Ep. 43 - GlenDronach's History and Whisky with Rory Glasgow

Transcript

Drew (00:00:09):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, Drew Hannush, the Amazon bestselling author of Whiskey Lores Travel Guide to Experience in Kentucky Bourbon. And today, well, I've got the honor of sharing my absolute favorite Highland whiskey, and the person I'm going to be chatting with about that is Rory Glasgow of Glenro Distillery in Scotland. And there's so much history in this distillery from James Allardice, the founder to Billy Walker and Dr. Rachel Berry. And I wanted to do a deep dive into each of them and really dig in and find out more of the background and how they influenced the character of the distillery. And along the way, we're going to correct a couple of mistakes that I found out on the Wikipedia page, so hopefully those will get updated one of these days. You can't always trust Wikipedia, but hopefully you can trust whiskey lore.

(00:01:05):
Right? We're also going to jump into a little controversy that came up about a year ago with a YouTuber who was a big fan of Glenro, and then this whole hub up kind of built up about a certain bit of information that had been removed from one of their labels. And so I'm going to get the scoop here on the background on what the distillery is actually doing. It's a lot more complex than something that you could put on a label, so we're going to get into that. We're also going to do a tasting of the core line ofr whiskeys, including the 12, the 15, the 18, and the 21, and also the recent edition, the Portwood. So enjoy my interview with Rory Glasgow of Glenro. Hello there. Drew Hanish whiskey lore. And today I have as my guest, Rory Glasgow, who is the senior brand ambassador for the West Coast of the US for Glenro, Ben and Glenn Glaso.

Rory (00:02:10):
Perfect. Nice pronunciation there. Yeah. Oh, thank you for having me, drew.

Drew (00:02:14):
This is really great for me because I've had a chance to go to the Glenro Distillery, and I have two whiskeys that when people say, what's your favorite whiskey? I will usually throw out La Freud and Glenro. They're different sides of the spectrum of Scotch World, but I love diversity in my collection, and those represent two of what I think are some of the best whiskeys that you can get in the world. So I've been wanting to talk with you guys for a long time to get you on the podcast and talk some history, because actually it'll show you how much I enjoy Glenro that when I decided to start doing my whiskey history podcast where I'm doing the storytelling the first story I chose to do was the one on James Allardice, or we call him Kobe because that was his nickname. But telling that whole story because it's a fun way to learn about a whiskey, and it's a story that until I actually found the documentation, the entire written story by the family in their own family journal, they had a website up where they had posted a PDF of the entire story.

(00:03:38):
I was just hearing dribs and drabs of it. And so what you would hear is that, well, he couldn't sell his whiskey where he was at, so he went down to Edinburgh when he went, he had some ladies of the evening selling his whiskey for him, and that's all you hear. And you go, well, that's bizarre. There's got to be a whole lot more to this story than just that. And so in digging in and really going a bit deeper with it and finding out that he was trying to sell his whiskey locally, he was late to the game and starting the distillery, and then all the taverns, according to them, were all already supplied. And so they didn't need his whiskey. And so he went to Aberdeen, tried to sell it there, couldn't sell it there, went down to Edinburgh, and it was just a chance meeting in the middle of the street of a lady of the evening saying, will you buy buy me a drink?

(00:04:39):
And he's like, I got to barrel a whiskey back at my hotel if you want to come back. And then they're all excited about drinking is whiskey. So that part of the story, I think most of my audience knows up to that point. And like I say, fun way to get started. But when I started researching this, I looked on Wikipedia and somebody's going to have to fix your Wikipedia page because we will cover a few of these things here, which I think they have wrong, and maybe we can kind of clear this up, but they actually say that Glenro was the second licensed distillery after the Excise Act of 1823. Yes. But the bottle says 1826,

Rory (00:05:25):
So yes so it's amazing. Actually, just to touch on the story there, there's so much stories about James Allardice in the history, and a lot of it can be seen as maybe some conjecture because we don't have mean, some of that stuff can be traced back, of course. But some of the stories that come out and every source that you look at can see slightly different variants of the story. And Charles McClain, for example, a prolific writer for whiskey, he has some other stories that he talks about James Allice, and it's not quite clear where those sources come from. But yeah the excise law, like you were saying, was passed in 1823. Len is, some sources do state it as the second licensed distillery in Scotland. It is certainly one of the first licensed distilleries in Scotland. And it's actually really funny, some of the information you can see about James Allardice and even, I mean you could really kind of big this up as much as you'd like here, but some of the research that you can look into with James is that he was really friendly with the Duke of Gordon, who was the local kind of land owner in that area of Aberdeen chair in the northeast of Scotland where Glenro is located.

(00:06:32):
And the Duke of Gordon was so impressed apparently by James Allardice in this kind of entrepreneurial spirit, especially for whiskey, of course, that he was. And the Duke of Gordon was one of the kind of founding peers that really pushed through that act of excise in 1823 probably for multiple reasons, I think probably the landowners were looking to maybe make some cash off it, trying to make more efficient of the process of making whiskey, and also maybe obviously taxing it as well and putting down regulation to make a more quality product. But yeah, apparently so the Duke of Gordon was impressed by James, and so that was a main driving force for him being a part of the passing of that law. So quickly after that, we see James Ada coming in with a consortium of farmers and even a chemist around 1825. The distillery was kind of finished and then was really established in 1826, and it was James Allardice with his nephew, I believe it was Robert Davidson who was a chemist, and then his cousin Robert Stewart, who was a farmer, and then John Richardson, who was a farmer as well.

(00:07:43):
And so a lovely kind of blend already between business, entrepreneurial spirit the technical knowhow, and the land as well coming into play here. So these were the four partners that really set up the distillery, but all of it was really driven by James Alles, and as you alluded to there in that story, his methods in which he could sell his whiskey were quite funny. So kind of going down to Edinburgh to sell to the Innkeepers and to the merchants there, but having all been stocked up on products, it was only until he had this runin, supposedly with the ladies of the night, who then after tasting the product, then tasted people they knew on the product, and then quickly people were asking for it by name and then casks were getting shipped down to Edinburgh to fill the demand. So yeah, he is a really fascinating character. So I dunno if there's any other stories you've heard of him, because there's a couple I could share with you that are just fascinating.

Drew (00:08:35):
Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Because the only other thing I know about is really kind of that the distillery ended in a fire, and I think that's where he kind of exited from the business, but I don't know anything in between.

Rory (00:08:47):
So yeah, it's funny. Yes, so the fire did happen, I think it was in 1837, the fire took place at the distillery which largely destroyed it sadly. So it was rebuilt in the kind of 1850s, and that's kind of what remains there today is most of that. Although there are buildings that date back, even predating the distillery, 1771, we have the lovely kind of manor house that's on site. You probably saw it when you were there, Glen House, beautiful old man are there, 1771. So very old Indeed. No. So I mean, some of the stuff that you can read from Charles McLean he writes about the relationship with the Duke of Gordon which is such, again, a kind of just giving an idea how important and how prominent he was in the whiskey industry at that time. There's even a statue of him on a big column in the city of El or the town of Elgan in space side, kind of the, I guess the capital of space side, if you like.

(00:09:40):
Yeah. So yeah, people definitely pay homage to him. And on one occasion, Charles McClean, again, we can't verify much of this, but it's interesting to read about it. But Charles McLean writes about how I think it was one time when James Paradise was at Castle Gordon the Dukes residence, and apparently James had maybe a little bit too much to drink after dinner, and he was very overly effusive with the Duchess's piano playing. And so the morning after the Duke talks to James, and I was like, my wife's not very happy about the way he spoke to her. And so James Aade then kind of goes on to say apparently that it was because it was the rubbish clean Li that he'd been given <laugh> as opposed to his good old Jon. If only it had that, he would've been much less worse for wear <laugh>. So apparently a cask was ordered immediately to the castle.

(00:10:31):
So there's stories like that that are great, and even some people even attribute the relationship that he had with the Duke as maybe kind of being one of the reasons that, not that it led to the fire, but certainly maybe his time being spent elsewhere and his focus maybe being distracted by to London because the Duke obviously being high society took a shining to James Aice and introduced him to the high Society of London. And so James spent a lot of time down there. And so again, being this kind of entrepreneurial, very kind of colorful character, he kind of, I guess attracted a lot of people down there and really loved it. And so when he was away down in London, the fire broke out in Glenro and burnt down. And then about five years after that in the 1840s, James went bankrupt and he kind of falls off the history books at that point.

(00:11:22):
We don't really know what happens after that with James, but what's amazing though is that he really, and the reason we obviously attribute a lot to James and we kind of named our Glenro 18 after him, the Allardice which is a very well loved favorite for many Glenro fans it's because he really put it on the map. So even after the fire destroyed a lot of the distillery, he went bankrupt. A lot of partners then pulled out. You had the managing partner at the time who was a guy named Walter Scott, who was from, who I believed also owned the 10 inch distillery at the same time as well not the famous writer a lot was a Walter Scott, who was also a famous writer. Yeah, not the same guy. So he was the managing partner and he came in and rebuilt the distillery back to his former glory. And yeah, the the Distillery's name still held a lot of weight from that time passed when James was really managing it and running with it. So he really kind of built the foundations that Glen Ick sits on for sure.

Drew (00:12:22):
And he gets his name at the top of every

Rory (00:12:24):
Bottle and he does, and it's on every CAS head and all that. Yeah, he still plays a very big role in it. And by far, I mean for me, the 18 is my creme de la creme when it comes to our quine. Just my personal favorite. I love them all. But the 18 is something very special, a very old school whiskey for sure.

Drew (00:12:42):
Yes. This is going to be the fun part because I have lined up over here five different whiskeys that we're going to go through. And are they the same five that you have back there? Can't squinting to see. I know the parliaments in the middle, that's a 21 year old.

Rory (00:12:54):
Yes. So I have the 12, the 15, the 21, the Portwood, and then I have a single cask, which is a 2008 11 year old that was bottled for, I think it was K and L Wines that was bottled for a while ago. Oh, okay. A little single cask. What do you have over there? I'm curious. I see some behind you. So

Drew (00:13:11):
I have the 12, the 15, and this is the cast strength batch eight. Oh,

Rory (00:13:18):
Beautiful stuff. Oh, the cast strength's great. Yeah, that's a particularly good one. Yeah, very nice. Yeah,

Drew (00:13:23):
I to I joke with people because they say I have to go to Louisville, Kentucky to find my rare scotch whiskeys because they sit on the shelf there, everybody else is chasing after the bourbons. And I'm like, you guys got the supply here of plenty of Scotch, so I'm going dig through. And so last time I was up there, I found the bottle of it. It's

Rory (00:13:43):
The first place it comes into. Yeah, I know.

Drew (00:13:46):
Got to do it. And the only other one I've had is the ped one, which I had, and we'll talk a little bit about that too. But I had that while I was over in Scotland. That's

Rory (00:13:54):
Wonderful stuff. That is a great exemplar for what Highland petted whiskey can be, and we don't really do an that anymore, but it's a little bit kind of extincts now, but it's lovely whiskey, the Peter stuff at Glenro.

Drew (00:14:06):
I think it's interesting to note that you guys were one of the last distilleries to stop coal firing, and you used to have your own malting floor, and I believe that when you were malting, you were using a mixture of coal and peat for your heat source. Is that correct?

Rory (00:14:25):
Yeah, so we were one of the last direct fired distilleries, so direct firing of the stills via coal. And actually we still have the furnaces there that stopped around 2005 when I think you had per car take over the distillery under Shiva. And yeah, they took over the distillery and one of the things they did was convert the coal firing of the stills to steam firing of the still so indirect firing. And it was mainly coal that we used, but I don't know if we used Pete or not. That would've been potentially something we have used back in the day, but certainly coal would've been used in the large vast amounts. But yeah, they're still there. You can go, I'm sure you saw it when you're there, but you can go under the kind of stills and you can see these big kind of cast iron doors that can be opened up.

(00:15:15):
And there's big furnaces in there that they used to crazy to think 2005 that they were shoveling in coal to heat a still these massive giant copper stills. Yeah, yeah. It's fascinating as well. I mean even they obviously everything with a distillery so intricate to the flavor. So if they ever have to replace a still any ding or dent that's happened along the years, they'll make sure they replicate that. But even with the changing of from coal to steam coil, they essentially were trying to replicate these kind of hot pockets that would form from the coal that would just kind of naturally happen with heat pockets that would happen. And so they actually started coiling around the steam coils to be more tightly packed in certain areas to give the same kind of caramelization that would happen inside the still like you would have with coal. So they tried to replicate it, which is lovely to know that they would go to that effort to try and remain the, keep the flavor the same.

Drew (00:16:10):
So you've got four stills there, you've got two wash and two pot stills. Are they identical to each other then even with dings and dents?

Rory (00:16:16):
No, they're not. So the two outer stills are our wash stills and the two inner stills are our spirit stills, and they're kind of lantern shape. They have a kind of boil ball in the middle. There are in the lower, I guess the lower third. And the amazing thing about the stills, I'm sure you saw us when you were there, they are one of the more unique stills that you can see in Scotland. The two outer stills have this amazing line arm shape, which don't, I don't think I've seen in any other still anywhere else, but you could describe it in a couple of ways. Some people would refer to it as a saxophone neck. Some people refer to it as a swan's neck or a gooseneck but or some people say it almost looks like a U bend. And it basically is, and it has this shape to it.

(00:16:59):
And what allows us to do basically, and everything with glenro, if you've ever had it before, we're all about sherry cast maturation. And so to really have long periods of time spent in a sherry cast, which can get very influential in your spirit, you need to obviously have quite a robust spirit that can really withstand that she maturation for such a long time. So that line arm that kind of goes up and then around and then down and then back up allows us to capture the light, the medium and the heavy bodied alcohols, not allowing it to go back down into the still to reflux back up and strip it and lighten it. So we're allowing our spirit to really have that heavy body that's required for a long period of maturation in Sherry, which is amazing. And you get such a plethora of flavors if you talk to our master blender Dr.

(00:17:47):
Rachel Barry, who doesn't just manage Ben she also does Ben and Glen Glasser, she we'll talk about the flavors that you get at Glenro. And it is amazing when you're there. I'm not sure if you've got a chance to try the spirit, but it is just a wonderful array of this kind of, and Rachel will refer to it as like a duality. You've got the top notes as being these kind of citrus notes, which are typical at distilleries, but moose kind of sit in the realm of lemon. This kind of sits more of the realm of orange. So you're already kind of a little bit darker and deeper here with these orange notes coming through going down. You kind of get these cherry notes, these bramble notes, these kind of red berry fruit notes coming through. And then the dot, they have the lower notes that you have coming through are these wonderful leather sandalwood, tobacco, espresso coffee notes coming through. And that's before it's even hit the cask. So that is just like everything you want to tick the box on for then marrying and then interweaving these sherry notes into that spirit. So it's a perfectly crafted spirit for that Sherry Cas maturation. Yeah.

Drew (00:18:51):
So you've had the opportunity to taste the new make.

Rory (00:18:54):
Yes. I mean, drinking it can be the best way to do it. I mean, what a lot of people do is they'll take a little bit in their hands and they'll kind of put it in there and let it dry and then smell the aromatics coming off. And you really do get all those almost, I mean, talking to Rachel Barry, the way in which she breaks down this idea of smell and taste, she almost talks about it, it's like a orchestral kind of metaphor where she's talking about these light notes almost being like the strings, the woodwind being these kind of middle notes and then the brass and percussion being these heavier notes. And you do get all that whole range there. It's amazing when you're really getting the aromatics, it makes so much sense that you can draw a line from that through the 12, the 15, the 18, the 21 and beyond, because if you talk to any master blender, the hallmark of any truly great whiskey is having that kind of bl, that marriage, that balance between the distillery character and the cask. And Glen just does that so well because they're all, I mean, unless you maybe get one of these really just phenomenally unique single cask expressions, which can be as dark as molasses they can be really fun. But the core range just really amplifies the balance that we're able to achieve from distillery character to cask. It's amazing.

Drew (00:20:10):
It's fun seeing the range and how we're just a couple years apart from each other, and so you can really go through, in fact, I took a picture for Instagram and posted the backs of the bottles to show the coloration difference going from the 12 up to the 21 and how dark that 21 really gets. And we sometimes just think about these H statements, but we don't really dig into how much work that wood is actually doing to that spirit over time.

Rory (00:20:44):
Exactly. And that's the thing, I mean, like I said before, many distilleries would not be able to withstand that level, that intensity of sherry cask maturation. So you need to have, and when you think of a highland whiskey, and Glen John kind of sits on that eastern, eastern highland area there in Aberdeenshire. So it really is a classic quintessential highland whiskey. And we think of, although the regions now again, can be a little bit diluted and always to be taken with a pinch of salt. I see. Glenro is kind of one of, not the last remaining one, but more of that kind of classic big, bold, rich, muscular, robust highland single mots, which we typically think of, which kind of get more diluted now with some distilleries. But Glenro really still retains that. And you're right, the color that you see, we don't add any caramel colorings in any of our bottlings.

(00:21:30):
So all what you see is coming from the sherry. And it's amazing as well a testament to the blending because many of the roles that you'll see in the distillery, you'll see usually master distiller being thrown around as a term. But Rachel Barry goes from Master Blender, and every cask is so unique, it has its own unique fingerprint. So when you're talking to her about what she does on a day-to-day basis, a lot of it is trying to make these consistent products, this 12 and the 15, the 18, the 21, and beyond products and flavors that we expect a certain flavor because we've gotten used to it. But you're making that product with inconsistent materials, like every cask has its own fingerprint, so it imparts its own uniqueness. And especially with Spanish wood, that's another thing as well. We use Spanish oak casks coming from Spain that have once held a variety of different cherries in Glenro will order in Pedro Hek and ASO sherry casks.

(00:22:24):
And the way in which they create the Spanish oak casks down in Spain is they'll actually use wood chips to cure and to toast the wood. And if you go over, I'm sure you've been to Cooperages in the us, but I had the pleasure of going down to the Brown Foreman one in Kentucky and it's still very much done by hand, but when it gets to the charring and the toasting phase, it's very much like methodical. It's all timed out, it's all automated. But in Spain, it's all rotated by hand. It's all kind of a little bit more So when they get shipped to Scotland, then you have this massive inconsistency between some whiskeys that are coming out of the Cas after 12 years that are as dark as Coca-Cola, and then you've got other ones that are coming out that are much, much lighter. And so it's down to that guiding hand of the blender to really make sure that she might be using a different ratio of Pedroso Cas that time. So it's just totally dependent on what she has in front of her. So a crazy job,

Drew (00:23:19):
I think that's what amazes me is that somebody has the flavor memory to be able to try to recreate and blend something down to where it can be consistent. Because I mean, for me, when I'm tasting, I can taste a difference between these different ages. But if I took two fifteens from two different bottles and I tried to taste them from different eras, could I really tell a difference? Maybe I could, maybe I couldn't. But that's part of getting this consistency and having somebody who can pull that off

Rory (00:24:00):
A hundred percent. And I think as well, maybe from year to year batches of whiskey that are made that are under the same label, under the same age statement, you will see minimum amount of inconsistencies there. But as you kind of look at maybe a 15 year old that came out years ago compared to a 15 year old on the shelfs, now that was batched recently, you might start to see those inconsistencies start to be amplified a little bit more there. But yeah, the memory that these master blenders and distillers have is amazing. Obviously they have samples sitting around that they can refer back to in the notes that they have made. But yeah, it is amazing. It really is. It's amazing. But also just terrifying the scale that you have to build out from the lab, making these kind of more minute micro blended, so then macing it up into hundreds of thousands of bottles that you have to make. So yeah, it's incredible.

Drew (00:24:52):
So we move from Walter Scott, which again, Wikipedia got this wrong because they said that he bought it in or he came in 1881, he died in 1887, so he wouldn't have had it for very long if that was the case. So 1852, he's got it, and then it goes over he would've survived it through the blending laws when the blending laws changed in 1860. And so do we know anything about, was the whiskey being sold as a single malt in the 19th century, or was it always used for blend, including blending malts before the laws changed?

Rory (00:25:36):
I don't know, actually. I think it's definitely probably would've sold as a single malt, but certainly for any distillery at that time period, main, your life, I mean, up until even 1970s, 1980s, your main kind of life support your lifeblood would've been of getting a blending contract. So I certainly think that Glenro probably would've had its hand in some blends for sure. And you saw it being used famously in the teacher's blend for years and years and years until they actually acquired it. But I think again, yeah, I know you're referring to a Wikipedia page there. Yeah, it is a little sketchy about when Walter Scott took it over. I'm not entirely sure either, but some of the research I've done is some say that he purchased it in 1830. Others will say that he was one of the managing partners that was kind of involved after James Allardice kind of fell off.

(00:26:26):
So I think he then actually acquired it in what was it, in 1881 and then passed away. I think his then son took it over, and then his son passed it along to, I think it was like a Leh wine merchant and a campbellton distiller. And then they managed it for a while until it was then sold to, I think it was in 1920 to Captain Charles Grant, who was the youngest son of the founder of Glen Fit Distillery. So yeah, it's kind of changed hands a few times at this point. But yeah, I don't know. I wish I could answer your question, but blending more, but certainly in that time period, I'm not entirely sure, but certainly you do see it being used being the main backbone for a lot of teacher and sons William teacher and sons blends and single laws. Yeah.

Drew (00:27:17):
Well, the other challenge too, during that time period was that because the Highland laws, they couldn't really sell outside of their area. You had to stay within a certain radius of your area, and you could only produce so much, and you could only do it on, I think, what was it, 40 gallon stills or something like that. It was, it was very restrictive, and so it would be interesting. Unfortunately, we have no photographs, I'm sure, of nobody was that curious about how whiskey was being made at a particular distillery at that time. But the questions come up to me, especially with Glenro, because of how passionate James Allardice was about the whiskey and the concern for quality and the rest that you almost think if that spirit carried on, that this would be something you would want to drink as a single malt rather than being classified with all those harsher spirits that the Highlands were associated with for so long.

Rory (00:28:19):
Yeah, I certainly, with the rise in blended scotch whiskey happening around that, like mid 18 hundreds and all that legislation being passed, I think it would be crazy not to see the opportunity there for making a lot of capital if you were to try and get your whiskey in a blend, as that was obviously exploding through the British Empire, going through all the different trading routes as a small single malt distill, you can only make and sell so much, but if you've got a contract for a blending firm, big money. So I would be surprised and Glen in the 1860s as well, was, I think it was the highest duty paying distillery in Scotland, and it had about 50 folk that would live on site which is wild to think now, because when you were there and when I was there back in 2019 and then again in 2017, before that, it was, it's like any distillery, it's pretty quiet.

(00:29:08):
There's only a few guys maybe if that walking around just checking kind of dials and maybe doing some stuff with their hands, but really just checking on stuff. And crazy to think that you had 50 people living there and all the families. So there's all this kind of, and even today, if you ever get a chance to stay at the distillery, you can stay in these little houses that oh, okay, yeah, you can stay there. There's a couple of little accommodation spots that they have that used to house the brewers and the distillers and all that and their families. So pretty fun. But so obviously it was booming, business was booming around that time period. So what they were doing with the whiskey, who knows, I do not have that information, sadly.

Drew (00:29:44):
And those people weren't all crowding into that house. That was my first thought. When I heard that the distillery workers actually lived on site. I'm like, oh, they're all piled into that one little mansion.

Rory (00:29:53):
No, I think that's part reserve for the owner at the time. Okay. But certainly that's the nice house. I think there's maybe three or four, and there's probably some that have maybe been lost to time, sadly, but certainly there are some accommodations still standing today.

Drew (00:30:12):
So do we know much about Charles Grant's ownership? He bought it right at the worst time, 1920, because he's buying it right as prohibition was going on in the us. So if, I don't know how much the Highlands were exporting, I just did a story on Campbelltown and I mean, oh yeah, that area had direct access to shipping to get it to America, so I could see that being a much harder hit place, whereas the Highlands hard to know it. It probably was being used for blends a lot at that point.

Rory (00:30:45):
Yeah, we don't actually have that much information about what Charles Grant was doing with it. I wish we did but the history that we have is that it kind of goes from him to going to teachers and sons in the 1960s. And yeah, there's that kind of gap because I feel like there's so much history. Again, some of it can be conjecture, can be more traced back to its sources with James Allardice and then going through to Walter Scott. But a lot of it, when it comes to Charles Grant, we kind of lose some of that. And I don't really know I guess with this kind of what the parent company now, brown Foreman coming in, I think one of the things that we are looking to do is going to have that history looked into and researched more, which is great because I just don't think it's actually been really done to the point where we can have that solid narrative that we're looking for, especially in that little gap in the 1920s, what happened with Glenro. Yeah. But no, I wish I could shed some more light on it, but it's certainly something that kind of a little bit hazy. Yeah.

Drew (00:31:42):
Yeah. So this is another one. A reason why I may not buy that 1881 date is because again, in the Wikipedia article, it talks about how teachers came in and expanded it from two pot stills to six.

Rory (00:31:57):
Yeah. I would trust

Drew (00:31:59):
That opportunity. I've seen the spot. I can't imagine that they could fit six stills in there.

Rory (00:32:04):
No. I mean, I've got conflicting information that, I mean, based on having been there and seeing that there's four stills, but also just teachers and son in 1966 they would've increased it from two stills to four stills, not the six. This is the Wikipedia page six stills. That's so

Drew (00:32:21):
Funny. It's six. Yeah. Yeah.

Rory (00:32:23):
Someone's going to look into that. We got to get that changed.

Drew (00:32:25):
And it's documented, so it came from somebody's somebody's book or something, so somebody was just off. But I mean, we find that so much in history that there are people who make guesses. There are people, people who probably cross some information somewhere along the way, or I've seen where people have written history off of Wikipedia pages. I know. And it's completely wrong and it's not sourced. And so that's what makes this opportunity, as you say, for Brown Foreman to come in and do distillery research to get the story right, I think is beneficial to all, especially since you start finding more really great stories and Oh, yeah. To other places. If you're making that connection to Glen, that could open up questions about why that relationship and you had that train line that ran between Keith and Duffin and how that all worked out.

Rory (00:33:30):
So it's amazing. I mean, even not to go into a different distillery, but Ben, his sister Distillery had been to Glen John John Duff was the founder there, and we're kind of doing a bit more on uncovering on the research there. I think that's kind of where we're starting to do a lot of more research, which is great because he's a fascinating character, and it's amazing, like you said, these tie-ins to, because is, I mean, even now, the single mo Scotch Pussy is, it's a small industry in terms of who knows who and all these people that kind of all own this very small circle and bubble. And certainly back then it was even smaller. So John Duff actually was, I think manager distillery, manager of glendronach before then creating Ben Reik later on. Little did he know that they'd all be under the same umbrella, <laugh> a hundred years later. It's crazy. So it's a little nuggets like that that are so worth uncovering. So yeah, definitely. I'm looking forward to seeing more of the history being uncovered here. Absolutely.

Drew (00:34:26):
Yeah. So 1976 is the date that I have for when the visitors center was built.

Rory (00:34:33):
Yeah, I think that's when teachers and sons would, I think it was acquired by Allied, I think it was the British beverage company in 1976, and they had it until 2005 when they were acquired by car. But yeah, I think that's when the visitor sent, it was initially built, and then they've actually just undergone a new refurbishment, and they've totally revamped it to a beautiful new visitor center. Actually, Ben r angling glass have undergone some kind of these facelifts, and they've got beautiful new visitor center. So definitely worth checking out because I think the last one was a little bit tired, so we've kind of freshened it up a little bit. But back in 1976, I think that's been, they might have built that initial visitor center.

Drew (00:35:19):
So we think nowadays about doing distillery tours, and that's pretty much just become a thing. But were visitor centers really something. I mean, this was an early entrant into the visitor center concept, or

Rory (00:35:39):
Probably becau,

Drew (00:35:40):
Yeah. Yeah, because I mean, I'm thinking 1976, was anybody going, I mean, because whiskey was in a depression at that time.

Rory (00:35:46):
A single malt certainly really hadn't taken off. I mean, single malt now, as we know, it has taken off massively as a segment, as a category. But even back in the 1970s, it was all about, still all about blended scotch whiskey. So I don't think people were really necessarily wanting to go trip up to the Highlands and go tour a distillery. If they did, it would probably be more of a, I don't know, just show up and then someone that works there will just show you around. There wouldn't be this kind of curated visitor experience that they would have for you, which I mean, that would be great if they had that. It would be a great time to go visit one. But yeah, I just can't imagine them having that at the time period. I don't know. In terms of what Glenro was doing, it certainly seems like if it was built in 1976, which I don't know if you've got anything there that says that, I actually don't know when it was initially built, but that probably sounds right, but that sounds like it'd be ahead of the curve. Certainly. Yeah. Yeah,

Drew (00:36:38):
Yeah. So then it was moth bald. So what I guess again, whiskey depression took in a lot of different distilleries, a lot worse shutting down and that would've been 1996 around that

Rory (00:36:53):
Time. Yep, 1996. And that's like you said, that's when Allied decided to mothball Glen John and it wouldn't reopen until 2002. And then we had the takeover by Colonel Car, and they looked to, I think we were speaking offline about the kind of coal, or no, before in the earlier part of this, we're talking about the coal firing of the stills and things like that. So they did a couple of things with changing some of the mechanics. But a lot of people, the big fans of Glenro look to that moth balling as kind of giving us some of the amazing whiskeys that we kind of hold very dear to our heart at Glenro. Yeah. But yes, so a lot of people kind of infer that because there was that period of moth balling at Glenro that we do actually have some older vintages being snuck into those younger age statements that were being released in 2002 onwards in our 12, 15 and 18 years. So some people were kind of making that jump saying that there was older whiskeys. We don't actually confirm or deny that at the distilleries, but there is some information online that might give an idea of some of the vintages that were being used in those whiskeys giving you much, much older whiskeys than what was being suggested on the label.

Drew (00:38:07):
So this is the thing, I guess I'm not alone in being this almost defender of glenro. I mean, when you have a favorite, you're like, oh, I got to hold this dear to me, and we'll talk about that a little bit further on. But one of the things that I read about the time when Peno Ricard took over the distillery is that they moved to using bourbon barrels and that apparently didn't please too many people.

Rory (00:38:37):
Yes. And even some of the old books that you can read now, they say the style of maturation that Glenro uses is a combination of bourbon and sherry, but we've kind of moved away from those days, thankfully. Although even the Petered Glen that you may have tried I think it was called traditionally ped. We had that in the US for a while, and that was bourbon and sherry cask, and nothing wrong with it. It gives you a lovely flavor, and especially with that ped style, it's kind of that entry of vanilla combined with that kind of very wood-based highland PE that we use gives you this just like shortbread, smokey shortbread aromatics, which is lovely. I think what people have expected from Glen is Sherry, and I think that comes from, obviously our history, 1826 being founded, people drank Sherry at that time. There was records showing in Scotland start of the 19th century, that's when Scotland really started getting into Sherry.

(00:39:35):
England obviously predates that much more. And so that's what the casks, that's the cask that they had to work with in James Aldi's time. So that makes sense that we've kind of built a spirit around that style of cask. So the change to bourbon probably would've been more cost effective for per car, because obviously bourbon barrels, bourbon barrels are abundance on the secondary market because of the bourbon laws. So they're great value, but certainly when it comes to the spirit style, the glenro it's accustomed to using Sherry cask. So I think I'm glad we've reverted back to that old style. Yeah.

Drew (00:40:11):
Well, and you guys are very close to strata ILO where Shiva has their main spot for their whiskeys that they make. And so I wonder if they were just trying to grab somewhere in the same region and let's do production the same way between the two, maybe is just a sister distillery,

Rory (00:40:38):
Probably. Yeah, that definitely would make sense. I mean, yeah, again, we spend millions of dollar of pounds, I should say, on Sherry casks every year. And they're not cheap to get the good ones as well. So we work very closely with bodegas. So you can get at a good bourbon barrel for maybe 150, 130 pounds or so, a good butt or punch in coming from Spain, you're looking at well over a thousand, even though they are larger, even when you factor that in, it's still a very expensive cask, an expensive way to make whiskey.

Drew (00:41:09):
So when I stayed in ab hour while I was doing my little trip around space side and over there, and I was over at the mash ton hotel slash bar. Yeah, great place if you go. I mean they have everything, and they have a book about thick with all the different descriptions of the whiskeys that they have. But while I was there, that's where I first heard the name Billy Walker, and it was just me overhearing a conversation between two people and this passionate talk about Billy Walker and all that he did and did for Glenro, and bringing the Sherry Ca back and really bringing Glenro back from being a brand that probably wasn't even really, except to those who really knew what Glenro was. It was not a worldwide brand. Nope. Something that you could find anywhere else. So talk a little bit about him and because that's a point where the relationship with Ben Reik comes in as well.

Rory (00:42:24):
Yes. So Billy Walker is, he's kind of seen as this white knight coming into distilleries and really kind of bringing them back or turning them around, bringing them back from the mothballing stage that they may have been in and just putting them on the map. And he is by far one of the best master blenders and distillers around. He really is. And he's been in industry for a long, long time, and now he's at Glen Allocate doing the same thing with that distiller, which is fascinating to see. He not copy and paste job, certainly, he's got its own unique identity that distillery, but very much doing what he's done with Ben, but doing it with Glen Alki now, which is fascinating. But yeah, so he came in to the distillery 2008, he acquired Glen Drawing, but previous to that, he had acquired Ben Reek, I think in 2004 and he set up the Ben Rig distilling company, and that then went onto acquired, and then in 2013, he acquired Glen Glasser, and that was the three distilleries that he had under his ben rig distilling company.

(00:43:26):
Yeah, I mean, he is, guess I like to think of him as, and you're seeing this now with Glen Alki, and it certainly was the deal with Ben Reek in the past, because we've undergone, if anyone knows Ben Reik undergone quite a significant brand change. We've got new expressions, new core line tweaked expressions as well. We've also totally changed the marketing and the branding and all that and the logos. But yeah, so what he did with Ben Reik, he essentially, if you know anything about Ben Reik, a fascinating little space side distillery that has been the whisper in many blended scotch whiskeys for a long time. And so it was kind of, and actually Dr. Rachel Barry talks about it in the same way. It's like the larder off space side. So a lot of blenders would use Ben Reek for blending purposes. So if you needed Unpeated classic space side, it was there.

(00:44:14):
If you needed ped space out with Ila Stocks running Lobe, Ben Rick was there. If he needed bourbon, Sherry wine casts any type of cask, really, Ben Rig was always there to supply that gap. And so when Billy Walker came in, he just looked at this warehouse and probably was like, this is fantastic. I have all these whiskeys to release. And so it got a little crazy, and you're seeing that, and again, wonderfully crazy because a wonderful thing just to have so many options to taste and choose from. But we had kind of an Unpeated line, which was kind of our classic range, which we had a 10, we had a 12 that came out, then we had 21 as well. And then we had many others as well, limited releases, wood Finish series as well. Then we had our ped line, which was a tribute with these funny, quirky little Latin names, like Curiosity tasks, symptom, DEC timorous, authentic, which confused a lot of people.

(00:45:08):
Yeah, yeah. But very funny. And then we had our triple distilled line as well, which was we do very small batches off. So it was kind of like the, this very creative distillery. So Billy Walker was just pumping out all this amazing juice out, Ben, and people just start taking notice of very quickly, because if you've ever had Ben, it really can do, it's almost like a chameleon. It can kind of fit into these different cask sales, Marcella Tel Madeira Sherry Port Rum, you name it, petered Unpeated, triple the sale. It's incredible. So when that started coming out, Ben, he was, it really put on the map. And so people started taking a lot of notice, and then he bolan drawn, and like he said, he started kind of going back. He started, I think he used some of the bourbon stalk that were available there for some of the stuff, but certainly wanted to get back on track with what Drunk was well known for, which is the sherry casks. And he really put it on the map. And yeah, he released, yeah, I mean the 15, the 12 that were under him were just amazing. They really were. And that's what woke people up, I think, to Glen Drunk being this cast sleeping Sherry Giant that he just kind of awoke. So amazing.

Drew (00:46:17):
So what would be the, it's almost like each distillery has its own personality. A hundred

Rory (00:46:22):
Percent then. Yeah. And we haven't even touched Glen Glass, so that's a,

Drew (00:46:25):
Yeah. So what would Glass Glen Glass's personality be? Seaside? Yeah.

Rory (00:46:29):
So very coastal. I dunno if you've ever got a chance to go, did you get a chance to go see Glen Glasser?

Drew (00:46:34):
I drove by. I was like, it was a day I couldn't go. I think it was a Sunday morning or something.

Rory (00:46:39):
Well, that is one to see, because that is such a small scale operation, and it is such a lovely location to go see. Everyone should try and visit Glen Glasser. I'm not just saying, I mean, Ben and Glenro and all the other distilleries are fantastic to go see you, but Glen Glasser has a very just special spot that it is right on the beachfront. It is gorgeous. But to describe Glen Glasser, it's funny, if you listen to some interviews with Billy Walker, he talks about he was kind of, because the way he works is that he, and you see this with Glen as well, and how he operated Ben Rak and Glen Drunk and Glen Glasser, is that it very much works in that kind of boutique space. It kind of gets to a point where it's scaled up to the point where it's like, I can no longer really, I don't want to see this through to the next stage, which is to expand it even more.

(00:47:25):
So, hence why you have a parent company like Brown Foreman coming in and acquiring it and then taking it to the next level of distribution worldwide and getting it out to all those markets. But Glen Glasser was the one that he didn't really want to sell, it sounded like. So Ben Glen, he was like, I'm ready to see it go. But Glassier was like, I have big things for this distillery. And there is big things happening with that distillery. So if you've, it's very much under the radar but it is a wonderfully coastal driven whiskey. And where it sits on the map, and again, depending on what whiskey map you look at, it can be quite difficult to see where that Eastern space line sits. But most maps, social, Glen Glasser kind of straddling that Eastern space side and East Highland border, and it's also on the coast.

(00:48:10):
So it's a great way of just visualizing what it's like. It's this kind of trifecta of fruit from space side, and then the big, bold, rich character that is the highlands, and it's on the coast. So you've got this coastal element coming into play. It's all mature on site. So you do have that interaction with the Sierra. And again, it couldn't be more closer to the ocean. It is right on its doorstep and it's a very luscious whiskey. I mean, the history, we could cover a whole hour of Glen Glasser, because that's a fascinating distillery in terms of it being opened and closed. I think it was built in 1875, closed in 1907, reopened in, what was it, 1950 and in closed again in 1980s, reopened in 2008. So it has a kind of, it's now solidly on track for being open, which is great because it is a wonderful single malt. And there's big things kind of happening kind of behind closed doors right now with Glen Glass, but that's the sleeping Giant in its own right as well. So expect exciting things. But if you've ever tried our core range, it's wonderful stuff. It's oily, it's coastal. It's fruity. Yeah.

Drew (00:49:14):
Good one to start with, because I see the bottles all the time when I go into the store and I go, I don't know where

Rory (00:49:19):
To start. So there is revival, which is now confusing because we have Glen John Revival, but we have a revival, which is the first one that was released back when it was kind of reopened. So we revived the distillery back to life. And I should also mention that all three have three in our core range. All of them have undergone very different kind of personalities, because every batch that we bottled was slightly older than the last, because we're revolving it because we're obviously reopening our doors. So having to work with younger spirits. So there's the revival which uses bourbon, red wine and sherry casks, and it's very kind of more akin to a highland, more like glenro kind of that, more of that bigger boulder orange notes coming through, butterscotch, fudge and chocolate. But with that little bit of savory note coming in from the ocean.

(00:50:05):
So I'd say it's a good place to start. And then we have Tofa, which is the second one to come out that's petted, that's actually Tofa means turf, which is a old Norse word that comes from our relationship, good and bad with the Vikings back in the day. So it's denoting to the fact that we're using a turf or the peat in that one. And that's a lovely classic highland petted whiskey, bourbon and Sherry. And again, you're starting to get some of that tropical fruit note coming through in the distillate there. And then lastly, we have evolution, which is Unpeated, 50% A B V, a hundred percent Tennessee whiskey cask. And that is a great glimpse into what the distillery character is like because it's a bit more bare bones. It's just one cask and it's not ped. So you can really get a peek into how luscious the fruit is in that. And that's actually to its detriment. Blenders found it difficult to use because it was so tropical. It just didn't really fit well in a blend. But as a single malt, fantastic.

Drew (00:51:00):
I'm, I'm going to take a guess here. Tennessee Brown Foreman, I think I know where those barrels might be coming. Is there a banana note in that? There may

Rory (00:51:09):
Definitely is a banana note. It doesn't take a rocket. A scientist. I know. I think where they're coming from, a hundred percent. Yeah, <laugh>. Nice.

Drew (00:51:15):
Nice. So that's great. And I've had Ben, Rick, I've had the curiosities, which yeah, the first time I had it, I had to reset myself because it is, when you get so used to drinking West Coast and Isla peed whiskey, you get used to that kind of medicinal smoke, or even the PE that comes from Inverness has a certain character. And it seems that, I don't know if that's where you get that barley from, but it does have its own personality and very kind of a heathery ite to it. It

Rory (00:51:57):
Does. It's totally different. It's funny, during lockdown, one of the things I was doing was to, a lot of my friends, they were like, what am I doing? But I was getting really down the rabbit hole of the formation of Pete. That was my big kind of I wanted to learn a lot about it during Covid. So yeah, I went down that rabbit hole. And it's fascinating to look at Pete as it forms throughout the thousands of years. Obviously it's all based upon the local kind of fauna and local plant life that's surrounding in local, that local area. So you have on the west coast of Scotland, especially on the island of island and all those other islands, you get so many bogs. Those islands are predominantly made up of the seabed. Obviously, over the millions of years, they've obviously been risen up. So the actual peat bogs themselves, and you've been to Iowa, there's no forests there.

(00:52:50):
Even historically, there's been no forests, no trees, no woods. So that peat is basically made up of seaweed, sphagnum, mosses, and then also whatever you have there, very kind of local based headers and things like that. So it's not wood based. It's very much more obviously having that infiltration of the ocean as well. Being so close as being an island, you have that iodine, that kind of very medicinal style smoke. You hop over to the mainland, especially in the kind of highlands of Scotland in the north, you're going to have traditionally historically, the Cal Pine Forest that would've been there, that have come and gone. Obviously with the increased rainfall, cold weather per soil drainage, you have a very water bogged land. And then because of the decay that happens in those waters, you get a very acidic soil. So the plants and the trees that would've been there historically start to fall and die under the water line, they go through a very slow rate of decay. So you have those plants basically preserved. And so because there's that old Pinewood there preserved when you dig up that Pete and I actually have a piece which I'll show on camera, but I highly

Drew (00:53:58):
Thought

Rory (00:53:59):
You'll nice see this. But this is from Lyr, and as we use this for Ben Kaling glass, and you can see pieces of wood in there. I actually took this from the fireplace at Glenro from house and and you can just see how much wood is embedded in there. And so when you burn this and infuse it into your barley, we make very clear that we want to have this highland peat used in for the malting aga barley. And at Ben, we actually have our own malt floor, so we can do that on site when we want to, but it gives you a very different aroma, sticks to the barley, travels through to the whiskey, and you get, like you said in the curiosity task, which has now kind of become our Smokey 10 and our new core range you get this very different style of smoke and it's very approachable. I think for Isla drinkers, it's something new and different. And for people that are new to single malt, it's something that it's more akin to bonfire barbecue wood burning stoves. It's not quite as I don't want to say offensive because I love ilo smoke, don't get me wrong, but it's a very pungent flavor that if you're not used to that and you're going into single malts, it can be quite aversive. But certainly this style much more mellow, much more approachable.

Drew (00:55:09):
So I was talking about Okta Moore here recently, and they use Recla uses Maltings from the Caledonian Forest. And the first thing I noticed when I tasted it was I said that smoke is so different because it doesn't have that seaside character to it. It tastes like a campfire. Literally you're in the forest and you really pick up that kind of a experience with it.

Rory (00:55:35):
Yeah, I know what you're talking about. It's like that kind of campfire, almost like campfire jerky, campfire meats. It's got that real kind of depth to it that you just don't quite get. Not that the island alo whiskeys don't have the depth of smoke, but it's a very different style altogether. And you find that in the optimal and you'll find that the been distillery in some of those older expressions from Glenro as well.

Drew (00:55:57):
Yeah. Yeah. So how did Brown Foreman end up finding in the middle of Scotland these fine distilleries to purchase?

Rory (00:56:05):
So it's, yeah, very much so. I think they were just in the market to buy some single malt distilleries. I think the last time they had any dealings with any single malt Scotch whiskeys was, I think it was Glenn Mory, they had a tie in there, I think 12 years ago, or no, it would've been more in 2016 when they acquired the distilling company. They would've had a time with Glen Margie 12 years before that. So it's been a long time since they'd really gotten into the scotch game. And it sounded like Billy Walker was open to selling. And so they had meetings and apparently when Brett and Foreman was there it was all kind of hush hush at the time. But whenever they have visitors to the distillery, there's three flag poles there. And so they'll have the Scotland flag up and I think they have the rock flag, I can't remember. And then they'll have whatever the visitor flag is. And so they had the American flag up and everyone was like, well, it's pretty obvious who's coming to buy it got the American flag in there. It's not the French flag or anything else.

Drew (00:57:04):
Yeah. And that flag was still there when I went, because I drove up, I'm like, why is there American flag here? I didn didn't realize the brown foreman owned it at that point. I'm like, okay, this is different. Yeah,

Rory (00:57:16):
That's weird. That's a nice little calling to home. Yeah, that's funny. Yeah. But no, so I think they were looking to buy, and so yeah, Billy Walker walked away a very rich man and he obviously put that back into the scotch whiskey industry with Glen Alki and you're seeing the fruits of his labor coming out. Yeah, fascinating stuff. So I mean, the only major change we've had really since, well obviously a couple major changes now with Ben r undergoing that brand relaunch and remodeling, but obviously Billy Walker left and does what Billy Walker does, and we've had Dr. Rachel Barry take the helm as being master blender and we've just had increased distribution worldwide. Yeah.

Drew (00:57:54):
And so she came in right at the beginning.

Rory (00:57:57):
I think there was maybe a little bit of a turnover there. I think she joined kind of was probably passing on from Billy Walker to Rachel Barry. I think she kind of started in late 2016 or kind of into 2017 there, and then got caught up to speed and then the ball was rolling after that. Well,

Drew (00:58:14):
We could do a do a whole episode on her. I

Rory (00:58:17):
Was going to say, yeah, she is fascinating an amazing, I mean, 30 plus or almost, I think probably just over 30 years in the industry now, she's worked at some of the biggest distilleries in Scotland. I mean Glen Morgie Bour, art Bay, Glen Mor. It's amazing how much she's contributed to the whiskey industry and even chemist by education. She worked in the Scotch Whiskey Research Institute, and so she knows on a molecular level the interaction between spirit and wood. It's amazing. And when you talk to her, she, she lights up a room she just has a way of talking about whiskey, which I don't find from anyone else. And like I said, she can sometimes talk about it as like orchestrally and building, composing a symphony with these casks, using the lighter casks as the strings and so on. So it's amazing. She is a fascinating character.

Drew (00:59:11):
The fact that I think one of the things that gets attributed to her, and I don't dug in far enough on it, but she really was one of the first two, want to get creative with finishing whiskeys in different types of barrels and kind of started doing that at Glen Morgie.

Rory (00:59:29):
Yeah, working with Dr. Bill Lumsden. Yeah, they were kind of attributed with starting that whole kind of finishing trend. And you saw that just snowballed from there. And then you saw so many distilleries starting to pick up that whole finishing line. Absolutely.

Drew (00:59:45):
And now you have bourbons doing

Rory (00:59:46):
It and bourbons doing it as well. And I'm so excited. I love seeing that because that's the kind of creativity that I think people just love to latch onto. So it's amazing. And we're funny following her career you see the little, I guess that kind of trace fingerprints that come through in expressions. I think she had a lot to do with some of the art bigg expressions like Al and Corey Reen, which are some of my favorite expressions. And you start to, this person knows how to make excellent pted whiskey. And so being at Ben, I'm sure this was just so much fun and you saw that come through in the two smokey editions that we have to our core line at Ben, we have the Smokey 10, which uses bourbon virgin and rum casks, and just seeing that inclusion, and I think what she's now going to be hopefully attributed to moving on from the finish that she kind of started doing at Glen Marey is she's now interweaving both ped and unpeated whiskeys together, which people don't typically talk about when you think about ped whiskey, we assume that it's a hundred percent ped and an unpeated whiskey, it's a hundred percent unpeated, maybe some sort of light ping going on with the barley.

(01:00:55):
But what she's doing now, Ben, is we have what's called our smoke level. And our smoke level will tell you straight up how smokey it is, whether it's nil, so there's no smoke, no ped whiskey stocks going into this. If it's trace for our original 10, there's a trace amount of ped whiskey being snuck in there and interwoven in. And then for the other two, the smokey 10, the smokey 12, it's rich. So it's, again, it's still a marriage of unpeated and peated whiskey stocks, but a more heavily reliant kind of reliance on the petted stocks there to give you more of that smoke. And that's just amazingly cool when you think about the idea of blending the world just opens up at that point. You can not only take different cast tapes, but you're taking different spirit styles and marrying them together. It's fascinating. Yeah.

Drew (01:01:39):
So is she really kind of focusing right now on Ben Reed as the place to get her own expressions in? Or is there anything coming from Glenro that she's really, I mean we've got the batch eight, which I have back here, the cast strength, and are there things that she's working on that we could potentially maybe get a sneak preview of or just get an understanding of where her influence is coming in?

Rory (01:02:08):
Yes. Well certainly she's had her own, I guess she's continuing, she's kind of carrying the torch in many ways for Glenro. I think that's how we kind of conceptualize it with the core range. But she has added to the core range very recently, although it was a limited item to begin with, we actually included it as a core item now with the Port wood which is lovely because that's still kind of in the wheelhouse for Glen Drunks a fortified wine. And certainly that would've been used probably as a cask back in the day 1820s when Port was very popular as well. So it makes sense and that's a lovely whiskey no age statement on there, but certainly has this lovely, almost like a macino cherry apple crumble note going on. Very different, almost more fresh fruit as opposed to it being the kind of dried fruits that we find from coming from the 12 and the 15 and the cherry notes that we find that's so typical with Glenro, but 46%, it's lovely. Almost like strawberry shortcake as well, and plum coming out of the glass again, more leaning towards fresh fruit as opposed to the heavy caramelized dried fruits that we find. And the other expressions is that you sipping on it there it,

Drew (01:03:15):
That's the one I have right now. Yes, I figured since we're talking about it, I might as well jump on in there. Yeah,

Rory (01:03:21):
Absolutely. What do you think?

Drew (01:03:23):
It's interesting because yes, the thing that will always stand out, any glenro that I have is that Sherry influence, the darker fruits will be in there but then you sometimes get, what I find is that because you tend to mix the A laso and the px, it really strikes a nice balance. Whereas sometimes something that's just a laso, it tends to get maybe a little bit too much into the darker fruits, the plum and fig and that area, the raisins. And it kind of brightens up a little bit by going in with the Pedro Menez.

Rory (01:04:04):
It does, yeah. I think as well that ASO can be, and you find this in the, although it's one of my favorites, the allo, the 18, that is exclusively aso, so there's no px, no Pedro Hames coming into play at all. And what you find is it, and if you know you've ever had cherry, you'll know that Oliver also is quite tannic. It's quite dry on the pallet. So PX is the total opposite. It's like creamy. It's like if you took, I always think of taking raisins, date syrup plum sauce, chocolate sauce and brown sugar and just blending it up. It is such so decadent. But what it gives us is a really creamy mouth feel. And I think that's really important when you're combining the high tannins in the aso, the dryness that you get from those casks into the whiskey, and then marrying that with the creaminess that we get from the pedroni.

(01:04:52):
It's a lovely balance that's kind of giving you all the depth from the ASO and the finish that you particularly get from all rosso casks, but kind of countering with that creaminess and the sweetness that you get coming through as well. Because all the Ross, like you said, can get quite dry, bitter tannic and the PX comes in and just kind of a nice smooth, creamy layer of sweetness kind of comes in on top and just changes that bitter dark chocolate to somewhat milk chocolate or sweet chocolate and some honey and vanilla coming into play there as well. Yeah,

Drew (01:05:24):
There's some nice tropical fruits that come in on the nose on this also. It has a, this is the portwood again. Oh

Rory (01:05:31):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean the fruit there, that's the thing with Glen there because there is no age on that. Although the limited item that we did have a few years back, that was, I think around 11, 12 years old, so it can have a 10 year old mark ish was the minimum seeing used there. So you are getting kind of glimpse into the younger style of glenro there. I mean, you do get is more of that spirit character and it is very fruity. I mean that's kind of not hidden by the sherry casts, but certainly you're maybe getting more of the sherry cast coming into play when you're using exclusively sherry and you're 12 and plus years up. But when you're at that light, kind of light your stage of the age statement there and because the pork casts maybe don't give you quite the weight that the sherry casts do, you're getting the fruit coming through from the distillery. And like I said, it's oranges like Seville oranges, it's going to be that lovely kind of cherry notes. It's going to be even tropical fruits notes as well. It's interesting. I'll have to go back and give that a little nose and try and pick out some of those tropical fruit notes. But yeah, I'm

Drew (01:06:31):
Sure like a mango kind of thing or something going on there. It's really interesting. Yeah, I

Rory (01:06:35):
Mean all the fruit is going to be dialed up there from, from the distillery character. And then of course the inclusion of the port there, dialing up all that fruit notes, beautiful stuff.

Drew (01:06:45):
So we have a ghost story that Yes, that we need to get into at one point here. And so maybe we'll dive into that first and then we'll go in and do the tasting on the 12 next.

Rory (01:06:59):
Yeah, so I did do my very best to try and get more information on this the Spanish lady. Yeah, that haunts. And maybe I did ask at the distillery when I was there, and I certainly have looked online and I got some mixed stories at the distillery and I didn't really get much in the way of depth from, of information from that story. So I dunno if you want to start or do you want me to tell it?

Drew (01:07:24):
I, I'll let you do it because I know very little about it. And at one point I was thinking I was going to do a podcast episode telling all the different ghost stories from Oh yeah, around, yeah, there are so many ghost stories, but it has something to do with the barrel coming from Spain. Yes.

Rory (01:07:42):
So there is a rumor story that there was obviously we would use sherry casks and we still do in these casks that are coming from Spain are very large by the name of Butts or Punchin and the old around 500 liters. So they are very large when you compare to a bourbon barrel of 200 liters. So you could definitely get someone in there, let's see if they wanted to. It's a very large cask. And so the story is that this cask ended up making its way to cland and when they opened it up there was a lady in there from Spain and her spirit continues to haunt the house at Glenro, the Glen house there in the front room. So her spirit still haunts there, which that's kind of where it ends. But if you start to ask more questions and go down this rational, well, why was she in there? Was she alive? How did she, surely not. And then it's like it gets really dark all of a sudden. So it, I'm not really sure where to go with the story because Yeah, yeah. Was she immigrating over or was she bumped off? But this

Drew (01:08:46):
Is the fun part about legends. I st I thought had a story. It actually, it was Glen Keith right next door that had a story of about a barrel that they opened. They had gotten the shipment of barrels from Kentucky and they kept hearing this scratching noise inside of the barrel. And so they went over and everybody was a little worried about opening this crate up to see what was going on in there. Come to find out there was a cat, oh gosh, in there for cat that had survived the entire trip over on boat and the shipment to the distillery. And then they named it passport, which is a whiskey that they made a blended whiskey that they made out of there. First they called him Dizzy because he came out of there all kind of beat up and in bad shape and hungry, but he became the distillery cat.

Rory (01:09:45):
That's so funny. But

Drew (01:09:47):
I asked people and he ended up going over to Strata from what I understand. And then he was taken home by one of the distillery workers after a period of time. But I asked them about it and they didn't have much information at all. And you think these are great stories, but again, and that one was true. That's not a ghost story we're figuring. Yeah, it's probably mostly

Rory (01:10:11):
How does the cat get in there though? Because it's not getting there for the bung hole, it's getting there through the head of the, so it must have, how was it jerk? How did it get in there? So I guess,

Drew (01:10:22):
Yeah, well I all, I can fig, all I can figure is that maybe they were because now they break them down to ship them over, but back then I guess they were shipping them over and maybe he was in the crate. Maybe he was just tucked away in the back of the crate somewhere. Or was he in a

Rory (01:10:38):
Barrel? Was he actually in the barrel? Yeah, I bet. Makes sure a bear story seeing in the barrel. Yeah, yeah,

Drew (01:10:43):
Yeah, yeah,

Rory (01:10:43):
Exactly. Yeah, I mean that's the thing. I think every distillery has to have one of these stories and yeah, I know you maybe asked about talking the Spanish lady and I was thinking about it and I was like, gosh, this could get really morbid if we go deeper down this. So I was like, I don't know what happened to her, why she was in there. And I tried asking but I didn't get much more information other than they opened up the barrel and she was in there. So who knows,

Drew (01:11:08):
We maybe someday somebody will have a little more detail on it. So this is the 12. And the thing that I like to do with the 12 is if I'm ever doing a tasting with people, I will always include this one in because I think it's a fantastic introduction to, she whiskeys

Rory (01:11:29):
A hundred percent. It is so inviting. It is such a it's actually, it's funny, my kind of story, my connection with Glenro was I, I'm from Edinburgh, I'm a native of the capital city of Scotland and born and raised there. And I worked in a pub called the Can Mans for about five and a half, six years or so and stocked over 200, 300 odd whiskeys. And I was doing my various degrees at the time and using that as kind of student job in Glenro was my first whiskey that I fell in love with. And little did I know that I'd be obviously working for them. And the 12 was my first one that I tasted that it just was like, that's it, whatever that is, I love. And it was much better than, I obviously now don't detest this style of whiskey, but someone gave me La Frog 10 as my first whiskey and that was a big turnoff.

(01:12:21):
But Glen drawing 12 was the one that kind of turned me onto to she whiskey and it was kind of my gateway scotch into that world. And so I think for many people they find that, I don't use the word smooth cause everyone says that, but it's creamy. You really get this lovely mouth feel coming through and it's like autumn in a glass. I always feel that for people that are new to whiskey, it's great to put the time of year in the glass. And for that Glen Rock 12, it is soft autumn fruits, it is apple pie, it is chocolate, like milk chocolate, especially on the finish for that one. As soon as you kind of exhale after finishing it, it just turns into creamy milk, chocolate fudge and raisins and vanilla, easy peasy

Drew (01:13:03):
Little cinnamon in there too. And the baking spices kind of come through on it. It's really, really nice

Rory (01:13:08):
Little bit gingerbread. So you're still getting that kind of muscular kind of highland finish coming through there coming through in the way of baking space. But it's so approachable. It really is. And at 43% it's incredibly drinkable. It really is lovely. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew (01:13:23):
I think that's the challenge again, when you're trying to bring somebody in to start tasting scotch whiskey and you'll get people who say, I don't like scotch, why don't you like scotch? It's too smoky. This is the thing that makes them go, wait a second, it isn't always smoky. And this can have, in fact, I almost say this is the wine drinkers

Rory (01:13:47):
Yes

Drew (01:13:49):
Scotch. Because if you enjoy wine, I think this is one of the more approachable for you to try to get started.

Rory (01:13:57):
It's so funny, Dr. Barry, the master blender that we have, she actually talks about Glen drawing being like wine. And actually it's really funny. Do I have the quote here? There was a fun, again, this is all kind of conjecture, but there was a funny thing that I was reading from Charles McLean and just kind of on that note of wine, it kind of brought this up, but there's a little rhyme, and again who knows where this came from. There's a little rhyme about Glenro that kind of calls back to this kind of wine note that you're talking about, but the rhyme goes red, current jelly is good for the belly, ginger and nuts are good for the guts, but the wine of Glenro is good for the stomach, so it's pretty good. I was like, yeah, it basically nicely drinks like a wine. It really does.

(01:14:39):
And when you're there, and again the make that you can taste the notes that come off still, the way in which Rachel Barry is talking about them is very much wine esque. And I think when you especially are using wine casks, sherry wine it comes through as wine. And I think that is a natural step for wine drinkers to be able to understand the dimensions of scotch whiskey from that wine through that wine lens. And from that perspective, they really, it's easy to latch onto LENR because it makes sense when about the wine and the flavors that come from it and it does drink like a wine. It really does. Absolutely.

Drew (01:15:16):
You're tasting closer to the new make because you're not having as long an influence with the wood as you would be having with the 18, the 21 especially or the 15. And so for me, there are times when I'm more in the mood for 12 than I would be in for 15 or 18 if I'm not in the mood to taste that influence of the wood as much and I want more of the other personality to come through, then to me 12 is great.

Rory (01:15:48):
A hundred percent. Yeah. It's funny, there's always this kind of Rachel Barry talks about a duality with glenro and you find it in every expression, there's always the light to the dark. And even within the 12 there is those lighter notes, which like you said, you kind of get more of the distillery character coming through. And in the 12 particularly it's that top note of orange particularly. And actually it's funny, if we had the entire core range in front of us, you can really see the kind of, as you go from the top notes of orange in the 12, you get matino cherry coming through in the 15, which is certainly something you find in the kind of middle of our cut there, the flavors coming through. And then in the 18 and the 21, it's tobacco, sandalwood, espresso, leather, and those are all the dark notes that start to emerge in those older expressions. But you find hints of it even in the 12 and certainly in the 15, which I would say is the kind of, although we're not there yet, but it's kind of the middle of the road before you start to then go into the dark and sticky sherry that some people love. But the 12 is just such a lovely way to enjoy it. You get all that lovely top citrus note of Seville orange, which is yeah, it's so delectable, you can just keep drinking it. It's lovely.

Drew (01:17:01):
So the fun part about 15 for me is that when I was over in Scotland and I was doing the tour, I was hearing the rumblings about the fact of because of the mothballing of the distillery, the 15 that you're buying or you're tasting right now likely is not 15. It's likely a older whiskey and that's why everybody is raving about it. So when I took my old bottle that still has whiskey in it, and then the one that you guys just sent to me, I had to pour them and look at them side by side and nose them and see if I could tell any difference and I couldn't tell any difference between them. So if that was the case, because I thought I'll pour this and if it looks closer to the 18 or it even looks halfway in between than I've solved the mystery.

Rory (01:17:54):
So yes there, so certainly I think we maybe be touched upon it, there was certain rumblings that there's even a graph online that someone went to the effort of looking to try and figure out if what age of these whiskeys they would be essentially after the closure and after they reopened, they started bottling the whiskeys, there would be some older vintages snuck in there to bolster those age statements. And so some of the fifteens people were claiming that it had much older stuff, even 18, 19 year old whiskey in some cases. I will say when Billy Walker released that 15 it did have it was exclusively all aso. So fans that style of 15 I think have more kind of moved towards the 18 now because that is exclusively all aso the newer release of 15, very much very close to that style of older 15.

(01:18:47):
But it does now incorporate the Pedro Heth. And when you're looking at the core range, it just makes sense because again, if you had the 12 followed by the 15, followed by the 18, then the 21, like I said, it's this lovely kind of staircase down into the Sherry Bodega. It's like into the sticky rich sherry. It's just that it makes sense going down into the flavor profiles there. But yeah, so I think looking, and that's what most of the Glenro fans will do. They'll pick up the bottle, they'll look at the date, they'll look at the front little text. Is it Oliver Rosso exclusively or is it Pedro Oliver Rosso? And they'll try and deduce if it's an older bottling or not. But some people they very much cherish and prize those older bottlings for sure. Yeah. Beautiful stuff.

Drew (01:19:29):
The thing that I get immediately, and this is what I really love about scotch and why I think scotch is my favorite of all the categories is because if you've bend to scotch distilleries, when you put your nose to a glass of Undr 15, I smell the warehouse. Oh yeah, it takes me back. That's the extra juice in this one that made me say my favorite was the 15 because when I, because I didn't have a bottle of 18 or 21 around, but because when I put my nose in it, I go all of a sudden here I am in the Highlands and I'm at the distillery and I am smelling that warehouse.

Rory (01:20:17):
It is, that's the most powerful and evocative kind of sense that you can have with Whisk. And that's why it makes such a difference to go to these places and see the terroir and feel it and smell it and taste it. And then when you come back from that and you're sitting in your house wherever you may be from it's amazing to be able to be transported to that place in time. And Glen, I get the same feeling. I go to that warehouse, I go to the earth floors. It's that kind of mineral kind of stonewall smell that you get coming through being in a sailor. And Glenro certainly has that kind of old world old school feel. And then when you go to Glen Glasser, it's like you're standing on the beach and you're getting belted by the wind and occasional sun and you're getting all that lovely seas spray. And so it takes you to a place in time. And that's the powerful ties that whiskey can have

Drew (01:21:12):
In this one. I get a little bit of that tobacco on the finish and I get a little ginger. It has a nice little ginger sting to it as it goes through.

Rory (01:21:20):
This is the 15.

Drew (01:21:21):
15,

Rory (01:21:22):
Yeah. Yeah, beautiful stuff. So you certainly are starting to get the little emergence there off the darker notes, the tobacco coming through and then possibly that leather note and sandal would as well. It's kind of giving you hints as to what's to come in the older stuff. But I get almost like same kind of getting, it's the 12 but just dialed up a little darker that milk chocolate goes into dark chocolate, especially on the finish. Although, I dunno if you find this on the finish with this one, it has a, and some people get it, some people don't. But it's almost this, it goes darker and darker and darker until you get to right at the end of the finish it lightens up and you get this lovely mint leaf coming through there. It's almost like dark chocolate. We have these things in the UK called after eights, which is this dark chocolate. It's filled with mint cream and it's almost that one

Drew (01:22:09):
Of those Andy, like a Andy's mint here. Exactly.

Rory (01:22:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like one of those right

Drew (01:22:13):
At the end. I get that. The mint on the nose also, actually. Yes. So just a hint of that mint on the nose. Yeah, that's interesting. It's

Rory (01:22:19):
Always that duality that I feel like Rachel Barry goes on about is that it has the light and the dark combined and that is what makes a worldclass whiskey is that still having that balance retained even when 15 years and Sherry casks could do a real number on some spirit characters, but Glenro has that ability to keep doing both.

Drew (01:22:41):
So now we're going to jump into the world of the controversial

Rory (01:22:44):
Yes,

Drew (01:22:45):
Because the 15 is the bottle that actually stirred up a bit of online frustration about a change that happened to the label or to the tin that drew a particular YouTuber's attention. And then there got to be a little back and forth between the distillery and Ralphie is Ralphie his name and he's been doing tastings for what, 12 years? He's on his 900th episodes. So I mean he's seen a lot of whiskey and honestly he was one of the guys that got me really to dive in a hundred percent with Glenro because he was so passionate about 15. I'm like, I got to get a bottle of 15. And so again, we go back to the story of being really passionate about a whiskey but then he went into this whole thing about they've taken chill filtering, non chill filtering. Cause he is really big about, yes, no color

Rory (01:23:49):
Coloring,

Drew (01:23:50):
No chill filtering, be very transparent about what you're doing. And so when he saw that gone, he went on a little rant is the best way to put it. So I know my own audience would go, you can't go through this whole discussion without talking about the chill filtering controversy going on with Glenro. So give me the purpose behind it and then what you guys are doing in terms of whether you're chill filtering, not chill filtering, that sort of thing.

Rory (01:24:25):
Absolutely. Yeah, no, I love Ralphie and he's, he's been such a source of knowledge for me certainly getting into learning about distilleries and whiskeys and I value his opinion a lot. And yeah, I certainly saw that. So I think we all did non chill filtering. It's a funny issue because I share the same sentiment. I want to know full transparency. I want to know if the whiskey's being chill filtered, to what extent is it being chill filtered? Is there caramel colorings and all that stuff? And certainly that's something that I cherish a lot. And one thing I think nobody that loves anything, whether it's American whiskey or scotch whiskey, they don't want to see their product or their favorite distillery or expressions kind of stripped away. And I think with a big parent company coming in people always kind of feared that. So I think this was people maybe going, oh, it's happening.

(01:25:17):
This is the start of it. But it really wasn't, and I was on very quickly on calls with the UK team and the global team and the distilling team as well that we're all kind of a part of this. And I think it's really important, first and foremost to note that glenro is, I hate not say it's the most important, but it really is the big brother out of the three scotch distilleries and g glenro as we all know is not broken and they certainly don't want to mess with it and it's kind of the one that's leading the charge right now, although Ben r has been doing very well. So Glen is not the one to mess with. So the first thing I don't think they want to do brown formula would be to put their foot in it by messing it up. So we're the reason and is, we can go into this in quite a bit of depth if you'd like, but as we've expanded I guess our distribution to new and far flung markets one of the things that we're experiencing was this that happens in the bottle.

(01:26:19):
So this naturally occurs as many people know the natural reaction that takes place in the cask between the alcohols and the spirit and the acids and the esters that happen in the wood. Essentially you have the kind of particles that can come out of suspension when the whiskey is chilled down and you will have them showing a visible haze in the glass or the bottle, and that's a very organic, totally harmless, we all love it but what we were finding is there's going to have two different types of flocculation reversible flock, and then there's irreversible flocculation and reversible flocculation is totally fine. This is whereby if you chill down a whiskey with ice or if you leave it in your car overnight, which I've done with my job, and you'll take it out and it's gone slightly cloudy, so those Esther that flock has come out of suspension is and are visible to the eye and that's fine.

(01:27:17):
So we don't remove any of that. That would be only taken away if you bring down the whiskey to negative four Celsius and strain it and push it through a pressurized kind of mesh and different kind of layers there to really strip away that those long chain ERs that are coming out of suspension. So we're not doing that. The only thing we are doing, and this is done on a batch by batch basis, and this was to give the flexibility to Rachel Barry and our team that we're finding that essentially in these markets that we're, as we're expanding, like I said, we're finding this irreversible flocculation starting to occur, which can come in many different forms. So you can have sediment forming at the bottom of the bottle. It can either just look kind of dark, kind of dust essentially forming at the bottom, or it can even look like it can come in the form of calcium oxalate, which is these little pieces of almost looks like desiccated coconut, these little needles, these white needles that form, again, this is all totally harmless but it was causing issues for batches of whiskey being sent back as there's something wrong we need to, this isn't right, or especially if the whiskey was not being in warehoused properly.

(01:28:26):
I think there was some cases in Vietnam for example, there was whiskey that was being shipped back because they were keeping it in extreme heat and humidity, so the whiskey was going cloudy and so they had to send it back. And so to avoid the delays, we basically removed that from the packaging. Not to say that we are chill filtering, but just to give the flexibility to the bottling team that if there is levels off this turbidity or irreversible flocculation and sediment that we're looking to try and remove that. So again, we're not filtering down to negative four, we're not squeezing it through a pressurized mesh to strip out any flavor. It's just to do a very light filtration on some of those issues that we've found and it's on a batch by batch basis. So although it it's no longer on the bottle or I should say the tube, it was always on the tube, it may or may not have gone through a slight amount of filtration there, but it's a great question. Yeah,

Drew (01:29:30):
You're being transparent actually by not being transparent in a way, <laugh>, because what, by removing it from the label, you're being transparent that you may be doing something in the background, but what you just described to me to write that on a bottle to explain to somebody, this is the hard part because there is, again, as I said, I felt it when I saw Ralphie talking about it. I got frustrated too because I said don't mess with my whiskey. My whiskey. That bottle back there of Glenro 12, it has a brother, which is downstairs. As soon as I heard the news, I said, COVID going on right now, it's just coming to an end and we don't have any new supplies of glenro, so I'm going to go buy some bottles that still have that written on it. So I have it. I literally went to the store and said I have to buy at least two backup bottles. Did that of this. Yep. Because it freaked freaked me out because I said, don't mess with my whiskey. But I asked you a question offline before we started and of course you're not a representative of this distillery and so you're only going to know so much information, but exactly. We asked the question, I asked you the question of is Macallan chill filtering and we don't really know.

Rory (01:30:58):
Yeah.

Drew (01:30:59):
I mean we don't know off the top of, they don't, I have not seen it clearly written on a package anywhere.

Rory (01:31:05):
So that's the thing I, I think with, I think the fear, this was really feeding into the fears that people had, like I said about with any change in hands going from Billy Walker, which is he's kind of seen as, like I said, his white knight that goes into the distilleries and all these big changes that happen with our distilleries, although we've had very minute changes as opposed to Ben Rigg that's gone through quite a bit. I think this was really, like I said, feeding into people's fears. It's happening, it's changing, they're messing with it, but really it wasn't. And I think, yeah, you're right. I think it's funny trying to put what actually is going on on a bottle. <laugh> can be tough, but I think if we did have non chill filtering still on there and then people found out, wait a minute, they are filtering and it's like that, the backlash on that might be even worse. So I think it's to be transparent. So I hope the shed's light on it because

Drew (01:31:59):
Yeah, it absolutely

Rory (01:32:00):
Does. Yeah. And this thing is, well, brown foreman has an army of tasters. We've got Chris Morris at Woodford and all these people, Rachel Barry, all these people were lined up and they were tasting the batches of whiskey side by side. And there's no noticeable difference because when you're filtering out only the sediment, only the calcium oxylate or only the irreversible flocculation, that does not affect mouth feel. You cannot detect the change of what I've heard. But of course it's up to, and people will do, I've seen people tasting them side by side old batches compared to new batches and we just discussed a master blender. No batch is the same. So they're always going to be slightly different, especially if you're going way back to older. They're always going to be different.

Drew (01:32:45):
We forget about, there's other things going on and the rest that could be going on from, if mean, because my bottle of 15, I just assume that since it's a year and a half old bottle and it's half empty, that there's a certain amount of oxidization gone on with that bottle that is going to have changed it from the time I first had it totally to agreed. This year and a half later

Rory (01:33:09):
It opens up just like a wine, but a much slower rate. So it's going to open up on its own, whether it's in the glass or if you've drank a bit of the bottle, it was set and it will open up. And actually some whiskeys I've had do better when they're in the bottle for a little while and they just kind of slowly mellow out. And so you're getting a much more enjoyable experience or just a different experience in some cases. Yeah, absolutely.

Drew (01:33:30):
So the which is the 18 is just aroso sherry,

Rory (01:33:35):
Just ASO exclusively, and it's still at the, have you got that one there in front of you?

Drew (01:33:40):
That's that's what I

Rory (01:33:41):
Got right here. I don't even have that one here because that's had some stock issues here in California because it's a very popular one and obviously with covid 19 everyone's been affected by, whether it's shipping containers not reaching their destination in time or issues getting glass and other kind of yeah, non-consumable stuff. It's crazy. But no, the 18 is, like I said, one of my favorites. It is old school, single malt at its finest. It is the same percentage as the 15 it's 46%, it tastes bigger than 46, and that is purely from the spice that you get coming through from the O also. And because there is a lack of that PX coming into play, it doesn't have the cream that can kind of not mask the spice but mellow out the spice. And so the spice will grow if you hold this in your palate, it is a wonderful sherry spice bomb.

(01:34:36):
It's like Christmas and I, again, putting a time of year in the glass for me is so important trying to figure out what's going on in a whiskey. And for me, my mind's eye when I'm smelling this every single time is being in an old study during winter, it's like leather arm chairs. It's roaring old kind of fireplaces. Maybe someone's had kind of a pipe with some old school tobacco in it maybe going 20 minutes ago and it's still kind of hovering around in the air. It's amazing. It smells like antique, it just smells. Yeah, if antique had a smell, that's what it smells like.

Drew (01:35:11):
The finish though ends up in this really kind of a berry of some form and then all of a sudden that that toffee comes in, there's like that little richness of toffee that comes in to finish it off. So it has a lot of the things you expect out of an older whiskey with the leather tobacco kind of stuff. But what surprised me was really kind of that fruity barness at the end that I didn't expect.

Rory (01:35:45):
I think that, again, not to harken on too much, but that duality, I think we go in and it's like, oh wow, that is classic heavy cherry scotch. That is muscovado brown sugar is dates, it's figs, it's raisin, it's walnut bitters. And then you're getting that emergence of the fruit at the end or that kind of lightness starts to come up there at the end. And again, that's what makes a really good whiskey. You're getting the whole plethora of flavor. It's not just sitting in the corner kind of with the dates and the figs. It's more of this whole kind of expansion of flavor. You're getting

Drew (01:36:19):
A pleasure. I can tell that's one of those whiskeys that you're not going to drink that with friends. You're going to sit down and study that one.

Rory (01:36:27):
That is the study whiskey. That's the one that you take 45 minutes to just nose, let alone taste it. It's the one that you can just sit and oh yeah, it's the armchair whiskey and it's not the one you share.

Drew (01:36:39):
I'm so sad that I'm down to one more sample and then we are done. This is the parliament. So this is the 21 year old? Yes.

Rory (01:36:46):
Beautiful.

Drew (01:36:47):
All right. So PX and Oso, 48 a B V. Interesting note about this one because if you do the tour at lenr, you can do the regular tour and I think they let you 12 taste the 12, the 15 and the 18. Or if you pay a little extra, you actually end up doing the 15, 18, and 21. And so that's the one that I did. And it was interesting when we did the tasting because it was surprising. We have this thing about age statements and so it's older, it's got to be better. But during the tasting, after they tasted the 15 and the 18 and we went to the 21, the response was kind of, well, I kind of liked the 18 better and I did an experiment when I got, because I took some bottles back with me to my bed and breakfast that evening and I thought, let me taste them in the opposite direction. And so I started with the 21 and maybe I was rooting for it or something because everybody was kind of like, okay, maybe the woods had too much action on it at 21 years tasting it in isolation. I really, really enjoyed it and I thought it's just a matter of, again, sometimes it's how you line those whiskeys up and what your anticipation is. It's hard

Rory (01:38:12):
A whiskey decision. I feel like anytime I do an event and I've got to choose which order the whiskey goes in, it makes a massive difference. Whether it's because your pallet's getting tired or what your pallet is then tuning into at the end, it's a huge decision to make. So what was the results then when you reversed it then? I'm curious.

Drew (01:38:31):
Well, when I reversed it, I ended up, like I say, I don't know if part of it was me rooting for it or not, but a lot more was popping out to me. I was getting a little bit like lemon and I was getting espresso notes and I was getting things that I didn't get the first time. And I think because 18 is so much brighter in those different notes and that vast range of things going on, a array of things going on and then all of a sudden here we are with something that's probably a little bit more subdued, but when you really kind of dig into it, all of a sudden you're getting cherry notes out of it, you're getting melon, you're getting stone fruits, you get, it's like it's all there but it just is up to a lighter degree.

Rory (01:39:24):
It is. I sometimes what I tip I tend to do sometimes with that core line tasting is I'll do 12, 15, 21 and then do the 18 because I find that the 18, although it's 46 compared to the 48% that the 20 ones at, it's bigger, I find it has a bigger, darker note. And I think it is just that exclusive SSO cast that's coming through that when you go to the 21 with the PX and the SSO combined together, it can be perceived as being subdued compared to the 18, even though it's a 48%, it's not messing around there. But I do find it's more dessert. I feel like almost, if I'm going to define it, I've not done this before, but 12 is your starter, 15 is your main, and then 21 is your dessert. And then the 18 is leather armchair kind of after dinner drink.

(01:40:17):
And so I feel like, yeah, you really get to explore how PX andSo play together and then you get to just see what isolation the A rosso cast can do with Glen. And I love the 21 in that it is like a dessert Dr. It's like you're bringing back the creaminess from the Pedro, so you're not quite getting the bitter tannons that you found in the osos. You're still getting that kind of creamy, it's not quite got the dates and figs, but it's more of an inclusion of plumb. Notes start coming in. Plum pudding, dark chocolate cake. It's got like you said, espresso, the leather, the sandalwood all there, the tobacco notes. But it's maybe not quite as intense as what you find in the aso the 18 year old. And then yeah, there's also that duality coming in. You said lemon as well there.

(01:41:03):
You still get those lighter notes coming through as well. And I think that is a Ross the Hemnet I should say, because that does give you these kind of fruitier notes because Pedro Heth by itself is very, very fruity, albeit very sweet. So the yeah, 21 is, yeah, it's difficult to try and put that in. I'm sure I've done tasting so often where we get to the 21 and people are like, huh, I thought it's not that they didn't enjoy it, but they were just like, I think they had an expectation coming from the 18. The 18.

Drew (01:41:34):
It's just getting better, better, better, better and more intense and more intense. Yeah,

Rory (01:41:38):
Exactly. But the 18 is just an odd run out in the core, but I love it from being with that. Yeah, absolutely.

Drew (01:41:43):
Well, and this may be the other thing too, when I did that tasting, I'm just being introduced to Glenro further up the line from 12, which was all I had had before I went on that tasting. And so a pallet that's not familiar or that you're coming in, you're doing a tasting and you like scotch, but you're just approaching this tasting as I'm here for discovery. And I don't have that trained of a pallet when I drank it right now I love it because it does have a lot of personality going on and I just finished 18 and went to the 21. And for me now that's a whiskey I want to go back and explore because as you say, there's so much other stuff going on in there. It's pulled in a whole bunch of personality that even the 18 doesn't have. It may be a little bit more muted, but it is definitely all there.

(01:42:48):
And you mentioned Corey Rein. that's my favorite art bag. Love it. Scotch because I tasted all of them side by side and that one had so much personality going on. There were so many different flavors I was pulling out of it that I would taste the others and I would go, they all taste kind of flat once I go back to this one because it has so much other stuff going on. And I kind of think maybe that's where 21 is the hidden gem that once you have pushed your pallet out to a point where you're ready to taste something that's got a lot more intricacies to it, that that's the whiskey that you're, you're going to look at.

Rory (01:43:33):
And I think when you sit, and again, whiskey will, depending on what you've had to eat that day, depending on the time of day that you're drinking a whiskey so many factors go into what you can have, what you pick up on that certain time and moment. And I think the 21 is one that you want to sit with and let it open up by itself. It's 48%. So even that increased AV V, you maybe want to mellow out just through letting it sit for 15 minutes, coming back to it, trying it again, letting it breathe, maybe speeding it up with a couple of drops of water or pairing it with dark chocolate or even the best pairing. Now of course if you're studying the whiskey best to do on its own, but we do pair these with cheese. And the best pairing I have found for any of the whiskeys that I've worked with cheese before is the, I dunno if you've ever heard of Humboldt Fog, it's a goat cheese and it has, I believe it's an aged goat cheese that has a line of blue running through it.

(01:44:28):
It's kind of a distinctive look to it and it's very creamy, but it almost has these hints of a big, bold blue note but not quite as strong as a traditional blue. And that with the 21 is absolutely phenomenal. And again, it's beautiful pairing. So there's things you can do with it to change your perception of that whiskey. And by far, with the 21, the biggest thing I can say to recommend to anyone is letting it breathe. Just let it open up on its own because it is a big whiskey and it will reveal more to you the more you dive into it. For sure. Any whiskey will.

Drew (01:45:03):
Well, and the rule I've heard is that leave it sitting there open for as many year for a minute, for every year that it's been in the barrel. These have been sitting here all afternoon waiting for me. So that's probably the reason why it probably opened up a bit more too, because when you're on a tasting, they're just going to pour it right there and now you're going to taste it.

Rory (01:45:24):
Exactly. And I always preface that to anyone. If you come along to any whiskey events, and I'm sure your listeners have, it's difficult because I'm trying to imbue information onto to the people that are there. But really what I want 'em to do is to take that kind of try and internalize it as much as they can, taste the whiskey for what it is in that moment, but then really take it home, like go home, sit with it, dive through it, dissect it, try it a different day, a different night. That's the best way to do it. It's really difficult to do these kind of flash tastings in a way because it just doesn't give the whiskey the patience that it deserves. For sure.

Drew (01:46:00):
And I was actually a little nervous because these are so aromatic that I was afraid after I poured each one in there. And you can, some whiskeys, you got to stick your nose right into the glass to be able to smell and you can be away from them. And you're picking up those sherry notes pretty heavily. So it's like I was almost a little nervous that I wasn't going to be able to pull out the individuality of each of these different whiskeys. Yes. So

Rory (01:46:28):
Oh, there was one thing I wanted to bring up. You mentioned this, a whale back, it just popped in my head. So one of the things that we were talking about, maybe some new things that are coming down the line for Glenro. So one of the things that we should be releasing fairly soon, it's been postponed because of Covid, but we should be bringing it out fairly soon, but it's a Glenro 50 year from the 1960. Whoa. Yes. So that will be hitting the shelf. So Rachel Barry has curated this 50 year old that will be released shortly. I feel like I've done with the days of trying to give actual months or days because Covid keeps pushing things back and logistics keep getting messed up. But that is set to come out. And so you're starting to see Rachel Barry really have a kind of defining moment for Glen Drawn. She's already had the cask strength batches that you've got there. She's got her name on them, and of course she's making the batch, the cat, the core strength now. But even these older, very limited releases, she's starting to put together and release. So very exciting stuff coming down.

Drew (01:47:28):
That will be very interesting. I don't want to see what the price tag

Rory (01:47:30):
Is on it. Yes. It may be a little pricey, but whoever ends up snapping them up will I'm sure will be a delight. Liquid history there. Yeah.

Drew (01:47:39):
Well, Roy, you have been a wealth of information and I have loved doing a deep dive into all of this because when you're passionate about a particular whiskey, you want to learn everything you can possibly learn about it. So thank you for digging in a little deeper on some of these things and letting the audience know about the deeper parts of Glenro

Rory (01:48:03):
So much more, and I'm hoping, again, there's more to uncover. Like I said, brown Foreman, I'm sure will be doing a number on the history books and trying to get as much information, because I'd love to learn more. And there's so much more to that distillery. So yeah, to all your listeners yeah, I hope if you've had Glenro you continue to enjoy it. And if you're, I've never had it before, I certainly would recommend it if you're into some shared single mo. It's beautiful stuff.

Drew (01:48:25):
Absolutely. Highly recommend it on this end too. Thank

Rory (01:48:28):
You so much, drew. Well.

Drew (01:48:29):
Yep. None left in. Well, yeah, there's a little left in my glass, a little 21 to finish off. Beautiful. Cheers

Rory (01:48:35):
To you, spk. Thank you. Thank you so much. No, thank you for having

Drew (01:48:37):
Me. Sanjak. If you want to learn more about Glenro, just head to glenro distillery.com. And if you enjoy today's episode and want to ask some questions about it, or you want to make some new Whiskey friends, then head out to the brand new Whiskey Lord Discord channel. You can get there by a handy little quick link I created for you, whiskey-lord.com/discord. And we won't have a Friday Night Live coming up this week on YouTube because I'm off to Colorado to learn about a brand new whiskey from Strata Hands. But I will be back a week from Friday and make sure that you had to youtube.com/whiskey lore. Hit the subscribe button and ring the bell so that you're sure to be notified of the next tasting. If you're looking for show notes, transcripts, or official merchandise, head to whiskey-lore.com. I'm your host, drew Hamish. Have a great week, and until next time, cheers and Slah Whiskey Lords of Production of Travel Fuel's Life, L L C.