Ep. 70 - The Life and Times of a Irish Whiskey Legend: John Teeling of Great Northern Distillery

Transcript

Drew (00:00:09):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews, I'm your host, drew Hamish, the Amazon bestselling author of whiskey LO's travel guide to experience in Kentucky bourbon. And it's time for me to share with you an interview that I had about three weeks ago with one of my favorite new people in the whiskey industry. Now, several years ago, I had the opportunity to chat with Richard Paterson. Who's a 50 year master distiller in blunder for white and Mackay for my Whiskey Lore stories podcast on cer is Shackleton. And I remember saying to Greg glass of juror distillery later that evening, how blown away I was by how genuine and approachable Richard really was. And to me, if you wanted to create a role model for the scotch whiskey industry, it would be Richard Patterson. Well, while I was planning my trip out to Ireland, I decided to reach out to great Northern distillery to see if I could tour the old buildings and see, and learn a little bit about its history as the harp brewery.

Drew (00:01:11):
And then learn also about some of the history surrounding the town of dun dock, which has a somewhat storied whiskey past while I was floored. When I received a message back from John Teeling himself, not only to invite me to visit, but also offering to show me around and to talk about history now, for people who are new to Irish whiskey, you likely know the name Teeling from seeing the brand in your local whiskey shop. Well, as you heard through my interview last week, that is a distillery run by the sons of John Teeling. As for John Teeling himself. I don't think I'm overstating this in any way, shape or form to say that he is the man that paved the way for not only his son's success, but also he's helping to create the resurgence of the entire Irish whiskey industry. See, back in 1976, there was only one company that was monopolizing the entire Irish whiskey industry, Irish distillers limited, who owned every single brand that had the words, Irish whiskey on them, Jameson Bushmills powers and so on.

Drew (00:02:27):
And it wasn't until 1987. When John Teeling purchased the Cooley distillery, that things started to change and soon you would see tier Connell kill be, and Canara on the shelves as well as the old lock distillery and kill be kicking back up and starting to make whiskey again, as you heard last week, John ended up selling Cooley to Jim beam in 2012, and it was this move that spurred his sons to go on, to start their own distillery. And at that time there were only three distilleries that were craft distilleries on the entire island, Teeling Dingle and Lenville, and being an astute businessman. This is what brought about the great Northern distillery. So we're gonna talk a little bit about how he acquired that distillery. We're gonna find out where he thinks the Irish whiskey market is going and how big Irish whiskey could get.

Drew (00:03:26):
And I can tell you that as I traveled around Ireland, I was amazed at how many distilleries are using sourced whiskey to get started, and they are doing it using great Northern distilling product. So if anybody is having an impact on this industry, it is John Teeling. So we're gonna jump back to 61 years ago with him and find out all the way from the beginnings. When he unexpectedly had to take over the family business through to his education in Dublin, his attendance at two of the finest Ivy league schools in the United States, his success as an educator. And we'll also talk about how he made his money and all the industries that he's in. It's actually fascinating to see how diversified his portfolio is. And of course, we're gonna talk about whiskey. Now, you're gonna hear him mention the little birds that tell him things that are going on in the Irish whiskey industry.

Drew (00:04:26):
And he references one of his clients lock Gil distillery in Sligo and mentions that they were being eyed for purchase by SAAC, the makers of Buffalo trace, Southern comfort Patty and the slew of other whiskeys. Well as little birds were correct because that sale actually went through earlier this week. So you're gonna get some real insights into the Irish whiskey industry during this episode. So let's jump right into my conversation with John Teeling as we sit in his office, just north of the port in Dublin on Whiskey Lore. So welcome to the show, delight you to be here. This is great, cuz we got to chat at great Northern distillery. And we're now in your offices here near the ports of, of Dublin, but having that opportunity to walk around with Brian Watts and see what you're doing at great Northern distillery now, and then also get to see as I traveled across Ireland, the impact that your whiskey is having in helping to get a lot of these new distilleries that are popping up with some whiskey to sell that's of high quality and, and something that, that represents Irish whiskey very well.

Drew (00:05:45):
So you know, this, I want to dive in our conversation back into your past, but we'll also talk a little bit about the future as, as we go on delighted. So, so we're sitting in an office that, as I understand is not too far from where you grew up,

John (00:06:03):
I'm from <inaudible> so maybe three quarters of a mile going back towards town. And I now live maybe 400 yards from here.

Drew (00:06:12):
<Laugh> so not too far of a Jo into the office in the morning.

John (00:06:16):
No, but I drive

Drew (00:06:17):
<Laugh>

John (00:06:18):
I'm getting around to the walking jogging may be past it now.

Drew (00:06:20):
Yeah. Yeah. So in terms of this area, how much has it changed since you were younger? Of course there was new businesses in and, and the rest, not

John (00:06:31):
That much, not that much at all. The, the main change. If you, as you look out the window, this was used to be a boardroom, was there was more, more sea across there. They had filled in a lot of the port and added that, but that's the only substantial change since I, for in 70 years. Yeah. There's one new new road called LP burn road that goes over to that new estate, basically over there, a big industrial estate part of the port. But other than that, everything is the same along here. The only thing that has really changed in 50 odd years is this building used to be an old rundown dairy and the owner of the land built this block. It's an 11,000 square foot block in 68, 69. That's the only real change.

Drew (00:07:20):
Yeah. And you've been in the same office.

John (00:07:22):
I mean the office and it opened.

Drew (00:07:23):
Yeah. So you won't get lost if I do,

John (00:07:27):
Then it's time to start calling the, the people to mind me. Yeah.

Drew (00:07:31):
Yeah. So when you were younger, what did you have career ambitions early on or was this cuz you've, you've got your hands in a lot of different businesses now. But what, what were you thinking of when you were you young? What, what direction did you want to go?

John (00:07:48):
I, I, what, no matter what I thought my, my future was directed for me because I was the eldest of four. My father died when I was 14. Mm. And I had to help with his two small businesses. And so I had the experience of running a business, no matter how small, when I was 15. And my mother was from the country and not educated, like many, many people of her generation. So she needed a lot of help. She did a great job. She, she hung at it. She had four young kids and I took up commerce as it was called business studies in school though. I was academically. Okay. I was a nerd. Yeah. I really was. It was a good, it was a good student. Yeah. I have a grandson. Who's just like me frightening. <Laugh> I look at it now.

John (00:08:33):
The business studies course was so easy. It was ridiculous. Cause I was running a business, you know? Yeah. Have to write a check. Yeah. I knew how to write a check. So I, I did well in my high school leaving, you know, we have the national exam, everybody does the same exam and you're rated from one to N and I got a scholarship to the university to do commerce or business studies. Now I could have done anything. In fact, had my father been alive and doing well, I would've looked at medicine. Two of my siblings did medicine afterwards. I was wrong. I, I ended up where I should be. <Laugh> there is doubt about it. Yeah. And I did well in that and did a master's here in economics immediately after it, I was very young going to college. Then I have another grandson who will be finishing his first degree.

John (00:09:18):
By the time I had finished three, I was teaching in the university. Now it's no it's different times. Yes. Different times they go to school. They have a year longer and they go to school a year later. But I went to the university of Pennsylvania to do an MBA at Wharton in finance, came back here to do, to teach in the university. I was, I was recruited back very prestigious, but no money, you know, <laugh> a junior nothing. Yeah. I was teaching finance. And then my first year they came, this house came to the university, looking for somebody to do discounted cash flows. There were no computers, no calculators. That was the one tick, tick, you know, the, the manual ones at that stage. And I was the only one in Ireland could actually do that at that time. Wow. Was in ridiculous.

John (00:10:02):
Now you do it in grade school. <Laugh> elementary school probably. You just press Hewlett Packard and you're done. And and that's how I, I came to this office to do that for a feasibility study in, in June 19 69 stayed here and in, in UC D the university college Dublin, sorry I was teaching. Yeah. Went back to states in 70 to do international finance and I was at Harvard. So there were a lot of programs that you had to cover first, basically two years, you had to do courses and write case studies. And I wrote one at the, at the request of the professor of agriculture marketing or something. Another Harry Hansen, I owe you Harry. I, I, I should create a brand called Hansel. I should. Yeah. He liked Irish whiskey. He must be one of very few people in the world who liked Irish whiskey.

John (00:10:53):
And I looked at the marketing of AWI in, in the states and it was appalling absolutely appalling <laugh> we had gone from RO far. I mean, I realized around 1870 or 1880, there was about six or 7 million cases of very SW sold in the states. And by 1971, there was 260,000. It was wow. So I looked at the background of that in another case study. And that became the, the, the basis of, of the of the revival of the whiskey. I couldn't believe I really couldn into this age. 52 years later. I still can't believe how we screwed up so badly. Yeah. From 60% of the world to 2% of

Drew (00:11:31):
Scratch. Were, were you more surprised at how big it was during its payday or

John (00:11:35):
It was, I didn't know anything about it. Yeah. Because my family in, in that last couple of hundred years hadn't been in whisky. But then when you think about it, it only uses water air time and barley, and we grow very good barley mm-hmm <affirmative> hence we have big breweries as well. Same thing. Right. And we don't grow good corn. We don't grow good wheat or even good. Oat are Ry relatively speaking. So car barely is, is, is the one of choice. And though they have used other grains over the years and I thought I should build a distillery. Yeah. which in a way, I suppose the decide what would happen because it didn't occur to me that I should think twice about that. It was a monopoly. Yeah. It had fall into a monopoly. A monopolies are by nature and I'm, I was an economist then I'm not now probably. And, and if you, the thing that protects monopolies is difficulty of entry, barriers to comp barriers to entry. Yeah. So I thought if I could fix that, if I could get in, I would minor problem. I was a student, I was broke. I was old and I was married. <Laugh> I may have heard that. Yeah. Yeah. So still married, same one. And I came back here, teaching finance, again, always had the, had the, the job here. I used to earn more here as a consultant than I did as a lecturer in the,

Drew (00:12:56):
Oh, so what were you doing as a consultant?

John (00:12:58):
Was it, I was doing finance here. No, here I was in, this became in 1970. This house discovered the biggest sink deposit in the world in the, in the 20th century. And it is still working it's about the fifth biggest mine in the world, the fifth biggest zinc mine. And so that was all the work that had to be gone with that. Yeah. And that took about six or seven years. So I, I was here. I was a resource that they used <laugh> okay. And management's changed. Owners changed and there were all kinds of competitive attacks on the company. I, I learned something on the 14th of February, 1973, I was teaching discounted cash flows to senior students, seniors. And there was a bid came in from Anglo American, huge, huge, huge bid for the, for the deposit, certainly worth as much as you could ever estimate it to be, but it was south African company.

John (00:13:57):
It was the first thing, but that didn't matter. I had come back from a lecture and the, and the board meeting down there, it was going on. I went into it and the principles who, who were Irish individuals who had hit big, the chairman called two big shareholders who had grown up with him in Northern Ireland. And I'm sitting at the end being quiet. And they said, well, what are you gonna do? Hui and Patty Murphy, what else would they recall? <Laugh> right. And they said, ah, pat, pat Hughes was the chairman. I said, we don't know how we got, and this was worth, we each would've got 20 or 13 million in 1970 tax free tax, no taxes at that time. And they said pat said, well, he said, what are you doing pat? And pat said, ah, Huey, I'm not gonna sell. And he would've got 80 million. Right. Mm. And I'm down at the back seat.

Drew (00:14:53):
<Laugh> <laugh> so, so, so

John (00:14:55):
Yeah. Yeah. And then the tool ads said, oh, well then pat, we're not selling either. And that was the end of it. Wow. And I have used that for the last 50 years in classes saying, you can do all the discount cash flow you want, but you know, the owners ultimately make the decision <laugh> and whatever their value, where they made that it was a really good piece of education because I was good on this kind of formal stuff. And then, yeah, it's still used, it's still by banks and it's used by VCs and all that. And they don't realize that people who own a company have a different approach, different metrics. Yeah. So anyway, oh, that's so waffle has nothing to do with whiskey <laugh>. So I built, I, I taught finance at university and I speculated on the stock exchange. I, I was a Benjamin Graham, if you know anything about that.

Drew (00:15:41):
Okay. Oh yeah.

John (00:15:43):
I'm, I'm a big Ben Graham fan as my younger son, Steven and I was, it worked well for me. I made good bit of money. So by the mid eighties, I had early eighties, I had money and I'd always had a inkling that I should do something in whiskey. And I saw an ad in a newspaper for sale, an alcohol plant in Cooley. Okay. Which had made potato alcohol originally and then subsequently imported by glasses and made good quality alcohol mm-hmm <affirmative>. But it had something that was absolutely critical. And I, I almost nobody else in the industry shares this, they had columns. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> now you've seen 40 distilleries. I many, you have columns three.

Drew (00:16:25):
There's not many. No,

John (00:16:27):
No. But 85% of whiskey was then, and is now blended. Right. So you must have columns. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what destroyed the Irish industry. The three big ones in Dublin, never put in coffee stills. Never. None of them ever. And they disappeared because they couldn't make the product that the, that took over the market. It was as simple as that. And now did the columns work exactly as they should have? No, they didn't, but David Hines, you didn't meet David up in, in, I

Drew (00:16:53):
Didn't meet

John (00:16:53):
Him. No. He was with me at that stage and I said, well, now look, I'll make column whiskey in supply. Other people put to the Cooley peninsula in 1986, it was kind of a bit politically unstable mm-hmm <affirmative> it's on the border. Yeah. And it was also very poor. So I put in a complete knockdown bid for, for the assets, nothing. Yeah. Peanuts, not peanut. And it was turned down. So I, I got another, a local guy who worked with me, had worked with me earlier in the, in the share speculation. And we bid an extra 6,000, I think. So we bought Cooley for a hundred, 6,000. Wow.

John (00:17:34):
And they'd spent a million and a half the previous week on the offices, as you would in a state, in a state company, you know, God's say Nazis. Yeah. I'm not into that at all. <Laugh> and then David took over because he was a chemical engineers had built plants in the states. He'd built chemical plants and he found pots in in Nuy that were part of old cumber distillery. But those pots in fact had come from Ben NEK, a group of guys were trying to get it started the old Kuber okay. Who didn't manage to get it started. Yeah. So they're the pots that are, I think they're probably rebuilt now, but they were the ones only two, only two parts. I wasn't too pushed about the triple distilled. Yeah. Still I'm not. Yeah, though. I,

Drew (00:18:13):
So, so that wasn't a, a conscious decision. No. To kind of do something different no. Than what came.

John (00:18:18):
Oh, I had a very clear from 1971 when I wrote the paper. Very, very clear picture of what I wanted to do. Yeah.

John (00:18:27):
I was more right than wrong for a long time now. I'm not so sure. <Laugh> the, the whiskey that had made now we're talking about after second world war, this remembers 50 years ago yeah. Was light blended whiskey. And the best market was Spain where you had Valentine's and J and B a light scotch. And there was a malt and it was a <inaudible> it wasn't a big, heavy peed malt or, well, anything like that. Yeah. Light malt entry level malt. So I said that, that the two products I wanna make because Irish whiskey was heavy in, not in strength in perception. People thought it was heavy. I did research in the states in for their first paper and the Irish Americans said they never tried Irish whiskey because it was strong and would give you a hangover. And that's the most appalling you have to get over that before they'll tried.

John (00:19:16):
So they never tried her. Yeah. They might have liked it if they, as they are now. Yeah. So I raised money. I'd made some money for myself and some others. And at that stage, we'd started selling up the exploration companies to see some of the, the metals and things here mm-hmm <affirmative> and one of them had, had clicked, well, you know, you get a hit probably every 10 or 15 years in exploration companies, but we had done with one, a zinc buy. And so these guys funded, we didn't put up a lot of money raised about two and a half million now. Okay. You know, that was the time in, in the mid eighties was probably when it would be 10 now. And got going with the intention of making brands that never worked out.

Drew (00:20:00):
Were, were you going to create brands from scratch or were you yes. Okay. Well,

John (00:20:03):
No, I wasn't and no, no. I, I bought up all brands.

Drew (00:20:06):
Okay.

John (00:20:08):
I got that wrong. I don't think it really matters. I really don't know. Now you're saying, oh, you know, I have this be brand you're gonna see, which was the biggest selling Irish whiskey in 1912 internationally mm-hmm

Drew (00:20:17):
<Affirmative>

John (00:20:19):
Does it matter. Yeah. And then about a year after we started, I bought locks and Kiba, which I still think is lovely.

Drew (00:20:26):
How did you that's that's one, cuz I love that distillery. So do I,

John (00:20:30):
I love never wanted to sell it.

Drew (00:20:32):
I love the fact that that that the town helped keep that alive.

John (00:20:38):
It was the town, but at one stage there were three distilleries in that town one and either side of the road there and one on the first side of, of the, of the bridge. Okay. Which is now a coffee shop I think. Or a cake shop or something. Yeah. And why did that end up two things happened in 88 or 89. I used to trade things instead of, you know, being dedicated to manufacturing. If you like. Firstly, Willie MacArthur came to me. He and I had been in, in the states. He was at MIT when I was at Harvard and he wanted to go into Irish whiskey. He had a, he was a big businessman here, but we, our path had crossed, but we never discussed SW, but he had gone ahead and had taken over the assets of Andrew way wa and dairy, which was only nothing.

John (00:21:20):
Only just names. Yeah. And that included to tunnel in included in his own called, called Glen Iris Scott, a mixture of scotch and Irish. He merged that in with me for a few shares and joined the company cuz he couldn't get blended whiskey. A still had had a monopoly. There was no other, no other grain plant in Ireland except yeah. Except Cooley when it came on stream in 89. And the second thing was we need to bond warehouses and we hadn't any, still the same <laugh> but there was lots of Kiba and had former bonded warehouse, the old granite warehouses. Oh, okay. And again, the guys who had that didn't know what they wanted to do with it. I bought that for about a hundred thousand pounds in shares, two very wealthy northerners who had built a company called power screen and sold it for 40 or 50 million at that time.

John (00:22:13):
Both still alive one, not well the other one got inducted to the Northern Ireland hall of manufacturing hall of fame or something business hall of fame last week. Yeah. and so we got control of that and we had it for warehouses and the big thing there was, could we protect the buildings and things like that by putting roof. And we did. And it's appeared for celebrity facility completely underutilized by Suntory. I tried four times to buy it back. Did you really? Yeah. I never wanted to sell it Uhhuh well, but you know, they Bri you with money.

Drew (00:22:44):
So when you started that out, did you want to come with a new name with a name it after the town rather than naming it lock? Oh

John (00:22:53):
No, no locks, no, we, we only pushed locks. We didn't push Colgan, so okay. Okay. It was a brand, but the premium brand was going to be the original name locks,

Drew (00:23:01):
The locks.

John (00:23:01):
Okay. And that was dropped by, by sun Tori fairly fast. They thought Tobegan was obviously easier. Yeah. hasn't succeeded for the money. They haven't sun Tori could make it work if they wish. Yeah. It hasn't worked. I believe they were doing very well in Eastern Europe, particularly Russia. And it it's got yeah, ouch. It hasn't grown. It's the same size. It was that I sold it to them, which wrong, really wrong, wrong completely. Wow. All look that, I mean we spent 25 years there, first 11 of which we lost money. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> there was a time when I didn't have all these lines and I had a lot more hair on a different color, believe me. And there was no such thing as selling new make nobody wanted Irish Shuki yeah. Nobody at all, because it was still by 19 86, 87. If it had added 10,000 cases, remember it was still no para at this stage.

Drew (00:23:51):
Right.

John (00:23:51):
You still had the families controlling the companies though. It had be merged the art. It had be merged by the government forcibly in 1966, but the three families all went on the board. So you had four levels of, of, of overhead. All of it was

Drew (00:24:04):
Complete. I don't know how you compete against that. I mean,

John (00:24:06):
Well, I would've, I had a plan to take over arch distillers before I bought Cooley. Did you really? But that's what I used to do. I used to, as a value investors, you know, the activist investor, you wanna call it. Yeah. And you'd look at asset rich companies and arch distillers was so badly managed. It was so badly managed. It was horrendous. And I had done very well. That's where the money came from with a couple of companies. And I had a look at Irish whiskey again came up at 85, maybe early 86. I got two guys, Irish guys at Wharton. I didn't do anything at Ireland's. Like I said, Dublin's a said you cannot no such thing as Chinese or any kind of oils in Ireland. If you open your mouth. You're done. Yeah. And like for instance, I mean, I, I tell Mark Brown of <inaudible>, you know, I know exactly what's going on in, in Locke. And he gets very, he said, well, he said, I, I, I, what did I say? I said a little, a little bird. He says your birds are good. <Laugh>

Drew (00:25:01):
Your birds are good. Yeah. Cause I heard the same thing. Yeah,

John (00:25:03):
Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Well, they held up on tax. Somebody asked me just today. Yeah. But there's some tax complications, which we hear from like two companies away from them.

Drew (00:25:12):
<Laugh>

John (00:25:13):
And it's, it's Ireland

Drew (00:25:14):
Six degrees of

John (00:25:16):
It's six degrees. We'd be a long way in earning it's three years

Drew (00:25:18):
Enough. Anyway.

John (00:25:21):
So I had to, I had to make for, for stock, we did, then we kept running outta money. We, we actually led, we set up all these small little subsidy SPVs at the time they weren't called that. Then we got seven of them and raised about 15 million for inventory, which was very good. Was it 50? No, 7 77. And then the government changed the law so that it wasn't intended that you could set up SPVs to mature stock and not have any jobs. It was supposed to promote jobs. No, not unfairly. I did. Yeah. I, I, I did it as best I could. I used it. I used it in, in great, Northern as well. Jack won't touch it. Mm. And I probably came on stream about 92.

Drew (00:26:05):
And what was your first thing that you

John (00:26:06):
Released? Well, we got them all. We were slow with the, with the grain, which should have been easier. Yeah. It wouldn't work properly first us. Okay. Those bloody columns,

Drew (00:26:13):
The old columns were.

John (00:26:14):
Yeah. Now I don't think we knew enough.

Drew (00:26:17):
Okay. I mean, did you, you're jumping into an industry that you've researched, but distilling is different from knowing the business side. Yeah. You know, did, did you just look for people that you could

John (00:26:28):
David Heines no. Who's chemical engineer. Never just Frank Husky. Yeah. No, we, we, we, we, and the people in, in Cooley had come in mainly from unemployment and they were a great workforce. So David did it all from scratch. Yeah. He's building the expansions up there now at the moment too. He's built about nine now. Wow. But he does everything. He doesn't do it. According to the official foresight book. <Laugh> he builds his own. So when other companies looked at it, they were appalled. This is not how we build them in Scotland. Of course it's not, but ours work. And he's very good at that. Must give him his head. He's so bright. You can't control him spreadsheets and budgets and you can't do anything like that. Yeah. You must leave him alone. <Laugh> and he will deliver yeah. Just a creative energy and he knows what to do.

John (00:27:17):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean our, our expansion now up there just as an aside and that, you know, we were, we had plans to do build three additional ones. One is being built, ADE that'll come Onstream, the malt. We were then going to build a second malt plant in that lovely glass fronted building, and then build maybe a grain distillery in, in the older building at the back there, it's now gone to the grain distillery and David was doing all those numbers. <Laugh> like that. Yeah. And it went from 10 million LPA up to 40 million. Wow. Why? Because that's the equipment we have. Yeah. So all we need is columns and a few other bits and pieces. Everything else is there. And you build it in a way that you can switch it on and off. So you don't have to produce 40 million and say we were producing 10 million or even 15.

John (00:28:03):
We can switch off the other one. Mm-Hmm. So you have to look at, we don't believe in high CapEx and everything we do always cause your own money. Yeah. You know, I'm not using public company money. Anyway. It came on stream. And then I, I found the reality of modern life that building a brand with no money is an impossibility. Mm. We never succeeded. I never succeeded. We tried for about two years, got some good help. We had no money. You had to have cash. The us was the market. At that time, we got nowhere in the UK, Spain, which was a big-ish market of France hadn't really started. But then what the world changed because my work with Irish distillers, I, I bought options on 29% of the shares in Irish distillers. Did you really in 85? And it kind of leaked out a bit and the government kind of came to me and said, listen, you're nothing but an as stripper.

John (00:28:57):
And there was 1100 workers and it needed three mm-hmm <affirmative>. If you do that, we're going to investigate you under all kinds of, as governments can. Yeah. So I didn't take up. In fact, one of the guys who sold me options on 15% kind of lost his job over and he's ended up running a big consultancy firm in Moscow. <Laugh> very successful. In fact, he sent me something a very good piece about what's gonna happen. He thinks in the war, in Mosco. Yeah. It's a macro consulting. It's called wow. Economic consulting firm. And so I didn't proceed with that, but that then became the basis for the 20% that was used to, to essentially take over our distillers, DCC, bought it. Then it went to FIS and then it went to, there was a beauty parade and Paran, I would've thought was the worst one Paran won it. Wow. Amazing. Yeah. 89. They bought it. Best thing ever happened to ice whiskey, I have to say was they're too strong a competitor. We still are much worse. Yeah. But much better for me if there were no good. Wouldn't it been very easy for me. They were very good. Yeah. They got the packaging. Right. They focused on Jerson because Jerson had, was not a big brand in the states. They sold bulk like us.

Drew (00:30:07):
It's it's, it's hard to imagine that because I mean, as long as I've been around looking at whiskey bottles, I've seen James.

John (00:30:13):
Oh yeah. But you

Drew (00:30:13):
Your life, but yeah. I mean, mean

John (00:30:15):
There are a whole lot of brands in the states. Yeah. And all had legacy issues yeah. Of one form another. And so they decided they'd focus on Jemison with no legacy issues and they've taken it from what, 30,000 cases to five or 6 million. I got figures this morning. They, they were announced that there was a big meeting area, Swiss association yesterday. I wasn't at it. I should have be mm-hmm <affirmative> they didn't tell 'em more and they've taken it from, I dunno, less than a million case. Their total sales this year will be 9.3 million cases of Jemison. Isn't that? That's huge. It's unbelievable. Yeah. Full of accident, actually, Tommy Keenan, who runs it, I think he's more surprised, you know, than any of us on that. Cuz it's flying he's out the door. He can't make any more whiskey. So what we had to do was change strategy. And we went for retail owned label. There was no white label. There was no, as you see, all the distillation were not, there was nobody else. There was also nurse distillation.

Drew (00:31:07):
Wasn't a sourcing thing because there was there weren't there weren't companies thinking about starting up Irish distilleries.

John (00:31:13):
They weren't thinking of even having a brand. I could, they supplied all the whiskey for them, but why would you do that? Yeah, so we focused on own label and we were quite successful in that we probably had about 30 of the 45 biggest retailers in Europe that would carry alcohol experience.

Drew (00:31:29):
So you'd be like in Tescos and oh,

John (00:31:31):
Everywhere. Tesco. Oh yeah. Car four. Okay. We haven't got back into that yet. That much we've done a bit. Yeah. and

Drew (00:31:41):
Seems, seems like you're busy enough though with as many distilleries are popping up. Right. We didn't

John (00:31:46):
See it. We didn't see it. Yeah. And also with the fact that people David, he is here will tell you, you do not need a distillery to have a whiskey brand.

Drew (00:31:55):
True.

John (00:31:55):
You put your money into marketing. Yeah. So if you take that, there's 40 distilleries. We might supply 400 brands. So there's more than yeah. Somehow a number of cost, a number of, of, of, of iterations of the brand. Yeah.

Drew (00:32:08):
But you're, you're supplying more than just Ireland. You're supplying across borders as well. Oh yeah.

John (00:32:14):
Yeah. Oh, I know many countries we're in 50 or 60.

Drew (00:32:18):
Okay.

John (00:32:18):
Yeah.

Drew (00:32:19):
Mostly the grain whiskey that you're no,

John (00:32:21):
No, you see, we didn't intend to do them all. I get there eventually if you have enough. Okay.

Drew (00:32:26):
No, we have we money of room

John (00:32:28):
On there.

John (00:32:30):
So that way we, we, we lumbered on and we didn't notice that Jack came in. I was very much involved in the resource companies right through the nineties. That was what was funding, all this. And we, we, we blundered and lumbered on until about two Jack joined in 2001 with me, in fact to do, to do he's he's a finance guy, token. He was a keep off the old block. He is even worse than he is very much a value investor. He did his master's on it. Oh, okay. Yeah. And we were going to trade chairs and he rapidly got involved in Cooley and, and ended up as MD six years later and, and has done a good job, but we didn't see the change in the states for a couple of years. And suddenly there was a big change. Suddenly we saw our sales going up and said, why, you know, we're not doing nothing. And then we got kind, we had always had people wanting to buy us from about 2000 on. I dealt with grants twice. They bought us twice and fail to deliver twice. LVMH bought us once and didn't deliver. And at that stage we kind said, we're not, we're gonna keep going. Yeah. Because our sales were growing up. But from about 2007 on, they grew too fast because you know, if your sales are growing at 50% year, you run outta stock really quickly, really fast. Yeah. That actually was,

Drew (00:33:48):
You have to predict what's

John (00:33:49):
Coming in hard enough. There's no way to predict that. Yeah. So that's where I am at the moment of great Northern, I mean, shocking mess, terrible mess. I really am from success is having a terrible price. <Laugh> did I know it was going to happen? Of course I didn't a clue. And so we had a beauty parade about 2010 because it was coming ridiculous there. Now we were, we could have sold 50% of our inventory, entire inventory. In 2009, we had a lot of old stock at one stage. I had 56 years inventory banks weren't impressed with me. And we were called bank loans were called three times once badly. We barely, barely escaped. And cuz you were losing money and you were going nowhere and your sales never, never meet met any of your budgets ever. So it was a long run and we dealt with beam for a very simple reason.

John (00:34:40):
They were a bourbon company. They're a whiskey company and they, they were predominantly a whiskey company, kind of a redneck whiskey company. Right. And we sold to them and, and the guy was done in this room. The guy sat here, Uhhuh done a gainer for nine weeks in a row. He got the deal done <laugh> and handled all the problems that comes, handled the problems that are in Lai at the moment. Yeah. Handled the tax problems, handled all the other problems. The due diligence, you know, lawyers want to, or they do more and more due diligence they charged by. They are probably by the minute. Yeah. And he, he fixed it all good deal, perfectly comfortable. I had shareholders, I was one of the youngest shareholders, which I believe I had about 280 shareholders. Most of them quite old and a number of them didn't want to sell because I said, I don't need the money. Yeah. And guys in their nineties,

Drew (00:35:29):
Just happy to be in the

John (00:35:30):
Business. Yeah. Didn't wanna sell out. Yeah. One, one guy gave him a check for 280,000 Euro and he said, what am I gonna do? I said, what do you mean, Michael? He says, I don't need this. My pensions are more than covering my life expenditure. I said, give it to your grandkids. And anyway, I dunno whether he did or not. Yeah. I hope he did. Yeah. and Jack wasn't Jack and Steven, weren't happy now at that stage, the world was different. You were starting to see new distilleries coming up.

Drew (00:35:57):
Well, we were also going through a re recession where coming out of that too. Yes. So there was a lot of uncertainty during

John (00:36:02):
That time. Yes. Well we, yeah, day one, it was quite clear. What was gonna happen fortune was spinning off, spinning off beam. Mattock. Who's really good. His name has come up every day in the last three days and wouldn't have, wouldn't have heard his name for the last 10 years. Was building, was fattening out his line to sell the company. It was perfectly clear. And he did two years later sold us to San Tori for equivalent about twice what he paid us.

Drew (00:36:25):
Really. Yeah. Okay.

John (00:36:26):
Good

Drew (00:36:26):
Luck

John (00:36:27):
To him. Yeah. Yeah. Never worried about things like that. We were happy with the price. It was good

Drew (00:36:30):
Prices. It's been a good partnership with, I'd say with those two. Yeah.

John (00:36:33):
We, we, if you look from the initial investors, like the few of us, we would've made a compound interest rate of about 22 or 23% proud. Not enough for a BC company. Yeah. About 20 odd percent proud. Wow. Now over 25 years, that's a lot of money. Yeah.

Drew (00:36:47):
Yeah.

John (00:36:49):
And it was good now they did not seek to impose any kind of, of non-compete. I think they were advised in Dublin that under EU law, it's not so easy to enforce.

Drew (00:37:03):
Yeah.

John (00:37:04):
I still think that's true. So Jack and Jack in particular didn't want to sell because he said, you know, I see a future in this for brands. And he had a very clear strategy, which he told you. Yeah, come back to the, to the liberties, come back to the triangle home of whiskey, where it was all made in the, in the 1860s and build a brand, a Teeling brand. I never had the balls put my name for <laugh>. I didn't, I really didn't never had a confidence weird, isn't it? Yeah. And I tend not to lack self confidence

Drew (00:37:33):
And, and your family has distilling history. So if we,

John (00:37:36):
I still,

Drew (00:37:36):
I, do you know anything about that history? Is there much about history?

John (00:37:40):
There's no, there's not, but I know where, where Walter's buried. Yeah. I've been to his graveyard. Steven thinks there's a wall in Maribo lane, but it isn't a wall for the tilling distill. They're locked up municipal apartments. It didn't last that long. I have somewhere, I, I have the ad in the paper selling off the assets.

Drew (00:38:00):
Oh, okay. All right.

John (00:38:01):
In 1,801 and

Drew (00:38:04):
And they sold out to William Jameson. I think it was

John (00:38:06):
No, they did not bust. They closed.

Drew (00:38:08):
Oh, did they really? Okay. Yeah. No. And this, this was during the time when the scotch whiskey industry was faltering too, because of the Patterson crash, you

John (00:38:16):
See, there were an awful lot of, of, of little, it was cheap to start and clothes and breweries became distilleries and vice versa. Yeah. And they were, the, the cleaning family were in business in Dublin at that time. Now we weren't our Branchford wasn't in Dublin. We were still in the country. Oh, SL castle actually with the

Drew (00:38:35):
Same castle, which was one of your Cooley clients. Yes.

John (00:38:38):
Yeah. And still is Brian Foreman. A client. Yeah.

Drew (00:38:40):
Oh

John (00:38:40):
Yeah. Yeah. Cuz they've known columns. The columns they have, but they're too small, you know, David Heines would've laughed at them. Brian Watts course was used to 130 million LPA and he totally dismisses

Drew (00:38:52):
It. Yeah.

John (00:38:54):
That's arrogance.

Drew (00:38:55):
Yeah.

John (00:38:56):
Yeah. Cause we were dismissed by Irish distillers all the time. You know, we said we were ruining Irish whiskey industry and they attempted to buy us in 93 when we were in extremists and it was rejected by the competition authority correctly. I think it was a correct decision by the competition. So I didn't mind it that much.

Drew (00:39:13):
Would you have salted them?

John (00:39:15):
Oh, well I would've.

Drew (00:39:16):
Yeah. Yeah. Cause it was a good enough. My

John (00:39:17):
Dean was a deal. It was a good, wasn't a great deal. Yeah. It was a good deal. Yeah. A good offer. Fair offer. And but Richard bros had no intention of ever going ahead with it. He was good. He came from Paris. He intended to screw us. <Laugh> you know, bring you to the well and then drop you. Yeah. And suddenly a bike was expecting money. No money comes not a good deal. Fellow called Richard was their finance advisor who had written a book with me mm-hmm <affirmative> long term and finance years previously. And he was the term he could bust us cuz we were very weak balance sheet. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> very weak balance sheet. Anyway, look such his business. I

Drew (00:39:55):
Problems with that. Absolutely.

John (00:39:57):
He would've Richard would've wanted me because some of his clients would've been on the other end of me buying their shares cheap and causing Bedlam and taking the company and selling and doing all kinds of things. So he would' be lucky for his chance. <Laugh> and so Jack immediately set out, looking for a site, looked at 40 sites. I looked with him around inner city. Dublin ended up in new market who wouldn't have been his first choice. Yeah. But it turned out to be quite a good choice. At that stage, the square was a

Drew (00:40:30):
Disaster. Was it?

John (00:40:31):
Oh yeah. It was completely run down.

Drew (00:40:33):
He said he had actually looked at where Dublin liberties is right now, 2000 old mill that we

John (00:40:38):
Bid. We bid

Drew (00:40:39):
It. Did you? Yeah. Okay.

John (00:40:40):
Yeah. We I'd say we were the under bidder. We bid 307,000 for it. It went for about 3 25 or something like that. Wow. The road is too, too narrow. It's very difficult.

Drew (00:40:51):
Yeah. To

John (00:40:52):
You can't get any yeah. Yeah. You can't, you know, you can't bring in a 40 foot. You bring in, in as a lot of the urban distilleries do in Kentucky, you bring in one ton bags of corn and stuff, but you know, your costs are wild <laugh> and you're competing with me from great Northern. Yeah. I just, each alive, you know, my costs are fraction. My costs are way below jacks. So I was looking for another grain plant. All I wanted was the grain to supply the new ones, setting up. Yeah. Very specific project. They didn't wanna compete with Jack, even that was fine. Anyway, creating a brand I've never tried to do burnt. I used to have much longer fingers <laugh> and I knew that that Guinness was closing his three breweries Waterford, which is by far away the best side.

Drew (00:41:45):
It's beautiful down there. Yeah.

John (00:41:46):
Bought it. Couldn't hold onto it. Oh wow. Yeah, man. Rainier goes up me now I had, I had a deal. I agreed with the, that he let them out. Yeah. They said to me, look, please we're embarrassed. Cuz he paid three and a half times what I paid.

Drew (00:41:57):
Mm. So what, what was that before? It was a Guinness. Oh. Was

John (00:42:01):
A really high quality brewery. It brewery. But it made mainly essences that they should go over the world. Okay. So they'd ultramodern equipment. Yeah. It was beautiful sight. And I, I like Waterford. I spent time down there and but we walked around and much the same as I drove past Cooley on a Sunday with the wife and kids and I went in and there was a guy on security and I talked my way in and walked around with DRA. I had to look at him was awful. It had been run down to be closed for a year. And some part, the old equipment was awful. The offices were nice. Yeah. And there was a lovely lab, a really good lab. No Sweeney was in the lab. Okay. He drove in the lab. Yeah. But the rest was appalling mm-hmm and so on new year's Eve, 2012, I was up, I brought, went up. I saw there was one of them for sale and dun dock, the heart brewery, which I knew nothing about. And we walked at the outside of it twice. A good walk. Yeah. And I measured it out, you know,

Drew (00:43:00):
<Laugh>

John (00:43:01):
I got about 10 acres. I was wrong. It's about 13. And I did the simplest deal in the word much easier than even dealing with the government, met the guy, the fellow selling it and, and he met him up there and I walked around inside with him. Very nice man. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> he, he would've given it to me cuz he was trying to get rid of it

Drew (00:43:23):
Really.

John (00:43:24):
Wow. Yeah. Well it cost them 10 million to get rid of the one in K Kenny. Yeah. And it would've cost them about 25 or 30 million to clear that site to give it to the council for the user other things. Yeah. They weren't going to take all those buildings and there was some, no asbestos, but there was some oil spills and things like that. That can be done. So we did a deal where the kettles are now they're the pots, but I had no intention of putting in, in pots. Yeah. I could see how the fermentors could be used for we, we would buy columns. We had to buy columns because probably the industry doesn't like to say this distilling is brewing with a bit on the end. Yeah. That's exactly what it's. Yeah. Yeah. As you say, I don't drink whiskey

Drew (00:44:03):
<Laugh>

John (00:44:04):
So I can be very objective about yeah. And yeah. I could see how it could be done up there. Did I, did I need that site was a bit big for me. Yeah. But we split it. I was going to sell off the bottom end. You're now gonna put the grain plant in for pharmaceuticals. What if, if the offer had come and didn't thought I could build in the red brick, old brewery thought I could put apartments in there and in fact, have a plan worked out glad I didn't do it. It's expensive to re restructure those old granite buildings or those old red brick buildings. But I could put 63, 2 bedroom departments in there, but construction costs and done dock at the same price as Dublin and rents are half the price.

Drew (00:44:47):
Wow.

John (00:44:47):
Yeah. So I didn't, I guess something part we've looked at various things like, like aquaculture and like growing, what do you call vertical farming and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, because we can take the, the, they can take water because they used to store lagger. So they're all reinforced all the floors are this take awful hard things to work on, but anyway, that's there. So I bought that really cheaply did a deal in standing between the three kettles, which I thought were beautiful because they were well maintained, lovely things. And that was done.

Drew (00:45:24):
Was it much more expensive than you paid for Cooley when you yes, it was,

John (00:45:30):
Yeah. It cost don't ask me the price

Drew (00:45:33):
<Laugh>

John (00:45:33):
It was very good

Drew (00:45:34):
Value. Yeah. It was

John (00:45:35):
Very good value. Now I bought lock stock and barrel. Yeah. And it was a lovely story. I, when I walked around, they had a lovely Christmas display of reindeers and things up in the, and the front part of it on the car road, in the, in the little green area there. So I insisted on buying you know, lock, stock barrel plus the Christmas decorations. Mm-Hmm

Drew (00:45:57):
<Affirmative> nice. And

John (00:45:58):
They did it, they delivered, they wanted to walk. They gave me the keys. So got up. Thanks very much. Now they weren't finishing. We had to let them brew for about another nine months because harp wasn't ready. Yeah. I wasn't that big, the main thing that held us up was I needed to order columns from freely. So that was gonna be the long as it is again at the moment. Yeah. That was the delivery time of 11 months. Wasn't bad then.

Drew (00:46:22):
Well, you're, that setup is really interesting too, because the only, it was the first setup I've seen since, but it was the first setup I saw where the column still was actually split into three pieces rather than being excessively tall. It was set up in, in

John (00:46:38):
Parts that goes

Drew (00:46:39):
Still, that there's a w kind

John (00:46:41):
Motion. Yeah. That was to some extent that the David was watching the, the columns in there are three columns as well in Tmore. He was there yesterday. He, they walked around. I haven't seen that and I should have, yeah. They expecting me. I blew it. <Laugh> and it was to some extent a function of the site, but he wanted to, to do it in such a way, but most, most British ones have, have three columns. Do they? Okay. Yeah, they do. They do. You're thinking of the big of, of the Kentucky ones.

Drew (00:47:09):
The ones. Yeah. Jack Daniels and there monster huge sure. Copper column still. Yeah.

John (00:47:15):
So they do it like that for whatever reason I'm not technical. Yeah. It must be reasons there must be reasons. Yeah. So while I was there, I, again, it's one of the joys of not being a, an engineer SP not being a distiller and see, not being in the industry. I was up one evening. It was a lovely story on it. And I was looking at these beautiful copper kettles and I said, why can't I turn those into pot stills? Oh no, you wouldn't know. David Hines was as bad. Yeah. And he had, he was there with me and we were a guy called who's back, working with us again now Declan Grham. And they were marching around or both equally bright, you know, far too bright marching around just that. And the other and said, no. So I asked for a site to send over somebody and they did sent over their head of production.

John (00:48:03):
And it was a February evening and he was late. I picked him up with the airport. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> went up to the plant. It was pitch dark Declan GRN was there cuz he lived close by and, and a young apprentice engineer. So the guy comes in and the cup of tea <laugh> and he says I need some Vaseline. Okay. Clear Vaseline. You wanna be careful. And Don talk, looking for clear Vaseline or <laugh> not the black stuff, you know know? Yeah. So we had to send the kid home to bring home Vaseline this, where are we gonna get it into talking half seven and a February night. So we, we brought it back now. I knew nothing about this. Neither a detection GRN so he comes in and he rubs it on what is now the wash still mm-hmm <affirmative> and he takes out this ultrasound, what puts it on says yeah.

John (00:48:50):
3.7 meters thick. Perfect. Can take the pressure he says yeah, done. So all the blood that we gone around could have been done. Yes. <laugh> simple as that. So we had to build tops. We built X. Yeah. Yeah. I could have bought three pots at that time for a million under a million that size. Yeah. Put them into, into that location. I probably spent close to a million on refurbs on that. <Laugh> so now, but they're unique. Yeah. That how much of the original ones are there now? Not an awful lot. No, no, no. We've had the fixed, fixed tops and bottoms of it. Yeah. But look, it's fine. And we started to do, but the world had changed dramatically by then dramatically firstly, all the new distilleries and guys looking for whiskey. So the idea of selling new new make came in mm-hmm <affirmative> I had saw no new make at all in Cooley. Yeah. Never saw new make. And so now we're at the stage that I've sold too much. <Laugh> that's the problem. I in, if you sell it as new make, you can't sell it as four year old. Right. And now fastest growing part now is macho whisky coming from all over the world. Mm-Hmm I mean, I dealt with fourth this morning cuz Brian Watts has been away and he hadn't answered Japan, Thailand Romania. Okay. and the fourth one is it's definitely Eastern Europe. Is

Drew (00:50:19):
It like Czech Republic? I know Czech Republic is crazy for whiskey,

John (00:50:22):
But I dunno Irish state Irish for Irish, for Irish too. Yeah. Oh yeah. Very much. Irish was a bigger seller than Scott to believe there to J but so these are big companies that we want to deal with. So we had to, Brian had to sent off to, to get those samples out and get the pricing done very quickly today. Cuz he's been hanging around for a week or so. Mm. So we started to sell new Phil, which funds it. My, my, my colleague, Jim Finn who's with me for 40 years as well. He likes the cash flow, whereas he, he suffered so much in Cooley that he doesn't wanna work <laugh> so it's been very good to us, 60% of what I'm still making as solar's new make. Yeah. And it was, it was grain originally. Now David could make new, very good because we made in Cooley, we refined the distilling process.

John (00:51:07):
So we used, we used our distillers grain as the template mm-hmm and we got to that. Yeah. We got to where it was identical in our way. Just spec. Yeah. Oh this is this chemical process. Yeah. You tune your columns literally mm-hmm <affirmative> and that we got to that and then we we came on stream about 2015. Yeah, 2000 late 2015. Hmm. And the, the, once again, the, the pots were behind the co see, the columns were first built in Cooley, but didn't work. Right. Whereas this one worked really did a very good job. I think we're going to go free for the expansion as well. Yeah.

Drew (00:51:51):
They feel they're stills around.

John (00:51:53):
Yeah. But they knew Ireland cuts. They, which they hadn't, they only got into the pot stuff in, in recent years. Okay. They're a column expert. Yeah. So we'll go back to them. And good. Believe it. Or now Italian company delivers on time delivers on the quality <laugh> delivers on the price size.

Drew (00:52:10):
Yeah. Well, I think foresight ran into issues when that McAllen job came up and they were just backlogged with totally.

John (00:52:17):
It was about three years. Yeah. They've expanded from when we were dealing with them. First, we had, we had a meeting up there recently and there three of us had myself, David and Richard <inaudible> senior 1 75 year old and 2 76 year olds. Ridiculous. I think the people coming in were probably had oxygen and smelling salts for us along those kind of stuff. He's 450 employees now he's trip to this workplace. Wow. That's a lot of coppersmiths.

Drew (00:52:39):
It is,

John (00:52:41):
But he's, I think his deliveries are now, oh, see, that'd be a big job of 40 million in LPA. I, I think it could be two year wait and we, we wanted quicker than that if possible. Yeah. he said he wanted to be absolutely by the end of 20, 24, if possible. Cuz we need it four. Yeah. And so we didn't, as I say, we didn't see now what we started new make was easy. And then some of the existing distilleries affect almost all of them. If you are putting money into, to build a brand,

Drew (00:53:16):
Right.

John (00:53:17):
You're gonna want security of supply. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, you know, they come to me and I say, I know what you're gonna say to me. And I, I tell you what the answer's going to be. And they never know what their projections are. If they give me the projections, they're always optimistic. I say, you don't want

Drew (00:53:31):
<Laugh>

John (00:53:31):
I've been down that road and have been burnt repeatedly. Yeah. But I, I feel this, I moral with a small M obligation that if they've been supplying them with whiskey, we should continue to try and supply them. So our focus at the moment, and I've been wrote to people and said, look, you're running into trouble here, guys. You better come in and try and do a five year deal with me. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so what we do is say we will reserve stuff for you against the deposit. Yeah.

Drew (00:53:59):
Because

John (00:54:00):
I had one little company that had raised money and they came up and their five year projections had a deposit greater than a hundred percent of what they'd raised. Ooh. And that was for marketing, you know, that hasn't been finalized. Yeah.

John (00:54:15):
Because you know, if you expect to going 5, 10, 20, 40, 60, that's a lot of cases and you're buying them at full price, full price. Then even 20% is a lot. Yeah. We would be doing contracts. The ones that don't do contracts with it are the big retail own label guys. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. They don't care. Yeah. If you don't supply it and they don't get it. So what they'll fill the shelf or something else. Yeah. So never get a contract from them. And they with price rises. We never, we never put our prices up until December now. I've experienced in the seventies. So we put it up. We put them up in December and we put them up again in may. Now that should be the end of it.

Drew (00:54:55):
Yeah. Hopefully <laugh> the way, the way inflation's going right now, who knows who we're

John (00:55:00):
Gonna stop. So that, that brings you kind of up to where we are in a way now. We've only 50 other employees. We'd probably go to 70 or 80. Yeah.

Drew (00:55:10):
And, and so with this move, and I understand the idea of the five year contract makes sense to me that your own whiskey, if you're starting to produce it, it becomes whiskey after three years. But that doesn't mean that it's gonna be a quality product.

John (00:55:26):
No. And also remember you're everybody else start off with a single mal Irish, but you have to have a blend.

Drew (00:55:32):
Yeah. You know?

John (00:55:33):
Yeah. Everybody can sell single Mo. Yeah. Now I got a couple of things wrong. I got the pot still wrong. I didn't distill enough pots. I didn't realize how successful it's going. I believe it's an allocation in the states

Drew (00:55:46):
Pot still. Yeah.

John (00:55:47):
Yeah. My red breast. Yeah. Supposed to be an

Drew (00:55:49):
Allocation. I think you can, well, you can find 12 and the,

John (00:55:52):
Oh actually it's the 12 year old hair just this morning. Really? Yeah. Somebody rings me up and said, listen, here, we, we, we don't want, you know, we haven't got pot still, but could you give us something? Can we make it kind of, you know, make us something that looks like 12 year old. Yeah. I said to him, you only want the number. It's the number

Drew (00:56:08):
Thing? Well, the thing is though with me I was introduced to pots still, actually by a distillery in Colorado. That's making a single pots, still whiskey and the personality of pots still whiskey to me is and, and you've traveled all around. So you probably know the reference of Graham crackers. What Graham crackers do don't you mean the crackers they're crackers. Yes. But they're, they're kind of like it's a grain. Yeah. Grainy cracker with a honey flavor to them that are very popular in the states. And when I taste a good single pot, still whiskey, which many of the ones I tasted probably came from your distillery. No we don't. We didn't. You don't do.

John (00:56:51):
Oh yeah, we do. Yeah. Yeah. But we, we don't,

Drew (00:56:53):
You don't do enough. A lot

John (00:56:54):
Of it. So if, if yours was a mature yeah. Pot still, we didn't distill much in 2016 or 17 at all.

Drew (00:57:02):
Oh, okay. Oh,

John (00:57:02):
It's like gold from us. If you can get any from you can't we haven't got any more

Drew (00:57:06):
Sell. Okay. But it comes at you with this really nice grain note and then there's the pepperiness on the end and it's, and it's very, I love the mouth feel of it. It's it's got some, some weight.

John (00:57:16):
You always been talking Chinese to me.

Drew (00:57:18):
Yeah. Well <laugh> there you go. Yeah. And this is fascinating that you've run whiskey distillery so long and that you don't drink whiskey.

John (00:57:27):
Don't drink alcohol.

Drew (00:57:28):
Yeah. At all.

John (00:57:29):
It shouldn't, I've been re I've had multiple problems on that. I was trying to do a deal with, with ARD. Have you heard of ARD? Mm-Hmm <affirmative> there were French, a French secure, very successful in, in, in France. And then in the states they had an American company and I went to see the board and we were in having lunch. And so it was all you know, white wines, red wines, bloody well, green wines, dessert wines. Yeah. And I wanted a diet Coke, which of course

Drew (00:58:02):
Sin sin with French. Yes.

John (00:58:05):
And they put up with it

Drew (00:58:08):
<Laugh>

John (00:58:08):
And I was muttering. So we're going back to the airport with the, with the marketing director who was very disappointed in me. They wanted, I was trying to get 'em to take little, be as a brand. Yeah. And I said, that didn't go well. And I said, no. I said, what were they saying? They said it was the first time since 1775, there was a non-drinker in the board.

Drew (00:58:25):
<Laugh>

John (00:58:27):
And then there was another one, Matthew Clark in England, still a company still going, but the family had gone. Same thing again, we had the, the the chairman old bat of alpha sitting at the top very traditional company. And he said, what, what would you like to drink? I said, well, I don't drink. And he looks at me. He says, I don't trust a man. He doesn't drink. <Laugh> didn't deal with me.

Drew (00:58:48):
Wow.

John (00:58:49):
But the logic always this, when it was asked you, if you haven't heard this, you, the only one in Ireland who hasn't I used to own in my earlier days, my activist days ended up control of a large text clothing company that made, had 1200 girls working for me. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> mainly making ladies underwear.

Drew (00:59:04):
Okay.

John (00:59:05):
50% of all the ladies underwear in Ireland I made. Wow. And I never wore that either. <Laugh> certainly never in

Drew (00:59:11):
Public. Yes. That completely makes it well, you're a businessman and you, and, and you see opportunities.

John (00:59:17):
Well, I, yeah. And as I said, that example, I gave you the discount to class folk. For me, it's a financial thing. Yeah. And now at the moment, I'm completely non you because I believe in shareholder capitalism, I don't believe in stakeholder capitalism and I've just driven. My, my, my, my young grandson is doing a state exam in, in, in, in rest assured there'll be a question on capitalism and rest assured the examiners will all be woke. So I said, don't believe, and I had to go back to him and say, phon, don't believe a word I've just said,

Drew (00:59:46):
<Laugh>

John (00:59:47):
Talk about the stakeholders, you know?

Drew (00:59:49):
Yeah.

John (00:59:49):
Yeah. So yeah, go ahead.

Drew (00:59:52):
So I was gonna say with the with red breast and talking about drinking pot still whiskey, what I'm interested to see over time is how people, how their opinion will change on red breast. Because red breast has such a great reputation in the us. I do a little competition online every year where I let people nominate whiskeys, and then they can go through and vote until we go through brackets down to what is the most popular whiskey. And redress is always in the top 10, if not a top four whiskey worldwide,

John (01:00:26):
But does it not just have its own devotees?

Drew (01:00:28):
It, it does. And, but, and

John (01:00:30):
Like sells.

Drew (01:00:31):
And I think they, I think they're sold on the idea of pots, still whiskey from red breast. But the pots still whiskey I've tasted over here that isn't red breast I think is better than red breast.

John (01:00:44):
Well, you know, you have to think about this and this is against myself. Our distillers has 70 million LPA capacity. We've 20. Yeah. You're big industrial operations. Yeah. And whether or not the smaller ones, you can get some tweaks to make it different. Sometimes it may not be as good. I think our four year old, our four year old pot still is some of which you would've got. Yeah. Very, very good. Now Brian wouldn't have known any, he wouldn't have known anything about potstill still

Drew (01:01:18):
He Scottish,

John (01:01:19):
But he knew nothing about mal either.

Drew (01:01:21):
Yeah.

John (01:01:21):
Yeah. But that's not true. He was in grants before he went to British. Okay. But yeah. Potstill is alien to him. Yeah. and he kicks and fights against Peter because he doesn't like it smelling up his pots

Drew (01:01:34):
<Laugh>

John (01:01:35):
But yeah, I think it's going to, I was wrong. Yeah. I was wrong. I didn't know. It would work to me. Pot still was always a, a man's cheap malt. It's a cheap malt. Yeah. Because they couldn't afford the malted barely in this kind of

Drew (01:01:48):
Stuff, but it has such a personality to it.

John (01:01:51):
I look, I, I went wrong. Yeah. It's as simple as that. Yeah. And last year we made 900,000 liters of pot. Still. That's a lot pot still now. Yeah. That we made too much here. No, we probably made too much, but maybe not. And we'll see how it goes. That we, we kept that we saw very lit, eh, maybe I sold about three or 400,000, but I can't remember what I sold. Yeah. And there's too many customers. I can't remember them all. And so yeah, that's a category it's particularly Irish. But you know, to, if I can put words in your mouth, one of the things that firstly, there was never Irish malt, Bushmans never pushed its malt at single malt mm-hmm and there were pretty good Irish malts, 150 years ago around co there were only malt, only companies. And there was a very famous one, all mans abandoned, a very big company that only made double distilled malt about in the early 19th century.

John (01:02:45):
I tried to buy their brand names on that one. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I think it'll come back into being, because I had a really good, I'm surprised that John, John O'Connell of Westco didn't tie it up somehow. Yeah. and it, we, I remember I was at the or some show in London and I'll tell you, it was the Scottish mal whiskey society had to stand for us. Yeah. And guys come up and said, what are you doing here? There's no such things, an Irish Martin at Scottish. And of course it wasn't <laugh> and it's only very slowly getting and when, when we started and this is David, Heines not me at all. When we started to sell tear tunnel as a very young three year old, Bushmans thought this was mad because Bushmans really didn't sell its malts. They sold black Bush and orange. Bush. Yeah. Both planes like, like Johnny Walker. Yeah. And only in the last few years, have they got 10 and 21 because they had the stuff and the stuff you see that that's 30 year olds, you might have seen in tailing at 30 year old. That's all

Drew (01:03:45):
Bushmans okay. Well, it has to be. Yeah, yeah.

John (01:03:48):
Yeah. Cuz I mean, with the best will in the world, the oldest Cooley and the wooden, there's only about five casts of that.

Drew (01:03:53):
I was gonna say you need a time machine to be able to have teeing make one that's 30 years old.

John (01:03:57):
So well the oldest team would be 1989. Yeah. It should be actually it'd be 33 now, but I, I have the five, five casts. I think they naming five casts of that. Yeah. We're not selling it. It's up in great. Now we're not selling it stupid. But the idea was to provide again, a fairly clear idea. And this came from Binny's Brad, Brad Fontain God where the back of my head

Drew (01:04:23):
<Laugh>

John (01:04:24):
He went on and he was very keen to, because you know, he was very keen to break a monopoly. He didn't like it. Bins was very good at company and he took me from the big place in Chicago. He said, come with me. And I went out and I went down the line of sketches. There must have been two, 3000 sketches. Mm. At the very end bottle of Bushman, a bottle of Turner. More, no German. That

Drew (01:04:45):
<Laugh>

John (01:04:45):
If you went back there, now there's a category of Irish. Nice. So what Cooley did to some extent and now great. Northern has done to a huge

Drew (01:04:53):
Extent. You're

John (01:04:54):
Right. You have created a category. Yeah. You can have a choice of a couple of hundred brands. If you go to the palace bar, have you been to palace bar?

Drew (01:05:00):
I, I did not get to go there this time. No.

John (01:05:02):
Oh, when aren't you going back?

Drew (01:05:05):
Tonight or tomorrow morning.

John (01:05:07):
How it spark tonight? Yeah. Okay. It's it's where are you staying in town?

Drew (01:05:11):
Just north of town. So probably about 20 minutes north walking or walk. Yeah. I knowm. I'm crazy. I love walking. I love towns that I can walk through.

John (01:05:22):
Well Dublin's an easy city to walk, to walk to it from outside the town. Yeah. Yeah. So you're close to the airport.

Drew (01:05:28):
Was it fisbo?

John (01:05:30):
Fisbo. Fisbo. Oh yeah. Fisbo. No, that's on the north side. You know,

Drew (01:05:34):
You

John (01:05:34):
Could walk into temple bar. Yeah. And it's in fleet street. Yeah. The palace bar. What night is and night Tuesday probably shouldn't be for, but probably will be. But anyway, yeah, they have about 200 Irish whiskeys.

Drew (01:05:45):
Wow. Yeah. Okay.

John (01:05:46):
Very famous bar, rarely famous cuz fellow Cal miles and a GoLine Brian Nolan, who is a brilliant writer, satirical writer. He had his own chair there and he drank there every day.

Drew (01:05:58):
<Laugh>

John (01:05:59):
There's still little snug and things. It's a fabulous bar.

Drew (01:06:01):
Very nice.

John (01:06:01):
But so we created a category, but on top of that and Jack is explains this. He probably explained this better than me. He wanted to create a ladder of opportunity. So you start off with Jemison, but you know, oh, it's a whole hair to have Jemison. And then your tastes it's bland enough. It's meant to be bland. Yeah. You

Drew (01:06:24):
Know?

John (01:06:25):
Yeah. All things, all men <laugh> nothing.

Drew (01:06:28):
Well,

John (01:06:29):
I meant to sell 9.3 million

Drew (01:06:30):
Cases. I was gonna say, this is where the word smooth comes in because the idea is I got images of my younger years where Jameson was what you would shoot. You would to get a shot and knock it back because it wasn't harsh. And it was easy to swallow quickly.

John (01:06:47):
This has always been by the way. Yeah. In 1,601 queen Elizabeth, I first said she preferred Irish Aquavit because it was more mellow and less, very on the stomach. Mm. And how do I know that? Because she gave the warrant, you know, the warrant yeah. To Barry brothers and Rud in Mayfair and they are still in the same building. Yeah. And as look what have it, I'm meeting them on Friday in distillery.

Drew (01:07:10):
Oh you really? Oh, wow. Very nice. They're

John (01:07:12):
Still going. Yeah. And they're still in the Brinks business. Oh, that's fantastic. And it was always smooth and mellow and I've never understood why. So they start off on that. And then if you want to, you know, people drink different types of, of spirits. And so they want to change something different or you go for pot still, or you go for malt or you go to in small case to Peter, the Cooley pet is very successful. Kamar is very successful. That's an allocation the whole time.

Drew (01:07:36):
I have a, I have a story about that by the way from yesterday a friend I went to school with that is living in Dublin. So we went out to have drinks last night and they were drinking Guinness. I was drinking Guinness, but then they said, well, you know, all about whiskey. What should we try? And I am on a mission to get bourbon drinkers, to drink, peed, peed whiskey. All right, right. Because I believe it is a transition that a lot of people would probably argue with. But I say, when I think of bourbon drinkers, I think of them outside grilling burgers. Yeah. And you know, bacon it's

John (01:08:18):
It's like it it's like Jamison. Yeah. Standard simple drink. Yeah.

Drew (01:08:22):
Yeah. So so when asked, what would I suggest? I said, well, are after dinner, do you like pie? Or do you like to get a bag of chips or something like that to to eat? And she said, well, bag of chips. I like, you know, salty and so on and so forth. So I said, forget everything you know about whiskey. Cuz whiskey is on a sweet scale. Yeah. You say it's sweet or it's or it's dry. Yes. But you're always in the world of sweet. Yes. I said, think of this. Like it's a completely different drink and you are looking at smokey and you want to, you smelling bacon and you're smelling you know, those kinds of seaside kind of SCS. And she ordered it. She was gonna order the 12 year. And I said, no, no, no, no. Don't get the 12 because the 12 loses the smoke

John (01:09:12):
Has too much of vanilla. Yes. On the woods. Absolutely. Right. David Heines now would be a disciple of yourself

Drew (01:09:17):
<Laugh>. And so I said, you know, no, get the, get the younger one. Yeah. And she put it to her nose and she, she and her husband was there and she said, smell this. And at, by the end of the night, she said, I have a whiskey. She's not the one

John (01:09:32):
If she likes it. But the number of people it's one 10 of 1%

Drew (01:09:36):
From yeah. But I think it's all about introducing it to people and getting them them in the right mindset. Cuz

John (01:09:42):
Yeah. You need the mindset. Definitely.

Drew (01:09:44):
Yeah. Cause if you taste something that you think is going taste sweet and it tastes smoky or bitter or something like that, kinda like when I get a bad Guinness, sometimes you get a Guinness that isn't poured well and it's very bitter. Bitter. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's a disappointment because you're like, I know what I'm anticipating here and you don't get it. It can turn you off. But I think that people probably would drink more petered whiskey if they just were in the right mindset.

John (01:10:12):
No, there's a very good product up in sleeve league in Don golf.

Drew (01:10:15):
Yes. The silky, the

John (01:10:16):
Silky isn't yes. Apples be bright. James Ty is ex shes.

Drew (01:10:22):
Okay.

John (01:10:23):
And as you know, Brian and himself, it's, it's all coming from us. They have a little distillery, but he's not making the Peter, our dad, our dad distillery. I'm doing well here. It's growing like this. Yeah. And if he'd any sense, he'd come back and negotiate a better price with us, but he simply, I think he's delighted to get it. Now he'd be one of the ones that we guarantee will get it. Cuz he's been with us. He, he will buy maybe 60, 70,000 liters of Peter water from it. Wow. Now there's a midnight silky. Isn't it? A dark silky. Yeah. It's a stronger flavor. Yeah. Yeah. And there is a 12, yeah. The 12 year. So that, that pub had a 12 year old

Drew (01:10:59):
Kaari they had 12 in the, they had 22. Is there 22? Also, there was an older age range. There might be

John (01:11:05):
Age the most. Well what pop was this? That's rare.

Drew (01:11:09):
Wow. What was that? It was right downtown. You

John (01:11:11):
Can't even remember the pub. The

Drew (01:11:13):
Pub. Yeah. Good. It was that good. Yeah. I was it's called the dark room or something like that. I don't know. It was a, it was a place they suggested. So I just showed

John (01:11:23):
Up close

Drew (01:11:24):
To street, right? Yeah. Right near, yeah. In that little circle

John (01:11:28):
Of near temple bar. Yeah. Yeah. I think that could be the some not the front room.

Drew (01:11:34):
No, I dunno. Front room.

John (01:11:35):
I don't know. See, I don't know. You're asking

Drew (01:11:37):
The long way. Yeah. There you go. Cause you're probably hanging around in pubs a lot. If you're not a whiskey drinker.

John (01:11:41):
I never did. Yeah.

Drew (01:11:42):
I never

John (01:11:42):
Did. I was a student. I never went to pubs

Drew (01:11:45):
<Laugh> so I keep hearing as I'm doing my travels I, I, I will hear certain distilleries saying that Irish whiskey is growing so fast that it will overtake scotch. Yes. In the next few years. Do you, do you believe that's

John (01:12:03):
True. I'm believer. In fact, I had thought it would take place by 2025 and I had agreed. This was a couple years ago. I, it will happen because scotch now scotch is trying to change very fast. Yeah. Scotch blend is more the wrong product. Yeah. For young people. And the leading the changes is the worst of the model. The Azure are currently trying to lead the changes in, in, in, in the GI because you know, it it's, it's the wrong PR. It's like Irish whiskey in 1860 wrong product. Yeah. And I decided that I was going to put a huge marque on the back part of the site and was gonna have a massive party. And everybody connected with the industry was gonna be invited to it. And I have a famous Irish comedian called Oliver Callen, who has agreed to MC it because he's from Dondo. And now it's been knocked on its head by a couple of years. And now again, it's been the COVID knocked it as said, and now the loss of Eastern Europe, Russia and Russia was the fastest growing 780,000 cases last year. Wow. And, and that was second biggest market. Ukraine is the 10 biggest all gone and Ukraine's not going back.

Drew (01:13:09):
Yeah.

John (01:13:10):
So at the end of the decade, definitely, maybe sooner little pass.

Drew (01:13:16):
Okay.

John (01:13:17):
Scotch pastor Irish in about 1880 something.

Drew (01:13:19):
Yeah. You, you noticed I, I sort of noticed this with with Jack yesterday talking about how they chose to use barrels yes. And their barrel selection to get them from what, what they were sourcing to what they're producing now to keep some consistency. Yes. Because I think that's the, that's the only caveat I have to the growth of virus. Whiskey is there will be a time when they'll have to move from what, the ones that are doing their own distilleries from what you're producing, which is high quality.

John (01:13:52):
You should be to get it blended. Yeah. You should be able to get it closely blended. The second thing is, if you, which is the fastest growing part of Irish whiskey production is you use multiple types of tasks. Yeah. So if you take the big thing now that's flying is, you know, every Sherry CAS, Sherry finish. Yeah. If you can get Sherry CAS,

Drew (01:14:15):
If you can get them. Yeah.

John (01:14:16):
Yeah. You're tasting the Sherry in reality. Yeah. and if you take a whiskey, you are a whiskey, a might whiskey and put it together, say, say it's a three year old, more or less the same. Yeah. blend and you put it into a Sherry cast for eight weeks. It'd be hard to distinguish. We used wood as a, has got me into trouble for the wrong reasons in that we use, you know, single use bourbon barrels which means the quality of a wood. So we're getting more of the wood in a whiskey than we are of the actual distillation. Yeah. Which means when you compare our stuff to say that like the Irish distillers, some of the others who don't use it might be threes maybe. Yeah. it's not the same product and the change over four years is dramatic. You should see it if you take our standard grain. And if you take our distiller standard grain and compare two, four year olds, they're very different. So it's very hard to change those. Yeah. So if you're trying to put, if you're trying to put this is purely hypothetical.

Drew (01:15:13):
Yes.

John (01:15:14):
If you're trying to put great Northern grain into McGregor instead of very distillers grain, it's not the same. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> because it's a different product. Yeah. Because of the wood. Yeah. yeah. We are strong on woods. There's I think Irish distillers now said we've gone far enough. And I think they're trying to reign it in. I think they'd struggle with in, in the GI to reign it in, then a couple of interesting problems. You know, I feel sorry for the explicit association, I'm a founder member, obviously <laugh> we had a lovely situation all long time ago, we were fighting with Irish distillers naturally. And there was the Irish spirits association, which had one member, Irish distillers <laugh> and they invited us to join. Yeah. We were coming half respectable. And my board at the time said, Nope, we're going to set up the Irish native spirits association. Mm that's. Still there. Okay. Now there are not that many independent Irish Lander. Yeah.

John (01:16:11):
If you look at the big ones, not that many at all, they, a lot of them have overseas equity. Now John Connell bought back his foreign. Yeah. It was Haywood. So

Drew (01:16:22):
It was sold. He, somebody else owned it for a while.

John (01:16:24):
Oh yeah. No, only 20%. He sold 20. Okay. Okay. Maybe a bit more than that, but he used a government money. I don't know how the hell he got politically. They loaned the money to buy it back. Yeah. I wouldn't have that political strength now. He's country guy then and there. So maybe they can

Drew (01:16:40):
Do that. So, so you have this situation where you've got outside investment coming in to, to Irish, to distill. And also the thing is, is that a industry can't have talent when it's so small. That's within that, that same country. I mean, if you are distilling and Irish distillers are distilling, where does the talent pool come from? It's gotta come from other places.

John (01:17:04):
Well, what's happened. Is it hasn't if you look no, that's not true. Of course it has. Yeah. nobody left arch distillers. Yeah. Forever. Now they're leaving. Okay. Brian nation is running all ness. He's now in and he's I think he was the head steward. He, he went to all shortness. He's in Minneapolis. Who's the other guy has left. One of the other ones has left and has gone to one of the other distilleries. Now there's quite a lot of cool alumni all over the place. Okay.

John (01:17:34):
How much skills some of them had? I don't know. Yeah. Now also a lot of Bushman's alumni and you'd ask the same question. I know one in particular who has a very big reputation, good luck to, I says, this is a non-drinker speaking. You know, it's not rocket science. No, you, you take all the, the right ingredients. You put them together and you do it. Is there any great magic in the magic? If you're a consumer, you know, this idea of knocking the same, Dinges in the pots at all this to me, it's got damage because it comes from the wood comes from the warehouse and with the warehouse, a different, very in Kiba. There was, there was a flat roof warehouse and it was built about oh, 1900 and it was one story. And they had a lip on the top. So that in the hot summer days, they'd put, put a foot of water in it from to keep it cook. Mm lovely. Yeah. And don't think beam did that. Now we did it a few times.

Speaker 3 (01:18:30):
<Laugh>

John (01:18:30):
But I was at the, at an opening party and there was this really old man there. And he says, you know, the best place to get the best goes case down in that back corner. Cuz it was a clay floor, the proper floor. Yeah. Clay floor down in that back corner stamp. It's great. I was, I was bringing around. I've never forgotten her bringing around great grand metropolitan. This is before the Azure is. Yeah. And we walked through the warehouse and down at the back in that corner, there was a pile of vomit and sick. The guys were drinking out that

Speaker 3 (01:19:00):
Part. Oh no. They knew <laugh> the guys knew yeah. Where to go.

John (01:19:04):
I was at, you know, you suck it out. Yeah. Yeah. It was lovely. You, they know all

Drew (01:19:07):
The time. There's there's fun story. You hear? When I was at Jim beam and I got a chance to do a private tour of their distillery it was Booker. No. When he was running the place that he had a specific sweet spot in the warehouse yes. That he liked to go to get his whiskey. Yes. And so that,

John (01:19:28):
That's it. I didn't know that. Yeah. That's exactly the same. I could bring it to you now. Yeah.

Drew (01:19:32):
All over

John (01:19:32):
The

Speaker 3 (01:19:33):
Floor. <Laugh>

John (01:19:34):
So the guys had just sat down there drinking probably on a weekend and just got drunk and got sick. Yeah. Drinking cast rank

Speaker 3 (01:19:41):
<Laugh>

John (01:19:42):
There. Yeah. There's some, there are really good stories about it. It's a great industry for stories. We had a problem in Don dock where the filters were clogging up. They do plug all, all these pipes CLO we' a lot of problem with it. Yeah. This was, this was cooling now. Not, not great now. And so eventually after share or four times David Hines said have enough of this. So he, as he would, he went along the pipes, all the pipes were light. Mm. And found a tiny pinhole where, when the guys wanted some new whiskey, they, they, they drilled one hole. First of all. Yeah. They let it come out. But then they took a match stick and filled the hole.

Drew (01:20:27):
Oh no.

John (01:20:28):
Yeah. So the next time they wanted, if they pushed the mask stick in and eventually it blocked the filters. Oh, isn't that lovely. Lovely. He ever found out. Yeah. Oh, he didn't have a clue who I did that. They're good.

Drew (01:20:40):
Yeah.

John (01:20:41):
Jim fin downstairs will tell you. No, we don't have any losses anywhere. I hard to believe it or not. <Laugh> I I've never believed it. Yeah. But we don't have losses that are noticeable.

Drew (01:20:50):
Yeah. Yeah. Those are the fun stories coming, going back to prohibition and hearing what Jack Daniels, when they were in St. Louis that George Remus, the famous bootlegger was basically siphoning whiskey out of their, out of their barrels or in Bargetown they would have the warehouses that were supposedly being watched. But what would happen is they would come in with water. They would drain out some of the whiskey from the barrel and replace it with water. Yes. And towards the end of prohibition, there were a lot of upset people because they were going in trying to drain some out of the barrels and they were getting water <laugh>

John (01:21:30):
They, they, you know, the answer is yes. Yeah. I I'm sure that has gone, you know, and I don't think people learned that they just knew it intuitive <laugh> that was supposedly under from Kiba across the road to the, the manager's house that John's lock's house mm-hmm <affirmative> there was supposed to be a pipe that they could take a small amount of stuff when they wanted the revenue or couldn't find it. That was supposed to be that we never found the pipe. Yeah. yeah. I it's a wonderful industry for that. I can only imagine in the likes of, of the very old distilleries, what you would have Albe must have had wonderful distillery, wonderful stories. Yeah. All the time 10 generations of, of people kind of got value out of it in the town. It's been fabulous that, yeah.

Drew (01:22:16):
So once I started getting involved in the whiskey industry and meeting people, I find it to be probably for corporate world, one of the most pleasant, corporate worlds you could possibly get. It's great. Is that what you really kinda?

John (01:22:31):
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you know, what is wonderful is that new new countries and you asked me earlier, where's it going? I'm a complete optimist. I mean, you're going past, I, I think that Irish whiskey has not even scratched the surface. Sorry. It's now scratching the surface in Africa. It's doing nothing in Asia mm-hmm <affirmative> and if you take India being four or 500 million cases Thailand, a hundred million cases. Now all, all domestic whiskey made from God knows what, but that's sort of starch who cares. Yeah. Now you can distill it. Not all Indian whiskeys are bad. Japanese whiskeys are very good. Yeah. So, you know, I I'm, I have no hangups on that Irish whiskey used to be made with Sugarbee and we're gonna put in a little tiny. I have bought it. He didn't say it. I have a little tiny distillery up in dun dog. Now I want to put it in its own house. Yeah. And I was gonna get somebody to start. I wanted distill very different types of, of things. Tricks, maybe peas. Huh? Now the E is appalling. Yeah. But sugar bee and iron sugar beet grows well in Ireland. Not, not, not sugar cane sugar beet. Yeah. And that was a big source of alcohol and iron in the 18th century. Good. Yeah. I

Drew (01:23:38):
Was gonna say, I also heard way that they would use way to make.

John (01:23:43):
I don't think why you wouldn't. Yeah. I've often thought that they, the whole idea of, of spent grades, another area that I would like to do again, I'm probably not going to get the chance to do it now cuz you wouldn't do it. Any of the mainline distilleries is, you know, that distillers grains are rejected very easily with all kinds of things. If they don't look right. There's 25 checks that Guin us have now there's no reason just cuz it doesn't look right. That you're distilling the thing.

Drew (01:24:18):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

John (01:24:20):
So, and it's a third of the price. So I will, I will probably try and do it in this little tiny distill. They're gonna put it up, up on the top up there. But once people bought the idea, they now think it's a great idea. They'll experiment. I want to do it for myself. Yeah. Now it's only, you know, you might do 50,000 meters a year in it.

Drew (01:24:36):
Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with John Teeling. Unfortunately we had to cut the conversation short there because as John predicted, I ran out of room on my recording device. But if you wanna get a taste of the whiskeys that John and Brian Watts are producing, then make sure to check out my upcoming Whiskey Lore stories series on my travels across Ireland and Northern Ireland, along with Alfred Barnard's story about his travels across Ireland, due out this June on Whiskey Lore stories, podcast available wherever you get your favorite podcast, including this one. And if you need show notes, transcripts or links to Whiskey Lore social media at whiskey-lore.com. I'm your host Drew Hannush. And until next time cheers and Solan JVA whiskey, LO's a production of travel fuels life LLC.