More Good Drinks - Industry Podcast

Nick Ravenhall doesn’t think he’s a New Zealand whisky maker. He’ll tell you that himself, in the same breath he uses to name-check Mat or Rach Thomson, Mark and Ro on Waiheke, and a list of others he’s careful not to leave out. But he is one of three ‘washed-up bartenders’ collecting awards and redefining the playing field in New World whisky.

Woven Whisky landed back in New Zealand last month — second time around, but this in 700ml bottles. We sat down at the tail end of his trip home to talk about what’s actually happening underneath the hood and making blended whisky such an exciting place to make whisky right now: the structural argument that makes blending — proper, contemporary, world-spanning blending — the format that meets the moment the industry is in.

Because whisky is genuinely strange right now.

“There was an upswing in the purchasing of bottles,” Ravenhall says of the bubble, “but I don’t think there was the upswing in consumption to keep consuming all the extra bottles that people were buying.”

Somewhere around 2012, Scotch — and then much of new world whisky riding the same wave — started being a thing you bought, collected and talked avbout more than you drank it. Cask releases stacked on cask releases. Small batches stacked on small batches. New releases every month, each one as collectable as the last. China running hot on Western premiumisation. Then COVID struck, where everyone went home and bought the bottles they’d been meaning to try, just to pass the time.

And the whisky makers, beholden to forecasts built on all of that purchasing, kept making.

What no one had clean data on was whether any of it was being drunk. Sales reports showed movement. You know I talk about this a lot. Depletion reports — the actual re-orders, the rotation through retail, the second and third bottle bought by the same household — were a different story.

“All you have to do is see a new release and just scroll down the commentary,” Ravenhall says, on where customers landed. “They’re like, not another blah, blah, blah, blah.”

The current correction isn’t really a whisky problem but there’s definitely a trust problem with whisky pricing among enthusiasts. Value for dollar dram videos flood YouTube. Customers haven’t stopped drinking. They haven’t even stopped seeking out the unicorn bottles, but the promise on the label has to land in the glass.

Which is where Woven, offers an incredibly well-timed offer to the market.

“As a blender,” Ravenhall says, “we have the extreme privilege of not being distillers.”

A distiller wanting to try something has to make it, fill a cask, and wait three years minimum, six or seven before the liquid does what they hoped. A blender can buy something today and put it in a glass tomorrow. No three-year capital lockup on every experiment and no forecast built on whisky futures, in a world where value continually goes up.

What that unlocks, when you do it well, is a flavour proposition no single distillery can offer. Pure Malt, the blend Ravenhall and I tasted through, takes a Sherry-led Speyside heart and layers it with single malts from Starward in Australia, Kavalan in Taiwan, Paul John in India.

“If you as a customer wanted to experience those three other things, you’re going to be buying three other bottles at north of $100. Are you going to do that? Not ever.”

For a while now, blends got left on the bottom shelf at the UK’s Tesco for £18, while every distiller and their distributor chased the cask-strength single malt premium. The category that is actually solved a price-and-discovery problem for the modern customer was the category nobody was really paying attention to.

Woven came into being in the gap.

Sure, three washed-up bartenders — Nick’s words, not mine — turning up to blend at the level Scotch holds blenders to is a high bar. The first couple of years, he says, were just figuring out whether it could work at all. The next couple were realising they had to change how it worked. They’re five years in. Operationally, they now know how to land a price point on the shelf the customer is happy to pay, and then they over-deliver on experience. They’ve moved from single blended expressions to stamping their confidence and hard-won customer trust into a core range.

“It’s just a f*****g simple equation,” Ravenhall says. “Respect your customer. Put a price on the shelf they’re happy to pay. Make sure you keep your whisky promise. Make something that surprises and delights them.”

Ravenhall is candid that the rules-and-regulations approach Scotch has used to police itself for two centuries — the SWA, the sensory panels, the Appellation discipline — has almost nothing to teach New World whisky makers. He’d know. He was running Holyrood when SWA put a Rauchmalt-distilled spirit through a blind sensory panel to determine whether birch-smoked malt could legitimately be called single malt. (It could, in the end.) But that machinery exists to protect a 200-year-old category from itself. Trying to retrofit it onto Australasian or Nordic or Taiwanese whisky-making is not going to help.

“Stop trying to make rules and regulations to gather in your whisky-making,” he says. “We’re all too early in the process.”

The implication is bold, but is worth some consideration. New World makers who treat Scotch as the template — the rules, the price ladder, the cask-release cadence, the founder-as-hero marketing — are competing on Scotch’s terms in a market Scotch already owns the high ground in. The interesting move is to do the things Scotch doesn’t do.

Blend across borders. Build a flavour proposition that isn’t tied to a single still. Tell the customer what they’re actually getting. Charge them what it’s worth. Land on the shelf at a price that lets them say yes.

Whether the rest of the category catches up to that argument is a different conversation. Some of it will. Some of it won’t survive long enough to.

The full conversation with Nick Ravenhall — including how a job at Cragganmore turned into Holyrood turned into Woven, why he passed his business card across the desk at Blair Athol like a crazed antipodean fanboy, and what it feels like to ship whisky home and watch your mum run out of it — is on the More Good Drinks podcast now.

Cory Evans is a really nice guy. Or he might just be Canadian. I invited Cory to get tiger-onesie comfy so we could unpack a few layers about what one of the stalwarts of New Regent St is like off shift and outside the bar. We learn about the trade he took up when he thought he was done with hospo, why he came and what he loves about Christchurch hospitality specifically.

Along the way, maybe Cory finds out he has changed a little bit in the five years he’s been in the 03 and calling NZ home and personally, I think it’s a refreshing kind of wisdom to process ego alongside self-deprecating humour and generally bringing the golden retriever energy to people around him.

But decide for yourself and let me know if you’re up for a dose of room service.

Have you sat beside Cal Ross on the couch at Panacea? This time we turn the tables and get cosy unpacking the tension, struggle, triumph and the bonds as tight as family and tighter that accompanied every step of his journey to success this year.

From defeat and nearly giving up to now being a double champion of Del Maguey and Scapegrace Uncharted - you won’t help but fall a little bit in love with the heart and soul of Cal Ross.

You may even learn a little about the battle with ego, self-reflection and feedback to become better than ever and tightly bound to those who journey with you along the way.

Want to know what’s like to get an email saying - well done, you came 51st in the world but it wasn’t quite enough? PJ opens up about a recent cocktail competition experience and we break down the lessons we’ve both learned about losing well.

The TLDR: Meet the brief, champion the spirit, compete together not against each other and .. the power of the Edit.

I hope you’ll love this chat and feel inspired to share your own lessons with the More Good Drinks community.

We all want more community and connection in our hospo industry but it’s not easy to know how and where to begin.

Appleton Estate have come to the party, bringing together some leading doers of community to showcase what’s been working and to get honest and vulnerable about building a supportive community with or without a drink in hand.

Plus, we tease a little Aperol Spritz Karaoke, an event designed to bring nothing but joy to your face, if not your ears.

Big energy and big smiles as we talk about the big parties Pernod are hosting at NZBarCon - with one big takeaway… New Zealand hospitality has great stories to tell on a global stage… and we’re on our way there.

In this episode you’ll hear a big shout out to Kismet, where James recently had a great time at the Winter Whisky Festival, Evan’s tales of learning the art of the Kiwi barbeque, another Kiwi off to the Global Top 10 for the Jameson Black Barrel comp and where you can find massages, brekky and coffee after a huge weekend at NZBarCon.

Not to mention - bartenders have three days to get their Del Maguey entries in.

We chat with Tom Price of Michter's, alongside Jamie Dickens of Tickety-Boo Liquor about their upcoming events at NZBarCon and the broader benefits of connecting with community.Plus, it’s Excise Day so be nice to the people who pay the bills. We do celebrate an increase in the newly renamed Pae Ora Agency levy - that’s the tax that actually goes to alcohol harm prevention. Be sure to throw your questions, topics you’d like to see covered and guests at us too. [email protected]

Mikey Ball covers the taster of Scapegrace’s FlavourLab 2.0 that will be on offer at NZBarCon - an education spotlight that will be limited seats but free to attend. Mikey will walk you through the process of deliberate drinks - from story to process and prep through to delivery. You won’t want to miss this - especially if menu development and drink development is your interest.

He’s also delivering a ton of lessons in carbonation - call it the Fizzness! And more puns will be on offer I’m sure.

Plus we cover the details of Scapegrace Uncharted - a 48hr deadline to get those flavour & locality driven entries in. And NZBarCon is giving away 3 prize packs of flights to Auckland with a prezzy card to help accom. It’s lal on.

With NZBarCon just around the corner, Tash sat down with Drew Down, William Grant & Sons ambassador in the NZ market to talk about all things House of William Grant party on the 5th of August, the importance of fun, community, brand love and immersion experience.

Jane is one of the most effective hospitality PR specialists in the marketplace, as well as being warm, generous and genuinely invested in seeing her clients get great results. She’s also been named one of the Top 50 Women in Food & Drink.

Listen in for

* when and how to engage effectively with PR

* understanding a good brief and when not to act in a cluttered market

* what PR can help you with and what it can’t