Latest / Whisky Stories Podcast / In the Warehouse with James Zorab - The Lowland Bond

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In the Warehouse with James Zorab - The Lowland Bond · Whisky Stories Podcast

• 0:00
  Smell of this place is fantastic.
• 0:02
  Isn't it right I guess you know to do it clap us in welcome to
• 0:07
  the whiskey stories podcast. Those are very high, James.
• 0:11
  I'm you're, you're a bit more comfortable with the height at
• 0:14
  the moment than I am. You get.
• 0:16
  Used to. It I'm happy man, I, I'm, I, I I
• 0:22
  I don't want. I'll try and lean further I
• 0:24
  guess. You're seem to be a bit more
• 0:26
  comfortable with the height. Of my height.
• 0:27
  I'm got used to it actually. I don't think anyone's ever
• 0:30
  painted on the podcast before, but I am poking my head out a
• 0:33
  little bit. I'm trying my hardest not to
• 0:35
  look down. Welcome along the Whiskey
• 0:36
  Stories podcast, myself, Graeme Colgard.
• 0:39
  And we are not in the athletic arms, Angus.
• 0:41
  We are not in our usual spot truck.
• 0:43
  We're not down the stairs and diggers.
• 0:45
  No, we are. We're in a pretty big room.
• 0:48
  We are in a big room. A big room full of casks full of
• 0:51
  whiskey. It is.
• 0:52
  It's the podcast episode I've been waiting for.
• 0:55
  It is the warehouse episode and what a warehouse to be in I
• 0:59
  guess. Absolutely.
• 0:59
  We are currently standing in what I believe to be the tallest
• 1:03
  racking system in the Scotch whiskey industry, which makes
• 1:07
  this the tallest racking Scotch whiskey warehouse in the world.
• 1:13
  That's what that's what we're told.
• 1:15
  I've not been to the mall. I don't know if you guys, but
• 1:17
  we're definitely the tallest I'd say in Europe.
• 1:19
  The guys who built it, physical systems, biggest they've ever
• 1:23
  done really. So wow, yeah, it's exciting to
• 1:26
  be to be part of. We get a lot of questions asked
• 1:28
  about it. We don't get a plaque from the
• 1:30
  Guinness Book or records or anything sadly.
• 1:31
  But we can put up because we. Well, first of all, James Zorab,
• 1:34
  welcome back to the Whiskey Stories podcast.
• 1:36
  You were on Put your other hat on with your other hat as an
• 1:40
  independent bottler. Yeah.
• 1:42
  But you're. You are.
• 1:44
  What's your title? Here site operations managers
• 1:46
  that the site. Operations Manager, but more
• 1:49
  importantly and most importantly, Chuck Cares gaffer.
• 1:52
  Yes, yeah. Chuck, it's bringing, as James
• 1:55
  said to the LR, We walked in. It's bring your podcast to work
• 1:59
  day. How are you, Chuck?
• 2:00
  Alright man, I'm good. Yeah.
• 2:02
  Did we get to see you in a completely different light here
• 2:04
  because this is your workplace? Yeah, quite annoying I've.
• 2:06
  Actually managed to keep you at work for a couple of hours
• 2:08
  before you were supposed. To leave, be respectful, yeah.
• 2:11
  Around the boss. Well, wait, but it's been
• 2:13
  putting. This on your timesheet.
• 2:14
  It's 8:30 in the morning as we're, as we're recorded, this
• 2:17
  is 8:30 in the morning. This is track's a bit of
• 2:19
  starting to shift, but we thought we'd get a bit early
• 2:21
  getting working. But no, it's great.
• 2:22
  James, thank you so much for for inviting us along.
• 2:25
  It's great. And we've, we've, we've been
• 2:26
  doing quite a little bit of content whilst we've been here.
• 2:29
  We've already sampled a couple of casks, just for clarity.
• 2:32
  It's not half the half, eight in the morning.
• 2:34
  We. Had the owner's permission as
• 2:36
  well. We did have the owner's
• 2:37
  permission as well to sample these cast, but it's great.
• 2:39
  We're in a we're in a warehouse now.
• 2:40
  You mentioned not being able to get a, a, a Guinness Booker
• 2:44
  records accreditation or plaque or anything like that.
• 2:47
  But as our discussion on a couple of weeks ago, we did the
• 2:52
  conversation Chuck where it was like the seven wonders of the
• 2:54
  whiskey world all. Right.
• 2:56
  Yeah, and we got someone got in touch, I forget the name, and I
• 3:00
  will need to check it on our Instagram.
• 3:01
  We worked at Glengiri and we talked about the Glengiri line
• 3:04
  arm. All right.
• 3:05
  And Ross, I said like the Glengiri line arm is the
• 3:08
  steepest line arm he's ever seen.
• 3:10
  Well, I wonder if we'll get a World Heritage plaque.
• 3:12
  I'd apply to him. Maybe not, but if you get a
• 3:14
  Whiskey Stories heritage plaque, you can have that.
• 3:16
  So we can we can try and get you 1.
• 3:17
  Of them, what colour would it be?
• 3:19
  What colour would you like? We're just making them up.
• 3:21
  What's a? What's a line?
• 3:22
  ARM it needs to be Ivis so. What's what's the line arm?
• 3:26
  A line arm is the arm coming off the stealth.
• 3:29
  All right. OK.
• 3:31
  Yeah, yeah. Welcome to the Whiskey Podcast.
• 3:33
  I will. No, I know.
• 3:35
  We're not there. We were there.
• 3:37
  We were talking about. I know, but the steepest line
• 3:40
  arm he's ever seen, right? OK.
• 3:41
  Yeah, Yeah. We don't have any examples for
• 3:43
  that, you for that. Here.
• 3:44
  No, but we. But this is this could get off
• 3:46
  one of the seven wonders of the whiskey world.
• 3:48
  This. We're in there.
• 3:49
  Yeah. As Thistle Rackin have said,
• 3:51
  tallest. Yeah.
• 3:52
  But James, Yeah, you're the you're the man behind all this.
• 3:55
  What is it like coming into work every day, walking through the
• 3:58
  door and going? Yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty
• 4:03
  good. Whenever you've any kind of
• 4:05
  stress happens, you can just go and get lost in the rack and,
• 4:08
  and you've got the gentle aroma of, of, of the cast mature in a
• 4:11
  way to kind of soothe you. It's really, really quiet
• 4:13
  because there's a lot of sound deadening just from the cast.
• 4:16
  So if you love whiskey, it's a lovely place to be.
• 4:19
  And the temperature's always fairly constant.
• 4:22
  I think the top, because it's so high, it's got a slightly so
• 4:24
  microclimate, I think. Yeah, we can get into that later
• 4:27
  if you if you want to. Well, yeah, no, it's really good
• 4:30
  fun. We're based in Glenrothes and
• 4:32
  Fife. I live in Leith, sort of, sort
• 4:35
  of Chuck. So yeah, it's the the morning
• 4:37
  traffic to get here can be maybe a little bit stressful, but as
• 4:40
  soon as you're here just or just washes away.
• 4:42
  Well, if they say, you know, I've said it plenty of times
• 4:44
  that Fife some of the best barley in the world for making
• 4:48
  making Scotch whisky. But what we're seeing an awful
• 4:50
  lot more of is Fife being a real hub for whisky maturation
• 4:55
  effectively is the, the the bonded warehouses in Fife not
• 4:59
  too far away from here. And it's actually as as we were
• 5:01
  coming in today, it's the first time I've ever seen it from that
• 5:05
  area. But if you're coming through
• 5:07
  Clooney of people who are listening to this, there's the
• 5:08
  Clooney bond, which is owned by Diageo.
• 5:10
  And when you drive past that, well, when you drive past it,
• 5:13
  you just see the entrance in the driveway and it's it actually
• 5:16
  almost looks like a military base or something.
• 5:18
  You're like, you know, find well that.
• 5:20
  Little gate. Yeah, and the gate that you're
• 5:22
  going through, you're not supposed to go through that gate
• 5:23
  unless you're supposed to be going into there.
• 5:26
  I don't know how far the road that you drive in off the road,
• 5:28
  main road goes, but then it isn't until you turn off at the
• 5:31
  King Lassie Junction and you're coming back.
• 5:32
  If you look to your right as you're heading into Glen Rothes,
• 5:35
  you see, I think it's like. It's just vast.
• 5:38
  It is. It is.
• 5:39
  It's absolutely mind boggling. I mean, not, not, you know,
• 5:42
  we're just in one warehouse and OK, it's absolutely huge, but
• 5:46
  they've got dozens of warehouses.
• 5:48
  And that, that's, that's one location in Fife that they've
• 5:50
  got, if they're driving through to Saint Andrews and you go past
• 5:53
  the Azure and leave and, and you see that now that's just, that's
• 5:56
  the Azure. We know it's the biggest in the
• 5:58
  world. So that probably has the highest
• 6:00
  volume of whiskey there. But at the same time there's
• 6:02
  there's plenty of other bonded warehouses in the Fife area as
• 6:05
  well. Isn't it?
• 6:05
  Yeah, they're all popping up. But obviously there's there's
• 6:07
  dip in some industries leaves vast warehouses open.
• 6:10
  And if you're not putting rack and if you're palletising, then
• 6:14
  all you have to do is get sort of a bit, you must see you get
• 6:16
  the the rights, fire alarms and stuff and security and you can
• 6:20
  just stack your stack your pallets.
• 6:22
  Yeah, because it's crazy to be a few.
• 6:24
  A few weeks ago we were just down the road at Inch Derny and
• 6:27
  we went into their warehouse and that is palletized.
• 6:29
  That is when casts are sitting upright on pallets on top of
• 6:34
  each other. Yeah, stacked up.
• 6:35
  That's different to what you've got here.
• 6:38
  So this is what would you call. This well, this is CAS racking.
• 6:42
  This is yeah. So you mentioned Thistle
• 6:44
  racking. They're one systems, Yeah,
• 6:45
  Thistle. System yeah so they're one of
• 6:47
  the only there's I think there's maybe two or three companies
• 6:49
  that specialized in doing yeah this style of racking because as
• 6:53
  as we'll show you as you can see the rack the casks are on their
• 6:56
  on their sides they're rolled in now we.
• 6:59
  This means the access is easier than palletized racking.
• 7:02
  Doesn't say. Yeah, we've got capacity of
• 7:05
  about 20,000. We could get more in here every
• 7:09
  palletized, but we like to try and cater for if you got someone
• 7:14
  with one or two casks, pride and Joy, you bought them for your
• 7:16
  kids for when they they hit 18 or 21, whatever.
• 7:20
  We can see that both ends of every cask.
• 7:23
  There's no outward pressure on any casks when it's in the
• 7:25
  racking. So we can see every aspect of
• 7:28
  it. If you put your cask in a pallet
• 7:31
  warehouse, obviously not just in them, you'll have the benefits.
• 7:35
  It gets stacked at the back and you may not be able to see, you
• 7:39
  know what's going on with it. If it springs a leak, is it
• 7:41
  going to get found? We talked, we talked about that
• 7:44
  when we were there and we've talked about different racking
• 7:47
  systems because of course, I think when you look at the
• 7:50
  racking systems of cast now you've got dunnage.
• 7:52
  Yes, Dunnage. Which is like your traditional
• 7:54
  warehouse and where you've got Castor.
• 7:55
  On the. Floor usually only about 3-2
• 7:58
  casts on top of each other, yeah.
• 8:00
  And then you've got like you say, you've got palletised and
• 8:03
  then you've got racking, cast racking where they're on their,
• 8:05
  on their sites like this. And each will have its own
• 8:08
  benefit. And you could look at this and
• 8:10
  say from a, from a point of view, yes, in this size of
• 8:14
  warehouse, you could from a business point of view have said
• 8:17
  we could, we could palletise each, each one.
• 8:20
  And then you were talking about whether it's 6 per pallet, you
• 8:23
  can start them high 5-6 depending on how, how you want
• 8:26
  to go. But as we talked about it then
• 8:28
  sternly 1, I think they they said you take into consideration
• 8:31
  that there will be lossage, there'll be a higher loss rate.
• 8:34
  Of liquidity. From that, but when you're a
• 8:37
  distillery producing liquid, millions of millions of mills of
• 8:41
  litres, yes, it'll be annoying if you lose some, but it's your
• 8:43
  liquid that you've lost that you can you're remaking.
• 8:46
  And the advantage of being able to hold more makes the economy
• 8:49
  of it. But as if it's me and I own 1
• 8:51
  cask and I give it to you guys and maybe that cask is 25 years
• 8:55
  old and it's a big pride and joy.
• 8:57
  Once that's gone, it's gone. So maybe having this, but at the
• 8:59
  same time we were at the Glenfarcliff Distillery, we were
• 9:03
  and there. Still, everything is damaged
• 9:05
  there, or I think apart from one or two warehouses, but
• 9:07
  everything is damaged. And we've had Chuck, Chuck, you,
• 9:10
  we've had you running around this warehouse today.
• 9:12
  Yeah. Finding casks, pulling them out,
• 9:15
  letting us draw samples out of them, going, Nah, it's not
• 9:18
  right. Go and get another one.
• 9:20
  Chuck. You've been on that forklift,
• 9:23
  You've been up and down these stairs, everything like that.
• 9:25
  Nah, maybe worked for my time. Exactly.
• 9:28
  But being here, I suppose it might have been hard work, but
• 9:33
  you can imagine that's four people to get a casket and out
• 9:37
  on a dunnage warehouse. Yeah, if you're suddenly talking
• 9:39
  about what? A Hogs Head?
• 9:40
  What's a Hogs Head holding? 250 litres.
• 9:42
  And what's that weighing roughly?
• 9:43
  About two 300 kilograms maybe? Or maybe longer.
• 9:46
  Yeah, weighing went full about yeah, over 300.
• 9:49
  Yeah, so 300 kilograms with liquid sloshing around.
• 9:53
  It's easy when you can just take a forklift up to an end and get
• 9:56
  and get it moved to your forks and taken down.
• 9:57
  Yeah, well, I mean, in theory it would take with the way we store
• 10:01
  it, you'd be 13 casts away from where you want to be.
• 10:04
  Like for finding a cast, we hopefully only have to move at
• 10:07
  most 13. Casts but again, Max.
• 10:09
  Yeah, but you can imagine if that's done it style.
• 10:12
  Yeah. Oh, no, no.
• 10:13
  Absolutely. And you're suddenly saying
• 10:14
  right, truck, because I think Greg Urquhart, who we've just
• 10:18
  done a little bit of content with earlier today, was sort of
• 10:22
  saying that you sent you a list of 80.
• 10:25
  Yeah, I just arrived this morning.
• 10:31
  It's probably going to be a week long job at least to get it
• 10:34
  done. So I mean, generally speaking
• 10:37
  with maybe not so much when you get a delivery from one customer
• 10:41
  such as Greg of 80 cast samples, you're trying to get it done
• 10:43
  within 5 days and sent off to these people.
• 10:46
  So fingers crossed I can get it done for Greg, but we'll we'll
• 10:50
  see how it goes. Yeah, you, you get some leeway
• 10:51
  with 80 cast samples, Yeah. Once and I think but that's,
• 10:54
  that's part of the business model as well because number
• 10:57
  one, you're not a distillery. No #2 you know, you have the you
• 11:02
  know, Edinburgh Whiskey is a product that is part of of the
• 11:05
  company that you're working for. Yeah.
• 11:08
  But as Chuck's just said, rare Finder, we know really, really
• 11:10
  well have more majority of their casks here.
• 11:13
  They're a customer. You've mentioned that there's
• 11:15
  other individual customers that are storing here.
• 11:18
  Are there bottlers I'd assume as well potentially?
• 11:20
  Yeah, yeah, all your probably a lot of them have been on your on
• 11:23
  your show. Yeah, some good friends like
• 11:27
  aspiring bottlers, Blind Summit Whiskey have their whiskey here.
• 11:31
  I've heard it's fantastic. One of them is other ones.
• 11:36
  He's on holiday at the moment, enjoying Palma.
• 11:38
  But it but, and then there'll be the distilleries like did
• 11:43
  distilleries use this space at all?
• 11:44
  Yeah, we've got a few, a few on boards.
• 11:47
  Again, as you, as you mentioned for them it's about price and
• 11:50
  how many they can squeeze in. So we'll, we'll tend to pick up
• 11:52
  a little bit of silly work if they're renovating a warehouse
• 11:54
  and need some cash stored. Otherwise they'll, they'll put
• 11:57
  them in pallets because this amount of steel costs a lot of
• 12:01
  money. We managed to get our bought
• 12:03
  just before the whole like Ukraine war.
• 12:05
  So after that price jumped even more.
• 12:08
  So our our storage is because and again because we've had a
• 12:11
  bit more hands on service, our storage costs are a little bit
• 12:14
  higher than a palletized warehouse.
• 12:16
  We've got fewer casks in in the same space.
• 12:19
  Yeah, but but as you said, you're a service provider for
• 12:23
  the whiskey industry. So as Chuck was saying there,
• 12:25
  you know if I'm if it doesn't matter whether I mean I'd
• 12:30
  imagine if you're providing a service, it doesn't matter
• 12:32
  whether I have 5 casks or 500 casks with me.
• 12:34
  You have to treat me as somebody I provide the service for.
• 12:38
  So if iPhone you up and say right I've got 5 casks and I
• 12:41
  need a sample drawn from each one of them so I can just check
• 12:44
  how good they are and work out whether I'm going to bottle or
• 12:46
  not. I suppose that just gets added
• 12:48
  to the list at Chuck. Yeah, so.
• 12:51
  Or other people that work? How many other people work here?
• 12:53
  I've got a team of five altogether.
• 12:56
  He's got Scott the foreman, then kind of Kirk works under him.
• 12:59
  Then we've got Curtis, just the other side there, just having a
• 13:03
  drum. He runs the bottling and then
• 13:05
  there's Chuck and there's John. Yeah, so good, Good team, small
• 13:08
  team. I'd like to add one more.
• 13:09
  I think they have anyway, as far as you need warehouses.
• 13:12
  Here here if you need me, I have a lapsed forklift license which.
• 13:16
  Might end up on the yeah on the beast.
• 13:18
  Well, that's it. Yeah, but I mean right, so.
• 13:20
  To be fair, you seemed a bit shaky at the top.
• 13:22
  We have been to the top of this already and my head for heights
• 13:26
  it wasn't great, but like so. So that's the service that you
• 13:29
  provide. So in terms of what are you
• 13:31
  looking at, you've said five days, Chuck.
• 13:33
  Yeah, within five days you're looking at.
• 13:35
  Try and turn a sample around for.
• 13:37
  Something. Yeah.
• 13:38
  So that's our promise. Guarantee that once it comes
• 13:42
  through the sample request, it's dispatched within 5 working
• 13:44
  days, same as RE gauges. And when and then when you look
• 13:48
  at across the industry, would that be how is that does that
• 13:52
  put you guys in? Yeah, pretty rapid from my
• 13:56
  experience of having to request samples of warehouses and you
• 14:01
  know if you're working in single cask stuff as you guys don't
• 14:04
  know if you're doing a finish that can change in a month's
• 14:07
  time. So if you put a sample request
• 14:08
  in and you get a month later, you go great, OK, this is great,
• 14:11
  when can I get it out and you can't get out for another six
• 14:14
  weeks then how dramatically has that changed?
• 14:16
  So we want to try and cater to people that need rapid
• 14:21
  responses. You're like the 7th emergency
• 14:24
  service then basically. I've got blue lights on my car.
• 14:29
  Yeah, I know the forklift. There's blue lights on that
• 14:30
  bottleneck. Does Chuck just get out of the
• 14:33
  bottle with Nina? Nina, he's got.
• 14:35
  Special, special hat and everything.
• 14:36
  Yeah, yeah. They gave me that.
• 14:38
  Right. Yeah.
• 14:40
  What's Chuck? What do you think from your own
• 14:43
  mind in here is the, I'm not going to say most expensive, but
• 14:48
  like valuable cast that you think you've you've moved in
• 14:53
  here when you've gone, right. I need to get this cast down and
• 14:56
  move it around. I mean moved some stock from the
• 14:59
  70s. And.
• 15:01
  Those kind of things I can't say I particularly for me, I get
• 15:06
  really pumped about moving just unusual cast that when they see.
• 15:09
  So we've got some really cool rum cast maturations that are
• 15:12
  going on. Might not be the oldest stock in
• 15:14
  the world, but I think that's really awesome.
• 15:16
  And then some really just some distilleries that you wouldn't
• 15:19
  expect to see pop up now and then closest to the raise or
• 15:24
  yeah, mothballs or even just liquid that you wouldn't see too
• 15:28
  much as an independent or I mean, a guy had two casts
• 15:33
  arrive. I just like couldn't believe
• 15:35
  like well, aged whiskey from 2 distilleries.
• 15:37
  I really, really respect from one of them from a time period.
• 15:40
  I was like in particular. That's awesome.
• 15:43
  And it's just a guy, just a guy living a way better life than
• 15:46
  me. Because this is The thing is
• 15:49
  people, people acquire cast. Yeah, yeah, we could.
• 15:52
  I don't think we will go down the rabbit hole of cast
• 15:55
  brokerage in terms of what we've seen in the past and stuff like.
• 15:57
  That well, I was going to say, if we're talking about
• 15:59
  investments, the rackings. Really laughing value.
• 16:03
  That's where you want put your money.
• 16:04
  Didn't put in money into cast, put it into steel.
• 16:07
  Put in the cask racking systems because I'd imagine that there's
• 16:10
  a pretty penny involved in there.
• 16:11
  It's not knowing like talking about the the investment world,
• 16:14
  but we've noticed a real uptick because the rules and where we
• 16:17
  changed yes and we are able to open well they want to be doing
• 16:22
  it anyway opening accounts for people that have one cask and.
• 16:25
  They get full control and stuff as well.
• 16:27
  Yeah, I mean, without we could we could talk, we could talk
• 16:29
  about that side of it, I suppose, because the interesting
• 16:31
  thing is like, yes, 2025 has seen a massive swing in cask
• 16:35
  ownership, right myself include I've I have a few casks, I think
• 16:40
  truck was just talking about my cast that arrived there about
• 16:42
  the age stuff, just a guy living a bit.
• 16:45
  I definitely wasn't. But he was talking about this
• 16:49
  kind of knackered ones at the back.
• 16:51
  The empty ones just full of iron brew.
• 16:55
  But basically, previously you've mentioned woga, OK, now for
• 17:00
  people listening to this who have maybe gone down the route
• 17:02
  of investing in casks or owning their own casks or even people
• 17:05
  who who work in the industry, Wouga then what does that?
• 17:08
  What did that stand? Is it warehouse owners?
• 17:11
  Warehouse keepers and owners of warehouse goods regulations.
• 17:13
  There you go. Right rolls off the tag.
• 17:15
  Yeah, yeah. Now, to be able to be the
• 17:18
  official owner of a cask of whiskey, you used to have to
• 17:22
  have a wouga. Sort of.
• 17:25
  It's it's if you're a revenue trader, So if your business was
• 17:30
  making money out of whiskey, then you need to be up with the
• 17:35
  wager regulations, right? So individuals could always own.
• 17:38
  And then there was this myth going around that it was nowhere
• 17:42
  based written down, but just circulated that five casks
• 17:45
  maximum you could have. Oh, really after that.
• 17:47
  But the way I think it is viewed is that it's an asset.
• 17:52
  So it's like saying you can only own 10 high high high end
• 17:57
  paintings. You know, if you are just
• 17:59
  putting your money into it then you're not a revenue trader.
• 18:02
  If you start selling it to make money, then the area becomes a
• 18:06
  little. Gray So to hold hold a wow
• 18:08
  guard, did you have to have a limited company to be able to
• 18:10
  get Yeah. Only limited companies, yeah.
• 18:12
  Yeah, because this is, I mean, we, we the documentary that came
• 18:15
  out in February this year, which really triggered the sort of
• 18:20
  knock on effect which has led to effectively the arse collapsing
• 18:24
  out of these this industry of people flogging your cask, et
• 18:28
  cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But one of the things that
• 18:31
  people talked about was being like, no, no, no.
• 18:34
  When people actually did dive into it, you got a certificate
• 18:36
  of ownership from these companies.
• 18:38
  I said you could even go there, own this particular certificate.
• 18:40
  But when you actually looked into who owned the whiskey, then
• 18:44
  you found out to your horror, actually, you don't own the
• 18:47
  whiskey. You own a certificate.
• 18:48
  That's all you own and you're in an unregulated market and you
• 18:51
  don't actually own the whiskey. The way has no has no visibility
• 18:54
  on correct the end. So if someone was storing A cask
• 18:57
  here under those rules, if I was to phone you directly and say,
• 19:00
  hi, I'm green, I will, I've got one of your casts.
• 19:02
  What's the cast number? You wouldn't be able to give me
• 19:05
  the all information for all the GDPR stuff.
• 19:08
  But if I gave you the cast number, all you could say is no,
• 19:10
  you don't own that. I could tell you if the cask is
• 19:13
  here or not. Have you said the cask here?
• 19:15
  And have I said, yeah, I I'm the owner of it and.
• 19:17
  I'll say, well, not according to me.
• 19:18
  Yes. So that was when people really.
• 19:20
  Contact the person you bought it from.
• 19:21
  Yeah, and people would start going, oh shit, what am I doing
• 19:23
  here? You contact this person, they
• 19:25
  tie you and the whole thing. I say you're going to need a
• 19:28
  WOGA to get a WOGA, you need a limited company.
• 19:30
  You need to be a registered trader.
• 19:31
  You need to go through HMRC, you need to fill out all this
• 19:33
  paperwork. Don't worry, you own it.
• 19:35
  But we are the custodians of the cask for you.
• 19:39
  Now, as you've said, that all changed in January.
• 19:42
  Was it March time? Was it March, March?
• 19:44
  Yeah. So that's all changed now.
• 19:45
  And what you need now am I right in saying is basically an
• 19:48
  account with a bonded A? Warehouse.
• 19:51
  Yeah. That will open an account for
• 19:52
  individuals, yeah. Which you said you guys have
• 19:54
  been doing that from scratch, right?
• 19:55
  Yeah, yeah. Whereas other warehouses have
• 19:57
  actually been very like no selective.
• 20:00
  You have to be an industry within the industry.
• 20:02
  I suppose space is a premium. Yeah, and it's a case of people
• 20:05
  used to do them with companies, one accounts department and
• 20:11
  individuals with two casks are more needy than a company with
• 20:14
  1000, correct, because they just want to store them.
• 20:16
  And if they need a sample, you just sample.
• 20:17
  But there's a lot more questions that come from people who are
• 20:20
  just dipping their toe in. Absolutely.
• 20:21
  So now, so you just need an account and then a delivery
• 20:25
  order, is that correct? From the seller, yeah, delivery
• 20:27
  order is again, it's got no real place in legislation, but it's
• 20:32
  just a tradition Scrap 2006. But it's a notice issued by the
• 20:37
  seller given to the buyer who kind of signs it, it's given to
• 20:40
  the warehouse keeper and it just says this cask has changed hands
• 20:43
  between from through sale. Yeah, that's it.
• 20:45
  It's it's not kind of a legal document.
• 20:47
  No, so that's it now. So, yeah, so all these people
• 20:50
  because there has been, I mean, I know that there's still a lot
• 20:53
  going on with if there's people are certainly going hang on a
• 20:56
  minute, where's my casks? And they're asking questions and
• 20:58
  there's some horror stories as we've heard, you know, people
• 21:01
  putting all their life savings. I think it's.
• 21:02
  Absolutely, yeah. But now you know, there are.
• 21:04
  Thankfully, there's a lot of people who are and you guys are
• 21:07
  available for that. Yeah.
• 21:08
  So again, if there was somebody who's listening to or watching
• 21:10
  this thinking I've been through that.
• 21:12
  They just need to pick up the phone to you guys or finally
• 21:14
  bond, reach out by e-mail. Yeah.
• 21:15
  And then once you're cast here, you.
• 21:17
  Can come and visit, you can. Not quite what you guys are
• 21:19
  doing, but. But then.
• 21:21
  Everything is the cast, Yeah, you come down and visit.
• 21:23
  Every two weeks just get truck to draw your sample.
• 21:25
  You'll get one in five. Caress your cask, yeah.
• 21:28
  If you need some tasting notes, Chuck will knock them up.
• 21:30
  For you Truck's good at Chuck's there.
• 21:32
  But yeah, 'cause that and it's, it's a big thing.
• 21:35
  I mean, as I've said before, I'll say it again, warehouses do
• 21:37
  make me horny. And I have to say like I've been
• 21:42
  there was something nice. And I would have said, I guess
• 21:45
  two years ago, before we started this, I would have said all the
• 21:51
  magic happens in the warehouse. In maturation, yeah, because
• 21:54
  this is interesting. I was actually, I was speaking
• 21:56
  to somebody at work today about the tasting we've been to on
• 21:58
  Friday and they said, I was talking about finishes and they
• 22:01
  said how important's the maturation, how important is the
• 22:05
  distillery? And I said you'll never find
• 22:08
  anybody in the industry that agrees.
• 22:10
  From my, from my, you know, interactions is, you know,
• 22:15
  people in production will say, oh, it's all in the spirit.
• 22:18
  People in warehouse maturation. Oh, it's all in the word
• 22:20
  Goodwood's the answer. And you know, people will say
• 22:22
  it's 6040, it's 406080. 20. As well.
• 22:26
  Yeah, exactly. So there's no kind of agreed,
• 22:29
  agreed logic as far as I can see about I mean, people have their
• 22:32
  own opinions, I think, but about how important maturation is, how
• 22:36
  important distillery characters, the spirit initial spirit is.
• 22:40
  It's just one of the, you know, like I said in warehouses, it's
• 22:43
  just where the IT is where some some of the magic happens, but
• 22:46
  how much of it? I think it's like every step is
• 22:49
  important. You can't.
• 22:50
  You can't Bad spirit with good woods and taking great spirit
• 22:55
  put it into bad woods. You're gonna get a bar.
• 22:57
  That's gonna happen. So I think so.
• 22:59
  Go hand in hand. I don't.
• 22:59
  Really charge but people start putting percentages on it. 70%
• 23:02
  is is the the cast like well that doesn't.
• 23:04
  Make any sense? Yeah, it doesn't exactly,
• 23:06
  because, yeah, like you say, sourcing your casks, we've heard
• 23:08
  so many people on the podcast talking about like the challenge
• 23:12
  now is finding really, really good conditioned wood that
• 23:16
  you're buying it from. You have the big industries that
• 23:18
  you have your Edrington, your Diageo and you know, all the all
• 23:22
  the bigger producers of whiskey are they can go into Herev and
• 23:28
  go over to the States and probably command a fair amount
• 23:32
  of control over like we bring that in.
• 23:35
  That filters all the way down to the next level of distillery, to
• 23:37
  the next level, to the next level.
• 23:39
  And then to the independent bottlers.
• 23:40
  I mean, don't get me wrong, they'll be independent bottlers
• 23:42
  that have well, Gordon Macphail. We heard Stephen Rankin talking
• 23:45
  about the supply of wood that Gordon Macphail have had for
• 23:49
  generations is what they they strive on.
• 23:51
  But you're an independent bottler as well.
• 23:53
  You probably deal with other independent bottlers outside.
• 23:56
  You've got casks sitting there that are empty, so managing wood
• 23:59
  is also part of your job I'd imagine.
• 24:01
  Yeah, yeah, it was. I think people think casks might
• 24:04
  just last forever, you know, if you get get them delivered, put
• 24:07
  them outside, use them in a year's time or something.
• 24:09
  But we like to try and encourage people to do this kind of just
• 24:13
  in time, as in get your CAS landing when you want the
• 24:16
  operations to happen, get them, get them filled when they're
• 24:19
  still wet. We we can have a policies you'd
• 24:22
  make sure there's no travelling liquid in the casket, empty it
• 24:25
  out so that it's the you know, it's the wood that does the
• 24:28
  talking without huge amounts of travelling Sherry stuck in
• 24:32
  there. But yeah, cask will degrade the
• 24:36
  living breeding things. Yeah, because I mean, sitting
• 24:38
  outside is not going to in the weather is not going to do.
• 24:41
  Yeah, it's it's not exactly, you know, Dubai out there, but you
• 24:44
  get a week's hot spell and that you can get the the seams
• 24:47
  opening right up, especially on the heads.
• 24:49
  So when it's the brief kind of summer spells we get here, we're
• 24:52
  outside with the sprinklers just trying to keep everyone's castle
• 24:54
  wet. But we tend to tell people that
• 24:57
  if you're doing a re racking job and you're putting your refills
• 25:00
  outside, if you don't use them within six months, they're
• 25:03
  they're going to be knackered. We store them for free for that
• 25:06
  amount of time. And after that, we're like,
• 25:07
  look, you need to move them or. Or we'll we'll.
• 25:09
  Sell them to a garden centre. Because it's that heavy, it's a
• 25:11
  balancing act, isn't it? And I suppose it goes back to
• 25:13
  what you were talking about there.
• 25:14
  It's like, I love the fact that there's just so many happy
• 25:18
  accidents in Scotch whisky that produces this as to quote Keith
• 25:22
  for Keith Bruin liquid Bruin liquid that that you get.
• 25:26
  And it's like, you know, take one step away, take one tiny
• 25:31
  little bit away and it just will not be the same as what you're
• 25:35
  what you're getting here. So as we're saying, yeah, some
• 25:38
  people will tell you the magic happens in the way that's where
• 25:40
  it all goes on. But there's so many different
• 25:42
  caveats to that. So just the consistent
• 25:45
  inconsistencies, they're fantastic as well.
• 25:48
  Well, yeah, get. Two sister casks in here, exact
• 25:52
  same maturation, exact same fill date and one of them's, you
• 25:55
  know, incredible, one of them's OK, and you can get the, you
• 25:59
  know, complete opposite as well. So that's.
• 26:01
  Yeah, well, we've had that. Yeah, exactly.
• 26:03
  Me and my hook. Yeah, two casts from Glenn with.
• 26:06
  Us, they were filled on the same day, filled into the same type
• 26:09
  of wood casts that come from the exact same place.
• 26:12
  Sat beside each other, sat. Beside each other in the
• 26:14
  warehouse, and she had a sample of one, a sample of other.
• 26:17
  And oh, she gave us the blind. Told us.
• 26:19
  Yeah, well, that's what I mean. She had two told it blind.
• 26:21
  And you you would never have guessed that they'd come from
• 26:25
  effectively the same cast just sitting in the next to each
• 26:28
  other in the warehouse, because completely different things have
• 26:30
  gone on. And that must be a charge for
• 26:32
  it. See when you, when you're regae
• 26:34
  like so talk through regaeing. What does that mean?
• 26:37
  It's essentially just finding out how much liquid's in the
• 26:40
  cask and it's alcoholic content really.
• 26:42
  There's kind of two different types.
• 26:44
  You do, it's a dip the old fashioned way, which basically
• 26:47
  literally a meter stick with some markings on it.
• 26:50
  And then there's a gross tear where you you dump all the
• 26:52
  whiskey out, weigh the cask, and then fill it back up again.
• 26:55
  Wait again. Yeah, all these ones behind us,
• 26:58
  they've all been tear and weighed so.
• 27:02
  So that they've had the liquid poured out, weighed, put back in
• 27:05
  again. No these.
• 27:06
  Actually have just been filled today.
• 27:09
  So on one end of the cask I've written in chalk or John's
• 27:12
  written in chalk. You've got your tear weight,
• 27:14
  which was the weight of the vessel, and then as we filled
• 27:17
  it, we've taken a new weight and that's written on.
• 27:19
  And actually because that's the other thing is yeah, because
• 27:21
  you'll be able to worry, work out your evaporation levels and
• 27:25
  stuff like that as. Well, yeah, it's more figuring
• 27:27
  out your litres as well. So we've taken the ABV, the
• 27:30
  alcohol and density and then using the weight you can figure
• 27:33
  out the exact amount of liquid that's gone in when you're using
• 27:35
  a. A dip is accurate to a certain
• 27:39
  degree. Anything would be very insane.
• 27:40
  Hefty margin of error, yeah. So you use owage tables from
• 27:44
  HMRC. Owage tables.
• 27:46
  So it's. Yeah, and I've.
• 27:48
  Never. I've never heard the word owage
• 27:50
  before. You've got, I think owage means
• 27:52
  that kind of missing a wastage or something.
• 27:55
  So you've got your your wet dip, which is where the liquid level,
• 27:57
  your dried dip, which is just there on the side of the bung.
• 28:00
  So you'll take your wet dip, divide it by your dried dip.
• 28:03
  That gives you it's. Like a whiskey BMI.
• 28:05
  Percentage and then that you go to the olage tables and you find
• 28:10
  closest to where yours is you go across and HMRC give you a
• 28:14
  percent full and that's based off the percent full you know a
• 28:18
  cask of that sizes so when you go for a butt you generally say
• 28:22
  500 litres a hog's head 250 but as you know being made by
• 28:26
  Cooper's not everything's exactly the same we've.
• 28:28
  Got to be a bit of allergy in there so.
• 28:29
  It's going to be yeah. So it's it's quick.
• 28:32
  It's it's cheaper to do. So it's just, yeah, it's it's
• 28:38
  much more old fashioned, but yeah, really accurate.
• 28:41
  So everything that comes in, we get, we give it a free dip, just
• 28:43
  so we know it starts its life here.
• 28:44
  And how how? How do you work out the ABV
• 28:47
  then? Well.
• 28:50
  So you can tell. Well, we've got an Anton Parr
• 28:52
  which can take, it's an electronic device, it can take a
• 28:55
  small sample and that'll give us an alcohol reading and then
• 28:58
  this. Is just something you dip in and
• 29:00
  it beeps and says 50% so that. Sucks up and we bet you've got a
• 29:04
  plunger. Yeah.
• 29:05
  So that gives us a fairly consistently accurate one.
• 29:08
  And then I'm blanket on the name.
• 29:11
  I've got a nervous. We use the hydrometers.
• 29:14
  Hydrometers, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 29:15
  So that's the official way. So we.
• 29:17
  I just we have to balance is in the that balance in the liquid,
• 29:20
  doesn't it? Yeah, yes, It's like you've got
• 29:22
  a weighted sort of belt at the bottom, then it's almost like a
• 29:25
  thermometer. Yeah, that's right.
• 29:27
  And depending on the density of the liquids, it it floats at
• 29:30
  different heights. And then you you take a reading
• 29:32
  off that, then you use the temperature.
• 29:34
  Yeah. And then you've got your alcohol
• 29:35
  tables, which you wow. You find your.
• 29:39
  It's all very but but but but but.
• 29:41
  Something but something like that would be no use when it
• 29:43
  because I we went once to Glenn Scotia tasting and they said,
• 29:47
  oh, old Glenn Scotia, you can sit a teaspoon up in it.
• 29:50
  So that would be no use in that, you know, Yeah.
• 29:57
  Yeah, it's, it's, it's a, it's a slow way to do it.
• 29:59
  You have to take quite a bit of liquid out of the cast to do it.
• 30:01
  So the Anton Par is really handy, but there's a there's a
• 30:05
  margin of error in that. Whereas if you're reporting to
• 30:07
  HMRC, we use the hydrometers because that's, that's the
• 30:11
  scientific kind of accurate way. You can buy a really expensive
• 30:13
  Anton Par which sits on the desktop.
• 30:15
  And obviously we saw when it was dirty and I got really excited
• 30:18
  about it, the better it disappeared off.
• 30:21
  It's within that control room. Yeah, you guys all left and I
• 30:23
  was just chatting to the operator about the Anton.
• 30:25
  Par. So it's, it's interesting in
• 30:29
  that, you know. That in this whiskey industry,
• 30:33
  you've got these new technical instruments, but yet you've got
• 30:39
  the old ones as well. And they still serve a purpose.
• 30:41
  They're still used, which is an interesting thing because you
• 30:45
  know, and at some degree you could just get rid of using that
• 30:48
  and just use the kind. Of it's a it's a fail safe
• 30:50
  against, you know, yeah, if the end of it all happens, we can
• 30:52
  still regauge for the hydrometers, you know, but the
• 30:55
  Anton Pi, you need to put batteries in that.
• 30:56
  Yeah, yeah. Oh thank God, yes, because if
• 30:59
  the end of the world was here and we still had whiskey.
• 31:01
  And we need to check your ABV and that'd be.
• 31:03
  Great. But what what I would wonder on
• 31:06
  that front that Angus is sort of saying is like, is there a a
• 31:10
  qualification that you can get in whiskey warehousing?
• 31:14
  Because we've heard about coopering and I think it was
• 31:17
  Stephen Woodcock talked about the apprentices.
• 31:19
  Yeah, it's like a nine year apprenticeship becoming a
• 31:21
  Cooper, right? Because you literally like no
• 31:24
  matter how much automation happens in the whiskey industry,
• 31:28
  a cast will always have to be made by hand.
• 31:30
  And also. You can't 3D print one.
• 31:32
  No, you can't. But a good Cooper, a good
• 31:35
  Cooper, and that's what takes is is they'll say it's like a good
• 31:38
  Cooper can look at staves and know what staves will match with
• 31:41
  with each other, marry them together, put them in a cask,
• 31:44
  fill out the liquid and it won't leak, right?
• 31:48
  You know, it's not an IKEA. Pull the pull the instruction
• 31:51
  manual out and take that A1 and put it beside A2 or whatever.
• 31:55
  It's it's genuinely some some of it has more Allen keys are used.
• 31:58
  Not exactly just a big hammer, but is there anything for
• 32:02
  warehousing like to learn how to use allege tables and how to use
• 32:07
  hydrometers and all these different things?
• 32:10
  Or is it just a case of you learn from the guy that
• 32:12
  explained it to you? Yeah, I think it is.
• 32:14
  It's that kind of knowledge just passed down.
• 32:17
  Not from like, you know, father's son Woody taught me a
• 32:20
  lot. Woody from Woodrow's.
• 32:21
  Yeah, he's a bit. Of taught me how to lick casks,
• 32:23
  yeah. Yeah, I haven't quite mastery
• 32:25
  yet though, a lot of splinters. But like you can do courses, one
• 32:30
  done by the the British Warehousing Association, but
• 32:33
  that's all through like legislation and the ENTS system
• 32:35
  and things. But you just have to rely on the
• 32:38
  older heads passing it on to, yeah, the new guys.
• 32:41
  And you know, you learn shortcuts to make the way to
• 32:43
  make things easier. But yeah, it's just a, you know,
• 32:48
  passing on on the job. Well, Cos Castle, like this is
• 32:49
  what I couldn't get my head round the fact that when we went
• 32:51
  to Glenn Farkless and Glenn Murray then, and you look at
• 32:57
  like the the volume that they're producing, you look at the
• 33:00
  brands that they are global brands, you look at the volume
• 33:03
  worth that those companies have. Sure.
• 33:05
  And Glenn Farcliffe, Glenbury both travel around the world as
• 33:08
  as brands that stand on them on their own and then other brands
• 33:12
  associated with them as well, like, you know, Cutty Sark and
• 33:15
  stuff, Absolutely huge company. And yet you walk into their
• 33:20
  warehouse and they'll say, aye, we still roll casks with a car,
• 33:23
  still gets rolled up and dunnage.
• 33:25
  So you're literally and they'll still say it takes four men, 4
• 33:28
  warehouse operators, I should say, to row a cask up a ramp on
• 33:33
  on top of other cast. I mean, this is slightly
• 33:35
  different, but as we saw earlier, Chuck just gloriously
• 33:39
  rolling a cast down a warehouse floor.
• 33:42
  There are certain things that just can't be done any other
• 33:46
  way. And that is the way that and
• 33:48
  there's something really nice about the fact that it doesn't
• 33:50
  matter 200 years ago, all right, they didn't have big metal
• 33:53
  racking systems that go this high.
• 33:54
  They didn't have some of the forklifts that you've got.
• 33:56
  But at the end of the day, 200 years on, you're still rolling
• 33:59
  casks. We've had days here, we've had
• 34:02
  like, you know, 150 casks arrive and I've been really wishing
• 34:07
  they'd developed and that's and we're rolling them all the way
• 34:11
  down the full lengthy this so we can get them all depped and
• 34:15
  checked and re racked Abvs taken and then all racked away.
• 34:18
  So it does generally take us three people with the machine to
• 34:23
  you've got to time the casks, place it and then get up in the
• 34:26
  racking and they've got to make sure the timing's right as well
• 34:29
  when it gets into the racking. Timing then because that's the
• 34:32
  other thing is I suppose as you were saying, James is like you
• 34:35
  learn as you go, but you probably also learn from other
• 34:37
  people's mistakes. I'm looking at every single one
• 34:40
  of your casks right now that I can see, and the bunghole is
• 34:44
  always facing up the way. Yeah.
• 34:45
  And then that seems like a the. Coding that the boys have put up
• 34:49
  here, right? That's the.
• 34:50
  That's the secret code. All right, because, well, yeah.
• 34:53
  So what I can see is BRQ 5T25T15A20 a BU20P.
• 35:01
  Yeah. Right, right.
• 35:03
  Translate that, Chuck. Well.
• 35:07
  BRQ is very BRG. BRG.
• 35:10
  Is that BRG? BRQ.
• 35:12
  Is 3 I've got that better right? And then you've got your
• 35:14
  timings. So 20A is 20 away BU is bung up
• 35:23
  and then 20P is 20 past so. Right.
• 35:26
  So right. Clock face.
• 35:28
  Yeah. So what so you're saying
• 35:29
  timings, right? Yeah, go and just simplify this.
• 35:32
  Are you're looking, do you look at that?
• 35:34
  So when you're rolling them in, because what, how many deep are
• 35:37
  you in there? That's sort of about 13 or 14.
• 35:39
  So you've got 14 casts in and you've got to roll those casts
• 35:43
  in. So The thing is, if you're
• 35:44
  rolling a casket and you're doing it for 1314 times, you've
• 35:49
  got to make sure that every time you roll a cask in there, it
• 35:51
  goes all the way, rolls to the back and it is and finishes with
• 35:55
  the bung up. That's a sign.
• 35:57
  So that's an art in itself then. So yeah, how do you do that?
• 36:00
  So generally speaking, if you're using the same size of barrels,
• 36:04
  I mean if you're using casks or barracks or hogs heads, you want
• 36:08
  to consistently use the same size and then you've got a
• 36:10
  vaguely consistent time. Your bung would be kind of that
• 36:17
  is what the timing refers to. So if it's twenty away, your
• 36:19
  bung is 20 minutes away from the racking.
• 36:22
  So that's at 20 past. So at 20 past when it goes in
• 36:26
  and then. 10 past what? It'd be 22. 22.
• 36:30
  So it goes What? So if you're going, oh, you're.
• 36:32
  20 away so. So is it?
• 36:33
  Yeah, that is 22. So we're going away from the
• 36:37
  racking. So we're going this way.
• 36:38
  So you're coming towards us? Yeah.
• 36:40
  Right. So 20 away from the racking,
• 36:42
  then roll that in and then your next one would generally be 20
• 36:44
  minutes faster. So the next one would be bung
• 36:47
  up. So the bung would be facing
• 36:49
  straight to the sky and that would then roll in.
• 36:52
  And that in theory would be. Bang on the that's based off
• 36:55
  like the center line and. That, yeah.
• 36:56
  So that's the position. The position moves 20 minutes
• 36:59
  per cask effectively. Yeah, that hopefully sometimes
• 37:03
  you, I mean again, casts are not all completely consistent, so
• 37:06
  you can. I'm still quite lost here,
• 37:07
  right? So talk me through you've got on
• 37:09
  the forklift, right? You'll get your, you'll get your
• 37:11
  cast on the on the forks. Do you then have to get off the
• 37:15
  forklift to then? So there's three of us there.
• 37:18
  So I'm generally guy if we're putting stuff away just now, I'm
• 37:22
  generally guy doing the timing. You're a timer.
• 37:24
  I'm a timer, so we've got we've got a butt right here.
• 37:27
  Right. So at the moment this butt is
• 37:30
  sitting at. 5 past. Well, yeah, yeah, if you want to
• 37:33
  be really stingy about it, yeah, yeah, yeah. 5 away so.
• 37:37
  That's five away 5 past yeah, right, right.
• 37:40
  So the five past the other. OK, right.
• 37:42
  I think it's one bit. Bear in mind there's people
• 37:44
  listening to this, not just watching it.
• 37:46
  So we've got I I got this. I I think I was just going to
• 37:50
  say I. Was going to say, I think that's
• 37:51
  about two minutes past Graham for being.
• 37:52
  On I was just going to say, if you're 5 past, you're going to
• 37:54
  be early I'm. So glad you guys don't work
• 37:57
  here. I was just, I was going to call
• 37:59
  that. Bung up right?
• 38:00
  Bung up, right. So we're bungging up, right?
• 38:02
  Yeah, it's bung up right. OK, so that's it.
• 38:05
  That's bang on the hour. Yeah, let's say that.
• 38:06
  OK, that's so. For argument's sake, that one's
• 38:09
  at. Five.
• 38:09
  Yeah, sure. OK, cool, cool.
• 38:11
  Yeah, well, whether on which side you're standing on, right.
• 38:15
  So if you're so the first one goes in at that or just move
• 38:20
  this just now. So what's yourself?
• 38:21
  Oh, OK, so oh, your first one goes in.
• 38:26
  So just for the benefit of anyone listening, trucks just
• 38:28
  rolled this cast to face in as it would go in.
• 38:31
  Yeah. So that's and.
• 38:32
  I would say now that's bung up. That's bung up.
• 38:34
  That's midday. That's midday 12 now.
• 38:36
  That's high noon I'm. So glad you guys are pleased,
• 38:39
  right, Bug up. We've all agreed on that, right?
• 38:42
  Yeah. So the first one would go in at
• 38:43
  that, then your next one would go.
• 38:45
  In and if you so now you know that if you roll that all the
• 38:49
  way to the end yeah, that is going to end up at the bung up
• 38:52
  like that. Yeah, it should do.
• 38:55
  How? But how do you?
• 38:56
  Just from trial and errance. Yeah, just literally.
• 38:59
  So like if you so then and then if you put the second one up
• 39:02
  now, yeah, you would then line that up 20 minutes slower.
• 39:05
  Yeah. So 20 minutes.
• 39:07
  So be back towards you. Away. 20 minutes away, Yeah. 20
• 39:11
  away, yeah. So the bung, the bung 20 minutes
• 39:15
  away from the racking, yeah. Yeah, yes, yeah.
• 39:17
  So the So yeah, you're 20 past if you're doing it like that,
• 39:21
  yeah. And then you stick, you lift
• 39:23
  that, roll it, and that will roll and the bung will be up.
• 39:25
  Well, generally, yeah, you kind of have to.
• 39:27
  These butts are maybe the worst example because they're like an
• 39:29
  absolutely massive yeah. So these are.
• 39:31
  About 530 kilos and. You've shifted that quite well,
• 39:34
  Chuck. Yeah, I was going to say.
• 39:35
  He's a strong laddie. But then you have to time it by
• 39:38
  effectively doing a bit of that. You should go, yeah.
• 39:41
  So what you're doing a bit of that means that you're.
• 39:43
  Shooting. So you're pushing down on one
• 39:45
  side and then pulling up and then you're so you're rotating
• 39:48
  the cask a small. Amount So there's an art to
• 39:50
  yeah, that sort of thing. Talent.
• 39:52
  So like the first week, the forearms are absolutely
• 39:56
  destroyed. I'll tell.
• 39:57
  You that I mean, that is. Aye, that's I'd.
• 39:59
  I'd love to spend a week here. You're a talented man, Chuck.
• 40:03
  Thank you. So now that's sitting roughly
• 40:05
  about quarter past. I mean, oh, it's 10:10 past.
• 40:09
  Quarter past would be bang on 45.
• 40:11
  Degrees Again, just to say, if you both worked here, I don't
• 40:13
  think we'd ever get anything. Done no.
• 40:14
  It just. It would just be me and Graham
• 40:16
  arguing about. 5 minutes, 1000. That's 11 minutes past.
• 40:21
  Have I've never seen it? No, no, no.
• 40:22
  That's 12 you, Phil. 11 1/2 in terms of costing wise, then I
• 40:27
  don't know how much you can dive into that, but I'm sure if
• 40:30
  anyone was to phone you and ask, obviously it'll depend and
• 40:33
  imagine prices will vary depending on cast size, cast
• 40:37
  volume and length of time. I mean, your dream scenario I
• 40:40
  suppose if you're a bonded warehouse is a warehouse.
• 40:43
  A distiller comes to you and goes, I've got 5000 gasks I want
• 40:48
  to shut the door and forget about for five years and I'm not
• 40:52
  even going to think about them until they're five years old.
• 40:54
  Does that happen very often? Not with us, right?
• 40:59
  We've got people who I got call from some today, just the
• 41:03
  company they've stored the CAS with has said we're all going to
• 41:06
  deal with big fish. Now all the small fries have to
• 41:08
  get out desperately from a Subway store is casks like send
• 41:11
  them in. Some people do renovations on
• 41:14
  the warehouse so they need casks out for like, you know, a year.
• 41:17
  Yeah, we we get tankers in here ourselves.
• 41:20
  We fill them off. The dream scenario is that was
• 41:23
  tanker comes in, new mate goes into wood, stays here for 10
• 41:27
  years, we bottle it for someone and it goes out in glass.
• 41:29
  That's you know, that's, that's a dream.
• 41:30
  That's what we want to do as a business.
• 41:32
  Yeah, yeah. Because of course, you bottle
• 41:33
  here as well, and you bottle for customers.
• 41:36
  Yeah, we do. We do small.
• 41:37
  Batch single cash for that as a service?
• 41:40
  Yeah, absolutely. We are fine being one of them
• 41:42
  now. Yeah.
• 41:43
  But what we're looking like, because if someone's listening
• 41:45
  to this and go, how much does it cost to store the cash?
• 41:50
  So if you have your own insurance policy it's a pound a
• 41:53
  week for hogs heads barrel small format and then it's 2 lbs Sorry
• 42:00
  150 for bucks. What about if you don't also I
• 42:02
  mean. It's if you're using your
• 42:04
  insurance policy you just doubled.
• 42:06
  So you you so you could provide the insurance.
• 42:08
  Yeah, yeah. So £104.00 a year so. £104.00 a
• 42:11
  year, yeah, for one cast. For one cast.
• 42:13
  Which doesn't sound unreasonable whatsoever.
• 42:16
  There'll be cost obviously for trucks.
• 42:17
  Time to go and get your samples I suppose as well.
• 42:19
  But I guess as well, yeah. So how much have I phoned you in
• 42:22
  and said right he's a re re gauge?
• 42:25
  Or does that vary on the GET? Dip re gauge is I think 3035 a
• 42:31
  gross tear because it's more labour intensive 75.
• 42:34
  I mean, it's, it's fairly kind of standardish across the
• 42:36
  industry kind of service charges our, our samples are, it's £50
• 42:42
  per sample, right size. The sample doesn't matter
• 42:44
  because it's you're like we don't charge you more if you if
• 42:46
  it's for personal reasons. You've got to be careful for
• 42:50
  duty. Or commercial, then you have to
• 42:52
  pay duty on it. If it's for analytical purposes
• 42:54
  only, then it's duty free. And the rule is if you don't
• 42:57
  finish it, you have to send it back to me or prove that you've
• 43:00
  destroyed it. That is the way we have to sign.
• 43:03
  Really. Yeah.
• 43:04
  So, so basically someone could order like, I don't know, 70 CL?
• 43:11
  Yeah, 70 CL duty sample. Duty sample.
• 43:16
  Duty free. No, No, but.
• 43:17
  Do you get people sending you videos and pouring it down in
• 43:19
  the sink? You've heard it is.
• 43:21
  Yeah, yes. You're just throwing it off the
• 43:22
  4th row bridge, that kind of stuff.
• 43:24
  Yeah, yeah. Please destroy your samples
• 43:26
  responsibly. Have you ever had anyone sending
• 43:29
  anything about? People have been very diligent
• 43:32
  in their quality control, so it all goes.
• 43:33
  Sure, they only drink every drum.
• 43:35
  I mean, in terms of, and again, without having to go, you've got
• 43:39
  to be careful with because you have other clients here.
• 43:41
  So you can't be telling people, oh, we've got this at the next
• 43:43
  time. But in terms of like age stock,
• 43:46
  what do you do? You have an indication of like
• 43:48
  what the oldest cast that you have in here right now.
• 43:50
  It's 1964. I think I might have tried that.
• 43:58
  I think we we got a couple. I mean, like would that have
• 44:01
  been something that was on a tasting that was delivered?
• 44:04
  It was still in 1964 then. It was.
• 44:06
  Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it was. There was a few casks.
• 44:09
  I've heard it was good. I've not.
• 44:10
  Done. It was a cracking DRAM.
• 44:11
  It was good, everyone. Thinks like, I just, you know,
• 44:13
  try every single DRAM that passes to the doors.
• 44:16
  It's like it's just, it's tempting to, but as in a in a
• 44:19
  previous role when I met someone who was doing my my job, I asked
• 44:23
  about how do you not just, you know, want to stick your nose in
• 44:25
  everything? It's like you just have to look
• 44:27
  like brown liquids. It's yeah.
• 44:29
  If you start obsessing over. Every well, this is it.
• 44:30
  Well, if a tanker comes when you make, you're not going to try
• 44:32
  everything. Everything well, we do try every
• 44:35
  tanker. We keep a control sample.
• 44:37
  Oh right. To make sure it's like the last
• 44:39
  one. Yeah, yeah.
• 44:40
  And I was like, oh, you know, surely the if a if Diageo make a
• 44:45
  dud batch of Ben Renis, they'll probably send it to us, you
• 44:47
  know, get rid of it. But it's going to be opposite.
• 44:48
  They can mask that, whereas they want to make sure we're getting
• 44:51
  consistent good quality product. So it's it's essential for them
• 44:53
  that we assess it and go right, yeah, this is, this is the same
• 44:57
  or this is, you know, up to scratch.
• 44:59
  So when you talk about filling, are you filling for other people
• 45:02
  or are you filling for yourselves?
• 45:04
  Both. Both we we buy tankers directly
• 45:08
  and we. What's a tanker load?
• 45:11
  About 30,000 litres generally they can be less generally all
• 45:16
  around about 70%. So buying tanker loads and of
• 45:20
  course the thing about buying a tanker load of of new make is
• 45:25
  you need to have something to put it in.
• 45:27
  Yeah. And the problem you've got as
• 45:28
  well. It's like when you look at them.
• 45:29
  So what's AI think? We were at that tasting on last
• 45:33
  Friday as we were recording this.
• 45:35
  Greg did a great tasting for rare find it Scotch palm oil.
• 45:38
  Yeah. And we had a really, really,
• 45:40
  really nice time there. Some cracking whiskey as I've
• 45:42
  already sort of said there. But Greg talked about the
• 45:45
  pricing of wood at the moment and how it's coming down now.
• 45:49
  But there were stories of, I mean, what was, what was an
• 45:51
  American? 220 LB or 250. # Burn Barrel
• 45:55
  Burn barrel getting up towards 300 at 1:00.
• 45:57
  Point Yeah, yeah, Greg. Greg kind of said he didn't
• 46:00
  think they ever got to 300, but they were certainly the threat
• 46:03
  of 300 at some point. So you could certainly imagine
• 46:07
  if what she got 33,000 litres, that's a hell of a lot of hogs
• 46:11
  heads that you've got to fill that with.
• 46:13
  If it's just hogs heads you put in, yeah, you suddenly look on
• 46:15
  top. You said a Sherry.
• 46:16
  What would a Sherry but be costing now, roughly?
• 46:19
  Top quality 1, maybe 1200. Quid, £1200, I mean, I'm not
• 46:24
  even going to be able to do the maths very quickly, but 33,000
• 46:27
  litres going into 500 litres, there's still, you still need a
• 46:30
  hell of a lot of those. Yeah, that tag is about 60
• 46:33
  bucks. 60 bucks. So yeah, you still look at that
• 46:36
  and that then in itself that's that's tied up for years because
• 46:41
  you're not going to get a return unless you sell it to somebody
• 46:44
  else, but you're not going to get a return on that for a very,
• 46:46
  very long time. A.
• 46:48
  Lot of people in my experience, you say, oh, we put it into this
• 46:51
  amazing wood. They go well, I don't really see
• 46:52
  that as the value because it's still new.
• 46:54
  Make you're telling me so it's. Because people look at new make
• 46:58
  and go, oh, it's not whiskey yet.
• 46:59
  So, but I suppose that's the short term way of looking at it.
• 47:02
  If you suddenly said I've got some, if you knew the
• 47:05
  distillery, right, I've got new make from this distillery that I
• 47:09
  can guarantee has gone into some of the top wood that you can get
• 47:12
  your hands on. At this level, it's probably a
• 47:15
  bargain because you're probably looking at going, oh, you're
• 47:18
  probably you're, you're going to be spending.
• 47:20
  You know, if you were to put two of the cast side by side saying
• 47:23
  this is 3 year old whiskey in a standard bit of wood, people
• 47:27
  would probably be more drawn to that because it's whiskey now.
• 47:29
  Yeah. It's not new make, new make.
• 47:32
  You've got to wait three years before you can call it whiskey.
• 47:35
  Absolutely. Drawing samples at a cast of new
• 47:37
  make isn't any fun. Drawing samples at a cast of of
• 47:40
  whiskey is fun. So I suppose, yeah, there's that
• 47:43
  element. But from our investment point of
• 47:45
  view into the liquid, if you're going to say, well, that's only
• 47:48
  going to get really, really, really, really good.
• 47:50
  Yeah, and keep getting good. I think people have the tendency
• 47:52
  to get over excited when they get if it's a, you know, a small
• 47:56
  company buying their first ever tank and they go excited like
• 47:58
  everything first of Sherry. But what's, you know, put half
• 48:01
  into decent quality refill like Huggies.
• 48:05
  We we get a really good supply from a distillery.
• 48:08
  I can't mention the name, but they're really good quality.
• 48:11
  They get them made themselves, They use them a few times.
• 48:13
  Then then we use them and we get some really good results from
• 48:16
  that. We get some D char recharging
• 48:19
  from Loch Loman group, which are fantastic.
• 48:21
  Yeah. And then?
• 48:22
  Is that empty or you're talking or full of?
• 48:25
  Empties empty, so just just wood and then a few first of all
• 48:29
  bourbons get some cherries in there as well.
• 48:31
  Some rums just just spread it around and then you've got
• 48:35
  opportunity if, if the refills aren't doing enough to it, then
• 48:39
  you know, you can upgrade them or if the share's going too
• 48:41
  powerful, then you can do kind of swap out.
• 48:44
  So it's, yeah, I think it's an arc to how you how you deal with
• 48:47
  the whole tanker if your business isn't, you know, just
• 48:51
  massive blends. And would you, would you, I
• 48:53
  mean, well, from what you've already said, and I suppose it's
• 48:55
  entirely up to yourself. And I don't know how you, I
• 48:58
  don't know if you can legally without having the right
• 49:02
  insurance and paperwork, call yourself a whiskey consultant.
• 49:06
  But from what you've just said, I'm just thinking to myself,
• 49:10
  like Angus and I have come through the door, we've met you
• 49:12
  for the very first time and we've said we've got cash and we
• 49:17
  are going to get some tankers and we're going to start doing
• 49:20
  this. Would you offer a like, would
• 49:22
  you be able to tell us? Listen lads, like what you've
• 49:24
  just said there. If I'm suddenly saying, ah, it's
• 49:27
  got to be Firstville, Sherry got a guy over in here that's going
• 49:30
  to send them all over. We're going to stick fairly odd
• 49:33
  1000 litres, all our cash into that.
• 49:35
  Are you going to say cool, if that's what you want to do it,
• 49:39
  but or if or or is it a case of us coming you saying, well, how
• 49:42
  would you do it, James? If you said it's all with a
• 49:45
  first for Sherry, it's your and it's your first foray into this.
• 49:48
  I might be like all first. OK, maybe that's interesting.
• 49:53
  Maybe keep a little bit back or something just because you don't
• 49:56
  know how it's going to react with the wood and overpower it.
• 49:58
  But I'm you say that I've always, I've always been one for
• 50:02
  not giving my opinion unless it's asked for.
• 50:04
  Yeah, of course. Chuck, how would you tell us?
• 50:09
  I mean, James has given us a really nice, polite business
• 50:12
  sort of thing. All right.
• 50:13
  OK, if I've got you right, Chuck, we're Angus.
• 50:16
  And that what you sent us. Everything in firstly, Phil
• 50:18
  Sherry. Yeah.
• 50:19
  It's a part of the Edinburgh Whiskey Company.
• 50:20
  I would agree with my boss. Privately, privately, we're in
• 50:25
  diggers, we're off the clock. And I'm saying, right, we're
• 50:27
  doing this, Chuck I. Would just say personally for me
• 50:29
  I'd want to see some variety. So you wouldn't go out, are you?
• 50:33
  Fucking stupid. No, not unless they told me they
• 50:35
  didn't believe in finishes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 50:39
  But that's a debate for another time, yeah.
• 50:41
  But I think for like maturation, I mean, I, I like personally, I
• 50:45
  like variety. Yeah, I like to see, I also like
• 50:48
  to see how Spirit does in different vessels.
• 50:50
  So I'm a big fan of refill. I like first fill.
• 50:53
  I like. Well, you mentioned finishing
• 50:55
  then talk about like that's something that you'll offer as
• 51:00
  re racking is a phrase that you hear a lot of people talk about.
• 51:03
  And so basically re racking is the industry term for what then
• 51:08
  becomes a finish. Would that be correct?
• 51:10
  Potential part of I think. When we're in Sterney, if he
• 51:15
  described it as if the whiskey's in the new cask for three years,
• 51:19
  then it's a double maturation. Yes.
• 51:21
  Yeah. Where the finish is something
• 51:23
  under that. Yeah.
• 51:23
  There's no. Again, there's no.
• 51:24
  Yeah, there's no legal. Well, what we'll do is we'll
• 51:26
  fill everybody in on the inside Joke is that Chuck and I had
• 51:30
  Chuck and I, Jake Adkook and and Gregor Kirk, after a fair few
• 51:34
  drums, had about an hour long rummy about finishing.
• 51:39
  And there's a there's a discussion point for a, a
• 51:42
  dedicated episode on that. But but what I'm saying is that,
• 51:45
  you know, we the end user, the drinker on the bottle, it will
• 51:50
  say finished in or extra double maturation or extra maturation,
• 51:54
  etcetera. That's what we see on the
• 51:56
  bottle. But what the word thing the the
• 51:58
  technical term within the warehouse would be it's been re
• 52:01
  racked into something else, which basically re racking is
• 52:04
  effectively liquid. Going out of 1 cask and then
• 52:06
  going into. Another cask, which again is
• 52:08
  something that you guys will do fairly regularly.
• 52:10
  We've seen the smaller casks. You can see down there, there's
• 52:13
  a couple of smaller ones and that's something like a lot of
• 52:16
  people again, is, you know, the smaller casks speeds, maturation
• 52:20
  speeds up a little bit, smaller casts.
• 52:22
  I found I saw Woody put on the Facebook group, he was messing,
• 52:27
  someone was talking about his blood tub stuff.
• 52:28
  Woody is just an incredible. I mean, first of all, Woody and
• 52:32
  Megan, what they've done with Woodrow's just exceptional.
• 52:35
  And you've said that Woody's taught you a fair bit about, you
• 52:38
  know, gave you a bit of provision.
• 52:40
  So someone was actually talking about Woody's five year old Loch
• 52:44
  Lomond and the 9 year old Loch Lomond which have both been
• 52:47
  finished in blood. Yeah, I think it's finished in
• 52:50
  blood. Tubs are mature anyway.
• 52:51
  And. There's a really little cast.
• 52:53
  He's a tiny little cast, but Woody, Woody just said, I just
• 52:56
  just comments on the thing. Everyone's talking up his
• 52:58
  product. Everyone's be like, it's
• 53:00
  amazing. Like when it's this, that next
• 53:01
  thing. Woody just I always think
• 53:03
  finishing in small cast is cheating because I suppose
• 53:10
  match. So what we know is this
• 53:12
  maturation happens with surface area surface retention.
• 53:15
  Am I right in saying that it's starting to sound like what I'm
• 53:17
  talking about here, but basically the more surface the
• 53:21
  whiskey has to cover, the longer it takes for maturation?
• 53:25
  Or is it the other way around? Yeah.
• 53:26
  Well, you think about the size of the butt, yeah, there's only
• 53:29
  so much liquid that's actually touching the wood.
• 53:30
  The rest of it's really entrained in in the middle.
• 53:32
  Yeah. And there's, you know, there's
• 53:34
  transfer going on, but the smaller the cask, the smaller my
• 53:37
  liquid there and it's still touching the.
• 53:39
  This is more actually touching the wood I guess and.
• 53:41
  So I suppose if someone said like right, I've got a, I've got
• 53:44
  a hogs head, 250 litres. It's been sat there for five or
• 53:48
  six years doing something. Could somebody come to you guys
• 53:51
  and say I want to take half of it out.
• 53:54
  OK, I want half of it put into or.
• 53:57
  So I'm going to take half of it, keep 1/2 in the Hogs Head and
• 54:01
  I'm going to get that other half of liquid, 175 litres or
• 54:05
  whatever, and I'm going to 125 litres, sorry, and I'm going to
• 54:09
  stick. I want some of it to go into an
• 54:11
  octave. I want some of it to go into a
• 54:14
  barique. I want not a Barique.
• 54:15
  A breaks. How big's a break?
• 54:17
  225. So you wouldn't pay it all, but
• 54:18
  I want some of it to go into a hogs head, an octave, A ferkin,
• 54:22
  a blood tub, 1/4 cask or anything like that.
• 54:24
  You're. Describing Greg, OK, yeah, I'm
• 54:28
  always turning that with different sized cask going
• 54:29
  right. You've got some ratios here for
• 54:31
  you, this and this. This and then because then I
• 54:33
  mean, I suppose the longer that you could leave it in, you could
• 54:37
  maybe add it back. Would you be able to add it
• 54:38
  back? Could you re rack and then re?
• 54:40
  Back yeah, if you want. To Is that what something?
• 54:42
  Had like marrying vessels together.
• 54:45
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how would it work then if
• 54:47
  I've. So let's just say I've taken
• 54:48
  half a hog's head out, right? And I've split it between 4
• 54:52
  different octaves, shall we say? Right, right.
• 54:55
  And I decide one octave I'm going to bottle straight away
• 55:00
  because it's a cracker. After two or three months.
• 55:02
  Yeah. The other octave I'm going to
• 55:03
  give a little bit longer, but the other two octaves, nothing
• 55:06
  really happens. Could I put those two octaves
• 55:09
  back in the same cask? Yeah, Yeah.
• 55:12
  But then could you call it single cask whiskey if you then
• 55:14
  bottled it from that? No, Isn't that an interesting?
• 55:17
  Question. Yeah.
• 55:19
  So you know the spirits drink verification scheme is no.
• 55:24
  So that is a part of HMRC who basically are there to maintain
• 55:29
  this recommended standards of the Scotch or protected tips
• 55:33
  like Scotch whiskey. Yeah.
• 55:34
  So in theory, if we've got a three-year old Stosia here, we
• 55:40
  should be able to trace that liquid all the way back through
• 55:42
  everyone's records all the way back to Binhaban Distillery and
• 55:44
  the, the grain, the. Stosia eyes.
• 55:47
  They have a Peter Binhabon, right?
• 55:48
  OK. And so everyone who opens a new
• 55:53
  warehouse, they have to be part of the scheme.
• 55:55
  So we had sort of them visiting and they're just talking about
• 56:00
  bottling and things like that and they're kind of quizzing me.
• 56:03
  And they said, so if someone wants to, you know, bottle,
• 56:07
  bottle a whole cask but into two different brands and they want
• 56:11
  to put a single cask on the label, what do you think of
• 56:13
  that? And I was like.
• 56:15
  So I mean it's 1 cast. So it's one cast, say, say it's
• 56:18
  this one here. It's going into SO.
• 56:19
  So let's say you had a little joint venture going on between
• 56:23
  Blind Summit and Rarefying, for example, half of it labeled as a
• 56:29
  Blind Summit. Is that the sort of thing
• 56:30
  you're? Yeah, it's actually, yeah, two
• 56:32
  different companies. Can you call it single cask?
• 56:35
  Well, yeah, would again as a way to keep it, I have to prove the
• 56:37
  labels because this is my responsibility to maintain all,
• 56:41
  you know, the regulations. So would it be single cask?
• 56:44
  And I was like, well, yeah, the contents has come from one
• 56:46
  single cask, but they explained well that 1/2 is not the entire
• 56:51
  cask. So although the liquid has come
• 56:53
  from one single cask, that bottling.
• 56:55
  It's not a label. That's not a full single cask,
• 56:57
  but then they went. So what I would do is just take
• 57:01
  out half liquid, put it into a smaller vessel for a day and
• 57:05
  then bottle it, and then you've got a single cask of whiskey.
• 57:08
  And then would you have to then say it's finished then?
• 57:10
  No, no, you don't have to declare it, Yeah.
• 57:12
  All right enough, you don't have to.
• 57:13
  Declare, I don't have to declare it.
• 57:14
  You can just say it's from a single cask.
• 57:17
  Yeah. But it is interesting when we're
• 57:19
  talking about, when we're talking about the size of the
• 57:21
  cask and how what effect that has in maturation.
• 57:24
  We know temperature, yeah, has an effect on maturation.
• 57:27
  When we were going around with Chuck earlier, he was saying
• 57:29
  that the, you know, the older stuff generally is towards the
• 57:33
  bottom because it's colder in the warehouse at the bottom, at
• 57:36
  the top, we know heat. Rise.
• 57:37
  It's more constant. Younger stuff.
• 57:38
  So there's all these levers you can pull on if you are managed,
• 57:42
  you know, managing casts, wanting to get different
• 57:44
  results, you can slow things down, speed things up.
• 57:47
  Well, The thing is, you know, well, we talked about it.
• 57:50
  It was fascinating. I think it was when we were at
• 57:52
  Glenn Murray and at Glenn, Farcliff says.
• 57:54
  Of course, when you do these tours, they always, there's
• 57:58
  always a warehouse. There's usually a warehouse one
• 58:00
  or something like that that'd take you an oldest warehouse,
• 58:02
  there's oldest stock. And usually in the corner, the
• 58:04
  coldest, dampest corner, they'll say like that's the oldest cast
• 58:07
  that we've got there. And of course the, the, the two
• 58:10
  sides that everyone worries about, there's volume of liquid
• 58:12
  that's left if someone's been sitting there for 60 odd years,
• 58:16
  you know, the angels share, which we'll talk about when we
• 58:19
  go further up. But also the big problem you've
• 58:21
  got is managing that ABV because every year there will be a loss
• 58:26
  in liquid. But as we know cast maturation
• 58:29
  ABV drops. Yeah.
• 58:31
  Yeah. So your biggest concern would be
• 58:32
  if you've got something sitting there from the 1960s or 70s and
• 58:36
  you're going this is going to be a cracker.
• 58:37
  But then one day, I mean, how quickly could that happen?
• 58:40
  How quickly could could, because when it's 57% losing a couple of
• 58:45
  percent a year, that's not a problem, is it?
• 58:47
  Because you're going to go, well, it just comes down to 56
• 58:49
  or 55. But when it's 4142, suddenly
• 58:53
  you're going right, We lose any more out of that and that's a
• 58:56
  goner. Yeah, it's to do with like
• 58:59
  relative volatility. So when it's much higher
• 59:01
  concentration of alcohol, it's much more volatile.
• 59:03
  The alcohol wants to escape as you get lower and lower it.
• 59:06
  Slows down. It slows down so you don't have
• 59:08
  to worry about it as much and things like re racking.
• 59:12
  I think it was it was Gareth Morgan used to be up at DNM
• 59:15
  Winchester. He he's only when you re rack,
• 59:17
  you'd probably lose instantly about 4% ABV really.
• 59:20
  So if someone's there with their old, their old, you know, just
• 59:23
  by old cask, but it's been in a bad way, they go.
• 59:25
  I'll just give it a turbo power with some a Sherry cask and it's
• 59:28
  well if it's a 43%, don't do it. Just just by rights of taking
• 59:33
  out the bang and moving. Yeah, and.
• 59:35
  Like you know the if it's contact with the air.
• 59:38
  When ex Sherry Cask, Yeah, that the Sherry in there will be 12%
• 59:43
  or something. So there's something in the
• 59:46
  actual wood will actually dilute it and then there's all the in
• 59:50
  drink that happens and then just moving about.
• 59:53
  So even giving it more oxygen could or more air could have
• 59:56
  could cause that, right Well. What we are trying to do is just
• 59:59
  put the cask on the rack and then just leave it until you
• 1:00:02
  have to touch it. Well, I'll tell you what, Angus,
• 1:00:03
  right? Yes, they often talk about the
• 1:00:05
  Angels Share, right. And what we do is that the
• 1:00:08
  evaporation happens and what we tend to know is it goes up the
• 1:00:11
  way. So I think with a how many rack,
• 1:00:13
  how many casts do you say you've got here right now?
• 1:00:16
  13 1/2 thousand. 13 1/2 thousand.
• 1:00:18
  So I reckon by just going up to the top end of this rack we
• 1:00:22
  should be able to probably inhale a bit of Dram's worth.
• 1:00:25
  Oh, why not? Shall we go up and see how high
• 1:00:28
  this actually ends, James? Right.
• 1:00:29
  OK, perfect. Right.
• 1:00:33
  Angus, clap us in. OK, so if you're watching this
• 1:00:39
  episode episode on YouTube. We're up, We're up in the
• 1:00:42
  rarefied air. We are now up in the tropics of
• 1:00:45
  the, the, the warehouse. It's very warm up here.
• 1:00:49
  It's also very high. James, I'm you're, you're a bit
• 1:00:52
  more comfortable with the height at the moment.
• 1:00:54
  Than I am you're going to get used.
• 1:00:58
  To it I'm happy man I'm I, I, I I don't want.
• 1:01:02
  I'll try and lean further I guess.
• 1:01:03
  You seem to be a bit more comfortable with the height.
• 1:01:06
  Of my I've got. Used to it, actually.
• 1:01:08
  I don't think anyone's ever fainted on the podcast before,
• 1:01:11
  but I am poking my head out a little bit.
• 1:01:13
  I'm trying my hardest not to look down.
• 1:01:15
  I can see truck across from me who's kind of looking after the
• 1:01:17
  camera truck. You're up here pretty much most
• 1:01:20
  days then. Yeah, fairly regularly.
• 1:01:24
  Yeah, I wouldn't say it was particularly warm up here.
• 1:01:27
  I mean, it's warmer than it was down below, but it's still
• 1:01:29
  fairly. No, but as well, according this,
• 1:01:31
  it's you know, it's just gone 5 past eight in the evening.
• 1:01:34
  So yes, cooler. It's a cooler day as well.
• 1:01:37
  I can imagine when this was James.
• 1:01:38
  This is quite warm. Yeah, on, on the really hot
• 1:01:41
  days, I think the fluctuation up here can be quite, yeah, quite
• 1:01:43
  dramatic, the swings. But we've got so much
• 1:01:47
  ventilation so there's a lot of air passing through anyway, so
• 1:01:50
  it doesn't get like too kind of stuffy.
• 1:01:52
  Yeah. And as opposed as well as you
• 1:01:54
  don't need to store casks this high at the moment.
• 1:01:58
  So there aren't many casks. There are a few casks further
• 1:02:01
  behind us I guess where you've mentioned.
• 1:02:03
  Some over there, right up at the top as.
• 1:02:05
  Well, the bungholes are looking at the right direction as well.
• 1:02:08
  So I think trucks managed to do a good job of getting them in at
• 1:02:11
  20 past and 22 and midday. Chuck, well done.
• 1:02:14
  Thank. You very much.
• 1:02:15
  And yeah, so how high up are we right now, James?
• 1:02:19
  For people who are listening, I. Think the apex, the roof is
• 1:02:24
  about 16 metres I think. I mean, every time I look down I
• 1:02:29
  get a really funny feeling in my teeth.
• 1:02:32
  So we added these extra kind of safety bars in.
• 1:02:35
  So people would stop leaning over so you.
• 1:02:37
  Can rest your head on. You'll also be pleased to know
• 1:02:39
  that I've smacked my head off one of these bars quite a few
• 1:02:41
  times as well, yeah. Yeah, I can imagine.
• 1:02:44
  Lucky you had appropriate headgear on SO.
• 1:02:46
  I mean, it's a, it's a high, it's a long way up in terms of
• 1:02:49
  filling this then filling this space.
• 1:02:51
  I mean, first of all, how long has the warehouse been here?
• 1:02:54
  First cast rolls rolled in April 23.
• 1:02:57
  So yeah, it's still, I mean pretty new, yeah, still
• 1:02:59
  relatively new in terms of in terms of a building and and of
• 1:03:03
  course with a lot of work has to be done now.
• 1:03:05
  I'm going to how there's firewalls that have to separate.
• 1:03:08
  So what zone are we in right now?
• 1:03:10
  This is zone 1. And how many zones are there?
• 1:03:13
  3 altogether 3 cast storage zones and then the the operating
• 1:03:16
  zone which. Is what we were.
• 1:03:17
  So you've got 4 zones, but three cast storing zones, and there's
• 1:03:20
  a zone. And then roughly per zone,
• 1:03:22
  you're what, just a straight up divide your?
• 1:03:24
  Capacity by this one, Zone 1 has got the the butt racking union
• 1:03:27
  as well. OK.
• 1:03:28
  So we've got capacity, about 528 butts to be really exact.
• 1:03:35
  I wish we were a bit more. It seems a bit more of a trend
• 1:03:37
  now to put use butts again. So a lot of people are, if
• 1:03:41
  they're getting a butt delivered, they'll break it down
• 1:03:44
  into two hoggies because a lot of people, that much whiskey is
• 1:03:47
  too much to handle. Really.
• 1:03:48
  Yeah. The best way to get up and down
• 1:03:51
  here truck is the bungee you do because I do you ever when
• 1:03:58
  you're working, just take a minute, look down and go, Jesus
• 1:04:01
  Christ, I'm quite high up. Or do you just switch off to the
• 1:04:03
  height that you're in just now? I'm quite good with this.
• 1:04:05
  I mean, I grew up working on dryers on farms, and I have to
• 1:04:10
  say the racking here is, oh, my God, It's like a dream of
• 1:04:14
  comparison of what I was working with before.
• 1:04:16
  Yeah, that was just like the idea of safety.
• 1:04:19
  There's actual safety. Here.
• 1:04:20
  So for people listening on a safety front, I think it's
• 1:04:23
  important because if anyone's listening to this, I think I
• 1:04:24
  don't know what they think we're doing.
• 1:04:26
  Whether we're just climb ourselves up to the top of a
• 1:04:29
  racking system and we're just sitting with our legs dangling
• 1:04:31
  off like those guys at the picture in New York at the
• 1:04:35
  Rockefeller Centre or whatever it is.
• 1:04:36
  We, I mean for context here, there are there's dedicated
• 1:04:42
  stairwells inside the racking and there's walkways as well
• 1:04:47
  between each cast rack effectively.
• 1:04:50
  Which? So when you're talking about
• 1:04:53
  actually digging cast samples out, there'll be a time when you
• 1:04:57
  need to get the forklift to bring the cask down.
• 1:05:00
  But could you do a cask sample from up here?
• 1:05:03
  Yeah, Well, I mean, obviously Chuck's better to answer this,
• 1:05:05
  but what what we can do is if you take one out above, then you
• 1:05:10
  can roll them all and make a gap down to the one below and then
• 1:05:13
  just pop the bung out, take your sample.
• 1:05:16
  I know in a dunnage Ware as I've seen these people just end up
• 1:05:18
  drilling a hole into the cask and putting a little like rubber
• 1:05:21
  tube in, which obviously you don't want to ruin the integrity
• 1:05:24
  of the cask. It's not our cast to drill into
• 1:05:27
  so. So I mean, that does make things
• 1:05:29
  ahead and from an inspection point of view, I was kind of
• 1:05:31
  half laughing, chuckling to myself earlier, thinking to
• 1:05:34
  myself, I could just see sort of Chuck as this sort of almost
• 1:05:38
  like the the prison warder walking up and down, patrolling,
• 1:05:43
  patrolling the patrolling the corridor here.
• 1:05:46
  Just W like whistling to himself with a torch and twiddling some
• 1:05:50
  keys around his index finger as he walks up and just inspecting
• 1:05:54
  the cast. Because I suppose how often are
• 1:05:56
  you supposed to inspect your rack in to make sure that casts
• 1:06:00
  are all fine? Everything's doing what it
• 1:06:02
  should. Well, you know, you're not.
• 1:06:04
  There's no leakages or anything like that.
• 1:06:06
  Our policy is every Friday, they'll they'll do the leak walk
• 1:06:10
  as much as you can as this many casts.
• 1:06:12
  You can't spot every single drip.
• 1:06:14
  But The thing is that when you walk into a wire, you get a
• 1:06:16
  lovely kind of gentle aroma. You get the vanilla from the
• 1:06:20
  wiring cast. If you smell like hard spirit,
• 1:06:23
  that's a that's a problem because that's a leak.
• 1:06:26
  So using your nose, you can kind of find find the place where,
• 1:06:29
  where the leak's coming from. And then it's a case of how far
• 1:06:31
  up do you have to go to to spot the actual leaking cast.
• 1:06:34
  Is it is it a case of just getting on your hands and knees
• 1:06:36
  and licking at the floor for any kind of damp spots?
• 1:06:38
  As well. Yeah, it is.
• 1:06:39
  It is a shiny spot on the floor. That means it's, you know, an
• 1:06:42
  active leak is dripping. If it's if it's dull, then it's
• 1:06:44
  a leak that's sealed itself up because that's, you know, as you
• 1:06:47
  know, as you know, casks are living, breathing things.
• 1:06:49
  Because that will happen. I mean, that's the thing you've
• 1:06:51
  got, you've got this volume of casks here.
• 1:06:54
  There will be leaks that. Happen.
• 1:06:57
  Yeah, yeah, for sure. And so that's just and, and of
• 1:07:00
  course, as a cask owner, I suppose that's what you pay your
• 1:07:03
  insurance for one sense. But also at the same time,
• 1:07:05
  that's just, that's just part of the rubber.
• 1:07:08
  The green isn't that, you know, you, you, you don't know.
• 1:07:11
  I mean, even when you speak to independent bottlers, you hear
• 1:07:14
  about buying parcels of casks, but very few, from what I
• 1:07:18
  understand from the people we've spoken to, very few people get
• 1:07:20
  an opportunity to come along, kick the cask, open the bung,
• 1:07:24
  take a dip out of it and see what it's like before they buy
• 1:07:27
  it. You sometimes buy on what you're
• 1:07:28
  seeing on. Original fill yeah, yeah, you
• 1:07:30
  get some people buy a 10 year old cask and it was you're
• 1:07:34
  buying it on the fill details and just hoping for the best.
• 1:07:36
  Yeah, some, if you're buying direct from distilleries,
• 1:07:38
  you'll, they'll tend to be like, oh, sorry, that's obviously half
• 1:07:41
  empty and it's only 5 years old. We'll give you another one.
• 1:07:45
  From my own personal experience, I, I bought a, one of the first
• 1:07:49
  Ben Evis that we bottled arrived the warehouse and yeah, it'd
• 1:07:53
  been leaking and it was about half as much as we were
• 1:07:55
  expecting. But that for us as a new bottler
• 1:07:57
  was a bit devastating. But we just made the best of it
• 1:08:00
  as you could. And there's no comeback on that.
• 1:08:02
  You can't say. No, you store your cast at your
• 1:08:04
  own risk. Yeah, you can't.
• 1:08:06
  You can't fill the bottles up to half full.
• 1:08:09
  Yeah, just put disclaimer on the on the label so that that's
• 1:08:12
  insurance covers like catastrophic loss.
• 1:08:15
  So if we bend it off a forklift and broke it and it's spilled on
• 1:08:19
  the floor, then insurance covers that.
• 1:08:21
  Or if a hoop pops in the rack in which, you know, rusty ones do
• 1:08:26
  then and it just empties itself over the weekend, then that
• 1:08:28
  that's an insurable thing. As for my understanding is but a
• 1:08:32
  slow leak, no one's going to, you know, even look at that and
• 1:08:35
  entertain an insurance claim. So that's that's why we do our
• 1:08:39
  checks because the last thing we want is to have to report to
• 1:08:42
  someone that. Oh, the bad.
• 1:08:43
  News leaked empty and it was on our watch and.
• 1:08:47
  You hear horror stories from, you know, you hear horror
• 1:08:49
  stories from independent bottlers that talk about the
• 1:08:51
  fact that like we'd bought a parcel and the casks arrived and
• 1:08:56
  it was maybe 10810 years old. And basically the, the wood that
• 1:09:01
  it's been in has been doing absolutely nothing.
• 1:09:03
  So you're getting a a cask of eight years old, but actually
• 1:09:08
  it's probably had about two years worth of maturation
• 1:09:12
  involved in that. I suppose the benefit is you can
• 1:09:14
  salvage that by re racking and putting into other things to
• 1:09:17
  pull it back. But again, that that changes
• 1:09:19
  everything because it's might be 8 years old in age, but flavour
• 1:09:22
  profile and stuff like that you're not.
• 1:09:24
  Getting. Yeah, but you're hoping to
• 1:09:24
  bottle that relatively soon, Yeah.
• 1:09:26
  Then that's set you back, you know, 1-2 years.
• 1:09:29
  Right. So we normally ask our guests
• 1:09:32
  for their walk 3 drams, any 3 whiskeys that have any three
• 1:09:37
  story associated with them. You've been on the podcast
• 1:09:40
  before, so we've asked you this already, but I would like to ask
• 1:09:43
  you, seen as we're in a bonded warehouse that you are the
• 1:09:45
  operations manager of for your what, 3 casks Now for Cavett
• 1:09:51
  here, that could be anything that could be like you've just
• 1:09:55
  talked about, you've been Nevis there any, any cask that you've
• 1:09:59
  come across or even sitting in here or that you've bottled that
• 1:10:02
  has some sort of story or some sort of meaning to you in it.
• 1:10:05
  So James, what are your what, 3 casks?
• 1:10:09
  Well, we just out of pure nerdness, we had a couple of RB
• 1:10:15
  keys arrive. They're like they're rye or
• 1:10:17
  one's a spirit drink. So I messaged Kirsty asking her
• 1:10:21
  about it and it's just absolutely fascinating what
• 1:10:22
  they're able to do with that and having one in the warehouse that
• 1:10:26
  it was really incredible. What other ones?
• 1:10:33
  We've had some really good Woodford Reserve, like bourbon
• 1:10:37
  barrels come in and being able to split, you know, say a butt
• 1:10:42
  into into one of them and then a Buffalo Trace and just watch how
• 1:10:46
  they just go on different journeys.
• 1:10:48
  Split a butt. Yeah, the butt of the same
• 1:10:50
  liquid one went the Buffalo Trace, first of all.
• 1:10:53
  Bourbon Barrel, the one Woodford Reserve and just watching how
• 1:10:57
  the whiskey just starts going on in its own different journey.
• 1:10:59
  I think that's the kind of thing Chuck was talking about earlier.
• 1:11:01
  It's just, you know, whiskey people and that I find that
• 1:11:04
  absolutely fascinating how a cast can just go off even it's
• 1:11:07
  technically, you know, it's first full bourbon, but it's
• 1:11:09
  just two different very, very amazing specimens.
• 1:11:13
  And then I think when we got our first spring Mac's all been
• 1:11:16
  quite a a dear story to me because it's my dad's favorite.
• 1:11:18
  So we've got our first cast of spring Mac rolling.
• 1:11:20
  That was pretty amazing in 92. 92.
• 1:11:23
  Casts and that was that's the first time I went, Oh, I'd
• 1:11:26
  really love that. We just we nose of that.
• 1:11:27
  So whenever we're re gauging, I'll put my nose in.
• 1:11:30
  Obviously we can't we can't try it.
• 1:11:31
  But yeah, it's a pretty special moment just getting some some
• 1:11:35
  really kind of rare stuff in here as well.
• 1:11:37
  There you go, truck. Fantastic from your own point of
• 1:11:40
  view. Really cool to see actually.
• 1:11:43
  It was a blind stomach ball and they they got that waxy Daluin
• 1:11:48
  in. Lovely drama actually.
• 1:11:50
  We had that in the pod Eye, really.
• 1:11:51
  Really cool to see and learn about.
• 1:11:54
  And there was also red wine Mortlax that are owned by Glenn
• 1:12:00
  Rare fine guys. They've done a couple of
• 1:12:02
  releases of it already in the past, but the these cast are
• 1:12:07
  still maturing and still seeing the colour on some of them is
• 1:12:10
  just insane. And we've been taking some of
• 1:12:13
  them and doing re racks and putting them into, you know,
• 1:12:17
  refill bourbon to see how that changes them in time as well.
• 1:12:22
  And very special to me, for me as well.
• 1:12:26
  But there was a some 1990 little mill.
• 1:12:31
  Arrived. Wow, Really.
• 1:12:32
  Just. Getting to see those casks and
• 1:12:35
  again, knows those casks like liquid history and a great year,
• 1:12:40
  the year of my birth, 1990. So just getting to see and, you
• 1:12:45
  know, handle stuff like that and like knowing that you're getting
• 1:12:48
  to put it in places that it could be there for, could be
• 1:12:50
  there for years and years and years, could ever be there for
• 1:12:52
  six months and someone's going to bottle it.
• 1:12:54
  But still just really cool to see.
• 1:12:57
  Superb. Well, guys, I think we've kind
• 1:13:02
  of come to the point where this is all you.
• 1:13:05
  Can do. Graham's got altitude sick.
• 1:13:08
  Oh, really? It comes to the point Graham
• 1:13:10
  needs to descend it. Has genuinely been incredible.
• 1:13:15
  I'm going to toggle the camera a little bit here to try and give
• 1:13:18
  people their thing. Is there to give people the
• 1:13:21
  scale of how high up we are. There'll be some other videos
• 1:13:26
  associated with us. Get onto the YouTube channel to
• 1:13:29
  see. But listen, thank you so much to
• 1:13:32
  everybody who has been involved in the Whiskey Stories podcast
• 1:13:36
  over the last few weeks. Our Facebook group as we're
• 1:13:39
  recording has gone off It's fantastic.
• 1:13:41
  We've got over 470 members at the point of recording and that
• 1:13:45
  could go even higher. We drew our our winners earlier
• 1:13:50
  today. So well done to those guys who
• 1:13:52
  who won their Whiskey stories 25 year old blind.
• 1:13:56
  Fantastic. Thank you so much to everybody
• 1:13:58
  who who shared past the pod as much as you possibly can, guys,
• 1:14:02
  it's great to have so many listeners, so many people that
• 1:14:06
  are getting involved. Our our weekend DRAM roll call,
• 1:14:08
  Angus once again, just been brilliant people just getting
• 1:14:12
  involved from all over the world and more music as well.
• 1:14:15
  Getting people, people absolutely get involved
• 1:14:17
  musically. We've had their rugby shed,
• 1:14:21
  Lions rugby shed. We've had loads and loads of
• 1:14:24
  things. It's fantastic.
• 1:14:25
  And James as well, you know, thank you so much for inviting
• 1:14:29
  us a lot. It's been great to come along to
• 1:14:31
  this. As this goes out, we will be
• 1:14:34
  gearing up for Whiskey Fringe. But of course for that, this
• 1:14:39
  goes out on Thursday, tomorrow. If you're listening this on the
• 1:14:44
  Thursday, we have our Thompson Brothers in the Butler
• 1:14:47
  Spotlight. This sell out.
• 1:14:49
  I think we put some more tickets on there.
• 1:14:52
  Hopefully at the time of recording, you know, we'll get
• 1:14:54
  those all sold off as well. But it's going to be a cracking
• 1:14:56
  weekend. We've got Thompson Brothers on
• 1:15:00
  Friday night and then of course, we are working the stand for
• 1:15:04
  Glenmore Spirits Rare find at the Whiskey Fringe.
• 1:15:07
  If you're listening to this before you head to Whiskey
• 1:15:09
  Fringe, if you're coming on a Sunday, come and look for us.
• 1:15:12
  Seek us out. Yeah, come and say hello.
• 1:15:14
  Code word frozen cream, eggs and and you'll get a health, you'll
• 1:15:18
  get a healthy DRAM. Bearing in mind Angus is on the
• 1:15:21
  pores. So I don't know if if Greg
• 1:15:24
  Urquhart has put enough liquid aside for the whole Sunday with
• 1:15:28
  Angus on the pores. Maybe they'll get somebody who
• 1:15:31
  knows what they're doing pour in the drams and Angus and I could
• 1:15:33
  just talk about them, but it's going to.
• 1:15:35
  Go and fill your boots. It's going.
• 1:15:37
  It's going to be a great weekend.
• 1:15:39
  Yeah. Like I say, give us five stars,
• 1:15:41
  pass the pod on. The more we get, the lower
• 1:15:43
  people want to talk to us about whiskey and lots and lots of
• 1:15:46
  other exciting things happening. James, thank you very much.
• 1:15:49
  No worries. I'm genuinely start.
• 1:15:51
  My legs are, I love getting ready to go here.
• 1:15:54
  I'm going to sort of head back down the stairs, I guess.
• 1:15:56
  It's been great. We've done it again, a whiskey
• 1:15:58
  warehouse. We are standing at the top of
• 1:16:01
  the tallest whiskey racking in Europe.
• 1:16:05
  Certainly, certainly in Europe. 100%.
• 1:16:07
  Yeah, whiskey stories only going up in the world.
• 1:16:10
  Absolutely. There we go.
• 1:16:11
  Cheers, guys. Spongevar, Thank you.