Latest / Whisky Stories Podcast / Whisky Maker: Distilling, Blending & Global Whisky with Craig Johnstone

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Whisky Maker: Distilling, Blending & Global Whisky with Craig Johnstone · Whisky Stories Podcast

0:00
But I guess you know to do clap us in.
0:03
Welcome along to the Whiskey Stories podcast for myself,
0:05
Graham Cogar and we are back in the athletic arms back
0:08
underneath the bar, sandwiched underneath the toilets and the
0:12
and the and the old snug that used to be.
0:14
Yeah, and Kev has tidied up for us.
0:17
It's slightly different bottles behind this perhaps?
0:20
And it really is starting to feel and look like a whiskey
0:24
little podcast recording area. Yeah, he's, he's clearly put a
0:27
brush to the floor as well. I mean, yeah.
0:30
It's not going to let us back in, I guess something like that.
0:32
But no, it's great. Chuck, how are you?
0:35
I'm all right. Yeah.
0:36
I've noticed the Balandalek. It's like pride in place.
0:38
Is that just to make sure that nobody touches?
0:40
It yeah, it's a bigger red line on the.
0:43
After Ross's antics before, remember, I think it was after
0:46
one of the episodes that we did, I think.
0:48
It was the first one we did then here.
0:50
No, but I think it was, it was a Dornak episode that we did where
0:52
Kev went. I'm going to have to stop
0:53
listening to your podcasts and start watching them.
0:56
He started watching them, and then his sticky finger.
0:59
He started seeing Ross just casually helping himself to a
1:02
bottle behind them on the shelf. I think, I think as well, I
1:06
didn't, I, I partially encouraged him because I think
1:08
he said something like, oh, it would have to be a very special
1:11
bottle to have me just like dip in what's down here.
1:15
And I said, is that one special enough?
1:16
And he went fuck it, Yeah. That's Ross funny.
1:20
But we are joined as as ever, we need somebody that knows what
1:24
they're talking about in the whiskey rod and I think there's
1:26
definitely no man better for the job here.
1:28
We've got Craig Johnston here, Craig head of whiskey creation
1:31
at the Whiskey Club. How are you?
1:33
I'm good, I'm good. Thanks for thanks for having me.
1:35
Welcome to our dungeon. Yeah, look, I love, I love the
1:37
bar. I didn't know that there was
1:38
this little secret room under. Yeah.
1:40
So it's a nice, sweet thing, I think some people.
1:42
I wonder if there's a very warm thing.
1:43
It's pretty nicer than the winter months, but.
1:47
I always grateful for it in February, yeah.
1:49
I wonder if people like maybe I've started because the
1:52
Facebook group was really kicked off over the last few weeks
1:54
since we've been recording this gone from 192 members of the
1:58
Facebook group up to over 500. As we're recording this, we've,
2:01
we've got people interacting with us from all over the world
2:04
that we've got listeners and we've, we've nearly, we're
2:07
starting to make a bit of a dent in, in Africa.
2:10
As well big in Timbuktu. Not yet.
2:13
There's nobody in Timbuktu that's listing, but we're, we're
2:15
getting there. We've got a few listers in, in
2:17
different parts of South Africa, which is fantastic.
2:20
We've we've got loads. We've just got a really, really
2:22
engaged. But I do wonder if anyone
2:23
stumbles across this podcast and thinks like this is a set, like
2:26
we've made this up. It's not, it's actually, it's
2:30
our little, it's our little area.
2:31
It's not anywhere near some of the whiskey bars that we've seen
2:34
from our, you know, we've seen Bob Cutting's Whiskey Shed.
2:38
Craig Darling. Bar there fantastic, but.
2:42
Can you hear the flush of a toilet?
2:44
From that no exactly even Mark Hughes, he he was a winner of
2:50
the whiskey stories podcast. 25 year old blind.
2:54
It's not what was available. He won that as part of the
2:57
share. Wait a minute.
2:58
Aye, wait a minute. You get that plug in and I'm
3:00
told that. I'm that's well, you've got
3:02
Peter. Come on.
3:03
You want a plug? Fair enough.
3:05
Fair enough. Has everyone heard of it?
3:07
The 25 year. Old 25 year old blend.
3:09
It's a banger. There's only a limited amount of
3:10
bottles left. Ignore these three boxes that
3:13
we've got behind us. They're all empty, but there's
3:16
literally this is one of the few bottles that I'm holding that is
3:18
left. You're getting that as we're
3:22
speaking, I think that's still running 15% discount on the on
3:26
the rare find website. So 15% if you use the discount
3:31
code that is available as a two members of the the Facebook
3:34
group. But Mark Hughes won the bottle
3:37
really active. He posted a good few pictures
3:39
the other day there, but he also asked a question for the Pod A.
3:42
Fantastic collection of our beg as well.
3:44
He's. Called huge collection of our.
3:45
Beg. Oh yeah, yeah.
3:47
Quite jealous. Almost weird amount of
3:49
collection of our, you know, mark.
3:54
Is everything OK? For let's go.
3:56
But Mark has asked us. I'm heading to Egypt and we love
4:00
your advice. What whiskey do I take?
4:02
It's going to be 40 to 45°C in the day.
4:07
My options would be to take something that I could where I
4:09
could withstand the heat or I put in the fridge.
4:12
Question mark in my head. You're not want you don't want a
4:16
big smoky number but maybe more of a refresher refreshing for a
4:19
breakfast whiskey. I saw that some distiller is all
4:22
contortion make Sauvignon Blanc finish finishes that you can put
4:26
in the fridge. But is this just a gimmick and
4:29
will the cold suppressive flavours of the whiskey?
4:31
We'd love to know your ideas. Truck.
4:33
What you taking 45° heat in Egypt?
4:36
Johnny Walker, White Walker, designed to go in the freezer.
4:41
It's like, that's great. Freezer Whiskey.
4:43
Yeah, yeah, Freezer. Where do you sit in general with
4:45
putting whiskey in the fridge? Is that an acceptable thing or
4:47
is that? I've had like I bought like when
4:50
Johnny Walker White Walker came out, I bought 2 or 3 bottles and
4:52
I've had a bottle in the freezer for like the.
4:54
Last in the freezer, yeah. The bottle changed.
4:57
Thanks for the cream eggs. It's my batches of burritos.
5:02
I do, but then no. Yeah.
5:06
Johnny Walker. White Walker So what was it
5:08
about White Walker that was just for the freezer?
5:10
Just. It was done for the Game of
5:12
Thrones. Yeah, related to the White
5:14
Walkers. I think it's mostly like Clay
5:17
Nation Cardo, right? And like when it comes out the
5:20
freezer, like really syrupy loads of vanilla, a little bit
5:23
of red currants. Yeah, because when I was at uni,
5:26
guys, we would sometimes put a bottle of white and makai in the
5:29
freezer, all right, Drink it, you know, for a few hours and
5:32
then drink it because. You're much more classy than me,
5:34
yeah. Well, like.
5:37
We have a bottle of like the coop own brand vodka.
5:40
Yeah, well, you know, and did. You put that in the freezer as
5:43
well. Aye, and then we mix it with
5:45
diluting juice and water. There you go, cocktail.
5:49
Please. Look like responsible, but I've
5:52
never I've never at home been tempted to put a bottle in the
5:55
fridge. Oh, you're having a hot day?
5:56
Yeah, but. I probably wouldn't drink
6:01
whiskey on a maybe not a hot evening, but on a day I mean I'm
6:04
wanting a cocktail. Are you taking something for a
6:05
highball then? I think The thing is, I mean we
6:09
maybe a. Whiskey Sour would be pretty
6:12
good. What?
6:13
Are you putting on Craig? Craig, We're going to, we're
6:15
going to speak about your career because you have had quite an
6:17
illustrious career, 20 / 20 years in the industry.
6:20
But the first question we're going to ask you is what you put
6:22
in, what you take in Egypt in your bag if it's 40°.
6:25
And what I do like the idea of like whiskey in the freezer,
6:28
there is a place for a tiny place for it.
6:30
I know that when he did one as well.
6:31
Oh yeah, Winter gold does obviously suppress the flavours.
6:36
I used to work with somebody who basically said, you know, if you
6:39
put a steak pie in the freezer and eat it straight, the
6:41
freezer, you'd taste nothing. You know, that was that was
6:44
their analogy. But I think, you know, having
6:48
spent some a bit of time travelling around Asia and
6:50
places where it is 4050° and they have a much bigger whiskey
6:53
drinking culture than we do, ice actually does have a place.
6:59
And, you know, it's all down to circumstance.
7:03
Shock that whiskey down, you're going to lose a bit of flavour.
7:05
But as that ice melts and the whiskey warms up, it actually
7:09
releases its flavour in stages. And that's quite cool to see.
7:11
Yeah. Where I'd be going.
7:13
If you're just wanting a DRAM on the rocks and wait for the ice
7:16
to melt, a real just easy drinking Glamorangi 10 would be
7:20
pretty good. Nice and fresh.
7:21
Or the other one. I know you're a big fan.
7:23
Tomatin Tomatin's All Pears of Apples and.
7:26
Almond juicy. Stunning.
7:28
Like, yeah. And of course, depending where
7:30
he's leaving from, there's travel exclusives of course as
7:33
well. Yeah, so.
7:33
You get a little plenty plenty of you get a little do.
7:36
You take it. Do you take that?
7:37
Do you go smoky Because we've had I mean, we did our BBQ drams
7:43
I. Guess we did.
7:44
And we talked about what 3 BBQ drams, which you can watch.
7:47
Yeah, because we were using cooking skills on the, on the on
7:50
the I was. Focusing on the West sausages.
7:52
The sausages. Did end up the sausages they
7:54
were well done well done all right but the first batch tasted
7:57
well but we went we went through the the sweetness because that
8:01
Glen Alaki 12 saw turns yeah it's been a real summary summary
8:06
DRAM sweets yeah nice easy going but we also went through the the
8:10
fact is I think it was that our beg I know was the one that
8:12
we've. I sweetened.
8:13
Salty, I know. Yeah, but our smoky mosque.
8:17
On a Summer's Day isn't actually that bad, and actually from
8:20
Sherry would. Be what we were drinking on
8:22
probably the hottest day of the year, Graham and when when we
8:25
were up at the up at Craig elicate itself at the the the
8:30
Highlander Inn. Yeah, we were having those high
8:32
balls with Japanese whiskey. It was Japanese whiskey.
8:35
I can't it was I well it was a world whiskey.
8:36
I think it was a Chichibu and edgy rose malt and that was
8:41
made. Made like, because I said to the
8:43
guys I think I'm going to go for a highball to start with and he
8:47
said, well what would you like? He said if you want that I want
8:49
a highball and you're OK drinking non Scotch, try this.
8:52
It's kind of made. With high like Jack has lost in
8:55
mind. Yeah.
8:56
It was delightful, Yeah. Yeah, just to mention that on a
9:00
recent trip, the Santori, just the normal stuff, the yellow
9:04
label, Yeah, it was, it was basically five quarter litre in
9:07
Japan, but it's so first filled bourbon driven that it actually
9:11
tastes like a bourbon that over ice and a high bolt is you
9:15
cannot beat it. Yeah, right.
9:16
So we've got one DRAM from Chuck.
9:18
You're saying you're saying that?
9:19
I'd say Johnny Walker, White Walker.
9:21
I mean that is you'd have to buy it on option or something.
9:24
Been there for like £20. He's.
9:25
Got a bottle in the freezer? I'm not going to Egypt, but but
9:30
I would, I would, I would tend to be like something Barbie
9:33
matured. I mean, I think I've mentioned
9:35
it before, but I think very summer drinking and high
9:37
temperatures would be like Glenfiddich, the Orchard
9:40
actually, or even at 12 to be honest with.
9:44
You. The guy asked us a question.
9:45
He's leaving with more questions.
9:48
Pete, Ed Wise. I mean, you could say something
9:51
like Cocoa Maccabee probably. I mean, that's fresh and big hit
9:55
of Pete. Well, we know he likes Pete.
9:57
Yeah, I'm. Thinking it's our beg collection
9:59
in his house. As I said, strangely large, but
10:03
it's he's got a lot so he likes an R beg.
10:05
Yeah. So if you took something that
10:06
wasn't available in Egypt and then sold it and bought 2
10:09
bottles of local stuff and then did that, would that be a
10:12
pyramid scheme? Here we are.
10:17
So just after his stand up comedy show Professional, we've
10:20
got Craig Johnson here. Mark, there's loads of things
10:24
there. I think the the basis of it is
10:26
Pete's maybe not too bad a thing, something something you
10:30
can stick in a highball. So maybe a higher ABV, you'd be
10:32
looking at 46 up upwards bourbon mainly.
10:37
And if you can, get your hands on Johnny Walker White.
10:40
Johnny Walker. White Walker.
10:42
White Walker, don't don't be scared of ad nice.
10:45
Yeah, brilliant. Well, that's great.
10:46
Now Craig, you are here not just answer our listeners questions,
10:52
but you've as I say you've had over 20 odd years in industry,
10:55
you've worked across the world as well as you've kind of
10:57
alluded to earlier. So what got you into whiskey?
11:00
So my origin story starts bang on my teeth birthday.
11:04
Funnily enough, Very very. Keeping it legal.
11:07
Keeping it legal, yeah, very, very lucky.
11:09
I mean, at that point, I'm, I'm from from East Lothian, yeah,
11:12
McMurray. So I'll be town, you know,
11:14
between Harrington and Trenton. And basically nobody in my
11:19
family of at least my dad's generation really drank whiskey.
11:23
Loads of his sister's husbands did, and they were all drinkers
11:26
of Johnny Walker, Black Label and Bells.
11:28
But I had no real sort of exposure to it.
11:32
I left high school and I was going to university and I
11:36
thought, you know, what a big gap in my my sort of skill set
11:39
was public speaking used to get on stage at school and I would
11:43
basically be crapping my crapping myself.
11:45
So my dad's sister Manny, there's nothing like a bit of
11:49
nepotism. She ran the local visitor centre
11:52
at Glencinchy and she said, well, why don't you come and
11:54
basically do some tours for us and if you like it, you know
11:57
there's a job there for you. So my birthday, she picked me
11:59
up, drove up to Glencinchy, went round the distillery with
12:04
Charlie Smith, who was the manager at the time, got loads
12:08
of stories ultimately and then back to the bar and went through
12:11
the classic malts. And I think it was that, that
12:13
first drama of Glencinchy 10. I was like, oh, there's flavor
12:16
here, there's there's I can piece together all the stories
12:19
that they've taught me on the tour and and kind of never look
12:23
back from there. Day 2 was the day after and
12:25
ended up spending five years doing that while while I was at
12:27
uni. So how long ago was that then?
12:30
So of 2003 I would have started April 12th 2003.
12:35
So not long after Ross Barr claims to have built Glenn
12:37
Kinchy. Exactly.
12:39
He built Glenn Kinchy with his own hands.
12:41
The busiest 4 year old you've ever had.
12:44
But Nah, so, so that's so getting into that.
12:47
And then what? So literally visitor center.
12:49
So how long did it take? I'm always interested in this.
12:52
We've we've done a lot of stuff with Scotch whiskey experience
12:55
and stuff like that. And you often wonder, it's like,
12:57
when's it? When Are you ready to be trucked
12:59
out in front of your first group?
13:02
So for me it was day 2. Really.
13:03
So literally at that. So you basically rocked up in
13:06
day one, did the whole experience, got the whole thing
13:09
from, you know, the study manager quite looking back at
13:13
it, quite technical tour, not necessarily what you were
13:16
looking for in day one. But when it came to him
13:19
articulating the whiskeys, that's where you're like, oh,
13:20
there's stories and really interesting stuff with each one
13:24
of these six. So next they went in and got
13:27
there and it was my Auntie Mary. And then there was a woman,
13:31
Isabel and Andrina, and the three of them basically ran that
13:34
place. So I was on their team and
13:37
walked through the door at half eight in the morning.
13:39
They're like, go and clean the toilets.
13:41
And I was like, sorry, what? And they're like, no, yeah, the
13:45
tour guides do everything in here.
13:46
It was a five star visitor attraction.
13:48
That's why your auntie wanted you, so she didn't have to do
13:50
it. Right.
13:50
Well, it's one of those right. It was the logic was sound.
13:53
I'm going to sound like a really old man here, but basically, if
13:58
you're not willing to take care of your guests, yeah, then we're
14:01
not going to put you in front of your guests.
14:02
They're not going to be your guests ultimately.
14:05
So you are shown where basically, show me the bleach.
14:08
Show me the the. Day one, you're showing the
14:10
stills. Yeah, you're showing the
14:13
warehouses. Day 2, you're showing mop and
14:14
bleach. There you go.
14:15
Off you go. There's A and.
14:18
Then you basically joined every tour that was going out as a
14:21
spectator and then it got to the last two of the day, which was
14:23
4:00 and there was 2 Dutch people upstairs and they said if
14:26
you want to tackle it, they're up there.
14:29
They speak English, They've basically been around a few
14:32
distilleries before. They know it's your first tour
14:34
battering. And I was like, let's go, let's
14:37
do it. So 20 minutes to go down the
14:40
distillery with them. They were very kind.
14:44
I don't think that it was my first tour, but they had a great
14:47
time. We had a couple of drams.
14:48
I was getting obviously a buzz from it.
14:50
And from then it was like right, you're on the roster.
14:53
So you come in, you clean the toilets and then you're
14:55
brilliant, you're on the roster. And I was just, it was a
14:58
phenomenal experience. And it was at that point where
15:02
you start to go write this industry that I've never really
15:05
heard of before is, is driving Scotland.
15:08
It's, it's, it's not just driving a drink, but it's taken
15:12
a mindset of Scottish people out to the world.
15:14
Like we, we want the share, we want people excited and we want
15:16
folk to come and say hello. That's why, and obviously Glenn
15:18
Kinchy has changed a lot since you'd have worked there.
15:20
Is there anything you miss about it from the old?
15:24
They've still got the old model there, which is amazing.
15:26
If you've never been out, they've got this.
15:29
It was built for the British Empire Museum and it's a it was
15:32
a working model when it was first put out.
15:34
It takes up a whole room there. It was.
15:35
One of the old distillery managers just got out of the
15:36
loft and built it in his spare. Time a model What's her name of
15:39
a distillery Or it's actually like a.
15:41
Of a working distillery so it could take unmalted barley in
15:44
and and you would get whiskey at the end.
15:47
When it was first built, it was a.
15:49
It was licensed to make. So this model, so when you're
15:52
talking about model, I'm thinking about like little I
15:55
little wheels and. Yeah, stills are about that.
15:58
Size like little trains that go past and stuff like that it
16:00
looks like. Stills are about that size and I
16:02
had everything. I had mountain floor, had a
16:04
Kelan, had your mash house, had your your turn room, your still
16:07
house, your spirit safe and a wee warehouse at the end.
16:10
And I actually made whisk. I actually made spirit.
16:12
All right, Yeah. Have you ever tried any of the
16:14
Spirit? That came out of.
16:15
That it was decommissioned when it was when it was basically
16:18
taking out the exhibition bar. It was in the 50s, wasn't it?
16:21
Or. So 10 or 1800s?
16:22
1800s, right? Oh wow, she's.
16:25
Also had a distillery decommissions within it.
16:28
I tell you what, right? Distillery women of distillery.
16:30
Tiny little distillery models, maybe what Ross Barr thinks he
16:33
built. Hi.
16:34
Well, he's right. Size, yeah.
16:36
Hi, you're the only guy that can actually walk through the front
16:38
door. But having a duck, but it's
16:41
incredible. It's.
16:41
Incredible. Impressive that I'd.
16:44
Love to see that actually. I probably have seen it, but
16:46
I've forgotten about it. That's because I haven't been.
16:48
I've been around good. But even even things in like
16:50
2003, yeah, you know, that's that's you know, now that's a
16:54
long time ago as such. And the industry was different
16:58
back then and even the likes of now, I think, you know, I don't
17:02
know when the button is when, when people realised in the
17:05
industry about, you know, we hear people talking about, you
17:08
know, when whiskey realised is it's about not just about
17:11
production, it's about visitors. And you look at places like
17:14
portly distillery now that they're saying is it's, it's a,
17:17
it's a double business model as such.
17:19
It's like we, we are built just as well as built making whiskey.
17:22
We are built for tourism. And you, you know, we'll talk
17:25
about Macallan later on, but the changes that they made to the
17:29
distillery. Yeah, Glenn Kinsley was on at
17:31
the 1st and the thing that made Glenn Kinsley so special and
17:34
it's still probably underrated in terms of folk come to
17:37
Scotland and they want to see your Glenfeddrics and your Glen
17:39
Oranges named McAllen. And they don't think there's
17:42
this wee place that's, you know, 25 miles from Edinburgh.
17:46
But at the time I think it was the only brand home that the
17:49
Azure had that had every single distillery that the Azure owned
17:52
represented. So the Fora and Fauna were all
17:54
there. I still remember at the time I
17:57
bought the Klinkinschi with a set you back 23 quid threes with
18:01
discount rare malts. I wrote a 30 year old.
18:04
I got one of them for £180 back. Unbelievable.
18:09
Here we go. That's when we need to build the
18:11
Whiskey Time Machine I. Still, I still remember that
18:14
going on the shelf and some of the the oldest tired boys that
18:16
were tour guides going fuck whiskey's not worth that much
18:18
money. Yeah, really.
18:20
One of the boys, Bill, he was an old excise man.
18:22
I'll tell you what, he was very, very easy to wind up.
18:25
He was a he was a gem of a gem of a gentleman.
18:28
But I. But I mean, I suppose from like
18:31
Kenses business model, you're right, the as you would have
18:34
taken one look at that and going well, you know, the majority of
18:36
people that are travelling into Scotland are probably going to
18:38
come in through, they're going to come in through Edinburgh or
18:41
Glasgow Airport or they're going to drive up through from down
18:45
South, which means they're going to come past that neck of the
18:47
woods either. And you certainly say like as
18:49
you've said, people always assumed you've got to go to
18:51
Ireland and people still do probably you have to go to Iowa
18:54
or space either the Highlands to visit and distillery.
18:56
Am I wrong in? Thinking that Lincolnshire was
18:58
the the busiest distillery for tours for a good chunk of time
19:04
just because of location. Probably not, I don't know if it
19:08
ever overtook Glenfeddrick because they would get roses in,
19:11
but it would have been so you know what the major drive that
19:14
this is going to sound mad. The major driver visitors when I
19:17
was there. Clean toilets.
19:18
Henrik Larson. Henrik Larson, the Celtic
19:21
player. So there used to be the Super
19:23
fast ferry would come from either Sweden or Holland.
19:27
Into the South. And Swedes would come across
19:30
into the South. Swedes would come across for the
19:32
Celtic games and you'd get Dutch folk coming across.
19:35
I don't know why. Maybe, maybe it would have been
19:38
Newcastle. Oh yeah.
19:40
Newcastle Ferry Town. Both of those ferries had Glenn
19:43
Kinshi adverts all over them, So you'd have all these Swedes and
19:46
all these Dutch folk coming in and they were all here to see
19:48
Henrik Larsen and then go for and they wanted to see a
19:51
distillery and the only one that they could get to in a day,
19:53
within a day's drive was Glenn Kinshi.
19:55
So there you go, Henrik Larsen help Glenn Kinchy's biggest
19:59
brand ambassador. Help Glenn Kinchy, Man United,
20:02
Barcelona. Fair player.
20:05
There you go. Henry Larson is fixing the
20:07
distillery. That probably just lets us try
20:09
to get him on the podcast, but. You're five years in at Glenn
20:14
Kinchy, throughout university. When you left university, did
20:17
you know you wanted to stay in whiskey?
20:19
What did you say? What you studied at your age.
20:21
I studied astrophysics. Right, right, Actually, another.
20:25
Wait a minute, is that I'm trying?
20:27
I think it's mainly engineers, astrophysicists.
20:31
Got anything to do with engineering as such?
20:33
It was more maths. The vast majority of folk in my
20:36
course went into finance. All right, OK, so.
20:39
I did not want to go into finance.
20:40
No, they were not. A good few years before
20:42
everything. They had a good kick in the
20:44
ball, probably right. I think you know what the mad
20:46
thing about it was? I went to Glencoe to learn
20:48
public speaking and when I got to Edinburgh uni to do
20:53
astrophysics I chose it because, well, I liked physics at school.
20:56
I wasn't necessarily good at it, but I liked it and I thought
20:59
astrophysics sounded cool. None of the girls at university
21:02
thought the same thing. But basically my niche in 3rd
21:10
and 4th year to pass my exams and get my degree was being able
21:13
to take difficult concepts that were explained to me to the NTH
21:17
degree by really smart people and turn it into English.
21:20
Folk would do the learning for me and I would be a sponge and
21:24
then I would teach them presentation skills.
21:26
Funnily enough, even though when I left school I was rubbish at
21:29
that but because of. The wait a minute, you left
21:32
school and joined Glenn Country. Basically or.
21:35
Was it I guess summer? Was it summer work at the time?
21:38
Summer work, as soon as soon as I left, I was 18 at school, so I
21:41
was working there for the last few weeks of school and then the
21:45
months between school and uni and then I worked the season.
21:48
So I worked till October and then in the winters I would work
21:51
at the Malt Whiskey Society behind the bar.
21:53
Brilliant. So it was essentially during all
21:56
my university time, I was either weekends at the distillery or
22:00
behind the whiskey bar at the malt.
22:01
Whiskey. So whiskey really did sort of
22:03
just become, you tried whiskey, you know, when you were 18 and
22:08
just getting that and then. But then I suppose what we're
22:11
probably going to talk about later on as well is like,
22:14
difficult, yeah, hard to explain.
22:16
Things that can then be changed and made understandable probably
22:19
is a big part of like what you've done in your career as
22:21
well. Yeah, there's, there's, well,
22:23
there's a bunch of different sides of it.
22:24
So I think the first thing that got me was every story you give
22:27
out you guys on this as well. That's why guests keep coming on
22:30
your podcast. Every time you give a story out,
22:31
you get two or three back, right?
22:32
Yeah. And that was, there's a buzz
22:34
about that. Something really, really cool,
22:36
whether whether the stories are true or not, you know, you
22:39
generally get a you get a smile out of them and some folklore
22:43
develops and, you know, some other stuff that she'll never be
22:46
mentioned again can potentially happen.
22:48
But it's this idea that whiskey is a lubricant for, you know,
22:51
relationships for it's the thing you pull out at every memorable
22:57
event, whether good or bad, whether it's a birthday or a
22:59
funeral or a, you know, christening or whatever.
23:01
Whiskey is in some aspects, it's the glue that brings the
23:05
conversation of people who don't do each other together.
23:07
Sure. So that was the first sort of
23:09
hook and then going from Glen Kinchy where you had access to
23:13
28 distilleries from Diageo and also access to what was at the
23:17
time a really forward thinking brand story and brand image,
23:22
well crafted and, and put together for the time.
23:24
And then you've got the Malt Whiskey Society where
23:26
everything's under a veil. You know, obviously you can, you
23:29
can Google it. But this idea of, I think what I
23:32
saw at the Whiskey Society and I, you know, I still think you
23:35
get that from them today, is you get to see the style of a
23:38
spirit. And I didn't probably realise
23:42
this until I became a distiller later on.
23:44
But to actually appreciate how whiskey's put together, this
23:47
Kriegerlic is a great example as a new make.
23:50
It is sulphury. It's big and it's bold and it's
23:54
back of the palette and it takes probably, well, you know, if you
23:58
look at the brand at least 13 years for that to balance out
24:01
the first full casks. She has a component and a
24:04
three-year old blend that is one of the best things, as long as
24:07
you don't use too much. Starting to understand that with
24:09
the Malt Whiskey Society. I was like, all right, there's a
24:10
technical aspect to this as well.
24:12
Because that must be difficult when you're when you're so used
24:16
to telling a brand story, right? So you've got the Glenn Country
24:20
story, you can tell the stories of the distillery.
24:23
But the problem you've got when you're at the Society is it's
24:25
not about the distilleries, it's about the flavour.
24:28
So you're going from being able to tell a story of oh, because
24:30
it would be that easy if all the labels were.
24:33
But if you were standing and you could say, right, I'll tell you
24:35
a little bit about Kardu, or I could tell you a little bit
24:37
about Ben Reek. And I've got a story for each
24:38
one of these. But actually to say I can't tell
24:41
you a story. So then it really does become
24:43
how you portray the flavour. Correct.
24:47
You know when you're behind that bar, you if someone comes in and
24:50
says, you know, I'm a laggy villain drinker, generally the
24:53
answer was we don't have anything right, but and it's one
24:56
of those that's like, I know, but we don't have that but.
24:59
You might like this, right? The role of a bartender and
25:04
whether that's a malt whiskey society or hear it, they do it
25:06
really well at Diggers as well. Your role as a whiskey bartender
25:09
is to make the person that's ordered on the round a wee bit
25:12
smarter than everyone else at the table.
25:14
And then they go back to that information.
25:16
They tell it to the table. That's your social lubricant.
25:18
And then suddenly, you know someone else wants to buy around
25:20
because they want a little bit of information.
25:22
So the storytelling is the storytelling is still very much
25:25
a part of it, but because you have the numbers and you would
25:29
have or four different casts from a single distillery that
25:32
were performing completely different, you start then got to
25:35
understand, you know, spirit character, what Oak brings to
25:40
the whiskey first fill versus refill, like all these different
25:43
technical terms. You're given a really good
25:47
playground for that. I like that idea of like how
25:51
you've put it. We've had people on the podcast
25:53
in you know, there's no better brand than ambassador in a great
25:56
bar person. You know what can mind the bar
25:58
being able to push your brand and tell maybe your brand story,
26:02
but I like the idea as well with the malt whiskey society is like
26:07
the the consultancy of it almost where like I'm coming to you for
26:12
your consultation on what I'm if I said to you, I like a lag.
26:14
I feel like, well, we don't have that, but if you like that, then
26:18
and then it's once you've passed that.
26:20
How was that DRAM? Yeah, really, really enjoyed it.
26:22
Right. Well, why don't we try you on
26:25
this now and you're almost just taking me through this little
26:28
journey and to be able to do that with someone Like we were
26:31
talking earlier before we started recording about, we've
26:33
talked basically on there, Angus, when we were up in Craig
26:35
Ellicay and sat there and it's a cheat code for us.
26:39
Ben Romack, 15 is the cheat code.
26:41
Yeah, absolutely amazing. And that's what I would say for
26:43
people listening is that you know that being in a position
26:46
now where. Actually, Mark, take that to
26:48
Egypt. But it is a cheat code in the
26:53
sense that like, yeah, we were in, we were up at Craig LK.
26:57
We're sitting outside the bar and we're having a couple of
26:59
drams and we got chatting to these, these people, lovely
27:03
couple and their friend. And they started chatting away
27:06
and the husband liked the DRAM. He didn't mind an Isle of
27:09
whiskey. And then he's we got chatting
27:11
once Angus has stopped walking into the bargain.
27:14
I'm Angus, Shepherd of the whiskey stories.
27:16
Podcast by the Keep shutting this couple.
27:19
Absolutely. We get that very low key.
27:21
We didn't. We didn't tell anyone.
27:22
We did a podcast. I didn't try and sell.
27:24
That to you and all. Those yeah, we were signing, but
27:26
I actually did send them one. Actually we need to send them
27:28
one up. But anyway, but the, the point
27:31
of the matter is this guy said, oh, so you guys, we ended up
27:33
having a play that we said we do a podcast.
27:35
Why we're up here, we're going, we're going to a few
27:37
distilleries and stuff like that, Right.
27:38
And he said, right, I don't know this whiskey list.
27:41
Pick me a drama. It's my last drama.
27:42
Pick me one that's under A10 or whatever.
27:44
I'm not alike. And we just said, right, try Ben
27:46
Roma 15. Yeah, just try it.
27:49
He went away. He came back absolutely
27:50
delighted with it. And I've done it two or three
27:52
times since We went to that tasting that we went to at a
27:54
Scotch bar, Angus. And we were talking before, like
27:58
especially now you look at. Well, yeah, absolutely.
28:00
When you look at the Gordon Macphail story and again, wood
28:04
management, cast management, we had Stephen Rankin talking about
28:08
on the on the podcast and once we'd finished about, you know,
28:11
the the the fact that Gordon Macphail holds so much power in
28:15
terms of where they can supply their woods, an importance they
28:18
place on that as well. Yeah, I mean, that's what the
28:20
quality of wood and that's how they can bring out 85 year old
28:23
whiskey. That's how because it's been in
28:25
that wood for 85 years. They know how to look after a
28:28
cask and keep it going and, and, and keep it going.
28:30
And even last week, you know, speaking to James Zorab is a
28:32
friend of yours, you know, and James Zorab, we were asking
28:36
about where, how whiskey, where's the magic happens in the
28:39
warehouse. And we wanted to.
28:41
The point is. It's funny because the stellar
28:43
tell it happens in. The well, this is exactly.
28:45
This is the argument that we're having.
28:47
We've been discussing, right? And I said you'll never,
28:51
depending on who you speak to, you'll never get anybody to
28:55
agree on where where the flavour creation happens.
28:58
Is it in the still house? Is it in the word?
29:00
What percentage is in the way? What percentage is?
29:02
It's an argument. It's a great it's great for us
29:04
because it's something you can. No, no, yeah, you'll never find
29:07
two people, but James Zorab came back out and this you'll back
29:09
this up, Craig, as well as you'll say that you know, you
29:12
can't put shit spirit in good wood and expect the maturation
29:18
process just to happen. And you can't put a good spirit
29:22
and shipwood and just expect stick it, leave it for 1215
29:26
years and it should just come out fine.
29:28
Yeah, there's so many facets. I think it is.
29:32
It's a team. It's a team effort.
29:33
There's no doubt about it, right?
29:36
I think the way I try and explain it to folk is, you know,
29:40
like if you talk to any brand ambassador or a brand advocate,
29:43
they'll tell you, you know the guy.
29:45
The guy from Glenmondy will tell you Glenmondy make whiskey the
29:48
best way now. Glenmondy make the best McAllen
29:53
make the best Macallan, Arbig make the best Arbig.
29:56
You cannot make Arbig at Macallan or Ecla Mornig.
29:58
It's all philosophy that's in many cases built over centuries,
30:02
decades. So you know, there's certain
30:07
things where you sit there and go they've done that.
30:08
That's really interesting in terms of flavour creation, like
30:13
you're all using the same three ingredients, but how they're
30:15
treated, whether that's the brewing, you know, even the mash
30:18
bill can be important. Obviously your temperatures,
30:21
your water, all that does create flavor, but. 5 grain as well if
30:26
you use barley from Fife. I ask to produce bananas from.
30:29
Fife that different 5 different 55 for the why?
30:35
So you've got all that happening and then obviously the
30:37
distillation, but if you took our Begs my wash and put it
30:43
through Glenmoranges stills, you get a different product.
30:44
Yeah, yeah, sure. Where I think it becomes really
30:48
important though is is it's the human touch, all of that, right.
30:51
So you've got people in the brew house that are making decisions
30:54
and they're not making decisions necessarily based on recipes or
30:57
they're not at the best distilleries making decisions
30:59
based on recipes. They're making decisions based
31:01
on circumstances and hopefully the circumstances either down
31:06
to, you know, sometimes seen a weather report coming in, other
31:10
times they're getting feedback from the whisky baking team who
31:12
are saying your new experience changed and this is, you know,
31:15
how we're going to address that. And these little feedback loops
31:19
don't really get talked about enough.
31:21
So it's all human intervention. I think the other thing that we
31:24
sort of forget is for the big brands, consistency is key, but
31:29
consistency in process does not guarantee consistency in
31:31
product, right? So you have to basically be on
31:34
it to make sure that all the little changes that you make are
31:37
helping you aim for that bullseye, for that target.
31:41
James is going to be bit of a different area because he's, you
31:43
know, as an independent bottler. He wants to create something
31:46
with A twist. Yeah, yeah.
31:47
And then there are distilleries as well, you know, talk about
31:50
holy Rood where it's like, no, we want to create something
31:52
inconsistent. We want to produce different
31:54
products. Nightmare for a brand team
31:56
though. Yeah, that's true.
31:58
I mean, by the It's funny because we've had a chuckle
32:01
about it. When Angus and I went to Glenn
32:02
Farcliff, what was our what was our tour guide name?
32:05
Was it Jimmy? No, what was his name?
32:08
Terrible. But he'd worked.
32:10
Great guy. He was retired.
32:12
He retired and then basically said they twisted Martin to get
32:14
me to come back and work as a he was an operator.
32:17
And then he got and then he came back to deliver the tours.
32:20
And but one of the things we laughed about was he was
32:23
talking, he said he kind of sussed that we were asking a few
32:25
questions and he says, and he asked me anything about the
32:28
numbers, right? So I guess that we might have a
32:30
podcast. Or something.
32:32
Don't ask me anything about the numbers, but I'll tell you.
32:35
But one of the funny things that we kind of chuckled about was
32:37
basically saying like, and he was at this the spirit safe and
32:41
he'd worked in the distillery at Glenn Fartless.
32:43
Bearing in mind Glenn Fartless are very traditional on how they
32:45
do things and everything like that.
32:47
And he was sort of saying, it's fascinating.
32:49
He said them, Yeah, well, we'll be looking at the computer
32:52
screen and it'll tell us when when the spirit's kind of ready
32:55
and we'll go and check the, the hydrometer and things he goes
32:57
and the computer's getting it within one or 2% every single
33:00
time. He was obviously he was
33:03
fascinated by the fact that these computers are able to tell
33:05
him that, you know, what he can see is absolutely right.
33:08
But what we kind of chuckled about that, about, you know, the
33:11
fact that, you know, to a guy, you know, the computers are
33:14
going to get it bang on. But at the same time, that's
33:17
still that human interaction and intervention that you're talking
33:19
about where that element still. And we've had Stephen Woodcock
33:22
talking about the guy. Oh, the great old story.
33:24
He said he knew the time. Was it what was it was inch
33:26
Coward, wasn't it? I think it was inch coward.
33:28
He said he knew the time with the way the pressure belt on the
33:31
the stills and the way he knew if he walked at a certain pace
33:35
to get from his office to the place that'll be ready exactly
33:39
at that point. He said he could tap the he
33:40
could tap the stills and he would know the pressure level
33:42
and everything like that that was going on.
33:44
And he's like, that's just the guy.
33:45
That's that human touch that's there, as you said.
33:48
But then at the same time, we've been to and we've seen like how
33:53
they've modernized I. Can't.
33:55
Wait to go there. Oh, it's fantastic.
33:57
I've had that 8 year old double mature today and I tell you
33:59
what, that is something. That's great and.
34:02
It's amazing to see as well. Yeah, the place under one roof
34:05
as well. But right.
34:07
So because the fascinating thing about yourself, what we're
34:09
talking about, you know what a distiller might say, but also
34:12
what someone who works in the maturation side and a blender
34:15
might say and cast management, etc.
34:18
You've been you've had, you've got, you've had your feet in
34:20
both camps over the time. So when, when you what was it?
34:23
Where did you move to after your university years then?
34:25
And when you actually said right as a career in whiskey, I'm
34:28
going into. When NASA said no.
34:32
NASA. NASA didn't.
34:34
I didn't even ask the question. I wasn't.
34:36
I was not. I wasn't.
34:37
I wasn't ready for that. Basically came at uni.
34:40
I applied to as many different distilleries as I could and I
34:42
got a call back. So it was always whiskey you
34:44
wanted. To it was always I was.
34:46
I think, well, a lot of my pals at uni, probably still my pals
34:49
because I had access to whiskey as well.
34:52
Good way to win friends. Isn't it?
34:56
And you know, from, from that I applied to loads of people, but
34:59
it was actually, funnily enough, McAllen, Highland Park and
35:02
famous Christopher Edgington got back to me and they were like,
35:05
we need someone in the West of Canada that you fancy doing
35:07
every year stint out there. And I was like, I'll definitely
35:10
have a conversation. So I was interviewed for that 22
35:13
years old, showed up for the interview, got the job and was
35:19
the next thing you know, you're on a plane to Vancouver going
35:21
what, what the hell are you doing?
35:24
Like where, where are you going? They, they've organised the
35:26
first month of, of, you know, of accommodation, but apart from
35:32
that, yeah, you're fine blind. Did you just get Eddie someone?
35:36
There's a there's a bleach. I mean, we're still not the
35:41
hemisphere, so the toilet's still went.
35:44
I mean, I mean, was there a team out there in Canada already or
35:47
were you there solo or was there somebody there?
35:49
What was this guiding you? Because I mean, we've had
35:51
stories. I mean, it was Mike Brown who
35:52
was on the podcast. And I don't think it was Canada.
35:54
It was it was, it was possibly Canada.
35:56
And he's he's got some crazy, you know, obviously as a brand
35:59
ambassador himself, Ray McLeod, he's got a kind of ability to do
36:02
his own thing to a degree. And he's going to kind of kind
36:05
of Wild West bars in Canada where kind of the saloon doors
36:08
on and yeah, beer, smokehead and all this.
36:11
But was it that kind of thing or?
36:14
I was a bit lucky. So I, we, I worked for Maxiom.
36:18
So they were distributed out there.
36:19
So they, they had a huge wine portfolio and at the time it
36:22
was, I'm not, let me get this right, absolute vodka.
36:25
Remy Martin Perno. Was it Perno, might have been
36:31
Perno and Edrington was essentially four of those big
36:33
companies had a distribution chain.
36:35
It was based in Toronto but had an office in Vancouver, right,
36:38
right. And then sales reps in every
36:40
province and every state. So I went out there and.
36:44
Were you brand advocacy or? Hi, Brandon.
36:47
Master for West of Canada and then the east of Canada, a guy
36:50
I'm still very close with huge bent there for me, a guy called
36:53
Mark Laverde. So he had come.
36:55
Yeah, he's, he's just one of those people like you talk about
36:59
gravitas and, and just suaveness and, and he was class, so he'd
37:05
not retired into it, but he was a bit older and he was covered
37:08
in east of Canada. And I think the first thing he
37:10
said to me, he's like, do you want to know how much I love
37:12
Highland Park? And I'm like, I do.
37:13
And he just basically pulled up his arm and there was a big
37:15
Highland Park tattoo. I knew we were going to become
37:19
good pals because the first thing I said to him after that
37:21
was, you know, we've just changed the logo and his face
37:23
just dropped. I said, I'm just, I'm just
37:26
joking. And that was that we were best
37:28
pals. So we still chat quite a lot
37:30
today, but he took me aside and he's like, look, this is going
37:33
to be a, a big change, he says. But you know, your stuff, you're
37:39
selling stories and, and his whole thing was you're there to
37:43
connect with people and you've got the best way to do that
37:46
through, through Scotch whiskey. And we came up with a kind of
37:51
motto that, you know, I still essentially hold it dear today.
37:54
And it was basically as to life as we make it ultimately.
37:57
So, you know, you can go out there with this stuff and you
37:59
can decide I'm going to go out and not tell anyone about it or
38:03
I'm going to go out and show people a great time with, with
38:05
Scotch. So he definitely set me up for
38:09
success. And then the next thing you
38:10
know, you're in Vancouver and you're Turin and you've got
38:13
Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta. That like that was essentially
38:17
my, my patch. Now Alberta's got Edmonton and
38:21
Calgary. Yeah.
38:22
Saskatchewan, Manitoba, I tell you what, Winnipeg, Saskatoon
38:27
and Regina are your places. And I still remember going into
38:32
this bar in a place called Moosejaw.
38:37
Right now, Moosejaw's famous for two things.
38:40
One is they built a highway bridge that was illegal because
38:43
the, the, the, the angle of the turn was so that on a highway
38:48
was basically so tight that you had to slow down.
38:51
So that was an illegal bridge, right?
38:53
And then when you go over the bridge, there was a massive
38:55
statue of a moose. And the basically every, I think
39:01
it was every time there was a graduation, a student would get
39:04
up and paint the bollocks of this thing.
39:06
They'd go like go in the dark paint.
39:08
So if he came in a Moose Jaw at night.
39:10
You would see the good boy. But we went into this.
39:13
Bar slowed down as well, couldn't even drive past it.
39:17
But we went into this bar, I can't remember what this bar was
39:19
called, but it was a Welsh bar, right?
39:21
A Welsh. Bar.
39:24
And you know, you know, the yellow bricks that we've got
39:27
houses out, you know, E Lothian, you'll see them kind of yellow
39:30
bricks, right? So this guy had built bar stools
39:33
out of those bricks. So the stools didn't move and
39:36
they were rough as anything because they twisted as they
39:39
went up, right? And I said to the sales Rep, I'm
39:42
like, why are we going here? And he says, I needed to come to
39:46
this place. And I'm like, do the sell
39:47
Macallan, Do the sell Highland Park, Do the sell famous skirts?
39:50
She's like, not very much, but they're my biggest account for
39:54
blue Curacao from Bolts. And I was like in the middle of
39:59
Saskatchewan. And he goes, aye, so we broke up
40:03
to this bar. I'm doing a staff training
40:07
because we had to justify it's been there.
40:08
Yeah. Run through a few whiskeys.
40:11
And then the sales Rep says you need to ask him about it because
40:13
he says I'm too embarrassed. He says I can't see where blue
40:16
Kurasat was going. I said to the owner, I says you
40:20
guys sell a lot of blue Kurasat. Like you guys are selling more
40:24
blue Kurasat than bars in Toronto and Vancouver.
40:30
Moose Job is also famous because Al Capone had tunnels that went
40:33
there. And I was like, are you, are you
40:34
smuggling that shit into America?
40:36
And the boy went, no, he says, I've got a deal on and it's been
40:40
on for four years because it's so successful.
40:42
And I was like, what's the deal? And he points to this chalkboard
40:44
and it just says, we will make any drink blue for an extra
40:48
dollar. So basically you order your
40:57
cocktail and he just pours blue keto salmon until it goes blue.
41:00
And then he goes, that will be a dollar.
41:05
One of the brilliant. Things in the world so.
41:09
I mean in terms of like Canadian.
41:11
Drinkers. No, it's Welsh about a blue
41:13
drink. So many different eggs.
41:16
There's yellow bricks still. Bastards that don't do this
41:19
have. Like Welsh rabbit on the menu
41:21
and. It was class, but in terms of
41:24
like, So what are you selling out there when everyone hears
41:26
talking about Macau because everyone Edrington, the
41:29
Macallan, Glenn Rothes as well, I think are they at that time,
41:33
no, we didn't have. Rothes at.
41:36
The time. Yeah, it was Berry Brothers.
41:37
I think we did distribute Rothes, but they weren't in our
41:40
stable. But, but people, people see
41:42
Edgington as the sort of high end, but you're talking about
41:44
Famous Grouse in Highland Park as well, of course.
41:48
So what was the big seller out in a place like that?
41:50
Is it the high end stuff that you're trying to target the
41:54
brands to or were you going across all the spectrum?
41:57
The whole spectrum. So Maccallum was the focus I
42:03
would say. But what was interesting about
42:05
it at that time is we could sell a portfolio.
42:08
So you went in to your bars, they wanted the McAllen tasting.
42:11
You'd do a McAllen tasting, but you'd also look at the shelves
42:13
and be like, ah, you guys need to hear about Highland Park.
42:15
What? We're here.
42:16
Yeah. Same with the shops.
42:17
You'd go into the retail stores and it's the same thing.
42:20
And Famous Grouse was always a well, if you're taking these,
42:24
think about this for the well, you know, for your pouring
42:26
whiskey. I mean, Famous Grouse probably
42:29
we'll talk about it later on, but it's a crack and blended
42:32
whiskey. It's really, really still one of
42:34
the best. The the Famous Grouse activation
42:38
we used to do was the way we did the Canmore Highland games and
42:41
we were basically going to do grouse and ginger.
42:44
So you're setting out in the Highland Games in the middle of
42:46
the mountains in Alberta and you've got Famous grouse, you've
42:50
got ice, you've got ginger beer and you've got lime.
42:54
And it starts snowing in July. And I had to run, honestly, I
42:59
went to Costco and bought an iron and turned into hot
43:01
toddies. Always like brilliant what we're
43:04
drinking loads of Grouse toddies.
43:06
So Grouse had this place as well.
43:08
But I think the beauty of that role was you did have your, you
43:12
had your portfolio and different brands open different doors.
43:15
And it's still the same today. You know, the bars that you
43:17
would go into where you were talking about Famous Grouse,
43:20
they would sell volume, yeah, but be discerning drinkers as
43:24
well. But they sell loads and loads of
43:25
loads of cases of grouse. And then you've got, you know,
43:28
we launched 55 year old Lalik McAllen my first year out there.
43:32
So, you know, we're talking to people that collected that
43:34
stuff. I had a guy actually who
43:36
collected fine and rare and he got a ripped label once and I
43:40
had to replace the label really, which So there's a random fine
43:44
and rare out there. So the way it worked was had to
43:47
get a lock code off it. Now this was our first Phil
43:48
Sherry, so it was very difficult.
43:50
I had to use like mirrors and to find the background to try and
43:54
find what the lock code was on the back of the label, which was
43:56
handwritten so I could tell the distillery so they could prove
43:59
it was real. And then what they did is they
44:01
sent out extra labels and told me how to do the whole process.
44:04
So there's a random finding array right there that I've
44:06
signed on the back to say that's genuine.
44:09
Now at the time they were all labeled by hand and I think
44:13
glues got a bit better, but I was like how did I stick this on
44:15
and? I get the Brit stick pretty
44:17
much. It was a bottle of that setting.
44:21
Somebody like that back. What was that?
44:23
Back then it would have been for one to $2000 Canadian.
44:27
Yeah, but the the beauty of it was it's.
44:30
Got your signature and a hand stuck label.
44:33
Yeah, well, they all had hand stuck.
44:34
Yeah, well, back. But, but, but by me.
44:36
But the beauty of that is I went to the boy's house and I chatted
44:39
with him and looked at his, you know, you got to see this guy's
44:41
collection and you get to hand take this, this bottle away,
44:47
work with the distillery to fix it.
44:49
And I took it back to him. But when I took it back to him,
44:51
I showed up with a bunch of different stuff.
44:53
And you could give him the whole spectrum of McAllen, whatever he
44:56
wanted to taste in his own house, bring some pals around
44:58
like the, I think brands, brands still do that today.
45:02
But you had the, you know, you have the freedom to, to sell the
45:05
story and to get liquid on lips. And with McAllen, you know, the,
45:08
the, the portfolio is, is, is phenomenal.
45:11
It always has been for me the best thing on and this is going
45:15
to be controversial, put this one and read it.
45:17
Yeah, the best, the best McAllen in that that portfolio for me
45:21
was final 15 in terms of balance of everything that McAllen did.
45:25
That whiskey was exceptionally up together.
45:28
I think I went to a McAllen tasting just as lockdown was
45:35
easing off and it was actually, it was a special offer.
45:38
My mum got it right on. It is on.
45:41
And it was a McAllen tasting in the bar at Harvey Nichols.
45:46
All right. And there was a 30 year old
45:48
McAllen that they were, it was a new 30 year old McAllen.
45:52
So it was a tasting with a, a paired meal.
45:53
Now we've talked about this before, you know, COVID
45:57
restrictions lending themselves quite well to whiskey tastings
46:00
and the fact that, you know, if the three of us or four of us
46:03
were in a bubble, we could sit at this side of the bar and, and
46:06
everyone could do that. So that's what it was.
46:07
It was tables of two were all up the stairs.
46:09
They had to widen the whole area out.
46:10
And it was a brand ambassador for the McAllen had come up and
46:15
it was actually, it wasn't very well put together the the and it
46:20
was like, because everything was being served at different times
46:24
and you were supposed to have it paired with your food.
46:26
It was just and at one point, basically me and the guy I was
46:29
with, we finished them or we've started the DRAM and we're like,
46:34
this is nice. I and and as we're about halfway
46:36
through it, the guy was like, oh, sorry.
46:38
And Brian, the bastards guy did the other day because he hadn't
46:41
been served his dessert yet or his dessert was he was still
46:45
having his dessert. Sorry.
46:46
And he wasn't you know, And so he's like, oh, sorry, some of
46:48
your you've already started your drink And he's basically this is
46:51
the this is the 30. We're just.
46:54
We're just how old my counter. Should be.
46:56
I don't want to put fanfare, I don't want to put the boy under
46:58
the bus here. It wasn't entirely his fault.
47:01
What I would say is it's just it was the way the tasting was put
47:05
together with having so many different people sitting all
47:08
around. By the time the food service was
47:10
getting round, it wasn't as easy as it would have been.
47:12
Well, it was funny, like we'd started it.
47:14
But what was very interesting after we left, it was like
47:16
tasting that blind. It wasn't like, wow, like this
47:21
is incredible. It was a nice drum, don't get me
47:23
wrong. But actually we both walked away
47:25
and said, I can't remember what, what, what the type it was the
47:28
15, the 15. We both said out of the, out of
47:31
all of that, the 15 was the one that actually really, really
47:35
enjoyed. And you know, you're obviously
47:37
it's easy to say I didn't like the 30, which is why I never
47:40
bought it, but I'd buy the 15 because a massive price
47:43
difference, obviously, but genuinely like having them.
47:46
And that's because that was, it was the 50.
47:48
I think we had the 15 just after the starter.
47:51
Everyone had finished. Then we had the 18 at the meal
47:55
and then it was the, I think it was, I can't remember.
47:57
Anyway, bottom line was we walked out of there going 15.
48:01
The 15 was very. Good.
48:02
Yeah, I think, you know, when you when you talk about that
48:05
level of whiskey, it doesn't need, maybe not about fanfare,
48:09
but it needs, it needs time and probably an explanation.
48:11
And you know, like the for me, coming from coming back from
48:17
Tassie, I'm jumping about here in timeline.
48:19
But coming back from Tasmania, I remember joining Edison and I
48:23
thought I'm probably going to have to lower some quality
48:26
standards here because of the volume of this company, right.
48:29
The amount of stuff that you need to look at.
48:31
So in Tasmania with Lark, we could nose every cask every year
48:35
because there was not that many of them.
48:39
It was actually the opposite. Every single cask, whether it's
48:44
Famous Grouse, Highland Park, Glenrothes or McAllen, every
48:46
single cask is nosed before it was in the bottle.
48:50
And for the single malts, they're all nosed to 8 and then
48:52
they're nosed before that before blending every single one.
48:56
It's not a case of I'll take 3 from that stove and everyone's
48:58
going to taste like that. Every single. 1.
49:00
Gets colour taken, gets strength taken and gets a Roma and gets a
49:04
score right. And when you're putting things
49:08
together that are 30405060, you know, 7084 years old, you kind
49:13
of have to almost explain a bit about how that whiskey's kind of
49:17
come to be because they are very subtle when you get to that age.
49:19
And if it was a, I'm assuming it was a double oak 30 year old
49:22
that you tried as opposed to the Sherry and Sherry's going to,
49:25
you know, still give you the punch in the face from the
49:27
Sherry. The double oak has American oak
49:29
and European oak, all Sherry in there.
49:31
But that brings a level of it's just say delicacy to it that
49:37
after a 15, you know, you'd probably need to warm up, you
49:40
need to give it time in the past.
49:43
It sounds like just a queue is missed And no something the
49:46
brand ambassador job of a brand ambassador in an area, an
49:50
environment like that, it's like it's like having a catch, right.
49:54
But you know, the 30 year old, well, I would say all whiskey
50:00
about that age is special in some way.
50:02
But the 30 year old McAllen, the way that's put together is like
50:06
pretty, it blew me away the level of quality control that
50:12
goes into. Well, I want to talk about that
50:13
because obviously we're we have your story.
50:15
I mean time will come catch up with us.
50:18
But basically you mentioned, I don't know why that like I tell
50:22
you what, we'll come back to this, right, I've got remind me
50:25
right. But anyway, so you've come from
50:26
Canada, OK. And then you've mentioned now
50:29
for people who are listening to that are Keaton geography and
50:32
Canada, right, So, so. Fast forward, right?
50:35
So I did Canada for a year. Yeah, that was my first foray
50:38
into Edrington. Yeah, sure.
50:41
Moved back to Scotland, I got a job at Brooklady.
50:43
Oh, OK. Yeah, did that for a year.
50:46
On Isla or? No in in in Glasgow.
50:49
Was that sales as well or brand? That was brand advocacy and
50:52
sales and essentially covering, funnily enough, Canada, Europe
50:58
and Scotland. And then the regional sales
51:02
manager gave me all the amazing shows, like, I don't know, just
51:06
north of Newcastle outside the airport, that kind of stuff,
51:08
right? All right, so it was.
51:10
But it was an amazing, still is an amazing brand.
51:13
The integrity of Bouquard, he's insane.
51:14
I could talk for hours on that, but I had that job, did that for
51:19
just over a year. And then I had this opportunity
51:21
to move to Dubai to work for an importer.
51:23
And I was like, you know what? I get the chance to learn the
51:26
business side of things, the import export network and the
51:30
industry, and also learn how a completely different region does
51:33
whiskey. An importer in Dubai?
51:36
Yeah. There's only two.
51:38
Wow. And they're both owned by the
51:39
same guy. So I went for one.
51:44
I had 28 malts in My Portfolio from all over the world.
51:46
So my sort of journey into Japanese whiskey started, then
51:49
my journey into Indian whiskey started.
51:50
Then I just basically had this incredible portfolio, but I did
51:53
not have the complexion for 50° heat.
51:57
No, it was just wasn't. It wasn't for.
51:58
Me, but I mean I've heard I've heard people live in Dubai, they
52:01
basically don't feel the heat because you go out of an air
52:03
conditioned home into an air conditioned car into an air
52:05
conditioned office and. We do.
52:09
I mean, I think on that side of things, like Dubai is a
52:11
challenge. It was a challenge for me for a
52:14
bunch of different reasons, but one was basically a lifestyle,
52:18
wasn't there. I couldn't go out cycling unless
52:19
it was at 4:00 in the morning, right?
52:23
So talk to me about what's the challenges there, working in
52:28
whiskey in a country that has such strict laws with regard
52:32
because there's so many perceptions for people who
52:34
haven't been to people have maybe not been to Dubai.
52:37
No. They look at what you hear, oh,
52:40
you can only drink here and you've got to be careful because
52:42
if you get caught drunk in the streets, you'll be you'll be
52:44
arrested and stuff like that. It's like, but then you hear
52:47
people that go to Dubai regularly say nonsense.
52:50
You go to these hotels, they do bottomless brunches.
52:52
You can drink loads of whatever you want and get out there.
52:56
It's a good question. You know, what's amazing about
52:59
it is there's only one difference to the law there
53:02
versus in the UK, right? And that is, you need an alcohol
53:07
license to buy something. Right.
53:09
So if you only go to shop and buy a bottle of booze, you need
53:11
an alcohol license. But if you're in a hotel, you
53:13
don't. But this bar is licensed.
53:16
The hotels here, they're licensed you basically the laws
53:19
in Dubai are you can drink in a place that's allowed to sell
53:22
alcohol. It's exactly the same here in
53:23
the UK. So it's one of those you go up,
53:26
you know, you know, Muslim country, they're not going to
53:30
allow alcohol. But actually they've embraced
53:32
tourism to a certain degree. Of course.
53:34
Yeah, we're not going to the politics, no.
53:37
But in terms of the actual alcohol sort of area, it's
53:42
vibrant for a number of reasons. Number one, there is money to
53:44
spend there. So you do get access to some
53:47
incredible whiskies and whether a 28 brand portfolio.
53:51
The biggest challenge for me was given all the brands, the time
53:54
that they they reserved and they.
53:55
Needed. The bartending scene is insane.
53:59
Every single person that wants to basically make a career of
54:04
bartending that maybe can't afford to come to London or go
54:06
to Vancouver or come to Edinburgh or go to the big
54:09
cocktail centers, they go to Dubai.
54:11
So there's an incredible talent of bartenders from India,
54:16
Philippines, basically Sri Lanka, anywhere in that region
54:20
where folk can get to Dubai, they go and they work hard
54:23
because they're focused and they want to actually make some of
54:25
the best drinks. And you will get some of the
54:27
best cocktails in the world out there.
54:30
It's, you know, it is an, it's actually an incredible place to
54:33
go and enjoy a cocktail and a DRAM.
54:37
What's it, what's the pricing like out there for like I
54:40
traveled India quite regularly Yeah, it's not cheap.
54:42
No, right. It's not cheap.
54:43
So there, there's a fair hike on tax and everything like that for
54:46
a drama, Yeah, there's. There's a big tax, there's a big
54:49
allowance as you go in, so you can take 4 litres in tax free
54:51
from the airport. So that's probably quite good.
54:54
Pints are more expensive than than the Edinburgh Festival
54:57
prices. But it's, again, it's one of
54:59
those, see, when you live it there, you don't pay income tax
55:03
folklore, that's amazing. But in actual fact, your cost of
55:05
living, it matches that. They take the taxi elsewhere,
55:08
right? They take it from everybody
55:09
else. So it's it is, it's not, it's
55:14
not the sort of scaremongering place that people talk about,
55:17
but it's also not the utopia on the other side.
55:19
And in terms of lifestyle, that was the reason I left.
55:22
It wasn't the business, it wasn't the the booze culture.
55:25
It was nothing like that. But the other thing I left for
55:27
is because I wanted to had this itch I've been wanting to
55:31
scratch for a number of years and I want to prove I could make
55:34
whiskey. OK, Self, yeah.
55:36
So how long were you in Dubai then for?
55:39
About 8 1/2. Yeah.
55:41
And so that's then your step into Australia, this is.
55:44
So this was I essentially got AI got an e-mail from Chris
55:49
Thompson, who's a still a very good friend of mine and ex
55:52
colleague now obviously, but he, he ran Lark Distillery for Bill
55:57
Lark. So Bill Lark started the
55:58
Tasmanian whiskey industry, I want to say 3334 years ago now,
56:02
so. We had Lark on this podcast 30.
56:04
Three years ago. We had it with, I forget his
56:07
name, Christopher Coats. Yeah, he brought a ball.
56:09
Well, he was talking. He brought a ball of Tasmanian
56:11
whiskey. I'd mentioned larks when I was
56:13
on the first time. That's right.
56:16
Because he was the one that changed the laws when it came to
56:18
just the life. Still sizes, wasn't it?
56:21
Yeah, so the the laws out there changed essentially you entire
56:27
or in Australia there was us the minimum size of still that you
56:33
had was based on a manhole cover because someone needed to be
56:37
able to get in there to clean it.
56:38
So you can only build industrial sized stills and.
56:42
So that made kind of start up costs pretty really.
56:44
High, Yeah, yeah, craft of still.
56:47
Exactly. So. 1982 Bill Lark finally got
56:51
the law changed and ultimately got what was Peter's second name
56:59
guy called Peter was a German still Smith down there who built
57:01
these tight he wasn't a still Smith when he started he.
57:04
Was he was a still Smith when he.
57:05
Was a he was a plumber, but he was an incredible metal metal
57:08
worker and he built these stills for for bills a 1200 litre wash
57:13
still a 900 litre spirit still the.
57:16
Things you will learn to make do.
57:17
Like I was, I learned. I learned to mash in in a milk
57:22
fab. There was an old milk vac that
57:24
had essentially, again, Peterbilt, the, the sieve for
57:29
it, the the false bottom. But that was what we were
57:32
learning. And we were essentially bringing
57:34
in 400 kilos of barley at a time and making 100 litres.
57:37
So half of that cask every day really.
57:40
So I got an e-mail from Chris. He's like, you've got a big
57:43
network. I'm looking for talent and
57:45
either I need a new distiller and can you tell everyone?
57:48
And I wrote back, I was like, no, here's my CV.
57:51
Next thing you know, I've had a couple of online interviews and
57:54
they're like, when can you get here?
57:55
Really. So October 2014 I moved to Lark
58:00
making 100 litres a day. Now I don't know if this is a
58:03
trend in my career, but Day 2 is my first, first tour of Glen
58:09
Kinchy. On day 2 at Lark, Chris went.
58:12
I've got to meet me, the CEO and.
58:13
Bug Clean the bogs. Chris Thompson doesn't clean
58:17
much. No, that's not fair on him.
58:21
No, Chris, basically he said, look, it's day 2.
58:24
You know what you're doing? You've got the, the, oh,
58:26
everything's here. You've.
58:27
Got the gist of it. You've got the gist of it.
58:29
Just basically go and make us something.
58:31
So the way that that the still he was working at the time is
58:34
you obviously had the mash in and you had the mill and the
58:36
mash in in the morning. You obviously were building a
58:39
brew, but then you were also distilling what was put down the
58:41
week before. The beauty of that model was
58:45
everything was done on, I want to say vibes, but on a Roman
58:48
flavour. So the temperatures worked like
58:53
open topmastons here everything was pitched to be a bit higher.
58:56
Fermentation was open top and there was a vineyard next door.
59:00
So seasonally the Roman flavour of what you were brewing was
59:03
changing massively. So spring and autumn you had
59:05
this sulfur thing that's ran for the whole place, but that was
59:08
just the local essentially bacteria getting stronger.
59:11
It was fighting off stuff it didn't like, and the culture
59:13
that we built was getting stronger.
59:14
So sulfur in the brew didn't translate the sulfur in the
59:17
spirit, but it was really interesting to see how that
59:20
changed. And you could tell the
59:21
difference between spring, summer, autumn, and winter
59:23
Laugh. If you were making that, I mean
59:27
like 100 liters of 100 liters of wash and then were you
59:30
distilling that? No, sorry.
59:31
Making 100 liters of spinner, 100 liters is 1212 hundred
59:34
liters of wash. And were you then just feeling
59:36
like octaves or you just keeping that back until you're building
59:40
up enough to do a couple of casts We.
59:41
Filled what we called Australian quarter casts, which Bill Lark
59:45
invent there's 100 litre cast yeah OK So what and what he was
59:49
doing is he was going to. Sepultz Field was the main place
59:52
in SA and Sepultz Field has the longest unbroken lineage of
59:56
fortified wine in the world, right?
59:58
They can give you every vintage from 1878 to today.
1:00:00
Yeah, but what we didn't realise at the time is fortified the.
1:00:06
The fortified industry around the world was going down the
1:00:08
swanee so several food that were breaking down Saleras and had
1:00:12
all these casts to sell and Bill was the only person buying them.
1:00:14
So he was buying them for a song, turning them at 100 litre
1:00:17
casts and we were filling Larkin to them and then so.
1:00:20
What vintage did you say go out to 18?
1:00:22
78. 78 because we we are was at a tasting with no it was with
1:00:29
fragrant drops with George Rachel, George, George Geebo.
1:00:33
He was a Madeira and there was a place he was at and they had
1:00:36
every vintage from 1905. So I was very impressed with
1:00:40
that. But that 1870, wow.
1:00:42
You know that means it by good. Yeah.
1:00:44
We got we actually got the 1878 cask to extra mature some lark.
1:00:49
So he's so you're buying this stuff.
1:00:51
I mean that like you say, but then I suppose.
1:00:54
Well, the cast now are a bit more expensive and one of the
1:00:58
legacies are left. So I was at Lark for on and off
1:01:00
for eight years, right? And when I left, I left them
1:01:03
with a seasoning program. So they're actually seasoning
1:01:05
their own, you know, fortified wine cast as well as still
1:01:07
having access to some of the best old wood in the.
1:01:09
Industry so you're going distillation then so you're
1:01:12
working you're working as a distiller there.
1:01:14
So then you're going into seasoning cast and cast programs
1:01:18
and stuff like that. What was the change in what we
1:01:20
said? Did you was it just because it's
1:01:22
a small distillery and that you are sort of having more and more
1:01:25
of a say on, you know, just you could you could a smaller
1:01:28
distillery when you're only producing that much liquid, you
1:01:31
can have, you know, everyone's kind of having an input and a
1:01:34
saving things. I mean, so Chris here was, you
1:01:37
know, giving a bit of shit earlier on.
1:01:38
Chris and I were really quite almost Yang and Yang in terms of
1:01:42
how we worked like we just had. We could almost essentially see
1:01:46
what each other was thinking. And I would bring a traditional
1:01:49
Scotch aspect to it and he would bring his own experience.
1:01:53
So he's. And he's Australian, is he?
1:01:54
He's Australian, he's well, he's basically living Tazzy most of
1:01:58
his life. He only knew Lark and you know,
1:02:04
I only had theoretical knowledge from the Scotch industry.
1:02:08
So he gave me the tools to learn the practical and I gave him the
1:02:11
theoretical to change what we did at LARC.
1:02:14
So it was it was an amazing match made in heaven.
1:02:16
It was another guy, Rick, who's became a really, really good
1:02:20
gend distiller. So the three of us essentially
1:02:21
were running that place for a couple years and then we kept
1:02:24
expanding and expanding. So we moved from being a single
1:02:29
cask product into a blended product.
1:02:32
And that's, you know, Chris brought his essentially
1:02:34
knowledge of whiskey making in there.
1:02:38
And then I started looking after the wood.
1:02:40
But then obviously we brought more people on.
1:02:42
So I was running a team of distillers and become a
1:02:44
distillery manager and you get to know that side of things.
1:02:48
So going down we made 100 litres a day.
1:02:50
When I left we were making half a million bulk litres a year
1:02:52
from three different sites. That's crazy.
1:02:55
So I was running teams, I was looking after the oak policy, I
1:02:58
was doing a bit of whiskey making with Chris and then you
1:03:03
know, you know, the business just basically kept getting.
1:03:05
Bigger and bigger and it's a kind of a competitive advantage
1:03:08
being a Southern, you know, being an Australian distillery
1:03:10
with that obviously you know, huge wine, huge wine industry,
1:03:16
but so far away from the Scotch whiskey industry that I don't.
1:03:20
Do the tentacles reach that far to get hold of that word, or are
1:03:22
you a real competitive advantage in terms of getting hold of that
1:03:25
word? We were.
1:03:28
You were, and maybe not so much now or.
1:03:30
Oh no, we are. We still are.
1:03:31
Now there's a couple of guys down there that that buy and and
1:03:36
sell the best Australian winecast to Scotland and.
1:03:38
Sure. I've not seen I can't think of.
1:03:40
Fortified wine from Australia. Doesn't I think there was there
1:03:43
was a blind, there was a blind summit that I had that was in a
1:03:48
fortified a. Paracask.
1:03:50
Possibly a it was an Australian. Was that?
1:03:52
Was that there? You don't.
1:03:53
Really see a parrot outside there.
1:03:55
No, but I can't even Australian wine.
1:03:58
Yeah, but your guys, I mean your guys like Greg at Rare Finds,
1:04:01
they have had the foresight to go.
1:04:04
I'm going to try that. Yeah, yeah, even if it's a
1:04:06
handful of casks. Lolan Barnes got Australian wine
1:04:09
casks. They're trying to think of a
1:04:10
brand. There's a brand that like a
1:04:12
core. I generally think you'd get more
1:04:14
like name of grape than you would the name of vineyard,
1:04:18
these kind of things, unless it's very bespoke, kind of like
1:04:22
the yeah, 'cause. It's like Shiraz and things like
1:04:25
that. Yeah, 'cause I see.
1:04:26
Shiraz Pinot Noir. Pinot caps offs.
1:04:28
And like, right, OK, So it's because I've had them, I think
1:04:32
Aberfelde do like Californian wine cask.
1:04:36
I potentially, yeah. But it says that because it's
1:04:38
interesting that they put, they stipulate like this is.
1:04:41
Yeah, I think it's Aberfelde 18. Yeah, or 15.
1:04:44
It's Californian wine. I think it's a lot easier, and
1:04:47
correct me if I'm wrong, I think it's a lot easier to get the
1:04:50
grape variety signed off to put on your label just to get a
1:04:53
particular. Producer, There's that side.
1:04:55
The other side of it is, you know, from a blending
1:04:58
perspective, red, like red wine casts are tough because they're
1:05:02
bringing tanning into a, you know, to a cast that already has
1:05:07
different tannings at work. So it can be a nightmare
1:05:11
depending on your spirit profile to balance everything.
1:05:15
And also with table wine in particular, the chance of it
1:05:18
coming from Australia and being Vinegard when it gets here are
1:05:22
higher. So that's why Fortified was
1:05:23
always chosen because it was higher ABV and there was less
1:05:25
chance of it of it going off. So there's there's that side.
1:05:29
There's also the side that the wine cast that you tend to see
1:05:34
don't have. They've not had much use.
1:05:35
They maybe had 14-15 months, maybe two or three vintages of
1:05:38
wine and and therefore there's still a lot of active wood
1:05:40
happening. So you've got tanning from the
1:05:42
wood coming in that's playing in the mid pallet, you've got
1:05:44
tanning from the wine that's playing in the back pallet.
1:05:45
And whatever's happening in your spirits.
1:05:46
Got to try and find a way through that to balance
1:05:49
everything. And was there anything you were
1:05:52
able to do then in Australia that maybe just the kind of
1:05:55
legal definitions behind Scots you were able to do that
1:05:58
discoveries in Scotland weren't able to do?
1:06:00
Coolest thing actually. Next time I'm on I'll bring it.
1:06:02
I've got a sample we worked with.
1:06:05
Have you said the garage project?
1:06:07
No, I haven't. No, so there's just two actually
1:06:09
really good, two really good examples from that.
1:06:11
So one is Garage Project. They're probably the best craft
1:06:13
Brewer in the Southern Hemisphere.
1:06:16
They're based in New Zealand and their wines are sorry.
1:06:19
Their beers are phenomenal, well balanced, but hot driven, you
1:06:23
know, malt driven. They're just they're flavour
1:06:26
bombs and every can has some sort of artistic integrity with
1:06:30
a local artist. So after COVID, During COVID,
1:06:36
New Zealand and Tassie pretty much followed the same rules.
1:06:39
No one's getting on the. Island.
1:06:40
No one gets in, no one gets over.
1:06:42
Which killed tourism but actually meant that the local
1:06:45
community rallied a lot more locally.
1:06:49
You know, we were one of the projects we did at Lark is 8
1:06:54
weeks from the idea to commissioning.
1:06:56
We built a column still to make hand sanitizer.
1:06:59
That was one of my projects that was insane.
1:07:01
So we're making, we've built this thing that would put out
1:07:03
1000 liters of spirit in 24 hours a day, no bother at 96% if
1:07:07
we wanted that. That was one of the best,
1:07:09
proudest projects that ever got to manage.
1:07:11
It was really cool. Very, the Garage Project guys
1:07:14
were allowed, New Zealanders were allowed to Tassie and vice
1:07:17
versa. But the mainlanders were still a
1:07:19
wee bit. So the boys from Garage Project
1:07:23
came down with a few beers and they're like, we've got these,
1:07:25
what do you think? And they had this IPA, It was an
1:07:27
insanely hoppy IPA, New Zealand hops.
1:07:31
I think they had Tassie hops in there as well.
1:07:33
And we were like, people talk about the Glenfiddich IPA finish
1:07:37
and it's a cracking whiskey, but imagine if it tasted like that.
1:07:41
So we got some pallets of the beer down, filled some casks,
1:07:46
and they finished the whiskey and these beer casks.
1:07:50
Now I took that to some of the, let's just say most celebrated
1:07:54
whiskey makers in Scotland and they went, it would never pass
1:07:56
Southwest, but it's fantastic. It just had this thing.
1:08:00
The other one so very proud of it is they did a Christmas cast.
1:08:04
So there was a French patisserie down there, a patisser, whatever
1:08:07
you call it, French Baker who moved to Tasmania and he made
1:08:15
mince pies every year and they sold out every year.
1:08:18
And he had this essentially liquid, this sort of sweet Jew
1:08:22
that was leftover from his mince pies.
1:08:23
And he went to. So this is what we may be soaked
1:08:26
like, the kind of sultanas in it and so forth.
1:08:28
This is the. And he went to his winemaker
1:08:32
friend Elaine, who was running the vineyard next to the.
1:08:34
Just be like cooking Brandy or something like that, wouldn't
1:08:37
it? Or.
1:08:37
No, it was like sleeping. I was like syrup.
1:08:39
Oh, right. OK.
1:08:40
And he went, he said to Elaine, he went, this has got sugar in
1:08:42
it. You know how to make alcohol?
1:08:44
Can you make alcohol from this? And Elaine was like, no, but we
1:08:48
tasted it and we went, we can season cast with this.
1:08:52
So we made Christmas cask, which was mince pie as you finished
1:08:55
whiskey, right? It was spectacular.
1:08:58
It was unbelievably good. I think they're on their 7th or
1:09:01
8th release now. Brilliant.
1:09:02
That's so good. So that would never pass.
1:09:06
But I think the other thing, just to round off the lark stuff
1:09:09
for me, again, not many, well, some of them do, but there's not
1:09:13
many people in the Scotch industry get to say this.
1:09:16
There are bottles of Lark out there that I both distilled and
1:09:19
blended and to have that. That's cool.
1:09:22
You know, there's no one else to point fingers at if that was
1:09:25
he's bad, right? But to have the privilege to
1:09:27
basically take something that I distilled 7 years ago and then
1:09:30
blend it. So I was like that.
1:09:32
I know you've taken that from pretty cool.
1:09:34
Green bottle. Yeah.
1:09:36
Was it a pretty? I mean there's a lot of
1:09:39
distillers on Tassie. Like what, 30 plus distilleries
1:09:41
at this point? 300 + 300 plus on Tassie.
1:09:44
Oh, OK, crap. There's this.
1:09:45
There's this weird rule that they can make 10,000 liters
1:09:47
before they pay tax, so everyone's got a 9900 right in
1:09:51
their garage, right? But is it like a pretty communal
1:09:55
community I imagine? There's still a parochial site
1:09:57
to it. I think they're going through
1:09:59
bumps right now. Like they were never going to be
1:10:02
able to sustain that many when they were at, you know, 60 to
1:10:06
100. The tourist trade would carry it
1:10:08
because you could always sell, you know, a $450 five year old
1:10:12
whiskey to a guy that you're never going to see again.
1:10:14
Right. But for locals to come back and
1:10:16
buy it. So I would say that's, well, I
1:10:20
know this is, it might not be fair to say what I'd say there's
1:10:22
probably four or five big players in Australia.
1:10:25
That will be fine. Yeah.
1:10:26
Then there's probably four or five micro distilleries.
1:10:29
There's a really good one in the north of Tazi called Fannies
1:10:32
Bay. He makes 20 litre casks, he
1:10:35
distills whenever he wants and you know he can take the time to
1:10:40
get it right and he's small enough that you know he's doing
1:10:43
it as a hobby. And then there's all these in
1:10:44
the middle that you worry for because some of them are making
1:10:47
cracking whiskey. But until they realise I've got
1:10:51
to make something consistent it. Becomes harder to get.
1:10:54
That a crowded market as well. Yeah, only dragon.
1:10:57
I mean, when I was in Australia I'd for a bit of Sullivan's
1:11:01
Cove. It's some really cool stuff.
1:11:04
I can't remember the name of the Surrey but there's that mental
1:11:07
guy in Taza who was like. Yeah, a big doll at Belgrove A.
1:11:09
Good ball of mine. Yeah.
1:11:12
Was he not like, smoking his own barley with sheep shit?
1:11:15
Yeah. And had his own drying his
1:11:18
barley in a washing machine that he'd like.
1:11:20
Peter's. Peter's a legend, so he lost.
1:11:22
His license like 5 times. Or something in terms of the
1:11:26
stellar license, I don't know if it's that many, but he did have
1:11:28
challenges as laws changed. So Peter was, he thinks, and
1:11:33
he's probably got a good claim to this.
1:11:35
He was the first carbon negative distillery.
1:11:36
Everything was done on sale, right?
1:11:38
Everything was how can a Jimmy list not save money but to make
1:11:41
a good product with stuff that I already have ultimately.
1:11:44
So he did smoke. He smoked stuff with sheep shit.
1:11:49
All the rye grow he grows on his farm.
1:11:51
All the fuel that he uses in his direct fired single pot still
1:11:55
come from comes from the chip shop up the road.
1:11:57
So it's a little chip fat. His barrels, his casts are
1:12:01
essentially all refilled, but he refires them himself to give
1:12:03
them more life. His malt dryer, his rye drying
1:12:07
processes in a tumble dryer that is jimmied like the whole thing
1:12:11
is, is absolutely insane. But he's one of those guys.
1:12:15
Just a genius, you know, Wouldn't have been the last time
1:12:19
at the time before the Open was at Saint Andrews and you had the
1:12:22
big sand golf ball on the beach. Right, OK.
1:12:24
All right, he built that. He was the guy basically.
1:12:28
He paid them to come across. He got to see the golf, which is
1:12:30
great, but he's a world champion sand sculptor and ice sculptor.
1:12:33
He just felt just. Absolutely.
1:12:36
Man of many talents. He's an insane guy and his rise
1:12:39
really good as well. It's 100% rye.
1:12:41
He does obviously add enzymes to it but is 100%.
1:12:45
Right. That's traditional.
1:12:46
That's traditional American standard.
1:12:48
Yeah, he's he's class. But then, sorry Chuck.
1:12:51
I just got to say I had his Apski and that was just banging
1:12:55
Brandy blended with whiskey. It's absolutely.
1:12:57
Class really, I thought. Brandy Blinded with whiskey.
1:12:59
Yeah, it's like 5050 class, right?
1:13:02
I've. Got to feel this is going as a 2
1:13:03
parter. It could end up like that.
1:13:05
You've come back. So I because we are, you know,
1:13:07
we're getting on, but you came back to Scotland then and you've
1:13:11
mentioned working at Edrington. So how did that come about and.
1:13:15
So during lockdown, obviously the Lark side was just insane,
1:13:22
like a kid in a candy store, go and play with this equipment and
1:13:25
watch this brand like get to ridiculous levels.
1:13:31
And then during lockdown I was like, well, my team in Tassie
1:13:36
hasn't had much exposure to the rest of the industry.
1:13:39
So I was like, I'll call some pals.
1:13:41
So it was for phoning around different people in Scotland and
1:13:43
we were having teams calls with our blenders and our distillers
1:13:46
and just, it was amazing to say to these guys, you know, we've
1:13:49
got such and such on the line. And one of the people wanted to
1:13:53
get on the line was Kirsty Campbell at McAllen.
1:13:57
And I was like, look, I'd love it if you could just have a chat
1:14:00
or a teams call with our team. And she's like, I'm not going to
1:14:05
necessarily do that as a priority, but is there any
1:14:08
chance that you'd want to come back to Scotland?
1:14:10
And I was like, oh, what's going on?
1:14:12
He was like famous grouse need a master blender.
1:14:13
I was like, definitely not going to say no to put my hat in the
1:14:17
ring, but also think in my head, no chance, absolutely no chance.
1:14:24
Thanks to Kirsten that had the connections with the HR team,
1:14:28
reached out and did a very, very, let's just say I was
1:14:34
bricking it. It was quite a technical
1:14:36
interview. So they had.
1:14:37
Over over zoom or. Over Zooms they had their head
1:14:39
lab and you also had Laura rambling from Glenrothes on the
1:14:43
call and an HR representative. And I was just like, and Craig
1:14:47
Owen was actually with a Curry with him last night, funnily
1:14:50
enough. But I'd met him in the Scotch
1:14:52
Whisky Research Institute, so I knew, like, the questions that
1:14:56
could come up here are going to be potentially intense.
1:15:00
Yeah. So I came off that call and I
1:15:02
was like, that is the most intense, difficult whiskey call
1:15:05
technically I've ever had. Yeah.
1:15:06
Even though I'd been a distiller for seven years, and after six
1:15:10
years of doing it without a qualification, I got my general
1:15:12
certificate of distillation. I was like, you know, I was.
1:15:16
I was all right. But so I came off that call.
1:15:19
And I thought if that's as far as that goes, my hat was in the
1:15:21
ring. And.
1:15:23
Happy to stay. Here and then they phoned me and
1:15:25
they're like, could you come to Scotland in April?
1:15:27
I was like, all right, landed in Scotland now and realized that
1:15:32
the day after I landed my passport only had five months on
1:15:35
it. I was like, so not only do they
1:15:38
have to go in for an in person interview and they added Gordon
1:15:41
Motion into the mix. You know, you've got Highland
1:15:44
Park, 20 odd years experience there.
1:15:47
But I also then had to get to the passport office to get my
1:15:49
passport changed with a 24 hour sort of turn around.
1:15:53
So I came, did that, actually managed to bring some lark, but
1:15:58
with, again, this is when I started to see the way that
1:16:02
Edrington did things. They put me through some sensory
1:16:04
evaluation tests. Now, I'd done some of them
1:16:06
before with various companies, but this was proper.
1:16:09
It was really fast. Yeah.
1:16:10
It was cool. Yeah.
1:16:12
So here's a bunch of jars, tell us what they are.
1:16:15
And then here's a bunch of whiskeys.
1:16:17
Blind write your notes and also, you know, anything you can point
1:16:22
out about them. So the first one was can you
1:16:24
identify aromas? But also, can you find faults?
1:16:27
Second ones, They were like, it's tasting notes, just right
1:16:30
tasting notes. But there was a couple of faulty
1:16:31
whiskeys in there and they were basically just making sure that
1:16:33
he could pick up on sulfur and TCA, for example.
1:16:38
So I left, got back to Tazzy, and the day after I landed back
1:16:42
there, they phoned up and they're like, right, we need to
1:16:43
talk about getting you back. And I was like, this is insane,
1:16:46
really. Yeah.
1:16:47
I just asked, well, it's special my mind you said sulfur and PCA.
1:16:51
Well, it's. PCA TCA which is mustiness
1:16:54
essentially cork tape. OK, cool.
1:16:56
Right. So one of the conversations we
1:16:58
had after a few drams, the first time I met you, the last time I
1:17:01
saw you, in fact, when we were at tasting you, you, you, you
1:17:06
start talking about what I said earlier, you need to put a pen
1:17:08
in that and come back to it. And you were because what's
1:17:11
fascinating about when you work for Edgington and somebody else,
1:17:16
Pete from Woven, Peter Allison from Woven, he also worked at
1:17:23
Edgington and he's talked a lot about Famous Grouse and he
1:17:26
talked about the wood management programme, which you were a lot
1:17:30
to do with as well through your career there.
1:17:33
So basically it's this argument about the the fact that you work
1:17:38
for two brands effectively, Highland Park is the sort of
1:17:41
Highland Park and Landrothers are stuck in the middle as such,
1:17:43
but you're working on one side. You've got the Macallan, which
1:17:46
it's the Macallan, right? But also because it's the
1:17:49
biggest and you know, people see it as that premium whiskey,
1:17:53
etcetera. It's also wide open for cynics
1:17:56
to take box shots at it. They charge far too much money
1:18:00
for it. No, no whiskey could be as good
1:18:02
as that, that which you've justified.
1:18:04
Or when you come back and you talked about the, you know,
1:18:07
you'll talk about the process there.
1:18:09
But then on the on this polar other side of it, you've got the
1:18:12
supermarket blended whiskey, which is wide open again for
1:18:16
people to go cheap rubbish. It's, you know, supermarket,
1:18:20
it's under that it's crap that the next time.
1:18:22
So it's funny. Now, obviously Grouse not part
1:18:24
of the Edgington portfolio anymore.
1:18:27
Not anymore, no. But at the same time, when you
1:18:28
were there being in that would have that scale.
1:18:32
What was it like working in that?
1:18:34
Because when people there'll be people that you say I was the
1:18:37
blender at Famous Grouse, there will be some idiot like that.
1:18:42
Must have been really tough for you mate.
1:18:43
I'm sorry to hear that. So for me, best, it was best job
1:18:47
in the building because I'm essentially a whiskey nerd,
1:18:50
right, with Famous Grouse. So we had access to Edrington
1:18:55
Maltz and we had access to anything else in Scotland that
1:18:58
we wanted. Now the learning curve there for
1:19:02
me was the procurement, right? So there is this thing in the
1:19:06
Scotch industry, it's still today and it's always been like
1:19:09
this since Blens existed. You swap spirits, Yeah, no money
1:19:12
that necessarily changes. It's tankers that go back and
1:19:14
forward, of course. And the way that we blended
1:19:17
anyway with Grouse was everything was kind of pigeon
1:19:20
holed, not necessarily by distillery, but by style.
1:19:23
Because ultimately if I can't get a tanker of Tam DO for
1:19:26
example, I can replace it with tanker of Glendorothus.
1:19:28
Yeah, just as an example, of course.
1:19:31
So you had your buckets of flavour.
1:19:33
So you'll need to know flavour and style, like a flavour and
1:19:36
style profile across the. Recipe is such for.
1:19:41
Aye, we, we just so there's a recipe, but the recipe wasn't
1:19:44
distillery specific. No, right.
1:19:46
And and this is where my mind was blown and I learned this as
1:19:50
well, but it was all done on Numic style because the oak can
1:19:54
be anywhere in the portfolio. So the the the famous Krauss
1:19:58
recipe, I'm not going to give you the recipe, but the recipe
1:20:01
has certain amount, first full European certain amount.
1:20:03
First fill American Sherry casks.
1:20:06
And that doesn't matter where in the spirit.
1:20:08
It could be. And does that include the grain
1:20:10
as well? Or yeah, it could be Highland
1:20:11
Park, it could be grain, it could be wherever.
1:20:13
Yeah, so it has a certain amount first fill Sherry and that it
1:20:18
doesn't matter where that spirits come from.
1:20:20
It doesn't matter. That's the way.
1:20:22
So the way I think about it is this.
1:20:25
So with single malt, you can create complexity a bunch of
1:20:29
ways. You can do it with your own
1:20:30
profile and you can do it with age up with a blend where the
1:20:35
there's no age statements. The minimum age we worked with
1:20:37
is 3, but there was anybody from 3 to 8 years old depending on
1:20:40
what we were doing. You were creating complexity by
1:20:42
new make styles. If you needed to fill out the
1:20:44
back end of a blend, you would go and find something like a
1:20:49
Craig Eloquent because that spirit sat at the back end of
1:20:53
your palette and Glen Orange, another example set at the front
1:20:56
and you had some that sat in the middle.
1:20:58
You had to basically create a flavor profile with new make
1:21:01
that ticked all the boxes and the signature style of Grouse.
1:21:05
And then you needed to layer an oak policy on the top of it,
1:21:09
which was, and again, this blows a lot of people's minds.
1:21:12
Name is Grouse has or sorry, when I was there, I don't know
1:21:18
if anything changed when I handed it over.
1:21:20
We didn't have bourbon casks. All right, OK.
1:21:24
So our malt portfolio which was basically house and 3rd party
1:21:30
malts was all first or refill Sherry, American, European oak.
1:21:34
And the grain portfolio we were using was basically a lot of
1:21:37
refills. But because the refills were all
1:21:39
from in house, they were all Sherry as well.
1:21:42
And I think as well, like the Edrin, because this is what Pete
1:21:45
from Woven was, was saying as well as he said like blinds,
1:21:49
because he's a woven on a blind on a blender.
1:21:53
He was talking about that, about blades getting bashed too much.
1:21:55
And he said, and even the famous grouse getting bashed away, it
1:21:57
got big. People will bash it unfairly and
1:21:59
stuff like that as well. But he also said that Edgington
1:22:03
wood management programme is the Edgington Wood Management
1:22:06
programme. Ridiculous.
1:22:07
So, but but it's Edgington's wood management programme.
1:22:10
So it's the same wood. Well, not the same wood
1:22:11
management, Yeah, but like you're buying.
1:22:14
You're buying the casks that you forget about.
1:22:16
Those those bodega connections, they've made like over decades
1:22:20
and decades and decades. Yeah, exactly.
1:22:21
Obviously McAllen and they'll be divvied up, I'm sure.
1:22:24
I mean, I might be wrong here, but I'd be divvied up.
1:22:25
McConnell get this Mccarthic and but but it but famous crowds
1:22:29
have been getting the use of that similar those connections.
1:22:31
So first though, so the what I'll say, what I can say here is
1:22:36
probably a better way to put it because there's obviously a lot
1:22:38
of sensitive information in terms of recipes and stuff.
1:22:40
Right, I'll say that for the Facebook group bonus.
1:22:44
We'll put an encrypted message in it, but.
1:22:46
Make your own famous grouse at home.
1:22:49
Ultimately, right. So there's a there is a, there's
1:22:51
a recipe of of for famous grouse of, of new mix, right.
1:22:56
And they sit within styles and the percentages, you know, we,
1:23:00
we had the, the freedom to change them as long as they were
1:23:02
there to to match house style. And as I said, every castle went
1:23:06
into every single one, including the grain whiskey was nose
1:23:08
before it went in. Yeah, right.
1:23:11
When it was married together, grouse had half a million litre
1:23:14
tanks, right. Insane.
1:23:16
Yeah, so in, in one batting half a million litres.
1:23:20
Well, so 500,000 litres. So you had 500,000 litres, which
1:23:24
you had your grain tank and you had your malt tank.
1:23:27
We needed two malt tanks because as soon as you put a blend
1:23:29
together into that half a millilitre malt tank, it
1:23:32
physically got locked and it electronically got locked so
1:23:36
that that whiskey could marry together for eight weeks.
1:23:38
That's Famous Grouse. That's not McAllen.
1:23:40
That is the blend that people go, oh, it's just supermarket
1:23:44
stuff. I'm sorry.
1:23:45
It tastes different to single malt because blended whiskey was
1:23:49
designed to be different to single malt.
1:23:51
But in terms of quality of a final product?
1:23:54
And fast volume. So that would just so I'm
1:23:58
definitely right. So one single vatting of the
1:24:02
famous grouse is half a million litres.
1:24:04
Well, no, we had. So we had a half a million litre
1:24:06
VAT that we would top up but and then we would take volumes out
1:24:09
depending. Right.
1:24:10
OK. So you might take a percentage
1:24:12
out. You're not top it up.
1:24:13
I had to be locked for 8 weeks. Of course.
1:24:15
So you've got 2, right? And essentially you're locking
1:24:18
them and you're pulling from one while you're filling the.
1:24:20
Other Yeah, so. Once it's topped up, the line
1:24:23
isn't touched for 8 weeks, and then maybe after 8 weeks a
1:24:27
certain amount's taken out. And this and the up again.
1:24:29
No, the other tank will be locked at that point, so.
1:24:31
Yeah, that's what I mean. So a single tank.
1:24:34
I'm assuming you're leaving some liquid in there effect almost.
1:24:37
There's the. Only way I can describe like a
1:24:39
Cambucci. You've got the mother, so
1:24:40
there's a the. Ultimately a Selena system
1:24:42
you're working with yeah, but the thing I find amazing is the
1:24:45
blend you would put together in one week and the malts you'd yet
1:24:48
to have to play with would be completely different the next
1:24:50
week based on orders and stuff. Right.
1:24:52
So you've got all that happening it's a fairly interesting thing
1:24:56
to see everything is matched against essentially the best
1:25:01
blend that you had from the year before and you've.
1:25:04
It's nosed and signed off by ultimately at the time it was
1:25:08
me, but also the whole whiskey making team would be involved in
1:25:11
that process in case you had any questions or anything that was
1:25:16
off. So then you're your oak policy
1:25:21
and then sits on top of that. As I say now, yes, Edgington has
1:25:25
an incredible wood policy and has some of the best
1:25:27
relationships for particularly Sherry Cass, but also for
1:25:30
bourbon Cass as well. And they would come into the
1:25:33
different business units. However, there were proprietary
1:25:37
heat treatment and coopering techniques based on what we
1:25:40
wanted to do. So it wasn't just a case of
1:25:43
everyone gets first Hill casket was, but it was the case of at
1:25:48
Famous Grouse. I had the same levers I could
1:25:50
pull to change that recipe as I did at Macallan.
1:25:53
That's the level of just insane attention to detail that famous
1:25:57
Grouse has. As I said, we didn't we didn't
1:26:00
go, we'll take two or three from that Stow and everyone's going
1:26:04
to taste like that. Every single cast was was was
1:26:07
nosed. But it's it was an insane.
1:26:10
And that that you we and the conversation that we had that
1:26:13
night after a few drams, you know, you were saying about how
1:26:17
the justification of Mcallen's pricing can be well, not it's.
1:26:21
Not up to me to justify pricing, no, but you can see actually be
1:26:24
more expensive. But that point, the touch points
1:26:26
you said, and you've already mentioned it, the fact that
1:26:29
every single cast gets noticed. So why did you say so?
1:26:32
Every single, what was it? What was the process for
1:26:35
McAllen? And is that the same as As for
1:26:37
famous crowds as well? Yeah.
1:26:38
To a certain degree, so famous curse everything got nosed
1:26:41
before it went in because it was generally 3 to 6 years old for
1:26:45
McAllen, everything's nosed the 8 and that, that's ultimately a
1:26:49
touch point. Is it going the way we think
1:26:51
it's going? Or, you know, is it it's in a
1:26:53
European oak cask? Is it showing particularly good
1:26:56
European oak character? Do we want to carve that off for
1:26:59
a limited release or do we want to age it on further and put it
1:27:02
in a different part of the warehouse?
1:27:03
Same thing with American. So everything's nosed, the 8,
1:27:06
which just gives us a ultimately a, a kind of gauge for where
1:27:11
that's going. Then when it's 12/15/18, every
1:27:15
cask will be nosed before it's blended.
1:27:16
So we talk about recipe at Grouse McAllen.
1:27:20
There were recipes, but they were changed again, all based on
1:27:23
a Roman flavour. And we had a team of eight
1:27:26
people qualified who had to come to a quorum and say that whiskey
1:27:32
is the same as the, the, you know, the, the, the mother
1:27:35
batch, everything at the single malts were just in its natural
1:27:39
colour as well. So not only were you blending
1:27:42
for a Roman flavour, you had to blend for colour.
1:27:44
And then you had three or four other touch points before it
1:27:47
even hits a bottle where you had positive release.
1:27:49
If it's not right, it comes back and we change it.
1:27:51
So, you know, it is an insane level of detail.
1:27:56
But that's also the reason that we never, ever, in my time
1:27:59
there, got a McCallum being sent back as a miss.
1:28:03
Yeah, we might have got some, you know, there might have been
1:28:05
McAllen sent back that weren't actually necessarily McAllen
1:28:07
from various places around the world.
1:28:09
But anything that had a proper lock code that could be traced
1:28:11
back to Edrington would never a miss in that.
1:28:15
It was insane. Yeah.
1:28:17
And that that like when you can put a stamp like that on level
1:28:21
of quality. But that's what's very
1:28:22
interesting about the fact that at one side of it, you can
1:28:25
charge hundreds of thousands or 10s of thousands for bottles on
1:28:30
one side. But then at the other side
1:28:32
you're talking about supermarket drum.
1:28:34
But that's, I mean, so when you look at that scale, you almost
1:28:38
have to wonder how, how did Edrington's business model work
1:28:40
on having something like the Grouse?
1:28:42
I think the culture of that though, was essentially,
1:28:45
particularly at Great Western Roads, you know, that's where
1:28:50
all your whiskey makers work together.
1:28:52
So there would be someone from McAllen in there at least once a
1:28:54
week. And then you had your Highland
1:28:56
Park person based there, your Rothfest person based there,
1:28:59
your favourites Grouse person based there.
1:29:01
And occasionally somewhere from Wyoming or Brugal would float
1:29:03
in. And you essentially had this
1:29:06
environment where we could chat about best practices.
1:29:09
And it was one of those where, you know, we're, you know, we're
1:29:11
developing this for X brand. Do you want to have a look at
1:29:14
it? The other thing as well is never
1:29:16
ever rested on on our laurels. So we talked about how having,
1:29:22
you know, bodegas and well, these days McAllen have a share
1:29:26
in the group of Estevez family, a partnership with them.
1:29:28
So they make the Valdespino cherries.
1:29:31
Now there's no McAllen on the market just now that's been
1:29:33
seasoned in those casks, apart from maybe some in the 70s that
1:29:37
were bought. But under that partnership,
1:29:38
that's just a seasoning relationship that's just
1:29:41
started. So McAllen will start going into
1:29:43
those casks soon. I went down for harvest last
1:29:45
year. Every bottle of Valdespino on
1:29:48
the shelf. You could send a lot code to
1:29:50
Victoria and her team and they'll tell you The Reg plates
1:29:53
of the trucks that brought the grapes in.
1:29:57
And I like, I got to see that myself.
1:29:59
It was insane, like. So even from that level like
1:30:02
that. That's their future.
1:30:04
Right, that's that's what. We're doing going forward.
1:30:06
That's incredible. That's been fantastic.
1:30:08
Now, look, I mean, we're basically could, we could go on
1:30:10
for round two, but what we're going to do is your what, 3
1:30:12
drams you have brought a DRAM with you as well.
1:30:14
We're going to talk about your What 3 drams, but we're going to
1:30:17
stop recording right now and we're going to do that as a a
1:30:19
little bit of bonus content for our Facebook group.
1:30:22
So if you want to, if you, if you want to hear more about
1:30:24
Craig and incredible stories and what a career he's had in
1:30:28
whiskey and then jump onto the Facebook group, you'll be able
1:30:31
to get Craig's What 3 Drams on there.
1:30:34
It's exclusive content for our Facebook group members.
1:30:36
Facebook group is fantastic. Your weekend DRAM roll call,
1:30:40
what you know, bonus content that we've been doing.
1:30:43
There's just loads of stuff going on.
1:30:44
We've built a great community, over 500 people as we're
1:30:46
recording involved in that little community there and keep
1:30:49
it going, keep passing the pod. Craig, thank you so much for
1:30:52
coming along. It's been fantastic.
1:30:54
What an insight we've had. It's been great.
1:30:56
And Angus, tomorrow, as we are recording this tomorrow we will
1:31:00
be hosting. Yeah.
1:31:02
Thompson Brothers Indie Bottler Spotlight, which will be next
1:31:04
week's episode for people listening.
1:31:06
Absolutely. I'm.
1:31:06
Like could be chaos. And then on Sunday, we'll
1:31:09
definitely. Be sorry, it's guaranteed to be
1:31:14
chaos. I'm going to cut that last bit
1:31:18
out, I guess. Last week's episodes.
1:31:22
No, sorry, wait, hang on. I'm going to cut.
1:31:23
That's where are we in the TARDIS now?
1:31:25
Is this next? You're just giving yourself more
1:31:27
work. I guess what about the Thompson
1:31:32
Brothers Indy Bottler Spotlight? It was fantastic.
1:31:34
It was unbelievable. Where's Chuck?
1:31:36
Chuck, are you coming back? Oh, there he is.
1:31:40
Hi, Chuck. Hi.
1:31:41
But we shot. Girls, I live in Brie.
1:31:43
Fantastic. And then of course, Sunday as
1:31:45
we're recording this whiskey fringe that will be cartridge,
1:31:48
I'm sorry to the guys at Glenmore, but as we've convinced
1:31:50
you to let us on to the your stand, that whiskey fringe on
1:31:54
the Sunday. They've made it, I think.
1:31:56
Poor Greg, when he when he saw my sales technique on the the
1:32:00
lowland bond, he realized he'd made a terrible.
1:32:02
Mistake. He's not seen your pores either,
1:32:04
no. Not nerve wracking at all.
1:32:06
You guys picked the half time orange and you have to justify
1:32:08
that sale? Well, we will and we will.
1:32:12
In fact, that's absolutely. We did, and absolutely cracking.
1:32:17
Is it the 25 year old podcast Flint?
1:32:18
It isn't. No.
1:32:20
But where can people get the 20? 5 is it still available because
1:32:23
literally there's hardly any of these models.
1:32:26
No, you're still you'll still be able to get that on.
1:32:29
Well, first of all, I think Kev still has a few bottles here at
1:32:32
the Athletic Arms which you can pick up.
1:32:34
But also if you get onto the rare find website, you're
1:32:37
getting a 15% discount or takes it down from 85 lbs down to
1:32:41
about £72 for 25 and you're getting free, you get free
1:32:44
postage package on that as well. But it's not just a sales call.
1:32:47
It's fantastic. This has been great.
1:32:49
Great. Thank you so much for coming
1:32:51
along. Thank you for sharing your story
1:32:52
with us. And as I say, I'm really, really
1:32:53
looking forward to your, what, 3 drams and what you're going to
1:32:56
tell us there because I'm pretty sure they'll be spectacular and
1:32:58
they'll have some great stories associated with them.
1:33:00
Chuck, we've done it again, eh? Another one bites the dust.
1:33:03
That's the game. Episode 91 done and dusted.
1:33:06
Well done lads. Thanks very much Lange of our
1:33:07
cheers.