Latest / Whisky Stories Podcast / Indy Bottlers Spotlight No.3 - Finn Thomson Whisky

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Indy Bottlers Spotlight No.3 - Finn Thomson Whisky · Whisky Stories Podcast

• 0:00
  Everyone ready to rock'n'roll? Everyone got drama in front of
• 0:02
  them. Everyone got drinks, right?
• 0:03
  I guess you know what to do. Oh, clap us out.
• 0:06
  It's harder when I've got that. Slap your head.
• 0:16
  Welcome to the Whiskey Stories podcast.
• 0:19
  So McAllen was at the time a bit of a more of a blending malt.
• 0:24
  It wasn't a single malt brand. I've got the minutes of the
• 0:27
  meeting from when the McAllen management team came down to
• 0:30
  meet my granddad. I think it's dated in 1983.
• 0:34
  They came down to pitch McAllen as us and them all in the
• 0:38
  minutes of the meetings. There's a core.
• 0:40
  They described McAllen as the Rolls Royce Scotch Whiskey back
• 0:45
  in 1983. Welcome along to the whiskey
• 0:48
  Stories podcast and the Ballers Ball.
• 0:53
  I guess we're back. It's round 3 of the NB Bottler
• 0:57
  Spotlight and there's people still coming back to listen to
• 0:59
  us. There's.
• 1:00
  People yeah, live audience still coming back as.
• 1:03
  Well, so it was great to see so many people here.
• 1:06
  I mean a few. Familiar faces, yeah.
• 1:08
  Exactly. I like to think that it's
• 1:09
  because of our great chat and the podcast that we've done, but
• 1:12
  I think it also helps when you've got some fantastic
• 1:14
  whiskey with you as well. I.
• 1:16
  Well, you said come for the whiskey, stay for the stay for
• 1:18
  the banters. Yeah, but.
• 1:20
  Yeah, that's the line we're I mean, and people are people are
• 1:24
  coming back. But listen, there is a reason
• 1:25
  that we we are surrounded by some keen whiskey drinkers.
• 1:28
  We have drams in front of my sons because we are joined by
• 1:30
  Mr. Finn Thompson. Finn, how are you?
• 1:33
  I'm doing very well, yeah. Looking forward to a good
• 1:36
  tasting. I think we're we're well geared
• 1:39
  up for some good drams and hopefully some above average
• 1:43
  chat. Oh well, we'll.
• 1:45
  Just take the drams we have. We have some great drams here
• 1:51
  line up. I've got it written down here.
• 1:53
  We have a Girvin 33 year old, an Oakmore 11 year old, a
• 1:55
  Strathclyde 30 year old, a Tam, the new 133 year old and then a
• 1:59
  peat at Glasgow 5 year old. That is an incredible lineup
• 2:02
  that you've brought us. But not only have you brought
• 2:04
  whiskey, you've also brought an array of lots of different
• 2:07
  props, which is perfect for a podcast.
• 2:11
  But we do have the video on the go.
• 2:12
  But I mean, this is a real sensory treat for us.
• 2:16
  Where? There's an Osprey and a golden
• 2:18
  eagle on the table for those of you listening.
• 2:20
  We are. We're pushing the YouTube
• 2:21
  channel hard here, so people have to go and watch as well as.
• 2:24
  Literally so. Well, I'll tell you what we'll
• 2:27
  do. Introduce the first RAM and then
• 2:29
  talk about yourself. That's what we'll do.
• 2:31
  Cool, cool. Yeah, fantastic.
• 2:35
  Okay, well, first RAM that we have, we're starting quite old.
• 2:39
  I think we're actually starting unusually with the oldest
• 2:42
  whiskey that I've got here, certainly the same age as
• 2:44
  whiskey #4 so we're going in with a 33 year old Gervin single
• 2:52
  cast release that we did towards the end of last year.
• 2:56
  Actually, single grain. I love old single grain.
• 3:00
  I think it's probably the the unsung hero of single cast
• 3:05
  bottling certainly. And and this is this is a cast
• 3:10
  that I find really easy drinking.
• 3:12
  It's probably one of the reasons why I put it on 1st in a lot of
• 3:15
  the tastings that I do because everything that we do is cast
• 3:19
  strength. But this drinks super easy.
• 3:23
  I think it's come down to about 4044.9% distilled in 1989.
• 3:31
  We can go straight in with the wanky tasting notes because this
• 3:34
  is the one that when I tasted the reminded me, I think I
• 3:40
  wrote. So on each of the whiskeys that
• 3:42
  we release, I don't quite do wanky tasting notes.
• 3:44
  I do what I call a story of the cast.
• 3:46
  So it's all about how you choose it, what it reminds you of and
• 3:50
  and when I did try this, I thought, you know what this
• 3:52
  takes me back to being a little kid, little iron brew bottles,
• 3:56
  iron brew bars. It's super sweet.
• 3:59
  So this is like a a sugar fiend whiskey for me.
• 4:03
  I hopefully you guys agree it's an easy drinking, super sweet
• 4:07
  manufacturer sweetness. Kind of like that ice cream
• 4:10
  truck coming around at the end of school going to your pick and
• 4:14
  mix. That's what this whiskey's all
• 4:16
  about. Wow, well we'll enjoy that and
• 4:18
  I'm sure we'll be definitely getting stuck in some more wanky
• 4:21
  tasting. There's plenty more to come,
• 4:24
  but. Once we're all sitting here,
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  I've enjoyed this very sweet, very lovely whiskey.
• 4:28
  To get us started, tell us a little bit about how you found
• 4:31
  yourself sitting in this position as you are right now in
• 4:35
  terms of what got you into whiskey.
• 4:37
  What's your story behind that? Because we can see from all the
• 4:40
  different sort of bottles and things, there is a history to
• 4:43
  your whole background in this. There.
• 4:45
  Yeah, there's definitely history.
• 4:48
  I like to call it the Untold Story of Scotch Whiskey.
• 4:54
  My family's actually been involved in the whiskey industry
• 4:56
  going all the way back to 1772. Every single generation since
• 5:02
  then has been directly involved in the whiskey industry,
• 5:05
  starting in 1772 with my great, great, great, great, great great
• 5:11
  grandfather, James Thompson, who was listed as an illegal
• 5:15
  distiller in Grantley, which is just outside Aberfeldy.
• 5:19
  We found an old article, old document in the National
• 5:25
  Archives, which listed him as a tenant farmer with an illegal
• 5:28
  pot still in his land, as was, you know, very normal of the
• 5:33
  time. And yeah, every single
• 5:36
  generation until me has been directly involved in the whiskey
• 5:40
  industry legally. Are continuing.
• 5:44
  We we moved into legal. Yeah, at some point, yeah.
• 5:47
  The, the family, I think it was James's grandchildren started
• 5:51
  grandly Distillery, which they operated in the in the kind of
• 5:56
  mid 1800s. We discovered this actually in
• 6:00
  in I don't know if any of you have seen Alfred Barnard's
• 6:02
  whiskey distilleries of the United Kingdom.
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  It's one of the kind of, you know, gems of, of whiskey
• 6:08
  history basically. I, I sometimes describe him as
• 6:11
  one of the first kind of whiskey influencers potentially.
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  He travelled around the entire UK and basically went to as many
• 6:18
  distilleries as he could. And he wrote little pages about
• 6:21
  each of the distilleries that he visited.
• 6:22
  And in that there's a whole page on Grandfleet.
• 6:25
  In fact, I think it's 2 pages on Grandfleet Distillery.
• 6:27
  I think McAllen only gets one page.
• 6:29
  So there's a whole 2 pages on Grandfleet Distillery in it.
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  Notes senior Thompson as being the proprietor of the time.
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  It goes into big detail about the specs of the distillery, the
• 6:42
  style, whiskey they're producing.
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  It says that Grantley was the smallest distillery in Scotland
• 6:49
  at that time, producing 5000 gallons a year.
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  So it was, you know, it was small fry, but that was the
• 6:54
  family's move into legal distilling.
• 6:58
  And then after that, going into, into the, the 1900s or late
• 7:02
  1800s, even the family made the big move to the city of Perth
• 7:08
  and become blenders. Perth, as I'm sure most of you
• 7:11
  know, was the absolute heart of the blended whiskey industry.
• 7:15
  I like to think the family was probably the 4th family to, to,
• 7:21
  to be involved in blending there.
• 7:22
  Obviously the three big ones, you've got Dewars, you've got
• 7:25
  Bells and you've got the other one, Jews, Bells, Famous Grouse
• 7:34
  and our family brand obviously didn't do quite as well.
• 7:38
  Otherwise I would probably wouldn't be sitting here being a
• 7:40
  boat somewhere, but moved into moved into blending and that's
• 7:44
  what a lot of the bottles that are on the table here are from
• 7:47
  These are these are variations of of the family brands from
• 7:51
  throughout the 1900s, ranging from old bottles of Ben Eagles
• 7:56
  to old Perth. Oh yeah, I picked up the old
• 7:59
  Perth because we have had friend of the show Tam Cuthbert who who
• 8:03
  watched the car car more and that is Morrison's distillery.
• 8:06
  Company, that's right. They now own the old Perth
• 8:08
  brand. So was this started?
• 8:11
  This brand was started by your family then.
• 8:14
  Yeah, that's right, it was started.
• 8:18
  Not I'm not sure the exact date I've I've I've read through so
• 8:20
  many of the archives of the family.
• 8:23
  I think I see the first mention of Old Perth in about the 1940s,
• 8:29
  nineteen 50s and some of the minutes of meetings where they
• 8:32
  start talking about launching a new brand.
• 8:35
  So I think that's when Old Perth was launched by my great, great,
• 8:39
  great uncle. I've I'll lose track of the
• 8:42
  grace sometimes, forgive me. But yeah, it, it was a family
• 8:45
  brand and was stayed in the family up until I think that
• 8:50
  Morrison Mackay, who they were at the time instead of just
• 8:53
  Morrisons, asked my grandfather permission to to, to go and
• 8:57
  relaunch the brand. My granddad is very keen to see
• 9:00
  it come back alive. So granted them permission to do
• 9:03
  it. And I think they've done a
• 9:05
  phenomenal job. To be fair, I think it's
• 9:06
  probably one of my go to blend and most I.
• 9:08
  Mean it must be so incredible to be able to look back your
• 9:12
  history but. Well, I mean to put it put it
• 9:14
  into context. Your family has a longer For the
• 9:17
  listeners across the pond, your family is a longer history than
• 9:20
  the history of their country. I think, I think there you go in
• 9:27
  terms of the audience, in terms of, you know, we had a, a former
• 9:32
  guest friend of the show, Alex Thompson.
• 9:34
  Yeah. He works for Glenn Tullett.
• 9:36
  He used to work at the Scotch Whiskey Experience.
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  And Jake, do you know, you'll come across Alex?
• 9:42
  There you go. And there was a situation where
• 9:45
  he's talking about his family history and whiskey.
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  And Alex, he spent a long time when he was at university here,
• 9:52
  he was doing a lot of history stuff with Edinburgh,
• 9:55
  relationship in Edinburgh has with whiskey and things like
• 9:57
  that. And you must have crossed paths
• 9:58
  somehow or other I. Was I was doing a tasting in the
• 10:02
  Scotch whiskey experience. So I worked for Morris Mackay,
• 10:05
  my first job with a little family connection there.
• 10:08
  As you know, when they, when they, I think when they took on
• 10:10
  Old Perth, my granddad said you've got to take my grandson
• 10:12
  as well. No.
• 10:14
  One else would give me a job so. Take my troublesome.
• 10:19
  But one of their one of their products was called Brooder.
• 10:23
  It was a whiskey liqueur, whiskey, honey and slow berries.
• 10:26
  Really good. It was a great one for like
• 10:27
  introducing people and especially tourists to to
• 10:30
  whiskey. So we used to do a lot of
• 10:31
  tastings at Edinburgh Castle and did tasting the Scottish whiskey
• 10:34
  experience as well. Had a little stand there.
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  I was pouring drums for people and one of the lads who was
• 10:40
  working there comes up to me and it's like, are you, you're a
• 10:43
  Thompson as well, aren't you? I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 10:45
  It's like, I think we might be related.
• 10:48
  And then he obviously kind of shared his history and, and I
• 10:51
  think basically the, the, his side of the family split off at
• 10:57
  around the time my family moved to, to Perth, right.
• 11:02
  So the the that first generation James Thompson is also a
• 11:06
  relation of. Yes, because when we had him on
• 11:08
  and he he he spoke about the history of obviously a farming
• 11:12
  family he comes from. There definitely was a mutual
• 11:15
  relation. I think I remember that story of
• 11:17
  the 1772 pot still. So yeah, I think there we go.
• 11:21
  So I mean, how do you, how do you, Well, like, I take it a lot
• 11:25
  of the history that you're talking about, we can see
• 11:27
  there's a lot of stuff that's been saved up.
• 11:29
  You've got plenty in the family history that can go back to.
• 11:31
  But in terms of like, do you still find yourself uncovering
• 11:35
  other little pieces of stuff from your family's history?
• 11:37
  Me Like God, I didn't even know that.
• 11:39
  Yeah, absolutely. So my granddad is an avid
• 11:42
  collector. He basically kept hold of
• 11:44
  absolutely everything he could from from the previous
• 11:48
  generations before him as well. So we're we're absolutely
• 11:51
  blessed to have old archive material going all the way back
• 11:54
  to even the late 1800s. We've got an old, an old book
• 11:57
  from the 1800s which documents every single cask that was
• 12:02
  bought and sold from I think it's 1897 through to about 1905.
• 12:08
  And it's got, you know, purchase orders for casks of Lagavulin
• 12:11
  from John Walker and Sons things, things like that.
• 12:14
  But it's a big book. You know, I flick through it a
• 12:15
  lot and you find, you know, you find little different bits than
• 12:19
  that. We've also got the minutes of
• 12:21
  meetings spanning from the, well, from First World War all
• 12:26
  the way through to the 1980s. So I try to spend as much time
• 12:31
  as I can get just kind of flicking through it.
• 12:33
  And, you know, I did a lot of research when I was beginning to
• 12:38
  kind of launch or relaunch the, the, the family business.
• 12:43
  But a lot of it's still uncovered.
• 12:44
  So it's, you know, something I quite enjoy doing is just
• 12:46
  flicking through and hopefully finding little gems of
• 12:48
  information. Brilliant, right?
• 12:49
  Well, how are we finding the drums, guys?
• 12:51
  How's everyone? How are we getting on with this?
• 12:53
  What we're thinking? We got any anyone willing to
• 12:55
  offer up a tasting note or 20? We've got one there, right?
• 12:59
  Pass it over and I guess. To me it's like pure carrot
• 13:02
  cake. Oh, pure carrot cake.
• 13:04
  Yeah, or carrot cake, ice cream to be more specific, which I
• 13:08
  have had and it's lovely. That sounds like a good tasting
• 13:11
  note. And then you get it.
• 13:14
  Carrot cake, ice cream. Yeah, there we go.
• 13:16
  Anyone else now? For, for, for the for people
• 13:21
  that have come in, then how many people were actually apologies
• 13:25
  for this fed, but how many people were aware of Finn
• 13:29
  beforehand coming into this? You guys a few.
• 13:32
  So there's a few people in here that weren't too sure.
• 13:34
  So I mean, what is your sort of market and how do you get
• 13:37
  yourself out to people? And I mean, when you see this
• 13:40
  incredible whiskey like that, it's, it's, I mean, it's
• 13:42
  phenomenal what you've got out in front of us, The bottles
• 13:45
  even, we've, we've talked a lot to indie bottlers and we've done
• 13:48
  these spotlights and even just through the podcast, the
• 13:50
  challenges of being as you know, being an independent bottler,
• 13:53
  because it's all we think about is like, well, you find a cast,
• 13:57
  you keep that cast and you decide to bottle it.
• 13:58
  But then I mean, every single part of this bottle in front of
• 14:02
  you will have a cost to it labeling, even the, where do you
• 14:06
  source your corks and the, the what you put on there?
• 14:09
  Your bottles here are very fancy, aren't they?
• 14:11
  Yeah, they're, they're fancy, fancy bottles for me, the reason
• 14:15
  that they're fancy and, and it's, it's not just because I
• 14:18
  want it to look fancy. I think that's probably the most
• 14:20
  important thing about it for me. I mean, I've, I've got 99
• 14:25
  generations of family who've all been involved in whiskey
• 14:27
  industry. And when I, when I launched the
• 14:29
  brand, I thought it was really important to try and tell that
• 14:32
  story as much as I could and kind of using the, the, the
• 14:35
  bottle as a vessel for that. So every element of the bottle
• 14:40
  kind of plays into some part of the family story.
• 14:43
  I mean, the, the most obvious one is the shape of it.
• 14:46
  So the, the, the bottle is, is 9 sided, It's a non again.
• 14:50
  And that represents the 9 generations of family that been
• 14:52
  involved in the whiskey industry.
• 14:53
  So, you know, we probably did spend quite a lot of time just
• 14:57
  thinking about how how we can make it obviously stand out, but
• 15:00
  obviously help us tell the story because, you know, people
• 15:04
  haven't heard of us. It's as I said, it's it's kind
• 15:07
  of the untold story of the whiskey industry.
• 15:09
  You know, it goes all the way back to the 1700s.
• 15:12
  It traces what I think is the story of Scotch whiskey going
• 15:15
  from illegal distilling to very small legal distilleries through
• 15:20
  to the era of blending through to the era of now.
• 15:23
  Oh, I think is single cast bottling is kind of like coming
• 15:25
  at the forefront a little bit more.
• 15:28
  So the bottle is is kind of an attempt to help tell that story
• 15:30
  through talking about the family's influence and what
• 15:33
  they've done. So yeah, every, every little
• 15:36
  bit. We've got the 9 sided bottle,
• 15:38
  the ceramic cork which is a tribute to the the Ben Eagles
• 15:40
  era and other little bits as well on the way.
• 15:43
  I mean, their bottles are very similar to Angus because he just
• 15:44
  goes on and on again. Well, I was going to, I was
• 15:46
  going to say I, I think, I think someone called me a non again at
• 15:49
  some point of my life. Well, whilst we're doing this,
• 15:53
  what's the second DRAM that you've got lined up for us?
• 15:55
  Because I quite like doing a bit of a side by side as well.
• 15:57
  Absolutely. So whiskey #2 is one of our new
• 16:02
  releases. This was just bottled about two
• 16:06
  weeks ago. So it's starting to hit the
• 16:08
  shelves across the country. It's yeah, it's a bit of a
• 16:13
  personal one for me. So.
• 16:15
  So this is this is an 11 year old Altmore.
• 16:19
  And what's what I think is special about it is that it's
• 16:21
  been finished in a Torres Red wine cask.
• 16:27
  Now Torres is our, is our. I don't how many of you are
• 16:30
  familiar with Torres wine. Pool.
• 16:35
  Sadly, not the same one. Sorry.
• 16:40
  So Torres, you might, you might be familiar with Torres as a
• 16:44
  wine brand. It's actually you see bottles in
• 16:45
  the supermarket. They've got two kind of main
• 16:48
  brands. They do a white wine called
• 16:50
  Vinyasol and they do a red wine called Sangre de Toro.
• 16:56
  But Torres is a Spanish, Spanish wine based just outside
• 16:59
  Barcelona, and my granddad actually started importing their
• 17:03
  wines because as well as being a blender, he was a bit of an
• 17:06
  importer as well. Peter Thompsons, which was the
• 17:09
  family company were were essentially blenders but also
• 17:13
  wholesalers of wines and whiskies from from, well, all
• 17:17
  across the world, mainly Europe at the time.
• 17:19
  And Torres was a brand that he took a bit of a gamble on in the
• 17:23
  1970s. Nineteen 70s Spanish wine is
• 17:26
  considered pretty damn nasty, certainly compared to French.
• 17:30
  But he struck up a relationship with Miguel Torres and started
• 17:33
  importing Torres wine into Scotland as well as many other
• 17:37
  different wine brands. And he kind of maintained that
• 17:40
  relationship up until when I was first starting thinking about
• 17:44
  getting a job when I was 18, I got sent packing out to to Spain
• 17:49
  in 2010 and I spent the summer working in the Torres vineyards
• 17:55
  doing wine tastings. It was a.
• 17:57
  Really tough time here, yeah. It was, it was when Spain won
• 18:02
  the World Cup as well. And I, I remember, I remember
• 18:05
  going out that night and thinking, oh, it's going to be a
• 18:07
  big, big, massive party. Spain have just won the World
• 18:10
  Cup, but they were also Catalan. So actually most of them were
• 18:13
  sporting. Yeah.
• 18:17
  So I'm like, they're celebrating.
• 18:17
  Oh, this is going to be brilliant.
• 18:18
  And then. Yeah.
• 18:19
  And obviously, obviously there was still a few who considered
• 18:22
  themselves Spanish. But anyway, I remember my last
• 18:25
  day, Miguel Torres, who was the kind of owner of the company, he
• 18:28
  pulled me into the office and this bit was in Spanish.
• 18:31
  So I've maybe made it up in my head a little bit, but my
• 18:33
  Spanish was OK at the time. What I remember him saying,
• 18:36
  which is maybe incorrect, is that if you ever need anything
• 18:39
  in the future, give me a call, whether it's in wine or if you
• 18:42
  go back to whiskey, then we're here to help.
• 18:45
  And I kind of remembered that when we were first launching the
• 18:47
  brand, I wrote him a letter and I said, listen, I'm about to
• 18:50
  start the family whiskey brand again.
• 18:53
  I'd love to do a collaboration with you guys to work with your
• 18:56
  wine barrels and and putting my whiskeys into them.
• 18:59
  And they were really keen for it.
• 19:01
  So we brought over a whole selection of their wine casks.
• 19:04
  Some of them were good, some of them not so good, but we've kind
• 19:07
  of continued on that relationship and this is the
• 19:10
  result of one of them. So for me, I like this about
• 19:14
  independent bottlings. You know, there's, there's so
• 19:16
  many casts that get put out by independent bothers and I think
• 19:19
  one of the most important things is to give them personality and
• 19:23
  story. So for me, being able to have a,
• 19:25
  a bit of a personal reason why we chose that red wine cast as
• 19:29
  opposed to any generic red wine cast is quite important.
• 19:33
  I also think flavour wise, it's cool.
• 19:36
  It tastes, it tastes very whiny. I think the wine influence is is
• 19:40
  very, very strong, but I quite like that as well because
• 19:43
  sometimes I see wine cask finishes and there's actually
• 19:47
  not so much wine influence. I'd rather see it do do what it
• 19:51
  says in the tin. Yeah, get something out of it.
• 19:53
  Yeah, yeah. It's so nice that something that
• 19:57
  it's not only a kind of fortuitous business thing that
• 20:00
  happened, but also it's something that pays homage as
• 20:03
  well to that kind of long history that your family has
• 20:05
  got. But.
• 20:06
  I mean, we've got Jake. Sorry.
• 20:07
  No, no, I've got Jake. I've cooked.
• 20:09
  You're a blender for Ian MacLeod Distiller.
• 20:13
  Well, that's something I guess, right?
• 20:17
  We talk you with your job sampling whiskeys that Ian
• 20:21
  MacLeod Distillers are producing.
• 20:25
  You get to see the cask influences that that can happen,
• 20:28
  and you've got to obviously make decisions on how that works and
• 20:31
  what, what, what cask. Is it easier to smell a good
• 20:34
  cask or easier to take a bad cask, so to speak?
• 20:37
  As far as there's a bad casting, you know, bang on what's what's
• 20:41
  wrong with it basically right away to honestly.
• 20:43
  But especially right now with the current climate, the way
• 20:45
  things are going in the whiskey industry, you speak to people
• 20:47
  like yourself, you speak to people who work in the industry
• 20:50
  and it's like, how hard is it to source good wood right now and
• 20:54
  how important is it for for that?
• 20:57
  So when any relationship that can come about, if you can find
• 21:02
  that relationship and utilize it for Finn, that must be an
• 21:05
  absolute goldmine. Yeah, absolutely.
• 21:06
  I mean, wood is probably the the tightest thing in the industry
• 21:09
  right now, especially with sales coming down, but production's
• 21:12
  same high. So if you've got that wood
• 21:14
  supply and sure, if you've got a good wood supply, that's huge.
• 21:17
  But wine casks are becoming bigger and bigger.
• 21:18
  So it's interesting to see, especially if you can nail it
• 21:21
  down for its origin as well and keep that quality up there then.
• 21:24
  Yeah. And.
• 21:24
  I suppose as well, like nailing down the origin also helps with
• 21:27
  the story. Like you're saying, we we were
• 21:29
  doing a tasting last night or a recording last night was turned
• 21:32
  into a tasting with the Dave Worthington from the Tiki
• 21:35
  Whiskey Company. He was talking about how every
• 21:37
  bottling they try and do it, they want a story behind it.
• 21:40
  And it's like what you're just saying there as well.
• 21:41
  And it's like having the story. You've got the story of the
• 21:43
  brand. But there's a great thing where
• 21:46
  it's like if you can say we'll see this bottle here, bottle
• 21:49
  number one, or bottle a particular bottle of a
• 21:53
  particular run, which might be a few 100 or even less than that.
• 21:58
  Having that ability to be able to say this is a specific story
• 22:00
  about this casket, it must be great.
• 22:02
  Yeah, I think it's, I think it's really important.
• 22:04
  You know, there's so many independent bottlers out there,
• 22:07
  there's so many brands out there, full stop in it.
• 22:09
  And I think, you know, when I look at whiskey, if I'm, if I'm
• 22:12
  buying things myself, I'm looking for things that do have
• 22:15
  that little bit of personality where things are done for a
• 22:18
  reason beyond, I want to say beyond marketing.
• 22:21
  Obviously when you're talking about these stories, there's a
• 22:23
  degree of marketing behind it, but it's done with an element of
• 22:27
  truth behind it rather than kind of the bullshit that you
• 22:30
  sometimes get from big brands. I think keeping it honest is
• 22:34
  really important and keeping it real and trying to give it
• 22:39
  personality along the way. I think that's what will
• 22:41
  separate the best independent bottlers from the others down
• 22:44
  the line is people who who really are the ones doing
• 22:47
  everything behind it, who know each cast that are going into
• 22:49
  each thing. So yeah, I think, I think that's
• 22:51
  a really important bit. Of it, there's our tasting
• 22:54
  notes, honest, real and full of personality is I'm going to
• 22:58
  start pouring the next ramp if you would like with your
• 23:01
  glasses, if you could, if you obviously don't feel you're
• 23:04
  rushed to drink them or anything like that.
• 23:06
  I think the first tasting we did we spent like 45 minutes on the
• 23:10
  1st 2 drums and then we rushed through the last.
• 23:14
  Everyone was hammered at the end of it.
• 23:15
  Please drink responsibly. What?
• 23:16
  But but basically I'll go round with the next bottle.
• 23:19
  If you want to rinse out your glass, please feel free.
• 23:22
  What? Right, I'll take that.
• 23:24
  Angus, you guys want to chat? Yeah, absolutely.
• 23:27
  But. One, sorry, I'm going to jump in
• 23:29
  one thing I want to say about about wine cast because it's I
• 23:32
  think a lot of people think the wine casks in whiskey are a bit
• 23:37
  of a new phenomenon. And no no doubt they they
• 23:39
  probably are a little bit because they're a little bit
• 23:42
  more accessible they're a little bit cheaper than than Sherry and
• 23:46
  other types of kind of fortified wines.
• 23:50
  What I found really interesting I talked about that, that book
• 23:53
  that we've got from from my great, great, great granddad
• 23:56
  yeah. From.
• 23:57
  Turn of the century. Turn of the century.
• 23:59
  So not only did they list the the distilleries that he was
• 24:02
  buying, but they also talked about the types of cast that
• 24:05
  they're in and the the prominence of wine, Madeira rum,
• 24:11
  all these things. Were really interesting because
• 24:13
  we were. Getting used back then you know
• 24:15
  to. To my mind, I'm a kind of, you
• 24:18
  know, I'm a whiskey novice. I always say that it it's, you
• 24:22
  know, bourbon and Sherry and then this, you know, stuff about
• 24:25
  Madeira, you know, rums or turns, all these sort of things
• 24:29
  is a new phenomenon. But clearly, clearly this is
• 24:32
  something that goes back hundreds of years, which is,
• 24:35
  yeah, fascinating. I was quite surprised when I was
• 24:37
  reading it. I was kind of, I was kind of
• 24:39
  shocked seeing, seeing Madeira cast whiskies being being used
• 24:43
  as far back as like 1897. And obviously, you know, when
• 24:47
  doing a bit more research, you find out that that was
• 24:50
  absolutely common. And obviously the the types of
• 24:52
  cast being used would have been slightly different.
• 24:55
  But essentially Madeira is being transported in cask to Scotland
• 24:59
  for bottling in Scotland. Yeah, at this point in time.
• 25:03
  And the cask was just a vessel for transport.
• 25:06
  So they're arriving a little bit wetter, a little bit fresher.
• 25:08
  And obviously we've don't we don't have that luxury anymore.
• 25:13
  But yeah, absolutely. What's the case?
• 25:14
  And you and you're you're kind of great, great grandfathers at
• 25:17
  the time of that public. You know that that that whiskey
• 25:20
  log they would have only been releasing blended whiskey,
• 25:25
  single malt whiskey, single cask whiskey.
• 25:28
  I mean, I dare say they tried single cask whiskey on, but I
• 25:32
  you know, blended whiskey was the only thing that would they
• 25:35
  they would have produced at that time.
• 25:36
  I take it it just wasn't on the IT just wasn't a concept.
• 25:40
  It's. It's almost it's almost
• 25:42
  exclusively blended W11 of my favorite things I've ever found,
• 25:45
  though in the whole family archive is is actually a recipe
• 25:48
  for Irish whiskey. It's it's a recipe from 19 six.
• 25:55
  No, it's 1909, sorry, right, 1909 and at the top of it says
• 26:00
  Irish Irish blend and bond. So essentially, back then, Irish
• 26:06
  whiskey is more popular than Scotch whiskey.
• 26:09
  And what I think think some of the Scotch whiskey producers
• 26:13
  would have been trying to do is almost create their own style of
• 26:17
  Irish whiskey. And we've got the recipe for how
• 26:20
  our family did that anyway, right?
• 26:22
  So it's broken down into I think it was Hogs Heads of Cameron
• 26:28
  Bridge, single grain. That's what they were using.
• 26:30
  And then they added three things to that to make it seem Irish.
• 26:35
  And I can guarantee none of you will guess what it is.
• 26:38
  Shamrock. Or something.
• 26:41
  Not quite so and and this this feels very exotic for the time
• 26:46
  they added to to each cast, they added one gallon of pineapple
• 26:50
  juice. This is.
• 26:53
  A. Cocktail, 11 gallon of prune
• 26:56
  wine and a gallon of vine de colore as well.
• 27:02
  And this is written down in a recipe.
• 27:04
  And it even talks about the commercials of this as well
• 27:06
  because they were selling this as an Irish whiskey and they
• 27:10
  said the profit margin is very, very good.
• 27:13
  But I look at I think #1 pineapple juice in early 1900s,
• 27:17
  that's got to be very, very exotic.
• 27:19
  It would be, I would assume, Yeah.
• 27:20
  How would that, You know, I mean, you talk about, you know,
• 27:23
  I mean, obviously it's not not different circumstances.
• 27:25
  But during the war, you know, people grew up without seeing an
• 27:27
  orange. So pineapple juice was, yeah,
• 27:31
  probably really exotic at the time.
• 27:33
  There are three Hogs heads of Cameron Bridge in your warehouse
• 27:36
  you're planning to ignore. This what what what I've done,
• 27:39
  what I've done, I might well maybe, maybe might do in a grand
• 27:43
  scale. But what what have done recently
• 27:45
  is we've, we've partnered up with the Balon Taggart, which is
• 27:49
  a brilliant hotel up in Grantley.
• 27:51
  It's actually built by my great, great, great uncle.
• 27:55
  So we do a lot of stuff with them.
• 27:57
  It's a brilliant cocktail bar. It's also a nice restaurant,
• 27:59
  really nice place. And I showed them this recipe
• 28:02
  and I said, listen guys, I think we try and make a cocktail based
• 28:06
  on that old recipe. So they obviously tweaked it a
• 28:10
  little bit, but it's like a pineapple liqueur and it's prune
• 28:13
  infused and they use a little bit of Sherry in it.
• 28:17
  But that, you know, that kind of thing's quite fun to play about
• 28:19
  with. And again, it just plays into
• 28:21
  what we want to do, which is do things with a purpose instead of
• 28:23
  just for for no apparent reason. Absolutely.
• 28:26
  Well, you've talked a little bit about, you know, you're going
• 28:29
  out and working in Spain. You've talked about, you know,
• 28:33
  yes, your sort of other careers that you've had.
• 28:35
  So when what were you doing or what was the sort of journey for
• 28:38
  you into whiskey? I mean, did you, did you just
• 28:41
  grow up hearing all about it? And just think I have is it a
• 28:44
  sort of natural progression or was it later in life or how did
• 28:47
  it start for you? Yeah, I think I was always aware
• 28:50
  of it. I mean, I remember, I remember
• 28:52
  growing up as a kid and seeing a lot of these bottles on the
• 28:55
  table dotted around, particularly my granddad's
• 28:57
  house. So these, these eagles were
• 29:01
  probably the most, the most famous one.
• 29:03
  The the, the golden eagle decanter is probably the most
• 29:06
  famous one. I remember, I think one of my
• 29:08
  other cousins broke one and he got in a lot of trouble.
• 29:13
  So I do remember, you know, growing up around certainly
• 29:17
  whiskey bottles, you know, obviously not being told about
• 29:21
  it as a as a young kid, but I remember going to university and
• 29:25
  thinking, what the hell am I going to do?
• 29:27
  Obviously going out to Torres when I was 18 was the first,
• 29:31
  first kind of experience of the drinks industry.
• 29:34
  And I came back from that. And I think going into it, I was
• 29:36
  thinking, all right, might do something with wine because my
• 29:39
  granddad was very big in his on his wine.
• 29:41
  He was a wine importer at the end of the day.
• 29:42
  But I remember coming back from him, I'm not sure if it's
• 29:45
  because I was overwhelmed by the world of wine and all these
• 29:48
  different great types and terroirs and, you know, whatever
• 29:51
  else. But I came back and I thought,
• 29:52
  you know what, it makes a hell of a lot of sense for me to, to
• 29:57
  get properly stuck into whiskey. So I finished off, finished off
• 30:01
  university and my first experience was going to work for
• 30:05
  what was at the time local whiskey company.
• 30:07
  Morris and McKay joined them as a as a kind of sales Rep, worked
• 30:11
  for them for for a few years working on car and more, of
• 30:15
  course, and then. I'm going to be forgetting the
• 30:20
  name of their distillery, but was that being built at the
• 30:23
  time? Was I left?
• 30:25
  I can't remember. I left.
• 30:26
  The name of. It a month before Abaragi
• 30:29
  started production, and it's because I got asked to join a
• 30:35
  big Diageo new venture called Copper Dog.
• 30:38
  I'm not sure if you've seen Copper Dog, Yeah.
• 30:40
  I've heard of Glendid Malt so that is something to do with the
• 30:43
  Craig Alec a hotels. I'm not wrong.
• 30:45
  Yeah, So it was, I think it was the research, the only thing
• 30:48
  let's. Give that a ride in my boys
• 30:50
  there, then you know, that is exactly why somebody that's been
• 30:54
  to the Craigalokey Hotel. Research.
• 30:57
  Research, I suppose. Yeah, you can.
• 30:59
  Count it down to that. It's, Yeah, It was brainchild of
• 31:03
  the owner of the Craigalokey Hotel.
• 31:05
  The hotel's pub was called the Copper Dog Pub, right?
• 31:08
  And they wanted their own whiskey for it.
• 31:10
  So they created their own whiskey and essentially pitched
• 31:12
  it. The owner pitched it to Diageo.
• 31:14
  Diageo liked the sound of it, I think, and basically launched it
• 31:19
  as a probably a bit of a rival for Monkey's Shoulder.
• 31:22
  It was. It was more moving into that
• 31:23
  world of make whiskey very trendy, let's use it in
• 31:26
  cocktails, make it mixable. So completely different to.
• 31:30
  What after an animal? Yeah, I name it after an animal.
• 31:34
  I name it after an animal on the name, like for I'm right, right,
• 31:37
  saying that for copper dog is what they used to, what people
• 31:39
  used to keep up their sleeve, a little sort of copper capsule
• 31:42
  that used to be kept up the sleeve on a chain.
• 31:44
  I could give you the whole branch feel for it if you want.
• 31:47
  It was, it was because I know, I know it would be a bit of copper
• 31:52
  pipe sealed off at the bottom. And the, the guys working in the
• 31:57
  warehouse would, would put it down their leg, down their
• 32:00
  trouser leg, so it'd be hidden from the boss.
• 32:03
  And then they'd fill it up, tuck it back in, try sneak out with
• 32:06
  it. And the reason it was called a
• 32:07
  copper dog obviously made a. Copper so so it was also man's.
• 32:10
  Best friend and it and it was right by your side, so I was.
• 32:13
  Going to say Wendy Wendy's old guys that used to work in the
• 32:17
  and then in the warehouses when they said to the tailor about
• 32:20
  the trousers, just make it a wee bit baggy about the knees.
• 32:22
  They weren't. They weren't showing off.
• 32:24
  They weren't there. Maybe some of them.
• 32:27
  Hey, copper dogs floating around your neck of the woods.
• 32:30
  Jake Kenny, you got any copper dogs in?
• 32:32
  There. Yeah.
• 32:33
  I mean, in terms of like the history side of it and stuff
• 32:37
  like that, it's great to look back and you're talking about
• 32:40
  this sort of marketing spiel. But The thing is, well, in fact,
• 32:43
  I think it's just over there. I'll go and bring it over, but.
• 32:49
  No. So there is this is this is
• 32:52
  copper, is it Jake, this? That's not quite a copper dog.
• 32:55
  It's not a copper dog, but it's made out of coffee.
• 32:57
  It's made out of copper. That is what was used for drug
• 32:59
  samples. That is the cast we've got
• 33:01
  there. A nice what's the name?
• 33:02
  Is there a terminology for that? Just a.
• 33:05
  Valance, yeah. So.
• 33:17
  So does this have a part in the family history?
• 33:19
  Is this standard down generations?
• 33:21
  No, I just found this. In terms of being like, that's
• 33:25
  The thing is like if you know, there is a bit of market spiel
• 33:28
  there and stuff, but these things did happen in whiskey and
• 33:30
  that's it. And it's interesting that a
• 33:32
  company like the Azure are happy that, you know, they, they can
• 33:35
  celebrate that they're so one of the premises of this podcast
• 33:38
  where they're sitting thinking about it.
• 33:40
  And it's like the stories associated with the history of
• 33:43
  whiskey. And there's a lot of stories
• 33:45
  that really romanticize whiskey. And we've probably had quite a
• 33:48
  lot of them ourselves through different sort of eras and all
• 33:52
  the different things that gone on, illicit distilling and all
• 33:54
  these kind of things. But yeah, there's a lot of
• 33:56
  brands now out there that don't want to publicize that side of
• 34:00
  the story. Because when you start thinking
• 34:02
  about a brand that's owned by a PLC like Diageo, can they go out
• 34:06
  and start showing off to say actually, you know, we started
• 34:09
  out by a bunch of, you know, illicit distillers.
• 34:12
  And of course you got to remember that we look back at it
• 34:15
  fondly and you look at like the Glenn Livett story and stuff
• 34:17
  like that. And there was a time when it was
• 34:19
  pretty hairy for everybody, you know, and there was people you
• 34:22
  talk about excise men and everyone, you know, people were
• 34:25
  in serious danger at certain points in that, that history.
• 34:28
  We can look back now and say it was a little bit of fun, but
• 34:30
  actually, you know, it's a shame because there are so many
• 34:35
  stories associated with brands that the brand can't actually
• 34:37
  tell because they go, our marketing department down in
• 34:40
  London will say categorically, do not start bragging about
• 34:43
  that. But I mean, from your own, you
• 34:45
  talked about your family history starting on a sort of a legal
• 34:48
  side of things. It was fairly common back then,
• 34:51
  wasn't it? Oh, it's very the the list that
• 34:53
  we have, which mentions James Thompson is an illegal owner of
• 34:58
  a pot still. There's about 20 other names on
• 35:00
  it, so you know, so there's loads of them.
• 35:05
  That's just one tiny section of Perthshire, so I imagine this is
• 35:10
  going on all across the country. It's a massive part of Scotch
• 35:14
  whiskey. Did you get that?
• 35:15
  Point where you thought I'm going to stop looking into this.
• 35:20
  You know what, obviously there's things that I've found along the
• 35:22
  way where I think I probably shouldn't bring that out.
• 35:25
  I'm not sure of this part. There's there's one particular
• 35:28
  rum brand that that my, I'm, I don't not sure it was my
• 35:32
  granddad. It might have been my, my great,
• 35:34
  great uncle who's running the company that he released, which
• 35:37
  is I don't blame him. There's there's a very on PC rum
• 35:40
  brand that we once did, which I'm not allowed to relaunch.
• 35:43
  I won't, but I mean in terms. Of what we're drinking right
• 35:47
  now. Because I've just realized drum.
• 35:48
  Yeah, and we're on drum #4. This is brilliant.
• 35:51
  Strathclyde OK, so we're going in with another single grain
• 35:56
  whiskey. Strathclyde only 30 years old, a
• 35:59
  little bit younger than the Gervin.
• 36:04
  I find it really interesting to compare the two because they're
• 36:08
  they're there's similarities between them, but then there's
• 36:11
  also a lot of differences as well.
• 36:13
  I think the Gervin has a bit more of that manufactured
• 36:17
  sweetness to as you said, it's like a little bit of carrot
• 36:20
  cake. It's all about like super
• 36:21
  sweetness sweetie shops. I think this is actually a
• 36:24
  little bit more balanced. There's a little bit more going
• 36:26
  on with it. Strathclyde I was, I was lucky
• 36:31
  enough to go into it actually, because it's a it's a distillery
• 36:34
  that. So this is.
• 36:34
  This is in is it government or the gobbles?
• 36:37
  It's right in the gobbles. Yeah, right in the Gobbles in
• 36:40
  Glasgow. I actually had a friend who was
• 36:43
  looking at launching his own single grain whiskey and he had
• 36:46
  a meeting with them and he said, oh, I'll just bring you along as
• 36:49
  my sidekick. I was like, absolutely not many
• 36:51
  people get to go into into Strathclyde's and I was quite, I
• 36:55
  was almost quite shocked. It was the first time I'd ever
• 36:57
  been into a grain distillery. And you know, having been to
• 37:00
  many single old stories before you go in and you're just like,
• 37:04
  wow, this is such a different process, isn't it?
• 37:08
  It's it's let and and you know, I want to I want to give them
• 37:11
  fair credit because actually I think they make a really good
• 37:14
  quality of whiskey, but it is it is industrial.
• 37:18
  And it's like, let's let's try and maximize efficiency, but
• 37:23
  still maintain a consistent flavour profile that people can
• 37:27
  rely on from the point of view of blending seem to be the
• 37:29
  messaging that they were giving me.
• 37:31
  So what what I find really interesting about these old
• 37:34
  single grains because we're, we're we're very lucky to have
• 37:37
  access to a lot of old whiskey casks.
• 37:42
  We've got multiples, for example, of the Strathclyde and
• 37:45
  this and the and the Girvin. We've also got multiples of the
• 37:49
  Tannevillin, which we'll try next, and they're all kind of
• 37:51
  sister casks. They've been lying in the same
• 37:53
  warehouse distilled in the same day, you know, should should be
• 37:59
  the same. The single malt casks, things
• 38:01
  like the Tam, the villain. We've bottled a long more in 88,
• 38:04
  which we've got multiples of. They're all very different
• 38:07
  individually. I struggle a little bit to find
• 38:11
  big differences between the Girvan 89 here and it's Sister
• 38:16
  Cask and the Strathclyde 30 that we did and it's Sister Cask.
• 38:20
  I find that they start to separate after a little while,
• 38:24
  but not on the same level as some of the old single malts
• 38:27
  that we have. And this is, I think it's
• 38:28
  probably more about consistency in that regard.
• 38:31
  Well, I know that malt whiskies are.
• 38:32
  And this is interesting. We, we, we've sort of had our
• 38:35
  own experience of this Graham going way, way back to, I think
• 38:38
  episode number 5 or 6, Megan Murdoch of is it Murdoch?
• 38:42
  Yeah, Megan Murdoch of Glenn, Glenn Withis came on and she
• 38:45
  brought 2 samples of sister casts that had been in the
• 38:50
  warehouse up there in Dingwall sitting next to each other and
• 38:54
  very different, very different. They've been in the exact same
• 38:57
  type of cast, sitting next to each other, and yet a different
• 39:00
  result. Yeah, so I mean and.
• 39:02
  Also, not that that part of it, it's absolutely fascinating and.
• 39:05
  At the risk of sounding topical here, it's very interesting
• 39:07
  about everyone. The news a couple of weeks ago
• 39:11
  about how William Grant sons have bought over the famous
• 39:14
  Grouse brand. And you look at that and from an
• 39:17
  outside looking in, you can see that's an interesting purchase.
• 39:20
  What does that mean Kev from Diggers who gets a lot of stuff
• 39:25
  from because William Grants really is fantastic with the
• 39:27
  trade to support them. Kev went rugby tickets.
• 39:31
  We'll get tickets to the rugby. But it's interesting from a from
• 39:37
  a business perspective, because then you think, well, actually
• 39:39
  hang on a second here, because William Branson's on their own
• 39:41
  grain distillery and then you can start to see like from a
• 39:44
  business perspective. Then with the production that
• 39:46
  happens with Famous Grouse, are you starting to see a real
• 39:51
  clever manoeuvre from William Grandson's by saying well
• 39:54
  actually now we can central we can.
• 39:57
  I mean, I don't know Famous Christmas be one of the most
• 39:58
  produced single by the whiskeys on the market and they can now
• 40:04
  say well that will all come from our our own grain warehouse, but
• 40:09
  a grain distillery. But but you're right, I mean,
• 40:12
  you N British, we've talked about N Brit N British, where
• 40:15
  our home of the podcast is the athletic arms diggers stones for
• 40:19
  away from North British distillery.
• 40:21
  You can do a straw poll with plenty of people around
• 40:24
  Edinburgh and ask them about do you know about how much
• 40:26
  production of whiskey is actually being made in this
• 40:29
  place? And it just looks like a
• 40:31
  factory. And it is fascinating that side.
• 40:33
  But yeah, one of the biggest things that we've learned, I
• 40:36
  guess, through this podcast is how valuable grain whiskey is to
• 40:39
  the industry, first of all, but certainly how fantastic it is
• 40:42
  and also how affordable. And, and and what's actually
• 40:44
  remark about N British is, is I get the tram home.
• 40:48
  So you can see the distillery from the tram as you go past
• 40:50
  Murrayfield. And I sometimes hear comments,
• 40:53
  I've heard comments on the tram. People don't realize it's a
• 40:55
  whiskey distillery. No, people think it's a brewery
• 40:57
  or, or what's that fact? You know, it's like, what do
• 41:00
  they do there? And I've, I've said on at least
• 41:03
  one occasion, oh, so whiskey distillery produces grain
• 41:06
  whiskey. Oh, really?
• 41:07
  What? Whisk whiskey in Edinburgh?
• 41:09
  I've lived here 40 years and I never knew.
• 41:10
  Yeah, so as well. It's incredible.
• 41:12
  It's the only place left in Edinburgh where you will still
• 41:15
  get the distinctive smell of the of the brewing.
• 41:18
  Yeah, but everyone, everyone will still think about, well,
• 41:21
  you used to get that from when fountain.
• 41:22
  Well, Fountain. Fine Bread, Fountain Park, Hyde.
• 41:25
  Park used to be just, I mean, I've seen old photos of that
• 41:27
  brewery. It's incredible.
• 41:28
  It's you see the Caledonian Brewery, which is now shut in
• 41:32
  Slateford Rd. So the only place in Edinburgh
• 41:34
  is actually producing that smell now is the whiskey distiller
• 41:36
  isn't? It, it's, it's my, it's probably
• 41:39
  my first whiskey experience is North British Distillery.
• 41:42
  I was, you know, born Edinburgh, grew up in Edinburgh.
• 41:45
  I'm a Hearts fan so. Our.
• 41:48
  Stadium, our stadium, yeah, Detail.
• 41:51
  So stadium, Stadium was right next to the distillery.
• 41:54
  Obviously, you know, went to the rugby games as a kid as well.
• 41:57
  Murray feels right next to the distillery.
• 41:59
  And I always remember being, you know, 6-7 years old going alive,
• 42:02
  going along either kind of towards Roseburn or or Gorgie
• 42:06
  Road or whatever and spelling that.
• 42:08
  And as a kid, you've got no idea what it is.
• 42:10
  But that is, that is my first whiskey memory, so.
• 42:15
  And I still live in Edinburgh. I live kind of like West End.
• 42:18
  And when the wind blows the right way, yeah, city's covered
• 42:21
  in it. It's a great, it's a great
• 42:22
  smell. But as you said, not many people
• 42:24
  know that. Yeah.
• 42:25
  So in terms of like you're saying you're visiting
• 42:27
  Strathclyde Distillery and stuff like that and you're talking
• 42:30
  about sourcing cast. One of the things we've talked a
• 42:32
  lot about on on these indie bottler spotlights is of course,
• 42:36
  independent bottler scene is, is like really, really kicking off
• 42:41
  big time. And it's fantastic to see so
• 42:44
  many different independent Ballers.
• 42:45
  As a consumer, it's great. We're spoiled.
• 42:48
  You know you can and there'll be people, as you said, without
• 42:51
  being disrespectful to yourself. There's people in this room who
• 42:53
  haven't heard of you though that will be going another indie
• 42:56
  bottler that I can, I can keep an eye on and see what's what's
• 42:59
  coming out and stuff like that. We had Paul Main on a couple of
• 43:03
  weeks ago. He was talking about he works
• 43:05
  with Hunter Lang and and he was talking about how and you're
• 43:09
  saying about sister casks and you're talking about sister
• 43:11
  casks of 30 year old whiskey, 33 year old whiskey and stuff like
• 43:14
  that. And people were saying like, Oh,
• 43:17
  well done and picking. I can't remember what it was.
• 43:19
  It was a 40 odd year old Ben Nevis think he was talking about
• 43:21
  someone said well done and bottling that 40 year old.
• 43:24
  That's that's fantastic. And and they said like, no, well
• 43:28
  done and not bottling it at 30. Well done and not bottling it at
• 43:31
  25 to keep that. You've got sister casks, you've
• 43:35
  got this. You know, it must be so tempting
• 43:37
  when you see a cast. Maybe I don't know when you
• 43:41
  first came across this 20 odd year old and you're saying no,
• 43:44
  no, I'm going to keep hold of that is our family secrets.
• 43:47
  Family is our sort of, we sort of in the family are we sort of
• 43:51
  nod, you know what to do when it's going to be bottled or
• 43:53
  anything like that. Well, it, it, it, it probably
• 43:55
  plays the the reason why we've got a lot of these old casts is
• 43:59
  probably one of the most integral parts of the family
• 44:01
  stories. So and, and this is this is
• 44:03
  probably the reason why no one's heard of us either.
• 44:05
  So 1980s come along and whiskey industry is not doing well at
• 44:11
  all. This is a year of distilleries
• 44:14
  closing and the whiskey lock. Exactly.
• 44:18
  Exactly. Demand falling off.
• 44:20
  Demands falling you know, our, our family business essentially
• 44:25
  is is probably struggling a little bit along with many other
• 44:28
  companies of the time. And, and what my granddad kind
• 44:32
  of tells me is that ultimately he made the decision in the mid
• 44:34
  1980s that it was the right time for him to to sell business.
• 44:40
  So he sold the Ben Eagles brand, he sold his distribution
• 44:45
  channels. You know, he was, he was
• 44:47
  distributed, he was the the sole distributor of McAllen in the
• 44:51
  early 1980s. His fault that it's become such
• 44:54
  a big, massive brand possibly and, and you know, selling all
• 45:00
  these different wines across Scotland as well.
• 45:02
  But eventually he decides to sell the company.
• 45:05
  But what he decides to do, I already said he's he's an
• 45:07
  average collector. He collects everything.
• 45:10
  And he clearly made the decision to also keep hold of a lot of
• 45:15
  the casks that should have gone into his Ben Eagles blend at a
• 45:18
  very young age. And that's the reason why we've
• 45:21
  still got access like many independent bottlers don't to
• 45:25
  some very, very old 30 plus year old single cask.
• 45:29
  So we're in an incredibly fortunate position that my, my
• 45:33
  granddad when he sold the business, decided to keep on
• 45:36
  trading a little bit in a few swaps here and there.
• 45:38
  But essentially he decided to sit on his portfolio of casks
• 45:42
  that should have gone into his blend and not quite forget about
• 45:46
  them, but certainly put them to 1 to one side.
• 45:48
  And, and essentially, you know, I was fortunate enough to have
• 45:52
  access to some of them to go ahead and, and relaunch the
• 45:55
  family. Business and and well listen
• 45:57
  well if I wanted to jump the gun too much, obviously.
• 46:00
  I think I know what you're going to do.
• 46:01
  Yeah, the old Moore and the Glasgow 11 year old, 5 year old,
• 46:04
  but there's 3W's 30 plus. I take it these are cast that
• 46:08
  your grandfather purchased? Two of them are.
• 46:11
  Ah well what I was going to say whilst I was going to port.
• 46:14
  Yes, I will. I will, yeah.
• 46:16
  We're about to be treated to a 33 year old Tamna Villa.
• 46:20
  Give give your glasses just that.
• 46:21
  We wash out with this one because especially if you're
• 46:23
  pouring into the Altmore, it might just need a little bit of
• 46:26
  freshness in it. And if I am being mean, do speak
• 46:29
  up. Go go big, go big.
• 46:33
  What's interesting, my grandfather was also, he worked
• 46:38
  in the whiskey industry for a while and the stories and I
• 46:42
  don't know how true they are, and I'll say he's, he died in
• 46:45
  1991. So no one can hold them
• 46:46
  accountable to it. But basically one of the really
• 46:49
  interesting insurance was he he worked with Ballentine's and one
• 46:52
  of the things is he had access through the 80s and 90s what
• 46:56
  that he had the access to what distilleries were about to be
• 46:59
  mothballed And what he was very shroud and clever and going, I'm
• 47:03
  going to buy up some stock of distilleries that he knew that
• 47:07
  the Ballentine's brand were going to be mock balled and keep
• 47:09
  hold of them. And a lot of the time it was
• 47:11
  literally sometimes to sell back to the distilleries.
• 47:14
  So it would be a case of being able to say, right, well, you're
• 47:16
  running low on stock of your of stuff coming up for 15 years
• 47:20
  old, so I can sell that back to you.
• 47:22
  Unfortunately for us and the family, he never kept hold of
• 47:26
  any of them. We could have been sitting here
• 47:28
  today. I've got a casket that day,
• 47:30
  baby. I wish he had if he had the
• 47:32
  foresight, but unfortunately he didn't.
• 47:34
  But but it is interesting. And do you think being on the
• 47:37
  inside of the industry at that time, there's so many stories of
• 47:40
  for instance, like Glenn Barkless have often been phrased
• 47:44
  with the fact that whilst everyone else was pulling back
• 47:47
  on production, Glenn Barkley said keep producing because what
• 47:50
  we know is when whiskey industry.
• 47:52
  I was speaking to someone even just yesterday and they said
• 47:56
  everyone's looking at the whiskey industry just now is
• 47:58
  sort of where we're going into. And there's a lot of people
• 48:01
  saying, oh, this is it where this is the downturn we've all
• 48:04
  been waiting on. And this guy been in the
• 48:06
  industry for over 20 years. And he said, look, I've been in
• 48:09
  the industry for over 20 years. What I'll tell you is whiskey
• 48:12
  goes from very good to good. It doesn't go into a slump these
• 48:17
  days. Maybe in the 80s there was a
• 48:19
  real concern. And when you look at, you know,
• 48:21
  there's, there's certain situations and moments in the
• 48:23
  industry that maybe triggering a change or have you?
• 48:26
  But in terms of like having that inside knowledge and the ability
• 48:31
  to be able to do you reckon there was a bit of that going on
• 48:34
  with your with your grandfather being able to see a little bit
• 48:36
  of trains or know what he was doing in terms of I know that
• 48:40
  this will come back? What what, what I think is more
• 48:42
  the case when when I look at the the casks that we're lucky
• 48:45
  enough to have from that era, it's essentially the genetic
• 48:49
  makeup of the Ben Eagles blend. So I can look at it and, and
• 48:56
  having spoken to my granddad, he kind of talks to me about what
• 48:59
  that recipe was N British was the the predominant single grain
• 49:04
  in it. So we've got a lot of casks of
• 49:06
  that from 1980s, a lot of them we've done a couple releases of
• 49:11
  that 34 and 35 years old, which are very, very good.
• 49:15
  And then from the malt side, the the biggest one in the blend was
• 49:21
  McAllen. So McAllen was at the time a bit
• 49:26
  of a more of a blending malt. It wasn't a big single malt
• 49:29
  brand. In fact we I've got the minutes
• 49:32
  of the meeting from when the McAllen management team came
• 49:35
  down to meet my granddad. I think it's dated 1983 and they
• 49:41
  basically came down to pitch McAllen as a single malt that
• 49:45
  they wanted to be distributed by Peter Thompson's at the time.
• 49:48
  That would never work and and. In in the minutes of the
• 49:52
  meetings, there's a quote and it says, oh, I think it was Willie
• 49:55
  Phillips came down to to meet with Michael Thompson.
• 49:59
  And they described McAllen as the Rolls Royce of Scotch
• 50:03
  whiskey back in 1983. At least that's what they wanted
• 50:07
  it to be seen as. And my grand granddad basically
• 50:11
  said that they took a punt on it and it went very, very well.
• 50:18
  Obviously they, they brought it from, you know, couple 1000
• 50:23
  cases a year to more than 10,000 cases a year in the space of a
• 50:26
  very short time. And it was almost too successful
• 50:29
  for the company. Peter Thompson's were a mainly
• 50:32
  Scottish wholesaler with not a national outreach at the time.
• 50:38
  And when McAllen started getting big, they decided to take it
• 50:41
  back in house. And then they, they nominated a
• 50:43
  london-based distributor to do sales of it.
• 50:46
  So that that's why, that's why McAllen was one of the the big
• 50:50
  single malts in the Ben Eagles blend, because we had a very
• 50:52
  good relationship with them. The other ones were Longmourn,
• 50:57
  Tam, Neville, in which you're trying now, Glenn Farkas, big.
• 51:03
  Names. Really.
• 51:05
  And I think I mean Old Perth as well.
• 51:07
  I mean, I was kind of told Old Perth again had a lot of
• 51:11
  McAllen, a lot of Highland Park as well.
• 51:13
  I believe in it originally, or maybe completely wrong.
• 51:15
  So my my family notes an old Perth where the old Perth was
• 51:19
  certainly the, the premium, the premium brand it was, it didn't
• 51:25
  sell as well. It wasn't as popular going by
• 51:28
  our our minutes of meetings and and they had to sometimes give
• 51:31
  away bottles of Ben Eagles to people in order for them to take
• 51:35
  old Perth. But it does say in the minutes
• 51:37
  of meetings that Old Perth was a better quality blend, so it had
• 51:41
  a bigger percentage of malt whiskey in it, but it didn't
• 51:44
  sell as well. Do you know why that could have
• 51:45
  been? What was the market reasoning
• 51:47
  behind that? Do you have an indication of
• 51:49
  that at the time? Yeah, I'm not, I'm not sure.
• 51:51
  I think, I think it was it came after Ben Eagles.
• 51:53
  Ben Eagles came first and then old Perth was definitely
• 51:56
  introduced afterwards. And I suppose that was maybe
• 51:58
  brought in as a more premium version of the blend.
• 52:01
  But ultimately people wanted, you know, as they always do,
• 52:05
  good value for money and Ben Eagles was still considered a
• 52:07
  very good blend of the time and that that just seemed to to sell
• 52:12
  better. Right.
• 52:13
  I'm going to borrow your microphone, I guess.
• 52:15
  Yeah, of course, I'm going to go around the table.
• 52:18
  So have we got any thoughts so far in the drums that we've had?
• 52:22
  Yeah, the drums all been lovely. Could I ask a question?
• 52:25
  Of course we. Agree.
• 52:27
  In the event of your progeny following in your footsteps and
• 52:30
  extending it to 10 generations, will you alter the bottle?
• 52:35
  You. Know what?
• 52:38
  I have thought about this and I think whenever that might be,
• 52:43
  and it's certainly not happening anytime soon, you.
• 52:46
  Never know that. You never know, might get a
• 52:49
  phone call from someone. I saw you on this.
• 52:52
  Podcast I can I I would I love that.
• 52:55
  I think that's that would be an amazing thing.
• 52:57
  You know, after 20 years of doing this brand in a nine sided
• 53:02
  bottle, if all of a sudden, hopefully we're better known
• 53:04
  then then we are now then if you change it from a nine sided
• 53:08
  bottle to A10 sided bottle, I think that'd be a very cool
• 53:10
  thing. Also, ten sides would be a lot
• 53:13
  easier to work with than 99 sides or a nightmare to work
• 53:15
  with it. It's all asymmetrical and and
• 53:18
  awkward angle. So yeah, yes, we would.
• 53:22
  And do you have a do you have any wanky tasting notes for
• 53:24
  this? Evening.
• 53:25
  No, no, I'm waiting for the for the Glasgow to make my wanky
• 53:28
  tasting. Oh.
• 53:29
  Fantastic. That's the reward that's waiting
• 53:30
  for me at the end of of of today.
• 53:32
  Right now, your friend here, this is the first time you've
• 53:34
  been to Whiskey Store Is indie bottler Spotlight.
• 53:37
  It is, yeah. How are you finding it so far?
• 53:39
  Yeah, you're really interesting. Yeah, I don't drink a lot of
• 53:43
  whiskey, but I enjoy it when I do.
• 53:44
  Yeah, really interesting range tonight.
• 53:48
  I think first and third one really kind of sweet, really
• 53:52
  like the third one actually like kind of kind of kind of
• 53:57
  butterscotch was kind of getting from that was probably nice that
• 54:00
  one. And the other thing to take away
• 54:02
  from this as well, for anybody who's just coming for the very
• 54:05
  first time is when Angus pours a drum, he does it because he
• 54:09
  knows it's not anybody say. I wasn't going to say.
• 54:13
  Anything that's listening should have gone to that.
• 54:18
  That sounds like when Angus pours a drum, he pours a drum.
• 54:22
  Tell you when it's Angus's bottle, he doesn't pour it like
• 54:24
  that Fruit. I'll pass this over.
• 54:28
  We pass this one through there. What's your thoughts so far?
• 54:35
  It's good. I've as I said, I've not heard
• 54:36
  of it. It's it's good quality.
• 54:39
  Yeah, the green whiskey as well, like it's very good quality with
• 54:41
  it. I've got a question.
• 54:42
  See your wine finish, What size of casks are and how long did
• 54:46
  you finish that for? 22 to five litres and I think it
• 54:50
  was in the cast. We we re racked that in about
• 54:53
  March early in the year. So it's only only about when do
• 54:58
  we bottle it. We bought it last month, so
• 55:00
  March it's about 6 month finish. It's short.
• 55:04
  It's short, it's very, it's got very whiny taste.
• 55:07
  It's it's very, very whiny. I like it because of that and
• 55:12
  and. I've had plenty of otmores.
• 55:14
  I've never had an otmo like that though.
• 55:15
  So it's different and that's what's good about the indie
• 55:17
  bottlers. So it's it's all more in a
• 55:19
  different way entirely. So yeah.
• 55:22
  We've. Done one other Torres red wine
• 55:25
  finish. It was it was one of that we
• 55:26
  launched with. It was an inch Gower 13 year
• 55:29
  old. I remember when we put that into
• 55:32
  the Torres red wine cask. I tried it after I took my first
• 55:36
  samp after about 3 weeks and I tasted it and I thought, what
• 55:40
  the hell have I done here? This is an absolute nightmare.
• 55:42
  It it tasted like you'd poured a bottle of red wine in a cask of
• 55:46
  whiskey and overtime it meld out a little bit more.
• 55:50
  But it was a total love hate relationship where it was like
• 55:52
  sometimes I taste and think I've got no idea what I'm doing.
• 55:55
  This is a disaster. And sometimes I taste it and be
• 55:56
  like it's quite good. And then eventually got to the
• 56:00
  point where I was just like, there's something about it which
• 56:03
  I want to keep drinking it. I still can't make my mind up
• 56:05
  about it sometimes but I want to keep drinking it and I think.
• 56:09
  Wine finishes a Marmite. You like them when you don't
• 56:12
  agree, and they're different. Agreed.
• 56:14
  And I think I like to do them where where it's obvious.
• 56:18
  And, and I think that's why this one works because the red wine
• 56:21
  is, is very, very prominent in it.
• 56:25
  I don't think it's a balanced whiskey.
• 56:27
  I wouldn't, I wouldn't sit here and tell you this is a really
• 56:29
  well balanced whiskey. But there's something about it
• 56:31
  which when I give it to people who are maybe new to whiskey and
• 56:34
  they try that, they think this is totally different to what I
• 56:37
  thought whiskey is all about. And even with whiskey, you know,
• 56:40
  proper whiskey drinkers, when they try that, I can guarantee
• 56:43
  that they've probably not tried something quite like it because
• 56:45
  the wine influences is so big in it.
• 56:47
  And I quite like bottling things like that because it just makes
• 56:50
  you stand out because you could, you could do full maturation on
• 56:53
  wine cask and it will balance itself out over time.
• 56:56
  But something like that's a bit quirky.
• 56:58
  And I think it's important to do that as an independent bottle.
• 56:59
  Sometimes it's. Quite ballsy in fairness, like
• 57:02
  see for you to like take 9 generations and then just go
• 57:05
  with something that you're just going to go Torres red wine.
• 57:08
  I went in there. I'm going to give the guy a
• 57:09
  shout, give me a cask and I'm going to give that a shot if it
• 57:12
  is I. Mean you've got a friend with
• 57:13
  you as well. Yeah, Fraser's with me.
• 57:16
  Fraser, how are you finding it so far?
• 57:19
  I am loving them all. Basically is the is the shot?
• 57:24
  Is there anyone that stands out to you?
• 57:26
  I quite like the the third one. I thought that I would say like
• 57:32
  they've all been really good. I thought that one was really
• 57:34
  smooth. I mean, they've all been
• 57:36
  delicious. I'm not a connoisseur by any by
• 57:40
  any means, but I enjoy a good whiskey and they're all good
• 57:44
  whiskey. It's interesting because like,
• 57:46
  you know, two people so far maybe are saying and look, we're
• 57:51
  all the same really. It's a sense of you like what
• 57:53
  you like and things, but it's 2 grain whiskeys that are standing
• 57:57
  out right now out of out of the lineup.
• 57:59
  And is grain whiskey something that you'd ever single grain
• 58:03
  whiskey, something you'd ever tried before?
• 58:05
  Not that I'm aware of, right. So it's fascinating that it goes
• 58:08
  back Angus like we had them. We had Charlie Topa.
• 58:15
  That's right. Yeah.
• 58:15
  And he talked about, in fact, not a stones away from here when
• 58:18
  he used to work at Cabin Heads and he'd put the International
• 58:20
  School language just up the road there.
• 58:22
  He was saying he used to he got asked lecturer or whoever it was
• 58:27
  that worked at the International School language used to pop in
• 58:29
  and buy his whiskies and he would.
• 58:32
  He was so sort of like he knew so much about it.
• 58:38
  He said, why don't you come over and do a taste it for our
• 58:39
  students because we get international students coming in
• 58:42
  and you know, and So what you're dealing with is young people,
• 58:45
  mixed male, female and very limited knowledge on whiskey.
• 58:49
  Now, what he does was Mark Davidson would do blind tastings
• 58:53
  was what they sort of specialized in.
• 58:55
  And every single time it was a single grain that everybody
• 58:57
  walked away from. That's.
• 58:58
  What and especially especially amongst, if I remember,
• 59:02
  especially amongst kind of foreign exchange students who
• 59:04
  hadn't hadn't tried whiskey before, they would immediately
• 59:06
  go straight to the single grain. I think, you know, like we said,
• 59:10
  maybe because of how it was used or how it was viewed in the days
• 59:14
  of, you know, when blending was, you know, at its forefront,
• 59:17
  people maybe look down upon single grain whiskey and we know
• 59:20
  that. But actually the you know when
• 59:21
  you you know the single grain whiskey is a particularly
• 59:24
  independent bottlers are producing right now.
• 59:26
  Some of them are absolutely incredible.
• 59:28
  But how do we question when you were talking about the the
• 59:33
  Torres cask your your first one with the inch Gower when you
• 59:38
  know you're you're obviously bottling these casts.
• 59:42
  Do you do you have any assistance?
• 59:43
  Do you get a second opinion? Do you get some?
• 59:45
  You know, is, is are there any people you you kind of lean on?
• 59:48
  I mean, maybe your your father or your grandfather, I don't
• 59:50
  know. But do you lean on anyone say
• 59:53
  like can you try this and tell me what you think?
• 59:55
  Yeah, I, I certainly, I don't do it all myself.
• 59:58
  Yeah, I think that's a really important part of it.
• 1:00:01
  It's funny, someone, someone asked me.
• 1:00:03
  I remember when we were launching the brand, before we
• 1:00:07
  launched actually, someone asked me, how do you, how do you
• 1:00:09
  choose your casks? And, and I actually had to think
• 1:00:12
  about it for a little bit because I almost had it stuck in
• 1:00:14
  my head that there's almost an, an, maybe an industry answer
• 1:00:18
  that is a bit more scientific than the reality for me.
• 1:00:22
  You know, in my head, I think you're sitting there, you taste
• 1:00:25
  the sample, you write down some notes, you're maybe tasting it
• 1:00:29
  blind. You're adding a drop of water.
• 1:00:31
  You'd come back to it in quite an analytical way.
• 1:00:34
  And I, I kind of thought about it.
• 1:00:35
  I thought, I've never done that in my life.
• 1:00:37
  That's not, that's not how I drink whiskey.
• 1:00:40
  And I, and I thought about it, it's like actually the first
• 1:00:43
  releases that we did, most of them I cracked open with friends
• 1:00:46
  and I was like, alright, let's try this tonight.
• 1:00:49
  And, and I suppose my answer to it is almost every single
• 1:00:53
  whiskey that I select is based on bring it out into a bit of a
• 1:00:56
  real experience, you know, whether it's going to a Scottish
• 1:01:00
  rugby match and bringing a wee hit fast with me and having a
• 1:01:04
  wee sip of whoever I'm there with.
• 1:01:05
  And and you know. At Murrayfield because their
• 1:01:09
  trick prices are so reasonable. When you can play over a tenner
• 1:01:14
  for a fight, why would you take your own booze in?
• 1:01:17
  It's more for Hearts games when I'm watching us lose and you
• 1:01:19
  need some Scotland games. I'm at Hampton Park and you need
• 1:01:22
  something to get you through it. Track.
• 1:01:25
  For a Scotland football game. So yeah, I try and I try and
• 1:01:32
  choose them as much as possible, whether it's with, you know,
• 1:01:35
  trusted retailers that I work with.
• 1:01:37
  One of my favorite shops is Feeling of Wines down in
• 1:01:41
  Peebles. My mate Henry works down there.
• 1:01:43
  Great palate. He's got quite a funky taste.
• 1:01:45
  I'll always run things past him. At the end of the day, obviously
• 1:01:48
  it comes down to me. It's my, it's my name in the
• 1:01:51
  bottle. So I've got to take, take
• 1:01:53
  responsibility. But I enjoy, I enjoy sharing all
• 1:01:56
  the samples that I've got with people.
• 1:01:58
  I think if I just did it by myself, then I'd probably lose
• 1:02:01
  interest in doing it. And you know, I'm obviously
• 1:02:04
  doing it for from a business point of view, from a bringing a
• 1:02:09
  family business point of family business back to life point of
• 1:02:12
  view. But also I want to enjoy it as
• 1:02:14
  well. And I think being able to share
• 1:02:16
  nice drams of, you know, 30 year old Strathclydes whatever with,
• 1:02:20
  with other people in the selection process is quite a
• 1:02:22
  nice. Part of it, I mean, in terms of
• 1:02:25
  sorry, but in terms of like, it's fascinating whenever we
• 1:02:28
  speak to indie bottlers and we speak to people who are involved
• 1:02:30
  in that process and it's like I'm what's really interested in
• 1:02:33
  that. Remember speaking to Greg Archer
• 1:02:35
  and Glenn Moore Spirits and he was talking about he has his own
• 1:02:38
  system that he follows and he sort of does a number system.
• 1:02:41
  He'll say a casket that's a six out of 10 at the moment because
• 1:02:44
  he's getting parcels in. That's a six out of 10.
• 1:02:47
  And then he maybe works it out. Maybe I need to put it in there.
• 1:02:49
  So maybe I need to put it that. We then had Woody and Megan
• 1:02:52
  talking on the 1st in the bottle spotlight that we had from
• 1:02:55
  Woodrow's Edinburgh. And they said like we just sit
• 1:02:57
  down and discuss it between ourselves.
• 1:02:59
  And then there was a bit of debate about when Megan does
• 1:03:01
  Megan always win and stuff like that.
• 1:03:04
  And there isn't a system in place.
• 1:03:07
  But what's really interesting about your situation is and
• 1:03:10
  fruit, kind of fruit almost sort of the pressure that you're
• 1:03:13
  under is you, you know, you, you're carrying the family
• 1:03:16
  brand, you're carrying the family name, you're carrying all
• 1:03:19
  of that. So there is almost an extra
• 1:03:21
  pressure on your shoulders. But is there a sort of family
• 1:03:24
  trades like secret like, well, this is how your granddad did it
• 1:03:27
  and this is how his granddad did it.
• 1:03:29
  This is and and following it on. I think.
• 1:03:31
  I think the, the, the it's probably a good time to bring
• 1:03:35
  this out. Maybe not so good for your for
• 1:03:37
  your listeners, but one of the things I've got on the table,
• 1:03:39
  which feel free to pass round and feel free to even have a wee
• 1:03:42
  nose as well. This.
• 1:03:44
  Only I just pour it. No, no, no, no.
• 1:03:47
  I'm bad. You're.
• 1:03:48
  You're not allowed to pour it incredibly well.
• 1:03:51
  Never. I think I've had one tiny sip of
• 1:03:53
  this. No, no, no, no, no, I'm not
• 1:03:54
  pouring anymore. You can you can sniff, but you
• 1:03:57
  can't taste This is I'm mean, this is again one of my favorite
• 1:04:03
  things that we've got in the collection.
• 1:04:05
  This is a sample bottle of one of the prototypes for Ben
• 1:04:08
  Eagles. I think it's dated 1970.
• 1:04:10
  Well, we. Were trying, I was.
• 1:04:13
  Trying to work it. There's a date of 1959 on the
• 1:04:15
  label, and if you go down the label there since 1959.
• 1:04:21
  Yeah. I think that relates to some
• 1:04:22
  sort of legislation seems. To be 1974 from December.
• 1:04:27
  I read that as December 1970. Four as going to the quest for
• 1:04:31
  sample scored it. On so so you know, what my
• 1:04:38
  granddad was doing is very, very different to what I'm doing now.
• 1:04:42
  I'm I'm choosing single casks. He was a blender.
• 1:04:45
  I'm not doing, I'm not doing any blending at all yet.
• 1:04:50
  That's yet was doing a lot of workmen.
• 1:04:55
  It's not an ambition then playing it be doing, blending.
• 1:04:58
  Potentially, potentially we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll maybe work
• 1:05:01
  our way into that. No, I'm I'm maybe jumping the
• 1:05:05
  gun, but would there be any rebirth of brands or would it be
• 1:05:09
  a new brand? Or is this is this?
• 1:05:11
  You don't have to answer this one if you don't want to shake.
• 1:05:13
  The light in his eyes. You know what, I I, whatever I
• 1:05:18
  do, whatever I do from a, a blended point of view will
• 1:05:21
  definitely pay tribute to the Ben Eagles era.
• 1:05:25
  Obviously we've already given away one family brand of old
• 1:05:29
  Perth. I would love to do something
• 1:05:31
  about Eagles. It's not something we're looking
• 1:05:33
  at doing immediately, but I've got, I've got a project lined up
• 1:05:36
  for next year, which will be my first attempt at some form of
• 1:05:40
  blending. Might not be a blend that we
• 1:05:42
  make, but maybe I've acted single malt.
• 1:05:43
  So keep, keep an eye on that. But yeah, at the moment
• 1:05:48
  everything is single cask and that's why it's very different
• 1:05:50
  to what my granddad is doing. What the guys are obviously
• 1:05:52
  passing around is a prototype bottle of Benny Goes from 1974.
• 1:05:56
  And what's really interesting about it is that on the back
• 1:05:58
  label there's the signatures of all the directors of the
• 1:06:02
  company. So that suggests that everyone
• 1:06:05
  had to sign off on it in order to get approval of it to be
• 1:06:08
  bottled in Ben Eagles, whether it was in the the standard glass
• 1:06:12
  bottle or one of the and you're. Just dishing your whisk out to
• 1:06:16
  your pals at the rugby and. I and I, I literally just dish
• 1:06:19
  it out to my mates. But let's see if you like it for
• 1:06:21
  that. I mean, we've had we've had
• 1:06:22
  somebody, I can't remember who it was in the podcast.
• 1:06:25
  And they were like, I'm sure they were an independent
• 1:06:28
  bottler. And they said, you know, a lot
• 1:06:30
  of the time I like and it's finding the right balance.
• 1:06:33
  And you have to be very careful when it's sort of yourself
• 1:06:36
  that's doing it all the time in the sense of I just like to give
• 1:06:40
  whiskey to folk that I would I like, right?
• 1:06:42
  So you go, I like that. So I know that probably you'll
• 1:06:46
  like that and you'll like that and you'll like that.
• 1:06:47
  So I know that this is good. So you guys have it and I
• 1:06:51
  suppose there's an element of that, but then you have to be
• 1:06:53
  very careful in the sense that you could then box yourself into
• 1:06:55
  a corner where you go, well, I know what I don't like.
• 1:06:58
  So I know that if I don't like peated whiskey, for example,
• 1:07:01
  I'll stay away from doing any kind of peated whiskey stuff, or
• 1:07:05
  if I do have to do it, I won't be as invested in the quality of
• 1:07:09
  it. So how difficult is that to to
• 1:07:11
  make sure that you're not just keeping yourself stuck in the
• 1:07:14
  same corner with the same types of releases?
• 1:07:16
  I think, I think sometimes you've got to take personal
• 1:07:19
  biases out of it a little bit. And the other thing that I find
• 1:07:23
  is that obviously I, I, I bought, I only bought things
• 1:07:27
  that I do genuinely like, or at least I think that people will
• 1:07:30
  really, really like them. But sometimes I do fall in and
• 1:07:34
  out of love of them. And one, one of the hardest
• 1:07:37
  things I have, you know, I've worked in sales all my life.
• 1:07:41
  I actually don't consider myself a very good salesman.
• 1:07:44
  You know, I'm good at selling things that I truly believe in.
• 1:07:48
  Sometimes if I'm stuck there and maybe I lose confidence that
• 1:07:52
  whiskey at whiskey show, then I'll probably ignore that one.
• 1:07:54
  I'll think, do you know what? Today?
• 1:07:55
  I just I don't I don't like that one today, but what's funny is
• 1:07:59
  maybe the next whiskey festival that I do were important on my
• 1:08:02
  taste. I'm like, I really like that
• 1:08:03
  right now. So you try and take personal
• 1:08:06
  bias biases out of it. I think like like everyone,
• 1:08:10
  you're you're you're tasting whiskey changes all the time.
• 1:08:12
  Some days I I love that Gervin and some days I think I it's not
• 1:08:16
  what I'm needing. It's.
• 1:08:16
  Almost seasonal as well. I find, You know, in the summer
• 1:08:19
  you're definitely wanting to drink something different to
• 1:08:22
  what you'd do. You get winter's night.
• 1:08:25
  Do you get protected? Like if, if, if you're said to
• 1:08:27
  your mates that they're being these are your path and you
• 1:08:29
  might sit there and go, I've done it, I've got this, I've got
• 1:08:32
  this. And it's funny because you will,
• 1:08:36
  you're saying about the way you go hot and cold and certain
• 1:08:38
  things like you're this is going to be great.
• 1:08:40
  I've tried it. This works so well whether you
• 1:08:42
  try it and then someone goes, yeah, no, no, no, but you may
• 1:08:45
  try again, try again because you're not really getting it.
• 1:08:47
  Do you get because it's effectively it's your creation,
• 1:08:50
  isn't it? I want at some point.
• 1:08:51
  Yeah, well, I think to that question, I'd like to separate
• 1:08:55
  my my mates from from my old mates from some of my like
• 1:09:00
  whiskey and industry mates. Industry mates obviously, I
• 1:09:05
  probably take it more personally if they dislike something.
• 1:09:08
  My school and uni mates. Most of them don't drink
• 1:09:12
  whiskey. If they don't like wrong.
• 1:09:18
  I heard, I think on our WhatsApp group chat today we're talking.
• 1:09:21
  I was in I was in Diggers earlier and and we dropped off a
• 1:09:25
  bottle of we did a bottling for Hearts.
• 1:09:28
  It was a 1998 N British celebrate Hearts win the
• 1:09:31
  Scottish Cup in 1998. I sent a mate a picture to my
• 1:09:34
  mates. I said, oh, if you're going to
• 1:09:36
  the Hearts game tonight, popping the Diggers have a DRAM.
• 1:09:38
  And he texted me back saying I'll buy a DRAM and I'll pour it
• 1:09:42
  down the toilet because that's what it's good for.
• 1:09:43
  This is. Going to be I mean nothing.
• 1:09:47
  Any audience out of Scotland is the ABV 51%.
• 1:09:50
  It's not. It's not.
• 1:09:53
  Well, no, I know it's the wrong 1 when.
• 1:09:55
  I do when I do, when I do that one, you do that one.
• 1:09:58
  Yeah, yeah. But in terms of, yeah, so you
• 1:10:01
  have to be careful about who you pick to, to give you your
• 1:10:03
  feedback, I suppose. Isn't it?
• 1:10:04
  Yeah. Do you get?
• 1:10:08
  Well, first of all, actually, before we move on, tell us about
• 1:10:10
  tell us about this DRAM that Angus has poured everybody My.
• 1:10:13
  Elbow with Yeah. I'm really sorry.
• 1:10:17
  I hope everyone's enjoying it because you've got big glasses
• 1:10:19
  to drink. But pay for it next time and
• 1:10:21
  he'll be sorry. So this, this is a 31 year old,
• 1:10:28
  a 33 year old Tam Navulin, sorry, one of the cast that was
• 1:10:32
  laid down by my granddad. This, this to me is, it's
• 1:10:38
  probably a bit of a gentle giant.
• 1:10:40
  So, you know, we, we, we're lucky to have a lot of old casks
• 1:10:43
  from 1980s. And what I find really
• 1:10:46
  interesting about them is, is that actually the ones like this
• 1:10:50
  that are in refill hoggies I think have come out best.
• 1:10:54
  Because if you think about 30 plus years of ageing, if you're
• 1:10:57
  talking that in a very, very active cask, I think eventually
• 1:11:00
  over time, you're, you're, you're going into the territory
• 1:11:03
  of cast taking over spirit. And what I love about this is
• 1:11:07
  that you get that multi serial character that is kind of
• 1:11:12
  expected from Tam Navulin of that time, bearing in mind that
• 1:11:15
  this is old style Tam Navulin. So Tam Navulin was mothballed
• 1:11:21
  for a long period of time, I think.
• 1:11:23
  Yeah, I think 1995, but I might be corrected on that.
• 1:11:28
  So certainly, certainly 1990s mothballed and not opened again
• 1:11:32
  until 2000s. So this is the old style of Tam
• 1:11:35
  Navulin from my research, I think what they tried to create
• 1:11:39
  when they opened the distillery, which I think was 1960s, was a
• 1:11:43
  multi cereal style spirit, which was actually suited for the
• 1:11:47
  American palette because like so many distilleries at the time,
• 1:11:51
  it was a blending mole and it and it had that style that was
• 1:11:56
  appealing to the American palette supposedly.
• 1:11:59
  And what I think you've got with this is that really nice balance
• 1:12:02
  between multi cereal, almost in a kind of like dusty, a little
• 1:12:08
  bit woody, but not not overly woody at all, but actually still
• 1:12:11
  with a lot of brightness to it, a little bit honey.
• 1:12:15
  It's very delicate, it's sophisticated.
• 1:12:19
  So I really like it as an example of an old whiskey that
• 1:12:22
  showcases what that distillery was like at the time.
• 1:12:25
  Again, that's the kind of thing I want to be bottling because
• 1:12:28
  it's single cast. There's only a couple 100
• 1:12:30
  bottles of it in the world. It's from a style that the
• 1:12:33
  distillery no longer produces. To me, that's what these old
• 1:12:36
  bottling should be about. It's a bit of a time capsule.
• 1:12:39
  Was this? Was this a bottle you had?
• 1:12:40
  Tasty note of the Golden Graham. This is Golden Graham.
• 1:12:43
  Got our very own golden. I mean, one question I wanted to
• 1:12:48
  ask you as well, Finn is you know, we know we know we've
• 1:12:53
  we've heard about your grandfather 30 years ago 40
• 1:12:56
  years ago buying these cast. Do you have an eye on the future
• 1:13:01
  as well? Are you thinking 30 years in the
• 1:13:03
  head? I mean, we've asked this to
• 1:13:04
  people that work in the industry and often you're making
• 1:13:07
  decisions for kind of beyond when you probably plan to retire
• 1:13:11
  or you know, you're making decisions for the next
• 1:13:13
  generation. Are you conscious of that Or is
• 1:13:16
  there anything you know are you get buying new make spirit at
• 1:13:19
  all for maybe things that you know won't be bottled for 20-30
• 1:13:23
  years? Yeah, we, we've, we've started
• 1:13:25
  buying new make spirit. So that's an exciting new
• 1:13:28
  chapter of what we're doing, getting to lay down cast for for
• 1:13:31
  however long. I suppose All I know is that
• 1:13:35
  this is what I want to be doing personally.
• 1:13:38
  Yeah, for a very long time. Partly because now I'm
• 1:13:41
  completely unemployable. I don't think anyone would,
• 1:13:44
  would, would take me on. And also I don't think I'd ever
• 1:13:46
  want to work for anyone else either.
• 1:13:48
  I think. I think I've got.
• 1:13:50
  That for yourself, it's hard to go working for somebody else.
• 1:13:54
  Potentially, but I think it's more the fact that no one would
• 1:13:58
  employ me. So you know, I I want to be
• 1:14:01
  doing this for a very, very long time.
• 1:14:03
  So I think about your next generation, not not quite next
• 1:14:06
  generation, because no. No, I'm not sorry.
• 1:14:08
  Jumping the gun. Quite at that stage, but yeah,
• 1:14:11
  certainly there I I look at certain casks and and you know,
• 1:14:14
  great, great. Mentioned earlier where it's,
• 1:14:16
  it's it's so easy to go and bottle things that are good, but
• 1:14:22
  maybe they could be very, very good in a few years time.
• 1:14:25
  And that's that's probably one of the biggest challenges is
• 1:14:27
  finding a cast. We think, damn, that's really
• 1:14:29
  good right now. I could go and bottle it, but
• 1:14:33
  instead waiting. Conversely, I'll also put out
• 1:14:37
  the argument that if something's very, very good already, and
• 1:14:41
  even if it's an odd age, whether it's, you know, unmarkable age
• 1:14:45
  like 9 or 11 or 13, one of these awkward ages which people don't
• 1:14:48
  really buy into from a whiskey point of view, I think sometimes
• 1:14:51
  it is really important to just go and bottle it instead of
• 1:14:54
  waiting for it to wait to reach around age of 12 or 15.
• 1:14:58
  We actually had that with one of the first casks we released.
• 1:15:02
  It was meant to be a manic Moore.
• 1:15:03
  I remember trying it about six months before we we launched the
• 1:15:09
  brand and it tasted great. And I kind of waited another
• 1:15:12
  four months just before bottling and I tasted it again.
• 1:15:16
  I just thought, you know what, I think that's it's just gone a
• 1:15:19
  wee bit over. It was just taking on a wee bit
• 1:15:20
  too much wood. It didn't have that like juicy,
• 1:15:22
  juicy fruitness that I thought it had.
• 1:15:24
  And we canned it and it's it's still in cast.
• 1:15:26
  So it's probably just getting woodier right now, yeah.
• 1:15:28
  I've got a question you've got. I've got a question.
• 1:15:32
  Timing. Yes to the Man in the Iron
• 1:15:34
  Maiden T-shirt. So with your granddad and family
• 1:15:40
  before being blenders and whatnot and they must have must
• 1:15:44
  have had quite a portfolio stock, especially of malts that
• 1:15:47
  weren't big them or big no big culprits being things like
• 1:15:49
  Telescar and Lagaville. And so I assume you probably
• 1:15:52
  came into some of these stocks now.
• 1:15:54
  Did you go back and trade with, you know, people like Diageo and
• 1:16:00
  stuff and actually get a probably better deal out of some
• 1:16:02
  old Telescaris and then get younger malts in return or
• 1:16:04
  stuff? You know, yeah, we've done,
• 1:16:07
  we've done bits of that. It's, you know, we, we've got,
• 1:16:11
  we've got probably more casks at that age than we could bottle.
• 1:16:17
  And therefore it is important to to choose the ones that
• 1:16:20
  obviously we really want to bottle and be open to doing
• 1:16:24
  deals with other people. I think it's one of the great
• 1:16:27
  things about the whiskey industry is that people are open
• 1:16:29
  to doing swaps, whether it's a big company like Diageo or one
• 1:16:34
  of the small independent distilleries or other
• 1:16:36
  independent bottlers. And you know, that's part of the
• 1:16:39
  challenge of it is swapping a, a very old Longhorn for maybe a
• 1:16:43
  new distillery and getting the right ratio and just figuring
• 1:16:47
  out what, what's right for us. So yes, it's, it's something
• 1:16:50
  that that we've done recently, we've done a few years ago as
• 1:16:53
  well. And it's just getting the the
• 1:16:55
  right balance of stocks that we've always got the the right
• 1:16:57
  kind of things to put out and. The Do you struggle a little bit
• 1:17:02
  with the fact that do you always carry, you know, you, you start
• 1:17:06
  this. I mean, in fact, let's let's
• 1:17:08
  move on to that. Like the moment you decided I'm
• 1:17:11
  ready to rock'n'roll with this, right?
• 1:17:14
  And what the question I was going to ask there is like, do
• 1:17:17
  you struggle carrying this sort of your so and so's laddie or
• 1:17:21
  your so and so's grandson instead of wanting to be your
• 1:17:24
  own person? Or do you own it?
• 1:17:25
  And you mean, you hear, you're talking about the history, you
• 1:17:28
  hear you're talking about it. And there are certain people
• 1:17:31
  that would be able to say, no, I want to lose that.
• 1:17:33
  I'm my own person. This is my style of I'm putting
• 1:17:36
  my stamp on it. I'm not following what was done
• 1:17:39
  previously. Or is it a nod to it?
• 1:17:41
  Or did you just fully fully? Just take it over.
• 1:17:43
  But I think what I'm doing is significantly different to what
• 1:17:48
  my family is doing before. So that that's a very natural
• 1:17:50
  separation where it's not it's not carrying the same, the same,
• 1:17:54
  you know, expectation of creating a ultimately an
• 1:17:57
  international blended whiskey brand, which is what Ben Eagles
• 1:18:01
  was, you know, it was sold all over the world.
• 1:18:03
  And, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm not trying to do that with with what
• 1:18:07
  I'm doing everything I'm doing a single cast.
• 1:18:09
  Yeah, won't. Of course we sell in export
• 1:18:12
  markets, but it's never going to be a mass market brand.
• 1:18:15
  Finn Thompson Whiskey will remain, you know an independent
• 1:18:18
  bottling brand, which is typically single cask and sold,
• 1:18:22
  sold in a few markets around the world.
• 1:18:24
  So I think that's quite a nice separation.
• 1:18:27
  I also think that, you know, the fact that my granddad kind of
• 1:18:30
  sold the business and and moved out of whiskey in the in the
• 1:18:33
  1980s, that's there's not, there's not many people that
• 1:18:36
  that remember that. Of course, you know, it's, it's
• 1:18:38
  great when I, when I meet other kind of industry legends who
• 1:18:41
  remember dealing with my granddad.
• 1:18:43
  I remember some chance of Richard Patterson, who's coming
• 1:18:45
  back from a Las Vegas whiskey festival with me and nothing
• 1:18:49
  not. Bad, eh?
• 1:18:50
  Las Vegas. Las Vegas Whiskey Festival.
• 1:18:54
  I know anyone from the last. Vegas, if anybody was listening
• 1:19:00
  and wants us to exhibit Las Vegas Festival, 2 business class
• 1:19:03
  seats will be there. Well, I wasn't doing with, with
• 1:19:09
  this stuff. It was with another brand.
• 1:19:11
  But he, he remembers selling Benigos White and Mackay ends up
• 1:19:15
  taking on the Benigos brand. So you might, if you see some of
• 1:19:18
  the bottles, they'll have White and Mackay branding on them.
• 1:19:20
  And he, he told me he was like, they were an absolute nightmare,
• 1:19:25
  the fact that they were bloody head falling off and all this.
• 1:19:29
  So yeah, no, it's, it's great when I get to, to, to chat to
• 1:19:33
  other people who do remember my granddad in the industry.
• 1:19:35
  But you know, I, I quite enjoy this new generation of, of
• 1:19:40
  people in the industry. I think there's so many young
• 1:19:42
  people in the industry who are really doing really cool things,
• 1:19:46
  whether it's independent bottlers or new, new blenders
• 1:19:49
  who are, who are going to make their own stamp on things.
• 1:19:51
  So it's or pod casters as well? While we're finishing two
• 1:19:56
  Angus's bowl of soup that he poured everybody and starting
• 1:20:01
  starting on our next one. That was the next one.
• 1:20:05
  You've talked about the process, what you're doing and your sort
• 1:20:08
  of journey that you've got, but when was it and when did you
• 1:20:12
  know? I'm ready to rock'n'roll here.
• 1:20:14
  I'm going myself. Do you want the honest answer?
• 1:20:18
  Give us the honest answer. So I was, I was at Copper Dog
• 1:20:21
  and basically they moved me down to London.
• 1:20:24
  I was, I, I went down as the, the brand ambassador to, to go
• 1:20:28
  and work in London in the on trade down there.
• 1:20:30
  And it was a totally different world.
• 1:20:32
  You know, I'd, I'd, I'd been based up in Pitlochry living
• 1:20:36
  with mom and dad for a while. I was, you know, selling car and
• 1:20:38
  more independent bottlings, talking to whiskey geeks, which
• 1:20:42
  I felt quite at home in a lot of the time, and all of a sudden
• 1:20:44
  moved down to London. It was meant to be going into
• 1:20:47
  all these fancy hotels, the the Ritz and Savoy and all this
• 1:20:51
  trying to sell Copper Dog and fell out of love with it, fell
• 1:20:56
  of love with London first of all.
• 1:20:57
  It just, it wasn't for me and and probably came back to
• 1:21:01
  Scotland tail behind my legs a little bit and, and kind of had
• 1:21:03
  that, that moment of thinking, what do I want to do?
• 1:21:07
  I still love whiskey. I've done something that didn't
• 1:21:10
  work out. Still a really good experience
• 1:21:12
  seeing how a big company and a big brand works like that.
• 1:21:15
  You know, Diagio approach things in a way which is totally
• 1:21:18
  different to a small independent bottler.
• 1:21:20
  And a lot of that I think I've taken on from a branding point
• 1:21:23
  of view and a storytelling point of view, which I think they do
• 1:21:25
  quite well. But I came back and I thought,
• 1:21:28
  you know what, I think this is the time to to go and do it and
• 1:21:32
  started trying to plan how a whiskey brand might look, which
• 1:21:37
  takes into account all these elements of the family story and
• 1:21:40
  took a long, long time. And then COVID happened and that
• 1:21:47
  probably helps. I was, I was doing a little bit
• 1:21:49
  of work for some other brands. I was, I was helping out Glen
• 1:21:51
  Turret with their launch of, of their new Glen Turret Elite
• 1:21:56
  conversion, doing some sales for them.
• 1:21:59
  But then COVID happened And that basically gave me the time to
• 1:22:01
  really essentially first of all, get into the library and do all
• 1:22:05
  the family research, go through every single, you know, minutes
• 1:22:08
  meeting from the family, all the old archive material.
• 1:22:11
  And then I was lucky enough to stumble upon my colleague called
• 1:22:16
  Reeve. Reeve was, he was actually a
• 1:22:19
  filmmaker originally. And I kind of showed him a
• 1:22:23
  little bit about the family story and he seemed to really
• 1:22:26
  like it. And essentially his background
• 1:22:28
  is in bringing up a brand life for creating stories.
• 1:22:31
  So I told him that he he was a massive influence in trying to
• 1:22:34
  choose all these different things about the bottle to
• 1:22:37
  represent the the family story where there is this ceramic to
• 1:22:41
  to go in the top, the night side of the bottle.
• 1:22:43
  This little thing here, which I'll also pass around.
• 1:22:46
  This is a postcard from 1916. The thing to note on it is the
• 1:22:52
  font. So it's the same font that we
• 1:22:54
  use in the Finn Thompson, but obviously on that is it's Peter
• 1:22:57
  Thompson. So this is the photograph for
• 1:23:00
  the podcast listeners is a photograph of a grocers van 1916
• 1:23:06
  which is your what? Great, great grand fella.
• 1:23:08
  Yeah, yeah. It would have been Peter
• 1:23:10
  Thompson's era. So my great, great, great, great
• 1:23:14
  grandfather. And essentially, this is
• 1:23:15
  actually a postcard from one of his sales reps called David
• 1:23:18
  Chisholm. And essentially this is 1916.
• 1:23:21
  He was on his, on his travels around Scotland and sent a
• 1:23:25
  postcard back saying, look at me, I'm, I'm traveling around
• 1:23:28
  Scotland selling whiskey to people, standing very proudly in
• 1:23:32
  front of his, in front of his van, which was one of the, you
• 1:23:35
  know, first mobile whiskey shops.
• 1:23:37
  And, and on it, the thing that we picked out is, you know,
• 1:23:39
  obviously the, the van itself is iconic.
• 1:23:41
  It, it, it appears in all the, the, the boxes that we sell our
• 1:23:45
  whiskey and, but also the font. If you look at the, our, our
• 1:23:48
  font that we use for Finn Thompson, it's got the same
• 1:23:51
  underscored OS that have that are on the, the van as well.
• 1:23:54
  So it was, it was discovering little gems like that during
• 1:23:57
  COVID, which were, you know, the most exciting part of it
• 1:24:01
  alongside obviously doing the actual whiskey preparation, but
• 1:24:05
  also the business setup preparation as well, which was
• 1:24:08
  totally new to me. You know, I'd, I'd worked in
• 1:24:10
  sales all, all my career, but I'd never run a business.
• 1:24:15
  And that that itself was a big challenge.
• 1:24:17
  My dad was, was absolutely a massive help.
• 1:24:19
  He is kind of the misgeneration of the family.
• 1:24:22
  He was a teenager when my granddad sold the business.
• 1:24:25
  So while he's not been directly involved in his career, you
• 1:24:30
  know, he's semi retired now and he likes to chirp in with all
• 1:24:33
  his helpful stuff. So, you know, it's still very
• 1:24:35
  much a, a kind of family project with, with him on board as well.
• 1:24:39
  I mean, it's, it's fascinating and and I think it's one of the
• 1:24:42
  things that really is great for whiskey geeks and it's getting
• 1:24:46
  that out to people as the devil's in the detail and having
• 1:24:49
  that sort of little tie and just simple little things like the
• 1:24:52
  little score under the O is a nod to this or they're certainly
• 1:24:57
  like the, the, the 9 sided. What's the, what's the relevance
• 1:25:00
  of the, the tops in of the bottle tops.
• 1:25:03
  So. Ceramic bottle tops.
• 1:25:04
  Ceramic bottle tops. So the tops were inspired by all
• 1:25:08
  the different ceramics. And initially, my initial idea
• 1:25:12
  was to do a ceramic bottle because Ben Eagles was so iconic
• 1:25:15
  for the ceramic Eagle in particular, but also things like
• 1:25:19
  this. And we thought about it for a
• 1:25:23
  while and ultimately we, you know, kind of decided with the
• 1:25:27
  kind of whiskey that we're doing, everything's obviously
• 1:25:30
  natural colour. We're we're single cask until
• 1:25:32
  filtered cast strength. Yeah, no added caramel anything.
• 1:25:35
  So we want to show the colour of the whiskey and ceramic just
• 1:25:37
  wouldn't have wouldn't have worked in that regard.
• 1:25:39
  So I think it was one of Reeves ideas.
• 1:25:42
  He said, well, why don't we just do this stopper instead?
• 1:25:44
  So every single stopper is is a handmade ceramic actually made
• 1:25:49
  out in Ukraine? Really.
• 1:25:51
  Yeah. It was a nightmare.
• 1:25:54
  I mean, going back, it's a well trod bath.
• 1:25:57
  It's a troll. In fact, a former guest, Jacob
• 1:26:00
  Cook, who's here as well, he's loving being mentioned every
• 1:26:03
  time. But it's the the COVID-19
• 1:26:09
  pandemic was obviously a terrible, terrible time for so
• 1:26:12
  many people. And it's, it's really hard to
• 1:26:14
  try and celebrate what was going on back then because it was so
• 1:26:17
  hard for so many folks, but it's done so many things for the
• 1:26:22
  whiskey industry. I, I think that the COVID
• 1:26:27
  pandemic has, it's probably had a detrimental effect now because
• 1:26:31
  what we're, we were, what we're seeing is this slump in sales,
• 1:26:35
  which peaked round about sort of 20/21/22 period when everyone,
• 1:26:40
  myself included, was sitting at home just buying a shit ton of
• 1:26:43
  whiskey because there was nothing to do except for that.
• 1:26:47
  And, and everyone became, and, but there's people, Jake, it was
• 1:26:50
  COVID that got you involved. It got you.
• 1:26:52
  Was it a bottle of Glenn Farkless?
• 1:26:53
  Was it? Yeah, Glenn Farkless, 15.
• 1:26:56
  There you go. That was a big boy.
• 1:26:57
  Yeah. Yeah, and COVID-19, you sat
• 1:27:00
  down, I'm going and now look at where you are and you see what
• 1:27:03
  you've what you've done. But there's three carats are
• 1:27:05
  last in the bottlers. Same situation we were in
• 1:27:08
  employment. We got a little bit of time.
• 1:27:10
  We decided something that we've always talked about, let's just
• 1:27:12
  go and do it. And that time gave them the
• 1:27:14
  space to do it. Even things like the fact that
• 1:27:17
  distilleries suddenly realised, hang on a minute here, we're
• 1:27:20
  going to have to try and really up our game in terms of how we
• 1:27:24
  can instead of bringing people to us, how can we get to people?
• 1:27:28
  Virtual tastings suddenly became massive, I guess, right?
• 1:27:31
  Absolutely. It was our sort of Kev Diggers.
• 1:27:34
  You know, we've got a whiskey bridge, an independent Butler
• 1:27:37
  whiskey bridge at the Athletic Arms.
• 1:27:39
  Now, Kev didn't drink whiskey until COVID and he was drinking
• 1:27:42
  bored. It was a brook laddie.
• 1:27:47
  Some sort of wine. Wine cast.
• 1:27:48
  Yeah. It's been having been.
• 1:27:50
  Having sorry that was been having every week to make sure
• 1:27:53
  he still has his he's got COVID and and now he's got the second
• 1:27:58
  or one of the most unlarged collections of indie bottle of
• 1:28:01
  of open. Bottles, whiskey and what Chuck
• 1:28:03
  Kerr went through during COVID. I mean, just doesn't bear
• 1:28:06
  thinking about it. Maybe your old dog.
• 1:28:08
  We want to be strongly suggest people.
• 1:28:10
  I think I think we should mention then or let you talk
• 1:28:13
  about the final whiskey that Graham's poured.
• 1:28:17
  Yeah. What?
• 1:28:18
  What are we going? What measures Lawnmark is?
• 1:28:20
  I've never been allowed to pour whiskey again, but that's fine.
• 1:28:23
  I'm quite comfortable with. That I'll tell you what this is,
• 1:28:28
  OK, This is a different whiskey for two reasons.
• 1:28:31
  Obviously, this is the only peated whiskey that we've got on
• 1:28:34
  the table tonight. It's also not cask strength.
• 1:28:40
  This is the only whiskey that we've done that has been not
• 1:28:43
  cast strength, but I've done it for a reason.
• 1:28:46
  And it plays into what I was saying earlier about how we
• 1:28:48
  choose our whiskey. So we got some cast from from
• 1:28:53
  Glasgow Distillery, who I think are probably one of the the best
• 1:28:57
  new distilleries in the country. I think they do some tremendous
• 1:29:00
  stuff. We're lucky enough to get some
• 1:29:02
  pitted cast from them. I, I brought a few samples with
• 1:29:07
  me as well as watching and playing football.
• 1:29:12
  I love trail running, climbing mountains, you know, bagging
• 1:29:16
  Monrose, all that kind of outdoorsy stuff.
• 1:29:19
  So I'll often take samples with me when I'm when I'm out
• 1:29:21
  climbing please. Drink and climb responsibly.
• 1:29:27
  That's another can't be with the story.
• 1:29:30
  I think that story before, yeah. You're.
• 1:29:32
  Right, so we I brought a sample of this one.
• 1:29:34
  It was just four years old up Ben Crookin, which is out
• 1:29:39
  towards Oban and started off as a as a cracking day got through
• 1:29:45
  the tree line and then it opens up into a dam before the big the
• 1:29:48
  big climb up and all of a sudden, like it does in
• 1:29:50
  Scotland, heavens just opened. It was absolutely chucking it
• 1:29:53
  down, miserable weather, windy, freezing.
• 1:29:56
  I was saving the drums for the top, the sample bottles for the
• 1:29:59
  top and I thought, you know what, we've got to get stuck
• 1:30:01
  into these. So ended up swigging something
• 1:30:04
  the bottle and didn't quite hit the spot it was.
• 1:30:09
  I think cast strength there are still about 61%.
• 1:30:12
  Because it was really young, it was 5 year old whiskey.
• 1:30:14
  So I cast strength. You're into 60.
• 1:30:16
  Percent and at the time it's four years old, but I've
• 1:30:20
  actually brought some some whiskey glasses with me.
• 1:30:23
  So we sat down, we had kind of huddled round poured some poured
• 1:30:26
  the sample bottle into 3 glasses for the three of us.
• 1:30:29
  By the time I poured it, the rain water just absolutely
• 1:30:32
  poured into the glass and it naturally diluted tasted it.
• 1:30:35
  It was way better. So.
• 1:30:37
  That is the reason why I've diluted this just a little bit,
• 1:30:41
  well, 56.2%. So when I say it's diluted, it's
• 1:30:47
  still a very strong whiskey. It's a bit.
• 1:30:48
  Too long at the edge view for the market.
• 1:30:51
  Well, I was going to say, huggled around on the edge of
• 1:30:54
  this mountain in the Scottish rage.
• 1:30:56
  It was, it was a good, it was a good job.
• 1:30:59
  It wasn't hail, but I don't know what you'd have.
• 1:31:01
  Had I don't know what you'd have had it done if I.
• 1:31:02
  Had a chill filter. Chill filter there you.
• 1:31:05
  Go. But it is true, it is.
• 1:31:08
  True, I agree. Well, we've also we've been
• 1:31:10
  waiting all evening because the gentleman to my left.
• 1:31:12
  Here. Oh yeah, I'm looking forward to
• 1:31:13
  this. Are you ready for your?
• 1:31:16
  He promised us a tasting note. Right here is our wanky tasting
• 1:31:20
  note. Here we go.
• 1:31:21
  He's oh, he's he's still going. In fact.
• 1:31:25
  Wait, wait, do that again. I'm going to film you.
• 1:31:31
  You really. You really caught the moment
• 1:31:33
  there. He's that muster, I thought.
• 1:31:35
  All right, you're ready for this.
• 1:31:36
  OK, here we are, one pressure virgin.
• 1:31:39
  Face feels. It's.
• 1:31:46
  Really good? No, but it is.
• 1:31:54
  Though joking aside, that's fantastic.
• 1:31:57
  I've been waiting on even for that and.
• 1:32:04
  Yeah, I can't put my finger on that and I'm not going to get
• 1:32:06
  winky taste. No, I'm just going to give you.
• 1:32:07
  That's beautiful, that's incredible.
• 1:32:08
  That's. Well, I'm.
• 1:32:12
  Sure, that's smoky bacon crisps and a wee glass, and it's just
• 1:32:15
  delightful. I can't eat much more than that.
• 1:32:17
  It's not that wanky, it's just true.
• 1:32:19
  I'll take that. But we've also got Joseph and
• 1:32:23
  Jamie. You guys have Joseph.
• 1:32:25
  This is your second time you've come here.
• 1:32:27
  Yeah, came along to the first one.
• 1:32:28
  Yeah, thought not sure, but you're back for the pet between
• 1:32:35
  the pair of you then have you got a drama the night?
• 1:32:37
  Have you got something that's really caught your eye?
• 1:32:39
  It's. For me, Tom Nevulin or Tom
• 1:32:42
  Nevulin, it's just really nice to taste it, how it kind of
• 1:32:48
  naturally comes out and not with the wine cast finishes that they
• 1:32:51
  have. I've, I was also interested in
• 1:32:55
  the Altmore with the wine finish because it was fascinating how
• 1:32:58
  you got such a strong flavour out of it.
• 1:33:01
  And I was kind of curious, like does that come from the, the
• 1:33:05
  wood quality or the, the wine influence?
• 1:33:09
  Because you said like other wine finishes, they don't impart as
• 1:33:13
  much flavour. So I just how?
• 1:33:16
  How does that one hurt so much? When I when I brought those
• 1:33:18
  casks over, they were still wet. They had.
• 1:33:23
  They had. Wine in there.
• 1:33:26
  And there's definitely an element of a little bit of wine
• 1:33:31
  still being involved in that, in that whiskey.
• 1:33:33
  And, and what I find with the other Torres cast that we had is
• 1:33:37
  actually that wine element mellowed out over time.
• 1:33:41
  Certainly the what what I think you get with this is that you
• 1:33:44
  get the tannins, you get the, the, you know, red berries that
• 1:33:48
  you expect from our kind of Spanish red wine.
• 1:33:52
  So yeah, it's it's, it's probably an element of the
• 1:33:54
  rawness of the wine in the cask, which I don't mind.
• 1:33:57
  And Jamie, this is the first time you've been to one of
• 1:33:59
  these. Yes, How you?
• 1:34:01
  Found it so far so far. Yeah, really good.
• 1:34:04
  I think whiskey wise, I quite like to to drink something
• 1:34:07
  slightly different each time. So, you know, the kind of
• 1:34:11
  whiskey that I might seek out because I like the taste of it
• 1:34:13
  is, is probably along the lines of the five year old Glasgow.
• 1:34:16
  But I think it's really great coming along and tasting
• 1:34:19
  something that you wouldn't maybe necessarily pick off the
• 1:34:21
  shelf. And so, you know, tonight I've
• 1:34:23
  quite enjoyed the, the Gervin and the, the Altmore for their
• 1:34:26
  own reasons, you know, quite interesting.
• 1:34:28
  And I think, you know, whiskey in particular, it's, it's really
• 1:34:31
  good to get the, the history and about the story behind each one
• 1:34:34
  of them. So it's really good to sit here
• 1:34:35
  with, with yourselves and, and, and talk about it.
• 1:34:38
  And yeah, just have a, a nice sort of special, interesting
• 1:34:42
  experience for, for each of the, the bottles we've got in front
• 1:34:45
  of us. Yeah.
• 1:34:45
  Yeah, fantastic. That's I mean, are we getting is
• 1:34:49
  everyone in a great. Has anyone else got any wanky
• 1:34:51
  tasting notes that they would like to pass on?
• 1:34:53
  I mean the smoky bacon. It's.
• 1:34:55
  A It's a bag of frazzles. Great, there we go.
• 1:34:59
  But it's not smoky bacon. It's a bag of frazzles.
• 1:35:01
  Yeah, we use brand names. It's a bag of frazzles.
• 1:35:05
  Yeah, right. I mean, we started off with I am
• 1:35:08
  brew bars. Yeah, I'm riding with a bag of
• 1:35:10
  Frazzles. One of my one of my weaknesses
• 1:35:14
  is cheap crisps and I I really want to do a whiskey tasting
• 1:35:18
  where we pair like 5 whiskeys with the cheapest of crisps.
• 1:35:21
  I'm talking like Space Raiders, Frazos Chipsticks.
• 1:35:24
  Well, I was going to say how, how are you going to?
• 1:35:26
  How are you going to? Scampi fries would be good as.
• 1:35:27
  Well, actually, pears are scampi fries.
• 1:35:31
  There's a question. Yeah.
• 1:35:33
  True, true. You don't have a recommendation
• 1:35:35
  for what pears were scampi fries, no.
• 1:35:38
  I don't know, We'll go with the garden.
• 1:35:41
  Well, I was going to say, how are you going to create a
• 1:35:42
  whiskey that's going to end up with a taste signal of Monster
• 1:35:45
  Munch pickled onion? I tell you what.
• 1:35:53
  No, no, no. One of the casts I've just
• 1:35:56
  bottled could match it. It's the one that I've been most
• 1:35:59
  hesitant about. In every single cast that we've
• 1:36:02
  bottled. It's a Takei finished pity Lee,
• 1:36:08
  which is the the the trade name for Aberfelde.
• 1:36:11
  So it's Aberfelde single malt, but it's bottled as pity Lee and
• 1:36:14
  it's been finished in Takai cask.
• 1:36:17
  Now I was late in getting the whiskey into the Takai cask and
• 1:36:23
  for that reason it's taken on an element.
• 1:36:27
  I think I've described it in my tasting notes as balsamic, but
• 1:36:30
  you can read balsamic vinegar and, and what, what I've found
• 1:36:36
  is that, so you know, two weeks ago I went around all the UK
• 1:36:40
  retailers and I was showing them samples of all the new releases,
• 1:36:43
  that being one of them. And there's probably call a 5050
• 1:36:48
  split between people who thought it was one of the best whiskeys
• 1:36:50
  they ever tasted or one of the worst whiskeys they ever tasted.
• 1:36:53
  I, I showed it some people and there's like, what are you
• 1:36:56
  doing? This is, you know, you've,
• 1:36:58
  you've bought some good stuff before, but this is, this is
• 1:37:00
  awful. And then I bought, I've shown it
• 1:37:02
  some people and they're just like, that's brilliant.
• 1:37:05
  All my weird whiskey drinkers are going to go mad for that.
• 1:37:08
  So I, I've, I've bought it and I'm promoting it with the
• 1:37:11
  disclosure. That is absolute Marmite.
• 1:37:13
  You'll either love it or you hate it.
• 1:37:15
  So if you can find a bottle of that Paley, some retailers will
• 1:37:18
  be pushing it really hard and some will be hiding in the back
• 1:37:21
  shelf somewhere. Brilliant.
• 1:37:22
  Well, we look for that. It's like.
• 1:37:23
  You want to try the ginger beer cask.
• 1:37:25
  Well, the ginger beer. Yeah, the Starwood Ginger the.
• 1:37:26
  Starwood ginger beer. Is the one out is something.
• 1:37:29
  We need to find yeah, yeah, we're people would probably.
• 1:37:31
  Taste it in me like. Well, I don't even know what
• 1:37:35
  I'll be like. I just know that I think it's a
• 1:37:36
  Bundaberg. Bundaberg ginger beer.
• 1:37:39
  Yeah, Bundaberg ginger beer. Starward finished or I think
• 1:37:42
  they did if I'm right saying they did a full maturation,
• 1:37:45
  which didn't do very well. I think there was a bit of sort
• 1:37:47
  of that's too much and then I think they did a finishing.
• 1:37:50
  Starward finished it in a Bundaberg, ginger beer and
• 1:37:54
  Bundaberg for me. I used to work at night shift at
• 1:37:58
  Methyl Hill Dockyard and I used to buy myself 2 bottles of
• 1:38:04
  ginger beer, Bundaberg ginger beer on the way back and I would
• 1:38:07
  always wind the guy I worked up big show.
• 1:38:09
  That's why you've got so many fillings.
• 1:38:11
  Great. Well, but what I used to do is I
• 1:38:13
  used to open it, drink it, and then speak for the next half an
• 1:38:16
  hour with an Australian accent. And at 3:00 in the morning, when
• 1:38:21
  no one's happy, I go wait, wait, wait till you see this.
• 1:38:24
  And I would drink this food every time I'm doing a big thing
• 1:38:27
  about opening it up, drinking it, and then just for the next
• 1:38:30
  half an hour, annoying and with an Australian accent.
• 1:38:33
  So if we, if we ever do get to try it out on a podcast, we do
• 1:38:35
  the next half hour the podcast in Australian accent.
• 1:38:37
  Absolutely. If anyone from Star Wars, let's
• 1:38:39
  like wants to ship us over a good box of that stuff, be
• 1:38:43
  great. But listen anyway, Finn, thank
• 1:38:45
  you so much for coming along. Thank you so much for sharing
• 1:38:48
  your story. Thank you so much for staying
• 1:38:49
  here. Excuse with us.
• 1:38:50
  Tell me, how can people find out about who you are, find a bit
• 1:38:54
  more or even purchase some of these bottles online and things
• 1:38:57
  like that? Yeah, we, we try to work
• 1:39:01
  exclusively with UK independent retailers.
• 1:39:05
  So most good independent retailers should have a
• 1:39:08
  selection of the bottles in stock.
• 1:39:11
  We do a little bit through the website, but I'd always rather
• 1:39:14
  prefer to, to promote the retailers follow us on the
• 1:39:17
  Instagram, which is creatively named Finn Thompson Whiskey.
• 1:39:22
  Follow that. And yeah, just just check out
• 1:39:26
  the website and check out Instagram.
• 1:39:28
  We do, we do a little bit there. Sign up for the mailing list.
• 1:39:30
  We'll give you advance note, advance notice of what's coming
• 1:39:33
  next. But yeah, that's that's probably
• 1:39:36
  about. It well, ladies and gentlemen,
• 1:39:38
  please show your appreciation for Finn Thompson.
• 1:39:40
  Absolutely fantastic, brilliant, some fantastic, fantastic
• 1:39:45
  whiskey. And yes, there we go.
• 1:39:48
  That's our third. Number.
• 1:39:50
  Three number three, we already have #4 in the pipeline, so stay
• 1:39:53
  tuned for that as well. I think it's the 28th of
• 1:39:56
  November at the Athletic Arms. So keep your eyes out, eyes
• 1:39:59
  peeled for that. That's going to be a a belter as
• 1:40:01
  well. And thank you so much for
• 1:40:02
  coming. On.
• 1:40:03
  Thank you guys. Appreciate it.
• 1:40:04
  It's absolutely fantastic. I guess we've done it again.
• 1:40:07
  Oh, every. I mean, this is brilliant.
• 1:40:09
  This has been one of my favorite podcasts we've ever done.
• 1:40:12
  I. Really appreciate it.
• 1:40:13
  We've managed we've managed to bring along all their whiskey,
• 1:40:17
  convince other people to come along and we could just sit here
• 1:40:19
  and drink. We've cracked it.
• 1:40:22
  Well, listen, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for
• 1:40:24
  coming along. Thank you so much for for taking
• 1:40:26
  part, being part of this. Big thank you to everybody who
• 1:40:28
  keeps listening and downloading the podcast.
• 1:40:31
  We're fast approaching our ten thousandth download.
• 1:40:34
  It's great. So many people get involved and
• 1:40:36
  as I say, if there's anybody here who wants to get involved
• 1:40:39
  in the The Whiskey Story's Facebook group, it's it's
• 1:40:41
  really, really good. Wanky tasting notes galore.
• 1:40:44
  Weekend drum roll call. We had our first wanky tasting
• 1:40:47
  note properly from Nadia. That was right.
• 1:40:49
  That was a tremendous. It's something was described as
• 1:40:51
  a tin fruit salad, which is just brilliant.
• 1:40:55
  Great. Get yourselves.
• 1:40:56
  On the, the the Facebook group for us on Instagram, download
• 1:40:59
  the podcast and also just check out Finn Thompson whiskey
• 1:41:03
  because I'm sure I speak for everybody tonight.
• 1:41:05
  It was absolutely magic. And remember, if you were
• 1:41:08
  thinking about coming along tonight, but you thought maybe I
• 1:41:10
  won't, Angus will pour you at least 2 drags and that itself is
• 1:41:17
  worth the money. But no, thank you so much.
• 1:41:19
  Thank you to you guys for coming along and supporting.
• 1:41:21
  That's brilliant. Cheers, guys.
• 1:41:22
  All the very best. Cheers.