Latest / Whisky Stories Podcast / Greg Urquhart's Liquid CV, Blending and Dram Jam

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Greg Urquhart's Liquid CV, Blending and Dram Jam · Whisky Stories Podcast

• 0:00
  All right lads, we've got drums in front of us.
• 0:01
  I guess you know what to do. Clap us in.
• 0:06
  Welcome to the Whiskey Stories podcast.
• 0:08
  I've actually got ACD that someone could taste so I could
• 0:11
  take. I've got a liquid seat.
• 0:12
  Yeah, I could say all the good right things, but actually don't
• 0:15
  want to try some whiskey that I helped see and I can talk you
• 0:17
  through how I've done it. I remember, can still remember
• 0:20
  sampling that downstairs. And as soon as I sampled it,
• 0:23
  like, I walked upstairs with a glass and was like, this is one
• 0:26
  of my favourite whiskeys in the imagery right now and we need
• 0:28
  to, we need to release this like.
• 0:30
  Never like a trumpet or that the UK.
• 0:33
  Please don't make commercial whiskey and basements of bars
• 0:36
  illegally. But I'll do yet do it
• 0:37
  responsibly. Welcome along the Whiskey
• 0:39
  Stories podcast myself, Graham Colgar.
• 0:41
  We are back in the athletic arms, back sandwiched underneath
• 0:44
  the gents toilets and the bar. We've got a good pal friend of
• 0:47
  the pod, Greg Archer. He's back on the podcast and
• 0:50
  yes, it's great. Yeah.
• 0:50
  He is, Yep, wearing green and diggers.
• 0:53
  Yeah, I know it's a risky move behind enemy lines.
• 0:56
  Yeah, but same as Chuck, I thought it was going to be
• 0:58
  Leith. A dress for the wrong diggers.
• 1:00
  Yeah, no, it looks like you're about to start playing a piano
• 1:04
  or. Something I've not got a job so
• 1:07
  I might as well. Yeah, there you are.
• 1:08
  How are you, Chuck? Am I right?
• 1:10
  Yeah, Yeah. Good.
• 1:11
  Yeah, excellent. Thanks.
• 1:13
  Well, good to see you. Great to see you.
• 1:15
  How are you, Angus? I'm grand, I'm grand.
• 1:18
  Bye. It's great to be.
• 1:18
  Back. We're back at the swing of
• 1:20
  things now. We're on the third week of me
• 1:22
  being back from, I don't know if you knew, but it was actually
• 1:24
  over in India. You were an Indian, yeah.
• 1:26
  Actually. I haven't heard anything about
• 1:28
  you in India. Have you not?
• 1:30
  No. What are you being chucked?
• 1:32
  Been avoiding your social? But we're back, we've got drums
• 1:36
  in front of us. It's good to be here.
• 1:37
  And so it's someone's using the toilet.
• 1:41
  Yeah, it's it's we've got drums. What are you drinking?
• 1:44
  I guess. Yeah, well, I mean.
• 1:45
  We're all drinking the. Same.
• 1:46
  We're all kind of drinking the same thing.
• 1:49
  I don't think there's too many. Well, I've got a nine year old
• 1:52
  Ben Nevis which is from which was.
• 1:56
  Exclusively for the bar. Exclusively for the bar is it?
• 1:59
  No. No, all right, He said.
• 2:01
  She said you couldn't get anywhere else.
• 2:03
  Yeah. So maybe it is.
• 2:05
  I don't know. Well, you might have to come
• 2:07
  here to find out. The only place they've got it is
• 2:09
  here. That's what we've been informed
• 2:11
  and yeah. And wrong.
• 2:12
  I don't think it's a bar. I don't.
• 2:13
  It's not. It's not like the digger's label
• 2:14
  on it. It was.
• 2:15
  No, it's Woodrow's. But anyway, it was described as
• 2:20
  chewy and not sulfrey, so yeah. Would you concur, Chuck?
• 2:23
  I've just smelled it. Smells good.
• 2:25
  I like the way you you asked the the girl behind the bar, he
• 2:28
  said. Is it sulfrey or not sulfrey?
• 2:30
  And it was like, does he want it to be sulfury?
• 2:33
  Or does he? Not wanted to be sulfury.
• 2:35
  There was a bit of a quiet and then she went.
• 2:37
  Not sulfur anyone. I'll have 1 then.
• 2:39
  I've not had an awful lot of Ben Nevis, no, but I do know that I
• 2:44
  can. Well, it's got mixture reviews
• 2:46
  like a lot of people don't. Talk up Ben because when I was
• 2:49
  getting into whiskey I had AI bought a 10 year old Ben Nevis
• 2:52
  in a supermarket in Fort William because that was quite hard.
• 2:57
  It was quite hard to find it actually at certain point, like
• 3:01
  just the start of the core release and great.
• 3:04
  I really enjoyed it because it's kind of up my street.
• 3:06
  It's. Have to say I was.
• 3:07
  It's a bit of a kind of hefty drum, you know?
• 3:09
  I was very anti Ben. Nervous.
• 3:11
  Yeah. Why for?
• 3:11
  A long time. Why I just?
• 3:14
  Thought it was pretty shit to be honest with you, just wasn't
• 3:18
  really really very impressed with it and I had a lot of
• 3:21
  really self free Ben nervous. And then when I was travelling
• 3:24
  internationally, loads of people love Ben Nevis and specific
• 3:29
  years like 1990. 6 Ben Nevis There's lots of people chased
• 3:32
  that. Yeah.
• 3:33
  Really. Yeah.
• 3:34
  Yeah, I think, I think one of the first Ben Nevises I had that
• 3:38
  was really, really impressed by was when they did the movie The
• 3:42
  Amber Light. Dave Broome did his one.
• 3:43
  I think that was a partnership with Thompson Brothers that
• 3:46
  would probably have been about, I think that was a 19 year old
• 3:48
  then actually. I don't think the maths math in
• 3:52
  on that, but that was sublime, really, really good.
• 3:56
  And then I had some really good ones in Japan and then some
• 3:58
  really good ones in, yeah. Because there's a, there's a for
• 4:00
  me. I don't know where I've heard
• 4:02
  that, and I don't know why I associate it.
• 4:04
  But for Japanese whiskey and Ben Nevis, there's a there's a
• 4:06
  connection. It's owned by a Japanese
• 4:08
  company. It's owned by, owned by Nika, so
• 4:10
  and. Of a lot of love has been used
• 4:12
  in the blending process. As well, right?
• 4:13
  Because was there not criticism at one point where a lot of the
• 4:16
  stuff that was coming out of Japan was imported?
• 4:20
  Ben Nevis. Well, I, I, I don't know about
• 4:23
  that side, but I do know that the other side that there's
• 4:25
  certainly a lot of Ben Nevis was going into Japan, right.
• 4:28
  OK. So I don't know how much of what
• 4:30
  was coming out of Japan was Ben Nevis, but I know a lot of a.
• 4:32
  Lot of what's? Been going across to Japan was
• 4:35
  Ben Nevis right but just simply because it's owned by Nika who
• 4:38
  are one of the big. Because you don't see an awful
• 4:39
  lot of Ben Nemessel like whiskey come original bottlings, you
• 4:42
  don't see enough. No water shelves.
• 4:44
  That's what I'm saying. It was very hard to find you.
• 4:45
  I mean, you're not in any supermarkets.
• 4:47
  You wouldn't find it in, you know, I, I remember I think even
• 4:51
  going into Royal Mile Whiskey and they didn't have the Ben a
• 4:55
  Ben Nevis core release. You could only buy like a James
• 4:57
  Ed or what have you. They only did the 10.
• 4:59
  They only did the 10. And then they did 10 and then
• 5:01
  they did cast strength. I mean, from from your point of
• 5:05
  view, Greg, you know, for people who are maybe who your first
• 5:08
  time on the podcast, you've been on the podcast a few times as a
• 5:11
  pal of the pod. Yeah, but you're, this is
• 5:13
  actually the first, the second episode we've ever had you fully
• 5:17
  back because you were episode number six.
• 5:18
  Yeah, back on the 22nd of November.
• 5:20
  When nobody watched that that. Was that was when we could say
• 5:24
  what we wanted? And now I've got a deal with
• 5:26
  your legal team and all that. Kind of stuff, yeah.
• 5:29
  But you were at the time you were working for Glenmore
• 5:32
  Spirits. You've now you don't work for
• 5:34
  Landmark Spirits anymore. You're you're self-employed.
• 5:37
  Well, about, about to go through that, about to go through all
• 5:40
  that process, right? Yeah, I've took a bit of time
• 5:42
  off, right. And then that's me now going to
• 5:44
  be moving into kind of consultancy work and I'm kind of
• 5:48
  going through all that registration process and stuff
• 5:50
  just now, but already speaking to kind of a couple of clients
• 5:53
  that have seen that have left and I'm going to be doing
• 5:56
  consultancy. So I've had a couple of meetings
• 5:58
  about projects and stuff. So there'll be stuff on the
• 6:00
  horizon, but I need to get all the the name and everything
• 6:03
  sorted first and and then in the next couple of months I'll be
• 6:05
  kind of out actively doing stuff.
• 6:07
  And the big part of your job whilst you were there though was
• 6:10
  like, you know you were, you were quite, you mean you were
• 6:12
  very hands on with right across the whole business from cask,
• 6:17
  cask inventory purchasing as well I suppose.
• 6:20
  Would that be part? Of it not not so much.
• 6:22
  Purchasing liquid entry, not really.
• 6:24
  Well, I wasn't really in my remit, but the kind of because
• 6:28
  it was almost like a dual role, the kind of head of OPS and head
• 6:31
  of spirits towards the kind of the the end of my time there.
• 6:35
  So the fun stuff that the spirit side was, as you can imagine,
• 6:39
  the kind of wood procurement and cash management blend and stuff
• 6:41
  like that. And then the other side, which
• 6:44
  was the order in bottles and, and facilitate and kind of
• 6:49
  request forms and all that kind of stuff that that was kind of
• 6:51
  the other side of it. But yeah.
• 6:53
  Yeah, so I mean, but working with it like going back to bed
• 6:56
  nervous then is it, is it an easy like you'll know that's
• 6:59
  what's great when you have when we're having drams, we're having
• 7:01
  a chat. It's when you really start to
• 7:03
  understand someone who because you're about 10 years at.
• 7:06
  Yeah, just under 10 years, yeah. So being in that position and
• 7:09
  getting a full understanding of spirit, character and what
• 7:13
  whiskey works well, what's good for, what's good to work with
• 7:16
  and what's trickier to work with.
• 7:17
  Where does Ben Nevis sit on that front as from an independent
• 7:20
  bottler point of view then? As Angus touched on it, it's
• 7:22
  quite it's quite a robust, quite a heavy spirit to work with for
• 7:27
  me. I thought that was something
• 7:28
  that I did work off in the inventory and chuckle have seen
• 7:32
  this at the warehouse. There is a lot of Ben Nevis
• 7:34
  there that's been re racked into different finishes and it was 1.
• 7:37
  I hadn't got to the point of getting one ready for release,
• 7:40
  but it was one that I was actively working on across
• 7:42
  several different kind of finishes, shall we say.
• 7:46
  But different spirits for me were the ones I worked with some
• 7:51
  just finished really quick and are ready younger.
• 7:54
  And the impression I was getting with working with Ben Nevis.
• 7:57
  Is it maybe just going to take a bit longer to to round off and
• 8:00
  mellow down and just. Because it's a robust spirit
• 8:02
  there because only we often hear about, you know, traffic like
• 8:07
  Glenn Murray, it finishes so well in lots of different ways
• 8:10
  and that's great. It's been nervous kind of
• 8:13
  similar, but maybe it just takes that because.
• 8:15
  I think it's going to take longer.
• 8:16
  It's it's a big kind of heavy, bold spirit.
• 8:19
  And as you say, that kind of bluff and edges maybe need a bit
• 8:23
  longer to soften out and a bit more kind of closer management
• 8:26
  things like Man it more and Glenn Lossy and stuff.
• 8:29
  I find really they find them really easy to work with.
• 8:31
  The the spirit just lends itself well to taking on a finish.
• 8:34
  Yeah, Deanston's another one that that seems to work really
• 8:37
  well. And that I mean, that was a
• 8:38
  beauty. The inventory was always
• 8:40
  changing. There'd be a new make would come
• 8:42
  in that hadn't worked with before.
• 8:44
  I don't mean new make, I mean just a new distillery spirit
• 8:47
  style that hadn't worked with before.
• 8:49
  And it was, it was test and learn.
• 8:50
  It was. It was.
• 8:52
  Really exciting time as well with all these new distilleries
• 8:54
  coming online, Just seeing them coming in for the first time.
• 8:57
  It must have been really exciting.
• 8:59
  Yeah. It must be a really exciting
• 9:00
  period to do that because I mean, there was a time when it
• 9:03
  would just, you wouldn't get that, you know?
• 9:05
  No, absolutely. But even established older
• 9:08
  whiskeys that maybe weren't available when Glenmore started.
• 9:11
  And that's the people that were looking after the purchase and
• 9:14
  at the time making new relationships and and
• 9:17
  diversifying the kind of holdings and that we had.
• 9:20
  It was always changing. And that when, when a schedule
• 9:22
  would come in and I would see we had something that I hadn't
• 9:24
  worked with before. It's quite exciting because
• 9:27
  you're getting, you're getting the opportunity.
• 9:28
  As I say, working maybe on a core brand for someone you maybe
• 9:32
  only other than drinking outside at work, you maybe don't get
• 9:35
  exposed to a lot of different stuff on your working hour.
• 9:37
  You can do it out with, but being able to go through an
• 9:40
  Indies portfolio and, and try lots of different styles, It's,
• 9:44
  it's quite, it's, it's a good way to learn.
• 9:46
  I find it really interesting being in the warehouse going
• 9:49
  back to like spirits. I probably wouldn't even really
• 9:51
  thought twice about being seen quite a bit of like teen in
• 9:55
  Munich and like this quality liquid.
• 9:57
  And it does really, really well in certain tasks.
• 10:00
  And even with I'd a, we've been pulling a lot of samples this
• 10:04
  year, I think because since you're gone, everybody else
• 10:08
  you're trying. To be like you're almost signing
• 10:11
  a wee bit when you're saying that was a reluctant point.
• 10:13
  Out first of all you pulled a lot as well you guys were
• 10:16
  colleagues then so you actually truck still works.
• 10:18
  I only got. Employed because Greg like,
• 10:21
  invited me up to the warehouse and it turned out it was a job
• 10:23
  interview. And he was really good at
• 10:25
  putting stickers. On the on the box.
• 10:29
  But it's so good at naming stuff.
• 10:31
  Yeah, Yeah. Because you were so you worked
• 10:33
  together. So I mean, the operation, it's a
• 10:34
  fair size at Glenmore Spirits. And but having that access to
• 10:38
  liquid makes it makes it so much easier, I suppose, when you've
• 10:43
  got that inventory to look at. But at the same time, that could
• 10:45
  be quite daunting, I can imagine as well when you're looking.
• 10:47
  Of course, you know, sometimes we, we've, we've spoken to a lot
• 10:50
  of independent bottlers and we, you know, sometimes you hear and
• 10:53
  casks, laying casks down, keep them for the future.
• 10:56
  I remember you having the conversation with us when we
• 10:58
  were, when we had the first episode with you talking about
• 11:01
  your process. And there isn't, that's what's
• 11:03
  fascinating about this whole thing.
• 11:05
  And your story, which will maybe come to as well, is there is no
• 11:10
  approach where you can go through the university, there is
• 11:13
  a university degree you can go through etcetera, etcetera.
• 11:16
  But there's also plenty of people just like yourself who
• 11:18
  have approached into whiskey that just find themselves in a
• 11:20
  situation where they do that. And well, first of all, before
• 11:24
  you were working, you didn't work in whiskey before you
• 11:26
  started working on our spirits. No, so it was we'll go back to
• 11:30
  primary school or no I was retail for years and kind of
• 11:35
  retail management and then wasn't kind of enjoying that
• 11:39
  started rolling taxi firm just yeah, didn't know that I've done
• 11:42
  this. We're going to be a bit further
• 11:44
  back next taxis. What led me into before Uber,
• 11:47
  before it was actually easier to make money, it would be.
• 11:49
  Great. If you're like and it was called
• 11:50
  Uber. Yeah, I sold that.
• 11:53
  And then no, I decided to pursue.
• 11:56
  I was in a position where I wasn't happy and my wife was
• 11:59
  like, what do you want to do? And I was like, I'd like to look
• 12:01
  into doing photography. And for anybody who's went down
• 12:04
  that self-employed photography route, it's a grind.
• 12:06
  It's hard. You're constantly trying to
• 12:08
  generate more work unless you're employed for to be the
• 12:11
  photographer for a company. But if you're just a job in
• 12:14
  photographer, there's a lot of work out there, but you've got a
• 12:17
  hustle and you've got a, you've got to be constantly adaptable
• 12:20
  to people's needs because it can change from one shoot to
• 12:23
  another. But I found a bit of a passion
• 12:25
  for doing like a product photography, partly because you
• 12:29
  don't need to tell someone to sit still and working with kids
• 12:32
  and animals and all that kind of stuff.
• 12:33
  So it's far easier. And so that was kind of
• 12:36
  something I was doing as a whiskey fan at the time.
• 12:40
  I was just buying bottles. I thought they were looking
• 12:42
  cool. Take a few shots and social
• 12:44
  media as your your platform and you're a photographer.
• 12:46
  So just putting them out there and then started to pick up a
• 12:48
  little bit of work and done a few shoots for some bigger
• 12:51
  brands. And that led me kind of opened
• 12:53
  the door to speaking to people about it.
• 12:55
  And that ultimately, as I touched on on the first time I
• 12:58
  was on that, it was a photo shoot that I wasn't even meant
• 13:01
  to be at. That led to me working with
• 13:03
  Glenn Moore and it just just the right time, the right place.
• 13:08
  And it just led to where I'm sitting today.
• 13:10
  Yeah, that's like my old. My old, old job was a
• 13:13
  photographer. And then now I'm in the whiskey,
• 13:15
  in the strange. Man, and that's what I mean is
• 13:17
  to be go from being a photographer to then finding
• 13:21
  yourself selecting casks that are going to be put into bottles
• 13:24
  that are going to be released and there is no.
• 13:26
  I'd also say, like together a wood program.
• 13:29
  Yeah. And like arranging maturation
• 13:31
  for years down the line. I mean, a lot of the stuff that
• 13:33
  we're like the company's doing, still looking at now is all.
• 13:37
  Well, all the stuff we're looking at is also the Greg put
• 13:40
  into place. Yeah.
• 13:41
  And has formed and some of it came.
• 13:44
  We were lucky enough that it came into fruition when Greg was
• 13:46
  working there. Some of it's on a trajectory.
• 13:47
  We're gonna see what's gonna happen years down the line.
• 13:50
  And the thing about it as well though, is like there is no like
• 13:54
  you have to. How do you learn that?
• 13:56
  Like, how do you learn to how there'll be people listening to
• 13:58
  this going? I I want you, you think like the
• 14:01
  whiskey industry was a closed shop because you either had to
• 14:03
  be in the industry for a long time to get it to be in the
• 14:06
  industry or. If you weren't and you weren't.
• 14:07
  Any Yeah, exactly. And, and also then the, well,
• 14:13
  the, the also like, you know, the qualifications that maybe
• 14:16
  people have. And you look at the Heriot Watt
• 14:18
  University programme and you look at how many people done
• 14:20
  that. But then equally, you'll look at
• 14:21
  how many people have never even liked whiskey that have walked
• 14:24
  in the Scotch whiskey experience.
• 14:26
  Yeah. And are now literally distilling
• 14:29
  whiskey are master blinders. You look at Jake Adkook, for
• 14:32
  example, He's he's an example of that Ian for teeth.
• 14:35
  You know, he's a master blender for Angus Dundee, Tom and towel
• 14:38
  and and Glenn Cadham, you know, and he talks about how there's a
• 14:41
  great clip last time we had him on where he said you can
• 14:44
  actually train yourself how to taste whiskey.
• 14:46
  And I'm still trying very hard to understand it.
• 14:49
  But but he went from being just a brand ambassador to being on a
• 14:53
  tasting panel. Someone's going, you're actually
• 14:55
  pretty decent on this to then become it.
• 14:57
  And now he's a master blender for, for a, for a, you know, a
• 14:59
  company like that. So it just shows you that there
• 15:01
  is trajectory. There is, there is career paths
• 15:03
  there. So, you know, how did you learn?
• 15:05
  What was the process was it about?
• 15:07
  Is it just a case of making mistakes and learning from your
• 15:09
  mistakes and just carrying on from there?
• 15:10
  Yeah, of course. I mean, there's, there's been
• 15:13
  times where I've I've instructed re rack thinking I'm going to
• 15:16
  get one thing and it doesn't quite work out, but then you
• 15:18
  have to know how to put that on a correction path, whether it's
• 15:22
  stopping that current maturation or writing it out and seeing if
• 15:25
  it does maybe take a bit longer. But the it's yeah, it's test and
• 15:29
  learn. It's it's nose and it's tasting
• 15:31
  as much as you can and having this is one of the greatest
• 15:35
  things about working at Glenmore.
• 15:36
  I had almost carte blanche when it came to these decisions.
• 15:40
  And I think that's where I mean ultimately I had to be able to
• 15:43
  present stuff that was ready for market every quarter.
• 15:45
  There was always that pressure. But as the the business grew and
• 15:49
  I was getting exposed to more different makes and different
• 15:53
  wood types and everything, it just, it was just the right
• 15:56
  environment for me to like. I don't think if I'd went in to
• 16:01
  establish distillery as a a junior blender or something, I'd
• 16:04
  probably then that would be great.
• 16:05
  I'd be, but I don't think I would have ever got that
• 16:08
  opportunity. I think that was probably the
• 16:10
  the most, the only path for me into the whiskey industry was
• 16:13
  somebody giving me the flexibility to actually learn it
• 16:16
  on the job. And luckily it worked.
• 16:19
  Out well, I mean another thing is as well as now from the
• 16:21
  position that you're in to pass that information that you've
• 16:25
  learnt first hand on to other people.
• 16:26
  Was there somebody that did that for you when you were coming
• 16:30
  through the ranks? You know, whether it's where
• 16:33
  somebody sitting there going, Here's how I'll tell you how to
• 16:35
  do it, or was it a case of find out yourself?
• 16:39
  But and then just picking up tiny little bits here and there,
• 16:42
  you know, bits like you just saying right now, been nervous
• 16:45
  takes a little bit longer than a finish versus like say Glenn
• 16:47
  Lossy or something like that. You know, for some people like
• 16:50
  that might be something they lodge at the back of their mind.
• 16:53
  So maybe 2 years, maybe two months, maybe two weeks down the
• 16:56
  line someone might come across a Ben Nevis or a Glen Lossy and go
• 17:00
  hang on a minute. Not sure.
• 17:02
  I've heard somebody or so and so told me was that some how did
• 17:04
  you learn then was. It well, I was happy about that.
• 17:06
  That's my opinion. Of course, something else might
• 17:08
  differ from that, but the and this is the I had a conversation
• 17:11
  with someone the other day who was inquiring if if I could help
• 17:15
  them maybe with a project in the future.
• 17:17
  And I said, yeah, I mean, I can sit here and say I can do that,
• 17:20
  but also I'm quite lucky and other people that have done the
• 17:23
  job that I do, I've actually got ACV that someone could taste.
• 17:26
  So I could take, yeah, I could say all the good right things.
• 17:30
  But actually do you want to try some whiskey that I helped steer
• 17:32
  and I can talk you through how I've done it.
• 17:34
  And if it aligns with their kind of strategy and what they're
• 17:36
  trying to make, then then I can work with them on that.
• 17:39
  But definitely there's been people all the way through that
• 17:44
  kind of almost 10 year journey that I've leaned on.
• 17:46
  And it's it's a really collaborative industry and
• 17:48
  people I know there's people I can pick the phone up.
• 17:50
  I've had a question, say a client came to me and says this
• 17:53
  make and that finish and I'm like, I've never worked with
• 17:56
  that. I know there's people I could
• 17:57
  lift the phone up thing and get their opinion on.
• 17:59
  I think. I don't know if I've spoke about
• 18:00
  it before, but the probably one of the, although it was not a
• 18:04
  lot of time spent with them, but probably the most valuable time
• 18:06
  that I had with anybody was Brendan Mccarran.
• 18:10
  He came in on a kind of mentorship, just for a few
• 18:12
  months, a few days here and there.
• 18:15
  So who's he then? Sorry, so Brendan Brendan's a
• 18:19
  bit of a legend in the industry. So Brendan's been master blender
• 18:24
  and and master distiller. I think his name has popped up a
• 18:26
  couple of times, but what? What for people who maybe like?
• 18:28
  So where was he? Where he?
• 18:29
  Worked for so he he well, he was under Doctor Bill at at Glenbow
• 18:35
  and then he looked after Deanston Ledger Gabuna as well.
• 18:40
  So he's his, he's a he's an absolute like I totally look up
• 18:43
  to Brendan and he's not paid me enough tonight to say all this.
• 18:47
  But no, he's what I picked up from him in a very short space
• 18:51
  of time, just changed my mind on so many different aspects about
• 18:55
  what I thought I was doing. And yeah, just there is people
• 18:58
  out there that the industry can access.
• 19:00
  And that was an example of Brendan being a consultant and
• 19:04
  also someone that I look up to in the industry, spending a lot
• 19:06
  of time with me, albeit the company had brought him in.
• 19:10
  But the that kind of cross sharing information is really
• 19:14
  important because ultimately, if everybody's learning from each
• 19:17
  other and we lift the quality of whiskey for everybody,
• 19:19
  everyone's a winner. And that's what it goes back to.
• 19:21
  I always say it the market inside of whiskey.
• 19:24
  It's sharp elbows on the stands when you're selling bottles, but
• 19:27
  in the background it's so collaborative.
• 19:29
  Yeah, well, we talked about last week.
• 19:31
  I should. Probably mention as well Brennan
• 19:32
  started his own distillery as well with Perfectulum.
• 19:35
  Benbecula, he's working the lakes.
• 19:37
  He's working Benbecula because I was actually looking at it in
• 19:40
  the other day there. Yeah, because they've they've.
• 19:42
  Got right up in the They're in the Hebrides.
• 19:44
  In the idea of Herba days, yeah, I don't I don't know if they've
• 19:47
  got whiskey coming. I.
• 19:48
  Don't know. It's not.
• 19:50
  It's not come of age yet. They've they've come in.
• 19:52
  No, they're whiskey. In.
• 19:54
  Their whiskey's maturing and they've got cast who's just not
• 19:57
  three years old at this point. But yeah, so he, I don't know.
• 20:01
  He's not done it obviously by himself, but no.
• 20:03
  He's been involved. It's funny looking at when you
• 20:06
  hear about and going down the consultancy route because it's a
• 20:09
  big thing, but it's also on. That Graham.
• 20:10
  I really like the idea of having a liquid CV, Sounds a lot easier
• 20:14
  than typing one up. Let me let me pour you my CV.
• 20:19
  No cover letter, just there you go.
• 20:21
  But I think it's from a consultancy point of view and
• 20:25
  it's just like what you've said and whiskey is so opinionated
• 20:28
  and some people will sit there and go, I don't like that.
• 20:30
  And some people will sit there and go, I don't understand what
• 20:32
  you're talking about. I think it's great.
• 20:34
  And and that's the danger when you're a consultant.
• 20:36
  And that's also the danger when if you have too much of A tight
• 20:39
  hand on somebody else's shoulder when they're trying to do a job,
• 20:42
  you've got that autonomy to make your make your decision on how
• 20:45
  you like things. If it'd be harder, I suppose if,
• 20:49
  I mean, look how long it took four of us tonight to pick two
• 20:53
  drums each from us standing in the bar.
• 20:56
  The poor are going to buy the bar.
• 20:57
  Would you just fucking make a decision?
• 20:59
  Well, on that one only actually mentioned.
• 21:01
  One of them so far. So what I will say is to have
• 21:04
  that, but what's also very interesting is isn't until you
• 21:08
  see the importance of a master blender of staying where they
• 21:13
  are. I mean, Brian Kinsman, for
• 21:15
  example, in 139 years of William Grant and Sons of you know, of
• 21:21
  Glenn Fiddick, he's the 6th master blinder for that, but
• 21:25
  that. Is incredible and we talked
• 21:26
  about. What you wonder on?
• 21:27
  The last part, when you know you're talking about Cooper's
• 21:30
  having that hand over over the generations, Brian Kinman's in
• 21:34
  that position where he's over from David's shirt, He's
• 21:37
  probably worked. Well, no, I mean, David Stewart
• 21:39
  was Balbeny. So David Stewart was just
• 21:41
  Balbeny? Oh, of course, David.
• 21:42
  Stewart trained up. It's Kirsty.
• 21:45
  I'm sorry. Getting my distillery, Yeah, but
• 21:47
  that's the same company. I know the thing, but.
• 21:49
  But the thing with The thing is. But what I mean is there's that
• 21:52
  there's probably that link. Oh, there's always.
• 21:54
  I mean, you've been there with somebody who worked with
• 21:56
  somebody who? Of course, Yeah.
• 21:57
  But the thing about. It is as well.
• 21:58
  Is that like, how hard must it be when somebody eventually,
• 22:03
  like when, when, when Brian Kinsman or Doctor Bill Lumsden
• 22:07
  or the names or even Richard Patterson decides, right?
• 22:09
  I'm hanging up the I'm hanging up the, the, the, the glass, the
• 22:13
  glassware. I'm retiring.
• 22:14
  The gloves are coming off as. We've done and and you suddenly
• 22:17
  go because the somebody else now you they'll have a line that
• 22:20
  they'll say this is where we want to go.
• 22:22
  But they're also, if you have that freedom of sensory and
• 22:25
  opinion, it might be a daunting, it must be a daunting task
• 22:29
  because suddenly one small tweak, one small change could,
• 22:32
  could alter, you know, a flavour profile and castle.
• 22:35
  But I also wonder from Greg's perspective, you know, you came
• 22:38
  into what effectively was a company buying in cast to then
• 22:42
  formatting your own progress for how you want these cast to go.
• 22:46
  If you had gone and say you'd been employed by a bigger
• 22:49
  distillery or something like that, you could have very well
• 22:52
  have been like, well, this is how we do it.
• 22:53
  That's how we've always done it for 150 years or whatsoever.
• 22:57
  This is how you'll do it, Yeah. So we will leave these in casks,
• 23:01
  we'll leave them on bourbon for six years, rewrap, we'll nose
• 23:06
  and then view them and then grade them.
• 23:08
  And then X will be selected for Sherry cast and X will be
• 23:11
  selected for that. That'll be the process.
• 23:13
  And maybe you'll get a very small percentage of the
• 23:14
  portfolio obviously like to experiment with.
• 23:18
  So you came in to a warehouse and you're like figure it out.
• 23:22
  Yeah. And you've done clearly a very,
• 23:24
  very good job of that. And imagine that is I don't.
• 23:29
  Maybe not. I don't think a lot of people
• 23:30
  would do that. No, I mean and it helps I
• 23:32
  suppose because there is like it's look at the end of the day
• 23:36
  like it's a creative industry effectively.
• 23:39
  So the problem you have with with creative industry, well,
• 23:42
  yeah, but when you have when you're creating something and
• 23:45
  you have to be given that freedom and luxury to be go
• 23:48
  places. But if you're given tighter
• 23:50
  parameters, that makes it really difficult.
• 23:51
  And it'd be the same if if Glenmore Spirits had decided to
• 23:54
  go so and so so and so has just left their position on the
• 23:58
  blending team of this place. We'll bring them in and then
• 24:02
  they will then come in and go. But this is how we did it when
• 24:05
  we were at this place. So we'll follow a similar path
• 24:08
  instead of being able to just go right.
• 24:10
  Well, because there'll be certain things that happen where
• 24:13
  people go that shouldn't work, but it has worked.
• 24:16
  Or an opinion someone might go. That's not where I would have
• 24:20
  gone with that spirit character. But I tell you what, it's it's
• 24:24
  paid off because it's there, right?
• 24:26
  But anyway, as Angus said, DRAM. So we've we've got started on
• 24:29
  the first DRAM, which was about. So that was Woodrow's 9 year old
• 24:32
  Ben Nevis. So my second DRAM I've gone for,
• 24:35
  which you've also gone for as well.
• 24:36
  Graham is 10 year old lad. Beg cast.
• 24:40
  Strength cast. Strength.
• 24:41
  What strength is it? Oh, now you're from the cast.
• 24:44
  I think it was. I think it was.
• 24:45
  It was quite punchy. I think it was maybe even up,
• 24:48
  maybe even early six days. Oh God, I think it was quite, I
• 24:51
  think. It was 585 high 50s.
• 24:54
  High 50s, maybe high 50s. I think it was low 40s.
• 24:57
  I think higher, higher or lower player ABV, right, We looked at
• 25:02
  that. No, I I can't honestly agree.
• 25:05
  I can't remember what it was. Had a research.
• 25:07
  Had a research. Yeah, yeah.
• 25:10
  Sucked in the morning. I'll get my liquid CV together
• 25:13
  in the morning. I'll just be fresh, I know.
• 25:17
  Take water first before you do that.
• 25:20
  But I, so I'm, I'm trying it yet I'm really keen to try this
• 25:23
  because as soon as I saw it, I had Greg, Kev put it up on,
• 25:27
  Yeah. A flight of.
• 25:28
  Cars and so shows and I straight away I was like.
• 25:31
  It'd be tasty, yeah. I'm trying that.
• 25:32
  No, I haven't. That's what I'm saying.
• 25:33
  I'm I'm excited to try it. What did you go for, Chuck?
• 25:36
  I've got what the all the rest of us all got, which was the 15
• 25:40
  year old Glenn Bergie. Yeah, we, yeah, yeah, we got
• 25:43
  that. Which I've nearly drunk.
• 25:45
  Yeah, finished mine. Just finished mine as.
• 25:46
  Well, she's. Really, really good 40%.
• 25:49
  So thank God Ross isn't here because he'd be rinsing us.
• 25:51
  Yeah, yeah, but delightful. Really good mouthfeel, really
• 25:54
  tasty. Glenn Bergie as well.
• 25:56
  Yeah, that's a different bottle. But I got a bottle of Glenn
• 26:00
  Bergie 15, Ballantine's Glenn Bergie 15 in India, and it's the
• 26:05
  only time I've ever managed to get a bottle of whiskey, Scotch
• 26:08
  whiskey, cheaper in India than it was back home.
• 26:11
  Now that was in Goa. That's because you're a
• 26:14
  celebrity over there. You got, you got like a
• 26:15
  discount. Yeah.
• 26:16
  No, no, I walked in, I got, I got a bollock in.
• 26:19
  To be perfectly honest with you, we flew.
• 26:21
  Because they undercharged. You.
• 26:22
  No, no, no. We flew to from Bangalore to
• 26:26
  Goa, which is only about a 40 minute flight, 45 minute flight
• 26:29
  and it's great. So you're up and down, that's
• 26:32
  it. But we had an 18 month toddler
• 26:33
  with us and basically it was Graham, do you want to change
• 26:37
  her or do you want to go to the carousel and get the bags?
• 26:40
  I was like, I won't get the bags.
• 26:42
  So was that not the right answer?
• 26:45
  Graham No, no, I was OK with that.
• 26:46
  I was like, I don't mind changing that sort of situation
• 26:49
  where I was like, no, I'll change it.
• 26:51
  No, no, it's fine. I'll go to the toilet.
• 26:52
  Current life after that. God bless that took to the and I
• 26:57
  made my way to the bag carousel, stopped and went, oh, there's a
• 27:01
  duty feed. Now the thing about India we've
• 27:03
  talked about is the prices vary every state that you go to.
• 27:07
  And Goa is the second cheapest state in India for buying booze.
• 27:11
  So I've gone in and I said, I'll have a look and I'm just
• 27:13
  producing and I'm like, oh, wow. And these prices are definitely
• 27:18
  noticeably lower than what they are in Bangalore.
• 27:21
  And I see a Ballantine's I Valentine.
• 27:25
  Obviously most people listen to politics, know my affiliation
• 27:28
  with Valentine's a little bit and what have you.
• 27:29
  But at the same time, seeing the Glen Burgie and Glen Burgie has
• 27:33
  been a revelation for me on the podcast.
• 27:35
  And genuinely, it was all melted up in my head before it started
• 27:38
  the podcast, but Glen Burgie and shouted to Connor O'Keefe for
• 27:41
  the What about Glen Burgie Facebook pages.
• 27:45
  But I saw a Glen Burgie 15 bottle and I looked at the price
• 27:49
  and was like, hang on a minute, that looks pretty decent.
• 27:51
  Went online to see what it would cost back home.
• 27:54
  I was like, shit, that's cheaper than it would get back in back
• 27:57
  home. Now it was an older bottling,
• 27:59
  right? So I don't know whether the new
• 28:01
  bottling that we've got tonight would actually probably be
• 28:03
  cheaper than the one I bought in India.
• 28:05
  But for context it cost me about 50 lbs roughly give or take 50
• 28:10
  quids. I was looking online, you were
• 28:12
  picking up for anything between 65 and 75 lbs online and UK
• 28:16
  retailers so I should. Fly to India, buy a ball.
• 28:20
  You know, for people. Child with a diaper.
• 28:23
  But then the problem was. Then the problem was I've come
• 28:26
  out been like, I just got myself a Kraken bargain, by the way,
• 28:30
  and I'm standing waiting for wife and daughter to come out of
• 28:35
  the thing and I get a phone call and it was like, where the hell
• 28:37
  are you? And I'm going, I'm waiting on
• 28:39
  you to come. At the time.
• 28:40
  I've been out for about 10 minutes and I've got the bags
• 28:42
  and I've come walking around and be like look at the bags I've
• 28:47
  got. A waste of weight.
• 28:50
  Before this is posted some Facebook.
• 28:52
  But I was so I was not popular. I was so tough.
• 28:56
  But basically, yeah. But interestingly as well as you
• 29:00
  know, brands will often pick Goa as the place.
• 29:03
  Well, the the revelation for me was Paul John deciding to pick
• 29:06
  London to launch the first ever inaugural Paul John.
• 29:10
  They launched it in the UK before they launched it anywhere
• 29:13
  else in the world, not even in their own country.
• 29:14
  And then the second place was Goa.
• 29:16
  And then it isn't until you hear people saying, so Goa is a party
• 29:18
  place in India. It's a place where booze is a
• 29:20
  SEC. The two places in India that are
• 29:23
  cheaper, the cheapest place is Gurgaon, which is just South of
• 29:26
  Delhi and by all accounts is effectively just our industrial
• 29:31
  estate after industrial estate after industrial estate.
• 29:33
  London's a really weird choice there's.
• 29:34
  London Exchange or London whiskey.
• 29:35
  Well, London lies whiskey show in London.
• 29:38
  That was the first place 2012. But point of the matter is go as
• 29:42
  the place to launch up. So if you are launching an
• 29:44
  escape, go as a place to go. That's where we're going to go
• 29:46
  and that's where. We're launching our W That's
• 29:47
  where we launch. Our next whiskey, but I went
• 29:51
  Burgie. Absolutely fantastic.
• 29:52
  I really, really enjoyed it. And whiskey number 2 was Ben
• 29:54
  Nevis as well. Yeah, I also just tasted that.
• 29:57
  And that I can understand why that's so big in Japan.
• 30:00
  It's just like so best guess. What the Ben Nevis, Yeah.
• 30:03
  Yeah. I think it's just my feel that I
• 30:04
  think that's probably. One of the big deals.
• 30:06
  Nice, yeah. And what about you?
• 30:07
  Guys. And then you went for, you've
• 30:08
  also got the yard bag. I've got the yard bag, but then
• 30:10
  Greg has got something. I've got a 16 year old Altmore
• 30:14
  from Trecara. Yeah, I think I've had that
• 30:17
  here. Any good?
• 30:19
  Yeah, I think it was good. It may have been at the end of
• 30:22
  the night, but. What was the ABV?
• 30:25
  No, I think it was 56.6 but don't hold me to that.
• 30:28
  I'm not tired. I'm not going to dismiss it,
• 30:30
  Greg. You know, it's interesting.
• 30:31
  To say it's 56.6, it's 56.6. It's funny talking about Apvs
• 30:35
  because I actually message to you and I said you want to come
• 30:38
  on the podcast? Yeah.
• 30:38
  What do you want to talk about? And I went water.
• 30:40
  What are you talking about? And it was actually, it was
• 30:44
  after word of the taste, it was after the Glenfiddich tasting at
• 30:46
  Scotch. We sat down and we had this
• 30:48
  amazing insightful conversation about water and how good it is.
• 30:53
  Can't remember that. You were like, what do you want
• 30:56
  to talk about water for? I was like, well, you talk about
• 30:59
  at the time, after 5 or 6 drams, it sounded like, yeah, this is a
• 31:05
  conversation we need to be having.
• 31:07
  Have you tried the new release from Avion?
• 31:10
  Water Stories podcast you've. Used that tap in your.
• 31:14
  House but The thing is if I try and go back.
• 31:18
  You've also mentioned about Ross hating on low ABV.
• 31:23
  Yeah. And it's funny hearing about
• 31:25
  conversations that people have. And it wasn't until doing the
• 31:27
  podcast again, I'll openly admit when we started the podcast,
• 31:32
  Cash Strength Whiskey was actually, I couldn't get there.
• 31:34
  I couldn't understand why people, why on earth would
• 31:36
  somebody, how can somebody drink whiskey at 60% ABV, 55% ABV and
• 31:41
  then over time being introduced it.
• 31:43
  But then you hear other things, like Jake talking about Jake
• 31:46
  Adcock talking about how actually the human body is not
• 31:50
  designed to be drinking whiskey at that level of ABV.
• 31:53
  Well, actually before we came on the podcast today, Graham, we
• 31:55
  had an interesting conversation with some are so because we
• 31:59
  mentioned I mentioned this drum on a group chat, I mean, and
• 32:04
  somebody said he'll remain lamus.
• 32:06
  Somebody said, what's this then? And I said it's odd beg 10, but
• 32:10
  it's cast strike and I said, well, what's special about that
• 32:13
  then? Yeah.
• 32:14
  And I said, well, because it's like a real core release, like
• 32:16
  Odd Beg 10, but it's that higher ABV.
• 32:19
  You don't get to try it. Normally it's about 43 or 43.
• 32:23
  I go, all right, so it's just stronger then.
• 32:25
  And it's like, well, yeah, but it's like.
• 32:28
  This is a conversation we were having.
• 32:30
  So, yeah. But it is interesting.
• 32:32
  Well, I just, I find myself unable to do it.
• 32:35
  And then there's all the always the argument of, I'm going to
• 32:40
  say this as well. We have to get to people working
• 32:43
  in the bar industry who work behind the bar, who do great
• 32:47
  jobs promoting whiskey and do great jobs in a, in an industry
• 32:50
  that's actually really, really tricky at working.
• 32:52
  But please, please, please just don't pass judgement and don't
• 32:57
  comment on a whiskey order because it's so basically, I was
• 33:01
  at a bar last Friday, ordered a drink.
• 33:04
  It was actually not Big 10. Yeah, well, it was ice or water.
• 33:07
  I went no and I went is the correct answer and went away and
• 33:10
  got and I was like no mate what you should have actually.
• 33:13
  Done is when you come back, it's going actually 2 ice.
• 33:15
  Cubes. Well, I know, but this is the
• 33:17
  problem that we live in is people doing it.
• 33:19
  But there is this element people.
• 33:21
  Yeah, Facebook, Facebook groups as well.
• 33:23
  Like you'll see somebody put in a picture of a DRAM with on the
• 33:28
  rocks on a Friday night. And the first guarantee in the
• 33:31
  comments somewhat like ice cubes question mark, you're killing
• 33:35
  that liquid or anything like that.
• 33:36
  But is we know, we know is how people like to drink it, yadda,
• 33:39
  yadda, yadda. But there is a stigma.
• 33:41
  Do you put water in your whiskey?
• 33:43
  Do you not put water? Jake Adkook said, I think that
• 33:45
  body's not body's not capable to take it.
• 33:48
  He as a blender will take everything down to 20%.
• 33:51
  I would say one of the but that, but I think he's he's mainly
• 33:53
  nosing stuff. But he did also say that that's
• 33:55
  not to enjoy. That's but why?
• 33:57
  I also did say though like we can't sit here and drink 60%
• 34:01
  whiskey and we getting. But I would argue the the main,
• 34:05
  like the point of Castrans whiskey is that, you know,
• 34:08
  there's no dilution in the product you received.
• 34:10
  So there you have the full range to play with.
• 34:13
  You can go from, yeah, 57.8 to 57.5.
• 34:18
  You go all the way down to 20. Yeah.
• 34:19
  You know you can. You can play about with that and
• 34:21
  you can have it your way. Yeah, and that's what Ross said
• 34:23
  about 40% whiskey was, he said it's annoying because he said
• 34:27
  it's my whiskey, let me do with it how I please.
• 34:31
  I I can understand that perspective, but I can also
• 34:35
  understand wanting to buy a product that a professional like
• 34:39
  Jake I cook has gone. This is what I think is the best
• 34:45
  with the product I've received, the cast we have selected, this
• 34:49
  is where I think it's at its best and its most approachable
• 34:52
  and you can do nothing. You could have that neat, very,
• 34:56
  very happy. You can have it with two ice
• 34:58
  cubes, you can have it with soda water.
• 35:00
  You can do whatever you want, but from a starting point, I
• 35:03
  think it's bang up. I think that's quite cool and I
• 35:06
  I've had a lot more appreciation for that.
• 35:08
  But we are in a position where we know the people.
• 35:11
  So you almost like you're the general consumer doesn't but.
• 35:14
  I also think I'm getting older. I'm not as well, I don't think I
• 35:17
  sometimes I drink a cash strength whiskey and immediately
• 35:20
  I get heartburn and. Then sometimes and then your
• 35:23
  knee gets sore. And then his light bulb goes
• 35:26
  out. Yeah, Christ.
• 35:28
  Then his boiler switches off. Then he locks himself and it's
• 35:31
  black. I can't get him back.
• 35:32
  And then I. Look at my pension part and be
• 35:34
  like. He's late for doing AC section
• 35:40
  on a cow enough. Stories about my life.
• 35:45
  OK. But Greg put.
• 35:47
  In Rocks picking up rocks again. The conversation like is well, I
• 35:52
  remember, in fact, I use I've stolen it from you, but
• 35:57
  basically you saying tasting that one of the first tasting
• 36:00
  we'd been to before we even knew you was you said, remember, you
• 36:03
  can put water in, but you can't take water out.
• 36:05
  So it's how you go about putting your water in your whiskey.
• 36:08
  But you said about like what trucks just saying they're
• 36:12
  educating people on the importance of adding water and
• 36:16
  what it can do to a drum and then how to do it.
• 36:19
  There doesn't seem to be an awful lot of thing out there
• 36:23
  where people actually fully understand that, even myself
• 36:25
  included. It was always something the most
• 36:28
  of the almost 99% of the releases that would have come
• 36:32
  out under rare find were cast strength and I always then had
• 36:36
  to backfill the information at tastings that I'm not saying
• 36:40
  this is my preferred drinking strength of this.
• 36:42
  I'm just giving you the raw product.
• 36:44
  I think the right products in there for everyone's taste.
• 36:47
  If you go through that process of try it meat, I always
• 36:50
  encourage people to do that with cash rank, try it meat and then
• 36:53
  start your dilution process, whether that's with a pipette or
• 36:56
  a teaspoon and stuff. I know where that that's at the
• 36:58
  geeky end of whiskey and that's but that's what those single
• 37:01
  cash products are really aimed at.
• 37:03
  And then you've got your core range kind of blended products.
• 37:06
  I've got my own views on 40%, much like Ross as a as a
• 37:08
  consumer, not someone in the industry.
• 37:11
  I find it a bit too, too much dilution for me.
• 37:16
  Most of my favorite kind of core range stuff sits between kind of
• 37:20
  4044 and 48 and maybe into 50. That's kind of a really nice
• 37:25
  drinking strength for me personally.
• 37:26
  And I still might add water to some of them anyway.
• 37:29
  So it is, it's an it's an absolute, it's an education
• 37:32
  piece and it's a talking piece as well.
• 37:35
  It would be pretty boring if we all if everything was 40% and
• 37:38
  that that was it. There's flexibility in there
• 37:40
  that will suit everybody. And you know, and Chuck's right,
• 37:42
  at some some points in your life, you've just got heartburn
• 37:45
  and you want a 40% whiskey. But yeah, we're lucky.
• 37:49
  We get to see the whole kind of scope of, of how that sits
• 37:52
  within the industry. But I still the amount of people
• 37:55
  that taste things that would maybe class themselves as I'm a
• 37:59
  whiskey geek and stuff. And they're like, I will not add
• 38:02
  water to a cash strength whiskey.
• 38:03
  And I'm like, you're absolutely missing out in my opinion
• 38:05
  because I am 100% telling you that all of the drams here
• 38:09
  tonight are cash strength. And I prefer that one, that one,
• 38:12
  that one, and that one with water.
• 38:13
  Maybe actually on that one I do quite like it, but you'll never
• 38:17
  know until you try that. Yeah, and that's definitely
• 38:19
  something I was probably a wee bit guilty of as well, just when
• 38:22
  I started trying casting, which because I would try and sort of
• 38:26
  almost power through just drinking it out of that strength
• 38:29
  'cause it was like, well, I can drink it this but actually.
• 38:31
  Like a Billy. Big there was a little better, I
• 38:34
  think, and I was also scared. Whenever you do get well, I
• 38:39
  think there's two reactions. It's like you're either scared
• 38:41
  the cancer in West, but it's a bit like.
• 38:44
  Like a rabies, I was scared of water.
• 38:46
  Take it back to India. It's a bit like going to the
• 38:48
  Indian and ordering the spiciest Curry because it's a bit like,
• 38:50
  well, I can order the spiciest Curry.
• 38:52
  Yeah, when you're when you're sitting.
• 38:53
  There and one of your mates is sweating.
• 38:54
  Bullish is like, it's fine, yeah.
• 38:56
  Exactly. It's like, well, you're not
• 38:58
  actually enjoying that, you're just drinking.
• 38:59
  You're just eating that. I think that's actually like.
• 39:02
  Sweating from my eyeballs. But there's two points to that
• 39:04
  is number 1 is that lowering the stigma of water's fine.
• 39:08
  If you want water, whether you're drama, that's fine.
• 39:10
  But the other thing was what I'm saying about I was scared was
• 39:12
  sometimes I would get a cash strength whiskey and I'd go.
• 39:16
  This is hitting me very nicely that tasting because then the
• 39:19
  problem you've got is then that the situation would be is then I
• 39:21
  go. I actually quite enjoy it like
• 39:23
  this. If I add more water, what
• 39:25
  happens if I then have it and go, oh shit, I've added too much
• 39:28
  or worms. If I add a little bit of water
• 39:30
  and I try it and I go, that's nice.
• 39:32
  And then I think to myself, worms.
• 39:33
  If I add a little bit more water and I go buck up, now it's fine.
• 39:37
  You've got the bottle in the house.
• 39:38
  Yeah. Well, sometimes as well, you get
• 39:39
  a castrated whiskey. You have it and you're like,
• 39:41
  this is great, but I really like to see it a bit more diluted.
• 39:44
  You add water and it's spicier. Yeah.
• 39:46
  Yeah, yeah, 100%. The one I always think about
• 39:48
  that was like the probably one of the most perfect castrated
• 39:51
  whiskies I've ever had was in the first releases of Fragrant
• 39:55
  drops, the 12 year old liquid for the maturing Tokai wine and
• 40:00
  the mouth consistency on that, it was like Jelly.
• 40:03
  It was like gelatinous. And I was like.
• 40:04
  This is class, it's 50. 8% I'm gonna add some water, added some
• 40:09
  water and it was just gone. Really like the most it was
• 40:12
  completely different. It was it was nice, but like
• 40:15
  mouth consistency just was not there anymore.
• 40:17
  It's a good, I mean, this is the thing.
• 40:18
  It's the stigmas are so, I mean, one of the things I always
• 40:21
  remember and I look back now and I'm like, yeah, yeah, that bad
• 40:24
  ass granddad. It was my old, my old granddad
• 40:27
  when he was in his late 70s and in fact into his 80s, it was
• 40:30
  grouse. He drank grouse.
• 40:31
  And remember I was going out for that.
• 40:33
  And he says, oh, can I get a bit of water in that?
• 40:35
  And it was a standard Tumblr that he had.
• 40:37
  And the boy, the boy behind the bar.
• 40:38
  And again, it comes back to a barman trying to give like, it's
• 40:42
  not their place, if you know what I mean.
• 40:44
  And basically he got the he got the water tap and he started
• 40:47
  pouring it for him. Keep going, keep going, keep
• 40:49
  going, keep going, keep going. And it was like, he goes, it's
• 40:52
  just all water, right? But my granddad was 80, right,
• 40:56
  like you're saying. And he just went and he just
• 40:57
  grabbed a glass. Wouldn't I?
• 40:58
  But it's drunk, a good spirit. And basically.
• 41:01
  But at that time, whiskey even at 40% for an 80 year old was
• 41:07
  just too much. But.
• 41:08
  My dad's always, like I think I've mentioned on the podcast
• 41:11
  before, but like my main job as a kid was to pour my dad's
• 41:14
  whiskey in the evening. And I think I got that job
• 41:18
  because I probably the most heavy poor, but the poor was and
• 41:21
  still is to this day. It's a good job.
• 41:23
  I'm not your brother, just I. Think, just shake your hands,
• 41:30
  thumb of whiskey, half a thumb of water and two ice cubes.
• 41:33
  Yeah, that was the poor. And he still has, he still only
• 41:37
  really enjoys whiskey with ice to this day.
• 41:41
  So I I could judge him for a lot of stuff, but you know, that's
• 41:45
  the way it is and he enjoys whiskey.
• 41:49
  So there is a, there is a wee trick that I've done before when
• 41:52
  when you talk about not having access to the bottle and not
• 41:55
  wanting to take the risk as if you've got a glass of water,
• 41:58
  take a tiny sip of water and just hold the water in your
• 42:00
  mouth and then sip the whiskey in.
• 42:03
  I know it's not, it's not measured as such, but it will
• 42:05
  give you a wee indication if it's going to stand up to.
• 42:08
  And that's the thing. But you know the other the
• 42:11
  other. Pro straps.
• 42:12
  The. Other side of things as well is
• 42:14
  and we've talked about it last week with Shona glass Bait and
• 42:18
  you know at the end of the day we'll we are we are sitting
• 42:23
  there going Ross has said it so many times about dura.
• 42:26
  Why on earth do we give dura? Why, why dura should, why is it
• 42:30
  always 40%, Why is always 40% and you suddenly go, yeah, but
• 42:33
  Ross, at the end of the day, the guys that white Mackay are
• 42:36
  suddenly going we don't care because guess what, we are
• 42:39
  selling case after case after case of 12 year old, 10 year
• 42:43
  old, whatever it is dura at 40% ABV.
• 42:45
  And that is what the general consumer is wanting.
• 42:47
  But also Greg, you'll know from your own experience when you
• 42:50
  start doing batches and stuff like that, the duty as well.
• 42:53
  When you look at what could another, what could another, I
• 42:56
  mean even things like So what is it 46.3% for child filtration?
• 43:00
  46 and above's kind of where you want to set.
• 43:03
  So again, without chill filtration, what does that do
• 43:05
  for a mass produced whiskey? If you suddenly go right, well,
• 43:08
  you know, what we're going to do is we're going to make this,
• 43:11
  we're going to make this chill filtered or non chill filtered.
• 43:14
  There's a lot of process that goes through it all and
• 43:15
  everything like that. But ultimately if if you
• 43:18
  suddenly look at even the difference of 3% on alcohol and
• 43:22
  you're doing that on mass. Scale cases a year, yeah.
• 43:26
  Yeah. Suddenly you look at what that
• 43:27
  cost is actually going to be and you go hang on a minute.
• 43:30
  It's selling anyway. So why do we need to try and
• 43:33
  appease the snobs on Whiskey Stories podcast that are getting
• 43:37
  our say? Because it's 40% instead.
• 43:39
  Jura did release a 16 year old, I can't remember what the name
• 43:42
  of the kind of series was, and that was about 46%.
• 43:45
  Yeah, and it was very nice. Ginger Boy gave me a drama of
• 43:48
  it. And whiskey.
• 43:49
  Show I think the dilution thing is a really, really important
• 43:51
  one to think about because I mean I've done dilution for
• 43:55
  whiskeys as part of my role now and you bring a whiskey down
• 44:00
  maybe we've done a vatting for a blend or something you just.
• 44:02
  Turn the big tap on. You've got deionized water, so
• 44:05
  it has to be really like clear. So it's not going to add any,
• 44:09
  anything else than hydration I suppose.
• 44:13
  But you know, you add, you've got to bring something down for
• 44:15
  58% to 46% and then you add if it's depending on the volume, if
• 44:20
  it's say 400 liters, that could be 50 or 60 liters of water
• 44:25
  you're adding to that. So that's then, you know, 80
• 44:28
  more bottles. Just yeah, just.
• 44:30
  Force, yeah, the yields bigger. Yeah, so let me deionize water
• 44:34
  in your tears. No, I'm.
• 44:38
  Yeah, Well, there you go. But I think, I think it's when
• 44:41
  we when we were six or seven drafts deep and it sounded like
• 44:44
  I was like. Oh my God.
• 44:46
  But this is mental. But at the same time, I like
• 44:50
  there are there is too much around.
• 44:52
  We've been big on that and we've come round in different ways
• 44:55
  where it's funny how some things I often wonder is it Emperor's
• 44:59
  new clothes? Is it be getting into what
• 45:02
  people say too much? So you know I right now that our
• 45:07
  begs the first cast. I was the our.
• 45:09
  Beggars. Very nice, Very, very nice.
• 45:11
  I added a bit of water to it because I thought you.
• 45:14
  Had that choice. I had a cast strength and it
• 45:16
  was, it was nice, but it was, it was quite cast strength.
• 45:20
  I just took it down the way there.
• 45:21
  Yeah. No, I'm going to.
• 45:22
  Have to get down to what you get it on the shelf.
• 45:24
  I've been for people who are listening, you'll hear a lot of
• 45:27
  rustling. I've been to the shops, guys.
• 45:29
  All right, I've been to the shops have.
• 45:31
  A nice day back. I'm just, yeah, the budget on
• 45:35
  this podcast must be through the roof because that.
• 45:37
  Is this is work? This is where.
• 45:39
  I've got but they don't have the they.
• 45:41
  Didn't have that since I was at my parents.
• 45:42
  They didn't have the, they didn't have the spreadable box.
• 45:46
  So I've got a block of love back.
• 45:48
  Do you have a butter sponsor for the?
• 45:50
  We don't have a butter. So that is available if.
• 45:52
  Yeah, if anyone. Can't believe you don't have a
• 45:54
  sponsor. Can't believe, can't believe.
• 45:57
  It's not butter. Oh, I've got this.
• 45:59
  Can't. Believe it's not.
• 46:00
  I've got digestive biscuits as well.
• 46:01
  So we've got digestive biscuits here.
• 46:03
  We don't often have this like homemade Graham.
• 46:05
  We don't have scran on. School.
• 46:07
  We're making a cheesecake. This is the weirdest blend I've
• 46:09
  ever worked on. I've got some plates here, so
• 46:11
  I'm going to give you a plate here because we've got a wee
• 46:13
  treat actually we've pulled. That butter and biscuits.
• 46:17
  We're going to have some buttery biscuits, but we've had we've
• 46:21
  had whiskey sent in last week. I've still got the bottle here.
• 46:24
  The the Six Nations blend from from Bob Cutter.
• 46:29
  Yes, brilliant people sent us. We've had T-shirts sent in as
• 46:33
  well. Cameron Noon actually messaged
• 46:35
  me today as we're recording this.
• 46:37
  He went that and I'm so glad he's noticed that.
• 46:39
  He said that Glencaddem T-shirt you're wearing, was that paid
• 46:42
  for or was that gifted? I said it was gifted actually.
• 46:44
  So the good folks at Glencadem had sent that in.
• 46:46
  Yeah. So I'm, I'm wearing a paid for
• 46:48
  Glenn going T-shirt at the moment.
• 46:50
  But even wearing still. Paying for Thompson Brothers
• 46:53
  hat. You've got a lovely.
• 46:55
  You're on brand there, I guess. Yeah.
• 46:56
  Whiskey story a penny for? Us.
• 46:58
  No, Exactly. I've got Primark T-shirt you've
• 47:00
  got. You're sponsored.
• 47:00
  No. But for the very first time
• 47:02
  ever, we've been sent something else in.
• 47:04
  We have ladies and gentlemen, people of the pod podcast Smokey
• 47:09
  whiskey fake jam. Wow there you go.
• 47:13
  We've got DRAM Jam because a lovely.
• 47:16
  Jar as. Well, Moira McCurdy, who is a
• 47:18
  big power of the pod and also gave us a really, really funny
• 47:22
  moment at the big birthday bash when we were talking about what
• 47:26
  was what was the one? I don't know.
• 47:29
  What's the distillery that you got tied up in with the with the
• 47:32
  pronunciation? Oh.
• 47:35
  Don't do this to me. What is it?
• 47:36
  What is it? Royal?
• 47:37
  Yeah. And then we were talking and
• 47:41
  then Boiler just shouts from the back.
• 47:43
  Are you sure that's how you pronounce it?
• 47:44
  And it brought the host down. Yeah.
• 47:46
  So basically, she has made jam because apparently she loves
• 47:49
  making jam. Okay, good for Moira, whatever.
• 47:52
  That's her jam. Yeah, that is her jam actually.
• 47:55
  So we have fig jam, no allergens on the podcast, is that?
• 47:57
  Right. No, no, no, no.
• 47:59
  I don't know how you want to have you think I've.
• 48:01
  Ever had jam on a digestive whiskey before?
• 48:03
  Have you not? In a basement.
• 48:05
  Have you had butter on it as well?
• 48:07
  You see, I think I'd have. Buttered plenty of stuff in
• 48:08
  basements but never a biscuit. I think I'll try it sans butter.
• 48:13
  Which without which side did the the digestive do you butter?
• 48:16
  Do you know after that some things, if I've come home after
• 48:19
  a couple of drams, it will be a sandwich with butter, jam,
• 48:23
  digestive biscuit. Oh, really?
• 48:25
  Is that you're quite Is. This actually a thing?
• 48:27
  Yeah, yeah, my granny, we used to.
• 48:29
  I mean, it's amazing. I've not got diabetes, but my
• 48:31
  granny, we used to give us digestive biscuits and butter
• 48:34
  and we would go and visit her And then you could have
• 48:36
  digestive biscuits and cheese with butter and digestive
• 48:39
  biscuits, butter and jam. And sometimes you can have
• 48:43
  digestive biscuits, butter, cheese and jam.
• 48:46
  Wow. And that was a taste sensation.
• 48:48
  Okay. Not any cheese, right?
• 48:50
  I. Grounded crumpets, so.
• 48:52
  Yeah, I think I'm going for the unbranded side.
• 48:54
  There's that one. There's a bigger surface.
• 48:56
  Area, I think the ridges. This is going to be great and.
• 48:58
  There's going to be more consistency with the spread.
• 49:00
  Yeah, I think, yeah. So I've got the butter here.
• 49:03
  If anyone, how many? Slices of Lurpak, would you
• 49:05
  like? Right, if you're going, if
• 49:07
  you're going, but. I'm going to go without butter
• 49:08
  initially, right? There's a jab.
• 49:10
  I just want to that should not be an.
• 49:11
  Actuated drop so completely. Unrelated and probably quite an
• 49:14
  old man thing, I just bought a butter dish.
• 49:19
  A butter dish. I'm genuinely over the moon.
• 49:21
  What you don't injure, injure yourself while you're trying to
• 49:23
  lift the up or. Something drop the butter dish.
• 49:30
  What we've also got to do is this is smoky.
• 49:32
  There is a peated whiskey used in the production of this fig
• 49:35
  jam. And Moira said bonus points if
• 49:38
  you can guess the whiskey that's been used right.
• 49:40
  And I don't know what it is. So we'll have to wait till next
• 49:43
  week if I remember to ask. All right, or mirable message
• 49:46
  you don't. Actually know mirable message
• 49:48
  because Mira is good like that. Do you want to butter before?
• 49:52
  Do you have a separate? I'm just jam utensils to be?
• 49:56
  Honest I'm. Not fussed.
• 49:58
  You live your life all right. Get to yourself.
• 50:01
  Oh, I think there's. Quite a lot, yeah.
• 50:05
  Oh, is that not? I don't know what the
• 50:06
  appropriate. Not that that's a third of the
• 50:11
  jar you've got, right? Greg's going to tell us.
• 50:16
  Is that I'm thinking of it like you're doing like that you've.
• 50:19
  Got a full? I mean, that's a mouthful, I
• 50:21
  mean. A mouthful.
• 50:22
  That's a dinner. I've not had dinner so.
• 50:26
  Figure that out yourself. There you go.
• 50:29
  Right. So I guess it's gone non butter,
• 50:31
  Greg's gone butter and half the. Are we doing tasting?
• 50:35
  Tasting notes It's got whiskey in it, so technically this falls
• 50:37
  under whiskey. Sniff it.
• 50:38
  Separate score it. Sniff it.
• 50:39
  Sniff it. I'm just trying for like I'm
• 50:42
  just going to try half of it and then I spread it.
• 50:44
  You're doing a half, actually, half and a half he's.
• 50:47
  Going off and off I'll some. Butter there.
• 50:50
  You go. Never turned down free butter.
• 50:53
  It's one of my life. Are you getting?
• 50:55
  Are you getting anything on the nose?
• 50:56
  Egg, Jam. Jam.
• 50:57
  Yeah, there you go. That's a good sign.
• 50:59
  I'd be a shock if you didn't. I think there is a, there's a
• 51:03
  biscuit somewhere underneath that.
• 51:04
  Yeah. I.
• 51:05
  Mean we can start calling this instead of the sellers and the
• 51:07
  seller, the digger sellers. It could be the diggers pantry.
• 51:12
  Pantry, right? You got the jam there.
• 51:15
  I'm going to, I'm going to take a bit of butter and I'm going to
• 51:17
  have some labour on mine. Yeah, life's too short to not
• 51:21
  have butter. And you know what, Greg?
• 51:23
  You can use this in your consultancy if you ever need to.
• 51:26
  Which which jam works best on a risk?
• 51:28
  Exactly. There you go.
• 51:30
  Right trap. Pass me on the knife.
• 51:31
  This is tuck in, I guess. So we're not waiting to go a
• 51:34
  slant. Javar and Myra's going to be
• 51:40
  able to remember. That I'll dig in then.
• 51:42
  Fair play of Myra all. Right.
• 51:45
  There we go. Great, great audio there.
• 51:48
  What's the ABV on the jam? I don't know, none of us are
• 51:51
  driving so it's OK. But if you have it on your toast
• 51:54
  in the morning, well wait a minute.
• 51:55
  If it's cooked you should be OK unless she's added it at the
• 51:58
  end. Well, I think that's all.
• 52:01
  What we're thinking can you get the whiskey on it?
• 52:02
  I mean, you can really smell it. Can you?
• 52:04
  I got it on the nose. Yeah.
• 52:06
  OK. It's one of those ones.
• 52:07
  You lift it to your mouth, get away.
• 52:10
  Better the old as it goes in. I know, I know.
• 52:13
  Speaking. Yeah.
• 52:14
  I don't know if it's just because the glasses are there,
• 52:15
  but I think it could be Arabic. You're going out big.
• 52:19
  Well, that one man. I was more than getting like
• 52:23
  Talisquer Tour of egg. OK.
• 52:27
  Name. Name in two if you have to.
• 52:28
  Which one? What 1 you go?
• 52:31
  That's that's a goner. I've given that to the Mace.
• 52:36
  Well, about just to be different, I'll say.
• 52:40
  But a lager villain. But a lager villain?
• 52:44
  That's very nice. Nice, Moira.
• 52:45
  Thank you very much. It's lovely.
• 52:47
  And the Future just sent us a bottle.
• 52:50
  No, but drum jam. There you go, TM Whiskey
• 52:54
  stories. We're now selling drum made by
• 52:59
  Moira. That's the second drum jam I've
• 53:00
  ever had. We used to sell.
• 53:02
  They sold it at Bakery Hill when I was working there.
• 53:04
  Yeah, I mean it's. Marmalade.
• 53:06
  There you go. But.
• 53:08
  Well, TuneIn, next week. OK, I'm.
• 53:11
  Going to say TuneIn. Next week I know is there is
• 53:13
  podcast is it unbag Who knows. I'll say it's Torrevig.
• 53:18
  Just. Just to be that guy.
• 53:19
  Torrevig excellent. I'll take your plates.
• 53:23
  Cheers. That's that's thanks.
• 53:24
  Thanks for that, Moira. Thank you.
• 53:26
  Thank you, Moira. Yeah.
• 53:27
  Also jam on a digestive biscuit with bar.
• 53:30
  Absolutely. Yeah.
• 53:31
  First time I've ever had that as well.
• 53:32
  Yeah, you. Know what?
• 53:33
  We've had them. I actually think I'm.
• 53:36
  I messed up by not going to the bar.
• 53:37
  Of course you did. We all knew that.
• 53:39
  I wanted to try the jam about the butter influence.
• 53:42
  This is where I mean, on the podcast, we've also, we've
• 53:45
  triggered the debate in the past about whether you keep chocolate
• 53:48
  in the fridge or not chocolate in the fridge.
• 53:50
  Or the freezer. Or the freezer and Angus's
• 53:52
  dad's. But it's coming up for Easter
• 53:54
  time. I think your dad's filling the.
• 53:57
  Freezer The cream eggs will be. The cream eggs will be.
• 54:00
  He's had his dentist trip in the year and judging it and he's
• 54:03
  like all specs. Your nasters are all fine, Mr.
• 54:07
  All. The feelings have been talked.
• 54:10
  So yeah, that's that's so there you go.
• 54:12
  Two things, whiskey and jam. And if you do like it, message
• 54:16
  Moira. She's very active on the
• 54:18
  Facebook group. She's also great on on Instagram
• 54:21
  and socials. And stuff like that.
• 54:22
  Jam as well. Really good.
• 54:23
  She loves making jam. She loves making jam.
• 54:25
  So well done to Moira for that and thank you for sending that
• 54:29
  in. And please don't hesitate and
• 54:31
  sending other stuff into us because we do enjoy.
• 54:35
  Free food, yeah. You know, T-shirts, whiskey.
• 54:40
  Spread. Spread Yeah.
• 54:41
  Condiments yeah. Whiskey Stories podcast You do a
• 54:44
  whiskey BBQ. Sauce we want.
• 54:46
  Whiskey BBQ sauce. Yeah, there you go.
• 54:48
  Somebody can make us a whiskey BBQ sauce, please.
• 54:50
  Athletic. Arms, Edinburgh.
• 54:51
  Care of whiskey Stories. Podcast.
• 54:53
  Yeah, exactly. Steak.
• 54:55
  Yeah, we'll have a steak when we're I mean this with a whiskey
• 55:01
  sauce. There you go.
• 55:02
  Get us a whiskey sauce. Sauce.
• 55:04
  There you go. So we've done the jam.
• 55:05
  I can take that off, right. That's that's very kind of you.
• 55:09
  Thank you. Yeah.
• 55:10
  Yeah. OK, industry stuff then.
• 55:13
  Right. So Greg, you're you're you're
• 55:15
  you're venture. And then Angus, as we're
• 55:17
  recording this, we, we've been talking about, we talked.
• 55:22
  Look, it's been a reoccurring theme on the podcast for a few
• 55:25
  months now. Yeah, we talked about general
• 55:27
  State of the West game. And it is in a place where
• 55:31
  there's a lot going on. Yesterday, as we were recording
• 55:33
  this, the actual share price plummeted.
• 55:35
  Yeah, but at the same time for a reason which I actually find
• 55:39
  quite exciting. Yeah, I think, I think you're
• 55:41
  right, Graham, because there was a few things that came out.
• 55:43
  There was a few articles I was reading about this as well
• 55:45
  because it was quite interesting to see it happened.
• 55:49
  I don't know anything about this.
• 55:50
  So I mean for context, the Azure share price dropped the most.
• 55:53
  Yeah, they did. It dropped significantly.
• 55:55
  They they, they cut their dividend and they lowered their
• 56:00
  profit expectations. So they got a new CEO in about
• 56:03
  four or five months ago, I think.
• 56:06
  And he's an ex Tesco CEO. Right.
• 56:09
  To plan to context as well. And he said basically he said,
• 56:14
  he said several things and he said the off trade at the Aggio
• 56:17
  is nowhere. We're not as far short of where
• 56:20
  it needs to be, which is interesting because he's coming
• 56:23
  from that retail background from Tesco and he's saying Diageo are
• 56:27
  not good enough at selling to the bars, the supermarkets.
• 56:32
  And this is across, I mean, we, we look at the agile in the
• 56:34
  context of the whiskey, but actually this is not the agile.
• 56:38
  I mean, the gens, they're yeah. As an evidence and is it kind of
• 56:41
  almost as a historical thing, it goes back to COVID.
• 56:44
  So COVID comes along, there's less focus on that, less focus
• 56:48
  on that side of the business and it's more about selling the
• 56:51
  people in their houses online, etcetera.
• 56:54
  But obviously that's changed again.
• 56:57
  And then Diagio, the suggestion is Diagio haven't been quick
• 57:00
  enough to kind of get back to that state of affairs.
• 57:03
  So but it's also interesting as well.
• 57:05
  There was another, there was a lot of conversation about how
• 57:07
  he, one of the other headlights was about actually, you know,
• 57:14
  we, we, we've mentioned it and I think it's salient because it's
• 57:17
  a point we've mentioned a lot in the podcast about, particularly
• 57:20
  in relation to do you remember all the conversation we had
• 57:22
  about Tasker 18? Yeah, yeah.
• 57:24
  Went from 80 LB a bottle to 201 hundred.
• 57:28
  And. Yeah, I mean over the piece and
• 57:32
  he this new CEO, I can't remember his name came out and
• 57:34
  said on certain prices we need to go back down.
• 57:38
  Yeah, we've gone to, we've focused too much on luxury with
• 57:41
  push, push prices up on too many brands and the needs come back
• 57:46
  down because we've left them. We've left that middle market
• 57:49
  and we're under represented in that middle market compared to
• 57:53
  competitors, especially in North America, I think he said.
• 57:57
  So again, it's like, well, this is now the reversal of all those
• 58:00
  prices going up. It's like, well actually the
• 58:03
  need, yeah, I'm back down now. I.
• 58:05
  Mean, I suppose, especially if sales are down, then probably
• 58:08
  stock availability is increased as well.
• 58:10
  Well, yeah, and you look at if you look at the Azio and we know
• 58:15
  that the the biggest, you know, they're the they're the biggest
• 58:17
  and they're the monster of not the bad monster of the industry
• 58:21
  because it's always very easy to look at somebody like the Azio
• 58:24
  and the negative. Yeah, yeah.
• 58:26
  The next thing. But we've had plenty of people
• 58:28
  on this podcast, Ally Reynolds being one of them, who said, you
• 58:31
  know, he worked for the Azio at the time he was at Brandon Bass
• 58:34
  for Johnnie Walker, I think it was, and basically said, yeah,
• 58:37
  you know, there's there's people who all these master blinders
• 58:40
  were asked if you could pick one 1W that you can have your name
• 58:45
  on, what would it be? And it's like Johnny Walker
• 58:47
  Black because it is the IT is, it goes.
• 58:50
  It's the blend of all blends effectively.
• 58:52
  There'll be some people that sit there and go fuck off.
• 58:54
  It's Pesh, it's rubbish, it's cheap.
• 58:55
  It says that next thing. But actually, I say all the
• 58:58
  time, you can go anywhere in the world and you'll find Johnny
• 59:01
  Walker and Oh yeah, that is. And we don't dock ourselves up
• 59:04
  enough as in Scotland to say Johnny Walker is a Coca-Cola
• 59:08
  style standard brand. You know Coca-Cola is a
• 59:11
  household name. Johnny Walker's a household
• 59:13
  name. And the one, I mean, the one guy
• 59:15
  who did have his name on that bottle was the late Radio 2 DJ,
• 59:18
  of course. But Johnny Walker, he was called
• 59:24
  Johnny Walker. But the point, but the point of
• 59:27
  the matter is that well. Could I, I would say, I mean,
• 59:29
  I'm, I think I probably find myself focusing on the niche
• 59:32
  stuff, but I would say Diageo, particularly in whiskey and
• 59:37
  maybe in June to a certain degree, the last couple of years
• 59:39
  I've been heavily focused on prestige, yes.
• 59:41
  And you look at the special releases and when I look at some
• 59:45
  of those prices, I'm just like, no way, no way that this makes
• 59:48
  sense. Am I thinking that a 10 year old
• 59:51
  Tasker or a 10 year old a 12 year old Lagaville and should be
• 59:56
  £140 or something? Along those lines and that's
• 59:59
  what Angus is saying their CEO is now looking at that going
• 1:00:01
  we've lost sight of or not lost sight but we need to re think
• 1:00:05
  but I. Think the argument they always
• 1:00:06
  had for the last couple of years was that we wanted, because I
• 1:00:09
  think second they wanted, they were arguing it was a deterrent
• 1:00:13
  for secondary markets. Yeah, which didn't make any
• 1:00:16
  sense. But The thing is, people will
• 1:00:18
  still tell you prestige is still like the fact that people are
• 1:00:23
  buying whiskeys at very extortionate prices.
• 1:00:26
  You know, you speak to people who are in that market, are in
• 1:00:30
  that industry, that area of the market, and they're still
• 1:00:32
  telling you that like prestigious selling.
• 1:00:34
  And we were talking off, off, off before we started recording,
• 1:00:36
  I guess when we were saying, you said, you know, what would you
• 1:00:39
  rather do? Would you rather sell?
• 1:00:41
  You know that. Oh yeah, we were talking in the
• 1:00:43
  context of hotels and I, I, I, I, you know, it goes back to, we
• 1:00:46
  were talking about Las Vegas. I said, well, it goes back to
• 1:00:49
  the point of do you sell 100 rooms at £300 a night or do you
• 1:00:54
  sell 300 rooms £100 a night? Yeah, At the end of the day, if
• 1:00:57
  you've got that availability, you're still making the same.
• 1:01:00
  Exactly. Well.
• 1:01:01
  Cleaning. Yeah, of course.
• 1:01:03
  But then you look at and you say that's, but you can argue that
• 1:01:07
  and you say when you look at like and again in the Azure
• 1:01:10
  context, you look at Boras and Fort Ellens and you look at some
• 1:01:12
  of the crazy Taliskas. And like what Chuck's saying is
• 1:01:16
  selling for very high prices, but they also go, well that
• 1:01:19
  doesn't take as many people to sell and also for what you sell
• 1:01:22
  that for what, but. I like the Azure products.
• 1:01:27
  I think they do phenomenal whiskey.
• 1:01:29
  I think it's really, really good quality.
• 1:01:30
  I'm a massive sucker for the Flora and Fauna series.
• 1:01:33
  Yeah, outrageous liquid there for really, really good prices.
• 1:01:36
  But I do get pissed off when I go into distillery and I see
• 1:01:42
  Cameron Brigg 35 year old for £400.
• 1:01:45
  Yeah. And I go, that's a crock of
• 1:01:47
  shite because that even if that is phenomenal liquid and you
• 1:01:53
  know the value of grain, you know the value of good grain
• 1:01:56
  from and maybe it is an independent market that doesn't
• 1:01:59
  make sense. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:01
  Yeah, if a distillery is making 100 million litres a year and
• 1:02:05
  you've made a release of a boss thing, where's the value there?
• 1:02:10
  And, and that's one product out of thousands, and they do
• 1:02:16
  thousands of incredibly good, consistent products.
• 1:02:19
  I think their Singleton brand globally, it's one of the
• 1:02:22
  coolest brands around. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:24
  I think the fact that you can go to three different areas, you
• 1:02:26
  can go to Asia and North America and Europe and get a product the
• 1:02:30
  same packaging, same quality, almost same flavour profile
• 1:02:34
  throughout, but but from three different distilleries is.
• 1:02:37
  Class, yeah, I think it's important to say like, you know,
• 1:02:39
  we're not knocking the actual by any stretch of imagination, but
• 1:02:42
  what we are saying is that when they are the biggest guys in the
• 1:02:45
  industry. So what happens is when it's a
• 1:02:48
  lot, what you know is that when they're having a hard time, it's
• 1:02:51
  going to filter down. But what you also know is do
• 1:02:54
  they get used as the index for everybody else?
• 1:02:57
  So, for example, going back to Angus's point about the Talisker
• 1:03:00
  18, if, if Diazio can suddenly go right, I tell you what,
• 1:03:03
  overnight we can Chuck our task at 18, our 18 year old from a
• 1:03:06
  very good brand that we've got. Can we Chuck that up an extra?
• 1:03:10
  Can we add another 6070 lbs on to the RRP of that?
• 1:03:14
  Does that then mean that every other single whiskey company can
• 1:03:17
  go around and go hang on a minute?
• 1:03:19
  If that's if that's if they're 18, if they're 18 at for Tasker
• 1:03:23
  and that is a standard in the in the industry, then suddenly we
• 1:03:26
  can all jump that up. And it like goes back to Stephen
• 1:03:28
  Woodcock when and you have to take your hat off to people like
• 1:03:32
  Glenn Murray. And he said on the podcast
• 1:03:35
  whisk, everyone uses the same three ingredients, you know,
• 1:03:38
  everybody uses. He said.
• 1:03:39
  So when he used to get asked like, why is Glenn Murray so
• 1:03:42
  cheap? His question was, well, why is
• 1:03:44
  everybody else so expensive? You know, and that's what it is.
• 1:03:47
  And that's what that's and of course there's there's loads of
• 1:03:50
  type factors involved in that. But one thing you're saying I
• 1:03:53
  guess is if this is a reset by Diageo, does this mean as a
• 1:03:57
  consumer we are now going to start to see the reset filter
• 1:04:02
  it? Will be interesting to see how
• 1:04:03
  it happens as well, because it might be that it's the price
• 1:04:08
  dial has moved on certain brands, but then other brands
• 1:04:11
  maybe like Telescope, we don't see that because at the end of
• 1:04:14
  the day, I mean task has been singled out here, but it's AI
• 1:04:18
  mean price at that rate because it was a popular brand.
• 1:04:21
  I mean I imagine Lagavillion would like price change their
• 1:04:24
  life and it might be quite slim as well.
• 1:04:26
  And the other thing is as well is, is this an opportunity like
• 1:04:30
  we, we talked last week about rebrands, Yeah, we talked about
• 1:04:33
  the Glenfiddich rebrand, talk about Bulmore rebrand, Highland
• 1:04:35
  Park. Also, I'd like to say I looked
• 1:04:37
  up the Glenfiddich rebrand. I like it.
• 1:04:39
  You don't mind that? I think it's good.
• 1:04:41
  Yeah. I mean, I, I, I, I, I see two
• 1:04:43
  sides to it. Like I said, there's I think.
• 1:04:45
  It's a pretty quick turn around from the last rebrand.
• 1:04:47
  But but now here's the thing, right?
• 1:04:50
  Is this a subtle way of adjusting prices where what you
• 1:04:56
  can do now is do Glenfinic and other brands suddenly go see all
• 1:05:02
  the old brand like because how many bottles of Glenfinic 12 are
• 1:05:05
  going to be in the old style bottle that are still sitting
• 1:05:08
  ready to go out to retail and what have you?
• 1:05:10
  Is there an opportunity for them to go?
• 1:05:12
  Here's what we're going to do is Glenfinic 12 looks like this.
• 1:05:17
  We're going to, because we've got a rebrand, we're going to
• 1:05:20
  say, are we going to cut the price down?
• 1:05:21
  And then suddenly what it is, it's not a reset.
• 1:05:24
  They're not. So cuz The thing is what you
• 1:05:26
  can't. Do can I just say as a sticker
• 1:05:28
  guy, I did look at the bottles and I was like, well, that is
• 1:05:32
  just consistent label color, consistent label printing ink
• 1:05:38
  that is cheaper than it was before because it's not as full.
• 1:05:40
  But what I mean, it's hard, what if Glenn FedEx suddenly say,
• 1:05:42
  right, we're we're rebranding another and I'm going to say
• 1:05:45
  other, other companies as well. They rebrand.
• 1:05:47
  And then what they can do is they have the opportunity to go
• 1:05:49
  the old brand stuff we can cut down on price.
• 1:05:52
  So what it doesn't look like is it doesn't look like William
• 1:05:54
  Grant and sons are panicking and they're slashing all their
• 1:05:56
  prices and their prices are going down.
• 1:05:58
  What they're able to do is it's an opportunity to do a a small
• 1:06:01
  reset without making big news in the sense of, I don't know,
• 1:06:05
  maybe they will. It's interesting because I went
• 1:06:07
  up to Aber Lauer a few years ago and it was when it was when
• 1:06:12
  Aberlauer had rebranded. They've gone from their 10 year
• 1:06:15
  old to the 12 year old and obviously.
• 1:06:17
  The bottle shape changes, right? There was a rebrand with that as
• 1:06:20
  well in terms of the bottle design and the, you know, the
• 1:06:22
  whole packaging. And they had the last few
• 1:06:25
  remaining bottles of our Aberlauer 10 they were selling
• 1:06:29
  for £30. I picked up a bottle, still got
• 1:06:31
  it in the house unopened. But that, you know, it's
• 1:06:34
  interesting because that was maybe, you know, they moved to
• 1:06:38
  from 11:50 consciously and, and put I think the Tet, the 12 was
• 1:06:44
  more priced at kind of like 46 or something around that £30 so.
• 1:06:48
  Because I mean. Again, it was a repositioning,
• 1:06:50
  but then this is what you might see the other way, where brands
• 1:06:53
  might rebrand and slightly change the age statements and.
• 1:06:56
  That move as well could have been, you know, because.
• 1:06:58
  And it could have been done it. Had come to 12 years old, this
• 1:07:01
  is well it could have been. Why are we selling this at 10?
• 1:07:03
  Years. Well, I just I just wonder like
• 1:07:04
  stock thing as well. It doesn't look like you're
• 1:07:06
  panicking and suddenly slashing your prices if you suddenly go,
• 1:07:08
  oh, by the way, we've rebranded and everything that's the old
• 1:07:11
  brand we can put down at this price now to get it into
• 1:07:14
  retailers, which allows retailers to drop their price a
• 1:07:16
  little bit, go and maintain their margin.
• 1:07:18
  But then what it does is it suddenly creates, oh, Glenfedeck
• 1:07:22
  is actually now this price instead of what it used to be.
• 1:07:26
  And then you can just go, that's working.
• 1:07:28
  We can continue instead of it looking like because that's the
• 1:07:31
  one thing people don't want to do is you don't want to suddenly
• 1:07:33
  look like we're slashing our prices.
• 1:07:35
  I would I would say as well like the 12:15 12 and the 15 in
• 1:07:40
  particularly are probably more supermarket orientated and
• 1:07:44
  people know that product and they love that.
• 1:07:46
  Product. Yeah, Yeah, of course.
• 1:07:47
  But then you've still got the experimental series and that
• 1:07:50
  would probably make some more sense to put more money into the
• 1:07:52
  packaging for that because it is maybe more of a gamble and more
• 1:07:56
  of a sales. And I think is it 18 in in this
• 1:08:00
  same packaging as well? I don't know about what I would
• 1:08:02
  say is that one thing I always maintain, and it goes back to
• 1:08:06
  this sort of financial crashes at 2008 and things like that, is
• 1:08:09
  I remember speaking to somebody and he said, like people who
• 1:08:12
  still spend money, but all they're going to be doing is
• 1:08:14
  they're going to be a bit more smart about it.
• 1:08:15
  And there's value that all people want is value.
• 1:08:18
  Yeah. And I think this is where we
• 1:08:20
  have lost a little bit of that in whiskey.
• 1:08:22
  Where basically people love Glenn Fennick.
• 1:08:24
  People love what, you know, all the different.
• 1:08:27
  We're using Glenn Fennick as an example, but there's our pegs,
• 1:08:29
  there's Glenn Modern Jay, all this kind of stuff.
• 1:08:31
  People love it, right? But at the same time, people
• 1:08:33
  also don't love being feeling like they're getting, you know,
• 1:08:36
  what was once this drum was costing you this?
• 1:08:39
  And what you've also got to remember is like I say, I've
• 1:08:41
  said it on this podcast before Christmas, I guess we joked
• 1:08:44
  about it is like we're the world's worst where we have to
• 1:08:47
  pick three different drums that we're going to drink in an hour
• 1:08:50
  and a half. We're actually sometimes I just
• 1:08:53
  like I've found coin leash 12, coin leash 14.
• 1:08:57
  I love it. I absolutely love it.
• 1:08:59
  And you know, I love the fact that I don't.
• 1:09:01
  I can come in and diggers and I can go first DRAM off the bat,
• 1:09:04
  I'm going to get a coin leash 14, But sometimes I used to feel
• 1:09:07
  under pressure going, Oh, what's new?
• 1:09:09
  What have you got? I should try this.
• 1:09:10
  I've tried that already. Actually.
• 1:09:12
  But most consumers are the guys that go to the supermarket and
• 1:09:16
  go well, a Glen FedEx 15. I like that.
• 1:09:19
  I'm going to buy it and then when it empties or it's nearly
• 1:09:21
  empty, they'll go back and buy it again.
• 1:09:23
  They'll go back and buy again. They'll go back and.
• 1:09:24
  Back. Well, what we probably haven't
• 1:09:26
  mentioned as well as a lot of whiskey in this country has
• 1:09:29
  bought as a gift. Yeah.
• 1:09:30
  So there's an element I think as well where it's a case of what's
• 1:09:35
  the most luxurious thing I can buy for maybe the most
• 1:09:38
  reasonable price. So it's like, what can I, what
• 1:09:41
  can I get and give to somebody? And I'll go, oh, wow, yeah.
• 1:09:44
  And you're going, well, that's all right, because I've only
• 1:09:46
  spent so much. I think a lot.
• 1:09:49
  There are some interesting statistics.
• 1:09:50
  I can't remember them, so I can't quote them, but there were
• 1:09:53
  some interesting statistics about how many bottles, what
• 1:09:55
  percentage of bottles on this in this country, what start again,
• 1:10:01
  what percentage of bottles of whiskey in this country are
• 1:10:03
  bought? Yeah, I brought.
• 1:10:05
  I brought his gifts. We.
• 1:10:07
  Have another cracker and Jack another biscuit.
• 1:10:10
  Because he's done a buy, right? But it's a high percentage.
• 1:10:15
  Yeah, absolutely. And I think what you're saying
• 1:10:17
  there, Chuck as well, is there's a place for if, if someone wants
• 1:10:21
  to buy an expensive bottle of whiskey, you can still buy an
• 1:10:23
  expensive bottle of whiskey. Yeah.
• 1:10:25
  But at the same time, what we've seen is that actually the people
• 1:10:28
  that have been hit the most are just the guys and the people
• 1:10:31
  that just want to buy a whiskey. Yeah.
• 1:10:33
  And this is the problem that people are having is the fact
• 1:10:35
  that, look, maybe Talisker 18 won't drop in price, but
• 1:10:37
  Talisker 18 will has put itself on the shelf as that standard of
• 1:10:42
  whiskey. And that's fine because now what
• 1:10:44
  people have been people are looking at going, well, that's a
• 1:10:46
  special drama. It's not a drama that you can
• 1:10:48
  buy every second week when you're when you're running a
• 1:10:50
  low, when you're whisking the house.
• 1:10:51
  But basically what people are getting fed up is, is why is the
• 1:10:55
  Glenmorne G12 costing me more than what the Glenmorne G10 was
• 1:10:58
  costing me? Even though for the last 10
• 1:11:00
  years I've drank consistently Glenmorne G and that's the drink
• 1:11:03
  that is the general. Whiskey.
• 1:11:04
  And it's from myself from a purchasing perspective, because
• 1:11:09
  I do have a problem and I buy too much whiskey.
• 1:11:11
  And I I'd, I buy mainly from like, like FOMO.
• 1:11:15
  I'll see stuff come up on social media, but that's actually good.
• 1:11:19
  Yeah. I really like to buy that and
• 1:11:20
  look at it for four years and not open it.
• 1:11:21
  Yeah. And then I'll go.
• 1:11:23
  But I go to the supermarket and I quite often, like buy Berman
• 1:11:26
  and it's always on a deal. Yeah.
• 1:11:28
  It's like the rule. I will buy Eagle Eagle Rare. 10
• 1:11:32
  and if it's like it's a great. Purchase it was like 6 if it's
• 1:11:35
  like £6 off on on Clubcard or Nectar card or whatever by two
• 1:11:40
  and that is the one. And my old man would always buy
• 1:11:45
  Valve any 12 when it was on deal and he'd buy like a case or two
• 1:11:50
  or Highland Park or these kind of things.
• 1:11:53
  Now you can't even look at your whiskies because you've got no
• 1:11:55
  lights. You might as well open them.
• 1:11:58
  I'm not brave enough to walk over.
• 1:11:59
  To them yet. But Greg, look, it's, I mean,
• 1:12:03
  look, it's doom and gloom in some cases, which sounds like
• 1:12:06
  doom and gloom. But is it, is it like you're in
• 1:12:09
  the, you've been in the industry you've been in for 10 years?
• 1:12:11
  Arthur Motley on the podcast last year said, you know, where
• 1:12:15
  the industry is right now is we're still a long way from it
• 1:12:18
  correcting itself. And there are still going to be
• 1:12:20
  a lot of casualties. And that's really, really sad to
• 1:12:23
  see. And we are seeing those playing
• 1:12:25
  out since Arthur was on the podcast.
• 1:12:26
  But one of the other things he said is, well, two things he
• 1:12:29
  said #1 we shouldn't be surprised that the thing we knew
• 1:12:32
  was going to happen, happened. And two, he said for the very
• 1:12:36
  first time for the last 10 years, people are now having to
• 1:12:39
  sell whiskey because you sell. But it's easy for us to sit here
• 1:12:43
  and be like, oh, let's get industry as fuck, we're all
• 1:12:46
  knackered, yada, yada, yada. Is it?
• 1:12:48
  You're about to go in here, You know, I don't want you sitting
• 1:12:51
  there to be like, oh, Jesus Christ, I'm just trapped in
• 1:12:54
  Titanic. Cheers for the biscuit man.
• 1:12:56
  I might just retrain as an electrician.
• 1:12:58
  It sounds like there's work to be done on a chiropractor.
• 1:13:02
  You maybe saw your knee. Yeah, I think the chiropractors
• 1:13:07
  backs isn't it? Sorry, I won't, I won't be
• 1:13:08
  fixing any. That's the needle car.
• 1:13:10
  You need that. Chiropractors do bones do it.
• 1:13:13
  Yeah, no backs. Anyway, it's not a specialty jam
• 1:13:16
  and jam and butter is no, I think as you say, as all the
• 1:13:20
  headlines and everything doom and gloom and but it's not
• 1:13:22
  unique to whiskey. I think you look, news is pretty
• 1:13:25
  rubbish everywhere just now. Consumers are getting hit with
• 1:13:28
  everything, whether it's energy or whatever.
• 1:13:31
  Everybody's a bit down on themselves just now.
• 1:13:35
  We've got a great industry. We've got a great product that's
• 1:13:37
  been around for hundreds of years.
• 1:13:39
  We're all passionate about it, whether we're working it, you do
• 1:13:41
  podcasts in it, As long as we're doing our bet to talk, talk it
• 1:13:46
  up and share it with people and have these conversations and eat
• 1:13:50
  jam and may be happy, then you never know, maybe, maybe it'll
• 1:13:54
  just start to come round again. Listen, there is absolutely a
• 1:13:57
  reset happening on pricing. The consumers probably
• 1:14:00
  ultimately going to win out of that.
• 1:14:02
  Brands will ride it out, some won't.
• 1:14:04
  Some, well, that's not unique to whiskey as well.
• 1:14:06
  That's, that's business, that's consumerism at the end of the
• 1:14:09
  day. But as long as we are enjoying
• 1:14:12
  it and buying it and drinking it and sharing it, we're doing our
• 1:14:14
  part. And yeah, hopefully as Chuck
• 1:14:17
  says, if there's a Tesco deal to be had, well, I think we'd all,
• 1:14:20
  we'd all take that discount as a consumer.
• 1:14:23
  But if we're consuming and talking about it, it's good for
• 1:14:25
  the industry. And does that mean like
• 1:14:27
  ultimately, you know, the consumer is the customer is
• 1:14:29
  always right? You know, if, if the bottles are
• 1:14:32
  selling, then sure enough, the custom, if the bottles are, if
• 1:14:36
  people are drinking the whiskey and people are buying the
• 1:14:37
  whiskey, then the customer because there's a danger.
• 1:14:39
  Where is there a danger that when things start going so well,
• 1:14:43
  like like what we saw 2018-2019, 2020 and the COVID and stuff
• 1:14:47
  like that, people are just buying whiskey.
• 1:14:49
  It was it wasn't a danger of like the whiskey, like the who's
• 1:14:52
  wagging the tail here, right? If the whiskey industry are
• 1:14:54
  telling you this is good, this is the price and people are
• 1:14:57
  going give me it right. But then what's starting to
• 1:15:00
  happen is suddenly, like Arthur was saying, is people are having
• 1:15:03
  to work hard to sell it. The consumers actually going.
• 1:15:06
  Hang on a minute. I am fed up seeing too many of
• 1:15:09
  your non age statements coming out that are dressed up like
• 1:15:12
  this and still costing me £150 a bottle.
• 1:15:15
  I'm you know, I'm going to go back and I just want and you
• 1:15:19
  know, like we had the Glenn Scottia 12 last week on the
• 1:15:22
  podcast, 45 LB bottle and I just absolutely loved that.
• 1:15:26
  Absolutely love £45 a bottle. 12 year old.
• 1:15:30
  Really, really good question. It was 46.
• 1:15:34
  Percent or something, I remember someone telling us about
• 1:15:36
  economics and about kind of consumer economics that we're
• 1:15:39
  all voters. So if you're going out to a shop
• 1:15:41
  and you're buying a brand, you're you're you're voting for
• 1:15:44
  that brand, you're saying that that's you know and collectively
• 1:15:47
  we're all doing that. If you're if you're good buying
• 1:15:49
  that brand, you're voting for that brand, you're showing your
• 1:15:51
  faith in that brand. If you're but not voting for
• 1:15:53
  somebody that's not happening. You know, that's the other end
• 1:15:57
  of the stick. So by being as consumers you're
• 1:16:00
  having you're, you have a real effect in terms of which brands
• 1:16:03
  succeed, which brands don't. Yes, you are if you buy that,
• 1:16:07
  that's the way you're looking at it as.
• 1:16:08
  Well, if you buy a bottle of something and bring that home,
• 1:16:11
  invite mates round and show you how much yeah that you are in a
• 1:16:15
  I. Must say, if Graham goes and
• 1:16:16
  buys a 12 year old bottle of Glenn Scotia because he really,
• 1:16:19
  really likes it, then he's showing faith.
• 1:16:22
  You know he's repaying. Yeah, you know he's.
• 1:16:24
  Showing his now wife she's like please stop, show me that ball.
• 1:16:27
  Yeah, but I got back. I just remember.
• 1:16:29
  I just remember. Go and pick up the bags first.
• 1:16:32
  I will say this as well, priorities great if anyone else
• 1:16:34
  for if anyone from the Azure is listening and there might be a
• 1:16:37
  few people and it particularly even if they if we end up in
• 1:16:40
  front of the. And we'd love to go to Tina.
• 1:16:43
  We'd love to go to Glenor. No, no.
• 1:16:45
  The other thing I would say. To Dal you if the.
• 1:16:47
  New if the new CEO of of the Azure's listing as well.
• 1:16:52
  Have you thought about Jam? Have you thought about Jam?
• 1:16:55
  Because I tell you what, give Moira hook up Moira she she
• 1:16:59
  might save it, she might. Say Walker's jam.
• 1:17:02
  Walker's probably already done, but I want to talk about
• 1:17:06
  blending because one of the jobs that you had, Greg for a long
• 1:17:10
  time, in fact, you talked about it on the episode that you were
• 1:17:14
  on, and it really just changed my way of thinking about
• 1:17:17
  blending was just being able to create flavor.
• 1:17:21
  Yeah. And one of the blends you
• 1:17:22
  created was I had about a moment where this was the, was it the
• 1:17:25
  leaf, Leaf Legacy, No leaf blend.
• 1:17:29
  What was the leaf blend you did? So there was Whiskey Roll, and
• 1:17:33
  then there was the Leaf Legacy. Leaf Legacy.
• 1:17:35
  So it's Leaf Legacy. No, it was the one that was
• 1:17:37
  literally a leaf. And I'd never seen this brand.
• 1:17:40
  I don't know. I wasn't aware it was you.
• 1:17:42
  And it was you were the official at one of the fringe venues.
• 1:17:47
  Yep. And I went there and I ordered.
• 1:17:49
  It was like, oh, that's the only whiskey they've got.
• 1:17:51
  I'll have that then. That's fine.
• 1:17:53
  And I was with my wife and she was like, what do you think of
• 1:17:55
  that current wife? And she was like, what do you
• 1:17:57
  think of that? I was like, this is nice.
• 1:17:59
  Yeah. I was like, who does this?
• 1:18:01
  He's the. I was like, oh, Glenn Moore
• 1:18:03
  spirits. I was like, oh, that's Greg
• 1:18:04
  Arka. I was like.
• 1:18:05
  I know him. I've met him.
• 1:18:06
  I'm. Gonna caveat that's.
• 1:18:07
  Would have probably been the first year in the pod.
• 1:18:09
  I didn't blend that so. Here's me talking.
• 1:18:12
  You open I'm. Glad you loved that one that no,
• 1:18:14
  I really didn't like, no. So that was an example of and I
• 1:18:17
  talked about it when we released that product, but we worked
• 1:18:20
  towards it. So as I was leaving the last
• 1:18:23
  batch I did blend. So we that was you get offered
• 1:18:27
  parcels in in the industry as Indies and sometimes it's
• 1:18:30
  blends, some days it's single casks and you've got all these
• 1:18:33
  moving parts. And that blend came in and it
• 1:18:34
  was great. I didn't need to do anything
• 1:18:36
  with it. We caught at the right time.
• 1:18:38
  It was available, we put into bottle and that's what that was
• 1:18:41
  a story, but the intention was always to move towards creating
• 1:18:44
  our own version of that. So that was the kind of this is
• 1:18:47
  a concept of the product. It's almost like a while we wait
• 1:18:49
  blend if you like. And then as I was leaving, kind
• 1:18:53
  of scaled up the recipe to to replace that and the ones that,
• 1:18:57
  so the ones are out now, all the ones that have been out, put out
• 1:19:00
  in the latest batch. The batch 2 ones were ones that
• 1:19:03
  I'd worked on the recipe for so well, I mean, so hopefully they
• 1:19:07
  like that better than the first one.
• 1:19:08
  Yeah. I've added it and it's really
• 1:19:11
  really good. Well, you, you talked about
• 1:19:13
  blend and one of the things, I mean, the first ever DRAM that
• 1:19:16
  we had on this podcast was a blend.
• 1:19:18
  It was 25 year. Old.
• 1:19:19
  That's true, yeah. And it was because, number one,
• 1:19:22
  it was an absolute cracking price for a 25 year old whiskey.
• 1:19:25
  You were you were part, it was a drunken conversation at Ross Bar
• 1:19:30
  stag do where we we hatched the plan of can we bring out a
• 1:19:35
  bottle of something? And you said, well, yeah, we
• 1:19:37
  can. And we talked about it.
• 1:19:38
  And it worked so well in the fact that the first ever drama
• 1:19:42
  that we had on this podcast, a 25 year old blend, that the
• 1:19:45
  first ever whiskey release that we did was a rare fine 25 year
• 1:19:48
  old. And I can happily say no bottles
• 1:19:51
  are available of that anymore. All gone, All gone.
• 1:19:53
  Absolutely finished and it was it was a great project to work
• 1:19:57
  with you on and things like that as well.
• 1:19:59
  We didn't blend that it wasn't a blend, but but when it comes to
• 1:20:03
  blending then like you said, it's people often look at and go
• 1:20:07
  blends aren't are secondary to single malts.
• 1:20:10
  But then we had Fraser soon as. On the podcast 2 weeks ago.
• 1:20:14
  Sorry to hear that. Yeah.
• 1:20:15
  Yeah, we literally struggled to find anybody that was available.
• 1:20:19
  What's going on? You were on holiday.
• 1:20:21
  We had to do that podcast with the lights off.
• 1:20:26
  He's a beautiful. Yeah, great guy, great guy.
• 1:20:28
  But one of the things the Linquid that he brought in with
• 1:20:32
  him, obviously you know Linquid, but what he said is actually and
• 1:20:34
  again it. It's consistently a great.
• 1:20:36
  I put that on the socials and I'll be honest with you, I hope
• 1:20:39
  that would on our social media posts, we've had some, we've
• 1:20:44
  caught some great strays, some really, really good strays.
• 1:20:46
  The the the lag of the learning, the the Smokey Cokey post that
• 1:20:50
  we put up really split up in you.
• 1:20:53
  Stand by my stand. My great.
• 1:20:55
  Brilliant. Yeah, but we had We're not the
• 1:20:57
  best invention. But like.
• 1:20:59
  No, but the truck, stand by it. Hundred 170,000 people watch
• 1:21:03
  that. I don't roll back now, right?
• 1:21:04
  It's fire the wheel and. Smokey.
• 1:21:06
  Yeah, but 160, 160 odd thousand people have watched that clip,
• 1:21:11
  right? And there was people.
• 1:21:12
  And on that we have comments. To have the smoking.
• 1:21:14
  People were like we were called heathens at one point, probably
• 1:21:18
  like how dare you mix Lagaville and with but then other people
• 1:21:21
  were like, yeah, totally get it. Absolutely fantastic.
• 1:21:24
  Probably about it. That was that.
• 1:21:25
  That was that. And I stuck that I thought, Oh
• 1:21:28
  well, this might catch a few strays with Fraser soon as yeah,
• 1:21:31
  talking about how. And basically it was like the
• 1:21:33
  best compliment you can give a single malt is that it's hardly
• 1:21:36
  available because it's used by blinders so much because it's
• 1:21:40
  such a good liquid to work with. And the comments, they're all
• 1:21:43
  just people would totally agree. Like absolutely get that.
• 1:21:47
  Like, yeah, it's very good. You talk about how much you love
• 1:21:50
  Client Leash now, that's that. The only product they really do
• 1:21:53
  is the 14. Yeah, They used to do Distillery
• 1:21:56
  Distillers Edition. I don't think they'd do that
• 1:21:58
  anymore, Yeah. So it's because the.
• 1:22:01
  Bulk of that is required because it does such a phenomenal job I.
• 1:22:04
  Suppose you could probably argue about most of Florida and fauna
• 1:22:07
  effectively edge goer like yeah, effectively, because we all know
• 1:22:12
  that diazio have the route to market where they can actually
• 1:22:15
  bring out 10A12A14 an 18, a 20. And they could charge as we
• 1:22:19
  could know if they do that with with with all their brands, they
• 1:22:22
  could probably charge a premium for a lot of them.
• 1:22:24
  But actually, like you say, they probably just go we can hoard
• 1:22:26
  this in. But I think, I think that's how
• 1:22:28
  you get to sleep tonight. Sleep.
• 1:22:30
  I think that's how you get to sleep at night.
• 1:22:31
  Chuck just naming, trying to name all the flooring faunas.
• 1:22:34
  I just. Clutch my knee and try.
• 1:22:38
  But anyway, Craig, my point being is blinding, right as well
• 1:22:41
  as wood management and control of that as well as selecting
• 1:22:44
  cast as well as managing inventory as well as
• 1:22:46
  understanding out turns and knowing when a whiskey is ready
• 1:22:49
  and when it needs fell back and also knowing again about because
• 1:22:53
  it's not just blending was a big part of your role as well.
• 1:22:56
  Yeah, it was very much kind of small scale for most of the
• 1:22:59
  time, but towards the kind of latter end everything was kind
• 1:23:03
  of scaling up and all with the one of the most nerve racking
• 1:23:06
  parts of that is you'll do like a bench top blend and small kind
• 1:23:10
  of volumes and you're like that's really good.
• 1:23:12
  But then sending the request and like Chuck to make hundreds of
• 1:23:15
  1000 liters of this and just being like please, please this
• 1:23:19
  place as good as it did. Yeah, and.
• 1:23:22
  Then you obviously you have to check and make sure it's right
• 1:23:25
  at the end and luckily always kind of panned out that way.
• 1:23:27
  She's. Got big, adding water, big
• 1:23:30
  paddle. Yeah, yeah, that's how you got
• 1:23:33
  the guns. No, I just thought it was moving
• 1:23:36
  casks to 12:00. I had, yeah, It was just adding
• 1:23:42
  water because we're not doing chill filtration.
• 1:23:45
  We're just adding water, yeah, and then filtering it through
• 1:23:49
  that. So adding water, try and shiggle
• 1:23:51
  up just to make sure it's mixed and then have to take a new ABV
• 1:23:54
  and density check it and then be like, all right, we're a percent
• 1:23:59
  and a half off. So probably go liter by liter
• 1:24:02
  now and then just add. But we did a blending experience
• 1:24:06
  tasting with yourself, Greg. And it was, I mean, a lot of it
• 1:24:10
  is easy to set up because what you did was you gave us everyone
• 1:24:13
  in the room got 3 sample bottles, a a smoky 1A bourbon
• 1:24:16
  one and a shedded 1. And everyone got one.
• 1:24:18
  And we did the blinding experience of going Angus.
• 1:24:20
  But that was a single malt. Yeah, this was a blinding malt
• 1:24:22
  that we were creating and. The the look of disappointment
• 1:24:25
  on Jake Adkin's face when he tried my.
• 1:24:31
  But The thing is ultimately it's, it's a, it's, it's a
• 1:24:35
  difficult process, but all the same time, if you strip it back,
• 1:24:38
  it doesn't, it maybe sounds more complicated than it is because
• 1:24:41
  one of the things when you said just creating flavour, yeah.
• 1:24:44
  You know, and when you know what you've already got available to
• 1:24:47
  you. And whilst we did it that night
• 1:24:49
  and for these, we had three sample bottles and everyone
• 1:24:52
  could measure out. We'll try a little bit of this,
• 1:24:54
  a little bit of that and a little bit of that and we can
• 1:24:56
  try it. And OK, it needs more.
• 1:24:57
  That's means more of that. You're only using three
• 1:24:59
  ingredients. But I suppose if you've got an
• 1:25:00
  arsenal of 10/15/20 different ingredients in front of you,
• 1:25:04
  then you can have a real bit of fun doing that.
• 1:25:05
  But blending just sounds so much fun to be perfect.
• 1:25:09
  Honestly, it's creating, just creating a flavour.
• 1:25:11
  Until I was kind of doing that, I probably, I was the whiskey
• 1:25:15
  geek as a consumer, going single cask whiskey is like the
• 1:25:18
  pinnacle like you'd, but actually blendens the real art
• 1:25:22
  because you're there's so many moving parts.
• 1:25:24
  And I think it goes back to the flexibility I had at Glenn Moore
• 1:25:28
  that I wasn't really given like a liquid budget to work with or
• 1:25:32
  like you can't use that because the price is going to be this.
• 1:25:35
  I was always allowed to just work with flavour.
• 1:25:37
  So I'd make the best product I think I could with what was
• 1:25:40
  there and then tell them what the ingredients were and they'd
• 1:25:43
  work out the price if that worked within.
• 1:25:44
  So it was, it was quite nice. And I don't know if other other
• 1:25:48
  whiskey companies do it that way.
• 1:25:50
  They maybe look at more from a commercial.
• 1:25:52
  You can only use this age. You can only, but they're
• 1:25:54
  probably working with core blends that they know, they know
• 1:25:56
  the recipe where I kind of, I was allowed to just feel around
• 1:25:59
  like I was with the, the cast single cast maturation and it
• 1:26:02
  was great. There's like they were the, the,
• 1:26:04
  I remember being given a sample for a specific project and they
• 1:26:08
  were like this type of profile. Can you do that with what we've
• 1:26:12
  got? And then I just spent like a
• 1:26:14
  couple of days playing around, pulling stuff together and
• 1:26:17
  basically getting it as close as I thought I could with what I
• 1:26:19
  had without knowing what was in it, just going, no, but it's
• 1:26:22
  missing a bit of this, It needs a bit of that.
• 1:26:24
  And then just playing around, it's like, it was great.
• 1:26:26
  Great project. And one of the things that
• 1:26:27
  really opened us, it was a mutual friend or I've found that
• 1:26:30
  years he introduced us to was Craig Johnson, who talked about
• 1:26:32
  and he was, he was creating famous grouse and everything
• 1:26:35
  like that. And one of the things that
• 1:26:38
  really got me was the fact that it's when he's working with
• 1:26:43
  blending, it wasn't about flavour profile as such, It was
• 1:26:46
  about spirit character. And I think that was that
• 1:26:49
  because The thing is as well as. I think as well, he was almost,
• 1:26:52
  you know, he's working off a recipe had to, you know, unlike
• 1:26:57
  yourself maybe where you're creating that blend.
• 1:27:00
  He was conscious of what's been there for.
• 1:27:03
  Us, he described such an established well, this was
• 1:27:06
  profile, yeah, it was consistent.
• 1:27:08
  But also what got me was the fact that it was like, I suppose
• 1:27:12
  because of the volume that they're dealing with that the
• 1:27:14
  odd cask that doesn't match. If you've got a bourbon cask
• 1:27:19
  that's five years old, right? And it's not had very much
• 1:27:23
  maturation out of it because the wood is knackered.
• 1:27:25
  It's going into a VAT with a hell of a lot of other casks.
• 1:27:28
  So that's not going to make as big a difference than it would
• 1:27:31
  do if it was on its own, so to speak.
• 1:27:33
  But ultimately what really got me was it wasn't he wasn't
• 1:27:37
  going. We need that, that that bourbon
• 1:27:40
  cask and and Sherry cask. And that's the next thing.
• 1:27:43
  It was it was spirit character LED because I suppose what
• 1:27:45
  they're doing is they were buying, they were buying spirit
• 1:27:48
  Ross, but like they were buying Noni spirit at the time to lay
• 1:27:52
  it down so they can put it in their own casks that they can
• 1:27:55
  mature their way. So then it comes into their
• 1:27:57
  blend at the time. And and that for me, really
• 1:28:00
  opened my eyes about spirit, the importance of spirit character
• 1:28:03
  in a blend rather than just. You can.
• 1:28:06
  You can almost add the the style of wood that you want on that
• 1:28:09
  finished blend. You can add that different parts
• 1:28:11
  of the process. But Craig's absolutely, he's
• 1:28:14
  like a different plane when it comes to the volume of blending
• 1:28:18
  that he would have done. People like that.
• 1:28:19
  And that blows my mind to think how would I even approach that?
• 1:28:23
  Like obviously I worked at a smaller scale, but the, that
• 1:28:27
  element of understanding the, the makes that he's working with
• 1:28:31
  profiling them, as you say, knowing, having the assurance
• 1:28:33
  that if I put them together and put them in this type of cask,
• 1:28:37
  how many get Grouse? But the the touch points he
• 1:28:39
  would have had throughout that maturation.
• 1:28:40
  And I think he even talked about with McAllen as well, the, the
• 1:28:43
  quality control. And it's suddenly arguably
• 1:28:46
  Grouse is probably one of the most important, along with
• 1:28:49
  Johnny Walker, one of the most important jobs in the industry
• 1:28:51
  because it's another, it's a ubiquitous whiskey.
• 1:28:54
  It's absolutely everywhere. Yeah.
• 1:28:56
  And it and you're absolutely bang on the consistency could
• 1:29:00
  not easy sake after all that butter consistency is like it's
• 1:29:04
  there. It's just, it's absolutely.
• 1:29:05
  Not on. And the other thing that got me
• 1:29:06
  was. Question just about blending.
• 1:29:09
  I because I bought, I got pints of Fraser and Ross the other
• 1:29:14
  week and they were talking about blends blending together matured
• 1:29:18
  whiskey stock and they were saying that is it not legal or
• 1:29:22
  is it is it legal to blend you make spirit together and mature
• 1:29:26
  that? So like Inception blends?
• 1:29:28
  Yeah, OK. Right.
• 1:29:28
  I was actually going to be a question now, yeah.
• 1:29:30
  So blending new make together to then go into wood for
• 1:29:34
  maturation. That's that's, that's done
• 1:29:36
  within the, so the one of the inception blends that we worked
• 1:29:40
  with was a 34 year old blend that was done by Dunhill
• 1:29:44
  originally. Well, I haven't tried.
• 1:29:47
  That yeah. And then but that was then put
• 1:29:49
  into Sherry Butts to then mature out.
• 1:29:51
  They they cut that kind of arm of the business at the time and
• 1:29:54
  the stock just kind of was bouncing around and passed
• 1:29:56
  through a few hands and found its way to us.
• 1:29:58
  But that was an example of one that was blended together as
• 1:30:01
  make and then. Really so and do they have to
• 1:30:03
  call it Inception blend or is it?
• 1:30:04
  Just not so blended Scotch, but yes.
• 1:30:06
  So what you could do is you could suddenly go right, we're
• 1:30:09
  going to get 10 liters of you make from this from let's just
• 1:30:13
  say if you want to do a fight, you can suddenly sit there and
• 1:30:15
  go inch there and eaten Mel Kings Barns staff milk.
• 1:30:20
  But you're buying new make. You're sticking it all in a cast
• 1:30:23
  together or a VAT, vatting it together, sticking it on and
• 1:30:26
  then waiting 10 years. I wonder what that process would
• 1:30:28
  be. Are you then blending the new
• 1:30:30
  make for a flavour? Profile So there was something
• 1:30:32
  I'd never done and I actually don't know, like I don't know if
• 1:30:34
  it meets current regs because we were only starting to work with
• 1:30:38
  new make like the last few years.
• 1:30:40
  And it was the way I always looked at the inventory anyway,
• 1:30:44
  as unless you know, if like if you're making a blend from new
• 1:30:48
  makes that's going to be released eight, you're
• 1:30:51
  committing that, you're committing that liquid now where
• 1:30:53
  you'd be better in my opinion, whether as I say, I don't know
• 1:30:56
  the legality behind it. But if you're, you're better
• 1:30:58
  leaving it in its constituent parts because you just never
• 1:31:01
  know where the business requirement might be in five or
• 1:31:04
  six years. And if, if that particular mate
• 1:31:06
  comes out and you've got the other 5 or 6 components, you
• 1:31:09
  could replace that one component that's missing and bolt it
• 1:31:12
  together closer to when you're actually bottling it.
• 1:31:15
  That make in my eyes, that makes more.
• 1:31:17
  Commercial sense. It's a bit like a mortar to your
• 1:31:19
  whiskey. You you can't unblend it once
• 1:31:21
  you've blend. I also saw recently with so the
• 1:31:26
  Thompson brother guys just released their new donor you
• 1:31:29
  Sullivan black batch for this year and they were talking about
• 1:31:33
  doing maturation for those cast with oxidization.
• 1:31:37
  So they were purposely weren't filling the casks full so they
• 1:31:41
  could see how. Yeah, that's interesting.
• 1:31:43
  And I think they did a partial dilution and put back into cask.
• 1:31:48
  I've done the the oxidisation deliberately before.
• 1:31:51
  We're one cast. I don't know if I've spoke about
• 1:31:52
  it on the podcast before, but we had a 26 year old Dean Stan and
• 1:31:56
  I used this as an example of when an indie has a cask in the
• 1:32:00
  inventory, they've got that, it's in there.
• 1:32:02
  The stewardship, you've got that decision.
• 1:32:05
  Do you change it to something else or do you leave it as is
• 1:32:08
  or. And that particular whiskey was
• 1:32:10
  absolutely amazing and it's it's original vessel.
• 1:32:13
  It was in refilled bourbon. It was stunning.
• 1:32:16
  I took about 120 litres out into first fill all the Rosso quarter
• 1:32:21
  cask and left the rest in the the original vessel.
• 1:32:25
  So there was a lot of space headspace in there.
• 1:32:28
  But let them then go off on their own journey for I think it
• 1:32:31
  was 7 month finish on the on the cherry.
• 1:32:34
  And when we released them, we released them both at the same
• 1:32:36
  time as a conversation piece. And also that doing that
• 1:32:40
  ultimately lead to getting to be able to do like the Sherry
• 1:32:45
  seasoning program through Barbadillo.
• 1:32:47
  That experiment of going look, we're not just taking like
• 1:32:50
  really spent casks that have got not a lot of influence on the
• 1:32:54
  spirit and putting a big Sherry finish on it.
• 1:32:56
  This is something that's arguably perfect, but we've made
• 1:33:00
  the decision for right or for wrong and the consumer will tell
• 1:33:02
  us. And but that was a beauty when
• 1:33:04
  it when we were doing tastings, it split the room and that's
• 1:33:06
  kind of what you want. I've always said that tasting
• 1:33:08
  half the room preferred the Sherry, half the room preferred
• 1:33:10
  the bourbon. They both sold out, but we got
• 1:33:13
  to exercise a bit of kind of creative license.
• 1:33:15
  And yeah, yeah, that's one of my favorite whiskeys.
• 1:33:19
  And I wouldn't have if I'd just played it safe and just went
• 1:33:22
  like, no, leave it. But that that I find that
• 1:33:25
  oxidisation thing, I didn't get to do it a lot, but absolutely,
• 1:33:28
  it'll make a difference. And it would have been good to
• 1:33:31
  have done more of that kind of experiment and throughout.
• 1:33:34
  Right, Greg, I want to ask you this.
• 1:33:35
  I've got a couple more points to make, but I want to ask you
• 1:33:37
  this. I was scrolling through my phone
• 1:33:40
  on Monday night. I don't know if we talked about
• 1:33:43
  this on the Shona. What comes up on your real?
• 1:33:47
  No, it was actually on Facebook marketplace I found a 60 litre.
• 1:33:51
  Vatting tank. Oh, we did talk about this.
• 1:33:53
  I don't know if it was on. It was.
• 1:33:54
  On, I know it was on the Pod, I went by a sixty.
• 1:33:57
  I thought it was £150 or something and I was like, well
• 1:34:01
  every household should have a 60 litre vatting tank.
• 1:34:05
  What happens if I buy a vatting tank right?
• 1:34:08
  Oh God. And I want to become a blender.
• 1:34:11
  I want to try it. I want, I want to give a go.
• 1:34:13
  I want to have a go at going. Let's see.
• 1:34:15
  Let's see what I can. Buy go to 60 from the get go
• 1:34:18
  man. Yeah, I mean.
• 1:34:20
  You got to start somewhere. Yeah, 60,000 start at 5:00.
• 1:34:24
  Bob Cutting sent us the Whiskey Shed 6 Nations Blend and we all
• 1:34:27
  loved it. Yeah, I tell you what, it's not
• 1:34:29
  about 60 liters, no. No, he's not.
• 1:34:31
  No, but I just want to get back. I just thought, you know what
• 1:34:36
  thing? Work backwards, Find them, find
• 1:34:38
  the kit first. Actually, that's £150 for a 60
• 1:34:41
  litre vatting tank. That's not bad.
• 1:34:42
  If you'll probably be, you'll get your money back.
• 1:34:45
  If you buy a 60 litre vatting tank, you have to do something
• 1:34:47
  of it. Correct.
• 1:34:48
  Exactly. And I'm not going to VAT
• 1:34:50
  mayonnaise, am I? So no jam jam maybe.
• 1:34:54
  I mean I could sell it, I could sell it to Demora if it doesn't
• 1:34:57
  work out. But ultimately, right, I'm going
• 1:34:59
  to come to you for a consultancy here, right?
• 1:35:00
  And don't, please don't say just don't do it.
• 1:35:02
  But basically, let's just say Kev allows us to have a wee
• 1:35:07
  vacuum tank in here, right? And we can start just topping it
• 1:35:10
  up whenever. I mean, I suppose when you look
• 1:35:12
  at having the access. To as long as it's not in your
• 1:35:14
  ear encumbered grip. Yeah, because, well, we rule
• 1:35:16
  that one. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:35:17
  But they've. Been near that boiler by the.
• 1:35:19
  Sense the access, the access to liquids are just difficult thing
• 1:35:23
  because you obviously to get. I mean, we know guys at woven
• 1:35:26
  and they've talked about it. You know you have when you're
• 1:35:28
  making a blend, you have to have a lot of whiskey to be able to
• 1:35:31
  arrange of it. I can't just suddenly go, but
• 1:35:34
  I've got 2 Farkins 1's, a shredded one, and one's a
• 1:35:37
  bourbon one. We're going to stick it in.
• 1:35:39
  You need grain, you need single malt, you need access to.
• 1:35:42
  Different depends what you're doing.
• 1:35:43
  Yeah, you need different. You have two farkins.
• 1:35:45
  Yeah. Blenders together, you call it.
• 1:35:46
  What the Ferk? Yeah, that's the first release.
• 1:35:48
  That's the first release TM. What the fuck?
• 1:35:52
  That was a light bulb moment. There you go.
• 1:35:54
  What's her name? I.
• 1:35:56
  Mean is it as simple as, and I know I'm probably simplifying
• 1:36:01
  this to the Max and doing you have a massive service as a
• 1:36:04
  consumer, as a guy who spent 10 years creating blends.
• 1:36:07
  But ultimately, you know, to to basically say, if I guess Chuck
• 1:36:11
  and I sat here one night and we said, right, let's let's create
• 1:36:15
  a blend from what Let's just say we went to a number of different
• 1:36:19
  independent bottlers that we know, right?
• 1:36:21
  You go with the Megan, you go to George and Rachel Keeble
• 1:36:26
  fragrant drops. You go even Someone Like You go
• 1:36:29
  to blind blind someone. You even go to engineer and say
• 1:36:32
  go and give us some Rila or whatever, I don't know.
• 1:36:35
  And suddenly you go right here we go.
• 1:36:36
  We've got everything sitting on our samples.
• 1:36:38
  Let's start creating something and we come up with something.
• 1:36:40
  We go. That's brilliant.
• 1:36:41
  Now what we need is we need to go.
• 1:36:43
  We need 60 liters of this and we've got Chuck who already
• 1:36:47
  knows how to do the whole thing where the water we say right, we
• 1:36:50
  want the water. We want this to be 46%.
• 1:36:53
  We want this to be non chill filtered, bang it all in there,
• 1:36:57
  give it a start and then see what see what it's like is I'm
• 1:37:00
  on the tracks. I mean, you're on the track to
• 1:37:02
  jail if you're going to do it in the Digger's basement.
• 1:37:05
  So my first, my free bit of advice to you is to find a
• 1:37:09
  facility that will support that and somebody that's got all the
• 1:37:11
  approvals for blended. Please don't make commercial
• 1:37:14
  whiskey and basements or bars illegally.
• 1:37:16
  But I do get do it responsibly. And it's nice that you've bought
• 1:37:20
  the equipment. That's that's the starting point
• 1:37:22
  I. Suppose yeah.
• 1:37:23
  But I really appreciate the evidence, yeah.
• 1:37:27
  And I've said that on a, I've openly amended doing on a
• 1:37:29
  podcast. You said hypothetically, yeah.
• 1:37:32
  Hypothetically, yes, that would be if you if you found the right
• 1:37:36
  facility that would partner up with with stalking it and their
• 1:37:39
  SDVS approved and you go through all of that stuff and you get a
• 1:37:43
  man with this the stunning arms of this guy yeah you're on
• 1:37:46
  you're on something I. Think you want to do the Indie
• 1:37:48
  Stories Blend? Is that what?
• 1:37:49
  You would. I just think I just think it'd
• 1:37:51
  be I think it'd be a really fun thing to do.
• 1:37:52
  I think well, Bob cutting last week, I mean, like I say, I we
• 1:37:58
  all love Bob's. It was really good.
• 1:38:00
  It was absolutely fantastic. You know, and I look at that
• 1:38:03
  did. You get.
• 1:38:03
  Did you get Greg? Somewhere.
• 1:38:04
  Is that all gone? It's all gone.
• 1:38:06
  You guys got the you guys I gave you the.
• 1:38:07
  I've got one at home. Yeah, yeah, I.
• 1:38:10
  Forgot I yes, it's at home. Yeah.
• 1:38:13
  So if you get. If you get all this liquid from
• 1:38:15
  all these Indies, you know it can be the in the blended.
• 1:38:17
  In the blended there you all look see we're coming out with
• 1:38:19
  so many, but I will say on the on the other side of that right
• 1:38:22
  leaning on you created a whiskey of of 2025 for a lot of people,
• 1:38:31
  which was the rare find Pony 17 White port, white Port yeah, and
• 1:38:37
  that for that for us that was a favorite.
• 1:38:41
  DRAM also B16. Oh yeah, B16.
• 1:38:44
  But also what it also did was it created something that was
• 1:38:48
  really special that happened for us on with the Poultney 17 Ruby
• 1:38:52
  port cast, which we which we bottled and sold through all my
• 1:38:56
  whiskeys and. Again, no bottles are.
• 1:38:58
  Available No bottles available at all.
• 1:39:00
  I had to buy a bottle I. Had to label them all by hand.
• 1:39:03
  Stick the stickers on. But it's it was for me, it was,
• 1:39:07
  it was a bit of a crazy moment because I was over in India.
• 1:39:09
  I don't know if I told you this, I was over there.
• 1:39:11
  You're in India. But but it was Egypt and no, no,
• 1:39:15
  it was over there. But basically I remember with
• 1:39:19
  the time difference just being really nervous and was that that
• 1:39:22
  whiskey sold at 4 hours for us, which for us I was pretty good
• 1:39:25
  goal I think for. Anyone.
• 1:39:27
  Yeah, I mean, that's, that's like, it was just a bit mental.
• 1:39:30
  That's crazy. It was absolutely mental and.
• 1:39:33
  Just I only bought 25. I know you didn't, but but it
• 1:39:39
  was it was a great story that started from us visiting you at
• 1:39:43
  work and pissing him off a lot by, you know, asking about how
• 1:39:48
  he moves casks and stuff like that.
• 1:39:50
  But when you get moments like that, that must be hugely
• 1:39:52
  rewarding for you. You say we joked about your
• 1:39:55
  liquid CV, but I'm pretty sure if you've got any of that, both
• 1:39:59
  either of those two Pulties left the Pulties 17 white port.
• 1:40:03
  Or as whiskey friends Drama, the drama the friends.
• 1:40:06
  Yeah, what are accolade? To be able to win.
• 1:40:08
  It was, yeah, it was great. I mean that I spoke about at the
• 1:40:11
  time. I remember, can still remember
• 1:40:13
  sampling that downstairs. And as soon as I sampled it,
• 1:40:16
  like, I walked upstairs with a glass and was like, this is one
• 1:40:19
  of my favorite whiskeys in the inventory right now.
• 1:40:21
  And we need we need to release this like.
• 1:40:24
  Never like a trumpet or like the UK.
• 1:40:26
  He's walking about, everyone's at work, and then suddenly just
• 1:40:33
  found the whiskey. I've done it again, everyone.
• 1:40:38
  This was all me. I'm going to stay this in my
• 1:40:41
  liquid CV. The Russell of a draw that's.
• 1:40:47
  Going on the CV. Just hand the CV and it's just
• 1:40:52
  covered in whiskey. Don't know words on it at all.
• 1:40:55
  Just like just. Some wet bits of paper, but it's
• 1:40:58
  not a scratching sniff, it's just a sniff, OK.
• 1:41:02
  But for you, like genuinely. Yeah, of course.
• 1:41:05
  Like I've been going to Whiskey Fringe for a few years as a
• 1:41:08
  punter. I've never actually, I think
• 1:41:10
  I've worked it one day, but I go there to try because there's
• 1:41:13
  over 400. You remember that was a good
• 1:41:20
  weekend. All right, I.
• 1:41:21
  Don't either. From the camera yeah, the reason
• 1:41:23
  that the reason that vlog is so short if you could chunk this
• 1:41:26
  old in the camera and. We got nothing.
• 1:41:29
  I was really excited to see people.
• 1:41:31
  Like a Labrador, just like yeah, with a glass.
• 1:41:36
  And a camera that I was supposed to be editing the footage from
• 1:41:38
  after anyway anyway. You're not so fine.
• 1:41:40
  But yeah, over 400 whiskeys. There it was.
• 1:41:43
  It was great for that for people that can never agree with me
• 1:41:46
  that I thought was a good DRAM. But yeah, I mean, these are,
• 1:41:49
  it's a great thing to to, to look back on and yeah, hopefully
• 1:41:54
  I'll get a chance to do something like that.
• 1:41:55
  Again, no, it was great. And like I say, it was a it was
• 1:41:57
  a nice moment to be able to sit there and go like I was.
• 1:42:01
  It was nerve wracking. I thought genuinely the story
• 1:42:04
  that we, we genuinely didn't know how quickly or how fast
• 1:42:07
  this was going to happen. And it did happen very quickly
• 1:42:09
  to the point where and you start looking at it and you're going,
• 1:42:13
  Jesus Christ, we're about to put a whiskey out in January, like
• 1:42:16
  middle of January. And you're going, is this the
• 1:42:18
  thing that, but, but the hype, that's the time people buy
• 1:42:21
  whiskey. Well, that's it.
• 1:42:22
  But I think what happened was it, it worked so well on 2
• 1:42:25
  fronts #1 is because of there was enough people who knew about
• 1:42:31
  the, the drum that we had drawn and picked for our, our, our,
• 1:42:35
  our whiskey fringe half time orange.
• 1:42:38
  Enough people tried it that day. But also the big, the thing that
• 1:42:43
  carried it over the line was the fact that the amount of people
• 1:42:45
  that I'd heard or tried the white, the white port, they went
• 1:42:49
  well, hang on a minute here. And also I remember saying at
• 1:42:52
  the time, because there was an element of you didn't know
• 1:42:55
  whether or not we were going to pick that whiskey and whether it
• 1:42:58
  was going to be the one we used. And suddenly I remember being
• 1:43:00
  like, Jesus, this isn't working as well as I maybe thought it
• 1:43:02
  was going to be the fact that there's going to be a pulp of 17
• 1:43:05
  on the table and we were going to be pouring a pulp of 17 as
• 1:43:07
  our, as our DRAM. But it worked almost perfectly
• 1:43:09
  because it did that thing like what you're saying about the
• 1:43:12
  oxidisation cast that you did was able to say, well, if you
• 1:43:15
  like that, you'll like this as well.
• 1:43:18
  And that's exactly how it worked.
• 1:43:19
  And it was brilliant, and it must be it's.
• 1:43:20
  Always really interesting to see how good spirit diverts
• 1:43:23
  depending on where. What vessel is pretty as well?
• 1:43:26
  And it was great, but. Doing for a whiskey French is
• 1:43:28
  probably one of the best locations for that conversation.
• 1:43:30
  To be had, Exactly. Absolutely.
• 1:43:32
  There was some phenomenal stuff that I tried across all of the
• 1:43:35
  stands. But yours is that honestly
• 1:43:40
  they're the whiskers are all brilliant, but you can always
• 1:43:43
  give it to 1. Only one guys got that is
• 1:43:46
  linked. Polly Pocket, It's a blind now.
• 1:43:52
  Really. That's why you just got a Polly
• 1:43:54
  Pocket? Yeah, just Polly Pocket on the
• 1:43:56
  wall. Add that in there.
• 1:43:58
  You go. It's.
• 1:44:00
  Just like a big watery mattress. You just see jobs posted for
• 1:44:04
  blenders. It's just like people jingling
• 1:44:06
  along. There you go, there you go.
• 1:44:09
  It's great. Now what we are, we're fast
• 1:44:11
  approaching the end of the podcast.
• 1:44:12
  We do ask our guests for what 3 drums you've been on before.
• 1:44:14
  Can you remember what 3 drums that you gave us the first time?
• 1:44:18
  You because bear in. Mind Yeah, yeah, I think I can.
• 1:44:20
  So in the Bavani 12 Doublewood was on there because that was
• 1:44:24
  the whiskey that got me into whiskey.
• 1:44:27
  The last drama I had with my dad before he passed away, which was
• 1:44:30
  the Port Charlotte 10. So that's just something always
• 1:44:32
  have a touch point with. And then the one that had on my
• 1:44:35
  we we had Glenmore had released it before I was there.
• 1:44:40
  I think so it was, it was a single grain 52 year old
• 1:44:43
  cartridge that was in my hip flask on my wedding day.
• 1:44:46
  So yeah, again, kind of emotional attachment there.
• 1:44:48
  But that was that was. My so you got three good times.
• 1:44:51
  Now can I ask you a question here because it was actually
• 1:44:53
  another tasting that we were at. You gave me tasting notes. 2
• 1:45:00
  tasting notes for Port Charlotte 10.
• 1:45:04
  Right, right. Very interesting tasting notes.
• 1:45:07
  And you said, I'm going to say this and you said it.
• 1:45:10
  And then they were like, but it's absolutely banging.
• 1:45:12
  And I get it. And actually it was, it was a,
• 1:45:15
  it was a whiskey, a peated whiskey that I could drink.
• 1:45:17
  Knowing the tasting notes that you gave, can you remember what
• 1:45:21
  you might have said? That's a good question.
• 1:45:23
  How many dramas that I have? We've done a few, but you and I
• 1:45:26
  love this drama. I absolutely love this drama you
• 1:45:28
  gave me. You said it's it's this and this
• 1:45:29
  and I absolutely love it. And that's in a good way.
• 1:45:32
  It's probably as butyric acid in there no as no acetone.
• 1:45:38
  No one of them starts to B BS. Bullshit babysit.
• 1:45:45
  Butyric acid, yeah. But yeah, that's yeah.
• 1:45:48
  So I don't know, butyric acid, I don't know.
• 1:45:50
  What I so? Yeah, no babies.
• 1:45:51
  Yes. I do.
• 1:45:53
  Have you had it on a cracker with butter though?
• 1:45:59
  No, it's something that that I find is on there.
• 1:46:02
  But I love the drama. But there was the other. 1 It's
• 1:46:06
  butyric acid, let's call it that.
• 1:46:07
  Butyric acid, yeah, yeah, of course.
• 1:46:08
  And. But I did have a small child at
• 1:46:11
  the time as well, so I was familiar with that.
• 1:46:12
  Butyric acid and smoky bacon, yeah, that's, that was the two.
• 1:46:16
  And like, like I say at the time, the smoky bacon really
• 1:46:19
  came through for me on that and. And now that you've got a child.
• 1:46:22
  Yeah, the baby sucker absolutely comes in there as well.
• 1:46:24
  So what if you were? If I was to ask you for what, 3
• 1:46:26
  drums, 3 whiskeys that have an association of story, a meaning
• 1:46:30
  from your journey that you've been on, I mean, bear in mind
• 1:46:33
  that was November 2023. So, you know, there's been a
• 1:46:37
  fair bit of stuff happening between now and then.
• 1:46:41
  Yeah, I mean, it'd be easy. Those those drams will always
• 1:46:43
  still kind of be on there. I think we talked about the the
• 1:46:47
  rare fine Puntney serving team, but the original, the OG old
• 1:46:51
  Potley 17, the discontinued is definitely one that's probably
• 1:46:55
  always going to live in that top five for me.
• 1:46:58
  Probably another one that really resonated with me and a lot of
• 1:47:01
  people at the time was the old Johnny, the old Glendronic 15
• 1:47:05
  under Billy Walker, The Gazette pre 2014 bottlins over the 15
• 1:47:10
  revival. That is absolutely sensational
• 1:47:14
  stuff. Both of those bottles have
• 1:47:15
  bought at auction, even when the prices were a bit spikier, but
• 1:47:19
  just so I've got a bottling house.
• 1:47:21
  I can always I can always tap into that there too.
• 1:47:23
  That really jump out and I've always been part of my kind of
• 1:47:27
  whiskey drinking at home. And then probably more on just a
• 1:47:30
  personal level, the the whole project being sorry for non Hibs
• 1:47:34
  fans, the project around the the Hibs bottlings and you'll
• 1:47:37
  probably have this with the wreath Rovers ones.
• 1:47:39
  I'd probably say the out of the ones that we did, the one with
• 1:47:43
  David Gray, 14 year old lightly peated Highland whiskey was, I
• 1:47:48
  loved that, absolutely loved that DRAM.
• 1:47:50
  And I forgot how good it was until I then had it again at the
• 1:47:54
  stadium. I've got a couple of bottles at
• 1:47:55
  home that aren't open, but when I had it at the stadium and I
• 1:47:58
  was like this liquid this, Yeah. I forgot how good this was.
• 1:48:01
  Yeah. I mean, I would say that I've
• 1:48:02
  worked on worked with you on projects like that special
• 1:48:05
  edition bottlings. And there is like, you know,
• 1:48:08
  there's a danger that the bottles never get opened.
• 1:48:10
  Yeah. And then there's also the,
• 1:48:11
  there's, there's, there's, there's.
• 1:48:13
  Well, we've joked about it a few times where it was like, oh, you
• 1:48:16
  could stick anything in this because no one's going to open
• 1:48:18
  it. But of course, for integrity
• 1:48:19
  purposes and as the person that you are, the standard and
• 1:48:23
  quality level of what you would have your name, because at the
• 1:48:26
  same time, we joke about it a little bit, but your name was on
• 1:48:28
  the label. And the bottom line is you don't
• 1:48:30
  want to put your name to something that you're not happy
• 1:48:32
  with. So of course you are always, and
• 1:48:34
  rightly so, very, you know of the point.
• 1:48:37
  It has to be very good like with and you have to have the basis
• 1:48:40
  of this bottle will be open and someone will drink it.
• 1:48:43
  But the problem with these bottlings is a lot of people
• 1:48:45
  don't ever open the bottles and drink them.
• 1:48:47
  And it's almost like it's the catch 22.
• 1:48:49
  You've got a great bottle there and it looks nice and it's a
• 1:48:51
  commemorative bottle and it'll have a sentimental meaning to
• 1:48:53
  the person who's bought it and it sits on their shelf.
• 1:48:55
  But equally you're going crack it by the way, because see that
• 1:48:58
  whiskey in there? It's just as good as what a
• 1:49:00
  whiskey bottle looks. Like some people, some people
• 1:49:02
  also order them and wait two months and forget to.
• 1:49:05
  I haven't even. Collected it.
• 1:49:06
  Yeah. If anyone's listening, they've
• 1:49:09
  got that erythrobers 17. Do yourself a favour.
• 1:49:13
  It's a cracker. That's the one I need to pick.
• 1:49:15
  Up the liquid that the liquid that we did the liquid that
• 1:49:18
  finished in a rum casket. Absolutely.
• 1:49:19
  And you forget and I thought it was a grain whiskey finish.
• 1:49:22
  There was a Cameron bridge as well.
• 1:49:24
  Yeah awesome. Yeah, so but this is what's
• 1:49:26
  happening when you have these commemorative bottlings.
• 1:49:28
  It's easy to just put them on the shelf and forget about them.
• 1:49:31
  But then also at the same time I was of the opinion like, Oh,
• 1:49:34
  shut up, I'm going to whiskey's been made a drink and I'm open
• 1:49:37
  two of them and they're like one of them is nearly finished and
• 1:49:40
  I'm like, oh shit, once this is gone, like because it's done
• 1:49:43
  left, it's got. Exactly what I say.
• 1:49:44
  You know, the first third you tuck into that no bother, and
• 1:49:47
  then it starts to become rare. Yeah, to you.
• 1:49:50
  And then the last bit, if you're thinking about buying miniatures
• 1:49:54
  and a can to that and I'll keep 35 miles for ten years down the
• 1:49:56
  line. And then, yeah.
• 1:49:57
  And then you get drunk and you finish it.
• 1:49:59
  There you go. Well, that's it.
• 1:50:00
  Well, Greg, honestly, thank you very much for coming out.
• 1:50:02
  No worries. Before we go, if you don't mind,
• 1:50:04
  Chuck, can you do me a wee favour?
• 1:50:05
  There's a bottle in my bag. So a bottle of glasses.
• 1:50:08
  No, no, you're fine. I brought a bottle along just to
• 1:50:11
  say I'm always, when I watch them, I always see everybody
• 1:50:15
  who's brought you whiskey and I never bring whiskey in the
• 1:50:16
  memory, so I didn't. Actually bring anything the
• 1:50:18
  first time you were on, so this is this.
• 1:50:19
  Is I'll hopefully make up with it.
• 1:50:20
  So I the gentleman sitting there actually drew.
• 1:50:24
  What did you draw the sample you labeled it?
• 1:50:26
  I you certainly. Labeled it.
• 1:50:27
  I believe I drew it as. Well, yeah, so this was a one of
• 1:50:30
  my parting gifts from from Lenmore.
• 1:50:32
  They gave me this bottle, one of one bottle cast sample of a
• 1:50:36
  thrust a 43 years old 1982. So that's my my universal very
• 1:50:41
  lovely gift. And I opened it straight after
• 1:50:44
  my last shift because I wanted to share it with people.
• 1:50:46
  So I brought that along. We can have that once once we've
• 1:50:48
  No, he's definitely not. So if you pour it on the back of
• 1:50:53
  the digestive. So yeah, once we once we wrap up
• 1:50:57
  here, we'll put a wee drama that and just label.
• 1:51:00
  Just squint mate, don't embarrass.
• 1:51:02
  Yourself as well, just actually Greg.
• 1:51:04
  I didn't leave. The next, the next time you come
• 1:51:06
  on, bring your CV along with you.
• 1:51:10
  Well, by the way, thank you very much for listening.
• 1:51:11
  Thanks to Greg for coming along. It's absolutely fantastic.
• 1:51:13
  If you are looking for consultancy, you've heard that
• 1:51:16
  first time here, absolutely fantastic.
• 1:51:18
  Get yourself in touch with Greg, It's great.
• 1:51:20
  He's going to help us with my 60 litre Viking tank.
• 1:51:24
  Apparently so, yeah. What this was, I wouldn't have
• 1:51:26
  brought my CD if I. Got that?
• 1:51:27
  Yeah, by the way, he's going. You're a lawyer, I think, Yeah.
• 1:51:32
  That's helpful because he's saving me from which is really,
• 1:51:35
  really beneficial. So thank you very much.
• 1:51:36
  All the very best slides about, Yeah.