Ep. 101 - Living HIstory: Scotch Whisky in the 1970s and Beyond (Part 2)

Transcript

Welcome to Whiskey lore the interviews I am your host Drew Hanish the Amazon best-selling author of whiskey lures travel guide to experiencing Irish whiskey and whiskey Lord's travel guide to experiencing Kentucky bourbon and soon the history of Tennessee whiskey and today I have as my special guest Richard Patterson of white Makai now this is going to be a second half of an interview that I started last week so if you haven't caught that please go back and check that out we talk about the 1960s how he got started in the business and really what distilling and blending was like back in that time period and today we're going to dive in further and go through the 70s when he started with white Makai go through some of that history we're also going to talk about blenders and their Journey Back Then when companies were a lot more private and it was a little bit harder to learn your craft when you were kind of isolated within your own company so we're going to talk about that talk about chill filtering it's actually changed over the years the opinions about it have changed over the years we're going to talk about that talk about drinking glasses we're going to talk about a special blend that all the blenders got together all the big blenders and a funny little note there about something that Billy Walker said to Richard Patterson that you'll get a chuckle out of that coming up as well and some history thrown in there as well as we're going to talk about the history of the Dalmore at least a little bit in Richard's experience in meeting the owner of the Dalmore at that particular time so I hope you enjoy this and please uh if you have feedback drop it below love to hear your comments and um let's check out this interview enjoy so how hard was it in terms of Shifting to when you went to White Makai they had a um they seemed to promote lighter whiskeys at that time and I think that was an industry thing basically too at that particular time um when I hear you talk about whiskeys I hear you talk about muscle muscle whiskeys with a nice backbone and I get a sense that's that's kind of your sweet spot where you like to be in terms of of whiskeys is there for a blender a challenge sometimes in stepping into a style that maybe there isn't first nature to them I I think you must have respectability for the Blending House that you're going to work for the recipe is you inherit that you must maintain that but over the years what you can do like when we say light whiskeys white Makai was a light whiskey because they wanted to attract the female audience hmm and because it was very male blinking male orientated pinstripe suits you know etc etc so this light easy blend because of the marring that we did actually conformed to actually to the changes that are going on to this day because because harsh whiskeys are no longer the case they've got to be drinkable palatable they're going to give you a warm glowing aftertaste and and that's what we've always tried to do uh but it is it's a Harmony that word harmony mellow charm Elegance refinement it has to have that because a lot of people if you get that that horrible word burden um it's there's something not right they all have to come together I mean we get all this marketing jungle saying oh it's about the orchestra playing in harmony well actually it is it's something that that glows and just gives you that harmonization and that's silky I mean a Whiskey's just still go down by Silk so so that's important but then every everybody has a style yeah well and for me I love a nice mouth feel to a whiskey a nice heavy mouth feel to it uh Glenn Glasser is one of my favorite distilleries because every time I sip something from there it has a lot of body to the whiskey and it's interesting when you were talking about choices of you know whiskeys for doing Blends that's one of those distilleries that usually gets mentioned is one where probably not as great for Blends because it has such a heavy character on its own that it makes it difficult to to work with um how does that work in terms of when you're blending these together are you trying to maybe take little elements of those heavier third level whiskeys but you're using more of a base out of your first level whiskeys right I mean I mean there's no question when you're talking about lowlands but particularly the speed sides that some of them are just pure charm Elegance refinement you know unsurpassed quality that is it's got that Finance but but if you've got too much finesse it becomes oh this this uh we need more muscle here to build up it's it's too thin it's too light we need to prop it up with muscular islands and and to give us that backbone but what we find is you use the heavier malts with the lighter they'll come together in Perfect Harmony providing you get the right balance and the proportions are looked at and then when you've got that emerging you then then think of Campbellton and then you think of Isla that's going to add to that but they they they all came apart yeah so thinking about how you learn all of this stuff when you in 1975 became the chief blender you'd worked as an assistant for some time before that um but uh kind of when I got started and I was did web design for years and once you become the top guy there's not a lot of people around to talk to unless you're gonna go talk to people who are probably your competitors or that that sort of thing um how did you handle the the early uh years of being a blender and being able to extend your knowledge did you have relationships that you kind of built with people through that time um very good question number one is as probably you know I go by two things knowledge is power when the executive stops learning is finished and that's why the women's education Trust uh formed in 1969 was my Guiding Light to open me up not only to whiskey but to wines because it would give me the knowledge I was looking for I I looked and studied on every book on the subject there was no computers there was no nothing but I talked to as many people as I possibly could but quite often the doors were slammed in your face because because it was very difficult I always talk about 1980 1997 when we had the Frankfurt whiskey Festival 1998 it when the first New York whiskey festival and when we went into the 1990s and early 2000s that's when all the blenders traveled around the world in their Kilts and we exchanged talking and finding out and find out very quickly the problem we have at White Makai now more Dura fedic in town of villain it's exactly the same as every other Distillery but they were not all giving away the trade secrets but at least they weren't being more approachable uh and and that was that was a good thing but learning in the early days was actually making sure you physically got out there and and saw the changes going on for yourself because I mean it it was blended whiskey okay Glen Phillip would not it would take till 1964 when Glenn fiddick mccallums and all that would be bringing out their their single malts but it really was a whiskey festivals that really launch padded it um you mentioned in the book you go through the history of Dalmore and we could probably spend a whole podcast episode talking about the history of Dalmore but uh Andrew McKenzie they stuck with single malt it sounds like for into the 20th century when did they give that up no well number one Andrew McKenzie when he came along in 1867 with his brother studied his production in January 1868 he doubled the capacity 1874. but people found even during these early years actually this is not a bad single malt yeah we have self whiskey and then people say what's self whiskey new spirit this is what was being sold and Andrew McKenzie said well I can mature for three four years maybe five years and when he released it some of them were a bit heavy so he said well we'll just watch the cutoff points a wee bit more and then he said after a bit actually there's great demand for here but what I'm going to do I'm going to lay down stocks and they said what are you going to do but wait a minute Blended whiskeys three four five years old what are you thinking for single malt oh I think you're doing it for 15 20 30 40 years and they said no no no you can't be serious so that's what we're doing and when we talk about Gordon mcphill yeah they did the same but very few people know this and and that's why we we built up old stalks and we've we've been able to release them you know even to this day but it's something that was done many many years ago because of the changes and and even when we talk about 1867 1868 we were using Sherry costs um we were still you know bringing cars in 1915 from Gonzalez buys we've got written documentation showing that but it allowed us to take that heavy character the bulbous stills of Dalmore nurture them and sees them season them in the right wood and and and that to my mind is what gives me such warmth and satisfaction really seeing the development yes great and American White Oak American White Oak for space sides and all these fantastic but when you take the right Sherry that suits your particular style of malt you can bring it to an added level of luxury nice so when you went to Dalmore the first time what was your impression was this uh how many distilleries have you been to before then and did you cut was there something that kind of uh because I sense that Dalmore is really kind of your um I won't say favorite Distillery but the one that you are most connected with I I'm a little connected with uh with Delmar but I have to say the lava app for Jura time to go and fedicure you know and Inver Gordon I mean it's the people you you never forget that but but really before I go to Dalmore I'd gone to many distilleries but you know the first thing that I that struck me was uh Colonel McKenzie come up comes up and said hi Richard I'm Colonel McKenzie I'm in charge of The Distillery which I obviously knew but I hadn't really met him properly and I took one look at him here he was in his uh Kilt and he's uh spoil which was a bashed in Badger head and he was just typical that Distillery owner and he was immensely broke this is what we do at at Dalmore and we're going to show you and but it very quickly saw what about the wood management and it was kind of well we just get these cars from here that cars from there and we just get on with it so there was no sense of urgency it was just done and of course the demand for single malts was just in its infancy I hadn't really got underway in the 70s 80s so it was just emerging um I mean it was there was bottles there but we we were doing uh Dalmore eight years old 20 uh sorry eight years old uh 12 years old and 20 years old so so they existed but they had others of nine years old 11 years old they're you know quite a number of different expressions but you know you say well what was the sort of Sherry between American White Oak and it was well you know sometimes it's 10 percent sometimes it's 15. it just depends on what what comes in from Spain yeah you know so or what comes in from down in London that they're not going to use when did the uh when did the Stag get on the bottles this was what was interesting about visiting you at your offices and actually seeing that at one time they used to hang on a metal chain on the on the bottles yeah when did that come along Andrew McKenzie because of the charge of the fury of the Stag of 1263 saving the king had always been part of the Mackenzie Clan because he saved the king from the charging stag uh King Alexander the sword said you can use the emblem of your stag so it doesn't matter we've had many Americans coming over with a McKenzie name and they've got their tattoos on their head they've got here everywhere but the Stag set has always been there but when you see the early bottles when the McKenzies were in charge it was almost a comical stag there's even one with a stag with his tongue hanging out and and sort of blood because to remind of con Fitzgerald Chieftain the clan McKenzie you know saving the king but over the years we've really used that iconic uh emblem and we've even transformed it but it's taken years to get it onto the bottle the right way and really to give that sense of the Stag is so important to us yeah talk about a little bit about the um the Black Isles and I always love the name Black Isles because it sounds like uh if it were in America we'd have Pirates all around it um and uh but the the idea of um where a lot of this grain comes from and also kind of the tie-in to the the farintosh Distillery um I'm wondering is there um uh are there any elements of that distill that there were multiple distilleries I think around that area is any of that exists still fair and George area there's a lot of controversy about it was this area was that it was near Culloden Moore it was further up Noah was up it was up near near where Dalmore is just now basically speaking yeah there are a number of areas where it was meant to exist but very Dodge because of Robert Burns famous poem fair and Joshua certainly lost from coast to coast and all this and then they had to pay Duty exempt from for many years and they were given freedom of Duty so it made it very famous but but uh it was a distilling area and also an illicit area but I think generally speaking uh it it was around you know Inverness let me say it from there other people have said oh no it's strongly documented it's in this particular area but you know it could be just uh you did just speak to one or two historians just to just to confirm that but it was famous uh for that distilling area the black Isle of course why was it called Black Cow many people thought was where the black watch came from it was where there was forests and some people said actually that's where the uh the periodically burnt the Heather and gave that sort of Blackness to the area but it's not an island it's it's a peninsula okay I need to I need to see it I I walked on the property of uh beautiful yeah it's a beautiful beautiful area this is this is the drawback of um you know having limited time when you come over to to Scotland and trying to figure out all the places that you need to go to I I drove onto the campus of Dalmore but I didn't get I didn't have time to do a tour and it's like I gotta come back here because as soon as you start walking around it's like you know this is this place is beautiful I know there's lots of stories surrounding that Distillery that you when you go on these tours that is what I think really connected so many people over these last 15 to 20 years where whiskey is taken off are these are these stories that are coming out of these distilleries I mean the main thing to to bear in mind is when you look where Dalmore is anybody coming from America what have you you need to go to The Distillery and then just before you go in is to look in front of you and what do you see you see the commentary first and then you see the Black Isles and then beyond there is the North Sea now when we have the black Kyle it acts as a sort of uh Shield because the North Sea a lot of winds blow in or it comes down by the chroma tree forth and that's why Warehouse four dark Limestone uh you know Sandstone buildings really thick excuse me but really um has a sort of protection of the cars but it has that lovely sea air that salinity it's not it's not really seen in the whiskey but it has that sort of boring character that reflects what's in front of you but Warehouse four which is where I have all the babies uh gems the jewels the diamonds we're all sparkling in there that warehouse is really traditional three High dunnage Warehouse is damp and it's got the cement going down the pathway but it's the old Ashen floors but that's where we get really the the nurturing of the cars that I'm looking for but it to my mind it's bathed by you know people would say the terroir but that that's what's important there yeah so you you do believe in this idea that that atmosphere Finds Its way into the cask yeah I mean if you go just now in July August we're now in August coming up in September uh already the environment is changing but the warehouse is generally just now are quite warm I mean they're not damp they're just a little bit warm but another another month another six weeks they'll become the air will become heavier and it will be sort of damper and the whiskeys will begin to go to sleep again again and and then they're not going to change now if it's going to be very dry if it's a dry summer the the waking up for quite a few more months more months yeah but it only takes one really cold spell to get into the warehouses and that's you until April next year okay but again they're all different I must chase that all warehouses whether it be three High pallets racks or the dunnage will be different but I'm just telling you that's what helps to mold our particular Styles and Seasons uh and and still provide some of the mysteries of how it develops yeah so when we talk about the time that you've been with white Makai there's been a lot of changes of ownership through the years but somehow in fact as I was going through it I was going we can't talk about all of these there's I will spend days going through all the different uh changes in in owners through the years but that adds in distilleries that gives you the ability now to have a jurora come in and and uh you know add to your Arsenal I guess for lack of a better term of different uh characters that you can bring into your Blends and while all this turmoil is going on with uh you know changing from company to company you're winning Awards so where where is your mindset when a company is changing around you a lot there's changes in leadership attitudes that sort of thing yeah well you know I always say 11 takeovers in 19 different bosses but you're gonna come back to that favorite word passion you've got to make sure that you I mean no mistake and I say quite often we've had to fight for what for what our reputation we we never had huge huge Deep Pockets money that was just being thrown we had to be very conservative we didn't get it right all the time but what we did try and do is to try and get value for money at every every angle every turn of the book and uh I'd like to think yeah we've probably achieved that now looking for the long term although uh quite often I was taught quite often uh I'm in for the long term I said well that's what the last owner said but but generally speaking you know uh we we talk about what is available we've got a management wood policy etc etc and and as you can see as from 2007 Scotch rocks and it hasn't stopped since there but we never can be complacent because you know in the in the younger days when I started it was cognac that was the main drink you know yeah and the packaging of uh and the supermarkets were the cheapest on display and the packaging was generally pretty pretty substandard but now if you don't have a wound factor and something that encourages the the consumer to enjoy your whiskey tell them a story about it and really the label must try and enhance that you this is something that's a priority but you're liquid at the end of the day must be good yeah and that that's that's that's what it's all that's what it's all about doesn't matter about the packaging but it's the brilliant packaging but if your product's not right it's a waste of time so you have to have all these combinations well you talked in the book about a uh packaging snafu when you had a bunch of Outsiders coming in all of a sudden and trying to figure out the marketing for the company and you decided to go with blue label white Makai talk about the issue with uh with a blue label to an outsider well the blue label uh if you take that color blue it's kind of Lighty is a particular blue but blue and gold of the gold of the whiskey doesn't quite match up that's why we had cream labels for a long long time cream and gold they go perfectly no problem but uh certain individuals want you to reach out it was a very difficult time and we decided to go this particular label presentation but in Glasgow um well I'm sorry but in the glasgows in the 70s and 80s and 90s um Blue Mount Regis football club so when the Reps went into a Celtic pub and said oh you must have this new blue label it was thrown out because everything was green green the table people like that so you have to be you have to do your research and you have to see if if it's going to be compatible and it's going to be acceptable but not just in the UK and not in just in Scotland and I mean Scotland are you and London you have to go further afield abroad does this color in Japan is it going to work there is it going to work in Canada America or what have you it's all about research and not just from the books get out there and applaud get some leather in your shoes and check and talk and talk to people yeah that's I mean it's very easy I think for people to think they know coming in especially from a corporate standpoint that they they've got the formula down and they know what direction to go in and they can miss those little things like I I loved reading that in your book because I've been to Glasgow uh several times and I always hear of that rivalry but I didn't realize you know that and I knew it was a heated rivalry but I never thought about the fact that if you were bringing a a bottle in at a certain color I wonder if Glenn Murray has any problems getting into uh into Celtics yeah but I mean I mean I have to say quickly that these you know things have changed a lot it's far more acceptable but but you know it's to some people it still matters they're not gonna not everybody's gonna change overnight you know that there are people that still believe no it's not the right color for the year there everywhere so you're going to be very my my sort of point is you've got to be cautious but really think about it but today because competition is so strong you've really got to make sure everything on that label tells the consumer what he's looking for as they say it's going to say something on the tin and it's going to transform to that yeah so talk about Charles Shaw's Road Show and how that was that an evolutionary point for you and turning into a brand ambassador as well as being a blender yeah Charles Shaw was a real marketeer and he decided to take that sort of Road show but what he was doing again during that time the computer mobile phones weren't about but he got on a bus that had the white Makai slogan and we went to all these cities and we had these well we had these Carousel projectors except it wasn't one it was 12 of them and as as you can imagine the synchronization was was unbelievable and then when we went to London as with somebody somebody took the main line and cut it off that affected all the computers so you know it was a real it was a real headache after that but generally speaking it was it was a great enormous success because we went to the people we had 100 200 people attending these presentations and they talked about the marketing plans all the different Innovations packagings but we were really talking about the blend and showing people to say hello how are you what is this guy doing so that was really the Ambassador role before I would get out and go to all these different countries but this was when blended whiskey was about 95 not 96 percent of of the whiskey Market and so when you had that um I I wonder in reading it shocked me that you said at one point that you were nervous in front of of crowds because you seemed like such a natural at it your humor comes through your but uh but you had some tentativeness there apparently at the at the beginning when I did my first presentation it was done in Campbellton but even even the road shows I've been the toilet throwing up um you know I mean I still talk about it you know even even Pauline will see you doing a birthday now what what was that I barely was when I felt sick and I would it would turn to my stomach and pretend to be saying and then my eyes would be sort of glazed over but it would be a way of relaxing okay I've gone for these therapies here deep deep breathing etc etc etc but every Crown is different but during these early years like like the comedians of America comedians of the UK you've got to work at it and even the you know I remember doing one presentation in in Yorkshire fantastic everything went well we went 50 miles down the road same presentation different crowd what's going on here it's just not the same wow so you're you're using all these things but uh it's it's actually more nervous to do a presentation to 50 people than 500 people is that because uh you you're going to get more feedback directly and and the other thing there's no question you'll never please everybody and people might say why why'd you throw ice why why do you do this why why do you lay off Party Poppers I mean okay that's gonna change now but but but in these early days if you had to make something different they never they never remember you so the Rockets the ice throwing the whiskey Etc that was just a way of getting their attention yeah so were you tossing whiskey before then or was it really when you started doing presentations Donald McKinley with uh with the the famous um film that he was in time was the beginning it was called he used to shake the whiskey like that and then knows it but what what I did was always throw it away and and that's and I still I mean this morning I did it for a wee bit uh just just I mean it doesn't stain the carpet but it actually cleans and makes sure that the glass is clean and then you can go back to it I mean there's always Madness in the method and the madness and all that yeah but you're it's not something you picked up from uh from your father uh doing that no no no he would tend to he would tend to drink it he would call it a snifter and he said time for another snifter that's what it's all about well they use smaller capitas at that time too didn't they exactly you're absolutely right they were smaller computers and these were the proper Sherry glasses and and the one that um I mean there's plenty over here but the one I had uh in the 60s 70s became a little bit larger and then about 1985 it came a little bit more bulbous and and I really and a longer stem and and these are the ones I really like in fact uh if you look at some of the archives for distillers for the White Horse blender you'll see how big how big balloons uh kind of almost like cognac classes hmm but the one that's done today for the blenders is that is that particular one whereas now the Glencairn crystal glass is really making sure people look at the whiskey for the first time yeah I I had a tough time when I was traveling around Ireland because I didn't have my capita glasses with me and so I was uh first when you're in a hotel room and you've brought your samples back home or back to the hotel with you and you're having to do it out of like paper cups it just doesn't work it doesn't work and a lot of people that have never been there before and and I constantly say that I take a tumbler and then I put the whiskey in there when I do the presentation I said what's good about this it says you can get all five fingers in the glass with all over your nose whereas when you take the capita and knows it you can't even get a fingernail in it so everything is concentrated in your nasal capacity and you really are looking at it so um let's talk about some different uh philosophies that have changed over the years one that I found interesting was this idea of chill filtering chill filtering is something that now the general public is becoming aware of you're starting to see it put on bottles um but this was a technique that really only came about I think around a little before the time that you started in the industry is that is that right yeah because when when we started blending in Glasgow and over at Leith it worked generally pretty well but the temperatures in the warehouses and some of the whiskeys we're using were quite heavy and and therefore if you send it to a country like Canada was a typical example going from say New York over to Canada the time that it went over by train it was subjected to really harsh temperatures and then of course you've got this colloidal suspension and people looked at and say well a minute what's that dandruff in my whiskey well that's it that's the heavier oils no it's not it's it's got sediment yeah it's undrinkable so the only way of course doing it is to chill filter to remove these heavier oils so to be acceptable to the the consumer okay you could leave it and Let It Drop to the bottom shake it but it would still have that kind of sediment coming out and It's Perfectly Natural but the consumer is very demanding so you know you can't have that and that's when well give give credits dude distillers company in the 30s we're looking at it uh and of course you could give it a high strength that would avoid that but if you if you had a customer uh you know in a cold place and you had all these problems the whiskey would be shipped back to you so so Joe filtration um is something natural uh to other people no it's not you're doing something you're taking maybe something out of it but if you're doing it in a light form or what we used to do with Dalmore quite often uh way back in the 60s 70s as we would bring our Dalmore down we would reduce it to uh 46 alcohol and Let It Go cloudy naturally and then we would take it down to 40 or 43 and then just filter it naturally filter it in the normal filter pads and and that would remove it but that became a very expensive business um well and I wonder today I mean there are many opinions about it um there was a big uh hullabaloo over when uh glendronic decided that they were going to take that off of their labels uh because it was like wait how can you do that but the explanation behind it was we don't do it for all whiskeys but we we will do it occasionally when a when a barrel needs it some sometimes you have to have the tools in your tool kit and we don't want to be caught saying we're doing it when uh or not doing it when we actually occasionally have to do it um is it the process that yeah it comes back to the original it comes back to your Distillery and how it performs and how it will take and and how how you keep the strength at it etc etc but it you've got to do it individually you know it's up to the individual Distillery to do that yeah so when your father was uh putting out whiskeys was he putting it out with chill filtering no no no there was no chill filtering you know it became for him the norm and and that is actually another reason why uh he started with his uh well many different bottles but he had these ceramic book bottles and of course you couldn't see the whiskey and Ceramics became very popular uh particularly to the Far East and uh you could leave these whiskeys for a long time because the consumer couldn't see what he's drinking yeah but then people as time went by I said no no hold on a minute I want to see what I'm drinking I want to see that golden color yeah so if we're going to see that golden color you better have everything right it's interesting to see which brands still decide to go with dark glass in my research on glass bottles in the 19th century if you could afford to as a as a bottler or or if you bottled whiskey which which was somewhat rare um you were always doing it in dark colored bottles like that and then all of a sudden it moved to the to the clear glass um yeah you know interesting to see and then to to think like art bag is a good example of a whiskey that if people looked at it and it was in a clear bottle they might go is that really is that really fully matured whiskey because it is so light in color and like yeah yeah it it even even Drew when you see something is naturally light we used to have that on many way way way back and I said well hold on a minute uh you wanted to put that and then we had some Sherry cars people said Richard what are you doing I said it's dark yeah but this is naturally light is it because that's what that's the stock I'm working with yeah yeah but you can't have that you know I said I said but that that's the stock and it's natural it might be a little bit darker but it does it conform to that so so we had to change a lot of things like that you to get that consistency as you know from certain cars first fill second fill third fill you're gonna get all these different colors so uniformity and what it does do it gives you one word confidence confidence in the consumer you must have consistency if you deviate from that you're going to cause problems with your consumer because they can visually tell that there's something up whereas uh you know I talk about if you drank a uh a Laphroaig from 20 30 years ago versus one today you probably if you put them side by side are gonna taste some differences but if you put the bottles side by side you're you're not going to notice much even their label really hasn't changed that much over the years I mean I mean even even Drew and when we had certain label changes with white Makai I remember one particular customer he said wow this new label it's the Whiskey's much better is it I said what do you mean it's got that wrongness he said I said I said it's exactly the same I can't believe you is it because the label looks so good you know and I went I'm sorry but it is the same label yeah and you know it's the same Whiskey in the same you know different label you know but so you've got to be very careful how you do it well this this uh and I've seen Brands drastically change their logos and it is interesting that it gives you a different impression of the whiskey even before you taste it it's like wait a second they always have these really dark labels and now all of a sudden they got this bright white label what's going on with that and you wonder if the whiskey inside has changed at all um and that and that brings about the the question I have on blind tasting uh do you are you an advocate of doing Blind tastings is there a place for those uh do you think people should use that to learn or because to me there's a the brand is part of The Experience uh in in tasting a whiskey now when you're going Barrel to Barrel you're not seeing anything but what the barrel looks like but that's having an impression on you probably too when you're when you're doing a tasting of it I would imagine we come back to the famous blue glasses we we do every day what we call Triangle tests and you can't see the color because it's dark blue you don't know what you're drinking but it really puts you on the spot do you see our difference here if not fantastic but it does help you to do it when we come to judge the whiskeys of international widespread competition International Spirits challenge it's blind we don't know what the the products are and you are looking at it it could be your own brands does that very often because they're trying to take the judges elsewhere when the old products are out there but it actually makes you look and think and makes you be alert to what's going on here and therefore because as soon as you see a labeled bottle or a labeled White and look at it and study it you're going to be influenced whether you like it or not so by seeing it blind you've got to really put your wits and really concentrate yeah so let's talk uh last last piece here about the uh Andrew Usher blend talk a little bit about Andrew Usher and his impact on blending you brought an interesting point up in the book that I didn't realize I know about the spirits Act of 1860 which was basically opening the door to being able to blend grain Spirits with uh malt malted Spirits um I didn't realize it seven years before that was also a change in the law that allowed the marrying of whiskeys from different distilleries doing the vetting of of whiskeys um what was what would his early days have been then basically uh just going to a single Distillery and pulling Whiskey In from then and and with the Scotch whiskey police come over and uh uh fine you for if you Blended a whiskey from one Distillery to another no I mean he was he was a real innovator but let's just go about a little bit further like his mother as as I say in the book was making up sort of cordials you know the these sort of liqueurs different uh sugaring etc etc and quite often Andrew Russell Jr was looking to see what his mother was doing and getting his opinion Etc and I'd like to think because of the sort of cordials that were being made up Mr crabby of course took one of them eventually um and all that he was he was looking for a particular style but he was as far as I was led to believe he was always looking around and being Innovative and seeing what your public were demanding and wanting and to my mind yes he was involved with North British Distillery he was involved with many things but he was an innovator that sort of Drew many other people to his sort of advocation that said look at whiskey for the first time and look at not just a single malt from the distilleries I want you to look at blend your whiskeys and that's what managed to enhance the whiskey industry there were many other blenders sanderson's Walker you you name it uh Lundy not not so much Lundy there was one more um but anyway there were many people uh Lori so uh the the lower is yeah there were many people of that particular period that actually had the cars in their bars and and quite often they found when they like like Asher himself when they were in the bars there weren't a bit of heated they found in fact actually I know we're topping up this whiskey but this one has not been taken so much but actually the length of time has been in here has actually changed so so you know holding it in an atmosphere warm and all that helped to sort of develop his career and of course thanks to him he made a lot of money and we've got the Usher all named after him but very few people know it came from Mr Usher the whiskey man yeah it's an interesting time period and interesting to see the evolution of whiskey through time and seeing how Blends really went from that beginning to dominating the market and they still really dominate the market to this day yeah they do but again because of the Renaissance or Renaissance because of the whiskey industry all going for single malts of great ages and great standards and seasoning people are very excited about it but but people should never forget it's actually single malts that meet the Blends along with the greens now people say greens Green no it's not if you mix the green whiskeys with the ripe malts it can enhance it and remember generally speaking 80 percent of Blended whiskeys is 80 20 you know well that kind of Market around about the 80 grain whiskey to 20 more so it's 80 grains that are helping to enhance uh these whiskeys but the malts are giving the backbone and the structure so so you know never decry blend your whiskeys they're a smooth mellow and and again great successes are happening in the last five years particularly with white Makai blend yeah it's back up there I did a little experiment with your Shackleton shackleton's one of my it's definitely my favorite blend uh because I like the complexity and because I um as you say the kind of the heavier muscly character that comes through on that particular whiskey I did an experiment though the other day I took some um uh I had Spring Bank 10. I had a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue that I was that was almost empty and I said let me see if I can sort of make a little um not a complete match to this but something that's that's going to sort of uh be in that area so I took this I took the Shackleton which a friend of mine was the one who actually told me he said you know that Shackleton um isn't that far off from what I'm getting out of this Johnny Walker Blue there's age characteristics that are always going to be there but he says I'm getting all of that so when I was tasting what was in that Johnny Walker Blue Bottle um I said the only thing this really is missing is that citrus note there's like a really heavy what whiskey do I have that has a nice big heavy citrus note to it that I could add to this so I put it in there and then did a little side by side and I'm like you can tell you know characteristic differences between them but it actually uh it worked out really well and came up with uh it fun blending at home and trying to uh see if you can can match something that has the status that something like that Johnny Walker Blue does but it's so it's so important remember the original blend um you know the blending more was highest strain 47.3 Etc and and that is so important because it it went down to the South Pole Wind and Rain the blizzards conditions but you needed that higher alcohol and that's Citrus it is Citrus but it's great pretty you know you've got that sort of grapefruit tinge but all the charm is there but holding it along in their mouth yeah you know and and just that lovely Tang that goes with it but you need a bit of a bit of sense what what when's the best time to drink this you know outside yeah yeah you know get you know get that sort of element of Adventure inside of you just to drink it at that particular time it's it's probably less of a uh Heat Of Summer drink and more of one of those that when the temperature starts to drop that's the one you want yeah yeah um so you did this Andrew Usher event uh where you basically created a uh you had all of these blenders come together and create Blends and then you Blended all of those together to make this special bottle uh the first question I have to ask and and would love for you to tell that story but the first question I have to ask is did you get did everybody get a chance to taste what the blend was like yeah they all tasted it but it was it was it was the first time as far as led to believe all the blenders got together you know it was it was it was something really special and that's why we want you to produce the blend and then uh we kind of sold it off the The Heritage Center to raise money etc etc but but I mean the underarsha blend uh it was uh it was something different but it was something to show that that the the industry had moved on and we were all talking and we're all good friends and and you'll see Billy Walker uh um behind me uh a lot of people don't know why I'm smiling is because uh Billy just said in your your your your urine Blends are all the rubbish rich you know so if you look at if you look at the picture next time you'll see him smiling and and it was but it was a lot of camaraderie but it was it was something that really allotted and and it was something something more one of the sort of events milestones in my life that I would never forget so one other thing to really kind of uh jump into because this question has been sort of uh gnawing at me as I as I talk to people these days the term Master when we apply it to a idea like a master distiller Master blender you're kind of your own personal philosophy on that do you feel like that's a term that probably should um uh maybe maybe have some time behind it rather than it because now it's become kind of an occupational term but to me it sort of feels like like Master blender Master distiller means that you've achieved or you may even be to a point where my idea of mastered is that you've done everything you can possibly do you're really not learning anymore you're at a point where you're teaching other people and you're learning has kind of come to an an end where do you fall in that spectrum of kind of your thought behind that term right um it is a term that has changed dramatically when I became a master blender along my with my fellow Master blenders no no question yet you had to be in that position for many years you had to earn that and um quite often people would think a master blender is an old man going into the warehouse almost with a Zimmer and everything but but as as it's changed over the years um younger people are coming in and they've learned it and so therefore the master plan he should still be ultimately responsible but there are new terminologies that are coming in and quite often you know when we went to America people said they wouldn't have a clue where you're talking about Richard because you're talking about Donald Moore we're going to call you master distiller and he said well Master distiller means a Distillery no it really means you're a master blender because you're blending the single malts expressions of of that particular single moment but but you're right the master blender situation is something I still like because uh I feel honestly that I I kind of earned it through many many years and and here we are 50 56 57 years later you're still a sort of Master blender although occasional Master distillers but it's making people understand you have to make it for the customer will you understand what our Master blender is really uh and even when you fill in a form today you know a question they are they say give us your job title and you put Master blender what the heck is that they're not clue what it is yeah so you have to look and see whether it will try and fit in it's like chemistry or something like that so it has its own problems but generally speaking the whiskey the whiskey fraternity knows what a master blender really is all about so if you um sometimes the question is asked what is your everyday uh Drinker in terms of a whiskey but when you're a whiskey when you're when you're a master blender um do you find time to sit back relax and and just enjoy a whiskey or when you go home are you kind of like I've had a day full of whiskey and so I'm not really interested in yeah I I drink I drink a lot of wine I love champagne I love burgundies red burgundies are my favorite but I love whiskey at the right time right place now I've had a lot of whiskey nosing today tasting today so you know tonight is a matter of chilling out and relaxing but when it comes to the weekend I do honestly love to sit down with certain of the single months that we produce and it doesn't it's not just almost jurors fedicure and time of villain and and even in regarding green whiskeys you know we've produced but a lot of times they come back to the white Makai blend I mean that's why when we produce the dark white Makai blend 50 years old it was something I really love because people said you can have a 50 year old blend yeah we can and we've got whiskeys that are 50 years old and it really did help to show that we've been under on the game of producing great whiskeys for many years but it's still a part of my life to sit and Savor plenty of whiskeys single bowls Etc but in moderation yes let me clearly say that I'm not uh I'm not drinking all the time I'm drinking drinking driving all these things yeah it's so important so I take these things very seriously I think we've gotten past uh for the most part I know there's a there's there's part of the whiskey industry or people who are whiskey drinkers who still knock back a shot uh and when I see that actually in a movie I go ah don't do that don't do that you know but um but luckily I think a lot of people are becoming much more uh interested in taking the wine approach to it and really getting to know their whiskey instead of just abusing it well quite often thanks to tick tock and and the video that's gone out I think we're up to 35 million now or something but it people I meet people in the street they passed me and they go [Music] who's that yeah yeah are you that guy that does that I said yeah yeah well you know but but at least at least they're listening yeah and and that is I mean that that video was done uh 13 years ago 13 years ago and you know people say well what do you think I said actually what I said 13 years ago is still good to this day you cannot hurry whiskey you're gonna put the top of the tongue underneath the tongue back in the middle keep it in there for at least 20 20 seconds before you swallow it very nice Richard I really appreciate it every every time I uh getting a chance to talk to you is is amazing because it gives such a view on the whiskey industry that we we can't always get because um uh you know the the experience of what was going on in the 60s and 70s and 80s a lot of that I think is is kind of getting lost and uh and it's fun to see that history and bring It Forward into what's going on today and so you're you're a great Ambassador for for Scotch whiskey and I really appreciate you uh taking the time to relay your history to us well thanks very much for giving the opportunity because as you you've just hit it right in the nail people said you did that all those years ago you you you you you can't be serious but there was no phones no computers you got on with it did was it was it enjoyable yeah because it was that different culture but today people are in a hurry they have to have an immediate satisfaction you have you can't be too boring you can't be this people are more demanding now than never have been but in the past we might have sat back a little bit then but it was still enjoyable well this is the best part of whiskey as it gets you to slow down and pay attention so very good well thank you so much Richard I appreciate your time okay