A Day in the Life with Connal Mackenzie, Sales Director | Ardnamurchan Distillery & Adelphi — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00[Music]
2. 0:06hello and welcome to arican distill I'm
3. 0:09currently standing outside Warehouse 2
4. 0:11we're up the hill and it is a glorious
5. 0:14Winter's afternoon it's freezing cold
6. 0:17and as you can see the Vista uh the view
7. 0:20is absolutely spectacular the reason why
8. 0:23I'm here today is we're going to give
9. 0:25you a little of an insight into various
10. 0:27team members at AR neran we're going to
11. 0:30a bit of a behind the scenes of what we
12. 0:31do on a not so much daily basis but the
13. 0:35things that spin our wheels and for me
14. 0:37it's hanging around warehouses and
15. 0:39looking at
16. 0:40casks okay so let's get cracking to it
17. 0:42so we're outside Warehouse 2 um my
18. 0:44colleague Carl is is in there so we're
19. 0:46going to go and check out some gks and
20. 0:48see what see what's in Warehouse too
21. 0:49come
22. 0:52on so I can tell you it's a lot warmer
23. 0:55even in here compared to outside which
24. 0:57is pretty good news what we're going to
25. 0:59do is going to have a real extreme game
26. 1:02of where's Wally but with Wally we're
27. 1:04replacing Carl so if you do see him give
28. 1:07give me a
29. 1:11shout
30. 1:13aha Mr crafts
31. 1:17hello I like how you matching cks jump
32. 1:21yeah that was intentional yeah you want
33. 1:23introduce yourself Carl yeah hi everyone
34. 1:26uh I'm Carl C uh I'm a sales executive I
35. 1:30cover a few uh International markets
36. 1:34most notably um the US and Canada uh but
37. 1:38also some Emerging Markets uh Latin
38. 1:40America turkey a few other bits and Bobs
39. 1:43um have a a fair few UK accounts and uh
40. 1:48yeah I am have the privilege of being a
41. 1:51part of the team that sort of selects
42. 1:52liquid um for Arkadelphia as well so
43. 1:55that's uh kind of what we're doing here
44. 1:57today on the warehouse and Warehouse 2
45. 1:59just now so as you can see in in in
46. 2:01Warehouse 2 uh traditional dunnage
47. 2:04Styles so what I mean by that Earth
48. 2:05floor three to four casks High um it's
49. 2:10not the most ideal scenario for storing
50. 2:12casks in a saving uh space but we do
51. 2:16believe it's the best way to mature
52. 2:18Scotch whiskey we have around 18,000
53. 2:20casks maturing here out west on the
54. 2:23peninsula all our casks go through a
55. 2:26full maturation here um the only time
56. 2:28that they are moved is when they are
57. 2:30selected for bottling um our vatting
58. 2:33together which we do down at our adelfi
59. 2:35warehouse in F predominantly we have
60. 2:38bourbon battles which we fill and we
61. 2:40have a direct relationship and uh with
62. 2:43old Forester so we fill old Forester uh
63. 2:45bourbon battles we also have a great
64. 2:48relationship with two shed Bas in herth
65. 2:51in the south of Spain over the last sort
66. 2:54of six years we've been experimenting
67. 2:56with different types of wood uh various
68. 2:58types of wood from ports
69. 3:00Saturn Mez and more and what we're going
70. 3:03to do is have a we look at these right
71. 3:06now so about 60% of the casks that we
72. 3:09fill is in a b an ex bourbon battle an
73. 3:12American Standard battle so I think
74. 3:14that'd be a really good place to start
75. 3:16Carl have you found something yet y sure
76. 3:17did cool let's
77. 3:22go let's do one of these so we're going
78. 3:24to look at something from 2017 vintage
79. 3:27which believe it or not this year is
80. 3:28going to be 8 years old old now uh we've
81. 3:31got a variety of different types so
82. 3:32we've got ped and UNP so we do six
83. 3:35months ped spirit and 6 months andp spit
84. 3:38here at AR American take it away
85. 3:45girl give it just a gentle
86. 3:48swirl 2017
87. 3:57bourbon I just want to uh want to chime
88. 4:00in and say this cast wasn't pre-picked
89. 4:03for this video and it was completely
90. 4:05random and it looks like he's picked a
91. 4:06goodie so
92. 4:08well that doesn't always happen folks
93. 4:11that's H that's unusual one so obviously
94. 4:15yeah yeah deep Golds golden color honey
95. 4:18colored you know that's what you're
96. 4:19looking for in a in in a bourbon battle
97. 4:22um it's obviously very cold uh and it's
98. 4:24it's going to take a we while for this
99. 4:25whiskey to open up but yeah we're even
100. 4:28in our UNP Spirit we're finding that Ard
101. 4:31American character that saline spirit
102. 4:34that shines through we it's in pet Peter
103. 4:37Spirit or and Peter Spirit but yeah our
104. 4:40bourbon battles are are giving off those
105. 4:42lovely sort of
106. 4:43biosi um sort of caramac white chocolate
107. 4:48um Flapjack I suppose another another
108. 4:51way would be to describe it but yeah car
109. 4:53what did you get from our our bourbon
110. 4:55Cask oh that's that's lovely I think
111. 5:00yeah certainly the that nice sweet
112. 5:02bready character but also you know the
113. 5:05the fruit the fruit is is is critically
114. 5:07important
115. 5:08especially well really for both UNP and
116. 5:11peed but um when you've got UNP bourbon
117. 5:13there's really nowhere to hide um in a
118. 5:15in an unated bourbon Cask so you know
119. 5:17that nice apricot Peach character when
120. 5:19that comes through that's a that's a
121. 5:21beautiful thing and I think you know it
122. 5:24seems it is one of the best parts of our
123. 5:26job I think right is is keeping an eye
124. 5:28on cast but you know it is important
125. 5:30that we get up here and and see how
126. 5:32things are progressing because every
127. 5:34Cask is different right and I think
128. 5:35that's you know the one directly next to
129. 5:38this might not be quite as ready as this
130. 5:40one is right and this is this is an
131. 5:41absolute this is a you pick an absolute
132. 5:43Bel delicious right so really really
133. 5:46honeyed um almost good texture really
134. 5:49good mouth feel really good um yeah why
135. 5:53there's waxiness though definitely
136. 5:54definitely definitely got good mou feel
137. 5:56so absolutely yeah really really chuff
138. 5:57for that and I would just like to say
139. 5:59that we um is it is a camera the C
140. 6:02there's something wrong with our camera
141. 6:03it is probably showing me to be quite a
142. 6:05lot smaller than Carl I'm actually 6'6
143. 6:07so I don't know how tall he is yeah um
144. 6:10it's a severe a severe slam I've been
145. 6:12trying to sort of I've been trying to
146. 6:14sort of stand on this but it's here that
147. 6:16would be better right cheers yeah cheers
148. 6:18yeah I'll just stay if you could Crouch
149. 6:20down that would be that would be it's
150. 6:23not really good for myself confence I'll
151. 6:24just contort myself like this thank you
152. 6:27so yeah I'm just going to
153. 6:30you know as we were talking about just
154. 6:34now um sorry multitasking here getting
155. 6:36whiskey into a bottle uh we really don't
156. 6:39know uh I had no idea that this was
157. 6:41going to be quite as good as this so
158. 6:43Connell Callum and I kind of decided
159. 6:45that's that's definitely good enough for
160. 6:46a potential single Cask in the future
161. 6:48right so that's pretty much what happens
162. 6:51when we're doing this you know a large
163. 6:54part of it is um having an idea of how
164. 6:58the vintages are progressing in this
165. 7:00cast type or that cast type but also as
166. 7:02we're working through that it's finding
167. 7:04a cast that's really properly good that
168. 7:06we can do a single Cask bottling of and
169. 7:10those will go to you know supply chain
170. 7:11Partners around the world um whether
171. 7:14it's an importer it could be you know a
172. 7:16really good whiskey account um that sort
173. 7:18of thing so that is uh one of the
174. 7:21important parts of getting into the
175. 7:22warehouse right is is getting uh fun
176. 7:24really special single cast for for
177. 7:27people that support ardin Amur all
178. 7:28around the globe
179. 7:30so yeah Carl's just taken us through
180. 7:32really quite an exceptional example of a
181. 7:34bourbon battle uh and we're going to
182. 7:36take a look at our shed C now our Sherry
183. 7:39casks typically come in three sizes so
184. 7:42we have octaves which are the the really
185. 7:44small sort of 55 L fill you'll typically
186. 7:47yield around 70 bottles after maturation
187. 7:50this is a Sherry Hogs head so this is
188. 7:53250 lers and this is actually PX or
189. 7:56Pedro HTH which is a uh grape a type of
190. 7:59uh
191. 8:00shete and known for its sort of sticky
192. 8:03dessert style qualities and then we have
193. 8:06the shete bat which is one of the
194. 8:08biggest and probably most popular shedy
195. 8:10casks in the industry so they're 500 L
196. 8:13um and they'll typically yield 700ish
197. 8:16bottles um after 10 years is of
198. 8:18maturation so we'll take a look at uh at
199. 8:22this
200. 8:28one thank you
201. 8:30we are looking at cast 915 from 2018 so
202. 8:34that's going to be what seven so yeah
203. 8:38it's it's not it's it'll be seven this
204. 8:39year 6 and a half 6 and a half years old
205. 8:42first fill so spit being filled into
206. 8:45this cask and it has been simply
207. 8:47sleeping here for the last six and a bit
208. 8:49years
209. 8:52so it's promising
210. 9:01yeah so that's a it's it's it's doing
211. 9:04its job The Cask it's
212. 9:06um marrying wonderfully with the spirit
213. 9:09and I think that's something
214. 9:11that we we we do talk about in the
215. 9:13industry but I think you know when
216. 9:14you're looking at maturation with wood
217. 9:16and spirit you're you're looking for a
218. 9:19marriage together you don't want the
219. 9:21cast to overtake the spirit and you
220. 9:23don't want the spirit to overtake the CK
221. 9:25you want this harmony of um maturation
222. 9:29together they're having a conversation
223. 9:31for many years you don't want anyone to
224. 9:32be too shouty uh is the way I like to
225. 9:35describe maturations so the casks are
226. 9:37very important that's why we try and buy
227. 9:39the best casks that we can we can buy um
228. 9:42and we're very fortunate to have
229. 9:43fantastic suppliers from both bourbon um
230. 9:47shete and and and and all the other
231. 9:50casks that we have we try to have a
232. 9:53direct relationship with these cages
233. 9:57suppliers wineries you name it
234. 10:00yeah it's almost H espresso tiasu is
235. 10:03what I would describe this tiasu or an
236. 10:07apato uh in a glass um the viscosity or
237. 10:10the texture of the spirit it's almost
238. 10:13cloying um quite quite quite luscious
239. 10:17already for something that's just over
240. 10:18that sixe Mark this is uh the color is
241. 10:21really nice this is definitely going the
242. 10:23direction we would want um I would say
243. 10:25this is not as ready as the bourbon cast
244. 10:27we just pulled right and I think yeah
245. 10:28100% con and I you know even just
246. 10:31looking at each other now 10 seconds in
247. 10:33it's he's right it has the T Mao it has
248. 10:36a beautiful nuttiness you know sort of
249. 10:37almost like an almond Lor thing um but
250. 10:40the pet is probably it needs a little
251. 10:42bit more time to round out and that's
252. 10:44fine that's the beauty of whiskey right
253. 10:46we um we just let it sit for a little
254. 10:48while longer and then uh and then keep
255. 10:50keep giving it a try and make sure that
256. 10:53it's it's at the place it needs to be I
257. 10:55mean I think that's the really important
258. 10:56part of of tracking this so closely is
259. 11:00we have a variety of different
260. 11:01expressions and the single cast that we
261. 11:03mentioned and those are all going to be
262. 11:06useful at different ages and with
263. 11:08different characteristics right so yeah
264. 11:10and also you don't want all your casks
265. 11:13to be ready at the same time no because
266. 11:15you're a you're in a bit of a you've got
267. 11:17an issue on your hands if that is the
268. 11:18case each Cask whether it's filled on
269. 11:22the same day it's a sister Cas and
270. 11:23you're looking at this row here you've
271. 11:25got bourbon battles from 2018 30 31 32
272. 11:2833 34
273. 11:30we could open all of these casks and
274. 11:32each Cask would have a different point
275. 11:34to it and some would be further on in
276. 11:36their maturation um some would be less
277. 11:39and that's fine that's exactly what
278. 11:40we're looking for here um not not
279. 11:43exclusive to AR American that's just a
280. 11:44gen General thing in Scotch is we are
281. 11:46looking for each Cask to have its
282. 11:48different different stage um so yeah
283. 11:51it's good it's good as I said the nose
284. 11:54the nose is a all better and the pallet
285. 11:56is not quite together yet but showing
286. 11:57great promise yeah absolutely
287. 12:00yeah so what we'll do is we'll head
288. 12:02further up the hill H go up to Warehouse
289. 12:043 and see what's uh lying up there come
290. 12:09on oh yeah
291. 12:14uh-oh look at that perfect Whiskey
292. 12:18Whiskey Drinking
293. 12:21weather ah winter on the west
294. 12:25coast it doesn't get much better than
295. 12:27that for the view though the sun Sun's
296. 12:29going down lights
297. 12:31unreal snow capped mountains snow capped
298. 12:34casks
299. 12:36wow
300. 12:44wow uh yeah so to give you uh a good
301. 12:48sense of scale I guess ju's deposing the
302. 12:51Hogs head that Connell uh was in
303. 12:53previously with with what he mentioned
304. 12:55as a Sherry butt your 500 L butt so this
305. 12:58is
306. 13:00two Sherry butts on top of each other on
307. 13:02the Stow here um and as you can see I'm
308. 13:056'6 or just shy of 2 m and uh two butts
309. 13:08is basically my height so that's a
310. 13:10pretty big chunk of wood with a bunch of
311. 13:12whiskey in it
312. 13:14um again uh going to the
313. 13:18unpredictability of looking into casks
314. 13:21with a butt of this size at 500 L you
315. 13:26typically expect the the maturation
316. 13:29process and thereby the color because
317. 13:31the color for those that don't know is
318. 13:33coming from the interaction with the
319. 13:35wood right the the give and take of the
320. 13:37wood and the liquid you expect there to
321. 13:39be um it to take longer for the color to
322. 13:42be imparted because uh there's less
323. 13:45surface area uh as compared to the
324. 13:47amount of liquid in The Cask however
325. 13:49things sometimes are unusual right so
326. 13:52this is a
327. 13:532019 uh Pedro menth uh Sherry butt uh
328. 13:59would have been reasonable to assume
329. 14:00that this would not quite be there yet
330. 14:02in terms of color uh and however that's
331. 14:05where we're at uh 5 and 1/2 years in uh
332. 14:09in a very large vessel so it goes to
333. 14:12show again the one underneath it could
334. 14:14be several Shades lighter there's just
335. 14:16no way of knowing um that's a beautiful
336. 14:19active Cask uh with PX influence so
337. 14:22that's really good news for us and
338. 14:23obviously we get a decent amount of
339. 14:25liquid out of out of that bigger cast to
340. 14:28to eventually B
341. 14:29yeah another really cool Cask um which
342. 14:33well we just haven't talked about
343. 14:34because it's they were filled in the the
344. 14:36really fun year of 2020 what a year that
345. 14:39was um are these we quarter casks now
346. 14:42these what's special about these quarter
347. 14:44casks is that they're from Isa so
348. 14:46they're ex Isa casks and they're also
349. 14:48filled with peted Spirit from AR ameran
350. 14:52now our Pete smoke is different from Isa
351. 14:55Pete smoke we're not trying to recreate
352. 14:56an Isa we're we we're a Highland style
353. 14:58facility
354. 14:59we're using Highland Pete um but these
355. 15:04quarter cks um are delivering another
356. 15:07dimension to our spirit so they're
357. 15:09really really coming on good now we we
358. 15:12uh we looked at these about 6 months ago
359. 15:14and yet they're really they're giving an
360. 15:17extra element to to to the
361. 15:21whiskey uh yeah so we're going to look
362. 15:23at a a port Cask um that we filled so
363. 15:28col is this full maturation from 2019
364. 15:31then these are full maturation and the
365. 15:33reason why we I remember in well in
366. 15:372020 maybe um looking at these and they
367. 15:41were they were like the color of rosé
368. 15:43wine and I was like oh no um we're not
369. 15:46making a wh ski here you know we're want
370. 15:48to yeah so I just left them alone um so
371. 15:51fast forward now a good few years from
372. 15:53memory they were showing much better so
373. 15:57it'll be excited to see them
374. 16:07what are we
375. 16:08saying oh there you go look at that yes
376. 16:12it's still got that tinge but it is
377. 16:14quite a lovely color it's kind of an
378. 16:15orangey it's kind of an iron Brew it's
379. 16:17kind of an iron Brew color
380. 16:20um hope tastes different yeah just
381. 16:23really yeah wow that is
382. 16:27quite wow
383. 16:37is it cold probably bit yeah it's very
384. 16:42cold that's going to be a lot of fun to
385. 16:44work with it some point we'll probably
386. 16:45give it another summer and uh I think
387. 16:48that in about 8 months time 9 months
388. 16:50time is going to really be quite
389. 16:52different but these are all I they're a
390. 16:55mixture actually of um Tony and Ruby
391. 16:59Port mhm bi yeah pal it's good yeah
392. 17:03there there's a tartness to it which I
393. 17:05like it's quite endearing it's not a
394. 17:07it's not spiky it's it's
395. 17:10quite yeah pretty pleased with that it
396. 17:12has it yeah it's almost like Ruby Red
397. 17:14Grapefruit grapefruit is good yeah I I
398. 17:16think what what I love about it is it's
399. 17:18it's another flavor profile of what AR
400. 17:22American um that we haven't tried before
401. 17:24right so we tend to We tend to sort of
402. 17:27Veer towards
403. 17:29things are fortified um I think it's
404. 17:31fair to say um but then not exclusively
405. 17:35because you know we we use pauloa the
406. 17:38champagne house in lemon uh next door to
407. 17:41Krug we work with Julian and S laoa uh
408. 17:44on with with these paoa X champagne or
409. 17:48100% Chardon B which we'll talk about um
410. 17:51when we get to our warehouse one upper
411. 17:53level so we're going to head on to Upper
412. 17:56Warehouse which is our um part of
413. 17:58Warehouse one it's a dual level
414. 18:00Warehouse so but we're going to go to
415. 18:03the upper part concrete floor still
416. 18:05traditional Dage in a sense where it's
417. 18:07three casks high but no Earth floor so
418. 18:10what we see especially in the summertime
419. 18:12is that the Believe It or Not H in
420. 18:15Scotland we do see increased levels of
421. 18:17maturation due to the heat because of
422. 18:19that concrete floor and the and where
423. 18:21where it's situated so I wish we could I
424. 18:23wish it would be hot there today it's
425. 18:25not so get the beanie on and we'll go
426. 18:28back outside let's
427. 18:37go it's very
428. 18:40quiet all you can hear is the hum of the
429. 18:43boiler the biomass boiler and you can
430. 18:45hear the the Glenmore River um and
431. 18:49that's
432. 18:51it Bliss
433. 18:56[Music]
434. 18:59what you're looking at yeah so we're
435. 19:02here in Warehouse one upper level uh as
436. 19:05I explained earlier increased maturation
437. 19:09um so much more heat here in the summer
438. 19:12um not today it's absolutely freezing
439. 19:15hence my hands are in my pockets uh so
440. 19:18these are our po Ando breaks um now we
441. 19:21started um dealing with pow I think in
442. 19:242020 actually was the first year um and
443. 19:26we were introduced to Julia and Sara uh
444. 19:30the owners um they named it Paul L uh
445. 19:34after their son Paul so they own a
446. 19:38family very small boutique champagne
447. 19:41house in lemon um next to Krug Salon not
448. 19:45too far from Don Peron great champagne
449. 19:49growing area and they use 100% Chardon
450. 19:51mainly and these BS we get for the last
451. 19:56four years we've got 10 to 12 BS each
452. 19:58year now that is not a lot of CAS at all
453. 20:02they essentially do a single barrel
454. 20:04program so just like single Cask whiskey
455. 20:06Single Barrel program um in Champagne
456. 20:09which I honestly didn't even know
457. 20:10existed until I started um dealing with
458. 20:13the lovely Julian and Sala so we get 10
459. 20:16to 12 casks it is growing so this year
460. 20:18actually we're going to get um just over
461. 20:22double that so the batch sizes of pollen
462. 20:24W will increase but essentially what
463. 20:26that means is we we will get around
464. 20:303,000 bottles give
465. 20:32orake um each year we release it late
466. 20:35spring into early summer uh what the the
467. 20:39style of whiskey it delivers is a really
468. 20:42different take for us it gives you that
469. 20:44really dense flavorful sort of almond
470. 20:48croissant um very luscious very viscous
471. 20:53full bodied and bottled in natural Cask
472. 20:55strength um and yeah as I said these
473. 20:58these These casks are are are sort of
474. 21:01our our our gem if if you like in in
475. 21:04this Warehouse um and we're very proud
476. 21:06to be working with the lar family
477. 21:09usually what we do it's usually all UNP
478. 21:12spirit and what we do is we'll take that
479. 21:14UNP Spirit that's been resting and aging
480. 21:16in Bourbon
481. 21:17battles between six and 8 years I
482. 21:21suppose in Bourbon casks um and then we
483. 21:24will finish them a further year to 18
484. 21:28months give or take um in Pauls and that
485. 21:32just gives it that extra boost and
486. 21:34different style of of of flavor and
487. 21:36characteristic so yeah we're we're we're
488. 21:39chaff the bits with this release it'll
489. 21:40be a a yearly release as long as we can
490. 21:43get the casks and uh yeah hopefully you
491. 21:46managed to snag yourself a bottle so
492. 21:49hopefully that give you a little bit of
493. 21:50an Insight H to what part of my job is
494. 21:53here at AR American Distillery um it's
495. 21:56uh probably my favorite job uh spending
496. 21:59time here in the warehouses uh along
497. 22:01with blending but very much a small part
498. 22:04of my job uh obviously sales marketing
499. 22:08uh traveling around the world attending
500. 22:09whiskey shows etc etc is all very much
501. 22:12still part of what I do and working with
502. 22:14a wonderful team that we do have here at
503. 22:16The Distillery and in five and yeah it's
504. 22:20it's uh it's no no day is the same H
505. 22:24let's put it that way hopefully that's
506. 22:27giv you an insight to
507. 22:29to what our warehouses are like um and
508. 22:31hopefully it gives you an appetite to
509. 22:32come out west to to make the pilgrimage
510. 22:35to the peninsula it's uh it's pretty
511. 22:38cold today maybe not advise it the
512. 22:40current roads but um in summer spring
513. 22:44autumn it's a wonderful place to visit
514. 22:46not only just to see us here at The
515. 22:48Distillery but the the the actual
516. 22:50Peninsula itself it's it's really is
517. 22:52something quite special so yeah hope you
518. 22:55enjoyed it cheers
519. 22:59[Music]