Great lads. We've all got dramas in front of
our leave us. We've got dramas in front of us.
We're all set. Sandra, bar guys, all the very
best. Thanks.
All the best. Bless me, Alex.
Cheers. Lovely, great Angus.
You know what to do. Clap us in.
Welcome to the Whiskey Stories podcast.
We had three casks which we just bought from Ian MacLeod
Distillers. Over a long lunch, they were A
butt of 1969 spring Bank, which was quite good and from memory,
a couple of hogs heads 1 was a 15 year old Tam do and I think a
12 year old good leader. But that was that was my stop to
get Adelphi going again. You know, generally we're not
we're not we're not trying to rewrite anything.
We're just whiskey lovers who got behind the lucky enough to
get behind the new distillery and do everything in the house.
And if if if other people have the same taste buds, that is
fantastic. Welcome along the Whiskey
Stories podcast, myself, Greg Kogar.
We're back in the athletic arms, back when it all began and guess
what lads, we are going up in the world and I just don't mean
with the calibre of guests that we've got on this evening.
We are literally up in diggers. We're back in the snug, Ross.
I'm quite upset when I get put down into that resale, although
you guys quite like it, yeah. So I'm just getting through the
Hatch. Too.
I've got more breathing space in here.
Got. A nice comfy seat up here.
It's true. It's true.
It's a. Space we're not kind of perched
on a on a stool, no, there's. Something about the upholstery,
you know? There any upholstery?
Yeah, that's exactly. That's for a change I've seen,
right? It's been a while since we've
been here. And we've got drams in front of
us. What you saw?
I've got a couple of belt and drams in front of me.
Actually, I've got Spring Mank 18 from this year, which got in
recently. Last year's was all bourbon and
which I really liked. This one's 50% bourbon, 40%
Sherry, 5% rum. OK, it's very Spring Monkey,
which actually is maybe not really my style of whiskey.
Spring Monkey. Stuff it's not it's not really
my style of whiskey, but I thought I'd give it a go. 12 lbs
for something like that and the diggers.
Great value. And I've got the new Feticare
and 25 year olds which. Is ages tonight, Ross?
I know, I know. It's going to be a travel.
Those big ages, it's. Going to be a travel retail
exclusive I believe, which is quite annoying, but it's a
bourbon cask, 46.8% Petacare, which means I know I'm going to
enjoy it. And I was just in the Diggers
leaf before I came here and I was looking at the gantry and I
thought Kev's done a really good job here.
He's got more whiskey in and I seen an unopened bottle of beer
having 30 and I said I just have to ask the question having been
an Isla in January, said how much is that £35 a nip, £35 for
35 mils? I've been having 30 so I had to
crack that open. So I've had a very good.
You wouldn't even get, you wouldn't even get that cheap on
your own staff discount. I mean, there's a world.
It's a very well priced salmon the diggers is what I'll say.
There's a there's a world, I guess, where a lot of people can
sometimes go through a large part of their life or they'll
never have a whiskey older than the age that they actually are.
Whereas Ross actually, it's usually, you never really drinks
it. What have you got I guess?
I've got October morning 12. Very, very nice.
Yeah. And I've gone Arden American
Fidelity, I can't go. Why is that?
It's probably in sales for the month.
I've got your heritage barley release great and Pete and
Sotternes super. Glad.
Graham you. Have you gone the same way?
I've got 2 Arden Americans on either side of a Glen Allocate
15 and I've gone this is because you've you've viewed Billy
Walker the other day and you've just gone all out yeah Glen Alec
right well yes yeah, we I saw Billy speaking at the end
Whiskey conference. I'll give these guys a shout out
later on. It was, it was a great as we
were recording, I still got a few weeks after it, but it was a
really, really successful conference.
But Arden, Merkin, Sherry, which people of the podcast will know,
That was my 2025 DRAM of the year.
I believe you said you could bathe in it.
I said I would love to fill a bath full of that.
What? Was nice is when I went to the
bar, I went after you. So I can actually see pretty
much which Arden Merkins you've gone for us.
I went right go for the ones. Well, I said and there was a
tasting here as we're recording this a couple of weeks ago.
So all the Arden Merkins have been brought.
Forward to the edge, to the shelf, and I've also gone for
the Arden Merkin tent, which I think just a a cracking drama.
As well Dark Label the New 10. Yes, but we are ardent American
daft because tonight, ladies and gentlemen, we have the managing
director of Adelphi Man, who is in charge of it all for Adelphi
and ardent American, Alex Bruce. Alex, how are you?
I'm very well, thank you and delighted to be here.
Yes, very kind of you to welcome me in tonight.
Well, thank you for coming along.
And we're sitting here enjoying all these drams.
You've got a ginger in front of you because you're driving.
But look, we would drive them on your behalf.
And I'm sure they're, you know, I would say you've probably had
that much, you're sick of it, but I just don't think you can
get sick about the market. You guys must be nice to beg
Carl. If Carl was able to say to Alex,
no, it's all right, it's safe. These boys are OK.
Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I mean that's one of the
other. Reasons I'm not careful that
I've turned up for this one, Carl.
I do, I think Carl Kraft says he is on Instagram.
One of the heroes of modern WW sales folk.
Just. But I like the accent, as you
know. American wife and all the rest.
Yeah. And he's he's under, he
understood that he he doesn't pronounce it Glasgow.
Yeah. Yeah, we've had to beat that
into the and Carl. Carl Ossigrave is one of the
great podcast moments. We had him on the pod and about
two weeks later he was out in America and somebody who listens
to the pod drove about 6 hours. Scott Moore drove about 6 hours
to go and meet him in Saint Louis.
He's he's back out at the moment.
He's in, I think Austin tonight. Was he?
Yeah. Or 19 only if you're listening
Scott, that's. Another 8 hours drive from
Memphis I think but. But no, Alex, it's great.
I mean, I think we, what we'll all say is we'll mention on the
market a lot tonight and the day of course we'll talk about that.
But you're not paying, you're not paying us to do it.
We genuinely, I mean, not that we would speak about a brand if
we weren't being paid to talk about, but we're being paid.
Sorry, but we are just massive Arden market fans on the podcast
and and genuinely, and we were actually talking.
In fact, the last last week's episode we're talking about, it
was Flor Outram was on the pod and it was one of her, what, 3
drafts? European Brandon Master for
international beverage. Yes, that's correct.
And we were asking, she asked about how does Arden American
pop up a lot, and I said, yeah, it does.
It was Charlie Hume who first put it up and it was that Paul
Noir champagne, but he got to try it before that actually came
out. And I said I was really annoyed
and I'm repeating myself. So if you listen to last week's
apologies, but I'm but I was really annoyed that night for
two reasons #1 I'd never heard of Arde Marcus, so I didn't have
a clue how to spell it. And if you look back at my
phonetic spelling of what I thought he'd said.
And then of course he's stuck Paul Louise Noir or whatever it
is on top of it. Well, that's a nightmare for a
dyslexic straight away. But secondly, I was actually
really annoyed because the first time I'd ever heard of Arde
marking and the first time I'd ever we'd ever had somebody on a
walk 3 drams bringing in a new distillery on a walk 3 DRAM
Charlie. His walk 3 drams were incredible
that night and I was semi disappointed going why?
I've never heard of these guys. Why would you, why would you
bring that and how wrong a year and a bit later am I?
Because the the range and scope of the whiskey that's been
produced there is absolutely fantastic and we've just enjoyed
so many different releases. Angus, anyway.
Absolutely. I think, I think particularly
when there was a moment we had when we were at the Edinburgh
Whiskey Festival and we were recording something at the time.
So we were kind of mid conversation.
Somebody who we we know for the Jeeves, Jeeves we know as a
listener came up and he had a bottling of your cherry cap,
your cherry release. I think it might have actually
been a single cast version, a private bottling of that.
And he kind of just Glenn Kern glad.
Like we didn't really even see necessarily what he was pouring.
They put it in, couldn't tell us what it was.
It was just, you know, that point, right?
OK. And we tried it.
And I remember Graham and I just kind of.
Gave a look because we're again on camera.
We chatted mid conversation conversation with somebody else.
Somebody else was talking. He's coming on camera and
porters and Graham just made the eye contact and went right.
Wow, that's. Really, really nice whiskey,
Yeah. Look, and we, I think the end of
the day, we, I mean, I think Carl probably explained this
previously, but everything's in house, including the blending
team. And I think that's hugely
important. We're not wearing lab coats.
We're not masters this and masters that, We're just people
who love whiskey and have been in alcohol for a number of years
and have gained experience both in terms of what we like and
also what we think works. And having that all together not
only gives you a bit of consistency, but if we're having
a bit of fun, that can shine through as well.
Definitely say that one. I spoke to Carol, you know, but
talk, talk us through then where they're all how they're all
start from your own point of view, where do you start by
getting involved in in whiskey? So I actually started on the
wrong side of the channel. I did my sort of post student
training with Remy Remy Mahtan and I was very lucky to build a
Blogger job through Highland Distillers, who were then in the
mid 90s in a joint venture. So I got a beautiful office on
the Ron Vine de Chauncelyze and I had an amazing few months.
But what it taught me was, well, it gave me this, this desire to
get back into or to get into spirits.
And it was logical that that would be Scotch because it was
back home. So I came back kind of going
right get a job in Scotch whiskey.
And it was just about the time when we were ploring our way
back out of the last dip and the last jobs to come back are the
sales and marketing jobs, which is what I was going for.
So various people said look, just get into the industry
anyhow you can. And I managed to get a job in
wine because I ended up working for J&B.
But on the wine side up here in Scotland, I had about 8 years
with them and then formed my own little wine business in Leith.
And two years into that, we opened a retail shop.
It's now I think ALDI, it's we started ALDI the the building is
that ALDI? It's just next soon as this
goes, oh, it's in. I started the middle ale.
Yeah, Anyway, yeah, next to Kinloch Anderson there and it,
it had a back entrance onto the Main Street, you know,
commercial. Yeah.
Commercial St. Yeah.
So directly opposite Tom Kitchens and in fact we were his
first wine supplier when he opened because we took, we took
it across on a trolley. You just pass it right?
Straight. Ahead so people said why, why
don't you adapt? You're doing wholesale, why
don't you do retail at the back door?
So we opened like a wine warehouse, Majestic style thing.
Lots of people came in they bought wine and then gradually
they started complaining that they that we didn't have the
full shelf. You know, where's your gin?
Where's your whiskey? So I went out and I rang up my
old friend Jamie Walker, who owned Adelphi, and Adelphi I've
known for years because we used to buy it, J&B and all the rest
of it just for these exceptional single casks.
Almost eccentric in how exceptional they were.
They, him and Charlie McLean had spent hours over each selection.
I mean I think the ratio back there was something like 1 cast
selected in 40 tried. Albeit it was different back
then because you just got all kinds of cars coming through.
You didn't get any kind of pre selection.
What time? Of year, sort of when, what,
what, what page are we talking here then?
So this would have been summer 2004.
Right, OK. Jamie then said I've just sold
the business. You need to go meet a guy who
lives in Banton. He's bought it with a guy who
lives in AD American. I said where?
So anyway, I met, I met the lovely Keith Faulkner in Barnton
on a Saturday afternoon. We got on really well and he
said, I want you to go and meet my business partner Donald.
He lives in Adam American tomorrow.
I said, why? I just want to buy some whiskey
and he said no, no, we want you to come and work for us.
I was like, oh Christ, well there's, there's a, a new route.
So I trundled my way up to Adam American on Sunday, met Donald
and on the way back they offered me the job and I then shipped
the wine company on to my great friend Philippe, who has now
progressed it into a very good company called Luck Duvan, who
was still trading successfully anyway.
So that that was that. That was me into whiskey.
I arrived at Adelphi, which is actually my attic bedroom.
The office wise, the fax machine, I don't think e-mail
was really kicking off properly then.
And we had three casks which we just bought from Ian MacLeod
Distillers over a long lunch. They were a butt of 1969 Spring
Bank, which was right quite good.
And from memory a couple of hogsheads. 1 was a 15 year old
Tamdu and AI think a 12 year old good leader.
But that was that was my stop to get Adelphi going again.
Wow, so Jamie Walker then was in business with it was the other
chap you said that was up in Ardemirkin was?
No, no, no. So Jamie was pre.
Pre Jamie Walker, Yeah, Jamie Walker sold the business to to
chap up in, well, the guy in Barnton.
Yeah. And Ardemirkin.
And Ardemirkin, yeah. And so then, so that back then,
you're saying that they were still an independent bottler.
Yeah, but you were literally these small parcels of casks.
But at the same time, like you're saying, Charlie McLean
was involved at that time as well.
And Charlie was actually a director when when I joined and
he was beginning to branch out. He was beginning to write a lot
more for and taste a lot more for other companies in the
industry. So he felt it was a legitimate
reason to then back down or come off the board and just remain as
a consultant. And what what at that time we
because we talked with Carol on the episode about the history of
Adelphi, where the name comes from the Adelphi distillery in
Glasgow. There was a great what was the
disaster? Where the was it?
The wash back broke and rang beer down the area.
So if you want to hear about that, listen to Carl.
Stop this episode and go back and listen to Carl's because it
was it was good with that. But I'm interested at the time
what was Adelphi as an independent bottler and how big
a scene was independent bottling in the sort of early 2000s.
So Adelphi was a bit of a loner, not as an independent bottler,
but but in the style of independent bottler.
So you had obviously the famous historical names like Gordon
Macphail, Caden, the Heads, and just before Adelphi was
signatory, Andrew Symington. But all of these independent
bottlers, they all had built stock of young whiskey.
So they were like a sort of virtual distiller.
They built exactly. Yeah, young anyway, so filling
contracts, all the rest of it, Jamie and Jamie never had enough
money to do that. I mean, literally he was hand to
mouth. So he he would buy a cast, he
would bottle it at Broxburn Bottlers, he would sell it, and
then they'd give him enough money to buy the next one just
in time. And that was what what I
inherited. And it was unique.
There was no one really in the market doing that.
But what it did give you, even though you'd never make a huge
amount of money doing it, and you were at the risk of the
distillers closing their doors to supply you, what it gave you
was the ultimate chance to select the best you could get.
Yeah. So that was where he was always
at that level. And he would never allow
anything to be bottled that hadn't been passed by him in
charge. And in my experience when I
first got into whiskey, Gordon Macphail and Adelphi with the
two bottlings that I've seen most commonly in the luxury
market. And it was always didn't
necessarily have to be big names in whiskey for I remember having
a Glen Keith. Yeah, and he's 21, bottled by
Adelphi, but thinking this is the very best cask.
So is that what Adelphi came? Oh, always.
Well, even then I remember having a six year old Khalila
that was like I looked like a paint of Guinness, it was that
dark. But obviously because it was
exceptional at that age, that's why it had been bottled.
But it always felt that the out turns were not necessarily that
consistent from Adelphi, but they were always focused on the
quality of what was coming out. So you were always really
excited when you seen there was a new Adelphi outturn coming
out. Even now all the Adelphi's that
I have are old 27 year old Clyde Leish, 40 year old Milton Duff
and mid 30s bourbon cask mortlike.
Yeah, like it's it's all top, top stuff.
So and that. Carried on right away through.
I think. I think it has from from my
point of view, but you don't see as much anymore.
I I must admit, like I from that from that, you know, Alex, from
if you've not listened to the podcast, I don't blame you, but
but equally I have Angus and I we approached whiskey from we
we're whisking opposite. So we've always said from this
podcast, you know, we needed to get somebody on the podcast with
us that knew they were talking about.
We tried with Ross, but then we realized we're just going to
have to get a guest on everybody.
But but I'll be honest, Adelphi is just a brand that I've only
since doing the podcast. I mean, before we started doing
the podcast, Angus, we weren't drink, we weren't drinking
single cast whiskey really. No, not really.
We weren't drinking independently bottled stuff
really. So this is all a fairly new part
of the journey for us. But then it is it isn't until
you you, you until you walk into and this is like we did the the
spotlight with Morrison distill. Morrison.
Yeah. Scott Frisky Distillers.
And I was saying to Tam who was doing it with us.
You know, you don't see car more.
Yeah. On the shelves and diggers.
No. And he was like, because we're
so focused on trade, we we off trade, we go into the off trade.
And it's similar to Adelphi. You know, you guys, you would
be, I would be guilty of thinking Adelphi were a fairly
new guy in the game of independent bottlers because I'd
never heard them before. And I think naively, and Chuck
always said it just when you think you're at the peak of
ignorance, when you think you know absolutely everything about
whiskey. But I would sit there and go.
These Adelphi guys must be fairly.
New and I would have never seen them.
Before. And I would have said to you,
Graham, and I guess we are getting into whiskey, that
independent bottling was kind of a fairly niche thing for whiskey
drinkers mostly, but just drank what they got in the
supermarket. So once you got into independent
bottling, you realize how interesting things could be.
And then you would go to independent bottlers, you'd have
your preferences, whoever you go for in Edinburgh, Fragrant Drops
and Woodrow's do really well, but Adelphi felt like that
little next step up. But when I first started, I felt
like not only do I know independent bottling, but I
liked Adelphi's selection. And Adelphi's selection for me
was, although it was more few and far between, it was always
something that you would kind of take your time, sit down and
take notice of. I've got, for example, Ben Nevis
Adelphi in my house that was bottled for Loch Fine Whiskeys.
So again, off trade success, looking at an independent
retailer who have said they want to get their own single cask.
And again, this was a young Darker's Knight Sherry cask.
But my best experiences are distilleries I hadn't.
And then I'd never heard of Glen Keith.
The first Glen Keith I can remember tasting is this
Adelphi, because and that was then my representation.
Representation and thoughts of the distillery.
And just as we've talking about, you know, Glenbergie, Milton,
Duff, Tormore, Longmore, and all these distilleries reputations
have been built on the shoulders of independent bottlers because
they've never done official bottlings themselves.
And so I always thought of Gordon Macphail in Adelphi.
If they were, it was well aged and it was an interesting cast.
You were getting to experience a decelerant maybe you wouldn't
know much about, which I thought was really interesting.
And from your own point of view, then you're talking about 2004.
I just want to go back by the way and just say selling wine at
the back door and leaf was probably but.
It was what we had to clear off the doorstep every morning.
It was more. But what, how how long had the
like? So you're talking about 2004,
maybe 2005 area time with a Delphi and that's what they've
been doing. How long had the Delphi been
going prior to that then? So Jamie started the company in
1993. Wow, so it was all very well
and. I think even at the peak of his
ability to by cast himself, I don't think he did more than
probably 50 cars a year. Yeah, something like that.
So when was the Scotch Malt Whiskey Society?
What was that? Oh, the 1980s, Pip Hill, I think
1883 or something like that, right?
So there've been a bit of time, but even it's funny you talking
about we've, we've, you'll see the peaks and troughs of the
whiskey in the stray and you'll, you'll know better than most.
We've talked a lot of independent bottlers that we've
had on the podcast and we hear about the processes.
And you go back just two years when we were speaking to Gregor,
Kurt and a few other independent bottlers and they were saying,
we at the time, it was like you'd get if you had the
relationship with one of the guys that could pass your cast
on. You got a spreadsheet of a list
of casts and it was like you have to buy that parcel and if
you even tried to ask them, can we get a regauge on that or can
we get some samples sent? I was like, no, you buy it as
is. That's what it is.
Some people will tell you, independent bottlers will tell
you. Right now things are easing off
a little bit because casts are becoming more available and
things like that. But it's interesting going back,
you're saying that Jamie had already had that relationship
where he was saying try getting the opportunity first of all to
try 40 casts for. The the black book, which was
literally a black book that he gave me of all the contacts, the
supply contacts was probably the most valuable thing.
Yeah, because that's I got, I think I got a battered filing
cabinet, the fax machine and this black book and that was it.
I. Mean you came in.
Was was it a case of keeping doing what he'd done?
Before or was there a change? In terms of buying casks,
because you said the stock was kind of freecast basically when
you came in? There was an assortment of
bottles as well, which he hadn't sold.
So yeah, we had that. No, that was all that was.
He had made the decision, I'm guessing probably about 2001,
too, to sell the business. And he'd been looking for the
right people. And Keith had walked in on the
suggestion of a cousin, I think a mutual cousin, because she
said if you, because Keith wanted to buy a single cask and
share it with Donald, basically. And he'd walked in.
Jamie had been introduced by this cousin.
And he said, I want to buy a single cast.
I hear you've got some good ones.
And Jamie sold them the business.
He walked out with three casts, filing cabinet, black book.
So I mean. Within a year or two you'd gone
up and cast volume. I take it a bit.
Well, yes and no. So the, and that was the reason
Jamie had sold it to them, was he'd finally found someone who
respected what he'd done and would then continue it.
At least that's what do. You hope buying again.
So retaining Charlie, who then became my mentor because I had
to switch from a kind of wine pallet into a whiskey pallet
fairly quickly. And yeah, no, you're right.
We we bought more now. And just to put it into
perspective on what you've just said about doors opening and
stock availability. So 2004 we had good
availability, really good in fact.
And if I give you one example, a number of some of the most
exciting cars I ever bought were from Drambuy.
Really. OK, so Drambuy were based out at
Glen Warranty where you know where they were, shared the
building there at the time. And I walked in to meet the the
the supplier guy there. And he offered me on that day
something like 10 Sherry Hogsheads of McAllen, 30 year
old Glenn Livett, 40 year old, you name it.
And I said, well, what do you do with all this stuff?
And he said we're chucking it into Drambu.
They literally had that stock and they were putting it into.
Drambu yeah, 30 year old. McAllen because they bought it
when it was young. The Drambu brand had tailed off
a little bit, so they still had the stock.
They had to use it. So I was, I was, you know, like
his fairy godmother. I was paying him more money.
Yeah, so have you. I was delighted.
So if anyone can get. Themselves a bottle of Granby.
From two years onwards, yeah. Yeah, you probably.
Got some pretty decent, right? Yeah.
Because when you talk about that time, I mean, we're, well, I, I
worry that on the podcast over the last few weeks, we've become
not the doom merchants of the, of the, of the industry.
There's a lot of bad news. There it is, but the.
Adju share price has been mentioned.
Yes, it has been mentioned, but we offered them an opportunity
to save their share price by buying some of Moira's DRAM jam
and putting out in the shelves. But I think I mentioned it I was
at that in whiskey conference as we were recording this last week
and it was fascinating. It was the first time they've
ever done it big KD media, they did a great job putting it on.
I didn't know what to expect. That's great.
I was kind of going along there going we'll see what this is
like. Well, how well attended it'll be
what the and I'd seen a little bit online about who we're who's
going to be speaking and look, it was on the IT was on the
topic of conversation, the industry.
But they also said at the start of the conference, we have to
talk it up. We're not going to be talking it
down. What we if we are going to be
talking about the challenges that we're facing, we have to be
talking about it on a positive, you know, how do we fix it
rather than just everyone getting in a circle or having a
cry and thinking how bad things are and it gets worse and worse
and worse. But very interestingly, the
aforementioned Billy Walker was speaking and it was funny
because he said, I remember when I, when I, you know, there's
only a few people, there's only one person in this room that can
say something like this effectively is he said, I
remember when I bought my first distillery, right, right.
You know, I didn't go, oh, well, good for you, Billy.
But he said it was 2004 and he said for context, there were 14,
I think it was 14. There was 14 distilleries in
Scotland that had been mothballed that were being made
available, right? And he said, just let that sink
in right now when everyone's sitting here today thinking
we're in our turmoil at the moment.
It's 2004. There were 14 distilleries that
we could have picked from that would be officially mothballed.
So OK, you're hearing about people being paid off and it's
terrible. And we've seen, you know,
closures of different areas and people are distilleries going
down to certain levels. But he was saying that that's
where the industry was in 2004. So from your point of view,
Alex, you know, being involved in the industry back then, did
you see it as a tough time or was it a A, you know, whilst
it's tough for some, is there's an opportunity for others?
I think, I think I've been incredibly lucky over the years
at timing things right. And it's not by design, it's by
default. But with Adelphi, I landed just
a single malt was beginning to take off while the supply doors
were still open. And that's a very difficult
balance to have. And it wasn't long before they
started to close. I'm talking three years.
Well, the doors started to yeah, yeah.
And even even for someone like yourself who had that black book
had already said. So suddenly instead of it was
going back to like what we've just talked about where instead
of you being able to say, come on guys, you were selling us
these casks and giving us samples and letting us kick the
casks and try like and what have you to a few years later, even
with the relationship order in place are saying sorry.
So what you've got to remember is, well, what you have to
realise is that that Black Book, 95% of the names on it were
brokers or they were distillers, some of them.
But where I was getting whiskey in terms of the brands, it was
more often than not not the original distillery.
Yeah. So it wasn't the fact that my
contacts were saying no, it was the fact that their. 1.
Their suppliers one thing no calm down.
You know, we can't supply that much this year.
And that's the way with all of the way the independent bottlers
works, whether some people in the industry have referred to us
as parasites, some like to see the more symbiotic relationship,
which is great. And certainly we help out when
times are tough and, and, and it's a good way of spreading the
word. But with all of these things,
you've got to remember that the original supplier is at the end
of the day governing everything that's happening.
Yeah. And this this includes and I, I
always drum tell this story. So when we do, for example, a no
named whiskey, so we call up call it some fictitious name.
It's not because we don't want to tell the customer where it
comes from. I mean, in theory we actually
don't know, but maybe we do. It's not because, you know,
we're protecting ourselves. We're protecting our supplier
because we need to make sure that their supply arrangement
continues. Yeah.
And if we suddenly say that is a McAllen or whatever, yeah, then
it potentially dries up at the other end.
Yeah. So it's a much bigger picture
we're looking at. I remember speaking to Dougie a
little about that, and I think it might have been a Cline leash
that had been, I wrote about it in the the newsletter actually,
because it's the first time you actually look at the dynamic
from the other side. And I think at the time it was
either I might have been Royal Mail.
Whiskey's had the chance to bottle a Cline leash and they
had the naming rights on the cask.
They call it Sutherland. No, it was, well it was, it was
about 16 year old or I thought I can't remember what age it was,
12 to 16, what somewhere in between there.
But the problem was they could have stuck that on the shelf.
That would have been the direct competition, recallingly 14.
Yeah, right, but they also said, well, we can't stick it too high
up because then people would go, well, why would we buy that when
we can get a coin leash 14 and then they couldn't undercut it
because then that would piss off their supplier and they go hang
on, really guys, we're giving you this.
You can't suddenly start putting that out.
So what they decided was they made the choice to make it a
Highland and they put a cat on the label.
Maybe Sutherland, maybe they did that, but but if you knew, you
knew. But what they were able to do is
they were able to put it on the shelf.
I can't remember what he said, but it was like, you know, a £50
if that a 50 LB bottle of what they knew was 16 year old
claiming what if you knew you knew and you were getting a
bargain. And we that's that's what these
things can work in two ways. And if it's a single cash,
you're not going to do too much damage.
But as if you're consistently buying lots of stock and you
know, everybody knows what a Williamson is now at this point
or a burn, you know what Williamson is.
No. Well, for the people who are
like, I don't. Know, I don't know.
Well, I do. You've had it on the podcast.
So William Williamson is a Lafroy.
Yeah. It's like the name you put for a
Lloyd because Bessie Williamson was the one of the.
Remember Ruskin Novices, Ross. I know that's true.
It's true. Or Burnsides.
Or Ward Heads. Or Westport.
Burnsides is an interesting 1 though.
Because cabinet. Yeah, well, that's true.
But. And that has well.
We do, Megan. Well, because I, I I've was
speaking to a bottler that's that was heavily featured in the
podcast in the last two years who have casks of Burnside that
are going to release it as an unknown space.
I'd soon because they don't want to get themselves.
Involved oh look, we we put one out not realising Burnside
Burnside. Those were well again and
immediately got a phone call phone call because we know them
pretty well and I'm really sorry I've no idea We'll we'll stop.
We've got one more. So I kind of scratched my head
and said what we're going to call this and I, I called it
distilled in Duff Town. OK, we seem to have hit this.
Yeah, why not? And so people have WW sponge
whiskey land have come out of sideburn.
Yeah. Equally annoying that our
friends at can heads. But it's one of those things.
What do you do with these? You're not naming it so also, I
know for a fact that the, you know, the owners of these cast
and William Grant and sons are no longer making burn sides and
selling them or ward heads and selling them.
That's not, they've stopped that since early 2000s.
So that's why it's always debated when there's young stuff
that comes out now you'll hear from Charlie Metcalf's then
actually that can't be a Burnside because they've not
sold any Burnside and and and and since it's XYZ.
But it's interesting to me you're bottling all these
whiskeys. You must have seen, you must
have seen Adelphi really pick up when when you took over then in
the in this first couple of years and started to do slightly
bigger outturns. I came back from one of the
clinch moments in terms of sort of where we got to, in terms of
so well, I'll just, if I just regress to an earlier
conversation, what I was going to say around the fact that you
hadn't seen Adelphi very much. So the availability or lack of.
So bearing in mind, I was coming out of a wine business and we
were looking after hotels and restaurants in Scotland
predominantly and it was just me.
So I had to try and work out what the easiest way to market
was and, and with potential growth in mind as well.
So the first thing of, of that was to go back to my wine, my
restaurants and my hotels. So we had some really good
relationships with some good, you know, like Andrew Fairley's,
places like that. So I could get an exclusive on
the whiskey trolley for that. Then I went right.
If I appoint an, an importer in one market, they'll then appoint
lots of me and they can, you know, take over.
And it was also a commercially, it was a cash flow issue
because, and it's even worse nowadays.
But if you're selling in the UK, you have to pay the duty upfront
as the manufacturer, as a producer.
And yes, you'll get paid, but you may be 30 days after.
So that's a lot of cash if you're building a brand.
So I thought export, no, no duty requirements, shove it out the
door. Broxman bottlers will handle it
because we use them for everything then.
And so places like Germany took off and the Netherlands and the
US, these were all really good markets for us in the early
days. And the catalyst for me coming
back to my shareholders and saying we need to think about
the future was a whiskey fair in Essen.
I think it was about 2007. And it was in this sort of town
hall in Essen, my first time there.
And I remember coming along, normally you'd go to a whiskey
fair as an exhibitor maybe an hour before the doors open.
And here we were, nice sunny day walking in and there was a queue
sneaking all the way back from the doors around the corner or
at least two or three corners. And I said to my importer Tila,
I said you must be really pleased with it.
You know, they're all queuing for tickets.
And he said, Nah, they're queuing for your cask of.
Really. So we'd done a, we'd done a, an
exclusive cask of our beg for the whiskey for that weekend,
which in those days was available.
Yeah. Where's?
Where's Essen? Angus, Germany.
Good in tag. Hello, Germany.
Good. In tag Germany.
They they, they said it was 1 bottle per person and it sold
out within an hour and a half. That's mental.
So I came back slightly cap in hand, but also really
optimistic. And I said, you know, to Donald
and Keith, I said, going forward, we're going to have an
issue. We can either flat line the
business because that's kind of what supply is doing now, or we
can take control of our production of our, you know,
bulk whiskey, you're like, or we can just lock ourselves in the
warehouse and drink what we got left.
And they, and they actually, option 3 was definitely got a
big tick. But no, you can see, I mean,
Donald's an engineer. He's an extraordinary mind and.
You can see this, this idea of a distillery, it wasn't there when
you took over the company at all.
It wasn't an ambition necessarily of your owners.
This is something that came. Out no they they wanted this to
be a hobby that I can make a little bit of a profit profit
every year and give them a dividend that was it so suddenly
I had this and Donald's you can see the cogs going and you see
it right distillery an American what's going around that where's
the circular economy and all of these things started clicking
into place so. That was that was the decision
that they. Had 2007 two thousand and we
then we engaged in architect pretty quickly.
Yeah, the wrong one. And he came up with this
monstrous great factory on the hillside, you know, like
architects drawing thing. And it just wasn't the right
place. It wasn't the right volume.
It was all wrong. So you had a site fairly
quickly. No, no, we didn't.
At that stage, it was just Plunkett somewhere in an
American as a design. And then we'll work out, you
know, how to build. It the rest of.
So we kind of then felt really despondent because the cost was
obviously horrific. And then another trip, this time
to Japan. And I think it was 2010.
I got invited last minute. I was out in Tokyo for the
whiskey fair and Anthony Wills was there and he was invited to
go and visit Chichibu, which was the same age as as Kilhoman.
And there was a journalist, a British journalist as well.
And, and he said, why don't you come along?
It'll be fun. It's like a three hour train
journey. We're in Tokyo.
So I went out and what a place. I mean, my eyes just open to the
the simplicity and on the flip sides, the quality out of that
simplicity, you know, So there was, I can't remember it was
you, me or whoever it was back in the day, but there was
someone stirring the Mizanara wash back.
Sorry, a mash ton by hand with an awe.
Everything was Yeah. Yeah.
Well, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck's been to Chichibu.
I think he just turned up and asked if.
He can have a look. He does.
He went back to Chichi Chichi Whiskey Festival and favorite is
Yeah. Yeah, it's great.
It's really good. Yeah.
So anyway, came back full, full of optimism.
We don't need to go big, we can do it small scale.
I think Chichibu was probably around 80,000 litres.
Yeah, 'cause you're about a million litres, aren't?
You. No, we're not.
We're not. We originally planned for
100,000 and one of my, by then I'd, I'd encouraged a few more
mentors to kind of appear on the scene.
One of them was Colin Ross, who was forever the manager at Ben
Nevis Discovery. And it was what I wanted was his
historical knowledge. So the peaks and the troughs,
what did he do? All these kind of things.
And he said, right, what are you building?
And I said it's 100,000 litre, it's going to be off grid
because we kind of had worked that out.
It's going to be an Adam Mercan. He said best water in Scotland
isn't that great. And he said right, I'm going to
stop you there. He said 100,000 meter all wrong.
You either go in for a kind of cellar door, tiny, tiny, tiny
thing like 20 thousand, 30,000 meters that you can pretty much
sell direct to consumer or you get at least 200 to 250 because
otherwise to grow the brand, you'll never have enough
advertising promotional collateral, especially in the
big markets like America. So that's when we shifted it up
to we could do, we could do 750, we could do 500 comfortably, but
we settled at about 400. 400 wow there.
We go it's a good size. So that's because to hear it
like that, to hear the story about the fact that you wanted
to get the, you know, you saw that there was a market there,
you saw what you had and going to Germany, seeing the queue
around the block and things like that and going right where,
because that is the, it's funny. The, the, the question over
being an independent bottler of where they start versus where
you end up is a lot of these guys will start.
And it's, it's kind of like hand to mouth.
That's you buy a cast, you get a bald, you get enough money to
buy your next cast. Or maybe you have a, because
we've talked about it so many times, a cast sitting on the
shelf. There's a, there's a hole in
your pocket. It just burns a hole in your
pocket. You maybe buy that, but you go
well and it ties up your cash flow.
You don't know when are you going to get that bottled?
You maybe know it's a crack in whiskey.
And as soon as it's ready, well, once that goes, that is going to
sell. But at the same time, until it's
ready, it's not. So there is that that element of
at some point an independent bottler has to jump in and go
right, it's time to do it. You said cap and and a little
bit go Yep, go investors and say can we, can we actually start
laying down? Cash so we.
Could do it badly to go to go to the next stage instead of just
going listen guys, I think when we start laying down more cash,
we could be we could really make a go of it.
You've gone all in. Let's get bulk.
Let's get going. And move that must have been
kind of fundraising challenges. I mean, how how did you raise
the capital to build the distillery itself?
Was that something that came from your owner?
Yeah, look, we're very lucky. We've never used them.
We've never used a bank so well, not not for overdraft or loan
facilities over. The years?
No, it's not somewhere. No, as Donald said, you know,
he's a typical philanthropic investor, Scotsman.
He's got deep pockets and short arms.
But we managed to structure it or they managed to structure it
as as principal shareholders through loans and a bit of
capital we got. We would because we were ahead
of the big growth in new distilleries.
We managed to get 2 quite decent grants as well, one from
Scottish Government and one from Highlands and Islands and in
fact the Highlands and Islands one, I'm sorry HIE Islands and
Islands Enterprise was only available if we built a retail
element on site, so a visitor centre and that was the last
thing we wanted people that come to our.
Just to create those few more jobs.
Yeah, exactly what it was. It's about bringing, you know,
more, more jobs. So they, they, they say, well,
we need to see a feasibility study if you're going to build a
visitor centre. And, and we got some guy from
down South to come up and scratch his head and, and avoid
the midges for a few months. And he reckoned that when we got
to full maturation, as in you know, 20304050 years down the
line as a brand, not as a whiskey, but as a brand, we
might be lucky to squeeze 10,000 people down that single track
route. Last year we got over 10,000
people. That's amazing.
So it has changed. It's really changed, not, not
the way things work in Adam Merkel, but just the, the, the
support, the natural support it's brought to the area, which
is more than we could ever wish. And tell me Alex before you the
distillery really kicks off and the development of Adelphi at
this point, are you filling spirit into cash Philadelphia at
this point or are you still buying kind of ready made liquid
and. So what we've, we've kind of got
onto phase, I don't know if it's 234 or whatever, but it's, it's
beyond phase one of Adam Merkin. So phase one of Adam Merkin was
to bottle a single malt. And we did that stupidly or
luckily during COVID when everyone was sitting, sitting at
home and wanting something to do.
Phase two, let's call it that was to start using a proportion
of Adam Merkin to benefit Adelphi, OK, by that I mean
trading bulk, sure. So we're now actively trading Ad
American with some of the quite big guys football lending.
Trading spirits rather than. Sometimes mature, sometimes
Billings, and we're getting mature stock back more often
than not that we can then shove through Adelphi much more
quickly. And I think it was something
that should be admired about a new distillery and new feels
very established now in all reality.
You were the lowercase. Then it really does.
It does you. See many grey hairs.
Like it does feel you're very established now, but we've seen,
you know, all these new distilleries open in the 21st
century. Anyway, your policy on wood has
been quite exciting for a new distillery and adventurous.
Did I say as well, does that come from a confidence of having
used lots of stuff for a Delphi and having an interesting wood
management policy or is it go well, we're bringing really
interesting spirit here. Let's see how it tastes and
sauteed, you know, repeated sauteed for example like.
I oh, there's so many things feeding into this and I'll try
and keep it short. The first thing that's always
ringing in the back of my head, and this might sound a bit kind
of flippant or whatever the word is, my great, great, great
grandfather. Four times great grandfather was
many call him the first blender or first commercial blender.
Yeah, my mother's side. Andrew Asher.
Yeah, I mean, we, we need to talk about.
That we don't. We don't.
Well, the reason I'm bringing him up.
He's effectively the first man that put grain in spirit, but
grain commercially. Whiskey.
Commercial all together. But beyond that, what he did,
and this is what's ringing in my head every day when I get up, is
you have to have consistency. Sure.
So even when it comes to the blend, we've got lots of, you
know, multiple components from multiple distineries, you've
still got to get that consistency, right.
So one of the aspects of being able to look at different wood
types is that our new make spirit is consistent.
And yes, we do unpeted and yes, we do petered and occasionally
we'll go off and do a heritage or whatever, but the DNA is
there throughout. And we're just very lucky.
And there's a number of reasons for this too.
We're very lucky that the DNA is quite powerful.
It's it's got a real West Coast character to it.
So it allows it to shine through even when you go off and shovel
it in a so turn or report or whatever.
But even then I was still nervous.
I was very traditional in that when we started, it was all
bourbon, it was all Sherry. And the other important factor
was that I had to work with source.
So I wasn't going to work with a cooperage or a broker.
You know, I literally in 2013, I went to two places.
I went to Kentucky and I met with the then seller of Jim Beam
in terms of casks, and then I went to Spain and down to Hare F
and met Miguel Martine. Both really good introductions.
And the Jim Beam 1 ended up falling flat on its nose because
they got sold to Santori the day before I placed my first
container order. But just to show you how the
international industry works, I, I put the phone down really
despondent. I knew we were starting to
distill in six months time. We had no wood on the water.
And I remembered one of my oldest friends from back here in
Fife, he had married, he'd married an American and
emigrated years ago, lived in Virginia.
I remember the last time I'd spoken to him, we were talking
about distilling and stuff and he'd said, oh, you must meet my
friend who works for Brian Foreman.
And I, I thought, I wonder what his friend does at Brown Forman.
So I, I waited till the time was right in the day and I rang up
my mate Sean and I said, who's your friend at Brown Foreman?
And he said, oh, it's my friend and my wife, but he's currently
in Australia. He's he's like the manager right
there for Brown Foreman. What?
What is it you want? I said I need cast.
I need a container of cast empty.
And he said OK. And, and half an hour later the
phone rang in my office from the head Cooper at Brown Foreman.
Wow. So he'd gone from Virginia to
Sydney back to Kentucky, and this guy who had an, you know,
he everyone knew he was always grumpy and wouldn't speak to
anyone Here he was. And he said, I've been told to
speak to you and I've been told to send you some cars, but I
don't want to. Terrible American accent, by the
way, I. Wasn't going to try.
The car so and so this is anyway, but he has phoned you
straight away, yeah. Phone me straight away and he
said you're really lucky because what's happened?
And basically with a whole revamp of cooperages and who
owns what, the space side cooperage had been sold to the
French. The French had then decided to
try and get into Kentucky to almost get rid of the supply
chain and, and make it their own.
That had pissed off all the guys who were selling to, you know,
XY and Z in Kentucky. So Brian Foreman had gone, this
guy who was on the phone, he got his nephew to start up a new
cooperage business, independent cooperage.
And he said, I'll supply you all the brown Foreman casks.
Wow. So I was his first customer.
That's brilliant. Yeah.
And we're still with him today.
Yeah. Yeah.
Ex. Ex Jack Daniels casks.
Originally and then we decided they were just a wee bit too
late so we moved to Old Forester and Woodface.
Right, let's go, let's go back a lot.
So you you, you briefly, I mean to just casually drop and I
think a fourth great grandfather of mine was was Andrew Usher and
expect us to brush overnight. But Angus?
Angus is Angus is our head of research.
On what's coming now. He's the historian as well of
the Whiskey Stories podcast. Ross has a phrase is tail, Ross
sometimes says when he gets excited about something.
He says my tail was wagging. Angus's tail was wagging today
when he was like, you know. Reading about Andrew Usher.
Yeah, it was, it was terrific. I mean, especially when I, I was
looking online, I saw we we've recorded one episode at
Bennett's Bar in Tall Cross and I was on.
That is Andrew Usher. Spirits, there's a glass window.
And I mean, you know, everyone in Edinburgh knows about the
Usher Hall as well and this guy, but you know, it was one of the
of course founding N British distillery as well.
The guy just has the whiskey history CV to rune all others.
There was some he'd. Be a great guest on the podcast.
He really would be. We've got his 4th grade
grandson. No, there was some irony on the
North British thing and I'm sure you're aware of, but just in
case you aren't or you're the listeners aren't.
So Andrew Usher. Oh, who else was it?
It was it. Was Sandaman's.
Yeah, but what's the brand in Leithnow?
It's been resurrected. Oh, we've seen the crabbies.
Crabbies. Yeah, yeah, it's John Crabby,
probably Thompson and other people.
So they were Edinburgh merchants, basically grocers who
were all into blending it by that stage.
And they relied on what was, would it have been DCL?
Yeah, it was DCL. Yeah, yeah.
So what is Diagio? Basically today they relied on
DCL for their grain element. And so, you know, not their
supply chain. So they said, right, let's start
our own grain distillery and we'll we can look after our own
and supply tip who owns. North British well.
Yeah, 50%, yeah, yeah. It's funny how these things go.
And of course. The irony as well with William.
We've talked about the story with William Grant and sons
where they were in the same situation, not in charge of
their own grain supply chain. So what did they go and do?
They founded. Girvan.
In the 60s. And now they bought the famous
grouse which used a lot of North British.
Graves could close N British. Yeah, exactly.
So it's it's all these things kind of come.
When you, when you, when you look, when you look back
through, when you look back when you, you started.
So let's go through. So you're saying 2007 was when
the conversation started to happen about opening a
distillery? I found a single piece of A4 the
other day. I can't remember what I was
looking for, but I found it in an old file with scribbles on it
and there was a meeting, a board meeting in an American when that
question was posed. Shall we open a distiller?
Shall we just, shall we just create a distillery?
And there was like two or three things saying do this, do that,
and I also had to go off and do them.
Yeah, that was it. And then when?
When I went from the next stage, then what's that way?
Because again, so the question about Arden Market, then you're
on the western peninsula right up in the middle of bloody
nowhere, which even the fact that 10,000 people, it just
shows you that like genuinely is.
You can get the ferry from off the mainland on the back off of
but but. The fact is there is an element
of. I mean, there is an element of
that to travel all the way there.
What's the word I'm looking for? Pilgrimage.
Yeah. Pilgrimage.
Genuinely. Yeah.
To be able to be in that position at such a young age as
well, where people are just like we have to go and see this
because, you know, you could be a 200 year old distillery and
almost. Maybe that's what makes it more
exciting is the fact that, you know, you could be 150 or 200
years old and you've been there for so long.
Everyone's like, we can go there whenever we want.
It's like the story about Edinburgh Castle.
How many people in Edinburgh visited Edinburgh Castle versus
all the tourists? But as I said, you know, it's
there so you can always go, you know, Glen FedEx there, so you'd
always go. But Arden Market is new, so it's
like you have to go and see it because what's going on.
But what I want to know is, first of all, was it always
going to be just we have to build it on in Arden Market and
why was that conversation? So it was basically going to be
in and around that area. So Keith and Donald both had
farms, if you like one. Keith had his farm on the Morven
Peninsula, which is across the water where where Nick Neon is
actually now. And Donald had his farm on
American. And it wasn't like they were
fighting for rights to the distillery.
It was about finding the right place.
And even though it's pretty much the wettest point of anywhere in
the UK, because it's literally as, as we say on our bottles,
headland of the great seas, the Atlantic just get dumped on us
regularly. Even though it rains all the
time. There are very few holding
locks, unlike, you know, we're in central belt and and space
side especially. You have a lot of hill water,
you have snow melt. We don't get that on the West
Coast. Just right off, straight into
the. Sea it literally comes pouring
down. It looks like Coca-Cola because
of the peat, and it pours into Locksuner, which is the second
longest sea lock in Scotland locks.
Soon it turns brown and then it clears up again so that's what
you're left with. We looked at 7 sites and only
one had a proper amount of holding or holding locks.
I think it's got three above us in the distillery and even then
we feared we wouldn't have enough water and we put
recycling things in place now, so it's not an issue we.
Find a borehole opportunity. No, because we're too close to
the sea water really. It's going to be brackish.
So it was just. The point is, so it was always
going to be in that area, yes, you would never looked at and
going because I remember Alastair, Dave Rassie, well he
spoke about it. He said, he said, look, we
could, we could start a distillery here.
And, and again, it was an investor who he had or a partner
that he had well. The investor came in and said
well. It was a cheap hotel that was
for sale and the investor's wife was originally from Rasi.
Rasi been offered objected by this, just nobody was wanting
this this closed hotel. Alice today was from the borders
and in his mind it had always been there'll be some of the
borders, there'll be some of the borders.
But this investor came in and he said we can have this distillery
but it's going to be in Rasi but also.
Equally though, like what like what Alex has just said is, you
know, how easy is it to all right, land price and all the
other things that go along with it.
But also, you know, Scotland will probably throw more at you
if you can bring people to rural area where you're talking
grounds and things, stuff like that, where you can send
something safe and. On Lastly, they also happened to
put a borehole, but 50 yards behind where that old hotel was
and hit water. Yeah, which is a fortunate thing
to do. Yeah.
So it was always going to be. So it was always going to be up
that neck of the. Way it was always going to be
there, but we had to try and work out.
It wasn't just about building the distillery.
We had to work out how all our raw materials.
Well, this is an excellent thing for.
Construction so this is where Donald's cogs were, you know,
moving and he could visibly see the brain and gear.
He has this estate which apart from a multitude of sheep and
cows and a wind turbine and that's about it except for one
at that .1 crop he could not use or could not benefit from.
And that was thousands of acres of forestry, some of it standing
dead because of previous forest fires.
But the majority of it costs so much to get it out to the
nearest mill in Fort William to actually fail it.
Absolutely not. It made no sense.
So he said, right, what we're going to do here is you're going
to be, but we are going to be the first distillery to use 100%
wood chip fueled. By a mass boiler.
It, it had been tested as a backup in places like Temartin I
think for a few years before that.
But no one had relied purely on wood chip for obvious reasons.
So that was the first thing and we had to go to Switzerland to
find someone who could build a big enough steam boiler, A
biomass steam boiler, because no one in the UK could.
Then he said, right, I'm going to have to feed you quite a lot
of wood chip. So I'm going to build a plant 2
miles down the road and that plant is going to process all
your by products as well. And I can benefit from that
because my cows can now eat your giraffe and your butt ill and I
don't need to get food. Lorries come and feed.
Sorry, cattle feed lorries. So not only were you cutting
down on cattle feed lorries coming in, we were cutting down
on what would have been timber lorries going out.
So we're actually, even though we had to bring cast in and out
and a bit of barley. Or malt.
We're actually cutting down, Yeah, well, the infrastructure
we were cutting down on long term heavy haulage on the single
track Rd. So we kind of naturally form
this, this sort of circular economy, I suppose you can call
it that. So we buy the wood chip often.
We burn about a ton every two hours.
It's delivered by tractor and trader and the tractor then
pulls the draft back, which gets palletized.
And meanwhile there's 2 miles of pipe going over the hill, which
takes the pothail into an evaporator that gets evaporated.
The heat coming from biomass as well from wood chip and the
syrup from the pottel and the pellet from the giraffe get
mixed together and sent out to to feed the cows.
It's as simple as that and it is and I love saying this because
it is completely true and I'm not making it up our distillery.
Going back to what you were saying about output, our
distillery is sized in a classic tail wagging dog situation
because the number of carries dictates how much whiskey we can
produce. I love it.
That is, I've actually worked on a biomass plant.
What have you not done? What have you not done?
It was, I mean, I don't know if anyone, I mean, my previous
employer no longer exists so they can't come back at me.
But it was a cursed project from the very beginning.
I remember it, but I remember the biomass thing really kicked
off in this sort of two. You're talking what, 2008 to
2012? There was a big push for
biomass. But one of the biggest problems
which you've managed to solve immediately in that process is
the source of wood, because there's a lot of people who
cynically will talk about wood. Where does the wood, where does
the wood pellets come from to force to feed the biomass plant?
And that's always something that a lot of people have have have
critical criticised biomass for. And this is not only local wood
chip because it's tractor and trader delivered.
Yeah, but it's, it's also replanting behind it.
Yeah. So they, they look at the
forestry as a, you know, we look at Bali.
As a well are you are you replanting the forestry?
No, they're they're I'm sorry, they're they're as but so it's
it's it's like planting Bali, except it's a 30 year this.
Is remarkable because it was a forestry that was not
economical. And now?
It is because you've got the solar.
So again, another reason to put well, but still it in that I.
Have to ask you as well, have you tried the beef?
So, yes, and I'll tell you exactly where you need to go.
You need to go to other American restaurant in Glasgow, right?
Really, they haven't. They serve beef from.
So they serve beef from other American and Mull and venison
from other American. They also get, you know, if
they're really feeling hungry, they can come and eat the cow's
food. So yeah, you can basically
guarantee that a steak in the other American restaurant has
got some other American whiskey, my product in it.
Fantastic. I think we need to make a trip.
I want to talk about then building a distillery and we
mentioned we were talking a little bit before.
We did that. I'm gonna let you introduce this
with. Sorry, Yeah.
Ross. Ross.
Ross, Ross, this is Smokey. I wonder if I'm going to
introduce one that's first if. That's OK.
So you. Brought a couple of drums,
actually. What are we having?
Very first, yeah. Well, first of all, I should
probably tell you why there's very little left in the bottle.
A very surreal tasting event I had to do after we beat France
at Murrayfield last weekend. 55 the weekend before.
Bonjour to our French. Hello, France.
So. Congratulations on your title
actually. I'll say an old school friend of
mine was an ex captain of Scotland rugby and every now and
then we'll do something to raise money for Doddie Weir and you
know the MND and everything. So we were having a meeting in
the office the previous week. And I was sharing with the
board, I was sharing something on screen, probably a
spreadsheet showing how little money we got in the bank.
Anyway, my WhatsApp. The whiskey business, The
whiskey industry is great. I.
Suppose we're spending it. Exactly.
It's all been reinvested. The WhatsApp starts going and it
I've got it on the computer as well.
So there's Rob Wainwright calling, comes across the screen
and they're all going, oh, answer it, answer it and I'll
go. No, no, I'll call him back
after. So basically this is like the
Thursday of that week. I called him back and he said,
can you do a tasting in the in the the Eagles townhouse on
Saturday night? It kind of be after dinner.
And I said yes. I said, OK.
He said just just pitch up like half nine and we'll you know,
we'll get you in. Bring four or five good
whiskies. And I don't know who this is.
I don't know. So anyway, I pitched up and also
another friend, Marc Beaumont, he was there.
So these are guys are all just bicycled to Dublin.
Yeah, I was just going to say. You powered the Duke that
powered off of them. That is the third time I've
given them a whiskey tasting the day or two days before they've
gone on these massive bicycles. So I don't know.
Anyway, so Mark and I are going, you know, we're going
downstairs, apparently. So we got LED in and it's a
secret room in the townhouse. It's like a sort of library
door. Big Thing swings open like
halfway and right in front of me with his back to me.
He's Prince Albert Monaco, so it was his dinner and we have done
stuff with him in the past. I've been out to Monaco.
Connell's been there. He actually opened the
distillery site. Not the distillery, but the the
construction site. So when when shovels went in.
The ground, he opened it, he clipped the ribbon in order he
did so there's a connection anyway.
So he was. He was, yeah.
He jumped up and shook hands and that was lovely.
He introduced me to his 2 French friends on his right and as I
was speaking to them the door was closing so I could get the
picture on the left hand side of the table.
So bearing in mind this is 9:30 which and the match started at
2:30 and finished at what 430? Yeah, sitting next to Prince
Albert on his left was Finn Russell was.
It. Oh wow.
And sitting next to Finn was Jamie Ritchie, who had crutches.
Yeah, that was just like the most surreal evening I've ever
had. Anyway, had a great night.
And the reason I took those two whiskeys, so there were a couple
of others, but the Fascadel, which is an Adelphi brand, which
I created in 2007, I think it was on the back of us deciding
to build a distillery. And I thought maybe in the
future, if we were lucky enough to produce a decent whiskey, we
should, we might have some of our whiskey named after places
in the peninsula, on the peninsula.
And Fascadel is this beautiful smuggler's curve right on the
sort of northwest point of the peninsula.
No smuggling going on these days, you know.
There's a story there, but I won't go into tonight.
Anyway, Fascadel for Adelphi or for Adelphi purposes was always
styled. So the make that we filled into
it was always going to be similar, we hoped, to what we
could produce in Adam American. So that is not in Adam American.
No, but this was. Because I was actually just
tasting that they're going that taste.
I was, I was a bit worried because I've just put that in
the glass. I've just had an hard mark.
In it you can almost assume it's a benchmark.
It was one of the things we were aspiring to do.
So this is a 10 year old tender cask batch, all bourbon, bottled
at 46% of an unnamed. Back in the day it was
definitely unnameable distillery on an island off the West Coast
with a bridge there. You go on an island off the West
Coast with a bridge. Yeah, I guess knows.
Yeah, I know. You know them, you do all right?
OK, you'll work on that. Later.
Yeah, that's amazing. And that, that if you imagine,
and I, I said this in some previous interview somewhere, if
you imagined a bucket of all my favorite drams mixed together,
that was what I'd hoped an American would turn out to be.
And that was one of the main ingredients for that.
So that's why I brought it along.
Tonight is a kind of succession draft.
There's a single cast then. There's 10 cast batch. 10 cast.
Yeah, because actually I've just seen bottle #1 of 3797.
So, Angus, is this the first time that we've ever sampled a
DRAM after the from the same bottle?
Of Prince Albert, Monaco and Finn, Russell and Jim.
Actually, yeah, I would. Say no in.
Fairness, Finn wasn't right. Of course.
I. Remember, Jamie was or not, but
yeah. I gave you Prince Albert was
getting. Yeah.
Play salute. Well, thank you for bringing
these in. And then this next bottles looks
much more like something we have seen many times in this podcast
dressed sample. That's what I read inside of
this. It does look a bit like a sample
bottle. It's about having the official
label. But I have a question.
This is from Ben Nevis distilled at Ben Nevis 197037 years old,
which is all very exciting. This is blended Scotch whisky.
You're going to need to explain that one to me.
Well, the reason I brought along tonight was A, that was
something left in it and B again was one of our influencing West
Coast, you know, West Highland distillers, Colin Ross,
etcetera. But it does have a bit of a
story behind it. So during prohibition in the
USA, Canadian called Joseph Hobbs made a fortune by
smuggling Scotch whiskey down the Great Lakes as penicillin
and various other things. And when the prohibition ceased,
he had his fortune and he decided to reinvest it in
Scotland as best as he could because he felt, you know,
that's where he got his money from.
So he came over to Scotland and he bought Ben Nevis Distillery
and Lock Side distillery in Montrose.
He also bought in Velocchi Castle Hotel.
It wasn't the hotel then but the building.
And not wanting just to rest on laurels of having bought
distilleries, he then decided to be a bit different and he put in
the whereabouts basically to make grain whiskey on both sides
alongside the malt whiskey. Wow.
Column stills, etcetera. And even then he didn't stop.
He then decided to blend at birth some of his stock.
OK, so this is a blended at birth grain and malt bend.
Nervous. It's a single blend single.
Blend so this is grain and malt spirit being blended as we've.
Talked about that not that long ago.
That's the question that was asked.
You're no longer allowed to do it Yeah at new make spirit but
we I think. We we talk.
About it. About House of Hazelwood.
Who done? No, no, no, no.
You went for drams with Chuck and Fraser maybe.
And he talked about blending at like blending at birth.
Chuck then asked Craig Urquhart on the on the podcast a couple
weeks a few weeks ago about it and Greg said because it was the
Dunhill, the Alfred Dunhill blend that we tried was a
blended at birth blend that Dunhill had had and they got,
they shipped it off and Glenn Glenn Moore then that picking up
all them refine, refine. But we were asking about that
and it was, it's, it's an interesting concept because it
economically it almost doesn't make sense to do because you'll
never know what the, you know, at least when you're blending,
you can suddenly go. You've tried to finish, you've
tried to product. To add a little bit of that and.
You've balanced them out. Yeah, whereas actually can blend
at birth. So I take it this so?
So what you're saying is blending at birth is no longer?
Allowed. No, I think it.
Is my understanding is you cannot currently blend spirit
grain and malt. Ah, sorry.
Grain and malt not not distilleries.
Yeah, OK. Yeah.
Yeah, of course you can make a blend.
Yeah, absolutely. Of course you can.
You can combine stouts, but I don't think you combine grain
and malt, mature it and call it blended.
Scot. Is that why Loch Lemon doesn't
do it then? It might be the last time I had
it was a House of Hazelwood 1964 or 1966 called Blended at Birth
and again it was 2 space side malts.
He never told who it was and it produced this amazingly tropical
fruity spirit which is in the top three drama of all time for
me, is what I mentioned. I think I also.
This is 1 of 135 bottles by you. Very much.
From 1970, I don't know what you guys were doing in 1970.
My father was. Ross Barover what he started
with a 3030 year old Ben. I haven't this.
Afternoon. My father was born in 69.
But this is the year old who means.
So there you go. There you are.
Yeah, thank. You very.
Much, Ross. No thanks, Alex, don't thank.
You, Ross, I will say sorry brings on a nice subject here.
Talk about Finn Russell sitting there.
You are also been tucking into a little sample bottle.
That's the first thing you can already try.
I am, and it's actually blowing my socks off.
Yeah, it's great. But Bob cutting the whiskey
shed. Long time listener whiskey.
Shed, yeah. A long time listener, long time
contributor to the Wishy Story's Facebook page.
If you're new to the if you're new to the podcast, join the
Facebook page. It's very active people from all
over the world. Facebook group, Yeah.
The whiskey shed 6 Nations blend now I absolutely love the label
here as well. Alex, I'll give you this the
half of this to take home. It's actually fantastic It's
got. This has got, so it's got.
Pretty well it's got single from all of the Six Nations.
Yeah, the. Constituents were they put the
constituents of the blend. Out.
I'm going to be honest, Bob, cutting this is not only not
shit, which is what I would occasionally say to say is
something that's all right, it's actually very tasty.
I like of course, that you're not selling this because some
ABV official sample probably wouldn't work, but bottled 2026,
it's just fantastic. Well, he said that, let me tell
you, okay, the 2027 Six Nation blend is in the cask already.
Excellent, right? A Chianti season, cask season
for most of the 2026. Here's the blend.
Saint Patrick's cask. Is this for this year?
Yeah, for no, this is this. Is next year's?
Oh, tell us. Tell me what's in this.
I've got no but next, so next year's that we can look forward
to it. We've got 12 months to Saint
Patrick's Cask Strength, Ireland, Cotswold Founder's
Choice, England, Pune Darkness, Italy, Glen Allocate, QV Cast
Scotland Glen Lossy Red wine Break Scotland, Cortoise single
malt France hate Club Green Scotland and Bellevue blue-green
France. So that's so.
I mean, tell you what, right? Honestly.
And do you know? There's got to be a Welsh to,
say, a Welsh system. There's the Pendennon or the.
Yeah, from the list that you from send me.
Bob, you need to go back. Wales have had an unlucky last.
Year you cannot kick them out. You've left a well train of
that, but but what I would say is.
That Lee label is brilliant as well.
He's. Done his label yeah look at
that. It's it's it's great.
And he does whiskey shed. He's got his only whiskey and he
does his videos. 6 Nations video has been fantastic.
What I was saying? And what are 6 Nations It's been
by the way. So Alex, were you at the
Scotland France game? No, I've been to the England
one, which was more than enough enjoyment.
Hi, Bob. Thanks for sharing that
properly. World class draft.
It's the 1st 19 I think. Is this the first single blend
we've had on the podcast? So we'd bottled some of those.
We also bought some oxides over the years, also single blend.
But just so we know, you see the strength is 50 points. 50.9.
Yeah. So for a 1970, albeit bottled in
2008 or whatever to be that high strength, that was one of the
positives of doing a blend at birth was the grain was much
higher strength. Yeah.
So you got longer maturation potential that's.
Delicious. Both, that is.
It's a fruit bomb. It's also quite cheesy though.
Yeah, they're a bit cheesy in there, that kind.
Of Benedis element I guess. So I'd say.
Really, really cool. No.
And not many distilleries that could do that as well, even
around the. World.
Not many bottles that would have thought of doing that for sure.
Talk to us about the Arden American process then we I find
it fascinating that new distilleries get this
opportunity to create something from scratch.
We've we've spoken to so many people on the television has
just come on. Excellent.
Just in time for colleague, but we've spoken to so many people
on the podcast, you know, you, you speak to older, you know,
distilleries and they talk about this the, the, the heritage that
they have and about how. And one of the things that I've
always said, and I said that even just a few weeks ago, the
Aberrargay inaugural tasting that we had with, with the
Morrisons guys and Tam Cuthbert, there's no one alive today that
has been able to sit there and swirl a glass of spring back
when FedEx, Balvani or anyone that goes when far.
Let's go. Can't wait to see what it's like
at 10, you know, But at the same time, the whiskey that we know
today has been built on so many different factors like your
great, great great grandfather, Andrew Usher is part of that as
well, where people making decisions and then we'll just
learn from them and move on. People have made mistakes, so
we've learned to move on. So when you get an opportunity
to actually build a distillery from scratch, how much of it is,
I mean, do you, are you sitting there?
You've already told us about this Adelphi release that you've
said this is what I'd like Adelphi to taste like.
So when? What's the process from there?
So I was very lucky, as were a number of newer distillers, to
have the amazing wisdom and scientific knowledge of Jim
Swan. So we got in just just after
Kavlan. So he's still involved in
setting up Kavlan in Taiwan. He was still up and down the
road to Pendaren, even though they had started way back.
He came in later. And for those of you who don't
know, Doctor Jim Swan very sadly died a few years ago now, but he
was one of the original chemist, if you like, who would sample
and rate a new mate from most of the small to medium
distilleries. And the company which he set up
with Harry Rifkin called Taplock and Thompson is still the go to
for that process. So we still send samples to TNT
every month we get a rating back.
Most importantly, it's not what they rate it out of five,
although it's quite nice to see. It's the spider diagram, and you
want to be able to. If you imagine it on tracing
paper, you want it to be the same spider.
Yeah, well, you need it to look as it goes back.
To the consistency. So that's why we used that lock
and Thompson. That's why Jim set it up with
Harry Rifkin. But Jim was not.
I mean, he enjoyed whiskey, don't get me wrong, but he was
not coming at the industry design, if you like, from a
whiskey drinker's perspective. He was coming at it from a
chemist perspective. How are flavours created?
And he'd worked out how basically, and I, I'm no
scientist so I don't know quite how it all works, but he'd
worked out how to mature, sorry, how to create whiskey or
pneumate spirit that did not require the oxidization process
to mature. And it's a combination.
It's like a jigsaw of different things.
And I know this now because we've tried eliminating 1 and
putting it back very quickly because we know it changes
things. The combination of different
things, starting at the the mash ton, going through fermentation,
the cuts, the way the condenses work, all of these kind of
things. And then the quality of the
wood, that was another of his big things.
And even though he was the guy behind inventing STR casts.
I was just about to say, I don't think I've seen an armed
American. So I, I, I didn't fall out with
him. STR means what's.
That shave dos of recharge. I never fell out with Jim, but I
had a disagreement on 2 occasions, STR was 1.
He said you've got to try. You'll be the first people to
get these. And I said, well, can you tell
me what they're going to taste like, what it's going to do to
the spirit? And he said, well, I'll tell you
what, I'll send you a bottle of Kavalan Soloist or whatever it
was that it was 2 years old, but it obviously had that
accelerated Taiwanese maturation.
And for me it was too dry. It's a kind of Jim Swan's an
absolute genius. So what did you have to do for
these new distilleries? It's amazing.
SCR is kind of a shortcut. Yeah.
It accelerates some actuation. It's been really successful in
Kings Barns as the example. I always I've got a lot of new
distilleries have used it. Jim Swan at Lindo's Abbey as
well. Wasn't it?
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, he had. Yeah, he had.
Yeah, it was it was it's plaques on it was in the still house,
London's Abbey. But but Kings Barns is probably
the example of their dream to DRAM was it was just the STR and
it was four or five years old. He went actually, that's that's
palatable. I totally get it.
It does. I am not a fan of STR casts.
Either yeah, it's lovely red fruit, all those kind of things,
and it's cheap. Or at least it was a lot
cheaper. It's now bourbon class to come
down again. It's not.
Plus it isn't. I think I recently had an STR
French Oak Kilholmen and that was interesting.
They're effectively shaving the inside of the you're.
Bringing the wood back to life. Yeah.
It's it's almost I would describe it to a customer as
taking a used cask and trying to bring virgin oak elements to the
wood. Yeah, by shaving it and then.
There are other ways to do it and we've we've seen through
Adelphi and this is kind of where I was coming from over the
years tasting with Charlie, selecting casks for Adelphi.
It wasn't about the name, the age, the colour, it was about
finding a DRAM that we would both sit down and happily have
another. And it's about the drinkability.
And within that there's a mouth texture, the flavours that it
could have been completely off brand in terms of flavour
profile. But if it was drinking well and
you'd have another go to it, then that is a good whiskey to
put in a bottle. And that's kind of what we tried
to do without American too. And I didn't, I felt that that
dryness would have made it difficult to have more than
right you're. Right.
There's so many times that you can have a DRAM where it's a one
DRAM wonder where you can sit down and go.
It might be there's there's whiskeys that I would go to that
go. Do you know what that'd be the
perfect end of the night whiskey for me.
Where you have that, you have that's that's it.
Equally, there might be a whiskey where you could say
that's your starting whiskey where you have that.
Yeah. And move on.
But actually there's something to be said and I've said it over
the last since I got back from India.
I don't know if I've mentioned on the podcast a bit at the same
time, one of the things is I I've said it, In fact, I've said
it before. When I went, it was with code,
It was the episode with Cody Reynolds.
It's all age, how long it was. But sometimes we feel like we're
under pressure in this podcast where you have to pick 3 or 4
drams and every time you come in here you feel like I should be
trying something else. But actually, sometimes you just
want to come in and just say that is a DRAM I'd like to have.
Graham from two years ago would have been delighted by Glen
Alec, 15. Absolutely.
Glenn Piero today delighted. Genuinely.
You don't need to pretend to like Pete.
You can enjoy this. You can really go back to what
you love and. What you said, there is a lot to
be said for that and I think that's where we've talked about
it. We talked about with Tim Walker
Ross, you know, in the luxury market, if someone's paying an
awful lot of money for a bottle of whiskey and luxury, do they
want to pay for something that they're going to be challenged
with or do they want to just pay something that's going to be
smooth and easy to drink and just down, you're not down the
hard, but just they can sit and go.
I don't even worry about how much water I need to add.
I don't need to worry about that, you know?
And so actually it brings on a really nice point about art and
working as well. You're very reasonably priced.
But. That's why I had that
spreadsheet. But your single malt and the
diversity of your single malt through different cask finishes,
limited release single casks as well, always very reasonably
priced. And really, it seems to me that
you've always set out that Arden Merkin was to be a whiskey that
was to be dragged. Yeah, which is an interesting
dynamic when you look at the Adelphi element where you look
at the exclusivity and possibly the premium premiumisation.
But they always doubt. Yeah, they.
Could have gone down the OR the port Helen root and gone we
want. If you bought a bottle of this
sealed now, yes it's interesting and it happens to be delicious,
but you might be reluctant to not open it until a special
occasion or a real reason to do it because it's it's liquid
history. With Adelphi, we never put the
prices up because we felt we were better because we were
operating on a just in time method, which back then was very
rare. Nowadays it's kind of everyone
does it, but back then we were reliant on what it was, what it
cost us to buy on that day. That was then plus margin, what
we sold it at. So yeah, sometimes we were more
expensive, sometimes we were slightly cheaper, but we just
put it out straight margin. Here's something to drink.
And Arden Merkin was always going to be the same principle.
We managed to get, and this is again, Donald's brain in in gear
as an engineer. We managed to get our cost of
production for a reasonably small distillery to a very low
level biomass wood chip delivered 2 miles away,
hydroelectricity, all these kind of things.
A, they don't fluctuate as much like oil and gas and B, we have
a nice low, you know, no transport costs, all that kind
of thing. So we've been very fortunate to
build, being able to build and run a distillery of a small to
medium size purely for single malt ish that can then translate
into an affordable attainable. And you know, when do you make
the decision? Because like everyone will say,
we make the decision to put out our first release, our first
single malt when it's ready. That's the line, isn't it?
And I suppose it has to be the line because if you're not
putting out three years in one day, yeah, then you suddenly go,
well, why are you putting out after seven years?
Or sometimes you might wait. Some people will make wait for
the age statement to hit the den, but there's other.
So was there a plan in place to go we will release On this date?
Or was it just a case? Was it that?
We'll release it when it's ready, Mark.
So there were kind of two or three plans which you all got
sort of mixed up. The first plan which wasn't was
I bought off Miguel Martin in Spain.
I bought some octaves, some little 50 litre nuked Sherry
octave on our first lorry from him.
So this had been 2014 and I didn't buy them to accelerate
maturation, to be able to sell quickly.
I bought them to accelerate maturation to see if we needed
to change anything. And then yeah, it doesn't make
difference. Yeah.
And. That's an octave.
How do we need to approach our butts?
Yeah, just, you know, because it would means even though it's
heavily Sherry, you'd be able to see, do you have enough DNA
coming through? Do you have this, that the rest
of it? Yeah, it might taste of
strawberries and you want it to taste of raspberries.
Yeah. So what actually happened was
the complete opposite in that these things matured so well so
quickly that we had to bottle them.
Yeah. So we came out with these less
than three-year old Spirit bottlings.
OK. And it was AD for Anna Domini
rather than Anna Mercantisuri, but it was also Anna
Mercantisuri. AD 2016 20/17/2018 in 2019 all
from octaves and they got a real cult following around the world
even though they're kind of small batches.
And they were called Spirit. They were called Spirit and it
just kind of led people into waiting for the first single
mole, which was great. So by that stage, by probably
the second batch of those becoming quite successful, we
then reckoned we'd be able to get something out at five years
old that was good enough quality.
What we didn't of course know was in in whatever.
That would have been another three years time.
Global pandemic. There was a global pandemic
coming around the corner, so we decided to push ahead.
The one thing that could have stalled it, and thank God it
didn't, was that we weren't allowed out.
And we had to literally, Connell myself, had to get time in the
warehouses in order to start looking at casks.
We hadn't been up there in months.
I mean, Adam American literally had a roadblock.
It was like no one in, no one out.
So eventually we got let out in the, I think it was the late
spring of that year, maybe the summer, I can't remember.
We got up, we locked ourselves in the Warehouse 1, which was
the only main, only warehouse really at the time, and we just
started going through the 2014 and 15 stuff.
That sounds like a terrible day. It was.
It was, yeah. How did you spend your COVID?
What I was I was making cakes and making bread.
You're in the warehouse for the first time in.
Well, we had both both families were up as well because they're
in great fun on the beaches. Again, first time lied out and
we ended up with something like 100 samples on this big table to
start putting the first blend. Didn't know what what it was
going to taste like. We literally we, we had nowhere
to even, you know, start from. I remember Graham Mackay coming
in for a sort of pseudo interview stroke.
You're coming in, you know you're coming to work for us.
But he didn't know that and they're kind of going crazy.
What have I let myself into? And we ended up with three,
three different versions. The first version was exactly
the profile of stock that we were laying down.
So it was 50% unpetered, 50% pitted, 75% verb and matured and
25% sharing. And version two and three were a
variation on that. And everyone that we took it to,
including people like Dave Brumer, who just happened to
appear in London American randomly because he was writing
a book, everyone unanimously said version 1.
And so we were lucky we got the recipe right from day one.
But you never know. But then you've got some Connell
then who thought Connell has been a big part of he's like
your agent, isn't he? He's speaking like Conal gay
Alex. And he said I'll let you see.
And he he sent me your rider. He said he's got to have this
year. There's no blue M and Ms. or
Reddit. Where's the bubble bar, Christ?
But but Conor, how long has Conal been at the distillery
for? So I knew him from travelling to
New Zealand to. And it's Conor.
What's this? What's this film?
And Conor McKay. The sales director, yeah.
So I've been going out to New Zealand every other year for
DRAM Fest, which is the best, by far the best whiskey festival on
that side of the world. It's fun, it's big, it's it's
quick, you know, which is good from both sides of the table.
And it's a whole weekend of different things going on.
And they look after all the Scots that come over.
So everyone from the industry, they get taken on adventures and
stuff. Anyway, Connell was, he comes
through the hotel trade and then got employed by Whiskey Galore
that run Gram Fest also right importers.
He got employed as AGM, can't remember which year it was maybe
20/15/16. And I met him, we did a road
trip through New Zealand doing tastings and he was saying, even
at that stage he was saying I might have to come back at some
point. And so we just kept in touch and
I wasn't actually looking, but he he got in touch and I said,
you're about a year too quick. But let me let me see what we
can do. And it's a similar sort of Carl,
you know, Carl was, you know, working as an import, working,
was it the Scottish Government? He was working part of the
Scottish Government with American imports and stuff.
Like that? Yeah.
No, he was. And suddenly, but yeah, how
big's the team? Because Carl's even talked
about, you know, was it the mid J he was talking about where he
said we were all just sitting there and no, there was a drama
that he had. And he said, what if we just
stick up Sherry button there and wait that everyone was sitting
there and it was like round the table samples on the table.
Everyone's trying to sampling like what's the next release
going to be? And somebody said, what if we
just stick a cherry button there and see what happens?
And they went, OK, here's a set cherry sample.
And everyone just went, yeah, that's yeah, that's it.
So I mean, what's the team like? How big's the team?
Because you're all the way up in the middle of of Ireland to
market. You just.
Wondered. We just hired Connie, who's
fantastic. He's just.
Started new UK sales manager. Yeah, it's good to get some good
news in West. Yeah, yeah, people are hiring.
Yeah, yeah, that's why I have even less beans than I did last
week. No, look, so the if we're
talking blending team or. Just the total.
Like the total team. So we're split 5050 more or less
between our American where we make the stuff and welcome
people And, and, and just on that, you mentioned, you know,
about people going up there like pilgrims from the other side of
the coin. We are so delighted when someone
walks through that door. Yeah, that it's a genuine West
Coast hospitality and I've been out there a couple of times last
year where the car park's overflowing onto the single
track Rd. which doesn't help and everyone just is happy.
It's great. So 50% of people up there, all
local, got some early help in to train up and now it's all local.
The distillery manager is the he was bus driver for the kids.
That's right, in 2014. So even all the production team,
everyone. Everyone's and I.
Mean that's great because that's a bit like even the third
episode we had we we spoke to he's from Harris.
We spoke about Harris and how great they've been at employing
local people, training, skilling people locally rather than
bringing in people from. So we're we're looking at it not
just for the here and now, we're looking at it for the future as
well. So here and now is if someone
leaves, we bring someone in at the bottom, which is not the
worst job, it's just the the least training required, which
is warehouse and then they get immediately trained up through
warehousing. They get trained on the stills
within six months to a year. They get offered to take the IBD
exams. So everyone pretty much within a
year or two of arriving has the ability to do anything on site.
And, and long term, what we've done since the beginning, we
teamed up with the Ad American Trust, which is like the local
charity and we basically sell them a cask or casks every year
a child or children are born on the peninsula.
We sell them a cost price. It gets put away in their name.
And when they turn of a legal age for alcohol, they can write
to the trust and say I want to go to university, I want to
start a business selling wool because I've got a sheep in the
garden. You know, as long as it's a good
case for it commercially, they then the trust then sells that
cast back to us and we give them the going rate on that day.
So when we started. This on the peninsula.
And we kind of hope we then we then bring them in as well.
We kind of say that. This is what you can.
There's a whole story about Billy Brebner.
Oh yes, so back it was back when got to qualify to play for
Scotland, you had to be born in Scotland.
And Billy Bremner was playing for Leeds and famously his
wife's water broke and he trucked her in the car and drove
from Leeds to cross the border because he didn't want, if he
had his first son, he didn't want his son being born as an
Englishman instead of Scotsman. So basically, if people are
listening, if you're close. To the peninsula.
Well, look, if you're sitting there going could. 4 hour drive
from Edinburgh. You know, someone could be
sitting there going, well, I've ready to pop in the next few few
weeks. Get in a car up there on the
working peninsula. You'll get yourself.
We've just heard of it, the low operating cars, That's good,
that's brilliant. That's a great, it's a great
incentive. It's a practical, it's
practical. We're not, you know, with
everything we do, we some people say we're the greenest, we're
not maybe where when we started, some people say we do this and
that, but everything we've done has been pragmatic.
It's been because of where we are and in order to benefit
where we are. And the Highlands and Isles of
Scotland need to this investment.
Yeah, as you said, we mentioned them before Rassie and other
distillery. I was there last week for the
first time. There was 120 people on that
island before the distillery. The latest census are expected
about 188. Apparently that's a third of the
island. Yeah.
Because somebody has invested in it.
Yes. And these rural communities,
when you do go north, the central.
The kind of brain drain and the. Ageing.
Population, this is it's really important.
Yeah, I I'm very successful. Holding it, yeah.
And but at the same time it is bringing people into these areas
to to get eaten alive by the midges because I the.
Midget population up the. Other thing is I wouldn't want
to say again, we don't want to cover what Carol had already
talked about. If you want to find out the
Midget, the hard American Midget, find out on the his
episode, because he'll tell you all about the the reason mine
it. But what we it says is it says
that Arden markings are a brand and the distillery likes to have
a bit of fun as well. That doesn't you know, it's
important to be serious about whiskey and when you're putting
out the whiskey that you're putting out, you can do that,
but you can also have a bit of fun.
But Mclean's nose as well? Talk about so.
So Mclean's nose is what? What is Mclean's nose?
I So the day we opened, we were very fortunate to have Princess
Anne. She flew in to to the ceremony.
It was 32° in an American, so we were dressed up in teads and
kilts and stuff like this and. Like Ross, as if they did.
Just really not enjoying the the heat.
So we took her right through the process.
I was involved in the early bit of it with the filling store,
filling a bottle through her husband and of new make spirit.
Then she progressed through production and she got to the
still room. Now, bearing in mind it's 32°
outside. Oh yeah, What's?
That still room would have been 50.
There's like our trip up to Glen Murray and one of the Snow Room.
Is too hot. Yeah.
We're not allowed. So all she did, there was never
a bead of sweat. All she did was she removed her
gloves and gave them to her lady in waiting.
I can assure you when we went up to Glen Murray that last summer
in the hot stadium, there was a lot of sweat.
Yeah, anyway, she then flew out after, you know, handshakes and
all the rest of it, and that was great.
And we kind of, you know, everything relaxed.
But it was a lovely day anyway and the next thing I do, I had a
drama in my hand. I was looking out the still room
window down the lock. You can just see Toby Mori at
the end of the lock and just kind of feeling, not smug but
just feeling really happy we'd got to that stage.
I knew there was going to still be a massive journey ahead but
you know, we'd got there. And the next thing I knew,
Charlie Mclean's, there was his very sweaty arm around me.
And he says to me, he says, you do realise you are now the
closest distillery to my nose. And I thought that was the
nicest thing he could have ever said.
You know, we haven't even matured a whiskey yet.
And you were saying it's the best thing you've ever had.
And, and so I said thank you very much, It's really kind.
And we passed our ways and that was fine.
And it was several years later back in the still room, I'd just
got come up from Fife. I was walking through saying hi
to everyone and there was a stillman.
We we basically, we have two shifts a day, 6 till 2 till 2
till 10. So around about half one to half
two, there's a changeover of shift and it was a lovely sunny
summer's day. And whoever was coming off shift
on the stills said to me, yeah, I'm just off to go and climb
Mclean's Nose. I said, what do you mean climb
Mclean's Nose? He said, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The big rock that goes down to locks in it, it's off the back
of of Ben Heehan, which is the highest hill.
And I said, really? I said, so everything started
clicking. So as soon as I go back to Fife
the following week, I got onto our IP guys and I I got the
brand locked. In SO, Mclean's nose is actually
a dedicated area. There.
So it is literally it's a, it's a, a, a nose shaped, well,
Mclean's nose shape because they've got quite kind of Roman
noses. It's a volcanic outpouring
because Arden Merken is all volcano basically right from the
far end all the way through. And it it, it would have been
the lava spewing down into Lacuna and it just looks like a
nose. But it's been, crucially, it's
been at fundamental in navigational aid for boats
coming in and around the Tobe Mori area.
So they'll see that. See that they know where they
are. I know where I am.
Yeah. So.
So it was all registered. That's fine.
Parked it. And I can't even remember what
year this was. And then bit by bit I kind of
remembered, oh, we've got that brand, what we're going to do
with it? And I thought, let's do a
blended malt. And then everyone did a blended
malt, so maybe we shouldn't do a blended malt.
And then I said, well, and also the trouble with the blended
malt is that you are, if prices start going up and they did for
malt whiskey, you're then going to have to put your blended malt
up as well. So we ended up deciding to do a
whiskey that would always be affordable, or at least we'd try
our best to be affordable that we had enough control over to
make it consistent in price and flavor.
And other than that, there was no criteria.
So we didn't actually know that it was going to be a blend at
that point. We just said it's got to be at
this kind of area of price and it's got to be really drinkable,
interesting whiskey. And we ended up going with a
completely upside down blend. So 70% malt, 30% green.
Really. Yeah.
And of the 70%, a high proportion is from a certain
West Coast distillery that we may or may not.
That's not only support. So, yeah.
And. You know where Mcleans knows his
first reference on the podcast? Go on.
It was. We did mention it.
It was player distilleries, right?
And we did the higher or lower game of price point top 50.
It was, it was we, we picked 10 of the top fifth or it was in
the top 20 drams in Royal Mile whiskeys, right, Right.
So what I did was I went into the Royal Mile whiskeys top
drams and then hit the filter button and went price highest to
lowest. And then I picked the last 10.
And then we played a higher or lower version.
We played we, we did a player distilleries right.
And Maclean's nose was the highest rated and cheapest.
I'd say best value if you'd say that's amazing.
But also then the other part of it was referenced with with when
Carl was on the podcast because Maclean's nose played a big part
in the Mccharles's Charles Maclean's sons who rode across
roads all the way. Across was at the Pacifically
Rd. Atlantic.
No, no, no.
Well, at First Pacific. Pacific this time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. Which is extraordinary.
It's like whatever 9000 miles they've had.
With their brothers, I said yeah, I can't even, no, I'm not
sure. Like the car with my brother
from Edinburgh, Kirkhodie and. That was a real last minute
thing because we'd obviously individually we'd all been
helping, you know, just giving sponsorship as much as we could
afford. Oh, it's unreal unaided to, to
Rd. from Peru to Australia, which is what we did.
So we've been helping as we could.
And then I said to Charlie, I said, look, I really want to do
something from the business. We haven't got a huge amount of
money, but how about we say from now until you land?
So there was still quite far out at that point.
We'll for everything sold in the UK of Maclean's nose, we'll
donate £5 to the the court. So it's basically the profit.
I'm not going to get into my commercials.
More or less a profit. And he said that would be great.
And I said, well, you do realise that they'll make more more
money if they stay out longer? Yeah, that outboard engine back
in the boat. But I mean, Mclean's knows
itself, you know, when you were talking about that ability to
then buy from other distilleries and you know, some of it would
go obvious into our Delphy, some of it's clearly going into
Mclean's nose as well, potentially.
And I mean, Charles McLean himself must.
Did he have some say in the recipe?
No, at the inception. He had a say in the so yeah,
like like we did with the first single malt from an American.
He got to choose between 3 versions, right?
We we were the ones. If you put it together, I had a
rough idea of what I wanted. Yeah, I wanted to use N British.
That's the Green, because of their family, the history.
Whether or not we'll always be able to use it, I don't know,
but it's certainly up until this point it's been 100%.
But we are fast approaching that time of the evening.
Well, I've got one last question.
I know I'm allowed one. Had an hour and a half.
Angry. I know.
I know well why. Why?
Why?
Yeah, but we're talking one of the previous podcasts on it, Flo
Uttrum on and we're talking a lot about the maturation and you
know, she of old pulp name. She played great emphasis on
that. The fact that it's all all the
stuff that goes into single malt is matured in weck and the you
know, the wind in the air plays a great part in the character of
the whiskey. It's everything that goes into
single malt. Armed American matured up at
armed American and and does that have a part to play in the
outcome of the whiskey as well? Because there is that
maritimeness and that salinity there is there.
I see it in an American as well. So with a very, very few
exceptions, when we ran out of warehouse space and we're about
to run out again and we had to take class off site for maybe
six months. Everything's been matured up
there. So there's there's two things I
don't know what was said about totally, but if I give you my
the impression, if you like, I mean, it's probably complete
rubbish. But this is the way I see it.
There are two factors by maturing on site, which will
allow you allow the spirit to take on more of a unique style,
specifically to the nature you're in the first one, and a
lot of people forget about this. If you're maturing on site, more
than likely you're filling your tasks at 63.5, unless you're
really stuck for space, in which case you'll go up a bit.
But you know, we all know in Scotland, 63.5 magic number
they're filling a cask comes off the still around 70, just over
70. That's quite a lot of water to
add, sure. And if you're filling on site,
more than likely you're going to be using your local water as
well. Right.
Certainly in our American when the water hits the hill, it goes
into the hill. We've got Moss, Pete, sheet
toenails, everything you like. What I'm trying to say is we
have a credibly unique water up there.
I mean, right to the point. We've had importers and agents
from all over the world coming trying the water and thinking
this is the best thing we've ever had to get back.
The whiskey, the water, you know.
So we have this lovely Peaky water coming off 3 springs on
the hill, which yes, it goes through UV filters because we
have to by law, but basically you are getting that mineral
rich reduction water into the cask.
I know that makes a difference. And then the second one, which
is slightly more kind of, you know, not wishy washy, but
certainly we'd like to think it has a big difference is the
atmosphere. So if you park your car in a
rainstorm outside the distillery, more often than not,
if the sun comes out after it, it'll be white with salt.
I was going to say, if you park it there for a few years, yeah,
yeah. So we're constantly being dumped
on from a hike with water and that is getting in.
It's permeating, it's through the warehouses, it's all
dunnage, it's all natural and we encourage it as much as we can.
Brilliant, brilliant. Good question, and it's worth
waiting for. Good.
Good, good, good. That's great.
Well, we are, we are getting to that point in the evening where
we do ask our guests whether what 3 drafts.
So Alex, it's, it's basically any 3 whiskeys that have a
meaning story or some sort of association with yourself.
And we do allow I mean, yeah, you're, you're the, you're the
gaffer. So you can have you can have as
many 1 brand as you like I. Don't think you're long enough
for that. Look, you very kindly gave me
about four hours warning for this.
So I have had a wee thing I and I am going to choose three that
have been stepping stones in my own personal exploration of
whiskey, one of which is trying to remember we've got the right
ones. Yes, one of which is is own
brand on brand and the other two aren't, although there's
connection. So the first one would be my
first introduction to proper quality single malt Scottish
whiskey. And I shared a flat here in
Edinburgh University with one of my oldest friends, whose father
back then owned a whiskey shop just outside Aviemore.
It was a legendary whiskey shop, long since sold.
But when we used to go up, if there was any snow on the hills,
maybe go up for a day skiing when we're students, and we'd
pop in to see Frank on the way down just for a restorative.
And I remember the first time getting introduced to Flora and
fauna, Mortlock and Liquid, side by side.
And it was a defining moment because up until that point it
had been whatever was on special in the local pub, which had been
fine, but it was local pub was probably the wrong place, wrong
DRAM. This was definitely the right
place, right DRAM? So mort Lac 16 which no longer
available as. Floor.
That's been mentioned the floor of it once, I think.
It's definitely been mentioned, but Linkwood 12 still very much
floor and fauna still going strong.
Cracking DRAM, Yeah. So that that would be certainly
something that got me interested.
And then it was only a couple of years from that stage when I
then got the job at Remy and and really built from there.
Second one, I don't know which order to put these in.
Yeah, OK. Second one would be me getting a
brain wave but on the back of a request to blend officially
blend international whiskey for the first time.
I may be wrong, but I've always felt that it was the first
official Japanese Scotch. There's been plenty of
unofficial stuff. This would have been 2015.
But you've been nervous. 2015 two guys or three guys
approached me in the office and said we want to commemorate the
life of a Scotsman called Thomas Blake Glover.
I'd never heard of him and along with most other Scots.
He's the man who founded Mitsubishi and or I played a
part in Mitsubishi and Kieran. Yeah, no, that's.
Why? We've become the big part,
right? He he he sold arms to the
Satsuma Daimyo, who was the kind of local landlord and played a
big part in the in the Satsuma Rebellion, which was a kind of
failed. But crucially got them to be got
them over for yeah, education in in the England for the first
time. So it was the first, the
current, as far as we know, of Japanese coming over to the West
to learn Western. Yeah, but he, he was based in
Nagasaki. I've been to Nagasaki and
there's a whole kind of garden that's dedicated to him and his
old house is still there and. So they, they basically, they
told me this in the space of an afternoon.
This is what he wants, what he did.
Excuse me. Interesting.
We want to, they said. We want you to make a blended
Scotch whiskey and we'll take the funds from it to help fund
rebuilding his house in in Fraserbrook or wherever.
It is, yeah. He's from Fraserbrook, so I.
Said, oh, this is great, it's really interesting.
And there was a few things which I hadn't picked up on but
subsequently made it even more important.
One of which, well, sorry. I then came back to them the
following day having had that brain wave, which was why are we
doing a blend of Scotch? He was a blend of the two
countries. Let's do that.
They said, can we do that? I said, no idea, I'll go and
talk to the SWA. And it took months.
That's another story. But the other trigger for this,
this combination was that where he did, where he started making
a huge impact in Japan was post the signing of the Treaty of
Amity and Commerce between the UK and Japan.
So America were first, the UK was about fourth in line.
But it just happened to be my great, great grandfather who was
ambassador or something. I don't, I can't remember out
there at the time had a faster ship than the French, so he got
up there. Before the Yangtze.
And signed the treaty second after America.
So that was 18. Eighteen 58455 Yeah, 1850s I
know. Yeah, 1850s.
And that allowed Glover then to start trading West to east.
So there was this amazing family connection, but I hadn't even
thought about it at all. So we had the bare bones of the
idea. I then went spent months with
the SWA going through everything.
What it boiled down to was you're only allowed to produce
Scotch whiskey in Scotland and the word produce was key.
So what is production? What does it entail?
And it came pretty much to its flavour altering.
So you can bottle in Scotland non Scotch whiskey, but you
can't do anything else, you can't mature it, you can't blend
it, etcetera. So we worked out a way of doing
it great, and then I had to find some Japanese whiskey in bulk.
Fortunately, I knew Ochiro reasonably well from Chichibu,
who still had reasonable stocks of Hanyu from his grandfather or
great uncle, I can't remember, who had had that distillery.
Now Hanyu's gone on to be the most ridiculously expensive,
unobtainable whiskey as as the castle got fewer and fewer.
But he offered me two to choose one.
They were both beautiful whiskeys.
We bought one. We blended it with Longbourn and
a few other things and it was the first Glover and out it.
Went what was the product called?
It was called the Glover, The Glover Glover, Yeah.
So we're now on batch 10/11 I. Think so the Glover Batch 1.
Yeah, this is batch 1 and it was in a fancy decanter.
First time the Delphi's ever done that.
It was over £1000 a bottle, bearing in mind it had a 23 year
old handy. Handy.
Yeah, Yeah. Wow, and it was delicious.
And the family, the family in the family connection.
Just fell as spurious connection and it also then allowed me to
look at other fusion blending opportunities with India,
Sweden, Australia. We've done, you know, those over
the years. So that was a big step in my own
personal kind of thing. And then the third one goes
going back to the other side of the family, the ushers was the
ability or the the the the chance to open a open a bottle
of Usher's green stripe with modern day and American
supporters. So our AD Venture club, the
adventure Club, we meet once or twice a year, normally in Zoom
and then in person, and that particular year a few years ago
was in Behind the Pear Tree in Edinburgh.
Yeah, which was recently owned by Angeles's house.
So I had this extraordinary opportunity to open the bottle
of green Stripe, which I'd got an auction Andrew Asher, albeit,
you know, long after he was gone, but his brand and share it
with my as an hour Adam Merkin Wow adventure Club.
In his house. In his house.
Wow, that's super and. It was bloody good whiskey as
well, actually. Great, great watch 3 dramas.
Yeah. Look, Alex, I have to say, you
know, it's been, it's been a real pleasure getting you on the
podcast. Adam Merkin for us.
I mean, the fact that I wish I'd brought a trophy because,
because last year we sat down to meet.
Sorry. Well, year, year past December
there we sat down and said what are our top drams of 2025?
And for me, Arden, Mark and and Sherry, I said that, like I
said, I wanted to fill a bathtub with it and wine it and drink it
and bathing it. Bit of a Eureka whiskey for.
You, it really was, it was, it was a crack and drop then this
year or last year. Sorry, 2020, sorry, that was
2024, I should say 2024-2025. We decided instead of going
through our all of our drams that were our top ones, we put
it out to the listeners and we got a lot of feedback coming in.
People ranked in no order. Some people put them in order
their top 10 drams of 2025. I don't know how to collate that
kind of information to I chucked in and ChatGPT, but basically by
basically came out with what were the top brands that people
were drinking and are the market finished?
Number one, it was #1 for the Whiskey Stories podcast.
So two years in a row, effectively. 2024 Dana Merkin
and Sherry for me 2025 Whiskey Stories podcast Drama of the
Year I. Mean that's music music to our
you know, generally we're not we're not we're not trying to
rewrite anything. We're just whiskey lovers who've
got behind the lucky enough to get behind the new distillery
and do everything in ice. And if if other people have the
same taste buds. It's fantastic and we're coming
up to see you. Well, I was going to say, you
haven't even been yet. Yeah, well we're going to make
the pilgrimage aren't we lads? We're going to be heading up not
too far away in fact. This episode will go out on the
2nd of April. Yep.
And and I. Can't be more excited?
Actually I'm on the 3rd and the 4th here.
And on the 3rd and 4th, we're ending up.
So this episode, the the the vlog and our trip up, Cornell's
looking after us. I think he's actually heading to
New Zealand the next day. Or or, well, maybe not.
Yeah, well, you never know. Yeah, but we're getting looked
after up up in the distillery, so we're really looking forward
to keep your eyes peeled for that.
But Alex, thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you for sharing your whiskey story as well.
And thank you so much for sharing these fantastic drams
with us as well. How How do people get to the
distillery salary opened just now?
Yeah, it is. Come Easter, it'll be open seven
days a week, hopefully, certainly 6.
We're aiming for seven this year.
Usual kind of business hours. There is an in joke that an
American distillery is 4 hours from anywhere in Scotland,
including including an American, but it is worth every single
mile of that trip. Angus is driving.
That's for. Sure.
Yeah, boy, thank you very much, Alex, for coming on.
Thank you for everyone who's listening.
Keep up to date with everything that's going on through the
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All the very best. Thank you very much, Alex.
Sponge bar. Cheers.
There we go. Well done.
Nice one. Excellent.
That's the closest I've ever come out pushing my pants.
Sasha. See.
See, I started me. I'm sorry, I should have gone on
longer. No, no, you're all right.