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Indy Bottler Spotlight LIVE from Leith with Pintail: Sweet Wine Casks & New Pubs · Whisky Stories Podcast

• 0:00
  But is everyone ready to rock'n'roll right, Angus?
• 0:04
  You know what to do. Welcome to the Whiskey Stories
• 0:11
  podcast. That's my first trial that
• 0:14
  genuinely ends. Yeah, I, I nearly said fuck me
• 0:17
  on my. I think it's exceptional.
• 0:19
  I really, Yeah, it's got that. It's exactly what you want from
• 0:22
  that kind of cast. That sweet wine is coming
• 0:23
  through. You've got a nice depth to it.
• 0:25
  We enjoy the whole pairs, we enjoy it.
• 0:27
  It's a great fun show and it's the energy, but also it's the
• 0:31
  learning. I mean everything about the
• 0:33
  whiskeys tonight that you learn and and whiskey to to to me and
• 0:37
  and to my poem like it's still. Welcome along.
• 0:41
  The whiskey story is indie balls.
• 0:47
  I guess we've done it again. We have, yeah.
• 0:49
  And a real change of scenery. We're down in Leith.
• 0:51
  I think this episode will recorded down here.
• 0:54
  We've talked a. Lot 7 of Port Leith Distillery
• 0:55
  episodes. Well, have you ever thought
• 1:00
  about that before? I actually went one of the first
• 1:03
  episodes that we've ever recorded.
• 1:04
  I. Like a steam train Well, it just
• 1:06
  went into that, but yeah no, apart from the port Olathes.
• 1:08
  Sorry, second episode we've. Done that.
• 1:10
  Yeah, we are. And we are joined by a very,
• 1:12
  very familiar face, a man who's he's been on a podcast a fair
• 1:17
  few Times Now, Simon. Simon Smith, third.
• 1:18
  Time's the charm, yeah? Yeah, I mean, third time, but if
• 1:21
  you also include the interview that I completely forgot that we
• 1:24
  did outside and the whiskey. Fringe.
• 1:27
  A whiskey fringe. I thought I was like, I can
• 1:29
  remember speaking to Simon. We had like 5 minutes and then I
• 1:32
  looked at the recording. I was like 15 minutes.
• 1:34
  Can't. Remember what we spoke about at
• 1:36
  that stage of the day? But it's fantastic to be here.
• 1:39
  So, so we are, this is the Pintail in the bottler spotlight
• 1:43
  that we're doing. And Keith Bonington, who
• 1:44
  unfortunately can't join us this evening, but he is the man that
• 1:48
  you, you know an awful lot about.
• 1:49
  You you you work with Pintel. With Pintel, yes.
• 1:52
  So Keith is the man behind it, but I help him do some.
• 1:55
  As well. Absolutely.
• 1:55
  But also, I think it's worth pointing out for for the
• 1:58
  listeners and for the people that are here, this is your new
• 2:00
  gaffe. Yes.
• 2:01
  So we're still in a bit of a kind of a handover period.
• 2:03
  So we literally walked in here at about 2:00 this afternoon.
• 2:07
  So there's a lot of things to change before, before anything
• 2:10
  like a soft or a proper opening. But luckily we could get in here
• 2:13
  to host this as we we wanted to. So it's the first kind of look.
• 2:16
  Obviously there'll be a lot more behind me on that bar while the
• 2:19
  time we go. Will you be building a whiskey
• 2:22
  bridge? Yeah, well, I don't know.
• 2:23
  We might have to do something a bit.
• 2:24
  We might have to try it out, Duke.
• 2:26
  Yeah, but I mean it's. Sort of whiskey structure or
• 2:29
  some description. Yeah, well, we need more space
• 2:30
  than that anyway, so. We'll get some space.
• 2:33
  It's fantastic. And one of the things as well as
• 2:35
  we were here getting set up, we were, we were just sort of
• 2:38
  sitting getting set up and the doors had been opened and some
• 2:41
  guy burning his field work gear kind of came in as he's open yet
• 2:44
  lads. And he went no and he went when
• 2:46
  do you open? And he sort of said next few
• 2:48
  weeks, I think he was expecting like 8:00 and you guys the next
• 2:54
  few weeks, a few weeks. And I won't say what else he
• 2:56
  said, but it does show you that there's definitely an apple.
• 2:58
  We've got 1 customer, we know that.
• 3:01
  But I mean, I think one things we're going to talk about a lot
• 3:04
  on the podcast, we've we've mentioned it.
• 3:05
  In fact, a few weeks ago we had Justine Hazlehurst on the the
• 3:08
  history of whiskey and and leaf. It's fantastic and you're just a
• 3:12
  stone throw away from some of that some of that history.
• 3:15
  Absolutely, yeah. You can see, you still see a lot
• 3:17
  of the old tracks from Whiskey Bones around the place, which
• 3:19
  sometimes leads into Watts now flats and stuff.
• 3:21
  But they were all kind of car tracks that were used for cast
• 3:24
  and stuff. And obviously, I mean, Justine's
• 3:25
  is a wealth of knowledge on on that subject much more than I.
• 3:28
  But yeah, the the Patterson brothers and all sorts of
• 3:31
  things. And obviously being a Center for
• 3:33
  shipping was what, you know, would have seen all the some of
• 3:37
  these cherry barrels coming in, all the stuff that was all, not
• 3:40
  just whiskey itself, but all the component parts of the industry
• 3:42
  would have foddled through here for a long time.
• 3:44
  So yeah, it's definitely got a beating heart of whiskey down
• 3:47
  here. Well, just before we get
• 3:48
  started, I have to say an honor I mentioned Lance Morgan has
• 3:51
  travelled all the way up here with his current wife.
• 3:53
  It's fantastic. Give him a round of applause,
• 3:54
  ladies and gentlemen. That's fantastic.
• 3:56
  See them. Lance, where have you travelled
• 3:59
  from this evening? It's a little village called Elm
• 4:02
  in the East Anglia, not far from King's Lynn.
• 4:05
  Fantastic, and I believe you've travelled all the way up just to
• 4:08
  see Angus myself. Just just to see Angus and Ross
• 4:11
  and Graham and everybody else. But we're thrilled to be here.
• 4:14
  Well, listen, thank you so much for coming along.
• 4:16
  It's fantastic. It's fantastic to see you here
• 4:18
  and well, we hope you really, really enjoy yourself.
• 4:21
  I must admit, you know, your Facebook intrigue me, a dog with
• 4:26
  a paper hat on the on the on the as the picture.
• 4:30
  And I was like, what's this? And then you say a friend
• 4:32
  request, but you messaged, you said, look, we're we're coming
• 4:34
  up for this weekend. Is there any opportunity?
• 4:36
  And it just so happened that you'll be able to come along.
• 4:38
  So thank you so much for coming along.
• 4:40
  It's great. I hope you really enjoy
• 4:40
  yourself. Great to see so many familiar
• 4:42
  faces. Great to see some new faces.
• 4:44
  Well, thank you to everyone for coming along.
• 4:46
  But Simon, we're all, we're not here for our chat.
• 4:48
  We've got Chuck Kerr. I should say as well.
• 4:49
  Chuck's basic. Yeah, sadly filling in for Ross.
• 4:52
  Hi, Ross. Yeah.
• 4:53
  So you're, you're here for taking Ross's space for this
• 4:56
  evening. He's very jealous that he can't,
• 4:57
  not taking as much space as Ross.
• 4:59
  I was wondering. I was wondering.
• 5:02
  I was going to get upset. Sorry, Ross.
• 5:06
  That's not a glass house which you and I can tell a story I.
• 5:08
  Know exactly, exactly, but we are we are just here for the
• 5:13
  famous whiskey stories chat. We're here for some whiskey and
• 5:16
  pintail tonight. So, Simon, what I'll get you to
• 5:18
  do is lead us into the first DRAM that we're going to be
• 5:20
  having. Right.
• 5:20
  So I think just to cover Pintail a little bit, first and foremost
• 5:24
  is Pintail was an existing brand going back about 100 years ago
• 5:28
  and it was a Sherry brands and it belonged to Globes.
• 5:31
  So it's basically the Sherry that the makers of Grouse would
• 5:34
  take out of the barrel and they used to ship it in barrel from
• 5:38
  Spain rather than bottling it there.
• 5:39
  They would bottle the Sherry, use it as as their own brand,
• 5:42
  which was pintail. And then they'd obviously use
• 5:44
  the cast for for the whiskey. The brands was shut down when
• 5:48
  Sherry for sales kind of went in the mid century and Keith bought
• 5:52
  the brand back from them and has taken.
• 5:55
  And if you look in the the leaflets that you guys have got
• 5:57
  on the tables, you'll actually see the old branding in the new
• 6:00
  and it's almost a replica. It's just being kind of shined
• 6:02
  up a little bit. So while it does have a nice,
• 6:03
  really nice vintage look on the bottle, it's actually it's not
• 6:06
  contrived at all. That is genuinely the how the
• 6:08
  brand looked beautiful pintail duck on it, obviously, which,
• 6:13
  you know, very bird themed this evening between the boozer and
• 6:16
  the the drams. But the the idea with behind
• 6:20
  pintail was actually that because the other sister brand
• 6:22
  is the whiskey sellers, which is kind of a square bottle with a
• 6:25
  kind of oak like sticker, like I wouldn't finish on it.
• 6:30
  The idea was for that to be the whiskey and then this to be
• 6:33
  everything else. So the early bottlings were were
• 6:35
  things like Brandy and port and stuff like that, some rum which
• 6:38
  which still comes under the brand.
• 6:40
  But then as it developed, it kind of became more of the, so
• 6:43
  the experimental, more new wave, we want to say it, whiskey
• 6:46
  selection. So the whiskey teller stuff is
• 6:49
  predominantly bourbon and Sherry casks, whereas the pintail stuff
• 6:52
  is a lot of sweet wine. Randy's, those kind of cars for
• 6:55
  finishing whiskey. There have been two or three
• 6:58
  that that the price on whiskey's ever gone into that type of
• 7:00
  cask. It's been done by pintail.
• 7:02
  There's been more than three or four that I've had to Google
• 7:04
  what the hell the cask was when I first saw the release because
• 7:07
  Keith has just got a real ability to source some really
• 7:11
  interesting cars. He's happy to source, you know,
• 7:13
  even a one off casks, whereas a lot of other people will want to
• 7:16
  buy in bulk. So it means that we can see that
• 7:19
  Lupiak cast. That's the second Lupiak finish
• 7:21
  that's in the line up tonight that pintail have done.
• 7:23
  The first one was the first ever whiskey to be finished in
• 7:24
  Lupiak. There's been fond Dion, there's
• 7:26
  been Finn Bratan, there's been flock to gas going all these
• 7:30
  words that you're probably looking at me and I didn't know
• 7:32
  what they are either. Yeah, so it's really
• 7:33
  interesting. So it's a way to explore a lot
• 7:36
  of fairly well known distilleries.
• 7:38
  I mean, most of the line up in front of you people will have
• 7:40
  drank that distilleries liquid before, but never in a guise
• 7:43
  like this. So really interesting cast
• 7:45
  finishing and Keith is, you know, judge during execution
• 7:49
  when it comes to what happens with the whiskey.
• 7:51
  So it's kind of a very curated process to get and and it is
• 7:55
  based on what's the profile of this whiskey, this isillery?
• 7:58
  What's the profile of that wine that the cast previously held?
• 8:01
  And will that match up together, you know, using those building
• 8:03
  blocks rather than just saying, I've got this, I've got this,
• 8:06
  let's Chuck it in. So and that doesn't always work.
• 8:08
  We've had to do some double finishes and stuff along the way
• 8:11
  where the first finish just didn't quite do what we hope.
• 8:12
  So it is that process, but obviously when it works, you get
• 8:16
  some really interesting things and and liquid that you know,
• 8:18
  it's, it's quite unique. So firing into the first round,
• 8:22
  we've got Taliban, which most people will probably know a
• 8:27
  really nice kind of easygoing spirit.
• 8:29
  For the most part, it's 10 years old.
• 8:31
  We're going to left to right. Left to right as you look at it,
• 8:33
  sorry, left to right. And this is in a Calvados task
• 8:37
  and it's a it's a 10 year old. So the Calvados finish.
• 8:40
  So if anyone doesn't know Calvados, it's French Brandy.
• 8:43
  You've got three regions of French Brandy.
• 8:44
  You've got Almanyac and cognac, which are great Brandy's and
• 8:47
  you've got Calvados which is apple up up in the north.
• 8:49
  So so it's apple Brandy finish. So you've got a nice kind of
• 8:54
  classic unpated Scotch whiskey with a nice and then then you've
• 8:57
  got that kind of appley Brandy note as well.
• 9:00
  So you get a little bit of that. If you think of cider, you get
• 9:04
  that kind of slightly punchy ferment from a cider, especially
• 9:06
  a strong cider or a scrumpy. You get a little bit of that
• 9:08
  from that kind of fermented apple.
• 9:10
  But there's obviously plenty of whiskey character coming through
• 9:12
  as. Well, and this is sitting at
• 9:13
  what, 5054.1% as well? So they're all like they are all
• 9:17
  at car strength. It's worth bearing in mind so
• 9:19
  there's water on everyone's table for a reason.
• 9:21
  So, yeah, I mean the the interesting thing that I found
• 9:24
  fascinating after speaking to yourself, I think it was when we
• 9:28
  did the the episode at the Lost close and you talked about the
• 9:31
  work that you've done with Pintail and and, and what
• 9:34
  Pintail actually is. And as an independent bottler,
• 9:38
  it kind of, pardon the pun here, like flowing under my radar
• 9:41
  completely. And but but when you start
• 9:44
  talking about a bottler here that just kind of really
• 9:47
  specialises and hones in on sweet wine or wine cast
• 9:52
  finishes, it's a very unique sort of market or area to put
• 9:58
  put themselves in. But to to say, yeah, it doesn't
• 10:01
  matter what the liquid is, it will always go in something that
• 10:04
  we think should finish it. Oh, but I suppose having the
• 10:06
  whiskey seller. Having the other, having the
• 10:08
  sister brand does mean that if something is more asserted to a
• 10:10
  traditional release that there is that outlet for it.
• 10:13
  So you know, you know, a good example is, you know, if you
• 10:15
  were to do a whiskey show, 1 brand would be for the purest
• 10:18
  one would be for the those who are slightly more interesting.
• 10:23
  So, but you know, there are whiskey purists, there are
• 10:25
  people who just think, you know, and maybe Sherry at Christmas,
• 10:29
  you know, that kind of thing. Like there's people like that
• 10:31
  and then there is a brand for that, that obviously the
• 10:34
  demographic of whiskey drinkers in the last 15 years has
• 10:36
  expanded hugely. And as a result of that, a lot
• 10:40
  of people who want to drink. And the legalities as well.
• 10:42
  Of course. And the legalities, what cast we
• 10:44
  can use now has changed as of when I was 2022 or something.
• 10:48
  Yeah. So yeah, it's a brand for, I
• 10:51
  guess, a newer generation of whiskey drinkers.
• 10:53
  But then people's attitudes are changing as well.
• 10:56
  There's less and less botanical whiskey drinkers, fortunately.
• 11:00
  Trucker, you're a purist. Sherry.
• 11:02
  Sherry whiskey will make Christmas time.
• 11:04
  I. Mean, I do like shared whiskey
• 11:06
  at Christmas time. I am.
• 11:07
  It's not very, yeah. No, I'm a big fan of 1 cast
• 11:11
  maturations. I do find them really, really
• 11:13
  interesting because it's one, it's kind of new territory.
• 11:16
  People vaguely know where a barren casket is hopefully going
• 11:19
  to lead to or where a Sherry cast is hopefully going to lead
• 11:21
  to. But it seems like with one cast
• 11:23
  maturations, it's really. So it was like a wave.
• 11:27
  Sometimes you get at a point where it's phenomenal, yeah.
• 11:30
  And then it completely crashes and burns.
• 11:31
  And then for two years, like, oh fuck, what have we done?
• 11:34
  What have we done? What have we done?
• 11:35
  And then eventually it comes back.
• 11:36
  Exactly are used because of Chuck for for people who maybe
• 11:38
  don't know Chuck too well, you're now working at the
• 11:41
  lowland bond with Edinburgh whiskey and so part of your job
• 11:45
  as well. I think that one of the last
• 11:46
  times we had you on the podcast, she talked about sensory
• 11:48
  sessions with Greg Urquhart and, and, and the guys like that.
• 11:51
  So you know, you're, you're also in that process of maybe looking
• 11:56
  at casks, sampling casks. And then so, so when you're
• 11:59
  saying the wave, are you talking about once you've made the
• 12:02
  decision, stick it in a wine cask and let's see what happens?
• 12:06
  Yeah, you might get to a stage where it goes.
• 12:07
  That's, that feels and smells and tastes really, really good.
• 12:10
  But then also it could go, it could dip, but then come back
• 12:13
  again. Yeah.
• 12:14
  I mean that's certainly with speaking to Greg, he's talking
• 12:17
  about that where it will kind of you'll catch at a point maybe
• 12:20
  every three months it could be a very different stage.
• 12:22
  So revisiting stuff. There was one of the releases
• 12:26
  that will be the rare findings that will be bottling in the
• 12:29
  future was finished off in a cast that for it was an it was
• 12:34
  bottled in an 11 month finish. But for about nine of those
• 12:38
  months, I think Greg was fairly terrified that it would just be
• 12:41
  two very distinct flavours that never really got homogenised
• 12:44
  together. But I think the best example I I
• 12:46
  have of it is actually Mike from the From Mother mothership.
• 12:54
  Mike Aikman. Yeah, when they did the
• 12:56
  Lockendahl release, which was one of their, I think it was
• 12:59
  their third release ever, it was a full maturation and Saturn
• 13:01
  wine, Peter, Peter Brukelardic. And they said they bought that
• 13:04
  cask at six years old and they thought this is the best thing
• 13:08
  we've ever done. And then for seven years they
• 13:11
  were like, we're fucked. Like this tastes absolutely gut.
• 13:15
  This is, this is garbage. This is garbage.
• 13:17
  And then they taste that 13 and I, I think it's a phenomenal
• 13:20
  whiskey, phenomenal whiskey. I think about it all the time.
• 13:22
  I have a bottle in the house and and it's just a great, great
• 13:27
  showcase of wine maturation working really well with like
• 13:30
  peated stock and they taste it at 13.
• 13:33
  They're like, yes, bottling now we don't know.
• 13:35
  We don't know what's gonna. Happen so I was working for
• 13:37
  mothership at that at that time and I remember my bringing a
• 13:40
  sample and he said what do you think I was like get that out
• 13:42
  now yeah and that that was universal I mean I got and then
• 13:45
  Lutena was my assistant at the time as well everyone just went
• 13:47
  that's whatever that is do it now really you've hit something
• 13:50
  that's just for. Whatever.
• 13:51
  But it's fascinating that you can go through these peaks and
• 13:53
  troughs with just the way that the day that you try that cask.
• 13:57
  Yeah, because The thing is you're it's funny right now I'm
• 14:00
  just going to look at this a completely.
• 14:01
  It's going to sign a bit daft, but like you're saying, it could
• 14:05
  be great and then three months later it could be terrible and
• 14:08
  then another two or three months.
• 14:09
  But what happens if you try it the day before it just turns
• 14:12
  great again? I don't know.
• 14:14
  Because you think is what you're saying is you're not trying it
• 14:16
  every single day or every single week for that three month
• 14:18
  period. You're trying it months and then
• 14:21
  coming back to it. So you don't know at what stage
• 14:23
  it got good again or what change to make it good and what what
• 14:26
  kind of things could influence a cast that could make it go from
• 14:32
  being because that's fascinating that instead of just sticking
• 14:34
  England, that's going to be great.
• 14:36
  It goes great, goes bad, goes great again, goes bad.
• 14:38
  And then knowing when to do it. Yeah, it's, it's one of the
• 14:41
  things I think certainly with finishing, and I might be wrong
• 14:45
  in this, but I think it does. You're introducing a massive new
• 14:47
  flavour and it's going to take a while for the liquid to kind of
• 14:50
  get a grasp to what it is or really kind of blend those
• 14:54
  things together in a sense. So you can have a, you know, a
• 14:57
  very distinct wine characteristic or a very
• 14:59
  distinct cavadas flavour at the very beginning and then that
• 15:03
  disappears and then goes into a very distinct whiskey flavour.
• 15:06
  And I think finding that at the right.
• 15:08
  Point because integration, you know, you've gotten that you've
• 15:10
  got, you've got an active cast, but obviously there's very, very
• 15:13
  degrees of how active that is depending on what the wood is,
• 15:15
  how, what, how it was charged, how many times it's been used,
• 15:18
  all sorts of things. So that's obviously as the
• 15:20
  alcohol is stripping flavour out of the out of the oak.
• 15:23
  Literally how much of that it's doing just depends so much on
• 15:26
  the condition of the oak, how long when it was in there
• 15:28
  previously was in there for what it was, sugar content, all sorts
• 15:32
  of different things. So as that happens and you get
• 15:35
  some shipping of flavor from the cast, then it sits, then it
• 15:37
  integrates, then it might lose it and then it comes back.
• 15:39
  And especially with anything big wine casks, I mean, working with
• 15:43
  sweet wine cast is great, but there's also obviously you can
• 15:46
  use red wine casts a lot. And I think when you when you
• 15:48
  working with red wine where you've got tannins involved,
• 15:50
  that's another thing that can become cyclic and at times can
• 15:53
  feel return as if you've, you've really ruined the whiskey.
• 15:56
  But it can also come back as they didn't mellow out with more
• 15:59
  oxygen, more time, more breathing, all that kind of
• 16:01
  thing. So it's a very cyclic process,
• 16:03
  ageing. Yeah, and it's a, it's a
• 16:05
  fascinating situation here because when we've done these
• 16:07
  indie bottler spotlights, I remember speaking to like Woody
• 16:11
  and Megan at the very first one and we asked them about, you
• 16:14
  know, do you feel pressure as an independent bottler to have to
• 16:18
  sort of go and say we should finish this?
• 16:21
  Because at the moment it does the, the market sometimes goes
• 16:25
  well. And I've asked this question and
• 16:27
  every indie bottler spotlight is if you've got a, a whiskey
• 16:30
  drinker and they're they're into an indie bottler, they might
• 16:33
  look at it and say, well, why would I take a refill bourbon
• 16:37
  only when right beside it there's another brand that's
• 16:40
  done something really cool with a wine cast.
• 16:42
  And I think sometimes it's the mistake might be made that
• 16:44
  people will go, I'll take the wine cast finish every single
• 16:47
  time because it's it's somebody's done something
• 16:51
  different. But actually, when you look at
• 16:53
  you go imagine the how great that whiskey must be if someone
• 16:57
  who's invested heavily into it has made the decision of opening
• 17:00
  it, trying it and going that is that is perfect.
• 17:03
  But what's great about Pintail here is you don't have to worry
• 17:06
  about that because we've had like the last one at Fragrant
• 17:09
  drops, which we did what's actually our last indie bottle
• 17:11
  spotlight. We kind of almost stopped doing
• 17:14
  them because we put someone to sleep.
• 17:15
  And the last one, check that video out if you want to see
• 17:19
  what I'm talking about. But he is in camera for most of
• 17:22
  it until his head really does. But but what they did, George
• 17:27
  and Nature Fragrant Drops is they did a three and three.
• 17:29
  So they said here's 3 bottles that we've done that we've had
• 17:33
  nothing done to them. So that's literally cast into
• 17:36
  the into the glass and that's it ready.
• 17:37
  And then the other three were the the, the finishes.
• 17:40
  But I suppose pint it and making that decision, it's a big thing
• 17:42
  'cause it is sort of putting into their own little corner,
• 17:45
  their own little space. Yeah, absolutely.
• 17:47
  But it kind of I'd say that there's so much on the market
• 17:50
  now and it's, you know, it's a buyers market for sure.
• 17:52
  And there's so much choice that occupying that space on your own
• 17:55
  is not a bad thing at all. And you know, you have got the
• 17:58
  benefit of you talking about Pintail or Woody's or Blind
• 18:00
  Summer or Fragrant Drops or any of these these brands where
• 18:03
  they're, you know, it's a, it's a couple or you know, just two
• 18:06
  or three people working, running them.
• 18:09
  Of course every bottle is going to be good.
• 18:11
  These guys are whiskey professionals.
• 18:12
  They know what they're doing. I might look boring.
• 18:13
  I might be a refill bub and 12 year old Diageo, you know,
• 18:17
  disagree that you think you've seen a million times.
• 18:19
  But if they've bottled it, it's for a reason.
• 18:22
  You know what I mean? They're not churning out
• 18:24
  thousands of releases a year. They're not just going.
• 18:26
  We just, we don't, we don't have a production line.
• 18:28
  We don't. They're not a huge company that
• 18:29
  just needs to put stuff in a bottle if it's not ready.
• 18:31
  I speak to George probably once a week and half the conversation
• 18:34
  is I've got this. I just don't think it's there
• 18:36
  yet. And I've got this cast.
• 18:37
  It's really interesting. But you know what I mean, These
• 18:39
  guys who are these are people who very, very personally look
• 18:42
  after their cast. And obviously Keith does the
• 18:43
  same. So it is tempting to buy on
• 18:45
  spec. And I completely agree with you.
• 18:47
  If you look at, you know, if I was to look at a bottle of a
• 18:50
  Loopiac Finish next to a bourbon cast, I would be tempted to go.
• 18:54
  Well, I've never actually heard of it.
• 18:55
  Yeah, finished. So I'll I'll grab that.
• 18:57
  But that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be better or
• 18:59
  worse, you know, and I think and I think refill bourbon and
• 19:02
  drowns with lesser cask influence is having its day in
• 19:07
  the sun again now as well. I think people are realising
• 19:09
  that you can make very or produce very good whiskey no
• 19:12
  matter what you do to it, if you just get it.
• 19:14
  Well, I mean, when you're on that, on that subject, one of
• 19:16
  the last times that we spoke is you gave Angus and IA sample of
• 19:19
  a drum from A Lithuanian blueberry wine cast.
• 19:25
  Which was interesting. It was interesting and then you
• 19:29
  know that was whilst you were doing your pop up bar at the
• 19:31
  Lost close. Yeah, we're now as we're saying,
• 19:33
  we're sitting here just now and effectively your name's going
• 19:36
  above the door with. Yeah, because your dodgy
• 19:40
  criminal record, they still. Won't let us trillions on pubs.
• 19:45
  But but you know what, Angus has alluded to it, you've talked
• 19:49
  about it, your background for people who don't know who you
• 19:51
  are, you know, you've you're a WW and cynicism.
• 19:54
  You've worked as a whiskey consultant, you've worked at
• 19:56
  some big, big places putting a collating whiskey for behind for
• 20:01
  the back bar, even just yeah, stones for a wave port Elite
• 20:05
  Distillery, you know, doing all that.
• 20:06
  So what are we? We're looking at this back bar
• 20:08
  right now and it's a cracking looking back bar actually.
• 20:11
  For bar where I mean that's one of the reasons that Marcus
• 20:14
  firstly and then me, we're attracted to the places.
• 20:16
  It's just such a stunning old kind of old proper, just boozer,
• 20:21
  you know, it's just a pub, but it's when pubs were made
• 20:23
  beautiful like this, you know, it's great so.
• 20:25
  Was this the pub that was filmed for Trainspotting?
• 20:28
  Is this where they filmed in Trainspotting too?
• 20:32
  Well, the the they drive faster, yeah.
• 20:34
  Right the. Scrap Yard Across the road is
• 20:36
  the scrap yard. Too.
• 20:38
  Yeah, So what what are we expecting?
• 20:40
  Like how where do you start when you have a back bar like this?
• 20:44
  I mean, I'm talking about you. We.
• 20:45
  I mentioned a blueberry wine. Yeah.
• 20:46
  And. I mean, is there a theme in mind
• 20:49
  or you know, because we talked about the Porter leaf, you've
• 20:53
  said, you know, really wanted to get lots of young whiskey, lower
• 20:58
  age statements in there just to expose how great some of these
• 21:02
  are, you know, given that it's a new distillery, etcetera.
• 21:05
  So it's a kind of thoughts in the back of your mind about the
• 21:08
  kind of whiskey you want to put in the bar here and you want to
• 21:12
  curate, as it were. Truthfully, because I'll, I'll
• 21:15
  not be using the desert Isle pop up anymore because of this.
• 21:19
  So that concept, which I was, I was very lucky to run that for
• 21:23
  over a year and it went well. And the proof of concept was
• 21:25
  there that people will travel to the Royal Mile, which getting
• 21:28
  Edinburgh locals to do is difficult the best of times.
• 21:31
  And I completely understand why. But you know, I had a lot of
• 21:34
  vintage drams, a lot of weird stuff, very little in the way of
• 21:38
  call known expressions. So that will be the heart of the
• 21:44
  the whiskey back bar here because it I think it's
• 21:48
  interesting. I don't think there's many
• 21:49
  people doing it. I mean, I know wonderful Rory
• 21:52
  over the belfry does some vintage stuff as well.
• 21:54
  So there will be a focus on vintage drams, all blends and
• 21:57
  weird releases. So a lot of the stuff from my
• 22:00
  collection will will come in some of the stuff that's, you
• 22:02
  know, disappeared from from shelves years ago.
• 22:06
  But also one of the one of the things that the lost clothes
• 22:08
  that was so popular was the vintage liqueurs.
• 22:10
  You know, there was the running gaggle.
• 22:11
  I thought I opened a whiskey bar, but I actually opened a
• 22:13
  Malibu bar because. Russell always went out of it.
• 22:15
  Russell, you've not tried anything until you've tried a
• 22:17
  1980s Malibu. Exactly.
• 22:20
  Just sums him up. And the father, he called me a
• 22:23
  Chevy tart. Yeah, by him and everyone.
• 22:26
  Else was the thing. I mean, I remember you kind of
• 22:29
  set the bar up, which is you boys can imagine what you've
• 22:32
  been in. Wasn't a hell of a job.
• 22:33
  You set the bar up, it'd be 5:00 and you'd be thinking it's a
• 22:35
  Monday. Probably what?
• 22:36
  I'll just open the laptop. Someone might wander in later on
• 22:39
  before dinner or something and at 5:00 the knocker would go on
• 22:41
  the door I'd open to be two young lads.
• 22:43
  Like I heard you got some Malibu, but what?
• 22:48
  But I don't even have a bottle or a time of of some kind of
• 22:50
  wave into the cure Benedictine on Midori or something.
• 22:52
  But I've got a lock up full of it really.
• 22:54
  So, so there'll be a lot of vintage secures here as well.
• 22:59
  There was a little thing called lockdown shock and I went.
• 23:03
  But The thing is now I've got a, I've got an ice one and a sink
• 23:06
  so I can make cocktails. So vintage cocktails have kind
• 23:09
  of been a thing around the the traps in the UK for a while.
• 23:12
  They, but it's in places like the Savoy and they charge you 3
• 23:16
  or 4 figures for vintage cocktails.
• 23:18
  You have cocktails made on old ingredients.
• 23:19
  Whereas the reality, I know what this, this stuff costs at
• 23:22
  auction, It's not much more than retail for standards.
• 23:25
  So we can do some really cool things, some fun stuff with old,
• 23:28
  old booze, whether it be old whiskey, highballs or, or
• 23:31
  cocktails and just do them at a price that is actually, you
• 23:34
  know, a couple of quid more than a cocktail is anyway.
• 23:36
  So, so yeah, it's going to be kind of, again, I really hadn't
• 23:41
  thought of any parallel 2 pint. But the idea is that this place
• 23:44
  can occupy a bit of a space with its back bar that is unique
• 23:47
  within Edinburgh first for a start, because first and
• 23:50
  foremost it's going to be a local pub.
• 23:53
  It's just a cruiser. It's just someone to come and
• 23:55
  have a pint. So when you want it, if you are
• 23:56
  someone who wants to explore a back bar, that's the step beyond
• 23:59
  what the first function of the place is anyway.
• 24:01
  So when you get to that, that's when you might find it's a bit
• 24:04
  weirder than you expected. But yeah, that's for the whiskey
• 24:06
  nerds and people who want to come and experience it.
• 24:08
  But not everyone has to. Well, in our sort of spiritual
• 24:10
  home at the Athletic Arms that, you know, you look at what Kev
• 24:14
  has there and you suddenly say, you know, there's passing,
• 24:17
  there's there's a local pub first and foremost.
• 24:19
  You know, there is always a local, see the same faces.
• 24:21
  It's a local bar. There's guys that are sitting
• 24:23
  there, you know, and then then on the other side of it, it's
• 24:26
  got the football traffic. Then you've also got the rugby.
• 24:29
  It's a rugby pub. There'll be, there's so many
• 24:31
  people that hold the athletic arms in their own mindset.
• 24:35
  They'll say you're talking about Diggers.
• 24:37
  Oh, it's a Hearts pub. And then there'll be other
• 24:39
  Diggers. Oh no, it's a rugby pub.
• 24:40
  Oh, it's a, it's a beer pub because of the, the beers that
• 24:43
  they've got in town. Great selection.
• 24:44
  Now there's loads and loads of people because what Kev's done
• 24:46
  is it's a whiskey pub. And but that's The thing is by
• 24:49
  the end of the day, he's kept it as a pub.
• 24:50
  Now I suppose it would be very easy for you to say now we are
• 24:53
  going to be with your background because it's called the Bull
• 24:56
  Finch. But I believe you're you're
• 24:57
  looking at. Yeah, we're kind of looking at
• 24:59
  maybe the Finch just to give it enough of a nod so.
• 25:02
  The reason being out the bill. Yeah, exactly.
• 25:04
  Yeah, so the. Reason being that these stained
• 25:06
  glass windows behind have got all got birds in them and
• 25:08
  there's a couple of finches kicking about, balls kicking
• 25:10
  about. So there's nice relevance to
• 25:12
  that. They've been recently restored
• 25:13
  all those windows. So we obviously want to kind of
• 25:15
  keep that little bit of what's part of the building 'cause they
• 25:19
  are very nice, but we just seen the finches maybe a little bit.
• 25:22
  It will be abbreviated to anyway.
• 25:23
  So we'll just get ahead of the game on that one.
• 25:25
  And get to the French. So and on that front then, you
• 25:28
  know, because it would be easy for you to say, oh, just make
• 25:30
  the Finch a whiskey bar. But as we've said, that guy who
• 25:33
  came to the door earlier on, it was like when?
• 25:35
  You fuck about 1980s White Horse he.
• 25:38
  Wants a pint anyways. What's a pint?
• 25:39
  That lad? Yeah, yeah.
• 25:40
  And I think that's important. Yeah.
• 25:41
  So. Yeah.
• 25:42
  But So what we all thinking about this DRAM so far?
• 25:44
  It's the first one of the night you, you decided because the
• 25:47
  actual line up you changed a little bit, you said you want to
• 25:49
  stick that here. So at home this, I believe,
• 25:52
  Simon, this is all stock that's very new.
• 25:55
  This is part of the brand new release.
• 25:56
  So yeah, this is kind of just on all coming 2 shelves kind of
• 26:00
  thing. So it's all pretty much first
• 26:03
  time for me. But I just think the Calvinos,
• 26:05
  especially with telebunding just be it's a bit more delicate.
• 26:08
  I've just dropped the Daluan back a little bit because
• 26:09
  Daluan's it's like kind of punch your spirit most of the time.
• 26:14
  So yeah, do any? Is it too early?
• 26:16
  Is it too early for a wanky wanky tasting though it?
• 26:20
  Tastes like whiskey. Chuck, give us something you've
• 26:22
  got you've got to say I was actually we were.
• 26:24
  We were sat beside each other as we're recording this.
• 26:27
  We're not long back from our trip to Dorner, and the fact
• 26:30
  that Chuck decided to still come and join us this evening says
• 26:32
  that he didn't hate us after spending a full weekend.
• 26:35
  We're all still talking, which is important, but we did a Glen
• 26:40
  Allergy tasting and I, it was, it was a nice small intimate
• 26:44
  tasting in the, in the sort of cellar area in the, in the
• 26:47
  Dorner Castle. Keira, he was seven months
• 26:50
  pregnant while she was when she was doing that.
• 26:52
  So good luck to Keira. But seven drums in the line up.
• 26:57
  Yeah, 7 Glen allocates as a Sherry tart.
• 27:01
  I was absolutely in my ailment. But there was at one point where
• 27:04
  and it was very quiet and everyone's been quiet and I'm
• 27:06
  very conscious that I could be quite loud.
• 27:09
  So. And I do speak a lot as well.
• 27:11
  Some people might know, but I was sat there and I tried, I
• 27:14
  smelt it and I tried it and I made a sort of small noise
• 27:17
  because for the very first time I was able to come up with my
• 27:21
  own kind of wanky tasting note. We had Ian for Teeth on the
• 27:25
  podcast a few weeks ago from Angus Dundee, and basically he
• 27:31
  was a sort of master blend, master blender there, isn't he?
• 27:34
  And he, he was a, he's a big advocate of the drill down
• 27:37
  method. You know, if, if, if you smell,
• 27:41
  you know, if you get fruit on a nose, what kind of fruit, right,
• 27:44
  citrus fruit, what kind of citrus fruit, fruit, etcetera,
• 27:47
  etcetera. And actually we, we had AII
• 27:50
  predict in a future episode we'll interview actually no
• 27:54
  relating to this. I've probably got it before,
• 27:56
  just Stuart Baxter. I'm Stuart Baxter said.
• 27:59
  I'm so pleased that Ian 40th master blender Angus Dundee said
• 28:03
  this because this is exactly what I do as a brand ambassador.
• 28:05
  But obviously I'm not a master, a master blender like he is.
• 28:09
  And if he's doing that and I'm doing that on the right track.
• 28:11
  Yeah, and also it's funny because Ian used the method, the
• 28:14
  conversation about ingredients and smell and picking away as
• 28:18
  like a spaghetti Bolognese, right.
• 28:21
  And and and Stuart Baxter said I do that, but I do it with
• 28:24
  Ratatouille, like the movie scene in Ratatouille when
• 28:27
  they're picking away all the different ingredients or
• 28:29
  whatever. By the way, smell Dry roasted
• 28:33
  peanuts, KP dry roasted peanuts. And then I said there was a
• 28:36
  sweetness and I'm nudging Chuck and Chuck because I'm on my
• 28:40
  phone. Well.
• 28:40
  No, you were next to me. I.
• 28:41
  Was you? I was nudging you, was tugging
• 28:43
  on my T-shirt. I've done something.
• 28:45
  I've done something. And it was the KP Dry roasted
• 28:49
  honey glazed. Peanuts.
• 28:51
  I was fairly enjoying the taste. Salted honey peanuts it was.
• 28:54
  I was enjoying the taste and I got like a punch in the arm and
• 28:56
  then I get handed a picture of KP and you're the most.
• 28:59
  Excited. You're like.
• 29:01
  Like, Vindy gave me tell me. Yeah, a truck kind of went.
• 29:03
  He smelt it, and he just looked at me and went yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 29:06
  And I felt so good because that was the first ever wanky taste
• 29:10
  that I've got. So has anyone got a taste?
• 29:11
  Anyone got what we're thinking of that drama?
• 29:13
  Anyone wanted to put their neck on the line so far?
• 29:15
  No, wait. Wait till the dramas are going
• 29:17
  further down, I think. Yeah.
• 29:18
  Connor. Oh wait, It was it swanky
• 29:20
  tasting notes in the in the introduction to your video,
• 29:23
  Craig love that line. Absolutely fantastic.
• 29:26
  So Simon then moving on to our next round.
• 29:28
  One of the things I've started to do, I think that I got kind
• 29:31
  of said he he likes to do is leave, leave the first two or
• 29:35
  three and come back to them as the tasting goes on.
• 29:37
  Tasting twice, Yeah. You know what?
• 29:39
  I mean, I'll go half, yeah. So what have we got for our next
• 29:42
  1 then? So the next one we're going to a
• 29:44
  liquid. So again, still the story
• 29:46
  character wise, we're in a fairly kind of lighter end of
• 29:49
  the scale. This is in a Lupiat cask, which
• 29:52
  is the second Lupiat cast as I said that Pintel have done, but
• 29:55
  this is the second ever Lupiat cast to be used.
• 29:57
  For whiskey, what is Lupiat? So Lupiat is across the river
• 30:00
  from Saltan. Right.
• 30:02
  OK, same region and Bordeaux and and you're basically a very
• 30:06
  similar suite by wine to Sauton. So it's very nice.
• 30:08
  It's a very, it's very, very nice summer style of production.
• 30:12
  It's just a different DOC. So.
• 30:14
  So for the whiskey drinker, Sauton is what you're thinking
• 30:16
  of. Yeah.
• 30:17
  What do you think of when you look at Lupiak?
• 30:18
  We're doing by DOC. Designation origin control in
• 30:23
  French and Appalachian. Yeah.
• 30:25
  It's like we call it something different here currently, yeah.
• 30:28
  It's like, you know, if you if you make types of cheese, they
• 30:32
  have to be made in a particular. Area Yeah.
• 30:35
  Champagne. Champagne Regional.
• 30:37
  Yeah. Cherry is the same as.
• 30:38
  Well, and it's fascinating, like, you know, we're we've
• 30:41
  talked so much about the whiskey history that Edinburgh has and
• 30:45
  we're really unearthing so much. And there'll be people who are
• 30:48
  lethal that will be shouting going leaf isn't Edinburgh Leaf
• 30:51
  leaf. People's Republic of Yeah.
• 30:53
  Yeah. And you look at the area that
• 30:56
  we're in the history and, and you know that, that the whiskey
• 30:59
  that we have in front of us is you're sourcing casks when you,
• 31:03
  when you hear people speaking like Justine Hazlehurst, we've
• 31:06
  had on, she does her whiskey tours and leaf walking tours and
• 31:09
  stuff. And the conversation of how many
• 31:11
  casks were coming into Scotland through leaf, how many casks
• 31:14
  were leaving Scotland through leaf.
• 31:16
  But also at the time, Sherry and wine casts, they were coming in
• 31:21
  as cast form. And that's where like the
• 31:23
  accidental machination came from, I suppose, where I'm
• 31:28
  assuming you'll maybe know a little bit more, but like people
• 31:30
  who are whiskey merchants would have just got their hands on
• 31:33
  whatever type of cast they possibly could store their
• 31:35
  whiskey. Exactly.
• 31:36
  Yeah, I mean, that's the that's why that's kind of why charring
• 31:38
  became a thing as well, because not it wasn't always previous
• 31:41
  occupant of that cast wasn't always favourable.
• 31:43
  So the charring was to kind of cleanse it a lot of the time.
• 31:46
  But yeah, so Sherry but now has to be produced and bottled in
• 31:50
  her earth. But for a long time until I
• 31:51
  think it was the mid 80s, yeah, it could be shipped.
• 31:55
  So. And that's why, I mean, people
• 31:56
  like Mark Rainier, a lot of people talk about, well, there
• 31:58
  are no Sherry casts. Yeah, they're seasoned.
• 32:00
  There's no transport casts. There's no these old casts.
• 32:02
  There's why when you get back to some of those old, some old
• 32:05
  Edrington stock, you might have tried some blends from the mid
• 32:07
  70s that are Sherry. They're just, they're just
• 32:09
  different ball game because they were casts that had Sherry in
• 32:11
  them for seriously long times. Whereas now the bulk of what we
• 32:15
  deal with are seasoned casts where somebody gets strucked in
• 32:19
  and rolled around for a while and binge a lot of the time.
• 32:21
  And because Solara casts that have sharing them for a long
• 32:25
  time, bodegas hold on to them. Yeah, they're valuable, you
• 32:30
  know? Exactly.
• 32:31
  But I think there's an interesting Dux because of
• 32:33
  course, you go back 150 years, people were just putting, I know
• 32:39
  maybe I'm simplifying, you know, but people were just putting
• 32:41
  whiskey into the cast that were available there.
• 32:44
  What Pintail are doing is something completely different,
• 32:46
  where Keith is going and sourcing very, very specific
• 32:49
  casks from very specific regions of Europe.
• 32:53
  You know, it's not just what's available on the next ship
• 32:55
  that's coming in. It's, it's, I mean, does he
• 32:57
  travel to these places, to Italy, to Spain, France?
• 33:01
  Spends a lot of time on the continent.
• 33:02
  Yeah. So because of the the, the when
• 33:04
  the brand launched as well, which was kind of which was
• 33:08
  deepest darkest lockdown in COVID times.
• 33:10
  So it was very hard to launch into a domestic market because
• 33:13
  while whiskey kind of boomed, it was booming with a lot of things
• 33:17
  that were already kind of sort of limited, but getting into
• 33:21
  something. So basically the brand went
• 33:23
  straight to export very quickly. So Italy is a huge market for
• 33:26
  pintail especially and that that's why some of these
• 33:29
  relationships built with, you know, wine producers and things.
• 33:32
  So, but it is also just looking at, I'm going to cast brokers
• 33:35
  and people deal with these things and just looking, looking
• 33:37
  down at the bottom of the list of what they've only got 1 of
• 33:39
  and hoping it's weird. Yeah, I mean that kind of thing
• 33:41
  as well. Just trying to find stuff that's
• 33:43
  intentionally interesting, which it keeps me working in those.
• 33:45
  Question of dusty hunting. Well, that's.
• 33:48
  Essentially, yeah, it's a little bit of that, you know, it's like
• 33:50
  flipping through the vinyl store, you know, it's kind of
• 33:51
  you're looking for something that that's that's rare and
• 33:53
  unique in it and might give you something different.
• 33:54
  And, and Keith's worked in whiskey for a very long time.
• 33:56
  He was Edrington for a long time and looked after their export
• 34:00
  markets and bits and pieces. So, you know, he knows what he's
• 34:02
  looking for. He knows what he wants this
• 34:04
  brand to be. And that is very much
• 34:06
  introducing people to different to new things.
• 34:08
  And when they're introducing whiskey drinkers, you know,
• 34:11
  experienced people who have done a lot to new things, that's
• 34:14
  obviously a great thing because you know, when you've got a line
• 34:16
  up of, you know, people in this room who've never had to say a
• 34:19
  loopy act before. But obviously avid whiskey
• 34:21
  drinkers and people have all the pod and all the rest of it.
• 34:23
  That's a cool thing. Yeah, there's not many ways to
• 34:25
  do it in the whiskey industry anymore because most of us have
• 34:27
  tried most stuff. Well, that's being different,
• 34:29
  but also at the same time, I think there's I was actually
• 34:32
  speaking to somebody who who'd been at a whiskey tasting over
• 34:36
  the weekend and while she was working behind the the bar at
• 34:38
  the Whiskey Tater, it was at a Bowling Club in Kirkcaldy.
• 34:41
  And what she was saying is she said them, I had no idea whiskey
• 34:45
  did wine casks. And I was, yeah, it's like it's
• 34:49
  a common thing, you know, wine, port, Sherry and all that.
• 34:52
  And she's, oh God, you know, all my life I've always just thought
• 34:55
  whiskey was whiskey. It's like a whiskey cast.
• 34:58
  And then she was saying that, you know, as she said, I drink
• 35:00
  white wine. I love a white wine.
• 35:01
  I love, I love a wee bit of red wine.
• 35:03
  And she was like in this lineup, there was like 2 casks that was
• 35:06
  like a white wine cask and a, and a, and a red wine cask.
• 35:09
  And she was like, actually it, it gave me a, an insight and
• 35:13
  introduction into that where I would never like if I hadn't
• 35:16
  known that I wouldn't touched it because it's, well, that's a
• 35:18
  whiskey cask. It's a whiskey barrel.
• 35:20
  It's just whiskey. Yeah.
• 35:21
  So that I suppose from another point of view, it does add
• 35:24
  potentially people to it because they see the attraction.
• 35:26
  If you're talking to a whiskey drink, someone who's maybe not a
• 35:29
  whiskey drinker, but they are, they like their wine.
• 35:31
  And you can suddenly say, well, hang on a minute here, like we
• 35:33
  can go, you really like your wine.
• 35:35
  We could dive into the wine and you can suddenly see you.
• 35:38
  Maybe you're not going to get, it's not going to it's going to
• 35:40
  taste like whiskey that's been matured in a wine cast.
• 35:42
  But there'll be traces of that wine that people can get a. 100%
• 35:46
  And even if there isn't, you think there is because that's
• 35:48
  just the way, that's just the way these things work because
• 35:51
  you'll assume there is. So maybe a lot of the work we do
• 35:53
  with pintails. So most of what I do for for key
• 35:56
  this kind of on trade stuff and marketing and helping, you know,
• 35:59
  pubs and restaurants find out about it.
• 36:01
  But it works so well in places like, you know, Montrose or #1
• 36:04
  at the Balmoral or, but in places that have got a huge wine
• 36:06
  that's in a sommelier because a sommelier might, you know, have
• 36:10
  a limited experience with whiskey because he's a wine guy
• 36:12
  and he, you know, sells whatever the few whiskeys they've got.
• 36:14
  But if you give a bunch of whiskeys, they're in weird wine.
• 36:16
  Cast the sommelier goes class, and what?
• 36:18
  It is. Yeah, exactly.
• 36:19
  I can just talk about a. Lupiak yeah.
• 36:21
  So it does give a different angle into wine the same way
• 36:24
  that Ramcast does to some people, in the same way that
• 36:26
  there's, you know, a lot of different whiskey kind of entry
• 36:30
  points. And the more these things exist,
• 36:33
  the more of those there are, the more people start drinking
• 36:36
  whiskey, the more category benefits.
• 36:38
  So I think there are the gatekeepers, there are the
• 36:43
  purists, there are all that. But realistically, that are the
• 36:45
  harms the category, the more people drinking it in however
• 36:47
  way they like, the more that you know, the more that I make a
• 36:51
  living, the more that pubs sell whiskey, the more that whiskey
• 36:53
  brands exist, the more that the independent bottlers we would be
• 36:56
  talking about the especially the smaller ones can Yeah, and and
• 36:59
  you guys can have podcasts that people.
• 37:01
  Absolutely. Yeah, exactly.
• 37:02
  Something different. Well, we're all thinking about
• 37:04
  that 1 then. Yeah, there's something
• 37:06
  different there. There's something.
• 37:08
  That's my first try that genuinely ends I I knew that he
• 37:11
  said fuck me on my that's. All right, you're allowed to
• 37:14
  swear. I don't have that anyway, but I
• 37:16
  I, I self confess I love sweet wine cut.
• 37:19
  Like, yeah, Peevisol, sawturn, all that kind of thing is is
• 37:22
  absolutely my jam. And that loopy act does hit that
• 37:24
  same. You know, I think there's a,
• 37:26
  there's a thing with some sweet white wine cuts and bizarrely,
• 37:28
  Chardonnay can do the same thing as well where you think it's
• 37:31
  going to be sweet white wine. So you think delicate and like
• 37:34
  light fruits and all that kind of stuff.
• 37:36
  And then that actually comes out with that like that's got a bit
• 37:39
  of colour in it as well. You know, it comes out with
• 37:40
  quite a nice, it's not savoury, but it's much more robust than
• 37:43
  maybe you think sweet wine would create.
• 37:45
  And you know, Sherry does the same thing as well.
• 37:47
  I was just. Going to say it's like it's
• 37:49
  quite oily. It's kind of like that black
• 37:51
  currant wine gums vibes. There we go.
• 37:53
  Wine gums. He stays alive, chucks in wine
• 37:57
  gums. You get what you're saying
• 37:59
  there? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 38:00
  What we're going to do is we'll stop for a quick break on on on
• 38:02
  this one. We'll finish this one, then
• 38:04
  we'll we'll come back round and things like that and then we'll
• 38:06
  get started again. Through the last.
• 38:08
  Three fantastic. Cheers.
• 38:10
  Cheers. Right, Angus?
• 38:11
  Oh, I have. To clap us in again.
• 38:13
  You know what to do again? Yep, everyone in, everyone's
• 38:16
  working, everyone's fine. Clap's in, everyone's here.
• 38:19
  Well, welcome back after. I mean, there's a massive queue
• 38:22
  at the bar there for all the for all the drinks that you've got
• 38:25
  behind there. But we're back and you know,
• 38:28
  it's just these have been an interesting couple of we've only
• 38:32
  had two drams, but that that that second DRAM there, like
• 38:37
  with Lupe cast put AI think. It's exceptional.
• 38:40
  I really, Yeah. It's got that.
• 38:41
  It's exactly what you want from that kind of cast.
• 38:43
  That sweet wine is coming through.
• 38:44
  You've got nice depth to it so plenty of distillery in there
• 38:47
  though. Well, I was going to I was going
• 38:49
  to ask is how important is it and truck, you know, with with
• 38:51
  your experiences here and stuff like that, as well as the
• 38:54
  importance of making sure the distillery character comes
• 38:57
  through. Now, I suppose from a
• 38:59
  distilleries point of view, when they're doing cast management,
• 39:02
  they have to make sure people need to know that when they
• 39:05
  drank this, this is I love it. I like it when.
• 39:09
  You're. An independent bottler?
• 39:14
  Does that weigh too heavy on your mind or are you just going
• 39:17
  now? I want to make something that no
• 39:19
  one else is is tried in this style.
• 39:24
  I mean, I'd say everybody wants to make a good whiskey.
• 39:27
  Sometimes you can't have independent bosslings.
• 39:29
  So you're like, this is a great example of a wine at 60%.
• 39:33
  It was Bruce Sherry. Yeah, yeah, You know, something
• 39:36
  really heavy on all the restaurant PX.
• 39:38
  You're like, well, this is a great, really nutty duck
• 39:41
  chocolatey PX whatever ABV but. It's like your first attempt at
• 39:46
  making a Sherry whiskey grave. It was.
• 39:48
  Yeah, it was. It was very much.
• 39:50
  You know, yeah, Before I before. So the the the we cast that for
• 39:54
  for listeners who maybe remember Graham.
• 39:55
  'S first experiment in cast finishing.
• 39:57
  Yes, but it was second. Now, the first of two weeks that
• 40:02
  I had in during lockdown, I, I spent a small fortune on buying
• 40:07
  Sherry and then I mean, I made a total mess of it.
• 40:10
  So basically what I did was I had this, I had this tiny, well,
• 40:13
  no, the end result, it was a good one.
• 40:15
  I was supposed to enjoy whatever it was that I had.
• 40:17
  So I had this small small 1 litre cask.
• 40:20
  Really wanted to get into cast finishing and or to see how it
• 40:24
  works. The maturation process lockdown,
• 40:26
  as everyone, as you kind of alluded to Simon there you were
• 40:28
  buying, you know. 1960s blue Curacao, Yeah.
• 40:33
  So I, I, I had to go again, had to go into and so I sourced A3
• 40:37
  litre and A5 litre cask as well, right?
• 40:40
  So, and what I found out I called cooperages, right?
• 40:44
  I phoned cooperages and what's the smallest cat you can get me?
• 40:46
  And someone didn't explain to me the smaller the cast, the more
• 40:50
  expensive it is because you know, for making it's harder to
• 40:53
  get the stave size, etcetera. So I've gone online.
• 40:55
  So these little casts, 33 litre. So now I have a one litre, A3
• 40:59
  litre and A5 litre, but I don't have anything to put in them.
• 41:01
  So I've decided, I think it was the smallest one.
• 41:05
  I decided to put Sherry in PX but then I was like right, well
• 41:08
  with a three litre I might as well put some all the Russell.
• 41:13
  So I've gone and bought 3 litres of all the Russell from
• 41:15
  Sainsbury's I've got. The classic cherry.
• 41:26
  Supplier. That's good.
• 41:29
  Stuff So then what I've had to do is I've got well, I've got a
• 41:32
  5 litre now and again it's like right, well, I've got cherry all
• 41:36
  are also and and and and PX there.
• 41:38
  So what I'm going to have to do is I'm going to have to buy 5
• 41:41
  litres of Buffalo Trace and so I've then filled this up with so
• 41:46
  I've left that. How long do you leave it for?
• 41:48
  Who knows? It's lockdown.
• 41:50
  So I've left it for a very long time, a significantly long time
• 41:54
  considering the size of the cast.
• 41:55
  Got rid of it and then it's like now I need liquid to put into
• 41:58
  this now. Great, can I pause?
• 42:00
  Do you just pour away 5 litres of offalo trays?
• 42:03
  No. Well, OK, I can't.
• 42:06
  I've still got like, it's still at the back of the cupboard.
• 42:08
  I've got loads of stuff. My mum took the Sherry off me,
• 42:13
  but it just tasted like soggy woods.
• 42:15
  Because. Because what you have to do with
• 42:17
  these casts is you have to fill them with boiling water first.
• 42:19
  Yeah. And leave them so that the the
• 42:21
  wood expands and stuff like that.
• 42:23
  So it just, it was awful. It tasted like everything that
• 42:26
  came out of that tasted like soggy woods right now.
• 42:28
  Then you leave it for a few days.
• 42:30
  And then what happened was I decided now we need whiskey to
• 42:32
  put into it. And again, it would have been so
• 42:35
  much cheaper and easier and hindsight's wonderful thing if
• 42:37
  I'd just decided to buy like a Glenferrick 12 or something like
• 42:41
  that. No, I had to source single cask
• 42:45
  independently bottled stuff stock for so I could make sure
• 42:50
  that it was totally correct. So I'm putting cast strength
• 42:53
  whiskey back into the cast. But I had to be, I wanted to do
• 42:57
  the difference. I wanted to see the colour
• 42:58
  change with the, the quickness of the maturation and all that
• 43:01
  kind of stuff. So I've bought a Ludic Glenn
• 43:03
  Levitt Nadura bourbon. Yeah, for the one litre and the
• 43:07
  three litre, but I've gone in 95 litres of something.
• 43:12
  And of course I, I, I'm talking about this is at the stage in
• 43:15
  lockdown when no one's getting dressed anymore, right.
• 43:20
  You know, I am now just researching, finding as much as
• 43:24
  possibly can because in my mind I am about to.
• 43:28
  Like, this is it? This is the start of the Graeme
• 43:31
  Cogar Independent Bottlers. Whiskey Baron.
• 43:33
  Yeah, I'm going for it. Right.
• 43:35
  So I found and of course, so I had to be Milton Duff.
• 43:38
  Yeah, of course. Right, so I've looked for Milton
• 43:40
  Duff, then I've found Golden. What's the independent bottler
• 43:45
  now? I can't remember Golden Cask.
• 43:49
  They were the only ones I could find that had X Burben.
• 43:52
  Milton Duff 7 bottles I bought that I don't want anybody to.
• 43:57
  I've not told very many people or this.
• 44:05
  I've chucked it all in. Spent a hell of a lot of money
• 44:09
  and and then eventually I think, I can't remember where we were
• 44:12
  going, Scotland versus it. Was it was Scotland and the EUR
• 44:15
  and Euro, the game that was at Hampden, EUR 2020, that was
• 44:19
  2021, yeah. And and Graham very excitedly
• 44:22
  gets on this train. He goes, it's ready.
• 44:24
  I've got the Westgate, but be honest, tell me what you think.
• 44:28
  And I've this is the Sherry stuff.
• 44:30
  This is a Sherry. This is the final product I've
• 44:33
  I've not got face that my expressions I can't really hide.
• 44:37
  A terrible poker. Face and and and Graham gives me
• 44:40
  this to try and I'm just like yeah, that's very nice, yeah.
• 44:46
  That's right, isn't it? Yeah.
• 44:49
  Basically, you've created Sherry.
• 44:51
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 44:52
  So then I then start panicking and going and basically I left
• 44:56
  it far too long. How long is far too long for a
• 44:59
  litre? Weeks, right?
• 45:01
  OK, weeks and weeks and weeks on my earring.
• 45:04
  I've got one of those heat electric heater Aussie company
• 45:07
  as well. Exceptionally the electric you
• 45:11
  know, the electric clothes dryer I've I've got.
• 45:15
  I've seen them at magazines, but they're well at my pressure.
• 45:19
  I've stuck it on top of that. So it's so it's been drying off.
• 45:22
  It's been. It's been, but a lot.
• 45:24
  Of you did all this research, but then you're like, warehouses
• 45:26
  must be warm, hey? Famously, it makes no sense.
• 45:32
  It makes absolutely, but I still have.
• 45:34
  I'll tell you what, I've still got some bottles.
• 45:36
  We should loads it as some I've got loads of bottles.
• 45:38
  We should maybe remove it. I would be quite.
• 45:40
  It's disgusting, absolutely disgusting, a massive waste of
• 45:44
  money and potentially a waste of whiskey.
• 45:47
  But it was the start of my thing.
• 45:49
  And then the second time I tried it, I tried it with the Infinity
• 45:51
  cast, which then put my hair in cupboard and just tasted like
• 45:54
  purse. So yeah.
• 45:56
  That was even worse. So I leave this now.
• 46:01
  I've decided I'm better at talking about whiskey than
• 46:04
  trying to create. Yeah, you should move.
• 46:07
  Swiftly on to the third RAM. Yep, Simon, What?
• 46:11
  What have we got? So we're looking at an inch
• 46:13
  gallop, which I think is currently underrated distillery.
• 46:17
  I adore inch Gower. We're big fans of inch Gower as
• 46:20
  well. I mean, I remember finding the
• 46:22
  floor and fauna quite early and kind of being into whiskey and
• 46:25
  just it was like I remember speaking to Graham, but it was
• 46:28
  like Graham, there's a there's a whiskey that's like salty.
• 46:31
  It's. Yeah, absolutely.
• 46:31
  Yeah, Coastal space side, lots of that kind of solidity going
• 46:35
  on, which you know isn't unique in the whiskey world.
• 46:38
  But a lot of a lot of times when you're talking about any
• 46:40
  solidity, you are talking about Pete hand in hand because you
• 46:43
  talk about the islands especially.
• 46:45
  So to have some that's got that saltiness, that really nice kind
• 46:49
  of maritime note a la old Poultney or Bunhaben or
• 46:54
  whatever. For for those who haven't tried
• 46:55
  in Scout, it's in those lines or Adam Merkin as well in Scotia.
• 46:59
  But in Scout has it with a really nice kind of it's a I'd
• 47:04
  say it's a medium weight of space site.
• 47:07
  So it's not really really light floral or anything.
• 47:10
  But it's also not it's not a more lucky Craigy lucky.
• 47:12
  It's not a big meaty thing. It's kind of somewhere in the
• 47:14
  middle. It's got enough weight to carry
• 47:16
  that saltiness with a nice backbone of flavour, but also
• 47:19
  the weight very importantly to be finished in a very active or
• 47:23
  a kind of an impressive cast. So this one is in Daniel, which
• 47:28
  is a fortified wine, kind of close, I guess closer to a
• 47:33
  darker Sherry in the kind of that end of the spectrum of
• 47:35
  Sherry. And it's from the South of
• 47:38
  France. So if you were down it down
• 47:40
  towards kind of Julio perping on that kind of region that it's
• 47:43
  local to that area. So what you got is salt and
• 47:45
  sweet, which is an absolute winner.
• 47:48
  You know, you salt the caramels on every menu, you know, that
• 47:50
  kind of thing. And it just works very well.
• 47:51
  And for anyone's palate, really, salt and sweet is stuff that we
• 47:55
  crave. You know, I think, yeah,
• 47:59
  historically humans have always imbibed salt in, in kind of 200
• 48:04
  times what they need. Even going back to, you know,
• 48:06
  going back hundreds of years, we've always craved salt, some
• 48:08
  of those in our kind of Physiology.
• 48:11
  So when that sweetness that we, that obviously is a you've got
• 48:14
  sweetness, great bit of salt and it's just Moorish.
• 48:16
  So for me, anything, any of those coastal numbers, anything
• 48:20
  that's got a bit of saltiness to it, a bit of maritime to it with
• 48:22
  a sweet cast is just, it's always a winner to me.
• 48:25
  You know, it's just really good. And Daniels is a very kind of
• 48:27
  nice delicate fortified wine as well, so.
• 48:31
  Well, I guess the last indie bottle spotlight for those that
• 48:34
  are here, inch scourders got gave us the wankiest of wanky
• 48:38
  tasting notes. Yeah, it's like, what was it
• 48:40
  standing on, Ken? When you're standing on Bonf
• 48:43
  Harbour? Yeah, that was a bomb harbour.
• 48:47
  And it's like, it's like eating a crimpled thing of a container
• 48:53
  of sticky toffee pudding getting whacked in the face by the sea
• 48:57
  air in bomb in the Northeast. What I loved about that as well
• 49:01
  was. Specific to bomb though.
• 49:03
  She said I'm free, I'm free. That was I was a great I'm free
• 49:06
  the Northeast and Rachel, God bless her, who's also from the
• 49:14
  definitely Northeast Rachel. But but I think when you have an
• 49:20
  inch Gower and I suppose when you are an independent bottler
• 49:23
  and one of the things is it is funny fact that when you look at
• 49:27
  what casts become available when they become available and we
• 49:30
  know that there's parcels people, these independent
• 49:34
  bottlers, they buy parcels of cast a lot of time or sometimes
• 49:36
  individual casts. But something like in Together
• 49:39
  stands out for a lot of people because it's a it's a drama that
• 49:41
  not many people can get hold of. You've seen this florin fauna.
• 49:45
  Florin Fauna. Yeah, it has.
• 49:47
  It doesn't have many official. Bottlings.
• 49:49
  So I'd imagine as well it's the actual distillery, so production
• 49:54
  must be fairly significantly. Big, yeah, but I mean I remember
• 49:57
  there was just imitation notes. There was a special release from
• 50:00
  Inch Gower. I want to say it was a 27 year
• 50:01
  old. It was when I was working at The
• 50:03
  Last Word where Chuck's also played his train.
• 50:07
  So that would be 8 years ago now and the the inimitable Ben
• 50:11
  Luthian who worked with me at the time, we had on break even
• 50:13
  and his taste in it was it's like someone's drowned an
• 50:14
  orchard in the North Sea. That's a good one.
• 50:18
  Hi, I like. That so yeah, that's always bad,
• 50:20
  as you say. I mean, you've got the floor and
• 50:21
  fauna range and there will be special releases and there'll be
• 50:23
  bits and pieces. There'll be distillery
• 50:24
  exclusives like all Diageo, all these three editions or
• 50:27
  whatever. But for the most part you
• 50:29
  discover it through independent bottlers.
• 50:32
  And and you know, for me, independent bottlers are
• 50:34
  fascinating because you will get to try distilleries that maybe a
• 50:37
  deviate somewhat from the distillery character or their
• 50:40
  classic. You know, that that's why some
• 50:42
  cast get sold to these sometimes is because the distillery is
• 50:44
  gone. That's just that's good.
• 50:45
  But it's just never going to taste like, as you say, what
• 50:48
  people expect from that bottle when they buy it.
• 50:50
  So there is that interesting side of trying to maintain that
• 50:52
  distillery character and get it to shine through.
• 50:54
  And I think any good whiskey should have a balance of cast
• 50:57
  it's cast nature and the distillery.
• 50:59
  But if it's cast nature is refilled bourbon, then the
• 51:02
  balance is obviously going to be heavily more heavily on this
• 51:04
  three character. You know, it's not a 5050 thing,
• 51:06
  but it's getting that to work. And I think with with inch gauer
• 51:09
  and the value in which we're about to go to as well, both
• 51:12
  kind of heavier styles of spirit, that's when you've got
• 51:15
  the the ability to throw it up against biggest styles of casks
• 51:19
  and still get that balance. Whereas, you know, so if you
• 51:22
  have two active wood with not enough to slurry character and
• 51:24
  you end you end up with boozy Sherry, you know, especially if
• 51:27
  some of the full mats for maturation sherries you get at
• 51:30
  younger ages, at five years old and you kind of go that's barely
• 51:33
  whiskey. It could be anything, you know.
• 51:35
  So I think, and I think that's why I think finishing is so
• 51:37
  important as well. I mean, some of the full
• 51:38
  maturation stuff can be great. There's Lockendahl you were
• 51:41
  talking about earlier, but finishing gives you the ability
• 51:44
  to go. That's enough because you put
• 51:47
  something up of age already into the castle that you know is
• 51:50
  rested enough to mature enough. It's got enough to it.
• 51:52
  And then you can just really control that that finishing
• 51:55
  process and use it as seasoning rather than rather than the
• 51:58
  whole kind of dish. So.
• 51:59
  Well, that's interesting for your talk because I think Chuck,
• 52:01
  you were sort of saying about earlier on when we had the
• 52:02
  break, yeah, about finishing. Oh yeah, I was really wondering
• 52:06
  more of the kind of time frames for some of these finishes is
• 52:09
  there exactly they're. Very hugely.
• 52:10
  You want to say someone can be months and on the years, sorry,
• 52:13
  someone can be months and that can be years because they really
• 52:16
  are. So they're curated by one
• 52:18
  person. I mean, I know there are others
• 52:20
  who kind of help with the tasting process, but
• 52:22
  realistically it's just a matter of Keith keeping an eye on it
• 52:26
  and say sometimes haven't worked.
• 52:27
  There was 1 release, it was 2 years and saw turn and it got
• 52:29
  put back into something else because the saw turn even after
• 52:32
  two years, it just kind of wasn't there.
• 52:33
  So it is a is a very variable process, but only because it's a
• 52:37
  small enough operation to have that control.
• 52:40
  You know, obviously you can't do that.
• 52:42
  The beginning you get. So I suppose as well when you're
• 52:44
  using the first of ever cask of a certain whiner or fortified.
• 52:48
  Oh, it's gonna fuck knows. Yeah, yeah, it's like, OK, here
• 52:50
  we go into the depths of what the hell is going to.
• 52:52
  Go on. Yeah.
• 52:53
  And we we've talked about it a few times on the podcast Angus,
• 52:57
  about how about, you know, what is the difference between a
• 52:59
  finish and a second maturation? There isn't.
• 53:02
  And that, that's The thing is like.
• 53:04
  You won't spend too much time with Ross Barr.
• 53:06
  He gets through this question all the time.
• 53:07
  He does. He's too long for a finish.
• 53:08
  I always assume that finish was. Like up to two years and then
• 53:12
  there was a secondary maturation after.
• 53:14
  That well, that because, yeah, because what you could
• 53:16
  technically do is you could put, so we've had somebody in the
• 53:18
  podcast saying you could Chuck, you could Chuck it in a cask and
• 53:20
  roll it down the warehouse and then bottle it and say that's a,
• 53:22
  that's a, it's been finished. You know, you could say that
• 53:26
  because there is no, and I think we talked about it.
• 53:29
  I mean, it was a stab in the dark, if I'm being honest.
• 53:31
  I think it was a New Year episode for 2024 and it was kind
• 53:34
  of Ross was asking us, bearing in mind we normally started the
• 53:37
  podcast in November 23. So he was saying, what do you
• 53:40
  guys think will be the the sort of things that we'll maybe see?
• 53:43
  And it was a stab in the dark. It was basically like maybe
• 53:46
  finishes versus secondary maturation because we're seeing,
• 53:49
  you know, SWA, do they clamp down on it?
• 53:51
  Because we're at that even at like Glen Alchy tasting and we
• 53:55
  were at, you know how one of the questions somebody asked was you
• 53:59
  tell us it's APX. Yeah, PX.
• 54:03
  It's PX on there, PX Sherry. It's Sherry cask.
• 54:05
  But actually, was it always in Sherry cask?
• 54:08
  And the person wasn't no. Don't tell us how long it has
• 54:11
  been. Yeah, it's just Yeah.
• 54:12
  This is PX Finish. There it is.
• 54:15
  It's yeah. How many years ago?
• 54:16
  Or not even PX finish, just PX and that's what it says.
• 54:19
  PX cask. Yeah, many years old, but you're
• 54:22
  right. We know from what we've been
• 54:25
  told that that is only part of the journey, that's that's the
• 54:29
  end rather than. And I suppose it doesn't matter.
• 54:31
  Does. It I think there's, there's two
• 54:33
  arguments to that and which is what a lot of whiskey kind of
• 54:36
  boils down to, especially when you get into terminology and
• 54:39
  regulation, is that on one side, who cares, doesn't taste good,
• 54:42
  isn't worth the price on the shelf.
• 54:44
  Who cares? That's grand.
• 54:45
  That's all I need to know. But the other side of it is, is
• 54:50
  the transparency to the consumer.
• 54:51
  So if if you're saying it's APX Cask, but you only rolled it
• 54:55
  down the warehouse for six seconds and you're using that to
• 54:58
  increase your price point, then you are to an extent ripping a
• 55:02
  customer off. But but then the market's the
• 55:04
  market, you do that enough people lose faith in your
• 55:07
  products. So you kind of there's a bit of
• 55:08
  self regulation going on there because if I see, you know, if I
• 55:11
  buy APX cast bottle, because it's, you know, it's my one
• 55:14
  Sherry DRAM on Christmas and and then I and I pour it and it's a
• 55:17
  borderline crystal clear, doesn't taste like Sherry.
• 55:19
  Well, whoever bottled that, I'm never buying anything from you.
• 55:21
  Again. Exactly, you've ruined my my my
• 55:24
  annual sharing DRAM. So.
• 55:26
  But it's the same thing with E150 and colouring.
• 55:28
  There's nothing wrong with with using E150.
• 55:30
  It's legal, it's fine, and it's used by most people in tiny,
• 55:33
  tiny amounts for consistency in mass market products so that a
• 55:37
  Johnnie Walker looks the same on the shelf in Leaf as it does in
• 55:40
  Sao Paulo and that's fine. The problem I have with the 150
• 55:44
  is when people you overuse it to really darken a whiskey to give
• 55:47
  the impression as heavily sherried and therefore charge
• 55:53
  Dallas Do or Dallas Loch do. Loch do was the famous one.
• 55:55
  Yeah, but there are others who put themselves in the premium
• 55:58
  market based on darker whiskey because it's worth more heavily
• 56:02
  Sherry. And it's not, you taste it and
• 56:04
  it's thin because it's just been, it's been charged with
• 56:07
  colouring and that's where that kind of thing is.
• 56:09
  I mean, again, if it tasted good, really who cares?
• 56:12
  But there is a deception there that I think is where Scotch
• 56:15
  whiskey kind of sometimes loses its own self regulation.
• 56:19
  But fortunately, it is a very small part of the industry sold
• 56:22
  to people who tend not to know that much about whiskey anyway.
• 56:25
  So it's kind of all right. I guess I was kind of talking
• 56:28
  about this last week. I think it wasn't.
• 56:31
  Is there more than one way to skin a cat when it comes to the
• 56:34
  colour line? Because what we know is that,
• 56:35
  you know, markets can, you know, there are markets that will say
• 56:39
  if whiskey doesn't look like that, we won't buy it, right?
• 56:42
  So what you would say, and now some people might say no, no,
• 56:46
  no, no, no, no. What what what that is, is the
• 56:49
  market is, you know, prefer that style of whiskey.
• 56:54
  But you're not telling me that if the market prefers heavily
• 56:56
  shedded whiskey, right, then obviously the the, the, the the
• 57:00
  whiskey company are going to be saying let's let's give them
• 57:03
  heavily shedded whiskey. Now, how do you make somebody
• 57:06
  know what heavily shedded whiskey looks like before even
• 57:09
  bought a bottle of it? It's the colour, isn't it?
• 57:11
  It's the colour, yeah. So, but now you're talking about
• 57:13
  adding artificial colour to to whiskey.
• 57:15
  And there'll be so many people that go, surely that doesn't
• 57:17
  happen anymore, but it does it. Is and it's probably the legal.
• 57:21
  And you said it's fine. Yeah, it's consistency.
• 57:24
  But if you're over using it to give an impression that the
• 57:26
  product is something it's not. But that's when it no, but no,
• 57:28
  no, that's one thing with using it.
• 57:30
  But if you're, if I said right, I want to be a bottler or I want
• 57:33
  to be a whiskey company and I want to to make people realise
• 57:38
  just how my my whiskey appears, appears to appeal to that
• 57:42
  market. Yeah, instead of adding, but I'm
• 57:44
  going to do honestly, I'm not going to put colouring in it, is
• 57:47
  there? Is there another way to skin the
• 57:49
  cat by saying like wet casks or heavily like?
• 57:52
  100% yeah. I mean, like you should
• 57:53
  discourage your cast completely and all that kind of stuff.
• 57:55
  And there's plenty of, we've all had whiskey's where we've gone
• 57:58
  that still had Sherry in the cast when they put the whiskey
• 58:00
  in for sure. There's obviously ways to do
• 58:01
  that. And the reason is that a lot of
• 58:04
  a lot of markets associate darker whiskey with quality and
• 58:06
  age, which isn't true. It's kind of a general thing.
• 58:10
  And whiskey will maybe get darker than more cast influence.
• 58:13
  But I've had 22 year old which he's looked like that glass of
• 58:16
  water. You know, it's not that the
• 58:18
  ecosystem is more complex than that.
• 58:21
  But you know, The thing is that again, with the whiskey market
• 58:25
  growing, people who associate those things with quality and
• 58:28
  they buy them because they've got a limited selection what
• 58:32
  goes into their market. And that's kind of all their
• 58:33
  perception knows. And that's what that the brand
• 58:35
  who first went to that market went.
• 58:37
  This is good because it's dark and kind of and launched ad
• 58:40
  campaigns and all that kind of thing.
• 58:41
  As they get more and more whiskey like as they get
• 58:44
  independent bottlers and as they get a greater selection of more
• 58:47
  interesting, sometimes more honest or more kind of well
• 58:52
  curated and, and, and hand crafted and, and lovingly made
• 58:55
  or bottled whiskies, they will eventually out themselves.
• 58:58
  But obviously whiskey markets aren't all where we are.
• 59:00
  Yeah. You know, globally, of course
• 59:03
  they're not. Some are 10 years behind, some
• 59:05
  are ahead, some are, you know, it's different.
• 59:06
  So that's, that's an inevitable, you know, there's an entropy
• 59:10
  there for those kind of brands are being slightly, you know,
• 59:14
  thrifty with the truth or just and using marketing and using
• 59:18
  things or indicators that aren't.
• 59:20
  Yeah, actually because of quality, they will eventually
• 59:22
  get caught out, but they're making hay while the sun shines.
• 59:24
  Yeah. And fair enough.
• 59:25
  I mean, that's business like, you know what I mean?
• 59:26
  If you educate, if you, if you are in the position to go to the
• 59:28
  market 1st and you educate them to like what you do, that's your
• 59:32
  prerogative of being the 1st in that market.
• 59:34
  Yeah. That's just the, that's just the
• 59:35
  way the market works. But eventually that will
• 59:38
  collapse, whether it takes 10/15/20 or 50 years.
• 59:40
  But it will. Collapse, I think, I think on
• 59:42
  that front, I can't remember the insurance and outs of it, but
• 59:44
  it's like they, you know, go all the way back to when, you know,
• 59:48
  whiskey started becoming more available in, in America after
• 59:51
  the prohibition. And I'm sure it was was it
• 59:54
  Seagram Seagram's or there was an 8 year old that came out and
• 59:57
  basically I think a lot of people were trying to educate
• 59:59
  the American market like 8 year old is the optimum between 8:00
• 1:00:02
  to 10:00. It's the optimum age to drink
• 1:00:04
  whiskey, not drink whiskey. Sorry 8 and 10 year olds not
• 1:00:07
  drinking whiskey your. Appreciation dies when she
• 1:00:12
  turned 9 year olds. You give him a like it was 10,
• 1:00:14
  the best number that when you're 10.
• 1:00:16
  But but but they were trying. And I think to this day, there's
• 1:00:20
  that, you know, whiskey myths carry, don't they?
• 1:00:23
  8 year old was a was also a category yeah.
• 1:00:26
  So deluxe whiskey was 8 / 8 yes. So if you ever saw the phrase
• 1:00:30
  deluxe blend, which I think the most modern blend I can think of
• 1:00:32
  that these recently was the antiquary certainly did the 12
• 1:00:36
  year old, but deluxe meant over 8 years old.
• 1:00:38
  Yeah. So that that was a kind of line
• 1:00:39
  in the sand. Yeah.
• 1:00:41
  A bit like, you know, the Bob and Kentucky straight Bob and is
• 1:00:44
  over 4 years old. So there are indicators that are
• 1:00:46
  based on ages that maybe we don't don't think about because
• 1:00:48
  our age statement world is kind of 10/12/15 seventeen, you know,
• 1:00:52
  that's the kind of classic steps.
• 1:00:53
  So 8 was an indicator that people can use.
• 1:00:57
  And the reason being that, you know, for Scotch whiskey, and
• 1:00:59
  especially when we had, you know, if you go back a certain
• 1:01:03
  amount of time and Scotch WW didn't need to be of our age
• 1:01:07
  because the cast was knocking off the rough bits.
• 1:01:10
  You know what it what it was a rough spirit.
• 1:01:12
  And that's why kind of Scotch whiskey is so varied and, and so
• 1:01:15
  interesting because it is, you know, if you talk about in in
• 1:01:18
  any booze, we talk about flavour, you're also talking
• 1:01:21
  about impurities, which is why the really kind of elegantly
• 1:01:24
  made Japanese whiskey that's so kind of precise and very kind of
• 1:01:29
  objectively good. Careful, Chuck is a big Japanese
• 1:01:33
  whiskey, no? No, no, I'm not.
• 1:01:35
  I'm not slagging, but it's objectively good and so, so
• 1:01:37
  precise and so interesting to kind of observe.
• 1:01:40
  But for the most part, you will find more character in Scotch
• 1:01:43
  because of the impurities, because of the rougher nature of
• 1:01:45
  it. It's it's like, you know, the
• 1:01:46
  Japanese make a car that will run, you know, you can send a
• 1:01:49
  50P piece up on the engine while it's running because it's so
• 1:01:51
  precise. But isn't as much fun as an old
• 1:01:54
  Jack. I mean, it's that kind of thing.
• 1:01:55
  Like the old Jack is by no means no objectively better piece of
• 1:01:58
  engineering, but is it more fun? You know, I think.
• 1:02:01
  That's why as. Well, exactly.
• 1:02:02
  And I think Scotch whiskey is interesting for that.
• 1:02:05
  So we are all talking about impurities all the time because
• 1:02:07
  if you but still the fuck out of something.
• 1:02:09
  So you get till you get rid of all the impurities, you get
• 1:02:10
  vodka which takes them nothing. So there there is that kind of
• 1:02:14
  thing of what on earth was I talking about?
• 1:02:18
  Well, well, well, just one more one last thing and I suppose on
• 1:02:22
  Keith, if Keith was here, I would ask him.
• 1:02:24
  But it is interesting when going back to the inch Gower and
• 1:02:27
  you're talking about the sweet and saltiness and how that's a
• 1:02:29
  craving. If you get your hands on an inch
• 1:02:33
  gather cask as an independent bottler, is it shooting in?
• 1:02:36
  You're going right, because you're going, I know what I'm
• 1:02:38
  going to do here. We're going to have that
• 1:02:41
  saltiness. We're going to have that
• 1:02:43
  maritime whiskey. I know that if I stick that in a
• 1:02:46
  soft earned cask or a or a, you know, we're having this in a
• 1:02:49
  Baniel's cast, the sweet cast that is going to hit the mark
• 1:02:53
  every time because like you've just said, it might not be.
• 1:02:56
  It's the pintail version of the inch scour that's salt and
• 1:02:59
  sweet. Yeah.
• 1:02:59
  Oh, but do you think, do you think that is that comes in?
• 1:03:02
  Would there be someone that goes now you know what?
• 1:03:04
  I'm going to keep that brainy salty and it's going.
• 1:03:06
  Out. Oh, I'm going to respect
• 1:03:07
  experiment. You look at fragrant drops, you
• 1:03:12
  know they've did. They've did one recently.
• 1:03:13
  Short term, I think it was no. But they did that.
• 1:03:15
  The one. Before, yeah, but the.
• 1:03:17
  More recent one I'm sure. Tedenex Salterne was one of the
• 1:03:19
  ones in the latest. Yeah, but they recently did an
• 1:03:21
  inch scour in bourbon. Oh, did they?
• 1:03:22
  It was banging. I mean, it's you know, like
• 1:03:25
  obviously like you, that's all the thing.
• 1:03:26
  You know, The thing is and that that's kind of the trap we will
• 1:03:29
  fall into, especially talking about these kind of drums is
• 1:03:31
  that we're we're sidelining, sidelining bourbon as if it's if
• 1:03:35
  it's a glass of water, you know, the bourbon cast, you have to
• 1:03:38
  impart lots of vanilla, lots of coconut.
• 1:03:40
  Like there is there is still a huge kind of place for them to
• 1:03:43
  play, especially if they're fresh, which I think that one
• 1:03:46
  was. And if George and Rachel are
• 1:03:47
  singing, I've got that completely wrong.
• 1:03:48
  I apologise. But you know, the the idea of
• 1:03:50
  like bourbon cast being a last resort is it's not the case.
• 1:03:55
  You an inch gal was still set up and will still take the salt
• 1:03:57
  against that light, slightly lighter, sweeter notes like
• 1:04:02
  vanilla and stuff. Because I was interested.
• 1:04:04
  People say I like a sweet whiskey, especially if you
• 1:04:05
  working by a bar or whatever you can like where where's sweet for
• 1:04:08
  you? Is that custard and Creme
• 1:04:10
  brulee? Because that's a bourbon cask or
• 1:04:12
  is it, you know, PX is a Christmas pudding is a rich
• 1:04:15
  sweetness. There's a difference there.
• 1:04:16
  And, you know, inch gal will do very well in any of those things
• 1:04:19
  because you're always going to imply, I mean, part of the
• 1:04:21
  thing, part of what gets extracted is sugars in the
• 1:04:24
  woods. You know, it's part of any
• 1:04:25
  maturation process. But I think with inch gal, with
• 1:04:28
  the, the robustness of the spirit, you do have the the
• 1:04:32
  option to go, well, let's do something.
• 1:04:34
  Yeah, a bit rich because it's going to stand up to, you know,
• 1:04:37
  like, I mean, it's not a free hit, but like, you know, it is
• 1:04:42
  that that's what I was talking about over 8.
• 1:04:45
  So what was about so, so we did we didn't need age.
• 1:04:47
  But when you look at kind of dysleries now, like Ardon
• 1:04:49
  American's a great example. Sure.
• 1:04:51
  And I mean, I love the guys and I love the company.
• 1:04:54
  I've worked a lot with them but it's almost annoying now how
• 1:04:57
  everything they do hits because what they did was 10 just.
• 1:05:00
  Waiting for them to produce. Something just fuck up sometime,
• 1:05:02
  right? Come on.
• 1:05:03
  But. Don't release.
• 1:05:05
  Don't. Release that ardor, Gurkin.
• 1:05:07
  That was delicious, and if you didn't like it, you're wrong.
• 1:05:12
  Arden Gurkin was a release that did through Adelphi that was in
• 1:05:16
  what is called like a pickled cask.
• 1:05:18
  Or it was, it was, it was a cast.
• 1:05:21
  I'd gone to vinegar. It was it was something you
• 1:05:23
  would normally blend back in a batch of 10,000 other cast.
• 1:05:26
  Was like a faulty cast, right? Yeah, And he did not taste good
• 1:05:30
  it. Was funny because I really
• 1:05:32
  enjoyed it. And then Rory.
• 1:05:34
  This is Guskins, isn't it? Yeah, Rory, Coffee and burger
• 1:05:36
  and you keep them on. Yeah, Rory and Ensign refused to
• 1:05:38
  charge for it. Yeah, that's how I had it.
• 1:05:41
  And I was like this, this tastes like my gym care for the summer.
• 1:05:44
  Like it was disgusting. I see.
• 1:05:46
  But yeah. I.
• 1:05:49
  See, Chuck, I've ever been in a gym, so I don't know that.
• 1:05:53
  I mean, yeah, I mean. But Arne Merkin, they because
• 1:05:56
  they're youngest 3 and they could, they set up 10 years ago
• 1:05:58
  with all the all of the 200 years of advancements behind
• 1:06:01
  them. They make your new mate that off
• 1:06:04
  the rack is beautiful. And so we don't need those same
• 1:06:08
  years of maturation to knock the edges off.
• 1:06:10
  We're playing a different game with.
• 1:06:11
  Maturation we've seen that and and, and I think we've talked a
• 1:06:14
  lot about that and I think Paul Main talked about it on the
• 1:06:16
  podcast when he was talking about Arden Ho, He was saying
• 1:06:19
  that when you when he he started working with Hunter Lane, when
• 1:06:25
  Arden Hall was just a, a space, right?
• 1:06:28
  And then he's seen it slow and he was he was lucky enough to
• 1:06:31
  systematically visit the distillery and things.
• 1:06:34
  And he said that when you hear engineers talking about putting
• 1:06:37
  a bend and a pipe in a certain place, because what we're seeing
• 1:06:41
  now with new distilleries being built is they can manufacture
• 1:06:44
  the flavour. Whereas you go back to Inch
• 1:06:47
  Gower, you go back to any of these these distilleries that
• 1:06:49
  were trying tonight, you know that that no one when these
• 1:06:52
  distilleries were being built, no one was thinking of it.
• 1:06:54
  In fact, we've had the Stephen Adcock, Stephen Stephen Woodcock
• 1:07:01
  on the podcast talking about when he worked at Edge Goer.
• 1:07:04
  Yeah. And he's like what he used.
• 1:07:05
  He said if you took all the parts of a distillery up on a
• 1:07:08
  plane and dropped them, he said that's what Edge Goer looked
• 1:07:10
  like when I wanted. And, and suddenly he said his
• 1:07:13
  task was eventually to strip the distillery out and rebuild it,
• 1:07:17
  maintaining distillery character, which he he sort of
• 1:07:20
  said, yeah, well, that was what he said.
• 1:07:22
  And but, but that's what's great about Inch Gower is the fact
• 1:07:25
  that like you're saying about the Japanese contradiction is
• 1:07:28
  the Japanese maybe came over to Scotland and said, right, we
• 1:07:31
  want to sort of match Scotch whisky, but do it better.
• 1:07:35
  But do it. And they they manufactured that.
• 1:07:37
  So it was starting from scratch. But what we are seeing and maybe
• 1:07:40
  we are and as you said Arnie Merkin, maybe it is annoying
• 1:07:43
  because now what can happen is with the engineering
• 1:07:46
  technologies we've got now and with the expertise that are out
• 1:07:49
  there, people can build a distillery to say the first bit
• 1:07:52
  of spirit that comes out of that still is going to be ready.
• 1:07:55
  They released a 10 year old under the Adelphi market label,
• 1:07:58
  which was cast #10 therefore must have been run one.
• 1:08:02
  Yeah. And it was bagging.
• 1:08:03
  Yeah. And you've got very little right
• 1:08:05
  to be that good that quickly. But I mean, that's the thing.
• 1:08:08
  But I think The thing is with Scotch as well, because we have
• 1:08:10
  it's gone that history of different styles across the
• 1:08:13
  country, but very coastal styles or kind of more kind of robust
• 1:08:17
  sulfurous worm to be kind of highly space study styles or
• 1:08:19
  whatever it might be, wherever you are.
• 1:08:21
  Obviously those styles can be made anywhere, but we now have
• 1:08:24
  the ability to reverse engineer them because the the reason
• 1:08:28
  those those styles sprung up what they did was by locale from
• 1:08:32
  what the most part. So if you, if you make a whiskey
• 1:08:35
  and you're on Sky or on Isle or whatever, and you know, if your
• 1:08:38
  first run tastes a bit salty to you for whatever reason, you
• 1:08:42
  know, I guess, you know, if that was your diet was all salty fish
• 1:08:44
  and you live by the sea, Yeah. You actually wouldn't pick up
• 1:08:46
  that imperfection necessarily because it's something that
• 1:08:49
  you're so used to. Whereas if you're somewhere like
• 1:08:53
  Craigelikey or up in the Highlands where like if you got
• 1:08:55
  something like it was a really meaty note, but if you're living
• 1:08:57
  on game, then you wouldn't spot that note as much as an
• 1:09:00
  imperfection. So you would run with that
• 1:09:02
  style. So if you've got that kind of
• 1:09:04
  existing by chance and by location, and then also as you
• 1:09:07
  say by why they're still that high, well, because that's where
• 1:09:09
  the roof is, you know, that kind of thing as well.
• 1:09:12
  That all happened across the country over how many kind of
• 1:09:14
  decades and and centuries. But now we know why all those
• 1:09:18
  things happen. You can just go, OK, we'll take
• 1:09:20
  that, we'll take that, we'll use that.
• 1:09:21
  And that's how we'll we'll create the those elements from
• 1:09:24
  different things. Hundreds years ago in the 1800s
• 1:09:27
  and that when they were when they were making distilleries,
• 1:09:29
  how many people were talking about copper contact and going,
• 1:09:32
  you know, you know, they weren't going like, oh, no, one tub
• 1:09:35
  versus this style condenser or and and you're talking about I
• 1:09:38
  think Rosebank is a classic example is that one of the
• 1:09:41
  stills is a lot shorter. If I'm right and Rosebank, but
• 1:09:44
  they've said that as well. But historically it was
• 1:09:46
  literally the reason that one that back still is that size is
• 1:09:49
  because at the original distillery, we found out that it
• 1:09:51
  was literally because someone went, Oh shit, we won't be able
• 1:09:54
  to felt fit the third one in because of the roof.
• 1:09:56
  So we're just going to have to make it smaller.
• 1:09:58
  But suddenly the three different stills running at different 21
• 1:10:02
  size, 1 at another size, it's going to have an impact, but no
• 1:10:05
  one knew at the time when they were building.
• 1:10:06
  Their and then what we've done now is you've got you know, now
• 1:10:10
  that we are, we know that stills of a certain shape produce.
• 1:10:13
  Yeah, yeah. And so you're you're what you're
• 1:10:17
  seeing. Yeah.
• 1:10:18
  Like you said, you can reverse the injury.
• 1:10:19
  So you're you can you can start from a point of OK, I want to
• 1:10:23
  produce a spirit that's XY and Z.
• 1:10:25
  Therefore I'll need to build with a still.
• 1:10:27
  Well, I said stills are so that's why we we're lucky.
• 1:10:30
  But I've said it so many times, there was nobody, there is
• 1:10:33
  nobody alive today that tried spring back early doors and goes
• 1:10:35
  can't wait to try that at 10. You know, you know, I mean.
• 1:10:38
  Whereas we are now in that, you know where we are now, we're
• 1:10:41
  there where we can. Talk about the equipment a lot
• 1:10:43
  as well and how we're, you know, we've got that SUS, but we are
• 1:10:46
  also looking where we are with the products we're using, the
• 1:10:49
  varieties of barley and the yeast we're using, but we're
• 1:10:51
  going all the way back to what it was before.
• 1:10:54
  Well, yeah, getting barley varieties made in the 1950s and
• 1:10:57
  90s. Yeah, because, because when we
• 1:10:58
  can't decide on 2 strains in the 70s and when that's great yield
• 1:11:01
  and no one thought about anything else.
• 1:11:02
  And then, you know, you look at, if you, if you look at the
• 1:11:05
  cognaces and the Armaniacs and, and what they, the way they look
• 1:11:08
  at creating Almanac and cognac, you know, they're, because
• 1:11:12
  they're very French about it. And you know, it's, it's
• 1:11:14
  cuisine, you know, it's part of, you know, there's no, the yield
• 1:11:17
  isn't the issue. It's flavour is what it makes.
• 1:11:19
  I mean, they, they talk about wanting a lower ferment.
• 1:11:22
  So they want to, they want to ferment to about 7% because when
• 1:11:25
  you distill from 7% to 70, you're concentrating 10 times,
• 1:11:29
  Yeah, where you have a 10% ferment, you just design from
• 1:11:31
  10% to 70, you're only concerning 7 times.
• 1:11:33
  But it's quite so they they sacrifice yield all the time
• 1:11:36
  because it's well. It's quite interesting, when we
• 1:11:38
  were at the Glen Alka testing up in Dornick, they were talking
• 1:11:40
  about how the distillery was designed for 4 million litres
• 1:11:44
  per year. That's the way it was, and
• 1:11:45
  they've changed the whole fermentation process now, so
• 1:11:48
  they're doing a 900. 1000 litres per.
• 1:11:50
  Year, yes, they're doing a five day ferment now which is taking
• 1:11:54
  them slowly down to 900,000 per year by year production and
• 1:11:58
  that's a choice purely for quality of spirit.
• 1:12:00
  Yeah, exactly. You know.
• 1:12:01
  These decisions are now being made.
• 1:12:02
  I mean, it's amazing that we've got, we've got the bigger
• 1:12:06
  distilleries that we can carry that so we can have the small
• 1:12:08
  guys. Yeah, we're here in the kind of
• 1:12:11
  molars and stuff like that. But one of the things is are
• 1:12:13
  we've seen in the whiskey industry a movement towards more
• 1:12:15
  artisanal style of of. I, I think we are at one end,
• 1:12:19
  but at the other end like like this is what Chuck was saying.
• 1:12:22
  We do have these distilleries is, you know, you look at you
• 1:12:25
  look at Rose Isle, Yeah, big, big distillery producer, big,
• 1:12:28
  big volumes and and yeah, producing great stuff.
• 1:12:31
  We've had this, you know, but but being able to produce at
• 1:12:34
  volume so that people like, you know, Simon and Philip Donna can
• 1:12:39
  produce, Yeah. You know, just think quality,
• 1:12:41
  quality, quality. Well, let's, let's, let's move
• 1:12:44
  on to our next drum, right, Simon?
• 1:12:46
  You're pouring it for yourselves because we thank you very much.
• 1:12:48
  I've got that. I think I've got one up here.
• 1:12:49
  You go back for. This one so.
• 1:12:51
  Yes, what we've got here, Simon. You should have 4.
• 1:12:55
  I've got four. Yeah, I've just got the last.
• 1:12:58
  One, so we're moving on to a Dal Ewan.
• 1:13:01
  So the Dal Ewan is yeah, yeah, like.
• 1:13:03
  A Dal Ewan fan over there, I like Dalia.
• 1:13:07
  I I think Dalia sits to me in that slightly meteor of of the
• 1:13:13
  space. It's kind of, you know, the
• 1:13:15
  Dalia, sorry. So it's the so where's what
• 1:13:21
  you've got like you've got like a little kind of family of like
• 1:13:23
  Benrinus Craigalokey malt. Look, it's like in a heavier
• 1:13:26
  sometimes a bit more sulphurous at times, kind of really, really
• 1:13:31
  kind of well suited to Sherry casks as a rule.
• 1:13:34
  And they were, they were blended dreams essentially these kind of
• 1:13:36
  cast. So what you get with these kind
• 1:13:38
  of more soul free is heavy meaty spirits.
• 1:13:41
  Most of them weren't bottled at all under their own label for
• 1:13:44
  many, many years. And Craigelecky famously went
• 1:13:47
  through a few independent bottles.
• 1:13:48
  A few people really liked the style.
• 1:13:50
  And then I think 07 Craigecky actually made a brand because,
• 1:13:53
  oh shit, you actually want to drink this because it was just a
• 1:13:55
  blended dream. It was just something that like,
• 1:13:57
  it really tied together. It was what they call what's the
• 1:13:59
  word? I can't remember now, but you
• 1:14:01
  know, it's a malt that brings all the other flavours together.
• 1:14:03
  Not a top dresser, is that? No.
• 1:14:04
  And that's that's what goes on top.
• 1:14:06
  Isn't it There's another word for an I just escape.
• 1:14:08
  They'll come back to me. I'll have another.
• 1:14:09
  We've had, we've had pizza connotations before, so that
• 1:14:12
  would be the dope. Yeah.
• 1:14:12
  Oh. Yeah, so I'll have a flashback
• 1:14:14
  in 30 seconds and I'll remember so, but they basically it's in
• 1:14:17
  that kind of family, which I I quite like.
• 1:14:19
  And it's also something I talk about when I do whiskey
• 1:14:21
  trainings a lot. Isn't that this is where you
• 1:14:23
  start to really breakdown the myth of regions because if you
• 1:14:25
  gave someone a, you know, a Glenn Lossy next to a Del Ewan
• 1:14:29
  and said that's the same region, they all taste like that.
• 1:14:31
  You'd think you'd taken lead of your senses because they're
• 1:14:33
  completely different. So I do like these.
• 1:14:36
  I read, but these are kind of some of the drums I filled up
• 1:14:38
  with very early doors in my whiskey drinking words.
• 1:14:41
  You won't look see Craig Ellaki's that really rich style
• 1:14:44
  and again stands up to stands up to big casts.
• 1:14:47
  So what we've got here is a Paolo Katara Sherry cask.
• 1:14:51
  So we're now sort of entering that the the the next two casts
• 1:14:53
  have sort of slightly more recognized familiar.
• 1:14:57
  Yeah. We're back on Terra Firma here.
• 1:14:58
  So Palo Katado is a slightly obscure Sherry.
• 1:15:01
  It's basically, and all are also gone wrong.
• 1:15:04
  So Sherry is aged on the floor, which is kind of a bacterial
• 1:15:08
  layer that sits in the cask. And for some, for young, for
• 1:15:12
  younger Sherry's, that's what happens.
• 1:15:15
  And then for older Sherry's, they break the floor
• 1:15:17
  intentionally and finish the aging process.
• 1:15:20
  Off the data they. Kind of stick the wood.
• 1:15:22
  There literally, literally do that and they break the floor,
• 1:15:24
  which is like almost like if you think of it like a layer that
• 1:15:26
  has surface tension. So once you break it, it's gone.
• 1:15:29
  So they break the floor intentionally and then age the
• 1:15:32
  end of it oxidatively, which is where you get your older Osos
• 1:15:34
  and Upx as your darker old cherries.
• 1:15:36
  Palo Kitado is what happens when a cherry barrel breaks.
• 1:15:40
  The floor breaks unintentionally.
• 1:15:42
  So when the floor breaks because of of just a change in just by
• 1:15:45
  without a. Man.
• 1:15:47
  Putting without someone's putting.
• 1:15:48
  So when that happens, if you're aside, that becomes Palo
• 1:15:50
  Cortado. So it's kind of in profile.
• 1:15:52
  It's quite similar to Olarosso. But for me, I always get a
• 1:15:56
  little hint of the Montiado in there.
• 1:15:57
  So they're kind of slightly. So again, meaty thing from
• 1:16:01
  Olarosso, but there's a little bit of that nuttiness from
• 1:16:04
  Montiado. Somewhere in the middle there is
• 1:16:06
  a bit of a hybrid. And if you don't, if you do
• 1:16:09
  drink cherry, the actual product is delicious.
• 1:16:11
  It's one of my favourite cherries, but again, gives
• 1:16:14
  another interesting layer to a whiskey finishing it because
• 1:16:17
  it's got a kind of two elements from the cherry world that we
• 1:16:20
  normally experience separately kind of come together.
• 1:16:23
  And it's a slightly rarer type of cherry.
• 1:16:25
  We are seeing more and more of it in the whiskey world, but I
• 1:16:27
  don't think anyone was really using it until maybe 10 years
• 1:16:30
  ago. I mean, I hadn't seen it until
• 1:16:32
  then, so. I think James Eddy made me aware
• 1:16:35
  of it. They.
• 1:16:36
  Just yeah, James Eddy was probably one of the first ones I
• 1:16:38
  had as well. Yeah, there was a boon I haven't
• 1:16:40
  done, like fish ale. There was like pillow cartel
• 1:16:42
  that matured. Yeah.
• 1:16:43
  So yeah. And this is where kind of my
• 1:16:48
  ignorance comes in, because Paolo Katado is something I've
• 1:16:50
  always kind of seen. So I'm kind of thinking it's
• 1:16:52
  kind of something that's always been around forever, but clearly
• 1:16:55
  not. No, I'm trying to think we've
• 1:16:56
  tried something in Paolo Katado recently, you see.
• 1:16:59
  A few of them, James, you do do a bit.
• 1:17:00
  They generally like that. Kalila is famous.
• 1:17:03
  Yeah. You know that they've released
• 1:17:04
  some color and Paolo Katado every year and it's always
• 1:17:06
  delicious. I mean, when I first started in
• 1:17:09
  the in around whiskey, which is going back 1617 years now, you
• 1:17:14
  know, the you just saw Sherry cask.
• 1:17:17
  Yeah, there was never anything. It could be anything.
• 1:17:20
  And then basically as what's happened with all consuming of
• 1:17:24
  food and drink over the last 10 years is people care more about
• 1:17:28
  the geekiness of such as like the I want to know things, but
• 1:17:31
  also the provenance. There's a little bit, you know,
• 1:17:33
  people just like that bit more information, whether it's, you
• 1:17:35
  know, whether it's where their cheese come from or whether that
• 1:17:37
  where their meat comes from or all those kind of things.
• 1:17:40
  And that the whole, you know, farm to shelf movement and
• 1:17:42
  they're all that kind of, we've seen that culinary cuisine is
• 1:17:46
  all the time is people want more and more provenance, Where did
• 1:17:48
  the cow come from? All that kind of thing.
• 1:17:50
  And it's the same with whiskey. People just went, oh, you care.
• 1:17:53
  It's Manzania. All right.
• 1:17:54
  Yeah. We'll put that on the bottle.
• 1:17:55
  Yeah. We just did because it's funny,
• 1:17:57
  because it's like you go back to what you said when you break it
• 1:17:59
  down and we were talking about difference between a finish and
• 1:18:03
  a double maturation and stuff. The reality is, you know what if
• 1:18:07
  it takes good, why do you care? But people do people do people
• 1:18:10
  like you know, and I think we we're living in the era of like
• 1:18:12
  the whiskey and the whiskey geeks.
• 1:18:13
  But The thing is as well, people can.
• 1:18:15
  That's why the whiskey industry is is become so much more open
• 1:18:17
  in a wave to so many more consumers.
• 1:18:19
  Because if you tried a Sherry cask when everything was as
• 1:18:22
  cold, that one to the other might be so different and you'd
• 1:18:25
  be like, OK, well, I like that one, but not that one.
• 1:18:27
  So there's no Sherry cask I like.
• 1:18:29
  So now if you try like a man's ear cast and you go, well, that
• 1:18:31
  for some reason that fucking works for me, then you know what
• 1:18:34
  to look out for. So the more information you've
• 1:18:36
  got, the more you can realize yourself.
• 1:18:38
  That's the kind of thing I look out for.
• 1:18:40
  Yeah, I think the consumer being that interest as well helps the
• 1:18:44
  industry. And that probably like 100%.
• 1:18:46
  That's why we have an independent botler who's decided
• 1:18:50
  there's a market where I can you know, it's not a case.
• 1:18:52
  And obviously Keith with the with the with the other
• 1:18:55
  business, the whiskey seller can can say right, I can have I can
• 1:18:59
  have best of both worlds. But rather than just say whiskey
• 1:19:01
  seller, here's a cask finished whiskey, here's a non caster.
• 1:19:06
  He's actually made the conscious decision to say right, I'm going
• 1:19:09
  to I'm going to go down an Ave. where it's only that, and that's
• 1:19:13
  something that we've not seen. Now what I'm going to do is I'm
• 1:19:15
  not done it. We'll do a better roving.
• 1:19:16
  We'll go for what what we're thinking so far.
• 1:19:18
  What's your favorite bean? Like the second?
• 1:19:21
  One second one. What was the second one again?
• 1:19:23
  The Lynkwood and Lupiak. Look in the Lupiak Fantastic and
• 1:19:27
  you've got pal. What's your name?
• 1:19:29
  Grant. Grant, welcome along.
• 1:19:30
  Not seen you before. Have you got a favorite?
• 1:19:33
  I also like the second I think. Brilliant.
• 1:19:36
  Thank you. Thanks, Grant.
• 1:19:39
  Over here lads, what we're thinking.
• 1:19:40
  I've been I'm a Dalian fan all the way.
• 1:19:42
  So it's a it's a lovely of a drum.
• 1:19:44
  But I must admit the Lynkwood is another good.
• 1:19:47
  I mean really, really complex and nice.
• 1:19:48
  I mean, they've they've gone from very, very safe, but I
• 1:19:51
  wouldn't say safe, but just a nice summer morning breakfast
• 1:19:54
  whiskey and it's like it's getting fuller and further
• 1:19:57
  through the day. So it's been.
• 1:19:58
  Really good. Well, well, I mean, Simon, you
• 1:20:00
  you actually changed the line up tonight.
• 1:20:01
  You decided to stick that tally Barden at the front, the I.
• 1:20:05
  Swap the Dal you and the sorry, I swap the Dal you of the
• 1:20:08
  Taliban. So I, I think the the Calvados
• 1:20:10
  cast, that kind of nice bright apple thing was a good place to
• 1:20:13
  start for sure. Yeah.
• 1:20:14
  That's why he's a whiskey consultant, eh?
• 1:20:16
  Right. Yeah, it.
• 1:20:18
  Was, I mean, the first one again, it seemed very simple,
• 1:20:20
  but I did that huge thing that I sometimes do, which is to put a
• 1:20:23
  bit of water in my mouth, a bit of whiskey, and just warm up
• 1:20:26
  your mouth. Yeah.
• 1:20:27
  And I sucked my cheeks and the sweetness that came out of that
• 1:20:29
  Calvados was absolutely lovely. Fantastic.
• 1:20:32
  Anyone else? Anyone.
• 1:20:33
  Anyone want to hit us with a wanky tasting note this evening?
• 1:20:36
  Lawrence, you got 1 yet? No.
• 1:20:38
  Well. Kind of because when we tasted
• 1:20:40
  the second one I've got, I've got kind of vanilla ice cream to
• 1:20:44
  begin with, which is not the greatest taste to notice it.
• 1:20:46
  But when when you do the Richard Patterson thing where he says
• 1:20:50
  take a mouthful, swill it around, give it a good chew, but
• 1:20:54
  then inhale and go, then I got Dragon's Breath Dragon.
• 1:20:59
  'S breath. Well, if you really want, I
• 1:21:03
  mean. Simon said he's getting a new
• 1:21:07
  floor in here, so if you really want to do the Richard Patterson
• 1:21:10
  thing and just Chuck the whiskey, the.
• 1:21:12
  Most expensive carpet in the world.
• 1:21:15
  Swirl it around, Chuck it out. So fantastic.
• 1:21:20
  Dragon's breath like it. I like it a lot there.
• 1:21:23
  I like it. So, Simon, moving on to our last
• 1:21:26
  DRAM of the evening then. So we're finishing with a pitted
• 1:21:29
  number, as is tradition. So this is a little bit unusual
• 1:21:35
  because it's it's a Lefroig bottled as Lefroig.
• 1:21:37
  So some of you might know the the Williamson, which is the
• 1:21:42
  trade name for the Froig, which is named after a woman who ran
• 1:21:46
  Lefroig just so I want to say the turn of the previous
• 1:21:48
  century, if I've got my dates right.
• 1:21:50
  So a lot, a lot of distilleries will sell casks to independent
• 1:21:53
  bottlers with the proviso that you can't use, yeah, the name,
• 1:21:58
  you can't use the name. So.
• 1:21:59
  So I remember, I think we spoke about it when we had them on the
• 1:22:02
  first time. Woodrow's had a Williamson that
• 1:22:05
  they were talking about a lot. Which was very good.
• 1:22:07
  Which was? Very good, but this is.
• 1:22:10
  This is bottled as Lefroy. Bottled as Lefroy, yeah.
• 1:22:12
  Which is unusual. So which is unusual, yeah.
• 1:22:14
  So yeah, you you'll get like you've got Westport I think is
• 1:22:20
  when moringy from memory you've got things like Ward head, which
• 1:22:23
  is Glenfiddich, but teaspoon which is slightly different.
• 1:22:25
  So they'll adulterate it just to make sure it can't be bottles.
• 1:22:27
  You've got the very creative one, Pledgeig, which shockingly,
• 1:22:32
  nothing is. Legig, Yeah.
• 1:22:35
  Yeah, yeah. Really went out on that one.
• 1:22:36
  So yeah, basically what the reason is is that some companies
• 1:22:41
  and you know, so William Grants go, yeah, you can have some
• 1:22:45
  Glenfiddich, but we're putting a little bit of balbetti in it.
• 1:22:48
  So you can't bottle as a single malt and also you can't call a
• 1:22:51
  Glenfidic just in case you fuck it.
• 1:22:52
  Essentially, that's all it is. Yeah, Because I don't want you
• 1:22:55
  doing a bad finish with it and then putting it in A and then
• 1:22:57
  putting it that, then it. Won't wait somebody.
• 1:22:59
  Tries it tries that way someone Glenfidic is I'm not doing that
• 1:23:03
  so so the Freud and then so we have yeah, the teaspoon stuff.
• 1:23:06
  We have the trade names that basically the trade goes, OK,
• 1:23:07
  well, everyone knows it is anyway.
• 1:23:09
  But this is bottled as the Freud 16 year olds.
• 1:23:11
  And this is definitely much more in the kind of Santa cast
• 1:23:15
  wheelhouse. We're on an other also Sherry.
• 1:23:17
  Yeah. So Olerosso, you're the other
• 1:23:20
  second, but one of the sweetest. It's kind of what's the old
• 1:23:25
  thing if it if it swims Manzania, if it flies to
• 1:23:29
  Montellado and if it walks Olerosso.
• 1:23:31
  So it's that's your kind of food pairing for Sherry.
• 1:23:34
  But so, yeah, so Olerosso is the kind of slightly more meaty,
• 1:23:36
  slightly more robust. It's sweet, but not hugely, but
• 1:23:41
  it's also not strip your mouth dry like a fino.
• 1:23:43
  It's kind of that nice middle ground.
• 1:23:45
  And so, and then again, you've got, you'll have the saltiness
• 1:23:48
  there because it's Lefroig, it's coastal, it's be it'll be 25% I
• 1:23:56
  would imagine at least floor molted at the Froig with local
• 1:23:59
  peat. The reason that, so basically
• 1:24:02
  the reason because Bomore and Lefroig are owned by the same
• 1:24:06
  company and they molt a lot of their barley on site.
• 1:24:09
  They both have molting floors. They cut their they cut their
• 1:24:11
  peat from the same peat bogs on Isla and I've walked through
• 1:24:15
  them, but the difference is a bit.
• 1:24:17
  Of your solely your shoe on. There will be, yeah, yeah, the
• 1:24:21
  whole shoe in fact. So basically for Bulmore, they
• 1:24:25
  machine cut their peat so it comes back to the slurry in
• 1:24:27
  bricks, right. Whereas in for the Frog, they
• 1:24:29
  rough cut it essentially. So it's in kind of just weird
• 1:24:32
  shapes and stuff. So what therefore happens when
• 1:24:34
  they burn it is it doesn't really burn all the way through
• 1:24:36
  as evenly. So you get like it doesn't dry
• 1:24:39
  as well. So it gets like kind of wetter,
• 1:24:40
  dirty or oily things. That's why in the frog you've
• 1:24:42
  got that for most people it's that peak medicinal TCP, like
• 1:24:48
  Buickle, Dalton Coast Classic, you know, balls to the wall Isla
• 1:24:52
  rather than slightly more elegant peat of Bono.
• 1:24:55
  So it's going to be big. It's going to be a lot of Pete,
• 1:24:57
  although Ross could have a lot of richness to it.
• 1:24:59
  Again, I think Pete and Sherry's a great combination, always has
• 1:25:02
  been. So this is the first time I'm
• 1:25:05
  trying it. I hope it's delicious.
• 1:25:06
  Lovely. Good, good news.
• 1:25:07
  I have to say is someone who's been, as Ross would say, been
• 1:25:10
  pretending to like Pete and whiskey for a for a long time.
• 1:25:14
  I think it's fantastic. And, and, and it's interesting
• 1:25:16
  because I have to say, you know, it must be very difficult from
• 1:25:20
  an independent bottler point of view where, you know, there'll
• 1:25:23
  be a large amount of the same kind of casks that are doing
• 1:25:28
  that go around, you know, and there'll be times.
• 1:25:31
  And I know that from the, from the people that we've spoken to,
• 1:25:34
  you know, very rarely as someone buying 1 cask at one time, it's
• 1:25:38
  parcels, these parcels. And there'll be so many people
• 1:25:41
  that have probably gone, they've they've bottled that out of the
• 1:25:47
  parcel that I passed up on. And, and, and speaking to an
• 1:25:50
  independent bottler, I'd be able to ask if Keith, you know, if
• 1:25:53
  Keith was here or other independent bottlers.
• 1:25:54
  You know, there must be a sort of rule of thumb where you go.
• 1:25:59
  I think we spoke about the Thompson brothers spoke about
• 1:26:01
  with them and they said, I said, you know, as brothers, do you
• 1:26:04
  guys have to be, is there one that's the more like gung ho one
• 1:26:08
  and one that's to pull it back? And how hard is it when you're
• 1:26:11
  looking at your money levels and your finances and saying that is
• 1:26:14
  a great cask that we could buy and that would do so well in a
• 1:26:19
  bottle under our label. But unfortunately it's, we just
• 1:26:22
  can't, we're going to have to. Pass it up right now that we
• 1:26:24
  know we're have to going to sell it for extra amount and that's
• 1:26:26
  not going to sell. It so well when you come across
• 1:26:27
  a lathroic independently bottled, you know that is that
• 1:26:31
  is a bit rare, isn't there and. It's also it's also a bit of a
• 1:26:34
  swing because you know, if well, I guess for both parties, I
• 1:26:39
  guess the the frogger at risk of someone trying and not liking
• 1:26:42
  and thinking why don't like the frog then?
• 1:26:44
  But also there's the kind of thing of I love the frog, so I'm
• 1:26:47
  going to buy that indie 1 And then then if you don't like it,
• 1:26:50
  then you kind of write off the bottler.
• 1:26:52
  You know, it's a bit of a two way St. there, but you know,
• 1:26:54
  obviously to put that label on it and to sell it as that
• 1:26:56
  there's the confidence there's and it and it stands up in the
• 1:26:59
  in the glass, you know. So it's I think you know that
• 1:27:02
  there is that thing with independent bottles that there's
• 1:27:04
  that you're always taking a swing somewhere because it's
• 1:27:07
  going to be something that someone holds dear dear, whether
• 1:27:09
  it's the star of the whiskey, the regional whiskey, the
• 1:27:10
  distillery, the the caskets in whatever it is, you know, you're
• 1:27:14
  always going to be in someone's favorite territory.
• 1:27:17
  And if you get it wrong for them, then you might lose the
• 1:27:20
  trust. And The thing is as well as you
• 1:27:22
  could argue like, is it playing it safe by saying, right, of all
• 1:27:25
  the, of all the whiskeys that we've tried tonight and we've
• 1:27:27
  got some very interesting casks, but to go right, it's Lefrog,
• 1:27:31
  stick it in and all that. Also because you're almost going
• 1:27:35
  #1 flavour profile. What does, what does the flavour
• 1:27:38
  profile of Lefrog allow you to do?
• 1:27:41
  Like if you put Lefrog in a Le Peg cask, for example, are you
• 1:27:45
  being sensible when saying stay away for that because that could
• 1:27:48
  be a disaster. Are you playing it safe?
• 1:27:50
  But also when, when people do look at the the line up here and
• 1:27:54
  people do look at, you know, you're automatically drawn to
• 1:27:58
  the brands that you recognise, aren't you?
• 1:28:00
  Yeah. So suddenly you say, right,
• 1:28:01
  Laproid, this is a Laproid that tastes slightly different.
• 1:28:04
  But they've not because I, if you're a, if you're a drinker of
• 1:28:07
  Laproid whiskey, you like it because it's a, it tastes a
• 1:28:10
  certain way. So trying to change that taste
• 1:28:12
  too much would be a danger because you've gone.
• 1:28:15
  That's not Laprog anymore. I think as well, you know, and
• 1:28:17
  the thing with any bottler, independent bottler is you want
• 1:28:22
  to always have a piece of expression somewhere because you
• 1:28:25
  want to always have something for those characters, you know
• 1:28:28
  those customers. So but what's the frog is we?
• 1:28:31
  All thought, sorry, we all thought someone was a bit
• 1:28:32
  walking. And Can you imagine if someone
• 1:28:35
  had just walked in thinking, oh brilliant, it's even worse than
• 1:28:40
  the banjo stopped to play, but it was 4 guys with microphones.
• 1:28:44
  Why is this? Yeah.
• 1:28:47
  Just slowly reverse out the doors.
• 1:28:50
  Do you know if? The pub's haunted.
• 1:28:51
  Well, I'm about to find out the thing.
• 1:28:55
  Is for the frog though is because this is what Keith does.
• 1:28:57
  He does look at the slurry character, what he's got in that
• 1:28:59
  cask and what the cask is going to put into and the frog would
• 1:29:04
  probably destroy Calvados Lupeak and Elise Baniel.
• 1:29:07
  The ones we've had tonight, it could go into Palo Katado I
• 1:29:11
  would say. But the the first 3 casts we had
• 1:29:12
  the the frog would absolutely to override it.
• 1:29:16
  There'll be no point. So it's something it's safe.
• 1:29:19
  Yeah, to an extent. But also there's a thought of it
• 1:29:21
  needs to be a big enough if it's going to go into the pintail
• 1:29:24
  range and be finished and, and some sort of sweet kind of whiny
• 1:29:27
  finish, all there also is going to be, it's going to be all
• 1:29:30
  there also or PX and Lefroy. PX is a very kind of famous duty
• 1:29:33
  free release. It's got to be something big
• 1:29:35
  enough to go up against Lefroy, you know?
• 1:29:37
  It can't be. I mean, I love something like a
• 1:29:39
  Chardonnay cast because it could be doing really interesting
• 1:29:41
  things, but the frog is going to destroy it.
• 1:29:42
  Yeah, yeah, there's certainly certain things.
• 1:29:44
  You. Can do interesting things.
• 1:29:45
  When we were talking about the kind of start of it was a case
• 1:29:49
  of, you know, can Can it was the other way around.
• 1:29:54
  Can the Spirit handle a finish rather than?
• 1:29:57
  Was now we're at. Now we're at kind of cast and
• 1:30:00
  spirit, yeah. Brilliant.
• 1:30:01
  Well, we're going to do something that we've never done
• 1:30:04
  before. We're going to invite a guest
• 1:30:05
  up. We've got lawns here.
• 1:30:06
  Lawns, have you come? Give her a right now.
• 1:30:08
  Pause. Have you come?
• 1:30:08
  Lawns have a seat. I'm going to grab a table, a
• 1:30:10
  chair here. Have a seat, Sir, we must be
• 1:30:17
  moving. Into dangerous territory.
• 1:30:19
  Have a seat now I'll grab This is a Whiskey Stories podcast and
• 1:30:24
  you have travelled a long way to get here tonight and I really
• 1:30:27
  appreciate you and your current wife.
• 1:30:29
  As we say, as I've travelled up together, you always know who
• 1:30:32
  the listers are because when you mentioned current wife and if
• 1:30:35
  you come, I can't believe he's saying that there was a
• 1:30:37
  reference in the podcast of it. But once you've come up here,
• 1:30:40
  it's fantastic to see you. Thank you so much.
• 1:30:41
  Now, what you've also done is I, I don't know how many people saw
• 1:30:45
  it, but you, you brought a bottle of the Whiskey Story's
• 1:30:48
  blend and you've asked Angus and I assign it, which is bizarre,
• 1:30:52
  right? No but I so but but.
• 1:30:56
  He could have let me know on a practice Muslim.
• 1:31:00
  But but if it says anus on it, you know, but like what you've
• 1:31:08
  been on listener to the podcast, you've, you've you've been
• 1:31:10
  great. You, you, you've post on the
• 1:31:12
  Whiskey story's Facebook page and stuff like that.
• 1:31:14
  But it's great to see you. It's great to meet you.
• 1:31:15
  So thank you for coming along. Thank you.
• 1:31:17
  And what I would like to ask we we normally finish our episodes
• 1:31:20
  with, and I'm putting you on the spot here, what 3 drams of our
• 1:31:24
  guest right now. Simon's been on 3-4 Times Now.
• 1:31:27
  So we we know all Simon's, what 3 drabs.
• 1:31:30
  But Pintail has been fantastic this evening.
• 1:31:31
  It's great. But what I would like to say is,
• 1:31:33
  as you've come up tonight, you know, for yourself, first of
• 1:31:36
  all, have you enjoyed yourself tonight?
• 1:31:38
  Oh, fantastic. It's it's been a lovely thing.
• 1:31:41
  We've we enjoy the podcast. We enjoy.
• 1:31:43
  It's a great fun show and it's the energy, but also it's the
• 1:31:48
  learning. I mean, everything about the
• 1:31:49
  whiskeys tonight that you learn and and whiskey to to to me and
• 1:31:54
  to my current wife is still it's still all new and it's it's that
• 1:32:01
  intricacy, but it's also what what what Russ would say if he's
• 1:32:05
  hearing. I could get a word in.
• 1:32:06
  Oh, you. Definitely listen then, yeah?
• 1:32:11
  It it's the camaraderie, it's the event, it's the happening
• 1:32:14
  it, it's so many other things. And what was the question?
• 1:32:16
  Well at that time of night I wanted, I wanted to ask you what
• 1:32:20
  would your, what would your what 3 drums be?
• 1:32:23
  Three drums, right? So what really got us into
• 1:32:27
  whiskey about a year ago now? And it's really only a year.
• 1:32:30
  It's, it's taken a long time, isn't it?
• 1:32:33
  And I might look old and a bit, a bit grey, but really I'm only
• 1:32:35
  23. But we, we, we started off and
• 1:32:40
  it was a Welsh whiskey pen, Darren.
• 1:32:43
  Yeah. Yeah, OK.
• 1:32:44
  You know that I've got half a family from from Wales, I've got
• 1:32:47
  half a family from Scotland and I've got half a family from
• 1:32:50
  Ireland and I've got half a family.
• 1:32:52
  You know, I've got 2 lots of family.
• 1:32:53
  You're terrible enough. I, I think if you're lucky
• 1:33:04
  enough to, to have a go at the penderon range, it's it, it
• 1:33:07
  reminds me a bit of fish fingers in a way, because we, we, we
• 1:33:11
  were listening to the podcast and you were saying what to have
• 1:33:13
  with fish and chips and actually at the time was having a fish
• 1:33:16
  finger sandwich. You know we and you can never
• 1:33:19
  mention advertising, but it it was Birds Eye.
• 1:33:23
  What other fish fingers are about?
• 1:33:26
  They were great fish fingers, you know, and the wife always
• 1:33:29
  puts ketchup on it, you know, but it's still Birds Eye.
• 1:33:31
  It's great, but you could. I'll move your blondes, don't
• 1:33:34
  worry. You know, but if you go into the
• 1:33:36
  shops now, you get these bloody river cobbler things, don't you?
• 1:33:39
  What the bloody Hell's River cobbler?
• 1:33:42
  Fish finger stories just. Just wait.
• 1:33:49
  Just wait for the pandering connection to come in.
• 1:33:52
  I mean, I mean Lords, to take it off even on more of a tangent,
• 1:33:55
  we had the Shizuoka. We had a Shizuoka up in and you
• 1:33:58
  probably get some chat about it on the also, I was the one and
• 1:34:02
  it was the sausage. It was a it taste it the sausage
• 1:34:06
  supper smoked sausage smoked sausage supper with sauce.
• 1:34:09
  Yeah, chippy sauce, Chippy. Sauce.
• 1:34:11
  Yeah, chippy sauce. It's a little.
• 1:34:12
  Scottish Tasty No you'll ever find in your life.
• 1:34:16
  So your fish finger sandwich. Yeah.
• 1:34:17
  But but where that takes you is that if you can get a really
• 1:34:21
  good spirit, you know, and there's four or five key pen,
• 1:34:24
  there is. They're all beautiful and it's a
• 1:34:27
  bit like, you know, if you have a bird's eye, it's always decent
• 1:34:30
  fish. It doesn't matter what ketchup
• 1:34:31
  or brown sauce you put on it, you know, it's still, it's
• 1:34:34
  still. And that's what we got from pen.
• 1:34:36
  They're beautiful. So my first round would be Pen
• 1:34:39
  Daring Rich Oak. Oh God, it's.
• 1:34:41
  Good. That is really cool.
• 1:34:43
  And they've got a new icon of whales coming out now, which is
• 1:34:46
  Copperopolis due due to drop on the floor any moment and I'm
• 1:34:49
  sure it's going to be amazing and you're going to get a bottle
• 1:34:52
  anyway. And so second round secondary
• 1:34:55
  and we've, we've been round a a lot of different things.
• 1:34:58
  And we, we got sent some whiskey at Christmas to me, which is
• 1:35:03
  lovely. And we we opened it and it was
• 1:35:05
  really fruity, citrusy, got that oily twist and it was a
• 1:35:10
  Deanston. 12. Year old and I thought, wow,
• 1:35:15
  this is so we've got loads of Deanstons now.
• 1:35:18
  So that's really great fun for the third one.
• 1:35:22
  Any any particular just well, I I think my my favorite would
• 1:35:27
  have to be 1 one we got for Christmas.
• 1:35:29
  It was a bit of a treat really, but we got a down or 15 year
• 1:35:32
  old. Oh, you're nice.
• 1:35:34
  Oh, what I do like that. That's Simon's 1 Sherry drum for
• 1:35:41
  Christmas sake. And al, more effective.
• 1:35:43
  Something like that myself, yeah.
• 1:35:44
  But you can get the fish, you get that lovely taste and and
• 1:35:48
  you just want to have another one and another one and so.
• 1:35:51
  Brilliant. That's the thing.
• 1:35:53
  Well, ladies and gems. Yeah, fine.
• 1:35:54
  Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
• 1:35:57
  Now we have sort of we have gone through our drums there.
• 1:36:00
  We've we've gone through. Is there anyone willing to offer
• 1:36:03
  a wanker tasting note than a bird's eye fish finger sandwich
• 1:36:09
  ketchup on it? Has anyone, has anyone got any
• 1:36:11
  tasting notes for me? I said, have you got any?
• 1:36:12
  Have you got a favorite drum? Whatever is in my glass at the
• 1:36:18
  time. There we go.
• 1:36:19
  Fantastic, excellent move on, Graham.
• 1:36:22
  Well, Craig darling here, Craig, how how you find you're a you're
• 1:36:25
  a, a man that we've got to know through the.
• 1:36:27
  The Facebook stage sober tonight.
• 1:36:28
  I'm I'm driving the nights I've just been nosing them, but I
• 1:36:31
  think that Le frog for me is interesting because I don't
• 1:36:35
  actually like Le frog, mainly because of the medicinal notes,
• 1:36:37
  but I'm not getting any medicinal.
• 1:36:39
  It is. It is gentle, Yeah.
• 1:36:40
  It's. Not so much medicinal.
• 1:36:42
  But really that one, the Le Frog, you're just going to have
• 1:36:44
  them on the bus on the way in. Please, please, please drive
• 1:36:49
  responsibly. But what about yourself?
• 1:36:51
  What about you? You've been a few, now whiskey
• 1:36:53
  tastes at Whiskey Stories podcast in the Bottle spotlights
• 1:36:56
  how you finding them. Brilliant.
• 1:36:58
  I actually I'm kind of like getting a few now having tasted
• 1:37:03
  some really quality whiskeys is like of what I like.
• 1:37:07
  It's funny to come back to the Lafroy because that's one of the
• 1:37:09
  ones that I is actually one of the whiskeys that got me into
• 1:37:13
  whiskey. And I, I think all of them have,
• 1:37:17
  have had a really nice balance. And, and I think for me, that
• 1:37:21
  one was at my estate, like obviously it's still going to be
• 1:37:27
  a Laphroaig, but it was something a wee bit different as
• 1:37:30
  well. No, it's fascinating that that
• 1:37:32
  you can you, you've. There's a drop of kind of almost
• 1:37:34
  like barley sugar sweetness and that for you really nice for
• 1:37:37
  that for that that distillery so.
• 1:37:39
  What is? How strong is that one?
• 1:37:41
  Many. No, it's 47 point 5.5, so it's
• 1:37:44
  not. It's not too bad.
• 1:37:45
  The time I thought I. Thought the Lefrog didn't really
• 1:37:48
  like jump at you with the peep but it like sinks into the yeah
• 1:37:51
  if that makes sense. So they finish because.
• 1:37:53
  It's it's, I mean, normally you open a bottle of frog and you
• 1:37:56
  can smell it across the block, you know, but that's got a
• 1:37:58
  little more subtlety to it. It's got it's really well
• 1:38:01
  integrated though. It is Lefrog.
• 1:38:03
  I mean, I don't I don't think, you know, it's not muted enough
• 1:38:05
  to confuse it with the Calloo or something, but it's it's still
• 1:38:08
  got those notes, but I think they're just tempered quite
• 1:38:10
  nicely because like the Freud 10 is kind of stunt drinking in the
• 1:38:13
  way that it's all those notes start up to 11.
• 1:38:15
  And if you want to do that, you can.
• 1:38:17
  But again, there's not a hell of a lot of balance in it.
• 1:38:20
  It's still an iconic drama, obviously.
• 1:38:21
  But whereas that I think the medicinal note is there, there
• 1:38:24
  is some salinity. There is that Kill Dalton
• 1:38:26
  Coast's kind of reminiscent note, but it's underneath a nice
• 1:38:30
  layer of Sherry. And I I give it a wee smell when
• 1:38:34
  through the glass and I thought I genuinely was like I'm there's
• 1:38:38
  something different here. And I almost thought before I
• 1:38:40
  tasted it, this could be like a semi unpeated or a really dull
• 1:38:43
  down peated version of the Freud tasted it.
• 1:38:47
  Listen, that's all. That and it's still there.
• 1:38:49
  Yeah, it just goes. But yeah, the younger it is,
• 1:38:51
  stronger it is. Yeah, older.
• 1:38:53
  It is. The less, right, Yeah.
• 1:38:56
  So 16 as well. It's probably older than a lot
• 1:38:58
  of the frogs. That we.
• 1:39:00
  Try as well. So yeah.
• 1:39:01
  But we've got the time of night, so we'll cover.
• 1:39:03
  We vote for our drama the evening then, ladies and
• 1:39:05
  gentlemen, So Kelly Barton ten the first time we had hands up
• 1:39:09
  for that one. Anyone any any takers on that
• 1:39:11
  one? Okie, dokie like with 14 Lepak
• 1:39:13
  cast. That was a very OK.
• 1:39:16
  I think that's taken. I think that's taken there.
• 1:39:18
  We've got an inch. Got any fans with an inch?
• 1:39:19
  Got 16 Good stuff over there. Now.
• 1:39:22
  I think that's everyone it'd be but but if you give a second
• 1:39:25
  vote, would you take the Dal Dal Yun Paolo Catardo that came,
• 1:39:30
  Yeah. And then the Lefrog 16 at the
• 1:39:33
  end there. That's a good show of hand
• 1:39:34
  there. So I think it looks like the
• 1:39:36
  Lepate Cask is the winner this evening.
• 1:39:38
  The board a bit, yeah. Absolutely, certainly
• 1:39:40
  exceptional. I mean there it's a good lineup,
• 1:39:41
  but that that loop yet cast just really went.
• 1:39:44
  There was something for me that straight away was exceptional
• 1:39:47
  decade and really, really enjoyable and so I'm not
• 1:39:50
  surprised that won the popular vote.
• 1:39:52
  Yeah. Well, ladies and gentlemen,
• 1:39:53
  thank you so much for coming along.
• 1:39:55
  Thank you so much. First, let's hear it for launch
• 1:39:57
  and it's coming live travel up here.
• 1:39:59
  Brilliant, fantastic, excellent. Thank you so much.
• 1:40:02
  Thank you so much for yourselves coming on.
• 1:40:04
  But also please give a big shout, a big round of applause
• 1:40:06
  for Simon and Pintail. Fantastic tonight under the
• 1:40:12
  Dolphin. As the time this is going out, I
• 1:40:14
  believe at the time this if you if you get your skates, he's
• 1:40:18
  looking at me. Don't.
• 1:40:20
  Do not. Put a date out in the world,
• 1:40:22
  right? Do not.
• 1:40:22
  Put a date out in the world. But a big thank you to
• 1:40:24
  yourselves for hosting us today, so.
• 1:40:25
  Marcus and I will be working tirelessly for the next few
• 1:40:28
  weeks to get the spouse up and running and we'll obviously
• 1:40:30
  announce on on every platform we can to hopefully get locals but
• 1:40:34
  also whiskey nerds and enthusiasts around Edinburgh
• 1:40:36
  Down and hopefully we just on the tram.
• 1:40:37
  You're like 6 minute walk from the tram.
• 1:40:39
  You said you take it. Go off the tram at Constitution
• 1:40:42
  St. That's the one.
• 1:40:43
  Take a ride. Don't don't forget to get.
• 1:40:45
  Offshore, the shore. Sorry, the Constitution.
• 1:40:49
  Don't get off the Constitution. Get over the shore.
• 1:40:52
  They're sure. As the guy who just shouted at
• 1:40:54
  me, they're sure yes, there you are, Bob of Constitution Street.
• 1:41:01
  But listen, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for
• 1:41:03
  coming along. Thank you so much for saying
• 1:41:04
  thanks to the Billfest. Thanks a lot for coming up.
• 1:41:06
  Thanks to all you guys for coming along as well.
• 1:41:07
  And thanks to the listeners and the people that watch this back
• 1:41:09
  home. It's been absolutely fantastic.
• 1:41:11
  Please give us five stars like review, get involved, pass the
• 1:41:14
  pod, join the Facebook group, show us your whiskey bar or or
• 1:41:18
  something. But it's been great.
• 1:41:19
  We, we, we, I guess we, we can't go over it really that you know
• 1:41:23
  well. We also are a bit humbled by
• 1:41:26
  what we've got our in our flat. Exactly.
• 1:41:30
  Liters of boozy Sherry you can't use.
• 1:41:33
  Whiskey cupboards, yeah, but yeah.
• 1:41:36
  So it's been absolutely fantastic.
• 1:41:37
  Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
• 1:41:39
  It's been indie bottle spot with Pintail.
• 1:41:40
  Cheers.