Whisky Stories Podcast

I love listening to Alex Thomson talking about history, whisky, and Scottish Hospitality.

And there's plenty of that on this episode.

Since the last time Alex was on the podcast he's since left his role at Glenturret and has set up his own business with a focus on delivering authentic Scottish experiences with a focus on the Perthshire area.

Alex has plenty of amazing whisky stories and is also a member of the Athol Highlanders which is a private Scottish army.

It was great catching up with him again.

This is the second time we've interviewed Gregor Hannah from Lady of the Glen Independent Bottlers. And if there's one thing I know about him, he just says it as it is.

This episode is one of the best insights I've ever had on Independent Bottling. How he started the business, growing the business to the point of bringing in a Brand Ambassador Paul McKendrick, and searching for markets to sell their whisky.

This was our May Indy Bottler Spotlight tasting with a live audience, we went through their latest releases and even got our very own One of One bottle from the ONLY Solera Cask System in Scotland.

It was just the boys in for some drams and a catch up for this week.

We haven't had an episode with just the 4 of us this year! So it was good to get us all in the back room at Diggers, get some drams and answer some listener questions.

There's a lot to unpack in this, there's questions ranging from our dream distillery visit to who would win in a whisky triathlon.

Turns out Chuck's dad is now a listener, so hello Mr Kerr.

Ross is off to America with the Current Wife. So if anyone at Iron Fish Distillery is listening, hook him up.

Pour a dram and enjoy this.

This is the second time we've had Finn Thomson on the podcast. The first time was for our second Indy Bottler Spotlight. But we wanted to sit down with Finn and dive into his fascinating whisky family history which dates all the way back to 1772.

Illicit stills, blending, buying casks, and carrying on the family business. We hear all about how Finn decided to set up his very own whisky business and the work that goes into starting a whisky brand.

He even brought in some of the new bottles for his latest project with the Scotland Tartan Army for the World Cup. These are the Official Tartan Army bottlings. They look and taste fantastic, and at the time of the podcast going out, they are on sale to buy. If there are any left.

Enjoy

It was a big night at Mother Superior for our Whisky Stories LIVE event with Adelphi and Ardnamurchan.

After our trip to the distillery, it was great to sit down with a group on a Friday night and go through a great lineup which included our very own hand picked cask sample we drew on our trip to the distillery.

We had Calum Rafferty and Connie MacDonald in representing Adelphi and Ardnamurchan and they brought some great drams along with them.

Another great night with loads of laughs and great whisky.

This is the big one.

Dr. Emma Walker is the Master Blender for Johnnie Walker. That's got to be the biggest job in whisky. She is responsible for blending and signing off on all Johnnie Walker products and she talked us through the whole process.

Getting to sit down and have some drams with Emma has been one of the best experiences I've had since starting the podcast. Hearing her explain the magnitude of the job that she has, managing 11 million casks of whisky, maintaining the quality and consistency of a product that's sold all over the world, and creating exciting new releases for new individual markets. This podcast was a proper insight into one of the biggest drinks brands in the world.

This week's episode is with Andrew Lennie who is the Global Whisky Specialist for Whyte & Mackay.

This episode is actually part of our collaboration with Whyte & Mackay to celebrate the 60th anniversary for Tamnavulin Distillery.

In this episode we hear about how Andrew got into whisky and worked his way to becoming the Global Whisky Specialist for Whyte & Mackay.

We talked about the whole Whyte & Mackay portfolio which includes The Dalmore, Jura, Fettercairn and Tamnavulin. We talked about the incredible stat that Jura and Tamnavulin are number 1 and number 2 best seeling single malt whisky in the UK for off-trade in volume and value which is mental.

Jura being number 1 and Tamnavulin being number 2.

We also spoke about the unique still cooling system at Fettercairn as well as their use of Scottish oak which is really interesting. Ross had the Fettercairn 18 which is 100% finished in Scottish oak.

We also got a chance to try the 2 NEW and EXCLUSIVE Tamnavulin Special releases. One being the 25 year old celebration single cask for the 60th anniversary which was actually distilled and put into the cask in 2000 when the distillery was mothballed and we also tried their single cask release for Spirit of Speyside Festival which will only be available at the distillery for the 1 week that it is open to the public during the festival.

Anyone who knows the pod will know that we never ignore barley chat. However, we've had Master Blenders, Distillers, Distillery Owners and Founders on the pod, but never had a Maltster.

David Hannah is Head of Distillery Sales - Global for Muntons Malt. Basically, it's his job to travel around the world talking to Distillery Managers and selling them malted barley.

David said that it might not be the sexiest part of the process, but it's definitely the most important. And we deep dive into the world of malting in this episode.

This was a lot of fun to record, David is a keen listener of the pod and we had a few more drams after recording.

We're BIG fans of Old Pulteney on the pod. But we don't know enough about it. So we had Flora Outram who is a Brand Ambassador for International Beverage. She covers everything in their portfolio from New Zealand whisky and vodka, Thai Single Malt and all of their Scotch brands.

Thankfully for us, Old Pulteney is one of the brands she covers.

We tried some great drams and heard about the amazing history of the distillery which is turning 200 years old this year.

Prohibition in Scotland, salinity tasting notes and loads of laughs. This was a lot of fun to record.

We're HUGE fans of Ardnamurchan on the podcast. So it made sense for us to find out the story of how it started.

Alex Bruce is the Managing Director of Ardnamurchan and Adelphi.

In this episode he talks us through how he started out at Adelphi in 2004 with nothing more than a black book of contacts, a filing cabinet, fax machine and 3 casks.

From there he grew Adelphi into a premium highly sought after Independent Bottler and then made the decision it was time to build a distillery.

This was a lot of fun and there were some amazing drams he was kind enough to bring in with him.