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🥃 Gordon & MacPhail: From Grocers to Whisky Bottling Legends! 🥃 · Whisky Stories Podcast

• 0:00
  Anyway lads, cheers. Cheers.
• 0:05
  Fabulous drama, this one, eh? Oh yeah, boy.
• 0:11
  Glen Burger, right? Angus, you know what to do.
• 0:13
  Clap us in. Welcome to the Whiskey Stories
• 0:18
  podcast. Make sure you're doing it right
• 0:22
  by the people that sold you the rescue and you are and therefore
• 0:25
  building the good name of Gordon in the film.
• 0:27
  That is that's that's what it's all about.
• 0:30
  It's really quite that simple. And going back to the original
• 0:33
  advert in the paper, we want to give you a superior product at
• 0:36
  at a popular price. And it was something my
• 0:39
  grandfather believed in about value for money.
• 0:41
  Can I just say to the audience, I'm amazed these guys A, we're
• 0:43
  on time this morning. B are still standing.
• 0:46
  Welcome along at the Whiskey Stories podcast for myself,
• 0:48
  Graham Koga. We are back.
• 0:50
  Well, we're, we're, we're on the final day of our space aid
• 0:54
  extravaganza road trip, I guess. Yeah, we're back in Elgin.
• 0:57
  We're back in Elgin, all roads lead to Elgin this weekend.
• 1:00
  That's what it's been. We've it's Sunday, it's Sunday
• 1:04
  morning as we're recording this and we've had a fair good
• 1:08
  weekend of it up and up in space I.
• 1:10
  Absolutely, Yeah, we've made the best uses of our time up here.
• 1:14
  Absolutely. And yeah, we're in the Gordon
• 1:15
  Macphail pop up shop at Johnstons of Elgin.
• 1:18
  Yes. We're joined by Stephen Rankin,
• 1:21
  now Director of Prestige. Is that correct?
• 1:24
  That is well. Prestigious podcasting is what
• 1:28
  we do. It's great to have you here,
• 1:30
  Steven A. Marriage made in heaven.
• 1:32
  It's exactly how are you. Excellent.
• 1:34
  Brilliant. And of course we're here.
• 1:36
  We've got dramas in front of us and that's a fantastic word.
• 1:39
  Drinking, that is at Glenn Bergen, 1990.
• 1:41
  Four, I think, yes, it is one of our clonisters.
• 1:43
  Choice single malts. So yeah, absolutely phenomenal.
• 1:48
  Just so beautifully Glenberg. Absolutely.
• 1:51
  And we were talking because, well, there's going to be a lot
• 1:54
  of video content coming out. We, we, we arrived at Spayburn
• 1:58
  Distillery at 10:00 on Friday morning and we're given a
• 2:00
  fantastic tour there, which will be a video feature.
• 2:04
  We also, we were, we were at Glenn Fartless for a Wii tour,
• 2:07
  which we'll get some content out.
• 2:09
  Yesterday we were at Glenn Murray for a great tour, which
• 2:11
  again, will be more content coming out.
• 2:13
  But also one of the things is we are, it's the tropics of Elgin
• 2:16
  this weekend because that's absolutely Scotchio outside and
• 2:20
  it has been. Going We're sitting in a
• 2:22
  greenhouse as well. So when we were looking at the
• 2:24
  drams of choice, I think we did say something nice and tropical
• 2:27
  and something easy to go to get us started.
• 2:29
  But it's fantastic. And and look, Steven, thank you
• 2:31
  so much for for having us here. Pleasure.
• 2:33
  It's great to have you here. And Gordon Macphail, you know
• 2:37
  something that we've always we've talked a lot about Angus
• 2:39
  and Ben Romack. We've we've, we, we've enjoyed a
• 2:43
  great tasting by delivered by Keith Keith from Ben Roma and.
• 2:48
  Scots of the Balmoral. Yeah, yeah, a few.
• 2:50
  Years ago, a few years. Before the podcast started, the
• 2:51
  podcast started, Yeah. And it was about the time that
• 2:53
  we were looking at setting the podcast up and Keith came down
• 2:56
  and one of the things that still makes me laugh was the Brune
• 2:59
  liquid, right? This week it's all but it's all
• 3:02
  but the Brune liquid. And he was, they turned the
• 3:05
  phrase that he had was absolutely fantastic.
• 3:07
  It was about 7 or 8 drums. Yeah, really enjoyable tasting.
• 3:10
  Yeah, right through the kind of core range stuff and a couple
• 3:13
  others as well. Really, really good tasting.
• 3:15
  But Stephen, tell us then tell us a little bit about yourself.
• 3:19
  How did you find yourself getting into whiskey?
• 3:21
  And then how did you find yourself working at Gordon
• 3:23
  Macphail? Wonderful.
• 3:26
  Questions. So it was the year 2000, I'm a
• 3:32
  chartered surveyor, finished uni, worked in Edinburgh and
• 3:39
  everything was going along really well past my professional
• 3:42
  qualifications, trucking along, great group of guys.
• 3:46
  And the company I was working with, they were a global
• 3:50
  business actually, and Edinburgh was just one of their offices.
• 3:53
  And there was suddenly quite a significant amount of change.
• 3:57
  And the business, the owners came to the ripe old rage to
• 4:04
  retire and he didn't have anybody obviously to take over.
• 4:09
  So the next best thing was a management buyout.
• 4:11
  Yeah. So that happened and the company
• 4:15
  was called Bucknell Austin. And when that happened, that
• 4:20
  sent a lot of changes around the business.
• 4:23
  And with my immediate group of, of, of peers, my immediate boss,
• 4:30
  he left to sit. He, you could tell there was, he
• 4:35
  saw something, something that he wasn't willing to stay for.
• 4:39
  He then took two of the senior guys.
• 4:42
  They set up their own business. And then we had some wonderful
• 4:47
  people still there, 22 fabulous people, Charlie Martin and, and
• 4:51
  Willie Allen and, and just just brilliant.
• 4:55
  However, slowly but surely, they Charlie left and and you could
• 5:02
  just see there was just a bit of disharmony.
• 5:04
  Yeah. And future wasn't looking super,
• 5:07
  super bright. And so I said, you know, OK,
• 5:11
  just keep my eyes open. Meanwhile, up in Elgin, Gordon
• 5:17
  and Macphail was was growing and it was growing quickly.
• 5:20
  But they were also a real transition in the, in the, in
• 5:24
  the families evolution. So the thing, the thing about my
• 5:32
  position is unique. So I'm, I'm actually the eldest
• 5:35
  of the 4th generation of the, the Arthur family, right?
• 5:37
  And so, but unlike my cousins who lived and grew up in Elgin,
• 5:43
  I grew up in Inverness, right, Having been born in Aberdeen,
• 5:47
  grew up in Inverness. So I wasn't, you know, I wasn't
• 5:50
  sort of coming in every, you know, after school and not to
• 5:53
  see dad or get a lift home or yeah or the weekends to help out
• 5:57
  with, with whatever's going on school holidays.
• 5:59
  I was, I was in Inverness and I was doing other things with one
• 6:04
  exception. That was during university time.
• 6:07
  I, we'd just bought Ben Roma and I came to work through the
• 6:13
  summer with two exceptionally fine gentlemen, one being my
• 6:16
  grandfather. So that was just fabulous to do.
• 6:20
  And the second was a guy called John Taylor.
• 6:22
  John Taylor and my grandfather at this point were both 75 years
• 6:25
  old. I was 21.
• 6:28
  Yeah. And so they, between us, we had
• 6:30
  a combined aged of, of 171 years old.
• 6:37
  But Gee, whereas these guys, my grandfather was always, you
• 6:40
  know, turned his hand to absolutely everything and
• 6:42
  anything and, you know, great skill and great wisdom at so
• 6:47
  many things. And so he, and he's just a
• 6:49
  student of things. And with John, who's been just
• 6:53
  effectively A labourer and a sort of a sort of assistant on
• 6:57
  sites and buildings and and whatnot all his days, these guys
• 7:01
  set about teaching me how to to do anything and everything.
• 7:04
  So from driving a JCB and we had to demolish one of the
• 7:07
  warehouses, which we got professionals in to do that bit.
• 7:11
  But then the cleaning of the site.
• 7:12
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Using this JCB was just
• 7:16
  fabulous, putting in all the fence posts and which are still
• 7:19
  standing to this day. Big strainer posts and just just
• 7:22
  what a life experience for the summer.
• 7:24
  Fantastic. And it gave me a lot of time to
• 7:28
  spend with my grandfather and but also my grandmother.
• 7:31
  But that was, that was bittersweet because my
• 7:33
  grandmother was suffering Alzheimer's from Alzheimer's.
• 7:35
  So you know what, it's such that dementia, just the cruelest
• 7:41
  diseases and it's just, it's heartbreaking for anybody
• 7:44
  involved. There was also, it has its
• 7:47
  amusing points and you've got to like, I'll always learn from my
• 7:50
  dad. You've always got to see the
• 7:51
  humor in things, of course. Otherwise you could kick down
• 7:53
  pretty quickly. So the train, you could tell in
• 7:56
  the morning, you'd be there probably about 7:30.
• 7:58
  And my grandparents would come through about 9:00 and they
• 8:02
  would come onto the side and the train would go by about 9:30.
• 8:05
  And that was the sort of cue to head in to get your morning cup
• 8:10
  of tea. Cause for John and I, we've been
• 8:12
  going for a couple of hours for that point.
• 8:15
  And so of course we'd have a cup of tea and chat away.
• 8:18
  And my grandfather was a great one for his rich tea biscuits
• 8:21
  and the and the Dunk. So we'd all have rich tea's cup
• 8:24
  of tea. Right off we'd go.
• 8:26
  Of course, with dear grandmother.
• 8:27
  She would, she would turn to us and she'd be, you know, drive
• 8:32
  boys off, you get back to work and she would tidy up.
• 8:35
  And of course she would have one of these moments like we all do
• 8:37
  actually like where you would stop yourself and go right.
• 8:40
  Am I putting this away or taking it out?
• 8:43
  And they do it now and you go, what was it doing again?
• 8:45
  And and there was the kettle. So she'd touch the kettle and
• 8:49
  go, kettle's not that warm anymore.
• 8:50
  Oh, oh, I'd better put the kettle on, maybe.
• 8:52
  I'd spend the tea. I was, maybe, I'd say.
• 8:55
  So of course, the next thing you'd hear the shout saying
• 8:57
  teaser boys and John and my grandfather say John Stephen,
• 9:01
  you go into humour and you know, and check she's OK and make sure
• 9:03
  everything's fine. So and I'd go and scoop another
• 9:06
  cup of tea as fast as I could, say thanks very much Granny and
• 9:10
  head off again. So that would happen every now
• 9:12
  and again. And the real benefit factor of
• 9:14
  that was a cat called Scooby, you know, distilleries, Hill hat
• 9:17
  cats. We had this one called Scooby
• 9:19
  and the adventures of Scooby would fill in book.
• 9:21
  Incredible. So of course the cat would come
• 9:24
  in and have it, you know, have its newly laid out whatever meal
• 9:28
  it was, it was getting in that morning.
• 9:30
  And of course it would eat it all up through the morning.
• 9:33
  And my grandmother would look and think, oh, there's empty
• 9:36
  bowl, Andrew. Excuse me, a member of Fed?
• 9:38
  Cat would get another. That's fed cat and Distillery
• 9:41
  cat. Yeah, it was the most.
• 9:42
  Appropriate name because he was obviously the name of a dog yeah
• 9:44
  yeah and this this cat was about the size of a dog so I.
• 9:48
  Mean, I have to say, Stephen, like the, the, the family
• 9:52
  connection, the Gordon Macphail family story and things like
• 9:54
  that. And it's like, you know, the
• 9:57
  generations, I mean, how many generations now are you?
• 9:59
  Are we on the Gordon Macphail sort of family tree doing?
• 10:02
  So we're, there's, there's four generations that have worked in
• 10:06
  the business and the 5th generation is, is strong and
• 10:11
  healthy. It's, it's obviously given the,
• 10:13
  the age span of the third, the 4th generation, it means that
• 10:17
  when we've all had children there, there's a, there's an,
• 10:20
  an, an expanded age Grange. So the eldest is, is my eldest
• 10:24
  son Jamie, who's 22 this September.
• 10:27
  So he's just finished his degree at Edinburgh University and did
• 10:30
  very, very well because first year or so, that was COVID time.
• 10:35
  Yeah, of course. Coming to terms with the way
• 10:38
  yeah, yeah. And just like so there's
• 10:40
  everything online and never seen somebody in flesh and not even
• 10:44
  in a cohort of about, I don't know, 2 or 300 folk and his in
• 10:48
  his you're doing business with economics and marketing and
• 10:51
  stuff. You know, you think you're gonna
• 10:53
  you're gonna create a lot of friends, but Coke would actually
• 10:55
  restricted that. Isn't that challenging?
• 10:57
  And is that, is that part of the I've always heard about, you
• 11:00
  know, the family plan and things like that is to is it, is it
• 11:03
  about going out and finding your way somewhere else and then
• 11:06
  having the opportunity to come back?
• 11:08
  So there's never a, you know, because you're, there's never
• 11:10
  this sort of lineage of regular, you're the eldest son of the OR
• 11:14
  you're the eldest of the generation.
• 11:15
  So you're automatically ergo going to step straight into the
• 11:17
  Yeah, so. It's not like the farming model,
• 11:19
  Yeah, no, no, it's quite the upset.
• 11:22
  In fact, the third generation need absolutely applauded for
• 11:27
  this because they spent a lot of time with some really wonderful
• 11:32
  people in the world, family business listening and to their
• 11:35
  cohort and peers about what works, what doesn't, where the
• 11:39
  pitfalls are because the the the success rate of a of a family
• 11:45
  business making it, you know, successfully really into the
• 11:48
  second generation is less than 150.
• 11:50
  It's. It's actually way lower than
• 11:52
  that to make it to the third generation.
• 11:54
  It's it's drops significantly into making it the 4th is you
• 11:58
  know you're you're. Well, that's hundreds.
• 12:00
  What's the old saying about what's?
• 12:01
  What's the generation that statistically always first?
• 12:04
  First, make it first, start at second, make it third.
• 12:07
  Yeah, yeah, these are mess it up.
• 12:09
  Yeah. So there's there's there's a
• 12:11
  more less eloquent term, but. Yeah, I mean and and right.
• 12:15
  OK, well, I'll tell you what, let's go all the way back.
• 12:17
  Let's let's ride all the way back.
• 12:19
  And for people who are listening to this, they'll maybe know the
• 12:21
  Gordon Macphail. They've heard the Gordon
• 12:23
  Macphail. What is the origins?
• 12:24
  What's the story? So the story's Absolutely
• 12:27
  Fabulous. It's it was 2 gentlemen James
• 12:30
  Gordon John Alexander Macphail here in Elgin James Gordon is a
• 12:37
  small small sort of trader cus broker right in the town here.
• 12:45
  His good friend James John Alexander Macphail is a grocer.
• 12:50
  And what year is this then? Sorry. 1895.
• 12:52
  Right, so 1890. 5 S and it's worth saying here we are 2025
• 12:56
  with 24th of May was the day they threw open the doors.
• 12:59
  So 24th of May this year was our 130th anniversary.
• 13:02
  Yeah. And you know what, we had the
• 13:04
  most wonderful time. We had our own fabulous event
• 13:07
  for for all our fab colleagues at work in the business and we
• 13:11
  also had for for customers. We actually put on 130th
• 13:14
  anniversary weekend which people could sign up for.
• 13:17
  It was like we didn't deliberately kept it small, but
• 13:20
  if anybody's interested in these sorts of things, one, they are
• 13:23
  unbelievably good fun. You as you can imagine, you'd
• 13:26
  use the most sensational whiskeys and get great, great
• 13:29
  experiences because be it family members or be it the team here,
• 13:35
  the one thing that you get is just unbelievable and bridal
• 13:38
  passion for whiskey. Yeah, absolutely.
• 13:40
  And and it just oozes out of everything both they do in the
• 13:44
  family, I think. You need a podcast to come along
• 13:45
  on one. Of these events, actually, I
• 13:47
  think I think you could be right.
• 13:49
  I think Angus and I and maybe Ross should be should cover it.
• 13:52
  We'll bring the camera. We'll just be there to see how
• 13:54
  everyone's getting on and try a few dramas as well.
• 13:56
  As for doing that, I think I think that would make a lot of
• 13:59
  sense. I think that's supposed to be
• 14:00
  today. We get, we had people from all
• 14:02
  over the world coming to it. It was just fabulous.
• 14:04
  And and a lot of them are, well, you know, well known to Gordon
• 14:06
  Macphail. Anyway, back to the story.
• 14:08
  Yeah, 1895. These two gents start business
• 14:12
  and in the first, when they open the doors, they take on.
• 14:15
  Of course, they need staff. So they've taken an apprentice
• 14:18
  whose name is John Urquhart, right.
• 14:20
  John Urquhart has come from farming stock, not farm owners,
• 14:23
  farm workers, very blue collar. And he's 15 years old and he
• 14:27
  comes in and he very much slots in underneath James Corden as in
• 14:33
  the whiskey side. Of course, you learn how to do
• 14:35
  everything, especially at that age.
• 14:36
  You're, you're doing what you're told.
• 14:38
  The take tell ask model is, is or take ask tell model is, is,
• 14:42
  is an operation. You're just taking instruction.
• 14:45
  And then but quickly he learns and he learns very quickly, and
• 14:50
  he becomes very trusted as the right hand of James Gordon.
• 14:53
  And so he's, as he grows older, he starts partnering James and
• 14:57
  meeting the local distillers. And what you have to understand
• 15:00
  about 1895 is the Glenn Murrays, the Ben Romans, the Glenn, the
• 15:04
  Benreex, the Longhorns. They they're not.
• 15:07
  They don't exist. Yeah.
• 15:08
  And we're from the word go. We're immediately filling with
• 15:11
  partners which would have been liquid.
• 15:13
  Right. Founded in 1821.
• 15:15
  McAllen, of course, Glenn Grant, 1840.
• 15:18
  Right up to Mortlich and, and, and, and Glenn Farklis was on
• 15:22
  the go back then Glenfiddich and the likes.
• 15:27
  So there's a there's a there's a group that are there that we've
• 15:30
  not quite hit boom, boom time, right?
• 15:32
  OK, that's just about to come in in in Scotland.
• 15:35
  And between obviously 1890, sort of seven right through to, to
• 15:41
  the sort of the partisan crash at the end of the 1800s, there
• 15:46
  was this, this big flux of, yeah, distilleries opening.
• 15:49
  Yeah, of course. Gordon Macphail, Prime.
• 15:52
  Great location. Great.
• 15:53
  Location and and this is interesting, you know I do we
• 15:56
  talk a lot about this. So we're a grocer, but name,
• 16:01
  name. I can name it dozens of other
• 16:03
  grocers. John Alexander Walker.
• 16:06
  Yeah, the one that comes to mind.
• 16:07
  His blender, his blending, his blended Scotch whiskey outgrows
• 16:10
  the the grocers business. And the and the grocers would
• 16:13
  have just been so incons, you know, so irrelevant almost.
• 16:16
  Yeah, of course. So.
• 16:17
  Of course they outgrew it and likewise John Dewar, Matthew
• 16:21
  Globe in Perth. Well, you've got the Chevis
• 16:24
  brothers from Aberdeen grocers. I think they were in Bonnicourt
• 16:28
  Terraces at Bonnicourt St. and and and so you can see it, you
• 16:33
  know. There's a model, there's.
• 16:34
  Grahams who obviously black bottle, the Grahams are from
• 16:37
  Aberdeen as well. And so there's there was this
• 16:39
  model on how these companies all sort of effectively outgrew
• 16:43
  their the original roots, the Gordon Macphailers surrounded by
• 16:46
  distilleries. We're also a long way from big
• 16:48
  markets. So while we did some blends, we
• 16:50
  were also right from the word go.
• 16:52
  I remember asking my uncle Ian this, I said, when was the first
• 16:55
  time we did a sort of distillery bottling?
• 16:57
  He went 1895 to 896. You know, it would have been
• 17:00
  right in the very beginning. So when we would have had that
• 17:03
  and we would have had stock, maybe James Gordon already had
• 17:07
  the stock and we we did that. But I think what what's really
• 17:11
  important is it's that we're, we're we're really quite
• 17:14
  rounded. Write the word go.
• 17:16
  If you ever see pictures of the shop and we've got a classic, we
• 17:18
  should probably share it with you to, to go into this podcast.
• 17:21
  Yeah, but you read the window, the, the, the messages on the
• 17:24
  window. And it was blenders of teas and
• 17:28
  fine wine merchants, bottlers of relails and stouts.
• 17:33
  And we were coffee. We, you know, we would roast our
• 17:35
  own coffees and things. And we were provision.
• 17:38
  Yeah, we were provisioners. The the term was Italian
• 17:40
  warehouse man, where you'd ship all these sort of wonderful
• 17:43
  goods from around, you know, from far and wide.
• 17:47
  And, and of course one of the key goods was of course,
• 17:50
  fortified wines. That would be that port or of
• 17:53
  course, Sherry and there's some wonderful stories.
• 17:57
  We'll come onto those in a minute that that bringing those
• 18:01
  two up to Elgin bottling the what was the one of the most
• 18:06
  popular drinks in the world. Sherry, of course, and
• 18:09
  especially in in Great Britain were incredible.
• 18:12
  And then we'd ship all these amazing casks and we'd bottle
• 18:15
  the Sherry and we'd bottle in the, the cellar of the South St.
• 18:18
  shop and, and of course that would go out to, out to our
• 18:23
  customers. And we had become wholesalers as
• 18:25
  well. We weren't just a grocer.
• 18:26
  So we, we're broadening our expanse.
• 18:29
  And what do you do with the empty casks?
• 18:31
  Well, of course you go and fill them to your friends.
• 18:33
  And when we were at Glen Murray yesterday, they were very proud
• 18:35
  that they had ledgers back till 1910 where they could say
• 18:39
  there's masala cast, square filling.
• 18:40
  And obviously people think masala cast.
• 18:42
  This is a, you know, relatively new thing.
• 18:44
  What a day for finishing, yeah? Yeah, 1910.
• 18:46
  Yeah, they were filling casts in Tsunasala.
• 18:48
  So let's look at this. Yeah, Porch cherries.
• 18:51
  Yeah, this would have all been coming in.
• 18:53
  And that what was absolutely charming was you've got this
• 18:58
  young guy who's learning the ropes, he's building this
• 19:01
  knowledge. He starts, you know, supporting
• 19:04
  James Gordon more and more, who's, of course, probably
• 19:06
  relying on him because he's focusing more and more on the
• 19:08
  running of the business. And we get to 1915.
• 19:13
  So 20 years into the business. Yeah, 20 years of this young
• 19:16
  apprentice working hand in glove for the 2 owners.
• 19:19
  And he's senior manager within the business at this point, got
• 19:24
  some really key responsibilities around the whiskey side.
• 19:27
  And Macphail announces he's retiring.
• 19:29
  OK. His family are, I understand,
• 19:32
  are in Inverness. So what does he do?
• 19:34
  He leaves the area to be near the family.
• 19:38
  And James Gordon Turnstone, you can picture the scene.
• 19:41
  You've been working with me for 20 years.
• 19:44
  There's nothing you don't know about the business.
• 19:46
  Would you like to be my partner? Well, of course you're you're
• 19:49
  only going to say yes, aren't you?
• 19:51
  Yeah. Well, that was that was a great
• 19:53
  move because that partnership was to flourish, blossom and
• 19:56
  grow for two entire 4 weeks. Two weeks.
• 20:04
  Two weeks, the story goes that James Gordon sadly passed away.
• 20:08
  And there's, there's there's sort of that folklore about it
• 20:11
  was while he was driving his car to work one day.
• 20:14
  And the what's intriguing about that was he was the first man in
• 20:16
  the county to own a car. Yeah, I was gonna say in 19. 15
• 20:20
  Owning a car was, yeah, quite an exclusion.
• 20:22
  A major from the famous major from Glenn Grant he he he would
• 20:26
  have I think he also owned a car.
• 20:28
  But if it's really interesting. So if you track back first man
• 20:31
  in Scotland was one of the jurors and to own a car, first
• 20:35
  man in the UK, William Lipton of the tea.
• 20:39
  So you can see how tea was so important tea and.
• 20:42
  And that made people's fortunes, of course.
• 20:44
  Yeah. And and of course, what do a lot
• 20:47
  to the grocers do? They blended their own tea, tea
• 20:49
  and they had their own house blind.
• 20:50
  You still see it today. And they're obviously the fine
• 20:53
  establishments down in London. Yeah.
• 20:55
  And that then brings us on to what everybody knew Gordon
• 20:57
  Macphail has. Well, one, we're on a corner.
• 21:00
  We're quite prominent in the town.
• 21:02
  We had our original advert when we opened read that we we used
• 21:11
  to sell I think high class goods and all our goods are hand
• 21:16
  selected and high class goods and customers favouring us with
• 21:20
  their patronage may depend on getting a superior product at a
• 21:23
  popular price. There's the language of.
• 21:26
  The day. Isn't that a good marketing
• 21:28
  slogan? Yeah.
• 21:29
  Absolutely that was. Fabulous and and of course you
• 21:31
  can tell by it he's had a car the success of the business.
• 21:34
  Well, I want to go back. Yeah.
• 21:36
  So let me just get this clear then.
• 21:38
  Right? The original business model.
• 21:40
  So you've got James Garden, You're saying who was a cast
• 21:43
  broker? Yeah.
• 21:45
  What at the time when Gordon Macphail, they both decided to
• 21:49
  do it. So was that the business model
• 21:51
  looking at cash brokerage or whiskey immediately into this,
• 21:56
  into our grocers? Was it just a right from the
• 21:58
  start, right from the right? From the very start to.
• 22:00
  That so the model really was selling, you know, provisions
• 22:04
  and we say grocers, we think of grocers as fruit and veg only or
• 22:07
  things like that. But actually what you were
• 22:08
  saying is because that leaves me on a second point, because we
• 22:10
  were actually driving into Elgin today and we were speaking to
• 22:13
  the taxi driver and he was talking about the coast and
• 22:15
  things. And I, I said Elgin feels like a
• 22:18
  coastal town. But yeah, you can't see the
• 22:21
  coast from Elgin, but it is a coastal town of. 5 1/2 miles.
• 22:24
  Yeah. So it's not far.
• 22:25
  Away and do you know what connected us to the coast?
• 22:28
  The Grant family of, of Glenn Grant Distillery.
• 22:32
  Yeah. This is another great story.
• 22:33
  So if you go to what is the Royal Hotel, you'll actually see
• 22:36
  one of the pillars inside there. You'll see the sort of almost
• 22:40
  like a coat of arms and an engraving on the stone which is
• 22:43
  what's on the front of Glenn Grant bottles today because that
• 22:46
  was James Grant's house. James Grant had become the Lord
• 22:48
  province of Elgin. Right.
• 22:49
  And his brother John, who, there's all sorts of funny
• 22:53
  stories about him in about how he.
• 22:55
  Because these were the original 2 who bought Mortlick, sort of
• 22:58
  dismantled it moved it down built Glenn Grant in 19401840.
• 23:03
  And, and one of the things they recognised is they needed to get
• 23:06
  goods to market. Yeah.
• 23:07
  So the story goes that using the public purse, the James James
• 23:12
  Grant would help the people of both Elgin and surrounding
• 23:15
  places by putting a railway line from Elgin down to Lossymouth.
• 23:19
  Yeah. And Lossymouth was being the key
• 23:21
  port. Yeah.
• 23:21
  Like people to get goods out and goods in, of course.
• 23:25
  So that was a great help. And I suppose like from like,
• 23:27
  like this is what we, we talk a lot about leaf down in Edinburgh
• 23:30
  and we say about, you know, how as a, as a massive international
• 23:34
  port into not just Scotland, the United Kingdom.
• 23:36
  That's where we started to see these, these blinding houses
• 23:39
  opening up down in leaf and all that.
• 23:40
  But up in Elgin, because it's easy to forget that you're not
• 23:43
  in the coast, but you are the closest major town to that
• 23:47
  coastal pathway. So they're then like you're
• 23:49
  saying, tea coming in, interesting casks, Sherry coming
• 23:52
  in. It wouldn't have if it was
• 23:55
  coming down the way if it only had to go to Elgin before it had
• 23:57
  to stop before someone like Gordon Macphail would probably
• 24:00
  buy those provisions and then be able to distribute it out
• 24:03
  themselves to all the other people within the area.
• 24:05
  So that was right. OK, So then so we've got two
• 24:09
  week period where they're working hand in hand then?
• 24:12
  Yeah. And then he dies.
• 24:14
  Yeah. So of course the widow
• 24:16
  apparently was didn't want anything to do with them.
• 24:19
  There's there was no sign of any children that were coming into
• 24:22
  the business if they had, I'm not sure they had children
• 24:24
  actually. So the widow says, look, the
• 24:28
  business is yours. I don't, I won't put a claim,
• 24:32
  stake a claim to it. So.
• 24:34
  So that's what happened. That's in 19. 15 yeah in 1915
• 24:37
  so. That and then so that what
• 24:38
  relation is this person then? Great grandfather, great
• 24:41
  grandfather John is my great grandfather, yeah.
• 24:43
  And so he was married to a lady known known known to everybody
• 24:47
  as Maggie and they had four children.
• 24:49
  There was Johnny there's all is a bit known as Auntie Betty to
• 24:54
  us. It's a Betty and there was
• 24:56
  Gordon and there was George. George was the youngest.
• 24:59
  He was born in 1919. Now interesting is his childhood
• 25:04
  was bookended prohibition because prohibition was written
• 25:07
  in 1919 and then it was repealed in 1933 and George 1919 started
• 25:14
  working at the age of 14 in 1933 in Gordon McPhee.
• 25:18
  Just coincidence, of course. Of course, but that was probably
• 25:20
  the one of the hardest times in the economic history of the
• 25:23
  world, you know, from post SEC, post Great War, through the
• 25:29
  Great Depression, prohibition and Wall Street, Craig, you name
• 25:33
  it. And you know, if you Dave Brooms
• 25:37
  done a lot of work, of course, and he's doing a lot of work
• 25:39
  with Arthur, which is fantastic. But I love listening to all that
• 25:46
  and some of the stuff they've done in the past.
• 25:48
  He recognized that there was actually only two distilleries,
• 25:51
  one point operating in the 1930s in Scotland.
• 25:53
  Yeah. You know, such was how hard it
• 25:55
  had been. Yeah.
• 25:57
  And if you follow Gordon Macphail's Bodwins, it's really
• 26:00
  sort of 3536. You start see this coming back.
• 26:02
  And true enough, you read all the books.
• 26:04
  It's that that's when things started opening up.
• 26:06
  And there was sort of some real positivity.
• 26:08
  Meanwhile, with Shadow of the Kaisers were from the Central
• 26:13
  Europe and Germany was creeping out because.
• 26:15
  I think as well, even during the Second World War, there was only
• 26:17
  one distillery that operated or two distilleries that operated
• 26:20
  throughout the war. Well, technically there was
• 26:22
  there. I don't think there was because
• 26:23
  I. Think I may be completely wrong
• 26:25
  I. Don't in 1940.
• 26:26
  Five, the research is no way out of his role in that podcast.
• 26:28
  He's already made a mistake. Yeah.
• 26:30
  No, no, no, because. Because apparently what happened
• 26:33
  was during the war. And of course, what do you need?
• 26:36
  You need barley, so you need your grain, you need fuel.
• 26:40
  Both of those are being diverted for the war effort and good
• 26:43
  people. But of course, in all these
• 26:44
  small villages and towns, they're all going to fight for
• 26:46
  the Seaforth. Exactly.
• 26:47
  The Seaforth and Cameron Highlanders and all this sort of
• 26:50
  stuff, you know. So they, they all you're, you're
• 26:55
  everything is leaving you effectively.
• 26:58
  If you know, we've bottled some sensational whiskeys from 1943
• 27:02
  and that'll be one of the ones that went in my top three,
• 27:04
  that's for sure. But the reason that that
• 27:09
  happened was because actually all the, all the, the rationing
• 27:14
  sort of stopped at the end of 42 October 42.
• 27:18
  But people, you know, you've probably heard of a lot of
• 27:20
  distillers in the past talk about they like to distill
• 27:22
  through the winter months, abundance of water, clearly, but
• 27:25
  it's colder and you get a better reaction with the cold
• 27:27
  temperatures and the copper and so produce produce a obviously a
• 27:33
  better coldly spirit. Now what the Lexical and Livet
• 27:39
  did was they actually held back and they distilled them through
• 27:42
  the winter and towards spring. But I think in 43 they were
• 27:47
  literally made small thousands of liters of spirit and we just
• 27:53
  happened to be, you know, in the right place.
• 27:56
  But also what we were offering was one, we're buying the spirit
• 28:00
  2. We were giving them our casks
• 28:01
  and we were paying them the store and this stuff there.
• 28:04
  So it's a triple income effect, of course.
• 28:06
  Well, what this middle ones are saving because they're not
• 28:08
  having to buy the casks. So there's, there's three
• 28:10
  benefits there to to dealing with Gordon Macphail.
• 28:13
  And it was Captain Bill Smith Grant at the time that would
• 28:16
  have been in charge. And he knew my great, great
• 28:20
  grandfather well and got to know my grandfather well.
• 28:22
  They both had houses in Fintrn actually, and both were on the
• 28:25
  Royal Yacht Club, Fintry Yacht Club committee as well.
• 28:29
  Bill, it's cup from Bill Smith's grandma's Commodore actually for
• 28:31
  a while. And my grandfather, he had a key
• 28:33
  role in the committee alongside him.
• 28:34
  So anyway, you could go on a bit that side for years.
• 28:39
  But yeah, so they, they find themselves just distilling
• 28:42
  through that into that time and then but that through the rest
• 28:45
  of the year, I think everybody started to, to run out of, of
• 28:50
  both fuel and, and grain. And in 1944, I think I don't
• 28:55
  think there's ever anybody ever produced, there's been a couple
• 28:59
  of rogues and scallywags that I've seen.
• 29:01
  Like, for example, take the McAllen.
• 29:03
  And when they did their, their, their rare vintage series and
• 29:06
  they would, you know, famous Demi Johns and they would go and
• 29:08
  bottle what at least. But 1944 was a blip because they
• 29:12
  started again in 45 and we had feelings from 45 and and prior
• 29:17
  of course because famous what was from 363738 is you know,
• 29:20
  from our spam from our original McAllen bottlings.
• 29:24
  But of course nobody had 44. And then somebody, you could
• 29:27
  tell it was a fake because they came out with us to.
• 29:30
  I did felt thinking. You'd fill the line, yeah.
• 29:33
  Right. So when you're looking at these,
• 29:35
  these dates then and you're talking about the business
• 29:37
  model, you, you, you go from the, the, the, the, the grocer
• 29:42
  and the, and the whiskey say when did, when did it overtake?
• 29:45
  When did the whiskey overtake the grocery?
• 29:48
  Grocery and and also the wholesaling as well.
• 29:50
  Yeah, well, so well, what happened was the wholesaling
• 29:54
  actually became your vehicle. Yeah, so it was in the 1980's
• 29:59
  the growth of the supermarket start and the start, you know,
• 30:03
  causing lots of small retailers and towns and villages to close
• 30:07
  our bread and butter. Yeah, yeah, of course the the on
• 30:10
  trade was still there. But the, the small, small
• 30:15
  anything from small retailers that we doubled up at the post
• 30:19
  office to the grocery stores and everything.
• 30:21
  So we slowly but surely started closing with the rise of the the
• 30:25
  the the bigger players. So even up to 1980s Gordon
• 30:29
  Macphail would have been still known as you could you could
• 30:31
  pick up a bunch of bananas, or you can get yourself a private
• 30:34
  bottling of a Gordon Macphail bottling of a Glen Liver or
• 30:37
  something like that. My mother, she was sent off to
• 30:40
  school, actually down in Helmsdale and Helmsborough,
• 30:44
  Helmsborough. And what was interesting was
• 30:47
  she, but she remembered when she was at home, she would always go
• 30:50
  down with my grandfather and they go and turn the hands of
• 30:52
  bananas, right? So in our original, in what we
• 30:55
  call the boardroom up at the South St. shop, we had all these
• 30:58
  artifacts and one of them was a banana hook with a, a hand, a
• 31:03
  hand of bananas on them. And it tells this wonderful
• 31:06
  story about that relationship my mum had with her dad and how
• 31:09
  they would come and help it and how they would when they would
• 31:12
  sometimes get like lizards and sometimes the old spider.
• 31:16
  But she would, they would catch the lizard and she'd take them
• 31:17
  back and put it in the greenhouse because it would eat
• 31:19
  all the bugs. You know what, my grandfather
• 31:22
  would be growing in the greenhouse, but that was great.
• 31:25
  But also, the, the bananas were key.
• 31:27
  It's you. You, you laugh about this
• 31:28
  because. Because bananas were a love
• 31:31
  story. Yeah.
• 31:32
  Because my, my, my uncle David, he was in charge.
• 31:38
  So he came into the business in 1972 and he was in charge of all
• 31:43
  the buying. So all the groceries and and
• 31:45
  fruit and veg and everything. Also all the, all the wines
• 31:49
  alongside his brother Ian, his brother Ian was standing in
• 31:53
  wines as well. The two of them, they were sort
• 31:55
  of the forefront of a, of our membership of a group called the
• 31:58
  Merchant Vintners, which is like the family owned wine merchants
• 32:04
  from throughout the UK. The club together basically to
• 32:06
  create a buying group and a mass.
• 32:08
  So that was fabulous. And that of course got an
• 32:11
  introduction not just to other retailers throughout the whole
• 32:14
  of the UK, but access then to, to, to learn and see, go and
• 32:20
  speak to wine merchants and, and find out where they're selling
• 32:22
  their stuff. Which then because it was all
• 32:24
  fine wines, right? If they're selling all fine
• 32:27
  wines, could that be a place we're selling fine whiskey?
• 32:29
  So you can see, yeah. Yeah, there was there was a
• 32:32
  method of the madnesses were absolutely.
• 32:34
  But what was what was lovely about the this, the haunted
• 32:38
  bananas. So doing this fruit and veg
• 32:39
  meant we obviously had our suppliers come.
• 32:41
  And there was the famous Bell family from Glasgow.
• 32:44
  And Mr. Bell had a place in Fintorn called Dalclarek and his
• 32:50
  family would come up and stay through the summer.
• 32:53
  And one day this very attractive young lady called Sheila came
• 32:57
  into the office and just to on behalf of her father, to to call
• 33:01
  in and just to, to touch base and top business and sell, sell
• 33:06
  some, some bananas. Of course, you know, they were
• 33:08
  the banana king of Scotland. I'm sure there's a story about,
• 33:11
  you know, how Billy Conley would come into the.
• 33:12
  Big banana tea, Yeah. Yeah, and how working as a
• 33:15
  welder, you would see the boats coming up.
• 33:17
  Yeah, the Clydes, you know, with all the bananas.
• 33:19
  And then they would be brilliant into Mr. Bells and Mr. Bell
• 33:23
  would then. The banana king of Scotland?
• 33:25
  Yeah. So yeah, so vice a brilliant
• 33:27
  story. And so anyway, of course David
• 33:30
  became quite smitten by Sheila, so he'd go down and ring the
• 33:32
  bell. And of course, one day he went
• 33:34
  and rang the bell asking if she was available to come out for
• 33:37
  dinner that night. And of course, your worst
• 33:39
  nightmare. Of course, as a young lad went
• 33:41
  to court their girlfriend who answers the door, but the
• 33:43
  father. Absolutely.
• 33:45
  What do we all this pleasure? It's actually not to see you,
• 33:49
  Mr. Bell. I'm wondering if your daughters
• 33:52
  so of course, but without without that meeting and David
• 33:55
  and Sheila would have never got together, married and wouldn't
• 33:57
  have my cousins say Richard and Stewart, who are.
• 34:00
  So we've got bananas to thank for that.
• 34:02
  Bananas to thank for. That there you go.
• 34:04
  Yeah, they're two superbly talented boys.
• 34:06
  Yeah. And that's sort of right, OK, I
• 34:08
  don't want to sit here with my pen and bit of paper and try and
• 34:11
  work out the family tree here because it's when you start
• 34:15
  looking at it and you're saying, right, you're talking about
• 34:17
  cousins and and things like this.
• 34:19
  So how many of the family are currently working within the
• 34:22
  business Right I'll. Just take a step back.
• 34:24
  So John George came into the business, did what John had
• 34:29
  done, fitting under James Gordon's wing.
• 34:31
  Yeah. And George came in and fitted
• 34:33
  under his father's wing. Now he was 14 at the time.
• 34:37
  And of course, he learns like his father had done, the whiskey
• 34:40
  side of the business. And we were, we were talking
• 34:43
  before this started about in famous quotes, standing on the
• 34:46
  shoulders of giants. Yeah.
• 34:47
  So here we are great example of where you this in in reality,
• 34:53
  because what happens is John's now built up this knowledge.
• 34:58
  His son comes in and he starts learning from his dad, but he's
• 35:02
  also got it's like an artist. He's now got all this material
• 35:06
  in front of him, which his casks slowly maturing.
• 35:10
  Yes. And he becomes very much the
• 35:12
  student of this. And but George was the student
• 35:15
  of so many things. You can imagine leaving school
• 35:18
  at 14. You must have just not liked
• 35:19
  school much. But I think he, you know, look
• 35:22
  at some of the family traits and things and he was a very
• 35:24
  practical man. So school would have probably
• 35:26
  just frustrated him a bit. So anyway, he he comes in as a
• 35:31
  very bright kid and he starts asking questions and he starts
• 35:34
  really understanding the maturation side of these calves.
• 35:38
  And what were we doing? Was we were maturing whiskies,
• 35:42
  but so was other people, but we were maturing them for longer
• 35:44
  than anybody else. And because we've we've not had
• 35:47
  that sort of distraction of the blind sort of taking over.
• 35:50
  And we've seen this roller coaster where actually having
• 35:53
  the grocers business has been a real help to just being a, you
• 35:57
  know, one string to the bowl type thing.
• 35:59
  Yeah, we find this, this, this spectrum of of commercial
• 36:05
  activities a help. So we've got our whiskey side,
• 36:07
  we've got our fine wine side and our wine importing business.
• 36:11
  We've got our fruit and veg and our wholesale goods business
• 36:15
  plus the retail. And so, yeah, there's there's a
• 36:17
  lot of fast. You need to make family run a
• 36:19
  business like that because I mean, I work for AI work for a
• 36:22
  fruit and veg wholesaler during COVID and you know, the go to
• 36:27
  the market to buy, buy all this stuff to bring it in.
• 36:30
  You know, the guys would head out at midnight to arrive at the
• 36:33
  Glasgow Fruit and Veg Market, just bring it all back to
• 36:35
  Kirkcaldy and then the orders would be then divided up and
• 36:38
  they'd be sent out at 5:00 in the morning and stuff like that.
• 36:41
  But I also used to love, there was one guy, Alan, and he was
• 36:43
  the guy that he could sit there and he'd pick up the phone and
• 36:46
  he'd write it down and I used to win them, I'd play the countdown
• 36:49
  music and I'd go right Alan, I want 2 punnets of two punnets of
• 36:52
  strawberries. I need a box of bananas.
• 36:55
  And he'd that elect thing and he'd go right.
• 36:56
  And he'd write for 8 LB thirty. What's that?
• 37:01
  But I mean, that's that's that's a business in itself.
• 37:04
  Yeah. So and then you've got a wine
• 37:05
  merchants where you're saying right, you've got so you can't
• 37:08
  have one person that must have been sitting there with about 6
• 37:10
  phones on their desk going right.
• 37:12
  I've got a call with these guys because I need to get some wine
• 37:14
  and I've got of. Course this expertise in
• 37:16
  different areas as well as what you're what's required so of
• 37:19
  course. Yeah.
• 37:20
  Yeah. So it's a very business.
• 37:21
  George worked with this brother Gordon for a period of time in
• 37:24
  1967. So George, then, you know,
• 37:27
  there's a bit of a trend here. So George, George went with his
• 37:30
  wife Peggy. She went on to, she was a, a
• 37:33
  nurse, local nurse, very high grade of nurse actually.
• 37:38
  And she got the two of them had four children.
• 37:42
  The eldest was Rosemary, who's my mother.
• 37:44
  Then there was Ian, followed by David, followed by Michael.
• 37:47
  And so Ian came into the business first in 1967, but he
• 37:54
  had been to college and all the rest of it.
• 37:56
  And, and when he, when he came in, he immediately went out into
• 38:01
  the big bad world. So he, you know, from what I
• 38:04
  understand, he went out and sort of went to work with our wine
• 38:10
  companies that we dealt with. He then came back, he worked for
• 38:12
  Harrods for a while, which was a boost.
• 38:14
  Him and George Grant, I understand used to, to then
• 38:16
  through throughout life, you'd would with their own contacts
• 38:20
  when they were discouraging their Sherry to bottle.
• 38:23
  There would be a wee battle for the casks charm who had us to
• 38:27
  get into those casks as well as their own casks.
• 38:30
  So that's, that's a lovely story.
• 38:32
  I've heard John, John Grant tell me that story actually.
• 38:35
  And and then we also so that was that was Ian David then came in.
• 38:43
  He had been to Aberdeen and he had studied, you know, commerce
• 38:46
  at Business School in Aberdeen. He came in 1972 and then
• 38:50
  Michael, he became a chartered CA and turned accountant and he
• 38:57
  came in in 1981. By that point, my mum, she's had
• 39:01
  herself and my sister and we're that bit older now, we're sort
• 39:04
  of towards the end of primary school.
• 39:06
  And so she comes and starts working part, part time because
• 39:10
  they needed a sales Rep for the Inverness area, which in that
• 39:14
  area in itself didn't need the full time.
• 39:17
  If the area was as big as it became, yes, it would have of
• 39:20
  course needed it. But and that was back in the
• 39:24
  early 81. So that's still we're still
• 39:27
  doing everything. Yeah.
• 39:28
  So, so that was the the four generations.
• 39:31
  So when they came in, George was to carry on.
• 39:36
  I think it was probably like 1995 He stopped.
• 39:40
  He had become senior partner in 1956.
• 39:43
  And so that was the year that his, his father John was to sort
• 39:50
  of retire, but he obviously wasn't in great health because
• 39:53
  he was to actually pass away that year.
• 39:55
  And John George had stepped up and became, became senior
• 39:59
  partner. Now I'm looking at the maths
• 40:01
  here and I'm going right 19/18/95 he started and he's
• 40:05
  gone to 1956. That's 61 years working.
• 40:08
  My grandfather starts in 1933 and he goes to 19.
• 40:12
  Sorry, 1995. Apparently my grandfather he did
• 40:15
  retire and then got his B45 on the Friday.
• 40:19
  And and was bored and came back on Monday.
• 40:22
  Frustrating. The hell?
• 40:23
  And Michael's understand. That's a tale we've heard
• 40:26
  before. Yeah, a few.
• 40:27
  People so he was he was a yeah so they get frustrated to ello
• 40:30
  for the boys David and Ian and and and and and Michael come on
• 40:35
  did you meet or retire you? Meet her right you.
• 40:37
  Know and of course so, but if you take 1995 for example, it's
• 40:41
  the time that means 62 years. I'm thinking, wait man, I'm a
• 40:44
  generation down. If that's 61 and 62, you've got
• 40:46
  to keep going. He's all over there thinking.
• 40:49
  About it, yeah, Yeah, at the moment, exactly.
• 40:54
  Yeah. So, yeah.
• 40:55
  So bless. So of course, Ian, Ian becomes
• 40:58
  managing director and then Ian, I think it was 2007, he steps
• 41:06
  down 2007 or 8 and Michael and David become joint managing
• 41:12
  directors And, and then of course, David retires and very
• 41:18
  sadly has, has been diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2012.
• 41:25
  And he had worked, that's him done 40 years.
• 41:28
  And so he, he, he doesn't retire.
• 41:31
  Actually, he, he actually, he does what all the family do.
• 41:34
  They get to a point their, their rules that the third generation
• 41:37
  created. When you hit 60, you move from
• 41:40
  being fully, you know, front house and full executive
• 41:46
  capacity in the business to a non executive to be the mentor
• 41:49
  and the guide and the wisdom on the board, you know, etcetera.
• 41:53
  And so that, and that's what David does, right, very sadly,
• 41:55
  right the way through to the point he passes away because it
• 41:58
  was it was only him three years later that that that moment came
• 42:06
  and that bless you know, we Michael then moved into managing
• 42:11
  director position and that was fabulous.
• 42:13
  And then we have ourselves into a situation where we've now got
• 42:21
  I've come into the business in the year 2000.
• 42:23
  Cousin Neil came in in 2002. And then I think it was 2000 and
• 42:29
  7 or 8 Richard and then Stewart came in, I think 1st and then
• 42:34
  Richard came in six months after, eight months after.
• 42:36
  And they all of us have got, you know, degrees and something
• 42:41
  background that has actually always come in to help the
• 42:45
  business because mine being in the world, obviously of
• 42:47
  surveying and property and e-commerce and that given that
• 42:51
  we're building warehouses and things and surveying things,
• 42:54
  you've got that overview you can have in doing the work to the
• 42:56
  shop. Neil he did his degree was at
• 43:02
  Sterling and he was actually he became isn't the university
• 43:06
  union, I think it was or sports union or something.
• 43:08
  He was at the end of his university life and then he
• 43:12
  moved into sales and HR actually, which was really
• 43:15
  beneficial because he came in and ultimately became director
• 43:19
  in charge of all those sexy things like compliance, HR,
• 43:23
  logistics. And which as a family business
• 43:25
  can often very quickly be forgotten.
• 43:26
  You know, when you when you I've worked for a family business
• 43:29
  before, HR sometimes doesn't, doesn't exist because it's like,
• 43:32
  well, it's a family business. But as businesses grow and the
• 43:35
  modern times that you move into, yeah, you absolutely need to
• 43:38
  start looking at these things. And it's, it's as you said, it's
• 43:40
  the, it's the side of the businesses like these things
• 43:43
  that people are often like, tell me about the whiskey.
• 43:45
  Tell me about the the what's in the warehouses, but as a
• 43:48
  business? You need to.
• 43:49
  All Macphail needs to have that kind of element.
• 43:51
  Yeah, of course. Yeah.
• 43:52
  And Richard Stewart, they've, they did software engineering.
• 43:55
  So there's all computers of course.
• 43:57
  And which again, significantly important to the modern world we
• 44:01
  live in because they've got that true understanding of, of how
• 44:05
  these things work and and which is great to have.
• 44:08
  We, we're blessed that we've got a fabulous IT team that sits
• 44:11
  under a finance director, Ben who's, who's brilliant,
• 44:14
  absolutely brilliant. And so, and, and they, they are
• 44:17
  stellar. They are stellar.
• 44:18
  And but in the time we've had, you know, Stuart and Richards
• 44:21
  write various programmes that have been bolted into the
• 44:23
  systems we have to do with cask management, for example.
• 44:26
  Sure. So there's something you need to
• 44:27
  understand the whole maturation thing to to build a unit, A unit
• 44:33
  for that purpose. And then when you build a
• 44:35
  distillery as well, yeah, you know, we've been to a few
• 44:38
  distilleries, you know, you've just in the last 2440 hours and
• 44:41
  you know, there's the handcraft element.
• 44:43
  But now we are seeing an awful lot more of, well, you know,
• 44:46
  what's you're writing on a computer screen is, is and you
• 44:49
  need these kind of things. I guess we're talking about
• 44:51
  these these tours. Listening to Steven here.
• 44:55
  We were at the Glenn Farkless tour.
• 44:57
  We had a bit of a laugh asking is there anyone in the family
• 45:01
  that's ever been named outside of George or George?
• 45:05
  John. Does it make it easier with this
• 45:07
  family here when Stevens talking about all the different names
• 45:10
  and trying to remember? Is it easier if you just go
• 45:12
  well, there was George and then there was John and then he had
• 45:14
  two sons called John and George. They had another three kids that
• 45:18
  are called George, George and George 2nd and stuff like that.
• 45:22
  You. Know what it's really funny.
• 45:24
  Could you imagine? And you've got to remember in
• 45:26
  the world we are living with names and things in the UK
• 45:29
  because obviously around the world it's different and you'll
• 45:32
  you'll get a real formality in certain parts of the world.
• 45:35
  Japan where is a good example, but in the UK it was very
• 45:40
  formal. You know, it wasn't long ago
• 45:42
  that you were still referring to your boss's Sir and things like
• 45:45
  that. But Can you imagine being in a
• 45:47
  family business when everybody, we would call it, excuse me, Mr.
• 45:50
  Urquhart, and you've got 5555 Murkers.
• 45:54
  OK, one the one you would tell 'cause she's Mrs. Then she had
• 45:57
  when she married my dad, she took my my dad's name.
• 45:59
  Obviously, that's why I'm a Rankin.
• 46:01
  But so you've got that scenario. So, but the the boys always
• 46:04
  insisted that, you know, we weren't that's not the way to do
• 46:09
  business, But but of course people have that for Marty.
• 46:11
  So instead of calling them Mr. Urquhart, they called them Mr.
• 46:13
  George or Mr. Ian or Mr. Michael.
• 46:16
  And then of course, the Mr. dropped and became Michael and
• 46:19
  etcetera because they're they're super approachable guys.
• 46:23
  And so you had that Mister. That's why you've we've released
• 46:28
  the now the final in the Mr. George legacy series.
• 46:31
  You know, there's five, it's credible bottlings, but there's
• 46:34
  the story that that in itself, the story of family.
• 46:37
  It's about relationships and about what what they held dear
• 46:40
  to to to their in their terms of their values and principles.
• 46:43
  And that series encapsulates that brilliantly.
• 46:46
  But so, so back to your point about family tree.
• 46:48
  So, so that's George. John had four kids.
• 46:54
  Actually. There's a wonderful story.
• 46:55
  Auntie Betty, she married Sandy Mackintosh, who was a farmer,
• 47:00
  and they farmed at 2 locations, White Craig's, right next to
• 47:03
  Longmorne Distillery. So we would leap over the wall
• 47:06
  when we were kids and we would play in there.
• 47:07
  And sort of we drove past lot more on the way up here, yeah.
• 47:10
  Yeah. And then and they also had a
• 47:15
  place called Chapelton, which is, you know, I'm pointing here.
• 47:18
  It's Hardy for three vouchers, isn't it?
• 47:20
  It's no, no, it's. There's a Chapel town in Tom
• 47:22
  near Tom and. There's a Chapelton on the back
• 47:24
  of forest where we where spring source comes from.
• 47:28
  There was Chapelton Farm over above Bishop Mill in Elgin.
• 47:32
  And funnily enough, the site where I live in the house just a
• 47:36
  housing state to state, you know, is actually on that where
• 47:40
  that farm was. And the original buildings where
• 47:43
  Mrs. Webster stays and the old drying house and that that those
• 47:46
  buildings were converted into be part of a house where this
• 47:49
  wonderful lady stays just up the road from us.
• 47:53
  So you've got this connection and.
• 47:55
  And. Yeah.
• 47:56
  And it's so it's so funny because.
• 47:59
  And you can track where the different houses that the
• 48:01
  families have lived in and who lives in them now.
• 48:03
  Yeah. The rest of it so so that right
• 48:06
  now, OK. So that was so.
• 48:08
  That was the family. So John, John, John had four,
• 48:12
  George had four. And then?
• 48:14
  No tellers in the houses up in Elgin.
• 48:18
  And then of course we come that come into the next generation.
• 48:20
  And so there's 10 in our generation.
• 48:23
  And cousin Fiona, she lives in Edinburgh now.
• 48:26
  She's worked in the business. Cousin Laura has worked in the
• 48:29
  business before her and her her husband Kevin.
• 48:32
  They haven't had long story, but anyway they ended up in
• 48:36
  Australia and love took them there so and broke wonderful.
• 48:41
  They got 2 fabulous kids and so and they're back in the UK and
• 48:46
  so the 10 Collins adopteries in Australia, coincidentally
• 48:49
  Claire's in London, you know, etcetera.
• 48:51
  But there's the four, the four that have sort of come into the
• 48:54
  business remained cousin Jenny and my sister, they've both had
• 48:58
  roles within the business, but they're called family assembly
• 49:01
  directors. So they're there to represent
• 49:03
  the family interests on the board and, and get the
• 49:06
  communication. They, they, they get all the
• 49:09
  information coming in and report back as it were, right.
• 49:11
  So that the executive can exactly run the business and the
• 49:15
  family can just be kept abreast of everything and whatnot.
• 49:19
  And so, yeah, there is actually only, there is only what only 8
• 49:23
  shareholders at the moment of, of, of the business because
• 49:26
  sadly last year my uncle Liam passed away as well.
• 49:30
  So which wasn't great because that was another cancer that got
• 49:34
  hold of him so well. Different forms so.
• 49:37
  On the, on the subject, right, So the, the background to the
• 49:40
  family yesterday, the story of God McPhail is fantastic.
• 49:43
  And what, what a story it is. But of course the whiskey that
• 49:47
  we've talked about as well. You know, you've already
• 49:49
  mentioned a few when you're talking about bottlings of
• 49:51
  Macallan from the 30s and the Glenn Levitz and things like
• 49:54
  that. That is what it, you know what?
• 49:56
  We know it as this Gordon McPhail, this powerhouse of, of
• 50:01
  independent bottling. If we were to go back in time
• 50:04
  and the bottlings that were being done in the late 1800s and
• 50:08
  the early 1900s, because we people see single malt as single
• 50:12
  malt as something that's maybe been on the scene since like the
• 50:15
  60s, right way to do. We've seen this acceleration of
• 50:18
  single cask, though you can still go into a lot of what we,
• 50:21
  we, we see it today. We'll, there'll be people that
• 50:24
  we drink in the athletic arms that we drink in where that
• 50:27
  would do the podcast. And there's people who like a
• 50:28
  whiskey but don't understand the process of what single cast.
• 50:33
  Why would I drink a bottle of Gordon Macphail that has the
• 50:35
  Glen Levitt on it when I could just go and buy a bottle of Glen
• 50:38
  Levitt? That is the Glen Limit
• 50:39
  Distillery. So there's this lack of.
• 50:41
  So what was the sort of process of the growth of that that
• 50:45
  business then? So don't get me wrong, it was an
• 50:50
  upward struggle because people didn't recognize, but also age.
• 50:54
  This one I'm drinking here, that's whatever tastes perfectly
• 50:58
  good. Why you should have paid a
• 50:59
  little bit more for when it says it's 10 years old or whatever.
• 51:02
  I remember when I started. You come into the business as a
• 51:06
  family member and I think we've been, it's something that's
• 51:10
  called the leadership development programme.
• 51:12
  But the golden rule is you come in and you have to understand
• 51:15
  the whole business. You need to understand how it
• 51:17
  works. So, but so that you can add
• 51:19
  value. Otherwise you can do things and,
• 51:23
  you know, you don't realise the repercussions of them down the
• 51:26
  track. You think, I think we should do
• 51:28
  this here and you go, actually, you don't realise what impact.
• 51:31
  So first thing you do is you learn how to make whiskey.
• 51:33
  So spent the first, you know, three to six months of Enomic.
• 51:36
  Yeah. Well, you'd the benefit that the
• 51:39
  company had recently. Bought Ben Romac, Yeah.
• 51:41
  Purchased Ben Romac so that that right trying to divert you too
• 51:46
  much that's not that's that that was something you hadn't done
• 51:49
  before so. But let's come on to that
• 51:51
  because it's all part of the same.
• 51:52
  The lineage of the story is important.
• 51:54
  So back then, distilleries were one.
• 51:57
  They didn't bottle, but they were plants making spirit.
• 52:01
  Yeah. And they were creating an
• 52:02
  ingredients that went to blenders and brokers and to
• 52:05
  create. Because that's the thing that a
• 52:07
  lot of people don't understand. Historically, once the spirit
• 52:10
  was coming out of the still a lot of the, a lot of the
• 52:14
  distilleries are going, that's our, we've done our job.
• 52:16
  We're not here to cask and bottom.
• 52:19
  That goes out to somebody else. It goes blinders, it goes in a
• 52:22
  warehouse and it goes to a bottler and that's that's it
• 52:24
  done. So whiskey leaves on a tanker
• 52:27
  and goes down the road, Yeah. So what would happen is we found
• 52:32
  ourselves obviously in a situation with all these places
• 52:35
  on our doorstep and we would, we would take our casks, send them
• 52:38
  to the distillers, they would fill them.
• 52:40
  And of course we, if you then track Gordon Macphail against
• 52:44
  the ups and downs of the industry patterns and crash,
• 52:46
  people are desperate. So of course we're in a
• 52:49
  situation where we can help. We used to, my uncle Ian
• 52:51
  described it and Michael as well described it as sort of going
• 52:54
  anti cycle. So and that that was that wasn't
• 52:58
  purely it wasn't 100% commercial for doing it, but so when
• 53:01
  everybody was you know on their Downers, as it were Gordon my
• 53:04
  fear were there to help you say, well, what do you need from us?
• 53:07
  Could you fill fill more, you know, fill more casts.
• 53:11
  Could you do this? Could you do that Some brilliant
• 53:13
  stories. You know, if you go to anything
• 53:16
  from Straw Island in 1949, after the, you know, Jay Pomeroy gets
• 53:20
  arrested and his his life destitute and everything, all
• 53:23
  his possessions are taken away from him and including the
• 53:26
  distillery. I don't know if you know that
• 53:29
  story, but there's an example where there's a man that's under
• 53:33
  the current with everything being rationed right through to
• 53:35
  1954. That time he was making spirit,
• 53:38
  shipping it to London and selling it in the black market
• 53:40
  without paying any duties. And they got caught.
• 53:43
  They caught up with him. It's a simple short story there.
• 53:46
  And so he's they threw the book at him.
• 53:49
  The only thing they don't do is put him in jail, but he left him
• 53:51
  destitute. The, the administrators come in
• 53:55
  to run the, the distillery, the actual sort of admin officer as
• 54:01
  well as a guy on at the site. And by the way, the distillery's
• 54:05
  called Milton Distillery at this point.
• 54:07
  They make a spirit which is called Strathila.
• 54:11
  And that that's, that's goes out to blinders, of course.
• 54:16
  So of course this guy Palmer, who's greedy, he didn't want
• 54:19
  anybody to have his stuff. So people like us and everybody
• 54:22
  else has been told, sorry, you're not getting any fillings
• 54:24
  as soon as administrators come in.
• 54:26
  The guy came up from Edinras, a guy called Geddis think it was.
• 54:29
  He grew up from Edinburgh and he looked around.
• 54:31
  He looked at the distillery manager and thought he had seen
• 54:33
  too much of distillery life was a quote.
• 54:37
  And. So turned to Alex Firmestry and
• 54:38
  said, you look like you've got a solid head in your shoulders and
• 54:41
  could you you run that, You run the place for us.
• 54:44
  First thing he did was picked up the phone to their hearts and
• 54:46
  said, would you? Do you want to start filling
• 54:48
  again with us No problem at all, right.
• 54:50
  I think we filled three times in 1949 looking at our records and
• 54:54
  of course that led to the what is the the Unicorn?
• 54:57
  Because I don't know if you look at our Connor's choice whiskeys
• 55:01
  and our private collection whiskeys, they say, they say in
• 55:04
  them carefully matured in our our own tasks with spirit
• 55:11
  entrusted to us from. Yeah, spirit entrusted as an as
• 55:15
  an interesting one, yeah. Entrusted to us.
• 55:18
  'Cause you have, you have to be careful with that.
• 55:19
  We see that with we see that with independent bottlers now
• 55:22
  and you look at the the rules that are in place, you know a
• 55:25
  lot of brands will not allow you to bottle with their brand on
• 55:29
  the label because it is that trust factor.
• 55:31
  We just don't know if we sell this cast to Angus and myself
• 55:34
  exactly. We don't know what we're going,
• 55:36
  they don't know. I can't guarantee that we're
• 55:38
  going to withhold their reputable thing and we could put
• 55:41
  it could be crap that we stick out and it's got their label.
• 55:45
  Well, this is it. Somebody picks up a bottle with
• 55:47
  a certain distillery on it, tries it and goes.
• 55:50
  I'll never drink that again. That was not for me.
• 55:53
  Then you know you're getting the wrong impression of what a
• 55:56
  distillery is. What?
• 55:57
  If you've only got a small amount of casks, you're going to
• 55:59
  be looking to maximize your return on these casks.
• 56:02
  And if we've got one that happens just not to be the
• 56:04
  greatest, it's not maturing quickly or or it's got an off
• 56:07
  note or something and you put it in to your point, I'm guessing
• 56:10
  suddenly you've got that. We have always stood in a
• 56:15
  position where we are carrying two names on the on the label.
• 56:20
  So we have to golden rule do right by the whiskey.
• 56:23
  Yeah. The second is make sure you're
• 56:25
  doing right by the people that have sold you the whiskey and
• 56:28
  you are and therefore building the good name of Gordon and
• 56:30
  Macphail. That is, that's, that's what
• 56:33
  it's all about. It's really quite that simple.
• 56:35
  And going back to the original advert in the paper, we want to
• 56:38
  give you a superior product at at a popular price.
• 56:42
  And it was something my grandfather believed in it about
• 56:44
  value for money. But first and most important
• 56:46
  thing is what does superior product mean?
• 56:48
  It means quality. And that my uncle Michael always
• 56:52
  says quality never goes out of fashion.
• 56:55
  Yeah, yeah. And do you know what?
• 56:56
  That's the world changes. We all know that.
• 56:59
  Well, the world changes because, I mean, the slogan, you know,
• 57:04
  it's a popular product, sometimes at a superior price.
• 57:07
  Yeah, Yeah. We always try to make sure that
• 57:10
  nobody ever feels like you're buying a box, fancy box for
• 57:13
  sure. You're what you want to feel
• 57:14
  like you're buying the spirit. And I think that there was a
• 57:17
  there was a point in time where we maybe got so caught up in
• 57:19
  that, that our patching fell behind where other people's
• 57:22
  were. And then the great team
• 57:24
  marketing team we had and the folk that we used obviously
• 57:28
  changed that around and we sort of came out, revolutionized our
• 57:32
  patching a bit. It's still to this day, you
• 57:34
  still feel like you're getting all of these things, but you'd
• 57:37
  feel that like you're buying this sensational whiskey.
• 57:40
  Yeah, that's how it's right. So can I just get my head around
• 57:43
  the the business model then in the early, early days?
• 57:45
  So you're buying all these you're you're sending these cast
• 57:48
  to distillers to Phil, OK. And then the cast are coming
• 57:51
  back. Now you obviously be laying a
• 57:53
  lot of them down, but what are what's happening with all that
• 57:55
  whiskey then? Are you, are you then brokering
• 57:59
  that whiskey to other bottlers or other, or is everything just
• 58:03
  going into a bottle in the end for that Gordon Mcfill?
• 58:05
  Everything you feel, you're bottling yourself.
• 58:07
  And this even at even at the early, early stages.
• 58:09
  Yep, Yep, we, we do we through our records, you'll see the odd
• 58:13
  little you'll see the odd transaction with someone right
• 58:15
  where the our goods will be kept.
• 58:18
  Or there's been, there's been a transfer because again, by
• 58:21
  balancing your stock, they might been doing something to help a
• 58:24
  blender or a broker or blender. Because the world is about
• 58:28
  relationships. Relationships aren't one way.
• 58:31
  And for, for any relationship to succeed, there's a, this is a
• 58:34
  bit of a business chat now, but there's a guy called Marcus
• 58:37
  Buckingham who talks about this really brilliantly.
• 58:39
  And you need 3 things. You need to feel valued.
• 58:42
  You need to feel like you belong and you need to feel loved.
• 58:46
  But what does love mean? You can't walk around hugging
• 58:48
  your partners and your, your suppliers and things.
• 58:50
  No, it's the unwavering commitment to the flourishing of
• 58:53
  the other party because as my my grandfather, before he passed
• 58:58
  away, he wrote the next generations Pluto a letter and
• 59:02
  he said for us to be in business, somebody somewhere's
• 59:03
  got to be buying our our product.
• 59:06
  And therefore you must respect the people that will buy it.
• 59:09
  But you have to respect your suppliers because if you try and
• 59:12
  screw your supplier down, you're just going to get an inferior
• 59:14
  product from them. And then you how can you then
• 59:17
  give a superior product to the customer?
• 59:18
  How can you offer them quality? Well, you can't.
• 59:20
  So you must make sure that you give the, you give your supplier
• 59:25
  a showing to make sure that they can invest in their business to
• 59:28
  keep progressing. Otherwise you're just going to
• 59:29
  keep changing your suppliers. It's it's so it's, it's, it's a
• 59:33
  great rule in life because you have, if you don't, if you
• 59:36
  respect, if you can, of course, everybody respects their
• 59:40
  customers. You have to respect the supplier
• 59:42
  base as well because without it we won't get the best wood and
• 59:45
  that's what's fundamental to Gordon McPhail with the very
• 59:48
  best wood. We deal with three family Cup
• 59:51
  bridges in town and her Earth we deal with.
• 59:54
  Obviously it was the Taylor family from Space I Cupbridge
• 59:57
  and now it's the French company owned them, but we deal with
• 59:59
  them and have wonderful relationships which.
• 1:00:02
  Which includes the obviously their massive presence in the
• 1:00:05
  US. So we get the very best quality
• 1:00:07
  casks from there. And so, and that's vital, right?
• 1:00:10
  With these things, you do that. But guess what?
• 1:00:14
  If you, if you don't treat your supplier base right, we're not
• 1:00:16
  going to get the best casks We're not going to get.
• 1:00:19
  And when times are tough and the industry's screaming for wood,
• 1:00:22
  guess who's at the front of the cube?
• 1:00:24
  Even though we don't buy as much as a lot of people.
• 1:00:27
  It's a long standing. Relation.
• 1:00:29
  It's a long. Standing and that's that's.
• 1:00:30
  Through the good times and the bad times, you support.
• 1:00:32
  Well, that that's the we look, that's the stories oldest
• 1:00:35
  diamond whiskey because we've had what was it Peter Allison
• 1:00:38
  from woven was on and he said, you know, some of the best
• 1:00:42
  people. He said from a sales point of
• 1:00:44
  view, you're all you hear the word the gatekeeper, right, and
• 1:00:46
  that's the person that can allow you in or not.
• 1:00:49
  And often you can look at the gatekeeper and go, and I work in
• 1:00:51
  sales. So you're always like, right,
• 1:00:53
  you've got the gatekeeper can be the person that could shut the
• 1:00:55
  gate or or open the gate for you.
• 1:00:57
  And you sometimes worry about them.
• 1:00:59
  Like Peter Allison put in her great way.
• 1:01:00
  And he says some of the the best people in the whiskey industry
• 1:01:03
  are the gatekeepers because they're the ones they, they all
• 1:01:05
  they want you to do is do the right thing by the industry.
• 1:01:08
  Whiskey first, make sure whiskey is the product.
• 1:01:11
  And as long as you're not making it terrible or you're not
• 1:01:13
  putting a bad light on it, then they'll be more than happy to
• 1:01:16
  give you what you want out of it.
• 1:01:18
  And it but it's and he said and it's relationships.
• 1:01:20
  We were having a chat last night with a gentleman who works in a
• 1:01:23
  fairly significant maltings and we were talking about, you know,
• 1:01:28
  the, what you've just said about what the, the, the letter that
• 1:01:32
  was written about respective, you know, show the supplier the
• 1:01:36
  most, you know, the most the farmers with the grain.
• 1:01:39
  And you're saying that fine balances the maltsters have to
• 1:01:41
  play is the fact that maybe sometimes the distillers might
• 1:01:44
  be saying we're not producing an awful lot this year.
• 1:01:46
  So we don't need as much great much malt barley, which means
• 1:01:49
  that the maltsters can't buy as much, which means that they
• 1:01:51
  become tighter on the quality of the of the grain that they buy.
• 1:01:55
  And then that might affect the price point and, and things like
• 1:01:58
  that. But at the same time, you, if
• 1:02:00
  you stop giving the fact, if you, if you treat the farmers
• 1:02:03
  badly and hit them with a low price of the barley, then the
• 1:02:07
  farmer might go well. I'm just not going to grow as
• 1:02:09
  much next year. So you're not going to get it or
• 1:02:11
  AS. Bees, you know, it's like, you
• 1:02:13
  know, we need, we want the farmers to grow the barley.
• 1:02:15
  So we need to treat the farmers. Yeah.
• 1:02:17
  Yeah, yeah. And it's it's that that's a
• 1:02:19
  balancing act that I think the whiskey industry has had to play
• 1:02:23
  or well since it began, I'd imagine is the fact that.
• 1:02:25
  And I think that's what one of the things that we've always
• 1:02:27
  talked about, the sharp elbows and the whiskey industry, the
• 1:02:29
  fact that you don't appreciate until you come up to space side,
• 1:02:32
  the fact that you could literally have to distilleries
• 1:02:35
  across the road from each other and they'll probably quite
• 1:02:38
  pally. And imagine that in any other
• 1:02:41
  business, if you had a car dealership across the road from
• 1:02:43
  another car dealership, I don't think they'd be maybe or maybe
• 1:02:46
  in a personal level, might be quite pally, but we're a
• 1:02:48
  business level. They'd be going.
• 1:02:50
  We need to stop people walking in there because we need them to
• 1:02:52
  come and ask. And it just, it's fascinating.
• 1:02:55
  There's a lot of camaraderie in the whiskey industry because I
• 1:02:57
  think we operate on a global stage.
• 1:03:00
  And I think actually what's really important is that we all
• 1:03:03
  do. And we all do.
• 1:03:04
  It is first and foremost trying to encourage people to drink
• 1:03:07
  whiskey. Yeah.
• 1:03:08
  And, you know, ahead of other things, you know, and then if we
• 1:03:12
  can get people drinking whiskey, let's make sure they have the
• 1:03:14
  best possible time drinking whiskey and enjoying it for the
• 1:03:18
  quality of product it is in the right environment and, you know,
• 1:03:21
  in the most sociable ways they can.
• 1:03:23
  That's that's funny. I think you see it with with the
• 1:03:25
  brand ambassadors and people we've had on and I think anyone
• 1:03:28
  that works in marketing outside of whiskey would probably
• 1:03:30
  scratch their head. How on earth are they allowed to
• 1:03:32
  do that is when we do the what 3 drams at the end and we'll have
• 1:03:35
  brand ambassadors on and they'll work for one brand and we always
• 1:03:38
  skip them. People we say, look, you can go
• 1:03:40
  on brand, We'll give you a chance to go on brand.
• 1:03:41
  But you know, we also, you know, and I think that's what's nice
• 1:03:44
  is when you've got a brand ambassador that can sit there
• 1:03:45
  and I work for X company, but I'm going to tell you one of my
• 1:03:48
  favourite drams is a DRAM from this company.
• 1:03:51
  And now so many marketers would they're going, what the hell are
• 1:03:54
  you in the public forum? You can't be speaking about
• 1:03:56
  somebody else's Brandy ribs. But I think I always see the
• 1:03:59
  whiskey industry at these brands putting it's like you say, it's
• 1:04:02
  put whiskey first because as long as somebody's drinking
• 1:04:05
  whiskey, there's a chance that they'll come across your product
• 1:04:10
  eventually. You know, if you're if I.
• 1:04:12
  And that's where it's different maybe from Gordon Macphail and
• 1:04:14
  you speak to independent bottlers.
• 1:04:16
  Mark Thompson, for example, said when he moved to Duncan Taylor,
• 1:04:20
  you know, loved working at Glenfiddich and he he the
• 1:04:23
  stories that he could tell you about Glenfiddich XYZ.
• 1:04:25
  But he said work for an independent bottler meant that I
• 1:04:28
  had to learn about all these other distilleries.
• 1:04:31
  And I could sit down and say I just this bottle is from this
• 1:04:33
  distillery and then I've got a raft of information I can give
• 1:04:36
  and then this bottle's from a completely different distillery.
• 1:04:38
  So, so it's a really, because that's what you are, you and
• 1:04:41
  effectively are. What you're saying is you've got
• 1:04:43
  the government failed brand, which everyone needs to know and
• 1:04:46
  understand the quality there, but you're representing so many
• 1:04:49
  other little distilleries as soon as that liquid's in that
• 1:04:51
  glass bottle, yeah. In our case, 112, we filled 112
• 1:04:54
  different distilleries through our time really.
• 1:04:56
  So yeah, yeah. And some of those is going to
• 1:04:59
  say some of those examples stuff I like where we really help them
• 1:05:02
  out to just keep going. It went to went to auction in
• 1:05:06
  1950. It was won by Seagram's.
• 1:05:08
  We lost out some others, but we came close apparently.
• 1:05:12
  And in 51 they changed the name and you can get there's 1949
• 1:05:16
  from Milton. It's one of the IT might be the
• 1:05:19
  only or one of a couple of Milton's that were ever ever
• 1:05:23
  bottled. So it's total Unicorn stuff and
• 1:05:25
  it's sensational of but there was we only released it a couple
• 1:05:28
  years ago. So and then in 1949, if you just
• 1:05:32
  even stay back from the world of whiskey, what was going?
• 1:05:34
  On there a different world, well.
• 1:05:36
  Post post post Second World War, think about what's the division
• 1:05:40
  of, of Germany and with the division of Berlin and then East
• 1:05:43
  and West Germany, 1949, the year the People's Republic of China
• 1:05:47
  was formed, you know here. And this year, I think it's the
• 1:05:52
  60th anniversary of of Singapore.
• 1:05:55
  Singapore was in that country back then and things you'd think
• 1:05:57
  of what's happened in the world. So, yeah.
• 1:06:02
  So there were all changes. Dura, I remember Damien from the
• 1:06:06
  Whiskey magazine came wandering into the office one day to to
• 1:06:09
  chat to Uncle David and he came in and he said, he said, oh, is
• 1:06:14
  it Uncle Ian around? He says, I said, no, I don't
• 1:06:16
  know if he is actually. He said, Oh, well, if you see
• 1:06:18
  him say my dad's asking for him because of course it was in the
• 1:06:20
  1960s that Tony his Damien's dad, Tony Riley Smith and Robert
• 1:06:24
  Fletcher took over and running of Dura, right.
• 1:06:28
  And he said, I said, oh, that's really nice, and I'll do that
• 1:06:32
  And asking naive questions. Do they know each other?
• 1:06:34
  Well, he said, yeah, your uncle and your grandfather used to
• 1:06:37
  fill with us at times when if they didn't, the distillery
• 1:06:41
  probably would have closed. Wow.
• 1:06:42
  It was clear thing that kept. Yeah, but that's the sort of
• 1:06:46
  thing. And it's that's, you know, it's
• 1:06:49
  an industry that was supporting us.
• 1:06:51
  We're getting some wonderful spirit.
• 1:06:53
  And so when the times came, we'd scored them back it.
• 1:06:57
  Works for you because. It's too easy.
• 1:06:58
  But then Gordon Macphail today obviously we probably should
• 1:07:01
  talk about the decision a few years ago when you said.
• 1:07:03
  Just last. Year or just last year?
• 1:07:05
  I thought it was too. Yeah, last year to February.
• 1:07:07
  Last year, yeah. February last year, right?
• 1:07:09
  But you were not going to lay down any new casks and the, you
• 1:07:13
  know, obviously you bought Ben Romack about 20 years ago.
• 1:07:15
  You've got the distillery Cairn, yeah, as well.
• 1:07:18
  So the focus, the focus since 19, eight.
• 1:07:21
  So the focus of the business is changing, isn't it?
• 1:07:24
  Yeah, with the Cairn, part of the reason for that is because
• 1:07:28
  if you if you, you mentioned the rise of single malt, of course,
• 1:07:32
  it's sort of began to start bubbling away very subtly in the
• 1:07:35
  60s. In the 1970s, remember pulling
• 1:07:38
  out a price list and our our rule was to cover carry
• 1:07:43
  everybody's bottles of whiskey. And the actual list of single
• 1:07:47
  malts from distilleries was a little bit 8 or 9, you know, and
• 1:07:50
  it wasn't initially all the names you think are the big
• 1:07:52
  names today, you know, so there would have been small, you know,
• 1:07:55
  the odd bottlings done by distillers for certain people or
• 1:07:58
  things because of the locality and maybe the relationships of
• 1:08:01
  those people. But on the whole, there wasn't
• 1:08:03
  that that many commercial single malts available at all.
• 1:08:07
  But there was pages and pages and pages of blinds and, and it
• 1:08:13
  wasn't that we, we began to see the increase coming slowly but
• 1:08:16
  surely just more through the 80s and then certainly into the 90s
• 1:08:19
  and then everybody. But the problem is as the
• 1:08:23
  distilleries and the owners of the distilleries realized that
• 1:08:27
  of course, blended sails were plateauing and dropping a little
• 1:08:29
  bit, you know, and malt whiskey was actually beginning to
• 1:08:34
  command premium. Actually, there's there's a real
• 1:08:37
  sector here that could work hand in glove with the blend without
• 1:08:40
  taking business away from the blended market by being the
• 1:08:43
  premium offering. And so of course, as time goes
• 1:08:46
  by and people start looking at their own stocks and things
• 1:08:51
  realise actually this stuff's really important.
• 1:08:53
  And to your point, if you've got wonderful relationships with
• 1:08:56
  people, but those people retire, move on, and you find yourself
• 1:09:00
  then dealing with new people who have maybe some of them might be
• 1:09:03
  not that long at university and they're going by the marketing
• 1:09:06
  one-on-one book. And you know, you're like, why
• 1:09:08
  are you dealing with them? Why are you doing that?
• 1:09:09
  Why are we doing that? We shouldn't do that.
• 1:09:11
  We need, we should, we should keep our whiskey for that.
• 1:09:13
  We'll need it for this. And so relationships, you know,
• 1:09:16
  people stop doing it or they start changing how they do it.
• 1:09:18
  You know, filling, not feeling the name of the distillery
• 1:09:21
  because we want to protect that IP is a massive thing.
• 1:09:24
  So of course, so relationship change, we're blessed.
• 1:09:27
  We had wonderful relationships and with so many people because
• 1:09:31
  it was so important that we did right by them.
• 1:09:33
  But times change, people's focus changes and so we saw, we saw us
• 1:09:40
  in a situation where you know, now and again folk would say,
• 1:09:43
  actually we're not going to be able to fill with you at the
• 1:09:45
  moment or this year. We're holding our cast for our
• 1:09:47
  own stock. We're we're producing so much
• 1:09:50
  that we need to have that laid down.
• 1:09:52
  And they've got plans for maybe look at look at people how
• 1:09:55
  they're coming out with brands for for different, different
• 1:09:59
  drinking purposes. So take like the wonderful
• 1:10:01
  Monkey shoulder, yeah, fabulous, fabulous whiskey.
• 1:10:03
  But they are to be much more a mixing drink.
• 1:10:05
  Yeah, you know, it's brilliant stuff and you know, it's great
• 1:10:09
  drinking it with ginger ale or yeah, it's brilliant.
• 1:10:13
  Love it. And so, but you can see the
• 1:10:16
  purpose where people actually hang.
• 1:10:17
  If we're going to if that's going to take off, we're going
• 1:10:19
  to need this. And of course, you've got then
• 1:10:21
  other factors like if South America opens up with India
• 1:10:24
  opens up with, you know, suddenly people who have to
• 1:10:27
  start hazing their bets. So every leader became, you
• 1:10:29
  know, really, really precious. So the risk of a business like
• 1:10:32
  Irish where you've got, you know, 100 plus years with a lot
• 1:10:35
  of people, it could all end because of a new person coming
• 1:10:38
  in or a phone call. Yes, sorry, this year's not for
• 1:10:41
  us. And suddenly you see that
• 1:10:42
  completely change. And that would be a terrible
• 1:10:44
  business model to have if you if you just relied on a phone call
• 1:10:48
  and to to so. Because you wouldn't have a
• 1:10:51
  contract in place that says, right, we're going to maybe
• 1:10:54
  previously, I don't know. But you wouldn't say like a
• 1:10:56
  distillery. I know a distillery somewhere in
• 1:10:58
  space. I'd and say Gordon Macphail are
• 1:11:00
  going to we're we're going to commit X amount of liters to us
• 1:11:03
  over the next 25 years. It wouldn't have been done like
• 1:11:07
  that, would it? It would have all been done on
• 1:11:09
  it seems would have been regular suppliers to God might fail and
• 1:11:12
  then there would have been ad hoc situations like the
• 1:11:14
  Strathala situation said someone pick up for did right.
• 1:11:17
  Let's go the Dura situation. And stuff we would have been
• 1:11:20
  doing it, but again, it just, it would have been some years
• 1:11:23
  stepped up some years we would have been looking at stocks,
• 1:11:26
  having discussions and it goes both ways.
• 1:11:29
  Some folks saying actually this year we're actually going
• 1:11:31
  through a lot of maintenance and renovation at that distillery.
• 1:11:34
  We're not going to have as much. So we're not.
• 1:11:35
  We can't give you that, but we'll give you this.
• 1:11:37
  But it wouldn't be contracted. It wouldn't be.
• 1:11:39
  I mean, there may be some sort of contract in place, but it
• 1:11:41
  wouldn't be it. Was Genderman's, hadn't you?
• 1:11:43
  Yeah. So it wouldn't have been a
• 1:11:44
  situation where we all say right, all right, here that for
• 1:11:46
  the next 15 years we will supply you a minimum of X amount of
• 1:11:50
  litre, you know, per. Yeah, but but in terms of it
• 1:11:53
  could have just been that sort of ad hoc.
• 1:11:55
  We've got enough of that stuff at the moment.
• 1:11:57
  We don't need as much, but we do need more of this so we can buy
• 1:11:59
  that. So, I mean, I remember this
• 1:12:01
  situation when it was the the the breaking news was like,
• 1:12:05
  well, one of the biggest independent butlers in Scotland
• 1:12:07
  are shutting down or stopping. It was like this.
• 1:12:10
  It was the big news of the day. Yeah.
• 1:12:12
  But then their their realization and and that was one of things
• 1:12:14
  we were talking about the podcast and Ross even said, come
• 1:12:17
  on with them out of the casks that these guys have up their
• 1:12:20
  sleeve. I mean we, we were at the
• 1:12:23
  football ground yesterday but at Briggs and we were looking
• 1:12:25
  across, we saw the big Gordon Macphail and I'm sure there'll
• 1:12:28
  be warehouses with. Benromax sign.
• 1:12:30
  We were sitting in front of it, not obscuring it, don't worry.
• 1:12:33
  But in terms of volume that even even that the fact that a year
• 1:12:38
  ago the the decision has been made by the company not to
• 1:12:42
  bought not to fill any more cast.
• 1:12:45
  For context, if Gordon Macphail worth the carry on releasing the
• 1:12:49
  amount of releases they are just as they are just now stock wise,
• 1:12:53
  how long could Gordon Macphail be still bringing out
• 1:12:55
  independent bottle to sit and shop shelves that people could
• 1:12:58
  buy before the the the final cast that's left in that whereas
• 1:13:02
  is emptied? So if you, you think about take
• 1:13:05
  our generations whiskeys and we'll, we'll maybe give you a we
• 1:13:08
  we know to something later on, But there's an example where we
• 1:13:12
  know the type of wood that we need to age a whiskey for
• 1:13:15
  exceptional lengths of time like that and for the whiskey to be
• 1:13:18
  brilliant. So we've been securing that
• 1:13:20
  quality of wood because one thing we didn't touch on is
• 1:13:22
  those casks we filled today. They're made to our
• 1:13:25
  specification and we learnt again, standing on the shoulders
• 1:13:28
  of giants, we've learned through the years about what makes a
• 1:13:31
  good cast and the thickness of the staves and the fact that
• 1:13:34
  these amazing transport casts were coming to us, how long the
• 1:13:37
  cherry had been in them and all this sort of stuff.
• 1:13:39
  And so we, we, we modelled our Huggies and butts on that
• 1:13:43
  knowledge of experience. So take last February when we
• 1:13:48
  filled casks that month, even some of those would have been
• 1:13:52
  destined to be maybe another say 50 to 80 year old whiskey.
• 1:13:56
  So, so we've got that. But at the same time, there's
• 1:13:58
  obviously a lot of whiskeys and that in their makeup, their
• 1:14:01
  spirit weight and character aren't aren't necessarily going
• 1:14:05
  to ever be that age of whiskey. So yeah, they're going to,
• 1:14:07
  they're going to be ones that will, you know, will run out of
• 1:14:11
  those maybe in say 20 years time.
• 1:14:13
  So there's there's going to be a balance.
• 1:14:14
  We're going to manage our portfolio and to the end.
• 1:14:17
  But at the same time, you know, take examples like like Monkey
• 1:14:22
  Shoulder, because we've now got just two distilleries making, of
• 1:14:26
  course, contrasting styles. And we've, we've got more
• 1:14:31
  ingredients that we can play about if we wanted to do that
• 1:14:33
  type of project or create other products and things like that.
• 1:14:37
  So we've, we don't, we're not relying on filling for stuff
• 1:14:41
  like that. That could go in and fill some
• 1:14:43
  of the the the the the products that we've had historically
• 1:14:46
  done, you know take even side or take our own label and offerings
• 1:14:51
  that we would do for so many great places throughout the
• 1:14:54
  country and overseas, things like that.
• 1:14:57
  We don't need that sort of liquid.
• 1:14:59
  Yeah for we don't need the single Castro alert to selling
• 1:15:03
  friends for that because we could do that from those our own
• 1:15:05
  place. And because the nature of both
• 1:15:08
  the Cairn and Ben Romick is you know everything at Ben Romick's
• 1:15:11
  handmade. It's it's people.
• 1:15:13
  It's not it's not technology that's running that.
• 1:15:16
  It's the people that's running that.
• 1:15:17
  So it gives us great flexibility to to like we do stop is to 100%
• 1:15:22
  organic run, let's clean the place down.
• 1:15:25
  Murdo even goes in and takes out all the fuse oils out with the
• 1:15:28
  receiver and cleans it all out before we go.
• 1:15:31
  And then he keeps it, though, and he puts it all back in
• 1:15:33
  again. Because we'll learn from what
• 1:15:35
  Klein Lees did you know? Yes.
• 1:15:38
  You know, so all of that stuff is so important and so you end
• 1:15:41
  up in a situation where but but don't get me wrong, just the
• 1:15:47
  pride we have in those relationships and we still have
• 1:15:49
  those relationships today. Sure.
• 1:15:50
  And because we know and to to your point, when we're standing
• 1:15:54
  at somewhere and we're talking about Glenn Burgie, we know we
• 1:15:58
  do it with pride and passion, which is only going to benefit
• 1:16:01
  that we came out with our generations 80 year old.
• 1:16:04
  That was 1940, you know, and it was wrong going live it and
• 1:16:08
  actually you could see a few people in a company might get a
• 1:16:12
  bit prickly at there's somebody with our whiskeys older than
• 1:16:14
  anything we've done. Yeah, actually guess what, half
• 1:16:18
  the people, the report and it went 8 year old going with it.
• 1:16:21
  They were just getting all the great media from it.
• 1:16:25
  That way, but that's been I walked three drams twice on the
• 1:16:30
  podcast. We've had two people on the
• 1:16:31
  podcast that I've named and. That.
• 1:16:33
  Specific that specific 1 twice actually quite incredible that
• 1:16:38
  we've out of all the we've had what, 75 or 78 guests on the
• 1:16:43
  podcast and of those 7572 people have tried it and stuck it in
• 1:16:48
  the in the walk 3 drums. I'll be your third well.
• 1:16:51
  Right, right. It's, it's insane, Yeah.
• 1:16:54
  It's just you've you've. And well, right.
• 1:16:56
  So very quickly on your role then we see gourmet fail as
• 1:17:01
  that. You can see the bottles, the
• 1:17:03
  pictures and things like that we enjoyed.
• 1:17:06
  Now what? What collection would it be
• 1:17:07
  from? It was the Milton Duff 10.
• 1:17:09
  It's one of my favorite. Oh, it's our distillery label
• 1:17:12
  series, or it's in discovery now.
• 1:17:14
  Yeah, yeah, and good. Medal winner as well.
• 1:17:16
  Absolutely. And you've got these, you've got
• 1:17:17
  these great ranges that very accessible for people to
• 1:17:19
  purchase. But obviously we've seen some of
• 1:17:22
  the bottles here, we've tried some of the bottles.
• 1:17:24
  It goes all the way up and up and up and up.
• 1:17:25
  And then the prestige element is that how far does the Gordon
• 1:17:28
  Macphail brand travel globally then is it much more of AUK
• 1:17:33
  market or does it travel all over the?
• 1:17:35
  World all over the world we at one point I think we were in 60
• 1:17:37
  markets. I think we're, we're now
• 1:17:39
  focusing really intently in sort of 10 to 20 and but but have a
• 1:17:43
  presence and I think it's maybe around about, I want to say 30
• 1:17:48
  to 40, you'll still find a bottle of our product.
• 1:17:51
  But with a company our size, it's about focus and you've got
• 1:17:55
  to do that and it's about relationships.
• 1:17:57
  And it's something that really I know my cousin Richard is in
• 1:18:00
  charge of our sales director for the Globe.
• 1:18:05
  It's something that he's really putting a lot of emphasis and
• 1:18:10
  and that is that relationship building with the people that
• 1:18:13
  we've had, you know, multi generation relationships.
• 1:18:16
  You take Lemies and do whiskey and and Paris.
• 1:18:19
  It was the two Georges that got together, George Bennett and
• 1:18:21
  George Urquhart, and that was a relationship that started 60
• 1:18:24
  years ago and, and it's Georges Santieri that now has
• 1:18:28
  relationship with, with, with us and our team and, and it's just
• 1:18:32
  brilliant. And then of course the the model
• 1:18:34
  as well is having a a distillery now.
• 1:18:36
  Yeah. It means that that's another
• 1:18:38
  that's another opener for markets as well where, you know,
• 1:18:42
  if you've got out terms of small batches, trying to divvy that up
• 1:18:46
  between 30 markets must be very, very difficult because you could
• 1:18:49
  say. Oh, you have to start doing
• 1:18:50
  exclusives to certain markets. Exactly.
• 1:18:51
  And then you've got to, you know, you've got these sort of
• 1:18:55
  people would say like, you know, of course I'd like something
• 1:18:58
  really incredible old and heavily cherries and that and
• 1:19:00
  on. And you go, well, actually, if
• 1:19:02
  all the cast were releasing, we could give you one of those or
• 1:19:04
  some of those or, and but then at the same time there's you
• 1:19:08
  want, you might have a, but that's given you, you know, 4 or
• 1:19:11
  500 bottles. Actually, that's one, that one
• 1:19:13
  market alone when you struggle with, but actually do it across
• 1:19:17
  a continental Europe or a couple of markets in Europe, Canada,
• 1:19:21
  you know, some of it going over to the Far East.
• 1:19:24
  You know, suddenly it's split up beautifully and it becomes, they
• 1:19:27
  become, you get great reputation for, for those whiskeys and then
• 1:19:30
  become really sought after. And then people start travelling
• 1:19:33
  to find them and it becomes a lovely it's almost like a game
• 1:19:35
  in a way, isn't it? Yeah, that's it.
• 1:19:37
  And by the way, they've been in Roma side of it, it's, it's a
• 1:19:40
  new distillery in terms of for a lot of people.
• 1:19:43
  In fact, we had it on Friday night.
• 1:19:44
  We were sitting in the Highlander and or outside the
• 1:19:47
  Highlander. And because it was that warm and
• 1:19:48
  there was a group from Wick Wickers, as they called
• 1:19:51
  themselves. Wickers.
• 1:19:52
  Wickers, that was. Already weaker.
• 1:19:55
  That's exactly the guy. We were drinking drams and he
• 1:19:57
  was, he got chatting to. I said he's.
• 1:19:59
  We're talking about old pulp. Yeah, and he he, we like
• 1:20:02
  whiskey, but his wife and he says I can't stomach whiskey.
• 1:20:04
  But he said, I like a smoky whiskey and and he said, right,
• 1:20:07
  I'm going to have one more. And he kind of asked us what
• 1:20:09
  should I get? And I just said, well, Ben Roma,
• 1:20:11
  15, if you like a smoky whiskey, but you're you'll want to try
• 1:20:14
  something Never and it's never, never happened with it.
• 1:20:17
  And he said, oh, it was about 7 lbs.
• 1:20:20
  Oh, I don't normally spend that much on a whiskey.
• 1:20:22
  Bar and I said. Well, it's Bob Spices.
• 1:20:24
  Yeah, go on. Ben Roma, 57 I think it was.
• 1:20:28
  I can't remember, but yeah, great value.
• 1:20:32
  But he went smell this smell that you know to the Y is why
• 1:20:37
  smell this? This is fantastic and I
• 1:20:39
  absolutely. It's it's, it's not a new
• 1:20:41
  distillery. It's a new distillery.
• 1:20:43
  It was a mothball distillery that's been taken over because
• 1:20:45
  I've been lucky. I've tried the I now it was your
• 1:20:48
  cousin. Now let me get this right.
• 1:20:51
  Is it Stewart? He he delivered a tasting for
• 1:20:54
  the Ben Romer, 50. Yes, and I was in Edinburgh.
• 1:20:57
  Yes, in Edinburgh I was extremely lucky to have been
• 1:20:59
  there. I think that's where I met Nigel
• 1:21:00
  who who's put us in touch. Yeah and I was extremely lucky
• 1:21:03
  to be there and I think it was the the 50.
• 1:21:05
  Oh let me get this right. Anyway, there was 2 cocktails,
• 1:21:07
  there was 152140 and 50. There was an organic.
• 1:21:10
  Was that like an organic old fashion?
• 1:21:11
  Maybe just I. Think it might have been.
• 1:21:13
  Yeah. And it was incredible.
• 1:21:14
  Yeah. So that's The thing is you're
• 1:21:16
  looking at two sides to this. It's a it's a distillery that's
• 1:21:19
  in 1998 restarted. So it's reproducing.
• 1:21:23
  But also I'm, I'm sure we've heard this story before with
• 1:21:27
  like Ian McLean Distillers looking at Tam do and other
• 1:21:29
  things where basically you open up the warehouse doors or maybe
• 1:21:32
  even some of the stock that you already had from previous
• 1:21:35
  relationship would be exactly yeah, you see there's stock
• 1:21:37
  already here which can which is age stock that we can carry the
• 1:21:43
  brand into. Exactly.
• 1:21:44
  So you've got an opportunity where now you're making your own
• 1:21:48
  distillate and in control of that and you're putting your own
• 1:21:51
  stamp on that as well. Because Ben Romick as well was
• 1:21:54
  it's effectively a new distillery built inside the
• 1:21:56
  walls of an old one. Yes, yeah.
• 1:21:57
  So, because if you look at the original drawings and things,
• 1:22:00
  our stills are slightly different shape and size.
• 1:22:02
  And originally they had worm tubs not changed through the
• 1:22:06
  life of Benomic, but and we've, we went shell on tubes as they
• 1:22:09
  had at the end Benomic as well. And but everything, everything
• 1:22:13
  in Benomic is, is incredibly unique.
• 1:22:16
  And you know, we, we talk about the lost taste of space side and
• 1:22:20
  how it's all handcrafted by, you know, for genuine character.
• 1:22:23
  It's also true. You know, there's a great thing
• 1:22:26
  that we we learned from partners in the US about how the typical
• 1:22:30
  US about how they, they sort of eloquently get, get across their
• 1:22:34
  points and they talk about, they talk first about
• 1:22:36
  characteristics, then differentiators, then
• 1:22:38
  validation. Now the characteristics are
• 1:22:41
  those flavour profile of whiskey, but the differentiators
• 1:22:45
  are Benomaker quite unique because that's why the
• 1:22:47
  differentiators one, we only use local barley.
• 1:22:50
  Yeah, 2. We've got original wash box, but
• 1:22:55
  even the expanded wash, the extra wash box we put in are
• 1:22:58
  made with large as well. And so, and everything's done
• 1:23:02
  that way. We use two types of yeast.
• 1:23:05
  So we go back to Brewers and distillers the way Tasker would
• 1:23:08
  have done it, McCallum did it years ago, etcetera.
• 1:23:11
  And we and then again we we use our local spring water of
• 1:23:18
  course, but all most of us to lose would do that.
• 1:23:20
  So that's not really a differentiator.
• 1:23:22
  But we then go for long fermentations and just due to
• 1:23:24
  the model we have first two days are long in terms of about 80
• 1:23:29
  hours, then the next three days end up being over 120.
• 1:23:33
  So, so you and it's all about that secondary fermentation, the
• 1:23:37
  Ester build up the profile you get.
• 1:23:39
  And what we found was actually at that point, if you just took
• 1:23:44
  away the smoky element, you actually have something very
• 1:23:47
  akin to even with all the differences to the spirit
• 1:23:50
  character the open Roman had, right.
• 1:23:52
  So that's does say there's a lot about that local environment.
• 1:23:55
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, then the other thing
• 1:23:57
  of course is so two types of yeast, long fermentations and
• 1:24:02
  then our cut points of the stills.
• 1:24:05
  And with that, the Barleys got phenol content for the core
• 1:24:09
  range of 12 PPM. And then we only ever use, first
• 1:24:12
  of all, bourbon and Sherry cast, right.
• 1:24:14
  So again, it's totally unique. And then we've got damage
• 1:24:17
  warehouses, now that's not totally unique test parkless
• 1:24:21
  used as well as well, but it's not many people still use those.
• 1:24:26
  So yeah. So there's exclusive done it
• 1:24:28
  really. Sort of, yeah.
• 1:24:29
  So 5 or 6 completely unique points to Ben Roma that help.
• 1:24:34
  And obviously we're actually producing such a small quantity
• 1:24:37
  and relatively speaking, when Benoma first opens its doors,
• 1:24:40
  we're making about 125 to 130,000 litres.
• 1:24:44
  And it's taken those 20 odd years to for us to build up to
• 1:24:47
  get to about 500,000 litres now. And all of it is just for malt
• 1:24:50
  whiskey, you know? So it's cracking brewing liquid.
• 1:24:53
  And I think one of the best things about that tasted was,
• 1:24:57
  and I love him, he came with a PowerPoint projector and he went
• 1:25:03
  right. And he sort of said, OK, we've
• 1:25:05
  got 7 dramas to get through the night, but I've also got to get
• 1:25:08
  you through this PowerPoint presentation, right?
• 1:25:10
  He will say there's a nice picture from the, of the
• 1:25:12
  distillery in the winter. There's another nice picture of
• 1:25:15
  it. And he's, and he went through
• 1:25:16
  all the production, a photo of now King Charles when he when he
• 1:25:20
  visited the distillery. But his favorite slide, this is
• 1:25:23
  the only slide I'm allowed to put in.
• 1:25:25
  And it was like the most, it was a very bog standard basement,
• 1:25:28
  but it was all about the casks, where the casks are sourced
• 1:25:31
  from. And he's put this map of Herath
• 1:25:33
  up and he's got his own little triangle in there to say like,
• 1:25:36
  this is where we get our cast. And I get to go over Herath once
• 1:25:39
  a year or something. That's my favorite trip of the
• 1:25:41
  year. I get to go over and I'm picking
• 1:25:43
  the cast and stuff like that. Yeah.
• 1:25:44
  And it was great. And it was, it was a really
• 1:25:46
  nice, in fact a really rare experience.
• 1:25:49
  We going to the Scotch, the bar there and you know, often it's
• 1:25:54
  brand ambassadors that are coming down, but to have
• 1:25:56
  somebody in management production, he's been there and
• 1:25:59
  I think it was and we've talked about it so much as well.
• 1:26:02
  One of the things that really attracted us, not just the
• 1:26:04
  liquid that was very, very good, but it was the passion that he
• 1:26:07
  showed about making it. And this is what we're doing.
• 1:26:09
  And I have because. In a way, he was almost the best
• 1:26:12
  brand ambassador that you could have had because there's
• 1:26:15
  somebody that is, you know, for so long has worked in producing
• 1:26:21
  the spirit rather than somebody that's just been hired and.
• 1:26:25
  I and it was. To talk about the spirit
• 1:26:26
  themselves, He's got somebody that's actually made the spirit
• 1:26:28
  themselves. Keith then Keith suddenly
• 1:26:30
  doesn't work for us and where he sort of retired from Gordon
• 1:26:33
  Macphail earlier in the year and and he's off.
• 1:26:36
  He's fulfilling some other wee projects.
• 1:26:39
  So but, but, but again, in the same way as when Keith came on
• 1:26:43
  board, he had been working in the Interstate.
• 1:26:46
  He came in as as very much with a bit like Prince Charles.
• 1:26:50
  He came, he came to be the king, but he started off as the Prince
• 1:26:54
  because he worked for under Bob Murray, who was the old hand
• 1:26:57
  that had come out, returned to help us get the place up and
• 1:26:59
  running. They worked together for a
• 1:27:00
  couple of years and then and that by that point Keith was had
• 1:27:04
  absolutely strengthened his wings, as it were, and he could
• 1:27:07
  fly solo and he took on. And then over time he's had
• 1:27:09
  different people belong where he's trained them up.
• 1:27:12
  And now it's Murdo so and Murdo and Mackenzie, he's top guy and,
• 1:27:18
  and again, it's that passion and that just everything is so
• 1:27:23
  important to them. Every tiny detail is so
• 1:27:25
  important to them. And Keith and Murdo, they still
• 1:27:27
  use that. They use the same story because
• 1:27:30
  whiskey is made with three ingredients.
• 1:27:32
  Ours is made with four water, yeast, barley and us.
• 1:27:37
  Brilliant, Fantastic. Now we are fast approaching.
• 1:27:40
  Well, we are fast approaching the time are what for the drums
• 1:27:44
  now because we could sit here for another hour.
• 1:27:47
  I could sit here for another hour just telling you my
• 1:27:49
  favorite drums. But I mean, you have, I mean,
• 1:27:51
  it's been incredible, Stephen, to get the access and the
• 1:27:55
  stories that you've had. But as I say, the feature that
• 1:27:57
  we do what 3 drums, any 3 whiskeys that have any kind of
• 1:28:00
  meaning or story associated with them?
• 1:28:07
  How long have we got? And Oh, my goodness, do you know
• 1:28:11
  what I'm not. You know what?
• 1:28:14
  You have to pinch yourself when you work with Gordon Macphail
• 1:28:16
  because not only do you get to taste the finest whiskeys, yeah,
• 1:28:20
  but I think there is a real genuine respect so.
• 1:28:25
  But I think the brand and really inspires people.
• 1:28:30
  And so I get to work with just fabulous people.
• 1:28:32
  Yeah, not just family, which is always it's, you know, in some
• 1:28:36
  places you working with your family can be a real, you know.
• 1:28:40
  I've done that. I'm.
• 1:28:42
  Lucky. I've just, I've just, I just
• 1:28:44
  have nothing about respect and love for uncles, obviously my
• 1:28:47
  mum, but my cousins, it's because it's because they're
• 1:28:50
  creative and we do things the right way.
• 1:28:53
  But the people that we work with are brilliant and and and I
• 1:28:58
  could I could, I could honestly, every time you ask me this, I
• 1:29:00
  could give you 3 different dramas because I've had the the
• 1:29:04
  joy of sitting and with my uncles enjoying.
• 1:29:08
  We did in 1949 Ben homework years ago and it blew me away
• 1:29:15
  and it wasn't until we did the 50 year old in October last year
• 1:29:19
  that I thought holy mackerel. Last year you had something
• 1:29:21
  that. Yeah, and so and that's a it's a
• 1:29:24
  different style. Cherry matured American big old
• 1:29:28
  transport, American open made cast, right, just phenomenal.
• 1:29:31
  So I would, I would probably actually put the new Ben Roma 50
• 1:29:35
  year old and had the most wonderful experience with a guy
• 1:29:38
  who actually he's a relatively new friend to me.
• 1:29:42
  And I, I had a drama with him in Dornak last year and he messaged
• 1:29:48
  me afterwards and said I was reflecting that Stephen, that's
• 1:29:51
  the best whiskey I've ever drunk.
• 1:29:53
  And I was thinking that's good coming for you.
• 1:29:55
  He's got a lovely collection which he showed me and I'm like,
• 1:29:58
  wow, that's amazing. Yeah.
• 1:30:00
  So that, so the 50 year old Benomic would would be 1 and
• 1:30:04
  that would be one with Benomic. However, I can't, you know, not
• 1:30:08
  many people in the company see past the the 15 year old because
• 1:30:11
  it's just so well constructed. Yeah, it's like.
• 1:30:13
  Incredible whiskey is. That just so if you said like
• 1:30:18
  what's your best 3 whiskeys, you know, you know, under a budget
• 1:30:22
  of whatever, then over 15 the Glenosus Discovery 11 year old
• 1:30:27
  is just phenomenal as well in terms of that inexpensive
• 1:30:33
  brilliance. However, if this was if this was
• 1:30:37
  the my very very best. Topic We're fast approaching the
• 1:30:40
  year. What 7 drums?
• 1:30:41
  Yeah, yeah. So.
• 1:30:43
  You're a few. Honourable.
• 1:30:46
  You're allowed a few honourable mentions.
• 1:30:47
  Honourable mentions at the lower end and this is Ward, I like the
• 1:30:54
  mother and father from from Orkney, the Highland Park.
• 1:30:56
  They call the father because it's got more robust and then
• 1:30:59
  the elegance of Scalpa, of course.
• 1:31:01
  And and I I had the wonderful joy of a really, really old
• 1:31:04
  miniature. I don't know what a bottle it
• 1:31:06
  was with a friend from Switzerland and we sat in one of
• 1:31:10
  his this room he's got and and he cracked it with me and he
• 1:31:14
  said let me try this. It was just beautiful.
• 1:31:17
  I was so old school. It was from years and years ago.
• 1:31:19
  It was a real sort of we'd have been the only people bottling
• 1:31:22
  scalp, you know, at that point. Suddenly I remember when I first
• 1:31:25
  came to Elgin as well in terms of working, I went and stayed a
• 1:31:30
  night with my Uncle Michael and he cracked open an Imperial.
• 1:31:34
  And I didn't know Imperial from from anything, you know.
• 1:31:37
  And I remember thinking holy smoke, this is a whiskey and a
• 1:31:40
  half. And we were bottling, you know,
• 1:31:43
  doing that distillery label bottling of Imperial to the
• 1:31:46
  point I ended up buying a few of those.
• 1:31:48
  And over the years I've drunk them all.
• 1:31:51
  I've had so much fun with that. After that introduction, then to
• 1:31:55
  then drink it. And again, I had a group of
• 1:31:57
  friends, One was a really old school pal from, if you join the
• 1:32:02
  police force, actually he's no longer retired, but he came down
• 1:32:05
  with some friends that I got to know through him that we're all
• 1:32:08
  from the north up in the northeast there.
• 1:32:10
  And they came down and we polished off this, this Imperial
• 1:32:13
  1997 in a heartbeat. And it was, I'm sure that was
• 1:32:17
  either the same bottlers or very similar to the one my Uncle
• 1:32:20
  Michael had introduced me to. Holy moly, it was everybody in
• 1:32:23
  the room was just that, you know, we spoke for the 1st 10
• 1:32:25
  minutes, you know, and then within the next loop the box was
• 1:32:28
  finished. You know, I love about these
• 1:32:29
  stories, you know, everything that you've mentioned and it's
• 1:32:32
  exactly epitomizes what we like the podcast to stand for is
• 1:32:36
  every part of your all the drams you've talked about there is
• 1:32:39
  drinking with other people. You know, I was at this.
• 1:32:41
  We cracked this open, you know, and family and being part of it
• 1:32:45
  is absolutely fantastic. And Steven, I can't thank you
• 1:32:47
  enough for for having us today. Well.
• 1:32:49
  I'm going to I'm going to finish on then and my my so my Ben Roma
• 1:32:54
  50 and with in some brackets the 49 from a while ago.
• 1:32:58
  And the second would be like that imperial and the third
• 1:33:02
  would be the generations 80 year old.
• 1:33:04
  And I know this podcast is going out on Thursday, but all all
• 1:33:10
  they'll say is keep an eye on the press next week.
• 1:33:12
  Yes, because Gordon Macphail are about to rewrite the history
• 1:33:14
  books again. Oh.
• 1:33:16
  Right. And it is, it is sensational and
• 1:33:20
  everything great about that the, the generations 80 year old.
• 1:33:25
  Of course, for me, it's just hiding because there's a cask
• 1:33:28
  that has got the fingerprints of four generations on it.
• 1:33:31
  It's got my great grandfather who would have laid it down back
• 1:33:34
  then. My grandfather would have been
• 1:33:38
  21. He would have been in the
• 1:33:39
  business 7 years by that point from 1933 to 1940.
• 1:33:44
  He would have been doing it with another family business.
• 1:33:47
  It would have been Captain Bill Smith Grant.
• 1:33:50
  And we filled this incredible cask and it's then seen through
• 1:33:55
  my grandfathers generation, then my mum, my 3 uncles and then
• 1:34:01
  Ewan who's really important part of Gordon McPhail story.
• 1:34:04
  I don't know what fabulous guy just blessed I've worked with,
• 1:34:08
  with him for so long because Euan and I came in in 2000.
• 1:34:12
  Euan, he actually started in 91. But so I've seen Euan as not
• 1:34:16
  only as our sort of working under, under my uncle, but right
• 1:34:19
  the way through to managing director.
• 1:34:20
  So just fabulous to see, see his growth and what he brought to
• 1:34:24
  us. And, and then of course,
• 1:34:26
  everything he did to, to, for educating Stuart as well
• 1:34:29
  alongside my uncle and to, to what Stuart does for the
• 1:34:31
  business now. And of course these whiskey's
• 1:34:33
  got Stuart and then his team's fingerprints on them.
• 1:34:36
  And we've got such a talented team.
• 1:34:37
  It's great. And so to for me drinking that,
• 1:34:41
  it's not me just drinking an 8 year old whiskey, It's me
• 1:34:43
  drinking that's like like the family.
• 1:34:46
  Excellent for you the. Story isn't just thinking back
• 1:34:49
  to well. This is it.
• 1:34:50
  When you think of the hands that have been on that cast, almost,
• 1:34:53
  you know, and it's just incredible.
• 1:34:55
  Brilliant. And you're the third person to
• 1:34:57
  the Internet. You know what one thing you
• 1:35:00
  forget to do with that whiskey is start drinking it.
• 1:35:03
  There's the nose. Really.
• 1:35:04
  Bonkers. It's just and you're like and
• 1:35:07
  then when you drink, you know it's brilliant and all I'll say
• 1:35:12
  is what we were about to come out with.
• 1:35:14
  I've had the joy of drinking it once so far and honestly not
• 1:35:19
  only did the nose last forever and then when you drink it taste
• 1:35:23
  last week. Brilliant.
• 1:35:24
  Honestly I think 85 years time will still be tasting.
• 1:35:27
  We'll keep that. We'll keep an eye out.
• 1:35:28
  One of those brands that you're not going to brush your teeth
• 1:35:30
  that. Steven, thank you so much for
• 1:35:34
  having us. It's been it's been such a good
• 1:35:36
  afternoon getting a chance to meet you and hear the story.
• 1:35:39
  It's fantastic. Again, it's been great.
• 1:35:42
  Thanks to everybody for for listening.
• 1:35:43
  Please don't forget to keep liking and subscribing.
• 1:35:46
  Join the Facebook group. I can't stress it enough.
• 1:35:47
  Our weekend drama roll calls. They're they're brilliant every
• 1:35:50
  single Friday, Saturday, Sunday. The newsletter is great as well.
• 1:35:54
  If you want to hear Angus's drama the week.
• 1:35:55
  We've got loads and loads of stuff going on there.
• 1:35:57
  Thanks again to Stephen. Thanks to Angus, the trip has
• 1:36:01
  come to an end. This is it.
• 1:36:03
  We well. I've still got to drive you
• 1:36:04
  home. Can I just say to the audience,
• 1:36:07
  I'm amazed these guys, A, we're on time this morning, B, are
• 1:36:10
  still standing. I know we're done.
• 1:36:12
  Well, I've. Done very well, yeah.
• 1:36:13
  And your football team won. Absolutely fine.
• 1:36:15
  I'll take your time. That happens.
• 1:36:17
  Take you back to the air. Well, by the way, guys, thank
• 1:36:18
  you very much for listening. Thanks for watching.
• 1:36:20
  All the very best. Cheers, Steven Slongevar.
• 1:36:22
  Cheers. Slongevar.
• 1:36:23
  Cheers, well done.