August 13, 2025 • 62 mins
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White Peak Distillery
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
David Levine (00:00):
Hey folks, welcome to a new episode of the whiskey
(00:02):
ring Podcast. Today. We're goingback over to England, where
they've been having a bunch ofdistilleries that I've had on
recently, and I just loveexploring them. It's a whole new
scene with remarkably, let'ssay, a remarkably independent
profile from what you mightexpect from their very close
neighbors, and one that I'mthrilled to feature. So today we
(00:25):
are talking about white peakdistillery, and to talk about
it, we've have one of the cofounders, Max Vaughn, and I say
co founder, because it would bea shame not to mention that his
wife, Claire is also a cofounder, something he's
corrected in multiple interviewsbefore. So Max, welcome on.
Max Vaughn (00:42):
Yeah, hi David, yeah, great to great to be on
and yeah, thanks for the thanksfor the shout out to Claire as
well,
David Levine (00:50):
absolutely. So I do want to also do a shout out
to Brian luffman. He was a gueston the podcast last year for
Never Say Die, and introducedMax and I back. I know at some
point in between there, andthere will be one or two others
that get shout outs as wellthrough the interview. So with
that, let's start off where weusually do the origin story of
the distillery, and then we'llget into the more nerdy
(01:12):
questions after that. So Max,I'll throw it to you to for the
origin story of white peak.
Unknown (01:18):
Yeah, thanks, David. So I guess, you know, dialing back
probably three decades, so Well,before we had any kind of dream
of starting our own distillery,I've, I've been a lifelong
whiskey fan, and something Iinherited from my father, he was
(01:40):
a member of the Scotch maltwhiskey society, and so yeah, he
was always Yeah, kind ofenticing me to try some of the
latest single cask, often caskstrength whiskies that he got
through that membership.Anyways, I yeah, I developed,
let's just say, a, sort of, youknow, a reasonable interest in
(02:05):
whiskey. I wouldn't say I had a,yeah, an encyclopedic knowledge,
but I I loved whiskey. I reallyenjoyed a lot of the whiskey
distilleries that I used tovisit. And I think, yeah, just
that history of of whiskeymaking anyway. So wind forward
(02:26):
the clock to probably aroundabout 12 years ago, I was aware
of someone starting an urbandistillery in in place called
Battersea, in just one of theLondon suburbs. And I think,
yeah, as I was kind of beingtold the story, it kind of sowed
(02:49):
a seed in my mind that, youknow, that's what, that's what
I'd love to do, you know, oneday I'd love to start my own
whiskey distillery. So, yeah, itkind of it grew from there. So I
wasn't working in drinks orspirits. I've never worked in
whiskey. I'd never made anywhiskey, but I certainly had
this dream of starting a whiskeydistillery in the region of the
(03:14):
UK where I'm from. And yeah, Ikind of did my best to put
together a sort of a businessplan, and made a lot of phone
calls and had people recommendedto me I should speak to, and
slowly but surely, kind ofconvince myself, and also
(03:35):
Claire, that, you know, thiswas, this was something that We
should, you know, seriouslyconsider. And I think, yeah,
probably after four or fiveyears of finessing the plan, you
kind of got to a point where itwas either, yeah, let's, you
know, let's jump in and get wet,or, you know, let's kind of
(03:56):
consign the business plan tohistory. And yeah, so we decided
to give it a go. So that's,that's kind of the, you know,
just the the general backgroundto, yeah, why it is we started a
distillery, yeah? And there's,there's, there's lots more
specifics that I'm happy toshare, David, but that's the
(04:19):
Yeah, that's the simplebackground.
David Levine (04:22):
And I do want to just throw in here, because I
heard this on an interview whereyou mentioned one of the guys
from who was making the batterseat distillery. That was the
London distillery company.
Unknown (04:34):
That's correct. That's correct. And it was a guy, I
think there was, there were twopeople involved, is my
recollection, but the personwhose name kind of stuck in my
mind and who I've subsequentlymet was a guy called Darren
rook, and in fact, he's been upto Derbyshire, where our
distillery is, to visit whitepeak distillery. But yeah, their
(04:58):
endeavors are. And in Londonback in the day was certainly
kind of an inspiration for us.
David Levine (05:06):
Gotcha, I only picked up on that because very
recently, I had on Matt McKay,who's taken over London to sell
their company in their newiteration. So I was like, I know
Battersea. I've heard thatrecently. So
Unknown (05:17):
yeah, no, I know Matt. I knew him in his previous role
at binburn. I actually knew himbefore that. We met at a whiskey
festival. Yeah, I'm going to say2017 something of that nature, I
think, yeah, it was, it wascertainly very early on for us.
We had our new make spirit atthe festival. But that was, that
(05:38):
was all we had, yep.
David Levine (05:41):
So this place you're in Derbyshire, which, if
you're looking at it on paper,is Derbyshire, but pronounced
Derbyshire. You and Claire bothgrew up there. You went to
school there. You met there, andputting aside some years in
London for jobs and what haveyou you it felt like you knew
(06:04):
from the beginning of this idea,as you said, you were going to
come back to this area to makethe distillery and forge forward
with whatever plans. So how,like, how close to where the
distillery ended up. Did youguys grow up and do you know the
area pretty well?
Unknown (06:25):
Yeah, so that's right, we the once we started to get
our kind of detailed planstogether, it was always going to
be a distillery in inDerbyshire, where we're from,
and we grew up around about 10miles away from where the
(06:46):
distillery is. But more thanthat, the one of the reasons
that we are in that specificlocation is I used to was a
younger man do a bit of mountainbiking, and the distillery is
located right on the banks of ariver. And if you go through the
(07:09):
back door, we back onto anancient woodland. It's a
woodland. It's called shiningcliff. And in any case, in the
early 1990s I used to ride mybike in those woods, so I knew
of this kind of EdwardianVictorian era site when we were
(07:31):
thinking about somewhere for ourhome.
David Levine (07:35):
So the river is the river derwit, and it's
you're not that old guy. I couldsee you still getting out on a
mountain bike if you wanted to.But that's that's just me. The
the idea that you're looking atthis building in particular was
interesting is it was a formerwire works factory, which will
(07:57):
come up very shortly, and it hadbeen in disuse from about 96
until you guys salvaged it andstarted using it again in 2017
so around the time that you werebiking around it and seeing it,
I would imagine it would havebeen, you know, close to being
shut down, or recently shutdown. So you probably had an
(08:19):
image in your head of notnecessarily a vacant building in
disuse, but one that was freshlyindustrial, maybe closed, but
still close enough in actionthat it could still look like
something usable.
Unknown (08:35):
Yeah, that's right. I think we got, let's say, three
kind of criteria when we werelooking for our brand home or
the distillery home, one ofwhich was we wanted the
distillery to be on a river. Andthat was kind of almost like a
(08:56):
sense of romance. It's commonlywhere you find the skill
distilleries in Scotland eitherby the sea or by the river or by
some other natural water course,because, of course, back in the
day, they were being establishedin places where there wasn't a
kind of public water connectionthey could link into. But in any
(09:18):
case, so we had a one of therequirements was we wanted the
distillery to be via river. Wealso were looking for a
brownfield site and somethingthat got a bit of backstory, a
bit of history to it, that wouldhopefully make for a nice home
for the distillery. And then,yeah, thirdly, kind of
(09:40):
selfishly, we wanted areasonable commute from home
and, like I say, it was kind ofwithin, within 10 miles. So
yeah, so those were thecriteria. And then, yeah, I knew
of this, these buildings, youknow, because of, yeah, the
cycling I used to do by. Behindthem. And to my knowledge, they
(10:03):
were huge buildings, and most ofthem are, you know, most of them
are sort of 50, 60,000 squarefeet, which was way more space
than we thought we would need.We were, we were a little bit
naive with how much space wemight need for warehousing. But,
you know, we were looking formore like five to 10,000 square
(10:25):
feet. And I through, yeah, someother kind of nice coincidences
I knew of the family that ownedthe site, so that the landlord
and I contacted them and said,hey, you know, this is, this is
(10:45):
something we're looking to do.We're looking to start a whiskey
distillery. You know, we'relooking for space in the area.
Have you got any suitablebuildings? And actually, the
landlord came back to me andsaid, I've got something you
might be, might be suitable. SoI think I went down, met him in
(11:07):
February 2016 and it turns outall these big, 50 to 60,000
square feet units, that was themain makeup of the site, but
there was a couple of unitsright at the kind of the
northern end of the site thattogether were 10,000 square
feet. And yeah, we, Claire and Iwalked in, and yeah, there was
(11:35):
a, let's just say, a fair bit ofindustrial history from 1996 it
was still in the building,because I think the business had
closed relatively quickly, andessentially, I think they almost
left and locked the doors. Soyeah, I guess it was a bit of a
mess being polite, but it justhad this kind of aura or feeling
(11:58):
about it, and we both just feltit would be a great home for the
distillery. So we, yeah, it kindof, it was, how handy in the
sense, it very much shortcuttedour search for for a brand home,
because it was a site that I'dbeen aware of, and it so
happened that they had somespace, which, you know, really
(12:20):
fitted the bill. And it was bangon the river, doing
David Levine (12:25):
the site in particular, in let's call it,
let's call it the site. That'sfine. When you're let's say
you've got the building, you'reable to finance it, initial
investment around, you know, 1.6million pounds, reportedly, the
the building itself, as we said,like it required a bit of of
(12:45):
salvage, and call it whateverthe what was in there that had
to get cleaned out, updatingwhatever was, I think, you know,
you're on the side of a river,so I'm sure there's some water
stuff you gotta fix up, andthat's before you bring In any
of the equipment that you need,right? Plus, this is on a UNESCO
World Heritage site as well. Sohow did you manage all of that
(13:12):
on a what I feel like, I feellike 1.6 million pounds is a
shoestring budget to do all ofthat.
Unknown (13:18):
Yeah. I mean, it was very much a shoestring budget.
And I guess we, we also got in,you know, the, at least, our
plans came together before we'veall experienced some, you know,
crazy, inflationary, you know,cost increases. But, yeah, I
mean, it was, it was very tightfinancially. We couldn't afford
(13:41):
to have a consultant, you know,kind of pull things together for
us. So, you know, it was verymuch, yeah, as on site, you
know, every single day, youknow, managing the build you're
talking with the engineeringfirm that we used to do the
detailed engineering of thedistillery itself. And actually,
(14:05):
I really enjoyed that my back inthe day I studied mechanical
engineering at university. Soalthough, yeah, I got kind of no
real experience of working indistillery or designing a
distillery, a lot of thediscussions, certainly during
that construction phase, werethey were kind of topics I could
(14:26):
at least get my mind around. AndI think generally, we found most
people that we needed to get onboard as stakeholders, so
including the group that managesthe UNESCO site, most people
were just really supportive. Ithink the fact that we were
(14:49):
trying to bring some buildingsback to life, I think people
bought into that process. Andthe former. Occupant, which was
that, you know, the wire works,the company was run by a guy
called Richard Johnson. And youknow, they existed for 120
years, and they were a majorpart of our local community.
(15:12):
They were certainly one of, ifnot the biggest employer. You
know, when you the towns andvillages around there are
relatively small, and so, youknow, there was this sense in
which we were breathing new lifeback into this site that, you
know, at one point, had been a,you know, a fairly core part of
the community. And I thinkbecause of that, and be, I'd
(15:35):
like to think people understoodwe were doing it in a
sympathetic way. Yeah, we, weenjoyed a lot of support. And
the Yeah, the UNESCO team,generally speaking, their sense
was, look, yeah, you've got somesalvage work to do here on the
building and but you're going toput it back into what they would
(15:59):
consider to be a sort of lightindustrial use, which is what it
was designed for in the firstplace in the 1870s so yeah, they
were, they were definitely onboard with things
David Levine (16:12):
like it. So something that I guess is coming
up more and more when Iinterview English distilleries
in particular, is this idea thatmost of these distilleries are
in areas where there just wasn'ta distilling tradition. England
as a whole did not have a lot oftradition distilling. It was
(16:34):
mostly done in Scotland andIreland and on the continent and
imported rather than being onsite in England proper, so
before white peak, whiskey hadnever been made, at least
legally in Derbyshire before,but there was a strong brewing
tradition. And you have around70 breweries operating. You
(16:59):
know, I know there, there weretax reasons and revenue or
reasons for England not havingas much whiskey history as the
other countries I mentioned. Butto your knowledge, was there any
reason that your area inparticular didn't have any legal
distillation, or was that justpart and parcel?
Unknown (17:15):
Yeah, and I don't know of any particular reason. David,
I Yeah. I mean, sometimes thesethings just, you know, develop
through circumstances of theday. And yeah, indeed, yeah,
there's, you know, the kind ofcluster points in the UK for
whiskey distillation wereScotland. And I guess, you know,
the obviously in Ireland aswell. And I suppose both
(17:38):
countries would perhaps layclaim to, you know, that sort of
the, you know, the first move,certainly in the United Kingdom.
But, yeah, I don't know. I don'tknow the reason, but certainly,
as far as we've been able totell, that never been any
whiskey made in Derbyshire. Wehave found a company. And in
(18:00):
fact, you can in some of thekind of thrift shops in the
area, you can sometimes findbottles that have the company's
name on that actually blendedwhiskey in this area. I think
they had some sort of blendingoperation, but, yeah, they
(18:21):
weren't making the spiritthemselves. So yeah, so that
that history didn't exist. Butyou're right. There was a, an
enormous heritage in brewingbeer, and certainly in in the
Derbyshire region to today is a,you know, it's still an
important center for beermaking. And actually, just on
(18:42):
the southern tip of our county,there's a town called Burton on
Trent, which is the kind ofhistorical home of beer making,
certainly in England. So theregion is, let's say, yeah, well
known for that brewing heritage.And
David Levine (19:02):
going back to when you were not only dreaming, but
when you were really starting toturn this dream into a reality.
So you broke ground, quote,unquote, broke ground because it
wasn't flat ground or emptyground at that point, but
December 2016 or so. So you'rethinking about it beforehand a
couple of years. So let's, let'sgo back maybe 2014, or so when
(19:25):
you're really like, Okay, I wantto do this. You've convinced
Claire, this is project you wantto really move forward on. You
know, this is 12 years ago. Nota lot of distilleries in England
were up and running at thatpoint. We had the earliest ones,
the English distillery companythey might have even been, still
been St George at that point.Yeah, they were, yeah, yeah. So,
(19:46):
you know, just a couple of them.Now we've got 22 up and running
with 50 plus, no more than that,up and running. Sorry, you know,
45 are part of the Englishwhiskey guild. Bunch more than
that, in various states ofbuilding. And permitting and all
of that.
Unknown (20:02):
Yeah, I think we're up to 61 I mean, that was the last
count, and it may have changedsince then,
David Levine (20:06):
right? So it's day by day. It seems to be changing,
which is a good thing. So, youknow, you mentioned you had a
couple of these inspirations,but also that you didn't have
the money for for consultant tocome in figure out how we were
going to build it out, and otherthan that. So how did you and as
you said, you didn't. You had toexperience as a whiskey
enthusiast with SM, w, s, and Isaw in one interview, that's how
(20:30):
Claire got into it was bydrinking with you and your
father. Yeah, so, but you know,with no disrespect at all, no
whiskey making experience beforethat. So how did you go about
gaining that knowledge andgetting the guidance you needed
to figure out how to how tobuild this out without the
(20:53):
resources that you needed?
Unknown (20:56):
Yeah, I think so. I guess one of the things that I
kind of, yeah, sort of learnedduring my previous career is,
you know, there's lots of smartpeople in the world, and you
know, you as an individual arenever going to have all the
answers to all of the questions.So I've always had this
(21:17):
perspective that, you know, it'sfine to acknowledge that you're
not the expert in every matter.And essentially, you know, ask
people that perhaps have thatexpertise or the or experience
that you're looking for. Andthat was kind of my approach
when we were getting our planstogether. So there were certain
things that, in terms of whiskeymaking, for example, I'd got
(21:42):
some kind of outline ideasabout, I mean, I'd been to visit
a lot of distilleries, but then,yeah, I, you know, I was kind of
just soaking up information fromas many sources as I could get.
And you know, is often the casein life. You know, you can have,
after a couple of phone calls,you'll get people, you know,
(22:04):
recommending that you should goand speak to, you know, so and
so. And you know, you suddenlyfind that, you know, there's
roads leading to people who havegot information. And you know,
by and large, I found in ourindustry, you know, people are
happy to share. I think it's adifficult industry to start in,
and I think a lot of people thatperhaps have gone through that
(22:27):
process or work in the industryand have seen, you know, the
cyclical nature of it,appreciate that, and I think,
you know, they're often generouswith their kind of help and
guidance as a consequence. Butyeah, so that was, that was kind
of, I guess my kind of approachwas to just try and get as much
(22:51):
information from as many andfrom as many sources as I could.
And then, of course, you've gotto sieve through all of that and
decide what you think is rightfor the business that you want
to build. And then allied withthat, we one of our first hires,
was our main distiller, and thatwas just at the same time when
(23:14):
we were doing the basicengineering and trying to get
some basic costings togetherwith the engineering firm that
we work with. And so it meantthat, you know, the first kind
of paid member of the team wasour distiller, and you know, he
was with the company for, youknow, 12 months, maybe just, you
(23:37):
know, give or take, a few weeksbefore we were distilling
anything. And so it meant thatwe could build that knowledge
into the kind of the process offinalizing the detailed
engineering, and then also inparallel with all of that
thinking in more detail aboutthe style of whiskey that we may
(23:57):
make
David Levine (23:59):
love it. And
Unknown (24:01):
one of the kind of interesting stories is that,
obviously I recognized thatthere was a huge whiskey
industry north of the border inScotland, but I was also
slightly cautious of kind of,let's say, seeking all our
(24:21):
advice from sort of north of theborder. Because in my head, at
least rightly or wrongly, I justthought, there's a danger here
that we build a scotch whiskeydistillery in England, and that
would, in my mind, be a hugemistake, because it's an
opportunity lost to do somethingdifferent. And also, you know,
(24:44):
the the in Scotland, they'revery good at making Scotch
whiskey. So, you know, let's nottake them head on at that game.
So one of the things I did is Istarted to look elsewhere. And
there was an in, you know, thethe American. Craft distilling
scene, not just whiskey, butcertainly in whiskey, had
(25:07):
probably been, you know, goingfor a good decade or so before
we've seen this resurgence inEngland, and it meant there were
new distilleries setting up inthe US and people getting into
making whiskey in a way that weperhaps hadn't experienced at
(25:27):
that time in the UK? So, yeah, Iwas kind of just following a
news flow from this side of thepond, and there was one person
in particular whose name keptappearing, and so I reached out
to him on LinkedIn, and kind ofto this day, I'm not sure why he
(25:49):
accepted my invite, because, youknow, he would have had this
inbound kind of email from someguy that had worked in, you
know, financial roles and aformer engineer, but never
worked in kind of drinks orspirits, but, yeah, and he
turned out to be prettyfundamental to shaping our early
plans. And that guy's name is aguy called chip Tate who started
(26:13):
balconies distillery in Texas.And so, you know, I got a lot of
very supportive advice fromchip. I actually spent a week
with him in Waco, Texas in veryearly 2017 and that really kind
of helped to shape some of ourplans for distillery. And also,
(26:39):
you know, he was, you know,extremely generous guy. And I
think gave me just, you know, akind of, you know, a little
boost in confidence that, youknow, yes, we could do this. And
so JIT was very instrumental inthose early days, in refining
the plans for what subsequentlybecame white peak distillery, I
(27:00):
was surprised to
David Levine (27:02):
hear when I it's come up in other interviews, but
I was surprised to hear aboutthe connection with Chip,
because a lot of I guess I don'thear a lot in English
distilleries about these crossAtlantic connections that much.
But in white peak you've gotmultiples, you've got chip at
the beginning. You've got Brianwith never say die in the last
(27:25):
couple of years. And I likethat. I like more of that cross
national idea transfer, becausechip created something very
different with balconies. Andeven though, and I've said this
publicly, so it's not a it's notgoing to be a headline like, I'm
not generally a fan of theirwhiskey style. I respect a lot
(27:48):
what they did and what they'vecreated, what he created so it,
and also what he's done withstill making and his, yeah, his
life after Balcones in the lastcouple of years. So it's no, I
love, I love the transfer ofinformation there, just for sake
(28:11):
of time. Gonna move on to thenext question, but I so we'll
get into the process in a littlebit. But one of the questions
that I had was, you told, honestto a malt, I think, last year,
that the brand wire works, soit's which are the brand name of
(28:31):
the whiskey. Notably, you wereinspired. Sorry, this is a
circuitous lead into thequestion you were inspired by
the way brodic Did theirbranding, where they have a name
for the whiskey line, a name forthe gin line, and they're
separate, even though it's underthe company umbrella. So wire
(28:52):
works is the whiskey brandnamed, of course, for the wire
works factory that you are inthe I the, oh, my goodness, the
name of the cliffs just wentright out. Shining cliff.
Shining cliff, thank you. Yeah,shining cliff, the name of the
gin for the area. So the brandnames, again, are separate.
(29:17):
They're meant to be like, Okay,this is the our gin brand. This
is our whiskey. You're not goingto get a wire works gin. It's
separate. But you told, honestto a malt, that when you were
filling those first few casks,first 100 or so casks, you
didn't really have a brand namein mind at that point where you
were still working on the brandname. That's correct. So did
(29:38):
you, you know, after those 100casts, did you have to go back
and rebrand those casts they setaside for something else, or,
you know what? I guess I'mcurious about that, but also the
idea of, like, we're distillingsomething. We don't know what
we're going to call it yet, butwe're selling
Unknown (29:54):
something. Yeah, I mean, so that's, you know. That
is the way things happen. David,so we, you know, again, Claire
and I are not from a sales andmarketing background. So, you
know, I guess you know, a verylegitimate approach to starting
any business would be with thatkind of sales and marketing hat
(30:15):
on. And, you know,understanding, you know, from
the get go, exactly how yourproduct and your brand and your
service is going to fit in themarket, and you know how it's
going to be marketed, and howit's going to be branded, and
all of those types of things.Yeah, that's not how we started.
We much more, and this is, youknow, you could say this is kind
(30:38):
of naivety, but much more a caseof, we're going to make the best
whiskey we can. We're going tomake whiskey that kind of speaks
to the place where we're makingit. And, you know, has that kind
of provenance story. And youknow, if we do a good job of
that, then people will buy it,and we'll think about the kind
of branding and sales andmarketing a bit further down the
(31:00):
road. And so, you know, that'swhat we did. And, you know, we,
we've ended up, as you say,with, I guess, different brands.
I mean, principally, you know,we are 95% a single malt whiskey
distillery. So the wire worksbrand is, you know, the
overwhelming majority of thebusiness. But the reason we're
(31:24):
called White peak distillery wasis because the we're in an area
of the UK where there's anational park called the Peak
District. It was the firstnational park to have that that
sort of designation from the UKGovernment. And the northern
half of the Peak District iscalled the high peak, or the
(31:47):
dark peak, and the southern halfis called the white peak. And so
the distillery is kind of on theon the boundary of the southern
half of the Peak District. Andso we, we had a sense that white
peak might just kind of travel abit further than using the name
(32:08):
Derbyshire, which is the name ofthe county we're in, kind of,
rightly or wrongly. And, yeah,when you're starting a company,
you know, you do the usualthings you kind of, in the UK,
you have to, if you're going tohave a limited company, it has
to be registered with CompaniesHouse. And so you go to
companies house, you check whatnames might be available. You
then think, well, we're going toneed a website so what domain
(32:29):
names might be available? And wedid kind of those checks and
balances on various names, butwe ended up with, you know,
white peak distillery, becauseof our location, and, because we
we needed a name for the for thebusiness that we could use, kind
of legally and on a website,etc. But at that time, yeah, we
(32:51):
did not have any idea what thebrand of the whiskey would be.
But then you kind of, you know,you pointed this out, we got a
strong sense that we were goingto release a gin in the early
days, partly to help with cashflow, also to help with our
(33:16):
visitor experiences that westarted well Before we had
whiskey available. And, yeah,we, we'd obviously, through our
lived experiences, you know,we'd seen what brooklady had
done. And you know they, youknow, they, in my mind, quite
cleverly separated the twobrands in the botanist gin from
(33:37):
their various whiskeys to thepoint where, certainly many gin
drinkers in the UK would perhapsbe surprised that the gin was
made by a whiskey distillery,but we thought that was a smart
thing to do, and I'm not saying,you know, that's the only way to
look at it, but we kind of knewthat if the first brand that we
put out was a gin, then theremight be a sense when we
(34:01):
subsequently launched thewhiskey, which was always going
to be our main product, but itjust comes later because of the
maturation period, because ofthe order of those two products
coming out, that people mightthink, ah, these are the these
are the gin people now having ago at Whiskey. And of course,
you know the reverse is true,but it's just the order that the
products get released, and so weliked that kind of concept, and
(34:24):
we we didn't have a discussionwith brooklady, but it was kind
of that was our takeaway fromthe way they had branded their
different spirits, and that'swhy we ended up with shining
Cliff gin. And you know, thatwas launched again before we had
a brand name for the whiskey.
David Levine (34:43):
And it should be said that you do have a
connection. I'll be a tenuous toBrooklyn, where you have a cask
of theirs. I do. I do? Yeah,yeah.
Unknown (34:55):
I had a lovely, I mean, I've been to Isla a few times,
but one of. The trips was withmy two brothers and my dad, and
we, yeah, we visited a bunch ofdistilleries. We had some good
fun on the island, and we hadn'tgone with a view that we might
buy a cask of whiskey, but we wearrived at brooklady. This was,
(35:18):
you know, back in the day, whenit was still sort of, I guess,
independent, part of the markRainier consortium. And yeah,
there was an opportunity to buya cask. And so, yeah, we turned
up, did the distillery visits,and found out you could buy a
cask. And certainly back in theday, the kind of, you know, the
(35:41):
entry point is financially wasjust about attainable for myself
and my younger brother in theend. So, yeah, in 2007 we, yeah,
we bought a cask from Brookladdie. Actually turned it
turned 18 this May, so veryrecently, and we're about to get
(36:01):
some of it bottled. But yeah,and ever since that first kind
of visit, I've been backsubsequently. And yeah,
brooklady has a Yeah, it's got aspace in my heart, not just
because of the cask, but I thinkbecause of partly because of the
kind of Phoenix and the flamestype history that it has, and
also just the Yeah, the historyof at the distillery itself,
(36:24):
when you when you go visit,
David Levine (36:26):
you would not be the first podcast guest, I won't
even say person, podcast guestwho, to put it nicely, fell
victim to Jim mcewens Very, veryconvincing chat about, you know,
you should really buy a cask ofthis now, because you're going
(36:46):
to regret it if you don't do itlater. So I know a number of
people who who did that when,like you, said it was just, it
was kind of bare bones. It wasJim mark. Handful of people
there trying to resurrect thebrand, not what it is today. So
no, I love hearing that, though.So since you started, and before
(37:11):
we get into your connection withThornbridge, almost at
Thornbridge distillery,Thornbridge brewery, have any
other distilleries popped up inyour county?
Unknown (37:22):
Not in our county there's, there is another
distillery kind of the otherside of the this Peak District
National Park that I mentioned.But actually in the kind of the
the wider region we're in, whichin the in England is called the
East Midlands, there's arelative kind of scarcity of
distilleries. When you look atthe map of the 60 odd English
(37:46):
distilleries that now exist, youknow there are some clusters
around the country, but not inthe area that we're
David Levine (37:53):
in, gotcha. Gotcha. So as you mentioned
earlier, Derbyshire is known formany things. It's got a strong
brewing tradition. It's got oneof them being Thornbridge. And I
admit, I'm not a huge beer guy.I enjoy it occasionally,
certainly not enough to know,like the International beer
scene very well, yeah. But Ihave in just reading for this
(38:14):
interview, thorn bridge is quitewell known, it seems, and well
regarded at that. So for justthe sake of time, today, I am
going to include some of themore specific process notes in
show notes that will beavailable when this episode goes
live. So please be sure to checkthe description of the episode
(38:35):
for a link to the show notes, aswell as to go onto the website.
But I do want to talk aboutThornbridge, because that is
where you get your live yeast,right? You know every Tuesday is
fresh yeast day you got it,they're cropping yeast from from
the brewery, because the East isalive after the brewery, they're
not driving it to death, likeyou do at a distillery. So like
(39:00):
you collect the yeast, theybring it over, and you get to
use it in your fermentation. Iwas reading one of the
interviews that, you know, ittook a little convincing at
first to get Thornbridge onboard, because, you know, you
were brand new distillery. Theydon't know at that point how the
project is going to turn out,how the whiskey is going to turn
out. So, you know, there washesitance at first,
(39:22):
understandably, I think, toputting their name to something.
Now, obviously, it seems likeit's a very well known
relationship, and everything isgreat, but from your
perspective, as as a distillerwho's coming to them to say,
hey, we want to use your yeast,what was that initial
conversation like,
Unknown (39:42):
yeah. I mean, you're right, David, I think you know
and you can understand it. Ithink Thornbridge as a business
has been, you know, extremelysuccessful, and they've been
certainly going for at least twodecades. So yeah, when we were
approaching them, probably backin 2017, and. And, you know,
they were well over a decadeinto their business. You know,
(40:04):
they'd already built a goodreputation. So, yeah, there's a
certain amount of jeopardy of,you know, involved with
associating themselves with astartup in a sector that
doesn't, hadn't previouslyexisted in this part of the part
of the the UK, um, having saidall that, I think the the
brewing team there and a guycalled Rob Lovett, who's
(40:28):
director of brewing, in fact, Iwas spent some time with Rob
yesterday. I think he's beenthere since 2010 but I think he
he was, he was curious. I thinkhe was generally supportive in
terms of, you know, well, youknow, this sounds, you know,
like an interesting project. Andif you know, you know, in the
(40:51):
beer world, that's the kind ofthing that I'm sure they'd have
been doing. So I think from theBrewers perspectives, the
brewing team, I think there wasmore of a kind of sense of,
Well, yeah. I mean, this is,this is an interesting project.
What kind of, why wouldn't we? Ithink we, we had a sense,
although never directly, kind ofconfirmed, that perhaps the
marketing department were alittle bit more cautious about,
(41:14):
yeah, like I say, associatingthe Thornbridge brand with a
kind of unknown startup. And socertainly in the early days,
even once we establish thisTuesday routine for, you know,
collecting the spent livebreweries from their brewery, we
(41:34):
were, you know, we were tellingpeople that we were using spent
breweries yeast in ourfermentation and as part of our
whiskey making process, but weweren't sort of name checking
Thornbridge, per se, in thoseearly days. I mean, kind of for
two reasons, one of which isyeah, we Yeah. We certainly
(41:56):
didn't want to end up in asituation where they could
metaphorically pull the rug fromunder our feet, because we were,
you know, kind of, you know,hanging on their coattails too
much. But then also, you know,we had a, you know, our own kind
of sense of place and, and alsoa kind of, this, you know, sense
(42:16):
of, you know, this is somethingthat we're building. And, yeah,
you know, the Thornbridge Eastis a, you know, a key part of,
certainly our history thesedays. But we wanted it to be
about white Peter Stiller andwhat we were doing, so, yeah, we
were talking about the spentBrewer yeast, but it was kind of
in an anonymous way. And then,like, as you say, I think over a
(42:39):
period of time, we got to knowThornbridge well, and I think
they became more comfortablewith us, and that, you know, we
were, yeah, we were fit andproper people. And you know, we
weren't kind of, you know, heretoday and gone tomorrow. And so,
you know, that relationship, Ithink, has has really blossomed.
(43:01):
And, yeah, aside from the yeast,we are sharing casks, and we've
laid down some whiskey with atotally different mash bill. And
in fact, it's going to be fiveyears old in October this year,
and that was a mash bill that Imean very much, you know, was
kind of a decision made with thebrewing team up there. So, yeah.
(43:27):
And in terms of individuals, asa, you know, there's a there's a
human story, I would say, offriendship. And also, yeah, kind
of fellow makers in this countyof Derbyshire, where we live,
David Levine (43:41):
I've gotta know if you are willing to share what
that different mash bill is,
Unknown (43:46):
yeah, I mean, so all I can say is, it's got, you know,
it's got kind of elements thatyou might expect from kind of
craft brewery. So there's goingto be some dark malt in there,
some chocolate malt. There'ssome oats, there's some beach
smoked malt. Yeah. So somethingvery different.
David Levine (44:08):
That sounds I mean, obviously I can't speak
for for what it will taste likeor what it tastes like now, but
interest wise, that soundsfascinating. So yeah,
absolutely. And I'll drinkanything with oats in it. So
Unknown (44:22):
well, I think we hadn't got a real sense of direction in
terms of what it might end uplike. And it's, you know, it's
still maturing away in ourwarehouse, but yeah, but yeah,
just echo your comments. David,it certainly was an interesting
project for us to do, sure.
David Levine (44:39):
So the the profile of the distillery, and by that,
I'm talking specifically aboutthe single malt is, you know,
light and fruity. It's not meantto be a super heavy DRAM at all,
but fairly unique, if not fullyunique, to English whiskey and
English distilleries. There is alight Pete running through it.
You've got about. 10 PPM on thegreen ends up being between four
(45:02):
and six. You know, this is allkind of by by the time it goes
through the still, it's allsensory, as opposed to, like,
scientifically, 10 ppm, but endsup being about four to six in in
bottle or after distillation. Soas of this was back in 2021
you're on an interview withIrish whiskey review. At that
(45:23):
point, you were probably theonly English whiskey, only
English whiskey distillery.There we go, with a lightly
peated single malt as their coreprofile. So all of your single
malt has that light peat inthere as of now, you know, four
years later, as far as you know,is that still the case?
Unknown (45:45):
Yeah, as far as I know, David that that remains the
case. And certainly that lightlypeated house style, I think, has
helped us, amongst otherreasons, you know, find a space
in this market, and it probablyconstitutes, I'm going to say,
at least 80% of all the spiritwe'd laid down. You know, just
(46:10):
as an aside, we do work with alocal farmer, so with some
barley that's grown in ourcounty, and that is floor molted
in a traditional floor moultingsA couple of 100 miles south of
the distillery. Malting iscalled Warminster, and we've
(46:32):
decided for that malt that it'sgoing to be completely unpeated.
So we do have some unpeatedspirit. I think the oldest is
just about turning three, butthe overwhelming majority is
lightly peated. And, yeah,absolutely, it's a it's a point
of difference between ourdistillery and the rest of the
(46:54):
English market. And in fact, Ithink further afield in the UK,
you know, there aren't that manydistilleries with a with a core
spirit that's lightly peated.
David Levine (47:04):
Oh, for sure, it's and I love that you brought up
the local barley. So it's mostlyChevalier barley, if not all
Chevalier. So this is not acommonly used barley for whiskey
making, though it's not reallycommonly used too much period
anymore. It's it's one of theolder varieties, but it is used
(47:27):
sometimes in beer making. Yousaid in one of the interviews
that this particular crop thatyou're getting locally is
produced differently in terms ofmashing and in the wash, besides
being unpeated. So what do youdo differently with this batch
than you do with your overallproduct?
Unknown (47:50):
Yeah, so with the local barley, and I know there's not a
lot of local barley inDerbyshire, it's quite a kind of
Rocky, hilly terrain. So it's,you know, it's more suited to,
yeah, kind of animals, kind ofsheep and cows, rather than, you
(48:12):
know, huge flat sways of landwhere you can grow a crop nice
and efficiently. So yeah, we thelocal Bali we, we, we kind of
knew that as and when we bottleit, which, you know, the time
when we were first getting thelocal crops was going to be a
few years away, but we justdecided that the conversation we
(48:35):
wanted to have was around thefact that it's local barley, so
that, you know, rather than justmaking the statements that it's
local, barley is kind of well.So what you know, what? What
does that mean in terms of whatI'm going to taste? So what we
decided to do at the mashingstage of our process is produce
(49:04):
a cloudy word. Now, normallyspeaking, we're trying to make a
relatively clear word to go intoour fermentation, because that's
going to help us develop some ofthe fruity notes that we want in
our end spirit, but when you infact, we run the rakes
(49:26):
constantly when we're mashingthe local barley, and you end up
with a cloudy word, whichultimately leads to sort of more
of The kind of biscuity barleygrain notes coming through into
the spirit. And so the intentionis that, yeah, when we do
(49:47):
eventually bottle some of thiswhiskey made with the local
barley, you know, that kind offlavor profile is going to be in
evidence, and then we can have agood conversation about, well,
why? Why is that? And that'sand. Then we kind of ties into
the the grain story and thelocal barley story. So yeah. So
we we mash in a different way,and then also our cut points are
(50:10):
different. So we went throughthe kind of the same process
that most distillers will gothrough, where they decide where
they're going to take their kindof four shots and faint cuts,
and we just changed them up forthe for the local barley again,
to try and encourage some ofthose kind of multi year notes
(50:33):
to be evident in the in thefinal spirit. So yeah. So it was
a really interesting process forus to go through as whiskey
makers. And actually, the, youknow, we've obviously been
sampling, and it's, yeah,indeed, it's a, it's a, it's a
totally different kind of flavorand aroma experience from our,
(50:58):
you know, our house style oflight repeated. That
David Levine (51:00):
was gonna be. My next question was, you know, you
said it's turning about three isit? Is it so far living up to
the expectation that you, youknow, the direction that you
thought it was going to go
Unknown (51:11):
in? Yeah. I mean, absolutely, I think we're, we're
really pleased with the way it'sgone. I think it would probably
be wrong to say that in whiskeymaking, you know, you're ever
100% certain what the outcome isgoing to be, you know, you kind
of, you put your best footforward, and you've got a real
kind of sense of direction. Butobviously there's the certain,
(51:32):
you know, magic goes on in thecask that I don't think anyone's
ever kind of 100% scienced todeath. So I think in terms of
our expectations, I would sayit's probably exceeded them. But
then, you know, I'd also say togive our team some credit for
that, that, you know, we madesome conscious decisions around
(51:53):
how we would mash, aroundchanging our cut points, that
they kind of logically madesense in terms of what that
should do to the Spirit. But youknow how that manifests,
manifests itself in the maturedspirit is, of course, you know
that's not easy to predict.
David Levine (52:11):
Jordan. I do want to also point out, just briefly
that putting aside the localbarley, which sounds like it's
going more towards the profileI'm about to talk about, in a
county that has such a strongbrewing tradition, I could
easily see someone coming in andmaking a whiskey and a
distillate that aims to leaninto the malting side of things,
(52:32):
and a multi year, perhapsheavier spirit. And I think it's
it's unexpected and kind of agreat idea to go the opposite
direction of this fruity,floral, not floral, excuse me,
fruity, light style for yourmain whiskey, the one that
you're going to be known formost outside of the area. And
then being able to tie backother portions of this like
(52:55):
you're using a brewer's yeast,you're doing X, Y, Z, but you're
not tying yourself, as you usethe phrase earlier, to the
brewing tradition, you just feelyou're really starting a new
distilling tradition in thecounty. So I loved that idea on
the website. When I write thisup, I'm also going to talk a
little bit about the packagingdesign. I will give a shout out
(53:18):
here to Claire. I know that wasa big project of hers for about
15 to 18 months, designing thebottles for wire works in
particular, and also this ideathat from the beginning, the
customer and visitor experienceis going to be part of this.
Yes, you're in an area of thecountry that I think you said
(53:38):
the number earlier, just in caseyou didn't, I'll throw it here.
You know, you get 13 millionvisitors a year to the Peak
District. Yeah, that's quite abit. When that's 20% of the
population of the UKequivalency, that's, that's a
large population going there,yeah, year to year. I mean, if
you're not in the dead center ofwhere people are going all the
time, you're adjacent, you'revery close. So, and being in the
(54:03):
East Midlands too, you're not,it's going to work in my mind,
but not may, may not work inothers. But like, you're not far
north in Yorkshire, you're,you're relatively close to the
main centers of population. Soyou could do day trips.
Unknown (54:17):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. We, we, we refer to this area as
well. It's also known as theMidlands. I in the middle and
so, yeah, just the wholeconnectivity, you know, it's by
car, by train, you know, even byplane. It works pretty well for
us,
David Levine (54:36):
absolutely. So, you know, one of the questions I
had is, you're, you know, you'renot putting out a massive
volume. So far as of May of thisyear, you had about 2700 barrels
in situ at the distillery.You're distilling about two
barrels a day. Yeah, and I'mcurious in our last few minutes
that we've got to talk about thelocal demand. Stick and
(55:00):
international presence thatyou've gotten. Clearly, you've
been winning a lot of awardsacross the range and across
multiple well regarded awardwhat's the word, like
competitions? There we go. AndI'm curious what the demand and
response locally has been. Andby locally. You can look at, I'm
(55:21):
talking, the 10 mile radius ofwhere you are, and people
visiting the Peak District, alsowhere you are distributed within
England in the UK.
Unknown (55:31):
Yeah. So I think, as you said earlier, David, we,
we'd always got a sense thatthe, yeah, that kind of visitor
experience offering. And indeed,you know, this kind of just
broader whiskey tourism wasgoing to play an important part
for our business. And, you know,I know there are challenges in
the in the US, or, you know, thekind of the cellar door kind of
(55:54):
sale concept, but certainly herein the in England, you know,
that's perfectly legitimate. Andindeed, our cellar door is still
our biggest channel in terms ofsales. So, yeah, I'd say in
terms of local support. Yeah,we've, you know, we've been, we
enjoy, I think, a lot of regularcustomers. And I think there's a
(56:19):
lot of people who are, you know,maybe new to whiskey. And we're
curious about, you know, what onearth is going on here in
Derbyshire? And then also, youknow, whiskey fans, who, I think
there's a lot out there close tous, who are just, you know,
delighted that they've got awhiskey distillery nearby. So I
think, yeah, locally, we'veenjoyed a lot of support. A lot
(56:42):
of that on the back of visitorexperiences. But indeed that's
pulling people to distilleryfrom further and further afield.
We had some people alongyesterday from France. We
regularly see people from theNetherlands, from Germany. And
as you say, there is thisfootfall of 13 million people
coming to the Peak Districtarea. So you know, to some
(57:04):
extent, you know, they haven'tgot, you know, a massive
diversion in their journey, aslong as we can let them know
we're there to come see us. Soyeah, the local market is very
important for us. Furtherafield, you know, we are
stocked, I'd say pretty muchthroughout England. You know, we
(57:26):
have, we some of our whiskey inScotland as well, which, you
know, is no sense in which we'retrying to, you know, take the
Scottish whiskey market head on,but they're just people who are
interested in, well, let's justsay world whiskey. And you know,
we've, we found some interest upthere, but certainly throughout
(57:48):
England. And then, morerecently, in the last couple of
years, we've started to exporton a in a selected way. I think,
you know, my perspective isthat, you know, it's difficult
enough to start a whiskey brandin your kind of, you know, home
country. So that just getsamplified in terms of difficulty
(58:09):
when you're exporting. And,yeah, because we're a small
company with limited resources,you know, we we don't have the
benefit of putting kind of bootson the ground. So it's kind of,
you know, it's kind of, fly in,fly out whenever we can, to
support our importeddistributors. And so we got a
(58:29):
small number of export markets,but including countries like
Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and,hopefully soon, South Korea. So,
you know, I know some of thoseplaces are relatively far apart,
somewhere closer than others,but there's a, there's a bit of
a hub there. And obviously thoseare markets, you know, where,
(58:50):
you know whiskey, you know,there are risky consumers. It's
a, it's a known spirit. So we'renot kind of, you know, trying to
introduce people to a spiritthat they've never heard of at
the same time as introducingthem to a country that they may
never have known of and madewhiskey. So yeah, and we're
enjoying some, you know, somesuccess. I think it, you know,
(59:11):
takes time to build a brand. Sothat's certainly Yeah. I think
our perspective is, you know,whiskey is a long term game. But
yeah, it's, yeah. So far, therisk has been going down well,
and that's, I think that'shelping it travel, wonderful.
David Levine (59:27):
So I do want to leave just a minute or two for
us to debrief after, but I'llthrow you the last question for
now, which is, you're about adecade in. This is your it's not
your first career. As you said,you worked in finance. You were
and you trained in engineering.You worked at a gold mining
operation for Yeah, yeah. So,you know, not your first career,
(59:48):
but seems like you're it feelslike you're content to have this
be your last career, and to takethis as far as it will go. So
what do you feel like you. AndClaire want the legacy of white
peak distillery to be?
Unknown (01:00:05):
Yeah, that's a great question, and I think this kind
of comes full circle back to thediscussion we were having around
the wireworks brand. Thewireworks started in the 1870s
unfortunately closed down in themid 1990s but for certainly 120
years, they enjoyed, you know,enormous success for most of
(01:00:28):
that time, through beinginnovative in the kind of
engineering sense, in the senseof making great products made to
last. And I think you we feelthat kind of sense of, you know,
legacy, that in the decisionswe're making, kind of day in day
(01:00:49):
out, about running this businessand laying down whiskey, that we
kind of really hope that in, youknow, another 100 years time
when we're no Longer around tohave the conversation, but that,
you know, people will be talkingfondly about wire works whiskey,
in the same way that we are kindof celebrating the wire works
(01:01:14):
that occupied this site betweenus. So yeah, pretty much all the
decisions we take, we alwayshave this kind of view that, you
know, how is this going to beseen in the long term? How are
these decisions that we maketoday going to kind of stand up
to the Yeah, the test of time?So I think yeah, in terms of
(01:01:34):
what we are hoping for, for thebusiness in the long term. And
our risk in the long term isthat, yeah, it's going to be,
you know, around and enjoyed andyou know, some of this kind of
the stories that we're layingdown on podcasts like this David
may get repeated on, you know,whatever the device of the day
(01:01:57):
is by the time we get there. Butyeah, that's our long term
perspective and our long termhope for the business.
David Levine (01:02:04):
Well, Max, thank you so much for coming on talk
about white peak distillery.Hang on with me for just a
moment after we finishedrecording, this been another
episode of The whiskeringpodcast. Please follow, like and
subscribe wherever you can takea look at the show notes. When
this episode goes live, you willsee more information that we
didn't get to talk about todayon air, and this is a distiller
you're going to want to keep aneye on. And I know, for the
(01:02:27):
nerds out there who listen,because I'm one of you, there's
going to be information on therethat you want to see about how
they make the whiskey and whatgoes into it. So thank you all
for listening, and I'll see youall next week. You.
Hey folks, welcome to a new episode of the whiskey
(00:02):
ring Podcast. Today. We're goingback over to England, where
they've been having a bunch ofdistilleries that I've had on
recently, and I just loveexploring them. It's a whole new
scene with remarkably, let'ssay, a remarkably independent
profile from what you mightexpect from their very close
neighbors, and one that I'mthrilled to feature. So today we
(00:25):
are talking about white peakdistillery, and to talk about
it, we've have one of the cofounders, Max Vaughn, and I say
co founder, because it would bea shame not to mention that his
wife, Claire is also a cofounder, something he's
corrected in multiple interviewsbefore. So Max, welcome on.
Max Vaughn (00:42):
Yeah, hi David, yeah, great to great to be on
and yeah, thanks for the thanksfor the shout out to Claire as
well,
David Levine (00:50):
absolutely. So I do want to also do a shout out
to Brian luffman. He was a gueston the podcast last year for
Never Say Die, and introducedMax and I back. I know at some
point in between there, andthere will be one or two others
that get shout outs as wellthrough the interview. So with
that, let's start off where weusually do the origin story of
the distillery, and then we'llget into the more nerdy
(01:12):
questions after that. So Max,I'll throw it to you to for the
origin story of white peak.
Unknown (01:18):
Yeah, thanks, David. So I guess, you know, dialing back
probably three decades, so Well,before we had any kind of dream
of starting our own distillery,I've, I've been a lifelong
whiskey fan, and something Iinherited from my father, he was
(01:40):
a member of the Scotch maltwhiskey society, and so yeah, he
was always Yeah, kind ofenticing me to try some of the
latest single cask, often caskstrength whiskies that he got
through that membership.Anyways, I yeah, I developed,
let's just say, a, sort of, youknow, a reasonable interest in
(02:05):
whiskey. I wouldn't say I had a,yeah, an encyclopedic knowledge,
but I I loved whiskey. I reallyenjoyed a lot of the whiskey
distilleries that I used tovisit. And I think, yeah, just
that history of of whiskeymaking anyway. So wind forward
(02:26):
the clock to probably aroundabout 12 years ago, I was aware
of someone starting an urbandistillery in in place called
Battersea, in just one of theLondon suburbs. And I think,
yeah, as I was kind of beingtold the story, it kind of sowed
(02:49):
a seed in my mind that, youknow, that's what, that's what
I'd love to do, you know, oneday I'd love to start my own
whiskey distillery. So, yeah, itkind of it grew from there. So I
wasn't working in drinks orspirits. I've never worked in
whiskey. I'd never made anywhiskey, but I certainly had
this dream of starting a whiskeydistillery in the region of the
(03:14):
UK where I'm from. And yeah, Ikind of did my best to put
together a sort of a businessplan, and made a lot of phone
calls and had people recommendedto me I should speak to, and
slowly but surely, kind ofconvince myself, and also
(03:35):
Claire, that, you know, thiswas, this was something that We
should, you know, seriouslyconsider. And I think, yeah,
probably after four or fiveyears of finessing the plan, you
kind of got to a point where itwas either, yeah, let's, you
know, let's jump in and get wet,or, you know, let's kind of
(03:56):
consign the business plan tohistory. And yeah, so we decided
to give it a go. So that's,that's kind of the, you know,
just the the general backgroundto, yeah, why it is we started a
distillery, yeah? And there's,there's, there's lots more
specifics that I'm happy toshare, David, but that's the
(04:19):
Yeah, that's the simplebackground.
David Levine (04:22):
And I do want to just throw in here, because I
heard this on an interview whereyou mentioned one of the guys
from who was making the batterseat distillery. That was the
London distillery company.
Unknown (04:34):
That's correct. That's correct. And it was a guy, I
think there was, there were twopeople involved, is my
recollection, but the personwhose name kind of stuck in my
mind and who I've subsequentlymet was a guy called Darren
rook, and in fact, he's been upto Derbyshire, where our
distillery is, to visit whitepeak distillery. But yeah, their
(04:58):
endeavors are. And in Londonback in the day was certainly
kind of an inspiration for us.
David Levine (05:06):
Gotcha, I only picked up on that because very
recently, I had on Matt McKay,who's taken over London to sell
their company in their newiteration. So I was like, I know
Battersea. I've heard thatrecently. So
Unknown (05:17):
yeah, no, I know Matt. I knew him in his previous role
at binburn. I actually knew himbefore that. We met at a whiskey
festival. Yeah, I'm going to say2017 something of that nature, I
think, yeah, it was, it wascertainly very early on for us.
We had our new make spirit atthe festival. But that was, that
(05:38):
was all we had, yep.
David Levine (05:41):
So this place you're in Derbyshire, which, if
you're looking at it on paper,is Derbyshire, but pronounced
Derbyshire. You and Claire bothgrew up there. You went to
school there. You met there, andputting aside some years in
London for jobs and what haveyou you it felt like you knew
(06:04):
from the beginning of this idea,as you said, you were going to
come back to this area to makethe distillery and forge forward
with whatever plans. So how,like, how close to where the
distillery ended up. Did youguys grow up and do you know the
area pretty well?
Unknown (06:25):
Yeah, so that's right, we the once we started to get
our kind of detailed planstogether, it was always going to
be a distillery in inDerbyshire, where we're from,
and we grew up around about 10miles away from where the
(06:46):
distillery is. But more thanthat, the one of the reasons
that we are in that specificlocation is I used to was a
younger man do a bit of mountainbiking, and the distillery is
located right on the banks of ariver. And if you go through the
(07:09):
back door, we back onto anancient woodland. It's a
woodland. It's called shiningcliff. And in any case, in the
early 1990s I used to ride mybike in those woods, so I knew
of this kind of EdwardianVictorian era site when we were
(07:31):
thinking about somewhere for ourhome.
David Levine (07:35):
So the river is the river derwit, and it's
you're not that old guy. I couldsee you still getting out on a
mountain bike if you wanted to.But that's that's just me. The
the idea that you're looking atthis building in particular was
interesting is it was a formerwire works factory, which will
(07:57):
come up very shortly, and it hadbeen in disuse from about 96
until you guys salvaged it andstarted using it again in 2017
so around the time that you werebiking around it and seeing it,
I would imagine it would havebeen, you know, close to being
shut down, or recently shutdown. So you probably had an
(08:19):
image in your head of notnecessarily a vacant building in
disuse, but one that was freshlyindustrial, maybe closed, but
still close enough in actionthat it could still look like
something usable.
Unknown (08:35):
Yeah, that's right. I think we got, let's say, three
kind of criteria when we werelooking for our brand home or
the distillery home, one ofwhich was we wanted the
distillery to be on a river. Andthat was kind of almost like a
(08:56):
sense of romance. It's commonlywhere you find the skill
distilleries in Scotland eitherby the sea or by the river or by
some other natural water course,because, of course, back in the
day, they were being establishedin places where there wasn't a
kind of public water connectionthey could link into. But in any
(09:18):
case, so we had a one of therequirements was we wanted the
distillery to be via river. Wealso were looking for a
brownfield site and somethingthat got a bit of backstory, a
bit of history to it, that wouldhopefully make for a nice home
for the distillery. And then,yeah, thirdly, kind of
(09:40):
selfishly, we wanted areasonable commute from home
and, like I say, it was kind ofwithin, within 10 miles. So
yeah, so those were thecriteria. And then, yeah, I knew
of this, these buildings, youknow, because of, yeah, the
cycling I used to do by. Behindthem. And to my knowledge, they
(10:03):
were huge buildings, and most ofthem are, you know, most of them
are sort of 50, 60,000 squarefeet, which was way more space
than we thought we would need.We were, we were a little bit
naive with how much space wemight need for warehousing. But,
you know, we were looking formore like five to 10,000 square
(10:25):
feet. And I through, yeah, someother kind of nice coincidences
I knew of the family that ownedthe site, so that the landlord
and I contacted them and said,hey, you know, this is, this is
(10:45):
something we're looking to do.We're looking to start a whiskey
distillery. You know, we'relooking for space in the area.
Have you got any suitablebuildings? And actually, the
landlord came back to me andsaid, I've got something you
might be, might be suitable. SoI think I went down, met him in
(11:07):
February 2016 and it turns outall these big, 50 to 60,000
square feet units, that was themain makeup of the site, but
there was a couple of unitsright at the kind of the
northern end of the site thattogether were 10,000 square
feet. And yeah, we, Claire and Iwalked in, and yeah, there was
(11:35):
a, let's just say, a fair bit ofindustrial history from 1996 it
was still in the building,because I think the business had
closed relatively quickly, andessentially, I think they almost
left and locked the doors. Soyeah, I guess it was a bit of a
mess being polite, but it justhad this kind of aura or feeling
(11:58):
about it, and we both just feltit would be a great home for the
distillery. So we, yeah, it kindof, it was, how handy in the
sense, it very much shortcuttedour search for for a brand home,
because it was a site that I'dbeen aware of, and it so
happened that they had somespace, which, you know, really
(12:20):
fitted the bill. And it was bangon the river, doing
David Levine (12:25):
the site in particular, in let's call it,
let's call it the site. That'sfine. When you're let's say
you've got the building, you'reable to finance it, initial
investment around, you know, 1.6million pounds, reportedly, the
the building itself, as we said,like it required a bit of of
(12:45):
salvage, and call it whateverthe what was in there that had
to get cleaned out, updatingwhatever was, I think, you know,
you're on the side of a river,so I'm sure there's some water
stuff you gotta fix up, andthat's before you bring In any
of the equipment that you need,right? Plus, this is on a UNESCO
World Heritage site as well. Sohow did you manage all of that
(13:12):
on a what I feel like, I feellike 1.6 million pounds is a
shoestring budget to do all ofthat.
Unknown (13:18):
Yeah. I mean, it was very much a shoestring budget.
And I guess we, we also got in,you know, the, at least, our
plans came together before we'veall experienced some, you know,
crazy, inflationary, you know,cost increases. But, yeah, I
mean, it was, it was very tightfinancially. We couldn't afford
(13:41):
to have a consultant, you know,kind of pull things together for
us. So, you know, it was verymuch, yeah, as on site, you
know, every single day, youknow, managing the build you're
talking with the engineeringfirm that we used to do the
detailed engineering of thedistillery itself. And actually,
(14:05):
I really enjoyed that my back inthe day I studied mechanical
engineering at university. Soalthough, yeah, I got kind of no
real experience of working indistillery or designing a
distillery, a lot of thediscussions, certainly during
that construction phase, werethey were kind of topics I could
(14:26):
at least get my mind around. AndI think generally, we found most
people that we needed to get onboard as stakeholders, so
including the group that managesthe UNESCO site, most people
were just really supportive. Ithink the fact that we were
(14:49):
trying to bring some buildingsback to life, I think people
bought into that process. Andthe former. Occupant, which was
that, you know, the wire works,the company was run by a guy
called Richard Johnson. And youknow, they existed for 120
years, and they were a majorpart of our local community.
(15:12):
They were certainly one of, ifnot the biggest employer. You
know, when you the towns andvillages around there are
relatively small, and so, youknow, there was this sense in
which we were breathing new lifeback into this site that, you
know, at one point, had been a,you know, a fairly core part of
the community. And I thinkbecause of that, and be, I'd
(15:35):
like to think people understoodwe were doing it in a
sympathetic way. Yeah, we, weenjoyed a lot of support. And
the Yeah, the UNESCO team,generally speaking, their sense
was, look, yeah, you've got somesalvage work to do here on the
building and but you're going toput it back into what they would
(15:59):
consider to be a sort of lightindustrial use, which is what it
was designed for in the firstplace in the 1870s so yeah, they
were, they were definitely onboard with things
David Levine (16:12):
like it. So something that I guess is coming
up more and more when Iinterview English distilleries
in particular, is this idea thatmost of these distilleries are
in areas where there just wasn'ta distilling tradition. England
as a whole did not have a lot oftradition distilling. It was
(16:34):
mostly done in Scotland andIreland and on the continent and
imported rather than being onsite in England proper, so
before white peak, whiskey hadnever been made, at least
legally in Derbyshire before,but there was a strong brewing
tradition. And you have around70 breweries operating. You
(16:59):
know, I know there, there weretax reasons and revenue or
reasons for England not havingas much whiskey history as the
other countries I mentioned. Butto your knowledge, was there any
reason that your area inparticular didn't have any legal
distillation, or was that justpart and parcel?
Unknown (17:15):
Yeah, and I don't know of any particular reason. David,
I Yeah. I mean, sometimes thesethings just, you know, develop
through circumstances of theday. And yeah, indeed, yeah,
there's, you know, the kind ofcluster points in the UK for
whiskey distillation wereScotland. And I guess, you know,
the obviously in Ireland aswell. And I suppose both
(17:38):
countries would perhaps layclaim to, you know, that sort of
the, you know, the first move,certainly in the United Kingdom.
But, yeah, I don't know. I don'tknow the reason, but certainly,
as far as we've been able totell, that never been any
whiskey made in Derbyshire. Wehave found a company. And in
(18:00):
fact, you can in some of thekind of thrift shops in the
area, you can sometimes findbottles that have the company's
name on that actually blendedwhiskey in this area. I think
they had some sort of blendingoperation, but, yeah, they
(18:21):
weren't making the spiritthemselves. So yeah, so that
that history didn't exist. Butyou're right. There was a, an
enormous heritage in brewingbeer, and certainly in in the
Derbyshire region to today is a,you know, it's still an
important center for beermaking. And actually, just on
(18:42):
the southern tip of our county,there's a town called Burton on
Trent, which is the kind ofhistorical home of beer making,
certainly in England. So theregion is, let's say, yeah, well
known for that brewing heritage.And
David Levine (19:02):
going back to when you were not only dreaming, but
when you were really starting toturn this dream into a reality.
So you broke ground, quote,unquote, broke ground because it
wasn't flat ground or emptyground at that point, but
December 2016 or so. So you'rethinking about it beforehand a
couple of years. So let's, let'sgo back maybe 2014, or so when
(19:25):
you're really like, Okay, I wantto do this. You've convinced
Claire, this is project you wantto really move forward on. You
know, this is 12 years ago. Nota lot of distilleries in England
were up and running at thatpoint. We had the earliest ones,
the English distillery companythey might have even been, still
been St George at that point.Yeah, they were, yeah, yeah. So,
(19:46):
you know, just a couple of them.Now we've got 22 up and running
with 50 plus, no more than that,up and running. Sorry, you know,
45 are part of the Englishwhiskey guild. Bunch more than
that, in various states ofbuilding. And permitting and all
of that.
Unknown (20:02):
Yeah, I think we're up to 61 I mean, that was the last
count, and it may have changedsince then,
David Levine (20:06):
right? So it's day by day. It seems to be changing,
which is a good thing. So, youknow, you mentioned you had a
couple of these inspirations,but also that you didn't have
the money for for consultant tocome in figure out how we were
going to build it out, and otherthan that. So how did you and as
you said, you didn't. You had toexperience as a whiskey
enthusiast with SM, w, s, and Isaw in one interview, that's how
(20:30):
Claire got into it was bydrinking with you and your
father. Yeah, so, but you know,with no disrespect at all, no
whiskey making experience beforethat. So how did you go about
gaining that knowledge andgetting the guidance you needed
to figure out how to how tobuild this out without the
(20:53):
resources that you needed?
Unknown (20:56):
Yeah, I think so. I guess one of the things that I
kind of, yeah, sort of learnedduring my previous career is,
you know, there's lots of smartpeople in the world, and you
know, you as an individual arenever going to have all the
answers to all of the questions.So I've always had this
(21:17):
perspective that, you know, it'sfine to acknowledge that you're
not the expert in every matter.And essentially, you know, ask
people that perhaps have thatexpertise or the or experience
that you're looking for. Andthat was kind of my approach
when we were getting our planstogether. So there were certain
things that, in terms of whiskeymaking, for example, I'd got
(21:42):
some kind of outline ideasabout, I mean, I'd been to visit
a lot of distilleries, but then,yeah, I, you know, I was kind of
just soaking up information fromas many sources as I could get.
And you know, is often the casein life. You know, you can have,
after a couple of phone calls,you'll get people, you know,
(22:04):
recommending that you should goand speak to, you know, so and
so. And you know, you suddenlyfind that, you know, there's
roads leading to people who havegot information. And you know,
by and large, I found in ourindustry, you know, people are
happy to share. I think it's adifficult industry to start in,
and I think a lot of people thatperhaps have gone through that
(22:27):
process or work in the industryand have seen, you know, the
cyclical nature of it,appreciate that, and I think,
you know, they're often generouswith their kind of help and
guidance as a consequence. Butyeah, so that was, that was kind
of, I guess my kind of approachwas to just try and get as much
(22:51):
information from as many andfrom as many sources as I could.
And then, of course, you've gotto sieve through all of that and
decide what you think is rightfor the business that you want
to build. And then allied withthat, we one of our first hires,
was our main distiller, and thatwas just at the same time when
(23:14):
we were doing the basicengineering and trying to get
some basic costings togetherwith the engineering firm that
we work with. And so it meantthat, you know, the first kind
of paid member of the team wasour distiller, and you know, he
was with the company for, youknow, 12 months, maybe just, you
(23:37):
know, give or take, a few weeksbefore we were distilling
anything. And so it meant thatwe could build that knowledge
into the kind of the process offinalizing the detailed
engineering, and then also inparallel with all of that
thinking in more detail aboutthe style of whiskey that we may
(23:57):
make
David Levine (23:59):
love it. And
Unknown (24:01):
one of the kind of interesting stories is that,
obviously I recognized thatthere was a huge whiskey
industry north of the border inScotland, but I was also
slightly cautious of kind of,let's say, seeking all our
(24:21):
advice from sort of north of theborder. Because in my head, at
least rightly or wrongly, I justthought, there's a danger here
that we build a scotch whiskeydistillery in England, and that
would, in my mind, be a hugemistake, because it's an
opportunity lost to do somethingdifferent. And also, you know,
(24:44):
the the in Scotland, they'revery good at making Scotch
whiskey. So, you know, let's nottake them head on at that game.
So one of the things I did is Istarted to look elsewhere. And
there was an in, you know, thethe American. Craft distilling
scene, not just whiskey, butcertainly in whiskey, had
(25:07):
probably been, you know, goingfor a good decade or so before
we've seen this resurgence inEngland, and it meant there were
new distilleries setting up inthe US and people getting into
making whiskey in a way that weperhaps hadn't experienced at
(25:27):
that time in the UK? So, yeah, Iwas kind of just following a
news flow from this side of thepond, and there was one person
in particular whose name keptappearing, and so I reached out
to him on LinkedIn, and kind ofto this day, I'm not sure why he
(25:49):
accepted my invite, because, youknow, he would have had this
inbound kind of email from someguy that had worked in, you
know, financial roles and aformer engineer, but never
worked in kind of drinks orspirits, but, yeah, and he
turned out to be prettyfundamental to shaping our early
plans. And that guy's name is aguy called chip Tate who started
(26:13):
balconies distillery in Texas.And so, you know, I got a lot of
very supportive advice fromchip. I actually spent a week
with him in Waco, Texas in veryearly 2017 and that really kind
of helped to shape some of ourplans for distillery. And also,
(26:39):
you know, he was, you know,extremely generous guy. And I
think gave me just, you know, akind of, you know, a little
boost in confidence that, youknow, yes, we could do this. And
so JIT was very instrumental inthose early days, in refining
the plans for what subsequentlybecame white peak distillery, I
(27:00):
was surprised to
David Levine (27:02):
hear when I it's come up in other interviews, but
I was surprised to hear aboutthe connection with Chip,
because a lot of I guess I don'thear a lot in English
distilleries about these crossAtlantic connections that much.
But in white peak you've gotmultiples, you've got chip at
the beginning. You've got Brianwith never say die in the last
(27:25):
couple of years. And I likethat. I like more of that cross
national idea transfer, becausechip created something very
different with balconies. Andeven though, and I've said this
publicly, so it's not a it's notgoing to be a headline like, I'm
not generally a fan of theirwhiskey style. I respect a lot
(27:48):
what they did and what they'vecreated, what he created so it,
and also what he's done withstill making and his, yeah, his
life after Balcones in the lastcouple of years. So it's no, I
love, I love the transfer ofinformation there, just for sake
(28:11):
of time. Gonna move on to thenext question, but I so we'll
get into the process in a littlebit. But one of the questions
that I had was, you told, honestto a malt, I think, last year,
that the brand wire works, soit's which are the brand name of
(28:31):
the whiskey. Notably, you wereinspired. Sorry, this is a
circuitous lead into thequestion you were inspired by
the way brodic Did theirbranding, where they have a name
for the whiskey line, a name forthe gin line, and they're
separate, even though it's underthe company umbrella. So wire
(28:52):
works is the whiskey brandnamed, of course, for the wire
works factory that you are inthe I the, oh, my goodness, the
name of the cliffs just wentright out. Shining cliff.
Shining cliff, thank you. Yeah,shining cliff, the name of the
gin for the area. So the brandnames, again, are separate.
(29:17):
They're meant to be like, Okay,this is the our gin brand. This
is our whiskey. You're not goingto get a wire works gin. It's
separate. But you told, honestto a malt, that when you were
filling those first few casks,first 100 or so casks, you
didn't really have a brand namein mind at that point where you
were still working on the brandname. That's correct. So did
(29:38):
you, you know, after those 100casts, did you have to go back
and rebrand those casts they setaside for something else, or,
you know what? I guess I'mcurious about that, but also the
idea of, like, we're distillingsomething. We don't know what
we're going to call it yet, butwe're selling
Unknown (29:54):
something. Yeah, I mean, so that's, you know. That
is the way things happen. David,so we, you know, again, Claire
and I are not from a sales andmarketing background. So, you
know, I guess you know, a verylegitimate approach to starting
any business would be with thatkind of sales and marketing hat
(30:15):
on. And, you know,understanding, you know, from
the get go, exactly how yourproduct and your brand and your
service is going to fit in themarket, and you know how it's
going to be marketed, and howit's going to be branded, and
all of those types of things.Yeah, that's not how we started.
We much more, and this is, youknow, you could say this is kind
(30:38):
of naivety, but much more a caseof, we're going to make the best
whiskey we can. We're going tomake whiskey that kind of speaks
to the place where we're makingit. And, you know, has that kind
of provenance story. And youknow, if we do a good job of
that, then people will buy it,and we'll think about the kind
of branding and sales andmarketing a bit further down the
(31:00):
road. And so, you know, that'swhat we did. And, you know, we,
we've ended up, as you say,with, I guess, different brands.
I mean, principally, you know,we are 95% a single malt whiskey
distillery. So the wire worksbrand is, you know, the
overwhelming majority of thebusiness. But the reason we're
(31:24):
called White peak distillery wasis because the we're in an area
of the UK where there's anational park called the Peak
District. It was the firstnational park to have that that
sort of designation from the UKGovernment. And the northern
half of the Peak District iscalled the high peak, or the
(31:47):
dark peak, and the southern halfis called the white peak. And so
the distillery is kind of on theon the boundary of the southern
half of the Peak District. Andso we, we had a sense that white
peak might just kind of travel abit further than using the name
(32:08):
Derbyshire, which is the name ofthe county we're in, kind of,
rightly or wrongly. And, yeah,when you're starting a company,
you know, you do the usualthings you kind of, in the UK,
you have to, if you're going tohave a limited company, it has
to be registered with CompaniesHouse. And so you go to
companies house, you check whatnames might be available. You
then think, well, we're going toneed a website so what domain
(32:29):
names might be available? And wedid kind of those checks and
balances on various names, butwe ended up with, you know,
white peak distillery, becauseof our location, and, because we
we needed a name for the for thebusiness that we could use, kind
of legally and on a website,etc. But at that time, yeah, we
(32:51):
did not have any idea what thebrand of the whiskey would be.
But then you kind of, you know,you pointed this out, we got a
strong sense that we were goingto release a gin in the early
days, partly to help with cashflow, also to help with our
(33:16):
visitor experiences that westarted well Before we had
whiskey available. And, yeah,we, we'd obviously, through our
lived experiences, you know,we'd seen what brooklady had
done. And you know they, youknow, they, in my mind, quite
cleverly separated the twobrands in the botanist gin from
(33:37):
their various whiskeys to thepoint where, certainly many gin
drinkers in the UK would perhapsbe surprised that the gin was
made by a whiskey distillery,but we thought that was a smart
thing to do, and I'm not saying,you know, that's the only way to
look at it, but we kind of knewthat if the first brand that we
put out was a gin, then theremight be a sense when we
(34:01):
subsequently launched thewhiskey, which was always going
to be our main product, but itjust comes later because of the
maturation period, because ofthe order of those two products
coming out, that people mightthink, ah, these are the these
are the gin people now having ago at Whiskey. And of course,
you know the reverse is true,but it's just the order that the
products get released, and so weliked that kind of concept, and
(34:24):
we we didn't have a discussionwith brooklady, but it was kind
of that was our takeaway fromthe way they had branded their
different spirits, and that'swhy we ended up with shining
Cliff gin. And you know, thatwas launched again before we had
a brand name for the whiskey.
David Levine (34:43):
And it should be said that you do have a
connection. I'll be a tenuous toBrooklyn, where you have a cask
of theirs. I do. I do? Yeah,yeah.
Unknown (34:55):
I had a lovely, I mean, I've been to Isla a few times,
but one of. The trips was withmy two brothers and my dad, and
we, yeah, we visited a bunch ofdistilleries. We had some good
fun on the island, and we hadn'tgone with a view that we might
buy a cask of whiskey, but we wearrived at brooklady. This was,
(35:18):
you know, back in the day, whenit was still sort of, I guess,
independent, part of the markRainier consortium. And yeah,
there was an opportunity to buya cask. And so, yeah, we turned
up, did the distillery visits,and found out you could buy a
cask. And certainly back in theday, the kind of, you know, the
(35:41):
entry point is financially wasjust about attainable for myself
and my younger brother in theend. So, yeah, in 2007 we, yeah,
we bought a cask from Brookladdie. Actually turned it
turned 18 this May, so veryrecently, and we're about to get
(36:01):
some of it bottled. But yeah,and ever since that first kind
of visit, I've been backsubsequently. And yeah,
brooklady has a Yeah, it's got aspace in my heart, not just
because of the cask, but I thinkbecause of partly because of the
kind of Phoenix and the flamestype history that it has, and
also just the Yeah, the historyof at the distillery itself,
(36:24):
when you when you go visit,
David Levine (36:26):
you would not be the first podcast guest, I won't
even say person, podcast guestwho, to put it nicely, fell
victim to Jim mcewens Very, veryconvincing chat about, you know,
you should really buy a cask ofthis now, because you're going
(36:46):
to regret it if you don't do itlater. So I know a number of
people who who did that when,like you, said it was just, it
was kind of bare bones. It wasJim mark. Handful of people
there trying to resurrect thebrand, not what it is today. So
no, I love hearing that, though.So since you started, and before
(37:11):
we get into your connection withThornbridge, almost at
Thornbridge distillery,Thornbridge brewery, have any
other distilleries popped up inyour county?
Unknown (37:22):
Not in our county there's, there is another
distillery kind of the otherside of the this Peak District
National Park that I mentioned.But actually in the kind of the
the wider region we're in, whichin the in England is called the
East Midlands, there's arelative kind of scarcity of
distilleries. When you look atthe map of the 60 odd English
(37:46):
distilleries that now exist, youknow there are some clusters
around the country, but not inthe area that we're
David Levine (37:53):
in, gotcha. Gotcha. So as you mentioned
earlier, Derbyshire is known formany things. It's got a strong
brewing tradition. It's got oneof them being Thornbridge. And I
admit, I'm not a huge beer guy.I enjoy it occasionally,
certainly not enough to know,like the International beer
scene very well, yeah. But Ihave in just reading for this
(38:14):
interview, thorn bridge is quitewell known, it seems, and well
regarded at that. So for justthe sake of time, today, I am
going to include some of themore specific process notes in
show notes that will beavailable when this episode goes
live. So please be sure to checkthe description of the episode
(38:35):
for a link to the show notes, aswell as to go onto the website.
But I do want to talk aboutThornbridge, because that is
where you get your live yeast,right? You know every Tuesday is
fresh yeast day you got it,they're cropping yeast from from
the brewery, because the East isalive after the brewery, they're
not driving it to death, likeyou do at a distillery. So like
(39:00):
you collect the yeast, theybring it over, and you get to
use it in your fermentation. Iwas reading one of the
interviews that, you know, ittook a little convincing at
first to get Thornbridge onboard, because, you know, you
were brand new distillery. Theydon't know at that point how the
project is going to turn out,how the whiskey is going to turn
out. So, you know, there washesitance at first,
(39:22):
understandably, I think, toputting their name to something.
Now, obviously, it seems likeit's a very well known
relationship, and everything isgreat, but from your
perspective, as as a distillerwho's coming to them to say,
hey, we want to use your yeast,what was that initial
conversation like,
Unknown (39:42):
yeah. I mean, you're right, David, I think you know
and you can understand it. Ithink Thornbridge as a business
has been, you know, extremelysuccessful, and they've been
certainly going for at least twodecades. So yeah, when we were
approaching them, probably backin 2017, and. And, you know,
they were well over a decadeinto their business. You know,
(40:04):
they'd already built a goodreputation. So, yeah, there's a
certain amount of jeopardy of,you know, involved with
associating themselves with astartup in a sector that
doesn't, hadn't previouslyexisted in this part of the part
of the the UK, um, having saidall that, I think the the
brewing team there and a guycalled Rob Lovett, who's
(40:28):
director of brewing, in fact, Iwas spent some time with Rob
yesterday. I think he's beenthere since 2010 but I think he
he was, he was curious. I thinkhe was generally supportive in
terms of, you know, well, youknow, this sounds, you know,
like an interesting project. Andif you know, you know, in the
(40:51):
beer world, that's the kind ofthing that I'm sure they'd have
been doing. So I think from theBrewers perspectives, the
brewing team, I think there wasmore of a kind of sense of,
Well, yeah. I mean, this is,this is an interesting project.
What kind of, why wouldn't we? Ithink we, we had a sense,
although never directly, kind ofconfirmed, that perhaps the
marketing department were alittle bit more cautious about,
(41:14):
yeah, like I say, associatingthe Thornbridge brand with a
kind of unknown startup. And socertainly in the early days,
even once we establish thisTuesday routine for, you know,
collecting the spent livebreweries from their brewery, we
(41:34):
were, you know, we were tellingpeople that we were using spent
breweries yeast in ourfermentation and as part of our
whiskey making process, but weweren't sort of name checking
Thornbridge, per se, in thoseearly days. I mean, kind of for
two reasons, one of which isyeah, we Yeah. We certainly
(41:56):
didn't want to end up in asituation where they could
metaphorically pull the rug fromunder our feet, because we were,
you know, kind of, you know,hanging on their coattails too
much. But then also, you know,we had a, you know, our own kind
of sense of place and, and alsoa kind of, this, you know, sense
(42:16):
of, you know, this is somethingthat we're building. And, yeah,
you know, the Thornbridge Eastis a, you know, a key part of,
certainly our history thesedays. But we wanted it to be
about white Peter Stiller andwhat we were doing, so, yeah, we
were talking about the spentBrewer yeast, but it was kind of
in an anonymous way. And then,like, as you say, I think over a
(42:39):
period of time, we got to knowThornbridge well, and I think
they became more comfortablewith us, and that, you know, we
were, yeah, we were fit andproper people. And you know, we
weren't kind of, you know, heretoday and gone tomorrow. And so,
you know, that relationship, Ithink, has has really blossomed.
(43:01):
And, yeah, aside from the yeast,we are sharing casks, and we've
laid down some whiskey with atotally different mash bill. And
in fact, it's going to be fiveyears old in October this year,
and that was a mash bill that Imean very much, you know, was
kind of a decision made with thebrewing team up there. So, yeah.
(43:27):
And in terms of individuals, asa, you know, there's a there's a
human story, I would say, offriendship. And also, yeah, kind
of fellow makers in this countyof Derbyshire, where we live,
David Levine (43:41):
I've gotta know if you are willing to share what
that different mash bill is,
Unknown (43:46):
yeah, I mean, so all I can say is, it's got, you know,
it's got kind of elements thatyou might expect from kind of
craft brewery. So there's goingto be some dark malt in there,
some chocolate malt. There'ssome oats, there's some beach
smoked malt. Yeah. So somethingvery different.
David Levine (44:08):
That sounds I mean, obviously I can't speak
for for what it will taste likeor what it tastes like now, but
interest wise, that soundsfascinating. So yeah,
absolutely. And I'll drinkanything with oats in it. So
Unknown (44:22):
well, I think we hadn't got a real sense of direction in
terms of what it might end uplike. And it's, you know, it's
still maturing away in ourwarehouse, but yeah, but yeah,
just echo your comments. David,it certainly was an interesting
project for us to do, sure.
David Levine (44:39):
So the the profile of the distillery, and by that,
I'm talking specifically aboutthe single malt is, you know,
light and fruity. It's not meantto be a super heavy DRAM at all,
but fairly unique, if not fullyunique, to English whiskey and
English distilleries. There is alight Pete running through it.
You've got about. 10 PPM on thegreen ends up being between four
(45:02):
and six. You know, this is allkind of by by the time it goes
through the still, it's allsensory, as opposed to, like,
scientifically, 10 ppm, but endsup being about four to six in in
bottle or after distillation. Soas of this was back in 2021
you're on an interview withIrish whiskey review. At that
(45:23):
point, you were probably theonly English whiskey, only
English whiskey distillery.There we go, with a lightly
peated single malt as their coreprofile. So all of your single
malt has that light peat inthere as of now, you know, four
years later, as far as you know,is that still the case?
Unknown (45:45):
Yeah, as far as I know, David that that remains the
case. And certainly that lightlypeated house style, I think, has
helped us, amongst otherreasons, you know, find a space
in this market, and it probablyconstitutes, I'm going to say,
at least 80% of all the spiritwe'd laid down. You know, just
(46:10):
as an aside, we do work with alocal farmer, so with some
barley that's grown in ourcounty, and that is floor molted
in a traditional floor moultingsA couple of 100 miles south of
the distillery. Malting iscalled Warminster, and we've
(46:32):
decided for that malt that it'sgoing to be completely unpeated.
So we do have some unpeatedspirit. I think the oldest is
just about turning three, butthe overwhelming majority is
lightly peated. And, yeah,absolutely, it's a it's a point
of difference between ourdistillery and the rest of the
(46:54):
English market. And in fact, Ithink further afield in the UK,
you know, there aren't that manydistilleries with a with a core
spirit that's lightly peated.
David Levine (47:04):
Oh, for sure, it's and I love that you brought up
the local barley. So it's mostlyChevalier barley, if not all
Chevalier. So this is not acommonly used barley for whiskey
making, though it's not reallycommonly used too much period
anymore. It's it's one of theolder varieties, but it is used
(47:27):
sometimes in beer making. Yousaid in one of the interviews
that this particular crop thatyou're getting locally is
produced differently in terms ofmashing and in the wash, besides
being unpeated. So what do youdo differently with this batch
than you do with your overallproduct?
Unknown (47:50):
Yeah, so with the local barley, and I know there's not a
lot of local barley inDerbyshire, it's quite a kind of
Rocky, hilly terrain. So it's,you know, it's more suited to,
yeah, kind of animals, kind ofsheep and cows, rather than, you
(48:12):
know, huge flat sways of landwhere you can grow a crop nice
and efficiently. So yeah, we thelocal Bali we, we, we kind of
knew that as and when we bottleit, which, you know, the time
when we were first getting thelocal crops was going to be a
few years away, but we justdecided that the conversation we
(48:35):
wanted to have was around thefact that it's local barley, so
that, you know, rather than justmaking the statements that it's
local, barley is kind of well.So what you know, what? What
does that mean in terms of whatI'm going to taste? So what we
decided to do at the mashingstage of our process is produce
(49:04):
a cloudy word. Now, normallyspeaking, we're trying to make a
relatively clear word to go intoour fermentation, because that's
going to help us develop some ofthe fruity notes that we want in
our end spirit, but when you infact, we run the rakes
(49:26):
constantly when we're mashingthe local barley, and you end up
with a cloudy word, whichultimately leads to sort of more
of The kind of biscuity barleygrain notes coming through into
the spirit. And so the intentionis that, yeah, when we do
(49:47):
eventually bottle some of thiswhiskey made with the local
barley, you know, that kind offlavor profile is going to be in
evidence, and then we can have agood conversation about, well,
why? Why is that? And that'sand. Then we kind of ties into
the the grain story and thelocal barley story. So yeah. So
we we mash in a different way,and then also our cut points are
(50:10):
different. So we went throughthe kind of the same process
that most distillers will gothrough, where they decide where
they're going to take their kindof four shots and faint cuts,
and we just changed them up forthe for the local barley again,
to try and encourage some ofthose kind of multi year notes
(50:33):
to be evident in the in thefinal spirit. So yeah. So it was
a really interesting process forus to go through as whiskey
makers. And actually, the, youknow, we've obviously been
sampling, and it's, yeah,indeed, it's a, it's a, it's a
totally different kind of flavorand aroma experience from our,
(50:58):
you know, our house style oflight repeated. That
David Levine (51:00):
was gonna be. My next question was, you know, you
said it's turning about three isit? Is it so far living up to
the expectation that you, youknow, the direction that you
thought it was going to go
Unknown (51:11):
in? Yeah. I mean, absolutely, I think we're, we're
really pleased with the way it'sgone. I think it would probably
be wrong to say that in whiskeymaking, you know, you're ever
100% certain what the outcome isgoing to be, you know, you kind
of, you put your best footforward, and you've got a real
kind of sense of direction. Butobviously there's the certain,
(51:32):
you know, magic goes on in thecask that I don't think anyone's
ever kind of 100% scienced todeath. So I think in terms of
our expectations, I would sayit's probably exceeded them. But
then, you know, I'd also say togive our team some credit for
that, that, you know, we madesome conscious decisions around
(51:53):
how we would mash, aroundchanging our cut points, that
they kind of logically madesense in terms of what that
should do to the Spirit. But youknow how that manifests,
manifests itself in the maturedspirit is, of course, you know
that's not easy to predict.
David Levine (52:11):
Jordan. I do want to also point out, just briefly
that putting aside the localbarley, which sounds like it's
going more towards the profileI'm about to talk about, in a
county that has such a strongbrewing tradition, I could
easily see someone coming in andmaking a whiskey and a
distillate that aims to leaninto the malting side of things,
(52:32):
and a multi year, perhapsheavier spirit. And I think it's
it's unexpected and kind of agreat idea to go the opposite
direction of this fruity,floral, not floral, excuse me,
fruity, light style for yourmain whiskey, the one that
you're going to be known formost outside of the area. And
then being able to tie backother portions of this like
(52:55):
you're using a brewer's yeast,you're doing X, Y, Z, but you're
not tying yourself, as you usethe phrase earlier, to the
brewing tradition, you just feelyou're really starting a new
distilling tradition in thecounty. So I loved that idea on
the website. When I write thisup, I'm also going to talk a
little bit about the packagingdesign. I will give a shout out
(53:18):
here to Claire. I know that wasa big project of hers for about
15 to 18 months, designing thebottles for wire works in
particular, and also this ideathat from the beginning, the
customer and visitor experienceis going to be part of this.
Yes, you're in an area of thecountry that I think you said
(53:38):
the number earlier, just in caseyou didn't, I'll throw it here.
You know, you get 13 millionvisitors a year to the Peak
District. Yeah, that's quite abit. When that's 20% of the
population of the UKequivalency, that's, that's a
large population going there,yeah, year to year. I mean, if
you're not in the dead center ofwhere people are going all the
time, you're adjacent, you'revery close. So, and being in the
(54:03):
East Midlands too, you're not,it's going to work in my mind,
but not may, may not work inothers. But like, you're not far
north in Yorkshire, you're,you're relatively close to the
main centers of population. Soyou could do day trips.
Unknown (54:17):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. We, we, we refer to this area as
well. It's also known as theMidlands. I in the middle and
so, yeah, just the wholeconnectivity, you know, it's by
car, by train, you know, even byplane. It works pretty well for
us,
David Levine (54:36):
absolutely. So, you know, one of the questions I
had is, you're, you know, you'renot putting out a massive
volume. So far as of May of thisyear, you had about 2700 barrels
in situ at the distillery.You're distilling about two
barrels a day. Yeah, and I'mcurious in our last few minutes
that we've got to talk about thelocal demand. Stick and
(55:00):
international presence thatyou've gotten. Clearly, you've
been winning a lot of awardsacross the range and across
multiple well regarded awardwhat's the word, like
competitions? There we go. AndI'm curious what the demand and
response locally has been. Andby locally. You can look at, I'm
(55:21):
talking, the 10 mile radius ofwhere you are, and people
visiting the Peak District, alsowhere you are distributed within
England in the UK.
Unknown (55:31):
Yeah. So I think, as you said earlier, David, we,
we'd always got a sense thatthe, yeah, that kind of visitor
experience offering. And indeed,you know, this kind of just
broader whiskey tourism wasgoing to play an important part
for our business. And, you know,I know there are challenges in
the in the US, or, you know, thekind of the cellar door kind of
(55:54):
sale concept, but certainly herein the in England, you know,
that's perfectly legitimate. Andindeed, our cellar door is still
our biggest channel in terms ofsales. So, yeah, I'd say in
terms of local support. Yeah,we've, you know, we've been, we
enjoy, I think, a lot of regularcustomers. And I think there's a
(56:19):
lot of people who are, you know,maybe new to whiskey. And we're
curious about, you know, what onearth is going on here in
Derbyshire? And then also, youknow, whiskey fans, who, I think
there's a lot out there close tous, who are just, you know,
delighted that they've got awhiskey distillery nearby. So I
think, yeah, locally, we'veenjoyed a lot of support. A lot
(56:42):
of that on the back of visitorexperiences. But indeed that's
pulling people to distilleryfrom further and further afield.
We had some people alongyesterday from France. We
regularly see people from theNetherlands, from Germany. And
as you say, there is thisfootfall of 13 million people
coming to the Peak Districtarea. So you know, to some
(57:04):
extent, you know, they haven'tgot, you know, a massive
diversion in their journey, aslong as we can let them know
we're there to come see us. Soyeah, the local market is very
important for us. Furtherafield, you know, we are
stocked, I'd say pretty muchthroughout England. You know, we
(57:26):
have, we some of our whiskey inScotland as well, which, you
know, is no sense in which we'retrying to, you know, take the
Scottish whiskey market head on,but they're just people who are
interested in, well, let's justsay world whiskey. And you know,
we've, we found some interest upthere, but certainly throughout
(57:48):
England. And then, morerecently, in the last couple of
years, we've started to exporton a in a selected way. I think,
you know, my perspective isthat, you know, it's difficult
enough to start a whiskey brandin your kind of, you know, home
country. So that just getsamplified in terms of difficulty
(58:09):
when you're exporting. And,yeah, because we're a small
company with limited resources,you know, we we don't have the
benefit of putting kind of bootson the ground. So it's kind of,
you know, it's kind of, fly in,fly out whenever we can, to
support our importeddistributors. And so we got a
(58:29):
small number of export markets,but including countries like
Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and,hopefully soon, South Korea. So,
you know, I know some of thoseplaces are relatively far apart,
somewhere closer than others,but there's a, there's a bit of
a hub there. And obviously thoseare markets, you know, where,
(58:50):
you know whiskey, you know,there are risky consumers. It's
a, it's a known spirit. So we'renot kind of, you know, trying to
introduce people to a spiritthat they've never heard of at
the same time as introducingthem to a country that they may
never have known of and madewhiskey. So yeah, and we're
enjoying some, you know, somesuccess. I think it, you know,
(59:11):
takes time to build a brand. Sothat's certainly Yeah. I think
our perspective is, you know,whiskey is a long term game. But
yeah, it's, yeah. So far, therisk has been going down well,
and that's, I think that'shelping it travel, wonderful.
David Levine (59:27):
So I do want to leave just a minute or two for
us to debrief after, but I'llthrow you the last question for
now, which is, you're about adecade in. This is your it's not
your first career. As you said,you worked in finance. You were
and you trained in engineering.You worked at a gold mining
operation for Yeah, yeah. So,you know, not your first career,
(59:48):
but seems like you're it feelslike you're content to have this
be your last career, and to takethis as far as it will go. So
what do you feel like you. AndClaire want the legacy of white
peak distillery to be?
Unknown (01:00:05):
Yeah, that's a great question, and I think this kind
of comes full circle back to thediscussion we were having around
the wireworks brand. Thewireworks started in the 1870s
unfortunately closed down in themid 1990s but for certainly 120
years, they enjoyed, you know,enormous success for most of
(01:00:28):
that time, through beinginnovative in the kind of
engineering sense, in the senseof making great products made to
last. And I think you we feelthat kind of sense of, you know,
legacy, that in the decisionswe're making, kind of day in day
(01:00:49):
out, about running this businessand laying down whiskey, that we
kind of really hope that in, youknow, another 100 years time
when we're no Longer around tohave the conversation, but that,
you know, people will be talkingfondly about wire works whiskey,
in the same way that we are kindof celebrating the wire works
(01:01:14):
that occupied this site betweenus. So yeah, pretty much all the
decisions we take, we alwayshave this kind of view that, you
know, how is this going to beseen in the long term? How are
these decisions that we maketoday going to kind of stand up
to the Yeah, the test of time?So I think yeah, in terms of
(01:01:34):
what we are hoping for, for thebusiness in the long term. And
our risk in the long term isthat, yeah, it's going to be,
you know, around and enjoyed andyou know, some of this kind of
the stories that we're layingdown on podcasts like this David
may get repeated on, you know,whatever the device of the day
(01:01:57):
is by the time we get there. Butyeah, that's our long term
perspective and our long termhope for the business.
David Levine (01:02:04):
Well, Max, thank you so much for coming on talk
about white peak distillery.Hang on with me for just a
moment after we finishedrecording, this been another
episode of The whiskeringpodcast. Please follow, like and
subscribe wherever you can takea look at the show notes. When
this episode goes live, you willsee more information that we
didn't get to talk about todayon air, and this is a distiller
you're going to want to keep aneye on. And I know, for the
(01:02:27):
nerds out there who listen,because I'm one of you, there's
going to be information on therethat you want to see about how
they make the whiskey and whatgoes into it. So thank you all
for listening, and I'll see youall next week. You.
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