Latest / Whisky Stories Podcast / How to Build an Independent Bottler Business - Lady of the Glen

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How to Build an Independent Bottler Business - Lady of the Glen · Whisky Stories Podcast

• 0:11
  Here we go. I guess we've done it again, eh?
• 0:13
  Wow, what a reception. Yeah, exactly.
• 0:15
  Here we are diggers Leaf. Drams in front of us.
• 0:17
  Drams in front of us another and they bought our to.
• 0:19
  Spotlight. Exactly.
• 0:20
  And we've got people that know what they're talking about as
• 0:22
  well. Gregor That's good.
• 0:24
  We've got Gregor Hanner and Paul Mckendrick here from Lady of the
• 0:27
  Glenn. Gregor, how are you?
• 0:28
  Good. Yeah, thanks.
• 0:29
  Thanks for inviting us along. Second time now.
• 0:31
  You're welcome to have you back on the podcast, Paul.
• 0:33
  Never seen you before in my life, but welcome along.
• 0:35
  And I had to make an appearance at some point.
• 0:37
  You know, I've got to justify the big wage that Gregor pays
• 0:39
  me. So.
• 0:39
  Oh, really? All right, great.
• 0:42
  Gregor, I know they speak about your fever.
• 0:43
  Come on, come on. This but.
• 0:45
  What's the wage, Graham? We've got drams in front of us.
• 0:48
  So Gregor, I'm going to let you first of all introduce the DRAM
• 0:51
  that we're drinking. Then we'll have a better chat
• 0:53
  about you guys and what you do. Right.
• 0:54
  So this is our 12 year old Klein leash.
• 0:57
  Not, not a lot to say because we didn't actually have to do a lot
• 1:00
  with this cask as we'll go on to later.
• 1:02
  We acquired this as a parcel of casks and this was the best of a
• 1:05
  bunch and so we didn't have to re rack it as we'll learn as we
• 1:10
  go on. We do a bit of re racking.
• 1:12
  This came to us and it was it was really tip top.
• 1:14
  So yeah. Let's join full maturation in ex
• 1:17
  Bourbon then. I have refill Hogs Heads.
• 1:20
  Yeah. It's just, yeah, quite fluky
• 1:22
  because it's got a lot of the a lot of those sort of things
• 1:25
  you'd expect with like a bourbon or a first full bourbon cast.
• 1:28
  But it's purely just a refill hoggy.
• 1:30
  I think I mean, a lot of the the reputation, certainly when I
• 1:34
  joined the business six years ago was Lady of the Glen or
• 1:37
  they're good at finishing whiskey and Sherry in port and
• 1:41
  yeah, things like that. But when you get little gems
• 1:44
  like this, they remind us and and give us a chance to show
• 1:47
  that it's if it's not broken, don't fix it.
• 1:50
  At the end of the day, Gregor said fluke.
• 1:52
  Yeah. But you've still got to make
• 1:53
  that decision that this would be inferior if we put it in a port
• 1:57
  or Sherry cask and that's it would say, you know what you
• 1:59
  mean? You could say it would be
• 2:00
  inferior, but is there pressure from what your reputation is to
• 2:04
  put that in something like a wine cask or a podcast?
• 2:07
  Because are you thinking if we did that we know that will sell
• 2:10
  because of Yeah, what what the caskets in I Whereas if it's
• 2:13
  just experiment, maybe it won't. Have that there is always that.
• 2:16
  I mean, at the end of the day, sex sells and if you put whiskey
• 2:21
  and yeah, sexy. Stories Podcast.
• 2:23
  Whiskey a Sherry. Casket.
• 2:25
  Yeah. You don't have a topless picture
• 2:26
  of the Lady of the Glen on your bottles.
• 2:29
  Maybe you're missing a trick? You know, if we put it in every
• 2:32
  whiskey into A and a Sherry cask or port cask and, you know, turn
• 2:37
  them all into the colour of, you know, Ribena, like maybe some
• 2:41
  other independent bottlers do. Not naming names, but it is.
• 2:44
  The temptation is there, but it's.
• 2:45
  It's we can name names after the 6th.
• 2:47
  Round, yeah, we'll get to that, We'll get to that.
• 2:50
  But I think sometimes the hardest decision is to do
• 2:52
  nothing, and it's the most noble decision when it comes to
• 2:55
  representing the whiskey in its best form, you know, and
• 2:59
  hopefully you guys will agree, tasting this, there's nothing we
• 3:02
  could have done with a better disc.
• 3:03
  Whiskey and I think also does it make a difference when you have
• 3:07
  a name like Klein Leash on the bottle as well?
• 3:10
  Because if I'm being perfectly honest, I mean it was the last
• 3:12
  the last one we had was a Klein leash where Klein Leash 9 from
• 3:15
  Adelphia on the last indie bottler spotlight.
• 3:18
  And I don't, I struggle to find an independently bottled Klein
• 3:22
  leash that has had some sort of crazy finish or anything like
• 3:25
  that. Because maybe a lot of people
• 3:27
  just they know that they don't have to worry about the the cast
• 3:30
  type that's been finished in because the the name actually
• 3:33
  carries it so much weight itself.
• 3:35
  Well, I've got a few other casks that probably would disagree
• 3:38
  with you in that they'll they'll need a bit of work.
• 3:40
  And yeah, yeah, Alex who's here in the warehouse, he did a whole
• 3:43
  bunch of re racking with a lot of client leash she forgot.
• 3:46
  So yeah, I do think there is an element of trying to not rescue
• 3:51
  but manage casks that are maybe not been put in the best oak.
• 3:55
  Brilliant. Well, let's, let's talk about
• 3:57
  Lady of the Glen as a brand then.
• 3:58
  So Gregor, we did a a podcast episode with yourself where we
• 4:02
  we took a train to Dalgety Bay. I had a perilous walk along a
• 4:06
  grassy bankman to get to. Not not a footpath the whole way
• 4:11
  there. I did say we did go through the.
• 4:13
  Industrial. So we we arrived with muddy
• 4:14
  shoes. And we, there hadn't been much
• 4:17
  discussion on what we do and how we do it and things like that.
• 4:21
  And it was like, I don't know, a Wednesday night or something
• 4:23
  like that in February time. Yeah.
• 4:25
  And you'd sort of open your door to us.
• 4:27
  And we went in and we had a look around your warehouse and
• 4:29
  things, and we saw the operation that you have a nice piano in
• 4:32
  your office, which is always nice to see.
• 4:35
  And then of course, lots and lots of different casts in the
• 4:38
  back of yours. But for people in the room and
• 4:40
  for people who maybe have missed that episode, how did you get
• 4:43
  started with Lady the Glen? Right, so my dad was a piper in
• 4:46
  the Black Watch, so that really brought me into.
• 4:49
  He would get lots of gifts and things.
• 4:51
  He played at the Tattoo. So in my house there was always
• 4:54
  lots of different whiskey bottles that he would get over
• 4:57
  the years. So that really inspired me to
• 4:59
  get into the whiskey industry. Was he a whiskey drinker
• 5:01
  himself? He is, yeah, but I wouldn't say
• 5:04
  he's like into single cask. Stuff he got he got given
• 5:07
  whiskey bottles quicker than he could drink them though.
• 5:09
  Well. I feel like it's one of these
• 5:11
  things like a different tangent, but I remember saying to him and
• 5:14
  showing him a whiskey and he's like, I saw a single cask and
• 5:17
  he's like, I'm really just like Glen Warringy and stuff like
• 5:20
  that. So the idea like going to the
• 5:24
  single casket, he's never really gone to that sort of part of it.
• 5:28
  So I've taken an interest there and then just gone really head
• 5:31
  first into it. But to get back I applied for
• 5:35
  jobs and stuff in the industry. I didn't really get anywhere.
• 5:37
  I was working in a job that I really didn't enjoy.
• 5:40
  I'd learnt about independent Botlin when I worked in a bar in
• 5:43
  Sterling called Sportsters. I'd learnt about it was a guy
• 5:47
  that worked on the rigs was telling me about single cask.
• 5:51
  From that I'd learnt about where you could buy single casks.
• 5:54
  So I got a loan from the bank for a car to help with my
• 5:58
  commute and I used that to buy my first two casks, which were a
• 6:02
  24 year old Inver Gordon, 12 year old Ben Rennes.
• 6:06
  And I thought they would sell really easily.
• 6:10
  I'd set up the brand, I'd set up the website, pretty much no
• 6:14
  sales for apart from friends and family for like a a long period
• 6:18
  of time. And then from that point on it
• 6:20
  was kind of like living hand to mouth.
• 6:22
  So what you would sell, you then use all of that money to buy
• 6:25
  another cask and it sort of eventually it snowballed.
• 6:30
  Eventually I was able to build a portfolio.
• 6:32
  Things really turned a corner when Paul joined the business we
• 6:36
  started became a bit more legitimate.
• 6:39
  Everyone was full time IT. Gave you credibility, Paul said.
• 6:43
  If you sell your new car and get me in SO.
• 6:48
  The portfolio had built up a little bit before, then I'd done
• 6:52
  a little bit rewracking and then when Paul joined, we sorted out
• 6:55
  pricing and stuff like that. That became a lot better,
• 6:58
  whereas before I was just like, oh, that was that, and this is
• 7:01
  how I'll price it. Paul was a lot more astute to
• 7:03
  the market. Just having someone dedicated to
• 7:05
  being out on the road doing tastings and festivals and yeah,
• 7:09
  sales. Just focus on sales and running
• 7:11
  business. How?
• 7:12
  Long had it been then? So how long had you been going
• 7:15
  until you and Paul got got together on that front?
• 7:18
  It must have been about what, 7-7 years?
• 7:20
  Oh, so you'd been going for seven years?
• 7:22
  Yeah, so it was like part time I'd done like I'd worked at
• 7:25
  David Urquhart, travel coach travel.
• 7:27
  I'd worked at Lloyds Bank before that doing like an admin role,
• 7:32
  which I was terrible at. I still to this day I've never
• 7:36
  had a promotion in any job I've ever done.
• 7:38
  And that includes working at at bar work.
• 7:39
  So, you know, I was never, ever going to do well working in a,
• 7:45
  in that sort of environment. I like, I like to think I'm all
• 7:48
  right as a team. Alex will probably tell you
• 7:50
  whether or not that's true. And Paul, but yeah, that's, I
• 7:54
  don't think I could do any other type of job.
• 7:56
  So how did you? Do have you ever given yourself
• 7:58
  a promotion Lady of the Glen? Sometimes I look myself in the
• 8:01
  mirror and say you could do better.
• 8:05
  But I mean, it's, it's interesting.
• 8:08
  It's interesting you you learn a lot about single cast whiskey at
• 8:12
  sports in Sterling because I was a student in Sterling and all
• 8:15
  all I all I learned in sports. This was valuable life lesson
• 8:18
  playing. There was a lot of Canadian club
• 8:20
  in Jack Daniels we used to go through and we didn't really do
• 8:23
  a lot of single casts and no one really did a lot of single cast
• 8:26
  stuff in Sterling. Then there was 1 whiskey shop
• 8:29
  that opened up. I think it lasted what, 6
• 8:30
  months? Yeah, but you would have thought
• 8:33
  Sterling would itself be a goldmine for whiskey.
• 8:35
  But I it's maybe in the last few years it's really turned the
• 8:39
  corner. So you two met then, So what was
• 8:41
  the situation? What was, how did you meet?
• 8:43
  How did you guys come across each other?
• 8:45
  Well, we would always go to, well, I would always go to
• 8:47
  festivals. Paul worked for other companies
• 8:49
  and we'd always just had a good relationship.
• 8:51
  We would always like chat, you know, between breaks.
• 8:55
  I would usually be on my own. Paul was always good, good chat.
• 9:00
  And then I made the mistake of having an interview with Paul in
• 9:03
  the pot still and then the rest is history.
• 9:07
  Well before that, you know, I I was looking for a job and and
• 9:10
  then I looked at you at the whiskey festival.
• 9:11
  I thought he God he needs some help.
• 9:16
  Gregor touched on it. Yeah, so we yeah, I was in need
• 9:20
  of a job. Gregor was ready to take someone
• 9:22
  on and and I can sales role. So timing was good.
• 9:26
  You just started saying about how well after it was a good
• 9:29
  thing that we had the interview in the famous pot still in
• 9:31
  Glasgow. But I think you're thinking,
• 9:32
  well, if we'd had a an interview in, you know, Costa or
• 9:37
  something, then it might have went differently.
• 9:38
  But you know, few pints, few drams, donor kebab on the way.
• 9:41
  Home how how structured how structured job interviews go how
• 9:44
  structured was this job interview was this was this kind
• 9:47
  of series of predetermined questions is.
• 9:51
  That. Do you ever look at the mirror
• 9:52
  and say you can do better? Yeah.
• 9:56
  So from your own background then, Paul, what was it?
• 9:58
  You. What did you do?
• 9:59
  How did you and Gregor end up crossing paths?
• 10:01
  Firstly before you. So you worked in whiskey,
• 10:03
  Obviously. I, so I've been whiskey for,
• 10:05
  well, I mean, I'm a whiskey geek at the end of the day.
• 10:07
  I mean, I'm the typical pig in shit right now working in a job
• 10:11
  that I love the product. So I'm, I'm able to fulfil that
• 10:14
  side. That is my hobby and my passion
• 10:16
  as well as my work. But yeah.
• 10:18
  And so my background goes working in the whiskey shop for
• 10:20
  a few years before I got a gig with David stuck at Creative
• 10:23
  Whiskey. I was there for three years
• 10:26
  before he sold the business. And it's at that point,
• 10:28
  actually, I first met Gregor looking for a job, like I said,
• 10:32
  but not quite well, neither of us were quite ready at the time
• 10:36
  to take that kind of jump. So I went to Murray McDavid for
• 10:41
  18 months and then looking for another job.
• 10:45
  Gregor was in a good place at the time.
• 10:47
  I was had increased my skills and awareness and capacity and
• 10:52
  the whiskey industry and Euro 66 and a bit years later here we
• 10:56
  are. And actually, this is the
• 10:57
  longest I've ever had one single job in my entire life, so.
• 11:00
  There you go. Well done, egg.
• 11:04
  Like. He's he's clapping because I've
• 11:08
  managed to hang around us long putting up with, you know, the
• 11:10
  team that we have. But no, it is.
• 11:12
  It's a great dynamic. You know, what's your what is
• 11:15
  your title there? What's it you do through a lady
• 11:17
  for a lady of the glass? That's the $1,000,000 question.
• 11:19
  So my business covers not $1,000,000 says.
• 11:22
  Have you ever given a promotion? No.
• 11:26
  My business card, says brand ambassador.
• 11:28
  But you know, if I could sum it up in in one sentence, I suppose
• 11:31
  Yesterday I had my steel toe caps and my my combats on and I
• 11:35
  was in the van going down picking up whiskey from the
• 11:37
  Borders distillery. Was it a raid or just yeah?
• 11:41
  The way things are going, it could be.
• 11:42
  It said half eleven. I didn't realise it was half 11
• 11:44
  at night and then bring my back balaclavas and that so.
• 11:47
  But no, that all-encompassing and obviously sales is probably
• 11:50
  the most important part of what I do.
• 11:53
  And, you know, basically selling whiskey, paying the bills,
• 11:56
  keeping the lights on, That's, that's a big part of it.
• 11:58
  But yeah, mostly travelling to doing festivals, tastings and
• 12:02
  things like that. So and.
• 12:03
  What do we think of the first drum guys?
• 12:04
  It's a good, good one to start on, isn't it still 5050 odd
• 12:07
  fifty, 54554 1/2%. So has has anyone added a little
• 12:11
  bit of water to it yet or seen see what happens?
• 12:13
  What's what's open up a little bit?
• 12:15
  Does it brilliant. Excellent.
• 12:17
  Yeah, yeah. Good, good.
• 12:19
  There's just something, I mean, when you've got Klein Leash,
• 12:21
  yeah, there's an element, you know, So when it, when it comes
• 12:24
  to buying these casks, that's a big question that we ask a lot
• 12:26
  of the independent bottlers is cask availability.
• 12:28
  And what we are hearing, of course, is, you know, people are
• 12:32
  saying right now there's never been a better time to be buying
• 12:34
  liquid because of the way it just shows you the way that it's
• 12:38
  turbulent times at the moment. Is that something you've noticed
• 12:41
  yourself first hand in terms of availability casks?
• 12:44
  Well, for a long time I always felt like it was.
• 12:47
  There was always independent bottlers that had good access.
• 12:50
  It's just probably now there's more independent bottlers that
• 12:53
  are getting more access. So I would say like without
• 12:57
  putting words in their mouths like signatory Adelphi and GNM,
• 13:01
  they've probably always had access to client leash and stuff
• 13:04
  like that. So now it's just an open playing
• 13:06
  field a little bit. More, I wouldn't say it was open
• 13:08
  like I would say there's still like discretion and due
• 13:10
  diligence that it has done. Obviously cask investment is
• 13:15
  really put the shutters up to a couple places and a lot of
• 13:20
  businesses that maybe rely on broking and probably not getting
• 13:23
  access that they got before there's.
• 13:25
  Definitely a different dynamic now in terms of what's available
• 13:28
  and this first dramas case in point because we've not seen
• 13:31
  Cling Lease openly available from direct as well.
• 13:35
  But then we're in the same playing field as the other
• 13:38
  Indies as well, which is why you'll see Thompson brothers,
• 13:41
  Adelphi Woodrow's with a cling leash.
• 13:44
  And yeah, again, part of my job is to make sure that I, I go
• 13:47
  down and try all these other independent bottlers and know
• 13:50
  that this one, I'm going back and I'm 23, but but yeah.
• 13:58
  And, and make sure that when we get a a cast, and as Greg
• 14:01
  mentioned, we've got a few of them, we can cherry pick the
• 14:04
  best and know that ours is is is head and shoulders above the.
• 14:08
  Other I'm going back to this tram.
• 14:09
  You know, we mentioned about finishing and the choice not to
• 14:12
  finish. How long have you had this cask
• 14:15
  maybe in your warehouse? Because that's another decision
• 14:17
  as well. When you get it, do you, do you
• 14:18
  bottle that at 12 or do you say, well, actually no, maybe maybe
• 14:21
  we bought a lot when it's 18 or maybe we see how it goes in a
• 14:24
  few years time because that's another decision as well.
• 14:26
  And how, how do you come to those sorts of decisions when it
• 14:29
  when is a, when is a cask ready, which is really the the question
• 14:33
  and what determines that? So I, I think it's got a lot to
• 14:36
  do with with the customers pay for it.
• 14:39
  I mean, at the end of the day, yeah, you could hold onto this
• 14:42
  one until it's 15. It could and it probably should
• 14:45
  get better. But then we want this out to
• 14:48
  market. And then as a food product, we
• 14:51
  want people to drink it. It's ready to be consumed.
• 14:55
  So we should bottle it. We don't want to just, you know,
• 14:59
  hang on and hoard loads of stock because there's always the
• 15:02
  choice. Well, maybe we'd be a Better
• 15:05
  Business if we just shut down for two years and just let
• 15:08
  everything age. For two years, yeah, stop paying
• 15:10
  bills. But you don't have to pay bills,
• 15:11
  Yeah. But then you've got limited
• 15:13
  space as well, so it's a case of.
• 15:14
  Rent. Not really.
• 15:15
  Well, that's an issue because no, you're paying pennies on
• 15:18
  rent. Yeah, yeah.
• 15:19
  So the rent's not costing the burn burning oil experience.
• 15:21
  The other. The other thing is you mentioned
• 15:23
  about access and you've also mentioned about other people who
• 15:27
  are bottling things like that. How how difficult is it or how
• 15:31
  much conversation happens when you'll know if you're getting
• 15:35
  offered something, you'll know that other people are probably
• 15:39
  getting offered the same parcels of casks, which means that
• 15:43
  you'll know that if you take some of them, other people are
• 15:45
  going to take some of them. And then it comes down to what
• 15:47
  do you do? Do, are you do you get annoyed
• 15:51
  or do you speak to each other when you're, when you're putting
• 15:53
  out, you put a client leash out and then suddenly another
• 15:56
  independent bottle is putting another client leash out and
• 15:57
  another independent and suddenly you go, Christ, now we're in a
• 16:00
  market with three or four. Is it better because it gives
• 16:02
  people who that are more of a choice of client leashes that
• 16:05
  you can take from lady, the Glen Thompson brothers, Woodrows,
• 16:07
  Venera or and then does it affect your judgement on when
• 16:11
  you put it out because you start second guessing?
• 16:13
  Well, if we know they've taken some of these casks, they'll
• 16:16
  probably put one of them out now.
• 16:18
  So we might as well hold it back for our next out.
• 16:20
  Done. Yeah, that's that sometimes it's
• 16:21
  a race to see who can get those out first.
• 16:23
  But you know, ultimately and I guess just to turn back on your
• 16:26
  point about the the timing as well, like, you know, we we
• 16:29
  could have re racked them all, but they we identified this one
• 16:32
  as being you're ready and yeah, yeah, I suppose the question I
• 16:36
  think you were asking was, well, how do you know it's ready?
• 16:39
  What if you did leave at six months another year in that
• 16:42
  cast? And that's the decisions as
• 16:43
  well. You know, it's the decision to
• 16:45
  bottle when when we do, it's just as important as to be put
• 16:49
  in a Sherry cask and and whatnot.
• 16:50
  But yeah, I mean, we we are aware that when these kind of
• 16:54
  products come out, they're going to be available to other Indies
• 16:57
  as well. And you can only just assume
• 17:00
  that, you know, they're going to have their own way with them and
• 17:03
  whether they make decisions to re rack or bottle as as is.
• 17:08
  But yeah, I mean, we've just got to taste that cask and say we're
• 17:11
  happy to put her name, her name to that.
• 17:13
  And and know that when people try it, hopefully they they like
• 17:16
  it and then run straight out to the shops first thing tomorrow
• 17:19
  morning when they open and and go and get it.
• 17:21
  Well, one of the things is you can tell, and if you are, please
• 17:24
  watch that. I poured one of these whiskeys
• 17:26
  and Angus poured one of these whiskeys and you can see that
• 17:30
  I've been there and Angus has been really, really good with
• 17:33
  this one. So I think that puts Angus on
• 17:36
  the pouring duties for the rest of the evening then.
• 17:39
  But we're going to move on to the next one here.
• 17:41
  They're still very close to my heart, actually.
• 17:42
  It's Lindor's Abbey 2019 ex Bourbon barrel this.
• 17:46
  Is our 2019 year old Cask of Lindor.
• 17:49
  'S 2019 year old. There you go, it's an ancient
• 17:51
  cast that's. Why the losses were high?
• 17:54
  So distilled? Yeah, distilled first of first
• 17:57
  of August 2019 and bottled second of eight hold on my
• 18:01
  birthday, 2nd of April 22nd. We.
• 18:04
  Don't. Have to buy a fucking bottle
• 18:05
  now. But right, Lindo's Abbey then.
• 18:08
  So this is quite interesting because we haven't seen an awful
• 18:12
  lot of Lindo's Abbey on the market from an independent
• 18:14
  bottler. So talk us through this thing,
• 18:16
  Gregor. So part of the deal to get this
• 18:20
  cask was that we weren't allowed to put an age statement on it.
• 18:22
  So we had to get these labels custom made.
• 18:25
  So we had to use a label printer.
• 18:27
  So it's a bit of a boring detail, but it was a bit of a
• 18:28
  pain because as you've probably seen, for every lady, the Glen,
• 18:32
  we actually print the labels in the warehouse.
• 18:34
  We've got like templates and we put them through a printer, but
• 18:38
  we couldn't do that with this one as part of the deal.
• 18:40
  So the way that this came about is we were approached by
• 18:44
  Lindor's. I think you're probably going to
• 18:46
  see a lot of Lindor stuff hitting the market with Ivs.
• 18:49
  Very similar to the what we're talking about with the Colin
• 18:51
  Leash. We we know that other Indies
• 18:53
  have got hold of these casks, so it's just a case of what to do.
• 18:56
  With us, so there was a variety of options.
• 18:58
  I felt like the best version for us would be something that gives
• 19:02
  a a balance of distillate character with Caskey.
• 19:05
  So I tend to find that bourbon barrel we fill Hogs Head is
• 19:09
  where you want to go with that. So we got a few samples.
• 19:13
  This was the one we liked the most.
• 19:15
  It then turned out that the the the cask had, I don't think it
• 19:19
  leaked. I think there's been stuff taken
• 19:21
  out of it, but so the cask wasn't full, so it was only.
• 19:24
  Bloody monks, yeah. Well, those angels really do get
• 19:28
  their share, don't they? So, yeah, so it's it's a quite
• 19:31
  low. Yield 100.
• 19:32
  And 16 so 116 bottoms. And what was that?
• 19:35
  Was that a Hogs head as well? Was it or?
• 19:37
  So this is a barrel. A barrel, yeah.
• 19:38
  First filled bourbon. So normally, what would you be
• 19:40
  expecting to get out of a first filled bourbon with this age?
• 19:44
  250 or. 200 yeah, right. So to get 116 bottles, and
• 19:48
  that's a considerably, yeah, lower amount, but of course the
• 19:51
  whiskey's better for. It you know when it's and we,
• 19:53
  we, we, they know that when that whiskey has time to breathe and
• 19:56
  and the cask. Well, this is it.
• 19:57
  There's more oxidisation happening in the cask, isn't
• 20:00
  there? So does that, and does that help
• 20:01
  when you're bottling at an age like what?
• 20:03
  Well, we can't say the age, but. Six years, you can't say the age
• 20:06
  you. Just can't you just?
• 20:07
  Can't, I just can't put it on the we're.
• 20:08
  All good at, well, some of us are good at maths.
• 20:10
  There's a maths teacher in here I'm sure somewhere.
• 20:14
  So yeah, we're seeing here tasting notes, pineapple,
• 20:18
  toasted marshmallow, dried orange peel.
• 20:20
  So 2 very nice drums to get us started.
• 20:23
  But like I say, 59 1/2 percent is.
• 20:25
  Can I maybe get a wee drop of water from one of the tables if
• 20:28
  that's OK? So if you've never been to
• 20:29
  Lindores, it's really worthwhile visiting the Discovery.
• 20:32
  It's quite famous because it's one of the the Jim Swan type
• 20:36
  styles distillate that he tried to well, he did make.
• 20:40
  So it's quite a fruity distillate.
• 20:41
  But when I spoke to Matt Hastie and we talked about the stills,
• 20:45
  he was quite up on it being quite medium to heavier bodied,
• 20:49
  just with the the neck shape on the stills being slightly tilted
• 20:52
  down the way right. So really interesting
• 20:54
  distillate. Of course it's five.
• 20:56
  We were going to put a camera on bridge in the Outrun, but then
• 20:59
  it wasn't good enough, so we didn't. 5W has a, you've got a
• 21:06
  bit of a history with that because you are first of all
• 21:09
  lady the Glenard based in Fife, which is which I love.
• 21:11
  Absolutely fantastic go get to be.
• 21:13
  But we're going back to that label maker of yours.
• 21:15
  Yeah, those pesky label. Improvement label maker.
• 21:18
  Fife Whiskey Festival two years ago, last year was yeah, last
• 21:20
  year you were there you were. You bottled the bottle for it
• 21:23
  and there was a printing error on the label which went into the
• 21:27
  region section. Yes.
• 21:28
  So we we just put it as a Fife region.
• 21:30
  Brilliant. I think.
• 21:33
  I think there's enough distilleries in Fife that it's
• 21:35
  only a matter of time. Really half of that cast there,
• 21:39
  but it's going out to the open market.
• 21:41
  Did you have the? SWA on the phone or anything
• 21:43
  like that or no, not yet. No, not yet, but.
• 21:47
  I mean, I suppose in that, in that element, I mean you, you
• 21:49
  knew that that bottle was going to get sold through Fife Whiskey
• 21:53
  Festival. There's a good chance that by
• 21:55
  the time anyone even realised what error had been made on the
• 21:58
  printing label, on the on the labels by accident, there'd be
• 22:01
  no way to recall them, or there would be no way to take them off
• 22:03
  the shelves anyway. So we.
• 22:04
  Wouldn't want to say that that was the reason we did it.
• 22:06
  No, of course it was an accident.
• 22:08
  It was an accident, yeah, but. Sometimes you just put in the
• 22:11
  post codes and stuff in and then.
• 22:12
  Yeah, just trying to put our address on it and it just fell
• 22:15
  into the wrong box. You know what words?
• 22:16
  The address goes on and. We don't move something.
• 22:18
  But I mean, does it because you used the Lady of the Glen
• 22:22
  branding and story from your team at Sterling University?
• 22:24
  Yeah, Yeah, I remember you talking about that and.
• 22:27
  Ghost in the Castle. All that kind of stuff.
• 22:29
  So you can see that heritage matters to you guys as a brand.
• 22:33
  So you're in Fife. This is not the first bottling
• 22:36
  that you've done from a Fife distillery.
• 22:38
  So does it, does it, does it, do you like the fact that not like,
• 22:42
  but it does it matter to you as much there?
• 22:44
  You make unconscious effort to do that, to source that kind of
• 22:46
  liquid exclusively for you guys as a Fife independent bottler
• 22:49
  putting out whiskey that's been made in Fife.
• 22:52
  I would say so, yeah. Every year we buy a new spirit
• 22:54
  from Inch Darney. I like to think we've got a good
• 22:56
  relationship with Scott. He's always interested in our
• 22:59
  releases and even when things have been probably tight, we've
• 23:03
  always kept that relationship and kept buying the new spirit.
• 23:06
  So yeah, fight's been good to me.
• 23:10
  I couldn't afford to live in Edinburgh so I've been fine and
• 23:14
  it's it's been good. Yeah, I'm, I'm happy with her.
• 23:17
  I get to my boys are going to nursery there, I get to cycle to
• 23:20
  work. And the industrial estate we, we
• 23:23
  live in, we don't live in it, but yeah.
• 23:25
  I was going. To say it, but generally, I
• 23:29
  mean, there's still issues with the Fife Council, the council
• 23:32
  which we probably need to deal with, but at the moment, yeah,
• 23:35
  it is what it is. Paul, where do you travelling
• 23:37
  from? Sunny Cumbernauld, born and
• 23:39
  bred. 40 minutes. Not too bad.
• 23:41
  His commute, school. It's it's doable.
• 23:43
  It's worth it. There you go.
• 23:44
  That's for sure. But yeah.
• 23:45
  So in the front well go to the group group.
• 23:48
  There's now first two drums, which is there a preference on
• 23:50
  which one we like better at the moment?
• 23:54
  Glenn leash is quite drama. We're unclean.
• 23:56
  We were talking when you were when we were sort of at the
• 23:58
  lineup. You you said something, Paul,
• 24:01
  which resonated strongly with myself is that the the first
• 24:05
  DRAM in the lineup always gets has the hardest work to do
• 24:08
  isn't. It suffers.
• 24:09
  I I mean, it's, it's usually picked to go first for a reason.
• 24:13
  That's the latest that's easiest going.
• 24:14
  It's the breakfast whiskey, the one that you start with, but you
• 24:17
  know by the time you're 6 drams deep two hours later.
• 24:20
  Memories not exactly as strong as it was at the start.
• 24:23
  Well, what we maybe should have done is when Graham was going up
• 24:25
  to pour, he started to put the speed pour on the one at the
• 24:29
  very end. So maybe we should have gone
• 24:30
  back back-to-back to the front. Other reverse taste thing I.
• 24:33
  Think on that one just for shits and giggles.
• 24:35
  Started with the heavy pitted dialer and went to the grain.
• 24:38
  How did it go? How did people think about it?
• 24:40
  Not well at all. Oh, really?
• 24:42
  Right. Well, we I won't do that right?
• 24:44
  So you're talking about the importance of trying to get like
• 24:47
  with different independent bottlers and the people bottling
• 24:50
  different things or people bottling similar things,
• 24:52
  different same casks from different parcels or what have
• 24:55
  you XYZ. Does that make things like
• 24:58
  tonight or even independent or whiskey festivals really
• 25:02
  important? Because suddenly you can go to a
• 25:05
  whiskey festival and you could get because if you're at a shop
• 25:08
  and I see four, let's just say I see 4 independently bottle
• 25:11
  client leashes on there. Which one am I picking?
• 25:14
  You all. You almost only pick the one
• 25:16
  with the bottler that you have a close affinity to.
• 25:19
  I had there such and such the last time, so I'll buy.
• 25:22
  I'll buy that. That's the dream for independent
• 25:24
  bottlers and I've heard you touch on it before.
• 25:26
  You know, we 6 completely different whiskeys here and
• 25:29
  we're representing the distilleries as much as anything
• 25:31
  else. But more than that, representing
• 25:34
  our brand and that trust that people we want people to have.
• 25:37
  And you know, you buy a cask or a bottle from a cask, by the
• 25:41
  time you finish the bottle, you say that was incredible whiskey,
• 25:44
  I want to get another bottle. Chances are it's gone.
• 25:47
  Oh, but look, they've got this other one, same brand, same
• 25:50
  people, same noses behind it. You know, let's let's trust that
• 25:54
  and go with that. So that that's, that's the idea.
• 25:57
  But there's also I think an element that people don't
• 25:59
  realise. And especially when we're such a
• 26:01
  small team, there's four in the team, you know, 3/4 of them are
• 26:04
  in the room tonight. So let's hope that nothing bad
• 26:08
  happens. But you know, we, we're, we're
• 26:10
  putting a bit of our things, things happen.
• 26:15
  We're, we're putting a little bit of ourselves in it as well.
• 26:17
  Touch tail on about how important it is that we do the
• 26:21
  whiskey service by making choices for it.
• 26:24
  But we're also representing our palates and tastes.
• 26:27
  And, and especially when there is only four of us, you know, 4
• 26:30
  represent ourselves. We, we are all very different,
• 26:33
  which is good, you know, Well, even just back to this, this
• 26:36
  Lindo was like same with the Colin leash.
• 26:38
  We know other Indies are getting these casks really exciting
• 26:41
  because it's new distillery, especially for us because it's
• 26:43
  on our doorstep. But I actually loved it with
• 26:46
  Gregor said you've got 2 casque samples here.
• 26:49
  We're going to pick from the 2. They're both bourbon casks and I
• 26:52
  thought fantastic. This is what we want is first of
• 26:55
  all, bourbon. We know it's going to be young
• 26:57
  represent the distillery character, especially because
• 27:00
  it's our first cast from that distillery.
• 27:02
  And always that little bit of doubt, you know, especially the
• 27:05
  fact that I need to go out to market to sell this.
• 27:07
  I've got a six year old whiskey in a bourbon casket.
• 27:10
  It's quite fairly valley in colour as much as it's it's
• 27:13
  delicious. But I've actually, you know,
• 27:17
  it's come to fruition when I look at the other Indies that
• 27:19
  have bottled it. And I'm sure they're fantastic
• 27:21
  dramas. I've not had the privilege of
• 27:22
  trying them yet, but they're all in quite intense wood like STR
• 27:26
  or first Phil Sherry. And when I taste this, I get a
• 27:29
  lot of distillery character and I think anything would swap
• 27:33
  that. And so, so delighted that we
• 27:35
  managed to get first L bourbon and represent this distillery.
• 27:37
  And that's that's really important too.
• 27:39
  The word balance. People play bingo when I do a
• 27:42
  tasting with how many times I say the word balance 65, I think
• 27:46
  is the record. But that's so important to what
• 27:48
  we do. And it's that balance between
• 27:50
  the distillery character and the the it's.
• 27:55
  Got the balance ometer on the go right?
• 27:58
  And the, the choices of the cask and the choices that we make, as
• 28:01
  long as when that whiskey hits the the bottle and then your
• 28:03
  glass, you can determine that balance between those two.
• 28:06
  So, so easy for this to be offset because it's such a young
• 28:11
  whiskey, because it's a delicate whiskey.
• 28:13
  First of all, bourbon is just perfect.
• 28:15
  And I suppose that it's funny when you, you, we've got 2
• 28:18
  whiskeys back-to-back here, you've got both of them and so
• 28:21
  are refill casks. Nothing fancy about the cast
• 28:25
  type or what it is. You've got one that comes from a
• 28:28
  distillery that goes back all, all the way and people know all
• 28:31
  about Klein Leash. But then there'll be other
• 28:33
  people that would actually seek out the Lindors because number
• 28:36
  one, we haven't seen very many independently bottled Lindors.
• 28:39
  Abbey wait for it. Well, but we haven't seen an
• 28:43
  awful lot of that and so. Most of it exists in red wine as
• 28:46
  well. Great.
• 28:46
  Well, that's it. I've got, yeah, I've got a
• 28:50
  bottle of that retro kind of stuff, but it does make people
• 28:54
  catch people's eye a little bit and it will there'll be whiskey
• 28:56
  geeks out there that get a chance to look at that.
• 28:58
  So how well so far this is your out turn for our Q2 quarter,
• 29:01
  quarter two then, right. How well we're looking at from
• 29:05
  this perspective right now, because when did you release
• 29:06
  these bottles and. Well, Paulo initially approached
• 29:10
  the exporters, so I think the majority of them have taken all
• 29:14
  of the outrun apart from one or two.
• 29:16
  So it will now be the step to approach the UK market.
• 29:19
  That's always been the way we've done it.
• 29:21
  So you go through your, your, your Internet export market
• 29:24
  because. It takes much longer to reach
• 29:26
  the exporters. Yeah, so so basically no one
• 29:29
  else in the in the world actually apart from the floor
• 29:32
  was in the the warehouse have actually tried this.
• 29:34
  So oh, enjoy and also feedback because.
• 29:38
  No one else in the world. There you go, guys.
• 29:40
  A whiskey story is exclusive. More people have been to the
• 29:45
  moon than I've tried this stuff. There you go.
• 29:47
  Look at that, allegedly been to the moon.
• 29:50
  There was some, there was interesting shadows in places
• 29:52
  that probably shouldn't have been there.
• 29:54
  But anyway, what we're going to do is we're going to take a
• 29:56
  little break. So it lets you get through the
• 29:58
  plate of soup that Angus poured you for your second drum.
• 30:02
  And then we'll get back to it and see if there's anyone else
• 30:04
  from Diggers that wants to come and join us.
• 30:05
  Right, Cheers lads. Right.
• 30:07
  Anyway, Angus, you know what to do.
• 30:10
  Clap us back in. Welcome back to the Whiskey
• 30:14
  Stories, indie boss, Bollywood lady of the globe.
• 30:23
  Drums #3 and 4 Now, Gregor, you said quietly said we're going to
• 30:26
  have to really work for these two because they're mid table.
• 30:28
  We're in there. We're now in the mid table of
• 30:31
  the drafts. We'll have some green room chat,
• 30:33
  you know, like. We're we're in the full cut
• 30:35
  drums. We're in the mid, we're in the
• 30:37
  mid table drums and but, but what have we got?
• 30:41
  What's the next drama that we've got here, Paul?
• 30:43
  A nice little Glenn Spay. Glenn Spay.
• 30:46
  I think what Gregor was meaning is the, you know, we had some
• 30:50
  stellar names for Whiskey 1 and 2, Clay, Leash and Lindor's.
• 30:55
  Yeah. Storied names.
• 30:56
  They should sell well based on the names, which is a blessing
• 31:01
  but also a curse at the same time.
• 31:03
  You know, I think the best 2 whiskeys that we have on show
• 31:06
  tonight are these mid table ones.
• 31:08
  But I think the names are the the tricky parts.
• 31:11
  But you know what some of the best whiskey's made that these
• 31:14
  discoveries that don't have the biggest names, and we give them
• 31:17
  a chance to shine. So so so this whiskey 12 year
• 31:20
  old, what, what's happened to it?
• 31:21
  What's the maturation? I'm going to say it's got it's
• 31:24
  got here Hogs head ex Pinot de Charnets finish.
• 31:30
  Are you able to translate that? So this is this is obviously
• 31:38
  spent some time in Hogs Head and it's been finished in a French
• 31:40
  wine. Cast Pinot de Charente.
• 31:42
  There you are, There you go. Rolls off the standard.
• 31:45
  A red, red pinot, yeah, Which is?
• 31:48
  It's. Kind of a fortified wine, but
• 31:50
  more like an aperitif style sweet wine.
• 31:53
  OK. And that's matured in casks and
• 31:55
  then we source the casks some .3 years ago, put the Glenspie in
• 32:00
  there. Thought that I would be a nice
• 32:02
  match for the the character that we got and the the glass at the
• 32:05
  time, we thought we'd match that up with something a little bit
• 32:07
  more kind of fruity and robust. And yeah, I'm really happy after
• 32:11
  three years with the result. 59 point 1%, so again, punchy,
• 32:15
  punchy number there, but you can definitely tell from the first
• 32:18
  two that we've had instantly colour wise and also on the nose
• 32:22
  and on the palette. You can just go, you know,
• 32:23
  you've got something there that's that's a wee bit
• 32:25
  different from the last two then.
• 32:26
  So when it comes to sourcing casks for finishing, then how
• 32:32
  does that work? How do you how do you get your
• 32:33
  hands on those kind of casks that just go to Cooper ridges
• 32:35
  and asking or do you like do you sit there and taste a whiskey
• 32:41
  and go do you know what that would be really, really good in
• 32:45
  an ex Pinot du shot? What's that Charon Pinot du
• 32:48
  Charon cask? Or do you just get access to
• 32:52
  lots of different casks and try and work out how you could
• 32:54
  finish that and see what see what comes out?
• 32:56
  So to be blunt, the way I used to do it is I used to get the
• 33:01
  the parcel of whiskey from a distiller and then I'd interpret
• 33:05
  the body of the spirit, whether it was light, medium or heavy
• 33:09
  bodied. Then I'd speak to the bodega and
• 33:12
  either France or Portugal or bigot casks and look at the sort
• 33:17
  of casks that it would offer. And I would try and look to
• 33:20
  think, well, what could I, what would really create a good story
• 33:23
  or create a good blend of flavors?
• 33:26
  Something that's not just like an Oloroso or APX, something
• 33:29
  that you can maybe build on that people wouldn't have tried
• 33:32
  before. I'd then speak to the once of
• 33:35
  confirm what I would like to order.
• 33:37
  I'd then speak to the bodega or cooperation.
• 33:40
  I'd say right. What would you marry this
• 33:43
  ideally with? Would you want it with a light
• 33:45
  bodied, a medium bodied or heavy bodied?
• 33:47
  Generally Khalila goes with everything so you don't have to
• 33:51
  worry about that. The lighter spirits like sort of
• 33:56
  Glenn space and sort of medium bodied, then you need to look at
• 34:00
  stuff like this, which is maybe like a cognac or a refill, and
• 34:05
  then you would use that. So you're really just hoping
• 34:09
  that you're going to get good advice from the warehouse or
• 34:12
  bodega that's selling the casks? This is bold and honest that
• 34:15
  you've got, that you know, that you've built up that knowledge
• 34:19
  base by just asking questions. A lot of people would be too big
• 34:22
  headed to want to have to do that, but it gave you that
• 34:24
  knowledge base. But this this, I suppose, goes
• 34:27
  back to before we had our own warehouse, which is, you know,
• 34:30
  you guys have saw that how important that has been, Whereas
• 34:32
  now we can use that knowledge that I've been in my experience
• 34:36
  and you've but actually taste the whiskey before and decide,
• 34:41
  OK, what's is it good enough to bottle?
• 34:44
  No, OK, So what do we need to do to make it good enough to
• 34:47
  bottle? What direction do we want to
• 34:49
  take this on? And that is based on the spirit
• 34:51
  character. And then if we do decide to re
• 34:55
  racket, what's that going to pair with?
• 34:56
  Because what's of course the most important thing about so,
• 35:03
  so you know, we are, I say predicting, I'll call it more of
• 35:07
  a well educated guess as to what we're trying to achieve on the
• 35:11
  final products. Yeah.
• 35:12
  It makes you make a really good point and.
• 35:14
  So I've probably answered that question the way I would have
• 35:16
  answered it maybe three years ago when I was buying parcels
• 35:21
  and then having to bring the the product up to a certain level,
• 35:26
  knowing that it was going to get released in years time.
• 35:29
  Whereas now we're sort of working off a knowledge base and
• 35:32
  we've already got casks. And something that we've not
• 35:35
  really touched on is that a lot of these casks now, which are
• 35:38
  where first fill what we're getting now is refill.
• 35:42
  And so we're recharging casks that we've got an inventory.
• 35:45
  So we're you've got a lot more options than what you had when
• 35:49
  when I first started. Just because of that cycle,
• 35:51
  you've got more on your own. Yeah, it's about that a lot of
• 35:54
  people doing like two or three, two points to what you've said
• 35:57
  there. First of all, I'll say
• 35:59
  absolutely love and you've touched it there, Paul, The fact
• 36:02
  that you can sit here and go, I'll ask people and I think
• 36:06
  because it's you're right, there's so many people in the
• 36:08
  whiskey industry that will sit there and some people will say,
• 36:11
  and there'll be people who are qualified.
• 36:12
  Don't get me wrong. There'll be people who are
• 36:13
  absolutely qualified to go and they've been in the game and
• 36:16
  they can say, I know that that would go perfect because they've
• 36:18
  had that experience of spirit type.
• 36:21
  What characteristics work best with different, different.
• 36:24
  And you've built that up. And like you've just said, maybe
• 36:26
  three years ago you were asking more questions, whereas now
• 36:28
  you've got that knowledge. Base still learning all the
• 36:30
  every time every time we bottle something that's like OK that
• 36:33
  that worked so next. Time wines and fortified wines.
• 36:37
  I think it'd be naive to think that you would know what would
• 36:39
  be absolutely perfect. A lot of these things are not.
• 36:43
  But everyone learns from everyone learns from
• 36:45
  experiences, and everyone learns from other people's experience
• 36:47
  as well. And I suppose if you're speaking
• 36:49
  to the guys who are putting wine in those casks, there's no
• 36:53
  better people that could tell you exactly what those casts
• 36:56
  would work for better than them. They say, listen, you put
• 36:58
  something heavy and oily in this, it's not going to work.
• 37:01
  If you take something and put a light and fruit here, it's going
• 37:03
  to really elevate that and come out.
• 37:05
  And it works for them because if they get a product at the end of
• 37:09
  the day that we're happy with, we'll buy from them again.
• 37:12
  So it has to work for them in many ways.
• 37:14
  It's not just a case of well, there was instances in the past
• 37:18
  where I was trying to and get casks no one would get.
• 37:22
  So you would contact vineyards. So I would contact vineyards and
• 37:26
  Amarone and try and get sweet wine casks like Marsala wine.
• 37:31
  You'd speak to the vineyard, you'd get the casks and yeah,
• 37:33
  they were good. Some of them are quite leaky.
• 37:36
  Some of them are salomons would come over were quite leaky.
• 37:38
  But you know that you were the only person that would have
• 37:40
  those casks. Yeah.
• 37:41
  Does anyone want to say is there anyone on on the difference that
• 37:45
  we've had or does anyone want to say anything on some of the
• 37:47
  other stuff that we've talked about tonight?
• 37:49
  That's all. Has anyone got any tasting notes
• 37:50
  for the first one there? I mean, I've never tried a
• 37:52
  Glenspay, but I don't think I've tried Glenspay before.
• 37:55
  It's. Probably going to blame that.
• 37:56
  It's just is that the stuff that's bottled as spay or is
• 37:59
  that something completely? No, it's different space out
• 38:01
  distillery. So where's you've got a bit of
• 38:03
  information on the Frontier bottle?
• 38:04
  Glenspay is that Diageo distillery?
• 38:07
  Then? It is, isn't it?
• 38:07
  So it's one of the floor in Fauna, isn't it?
• 38:09
  Or yeah, that's yeah, again, I don't think I've tried an awful
• 38:13
  lot, but. That that's the point.
• 38:15
  I mean, we touched on like mid table that we're going to have
• 38:17
  to sell these because they don't have that legacy, that
• 38:19
  reputation. Yeah, the actual yeah, that's
• 38:22
  that's their distillery. That's their choice not to have
• 38:24
  a core range. Yeah, mainly because they need
• 38:27
  it all for blends. Yeah, Glenspy is a bit different
• 38:29
  because it's I think it's still mothballed just now.
• 38:33
  I think for the last five or six years they were making gin.
• 38:35
  Now they've moved that to Cameron Bridge.
• 38:37
  So, you know, when are they going to start producing again?
• 38:40
  The Glenspy? I don't know.
• 38:42
  Am I trying to create a product here that's from a close
• 38:45
  distillery? I don't know.
• 38:46
  Have you put words in my mouth? I don't.
• 38:48
  Know I don't put words in your mouth it.
• 38:50
  Is but I think you know by name. I can't remember if it was one
• 38:53
  of your podcasts before you were talking someone was talking
• 38:56
  about a Glen Spay. Love that name because it is
• 38:58
  just like someone has just made it up for marketing.
• 39:01
  You know it's going. What they should have really
• 39:03
  done is opened up the summary called Glen Spay on Iowa, just
• 39:06
  to really confuse everyone. But yeah, I suppose like, but
• 39:10
  does it help? Are there people that will like
• 39:12
  we've talked about Clyde Leach versus when there's Abbey?
• 39:15
  I would, I would have three years ago, five years ago
• 39:18
  definitely, I would have never picked a Glenn Spay from an
• 39:21
  independent bottler because I'd have thought it was fake whiskey
• 39:23
  number one. I would have looked at England.
• 39:25
  I didn't understand the independent bottler.
• 39:27
  Charles, you've got a point there.
• 39:31
  You say you wouldn't buy a Glenn Spade, but I bet there are
• 39:34
  independent bottlers out there that you have enough trust in
• 39:38
  that if they put it in a bottle, you would have given it a shot.
• 39:42
  And I think I listen to the guys tonight.
• 39:43
  They're saying, I mean, what percentage of your stuff goes
• 39:45
  abroad? Well, depends how well Paul's
• 39:49
  doing, really. I'd say.
• 39:51
  Somewhere Paul's doing he's if he's looking in the mirror and
• 39:53
  have a good look at himself. 8085% I'd say export.
• 39:59
  I'm, you know, I want more of a presence in the UK, but it's
• 40:02
  just, you know, shelf space, I mean.
• 40:04
  We're talking abroad as well. What's your biggest market?
• 40:07
  Have you got one in particular or I mean before we talked about
• 40:11
  Germany being a huge market? As indeed I probably the biggest
• 40:14
  single market in terms of the number of bottles that go to
• 40:17
  that market and as a bloody big country as well.
• 40:20
  You know, and they've had their challenges over the last five or
• 40:24
  six years. It always was a big market.
• 40:26
  But yeah, it's coming back down. Most, most markets are after
• 40:29
  yeah, you know, COVID and recessions and things like that.
• 40:33
  So. And you're obviously brand
• 40:36
  ambassador. Is that global brand ambassador?
• 40:39
  Do you go to these markets much? Do you go to shows in Germany?
• 40:43
  Scandinavia. As Brandon, yes, short answer,
• 40:46
  yes. But as brand ambassadors go, you
• 40:48
  know, maybe 8-9 trips a year, not quite the 32 weeks a year of
• 40:53
  the, you know, the Sheltons of this world, etcetera.
• 40:55
  But yeah, it's, it's, it's more, it's market support, you know,
• 41:01
  out there working with the importer.
• 41:03
  The end of the day, they are our ambassadors on the ground.
• 41:06
  Because they're selling it in that.
• 41:07
  Market, yes. So yeah, we've got to trust them
• 41:09
  with the job that they're doing. You know, the last international
• 41:12
  trip I had is over to Germany for the Limburg Whiskey
• 41:15
  Festival. I'm on the stand.
• 41:17
  Germans love the Scots guy going over there talking about the
• 41:20
  whisky there and it makes a difference on the day it does.
• 41:22
  But then I fly home and I'm leaving it in their hands for
• 41:24
  the other 360 days of the year. So.
• 41:28
  And from a business perspective as well, what you want is you
• 41:31
  want a situation where you've got how many you said you bought
• 41:33
  10/8 or 9 casks. Yeah, this, this everyone is 9
• 41:37
  casks. So you've done 9 casts.
• 41:39
  What in an ideal situation out of that is you want somebody, an
• 41:42
  importer coming to you and just going, we'll just nab as much of
• 41:46
  that as we see our hands on. Some of you know the business
• 41:48
  has been done and you've already got that's a lot of it sold.
• 41:51
  Then it's just a case of finding that.
• 41:53
  But you mentioned about trying to get more presence in the UK
• 41:56
  market then what does that look like?
• 41:57
  Because that's on you, you don't.
• 42:00
  Do you use, is there distributors that you can lean
• 42:02
  on in the UK market or is it just literally you getting
• 42:05
  yourselves into shop shelves and behind bars?
• 42:07
  Pretty much, yeah. And not behind bars in terms of
• 42:09
  the in jail, but on the back. Bars, Have you ever sold any
• 42:13
  fake whiskey? Oh.
• 42:14
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 42:17
  I mean, it's just getting out there pressing the flesh at the
• 42:19
  end of the day. I sympathize with the shops
• 42:21
  because you know, there is one or two other independent
• 42:25
  bottlers. There's quite a lot now
• 42:26
  recently, especially the last five or six years, they're all
• 42:30
  competing. Yeah.
• 42:31
  Well, it's for the market, yeah. For the concept, yeah.
• 42:34
  The reason that we got sold cast originally when I was first
• 42:37
  getting sold by Diageo is Mike Kidd said, right.
• 42:41
  The reason we're selling your cast is because as independent
• 42:44
  bottlers, you're expanding the category.
• 42:46
  Yeah, you're doing stuff with the spirit.
• 42:48
  Glenn Spay, Case in point, like you're doing these finishes,
• 42:51
  People are trying it. People know what it is and we're
• 42:54
  educating. And that's always been the
• 42:55
  problem. We're independent bottling and
• 42:58
  we find it as a lack of education.
• 43:00
  How many times have we been to a festival and folk are like, so
• 43:02
  where's your distillery? And we're like, we don't have a
• 43:05
  distillery. We buy cast and like, so you
• 43:07
  just sell someone else's stuff. I'm like, well, yeah, in a
• 43:10
  nutshell, we do. We sit on it, we wait for it, we
• 43:14
  release it, our discretion, we maybe add value by re racking
• 43:17
  it. But this is fundamentally what
• 43:19
  we do. We don't have a distillery, but
• 43:21
  we're expanding the category, and that's what independent
• 43:23
  Botlin, yeah, it's about, and that's why people get sold
• 43:26
  casks. That's exactly what Finn said on
• 43:28
  this week's episode that was out.
• 43:29
  But I mean, it's funny, you go back and it's going back to your
• 43:31
  point. Jazz as well was Angus and I, we
• 43:34
  before we started the podcast. So the podcast started pretty
• 43:38
  much. We started recording in October
• 43:40
  and went the first episode went out in November and Angus and I
• 43:43
  went to the Edinburgh Whiskey Festival as punters went along
• 43:46
  and I can remember just complaining.
• 43:48
  Well, I can remember our conversation because there was
• 43:50
  obviously a lot of independent bottlers there and we were
• 43:53
  saying it was it was a good whiskey festival, but I wish
• 43:55
  there were more distilleries there.
• 43:56
  But yeah, I'm not really interested in this independent.
• 43:59
  Everyone's got the. Everyone try there, they've got
• 44:03
  Colea and they've got a Colea and they've got a Colea.
• 44:05
  If you've tried one Colea, you've tried them all.
• 44:07
  That was, I mean, this was our, that was our set conversation
• 44:11
  beginning years ago. Yeah, whatever.
• 44:12
  And I remember and, and, and it's like what you were saying
• 44:15
  to us now is, and it's like what you're saying Lego is that
• 44:18
  education piece is. I mean, I just, I remember
• 44:21
  seeing bottles online during COVID and reading up on things
• 44:25
  and I just didn't understand. First of all, why would anyone
• 44:29
  buy whiskey that's from a distillery that isn't putting
• 44:32
  out a core range if they're not even got a core range?
• 44:34
  It must be rubbish, right? Because, you know, that was what
• 44:38
  it was. Up against that every single
• 44:40
  time. And this is again the touchstone
• 44:41
  just when we introduced this this whiskey, Glen's Bay.
• 44:44
  It's not an exciting name, but at the end of the day, there's a
• 44:50
  reason for why the agile don't, or they don't have the capacity,
• 44:54
  they don't have the, the, the stock to create, you know, a
• 44:58
  brand, a core range 10/15/18 of Glenspy.
• 45:01
  And that's because 85% of all Scotch sold around the world is
• 45:06
  basic blended whiskey. So what do you think the
• 45:09
  priority is? Yeah, you know, investing in a
• 45:12
  brand for Glenspy, No. Or using 99.9% of Glenspy for
• 45:18
  Johnny Walker and J&B. Well, that was the argument.
• 45:20
  I mean, we sat in this very room, we did the episode with
• 45:23
  Fraser Soonest and we talked about LINQ woods.
• 45:24
  And actually it gave me a new appreciation for independently
• 45:29
  bottled LINQ woods because I got to a stage where I'd seen loads
• 45:34
  of LINQ wood around and I'm going, you've seen one Linkwood,
• 45:38
  you've seen them all and all this kind of stuff.
• 45:40
  And it got to the stage where it's like every loads of people
• 45:43
  have like wood. And then Fraser soon as sat in
• 45:45
  this room and he chatted to us about how he spoke to, I can't
• 45:48
  remember what the name of the guy was he'd spoken to.
• 45:50
  He basically said he gave me like an hour chat of how amazing
• 45:53
  Linkwood Distillery is. And what he said was what you
• 45:56
  have to remember is this stuff is so good that they keep it
• 46:00
  away from single malt because it's so good for blending.
• 46:03
  But then it opened like suddenly I was like, right, he's right.
• 46:06
  Liquid. I've had liquid and we had
• 46:08
  liquid and a Tokyo casket there. I was talking, I was a liquid in
• 46:14
  with Morrison that was at the car and more was that it was a
• 46:17
  liquid in Tokyo. Yeah, we've had liquid and, and
• 46:22
  1st fell refill. We've had Linkwood and Sherry
• 46:26
  liquid, and what was the one we did, Greg?
• 46:28
  It was a link within a rum cask and you go and you just keep
• 46:33
  going back to it and go. It's just a solid, robust
• 46:36
  whiskey that seems to go well with so many, many different
• 46:39
  things. Have you?
• 46:40
  Put out a few Linkwoods as well and your time.
• 46:45
  We've put quite a few like this. Yeah, yeah.
• 46:46
  But another one, another one I've seen a lot of and I want to
• 46:50
  lead on is the next whiskey because inch Gower is another
• 46:53
  whiskey that we've seen. We've had a good fuel Inch
• 46:56
  Gowers on these in the bottle spotlights.
• 46:58
  So what's this? What's this second?
• 47:00
  What's the second whiskey of this?
• 47:01
  Of this or the 4th whiskey of the night?
• 47:03
  Well, this is 1. Paul's a big fan of actually.
• 47:05
  So this is Inch Gower. Yeah, if you think that sounded
• 47:08
  like I was keen on Glenn Spay, I'm going to get started on One
• 47:12
  Inch Gower. Yeah.
• 47:14
  So 12 year olds again, same age, but this time seven years in a
• 47:19
  first film, Madeira Cask. Hence the colour.
• 47:22
  Look at the colour. Look at the colour of that.
• 47:23
  Yeah, yeah. Now interesting.
• 47:25
  Last two whiskeys that we've had have both been finishes or some
• 47:29
  would say double maturations because.
• 47:33
  More than half its life. So where do you draw the line
• 47:35
  between the word finish? And you know, we use the word
• 47:37
  finish more because it's the most widely recognise and
• 47:40
  understood way of describing the idea of taking 1W from one
• 47:45
  casket to another. But you know, there's a point
• 47:48
  where it does it a disservice. And when it's been in more than
• 47:50
  half its life, then I think you could say maybe the Scotch
• 47:54
  Whisky Association should just not necessarily create rules,
• 47:58
  but just wind it in a wee bit of rain and to say, OK, there's a
• 48:02
  point where you should have a better definition.
• 48:04
  But we use finish because it's the monthly.
• 48:06
  Load wind it in southwest. We think that's that's the
• 48:10
  message we're getting from the and if any word from the
• 48:12
  Southwest would like to come onto the podcast as a right of
• 48:15
  reply, then please get in touch with us at the Diggers.
• 48:19
  But inch cover, I guess we've had a lot of inch cover.
• 48:22
  Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things, well,
• 48:24
  we spoke to Stephen Woodcock about working up at Inch Killer.
• 48:27
  Yeah. And I, I think, I think inch
• 48:30
  cover, it's one of those distilleries that has because of
• 48:33
  that coastal character, it it has a real special place and.
• 48:38
  Try not. This is like try and.
• 48:39
  Go on to Yeah, because it's too cliched is.
• 48:41
  It but to me like. You know, I was up in space I
• 48:44
  last week for the festival and, you know, doing some tastings
• 48:48
  and things like that. And you're taking space side
• 48:50
  whiskeys to space side, doing tastings with them.
• 48:54
  And yeah, you know, we were talking earlier on about having
• 48:56
  Fife as a region, as purely geographical now.
• 49:00
  And if you ever need an example to why that's the case, Space
• 49:04
  Side is a perfect example where in a tiny little bubble at the
• 49:07
  North East of Scotland, you've got Space Side whiskey.
• 49:10
  What do you mean by space side whiskey?
• 49:12
  Oh, yeah, I've tried Glenn Ferry, I've tried McAllen
• 49:14
  Balbiri. You know, they follow light,
• 49:18
  fruity, fresh. But then you've got some of the
• 49:20
  most heavily peaking coastal West Coast style whiskey has
• 49:25
  ever been produced and space side.
• 49:27
  And then you've got Aaron producing the most space side
• 49:30
  style whiskey the West Coast has ever seen.
• 49:32
  And then you'll get inch Killer, which you touched on it.
• 49:35
  Not many people mentioned that coastal character.
• 49:37
  Now it's a mile from the sea. Does that make a difference?
• 49:41
  Well, they're distilling it in such a way that it's quite
• 49:44
  heavy, quite robust, you know, short fermentation, quick
• 49:47
  distillation, which lends itself well.
• 49:50
  And that we, we have that knowledge that we know that
• 49:53
  Inchgiver is going to stand up to a bit more abuse than say
• 49:59
  like a Glen Space, something like that whereby we can
• 50:01
  confidently put it into Madeira Cask for seven years.
• 50:05
  And yes, we've got a big old I was going to.
• 50:08
  Say all natural colour, of course you know.
• 50:12
  We we couldn't afford caramel even if we wanted to.
• 50:14
  But but yeah, I mean full term. We know the the the inch Gower
• 50:21
  character is there and it's cutting through now.
• 50:24
  We've not spoke about well, I think we touched on adding water
• 50:27
  to whiskey. Obviously, lady, the glen's all
• 50:28
  cask strength in a room like this.
• 50:32
  I don't need to tell anyone to add water to whiskey, but I
• 50:36
  would say this is probably the only whiskey in the last few
• 50:39
  years that I would say please add water to it.
• 50:41
  It really needs it. It's so closed.
• 50:43
  If you've tried it nose that neat it's it's really closed.
• 50:46
  As soon as you add even a tiny splash of water it just jammy,
• 50:51
  pretty fruity, just really explodes.
• 50:53
  It and that leads me to an well that leads me to another
• 50:57
  question every every release you've done presumably has been
• 51:02
  a cast strength you've never been tempted to water a whiskey
• 51:06
  down even a little bit at. All I've never been tempted, but
• 51:09
  we have had arguments. Discussions.
• 51:13
  Yeah, We've had a lot of back and forth about whether we
• 51:16
  should do it and whether we should have done it.
• 51:18
  I feel like the brand, it's cash strength, it's single cask,
• 51:24
  there's no coloring, non chill filtered.
• 51:27
  And obviously there's more of a trend now for like marrying
• 51:32
  casts together, reducing strength and then it brings your
• 51:36
  price down and stuff. But we're sticking by it.
• 51:39
  We want to get single cast cash strength.
• 51:42
  And yeah, it means that everything's kind of more
• 51:45
  expensive, but I would rather give the customer the
• 51:49
  opportunity to. The discussion came in because
• 51:52
  and it's whiskey's like this. It's case in point where, you
• 51:55
  know, we're in a room of whiskey enthusiasts, so we know
• 52:00
  automatically, oh, that's pretty hot.
• 52:02
  I'm going to try it with some water before I make my call on
• 52:05
  it. But 200 and 50 bottles going
• 52:10
  around the world, you know, we can't get in front of everyone
• 52:13
  and say, OK, it's a bit hot, it's a bit closed.
• 52:15
  We put some water in it. So that temptation to already do
• 52:19
  that, but I I mean, ultimately Lady of the Glen does what it
• 52:22
  says on the tin. It's we want you to have that
• 52:24
  same experience that we have in the warehouse where we go back
• 52:28
  in hell. This is good.
• 52:29
  Get that in the glass right now. And if that means putting it out
• 52:32
  a strength where we know it's a bit hot and it's a bit, you
• 52:35
  know, it benefits from some water, then we just hope that
• 52:38
  people out there. It's good enough for Ronaldo,
• 52:42
  it's good enough for everyone. Else, Lady of the Glen.
• 52:44
  Medina Castle. All right, the Medina Castle.
• 52:46
  There you go. Cristiano Ronaldo is drinking
• 52:54
  Lady of the Glen at some point. He's from Madeira.
• 52:59
  Right. But I mean, I always think about
• 53:02
  and. I thought this was an amazing
• 53:04
  advertising campaign that was coming up.
• 53:06
  Lady of the Glen, if it's good enough for Cristiano Ronaldo
• 53:09
  then. He's enough with El Ronaldo as
• 53:11
  well. But he's more fundamental, the
• 53:16
  other, the other Ronaldo's more fundamental.
• 53:19
  But I was going to say inch goer.
• 53:21
  A couple of things about Inch Goer that stick out for me is
• 53:23
  when we had the figure it drops tasting and when you talk about
• 53:28
  Angus mentioned this sort of coastal and the salinity that
• 53:31
  maybe comes through from that. I think it was George Keeble
• 53:33
  just said, well, our all our palates are naturally geared to
• 53:37
  always love sweet and salty put together.
• 53:39
  So whenever you get inch Geller and you put it into a sweeter
• 53:42
  cask or something like or a wine cast, it just brings that
• 53:44
  sweetness to it. The other thing that I really
• 53:46
  love was it was Stephen Woodcock who helped redesign Inch Goer
• 53:51
  distillery and get up and running described it.
• 53:54
  He said if you were to take all the components from a
• 53:57
  distillery, take them up into an aeroplane and then drop them out
• 54:00
  of the aeroplane, he was like, that's what Inch Goer was like.
• 54:03
  But when we went out, because he said the system system made
• 54:05
  absolutely no sense whatsoever. But you once again like your
• 54:08
  Glenn Spade an absolute blending powerhouse and a distillery that
• 54:13
  again, unless unless you really know what you're and I would say
• 54:16
  inch Gower. For me, well, we love the floor,
• 54:19
  we love the floor. We were turned on to that quite
• 54:22
  early on. But I became it became it was
• 54:26
  this sort of gateway independent bottler whiskey that I really
• 54:30
  look for because I, I really love the idea that I know about
• 54:34
  it. I knew a little bit more about
• 54:36
  inch Gower than other whiskeys that I'd never heard or seen
• 54:39
  before. So then when I saw that in an
• 54:42
  independent bottler 1 to get the opportunity to say, and it was
• 54:45
  that sort of moment when you know, when you know a little bit
• 54:47
  more than other people know, you puff your chest out and go,
• 54:50
  well, you want to try inch Gower, by the way, because it's
• 54:52
  this and you could only get it through an independently bottled
• 54:56
  person and stuff like that. So it's a cracker.
• 54:57
  Anyone got any tasting notes for either there?
• 54:59
  We've got a tasting up there. Track the mic over.
• 55:03
  Sorry guys I just had a question.
• 55:05
  I've had a kind of Madeira cask finished before and maybe a port
• 55:08
  cast finished. For me it's a very kind of mouth
• 55:11
  stripping dryness and almost a fusty mouldy finish.
• 55:15
  Is there something like about not not?
• 55:18
  I mean it sounds negative but at the same time.
• 55:22
  It's. Some people like fusty molds.
• 55:24
  In the nicest possible way, this is the fustiested, moldiest
• 55:27
  mascara. It's.
• 55:28
  So. Only fans whiskey.
• 55:30
  When no, but a lot of these kind of really red with is that the
• 55:33
  tannins from like a red wine? Is that what I'm getting?
• 55:37
  Is that why it really it seems like it, you know, it kind of
• 55:39
  strips the mouth. I mean it's a nice nose and
• 55:41
  everything, but at the end there's that kind of dry.
• 55:43
  Is that indicative of those kind of qualities of of Madeira of
• 55:48
  ports? Just kind of curious.
• 55:50
  That I was thinking Madeira is kind of more similar to Tony
• 55:52
  port, and I prefer Tony Port and Madeira to Ruby port, but I'm a
• 55:58
  big fan of ports in general. But I would say you're kind of
• 56:01
  going to get more of your sort of hazelnut toffee Dicks and the
• 56:06
  longer the whiskey's in, I would say you're going to get more
• 56:09
  tannins and more grippiness. That's going to happen.
• 56:12
  That would be, that would be my input on, on why you're getting
• 56:15
  that from this, because seven years, I mean, it's it's a
• 56:17
  Madeira seasoned cask at the end of the day.
• 56:19
  So the Madeira's been in there to season the wood for whatever
• 56:23
  length of time. Don't really know.
• 56:24
  Not not that long anyway, but you know, and then emptied out.
• 56:28
  So the the oak is still fairly fresh.
• 56:30
  Yeah. Then you're putting that whiskey
• 56:31
  in there for seven years and it's drawn a lot more of the oak
• 56:34
  tannins along with the Madeira influence as well.
• 56:38
  But generally 7 years is a long time for a secondary maturation
• 56:44
  or finish, and it's going to draw a lot of those tannins out
• 56:46
  there. But yeah.
• 56:48
  This is also an. Is there anything?
• 56:49
  I. Don't know if that's just me.
• 56:51
  Is that just me or is that like everyone's palettes are
• 56:54
  different? Is that a general feeling from I
• 56:56
  think? It's because of the length of
• 56:58
  the finish. I think it's normal to expect
• 57:01
  that you're going to have that amount of intense drippiness and
• 57:05
  tannins just because there's going to be that much.
• 57:07
  And like, it's a first full cask as well.
• 57:10
  So an American oak, which I was going to say.
• 57:13
  So you're going to get a bit more gingerness to it as well,
• 57:16
  which is probably going to be more in the background.
• 57:18
  But that would be with any sort of first film or Sherry.
• 57:22
  For me, that's really works because you've got that balance
• 57:25
  between, I'm going to stop that. You're double figures now,
• 57:30
  double figures now. But yeah, between that, this,
• 57:34
  this still, I can stand up to that, I think in this one.
• 57:38
  So, but you've got that working there and that's something that
• 57:40
  we have to manage. You know, that's an interesting
• 57:43
  point. And you know, a lot of people
• 57:46
  are big fans of massive big Sherry bombs.
• 57:48
  And I'm like, why do you like that?
• 57:50
  I just love this. They all are also in the PX.
• 57:53
  I'm like, well, most of that, that enjoyment you're getting is
• 57:56
  from the tannins that, but when it sticks to your teeth and
• 57:59
  sticks all the way down and gives you heartburn, that's,
• 58:01
  that's the oak tannins more than that.
• 58:04
  Or also I'm in Tiado PX, whatever it may be.
• 58:07
  There's a bit of that here, but we all found a jammy sweetness
• 58:11
  there that just levelled things out to me.
• 58:13
  But there's another word. So I don't always need to use
• 58:15
  balance. I can use level.
• 58:17
  Yeah, Yeah. Can I take us back to price
• 58:19
  point? Yeah, we could.
• 58:21
  You were talking about whether you pick an indie bottler or the
• 58:25
  distilleries own Weibo as it were.
• 58:27
  I always find that sometimes the price point of indie bottler can
• 58:30
  be very, very favourable. What sort of price point are we
• 58:33
  talking about here for these? So, Glenn, Spain.
• 58:37
  For example, so typically like you know the agile 12 year old
• 58:42
  with an interest in secondary bat duration would probably UK
• 58:46
  retail about 70 Yeah, maybe just the wrong side of 70, but you
• 58:51
  know, ballpark yeah, which you know is more expensive than the
• 58:56
  inch cower 14 four and yeah, it's about. 5.
• 59:00
  Yeah, what, 43%, you know, child filter, we've got a caramel
• 59:04
  whatever, you know. But yeah, I mean, that's
• 59:09
  typical. I think of a cask of that style,
• 59:12
  that age indie bottle or cast strength, blah blah.
• 59:16
  Yeah. Absolutely good.
• 59:17
  I think as an indie you can buy indie bottlers and you can just
• 59:20
  look at the price and think, Oh my God, that is just so much
• 59:23
  bang from a buck. I've recently I bought an
• 59:27
  Adelphi Bladnock 26 year old for like 200 and a bit of pounds.
• 59:34
  Now if you buy that from from Bladnock, that's five, £600.
• 59:38
  So as an indie bottler, you have that little bit of you can age
• 59:42
  something and you you were saying earlier on your rent is
• 59:45
  pennies because by. For the cast, well, the cat is.
• 59:48
  Great, right? You don't have to add that much.
• 59:53
  Yeah. The, the, the distilleries tend
• 59:55
  to think, OK, I'm going from a 12 to a 16 so I'm going to add
• 59:58
  another £40 on to it. But I find independent bottlers
• 1:00:02
  don't add £40, they add. Yeah, but still every single
• 1:00:05
  tasting I do, mostly abroad but sometimes at home, you know,
• 1:00:10
  I'll explain what makes these whiskeys unique, what makes us
• 1:00:13
  and what we do and everyday unique.
• 1:00:17
  But then they'll still ask the question.
• 1:00:18
  But you know, I can go out and I can buy this distillery bottling
• 1:00:22
  same age that you've just bottled for £40.
• 1:00:26
  You know, I yes, you can, but you know, this, this is unique.
• 1:00:31
  This is a single cask, OK, You know, you can make that
• 1:00:35
  judgement for yourself whether or not you would buy that
• 1:00:38
  whiskey for that price based on what you're getting from your
• 1:00:41
  glass. But the prices were as because
• 1:00:43
  of where we're at, where it's gone through and obviously the
• 1:00:47
  unique aspect, which ultimately if we were to bottle something a
• 1:00:51
  12 year old and create 10,000 bottles at 43 percent, then we
• 1:00:55
  could charge 40 lbs as well. There's also your cast ref yeah,
• 1:00:59
  single cast, yeah. But there's a big education
• 1:01:01
  piece on. And like I said, and there's
• 1:01:04
  people, there's people who are probably people like this in
• 1:01:07
  this room who want to make that jump and go, I want to learn
• 1:01:10
  more. And then there's other people
• 1:01:12
  who will just look at that and go, now I'm interested in that.
• 1:01:16
  And it's how do you, how do you guys target that?
• 1:01:18
  Because ultimately, you know, you've mentioned already tonight
• 1:01:22
  and we see it the, the scene of, and it's great for consumers.
• 1:01:25
  We're all so lucky as consumers because the independent bottler
• 1:01:27
  scene is growing and growing and growing and everyone's getting
• 1:01:31
  some brilliant access to lots and lots of different casts.
• 1:01:34
  And we're getting the opportunity.
• 1:01:35
  And then what happens is it's you guys that have to then
• 1:01:37
  really start managing your price points for where it sits in the
• 1:01:41
  shelf. And again, from a consumer
• 1:01:43
  perspective, that's even better from us because we could pick up
• 1:01:46
  some really, really, really good, good whiskey at a very
• 1:01:48
  reasonable price. But ultimately, like when do you
• 1:01:52
  have to start trying to work out how to grow?
• 1:01:55
  Because you talked about growing the category of Scotch, but what
• 1:01:58
  about the independent bottlers are to try and grow the category
• 1:02:00
  of independent bottlers getting more people, more people to cut
• 1:02:05
  it to try and understand that a Glenn spay isn't a weird knock
• 1:02:09
  off whiskey that you've never heard of.
• 1:02:11
  It's actually brilliant because it's a distillery, an inch
• 1:02:13
  Keller, all that kind of stuff. So I mean, you've how long have
• 1:02:16
  you been a lady of the Glenn? You've only been doing it for a
• 1:02:18
  regular since. 2012. So since 20, So you've been in
• 1:02:20
  the game a lot longer than quite a few other independent
• 1:02:23
  bottlers. Yeah.
• 1:02:24
  So changes to the market, changes to how people are, Have
• 1:02:28
  you seen it growing or do you see it as same faces, same
• 1:02:32
  people? Well, Graeme, it's all about
• 1:02:35
  education, education, education. So we we adapt and overcome.
• 1:02:51
  We do you. Feel the hand of history on your
• 1:02:53
  shoulder. A lot of that, yeah, we, we put
• 1:02:56
  like QR codes on the boxes. We're always trying to like,
• 1:03:00
  show how it is the independent bottling works, you know, the
• 1:03:04
  social media and stuff like that.
• 1:03:05
  You're trying to show how we operate as a business
• 1:03:09
  internally, externally, the changes and things like that.
• 1:03:13
  You're just trying to be as transparent as possible.
• 1:03:16
  So when you're sending out, I mean, when I started, you would
• 1:03:19
  send out newsletters and you would obviously get loads of
• 1:03:21
  feedback from that. Then Facebook was really great,
• 1:03:25
  what, 7 years ago? It's kind of not as good in the
• 1:03:29
  last three years. I mean there was things like you
• 1:03:33
  would have like what's that we'd create?
• 1:03:36
  Like it's not post it, but there was there's so many fads that
• 1:03:40
  you have to like go through. At the moment we're doing a
• 1:03:43
  little bit tech talk like we don't do, we don't do Twitter
• 1:03:48
  anymore, so we're only ticky talk.
• 1:03:53
  Because I mean, ultimately, I would say that you're the first
• 1:03:57
  independent bottler that we've had.
• 1:04:01
  Well, no, no, the first of all that we've had on this podcast
• 1:04:05
  with a brand ambassador. And that's a big step because
• 1:04:09
  you know, we know how many, for example, you know, shout out to
• 1:04:14
  Olan Ryan at Estravegan, you know, Tricara and you go,
• 1:04:19
  they're lucky in the sense that there's two of them that.
• 1:04:22
  And brand ambassador is almost part of that.
• 1:04:26
  They have to be job but. Basically, and then you speak to
• 1:04:28
  them every weekend and you go where are you off to this
• 1:04:30
  weekend? And it's like 1's going to that
• 1:04:32
  end of the country and the others going to the other end of
• 1:04:34
  the country because there's 2W festivals that they need to be
• 1:04:37
  at. And then you've got the element
• 1:04:39
  of not everybody who likes to take casks and put them into
• 1:04:43
  wood and change things around. And I'd like to sample and like
• 1:04:46
  to be that science effect person.
• 1:04:48
  Not everybody likes also standing in front of groups of
• 1:04:51
  people and communicating and, and selling with and selling
• 1:04:54
  whiskey. So being able to either have to
• 1:04:57
  be a brand and you have to be an owner of an independent bottler
• 1:05:01
  that can wear both those hats or you have to make the make the
• 1:05:05
  big step and bringing in somebody that you can bring in
• 1:05:07
  and trust that can go away and sell your brand and the
• 1:05:10
  products. For you as well.
• 1:05:11
  Well, when I, I studied business at Sterling and part of the, the
• 1:05:14
  reason where the, the business name comes from is it's named
• 1:05:17
  after the Green Lady ghost at Sterling Castle.
• 1:05:20
  But I didn't want to call it Green Lady because Green Lady's
• 1:05:23
  got an association with new whiskey.
• 1:05:25
  So I called it Lady of the Glen. When I studied business, one of
• 1:05:28
  the fundamentals of that was bringing together the factors of
• 1:05:32
  production. So that was all about bringing
• 1:05:34
  experts, asking questions. So I know I'm not the best
• 1:05:40
  salesman. Paul's much better at that than
• 1:05:42
  me. Paul's got much better network.
• 1:05:45
  He engages with people. I respect that Paul works there.
• 1:05:49
  Alex and Gavin, who work in the warehouse very much, really
• 1:05:54
  great. Alex says we'll come on to build
• 1:05:57
  this letter system that we've got.
• 1:05:59
  Very good at doing other stuff that we've arranged and we do
• 1:06:03
  managing the bottom line. He's good at that.
• 1:06:06
  I've got my. What do you do, Gregor?
• 1:06:10
  That's what I was going to get. Like you're just looking in the
• 1:06:13
  mirror pointing at yourself. You just, you just do all the
• 1:06:16
  boring stuff and bring it all together.
• 1:06:19
  There's a lot of W fives, there's not W ones, there's a
• 1:06:22
  lot of HMRC. Stuff that I'm really interested
• 1:06:25
  in, you know, and also, you know Gregor, you mentioned that
• 1:06:28
  you're not you're Forte to go out there and to market do
• 1:06:31
  whiskey festivals and things like that.
• 1:06:33
  So I suppose that's I like. Going and doing all this stuff
• 1:06:36
  like going to France and like seeing all the casks of being
• 1:06:39
  like, oh we can do that and bring that over.
• 1:06:42
  Go to Portugal, we can go that. That leads me on the quick,
• 1:06:48
  because you were talking earlier about casts and how you were,
• 1:06:51
  how you were trying to source casts that nobody else had ever
• 1:06:54
  used before, all these things. Have you?
• 1:06:57
  You've obviously been doing it a long time.
• 1:06:58
  Is there still a cast that you haven't been able to get hold of
• 1:07:01
  that you'd love to get hold of? Not.
• 1:07:02
  Really. I mean, because they've done
• 1:07:05
  contract bottling, you actually see a lot of casks that you
• 1:07:08
  wouldn't normally pay for. And to be totally blunt, there's
• 1:07:11
  a lot of things that I've bottled that I thought, I don't
• 1:07:13
  really think that's worth the the rave.
• 1:07:17
  You're not going to name names, but I just feel like you're
• 1:07:20
  going to get like this Mizunara Oak.
• 1:07:25
  I said I wasn't going to name it, but I just don't really see,
• 1:07:27
  like what the fuss is about. I mean, someone else has
• 1:07:30
  probably tried it and thought, oh, this really changed my life.
• 1:07:33
  But when we bottled several versions of it, I just don't
• 1:07:37
  really see. I think it felt that reputation
• 1:07:39
  from some whiskeys rather than the wood.
• 1:07:41
  Itself, because we know that that's such a premium.
• 1:07:43
  Yeah, is a kind of lot, you know, a bit of a diminishing
• 1:07:46
  returns thing where almost the more you're paying, the less you
• 1:07:50
  know, exponentially more you're paying, the less you're getting
• 1:07:53
  in terms of do you know what I mean?
• 1:07:55
  The less getting them as another cask, you can put that on the
• 1:07:58
  label and then you can add a zero to the price of the bottle.
• 1:08:01
  Well, exactly. Yeah.
• 1:08:02
  How much? Is it is another cask empty?
• 1:08:04
  No comment. Really.
• 1:08:07
  It's like, it's a lot of money, yeah.
• 1:08:08
  Well, we have we we've, we've known from being at other
• 1:08:11
  tastings where? Yeah, Distillers music people,
• 1:08:13
  people have, I think, said the price.
• 1:08:15
  Maybe on a podcast? Before, yeah, yeah, but I don't.
• 1:08:17
  Remember it off my top of my head, but it's a lot of money.
• 1:08:19
  But what I will say is I do enjoy the man who told me to do
• 1:08:23
  this sitting in the room. Gregor, don't finish their drums
• 1:08:26
  immediately and and go back. And I have to say that you said
• 1:08:29
  there were two empty glasses going going back from there.
• 1:08:33
  I mean, it's interesting with the, the, the, what was it you
• 1:08:37
  said about the, the tasting notes that you gave for this?
• 1:08:41
  Fusty. Fusty, fusty things to go back
• 1:08:44
  to go from the dryness to go from the dryness of the of the
• 1:08:49
  inch Gower going back to the to the Glenn Spade.
• 1:08:53
  There's a freshness about that Glenn Spade that you that I
• 1:08:55
  wasn't getting at the very beginning.
• 1:08:56
  But look out of the drums that we've had so far.
• 1:08:59
  Why are the last two drums favorite for that?
• 1:09:00
  Let's go for the Glenn Spade. Anyone when the Glenn Spade OK,
• 1:09:04
  resounding there and on the inch color, then anyone like the inch
• 1:09:06
  color. OK, so a few people like that.
• 1:09:08
  Very good. Well, we'll be we'll be
• 1:09:10
  replenishing our glasses. Greg's got 2 empty glasses, so
• 1:09:13
  we're going to need to get everyone filled up again.
• 1:09:15
  But I absolutely fantastic. Thanks very much, Gregor.
• 1:09:17
  Cheers. All right, we're on the last
• 1:09:19
  two. The home leg, Angus, you know I
• 1:09:21
  do. Clap us in.
• 1:09:22
  Oh, I got my phone in my pocket. Welcome back to the Whiskey's
• 1:09:26
  Noise podcast. Right now, the last two drams
• 1:09:35
  we've got here some very interesting drams that we're
• 1:09:39
  going to talk about. First of all, you mentioned
• 1:09:43
  earlier both of you guys mentioned earlier that more
• 1:09:47
  people are you know, hardly anyone in the UK has tried the
• 1:09:50
  whiskey that we've got lined up on this.
• 1:09:52
  But to add a little bit extra, you've done something for us
• 1:09:56
  tonight where you've unless you if you missed the the Instagram
• 1:10:00
  post of Gregor, what we're the next drama we're about to have
• 1:10:04
  is an official one of one whiskey.
• 1:10:08
  So what that basically means is this has been specifically hand
• 1:10:14
  support, hand filled specifically for us tonight,
• 1:10:17
  which is fantastic. Big thank you.
• 1:10:24
  Now there's a reason for this that we've picked this one
• 1:10:28
  because you mentioned about us coming to visit you and I'll get
• 1:10:32
  to be and I'll get to be that evening.
• 1:10:33
  And you showed us something very, very cool and we recorded
• 1:10:37
  it and we filmed it and we put it out and then it did OK.
• 1:10:40
  And the, the episode did very, very well on our YouTube
• 1:10:43
  channel. It's, it's, it's done really
• 1:10:44
  well. Glad to hear that.
• 1:10:45
  And then I, I went through our social media in January time and
• 1:10:49
  I thought I'm going to start repurposing some of these posts
• 1:10:51
  that we've put out because I think on the Instagram account,
• 1:10:54
  when I first put this post out, it didn't land as well as I
• 1:10:56
  thought it should have. So I put it out and I can't
• 1:10:59
  remember how many views it's now sitting on.
• 1:11:01
  But if you were to use a phrase of rage baiting, right, which is
• 1:11:08
  which is a phrase used in social media now and or click baiting
• 1:11:13
  or just fashion, right, because this is it's got St.
• 1:11:19
  Bridges Kirk on the label. But tell us what St.
• 1:11:23
  Bridges Kirk is and where it comes from.
• 1:11:25
  Saint Bridges Kirk is named after a local Kirk in Dalgati
• 1:11:29
  Bay. So we accumulated a lot of
• 1:11:32
  blends over the years and we wanted to create blends.
• 1:11:36
  So we wanted to create a brand locally that we could release
• 1:11:41
  those blends under. We didn't want to do it with
• 1:11:43
  Lady the Glen because Lady the Glen single Cask single malt
• 1:11:46
  Castrate. So we created some Bridget's
• 1:11:48
  Kirk and we created multiple variants of some Bridget's Kirk,
• 1:11:53
  which very much like Johnny Walker, is colour coded
• 1:11:57
  depending on what it is. So we have a red, yeah, we've
• 1:12:00
  got a red label which is a blend, so that includes like
• 1:12:05
  green and malt. We've got a blue label which is
• 1:12:08
  all just malts and we've got a tawny coloured label which is
• 1:12:12
  the Solara System, which is a blended malt.
• 1:12:16
  No, Well, this is a white label, I would have said.
• 1:12:19
  This is the whiskey stories one the.
• 1:12:21
  Bottom. The bottom.
• 1:12:22
  The bottom but. Right.
• 1:12:23
  No, what I will say is Solara System, this is what triggered a
• 1:12:27
  lot of people on on social media is the the the, the the footage
• 1:12:35
  is of us standing in front of. And I said, so this is a Solera
• 1:12:39
  cast system. And you said the only Solera
• 1:12:42
  cast system and we start talking about it.
• 1:12:47
  Can I? OK, we've triggered someone
• 1:12:48
  already. We've got one, we've got one
• 1:12:50
  real man, right? And basically, and I'm going to,
• 1:12:56
  I'm going to meet that. You've got a photo of it in
• 1:12:58
  front of us. So you're going to show people.
• 1:12:59
  But what I'll say is I mean this with the greatest respect in the
• 1:13:03
  world, it's not a very impressive piece of kit.
• 1:13:07
  And I mean that. Well, this guy over here.
• 1:13:10
  You mean it, right? It's cool and it's it's amazing.
• 1:13:16
  Tap on it. But we but we so we said, and
• 1:13:20
  you said that somebody from the Whiskey magazine came.
• 1:13:25
  I had a look at your thing and said, you know, this is the only
• 1:13:28
  is that is that correct? This is the only Sailera.
• 1:13:29
  Yeah, yeah. Tasks.
• 1:13:32
  No, no, no, no. 1st I First of all the word the word sailera.
• 1:13:36
  Well, maybe we should. Maybe we should.
• 1:13:38
  Well, yeah, go ahead. The word sailera has been used
• 1:13:40
  in whiskey, you know, for maturation, for a type of style
• 1:13:46
  since the 90s with mainly Glenfiddich, which is what I
• 1:13:50
  think most people will go to. I think it was what 98, maybe 8
• 1:13:54
  where they launched the 15 year old solera reserve.
• 1:13:59
  So the word's been used quite a few times.
• 1:14:00
  There's other Indies that have used that as well.
• 1:14:03
  But what's different about the word solera reserve versus
• 1:14:09
  solera system, which is where we have and I think we'll be going
• 1:14:13
  there, we have until we're corrected.
• 1:14:17
  Otherwise, I'll say we have the only Solera system, cherry style
• 1:14:22
  system with a pyramid of casks and Scotch whiskey.
• 1:14:25
  Yeah. Connected by a copper pipe,
• 1:14:27
  yeah. Yeah.
• 1:14:28
  So that system means that whenever we bottle from the
• 1:14:32
  bottom right hand cask, the next cast fills it up and we only
• 1:14:37
  bottle from the one cask. So it's a constant system where
• 1:14:40
  it's going through a Feno cherry at the top.
• 1:14:42
  Then all are also all are. Also, it's not a case where we
• 1:14:46
  bottle the whole thing. So it's all getting emptied.
• 1:14:48
  It's every time there's a batch, it's, well, it's a little bit of
• 1:14:54
  the last batch. It's not a vatting system.
• 1:14:57
  Which is what the Glenfiddichs so for it's.
• 1:14:59
  Never emptied. But the benefit of doubt so so,
• 1:15:01
  so yeah. So the benefit of doubt with the
• 1:15:03
  Glenfiddich one, from my understanding of the Glenfiddich
• 1:15:05
  1 is in 1998, they filled a VAT and, and of 15 year old whiskey
• 1:15:10
  is mixed from different, different types of cast and what
• 1:15:13
  have you. And they'll never fully empty
• 1:15:15
  that VAT. Meaning the solera feeling is
• 1:15:18
  that that VAT. So even to this day, if you buy
• 1:15:20
  a bottle of Glyphetic 15, the romance of it is there could be
• 1:15:25
  15 year old glyphetic in there from 1998 because this, this VAT
• 1:15:30
  has never been fully emptied. And in essence, which in the
• 1:15:35
  solera, I mean, I don't know, if only we had someone from Spain
• 1:15:38
  in here that could tell us what solera actually means.
• 1:15:42
  Do you know what solera means? No, no, it's.
• 1:15:44
  Probably made out. That means what?
• 1:15:47
  Floor. Yeah, floor, right.
• 1:15:49
  Well, I thought it would meant, I mean, I think the essence of
• 1:15:51
  solera kind of means that it never empties in that sense.
• 1:15:54
  It always goes round that that feeling.
• 1:15:56
  And with your situation here is and the technicalities that
• 1:16:00
  we're getting on for pedants out there, is that what we
• 1:16:04
  understand is that this is the only connected Solera caste
• 1:16:10
  system in whiskey in Scotland? I can tell is always the
• 1:16:17
  youngest. Thank you Ronnie.
• 1:16:18
  So that's why the romance has been torn out of this product
• 1:16:22
  because it's non age statement. The reason for it being non age
• 1:16:26
  statement is because because there's a copper pipes, it means
• 1:16:30
  that it doesn't age while it's in the system.
• 1:16:33
  So despite us having this letter system for what is over a year
• 1:16:37
  and doing multiple batches, 2 1/2 when we put that spirit in
• 1:16:41
  and it could be like that water in terms of like the oak
• 1:16:45
  quality. And when it comes out, you know,
• 1:16:48
  it's it's not like that. You know, this is all what's
• 1:16:51
  happened as a result in going through the system that there's
• 1:16:56
  no, there's no maturation technically taking place.
• 1:16:59
  Right, but the man who made it sitting here.
• 1:17:00
  So I'll become, I'll be, I'll do a pause.
• 1:17:02
  Lady of a diamond, a pioneer in the whiskey industry, right?
• 1:17:09
  And you come. What?
• 1:17:11
  What? What was?
• 1:17:12
  What did you say your name was? Alex.
• 1:17:14
  Alex Right. So first of all, you're sitting
• 1:17:17
  there and you're you're sort of shouting out at me to say, tell
• 1:17:21
  him. Let's tell him that, right?
• 1:17:22
  What made you make this? Well, I'll tell you the origin
• 1:17:26
  of the solar system was the, Gregor said.
• 1:17:29
  I'm buying a solar system and I said OK, that sounds good.
• 1:17:33
  I and then I was picturing 3 casks on top of each other as
• 1:17:37
  you might and then it turned up and it was 2 casks on the
• 1:17:40
  bottom, one cask on the top and a sort of triangle formation.
• 1:17:44
  And I said Gregor, I'm not sure how we're going to join these
• 1:17:46
  together and make them all flew into each other.
• 1:17:49
  And he said I don't know, but make it work.
• 1:17:53
  And then he went to play golf. True story.
• 1:18:00
  We're really getting an insight into what Gregor's like as a
• 1:18:03
  gaffer, aren't we? And then I made it work, so I.
• 1:18:08
  Don't know how long, how long ago was this?
• 1:18:11
  It's got to be at least two years.
• 1:18:12
  I don't know. All right, probably.
• 1:18:14
  So there's what, 2 percent, 5% of the whiskey is in copper
• 1:18:19
  pipes, which is joining the cast together, but the rest of the
• 1:18:23
  whiskey is in oak contact with these shed.
• 1:18:27
  These are quarter casks as well, we should say.
• 1:18:29
  So this is 3 interconnected Sherry quarter casks.
• 1:18:33
  So 95% of the whiskey is in contact with oak, but obviously.
• 1:18:38
  But according to the well, the Scotch Whiskey Association.
• 1:18:41
  You're not going to go for them again, are you?
• 1:18:42
  No, I love them, love them. But but part of part of what we
• 1:18:47
  mean, the great thing that Gregor did was he was sometimes
• 1:18:50
  forgiveness is better than permission.
• 1:18:52
  But in this case, we went the other way just to clarify what
• 1:18:55
  we can and can't do for the for the label, for the sake of the
• 1:18:58
  brand. One of the main things was,
• 1:19:00
  well, you're topping up also the copper pipes interfering as
• 1:19:04
  well. So you can't have anything
• 1:19:05
  interfering in the car. So it's not technically ageing,
• 1:19:08
  but you cannot stop the spirit contact with the wood.
• 1:19:14
  And it's been in there for, you know, some time and, you know,
• 1:19:18
  results speak for themselves and the end product.
• 1:19:21
  So anyway, it is what it is. So it's, but it's that, yeah.
• 1:19:25
  Yeah. I mean, it comes to selecting
• 1:19:27
  the spirit that actually goes in at the top.
• 1:19:29
  What, what, what? What do you?
• 1:19:31
  What's your thinking with that? That's a totally different story
• 1:19:34
  altogether and actually drawn in as to why we created this system
• 1:19:38
  in the 1st place, but. Well, let's hear it for our
• 1:19:40
  Salera engineer. Yes.
• 1:19:41
  Are you for hire? If there's anyone else that
• 1:19:44
  goes, I want the second Salera cast system.
• 1:19:47
  Well done. Thank you very much.
• 1:19:48
  I bet you mean there are really nice bends on the pipes there
• 1:19:52
  has to be serious. There you go.
• 1:19:54
  It's still watertight after 2 1/2 years and I'll get a base.
• 1:19:57
  So it has not leaked. Except for tonight where we've
• 1:20:01
  managed to get because this isn't normally bottled that
• 1:20:04
  castrate. So for to get to get an
• 1:20:07
  opportunity to try St. Bridges Kirk, but also from the
• 1:20:12
  only Salera cast system connected by copper pipes in
• 1:20:16
  Scotland. This is an opportunity to try
• 1:20:19
  that and also it's. Usually bold at 48 1/2%.
• 1:20:22
  This is a cask strength exclusive.
• 1:20:25
  Sample there we go exactly now stories podcast exclusive.
• 1:20:28
  Thank you so much live. So I really appreciate it now.
• 1:20:30
  What would you normally? So how do you select the casks
• 1:20:34
  the the liquid to go in to the casting regular?
• 1:20:37
  So it's a funny story that, so it's a year, years and years ago
• 1:20:41
  when I was doing the V rack and what you would normally do is
• 1:20:44
  you'd put like a like a 250 litre cask into a barique and
• 1:20:51
  the bariques are usually what, 180?
• 1:20:53
  So you'd always have like remnants.
• 1:20:55
  And when I was telling the the warehouse that was doing it,
• 1:21:00
  they would ask, oh, what do you want done with all these like 25
• 1:21:03
  litres or whatever. I'd say I'll just stick it in
• 1:21:05
  casks and we'll worry about it in the future.
• 1:21:08
  So I ended up with like seven of these casks that are all made-up
• 1:21:11
  of roughly the same components apart from they had one key
• 1:21:16
  issue and that I was filling new spirit Ben Nevis pity at the
• 1:21:21
  time. So I was like, well, there's not
• 1:21:23
  enough to go in a cast, just stick it in these 7 hoggies.
• 1:21:27
  So that sort of reset their age and now we're seven years on.
• 1:21:32
  So it was a case of trying to make money with old rope.
• 1:21:38
  Well. That would be great because and,
• 1:21:42
  and from a marketing perspective, then you know, how
• 1:21:47
  much do you shout about this? Because when you do shout about
• 1:21:51
  it, as we did, you get a lot of people going.
• 1:21:55
  I think you'll find. That that is not the only
• 1:21:58
  Selena. What about we've had one
• 1:22:00
  tonight? What about Glenn Ferry?
• 1:22:02
  But but so so do you guys shout a lot about it or do you just?
• 1:22:07
  I mean, actually when that it's almost like baiting in a way
• 1:22:11
  where we're saying, right, you've heard that word before,
• 1:22:13
  but you know where we heard it and what we're doing unique.
• 1:22:16
  And the Glenfedrick one's the automatic 1 because it is the
• 1:22:20
  well, Glenfedrick's the biggest selling single malt Scotch in
• 1:22:23
  the world. But you've also got other Indies
• 1:22:25
  who use the word Solera. One in particular where all
• 1:22:29
  they've done is the sourced casts from an old Solera system.
• 1:22:33
  Brought them into their warehouse, married whiskey's in
• 1:22:36
  there, bottled that and called it their solera whiskey.
• 1:22:39
  But it's not a solera system. Not a solera system.
• 1:22:42
  Yeah. So the whole idea of the
• 1:22:44
  pyramids. It's the copper pipes that
• 1:22:45
  really make it, isn't it? Well, I mean, and heres is and
• 1:22:48
  heres they don't have copper pipes, but the pyramid is there
• 1:22:52
  whereby they bottle the wine from the bottom half, only half
• 1:22:56
  and then they top it up from the one above and then the one above
• 1:22:59
  that and the one above that and then they put the youngest wine
• 1:23:01
  in at the top. So no, we're not quite there,
• 1:23:03
  but as close to that system as possible within the.
• 1:23:09
  I guess that's the other. Thing it goes down and then back
• 1:23:11
  up. Yeah, well, actually we've got a
• 1:23:14
  physics teacher in the house if anyone's got fighters.
• 1:23:18
  So. I was going to ask on a standard
• 1:23:22
  release, when you do bottle list for release, what percentage are
• 1:23:26
  you taking out of the solar each time roughly it's.
• 1:23:28
  Roughly about a cask size. It's roughly 1/4 cask.
• 1:23:31
  So about 1/3 of. I think that comes from maybe a
• 1:23:34
  lack of confidence in terms of, well we don't want to bottle 2
• 1:23:37
  cast worth because then that would empty 2/3 of the system.
• 1:23:42
  So it's always about trying to keep enough in the system.
• 1:23:46
  So it's always like really small runs.
• 1:23:48
  I think it's 150. I certainly want that that
• 1:23:51
  bottom cast the bottom right where we have the tap with the
• 1:23:55
  empty strong. Had to get a special IBC for
• 1:23:57
  that as well. Yeah, because it has to be a
• 1:23:59
  flat IBC to go under the. Tap.
• 1:24:01
  But what? Bought 1/2 for that?
• 1:24:04
  And then that's where the magic happens because we only bought
• 1:24:06
  1/2 of that and then it's refilling from the one next to
• 1:24:09
  it. It goes uphill like Alex said
• 1:24:11
  because of gravity and then the one at the top that half empties
• 1:24:14
  and then we top that back up with the same blend as we had 7
• 1:24:18
  casks of the hogs heads of the same blend.
• 1:24:21
  How? Much do you got that left?
• 1:24:22
  No, we're actually running low on that.
• 1:24:24
  So we'll actually need to construct.
• 1:24:26
  So maybe we'll speak to Greg. So you're good if it turns up on
• 1:24:32
  time, but but because that this is it is and do you notice, do
• 1:24:42
  you have to check it and notice differences in flame?
• 1:24:46
  Like obviously there's going to be an element of you want to
• 1:24:49
  keep some sort of through consistency, but equally you
• 1:24:52
  also want them to be a little bit inconsistent so that when it
• 1:24:56
  comes to batches of the Saint Bridges cart, people can say
• 1:24:59
  I've got this. Batch number six, Yeah, well,
• 1:25:01
  we'll. Do that in two years time we
• 1:25:03
  because we've got to keep a bottle of everything we bottle
• 1:25:05
  for at least three years by law just as a line sample.
• 1:25:08
  So we have one of each batch when when we've exhausted the
• 1:25:13
  stock we have, we are going to do a tasting.
• 1:25:16
  Yeah, I'm just saying this right now, by the way, It's on record.
• 1:25:18
  With the Whiskey Stories podcast, with the way.
• 1:25:20
  Do you want it on the record? Or some other well you taste.
• 1:25:24
  Podcast. Is there any other one?
• 1:25:27
  No, I don't. There's not another one.
• 1:25:29
  Not another whiskey podcast with that.
• 1:25:32
  To do that, we'll have batch 1, batch 1/2, I think 99, maybe
• 1:25:36
  we'll get to I think 8 or 9 before we exhaust the stock
• 1:25:39
  we've bought and just to see the difference.
• 1:25:41
  But you know, obviously we, we know because we've been there
• 1:25:43
  since day one. This is what will be eventually
• 1:25:47
  batch 6, obviously reduced down to 48.5 when it's bottled.
• 1:25:52
  But already this is the first time I've noticed this since six
• 1:25:56
  months ago when we bottled. Batch you haven't noticed this 5
• 1:25:59
  because I just poured it myself. Yeah, thing.
• 1:26:01
  No, I know I have no in the wood because they're wearing my left.
• 1:26:04
  So you know I'm learning as to go here.
• 1:26:07
  We are working here that's. Working I working.
• 1:26:11
  We used to bottle it every quarter, but we've paused that
• 1:26:14
  for a little bit. So this next batch will have the
• 1:26:16
  most wood contact just to let you know.
• 1:26:18
  Oh, right, so. This has had six months rather
• 1:26:21
  than the three there's. No ageing and you Scotch
• 1:26:24
  whiskers. No, no, no, no.
• 1:26:25
  No, you touched on kind of the weirdness of this.
• 1:26:27
  There's because in, in other companies, sillier system is
• 1:26:31
  there for consistency and it flows through all these casks
• 1:26:34
  and it's the same amount of time.
• 1:26:35
  But whereas we're an independent Butler.
• 1:26:37
  So we want to mark out the distinction between the batches
• 1:26:39
  and yeah, I think these batches are coming through now.
• 1:26:43
  They've been in the longest. So you've got more of that.
• 1:26:47
  And these are quarter casks, cherry casks.
• 1:26:49
  You can really get the copper on it, can you?
• 1:26:52
  Really cleans it out. Really.
• 1:26:54
  Cleans it out. You can really appreciate the
• 1:26:55
  but. My feeling.
• 1:26:57
  You can really appreciate. How tight those right angles are
• 1:27:00
  in the pipes. You mean extra copper contact at
• 1:27:03
  the end of the day as well? You cannot.
• 1:27:05
  You know, you're getting more wood, more copper and then a
• 1:27:07
  salera. Fantastic.
• 1:27:08
  This time it's not leaked for the last two years.
• 1:27:10
  Yeah, you're really proud of that.
• 1:27:11
  You. You've done well, you've done
• 1:27:12
  well. Brilliant.
• 1:27:13
  Well, look, whilst we're having that, because normally you know,
• 1:27:17
  we finish the finish the tasting on a peated DRAM, but you'll
• 1:27:21
  notice that the last two drams are actually peaked because
• 1:27:23
  there's quite a bit of peatedness in this.
• 1:27:25
  St. Bridges, Curt and the Aford
• 1:27:27
  mentioned again, not straying too far away from small
• 1:27:31
  conspiracies are controversies. The next DRAM then, Gregor, is a
• 1:27:37
  new release of something similar to what you've done before.
• 1:27:40
  We've already mentioned. Let's hear it for the sole
• 1:27:42
  engineer guys. So this is Finn Lassie.
• 1:27:51
  So this is Inchdarney. Inchdarney, however you wish to
• 1:27:57
  pronounce it peated make. So this would have been, I
• 1:28:01
  acquired this as new spirit and I would have acquired it seven
• 1:28:06
  years ago, obviously. So we've continued to buy new
• 1:28:10
  spirit from this five basis still there, which is incredible
• 1:28:15
  stuff that Scott can do there. And we can only be ever thankful
• 1:28:19
  for what Ian's done at that fantastic facility.
• 1:28:25
  I did try and ask him if he'd sell us some of the rye and he
• 1:28:27
  said no. But in the meantime we've got
• 1:28:30
  this. So this is one of the oldest new
• 1:28:34
  spirits that we've matured. We originally got this and the
• 1:28:39
  Fife Whiskey Festival said that they wanted to bought all this
• 1:28:42
  cask. So we gave them half the cask.
• 1:28:45
  They bought it for the Fife festival last year.
• 1:28:47
  We were like, well, what can we do with the let the rest of the
• 1:28:50
  cask? So we put it in a Madeira.
• 1:28:53
  Cash and ABV. And yeah, so this is if you've
• 1:28:58
  ever tried the Fife Festival exclusive, this is the same
• 1:29:02
  spirit, but it's been finished in the data.
• 1:29:04
  It's. About a year in the.
• 1:29:05
  Same same cask as as the one you were talking earlier on.
• 1:29:08
  Yeah, which we tried when we went last visit and your, your.
• 1:29:11
  Label printer was fixed obviously by this time because
• 1:29:13
  there's no region. And unfortunately this one was
• 1:29:16
  going out to the wider world, so we had to be by the book.
• 1:29:19
  But yeah. Global export this, yeah.
• 1:29:20
  So the the one. Yeah, Karen and Justine, Fife
• 1:29:24
  Whiskey Festival, the Cominche Warehouse.
• 1:29:26
  We had all these bells and whistles, Sherry matured, rum
• 1:29:32
  matured and stir knees and they picked the only unreacted that
• 1:29:38
  we had. But you know what, it was
• 1:29:40
  fantastic. You tasted it lemony, you know,
• 1:29:43
  a bit like the the Lindores whereby you've got a lot of
• 1:29:47
  distillery character. I actually love what they did.
• 1:29:49
  But then, yeah, we had half a cask left.
• 1:29:51
  We had to get it out of the original Hogs Head, put it into
• 1:29:54
  the Madeira and this is the the other half a year later.
• 1:29:57
  Yeah, with a different tint on it.
• 1:29:59
  So. And it's it's interesting,
• 1:30:00
  Gregor, because you're one of the few independent bottlers
• 1:30:03
  that we've had on again, who have talked about laying down
• 1:30:08
  spirit. You know, we see even speaking
• 1:30:12
  to the guys from Adelphi, the last one talking about how the,
• 1:30:17
  the Adelphi model is just what we get our hands on with as
• 1:30:22
  quickly as possible. Get it, get it in, get it turned
• 1:30:24
  around and get it out. And that's the model rather than
• 1:30:26
  laying down casks and putting that in, because that's a big
• 1:30:31
  commitment into the business. And at what stage when you're
• 1:30:34
  going through the startup of Lady of the Glen, you know,
• 1:30:38
  you've sold your car, you've got casks, you're going through all
• 1:30:41
  this process, you've when do you start making a decision to go,
• 1:30:45
  We're going to have to, I'm going to start putting casks
• 1:30:47
  down because it's a big business decision, isn't it?
• 1:30:49
  Because they cost a lot of money.
• 1:30:50
  So you have to put that money out.
• 1:30:51
  Now, as you've said, they don't actually cost that much money to
• 1:30:54
  store, but they cost a lot or it costs cash flow to get that
• 1:30:59
  stock in and then to make that commitment to spend that money
• 1:31:02
  and then just sit on it. It must be quite, quite
• 1:31:05
  difficult to do and a big step to move into that that area as a
• 1:31:08
  bottler. Yeah, it probably took roughly
• 1:31:11
  about the same time as Paula started when we started
• 1:31:14
  acquiring new spirit. Obviously it was the year
• 1:31:17
  before. But if you imagine like if
• 1:31:20
  you're bottling casks and you're doing outruns, a natural part of
• 1:31:24
  that is that when every cask you bottle, you're emptying A cask.
• 1:31:28
  So you're ending up with loads and well, not loads, but you're
• 1:31:31
  ending up with like what, 5 or 6 empty casks and they're probably
• 1:31:35
  in quite a good condition. So you think, well, what is the
• 1:31:38
  cheapest thing that I can put in that that's going to return
• 1:31:42
  value in years time? And you think, well, new spirit.
• 1:31:46
  So then you're trying to reach out, but you can't go and speak
• 1:31:50
  to like big distillers because they're wanting big commitments.
• 1:31:53
  So you speak to independents and they're willing to like talk the
• 1:31:58
  same language. And so for years, that's how the
• 1:32:01
  relationship's built. And the longer you go, the more
• 1:32:05
  casks that I've got are empty and you can just.
• 1:32:08
  Keep refilling them. And it means that, yeah.
• 1:32:10
  So I mean, it makes see, when you're breaking into that, it
• 1:32:12
  makes a lot of sense. But but you end up with that
• 1:32:15
  decision again of when is it ready?
• 1:32:17
  Because it's slightly different when you you know, when the
• 1:32:20
  business model is we buy a cask, we either re rack it or we don't
• 1:32:24
  re rack it and then we sell it on.
• 1:32:26
  When you fill in new make, it's a case of you know, you know,
• 1:32:29
  when you've not bought the cask new and it's a case of right, it
• 1:32:34
  makes the most business sense to just sell it.
• 1:32:36
  Now when you've got the new making, you know it's a case of
• 1:32:39
  right, when's it ready and how long are we going to sit on it
• 1:32:41
  is a different, it's a whole different decision, isn't it?
• 1:32:45
  Well, it gives. It gives us options at the end
• 1:32:47
  of the day. The thing that impressed me most
• 1:32:48
  about when we were talking in the pot still before the kebab
• 1:32:53
  about whether or not it was the right decision thing that really
• 1:32:56
  appealed to me was so Gregor's policy long before I joined in
• 1:33:00
  terms of buying young stock, but you know, for the future and the
• 1:33:04
  portfolio and even today, we're still very much portfolio
• 1:33:08
  driven. So, yeah, I mean, we're talking
• 1:33:09
  about new whiskeys representing where we're at as a business
• 1:33:13
  just now and our take on what's a good whiskey and what we
• 1:33:17
  should be put in bottle. But tomorrow, you know, we're
• 1:33:21
  buying 5-6 year old whiskey filling new make into the casks
• 1:33:24
  for the future, but also buying things like cling leash
• 1:33:27
  Lindores, Yeah. And bottling them in the same
• 1:33:30
  week that we acquired them. Yeah.
• 1:33:31
  So it's it's that. It's having a different, you've
• 1:33:33
  got 2 elements. You've got the stuff you're
• 1:33:34
  putting away for a rainy day. Yeah, it's balanced.
• 1:33:36
  It's balanced, Greg. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:33:38
  It's I don't think. That's a way around you.
• 1:33:40
  It's a. Great way of putting that, Greg.
• 1:33:41
  Actually, really, it's balanced, isn't it?
• 1:33:43
  Yeah, I'm trying to beat my record of again, under 65, not
• 1:33:47
  over. And when it when it comes to a
• 1:33:48
  bit from a business model point of view, then we've talked about
• 1:33:51
  pricing and stuff like that. Do you have a business model
• 1:33:55
  that there's one market that you'll target or will you look
• 1:33:59
  at going up and up and up the ladder of markets that you can
• 1:34:02
  because will you? Well, well, we can we see lady
• 1:34:05
  The Glen releases that are in the two £300 mark that only Chaz
• 1:34:08
  Cook can afford to purchase. I don't think we missed that
• 1:34:12
  flex earlier, Chaz, but or is it a case of you'll always maintain
• 1:34:17
  when you're putting releases out, you'll keep them at a level
• 1:34:21
  that you're happy for the consumer to be paying?
• 1:34:23
  Well, we try and always react to market conditions as well, so
• 1:34:28
  you can't release whiskey that is not going to sell.
• 1:34:31
  So we have done the releases that are like the two or £300
• 1:34:36
  wise for Charles Bruce. And touch like.
• 1:34:41
  Can't get on it. No, it's no end, but so yeah.
• 1:34:46
  Well. So, so you have So what like for
• 1:34:48
  example, what have you bottled in the past that that sort of
• 1:34:50
  goes to that level And well, what was your sort of what, what
• 1:34:53
  was the feedback on it or what was the sort of model of it?
• 1:35:01
  Cappardona really, right. So if you beat Gregor at golf,
• 1:35:09
  you get somebody at the back of his car.
• 1:35:20
  What was it? What, what, what kind of things
• 1:35:24
  have you bottled where you're looking at that sort of price
• 1:35:26
  point? And I mean, we've done little
• 1:35:28
  mills, we've done Port Charlotte's, which are aged
• 1:35:32
  Paulo no more. Yeah.
• 1:35:35
  I mean, in terms of putting a quarterly, quarterly outrun
• 1:35:39
  together, normally we're trying to tick boxes being ultimately
• 1:35:42
  good whiskey and. It's a free product as well
• 1:35:45
  with. Balance and the glass, but also
• 1:35:49
  ticket boxes in terms of, yeah, we want, you know, a basic one
• 1:35:54
  in terms of price point, but also, you know, bourbon cask,
• 1:35:57
  Sherry cask, something exciting, unknown distillery, but also
• 1:36:00
  normally higher end one as well. We decided for this release, but
• 1:36:05
  we're just going to focus on the quality of the liquid when it
• 1:36:08
  was ready. But yeah, I mean, back in
• 1:36:09
  quarter one, we released the Port Charlotte, the 2020 year
• 1:36:13
  old Port Charlotte, which was in that sort OF250280 point.
• 1:36:18
  The year before we had the 21 year old teen unique, which you
• 1:36:21
  know is OK, 180 whatever. And then earlier last year as
• 1:36:26
  well. I've been nervous 26 year old
• 1:36:28
  from the sweet spot of Ben nervous in terms of 96 to 98
• 1:36:32
  where, you know, the magic happened.
• 1:36:34
  Apparently no one really knows why, but it was certainly there
• 1:36:36
  when you taste that whiskey. But yeah, so it's just and and
• 1:36:40
  that that's a total different dynamic of audience at the end
• 1:36:44
  of the day compared to, yeah, you know, the 12 year old NGR
• 1:36:47
  Glensby. But that can also be your
• 1:36:49
  marketing for you though, because what that does do is
• 1:36:52
  that attracts a different type of potentially a different type
• 1:36:56
  of whiskey drinker to your brand, because suddenly people
• 1:36:59
  can say, by the way, it ticks a few boxes here.
• 1:37:02
  The number one, it's a distillery that people recognise
• 1:37:04
  and it's an age that gets people's attention and then
• 1:37:07
  suddenly goes, who are these guys?
• 1:37:10
  I've never it's like what we talked about to a friend
• 1:37:12
  Thompson where he said about, you know, he's done 50 year old
• 1:37:16
  Claudia limits and things like that.
• 1:37:17
  And he can say he goes that that sometimes puts him on the map.
• 1:37:20
  But what he also the habit at this with is he actually sees
• 1:37:24
  more people starting at the younger stuff and working their
• 1:37:26
  way up getting that, getting people because there's two types
• 1:37:29
  of people. The whiskey drinker of that set
• 1:37:31
  of of like someone like myself, I wouldn't go for the 200 LB
• 1:37:36
  mark bottle until I knew who you were, until I trusted your
• 1:37:39
  brand, until I understood what you guys stood for.
• 1:37:42
  So maybe something that maybe like a 12 year old Klein leash
• 1:37:46
  grabs my attention. I try it, I like it, I try
• 1:37:48
  something else, I like it. And then it's like, oh, they've
• 1:37:50
  done this, they've done that. Once that trust built up, you're
• 1:37:52
  taking me up that ladder to try and get me to that point where I
• 1:37:55
  would would spend a few £100 on a bottle.
• 1:37:58
  I mean like when before Paul started, I did a, a Macallan
• 1:38:03
  release, the first and last Macallan release and it was a
• 1:38:06
  Macallan and APX Octave and it was going to be like what, 50
• 1:38:11
  bottles. So I released it, it was all
• 1:38:14
  through the website and I thought this is going to be
• 1:38:17
  really easy money because at the time it was going to be what,
• 1:38:19
  £1000 per bottle online And it was what, what 2020 years old
• 1:38:26
  Macallan single cask. And I sat on the majority of
• 1:38:30
  those bottles for eight months. Nothing really happened.
• 1:38:35
  But then one time this, this guy got in touch with me, he's like,
• 1:38:39
  I see you've got McAllen on your website.
• 1:38:42
  Would you give me a discount and I'll, you know, I'll buy a
• 1:38:47
  bottle. I was like, I'm not really
• 1:38:48
  interested in giving a discount. I paid a premium for the cask.
• 1:38:50
  We bottled it. Sorry about that.
• 1:38:58
  Literally within seven days, the whole thing sold out.
• 1:39:01
  Really. Because it was shared on one
• 1:39:02
  whiskey group. Yeah, there you go.
• 1:39:04
  So that's my feeling is like independent Botlin is is really
• 1:39:09
  small, but at the same time like the the industry and the markets
• 1:39:14
  available. If you get like an amazing
• 1:39:16
  market and some country, I'm not going to name names, but you can
• 1:39:21
  just send everything there. And like we're all excited about
• 1:39:25
  in India in the same way that we're all really excited about
• 1:39:28
  China and everyone gets excited about certain markets.
• 1:39:32
  But genuinely for independent bottlers, like you could get a
• 1:39:35
  market and that could be just that could be it, like your
• 1:39:38
  whole thing just goes there. And when a really important
• 1:39:43
  point is when we first opened the bottling hall, it was what
• 1:39:46
  it was just after COVID. And there was a really big issue
• 1:39:50
  because we were getting so much demand from markets in China,
• 1:39:53
  South Korea, Germany, lots of places.
• 1:39:58
  And we were saying we need to put a limit on this because if
• 1:40:01
  we dedicate ourselves to 1 market, then we're going to end
• 1:40:05
  up being so dependent if that market fails.
• 1:40:08
  And a lot of these markets in the long term did fail.
• 1:40:12
  And so we're constantly having to adapt, find new markets.
• 1:40:16
  That's what independent bottling is now.
• 1:40:17
  It's like finding new markets, building relationships and
• 1:40:21
  selling food products. Brilliant.
• 1:40:24
  I was just like I said, that's brilliant.
• 1:40:27
  That's the best, you know, Right.
• 1:40:31
  We've got another question. We're here.
• 1:40:35
  Oh, right. I'm intrigued as to what your
• 1:40:39
  new markets? Are so we're talking.
• 1:40:41
  About Germany and Singapore, Hong Kong as being traditional
• 1:40:44
  markets, what are your new markets?
• 1:40:46
  UK. Anyone who wants to buy or
• 1:40:52
  whiskey, there's a new market. You know where?
• 1:40:54
  Yeah, adaptable. Hungary is a new market, ash.
• 1:40:58
  We just, we just take on, yeah, So what I think the the market
• 1:41:01
  and the well, Eastern Europe is certainly one that's it's, it's
• 1:41:08
  going against the grain, pun intended.
• 1:41:10
  Yeah. Hungry for more?
• 1:41:12
  Yeah. I was in Churchville.
• 1:41:16
  In terms of where the markets at, well, I mean markets are not
• 1:41:19
  declining that this is, we've spoke about this before, but
• 1:41:21
  it's certainly we're back to where we would expect to be in
• 1:41:25
  this term. Obviously a COVID happened, we
• 1:41:28
  had the spike but plateaued a wee bit.
• 1:41:30
  But one of the few markets are still growing is that kind of
• 1:41:33
  Eastern Europe. So we're trying to tie into
• 1:41:35
  that. But again, we're not alone a
• 1:41:39
  small independent voters trying to find a way, you know,
• 1:41:42
  competition is rife, but also trying to get that message
• 1:41:44
  across as we always do, as I do whenever I travel, trying to
• 1:41:49
  explain what an independent bottler is.
• 1:41:51
  Didn't have that need to do that tonight.
• 1:41:53
  But that is mostly my tastings is what is an independent
• 1:41:57
  bottler? What do we do?
• 1:41:58
  What makes us unique and why is our 10 year old, you know, more,
• 1:42:02
  better, more expensive than the distillery equivalent?
• 1:42:06
  And it's that message that we're trying to get across.
• 1:42:08
  So any, any new markets, it's it's that challenge.
• 1:42:11
  Let's go through the the the drams that we've had you get, we
• 1:42:13
  always give you 2 votes. We always give you 2 votes.
• 1:42:16
  So let's go. We'll see.
• 1:42:18
  How did the clay leash? Clay leash for us?
• 1:42:20
  OK, well, a big, big winner. First DRAM.
• 1:42:23
  First DRAM as well. Brilliant.
• 1:42:24
  Good. You're not even counting them on
• 1:42:26
  to the second. Aye, Maybe you're not going to
• 1:42:28
  end up on to the Lindo's Abbey. Then how about the Lindo's
• 1:42:32
  Abbey? OK, like the Lindo's Abbey over
• 1:42:33
  there. OK, half and half.
• 1:42:36
  What about the Glenn? Spay.
• 1:42:39
  OK, so that's your second vote. Done.
• 1:42:41
  That's you done. Right.
• 1:42:43
  OK, inch Gower. Then who?
• 1:42:44
  Like the inch Gower? OK, a few hands up for that.
• 1:42:46
  Right on the one of one St. Bridges Curt Salerika system
• 1:42:51
  vote. Vote in brackets.
• 1:42:53
  OK, right. We'll not be releasing that
• 1:42:54
  anytime soon. And what about the thing?
• 1:42:58
  Lastly, the last one there, the last tram.
• 1:43:04
  We've just been talking about it for the last 5-10 minutes,
• 1:43:12
  right? Well, look, on that note, like
• 1:43:14
  you've been listening to Whiskey Stories podcast, Sydney Bottle
• 1:43:16
  Spot with Lady of England. Let's give a big shout out, a
• 1:43:24
  big thank you to to Gregor and Paul for coming in.
• 1:43:27
  Absolutely fantastic. Big thanks to our man over there
• 1:43:30
  who's the engineer of Salerika, Alex Salerika sister.
• 1:43:34
  Brilliant, well done. And of course, a huge thank you
• 1:43:36
  to Diggers Leaf for hosting us this evening.
• 1:43:39
  I've been absolutely fantastic. But thank you to you guys for
• 1:43:41
  coming along and supporting us. Well done.
• 1:43:43
  Hope you enjoyed yourself. Thank you very much.
• 1:43:44
  God bless you.