00:00 Introduction You're listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, back in your feed with Something Scotch. I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. Brett's in the room. Hi. Hey Brett, thanks for coming back. Thanks for having me. Why are you here? I'm here because I'm with Stephanie Macleod. Hey Stephanie. Hi, pleasure to be here. From Bacardi, but more important from Dewar's. Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. Only my second time, I think, in Chicago, and it's always amazing to be here, and there's snow on the ground. That's true. That's true, yeah. So, wasn't expecting that. We're not stoked on it, but you're welcome. A little bit earlier than we would have expected. We've gushed about your products on our podcast before. Remember that whisk a year, a couple of years ago? That was pretty good, huh? Yeah, yeah it was. It was one of those moments in life that you cherish. I can see it. It did, which I think shocked a lot of people, because we were having a discussion pregame about how sometimes the quality of blends, you know, Dewar's is a blend. Dewar's is one of the top selling blends in the world, one of the early blends. And one of the early blends that I think came out of not only a desire to have consistency, which is where blends came from historically in Scotland, but an attempt to really make a high quality product that was far better than anything else in the world. Wasn't it the first ever Scotch that was served in the White House, if I remember? We go way back with JB. Yes, yes. What? The first Scotch in the White House. The first Scotch that was ever served in the White House. Who was the president? It was Tommy Dewar was buzzing around. Well, it was actually Andrew Carnegie that facilitated it. So it was his, obviously he's a Scotsman, and he was born in Scotland. And I should remember the president, but I can't remember it. And I was only just told this information not that long ago. We'll say Taft. President, no, Harrison. It was President Harrison. Okay. And Andrew Carnegie sent him a case of Dewar's. And the bourbon industry were up in arms because the president was drinking something that wasn't bourbon. And how could he do that? And you know what? The corn farmers still take it personally. So they should. So they should. Dewar's has a long history of world exploration, possibly one of the first blends or one of the first scotches where the people that owned the company made a great effort to go outside of Scotland and outside of Europe, the famous travels of Tommy Dewar. Dewar. 2:40 Stephanieʼs Journey and Dewarʼs Legacy So with that legacy in mind, what brought you to Dewar's? What were you doing before you were running things at Dewar's? I mean, I've actually been thinking about this actually on the plane over here because I'm doing a speech at the end of this month. And that's what I'm talking about. And it really was, it was luck because when I was at university and graduating, the whisky industry, this was in the 90s, the whisky industry did not make itself known to me. And, you know, I saw whiskeys being something that my older uncles would drink and it wasn't relevant to me. And so when I graduated, I joined a soft drinks company, Iron Brew, which is very famous in Scotland. Oh my, you know, I just bought a case of that because Brett's co-worker, Dan, told me that I'd like it. Iron Brew. It's like- Iron Brew made from girders. It's no, it's no moxie. That's all I'm gonna say. Yeah. It's a great trivia question. It's the only country in the world where Coca-Cola is not the number one consumed soft drink is Scotland because of Iron Brew. Iron Brew. Is it that orange everywhere? Yes. Why is it orange? Doesn't taste like orange. No. It tastes like, I don't know. There might be orange in there somewhere. It tastes like melted orange jello. No, like iodine in watered down cough syrup. It's kind of like hubba bubba. Yeah. Bubble gum. Yeah, like bubble gum that somebody else already chewed. Yes. Well, anyway, that's where I worked. So, that's interesting. So, what was academically, what did you study when you were in school? I studied food science at the University of Strathclyde and I was quite lucky that department, it focused in on whiskey. So, it was a passion of Dr. Pigott who ran the department, that was his passion, was sensory aspects of whiskey. So, when I graduated, started working at Iron Brew, my old supervisor, John Pigott, called me up and said, would you like to join my research group? And we're studying mostly whiskey. And I thought, yes, why not? And in a way, my mom and dad were annoyed because I was leaving a full-time, well-paid job for fixed contract in academia and they couldn't quite understand it. But there was something about it that drew me to it. Wait, what did you drink at the time? Oh, I think I was drinking Midori and lemonade. Appletinis and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, we all were though. Lemonade. The baby food, as we call it. Right. I was like 17. Yeah, I was a little bit older. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not proud of it, but I was that age. So it just blew my mind from three ingredients, water, malted barley, yeast. We could produce this myriad of different flavors, and then we bring in casks. And I just, I fell in love with whisky, and I fell in love with the whisky industry. And so I spent four years in academia studying whisky, studying olive oil, wines from Northern Italy, all sorts of things we were looking at. Then I thought, I love whisky so much, I want to be part of it, I don't just want to study it. And then a role came up at Dewar's. And Bacardi had just acquired the Dewar's brand from UDV in 1998 when I started. And so it was a really exciting time to be part of Dewar's. You know, the company had just expanded, there was all these plans, a new bottling hall was being built. And I came in to the company working in the quality department, so working on the cases and the labels, as well as the liquid. So I spent my time crawling about bottling lines and measuring cases and it wasn't glamorous, but it really gave me an insight into the whisky industry. And then they always kept in mind that I had this sensory scientific background. And they put me in charge of the lab. And we had our master blender then who was Tom Aiken. And I always found it funny that why would you just rely on one person to determine the sensory quality of your liquid? And you know, what happens if he goes off sick? If he goes on holiday, what happens then? So we set up our very first sensory panel and we went out to everyone in the business. We calibrated their noses, but it's really just determining can people pick up differences in whisky? Then, you know, one day I was asked a question that changed everything for me. And that was, would you like to train up to be the master blender when the current master blender retires in three years' time? And I was shocked because, you know, coming into the seventh master blender, I was the first woman to become the master blender. There weren't many women at that time that were in that position. So there was Rachel Barry had just come into post. It was Maureen Robinson at Diageo. But it really was. It was I had to kind of take a breath and say, you know, I can do this. You know, I have the abilities to do it. I just have to have the confidence to do it. So I had that three years of training. And I went out to the industry and said, Dr. Bill, can I come in and see what you do as a blender? And he was like, of course you can. I did the same with Maureen Robinson, Brian Kinsman, and David Stewart at William Grant's. And everybody just opened their doors and said, yeah. I mean, they didn't share the recipes with me. But, you know, they've just told me from their perspective what it was like to be a blender. 8:18 The Blending Challenge Having seen this process and actually having done this process with, to a certain extent, with you, we've done a project. And also with Grant's and Brian Kinsman and Ian Miller at the time. You know, people, I think, have this misconception that there is one exact recipe where you have, I need, you know, where it's always salt and pepper and cumin and cinnamon. When in reality, you're dealing with a constantly changing cat. Now, subtle changes only, but a constantly changing cast characters to construct something that is the same over and over and over and over. And I think the people don't understand the complexity of it. So let's talk about some of the things that you're dealing with on a day to day basis just to put together the largest selling product, which is Dewar's White Label. Potentially, one, what is the size of a batch typically? Two, how many components are you looking at? How long have you been looking at them? I mean, just what are the, as basic as you can get, what are the steps behind constructing a blend? So what we do as a first step is we, our inventory is huge and it contains a whole myriad of different flavor profiles. So what we do is we categorize the spirits into different categories. So we'll have green grassy, we'll have fruity floral, we'll have grainy, we'll have Isla and then we'll have our green whiskeys as well. What that means is that if a particular malt isn't available on the day that we want to blend, because we don't blend just because we wake up in the morning and say, oh, I feel like blending today. We blend because, you know, Binny's in Illinois want some Dewar's White Label, and so we have to blend for that. So these are the signals that we are getting that we then blend for. Having these different categories allows us to be able to be flexible, but still retain the flavor profile of Dewar's. But then we have to factor in that we also have a wood profile. So it's not just about the recipe that shows the different makes, we also have the wood profile that has a certain percentage of bourbon, a certain percentage of sherry, and also refill casks. And so we have to satisfy the two criteria. And that can be quite difficult to do. Sometimes we talk about it being like a Rubik's Cube. You've satisfied one thing, but wait a minute, we haven't got the bourbon content right. So you think that Dewar's White Label is quite a simple thing to do, but actually there's a lot of technical aspects that we have to get right. But also, we also have to be able to predict, you know, years in advance, what we're going to be doing in the future. And we don't always get those forecasts right. Right. And that can be really difficult to manage. And that's often why we have to, you know, go into different stocks, and, you know, sometimes we have to do some finishing because we just haven't either laid down enough stock or laid down too much. So it's just a, it's dynamic, the whole, you know, and you don't associate dynamism with Scotch whisky. But when you're actually at the coalface making whisky, we're constantly looking at forecasts and seeing what do we need to do to satisfy these forecasts. So it's as much sourcing you're giving, just like a good chef, you spend as much time, or probably more time sourcing your ingredients than you do actually putting it together. It's like, hey, we're running low on green grassy. We need to go and so what distilleries fit that profile. And by the way, if you can get it in ex-Burban, that would be great. Yes. Right. Versus, or we have way too much of this. Yes. Ask a super dumb question and I've always kind of wondered, well, before you do the blend, how long are you holding onto the goods? And is it always warehouse to offside, or how much of that maturation do you do yourself? I would say most of the maturation is in our control, but we also have pockets that are out with our company. And we will be holding other people's stock, they will be holding ours. I don't know if it's well known, but we have a reciprocation in the whisky industry. So we have five distilleries, but we have many more than five distilleries in our blends. Yeah, yeah. And so we have to reciprocate with other companies in order to make our blends. And it's one of the unique things about the whisky industry is that we are fierce competitors in the marketplace. Well, the salespeople are. Yeah. But they're kind of jerks. Yeah. So you don't have to. No, but at the technical level, we all cooperate with each other because we know that if we all make the best whisky that we can, we're going to make the best blends that we can. And so that's why we have the Scottish Whisky Research Institute, where if you're a member, we all come together. We address issues that affect the whisky before it gets into the marketplace. And I think that's one of the unique things about Scottish whisky. And I think that's why we all love being in it, because we have this kind of camaraderie. You know, we are a small country with this big global product. And so we need to work together to make it the best that we possibly can. Yeah, and the benefits actually travel outside of just being able to everybody being able to construct the proper blends. A number of our signatory hand picks, in fact, I know, were sourced, actually surplus, basically surplus to need of Bacardi that just happened to spin out barrels that were bought at very young ages, that were very, very high-quality liquid, that just you didn't need that whiskey at that time to construct what you're constructing. And then when these things are constructed, just survey has a sense of scale, because we visited, you have two major warehouse complex in Glasgow, right? You have one that's active on the south side of the, west side of the, west side, east side of town, which was where the blending hall and everything is. And then you have more passive storage on the west side. Of town. Once you've made the decision what the recipe, just so people understand the scale, and risk is a bad way to put it, but how you're really relying on the sensory from a whole bunch of different pieces coming together. When you construct, are you bringing all of those casks to the facility on the east side of the, or are you bottling or dumping some and shipping bulk liquid from the different storage sites, not even factoring in what you might have stored in the So most of it is warehoused at Puneel. So that's about a half an hour drive from the east end of Glasgow, where our headquarters is. And so what we try to do is to train the guys that are working down there on the sensory aspects of all of our products, because they are our first line of defense. We get them to nose the spirit. If there's anything, they'll flag it to us. But we will then get the tanker up to our bottling site. We'll then have the spirit preparation guys that will offload the liquid. They will then reduce it to bottling strength and chill filter it. And then it's ready for bottling. It's quite an operation. But also before that, when we get in the new make spirit, the new make spirit comes in. It can't just sit there. We've got to ensure that we've got the right casks that are sitting, waiting for that spirit to go into. And, you know, these casks are coming from the US, our Bourbon casks, Sherry casks coming from Spain. So it's a real feat of logistics, bringing everything together at the right time in order that we have the correct spirit and the correct casks when we come to blend in a few years time. And I think that's a complexity people don't understand. And so essentially, you're buying, if you're getting something from X Distillery Macallan or wherever, Glen Fittick, you're actually buying bulk liquid off the still and controlling the wood regimen yourself, rather than being so people would think that you just have a bunch of casks being trucked around, when in reality it's raw liquid being trucked around. So you get possession of it when it's new make, and it's yours from that point, unless you trade it out. And, you know, we know it and, you know, if all is well, then we'll fill it into casks. And then it sits, and it sits, and it sits, and it waits until it has its time to shine. I was talking earlier to a group, and I was saying, you know, the whisky that we make today, we may never see in a bottle, but everybody puts their heart and soul into every drop, knowing that one day it will be consumed and appreciated. So it's a magical industry to work in. It really is a privilege. 17:48 Double Aging Innovation Speaking of appreciated, we have some sample bottles. Oh. Jumping straight into the- Can we taste and talk? So yeah, we can taste and talk. So a couple of things that more recently that I think that Dewars has been at the front end of innovating for. So the driver, the workhorse, is of course Dewars White Label. It would be something that's been around for years and years and years, competitor to the Johnny Walker franchise, to teachers, to famous Grouse. I'd say it's more iconic than most of those. To J&B. So that being one thing, the world started really embracing single malt in the late 90s, but it really I think came to a fore in the early 2000s, and certainly Americans got involved in the single malt world. Just for context, even though single malts are the sexy part of the category of Scotch whiskey in general, in reality, it's at an all-time high, but they're still less than, they might barely be 30 percent of what's consumed, the rest is consumed in blend. So I think that when everybody was discovering single malt in the early 2000s, late 90s, early 2000s, broad market, there was a perception somehow, it's like, well, the only way Scotch can be really great is if it's a single malt in blends, can't be great. And I think that Dewar's, and this goes back, when did Dewar's 12 launch, which is what we're going to try and talk about. It was the start of 2000. Yeah, the original 12 was way, way back. And that would have been at the beginning of the movement to single malt, and it would have been one of the first flavor innovations from the Dewar's family, correct? There hadn't been a lot of flavor innovations that had been done at that point in time. Yeah, I mean, obviously we took over the brand in 1998. So it was basically, there was white labeled, and there was Ancestor, which was a 12-year-old. And we decided to, you know, it was before my time as a blender, but, you know, we wanted to do this 12-year-old, and we wanted to double age it. So that was where we were taking the blend of malt whiskeys and grain whiskeys, all aged to 12 years old. And then we aged again. So we put it in to Nert casks to allow these disparate flavors of the malts and grains to come together, to interact with one another, and to create this, you know, increased smoothness. It takes up a lot of time, you know, a lot of people, a lot of space, but we really did believe that it was going to make a difference to our blends. And so a few years ago, we were working on a Gers 19 for the US Open, and we put it into Bourbon casks. And we thought, you know, the profile of Gers works really well with Bourbon. So we decided to put some Gers 12 into Bourbon casks, and we loved it. And you know, we talked about it with the brand team, and they said, yeah, let's do it. So we made this really small change of, instead of using inert casks to marry, to double-age our whiskey, we used Bourbon. And it just seemed to amplify the creamy toffee notes and the citrus notes that we associate with Gers 12, and just took them to a whole new level. So it's just so Moorish. And you know, we really did think, oh, it's just a small change. It's not going to do that much. But wow, we just found there was such a big difference. And I was in Puerto Rico at the start of the year, and we just went to this bar. And without any prompting, you know, they were asking, what do you think of the new Gers 12 in Bourbon? They were saying, oh, it's amazing. You know, it just seems to amplify. And I was like, what? So, you know, our whiskey drinkers noticed the difference. And proof in a way that you can get people to spell the myth that the only way that you can be complex and interesting and have depth and have character is to be a single malt. Yeah. The opposite direction that in fact you can very, very much blend these together. Yeah. You know, when I became the master blender, I always thought, right, I'm really going to, you know, obviously we have our single malts as well. But I really wanted to hero the blended Scotch. And I wanted to show people that it can be every bit as interesting as a single malt. And single malts are incredible. But, you know, making up a blend is very complex. You know, it takes all the skills that you use in single malts. And, you know, we blend different casks for single malts as well. So it's the same process. And what we're trying to do is achieve balance, that dry, sweet balance that we're looking for. And it's exactly the same skill set. And I remember being at a whisky fair. I'd not long become the master blender. And I said to this guy, would you like to try our Dewar's 18? I said, ah, I actually, I really only drink single malts. I don't really do blends. And I said, well, why don't you try it? You know, it's free. May as well. So he tried it. And to his credit, he said, ah, I didn't realize that a blended Scotch could taste like this. Well, you're held to such a high. And again, legacy and it's not, it's just because you were producing what was in bulk. But blends were kind of created as much for consistency as they were for differentiation. Right. I mean, it was it was a way to make sure that whoever's name was on it, I know that adores or whoever applied their name to the blend, that we have a good reputation for making something solid and consistent. So, you know, you have independent bottlers, independent blenders, people like Compass Box most, you know, probably were really the people who put it on the radar screen. But now you have a number of other, you know, other larger companies have tried, you know, Monkey Shoulder probably being the most prominent. But, you know, the Langs are doing it with their whole regional series, so on and so forth. I think that unfairly, you guys were probably also given a higher bar, because while these guys are small, it's the whole principle of what is craft and is, does craft distilling and craft blending have to necessarily be applied to something that's small? Because I think for a lot of people small is an adjective that is involved in craft, but I don't think that anybody, even people, you know, anybody that works for Compass Box or any of the other smaller independents is ever going to say, Also, they all have the freedom to, if they have something that's like outside of character, they can still cook up a label and slap it on it and then call it a special batch or something. And you would have to have that on a pretty large scale in order to execute something like that. You have to aim for consistency. I mean, yes, we do aim for consistency. And we also have our smaller batches, our Dewar's Double, Double range. And that was all about, you know, so it's 46% non-chill filtered, no added colour. And really, we wanted to show the art of blending. And we wanted each one to represent a different aspect of the Dewar's House style. And, you know, our four stage aging process, which allows incredible integration of the malt whiskeys coming together, the grain whiskeys coming together, you know, letting them sit and, you know, really integrate. And then bringing those together as the blended scotch. And then the final flourish, the 21 in the all or also. Can we talk about this 12 that we have in the glass real quick? Yeah. This is just plain Dewar's 12. And I'm sorry to say plain. Right now it's on sale at Binny's for $29.99. It's $30 for this bottle. And it is phenomenal. Every time I try this, it kind of pisses me off that it's so delicious. And you don't have to look everywhere for something so great. Okay. So like we have citrus fruit, we have more pear skin. There's a wisp of iodine, a little bit of smoke on the back. But it's really all about baking spice up front. And the whole thing is just supported by this like classic Scotch grain quality. Yeah. And it's just like textbook. We're nosing it at 40%. You know, we've not added any water. There's, it's in a beautiful Glencairn glass. But you could drink it neat. Absolutely no problem. Yeah. You know, it's just so smooth. It's a testament to using great ingredients. So great single malts, great grain whisky, carefully chosen casks, and then that final flourish of finishing in these great bourbon casks. I don't know what we do without bourbon in our lives. You know, we love the bourbon casks that we get from you guys. Oh, bourbon casks. I think we feel that way for different reasons. 26:56 Cask Series Exploration So, what was the timeline? Because one of the other innovations that Dewars has really sort of made their mark in is the Double Double program and some of the other further cast maturation. In fact, a couple that might have crossed the SWA on the way to getting approved, possibly, in terms of what you were using. But what was the timeline for you tweaking 12, right, to add instead of inert finishing, marrying, using the bourbon finishing? And when you embarked on the whole series of the Double Doubles, the younger non-age statement whiskeys that have been finished in Mezcal, that have been finished in Rum, that have been finished in leading up to a project that we did with you a couple of years ago at a much, much older, you know, much, much higher age. What was the timeline between tweaking 12 and when you started really also following up with these other finishing casts and doing these medium, small batches? Yeah, so the 12 tweak was fairly recent, fairly recent times. But where we really started to get our teeth into finishing of our blend, so our Dewar's 8 was with the Cask series. We were sitting around in the brand team office in London, and we were just talking about what we wanted to do with Dewar's. And we were talking about, I wonder how rum would go with Dewar's. And so we got some rum casks from Puerto Rico. That was during Hurricane Maria, just after Hurricane Maria, but they still managed to send us some lovely rum casks. We loved what that did. We had always wanted to do something with Miss Gal. But at that point, we weren't allowed to use Miss Gal. And some Miss Gal's just didn't work well with whiskey. Why can't you use Miss Gal? It was just one of these rules that, because it wasn't, excuse me, it wasn't traditional. Scotland rule? Yes, the SWA, the Scotch Whisky Regs. Oh, technically isn't a government body. It's an independent agency that is allowed to set the rules for the government. So the Scotch Whisky Regulations state, you know, it's three years old casks. But the SWA had a list of casks that we could use for finishing and maturation. But then they expanded that list and they said, right, OK, you can use casks that have contained spirit that are normally matured. And so we thought, well, that means Miss Gal is now legal. So one of the brand team brought me a bottle of Illegal Miss Gal. And I did my usual very technical, very scientific test, which is I put some of the spirit into glass, throw it away, pour in the whiskey. And if it works at that stage, I'm like, bingo, I think this could work. And what Illegal brought was a kind of freshness to the whiskey, which I hadn't seen in other Miss Gal's. I didn't realize that we already had a stake in Illegal. So we got in touch with them, started talking to Don Glazer. He then sent us over casks. We then met in New York in February 2020. And this was meant to be an on-premise spirit. Obviously, then COVID happened. But, you know, it's a beautiful, beautiful drink. And again, nobody had really done that with a blend before. Plenty of people have finished single malts. You know, not many do that with a blend. And it really worked so well to the extent that it then became too big because then we had the Portuguese Smooth, we had the French Smooth where we used Calvados casks. So it became really big, but we were really proud of it. So then we thought, what else can we do? How can we make Dewar's even smoother and even more interesting than it already is? You know, the brand team said it would be great if we had like, you know, three whiskeys, a collection of whiskeys. And so I went back into the archives and I saw that AJ Cameron, our first master blender, used to take Speyside whiskeys and blend them together and Highland whiskeys and blend those together for a more integrated blend. And I thought, well, maybe we could do something there. So we looked at our stock. We looked at where the big pockets were. That was 21, 27, 32. And I thought, you know, ding. And I thought, wouldn't it be great that each one represented a different aspect of the Dewar South style? So the 21 was representing the kind of toffee notes, the classic taste of Dewar's. The 27 was going to be the honey and the citrus notes. And the 32 was the kind of smoky, peaty, luxurious. I thought PX would work really well with that. And that's what we did. And then we launched it here in Chicago at Binny's. And it was wonderful to see something that you had created, then being appreciated by our whiskey appreciators. And it was so wonderful to see people's reactions, because it was in this square bottle. It was 46%. It was non-chill filtered, no color added. So it was against all the normal cues. Quite frankly, you get another large barrier you have to clear, it was appropriately priced for the age statement. So it wasn't like these were giveaways for the age statements, but they were, you know, in the worries, I don't know if anybody's going to spend that much money for a blended whiskey, but boy did they. But when people tried it, you know, their faces just lit up because it is so integrated. And, you know, our 32 year old, you know, hate to say it, but it won the best whiskey in the world. And I was speaking to one of the judges and he said, we actually didn't know whether it was a blend or whether it was a single malt. He said it was so well integrated. He said we were so divided about what is it. And that is the ultimate compliment for a blender, is that, you know, the blend that you've created is just so well integrated. And, you know, it's very much a team effort. You know, the whiskey that we're using has been nurtured for, you know, 32 years and one day it then comes out. And, you know, people get to appreciate it. And it was a lot. It was a big ask for the guys in our warehouses. They had to take the casks in, bring the casks out, take the casks and bring them out again. Lots of sampling, because at Dewar's, we really want to make sure that the cask doesn't dominate the spirit. So that you still know that you're drinking a Scotch whiskey and not an Oloroso sherry. Sure. The 21-year-old did so well that we came out with different versions of it. And that's where we met with you guys. You came over to Scotland. We had some great tasting sessions. And we found where we would normally fall based on the quality of what we had, not because we wanted to be esoteric, but we were able to try because it's like, okay, what's the weirdest wood you had? You had some, I mean, you had some what wouldn't be considered weird in continental Europe, but are a little odd for American consumers, Riva So and different things like that. We fell on a Ruby Marsala. And in fact, I think we had a Ruby Marsala and didn't we have a white Marsala as well? I think it was a white port. A white port. I know in white port. Yeah. I'm a sucker for white port. Did you have Brett do the super scientific method? Where you pour the spirit in and then dump it out and then pour the other spirit in? I don't think we did that. No, we just tried the same thing. And I believe that we assigned, if I remember, because it's just like a good judging competition. Everything is blind and you have a broad idea of what you're tasting in category. But beyond that, you don't really know. You don't know who made it. You don't know what the ABV is. It's outside of a range. Age, so on and so forth. So the same thing we kind of talked about. What do you guys lean towards? And we gave a list of, again, mostly esoteric, but I believe there was PX Sherry in there. I mean, it was PX in Olroso and Port, along with some other lesser known dessert and fortified wines from Europe. And we settled on the Ruby Marsala, just because I think. So what, and usually you were talking about 21, the base spirit sort of wanting to focus a little bit more on that sort of toffee, candy, deserty sort of thing. Full whiskey. I mean, to me, at least my opinion, at least by my decision to push for this was the layer of fruit to go on top of sort of that toffee caramel. There's just this beautiful layer of red fruit, you know, red fruit, purple fruit. We have this in the glass right now. Yes, the Dewar's 21 Binny's. Oh, sorry, you don't have the glass. I'm just going to pop the cork. I love that sound of popping the cork. Obviously, this doesn't translate well in a podcast, but the color is really beautiful. And you just get little flecks of ruby coming through. The weight and the body just in the nose and everything that's there, the structure. It's just rich, it's chewy, just dried fruits, marzipan. It's just a really, it's a decadent whisky. It's a real, I want to celebrate. I want to meet with good friends, open the cork, share stories. I mean, there's a little bit of, and you still get the fact that this is constructed with a whole bunch of different components, including a pita component. Yeah, it's a grace note along with the fruit. Which is just, there's that little, nice little bit of spice on the finish. It almost doesn't manifest as smoke as much as it does spice. Yeah. But that tiny little bit after the fruit, yeah. Yeah, it just sort of, and almost like a fizz. Like the Szechuan pepper of. Yeah, yeah. The Szechuan pepper of blending. So it's decadent, but it's also light on its feet with structure too. Yeah. It's like a gymnast in a fur coat, you know? You don't know. Okay, well. Yeah, it's shining a light on yourself there. Yeah, there's a gymnast somewhere in here, yeah. Yeah, it's, yes, you're right. You know, it's an old whiskey, you know, it's 21 years old. And that's what I love about a Finnish, and especially something that we bring Marsala that we don't often use, is it just gives us brightness to the whiskey, and it really enlivens it, and it just shows another facet of Dewar's. And that's really what we want a Finnish to do, is we really want it to complement it. We want it to add something that our whiskey drinkers haven't seen before. And, you know, we take a lot of time, we choose great casks, they arrive on site, we know each and every one of them. You know, sometimes I walk about the whole day with charcoal on my nose, nobody bothers to tell me. But that's what we have to do, because in a small batch like this, one rogue cask could just destroy it. So we take a lot of care to ensure that every single aspect is just right. We've been talking, the Finnish lasts forever on here. Yes, I know, I've still got it. Yeah. And there's like, as everything else like fades away, there's this like linear salinity too. That's like another layer of complexity that you don't pick up right up front. Yeah. And there's unfortunately, there's not a ton left of this. Oh, we're teasing them. We're, yeah, there's not a ton left of this, because we did this pro, we did this project a couple of, two and a half years ago now, was when we put this together and it took another year of marrying, nine months of marrying, I think. Yeah. And then, and then it came to fruition, so. So we've had it like a year. We, a bit more than that, so. If you missed it the first time, guys, I think we've talked about this one before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you missed it the first time, don't sleep on this one. How much is this? It's like 250. No, this is $80. This is $80? This is $80. Whew, I made bread, you know, I didn't buy a bottle last time, I didn't buy a bottle. Well, you might have to drive around. I don't think, I think we're finally starting to, you know, everything that came, it was a pretty sizable batch too, which says something about how much people have enjoyed this. Yeah. Because there were, you know, there were five or 600 cases of this. It's a really special escape. And we're, I think, under 100 cases left. $79.99 right now. That's an unadvertisable price. Right. Get it. Find it. If you can find it, get it. Right. Good work. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. You know, I haven't tried it for a while, actually. It was so nice to be reminded of how. 40:35 Wood Experiments and Aberfeldyʼs Character Is that project ongoing? Have you been able to do some, have you done other ones like that? So not Ruby Marsala. So very much, you know, you could only get it here. But we've done some work on Stone Toast, which I saw was in your store. And Mizunara. So Mizunara, we received these casks in a few years ago. We thought, let's put some Dewar's 21 into Mizunara. Let's put some Dewar's 12 in. Let's put 15, 18 in, see what happens. So we showed the 21 year old to the brand team. They're like, oh, this is incredible. And so just Mizunara and our whisky. Really spicy, right? Like spicy sandalwood kind of aromatic. Yeah. It's just, it's really hard to describe, but it gives a beautiful color as well to the whisky. And they're just beautifully made casks, you know. How much loss though? They always have, Mizunara has a reputation for being really difficult to work with. We were told that, people were saying, oh, nightmare Mizunara, they'll leak. They'll do. We had a wonderful experience with Mizunara. You know, it's just been a joy to work with them. And I think it does depend on who has made the casks. I think if you go to a really good cooperage, you'll get it. So you get what you pay for with Mizunara. But we had a great experience with it. It's good because the whisky was fantastic. And the stone toast, which I think, which is too bad because people didn't understand what it was. Magna stone toast. Magna stone toast. It is the only, I never ever thought about it as purpose. I've seen that process, but only for cognac. Yeah. That's typically something or a modification version of that for cognac barrels. And the wine industry. Yeah. We liked the idea of it and we thought we would just try it out as an experiment. And the brand team got wind of it and they wanted it. And I was like, okay, we had French oak, we had American oak, we had different levels of toasting. And we just loved comparing the French oak with American oak, the magma versus the jade toasted as well. And I'm not sure what difference either between magma and jade was. Wasn't really able to discern that, but we just loved what was behind the intent of it. So we have upcoming, and this is a little bit of a tease, coming from a small craft producer in the Midwest. We're doing an experiment with them with a rye that was aged so that they, for the wine business, because they have a heavy wine background, ordered two toasted casks from France so they could control. And they asked to get, I think they called it a two-toast, whatever that is. But they wanted a two-toast, but they wanted them to do one barrel where they toasted as quickly as possible to reach that level of toast. And then they wanted them to do the second toast as slowly as they possibly could. The difference being is if you think about what happens when you toast, you're essentially caramelizing the lignin and everything in that layer of wood, and then leaving what's inside it basically untouched. The theory being the longer and the more time you take to toast, the deeper the penetration is of that wood conversion, which means theoretically you're going to get those sugars that have been converted or more accessible that can be pulled out, Yeah. So maybe with the jade and the stone, were you able to drill down on time as well? Yes, we did. I can't remember now what the time was. It wasn't long, but what we found was the consistency. So obviously, you know, it's like a kind of element almost. So rather than having flames that, you know, some are touching the wood more than others, we had this beautiful consistency. And are you, you're heating stones to use as a heating element within the wood as to not expose them to flame and potentially even the baking and flavor. The flavor is imparted by a fuel source. Yes. Yeah. So it was like electrically, it was an electrical element. Oh yeah. Heated up the stones and then sort of radiated onto the wood. Well that sounds really tedious. Well, we just weren't sure what would happen. Yeah. I love your scientists streak. Yeah. And we just loved, you know, what would it do with French oak? What will it do with American oak? It was a really nice exploration of European versus American oak. And mostly, we work with American oak because it is so consistent. You know, it's well-fashioned wood, you know, and it doesn't leak. And we get these amazing vanilla notes that come from it and the spice notes. But it's also good to look at, you know, other types of wood. We did a really interesting experiment with Scottish oak. And the flavor we got from the Scottish oak was just off the scale. I just couldn't, because I've tried some Scottish oak finishes in the past, and I wasn't really that impressed. It kind of put me off using Scottish oak. But we must have gotten a really good batch, and we put some alt more into it. My goodness, even after three years, the spirit was incredible. It just shows that it doesn't always matter how old a whiskey is. If you've put it into great quality wood, you're going to get something special coming out of it. And we did a thing with some local restaurants and bars, and we let them taste it. We didn't tell them what it was. And we said, how old do you think this is? And I think they were already alerted. You know, they're trying to trick us. I mean, a lot of people were like 12, 15, you know. I don't know, three. And it just really shows the importance of good wood. Is Scottish oak like finer grained and less porous? Do you know, it's a bit like Mizanara, you know, so it doesn't grow long and straight like American oak. It's really naughty. It's got to grow slower. It's colder. Yeah. Yeah. So it's got lots of knots in it. So there's a lot of wastage. So it's quite expensive. It's used for more. It would be more commonly used for like furniture or something like that, right? Yeah. But it just gives a beauty. And I was worried about tannins, about the tannin level, but they were really sensitively toasted. So we're going to get some more in and see what we can do with it. Watch out Scotland's forests. Who's doing it? Is Speyside doing the coopering for you or somebody local in Scotland? It was Speyside that we got them from the first time. I think we're probably going for them again. Right. Yeah. So. And interesting in their coopering, they're doing the new coopering in Scotland. Yes. Because they own a coopering where they do quite a big coopering, now a couple in the United States where they're doing a lot of wood for the bourbon industry as well. And then obviously creating the ability to trade back and forth between Scotland. Yeah, yeah. I still kind of think it's funny when people see the Speyside in the States and like, okay, oh, here it is again. Pope of the Cork. Yeah, it is. Isn't it weird? Because I remember going traveling in Scotland for a number of years and going to, going to Speyside Coopridge and thinking, wow, this is so much different than what is done in cognac for, you know, for cognac and wine and what's done in the United States for fresh bourbon. And you get to do the cork too. That was a bit more squeaky, wasn't it? And then to see Speyside set up and all, and Kelvin even before that, a Scottish family set up Kelvin in the world before and was trading very, very actively with Europe, especially in the wine business. We're tempting everybody with the cork, but- Oh, that was, that's the best, yeah. The component of, you know, not only is, and we've focused on Dewar's because it's just such an incredible franchise, and that's been around for so long, and has also not just stayed in its own, you know, in its own old clothes, but has really done a whole bunch of different things, a number of which are very innovative. But, you know, we're going to take a look at what are the components, sort of. I believe what is now considered sort of the Ancestral Home of Dewars, which was the first distillery that the Dewars brothers bought, right? Yeah, it was the only distillery that, and they built it. So actually Dewars will be 180 years old next year. So the company started in 1846, and next year I'll be 20 years as the blender. So, yeah. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, so Aberfeldy was the only distillery to be built by the Dewars family. And I get the impression that they knew it would be the only one. So it was, you know, no expense was spared. The best architect, the best materials, you know, the building is still there. We celebrated 125 years, a couple of years ago. So it really is a beautiful distillery beside a beautiful body of water. And, you know, Aberfeldy is such a special part of the country. You know, I have family that live there. And it's one of these, you drive up to it, you just feel your shoulders dropping and, you know, you just feel you're relaxing and you've come home. And the spirit reflects the landscape. You know, it's a long fermentation. So, you know, the honey notes that we talk about associated with Aberfeldy really are there. And it's not because we add honey, which I think was a common belief for a while. We don't add any honey. It really comes from the fermentation. And so it's a very approachable whiskey yet also very complex. And each time you dip into it, you get something just a little bit different coming through. It's rich and deep. Yes. So this is the Bulgari. Yeah. The newest release, which is a 15 year old that was finished in Italian. Yes. Ex-Italian red wine barrels. Yes. Oh. Neat. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're drinking it neat. Yes. Which is another thing that you, you know, an extension of all the work and innovation you've done. There's also been, you know, you own five distilleries. Yes. But really it seems like the driver's been Aberfeldy. It's not the only distillery you've done things with but Aberfeldy. And again, talking about the honeyed and that it seems to be the malt, and I'm less distinctive as a bit, but just is the easiest, the friendliest to others. Like they compare that it is just really well balanced, well rounded, rich and full, but plays well with others versus, you know, Kregalki, which has that little bit of, you know, the tarry element. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm a firm believer that, you know, drinking whiskey shouldn't be an ordeal. You know, it shouldn't be something like a rite of passage, or, you know, whiskey, you know, was invented to help us cope with the harsh winters in Scotland. And it's a friendly drink. It's bringing people together. And I think Aberfeldy just beautifully captures that. You know, but there is a complexity there. And, you know, I think finishing it in these different wine casks that we've been exploring for the last few years has really brought the profile to life. And these beautiful Bulgari casks, you know, you can tell a good cask. You know, we normally know the casks in the morning. And if you feel like drinking red wine at nine in the morning, you know that you've hit on a good cask. Because you just get that richness and the fruitiness that comes from the cask. And do you think that is, you know, and I said that Aberfeldy plays well with others and plays well with everything. It is funny. I think that there seems to be over and over and over, there seems to be a theme that predominant would seems to be ex-red wine. I mean, you've done PX, you've done overall. So you've done all the cherries and ports and things, but you always seem to, at least to me, at least to kind of go back to red wine, which is fantastic. Yeah. Because they've all been beautiful and you've used French and you've used, you know, Spanish, you've used Italian. Yeah, yeah. At Napa. Yeah. You know, worked really well. We did an Aberfeldy 21 in Finca Ambrosia, a Chilean wine, which just worked beautifully. And the winemaker there, Daniel P., he came over and we just talked about wine. We talked about whisky. We also have done some lovely examples in Sauternes casks. Tokai, got a Royal Brat Clas out just now in Royal Tokai. So, you know, so there's some beautiful casks out there. And I haven't met a cask yet that doesn't work well with Aberfeldy. It's just such an affable whisky. You know, it's like, yeah, I'll be your friend. Well, it's robust for a single malt. And it's got, it's not bourbon like, but it's like beefy enough that it could wear a lot of different shirts. Yeah, it's a Highland whisky. It's like, you know, a big, rough, tough Highlander. Yeah. But inside, you know, it's, you know. And it started in an area where it would have been. Wait a minute. Let's finish that. Inside is just the big old softie. It's just the big old softie in there. Well, I mean, I think it was an area because people think of, you know, everybody, if you're if you're a little nerdy about Scotch or historian, you know, like, for instance, Camel Town. Well, it's this tiny little, you know, the end of the Argyle Peninsula. And there there used to be, you know, however many 50 or 60 distilleries in this tiny little town. I think the people lose sight of the fact that there used to be that many distilleries in Perthshire as well. Yeah. The difference being that in Camel Town, at one time, it was sort of the center of Scotch whiskey production. So their intent was not just to make for Camel Town, but to make for everywhere. Whereas all the distilleries, to me, that used to exist in Perthshire. There are only a handful of them now. Edgard Hauer, Aberfeldy, Deanston, Tully Barden, and Tully Barden is new. So they weren't, of the historic ones, that they all were smaller and seemed to really just be the distillery for the village. Yeah. Aberfeldy probably had bigger ambitions because it was the Homadour's. But the rest of them really were kind of there just to be of the area. Yeah. And, you know, Speyside obviously, rightly so, has this wonderful reputation. And some people think that that is Scotch whisky. But I think that's one of the amazing things about Scotch whisky is that, you know, take, for example, our Altmore and our Kregelachy. You know, as you were talking about Kregelachy, it's really robust, really muscular. Whereas Altmore, which is just like a few miles down the road from it, produces something that's completely different. It's ethereal, it's herbal. They're both space-side whiskies. They both use the same process, but can produce completely different spirit profiles. And that's just the amazing thing about Scotch whisky, is that we have this disparate range of flavors that, as blenders, we get the privilege of playing with every day. And people say it's a job. Right, right. Yeah, you know, that's what I've learned. And, you know, we don't ever complain about work, because when people realize what you do, they don't want to hear it. Yeah, that's right. Which one of your ingredient categories does the Aberfeldy fall into? It's not green and grassy. No, it's not. There's elements of grassy in it, but it's not the dominant. So this would definitely be in the fruity, floral part of the inventory. I like the orange peel quality. Yes. And then as it gets older, so the 21 year old, we get this kind of marmalade aroma coming through. You know, as it gets older, you get more of these facets of the house style, but just slightly different and slightly more matured. So it really is just the gift that keeps on giving Aberfeldy. Yeah. And it was lucky Aberfeldy was the first when Bacardi acquired the distilleries from all from DCL. There was a time where just through contracts that you couldn't actually sell any of the distilleries as a malt. And I think the first one that came up was Aberfeldy. So you're really able to launch that as the home of Dewar's. And then eventually, now you do all of them, including Macduff. Yes. Yeah. Thanks for mentioning Macduff. Because people forget, that's like a little... And was really designed to be a malt factory, right? I mean, they kind of wasn't... I mean, it's a single distillery, but was really designed to serve somebody's needs. Yeah. I mean, the brand for it is Glendevron. Yeah. Or the Devron. It's a modern distillery. You know, it was built in the 1960s. So, you know, it doesn't have any like the pagoda roofs on it. It's just, you know, we make whisky there and that's it. But it's quite a quirky distillery. You know, the condensers are on their side. And, you know, we don't really think it was just because of space. So, and it's a really great team that are up there. And Macduff itself is just a beautiful town. So each distillery has its own particular character. And we just rejoice in that. You know, we don't want all distilleries to be the same. We want them all to have their own character and to keep going with that character. You're working with now four Dewars. You were slowly but surely drawing more of those distilleries, more for your needs. I know that Craig Allachy for a while, you had a pretty big contract with a competitor, right? That you had to provide a lot of a high percentage of the liquid. I mean, that's the joy of the industry is that, you know, we, you know, we do these reciprocations, we trade with each other, but we still ensure that we have enough for our own needs, you know, that's, and that's, you know, what we do with the forecast. So we're looking out, you know, four years, five years, 20 years and more, which is very difficult to predict, you know. I mean, I played on being around in 20 years. How about you? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We'll, we'll talk again then. We'll see how you've done. It's a date. That's right. By then, you won't have to, you won't have to go through airport hassles and trying to land and trying to, trying to land and then being forced to not land because there isn't anybody who can actually tell the plane not to land. You know, by then we'll probably just get into like time warp machines. Teleporters. Teleporters, yeah. That's fine. Beam me up Scotty. Smell the vision. It's on its way. Yeah, you never know. Brett said you were a big deal, but okay, I guess so. Oh, thank you. I'm so modest. Thank you. I can possibly say. Thank you for coming and thank you for sharing these excellent spirits with us. It's been my pleasure. Talking us through with the insights in the process. Yeah, this is a great look under the hood because I think that people don't understand really a, how complex blends can be and b, what is a lot more work you might say required to do a blend than there is to do a single one. Yeah, and it's not just the blender that does it. There is a whole team of people that are passionate about whisky making, and it's not just one generation, but it can be many generations. Cool. Yeah. Thank you for coming. Thank you for having me. And listeners, thank you for tuning in to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Hey, if you enjoy this as much as I do, tell somebody about it. And this is a great episode to share, especially with your Scotch friends. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for listening. And we will be back in your feed real soon with something excellent. Until then, I'm Greg. I'm Brett. I'm Stephanie Macleod. Slàinte Mhath! Keep tasting.