  It's my first distillery tour since having the legal age of
• 1:31:29
  drinking. That's crazy to me.
• 1:31:31
  It really is, but it's mental. But thank you so much.
• 1:31:33
  First ever Mr. first ever distillery podcast in production
• 1:31:36
  in production. But you know, thank you so much
• 1:31:39
  for coming along. Pleasure for people that are
• 1:31:40
  wanting to keep up to date with what's going on at the Port
• 1:31:42
  Leith Distillery. How can people find out what
• 1:31:45
  what's going on? How can people find out what's
• 1:31:46
  going on in social media and online and things?
• 1:31:48
  Like that, yeah, I mean, you know, at Leaf Distillery on, on
• 1:31:50
  Instagram and then, you know, through through our website.
• 1:31:54
  You know, we we're, we're actually getting quite good at
• 1:31:56
  sending emails out these days and telling people and
• 1:31:59
  genuinely, there's lots of very cool events happening in the
• 1:32:01
  distillery this year. So so do do come.
• 1:32:03
  We did an amazing Burns night, activated the whole building.
• 1:32:06
  It was so cool. And there's going to be more of
• 1:32:07
  that to come. Brian Well, thank you so much
• 1:32:09
  for having us. Don't forget, guys, if you've
• 1:32:10
  enjoyed listening to this, you can watch it.
• 1:32:12
  You'll get to see that is the immersive experience on our
• 1:32:14
  YouTube channel. You'll be able to see us
• 1:32:16
  actually looking at stills and smelling and wash packs,
• 1:32:20
  everything like that's been fantastic.
• 1:32:22
  The Whiskey Stories Facebook group is absolutely popping off.
• 1:32:25
  We've had loads of people from your comments, Ross, we have you
• 1:32:28
  you put up who would you like to see and hear from on the on the
• 1:32:31
  podcast? We've got Sandy McIntyre.
• 1:32:33
  We've got in touch on the back of it.
• 1:32:34
  Brilliant, right? We've had Sandy McIntyre from
• 1:32:36
  Tandu getting in touch on the back of that.
• 1:32:37
  So it's great. Loads of those people.
• 1:32:39
  You'll find this on Instagram, Whiskey stories pod, keep
• 1:32:41
  passing the pod, keep liking sharing.
• 1:32:43
  Thank you very much for listening.
• 1:32:44
  Thank you very much for having us, Slangela.
• 1:32:46
  Cheers, cheers.