Latest / Whisky Stories Podcast / Play your Distilleries Right - Missing guests, Tales from Japan and Higher or Lower

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Play your Distilleries Right - Missing guests, Tales from Japan and Higher or Lower · Whisky Stories Podcast

• 0:00
  But yeah, that's one you can't say so.
• 0:03
  Right, we're all set. Right.
• 0:05
  OK, OK. Angus, looking forward to this.
• 0:08
  Clap us in and another welcome to the Whiskey Stories podcast.
• 0:19
  Welcome along ladies and gentlemen to player
• 0:22
  distilleries, right? Can you tell me is Glenn Keith
• 0:30
  higher or lower? I would think that Glenn Thief
• 0:33
  is lower. Than Glenn talk older.
• 0:40
  Younger, I'm refounding this I'm going to take.
• 0:46
  For you, I thought, I thought, what would I bring a couple of
• 0:48
  Sherry tarts back from Japan? Yes.
• 0:51
  Nice welcome along to the Whiskey Stories Podcast with
• 0:53
  myself, Craig there. And we are back in the athletic
• 0:56
  arms, are back in the tiny little snug, and we are back
• 0:58
  when it all began, how it all began with just the three of us.
• 1:01
  Because well lads, for the very first time on the Whiskey
• 1:05
  Stories Podcast, we have been let down by a guest.
• 1:08
  A guest who shall remain nameless.
• 1:10
  However, we are flying solo tonight.
• 1:13
  Yeah, we are raging, but we'll get over it eventually.
• 1:16
  Absolutely. I mean, to be honest, the
• 1:18
  podcast moves on, but. Angus has returned, so the. 2 is
• 1:21
  the good news for me is right. Well, Angus has returned from
• 1:24
  from from Japan and you are off your death.
• 1:26
  It's true, true. We're back.
• 1:28
  Back in fight, are you feeling alright?
• 1:30
  Aye, a few whiskeys sort me out, all right.
• 1:33
  And Angus, you are away in Japan whaling for a couple of weeks.
• 1:36
  That's what you're doing here. That's what you No dolphins are
• 1:39
  harmed. Before, before before we get
• 1:42
  cancelled by Peter or. Whatever he blaze whale
• 1:46
  responsibly. Wow, what a sack.
• 1:48
  What a sack. So get some drums in front of
• 1:51
  us. We're backing diggers.
• 1:52
  What you got yourself, Graham? We do.
• 1:54
  Good question, right? So I've gone for a line up of
• 1:56
  three. The if I'm going left to right,
• 2:00
  which isn't the order I'm starting actually drinking right
• 2:02
  to left, but I right to left, then I'll say I've got Thompson
• 2:05
  Brothers camper van. Yeah.
• 2:07
  So it's a camper van brewery. I think it's a kind.
• 2:10
  Of oh, so it's got, it's a camper van, the beer that you
• 2:12
  have. Yeah, so that this is a whiskey
• 2:14
  they've done in collaboration. So blending malt Scotch whiskey
• 2:18
  over 8 years, blended over 8 years.
• 2:20
  Nice. So that's, that's what I've got
• 2:21
  there. I love.
• 2:21
  The Thompson brothers. Big shout out to them, really
• 2:23
  exciting stuff happening over the next couple of weeks, next
• 2:25
  few months as well for them. So hopefully we'll be tying in.
• 2:27
  They have messaged us, we'll be in touch.
• 2:29
  Car Moore. I'm a big fan of Car Moore.
• 2:31
  Morrison Desilers. Tam Cuthbert.
• 2:34
  Love them. I've got a Ben Nevis distillery.
• 2:37
  They're still 2014, six years Madeira finish.
• 2:43
  Actually, I've just realised by accident as well, all my drums
• 2:45
  are under 10 years old. There you go.
• 2:48
  So that's a six year old Nevis Madeira finished there and.
• 2:53
  Is it 2014? When was it?
• 2:55
  Sure, it's a 10 year old. That was boiled last year.
• 2:57
  No, it's aged 6. Oh wow, so it's been.
• 3:00
  Model model 2014, maybe I can, No, no, there's still 2014
• 3:04
  there's. Still 2014, that's six years
• 3:05
  old. So that's that's been on the
• 3:07
  shelves for a while, yeah. So there you go.
• 3:09
  And the last one I've got there are big eight for discussion
• 3:13
  there. So I've got that cause basically
• 3:15
  now that we don't have a guest to talk to, we're gonna have to
• 3:18
  have a bit of discussion this evening.
• 3:19
  So that's that's what I've decided.
• 3:21
  What about yourself? I've gone for R and 10.
• 3:24
  Standard. Was it one of my what, 3 drams?
• 3:26
  I think it was it's. Certainly it's a DRAM that when
• 3:29
  I'm out of ideas, have one of them and I kill Kieran Heavily
• 3:33
  Pitted. Well, and it's called Kieran.
• 3:35
  Heavily Pitted is a kind of note to our friend and listener Scott
• 3:39
  Moore out in Tennessee. Well, actually, he's our We can
• 3:42
  now officially call him sort of our American reporter.
• 3:45
  I guess. He's our American host over in
• 3:48
  the States. We've branched out so we're kind
• 3:50
  of like, I don't know, you know how the BBC have BBC?
• 3:53
  Correspondents. BBC you spell like how odd beg
• 3:58
  our embassies yeah, he's he's a. Whiskey Stories Embassy American
• 4:03
  Ambassador American. Ambassador.
• 4:05
  Hi, we got brand ambassador, brand ambassador to the Whiskey
• 4:11
  Story, a Whiskey Stories podcast, brand ambassador to the
• 4:14
  United States. Sounds a bit right.
• 4:16
  He's. I mean, he's not one for blowing
• 4:18
  his own trumpet, isn't it? So people don't know he's also a
• 4:22
  professional trumpet player now. He's also done a great job
• 4:26
  because any kind of Co hosts on the podcast have to give me a
• 4:30
  bit of a slagging and his wife's done a great job of that as
• 4:32
  well. That was brilliant.
• 4:33
  So if you if you have listened to the podcast regularly, as
• 4:36
  you're new to the podcast, head to our Facebook group.
• 4:39
  It's a brilliant wee community. We've got going on in there on
• 4:43
  the Fridays putting their drums in and I just one night he's
• 4:46
  he's drinking an independently bottled North British Yeah, not
• 4:51
  of any significant age of a bottle that doesn't exist
• 4:53
  anymore. And I said how the hell have you
• 4:55
  got that and that and that kind of spiralled to me going in the
• 4:59
  background. I can see a phage Lafrog.
• 5:02
  I need this explained that he's put a great video together. 20
• 5:05
  minutes and and to be honest, like he really goes through the
• 5:07
  intricacies of we take it for granted.
• 5:10
  You know, we we've said it before, I say it again.
• 5:12
  You know, we're how lucky we are to have on our doorstep so much
• 5:15
  whiskey. But but literally particularly a
• 5:17
  pub like the athletic arms and also as they were shouted out
• 5:19
  last last week, you know, Noticus down in leaf being
• 5:22
  nominated that are are making it into the top 50 UK bars massive
• 5:28
  for them. But at the same time, like, you
• 5:30
  know, we could go to the shops and buy whiskeys.
• 5:33
  We've had people on the podcast who are brand ambassadors tell
• 5:36
  us that, you know, a bar with half of the whiskeys that we
• 5:41
  would have in here would probably be the biggest whiskey
• 5:44
  collection in the whole country, never mind just in, in
• 5:47
  Edinburgh. And I I you know, Diggers being
• 5:50
  one of the largest whiskey collections, open bottle whiskey
• 5:53
  collections in Edinburgh as a huge Bubba. 100% and this is a
• 5:56
  DRAM the Kilken heavily repeated that was his favorite.
• 5:59
  And so not normally, as you guys know, something that I would
• 6:01
  even pretend to enjoy. But it comes.
• 6:06
  Defeated stuff, especially Campbelltown.
• 6:08
  I think I'm going to do we trip to Campbelltown this year with
• 6:11
  my old man, Whiskey, dad and lad.
• 6:13
  There you go. We talked about leaving £200
• 6:15
  worth of whiskey on the bus seat on the way home from SO.
• 6:19
  I will say it was mentioned last week my father and I had an
• 6:22
  excellent day out, plenty of research and fortunately such a
• 6:27
  good whiskey. Sorry I've not told you about
• 6:28
  this. So I got him one of the whiskey
• 6:30
  stories blends for this Christmas for his Christmas for
• 6:33
  his birthday, which just happened.
• 6:36
  Limited amount of bottles still. Available 50. 6 year old.
• 6:39
  So I was like, you don't have a 25 year old blend and he bought
• 6:42
  a an old pulply single casket. I got him at the Christmas time
• 6:45
  that he's bought a second bottle.
• 6:46
  Was that from the whiskey shop? From the whiskey shop I.
• 6:48
  Had a sample of that, the ginger boy gave me something.
• 6:50
  Really good liquid, lovely and I've had a great diggers.
• 6:53
  I've sent them on the bus back to East Linton and he's left
• 6:56
  both bottles on the bus. Right.
• 6:59
  See what he said in his comment on the YouTube channel.
• 7:01
  I left 200 quids worth of whiskey on the seat.
• 7:04
  I thought he'd been sick. No.
• 7:06
  No, no, no, he actually left his bottles on the bus.
• 7:11
  Right, well make a shout out to Bobby Barr because, well, I I
• 7:14
  was sitting there thinking fair play for coming cleaning that
• 7:17
  and admitted to being sick with the bus in the wind.
• 7:19
  No, I mean, listen, I'm sure he wasn't far off it and you, you
• 7:23
  hate that I'm saying this, but but apparently when he got home,
• 7:26
  my mother welcomed him home and he's he'd had a clue, had a fall
• 7:30
  between between the bus stop and getting home.
• 7:33
  But anyway. Please walk responsibly, please.
• 7:34
  Walk responsibly from. The In a way, leaving the
• 7:38
  bottles on the bus prevented the disruption Well, so.
• 7:40
  Here's the thing, I got in contact with Phobian buses.
• 7:43
  Well, he was putting himself to bed.
• 7:45
  Somebody's oh. And what's the chances
• 7:48
  realistically? You got 2 bottles of escape?
• 7:51
  They got back to me. One of the two bottles had been
• 7:54
  handed in. Oh.
• 7:55
  God, this is going to be a regular indictment if it's a
• 7:57
  whiskey. So there's somebody has been,
• 7:59
  oh, that old boy's left a couple of bottles of whiskey there, or
• 8:03
  maybe it was a driver that picked up.
• 8:05
  And if I had a look at those bottles, the old pot, I've heard
• 8:07
  of that whiskey stories blend. I'll hand that one back in.
• 8:11
  Oh God, it. Means it means that the whiskey
• 8:15
  my dad has lost as a bottle that he's enjoyed and had before and
• 8:19
  can get another one of the whiskey stories blend has
• 8:22
  returned to its rightful home and he will get it this weekend
• 8:26
  when I turn 26 so I'm going over to his house so.
• 8:29
  Well, if anyone from Lothian Buses is listening, we'd happily
• 8:33
  provide you with a heavily discounted bottle of the Whiskey
• 8:35
  Stories Podcast whiskey just to say thank you for returning it
• 8:39
  to its rightful place. Thank you very much.
• 8:42
  Also, I find out who it is, took one bottle and gave the other
• 8:44
  one. I'll wring her neck at the same
• 8:48
  time. We were lucky.
• 8:50
  And so that that is what happened.
• 8:51
  That's how he left 200 lbs of lift.
• 8:55
  He literally left it. So we had a good day in our
• 8:57
  favorite pub with my old man and, and seeing Charles Kurt.
• 9:01
  We've done a kind of blind whiskey tasting, had three
• 9:05
  drams. We all tasted it and we swapped
• 9:07
  them round and swapped them round and one person had bought
• 9:09
  them. So it was quite funny because.
• 9:12
  I've got the comment here because actually it's quite
• 9:15
  funny because I really had a chocolate to myself because he
• 9:22
  says alright, I've just started watching this episode and like
• 9:25
  to apologise to Charles. I have no recollection of
• 9:27
  getting home that day and I was home just before 7 PMI didn't
• 9:31
  have a terrific. I did have a terrific day with
• 9:33
  the lads starting at Hawks Miller, but got off, got off the
• 9:36
  bus with £200 worth of whiskey left on the seat right.
• 9:39
  So that's me thinking he's been sick.
• 9:41
  Drink responsibly folks. But a great day had with my lads
• 9:45
  and then it wasn't long later I yeah, I saw that comment and
• 9:47
  then he popped up on his Facebook.
• 9:49
  It is. He put a few pictures up on his
• 9:51
  Instagram. Yeah.
• 9:52
  And I saw the first one was him. It was Chuck Withee's there.
• 9:55
  So it was a. Delta good.
• 9:57
  And so so there you go. There was a wee secret whiskey
• 9:59
  story. This the the surviving bottle of
• 10:02
  whiskey stories pass around the Lothian.
• 10:05
  It's not a wee. Bit of Are we about travelling
• 10:06
  there? Absolutely.
• 10:08
  And So what drams have you got yourself on here?
• 10:10
  Well I've only I've got 1 drum here really.
• 10:14
  That and. Then you.
• 10:15
  Could ball in the bar. I will introduce the others.
• 10:17
  I've got a recommended by yourself Ross a cast strength
• 10:23
  edition of Highland Park. I just fancied someone where
• 10:26
  about a beat and. It's something that I hadn't.
• 10:29
  I'd had a lot of Highland Park and never had the cast strength
• 10:32
  until doing a brand tasting and a great brand ambassador they've
• 10:36
  got called Martin Mcvartson. It's a big Danish guy got iron
• 10:39
  pack tattoo. In his chest suits the brand
• 10:42
  person. Well, certainly.
• 10:43
  Did you look at the New Highland?
• 10:45
  Parts. Well, that's so Martin
• 10:47
  Mcvartson's in suits and GT3 and then and kind of much more
• 10:50
  polished that that. But it is quite funny.
• 10:52
  The first time I had that I was like really high strength, you
• 10:56
  know, between 62 and 64% most of the cash strengths because our
• 11:00
  filling strength is so high. So it was well aged stock.
• 11:02
  It's still really strong and. We'll talk about, well, talk
• 11:05
  about what other drams we've got later because we'll do a bit of
• 11:08
  that later. But I do want to go back to
• 11:10
  Scott Scott Moore's video because as what was really
• 11:13
  fascinating about the video is he did a great job of not only
• 11:18
  showing us the collection and giving us a run through.
• 11:20
  There was also a few stories that he had associated with each
• 11:22
  whiskey, but also he really went in to explain the difficulties
• 11:27
  of or the sort of intricacies of buying whiskey.
• 11:30
  And one of the things that was fascinating was when he started
• 11:32
  talking about like, you know, sometimes I'll have to drive
• 11:35
  through it another state or I have to cross the state line to
• 11:38
  get here. And he also just mentioned like,
• 11:40
  oh, it's there's one, there's one place I can go to and it's a
• 11:43
  three hour drive out and a three hour drive back, but I'll do it
• 11:46
  on a day off just to get himself some.
• 11:48
  And he said was it was it? There was a phrase that was like
• 11:51
  old dusty hunt, dusty hunting, hunting dusties.
• 11:55
  I like it was like that. But basically, by the sounds of
• 11:58
  it, you know, it sounds like you often turn up at a liquor store
• 12:02
  as it would be over there and really sort of look at the dusty
• 12:06
  bottles that have been purchased at some point and for cotton and
• 12:09
  left at the back of the shelves. And that's the classic.
• 12:11
  Story of the story Miduri. Exactly, and that's where he
• 12:14
  wants he wants to source his balls, but also I loved as well
• 12:17
  is like my whiskey guy. He was talking about the guy
• 12:20
  obviously owns or runs the local shop to how he has to convince
• 12:25
  this guy, look, go and buy this type of whiskey.
• 12:28
  I promise you it'll be it'll be worth it because it's really
• 12:31
  good. But I just wonder, like, you
• 12:32
  know, how many people are buying whiskey over in the States?
• 12:36
  Must be, it must be huge. But at the same time, for the
• 12:39
  different types of brands that seem to get themselves out
• 12:42
  there, it's really interesting that like, people are managing
• 12:44
  to get their whiskey into these these these drink shops.
• 12:48
  Bonkers. And and especially 'cause he's a
• 12:50
  Scotch whiskey drinker in Tennessee.
• 12:52
  Yeah, you go to any liquor store, even in the Midwest or
• 12:56
  East Coast parts of America, where I've actually went into
• 12:58
  liquor stores, every shop has a barrel pick of their local
• 13:01
  bourbon or a big brand of Buffalo Trace, etcetera.
• 13:05
  But Scotch whisky is generally the same stuff that you're
• 13:07
  seeing lots of Oban whenever. I met an American.
• 13:17
  They said, oh, I've got a bottle of Oban.
• 13:19
  What's Oban? He.
• 13:20
  Didn't have had doers on his shelf.
• 13:22
  I didn't say a doers. I didn't.
• 13:23
  Think there was much blended Scotch at all, But yeah, Glenn
• 13:27
  Leavitt, Glenn Fenwick, Macallan oven.
• 13:30
  But it was interesting because he's obviously in a part of the
• 13:35
  world which is famous for drinking whiskey of some sorts,
• 13:38
  but he's just a Scottish drinker.
• 13:40
  And I had, I really couldn't comprehend that, to be honest.
• 13:43
  And the fact, yeah, crossing state lines, America is strange.
• 13:47
  17 of the states are government controlled liquor stores.
• 13:51
  So something that recently I've seen come up because Ohio, it's
• 13:54
  a very big state. I'm a big Michigan man, so not
• 13:57
  really meant to like Ohio. They're like the rival states.
• 14:00
  But the senator in Ohio is trying to basically get them to
• 14:04
  also be state-run, state owned because it gets more money for
• 14:06
  the local government, I guess. But we had AI would listen to
• 14:10
  your podcast last week. Brilliant.
• 14:13
  Talking about flipping bottles, if it's government owned state,
• 14:16
  I had never thought about this state controlled liquor stores.
• 14:19
  You can't resell whiskey. There's no auction market,
• 14:22
  there's no secondary market and I had never thought about that.
• 14:25
  And so, you know, people are up in arms because the secondary
• 14:28
  market, especially for bourbons and what we know for Scotch
• 14:31
  whiskeys, it's massive. Anything from the Buffalo Trace
• 14:34
  antique collection, whether it's Papi Van Winkles or it's
• 14:38
  Wellers, etcetera, people put them on the shelf at retail.
• 14:41
  It leaves a shelf and it gets resold for five times the
• 14:43
  amount. I quite like the idea that
• 14:47
  you're not allowed to resell it. Must be there must be having
• 14:49
  like underground Oh. For sure, for sure.
• 14:51
  People are probably selling it on Facebook.
• 14:53
  Mark, what is, you know, if I went to sell my bottle on
• 14:55
  Facebook Marketplace, should I be licensed?
• 14:58
  Probably, yeah. Yeah.
• 14:59
  But I bet there's lots of people that are doing it.
• 15:01
  And it's interesting, it reminds me of when we had more on
• 15:05
  Swedish Whiskey Girl talking about the again in in Sweden
• 15:09
  it's all government owned liquor shops.
• 15:11
  So it's kind of you have to kind of go in and there's your
• 15:14
  government's life. But it's very strange.
• 15:16
  The mix report is lagging. Super lagging.
• 15:21
  Well, remember. Yeah, but yeah, I mean it goes
• 15:26
  back. I mean, I don't want to go over
• 15:27
  what we talked about last week and things, but like it's
• 15:29
  interesting from your perspective, Ross, but quit
• 15:31
  flipping bottles and stuff. And you know, we talked last
• 15:36
  week on it about bottles that you have on the shelf that you
• 15:38
  never want to leave your leave your house unless you're sharing
• 15:41
  them with people or bottles that you have where you would be
• 15:44
  quite happy to have you ever have you ever flipped bottles?
• 15:47
  So I thought this was really interesting.
• 15:49
  I have never resold any bottles until recently.
• 15:52
  I'd sold some bottles to Kev, but flipping a bottle was
• 15:58
  buying. Only sold to trade.
• 16:01
  Yeah, yeah, I've picked up bottles for people or whatever,
• 16:03
  but it's I've never bought bottles with the intention of
• 16:06
  selling them until I went to phase and I was in line.
• 16:09
  I'm not really a Kill Holman fan.
• 16:11
  It was the 1st unpeated 100% Aila Kill Holman and you had the
• 16:14
  line up there on the day. It felt silly not to buy one at
• 16:18
  the same time. I gave it to Kev for way less
• 16:21
  than it goes for an auction because I would have read that.
• 16:23
  But most of the stuff that I've got on my flat, even if it's not
• 16:26
  open, I I intend to open it. I've never bought anything
• 16:31
  really of the intention of selling it.
• 16:33
  I thought it was interesting that I think Curtis said it was
• 16:37
  a good, really nice story. But buying bottles for the
• 16:40
  intention of not opening them, I don't understand that at all,
• 16:45
  which is interesting. I think there's a nice sentiment
• 16:47
  to it and but you're always looking for that reason, the
• 16:51
  bottles. I like getting a 1999 at the
• 16:53
  same 26 next week. It's quite cool to have your own
• 16:56
  vintage. Well, I can still afford it,
• 16:58
  which is soon not going to be possible.
• 17:00
  Yeah, but having that bottle, then open it when you have a
• 17:03
  child or something significant, I get that.
• 17:05
  But just having it going, I'll never open that.
• 17:08
  Because I'm a bit different to you, Ross.
• 17:10
  I've got, we were talking about it during the week.
• 17:14
  I've probably got about the same as you.
• 17:16
  I think both said we've got about maybe 30 to 50 somewhere
• 17:18
  in between there bottles in the house.
• 17:20
  I've only got about four of them open.
• 17:22
  It's not because I don't want to open them.
• 17:24
  I just have a bit of a policy. Say I want to open it, drink it
• 17:27
  and then when I finish it. Open another one.
• 17:30
  But within there are definitely, because I had to do a bit of
• 17:33
  reorganizing because my collection grew after coming
• 17:36
  back from Japan. So it was a case of right, and
• 17:39
  I've got a different cupboard that I was like, right, I'll put
• 17:41
  stuff in there, but I'll put the kind of stuff that was at the
• 17:43
  back of the shelf there that I'm probably not going to touch for
• 17:45
  a while. Yeah.
• 17:46
  And you'll be pleased to hear the whiskey stories playing was
• 17:48
  one of those bottles where I was like, hey, I probably won't open
• 17:50
  that tomorrow. But yeah, you know, that will
• 17:53
  stay there. The Wraith Rover's editions as
• 17:55
  well are in there. Oh yeah, that and so there's a
• 17:57
  few bottles that's. Quite a healthy way to do it.
• 17:59
  I like, I like you've got, you've got your 4 drinking
• 18:01
  bottles and that's what you'll stick to until and what or not.
• 18:04
  And then you finish what you finish when you're like, OK.
• 18:05
  When I finish. One what gets promoted, it's
• 18:07
  great. It's great when I finish one
• 18:09
  'cause I'm like right what I'm opening next.
• 18:10
  Yeah, so it's like you're having your own internal shot.
• 18:13
  We have 5 exactly. I have your system basically,
• 18:16
  'cause I have Angus and I have maybe spoken, maybe we'd be like
• 18:19
  for a drama or been out to the pub or wherever it's been and
• 18:22
  Angus will say like, oh, I've got a bottle and that that's
• 18:25
  going to be my next one. I'm I'm looking.
• 18:27
  Forward to. I'll get you around sometime.
• 18:29
  But I do think, yeah, it's a nice way of doing it.
• 18:31
  Yeah, it's a really nice way of doing it, to be honest.
• 18:35
  Yeah, it's an interesting one because we we we touched upon it
• 18:38
  and I mentioned that with the Whiskey Collectors club guys,
• 18:41
  the competitions guys. And, you know, they were the
• 18:43
  first people that we'd had on the podcast where they really,
• 18:47
  you know, they really looked into that idea of collecting
• 18:49
  whiskey. And you look at it from a
• 18:51
  consumer point of view. I'm assuming like if you look at
• 18:54
  it, is it three maybe types of consumers that you'll have or
• 18:58
  maybe 3 or 4 as you know, take the trade out of it.
• 19:01
  Your three would maybe be what, just your standard whiskey
• 19:05
  drinkers? Who buy one, finish it, buy
• 19:07
  another. And that could be anything from.
• 19:09
  Mostly supermarket. Stuff or even just guys that
• 19:12
  come to the pub to drink and like the DRAM.
• 19:14
  Then you've got your sort of maybe further into the whiskey
• 19:17
  drinkers, maybe people like that.
• 19:18
  We fall under where you're really actively looking for.
• 19:21
  Having a selection at home that you'll dabble into sometimes and
• 19:25
  maybe go through a few different drams that night.
• 19:27
  But most, yeah, I would be a good example of that.
• 19:30
  I think 90% of what I've got is already open.
• 19:32
  So when you come round to my house, see how about anything
• 19:36
  that's open? Help yourself.
• 19:38
  There we go, Angus's. Sure, you've got.
• 19:40
  But I'll let me tell you right. That looks nice, Angus.
• 19:43
  Well, that's not open actually. This is 3 bottles of the 1.75
• 19:46
  litre of old smuggler on his optics behind the bar in the
• 19:49
  house. You know, that's all you're
• 19:51
  that's all you're getting. And once honestly, Graham, I
• 19:55
  promise you as soon as we get through that, I'll let you into
• 19:57
  the bottom cupboard challenge. But then, so then you've got and
• 20:01
  then I think you've probably got your luxury whiskey guys now
• 20:03
  they'll be the people that. Could pay 800 pound £900 to
• 20:07
  enjoy a Macallan a 40 year old. I would say the answer is their
• 20:11
  best whiskey collectors, people who don't drink whiskey.
• 20:13
  And then the final of the four, I would say are people that
• 20:16
  would spend, I mean, what was the whiskey that they were
• 20:18
  giving away? That was the Macallan.
• 20:20
  What was the one that they were giving away when they came on at
• 20:22
  the pod there? Was a one.
• 20:23
  There's onto 1. And they had to, you need to
• 20:25
  wear gloves to open it. You had to twist it to pull it
• 20:27
  out, I mean. Horizon.
• 20:28
  Horizon Mental. Mental.
• 20:30
  And you're saying yourself, first of all, if you did well,
• 20:33
  held if you did, yeah, yeah. If you did have that bottle on
• 20:38
  your shelf, first of all, it would need its own mantelpiece
• 20:40
  to put it on. Secondly, I think they were
• 20:43
  saying that retail's about 30 odd grand or something like
• 20:45
  that. Yeah, it's only 4050 grand.
• 20:48
  Probably thirdly, boarding it would be an absolute bloody
• 20:50
  nightmare because when you actually think it's a 200 job
• 20:52
  trying to get out of the out of the but it but it's surely
• 20:57
  people it's we said it. It's like that.
• 20:59
  I suppose if someone likes the look of a bottle on their shelf
• 21:03
  and they say that finishes my mantelpiece perfectly, then I'll
• 21:06
  never get. Moved.
• 21:07
  I, I, I had two thoughts when I was thinking about that bottle
• 21:10
  when we were doing the thing and my first one was OK, knowing
• 21:14
  what it enters to enter the competition, if you win that
• 21:17
  bottle, you could say, well, look, at the end of the day, it
• 21:20
  only costs me the price of the ticket.
• 21:22
  So I'll be silly not to drink it, of course.
• 21:24
  But on the other point of view as well, this is worth a certain
• 21:26
  amount of money. Maybe I'll just maybe I think in
• 21:30
  that situation I probably would display a bit and to be honest,
• 21:32
  I could buy Jolly and a couple of Jolly nice bottles.
• 21:35
  I have plenty leftover. I think that's, I think that's
• 21:38
  the general Scottish attitude of, I don't know many people who
• 21:42
  would spend more than £200 a bottle of whiskey.
• 21:44
  And I think that's the right attitude to have because most
• 21:47
  Scottish people's attitude is, well I really, I really like
• 21:50
  Glen going white oak. The 24 year old might be
• 21:52
  brilliant, but if I could have 6 bottles of white oak for one
• 21:55
  bottle of 24, the Scottish attitude is I'd rather have my
• 21:58
  house stocked up than than have one bottle.
• 22:01
  It's funny, with our last, you know, Indy bottler Spotlight
• 22:04
  with fragrant drops, there was, you know, what people would
• 22:08
  probably describe as expensive bottles were on that lineup,
• 22:12
  that cars bridge for a 848 year old.
• 22:15
  I've not had it. That's over £200 worth of
• 22:17
  whiskey in there. Yeah.
• 22:18
  And there's a lot of people when they were drinking it being
• 22:19
  like, wow, you know, I was always feel quite privileged
• 22:22
  when you get to try a bottle, a DRAM out of a bottle where
• 22:25
  you're going, God, that might, you know, that's £200.
• 22:29
  This net would actually cost us quite a significant amount of
• 22:32
  money to drink. Sure.
• 22:33
  From a close distillery as well the liquid industry.
• 22:35
  Involved. But the thing about that is Once
• 22:39
  Upon a time I would have been like £200.
• 22:43
  There's no whiskey. You can't tell me that there's
• 22:45
  £200. Like that's £200 now what you're
• 22:49
  doing is in my mind that what I'm doing is I'm kind of working
• 22:51
  that out. It's going that might actually
• 22:53
  not be too bad value for money and independently like you've
• 22:56
  just said. And then there's and first of
• 22:58
  all, it tastes bloody good #2 it's a close distillery #3 it's
• 23:02
  a 48 year. Old whiskey, there's actually an
• 23:04
  immense value. There was people in the room,
• 23:06
  you know, a lot older than us, who had actually said, this is
• 23:10
  the most expensive whiskey that I've ever had.
• 23:12
  Yeah, I'm only fortunate enough because I think again,
• 23:15
  similarly, I was invited along to the launch of the Ben Ben Ben
• 23:21
  Romack. Was Yeah Ben Was Ben Romack 1?
• 23:23
  150. 50 year old yeah, I've never had that I'm.
• 23:26
  Going body hell and that the same as but but again, 20,000
• 23:30
  lbs ash for the bottle right but when you're spending 20 grand on
• 23:35
  a bottle, you're getting a bottle that comes with all the
• 23:39
  pomp and glory of a £20,000 but and some of the casings that you
• 23:43
  see with them a cat. I mean somebody said that was it
• 23:46
  truck care said that that Macallan that he bought and
• 23:49
  flipped. He said it smelled like a cat
• 23:51
  like his car, not his car actually, because his car for
• 23:54
  lyrics, but it smells like smells like a new car like you
• 23:59
  know with the leather on that. So that's come with that.
• 24:01
  But welcome back. Big thanks to Scott for them for
• 24:05
  spending the time and please. Yeah, I think all three of us
• 24:08
  really enjoyed that video. Yeah, the references.
• 24:11
  The references were brilliant. He put far more thought and far
• 24:14
  more professionalism than we put into our.
• 24:16
  But you could just. It's funny because we've not
• 24:18
  been doing this for that long, realistically.
• 24:21
  And you could tell from the way that he was speaking that he
• 24:23
  listens to all the pods. Yeah.
• 24:25
  And there is something amazing. We're really proud of it
• 24:28
  because. We're understanding.
• 24:29
  I'd say it was a poster, right? Just to show on Instagram.
• 24:32
  I mean, I said that we didn't know when we set this podcast
• 24:35
  up, what we were going to be doing.
• 24:36
  We didn't know how long the podcast episodes.
• 24:38
  We we how many we do or anything like that.
• 24:40
  But what we wanted to do is I think the main thing was that
• 24:44
  they start building a little community, which we have.
• 24:46
  And I see a little community, you know, it's global.
• 24:48
  It's it's. Around the World 100.
• 24:49
  Percent we we thought we were getting somebody to listen in
• 24:52
  the in the, in this. We're living in Antarctica.
• 24:55
  Antarctica. But it was the wrong end of the
• 24:57
  world. Wrong, Wrong poll, but.
• 24:58
  What I will say is that I should say is Les actually said folks
• 25:02
  through. I need to get them up and send
• 25:03
  some folks through of the whisky stories.
• 25:05
  That's podcast bottle being drunk round the campfire up
• 25:09
  there in the Arctic Circle. So brilliant well done Let's
• 25:11
  hopefully everything's going all right for them over there.
• 25:13
  Brilliant, right, OK. So normally we'd be diving into
• 25:16
  our guests and naturally asking them what got them into whiskey
• 25:19
  etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. But we don't have that So
• 25:22
  whiskey news let's let's be let's do a little bit of like
• 25:26
  current affairs so. Before we go to find out what
• 25:29
  Angus has been up to and where he's been, I think it's a good
• 25:32
  time for us to go back to the stats have been released for
• 25:35
  2024, right? And so kind of keen and loyal
• 25:38
  listeners of the podcast will have been here.
• 25:41
  Whiskey. Stats have been released.
• 25:42
  The whiskey stats, right, Yeah, because we we covered this
• 25:46
  before last year, overall global sales in terms of value was
• 25:50
  down, yeah. And just dropping below £6
• 25:53
  billion globally. Yeah, getting some massive
• 25:55
  market and it's continued to go down in 2024.
• 25:59
  So the market globally has dropped by about 3.7%.
• 26:04
  Now. Some markets are doing better
• 26:06
  than ours. We spoke a lot about the tariffs
• 26:09
  in India. Yeah, well, by volume, India
• 26:12
  have bought 15% more whiskey in 2024.
• 26:15
  They did in 2023 and by value up by 14% now.
• 26:18
  That's interesting because there's a few people who like
• 26:21
  cynically when they see the Indian numbers, yeah, people can
• 26:24
  say, hang on a minute, don't get mixed up.
• 26:27
  Value versus volume. Yeah, Yeah.
• 26:29
  Because what they're saying is that actually distilleries and
• 26:33
  we're sending a lot of bulk liquid out volume, a lot of bulk
• 26:37
  value, correct guys? Because then it's, and it's like
• 26:40
  what we're saying is when you look at the Indian market and
• 26:42
  you're saying if a Johnnie Walker Black Label is costing
• 26:46
  you 68 quid, how's the William Lawson's costing 100 percent,
• 26:51
  £35. And it's then down to saying,
• 26:53
  well, it's blinded Scotch that's getting sent over, but at the
• 26:57
  same time it's what was the value of.
• 26:59
  That sometimes it's not even being bottled.
• 27:01
  Sometimes it's literally stocks. That.
• 27:03
  Hank, it's the liquid and. Exactly.
• 27:05
  It's, it's The thing is, you know, if you're selling 10 litre
• 27:09
  bottles for 10 lbs but you're, you know, each, you're selling 2
• 27:14
  litre bottles in another country for £100 each.
• 27:17
  Yeah, yeah. And I should just quickly say
• 27:19
  sorry on that. Rayman, who is the founder of
• 27:24
  the single, the single malt amateur club, who's the guys I
• 27:28
  met whilst now there, he explained all this in the sense
• 27:32
  of like bulk getting sent out. And of course, what we know is
• 27:34
  that the challenge is single malt whiskey, Scotch whiskey
• 27:39
  cannot be exported in anything other than bottle format.
• 27:43
  Yeah, right. However, blended malt, grain
• 27:48
  whisk, single grain whiskey and blended whiskey can be exported
• 27:53
  in bulk. Yeah.
• 27:54
  So that's the, that's the bulk whiskey probably getting sent
• 27:57
  out. And so India by by value has
• 28:00
  also gone up 14%. It's the fifth biggest market in
• 28:02
  the world then, after Taiwan, Singapore, France and United
• 28:06
  States, Yeah, who have all went down in value in 2024.
• 28:10
  OK, now Singapore down 18%, Taiwan down 13%, but still about
• 28:15
  £300 million are for whiskey a year.
• 28:18
  Yeah. So it's still massive markets.
• 28:20
  The US still the biggest global market, £971 million last year
• 28:25
  of Scotch whiskey. Just.
• 28:28
  This is it. We found out where it all is,
• 28:31
  but it's just short of that billion, billion # market.
• 28:34
  It happened two years ago. It's the first time a single
• 28:37
  market had ever broken and. It goes back to the, the, the
• 28:39
  story that I've said, you know, and look what the news you're
• 28:43
  saying is when you look at these stats, you've seen a lot of Red
• 28:45
  Arrows pointing down the way. But what's what's fascinating
• 28:50
  about that is that when you speak, it's very easy to get
• 28:52
  caught up in this sort of doom and gloom.
• 28:55
  It's it's things are tough and what have you.
• 28:57
  And of course, let's not, let's not belittle that there are
• 29:00
  that's there will be plenty of people who are feeling the pinch
• 29:04
  of this downtown. However, like the guy, the chap
• 29:07
  who I've met who's you've been in the industry for over 25
• 29:10
  years and he's seen these cycles coming and going and what have
• 29:13
  you. And he just said, look, the
• 29:15
  whiskey industry in my lifetime, in 25 years in the industry has
• 29:18
  been, it's either very good or good.
• 29:21
  He said, So we've been in the very good times.
• 29:23
  We're now coming into the good times.
• 29:25
  And I think that's important for context because we can sit here
• 29:28
  and be like, oh, so what's it 3 point whatever percent down on
• 29:31
  last year's number. Yeah, 3.7%.
• 29:33
  And what was it down from the last year?
• 29:34
  Well, how much it was? The year before it had went down
• 29:38
  by a similar amount, but in 2022 was a record-breaking.
• 29:44
  Year. So it was the first time that we
• 29:46
  had a single market over a billion pounds in the year.
• 29:49
  What is interesting is we definitely noticed in the last
• 29:52
  two years that single malt whiskey is still doing better
• 29:55
  than ever. Yeah.
• 29:56
  So that high value single malt, which we always spoke about
• 29:59
  making up such a small part of the the market, we always said
• 30:02
  blended whiskey realistically is 90% of what they're doing a
• 30:05
  great start. I've seen for this year's which
• 30:07
  it it was bottled blended Scotch whiskey makes up 59% of the
• 30:14
  total market really. So bottled blended makes up
• 30:18
  nearly 2/3 of the total market. And then you've got, as you just
• 30:22
  mentioned, the non bottled. Stock.
• 30:24
  That's being exported, so blended whiskey is still totally
• 30:28
  dominating, which is brilliant because that is everybody, as
• 30:32
  all corners of the globe can be, having a bit of Scotland for
• 30:35
  blended whiskey and that's the way historically it's always
• 30:37
  happened. And you could go like, Angus
• 30:38
  Hill. You go.
• 30:39
  You've just, well, you know, you can go abroad.
• 30:41
  Yeah. And you can go to countries and
• 30:43
  you can go and see, all you'll see behind the back bars is like
• 30:46
  Johnnie Walker Shavis. Yeah.
• 30:49
  You know, Ballentine's and Mario all blends.
• 30:52
  These names are huge, huge, huge.
• 30:54
  You know, I just returned from Japan.
• 30:56
  We'll talk about it a little bit later.
• 30:57
  But I was speaking to a Japanese man, and I just bumped into a
• 31:01
  village, and he was working in a tourist office, and he was
• 31:04
  outside. And he said, oh, where have you
• 31:05
  come from? Scotland.
• 31:06
  And he immediately said, oh, do you like whiskey?
• 31:08
  And I said, oh, yes, I like whiskey very much.
• 31:10
  And I asked him if he liked whiskey.
• 31:12
  And I said, what do you like? And he said, oh, I like Red
• 31:15
  Label and I like jurors. Yeah.
• 31:16
  So. And if you go into, you know,
• 31:22
  convenience stores in Japan, you will see White Horse.
• 31:24
  You will see Valentine's. Yeah, see Johnny Walker.
• 31:28
  So. I mean Ross.
• 31:30
  I don't think what we're seeing, sorry, I just felt to clarify, I
• 31:33
  don't think what we're seeing is a big bad downturn in Scotch
• 31:38
  whiskey. I've just looked up because you
• 31:39
  asked a good question. 2022, that year every single of the
• 31:44
  top ten markets had gone up by at least 30% other than France
• 31:48
  at 26%. That was when America was 1.053
• 31:53
  billion in the year. So that's everything might be
• 31:56
  slightly down by between getting 1 and 15%, which is a lot, but
• 32:01
  it's still way up and what it was five years ago.
• 32:04
  But I say it's interesting about like the international markets
• 32:08
  and what they're buying versus like, we we drink a lot of
• 32:11
  whiskey from whiskey like people would never like people across
• 32:16
  the world will never have heard of Like what?
• 32:18
  Look what we're talking about. Thompson brothers.
• 32:20
  Let's talk about yeah. And, and there's more as well,
• 32:22
  you know, you think of someone like him, you know, you know,
• 32:25
  struggling to get kind of standard releases, but we would
• 32:28
  get well, what we, we consider standard release.
• 32:31
  I mean the pitch is obviously not going to be felt at the
• 32:33
  higher end of the of the scale. But you're as I say, you're the
• 32:38
  only one out of the three of us who work in the industry, right.
• 32:40
  From your own perspective working in the industry is that
• 32:42
  concern? I think it's a concern for
• 32:45
  distilleries, new distilleries, because all we've spoken about
• 32:51
  is the growth and how the industry has increased by 20% in
• 32:55
  the last 20 years and they're all competing for the same shelf
• 32:57
  space. A lot of them still haven't even
• 32:59
  bottled their own whiskey for that shelf space.
• 33:03
  That's interesting. We have seen some murmurs of
• 33:07
  distilleries. Waterford and Ireland recently
• 33:11
  stopped production. Everybody's out.
• 33:13
  We're hearing that even big facilities that brown foreman
• 33:16
  are having to look at restructuring their production
• 33:18
  systems and teams and maybe wage structures, etcetera.
• 33:23
  Macmera established, you know, world whiskey, Swedish whiskey
• 33:27
  that announced administration and was saved by an old board
• 33:30
  member. So there are some people
• 33:31
  teetering and all these facilities that have been
• 33:34
  planning of, OK, here's your business plan, you've got to
• 33:37
  think 1520 years at least in the future for building a whiskey
• 33:41
  distillery. They couldn't probably believe
• 33:44
  after 10 years how good it was looking.
• 33:46
  And so I think it's just a wee bit of reality.
• 33:48
  I still think Scotch whisky's doing amazingly.
• 33:51
  There's still going to be more opportunities than ever for
• 33:55
  these new brands to make a bit of noise, get on good podcasts.
• 33:59
  You know, it's awful to do, but there's definitely even for jobs
• 34:04
  in the UK, we've seen lots of redundancies from William Grant
• 34:07
  and Sons this year, a restructuring of the Edrington
• 34:10
  UK team this year. These are the companies that
• 34:13
  when I was joining Industry 18, you went, oh, I would love to
• 34:17
  work for them. And you can still, still the
• 34:20
  good companies you want to work for.
• 34:22
  But people that have been in their jobs in the industry,
• 34:25
  people going to moving to prestige markets, perhaps trying
• 34:28
  to look at do you need a brand ambassador anymore?
• 34:32
  Can you get a salesperson that can also do taste things,
• 34:34
  streamlining the business, trying to change things and
• 34:37
  people's outlooks on on, on Scotch whisky and how, how to
• 34:40
  run a business now A lot of talented people out there and
• 34:43
  there's a lot of very big teams. I mean, so we're seeing that
• 34:46
  change for sure. We're also seeing I guess like,
• 34:48
  you know, I think the hospitality industry is going to
• 34:51
  be, it's going to be hit really, really hard.
• 34:54
  You know, it's not long. I don't know if it's happening
• 34:55
  again. Don't want to go to political or
• 34:57
  anything like that. But you know, The thing is, like
• 34:59
  all businesses, the increase of National Insurance.
• 35:02
  Employment. Laws and suddenly yeah that has
• 35:05
  a knock on effect because basically for people like Kev
• 35:08
  for example to cover to cover the cost of staff he needs to
• 35:11
  then raise the prices on the drink and there will be a cut
• 35:15
  off point for so many people that go I cannot justify a Ford
• 35:21
  thing to go out during the week I cannot justify a Ford then to
• 35:24
  go out two or three times a month I can only do it once a
• 35:27
  month now or anything like that now sure if that's less
• 35:30
  purchasing over the bar which means that if Kev's not selling
• 35:34
  as many bottles if Kev's not emptying as many bottles of
• 35:36
  whiskey as he usually is he's not then going to these
• 35:39
  companies to buy more bottles of whiskey and then it's.
• 35:41
  And at the same time, can I say I, I could guarantee you that
• 35:44
  Kev's rent's higher than it's ever been from, from companies
• 35:48
  like Heineken who are going this.
• 35:49
  He's been experienced from either side.
• 35:50
  Well, this is how we say, you know, inflation still is higher
• 35:54
  than what people would want it to be.
• 35:56
  So therefore you do have this, you know, cycle of costs rising.
• 36:01
  That means that, you know, things exponentially get more
• 36:04
  expensive. So it's it's it's going to be,
• 36:08
  you know, it's going to be tricky for these sorts of, you
• 36:11
  know, things. And then obviously you have this
• 36:13
  global uncertainty in the world with regards tariffs and things
• 36:18
  like that, people, different governments wanting to do
• 36:20
  different things there. So you have people, you know, a
• 36:25
  pessimistic mood. Well, what's going to happen if
• 36:28
  terrorists get put in on? But then from a consumers point
• 36:30
  of view them from. Other parts of the world.
• 36:32
  If you're going to help us buying it over the shop or
• 36:34
  buying it, you know, because is it going to help us in the sense
• 36:37
  that all right, maybe it's going to because it's going to become
• 36:40
  too expensive to for for a lot of people.
• 36:43
  Why would I buy? Why would I spend that much
• 36:46
  money on a drum in a pub when I could actually find that bottle
• 36:49
  online for cheaper? Yeah, Scotch.
• 36:51
  Scotch whiskey is is an interesting one because we've
• 36:54
  seen brands that like Glencadam this last year could guess a
• 36:58
  good example. I always bring them up.
• 37:01
  Not a big Scotch whiskey brand doesn't actually sell that much
• 37:03
  Scotch whiskey. We speak about it a lot being in
• 37:06
  the industry, but they've introduced a load of very
• 37:09
  affordable, interesting whiskeys and they've been massive success
• 37:12
  stories. There's a thing in hospitality
• 37:15
  and and in Scotch whiskey. And again, don't get too
• 37:17
  political. Covers are down and spend is up.
• 37:22
  So people that are doing well are still doing extremely well.
• 37:24
  Still. Buying and so for single malt
• 37:26
  whiskey, old or certainly aged single malt whiskey, even 15
• 37:31
  year old whiskey is getting close to the 100 LB mark. 18
• 37:34
  year old whiskey is now almost accepted to be over 100 lbs.
• 37:37
  Very few examples under £100. Now they must be selling so.
• 37:42
  I. Know it's annoying, but they
• 37:44
  must. They must.
• 37:46
  Is this is this where it comes around?
• 37:48
  And we've spoken about it on the podcast before.
• 37:50
  And if you're saying, you know, less people are spending more
• 37:53
  where we have, you know, this, this that's kind of two pronged
• 37:56
  thing approach where we've got a race to the top at one end and
• 38:00
  then we've got a race to the bottom at the other end where
• 38:02
  we've got, you know, like you say, a company like like Cadden
• 38:05
  releasing. Signatory what they've been
• 38:07
  bought. So, you know, when we talk about
• 38:09
  it, yeah, especially when prevalent, these independent
• 38:13
  bottlers, you know, releasing, you know, very competitively
• 38:17
  priced bottles and you know, again, we're going CAD and
• 38:20
  perhaps producing a, you know, a range of really quality whiskey
• 38:23
  is at an affordable price. And you've got that pressure
• 38:26
  downwards pressure at that end of the market.
• 38:28
  And then you've obviously got this other end of the market
• 38:31
  going higher and higher. You know, here's you know, you
• 38:35
  know, you think of people like McAllen obviously always comes
• 38:38
  to mind and obviously Tallis creatine is a classic example of
• 38:41
  where it's. Just double the price for the
• 38:42
  same liquid, Yeah, you know. For the same liquid.
• 38:45
  You'd be my question, Angus, if you're buying a bottle of
• 38:47
  whiskey in a shop, yeah. How much do you expect to spend
• 38:50
  on that bottle of whiskey? Well, it depends what I'd be
• 38:53
  buying. Because for a long time I would
• 38:55
  say that I was expecting, for what I like to spend, 60 to £80.
• 38:59
  Yeah. And, and yeah, I mean, I mean
• 39:01
  this, it just depends on what you're wanting to buy, I
• 39:04
  suppose. Because I mean, The thing is, I
• 39:05
  suppose what you can say is it's quite interesting because you
• 39:09
  know, taking it back to the Tasker 18 is I think we've seen
• 39:15
  as a result of that other brands that have, you know, an 18 year
• 39:22
  old standard release have raised that in, in respect to that task
• 39:26
  of they're chasing that. You know, there's not too many
• 39:28
  that have said steadfast. You know, I mean, I try to think
• 39:32
  about, you know, 10-15 years ago you would probably think of a 18
• 39:36
  year old standard release spot would be in the in that sort of
• 39:39
  60 to 80. You're absolutely right.
• 39:41
  Five years ago, Confederate 18 task and 18 were both there you
• 39:45
  go and. Now and now, you know, to be
• 39:47
  honest, for something you know, 300 lbs, isn't that the question
• 39:50
  for quite a few? So.
• 39:52
  So you're right. So I think if you're saying the
• 39:55
  same as me getting between 16 and £80 for a bottle that used
• 39:58
  to guarantee me a 15 year old 46 percent or cash strength
• 40:03
  bottling, official release from a distiller, that's what it used
• 40:06
  to guarantee me. I'm not sure there's a really
• 40:09
  definitive value in that anymore.
• 40:11
  Now it's actually more interesting to look at
• 40:14
  distilleries like Arden American.
• 40:15
  Well, this is it. Yep.
• 40:16
  And independent bottlings. We can get old grains or
• 40:19
  interesting distilleries that maybe you wouldn't be buying for
• 40:22
  that value because that's the only place that value is left.
• 40:26
  Well, that's it. This is where like, I was
• 40:27
  actually speaking to a couple of guys on Saturday night and I am,
• 40:30
  I was, it turned into a little bit of an impromptu tasting
• 40:33
  really. And I pulled out the, IT was a
• 40:36
  Woodrow's race to the bottom, you know, wearing apartment with
• 40:38
  Thomas and it still had the price sticker on it.
• 40:41
  And the guy who's one of the guys who was tasting the
• 40:44
  whiskey, he likes his whiskey, he likes his drams.
• 40:46
  But again, somebody who sort of the people that we were talking
• 40:50
  about earlier on, that sort of guy that likes to, he's got a
• 40:54
  very nice collection in his house.
• 40:55
  He'll like to look for maybe the 1518 year old distillery,
• 41:00
  occasionally a distillery exclusive, sometimes a hand
• 41:02
  bottling from a distillery he's been to.
• 41:04
  But the world of independent bottling is very like he doesn't
• 41:08
  know very much about what we're very unsure of and what have
• 41:10
  you. And what he couldn't get his
• 41:12
  head round is that I'd paid £51. Something didn't tell you what
• 41:16
  it was. Well well yes I know paid £51.00
• 41:20
  for first of all something didn't tell it was, but secondly
• 41:22
  something that we could all agree was more than likely a
• 41:26
  Macallan single cast 9 year old and he was like I can't.
• 41:30
  And similar things like can it be a real Macallan?
• 41:33
  If it's only this explained about the fact that, well,
• 41:36
  actually they probably picked that McAllen casket fairly cheap
• 41:39
  on the fact that they can't actually put it out as McAllen
• 41:43
  on the label. So if you could put McAllen on
• 41:45
  the label, you stuck another 100.
• 41:46
  Percent. Oh yeah.
• 41:47
  You chucked a single cash McAllen independently bald.
• 41:49
  You could name your price, but the fact that it wasn't.
• 41:52
  But the point was, was that like you've just said, 51 LB.
• 41:56
  And we know that Woody was playing a wee game there and it
• 42:00
  worked perfectly for him in the sense that they, you know, I did
• 42:04
  well, I bet everyone spoke about it.
• 42:05
  Have you? But at the same time, you know,
• 42:07
  then is it now about where you're shopping?
• 42:09
  I mean, two years ago, a year and a half ago maybe.
• 42:12
  And when we were doing this podcast, we were talking about,
• 42:15
  you know, during lockdown, it was a buyer's market.
• 42:18
  It was, well, it was probably a bit of a buyer's and sellers.
• 42:20
  Market on the on the auctions now it's a great time to buy it
• 42:23
  for for reasonable bottles yeah, you that, that those bottles
• 42:28
  that we would buy for 60 to £80 are still going for 60 to £80 on
• 42:32
  auction yeah it's just the things that have been bottled
• 42:35
  now that would have been that value are now getting listed
• 42:37
  yeah higher a higher recommended retail.
• 42:39
  Price well then, like George and Rachel said, to support your
• 42:42
  local independent whiskey shops and support your independent
• 42:46
  whiskey. People don't know about it.
• 42:47
  Yeah. Before you start the podcast,
• 42:50
  you you had the Milton Duff 'cause you had the connection to
• 42:52
  Milton Duff. Yeah, well, Gordon Fail and you
• 42:54
  were just that sort of like of their they're in they're they're
• 42:58
  a sort of. They're so established that they
• 43:00
  were a brand in themselves. They had a card and heads before
• 43:02
  they started the podcast. You also wouldn't have, you
• 43:04
  would never have went into a shop and said, what independent
• 43:06
  bottles have you got? Yeah, Yeah.
• 43:07
  Because actually to you there was a there was a comfort and a
• 43:09
  familiarity of this is how the distillery have presented this.
• 43:12
  That's how it is. And so there's probably a lot of
• 43:14
  people who are going, I can't afford the whiskey I used to
• 43:17
  buy. So I'll go down the risky.
• 43:21
  The quality of whiskey is still there, but they're maybe not
• 43:23
  thinking of going to an independent bottle because it's
• 43:25
  still is niche as much as we see so many of them.
• 43:29
  It's a single cask whiskey. It's still almost a fetish.
• 43:33
  The most the most whiskey people.
• 43:35
  It really is. It's it's going, I had this
• 43:38
  amazing single cask. Oh yeah, that was a year ago.
• 43:41
  It doesn't exist anymore. It's a lot of people to go.
• 43:44
  What do you mean it doesn't exist anymore?
• 43:46
  I think, I think what we're seeing as well is it's just,
• 43:49
  it's just the power of having an established brand and, and, and
• 43:52
  with that, if you've got that, you can just add an interest in
• 43:56
  a lot of discussion by a guy in Japan.
• 43:57
  It was a behind a bar. It was a sake bar really.
• 44:01
  But he clearly liked his whiskey.
• 44:02
  But all he had was Mars whiskey. We had a bottle on me.
• 44:06
  I think he had the exact same bottle, had a bottle that Chuck
• 44:10
  Kerr brought back from Japan and he said people come over to
• 44:14
  Japan and they want Yamazaki 18, they want to show 18.
• 44:17
  You get a bottle of Now a bottle of art retails for about 800
• 44:21
  lbs. Probably something like that.
• 44:25
  You know, we talk about 300 LB bottle for a standard release 18
• 44:28
  being crazy, yes, that's £800 and he's, you know, that's
• 44:31
  partly down to kind of the fact that it didn't really produce as
• 44:34
  much. Supply and demand, yeah, They
• 44:36
  had no idea. Supply but he said that stuff
• 44:39
  just doesn't interest me. I'm not interested in Hakushu
• 44:42
  18. I'm not interested in you.
• 44:43
  I'm Zach 18 Mars are great. I've got, you know, they Hank it
• 44:46
  about 7 or 8 different bottles behind the bar and he said, you
• 44:50
  know, have one of those and you know, for him, but again, it's a
• 44:55
  bit similar to us. It's a case of value for money.
• 44:58
  I'm sure he probably thinks that, you know, if he if he
• 45:01
  hacky Yamazaki 18 perfectly tasty drama, I'm sure.
• 45:06
  But you know, where, where, where's the interest in that the
• 45:09
  value for money? You know, at the end of the day,
• 45:12
  he's probably not a guy who's going to drop £700 on a single
• 45:15
  bottle of whiskey just because. Just doesn't represent oh he's
• 45:18
  from money he's after. I always wonder that with people
• 45:20
  like you, we, we talk about Scott Miller, like Bob Cutting's
• 45:23
  collection, and then there's a few other guys on the Facebook,
• 45:26
  Craig. Craig Darling and actually have
• 45:28
  quite a good collection. I'm looking forward to his video
• 45:30
  He. Doesn't ever want to give too
• 45:32
  much away 'cause I he's worried that we will just because I
• 45:34
  think he's fairly local. Well, he's hiding so.
• 45:38
  That's as far as we know by he is a bit worried that what they
• 45:41
  will just turn out to his collection.
• 45:44
  But the but the thing about it is, is that.
• 45:46
  There's only a slight danger of that happened.
• 45:48
  Always wonder like what a collection like what, what does
• 45:51
  somebody's house collection look like?
• 45:53
  And you get an insight into it, you know, and you see Scott
• 45:56
  Scott's put his, all his art begs together and then he's got,
• 45:58
  he's done it in sort of areas. So he's just my own section.
• 46:01
  Here's a couple of shells dedicated.
• 46:04
  But I'm very jealous of his lovely shells.
• 46:06
  I suggested I might do a video of my well just to be explore my
• 46:12
  own home, but it'll be a rummage through the cupboard rather than
• 46:15
  rather. Than a beautiful, but what
• 46:18
  constitutes but what constitutes like a collection is like what
• 46:21
  are you look like? What I always wonder.
• 46:23
  I mean, I have got I'm terrible at it.
• 46:26
  I've said it on this podcast loads of times.
• 46:27
  I don't buy enough whiskey. Fact.
• 46:29
  Well, I I don't need to now because diggers are so close.
• 46:32
  I can just come and try it. But like, say, I think I bought
• 46:35
  only three or 4 bottles of of whiskey last year, one of them
• 46:38
  being the yard in the market and Sherry.
• 46:40
  It was fantastic. But I do occasionally look
• 46:44
  through, if it's a weekend drum roll call and I'm having a drum
• 46:47
  on a Friday night and I'm looking through going and I've
• 46:50
  just amassed weird stuff, right? But it's not good weird stuff,
• 46:55
  right? Like, I'm sorry, an Elgin Rotary
• 47:01
  Club, 10 year old blend that was done.
• 47:04
  I don't know God. Knows when that's what the drum.
• 47:06
  Roll It wasn't until and I nearly you know, Angus made a
• 47:11
  point and I didn't know what it was, but I put a bottle up a few
• 47:14
  months ago and it was a countryside of lion.
• 47:17
  Countryside Alliance is the way. I have no idea what the
• 47:20
  countryside allies actually was until I googled them and
• 47:23
  realized that they were the pro fox on the Oh God I'm having
• 47:29
  myself on on the. Facebook I would just.
• 47:32
  Like to say I am standing nowhere and for all I guess, but
• 47:37
  if you are fox hunting fox hunt responsibly and also for the
• 47:40
  foxes. One of the foxes a but but like
• 47:44
  it's funny. I just have masties weird and
• 47:46
  wonderful things. A White Horse.
• 47:49
  I brought it in when we had the White Horse from Japan.
• 47:51
  I had no idea where like that. I was like grandma, my
• 47:53
  grandfathers once, whatever. But again, when you're buying
• 47:57
  like what is what constitutes a whiskey collection?
• 48:00
  Because everyone's whiskey collection is different because
• 48:02
  a lot of the time it'll be like, oh, like this guy I was with on
• 48:06
  on Saturday, he showed me his collection and I was looking at
• 48:08
  it and like, it's an impressive collection in the volume of it.
• 48:12
  Yeah, of course. Right.
• 48:14
  But at the same time, and he does, I don't know if he listens
• 48:16
  to the I will listen to the podcast, but like a lot of it
• 48:19
  was like, well, I could buy majority of these bottles at any
• 48:24
  point anytime I wanted to. I could go into the whiskey
• 48:26
  exchange or I could go into an online shop and buy majority.
• 48:29
  There's nothing in that collection.
• 48:30
  I'm going whoa. Where did like like what you
• 48:33
  said about an independently bottled N brush that you can't
• 48:36
  get anymore? Like and there was nothing in
• 48:38
  that collection I looked at there, but not that it wasn't an
• 48:40
  impressive 1, but. It's just Shepherd, isn't it?
• 48:42
  Yeah, I could tell you. We went through my small
• 48:45
  collection of whiskeys. I could probably tell you where
• 48:49
  I got all of them or who gave me or why and why I decided to buy
• 48:53
  it because it's a weird collection.
• 48:55
  At the same time, I'm in the moment.
• 48:57
  I'm kind of in the mind frame at the moment because I'm in a wee
• 49:00
  flat and my wife doesn't enjoy whiskey.
• 49:03
  Was I went to Curtis, was on the podcast, went to his new flat
• 49:08
  for a Super Bowl party and I brought two half full bottles
• 49:13
  and I brought them and I said no matter how much worse anybody
• 49:15
  has, I'm not taking these bottles home.
• 49:17
  Yeah. So I'll get rid of 2 bottles.
• 49:18
  Yeah. Yeah, just getting rid of.
• 49:19
  It keeps keeps Kennedy happy. And also I'm going to have two
• 49:24
  of my bottles that have been sitting there for probably about
• 49:26
  a year when there's a single Cascade apple and refill red
• 49:29
  wine. It was excellent to share
• 49:31
  something like that. I knew I remember tasting it
• 49:34
  blind going what's that? And then buying a bottle that
• 49:36
  day. And then so at least a year and
• 49:39
  a half later, I'm giving it to people going die.
• 49:41
  This is magic. I can't.
• 49:43
  I've not, I've not had one in ages.
• 49:45
  And then I brought a bourbon round 'cause it was a Super Bowl
• 49:48
  in American football and all that.
• 49:49
  And there was two people in the room who didn't drink whiskey at
• 49:52
  all, who drank the bourbon. And it was.
• 49:55
  It was. Perfect.
• 49:55
  Well, I mean, you mentioned about fetishizing single cast
• 50:00
  whiskey and and I'm not one for kink shaming on the podcast, but
• 50:05
  I I kind of like you're somewhat of what you're actually saying
• 50:08
  there by current wife and their daughter had just arrived back
• 50:12
  today as we're recording from it.
• 50:13
  They've been away for for a whole month.
• 50:16
  It's been awful and. It's.
• 50:21
  All the time for you. Literally we walked back into
• 50:25
  the flat this morning or this afternoon and it was chaos,
• 50:29
  right? Absolute chaos.
• 50:31
  Been screaming the house down and and basically what I'd done
• 50:36
  was which is now five months fast approaching 6 months which
• 50:40
  means she needs a cop bed which I had to purchase while she was
• 50:43
  away and kids are. Another benefit of parenthood.
• 50:47
  Kids are out of money pets, let me tell you right?
• 50:49
  But what else? But it triggered me to have to
• 50:53
  go right. I'm going to have to do a bit of
• 50:56
  Feng shui in the flat now and also like tidy up, get rid of
• 51:01
  stuff and be a bit strict with that and move things around and
• 51:04
  you're basically paying when you're in a small flat you're.
• 51:07
  Playing. You're playing Tetris because
• 51:10
  you're saying if I need to move, that I need to find something.
• 51:12
  Anyway, I've had this lovely old Bureau desk, right?
• 51:16
  And what I'll say is one of the things I was always really
• 51:19
  jealous of people like yourself who worked in whiskey was all
• 51:23
  that the culture of like sample, sample swapping, right?
• 51:29
  I love it. And I'll say this, right, I have
• 51:32
  a hobby. I, I don't know what it is, but
• 51:35
  I love taking labels off of like I love collecting bottles and
• 51:40
  taking labels off them on a Sunday evening.
• 51:43
  I will think of nothing better than to put a podcast on, go to
• 51:46
  the kitchen, pour in and get to get some nice warm soapy water
• 51:51
  and just put empty bottles of whiskey in there and get the
• 51:55
  labels off. And for whatever reason, I think
• 51:57
  to myself, what am I going to do with them now, right?
• 52:01
  But basically I had to empty the whiskey cupboard that I've got
• 52:07
  and take the shelf off and what have you.
• 52:08
  And I suddenly realised I have a mast, a huge amount of tiny
• 52:13
  little miniatures that are labeled up with whiskey in them.
• 52:16
  Some I've had some out of them, some haven't.
• 52:18
  I've got some lovely little empty ones which I've already
• 52:21
  taken the labels off and stuff like that.
• 52:22
  And I've been able to find this lovely little Bureau that I've
• 52:25
  moved. You know, I've got this great
• 52:27
  little drawer that I've put them all in and I now just have this
• 52:30
  and I'm going to make it a wee thing where I could just on a
• 52:33
  Friday night when I'm doing DRAM weekend DRAM roll call, I could
• 52:36
  pull that drawer open and just put my hand in and pull
• 52:39
  something out and go bingo. I've got a Glenn Tuckers from
• 52:44
  the DRAM drops that they would Cam and Chuck were doing.
• 52:48
  Chuck brought in for us to share.
• 52:50
  And that's what I'm really, really pleased.
• 52:52
  You know, Cam Reun has something similar when he moved, when he
• 52:54
  had his daughter, when they moved into their their house in
• 52:58
  Fife. He's got a supermarket bag full
• 53:01
  of miniatures that sits under his sink or something.
• 53:03
  I remember going over to Sessy with what a drum he's like who
• 53:07
  shakes the bag, shakes the bag. I put my hand in and take
• 53:10
  something for the first time ever.
• 53:12
  Now I could never take labels off the bottles.
• 53:14
  I don't think I'm particularly OCD.
• 53:16
  But now I'm realizing, as I say this out loud, that might be I
• 53:19
  came across recently, maybe last week, an unlabeled sample in my
• 53:24
  jacket pocket and it has upset me way more than it should have.
• 53:30
  I'll post it into the weekend drum roll call this Friday with
• 53:34
  some wanky tasting notes because I'll open it and taste it.
• 53:37
  But the first thing I've done when I found it as a message
• 53:38
  Cameroon and I said, what's this?
• 53:42
  Because I assumed. I think I've seen them recently.
• 53:44
  I'd assumed to confirm, He said. I've got any idea?
• 53:47
  I'm. Like, well, if he didn't give me
• 53:49
  it. Who then?
• 53:50
  Oh fantastic. And, and so I've got this tiny
• 53:53
  wee sample that you will see on the Facebook page this Friday of
• 53:57
  what looks like sherried malt. I've smelt it, it smells good.
• 54:01
  It could be 40-50 years old, I don't know.
• 54:03
  I keep great company. Well, I'm.
• 54:05
  Also giving really good stuff I. Just want to freaking out that I
• 54:09
  had maybe half a wee, you know, a wee Sherry too much that day
• 54:13
  and I've got an unmarked sample for the first time ever.
• 54:15
  Japanese slipper. I.
• 54:18
  Think I might have done so I I am gonna try and fence with that
• 54:23
  this weekend and see what that's all about.
• 54:24
  Well, there you go. And a mystery drama if ever
• 54:27
  there was. Absolutely.
• 54:28
  A seamless, a seamless Segway there with the Japanese slipper.
• 54:32
  Angus, you've mentioned a couple of times that you were just
• 54:35
  speaking at some man in Japan. As I mentioned earlier on, you
• 54:39
  weren't actually over there on a whaling expedition.
• 54:42
  No, you were over there for the holiday that you should have
• 54:45
  had. Yeah, before then.
• 54:47
  Yeah, I'm So how? Was it I was tremendous?
• 54:49
  No, I don't. If anyone had followed you as an
• 54:52
  Angus whiskey fan on Instagram. Did a couple of.
• 54:55
  Updates. I don't know.
• 54:56
  I will. I will.
• 54:57
  Do some proper. I'll put them on the the grid as
• 55:00
  well. The socials have been great.
• 55:01
  You need to you need to follow Angus on Instagram.
• 55:04
  Absolutely. I'll put them on the grid.
• 55:05
  I'll visit to the salaries. The plan always was to visit to
• 55:08
  the salaries. So I managed to rebook my tours
• 55:11
  and got back. So the first one I've visited,
• 55:14
  Fuji Kitenba Distillery, which is Karen, is the company well
• 55:18
  known? You get Karen beer and all that
• 55:21
  sort of stuff that we went to now.
• 55:24
  It was very interesting. It wasn't.
• 55:25
  I don't think it was really geared up for.
• 55:27
  Tourists. Because we kind of, we walked
• 55:30
  into the distillery and there was, you know, the big, you
• 55:32
  know, outside Karen distillery, there's the big old steel and
• 55:37
  you got your picture outside. And I just say that it's called
• 55:40
  Fujika Time as a salary. It is right underneath.
• 55:44
  My pictures don't really do it justice, but it's just it's
• 55:48
  massive. It's a big old mountain and it
• 55:51
  looks. Huge.
• 55:52
  You kind of, you almost feel like you're in the shadow of it
• 55:54
  when you're there. It's really, really looms.
• 55:56
  Over my old mountain, right? That's huge.
• 55:59
  So we went in and sure enough, we're the only foreigners on the
• 56:03
  tour. There was about 20 middle-aged
• 56:05
  Japanese men in suits, and then there was Laura and myself.
• 56:09
  We kind of backpack. So yeah, just looking like the
• 56:12
  tourists we were. But we kind of checked in.
• 56:14
  No English was spoken to give us a kind of, you know, one of
• 56:18
  these audio pads. So that was quite good.
• 56:20
  You press #1, you press #2 and you've got the thing.
• 56:23
  And the tour was fantastic. So there was a kind of video to
• 56:26
  begin with. And this is the bet where
• 56:29
  Graham's great and there might be a wee bulge in your trousers
• 56:31
  here. The disappointment was we didn't
• 56:33
  actually get this, but they kind of the the video tour.
• 56:37
  I'll I'll explain why blue ball we.
• 56:39
  Didn't do it. Was it was it showed that the
• 56:42
  the the warehouse that they have the warehouse is as high as A10
• 56:46
  Storey building. Wow.
• 56:48
  And it's it's just casks. That's a nightmare. 10 Storey
• 56:52
  building casks. They must have looked.
• 56:54
  Believable, I thought the. Forklift.
• 56:56
  I was just about to ask how big a forklift do you need for that
• 56:59
  I. Have no idea?
• 57:00
  Well, another big one. But I really, I speak to Greg.
• 57:03
  I I said to her, I really hope we get to go in there.
• 57:05
  Unfortunately not, not for the 10 it looked.
• 57:10
  We saw the footage of it. It just looks incredible.
• 57:12
  I mean, mind blowing. You can't.
• 57:13
  You know, if you think you're standing on a street and you
• 57:16
  look up at A10 Storey building, Yeah, imagine that in a
• 57:18
  warehouse. That's mental.
• 57:20
  Just just a quick one then, right?
• 57:21
  Where does where does the bulk of Japanese whiskey end up?
• 57:25
  No, I don't actually know. I think now they, they, they
• 57:29
  have a lot of mass blends that are drunk on, you know, within
• 57:33
  the Japanese. Mass market so like population
• 57:36
  Japan will be what? Relation Japan is about 140
• 57:39
  million I. Think so.
• 57:40
  I mean, it's bigger than the UK. Twice in a bit over the UK's
• 57:44
  population. So they they and they do have a
• 57:46
  big market. They do consume a lot of us gate
• 57:50
  definitely and and but most of it, you know, if you go into if
• 57:54
  you go into a convenience store in Japan, they won't really have
• 57:58
  single malt whiskey. They will occasionally they do.
• 58:01
  Actually. We saw a couple of bottles, but
• 58:03
  they do have what they do have is, you know, a bit like us with
• 58:07
  Famous Grouse or Bells. They've got their Suntory
• 58:09
  whiskey or Niko. Exactly what I was going to say,
• 58:11
  yeah. And you can buy 4 litre bottles.
• 58:14
  Of these things like plastic bottles if you.
• 58:16
  Want I think it like Japanese whiskey drinking culture, like
• 58:20
  it'll be like, you know, I'm assuming that we have this, we
• 58:25
  have this notion that when people drink whiskey, everyone's
• 58:28
  go to Scotch and then if they can't drink Scotch to drink
• 58:31
  another type of whiskey where actually it's great.
• 58:33
  You go to India, you go to play. Japan, Well, what I would say
• 58:36
  about Japan is the highball is hugely popular, right?
• 58:41
  Wildly popular. If you go to any restaurant, any
• 58:45
  restaurant, bar, any evening place in Japan, you will have 3
• 58:50
  or 4 beer. You know you'll have the draft
• 58:52
  beer right underneath it will be the high ball list, and it will
• 58:54
  be so high ball would be what for high high ball.
• 58:58
  They define a high ball with any whiskey, with soda, but also
• 59:01
  with ginger ale. You can, but you'll have like a
• 59:04
  soda. You'll have a ginger ale.
• 59:05
  You have it like a lemon. Yeah, as well, maybe or
• 59:09
  something like that. Any, any soft drink.
• 59:10
  You have cola. Yeah.
• 59:11
  You know, they'll define that as Iowa whiskey, cola.
• 59:14
  It would just be a, you know, tall glass of ice, whiskey and
• 59:17
  then a soft drink. So so my understanding would be
• 59:20
  Santori and Nika have entire ranges of blended whiskey in
• 59:25
  Japan. So like as much as we have
• 59:28
  Grouse is popular over maybe white Makai's, the winter on the
• 59:31
  West Coast, maybe Bells and Sotlochry.
• 59:35
  Literally you can go and buy these 4 litre bottles of Santori
• 59:38
  rare, old or whatever it's called, which is not rare or
• 59:40
  old, but it's their kind of house blend.
• 59:43
  And actually it'd be really unusual for somebody to pour
• 59:45
  that meat in Japan. And like because people will
• 59:48
  have a bottle of grouse. People have a bottle of grouse
• 59:50
  at home and drink their grouse and drink it on ice, whatever.
• 59:53
  But whiskey sodas is like. It's just a big.
• 59:56
  It's just a day drinking thing. It's a day drinking thing and
• 59:59
  it's popular with, you know, men, women.
• 1:00:02
  All ages, young people drink eyeballs.
• 1:00:05
  Particularly, I think it was actually about 20 years ago,
• 1:00:10
  there was a huge craze for eyeballs.
• 1:00:12
  It was just became really, really popular and this
• 1:00:14
  coincided. This is part of why Japanese
• 1:00:17
  whiskey really boomed at that stage, because it coincided by
• 1:00:21
  coincidence. You had a huge boom and people
• 1:00:23
  just drinking the mass market version of whiskey, mixed and a
• 1:00:27
  drink. But then the single malt whiskey
• 1:00:29
  started to win loads of awards. So you had like this huge demand
• 1:00:33
  that had not been there from about 10 years before for
• 1:00:36
  Japanese whiskey. So that that that's what
• 1:00:39
  happened there. And it probably just engages a
• 1:00:40
  lot of whiskey drink because it's a stepping stone, isn't it?
• 1:00:43
  It's a stepping stone. I suspect there's a lot of
• 1:00:45
  people in Japan that will drink highballs and they'll drink
• 1:00:48
  highballs and that's it. And it never goes anywhere else
• 1:00:51
  in terms of single malt. But there is, you know, like you
• 1:00:54
  like you have it in Scotland. There are specialist whiskey
• 1:00:57
  bars. You can go to them.
• 1:00:58
  They'll be, you know, they'll be, there's plenty of them in
• 1:01:00
  Tokyo, plenty of them in other cities in Japan.
• 1:01:03
  And you'll be able to get your, your, your well known Scotch
• 1:01:06
  single malt, but also your, yeah, Japanese single malt and.
• 1:01:10
  As Angus kind of alluded to earlier in the podcast as well,
• 1:01:12
  you'll find that your Hikushu and your Yamazaki and your
• 1:01:15
  established malt brands, all the age statement stuff, all the old
• 1:01:18
  stuff will be exported as well. And so actually their biggest
• 1:01:22
  market like ours will probably be America.
• 1:01:26
  And so it's really funny that if you go to these amazing whiskey
• 1:01:29
  bars across Japan, you'll find single malt, single cask Scotch,
• 1:01:33
  independently bottled Scotch, as well as maybe distillingly
• 1:01:36
  exclusive Japan releases. Yeah.
• 1:01:38
  You know, I don't feel like they don't really do the handful
• 1:01:40
  thing as much, but you've brought us a couple of as any
• 1:01:43
  good guest in the podcast does well.
• 1:01:46
  That's it. So I, I, I, I should say, had a
• 1:01:51
  fantastic tour at Fujikitemba. What I've brought you is single
• 1:01:56
  cast selection. So one of the cool things, both
• 1:01:59
  distilleries I visited are not only a single malt distillery,
• 1:02:02
  but grain distilleries as well. Now before we move on to that,
• 1:02:06
  I'm going to put a question out here, Ross, how many, if there
• 1:02:10
  are there any? No, I can think of 1
• 1:02:13
  distilleries in Scotland that are similar to this where you
• 1:02:16
  could get a produce alias coffee still.
• 1:02:18
  And yeah. Only one of them had an alias
• 1:02:22
  coffee style. So Miyagiko has a coffee style
• 1:02:25
  and and they're very proud of it actually originally.
• 1:02:28
  So they've got a cool story about the coffee style.
• 1:02:31
  So they. Hang on.
• 1:02:32
  Two seconds. Yeah, you're giving us too much
• 1:02:34
  time, right. I want, I want Cameron, Big Cam
• 1:02:38
  Fraser soon as and everyone else sitting there going I know the
• 1:02:40
  answer to this and I want Ross to get and see what he can do.
• 1:02:43
  So I know the one that you're thinking of, which is Loch
• 1:02:46
  Loman, correct? Yeah.
• 1:02:47
  However, I think there probably is more than one in terms of
• 1:02:53
  Scotch and grain production. What I'll say is Loch Loman does
• 1:02:56
  the most known because of the amount of grain that they
• 1:03:00
  produce. So I would say Loch Loman's
• 1:03:02
  alone. I'm sorry that I got Loch Loman.
• 1:03:04
  I didn't think of it straight away.
• 1:03:05
  Angus did help me a wee bit with the thinking time there.
• 1:03:09
  Laughlin is the only one I can think of off the top of my head.
• 1:03:11
  There's certainly neighboring distilleries and such that would
• 1:03:13
  have. What about ones that do you know
• 1:03:16
  any ones that have previously existed?
• 1:03:18
  There's a lot, there's a lot of malt distilleries that used to
• 1:03:21
  use grain. Dumbarton, I think might have
• 1:03:23
  been. Well, Dumbarton was a grain
• 1:03:24
  distillery. Yeah, it was.
• 1:03:25
  Even if they produced malt, there's it was the first.
• 1:03:28
  One out in Inverness. Do you know, it's not even
• 1:03:30
  uncommon for what Inver Gordon's the one we have now in
• 1:03:33
  Inverness. But even distillery, like
• 1:03:35
  canvas, we've all enjoyed canvas.
• 1:03:37
  Canvas was founded as a malt distillery and they realized
• 1:03:40
  that malt wasn't popular and they were like, why don't we
• 1:03:43
  make grain whiskey? I think it was 1806.
• 1:03:46
  I think they started malt production by 1836, they
• 1:03:49
  decided. Shut up, right?
• 1:03:54
  That's going to become a colon team.
• 1:03:56
  And then and they closed down a few times.
• 1:03:57
  But it's it's a really good question.
• 1:03:59
  And I will study it for Friday because there will be more malt
• 1:04:03
  whiskey. Who are making grain whiskey.
• 1:04:06
  Yeah, 'cause people are trying to do this like single blend.
• 1:04:09
  Yes, and he heard the message on the House.
• 1:04:11
  And that's what's burning in my head.
• 1:04:13
  And I don't know if it's a Scottish show.
• 1:04:14
  Well, I know one There'll definitely be somebody who's
• 1:04:17
  listening to the The Whiskey Stories podcast who's screaming
• 1:04:19
  at the radio. Anyway, sorry I got fried.
• 1:04:22
  In his coffee, right? He's got Yeah, but I, I was
• 1:04:24
  gonna say actually talking about single blend, both Nika and Mia
• 1:04:29
  Geeko do single blends. They they've mixed their their
• 1:04:33
  grain and their malt together. So a single blend?
• 1:04:35
  A name is a blend. BB releases Yeah from 1
• 1:04:39
  distillery. It's not a recognised term in
• 1:04:42
  Scotland. I don't know.
• 1:04:43
  I think they had another name that they called it.
• 1:04:44
  I can't remember what they they had a specific name.
• 1:04:47
  It's like 1 distillery but a blend, which is a remarkable
• 1:04:50
  thing to be able to do. Yeah.
• 1:04:51
  So you put in amazingly samples from the same distillery.
• 1:04:56
  One says 1's got a box tip that says grain, one's got a box tip
• 1:04:59
  that says. So this is both from Fuji
• 1:05:01
  Kitenba. So Karen, so this is they're
• 1:05:04
  both quite similar in the OK. Well, they are.
• 1:05:07
  This is a grain 10 years old in American oak.
• 1:05:11
  That. Smells gorgeous by.
• 1:05:13
  The way distilled. Yeah.
• 1:05:14
  Distilled in April 2014, bottled in December 2024.
• 1:05:18
  I bowled at 61%. 61%. So if you this is your first
• 1:05:21
  time trying this as well. I've I've first time try, I
• 1:05:24
  didn't try out there. So when I got, when we, when we
• 1:05:26
  finished the tour, when we got to the shop, they had their kind
• 1:05:29
  of general releases and then they had just these little
• 1:05:33
  bottles, 30 CL bottles. Say 61%.
• 1:05:36
  Allow it to one per customer. Thankfully there were two
• 1:05:38
  customers so I bought 2 bottles of each.
• 1:05:40
  Love that So and I thought these are just going to be great to
• 1:05:42
  bring on the pod. Honestly, that's like custard
• 1:05:44
  creams. And again it's.
• 1:05:47
  Really tasty and. You don't often get like, well,
• 1:05:50
  the the grain. Did you know it won't be?
• 1:05:54
  It tastes like. Very old SO.
• 1:05:56
  So memory. This would be the youngest grain
• 1:05:58
  I think I've tried. Yeah, so that, that, that that.
• 1:06:01
  So our Fuji timber, they don't have a coffee still.
• 1:06:03
  So what they have is they have 3 stills 1's called a kettle.
• 1:06:07
  They're like Irish old school. Kind of pot still.
• 1:06:10
  Irish, They've got three different kinds of still, but
• 1:06:13
  then they've got a big kind of continuous about so like a.
• 1:06:19
  Coffee still, but not. Coffee still, so it's still on
• 1:06:21
  top of a still on top of a still and you've got this continuous
• 1:06:24
  vaporizing and. So is this triple distilled?
• 1:06:27
  I I. Don't.
• 1:06:29
  Know if this specifically triple the still but I know they have
• 1:06:32
  kind of. They have 3 stills.
• 1:06:34
  What I will say for 10 year old grain whiskey, 61%, it tastes
• 1:06:38
  like any 30 year old grain whiskey we've had this last
• 1:06:40
  year. It's soft, creamy vanilla.
• 1:06:43
  Yeah, really cool to have something that I can't read any
• 1:06:45
  in the label. They've kept the wee bit in
• 1:06:47
  English for us, which is nice as I'm distillery exclusive.
• 1:06:49
  It's got bottle number, followed by some more Japanese.
• 1:06:52
  I don't know what the calligraphy is called.
• 1:06:54
  They've got three different alphabets of.
• 1:06:56
  Course, but what an excellent taste is something that from
• 1:07:02
  across the world. Angus, you're an absolute
• 1:07:04
  gentleman. You could come back on the
• 1:07:05
  podcast. I will get you back.
• 1:07:07
  But we're talking about Mia Geeko then, so they do the
• 1:07:09
  coffee still. So the coffee still, they
• 1:07:11
  ordered it and they've got it. It's got built in Scotland,
• 1:07:14
  built in Glasgow. It came in about the early 1960s
• 1:07:18
  and it was originally in Yoichi. I can't get to.
• 1:07:21
  Pronounce oh Yoichi which. Was Shanbachan Shan.
• 1:07:26
  Yeah. So, so Nika have two
• 1:07:27
  distilleries of Mei Giko and of Yoichi up in Hokkaido.
• 1:07:31
  So they originally installed it up there.
• 1:07:33
  They built Mei Giko in the late 1960s, sixty 8 or 69 I think the
• 1:07:37
  distillery open and the coffee still, I think in the early 70s
• 1:07:40
  came down and was installed down in Miyiko and it's been
• 1:07:44
  producing grain whiskey at Miyiko ever since.
• 1:07:46
  It's a long life for us still, Yeah, to be honest.
• 1:07:50
  Well, yeah, I don't know if these kind of grain stills,
• 1:07:53
  these coffee stills have a long life.
• 1:07:54
  Do you think they would have a harder life because they're
• 1:07:56
  getting constantly right? So I mean, that's been going for
• 1:07:59
  Yeah, 60. Years did they try and you know
• 1:08:01
  how we're what we're like in Scotland Angus about here we are
• 1:08:05
  geographically. This effects our distillation.
• 1:08:07
  So how Yoichi up in, would you say Hokkaido?
• 1:08:11
  Up in so Yoichi's up in Hokaido and it's by the sea in Hokkaido.
• 1:08:15
  So I think, you know, we try, I try the Yoichi out there and it
• 1:08:18
  does have a bit of a maritime so it does.
• 1:08:21
  And it is slip peated as well. Yoichi and and and originally so
• 1:08:26
  it was founded by I'm going to forget his name.
• 1:08:29
  Wrong. He's a kind of godfather of
• 1:08:31
  Japanese whiskey. I should know it, too.
• 1:08:34
  I should know the name. No, I wasn't Takahasu's man.
• 1:08:37
  Yeah, I could suit it. But he.
• 1:08:39
  He, he obviously, he, he obviously went, yeah, he went,
• 1:08:42
  he went to Scotland and. There was 3 apprenticeships.
• 1:08:44
  1918 learnt, did his three apprenticeships, learnt his
• 1:08:47
  craft, came back, founded Yamazaki, Yes, with business
• 1:08:52
  partner. And then later on founded your
• 1:08:55
  tactic series. Tactic series founded Yoichi in
• 1:08:58
  the 30s and he was trying to find the closest to a Scottish
• 1:09:01
  climate. Yeah, in Japan.
• 1:09:03
  He'd done a grain distillery in Bowness or Lithgow, which is now
• 1:09:07
  closed, and he'd done a Campbelltown distillery and and
• 1:09:10
  a space head distillery that I can't remember.
• 1:09:11
  Yeah. And that that Cam and that will
• 1:09:13
  be raging about. And so visit in the Karen
• 1:09:16
  Distillery or or. Yeah, Fuji Canva did.
• 1:09:19
  They talk about the the climate there and Japanese water must
• 1:09:25
  be. Yeah, well, they talked, they
• 1:09:26
  talked a lot about the water. Did they, you know, they give
• 1:09:28
  the, you know, the the usual spiel.
• 1:09:30
  I mean, they explained, you know, the, the, the IT, it comes
• 1:09:34
  from spring water from Mount Fuji.
• 1:09:36
  So the, the snow falls on Mount Fuji.
• 1:09:38
  It gets a bit like Evian. It gets filtered through the
• 1:09:40
  volcanic rock. It comes out in a spring and it
• 1:09:43
  takes 50 years from the top of the mountain to the bottom
• 1:09:45
  mountain. And then I.
• 1:09:47
  Mean I would mention that that's.
• 1:09:48
  Pretty cool. And that's the water that they
• 1:09:50
  use. And so I was going to say as
• 1:09:56
  well that I, I forgot my train of thought, but they, yeah,
• 1:10:00
  they, they, they, they were very they.
• 1:10:02
  Were talking about. The climate, yeah.
• 1:10:03
  So try altitude as well yeah. So it is cooler.
• 1:10:06
  I mean, if you if, if you go from Tokyo's not too far away,
• 1:10:09
  it's an hour, hour and a half on the train, but it's 10° cooler.
• 1:10:13
  I find it. And yeah, it, it, it was pretty
• 1:10:16
  chilly when we were there. So, and, and you know, the
• 1:10:19
  climate is cooler up in the, you know, the foothills of Mount
• 1:10:22
  Fuji. They've got this water source.
• 1:10:24
  That's clearly why they decided to find that distillery there,
• 1:10:28
  Karen. But I mean, it was great because
• 1:10:30
  I mean, what was quite cool about Karen is they they had
• 1:10:36
  this huge room for filling cast. So we got to see that was in
• 1:10:40
  production at the time. They had the bottling on site as
• 1:10:44
  well as you got to see that. You don't get that if you're in
• 1:10:47
  Scotland. And you know, they were, they
• 1:10:49
  were very keen. I think I'm going to get this
• 1:10:52
  wrong. They might have maltings on
• 1:10:54
  site, so I think they might do the whole.
• 1:10:57
  Sounds like a massive production to be fair.
• 1:10:59
  On site. If if they've if they've got
• 1:11:01
  this massive warehouse you're talking about and the fact that
• 1:11:03
  they're filling spirit and bottling spirit on site, it
• 1:11:07
  wouldn't surprise. Well, that is, that is Kirin's
• 1:11:10
  only distillery in Japan, and it's just obviously one very
• 1:11:13
  large distillery place. I mean, when you saw the the
• 1:11:16
  wash backs, so they're actually only about four or five years
• 1:11:18
  ago installed Oregon pine wash backs, but they said that that
• 1:11:22
  was exclusively for the malt all the they'd stainless steel for
• 1:11:26
  everything else. I think even even this, I think
• 1:11:31
  I may be wrong here, but I think they said that the wooden rush
• 1:11:35
  backs are only for the malt that are going to release a single
• 1:11:37
  malt. I mean, they had, I don't know,
• 1:11:40
  2430 backs. It was.
• 1:11:43
  It was a big. Beast of a distillery.
• 1:11:45
  There we go. It's on this guest every
• 1:11:46
  weekend. We do Angus.
• 1:11:48
  Just send Angus away. Another country.
• 1:11:50
  Come back with samples of Jack. The best single green Japanese
• 1:11:53
  whiskey I've ever had. No doubt about that.
• 1:11:56
  Kicks the Arser at the cheetah. Sorry son.
• 1:11:58
  Well, I'm going to play. I'm going to play this music,
• 1:12:00
  right? I'm not sure on that one.
• 1:12:06
  Hang on, no, I'm not sure on that one either.
• 1:12:10
  Basically what I'm looking for is some quiz music.
• 1:12:16
  In the meantime, we'll be trying a little bit of this malt.
• 1:12:19
  Pour yourself out. I'm already on the malt so I
• 1:12:23
  would pour yourself. Out.
• 1:12:26
  So what we got here, we've got. So I'm not prepared for this.
• 1:12:30
  Didn't you? This is live, folks.
• 1:12:37
  Yeah. Let's tell that we got, we got
• 1:12:39
  told at about 3:30 this afternoon that our guest was not
• 1:12:42
  turning up, so we've had to scramble.
• 1:12:46
  That's you know that smells quite creamy as well.
• 1:12:50
  If you're trying these find you would assume but the you'd
• 1:12:53
  assume the malt was a space side Scotch whiskey.
• 1:12:55
  There's no Pete used here at at FID.
• 1:12:57
  You could tell. No, no, no, no, no.
• 1:12:59
  The no Pete. And I don't think they do any
• 1:13:01
  Pete editions. And they were very much we've,
• 1:13:03
  they were very much explaining that they always try and they
• 1:13:07
  want a very floral kind of drum whiskey, very floral, very
• 1:13:11
  delicate kind of that. That's the style they go for.
• 1:13:17
  New Geeko kind of similar as well actually, in terms of their
• 1:13:20
  kind of style, their one light, delicate floral kind of whiskey,
• 1:13:26
  which I think is probably a bit up your street.
• 1:13:27
  Rock. I am so impressed by them all.
• 1:13:30
  Like the front is is a light, floral approachable whiskey.
• 1:13:35
  It's almost got a kind of little bit of kind of candied limes on
• 1:13:38
  the finish. That is a delta.
• 1:13:40
  Really big fan, really impressed.
• 1:13:42
  From custard creams to candied limes.
• 1:13:43
  That's exactly it. We're getting all the wanky
• 1:13:45
  tasting notes tonight. And I'm ready for you at the
• 1:13:47
  whatever this is. Right.
• 1:13:48
  I guess are we calling this what play your distilleries right?
• 1:13:50
  I think we are. I think we're.
• 1:13:52
  Honesty. Yeah.
• 1:13:53
  Right. Go for it I.
• 1:13:54
  Have no idea what's. We're going to.
• 1:13:55
  We're just. I only have a grim tried to sort
• 1:13:57
  of explain what we were doing to me before, OK, I haven't.
• 1:14:00
  Welcome along, ladies and gentlemen, to Player
• 1:14:04
  Distilleries. Right?
• 1:14:08
  Basically, I've scrambled. I'm nervous.
• 1:14:11
  To play in a game, head to head of our first ever Whiskey
• 1:14:15
  Stories quiz. Bearing in mind what I've done
• 1:14:19
  here is set it up so that Ross can't win as they know it all.
• 1:14:23
  It's a level playing field here. I love it.
• 1:14:25
  And what I've also done is I've I've already mentioned them
• 1:14:28
  tonight, Cameron Ewan, big shout to him.
• 1:14:31
  He will be screaming when he's listening to this.
• 1:14:34
  So whenever Cameron is listening to this podcast, if you're
• 1:14:37
  listening right now, Cameron, I don't know when it is, stop what
• 1:14:40
  you're doing and sit down because this is going to annoy
• 1:14:44
  you, right? So what we're going to do is, as
• 1:14:46
  previously mentioned on the podcast, there are 14 Glens of
• 1:14:50
  Spaceite. I'm not going to ask you to name
• 1:14:53
  them, right? But what we are going to do is
• 1:14:55
  we're going to play higher or lower on the capacities of these
• 1:14:59
  14 Glens. But I'm going to take two of
• 1:15:01
  them out because Glenn Spinnick and Glenn limit actually
• 1:15:05
  according to the malt whiskey years for 2020 fours, 21 million
• 1:15:10
  litres each right gross hunt again.
• 1:15:12
  You knew that right? I'm really okay yes, I'm going
• 1:15:16
  to go with you. We're going to start with you
• 1:15:18
  now. The rule game is higher or lower
• 1:15:20
  is what we're going to do okay And as long as you are on, as
• 1:15:24
  long as you're on a streak, yeah yeah, you are on.
• 1:15:27
  Ross cannot get involved or Ross can only come in.
• 1:15:30
  If I give you a wrong answer. Give me a wrong answer.
• 1:15:32
  And let me guess, my question is no.
• 1:15:34
  No, no, it's just going to be carrying on, right.
• 1:15:36
  So basically the thing about this as well is that I'm not
• 1:15:40
  doing it on points either. It's the person who finishes the
• 1:15:44
  round. So basically.
• 1:15:46
  The last one is going to be impossible.
• 1:15:48
  No, no. So Angus, we're going to start
• 1:15:51
  good. Luck, Angus.
• 1:15:52
  So these are the what we're taking the 14 Glens of space
• 1:15:56
  side, we've taken 2 outs. So what we are is we're on the
• 1:15:58
  12 Glens of space side effectively, right.
• 1:16:02
  And we are going for capacities to on the million million litres
• 1:16:07
  that we're talking about here. We're going to start with Glen
• 1:16:10
  allocate. That's where we're going first,
• 1:16:12
  I guess. But I want you to tell me, is
• 1:16:15
  Glen Alecky higher or lower than Glen Dolan in terms of capacity?
• 1:16:22
  Oh. Now I've been to Glen Alecky.
• 1:16:27
  I have no idea about Glen Dolan. I'm going to, I'm going to say
• 1:16:32
  Glen, Alec is going to be lower because I don't think it
• 1:16:35
  produces a lot of risk. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:16:38
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:16:38
  So it keeps you there. OK.
• 1:16:40
  So we're on Glen Dolan. Glen Dolan, There we go.
• 1:16:44
  Glen Alec is set up for a hire for that.
• 1:16:46
  Shut up, Ross, he's got to be. So we're on Glen shot.
• 1:16:50
  Ross. But what I want you to tell me,
• 1:16:53
  I guess, right, is this Glen dollar higher or lower in
• 1:16:57
  capacity than the Glen Rothes distillery?
• 1:17:01
  Oh no, I think Glen Rothes must produce quite a lot of whiskey
• 1:17:06
  because I know they're. Oh.
• 1:17:09
  I'm going to say I'm going to say lower.
• 1:17:12
  I'm going to say lower. I'm afraid they're higher.
• 1:17:16
  Which means Ross is now in the hot seat, Right, Ross?
• 1:17:18
  I need those two. We're on Glen.
• 1:17:20
  Oh God, we're on Glen Rothes. But what I want you to tell me
• 1:17:23
  is that Glen Rothes higher or lower in capacity than Glenn
• 1:17:28
  Farkles. Oh, lower.
• 1:17:34
  I'm afraid you're incorrect. Glenn Farkles is lower than the
• 1:17:39
  Glenn Rothes distillery. So, Angus, it's back to you,
• 1:17:41
  back to me. We're on the Glenn Rothes
• 1:17:43
  distillery. No, we're not.
• 1:17:44
  We're on. We're Glenn Farkles.
• 1:17:46
  Is that not what I said? Did you just say is is Glenn
• 1:17:50
  Rothfuss higher or lower than Glenn Farkas?
• 1:17:52
  You like Glenn Rothfuss is lower, Yeah, Glenn Farkas is
• 1:17:55
  lower than. Glenn, OK, OK, OK, OK.
• 1:17:57
  Good, good, good. Sorry.
• 1:17:58
  So there we go. So we're on Glenn Farkas.
• 1:17:59
  Angus, what I want you to tell me, is Glenn Burgie higher or
• 1:18:03
  lower than Glenn Farkas? Oh well, if Glenn Farkas is
• 1:18:06
  lower than Glenn Rothfuss, I'm gonna think that Glen Bergie is
• 1:18:11
  higher. Glen Bergie is higher, you're
• 1:18:13
  absolutely right. So we're on Glen Bergie now.
• 1:18:15
  What won't you tell me, Angus is?
• 1:18:17
  Is Glen Elgin higher or lower than Glen Bergie?
• 1:18:22
  Oh, I think Glen Elgin is higher.
• 1:18:24
  I'm afraid you're incorrect. Glen Burgie is actually Glen
• 1:18:29
  Elgin is lower. Diageo dispute there.
• 1:18:31
  Right, Ross, we're on Glen Elgin.
• 1:18:33
  I just. Yeah, I just saw it knew as a
• 1:18:35
  Diageo one, this one I. Respect that I guess.
• 1:18:37
  What I do is tell me is, is Chuck Cares favorite Glen
• 1:18:43
  Talkers higher or lower than Glen Elgin in terms of capacity?
• 1:18:48
  Glen. Talkers is higher than Glen
• 1:18:51
  Elgin. You're absolutely right.
• 1:18:53
  So we're on Glen Talkers now. Can you tell me?
• 1:18:56
  Can you tell me is Glen Keith higher or lower?
• 1:19:02
  I would think that Glen Keith is lower than Glen Talk I'm.
• 1:19:06
  Afraid I guess it's over to you. Wrong.
• 1:19:10
  Glen Keith. I just had XP run here.
• 1:19:12
  Aye, and you could be in there. Oh, right.
• 1:19:16
  So what we're going to do is we're going to go to Glenn Spay.
• 1:19:18
  Can you tell me is Glenn Spay higher or lower than Glenn Keith
• 1:19:21
  capacity? I'm going to go lower.
• 1:19:25
  You're right, Glenn. Glenn Spay is lowering Glenn
• 1:19:29
  Keith now a. Good flora and Foda.
• 1:19:31
  We're going to go up here to Glenn Lossy.
• 1:19:36
  Is Glenn Lossy higher or lower than Glenn?
• 1:19:40
  Spay, I'm going to say it's higher.
• 1:19:44
  Graham Glenn Lossy is higher than Glenn Spay Angus.
• 1:19:47
  You must be close to winning this you.
• 1:19:48
  Can see this out here. Glenn lost a higher or lower
• 1:19:53
  than Glenn Grant. I'm going to say lower than
• 1:19:56
  Glenn Grant. He's absolutely right.
• 1:19:59
  I guess there's. Only going to be one or two
• 1:20:01
  left. We're on the last one.
• 1:20:02
  We're on a lot there. So let's let's win it.
• 1:20:05
  That's for the championship. Glenn, you're on Glenn Grant.
• 1:20:08
  Yeah. Can you tell me is Glenn Grant
• 1:20:11
  higher or lower than Glenn Murray?
• 1:20:19
  I am going to say lower. I would have said higher.
• 1:20:24
  So you're saying what you're saying, Glenn.
• 1:20:26
  Glenn. I'm I'm saying Glenn Grant is
• 1:20:29
  lower than Glenn Murray. You're absolutely right.
• 1:20:33
  Oh my God. And what I guess
• 1:20:34
  congratulations, I guess you have won.
• 1:20:36
  So in order there we've got Glenfetic limit, then it'll be
• 1:20:39
  Glenn Murray 8.5 million litres capacity.
• 1:20:45
  Then Glenn Grant, Glenn Keith, Glenn Rothes, Glenn Dillon,
• 1:20:48
  Glenn Burgay, Glenn Tuckers, Glenn Allockey, Glenn Lossy,
• 1:20:51
  Glenn Farkless, Glenn Elgin and Glenn Spay at the bottom there.
• 1:20:54
  Glenn Spay at the bottom Glenn Spay at the bottom 1.5 million
• 1:20:57
  capacity according to According to this 24.
• 1:21:00
  Interesting, because I would have thought the Glen Allockey
• 1:21:01
  were producing less than that. Yeah.
• 1:21:03
  This is what happens when we don't get guests on.
• 1:21:06
  Do you wanna play one more round on that?
• 1:21:08
  I've got one more round, but this time we could play one more
• 1:21:11
  round if you want, right? Right.
• 1:21:13
  But this time, now. What's the?
• 1:21:15
  Fraser Soonest Fraser Soonest once asked on.
• 1:21:19
  The Facebook I. Don't know this.
• 1:21:21
  Fraser Soonest once asked on the Facebook group how many
• 1:21:25
  distilleries use warm tubs? Can you tell me first of all to
• 1:21:31
  the closest one? We'll go and see who goes first
• 1:21:33
  here. How many distilleries use warm
• 1:21:37
  tubs? It's gone to Edinburgh Whiskey
• 1:21:39
  Academy website this. Is going to be bad for both of
• 1:21:42
  us, Angus. I'm going to guess 8.
• 1:21:45
  You're saying 8. I will get, I think it's I'll go
• 1:21:50
  for six. It's actually 20 Oh, according
• 1:21:54
  to. No looking good bro.
• 1:21:56
  So, Ross, by default you're you are the highest average because
• 1:21:59
  you get to go first in this next round of higher or lower, OK, or
• 1:22:04
  older or younger of the 20 distilleries.
• 1:22:06
  But actually, you know what I'm going to take.
• 1:22:08
  Older or younger, I'm refounding this.
• 1:22:10
  I'm going to take, I'm going to take three of them out because
• 1:22:16
  three of them are Arden Ho, Broda again and Rosebank.
• 1:22:22
  So those are the three. There's too much of A trump.
• 1:22:24
  It would be too obvious to stick them in.
• 1:22:25
  Yeah, yeah. So we've got actually got.
• 1:22:27
  So we've got 16 distilleries here.
• 1:22:30
  I'm going to start. In fact, you've already
• 1:22:31
  mentioned them tonight, Ross. We're going to start with the
• 1:22:34
  Poutney distillery. So we're going to say Poutney
• 1:22:37
  Distillery, but. Is it older?
• 1:22:40
  Is it young, older or younger than Craig Eleki?
• 1:22:46
  Well, I think old portly is 1825 or 6.
• 1:22:50
  OK, right you no points for getting the date.
• 1:22:53
  It's Craig Ellekey. I've got the other.
• 1:22:55
  Excuse me, I'm going to say that Old Portly is older than Craig
• 1:22:57
  Ellekey. I'll tell you this year,
• 1:22:59
  absolutely right to get you started.
• 1:23:01
  So we're on Craig Ellekey. But tell me, Nos, is Craig
• 1:23:05
  Ellekey older or younger than the distillery that you built in
• 1:23:09
  1837? Glen, Can she?
• 1:23:14
  Ah, see the thing about Craig Gellick, He's got the founding
• 1:23:17
  date on the bottle. I can see it.
• 1:23:20
  I think Craig Gellicky is younger than Glenn Kinchy.
• 1:23:24
  Well. You're absolutely right.
• 1:23:25
  You're flying here, Ross, after a wide start, right.
• 1:23:28
  So we're on Glenn Kinchy, but that.
• 1:23:30
  Would be bad if I get this wrong here.
• 1:23:31
  Can you tell me is Glenn Kinchy older or younger than Royal
• 1:23:36
  Loknagar? Royal forgot Nagar, I always
• 1:23:40
  forget about it. I think Royal Lochinagar is
• 1:23:48
  older than Glenn Kinchy, so I think Glenn Kinchy is younger.
• 1:23:51
  I'm afraid you're incorrect. It's 1845.
• 1:23:55
  It's 1845. That's annoying.
• 1:23:59
  So I guess we're on Royal Lochinagar.
• 1:24:01
  Absolutely I'm. A big fan of Royal.
• 1:24:02
  Lochinagar, but can you tell me is it older or younger than the
• 1:24:05
  Knock dude distillery? I think that's hard.
• 1:24:10
  I, well, I'm, I'm just going because I know a lot of these
• 1:24:14
  space side distilleries, very, very old, long, long hair
• 1:24:17
  strays. I'm I'm saying Royal Lucknagar
• 1:24:20
  is younger than Knock do. I'm afraid you're incorrect
• 1:24:23
  roster back to you again. We're on the Knock Do
• 1:24:26
  distillery, but can you tell me is older or younger than Ben
• 1:24:29
  Rennis? Great question, Graham.
• 1:24:36
  I'm going to say that Knock Do is younger than Ben Rennis.
• 1:24:43
  You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right.
• 1:24:46
  So we're on not, we're on Ben Rennis now.
• 1:24:48
  But can you tell me is Ben Rennis older or younger than
• 1:24:54
  Cragenmore? Cragenmore.
• 1:25:02
  I think that Ben Rennis is older than Cragenmore.
• 1:25:08
  Well done, Ross, you're carrying on.
• 1:25:10
  You're on Cragenmore now, but can you tell me is Cragenmore
• 1:25:12
  older or younger than Spayburn? Spayburn I think is the late
• 1:25:18
  1890s, so I think Cragenmore is older than Spayburn.
• 1:25:23
  He's doing well here, He's doing well here. 1897.
• 1:25:26
  Just so you know, they're like Spayburn or Spayburn older or
• 1:25:30
  younger than Dalwinnie. Dalwinnie, it's good on the
• 1:25:40
  bottle as well. I think that Spayburn is younger
• 1:25:42
  than Dalwinnie. Fair player, Ross, you're doing
• 1:25:45
  well here, right? We're on Dalwinnie.
• 1:25:49
  It can't even be the left. Right.
• 1:25:51
  You're not. You're not far away.
• 1:25:52
  You're. Going to drop the ball for Angus
• 1:25:54
  here on the touchline can. You tell me Balmina.
• 1:25:57
  Is Balmina older or younger than Dalwinnie?
• 1:26:02
  I reckon Balmena. Balmena.
• 1:26:05
  Oh, I'm. Afraid you're incorrect, right?
• 1:26:12
  Here we go. Here we go.
• 1:26:14
  Can you tell me, I guess is Baumanic older or younger than
• 1:26:18
  the Spring Bank distillery? Oh, I would say, I mean,
• 1:26:24
  obviously we're going with original and I think it is older
• 1:26:30
  than Spring Bank. Yeah, absolutely right, I guess.
• 1:26:32
  Wow, wow, I. Wasn't going to get that right
• 1:26:35
  either. We're in Tango Town now, I
• 1:26:37
  guess. But we're not.
• 1:26:39
  We're we're going to go. I want you to tell me, is Spring
• 1:26:41
  Bank older or younger than Edward ever I.
• 1:26:46
  Think Spring Bank is older than Edward ever?
• 1:26:49
  I'm afraid you're incorrect and. They're very That's a harsh.
• 1:26:52
  One, we're actually now in a very.
• 1:26:54
  I think they're a couple of years apart.
• 1:26:56
  Ray Ross could steal it could could win it here.
• 1:27:00
  Ross to bring it 11 And then we have to think of a tiebreaker.
• 1:27:02
  God help us, right? Edward Dower.
• 1:27:07
  We're going to go Edward Dower, Older, younger than Glen Elgin.
• 1:27:11
  Have we done Glen Elgin? No, no, last time.
• 1:27:13
  Older. Younger than Glen Elgin.
• 1:27:16
  Well, I, I think Edward Dower is 1832.
• 1:27:19
  So I think Glen Elgin is maybe a wee bit older.
• 1:27:22
  So I'll say that Edward Dower is younger than Glen Elgin.
• 1:27:27
  I'm afraid you're incorrect. You've left, I guess right in
• 1:27:31
  here. Last one you've not got a long
• 1:27:34
  ago I guess here right Glen Elgin.
• 1:27:36
  But are we older or younger then Mortlock?
• 1:27:41
  I'm going to say younger than Mortlock.
• 1:27:44
  You'd be absolutely right. Oh, Mortlock here I guess.
• 1:27:50
  But is it older or young as Mortlock?
• 1:27:52
  It is Talisker older or younger than Mort with distillery.
• 1:27:57
  I think Talisker. 'S older.
• 1:28:00
  I'm afraid you're incorrect. And you left Ross and before the
• 1:28:03
  steel Ross. Well, that calisker, but can you
• 1:28:07
  tell me? Alaska might be one of these
• 1:28:09
  ones. Really old Talisker?
• 1:28:11
  Older or younger and then the old band distillery.
• 1:28:15
  Oh, it's definitely younger. I'll say you.
• 1:28:26
  Know so it's probably the oldest distillery on that.
• 1:28:28
  Yes, open. So basically if you want to go
• 1:28:31
  for. When Balmenic has absolutely
• 1:28:32
  stretched me up there. How old is Balmenic?
• 1:28:34
  Balmenic 1824. Wow, so basically what we have
• 1:28:39
  is Oben Oldest Mortal life Balmenic editor Ben Reynolds.
• 1:28:43
  Some of those who sell these to be.
• 1:28:46
  Fair, Oh, Ross, Dragon, Moore, Craig, Alecky, Knock Do, Dalwyn,
• 1:28:50
  Ace, Bayburn, Glen Elgin And then it's Balandale, Arden Ho,
• 1:28:54
  Baroda and Rose Bank. There's your son.
• 1:28:57
  There, Ross. Well gone to the Edinburgh well.
• 1:28:58
  Done 11 turns. Out.
• 1:29:00
  You have to do it. We're gonna have to do a tie
• 1:29:01
  break. Ross, Your.
• 1:29:02
  Your. Prize is the third Whiskier.
• 1:29:05
  No, you're talking right. Back on the board now.
• 1:29:07
  I know I'd bring a prize in for. You, I thought.
• 1:29:09
  I thought, what would I bring a couple of Sherry tarts back?
• 1:29:12
  Yes, I've got I've got single more Miyagiko Sherry and Sweet
• 1:29:17
  Distillery Limited, it says. I love the way that the Japanese
• 1:29:22
  whiskey, even though market their whiskey.
• 1:29:24
  Yeah. So we were speaking about Angus
• 1:29:26
  shared this bottle of Dunbar that Fraser picked up, and I
• 1:29:30
  looked up at the photo when Fraser got it in.
• 1:29:33
  And we're even looking at the way that they presented these
• 1:29:36
  like medium grain. It's got all the information
• 1:29:39
  like a modern distillery would, but old Japanese whiskeys and
• 1:29:42
  just the way they used to market things are absolutely brilliant.
• 1:29:46
  This is a modern bottling from Yagi Kiyo.
• 1:29:48
  This is actually one that we've seen before, perhaps.
• 1:29:53
  Yeah. I mean, a real Japanese.
• 1:29:55
  This is an epiphany of world whiskey for you, Graham.
• 1:29:58
  Well, exactly, And this is what it's all about.
• 1:29:59
  Remember when what was the what was the one that Chuck brought
• 1:30:02
  on the very first time that they?
• 1:30:03
  So he was the bars the Mars. Oh no, the Japanese one of the.
• 1:30:07
  Australian the Mars What was the?
• 1:30:08
  One was the bakery. Hill Bakery Hill again.
• 1:30:10
  Yeah. I just had an opportunity to try
• 1:30:12
  drafts from around the world that you just wouldn't often do
• 1:30:14
  it. And as I say it, up until we
• 1:30:16
  started doing the podcast, it was it was actually up until you
• 1:30:18
  guys brought your first ever advent calendar and it was a
• 1:30:21
  gold golden. Gold.
• 1:30:24
  The Samurai, Yeah, Tremendous, Tremendous.
• 1:30:26
  Well, listen, lads, cheers. Thank you very much.
• 1:30:28
  Thanks for coming back, I guess without you.
• 1:30:30
  We've made it. We've made it through an hour
• 1:30:32
  and a half of recording without, you know, too much hiccups
• 1:30:36
  there. Well done.
• 1:30:37
  Thanks for thanks for everybody, Phil.
• 1:30:39
  Thanks for everyone listening the last.
• 1:30:41
  One let us know what you thought of the the no guest situation.
• 1:30:45
  Aye, well, aye. Well, look, thank you very much
• 1:30:47
  for everyone who's listening. I mentioned earlier on, you
• 1:30:49
  know, the listening numbers are looking great.
• 1:30:51
  The, the, the, the Facebook group, the, the community that
• 1:30:55
  we've built is absolutely fantastic.
• 1:30:57
  You know, we, we, we are still looking for sponsorship, but,
• 1:31:00
  but it's, it's, it's all about really just you guys listen to
• 1:31:04
  us and interacting. And Scott, I can't thank you
• 1:31:06
  enough for putting that video together.
• 1:31:08
  It was edited, it was great. It had so many different parts
• 1:31:13
  of the podcast associated with it, you know, just everything
• 1:31:16
  about it. And but also more importantly,
• 1:31:17
  it was just great to get an insight.
• 1:31:19
  You hear us talking every single week and it's great to hear from
• 1:31:23
  you. So if there's any other people
• 1:31:24
  who, who are in that Facebook group or anyone who's not in the
• 1:31:27
  Facebook group, who's listening this thing and I should probably
• 1:31:29
  get involved in that. It's the whiskey stories.
• 1:31:31
  What whiskey stories on Facebook, find the Facebook
• 1:31:33
  group. Yes.
• 1:31:33
  You just get in where it's just a great chat Weekend drum roll
• 1:31:36
  calls have been absolutely fantastic.
• 1:31:38
  It's been brilliant. But thank you so much for
• 1:31:40
  everybody who's listening around the world.
• 1:31:42
  It's great to hear from you. I guess I think we've got one
• 1:31:44
  more message to say before we go 123.
• 1:31:47
  Shut up, Ross.