Latest / Whisky Stories Podcast / Whisky tasting in the Arctic Circle and creating whisky - Stephen Woodcock and Les Mason

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Whisky tasting in the Arctic Circle and creating whisky - Stephen Woodcock and Les Mason · Whisky Stories Podcast

• 0:03
  Here we go, Angus. You know what to do.
• 0:06
  Clap us in. Welcome to the Whiskey Stories
• 0:11
  podcast. Across Scotland on a straight
• 0:14
  line, so Sidon, Montrose, East Coast, cut across the Highlands.
• 0:20
  Whatever came in your way, whether it's a mountain, a lake,
• 0:22
  just a lock, sorry, this way, straight through it.
• 0:26
  SO200K20 half hours. The only way you could describe
• 0:32
  Binge Tower is that if you took the constituent parts of our
• 0:35
  distillery up in the airplane and just kicked them out.
• 0:41
  Welcome along to the Whiskey Stories podcast with myself.
• 0:44
  Graham Cogar. We are back in the snug.
• 0:46
  We are back for the first time in 2025.
• 0:49
  Angus. We are back at the Athletic Arms
• 0:51
  and Diggers, our spiritual home. We have drums in front of us, We
• 0:54
  have guests. We have loads and loads of stuff
• 0:55
  to talk about. Just great to see you guys.
• 0:58
  Angus, how are you? Yeah, Oh, I'm great.
• 0:59
  Graham. It's been a few weeks since
• 1:01
  we've done a recording, so I'm just, yeah, ready to go.
• 1:03
  Roscoe, how are you? I've missed my pub to be honest.
• 1:06
  It's a terrible thing to say at 25 I think.
• 1:08
  But not miss you boys too. I missed in the pod, delighted
• 1:12
  to be back. And I have just returned from my
• 1:14
  adventures as a Maharaj over in India, back from Bangalore.
• 1:18
  And I've brought samples as well.
• 1:20
  It's been, it's been great. Whiskey's a lot cheaper in
• 1:24
  diggers than it is over in Bangalore.
• 1:26
  Let me tell you, 150% tax really makes you a little bit more
• 1:29
  selective on what drums. You're going what?
• 1:31
  Drums. You're going to be having.
• 1:33
  But to be honest, I think the whole time I was out there, I
• 1:35
  had one Scotch, the rest of it was what?
• 1:38
  Well, the rest of it was Indian whisky as well.
• 1:40
  Any highlights? Any highlights are very brands
• 1:42
  that maybe we don't know about the the the piqued your interest
• 1:45
  that you went back for? There's a few Paul John.
• 1:48
  There was a peated Paul John brilliance.
• 1:50
  I really, really enjoyed that. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:52
  And. You still pretend to.
• 1:53
  You still pretend to like peated whisky, even 55.
• 1:55
  Even the guy who sell this is you don't like peated whisky.
• 2:00
  But we are joined by guests. We have got some fantastic
• 2:03
  guests. We're joined by Stephen Woodcock
• 2:05
  from Glen Turner, head of whiskey creation and stocks.
• 2:09
  That's it. How are you, Stephen?
• 2:10
  I am good, thank you and thank you very much for asking us
• 2:12
  along. No, I'd like to be here.
• 2:14
  Thank you for coming along. It's it's great to have you
• 2:16
  here. It's great to great to catch up.
• 2:18
  But as well as Stephen, we are also joined by another guest, a
• 2:21
  man who we had to we had to squeeze him in to, to the
• 2:24
  podcast this week because on Sundays flying off, we have Les
• 2:28
  May Jason, who is, who's venturing off to the Arctic on
• 2:34
  an adventure. But he's also the founder of the
• 2:37
  Arctic Whiskey Club. Les, how are you?
• 2:40
  Excellent. Thank you for having me here.
• 2:41
  Yeah, really good. Thank you for coming along.
• 2:44
  You know, and also, you know, sure, it's Wednesday as we're
• 2:46
  recorded. So on Sunday you'll be flying
• 2:48
  out to to colder climates, if that's even possible.
• 2:50
  You can have loads of brands in your DMS soon going.
• 2:52
  We didn't realise there was an Arctic whiskey club.
• 2:54
  Let's get them punted off. The more the bear, the more the
• 2:56
  bear, definitely. All I'll say is if the Arctic
• 2:59
  Whiskey Club gets sponsorship before the W11.
• 3:03
  How, how did that start? You're the founder of the club.
• 3:05
  How did that start and and what's the background?
• 3:07
  Yeah, so basically since 2015 I've been helping my my friends
• 3:12
  come company. So he has adventure trips across
• 3:15
  the world. There's French Alps,
• 3:18
  Kilimanjaro, Mount Tuch Bal and also the Arctic Circle.
• 3:22
  So for some reason always got all the really cool stuff, not
• 3:25
  the really warm stuff. It's nice to do, but yes.
• 3:28
  So since 2015 we've taken charity groups to add a circle
• 3:32
  to, to, to basically fundraise for the respective teams.
• 3:34
  And it involves 3 days out on the ice, hauling your own sleds,
• 3:39
  carrying your own kit, camping out overnight.
• 3:42
  And as a as a guiding team, we're all whiskey drinkers.
• 3:47
  So we almost make it an, an annual thing that we take out a
• 3:50
  bottle and buy the campfire at night.
• 3:52
  We basically shared Rams. And then we also do it very
• 3:56
  responsibly because alcohol and cold weather don't always mix.
• 4:00
  So a few runs by by the campfire.
• 4:04
  See what you think. Is it getting back home, the
• 4:06
  whole thing? Yeah, yeah, it's nice.
• 4:08
  It's there's something very nice at like -30 by the fire having
• 4:12
  nice warm DRAM. It's just there's something
• 4:14
  very, very Scottish about it almost.
• 4:18
  It's that kind of open fire, the the those.
• 4:21
  And if you're taking people that you don't, you don't know, the
• 4:23
  best way to get to know somebody new, especially you're doing
• 4:25
  something that's physically demanded, I guess, not that I do
• 4:28
  that very often, would be to sit around, give them a drama and
• 4:30
  get to know them, of course, after a hard day's work.
• 4:34
  Well, The thing is, after this is, you know, by the end of the
• 4:37
  podcast, we're going to ask Leses not which one of us you'd
• 4:40
  like to share a drum with, but which one would you like to
• 4:42
  share a wee bivawack tent with? I'm.
• 4:45
  Gonna be I'm gonna be a. Feed to a bear 'cause you're
• 4:48
  making a. Sacrifice, You know I.
• 4:51
  Mean that that will be a concern and polar bears up where?
• 4:54
  Up where you. Are we are just slightly South
• 4:58
  of where the bears are. So we, we, we look to make it as
• 5:01
  safe and accessible as we can for the charities.
• 5:03
  But generally, if you can run faster than the slowest person,
• 5:07
  you're, you're gonna be alright. So that's.
• 5:09
  Fine. I'm not coming next year.
• 5:11
  That's gross out. Hi, whiskey Stories.
• 5:14
  I play football, I play football on Monday.
• 5:16
  I'm hobbling about the Edinburgh today.
• 5:18
  It's not not good. Whiskey stories that day
• 5:20
  explanation. It would be alright I guess.
• 5:21
  Wouldn't I think a whiskey story is warm bath.
• 5:23
  That's probably preferable. I felt it.
• 5:26
  To be fair, I felt like an Arctic expedition for me walking
• 5:29
  in the diggers tonight after 28° heating in manual.
• 5:32
  I like the notion that it just reminds me the story of the two
• 5:35
  guys in Safari, which is obviously nothing to do with
• 5:37
  going to, you know, and one boy's putting on putting on the
• 5:39
  trainers and the other fella says you'll know, outrun a tiger
• 5:42
  with it as long as it run faster than you.
• 5:46
  Exactly, exactly. Well, listen, we've got, we've
• 5:49
  got, we've got 2 two drivers come this evening.
• 5:53
  But Ross, you've got a drama in front of you.
• 5:55
  I have a healthy looking drama. They must have missed me in the
• 6:00
  pub. So I've came in, I want to show
• 6:03
  it to go for and I've picked out the Aaron Barrel Reserve.
• 6:06
  Aaron, you know, one of my favourite distilleries being an
• 6:10
  Air Sherman, you know, distillery.
• 6:12
  I used to go over to Aaron a lot before I knew whiskey.
• 6:15
  The Barrel Reserve I think is 55.8% and I did ask for a single
• 6:20
  done. Well, yeah, but they've missed
• 6:21
  me so much that they've given me 1/2 pint.
• 6:24
  Is it? So I've got an excellent drama
• 6:28
  of Aaron. Now wait a minute, is Aaron up
• 6:30
  the ladders? So not well, actually.
• 6:33
  Actually, it was you. All you had to do is get on two
• 6:35
  steppy toes. Maybe it's just maybe because I
• 6:37
  always think that they might get a bigger one if you pick one up
• 6:40
  on the top shelf so that they don't have to go back up.
• 6:44
  Not a bad argument. This would certainly be evidence
• 6:46
  to support that argument. What about yourself?
• 6:48
  Well, I'm guessing I'll and I'll line up now.
• 6:49
  I'll let you pick this talk this because you picked it giving you
• 6:52
  a bit of a Glen Murray tasting quite here.
• 6:54
  So I I did have people up the up the ladders and scrabbling
• 6:58
  behind I I annoyed the whole bar staff.
• 7:01
  Basically what we've got is I've got just the Chardonnay cask
• 7:07
  finish, I've got the distillery bottle in 15 year old and then
• 7:12
  I've got a private cask petered Marsala finish.
• 7:16
  So interesting. That's what we've gone from.
• 7:19
  That's two of us. We've got that.
• 7:20
  So you picked up. Yeah, I've picked that for you
• 7:22
  because I and I picked it because I know Glenn Murray
• 7:24
  obviously will get into it, but very big on kind of wine
• 7:27
  finishes. Massively.
• 7:29
  And particularly the masala as well, 'cause.
• 7:31
  That was a ball your own, wasn't it?
• 7:33
  Was it? It might be.
• 7:34
  So this is one of the few pubs, uh, where you're generally the
• 7:37
  owners and the staff will go and get bottles from distilleries
• 7:40
  and put them back. But on your website 1897 it said
• 7:45
  Marsala cask was one of the first casks that really.
• 7:49
  So every day is a school day. Note to self reads on the
• 7:53
  website. Well, that's why we've got a
• 7:55
  header research. I just had a research.
• 7:57
  When I when I looked at the whiskey lesson, I saw there was
• 7:59
  a masala cask, Glen Murray. I thought we have to go fast and
• 8:02
  before. You before we go kind of into
• 8:05
  into your career and your story and how how you are where you
• 8:07
  are now. Have you lads got much past
• 8:09
  experience drinking? Glenn Murray, Obviously, if I'd
• 8:12
  only bachelor on the podcast. I'll be honest, and I think this
• 8:15
  is one of the things for, for, for yourselves guys, is that
• 8:19
  like this has been a whiskey journey for Angus and myself.
• 8:21
  We we, we, we started this podcast over a year ago where we
• 8:25
  didn't know anything about whiskey except for we knew what
• 8:27
  we like to drink and what's happened for us both and a lot
• 8:31
  for myself as well as I've gone through so many different sort
• 8:33
  of perceptions that you hold sometimes and breakthrough it.
• 8:37
  And one of the things I would be Ally Baxter really opened up.
• 8:40
  What was it? Is it what's the what's the vine
• 8:45
  twisted vine that was a cracker. And again, Glenn, Glenn Murray,
• 8:49
  I'd be honest, it's like it's one of these drams where it
• 8:51
  probably from an outsider you see it so often in supermarket.
• 8:56
  Shelves. There's an iconic bottom, yeah.
• 8:58
  But at the same time, that can sometimes hold like why would
• 9:01
  you drink that when you know, you could go to go to Asda and
• 9:04
  get it? Whereas and, and that's been
• 9:07
  something where I've completely flipped on in the sense that
• 9:10
  actually, you know, if it's available at that level at that
• 9:14
  price as well as, and it's a cracking drum, it's an absolute
• 9:17
  bargain. This one I I would recommend for
• 9:19
  any listener to the Glen Murray teen.
• 9:22
  It's All American Oak. I think it's it's 47.1% or 48.1
• 9:27
  percent 40. 72472. Very well.
• 9:30
  We always like when Ross it's. Annoying.
• 9:31
  That's annoying, but it's probably one of the first
• 9:34
  American whiskeys that really turned me on that journey going
• 9:37
  from European oak to go for something more clean car.
• 9:40
  Absolutely adore the DRAM and they've done a port with 25,
• 9:43
  which then became a port with 21, which also were excellent
• 9:48
  drams and well worth trying because again, as you see the
• 9:51
  bottle, everybody see that interesting bottle shape.
• 9:54
  You see the dark blue, That's what you associate.
• 9:56
  And I feel like Elgin, I used to probably before I went up to
• 9:59
  space side. I must have thought that Elgin
• 10:01
  was in the middle of space side because everything's got elegant
• 10:04
  on it would just been Romacker, Gordon, Macphail, etcetera.
• 10:08
  But actually haven't gone up to Elgin been in the High Street,
• 10:11
  see where it's from. I've not done a distillery, but
• 10:14
  somewhere and. I'm frustrating, sorry.
• 10:16
  A frustrating one for me as a as a whiskey in Scott, Scottish,
• 10:19
  Scottish whiskey, we have so many different distilleries
• 10:23
  where you read the distillery name and you go, how is that
• 10:25
  pronounced? And yet everyone.
• 10:27
  Glenn Murray. Yeah, it's the easiest one.
• 10:31
  It's like, well, it's not. It shouldn't even the.
• 10:33
  Murray Council. But then the Americans have got.
• 10:35
  Money like all right, yeah yeah yeah.
• 10:37
  And it's and it so, you know from all these different
• 10:39
  spellings and difficult ones and Gallic and all that kind of
• 10:41
  stuff. Glenn Murray.
• 10:43
  But yet Glenn Murray is a It's the.
• 10:44
  Flip side of that always cause just I know you know someone
• 10:47
  have worked before would be leaching yeah you know, but you
• 10:50
  know just Oliver we sampler that ladig if you don't think.
• 10:52
  Or something. Absolutely.
• 10:54
  Glenn Gira. Yeah, yeah, I've been guilty of
• 10:57
  that myself. Gary, OK.
• 10:58
  Bye Ross. You asked me if I had any
• 10:59
  memories of drinking Glen Murray.
• 11:01
  There was a there was a train journey a couple of years ago
• 11:04
  where like you said, as you say. Stories.
• 11:06
  That's great. You, you, you find it quite
• 11:08
  often, as you say, in supermarkets and a supermarket
• 11:11
  very close to Inverness train station and they just, Yep, the,
• 11:14
  the, the Glen Murray, the, the distillery bottle.
• 11:16
  In classic, probably it was. Cool.
• 11:18
  That was purchased for a train journey back to Edinburgh and
• 11:21
  I'm going to pass a I'm going to show a picture of that.
• 11:24
  There's a pic, there's a picture.
• 11:26
  There's quite an infamous picture of me.
• 11:29
  Enjoy the bottle on the train. Oh, we enjoy the bottle.
• 11:31
  And again, it wasn't, it wasn't the only bottle, but legal it
• 11:34
  was. Yeah.
• 11:34
  Well, at the time, as the IT was it was it was totally confirm it
• 11:38
  was legal. What I will say is no laws were
• 11:40
  broken from this picture that you're about to see.
• 11:43
  I will say, well, get this, that this will be I may make this a
• 11:46
  picture. It looks like it's a.
• 11:48
  For the for the audio listener. But alright, I will say, despite
• 11:52
  him not holding a glass, he did have a glass he wasn't drinking
• 11:56
  it from, wasn't he wasn't drinking it.
• 11:58
  Not coming to a Whiskey Stories Instagram near you?
• 12:01
  Yeah, that is. The picture to check out, but
• 12:03
  yeah, I think so. But, but Steve, you, you have
• 12:06
  not worked for Glen Murray all your days, but you've been in
• 12:10
  whiskey for a very long time, starting off at Diageo and
• 12:13
  moving on and being around. So I mean, what's your journey
• 12:16
  been like before even got into working in whiskey?
• 12:18
  What was the sort of entry like into the industry for yourself
• 12:21
  or into whiskey? It sounds a wee bit cliche, but
• 12:24
  there's an element. I've been kind of born in it.
• 12:26
  So my mum worked for Valentine's.
• 12:32
  Oh, which then evolved into ally, which then evolved into oh
• 12:36
  goodness me where the Chavez and then Perno yeah, and and my
• 12:39
  father, God, God, God dressed him had a had a bar.
• 12:43
  We're interestingly enough I'm from Ayrshire as well.
• 12:45
  Very good Whereabouts in Ayrshire?
• 12:47
  Beef N Ayrshire. Very good.
• 12:48
  I'm N Ayrshire as well. I'm from everything.
• 12:50
  He's the most an honest man you'll ever see from him.
• 12:53
  But those, I guess I'd appreciate that.
• 12:55
  But Ross, you, you, you're gonna get some of this stories then
• 12:59
  that that, you know, when you get a bit older and you start
• 13:02
  listening and, you know, certainly my mum who worked in
• 13:06
  West get a good life out of it and and and and had a great
• 13:08
  career and always recommended it.
• 13:10
  But as a child, you know better. Yeah, I'm not really going to
• 13:12
  work in that. Why would I work in the same
• 13:14
  place as my parents? So.
• 13:16
  So what does he do, sort of, for Ballantine's?
• 13:17
  So, oh, she worked mainly admin stock control, then moved up
• 13:22
  into stock control and that kind of stuff.
• 13:24
  So, but where I, I grew up and, and again Russell get this and
• 13:29
  was surrounded by chemical plants.
• 13:31
  So big, big chemical companies like Ross and Beecham and ICI.
• 13:35
  So and I was just these places completely by which me, you
• 13:39
  know, you could sit and look and they must have, you know, 24
• 13:42
  hours a day. There was steam coming out of
• 13:43
  places and there was always noise and light and, and so I, I
• 13:49
  was just completely taken by them and and I was sent for
• 13:53
  music lessons. So for my sins, I'm I learned
• 13:56
  how to play the guitar really badly.
• 13:59
  And we used to go over the hill from, from beef.
• 14:02
  You would go over and Passover ICI and this company, just for
• 14:08
  context, this site was 16 square miles.
• 14:10
  Wow. It was just a city of stuff.
• 14:14
  Yeah. So that was kinda right.
• 14:18
  I'm going to, I'm going to enter school and love chemistry.
• 14:21
  And I was crap at everything else.
• 14:22
  I'm not sure if I can get away with saying something crap at
• 14:24
  everything else but but so when on and studied chemistry worked
• 14:28
  in the chemical industry for a few years and like everything
• 14:32
  else it just fell victim to cheaper meters from the Far East
• 14:37
  and everything goes into decline.
• 14:38
  So after that you kind of think, Mum, wasn't he talking so much
• 14:43
  rubbish? You look about and and from
• 14:45
  there started starting Diageo. Brilliant and when it comes to
• 14:49
  drinking whiskey and things like that because one of the common
• 14:51
  things that about a trope in in the whiskey with people who've
• 14:55
  worked at it. It's funny because a lot of
• 14:58
  people will tell you whiskey sometimes skips a generation.
• 15:01
  Yeah, I was talking about that not that long because an
• 15:03
  interesting connection we have is my my grandfather was worked
• 15:06
  about, worked for Ballantine as well with the, with the, the
• 15:09
  maltings in Kirkcaldy. That was that was supplied the
• 15:12
  most of the Ballantine Ballantine's brand's portfolio.
• 15:16
  But interestingly, my father can't has no inclination to
• 15:20
  whiskey whatsoever, even though he worked for the company too.
• 15:22
  I was Speaking of when I was over in India, we were talking
• 15:24
  about that and how it's like it, it is a thing.
• 15:26
  Actually, we more you hear about people saying that my father was
• 15:29
  in whiskey or my grandfather but skipped a generation.
• 15:31
  So did did you like whiskey when you were when you were a sort of
• 15:36
  young adult trying to no. In a word, no, but I suppose
• 15:41
  being where I'm from in the country and and you know, it was
• 15:45
  working class towns with working class people and and so
• 15:49
  everything you saw in the back bar was going to be a bells or a
• 15:52
  grouse and there's absolutely nothing wrong with these
• 15:55
  products and if you. Did work in a place I've worked
• 15:57
  in Paisley and it was a Chavez plant.
• 15:59
  Every day worked there, served. He was buying it as well.
• 16:03
  And if you command that can Johnny Walker.
• 16:05
  Yeah. But you know, before they left,
• 16:07
  I imagine it was very popular with the locals because it
• 16:10
  employed most of the people there.
• 16:11
  Absolutely no. When you talk about like a
• 16:14
  career and and working in chemical where where a chemical
• 16:17
  engineer. No, no, I was a chemist so
• 16:19
  working labs and then suddenly realised it didn't pay
• 16:22
  particularly well. So so then I moved in making a
• 16:26
  just like plant management right stuff.
• 16:28
  So I was never bright enough to get chemical engineer.
• 16:30
  Unless you're you're a fireman. Firefighter.
• 16:33
  Firefighter. Sorry, yeah.
• 16:35
  But yeah, yeah, been there that for 22 years now.
• 16:39
  Wow. Yeah, and I.
• 16:40
  Can imagine it's a firefighter for 22 years.
• 16:43
  You can't be into whiskey that much all the time I would
• 16:45
  assume. You got this amount of time off,
• 16:49
  it's actually pretty good. And you say play service fire
• 16:51
  services? Yeah, and within the service, a
• 16:54
  lot of really informed whiskey enthusiasts like whiskey and the
• 16:58
  fire service just seems to be a thing.
• 17:00
  Because I know Police Scotland have like a Police Scotland
• 17:04
  Whiskey Club. There's such a thing with the.
• 17:06
  Knowledge, but I know that there's a lot of a lot of our
• 17:08
  guys meet up at the mole whiskey site and stuff and they'll go
• 17:11
  the other thinking watch days out.
• 17:14
  So it's very much a thing, but I'm not sure if there's an
• 17:16
  actual whiskey society in the service.
• 17:18
  There's certainly we can set up. Oh.
• 17:20
  No, I didn't. That's why he's had to go over
• 17:22
  after an uptick to get drunk. But what was it like for you?
• 17:26
  I mean, when you when you're growing up and things like that,
• 17:28
  was it was whiskey, it was a drink that you enjoyed having or
• 17:31
  is it something that took a little bit of time, was an
• 17:33
  introduction into it? Yeah, it took a lot of time.
• 17:36
  So I kind of grew up seeing everyone else that it was mainly
• 17:38
  your bourbons, it was your Jack Daniels and Coke on Night Sight,
• 17:41
  all that kind of stuff. And like you say, it was all
• 17:43
  your your bells and your grouse that when you're that age, it
• 17:47
  seems to burn your throat and it kind of puts you off whiskey.
• 17:50
  And as you get older, you get a different palette for different
• 17:52
  things and maybe do you honestly maybe start earning a bit more
• 17:55
  money and you can try different things as well.
• 17:57
  So my palette kind of began getting developed late, late
• 18:01
  20s. I'm good friends with John
• 18:04
  Laurie who was The MGM of Glen Turret, so.
• 18:08
  I've now we're Glen Roth I've. I've known John for a long time
• 18:10
  and when John began working with the Glen Turret that can he peak
• 18:14
  my interest because he was talking about the wider world
• 18:16
  of, you know, Scots and stuff and what was out there.
• 18:19
  So probably late late 20s I began to get any whiskey.
• 18:23
  That's a great friend to have if you want a Dick there to win to
• 18:25
  win. So he's a great guy.
• 18:27
  Well, and also we have to thank friend of the show, huge friend
• 18:30
  of the show, Vicky Wicky Elliott for putting us in touch.
• 18:33
  It was Vicky that actually made the connection.
• 18:35
  Well, me McLaren and she said that I found somebody that I
• 18:38
  think would you would it would be very interesting on it.
• 18:40
  Now, Angus, we we've been we actually, in fact, I can't
• 18:45
  believe I've forgot I've not already said this, but
• 18:47
  congratulations to the whiskey stories podcast for enough
• 18:51
  10,000 downloads over over the weekend as we're recording.
• 18:55
  Congratulations. Yes, well done, guys, we've done
• 18:57
  it. So here's to here's to us.
• 18:58
  But one of the things is, is we've always monitored where our
• 19:02
  listeners are coming from and what different countries.
• 19:04
  And we've had a few listeners pop up in Africa, South America,
• 19:08
  we've got a listener in Russia. Very keen listeners.
• 19:11
  Yeah, I think he's listened, right.
• 19:13
  Yeah. So.
• 19:14
  Yeah. And one of the things we've
• 19:16
  always said is the Arctic and the Antarctic.
• 19:19
  And I think it's the old, it's the old confusion between
• 19:22
  Penguins and polar bears. That's my Graham's geography
• 19:25
  let's him down. I mean, I was like, we've found
• 19:27
  one. We've found the list of Yeah in
• 19:30
  the Arctic. And Angus had a research.
• 19:32
  Who's quite to tell by other part of the world, Graham.
• 19:34
  No, because it's the seven continents.
• 19:36
  The one continent we've yet to crack is the Antarctic.
• 19:38
  But I'm convinced this. Well, there must be somebody
• 19:41
  down there. I'm pretty much confident after
• 19:43
  hearing this episode. There'll be a bunch of guys.
• 19:45
  There's not much else to do in a research station down there.
• 19:48
  Yeah, but some are going the Arctic Whiskey Club.
• 19:50
  What about the Antarctic? Whiskey club we've been going
• 19:52
  for. Many more years so they might
• 19:54
  get in touch, but that's, that's fantastic.
• 19:56
  And the big thank you to Vicky for again, all our help and
• 19:59
  continued support and being able to put us in touch for yourself.
• 20:02
  But what was the jump like then? For yourself, then what was?
• 20:07
  What was the job at the Azure? Well, there's something.
• 20:10
  That in itself is interesting and I think always kinda, I
• 20:16
  think over the years I've learned, you know, in whiskey,
• 20:18
  you know, people can ask you well right, house whiskey made
• 20:21
  and I know I'm kind of segwayed here a wee bit off in a
• 20:23
  different direction, but you know, it's only three things go
• 20:26
  in. You can't, there's only so much
• 20:29
  you can do to make it signed into it, right?
• 20:30
  OK, so you put three things in and you do 3 things to it,
• 20:32
  right? What are you doing a Tuesday?
• 20:34
  You know what you do the following.
• 20:38
  Week, it is true. You do it all.
• 20:39
  Year just so it's it's kind of if there's one thing I've
• 20:45
  learned and it was from that very first day almost in in the
• 20:48
  eyes used to keep moving. Yeah.
• 20:50
  You know, it's almost like the daft analogy if this shark stops
• 20:53
  swimming and not comparing this other shark anyway, but if it
• 20:55
  stops swimming it dies. So you've got to keep going.
• 20:58
  So anyway, I was I was employed to look after predestination at
• 21:04
  Portland Dash, the now defunct Portland Dash right in Glasgow.
• 21:07
  And and that was fine and and and the transition was quite
• 21:11
  easy because you know when you you maybe do a wee bit, you
• 21:16
  know, you maybe do a wee bit of reading and and any of the days
• 21:18
  a chemical process you have to be fair.
• 21:20
  It's that that's what it is. Particularly a great a grain
• 21:22
  distillery. It's not, it's not very
• 21:24
  glamorous. It's.
• 21:25
  Not glamorous, it's. You've got a quota to me.
• 21:27
  I actually. And you don't see, there's not
• 21:29
  the pretty, you know, you're only the pretty copper pot
• 21:32
  still. Nobody cares about nobody cares
• 21:34
  about your grain species are as your liquid Easter powdered
• 21:38
  yeast of it. Nowadays people are really into
• 21:40
  it, these artisanal distillers, but I'm imagining being a big
• 21:44
  player in World Blended, Westgate at that point, Port
• 21:46
  Dundas, you had, you were busy. You were, oh, you were very,
• 21:49
  very busy. So at that point, I mean, up
• 21:50
  until it closed, I think it was about 4550 million a year.
• 21:53
  But about a week before I was due to start, the phone goes and
• 21:58
  it was my boss. There was a guy called MM
• 22:00
  O'Donnell. I don't know if Mike's still
• 22:01
  with the business and he's delighted to have you on board.
• 22:06
  Team are really psyched. You know, I bet you're starting.
• 22:10
  How do you feel about running a bridge and?
• 22:14
  I heard that in your voice. It's still terrible, still like
• 22:18
  kindness. That'd be great.
• 22:19
  Thanks very much. And, and at that point, you go
• 22:22
  from I'm going to, I'm going to storm this road to what have I
• 22:27
  done? I'm a good bridge on site.
• 22:30
  Dundas Hill, yeah. So I, I don't, I don't know how
• 22:34
  much of it is still there because I don't pass the site
• 22:37
  that often now, but there was an old piece of the site retained
• 22:41
  and I think it was because it was perhaps listed and it was
• 22:44
  old engineer's workshop. It's that right in the corner,
• 22:46
  faced right onto the motorway, the MA as you get past I'm.
• 22:49
  Going to say for people that don't know it was off, it was
• 22:51
  known as there's the Glaswegid that has been bottled as before
• 22:54
  the Glasgow grain distillerator. And so I didn't Dassel Cooperage
• 22:59
  just sat sat next to there. So, you know, what am I gonna
• 23:03
  do? There's a week to go.
• 23:04
  I don't have another job to go to.
• 23:06
  You're my. Eyes so you just got thrust into
• 23:08
  suddenly going from chemical plants and to be honest, like
• 23:10
  you said that, you know, the chemist, the the chemical plant
• 23:13
  side of it versus a, a massive industrial 'cause that like
• 23:16
  you're saying, Ross grain whiskey is produced and it's
• 23:19
  industrial. Level, yeah, it's continuous
• 23:21
  procession. You can't switch it off.
• 23:23
  Correct. So you've got that.
• 23:24
  So there's very little bit to go and then you you see distilling
• 23:29
  and you look at whiskey at hundreds of years old, 200 odd
• 23:31
  years longer and what have you that we've done this in
• 23:34
  Scotland, but yet the process is a a grain whiskey have gone into
• 23:38
  modernisation and all the process there.
• 23:40
  But cooperage and cooperage is still and Angus can justify I
• 23:44
  can either way go. I mean, did you have a go at
• 23:48
  physically doing any of the cooperating?
• 23:50
  Myself absolutely not. Well, do you know, it's, it's,
• 23:53
  it wasn't, it wasn't what I would see to be a particularly
• 24:00
  unionised or militant, but it certainly wasn't.
• 24:03
  But a Cooper's Hammond driver were his Hammond driver.
• 24:07
  You didn't touch them. So that was absolutely fine.
• 24:11
  And you know, there's me day one stood there like the boy, first
• 24:14
  day, quite literally first day at school because I was
• 24:17
  absolutely terrified. And you get in there, you know,
• 24:20
  can I pardon the French will be, but I didn't know a hog's head
• 24:22
  from a hog's arse. Genuinely didn't know.
• 24:26
  Yeah, well, you're sitting between one and the other.
• 24:29
  So he's a butt. It's yes, there's a few stories
• 24:34
  there, but. I mean.
• 24:36
  Coopers. Coopers are still paid by the
• 24:38
  cask in a lot of circumstances. Yeah, there's a lot of piece
• 24:42
  work salary, a bigger part now Diageo salary there's which was
• 24:49
  interesting. You know, earning.
• 24:52
  Potential was was was seriously cut but so so the kind of secret
• 24:57
  there was there is little point in me turning up and telling
• 25:00
  somebody what they're doing wrong with raising a cask.
• 25:02
  You know, because in those days it was still I don't see any of
• 25:07
  it now it's just great big what were called shooks of bourbon
• 25:10
  staves come over. So I'm guessing that was because
• 25:12
  it was much more efficient to, to ship them.
• 25:14
  And then the the casks were raised at the cooperage and and,
• 25:18
  and, and, and there we went. So it was, it was then just
• 25:21
  about under just getting in and and and understanding the
• 25:24
  people. And the assumption would have
• 25:25
  been being with a grain distillery, if you was a
• 25:27
  cooperage, was that cooperage used for all of the Azures
• 25:30
  portfolio or was it just used for the for the grain
• 25:32
  production? No, it would have been all of
• 25:34
  the Azures. So there was the Das Hill in
• 25:38
  Glasgow and there was Casper Bridge over in over in Alloa.
• 25:42
  Yeah, ironically where I live now.
• 25:44
  But. And then they both closed to
• 25:46
  make way for canvas. Yeah, it's nice.
• 25:49
  That's just the. Campus guys that you had to go
• 25:52
  because it was campus at the at the Edinburgh Whiskey Festival.
• 25:56
  The Canvas, the guy from Canvas was there with a couple of
• 25:59
  apprentices and they, they, there's a video I think you put
• 26:02
  up on, there's a few videos of Angus grunting away.
• 26:05
  Right on, trying to build away with a sweat, driven off me,
• 26:08
  trapped about 14 minutes. Yeah, bloody hard work,
• 26:12
  especially for a kind of white collar boy like me.
• 26:15
  It was. People have the assumption for
• 26:16
  people again that are are new to whiskey that are less than you
• 26:19
  know, when we talk about maturation for grain whiskey as
• 26:22
  well, it's generally assumed to be a lower quality of tasks
• 26:25
  that's used then the term refill can be second fill that could be
• 26:30
  4 for 5th. And so my assumption always was
• 26:34
  that grain whiskey was put into wood that wasn't particularly
• 26:37
  active a lot of the time because again, it was made to for
• 26:40
  constituency purpose to be a part of the bigger picture and
• 26:43
  just have a cuprage on that site.
• 26:44
  They would have, I saw a hard drug, a lot of knackered wood to
• 26:47
  get a player. But if they're doing all but
• 26:49
  also a lot of exceptional expensive.
• 26:51
  But on the flip side of that, without, you know, we we've
• 26:54
  talked about grain whiskey there in the last sort of 10 minutes
• 26:57
  about mass produced and put into knackered wood.
• 27:01
  That's your first storage. But at the same time, we've all
• 27:03
  had some fantastic grain whiskey.
• 27:06
  And it's like if it gets to, I can't remember what the someone
• 27:09
  has talked about on the pod where you know, if you get to an
• 27:14
  age of eight to 10 in a in a bourbon cask of grain whiskey,
• 27:19
  you're sort of entering into us a really nice flavour profile.
• 27:23
  And then on or onwards and others 33 year olds.
• 27:26
  Grain is so affordable. Yeah.
• 27:28
  How much old? How many?
• 27:29
  How many 30 year old N British or Canvas and Ember Gordon have
• 27:32
  we had in the last couple years? I'd be like, that is
• 27:34
  outstanding. What do you mean it's less than
• 27:36
  £100 a bottle? I mean, it was a Port Dundas,
• 27:39
  the closed distillery that you were in charge of in this pub.
• 27:42
  They had a golden cast, Port Lundas.
• 27:44
  That was my drama. The year 2024, probably.
• 27:49
  Yeah. And, and we had Mark Davidson
• 27:51
  on. Maybe 2023, Sorry.
• 27:52
  Mark Davidson, jolly Topper, a big shout.
• 27:54
  I mean, he listens to the podcast quite regular and and he
• 27:57
  does these blind tastings. And one of the things that he
• 27:59
  said was that when he worked at Carden Heads, it used to be the
• 28:03
  Edinburgh School of Language used to have these international
• 28:06
  students would come to Edinburgh and these people would be male,
• 28:10
  female, sort of ranging between any age up to sort of 2526 years
• 28:14
  old, Italian and Spanish. Would you do a tasting for them?
• 28:19
  Just take them through a general Scotch.
• 28:21
  A lot of time they're not not knowing what you know.
• 28:22
  What difference does it make if it's a grain whiskey versus a a
• 28:25
  single malt? What difference does it make if
• 28:26
  it's that brand versus this brand?
• 28:28
  But he said nine times out of 10 for entry level whiskey drinkers
• 28:31
  when he did the as a blind taste.
• 28:33
  And what one did you prefer best?
• 28:35
  Most people came out with I like the grey, yeah.
• 28:38
  Just the. Flavour profile of it vanilla's
• 28:40
  and just light. Easily anybody that says you
• 28:42
  don't like whiskey, start start with grain whiskey and then
• 28:46
  you'll end up all your experience getting into whiskey
• 28:48
  coming back round the grain whiskey again.
• 28:50
  And the other thing is I've come back to my trip to India is
• 28:52
  grain whiskey is very popular out there for twofold #1 is it?
• 28:56
  Again, it's like the, the whiskey that they make out in
• 28:58
  India can sometimes use different grains.
• 29:00
  But secondly, imported grain whiskey for two reasons is you
• 29:04
  can import grain whiskey into India in bulk and also the cost
• 29:08
  of it in bulk versus the cost of a blend, a blinded Scotch.
• 29:12
  And what you'll sometimes see is maybe they could use it in the
• 29:14
  blending process with other small brands.
• 29:16
  Yeah. So when you when you worked at
• 29:18
  Port Dundas at the Coop Bridge, what kind of numbers in terms of
• 29:21
  how many Coopers were you talking and.
• 29:22
  There were 14 total, but there were Coopers and then there were
• 29:25
  operators. So operators were essentially
• 29:28
  labourers. And how many casks were you say
• 29:31
  in a week was a Cooper got? Making or you.
• 29:33
  Would be able to say 100. Casks a week. 100 per person.
• 29:36
  So yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's no thanks, no
• 29:39
  thanks. That's about the entry.
• 29:40
  I don't want to experience that that anywhere that you're going.
• 29:45
  Trekking through the snow have a drama hard working cold weather
• 29:51
  Ross it's. One of the It's one of the jobs
• 29:53
  that is easily forgotten about. But it's also what's great about
• 29:55
  the whiskey industry. And it's like you're looking at
• 29:56
  Port Dundas and saying like the massive way.
• 29:59
  But yeah, the whiskey industry there, there still is no way
• 30:02
  other than to build a cash by hand.
• 30:04
  Yeah. And that that there's something
• 30:05
  about where you can try and try and try.
• 30:07
  And they'll be at at places like Diageo and I'm sure we'll get
• 30:10
  onto it. Glen Turner, Glenn Murray and a
• 30:12
  few of the other distilleries that you've worked in and things
• 30:13
  like that. There will always be processes
• 30:15
  where you could say like we could actually automate this a
• 30:18
  bit more. We could scientifically prove
• 30:20
  it. We can get engineers in, they
• 30:21
  could do that and do this. But at the end of the day, that
• 30:23
  is still going to be that old ancient way of of having to do
• 30:27
  it and. I would watch them.
• 30:28
  They would start with a kept called a windless, which
• 30:30
  essentially is just like a big, you know, a big steel wire like.
• 30:34
  A hoop start. To I, they just start to build
• 30:35
  the cask up right and you would see them carefully selecting,
• 30:39
  you know, and it was old. It was old Glaswegian coupons
• 30:42
  with broad and Nara and Broad and Nara.
• 30:44
  They would be, they would be picking the width of the Steve
• 30:47
  to give you the pitch of the cask.
• 30:48
  You know, it was just, it was all done by and it was just an
• 30:50
  absolute pleasure to watch it. There was an old fella I worked
• 30:54
  with and and maybe do you know what, he was spinning me a yarn,
• 30:56
  but somehow I doubt Neil Mccarroll, his name was and his
• 30:59
  apprenticeship was nine years, you know, and you think these
• 31:02
  guys are studying this for far? Long yeah, you know, and
• 31:05
  compared I mean, we you hear these stories in Japan of kind
• 31:08
  of sushi sushi chefs that serve A10 year apprentice and you go
• 31:11
  wow, but I don't think. There's have any raw fish off?
• 31:13
  No, no, no, no. But what I'm saying is we we
• 31:17
  hear this and we go, that's just unreasonable.
• 31:19
  And you know these guys. Feel the words increasing.
• 31:22
  Go. Yes, that'll work.
• 31:23
  Yes, that'll work. But look, I mean, when you, when
• 31:25
  you think about it, you know, as you're saying that's, that's the
• 31:27
  wood management for Diageo. So it's what's going in there.
• 31:30
  And and you're saying to yourself, there'll be there'll
• 31:33
  be plenty of people who that were involved in the wood, I
• 31:36
  take it so the the wood management process would have
• 31:39
  been somebody centrally in Diageo organising what what
• 31:44
  would is being sent to the different good bridges.
• 31:47
  And then blending teams would have still been there, I guess.
• 31:50
  So it's not something I was involved in then.
• 31:52
  So I suppose of I've got to be careful what I say of.
• 31:56
  Course, of course, yeah. I don't know how it all
• 31:58
  operates, but but now I mean I'll look at the way I look at
• 32:01
  it in the role I have just now is I start with you know, you'll
• 32:04
  look at your depletions, so you'll look at what is exiting a
• 32:07
  business. So you'll look at right, okay,
• 32:10
  you know for three-year old I'll be looking at 20/20/22.
• 32:13
  How many 4th fills have I got there?
• 32:15
  Many 5th fills, how many are likely to start exiting the
• 32:18
  business and and then we'll adopt A strategy of, well, how
• 32:20
  many of you I want you to replace, how many of you I want
• 32:22
  you to rejuvenate and, and, and so that process, then you'll
• 32:25
  decide exactly how you're going to allocate that.
• 32:28
  It's a recipe if you've got a core range product that's been a
• 32:31
  success you build a recipe. Brian Kinsman has the plan for
• 32:35
  Glenfedic 12 in 40 years time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 32:39
  You know, that production, those orders of whether it's refill
• 32:44
  American oak, refill cash, refill French oak, whatever.
• 32:46
  They're using Jacob Cook for Glen going production, a lot of
• 32:50
  what they're buying isn't very glamorous, but it keeps the
• 32:52
  business going. It keeps that that, that that
• 32:55
  recognizable label on the shelf and Johnny Walker Red Label and
• 32:58
  Johnny Walker Black Label, more than any other products in the
• 33:01
  world, in the Western world at that point was probably OK, how
• 33:04
  do we keep Johnny Walker Red Label in production?
• 33:08
  OK, we need X amount of said grain whiskey at four or five
• 33:12
  years old in four years. Except yeah, really interesting,
• 33:15
  but can all be done in a database nowadays.
• 33:17
  Yeah, but you're saying about done and this is what goes back
• 33:20
  now I have to be workout whether I'm right here.
• 33:24
  I've had a couple of drams at the time.
• 33:26
  It's going to start even better. It's going to sound even better.
• 33:32
  OK, I'd had a couple of drams at a time and I was in the
• 33:34
  Highlander Inn, right? So these are the great whiskey
• 33:37
  stories so long before we'd started in the Whiskey Stories
• 33:44
  podcast and managed to convince my current wife to we should
• 33:50
  head up to space side for a week trip away.
• 33:52
  I hadn't mentioned that until the day that we were leaving.
• 33:55
  Oh, by the way, it's for the space side festival.
• 33:57
  This is on at the moment. We've had a great time.
• 33:59
  What a happy coincidence, a lovely coincidence that we had,
• 34:01
  but we went through different places.
• 34:03
  Unfortunately, she doesn't drive.
• 34:04
  So I was doing a lot of the driving, but we we picked right
• 34:08
  Saturday night, I think it was Saturday early evening.
• 34:10
  Get to the Highlander and and there's a local there and I'd
• 34:13
  love anybody who's listened to the podcast who knows who I'm
• 34:16
  talking about. His name is Dodd, right?
• 34:19
  And he works for Diageo and he is a local and he's born and
• 34:23
  raised in Craig Ellicott. And basically I got chatting to
• 34:27
  him and he kind of, it's quite funny Spirit space at festival.
• 34:29
  There's Germans there, there's guys from Austria, there's
• 34:31
  people from all over the world. There's a couple of Americans
• 34:33
  and what have you. And he's just this guy.
• 34:35
  He's walking through it. It's like it's his house, right?
• 34:37
  And he's just, and he's so he almost made a point of trying to
• 34:40
  go up to people and just like talk to them, like say, and he
• 34:43
  got chanters. He says, also you work in the
• 34:45
  industry and I will chat. He's chatting and I says, what
• 34:48
  is it? And I want to say that he said
• 34:50
  I'm a cask pusher. Yeah, you've told this story.
• 34:53
  So it's about getting getting cast out of warehouses.
• 34:56
  So I said cast pusher and he says I work for the Azure and I
• 34:59
  says what's a cask pusher do? And he says I collect the casks
• 35:02
  that the Azure want to come back so that they're getting bottled
• 35:04
  and stuff that. So I said, oh, did you drive
• 35:06
  lorries? No, I didn't touch the lorries.
• 35:08
  The lorries get sent there and I said so.
• 35:10
  Oh, you're. The forklift so you're.
• 35:12
  I said, do you go to the, do you go?
• 35:13
  So do you go to the distillery with a wee inventory sheet and
• 35:16
  pick them? No, that's already picked.
• 35:17
  So I just make sure the right casks go into the lorries that
• 35:21
  end up going back to there. I could do that job.
• 35:25
  But I thought like this guy's spinning in my arm, do you
• 35:28
  think? Did You Know?
• 35:32
  Possibly not, No. Because I mean, you know, if you
• 35:34
  take to the letter of the law, yeah, what you see in the back
• 35:38
  of that TLV, if it gets stopped is what needs to be in the back
• 35:41
  of that TLV. So do you know?
• 35:43
  I just love that that, as I say, no matter how far technology can
• 35:47
  advance the whiskey making process, there are still so many
• 35:51
  tiny little elements that it has that that that will have been a
• 35:54
  job from how long ago that somebody has had to do that.
• 35:58
  And that that's what I love about that, the tradition side.
• 36:00
  And when you look at coopering, it is like such an old school
• 36:05
  way of doing it. And you, we met that.
• 36:07
  And as you say, we've got Coopers.
• 36:09
  There was male females who are serving their apprenticeships at
• 36:12
  the Edinburgh Whiskey Festival that were taken, guys like Angus
• 36:15
  through the process of, of building a cask.
• 36:17
  And you say 9 year apprenticeship, that's learning.
• 36:20
  That's not an apprenticeship, that's learning a craft.
• 36:23
  And, and when you think about the imagine, and this is where
• 36:27
  the romantic side of it comes in, it's like I could make a
• 36:30
  cast tomorrow, right? And it could hold whiskey in it
• 36:36
  for 40 years and then be sold for an extraordinary amount of
• 36:40
  money. And you say to yourself, wow,
• 36:43
  that I remember meeting a guy like this is one of the reasons
• 36:46
  I used to be a forklift instructor.
• 36:47
  And one of the reasons that our whiskey stories kind of idea
• 36:50
  came as I met a guy on a forklift course I was doing and
• 36:53
  I said, where do you work before?
• 36:55
  He was an on board. He was working at a gas plant in
• 36:56
  Airdrie. Really nice place to work.
• 36:59
  But I said, where do you? I said, I've driven forklift.
• 37:02
  Where do you work before for Broxburn bottlers?
• 37:05
  And suddenly I was like, wow, you've had cask.
• 37:07
  So whiskey on your forks. Yeah, Yeah.
• 37:09
  And I'm asking him what's the oldest cask of whiskey you've
• 37:12
  ever caught? And the guy looked like I had
• 37:13
  two heads. Do you like whiskey?
• 37:14
  Can't stand this stuff, mate. But it was a job at the end of
• 37:17
  the day. I watched the.
• 37:17
  Forklift Stories podcast but. It's just like I.
• 37:22
  Love that I love that my mind. Does that include?
• 37:24
  He had like a Fort, I can't remember what it was.
• 37:26
  It was like, I want to say a Timatton 40 odd year old private
• 37:30
  cast, he said. That's the most expensive whisky
• 37:32
  I've ever had in fork taken off the racks in a forklift that was
• 37:35
  going to get bottled to us like. F1 drivers, they drive for the
• 37:37
  the thrill of it, don't they? Aye, forklift.
• 37:39
  Oh, what about see what the most expensive on your?
• 37:42
  I don't know, you called it your forks.
• 37:44
  I have the forks on the forks there.
• 37:45
  Tilted back, of course. Of course.
• 37:48
  Yeah, tell that. Man, so tell us, you start
• 37:49
  production, you're doing production at Port Dundas.
• 37:54
  Do you then make an effort to start liking whiskey?
• 37:57
  If you got this then well, maybe I should get to know a wee bit
• 38:00
  about this. Yes, yes.
• 38:03
  I mean, I think that was that was probably my introduction
• 38:07
  into that. There's a whiskey out there for
• 38:09
  everyone. Yeah.
• 38:10
  I don't really buy into that. I just don't like it.
• 38:12
  Yeah. Because you know what I'll have,
• 38:14
  I lived a lie for years, you know, just thinking.
• 38:16
  I really just don't like it. So yes, I mean, it'll, it'll
• 38:19
  probably. I know we do the wee piece at
• 38:20
  the end of it. Yeah.
• 38:21
  Different stories. Yeah.
• 38:22
  And. And so there's problems.
• 38:23
  So there was a moment. There was.
• 38:25
  Absolutely. And so so you get that kind of
• 38:28
  itch, you know, the shark, you don't want to keep moving.
• 38:31
  So. So what's the next step?
• 38:33
  Well, they closed, Portland asked.
• 38:34
  Don't they? So.
• 38:35
  That was late late 90s, early 2000s.
• 38:37
  No, that was 2090, was it? And then by 2010.
• 38:44
  Quite late. It was silent and and do you
• 38:48
  know, I was really, really keen to stay in the industry and and
• 38:50
  that's where opportunities come up to kind of move north.
• 38:55
  So an opportunity to come up to move north and work in malt
• 38:59
  distilling. And that had always been in one
• 39:00
  great thing, you know, but Diazio is they want to find out
• 39:04
  what people want to do. What are your aspirations?
• 39:07
  They don't just want to bury you in a box and and and unless you
• 39:11
  want to do that for 40 years. So I'd always kind of aspire to
• 39:15
  work in in malt distilling. So I get that opportunity and
• 39:18
  and move north. And that was again, dragging my
• 39:21
  wife. Love you Lorna, but kicking and
• 39:24
  screaming? Well, you said Glas Glasgow lady
• 39:26
  that was not interested. In half, she says Glasgow and
• 39:30
  I'll bet we were living in there.
• 39:32
  So at the time, no I'm not moving N but my my paternal
• 39:37
  grandmother had stayed near all. Right.
• 39:40
  So I was really familiar with the Marie Coast.
• 39:42
  I thought, you know what, we'll love it, let's just go and give
• 39:45
  it a go. And and moved up and started
• 39:48
  malt distilling there. So I had considered whether or
• 39:52
  not a bells would be would be one of my one of my drums at the
• 39:56
  end, but it's it's not quite made it but but a landed Ninja
• 39:59
  Gower distillery. Oh, lovely love Inch garage the.
• 40:02
  Coastal spaces. Yes, there we go.
• 40:04
  Very Bones. Vince Keller.
• 40:07
  Yeah. And, you know, I turned up and,
• 40:09
  and, and what I really enjoyed. And really, I turned up because
• 40:11
  nobody hills wanted it, really. That's a really good study
• 40:14
  manager, that interesting. Yes, yes.
• 40:16
  So our site operations manager. At about the same time as Ramsey
• 40:19
  Borthwick would have been at. Rambo was there just before me.
• 40:22
  OK, So Rambo Ramsey. Yes, Mr. Borthwick.
• 40:25
  Mr. Borthwick, I worked, I worked with Henwick Lynn
• 40:27
  Kenschi. That was a Blankenschi.
• 40:29
  So I Ramsey was there just before me.
• 40:31
  So I turned up and, and the only way you could describe Inch
• 40:36
  Gower is that if you took the constituent parts of a
• 40:39
  distillery up in an airplane and just kicked them out was mental.
• 40:45
  And the story behind that is that is that during the 1960s, I
• 40:51
  think it was Bells wanted to upgrade Inch Gower, but they
• 40:55
  didn't want to stop production. So you've still got your mash
• 40:59
  done sitting with your MASH done sits getting fed with the grist
• 41:02
  case in the whole piece. And but all right, OK, so we
• 41:05
  kind of put the mash time there. But what we'll do is we'll
• 41:07
  decommission these malt kilns and we'll stick a mash time in
• 41:10
  there and then we'll move the boiler and we'll put it in the
• 41:12
  other old kiln there. We'll put hot liquor pranks
• 41:14
  downstairs. You couldn't follow this for
• 41:17
  love my money and. This is great.
• 41:19
  This is a distillery that most a lot.
• 41:21
  Of it's not open to the. Public a lot of our officers
• 41:23
  would have tried this, but we'll never get the opportunity to see
• 41:26
  and so it's just a a mismatch of equipment all over the place it.
• 41:31
  Really was and it was almost kind of fully manual.
• 41:34
  It was very limited in terms of automation.
• 41:37
  They had a go to, I think in the kind of 80s and 90s.
• 41:39
  So, you know, you something that can, you know, look at the the
• 41:44
  the the the Steven Wheel of the the the you know, when you've
• 41:47
  got the the enterprise and star play.
• 41:50
  So that's do. But it was brilliant because you
• 41:57
  were learning from proper old distillery.
• 42:01
  You know, it was like when you're transferring the starting
• 42:03
  the machine process. And it's fair to say, you know,
• 42:08
  I think Bells was, was always more of, you know, quantity and
• 42:13
  quality. So, you know, the master always
• 42:15
  ran backwards and, you know, they didn't know Clearwater was
• 42:17
  a thing. So that's, you know, the clean,
• 42:19
  the water was always really, really cloudy.
• 42:21
  But you know, you were, you were learning these things and even
• 42:24
  setting a wash bag, you know, bringing it up.
• 42:27
  The old boy, I learnt that from Duncan.
• 42:29
  He would be like he would be measuring in the in the in the
• 42:31
  stick coming up that's at a certain height.
• 42:34
  I'll now just walk fairly slowly back to the panel and stop the
• 42:37
  pump I'm on. And these things were just
• 42:43
  fantastic. So and, and in destination there
• 42:45
  was an old fella called Andy Smith and he had come up from
• 42:49
  Bladnock, a Bells employee most of his days.
• 42:53
  And, and Bells were really in energy saving.
• 42:56
  In fact, you know, they were, they were a way ahead of the
• 42:58
  time. So it's it's quite counter
• 43:01
  intuitive to think of hot water condensers, but that's what they
• 43:05
  ran. So what they would do is you
• 43:06
  would have, I remember that's right, you would have hot water
• 43:10
  coming in at the bottom or warm water.
• 43:12
  And then of course you would have the, the vapour can go
• 43:15
  through the condenser and it would give up its heat to the
• 43:18
  water travelling up through the condenser.
• 43:20
  And then you would have scalding hot water coming out the top.
• 43:23
  That scalding hot water would then feed up a falling film
• 43:27
  evaporator. So they would evaporate their
• 43:29
  own pothail and the syrup. So that was an animal feed.
• 43:33
  So you would then transfer the heat from the the hot, the
• 43:36
  scalding water into the into the pothill to transfer it to set
• 43:39
  up. It would go back as warm water
• 43:41
  and pass through the condenser. There's a savings, there's a
• 43:43
  great. Big pot of massive energy saving
• 43:45
  piece, but I've got another energy saving story about
• 43:48
  Inskeller, which is a cracker and but what you find is that
• 43:54
  spirit Disney really intuitively condensed in a hot environment.
• 43:58
  You know, we always think of these traditionally old
• 43:59
  condensers with really cold water running through them, so
• 44:03
  pressure would build. So you found in a lot of these
• 44:06
  old bells distilleries pressure transmitters measuring the
• 44:09
  pressure build up within the because of course the still
• 44:12
  running, it's generating vapor. The vapor doesn't really want to
• 44:15
  condense. I should have said when they
• 44:17
  charged the still is back in those days as well, Andy would
• 44:19
  be tap, you know, the stillman would tap the side because you
• 44:22
  would get that change in tone. So if I got the pressure got a
• 44:26
  bit too high if I go for. People that are familiar, that's
• 44:30
  mental, right? I'll just say that's right, Jake
• 44:33
  had Cook. You're welcome for this.
• 44:34
  He's going to absolutely love this.
• 44:36
  That is, for how long would you do that I.
• 44:40
  What do you mean in terms? Of so you've got you've got
• 44:43
  vapour coming up the still. I when you're charging the
• 44:45
  still, yeah, you'd be tapping it just to get the level.
• 44:48
  And then just. Even just things like just
• 44:50
  knowing that the distance, the time, if I walk this pace from
• 44:53
  here and. There.
• 44:54
  Oh, that's. That's and that's what I.
• 44:57
  Love it, but you would get the pressure, but so of course it'd
• 44:59
  start generating vapour and start building up and then you
• 45:02
  know, you'd be like you'd be watching the kind of pressure
• 45:04
  gauge giving it this and that patience.
• 45:06
  You know, it was this time and and he said, do you know when
• 45:10
  the still was just ready to come in?
• 45:12
  The still would literally just keep a sigh of relief and then
• 45:16
  it would come into the safe and now it would.
• 45:18
  Go. What are the stills like in
• 45:19
  skiller? Small onion shaped stills.
• 45:23
  And you would, you would distill really, really.
• 45:24
  Quickly so you wanted a really nutty, spicy serial character.
• 45:29
  Wow. And that was contributed that
• 45:31
  that the first the starting part of the process was this cloudy
• 45:33
  war. That was it.
• 45:34
  That that I mean, I must admit. I think they, I think you can
• 45:36
  tell that you loved. Your first child in malt
• 45:38
  production? Well, do you know the thing was.
• 45:40
  That, that the discovery was so decrepit that and, and here's a
• 45:45
  piece as well that it's got the history of this place.
• 45:49
  When you went to the boardroom and the Porter room was just an
• 45:51
  old converted cooperage, right? It was just a damp space and
• 45:54
  there was all this beautiful furniture, hand carved furniture
• 45:57
  and you couldn't keep it. You couldn't keep it from
• 46:00
  warping because you start heating on it.
• 46:02
  You're too warm. You couldn't eat and have it get
• 46:04
  damp and cold and. I was.
• 46:07
  I ended. Up my last point, I'd actually
• 46:09
  worked in all the bells and stilleries.
• 46:11
  My last stationing where with Diageo was at Blair Raffle and
• 46:16
  and put water which is just that's all the other.
• 46:18
  Beautiful place to work I. Loved it and, and, and, and
• 46:23
  somebody popped up in the Internet, this thing, it was
• 46:27
  called Wickers, Wickers World of Whiskey.
• 46:29
  And, and you need to be of a certain age, but there's a guy
• 46:32
  who you guys are a lot younger than me by a guy called Alan
• 46:34
  Wicker who used to do travel programmes.
• 46:36
  And there was this thing he's doing this Wickers World of
• 46:38
  Whiskey and it was all roundabout Bells and and and it
• 46:41
  was Ken is this is this available on YouTube?
• 46:44
  Well. You could look try and find
• 46:45
  that. Yeah, 'cause that, yeah.
• 46:47
  Alan Wicker, kind of wet, you know, he'd been a kind of pastel
• 46:49
  suit and he'd go around and there was the piece and he was a
• 46:51
  part of the. Air, which of course was no
• 46:53
  longer with us as well. But let me introduce you to the
• 46:55
  master distiller and here would come this guy dressed like John
• 46:58
  Travolta. You know, it was like a long
• 47:01
  pointy call us and it was it was a pleasure to watch.
• 47:05
  But they did this piece in Cherry Bank and which of course
• 47:08
  was the, was the headquarters of of, of, of, of of bells in, in,
• 47:11
  in Perth. And there was the, I can't
• 47:13
  remember who's the chief executive manager, a guy called
• 47:16
  Raymond Miguel, right? And what the hell is he not?
• 47:19
  Sat at this. Furniture in cherry bag that was
• 47:22
  now up at up at inch Geller no and I.
• 47:26
  Obviously I didn't. Know that when I was at inch
• 47:27
  Geller because I, I mean, I'm suppose gonna sue me nowadays.
• 47:31
  I broke that table when I was there leashed for a training
• 47:35
  course and I'd be a joiner and you fix it.
• 47:38
  But I just to see that kind of stuff was awesome.
• 47:41
  I would. I wouldn't have grown.
• 47:42
  And shower was a bells. Hostility.
• 47:44
  Somebody says bells to me. I think Blair, I did the IT was.
• 47:49
  Right, wait a minute, when did I try and scour for the very first
• 47:51
  time the floor and fauna? The IT was the floor.
• 47:54
  And fauna but I. Think it might have been at the
• 47:57
  Jeffers St. Whiskey and tobacco might have
• 48:00
  been there anyway. And he's explained to me that
• 48:03
  this is actually one of the malt blind that goes into the blind
• 48:06
  for bells. And it was probably the first
• 48:09
  time I tried a whiskey and instantly the flavour sent me
• 48:16
  some sort of like, how do I know that?
• 48:19
  Yeah. Like how there was a sort of a
• 48:21
  very distinctive flavour that just went into my memory that
• 48:24
  said, or my brain that said that that's like, it felt like I, I
• 48:28
  know that flavour profile. The whatever I pick up from when
• 48:31
  I drink a bell, it's recognizable.
• 48:32
  There's a bit of nostalgic. Yeah, I remember the first time.
• 48:35
  I I don't remember the exact first time I tried it, but I
• 48:38
  haven't given an inch Goer probably by Cameron Ewing at
• 48:41
  Scotch the Bell moral And I'm saying this is a coastal space
• 48:43
  side. Me saying, but space sides don't
• 48:45
  taste coastal because again, as an 18 year old, I thought it has
• 48:49
  to be from the West Coast of Isla.
• 48:50
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have a coastal flavour profile.
• 48:52
  Yeah. He says no, no, this is
• 48:53
  literally on water, so it's on the coast so you can shut up and
• 48:57
  it's in space side. And it has that amazing American
• 49:00
  character to it. Brilliant.
• 49:03
  Underrated. Whiskey Inch Gower.
• 49:05
  Total 100% but not not. Whiskey, you can actually.
• 49:07
  I've got a provenance. Is that a Douglas Lane often
• 49:10
  independently bottle? Yeah, often.
• 49:11
  Independently bottle. Let's let's go.
• 49:12
  To yourself here, you're going to be travelling out on Sunday
• 49:15
  as we're recording this. It's Wednesday, you're heading
• 49:17
  to the where's? Where do you fly to to get your
• 49:20
  trek started? So we.
• 49:23
  Shuttle through Helsinki, initially in the South of
• 49:27
  Finland, then go to Rovaniemi, the capital of Arctic Lapland,
• 49:31
  basically the home of Santa Claus.
• 49:32
  Hos lives, yeah. He'll.
• 49:34
  Be knackered. It's.
• 49:37
  In the line down. Basically from there we then
• 49:41
  trek for kind of three days N then get a bus back to the start
• 49:44
  again, right. So when you're trekking, then
• 49:46
  so. How far are you trekking every
• 49:48
  day? Then day one is just.
• 49:50
  Short of 30 kilometres. That's a mixture of frozen
• 49:53
  lakes, frozen rivers, etcetera. A little bit of forest walking
• 49:56
  as well. Day 2 is about 20 K day three is
• 50:00
  between 15 to 18 kilometres. In the end.
• 50:03
  Yeah, I need those dogs in the movies.
• 50:05
  To to drag me along. Yeah, I mean you need a few.
• 50:09
  Drams, if you're travelling, man, there's no, there's no dogs
• 50:11
  with you. It's all sled hauling, man, man
• 50:13
  hauling sleds, isn't it? Ever since we've got 22.
• 50:16
  Snowmobiles. So we've got a snowmobile at the
• 50:18
  front purely safe to kind of break the route to make sure
• 50:21
  there's no areas of any any kind of water and stuff on the ice.
• 50:25
  Then there's a snowmobile with the base camp team as well.
• 50:28
  But the rest of the time, you've got your sled, all your, your
• 50:31
  harness, and you're basically pulling your life behind.
• 50:33
  And you do this every year. Yeah, yeah.
• 50:35
  So wait a minute, you said you're saying.
• 50:37
  You're saying three days out and then a bus back and then there's
• 50:39
  another group that comes out and you take them out again just
• 50:41
  like a there by hamster wheel basically.
• 50:43
  So we fly out on Sunday, the first group arrive on Wednesday,
• 50:49
  they get training the Thursday leave the Saturday fly home the
• 50:52
  Monday group 2 comes out Wednesday industry.
• 50:55
  And these are these are I'm going to say.
• 50:57
  Like novices as such that people that that I've decided for a
• 51:01
  fundraiser, they're going to do this trek to raise money.
• 51:04
  Is that the sort of general group that you're getting?
• 51:06
  Yeah. So we've had checkers.
• 51:07
  Of all, all shapes, sizes, levels of fitness, motivation,
• 51:12
  levels for doing it and stuff as well.
• 51:14
  But some really proper hardcore people who have done time in the
• 51:18
  four CS that are just no, no issue at all through two people
• 51:22
  that have done this for the first time.
• 51:24
  And it's the first time outside pretty much doing stuff for guys
• 51:27
  that have never camped out before and their first time in a
• 51:30
  tent is at -30 and like what we're doing here.
• 51:33
  But yeah, it's because you can either self funds, you basically
• 51:37
  pay to go and do it yourself. But the, the vast majority are
• 51:41
  raising funds either for a charity that's close to their
• 51:43
  own heart or for their own personal reasons because they've
• 51:47
  maybe gone through some sort of trauma.
• 51:49
  It's a very personal journey for them.
• 51:51
  But we're we're, we're very keen to almost make it accessible to
• 51:57
  anyone because at its route, all you're doing is walking in the
• 52:00
  snow. It's the actual physical part's
• 52:04
  challenging, but it's not impossible.
• 52:06
  What's impossible is not getting through the conditions, that
• 52:10
  hardship, the temperature, all the, all the metal stuff that
• 52:12
  that comes with that. That's what people struggle
• 52:15
  with. Ultimately, if you can walk in
• 52:17
  the snow, then you can do the physical.
• 52:18
  But yeah, I think Ross would manage then, yeah.
• 52:21
  I'm too Gabby. But that would be the better
• 52:24
  really getting some hard. Work we never oh, look at that
• 52:26
  by the way, that's you wanna. Tell me about you say No,
• 52:28
  actually tell. You something about that
• 52:30
  actually, but I mean, I, I can't be a wee bit like that, you
• 52:34
  know? But that was about I've done so
• 52:35
  many exhibitions. Yeah, but exhibitions are
• 52:38
  exhibitions. Jesus.
• 52:40
  I've explorer in many ways, but I mean when it comes to.
• 52:44
  Like the danger element, of course there's always going to
• 52:47
  be that, that danger element, But I mean, you're a firefighter
• 52:51
  and you'll you'll have been in some pretty precarious
• 52:54
  situation. You can try me throughout your
• 52:55
  career, but. In terms of.
• 52:57
  Without having any any. That have a sad.
• 52:59
  Ending but have you been in any pretty hairy situations whilst
• 53:02
  you've been doing these trips? Nothing hairy.
• 53:05
  I think my. My, my mate Lee, who runs a
• 53:08
  company, he's X5 service as well.
• 53:10
  So you find that you're very good at risk assessing and
• 53:15
  you're very good at identifying an issue before it becomes
• 53:18
  terminal. So you tend to find any training
• 53:21
  that must be like, yeah. Scare every day.
• 53:23
  Everybody's going to take it seriously.
• 53:25
  Aye, that's it. So on.
• 53:27
  On, on day one, we, we, we give a presentation to all the
• 53:30
  Chequers saying this is what can happen.
• 53:32
  There's pictures of black hands and limbs that are falling off
• 53:35
  and they're like, what's this, What's this?
• 53:37
  But there's always a sign that if your hand starts to get cold,
• 53:41
  we'll fix it at that point. Don't let it get get down.
• 53:45
  So thankfully we've got a very, very good safety record because
• 53:48
  of our background with the fire service for this on you all the
• 53:51
  time. How are you feeling?
• 53:52
  Let me see your toes, your feet. You've had, we've had kind of
• 53:56
  mild frostbite, but you get that from that environment.
• 53:59
  But as long as you can manage it early enough, nothing terminals
• 54:03
  happen, thankfully. Thank God for that.
• 54:04
  What we'll say who's? The guy that, what's his name?
• 54:08
  Ben. The English guy that does all
• 54:10
  this sort of Ben, Ben Fogle, remember who and who is the
• 54:15
  former Olympic rower? Yeah.
• 54:19
  Steve Cry. No, Was it?
• 54:22
  The two of. Them not trek across the Arctic
• 54:25
  or the entire they did something and there was a documentary and
• 54:28
  it was basically like just them backing up.
• 54:31
  But but but this is this. Is I.
• 54:34
  Mean this is what happens in Arctic adventures because you
• 54:37
  you, you you've close company with just one other person and
• 54:40
  that kind of drives you mad. If you ever read about, you
• 54:42
  know, the kind of Scott expeditions and all this thing
• 54:44
  they all they all ended up loathing each other at the end
• 54:46
  of it. And I mean, you know, I'm if you
• 54:49
  watch straight back. Someone's character.
• 54:51
  Take away all their comforts, get them cool, Yeah, knackered.
• 54:53
  Then you see how that person And of course man hauling.
• 54:56
  Man, hauling was what kind of ended the Scott Arctic
• 54:59
  expedition. Cause again, they were, they
• 55:01
  were putting out more energy and they're actually taking in, in
• 55:03
  rations, of course. So it's, it's tough stuff.
• 55:05
  I mean, when it's just a kind of interesting thing, but when when
• 55:10
  they eventually. So Scott was famous for it
• 55:12
  because he just manholed. There was no dogs.
• 55:13
  There were ponies, but they were shot.
• 55:15
  And you know, he just this is the Arctic, this is the
• 55:17
  Antarctic. He manholed sledges to the South
• 55:19
  Pole and he was going to manhole them back.
• 55:21
  Amundsen very, very keen on dogs, a bit like Ross.
• 55:24
  It was all dog sleds. So when they got around, the
• 55:28
  British Geographical Society got around to having a kind of two
• 55:31
  of kind of a ball for Amundsen for completing the South Pole.
• 55:34
  They kind of offended everyone or an offend by saying, right,
• 55:37
  let's have a toast to the dogs 'cause it was like, well, the
• 55:39
  men didn't do it. It was it also, yeah, this was
• 55:43
  that. So I mean, man hauling was seen
• 55:45
  as a kind of the proper way to do it.
• 55:46
  Yeah, I, I did the, I did the West Highland way good few years
• 55:50
  ago. Very compatible.
• 55:51
  Well. First time I actually.
• 55:53
  Ever had a Glen going? Saw the distillery for the very
• 55:55
  first time. It was in Balmain.
• 55:57
  Wrong way or something iconic. Help.
• 55:59
  Did you not take a shortcut? No, we tried to backfired, but
• 56:04
  but it was at West Island the wrong way.
• 56:06
  It was. It was brutal.
• 56:07
  I hated every minute, but I absolutely hated it.
• 56:10
  And one of the things that someone actually did say is like
• 56:13
  they were a Monroe bagger. Like, so I thought to myself,
• 56:18
  ah, you'll know all about. And they were like, Nah, I won't
• 56:20
  bother with the West Highland W Why not?
• 56:22
  It's like, because you don't get the satisfaction of the view at
• 56:24
  the top. And he said that what you do is
• 56:26
  when you bag a Monroe, when you're climbing a Monroe, you're
• 56:29
  climbing up a mountain, you get to the top and you get that
• 56:32
  feeling of wow, look at, look at us in front of us in Scotland.
• 56:36
  Yeah. He said on the West Highland
• 56:37
  way, you're just, you see some nice things.
• 56:39
  Don't get me wrong. What is it like, is it just vast
• 56:42
  desert land of snow or is it actually nice scenery and nice
• 56:46
  things that people get to enjoy whilst they're doing that trip?
• 56:48
  It's nice scenery so. Finland's 81st 80% forest base.
• 56:53
  There's a lot of a lot of heavily forested areas that are
• 56:57
  proper Christmas tree environment.
• 56:59
  They're, they're frozen solid white, frozen lakes, frozen
• 57:03
  rivers, generally clear skies so beautiful, like unpolluted blue
• 57:08
  skies at night. You can see every star in the
• 57:11
  Galaxy, see the Northern Lights. And it's, it's hard to do it
• 57:15
  justice by talking about here within Edinburgh, but it's all
• 57:19
  horrible outside. But yeah, I think Finland's such
• 57:22
  a, it's a, it's a country that's very much attuned to the
• 57:27
  environment. Like me fighting a roving Yema.
• 57:30
  You're talking -30 kids are out in the street playing because
• 57:34
  that, that's just the environment is hard.
• 57:38
  Absolutely solid. So because there are people who
• 57:42
  operate in the environment all the time, they look after the
• 57:45
  environment. So where we walk through,
• 57:48
  imagine walking through the Scottish Highlands, but it's
• 57:51
  frozen ever. You can basically walk along
• 57:54
  Loch Ness and it's frozen solid. It's that type of environment.
• 57:59
  But we generally camp in the forest.
• 58:00
  So you kind of get off the frozen lakes because of the
• 58:03
  coldness and exposure. You're in the frozen trees in
• 58:06
  your tent. And it's just that it's really,
• 58:09
  it's hard to do it justice by by talking about it, but, well,
• 58:11
  you'll have plenty of plenty of photos because.
• 58:13
  You'll be able to send us back pictures of you enjoying a
• 58:16
  lovely Whiskey Stories 25 Year Old blend by They're finally
• 58:19
  delighted to donate to the. Cause you have a drama.
• 58:23
  Also because we want our blend to get.
• 58:25
  As as far and wide as possible so far, I mean, we've had I was
• 58:28
  able. To big shout to the guys at Soca
• 58:30
  in Bangalore, Soca Cocktail bar. They're they, we tried their
• 58:34
  DRAM, gave him a shot of the DRAM of the 25 year old over in
• 58:38
  Bangalore. And I know that we've got
• 58:40
  bottles in Wales for sure, Charlie.
• 58:42
  Hume is desperate. For a bottle going out in
• 58:45
  Cayman, Cayman, I ask. Cayman.
• 58:46
  I so. They'll they can buy the bottle
• 58:48
  at Cayman prices, But ah, it's great.
• 58:52
  And that's what we want is that bottle to get as far around the
• 58:54
  world as possible. So it's been it's been great and
• 58:56
  a big thank you to everybody who's who's bought.
• 58:58
  There's still bottles available. I think it's it's, it's an
• 59:00
  amazing. It's an amazing thing to have
• 59:02
  done. Oh, clearly the first time
• 59:04
  you've done it, you had no hesitation that you were going
• 59:06
  to do it the next year, etcetera, etcetera.
• 59:08
  I think they they. They the first year out quite
• 59:12
  hesitant because obviously it's a very new environment to me and
• 59:15
  thinking back to 2015 on the first day.
• 59:17
  Where are you from in Scotland? Dalkeith, that makes sense.
• 59:21
  Actually not head of phase. Yeah, basically.
• 59:25
  Basically, you see jungles out there, so it's fine.
• 59:27
  Yeah. Always done stuff in the hills
• 59:30
  and stuff anyway. So I kind of, I knew that I was
• 59:32
  fit enough. But that environment itself,
• 59:35
  you're always a bit intimidated because you don't understand -30
• 59:39
  until you've experienced -30 this whole whole different type
• 59:43
  of temperature right there. So I think it's good for the
• 59:45
  guides because when we go out for the first time, the trekkers
• 59:49
  are feeling that as well. So you understand that
• 59:51
  trepidation they've got and you understand as a guide what you
• 59:55
  have to do and know when to cuddle them and support them and
• 1:00:00
  know when they kick their ass and say keep moving, you're
• 1:00:02
  fine. You don't got to stop.
• 1:00:03
  It's that kind of good cop, bad cop routine you get.
• 1:00:07
  And that definitely comes with experience and working with all
• 1:00:09
  the different diversity into people.
• 1:00:12
  But that's to come out of the track.
• 1:00:13
  As I say, I've had people from all walks of life and people who
• 1:00:17
  work in the City of London that can be, they go to Hyde Park and
• 1:00:21
  for them that that's the outdoors.
• 1:00:22
  To people that have worked in the Highlands, for example, it's
• 1:00:25
  just a. There's a busman's hauled with
• 1:00:26
  them, so it's all very different range of people.
• 1:00:29
  But as we say at the end of it, you're walking 80K hauling,
• 1:00:33
  you're camping out, doesn't matter who you are, you're a
• 1:00:36
  human being and you've got the means to get through it and
• 1:00:38
  generally we always do. We've raised over £1,000,000 for
• 1:00:41
  all the Venus charities that have come out over the past the
• 1:00:43
  past couple of years, so it's very, very successful.
• 1:00:46
  Brilliant. Has your whiskey ever froze?
• 1:00:48
  Not a whiskey, you've had some brought out a.
• 1:00:49
  Case of beer before and then wonder when they opened their
• 1:00:52
  bag why everyone was basically soaking.
• 1:00:55
  But yeah, generally on on the trail it's whisky.
• 1:01:00
  Slow gin is very popular as well.
• 1:01:01
  Yeah. And that keep nice with a
• 1:01:02
  campfire, but it's it's generally whisky.
• 1:01:05
  Although Finlandia vodka's lovely as well out there.
• 1:01:08
  That's really nice. What was that country?
• 1:01:10
  Yeah, speaking. Speaking of that sort of area,
• 1:01:12
  it was that it was the Viking, Viking Cruise.
• 1:01:15
  Viking Cruise. That we had heard.
• 1:01:17
  About I saw from Sweden, yeah, yeah, I saw the the cruise was
• 1:01:20
  just I think it was last weekend or this weekend back Gordon
• 1:01:24
  Dallas. I saw a picture of Gordon
• 1:01:26
  Dallas. Just about aboard the how many
• 1:01:28
  days? Is it 3 days or something?
• 1:01:30
  How international waters back again and it's just a non-stop
• 1:01:33
  whiskey festival fighting Cinderella.
• 1:01:36
  I'm. Just reminded I have a very
• 1:01:38
  tenuous Finland whiskey connection.
• 1:01:40
  Oh, here we go. So my great, great uncle of was
• 1:01:45
  Sir Francis Shepherd. Who he was, he was.
• 1:01:50
  He was. He was the.
• 1:01:51
  British ambassador to Finland just after the war and he gave
• 1:01:54
  Sibelius the the composer a bottle of Scotch whiskey.
• 1:01:58
  Do you know what bottle? I have no idea, but he mentions
• 1:02:01
  and he's he's got, we've got a kind of, there's a family member
• 1:02:03
  of years ago there was a cheap one.
• 1:02:04
  Eh, probably, yeah. Bought an M&S Spartans car for
• 1:02:08
  almost that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:12
  Talking about travels guys, I do have.
• 1:02:14
  I do have some samples here, Ross.
• 1:02:16
  I'll pass them over to you. I sent the information over.
• 1:02:21
  I'll send passes over. Pour pour some of these out.
• 1:02:23
  We'll try them. Now.
• 1:02:24
  What I will give a shout out to is the SMAC, the single malt
• 1:02:30
  amateur club who are based in India.
• 1:02:33
  They are, as far as I'm aware, they are the largest whiskey
• 1:02:36
  club in the whole of India. And I met, I was very fortunate
• 1:02:40
  to share a lovely meal and a couple of drams, good few drams
• 1:02:44
  with Heyman who's going to start listing.
• 1:02:46
  He is the founder of the whiskey Club out there and fascinating
• 1:02:50
  to hear about these guys. And they have, as I said, and
• 1:02:53
  what they effectively do is they do it is affected by whiskey
• 1:02:59
  festival in Goa every year, Although whiskey festivals
• 1:03:03
  aren't something that they're, it would be a Fiskey festival is
• 1:03:05
  just because they get about 2-3 hundred people travel to Goa and
• 1:03:08
  that's their that's their annual members meeting.
• 1:03:12
  And these guys, the power that they have is they, and these are
• 1:03:15
  some of the samples that we're going to have is they, they can
• 1:03:17
  go to Amrut Paul John and actually get distillery
• 1:03:21
  collaborations out of them. And there's some great whiskers
• 1:03:25
  there. But also they have a big pool
• 1:03:27
  with a lot of the distributors and the importers over there as
• 1:03:31
  well where they can say, well, look, if the import, The thing
• 1:03:35
  is with the market over there, it's, it's mass, it's on mass.
• 1:03:40
  And one thing we do know is that importing whiskey into India is
• 1:03:42
  a very costly thing. You know, we keep hearing about
• 1:03:46
  the free trade agreement that's going to be brought in.
• 1:03:48
  We're not going to go too political on this podcast, but
• 1:03:52
  for the last three or four years, we've heard that this
• 1:03:55
  150% tariff is going to be dropped to 75 and eventually
• 1:03:58
  lower. It's never come to fruition.
• 1:04:00
  And now we're seeing, I guess as well, like, you know, the cloud
• 1:04:04
  or building a distillery out in out in India now.
• 1:04:07
  So you look at and you say are are distillers and the
• 1:04:10
  distillery whiskey brands giving up on the thought of the tariff
• 1:04:16
  lowering for their brand to become popular and just saying,
• 1:04:19
  well, why don't we just build it, they're still out there and
• 1:04:20
  get our brand to that market because it is, it's a massive
• 1:04:23
  market. So what these guys are
• 1:04:25
  effectively have, they have relationships with importers,
• 1:04:28
  distributors where basically they can say, we'll, we'll send
• 1:04:33
  you samples and get a running idea because you can't just buy
• 1:04:37
  a couple of cases. Of this.
• 1:04:38
  Stuff, if it's going to come in, you're going to have to bring
• 1:04:41
  in. I mean for example every new
• 1:04:46
  label of a brand. That.
• 1:04:49
  Comes in label not so you could say Glenn Murray and you can say
• 1:04:53
  if you wanted to. So every different label has to
• 1:04:56
  be approved by the Indian government authorities and that
• 1:05:00
  costs about 1000 lbs to do that before the actual.
• 1:05:02
  So that could be instead of you saying, oh, it's just Glenn
• 1:05:05
  Murray or getting it approved, that would be no, you want your
• 1:05:07
  12 approved. There's 1000 lbs.
• 1:05:09
  It takes three months. There's your 15 year old 1000
• 1:05:11
  lbs. So you're not going to say we're
• 1:05:13
  going to pay all this money just for a few bottles to try and get
• 1:05:16
  into simulation. Plus, what you also know is with
• 1:05:18
  the market out there, you know, we are, if you've got a
• 1:05:22
  distributor, you can get into all the different areas, you
• 1:05:26
  know, you're taking massive amount of stock out there.
• 1:05:28
  So that's what these guys do. They were fantastic, really,
• 1:05:31
  really helpful. But they have given us some
• 1:05:32
  samples. Ross, you've poured them out.
• 1:05:34
  I'll, I'll get the the information that I was sent over
• 1:05:38
  by them. So what's the first one that
• 1:05:39
  you've poured? So I've poured them all out,
• 1:05:41
  right? But there's one this your
• 1:05:44
  handwriting? No, it was excellent.
• 1:05:46
  Handwriting then. The one that spells myth.
• 1:05:50
  Methuna MITHUNA, right? Let me get that 50% Methuna.
• 1:05:58
  That's. From Paul.
• 1:05:59
  John Methuna there. So that's a Paul, John Methuna.
• 1:06:02
  So I think that's a special bottling that we've got there.
• 1:06:04
  And then we have C. OTLN Colton X-ray 50% Oh yeah,
• 1:06:15
  so X rye. Give me two seconds.
• 1:06:17
  I've got all. I've got the information.
• 1:06:18
  Yeah, this is great radio. So that's that's the first of
• 1:06:25
  its. Kind that's an X rye cask that's
• 1:06:28
  made quite a bit of that that it's Indian malt, single malt.
• 1:06:31
  Amateur Club and Amrit. Distillers unveil the children's
• 1:06:34
  of a Lesser God, the first single cast special edition from
• 1:06:38
  AMRUT exclusively for the SMAC and the Indian market.
• 1:06:41
  So there you go. And you need single cast AMRUT.
• 1:06:43
  I mean, that's really cool, yeah.
• 1:06:44
  So these are the kind of jams we've got.
• 1:06:46
  And then an Amrut M Nice or S Nice.
• 1:06:51
  It's nice it's Nice 60. Percent.
• 1:06:55
  Oh, that's going to be. Now wait a minute.
• 1:06:59
  Let's just try them in, yeah? And let's.
• 1:07:03
  And let's import them all we have we?
• 1:07:04
  Got a taste of them because we got 2 drivers.
• 1:07:05
  Yeah, let's, let's let's move on.
• 1:07:06
  So was was the Bells distilleries the end of your
• 1:07:09
  Diageo career? No, no, no, no.
• 1:07:11
  So. Well, Inch Gower got a wee bit
• 1:07:15
  got a wee bit more interesting because it was, I think, fair to
• 1:07:19
  say, a hugely underinvested distillery.
• 1:07:21
  So again, there was still a lot of hangovers from the from the
• 1:07:25
  19 fifty 1960s upgrade. So me and, and, or, or my boss
• 1:07:31
  at the time and I invited the senior exec team out to have a
• 1:07:36
  meeting. So the, the, the managing
• 1:07:37
  director at the time would take his team in of meetings at
• 1:07:41
  different distilleries. And they come out and we kind of
• 1:07:44
  hijacked them a bit and took them a wee wander round and said
• 1:07:46
  look really, is this the Azure standard still?
• 1:07:51
  So at the end of that day I'd ended up with a cheque for
• 1:07:53
  £5,000,000. Wow, go do something.
• 1:07:57
  So. So, yeah, so the, the, the
• 1:08:00
  great, the, the, the great piece about that was we completely
• 1:08:05
  refitted the distillery. So you, you stripped the
• 1:08:07
  distillery right back to his beaten heart.
• 1:08:09
  Yeah. And you start again.
• 1:08:11
  And so that is, you'd have had to have stopped production at
• 1:08:13
  that point. Yeah, aye.
• 1:08:14
  Production was taken out. And that was.
• 1:08:16
  When was this exactly sorry? When was?
• 1:08:18
  This 2010, perhaps, yeah. And is that quite a daunting?
• 1:08:24
  Because, you know, like. Whiskey's got this.
• 1:08:26
  Like, do it this way. Yeah.
• 1:08:28
  And don't change it. That's right.
• 1:08:30
  You hear all these stories about dents that I've been put in?
• 1:08:34
  Yeah, I subscribed to that. A.
• 1:08:36
  Bit and it's another another wee story, but we'll come on to
• 1:08:39
  Boonahab and I'm quite sure after a while.
• 1:08:41
  But yeah, it, it, it was, it was, it was the, the, I mean,
• 1:08:47
  obviously you're very well supporting the, yeah, massive
• 1:08:49
  organization. So you've got lots of of, of
• 1:08:52
  really clever engineers that know what they're talking about.
• 1:08:54
  So that was absolutely fine. And the, and the distillery was
• 1:08:57
  fully automated. So anything that needed ripped
• 1:09:00
  out and replaced and, and we just started to write, you know,
• 1:09:03
  really inventive business cases. You know, there was all the
• 1:09:07
  electrical switch gear was known Lean 2 that was leaking so,
• 1:09:10
  well, there's an easy story to tell.
• 1:09:12
  The hot liquor tanks were, and I don't even know this, that, that
• 1:09:18
  they were, they were square and stainless steel intuitively
• 1:09:21
  wants to be round. Yeah.
• 1:09:23
  And there was nothing wrong with the quality of the steel.
• 1:09:25
  But having the forbidden, the bracing was knackered.
• 1:09:28
  So they're like, OK, these are just going to pop apart.
• 1:09:29
  And so we just went through every, even the grist case.
• 1:09:32
  There was nothing wrong with the grist case.
• 1:09:34
  It was painted with lead based paints and all, just everything.
• 1:09:38
  So everything the, the, the, the, you know, the, the wash
• 1:09:41
  bags will just knock them. Yeah, old Oregon.
• 1:09:45
  And so they needed. Ripped out and replaced.
• 1:09:47
  So all this was going through that was massive, I think.
• 1:09:50
  It was 6. Months top to tail and it gave
• 1:09:54
  you the opportunity to put kit back where it should be, you
• 1:09:58
  know, so so yeah. So the lights of the old grass
• 1:10:02
  case came out, a new motor control centre within the the
• 1:10:05
  yeast plant all get replaced because it was hiding below a
• 1:10:09
  lean to that had been built by one of the operators.
• 1:10:11
  Because he was a joiner to trade.
• 1:10:13
  Because another thing Bells did back in the day was they would
• 1:10:15
  take people on with trades. Yeah.
• 1:10:17
  Because then they could. Oh, you could you work?
• 1:10:20
  Of course round about the site. So new stills as well, no?
• 1:10:23
  The stills weren't. Replaced, but the I mean the
• 1:10:27
  Azure are really smart because they have ongoing measurement of
• 1:10:30
  copper thickness. So they can then you then end up
• 1:10:33
  with predictive wear profiles and still so you can then say
• 1:10:36
  well, you know it might be the base this year or the neck this
• 1:10:40
  year or the head this year or so.
• 1:10:41
  Yeah, that kind of triggers broom.
• 1:10:43
  Yeah, that's right. It's.
• 1:10:47
  So it's it's it's so that was after after there.
• 1:10:51
  So after that all kind of get done.
• 1:10:52
  You kind of feel when the work here has done, what next?
• 1:10:56
  And I moved on to manic more and so which was great 'cause I was
• 1:11:01
  living in Elgin. So I love manic.
• 1:11:03
  Oh yeah. So what do you call?
• 1:11:04
  Yourself. I am a manic whore my.
• 1:11:08
  Favorite flora and fauna is it's.
• 1:11:11
  I always thought it. Was a phenomenal new makes.
• 1:11:13
  It's so new. Was it 19?
• 1:11:15
  71 I think it was it was sitting across the road from Glenn
• 1:11:19
  Lossy, which obviously people love Glenn Lossy, but there's
• 1:11:23
  something about manic more beautiful new makes but.
• 1:11:26
  It just you stick. Your head in the receiver.
• 1:11:28
  And it's pair drops because it's a really, really long
• 1:11:31
  fermentation. So it's 120 hours fermentation.
• 1:11:34
  So you just get that real beautiful development of this,
• 1:11:37
  this fruity character and the SOM there had moved on.
• 1:11:42
  So, so I, I was asked to kind of come in and tidy up the, what do
• 1:11:46
  you call it? The, the snagging list, which
• 1:11:48
  only ran to 120 points. I'll never forget each me
• 1:11:52
  overnight and the the the other piece.
• 1:11:56
  You know, that's not the guy that left for work this morning,
• 1:12:01
  but but they're really good. The challenge there for me,
• 1:12:03
  which are really because it was a fantastic team of guys out
• 1:12:06
  there. They were a pleasure to work
• 1:12:08
  with and but they'd they. 'D expanded.
• 1:12:13
  The distillery, I think it went up to 12 million.
• 1:12:15
  I think they're wrong. 12 million litres rings a bell.
• 1:12:17
  New still house, new wash bags, but they had this balance of of
• 1:12:20
  pine and stainless steel and of course, I, I, I, I, I suppose
• 1:12:26
  everybody would come in and it's one of the distillers myths.
• 1:12:29
  You know, it's got to be it's got to be, you know, wood
• 1:12:32
  because that adds a certain character during fermentation.
• 1:12:36
  But one of my challenges was when we need to get a consistent
• 1:12:40
  character and it came down to you.
• 1:12:42
  I mean, there's not really an awful lot you can do come down
• 1:12:44
  to cleaning regimes and how often you clean the stainless
• 1:12:46
  person, how often you clean the, the, the wood.
• 1:12:51
  But so I was there for a wee while and, and really enjoyed my
• 1:12:55
  time there. Then I get, I tapped my shoulder
• 1:12:58
  to go to. So would you mind?
• 1:12:59
  And, and I, I, I probably got one of my mates calls me this
• 1:13:01
  because I worked with him, the Winston Wolf of Malt, the
• 1:13:03
  Sterling, because I just seem to get moved on bloody issues, you
• 1:13:08
  know? So.
• 1:13:09
  And so I get moved on. At that time, my colleague
• 1:13:12
  Andrew Ian, who'd moved down to Glen Kinchy, yeah, had left
• 1:13:17
  Strath Mill and there were a few performance, quality, efficiency
• 1:13:21
  issues there. So you want to go and take a wee
• 1:13:23
  look at that. And there was a carrot dangle
• 1:13:25
  because I had always, because I'm a, a boy from the South, had
• 1:13:28
  always held this aspiration to get to Blair Affle.
• 1:13:32
  Because you're, you're at the halfway point, you're having it
• 1:13:34
  near at home. If you go there, fix a couple of
• 1:13:37
  things. We were introducing some kind of
• 1:13:40
  new continuous improvement initiatives.
• 1:13:42
  Get that underway, get that going, get it delivering and
• 1:13:46
  we'll move you to Blair Raffle for that.
• 1:13:48
  Fine. So did that and then moved down
• 1:13:52
  to me and the dog because my wife said I like it up here, I'm
• 1:13:55
  staying. So me and the dog went to Blair
• 1:13:58
  Raffle which if you cut her in half now does she scream?
• 1:14:01
  Elgin, she does. It's like where we're retiring
• 1:14:04
  to because I'll give you a clue. It begins with E and ends and
• 1:14:06
  end. So, so I so, so, so, yeah.
• 1:14:11
  So I moved down and, and strangely enough, the longest
• 1:14:15
  the, the, the period working at Blair Raffle, quite sadly,
• 1:14:17
  because I just, I love the bones of the place.
• 1:14:20
  I was back to a Bell's Distillery.
• 1:14:22
  Yeah, I was back to, you know, I, I, I set out.
• 1:14:24
  I was, I was back to a, a distillery character, a spirit
• 1:14:27
  character. I knew they give you a lovely
• 1:14:29
  house with a job and it was me and the dogs.
• 1:14:31
  So wow. You you would wind up down in
• 1:14:33
  the morning. So the house was up a mile away
• 1:14:35
  and there was a big Dutch barn at the back of the still.
• 1:14:37
  So I just left the calm there. So me and the dog would wander
• 1:14:41
  down in the morning. I would turf him into the back
• 1:14:43
  of the car, windows down. I'm in a Dutch barn.
• 1:14:46
  The weather doesn't matter. Yeah.
• 1:14:48
  So he would sit there away in a get him at lunch, away around
• 1:14:51
  the Afol palace forest. And, you know, then you would do
• 1:14:54
  the afternoon at your work and then wander tough life out.
• 1:14:56
  Oh, it was horrific. So as as as.
• 1:14:59
  Somebody who's head of production, Was this your first
• 1:15:01
  distillery? That was also what, as you'll
• 1:15:03
  call a brand home. Yes, it was to the public, aye.
• 1:15:06
  And so how, how, how was that different for your job?
• 1:15:08
  It was actually not too bad. Because they keep them pretty
• 1:15:12
  separate. So the the visitor centre was
• 1:15:15
  run by a it's a beautiful distillery.
• 1:15:17
  Oh, it's gorgeous. The, the, the visitor centre was
• 1:15:20
  run by a lovely lady, Jill. So she looked after all that
• 1:15:23
  side of things. I just had to focus on the I
• 1:15:27
  make make make sure the distillery in the production
• 1:15:29
  kept running and occasionally you know they would feel you out
• 1:15:32
  to to wave at a crowd and then. There's got to be if.
• 1:15:37
  You're having a tough day and then you go or in manic more and
• 1:15:40
  you say this is broken, this is your place.
• 1:15:42
  Well, but then you get a group of Texans coming round, Blair
• 1:15:45
  Apple saying this is this is magic or their equivalent.
• 1:15:49
  That's something like that or not.
• 1:15:51
  We've, we've talked about it on the podcast a lot about how
• 1:15:55
  people approach whiskey and how people like whiskey and things
• 1:15:57
  like that. And it, you know, it was Jake,
• 1:16:02
  I'd said to us, I have absolutely no interest in the
• 1:16:06
  history, the romance or anything like that.
• 1:16:09
  I'll, it's the process. I love the flavours all this.
• 1:16:14
  Show. Me tell me about warm tub
• 1:16:16
  condensers and and this side next side whereas from my
• 1:16:19
  perspective, I've always been more of this.
• 1:16:21
  I love the romance, I love the stories and I love all that kind
• 1:16:23
  of connection. Yeah building connections.
• 1:16:25
  And we have had you know, it's it's impossible to work out how
• 1:16:28
  many people on that we've had on the podcast that are either way
• 1:16:31
  in terms of how they approach it and whiskey has so many
• 1:16:34
  different ways of connecting to it.
• 1:16:36
  So from your own point of view then you've now I mean that just
• 1:16:40
  we're only on the Diageo side of your career at the moment.
• 1:16:43
  There's still the distell and then there's the Glen Turner and
• 1:16:46
  things like that. But I mean, from somebody who
• 1:16:48
  started off going whiskey's not really a thing.
• 1:16:51
  I'll be a. Chemist.
• 1:16:52
  I'll be a chemist to. Where they are now?
• 1:16:54
  What what really attracts you to whiskey?
• 1:16:57
  Because you're talking about that Blair Athol experience, but
• 1:17:01
  you've also going down talking about the, the inch coward.
• 1:17:05
  What is it that really draws you into what's going to?
• 1:17:08
  Is that the the? The, the, the number of things
• 1:17:11
  you can do with three raw materials and it is
• 1:17:13
  understanding distillery character.
• 1:17:15
  For me, I didn't really appreciate distillery character
• 1:17:18
  when I was an engine government because it's, it's, it's quite a
• 1:17:20
  simple pro. It's, it's a difficult 1 to get
• 1:17:22
  wrong because once you start with Cloudy War, there are very
• 1:17:26
  few tunes you can play on it. It will give you a final spirit
• 1:17:29
  that's not easy really. And it's, it's quite easy to do.
• 1:17:32
  But it's those nuances, it's a bit those, you know how quickly
• 1:17:35
  you run off the ton, the clarity of the what the length of time
• 1:17:38
  you ferment it for, how you distill it just completely
• 1:17:42
  hooked me. It almost gives back to the
• 1:17:43
  chemical days of how do you turn 2 innocuous things into gold.
• 1:17:47
  It's that piece for me that was just, I could talk about it all
• 1:17:51
  day. I love it.
• 1:17:52
  My longest distillery tour is 7 hours.
• 1:17:56
  Where was that? I was at the instant.
• 1:17:58
  Of all places it used. To be terribly it.
• 1:18:01
  Was and in terms of like that's. Amazing.
• 1:18:02
  In terms of looking at the the the sort of starting point at
• 1:18:05
  the Azio with the Cooperage and things like that is again, the
• 1:18:09
  the two sides that now I again, talking about what we said at
• 1:18:13
  the start of the podcast about the journey that Angus and I've
• 1:18:15
  been on myself and looking at the sort of hearing things and
• 1:18:19
  picking up. I was big on the fact that the
• 1:18:21
  distillation doesn't really matter.
• 1:18:23
  It's all about what happens in the wood.
• 1:18:24
  Yeah, right. And you're saying it.
• 1:18:25
  Yeah. But at the same time, then you
• 1:18:27
  speak to someone like yourself, he'll say no, hang on a minute
• 1:18:30
  here. Why?
• 1:18:30
  Because maybe it might, and I might be totally wrong here and
• 1:18:33
  you could feel free to shoot me down on this.
• 1:18:35
  But if you had to break it down in a simple sort of 8020
• 1:18:38
  principle when you could, some people would argue 80% of the
• 1:18:42
  flavour prover comes from the wood.
• 1:18:43
  But the important 20%? The important 20% is.
• 1:18:47
  Actually, when you speak copper contact the pressure that says
• 1:18:51
  done it and as you said, clear or or or cloudy, cloudy water
• 1:18:55
  and things like that. So before you answer, I always.
• 1:18:58
  Say that if somebody works in production, they have to give
• 1:19:01
  more credit to their spirit. Realistically, because if you,
• 1:19:05
  if you want, if you wanted cask to be the 100% influence, you
• 1:19:09
  could. You could.
• 1:19:11
  Just get a really wet cask. Over mature and that could be
• 1:19:15
  the full influence of course, but I feel like you see if you.
• 1:19:17
  Work in producing. Great new make spirit, Yeah,
• 1:19:20
  You've got to have something that tells, well that character,
• 1:19:23
  that fermentation at Mannock more well that will make you
• 1:19:26
  look at you have to look at some place.
• 1:19:28
  Like space side or Isle of where and go where you've got high
• 1:19:31
  concentration of distilleries where they're literally down the
• 1:19:35
  road from each other. Yeah.
• 1:19:36
  And you say to yourself, well, if it wasn't anything to do with
• 1:19:40
  the distillation process, then surely those two distilleries
• 1:19:44
  that are literally across the road are half a mile apart.
• 1:19:47
  The whiskey should taste exactly the same.
• 1:19:48
  But the whiskey doesn't taste the same.
• 1:19:50
  So then you have to say, well, hang on a second, right?
• 1:19:53
  They could have. And we've had it when we did the
• 1:19:55
  Sherry casts to ensemble from. I mean, we've had two casts from
• 1:20:00
  the same, you know, the same, the same spirit.
• 1:20:03
  In the same effectively the same casks side by side.
• 1:20:06
  Yeah, yeah. And they've come out completely
• 1:20:08
  different. They're tasted different.
• 1:20:09
  So that's the woods influence, but with the same spirit.
• 1:20:12
  But then on the flip side of that, you look at it, you go to
• 1:20:14
  space side aisle or someplace like that and you say, well,
• 1:20:16
  hang on, how can those two distilleries are so close to
• 1:20:18
  each other? Fill in to the same parcel,
• 1:20:19
  refill. Yeah, if you were to give them
• 1:20:21
  the same parcel of casks. Say there's literally 50%.
• 1:20:23
  They've all come from the same bodega.
• 1:20:25
  They've all come from the same place in America.
• 1:20:28
  So, so it does, it has to have a huge influence.
• 1:20:31
  Well, I mean, I I think you hit the nail.
• 1:20:33
  On the head if if it wasn't if if distillery character didn't
• 1:20:36
  have an influence, why would we bother Yeah, essentially we
• 1:20:39
  would just have a great big malt equivalent of a grain
• 1:20:42
  distillery. You know, we would just yeah,
• 1:20:43
  push out character a a a single character and let the let the
• 1:20:48
  let the wood do the work. But but it comes down to as
• 1:20:51
  well, it's not just you're absolutely right.
• 1:20:52
  You could take you could take two of the same spirits, put
• 1:20:55
  them in exactly the same castes. It came from exactly the same
• 1:20:58
  cooperage and put them in two different corners of a
• 1:20:59
  warehouse. Yeah, you'll get two different
• 1:21:01
  characters of of final questions and in your in your job.
• 1:21:05
  Then in that you've moved from the cooperage up to through
• 1:21:08
  learning all about this sort of process and then to the point
• 1:21:11
  where you know you are, you have started to be, you're being a
• 1:21:14
  master distiller as well. How much of it do you focus on
• 1:21:18
  the end product versus just the product that you're finishing
• 1:21:22
  off at your station at your bet? So I would, would, would you say
• 1:21:27
  as a master distiller, all I'm interested in is the quality of
• 1:21:30
  the clear liquid that comes out of the spirit safe versus or
• 1:21:33
  will you say I want to try what's been I've created that's
• 1:21:37
  in a three 510 year old cask? Well, it was an interesting
• 1:21:41
  articulation. Because until purely look after
• 1:21:45
  the new mates, but I was distillery's manager, that's
• 1:21:48
  what I did. So I looked after when I was
• 1:21:50
  with Distell, I looked after Beanston when I have and Tobin
• 1:21:54
  Mori and then our master blender left and left quite suddenly.
• 1:22:00
  So that gap needed filled and we had a talented blending team in
• 1:22:05
  there. So my boss at the time had
• 1:22:07
  spoken to me and said look, do you fancy just filling that gap
• 1:22:12
  just to look after following the gap of master?
• 1:22:15
  Distiller Well, it was no, it was more a.
• 1:22:17
  Master Blender. So a master.
• 1:22:18
  It's a great blending. Team and I think at.
• 1:22:21
  That point and it wasn't something I'm never I, you know,
• 1:22:24
  I've never chased a title in my life.
• 1:22:25
  It was like, well, this is what the new role is going to be.
• 1:22:27
  This is what it's going to look like.
• 1:22:29
  Do you think you can do it? Well, I've never want you,
• 1:22:32
  Shark. Back, it's back to the.
• 1:22:33
  Old shark analogy Shark Steven don't keep.
• 1:22:36
  Moving you stand still or or or. If you stand still.
• 1:22:39
  You're quite. Stagnant.
• 1:22:40
  What what, what, what? Let's let's.
• 1:22:41
  Look at time frames here, right? I want to hang on somebody they
• 1:22:44
  play it after. Well, she loved it.
• 1:22:45
  So I just love that. Well, I want I want to know that
• 1:22:47
  from a time. Because there's a there's
• 1:22:49
  something that popped out my mind there, right?
• 1:22:50
  What was the when did you decide to exit the the chemist, the
• 1:22:57
  chemical side of it and go in and become that?
• 1:22:59
  When was it there? You were there Probably be
• 1:23:01
  quite, quite shocked. It was just about what, 2.
• 1:23:03
  Years ago, no, it was a wee bit longer than that.
• 1:23:05
  No 2008, no. So that was when you joined
• 1:23:07
  Diageo? That 2000 the.
• 1:23:10
  Beginning of January 2009 is when I joined Diageo in the
• 1:23:13
  cooperage. Yeah.
• 1:23:14
  So that was 2009, and then by the time that you've been asked
• 1:23:17
  to become a master blender, that would well bastard the.
• 1:23:21
  Stellar master. The Stellar basically trained,
• 1:23:23
  right? That would have been about 2019.
• 1:23:26
  So like your cooperage? You effectively have served like
• 1:23:29
  a 10 year, almost like when you a 10 year a privacy like I say
• 1:23:35
  you get out what you. Put in, I was really keen to
• 1:23:38
  move about and and learn, you know, and it was the hook when
• 1:23:41
  I, when I was speaking to my boss at Distell, they were
• 1:23:44
  really quite keen at the time, albeit the funds never really
• 1:23:47
  materialized to RIP the distilleries apart.
• 1:23:50
  Because again, you know, they need a lot of work and they
• 1:23:52
  still need not so much a lot of money into being having now.
• 1:23:55
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and a lot of money into
• 1:23:57
  Deanston. A lot and a lot of money into
• 1:23:59
  Tobin Mori and they were they were much needed.
• 1:24:01
  But the the click was like, right, you take all this thing
• 1:24:04
  apart was the first thing you consider.
• 1:24:07
  I never forget the question. And my first answer was just
• 1:24:09
  intuitively distillery character.
• 1:24:11
  How do you maintain that distillery character?
• 1:24:13
  And from there on, and it was almost like I knew I had the job
• 1:24:16
  because it became less like an interview and it became just
• 1:24:19
  more like a, a really good conversation about a bit, making
• 1:24:23
  a bit, making whiskey, you know. And so that was so, so you've.
• 1:24:26
  Let you're leaving the out so was Blair Athol your last
• 1:24:29
  station posting posting and and then so Dean's not far away so
• 1:24:33
  there's. No, no, you're an hour down the
• 1:24:34
  road, so. How did the style come about
• 1:24:36
  Was. That an opportunity you seat
• 1:24:38
  yourself or these weird things you know you get.
• 1:24:41
  An opportunity comes up and, and, and and the champ who was
• 1:24:44
  there before me and Macmillan had left and there was a
• 1:24:48
  recruitment company just really doing as they do tapping people
• 1:24:51
  up. Yeah.
• 1:24:52
  And The funny thing is I never get tapped up.
• 1:24:55
  It was it was a friend of mine who did get a call said, look,
• 1:24:58
  I'm no interested be my wife. Speak to this guy, right.
• 1:25:01
  And it was and and and it was literally from there.
• 1:25:03
  And it was almost like, Jesus, this ever going to happen
• 1:25:06
  because I got the phone call, right.
• 1:25:09
  We'd like to have a wee chat with you.
• 1:25:10
  And and back in those days, God, was it Zoom?
• 1:25:12
  It was call or something like that.
• 1:25:13
  You know, it was a Zoom interview and aye, and then it
• 1:25:17
  was they'd like to come and speak to you can come down and I
• 1:25:19
  was waiting Wales for a rugby international.
• 1:25:22
  I can't even. Make it.
• 1:25:23
  Could we reschedule? And they were brilliant.
• 1:25:25
  They were really, really good. And and yeah, after that it and
• 1:25:30
  and it was Deanston. Yeah, landed it first.
• 1:25:32
  It was Deanston at. Well, it was.
• 1:25:33
  I was. Responsible for all three,
• 1:25:35
  right? Beast Beast and it's a.
• 1:25:38
  Lot easier than being based on Muller Island.
• 1:25:40
  Or darn tootin and. And you know that at that point
• 1:25:43
  I suddenly realised, as a nervous flyer, I had to do that
• 1:25:45
  fairly. Seater bones.
• 1:25:47
  Oh never. You know, it's the one thing I
• 1:25:52
  walked away from that job thinking, thank Christ I do not
• 1:25:55
  have to do really and in. Terms of Ireland life and
• 1:26:00
  production versus, you know, you've gone from the mass side
• 1:26:05
  of it. You've looked at working at big
• 1:26:07
  things like Bells and and and these for these big distilleries
• 1:26:11
  that are churning out decent levels.
• 1:26:13
  You always hear about the island lifestyle and and there's always
• 1:26:16
  an element of in whiskey or we do things like this because this
• 1:26:19
  is the way the railways done things did that was that
• 1:26:22
  challenge when you're working massive.
• 1:26:24
  Yeah, so. There, there was, there was lots
• 1:26:27
  of things and it made me laugh because I've always kept in
• 1:26:29
  touch with these guys. You know, Andrew Brown, you
• 1:26:33
  know, we consider a friend now at BUN.
• 1:26:35
  I haven't. And it's interesting, you know,
• 1:26:36
  he would, you know, and and and you'll have Brendan in one day,
• 1:26:40
  but you know, I'd, I'd phone and we'd have a wee blather and you
• 1:26:42
  know, Brendan would like us to be doing this.
• 1:26:44
  And do you know why he's here? We do it.
• 1:26:47
  But once he goes, you know what I'm going to think That sums up
• 1:26:51
  my entire Tell me if I'm. Not, but this was kind of the
• 1:26:56
  belief. Brendan Mccammon is your master
• 1:26:58
  blender and he really, really thought that Lechick had massive
• 1:27:03
  potential as a spirit and so change the production of
• 1:27:07
  Tobermory quite dramatically, I believe.
• 1:27:10
  Well. Yes, I mean, it's difficult for
• 1:27:12
  me to comment and what what the drivers were behind that
• 1:27:15
  business decision at the time. He always felt that Lechek had a
• 1:27:19
  bit of a cult following. You know, yeah.
• 1:27:22
  And, and I love that about, but it was niche.
• 1:27:24
  It was niche. Very.
• 1:27:25
  Niche. But but I think, I think you're
• 1:27:28
  absolutely right. I think you get better value
• 1:27:30
  personally. You get better value from
• 1:27:32
  Tobermory because it it it matures far quicker and far
• 1:27:38
  better the peat lens itself to a quicker yeah maturation.
• 1:27:41
  I feel that so the the the Sinclair series Riocha.
• 1:27:46
  Cast a great example, but you know that that.
• 1:27:48
  Was supposed to be a 2A2 part release, was it?
• 1:27:51
  Yeah, it was supposed to be pity, non pity.
• 1:27:53
  It's obviously non aged stated Yeah that Pete was the Pete the
• 1:27:56
  site. The the site was so good, just
• 1:27:58
  gorgeous. Yeah, but similarly.
• 1:28:00
  Aged exceptional value ready. To go turned heads that whiskey
• 1:28:05
  and then the 18 year old Fazolo Ozo, I think Lechek won, won the
• 1:28:10
  single malt of the year. And obviously you're going from
• 1:28:14
  distilleries that people like me, I love manic, more niche
• 1:28:18
  killer, but I am a weirdo. But as international.
• 1:28:25
  Internationally. People.
• 1:28:28
  Already have their established opinions and thoughts on
• 1:28:30
  bunahabin and and even Deanston again, a modern distiller.
• 1:28:34
  Deanston in the 1960s. Yeah, that's right.
• 1:28:35
  I used to. Be a cotton mill.
• 1:28:38
  Exactly. And so that waxy distillery.
• 1:28:40
  Character that people fall in love with, been been having is
• 1:28:42
  probably one of my favorite facilities.
• 1:28:44
  I don't know why, it just always has.
• 1:28:45
  It's been. I'm trying.
• 1:28:47
  To work out how many of the what 3 drums bunahabins popped up
• 1:28:50
  tobermori's popped up once Christopher, we are even I was
• 1:28:53
  gonna say been having 40 you you claimed, but I'm 40 has been
• 1:28:58
  actually twice as actually I would like to mention for people
• 1:29:01
  that have listened. To the camera and more podcasts.
• 1:29:03
  I was out of Cameron Julian last week and he brought up that I
• 1:29:06
  was out of order for saying that wasn't the favorite whiskey and
• 1:29:09
  then half an hour later said actually it isn't my favorite
• 1:29:12
  whiskey. You're right.
• 1:29:15
  For people that didn't know the. Context of that.
• 1:29:16
  Clip they would have thought how could he sit well, I guess and
• 1:29:19
  say that's not your favorite whiskey.
• 1:29:20
  This guy brought me up and whiskey.
• 1:29:22
  I was like, Nah, you're forgetting something.
• 1:29:24
  I I didn't know what it was. But I knew that.
• 1:29:26
  Wasn't it? And the other day he said, Oh
• 1:29:28
  no, actually it was a a long mourn G&M.
• 1:29:33
  He's just changing everything. I still.
• 1:29:34
  Like an arse because that clips legacy.
• 1:29:36
  Content that's forever, but I mean, I think.
• 1:29:40
  Tobermory it was Christopher Weir for me.
• 1:29:43
  Mel he he he mentioned Tober Mori and there's a story.
• 1:29:47
  Well, I was going to say I was going to call on you.
• 1:29:50
  I think we're calling to the same story at Tobermory.
• 1:29:52
  It was a great story. I can't remember who told it on
• 1:29:54
  the podcast. I can't remember exactly how it
• 1:29:55
  went, but there was there was something to do with the fact
• 1:29:57
  that on this the Tobermory been a wee island and there's been a
• 1:30:02
  good few years ago. But he basically it was like the
• 1:30:04
  guy that was working the night shift, that was running the
• 1:30:06
  stills on the night shift need is I'm sure it was Chris's
• 1:30:10
  granddad. He was good pals and he just
• 1:30:13
  used to go and chill out and the distillery with her and I'm sure
• 1:30:16
  this guy on the night shift. And then one day the guy used to
• 1:30:19
  leave. I think he was struck down with
• 1:30:21
  something and he just couldn't get out of his bed.
• 1:30:24
  And he said to his powwow, You know how to do it, just you've
• 1:30:27
  seen me. You've been in on the night
• 1:30:28
  shift for me. So many times you'll know what
• 1:30:29
  to do, but it wouldn't surprise that island.
• 1:30:32
  Lifestyle and the way. Things are, but it's so.
• 1:30:36
  Because and you know, it's the only whiskey distillery on the
• 1:30:39
  island. So you know, there's the piece
• 1:30:41
  of it Isla where everything coming across as some form of
• 1:30:45
  milk run, whether it's Easter or anything else, you know, So
• 1:30:48
  everyone's, you know, everyone's contributing to that.
• 1:30:52
  But in Tobermory, that's everything going.
• 1:30:55
  So it's a very expensive place to make whiskey.
• 1:30:58
  And we actually negotiated with the local Co-op so the east
• 1:31:01
  would go from their child van with his stuff for the like.
• 1:31:04
  Quite literally true. 100% true. We used to move on the coop van.
• 1:31:08
  Nuys because. It was, it was cheaper to get it
• 1:31:11
  there and you would just get that right enough.
• 1:31:14
  I mean, the guys would be in their way.
• 1:31:16
  We, you know, apples and cheese and oh, yeast right out and,
• 1:31:20
  and, and and get it, get it and balled into the into the
• 1:31:23
  chiller. So that's a lot of individual
• 1:31:24
  responsibility. In that role as well, though
• 1:31:26
  you're based at Deanston, you're now in charge of the production
• 1:31:29
  for those 3. And it's 3.
• 1:31:31
  Distilleries from three different, oh, it's three
• 1:31:34
  different generations with Tobermory, I think 1798, that's
• 1:31:38
  right. Been having 1881 and Deanson in
• 1:31:40
  the 60s. He can't help himself.
• 1:31:42
  He can't. Help themselves, but they're all
• 1:31:44
  so different. What was it like going to these,
• 1:31:47
  going to the distilleries and going, OK, you could tell this
• 1:31:50
  one's the old, you know what, what was the problems that came
• 1:31:53
  up with that and what was what was how did you marry them
• 1:31:56
  together? I mean, well, I mean, you're
• 1:31:58
  never. Going to marry them together in,
• 1:32:00
  in, in, in, in, in, in, in almost a production sense.
• 1:32:03
  But again, because the idea, yeah, it was a bit.
• 1:32:05
  People it was about. You know, it was a bit
• 1:32:07
  encouraging the sites to start talking to one another.
• 1:32:10
  So I kind of brought my my Diageo habits with it's right,
• 1:32:13
  guys. 9:00 we're just going to put, you know, a long standing
• 1:32:17
  arrangement in the diary. We're going to dial in, let us
• 1:32:20
  know what's happening, let us know what's good, let us know
• 1:32:23
  what the challenges are. But more importantly, we're all
• 1:32:25
  in a call. So we're all starting to share
• 1:32:27
  these experiences. We're all starting to learn from
• 1:32:29
  one another. Because again, the great thing
• 1:32:32
  about the Azure was they wouldn't throw a newbie and
• 1:32:35
  Dalwini or they wouldn't throw a newbie in a Royal Lochnagar
• 1:32:39
  Taliska because, well, that in the very remote they would put
• 1:32:43
  you in a cluster. So I was working when I went to
• 1:32:47
  Inch Gower, then I was in a cluster with Strathmill, a
• 1:32:49
  Thrash Glendale and Mortlock and Dafton.
• 1:32:53
  So we worked as a really tight we team of 6.
• 1:32:56
  And so with that kind of shared those shared experiences you
• 1:32:59
  learned. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:33:03
  Yeah. And and again, that was just.
• 1:33:04
  When you've got a group of really good guys wearing a group
• 1:33:07
  of space ID state was called again, that was just about, you
• 1:33:11
  know, you would sit down, you would, you would meet, you would
• 1:33:13
  talk at least once a week. So I just took that with me and
• 1:33:16
  let's just start, let's just start having a few, you know,
• 1:33:19
  shared experiences, what we're doing here that we're not doing
• 1:33:21
  there, you know, and it came together.
• 1:33:24
  Hopefully it came together quite well.
• 1:33:26
  Brilliant. And now you're back up in Elgin.
• 1:33:29
  Back up in Elgin. I know how.
• 1:33:31
  How ironic you're not based in. Elgin No, no So.
• 1:33:38
  That, that that in itself is another bloody story.
• 1:33:41
  So yeah, Star Law. Well, well, I moved.
• 1:33:46
  To take a wee step back, I moved to down to Blair Athol and my
• 1:33:50
  family stayed N my wife because my wife worked at the time.
• 1:33:53
  I mean, she's, she's worked for the Azio Grants and Edrington.
• 1:33:59
  So it's renewables now. She, she, she just, oh, don't
• 1:34:03
  mind. It's up here.
• 1:34:04
  She's a bit into the outfit. So it's, it's, I don't really
• 1:34:07
  get what she does, but she makes no solvents and stuff.
• 1:34:11
  But it's the same principle, fermentation and distillation.
• 1:34:13
  But but yeah, so I, I moved down to Deanston and and I bought a
• 1:34:18
  wee. I was, I had to look for a wee
• 1:34:19
  flax. I need somewhere to live.
• 1:34:21
  And Deanston's in. In Doon.
• 1:34:23
  Yeah. And Doon's calendar, you know,
• 1:34:25
  It's also bloody expensive, so I don't know if I can manage a
• 1:34:28
  flat here, you know? So then I went out.
• 1:34:30
  And then you're looking at places like Bridge of Allen and
• 1:34:33
  Dunblane. Good God.
• 1:34:35
  Sterling. Right.
• 1:34:36
  I'll move a wee bit further out still.
• 1:34:38
  We are competing with every affluent parent that's got a kid
• 1:34:40
  at the university. So they've started my love
• 1:34:43
  affair with Alloa. I would tell Lovely.
• 1:34:46
  Which in itself. Is steeped in distilling
• 1:34:48
  history. Absolutely.
• 1:34:49
  Yeah. My house sits on top of an old
• 1:34:51
  maltings. I live across the road for crisp
• 1:34:53
  maltings, right yeah, yeah. Again, one of these, but.
• 1:34:55
  I've got Abercrombie's at the. Back door, I can't escape
• 1:34:58
  whiskey. It's so, but you know, when you
• 1:35:00
  look and even to totally sidetrack, which I I tend to do
• 1:35:03
  and I'm really sorry, but you look at the Callowa, you know,
• 1:35:06
  you've got black grains, you've got canvas, you've got
• 1:35:09
  maturation, you've got big, you've got big.
• 1:35:11
  The agile storage facilities in the kind of Clackmannanshire
• 1:35:14
  area and now you've got team slanted and.
• 1:35:16
  You've also and you've also got the.
• 1:35:18
  The the founder and of Jameson Whiskey.
• 1:35:21
  That's right. Yeah.
• 1:35:22
  John had the grave of of of John.
• 1:35:24
  Jameson yes, I know. Not well, it's not.
• 1:35:27
  Supposed it was really. Far from now, but.
• 1:35:28
  But you've got yeast. You can get glass because why
• 1:35:31
  glass is there, you can get copper.
• 1:35:34
  The irony is you can get everything barred distillery now
• 1:35:36
  they've all gone. Yeah.
• 1:35:38
  It's so ironic. Yeah, I'm sure somebody's
• 1:35:40
  thinking about. A clack manager distillery Do
• 1:35:43
  you know The funny thing is since it needs in my.
• 1:35:44
  House I'm not allowed to build a distillery.
• 1:35:46
  Ohh really? Is actually mentioned in the.
• 1:35:48
  Deeds you can, you cannot be coming.
• 1:35:50
  Irony is, I can't go a step further.
• 1:35:52
  Back my career so I can't build a chemical plant.
• 1:35:54
  I'm shafty. Was this some?
• 1:35:58
  Kind of. No, no prohibitionist, no one.
• 1:36:02
  It was. It was when you go all the way.
• 1:36:04
  Back it was the Earl of Mark, so Bob and John was his name.
• 1:36:08
  So I I mean even Genesis wrote a song about him.
• 1:36:11
  But politically he's quite, he's quite famous and he donated the
• 1:36:14
  land, AH, to, to, I can't remember who.
• 1:36:17
  You donated but they put it in condition Yeah.
• 1:36:20
  And here's the thing. Brilliant cannot do Yeah.
• 1:36:22
  There's all sorts of things I remember my old house it was all
• 1:36:25
  kind of thing you know you can't keep chickens.
• 1:36:27
  And scuppered your plans and spoiled again I've.
• 1:36:33
  Always. Wanted to and I go it but.
• 1:36:35
  You know deeds in the. House well, the Glen Murray, you
• 1:36:39
  know, that distillery as we're, as we're talked about has popped
• 1:36:42
  up in the podcast a few times and you know, I think was it off
• 1:36:46
  before we started recording. I forgot what I said when I
• 1:36:49
  arrived in Bangalore, the first thing I saw and I sent a picture
• 1:36:51
  to Allie Baxter was a Glen Murray Christmas tree in
• 1:36:54
  Bangalore, the airport. So I mean as a as a distillery.
• 1:36:57
  Then when you're looking at, you've worked with Distell,
• 1:37:00
  you've worked with Diageo and then you get the opportunity to
• 1:37:04
  to be working with Glenn Turner, who obviously Glenn Murray and
• 1:37:08
  and as you're saying, yeah, I mean Glenn Turner, I just
• 1:37:14
  couldn't. Believe.
• 1:37:14
  The brands you know, because Cutty Sark is.
• 1:37:18
  Hugely. Famous in Scotland, at least
• 1:37:21
  everyone knows that. I mean, I've you go out to
• 1:37:23
  Japan, you go out to America, you will see it in every
• 1:37:24
  convenience store in Japan. And it's been mentioned a few
• 1:37:29
  times again. I'm talking about a work free
• 1:37:30
  drums. It's been meant Cutty Sark
• 1:37:32
  prohibition has been mentioned at least twice as bang for buck.
• 1:37:37
  It's always mentioned bang for buck Cutty Sark, prohibition,
• 1:37:41
  you know, some people just swear by it.
• 1:37:43
  But the other thing as well and you know, again, just reading
• 1:37:46
  this morning label #5 label 5 now label 5.
• 1:37:49
  Sorry, I've never never heard of it before right.
• 1:37:52
  But massive. I read somewhere ninth biggest
• 1:37:56
  whiskey by volume in the world. I actually was at a meeting last
• 1:37:59
  week with the. Marketing team where I wrote all
• 1:38:01
  these stats down and I have forgotten them.
• 1:38:04
  It says number. 2W in France, That's right.
• 1:38:07
  Yeah. And it's, well, it's only
• 1:38:08
  behind. William Peel, which is produced
• 1:38:12
  by a company that Mishukayan also owns.
• 1:38:15
  So he's also responsible and we supply into William Peel.
• 1:38:18
  So. And of course, wine being a big
• 1:38:21
  part. Of it as well.
• 1:38:22
  So when you look at like that, again, we, it's popped up on the
• 1:38:26
  podcast a lot about the challenges that we're seeing in
• 1:38:28
  the industry at the moment. And one of the big things that
• 1:38:31
  we talked about last year was so many people, the challenge for
• 1:38:34
  sourcing Goodwood and trying to make sure.
• 1:38:37
  And you've got when you, when you see the bigger companies
• 1:38:41
  like your William Grant and sons and these guys, they're not
• 1:38:44
  slowing down production. They're they're getting ramping
• 1:38:46
  it up, ramping it up. And of course, they will be
• 1:38:49
  paying lots and lots of money to create lots and lots of
• 1:38:53
  connections to make sure that they have a very, very good
• 1:38:55
  source of consistent wood that they're getting, which then
• 1:38:58
  makes it even harder for other people to tap into that market.
• 1:39:01
  And some would say, well, we want that.
• 1:39:02
  And we have also heard, was it, someone said five times in the
• 1:39:06
  space, five times the value of a bourbon.
• 1:39:09
  It's gone up a lot, used to. Be used to be the cheaper.
• 1:39:12
  It's not cheap. No, no.
• 1:39:13
  But then of course this is. Where it must be hugely.
• 1:39:15
  Advantageous for yourself where you're part of this larger group
• 1:39:18
  with huge amounts of what poor absolute Calvados hundreds
• 1:39:22
  percent brand 100% and and you're right I mean.
• 1:39:25
  That's in since 2021, I think we're paying $40.00 for a a BB1
• 1:39:30
  of a first film bourbon. It's 200 now, you know.
• 1:39:33
  Yeah, that's it coming back from its peak.
• 1:39:36
  So things are slackening off a bit.
• 1:39:38
  Yeah, it's also a bourbon decline.
• 1:39:40
  Interesting because yeah, but I mean, there's a.
• 1:39:43
  Lot more being. Produced and all this, there's a
• 1:39:45
  lot of. Chat.
• 1:39:45
  There's been a lot of noise. Throughout the course of 2024,
• 1:39:49
  in fact, I read an art, someone popped out, an article popped up
• 1:39:52
  that It was like on the sort of early week, first week in
• 1:39:55
  January 2024 of someone expressing concerns about where
• 1:39:59
  the industry could be. And it's sort of finished off
• 1:40:01
  with who knows what the next 12 months will bring for the
• 1:40:03
  industry. And it was a sort of reflective
• 1:40:05
  piece. And this is what was a year ago.
• 1:40:07
  This was. And then what happened in the
• 1:40:09
  industry over that course of 12 months, Not all doom and gloom,
• 1:40:13
  I should say, lots of different things happening.
• 1:40:15
  But at the same time, there are some interesting points.
• 1:40:18
  One of the big things that one of the big points that was
• 1:40:21
  raised in that article was about the price of whiskey.
• 1:40:24
  And yeah, from a consumer point of view.
• 1:40:27
  Is that we're, we've seen the prices go so high and it's
• 1:40:31
  almost as it got to the point where it can't go any higher or
• 1:40:34
  it's peaked or is it going to carry on?
• 1:40:36
  And then it's the the argument and it'll be interesting from
• 1:40:39
  your point of view is distillers, whiskey brands will
• 1:40:43
  say, yeah, prices gone up because cost of, well, the cost
• 1:40:48
  of, you know, power has gone up, you know, just keep the lights
• 1:40:51
  on's gone up. Now we're seeing the cost of
• 1:40:53
  staff wages, We're seeing the cost of all.
• 1:40:55
  So everything compounds. Well, there has to be a raise in
• 1:40:58
  price to justify that. But at the same time, there'll
• 1:41:00
  be other people, cynics will say, Nah, what you've done is
• 1:41:03
  you've seen that brand stick their price up at this level and
• 1:41:07
  everyone else below that brand can suddenly go, we can bump up
• 1:41:10
  because they've bumped up. No, I mean there's there's.
• 1:41:13
  There's genuine, I mean, I'm not so involved in the distilling
• 1:41:18
  side now, but but no, there's, there's, there's truth to be
• 1:41:21
  said. You know what energy prices, we
• 1:41:23
  all know the energy cap dropped off and energy prices went
• 1:41:26
  through the roof that the war in Ukraine didn't help because that
• 1:41:29
  impacted, you know, cereal. So there's been a whole raft of
• 1:41:34
  things. I mean, the price of cereal
• 1:41:36
  trebled, you know, so it's all these costs are real.
• 1:41:39
  They are all built into whiskey. But but certainly one thing I
• 1:41:43
  would say, and we know that's because we alluded to at the
• 1:41:45
  start is that Glen Murray still stays true and is yeah, is, is
• 1:41:49
  an extremely competitive DRAM. And, and at a meeting with I was
• 1:41:53
  in part of a meeting. We we miss Yukaya, who owns the
• 1:41:56
  company just a couple of weeks ago.
• 1:41:57
  And and you know, I have ambition from the brand and I
• 1:42:00
  you know, we've got a lot of stock here at a certain age
• 1:42:02
  saying, do you know what we really need to be pushing the
• 1:42:05
  brand architecture NA wee bit. You know we've we've gone
• 1:42:08
  backwards. If we've done anything used to
• 1:42:10
  be 25, it's now about 21 yeah. You know, but we still have lots
• 1:42:14
  of stock of an age where we've got to do something nice here.
• 1:42:17
  Yeah, He's he's absolutely fixed.
• 1:42:19
  No, no, I want a quality product and I want it to be an
• 1:42:22
  affordable quality product because that's more consumers,
• 1:42:24
  which is rare. That's rare.
• 1:42:26
  Well. The the piece I have.
• 1:42:27
  Is that that you get, and I get it, festivals.
• 1:42:30
  I love going out and doing festivals.
• 1:42:32
  I've got my favourites. And, you know, a lot of people
• 1:42:33
  will say wise clean Murray's a cheat.
• 1:42:36
  They've got it completely wrong. You know, whiskey is so highly
• 1:42:39
  regulated, we all make it the same way.
• 1:42:41
  Yeah. We can't cut any corners because
• 1:42:44
  there's an act that tells us how this comes to idiot.
• 1:42:46
  Yeah, So the. Question you need to ask
• 1:42:48
  yourself. Is why is everyone else that
• 1:42:49
  lives expensive? Yeah.
• 1:42:51
  And I think that's where. The from a consumers point of
• 1:42:54
  view, I think that's where people are getting at.
• 1:42:55
  And then the big question, what we're wanting to see is what
• 1:42:58
  will happen? You know, what will we see
• 1:43:01
  prices start to come down? I don't know.
• 1:43:03
  But what we will while we see new ranges coming out, what we
• 1:43:06
  see, you look back at history and you look back at what's
• 1:43:09
  happened in the past. And I think COVID probably I
• 1:43:12
  think up to 2019. And I'm only surmising this and
• 1:43:17
  I had no reason to believe otherwise because we hadn't done
• 1:43:20
  anywhere near as much research or had anywhere near as much
• 1:43:22
  knowledge as I have now in that sense and still don't have very
• 1:43:24
  much knowledge on that. But I think what it looked like
• 1:43:27
  is people in in 2019-2020 were starting to go like, is it?
• 1:43:34
  Going to burst. At some point, then COVID
• 1:43:36
  happened and for whatever reason, COVID like that, we put
• 1:43:41
  plenty of people who've said so many times upon them.
• 1:43:44
  So many people will have had horrible times in COVID, and we
• 1:43:46
  should never take away from that.
• 1:43:48
  But what I will say is that it seems like most people who speak
• 1:43:51
  to whiskey seems to have really catapulted whiskey into the 21st
• 1:43:56
  century with with the way they do things.
• 1:43:58
  So many people entered into whiskey, and this podcast was
• 1:44:00
  probably born on the back of us really getting into whiskey from
• 1:44:04
  them. So COVID kind of gave a false,
• 1:44:06
  didn't give a false dawn, a false peak.
• 1:44:08
  And now we're seeing at the end, like so many other things,
• 1:44:11
  things are actually becoming trickier.
• 1:44:13
  Yeah. Yeah, I mean 100%, you know,
• 1:44:16
  during COVID, of course, you know, the, the there was a real
• 1:44:19
  boost because people started drinking at home.
• 1:44:21
  Yeah. So, you know, we, we, we saw an
• 1:44:24
  increase there. But I think things are, are kind
• 1:44:28
  of, you know, I think they're evening out about.
• 1:44:30
  I think they're beginning to find the level, you know, where
• 1:44:33
  we are. Realistically, we, we, we feel
• 1:44:35
  we should be. But it's like anything else.
• 1:44:38
  Whiskey's historically sawtooth. You get this build, build,
• 1:44:42
  build, build. Oh, geez, right, OK, it's
• 1:44:44
  dropped off Build, build, build, build.
• 1:44:45
  And I think it'll continue. You know, I mean, my mother will
• 1:44:48
  tell me stop listening to them all my mum tell, you know, the
• 1:44:50
  whiskey lakes of the 70s and 80s because people just stopped
• 1:44:53
  drinking whiskey. And then it became trendy again
• 1:44:56
  and single malts hit the scene in a big way.
• 1:44:59
  You know, can a Glenfiddich really LED that?
• 1:45:02
  But you know, I think there's I think there's a new evolution
• 1:45:05
  cut. I would I would like to think
• 1:45:07
  there's a new evolution coming where it's about trying to make
• 1:45:10
  even things like, you know, I will speak on brand looking at
• 1:45:13
  Cutty Sark and looking at trying to make something that's really
• 1:45:17
  maybe not so accessible in the UK, but but but, you know, easy
• 1:45:20
  to drink and you know, and it's different applications for
• 1:45:23
  whiskey now, something that will make quite a vibrant cocktail.
• 1:45:26
  Just something that brings a new, you know, because we'll
• 1:45:29
  look at we haven't touched in things like gin, which is a
• 1:45:31
  divine mind is a bubble that has, you know, 1st that's
• 1:45:34
  certainly in the way and absolutely, you know, so what's
• 1:45:37
  the next big thing? Yeah.
• 1:45:38
  Is it going to be rum? I don't know if rum's really
• 1:45:39
  beginning to take off, but can we get people who because I.
• 1:45:42
  I'm convinced lots of people love the idea of drinking
• 1:45:45
  whiskey. Yeah, just.
• 1:45:46
  And that's why something that is actually a great.
• 1:45:48
  Example of a historic product has been very successful in
• 1:45:50
  Scotland that can now do so much for Scotland out with the
• 1:45:53
  countries. Oh, I mean, you see.
• 1:45:56
  You get until you sometimes go abroad where you see brands tell
• 1:46:00
  you, I've never heard of that. William Lawson's a good example.
• 1:46:02
  You drinking? That in India.
• 1:46:03
  William Lawson. Yeah, but I'm, I'm.
• 1:46:04
  I'm. Annoyed at myself, I forgot to
• 1:46:06
  bring some of these brands back. And my my current wife Barbara,
• 1:46:09
  she's over still in India. I've got I've got an empty until
• 1:46:11
  the 13th of February. So yeah, it's this he's but I'm
• 1:46:15
  gonna, I'm gonna say try and bring a couple bottles so we
• 1:46:17
  could do a wee tasting on here and maybe put one behind the
• 1:46:19
  back. I think it's worth asking some
• 1:46:20
  questions about Glenn Murray. And so give 'cause we do have a
• 1:46:25
  lot of industry lists as well. Distillery, deep dive into
• 1:46:28
  distillery. What makes Glenn Murray's spirit
• 1:46:30
  excellent, first and foremost? Well, I think it's.
• 1:46:35
  The consistency of the spirit is a great thing.
• 1:46:38
  There has been a lot of investment.
• 1:46:39
  If you have it's, it's a, it's a kind of, I don't, I don't mean
• 1:46:43
  funny in a ha ha sense. You turn up and and and it's
• 1:46:46
  this really old traditional courtyard and you know, it's,
• 1:46:48
  it's the fast side of a, the old kind of farm building.
• 1:46:51
  Exactly. A building that has been there
• 1:46:52
  since. 1897 you go behind that and then it's just a different
• 1:46:57
  world of technology. I so it's, it's been, I think it
• 1:47:00
  was the 2015, two, 1016 new 10 tonne mash tonne went in, new
• 1:47:05
  stills went in, new still house built, new wash bags put in
• 1:47:09
  place. I think it went up to 6,000,000
• 1:47:12
  litres. So I had a complete overhaul
• 1:47:14
  really. Completely ripped out, yeah.
• 1:47:16
  That took it up. I think that went from 2 million
• 1:47:19
  to about 6,000,000 litres. We have invested again and the
• 1:47:24
  distilleries pushing towards 9 million litres.
• 1:47:27
  That's the plan and and that's where's where's that?
• 1:47:30
  That like, like where's the majority of that like we're
• 1:47:32
  going? Is it going into Glenn Murray
• 1:47:33
  that we're seeing on the shelf or is it going into Kai Sark or
• 1:47:36
  is it what's it exactly that so? You know every single brand we
• 1:47:41
  turn out of any size, so Glenn Murray, single malt, obviously.
• 1:47:45
  Then you've got Cutty Sark, you've got Label 5, you've got
• 1:47:47
  Sir Edwards. So these are all brands that
• 1:47:50
  will have a degree of Cutty Sark in them.
• 1:47:52
  And then we have moving abroad, you know, you've got William
• 1:47:54
  Peels and stuff like that. So we are sending, you know, I
• 1:47:57
  mean broadly, you know, we're exporting or dealing with in an
• 1:48:03
  annual basis of it 29,000,000 litres of alcohol.
• 1:48:06
  So that's just LA. That's before you add the water.
• 1:48:08
  Yeah, of course. Yeah.
• 1:48:10
  So it's it's. I so it it.
• 1:48:14
  It, you know, the, the challenge for me is, is the, the, the, the
• 1:48:17
  challenge that you illustrated for, for Brian Kinsman, I need
• 1:48:20
  to make those pieces of that jigsaw fit for the next 30
• 1:48:23
  years. And the, is that something?
• 1:48:24
  Sorry. Yeah, no, I was going to say
• 1:48:26
  what what I find interesting about the company is the
• 1:48:28
  introduction to whiskey was opening a grain distillery well
• 1:48:31
  at a time when other grain distilleries were closing as
• 1:48:33
  well. So it just seems like a very
• 1:48:36
  unusual, well, they they bought. They bought Glenn Murray first,
• 1:48:40
  so they. Ah, right, this is where Murray.
• 1:48:42
  Hadn't been Murray in 2008 I think.
• 1:48:44
  It was the and then Starla was open the NH.
• 1:48:46
  Starla was open a year later. 2010, right?
• 1:48:49
  Yeah, Starla was. Commissioned and started to
• 1:48:51
  produce, so yeah. So yeah, prior to that, the the
• 1:48:55
  Glenn Turner site was really just blending in bottling.
• 1:48:58
  Yeah, yeah. I think it's from our lineup
• 1:48:59
  tonight. From the three drams that you've
• 1:49:01
  picked us, yes, Glenn Murray. I have to say kind of my heart,
• 1:49:05
  probably the biggest scale I've ever drank of Glen Murray, but
• 1:49:10
  thoroughly enjoyed it. What's your favorite meat so
• 1:49:11
  far? I have to admit I'm staying
• 1:49:13
  traced for Miss Masala beat masala.
• 1:49:16
  That's going to end. That's been my favorite a lot.
• 1:49:18
  I have to say that I really really, you know, I like I
• 1:49:21
  prefer you know, I do like my Pete whiskey.
• 1:49:23
  I love my kind of wine finishes as well.
• 1:49:25
  I'm going to say the same. No, I'd say it the first one
• 1:49:30
  like the Chardonnay. Yeah, Chardonnay.
• 1:49:34
  Well, was it? Is it just?
• 1:49:35
  No, it's just. The Chardonnay, I think it's
• 1:49:36
  just the Chardonnay. The so the classic, the classic.
• 1:49:39
  So this is, you know, one thing that's quite interested by Glenn
• 1:49:42
  Murray. You've got this range of kind of
• 1:49:45
  a lot. It's about 6 or 7 finishes.
• 1:49:49
  They're just kind of naughty and you've got Chardonnay.
• 1:49:52
  The other one I could. Have had out there was Cabernet.
• 1:49:56
  Cherry because in your job you'll be filling casks.
• 1:49:59
  The stuff that maybe you'll be filling like one of the casts
• 1:50:02
  might not currently be legal, for example.
• 1:50:04
  And there's a lot of stuff going on just now like the studies
• 1:50:07
  falling into chestnut or distilleries falling into
• 1:50:09
  tequila cast before it was legal, etcetera.
• 1:50:12
  Have you used any Scottish oak? And then we're talking about it.
• 1:50:17
  We. Haven't I was a chat a couple of
• 1:50:21
  years ago with Richard Paterson and Greg Glass.
• 1:50:24
  They. Had used some Scottish oak.
• 1:50:27
  But it's it's, you know, the piece that I suppose I've got to
• 1:50:30
  be mindful of and it is the Glen Murray buying for Buck and and
• 1:50:33
  if I go and spend 1500 quite a cask that that the the the
• 1:50:36
  spirit itself has crossed down the line.
• 1:50:39
  Yeah. So it's a bit.
• 1:50:40
  We, we are still very, very passionate about delivering a
• 1:50:43
  quality spirit. The, the, the, that's
• 1:50:45
  affordable. So, so in terms of something
• 1:50:47
  else we had, we had the. 15 year old, the kind of core bottle
• 1:50:50
  release is that is that a recipe you're kind of staying true to?
• 1:50:53
  Is it something you're looking to change in the future or is it
• 1:50:55
  like, no, that's, that's. Have you heard any rumours,
• 1:50:57
  Angus? Have you heard any rumours?
• 1:50:59
  No, I've not. Heard their research keeps his.
• 1:51:01
  Ears to the ground. Yeah, balls have just got new
• 1:51:03
  designs. I I.
• 1:51:04
  Yes, they have. The Heritage range the 15.
• 1:51:07
  Like I say, part of my job. Is looking 30 years into the
• 1:51:11
  future and it's not just about what people want.
• 1:51:14
  It's, it's clearly about how we get the stock to sustain this.
• 1:51:16
  And. And one thing I found quite
• 1:51:18
  quickly in 2021, the 15 is a is a blend of of acting of bourbon
• 1:51:26
  and Sherry wood. Yeah, and and and personally.
• 1:51:29
  I. Feel it a wee bit.
• 1:51:30
  Nobody's child. It's, it's either one or the
• 1:51:32
  other. It, it doesn't shine for me as
• 1:51:34
  well as it might. It's I thought it might have
• 1:51:36
  been Graham's favorite. For the Sherry involved, but it
• 1:51:38
  was, I mean. It's it's a, they're solid like
• 1:51:43
  you say, the first two, yeah. But then what I like?
• 1:51:46
  About the sorry. But the third one, there's a
• 1:51:48
  there's a challenge, not a challenge, but there's an
• 1:51:50
  interesting flavour with that with the Marcel and Pete when we
• 1:51:52
  carry on Sir petered spirit or petered casks.
• 1:51:55
  Petered spirit. Yeah, so we make.
• 1:51:58
  We do a run of about 200,000 litres a year, so how many, how
• 1:52:02
  many weeks is that? Is that?
• 1:52:03
  Like 2 weeks, 2 weeks, 2 weeks. Interesting.
• 1:52:06
  So yeah, we do that because we service label 5 as a smidgen of
• 1:52:10
  Pete in it. But on that scale, a smidgen of
• 1:52:12
  Pete is a bloody big number. So we've also got the the the PT
• 1:52:16
  classic as well. And we have just launched or or
• 1:52:19
  I'll just becoming as a a PT 12 year old from blueberry.
• 1:52:22
  So that's exciting. Well, yes, it is and it's a
• 1:52:24
  beautiful liquid and I worked very hard with the business to
• 1:52:28
  get it launched at an ABV that didn't require child filtration.
• 1:52:33
  So it's, it's also a nice, we, you know, it's a beautiful
• 1:52:36
  mouthfeel to it. So, as Angus said, I've been
• 1:52:38
  tapping the phone. Lines.
• 1:52:39
  Oh yeah. Well, yeah, we're talking about
• 1:52:40
  that, talking about the 15 year old, talking about the 15 and
• 1:52:43
  and and. And a piece I found out, you
• 1:52:44
  know, looking into the future and looking how the inventory
• 1:52:47
  was able to support that is we, we don't have the bourbon, but I
• 1:52:50
  guess what we've got a bundle of Sherry.
• 1:52:52
  So what I've been looking at doing, and I don't know how
• 1:52:56
  closely keep your eye on the warehouse 1.
• 1:52:58
  So there was a warehouse one came out, was it 2022?
• 1:53:02
  And it was an 8 year old fully matured and Sherry Olerosso.
• 1:53:06
  And it was beautiful, his nectar.
• 1:53:07
  It's just I need the world to, you know, I need the world to
• 1:53:10
  experience this. It was a really, really nice, it
• 1:53:13
  was a really, really nice Sherry, fully mature Glen Murray
• 1:53:17
  expression. But the plan is now, so from
• 1:53:22
  2026 it will go to a finish and we've been finishing, it'll be a
• 1:53:27
  long finish in, in, in Olaroso. But by 2029 it will go fully
• 1:53:31
  mature. Wow.
• 1:53:32
  So it'll be fully very exciting. There you go, Angus.
• 1:53:35
  Well done in the year. Well, we are fast approaching.
• 1:53:37
  I've got a question. I've got a question.
• 1:53:38
  I've got 1 issue. Go first, I'll go first.
• 1:53:40
  Go like Graham Russian get asked about.
• 1:53:42
  Starla A a very. Hard disturbary to find a bottle
• 1:53:45
  of like single yeah, you release a single grain at all.
• 1:53:48
  No glands. Yes we do.
• 1:53:49
  Or no it always kinda. It does slip under the.
• 1:53:52
  Radar a wee bit we we do a label 5 bourbon barrel right, which is
• 1:53:57
  roundup. It's not each stated, but it's
• 1:53:59
  about five years in first Fell Bourbon, right?
• 1:54:01
  It is. These are the answers you don't
• 1:54:03
  get that's. Brilliant.
• 1:54:04
  Absolutely beautiful. Yeah.
• 1:54:06
  And I'm. Not just on brand saying this,
• 1:54:08
  it's a lot. It's a lovely and I'm not single
• 1:54:10
  green star. Single Green Star and my final
• 1:54:12
  question would. Be What is your favorite Co Reg
• 1:54:16
  Glenn Murray and why I. Think it would be I would flip
• 1:54:20
  between the 12 and 18. I think the 12/8 and 18.
• 1:54:23
  The 12 is just quintessentially Glen Murray, quintessentially
• 1:54:28
  space side drum. But with 18, well, you just get
• 1:54:31
  that wee bit of luxury. You get that extra section,
• 1:54:33
  yeah, and and and wood, doesn't it?
• 1:54:35
  But it's. Also pears that's.
• 1:54:36
  A That's a great whiskey. It just sings and.
• 1:54:39
  So with that, the 12's great, great bang for buck.
• 1:54:42
  The 18, well, you've just got that wee bit of added luxury
• 1:54:45
  into it as well. Sorry, right.
• 1:54:47
  No, we're we're. I'm just I've.
• 1:54:48
  Called the musicians. Well, the musicians will arrive
• 1:54:52
  at 9:00 at 10, you know, but aside.
• 1:54:56
  But yeah, we are at that time of the of the recording here where
• 1:54:59
  we do ask our guests for their what?
• 1:55:01
  3 drums? Any three drums.
• 1:55:03
  I have any meaning with you, Les?
• 1:55:05
  I'll go with you first. You're you're heading off to the
• 1:55:08
  Arctic. But tell me 3 drums, three
• 1:55:11
  stories or meanings behind them. What's your first one?
• 1:55:15
  Monkey shoulder so. That was the first whiskey my
• 1:55:18
  wife ever bought me. We just got married and for that
• 1:55:20
  Christmas she got me that whiskey and I said at the time I
• 1:55:23
  will not open this whiskey until I have a kid and that will be
• 1:55:26
  the kind of drama to wet the kids head.
• 1:55:29
  Not realising that would be 12 years of IVF, miscarriages,
• 1:55:33
  thousands of pounds of money. So we've now got a one year old
• 1:55:37
  last year. Opened it for the 1st.
• 1:55:38
  Time. I dug the shed dust, the whole
• 1:55:40
  thing and opened that and it's probably one of the most special
• 1:55:43
  drams I've had that as a not the most expensive.
• 1:55:45
  One but the one. That meant the most, you know
• 1:55:49
  that. That lovely story, but also
• 1:55:52
  imagine if you were. I wonder what would happen if
• 1:55:54
  you were to try a side by side with a current monkey shoulder.
• 1:55:59
  They all say batch 27 on them for.
• 1:56:01
  Whatever reason, that sort of thing for the last great story,
• 1:56:03
  congratulations, that's. That's great.
• 1:56:05
  Firstly, congratulations. Fantastic.
• 1:56:07
  Really tough. One Glen turret.
• 1:56:09
  Pete's 12 year old, not a I'm not a massive Fanny period, but
• 1:56:13
  it's one that I can that I can tolerate The reason by that I
• 1:56:18
  done a charity event 2019 that Glenn Tarrett with a headline
• 1:56:22
  sponsor for it. I got a bottle from them as a
• 1:56:26
  kind of as an award, and that's again, that's one that because
• 1:56:29
  it's got meaning when you drink it, it just means a bit more for
• 1:56:32
  that. What was the event across?
• 1:56:34
  Scotland on a straight. Line so side in Montrose, the
• 1:56:37
  East Coast, across the Highlands, whatever came in your
• 1:56:41
  way, whether it's a mountain, a lake, just or a lock.
• 1:56:44
  Sorry, you just went straight through it.
• 1:56:47
  So 200 K, 23 1/2 hours can run inside swimming, swimming.
• 1:56:53
  What were you raising? What were you raising money for?
• 1:56:55
  Was it Tommy's, the miscarriage charity?
• 1:56:58
  So through my friendship I get I can send with John Laurie, John
• 1:57:02
  said. Look, anything you want, we will
• 1:57:05
  be your your sponsor. So he he enables so much.
• 1:57:07
  So I've got him. Although John's moved on a lot
• 1:57:09
  of loyalty to Glenn turret because they they enabled so
• 1:57:12
  much and final DRAM anything from Glenn Kinchey because that
• 1:57:17
  I'm a local lad. That's that's mine.
• 1:57:19
  So Ross's. Ross.
• 1:57:23
  Cligs. He.
• 1:57:24
  Built Ross Cligs. He built in the 1820s me, George
• 1:57:28
  and. John Ray.
• 1:57:28
  Why Glenn? Can she?
• 1:57:29
  Because it is your local. It's local and if you're on the
• 1:57:31
  bike and stuff. It's just a nice area to go and
• 1:57:34
  you know yourself. If you're going to watch Gifford
• 1:57:37
  Humvey, the hills, you go past there.
• 1:57:39
  You always tend to pop in. It's just a very, very nice
• 1:57:43
  place to be. Yeah.
• 1:57:44
  But because it's a low and malt as well, it kind of suits my my
• 1:57:47
  palate. So it's one that I one that I
• 1:57:49
  like. So I go go Montrose.
• 1:57:51
  To where? Where did you finish?
• 1:57:52
  Finished in Balhulish, so just. Across from Glencoe and that
• 1:57:56
  took you just under 24 hour 23. 23 1/2 hours.
• 1:57:58
  That's Bond. I follow that.
• 1:58:04
  The truth is, I can't. Steven, we'll go now.
• 1:58:07
  You're. Always allowed one on brand at
• 1:58:08
  least. Do you know what?
• 1:58:10
  I'm going to start with that. And, and it's it's, and it's
• 1:58:13
  quite deliberate because coming full circle, it would be Curtis
• 1:58:17
  arc. It would be Curtis arc.
• 1:58:18
  Original, straightforward, you know, obviously now I'm, I'm,
• 1:58:23
  I'm responsible for this production.
• 1:58:25
  But you know, having having had a father with a pub and I
• 1:58:29
  remember my grand, my grandfather had a bag bar in
• 1:58:31
  his. And that it may sound cliched,
• 1:58:34
  it may sound corny, but that, that green bottle, Yeah, green
• 1:58:37
  bottle, yellow. Now it just stands out, doesn't
• 1:58:40
  it? Can I, Can I my we are, I think
• 1:58:44
  the week, the week that we're recording this, it's Burns Night
• 1:58:46
  on Saturday night. Now, am I right in saying Cutty
• 1:58:49
  Sark is from, It's from Tamil. Tamil Shanter.
• 1:58:52
  Yeah, we'll done Cutty Sark right now.
• 1:58:56
  Well, Cutty Sack was also the famous, the shep.
• 1:58:59
  Shep, the shep, the tea Clipper. So what came first?
• 1:59:01
  The the poem. The poem.
• 1:59:03
  Then there's a shep, Yes. And then of course, the whiskey
• 1:59:05
  would have then come after that. So as an Ayrshire lad then.
• 1:59:09
  Aye, it's good. Meaning it's good.
• 1:59:10
  Meaning that way as well. I suppose as an Ayrshire lad, I
• 1:59:12
  hadn't really, really made that connection.
• 1:59:14
  But I was down. I was actually down on the Cutty
• 1:59:17
  Sack on Monday night there. So I was down doing some
• 1:59:19
  promotional work, which was, you know, really interesting as well
• 1:59:23
  because you never associate going South and it getting cold.
• 1:59:28
  So the weather between the two, I left here to fly down to fly
• 1:59:33
  down to London Monday lunchtime. And you know, we blaze on the we
• 1:59:37
  shot got to London and you can't get on the Cutty Sark to do any
• 1:59:41
  promotional stuff until they shot the ship at night.
• 1:59:43
  So you've got to rent the ship on there. 9:00 and a Monday
• 1:59:48
  night beside the Thames. Bloody freezing.
• 1:59:51
  And that is where my love affair with Cutty Sargent ran out.
• 1:59:56
  Smile Steven, Smile Steven, look happy.
• 1:59:58
  No, look at the bottle and smile.
• 2:00:00
  No, no freezing. Brilliant.
• 2:00:03
  OK, number cut this out would be number #1. #2 would be my
• 2:00:07
  introduction to whiskey. So that bit where no, I don't
• 2:00:11
  like it. No, I don't like it.
• 2:00:12
  No, I don't like it. And that would be Lafroy, which
• 2:00:16
  is a complete. You know it's a.
• 2:00:17
  Complete. Don't even ask me the
• 2:00:19
  expression. We had bottles in the house
• 2:00:22
  because my mum worked for Allied at the time and it was one of
• 2:00:26
  their brands and it just it was that there's a really good
• 2:00:30
  descriptor of it and it's like a fire and an oil drum washed up
• 2:00:34
  in a West Coast beach, but in a good way.
• 2:00:36
  And it was that almost for me, it was like it was the first
• 2:00:40
  time where whiskey initiated like I'm I'm gonna say a
• 2:00:47
  response, something triggered. It was like soaking a bump
• 2:00:50
  stick, but in a good in a good way.
• 2:00:53
  Wow, and I loved. It and I really enjoyed it
• 2:00:55
  soaking a bump stick it really. Was it was like chowing?
• 2:00:58
  A bit of car charcoal it was. I agree with you.
• 2:01:00
  I've never liked it. It's.
• 2:01:01
  More criticism. I'll subsequently find out.
• 2:01:04
  Mind you, it doesn't agree with me the next day.
• 2:01:06
  You know I'm trying le frog. On what, 3 drums?
• 2:01:10
  I think we've had maybe one of those, like we've had 30 people.
• 2:01:12
  Have it as their introduction to whiskey and actually we would
• 2:01:16
  put them off. Was it not Judy Bucket?
• 2:01:18
  It's mostly like. A villain, people, when it comes
• 2:01:21
  to that sort of thing. But fantastic.
• 2:01:23
  But then at that time I had no real.
• 2:01:24
  Affiliation to a brand yeah it was it was just I'm going to
• 2:01:28
  give this a go and I really liked it and and and 3rd again
• 2:01:32
  I'm I'm I'm I'm not on brand because I don't work but don't
• 2:01:35
  have an 18 just and it just. Evokes so.
• 2:01:40
  Many happy memories for me and and it does just a great deal of
• 2:01:44
  of pride and and and and being part of that.
• 2:01:46
  Yeah. And have you?
• 2:01:47
  Have you ever? You ever sat on the pier and had
• 2:01:49
  a I better have an 18 learn at the looking at the paps, Adora
• 2:01:53
  paps. Absolutely.
• 2:01:55
  It's it's almost like a kind. Of.
• 2:01:56
  Trope on the show stalking 18 the only.
• 2:01:59
  Thing is, I don't like it whenever it comes to.
• 2:02:01
  What 3 jobs 'cause I can't spell?
• 2:02:10
  It's like, it's like being. In the Caribbean, the water have
• 2:02:15
  been haven't we have to do we have to do an island.
• 2:02:17
  We'll have to do an island trip. We'll have to.
• 2:02:19
  I'll be able to see a lab something there for fish.
• 2:02:21
  All right, but listen, you have been.
• 2:02:22
  Listening to the Whiskey Stories podcast, a massive thank you for
• 2:02:26
  Les and Steven for coming on really great.
• 2:02:30
  Yeah. Les, how can people keep up to
• 2:02:31
  date with what you're doing and with what?
• 2:02:33
  What? How can people follow their
• 2:02:34
  trip? Because there'll be plenty of
• 2:02:36
  people in the Whiskey Stories podcast groups that won't keep
• 2:02:38
  up to date with what you're doing.
• 2:02:40
  And also see loads of great photos of you guys enjoying
• 2:02:42
  their Whiskey Stories 25 blend on there.
• 2:02:45
  So how can people find you? So best way is to follow
• 2:02:47
  breaking. Steam.
• 2:02:48
  Events on their socials, so usually Instagram is where we
• 2:02:52
  post most of our content on trail.
• 2:02:54
  The reception's a bit sketchy, so you might get a big dump of
• 2:02:58
  things after the event potentially.
• 2:03:00
  But also I'll share a lot of stuff with yourself, so I'll get
• 2:03:04
  hopeful pictures of the Northern Lights and stuff and this bottle
• 2:03:07
  and whiskey within that environment and I can share it
• 2:03:10
  with yourself as well together. Whiskey stories.
• 2:03:12
  Facebook page also, yeah, Brad, fantastic, yeah, if you're.
• 2:03:15
  On Facebook, don't forget get on that.
• 2:03:16
  You can find us on Facebook for Whiskey Stories, but you can
• 2:03:18
  also get in the group. I have been slack on the on the
• 2:03:22
  weekend was doing the DRAM roll call.
• 2:03:25
  I was. I got back.
• 2:03:27
  Well, the problem is you're away.
• 2:03:28
  I was doing a bit of a sober January, so there was but we
• 2:03:31
  will get back with the with the weekend DRAM roll call.
• 2:03:35
  Yeah. Stephen, how can people keep up
• 2:03:36
  to date with what's happening with yourselves and Glenn Murray
• 2:03:38
  and what? Keep up to date and all that
• 2:03:40
  stuff. And other than contact Angus, it
• 2:03:42
  seems to have the crystal ball. If you still cutting the phone
• 2:03:46
  lines, yeah, I mean. I mean, I suppose.
• 2:03:49
  We've just launched a new Label 5 website, but you'll, you'll
• 2:03:52
  cover off, you know, if you go to Glenn Murray, you'll get the
• 2:03:56
  website there. We've got websites for just
• 2:03:59
  about everything if you want an insight and I pass my life and
• 2:04:02
  I'm Glenn Moravian on but I I there are disclaimers on it.
• 2:04:07
  It is just my life unfolding. Is that?
• 2:04:09
  Is that on? Social media, is that on?
• 2:04:11
  Instagram is it. It's on Instagram.
• 2:04:13
  It's fine. Fantastic.
• 2:04:15
  Quickly lads, for the Single Malt Amateur Club, what was your
• 2:04:18
  favorite out of the floor that we had?
• 2:04:20
  Was it there? It'd be the 60%.
• 2:04:22
  And the third RAM for me. I'm root.
• 2:04:25
  I was. A big fan of the last, the last.
• 2:04:28
  One that was listed as old. Blend.
• 2:04:30
  What was that? That was lovely.
• 2:04:31
  I think that was the old VAT 69. I think I'll double check.
• 2:04:34
  Yeah, that was great. What I plan to share Dramas.
• 2:04:38
  From across the world and very generous.
• 2:04:40
  I was kind of nice and fruity and.
• 2:04:42
  Yeah, really big one. Let me see what I like.
• 2:04:45
  The old one. Yeah, that that was a VAT 69
• 2:04:47
  gold US import refined cognac on the nose and full of coal dust.
• 2:04:51
  I actually enjoyed that one as well.
• 2:04:52
  Big thank you to hey, man, forgive me those and I gave them
• 2:04:55
  actually gave them an Arden Merkin.
• 2:04:58
  I had my. I took three.
• 2:05:01
  Bottles out with me. Whiskey stories podcast 25 and I
• 2:05:04
  took I had started it. It was about halfway through
• 2:05:08
  Arden Merkin Sherry. Not enough to fill a bath
• 2:05:11
  anyway, not enough to fill a bath, but I took it and I gave
• 2:05:13
  it to them. I said, have that guys and tell
• 2:05:15
  me what you think because it's it's my fear and that's what
• 2:05:17
  it's all about. But listen, thank you so much
• 2:05:18
  for everyone for coming on. Thank you so much.
• 2:05:20
  Thanks for all the listeners. Thanks for getting involved.
• 2:05:22
  We have got in fact we have. Yeah.
• 2:05:24
  Thank you for the 10,000 downloads.
• 2:05:25
  Don't forget there are 5 tickets at the.
• 2:05:28
  Point of. Recording There are 5 tickets
• 2:05:30
  left for our first indie bottle Spotlight of the year.
• 2:05:33
  Yeah, with George and Rachel from for the end here in this
• 2:05:37
  room. It's going to be really, really
• 2:05:38
  exciting to do that. Lots of exciting whiskey.
• 2:05:40
  The lineup looks absolutely fantastic.
• 2:05:42
  Don't forget you can find us on Instagram.
• 2:05:43
  Please, like us, give us five stars, pass the pod on to as
• 2:05:46
  many people as you possibly can and just keep following on and
• 2:05:49
  get in the whiskey ski group. It's we've had some great stuff.
• 2:05:52
  Big shout out to Nadia who keeping the group going.
• 2:05:55
  She keeps the group going, but she she chucks there loads of
• 2:05:57
  great stuff. Fantastic, brilliant.
• 2:05:59
  You can watch us on YouTube as well.
• 2:06:00
  So if you want to see what we all look like and how we all sit
• 2:06:02
  here, I'm on drums. You can do it.
• 2:06:04
  It's great. Thank you very much.
• 2:06:05
  Cheers everyone Slandra, cheers.