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India's Whisky Revolution: Inside the Single Malt Amateur Club · Whisky Stories Podcast

• 0:00
  Normally I ask Angus to clap us in, but he's not here.
• 0:04
  So I'll say, Angus, you know what to do, Clap us in.
• 0:10
  Welcome to the Whiskey Stories podcast.
• 0:13
  It's the first bottle in Karnataka to come out and
• 0:17
  probably in India to come out at 50% ABV and I had three sessions
• 0:23
  with the commissioner who approves the labels.
• 0:27
  Its unsafe to drink at that kind of ABB.
• 0:30
  Do you know the gentleman? If you seem very young, you
• 0:32
  don't need know your way around your whiskies.
• 0:35
  I'm telling you with a person of experience that you shouldn't be
• 0:38
  drinking, you know, alcohol at that strength.
• 0:41
  Welcome over the Whiskey Stories podcast, myself, Graeme Cogar.
• 0:44
  And we are not in your usual position.
• 0:47
  In fact, it's just me. It's the Indian adventure, The
• 0:50
  Indian whiskey adventure with Graeme Cogar.
• 0:52
  I've found myself on someone's rooftop terrace in their house
• 0:56
  with a couple of lads from India, from Bangalore.
• 0:59
  And we've got some drams in front of us.
• 1:01
  Plenty of drams in front of us. Got hey man.
• 1:04
  Very well. Thank you, Graham.
• 1:05
  Welcome to India. Thank you very much.
• 1:06
  We got Harsha here. Harsha, how are you?
• 1:08
  Doing very well, thanks. Thanks for having me here.
• 1:10
  No problem. Well, listen, thanks for having.
• 1:12
  It's not my house. On your podcast.
• 1:15
  Thank you so much for coming along.
• 1:17
  You guys are the founding members of the Single Malt
• 1:20
  Amateur Club. Now before we get started, is it
• 1:23
  amateur or amateurs club? Amateurs.
• 1:29
  Amateurs with an apostrophe. Yeah, I.
• 1:32
  Mean it's been great for people who've been following what I've
• 1:35
  been up to whilst I've been over here in India.
• 1:37
  Last Saturday, as it was we're recording this, you kindly
• 1:40
  invited me out to Mumbai for a for a whiskey tasting the Sherry
• 1:43
  Symphony. Let me say, you boys know how to
• 1:46
  put on a taste. 3 sherries and 10 drams in the lineup One
• 1:50
  times, isn't it? It was good.
• 1:53
  It was good fun. We thought we were throwing a
• 1:54
  couple of cocktails. Yeah, I mean.
• 1:56
  God, I mean, I mean the three sherries to get started and I
• 1:59
  kept waiting for the main course to come out.
• 2:01
  I was like where is this main course coming?
• 2:04
  I need to get some food of it. But.
• 2:05
  I know it would have been quite an extended stint with
• 2:09
  whiskey's. There, yeah, I mean, I think
• 2:10
  I've been to I've been to 1 tasting in Scotland where 7
• 2:14
  drams were on the menu. We've had, I think we did, we
• 2:17
  did an indie bottler Spotlight where we had 6 drams and a bonus
• 2:20
  DRAM on the menu. But. 10/10.
• 2:22
  Rounds but to start the evening three sharing.
• 2:25
  That was great. It was fantastic.
• 2:26
  But but but we are drumming. We've got loads and loads of
• 2:29
  whiskeys in front of us. I've brought three of my own
• 2:32
  along here. We've got the Glen Alaki 12
• 2:35
  limited edition UK finished in a softened cask there from Glen
• 2:39
  Alaki. They're lovely, easygoing, nice
• 2:41
  zipper. We've got my own bottle of the
• 2:45
  Lindor's Abbey, which is bottle there good, as I say, good Fife
• 2:49
  whiskey, good Fife grain in there.
• 2:50
  And yes, we've got that. That's Reocha first felt
• 2:54
  Furkins. So there's only six third
• 2:56
  bottles. And of course we've brought
• 2:58
  travelling around with me in my bag everywhere I go.
• 3:01
  I have the whiskey stories. 25 year old Blaine bottled in
• 3:04
  association with the rare find. So that's the Scottish lineup.
• 3:08
  You guys have provided some drams Asha as well.
• 3:12
  We've got we've got some fantastic whiskeys here.
• 3:15
  There's a lager violin. What's this then?
• 3:18
  Lagaville and 14. Yeah, that's the Ila festival in
• 3:22
  2022, the Brandy cast. And when we were there last on
• 3:29
  our trail in Scotland, we took a few members from India to
• 3:32
  Scotland. And when we were doing a
• 3:34
  warehouse tasting with Ian and he thought that I would like
• 3:38
  this and I said, he said, I take this back home, mate, you're
• 3:41
  going to like this. I did.
• 3:42
  Very much so. Very interesting.
• 3:44
  Thank you. That and of course we have the
• 3:46
  Indian line up here. A favorite of mine from the
• 3:49
  tasting was the Longitude 77. From the House of Puerto Rico.
• 3:52
  Yeah, really, really nice. And I didn't realise that I
• 3:55
  can't actually get hold of this in Bangalore at the moment
• 3:57
  because I don't think it's available to to be purchased in,
• 4:00
  in the state of Karnataka they're.
• 4:01
  Not registered everywhere. It's not so very kindly.
• 4:05
  A colleague, a member, Harsh, Deep.
• 4:08
  I think he arrived today from Mumbai and he's brought a bottle
• 4:10
  of that with me, which I'll be sneaking into my bag before I
• 4:13
  leave. We've.
• 4:15
  Got an amroot here. What's This is an Amroot single
• 4:18
  malt whiskey, but it's rye. It's rye mold, so very nice.
• 4:21
  Not from Bali. That's going to be an
• 4:22
  interesting drop when we get to it in the evening.
• 4:24
  Superb. And of course, something that I
• 4:26
  got a chance to try last week, the Amroot Amaze, which I think
• 4:31
  we're going to chat about that a little bit later on as well.
• 4:33
  But really looking forward to that.
• 4:34
  But thank you so much for having me, guys.
• 4:35
  Thank you for your hospitality last week.
• 4:38
  It was really, really great to sit down with members and I was
• 4:41
  really excited to to see what an Indian, Indian whiskey.
• 4:45
  I. Like.
• 4:47
  And it was great, 40 people in the room.
• 4:48
  Yeah. And a, a, a real mixed bag of
• 4:52
  knowledge, experience, understanding, which was really,
• 4:55
  really refreshing because I think when we talk about our
• 4:58
  whiskey tastings, we talk about whiskey.
• 5:00
  I think we tried to break down as many of the barriers as
• 5:02
  possible because a lot of people could be put off by the
• 5:05
  pretentiousness and things. And I think some things people
• 5:07
  look at whiskey tastings and say, Oh, I don't know an awful
• 5:10
  lot about it. So maybe not go, but I really
• 5:11
  like the fact that the mix in the room and there were some
• 5:14
  people who were asking when we're talking about Sherry, it
• 5:17
  was like, so, so the colour of the whiskey doesn't actually
• 5:19
  determine the quality of the whiskey.
• 5:22
  But then we had other people that were able to guess exactly
• 5:25
  what were on the blind days of what it was myself not included.
• 5:28
  We'll be talking about that. But you, you, you mentioned,
• 5:32
  hey, man, in that at the beginning of that tasting about
• 5:36
  the amateur, right, part of the single malt amateur club or
• 5:40
  amateurs club, right. And about how you said, do we
• 5:42
  remove it or do we keep it in? And that, that you want to
• 5:46
  remain as the amateurs because it encourages people to come
• 5:49
  along. So you, you, what's the story
• 5:51
  behind the single malt amateur club or amateurs club?
• 5:53
  Then how did it all start? What, what was it?
• 5:55
  What was the journey like for you guys?
• 5:57
  So in India you got this saying right.
• 6:00
  When the boys get together to drink, there are two plants that
• 6:02
  usually get made. One is you travel to someplace,
• 6:06
  let's go someplace and let's have fun.
• 6:07
  That's one, you know, discussions that starts and the
• 6:11
  other side of the discussion with let's do something in life,
• 6:15
  right? So those are the usual streams
• 6:17
  that you know. Happen the next big startup
• 6:19
  idea? Yeah.
• 6:20
  That's interesting. So you're sitting down having
• 6:22
  some drinks, you're going let's go somewhere or let's start
• 6:25
  somewhere. Let's start something.
• 6:26
  These are the usual trends that I have seen and one of those,
• 6:29
  you know, evenings when sitting with my friends and I was
• 6:32
  starting to get into whiskey as a subject, reading about it a
• 6:36
  bit and getting myself around it is not usually my first
• 6:42
  preference in Alcobar as such. So when I was gravitating
• 6:46
  towards whiskey, I figured out saying that I got to read a
• 6:48
  little bit more and things like that.
• 6:49
  So it was always in my mind when I was sitting for sessions like
• 6:52
  this and that's when I thought let's do something around
• 6:55
  whiskey. And that's the whole thought
• 6:58
  processing that because there was no community at that point
• 7:00
  of time, a platform. When was it sorry?
• 7:03
  What? What?
• 7:03
  2011, 2011, yeah, 2011 some time ago.
• 7:06
  And at that time single mod wasn't the thing in India.
• 7:09
  Amrit had just started off, you know, 2010 is when they got
• 7:13
  recognized by Jim Murray and his whiskey Bible.
• 7:16
  So it is just about, you know, the very early shoots, so to say
• 7:20
  about single mod interest. So that let's start the
• 7:22
  community and let's see how that goes.
• 7:24
  And of all the places that I decided to start the community
• 7:27
  on, because I wasn't on Facebook or anything at that point of
• 7:30
  time, was LinkedIn. I said that all right, LinkedIn
• 7:32
  should be the one because I am on it.
• 7:34
  And that's the best reason it can be started, you know,
• 7:38
  gathering momentum and things like that.
• 7:40
  So 2011 is when it started. Started off just to get a
• 7:43
  community where India can come together, they can share
• 7:47
  something about whiskey, not in the typical Scottish colloquial
• 7:52
  sense, but more with an Indian flavour to that.
• 7:54
  That was the intent behind it. And Harsha has been, I know
• 8:00
  Harsha since 1998. So we go back way long.
• 8:04
  We studied together in college. He studied and I didn't back
• 8:08
  then. But then we know each other a
• 8:12
  while and he he knew that I was gravitating towards risky as a
• 8:16
  subject, but he was a beer guy hardcore.
• 8:19
  He still is, I think, to be honest.
• 8:21
  And when we kept talking about this multiple times, I guess one
• 8:26
  of those again, one of those bar meetings close to my father in
• 8:30
  law's place actually like how we are close to yours now.
• 8:33
  We, we, we did sit down at a bar and I was talking to him about
• 8:37
  the idea and I was telling him, just imagine the whiskey bar
• 8:41
  with only whiskeys lined up, like how you have the different
• 8:44
  kinds of beers here. Just imagine what kind of a site
• 8:47
  it would be for people who are really starved of good quality
• 8:49
  whiskeys in India. And he sort of, you know, I
• 8:52
  think that there's an idea here, we can make this work a little
• 8:55
  more, probably more organised than what you are doing very
• 8:59
  casually as a passion. So he joined me in 2016.
• 9:03
  We said that let's start a little more formal enterprise in
• 9:07
  terms of getting memberships out for members who are, you know,
• 9:10
  interested with us. And then we, of all the projects
• 9:15
  that we decided to go with, we said that, all right, let's do
• 9:18
  something really, really big. And that big was what you see
• 9:21
  there as Amrita Maze. We said that, OK, everyone does
• 9:25
  whiskey tasting. Everyone does, you know all the
• 9:28
  stories about what a typical whiskey club does.
• 9:31
  But there's one thing that you can't really do very easily in
• 9:33
  India is have your own club bottling.
• 9:36
  Yeah, really, really difficult to do.
• 9:39
  I had to wait around 2 years just to get the label approved
• 9:43
  from the excise department. So that's some sort of the
• 9:46
  starting of the story. So that the plan, I mean,
• 9:49
  because I mean, where we are, Bangalore, it's a it's famous
• 9:53
  for brewing, you know, the Kingfisher brand and travels the
• 9:58
  world. It's Union Brewery.
• 10:00
  You've got UV city for people who want to check out.
• 10:02
  It's a fantastic place and it's a place I actually like to take
• 10:05
  when, when when I got married here, I brought a lot of folk
• 10:07
  over and I took them to UV city early, early on because I think
• 10:10
  for a lot of people back home, what's the perception of India?
• 10:13
  Some people don't know what are we going to be getting an
• 10:16
  elephant from the other town? And I'm saying no, Bangalore is
• 10:19
  a hustle, a bustle city. It's it's great.
• 10:21
  And then Union UV City is a great place, but yeah, there's
• 10:25
  so many micro breweries everywhere they go 100 feet Rd.
• 10:28
  just around the corner from us, Loads and loads of, you know,
• 10:31
  brewery breweries. So distilling obviously is
• 10:34
  something that's fairly newish in there and in there then I'd
• 10:38
  imagine or distillations always probably happen.
• 10:40
  But in terms of distilling whiskey, maybe not so much.
• 10:43
  You mentioning like I'm route only 2000 and 12/11/12.
• 10:46
  That was sort of. Starting to take form we we do
• 10:48
  have a history Graham, to be honest and surprising as it may
• 10:52
  seem, the earliest records that we have found within India about
• 10:57
  distilling and distilling in popstills is 1855.
• 11:02
  So it goes way back from what we know in terms of the modern era
• 11:08
  of distillation and Alkabeth in India.
• 11:10
  But we have been doing distillation for quite a while.
• 11:13
  Different kind of spirits but popstills. 1855 is the record.
• 11:17
  But the I guess the more pertinent point would be the
• 11:21
  modern era of Indian whisky which started with Amrit, and
• 11:26
  Amrit started in 2006, 2005 around that time.
• 11:29
  And they're based in Bangalore. They are based in Bangalore.
• 11:31
  So there are local. There are local district,
• 11:33
  complete local district and the different part is they use
• 11:36
  different kind of Bali and all of that.
• 11:38
  Tarawar plays an influence significantly in terms of this
• 11:41
  length. But yes, from an Alcobar
• 11:44
  perspective, I guess beer in Bangalore is very popular.
• 11:48
  Distillation is always inherent because India as such is a brown
• 11:53
  spirits market. Spirits market as such, around
• 11:58
  60% of all your Alcobar belongs to the spirits world.
• 12:02
  And within that, again, the brown spirits really dominate.
• 12:06
  So you got your Brandy's, you got your rums, you got your
• 12:08
  whiskies that are usually there. We'll get into the debate about
• 12:12
  what's the typical definition of Indian whiskey and things like
• 12:16
  that, which is there's a lot of controversy around.
• 12:18
  But for a moment, I just want you to probably the audience
• 12:22
  also to probably take in that information snippet saying that
• 12:26
  yes, it is a spirits market largely has been for a very long
• 12:29
  time. And brewing in terms of beers,
• 12:33
  etcetera, especially craft beers, is a very, very recent
• 12:36
  advent when you look at it from a time scale perspective.
• 12:39
  So Harsha, what was it for you then that drew you into this
• 12:42
  project? Because I'm hearing, you know,
• 12:44
  when guys get together, they talk about the the next trip
• 12:47
  going someplace or the next startup.
• 12:49
  Now you've kind of combined two things together because you
• 12:51
  could actually take off trips to Scotland and single malt.
• 12:56
  Yeah. So what?
• 12:57
  What was it that drew you into this project?
• 12:58
  Oh, it was. It was just one thing that Heman
• 13:00
  told me during that conversation that we had over drinks, he
• 13:04
  said. There's this cast which is lying
• 13:06
  there with Amrit. I can ask them to bottle it and
• 13:09
  put your name on it or put any name on it, right.
• 13:12
  I said, really, can you do that? Because, because for, for us,
• 13:17
  whiskey is manufactured by the big houses and and its, its not
• 13:22
  accessible, right? Its, its a concept which is far
• 13:25
  away. You just buy the bottle and
• 13:26
  drink it and now you're making something of your own.
• 13:28
  And I say, wow, yeah, we've got to do this.
• 13:30
  So. So that got me hooked into the
• 13:31
  whole thing. So, so, so the plan then was
• 13:35
  like the starting point was #1 builder community, but #2 I
• 13:39
  think the, the bigger picture was let's get our own bottling
• 13:42
  out. So what I mean, we've done our
• 13:44
  own bottling. We've got one right here.
• 13:46
  And that was fairly easy in this situation is we had Gregor Kirk,
• 13:51
  good friend of the pod who's been on the podcast a good few
• 13:53
  times. He's the guy that works with
• 13:56
  Glenn Moore Spirits. It was a no brainer, an
• 13:58
  independent bottler that we worked with.
• 14:00
  And it was it happened within a matter of weeks.
• 14:02
  You're talking about two years wait to try and get labels and
• 14:06
  delivering that. But also the interesting factor
• 14:08
  here is it's also 50% ABV, which is interesting too.
• 14:12
  So talk me through then. Hey man, what, what is the
• 14:15
  process or what was the process like for you to get liquid into
• 14:18
  that bottle for you guys specifically?
• 14:21
  Right, since it's going to be a long one, all right, when we
• 14:25
  started and when Harsha said that let's do this and let's do
• 14:28
  this project, it seems to be an interesting one to do.
• 14:31
  And as I said, one of the things that we really wanted to do is
• 14:35
  distinguish ourselves from the typical clubs that were around
• 14:39
  in probably smatterings of 5-6 people coming together and
• 14:42
  forming a club and so on. We said that let's do a
• 14:45
  community, let's do a bigger community, let's do something
• 14:48
  that's more sustainable and things like that.
• 14:50
  And when the idea of, you know, indie bottle came into mind, of
• 14:54
  course, the natural choice was Amrut because at that time they
• 14:58
  were probably the most well known whiskey from India across
• 15:02
  the globe. So Ashok is a good friend.
• 15:04
  Ashok, the master is love Amrut right now.
• 15:07
  He was a good friend and so was Surinder, who right now is with
• 15:11
  Piccadilly. Indri was he's the master
• 15:13
  blender there. But at that point of time he was
• 15:15
  with Amrut. So went up to them and said that
• 15:20
  look guys, this is what we intend to do and we, we think
• 15:25
  that it's going to be a great offering for our members in
• 15:28
  terms of getting our own bottle and things like that.
• 15:31
  And they were both looking at me with utter disbelief.
• 15:33
  And what's gone into you, man? I mean, are you crazy about
• 15:37
  doing something like this in India?
• 15:39
  Can you think about, first of all, the regulation about
• 15:42
  labels? You got to explain to the excise
• 15:46
  department who basically is the authority in at a state level to
• 15:51
  approve of your labels, what the label says and so on and so
• 15:53
  forth. And if you go to put in on the
• 15:56
  label saying that this is exclusively bottled for a club,
• 15:59
  there's a lot of explanation that you've got to do and things
• 16:01
  like that. I said that that's not only it,
• 16:05
  I'm I'm planning to bottle it a very high strength ABV.
• 16:08
  And they were like you, you nuts.
• 16:11
  I mean, this is never going to take off.
• 16:12
  And that's the encouragement that they sort of gave me.
• 16:15
  They said that I'm going to give you the liquid show you tell me
• 16:17
  the liquid. You've been fan of Amrit for a
• 16:20
  very long time. So happy to draw out a caste and
• 16:23
  give it to you or even a combination of caste that you
• 16:26
  would want. But well, that is another story
• 16:29
  in terms of label registration. So that was the initiation in
• 16:33
  terms of the project, but then persisted with it.
• 16:36
  I said, I thought that if we got to do something, we got to do
• 16:38
  something really serious, start off with something which cements
• 16:41
  your position in terms of what you intend to do in the market.
• 16:45
  And that is where Amrut Amaze was born.
• 16:47
  And we said that the plan would be to release it in three
• 16:51
  batches. So we we sort of hooked into the
• 16:53
  idea saying that were not going to do this at one off kind of a
• 16:56
  thing. Were going to do this repeatedly
• 16:58
  so that people can come back to us.
• 17:00
  We establish that kind of a lineage.
• 17:03
  Picked a couple of cask and the interesting part was I explained
• 17:08
  to Surrender and Ashok what I had as a concept in the mind
• 17:12
  with the name of the label and Harsha again was like why can't
• 17:17
  we make it easy and just say you know.
• 17:20
  Amrit Whiskey. Bottle for single malt amateur
• 17:23
  club, you're done. And I'm like, no, we got to have
• 17:25
  a story. Because my thought was that why
• 17:29
  would anyone buy from us? I mean, Amrit selling in the
• 17:32
  market and they're not going to probably look differently when
• 17:37
  we just put the same Amrit label on us.
• 17:39
  So we got to distinguish ourself and we'll go through the pain of
• 17:43
  label registration. I picked up a name saying amaze.
• 17:46
  Amaze is a kangaroo word. It stands for a maze as well.
• 17:51
  So the label probably can get a closer shot at the label later
• 17:57
  time. When you look at the label, it's
• 17:59
  actually a maze. So it's got three parts to it,
• 18:03
  which actually represents the three versions that we were
• 18:06
  going to release. And it's actually a labyrinth
• 18:11
  when in a palace close by to Karnataka in Bangalore.
• 18:18
  And it's actually an escape route.
• 18:21
  Of the kings, because I maybe post a video, if you could send
• 18:24
  me the video that you guys did. Harsha does a great job with the
• 18:27
  voices. Anyone who's listening to this
• 18:28
  podcast episode here in Harsha's deep tones and going, oh, I need
• 18:32
  more of that voice. Then there's a great video that
• 18:36
  you voiced over there. But it shows you the palace and
• 18:39
  it shows you the sort of the because I'm running and saying
• 18:42
  the palace is some something to do with the is it not connected
• 18:46
  to the Taj Mahal? It's almost like a model of the
• 18:49
  Taj Mahal. It's very, very similar.
• 18:51
  Taj Mahal is in white marble. This is not in white marble.
• 18:54
  That's the distinguishing factor.
• 18:56
  But otherwise, the design aesthetics, the scale is not
• 18:59
  there. It's slightly smaller, but yes,
• 19:01
  it's pretty much exactly like the Taj Mahal.
• 19:03
  So, and this was it was this, this this labyrinth type thing
• 19:06
  you've got on the label, which I'll show people as I say it was
• 19:10
  that not something to do with an escape route as well from the, I
• 19:13
  mean, imagine this was the 10th DRAM of the tasting, right?
• 19:17
  So we've got we've got 3 cherries and 9 drams before we
• 19:20
  begin this and I'm still able. To find your way out.
• 19:23
  I'm still able. To remember the video that we
• 19:25
  put. Up after 10 drams.
• 19:26
  Yeah, I don't think it dropped there, but yeah.
• 19:28
  So that is so that so the connection, the story that you.
• 19:30
  Told that that was the story behind it.
• 19:31
  Saying that let's build the story.
• 19:33
  With each release, we give a hint as to where this place is
• 19:36
  for people to guess as well. So we made it a little bit of
• 19:39
  fun. Apart from the whiskey, Ashok
• 19:42
  and Surrender did a fabulous job in terms of putting the port
• 19:45
  pipes as well as the ex bourbon cast.
• 19:48
  Yeah. So what's in this then?
• 19:49
  So talk me through there. So we've got 3 components there.
• 19:53
  We've got an ex bourbon unpetered whiskey.
• 19:57
  Indian Bali. 6 row Indian Bali. Matured for around six years the
• 20:03
  first version and then it kept maturing on for the next
• 20:06
  version. So we basically kept the casts
• 20:08
  aside and said that next year we're going to probably take
• 20:11
  some more of them out and then the next.
• 20:14
  Some more of them and this is unaged as well, non aged.
• 20:16
  Aged but. What kind of rough ages we're
• 20:18
  talking in there? The first release was around 6
• 20:20
  1/2 seven years old and then we went to 88 and a half and the
• 20:25
  last one we had components. A large portion of it was 9 year
• 20:28
  old. Yeah.
• 20:29
  So that's how. Six row barley?
• 20:31
  Is it from Rajasthan? It is.
• 20:33
  Yeah, see, I'm doing my homework here.
• 20:35
  I'm a big barley nut. I maintain that the best barley
• 20:39
  in the world is Fife, Fife barley.
• 20:42
  That's where I'm from high 6 to everybody who's I would say I
• 20:47
  did a bit of homework yesterday as a researcher and Rajasthan
• 20:50
  seems to be the place that six row barley seems to be a very
• 20:52
  well known and established area for for bringing malted barley
• 20:56
  and things like. That it is.
• 20:58
  I mean like Scotland, most of the Bali for distillation houses
• 21:03
  come from one or two places in India.
• 21:06
  That's how they usually source. And Rajasthan is a key, probably
• 21:09
  producer of Bali where you get your Bali from.
• 21:13
  But I've read a little bit about Bali myself, as you can imagine,
• 21:16
  and I've heard about how difficult it is, or rather 5
• 21:21
  Bali is a little bit of a hard crust.
• 21:23
  So you got to get a little bit more in that mill to get that,
• 21:26
  you know, crushed and things like that.
• 21:29
  Indian Bali, the same way has got comes with its own
• 21:32
  complications. It's got 6 rows, of course, but
• 21:36
  it's slightly more difficult to distal compared to the two row
• 21:40
  Bali that is traditionally there.
• 21:41
  Yeah. And these distilleries in, in
• 21:43
  India, then are they, are they, and they're making as much of
• 21:47
  the Scotch distillation process as possible, or do they have
• 21:50
  their own distillation methods that they're using?
• 21:54
  You know, because I've heard, I think it might be Longitude 77.
• 21:59
  They've got Scottish style pot stills.
• 22:03
  Is that the same for most distilleries?
• 22:05
  Or is it a particular distillation method that's
• 22:07
  different for Indian whiskey? So again, Graham, I guess
• 22:11
  because of the kind of timeline that we have had with regard to
• 22:14
  exposure to distal spirits has been different.
• 22:17
  The very initial part when I talked about the 1855, it's a
• 22:21
  complete replica of what Scotland has.
• 22:23
  It was started by Edward Dyer, who was from England.
• 22:26
  So he had a lot of influence in how the distal was set up.
• 22:30
  Very, very similar part and spirit stills design as well.
• 22:35
  Very, very similar. But post that when we're talking
• 22:38
  about the 1920s, nineteen 30s onwards, the more focus was
• 22:42
  towards the volume of production because India is a large
• 22:45
  country, right? The market is really, really
• 22:47
  big. So we didn't really go through
• 22:49
  the maturation processes in terms of extensive maturation.
• 22:55
  We did not have the line arms and things.
• 22:57
  It was basically distillating to get your spirit out as fast as
• 23:01
  possible, add a little bit of color and send them out as it is
• 23:05
  that that's the way that it used to go.
• 23:07
  But the modern era, as I call it, in terms of whiskey,
• 23:10
  specifically the Amrit, when we talk about Paul John, we talk
• 23:14
  about Piccadilly and Rampur and all of those, those are largely
• 23:18
  designed after Scotland as to how, you know, whiskey is
• 23:21
  produced and things like that. So very, very connected.
• 23:25
  And of course, now like we've had a good friend of the show,
• 23:28
  I'm sure, sure we'll be listening to this episode.
• 23:32
  Jake Adkook, and he's part of the Ian McLeod Distillers who
• 23:36
  are building or have built a distillery up in the north.
• 23:39
  Is it Una Distillery or Una Distillery up in the Himachal
• 23:43
  area? So interesting to see that
• 23:46
  Scotch whiskey producers, Scotch whiskey companies have looked at
• 23:50
  it and said, we'll talk about it in a wee while about how we've
• 23:54
  all been waiting for this free trade agreement.
• 23:58
  The explosion of Scotch is going to be because India is one of
• 24:00
  the largest importers of whiskey in the world.
• 24:04
  But the fact that, you know, the bill to actually make the
• 24:06
  decision to say, you know what, we're not even just going to
• 24:08
  worry about trying to get our liquid into the market.
• 24:09
  We're just going to join the Indian whiskey market and
• 24:12
  actually start producing our own whiskey over in India.
• 24:14
  And it just shows the growth of that you're mentioning.
• 24:18
  I'm root there, but we mentioned the longitude Piccadilly
• 24:21
  Godawan, a lot of it's northern now, isn't it?
• 24:24
  You know, you've got Paul John in Goa and Amrut and Bangalore,
• 24:27
  which we consider the South. But will that have an effect on
• 24:30
  the whiskey making process? Because we know what the heat
• 24:34
  can do to the maturation process.
• 24:36
  We know that casks can expand and decrease and things like
• 24:40
  that. So what will that?
• 24:41
  Does that mean that you're going to get a completely different
• 24:43
  flavour profile from distillation and maturation down
• 24:47
  in the South of India versus what you're getting up in the
• 24:49
  north? So I'll let Harsha Chipin with
• 24:53
  regard to the Goa element as well because he's got a view
• 24:56
  especially with regard to the sea salt effects that it has.
• 25:01
  But largely we are absolutely right in terms of the
• 25:05
  distillation houses. It's been the southernmost well
• 25:09
  known distillery, let me call that out is from Bangalore Amrit
• 25:12
  of course. And then you go up towards go
• 25:15
  and then Central India and things like that right up to the
• 25:18
  top, which we are talking about Mohan Mekon, which is 1855.
• 25:22
  But then I guess the every distillation will have slight
• 25:27
  bit of variances. I can, I think so 70% of the
• 25:32
  time pick an Amrit because it's got a very, very distinct
• 25:35
  character in terms of the sweet malty notes that come out from
• 25:38
  an Amrit whiskey, which probably you can experience in one of the
• 25:42
  brands that we'll have later in the evening.
• 25:44
  But Paul John has got a different character.
• 25:45
  Rampur has got a very different character.
• 25:47
  The maturation techniques are very different.
• 25:50
  But generally, Graham, I think so it's a well known fact by now
• 25:53
  that Indian maturation is pretty much like the US maturation,
• 25:58
  very, very, let's say acute differences in temperature and
• 26:02
  accelerates maturation to quite an extent.
• 26:05
  The colloquial term is one year in India is equal to three years
• 26:10
  in UK or Scotland and such. That's the general understanding
• 26:16
  I think. So there's a lot more depth to
• 26:17
  that. But then I think it's each
• 26:21
  distillery within India. If you spend enough of time with
• 26:24
  the drams, you can distinguish between the distillates as well.
• 26:28
  So while I agree that on the overall, it might come as a
• 26:33
  category, but because of the vastness and the difference of
• 26:36
  Terawar and the influences of the temperature, I think so it
• 26:39
  makes a lot of difference in the way we see.
• 26:42
  India's a large country, right? You can probably fit about 30
• 26:45
  Scotlands in India, yeah. There's a lot of people as well.
• 26:50
  Yeah. So it comes with varied weather
• 26:53
  conditions. Up north, it's extreme.
• 26:55
  It gets really warm and really cold during winters, goes down
• 26:58
  to 5° or probably less than that.
• 27:01
  And that has an impact on the whiskey, on the flavor that that
• 27:05
  that comes through you. You come further down South,
• 27:08
  you're going to go out, which is by the sea.
• 27:10
  So it picks up a lot of this aligned content from the air.
• 27:13
  And they're different in terms of the profile.
• 27:16
  You, you put a Paul John on your palate.
• 27:18
  You know, it's a different whiskey altogether.
• 27:20
  They come down to Bangalore. We're, we're dry, right?
• 27:23
  And, and we're, we're moderate in terms of our weather
• 27:26
  conditions. It's not, it's not too warm, not
• 27:28
  not too cold, but since we're very dry here, we, we lose a lot
• 27:33
  of water. So the so the alcohol percentage
• 27:36
  goes up with the. With.
• 27:38
  Whiskeys, yeah, so, so your quantity of liquid in the in the
• 27:42
  cast might come down, but you've got some really strong alcohol.
• 27:45
  So it's almost like the Angel share that we get in Scotland,
• 27:48
  you know, but you're, you're losing the water, you're, you're
• 27:50
  keeping the good stuff. I, it's going back to then the
• 27:55
  decision to, to put this, to get this bottle sorted and things
• 27:58
  like that. At that time, then you're
• 27:59
  talking about 2016. You said it took two years,
• 28:02
  around about two years to get this.
• 28:03
  What was the membership looking like at this point then?
• 28:06
  Because The thing is, everything in India is, I've mentioned
• 28:09
  they're just scaled with regards to the amount of people.
• 28:12
  So when you started out and you've been putting posts on
• 28:15
  link down and things like that, what, what are you looking at?
• 28:18
  By the time you decide to put your first bottling out, how
• 28:20
  many members are you looking at that point?
• 28:22
  Let me let me take that one right.
• 28:24
  I'll start off from that. So when we had our first
• 28:27
  bottling out, we were not confident about selling 120
• 28:30
  bottles. This was in 2018, 120 bottles
• 28:36
  and each was priced at about 35 to 38 lbs.
• 28:40
  I went to a bunch of PR agencies and social media companies
• 28:44
  trying to figure out how I'm going to sell these 120 bottles.
• 28:47
  It can't be lying there dead inventory with the retailer.
• 28:51
  But fortunately we had a small membership base and we we did a
• 28:55
  pre booking option and the moment we put out the pre
• 28:59
  booking, it sold out in about 45 minutes.
• 29:01
  Really. Yeah, all 120 bottles gone in in
• 29:03
  45 minutes. Never expected that.
• 29:05
  Yeah, they didn't have to spend on any of those PR companies.
• 29:08
  Yeah, I need you guys to sell the next Whiskey Stories.
• 29:11
  There's still bottles available if you want to buy one.
• 29:14
  Yeah. So, so that I think was, was it
• 29:17
  was a turning point for me in terms of, you know, being
• 29:19
  confident about what we're doing.
• 29:21
  Yeah, I was way back in 2018 and we had what, 5 or 8 single malt
• 29:25
  whiskies from India on our shelves at that point in time.
• 29:28
  And that just turned things around for us.
• 29:30
  So in terms of you sell those 120 bottles in 45 minutes, but
• 29:34
  what members, what was the membership looking like numbers
• 29:36
  wise? How many roughly did you have
• 29:37
  around that kind? Of 2-3 hundreds.
• 29:39
  That's 2-3 hundreds. Yeah.
• 29:40
  So yeah, that's an engaged membership then when you know
• 29:43
  and when you're starting out then I mean, as I mentioned,
• 29:46
  we're at that event in in Mumbai, as you've said, and
• 29:49
  there's a massive country. So you're in Bangalore, you guys
• 29:51
  are from Bangalore, I suppose was the first real tranche of
• 29:56
  members in the Bangalore area. And then how did you start to
• 30:00
  expand it throughout the whole country then?
• 30:02
  So here's the story of the bottle carried on program.
• 30:05
  Yeah. So we, the first batch we while
• 30:08
  we couldn't, you know, fathom that everyone from outside India
• 30:12
  also would be interested. We had the first mover advantage
• 30:14
  the while we waited for a couple of years and all of that, the
• 30:17
  pain that we undertook. I just think that it probably
• 30:21
  gave us that recognition from both members within the country
• 30:26
  and outside people who are probably looking at it saying
• 30:29
  that wow, an Indian club doing a bottling with Amrit, we got to
• 30:33
  get our hands on that. We had a quite a few people from
• 30:36
  Dubai, our friends from Mall Club in Dubai, they were quite
• 30:40
  interested in buying what we had.
• 30:41
  We had some people from the UK also interested in picking
• 30:45
  something up like this. So it was starting from that
• 30:48
  point, but then it just exploded because after 45 minutes
• 30:53
  everyone who came to us for the bottle for the next three months
• 30:56
  or a year or so, we kept saying sorry, we don't have any more
• 30:59
  till the next year that we actually bottle that and things
• 31:02
  like that. So that's I guess became a
• 31:05
  talking point. It got us some media attention
• 31:09
  in terms of a club doing something like this and things
• 31:11
  like that. So that gave us a big boost in
• 31:13
  terms of our members and things. Growing members was one of our
• 31:18
  key Kras at that point in time, so we figured we've got to do
• 31:22
  something new for these folks. Bottling, of course, was already
• 31:25
  on. We started.
• 31:27
  We were doing events already with, now I was.
• 31:29
  Going to ask like how often will you get with the club be meeting
• 31:31
  at this stage? Not too many.
• 31:33
  I think we were doing one event in about 3 months at that.
• 31:35
  Yeah, there were not too many whiskeys.
• 31:37
  Yeah, because that's the. Next thing like what did at the
• 31:40
  very early stages? What did a whiskey tasting look
• 31:42
  like? Were you dominant, was that
• 31:45
  predominant ending single malt that you were using or were you
• 31:48
  trying to source Scotch and bring Scotch and we try hybrid
• 31:51
  that? Did you use any other world
• 31:52
  whiskies as well? Japanese whiskeys, Australian
• 31:54
  whiskies or anything like that. There were some private events
• 31:56
  where he pulled out his personal stash.
• 31:59
  Yeah, we got to dig into that sometime.
• 32:03
  Yeah, I got into whiskey a little early in life, right?
• 32:05
  So that was the point. But I guess anything that we
• 32:08
  could get our hands on, Graham, I guess that was the way to go
• 32:11
  about it at that point of time. Amrit and Paul John were of
• 32:14
  course, big supporters for the club.
• 32:16
  Can't thank them enough in the kind of faith they repose in us,
• 32:20
  in the way that they come across supporting us, growing the
• 32:23
  community, very, very open minded in terms of doing the
• 32:25
  tastings and things like that. So we grew with them, but we
• 32:30
  could pretty much do anything that we could get our hands on.
• 32:33
  The early tasting sessions were with the wine glasses and the
• 32:36
  typical ones because India didn't have Glen Cane and.
• 32:40
  All of. That.
• 32:41
  So yes, it was very rudimentary. Yeah.
• 32:44
  And because that's The thing is I've spoken about it on the
• 32:47
  podcast a few times about the accessibility of whiskey.
• 32:50
  When you come over here, I'll be I've been very upfront and
• 32:54
  honest on the podcast about the journey that myself and Angus,
• 32:58
  the the other Co host, you know, Ross Ross as well.
• 33:01
  He does a podcast where he's been in the industry for a long,
• 33:04
  for far too long. In fact, for the age that he is
• 33:06
  and he's only 25 and he's had about 25 jobs in whiskey.
• 33:09
  He'll be listening to this. But you know, started off very
• 33:15
  naively and I remember the first time coming to India and being
• 33:18
  absolutely pissed off that to have a Scotch, I had to pay out
• 33:22
  the nose for it because it's. It's so expensive.
• 33:25
  So expensive by the time I would, I, my naivety was why
• 33:29
  would I want to drink Indian whiskey?
• 33:31
  And I turned my nose up to it. And it's only been the last
• 33:33
  three times that I've been coming out in there where I've
• 33:36
  sort of tried to embrace it. And, and this time, you know,
• 33:39
  it's, it's, it's always when I'm here number one for the cost.
• 33:43
  But #2 also in the main, well, you know, the main one actually,
• 33:45
  it's with the flavour, it's, there's so many good whiskeys
• 33:47
  out there that you can try and you know that Indian whiskey
• 33:51
  growth is just huge. But as I say, accessibility,
• 33:54
  which is difficult. So were you attracting people
• 33:57
  who were already into whiskey or were you trying to attract
• 34:01
  people who like the idea of whiskey but didn't have the
• 34:05
  knowledge, understanding or experience in drinking it?
• 34:07
  Or was that a mix of both? Yeah, definitely a mix of both,
• 34:10
  right. So we had to bring in good
• 34:14
  whiskeys to the market. We had a whole lot of people who
• 34:16
  were looking for experiences which which was not normally
• 34:21
  available. So we just said we'll, we'll
• 34:22
  bring in all of it. We'll bring in the glassware.
• 34:24
  We imported glassware for, for our events.
• 34:27
  And yeah, we were able to put out some good experiences for
• 34:30
  members to to come. In and you mentioned about the
• 34:32
  support that Paul Jordan and Amory gave you at the very
• 34:35
  beginning. One thing that really struck me
• 34:37
  when we were at that that event last Saturday was almost every
• 34:41
  brand ambassador from the companies that were representing
• 34:44
  were there. So that's a big thing in itself.
• 34:46
  And the other thing is as well as in the particularly in the
• 34:51
  Scotch department, it's it's not a cartel as such, but you know,
• 34:55
  it's going to be it's going to be Pernor Icard, it's going to
• 34:58
  be Bacardi, it's going to be Diageo and it's going to be
• 35:00
  mainly Beam Santori. Whenever I go to a bar, you see
• 35:02
  the same brands absolutely everywhere.
• 35:05
  And it's always those, those brands.
• 35:06
  And we know the guys, there's the guys that listen to to the
• 35:09
  podcast as well that are representing these brands.
• 35:12
  And that in itself, if we were to try and get somebody from the
• 35:16
  Azure, in fact, if anyone from the Azure's list, then we'd love
• 35:18
  to try and get something else from the podcast.
• 35:21
  But it's really, really difficult because they're so
• 35:23
  big. But the fact is these brands get
• 35:25
  behind you because they see the value in what you're doing.
• 35:27
  Because I mean, you're talking about first few years, you've
• 35:30
  got 2 or 300 members. What's the membership numbers
• 35:32
  looking like now as we're sitting here roughly?
• 35:35
  7 1/2 thousand. 7 1/2 thousand members.
• 35:37
  Yeah. So now you know if you're
• 35:38
  putting 120 bottles out, you need to be reserving.
• 35:42
  Yourself, yeah, we've got into that problem now and different
• 35:46
  problems now, saying that now the members are expecting us to
• 35:50
  increase our distribution, get into different markets, saying
• 35:53
  that come on guys, we can't lie into Bangalore every single time
• 35:56
  that you bottle whiskey, get something out to Delhi, get
• 36:00
  something out to Mumbai, get it registered there so that we can
• 36:03
  pick it up easily and things like that.
• 36:04
  But then let me probably draw you back to the conversation
• 36:08
  about the brand ambassadors being together and the platform
• 36:12
  that we wanted to create. India is very different from
• 36:16
  Scotland and probably in terms of the maturity of how whiskey
• 36:20
  is being perceived even as a premium drink, right?
• 36:23
  Whiskey is always been a big, big market shareholder in terms
• 36:27
  of the Alcobev, around 40% of every Alcobev in India is
• 36:32
  whiskey. All right, OK, so we've been
• 36:35
  drinking whiskey for a while, but the augment of brand
• 36:40
  ambassadors, having a narrative around your brand, the story
• 36:43
  around it, why it's different than things like this is very,
• 36:46
  very recent. So when we talk about brand
• 36:48
  ambassadors as well, they're finding their way.
• 36:52
  They're finding their way as to how to connect with members, how
• 36:54
  to engage and how to probably, I probably see when I meet people
• 36:58
  from Scotland, they're way more casual.
• 37:01
  They're way more relaxed at the way that they do their events.
• 37:04
  They're probably catering to a very, very different kind of
• 37:07
  audience. But when it comes to India,
• 37:09
  right, people are still very, very naive, very, very nascent
• 37:13
  in terms of their understanding about whiskey.
• 37:15
  And so are the brand ambassadors.
• 37:18
  The Sherry Symphony was one of the examples that I wanted to
• 37:21
  emphasize saying that look folks, let's get even the brand
• 37:26
  ambassadors to have fun. Let them connect with the
• 37:29
  members directly. It shouldn't be such a card.
• 37:32
  I always encourage a non Snooty environment in our clubs, right,
• 37:36
  saying let's be casual. Let's no one's geek here, no
• 37:39
  one's an expert. We're having a little bit of a
• 37:42
  background noise going around, which is typical.
• 37:45
  But then that was the intent, right?
• 37:48
  Saying that, OK, this is going to happen.
• 37:51
  We're pretty ready, I don't think.
• 37:52
  You'll be picking. Up.
• 37:53
  No worries. So I'm just saying that the
• 37:56
  platform to ensure that brand ambassadors also get to have a
• 38:00
  good time, connect with genuine people who are interested in
• 38:04
  whiskeys was always the intent. Yeah.
• 38:06
  So very different when you perceive brand ambassador as a
• 38:10
  role in Scotland and UK and probably Europe and when you
• 38:13
  look at it in India as a market. So we want to really probably
• 38:18
  encourage the brand ambassadors to be more casual, ensure that
• 38:23
  they give an opportunity to every enthusiast to connect with
• 38:26
  them. Yeah.
• 38:27
  Well, what was really funny at the at the event, and I'm going
• 38:29
  to hold my hands up here as well, but the before the event
• 38:32
  started, there was a sort of, you know, mixer, everyone was
• 38:35
  standing there talking and things like that.
• 38:37
  And people, you were started to say people cover everything also
• 38:41
  and shake my hand that I am so and introducers and they're
• 38:43
  saying who you were representing.
• 38:46
  He's representing Scotland, easier for Scotland.
• 38:52
  So if anyone from the Scottish Government is just like I am
• 38:54
  absolutely not representing Scotland, but it was great and.
• 38:59
  You get a Scottish guy into an Indian whiskey tasting in India,
• 39:03
  they're gonna expect you're gonna be representing a.
• 39:05
  Brand. But then you stitched me up
• 39:07
  because I think it was Mark Thompson, friend of the podcast,
• 39:10
  who said to us, when you go to a blind tasting and you work in
• 39:14
  whiskey or anything, and I don't claim to work in whiskey at all
• 39:17
  or anything like that, he said you can only make a mess of it.
• 39:19
  And what you did was we had the five whiskeys lined up and I put
• 39:23
  this in the newsletter. So and Full disclosure here, I
• 39:26
  made a mess of it. So you had the five whiskeys
• 39:27
  lined up and went through them. I had these little booklets
• 39:29
  where we were writing down our notes and everything like that.
• 39:31
  And then you were, you were hosting, you had the microphone
• 39:35
  and you're talking about DRAM #3.
• 39:36
  And once we'd had our, we'd gone through them all, and we filled
• 39:39
  out our notes blind. You then asked us to start what?
• 39:42
  Trying to guess what they were. So you've come to me.
• 39:45
  Oh, ladies and gentlemen, I can't believe it.
• 39:46
  We've got our Scotsman in the room.
• 39:47
  We haven't spoken to have yet. And of course you come over to
• 39:50
  me and you say, right, Graham, what do you think of drama #3?
• 39:53
  And I boldly said, I can't tell you what it is, but I'm almost
• 39:56
  certain it is absolutely not Scotch.
• 39:58
  It's an Indian whiskey. You hit a little clicker on your
• 40:01
  presentation. Aberlauer 60.
• 40:05
  At that point I was quite happy to leave the room.
• 40:09
  So grab, it was fun. I mean, how many times would I
• 40:11
  get the opportunity to do something like that?
• 40:14
  I had to. Go, but it was it was great.
• 40:17
  And as I say, it was it was so nice sitting around, sitting
• 40:20
  around people at the tables at Puja who it's listening Puja and
• 40:24
  our partner, they were there and they were they were talking and
• 40:26
  what I loved is, you know, the questions that were being asked
• 40:30
  and everyone had their own way of looking at it.
• 40:32
  But what was really nice, and that's where blind tastings come
• 40:34
  in so well, was the, the, the IT would be very easy in these
• 40:38
  circumstances if you knew you were drinking premium Scotch to
• 40:42
  go. That's my favorite.
• 40:43
  Yeah, that's my favorite. So doing it blind and then you
• 40:46
  asking and people just saying I just like #2 I just like #1 or
• 40:49
  #3 was nicer than the rest of them.
• 40:51
  And then finding out. So that was that was really,
• 40:54
  really, really nice. The interesting part and concept
• 40:57
  of that tasting, though, was the Sherry Symphony.
• 40:59
  Now, you, you asked in the room, There was, is it Keir Williams?
• 41:03
  Keir Keir from he was representing the card.
• 41:06
  I was there for Abraleva. Sorry, perno, sorry.
• 41:08
  I was there for Abraleva and you asked in the room, has anyone
• 41:13
  ever tried Sherry before? 40 people in the room.
• 41:15
  The only two guys that put their hands on the two guys from
• 41:18
  Scotland, from Britain, they said, yeah, we've had it, But
• 41:21
  and it was interesting because the Sherry doesn't carry.
• 41:24
  So being able to spend that 20 minutes going through the
• 41:27
  history of Sherry and what it's done and let people understand
• 41:31
  and taste it and understand where that influence can come
• 41:35
  from. But where does India, where does
• 41:37
  the Indian market predominantly get their casks from them?
• 41:40
  Are they sourcing them from the UK?
• 41:41
  Are they sourcing them direct from Harris?
• 41:44
  Are they sourcing them from the US or, Or is it a mix of
• 41:46
  everything? Or is it Indian cast?
• 41:48
  It's a, it's a quite a mix of everything.
• 41:50
  Initially I guess it was largely Scotland from where they were
• 41:53
  getting their casks, but then we have got those associations
• 41:56
  going right now because Sazerac owns a significant stake within
• 42:00
  Paul John. So they've got their supply
• 42:02
  sorted out in terms of their cast coming from Sazerac.
• 42:05
  AMRUT has got AI think so similar kind of a contract with
• 42:09
  US in terms of a bourbon industry as to how the casts
• 42:12
  are. But what I'm seeing
• 42:14
  significantly, and that was probably one of the motivations
• 42:17
  for us to come up with a concept like Sherry Symphony was exactly
• 42:20
  that. We're getting a cast from heres,
• 42:23
  we're getting from Portugal in different parts of Europe as
• 42:26
  well. So many cast influences coming.
• 42:29
  India largely likes a little bit Swedish whiskey in terms of
• 42:34
  flavor profile. So Sherry whiskeys do really,
• 42:36
  really well. And if you look at the labeling
• 42:39
  as well and the promotion that people are brands are advocating
• 42:44
  right now, most of them will advocate a Sherry cast on their
• 42:48
  label right now. But the whole point was no one
• 42:52
  really knew what Sherry was. I mean, everyone said that, OK,
• 42:55
  it must be a type of cast that these guys are getting that gets
• 42:57
  really good whiskey. So the story behind it in terms
• 43:00
  of its wine and how it influences whiskey was never
• 43:03
  really known. And that was the concept behind
• 43:05
  Sherry Symphony, saying that let them like you had only two
• 43:09
  people in the room putting their hands up saying that genuine
• 43:11
  Sherry. I must actually thank a member
• 43:14
  for this. Rajesh.
• 43:16
  Yeah, from Pune, must call him out because he was the one who
• 43:19
  came from back from a tour from Spain.
• 43:23
  And he said that Hemanth, I've been to so many of your tasting
• 43:25
  sessions, always had good fun. You always used to explain to me
• 43:29
  as to what kind of notes each cast would really get in terms
• 43:32
  of Sherry types of Sherry. But when I was at Harris doing a
• 43:35
  tasting session, which is Sherry's, that's when it really
• 43:39
  hit me saying that, OK, this is really a flavor note that's
• 43:41
  coming out from the Sherry. And he was really kind enough to
• 43:44
  bring a few bottles of Sherry on him and say that this is for the
• 43:49
  club. I want you to probably let them
• 43:52
  have the same experience that I did.
• 43:54
  And I thought that was really, really kind of them, right.
• 43:57
  So I put in that effort saying that no, I'm going to make this
• 44:00
  probably country tour where we go across the country.
• 44:05
  Let the brands have a platform to showcase all of their brand
• 44:09
  ambassadors in their different nuances in their different
• 44:12
  flavors as to how they present their own brand and what the
• 44:15
  influence their whiskey has with cherry and get the members to
• 44:20
  understand what Sherry relationship with whiskey is.
• 44:22
  Yeah, I mean, I mean, I learned a lot of stuff from it.
• 44:26
  I knew what Sherry was and knew how it worked.
• 44:27
  And I've had it, I mean, perfectly honest Sherry on its
• 44:30
  own. I actually get nicknamed.
• 44:31
  I didn't say this. I purposely didn't say this on
• 44:33
  the night. But Ross, who does the podcast,
• 44:36
  he he nicknamed me very early on through the podcast as a Sherry
• 44:40
  tart at the time, you know, Sherry Glen allocate 15 was a
• 44:44
  real, real favorite of mine. Glenn drawn.
• 44:48
  I saw these kind of things. I like the.
• 44:49
  Cherry Cherry bombs. Yeah, and for me, that was a
• 44:52
  sort of entrance into, into drinking whiskey as a young
• 44:55
  star, you know, or, you know, getting whiskey, that sweetness.
• 44:58
  And I, I, I, I, they claim and maintain that I, I pretend that
• 45:03
  I like Pete Pussy, actually love Pete Pussy, Ally Reynolds.
• 45:07
  In fact, I had a Smokey cookie last night and in Bangalore,
• 45:11
  most expensive Smokey cookie I've ever had.
• 45:14
  The Lagaville 16. I think it came to wait a
• 45:17
  minute. Now let me work this out.
• 45:20
  I think the full thing with the lag it was.
• 45:22
  Around 6 lbs for your. No more, no double, double 12,
• 45:27
  double of that 15 lbs for the lag of old 16, and then I don't
• 45:30
  know how much for the. Couple of a couple of 100.
• 45:33
  Rupees, but listen, it was it was great.
• 45:34
  But I I mean the accessibility of Scotch there from from the
• 45:38
  time that you guys started to now are you have you seen more
• 45:42
  Scotch coming onto the shelves in India?
• 45:46
  But also caveat that is it all from the same like we mentioned
• 45:51
  earlier on, you know the, the, the sort of big power houses in
• 45:54
  the industry that can have the power to bring all that stuff
• 45:57
  in. Have you seen Annex?
• 45:58
  Have you seen more variation though to the Indian market?
• 46:02
  So I'll, I'll probably quote a survey of ours.
• 46:07
  Graham, in terms of we started a survey around four years or five
• 46:10
  years ago, I'm not too quite sure, but when we started the
• 46:13
  survey and we called it the Indian Whiskey Survey, Indian
• 46:17
  Single Malt Whiskey Survey, something like that.
• 46:20
  And we had 7 whiskeys, 7 in terms of the number of Indian
• 46:27
  whiskeys that were around at that point of time.
• 46:30
  And this is not too much of survey with 7W.
• 46:35
  But then the next year it grew to around 20 year pounds.
• 46:38
  So the rate at which it was growing was exponential, I
• 46:42
  think. So the recent survey, what was
• 46:45
  it, 47? Close to.
• 46:47
  So you had 47 whiskeys on a survey?
• 46:50
  Indian. Whiskeys, Indian whiskeys,
• 46:52
  right. So that was so.
• 46:53
  And what you, what was the survey about?
• 46:55
  Were you sending out to members and asking them?
• 46:57
  What was this kind of questions that you're asking on the
• 46:59
  survey? A standard, you know, baselining
• 47:03
  gram, if I may. It was largely to get genuine
• 47:06
  feedback from the members saying that have you first heard about
• 47:10
  this Indian whiskey? Because Indian whiskey, like
• 47:12
  India, is a big country and getting across to different
• 47:15
  parts of India still a challenge.
• 47:16
  So if you ask about Amrit to probably someone down South in
• 47:19
  Kerala, he may not have been heard about it even now.
• 47:22
  Yeah. So there's a possibility, rare
• 47:24
  now because they've gotten quite famous, but then there's still a
• 47:27
  possibility of that happening. But the survey had Have you
• 47:31
  heard about this whiskey? Have you tasted this whiskey?
• 47:33
  What do you think about this whiskey?
• 47:35
  Pretty much those central themes that we used to follow.
• 47:39
  We've gone a little bit more granular in the recent surveys
• 47:42
  in terms of what we want to understand, but the growth in
• 47:46
  the last five years that we have seen in number of brands, number
• 47:49
  of variants, unbelievable. Royal Challenger.
• 47:52
  Talk me through it. Royal Challenger.
• 47:57
  I. Mean is that is that a local
• 47:59
  that the Royal Challenger is featured on the podcast because
• 48:02
  it was one of my stories. We did a we did I think it was
• 48:08
  last year. Ross Angus and I sat down and we
• 48:10
  said let's do a reviewed Walk 3 drams.
• 48:13
  We did our first ever podcast episode where we came up with
• 48:15
  the feature of the walk 3 drams. Ross, Angus and I talked to
• 48:18
  three drams and what have you. And the next time we did a year
• 48:22
  on was I went to now you'll maybe know that Shoba mall on
• 48:28
  just off Church Street. So we were, we were meeting, we
• 48:33
  were going to a place called Bimas, which you'll maybe know
• 48:35
  for the meals you get massive. Amount of food.
• 48:38
  Served on the banana leaf clubs, Absolutely fantastic.
• 48:41
  Indian Experience. Oh, I love it.
• 48:42
  So the whole family were going there.
• 48:43
  I was actually out and about beforehand and I had about an
• 48:46
  hour to kill. I mean, less than an hour, half
• 48:49
  an hour maybe. And I was at this place, Shoba
• 48:50
  Mall. In Shoba Mall at the time there
• 48:53
  was the RCB, Royal Challenger, Bengaluru, the Cricket Club had
• 48:56
  their, they had their own bar. So I'll go there and I said I
• 49:00
  ordered a beer and then I saw in the whiskey list that they had
• 49:03
  this Royal Challenger whiskey. I thought, well, what makes it
• 49:05
  try it? It's Royal Regal challenges you
• 49:10
  what a challenge. Because what happened was it
• 49:13
  turns out I've arrived at happy hour, right?
• 49:15
  And I didn't know this. So what I've done is I've said
• 49:17
  I'll have a beer and you know what?
• 49:20
  I'll have a Royal Challenger and he's brought the little glass
• 49:23
  and I've had my beer and then I've finished the beer and I've
• 49:26
  literally finished the the whiskey and I've got, and then
• 49:31
  the guys come out with another beer and another whiskey because
• 49:33
  it was by 1 + 1. But the problem was it was now
• 49:38
  that happened, added a nice, I thought I've got 30 minutes here
• 49:41
  before the family are arriving and I can see where we're going.
• 49:44
  So I'll literally 30 minutes finish the drinks and I'll head
• 49:46
  down there, right. I've got 5 minutes now and this
• 49:49
  guy's turned up with another beer and another Royal
• 49:51
  Challenger. So but they scooped the beer as
• 49:53
  quickly as I can. The Royal Challenger.
• 49:55
  Yeah, like I say, it was a challenge, but I got through it
• 49:57
  all right. But yeah, I hope skipping a jump
• 49:59
  to Bima's, I was. I was quite happy when they got
• 50:02
  there. How did the lunch go grand?
• 50:03
  Then lunch was great. I was I was very talkative, I
• 50:07
  think, but by the way, I was looking at me as I'd say a
• 50:09
  drink. Yeah, it was it's nice to
• 50:13
  experience all these things. But in terms of Scotch, then you
• 50:16
  you mentioned harsh about hey man's personal stash.
• 50:21
  Scotch is really expensive over here, right. 150% tax.
• 50:24
  It's state by state. As luck would happen, I had to
• 50:27
  marry. I got off from Karnataka which
• 50:29
  is where the most expensive taxation in India is.
• 50:32
  Used to be. It's changed maybe now, but
• 50:34
  yeah, there's a liquor store right next door to where we
• 50:36
  live. I go in there regularly and just
• 50:38
  look at the prices and I just, I can't get over how expensive it
• 50:41
  actually is. But how was Scotch something
• 50:46
  that you are always passionate about and interested in?
• 50:48
  Or was it Indian whiskey 1st and Scott second?
• 50:52
  Scotch game, first gram. I mean, when we talk about
• 50:54
  whiskey in the Indian context, I guess even now there's a lot of
• 50:59
  influence of Scotland and Scotch still rules while Indian single
• 51:04
  malls and the Indian whiskeys have started making their
• 51:06
  impression around, I think. So the history of Scotch in
• 51:10
  India from the 70s onwards has been significant in the way that
• 51:15
  it is, you know, percolated into the market.
• 51:18
  And the point that I guess most people don't get is the price
• 51:24
  points. While you perceive it to be
• 51:26
  expensive, since we have always been paying that kind of money
• 51:30
  for Scotch, we have all almost like gotten used to it.
• 51:34
  We don't have many options, yes. But in terms of the price
• 51:37
  points, if someone is asking for, you know, a £50 for a
• 51:42
  Johnny Walker Black Label, it's a completely acceptable, you
• 51:46
  know, price for us. Yeah.
• 51:47
  It's just what we pay. So while you may look at it 50
• 51:50
  lbs for Johnny Walker, what do you crazy or something, but
• 51:53
  that's not how we look at it. So our baselines in terms of
• 51:56
  price versus the brand name and what we drink is very, very
• 52:00
  different compared to the other markets.
• 52:02
  So you need to be very conscious about that, I guess.
• 52:04
  When we talk about that, well, what shocked me was when I first
• 52:06
  came here and I went into the liquor store and as I say, my
• 52:08
  eyes were watering at some of the prices, but the variety of
• 52:11
  single malt that was available really did surprise me.
• 52:14
  There's bottles there that you would, you know, some bottles
• 52:18
  that would be actually difficult to find with the shops in the
• 52:20
  UK, but they have them here on the shelves.
• 52:22
  And I'm thinking to myself at this price with all these people
• 52:25
  must be drinking it like, and, and you look at the numbers and
• 52:28
  I think the numbers have to be taken into consideration.
• 52:31
  I hope someone can correct me if I'm wrong here.
• 52:34
  But in terms of people look at it and say, and there's the
• 52:38
  largest importer of, of one of the largest, if not the largest
• 52:41
  of Scotch whisky in the world. Now there should There is a
• 52:44
  little caveat to that because it's bulk.
• 52:47
  It's bulk liquid. It's bulk liquid.
• 52:48
  So it's not. So in terms of the amount of
• 52:52
  imported whiskey coming into India and bottle for, it's not
• 52:55
  as high as what's coming in and bulk for.
• 52:58
  So where's that bulk going there?
• 53:00
  So we've got a very interesting concept here and Harsha is
• 53:03
  whiling because he's seen me going through this sessions of
• 53:07
  explaining as to how the bulk liquid actually dissipates in
• 53:10
  India. And we've got this concept which
• 53:12
  is very unique called Indian Manufactured Foreign Liquor,
• 53:16
  which is stand for IMFL. And here's the concept, right.
• 53:20
  We decided saying that we've got a huge market, you can't really
• 53:24
  get in bottles because it's really, really difficult to
• 53:27
  cater to a market in bottles. So we're going to import in
• 53:29
  bulk. We're going to have our own
• 53:32
  blending or let's say bottling plants within India to make the
• 53:35
  distribution easier. And we're going to probably put
• 53:39
  some a little bit of green spirit that's been maturing in
• 53:41
  India out here. And we going to call that Indian
• 53:44
  manufactured foreign liquor, right?
• 53:46
  What the lineage of foreign is there within that entire bottle
• 53:52
  in terms of volume compared to what the Indian grain goes into
• 53:55
  it and Indian malt goes into it is still a very, let's say,
• 53:59
  unknown subject, grey area or a golden area, so to say.
• 54:03
  Well, it must be making a lot of money, clearly.
• 54:06
  But yeah. But then that's the bulk of the
• 54:10
  Indian whiskey. So when you talk about black
• 54:14
  dog, when you talk about 100 Pipers, when you talk.
• 54:17
  About they they, they label themselves as Scotch.
• 54:20
  So they wouldn't, shouldn't be able to label themselves as
• 54:22
  Scotch. If they because there's another
• 54:24
  brand. I'm going to say because I've
• 54:25
  seen it everywhere. It's Glen Walk.
• 54:27
  Yeah, right now is it, is Glen Walk labeled as Scotch or is it
• 54:31
  labeled as no? Because a cynic might say maybe
• 54:35
  myself might look at some of these brands and maybe it has
• 54:38
  the missing Scotch part on it. Yeah, but it has a nice big
• 54:42
  Scottish name, Scottish name or a British name, which I think
• 54:45
  which for the normal person, the layperson looking at that going,
• 54:50
  well, it's got a Scottish name. It doesn't have the word Scotch
• 54:53
  whiskey on it, but it represents itself.
• 54:56
  Would that be what you'd be looking at there?
• 54:58
  Because I was looking at it today before we recorded this.
• 55:00
  I went into the the shop and I was looking at it and I noticed
• 55:03
  like, you know, some of the bigger brands, they'll say
• 55:06
  bottled in India, but it still clearly says Scotch whiskey,
• 55:10
  blended Scotch whiskey, Scotch, and it's largely the blends.
• 55:13
  Now my understanding would be it can't call itself Scotch whiskey
• 55:17
  if it's got any other grain malt whiskey, anything added to it.
• 55:24
  So is that is, is that a grey area in India or is it the
• 55:28
  Southwest? I mean, if anyone from the
• 55:29
  Southwest is listening, sorry, sorry.
• 55:33
  You're not making many, many friends here.
• 55:35
  But no. But it's just interesting.
• 55:37
  It is an interesting subject. Like I say, there'll be, there
• 55:40
  must be lots and lots of people who are importing bulk liquid if
• 55:43
  because it's going somewhere, if India is the largest importer of
• 55:46
  one of the largest importance in the world, but it's
• 55:48
  predominantly bulk four years ago. 5% of that in in that
• 55:52
  bottle, the 5% of that is probably Scotch.
• 55:55
  Yeah, yeah, the the imported stuff has.
• 55:58
  That been kind. Then.
• 56:00
  Because it's scale, isn't it? I mean, when you look at the,
• 56:02
  the size of the country and you look at, and again, these
• 56:04
  bottles will sit there at 30 odd pounds, whereas a Scotch whiskey
• 56:09
  will sit there at 6570 lbs. And you're looking at that going
• 56:12
  well, you know that the market's going to pick, they're going to
• 56:14
  pick the, the general market, they're going to pick the
• 56:16
  cheaper option and that that that's, that's where they're
• 56:19
  going to go. It looks like Scotch.
• 56:21
  It feels like it's got a little bit of Scotch in it.
• 56:24
  So ergo. And it's easy on the pocket.
• 56:26
  Yeah, exactly. So, so, so is that is that where
• 56:29
  and do we see that as a challenge when the the the free
• 56:33
  trade agreement, you know, we're desperately waiting for that to
• 56:36
  happen. It's going to the news with the
• 56:38
  and again, I don't tend not to get too political in here, but
• 56:41
  you know, we do know that with the free trade agreement in
• 56:45
  place now or not in place, but having been agreed the import
• 56:49
  that the the the taxation in whiskey coming into into India
• 56:53
  from Scotland is going to go from 150% tax down to 70
• 56:56
  percent, 75 percent, 75%. Yeah.
• 56:58
  And is that over a certain period of time?
• 56:59
  Is that just? No, the drop to 75 is immediate,
• 57:03
  or rather when it gets implemented and from there on
• 57:06
  it's going to go to 40% / a period of time.
• 57:10
  That's the agreement that's been signed notionally as now it
• 57:14
  seems to be going through some kind of discussion to put it
• 57:17
  into practice that's going to probably it's going to take a
• 57:20
  while, but before we get there. And what do you see?
• 57:22
  What do you see happening then from your point of view to the
• 57:26
  Indian whiskey market? I thought that we got to the
• 57:30
  name with you in royal challenge and we didn't have to go to
• 57:32
  Glenn walk there. I thought the Indian, let's say
• 57:37
  perception about if you look at our names, we always get very
• 57:40
  royal regal and we always this is officers choice choice
• 57:45
  director special. There is lenders pride and all
• 57:49
  of those names, which is always very, very emotive in the way
• 57:53
  that they come across, right. It's always got to be something
• 57:55
  special. There's nothing the usual daily
• 57:58
  drams that we don't do those, we always do the special ones.
• 58:01
  But the Gray area is exactly that we still are able to call a
• 58:07
  majority of our blended whiskies that are getting bottled because
• 58:11
  as I said, the volumes Scotland can't sustain that kind of
• 58:15
  volume bottling that India would require.
• 58:18
  The supply chain and the cost mathematics behind that would
• 58:21
  just make it non feasible for us to do something like that.
• 58:24
  So we do bottle a lot of stuff within India and still are able
• 58:28
  to call it Scotch and it's within that segment of IMF
• 58:32
  called Indian manufactured foreign liquor.
• 58:35
  And only within that segment or that lineage are you able to
• 58:39
  bottle anything called Scotch. So the Glen Walk, while it may
• 58:42
  be very representative, which Southwest may not allow in UK or
• 58:47
  Scotland as such in India, it's completely OK, right, Because
• 58:51
  you're not really putting out saying that where is it
• 58:54
  manufactured etcetera. That's not coming through.
• 58:57
  It's just the name representative.
• 58:59
  It's just to attract your people in terms of what they perceive.
• 59:04
  But look at the rationale behind it.
• 59:06
  The rationale is exactly the question that you asked me a few
• 59:11
  minutes ago with regard to the reverence for Scotch.
• 59:16
  It's so deep. Yeah.
• 59:17
  That's the reason why these names usually take those tones.
• 59:21
  Yeah, Right. So that.
• 59:23
  That carries, isn't it? You know, it's really, I mean,
• 59:26
  it's, it's something that we've talked about.
• 59:28
  So they find a lot of pride. I mean, our community finds a
• 59:31
  lot of pride in saying that. I drank a Scotch whiskey
• 59:34
  yesterday. Yeah.
• 59:35
  Which is represented by Sanjay Dutt.
• 59:38
  He's the guy. He's a celebrity.
• 59:40
  Star. He's the Bollywood.
• 59:41
  Yeah, he's the Bollywood. Because then you've got Kevin
• 59:43
  Peterson as well. Who?
• 59:45
  Oh yeah, he's brought. He's.
• 59:46
  On watching some whiskey there. Yeah, and and because I mean,
• 59:49
  when you look at the market and but that's what that's.
• 59:51
  So that's where the next question is where they drop it
• 59:53
  and send. So there's two trains of thought
• 59:55
  here. Number one, the whiskey industry
• 59:58
  are rubbing their hands together and licking their lips.
• 1:00:00
  We've had so many people on. No one wants to say that the
• 1:00:03
  industry is on a down downturn. And I've said it before, I'll
• 1:00:07
  say it again. I met somebody who's worked in
• 1:00:09
  the industry for he's fairly high up, who's worked in the
• 1:00:12
  industry for over 30 years. And he said to me when I asked
• 1:00:15
  him. He said, listen, I've been in
• 1:00:17
  the industry for over 30 years. I've seen the cycles.
• 1:00:20
  I said whiskey either goes to the very good times or it just
• 1:00:22
  goes to the good times. And he said right now we're
• 1:00:24
  probably just going to the good times.
• 1:00:26
  But at the same time, we are seeing, you know, there are
• 1:00:29
  whiskey distilleries, not Scott so far Touchwood that, but we've
• 1:00:33
  seen Irish distilleries, we've seen European distilleries that
• 1:00:37
  are having to, you know, bring in administrators and we are
• 1:00:41
  seeing the start of maybe production slowing down in a lot
• 1:00:45
  of distilleries. So when this news breaks out of
• 1:00:48
  the blue, India have agreed it's it's all it's all done.
• 1:00:51
  It's signed, sealed and delivered Scotch whiskey 150%
• 1:00:55
  down to 75%. Lots of people are rubbing their
• 1:00:57
  hands together going Scotch is going to explode and it's going
• 1:01:01
  to just ramp up. But then there's another train
• 1:01:04
  of thought where I've seen an article written and forgive me
• 1:01:08
  for quoting, and I can't remember who it was that wrote
• 1:01:10
  the article, but their side of it was, was maybe it isn't all
• 1:01:14
  good news for every distillery of Scotland because is it going
• 1:01:18
  to be that your big powerhouses that are already in here are
• 1:01:22
  just going to close that market even more?
• 1:01:25
  And will you see when the free trade agreement comes in place
• 1:01:29
  and whiskey the taxation drops 150 to 75%, will we see prices
• 1:01:34
  being slashed or will we see prices staying the same but
• 1:01:37
  margins getting higher for the, for the, for the, for the
• 1:01:39
  businesses? Very interesting question, but
• 1:01:42
  I'd like Harsha to take a stab at this first before I'll
• 1:01:45
  probably give you some more stats with regard to how I see
• 1:01:48
  this going. But yeah.
• 1:01:49
  Now, so with with respect to what changes we'll see in terms
• 1:01:55
  of pricing, it will be certain brands would say I'm going to
• 1:02:00
  pass on this advantage to the consumer, all right.
• 1:02:03
  So if I'm pricing it at about £100, but right now I might just
• 1:02:07
  sell it about £75, There could be some who would say, you know
• 1:02:10
  what, I'm doing very well, right?
• 1:02:12
  I'm premium. I don't care what the change is
• 1:02:15
  going to be in terms of regulation, but I'm going to
• 1:02:17
  stick to my price point because I'm a popular whiskey and I'd
• 1:02:20
  like to stay on top. So I'm not going to change it.
• 1:02:23
  So it could be one of these two. But well, what's what's going to
• 1:02:27
  happen is that the market is still going to be controlled by
• 1:02:31
  some of the big power houses, right.
• 1:02:33
  If you find some of these craft distilleries trying to find a
• 1:02:36
  way into India, its still going to be very hard for them.
• 1:02:39
  Its just not the FDA. Its its about doing business in
• 1:02:42
  this country, especially when it comes to alcohol, which is a big
• 1:02:45
  challenge about its about scale when only when you land products
• 1:02:51
  in large numbers is when you're able to come out with better
• 1:02:54
  price points, right. There's also about.
• 1:02:57
  Label registrations, well, this is, these are the sort of areas
• 1:03:00
  that is easy to say. All taxes drop like you say.
• 1:03:03
  So from the label registration, you've mentioned this already.
• 1:03:06
  Distribution logistical issues right dealing dealing with with
• 1:03:11
  the excise laws and with different states its not going
• 1:03:14
  to be easy and and the small players will not will not be
• 1:03:17
  able to sustain in the long run. If you've got deep pockets, if
• 1:03:20
  you're going to, if you're able to hold on for a long time, then
• 1:03:23
  you'll be able to figure this out and, and maybe you'll,
• 1:03:26
  you'll be there when, when they have the FDA, when it's
• 1:03:29
  completely implemented, it's not going to be easy for the smaller
• 1:03:33
  players. And with regards to like so
• 1:03:35
  you're talking, so let's go back to the labeling situation here
• 1:03:37
  because if I'm right and saying you kind of we've talked about
• 1:03:40
  this off camera, but you know for every individual product
• 1:03:43
  label that has to be registered per state or.
• 1:03:46
  Just per state. Per state, and what's that
• 1:03:48
  roughly costing? And every year.
• 1:03:50
  Every year, yes. OK.
• 1:03:51
  So, so what's that roughly costing and what's the time
• 1:03:54
  frame that you're looking at for that?
• 1:03:56
  It could be about ₹50,000, which is about 50 odd quid right to
• 1:04:00
  about a hundred. 150 quid, £100, sorry, 500 quid, 500 pounds,
• 1:04:06
  £500 per label. Per label, per state, per state.
• 1:04:10
  Per bottle size. Per bottle a bottle.
• 1:04:13
  So, so today if I register this bottle as let's say Amrit Rai
• 1:04:17
  and I want to call this Amrit Premium Rai tomorrow, that's
• 1:04:20
  that's another registration for me and.
• 1:04:21
  What time scale you're looking at that there is.
• 1:04:23
  Six months. Three to six months.
• 1:04:25
  Yeah, so so you look like like, OK, we pick out let's pick out
• 1:04:29
  the let's pick out the whiskey stories, right?
• 1:04:32
  OK, we decide we're going to start our own whiskey right
• 1:04:36
  product, right. And we're going to do that now
• 1:04:38
  the, so that's the first challenge.
• 1:04:40
  If I've got now the first challenge that we're going to
• 1:04:43
  have here is obviously batch size because like you saw 120
• 1:04:49
  bottle sales and 45, it sounds great, but the problem is it's
• 1:04:52
  gone. Your product's gone.
• 1:04:53
  We've talked to, we've talked to brands on this, we've talked to
• 1:04:56
  retailers. And one of the really
• 1:04:57
  interesting things is that there's a, there's a balance
• 1:04:59
  because ultimately you want your product on the shelf for that
• 1:05:04
  sweet spot where it's not on the shelf for too long, but it's on
• 1:05:07
  the shelf long enough so that it's accessible.
• 1:05:09
  Because what happens is if everybody hears, oh, whiskey
• 1:05:12
  stores have brought out their single malt and I want to buy it
• 1:05:14
  and it's not there, then they're not going to, they'll just go,
• 1:05:17
  well, buy something else what you want.
• 1:05:18
  So first of all, volume. So I suppose you're going to
• 1:05:22
  have to, we would have to make a decision what states are we
• 1:05:25
  going to sell in only? So could you do with that?
• 1:05:26
  Would that be quite a? That would be a filter, of
• 1:05:29
  course. Yeah.
• 1:05:30
  So you say maybe we're only selling three different states.
• 1:05:32
  Yeah, but then right, say if we've got like 6 like so I guess
• 1:05:37
  that is drama the week from he did his drama drama the week on
• 1:05:41
  the newsletter this week as well.
• 1:05:43
  Listen to this. And it was at the independent
• 1:05:46
  bottle of Fragrant drops and it was then showcasing their newest
• 1:05:49
  out Turner releases. So I think they've probably
• 1:05:51
  maybe say for argument, say 5 different bottlings.
• 1:05:55
  Yeah, right. Each probably between 150 to 203
• 1:06:00
  hundred bottles per. So you're telling me that if
• 1:06:02
  these guys wanted to put that whiskey into India, they'd be
• 1:06:06
  paying £500 per state Pearl label?
• 1:06:08
  Yeah, right. Right.
• 1:06:09
  Waiting for three to six months for the sign off on that.
• 1:06:13
  And then 300, they would only have 300.
• 1:06:15
  It could be sold just like that. Now that sounds good, but that's
• 1:06:18
  a hell of a long way a lot to go so small batches.
• 1:06:22
  Sorry, what was the registration in Delhi sometime back?
• 1:06:25
  Wasn't it 25,00,000? Yeah.
• 1:06:27
  So 25,00,000 is what, 2 1/2 thousand 25,000?
• 1:06:29
  Pounds 25,000 lbs. It's a register, a label, a
• 1:06:33
  label. A label for the year.
• 1:06:34
  For the year, yes. So if you want your bottle to,
• 1:06:37
  if you've got a core release, let's say you bring out a
• 1:06:40
  standard 12 year old core release and you've got say
• 1:06:42
  20,000 bottles of that that you're happy to give to the
• 1:06:45
  Indian market. You're going to have to pay.
• 1:06:48
  You're going to pay your upfront fee of £500, wait three months,
• 1:06:51
  get signed off. But that's the next year.
• 1:06:53
  They're going to come at you and say yeah, you're still you need
• 1:06:56
  to pay for that 12 year old. And by the way, you want, you
• 1:06:58
  know, your 14 year old that you want out and your 18 year old.
• 1:07:00
  So if you want you want core releases on the shelves in
• 1:07:03
  India, that's that's so that this is the next thing is, you
• 1:07:06
  know, it sounds brilliant that free.
• 1:07:08
  To let this message land grammar, let me say this is one
• 1:07:11
  statement. We're a country of 1 billion,
• 1:07:13
  right? And we drink a lot of whiskey,
• 1:07:17
  right? And we have talked about these
• 1:07:18
  stats multiple times that India has a big whiskey market and
• 1:07:22
  things like that. And we've been drinking whiskey
• 1:07:24
  for a while. From the 70s or the 60s, we've
• 1:07:27
  been pretty popular. We're the only whiskey club in
• 1:07:31
  India that's able to do an indie bottling.
• 1:07:35
  Yeah, so. Let that sink in to tell you
• 1:07:39
  what's the complexity that we're talking about here, right?
• 1:07:42
  Because that's where we got to start from.
• 1:07:44
  Everyone who's looking at India as a market, yes, India as a
• 1:07:47
  market, you're absolutely on point saying that the big houses
• 1:07:51
  have got the distribution, they've got the marketing,
• 1:07:53
  they've got the history, they know the land, they know as to
• 1:07:58
  how the market works, They know the schemes, they know how to
• 1:08:01
  distribute. They know how to influence the
• 1:08:04
  consumer in terms of how, if you're talking about bringing
• 1:08:08
  him a bespoke release and the drop that I just had, absolutely
• 1:08:13
  phenomenal stuff right the. 24 years.
• 1:08:16
  No, no, the 24. Years, yeah.
• 1:08:18
  Absolutely brilliant. Stuff available.
• 1:08:22
  I'm going to get one of those that's really, really good.
• 1:08:24
  I thought, yeah, but I'm just pointing you in the direction
• 1:08:29
  saying that look at the complexity that we're talking
• 1:08:32
  out here. We're talking about not being
• 1:08:36
  able to bottle these small variants, these craft whiskeys,
• 1:08:39
  because it doesn't make financial sense.
• 1:08:43
  The kind of taxation, the kind of distribution challenges that
• 1:08:46
  you would have to undergo would make it absolutely unfeasible
• 1:08:51
  for anyone entering with small batches.
• 1:08:53
  Thinking that I'm going to go into India, I'm going to sell
• 1:08:56
  bottles like this. Yes, if you manage to finally
• 1:08:59
  get your bottle onto the shelf, you're going to sell like this.
• 1:09:01
  If you whiskey is good. But if people need to know about
• 1:09:05
  you whiskey, you got to have marketing.
• 1:09:07
  Of course. Its not easy to market in a
• 1:09:09
  country which says that you can't put out, you know,
• 1:09:12
  holdings, you can't put out ads, you can't put out so many
• 1:09:16
  things, Yeah. There's a medium of.
• 1:09:17
  Advertising very regulated. So yeah, advertising alcohol in
• 1:09:20
  in India is it, which is, which is really interesting because if
• 1:09:23
  I, when I looked into this, you know, a lot of big alcohol
• 1:09:26
  companies also have like. Water.
• 1:09:28
  Water manufacturing companies, yeah.
• 1:09:30
  Yeah, music. CDs, Glassware.
• 1:09:32
  Yeah. They produce everything.
• 1:09:34
  But the brand is so prominent that everyone knows that's that.
• 1:09:37
  That's the whiskey brand you've got.
• 1:09:38
  A term for that? Do you know that it's called
• 1:09:41
  surrogate marketing? Surrogate marketing, Well, this
• 1:09:42
  is the thing, as you say. So we were talking earlier about
• 1:09:46
  a Royal Challenger because this is what's really interesting.
• 1:09:48
  Royal Challenger is a whiskey brand that own the cricket team.
• 1:09:53
  So how can they advertise? But a Royal Challenger must have
• 1:09:55
  surrogate marketing. Did you see those aircrafts
• 1:09:58
  flying with Kingfisher it and all?
• 1:10:01
  I mean, what are we talking about here?
• 1:10:03
  He's got an airline that's actually advertising alcohol
• 1:10:07
  there. So that is Rob.
• 1:10:08
  Fascinating. But yes, because this is where
• 1:10:11
  you know, then the the whiskey industry might not benefit as
• 1:10:14
  much as people are actually thinking about.
• 1:10:16
  I think it's a longer. Taste, Yeah, it's going to be a
• 1:10:19
  longer Yeah. And it's, it's, I would love
• 1:10:21
  like we've got a Glen alley here.
• 1:10:23
  I mean, what, what really hit me and I, I, you know, we were
• 1:10:27
  chatting afterwards, after the taste thing last Saturday and I
• 1:10:30
  was and we're going to come to it and talk about the fact that
• 1:10:33
  you've brought people to Scotland.
• 1:10:35
  You mentioned earlier with the lag of going and stuff like
• 1:10:36
  that. So you've done trips to
• 1:10:38
  Scotland, then you've done trips to Japan as well.
• 1:10:40
  Yeah. So you've taken members to
• 1:10:41
  Scotland, which is fantastic and it's great.
• 1:10:43
  And speaking to your members and talking to them and they were
• 1:10:45
  talking about how when they were abroad, they found this bottle
• 1:10:48
  or that bottle and everything like that.
• 1:10:50
  But then suddenly the next thing is we were mentioned about the
• 1:10:53
  ABV being 50% for your Amrit bottling.
• 1:10:56
  There's ABV rules now as well. What?
• 1:10:58
  So that's, I mean, am I right in saying it's probably one of the
• 1:11:00
  highest ABV bottling? Its the first bottle in
• 1:11:03
  Karnataka to come out and probably in India to come out at
• 1:11:08
  50% ABV And I had three sessions with the commissioner who
• 1:11:13
  approves the labels. Its unsafe to drink at that kind
• 1:11:18
  of ABV. Do you know the gentleman?
• 1:11:20
  And you seem very young. You don't need know your way
• 1:11:22
  around your whiskies. I'm telling you with a person of
• 1:11:24
  experience that you shouldn't be drinking, you know, alcohol at
• 1:11:28
  that strength. And at that point of time, most
• 1:11:32
  of India had a restriction of, you know, distal spirits.
• 1:11:36
  The maximum strength that it could be bottled at was 40
• 1:11:40
  percent, 4342.8 in some, 43 in some.
• 1:11:44
  But that was the, you know, upper limit.
• 1:11:47
  Karnataka at that time was doing 46%.
• 1:11:51
  But when I tasted the liquid that Surinder and Ashok made for
• 1:11:54
  us, when amazed I said that that's got to have body, it's
• 1:11:58
  got to have that ABV to add that Zing to it to, you know, come
• 1:12:02
  forth in terms of the mid palate flavor.
• 1:12:05
  So I said that no, I got to do it at 50.
• 1:12:08
  So one of the exercises that I did was I went back, looked at
• 1:12:13
  all the labels that were very popular that the gentleman would
• 1:12:16
  know and recognize as to what the names were.
• 1:12:20
  For example, Glenn Levitt, he would recognize Glenn Levitt.
• 1:12:23
  So I took the names of all those, his labels for an
• 1:12:27
  example, and showed him saying that this bottle Glen Levitt
• 1:12:29
  bottles at 53%. Yeah, yeah, this bottle bottles
• 1:12:33
  at, you know, more than 50%. So you got to give me.
• 1:12:36
  So after all that haggling, 2 years in that entire project, he
• 1:12:42
  said 50% take it or leave it. You're not going to go do a
• 1:12:46
  strength ever in India. 50% take it or leave it, that became the
• 1:12:52
  presidents. Can you believe that two years
• 1:12:54
  so. Yeah.
• 1:12:55
  Well, we were lucky enough to probably be put in that spot.
• 1:12:58
  Bottling it car strength could be a challenge going forward
• 1:13:01
  because the FSAI, the food safety regulator, cut down Goa
• 1:13:07
  as well. So Goa was one state which
• 1:13:08
  allowed bottling at 58% till recently till about 6-8 months
• 1:13:12
  ago. Now they've clamped down, they
• 1:13:14
  say. They say it's 50% everywhere.
• 1:13:16
  Because this is The thing is like I'm speaking to your
• 1:13:17
  members. We're talking and we were, I was
• 1:13:19
  chatting about single cast whiskey.
• 1:13:24
  Kier was talking about we were and I felt we were sort of
• 1:13:27
  chatting away about different ABBA Lauer releases.
• 1:13:29
  Now Ross, who is on this ABBA Lauer do distillery exclusive
• 1:13:36
  and it's Abberlauer purely in bourbon, right?
• 1:13:38
  And Ross will tell you that Abberlauer in bourbon is
• 1:13:42
  fantastic. And Kev tried to Kev, who's got
• 1:13:45
  the digger of the pub that we've recorded.
• 1:13:47
  Kev will actually drive up to the Abberlauer distillery and
• 1:13:50
  buy maybe a box or two depending.
• 1:13:52
  He knows if Ross is going to be drinking it, he'll need by two
• 1:13:54
  boxes, but he'll buy two boxes of distillery exclusive to bring
• 1:13:57
  them down to put on the back shelf of the bar.
• 1:14:00
  And you know, there's the Abuna, which is a single cask cast
• 1:14:03
  strength. I'm sorry, cast strength,
• 1:14:06
  Haberlauer release, which is just pure shit as Sherry bomb
• 1:14:09
  and all this kind of stuff. And we were chatting away.
• 1:14:11
  Kier was saying, and he said it's so frustrating because, you
• 1:14:14
  know, there there is such a variety.
• 1:14:16
  And then the then we got talking about the single, the single
• 1:14:19
  cask independent Butler seen in Edinburgh alone in Scotland.
• 1:14:23
  We were talking. And because I have to give a
• 1:14:25
  shout out to Madhu. Yeah, Madhu.
• 1:14:28
  Did a fabulous. Job Madhu was I got excited
• 1:14:31
  because Madhu said to me he was at my table so Madhu, Madhu
• 1:14:34
  Rajagani he he was at the table but he was beside me and he said
• 1:14:39
  I introduced myself and he said I'm a I'm a brand ambassador for
• 1:14:42
  the Macallan fantastic and he said I'm also doing the the
• 1:14:46
  Sherry master class sort of bit and I said oh, have you got
• 1:14:50
  Sherry's from the Macallan? No, no, no, no, no.
• 1:14:54
  I got quite excited. Wow.
• 1:14:56
  We're going to Macallan Sherry here.
• 1:14:57
  That's going to be great. But but you know, like we we I
• 1:15:01
  was explaining to him about that we had we had the great side by
• 1:15:04
  side. So the now wait a minute.
• 1:15:07
  Let me get this right. Signatory independent bottler.
• 1:15:13
  Yeah, signatory independent bottler brought out space I
• 1:15:18
  brackets M, right. And the M was a big wink.
• 1:15:23
  It was a Macallan right. And Woodrow, Friends of the Pod,
• 1:15:26
  Woodrow's of Edinburgh, Woody, he got really pissed off with
• 1:15:29
  this because they put it down at a really low price.
• 1:15:32
  So you're getting and and what? A really good.
• 1:15:35
  Really, really good. McAllen.
• 1:15:36
  Yeah, and it's a McAllen single cask, independently bottled.
• 1:15:40
  They're not allowed to put McAllen on it, but they put
• 1:15:42
  space side brackets in and everybody knew it wasn't a manic
• 1:15:47
  more, let me tell you. Right.
• 1:15:49
  So Woody Woodrow's of Edinburgh, they brought out a series called
• 1:15:53
  Race to the Bottom, RIP Independent Bottlers and they
• 1:15:56
  brought out the secret Highland brackets, Mother Lover and it
• 1:16:01
  was great. And his point was he said it was
• 1:16:04
  a race to the bottom and he put a wee on the label.
• 1:16:07
  There was a gravestone that said RIP Independent Bottlers.
• 1:16:10
  And what he was trying to say was like we're seeing that in
• 1:16:13
  Scotland now is it is a race for brands to get whiskey in front
• 1:16:18
  of a consumer and price plays a big part in that.
• 1:16:21
  I don't think we're seeing that at the moment in India, but
• 1:16:23
  we'll see. Maybe we will when the price
• 1:16:26
  drop comes with the 75% drop in that because I think you know,
• 1:16:31
  once it starts to happen once Brian starts in right, we can
• 1:16:35
  cut our prices by quite a lot. And OK, maybe we're making a
• 1:16:38
  small margin, but we're making a small margin on a large scale.
• 1:16:41
  So it'll make sense and maybe we'll start to see that race.
• 1:16:44
  But just being able for us to be able to sit there at the Diggers
• 1:16:46
  one night whilst we're recording at the two of them side by side
• 1:16:49
  at the the Highlands brackets, Mother lover and at the space
• 1:16:53
  side brackets. And I was able to sit there and
• 1:16:56
  I was explaining this to some of your members and just the, the,
• 1:16:58
  the accessibility that we have in Scotland with independent
• 1:17:02
  bottlers what you're and experimenting.
• 1:17:04
  With cash and the freedom to do it right.
• 1:17:05
  Yeah, the fact that you can say right, you know, Woodrow's
• 1:17:08
  again, they brought out a they brought out an Aberlaber 12 in
• 1:17:12
  bourbon release only 200 odd bottles.
• 1:17:15
  And we were able we were able to get access to that.
• 1:17:17
  And you speak to the members and they I felt I've almost like
• 1:17:20
  right rein it in Graham, because I don't want to have to brag.
• 1:17:22
  Oh, I've tried this and I've tried that.
• 1:17:24
  Have you tried an inch gour and saw turns, cash that you haven't
• 1:17:27
  lived in? All that kind of stuff.
• 1:17:28
  But will we ever see, do you think?
• 1:17:30
  Do you think we'll see that in India?
• 1:17:32
  Interesting question and probably I'll probably step back
• 1:17:35
  for a minute here, Graham, because you know while we have
• 1:17:39
  talked about the challenges within India, right, If you look
• 1:17:42
  back in history and I'm a big history buffer in terms of the
• 1:17:46
  house caught whiskey or whiskey as Alcobar progressed over time,
• 1:17:52
  our story is not very different from the other parts of the
• 1:17:56
  globe. It's very similar.
• 1:17:59
  The only thing that's probably going to make a big difference
• 1:18:02
  in all of this is the number of people in the market size, which
• 1:18:06
  is a massive. So we're going to go through
• 1:18:09
  that phase where we're going to have these ups and downs in
• 1:18:12
  terms of the big houses being able to control the market and
• 1:18:16
  things like that. But if a club like ours has been
• 1:18:19
  able to mushroom and there are other clubs now which are doing
• 1:18:22
  very well, they do great jobs in terms of, you know, popularizing
• 1:18:26
  whiskey as a subject and things like that.
• 1:18:28
  It's going to come. It's going to come and we're
• 1:18:31
  going to get popular. The advantage I think so that
• 1:18:35
  most whiskey industry has with India is unlike let's say China
• 1:18:42
  which was a cognac drinking a Baiju drinking market.
• 1:18:46
  India has always been risky loving country.
• 1:18:49
  So that subject affinity, that product affinity is already
• 1:18:54
  there. The distribution is going to be
• 1:18:56
  a long haul. You're going to find your ways
• 1:18:58
  around the market to find that you know, consumer segment that
• 1:19:02
  you're going to be able to cater to.
• 1:19:04
  But when you do, you're going to have a very difficult time
• 1:19:08
  trying to supply to them because that's going to become your
• 1:19:11
  challenge in terms of keeping the supply chain on.
• 1:19:14
  We are not the kind of market that's going to wait for the
• 1:19:16
  next release to finally land. If you're not going to have your
• 1:19:20
  whiskey, which I really like, on, I'll pick up the next best
• 1:19:24
  one because I've got so many options right now.
• 1:19:27
  I'm going to do that. But both sides of the story, big
• 1:19:31
  market, big potential, because Virgin market, as you can
• 1:19:35
  imagine. Yeah, yeah, your Southlands
• 1:19:37
  class Classic example. How many people in India would
• 1:19:41
  have tasted sauton, scarce and whiskey?
• 1:19:44
  Well, This is why I brought it, yeah.
• 1:19:45
  Because it's it's. It would be probably in the, you
• 1:19:48
  know, decimals of, you know, four or five times.
• 1:19:51
  I guess that would be the number of people would have tasted
• 1:19:54
  something like that. So the potential in terms of
• 1:19:57
  numbers is definitely there, but he got to understand how the
• 1:20:01
  market works to be successful. You got to have scale to a
• 1:20:05
  certain extent. You got to know as to how to
• 1:20:07
  work the market, be patient about it, and then you're going
• 1:20:10
  to see success. But I see that coming probably
• 1:20:14
  around 10 years, 15 years from now where we're going to be able
• 1:20:18
  to have a proper whiskey bar where we're going to have
• 1:20:21
  multiple options that you can pull through.
• 1:20:22
  So, but that's the kind of time period that I'm talking.
• 1:20:25
  About so we're talking about this single mole amateur club
• 1:20:26
  whiskey bar. Yeah, at the time when Harsha
• 1:20:29
  and me, I've got all grayed up and hair or no hair and things
• 1:20:32
  like that, yeah. We're we could come over and do
• 1:20:34
  taste it there. Oh.
• 1:20:35
  Yeah. Take overcoming soon.
• 1:20:38
  Fantastic right lads? Look, the sun is going down,
• 1:20:40
  it's getting dark here. We've still got a lot of whiskey
• 1:20:42
  to get through, but we are getting to that time of the the
• 1:20:44
  the podcast recorded where I asked our guests for the what 3
• 1:20:47
  drums? Any three drums have any sort of
• 1:20:49
  story meaning or anything? Harsha here didn't even know we
• 1:20:53
  were recording a podcast. I gave him this trap.
• 1:20:57
  I gave him and the full I gave him every every bit of
• 1:21:00
  information he didn't have. He's obviously not passed on.
• 1:21:02
  Somewhere in my mind, I thought that I did, yeah.
• 1:21:05
  Clearly he was completely because he never had typed the
• 1:21:07
  hair and makeup. But anyway, what we'll do?
• 1:21:09
  So any 3 drams that have any story meaning or anything like
• 1:21:12
  that? So what we'll do is we'll go one
• 1:21:13
  for one. OK.
• 1:21:15
  Hey man, seeing as you're more prepared, I'll go to you first
• 1:21:18
  for your first DRAM. What was your first drama of
• 1:21:20
  your what, 3 Drams? First DRAM.
• 1:21:24
  So the first DRAM that you remember I guess is the
• 1:21:26
  question. Because any, anything, any story
• 1:21:29
  meaning it could be the fact we've had people say George
• 1:21:32
  Keeble said spring back 10 because I just don't think
• 1:21:35
  you'll find a better DRAM, a better price at that age.
• 1:21:38
  And that was his one. But other people have had great
• 1:21:40
  stories as well. So say.
• 1:21:41
  So let me go back to, you know, it'll connect a lot with what
• 1:21:46
  India has to say about Glenfiddich and Glenn Levitt,
• 1:21:48
  right? We are a market when we talk
• 1:21:50
  about single malt whiskey, talk about these two brands because
• 1:21:53
  they have been inherent in terms of our whiskey journey, right?
• 1:21:57
  Big brands, wonderful whiskeys. I really still love the Glenn
• 1:22:01
  Levitt. Some of the whiskeys that they
• 1:22:03
  come out with still resonate with me deeply.
• 1:22:06
  But the 12 year old standard Glenn Levitt duty free stuff was
• 1:22:11
  probably the best whiskey that I've tasted today because there
• 1:22:15
  was this time that I was going through this entire journey or
• 1:22:18
  understanding, learning about whiskey, reading mod maniacs
• 1:22:21
  from Johannes big guru for me in terms of how he influenced my
• 1:22:25
  whiskey journey. So he did talk about Glenn livid
• 1:22:28
  being one of the best whiskey, saying that, you know, you got
• 1:22:31
  to enjoy this. Went to nearby Hill station,
• 1:22:36
  very nice and a pleasant place called Coorg.
• 1:22:39
  That's where Harsha come from. You've been there.
• 1:22:41
  Yeah, yeah, I've been that, Scott, the Scotland of India.
• 1:22:44
  Scotland of India, yeah, it's. Known that, yeah.
• 1:22:47
  Brilliant weather sitting next to a pond and opened a bottle of
• 1:22:53
  Glen Livet with the wife and a friend.
• 1:22:55
  Still have that memory very clear in my head saying that
• 1:22:59
  when it is to that Glenn Livet, I thought that they couldn't
• 1:23:03
  make whiskey better than that because it's just that the
• 1:23:05
  moment the probably the affinity towards whiskey in my head and
• 1:23:10
  all of that running together, it just makes a wonderful brand.
• 1:23:13
  So that's the brand that I'll never forget because yeah,
• 1:23:16
  that's. Great.
• 1:23:16
  No, crack it, right Asha. Dinner's nearly ready.
• 1:23:23
  Chris. I have a chicken today.
• 1:23:25
  Definitely, and some pork Curry as well.
• 1:23:29
  What would you your first DRAM here?
• 1:23:31
  What 3 drams? Like I'll start with something
• 1:23:33
  Indian, something which is close to the heart.
• 1:23:35
  Definitely got to be our first release.
• 1:23:39
  It was so emotional, made a big impact.
• 1:23:42
  The we are, I am bringing out a whiskey into the market.
• 1:23:45
  It was a big deal. Amritamis.
• 1:23:47
  Absolutely. Yeah, no, no.
• 1:23:49
  And it's a great whiskey. You've not had the first
• 1:23:52
  release, Maybe we'll try to find you a little DRAM, but but one
• 1:23:56
  little tidbit there. We we did this unofficial
• 1:23:59
  auctioning of three bottles, the 1-2 and three and all three of
• 1:24:03
  them sold for about 1000 lbs. Really.
• 1:24:06
  I mean to sell it 120 bottles and the surprise that must have
• 1:24:10
  been the real. Nice.
• 1:24:11
  It is a charity auction, basically during COVID.
• 1:24:13
  Yeah, yeah, we said that. We'll put out our bottles.
• 1:24:16
  Whatever money comes out of it, we'll put it to the hospitals or
• 1:24:19
  whoever has the need. For charity.
• 1:24:22
  But even like the surprise of knowing that you're saying
• 1:24:24
  you're speaking to PR agencies, you're starting to worry about
• 1:24:27
  45 minutes or so. Fantastic.
• 1:24:29
  Great. We'll have to get you guys to
• 1:24:30
  come and sell someone to skip for us.
• 1:24:32
  OK. Hey man, drum #2 for you,
• 1:24:34
  please. Well, significant in two ways, I
• 1:24:38
  guess. I'd call out our trip to
• 1:24:41
  Singapore and trip to the great whiskey bars in Singapore.
• 1:24:46
  If you don't know about the secret diagram, let me tell you
• 1:24:49
  this, that what we've realized is going to Scotland's great,
• 1:24:52
  great locales, great, you know, atmosphere.
• 1:24:55
  You really get into the production of whiskey.
• 1:24:57
  But it's not easy to take a bunch of 15 people fly 5000
• 1:25:01
  miles out and to drink whiskey. I'm trying to.
• 1:25:04
  Do a nine months so. We we found this really nice
• 1:25:11
  spot close by Three hour Slide Singapore.
• 1:25:15
  Some of the whiskey bars in Singapore are the best whiskey
• 1:25:17
  bars in the world. I'm going to call out our dear
• 1:25:20
  friends at Swansong, the single cast.
• 1:25:23
  Single cast Brendan. Brendan Oh, he's a popular
• 1:25:26
  bloke, isn't he? Fantastic.
• 1:25:28
  You know, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
• 1:25:31
  So Ben Curtis, who's got the who's single casket?
• 1:25:34
  I know Ben quite well and Brendan was actually over in
• 1:25:38
  Edinburgh visiting and we went out for a couple of drinks and
• 1:25:41
  went to a bar. It was the Abbey Bar in
• 1:25:43
  Edinburgh. And we went to there because Ben
• 1:25:46
  knew that they had the single cast bottles on the on the bar
• 1:25:49
  and I thought this is the coolest thing ever.
• 1:25:51
  So Brett, so Ben said to Brendan, pick, pick a couple of
• 1:25:54
  single casts whiskies will have them.
• 1:25:57
  So Brendan's standing at the bar in Edinburgh and he said, excuse
• 1:25:59
  me, can I have a look at those, those three up there?
• 1:26:03
  He's looking at the label. So what are they?
• 1:26:04
  And she said, I can't remember what the whiskers were.
• 1:26:07
  And he said, I know them really, really well.
• 1:26:09
  And then she brought the bottles down.
• 1:26:10
  He said, yeah, my name's on there.
• 1:26:12
  Like my signature's on the bottle.
• 1:26:14
  I thought, wow, like what I think you'll be able to do in
• 1:26:17
  Scotland on the other side of the world.
• 1:26:18
  Fantastic. So sorry for interrupting.
• 1:26:20
  So. Yeah, no, no, no worries.
• 1:26:21
  Great stories. Brendan is a good friend and he
• 1:26:24
  takes care of us very, very well when we take a group there.
• 1:26:27
  But back to Singapore are almost like watering hole.
• 1:26:30
  So whenever we have this group that's really, really
• 1:26:33
  enthusiastic saying let's go hit some good whiskeys.
• 1:26:36
  So we fly to Singapore, hit these wonderful whiskey bars.
• 1:26:40
  They have a flight all ready for us.
• 1:26:42
  Take them through the flight, the members and you know what
• 1:26:45
  they're, you know, experiencing in terms of nice whiskeys.
• 1:26:50
  One of those tours, Aditya, a member of SMA, say he knew that
• 1:26:56
  I had a, you know, thing for peated whiskeys, and Brora is
• 1:27:00
  one of those whiskeys that I had.
• 1:27:03
  Very. Expensive taste, but it's always
• 1:27:06
  a thing, right? What you can't taste, you always
• 1:27:09
  desire. So Brora is always one of those
• 1:27:11
  segments. And in the Alder Lions, I
• 1:27:14
  remember I'll probably share that picture that you can put in
• 1:27:19
  as part of this podcast. We had this table and they were
• 1:27:22
  like 50 glasses on this table, all empty because we'd gone
• 1:27:25
  through all of them. And at that point of time, Aditi
• 1:27:29
  says that I'm going to get you something special.
• 1:27:30
  And he buys everyone Brora, everyone of the trip Brora.
• 1:27:36
  You know, saying that, you know, this is something for the club.
• 1:27:38
  And that was such a wonderful gesture.
• 1:27:40
  I'll remember that Ram for the gesture, what he bought to the
• 1:27:44
  table. And of course the whiskey is
• 1:27:46
  freaking hell. After all those whiskeys, it
• 1:27:49
  still made an impression. So Brora, I think so.
• 1:27:53
  It was in 1972. Wow, he's ever around there.
• 1:27:57
  And he got everyone. Fantastic.
• 1:28:01
  OK, Asha, what? Be yourself.
• 1:28:02
  Second DRAM. Second DRAM, you're asking me
• 1:28:06
  for my favorites. It's like you're holding me at
• 1:28:08
  gunpoint and saying no. If it's a favorite, if it's a
• 1:28:11
  story, that's all we're asking. Second one would probably be a
• 1:28:15
  lagable in the we tasted in the warehouse at the at the
• 1:28:20
  distillery with Ian MacArthur. It was his last year in 2023.
• 1:28:25
  We were fortunate to be there in in August a couple of months
• 1:28:29
  before he retired. Yeah, thank you.
• 1:28:32
  And I think it was a 25 year old, right.
• 1:28:34
  It was the last last one, right? Yeah, the the last cast there
• 1:28:38
  was a was a 25 year old where to suck it out with a Val inch with
• 1:28:43
  a Val inch put it put in a in a bottle in all of his tastes.
• 1:28:46
  I think it was just the experience of sitting there
• 1:28:48
  enjoying the whiskey, sharing that the, the love and, and the
• 1:28:54
  and the energy that that man brought to that room was, was
• 1:28:57
  incredible. I think that stands out for me
• 1:28:59
  one. Of the things is we've had Ross
• 1:29:01
  mentioned on the podcast, he's he's the guy that's worked in
• 1:29:04
  whiskey longer. Like I say, he's had too many
• 1:29:06
  jobs in whiskey. But he did say at one point to
• 1:29:08
  Angus and myself, you know, there's no taste like whiskey,
• 1:29:11
  whiskey that's come straight out of the cast while you're in the
• 1:29:13
  warehouse. And we've been lucky enough
• 1:29:15
  since to be able to try that. And it's an experience that is
• 1:29:19
  absolutely fantastic. So brilliant.
• 1:29:21
  OK, Hey man, your last third and final DRAM.
• 1:29:24
  Well, I guess the dream DRAM for me has always been doing
• 1:29:30
  something Amruth right? You filling me up?
• 1:29:32
  Yeah. OK.
• 1:29:33
  Do you think that we need some lights around here?
• 1:29:35
  No, no, we're nearly finished. The sun is going down, but I
• 1:29:37
  just thought we're OK. And it's 7:00 PM in India,
• 1:29:40
  ladies and. Gentlemen, we bottled last year,
• 1:29:47
  or was it a couple of years ago, something called the Children of
• 1:29:50
  the Lesser God. And for me, that's a great story
• 1:29:54
  because my dear friend Arun from the Swan Song, he said that even
• 1:30:02
  I don't know about the whiskey, but your story is selling great
• 1:30:05
  out here because there's such an interesting story with that.
• 1:30:09
  So long back when I was friends with Ashok and I'm still am.
• 1:30:13
  I don't know why because he still doesn't give me great
• 1:30:15
  whiskey. He says that you come back.
• 1:30:18
  But keeping that aside, when I started to get to know Ashok a
• 1:30:21
  little bit deeper, or rather a little bit more in terms of a
• 1:30:25
  person, I had written in this e-mail that sort of was rant
• 1:30:29
  because most of the great whiskeys that Amrit was doing at
• 1:30:33
  that point of time was all exported.
• 1:30:35
  We never used to get that stuff here.
• 1:30:37
  So one of the things that I had written in the e-mail was, are
• 1:30:40
  we children of the lesser God that you don't really give?
• 1:30:44
  Up it was an amrit. It was an Amrit whiskey, so.
• 1:30:47
  And they were. They were sport enough to bottle
• 1:30:50
  it this on this. Way that's the thing that when
• 1:30:53
  we really went and picked up a cast recently a couple of years
• 1:30:57
  ago, he said that let's do this children of the lesser God so
• 1:31:01
  that it really brings it into full circle.
• 1:31:04
  Saying that from the time that we started this discussion
• 1:31:08
  saying that you'd send me a rant to actually bottling of whiskey
• 1:31:12
  for you that can't be bigger than this.
• 1:31:14
  So that for me, I guess that's. A great story, a lovely name as
• 1:31:19
  well. Children of the Lesser.
• 1:31:20
  Children of the lesser God. Right Asha, bring us home right
• 1:31:23
  now, Drum. Last last one.
• 1:31:26
  I could say that every drama I have I have with him is my best
• 1:31:30
  draft. I could say that he's.
• 1:31:32
  Not good at it. Well, I think the Paul John
• 1:31:37
  Mithuna which is bottled at 58% is my favorite for the last two
• 1:31:43
  or three years ever since they brought out in the market and
• 1:31:47
  the product is so good, it's reverse in terms of how they
• 1:31:52
  mature it. So they first put it into French
• 1:31:56
  oak casks and then they do bourbon cask finish, right.
• 1:32:00
  So it's the other way around 58%.
• 1:32:02
  And it's it's like chocolate on the palette.
• 1:32:05
  It's an absolutely full bodied whiskey.
• 1:32:07
  Just just brilliant. Knocks it out of the park.
• 1:32:09
  I would pick that any day above everybody else.
• 1:32:11
  And and Paul John of course, have been great friends, great
• 1:32:14
  supporters of the club. So brilliant.
• 1:32:16
  Just that. Well listen lads, that's been
• 1:32:18
  absolutely the sun is almost. In.
• 1:32:22
  Front of us look guys, thank you very much for for for having me
• 1:32:26
  to your tasting. Thank you so much.
• 1:32:27
  And he's not appeared, but thanks Avanish for letting us
• 1:32:30
  use his. Terrible.
• 1:32:31
  Yeah. He was supposed to come in
• 1:32:32
  somewhere in the middle. Yeah.
• 1:32:34
  You know our food. But anyway, listen, thank you
• 1:32:35
  very much. All the very best.
• 1:32:36
  Thanks for listening, Slangewa. Slangewa.