Latest / Whisky Stories Podcast / Hoose Drams with Mark Thomson: Glenfiddich Stories, Industry Trends & The Lost Key

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Hoose Drams with Mark Thomson: Glenfiddich Stories, Industry Trends & The Lost Key · Whisky Stories Podcast

• 0:00
  Right, right. Better Rock'n'roll.
• 0:01
  We are indeed. Yes, right, Angus, do you know
• 0:04
  what to do? Clap us in.
• 0:09
  Welcome to the Whiskey Stories podcast.
• 0:11
  That's it. Honesty.
• 0:13
  That's the job of the ambassador.
• 0:15
  Done or the? Salesperson, Yeah.
• 0:17
  Just having that one point on the bar out of everything and
• 0:20
  that then becomes the biggest seller every time that
• 0:22
  individuals are out at the end of it.
• 0:24
  I said, any questions? He said yeah, what do the
• 0:26
  numbers mean? What?
• 0:27
  Really. Good news.
• 0:33
  Landing room is open. Bad news.
• 0:35
  Don't respond. Welcome along to the Whiskey
• 0:39
  Stories podcast. Who's Dram's edition we're in.
• 0:43
  We're in Mark Thompson's kitchen.
• 0:44
  I think it's the first time we've ever just gone to a guest
• 0:47
  house. Yes.
• 0:48
  That's it. Uninvited as well.
• 0:50
  No the. Door.
• 0:51
  The door. Just turned up the door.
• 0:53
  Was left open. We're just walking past the door
• 0:55
  was left open. We just thought, oh, that place
• 0:57
  looks nice and it's for sale. So yeah, just just while we get
• 0:59
  the plugs in this is this is your gaffe.
• 1:03
  It is indeed my my WI pad. Soon to be sold off if if anyone
• 1:07
  listening is interesting. Well, it's been, it's been 10
• 1:10
  days on the market. Good bit of interest popped up
• 1:12
  on the socials that helped. All right, good.
• 1:14
  And then got featured in The Scotsman.
• 1:16
  That helped, yeah. And now you're on the whiskey.
• 1:19
  Storage part, I mean, it's, it's the natural progression.
• 1:22
  We didn't know whether to go down Homes Under the Hammer
• 1:25
  route or or MTV Cribs. If this.
• 1:27
  Doesn't hold under the hammer. I'd have been saying knock down
• 1:30
  that wall and. If I'm I'm hoping with your
• 1:34
  global reach, oh, this is the killer blow that this house
• 1:36
  needs. I think, I think this is I, this
• 1:38
  is I, this is get us over the life.
• 1:39
  Once we sort out our Commission, of course.
• 1:42
  But Mark, you're, you're, you're, you're leaving town.
• 1:44
  I am, yeah. Well, I spend a lot of time up
• 1:47
  in the hills, the dogs, so. And Michelle, she can work from
• 1:52
  remotely, so we're not going too far.
• 1:54
  We've got a place out in Perth, but yeah, acre and a half
• 1:58
  garden, nothing around it other than fields.
• 2:02
  And so it's ideal. We'll miss this.
• 2:05
  We'll miss Edinburgh is a fabulous city, but actually it's
• 2:09
  only 50 minutes door to door. Yeah, it's under an hour and
• 2:12
  we're back in. The city exactly.
• 2:14
  So it just gives. Us that balance a little bit
• 2:16
  better and it takes an hour out of my journey when I'm always
• 2:20
  heading up the A9, either go up to a distillery or go up a
• 2:23
  mountain. Well, absolutely, 'cause.
• 2:24
  It's that disconvenient Convenient.
• 2:26
  If you follow on social media or Instagram, it's like you're
• 2:29
  either whisking, you're running or your dog walk.
• 2:31
  I was gonna say dog, but dog walking?
• 2:35
  Careful, Graham. The good thing is this new
• 2:37
  place, the local pub is Glen Eagles.
• 2:40
  Oh, well, that's, that's, that's tough.
• 2:44
  That's a tough gig there. But we have drams.
• 2:46
  We've got some drams here because you, you we.
• 2:47
  I brought some drams because I wasn't sure whether you.
• 2:50
  Most of the stuff is. Packed up and things like that,
• 2:53
  but we've got some drams I've got we've brought the the
• 2:56
  Tematan virgin oak, 6 year old virgin oak.
• 2:58
  There's a few of these bottles left.
• 2:59
  This was my whiskey Gasm whiskey that we had up at the Tematan
• 3:03
  distillery. I've had it since then.
• 3:06
  It still stands up to how I felt at the time when I tried it.
• 3:08
  I just remember just that moment.
• 3:10
  It was the first drama of the day whilst we've been travelling
• 3:12
  up and something I've been actually desperate to crack
• 3:15
  open. When we did our Glenn Murray.
• 3:17
  I remember this being a very, very nice drama.
• 3:20
  Yeah, we did our Glenn Murray trip, Angus, when we were up.
• 3:22
  But was that I'm trying to write a bit of content, which is
• 3:27
  called my Wet Hot Whiskey Summer, which this summer it's
• 3:31
  been. We've had some great trips.
• 3:33
  We have. Yeah, up to Elgin was a real
• 3:36
  highlight and taken around Glen Murray.
• 3:38
  Yeah, of course like Rosebank and Glenn Lane as well what
• 3:41
  we've done. But this was that's the Glen
• 3:43
  Murray house exclusive because we were in the Glen Murray
• 3:45
  house. I thought well for doing a hoose
• 3:47
  tram and house exclusive exactly.
• 3:49
  And that's it. And then of course, as a wee
• 3:51
  gift, I've decided to brought my Lindores Abbey cast, my own cast
• 3:56
  that was bottled 5 year old first fell Ryoka cast.
• 4:02
  Yeah, 60.6%. Bit punchy but it takes water.
• 4:05
  Well and yeah please. Take get some water.
• 4:07
  Take take that up for you. But yeah, so how how long have
• 4:10
  you been here, Mark? Eight years 8.
• 4:12
  Years we've got. A little cat pouring.
• 4:14
  Oh, look at that. Oh, nice.
• 4:16
  Yeah, that's very nice. I see I saw your junk, but it's
• 4:18
  cool. And where did you been before?
• 4:19
  Had you been? London, we we came up.
• 4:24
  Both Michelle and I had lived in London separately 16 years.
• 4:29
  We met in the latter end of that and then in Walthamstow.
• 4:33
  Well, all over. When I first moved out to London
• 4:35
  I was in Brixton, which is just after the riots.
• 4:39
  Oh wow. That was fun, cheap.
• 4:43
  And then Peblico and and and met Michelle.
• 4:46
  She's highway in Islington and we moved up to Walthamstow and
• 4:49
  then we came up here. We used to come up all the time.
• 4:51
  Cheers, cheers, cheers. Try this.
• 4:53
  But did you see the strength on this one?
• 4:56
  I'm looking at that. It's 13 years of age bottle
• 4:58
  number. That's 350 bottles.
• 5:01
  Distillation date 2010. Smells about 57.6. 57.7 mark
• 5:06
  well point 1% Yeah, he's good, he's good.
• 5:15
  First analysis, it was a cracking nose on it.
• 5:19
  Yeah, tremendous. Madeira Casque finishes.
• 5:22
  Yeah. Madeira, I mean, is it a finish
• 5:24
  or like Madeira, it's not a full?
• 5:25
  Maturation. Madeira matured, actually.
• 5:27
  Full maturation. There must be real maturation in
• 5:29
  there. Yeah.
• 5:30
  Oh, it would be being Glen Murray.
• 5:31
  Yeah, Yeah. That's, that's delicious.
• 5:35
  So yeah, we'd we've been kicking, but we've been coming
• 5:40
  up to Edinburgh loads. Michelle did both her degrees
• 5:43
  here and so she would she'd quite a lot of our friends are
• 5:48
  here and they'd come up during the festival.
• 5:51
  This game in London. Yeah.
• 5:52
  And then wander around going, what are you doing in London?
• 5:55
  This is great. And I suppose you get to certain
• 5:59
  cities are great when you're a certain age.
• 6:00
  Yeah, yeah. And and I loved London when I
• 6:02
  first moved down there. And it's like 2526 because I was
• 6:08
  working in the hospitality. All my pals were in the
• 6:10
  hospitality. So you were eating and drinking
• 6:12
  in the best places, but you're not having to pay for whack.
• 6:15
  For it, yeah. And that's just the way that the
• 6:17
  hospitality industry in London works.
• 6:19
  It's a moving wheel on the outside of consumers, you know,
• 6:22
  and everybody gets to swap out. Yeah, You come in, I'll pour you
• 6:24
  a drink the next time I come in, I'll give you know, that kind of
• 6:26
  thing. But then you get to a certain
• 6:28
  point where we used to joke about it, that you couldn't step
• 6:31
  off out your front door in London.
• 6:34
  Or if you did, you might as well just throw £50 in the gutter
• 6:36
  straight away really. Because that's, it's just, we'd
• 6:39
  come back from being out and going.
• 6:41
  We'd just went out for two coffees and a bit of cake and
• 6:43
  I've bought a lunch and got £120 down.
• 6:45
  Yeah. How OK, and not all the time,
• 6:48
  but when we came up to Edinburgh quite often, not that it's
• 6:53
  bargain basement here, but we realised that all of a sudden
• 6:57
  you were getting all the arts, all the culture, all the travel,
• 7:02
  the sort of mix of community that that that draws people here
• 7:05
  and it's just like a mini London.
• 7:07
  Yeah, yeah, without. The dirt, the.
• 7:09
  Smog and the underground. So yeah, we, we we found this
• 7:14
  place. I actually came up tasting.
• 7:17
  I was hanging and I came up to view it and the guy made me a
• 7:21
  coffee. I sat there, made me a coffee.
• 7:23
  I was like this is great and I was hanging and I phoned
• 7:27
  Michelle and said I found a great house.
• 7:30
  She never viewed it. Really bought it without just
• 7:33
  trusted. Just trusted you.
• 7:34
  There you go. Well, let's just say with this
• 7:39
  house we're buying, she's been around 4 times.
• 7:41
  I didn't get 2 bites, that's for sure.
• 7:46
  And. Are we working on whiskey at
• 7:48
  that point? Yeah, right.
• 7:49
  So was that Glenn Fennick or was this when you were?
• 7:52
  I moved up here when I was with Glenn Fennick, right?
• 7:55
  We actually needed to focus on Scotland for a little bit.
• 7:58
  So it worked really well and I'd sort of said to the bosses like,
• 8:02
  I'm going to move and I'll either be employed by Glenn
• 8:05
  Fennick or not, right? Not it was an ultimatum, but it
• 8:08
  just the timing was perfect for it.
• 8:10
  And how, how hard is it then working for a brand like a
• 8:15
  Scott, a Scottish brand, a whiskey brand that's based at it
• 8:19
  often when you're down in London?
• 8:21
  Because everyone, I, I, I, I've noticed that even when we're
• 8:23
  doing the, doing the podcast and things like that is the amount
• 8:26
  of people that I mean, it makes so much more sense when you
• 8:28
  realise that actually most of these people, brand ambassador,
• 8:32
  sales executive, marketing people even like the folk that
• 8:35
  are probably not necessarily needing to be at the distillery
• 8:38
  every single day. Just live in that central belt.
• 8:40
  Because the, the commute would be absolutely ridiculous if you
• 8:43
  were to have everybody based out of the distilleries that you're,
• 8:46
  that you're working on. But does it create challenges
• 8:49
  when you're disconnected from that?
• 8:52
  I suppose it depends on the role you've got and that's the
• 8:55
  importance of a really well structured sales team.
• 8:58
  So we had a fabulous team in Scotland, a fabulous team that
• 9:00
  looked after those particular areas.
• 9:03
  And you know, whiskey is all stories, as we know, and and
• 9:09
  it's about relationships and building connections with
• 9:11
  people. And quite a lot of the guys we
• 9:14
  had salespeople that just looked after Shoreditch.
• 9:16
  That was it. Just Shoreditch, really.
• 9:18
  Yeah. And then just so because there
• 9:20
  was so much business to be done there and it was just a
• 9:23
  constant. You've got to go and go and be
• 9:25
  seen because as soon as you walk out the door, a wreck from
• 9:28
  another one's end. And then if you've got an
• 9:31
  ambassador to then embellish that offering, you know, take
• 9:34
  these animals, come in and do a taste and do a dinner and it
• 9:37
  just, it's a constant grind. Then you've got the, the, the
• 9:43
  brand home, the distillery. And that was always used.
• 9:47
  Certainly when I was with Confedic, it was used as the,
• 9:50
  the sort of Holy Grail, the beacon.
• 9:53
  And it was quite a good sales tool because you could say to
• 9:55
  people, right, look, do this promotion for a month with us
• 9:59
  and the top three selling whiskey's off your bar, the
• 10:02
  three people that sell the most of it will take them up to duck.
• 10:04
  Yeah, great accommodation. And actually you'll find quite a
• 10:07
  lot of distilleries now we'll have that on trade hospitality
• 10:11
  offering for industry to to further sales.
• 10:15
  It's it's it's one thing that we've been very lucky.
• 10:17
  Yeah. But I mean, it's not, it's not.
• 10:19
  I mean, even beyond that, you've got things like Glenmorangie
• 10:22
  House. Glenmorangie House.
• 10:23
  Yeah, well, we, well, they've actually, you know, got yeah,
• 10:26
  but but we've had it like we, we actually like we, we when we
• 10:29
  first started speaking to people and we were actually having a
• 10:31
  conversation with Jane Ross and Shannon Bucket and they were
• 10:34
  talking about like getting sent to ILA, like our beg saying
• 10:38
  we'll bring you guys to ILA because you're we want you.
• 10:42
  And what we. I think we spoke to you about
• 10:43
  it, Mark. We've spoken to other people
• 10:44
  about it, how we like brands will really a good whiskey brand
• 10:49
  will really look after the people that sell the broad you.
• 10:51
  Can't be everywhere. Yeah.
• 10:52
  So as soon as you get and you see the light bulb moment in a
• 10:56
  lot of people. When I used to take, I used to
• 10:58
  love taking groups up to Glenfinnick.
• 11:00
  It was a real riot. Probably broke a few things and.
• 11:06
  I thought it was a riot. Yeah.
• 11:07
  These are the stories we've been hearing about buses of, yeah,
• 11:10
  Edinburgh pub, you know, workers and mini buses.
• 11:12
  We. Lost the keys for the blending
• 11:14
  room one day. So it was actually a load of
• 11:18
  bartenders from from Edinburgh, Big Red Teapot, Colin Church,
• 11:23
  It's Voyager Bark and Blackbird. And yeah, OK, she had about 9 of
• 11:27
  their best up and we had a real hoot.
• 11:30
  We were along at the Downs for dinner, I think, or we were
• 11:33
  somewhere off site and we were driving back on the bus and we
• 11:36
  were going over the bridge at Craigalifie next to the Telford
• 11:39
  Bridge, and it was high summer, so the sun's not quite set.
• 11:43
  It was a kind of bright night and the river's really low and I
• 11:46
  said, anyone fancy a swim? So we stopped the bus and we
• 11:50
  took everybody down to the river.
• 11:53
  Sensibly, I went out to the outside.
• 11:55
  There's a fast current on the outside, but there's a bit
• 11:57
  that's kind of sloped. And I said you don't go any
• 11:59
  further than this, I'm going to stand here and nobody comes past
• 12:01
  me. So it was all done, but
• 12:02
  everybody doubted their undies entered the space.
• 12:05
  Midnight, couple of drums on the beach and in the morning I got
• 12:09
  up first because that's part of it.
• 12:11
  Didn't matter if you're last to bed, you're first up.
• 12:13
  Got myself ready, went down to visitor centre and the head
• 12:16
  guides like key from the blending room and I'm like no, I
• 12:19
  put it back on the hook. No, no, we came in first thing
• 12:21
  this morning. We've got tours going in and the
• 12:23
  doors locked so you must have locked it but you have the key
• 12:26
  and I was like no, could be on the beach.
• 12:30
  I was like but you've got another one.
• 12:36
  No, no, we lost it last week. That's good.
• 12:40
  I said wow. So I went upstairs, big fire
• 12:44
  doors, but I could see there was just like a deadbolt lock and
• 12:48
  there was a bit of gift. So I thought I'll put my
• 12:50
  shoulder at this and do them a favour.
• 12:52
  And I put the door in and pronounced to me there were dead
• 12:54
  bolts in the doors and they burst.
• 12:57
  Through the veneer, so. So I went back down to visitor
• 12:59
  centre and was like good news blending rooms open, bad news
• 13:04
  doors. Fuck.
• 13:07
  But I mean, you're like you, you talk about the brand ambassador
• 13:10
  and the last time we were on that, you were on the podcast,
• 13:12
  we spoke about like the role of being a brand ambassador, things
• 13:15
  like that. But that is the, the side you're
• 13:18
  mentioning. Like haven't you've got to be
• 13:21
  entertaining people having Glenfiddich there as as you
• 13:24
  mentioned the Beacon, I think that would be a huge sales tool,
• 13:26
  but was a challenge being able, because you look at Edinburgh
• 13:30
  now and you know, when you were working at Glenfiddich, you
• 13:32
  know, 8-9 years ago as well, when you were coming up to
• 13:35
  Edinburgh, Edinburgh didn't happen.
• 13:37
  That even just in the radius of Edinburgh, there weren't the
• 13:39
  distilleries. Now that you could do it, is
• 13:41
  that a bigger advantage for these distilleries in Fife and
• 13:45
  and around the Edinburgh area where you can say you don't even
• 13:48
  need to pass yeah, the bypass anymore to get to get into
• 13:51
  distilleries? I think it is.
• 13:52
  I think most people, if you look at your average whiskey tourist,
• 13:56
  in fact they're not even whiskey tourist.
• 13:58
  Your average tourist that comes to Scotland, they're going to
• 14:01
  look for two or three things. They want to see a castle Nesse
• 14:05
  Highland cow, eat haggis, listen to bagpipes.
• 14:07
  Yeah. Now you can do most of that.
• 14:09
  Or play golf. Yeah, you can do most of that
• 14:11
  from from Edinburgh. Yeah.
• 14:13
  And whiskey just gets ticked off, so it doesn't really
• 14:16
  matter. Actually, a dog Walker friend of
• 14:20
  mine was talking about it. His father was coming over from
• 14:22
  Germany and he said there's two distilleries now in Edinburgh.
• 14:25
  I said yeah, Which ones would you recommend?
• 14:27
  There's Holy Rood and there's Port a Leith.
• 14:29
  And I said they're both excellent.
• 14:30
  Yeah, but they're both slightly different and it depends on what
• 14:32
  you want. Holy Rood feels like a more
• 14:35
  traditional distillery. And it's look that actually the
• 14:39
  way they're distilling is really geeky and really cool.
• 14:42
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you understand enough and
• 14:45
  want to really deep dive into that, that's cool.
• 14:48
  But if you just want to experience the modern face of
• 14:50
  distilling now, go to Port a Leith.
• 14:52
  It's a vertical distillery. It's all shiny.
• 14:54
  It's all new. It's like nothing.
• 14:55
  You'll you might see things in the future like it, but there's
• 14:58
  nothing out there before it. The tour's great.
• 15:00
  The views are great. The bar upstairs is brilliant.
• 15:03
  So if you're just a tourist that wants to tag whiskey on Port
• 15:07
  Elise, Yeah, Yeah. If you're a whiskey tourist, you
• 15:10
  do them both. But I'd say holy rood, yeah.
• 15:13
  And I think the distilleries are aware of that.
• 15:16
  They've set themselves up to appeal to those types of people.
• 15:21
  That whole setup of Port Elise with the bar upstairs, Yeah,
• 15:23
  that's just what it's just worst point at the bar anyway.
• 15:26
  And. Well, for the views.
• 15:27
  Right. The view and the drinks are
• 15:29
  great, the selection's brilliant.
• 15:31
  So I think it helps because, yeah, when I, you know, if you
• 15:34
  just go back eight years, the only thing you had was Glenn
• 15:37
  Kinchy and then Johnny Walker. Yeah.
• 15:39
  When you look at what that's that's.
• 15:41
  I was there last night, Yeah, that's the fourth time I've
• 15:43
  been. Even like the drums.
• 15:45
  I make just known for the camera.
• 15:47
  I didn't pay. I didn't pay more.
• 15:49
  Money. I'm kidding even.
• 15:52
  Even the drums on the menu, though, because you go into the
• 15:54
  roof. I mean look, you could buy a
• 15:57
  very, very expensive drama. I I can't remember that we were
• 16:00
  having a flip through and I think it was like £515 for a jam
• 16:03
  up there on the rooftop. But you can also have a client
• 16:04
  leash 14 for about 7 seven question 50 or something.
• 16:09
  Yeah you're not going to get a bad pint of Guinness up there
• 16:11
  either. Yeah exactly.
• 16:12
  You know, because it's the agile and you're getting a great but
• 16:13
  also the tour. We've done the tour, I guess.
• 16:15
  Yeah. And it's absolutely fantastic.
• 16:18
  Yeah. And I think.
• 16:19
  And again, what they've done very cleverly and I criticised
• 16:22
  it and Michelle was like the fuck up.
• 16:24
  That's just you. It's a conveyor belt, Yeah.
• 16:28
  And it's timed to perfection and it's theatre.
• 16:31
  Yeah. What it doesn't allow is for you
• 16:34
  to question anything. This because you.
• 16:37
  They can't stop and answer your question.
• 16:38
  It's on we go. That's right.
• 16:40
  And I had a few questions. Michelle just get digging and go
• 16:42
  just. Shut.
• 16:44
  Up. Just walk around, switch off.
• 16:47
  But again, you know, 90, I was listening to the people that
• 16:51
  were on the tour with us and they were blown away by it.
• 16:54
  Yeah. You know, really enthusiastic.
• 16:56
  And you think there is now a load of people heading out back
• 17:00
  home, wherever that might be, with a positive aspect on
• 17:03
  Edinburgh. Yeah, Scotland.
• 17:05
  Yeah. Whiskey, the whole.
• 17:06
  Lot and cocktails like the big big thing they push was the but
• 17:09
  yeah, well this is it. There'd be people that maybe we
• 17:11
  didn't think put whiskey in a cocktail and it tastes great or
• 17:14
  even to people. I don't like whiskey, though.
• 17:16
  Like, why are we going? I don't like whiskey, but it's
• 17:18
  like, well, you don't have to have it like that.
• 17:19
  You just have it in some of the cocktails you taste.
• 17:21
  You wouldn't know that there was whiskey, but it tastes better.
• 17:23
  But I like the theatre bit with the with the conveyor bit.
• 17:27
  Tamilator. Yeah.
• 17:28
  Brilliant. Isn't it I really, really well
• 17:29
  put together and stuff like that?
• 17:30
  It was it's a it's a, it's a great thing for for whiskey.
• 17:34
  But did you have do you see distilleries, legacy
• 17:39
  distilleries upper space side now playing catch up like you
• 17:43
  were working for Glenn Finnick, right I.
• 17:45
  Think it's the other way round. Yeah, No, it's not.
• 17:47
  Well, I know you're where you're going with that.
• 17:50
  But if we're purely talking about tourism, I reckon there
• 17:53
  are still going to be tourists that would maybe come to
• 17:55
  Scotland, not necessarily Edinburgh would come to Scotland
• 17:57
  and say I want to go to the oldest distillery in Scotland or
• 18:00
  I want to go to the new scenic. I want one.
• 18:02
  And that's what the. Purple Heather behind it, and
• 18:04
  you know just what? When I took, when I took
• 18:06
  bartenders or guests to go in Fiddick or Baldani, because I
• 18:10
  used to do the tours on both of them, I wanted to come away with
• 18:14
  a real sense of place. You know, we've done stuff like
• 18:17
  we've had dinner Midsummer, actually, we'd all had dinner.
• 18:21
  It was a huge group, might have been 1887 collected We used to
• 18:24
  do. And I, we had one drum left and
• 18:27
  it was a beautifully still evening.
• 18:29
  And I'm like, right, everybody up we're going to sit and we
• 18:30
  went up to warehouse 12 and there's a lovely bit of grass
• 18:33
  there and we sat and just such a still night, everyone with a
• 18:38
  drum. And I said, no, you're, you're
• 18:40
  as close as you can get to the warehouses and you can smell it
• 18:43
  all now, smell your whiskey. And, you know, rather than it
• 18:45
  being in that room, that was all.
• 18:47
  So that's a difficult thing for new distilleries to do.
• 18:51
  Yeah, you can. You can add the cobwebs or the
• 18:54
  stories. You know, there's.
• 18:56
  And with something like Glenfiddich or Balbeny or Glenn
• 18:59
  Livet or McAllen, every square meter you walk around, there's a
• 19:04
  story to tell about it. There might be a dent or
• 19:06
  something. Not not a dent in the still, but
• 19:08
  a funny story about, you know. A broken golf frame because
• 19:12
  Brandon Bastard lost the key for the.
• 19:16
  It's actually the way they repaired it was, you know, the
• 19:18
  kicker plates you have on the bottom, They put ones on the top
• 19:20
  as well. But I know why that's got a
• 19:24
  plate on, too. Yeah.
• 19:25
  And you saw that whole story. And if you and if you go to the
• 19:27
  beach at the. You might find.
• 19:28
  The baby with a metal detector and you find the key, you know
• 19:32
  where it might be. So I think, I think that's the
• 19:36
  that's the advantage that legacy and heritage brands have is
• 19:40
  that, you know, you walk around, you meet the people who are
• 19:43
  making the whiskey and they tell you their story about how they
• 19:46
  and you guys have done that. Now is you meet the PED Brewer,
• 19:48
  you meet the stillman, the warehouse man, the coppersmith,
• 19:51
  the Cooper, and all of them have got a wee story, a lot of funny
• 19:54
  story. One of the ones I remember from
• 19:57
  the cooling pond at Balveny is stunning.
• 20:00
  And it always has a sort of. The cooling pond's always
• 20:03
  slightly warmer, so it always had a mist on it.
• 20:06
  There was the big one at Confedic had a funny story about
• 20:08
  it as well. And one of the malt trucks was
• 20:10
  coming in one day and they reversed and unfortunately
• 20:15
  clipped a duck. So the stillman goes out and he
• 20:20
  and they thought would do this. So they actually plucked it and
• 20:24
  they roasted it in the kiln. Now I reckon Balveni are missing
• 20:31
  a real trick here by not doing a special release called the Week
• 20:34
  of week that was like that was the 1980s that happened.
• 20:42
  There was a there was a group of boys came back and when I'd go
• 20:44
  past the cooling pond, you'd look at it at Glenfiddich and
• 20:47
  I'd see all the water in here last.
• 20:49
  It's it's fully recycled out of this Olympic sized swimming
• 20:53
  pool. Every four hours really.
• 20:56
  Like, yeah, every four hours all in fact.
• 20:58
  Now that's just part of the cooling process for that, the
• 21:01
  expansion, and it looks nice. It's maybe a metre deep, but
• 21:06
  it's about a metre deep of silt. It just sits because it's never
• 21:10
  disturbed. Yeah.
• 21:12
  And there was a stag do. It used to be free tours and it
• 21:16
  was a stag do. And the boys parked.
• 21:17
  They did their tour, had a few drums, went up to their car and
• 21:20
  designated driver, and then they decided they were going to go
• 21:23
  for a swim. So they all stripped and ran
• 21:25
  back through the car park, hopped the wall and went into
• 21:28
  the cooling pond because they went their feet first and then
• 21:32
  realised they were in a metre of silt which stuck them and they
• 21:35
  just all looked like 5 Anthony Gormley statues all like naked.
• 21:41
  The water stopped there and because it was free tour it was
• 21:45
  like coach loads of people. All the time.
• 21:48
  Terrorists. So you know you can do that
• 21:51
  those stories the newer distilleries need to build and
• 21:54
  it's and it's when you're walking past you tell somebody a
• 21:57
  story like that. The next time they see a cooling
• 21:59
  pond, they remember the Anthony Gormley stag do it and that's I
• 22:06
  think that from my job when I was an ambassador that is key is
• 22:11
  to give people a quirky little something back.
• 22:14
  It's. Who do we have on the on the
• 22:20
  pod? And they were talking about from
• 22:22
  a a Craig Johnson and he was talking about how when he was a
• 22:27
  barman at the SMWS and he said like, send the person back with
• 22:32
  a bit more information or a story so that they can go back
• 22:36
  to the group and then pass that on.
• 22:38
  Because I, I mean that I remember, I think it might be
• 22:42
  Highland Park and Jura stick out for me a lot because it was like
• 22:47
  my grandfather drank grouse and it was like, but in there.
• 22:51
  And there would be occasionally a few other bottles in there.
• 22:53
  But it was Highland Park or juror.
• 22:55
  Because sometimes him and my Gran would, when they were
• 22:58
  retired, would jump in the car and just bugger off for four or
• 23:01
  five days, stay in some B and BS around the place.
• 23:04
  And they would drive and drive and drive.
• 23:06
  And that's what it was. He'd gone up to Orkney, visited
• 23:09
  the Highland Park distillery, got the lesson, got the thing
• 23:12
  going. I'm going to buy a Highland Park
• 23:14
  12. And any time he poured a drum,
• 23:16
  he would tell you, you know something about this and he'd
• 23:18
  tell you something about Island Park.
• 23:20
  And it was the same Ajura. They'd come back, come back.
• 23:22
  And that that was what it was. That was a three drama.
• 23:24
  And. Then they they'd become
• 23:25
  advocates. That's ambassadors themselves.
• 23:27
  And that that that then builds that storytelling globally.
• 23:30
  And then people, people then have a warm and fuzzy feeling
• 23:33
  about that brand Eagle. They've never been there.
• 23:35
  Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, I took a bottle to Australia
• 23:39
  for my grandfather's second cousin in Brisbane who visited
• 23:46
  Australia like 3 times in our life but felt this.
• 23:49
  Is this this thing where you had to meet your distant relative in
• 23:52
  Australia? Yeah, it's amazing.
• 23:53
  I've never met, never met these people before and you know, met.
• 23:57
  We had got a number from somebody when you arrived in
• 24:00
  Brisbane, let them know they'll come and pick you up.
• 24:02
  Came pick me up and went around and it was like it was the
• 24:05
  weirdest time because there was a slight resemblance to
• 24:07
  everybody. Like I'm always I was sitting
• 24:11
  there. Mistaken look at like which
• 24:12
  family line? Yeah, you, you look just like my
• 24:14
  auntie. And that's good because
• 24:17
  otherwise you end up in the kind of the Griswold family vacation
• 24:20
  where they meet these, they go, they go to Germany and they
• 24:23
  leave, they go. Who were they?
• 24:24
  I've no idea. But my granddad said take this,
• 24:28
  it's a bottle of dura for. And she visited Scotland like 3
• 24:32
  times in her life and she was like 95.
• 24:35
  And she was just the proudest woman.
• 24:37
  Yeah. You've ever met.
• 24:38
  Yeah, house was covered in Thistle, the thistles etched,
• 24:43
  not etched, but like carved into the house around them.
• 24:46
  They were so proud of their heritage.
• 24:48
  And it was like my grandfather's father's.
• 24:52
  Wait a minute, my grandfather's father's brother who'd emigrated
• 24:55
  in like the early 90s? You say emigrated, you mean he
• 24:58
  was a criminal? He was a criminal stole
• 25:01
  handkerchief I. Think immigration's choice?
• 25:05
  Yes, deportation. But she just they pulled it.
• 25:11
  They pulled the albums of all our family.
• 25:13
  I'm saying like this. But but the drama was Dura.
• 25:15
  And it was because the last time she'd come to Scotland, God
• 25:18
  knows when it was she was given. My grandfather said you got to
• 25:20
  ask Dura like it's it's the best.
• 25:23
  And he said to me before life, take this time Pauline.
• 25:25
  And it tasted for Pauline. And she was just over the moon.
• 25:28
  She had one drama of it. And we're all sitting there for
• 25:30
  18 people around the table, right.
• 25:31
  So she said, I'm going to have a whiskey and hello to our
• 25:35
  Australian. And they were all going like,
• 25:38
  Gran, like, you can't have a whiskey.
• 25:40
  You're 95 years old. There's a dogfight going on
• 25:43
  there. And basically we're sitting
• 25:48
  there having this DRAM and we're having this meal, and everyone's
• 25:50
  chatting away. She's sitting ahead of the
• 25:51
  table. You just heard this, like,
• 25:53
  clatter. We looked face down.
• 25:56
  Yeah, sound asleep One drama. Thank thank God it was sleep.
• 26:01
  There was a moment of slight Barrett where it was like, but
• 26:04
  you can see the suit one once the pulse had been checked, but
• 26:09
  it was great and I think people hold on that.
• 26:10
  So as as a brand ambassador, do you see like is the role
• 26:15
  changing? Has it changed a little bit or
• 26:18
  because you mentioned that this is the bit I really like getting
• 26:22
  my head round it coming into the industry and things it's going.
• 26:25
  There's brand ambassadors and then there's a sales team that
• 26:27
  follow it. Are we starting to see now that
• 26:31
  the industry is looking for brand ambassador slash sales?
• 26:34
  Is it or is it becoming more numbers driven, sales driven?
• 26:38
  When whiskey's having a tough time just now, it's a calm
• 26:41
  couple of years and it needed it.
• 26:43
  It's. Cyclical corrects itself, yeah.
• 26:47
  Usually every 10 years you'll get a dip and A and a through
• 26:51
  and a peak. We're in a, we've been in a
• 26:54
  troll for a couple of years and it's COVID was a little bit to
• 26:57
  blame. In my opinion. 2022 comes along,
• 27:01
  Everybody's got a bit of spare cash.
• 27:04
  The and brands, certain brands released a lot of big heavy
• 27:08
  hitting whiskeys and put price tags on them that were, let's
• 27:12
  say, inflated. And it's if you look actually
• 27:16
  now it's it's it's flattening off those if you look three
• 27:20
  years ago, those brands are bringing those bigger bottles
• 27:23
  out. The prices aren't indexing the
• 27:25
  way they should based on that figure.
• 27:27
  They're actually just flatlining because they've realized that
• 27:29
  they're going to Angus enough please.
• 27:33
  Thank you. For the listeners, one of Mark's
• 27:37
  dogs is called Angus. Yeah.
• 27:43
  I like the Cam way you do it. I make that Angus.
• 27:45
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 27:46
  Just a firm telling off. There you go.
• 27:48
  Yeah. So I think where the industry is
• 27:53
  when it's in its payday, when the sun is shining and
• 27:56
  everybody's pay packets are fat and it's all easy, advocacy is
• 28:04
  at the forefront of that because it's not tangible.
• 28:08
  People don't say, you don't say it's someone rate the value of
• 28:13
  that experience that going for it.
• 28:14
  How much is that worth to this brand that we've just taken it
• 28:17
  up here? There's monetary value you could
• 28:19
  put against it based on travel and flights and hotel, but your
• 28:24
  return on investment in advocacy is is not measurable.
• 28:27
  Yeah. So when somebody in an office
• 28:29
  has a spreadsheet in front of them and it's how much is he
• 28:31
  bringing in, how much is he? Bringing when and when the
• 28:34
  businesses are all doing well and things are doing great, that
• 28:36
  figure isn't that that individual and that team are not
• 28:39
  scrutinized as much. Yeah, we get we got away with
• 28:41
  murder. Yeah.
• 28:43
  I mean, I did a music festival for three years, just went
• 28:45
  camping when we went out. Now everything's a little bit
• 28:51
  tighter. Sales have to be made.
• 28:53
  And what I'm seeing is more ambassador hybrid sales rules.
• 28:59
  Yeah, yeah, Yeah. We need you to because the one
• 29:01
  some of these smaller brands as well can't afford the head
• 29:04
  count. Is that I mean, because it is
• 29:07
  when I put a hat on from other work I've done in other
• 29:11
  industries, like you say, trying to convince somebody that we
• 29:17
  can't put a return of investment on.
• 29:20
  Fly, fly this group of guys up, take them on a bus feeding them
• 29:23
  full of trams, take them around. Now when you actually break it
• 29:26
  down, though, the cost to the the cost to the the company
• 29:32
  isn't actually that much because the distillery is there.
• 29:34
  You're not building a new distillery for them to go check
• 29:37
  the whiskey is there. OK, OK, Angus is getting chucked
• 29:43
  out now. You're winding them up as well.
• 29:51
  But they, they like you say the, the, the cost isn't there.
• 29:53
  The distillery doesn't need to be rebuilt.
• 29:55
  Even the whiskey. Like the fascinating thing that
• 29:57
  I see when we do this is the fact that people like Rose
• 30:00
  Rosebank, right? We were at Rosebank Gordon and
• 30:03
  asked us, we've been taken around Gordon with that sitting
• 30:05
  there and and or a 50 LB tour, you get a 15% discount if you
• 30:10
  quote WSP when you're checking out.
• 30:12
  But for a 50 LB tour, you know, Rosebank 32 on that.
• 30:15
  And it's like the generosity, like you, you see that bottle
• 30:19
  and you see it's an expensive bottle here to go and buy online
• 30:21
  or what have you. If you go to Scotch Balmoral and
• 30:24
  have a drama that Ross will sell yet, but it's like you said,
• 30:26
  it's £140.00 for a drama, a 25 mil drama, yeah, £50 plus A2 and
• 30:30
  a Glen going 15 and you get 15% off.
• 30:33
  But like, it doesn't cost to distillery that much money to
• 30:38
  open those bottles. Have those bottles.
• 30:39
  Obviously scarcity will. It depends.
• 30:41
  On who it is, because, and this is a really interesting point
• 30:44
  some companies now are looking at, so if you've been around for
• 30:48
  150 years, 180 years, yeah, that cast that sat in there has a
• 30:52
  value, but also it was, it's in in the grand scheme of things,
• 30:56
  it's sample stock and it might be a 2000 LB bottle, but the
• 31:00
  liquid that you're pouring to that person's written down is
• 31:02
  £15. Yeah, because that's the duty.
• 31:05
  Yeah. And the value, that's it, which
• 31:07
  is the liquid's done. If you're a new distillery, it's
• 31:10
  not quite the same. And I know a couple of
• 31:13
  situations where the businesses are looking at liquid stock in
• 31:21
  terms of replacement costs. So if we pour that, if we pour
• 31:25
  that now how much will it cost us to replace that?
• 31:28
  And it's not free sample stock. It's all of a sudden it's now a
• 31:31
  75 LB bottle of sample stock. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 31:33
  And that's a slight change in the way.
• 31:36
  Because yeah, the way you're looking at essentially have
• 31:38
  given that away for free, that means somebody's not buying it.
• 31:42
  And if someone was going to buy it, that's what we would be
• 31:44
  getting for. That that's a new way, I think,
• 31:46
  but not a new way. It's business, but it's
• 31:49
  certainly in the whiskey industry and it's because we're
• 31:51
  in a, we're in a tight time. People are just watching it.
• 31:54
  And those advocacy teams, they're all getting their
• 31:57
  budgets cut, their T&E, their travel.
• 31:58
  They're not, you know, you don't see as many people with an
• 32:02
  expense account. Throwing it around, yeah.
• 32:05
  Which is. And it's also, I mean, you know,
• 32:07
  smaller distilleries as well. If you I can imagine it as well,
• 32:10
  if you do a release that's one of 500 bottles, it's like wait
• 32:13
  for pouring ten of these for nothing.
• 32:16
  That's cutting our margins down on this release.
• 32:18
  Are we going to make our money back, even?
• 32:20
  Press, you know like you'll see press.
• 32:22
  I remember been having in fact How I Met Michelle been having
• 32:27
  40 year old did the first release and we were given a 200
• 32:31
  mil bottle in a pack, not a sample like a finished labeled
• 32:35
  up 200 mil bottle like the dumpies you get in the shop.
• 32:38
  Yeah, that was the press pack on the the 1st 40 they ever did.
• 32:43
  Really. So and.
• 32:44
  I'm like, that's, that's what we're looking at now. 3 grand,
• 32:50
  three and a half, 1000 lbs. There's 1000 lbs.
• 32:52
  Yeah, yeah. Press pack.
• 32:53
  Yeah, yeah. £1000 worth of liquid.
• 32:55
  Sitting there, just just. Given, Yeah.
• 32:57
  And we were one of many people I knew that got one.
• 32:59
  Yeah. Wish I'd kept it a lot more than
• 33:04
  1000 now but. The flip side of that animal,
• 33:06
  you know, I've done a lot of, you know, research into it and
• 33:09
  you're looking at it. And people are saying now that
• 33:12
  people aren't going to drinking as much.
• 33:14
  People are holding on to their camera.
• 33:15
  It's a tough time economically. Yeah.
• 33:17
  But I mean, there's another trend there in that people are
• 33:19
  drinking less in terms of volume, but more and better, but
• 33:23
  the better. And The thing is that people are
• 33:25
  looking at as experience and they're saying that the
• 33:27
  exponential marketing now is becoming a bigger thing.
• 33:31
  They want more for their money. Yeah, they want to know.
• 33:33
  And and again, coming back to the COVID thing, I think that
• 33:35
  was vital to it's, it's the education piece globally about
• 33:41
  Scotch varies dramatically if you go to where was I, Lagos?
• 33:49
  Yeah. You know, it's like almost the
• 33:51
  third biggest market for glyphetic in the world. 11 City.
• 33:55
  Lagos. Lagos in Nigeria, bonkers.
• 33:59
  And I did. We have actually got one
• 34:01
  listener. We haven't, we've had, we've had
• 34:03
  one or two downloads in Nigeria. So hello, it's no doubt going
• 34:06
  for the drinkers. Yeah, it was.
• 34:07
  Well yeah, they do it by the bottle. 21 year old and I was
• 34:10
  doing it, not kidding. Yeah, it's all bling, it's all
• 34:13
  the top end, all high money. Yeah.
• 34:15
  And I was doing a training with some bartenders.
• 34:17
  Young Lad was great, loads of good questions.
• 34:20
  And I said so we're doing the 21 here.
• 34:24
  But I said do you sell much of this?
• 34:26
  I could see a kind of physical look in the space, he says.
• 34:28
  I think we sold 9 bottles last night, 9 bottles of 20.
• 34:31
  One SO in a bar. In a bar so they they give the
• 34:34
  mixers for free. Yeah, I.
• 34:36
  It's just, and it's like, it's like having a Belvedere with
• 34:39
  sparkles. In the top yeah, in.
• 34:40
  Mayfair, but in Lagos. Well, there's quite a chaos,
• 34:42
  yeah. Sitting on the bus.
• 34:43
  Sitting. Have it on your tail.
• 34:46
  And if you don't finish it, you can take it home.
• 34:47
  Ah. There you go.
• 34:48
  So it's a completely, because we went down to the beach bar and
• 34:51
  had a Hendrix bottle and, you know, 5 cans of tonic and we,
• 34:54
  I'm thinking that's actually quite good because I've actually
• 34:56
  only paid, I think it worked out like 45 lbs for the bottle of
• 35:00
  Hendrix. Yeah.
• 35:01
  And so that was meaning my gin and tonic was like £5 or
• 35:04
  something that we had. Then it was like, that's an 11
• 35:06
  LB drink back home. Yeah.
• 35:07
  And I could take the bottle home.
• 35:08
  Yeah, yeah. So it's a different way of
• 35:10
  thinking, but the young had after he's seen his selling 9.
• 35:15
  At the end of it, I said any questions?
• 35:16
  He said yeah, what do the numbers mean?
• 35:18
  What? Really.
• 35:23
  And I remember it clearly in my head just like start again hour
• 35:28
  and a half of my time. I didn't have missed that the
• 35:31
  numbers mean it wasn't. I hadn't told me, just didn't
• 35:33
  understand maturation. That's how old the whiskey is
• 35:37
  inside. All right.
• 35:38
  But to him it didn't matter because he's like, it's one of
• 35:40
  my best sellers and they get ticked.
• 35:43
  And you know, so that level where I was going with that,
• 35:46
  that level of education is very low.
• 35:49
  I think it was Brian Kinsman that was asked would would
• 35:53
  Glenfiddich ever see stopping cattle colour and Brian said no.
• 36:01
  Because just because one territory says we get it, we
• 36:04
  understand it, we know the difference, we would have to set
• 36:07
  up loads of different. The education would have to be
• 36:10
  going into. To look at every territory and
• 36:11
  that's just not possible for a company that.
• 36:13
  Size, we talked about it a couple weeks ago when it was
• 36:16
  Gordon Dundas. We were doing that, I tell you
• 36:18
  what. I've never seen a whiskey this
• 36:19
  pill. So we have the Taiwan 6, the
• 36:24
  whiskey gasm hand filled this little excuse it.
• 36:27
  But Gordon Madas explained to us through the time that he was out
• 36:31
  in in Taiwan, Taiwan talk about the Taiwanese market.
• 36:35
  Yeah, and how coloured. I take it this is what you go
• 36:38
  with colour driven. It's like, but what's the point?
• 36:40
  Forget looking at the label, just look at the colour, just
• 36:43
  because we're all a bit snobby about it now.
• 36:46
  So I mean this is the thing, that level of education globally
• 36:48
  changes wherever you go, and the UK is actually quite strong.
• 36:53
  And COVID helped because you could all of a sudden get 3
• 36:57
  master classes a week in your lunge and you could sit in your
• 37:00
  pyjamas and have a massive distill and a master blender
• 37:04
  talk to you. And I noticed the level of
• 37:07
  education upped a little bit when I came out and did a lot of
• 37:10
  whiskey shows. It was like, yeah, I like these
• 37:12
  glasses. They look like you're not.
• 37:17
  Pouring. So you weren't getting people
• 37:20
  coming up to stands and going, give me your softest, less
• 37:25
  spicy. You know, they were saying, what
• 37:28
  kind of new finishes have you got?
• 37:29
  You know the conversational. Changes were different.
• 37:32
  It was a completely different level.
• 37:33
  And is that is that has that increased?
• 37:35
  We've talked about the level geekiness.
• 37:37
  Yeah. Like, and then when you talk go
• 37:38
  back then that means a distillerate like Holy Rood can
• 37:42
  instead of having the stories, yeah, can justifiably stand on
• 37:45
  the fact that they can go. Let's tell you about you
• 37:48
  strings. Yeah, let me tell you,
• 37:49
  experimentation. We we, we do sit in a bit of an
• 37:52
  echo chamber. I mean, you have to always
• 37:54
  remember that. And I think, you know, any
• 37:56
  ambassador that was worth their salt would understand.
• 37:58
  When you walk into a room, you spend 90% of your life with
• 38:02
  people that talk whiskey yes, And then you walk into a room
• 38:05
  with 35 people in front of you for that evening.
• 38:07
  And I would always try and work out what had in front me who I
• 38:11
  had because just because I'm they've turned up doesn't mean
• 38:15
  they you had somebody on the podcast.
• 38:17
  I was listening to the the distillery, one the inch
• 38:21
  Journey. Yeah, Yeah.
• 38:22
  And the girl had never tried whiskey before.
• 38:25
  That was on the podcast. Was that at the, was that the
• 38:28
  tasting? Is that the tasting that the
• 38:30
  distillery spotlight though, isn't that?
• 38:31
  That's right, yeah. Yeah.
• 38:32
  She was with them. She was been brought along by
• 38:35
  Yeah, so. There you go.
• 38:36
  You know you would just if you didn't ask the question and
• 38:38
  didn't know that, you would automatically assume you're in
• 38:41
  the diggers. You're at a whiskey podcast.
• 38:43
  Yeah. With whiskey drinkers.
• 38:45
  Yeah, you'll have had whiskey. Before.
• 38:46
  Well, that's it. But so.
• 38:49
  I learned that very early on. Know your audience.
• 38:51
  Oh, you have to. Yeah.
• 38:52
  And I've certainly seen the change.
• 38:55
  But the geeky side is still a tiny percentage.
• 38:58
  Oh, yes. It's like the same, probably the
• 39:00
  same percentage as malt whiskey on the market to blended
• 39:03
  consumption. Yeah.
• 39:04
  It's that upper end of it that we spend a lot of time in.
• 39:08
  You know, I, I don't go into a bar now that doesn't have a
• 39:10
  great whiskey selection. I purposely choose Diggers,
• 39:13
  Rosebuddon Voyage, Buck Schusters.
• 39:15
  You know the in my head I was saying I say a friend recently
• 39:19
  said, do you know what the worst thing about this industry is in
• 39:22
  this job? When friends message me at like
• 39:24
  11 in the morning and go, you fancy a catching up?
• 39:28
  I'm like, I don't automatically think where's the nearest coffee
• 39:31
  shop I've. Got like what can I get?
• 39:34
  Bars open which one have not been into for a while, so you
• 39:37
  find yourself half of them in the morning with a whiskey in
• 39:39
  your hand. Yeah.
• 39:41
  Should have really been an oat flat white, yeah.
• 39:45
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. I think we we, we've seen it and
• 39:47
  I think this is part of the whole thing with the podcast is
• 39:50
  the fact that. Juicy.
• 39:52
  No, this is this one. Oh, is it?
• 39:53
  That's why it's juicy, because it's good to Matt.
• 39:55
  But I think we've been there and I think like we've in the last
• 39:59
  five years, we've been on that side where you go.
• 40:02
  We were talking about it tonight.
• 40:04
  You know, I was speaking to somebody who who said found
• 40:09
  myself and I don't know whether you don't.
• 40:10
  I know he doesn't listen to the podcast, right?
• 40:13
  Oh, can we slag him then? I would, but I know he doesn't
• 40:15
  listen to the podcast. But he said to me, I found
• 40:18
  myself on and I've known this guy for years and he likes a
• 40:20
  drum, right? But and he says found myself on
• 40:24
  the whiskey this whiskey stories.
• 40:26
  Facebook chat, right? So there's the Facebook group,
• 40:29
  right, which has over 500 members of it.
• 40:31
  But there's there's also a Facebook chat which anyone who's
• 40:33
  in the group can join. And it's a live going chat.
• 40:36
  Stuart McGregor, I think his name has lost a load of weight
• 40:38
  recently and and he's been promising himself a treat if he
• 40:42
  gets below 20 stone. And he gets that following the
• 40:44
  Ross Bar model. Yeah, the Robert Bar model, the
• 40:46
  weight loss. You should.
• 40:47
  You should go on the whiskey diet.
• 40:49
  Well then that's. Why he lost three days once.
• 40:52
  But he this guy said to me and he says I'm on that.
• 40:55
  He said some of the drams, I've never heard 1/2 of them, but
• 40:59
  they look a little loader rubbish.
• 41:01
  I said, what do you mean? And he goes, I just never really
• 41:04
  heard of them. I don't understand the this why
• 41:07
  would I want a drink? And I can't remember like he
• 41:09
  would use an example, I don't know, say a rabbit lover, say
• 41:14
  anyway, why would I want to try that in a wine finisher or
• 41:17
  something like that? It's an indie bottle.
• 41:19
  But we're just, I'm looking at him going.
• 41:21
  Are you daft? Yeah, but it's because.
• 41:23
  And I've got to remember that. Well, actually it was only two
• 41:25
  or three years ago I was went to.
• 41:27
  I'll tell you when it was the first and at this old age, it
• 41:30
  was three years ago we went to the Edinburgh Whiskey Festival
• 41:33
  at Murrayfield. Murrayfield just over.
• 41:34
  Yeah. Another convenience of this.
• 41:36
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we could, I can, I kind of
• 41:39
  have not complained, but to you I kind of went.
• 41:44
  There's too many ND bottlers there.
• 41:46
  Too many ND bottlers. Yeah.
• 41:47
  I just wanted that distillery. I 46% DRAM and I was happy
• 41:53
  because I was going what, like the three of them have all got
• 41:57
  koalas, understand and I don't get it.
• 42:00
  I don't understand why everyone's trying to do that.
• 42:02
  But now you look at and you go to whiskey fringe that we were
• 42:05
  at and we were down the stairs in the independent tent with the
• 42:08
  new distilleries and independent guys and there was people that
• 42:11
  go. I barely ventured up the stairs.
• 42:12
  Yeah, it's the only bit I went to this.
• 42:14
  Yeah, because I fucked up to say hi to a few folk in the great
• 42:17
  Royal Bratler that was on show. Yeah.
• 42:19
  By Mike McGinty. But that the indie was.
• 42:24
  It really interests me from the geeky side.
• 42:26
  Yeah, because I want. The trick of all finishes is to
• 42:30
  make sure you still hold onto the dystole character.
• 42:33
  Otherwise, that's when it's pointless, if it's overcooked,
• 42:37
  if it's not the right marriage. And we all know marriage is
• 42:41
  fair. If they're not nurtured with
• 42:44
  love and those you know, you start to build up a following as
• 42:52
  an independent bottler because you are.
• 42:54
  And the Thompson brothers are a great example of that.
• 42:56
  I mean, as are there many. Woody, Woody Woodrow.
• 42:59
  'S fragrant drops. Frank of African drops.
• 43:02
  Exactly. It used to be a case that how
• 43:05
  many? How many?
• 43:07
  Everyone does a great. Job and the reason is they've
• 43:13
  all got skin in the game. Yeah, yeah.
• 43:15
  It wasn't the case 20 years ago, 30 years ago, armchair bottlers,
• 43:21
  nobody cared getting casks. Some of the people that were
• 43:24
  bought in them wouldn't have even tried the liquid.
• 43:26
  It's they see the name, they see the age it goes in the bottle.
• 43:28
  It's a that then gave a literally a sour taste in many
• 43:34
  consumers mouths when they were buying into something and going,
• 43:37
  oh, I quite like this distillery.
• 43:38
  I've never heard of these guys, but I'll give this a go and try
• 43:41
  it. And you're like, that's guff.
• 43:42
  And it's not the distillery's fault.
• 43:44
  The indie bottlers have held onto the cast too long or found
• 43:48
  a parcel of casks that should never have been bottled.
• 43:51
  And that has happened where distilleries are trading casks
• 43:56
  and you know most big icon distilleries will have a blend.
• 44:02
  So they need to be keeping casks moving.
• 44:04
  And if they, and I know that one in particular in the mid 80s put
• 44:09
  a huge parcel of casks to another and that particular
• 44:13
  distillery and blender did nothing with them.
• 44:16
  They just left them. Now, the fact that they'd been
• 44:18
  moved from one distillery to another was clear indication
• 44:21
  that they weren't right for being single cast bottlings
• 44:25
  because they maybe made enough of a distillery character, but
• 44:29
  they're like, they're not showcased enough.
• 44:31
  So they they're, they can happily make up your blend and
• 44:34
  we will exchange for the ones that you bring in to go into our
• 44:36
  blend. That's how it works.
• 44:39
  But a few years later the an indie bottler turns up at the
• 44:44
  warehouse doors of said distillery and said got anything
• 44:47
  interesting? And they're like, oh, actually
• 44:49
  there's a lot of cast over there.
• 44:51
  Have those we'll sell you these. All of a sudden that indie
• 44:54
  bottler's like, wow, look at the names on these.
• 44:57
  This is brilliant. Bottle them all, put them out to
• 44:59
  the market. And that is actually in the
• 45:01
  ninth, I think 1984 or 1983 where a quite a number of major
• 45:08
  distilleries decided, no, that's it and teaspooning started to
• 45:10
  come around. Is that what is that where a
• 45:12
  teaspoon is so teaspooning for for people.
• 45:14
  So teaspooning would be a case of like what is it?
• 45:17
  What's the Balveni we had that the Hazel Hazel.
• 45:20
  You've got Aldooni, which is Ken in vain.
• 45:23
  I can say this now without getting into trouble.
• 45:26
  Glenfiddich and Balveni is ward head.
• 45:29
  So majority Glenfiddich teaspoon of Balveni ward head.
• 45:33
  Burnside is Barbeni with a drop of Glenfiddich and Alduni is
• 45:36
  Kinney with a drop of. Either yeah and so teaspoon
• 45:40
  would be so just so explained so far from so distilleries can
• 45:42
  protect themselves. What they would do is they would
• 45:45
  set like if I was, if I was a distillery, I would say, right,
• 45:48
  Mark, you want to buy a cask of my stuff, I'll sell it to you.
• 45:51
  But you can't put it out as our name because I'm putting a
• 45:54
  teaspoon of that in there. And legally, that would then
• 45:56
  have to be a blended malt. Yeah.
• 45:58
  And if you and if you ever did want to sell it as a single, if
• 46:00
  you ever did get your hands on it as an independent bottler,
• 46:03
  and if you ever did release it, you would have to release it
• 46:04
  under that name. Wart Head.
• 46:06
  The the delivery order you get from the warehouse, which is
• 46:09
  your certificate of ownership will state.
• 46:12
  And some of them, the only one I know out there that actually
• 46:15
  outside of the big ones, like of any Williamson's Mcfroy.
• 46:18
  Yeah. Dalrymple.
• 46:20
  Dalrymple. What's that?
• 46:22
  Dalrymple? I've got Elsa B.
• 46:24
  I've got Thompson Brothers Dalrymple absolutely cracking.
• 46:27
  Yeah, yeah. It's got the curling stones on.
• 46:30
  I think that's that was what they did was it was Dalrymple.
• 46:33
  But it's got the curling stones, Elsa.
• 46:34
  Crag is where all the stone for the curling.
• 46:36
  It's got yeah, cracking drama. Very good.
• 46:39
  And that's the thing and it's cheap.
• 46:40
  I, I used to collect ward head because I knew it was quite
• 46:42
  infinite and it's that style if it was American oak and there
• 46:45
  was loads of independent bottlers in urine, liquid
• 46:47
  sunshine, a couple of others that I got when I was doing work
• 46:51
  in Belgium and Germany and stunning.
• 46:55
  And you're getting like 27 year old ward head for, well, Karen
• 46:59
  Moore did what actually was it a 20?
• 47:02
  I think it was a 25 year old ward Hey for like £120.
• 47:06
  Yeah, well. Especially a 25 year.
• 47:08
  Old Well Fraser Soonest brought in.
• 47:10
  Was it velvet Hazelburn? Is it Hazelburn?
• 47:12
  It was a whiskey sponge. 27 year old Hazelburn.
• 47:16
  Yeah, he brought it Hazelwood. Hazelwood.
• 47:18
  Hazelwood. Was it Hazel?
• 47:19
  Yeah, Hazel. Hazel Burns, Campbelltown.
• 47:21
  Sorry, Hazelwood. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry.
• 47:23
  Yeah, that's right. So he brought in Hazel Wood and
• 47:25
  he's and we were quite like 27 year old single cats.
• 47:29
  Well, very effectively, yeah. Because it's teaspoon now.
• 47:31
  Yeah. How big is a teaspoon?
• 47:32
  You don't know. But at the same time, what we
• 47:34
  know is that it's just a case of protecting the brand.
• 47:37
  It's protection to make. Sure, the tablespoon is 15
• 47:39
  millilitres. Yeah, and that's why now, that's
• 47:43
  why now independent bottlers, whoever they are, they need to
• 47:46
  make sure their cast choice is great because there are a lot
• 47:51
  and it's a fickle market. But you think we'll see this
• 47:54
  internationally then do you think like for example, you
• 47:56
  know, use India as an example here, India do not understand
• 48:01
  the concept at the moment. The majority, the vast majority
• 48:04
  of whiskey drinkers, I've sat with somebody in India and tried
• 48:07
  to explain the concept of single.
• 48:09
  Like I've had a I can't remember what it what it was, but he was
• 48:13
  able to. It was in a shop in India.
• 48:15
  And I've got an independently bottled bottle of whiskey and
• 48:18
  it's got the distillery. I can't know the name of the
• 48:19
  distillery, but the distillery he knew was on here on the
• 48:23
  shelf. Yeah.
• 48:24
  And he's going. That's not.
• 48:25
  That's what I'm saying. I said, no, no, that's single
• 48:27
  gas. Yeah, but that's single mole.
• 48:29
  And I'm going, no, this is single mole.
• 48:31
  Yeah, Yeah, but but he's going. But why is it in that bottle
• 48:34
  when the other stuff. And then then his argument was,
• 48:38
  but why would I? Why would I have that when?
• 48:40
  Because it was a, it was a very straightforward label with a
• 48:43
  very, you know, it was, it was an, and you think it's from an
• 48:46
  independent bottom point of views as well as some of them
• 48:49
  not even being able to put the, the, the, the name of the
• 48:52
  distillery on it. But some of them you can't use
• 48:55
  the, the, the logo. You can't get the official logo.
• 48:58
  So you've just got to put it there so suddenly the iconic
• 49:00
  logo that someone might see. Yeah.
• 49:02
  Isn't seen on Typically they're cheaper than the original, the
• 49:05
  OBS. So if you've got a, if you had a
• 49:08
  25 year old Highland Park single cast, that's a lot of bucks.
• 49:15
  If you get that from an independent bottler, it's not so
• 49:18
  many bucks, it's still a lot of bucks.
• 49:20
  And so there is that. Hopefully they've got a good
• 49:23
  deal on it. That is the key to all is is
• 49:26
  ensuring because if they go back to a major distillery and go
• 49:30
  right, we'd like to buy a few more cast like Nah because the
• 49:32
  stuff you put out last. Well, this is it's, it's Pete.
• 49:36
  Pete from Woven, Yeah. It was talking about how the
• 49:39
  gatekeepers are whiskey. Yeah.
• 49:40
  And you speak to the people. It's relationships.
• 49:42
  And The thing is, as well as relationships can be, it's
• 49:45
  Scotch whiskey industry, very protective of itself, as we
• 49:47
  know. You look at the SWA, you look at
• 49:49
  some I'm. Surprised I've lasted this long.
• 49:53
  Rumours that fly around about me.
• 49:57
  But you look at they will protect the brand of Scotch
• 50:00
  whiskey. Oh, I'm rightly so.
• 50:02
  But at the same time, you know when you look at this, the
• 50:05
  stringency of that like people within the industry as well, you
• 50:09
  don't want to be the guy or the person or the lady that did that
• 50:13
  which led to that's. The black.
• 50:14
  Mark because suddenly it's like, like you said, it's with the
• 50:17
  whiskey. The Scotch whiskey industry is a
• 50:19
  massive industry, but it's a village as well as people.
• 50:21
  You could literally go into the the Highlander because we had
• 50:24
  some nights and you'll see three people from three different
• 50:26
  distilleries having a champ Well, and we spoke to it.
• 50:29
  We spoke about it as well. I can't remember who mentioned
• 50:32
  it, but it was, for example, Cats Brokers.
• 50:34
  If you've got a cask of something and you pass it on to
• 50:37
  something that then makes a hash of it or bottles it, you know,
• 50:42
  and then suddenly it's like, well, we know who sold that
• 50:45
  podcast. The so and so there's a trace
• 50:48
  because Cats numbers are traceable.
• 50:49
  The funniest thing I've heard. Was back to us.
• 50:51
  Working for Independent recently and I was speaking to a friend
• 50:55
  about a cask and a very prominent whiskey collector in
• 51:01
  the UK who also now owns a distillery and did own a shop.
• 51:07
  I'd asked the broker to sell a cast.
• 51:09
  Now I haven't had this fact checked.
• 51:13
  This is the story I had, but who wants the truth to get away,
• 51:16
  have a good story. This individual had said I've
• 51:19
  got some cast I'd like to sell. There's the Parsley cast, go and
• 51:21
  sell them and they said yeah, I can get a good price on this.
• 51:23
  About two weeks later, that same individual gets an e-mail in
• 51:27
  from another cast broker with a 30% increase price on those
• 51:31
  cast, and it just gone round three different people.
• 51:34
  They've added their 10%. I know who'll buy this.
• 51:36
  Yeah, sure. He's like, these are my fucking
• 51:38
  casks. Three years ago, but I looked at
• 51:42
  it, well, I I looked into the cast ownership situation and
• 51:46
  ended up got talking to, you know, you answer one Facebook ad
• 51:49
  and then suddenly you're getting inundated with people calling
• 51:51
  you in this afternoon, Milton Duff.
• 51:54
  So I've got an affinity of people cast.
• 51:57
  People listen to the podcast will know, yeah, affinity of
• 51:59
  Milton Duff and such that you know what?
• 52:01
  A cast of Milton Duff would be cool.
• 52:03
  Good, I'm just telling you. Yeah, and find out if what it
• 52:06
  would cost. So I put it out and I put it out
• 52:08
  to to one person and I got 3, the same 7 cast the parcel 7
• 52:16
  cast, still got the the screenshots of the spreadsheet.
• 52:20
  The same 7 casks were offered to me by three different people,
• 52:23
  three different prices. The cheapest price was obviously
• 52:26
  together and he was closest to the source.
• 52:28
  And again, then you speak to people within the industry, you
• 52:31
  should likely go. Why on earth would you pay that
• 52:34
  much money? Yeah, Yeah.
• 52:34
  For a Milton Duff at that age. Yeah.
• 52:37
  So basically every single person that I was speaking to was
• 52:39
  trying to sell that cash because people were saying independent
• 52:42
  bottler was saying, well, if I bottled that I would have to
• 52:45
  bottle it at this amount and I would never get them.
• 52:47
  We've talked about that in the bottle spotlight.
• 52:49
  We've talked about that, that the fact is that there's so many
• 52:52
  people that fall into the trap of thinking like, oh, I can
• 52:54
  become an independent bottle or I'll buy a couple of cast.
• 52:57
  And then it's like, so you own the cast, but then it's like the
• 52:59
  bottle cost the the, the, the dead, the corn, every single
• 53:02
  thing on a bottle that you see. Yeah, that, that little sleeve
• 53:06
  there, depending on how you want that to look.
• 53:07
  And then then you've got the duty on top of it.
• 53:09
  And then once you've done all that, you've still got to sell
• 53:12
  it. You still got to market.
• 53:13
  And then you go to a place like, I don't know, Jeffrey St.,
• 53:15
  Whiskey and Tobacco, and you look at who predominantly.
• 53:17
  Jeffrey St. Whiskey Now.
• 53:19
  Because they've got a tiny little cigar box left of what
• 53:23
  they've got. Emily, the other day I went in
• 53:25
  for cigar, she went. That's all we've got.
• 53:26
  Yeah, yeah, fingers crossed. I do believe they've got some
• 53:29
  nice big plans for for what they were, what they were, but
• 53:33
  predominantly selling independent bottler.
• 53:35
  Yeah, whiskey. And you can go in there and you
• 53:37
  go right. So I've got to put my bottle on
• 53:40
  the shelf beside all these other people.
• 53:43
  And you know what, Maybe they're doing the same kind of
• 53:45
  distillery stuff. Yeah.
• 53:46
  Why should anyone pay that? It just it's a dangerous.
• 53:50
  Then you come into there's. There's two things with that
• 53:52
  though, if you're so one of the clever things.
• 53:56
  Thompson Brothers have moved away from it slightly, although
• 53:59
  they'll probably tell me I'm wrong.
• 54:02
  They were eye-catching and really different.
• 54:03
  Their labels, the food series that they did, the local artists
• 54:08
  doing, and that was quite a distinct label.
• 54:11
  You could walk into a bar and go, oh, they're the Thompson
• 54:13
  brothers, but we would know. And then it's the case of can
• 54:17
  you bring me that down? But you.
• 54:18
  Can't see it? But some of the details on the
• 54:20
  side. But someone that didn't go would
• 54:21
  be like, well, that's a cool bottle of whiskey.
• 54:22
  What's? That in a shop as well, you're
• 54:24
  like, I like that and in a shop in a retail environment.
• 54:28
  Especially if you like cats. I think, yeah.
• 54:30
  I think. I think something basket
• 54:34
  statistics are something like 80% of whiskey purchased in a
• 54:39
  retail environment is for someone else.
• 54:41
  Yeah. Oh, really?
• 54:42
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 54:43
  Monstrously high. So again, this all changes.
• 54:47
  You look at a label in a bar and you're like, OK, this is cool.
• 54:51
  You put out a back bar that disappears.
• 54:53
  Yeah, because it's backlit or it's under lit.
• 54:55
  So all of a sudden you're just a dark bottle sitting there.
• 54:58
  Unless someone knows the bottle shape you put something like
• 55:01
  that and that in retail environment, I guarantee you
• 55:07
  people will pick that. Up Yeah, yeah, yeah, the bottle
• 55:09
  because. That's not a very well known
• 55:11
  distillery outside of the Geeks, and that looks really cool.
• 55:15
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So people are going to go that
• 55:18
  Michael Jackal love that. Look at that.
• 55:20
  That's a nice bottle, that. Feels great, yeah.
• 55:23
  And if he puts that on a sideboard, it'll look good.
• 55:26
  So you so as a as an indie or a main brand, you've got this
• 55:31
  horrific dichotomy of going, we want to make whiskey that real
• 55:36
  whiskey drinkers go. That's great.
• 55:39
  We also want to make whiskey that non whiskey drinkers so we
• 55:43
  can absorb the category go That's cool.
• 55:45
  I'd never thought I'd try that before.
• 55:47
  And then you've got all these different touch points, these
• 55:51
  contact points of are you in a bar?
• 55:53
  Is it more of the month? And.
• 55:55
  Yeah. And it comes back to the brand
• 55:57
  and Baxter comes back to the brand because because the other
• 55:59
  thing is, is you know, if you your bottle shape, your label
• 56:02
  and everything like that is a brand ambassador effectively,
• 56:05
  because people will like you say, well, this is, I mean, I've
• 56:08
  got a real soft spot for the Glenn Murray bottles just
• 56:10
  because of the that still shape. I just, I just love it.
• 56:12
  But but but then there's so you know, there's that touch point.
• 56:17
  Like you say, it's like, Oh, I was at a tasting, I was at the
• 56:20
  Glenn finish tasting. I know the bottle shape and I
• 56:22
  don't care what it was, whatever tasting was.
• 56:25
  If it's a brand ambassador, opposite experience, you know
• 56:27
  exactly what you're looking for. And that's when somebody might
• 56:30
  be able to go into a back bar and actually look at the bottle
• 56:33
  shapes and go, I know that one, that's it to man, I'm going to
• 56:37
  have that. They're all changing.
• 56:38
  I was in a whiskey bar in Edinburgh yesterday just before
• 56:42
  I was with Cameron Ewan. Just before we went to the
• 56:46
  Diggers and we're in a bar and I scanned the bar and missed 3 or
• 56:50
  4 bottles. Yeah, should have recognised.
• 56:53
  Because like Beau Moore very recently rebranded Highland Park
• 56:56
  rebrand. Merging a little bit.
• 56:58
  Yeah. And these are really big brands
• 56:59
  that had distinctive bottles. Yeah.
• 57:02
  And what's what's that? Is that cost?
• 57:03
  Is that another cost factor? Is it fine or is it just?
• 57:05
  Is it just I? Think it's just the way things
• 57:07
  are you look. I mean, there was a Porsche
• 57:09
  Cayenne went past me or the McCann and it and it honestly
• 57:12
  looked like a fucking Renault Megane.
• 57:17
  I was actually, I posted it on social.
• 57:19
  I was like, what is this? And someone, oh, that's the new
• 57:21
  Porsche. It's just been debadged and
• 57:23
  whoever's got it, it's debadged. That's £110,000 car.
• 57:26
  And I said it looks, it looks like something you'd use on the
• 57:30
  school run. Yeah, it's just where's the,
• 57:32
  where's the curves? Where's the instant head turn of
• 57:35
  going? Holy shit, there's a Porsche or
• 57:38
  a Jaguar or they're all just becoming.
• 57:41
  But does that make it harder for a brand?
• 57:43
  Like can you see it from as a brand ambassador point of view?
• 57:45
  Because like you're saying, like we'll talk about clinic here,
• 57:47
  sponsorship is available. But basically, you know, the
• 57:50
  triangle, the triangular bottle, that was it Johnnie Walker, the
• 57:53
  square bottle, the angle label, something like that would never
• 57:56
  change because surely it would be sacrifice.
• 58:00
  But The thing is like there's other brand ambassadors that
• 58:02
  might be looking at, do you know?
• 58:03
  What the interesting thing about that bottle is, though, it
• 58:05
  wasn't Glen FedEx. It was Grant.
• 58:08
  Yeah. Grant's had the triangular
• 58:09
  bottle. It's Hans Schlager that designed
• 58:11
  it for them in 1957. Yeah.
• 58:14
  And Glenn Phoenix nicked it because they went.
• 58:16
  That's cool. That's cool with you.
• 58:17
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 58:18
  And the Bavani in the same way, it's the still Nick.
• 58:21
  Yeah, yeah, top of it. So these are right, They are
• 58:24
  identifiable and iconic. It's difficult.
• 58:28
  I think it's really difficult for a brand and what, but what
• 58:31
  I'll think a lot of brands don't do and thankfully for the
• 58:34
  companies that I've worked for, except one most recently, is, is
• 58:40
  take advice of the people that are on the street and do the
• 58:43
  job. So any of the ambassadors back
• 58:47
  going Fiddick, there was like 30 of us at one point globally and
• 58:50
  every year we'd only up in Dufton and go to Elgin and do
• 58:54
  karaoke. Hilarious.
• 58:57
  Hilarious when you have two females who are Broadway
• 58:59
  singers. Really.
• 59:01
  Ambassadors. Really.
• 59:02
  Turned up in Elgin and pissed off all the locals by by belting
• 59:07
  out in perfect pitch on a Tuesday night.
• 59:10
  I think the Zale. Bar must be a real novice for.
• 59:13
  Elgon, honestly, it was the funniest thing.
• 59:16
  Tracy is now working for Uncle Nears.
• 59:18
  She's a distiller. Uncle Nears?
• 59:20
  Really. Yeah.
• 59:21
  And Jennifer Wren is the West Coast ambassador for Dalmore.
• 59:25
  Oh, wow. And they're.
• 59:26
  So they're both still in whiskey, but they were Broadway
• 59:28
  singers. And.
• 59:30
  You know, rocking up to Elgin on a dead Tuesday night with 30
• 59:32
  ambassadors and they're like, can you put the karaoke on?
• 59:35
  It's Tuesday. The karaoke doesn't go until
• 59:36
  Wednesday. I'm bringing 30 people in here
• 59:39
  with expense accounts. I will put the karaoke on a
• 59:42
  night. But if you, you know, you even
• 59:45
  they would sit down in that week and go, here's the liquid we're
• 59:49
  thinking of bringing out in 18 months and here's the bottle.
• 59:55
  What do you think? In fact, the whole change on the
• 59:58
  going for the 12 with a little red bit and that modern cut that
• 1:00:02
  just came out the most. Recent one.
• 1:00:04
  Every part of that is an amalgamation of about 5
• 1:00:07
  different bottles that they presented to the ambassadors.
• 1:00:09
  The ambassador that works, that doesn't.
• 1:00:11
  I like this bit of this design. So can't you put And then you
• 1:00:15
  went back and? Went OK.
• 1:00:16
  And that's so that entire bottle of Glenfinic has been shaped.
• 1:00:21
  OK. The initially the brand team
• 1:00:23
  brought up all the, what do you call it?
• 1:00:28
  The the sort of no. Help me out here.
• 1:00:32
  What was that on here? Different iterations.
• 1:00:34
  Right. OK, iterations, yeah.
• 1:00:37
  But ultimately, it was the ambassadors that chose.
• 1:00:40
  Because they're the boots on the ground, effectively.
• 1:00:43
  Then you'll see brands that just put something out and you
• 1:00:45
  literally go, as I say, last night in a bar and it's all
• 1:00:49
  backlit and half the bottles disappeared.
• 1:00:51
  Yeah. And you're like, no one stress
• 1:00:53
  tested that, did they? But you could, you could go to,
• 1:00:55
  you can go to Diggers and whether you're having a drama or
• 1:00:58
  not. And you can go, sorry.
• 1:01:00
  Exactly. But if it's not computer, but
• 1:01:02
  whether? You're working.
• 1:01:03
  Whether you are working or not. And you could say to Kev, well,
• 1:01:07
  not everyone in Diggers will ever have a drama.
• 1:01:09
  No, but you better do that. But Mark or any of the people
• 1:01:13
  are drinking Diggers and of course that's a whiskey.
• 1:01:15
  But you could go in and you could say what sound it's not.
• 1:01:18
  And Kev could say that bottle there has sat for way too long.
• 1:01:22
  But I'm shifting a load at that right now.
• 1:01:25
  And then you can start going, right.
• 1:01:26
  What is it and you can serve? £2.80.
• 1:01:29
  Yeah, well, everyone, everyone took a dunk when we brought in
• 1:01:33
  that 1.75 litre ball, the old smuggler that came back to put
• 1:01:37
  out for about 2 LB a giraffe just to get rid of it.
• 1:01:39
  But no, but it's true. You you speak that might just be
• 1:01:43
  OK maybe the people drinking it diggers aren't drinking that.
• 1:01:45
  But let's just say you you go further down the road or you go
• 1:01:48
  the ends in Europe or you go somewhere else and this is the
• 1:01:50
  same thing. Can't shift that.
• 1:01:51
  Yeah, don't know what it is. Yeah.
• 1:01:53
  And you go OK. And then it's a startup point
• 1:01:55
  where you say, oh, have to change the recipe or is there
• 1:01:57
  something changed? Or is it you've changed that,
• 1:01:59
  changed that? But actually ultimately you
• 1:02:01
  could that if you then go back and say, well, let me, I'm just
• 1:02:04
  wanting to point out. So the two, yeah, exactly.
• 1:02:07
  The two things that are key there is that, well, you said,
• 1:02:10
  have they changed the recipe? Which means you're thinking like
• 1:02:12
  a whiskey geek again. Potentially, yeah, Yeah.
• 1:02:14
  So when you go into these places like Diggers and you're
• 1:02:16
  presented with 800 bottles, OK, people make a pilgrimage there
• 1:02:20
  and the inside newer. But the one thing that's great
• 1:02:22
  about these if you say to the bar team, what do you recommend?
• 1:02:27
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they will give you a
• 1:02:28
  recommendation whether it's based at now most times it's
• 1:02:32
  based on their own choice. So last night I was up at
• 1:02:34
  Diggers with with Cammy and Jimmy and I, we bought a round
• 1:02:39
  spring back five. It was the Tomatin and and it
• 1:02:45
  was the totally 17 from rare fights.
• 1:02:47
  Which we took to the award. We we got the award over the
• 1:02:51
  line. Yeah, we brought it.
• 1:02:52
  In the bar, in the bar. When the bar Stewart came over,
• 1:02:56
  she said. She put them all down and went,
• 1:02:57
  Who ordered the 17? Totally.
• 1:02:59
  And it was me. And she went, yeah, you win
• 1:03:00
  this, right? Well, I think right.
• 1:03:03
  And that's just. So at some point, yeah, either
• 1:03:07
  Greg's been in or John's been in, or there's someone sat down
• 1:03:12
  and gone, this is brilliant. Or Kevin said this is brilliant.
• 1:03:16
  Probably listen to the podcast. And that's the key.
• 1:03:22
  What you know, you've got to think as well that not only are
• 1:03:24
  90%, I said this the last time, apart from the 5% there, you
• 1:03:28
  have to beat that out this time. 90% people don't know what they
• 1:03:32
  want. And recommendation is key.
• 1:03:35
  And if you've got a bar team and they're under trained or don't
• 1:03:38
  drink whiskey, when I used to do trainings for bars, all I wanted
• 1:03:42
  to do is get someone to say find what you like.
• 1:03:45
  And so if you as not a whiskey drinker are honest to someone
• 1:03:49
  and someone comes up and says, Gee, what a range would you
• 1:03:52
  recommend? Hey, look, I'm not a whiskey
• 1:03:53
  drinker. However, the last time we had a
• 1:03:57
  training in here with that cool ambassador, Yeah, I kind of like
• 1:04:00
  that. Oh, that's good enough for me.
• 1:04:03
  Yeah, that's it, honesty, but that's the job of the ambassador
• 1:04:07
  done or the salesperson, Yeah, just having that one point on
• 1:04:11
  the bar out of everything and that then becomes the biggest
• 1:04:13
  seller every time that individuals are and.
• 1:04:16
  But then and that's that comes back to it because.
• 1:04:18
  And you know, if, if, if brands are are seeing that, then brands
• 1:04:23
  are going, we'll reward that, you know, so you'll get guess
• 1:04:26
  what? You took a you took an interest
• 1:04:29
  in this DRAM. You saw the hell of a lot of it.
• 1:04:31
  You've really become a bit of a mini.
• 1:04:33
  Well, who's it? That said on the podcast,
• 1:04:35
  there's no better Brandon bastard than a barman or a bar.
• 1:04:37
  Yeah, But someone working behind the bar.
• 1:04:39
  And basically the bottom line is, yeah, suddenly then, and
• 1:04:42
  it's like, that's what Jane Ross says.
• 1:04:44
  You get a phone call from our bag and you get put on a mini
• 1:04:46
  bar something. Oh, yeah.
• 1:04:48
  But. Here's the key that's changing
• 1:04:49
  now, and it comes back to to what we were saying at the start
• 1:04:52
  of this. Yeah, to to get a bartender to
• 1:04:56
  fall in love with something is emotion and story.
• 1:04:59
  And what the industry is losing because it's stripping it back
• 1:05:03
  is it's putting salespeople into those roles.
• 1:05:05
  And they are saying the key performing things for them are
• 1:05:09
  it's good value for money. It's this, it's the hard sell.
• 1:05:13
  It's the hard sell. It's numbers based whereas I
• 1:05:16
  could not give a shit how much it cost.
• 1:05:19
  If you order X amount of well this week give you a deal.
• 1:05:23
  So that then becomes the prominent whiskey.
• 1:05:25
  But if you're going to get someone that's not a whiskey
• 1:05:27
  drinker into whiskey and brand call you to a recommendation or
• 1:05:30
  a punter that's walked in their bar, that will not be because
• 1:05:33
  it's got the best GP on it. No, I think, I think like this
• 1:05:37
  is what comes back down to I was having this conversation with
• 1:05:40
  somebody else who works in the bar industry, bar trade and we
• 1:05:43
  were chatting away about do people bread FIFA, so right.
• 1:05:50
  And you still class yourself as people.
• 1:05:56
  That's why it came from a Dandonian.
• 1:05:59
  My granddad always is. A sub classic my.
• 1:06:01
  Grandfather, my granddad and a farming Cooper outside Cooper
• 1:06:05
  and he used to say you can't. Why the folk in them there?
• 1:06:07
  I was so miserable. So why is that when it rains,
• 1:06:09
  the water just runs right down through the city?
• 1:06:13
  And floods 5. Go past the tape first.
• 1:06:16
  But but what what this I was asking about do people?
• 1:06:21
  Is it still a thing where the price of a paint Mars right.
• 1:06:24
  And he went no, really. And he went tap and go no one,
• 1:06:28
  no one's counting cash anymore, right.
• 1:06:31
  So he said what happened was you'd have if someone said, I've
• 1:06:34
  got £50 cash in my wallet and they've got a place and they'd
• 1:06:38
  say, can I get a pint of Guinness, please, fiver.
• 1:06:41
  And they'd be going, jeez, oh, handing over 20 LB, getting 15
• 1:06:44
  back. And they go back to the table
• 1:06:45
  and they go, that was that was £15.
• 1:06:48
  That's that's a fire. I've got £15 left, right?
• 1:06:52
  Whereas now tap and go, and I think this will probably be the
• 1:06:54
  same whiskey. Now people will see malt in a
• 1:06:56
  month or see whatever on the on the on the thing go, Oh, we go
• 1:06:59
  with that. That sounds reasonable.
• 1:07:01
  But at the same time, I think if someone said, if you went to a
• 1:07:04
  bar, a bartender and you said, I'm not really sure what I'm on
• 1:07:08
  right. And I've fallen into this trap.
• 1:07:11
  I won't say where, but Ross is the manager of that place and
• 1:07:16
  it's a cracker establishment. And as I say, experience
• 1:07:19
  matters. I would definitely say that
• 1:07:20
  experience matters. And it's part of that experience
• 1:07:23
  is if you speak to one of the members of staff that they've
• 1:07:25
  got behind the bar and you say, I don't know, I'm 1 here.
• 1:07:28
  And they'll go, right, I've got something pretty cool.
• 1:07:31
  It's this, it's that they'll go away.
• 1:07:33
  They get the bottle, they bring the bottle, they say all that
• 1:07:35
  and you go, yeah, I'll have it. And then you have it and you go,
• 1:07:38
  right, that was great. And they say that you're ready,
• 1:07:41
  that's £15. You go bloody hell.
• 1:07:42
  But at the same time you're going, I can't argue with that
• 1:07:46
  because 15, I got 15 quids worth.
• 1:07:48
  I got the full experience of it. And I think, I think that's like
• 1:07:52
  you say that the argument is somebody trying to say, take
• 1:07:54
  this, it's value. You can.
• 1:07:57
  You can prove value for money without having to actually
• 1:08:00
  absolutely say and. I feel sorry for the salespeople
• 1:08:02
  that are trying to push that forward because it's it's
• 1:08:05
  viewed, I think, by the industry.
• 1:08:07
  You can see them coming in and it's a long time ago.
• 1:08:11
  I stopped talking about pricing and values and, and in fact,
• 1:08:15
  actually, I used to say, especially during festival,
• 1:08:18
  you've no idea who that person is on the other side of the bar.
• 1:08:21
  If they come in and say, I'm new to whiskey, I think I've said
• 1:08:24
  this before, I'm new to whiskey. Give me a recommendation.
• 1:08:27
  The first thing the bartender should say.
• 1:08:29
  What's your budget? Yeah.
• 1:08:32
  Because if you are going to give someone a whiskey for the first
• 1:08:34
  time, most people will default to a 10 or 12 year old iconic
• 1:08:39
  distillery. Sure, right?
• 1:08:41
  Here's one of the biggest selling, here's this, here's
• 1:08:42
  that. It's nice and light.
• 1:08:44
  It's you. But actually a 12 year old
• 1:08:46
  something is quite spitting in certain cases.
• 1:08:49
  If your budget is not £4.25 and you're willing to throw £15 on
• 1:08:55
  the bar, all of a sudden your whiskey experience and
• 1:08:58
  introduction changes drastically.
• 1:09:01
  Well. And I don't think that happens
• 1:09:03
  enough. I think people automatically
• 1:09:05
  just go default basic entry level, yeah, instead of going
• 1:09:08
  where are we pitching? Here, Well, from a sales people
• 1:09:11
  absolutely do from a sales point of view, right.
• 1:09:14
  I I would say you're absolutely right, because if someone walks,
• 1:09:17
  if someone says to me, I don't drink whiskey, but I want
• 1:09:19
  whiskey, they need an experience now.
• 1:09:22
  So it's like I could give you you're not like, all right, you
• 1:09:25
  you could walk into any bar and say I'll take that one.
• 1:09:28
  But what they're asking is they're saying I don't drink
• 1:09:30
  whiskey. Or, you know, they might just
• 1:09:33
  go. I've seen everyone drinking
• 1:09:34
  grouse. I'll drink a grouse.
• 1:09:35
  I've seen everyone drinking Glenferrie 12 taking one for the
• 1:09:38
  12. And that could be it.
• 1:09:40
  But if someone's coming and said that, you've actually got a
• 1:09:42
  moment there where you can say, right, I can give you, I can
• 1:09:44
  give you what you want now give me two seconds.
• 1:09:46
  I'm going to put this camera on charge.
• 1:09:48
  I'm. Going to crack this.
• 1:09:57
  What? What's going on?
• 1:10:04
  What we know what to do, not mention the price and just talk
• 1:10:11
  about the stories. Michelle's been in Italy for
• 1:10:14
  five days and they've forgotten. She's come home and she's just
• 1:10:18
  made a noise upstairs, so they think something.
• 1:10:20
  She's outside, yeah. Yeah, I I think the experience
• 1:10:25
  side of it counts a lot now. And going back to your point,
• 1:10:28
  people want value for money. So you can sit in in something
• 1:10:33
  like the Balmoral and get a really good experience with
• 1:10:35
  that. I was sitting last night with
• 1:10:38
  Carmen and pulled me a phenomenal 38 year old Glenard
• 1:10:43
  Singleton Glenard and I sat with a glass for ages and one of the
• 1:10:48
  first things I said was I wish, I wish I could give more people
• 1:10:56
  that experience. Yeah, I wish I could let people
• 1:11:00
  you there, Michelle. I know she's upstairs.
• 1:11:03
  I wish I could. Especially people that say I
• 1:11:05
  don't get whiskey. I don't like it.
• 1:11:07
  Not that I don't like it, but I don't get it.
• 1:11:09
  And I said to Cameron, I so wish I could just like, have
• 1:11:12
  something like that on tap. Yeah, to just go magic here, try
• 1:11:17
  that. That's not what you think
• 1:11:18
  whiskey is. OK.
• 1:11:19
  It's a 38 year old Glen order, maybe 2800 LB.
• 1:11:23
  A bottle, but, but, but, but go back to, yeah, you're right,
• 1:11:26
  because I I've seen it online as well when people are saying I
• 1:11:31
  want to sort of get a malt for the house.
• 1:11:33
  And I'm not really a whiskey drinker, but I want to get sort
• 1:11:35
  of into whiskey and people will say, like you said, your big
• 1:11:39
  iconic drams. Yeah, ones you can freely.
• 1:11:42
  And there's drams out there. I mean, in the supermarket,
• 1:11:44
  there's strams out there that you can do that way.
• 1:11:45
  Yeah, there are puts in line, but it gives us, but it's on,
• 1:11:48
  it's a type on match point. Cheers as well.
• 1:11:50
  Cheers, yeah I've not tried this yet actually.
• 1:11:53
  So this is a Timatin 18. Tomatin 18 all of us are Sherry
• 1:11:56
  cask 46% natural colour naturals, not natural strength.
• 1:12:00
  It won't be 18 years old. I was keen to try this because
• 1:12:06
  again, looping back into the conversation about indie
• 1:12:09
  bottlers, that's a phenomenal example of tomato because it's.
• 1:12:13
  Bursting with tomato sex. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:15
  Bursting with fruit, all about the distillery.
• 1:12:18
  I think there's a point with European oak and particularly
• 1:12:23
  Sherry caste, although, and we all know that it's potentially
• 1:12:26
  not just the Sherry where it starts to fight against and I'm
• 1:12:30
  keen to see if that tropical fruitiness remains in.
• 1:12:35
  This yeah, yeah, there's a bit of that coming through but now
• 1:12:38
  but going going back to your point on on the experience side
• 1:12:41
  and we're going to do the sponsorship part here is I've
• 1:12:45
  mentioned it already, but getting an opportunity to try
• 1:12:49
  Rosebark 32 or Rosebark 33 on a tour.
• 1:12:52
  Sure. You know, we, we did the tour a
• 1:12:54
  few weeks ago. It's been out now for a couple
• 1:12:56
  of weeks. You're still Whiskey stories
• 1:12:58
  podcast listeners are still getting 15% off on the tours and
• 1:13:02
  the Tam do experience that you're getting at the at the
• 1:13:04
  Rosebank Distillery. Now you drop a train in
• 1:13:07
  Edinburgh. Someone already has asked on the
• 1:13:09
  Facebook group after I said this as we're recording this, I said
• 1:13:11
  yes. You're literally less than 40
• 1:13:13
  minutes on the train at Faulkner game one.
• 1:13:15
  Yeah, it's 1015 minute drive. I think it is.
• 1:13:17
  You can get a taxi or something that or if you're lucky, Jake
• 1:13:19
  add cook. Yeah, we'll pick you up as well.
• 1:13:21
  For us. I don't think he is a taxi
• 1:13:23
  driver. Again, an opportunity.
• 1:13:26
  I've, I've told three or four people who I know, my mum, my
• 1:13:32
  mum, you know, You're not, you know.
• 1:13:34
  People I know like my mum. People, I know that they like
• 1:13:38
  the idea of a drum. They don't drink a lot of
• 1:13:40
  whiskey or anything like that. But I said, look, you said see,
• 1:13:42
  you're your pals, you get a wee day out.
• 1:13:44
  I said you'll get 50%, please use a 50% discount.
• 1:13:47
  So you can see that was worth invited us all.
• 1:13:50
  But the point of the matter is I think anyone could go to that.
• 1:13:52
  Now, the two things it does. And it's like what?
• 1:13:54
  We're going all the way back to what we're talking about new
• 1:13:56
  distillery versus old distillery.
• 1:13:57
  Well, you've got a mixture of both there, right?
• 1:13:59
  You've got the legacy of the Rose Bank, right?
• 1:14:02
  You've got the history of the Rose Bank, but you're in a new
• 1:14:04
  distillery, which is laid out perfectly for a tour and in
• 1:14:07
  fact, but there's enough, there's enough harking back and
• 1:14:10
  enough quirks in terms of the style, the Bobby Mill that that
• 1:14:13
  that, that they can have these stories.
• 1:14:15
  Tell us about the Bobby Mill, I guess.
• 1:14:17
  What's the Bobby Miller? Tell us about the Bobby Miller
• 1:14:19
  Rosebank hostility. The quirkiness about the Bobby
• 1:14:21
  Miller. Well, it was originally,
• 1:14:24
  originally from Port Ellen. Is that right?
• 1:14:27
  No, I've got that wrong. No.
• 1:14:30
  Yes. I've got a video clip of you
• 1:14:32
  telling me about this. The.
• 1:14:34
  I've forgotten it all, though. Now, wait a minute.
• 1:14:36
  Let me. I might be wrong.
• 1:14:37
  I thought it was my, my. No.
• 1:14:38
  The Bobby Mill was at Rosebank. No, sorry.
• 1:14:41
  You're right. Sorry.
• 1:14:42
  It was poor. Sorry.
• 1:14:43
  I do apologise. It was originally.
• 1:14:44
  I cut that a little bit. Yeah, I got it wrong.
• 1:14:46
  Yeah. It was originally at Port Ellen.
• 1:14:48
  Yeah. And then it came to Rosebank.
• 1:14:50
  But it had been 1937 or 19. It was a, it was originally
• 1:14:56
  Rose, you know, it served the old distillery.
• 1:14:58
  Yeah, not, you know, none of the stills are old, they're all
• 1:15:01
  brand new, etcetera, etcetera. But the mill?
• 1:15:03
  But the mill barley mill is The barley mill is from the.
• 1:15:07
  Is it a roller mill? It is a roller mill, All right.
• 1:15:11
  There you go, Angus. But Angus was nominated as head
• 1:15:14
  of good points that day. Because Angus said I have
• 1:15:17
  everything that's in this distillery.
• 1:15:19
  Right. The mill is the only thing that
• 1:15:21
  had the old barley that used to go through Old Rose Bank.
• 1:15:24
  Yeah. And we'll have the new barley
• 1:15:26
  that's going through for New Rose Bank that's sitting there.
• 1:15:28
  Yeah. But they bought it.
• 1:15:29
  You're right. They bought it from Port Ellen.
• 1:15:31
  I thought that was the quote that had been at Port Ellen.
• 1:15:34
  And they don't know how old. They don't know how old it was.
• 1:15:35
  They reckon it's over 100 years old.
• 1:15:37
  But so you've got that heritage there.
• 1:15:39
  You've got the new stills, but the new stills put in it a
• 1:15:41
  little bit, but. And you get a great tour.
• 1:15:44
  But it's wrong for me to say this as such.
• 1:15:47
  But I just think like to get an opportunity to try 32 year old
• 1:15:51
  or 33 year old Rosebank, depending which two you take.
• 1:15:54
  It's just an incredible like it's he's going to produce a
• 1:15:57
  bottle soon, isn't it? I know he's he's going to Oh no,
• 1:16:00
  he's got a sample there. Look.
• 1:16:02
  Like 32 year old Rosebank. Yeah, haven't even tried it yet.
• 1:16:08
  But but I was going. To wait till I had a like sore
• 1:16:11
  throat Toddy. Did you write it back in 1983?
• 1:16:16
  Did you know? So Mike Jackson was talking a
• 1:16:18
  little, but. This is super.
• 1:16:20
  But the point of that is like that in itself is an opportunity
• 1:16:25
  for somebody who isn't into whiskey to walk into a
• 1:16:28
  distillery. They get to see.
• 1:16:30
  And the way they've laid it out is perfect.
• 1:16:31
  It's not confusing. It's like this is where they go
• 1:16:34
  this step, this step, this step. The steps are always that infed
• 1:16:37
  them, as Jacob Cook once said. Yeah.
• 1:16:39
  And it goes through that. But then you get the tasting
• 1:16:42
  experience. I think you get going, going 15
• 1:16:44
  and Rosebank 32 on the 50 LB one, and you get off stunning.
• 1:16:50
  And but a Rosebank 32 is that spirit that somebody could
• 1:16:54
  actually go. I don't really like whiskey, but
• 1:16:57
  I could drink. That it's like perfume and it's
• 1:16:59
  like perfect. When Glenn Philly brought out
• 1:17:00
  the 26 Excellence, which was a fabulous whiskey, just the
• 1:17:05
  palest Palin that 26 years old and people didn't get it.
• 1:17:11
  Brian Kinson was really happy with it.
• 1:17:13
  He was really proud of it. Just worked for Kelvin
• 1:17:17
  Cooperage. Was it actually the first full
• 1:17:19
  release from him? Because David Stewart just moved
• 1:17:21
  over. I think it might have been
• 1:17:23
  before I worked for this. It was about 15 years ago, 16
• 1:17:25
  years ago, and Cameron Bamaro and I always went, that's
• 1:17:30
  phenomenal. They see the amount of people,
• 1:17:32
  you put it in front and they look at it and it would almost
• 1:17:35
  disappear in the glass. Yeah, really.
• 1:17:37
  So then they'd smell it and go, what is that?
• 1:17:40
  And it it just smelt like potpourri and, and, and you
• 1:17:45
  could see people that were not whiskey drinkers and you you
• 1:17:47
  could see it the dials shift where they were just like,
• 1:17:51
  instead of going, yeah, that's what I expected.
• 1:17:54
  They were like why am I? What to be able to take a nose
• 1:17:58
  cover? To be able to take how you say
• 1:17:59
  it? How is that fool so floral?
• 1:18:01
  Yeah, and then they try it and it would be a nice enough
• 1:18:05
  experience for them. Some people would still go like
• 1:18:07
  still quite because it was 46% or 43%.
• 1:18:12
  I've got a bottle upstairs, actually, I do, which I bought
• 1:18:15
  that night before I worked with them.
• 1:18:18
  But giving people the opportunity, as you say, and
• 1:18:21
  that's a very clever thing by by Rosebank, because the the it's
• 1:18:26
  really well positioned to get a high influx of tourists.
• 1:18:29
  Yeah. Absolutely.
• 1:18:30
  And turning someone on, giving someone the opportunity of
• 1:18:33
  seeing. If you spend your entire whiskey
• 1:18:37
  tourism drinking life in the blames to 60 LB bottles and
• 1:18:44
  never experience it and it isn't experienced, then you think all
• 1:18:48
  whiskeys are the same, you know? And if you can give someone a 32
• 1:18:53
  Rose Bank or a 26 Glenfiddich Excellence or a 38 year old
• 1:18:57
  Glenard or whatever it might be and go this is going to blow
• 1:18:59
  your mind or a 36 to Martin, this is going to blow your mind.
• 1:19:04
  The the aromas, whether you think you can't get flavour out
• 1:19:08
  of whiskey at all. My dad's like that.
• 1:19:09
  He's like, I don't get it. Yeah, yeah, I can't, I can't.
• 1:19:12
  I know you know what you're doing with your job and somebody
• 1:19:14
  pays you to do it. But he says it just all smells
• 1:19:17
  like whiskey to me. And I've actually sat down with
• 1:19:19
  him with bland 12 year old and like 30 year old and gone.
• 1:19:24
  You tell me they all smell the same.
• 1:19:25
  And. I'll taste it enough.
• 1:19:27
  They all taste like. Whiskey.
• 1:19:28
  No, he's, he's actually, he's getting slightly better, but
• 1:19:30
  he's probably being his coffin before he's buy me a drum.
• 1:19:34
  But but yeah, I mean, I think like what you're saying about
• 1:19:38
  that Glen Ort, if you are in a position to give somebody that
• 1:19:41
  experience. But on the flip side of that,
• 1:19:43
  going back with Brian Ambassador, the person that they
• 1:19:45
  speak to being at tastings, I was at it wasn't you that took
• 1:19:49
  it, but I was you went to you. I was. 18 to another.
• 1:19:54
  Taste Glenn Ferick. Glenn Ferick.
• 1:19:56
  I was. I was 18.
• 1:19:59
  If everyone's watching or listening.
• 1:20:01
  Oh yeah, right. And it was the IT was the
• 1:20:04
  Edinburgh. It was it was Edinburgh food and
• 1:20:06
  wine or the take. It's like a building out in the
• 1:20:09
  castle. Kirk Weston.
• 1:20:10
  Any yes and done it. Yeah, cook all day and then they
• 1:20:13
  do a taste at the end of it. Other people have been on that,
• 1:20:15
  that I know that you were the one that was doing the really
• 1:20:18
  tasting. Yeah.
• 1:20:19
  But I when I did it once, that's.
• 1:20:21
  Quite. My brother.
• 1:20:22
  My brother was. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:26
  So even even the taste that all said tastes like whiskey.
• 1:20:28
  He was that guy. But he.
• 1:20:30
  But he said that Mark Thompson loves him.
• 1:20:32
  Sally. No, but he.
• 1:20:36
  Funny, I don't remember your brother.
• 1:20:37
  No, he's a very forgettable character.
• 1:20:41
  But, but I went on that when I was, it would have been, well,
• 1:20:47
  it would have been 2006, right? So that's how long it was.
• 1:20:51
  I can't remember who it was. It wouldn't have been Jamie
• 1:20:53
  Milne. I could have been Jamie Milne.
• 1:20:55
  I think it was a blender. I want to say it was a blender.
• 1:20:57
  I can't remember too much about. It was a very good taster.
• 1:20:59
  But point of the matter is it was the core range of the
• 1:21:02
  Glenfinn. Yeah, 12/15/18.
• 1:21:07
  Now I've done it, I've done a second time as well.
• 1:21:09
  And there was the IPA one on it. I can't remember anyway, and it
• 1:21:12
  went up, but bottom line was the experience was what it was.
• 1:21:16
  And that's for me. That is, that is my entry level
• 1:21:18
  into whiskey was that day, Yeah. Great. 18 in a day effectively,
• 1:21:23
  right? And I just I'll never forget
• 1:21:25
  that and being able almost to to pause when you're 18 and say
• 1:21:32
  we're going to have a wee drink and I'm pulling out of Gwen
• 1:21:34
  filler. I'm going I've got this and I'm
• 1:21:37
  going for like 12. What the hell they do.
• 1:21:38
  But my. Pals have got mad dogs.
• 1:21:40
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you need to appreciate this
• 1:21:45
  because it's been matured for this length of time and this and
• 1:21:47
  this, that next thing. It seemed like an absolute knock
• 1:21:49
  when I was. 18, drink whiskey and I started young and then
• 1:21:53
  stopped and I was Johnny Walker and Coca-Cola.
• 1:21:56
  Yeah. But it's experience.
• 1:21:58
  All the way through, yeah. I didn't actually get to it
• 1:22:00
  until maybe 20, late 20s Johnny Walker, Coca-Cola and I went to
• 1:22:05
  live in Ibiza and worked out there for a couple years.
• 1:22:09
  And because it's hot, I was the PR manager for Kathy Mambo.
• 1:22:14
  Oh yeah, right. Just as Radio One came in.
• 1:22:19
  Welcome to Ibiza story is about. No state.
• 1:22:25
  What happens on the white aisle stays on the white aisle.
• 1:22:28
  Yeah, two years straight through.
• 1:22:29
  Really. PR manager for Cathy Mambo.
• 1:22:30
  Did he end up in Highlander a few times?
• 1:22:32
  I ended up in a mess a lot, but yeah, Johnny Walker Coke and
• 1:22:37
  then too hot, too sticky. So then lemonade, then soda,
• 1:22:43
  then down to knee. Yeah, Hota Bay J&B is it was
• 1:22:48
  the. Big.
• 1:22:49
  Hota eBay. But, and that was my journey
• 1:22:53
  into whiskey. So I was 20.
• 1:22:54
  What was that 97? I was out 9697.
• 1:23:00
  Wow, so that's so, so right. Just I'm trying to remember back
• 1:23:03
  to your first episode that we did.
• 1:23:06
  Was it ladies wear if you were? Involved in Yeah women's
• 1:23:09
  underwear. Women's I worked in women's.
• 1:23:11
  Underwear. No one could see it the suit I
• 1:23:13
  had on. A wreck when I beat a.
• 1:23:21
  What's a wreck you did? It was, yeah, I was out there
• 1:23:34
  95. I went out seasonally from 95 to
• 1:23:36
  98, right? And then?
• 1:23:38
  For two years and. Then what was next?
• 1:23:40
  There was. I came back and started working
• 1:23:42
  in fashion, fashion. Before I'd gone out to Ibiza.
• 1:23:47
  I was working for Sears Group and it was Miss Selfridge.
• 1:23:50
  And then it was then I. Went to Ibiza, then I went to
• 1:23:52
  Glasgow and started working for. Cruise.
• 1:23:55
  Clothes shop, I was a buyer, I was a trainee buyer for them.
• 1:23:58
  And then then I got into bars part time job and that part time
• 1:24:02
  job became a full time job. And then I got into wine.
• 1:24:04
  I was just actually talking to someone because I was sitting in
• 1:24:08
  front of a wine fridge and I collect a lot of Chateau Mazar
• 1:24:11
  and I met Serge Hochar, the guy, he's passed away then and it was
• 1:24:15
  in a deli called. And this is again one of these
• 1:24:18
  things that sticks with you for life.
• 1:24:20
  So Chateau Mazar is quite a it's a Lebanese wine, right?
• 1:24:25
  It's it's, it's quite coveted and quite collectible.
• 1:24:28
  And my pre pre current girlfriend also called my
• 1:24:38
  ex-wife when we had we had a house, we had a cellar in
• 1:24:44
  Wandsworth and I'd gone to a tasting in Peckham and Rye, a
• 1:24:49
  little deli that used to be in Glasgow.
• 1:24:52
  I think there might still be one on Buyers Rd.
• 1:24:54
  But anyway, cool little thing. This is back in 959495 and the
• 1:25:00
  guy I was working with said you should come over to this daily.
• 1:25:04
  There's a wine tasting happening and it's a guy from Beirut,
• 1:25:09
  Becca Valley. It's like that sounds great.
• 1:25:12
  Go over and search a car himself and he's doing this tasting with
• 1:25:15
  his wines and he's got stuff in the 1970s, Nineteen 80s.
• 1:25:19
  It's all, it's seven years in oak before it gets released.
• 1:25:22
  It's just fabulous. Anyway, I bought loads of it and
• 1:25:24
  I remember at the time I was buying cases of things like
• 1:25:27
  198319841985 Chateau Mazar for like 8 to 11 lbs a bottle and I
• 1:25:35
  had quite a collect and it was just because I'd met the man.
• 1:25:38
  And he? Travelled to Glasgow and I'm
• 1:25:40
  just like I. I've not really.
• 1:25:42
  I've never met a wine maker in my life before and the first one
• 1:25:45
  I meet and sit and have time with is from Beirut and his wine
• 1:25:49
  is funky but it's brilliant. And so that was me.
• 1:25:52
  Hooked for life, for life through divorce.
• 1:25:57
  My ex we had, our friend had a bigger seller so we had all our
• 1:26:03
  stuff there. I mean, we're talking like like
• 1:26:04
  a 1985 Mazar and I was like £750 a bottle.
• 1:26:07
  Really. Right, You're getting it for
• 1:26:09
  like £12. And my when we got divorced my
• 1:26:13
  ex periodically would just send me a video of her opening and
• 1:26:18
  pouring another bottle because I didn't get to the seller quick
• 1:26:24
  enough to get it all out of her pals house.
• 1:26:27
  So I lost it all. Yeah, but we've I've got a
• 1:26:30
  vertical now from 97. Yeah.
• 1:26:32
  Wow. Right.
• 1:26:33
  What's next for Mark Thompson then?
• 1:26:36
  Well, bought a new house, so this one's on the market.
• 1:26:40
  Taking the summer off got a very, very understanding
• 1:26:43
  breadwinning girlfriend. No, very understanding
• 1:26:46
  girlfriend who's who's basically said don't rush, you've rushed
• 1:26:51
  from one job to the next, just take the summer off.
• 1:26:54
  And it's been a brilliant summer to take off, so very fortunate
• 1:26:58
  position spending time with the dog.
• 1:27:00
  Oh, seen that your Instagram your.
• 1:27:03
  Yeah. And you know, people, the great
• 1:27:05
  thing has been that people have said things like here, do you
• 1:27:08
  want to come along and do that? Yes.
• 1:27:09
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you like inch there?
• 1:27:12
  You don't have to check the diary.
• 1:27:13
  It's just, yeah. Guys are like, yeah, let's do
• 1:27:15
  it. Although now that's been nearly
• 1:27:18
  two months. So you've been doing Stanley.
• 1:27:21
  Did they take, did they, did they take you into the this is
• 1:27:24
  where we need task collection? No, into the little celery.
• 1:27:27
  But yeah, yeah, that's where we need to go back to the
• 1:27:30
  underground. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:27:32
  We can see that you're listening.
• 1:27:34
  Yeah, they're great. Actually, sorry, I do have to
• 1:27:37
  say today I was meaning to a shoehorn.
• 1:27:39
  I said somehow or other it's worked perfectly.
• 1:27:41
  I was, I was in Kirkcaldy and a guy with blue hair walked past
• 1:27:44
  me and I looked at him and went he's got blue hair and he was
• 1:27:47
  wearing an inch there and he jumper right and he's got work
• 1:27:52
  boots on and he's got the work trousers, workwear but he's got
• 1:27:55
  blue hair, which is what instantly look at that guy's
• 1:27:57
  walking about with blue hair. Instead I said do you work at
• 1:27:59
  his journey anyway? I do.
• 1:28:01
  I said I've been there and really I said what do you do?
• 1:28:04
  We chatted away. He worked in the warehouse and
• 1:28:07
  then. He was like a warehouse.
• 1:28:09
  Huge. And he said he's been there.
• 1:28:10
  He's been there almost since we've been there about 7 years
• 1:28:13
  or something like that. And he goes, do you know, it's
• 1:28:14
  amazing to meet somebody that, first of all, knows who we are,
• 1:28:18
  and second of all, has has actually been.
• 1:28:21
  Yeah. So he's there.
• 1:28:22
  But it was fascinating. But what place?
• 1:28:23
  I mean, I drove around it. I got an invite.
• 1:28:26
  Graham Glenn invited me across and he saw I had nothing to do.
• 1:28:29
  I was like, yeah, why don't we go?
• 1:28:31
  I'd love to go round. Yeah.
• 1:28:33
  And I didn't realise I was going to have the experience I did.
• 1:28:36
  Yeah, I certainly I had. I had dived across because I had
• 1:28:39
  to take him out in the morning. I couldn't take them with me.
• 1:28:41
  And I knew it was going to be sort of four or five hours.
• 1:28:43
  I'd been out in a big walk with the dogs.
• 1:28:46
  It's not a lot of dog friendly distillery.
• 1:28:47
  No, no. Well, I've got that photograph
• 1:28:51
  me in the still room, but I think it's illegal.
• 1:28:55
  And I'd driven down and it was, it was such a a juxtaposition.
• 1:29:01
  I stopped at the burger van as you go into the industrial
• 1:29:04
  estate and a burger and I'm standing with polystyrene box
• 1:29:09
  eating this burger thinking actually that's not bad.
• 1:29:11
  Yeah, I'm looking at the board and I'm going.
• 1:29:14
  It's down there. It says it's down there, and I'm
• 1:29:16
  just not feeling hopeful. And then I get to the end of the
• 1:29:20
  industrial estate and I look at the gates and I see the art next
• 1:29:24
  to it. And then you don't see the
• 1:29:25
  distillery. I know you're going to rang the
• 1:29:28
  door thing and are calling the gates open and I drive in and
• 1:29:32
  then you turn right that way. Holy shit.
• 1:29:35
  I. Mean I could have literally have
• 1:29:38
  been teleported from Glenn Rothes straight to space that.
• 1:29:44
  Which wouldn't have been a bad thing, no?
• 1:29:46
  Teleported from. Glenrothes might have got a
• 1:29:48
  better burger as. Well, I remember about two years
• 1:29:51
  ago before we started doing the podcast, I think we agreed your
• 1:29:56
  cast getting the low on bond potentially.
• 1:29:59
  So we were driving past by an office and Graham said, pull
• 1:30:02
  over here, there's a distillery. What do you mean?
• 1:30:04
  There's a discovery And we just drove up to the gates and it was
• 1:30:07
  like, I know you said to me, we basically know nothing about
• 1:30:11
  this place. No one knows anything about it.
• 1:30:14
  It's been open, it's been producing for five years or
• 1:30:16
  something. 9. Yeah, but at the time, but
• 1:30:21
  they've not released anything. It's just it's mystery.
• 1:30:24
  And it was like, here we were at the gates, kind of peeking over,
• 1:30:27
  trying to see what the hell was. Going on, and that's the thing
• 1:30:29
  with it might noise them up for that work.
• 1:30:38
  It encapsulates everything that the whiskey industry is just
• 1:30:41
  now. It's heritage and history
• 1:30:45
  because of the old way that they're doing things, they're
• 1:30:47
  looking at they're they're future proofing, they're using
• 1:30:51
  different grains. They're not different.
• 1:30:53
  They're not what we're used to now, but they have been used
• 1:30:56
  before and they're mastering them.
• 1:30:58
  They're becoming the leaders in what they do.
• 1:31:01
  In Fife, right? Get Fife right.
• 1:31:04
  And, and that was what took my attention.
• 1:31:10
  Well, you know, I went and went, OK, another beautiful
• 1:31:11
  distillery. Of course, if you've got enough
• 1:31:13
  money, you can build a beautiful distillery.
• 1:31:14
  It was when I met Scott and Graham and sat down and I went
• 1:31:17
  this is bonkers good. It's got an engineer.
• 1:31:20
  I know, I know, right? Yeah, just because it is like
• 1:31:24
  under one roof. But look, we can talk.
• 1:31:26
  We can talk. But Mark, we need to know, have
• 1:31:28
  we got a deal? Angus and I will look after this
• 1:31:30
  place while you're up there in Berkshire.
• 1:31:32
  We'll we'll sort this place out for you.
• 1:31:34
  I can see Angus and I really doing quite well in here.
• 1:31:37
  Well, there's, yeah, you'd have to fight over the shower, but
• 1:31:41
  it's in the shower. No, that's not something I want
• 1:31:45
  to have in my mind. When we have a shower, he does,
• 1:31:47
  my shoulders do. You have to condition his back
• 1:31:51
  though it's. His lower thighs.
• 1:31:57
  Well, I'm going to push you for A1 DRAM.
• 1:32:00
  A13 DRAM, One DRAM that you've had since either since you've
• 1:32:04
  been on the pod or or something that sticks out.
• 1:32:06
  Something a drama that'll take you away as a memory of of
• 1:32:10
  Edinburgh. You're not going for far too far
• 1:32:12
  away for too long. Well.
• 1:32:13
  That's a good question. It's a really good question.
• 1:32:16
  There's been a few because I've focused on indie bottlers for
• 1:32:19
  the last two years. So there's been so many cool
• 1:32:22
  little things come through at the Whiskey Show, the whiskey
• 1:32:29
  Fringe, Mike McGinty poured me Torkai Tokaja.
• 1:32:33
  I think you guys refer it as Torkai Cask, 23 year old Royal
• 1:32:40
  Bracha, which as something that wasn't mentally priced and an
• 1:32:46
  incredibly balanced whiskey, I thought was was stunning and it
• 1:32:49
  stuck with me last night. I was very fortunate to try some
• 1:32:54
  interesting bits and pieces from Cameron, That 38 Glenn Ord,
• 1:32:58
  which is exactly as Glenn or should be.
• 1:33:00
  It was waxy, funky, not tropical fruit, but there was sort of
• 1:33:06
  funky apricot in there, like almost nose apricot.
• 1:33:09
  But it was a really good way. Like I know this nose and the
• 1:33:12
  waxiness of that was fab. So that's a very recent memory.
• 1:33:17
  The Braca slightly further back, but I've just, there's been so
• 1:33:23
  many fun little things like Arlington, that's a house.
• 1:33:28
  Tram for us, this trap. There we are, this trap.
• 1:33:30
  It's I've just finished a bottle there, but an in 10 Ross.
• 1:33:35
  'S tail will be a wagon, but it's just it is it is great
• 1:33:41
  it's. Buttery.
• 1:33:42
  It's fresh, it's lively, it's spinity, but it's in there.
• 1:33:46
  It's got good violence. Yeah.
• 1:33:48
  And for the price that you can get it for, I'm like, why would
• 1:33:50
  I not? Last night I tried the spring
• 1:33:52
  bank 5 year old. I will be buying that.
• 1:33:56
  That was grassy, nettily green, funky spring bank to a tee.
• 1:34:02
  And most of the things I go for because I've obviously when I
• 1:34:06
  started in the industry, there was there were finishes, but
• 1:34:09
  this there wasn't this plethora. It was 6 whiskeys without finish
• 1:34:14
  available in the UK. It was like 23 when I left.
• 1:34:18
  Yeah. Well, absolutely.
• 1:34:21
  My basis of what whiskey is is if you're going to give me a
• 1:34:24
  tomat, and I already, it's like wine.
• 1:34:26
  I already know what I expect out of that bottle.
• 1:34:29
  So don't get too funky and don't get too wild with it.
• 1:34:33
  Yeah. And if it does, you've lost me.
• 1:34:35
  It's a waste of time. And I don't know who you're
• 1:34:37
  actually aiming at for a customer, but if you that good
• 1:34:40
  money is fabulous. That tomato is brilliant.
• 1:34:43
  That 18 it is a really nice DRAM.
• 1:34:47
  Smooth and easy, go ahead. I would potentially go back to
• 1:34:51
  that film from the distillery because that's just screaming
• 1:34:56
  and shouting to Matt and to me, yeah.
• 1:34:57
  Yeah. Because this is a bit more
• 1:34:59
  muted, it's a bit richer. I can see who it appeals to.
• 1:35:02
  Am I disappointed? No, no, I'm not disappointed.
• 1:35:07
  It's a great whiskey. Is it?
• 1:35:10
  If you put that in a glass and that in a glass would identify
• 1:35:12
  them as Tomatton, 100% yes. On the six year, on the six year
• 1:35:16
  old, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Well, how can, how can we sell
• 1:35:20
  this for you? So what are people?
• 1:35:21
  If anyone's looking at this kitchen on our on our YouTube,
• 1:35:25
  we're going to tell you what I like about that.
• 1:35:27
  Just jump on my Instagram single malt mark.
• 1:35:29
  Yeah, which since I put the dogs up with him with his sock.
• 1:35:33
  Oh yeah, the video in the in the bun.
• 1:35:35
  That's funny. I actually have a Forbes
• 1:35:37
  journalist with me and we're wild swimming and that was the
• 1:35:40
  whole point. We've got a bottle of Scapa 16.
• 1:35:42
  The new Scapa, Yeah, and he was doing a piece to camera and
• 1:35:46
  that's when I've turned the camera around and grab Angus
• 1:35:48
  with my sock and three 3/4 of 1,000,000 views.
• 1:35:53
  Oh, really, Dog Instagram, That's where.
• 1:35:56
  That's where. That's where.
• 1:35:57
  You look, yeah, that's why I've posted lots on the dog recently.
• 1:36:01
  But if you look at the followers that I've gained since that, I
• 1:36:05
  think I might change my handle to single mum Mark.
• 1:36:07
  Yeah, because it's lots of, there's a certain time, not with
• 1:36:16
  lots of rescue hounds, Yeah, either widowed or divorced that
• 1:36:19
  seem to have latched on to this. I can see it now that I think, I
• 1:36:23
  think, I mean, we've gone ladies wear underwear.
• 1:36:26
  We've gone Kathy Mambo and Ibiza.
• 1:36:28
  We've gone whiskey brand ambassador.
• 1:36:31
  I could see you with like. Only grands, no.
• 1:36:34
  A pedigree, Pedigree jump. I am.
• 1:36:38
  I'm Mark Thompson and I only feed my dogs socks.
• 1:36:42
  Very Grisha. Fuck, if there's anybody
• 1:36:43
  listening it will because you know how much they cost me a
• 1:36:45
  feeding. Sponsorship is available.
• 1:36:48
  Listen Mark, thank you so much. It's been his drams and Mark
• 1:36:50
  Thompson, absolutely fantastic. All the very, very best.
• 1:36:53
  And like I say, thank you so much for everyone who listens
• 1:36:55
  gets involved. WSP is the WSP 15.
• 1:36:59
  That's the 50% discount code you're going to get with Ian
• 1:37:01
  MacLeod Distillers. If you book on to the Rosebank
• 1:37:03
  Distillery, give us a like, give us a follow.
• 1:37:06
  Keep passing the pod. Please, please, please subscribe
• 1:37:08
  to the YouTube channel. That's what we're looking for.
• 1:37:10
  Give us a follow on whatever you listen on.
• 1:37:12
  Mark, thank you so much for having us.
• 1:37:13
  It's great. Lovely, lovely.
• 1:37:14
  Thanks. Roam around.
• 1:37:16
  We've still got upstairs today, but cheers guys, cheers.