Ep. 31 - Keeper of the Quaich Ed Kohl
SCOTCH FOR BOURBON DRINKERS // Are you one of those that says "I don't like scotch?"
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Show Notes
My guest is an American who knows a thing or two about scotch. His name is Ed Kohl and while he was born on this side of the Atlantic, his work as a scotch distributor over the last couple of decades has earned him entrance into the exclusive society known as the Keepers of the Quaich - a society that honors those who have been outstanding stewards of scotch whisky. He not only works as a distributor, but he also does tastings and trainings to help people gain a better appreciation for scotch.
We won't promise to convert you, if you don't like scotch, but you will definitely have a better understanding that it is more than just one flavor profile. And we'll cover some other general whisky topics as well.
In this episode, we will discuss:
- The evolution of scotch popularity in the US
- Which country is the largest consumer of scotch per capita?
- The Scots embrace what the Irish did not
- Ed's first scotch import
- The three tier system and why you can't get your whisky where you live
- The whisky tariff
- The opinion of scotch vs bourbon
- Where a bourbon drinker should start with discovering scotch
- The different types of smoky scotches and why they are that way
- The character of Speyside
- The pot stills and their shapes
- Buying whisky by age, right or wrong?
- The finishing of whisky in sherry, port, etc casks
- Aging a J.W. Kelly bourbon in an Italian red wine cask
- The golden age of variety in whisky
- Is a higher proof always the way to go?
- Non-age stated
- Ed's distibuted whiskies: Smokehead, Clan MacLeod, Spey
- Smokehead High Voltage, Sherry Bomb, Rum Rebel
- Too much time in a Tawny Port barrel
- Open states and where you can find the whisky
- The reasons for chill-filtering
- Clan MacCloud lineup of blended and MacCloud's single malts
- The origins of J.W. Kelly and the story of JW Kelly Deep Springs Distillery.
- The Moon Pie Kelly
- Scotch names
Listen to the full episode with the player above or find it on your favorite podcast app under "Whiskey Lore: The Interviews." The full transcript is available on the tab above.
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Transcript
Drew (00:00:14):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, drew Hamish, the Amazon bestselling author of Whiskey Lord's Travel Guide to Experience in Kentucky Bourbon. And in today's episode, I want to address a statement that I've heard from some bourbon drinkers who say they don't like scotch. Now, to me, that's way too simple of statement to say. I mean, there is a wide range of profiles in scotch whiskey. So my guest today is an American who knows I'd say a thing or two about scotch. His name is Ed Cole. And while he was born on this side of the Atlantic, his work is a scotch distributor over the last couple of decades, has earned him entrance into an exclusive society known as the keepers of the quake. And that society honors those who have been outstanding stewards of scotch whiskey. Now, he not only works as a distributor, but he also does tastings and trainings all in an effort to help people gain a better appreciation for scotch.
Drew (00:01:21):
Now, I met Ed about a year ago when I was doing my first tours across Tennessee, and on that particular trip, I was actually there to learn more about an American whiskey that he produces called j w Kelly, which is named after an Irish born distiller who set up a distillery in Chattanooga way back in the 1860s. And we had such a great conversation about scotch during that visit that I asked him if he wouldn't mind being a guest on the podcast sometime in the future. So in this conversation, we're going to first dive into his import business and discuss some things that affect how you buy whiskey, like the whiskey tariffs and the three tier system. And the three tier system is really tricky, and it's part of the reason why, whether it be bourbon, scotch or whatever, there are some whiskeys that you can't get in certain states.
Drew (00:02:16):
So we're going to talk about that system and the future of it. We'll also dive into a little Scotch 1 0 1, talking about smokey versus fruity SCOs. Talk about which scotch is probably best for a bourbon drinker to sample and kind of dip their toe in the scotch waters. And then we'll talk about regions buying by age proof finishing casks, and how all of these SCOs ended up with such a wide variety of styles. We got a ton to cover in this episode. So let's jump right into my conversation with Ed Cole, c e o and managing director of Quest
Ed (00:02:58):
Brands. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:03:01):
Thank you.
Ed (00:03:02):
So you have been an importer of scotch whiskey for how long?
Speaker 3 (00:03:09):
Ooh, about 20 years
Ed (00:03:14):
And over 20 years. How have you seen the popularity of scotch and the market open up in the United States?
Speaker 3 (00:03:23):
Well, 20 years ago, yes, it was Scotch whiskey was primarily blended scotch whiskey. Everybody knew that people were getting into single malt, but it was a slow start. And there were a few brands on the shelf, the Johnny Walkers, or I'm sorry, the Macallans and the Glen Levitz and the Glen Fit, and a few of those guys. But not everybody really understood it and knew it. I kind of fell in love with it when I discovered what a difference in flavor and the difference in the flavors of all the regions. And every distiller distillery had his own style, if you will. Yeah. But the popularity has grown over the years, thank God. Yeah.
Ed (00:04:10):
So were you were a scotch drinker before you started the Yes. Import business. Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:04:14):
Yep. Always enjoyed scotch whiskey. And of course, most people I was drinking Johnny Walker or doers. I think doers was my probably go-to, yeah, like the lighter style, but eventually discovered Scotch Whis single malt. And wow, it was quite a eye-opening experience.
Ed (00:04:37):
Yeah, I think a lot of, I, myself included, but I think a lot of people really thought the single malt has just been what's been sold all these years. And even today, it's stone, not the primary form of whiskey coming out of Scotland. You still have more blended scotch sold than you have single malt at this time. But that market is expanding as people become more aware of
Speaker 3 (00:05:04):
It. And they talk about the total scotch whiskey business. 80% of all scotch whiskey consumed in the world is blended scotch whiskey. It's interesting enough, the US is the largest by dollar importer of single malt scotch, but who is, what country in the world is the largest consumer of scotch whiskey?
Ed (00:05:38):
That's an interesting question. By per capita, kind of
Speaker 3 (00:05:43):
Per capita, who is the largest, largest consuming scotch whiskey country in the world?
Ed (00:05:50):
Taiwan?
Speaker 3 (00:05:51):
Nope.
Ed (00:05:52):
Nope. I was going to say small island. And I know they love their whiskey
Speaker 3 (00:05:55):
And they do France.
Ed (00:05:58):
Okay. I love that.
Speaker 3 (00:05:59):
Has a lot to do with the history. Think about it. So if you go back to the Earl, the mid 18 hundreds when Xa infected all of the vineyards in France, killed all the vineyards, we had a lot of thirsty Frenchmen, and there was guys like Johnny Walker and Mr. Doers and a few of those individuals who Hagen Hag and a couple of those guys that were just willing to go down there and feed those thirsty Frenchmen. And that began the scotch whiskey business.
Ed (00:06:36):
See, now you've added a whole nother layer to the story because I did this podcast episode around Baxa and talking about how cognac was really saved by a route from Texas that was grafted on to save those vines. But it was really, because there's always been that theory that the upper crust in London, in England were enjoying their brandy. And then when Veera happened, that's how scotch became popular, was because of that epidemic. And yet it, you're giving the other side of it that France was in the same boat and really didn't think about the fact that they are missing their spirit. And so when we talk about France and their whiskey industry, because I have heard that there are a lot of distilleries in France and that France is a large consumer of whiskey, and I say, why don't we see any of it here? I see one brand that has made it over from France and otherwise, I guess, are they concentrating in Europe mostly or just in France?
Speaker 3 (00:07:50):
Well, again, I think it's a lot of the history between the cognac producers, the brandy producers who are trying to protect their business, ARMAC, certainly trying to protect their business. Not that they don't like malt whiskey, they certainly do, but just look at the supply issue. For them to buy bulk whiskey from Scotland is probably a lot less expensive than it is to try to produce this stuff themself a new distillery and start it all up and get involved in all the things that are it's going to take. But back then, when all that happened, that was about the time that the continuous still was being developed, and all of a sudden the SCOs learned that, wow, you can make all this inexpensive whiskey, the continuous still. And of course the Irish were going, they were poo-pooing that they were saying, no, no, no, we don't like that. We're not going to do that. Well, the SCOs embraced it, and of course that became a big thing and pretty much one of the reasons why Scotch overtook Irish whiskey.
Ed (00:09:14):
Yeah, it's interesting to see how the Irish sort of pushed the Scots in a direction and then it ended up coming back in the long run. So
Speaker 3 (00:09:29):
History is interesting. It
Ed (00:09:30):
Is. It's very interesting. So what is the first whiskey that we have to thank you for in your importing business for bringing over to the US market?
Speaker 3 (00:09:41):
Well, I happened to meet a gentleman. I was a broker as a brokerage company. I met a guy by name of Andrew Symington, and Andrew Symington had an owned signatory, and he was looking for an importer over here in the us. I wasn't importing at the time. So I said, and we met and I was the guy's broker. So we were going around calling on accounts, and he said, ed, I'm looking for an importer. Can you help me out? And that was when I started in the business with tying myself up with a couple of importers. We lined the importer up, got things going, and basically launched signatory in the us. Okay.
Ed (00:10:33):
Yeah. And signatory, they're more of a bottling, they're not related to a particular distillery, is that correct?
Speaker 3 (00:10:40):
Well, no, they are. It would've been, I think it was 2001, I believe Andrew bought Edward oer.
Ed (00:10:52):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 3 (00:10:52):
Okay. So he owns Edward oer. Yeah. And when that happened, it just propelled him to a whole nother level because as a distiller, you have now a stock to be able to trade for other cast that you're looking for. And that helped his signatory business because he did as signatory is not a distiller. Yeah. What they're doing is they are getting these casts and they're bottling it up under the signatory label. They've distilled it Linwood or Tallk or wherever it happens to be,
Ed (00:11:31):
Right? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:11:32):
But it's those single casts that are unique and different.
Ed (00:11:36):
So is he the one we have to thank for Edar has a great reputation Oh yeah. At this point. So yeah,
Speaker 3 (00:11:44):
He bought that from Pero Ricard. Ah. And the day they did that, I was over there when the key was exchanged, the president of Pero Ricard gave Andrew the key to the distillery. Wow. And I still have pictures of that. And everybody was celebrating it because that was the day the distillery came back into Scottish ownership.
Ed (00:12:10):
So did this start your travels over to Scotland, or were you already previously traveling over there?
Speaker 3 (00:12:18):
I was over there probably another two or three years prior just to see the system and talk to some of these distillers understanding why in the world would they release cast to Andrew. Didn't make any sense. Yeah. I mean, it's their cast. Why would they do that? Well, it had it's stock. Yeah. I mean, they're trying to turn over cash flow just like everybody else does. And so you've got extra cash, you sell 'em if you can sell 'em.
Ed (00:12:53):
Yeah. Well, it's interesting in the US that we see sort of repetition of what has happened over in Scotland happening over here. Now you have a lot of companies that are starting to bottle other Yep. They're finishing, they're doing other finishing really kind of started over in Scotland and now it's making its way into the bourbon world and American single malts and the rest. So sure, it's it. This is why when I do my podcast, I say, I can't just do a bourbon podcast. I can't just do a scotch podcast because they're all interconnected in one way or another. History can't be told without hitting both sides of the Atlantic and even around the world, as we see with France.
Speaker 3 (00:13:40):
Yeah. And Japan.
Ed (00:13:41):
Yeah. So if you had to deal with the three-tier system all along through all of this. Yes. And so I think a lot of people hear three-tier system and they, they're frustrated because they can't get particular whiskeys in their state, but they don't understand why. Can you explain the three-tier system?
Speaker 3 (00:14:03):
Well, by federal law, when prohibition was repealed, the US government imposed the three-tier system, which basically said, we will grant you, there's three licenses that are available, and a producer or an importer, that's one license, a distributor, that's another license, or a retailer or a restaurant tour, that's another license. You can have two of the three, you can't have all three. And that's what broke everything up. And that was the purpose. It was to keep organized crime, which was heavily involved in the alcohol business prior to prohibition. They wanted to keep organized crime out. So they broke it up that way. So today I'm an importer and I have an importer's license. I can get a distributor's license if I chose. Yeah. I'm not going to, yeah. But I could do that. So one of the problems that you run into, it gets a little more complicated because it's, you've got open states and you have control states now open states, Tennessee or Missouri or California. Okay. That's an open state. I can sell to any distributor. They can buy any product that they want to buy and make it available to the retailer. Control states, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Montana, Oregon. There's a bunch of them. Now. The state controls the alcohol, and they're only going to bring in what they think is going to sell. So they're only looking at just the big brands, high volume. They're not going to mess around with things like smoke head or little stuff like this. They don't want to bother with that.
Ed (00:16:09):
And it even breaks down even further, because I grew up in North Carolina where North Carolina's a very firm control state. But the advantage to North Carolina is that if you get a really rare bottle bottle like a Papi Van Winkle or something like that, that is getting its price elevated everywhere else, they're selling it in s MSRP in North Carolina. So there, there's an advantage to it, but it, it's minimal. It's more of a, it's torture for me because I live in South Carolina and South Carolina's a little looser, but I still have to go to Kentucky or Tennessee to really find the whiskeys that I want. Yeah, sure. Because here it's much more open than, and not just because it's whiskey country, but because it is open and and more available that way.
Speaker 3 (00:17:00):
The problem we're having today though is, and we've seen this through the Covid reaction, the big companies are really beginning to control almost the whole system for small producers and small companies to get into the market through a distributor, finally to the retailer, and then finally to the consumer is becoming much more difficult. Companies, the big massive distributors, Southern Glazer, r n dc, I mean, they control just about everything. And it's very difficult to get into some of those market. We're still not Florida as an example. And Florida is a huge
Ed (00:17:52):
Market. It would be a great market to be in. Yeah. It's
Speaker 3 (00:17:54):
Huge market. We get requests all the time for some of our products, but you've only got a couple of distributors, and they're the big massive guys, and they're just not going to bring you in.
Ed (00:18:06):
It's like trying to find a Cuban cigar. You have to go out of state to go be able to legally get something. Yeah, that's crazy. Part of me thinks that organized crime was something that was a hotbed issue all the way up into the eighties, but now it's really not talked about as much. Is there ever a chance that this three-tier system finally gets looked at as ridiculous in either the distillers or distributors or somebody? Probably the distributors wouldn't fight for it because the, they're actually being fed business because they have to be in the chain.
Speaker 3 (00:18:46):
Well, it's interesting because I've just read recently in some of the newsletters that have been put out that the Biden administration is wanting to take a look at this.
Ed (00:18:59):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:19:00):
Which should be interesting.
Ed (00:19:01):
Well, and they're also the ones that push to get the tariff at least temporarily removed. I don't think they permanently have removed that tariff.
Speaker 3 (00:19:11):
No, they haven't. We certainly hope that it's going to be a permanent thing.
Ed (00:19:17):
Well, as with the issue that the craft distillers had for a long time with that tax break, they were getting looming over their head and they finally made it permanent, which now you can relax. It just leaves you in that constant state of how far ahead can I plan before the law changes and snaps me up again?
Speaker 3 (00:19:42):
Well, the only problem with that is there's a little caveat to that. You're limited to the gallonage. So if you produce cert over a certain gallonage, the tax goes back up.
Ed (00:19:56):
Oh, okay. So you have to stay. And it's not the limits of what craft distiller's no limits are because they're really high. Actually, I was shocked at how many gallons a craft distiller could put out in a year and still be considered a craft distiller.
Speaker 3 (00:20:12):
I think it's a hundred thousand.
Ed (00:20:13):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's not small. That's like American small business. We say it's a small business. But I mean, as we found out when they started dishing out P P P checks that small businesses can be quite large. So yeah. So talk about the tariffs a little bit. And it, we've seen it because as consumers, because we go to the store and for a long time it seemed like we kept waiting for the prices to go up. And in most places they still stayed down for a while thinking that's probably the old stock that is still in the area, and they're not shipping new stuff over. But I saw the price elevate early this year. So how is that affecting what you're doing?
Speaker 3 (00:21:05):
Well, prices, the big companies held their prices. They just absorbed those taxes. It's gotten to the point now where they can't absorb it anymore. But the taxes did now by taken off. But where it didn't affect the big guys, it affected the small people. That was the one that really took it in the chin. A spay distillery. I've had several conversations with them. Even Ian McLeod is as large as they are, they felt the pressure. So tariffs don't work. They don't work. Yeah. It's tit for tat. I raise it, the next guy raises it. Well, I'm going to raise it again. The next guy raises it. It doesn't work.
Ed (00:21:56):
Well, I think what a lot of Americans don't realize that they feel the effects of the tariff on Scotland. But over there, when I travel over there, I see Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, nothing else in terms of American whiskeys, maybe Buffalo Trace here or there, but the Terra, they have a tariff over there, had a tariff on bourbon as well. So what we're doing is we're just shutting down the ability in a globalized world to be free with getting people interested in different types of whiskeys beyond their own.
Speaker 3 (00:22:34):
I have JW Kelly in the uk. Do you?
Ed (00:22:36):
Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:22:37):
And JW Kelly here, the old Milford will sell for under $30 a bottle. Okay. Okay. Over there at 60.
Ed (00:22:47):
Yeah. Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (00:22:50):
It's stupid.
Ed (00:22:51):
Yeah. Well,
Speaker 3 (00:22:53):
And it doesn't look like they're, it's going to change right away.
Ed (00:22:56):
Yeah. Well, so in terms of talking about scotch, I wanted to use this opportunity because you do training and you help people understand scotch. And I don't know how many times I bump into bourbon lovers who say, I hate scotch. And I go, so that's kind of like saying I hate food because there's so many different types of food. How could you say, if you don't like something that's salty and meaty, you may like something that's fruity and sweet. And so when you're talking about scotch whiskey, I don't think they realize that there is a range. And usually what I hear is that, well, it's too smoky for me, and then I have to explain that not all scotch is smokey. In fact, probably the majority of it is not smokey.
Ed (00:24:00):
But again, I hear that same thing overseas where people say, I don't like bourbon. And I say, what have you had Jim Beam, Jack Daniels? Well, you're really only tasting some mass produced whiskeys that even Americans buy them too. But they're kind of considered low to mid shelf products. We have stuff that elevates a above that, even with Jack Daniels. There's other stuff that you're probably not getting to taste. So I wanted to open this up and start talking a little bit more about scotch in general, helping the bourbon drinker maybe understand where to start. So if you were doing laying out a flight of whiskeys for somebody to taste, whether you're own or another, a good starter whiskey for a bourbon person.
Speaker 3 (00:25:01):
Well, when I do tastings, I usually will taste anywheres from six to eight malts. And we always start off with the lightest one, which typically is going to be a lowland. So loland malts. Oh, contortion, kinji. These are malts that are very approachable. One of the reasons is they triple distill. They're the only region that triple distills. Now. The reason is their water tends to be a little softer, whereas the, they're not going to get that real minerally style water that you get up in the highlands. So lot, all those things kind of play in. So that's a lighter malt. We start there and then we start moving through up into the heavier style until you finally wind up with the isle whiskeys. And I always get a kick out of it every time I talk to somebody who makes the same comment. Well, I don't like single malt scotch whiskey.
Speaker 3 (00:25:56):
I don't like it too smoky. Well, what have you tried? Yeah, I had a La Freud. Well, yeah, you probably aren't going to like that. Yeah. Have you ever tried an no contortion? What's that? Okay. Well, then you start to explain it and the taste difference between that. It's one thing I've had people come to me after a tasting and they'll say, well, you get big differences with bourbon. Well, of course you do. And there is definitely differences in the different producers and the flavors and the styles and all that stuff. But you don't get the breadth of flavor profile and differences that you do in single mal scotch. Everything from light and all the way to Smokey and Petey and iodine and everything else in between.
Ed (00:26:49):
It's, it's fun actually to talk to American distillers because many of them have a secret love for scotch whiskey and will admit that bourbon kind of keeps them locked into a tighter range of flavors, and it's harder to bridge out. But you're starting to see some of the angels envy when they first started finishing a bourbon and getting some different character to that whiskey. And a lot of distillers here are starting to do that. But in a way, Scotland with all of the different regions kind of has developed different profiles that now seem to be kind of spreading out. You can get ped whiskeys in the highlands again, but they're different. And so talk about ped whiskeys. We'll start at peed. We'll do it backwards. We'll start at the peed whiskeys, and then we'll move towards the the highlands.
Speaker 3 (00:27:50):
The way I like to describe this is if you take a look at Scotland, all right, look at the West Coast. And of course over there you've got that little tiny island called Isla, which has got all those iconic distilleries there, BOMO and Lagaan, and El Fre and Aard bag, and all those wonderful guys. And then you go to the center of Scotland up in the Highlands, who some of those guys are making Pete whiskey. I mean, we have spay Fumar, which is a peed version. The big difference is where did they get their Pete? So the Pete on the western side that's harvested has got all that salt, that iodine, because of the proximity to the ocean as compared to the peat that's harvested in the center or up in the highlands, there's no iodine. Yeah. So where do you use your peat or where you harvest your peat is going to determine some of that profile. So if anybody has ever tasted Ben Remic, they do a light ping. It's highland Pete as compared to Lare. Yeah. Who does Ila Pete.
Ed (00:29:16):
And so I tend to get out of the highlands a little bit more of a heathery kind of a Exactly. So it's what you're all it is, is compacted dirt. And so whatever was on the land is what you're tasting. Exactly. Decomposed over a period of
Speaker 3 (00:29:35):
It's So it's very regional. Yeah. It can be very regional. That's part of where you get your differences. So it's also the water source. Any distiller will tell you one of the most important elements in where the decisions were made for them hundreds of years ago to build a distillery. It was the water. Yeah. Okay. You had to have clearing water. So the water starts the process. Now we go through all the mash and we mash the barley, da da, da, go through and you dry it. How do you dry it? Well, if I dry it over, gas fires down the lowlands, I'm not going to get a lot of flavor. I dry it over coal fires up in the highlands and space side, it tended to roast the grain a little bit. They don't do that anymore now, but I'm going back in history. Yeah. And that's what really gave you all these differences. People come to me all at the tastings and they'll say, okay, so can you describe a space side? No. Yeah.
Ed (00:30:41):
And how many distilleries are in space side? I mean, there's 40, 50 distilleries in
Speaker 3 (00:30:46):
That area. Yeah, exactly. And so everybody wants to try to take it to a region and come up with, okay, so if I'm from Napa, this is is the kind of cabernet I'm going to get. If I'm from Oregon, that's the kind of pinot noir I'm going to get it. It doesn't work that way. And it's because of the style, the water source. What did they do with their barley? Then it gets a little more complicated because as you start to ferment your work, how long did they do the fermentation? The length of fermentation is going to determine the acidity that you get in your beer. The higher your acidity, the longer the fermentation higher acidity, the more flowery you get out of a malt. Okay. And I kind of demonstrate that with our spay. Spay is a very flowery soft malt. Yeah. It's because they ferment their work for over a hundred hours.
Ed (00:31:48):
Wow. That's a long time.
Speaker 3 (00:31:50):
Long time. Yeah. Most distillers won't do that. Yeah. The reason they won't because they don't want to get yeast infection in the work, which is can happen. Yeah. You get a bad yeast infection, throw the batch out.
Ed (00:32:04):
So I wonder how do they temper that issue?
Speaker 3 (00:32:10):
Well,
Ed (00:32:10):
Just watching
Speaker 3 (00:32:11):
It at bay. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. They're very, very careful. They clean everything extensively. Yeah. I mean, it's really a process.
Ed (00:32:21):
Well, then we go to the Potstills and I saw a poster, and I would love to have a copy of this poster that shows all the different distilleries. Oh, you have it here? Yeah. It's great. Great poster. It shows all the different shapes for all the different stills. And I almost think that you should carry that along with you when you're doing tastings, because you could demonstrate the swan that stills at Glen Mork and how light a character that whiskey has, or olny, where they've got the squatty one that they had to squeeze into the distillery because they didn't have enough room with the roof and that. Then, so you got that, and then you also have where they put the barrels, because I know that Olny picks up a very salty kind of a character to it, and it is right in a little fishing village. Yep. Wick Scotland. So,
Speaker 3 (00:33:18):
Well, you go back to the stills. There's really, the stills are all copper. Okay. That's, there's been distilleries over the years. Hi, Walker. Over the years, experimented with other metals, didn't work. You have to have copper. And there's three reasons for copper. Number one, copper is the best transfer of heat. Everybody knows that. Right? Number two, there's actually trace elements of copper that are in the malt that help us in the aging process. So copper is a component of single malt, but three, most importantly, copper attracts heavy sulfurs. So the, you use Glen Morgie, the longer exposure to the copper, the more stripping goes on. The lighter your malt, the shorter still doesn't have all that copper, the heavier creamier your malt,
Ed (00:34:19):
And then you also have the line arm, and they can run that either up or down off the top of the still, which can exactly affect the
Speaker 3 (00:34:26):
Exactly. Yeah. So the line arm angle of the line arm will determine how much of that flux we pull off the still. Yeah. Yeah. People always ask, what is flux? Flux is, it's the element that you get when you change the direction of the dist distillate. Best example I can use, so I import ed mill gin from St. Andrew Scotland. When they put the stills in, they were actually Portuguese brandy stills, and when they came in to put him in the installers, the guys were putting him in after they put the still in, they went around with a ball pin hammer, and they pounded the whole thing. That's flux.
Ed (00:35:24):
Okay. You
Speaker 3 (00:35:24):
Changed the direction of the distillate.
Ed (00:35:28):
Okay. Now, when we get into the aging process, this is something where when people go look for scotch, they will sometimes tend to look at the age of the whiskey and try to make a determination on quality. Same thing going on in the bourbon market. I can tell you with the bourbon market, I'm very leery of age statements that are a little high, because I feel like there's a point of diminishing returns where if you don't like an overly oaky whiskey after it's gotten a bourbon has gotten past 10 years, you're starting to get into questionable territory depending on what the mash bill is and whether it's how it's being treated in the warehouse and the rest. But we get used to seeing, I just saw yesterday, somebody post a picture of a 33 year old, and I'm thinking, I had the 15 year old and I did not like it as much as I like the 10 year old lare, because I love the smoke in that whiskey. And the longer it sits in the barrel, the less of that smoke. Although I've also had an art bag that was 22 years old, and the aggression that's in art bag 10, that for me is a little overwhelming, is TAed down perfectly for me in their 22 year old. So talk about age statements and your thoughts on whether they're important and how you use those in terms of a buying decision.
Speaker 3 (00:37:07):
Well, drew, you're exactly right because the longer it sits in the barrel, the softer they become. There's a lot of chemical reaction that's going on between the wood and what's in the malt itself that's kind of marrying together. The way I like to describe it, if you've ever had, you've gone to taking your garbage bag out to the garbage pail, and it's been sitting out in that 90 degree sun for a couple of days, and you open up that garbage pail and phew, wow, that's pewter acid.
Ed (00:37:45):
Okay. And
Speaker 3 (00:37:47):
You get pric acid when you distill. Now, the bad part about it is it smells like garbage at the beginning. The good part about it is when it finally marries with all the other things, that's where the fruity component comes, is that putri acid has now been converted and changed by the wood aging process into that nice fruity flavor that we're looking for. Okay. And yes, you're right. The longer it sits in the barrel, the softer it becomes, and it can pick up too much wood. It's interesting because we talked about the largest consumer in terms of volume of scotch whiskey as France. Well, interesting enough, Italy will not buy scotch whiskey that's much more than six or seven years old. Really? And the reason is, is because they want that bright flavor. They're looking for that bright flavor. You lose that as you start to pick up those ages. And with some people, if that's their taste profile, that's great. Yeah. Wonderful. Myself, I want the bright flavor I'm looking for. And you used the Isla whiskey as it a good example with ABAG 10 year old. To me, you can't give me enough peat. Yeah,
Ed (00:39:16):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:39:17):
But that's my palette.
Ed (00:39:19):
Yeah. Well, I love the five, the wee Beastie. Is it? It's more aggressive. Yes. It shows a little youth on it, but the peat is full and in your face. So
Speaker 3 (00:39:32):
We were talking a little bit about Sherri whiskeys. Yeah. Okay. At signatory, we did a heavy Sherri Bun Haven. It was delicious. Yeah, absolutely delicious. But it's soft. I mean, there's, forget about any, of course, Boham is very light anyhow, but forget about any trace of Pete whatsoever. Always just, it's gone.
Ed (00:40:01):
Yeah. Well, and they're one of those distilleries that they really only do like one Pete peated whiskey a year at the end of the year. And the only reason they do that is because they kept getting complaints of, you're an Isla distillery, why aren't you using Pete? And they said, oh, well, okay, we'll do it. We'll do it, and then we'll clean everything out over the winter and be backing up and running.
Speaker 3 (00:40:21):
I think they probably had a disagreement with Port Ellen Dylan.
Ed (00:40:29):
So when we're talking about the age statements and then moving on into finishing of barrels now, because that has become prevalent throughout the industry. And you mentioned Sherry, and for the longest time, Sherry seemed to be the main barrel that was being used. And now we're going for all sorts of different port finishes. And I've seen rum finishes now, and I even saw Glen Alki did a rye barrel, which I've heard over and over rye and scotch don't mix. But what I tasted in their eight year old was pretty impressive. So what have you seen in terms of the evolution of that and
Speaker 3 (00:41:23):
Yeah, that's been pretty dramatic. Obviously the history, and most people know this, but the history of Sherry itself, Sherry barrels were, Sherry was being produced in in Spain. Sherry then would be shipped up in barrels to England, where Sherry back in the mid 18 hundreds was the beverage of choice. And of course, the bottlers would be bottling all the stuff up, and they would be bringing these sherry barrels in discarding the sherry barrels. Well, the Scotsman knows what to do with the free barrels. So up to Scotland, it went and they started aging their whiskey in this. And that's how it all started. And that became very, very popular. So the majority of the scotch whiskeys way back in those days were sherry barrels. Yeah. We didn't have bourbon then.
Ed (00:42:16):
Right. Well, and it was harder to ship all the way across the Atlantic rather than Exactly, yeah. You can take what you can get your hands on.
Speaker 3 (00:42:23):
Exactly. So over the course of time, it became a regulation by the European Union that all the sherry had to be bottled in. So the sherry barrels weren't available anymore. And that was the evolution of then the bourbon barrel. And that would've been probably about the mid 19 hundreds range
Ed (00:42:48):
Area, which is perfect timing for the 1935 law that said one use American barrel. Yes. And that then exactly, had a huge supply of barrels to Scotland. But isn't it funny that now it's flipped completely in the opposite direction for Sherry, that now they're dumping the sherry to sell the barrels? Yes. Right. They're just using it as a seasoning agent at
Speaker 3 (00:43:15):
That point, because Sherry consumption's dramatically down worldwide, and people are just not consuming Sherry anymore. And so yes, that's what they're doing. I know Macallan has got programs with the sherry producers, specific Sherry producers that will produce the barrels for them and do the aging and so on and so forth. But then you've got all these other things. I mean, we're doing some experimental stuff ourself with JW Kelly. We bought some eroni ca, and we've are aging our bourbon in Ooni, Cass.
Ed (00:43:52):
So explain Eroni. Where did those come
Speaker 3 (00:43:55):
From? Eroni is an Italian red wine. Okay. Comes from the northern portion of Italy. The wine's made out of the Corvina grape. What they do is Ooni is kind of an interesting wine. What they do is they take the grapes and they'll put 'em on racks up in the barns, and they'll let those grapes dry to raisins. They take those raisins and squeeze that juice, make the wine out of it real intense. I mean, it's high, high alcohol, typically about 16, 17% alcohol because of all the sugar. But you've got a big massive wine, red wine, delicious. Absolutely delicious. Our Moroni wines are very expensive. Yeah. A good one's probably 60, 70 bucks a bottle.
Ed (00:44:40):
So this is a small release for you. You're probably not buying a ton of those barrels.
Speaker 3 (00:44:44):
We're certainly not. Those barrels are expensive. So
Ed (00:44:49):
Were you doing that for your bourbon or for your rye? The bourbon. For the bourbon. Okay. Did you
Speaker 3 (00:44:53):
Test that? I, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It was the
Ed (00:44:54):
Rye. It was the rye. Okay. It was the
Speaker 3 (00:44:56):
Melrose.
Ed (00:44:57):
Yeah. I was going to say, it'd be interesting because Rye has those Urbanly character that Urbanly characteristic to me. It's where bourbon can sometimes be heavy handed or really kind of take up the whole picture, and it becomes harder to get those delicate flavors out of this or that. Rye seems to invite that. I think in
Speaker 3 (00:45:19):
A lot of ways it worked pretty well. Yeah, it worked pretty well. But again, with the experimentation that the solars of the distillers, the scotch distillers are doing, they're starting to step out and experiment with some things. I even heard of what one distiller was using some tequila barrels.
Ed (00:45:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:45:38):
Should be interesting.
Ed (00:45:40):
And I've heard that being done in Texas too. So this experimentation is all over the globe, which is great because for us, it gives us more choices. It's like when my dad used to say, he'd say, you walk in the grocery store and you go down the cereal island, and there's like 10,000 different types of cereal. Now. We had Corn Flakes or Wheaties, or you know, pretty much were down to just a couple of boxes on the shelf back then. And Whiskey has gone the same way now to where we are really in a golden age with variety of different types of whiskeys.
Speaker 3 (00:46:16):
But again, it goes back to your point that you were talking about earlier, for a consumer to be able to get all that stuff. Yeah, it's a challenge.
Ed (00:46:24):
It is it, but I think people, there's a certain segment that all of this refined, finished whiskey hits, and they're the ones who are going to be seeking and going for those. And there's always going to be that. I call them the Budweiser drinkers, they're always going to take the label. They know, and it's what they always drink, and that's what they're going to stay with. And so I guess it's just dividing up those pallets and figuring out who really wants to investigate and who just wants to throw something on ice and drink
Speaker 3 (00:46:59):
It. Well, in terms of the covid that we just went through this past year, year and a half, looks like further that consumer base that you're talking about, that hurt us because you couldn't go into a store, you had to call in your order, and people call in their order are going to order their comfort brands. They didn't know. They didn't know Smoke Head, they didn't know spay, they didn't know all these brands. Yeah. That had a big effect on us.
Ed (00:47:38):
Yeah. The first place I heard of Smoke Head was in Glasgow, Scotland. I stepped into a bar and I saw it back on the back shelf, and I saw a skull and Ila and I went, oh, that looks interesting. I'm going to have to try that. So that was my first go round with it. Now you've expanded the line, because back then I think all you had was the 43%. And so as we're start talking about, maybe we'll start with that because you have a lot of the stuff we've talked about represented in there between finishing. And the one thing we haven't really talked about is the proof. And I think a lot of people get hooked on proof as I want higher proof so that I get more flavor out of it. There are others who are, I'd rather have what the master distiller feels is the right proofing for this, and I'll taste it wherever it comes in. Do you have any kind of theories on that or how people should pay attention to proofing levels on a whiskey?
Speaker 3 (00:48:49):
Well, the way I like to explain that is for sure when you have a proofed down whiskey, 86, 80 proof, 40%, whatever it is going to have to lose flavor, just something that's going to happen as compared to a cast strength where nothing is done to it. It's taken out of the barrel and put in the bottle natural, all the flavors are there. So the downside of the high proof, it becomes more expensive
Speaker 3 (00:49:29):
If people don't understand it and understand that you have high proof, you probably do have to add a little bit of your water, which is okay. Yeah, that's fine. And I think that's probably where some of the biggest problems are. There are a few people, when I do tastings around the country that come to me and say, I'm looking for cast strength. I want high proof. And they get it. They understand. But that's one person out of 25 or 30 that are in that group. Yeah. But I can definitely tell you in this smoke head, and I use this as a great example. So the regular smoke head, which is 86 proof or 86 proof, 43% as compared to what they call their high voltage, the high voltage is the cast strength. That's 58%, 116 proof. Now that has been stabilized because every cask, every barrel of whiskey is going to be a little bit different in proof. So you will have to stabilize a bit, but it's just minimal. So it's 116 proof, but you taste the two of these side by side. It's amazing. The difference.
Ed (00:50:51):
Well, and one of the things that is different about distilling in Kentucky and Tennessee versus Scotland is that proofs go up as they age in Kentucky and Tennessee. So when you see, because I had this question on Johnny Walker Blue, somebody said, well, it's 40, it's 40 or 80 proof. Well, why do they keep watering it down like that? And I said, if they're using 20, 30, 40, 50 year old whiskey in there, they have to rescue that barrel before it drops below the minimum for scotch whiskey, which would be 80 proof. And it's because it's just losing that proof over time. So the older your whiskey in Scotland, the lower the proof it's going to be your cast strength would be. And so what's interesting is that I, I've noticed that when they're doing cast strength, usually non age stated whiskeys.
Speaker 3 (00:51:55):
Yes. And it's going to be because they will use multiple barrels. And of course the rule over there is the youngest barrel in the Vatting claims, the age. So yeah, if I've got a barrel that's five years old and I'm putting it into seven or eight, 12 year old cas, it's now five years.
Ed (00:52:18):
Just interesting because some people do get hung up on the proof of a whiskey. And understanding that difference will help you understand that whiskey is different all over the world. And so you have to really deal with whatever the weather climate is going to do to a whiskey. Well,
Speaker 3 (00:52:43):
You mentioned earlier about a barrel sitting next to the ocean as compared to a barrel sitting in the highlands as compared to a barrel sitting down the lowlands location because those barrels are breathing. They are breathing their environment. And if I've got a barrel sitting right next to the ocean, it's going to get that salty air. Yeah. What's going to happen to that barrel be because we talk about the loss of a barrel, and generally the rough formula is five plus two, 5% of the barrel you lose the first year. It's just to swell it up, get it tight so it's not leaking anymore 2% each year thereafter. So in a 10 year old barrel, you're going to lose about 25% of the fill, roughly. Yeah. And that's what's going to happen. Well, as that thing evaporates out, what replaces the space air, the air of where it lives.
Ed (00:53:46):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. My perfect example of that is when I was at Bomo, one of the people that was on the tour with me, we were standing outside and they were sipping one of their sample bottles. And he said, it's so funny because I usually get a sea air component to this that I'm really not picking up. And then the light bulb went off in his head and he said, oh wait, I'm surrounded by that smell. You're
Speaker 3 (00:54:14):
Already there.
Ed (00:54:15):
You're in it. And that's what I love, because when I went to lag or I go to Lare and then I'm home drinking it now, it almost transports me back. It's like a time machine, and it takes me right back to the spot. And I think that's one of the things that when you first start out drinking scotch, or if you don't travel and get a chance to see these places, you miss that element that it really is a product of its environment very
Speaker 3 (00:54:45):
Much
Ed (00:54:45):
And can really tell the tale of where it came from. So talk about the smoke head. And so this has been around for about how long
Speaker 3 (00:54:55):
Smoke head we launched. I'm trying to remember. That would've been about 2001, 2000, 2003. That was the regular smoke head. Quite recently. Two years ago they launched the high voltage, and then just most recently, it's now the Sherry bomb and just came in the rum rubble. So you talked about rum cas. Yeah, that's exactly what they're doing. Okay. They've taken Isla whiskey, which is kind of unusual and put it into a rum cask, a Caribbean rum cask.
Ed (00:55:33):
Interesting. So it's probably picking up some sweetness out of that.
Speaker 3 (00:55:37):
Definitely. And again, I think I mentioned this earlier, I'm a purist when it comes to single malt. I want all the bright Smokey PD flavor. Yeah. I don't want you to tone it down for me. So although I can appreciate the sherry bomb, it's really not one of my favorites. Yeah, it's too sweet. They've, they've just almost masked completely. The peat. Yeah. Okay. I love the high voltage because that is just dramatic. But this new rum rebel, when I tasted it, it was an interest. It was interesting. It was a good balance of peat and that sweetness, it was a perfect balance.
Ed (00:56:23):
And see with the Sherry and Pete mix, there really is a fine balancing act there. Big time. The same issue I see with people who are trying to, distillers are trying to use port barrels, because if you leave it in that port barrel just a little too long, it suddenly becomes whatever that port barrel was. I had somebody doing Madeira, and when they did it, he said, well, we left it in there a little too long because he said, I'll give you a sample. But it basically tastes like Madeira.
Speaker 3 (00:56:58):
Here's a great example. So this is from spay.
Ed (00:57:02):
Okay. That is a dark whiskey. Oh,
Speaker 3 (00:57:07):
Okay. Let me explain it because this is Tenay. Okay. Which is Tawny. All right. Okay. It's Latin for Tawny. They put it into a Tawny port cask. They left it too long. Way too
Ed (00:57:23):
Long. Yeah. I mean to, you can't see this, but it is,
Speaker 3 (00:57:28):
It's
Ed (00:57:28):
Black. It looks like grape juice. It is the dark grape juice. That's amazing. So
Speaker 3 (00:57:35):
As compared to the one that was done properly.
Ed (00:57:40):
Oh, that's dramatically different. So what do you think the always done, right? Yeah. Because this one is, I tend to rate color on what I call the walker scale, because zero is Johnny Walker, because that is what Diageo believes is the color that people accept as the color of whiskey. And then I go minus from there, or I go, plus if it's darker. So this is actually color-wise, right in that Johnny Walker range versus grape juice. And it's the same, but so it really is up to the distiller to go in there and check it frequently to make sure that it's Watch the
Speaker 3 (00:58:26):
Barrels. Yeah.
Ed (00:58:27):
Oh yeah. Because just different weather conditions could probably speed it up, or Well, it's slow it down.
Speaker 3 (00:58:32):
It's also first fills. Second fills. Yeah. I mean, the length of time in this particular case, did they use that for Tawny port? Yeah. How old was that barrel? And how active is it? So if I get a very active barrel, I don't need a lot of time in there as compared to a less active barrel, a little more time. But you're not, you're going to get a better balance.
Ed (00:58:59):
So there's a subtlety in that one that has been watched versus the one that just kind of got to soak in as much of the barrel as it could.
Speaker 3 (00:59:11):
It's an art to it. Yeah, it's definitely an art. And that's the distiller, that's his responsibility is to watch that.
Ed (00:59:17):
Sure. So talk about some of the other brands you have here and where these generally are, whether it's easier to say where they are available or where they're not available. Because these are brands I have not seen on my shelf in South Carolina. And as you say, those are probably the more controlled states. It'll be harder to get some of these
Speaker 3 (00:59:40):
In open states. So the open states, Minnesota, New York.
Ed (00:59:47):
I think Georgia is Georgia Open.
Speaker 3 (00:59:49):
Georgia's Open. Okay. Georgia, Tennessee, obviously, because we're here. Yeah. Missouri, California, New York, Colorado. I said Minnesota, Wisconsin. Yeah. Okay. Open states. Yeah, Texas. We're very active in Texas with a retailer there are called specs.
Ed (01:00:09):
Okay. And so describe these, because one of these, you were talking about when we think about blended whiskeys. Yeah. There's a technique used here that I've been preaching about a bit on my tasting videos, and also been dropping some hints about in my conversations with Distillers about how this is finished in not finishing in terms of the barrel it's put in. But what happens to that, the bottling
Speaker 3 (01:00:40):
Spirit process. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You're talking about chill filtering. And that's true for bourbon, for most whiskeys, especially brown spirits. Any brown spirit is going to have to go through some sort of chill filtering. And the reason for it is very simply, when you distill your product, there are natural fats and oils. What we refer to as Esther, that are actually in the whiskey, those are the flavoring agents. The problem that you have when you start adding water to the distilled spirit, when it comes out of the barrel, as you add the water and you get down to, it's right about 90 proof, 90, 89 in that range, you start adding water, those Esther come out of solution, and the Esther will get cloudy. The water has now created this cloudiness. So you consumers are not going to buy cloudy whiskey. So what has to happen, they will chill it down.
Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
Typically, it depends on the production. Some of the companies will go to 32 degrees. Okay, that's pretty severe. But when you're, you're bottling thousands and thousands of cases of Johnny Walker Red or whatever it is, yeah. You're going to have to get pretty severe. So they'll take it down to 32 degrees. They then pass it through a filter pad, which strips out the cloudiness that then is clears up the whiskey. Well, the problems are obvious. We just stripped out half your taste profile. So chill filtered is a little more difficult because you are going to get cloudy.
Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
And what you referred to is, we just launched this new brand, it's called Klan McLeod. And Klan McLeod is a blended scotch whiskey. Now, again, blended scotch whiskey is where you take single malt and you add grain whiskey. We add the two together that that's where the term blended scotch whiskey came from. So typically blended scotch whiskeys like Johnny Walker Doers, j b, all those guys, there's a certain amount of single malt to grain, and they have their formulas, but they're all going to have to go to chill filtering because they usually tick him down to either 80 proof or 86 proof. Well, what they decided to do, clam McLeod came out, or Mcle Ian McLeod, they launched this brand called Clam McLeod, which is 92 proof just before the hazing starts. And they didn't chill filter.
Ed (01:03:30):
And so you're actually getting a blended scotch whiskey that's going to be a higher proof and until filtered, which is not something you're going to get out of a Johnny Walker or doer or, because those are Well, and I've heard that the reason that they do it, I say it's about education, and it's about letting the consumer know that a hazy whiskey actually isn't a bad whiskey. It's a better whiskey,
Speaker 3 (01:03:58):
Actually.
Ed (01:03:58):
Yes, yes. Or as you showed me a bottle of JW Kelly that ended up with a little sediment in the bottom of the barrel, Hey, it's still, maybe it's aging a little bit in there still, you know, got something going on. It's not able to breathe. But unless you open the bottle, but
Speaker 3 (01:04:15):
Well, you take that bottle and shake it up. Yeah. Okay. You're going to disperse all the asterisks back in the whiskey. You taste that compared to the one that's been filtered heavily. Yeah. Oh, there, there's a difference in the flavor, for sure.
Ed (01:04:28):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
You'll taste the difference. Yeah. All y years ago, I owned a distributorship in Missouri for 16 years, and we launched, we were the third distributor in the country to launch four roses when four roses re relaunched in the us. And Jimmy Rutledge was the master distiller at the time. And I was over talking with him, and we were talk, he took me to the bottling hall and we showed me the bottling process and all that stuff, and they were dumping the barrels. And I'm, I'm going, ah, this is great. And all of a sudden, over in the corner, I saw the chill filter.
Ed (01:05:13):
Oh no. And he said, well,
Speaker 3 (01:05:17):
I said, you're not, he said, ed, you have to. Yeah, you
Ed (01:05:20):
Have to. So I guess even with his cream of Kentucky now, he's probably chill filtering that as well. Maybe. Well, we won't speak for him, but
Speaker 3 (01:05:28):
The main brands Yeah, yeah. The main brands are, yeah. Can they do it? And mentioned Al
Ed (01:05:34):
Al Young. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:05:35):
Yeah. God bless. Yeah. Al was mentioning a special bottling that they did. Yeah, you can do that. Yeah, sure. You can do that. Yeah. Just like this.
Ed (01:05:44):
Yeah. It's fun actually. Now seeing that Jim Beam went back and brought their old name back, old tub, which is what it originally was. Right. And they did it in big letters, unfiltered. So it's catching on. And when the big guys, because I've, thank God, I've heard Fred know say, we're not really looking, looking to sell a lot of whiskey. And so we don't want anything to detract from us being able to sell a lot of whiskey. And I get that. But even he's open to trying it out and seeing how it works. And most of the people that I've talked to who have tasted that whiskey really like that whiskey. So
Speaker 3 (01:06:31):
I think over the last probably 15 years, I have done anywhere from 60 to 80 single malt tastings per year around the country. And invariably people will come to me and say, when are you going to do cast strength whiskey? I mean, every people are getting
Ed (01:06:59):
It. There's an awareness now
Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
They, they're getting it. And I was talking to about chill filtered years ago, and at that time, people didn't have a clue what I was talking
Ed (01:07:11):
About.
Speaker 3 (01:07:13):
And I do a PowerPoint presentation where I actually show them the chiller and I show them the filter. This is how it works, this is what happens. And they still didn't get it, but people are starting to get it now. Yeah. Thank God.
Ed (01:07:31):
Yeah. Well, you mentioned it enough, and I think the more we get into this social media world where people are sharing tasting notes, and you're seeing more podcasters who are doing tasting notes and really focusing on that, and people are just leisurely listening to this, but they keep hearing it over and over and over again, sooner or later, it will start to drill into their head that maybe this is something I should pay attention to when grabbing a bottle of whiskey off the shelf.
Speaker 3 (01:08:03):
I will make a prediction. So we launched this 92 proof, chill, filtered, blended scotch whiskey. You watch the Big Boys
Ed (01:08:16):
See. Well, because you were mentioning to me that this actually comes in as a price point that's lower than Johnny Walker Red.
Speaker 3 (01:08:23):
Well, and that has a lot to do with Yes. The bottle of this is on the shelf at about 16 point 99 a bottle. I mean, the value is really there for sure. Yeah. This almost tastes like a single mal. I mean, it's that
Ed (01:08:36):
Close. Now, does this have any smoke to it, or is it Well, they've
Speaker 3 (01:08:41):
Got two St. Yeah, they've got two styles. Okay. They've got one here called Smooth and Mellow. Okay. This will not have any ped whiskey in it. And then they've got one bold and spicy. Okay. This definitely is going to have the PD whiskey.
Ed (01:08:53):
These could be trainer SCOs, really pretty much in terms of here's your chance to really get a sense of, all right, I've been the bourbon drinker for a while. Let me move on over and see. And it's not a huge price point to and not
Speaker 3 (01:09:07):
A huge price point. And for those people, I would suggest definitely the smooth and mellow. That's the way, because the spicy one has got some peak guts to it.
Ed (01:09:16):
Smooth to it, yeah. Yeah. And then the others, the mcleods and the,
Speaker 3 (01:09:21):
These are kind of beginner, if you will. Okay. And we're actually going to be adding two more. So we've got right now a Highland, a space side, and an Isla.
Ed (01:09:32):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (01:09:33):
The three basic styles. Yeah. We're going to be adding Loland and island. Okay. So we'll have five different styles, but these are all single Walts. The unique part here is, it's called McLeod's Own. It's produced by Ian McLeod, but we won't name the distillery. So they're single malts, but we're not going to name the distillery. And
Ed (01:09:59):
The same with smoke head,
Speaker 3 (01:10:01):
Not going to name the distillery.
Ed (01:10:02):
So what's fun about this is that you get to taste it, and if a lot of Isla distilleries, maybe you'll be able to guess which one it is. I see a lot of that on online. Whenever we run into a situation like that, lots of speculation. Some people think they've nailed it. And I did a tasting out in California where I had tasted a bunch of pre-prohibition whiskey, and one of the whiskeys I tasted had a heavy banana note to it. And I thought, the whiskey that stands out to me, that is Jack Daniels. And I thought, am I drinking a pre-prohibition version of Jack Daniels? But these bottles we'll never know, or well, somebody knows. Oh yeah. In that case, nobody will ever know because it's just coming out of a carboy that had a tag on it. That's a very good old whiskey.
Speaker 3 (01:10:53):
Well, what's interesting to me, and of course they won't tell me the malts that they use, but it's interesting to me that in Highland McLeod or Ian McLeod owns a Highland distillery,
Ed (01:11:08):
And
Speaker 3 (01:11:09):
They also in space side, they also own a space side distillery. They don't own an Isla distillery. So I can kind of pretty well figure out which ones they're using. Yeah,
Ed (01:11:22):
Yeah. Right. But
Speaker 3 (01:11:24):
The big advantage of this is these are about $36 on the shelf. So price points are really good in terms of value. It's single. The other thing they don't do is they won't put an age statement on there. And again, regulation is, if you're going to put an age statement on there, the youngest bureau claims the age. Right? Yeah. And I can tell you they're probably six or seven, eight year old malts in these vans, but you wouldn't want to put a six year old age statement on there.
Ed (01:11:57):
Yeah. Well, but I think that's another thing that's an education for the consumer. Because I've had Glen Scotia, I went to the distillery. They gave me whiskey straight off the still, and it was so fruity and had such a great flavor to it that when I got back home and I said, oh man, the youngest I can get is 15 year. I hope it hasn't killed off all that flavor. This is where the master BL blender, master distiller comes into play because it still had those early characteristics to it, but you could tell the maturity of the barrel as well. And it was a nice balance of those. So yeah, for me, I'm not really at that experience taught me that eight statements really don't tell the tale. They
Speaker 3 (01:12:49):
Don't.
Ed (01:12:50):
Not at all.
Speaker 3 (01:12:51):
And again, people have been taught over here 12 years, and I think that goes back to the Chevy Regal days when Chev Regal was really being promoted by Seagram's. Yeah. It was a 12 year old scotch, and that's where it got it in their heads. 12 years is the benchmark. Yeah. Yeah. It's not.
Ed (01:13:15):
So one other thing before we wrap up. We're talking about JW Kelly and have mentioned it a few times. How did you come to get into from being an importer to actually having your own whiskey brand?
Speaker 3 (01:13:29):
Well, it was actually my grandson who discovered the history and story of JW Kelly, who actually was a guy. One of the problems that you run into in our industry, in our business, people will come up with this fictitious names and whatever it is, and come up with a story. This is actually a guy who was actually born and raised in Ireland, and he moved, he was born in Waterford, Ireland. From what we been able to find out, he moved to New York as a young man and eventually wound up in Nashville during the Civil War and became a rectifier where he was putting together whiskey and brands. Old Milford was one of his brands that he was selling to the troops and everybody else during the war. At the end of the war in 1866, he decided to move to Chattanooga, where he actually opened up his first distillery, the first distillery being opened after the Civil War. And that was called JW Kelly, deep Springs Distillery. And it was right down there on Broad Street. I mean, we've got record of it and the whole nine yards. He's been put into, in fact, he was in the newspaper back in 18, I think it was 1883, was in a newspaper as being one of the top individuals in Chattanooga in terms of helping open up libraries and banks and stuff. He was doing very
Ed (01:14:59):
Well. He had money coming in.
Speaker 3 (01:15:00):
He had money coming in. He was doing very well.
Ed (01:15:02):
And this was a distillery town at one point? Yes. I think it was upwards of some 30, maybe distilleries in this area over time. So
Speaker 3 (01:15:10):
Because of the water, the water and the river allowed them to take their goods to various markets. So you, you've got big distilling here. Well, anyway, he started up, we found this, he disappeared because Prohibition put him out of business. He eventually disappeared. We found the history and decided, wow, this needs to be redone. And that's how we started. We started this in 2017,
Ed (01:15:42):
And last time I was here, I got a chance to sample some, and we went back. And my favorite one is one that you don't really sell, which was you were doing for a restaurant. I think it was the moon pie. So I've learned since I've been in Tennessee about sundrop and moon pies.
Speaker 3 (01:16:02):
That's right. Moon pies are a tradition here.
Ed (01:16:06):
And it was a barrel that I guess had held Yes. Moon pies. Right. And then you finished off in it, and it was really, for anybody who's had a moon pie, it was kind of like marshmallow. Yeah. And Mar Graham cracker and Right. Yeah. I've had even the banana ones, you probably didn't use the banana ones, I'm guessing. No,
Speaker 3 (01:16:25):
We only had that one
Ed (01:16:26):
Barrel. Yeah. Yeah. So that was very interesting. So that's great. And where is that distributed? Pretty much the same states as you're doing your Yeah,
Speaker 3 (01:16:33):
Yeah. Yeah. We're fairly good in 36 states.
Ed (01:16:41):
Okay. Well, thanks for sharing your wealth of knowledge on Scotch whiskey and introducing a lot of people. The barriers are the names sometimes being able to pronounce them.
Speaker 3 (01:16:53):
Yeah, the Gaelic stuff. Kaila,
Ed (01:16:54):
Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3 (01:16:56):
That's
Ed (01:16:56):
A tough one. And actually, I did a bunch of pronunciation videos out on YouTube, and I just did their ten second videos, and I took them from all the distilleries I visited and heard them pronounced there. And I still get people arguing with me that they're not pronouncing them, but I say, Khalila, and they're like, no, if you watch this guy named Brian Cox, actor Brian Cox, they say he's Scottish, and he says, it's Kailah. And I'm like, no, no, no, it's not. I'm sorry. I don't know how I argue against the A Scotsman, me, Mr. American, but I say I went to the distillery, and this is probably the one that's most confusing still for me. Is it Bomo, Bour, Boor? Because there, they'll say Bour, but then I heard one of their people on a different tour who was a tour guide for them on a tour at another distillery, and she said, no, we're just trying to get people to say bullmore now.
Ed (01:17:59):
And so it's what everybody says, so stick with it. But Glen, Glen Moray, it's looks like Glen Morrie. So people say, call it that. And so I get arguments on that too, but it's like, I can't do it with a Scottish accent. So Murray is kind of a, yeah, it's subtle in how you make it more Murray than Moe. Yeah. Yeah. So hopefully talking regions, talking different styles and learning more about what you got here helps people get a little better handle on it. So I appreciate your help on this. No, thanks for coming in. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Drew (01:18:41):
And to find out more about the whiskeys that Ed distributes, like Spay Smoke head, McLeod Klan McLeod, and his own j w Kelly, head to quest brands inc.com. And if you're new to the podcast, make sure that you subscribe so you don't miss any episodes. And help us grow by telling a friend about the show and find show notes, transcripts, social media links, books and swag@whiskeylord.com, or support this independent podcast by joining the Whiskey Lore Society at patreon.com/whiskey. I'm your host, Hanish. And until next time, cheers and SL of a JVA whiskey lore. The interviews is a production of Travel Fuel's Life, L L C.