Latest / Whisky Stories Podcast / Indy Bottler Spotlight: Gordon & MacPhail - A wild night in Diggers

Transcript

Indy Bottler Spotlight: Gordon & MacPhail - A wild night in Diggers · Whisky Stories Podcast

• 0:00
  But we've all got drums in front of us.
• 0:02
  Are we all ready to rock'n'roll? I guess you know what to do.
• 0:05
  Clap us in. Welcome to the Whiskey Stories
• 0:10
  podcast. It's.
• 0:14
  The. Whiskey story.
• 0:15
  It's the. Whiskey Stories podcast.
• 0:17
  You got a little. When I when I when I was a young
• 0:19
  lad. Because what else is when?
• 0:21
  Sorry, I've got. Quite good knowledge.
• 0:23
  Sorry, sorry. Well, I mean, the war
• 0:28
  technically was going on. Definitely, Yeah.
• 0:34
  It's outrageous. That is good, though.
• 0:36
  That is good. And it was fast.
• 0:39
  Welcome along to the Whiskey Stories podcast, Indy Boss Boy
• 0:42
  with Gordon McPhail. There we go.
• 0:49
  I guess we've done it again. Yeah, here we are, another
• 0:52
  Friday night packed house and the diggers.
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  We've got 5 and then independent bottler.
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  An independent bottler, yes. We are joined by Fraser Soon as
• 1:01
  Friend of the Pod, Pal of the Pod.
• 1:04
  Hold your mic, sorry. Absolutely.
• 1:05
  Yeah, it's a funny. You've been on the podcast two
• 1:10
  or three. This is.
• 1:10
  Is this your? 3rd 3rd appearance.
• 1:12
  Third. The first.
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  Third. Appearance.
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  First Professional capacity. Yes, yes.
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  Appearance. I remember the first time you
• 1:18
  were on, you said. Long time listener.
• 1:21
  Our first time caller, I thought.
• 1:22
  You were going to say something else, That's OK.
• 1:26
  But look, it's, it's great to have you back here.
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  We've, you know, we've followed your journey as you know, just a
• 1:31
  barman at the Scotch Balmoral to now becoming What's your
• 1:35
  official title with Gordon Macphail?
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  I am the area sales executive for Southern Scotland.
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  Wasn't good enough to get the whole of Scotland.
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  Just got the the little bit at the bottom which is most of the
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  population. Brilliant.
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  Yeah. Good.
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  Yeah, not too bad from just pouring a couple of jams to old
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  pal Graham. That's exactly it, you know, and
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  we've put you under a little bit of pressure tonight.
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  You know, we wanted to make sure I, I was, I've been messaging
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  you. It's been, I've been telling you
• 1:59
  about how many people have bought tickets.
• 2:01
  I've been telling you who's all coming.
• 2:02
  And I've been sort of saying, listen, we're needing some good
• 2:04
  juice on this, like on this on this podcast.
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  And I guess we were lucky enough in July to be up at, up at
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  Gordon Macphail. We visited with Stephen Rankin.
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  That's right, Director of Prestige.
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  We were at their bottle shop in Elgin, Yeah, which is the kind
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  of Johnsons of Elgin. But yeah, absolutely Stephen
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  Rankin, member of the family because it is a family business.
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  Indeed, poor generation. Very proud of the fact it is as
• 2:33
  well. Yeah, we are very, very.
• 2:35
  Proud. But most importantly guys, we've
• 2:36
  got drums in front of us. Well, let's get stuck in what we
• 2:40
  are going from left to right this evening.
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  I say that left to right. We've got 2 glasses in front of
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  us. OK, so you've got a 5050 chance
• 2:48
  of getting that right. I actually will say the first
• 2:50
  time that we did an indie bottle or spotlight, you know, 5
• 2:54
  minutes into the the episode, 5 minutes into the recording, we
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  said you were going from left to right to right and someone put
• 2:59
  their hand up and then said who's left?
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  So we're going from your left tonight, this evening.
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  You've got some bought water in front of you and things like
• 3:07
  that. But Fraser lead us into the drum
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  that we've got now, but also sponge of our cheers.
• 3:11
  Yeah. Yeah, I think Graham asked right
• 3:16
  to start who's never been to a tasting like this before.
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  But is there anyone who's not been to actual tasting before?
• 3:22
  So I don't know if you're just referring to whiskey stories.
• 3:24
  Those two in the corner are going to be absolutely nuisance.
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  But for people listen to this Ross Bar and Cameron, you
• 3:30
  sitting in the naughty corner already?
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  I've just I've just chucked their hands up.
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  So they've never been a tasting before?
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  Everyone in the room has been to whiskey tasting.
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  They're comfortable with knowing how to drink whiskey.
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  Yeah. All right.
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  Good, because I've done tastings before.
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  We get on over then and they say I've never had whiskey before
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  and how much. Someone try to eat a spoon or
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  something, yeah. Yeah, well, we've got fruit
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  beside the fruit. You brought someone to the last
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  one here at Diggers who'd never had been at whiskey tasting
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  before, and she's never come back, which means that we must
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  have done we must have done a great job, a great job there.
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  I. Mean, I mean, there was quite a
• 4:00
  bit of pressure applied. But she did eventually say, yes,
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  I like whiskey. Yeah, I am a convert.
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  Yeah, we found one there. So that's yeah.
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  Good. Right.
• 4:07
  Well, we'll just get tucked into some drams then, won't we?
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  Yes, exactly. Right.
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  OK. The first one we'll be going
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  with is on the left. I am also nicely presented in
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  front of my my model here and to the left as well.
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  So when you come up at the end or at any point, you want to
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  have a look, that's how you understand what you're having.
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  But the first one we're going to start with is a Glenn Burgie, 25
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  years old, which is part of our distillery labels range.
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  Now, I guess I think I need to go a bit into the actual back
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  story of GNM before I can just start saying it's part of this
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  range, that range, because nobody will have a hoop.
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  What I'm on about, GNM Angus kindly touched upon.
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  We are 4 generations. We are family owned, have been
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  since 1915. So we've been on the go since
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  1895 and started off with two gentlemen, James Gordon and John
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  Macphail and they kindly took in another man called John
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  Urquhart. And Urquhart name is, is very
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  well revered within our family tree as that's what you see in
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  the generations passing down. John joined them in 1895 as a
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  young apprentice in the South St. shop up in Elgin.
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  So that's where we are based and where we are still based.
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  So you have a lot of, I thought Cameron was asking a question
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  there first. Yeah, nice to see you.
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  Yeah, a lot of of bottlers or blenders of that generation that
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  had their own shops, Johnny Walker, Chevis Brothers,
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  etcetera, all had their own High Street shop, but no longer do we
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  still have that. So that shop from 1895 we still
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  have. I'm just kind of chatting to the
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  friend in the corner. You're in a temporary shop as
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  it's currently under renovation so due to be back up and running
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  hopefully soon. Temporary shop, I think it's
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  important to point out like I remember when when we were when
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  we were planning this Stephen Rankin episode, I guess.
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  Yeah. And he sort of said I'll get you
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  into our temporary shop. It's at the Johnsons of Elgin
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  Mill. And you're going OK.
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  And you just don't know when someone says temporary shop.
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  What what are you expecting? You know, are you, are we
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  putting a cabin in the back or is that, you know, you just
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  don't know. But when you turn up there,
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  it's. You wouldn't know it was.
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  Temporary. No, no, it was.
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  It was well stocked. And also even the fact that like
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  the interior within the within the building, you know, it's
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  there's that's, I mean, when you say temporary, I think it's a
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  lowercase T How long have you guys been in there so far?
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  That one only a couple months really.
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  So yeah, we. Because, I mean, they had got
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  one, though the pavement had all been done.
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  I mean, they had a boardroom in there.
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  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's exactly.
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  What can we place that? Yeah.
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  So when renovations started on the South St. shop, we actually
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  moved to another one, the Jail Centre on the High Street and
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  that was perhaps not as lavish. It was almost a temporary move
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  because it was meant to be very short term, right.
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  As you find with very old buildings, there's often a lot
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  of maintenance that you don't expect to come up.
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  And what is a six nine month project becomes a 15 becomes two
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  years becomes three years. So we decided to move quite
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  recently to the new location and just because when you are doing
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  these tastings and with Gordon Macphail, we're we're very, very
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  privileged to have lots of extensive older archived closed
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  distilleries and you know, people coming up doing tastings
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  for thousands of pounds and you want to replicate that and the
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  luxury experience of having a. Nice.
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  And this is what we've got today.
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  And this is where we'll. Start.
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  What have we got? What have we got?
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  Yeah, so 25 year old Glenn Burgate, this is not a single
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  cask. I thought I would start off
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  everyone a bit lower on percentage and we are going to
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  be going through four single casks.
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  So there's a lot of alcohol to be playing around with tonight.
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  This one is a VAT in. And so you're looking at a
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  couple 100 bottles at a time. Couple cast being batted
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  together exclusively of bourbon casks.
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  And so a combination between bourbon barrels, American Hawks
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  heads, different sizes going on there, but ultimately purely
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  Glenn Burgie. There'll be some people in the
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  room that are familiar with Glenn.
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  Burgie. Anyone?
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  Like Glenn Burgie? Yeah, yeah, like a Glen Burgie.
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  Absolutely. There's a Facebook page.
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  What about what about Glen Burgie?
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  Isn't it? That's that's, that's the Burgie
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  nights. That's Giri, that's Glen Giri
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  Giri Giri nights. I get them always.
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  I always get them. Confused.
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  Yeah. I've not heard about that one.
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  But what we think, what's our thoughts on this one so far
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  guys? What we what we're thinking
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  enjoying it first drive of the night nice and sweet, isn't it?
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  So tell us about the Rangers, Fraser, because The thing is one
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  of the things about you're talking about with Gordon
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  Macphail is that number one, you can identify from the label, but
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  you can also identify from the bottle size and what have you.
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  There's a large, a large amount of different areas because
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  people might you talked about the prestige element and of
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  course you've been very good to us and bringing some very nice
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  whiskey. But there's also just there is
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  an entry market level element to Gordon Macphail as well and it
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  goes all the way through. So where do we just now on this
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  scale? We're about two levels in.
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  So the very bottom we have a range called the discovery
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  range, which is unbelievable value, great product, really,
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  really, really good juice. It's what we describe as an
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  introduction to the portfolio. So there are often younger
• 9:07
  years. There's there's two distilleries
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  in bourbon free and Sherry 2IN Pete and they're more focusing
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  on cask maturation rather than the distilleries themselves.
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  Yeah, so in those cases are a case of this is a really good
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  example of 12 year old man bourbon.
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  That's a good example of how bourbon tasks affect flavor
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  rather than how the tomatoes coming through.
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  They are. Yeah, they're about £45 a
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  bottle. Like really delicious.
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  There's also a Clea 13 that I can see but camera nodding in
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  the corner and farm farm favorite of a lot of people who
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  try that entire range. Is that the Milton Duff 11?
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  I think I've had the Milton. Milton Duff, 11 in Cherry.
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  Absolutely. So it's a really diverse range.
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  Again, looking at the stories that aren't necessarily your
• 9:48
  your run-of-the-mill. And they're quite fun.
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  But obviously even the Whiskey Stories podcast, I've got to
• 9:52
  start a step above that. Yeah.
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  And otherwise, Graham would never.
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  Well, we've got people who have travelled.
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  I mean, we've got people launching.
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  Sandra Gladeja, get my mind? A pause.
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  They're bad for their second their second indie bottler
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  Spotlight and where's it you've travelled all the way up from
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  guys that beautiful village? About near West.
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  Beach near Kingsland, near Kingsland, down South by 5.
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  Five and five and a bit hours it took you to get up here.
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  Isn't it well worth it? Well worth it.
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  There you go. Well, around trap, there you go.
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  So, so yeah, crazy. You're right.
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  We put you under a little bit of pressure when you were selecting
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  this this line up, but you know, when it isn't until you you'll
• 10:32
  think about the family history and what Gordon Macphail have
• 10:35
  have you know, they've been in the industry for so long and you
• 10:38
  look at the the whiskey that they we the Stephen Rankin
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  episode when he talked about the relationships that have been set
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  up for what is it 5 generations, 4 generations, 4 generations, 4
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  generations of family connections.
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  And it's almost like we kind of. It's 4 generations but everyone
• 10:54
  lives quite long so it. Goes back.
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  It's not like, yeah. It's not like yeah, I.
• 10:59
  Think the average. No one got pregnant at 16 in the
• 11:02
  Arkat family. I think the average career spans
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  about 63 years in the Arkat family.
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  But we, we, we kind of came out of that interview with Stephen
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  Rankin and we were a bit like, wow.
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  And the one thing that was a real wow for me was like the
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  knowledge that he had on they were able to place a distillery
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  and a person at that distillery. And they were able to say, and I
• 11:26
  remember my grandfather, he used to deal with so and so, so and
• 11:29
  so at the Glenn Grant distillery.
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  And he would, they would say, and we kind of half jokingly
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  talked about, you know, the royal family used to have, they
• 11:39
  would have to learn all the houses and all the clans and all
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  the tartans and all the names. And so they would be able to say
• 11:46
  if they ever came across Mr. McLeish or whoever it was, and
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  we would say, Oh yes, I know you're from this place and your
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  great grandfather was this person.
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  That's what it felt like when you're speaking to Stephen
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  Rankin, who will be the of that generation of I.
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  Think you're very much on a good point.
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  And Gordon Macfill, we're very well revered within the
• 12:04
  independent bottle inside and and and foreign markets.
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  A lot of people recognise us, but we're not a huge brand.
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  We're not a Glenfiddich, we're not a Glenn Levitt, we're not a
• 12:14
  McAllen, We're not of that scale.
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  So when we are buying spirit, and it's very important we have
• 12:21
  those relationships because you go to a distillery, you can
• 12:25
  guarantee there's a bigger dog that's offering bigger money.
• 12:28
  But because we've been doing it for years and years and years,
• 12:30
  but we're able to build that trust that they have in US.
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  You know, a key point to highlight as well, we don't buy
• 12:38
  aged stock ever. We only ever buy new mixed
• 12:42
  spirit and so everything that we ever bottle has been looked
• 12:45
  after by us for its entire life. And in your own wood as well.
• 12:49
  And our own wood as well. Yeah.
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  So essentially it gets made at the distillery.
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  We've run it over to our warehouse and and to wood of our
• 12:56
  specification. And then when our operations.
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  So at the moment, Stuart Arcker, again, another family member
• 13:01
  when he decides, Yep, that's good, we then decide to bottle
• 13:04
  it. And so there's a real focus on
• 13:08
  quality. And I think Steven touched on it
• 13:10
  as well and standing by the spirit, you do have a lot of of
• 13:15
  bottlers now and are very focused on on red wine or
• 13:18
  tequila and they're being different and they're being a
• 13:20
  bit unusual perhaps trying to break the mold.
• 13:24
  I guess you could say what I love most about Gordon Macphail
• 13:29
  is we're not breaking the mold. We're very much in the mold.
• 13:33
  But there's every bottler is trying to be outside of that.
• 13:37
  And we are, we're so traditionally note, this is the
• 13:40
  spirit of this distillery. This is how it should be tasting
• 13:43
  and this is how people should be tasting it.
• 13:46
  And yeah, it's quite rare. We're very lucky to have 25 year
• 13:49
  old Glenn Burgie is not something you'll just see on a
• 13:52
  shelf. If you do see them now, they'll
• 13:55
  be in a crazy cast finish from somebody.
• 13:58
  So to try that distillate as it's pure form, super fruity,
• 14:01
  super fresh, quite playful and fun, you know it's a real.
• 14:06
  And I think that's very interesting when you know,
• 14:09
  you're talking about, you know, you get lumped in as an
• 14:11
  independent bottler with all sorts of people doing all sorts
• 14:14
  of different things. But what you're doing and the
• 14:17
  way you're doing it, like you said, buying new make spirit
• 14:20
  only, you know, you're not buying casks at 11 years old and
• 14:23
  finishing them for six months and something else.
• 14:26
  But you're you're, you're doing it the way you've always done
• 14:29
  it, which is buying new. Make spirit in your own casks.
• 14:34
  But then on the actress of that, yeah, well, Gordon Macphail
• 14:37
  don't have to battle for shelf space.
• 14:40
  And I think it's from the very first indie bottler Spotlight
• 14:42
  that we've done with Woody and Megan Woodrow's Edinburgh and
• 14:46
  stuff. And I asked Woody.
• 14:47
  And that's what's great about when you get Woody tan on his,
• 14:50
  he's very much. He'll just say it as it is.
• 14:53
  I think you joked the other beat there about Woody said you're
• 14:56
  only as good as your worst release, that he actually
• 14:58
  published his picture of what he thought his worst ever release
• 15:02
  was. You know, that's very, you know,
• 15:05
  but like when you speak to people and you ask them, do you
• 15:09
  feel pressurized as an indie bottler to do something
• 15:13
  different? Because do you think that the
• 15:15
  market and it'd be interesting to know as a show of hands,
• 15:18
  would you pick a drum that was just a refill bourbon cask, OK,
• 15:24
  15 years refill bourbon cast. Or would you rather go for a 15
• 15:28
  year that's been 10 years in a refill bourbon but finished in
• 15:32
  something a bit more jazzier section because.
• 15:36
  If you've got. 130 years, yeah, versus.
• 15:40
  The freight and drops in each demand, yeah, they're doing very
• 15:42
  different. Things exactly.
• 15:44
  And I think that's so. You you buying what you want to
• 15:47
  buy if you want to get a traditional risk.
• 15:55
  And that's it. And I think that that's what
• 15:56
  Fraser, to go back to your point, Fraser, is the fact that
• 15:58
  like Gordon Macphail can stand back and say, no, we've been
• 16:02
  doing this for this amount of time.
• 16:04
  We don't need to play around with things.
• 16:06
  We just know that if you want to taste what Glenburg at 25 year
• 16:09
  old taste like that's been in, is that a refill or a first
• 16:11
  field? You know, it's a combination of
• 16:14
  but then and but then the other thing is, and I think it was
• 16:17
  quite frustrating and Angus, when we spoke to Stephen Rankin
• 16:20
  was after the cameras had been switched off, he kept going.
• 16:24
  And I'm going. To wish I wish you hadn't done.
• 16:28
  I wish you'd said all this stuff on the pod.
• 16:30
  But he talked to us about even distilleries, saying that they
• 16:34
  got even the the empty casks that Gordon Macphail would
• 16:37
  sometimes send a distillery to get filled up.
• 16:39
  What was it he was saying about them?
• 16:41
  So I think, I think his story was that when the cast came in
• 16:45
  or, you know, certain people that had worked at certain
• 16:48
  distilleries said, I always love when the Gordon Macphail cast
• 16:51
  come in. And you can always tell when
• 16:52
  it's the Gordon Macphail cast because they're always
• 16:56
  absolutely Immaculate. The top, top, top class words,
• 17:00
  the quality of the word, the quality of the cast is always
• 17:03
  absolutely second to none. And, and sometimes you've got
• 17:06
  kind of some quite knackered cast next to it and you can tell
• 17:10
  quite clearly. Yeah, yeah.
• 17:12
  And there's a challenge that independent bottlers across the
• 17:16
  board, whether they've been going for a few years or whether
• 17:19
  you've been going for 1525 years, whatever the challenge is
• 17:22
  always, I think James Zorab talked about it.
• 17:24
  He said you can take, you can take good liquid, good spirit
• 17:29
  and sticking it in knackered wood doesn't make any, it could
• 17:32
  ruin it. Yeah.
• 17:33
  And equally, you know, you could just by putting all case, but in
• 17:37
  a decent wood, it's the balance that you have to have.
• 17:40
  And I think if, but like you're saying, Gordon McPhail are in
• 17:42
  complete control of that. Yeah.
• 17:44
  I mean, if you take, if you take really good spirit, no, no
• 17:47
  distillery design desires to make bad spirit or to deviate
• 17:50
  from their consistency is what they're looking from.
• 17:53
  So the issue is when they're putting it into the casks, not
• 17:55
  when they're making the spirit. If you put good spirit into good
• 17:59
  wood, you're going to get good whiskey.
• 18:01
  Yeah. And that's the.
• 18:03
  Cruise of it and I think we can all agree tram number one.
• 18:06
  Yeah, crack away to start the night, isn't it?
• 18:07
  25 year old Glenn Burgate Fraser.
• 18:09
  Well done so far. How's he getting on so far?
• 18:13
  He was very nervous earlier. Listen up.
• 18:16
  Hey, all right, what's our second drum?
• 18:19
  Let's let's have a wee go at our second drum here.
• 18:20
  Yeah, OK. We're going to be moving across
• 18:22
  to some cash strength whiskey now.
• 18:24
  So we're moving across to our Connoisseurs Choice range.
• 18:27
  Quick little timeline. So the distillery labels have
• 18:30
  been on the goal since about the 1930s.
• 18:32
  So when you had John Urquhart, the first generation of the
• 18:36
  Urquhart family, the Gordon Macphail lineage, he introduced
• 18:40
  his son, Mr. George George Urquhart, who joined the company
• 18:43
  in 1933. Around about this time they
• 18:46
  released the distillery labels where single malt wasn't a
• 18:51
  popular brand. That was all the blended
• 18:53
  whiskeys. So they decided to go to
• 18:56
  distilleries and say, well, we will export spirit you've sold
• 19:00
  to us that we've matured and we've bottled to Europe,
• 19:03
  America, etcetera. You let us put your labels in
• 19:07
  the bottle and Distillery said, well what that's free market and
• 19:10
  free publicity. Yeah, absolutely.
• 19:12
  And also they trusted that level of quality that our care and our
• 19:18
  kind of bottling of the spirit was as good as what they would
• 19:20
  as an official release. So yeah, this is almost a 100
• 19:25
  year old brand for distillery labels.
• 19:27
  I've been around for a long long.
• 19:28
  Time and on the back of the label, it goes into a lot of
• 19:31
  what we were talking about. I think it says word for word.
• 19:34
  It's testament to the relationships that Gordon
• 19:36
  Macphail built up. And I think the point I wanted
• 19:39
  to make is that the reason Gordon Macphail for me seems so
• 19:42
  unique is you couldn't create another Gordon Macphail unless
• 19:45
  you had a spare 100 years because to build up the
• 19:47
  relationships, the stock, yeah, etcetera, you couldn't do it.
• 19:51
  It's what we're drinking here then.
• 19:54
  Yeah, DRAM #2. Yeah, so #2 as a Craig Elochy,
• 20:01
  16 years old and a refill American Hogs Head sitting at
• 20:05
  Castrim 60.1%. So it's a big, big DRAM.
• 20:11
  Craig Elochy is a very well recognized brand now in the last
• 20:15
  sort of decade I would say. So since about what 2014 when
• 20:20
  they started to do their. They're weird numbers of that
• 20:23
  1317, yeah, 23 year old, they didn't really have a big
• 20:28
  presence as a brand at all. So not one that most people
• 20:31
  seen. Very much so associated with
• 20:33
  worm tubs at Craigelecky. So for people that understand
• 20:37
  that using a very traditional form of condenser where you are
• 20:42
  reducing copper contact and fury, creating more texture
• 20:46
  within your spirit can also increase sulfur tones.
• 20:51
  So you sometimes get a kind of match stick going on there, but
• 20:55
  often matured in Sherry when it comes from Craig Ellicott.
• 20:58
  So that's one exclusively single cast refill American Hawks head
• 21:02
  really just about their character and style.
• 21:05
  I've got in the nose that was surprisingly not as meaty as you
• 21:08
  would think. It's quite citrusy.
• 21:09
  Because this is what this is almost.
• 21:11
  It's almost. These two things are almost
• 21:13
  exclusive to each other. Where people mentioned Craig
• 21:16
  Elecky. People say meaty.
• 21:18
  Yeah, yeah. And but on the nose, you know, I
• 21:24
  would never have got that. I just got citrus and fruit and
• 21:28
  that kind of, you know, really fresh notes.
• 21:31
  Yeah, totally agree. Totally agree.
• 21:33
  So what's a bottle in this setting?
• 21:34
  What's a bottle of the 1st 2:00? Then what would we look at?
• 21:38
  Retail pricing. So the Burgue is on the moric
• 21:40
  pricier side. So the Burgue is about 220 LB a
• 21:42
  bottle, but it's for 25 year olds actually like we're at a
• 21:47
  point in the market just now it's the market is very
• 21:50
  saturated. So for selling bottles that are
• 21:52
  of a more premium standard, it's very, very difficult, not just
• 21:56
  for independent bottlers, but for every distillery out there.
• 22:01
  You look at Diagio to Shadow Cam in the corner.
• 22:04
  Tanina just closed production when FedEx have half.
• 22:07
  There. Yeah, you're.
• 22:18
  I think we should categorically say that Cameron had nothing to
• 22:20
  do with. Cam went up to TNA echo a
• 22:23
  padlock, is that what you're saying?
• 22:25
  I think we can say definitely didn't.
• 22:28
  But yeah, you're my fault. Yeah.
• 22:31
  Cheers. Mash filter for sale mash.
• 22:36
  But yeah, you are seeing that premium side is not shifting as
• 22:40
  quickly as it perhaps used to. So a lot of brands from from a
• 22:46
  consumer's perspective, I'd love to say yes.
• 22:49
  I think the brands that are leading the way your, your
• 22:51
  Mcallen's and Leavitts etcetera, they're still getting worldwide
• 22:54
  success. So they probably have little
• 22:58
  interest in reducing price, but perhaps bringing out more of
• 23:01
  younger age. It's a, it's an interesting, in
• 23:04
  fact, it ties in a little bit. It's a little bit of a detailed,
• 23:07
  but I have it written down in my notes about something to put in
• 23:11
  the either the newsletter or the blog or anything like that is
• 23:13
  volume versus value. And I've read a couple of
• 23:16
  articles recently about what's happening in the, in the, in the
• 23:19
  whiskey industry, You know, the, the sad news about Rosebank, you
• 23:23
  know, paying people off and what have you.
• 23:25
  And then there's also, in fact, I think it is the McAllen and
• 23:30
  Glenn Rothes distilleries are actually looking at balloting
• 23:33
  for strikeout industrial action because they're, they're,
• 23:36
  they're changes, the changes to their structure and what have
• 23:39
  happened. So there's the, the, you know,
• 23:41
  the, the unions have had to get involved in that situation
• 23:45
  there. And it does raise this question
• 23:47
  about where is the whiskey industry going?
• 23:48
  We've seen Edrington offloading your famous grouse to William
• 23:54
  Grant and Sons. You're still seeing companies
• 23:57
  like Glenn Modern J, William Grant and Sons.
• 23:59
  I think Lefroy just recently launched a big advertising
• 24:02
  campaign with a Hollywood superstar and you know, Glenn
• 24:05
  Modern J with Indiana Jones, Harrison Ford, Ford.
• 24:09
  And then you've got William Grant and Sons, Johnny.
• 24:11
  Walker with Sabrina. Yeah, exactly.
• 24:13
  Yeah. So they're they're really.
• 24:17
  Great, great Graham, seeing if we can get her on the pod.
• 24:19
  Yeah, but they're really, but they're really pushing this
• 24:22
  element of they're pushing into the luxury area, aren't they?
• 24:25
  And you look at even like William Grant and Sons with the
• 24:27
  Formula One. Yeah.
• 24:29
  And you look at that. But then at the same time,
• 24:31
  you've got to ask the question. It's like we've we talked.
• 24:34
  We were at a tasting on Tuesday night and there was a lot of
• 24:36
  discussion about what does the whiskey industry stand on?
• 24:40
  Does the whiskey industry stand on bulk volume or does it stand
• 24:43
  on the value of, of what people buy?
• 24:46
  And it's, it's a really difficult one to to see because
• 24:48
  people will tell you the green shoots 2024 has actually shown
• 24:53
  that volume has is it volume has risen in the import market,
• 24:58
  which tells you that people around the world are drinking
• 25:00
  Scotch whiskey or Scotch whiskey is in drinks that people are
• 25:04
  drinking depending on if they're going into different blends or
• 25:06
  what have you. But is that keeping the lights
• 25:09
  on for all these places, or is it making it difficult?
• 25:11
  I mean, I think the issue just now is not, it's not people not
• 25:15
  drinking whiskey as people refusing to spend above what
• 25:19
  they're comfortable spending. Coming out of COVID.
• 25:22
  There was a couple of years where it just, it was a false
• 25:25
  peak, if you will. Everyone was buying whatever
• 25:28
  they could and then going on auctions and paying 2-3 times as
• 25:31
  much as they should be paying. And that's just kind of popped.
• 25:35
  That's came back down. If you look at the levels this
• 25:39
  year are actually the same as they were before COVID.
• 25:43
  So we've not actually regressed, if you will, but we've came down
• 25:48
  from that, that kind of false high that we were at.
• 25:51
  So it feels really tough for a lot of companies because you're
• 25:53
  you're looking at it and you're saying, wow, we're doing so much
• 25:55
  worse than last year. When you put on a 10 year
• 25:57
  spectrum, it goes up and everyone says it is very
• 26:01
  cyclical. In the whiskey industry it does
• 26:04
  swims and roundabouts. And you've seen.
• 26:06
  Yourself, it will come back. We we saw you at Loman and Clyde
• 26:08
  Whiskey Festival there at the weekend last weekend.
• 26:11
  And you're you're doing a lot of these.
• 26:13
  We've seen you at Whiskey Fringe as well.
• 26:16
  Yeah. You're speaking to the whiskey
• 26:18
  drinkers. Yeah, right.
• 26:19
  That's that's your job. You're speaking to the whiskey
• 26:21
  drinkers. Encourage them the phrase.
• 26:23
  What was that? It was that pieces of liquid and
• 26:27
  mouths and that's my quote. Yes, instead of liquid tulips,
• 26:32
  which is the wanky marketing way of saying things that brands
• 26:35
  look like to go for. But the the thing about it is
• 26:38
  your speech. So what do, what do you see as a
• 26:41
  general perception of Gordon Macphail?
• 26:43
  Do people see it as well? If that's that brand where I
• 26:46
  know fine well I'm going to be dropping a good few £100 if I
• 26:49
  want a decent bottle. But at the same time, are they
• 26:51
  aware of the other ranges that you say?
• 26:53
  Well actually you can buy a you can buy a half decent Khalila or
• 26:55
  Vet or not 1/2 decent Khalila for £45 then and it goes up and
• 26:59
  up and up. Genuinely, from what I've
• 27:03
  experienced, so I've always known about CNN from my whiskey
• 27:06
  drinking career, but you get a lot of people at these festivals
• 27:10
  and events and they'll come up to you and they'll say, Oh my
• 27:13
  God, I love Gordon Macphail. I bought a bottle 20 years ago
• 27:17
  that I keep in the cupboard. And you're, you kind of go like,
• 27:21
  right, so you've got a bottle, you've kept it, it's a Port
• 27:23
  Ellen or it's a Baroda. And you know, it kind of early
• 27:26
  2000s, late 90s, we were bottling some ridiculous liquid
• 27:29
  for unbelievable pricing. You know, it was stuff that was
• 27:33
  designed to be opened and drank, came in horrendous packaging,
• 27:36
  screw caps, kind of cardboard boxes.
• 27:39
  But it was because it wasn't about the quality of, of the
• 27:42
  packaging. It was the quality of the
• 27:43
  product. But a lot of people were, were
• 27:45
  just keeping them. And you still have people that
• 27:48
  will come up to your festivals and they're interested in
• 27:51
  buying. But it's actually amazing how
• 27:52
  many people, newer generation or younger generation haven't heard
• 27:56
  of Gordon Mcphill. They don't know who they are.
• 27:59
  So you speak to anyone at festivals that are under 30 and
• 28:04
  they're like, all right, government fails.
• 28:06
  So is that a distillery? And they're like, no, no, we're
• 28:10
  quite a well recognized independent bottler.
• 28:12
  And it's an interesting feat because there is a there's an
• 28:16
  image behind you and a lot of people know and respect.
• 28:20
  But there has been that falsification of, of not having
• 28:24
  enough people that are showing that.
• 28:25
  That's why I've came in. And this is this is where
• 28:27
  perceptions are so important in the whiskey industry as well.
• 28:30
  Yeah. But to bring bring it back to
• 28:33
  what we're drinking. You were talking about the
• 28:34
  labels then. So, yeah, when you first spoke
• 28:37
  about this early labels, you said we're probably 2 up.
• 28:40
  We're now on Connaissance Choice, which is.
• 28:42
  One up. Next step after.
• 28:44
  That yeah. So this is Connaissance choices.
• 28:48
  Everything cast strength in the Connois choice.
• 28:50
  It is now, yeah. So a connoisseur choice as a
• 28:53
  brand's been around. So when did that start?
• 28:55
  Because we've seen kind of, I mean, we've been lucky enough to
• 28:58
  see the odd kind of very 1970s bottled label, the kind of
• 29:03
  almost kind of kind of, they're usually kind of brown and pink
• 29:06
  or something. So yeah, the connoisseur's
• 29:10
  choice. Been around for a long time.
• 29:12
  Yeah, 1968. So that's the kind of the
• 29:15
  brainchild of George Urquhart, and that's recognized as his
• 29:19
  pioneering moment where it was seen as being pretty crazy at
• 29:24
  the time. Yeah, because nobody drank cast
• 29:26
  strength, Westgate. Well, nobody was really drinking
• 29:29
  single malt and he was saying, I'm going to go and do cash
• 29:32
  strength and I'm going to produce it and bottle it.
• 29:35
  And the plans were still leading the way.
• 29:38
  And everyone said like, yeah, on you go.
• 29:39
  Like, yeah, buy as much as you want from us.
• 29:41
  Like do what you want. But having that foresight, his
• 29:44
  plan wasn't to age at five years.
• 29:46
  His plan was right. Well, we're going to age just 30
• 29:48
  years. And this 140 years and this 150
• 29:50
  years, you look at where we are just now as a brand, as a
• 29:54
  company and what's the 20? 26th.
• 30:00
  So in nine days, we release the new world's oldest whiskey.
• 30:07
  And you've brought some of that along with you tonight.
• 30:11
  And I'm going to be pouring it. And as Angus pours, there we go.
• 30:17
  Yeah. I mean when you.
• 30:19
  Just put the sample bottle is there in the middle.
• 30:21
  But exactly that's what. But you look back and now you
• 30:25
  forgive me. I've forgotten his name there,
• 30:26
  but he's one of the he's a twin. So you have Stuart, who's the
• 30:29
  director of operations, You have Richard, who's director of.
• 30:31
  Sales. It was Stuart who I'd met and it
• 30:34
  was funny talking here and Stuart talk about family
• 30:36
  background, grocers buying whiskey, you know, selling
• 30:41
  whiskey out of the grocery store.
• 30:43
  And I asked him about family business model and I said about
• 30:48
  and it was a bit of a loaded question.
• 30:50
  I said, did you ever did your family never ever think about
• 30:53
  getting into blending? And he was like, well, you know
• 30:55
  what? Round about the same time
• 30:56
  another grocery store over in Kilmarnock decided to get into
• 30:59
  blending and they've now got a nice big fancy place along at
• 31:02
  the at the end of the Princess St.
• 31:03
  If you would see camp Johnny Walker been been that and and
• 31:07
  you do look at the business model and you wonder at that
• 31:10
  time, you know, do do the do the family look back and go.
• 31:16
  If only great great great granddad had decided to start
• 31:19
  blending, we wouldn't be worried.
• 31:20
  We wouldn't have to try so hard to sell these whiskeys because
• 31:23
  we could be similar to the Johnnie Walker or even the
• 31:26
  Shebas Shebas brothers and stuff like that.
• 31:27
  But I. Don't think.
• 31:29
  So, but also the other fact of it is, is that this core rate,
• 31:33
  the core values of Gordon Macphail really have stood the
• 31:37
  test of time because the fact of the matter is that through to
• 31:43
  the 4th 1st generation of the four to be selling whiskey as it
• 31:46
  was, which is what people were drinking.
• 31:48
  But then to go and just carry on, like you say to actually,
• 31:51
  the first thing you speak to an indie bottler you talk about is
• 31:54
  if a cask is sitting in your warehouse ageing, it's burning a
• 31:58
  hole in your pocket, right? That's the bottom line.
• 32:00
  You know, you we spoke to, we spoke to Carol Crafts at craft
• 32:08
  from, from Adelphi and are the Merkin and he was talking about
• 32:11
  Adelphi's model and said Adelphi buy casts, bottle them and sell
• 32:16
  them. That's what it is because that's
• 32:18
  the business model or they trade them for other casts or other
• 32:21
  liquid. But what he was basically saying
• 32:24
  is that, you know, I'm an independent bottle and other
• 32:26
  independent bottles will tell you this as well as like, if you
• 32:29
  say, right, oh, there's a, there's a cast there that's
• 32:30
  going to cost me. Let's just say for argument's
• 32:32
  sake, 7 or 8000 lbs. But I've got to have to wait
• 32:35
  another three years before I could even think about putting
• 32:37
  that into glass #1 how are you going to make money for the next
• 32:40
  three years whilst that's sitting there #2 how do you know
• 32:44
  what you could retail that, that whiskey out?
• 32:46
  Because you don't know what the market's going to look like in
• 32:48
  three years time. So actually to have the, the,
• 32:51
  the foresight or even just the, I don't know, it's not brass
• 32:55
  neck, but just the, the, the way of saying no, no, this is the
• 32:58
  family brand. This is the family business.
• 33:01
  We're going to put that down and we're going to wait 30 years to
• 33:03
  do it. It's a brave, it's a brave
• 33:04
  little move. Well, that's how you know it
• 33:06
  takes it takes decades before. Like you said, if you're buying
• 33:10
  to then bottle straight away, you need to go through decades
• 33:14
  of eventually maturing, maturing, maturing before you
• 33:16
  get to a point where what you're maturing and then bottling pays
• 33:20
  for what you're now buying in. And that's why we're 130 years
• 33:23
  old. You mentioned kind of moving to
• 33:25
  Blendon. I don't think there'd ever be an
• 33:27
  interest in the family moving over to Blendon, but.
• 33:30
  They've got 2 distilleries now so well, I mean this.
• 33:33
  Is the other side of the question that you know, it's,
• 33:36
  it's hard to not mention it with Gordon Macphail on is that yes,
• 33:40
  it's a business that's been going for 100 hundred years and
• 33:42
  it's a business that's been independently bought in
• 33:44
  Westgate, but that that, that business is coming to an end
• 33:48
  effectively. Well, we could talk about that.
• 33:52
  That's a little bit clickbait there, isn't it?
• 33:54
  Wow. Gordon Macphail coming,
• 33:56
  Independent bowlers coming to an end.
• 33:57
  Find out in the next installment of Whiskey Stories.
• 34:00
  Because we've got like, first of all, we've got to recharge our
• 34:02
  glasses. But what I would like to do is
• 34:08
  finished WW is if we've got a favorite, Has anyone got a
• 34:11
  favorite for drum one or drum 2? What would we say?
• 34:14
  Show of hands for drum one. Oh, okay, so and you know what
• 34:21
  it comes back. Ross is over there.
• 34:22
  Going to hear from Ross soon. It's amazing.
• 34:24
  We've managed to get to half an hour of a whiskey stories
• 34:26
  podcast episode that Ross is on. And I have the cheaper of him,
• 34:30
  right? He's not.
• 34:30
  He's not even trying to collect somebody yet, right.
• 34:32
  That I think you'll find actually.
• 34:34
  But but I personally always say I feel sorry for the first DRAM
• 34:40
  in the lineup. Yeah, because you often
• 34:42
  sometimes find that it might just be the palate cleanser.
• 34:44
  But I tell you what, if there was to be a palate cleanser
• 34:46
  tonight, what better way of having it is a 25 year old Glenn
• 34:49
  Burgie because it absolutely sets us up for the next two
• 34:51
  drams, which we will start pouring now and then we'll get
• 34:53
  back started. So if you want to take a wee
• 34:55
  comfort break, we're going to get your glasses ready.
• 34:57
  So yeah, that's the end of the first two drams.
• 35:01
  Ended on a Cliff. Angus, you know what to do.
• 35:05
  Slap us back in. Welcome back to the Whiskey
• 35:09
  Stories podcast. Indie Ball Small.
• 35:10
  I'm a Gordon McPhee. There we go.
• 35:17
  You know when we're two drums in, everyone's a bit rowdy,
• 35:19
  everyone's a bit looser. Now we've got a couple of drums,
• 35:23
  right, Fraser? Angus left us on a cliffhanger.
• 35:27
  Is Gordon McPhail shutting? Will?
• 35:29
  Will Fraser be in a job next week?
• 35:32
  These are the last drums. A real EastEnders I really.
• 35:36
  Really got that. But they are.
• 35:37
  But yes, so I think we've heard that before, but I remember that
• 35:43
  at the time when Gordon McPhail made the announcement that they
• 35:47
  were no longer going to their indie bottling or their
• 35:50
  independent bottling side of things was not the sort of main
• 35:53
  focus of the business. I think that was it.
• 35:55
  But the click bait version was what I can get said as well
• 35:58
  towards the Edwards, like hundreds, hundreds of years of
• 36:01
  independent bottling family business coming to an end
• 36:04
  because of that. It's not.
• 36:05
  It's not the case, is it? No.
• 36:07
  So I think, yeah, that news broke about a year ago and what
• 36:10
  most people highlighted immediately, myself included, to
• 36:13
  be fair, at the time, I was working with the boys in the
• 36:15
  corner there in Scotch. And we were also a bit like, oh,
• 36:19
  what does this mean for the future?
• 36:21
  Have they stopped doing bottles altogether?
• 36:23
  Is it just buying spirit and that's it was nothing to do
• 36:27
  about stopping immediately see some production.
• 36:29
  There's no, you know, HMRC haven't shown up and been like
• 36:32
  that set game over. It was it was a case of the
• 36:38
  family over time. We've always had a vision of
• 36:40
  owning distilleries. So it starts off well, it
• 36:44
  doesn't technically starts with I know it being the first one we
• 36:47
  bought, but there was failed attempts for other distilleries
• 36:50
  before that. Strathael was one that was
• 36:52
  always haunted down, one that Mister George had a real, real
• 36:55
  keen eye for and always wanted to to work in and own.
• 36:59
  We got Ben Romack in 1993, took five years to renovate it and
• 37:03
  then opened up in 1998 by His Royal Highness Prince back then,
• 37:08
  but they can now the. Current the.
• 37:10
  Current can, Yeah. And then in 2020, ground broke
• 37:15
  for building the care and distillery, which is our kind of
• 37:19
  juxtaposition from Ben Romack. Ben Romack is very traditional,
• 37:23
  but it's that's kind of lost smoke of space side, if you
• 37:25
  will. It's still got a little bit of
• 37:27
  peat in there. Everything's kind of handled by
• 37:29
  hand. Everything's in the one room.
• 37:32
  You know, you walk in, you've got your stills beside your wash
• 37:34
  backs and the spirit saves in the corner and you can honestly,
• 37:37
  you see everything in the one room.
• 37:39
  And Cairn is that 21st century distillery where it's super
• 37:43
  modern, super luxury and nestled in the Cairngorms.
• 37:47
  These guys have been actually, I've just remembered you guys
• 37:49
  went along. Really beautiful, right?
• 37:50
  Wonderful, yeah. Wonderful.
• 37:52
  So yeah, what do you think about Cairn?
• 37:54
  It's. Just it's just brand new.
• 37:56
  It's. Just brand using like oh it's
• 37:58
  brand new or it is brand new, you can smell it.
• 38:01
  So like. Queen it is brand new French and
• 38:03
  stuff. Like that, brand new.
• 38:07
  Yeah. Which impressed us.
• 38:08
  Yeah, Yeah. Right bro it now, now freezer.
• 38:13
  What? What drama have we got in front
• 38:14
  of us right now? What's this one?
• 38:16
  I'll introduce the drama now continue.
• 38:17
  There, Yeah, yeah, Carry. On right OK, so this is a
• 38:22
  slightly biased opinion. I know one other person in the
• 38:24
  room will agree with me here. This is the best vintage of
• 38:27
  whiskey you can possibly ever get.
• 38:30
  This is a 1999 so that's I showed my age.
• 38:34
  I'm a wee young pup and this is a Ben Riek.
• 38:37
  So 24 year old Ben Riek and a refill Sherry butt coming in at
• 38:42
  just shy of 60 percent 57.1%. There a great example of a
• 38:49
  distillery that not not pitted either.
• 38:57
  Yeah, well, I'll get you, Ross. You've got you.
• 38:59
  Ross has got a mic. Yeah, very good.
• 39:01
  Did you do cast a friend? Really it's not amplified.
• 39:03
  Do you do cask finishes or does it single kind of maturation
• 39:06
  typically for? Not so much anymore.
• 39:10
  So past years we've done kind of red wine casks, Sherry cast
• 39:13
  finishes, Calvados, etcetera. Now we are very much set upon
• 39:18
  looking at long term maturations and by long term we're not
• 39:22
  meaning they're not all having to be crazy.
• 39:25
  Connoisseur choice for example starts at about 15 years old, so
• 39:29
  we see that as a kind of a longer term maturation, but full
• 39:32
  maturations. So everything comes.
• 39:33
  Our choice is the one cask, full maturation, no deviation from
• 39:37
  cask. Our finishing touching on on Ben
• 39:41
  Romick and Cairn, our idea with them is they will be our
• 39:46
  experimental part of the family. So Karen at the moment has been
• 39:53
  using almost any task you can think of to trial just to see
• 39:56
  what the spirits like. You know, we only started
• 39:58
  distilling there in 2022, so just turned 3 years old.
• 40:01
  So we legally do have spirit now or whiskey now.
• 40:04
  Sorry, but it's a case of right, we've got a new distillery, new
• 40:08
  spirit. Well, how does it work in rum?
• 40:11
  How does it work in bourbon? How does it work in Sherry?
• 40:13
  And play around with it. Ben Romack We do finishes from
• 40:17
  time to time. If you look on the independent
• 40:20
  scene, you don't get Ben Romack on the independent scene.
• 40:25
  Yeah, you don't. And that's not because you're
• 40:28
  selling it under a different name or anything.
• 40:30
  It no, it just doesn't sold. So unless it was purchased pre
• 40:33
  1993, yeah, when the Azure were in charge of that, you don't
• 40:37
  get. So it means now that any Ben
• 40:40
  Romack that's being released is done by us, and that means when
• 40:43
  we deviate from the path we're choosing to do so and give the
• 40:46
  consumer something different. So that yeah, to and a really,
• 40:50
  really long way of doing it. We're not ceasing production.
• 40:55
  Mr. Ross Barr. Ross has a question here.
• 40:57
  Ross. Actually, it's the first time we
• 40:58
  get to hear Ross. No, sorry, not a question
• 41:00
  actually, just want to clarify just very clearly.
• 41:07
  Point Point of order. Ross Barr.
• 41:10
  Like Gordon Macphail will still be bottling whiskey is an
• 41:13
  independent bottler for every single person in this rooms
• 41:15
  life. Yeah.
• 41:16
  So they're not that. Like absolutely very clearly,
• 41:19
  even the independent bottling you will.
• 41:21
  We will all be dead long before they run out of.
• 41:24
  Cash the bottle, I think. I think.
• 41:25
  I just feel like, I feel like the EastEnders.
• 41:28
  So basically that's. What I was about to.
• 41:30
  Yeah, that's just to be super clear.
• 41:32
  Yeah, sorry. Yeah.
• 41:33
  So, Yeah, yeah, because I mean, I think that's that the
• 41:35
  clarification that we've had on this topic, on this subject is
• 41:39
  the fact that let's just say. Closing business.
• 41:42
  Let's just. I just wanted to.
• 41:44
  Let's just say Gordon Macphail were buying new Mix Spirit up
• 41:48
  until the day before the announcement came and they want
• 41:52
  to carry on and have another 85 plus year release.
• 41:58
  There's nothing to say that that new make spirit they were buying
• 42:00
  the day before they announced wouldn't be getting put aside
• 42:04
  for that that reason. The whiskey that we're drinking
• 42:06
  tonight is very well aged and the whiskey that they've been
• 42:09
  buying up until last year when they decided it will still be,
• 42:12
  will be will be released one way or another.
• 42:15
  Yeah. And our warehousing just now,
• 42:17
  there is easily enough stock for, I mean I'll be retired, I'd
• 42:22
  imagine everyone in this room if I'm retired, you should all be
• 42:25
  retired. Yeah, imagine somebody looking
• 42:30
  at looking at a state of somebody using this room by the
• 42:33
  time I'm retired. To the 1999 vintage, yeah.
• 42:37
  There was a real panic initially that people thought, yeah, that
• 42:40
  they're not going to bottle anymore.
• 42:42
  And it was, it's almost like a slight PR stunt because there
• 42:45
  was a slight peak where a lot of people went, Oh my God, G&M are
• 42:48
  not bought anything else. Let me buy this, buy that. 10
• 42:51
  cases and. You've got Stephen in the retail
• 42:53
  shop. Stephen's like, what a day.
• 42:57
  I'm so Angus. Angus whiskey fans just come in
• 42:58
  and bought out the whole shop. Yeah, this.
• 43:00
  Is closing. Good luck with that.
• 43:02
  Absolutely. So tell us a bit more about
• 43:03
  this. But right, so, so yeah, ABV,
• 43:07
  tell us about the seven. .1 drinks really well.
• 43:10
  For that I is anyone willing to attempt a wanky tasting?
• 43:14
  I was. Going to say, can we do some?
• 43:16
  She's the first two drums. How delicious with those first.
• 43:18
  Two. Yeah, exactly.
• 43:18
  Absolutely. I think that first whiskey is
• 43:21
  going to be really difficult to beat.
• 43:23
  Cameron and I, we've had the Glenberg E 25 before, but how
• 43:26
  good was it going back to? It's very much of my street, to
• 43:31
  be honest. Honestly, we've done half an
• 43:39
  hour, he says. One line and gets around to.
• 43:41
  Apply. No, but like Glenbergie is a
• 43:46
  very underrated distillery without sorry with people who
• 43:52
  really, really dial into weird space site distilleries often
• 43:58
  exceptionally beautiful and Gordon Mcphill have presented it
• 44:02
  in a beautiful quarter century there that is unbelievable.
• 44:06
  Yeah, Fairpoint. And great values.
• 44:09
  We had the question in here Glenbergie, where's that from?
• 44:12
  That's a space side whiskey, but how would you know Like but.
• 44:16
  Because there's not. There's not many like you.
• 44:19
  It's independent bottlings of Glen Burgie.
• 44:21
  You wouldn't find our our our release of Glen Burgie
• 44:24
  Distillery OB or. I think the most amazing thing
• 44:27
  about Gordon Macphail is it Gordon.
• 44:29
  There's so many distilleries in Scotland that reputation is
• 44:32
  entirely based off of Gordon Macphail's bottling.
• 44:35
  And and the crazy thing about the bottle so far, Ross is the
• 44:37
  first three anyway. They come from like a 20 mile
• 44:41
  radius of Gordon. Macphail HQ, Most of that.
• 44:45
  When we mentioned Ben Rea, my memory, you know, we went up to
• 44:48
  space side in the summer, Graham.
• 44:49
  Yeah, but then we were staying in.
• 44:52
  Top and tail we were. We were practically.
• 44:56
  Top and tail, but we were staying.
• 44:58
  We were staying in a. We were.
• 45:05
  Fraser, Yeah, Fraser in the middle, just for the sexual
• 45:08
  tension in this. Podcast.
• 45:10
  We didn't speak for a week, we didn't speak for a week after
• 45:13
  that trip. But we were staying about 500
• 45:16
  yards from Craig Ellaki decelerate and when we drove to
• 45:20
  Elgin on the Sunday to go and speak to Stephen Rankum drove
• 45:22
  right past and big black letters on the white web building been
• 45:27
  raised distillery. So the proximity of all these to
• 45:30
  Gordon? Macphail is incredible.
• 45:31
  I mean there is a real focus obviously being where we're
• 45:34
  located up in Elgin. It makes sense.
• 45:37
  A lot of what we've we've bought over time and that we've bought
• 45:40
  all this from Space site and probably go as far as saying a
• 45:44
  good 85% of it is all from Space site.
• 45:47
  And kind of a lot of the distilleries we've bought most
• 45:50
  of are kind of closer to Elgin Glenbergie in between Elgin and
• 45:54
  Forres. But you would drive past it and
• 45:55
  never, ever notice it. Unless you're a real nerd and
• 45:59
  you've set your SAT NAV to turn off and to actually go and see
• 46:01
  it. You will never see it as hidden
• 46:03
  by the trees. Beautiful little distillery and.
• 46:06
  I think like you say, like there's so many people we've
• 46:10
  talked back about people who maybe aren't 100% familiar with
• 46:13
  Gordon Macphail. And you look at the we're
• 46:17
  spoiled, you know, the people that are in this room, 90% of us
• 46:20
  are people that are whiskey drinkers.
• 46:23
  We like to enjoy whiskey, which means that independent bottlers
• 46:26
  are on our radar. And you can see these different
• 46:28
  types of people and different types of whiskey, different
• 46:31
  brands that are are offering it. But you go to.
• 46:33
  And again, it goes back to the conversations that we're having
• 46:36
  on on on Tuesday night, Angus at a tasting that that Ross put on
• 46:40
  was, you know, the majority of people that pie and drink
• 46:43
  whiskey are buying it out of the supermarket.
• 46:45
  You know, that we're in a smaller percentage of people
• 46:48
  that so. So when it does come to these
• 46:50
  distilleries, I mean, if if you'd said to me three or five
• 46:52
  years ago going Burgie, I'd have said, I've never heard of them
• 46:56
  because I've looked at a back bar, I've never seen it.
• 46:58
  And then I would have also said it can't be any good because if
• 47:02
  it was any good, they'd have been putting their own, they'd
• 47:05
  been putting their stuff out. But actually the business model
• 47:07
  in whiskey really does show you that well, making mass
• 47:11
  production on bulk and having a good.
• 47:13
  And we've spoken to blenders on the podcast, Ray Johnson being
• 47:16
  one of them, saying that if you know in your recipe book that
• 47:20
  there is a distillery with a spirit character that you know
• 47:24
  does absolutely everything you need it to do in a blend, then
• 47:28
  you'll quite happily buy hundreds of thousands of litres
• 47:31
  of that spirit. Which means that they don't need
• 47:34
  to worry about going, let's put it in glass.
• 47:37
  Let's get somebody on trade. Let's get BDMS out there,
• 47:40
  business development managers out there to try and get it on
• 47:42
  shelves. And then let's put all the
• 47:43
  marketing work and getting people to drink it where they
• 47:46
  could just go. No, let's just have, I mean, how
• 47:48
  many people, Ross, do you think work in a distillery the size of
• 47:52
  somewhere like Glenberg? Maybe 15?
• 47:55
  15 people, there's a big, they're a big, but for a factory
• 47:59
  that produces the amount of liquid that goes.
• 48:01
  To it, and I think you know, you know how much Valentine's has
• 48:04
  done for your family and for your family.
• 48:06
  And realistically, Glenn Bergie is something that should be on
• 48:09
  your radar. Yeah, well, it was.
• 48:11
  As a whiskey drinker, you're like, what the.
• 48:13
  Well, I was, well, I was just, I was just saying, I was saying
• 48:15
  earlier on, but it was, it was actually it was again.
• 48:18
  Connected to Milton Duff. Milton Duff was because what I
• 48:20
  found. Was Glenberg and Milton Duff are
• 48:22
  twins? Correct.
• 48:23
  I know, but I always went for the other twin instead of that
• 48:26
  one. I said, But I know.
• 48:30
  Yeah. And actually I would say now, if
• 48:32
  you'd said to me 10 years ago, five years ago, Milton Duffer
• 48:36
  Glenberg, I said hands down. And I bought all the Valentine's
• 48:39
  releases of the Milton Duffs and they used to do the 17 year old
• 48:42
  and the and the 21 year old, but all them ignored the Glenbergie.
• 48:46
  And I'm annoyed at myself for doing that because the
• 48:48
  Glenbergie I've tried since then has been absolutely fantastic.
• 48:52
  And I'd say that that that's up there.
• 48:53
  That was, I mean, and so I know that's a big world one for that
• 48:56
  wanky tasting notes. I thought the Glenbergie was
• 48:58
  like the bottom of a Bakewell tart.
• 49:02
  You've been there a few times. Very good, very good.
• 49:10
  I thought it was really good. Is outrageous.
• 49:14
  That is good though. That is good.
• 49:17
  And it was fast. It was fast.
• 49:21
  And I think that I think that will be hard to beat for the
• 49:23
  whole rest of the taste and. Just I have to say I I would, I
• 49:26
  would almost. Does anybody else feel brave
• 49:28
  enough to do notes for the Glenberg?
• 49:31
  Obviously going on in the other W game, the drum, the drum that
• 49:34
  we're on now is anyone else is is anyone else getting green
• 49:37
  apples on this or like sherbet, apple sherbet or anything I'm.
• 49:43
  Getting Yeah, I'm getting your kind of.
• 49:45
  Yeah, more like oranges or Sherry.
• 49:48
  Yeah, you're more. Canadian to fruits.
• 49:50
  Yeah, I actually, I've really, I've really enjoyed this this,
• 49:53
  this third drum. And that's good because you're
• 49:55
  you're off the Sherry Graham. I know it.
• 49:58
  Refill Sherry. But yeah, I was reluctant to add
• 50:01
  water to this third whiskey, but I've done it because I liked it
• 50:04
  so much. Neat.
• 50:05
  And what was? What was your initial thoughts
• 50:07
  on the 3rd? One, I don't think it changes it
• 50:09
  that much, to be honest. It's it's because we've just
• 50:11
  literally done exactly that. I know I'm not going to go near
• 50:15
  that after the break of the tart.
• 50:17
  Honestly, I would say, and I guess you're, you're, you're
• 50:19
  right in point. So surely the ginger boys got
• 50:21
  some wacky taste. I mean this one as well.
• 50:23
  Ginger boys say raises as well, I would say.
• 50:24
  They're in refill Sherry. It's not a kind of Sherry bomb.
• 50:27
  It's not trying to. Be I would say that I think
• 50:29
  I've, I've been saying over the last for the last two, two or
• 50:33
  three weeks, I've actually got a bit of a, I've gone a bit
• 50:35
  Sherry. I'm not into it at the moment.
• 50:38
  I just don't feel it. But then I've spoken to a few
• 50:41
  people and again, people are saying that maybe what's
• 50:45
  happened is people have just brands have gone heavy on the
• 50:48
  Sherry stuff at the moment. And you maybe look back at
• 50:51
  trains and you say was three years ago everyone going down
• 50:54
  for Sherry. So everyone ramped up.
• 50:56
  Sherry, Cam, you're nodding away.
• 50:58
  Cam, Just before I hand over to Cam, what was the last bottle of
• 51:00
  whiskey you bought? Graham was at Glen Barkley 30 by
• 51:04
  any chance? That wasn't the last.
• 51:05
  One I bought really matured in Oladoso.
• 51:08
  It was, but I bought that. I bought that not to be open
• 51:12
  for. But no, I would say I've been.
• 51:16
  No, sorry. That's something that's good to
• 51:18
  you. No, but there are.
• 51:24
  But I would say that I don't know.
• 51:26
  There's just something about Sherry at the moment.
• 51:27
  I'm when I'm drinking. I'm just not feeling it at the
• 51:29
  moment. Yeah.
• 51:33
  Yeah, Cam, what are you? I'm just here for an observation
• 51:38
  point of view. We're moving into that season
• 51:41
  where Sherry will be very, very popular.
• 51:44
  Yeah. So, yeah, cold the Dark Knights
• 51:48
  are coming in. So brands will be pushing that
• 51:51
  more just from a pure commercial point of view.
• 51:53
  Yeah, yeah. So you're probably seeing that
• 51:56
  put down your or put more into your Instagram feed a little.
• 52:01
  Yeah. You know, but then is it more
• 52:02
  about then this comes back to the quality of cast when you do
• 52:06
  have a cherry, a cast of whiskey that's come from maybe 100%
• 52:09
  maturation of cherry and albeit this is refill cherry, so the
• 52:13
  edges are softer on the cherry notes.
• 52:16
  But does it? Does it?
• 52:17
  Some we're about to talk about leads very well into right to
• 52:21
  that discussion. Well, then wait.
• 52:24
  So one of the things that, as Ross would say, wowsers and gets
• 52:27
  our tails wagon is when you see a cask sample bottle and when
• 52:33
  you've got a bottle. Yeah, with a with a different
• 52:37
  label. And apparently it's his duty
• 52:39
  paid when his when his handwriting on the label.
• 52:41
  Yeah. You know, you're in for a treat.
• 52:43
  Fraser, you put this up in your Instagram story.
• 52:46
  You said it to. Me so.
• 52:47
  Fraser went off just for you. Fraser went all the way to
• 52:50
  Elgamore, a copper dog in his back pocket.
• 52:52
  There they go. Went to the warehouse, stopped
• 52:54
  on a cask and said that's the one for.
• 52:56
  That's the one for the whiskey story.
• 52:57
  Warehouse #2 at the George House said that's the one for me.
• 53:02
  No, not, not quite as as luxurious as that,
• 53:04
  unfortunately. So this is still yet to be
• 53:07
  bottled. So this is a cash sample from
• 53:10
  our warehouses. So this will be part of a future
• 53:14
  bottling. Yeah, so this is a future
• 53:16
  bottling we're doing that will coincide with the seasons
• 53:19
  changing and moving over to Christmas.
• 53:23
  Every every couple months we get sent an Excel spreadsheet and by
• 53:29
  no means are we selecting the cask in terms of I wasn't
• 53:32
  sampling this cask and saying I'll have #5 or whatever
• 53:35
  operations will say, right? We have 7 tasks available just
• 53:38
  now that we think are really, really good.
• 53:41
  Have at it. And this gets let go between the
• 53:43
  UK, Europe, America, and we've all got to politically agree
• 53:48
  with each other and who gets what.
• 53:49
  So there's a lot of, I want this one, I want that one, right?
• 53:52
  OK, tell me why you deserve this one and.
• 53:56
  That's your wish list this answer then.
• 53:58
  Yeah, so this was when, so I joined the company four months
• 54:01
  ago and this was honestly about one month into me joining the
• 54:04
  company and I got shown the list and got told, right, newcomer
• 54:09
  first ebbs, pick something you want.
• 54:12
  So this year as Glenn Turrett, currently 17 years old,
• 54:19
  depending when it gets bottled, it may well be 18 turns 18
• 54:24
  before the end of the year and a refill.
• 54:27
  American refill. It's American oak, but Sherry
• 54:31
  seasoned single cast. For Sherry season, American oak
• 54:34
  cask refill Sherry, Yeah. Yeah, said that really weird.
• 54:38
  We haven't. Yeah, So quite a fun one to try.
• 54:42
  Quite different for GNF, definitely.
• 54:44
  We haven't done many of our turrets before.
• 54:46
  What's the cask? Sorry.
• 54:48
  So a Sherry season refill. American oxen.
• 54:54
  How do you do seasoned American? Oak So what you do is you get a
• 54:58
  hog's head, season it in cherry, drain the cherry.
• 55:05
  I think that's pretty much, I mean, am I right saying when
• 55:07
  you're cherry seasoning it because for it to be cherry
• 55:10
  seasoned. So with these bleed bodegas, now
• 55:13
  here's me trying to sound like I know what I'm talking about.
• 55:16
  You're shying yourself looking over at the corner.
• 55:19
  You can have this one. Strap yourselves in folks.
• 55:21
  I'm going to try to explain something that I don't really
• 55:23
  know an awful lot about, but my under my, my understanding of it
• 55:27
  is is the cooperage is over and what we obtained the
• 55:30
  misconception that I've been very I've been guilty of making
• 55:34
  is that everything that comes out with Sherry cast, everything
• 55:37
  that comes out of Bodega Bodega uses European oak.
• 55:41
  OK, but the the way when you speak to people like Jake Adkook
• 55:45
  and you speak to other people, even Craig Urquhart and things
• 55:46
  like that, what they'll tell you is that no, they'll buy they'll
• 55:49
  buy American the the cooperage is over in in heres well that.
• 55:55
  Was good. I like.
• 55:56
  They always and you're only want to sound like you know what
• 55:58
  you're talking about put a fit at the end of heres but if you
• 56:01
  know what I said wanky call it heres the right but.
• 56:05
  They sound a bit more confident when you say it, yeah, but.
• 56:08
  But basically my understanding is that the cooperage is over
• 56:10
  there and Herath, well, they'll, they'll, they'll have the same
• 56:15
  access. So they'll buy American oak and
• 56:17
  they'll buy European oak. And what they'll do is they'll
• 56:20
  say, well, we'll make some European oak cast and we'll make
• 56:22
  some American oak cast. And those casts will then get
• 56:24
  filled with Sherry fortified wine or whatever it is, and how
• 56:28
  long they're going to be seasoned for.
• 56:29
  So then basically what you get at the end of it is you could.
• 56:32
  Yeah, like I say, I naively thought years ago that every
• 56:37
  Sherry cask was European oak and every cast that came out of a
• 56:42
  bodega was European oak. Now what they're doing is, so
• 56:45
  this would have been this, but this bodega or the cooperage
• 56:49
  over in Spain will have bought an American oak, built Hogs
• 56:52
  Head, filled it full of Sherry, drained it.
• 56:55
  And so basically what you're getting is, and I really, really
• 56:57
  like that because I think it was the Tamdu 21 and there's other
• 57:01
  Tamdu and Glen going as well. They'll say is they'll use
• 57:06
  American oak with Sherry. And it just gives you, and I've
• 57:09
  referenced that 100 times. Mark Thompson's tasting that he
• 57:13
  did when he put the European virgin oak and he had people in
• 57:16
  the room arguing over whether it was PX or all are also, but it
• 57:20
  was virgin oak. And it just showed you what that
• 57:22
  wood can do to to to, to the whiskey is that.
• 57:27
  Sherry, I'm sorry. It's OK that that that Sherry
• 57:31
  other than gets put into more casks.
• 57:33
  Yeah, August made into vinegar quite often.
• 57:35
  Yeah, because it's not it's not part of you drinking Sherry.
• 57:39
  They really still as well a lot. Of the time they'll need to sell
• 57:46
  it as a podcast we have to speak into.
• 57:48
  Microphone. A lot of the time they'll
• 57:49
  redistill it into neutral grain spirit.
• 57:51
  Really. Or neutral grape spirit as it.
• 57:54
  Was because I mean this is the question.
• 57:55
  I mean, it's not a question for tonight, but you know, when you
• 57:57
  look at about the the way that the whiskey industry is and
• 58:01
  sustainability questions and things like that.
• 58:03
  Because maybe Once Upon a time, one of the big arguments was
• 58:08
  always what constitutes as a Sherry cask.
• 58:10
  And what they'll tell you in Spain is that Sherry is only
• 58:12
  called Sherry if it comes out of the solera system at the bottom
• 58:16
  end, that is Sherry. So then when people used to
• 58:21
  argue is what is a Sherry cask? Is it a cask that's come from a
• 58:24
  bodega? You'll look at if you people,
• 58:26
  you speak to people that have been to bodegas and stuff like
• 58:28
  that, they'll tell you that if you want to get your hands on a
• 58:31
  cast that has been used in a bodega salera system #1 they're
• 58:35
  hundreds of years old. So they're going to cost you
• 58:37
  thousands for that bodega to be able to do that.
• 58:39
  So. It's not very many of them and.
• 58:41
  You're talking about Spanish oak there as well.
• 58:43
  A lot of people say European oaks Sherry, but it's a lot of
• 58:47
  Bulgarian oak being used in whiskey.
• 58:49
  But it's Hungarian oak as well. A lot of.
• 58:50
  Hungarian. Hungarian oak, but Hungarian,
• 58:52
  It's always been well known French oak, but no one's ever
• 58:56
  going to put Bulgarian oak on the bottle because it's not seen
• 58:58
  as it's not as sexy or as attractive to do that.
• 59:01
  But that's the reality. It's going to be countries in
• 59:03
  Europe that grows trees easy to cut down.
• 59:05
  Really the clear answer to your question is that Sherry isn't
• 59:08
  selling. And so the best thing for a
• 59:10
  Sherry bodega to do is have a filling contract.
• 59:13
  Well, they'll agree, OK, Gordon McPhee will say, and they have
• 59:17
  these relationships already. I would like, I'm going to send
• 59:20
  these American Oak Bucks because against their oak generally and
• 59:23
  and if you could season this for 18 months or for two years or
• 59:26
  for three years or for four years.
• 59:27
  And that's more business for the bodega.
• 59:30
  That's. What I said with with our.
• 59:38
  And actually, So what we're saying is if we want to support
• 59:40
  the. Have a Sherry.
• 59:44
  Well, by Sherry vinegar. Right, Fraser, let's get back on
• 59:48
  what? I was briefly going to just
• 59:50
  chime in there with, I worry Sherry butts and puncheons, our
• 59:55
  transport Sherry butts and puncheons, so quite different to
• 59:57
  what a lot of other sellers are using.
• 1:00:00
  So you talk a lot about seasons when we're using butts and
• 1:00:04
  puncheons. These are not seasoned.
• 1:00:05
  These are maturation casks so designed to be transported back
• 1:00:09
  when Spain would send it over to Edinburgh, it'd be emptied in
• 1:00:13
  Edinburgh and then it would be sent back to Spain that.
• 1:00:17
  Well possibly show you how long some of these casks have been in
• 1:00:20
  the the family because it was 19. 8819861986.
• 1:00:25
  What is what is a transport cast?
• 1:00:27
  So yeah, ficker staves. So essentially big cask ficker
• 1:00:31
  staves. The idea being that if you came
• 1:00:33
  by boat, you would have these huge humongous casks and that
• 1:00:37
  you would just push off the boat into the water and they could
• 1:00:39
  fall to shore and do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:44
  And doing so because the the staves are so thick, twice the
• 1:00:47
  thickness of a normal. Yeah.
• 1:00:48
  This is why we do them. We are.
• 1:00:50
  We're quite well recognized for releasing whiskeys of tremendous
• 1:00:53
  age with a lot of percentage still, still there.
• 1:00:57
  Fixed staves. Use them.
• 1:01:00
  Really. Yeah.
• 1:01:01
  Yeah. So I mean, because it's
• 1:01:03
  interesting you talk about going back to the first drama and I'll
• 1:01:05
  see we're talking about this Glenburg getting off a lot.
• 1:01:07
  But it's like what you said right at the very beginning is
• 1:01:10
  that you want Gordon Macphail want, you know, it's the, it's
• 1:01:15
  the original, it's the, it's the hundreds of years I've got into
• 1:01:18
  it. It's that's how we do things
• 1:01:19
  now. We were just sort of saying, so
• 1:01:21
  1986, I think it was where Spain officially said that Sherry has
• 1:01:26
  to be bottled in Spain, Spain for it to be exported.
• 1:01:29
  So before then Sherry casks where they export like it
• 1:01:32
  worked. So when Sherry was exported,
• 1:01:34
  they'd fill these, which you're saying these sort of
• 1:01:36
  transportation casks, roll them onto boats and send them
• 1:01:40
  probably to the UK somewhere and they get rolled.
• 1:01:42
  Off normally down to London and then it would make their way
• 1:01:44
  somewhere else. Rolled up the Thames.
• 1:01:51
  Well, The thing is, well, The thing is like we, we, we said it
• 1:01:54
  when we were up there and spoke to, to Stephen Rankin about it
• 1:01:57
  and we said that Elgin, I thought people who's been to
• 1:02:00
  Elgin when you've been been up there, yeah, Elgin does have a
• 1:02:03
  bit of a seaside village, a sort of coastal village feel tip, but
• 1:02:06
  actually 5 miles, yeah, 5 miles from the coast.
• 1:02:08
  But Lossiemouth. And at the time, Lossiemouth was
• 1:02:11
  a trading port. So it's also a good point if you
• 1:02:14
  look at when when the shop opened, the 1895, you kind of go
• 1:02:18
  to Elgin now and you think what a weird place to have a shop.
• 1:02:21
  You know, it kind of makes sense because there's distilleries,
• 1:02:23
  but you know, a bit like if you were to build a whiskey shop,
• 1:02:25
  you kind of think that's a bit bit bizarre.
• 1:02:27
  But in 1895, end of Victorian era if you will, Elgin was a
• 1:02:31
  hotspot. You know if anyone was going on
• 1:02:33
  holiday, Victorian Gentry and you take your family up to the
• 1:02:38
  Highlands, you take them to the space side and you go around
• 1:02:41
  Elgin. Now a lot of the old houses.
• 1:02:43
  Know how Victorian. Yeah, beautiful.
• 1:02:48
  What's Abd on this on? This 60.4.
• 1:02:51
  So it's, it tastes, it's. On the other to the grams.
• 1:02:54
  That we've had. It does taste a little bit
• 1:02:56
  different to the other ones, doesn't it?
• 1:02:58
  Does Does anyone prefer this one to the ones that we've had?
• 1:03:00
  To the other ones? You see?
• 1:03:01
  Like that one there, anyone? Yeah.
• 1:03:02
  You like that one? I.
• 1:03:04
  Thought it. Was quite waxy.
• 1:03:05
  As yeah, I would go with that as well.
• 1:03:08
  Yeah, it definitely it. Definitely I've not I've not
• 1:03:10
  tried it. Before is a very you know, if
• 1:03:12
  you you know it is a Christmas gram.
• 1:03:15
  It's the sort of thing. You can speak.
• 1:03:24
  But it's got it has it does have a different.
• 1:03:28
  Yeah, the dryness. I'd absolutely get on that.
• 1:03:30
  Anyone wanted to hit us up with a wanky tasting note for this
• 1:03:32
  evening? Cereal.
• 1:03:34
  Cereal. That's not wanky, though.
• 1:03:35
  Come on, give us give us a bottle.
• 1:03:37
  My cherry. Date Cherry.
• 1:03:41
  Crunchy Nut Cornflake. Crunchy Nut, Cornflake, we got
• 1:03:44
  ginger boys, had a couple of drums.
• 1:03:46
  He's ready to go now. Come on.
• 1:03:48
  What are you getting, Hamish? You know when you get a packet
• 1:03:50
  of bacon frazzles? Yeah, you get one that's really
• 1:03:54
  over seasoned, that's brown caked and you think it's my
• 1:03:57
  lucky day. That's kind of what I'm getting
• 1:04:00
  from this. You know, you think I've I've
• 1:04:02
  got the Jack for you. Where?
• 1:04:05
  Where? It's like dripping with bacon
• 1:04:08
  season. Dripping Driest crisper in the
• 1:04:12
  world, by the way. Omega Frazzle.
• 1:04:15
  That's what I'm getting from Omega.
• 1:04:16
  Not, not. Not.
• 1:04:17
  Not not. Wishing to bring us to of
• 1:04:19
  course, but when when good story about bacon frazzles when I was
• 1:04:23
  a young it's. A Wisi story It's a.
• 1:04:30
  Wisi Stories podcast. You got it.
• 1:04:31
  When I when I was a young lad and I was taken to the cinema to
• 1:04:35
  see Babe, my dad gave me a packet of bacon frazzles to get
• 1:04:41
  to watch it. That was it.
• 1:04:44
  So there you go, that's all it is.
• 1:04:46
  Right, on that note, we've got another two.
• 1:04:48
  Get bored. I'm going to say that.
• 1:04:49
  So you went to a 4D, They're getting the.
• 1:04:54
  Yeah, full amount of experience. What do you want here?
• 1:04:57
  Although I agree with it, unless you're unless you're in a
• 1:05:00
  warehouse, that kind of cash sample bottle is the most
• 1:05:03
  exciting thing to see. I think it is my least favorite
• 1:05:05
  drum so far. Thanks for saying that.
• 1:05:07
  Cheers Ross. But I have liked the other 3.
• 1:05:12
  Yeah. No, I would say I like it.
• 1:05:14
  I actually quite like that one. Now these two, then the the the
• 1:05:18
  second, the third drama or the 4th tram.
• 1:05:20
  What are we going for? The what?
• 1:05:21
  The first one. 1999 has to be. So hands up for drama. #3 OK,
• 1:05:27
  And then the cast. Hands up for the #4.
• 1:05:29
  But I would say I like, I actually, I don't think I've
• 1:05:33
  ever had an independently bottled Glen turret.
• 1:05:36
  No, you will have just never reckoned normally.
• 1:05:38
  It's a RUID more so Peter Glen turret.
• 1:05:39
  No, you get a lot of them just now.
• 1:05:41
  I wouldn't say I've ever, ever had that as a brand, but
• 1:05:43
  actually to to get and and also as you've said, which we'll come
• 1:05:49
  to in the next, next section of. This now tell anyone to each he
• 1:05:54
  said 1718 in a few. Months, don't worry if anyone
• 1:05:56
  that got to make failure excuse watching, he did tell us.
• 1:06:00
  But I, I think I think it is testament to say like something
• 1:06:06
  that we'll talk about in the second in the next part.
• 1:06:08
  The last part there is the fact that you're able to put the the
• 1:06:11
  distillery names on it because there will be other other
• 1:06:14
  brands. Yeah, that Gordon Macphail can
• 1:06:16
  say that plenty of other independent bottlers don't have
• 1:06:19
  the paperwork or the relationship to be able to say.
• 1:06:21
  But we're going to refill your glasses.
• 1:06:23
  If you want to take a quick comfort break, that's absolutely
• 1:06:25
  fine. Then we'll be back in the next 5
• 1:06:27
  or 10 minutes. Cheers.
• 1:06:29
  OK, ladies and gentlemen, let's get started for our final two
• 1:06:32
  DRAM. I guess you know today.
• 1:06:38
  Clap, I said. The budget is getting pushed
• 1:06:50
  tonight for the Whiskey Stories podcast, a genuine Clapper.
• 1:06:54
  But as we have been giving up, I have to shout out to Moira who
• 1:06:57
  is a big listener to the Whiskey Stories podcast who stole that
• 1:07:00
  from the the award ceremony, which I should say a round of
• 1:07:04
  applause as well for the athletic arts are winning
• 1:07:07
  Scottish Whiskey Pub in the year.
• 1:07:08
  Fantastic and as sponsored by Ben Romack as well I believe,
• 1:07:16
  and I've just seen Lance as well as as managed to smuggle himself
• 1:07:20
  a Diggers Woodrows of Edinburgh Highland Park 7 in his bags and
• 1:07:24
  he said that we could all we could all have a drama of that
• 1:07:26
  tonight as well. Well, we are.
• 1:07:33
  So I just think I think what we should say for people who are
• 1:07:35
  listening and also questions. So because we have had a few
• 1:07:38
  questions on the the drams that we've already had just to go
• 1:07:42
  back. Glenn Burgie, what are you
• 1:07:43
  buying? What can you pick a bottle of
• 1:07:44
  that up for? 2/2/20. 220 The the The next one
• 1:07:49
  that was on the list was the Craig Elkies 100.
• 1:07:52
  And 30. 130 The third DRAM, which was our Ben Rhea.
• 1:07:56
  Yeah, Ben Rhea, 24 year old. That's 240. 240 OK, sorry.
• 1:08:01
  OK. And then your single cast there
• 1:08:03
  and your cast sample. We don't, you know, for the Glen
• 1:08:06
  Turret that if people are listening, Christmas time's
• 1:08:08
  coming around the corner. If that's going to be a release,
• 1:08:10
  what do you think that'll be retailing around?
• 1:08:13
  Most likely less than what Glen Turret sell their 15 year old
• 1:08:15
  for. OK.
• 1:08:18
  That's a little DAG, right? OK.
• 1:08:22
  I mean, you don't have, you don't, you don't have leak,
• 1:08:25
  leak. Bottles, do you?
• 1:08:26
  Am I going? To have to cut that out Razor or
• 1:08:28
  am I already to keep that maybe do not phone me tomorrow I go
• 1:08:33
  any. Chance I have. 4 drums.
• 1:08:35
  What did I say about that? Anyway now?
• 1:08:38
  Love the restaurant? Leave the lead us into the next
• 1:08:43
  drum then, so that the third. And the fourth so.
• 1:08:45
  This is Drum 5th drum. I'm lucky Graham, 5th drum of
• 1:08:51
  the evening. This will be on everyone's left,
• 1:08:53
  so you should have quite clearly distinct different colours in
• 1:08:56
  the 2 glasses in front of you. Yeah.
• 1:08:57
  So there should be a lighter one which you're about to have, and
• 1:08:59
  there'll be a much, much darker one which we're going to finish
• 1:09:01
  off on. So we've not had anything peated
• 1:09:04
  yet at all. I always feel like you need to
• 1:09:07
  have a little bit of feet in there when you're bigger.
• 1:09:08
  Tasting. You.
• 1:09:11
  Know Ross has shaking his head. Sandwich in between the two peat
• 1:09:14
  lovers of the whiskey stories. I went to a very disappointing
• 1:09:18
  tasting on Tuesday with no peated whiskey.
• 1:09:20
  I was, I felt, really shortchanged.
• 1:09:27
  Is that the Balmoral Hotel? You're a very.
• 1:09:29
  No comment. You're a very, very lucky boy,
• 1:09:32
  Angus. Thank you, Mr. McCullough.
• 1:09:36
  Appreciate that. So what we what we drink?
• 1:09:39
  Why is this? For this one, we're actually
• 1:09:41
  going back to the distillery labels.
• 1:09:44
  This is a kind of vintage bottle.
• 1:09:45
  And so this is an Ardmore, Ardmore Highland distillery that
• 1:09:48
  a lot of people again aren't too familiar with.
• 1:09:51
  Most of what they produce was for teachers and still is for
• 1:09:55
  teachers. To be totally honest, Teachers
• 1:09:58
  as a blend was huge at the start of the 1900s, kind of dipped.
• 1:10:03
  Now Teachers as a Blend does about 5 million litres sales
• 1:10:08
  owned by Santori. Their next biggest single malt
• 1:10:10
  is Lacroix, could do about 4.5. So Teachers as a Blend isn't
• 1:10:15
  pushing so well. But Armour as a spirit is really
• 1:10:17
  quite interesting. 50% of the time they do unpeated.
• 1:10:22
  Again, that's all designed for the blended market.
• 1:10:24
  You don't really try. The other 50% is pitted very
• 1:10:28
  lightly sold. So you're looking at if we get
• 1:10:30
  quite geeky PPM is about 12 to 15.
• 1:10:33
  So you're looking at kind of almost sort of negligible that's
• 1:10:39
  that's the PPM before you've gone on and do the distillation
• 1:10:41
  etcetera. This one here. 2000 vintage,
• 1:10:45
  bottled around about 2021-2022. So you're looking at a 21 year
• 1:10:51
  old. Wow.
• 1:10:52
  Ardmore here. Yeah.
• 1:10:53
  And what's that? What's that?
• 1:10:55
  What would that retail at then? So that's about.
• 1:10:58
  So with Bryce, it's about 140 about.
• 1:11:00
  You know, Ardmore had never, ever been on my radar.
• 1:11:04
  But is. And Ross is shaking.
• 1:11:06
  Ross, right? You're shaking your head.
• 1:11:07
  Ross is shaking his head. Got like his nose up and shaking
• 1:11:09
  his head. Because I was just about to say
• 1:11:11
  Ardmore Legacy is a very I don't, I don't want to say it,
• 1:11:14
  but it's like a very standard issue supermarket drama.
• 1:11:17
  It's available, Tesco, all these big.
• 1:11:19
  Supermarkets. I would say that.
• 1:11:20
  Drama I've had a couple of times just by by by chat by by because
• 1:11:25
  it is that yeah, it's something that's very available but.
• 1:11:28
  Also that that's a good story where you talk about like with
• 1:11:31
  frolic etcetera. Armour Legacy has probably
• 1:11:33
  stopped more people drinking Ardmore than it's got people to
• 1:11:36
  drink Ardmore. Yeah, right.
• 1:11:41
  Well, I think, I think Ross, but I think you make a good point.
• 1:11:47
  And it goes back to volume versus value situation.
• 1:11:50
  Is that how many people in this, I'd be honest, be honest, how
• 1:11:54
  many people in this room when they first started out drinking
• 1:11:58
  whiskey will quite happily bought whiskey from a
• 1:12:00
  supermarket, right. Yeah, no problem at all.
• 1:12:03
  But if I was to put asking now to raise your hand and say how
• 1:12:06
  many people stole by their whiskey from the supermarket
• 1:12:11
  depends on the price, right. OK, fair, fair.
• 1:12:14
  But there is an element. There is, but there is an
• 1:12:16
  element where a lot of people will say it and I've been, I'm
• 1:12:19
  guilty of it is where you go. You maybe I go to the
• 1:12:22
  supermarket, I look at the whiskey shells.
• 1:12:23
  But then we've become spoiled. We've on the podcast in
• 1:12:27
  particular, we become spoiled drinking in this pub where you
• 1:12:30
  look at what's on the shelves behind this, this pub where you
• 1:12:32
  go, how many of the drums that you can see behind the bar
• 1:12:35
  diggers could you actually pick up from the supermarket versus
• 1:12:40
  how many do you have to go on online?
• 1:12:42
  How many did you have to source? How many independent bottlers?
• 1:12:45
  But you won't see an independent bottler really selling anything
• 1:12:48
  out of Tesco or Sainsbury's or Asda or anything like.
• 1:12:51
  That can I can I count that a little bit?
• 1:12:53
  So if you find so I'm reasonably old, I used to go to inferior.
• 1:12:56
  Reasonably, reasonably, I'll. Go with that.
• 1:13:00
  So, so back in the kind of late 90s, early 2000s, there's an
• 1:13:03
  amazing whiskey shop and Inverrary.
• 1:13:05
  I used to go to a lot and that's where I bought 90% of whiskey
• 1:13:09
  from because they selection that was incredible.
• 1:13:11
  Independent bottlers own bottlers, and if you've got a
• 1:13:14
  trusted source, then you'll go there.
• 1:13:16
  You'll try anywhere you go. Yeah.
• 1:13:18
  I'm not sure those shops exist in the same way now.
• 1:13:21
  I don't know. I mean, who is it?
• 1:13:23
  Who is it that Chuck managed to source the he found the two
• 1:13:27
  mystery malts. It was almost like the last two
• 1:13:29
  mystery malts the Buckers are. Sold.
• 1:13:31
  There I went. Down to front, exactly.
• 1:13:33
  Yeah, yeah. The shop are born himself.
• 1:13:36
  Yeah, Chuck could clean them out, but.
• 1:13:38
  There are, there are retailers, but there's also online
• 1:13:40
  retailers now that you, that you can buy from.
• 1:13:42
  But you look at you look at someone like Royal Mail
• 1:13:44
  whiskeys, for example, and you just know that if you go to
• 1:13:47
  Royal Mail Whiskey's website that they'll, they'll have a
• 1:13:50
  range of core ranges, core brands, obs to have a little
• 1:13:53
  more expensive fancy stuff, but they'll also have a good wide
• 1:13:56
  variety of independently bottled whiskey that you can buy, buy
• 1:13:59
  from. But are you, are you saying,
• 1:14:00
  Graham, you wouldn't buy a bottle of whiskey in the
• 1:14:02
  supermarket? Now I.
• 1:14:03
  I and I'll be perfectly honest as I've, I've, I've tried to but
• 1:14:07
  there's nothing, there is nothing.
• 1:14:09
  No, but no. I know it's not hard then the
• 1:14:11
  price point is, but I I'm now becoming, and I'll be honest,
• 1:14:14
  maybe it's the the the phase I'm at where I'd go.
• 1:14:18
  I've got all pony 12 in the house already.
• 1:14:20
  I've got a beau more 12 in the house already.
• 1:14:22
  I've got the stuff that you can get that's easily accessible
• 1:14:25
  that's already in the house. I what I want to do to my
• 1:14:28
  whiskey collection in the house or what I want to buy is
• 1:14:31
  especially, and I'm guilty. I'm lucky I'm 850 yards away
• 1:14:35
  from door to door from this place.
• 1:14:38
  So why do I need to go into the shop to buy it when I know if
• 1:14:41
  Kev puts it up on on on on Instagram, I can come and try
• 1:14:44
  it. But it does go back to that
• 1:14:46
  debate is that if it becomes a supermarket LED brand, do people
• 1:14:53
  look at the brand and go it's it cheapens it because it's a
• 1:14:57
  danger and marketeers will talk about this.
• 1:14:59
  If it's readily available at discounted prices continuously
• 1:15:03
  on the major supermarkets, then does it make people look at and
• 1:15:07
  go? It can't be inexpensive or it
• 1:15:08
  can't be a fancy whiskey? Well I would say the reason the
• 1:15:10
  only reason people know that Ardmore exists is because the
• 1:15:12
  Ardmore legacy. So I wouldn't say that Ardmore
• 1:15:14
  legacy makes people not drink Ardmore.
• 1:15:16
  I think it's the only reason. No, you've misunderstood what I
• 1:15:19
  was going. But what I would say is I
• 1:15:21
  didn't. I also didn't know that Ardmore
• 1:15:22
  is 50% unpeated. I didn't know that.
• 1:15:24
  I knew they make Ardley. I don't know it's 50%.
• 1:15:27
  My interpretation of Ardmore has always been a challenging
• 1:15:30
  whiskey. A lot of people that I really
• 1:15:32
  respect in whiskey and a lot of people, a lot experience in
• 1:15:35
  whiskey really, really rate the spirit.
• 1:15:38
  People that listen to the podcast will know that this is
• 1:15:40
  really not my kind of whiskey. I mean, it's just quite dirty
• 1:15:44
  drinking from a puddle a bit and that's and by the way, if.
• 1:15:49
  There's a wanky tasting or whatever, but drinking from a
• 1:15:53
  puddle and. By the way, that and by the way,
• 1:15:58
  that's not about the G&M bottling, it's just about the
• 1:16:00
  spirit from Ardmore. It's not my thing and I'm OK
• 1:16:03
  with actually be admitting that I'm probably wrong about
• 1:16:05
  Ardmore. Yeah, yeah, because it is an
• 1:16:07
  interesting spirit. She's not interesting to.
• 1:16:10
  Me, I'm clearly not drinking enough puddles.
• 1:16:14
  I would say this is a classic example of the value.
• 1:16:18
  This is a classic example of the value of an independent bottler
• 1:16:21
  is the first Ardmore I ever tried was at an indie bottler
• 1:16:25
  spotlight and it was in here and it was a tree Cara indie bottler
• 1:16:28
  spot. And I tried the Ardmore and I
• 1:16:30
  absolutely loved it to the point where maybe it was probably the
• 1:16:34
  last drama I brought from a bought from a supermarket was I
• 1:16:36
  just went out and bought the standard Ardmore and I've had
• 1:16:38
  it. And one of the other things I
• 1:16:40
  would say is that and who is it that owns?
• 1:16:42
  Ross might be able to tell us or Cam who is who owns more
• 1:16:45
  distillery. Bean Santori.
• 1:16:48
  Because what else is sorry, Fraser?
• 1:16:50
  I've got quite good knowledge. Sorry.
• 1:16:58
  You've got to remember to be, to be fair, to be fair.
• 1:17:00
  Fraser has worked for both me and.
• 1:17:03
  We're going to come here. But what I would say is that
• 1:17:06
  Ardmore is very, very readily available in India and you see
• 1:17:10
  it on the shelves a lot in India which which is an interesting
• 1:17:14
  like Cam you got, you got a point on this?
• 1:17:16
  I've got a wee point. Yeah, so, and it's a very, very
• 1:17:21
  passionate point for me. Armor for me has never really
• 1:17:27
  landed. But the guy who I took over from
• 1:17:31
  at Scotch Fraser Robson, which is now a mandate to come on the
• 1:17:37
  podcast, yeah. He also works at GNR.
• 1:17:39
  He's. Going to have to come in and
• 1:17:40
  clarify everything that Fraser says.
• 1:17:44
  Yeah, so Fraser is was my sense I for whiskey and he is probably
• 1:17:52
  the UK's largest collector of artboard really.
• 1:17:56
  Yeah, I'm I'm putting that probably globally.
• 1:17:59
  It's maybe globally really he upset, adores it.
• 1:18:03
  He absolutely. Adores.
• 1:18:05
  I think it's really nice. He sees value in it, so I see
• 1:18:09
  value in it because of that reputation.
• 1:18:12
  Yeah, it reminds me of like a Campbelltown whiskey, like a
• 1:18:16
  classic again, school show. It's got that wee bit of pee,
• 1:18:20
  but. Yeah, it's soft and.
• 1:18:21
  Easy. I like that, yeah.
• 1:18:22
  You know, I think for for me, it's got a bit of Highland Park
• 1:18:25
  as well. Yeah, yeah, it's got a lovely
• 1:18:27
  Not Isla smoke. Too.
• 1:18:30
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, generally it's there.
• 1:18:33
  Twelve, 1200% But I mean, well, we'll talk about it then,
• 1:18:36
  Fraser, right? Because 6.
• 1:18:37
  Percent as well this 46. Percent because this.
• 1:18:40
  Will be. Rest for everyone to because you
• 1:18:43
  you know, you're in your you're in your new position at Gordon
• 1:18:45
  Macphail. But your previous position was
• 1:18:49
  there who've just heard and Ross in the corner there, the naughty
• 1:18:51
  corner you worked at Scotch. So I want to find out the
• 1:18:55
  difference that you've seen from being on trade and selling
• 1:18:59
  Gordon Macphail to people, particularly in the environment
• 1:19:02
  that you worked in at Scotch to now selling it to everybody
• 1:19:06
  because how easy was it when a great tourist, I take you, Ross,
• 1:19:11
  when a when a tourist, when a tourist walks in or somebody
• 1:19:16
  walks in at Scotch, because I'm going to, I'm going to throw out
• 1:19:18
  there, right, I'm going. To have to be careful with a lot
• 1:19:20
  of my word choices for how I answer.
• 1:19:23
  That I'm going to, I'm going to propose this.
• 1:19:25
  I think that Gordon Macphail is a difficult brand to sell over
• 1:19:30
  the bar because I think. Not in Scotch, not in Fraser
• 1:19:36
  answer, Yeah. So I think Scotch we were very
• 1:19:39
  fortunate with the location we were in and and the clientele
• 1:19:41
  that we were having on a regular basis.
• 1:19:44
  So it wasn't people coming and looking for supermarket drams or
• 1:19:47
  looking for something that they've had before, it was
• 1:19:50
  looking for something they've not had before.
• 1:19:52
  Story behind a bit of you know, UK exclusive etcetera.
• 1:19:58
  G and MI think within Scotch, we could confidently say it's
• 1:20:03
  probably our best selling independent and it was and it
• 1:20:06
  was it was not an independent. It's always.
• 1:20:12
  Yeah, yeah, You know, I would grow up to table sometimes,
• 1:20:17
  right. I want to try really good
• 1:20:18
  whiskey. But you're having this and
• 1:20:20
  they're like, what is it? I'm like, so Gordon Macphail,
• 1:20:23
  you'll like it. And that was, and they would go
• 1:20:25
  great. OK.
• 1:20:26
  And because it was a different idea where they came in wanting
• 1:20:31
  a recommendation, wanting our experience, and they said, wow,
• 1:20:33
  if you really like that, then yeah.
• 1:20:35
  OK, absolutely. I'll have that moving across to
• 1:20:38
  going from selling by the DRAM to people to selling bottles is
• 1:20:42
  more difficult in the sense of your, well, not more difficult,
• 1:20:45
  but you're having to fit into many different scenarios and
• 1:20:49
  price points and looking at different, some people, right?
• 1:20:55
  I need something that's minimum 5000 lbs and they're like, wow,
• 1:20:59
  that's a great issue. And then they go ah, but it has
• 1:21:01
  to be one of these 4 distilleries and they're like,
• 1:21:03
  right, OK, really. Yeah.
• 1:21:04
  Or, and then you have other people that say, OK, currently
• 1:21:07
  we can't have anything over £50 a bottle.
• 1:21:10
  Yeah. And there will be and they will.
• 1:21:12
  We love the brand, we love everything you're doing, but we
• 1:21:14
  simply cannot at the moment. And to be, yeah, you've never
• 1:21:17
  had to sell Discovery before. Not really, no.
• 1:21:21
  Like is it something that PC track collections and CC uppers
• 1:21:24
  that we're going to move on to constant choice uppers, Your
• 1:21:27
  clientele coming in being like, listen, I've got a big budget
• 1:21:29
  and I want something special and you already had that trust in
• 1:21:32
  the branch. We used to say make dreams come
• 1:21:34
  true. That's what we would do.
• 1:21:37
  But to sell something, but to sell into like a local bar or a
• 1:21:43
  we shop that goes right. Why should I take your product?
• 1:21:46
  That must be difficult to be like take.
• 1:21:49
  Is it harder to use what? Because my point here right?
• 1:21:51
  The reasoning behind it is the fact that Gordon Macphail
• 1:21:53
  labeling, you know, because of the way that independent
• 1:21:57
  bottlers, the rules that they have to follow with what is the
• 1:22:01
  most highlighted element on the label.
• 1:22:04
  Some people will tell you if you're the distillery, can't,
• 1:22:07
  you can't plaster the distillery, you can't use the
• 1:22:09
  distilleries logos, you can't use their branding on the
• 1:22:12
  bottles, etcetera. So when someone is standing at
• 1:22:15
  the bar and they're looking up at a shelf of whiskey, could
• 1:22:19
  they be put off by the by, by not see being able to see your
• 1:22:22
  brand and and and understanding the brand?
• 1:22:25
  Because as we've talked about tonight, independent bottlers
• 1:22:28
  are not a thing that a lot of people have a a full
• 1:22:30
  understanding of because some of makes.
• 1:22:32
  Yeah. So that's.
• 1:22:40
  What I would look for, yeah. I agree this is an interesting
• 1:22:53
  discussion because it was actually a discussion I was
• 1:22:56
  having with a couple of people on tasting on Tuesday night
• 1:22:59
  where we talked about independent bottlers and maybe
• 1:23:02
  some in the independent bottlers are more familiar with some
• 1:23:04
  independent I'm left familiar with.
• 1:23:06
  But when it comes to an independent bottle of trust is
• 1:23:08
  so important. So when we're talking about, for
• 1:23:11
  example, Woodrow's of Edinburgh, you, you there is there, you
• 1:23:15
  know, when we talked about that we're only as good as our worst
• 1:23:18
  DRAM. And there's an element of that
• 1:23:21
  that is kind of true because, you know, if you've tried, you
• 1:23:24
  know, you're, you're, if you're, if you're asking somebody to try
• 1:23:28
  something from a different producer, you're you're bottling
• 1:23:33
  it, but it's from a different producer than maybe you've had
• 1:23:35
  before. Yeah.
• 1:23:36
  But you know, the last thing was good.
• 1:23:37
  You're taking the leap of faith to a degree and saying, right, I
• 1:23:41
  know this is going to be different to that, but I trust
• 1:23:44
  the brand. Yeah.
• 1:23:45
  Therefore I'm going to, I'm going to put, I'm going to
• 1:23:56
  because you've got trust in the brand.
• 1:23:57
  Yeah. No, exactly.
• 1:24:01
  Yeah. Although Ross did say this is
• 1:24:02
  like drinking out of a puddle. I missed that, sorry.
• 1:24:09
  Yeah, but, but I want to also talk about then the Gordon
• 1:24:12
  Macphail, like the, the, the, the, the labelling is really,
• 1:24:17
  really important as well. Because The thing is, Gordon
• 1:24:20
  Macphail, as we've talked about, there's the element of quality.
• 1:24:23
  And Stephen Rankin said a really great thing about, you know,
• 1:24:25
  quality never goes out of fashion.
• 1:24:27
  Fashions change. And that was his, I was one of
• 1:24:30
  his grandfather or one of the other generations before him has
• 1:24:33
  said that the one thing that you can remember in whiskey is that
• 1:24:36
  quality will never go out of fashion.
• 1:24:38
  And that's what that's what they've done and that's what
• 1:24:40
  they've strived to produce. But the relationships as well as
• 1:24:44
  the brands that are on the label, there are certain
• 1:24:47
  independent bottlers that just don't get the opportunity to
• 1:24:50
  stick down the brand of the of the distillery on the label or
• 1:24:55
  or put out. So some of the branding and some
• 1:24:57
  of the labels that you guys have had, it's massive.
• 1:24:59
  And we were at the, I don't know whether you can say it was that
• 1:25:04
  we were at the Glen Allocate tasting at the Dornoch Castle, I
• 1:25:07
  guess when we. Were.
• 1:25:08
  Yes, we are. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:09
  And fellowed Simon Thompson had put on a Glen Allocate tasting
• 1:25:12
  and there were six drums in the lineup that Glen Allocate
• 1:25:14
  brought in. That was great.
• 1:25:16
  And there was our 30 year old Glen Allocate on there and
• 1:25:18
  everything like that. Phillip Simon Thompson then came
• 1:25:21
  back and said like we, we just decided we'll, we'll Chuck an
• 1:25:24
  extra drama on for you guys. We had a look in the cupboard
• 1:25:26
  and we found this and there was a gourmet failed 1968 Glen
• 1:25:30
  Alaki. And it was like, it was like it
• 1:25:33
  was liquid. It was an 18 year old and it was
• 1:25:36
  liquid from, you know, the year after Glen Alaki Distillery had
• 1:25:40
  started producing whiskey. Wow, it's cool, you know, so
• 1:25:45
  that legacy is just massive. Yeah.
• 1:25:47
  I think a lot with the reason we get to use a lot of names is
• 1:25:51
  because we have been buying from distilleries for such a long
• 1:25:54
  time. And it is those relationships
• 1:25:57
  you get to a point where, yeah, so it's often not disclosed who
• 1:26:04
  we give them back to. But normally they're very
• 1:26:06
  expensive bottles and maybe make records.
• 1:26:12
  Yeah, try not to say too much. I'll get sacked exactly.
• 1:26:19
  Please, please not. But yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:21
  So we do sell casks back. But yeah, very often it'll be
• 1:26:26
  directly back to the distilleries and then as cases
• 1:26:30
  of we will sell casks to independent people.
• 1:26:34
  But when that happens, we're saying, well, we're bottling it.
• 1:26:37
  We're not selling unless it's directly to the distillery.
• 1:26:40
  We're saying right, that's fine, you can have this cask, but
• 1:26:42
  we're bottling it for you. You're not further age than
• 1:26:44
  that. We're we're saying this is we're
• 1:26:46
  OK with this quality as it is now.
• 1:26:48
  So that's where that stops. OK.
• 1:26:51
  But as it goes back to the distillery, they're not going to
• 1:26:53
  tamper with that. Nice.
• 1:26:55
  But yeah, that that reputation of looking after the names is is
• 1:26:58
  is huge. Because you could bottle them.
• 1:27:00
  I mean McAllen for example, we've had.
• 1:27:02
  So. Yeah, we've tried the brackets,
• 1:27:05
  M and the mother lover, all that kind of stuff.
• 1:27:09
  And there's different, there's different independent bottlers
• 1:27:11
  that can buy and sell whiskey, even likes of in the last indie
• 1:27:17
  bottler Spotlight, the Thompson brothers gave us a chance to try
• 1:27:20
  a Highland 18 and they couldn't tell us on the bottle what it
• 1:27:24
  was. But I think I did say at the
• 1:27:26
  same time as my favorite brand of brown sauce from the
• 1:27:29
  distillery that came from. And if you read down the back of
• 1:27:34
  the bottle, there's a little indication of which area, what,
• 1:27:37
  what distillery that that that 18 year old comes from.
• 1:27:42
  You guys like McAllen, You can bottle McAllen and there's
• 1:27:44
  different. Things, yeah.
• 1:27:45
  And the moment is not labeled as McAllen.
• 1:27:49
  So we used to be able to bottle McAllen quite easily.
• 1:27:52
  We always had a good agreement with McAllen.
• 1:27:54
  So coming out of the Second World War, McAllen produced
• 1:27:58
  briefly through the war. Coming out of it, they were very
• 1:28:02
  financially struggling and kind of put up a cry for help within
• 1:28:06
  the local community. And Gordon McVeigh had fill in
• 1:28:09
  contracts or McAllen signed up. And McAllen said, can you double
• 1:28:14
  it? And we said, yeah, sure.
• 1:28:16
  So this is 1945, just coming at the war.
• 1:28:17
  And we were saying, yeah, we'll buy a new spirit that we'd still
• 1:28:20
  then have to set for another 20 years before we get anything
• 1:28:22
  back. And again, that goes back to
• 1:28:25
  that trust. And that was fine up until the
• 1:28:27
  80s. And then McAllen changed their
• 1:28:29
  kind of legislation on how we can name it.
• 1:28:32
  So now it's like with a spay malt.
• 1:28:34
  Yeah. And then buy from McAllen.
• 1:28:36
  But even be able. To get McAllen, Mcallen's and
• 1:28:39
  quotation marks. You don't have to put it in an
• 1:28:41
  anagram or something like that. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:28:44
  That's a lot better than most, but.
• 1:28:46
  Even just to be able as an independent boughter, to be able
• 1:28:48
  to put that on on a label, there's for.
• 1:28:54
  A second I was. I can't answer.
• 1:28:55
  I can't answer that. Yes, yeah.
• 1:28:58
  As embargoed, you know, as a Glen limit.
• 1:29:01
  Yes, yeah. And well, 1940, so technically,
• 1:29:07
  yes. Well, I mean, the war
• 1:29:09
  technically was going on. Definitely, yeah.
• 1:29:19
  But yeah, 1940 was was quite a pivotal year for us and buying
• 1:29:24
  cast, but very, very few what Glenn Levitt, Strathfield went
• 1:29:29
  through the war. Mortlock, maybe a bit of
• 1:29:31
  McAllen. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:29:33
  But Glenn Levitt, we bought a fair chunk of the 1940s.
• 1:29:39
  And so a lot of our older bottlings you've seen have came
• 1:29:42
  from there. So, yeah, 85 coming out in less
• 1:29:44
  than two weeks and to be very exciting to deal with the
• 1:29:47
  McAllen as well. The Escort Mcfill was an
• 1:29:48
  independent bottler, but they were the official bottler of
• 1:29:51
  McAllen. Yeah.
• 1:29:53
  Yeah. So that's what the distillery.
• 1:29:54
  Yeah. So.
• 1:29:55
  So let's explain because the distillery labels again, these,
• 1:30:01
  these brands, Glenburgy, Ardmore, McAllen did not have
• 1:30:05
  their own bottles, could not get it to Europe, could not get it
• 1:30:08
  to America. We use their label with our
• 1:30:11
  liquid on their behalf. So whenever a McCallum has been
• 1:30:15
  sold for the, what, 1920s? Well, not 20s, maybe it's 1930s,
• 1:30:22
  forties, fifties, 60s going into the 70s.
• 1:30:27
  So it's all it was ever. It was you and them.
• 1:30:29
  So it wasn't an independent bottle in the way you know it
• 1:30:31
  now. Yeah, they didn't.
• 1:30:32
  Macallan didn't have their own bottles.
• 1:30:34
  Because this is like they say. Where the bottle?
• 1:30:36
  Is it well, this is this is the element that I've I've only just
• 1:30:40
  recently found out as well is the fact that like I don't know
• 1:30:43
  where it would have been and you might be able to tell me, but
• 1:30:45
  distilleries would literally just make spin it, you know, and
• 1:30:49
  they would literally just sell it to whoever wanted to buy that
• 1:30:51
  spin off it and it could be blinders.
• 1:30:53
  Whatever it was, it could be it could be gross.
• 1:30:55
  That's. The point of filling.
• 1:30:56
  The point, so they would literally just say it and it
• 1:30:58
  would either be do you want us to fill your CAS for your CAS or
• 1:31:01
  do you want us to fill a CAS for you?
• 1:31:02
  But you can buy the CAS and the liquid.
• 1:31:05
  But basically, I mean, that's my understanding of some of that.
• 1:31:08
  God, well, that's why a lot of distilleries in the kind of mid
• 1:31:11
  1900s love dealing with us because we would say, yes, we'll
• 1:31:15
  have your spirit. We'll bring the wood as well.
• 1:31:17
  We'll bring out, we'll bring our casks.
• 1:31:19
  So we were saving, we were giving them money and then
• 1:31:22
  saving the money on buying casks.
• 1:31:24
  So rather than saying, yeah, we'll buy some spirit, if you
• 1:31:26
  put in some wood, we were like, yeah, we'll do that.
• 1:31:28
  And then we said, and then we'll market it for you and we'll sell
• 1:31:31
  it. And they went, of course you can
• 1:31:33
  do that. So yeah, the legacy behind that
• 1:31:37
  is huge and. Well, the last drum then Fraser
• 1:31:42
  then, because this is the last drum.
• 1:31:43
  This is I can see from the colour the bottle.
• 1:31:46
  Now I will also say I want to talk about the bottle shape
• 1:31:49
  because there's a clear indication between the different
• 1:31:51
  well, this is. We've been through the labels,
• 1:31:53
  we've we've talked about the distillery labels, we've talked
• 1:31:56
  about connoisseurs choice. This is connoisseurs choice
• 1:32:01
  Upper plus upper, upper upper. Upper.
• 1:32:03
  A button box. Upper it gets a yeah.
• 1:32:05
  Grocery boys. And a big wooden box.
• 1:32:09
  By the way, it's very generous for you to bring.
• 1:32:12
  That's unbelievable. And for whoever's doing the next
• 1:32:19
  indie ball or spot, I hope you're watching.
• 1:32:24
  Yeah. So GNM gets broken up into
• 1:32:26
  almost a pyramid of three different categories.
• 1:32:30
  So you have your kind of like core, if you will, that'll be
• 1:32:36
  your discovery, your distillery labels and your connoisseurs
• 1:32:39
  choice. And then at that kind of upper
• 1:32:42
  echelon is your connoisseur choice upper.
• 1:32:44
  So distillery labels can vary in age and varying distilleries.
• 1:32:48
  So you have a, there's a 13 year old, there's a 15 year old, a 25
• 1:32:52
  year old. Connoisseurs Choice will tend to
• 1:32:54
  vary from 15 years old to 29 years old, and their Connoisseur
• 1:32:58
  Choice upper will be about 30 years old to about 40.
• 1:33:03
  You then go up a category and it goes into prestige and that's
• 1:33:07
  where Steven would come in. That's your private collections
• 1:33:12
  Where? That's where you hand over to
• 1:33:14
  Steven, Yeah. Director of Prestige.
• 1:33:16
  Not my pay grade. And I disappear.
• 1:33:19
  And that's where, yeah, much kind of more bespoke bottles
• 1:33:24
  looking at that kind of 40 year old plus or or close distillery.
• 1:33:27
  So it's a real well aged or just Unicorn whiskeys.
• 1:33:32
  And then you have that final, which is the Halo and the Halo's
• 1:33:34
  reserved for just our generations.
• 1:33:37
  So only whiskeys that have essentially made world records.
• 1:33:42
  So yeah, start starting with what you had.
• 1:33:44
  Yeah, you had the Mortlock 70 was the first one, and then
• 1:33:47
  Generation 70 and then Mortlock 75.
• 1:33:50
  Gonna live at 80, another 85. That's about to happen.
• 1:33:53
  All were at their time of coming out.
• 1:33:55
  Oldest whiskeys ever. There's a couple others that
• 1:33:58
  made in there. There's a Milton, a 1949 Milton,
• 1:34:01
  which is, as far as I'm aware, it's the only officially labeled
• 1:34:05
  Milton bottle. Yes, yeah, yeah.
• 1:34:11
  No, I'm pretty sure even milk has.
• 1:34:12
  Been it's been confirmed by Ross in the corner, so it must be.
• 1:34:15
  True, I should ask. Quite nerdy and so So Straff
• 1:34:17
  Island distillery was previously known as Milton but name changed
• 1:34:22
  about I want to say in the 50s. It came out of the war.
• 1:34:26
  There's a lot of dodgy dealings going on and they only made
• 1:34:29
  Spirit for a couple of weeks in 1949 whilst that was named
• 1:34:33
  Milton and. Some of that spirit ended up in
• 1:34:36
  the way. Some of that ended up GNM, but a
• 1:34:39
  lot of it would have been just used when they just maybe went
• 1:34:43
  into a blend for somebody or just drank straight away.
• 1:34:48
  So it's only melting that. Apparently drank straight away
• 1:34:50
  and. What?
• 1:34:51
  What you make? Yeah.
• 1:34:52
  What? What's this we're drinking?
• 1:34:53
  Then? What is this final DRAM?
• 1:34:55
  This is Balblair and so a 1993 thirty year old Balblair and
• 1:35:01
  like you probably tell by the colour what kind of cask this is
• 1:35:04
  in, first of all, Sherry Puncheon.
• 1:35:06
  So big big boy, you're a big 700 litre cask there.
• 1:35:10
  And these again are butts and puncheons is a cash.
• 1:35:13
  You're looking for very, very lengthy maturations.
• 1:35:16
  And is this is this? Would this be the same as the
• 1:35:18
  travel gas you were talking about?
• 1:35:20
  Thicker stage, Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:35:23
  Full maturation, about twice as thick as normal.
• 1:35:29
  I don't know. It's really you're asking us
• 1:35:32
  after 5 drums how thick a stave is puncheons?
• 1:35:47
  Yeah. Right.
• 1:35:49
  So yeah, I take it, I take it, how big is a Puncheon?
• 1:35:53
  700 liters. 700 liters, Yeah, There you go.
• 1:35:56
  Well, so, yeah. 250 Fox heads. 2 to 50 yeah Bucks 500 punches 7.
• 1:36:02
  100 yeah, it's a big old, I think.
• 1:36:04
  It's the biggest you can go. Pretty sure it's the.
• 1:36:06
  Biggest and what, what, what kind of what, what would this
• 1:36:09
  bottle be retailing at what we're talking so.
• 1:36:11
  It's about 700 and 5800 lbs there you.
• 1:36:16
  Go value for money. How much was the taste?
• 1:36:19
  How much was the taste? Tonight 25 LB a ticket.
• 1:36:22
  Tickets available. Value for money at the Wednesday
• 1:36:27
  Story podcast. Well done Fraser for bringing
• 1:36:29
  that along. No, actually, Angus, I think
• 1:36:32
  you, you and I tried this last weekend on our way home on the
• 1:36:36
  train. We did.
• 1:36:37
  Yes, from from Helensburgh. We tried this somewhere between
• 1:36:40
  Helensburgh and Glasgow Queen St. thanks to our sponsors, our
• 1:36:45
  travel partner ScotRail. Yeah, yeah, wait, wait.
• 1:36:50
  Because I think you, you, you had this at Loman and Clyde as
• 1:36:53
  well. Yeah, and you and.
• 1:36:56
  The bottle that was sharing. And you we were just about to
• 1:36:59
  leave and we said right, Fraser, quickly give us a DRAM for the
• 1:37:01
  train, charged our glasses, charged our glasses for us to
• 1:37:04
  hot foot across. So it was it was fantastic.
• 1:37:06
  But look, it was brilliant. Fraser, you've been absolutely
• 1:37:08
  fantastic this evening. We're going to do drama the
• 1:37:10
  night then or so we're going to vote as how strong is that?
• 1:37:15
  Fraser 54. 54.2 They're 30 years.
• 1:37:21
  Old so right drama the night then ladies and gentlemen we'll
• 1:37:23
  start with a Glen Burgate 25 hard one it be Ross is going to
• 1:37:27
  bat on anyone that says differently tonight whether the
• 1:37:30
  Glen OK so we've got just a three in the corner OK.
• 1:37:34
  And Ross has a really, really handy associate with him.
• 1:37:40
  Ross had a really What, Sir? Handy associate with him.
• 1:37:43
  Yeah, so if he wants to fight me on it.
• 1:37:46
  Cameron Ross, No one will be fighting up there.
• 1:37:50
  So what's that about five. Okay, right drum #2 which was
• 1:37:54
  which? Craig, That was a Craig Elke.
• 1:37:57
  Craig Elke. Okay, a few people in there.
• 1:38:00
  Right drum #3 the Benria. OK, so we're actually threes and
• 1:38:05
  fours at the moment. It's going to be a tight call.
• 1:38:07
  What about the cast sample from the Glen turret?
• 1:38:09
  I'm going to set my hand up for that one as well.
• 1:38:11
  Sherry Tart. There we go.
• 1:38:12
  Good one. Ardmore.
• 1:38:14
  Ardmore. Who's liking the Ardmore?
• 1:38:16
  No, no, no puddle drinkers in the room.
• 1:38:21
  Puddle drinkers OK the final one the ball Blair Blair what we got
• 1:38:26
  for the ball Blair 30 OK so I think the ball Blair 30 just
• 1:38:29
  sneaks it but I would say that it's very.
• 1:38:31
  You're talking about one or two either.
• 1:38:32
  Well, what I would say, Graham, an observation is quite often
• 1:38:35
  when. We have these tastings in here.
• 1:38:36
  There's one drum or two drums that really take it away, but
• 1:38:40
  there's about four or five drums very evenly about around the
• 1:38:43
  room that's been fours and fives that people have voted for.
• 1:38:46
  And I think that speaks to the quality of the bottlings of
• 1:38:51
  Gordon 100. Percent.
• 1:38:52
  Well, that's the case. There's not one brand absolutely
• 1:38:59
  spot on there. Fraser, thank you so much for
• 1:39:01
  coming in and bringing us the whiskey and your chat as well.
• 1:39:04
  It's the third time you've been on the Whiskey Stories podcast,
• 1:39:06
  which means you now might take over Ross's position.
• 1:39:15
  Good luck at the golf. Oh, I say a big thank you to
• 1:39:19
  everyone for coming along, but in particular lots of sand.
• 1:39:21
  Robin, absolutely fantastic. I mean, I am driving back home
• 1:39:27
  tomorrow, but they drove all that just for us tonight.
• 1:39:30
  No, but but also I think you're, is it Rosebank and Lindo's Abbey
• 1:39:34
  Tomorrow you're going to see fantastic.
• 1:39:40
  Launch Scrub a mic. Get on the mic so I can put it.
• 1:39:42
  Praise that absolutely fantastic whiskeys tonight, every single
• 1:39:47
  one of them, but also I. Just talk about.
• 1:39:51
  Them but also we, we come up not only for the whiskeys, which are
• 1:39:54
  amazing, but we come up for the company.
• 1:39:57
  Yeah, yeah, from you Scottish people and it's fantastic.
• 1:40:01
  Oh well, you're more than welcome.
• 1:40:07
  I guess, I guess we've always said it easy.
• 1:40:11
  Come for the whiskey, stay for the chat.
• 1:40:15
  Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much.
• 1:40:16
  You've been listening the whiskey story.
• 1:40:24
  Well done. Good one.
• 1:40:27
  Well done. Well done there we.
• 1:40:33
  Go. Very.