Ep. 4 - Lindores Abbey Distillery Founder Drew MacKenzie-Smith

Transcript

Drew H (00:14):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, Drew Hamish, Amazon bestselling author of the Whiskey Lore Travel Guide to Experience in Kentucky Bourbon. And in this encore interview that was recorded back in 2019, I'm gonna be speaking with the founder of Lindor's Abby Distillery, Drew Mackenzie Smith. And one of my missions when I went to Scotland was to find out the origins of scotch whiskey. And since Lindor's Abby is known as the spiritual home of scotch whiskey, it seemed like I had found the perfect place. And I really had, because this was an opportunity for me to spend a whole afternoon talking about the glorious history of not only scotch whiskey, but also of the distillery, the abbey, and the rest. And so I hope you enjoy this interview. It's one of these that was an early interview that wasn't really meant to be released as something that you listened to from end to end.

(01:20):
That was gonna be more sound bites that I pulled out of this. But there's some great information in here that wasn't in the episode, which I would actually tell you if you haven't heard the episode on Whiskey Lore Season two episode one, where I go through the entire story of fryer, John Core James, the four, the X checker roles and the distillery development and, and history. Then I would highly recommend doing that before listening to this interview, and it'll give you a lot more context. Now, we had just gotten through with walking through the distillery and we were sitting down in the beautiful tasting room. We had glasses of Aqua Vita, which is something that they decided to develop, which you'll hear more about in here while their scotch whiskey was reaching maturity. And so we're gonna get a chance to hear a little bit about that Aqua Vita and get a little bit more history from the actual founder of Lindor's Abby Distillery. Here is my conversation with Drew Mackenzie Smith. So talk a little bit about your understanding of scotch and its origins, not only as it relates to here, but you know, how scotch or, or how aqua vita actually got put into the record. Yeah. how far back it goes. And, and how you can at this point say this is why this is the spiritual home of scotch. Yeah.

Drew MS (03:07):
Well, I, I, I think distilling was going on right across Europe and beyond, way, way before 1494. I think that's, I think that's common knowledge, but in China mm-hmm.

Drew H (03:19):
<Affirmative>

Drew MS (03:20):
Thousands of years ago. But then I think equally common knowledge is the belief that, that monks brought distilling skills and techniques over from Europe. Our particular guys came from France, but there are other monasteries. So there was all sorts of different distillation going on right across Europe. What what happened here was that our monks came from Tiran in France, so a small little village south of Paris, their monastery still exists, and I've had the, the privilege of going there, and they still have their physic garden. So a physics garden is like an alchemist's garden, and that's where the monks going back centuries were growing plants to mix with distilled spirit to make not necessarily initially something you would drink. They, they were making something that was like a rubbing alcohol, and it had been used for centuries and centuries. And that is what came to endures.

(04:25):
I think when well, obviously this tale ends up with, with fryer John Core, but him and many before him, and many after him were distilling alcohol, infusing it with herbs and spirits, but not necessarily to drink. I think that's, that's the one bit of the jigsaw that still has never really been answered is when did it turn into to being something that people drank for pleasure. Yeah. Rather than using to, to help sick people. I've, I've, my theory is you get eight guys in a room be their monks or not, and someone's gonna try drinking it at some point. And then human nature is, if you're gonna drink it, why not try and make it taste nice? So I think, I mean, that's slightly glib, but I do think that's really how distilling progressed. The reason we are sitting here now is it's the earliest entry, the earliest written f reference to the production of Aqua Vita is an exte role of 1494, where it reads in Latin to fry John Cor eight bowls of malt wherewith to make aqua vita for the king.

(05:38):
And really that's because the king was King James the fourth. He resided at Forland Palace, which is only nine miles away from here. We know there was a lot of trade going on. We know the Abbott set sold fruit to the monastery, et cetera. So all the, all the links are there. But what we'll never really know is whether the quantity that was drunk compared to the quantity that was used for other purposes. What we do know is the eight bowls of of malt was enough to make the equivalent today of about 1500 bottles of whiskey. Wow. So we know it wasn't a small, a small operation. And yeah, so that's what led directly to us having a, a distillery here at Lindos. Again, if, if this was the second earliest mention, we wouldn't have a distillery the way the world is, You know, you're either the oldest or, or not.

(06:34):
So lucky us that someone, and no one really knows who the first historian was that saw that entry in the ex checker roles. I've had, I've had the, the honor of seeing the Ex Checker role. They still exists there in West Registry House in Edinburgh. You have to get special permission, but I, I went and they unroll the, the parchment, which is about 30 yards long, buried deep in the middle of it is the famous entry in Latin, but it's buried amongst thousands of thousands of other entries, and it's barely legible. So I've got a huge debt gratitude to whoever it was that found it. And thank you very much,

Drew H (07:16):
<Laugh>. So how long ago do you think, was that within like the last 50 years or so that somebody probably became

Drew MS (07:23):
Aware of it? I think so the earliest we've, because obviously everyone wants to trace it back and find out where the earliest we've come across it is there's a, is a booklet called the Bon Throne Brochure. And now the Bon Thrones were a distilling malting family going back several centuries that were based in Falkland. They, they don't exist anymore, but they were still distilling and malting in the early 19th century. And so this thing called the, the Bond throne brochure is the first I certainly read of, it's the earliest I've been able to trace it back when it's actually talking about Fry John Cole, Linds Abby, eight Balls of Malt. So that's the earliest I've been able to trace it back. As I say, no one, to the best of my knowledge, knows who first uncovered it in the X Checker role. Mm.

Drew H (08:14):
So would James the fourth maybe have been the first enthusiast of drinking it for something other than medicinal purposes?

Drew MS (08:23):
He could well have been. What we do know about James Thefor, he was very education, He was very highly educated. He spoke several languages. He was, and I know this is another very strongly held belief with the actual Aqua Vita, is that one of the things he was, he was an alchemist, he was keen, I dunno the technical word, but on explosives, you know, he, he liked fireworks and things like that. So again, the Aqua Vita could ignite. So there was all sort, I mean, it's multipurpose <laugh>, it's multipurpose, but you can't help but think that in a, a royal household or any wealthy household at that time where wine was drunk in, in Scotland at that time. But definitely stronger spirits were drunk as well. And whiskey as we know it, I mean, I don't think, I'm sure Aqua Vita was never matured again, that's, there's so much to learn about the history of scotch and there's far more educated people than I am that would know some of these answered. But when these things evolved into being, when people decided, well, actually, you know what, whiskey tastes better after it's matured for a bit. Yeah. You know, it doesn't taste like firewater. So yeah. That's why it's such a nice industry to be in. There's so much to look forward to for the future, but there's so much to learn from the past as well.

Drew H (09:45):
Now you've excavated out here a pot still. Would you call the pot still? It,

Drew MS (09:51):
It, I think the technical thing, it's a kiln of on which this pot still would've sat upon. Okay. So it's a source of the heat.

Drew H (10:01):
Yeah. And most likely that was one that was in use at the Abbey around the time of Yeah. Fire

Drew MS (10:08):
Job. We've had it carbonated. So we know it. Cuz I thought at first, maybe it was from a later, a later period after, you know, it could be the Abbey ceased to exist in about 1600. You could argue that people then removed the stones for other purposes. But it's been confirmed that that structure has been where it is from. I mean, the Abbey was built and found in 1191. There was a mill here in 1198. So there's no reason to think that potentially that, that still wasn't here in 1190, which is obviously Prees 1494 by a considerable period. There was definitely distilling going on around here and, and across Scotland. I suppose it's really where it was recorded. There's a lot of work going on at the moment, actually about illicit stills. But there we're talking much more 18th century mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So there's a wealth of history still to come out. And I suppose what's a bit difficult with Lindos when we're talking about 18th century techniques, there is evidence of how these structures worked. You, going back to 13th century makes things a little more tricky. <Laugh>, but we, we, we'll, we'll keep looking.

Drew H (11:26):
So Aqua Vita, would you, how do you figure out what that is?

Drew MS (11:33):
We, we did a lot. We did a lot of work. Cuz when we first decided to do it, when we decided not to do a gin for, for various reasons, we thought we, we have to do everything we do at Lins. We want to have providence, we want to tie it into the past. So really once we had decided to in Acqua Vita, we thought, well, it's great having the idea, but as you say, how, how do we find out more about it? The first thing we did was speak to the, the people at Harriet Wat University in Edinburgh. They, their brewing and distilling course is internationally renowned. It's really, really impressive place. So couple with them and also my own library of books I say library of books. There's only three great big books about Lindor's Abbey. I think, I'm sure I'm the only person living that's read them all, <laugh>.

(12:23):
And they're full of information. So for instance, part of what one of them has is a list of the plants that grew at Lindor's when it was a monastery. We know obviously what grows here now. So we would be able to go through these lists and say, Okay, we know that Aqua Vita was like a rubbing alcohol. So it was just a distilled spirit that would've been very rough to drink, to be like Firewater. So we can start working out, well what plants could they have used to soften the harshness of the spirit? And again, this isn't necessarily for drinking, this is for, for medicinal reasons. So we started doing that and working out, okay, which plants do we have that grow here? We have Sweet Sicily, which grows to this day in, in the Abbey. We cultivate that and we vacuum pack it.

(13:11):
We use that when we make our Aqua Vita. There's also lots of plants we can't use. One of the plants that grew here then that grows here in abundance now is wild garlic. Mm. <laugh> as I, you know, as I mentioned in, if you want to make scones, if you want to make soup pesto, it's fantastic. You want to make a spirit drink. I would not advise using wild, wild garlic. It's not great. Yeah. so there was a lot of trial and error. But then we got to the point we thought, well actually we've done everything historically that we can to be as similar to what fry what we assume Fry John Cole was producing. The technique is not really any different. The spirit might be a bit smoother, but we were using our ingredients, putting them in a container, stir them, macerating them for about a week mm-hmm.

(13:56):
<Affirmative> and then siphoning it off. But as I say, when we, whilst it was historically very accurate, the bottom line is it didn't taste great. And fundamentally, if you're gonna bring a drink out, that's quite important. <Laugh> we, you know, there's no point me standing here saying, but it's historically accurate. And I would say, Yeah, it's great, but it tastes horrible. <Laugh>. So Right. So we had to look at ways to make it more, more palatable. And that's also when we moved our experimentation. The guys at Harriet Water had done fantastic job on the, on the past, if you like, but we needed to bring our product into the, into the future. You know, we always think the past informs the future. So we had done the historical work, now how do we make it palatable? So we started working with a group of really upcoming bartenders mixologists in Edinburgh who, whose remit, if you like, was Look, take this raw spirit and make it into something you can, that you would use in cocktails mm-hmm.

(14:52):
<Affirmative> something you would sell to your customers. So we looked at really making it fundamentally, I suppose, less harsh and just a little bit sweeter. We weren't in the business of making a, a Dr. Beauty, you know, there's space for all sorts of laurs, you know, we're not anti-anything, but we didn't want anything that suite. So again, going back to the books and, and my knowledge of what we could do within the remits of the history of Linds, we know that our monks traded with flounders in Europe. And the currency the monks of Linds had was salmon from the river ta. So we have record of them trade trading with flounders to really minute detail to, to rotten barrels of salmon being thrown overboard. But when they got to flounders, it gave them access to, among other things, dates and raisins. Mm. So we settled.

(15:44):
We thought, well there's, there's a one way of sweetening it. So again, a lot of trial and error, you know, too much dates and reasons and it's too sweet. Yeah. so we worked out the, the right quantities. The nice upshot from that is twofold. It, it gave us a spirit that eventually, cuz there was a lot of times we would go through very excited to meet the gang, to try the Aqua Vita or try the, the prototype Aqua Vita. And I've gotta say being very disappointed, you know, we had our heart set on something. So the day that we got there and it was right, was, was a eureka moment. And it was just bang on for us. And the nice upshot. So we had this great spirit, but the unexpected upshot was the dates and raisins have given us an amber spirit.

(16:32):
So again, cuz in a way our, our backstory is we are saying Aqua Vita is the prototype to whiskey. It's, I've said before that, you know, the past informs a future. So we are saying that this product dating back 600 years is really the great great-granddad of what you are drinking today when you're having your macallen or when you're having your, your glen fit. So the fact that it's looks like that as well, I think really helps sell that story. And yeah, we are really proud of it. We are looking forward to our, our whiskey coming online as well. And we think the Aqua Vita will sit really well alongside the whiskey. Again, something that a gin may not have done so well. So, so whilst it was a, a kind of risky route to take because no one knows what Aqua Vita is. But now in a way, our, our job is to tell people what Aqua Vita is and then let people make, you know, you can, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. So if we can lead them to Aqua Vita, then it's over to the consumer.

Drew H (17:36):
So you've proofed it down to 40. Yeah. Yeah. And so is that, I mean, is there ever a plan to come out with a harsher version to be

Drew MS (17:46):
Yeah. Closer to this? Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah. The, the great thing, the, we, we make it on site. It, it's, it's a batched drink. So we have all sorts of plans. I was talking earlier, we have a small orchard here. Soon we'll have a far, far bigger orchard that there's huge history of apples, pears, and plums at Lindos. So, so our current Aqua Vita, you could say is our, is our core, no pun intended, but core Aqua Vita. What we can look at doing is bringing out flavored aqua vitas with apple pair and plum. And again, and I'm not having a go at gins, you know, there's flavored gins, but they're normally flavored and they're diluted and it's a bit of flavoring. What we can do is actually make our Aqua Vita with fruit that's grown here. But equally, we want, don't forget this Aqua Vita hasn't been in Aask, even though it's the same color as whiskey, it's made of the same new make that our whiskey is. But this hasn't been in a cast. So definitely one of the, the ongoing experiments is to start playing around with casts. I mean, the beauty of having a distillery to play with <laugh>, we've got lots of different casts. Yeah. So it may even be who, who knows it might even be a ped one one day.

Drew H (19:03):
Okay. so jumping back into the history side of things, when we talk about the monks making whiskey, there was an understanding after Henry viii there was a reason why the monks went to making whiskey just to be able to survive because the church Yeah, I see that, Yeah. Broken up. But why were monks so interested in making whiskey back in the 12th century? 13Th century? Yeah. I

Drew MS (19:32):
Think it was a skill like, like so many other things that they brought with them from, in our case, as I say, from France. So the Tyran ENSs who came to Lindos were ar arguably, funny enough, they were Artis and Artisan is now quite an overused, every persons anything. Now, if they make bread is an artisan. I mean, it is kind of fun cuz artisan means you make it with your hands. So everything is artisan. But the terras really were, they were artisans that were brought over. So it wasn't good enough just to be a, be a monk. You had to have a skill, you had to be a carpenter, you had to be an illustrator, you had to have all sorts of skills. And my belief is one of you had to be a distiller. So if that was your skill, I mean they, the monks had a pretty austere life.

(20:21):
But I think they, they knew how to enjoy themselves as well. One of the first, Abby was found in 11 91, 1 of the first later mentions. So when I say mentions, these are all in papa records. They, they're not they're not made up bits of history. They're, they're in the papa records. So one of the late, the soonest entries after the A was founded was quite a sad tale. It was, it was the I think think it was the Bishop of Durham was up visiting Lyes. And it's recorded that he and his, his man servant sadly burnt to death in their room. Because it says because they were very, very drunk. Oh. Oh. Now we dunno if they were drunk or aqua vita, but this is in, this is in, you know, 1302 or something like that. And people were drinking, they were drinking lots of beer.

(21:12):
Don't forget that they didn't really drink water then. And so there's records of brewing at Lindor's from way before 1494. So we, but we assume the logistical thing, if the monks can make beer, then they would have the know, they would've had the knowledge to go as we do, you know, in any distillery you're brewing before you're distilling. They were just doing the same thing. They just didn't perhaps refine it as much as we then have done over the centuries. But they also were scientists. So they, they were the educated people in this area. And yeah, I think also it was very harsh. One of the other very early entries with our monks, as I say they were from France, is a papa dispensation, that they were allowed to wear wool caps cuz you forget, you know, it was freezing cold in Scotland then mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And they were soft French people. So they were very lucky to be allowed to wear caps <laugh>.

Drew H (22:10):
Wow. Okay. So so the history of the Abbey itself, of course it's in a ruin now. How did it end up getting that way?

Drew MS (22:22):
Well, sadly, in the uk I suppose sadly it depends which side of the fence you're on are Protestant, Catholic, et cetera. But we had the reformation of the monasteries, you know, thanks to Henry viii. So really the monks were driven out. Well, in Scotland we had the Reformation. So we had John Knox, who was a sort of fryer brand Protestant, you know, history, history goes in circles. So the Tyran Ensen were a breakaway from the Benedictines. And they were founded by St. Bernard in Tiran. And the reason they broke away from the Benedictines, the Benedictines started off their journey with vows of poverty, et cetera. But by the end of it, they had huge wealth. And so there was breakaway factions saying, Well, this isn't what we signed up for. So the turians when they started were very, very austere. You know, they had a harsh life, you know, whether they had wool caps or, or drinking Aqua Vita.

(23:22):
It was a tough, tough existence. And their motto was, If you didn't, if you didn't work, if you didn't contribute, you didn't eat. They were, they were quite tough. But cause then the crusades happen the monastery Linds being one of many amassed huge wealth and lands. So in a way, leaving the religious side out of of it, people on the outside are thinking, Look, this, this is, this is crazy. You know, you have these huge palaces of wealth whilst we're all out here starving and freezing. So you can see how these things happen. These revolutions happen. What is recorded at Lindos. So John Knox came here with his followers and it, I can't remember the exact quote, but it was, they overturned the altars and throughout, throughout the monkish habits, you know, they, they cleared the place out. What's also recorded, though, ironically, is a lot of the monks did stay in the area because they actually quite liked it around here.

(24:22):
So a lot stayed in the area, a lot probably kept preaching, but they, they probably couldn't return to the monastery. So sadly for Dores, you know, it was a hugely important, hugely physically impressive building. But it became, I suppose like the local quarry people would pull bits of it down. And so sadly, that's why so little of it, you know, it's a very beautiful ruin mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. and we can never rebuild it, but we can preserve it. So in a way, that's what we do now through our preservation society. And again, if you look at it, the, the main thrust of the preservation is actually just keeping the ivy at bay and things like that. So what we do have last for another 500 years, but then that's why the original still that we were talking about, that's why discoveries like that are so important.

(25:11):
So we can try and raise funds through the preservation society to pres genuinely preserve that for another 500 years. But it's such a important structure. We need to kind of, we're keeping it undercovers for the time being. But we, we are exploring ways of making it open to, to the general public and the, the people that do see it, the whiskey fish artos, especially that when they come to indoors and they, they see indoors as a spiritual home, sculpture, whiskey. So to then find a spirit still there or the base of a spirits still there is, is like the holy grail. Yeah. cuz I live here, I slightly take it for granted, but it still freaks me out a bit.

Drew H (25:51):
<Laugh>. So I understand that when they found Cave where King Midas was at mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, they found a bowl and they did DNA testing on the bowl, and they were able to determine what kind of beer that was made within that bowl. Do you think there's ever a chance that because this has been out in the elements now?

Drew MS (26:16):
Sure. It would be great if we could. We, we have had it. So the clay there, there's an archeological term called plot testing. I'm got a clue what plot stands for. I'm sure it'll say it on the, on the forms, but it's a scientific test, a bit like carbon dating. So what's great is we, we can pinpoint how early it dates back to, so it dates back to 11th, 12th century. It is not a later edition. And equally importantly, with the clay itself,

Drew H (26:47):
It, it,

Drew MS (26:47):
The whole thing really for me personally, de depended on having carbon because no one that saw it at first could tell what it was for. You know, it could have been for salting salmon, it could have been for dying wool or no, no one really knew, but we all had a belief with, So we were hugely excited and, and a little bit relieved, if I'm honest, that when we did the flock test, it has shown signs of carbon, which obviously you'd have to have if there was burning there. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and signs of wood and signs of barley. So for us, that's, that's what you had to have to find in a still in a monastery. So yeah, to pair that at Lindos is, is huge.

Drew H (27:28):
How long did it take for you to gather all of this history that you have in the distillery

Drew MS (27:34):
In, in a funny way, you could, you could say 20 years on and off. I mean this, the project started 20 years ago, or the idea for the project started 20 years ago after a visit from Michael Jackson. That was the first, our family knew of any link to, to fryer John Core or anything like that. So that's when it started. And so I suppose I did a lot of work 20 years ago and then in the intervening 15, 16 years, I read quite a lot. But really it was only five years ago when we thought, okay, let's do it. It's really happening now. The best thing I can do to contribute to it as apart from contributing the, the fight, the whole project, I suppose <laugh> is I'm the, I'm the best placed person. I'm not, I'm not a professional historian at all. If I was rubbish at history at school, but what I did have was the three books and very importantly, I suppose I had the time to read them because some of it was in Latin and all sorts of stuff.

(28:33):
So I'm very lucky that I have those books that have helped me pull the story together. Well, another really nice offshoot one of these books I now have four copies of and it's quite a valuable book, but I was given one just yesterday that people have, you know, there can't be many copies around. It's over a hundred years ago, but quite a three people have now given me copies of the book. I think they made think I haven't got one and I'm too polite to say I do <laugh>, but it's actually, But to be quite honest, it's really, really nice because the one I, it is very, you know, for a hundred year old book to be as well thumbed as it is doesn't do it any favors. The other thing that was great is when I was doing my research, there's a, a university in Canada the name escapes me just now, but a very diligent student at some point there has digitized the whole, so the, the best book to read about the history of Linds and also the area, cuz it goes all the way up to the 18th century.

(29:32):
So it's Lindor's and thereafter, and it's called Lindor's and the Borough of New Bra. And that's sitting there on the internet free, free to anyone. Wow. Okay. So it's great. So all, all these things I'm talking about, like barrels of salmon, et cetera, et cetera, they're all in the, they're all in the book.

Drew H (29:49):
Yeah. Fantastic. I, I really appreciate your time today showing me around it's pleasure and getting to see this and learn all about the history and there's, there's so much history that it is really hard to uncover because we're talking about time periods where things just weren't documented as

Drew MS (30:08):
Yeah.

Drew H (30:09):
As they are today. Now everything is documented, even things we probably don't care about having document. Exactly.

Drew MS (30:14):
Yeah, yeah. In in in triplicate. Yeah, yeah. No, it's true. You know, so there's so much that you can pinpoint and say this happened, that happened, but then a lot of it, and there's far more skilled people than I that can link the, the dots between the two, et cetera of we know that happened here because of such and such reason. So yeah. So I've had, you know, I've had great help along the way and it is been an interesting journey and, and it'll continue you know, our whiskey's not ready for another year. So that'll be, that'll be the, that's kind of the next big stage for us is when the whiskey comes out.

Drew H (30:49):
Nice. Well, hopefully people now know what Aqua Vita

Drew MS (30:52):
Is. I very much hope so.

Drew H (30:54):
<Laugh>. So if you are in Scotland or you're planning a trip to Scotland, I would definitely suggest taking a right turn to Sterling and heading into Fife to do a tour over at Lindor's Abbey Distillery. There. Scotch Whiskey is now mature and you can taste that there. And if you want more information on Lindor's, head to lindor's abbey distillery.com. Thanks for checking out another interview. Make sure you're subscribed or following whiskey lore and whiskey lore, the interviews for much more in the future. I'm your host, Drew Hamish. And until next time, cheers and SL of a Whiskey lores, a production of Travel Fuels Life, llc.