Latest / Whisky Stories Podcast / Carl Crafts: Ardnamurchan, Indy Bottling & American Dreams!

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Carl Crafts: Ardnamurchan, Indy Bottling & American Dreams! · Whisky Stories Podcast

• 0:00
  Oh right, that's me Anne. Cheers lads.
• 0:03
  Cheers. Pleasure to be here.
• 0:05
  Slangibani slang, yeah. Oh, very nice, right?
• 0:13
  So we've got drums, we've got bottles, we've got everything
• 0:17
  ready to go. Ready.
• 0:18
  Ready to roll? Right, I guess you know what to
• 0:20
  do. Clap us in.
• 0:23
  Welcome to the Whiskey Stories podcast.
• 0:27
  And then we built basically built that on a base of of
• 0:30
  bourbon maturation. So it's our our kind of the base
• 0:33
  that we often work with is a mixture of peated and unpeated
• 0:37
  bourbon barrels. And then just for shits, there
• 0:40
  was a single peated Sherry bun. So the Sherry just we had
• 0:44
  samples, right? We just mixing it together like
• 0:46
  what if we threw a Sherry bun? It's very often adds.
• 0:51
  I know it sounds ridiculous, right?
• 0:52
  It sounds completely ludicrous, but.
• 0:54
  Welcome along the whiskey stories podcast for myself,
• 0:56
  Graham Koger and we are back down in the athletic arms
• 0:59
  diggers volts that's it's another warm one hang.
• 1:02
  Absolutely. I'm waiting.
• 1:03
  I'm waiting to come down here and winter when we all need a
• 1:05
  blanket. I know exactly.
• 1:07
  I might stop. Sweating by the end of the
• 1:09
  recording, which we did say it would be quite good if I said I
• 1:12
  guess you know what? The clap is said and there just
• 1:13
  cuts to the three of us sitting topless.
• 1:15
  Yeah, but it's it's a warm one. It's great.
• 1:19
  There is no Ross Bar. There is no Fraser.
• 1:21
  So there is no Chuck care, but they're not as Angus.
• 1:25
  And I've always said, if it was just the two of us sitting
• 1:28
  having a conversation, I don't think anyone would listen to
• 1:30
  that. But we have always got to have
• 1:32
  somebody on the podcast who knows what they're talking
• 1:34
  about. And it's a great pleasure to
• 1:36
  welcome along the podcast. Carl crafts the sales executive
• 1:39
  Arden Mercken anadelphy. Carl, how are you?
• 1:42
  Very well, thanks for having me. No problem at all.
• 1:44
  Thanks for having a name. That's the worst name to say as
• 1:47
  a Scotsman. Well, it.
• 1:48
  Sounds absolutely brutal it. Sounds like a shop in
• 1:51
  Brunsfield. Yeah, welcome over the Yeah,
• 1:57
  somewhere where there's like crochet and.
• 1:59
  Yeah, that's how I got here originally that.
• 2:00
  Was the original concept they already?
• 2:02
  Shifted to whiskey. Yeah, fantastic.
• 2:04
  But great to have you here, Carl.
• 2:05
  Now I'm going to say this, you are.
• 2:07
  I think you're the 1st. American we've ever had in the
• 2:10
  podcast all. Right, that's why no one else
• 2:13
  came then. That's a big claim.
• 2:15
  I'm not. Yeah, I think you possibly might
• 2:18
  be right. You're making the Whiskey
• 2:19
  Stories podcast great again. History.
• 2:22
  Oh no. Straight in, straight in on the
• 2:26
  Trump jokes. No, no, no.
• 2:27
  But listen. Welcome along.
• 2:29
  It's great to have you here. I think Angus and I are huge.
• 2:33
  Huge fans of hard to market. Right.
• 2:35
  Yeah. I mean, it's become almost an
• 2:37
  obsessive. Sort of need for artwork and and
• 2:41
  it's it's great that you're coming on at this point as we're
• 2:43
  recording because over the last two or three weeks, it seems
• 2:46
  like we've just not stopped talking about it.
• 2:49
  Last week's episode, I guess I think, well, there was a
• 2:52
  question last week and it was which distillery that you
• 2:55
  haven't visited, you know, given we've visited a few distilleries
• 2:59
  on the podcast. Sure.
• 3:00
  Which would you like to visit next?
• 3:01
  And I said Arden Mark. Yeah, that was the one that came
• 3:04
  to my head and just because, because of the liquid, but
• 3:08
  because of the because of the remoteness.
• 3:11
  And it's a part of Scotland. I've been there once before, a
• 3:14
  long time ago. To the peninsula itself, yeah,
• 3:16
  yeah. Yeah, I just kind of drove
• 3:18
  through because you you can get, you can get a ferry at the end
• 3:22
  to Mull. Yeah, exactly.
• 3:23
  So this was one of my dad's weird ideas as we'd go to Mull
• 3:26
  but go the wrong way around, right?
• 3:29
  The inefficient route, Exactly. Scenic route, Yeah.
• 3:31
  Which actually is. Fair and it is very scenic so,
• 3:33
  but I'd love to go back up that way.
• 3:36
  And yeah. And I think it started really,
• 3:40
  it was when we were doing the podcast at the Edinburgh Whiskey
• 3:44
  Festival last year. I remember somebody.
• 3:47
  Jeeves, Jeeves. He's on the Facebook.
• 3:52
  I know who he is. He came up to us with A and it
• 3:56
  was a single cast bottling I think for.
• 4:00
  For the French. Yes, this was it and it was a
• 4:03
  Sherry, Sherry cask. No, no, no, it was bourbon.
• 4:06
  No, so no, but he, James, James came up with, we were, we were
• 4:10
  recording, right, right. And we were just sitting
• 4:11
  according and suddenly this guy's just appeared out of
• 4:13
  nowhere who we recognised and he's just pulled a bottle at his
• 4:15
  bag and just we were in the middle recording and he's just
• 4:18
  gone quick, quick and just gone. There you go.
• 4:20
  And I think it was just, I think it was literally just Arnon Murk
• 4:22
  and Sherry. It could have been and I think
• 4:24
  it was. I think it was.
• 4:26
  And it just kind of hit a note. I I had an idea it was a single
• 4:29
  cast Sherry, but. The single cast The single cast
• 4:32
  1 was the Whiskey Fringe 1. I think it was a private
• 4:34
  bottling, but it might not have been.
• 4:35
  I had that in my head, but I could be totally wrong.
• 4:37
  Yeah, it could have been a couple things.
• 4:39
  I mean, now that we need, you know, fully delve into it, but
• 4:42
  fringe, fringe is one of our big hitters, right?
• 4:44
  So we we tend to bring the beans for for.
• 4:46
  Whiskey. Well, I'm sure if I remember
• 4:48
  correctly, that was the conversation everyone was having
• 4:50
  last year at Whiskey Fringe. Yeah.
• 4:52
  Was Have you tried the Arden American stuff?
• 4:54
  Well. This was it.
• 4:55
  It was the first time we'd tried Arden American and Sherry.
• 4:57
  Yeah. And it blew our minds.
• 5:00
  Yeah. Yeah, but I mean.
• 5:02
  And we had that exchange where you you were saying you weren't.
• 5:04
  Just so that's sort of. Stuff with the 2024 Sherry,
• 5:07
  which is. Yeah, which is basically, I
• 5:08
  think that was the. I mean that was that was my,
• 5:10
  that was my drama of the year. Fill a bathtub with it and I'd
• 5:13
  bathe in it and see tonight. I would happily do that right
• 5:15
  now if there was a wee bathtub behind us.
• 5:17
  Yeah, I just get in. Yeah, whilst you were.
• 5:18
  Yeah, I'm rolling because. Back to the shirts off.
• 5:22
  Yeah, exactly. But I know, but it's just AI
• 5:25
  don't know. And then we had and it's with
• 5:27
  the greatest respect in the world.
• 5:28
  It was Simon Smith who said that our pintail tasted.
• 5:33
  It was like just are the marking are becoming annoyingly good.
• 5:37
  And it's like every single thing that they're putting out at the
• 5:41
  moment is just better than the last one or just as good or just
• 5:45
  constantly. It was the Arden American
• 5:47
  Thompson brothers Dorner Castle release.
• 5:49
  I absolutely love Simon Smith has one that he did with the
• 5:53
  George, the George Hotel and then Bareilly fantastic.
• 5:57
  And it's like, how many releases are you going to do?
• 6:00
  We we were, we had the debate, the conversation Angus when we
• 6:03
  did our what 3 BBQ drums and we started at AD on in the middle
• 6:07
  because we were sort of saying like that 5050 of bourbon and
• 6:11
  Sherry and repeated non peated. And just like if you're having a
• 6:15
  barbecue and you want something sweet that's got a bit of smoke
• 6:17
  in there but you don't want to be able to part, that's
• 6:19
  fantastic. Oh, that's brilliant, Yeah.
• 6:20
  They're partnered very well with my cremated sausage.
• 6:24
  That video is available on YouTube if you want to see
• 6:26
  Angus's cookery skills as well as the three drams that we have.
• 6:29
  But listen, Carl, it's great to have you here.
• 6:32
  Tell us a little bit about yourself.
• 6:33
  How sure? How have you found yourself in a
• 6:36
  cellar with two random guys you only met?
• 6:40
  Yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a fun path, certainly fun
• 6:43
  from my perspective. Right.
• 6:44
  So been in booze for a while, you know, my pretty much my
• 6:47
  whole career since I was definitely not legally able to
• 6:51
  drink in the US, right, with the 21 year old limit over there.
• 6:56
  Yeah, I was originally in beer, like craft beer as craft beer
• 6:59
  kind of really took off in the States.
• 7:02
  That was like my, my initial pass passion kind of during uni,
• 7:06
  even prior to uni, if we're honest.
• 7:10
  And then, yeah, I, I ended up managing a pretty, pretty cool,
• 7:14
  like high end beer focus bar in, in Washington, DC and did that
• 7:19
  for four years. Ultimately kind of rose the
• 7:23
  ranks there. And then, yeah, like Long story
• 7:26
  short, moved to Seattle, worked for a brewery, really great
• 7:29
  brewery, worked for an importer as well.
• 7:31
  And then moved back to Boston, got a different role with that
• 7:35
  importer. And then got this kind of very
• 7:37
  fortunate job with Scottish Government, which is pretty
• 7:42
  random, but they have trade specialists all over the globe.
• 7:48
  So basically my job was was alcohol specific, which
• 7:51
  obviously for Scotland is like whiskey.
• 7:53
  And Jim, right. I sort of had it like not
• 7:57
  knowingly worked throughout the supply chain in the US, which is
• 8:01
  a bear. It's it's miserable for honest,
• 8:03
  you know, you've got different tiers distributors at each state
• 8:06
  level, 50 states retailers anyway.
• 8:11
  So yeah, I kind of helped Scottish producers as like a
• 8:14
  basically a, it's a tax benefit, right?
• 8:17
  Like my salary was paid by by by taxpayer money.
• 8:21
  The Scottish Government, Yeah, yeah, so, so, so right.
• 8:23
  So your job was basically what to try and help introduce new
• 8:27
  brands into the states? It could be anywhere along the
• 8:30
  path, right? So, yeah, you could be like a
• 8:32
  mom and pop chin producer on an island right off the coast with
• 8:37
  three employees being like, how do I get into the US?
• 8:39
  And usually my answer was like, go somewhere else first, right?
• 8:42
  Because it's way, it's way too much money, way too many
• 8:45
  barriers. Or it'd be Someone Like, You
• 8:47
  know, Ben Romick, Gordon Macphail or like I, I worked
• 8:50
  with Richard Urquhart on on a couple of things, you know,
• 8:54
  bigger, well established historic brands, right.
• 8:58
  That were I didn't work with the big brands all that much because
• 9:01
  they paid multiple people to do what I did.
• 9:04
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 9:05
  But it was that little benefit for an independent or slightly
• 9:08
  smaller brand to say like, hey, how the hell do we get into
• 9:12
  Pennsylvania, which is like government controlled?
• 9:15
  It's impossible. But there's two big cities, you
• 9:17
  know, like things like that. It could be any number of.
• 9:19
  Things really so, so would you deal with, would you deal with
• 9:22
  like American importers as well to try?
• 9:24
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
• 9:25
  So that was how that was the initially How I Met the importer
• 9:29
  that Arden American now goes through is is impacts beverages
• 9:33
  and I was working with impacts to sort of I was a little bit of
• 9:37
  AI don't want to say a pipeline that seems like I did my job all
• 9:40
  too well, right. But I I for the right company, I
• 9:43
  would maybe try to introduce them to that importer or to
• 9:46
  another importer depending on their size.
• 9:48
  Yeah, who's importer that we met, I guess.
• 9:49
  What was his name? Howard.
• 9:51
  Howard. Howard Sacks Howard.
• 9:53
  Sacks. Yeah.
• 9:54
  Do you know him? I know the name.
• 9:55
  I don't know. Him we met with Dorney.
• 9:57
  He, he, he. Based primarily down in Florida,
• 10:00
  I think and there's a couple of other sudden states, yeah,
• 10:04
  import and he he, he worked for a couple of brands.
• 10:09
  Lady the Glen was a big. Boy, the Glen was a big one.
• 10:11
  And Glen with us, I think he was doing stuff like, yeah.
• 10:14
  Doing some smaller. Yeah, yeah.
• 10:15
  And I mean, he was speaking to the Thompson brothers.
• 10:17
  Yeah, times. Yeah.
• 10:18
  Well, that was that. We, we, we were literally, we
• 10:20
  were up there. Just happened to be there.
• 10:21
  Happened. Yeah, we were doing.
• 10:22
  Something joined us for breakfast every morning and then
• 10:24
  he was just on his own cool. And we were like, and basically
• 10:28
  I think it was, I think Howard had gone up.
• 10:29
  Phil and Simon were looking after us up there and I think it
• 10:33
  was like the Friday night and Howard was there like, oh,
• 10:35
  Howard, do you want to join us for for dinner?
• 10:36
  So it's just like Ross, Chuck Angus, myself fellow and Simon
• 10:41
  Thompson. And then there's this guy, this
• 10:42
  American guy. We got chatting to him and he
• 10:44
  was really interesting in the next day when?
• 10:46
  He was there for as much this kind of personal, you know,
• 10:49
  indulgence as well as business because he was kind of visiting
• 10:52
  Belle, Blair and Klein. It's beautiful up there too,
• 10:54
  right? What a place to visit for
• 10:56
  whiskey. Yeah.
• 10:56
  So, so you're, so you're helping it.
• 10:59
  So basically from a government point of view, if I'm, if I'm a
• 11:02
  small bottler or distiller, right, distiller and I say,
• 11:06
  listen, I'm, I just want to get into America.
• 11:09
  Yeah. How do they do I, do I go
• 11:11
  through some sort of like Scottish Government import help
• 11:14
  desk thing? Precisely.
• 11:16
  And then they would say we've got big car over here.
• 11:18
  Yeah, yeah, of course there's protocol and red tape to get
• 11:21
  through, right. But yeah, that's exactly right.
• 11:24
  They just makes the basically someone on the on the back end.
• 11:27
  Make sure that you like turning over enough money for it to
• 11:31
  actually be viable for you. Yeah, of course to look at a
• 11:32
  country like that for export. But yeah, like long story long,
• 11:36
  I guess. Sorry that was, that was
• 11:37
  lengthy. But yeah, I met my now boss
• 11:40
  Alex, our managing director and our sales director, my my other
• 11:44
  boss Connell through that chatted to them a little bit
• 11:48
  about Canada. It was more of like Alex had the
• 11:51
  contact. He's we'll talk about Alex and
• 11:53
  he's been in the industry for a long time, very connected.
• 11:56
  But he was kind of verifying like, hey, like you've had
• 11:58
  experience with with this agent, you know, you do you condone
• 12:02
  that, you know, kind of working with them going forward.
• 12:04
  And I was like, you know, in that instance, I was like, yeah,
• 12:06
  I think they're great. And then I was going fully down.
• 12:11
  I'd always been a whiskey nerd, right?
• 12:13
  Like when when I was 22 in the bar in DC, I ended up buying
• 12:17
  spirits. At the time, bourbon was like
• 12:19
  going absolutely nuts, right? This was 2012.
• 12:24
  So yeah, bourbon in the States was was the thing, but.
• 12:28
  And and DC is a great place for whiskey as well as and.
• 12:31
  I'm going to. I've forgotten the name of it,
• 12:33
  but there's a particular bar. Jack Rose.
• 12:35
  Yeah, this is and this is that's been mentioned a few.
• 12:37
  We've had that mentioned in the pod they mentioned.
• 12:39
  Have you ever been on a podcast? No, I've never.
• 12:40
  I've never. Been.
• 12:41
  It's mental. It's a few people have been have
• 12:44
  mentioned, Eduardo, Eduardo and possibly Charlie Hu maybe yeah
• 12:50
  even. So what?
• 12:51
  So a bar in Washington DC that's just a whiskey?
• 12:53
  I've seen pictures. Of has more whiskey.
• 12:57
  Man can I go this far. It has more whiskey than I think
• 13:00
  I've seen in a pub in Scotland. Really.
• 13:02
  Yeah. Wow.
• 13:03
  Just because it's American, right?
• 13:05
  So it's absolutely enormous. And they have bourbon.
• 13:07
  So they've got single cast, single cast, single cast from
• 13:10
  Buffalo Trace. You know, it's just like
• 13:11
  everything you could possibly fathom.
• 13:13
  And then they also have so like, certainly not as much Scotch
• 13:17
  whiskey as you'd get, right? But in terms of whiskey?
• 13:20
  In terms of whiskey it is a 25 foot wall, two faces just like
• 13:26
  teared out ladders, the whole 9 yards.
• 13:28
  As well. And what's great is there's
• 13:31
  every chance, right? We've got our listener.
• 13:33
  He's our US brand ambassador. Scott Moore out in Tennessee.
• 13:36
  Out in Tennessee, right? Right.
• 13:38
  And he tunes in every single. Scott, shout out to you.
• 13:41
  Love it. He pulled me up because we did a
• 13:43
  bit of bonus content last week and he sent a message in and I
• 13:48
  after a drama too, he decided I'm going to try and read it in
• 13:50
  his accent. I think he said failed
• 13:52
  miserably. Yes, I think please start.
• 13:54
  He said how about you don't do my accent and I'm not trying to
• 13:57
  do a 5 accent so I actually want to hear you do A5 accent because
• 14:00
  I think it'd be great year but he yeah well that's the game.
• 14:03
  Give me a high 6. But basically he he talked, he
• 14:07
  did a great video and you have to watch this.
• 14:10
  I'll send you the like he did a great video for us.
• 14:12
  And it all stemmed from the fact that we do a weekend DRAM roll
• 14:15
  call every week in our on our Facebook group.
• 14:16
  Please get involved in it. It's absolutely fantastic.
• 14:18
  Friday, Saturday, Sunday, just a thread of what everyone's
• 14:21
  drinking over the weekend with a little write up if they want and
• 14:24
  what have you. But Scott put a picture up.
• 14:26
  He's got this whiskey bar in his house in Tennessee.
• 14:28
  Ross has spied this random bottle and he's like, how the
• 14:31
  hell have you got that in your place?
• 14:34
  And then he did, he said we need to see your, you need to see
• 14:36
  your, the video of his whole thing going through all his
• 14:39
  bottles, his whole whiskey collection and everything like
• 14:41
  that. He talked about hunting old
• 14:44
  dusties, right? And he'll travel 3 hours across
• 14:47
  state lines to find a liquor store that he knows.
• 14:49
  And he'll go, and he'll find an old dusty bottle and he'll go
• 14:52
  wow. And it won't be priced right
• 14:54
  probably. And he'll be able to get for an
• 14:55
  absolute bargain. But what I love to think, Carl,
• 14:57
  is there's a good chance that Scott Mueller has A and I'm
• 15:02
  going to use the romance of filter through the header and
• 15:05
  all that stuff with Scotch whiskey.
• 15:07
  But I think Scott Miller has a bottle of whiskey, Scotch
• 15:12
  whiskey on a shelf in his house that you've probably had some
• 15:15
  sort of fingerprint on of getting it into the States and
• 15:18
  into his. There we go.
• 15:20
  We're taking. It I won't take the credit, but
• 15:22
  it's possible. It's possible.
• 15:24
  It'll be there, yeah. Yeah.
• 15:26
  It's a huge place in a small place, right, Like, and I think
• 15:29
  whiskey is that way almost across the board, right?
• 15:32
  You run into people in, in, you know, one state in the US or in
• 15:36
  India. We were talking about India
• 15:37
  earlier or you know, Connell's over in Japan and there's this
• 15:40
  guy that was at a tasting in, you know, Fife, right, like 6
• 15:44
  months prior. And I'm like, how the hell is he
• 15:45
  there? You know, like it is, it is one
• 15:48
  of those communities. For sure why we had to because.
• 15:50
  It is. Mad, Who was that?
• 15:51
  We who's talking about this? It was a distillery and they
• 15:54
  were talking about a tour. Was it maybe Stuart Baxter or
• 15:58
  something like that? And it was basically saying
• 16:00
  like, oh, no, it wasn't sure. Anyway, long shortly, like
• 16:04
  they'd done a tasting over someplace else, and then they
• 16:07
  were doing a distillery, too. It was Mike Brown.
• 16:10
  I am Mike Brown. Yeah.
• 16:11
  It was Tamdu. Mike.
• 16:12
  Tamdu did an open day and. I there was tourists there and
• 16:16
  they're like you did a tasting for us in Japan and we wanted to
• 16:19
  come and just crazy. It's wild because whiskey like
• 16:23
  like there is an element that whiskey is a village.
• 16:25
  Yeah, right. Scotch whiskey industry is
• 16:27
  massive and you'll know from the Scott is the Scottish
• 16:30
  government's point. You maybe, I don't know if
• 16:32
  you've got the numbers, but like in terms of what Scotch whiskey
• 16:35
  does for the Scottish and British government in terms of
• 16:38
  exported. You can't measure it, really.
• 16:40
  You can measure the numbers, but realistically, in terms of like
• 16:43
  the actual yeah, the, the lore of Scotch whiskey, yeah, the.
• 16:47
  So it's like. It's abstract.
• 16:49
  It's that big. We've talked about the fact that
• 16:50
  you could walk, you go into any country.
• 16:52
  How many Olympic sized swimming pools?
• 16:53
  Well, yeah, but if you walk in any country, you'll find the
• 16:56
  Johnny Walker Black Label, you're whatever, all that kind
• 16:58
  of stuff. But in terms of that, it's
• 17:01
  mental that as an industry it's so small.
• 17:04
  Yeah, it's a massive world global industry.
• 17:06
  But yet, like you say, there'll be you crossed paths with
• 17:09
  different people within the Scotch whisky industry.
• 17:11
  And exactly. So you're obviously working over
• 17:14
  in the States at this point. Yeah.
• 17:15
  What was the decision then to to cross the pond?
• 17:18
  Yeah, So my, my partner and I, like, she and I wanted to move
• 17:23
  to Europe for a while and basically we both decided to
• 17:26
  kind of shoot our shots, so to speak, professionally.
• 17:29
  So I actually like Arden American Adelphi as I like
• 17:33
  really got into whiskey pretty aggressively turned into like
• 17:36
  option 1A. Like if I got really lucky, that
• 17:40
  would be amazing. I love what they do.
• 17:41
  I love the concept. I love the ethos.
• 17:44
  It's the size that I was looking for.
• 17:46
  So I just wrote to Alex and Caudle having had this
• 17:49
  relationship with talking about Canada and all this, and I was
• 17:52
  like, Hey, you guys can't know unless I let you know, which is
• 17:54
  maybe the the American in me, right?
• 17:56
  Being a bit forward about it. And I was like, if you were to
• 17:59
  be growing such that your team grew, I'd like to be considered.
• 18:03
  OK, cool. So I just kind of did it.
• 18:05
  I threw a dart a little bit and and to Alex's credit, you know,
• 18:10
  he was basically like, well, thanks for letting us know, like
• 18:12
  we're not ready yet. And I was like, oh, fair enough.
• 18:15
  So then, yeah, my, my, my lady ended up getting a job in Sweden
• 18:20
  when she kind of went down her Ave.
• 18:22
  And then Alex got back to me, you know, maybe six months later
• 18:27
  when I was, I was gearing up to move to Sweden with no job and
• 18:30
  just like figure it out. And then he was like, hey, like,
• 18:33
  I think let's do this. And I was like, shit, great,
• 18:36
  amazing. So yeah, we, we kind of figured
• 18:39
  it out. I moved to Scotland.
• 18:41
  She moved over from Sweden eventually.
• 18:44
  Well, it's like a tiny commute in the States, isn't it?
• 18:46
  Yeah. Scotland to Sweden.
• 18:47
  You look at it, you've been looking at them.
• 18:49
  I'd be like that's just. Just a little swim.
• 18:51
  You're there? Yeah.
• 18:52
  Yeah, yeah, that's fascinating. Like, I mean, I love the fact
• 18:55
  that like, yeah, well, I've got a saying as well.
• 18:56
  Shy beams didn't get sweeties. So yeah.
• 18:59
  If you're quite open to be able to say.
• 19:00
  Now, you mentioned as Alex. Who's Alex?
• 19:03
  Then tell us So. Alex who?
• 19:05
  Right. So Alex Bruce is our Managing
• 19:07
  Director. So Alex has been running Adelphi
• 19:11
  and then subsequently are an American since 2004 as managing
• 19:17
  director. So yeah, we're 21 years in now.
• 19:20
  So crazy was in the industry prior.
• 19:25
  So he has a terrifyingly good palate.
• 19:28
  He's one of those guys where he's, you know, really, really
• 19:31
  relaxed, really includes all of us.
• 19:33
  And I'll talk about how that fits into my role and all that.
• 19:36
  But then you sit down to a tasting or a blending session
• 19:39
  or, or dinner with them and he says things every once in a
• 19:42
  while. I'm like, oh man, you know,
• 19:44
  you've been doing this for a while.
• 19:46
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's one of those guys.
• 19:48
  And he's a, he's a tremendous guy to work for as his Connell.
• 19:51
  So it's basically, you know, there's obviously ownership and
• 19:56
  that's how Ardon Merkin happened and I can talk.
• 19:58
  About that Who's Connell? Sorry, Connell.
• 20:00
  So Connell, sales director. So what's the second name?
• 20:02
  Sorry, Mackenzie. Connell Mackenzie.
• 20:04
  So Alex Bruce, Managing Director, Connell Mackenzie and
• 20:07
  then the sales team kind of spreads out underneath Connell
• 20:11
  and I'm part of that. So that's kind of where we sit.
• 20:13
  That's, I mean your mental rights, Adelphi and Ardon Merkin
• 20:17
  then, yeah. So I think is now a relation of
• 20:20
  Alex is Alex is Antonia. Correct.
• 20:23
  Right. So I've met Antonio a couple of
• 20:25
  times and we did a tasting. It was a versus, well, it wasn't
• 20:29
  really a versus tasting, but it was Finn Thompson and Adelphi at
• 20:32
  the Glass House Natural science was put on.
• 20:34
  And yeah, I like, I knew Adelphi and I knew Arden Markham.
• 20:39
  I knew they were connected. But then it wasn't until Antonio
• 20:43
  went through the Adelphi and I'll be perfectly honest, I
• 20:45
  haven't tried an awful lot of Adelphi at all.
• 20:47
  And. There's not enough of.
• 20:48
  It no, well, this is one of the things that she said and I was
• 20:51
  trying to whilst hosting, it was very hard when you're hosting
• 20:55
  something like this and you've got I think it was like 3 drums
• 20:57
  on one side, 3 drums on the other side.
• 20:59
  So it's very difficult to I had to be very conscious of not
• 21:03
  falling into podcast mode because Antonio would talk about
• 21:06
  something and I'd go, I really want to dive into that a little
• 21:09
  bit more. I really want to find out a bit
• 21:10
  more about that. But basically it was really,
• 21:14
  really tricky to because we had the tight schedule, 6 hours to
• 21:16
  get through. So try not really trying really,
• 21:19
  really hard not to dive because Antonio would start talking
• 21:21
  about something. I think I really, really want to
• 21:23
  ask that question. But then like now I can't
• 21:25
  because we've got another whatever trams to go through.
• 21:27
  Oh, that's fascinating because she's she's told the whole
• 21:29
  Adelphi story about who Adelphi where there was something about.
• 21:33
  Now you'll be able to tell me Adelphi Distillers, the
• 21:36
  distillery in Glasgow, the wash back break in right.
• 21:39
  OK, I'll let you maybe know a little bit about that.
• 21:42
  So. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:43
  Sure. First of all, like where
• 21:44
  Adelphi, what do they do? And then how on earth did that
• 21:47
  move into hard and marking? Yeah, yeah.
• 21:49
  I'll try to be relatively brief in interest of time.
• 21:52
  Yeah. But basically, Adelphi's been
• 21:54
  going nearly 200 years. Yeah, so 1826, right.
• 21:59
  So Adelphi was founded as Adelphi Lochatron.
• 22:02
  So Lochatron, the water source for Glasgow and.
• 22:06
  So I just want to say, as an American, the way you produce
• 22:08
  Glasgow is so good. It's all right, it's not
• 22:10
  Glasgow. I mean, I lived there, so I
• 22:12
  would be. Dead by now.
• 22:14
  You've done. You've done.
• 22:15
  Really there's. No way I'd be on this podcast if
• 22:17
  I wasn't like at least 80% of the way there.
• 22:19
  You've done well there anyway, sorry.
• 22:21
  Although my Loch is still kind of American, it's still a bit of
• 22:24
  a. That's OK.
• 22:24
  That's a bit. Of a key to it, yeah, but yeah,
• 22:27
  so founded as a distillery in the Gorbals so, you know, South
• 22:32
  side of the river. What have you been busy?
• 22:35
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, indeed. Basically was really successful
• 22:40
  for a while, kind of through the mid, mid half of the 19th
• 22:44
  century. There's a gentleman named
• 22:47
  Archibald Walker who owned it back then.
• 22:50
  He owned a distillery in Ireland, also in Liverpool I
• 22:54
  believe. So he had a little bit of a
• 22:55
  whiskey empire. The wash back incident happened
• 22:59
  as things were kind of on the back end of the whiskey boom in
• 23:02
  the 19th century. So it was the first decade of
• 23:04
  the 20th century, 1919 aughts. And yeah, a wash back collapse
• 23:10
  triggered a chain reaction, flooded Inverkip St., which was
• 23:13
  where it was located, and actually killed a man and like
• 23:17
  four horses or some, you know, there's like a newspaper
• 23:20
  clipping, like just wash just running through the streets and
• 23:23
  killing. Things they just say, like you
• 23:24
  can still smell it. They say there's a better like
• 23:28
  folklore there that like, yeah, yeah, I'm sure.
• 23:31
  Yeah. Is that something about
• 23:32
  Glaswegians and washing that you're alluding to or something?
• 23:36
  No, still lingering. No, I'm sure, because like
• 23:38
  they'll, I mean, they'll tell the story about it, but I'll end
• 23:42
  up on it and and now I might get this wrong, but I'm sure there's
• 23:45
  like maybe markings on walls, old walls.
• 23:48
  I think that is real. You can.
• 23:50
  See, like this is how far the the tide marks.
• 23:53
  Yeah, tide marks. It's like the high watermark
• 23:55
  with the high wash marks, yeah. Exactly.
• 23:58
  Yeah, yeah. But I but that was, I mean,
• 23:59
  that's. Oh yeah.
• 24:00
  I'll laugh about it, thinking like how many thousands of
• 24:03
  gallons must have been running through the street.
• 24:05
  I mean, to properly kill a man like yeah, exactly.
• 24:07
  Either had to be tremendously pissed or it was pretty serious,
• 24:10
  right? Or both, Yeah.
• 24:12
  And do you know where the Adelphi name itself comes from?
• 24:14
  Because it, you know, it strikes me as quite, you know, it's like
• 24:16
  an Adelphi Theatre in London. So it must be, yeah.
• 24:19
  I don't know. I mean, I think that the word is
• 24:21
  of Greek origin, right? Like how it folded in in 1826.
• 24:26
  I probably should know that and I don't.
• 24:30
  He's had a research. I know I should have looked it
• 24:32
  up. I.
• 24:34
  Don't know that you say that. I think I did it one point, but
• 24:36
  I don't have it. But yeah, basically like fell on
• 24:40
  hard times 1970, it became the Glasgow City Mosque.
• 24:44
  So that gives you a sense of how Glasgow changed, right?
• 24:47
  Wow. But then so 93 is the big date.
• 24:50
  So the great grandson, great great grandson of Archibald
• 24:53
  Walker found out the brand technically still existed.
• 24:57
  It was owned by, I believe it was a law firm and down in
• 25:00
  London just randomly, kind of like tacitly held.
• 25:03
  So basically what this is? The company's folded, yeah, but
• 25:05
  it's not. A brand that's still there.
• 25:07
  Yeah, but this has happened quite a.
• 25:08
  Few times because quite a few kind of old brands have ended up
• 25:11
  being owned by kind of very old companies and people buy them
• 25:14
  back and we're going to make, you know, this blend again or
• 25:17
  this brand. Yeah.
• 25:19
  So, yeah, but that's really interesting.
• 25:21
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 25:21
  So. That, that, that great, great
• 25:23
  grandson, Jamie Walker bought it back in 93.
• 25:26
  That's when it became an independent bottler.
• 25:29
  And then he sold it in O 310 years later to our now majority
• 25:34
  shareholders, which is primarily 2 families.
• 25:39
  And they hired Alex a year later to oversee it.
• 25:43
  And Alex has grown the business exponentially.
• 25:46
  And then to keep it really brief, those two at the time,
• 25:51
  those two gentlemen, it was Donald Houston, Keith Falconer
• 25:55
  were our owners at the time. Keith has unfortunately passed,
• 25:58
  but his family is still involved.
• 26:01
  They also owned land on Arkham, Arden American, right?
• 26:04
  And so that is why we built a distillery in the middle of
• 26:06
  nowhere, because. We have the land, Yeah, right.
• 26:10
  So there's a number of. Production sites that they
• 26:11
  looked at this was back kind of O6O8, I believe.
• 26:16
  And Alex, I think was pretty prescient in seeing what we're
• 26:18
  going through now, which is just this insane demand for liquid,
• 26:22
  which from a bottling standpoint, right?
• 26:25
  I mean, we've all seen it. The price of casks has
• 26:27
  skyrocketed, right? Of course, you know, back 10
• 26:29
  years ago, Adelphi put out some stuff that we would absolutely
• 26:33
  kill for now, right? And so but he saw that kind of
• 26:38
  starting to happen and that's why we built the source of
• 26:40
  liquid, right? So ardent American, we broke
• 26:43
  ground on that site on the Peninsula 2013, 2014, first
• 26:48
  distillate end of July. So we're, we're in our 11th year
• 26:51
  now. That's in fact, what's the date?
• 26:54
  It's the 23rd. Of yeah, so we're.
• 26:56
  Days from being 11? That's mad.
• 26:58
  Yeah, that's. Aye, because I mean the, the,
• 27:01
  the, the they'll face situation then.
• 27:03
  So as a bottler, yeah. Where does a lot of the stock
• 27:06
  go? Is it, is it predominantly
• 27:09
  abroad, different markets or does it, Yeah.
• 27:11
  Does it get filtered out? Because it's not like I say
• 27:13
  there's, there's certain independent bottlers that you'll
• 27:15
  see on the shelf. Yeah, in the UK regularly.
• 27:19
  But then there's other independent bottlers that you've
• 27:21
  gone. Never heard of these guys.
• 27:22
  They must be new. And then you find out.
• 27:24
  No, no, we've gone for years. But it's just, we haven't
• 27:26
  really. Yeah, I I would almost.
• 27:27
  Put it down if we kind of in the middle, it's one you see
• 27:29
  occasionally but not always. But you know, and I remember
• 27:33
  Whiskey Friends last year, obviously there was a bit of a
• 27:35
  buzz around your 10 year old Arden American, but there was
• 27:38
  also, I remember Whiskey of the Fringe.
• 27:41
  Yeah, it was like we want we, we got the highest vote, which was,
• 27:44
  which was a bit of a coup. Yeah, it's pretty exciting.
• 27:46
  I remember. Spending quite a bit of time at
• 27:48
  your table because there was a Ross Baru is sometimes on this
• 27:53
  podcast. Yeah, right.
• 27:54
  He is on this podcast. But not tonight.
• 27:55
  Just not. Currently here sometimes again,
• 27:57
  there's an American in the room. Ross Baru is like.
• 27:59
  A returning guest on the podcast.
• 28:00
  Well, we're coming. Like a returning guest now.
• 28:03
  Yeah, he gets annoyed when he fiza.
• 28:05
  Yeah, but he was, he was, he was away.
• 28:07
  So it couldn't be on the podcast.
• 28:08
  That we're a monitor. American.
• 28:09
  We're in Boston. Yeah.
• 28:11
  And he, he, he asked for us to kind of bottle a couple of
• 28:13
  things just in little sample bottles and give him a kind of
• 28:16
  taste of whiskey, friend. And it was a chichaboo, I think
• 28:19
  an 8 year old chichaboo that I I bottled for him, yeah.
• 28:23
  Last year's was. It an 8 year.
• 28:27
  That feels about right. I think so.
• 28:29
  Yeah, I think so. But yeah, he he enjoyed it.
• 28:32
  It was I, I really enjoyed it. It was really good.
• 28:35
  I remember trying it and being like, Yep, that's the one.
• 28:37
  Yeah, we. We try to find fun stuff, right?
• 28:40
  That's. That's the thing.
• 28:41
  And how how much bottling get goes on at Delphi?
• 28:44
  Then how much are you doing? Yeah, it's small.
• 28:47
  It's small, right. So that, that, that's been an
• 28:49
  interesting thing I think for the company, you know, going
• 28:52
  from. Bottle in like.
• 28:57
  Maybe 80 a hundred casts a year to having a distillery that
• 29:01
  makes 400,000 liters, right? And then once you start, you
• 29:05
  know, we launched the single malt 2020.
• 29:07
  So we launched it as a 5 year old.
• 29:11
  And and. And it's gotten sort of
• 29:13
  progressively older, I guess. I think it was technically 5,
• 29:15
  but a lot of it was 6 kind of thing, right?
• 29:19
  That shift of like, but the cool thing was, and you asked about
• 29:23
  where the Adelphi has gone like because it has a little bit of
• 29:26
  legacy being, you know, close to 32 now.
• 29:29
  We had importers for 1520 years, right?
• 29:34
  So like those the big, the big old school whiskey markets,
• 29:37
  right? Netherlands comes to mind.
• 29:39
  Germany. Those guys imported really small
• 29:42
  quantities of Adelphi like as a really kind of niche.
• 29:45
  Hey, you know, you're whiskey. This is single cast, cast
• 29:48
  strength for 15 years before Arden Merkin happened.
• 29:51
  And then all of a sudden we were like, hey, here's like we've
• 29:53
  done this. You've got.
• 29:54
  Here's some pallets. You know, and it's just like,
• 29:56
  it's a very different shift. That's cool.
• 29:58
  So when you have a when? You have a, we, we did the
• 30:00
  Gordon Macphail interview couple weeks ago now with Stephen
• 30:04
  Rankin and you're looking at the Gordon Macphail Germany as
• 30:07
  being, you know, a legacy of independent bottlers that then
• 30:11
  have made a decision with Ben Romack to go into it.
• 30:13
  Nice. I suppose it does make the
• 30:15
  business model a lot easier and and things like that as well.
• 30:18
  Do we see a shift in Adelphi now pulling back on the the bottles
• 30:24
  that are going out with Adelphi versus everything going into
• 30:27
  Adam American or will Adelphi still try and carry on as a
• 30:30
  brand and still carry on producing bottling whiskeys and
• 30:34
  and put them in the market? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no.
• 30:36
  Adelphi will definitely carry on and and not to get too in the
• 30:39
  weeds on it because I'll pour you guys a DRAM here in a
• 30:42
  second, but. The the.
• 30:44
  The beautiful thing is and and I'm assuming.
• 30:48
  I don't know. Gordon Macphail's very like,
• 30:50
  they do their things their way, which I respect immensely,
• 30:52
  right? But.
• 30:54
  If you think. About where we're at now, Arden
• 30:56
  Merkin for from an Adelphi perspective is a different
• 30:59
  currency, right? So we can, we can trade spirit
• 31:02
  now that is not cash, right? There's a different, there's a
• 31:06
  different, what would you say like a different menu?
• 31:10
  It's a spirit to trade. As.
• 31:11
  Opposed to just money. So in terms of what?
• 31:13
  You're basically saying is like because this is definitely that
• 31:15
  we don't often talk about. Is the fact that like?
• 31:18
  Normally we would look. At an independent bottler as
• 31:20
  like every cash transaction, effectively to say, hey, look,
• 31:23
  now we hear stories about parcels, you know, buy big
• 31:26
  parcels. We've talked to losing in the
• 31:29
  bottlers about the hassles that they have or the not hassles,
• 31:31
  but the challenges of getting sourcing good liquid and of
• 31:34
  course good wood as well. Whereas now I suppose instead of
• 31:38
  having to pay that money, if our Demark undergoing listen, we've
• 31:41
  got, we've got liquid instead of paying for casks.
• 31:44
  But also I suppose then from a distillery to distillery point
• 31:49
  of view, it probably opens up bigger channels than from a
• 31:53
  independent bottler to distillery point, correct or
• 31:57
  but. I think it's just looking at the
• 31:59
  umbrella of the brands, right? So even like, you know, I think
• 32:02
  that speaking as an American who's like relatively fresh to
• 32:06
  the industry, let's be let's be real about it, right?
• 32:08
  Like that sort of old school, like trading concepts is still
• 32:13
  alive and well even with the big boys, right?
• 32:16
  So and I think I think a lot of people in whiskey know that, but
• 32:18
  a lot of people out of whiskey maybe no don't, right?
• 32:20
  Like we we found out when we went up.
• 32:21
  To the space site a couple of weeks ago, I guess we, we, it
• 32:25
  did amaze me how many when we went to distilleries and they
• 32:28
  were actually saying like, yeah, I mean we've got a lot of liquid
• 32:30
  here but there's only so much of it actually goes into our
• 32:33
  bottles and. We actually spoke about a good
• 32:36
  episode where we did speak about it was when we spoke at Inch
• 32:39
  Darney. Yeah.
• 32:40
  And they were talking about the Glenn Henry brand, which they're
• 32:44
  saying, well, we're we're, we're, you know, distilling this
• 32:47
  brand specifically as the brand that goes out the door, as it
• 32:51
  were, to other lenders, bottlers, etcetera, etcetera.
• 32:55
  So in a sense they're doing what you're doing as well that I
• 33:00
  think everyone's doing like, albeit, I think I think they're
• 33:03
  doing it more to sell it. And you know well, they have one
• 33:06
  specific. They have one specific which is
• 33:09
  brand effectively of how they've distillate that they will say we
• 33:13
  sell it, yeah, anyone else can bottle that and stuff like that
• 33:15
  and. But from right, Well, first of
• 33:18
  all, we've got drums in front of.
• 33:19
  We do, yeah. Yeah.
• 33:21
  Well, you've already poured me this, Angus.
• 33:22
  What did you have before So. Yeah, I I2 yeah, go ahead please
• 33:28
  I2 drums before I just as I said, bigger is very busy today.
• 33:31
  I just came in straight, just went for the specials board, had
• 33:35
  a Ben Roma 10 and a time day 5th all day.
• 33:38
  Just really solid. Really good, really good spread
• 33:40
  like a firm. Handshake and that was 2 drams
• 33:42
  for you exactly, but. You know, sometimes you come.
• 33:45
  Into diggers and you don't really have time to look at
• 33:47
  everything behind them. Yeah, yeah, Two drums I.
• 33:50
  Know and two drums I love so now yeah Carl you've.
• 33:53
  Poured us a drum here from a bottle that is the Arden mark in
• 33:57
  midgie. Midgie.
• 33:58
  Yeah. So this.
• 33:59
  Is, you know, we have 1W kind of from our core range, let's say.
• 34:07
  And we talked a little bit about the flagship, the 5050 and I'll
• 34:10
  touch on that. And that I think, I guess the
• 34:12
  important part to talk about with the 5050 is that at ardor
• 34:14
  murky and you know, since 2014, we make an unimpeated and
• 34:18
  repeated distillate and we rather than someone let's like
• 34:22
  Tobemori Lechic, our neighbors realistically are a great
• 34:24
  example of two brands, right? Unpeated Tobemori peated Lechic,
• 34:28
  we rather than that tend to incorporate them into into one
• 34:33
  brand with multiple expressions. And then it's just a taste,
• 34:36
  right? So this is rather than 5050 and
• 34:40
  then that core, that flagship or American single mall is 2/3
• 34:43
  bourbon, 1/3 Sherry, 46.8%. And that's the one that we
• 34:47
  export to 48 markets. That's that's our, our big boy,
• 34:50
  right? That's the one.
• 34:52
  This is a fun, right? We're independent.
• 34:54
  We get to take take the piss a little bit, right?
• 34:56
  So as opposed to another Stag, you know, another Eagle on a
• 35:00
  label, no offense, no offense to those companies, right?
• 35:04
  100% for it, right? And I'll talk about Aaron later
• 35:07
  in a very respectful way. Speaking of Eagles, Arden
• 35:11
  American. You've been once, but not to the
• 35:14
  distillery if you've ever been to the peninsula.
• 35:15
  No, but you've been to the West Coast.
• 35:17
  You know what the midges are like, right?
• 35:18
  Yeah. They're diabolical.
• 35:19
  It's crazy. They are.
• 35:20
  Yeah. And.
• 35:21
  They're absolutely mental. So we I was just.
• 35:23
  Thinking Scott, Scotch whiskey would be look very different if
• 35:26
  it was based in Tanzania or something.
• 35:28
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we've got, we've got
• 35:32
  stags, eagles and midges now, yes and.
• 35:35
  That was it, yeah, Yeah. But yeah, we want.
• 35:37
  To have fun with it, right? So this is the the second batch.
• 35:39
  So basically the idea will be it's actually going to be part
• 35:43
  of our core range in the sense that it will always be there
• 35:46
  every year. How the volumes fit in and
• 35:49
  whether it sells out depends on the market.
• 35:51
  We'll see right last year, but but the recipe will change every
• 35:55
  year. So what's this recipe?
• 35:56
  Then so batch 2. Is the first ever bottled are
• 36:01
  the murky and that has poor influence.
• 36:03
  OK, yeah, cuz that is. Something, yeah, So the.
• 36:05
  The concept behind the Medji, unsurprisingly, is we're having
• 36:09
  fun. We're not going to charge you
• 36:11
  100 lbs for a fun bottle. We, we, we try to keep our
• 36:13
  prices quite reasonable, generally, right?
• 36:15
  Whiskeys for drinking, right? It's for, it's for enjoying with
• 36:17
  your friends, with your family, whatever, especially this,
• 36:21
  right? It's called the Miji, right?
• 36:22
  It's, it's got to be, it's got to be a bit fun.
• 36:24
  So it's, it's the sweet and the Pete for an affordable price is
• 36:28
  the way I look at it. So 54 lbs retail, it's 48%.
• 36:32
  So it's actually bumped up from the from the flagship and half
• 36:36
  of the vatting half of the batch that we blended is full
• 36:40
  maturation port 6 year old wow, 2019 full maturation unpeated on
• 36:45
  all the port. And then we built basically
• 36:47
  built that on a base of of bourbon maturation.
• 36:49
  So it's our our kind of the base that we often work with is a
• 36:54
  mixture of peated and unpeated bourbon barrels.
• 36:57
  And then just for shits, there was a single peated Sherry butt.
• 37:01
  So the Sherry just literally, so we have a blending team.
• 37:05
  I'm very lucky to be a part of it.
• 37:07
  And we're unusual that way. And that feeds into Alex, we can
• 37:09
  talk about that at some point. But we were at the table tasting
• 37:13
  it effectively when it tasted just the bourbon in port to be
• 37:17
  midgie. And then we were like, what if
• 37:20
  we we had samples, right? We're just mixing it together.
• 37:22
  We're like, what if we threw a Sherry button because very often
• 37:26
  adds. I know it sounds ridiculous,
• 37:28
  right? It sounds completely ludicrous,
• 37:29
  but as that depth, Yeah, yeah, it's it's not dissimilar from
• 37:34
  the 4th DRAM and I'll talk about that.
• 37:36
  But there's something that Sherry brings to whiskey, even a
• 37:40
  bourbon forward expression that can really round out the tasting
• 37:44
  experience. I think that's how we feel.
• 37:46
  So yeah, basically about half unpeated port and then peated
• 37:49
  unpeated bourbon and then just that.
• 37:51
  There's not much Pete in there. I don't detect an awful lot of
• 37:53
  Pete in no, so on the whole would be about. 25%, I was
• 37:56
  actually going to say. This.
• 37:58
  If you had asked me if this was a peated or unpeated release,
• 38:00
  I'd probably have said that's unpeated.
• 38:02
  Yeah, because. But I mean there's a wee back in
• 38:05
  sort of maybe retrospectively knowing that it's Pete did kind
• 38:09
  of pick up on it, but I very very nice and yeah yeah, that
• 38:11
  port stuff it kind of throws you off the scent a little bit,
• 38:13
  doesn't it? It's totally different, yeah,
• 38:15
  because it's a. Summergram, right?
• 38:16
  It should be. It should be quaffable.
• 38:18
  It should be approachable for people that don't love Pete.
• 38:20
  I think that's really important. If you're at the beach, you're
• 38:23
  at a campfire. You know, you guys had a BBQ.
• 38:26
  Well, that's exactly it. Yeah.
• 38:27
  Yeah. Right, that's the whole idea.
• 38:29
  Right, like tan a bottle with five mates.
• 38:31
  Well, that's what we were responsible.
• 38:33
  Responsibly BBQ responsibly like we did.
• 38:35
  Burn your sausages to make sure they're cute.
• 38:38
  And so when it comes to your. Pete of spirit and your unpeted
• 38:40
  spirit, you talked about 450,000 litres production.
• 38:44
  Yeah, 400, yeah, four, yeah, 400,000 litres of production.
• 38:47
  How much of that is Pete of how much of that is unpeted?
• 38:49
  Is it 5050 or is it the ratio is a bit different?
• 38:52
  It's 5050IN concept. It is pretty much 5050.
• 38:56
  Obviously multi availability, the needs with what has been
• 39:00
  pulled from our warehouses will fit into that a little bit,
• 39:03
  yeah. But it's still by and large that
• 39:06
  the way we intend to operate is. Either Peter unpeated.
• 39:12
  Shut down, right? Two week shut down summer or
• 39:14
  winter, the other. So yeah, it's 6.
• 39:17
  Months peated, 6 months unpeated in effect.
• 39:20
  Yeah, and that's why the flagship bottling.
• 39:22
  Is that right? It's a, it's a, it's a snapshot
• 39:24
  of when, when you guys come. I won't say if right when you're
• 39:28
  at the distillery, the warehouses are majority bourbon,
• 39:31
  second majority Sherry, right. So that's the maturation
• 39:33
  profile, 1-2 thirds, 1/3, yeah. And then 5050 of the distillery.
• 39:37
  What half of the year do we have to come?
• 39:38
  In for it to be P third production, you just have to
• 39:41
  send me a message. We'll figure that out.
• 39:45
  And in terms of like so you're, you're.
• 39:46
  Based out of Glasgow. So you live in Glasgow, you're
• 39:48
  saying that, right? But then the distillery.
• 39:50
  So how far from Glasgow is the distillery then?
• 39:54
  So it. Depends on how well you know the
• 39:55
  roads or I guess how, how familiar you are with single
• 39:59
  tracks. So the last hour plus there's
• 40:03
  kind of, there's two main routes.
• 40:05
  There's a, there's about a 6 minute ferry, the Corn Ferry
• 40:08
  between open and Fort William and that six minute ferry, yeah.
• 40:13
  It's hilarious, yeah. You're like on you like, you
• 40:16
  know, you don't do whatever and then you're off and off you go.
• 40:19
  But. That the last.
• 40:20
  Especially the last 30 minutes of the drive is like single
• 40:24
  tracks full one. It's very, very old school.
• 40:27
  And so I I've done the fastest I've done as a non Scott is
• 40:31
  about like three hour 5 in Glasgow.
• 40:35
  And that was mildly irresponsible.
• 40:38
  Yeah. So I mean, I mean that's a.
• 40:40
  Fair Trek yeah. I mean, and that's that is to
• 40:42
  get out that neck of the woods. And I mean we we we, we heard
• 40:45
  Stewart Dick on. It works for Torah, Yeah.
• 40:47
  He he, you know, all sorts of stories about, you know,
• 40:51
  delivery drivers coming up the, you know, to them.
• 40:54
  But I mean, I think you have the same kind of so our distillery.
• 40:57
  Is literally crafted based on the roads, right?
• 40:59
  So when again, when you come, we have the single biggest piece of
• 41:05
  kit is the mash ton and it's I think it's 3.3 meters wide
• 41:10
  because, and there's a video of this there's a flatbed truck
• 41:14
  with that mash ton on it obviously overhanging the
• 41:16
  flatbeds and there's a bridge that and it scrapes by by like
• 41:21
  so that's the width of the pine. So they.
• 41:22
  Have to try and get the they have to build the mash ton with
• 41:25
  the knowledge that, yeah, that it's got to get over that.
• 41:28
  That's the narrowest part. That is how big our distillery
• 41:30
  is. Really.
• 41:31
  Because short of that, it's helicopter.
• 41:33
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 41:34
  There's nothing else you can. I mean, I guess you could figure
• 41:36
  out a ship. Yeah.
• 41:38
  Yeah. But it's it's a lot.
• 41:40
  It's like a mash to the mash. Ton and just sail it up there.
• 41:43
  That's it. Yeah, I.
• 41:45
  Mean, I mean the the the mash ton arriving at Eden Mill caused
• 41:50
  a big sushi because it got stuck at the roundabout in Cooper,
• 41:54
  right yes, there's a roundabout in Cooper where you got and it's
• 41:57
  a tough I know the roundabout yeah yeah, because.
• 41:59
  That's right where the 5W festival is every year.
• 42:00
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
• 42:02
  And. I know this.
• 42:03
  I know this from personal experience because I it's a
• 42:05
  random story. I've tried to keep this brief,
• 42:07
  but basically my mate got married, a good friend of mine,
• 42:10
  George Shields, got married at the Old Course Hotel, right?
• 42:13
  And then it was up to his brother, who was his best man.
• 42:16
  Useless best man, I should say. Brother.
• 42:18
  Brother won't be listening to this right half the time.
• 42:21
  Useless breast, right? Absolutely useless.
• 42:23
  And he he was too. Young at the time.
• 42:24
  And basically what had happened was Thomas the best man, his
• 42:28
  brother, God bless. I'm like he said, I've done
• 42:30
  something for him that's going to be special for the day of the
• 42:33
  wedding. And I said, oh, what is that?
• 42:35
  I've hired us a white stretch limo from Kirkcaldy to the to
• 42:40
  the Old Course hotel, right. And I never forget it was
• 42:43
  because the we struggle to get around that roundabout with a
• 42:46
  limo because the driver had gone that way with the limousine.
• 42:48
  Yeah. And so imagine a flatbed lorry
• 42:51
  with a with a mash done overhanging it.
• 42:53
  And I remember it cost a huge touchy.
• 42:55
  It made all the Facebook page groups and everything like that.
• 42:57
  But it. But yeah, so getting up there
• 43:00
  and imagine lorry grain lorries. I don't know whether like the
• 43:02
  grain merchants well look at their their line and they see
• 43:05
  they're going up dark the market and go Christ Almighty, but or
• 43:08
  it might be, but is it a nice drive?
• 43:10
  Is it because you hear about these stories like you're going
• 43:12
  up to the different, I'm sure stories second?
• 43:15
  Yeah, I'm sure Stuart said it right.
• 43:17
  Like, I mean, W is best, right? Like sorry, I know you're from
• 43:20
  5, like I love that. And Adelphi is based in five.
• 43:24
  Yeah, we have a lot of love for Five, but I mean that it's.
• 43:28
  I remember going up the first time with Alex and Alex was
• 43:30
  driving and I was just like kind of gasping.
• 43:33
  Yeah. It was like pretty
• 43:33
  unprofessional look, but I couldn't help myself.
• 43:36
  It's really, really. Yeah, that scenery when you're
• 43:38
  going. Through and things, it's
• 43:39
  unbelievable. And yeah.
• 43:40
  And the distillery is, is it open for visitors to visit or is
• 43:44
  it yeah, yeah, yeah. So seven days a week in the
• 43:46
  summer, really. Often in the winter or maybe 6
• 43:50
  Obviously staffing out there can be can be a bit of a beast,
• 43:53
  right. It's there aren't too many
• 43:55
  people on our American Yeah. So what's the nearest sort of?
• 43:58
  Larger sort of town or anything like that, probably like Fort
• 44:01
  William or? Something yeah, yeah.
• 44:03
  So if you live, there's. Two like big towns, Kilhorn,
• 44:08
  which is on the West, which is the ferry to Tobermory and there
• 44:11
  is a Heracle which is kind of somewhat at the intersection
• 44:17
  between if you come from Fort William Way and you go by
• 44:20
  Glenfinnan and down the top roads or if you're coming up
• 44:23
  from Glasgow or Edinburgh, you take that little 6 minute ferry,
• 44:27
  those two. Towns are not.
• 44:29
  Big no. And like if you, if you live in
• 44:31
  Cahoan, you grocery shop in Tobermory, right?
• 44:34
  So you're on the ferry. So you go in the ferry to get
• 44:36
  your message. There's.
• 44:36
  No and and. In terms.
• 44:38
  Of like staffing then. Yeah, like obviously that's a
• 44:44
  nightmare of a commute from a local point of view.
• 44:46
  It's not like there's a mass area of locals that can work for
• 44:49
  the distillery as well. I'm sure maybe.
• 44:51
  Well, I don't know, but what do they, how do they like for you,
• 44:54
  for other people who work for the distillery?
• 44:56
  Is it operations out of our merchant distillery or are they
• 44:59
  fairly flexible with working your sales executive?
• 45:02
  So you'll be out and about. Yeah, but in terms of like
• 45:04
  production, you'll have to be on site all the time and things.
• 45:06
  Yeah, so we have. 4. Employees on site.
• 45:11
  So we have our warehouse manager, one of our shift leads
• 45:14
  on the distillery, are one of our two marketing people and are
• 45:22
  soon to be sort of brand home manager, visitor center heads.
• 45:27
  Our distillery manager lives in Cohen.
• 45:29
  So he drives 20. Wow, he probably does it pretty
• 45:31
  quick. I'm going.
• 45:36
  To say Gordon, I'm going to say Gordon's.
• 45:38
  Like definitely under 25 minutes from Coho and he might correct
• 45:41
  me. We'll see if he listens.
• 45:44
  And then there's some in the other.
• 45:45
  Town to the east. Yeah.
• 45:46
  But so for a local and especially if you've gotten used
• 45:49
  to living out there, it's half an hour, right?
• 45:51
  Yeah. That's nothing.
• 45:52
  Look, it's not, it's. Not in Edinburgh, yeah well it's
• 45:55
  not a distilling like we we up in space site, right it's a
• 45:58
  distilling area yeah right. So basically you're either
• 46:01
  related to somebody that works in a in the whiskey in the sea,
• 46:04
  or you're Yeah, or you. And so people who have
• 46:06
  grandfathers and their. Fathers were distillers, and
• 46:10
  it's in the blood. Yeah, when it's up there.
• 46:12
  There's never been a distillery there.
• 46:14
  It's not like heritage distilling is something that's
• 46:16
  been up there for, no, for all these times.
• 46:18
  So yeah, being able to source local people that can do these
• 46:21
  things must be, must have been really, really challenging at
• 46:23
  the time. Yeah.
• 46:24
  And we're actually proud of kind.
• 46:25
  Of how that training fell into place, right, of course, and how
• 46:28
  we do it organically. So I mean, our distillery
• 46:30
  manager was a bus driver, right, right.
• 46:32
  And so like it was all. About.
• 46:37
  Do you have the interest in learning it right and sorting it
• 46:41
  out and then pass on that knowledge to the next and this
• 46:45
  is something we talked? About when we talked about the
• 46:47
  Isle of Harris Distillery, they've obviously primarily
• 46:51
  they've tried to upskill as it were, to use a kind of business
• 46:55
  term, right, upskill locals to teach them how to distill, teach
• 46:59
  them how to do the various jobs that need doing on the site
• 47:03
  rather than bringing in people from the outside in.
• 47:06
  Yeah, how people? And obviously they're a great
• 47:08
  success. Story in the sense that there's
• 47:10
  people that have left 15 years ago and then came back, yeah.
• 47:17
  So I imagine. It's kind of almost a similar
• 47:19
  kind of very much, yeah. I mean, we're the.
• 47:20
  Second largest employer on Arden Merkin.
• 47:22
  Yeah, right. So the largest being just one of
• 47:24
  the big seafood companies. Yeah, there you go.
• 47:26
  So, but that's, I mean we have including the wholesalers, the
• 47:30
  Adelphi side, I mean we're under 40, yeah, right.
• 47:32
  And we're the second largest employer small business, but yet
• 47:36
  you a. Second, yeah, what's the next?
• 47:38
  Round what's the other story what else we got here Yeah this
• 47:41
  is a fun one this. Is probably one of my.
• 47:42
  Favorites. So this was released kind of the
• 47:44
  start of the year February, March somewhere there.
• 47:47
  Have you guys tried this week? No.
• 47:49
  Why is this the? The Madeira I think we might we,
• 47:53
  I think we have tried this at some.
• 47:54
  Point I don't have Kev Harman for.
• 47:56
  You another touch. Go on.
• 47:57
  Remind me? Yeah, let's let let me.
• 47:59
  I have a feeling like we may have tried this.
• 48:01
  Somewhere along the line because if we see if we, if we saw, if
• 48:06
  we saw our the market. Madeira, we're definitely, we're
• 48:08
  not just saying this. To bum, yeah, but I mean.
• 48:09
  Even like Neil Tripper. Appreciate it.
• 48:11
  Really. Neil Tripper?
• 48:12
  'S put on the. Facebook group, just like
• 48:14
  yesterday as we're recording this, saying that he's away up
• 48:17
  north, he's way up on a whiskey trip.
• 48:19
  What should he take? So I just asked, well, first of
• 48:21
  all, where do you go and how long is it going to take?
• 48:23
  Five hours. We're off to out of the market
• 48:24
  and you're like, right, well, the one thing you need to take
• 48:27
  away is us. But was it a big suitcase that I
• 48:31
  can fit in? Exactly.
• 48:33
  I mean. But one of the things like Simon
• 48:35
  was talking about when we said, and it's like annoyingly,
• 48:38
  annoyingly good, and we're seeing this with so many newer
• 48:40
  distilleries is the fact that I've said it so many times,
• 48:44
  nobody is old enough that, sorry, nobody is alive today
• 48:49
  that tried spring back when. Can't wait to see what it's like
• 48:51
  when it's 10. Yeah.
• 48:53
  Right, exactly right. You know and but we are.
• 48:55
  Getting to live through this, right.
• 48:57
  But The thing is the whiskey evolution, we know that whiskey
• 49:02
  up until I can't remember when the when it had to be aged for
• 49:05
  three years in a day that rule and stuff like that.
• 49:07
  But we know that there was whiskey in the 1890s would have
• 49:13
  been shite, right? And there's nobody alive.
• 49:16
  They go rubbish. You never got a chance to join
• 49:18
  that. But I wouldn't say shy, I'd say
• 49:20
  wildly. Inconsistent.
• 49:21
  Well, yeah, I mean knackered. Would have some glory.
• 49:24
  You. Would have you would you would.
• 49:25
  I mean my theory is surely you would have some stuff that just
• 49:30
  maybe, maybe by intention, maybe by hacker accident it was just
• 49:34
  amazing. But stand it beside now though.
• 49:37
  There would have been, you know, because I mean.
• 49:38
  You know, the science has moved on.
• 49:40
  Yeah, sort of thing. We know about how wood and
• 49:43
  spirit interact and all. And even even if it was.
• 49:46
  Gloriously good in the 1910s or 1920s.
• 49:51
  Stand it beside something that's made that's 1520 years old now
• 49:56
  or even 10 years old now. And it would it would still the
• 50:00
  the flavour difference would be incredible.
• 50:02
  I mean, yeah, like when when was?
• 50:04
  Penicillin figured out. Yeah, like, not not that long
• 50:07
  ago. Exactly.
• 50:08
  They were people were just like, let's you know, let's make some
• 50:11
  look thicker. But what?
• 50:12
  We've seen through the whiskey industry is this evolution of
• 50:16
  flavour, what people like, what? For example, the reason blinds
• 50:19
  are so popular is because people couldn't handle the stuff as
• 50:22
  soon as it came out the still. So they were like, we need to
• 50:25
  blind this with something else, low and whiskey, softer whiskey,
• 50:28
  grain whiskey, more palatable and bulked it all out, et
• 50:31
  cetera, et cetera. Of course.
• 50:32
  Yeah. But what we're seeing now is
• 50:34
  this new age of this explosion of new distilleries that I've
• 50:37
  been opening up. One of the things that through
• 50:40
  the science and technology and the information and because of
• 50:43
  the evolution of what's happened before people, people that build
• 50:46
  a distillery like Arden American can just build it so that the
• 50:49
  first drop that comes out of this is going to be spot on.
• 50:51
  It's engineered effectively. Yeah, and that's what you're.
• 50:54
  Doing is the fact. That you know, we've seen it
• 50:55
  with the with Inch Derny. Now there's every new distillery
• 51:00
  either like the guys at Dornach, they like to look back and they
• 51:03
  say we are following them all the traditional ways of doing
• 51:07
  it. Then you have, they're saying we
• 51:11
  have a nod to the traditions with the types of barley that
• 51:14
  we're using. But at the same time we also
• 51:16
  have, we use it the use of technology that can engineer
• 51:21
  whiskey flavours and stuff like that.
• 51:22
  Yeah, their their filtration thing is.
• 51:24
  Mental mental. But how do how?
• 51:25
  How do our the mark? Can do it then what are you what
• 51:27
  are we looking at as a distillery, as a old school old
• 51:31
  fashioned? We want to make it the way
• 51:32
  whiskey was originally made. Or is it?
• 51:35
  No, we're engineering this to be like copper contact is massive.
• 51:39
  We've designed this distillery to be exactly like this.
• 51:43
  But maybe have a nod back to the traditions of whiskey making.
• 51:47
  Yeah, it's it's pretty. Traditional in terms of just.
• 51:52
  The actual day-to-day distillation.
• 51:54
  Right. So Alex has that background that
• 51:58
  I spoke of and has been in whiskey quite a long time at
• 52:00
  this point. And a lot of it was geared like
• 52:05
  we're on Nord American, right. There's there's no other
• 52:07
  distillery. There's there's technically a
• 52:09
  gin distillery in a shed. It's actually pretty good,
• 52:11
  pretty good gin, right. But like we we kind of have
• 52:13
  that, you know, in the same way that until Torrevaig Talisker
• 52:18
  had for sky. Yeah, exactly.
• 52:19
  Yeah. So if you're in our minds or I
• 52:22
  should, I guess I can say our now, I think I guess that's
• 52:25
  supposedly fair. But when when they created it,
• 52:27
  right, it was, this has to be West Coast, right.
• 52:30
  And that, that's why the unpeated peated happens.
• 52:32
  Yeah. And I think that's also
• 52:34
  reflected in how the the distillery is put together.
• 52:37
  So it's very manual, you know, when you go through.
• 52:40
  Yes, of course it's 2025, right. But it's basically temperature
• 52:44
  gauges and and pump valves. Yeah.
• 52:47
  There's no, there's no computer like the computer.
• 52:50
  In fact, we should be better at computers than we are better at
• 52:54
  computers. Yeah.
• 52:56
  That's. A phrase, I guess, that proves
• 52:57
  the point. Maybe, but yeah, look like if
• 53:01
  you're on MASH at Arden Merkin, you're up and down a flight of
• 53:03
  stairs 45 times a day, right? Like you're, you're turning
• 53:06
  levers manually and and that's, that's how we operate like on
• 53:11
  the still, it's all run. So the the modern part, not to
• 53:14
  get carried away here, but it's a big question.
• 53:16
  I suppose the modern part and the benefit that we have as one
• 53:20
  of those 21st century distillers is we built it with
• 53:24
  sustainability in mind. Yeah, right.
• 53:26
  So we, this is the, this is the most important thing, right?
• 53:29
  I'm never gonna lead with sustainability.
• 53:31
  It's about what's in the bottle, of course, but.
• 53:34
  We're in this. Beautiful place.
• 53:35
  And we've talked about the way I like to put it as a salesperson,
• 53:40
  I suppose is distilling this resource intensive?
• 53:43
  Like if if you disagree with that, I would argue you're
• 53:46
  wrong. It uses a lot of water, a lot of
• 53:48
  grain, a lot of everything. So we try to minimize that and
• 53:51
  we try to keep it on the peninsula where we can.
• 53:53
  Yeah. So it's a biomass boiler that
• 53:56
  operates the whole site. Tematin does that, but they also
• 53:59
  have backup. So we can technically claim that
• 54:02
  we were the first to have only biomass.
• 54:04
  Yeah, Yeah. And then Mcneeon did.
• 54:06
  So our neighbors at Mcneeon. But yeah, we, it's, it's all
• 54:12
  renewable wood chip. So replanting basically shitty
• 54:17
  pine that was planted for timber at a 2 to one rate with local
• 54:21
  species. So they're cutting down all this
• 54:23
  pine that was planted on the peninsula.
• 54:24
  It's a, it's a, it's a challenge that.
• 54:26
  The, the whiskey industry is only going to come up with more
• 54:28
  and more and more is the fact that look, people will say it's
• 54:32
  a luxury brand and anything that has luxury in it is not a
• 54:36
  sustainable thing because there's packaging, there's
• 54:39
  transports, travel, you know, it's flying around.
• 54:42
  You hear stories of people who will travel all around the world
• 54:45
  to sell one bottle with and things like that.
• 54:48
  But at the same time, the production side of it's
• 54:50
  obviously a challenge as well. Yeah, cutting peat is only going
• 54:53
  to get harder and harder. People are now talking about how
• 54:55
  dangerous it is for the environment to cut peat.
• 54:57
  And of course, we've got to, we've got to do that on a
• 54:59
  sustainability model as well, away from the sort of the, the,
• 55:05
  the greener side of things. What about business
• 55:07
  sustainability does Arden Merkin built with a capacity for
• 55:11
  growth? We were up at Glen Murray.
• 55:12
  Yeah, I guess. And oh, you hear the story where
• 55:15
  they've like, we've had to build a new still house and split them
• 55:19
  up and I mean, Oh yeah. And I mean.
• 55:20
  Emma who is our wonderful host up there, I mean she, she talked
• 55:23
  about going from kind of 3,000,000 litres, you know 10 or
• 55:27
  15 years ago up to kind of eight and a half million litres, so
• 55:31
  huge over double and when but that distillery.
• 55:33
  Was built in the 1800s, kids, you know, so it's like no one
• 55:36
  was building it at the time and even when even.
• 55:39
  When Murray, you know, take it back to 15 years when it was
• 55:42
  3,000,000, that's still what, 5-6 times more than what Arden
• 55:47
  American producing? So like when they build?
• 55:49
  The distillery, were they building the distillery in the
• 55:51
  mind of let's build this and is, is there a cap?
• 55:56
  Is there a cap of how much Arden American can start to produce if
• 56:01
  in 1525, thirty years time someone's gone, we need to go
• 56:05
  from 400,000 litres a year to a million and then to 5 million
• 56:10
  because you just don't know what the way the industry is going.
• 56:12
  Yeah. Is that, is that, is that
• 56:14
  something or well Arden marking you mentioned how many markets
• 56:17
  Arden markings getting it is in just now 4648?
• 56:20
  Yeah, yeah. So is it.
• 56:21
  Is it? Are you a craft distillery or
• 56:23
  are you you? You're not a powerhouse
• 56:25
  distillery because you're not at 400,000.
• 56:27
  But where? Where do you where do you see
• 56:30
  Arden marking? And then in that, in between
• 56:32
  craft and powerhouse, Yeah, I think we say small to medium.
• 56:35
  Right, right. I think I think we're we're
• 56:38
  hoping to sell commercially Yeah, right.
• 56:41
  Like this isn't just like a a household thing, right.
• 56:45
  There's a reason I was hired that we know we yes, we're a
• 56:47
  small team. We we, we draft we put a lot of
• 56:49
  hours in right, but 400,000 leaders, I mean, that's nearly
• 56:54
  double Spring bank until recently Yeah, right.
• 56:57
  It's so this is the way I like to put it going the other way.
• 57:01
  I mean think about Glen going, you know, a brand that is
• 57:04
  everywhere. Yeah, right. 1.1 right.
• 57:07
  So it's like a. Little.
• 57:08
  I think I made that number up, but it's somewhere in there,
• 57:10
  right? It's a little over a million,
• 57:12
  right? Just over double.
• 57:13
  Yeah, so like. We're not.
• 57:16
  There, but we're not. We're not tiny, right?
• 57:19
  So like I think that's how I like to approach.
• 57:21
  I would love to sell whiskey in the same way that Glen going or
• 57:25
  now Cohoman who's increased like and that that would be my answer
• 57:28
  to your question, which is to say, I wonder if you asked
• 57:30
  Anthony, you know, 20 years ago, are you going to increase in the
• 57:34
  next 20 years? Maybe he would have said yes.
• 57:36
  Well, I mean, it's I don't know. It's a question that you.
• 57:37
  Have to think about, because the thing with whiskey is like, you
• 57:40
  know, when you're making whiskey, you're thinking about,
• 57:43
  you're having to think so far ahead.
• 57:46
  Yeah. So for people that are making
• 57:47
  the whiskey to think that far ahead, the people that are
• 57:50
  making the distillery have to be thinking even further ahead
• 57:52
  completely. Where are we going to be in
• 57:53
  hundreds years time? Yeah, because it's 100 year.
• 57:56
  It's a nearly a 200 year old is a 200 year old industry that
• 58:00
  we're we're in yeah. So you have to say if we're part
• 58:02
  of that, we're not here for like, oh, you know, we're only
• 58:04
  going to we'll probably last 15 years and then what have you you
• 58:07
  know who knows? But actually you're saying, well
• 58:10
  you're starting it fresh. Who knows where the whiskey
• 58:12
  industry is going to be next year, but who knows where it's
• 58:14
  going to be in 30 years time. And trying to for I think that's
• 58:18
  really, really important, isn't it?
• 58:19
  Like markets open up, markets closed down a little bit.
• 58:21
  Yeah. So you'll you'll probably have
• 58:23
  to juggle that. But it's just very interesting
• 58:25
  to see because we're in such a fortunate position as consumers.
• 58:29
  Is the fact that like we've talked about Aaron, right?
• 58:33
  Aaron Distillery is like the oldest of the new guys, right?
• 58:37
  30 you know. And that's that's how.
• 58:39
  Crazy is that? Yeah, but then Paul?
• 58:40
  Main. Was on the podcast, Paul Main
• 58:44
  was talking about how like he can remember as a whiskey geek
• 58:48
  in the 90s, like having to read magazines and get excited about
• 58:53
  Paul's great Aaron Aaron. Opening up.
• 58:55
  And it's like, that's, that's what that's what it was like
• 58:57
  then. And then you suddenly look at
• 58:58
  the acceleration of new distilleries that are opening up
• 59:00
  now. And as we've said, as Simon
• 59:02
  Smith said, it's like it's annoying how good they are,
• 59:05
  right? But and it's great.
• 59:08
  Because, well, just keep it coming.
• 59:10
  That's all we're saying. Just keep it.
• 59:11
  Keep. It going.
• 59:12
  Keep it coming. But I think it's we're just
• 59:14
  trying to. Craft whiskey honestly, right.
• 59:15
  We're not trying to put it together.
• 59:17
  We don't lie. Transparency is huge.
• 59:18
  We've got the QR codes. I don't even like this is not
• 59:21
  the form for QR codes. To me, it's about I know as much
• 59:25
  as I possibly can about this whiskey.
• 59:27
  You could I'm sure you could ask me a question about production.
• 59:29
  I'd have to ask someone. That's not my strength.
• 59:30
  Right. But like, we're just trying to
• 59:33
  tell you what we do. It's in a bottle.
• 59:35
  Yeah. I hope you enjoy it.
• 59:36
  Yeah. If you don't love it, that's all
• 59:38
  right. Like, there's so much good
• 59:40
  whiskey out there to your point, right?
• 59:42
  Like, go try Torvik. Go have an Earn 18 and, like,
• 59:47
  blow your face off. Right.
• 59:48
  Like, there's so much good stuff out there, but it's just.
• 59:51
  I'll be well. But there's somebody who makes
• 59:53
  this, though, right? There is somebody who's involved
• 59:56
  in the process. Yeah, let's go in whilst we're
• 59:59
  sitting there going. That is brilliant.
• 1:00:01
  There might be someone there going not yet because I know
• 1:00:05
  that with that spirit style, with this type, with that type,
• 1:00:11
  I know that when that it's 15. It's got it even better, Yeah.
• 1:00:15
  And we don't know that yet. And I think, but that's the
• 1:00:17
  excitement. And we'll touch on that.
• 1:00:19
  Yeah, let's try. Let me tell you about.
• 1:00:21
  Did I tell you about? This.
• 1:00:23
  Yeah, well, I'll be brief about it.
• 1:00:25
  Right. And I think sorry, especially
• 1:00:28
  because it does kind of elide with the conversation, which is
• 1:00:31
  to say this is a limited release, 26 month Madeira
• 1:00:35
  finish, 40% peated, 60% unpeated, 52% alcohol.
• 1:00:40
  I'm a huge fan. Yeah, I helped put it together.
• 1:00:42
  Some bias, right? But this is 18,000 bottles.
• 1:00:46
  That's it, right. OK, so that's.
• 1:00:47
  A That's a fair. Sized batch right for a smaller
• 1:00:51
  smaller distillery like this is something we we have got.
• 1:00:56
  Especially with those first couple years.
• 1:00:58
  We were lucky we had a pretty good name for ourselves
• 1:01:01
  partially through a Delphi. We're happy with the distillate.
• 1:01:04
  We have a lot of retailers like partners who are saying, wait,
• 1:01:07
  you have more Madeira because the assumption is we put out
• 1:01:10
  like $5000. Yeah, it's a small batch.
• 1:01:12
  But like this is we have more like we have enough of this to
• 1:01:16
  sell for a couple months, right? Like it is sizable because you
• 1:01:18
  think of. Something like example
• 1:01:20
  Lagovillin I you know when they do their phase release, I think
• 1:01:23
  I've seen it like 1 of 6000 yeah, if that's what Lagovillin
• 1:01:27
  are doing for a special release 6000 and you're doing 18,000
• 1:01:30
  yeah, just to put it in you know, but The thing is as well
• 1:01:33
  so. Is that is it was this a one
• 1:01:34
  off? This is a limited edition or was
• 1:01:35
  it or was it? Yeah, so was it was a you're
• 1:01:37
  talking about 18,000 for that. What would a core release so it
• 1:01:41
  depends on? Where we sit with the previous
• 1:01:43
  batch, right but it'll be yeah, it could be 1215 thousand, it
• 1:01:46
  could be 25 yeah, yeah, because the danger is it's a funny.
• 1:01:49
  Way from a sales point of view, right?
• 1:01:51
  Yeah, I want to get into this, right, because it's an area that
• 1:01:55
  I like sales and Android sales and stuff like that as well.
• 1:01:58
  But there's always a danger, right?
• 1:01:59
  It sounds amazing if you sell out, right?
• 1:02:02
  Sell out. We're sold out within a week.
• 1:02:03
  Sold out in a week. But then when you're in a space
• 1:02:06
  where there's hundreds of other bottles that other the consumer
• 1:02:09
  can pick from, yeah. So if I want to buy this bottle
• 1:02:12
  here and there's only 5000 of them, I'm desperate to get it.
• 1:02:16
  I go to the shop, sold out, can't get it anywhere.
• 1:02:19
  I'm disappointed. But then I forget about it.
• 1:02:22
  So what else? It sounds amazing.
• 1:02:23
  Like, oh, we sold our batch out within so many days.
• 1:02:28
  The problem you have then is actually, like you said, we want
• 1:02:31
  this to be on sale for months because the longer it's on the
• 1:02:33
  shelf, the more chance it is I'll buy that, I love it, I
• 1:02:37
  finish it, I'll buy it again. And also it's more.
• 1:02:40
  Likely that you remember the brand and buy the next
• 1:02:42
  iteration. That's exactly.
• 1:02:43
  Yeah, yeah. Exactly if.
• 1:02:45
  And I think only Spring Bank can negate this comment that you're
• 1:02:50
  saying and that I'm saying. But if you're in the States and
• 1:02:54
  you're finding out about new distilleries and you can't get
• 1:02:56
  Arden Merkin if you're not going to drink Arden Merkin, yeah, you
• 1:02:59
  just find another one. Screw it, right?
• 1:03:00
  Like you're going to. Go drink an air in 10 for some
• 1:03:02
  outrageously low price. You're going to get up in Romic
• 1:03:05
  10 because Y goes to the trouble.
• 1:03:06
  Yeah. Whereas, well, I don't drink
• 1:03:09
  spring back. 10 I like no for that.
• 1:03:12
  Like there are people I will first of all, I will not make
• 1:03:16
  any effort whatsoever to get my hands on a bottle the way that
• 1:03:20
  other people do. They know that the releases are
• 1:03:21
  coming. They're like, right, I'm going
• 1:03:23
  to do it. If I see behind a bar, though,
• 1:03:25
  I'll go up a drama that. But at the same time is you also
• 1:03:28
  know that if the bar can't get hold of it.
• 1:03:31
  But like you say, Spring Bank have built that.
• 1:03:33
  But you're we're talking about two types of two types of
• 1:03:35
  distilleries here. It's not a fair, it's Spring
• 1:03:38
  Bank isn't a fair comparison to. Anyone.
• 1:03:40
  No, exactly right, because. But their legacy and but Arden
• 1:03:43
  Mark can be new. And like you said, I mean, if I
• 1:03:45
  like you just said, I've never heard of Ardemark and never
• 1:03:48
  tried Ardemark and never get hold of the stuff, I'll drink
• 1:03:50
  something else. Yeah.
• 1:03:51
  And that's that's the way. So actually, so because this is
• 1:03:54
  the this must be the real difficulty from a newer
• 1:03:57
  distillery point of view is and like, like you said, this, this
• 1:04:00
  obviously fluctuates massively on what the sale of the last
• 1:04:04
  real the last batch was. Yeah, to work out how you do it.
• 1:04:07
  But again, that takes time because when you actually start
• 1:04:09
  thinking about it, by the time you're getting all the sales
• 1:04:12
  information, you're three, six months ahead, correct for when
• 1:04:17
  that releases to go out. You know, it's not just a case
• 1:04:20
  of batch is ready, by the way. Yeah, good.
• 1:04:23
  Sell it. You've got to go, right.
• 1:04:24
  I got a minute. And from a financial point of
• 1:04:26
  view, and this is where the thing that a lot may have just
• 1:04:29
  landed in this in a. Country like the States or Japan
• 1:04:32
  yeah they may have just gotten the previous release 3 weeks ago
• 1:04:35
  yeah right. So then we're like hey like how
• 1:04:36
  much do you want of this and it's like so this is the danger
• 1:04:39
  of doing we've done a lot of releases of late and we're like
• 1:04:43
  we're proud of them and that's also partly due to the market
• 1:04:46
  because the consumer wants what's new what's different,
• 1:04:49
  what's unique right it's. I think anyone, I assume anyone
• 1:04:53
  who's come on here the core. Has been a trickier.
• 1:04:57
  Sell for the last five years, right?
• 1:04:58
  Because certainly like in a lot of export markets, you're, you
• 1:05:03
  have consumers who are like, OK, I've had Arden Merck and Sigmol,
• 1:05:05
  I've had Arden Merckon cast strength.
• 1:05:06
  What's next as opposed to like ever thinking, oh man, that cast
• 1:05:09
  strength was really good should I get another bottle?
• 1:05:12
  You know, and this is, I mean, well, you're.
• 1:05:14
  Because we're living in a world. Where we're spoiled we could
• 1:05:16
  just say try how many? How many releases are Arg
• 1:05:20
  marking putting out in a year? Then what are you talking?
• 1:05:22
  I mean, is it? It depends on what's ready,
• 1:05:27
  Yeah. And because you're doing a lot
• 1:05:28
  of single. 6 sixish so I mean. That's a lot.
• 1:05:30
  Yeah, I. Mean to say but then plus single
• 1:05:32
  casts. This is what I'm.
• 1:05:33
  Saying because you do, you do. A lot of single casts yourself
• 1:05:35
  and obviously that kind of harks back to the Adelphi thing as
• 1:05:38
  well. Precisely right whereas.
• 1:05:39
  It's like, OK, we. Are distillery, we are going to
• 1:05:41
  do releases of, you know, 18,000 bottles, but at the same time
• 1:05:47
  we're going to put out single cask releases to the and, and
• 1:05:50
  also you. Have to right?
• 1:05:51
  Yeah, like if you. If you have if anyone ever went
• 1:05:54
  to the George, this is a good example.
• 1:05:56
  Because you brought it up. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:57
  You walk into that bar, you go to the gantry downstairs and
• 1:06:00
  there's like, and I know. That George's in funky.
• 1:06:03
  Times right now let that go, but 15 to 20 adelphies, probably 10
• 1:06:10
  to 14. Arden.
• 1:06:11
  Americans wow right that five of which are single cast from
• 1:06:15
  somewhere no one's ever heard of Yeah.
• 1:06:17
  How do you not support that? How do you not give them a
• 1:06:19
  little chair? Right but but, but The thing is
• 1:06:21
  from. A market point of view and it's
• 1:06:23
  you harps back to what you were talking about in terms of like
• 1:06:26
  how the industry works is how how much of Arden market that
• 1:06:31
  goes into the bottles. Thank you very much.
• 1:06:32
  How much of Arden market that goes into the bottles?
• 1:06:36
  Versus how much of Arden market? In that, you know, the business
• 1:06:38
  model is the, the bulk liquids getting moved to somewhere else.
• 1:06:42
  Yeah. Because the bottom line is
• 1:06:44
  right. And we, we've, we've had this
• 1:06:46
  debate and look, the industry, some people will tell you the
• 1:06:49
  industry is hitting a bit of a tricky time at the moment.
• 1:06:52
  You know, some people will say there's a lot of liquid moving
• 1:06:54
  around. But at the same time, as you
• 1:06:56
  know, different markets are maybe holding back what have
• 1:06:58
  you, who knows? I've heard mixed people say
• 1:07:01
  mixed reviews on both. Are we getting told we're in a
• 1:07:03
  bad time versus actual what is or what have anyway?
• 1:07:06
  But the point of the matter is, is that the, the, the industry
• 1:07:10
  has survived this length of time.
• 1:07:14
  Distilleries have survived this length of time on selling bulk
• 1:07:18
  right to big blenders. You know, we talked about Glyde
• 1:07:21
  Murray Angus and, and things like that.
• 1:07:23
  And when we see a single malt bottle in front of us, you go,
• 1:07:27
  You just automatically assume that's all they do.
• 1:07:30
  There you go. No, no, no, hang on a minute.
• 1:07:31
  See that Glenfiddich bottle there?
• 1:07:33
  For every Glenfiddich 12, there's about four grants that
• 1:07:37
  are going around the world. And we've heard that probably
• 1:07:39
  we've. Brought more because we've
• 1:07:40
  heard. Anecdotally from.
• 1:07:41
  Some of these, well, yeah. From some of these distillers.
• 1:07:44
  The stuff you sell in bulk is your bread and butter, and what
• 1:07:47
  you're releasing is a, you know, as your core range, as your,
• 1:07:50
  your single malt is your kind of cream on top.
• 1:07:52
  Yeah, single malts are relatively new.
• 1:07:55
  Exactly. Product in itself, you know.
• 1:07:57
  100% it's not. I mean you actually look at the
• 1:07:59
  200 years of 200 years of of whiskey Estuary and from 1960
• 1:08:04
  till now, that's what people are being used to.
• 1:08:06
  So actually, and then when you go around, so when you talk
• 1:08:09
  about single cask stuff, there are whiskey drinkers in
• 1:08:13
  Scotland, there are people that we know who'd like a DRAM that
• 1:08:17
  still don't. And I was one of them, I guess
• 1:08:19
  would have been one of them as well, who still don't fully
• 1:08:21
  understood and didn't fully understand or still don't fully
• 1:08:24
  understand the concept single cask whiskey.
• 1:08:26
  Yeah. And foreign markets as well.
• 1:08:29
  I mean, how many? The American market, the market
• 1:08:32
  you'll know best the number of people that I come.
• 1:08:34
  Across When I say I'm on the blending team for a single model
• 1:08:37
  story and they're like, what do you mean what?
• 1:08:40
  And then I'm like. So if and then what you have to
• 1:08:43
  do is talk about the most probably the most successful
• 1:08:46
  brand in single mall, you know, 27,000,000 liters, whatever it
• 1:08:49
  is today as opposed to yesterday, right?
• 1:08:52
  Like what you think those are all single cast?
• 1:08:53
  And then they're like, oh right, yeah, right.
• 1:08:56
  And of course it's a. Batting right blend.
• 1:08:58
  Blend is a dangerous word, yeah, and Graham and I have
• 1:09:00
  experienced this. I think, I think for the kind of
• 1:09:02
  casual whiskey drinker that knows what a blend, knows the
• 1:09:07
  terminology of blend in single, single malt, yeah, it gets
• 1:09:11
  confused. They don't you know, people
• 1:09:12
  don't understand that something something that's a single malt
• 1:09:16
  is something that has been blended and that 100% concept
• 1:09:20
  book so from about like this. Is what I'm saying is like, so I
• 1:09:22
  mean, going back, you're bringing in six releases a year,
• 1:09:27
  give or take. Give or take.
• 1:09:28
  Yeah, Yeah. But that, that's that's a lot.
• 1:09:30
  And some people say, oh, you're following the market with giving
• 1:09:32
  people too much choice, but at the same time is for brand
• 1:09:35
  loyalty. Yeah.
• 1:09:36
  Like you're saying, all right, there's going to be a there's a
• 1:09:38
  hoose DRAM that you like. Yeah.
• 1:09:39
  And you can lay your hat on it. I can't see past the the AD.
• 1:09:43
  I'll always have a bottle of that on my shelf.
• 1:09:45
  But then at the same time, hang on a minute.
• 1:09:47
  Oh, Sherry. There's a there's a Madeira one
• 1:09:49
  or Sherry one or this, that or. And then there's the other side
• 1:09:52
  of it going. If I see a Thompson Brothers
• 1:09:55
  that's got Dorner, it's got hard marking on it.
• 1:09:58
  I know I'm taking it. Yeah, right.
• 1:10:00
  Because I'm going that's, that's going to be and that's huge for
• 1:10:02
  us too, right? Because imagine the hypocrisy,
• 1:10:05
  right? Born of Adelphi, born of an
• 1:10:06
  independent bottler. If we weren't, you know,
• 1:10:09
  especially friends with Phil and Simon, you know, friends with
• 1:10:12
  the SNWS crew, friends with, you know, like if, if we weren't
• 1:10:16
  selling to Indies, yeah, it would be.
• 1:10:19
  How outrageous. Yeah.
• 1:10:20
  Exactly, and even letting them put the branding.
• 1:10:22
  Like the because again, the unit, North Star, all these
• 1:10:24
  guys, yeah. You can't put the barriers.
• 1:10:26
  Up to the kind of businesses that you are yourself.
• 1:10:28
  It's it's ridiculous, Yeah. So yeah.
• 1:10:31
  So what's that say? Yeah, what have we got here?
• 1:10:33
  Yeah. So this is, I mean we've.
• 1:10:35
  We're talking a lot about age and where everyone fits in,
• 1:10:37
  right? This, this was a huge, huge
• 1:10:39
  milestone for us. So this is sold out.
• 1:10:42
  I brought this from from the flat because I think I think
• 1:10:45
  it's appropriate. Thank you very much.
• 1:10:46
  Oh no, no, it was a good sized batch.
• 1:10:48
  Nothing, nothing too crazy, right?
• 1:10:50
  There's another bottler too in the.
• 1:10:52
  I think I do have 1/1. One closer for you that you
• 1:10:55
  might not have seen, but yeah. So this was the 10 year unless
• 1:10:59
  it's huge. Yeah, we're a 10 year.
• 1:11:01
  Old distillery, right? How crazy is that, especially as
• 1:11:04
  an American guy coming in a couple years ago, being able to
• 1:11:08
  sell this is is pretty, pretty exciting.
• 1:11:10
  And I know the Glasgow team just just crossed that threshold and
• 1:11:13
  they're they're they're chuffed about it.
• 1:11:14
  So yeah, so so. Just for those that might not
• 1:11:17
  have tried it, what was this? Yeah.
• 1:11:19
  Of spirit wise, total wise. So kind of a.
• 1:11:22
  Funny order and I did it sort of intentionally to get your
• 1:11:24
  opinions. Appreciate if you're, if you're
• 1:11:26
  candid about it. So these were both partially
• 1:11:27
  peated, yes, in 2014. So first distillate end of July,
• 1:11:31
  early August. We didn't do any peated
• 1:11:34
  distillate that year. So when you turn around 2024,
• 1:11:38
  the 10 year has to be unpeated. Yeah, OK.
• 1:11:40
  By rule, right? Yeah.
• 1:11:41
  So this is entirely unpeated. Half of the batch is 50%
• 1:11:47
  alcohol, so slightly reduced, but not far.
• 1:11:50
  I mean, you know what I mean. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:11:53
  Half of the batch is just first old bourbon, clean, unfettered,
• 1:11:56
  unpeated, ardent American spirit.
• 1:11:58
  The other half, so we have a bottling that is probably our
• 1:12:03
  cult bottling so to speak, is the Pollen Noir, the champagne
• 1:12:06
  finish that was a walk 3. Drum by Charlie Hue.
• 1:12:09
  There you go. Charlie would do that.
• 1:12:11
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:12:12
  He's a good lad. I appreciate.
• 1:12:14
  That it's nice to hear so in I don't need to get down the pub
• 1:12:19
  and wild rabbit hole. It's it's a crazy beast.
• 1:12:21
  We're lucky to have it and people love it cuz that's right.
• 1:12:24
  It's a ground cruise, champagne house that.
• 1:12:26
  We're friends with the owners. Yeah, that's what it is.
• 1:12:28
  But it. But it can never be a.
• 1:12:30
  Champagne cask Efficient because yeah, correct, it's a
• 1:12:32
  Chardonnay. It's not champagne.
• 1:12:33
  Until it comes. Out of the cast, yeah, yeah,
• 1:12:36
  yeah. It's Chardonnay from a.
• 1:12:37
  Ground cruise, Champagne house. Exactly.
• 1:12:39
  You have to be a bit. Funny about terminology.
• 1:12:42
  We actually just owned it. We're just waiting for someone
• 1:12:44
  to I think. I think we do say champagne just
• 1:12:46
  because like, yeah, screw it. But for this celebratory
• 1:12:50
  bottling, we half the batch was finished on those champagne
• 1:12:54
  casts for a year. So it's different from the
• 1:12:57
  Polanois bottling, which we do once a year.
• 1:13:02
  And it's only about 3000 bottles because they're also a small
• 1:13:05
  producer. So they send us like 12 casks.
• 1:13:09
  But this was the larger vatting and half of the batch is that
• 1:13:15
  and that's nice that. Harks back to that as.
• 1:13:17
  Well, I'm sorry, it's nice that it harks back to that.
• 1:13:20
  Yeah, release that your first 10 year old that, you know, loads
• 1:13:23
  of people are going to try has something of the, you know,
• 1:13:27
  something of that kind of, you know, beloved the thing that
• 1:13:31
  people like really. Latched onto, right?
• 1:13:34
  Yeah. Is this, is this right?
• 1:13:36
  So. Well, so do Ardemark, well,
• 1:13:39
  Ardemark can always bring out an unpeated release and a peated
• 1:13:42
  release or will they only ever bring out mixed peated?
• 1:13:44
  Like so there might be 30% peated and that's what, so
• 1:13:48
  there's always going to be peated influence in this.
• 1:13:50
  So is this like, is this kind of like stripped right there?
• 1:13:52
  If, if you're a big geek of Ardemarkin and you're like, what
• 1:13:58
  about that release, the one release that they brought out
• 1:14:01
  that was completely unpeated? No, no, well, you're bringing.
• 1:14:04
  We will always do. A range, right?
• 1:14:07
  It will always trend towards partial of each.
• 1:14:11
  Yeah, a la Midji Madeira, right? And of course you'll always have
• 1:14:15
  single casts. As well.
• 1:14:16
  No, but yeah, we're on. Like as a core, like you could
• 1:14:19
  say, yeah, this one pillar is always going to be a completely
• 1:14:25
  unpeated release of our market. We've done.
• 1:14:31
  Conall might yell at me if I get this wrong.
• 1:14:33
  To my to my mind we've done 3 unpeeded fully unpeeded releases
• 1:14:38
  in Arden American livery right apart from single casks.
• 1:14:41
  This the saw turn release from. August last year.
• 1:14:48
  And then the first batch of Madeira was cast strength
• 1:14:50
  unpeated. That was October of 2022.
• 1:14:52
  That was before my time. We've also done so we the cast
• 1:14:56
  strength is part of our core range and is 95% peated.
• 1:14:59
  So just a touch of unpeated. So that's the one that you can
• 1:15:03
  almost always get and is the other end of the spectrum.
• 1:15:05
  So this is like we've also done the recent mezcal release, which
• 1:15:09
  was only peated spirit and it's it's it's.
• 1:15:12
  Nice that like from a new distilleries point of view,
• 1:15:14
  there's very few new distilleries.
• 1:15:15
  I think someone will probably correct us.
• 1:15:17
  But going back to the Glenn Murray video, Angus that we were
• 1:15:22
  we were up at Glenn Murray and I really, really respect Glenn
• 1:15:25
  Murray being a legacy distillery as such.
• 1:15:28
  That's been going for as long as they have been that are so open
• 1:15:31
  to just being like, Nah, we just quite happy.
• 1:15:33
  We're not fixed on one cast type.
• 1:15:36
  We'll just fire in and as fire in that and see what comes out
• 1:15:39
  the other end. And you know what, we'll we'll
• 1:15:41
  you know, that's what we do. And that's just like that's what
• 1:15:44
  I like when a new distillery having that like there's no
• 1:15:46
  constraints from a new distilleries point of view, cost
• 1:15:49
  being one of them. Probably if you're sourcing your
• 1:15:51
  cast, that's going to be a cost. Of course, by the same time new
• 1:15:54
  distilleries that are saying like hard American are going.
• 1:15:56
  You've just mentioned like sawtelles, mezcal, Madeira,
• 1:15:59
  bourbon, cherry, all that kind of champagne or whatever.
• 1:16:02
  Yeah. And you're saying like we that
• 1:16:04
  that having that freedom as a new distillery must be so much
• 1:16:08
  fun. Yeah.
• 1:16:09
  Because you'll find trends, right.
• 1:16:10
  That worked. The Madeira worked.
• 1:16:12
  So use the Madeira port worked a little bit, but not as much as
• 1:16:15
  this. So what got heavy on that?
• 1:16:17
  But at the same time, it's it must be just great fun being
• 1:16:19
  able to and as that's up being on the blending team.
• 1:16:22
  Yeah. The access that you must have to
• 1:16:24
  blast to be able to go life like you say that just the concept of
• 1:16:28
  how many is in the blending team, 6-6 years sitting there
• 1:16:31
  with your blending kit in front. Yeah, and just going why they
• 1:16:35
  bang a bit of Sherry in that just see, see what comes out
• 1:16:38
  genuinely, man, it's. Hilarious, right?
• 1:16:40
  So that was Antonia. Actually.
• 1:16:42
  Really. Yeah, So and you mentioned, I
• 1:16:43
  should mention Alex's sister Antonia.
• 1:16:46
  Yeah, she's been with. Arden Merkin since day.
• 1:16:47
  One Adelphi Pryor worked for Paul Roje, Alex worked for
• 1:16:51
  Josrine and Brooks. So they they were in wine for a
• 1:16:54
  while, but that was like her. She was, it was hilarious.
• 1:16:57
  She was she was banging on. She was like the shirt, it's
• 1:16:59
  better with the shirt. It's better with the shirt.
• 1:17:00
  It's better the shirt and that's how it works sometimes, right?
• 1:17:03
  Like we'll have, we'll have sessions where Graham Mackay,
• 1:17:09
  who's also on the team, he'll be like, hey, I think it's better.
• 1:17:13
  This way and like. The MD and the sales direct like
• 1:17:17
  Alex and Connell will be like, Nah, we kind of like it here and
• 1:17:19
  Graham and maybe myself or whoever be like, is that a case?
• 1:17:24
  Of who can argue the most passionately or well, no, maybe.
• 1:17:28
  But it's a credit, I think, cuz Alex could just like put himself
• 1:17:31
  as master blender and be like, piss off, this is what we're
• 1:17:34
  doing, right? Which would be fine.
• 1:17:35
  We'd be good, right? That's largely how the
• 1:17:38
  distillery was built behind that idea.
• 1:17:41
  But he gives us that space to to hash it out and sometimes, and
• 1:17:46
  in a way that's future proofing. It as well because if you know,
• 1:17:48
  it means as as a if it's a collective decision, there's
• 1:17:52
  more people involved, you're gaining sales of blending other
• 1:17:55
  people on that is doing it as well.
• 1:17:56
  So exactly. But I mean, when it comes to the
• 1:17:58
  experience of, you know, really the connections, the wine
• 1:18:02
  industry connections that Antonio and Alex have, that that
• 1:18:06
  must play a huge part in terms of what you can source.
• 1:18:08
  Because, I mean, we know how difficult it can be sometimes
• 1:18:12
  for distilleries to get their hands on Goodwood.
• 1:18:15
  Yeah. Is it down to those personal
• 1:18:17
  connections that really helps Ardemarchan in terms of getting
• 1:18:21
  hold of the best cast that you possibly can?
• 1:18:23
  Yeah. And and the Adelphi, I mean, 32
• 1:18:27
  years is not that long, but it's long enough.
• 1:18:31
  That's why. Yeah, so so.
• 1:18:32
  Alex like we're in with. Miguel Martin In terms of
• 1:18:35
  Sherry, who's the same guy that does Clint Farklas, Yeah, right.
• 1:18:40
  Like he's the godfather of of harass in terms of selling cast
• 1:18:45
  to Scotland. So that's that's huge for us.
• 1:18:50
  And yeah, it's also, I think it's also just the mindset, it's
• 1:18:53
  the commitment to, hey, we're going to pay more.
• 1:18:56
  We're going to ship cash hole from from Kentucky.
• 1:18:58
  We're going to pay. We pay a cooperage Kentucky
• 1:19:00
  Bourbon barrel in Louisville to check every cast cuz you can't
• 1:19:05
  exactly get to space side cooperage from American.
• 1:19:07
  No. So you need to have them, Yeah.
• 1:19:09
  So they show up like. The the team out there are
• 1:19:11
  pretty handy, but like they're not master Coopers, right?
• 1:19:15
  Like so we ship those whole from Kentucky pretty much ready to
• 1:19:19
  rock, which is a cost in itself. Is that absolutely?
• 1:19:21
  Because I mean. Most casts will come broken down
• 1:19:25
  and broken down. Especially if you're a larger.
• 1:19:27
  Company, yeah, certainly, you know just in terms of.
• 1:19:30
  Volume, it must, you know, shipping costs, it must save
• 1:19:32
  hugely. So you're, you're, that's one of
• 1:19:35
  you're paying for the quality, right.
• 1:19:37
  Yeah. Well, sorry, sorry.
• 1:19:39
  No, I'm going to say what we are going to do is we're going to
• 1:19:41
  move on or what 3 drams, OK. But what we are going to do,
• 1:19:44
  because we are, we can, what we are going to do is we've got
• 1:19:47
  three more whiskies to try that you've brought in.
• 1:19:49
  Yeah, sorry. No, no, we're going to do them
• 1:19:51
  as exclusive content for the Facebook group.
• 1:19:53
  Cool. So this will be so podcast wise,
• 1:19:55
  if you listen to this and you're thinking this is so much fun.
• 1:19:58
  If you want to find out what the last three drafts, the last
• 1:20:00
  three drams, because I will say that if you are, if you are, if
• 1:20:03
  you are, if you are watching, then you'll know when I pick
• 1:20:07
  these two, oops, when I pick these two bottles up.
• 1:20:10
  If you're watching, you can see there are casts in it.
• 1:20:12
  Anything that comes in a 20 CL. Bottle with a handwritten Yeah,
• 1:20:15
  a handwritten label. Cast sample Cast sample bottles.
• 1:20:19
  And if you're listening. That's the noise of 2 cast.
• 1:20:22
  Several, which means that you have to join the Facebook group
• 1:20:25
  to find out what we're drinking and hear a little bit more of
• 1:20:28
  Carol Craft. But Carol, I'm going to pass it.
• 1:20:30
  Pass it on. Now the what 3 DRAM section of
• 1:20:32
  this of our podcast is basically any 3 drams of any meaning story
• 1:20:38
  or anything associated with you. I'm really excited to hear these
• 1:20:40
  because you like your story tonight has been fantastic and
• 1:20:43
  cool. Yeah.
• 1:20:44
  So what's DRAM? Number one of your what, 3
• 1:20:46
  Drams? Old school Elijah Craig. 12
• 1:20:51
  before they next the age statement, OK.
• 1:20:54
  So this. Elijah Craig.
• 1:20:55
  I mean, it's a brand I've heard of, It's a brand I've seen on
• 1:20:57
  the shelf, right? Not a brand I'm particularly
• 1:21:00
  familiar with. I'm not, I'm complete novice
• 1:21:01
  when it comes to bourbon. We talked about this on the.
• 1:21:05
  No, it came up in one of our previous episodes, Ross talking
• 1:21:10
  about Elijah Craig bourbon being just a quality DRAM that he
• 1:21:15
  would. But you're saying now wait a
• 1:21:16
  minute, you're saying aye through 12.
• 1:21:19
  OK, so I won't I? Won't go too far, I promise.
• 1:21:22
  I'm worried but I'll hold it back.
• 1:21:24
  So the one that everyone freaks out about in the whiskey
• 1:21:27
  community now is Elijah Craig Barrel Proof ECBP.
• 1:21:30
  Like they love the acronym right?
• 1:21:32
  But the the the 8 the normal statement for Elijah Craig now
• 1:21:37
  is just Elijah Craig small Batch I think they call it.
• 1:21:40
  But as of 12/10 to 12 years ago, they're like flagship offering
• 1:21:46
  was a 12 year old bourbon at. 45%.
• 1:21:52
  Higher. Proof and it.
• 1:21:54
  Was like at the time, and I know inflation, but at the time it
• 1:21:57
  was like 2425 USA bottle, yeah, and that was like that's a
• 1:22:02
  bargain, you know when you're. When?
• 1:22:04
  You're 1819 turning into someone who's like chasing flavor,
• 1:22:09
  right? And all of a sudden you've got
• 1:22:11
  like a an actual 12 year old age statement at a higher proof and
• 1:22:16
  yeah, bourbon sweet. It's my palate is now very, very
• 1:22:19
  Scotch driven. Yeah.
• 1:22:21
  But at the time, that was something that really made me
• 1:22:24
  click a little bit where I was like, oh man, this is a world
• 1:22:27
  that I need to. Access more of.
• 1:22:30
  Right. Especially coming coming into it
• 1:22:33
  through beer. Not that they were very far
• 1:22:35
  apart, they were kind of doing this right, but that was a big
• 1:22:38
  one from a. Whiskey from a Scotch.
• 1:22:41
  Whiskey Perspective. I thought about giving a nod to
• 1:22:45
  Aaron 10, and I know Ross just just waxed on about about Aaron,
• 1:22:49
  but I'm not going to because Greg's breathing a sigh of
• 1:22:53
  relief. Yeah, I'm not going to.
• 1:22:55
  I'm going to. Say Clenleash 14.
• 1:22:58
  Yeah, I'm. Going to say OB.
• 1:23:00
  Clenleash Yeah, yeah. And I have a dusty story about
• 1:23:03
  that. So I have a buddy he probably
• 1:23:09
  won't listen to that actually might when I tell him that I was
• 1:23:11
  on here. Again, I'll be brief.
• 1:23:15
  Basically, he lives kind of in the suburbs of Boston.
• 1:23:18
  There's this funny little mini Mart, as we would call it, their
• 1:23:21
  convenience store. I don't know, what would you
• 1:23:22
  call here? Shop, right, where you have like
• 1:23:26
  whatever 12 facings, right? And one of them was unleashed
• 1:23:30
  14. And it was just like they had no
• 1:23:32
  idea, but they had bought it very clearly eight years prior,
• 1:23:36
  right? So it was on the shelf for 41 US
• 1:23:41
  after tax after that. So what's that?
• 1:23:43
  # wise for one, 4 lbs. Or finally 14 finally. 14 in
• 1:23:49
  the. US like exported so it's come in
• 1:23:51
  so these. I was wondering how do these
• 1:23:53
  guys, like, you hear them talking about old dusties and
• 1:23:56
  stuff like this, right? How does somebody buy?
• 1:23:58
  Yeah, I mean, what have they done?
• 1:24:00
  Have. They.
• 1:24:00
  Just somebody, they just gone. I've seen it on offer from an
• 1:24:05
  import or a distributor. No, I mean part of the part of
• 1:24:07
  it is like. I mentioned this like, well,
• 1:24:10
  they don't want to get too, too direct about it, but like Diageo
• 1:24:14
  has that buying power where they control all of the tiers so they
• 1:24:19
  can. My understanding.
• 1:24:22
  Is they can make it cost effective to price it
• 1:24:25
  aggressively in the states. We'll put it that way, right?
• 1:24:29
  And power to them Like they're a successful company.
• 1:24:31
  Well done. Look, Diageo gets a lot of grief
• 1:24:33
  from small companies. I disagree.
• 1:24:35
  Like, they're successful. They sell us whiskey still good
• 1:24:39
  on them. Yeah, I love it.
• 1:24:40
  Right? But yeah, they can afford to do
• 1:24:42
  it. So they can just so be it.
• 1:24:44
  Yeah. But yeah, I mean and.
• 1:24:46
  Then added on to that, you have the situation where somebody's
• 1:24:49
  bought it eight years ago. It's maybe not shifted
• 1:24:52
  particularly quickly. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:54
  It's got a dust. Dust, as we say.
• 1:24:57
  And then. Yeah.
• 1:24:58
  And you know, you see when you saw it, did you?
• 1:25:00
  Know it cleared the shelf but did so.
• 1:25:02
  You went. In and you saw Klein leash on
• 1:25:03
  the shelf and it wasn't even me. I had talked about Klein leash
• 1:25:07
  to to said friends who moved in this town and he was like this
• 1:25:11
  is a good price and I was like buy them all Yeah, because I
• 1:25:13
  mean we. Bought like 9 bottles.
• 1:25:15
  Of Klein leash. What, what, what?
• 1:25:16
  Would you? What would you pay for Klein
• 1:25:17
  Leash 14 today if you were to walk into God, a retailer 4550?
• 1:25:22
  Pounds. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:25:23
  Yeah, yeah. How?
• 1:25:24
  Was that you get it? For less than 50, yeah, five
• 1:25:26
  years. Ago so not that long not.
• 1:25:27
  That long ago. But I also prior to that.
• 1:25:31
  It's just one of those drams, 46% official bottling waxy.
• 1:25:35
  I mean, it's just, it's funny how you get that.
• 1:25:37
  Disparaging like in a plate like you would struggle to see that
• 1:25:41
  in Scotland like you struggle to walk in a shop in Scotland and
• 1:25:44
  go they're selling that for a lot less than they should yeah
• 1:25:48
  I'm going to it would happen in a pub we talked about tonight
• 1:25:51
  yeah but it'd be pretty rare on. The shop, Yeah, in a pub you
• 1:25:54
  could probably. Go how much is that?
• 1:25:55
  And they'll say is this and go how?
• 1:25:57
  How much am I getting? 2535 mils Right?
• 1:26:01
  People probably think that with diggers.
• 1:26:02
  Yeah, of course. God, the guy who run this place
• 1:26:04
  doesn't know what he's doing. You know, keep it, keep it.
• 1:26:07
  Down. Don't mention how.
• 1:26:08
  How good the prices are. But Kev knows exactly what he's
• 1:26:10
  doing, I should say. But like I say, anyway, drum #3,
• 1:26:12
  drum #3 I'm going to stay away from.
• 1:26:14
  Scotch for fun, and it's a bit more of like a nostalgia thing.
• 1:26:18
  So that first night when I was up at the distillery, first time
• 1:26:21
  I was out of distillery with Alex, he poured me an old, old
• 1:26:28
  bottling. I'm an Adelphi Cooley.
• 1:26:31
  It was like a 20. 4 or 26 year old Irish.
• 1:26:35
  Oh, right, OK, right. Because of.
• 1:26:38
  That link that I mentioned, the old owner of Adelphi Distillery
• 1:26:42
  also owned one in Limerick. Yeah.
• 1:26:44
  So this is a. Coolly distillery.
• 1:26:46
  Again, I'm Myers, so correct. Coolly distillery.
• 1:26:49
  Bottled as Limerick Slaney something.
• 1:26:52
  I don't know Irish whiskey well at all.
• 1:26:53
  No, I just remember that being, I mean, it completely changed my
• 1:26:58
  perception of what Irish whiskey could be and more, more because
• 1:27:02
  I'm so proud to be in the role that I am and lucky and
• 1:27:05
  fortunate. It was quite a sort of a
• 1:27:08
  watershed moment for me, right? Because, you know, Alex,
• 1:27:11
  probably the Strand, we're having dinner and I was like,
• 1:27:15
  Alex, what's this? He was like, this is like an 80s
• 1:27:17
  Cooley. Wow.
• 1:27:18
  And I was like, I don't even know what that is, right?
• 1:27:20
  I had no idea what it was. Is this a close distillery as
• 1:27:23
  well, presumably? Or is this a man you?
• 1:27:26
  You can't be out. As I said, I don't, I don't
• 1:27:28
  know. Like I don't know the Irish
• 1:27:29
  history, but I think Cooley fits in with the current history of
• 1:27:32
  the the big boys somehow tealing.
• 1:27:37
  I don't know. I don't know.
• 1:27:38
  I don't look. Nice, but I think.
• 1:27:40
  That that's what yeah, like, but I just remember it as one of
• 1:27:42
  those. Things where I was all of a
• 1:27:44
  sudden like incorporated into Adelphi and these these drams
• 1:27:46
  that you see and you're like, Oh my God, like what is I mean, and
• 1:27:50
  you. Just forget like you've said
• 1:27:51
  Adelphi like 30 odd year old. Yeah.
• 1:27:53
  So like the the cast that they all had passed through and that
• 1:27:56
  they've bought now you've also mentioned like probably there's
• 1:27:59
  some things that they've bought that could for, should have held
• 1:28:01
  that for a little bit longer. Well, it was good at the time,
• 1:28:04
  too good to bottle at the time. But you look back and go, wow,
• 1:28:06
  could you imagine if we had that, if we had that cast now,
• 1:28:08
  10 years later? Yeah, but.
• 1:28:10
  That's just the way it works. But we see, like I always think
• 1:28:13
  that with independent bottlers and stuff, they must have
• 1:28:15
  cupboards. Well, we've seen the cupboard at
• 1:28:16
  Gordon Macphail, I guess. Yeah, when they're able to just
• 1:28:18
  go through, and we've got this from an old bottling we've done
• 1:28:21
  here, we've got that. So we've been able to just bear
• 1:28:22
  pool. So now what we do, because
• 1:28:24
  you're up, because you're here representing Arden Mark and
• 1:28:26
  you've been great. I'll give you one on brand and
• 1:28:28
  bonus on brand. If you go for an ardent market,
• 1:28:31
  you have to take that away with you.
• 1:28:33
  That's you, right? You and a story may be
• 1:28:35
  associated with it. I've put you on the spot a wee
• 1:28:37
  bit, yeah, but no, no, it's good.
• 1:28:41
  From a sales perspective, it's the one.
• 1:28:42
  That's going to kick off the bonus session, but I'll come up
• 1:28:46
  with a story. Yeah, no Ardent America.
• 1:28:51
  So I do a blend. We do a blend every year for a
• 1:28:55
  big a big market visit that I do in the states ardent America and
• 1:28:59
  we can't. Resist the shitty.
• 1:29:00
  Pun ardent America so. Ardent America.
• 1:29:03
  We're on Batch 3, Ardent America.
• 1:29:07
  So ardent. America Batch 3 is literally on
• 1:29:10
  the water as we speak. It's on its way to the states.
• 1:29:13
  And what's what's the make up of that?
• 1:29:14
  Then I'm going to. Hold on that.
• 1:29:17
  Right, because it's I want to tell you, I'll tell you off
• 1:29:20
  camera. Right.
• 1:29:21
  OK. But the the old ones, the job.
• 1:29:24
  Yeah, the old. 1. For example was actually the IT
• 1:29:29
  was a Sherry Madeira mixture 900 bottles only art in America, so
• 1:29:35
  we. Do like the first.
• 1:29:36
  The first one was a cast strength full Sherry maturation.
• 1:29:40
  The third one is. Different, so it's kind.
• 1:29:41
  Of like Midgie, it's different every year based on like what?
• 1:29:44
  Basically it's Connell and I finding fun shit in the
• 1:29:47
  warehouses and probably having a bottle of wine and like being
• 1:29:52
  like, does that art in America this year?
• 1:29:54
  I'm like, yeah, probably. So how many?
• 1:29:56
  Bottles. Are you talking for this year's
• 1:29:57
  art? In America it's 900 every year
• 1:29:58
  9. 100 every year, 150. K, we've got to get.
• 1:30:01
  We've got. To get a bottle.
• 1:30:01
  To Scott Moore. I want to see Scott Moorer with
• 1:30:04
  his art in America. Yeah.
• 1:30:05
  So where? Where does it retail?
• 1:30:06
  End in America, then. So the fun thing.
• 1:30:09
  Is and obviously we've got any listeners out in America.
• 1:30:12
  Yeah, hands on that we give we. Give our importer impacts is
• 1:30:17
  fantastic in the States. It's the same as Cohoman,
• 1:30:20
  Glenochy, Rasi McGee and a whole bunch of Wolf burn.
• 1:30:25
  We give them it's it's their market.
• 1:30:27
  But but the the concept is the first crack is wherever the tour
• 1:30:31
  is. So there's an Art in America
• 1:30:33
  tour Art in America. Really.
• 1:30:36
  Yeah, Yeah. So.
• 1:30:37
  It's in September this year's I've been booking hotels
• 1:30:39
  literally this week and it's those retailers or bars that
• 1:30:44
  support the tour AKA do an event or whatever visit, have a chat
• 1:30:48
  with me, whatever it is, get first crack.
• 1:30:51
  So they of the 900 bottles, they can order six, they can order
• 1:30:57
  60. It's up to whatever their how
• 1:31:00
  far is the tour then? So.
• 1:31:01
  Are you right across the states? No.
• 1:31:03
  So. It's not quite that big Kahoma
• 1:31:05
  tour that they did with that crazy vehicle.
• 1:31:08
  All right, OK, but. Basic.
• 1:31:10
  It depends on the year. So they they, they toss us
• 1:31:13
  around year to year. This year's Midwest, so it'll be
• 1:31:16
  Chicago, Minnesota, Nebraska, Missouri.
• 1:31:21
  I'll also be in Boston, but not part of the tour.
• 1:31:23
  In New York, not part of the tour, Who I'm missing.
• 1:31:27
  Yeehaw, it's a couple weeks Arden America I.
• 1:31:30
  Think next year the whiskey. Stories podcast needs to cover
• 1:31:33
  the Arden America tour. We can do that.
• 1:31:36
  It's a lot of fun, 100% it's a lot of.
• 1:31:38
  Fun. That's been great.
• 1:31:39
  Carol crafts. Wow, what a man.
• 1:31:41
  And if you want to hear more of Carol's fantastic stories here,
• 1:31:44
  I'm talking about the other three drams he's brought there.
• 1:31:46
  I mean, two of which are from Sample bottles.
• 1:31:48
  And get yourselves onto the Facebook group.
• 1:31:51
  We'll do a bit of bonus content on that one for that for
• 1:31:53
  everyone there. Carl, thank you so much for
• 1:31:56
  calling you. Thank you so much for the draft,
• 1:31:57
  for the draft it's been. Absolutely fantastic.
• 1:31:59
  I. Guess we've done it again.
• 1:32:00
  We've managed to convince someone in the whiskey industry
• 1:32:03
  to come in, in this little cell, I think Blake Whiskey with a
• 1:32:06
  chat about it or a camera. I don't know how we get on with
• 1:32:08
  that. I don't know how we've done it.
• 1:32:10
  But listen, thank you very much for everyone that's listening.
• 1:32:12
  Thank you everyone that's interacting with the podcast.
• 1:32:15
  Like I've just mentioned Facebook group kick it off.
• 1:32:18
  I don't know, as we're recording this, I don't know where we'll
• 1:32:21
  be with tickets for our indie bottler spotlight with the
• 1:32:24
  Thompson brothers. The big indie bottler spotlight,
• 1:32:26
  which you know, as as we're talking is almost sold out now.
• 1:32:30
  So God knows, we might actually have to extend ticket allocation
• 1:32:33
  for it. It's going to be a big, big old
• 1:32:35
  night on the 8th at the at the the false window down at least.
• 1:32:38
  Yeah, if yeah, if there are do manage to get your tickets,
• 1:32:41
  it'll be worth it. I've seen the line up.
• 1:32:42
  It'll be absolutely because a mystery malt in there as well.
• 1:32:45
  But look, don't forget, give us five stars.
• 1:32:47
  Pass the pod, share the pod. The more we grow, the more we
• 1:32:50
  can convince people like Carol to come down and bring drums
• 1:32:52
  with them so we can have a drink and yeah, yeah.
• 1:32:55
  Join the Facebook group. Subscribe to us on YouTube 2027
• 1:32:59
  Arden America Tour. 27 Arden America Tour, The crowdfunder
• 1:33:03
  starts. Thank you so much.
• 1:33:08
  Cheers. Cheers.
• 1:33:08
  Right I'll. What I'm going to do is for ease
• 1:33:11
  on editing, I'm going to stop that.