Waterford Whisky and their Unique Approach to Flavor

I welcome Mark from Waterford Whisky, an Irish whiskey brand known for their focus on terroir, traceability, and sustainability. The conversation delves into the unique approach of Waterford Whisky, which emphasizes the importance of barley as the origin of whiskey's flavor. Mark explains that Waterford is located in the southern coast of Ireland, where the best barley in the world grows.

Mark also shares his background as a cereal brand creator and revivalist, having previously worked at Bruichladdich and revived the brand's focus on cereal and barley. He discusses his frustration at having to sell Bruichladdich before he was ready and how Waterford Whisky is his chance to do things properly with the right logistics and systems in place.

The conversation then turns to the concept of terroir and its significance in whiskey production. Mark clarifies the true definition of terroir, which refers to what happens to a plant, in this case barley, due to the microclimate, soil, and topography of its growing environment. He emphasizes that terroir is not about the distillery or the brewery, but about the flavors derived from the barley itself.

The host and Mark discuss the industrialization of the whiskey industry and the recent trend towards smaller, more attached-to-the-land offerings. They also touch on the complexity of terroir in whiskey compared to wine and the need for a new term to describe terroir in the whiskey context.

Mark then explains the unique practices and technologies employed by Waterford Whiskey, such as the hydro mill, incremental mash converter, and mash filter. These techniques allow for total terroir extraction, barley-forward flavors, and the preservation of barley aroma. Mark also highlights the importance of extended fermentation and the use of different types of wood in the aging process.

The conversation concludes with a discussion on Waterford's cuvée concept, inspired by the practices of winemakers in Champagne and Bordeaux. Mark explains that the cuvées bring together the terroir-defined flavors of the single farm origins to create a multi-layered and complex whiskey experience. He emphasizes that Waterford Whisky is meant to be savored and enjoyed over time, and encourages listeners to explore the different cuvées and single farm offerings.

Overall, this episode provides a deep dive into the philosophy and practices of Waterford Whiskey, highlighting their commitment to terroir, sustainability, and the pursuit of natural flavors in whiskey production.

🔗 Links:

https://waterfordwhisky.com/ https://www.instagram.com/waterforddistillery/ https://www.facebook.com/waterforddistillery/ https://www.youtube.com/@WaterfordWhisky

🎧 Listen to the full episode to get an insider's look at the craft of whiskey making, the importance of barrel selection, and the future of the whiskey industry from the perspective of a brand owner. Don't forget to subscribe for more industry insights!

Enjoyed the episode? Leave us a comment below and let us know your thoughts on barrel finishing and the evolution of the whiskey industry. Cheers! 🥃✨ Remember to like, share, and subscribe for more whiskey conversations and deep dives into this timeless spirit.

 

Episode Transcript

(00:05):
Hey folks, thanks for joining me for this episode from the EmbellishPod. It's
an opportunity for me to ramble about whiskey or something for a few minutes. If
you got here by chance, please take a moment to hit the subscribe button. Hopefully I can
be found on any podcasting platform that exists. And if you can't find
me on a platform, send me an email at embellishpod at gmail.com and
I'll get that taken care of. You can also find video versions of this podcast on

(00:26):
YouTube. You can find all of my links on Instagram at embellishpod or TikTok
with the same handle. I have a website, it is www.embellishpod.com. It's
also a place to pick up these links, episode details, and more. Today,
we're going to have the wonderful opportunity to talk to Mark from Waterford
Whiskey, which is an Irish whiskey brand out of
Ireland. And they're doing some really amazing things

(00:48):
with terroir, traceability, sustainability, and I really
hope you enjoy today's conversation. This
morning, we have Mark joining me from Waterford. Thank you, Mark,
for your time. I want to give you a couple of seconds. Just tell me a little bit about

(01:10):
Waterford, southern coast of Ireland, same latitude
as Cambridge, almost London.
So 240 miles south of Islay,
where I used to be at Brookladdy when I set that up in
2000. So I went south following the barley. You know,

(01:32):
barley is the origin of whiskey's flavor. 2000 flavor
compounds. It's the most flavorsome cereal in the world. It's
what makes single malt whiskey the most beguiling, compelling spirit
of all. So it makes sense to go where

(01:55):
And you mentioned this just just for a second. You
seem to be a bit of a cereal brand creator or
revivalist, right? So you revive the broccolatti and
cereal. So there's there's even some, you know, there's there's cereal in the
continuous nature and then cereal and barley. So, you know, it's a
play on words. But, you know, and you You

(02:17):
sold Brookladdy when you started Waterford. Were
you are you building this with the intent to eventually sell it? Or is this now
I mean, the thing with the thing with Brookladdy is, well, first of all,
I didn't want to sell it. I was completely out
done at the time. I was very sad. We had more things still

(02:40):
to do that we hadn't put in place, which which and
was annoying, bearing in mind how hard and difficult it was to, you
know, have got that to the, you know, to where we did.
So I was really rather frustrated. So Wardford
is a chance to actually sort of clear the decks and do
it properly, with the right logistics, with

(03:01):
the right systems
in place. And barley is an agricultural produce
You know, it's agricultural. It's
not like, you know, some, well,
to me it's not a commodity to be purchased on

(03:24):
a global market from the cheapest
place in the world. It's a very fundamental source of
Barley's flavor. And, you know, if you go back to how whiskey
used to be made, you know, the very origins of it,
you know, it was one man band, you know, it was a guy, you know, feeding his
family, growing some barley, you know,

(03:47):
to feed his family, to feed his cows, and
to distill for himself. And, you know, that was the very
origins of it, going back to the Middle Ages and before possibly
back to the Viking times. And it's probably,
you know, there's a different story altogether, but they're quite possibly the Vikings that
brought distilling and the knowledge of

(04:09):
it back from the Middle East. And
Vikings set up Waterford, you know, that was
founded in 942 by the Vikings. So,
you know, I think, you know, those origins of
subsistence farming, and then how
it changed into, by legislation, into

(04:32):
farm distilleries. In other words, stopping
the one man band operations and consolidating it
into established, licensed uh
farm distilleries and then those got bigger and you know you
can see the progress you know and and uh um
you know my contention is that it was always about the barley it

(04:56):
always was it always should be um and
really what we're doing at Waterford is taking it back to that
origin except not one farm you know 110 farms
um we've distilled since we started So,
you know, 110 origins of

(05:16):
barley, each with their own terroir-defined flavor
profiles. And, you know,
so, you know, Waterford as a techno-modern brewery
gives me the equipment and the ability to extract
those terroir-derived barley-forward flavors

(05:41):
unlike anybody else. And that's why we're
at Waterbrook, because there was this super modern brewery
there. And of course, to anybody, brewing
is where it all starts. It's how you liberate the flavors that are
in the grain. And that's brewing,
mashing, milling, fermenting. Brewing,

(06:04):
that's what it is. So having a super
modern brewery has been my aim all along, to
have that ability, the temperature control,
and mash filters, and
the world's only hydro mill, which allows us
to mill anaerobically, thereby preserving

(06:26):
the barley aroma that's normally lost in a millhouse.
you know, why I'm in Waterford is because of
this brewery being available, the best barley in the world.
The distilling bit, it's actually easy, you know, contrary to

(06:48):
everybody's indoctrination, it's
not about master distillers and alchemy and
mystery, it's schoolboy chemistry, it's very simple. So
we distilled Scottish Way, double distillation, in
stills that I stole from Inverleaven on
the River Clyde. In fact, I sold them twice. I stole them also from

(07:10):
Brookladden. So it's double
distillation. I'm not interested in any triple or other
mixed mash, mixed cereal stuff. You know, for me, double
with barley is the ultimate. So I'm making single malt

(07:32):
And you sort of touched on this, and I think this is the thing that makes whiskey the
most interesting spirit to me is, and
I've said this a number of times, whiskey mirrors
the industrialization of the world, right? It
started off as a very small boutique operation on farm distillery. People
were distilling for themselves. And then as farming

(07:56):
became more industrialized and you were able to produce more grain, Then
you can consume and that grain then created more whiskey than you
can individually consume then you start commodifying the whiskey you
get rid of it and eventually you know it
all things industrial we build this place where there's industrial
farms and there's industrial grain alcohol and then people

(08:17):
become detached from their consumer cycle of whatever it
is that they're eating or drinking. And then we start to
revert back to wanting to be very, very specifically tied to
what we're doing. And so we've seen this in
at least in North America and food and beer and a host
host of other things. We're now going back in the other direction where we want smaller,

(08:38):
more attached to the land offerings
and solutions in a time when Technology's
never been greater and now our technology can get smaller and
so you can do exactly what you're doing which are these single farm
origins and it's a really interesting exploration
of terroir and i do want to ask you

(08:59):
about that term terroir for whiskey should we be
developing a new term instead of terroir because
terroir has its distinct connotations in wine but
with whiskey there's this other bit around you know local yeast
and how do you age it and distilled product being clean
you know there may be a little more complexity to terroir with

(09:26):
Well that's an awful lot you've packed into that A
little bit. The first bit, go back to
the, you know, the social thing about sort of people
wanting to know where their food comes from. I mean, I think that's a direct correlation
to advertising and monopolies, you
know, it creates And

(09:47):
it normally starts at the top and it works its way to the bottom. We've
seen it with brewing, we've seen it with all
sorts. So you've got that as
a sort of social thing. And then, of course, the
more a sector develops and grows, it
throws off more levels of

(10:10):
you know, interest and intrigue. I mean, we all know that the
big guys get very big because they've done the whole thing
down to, you know, a standard level,
which is easy to produce. Don't upset, you know, the app
cart, keep everybody sort of, you know, you
know, like middle of the road music sort of thing, you know. You're

(10:33):
going to appeal to a wider audience, but you're not going to
make them love it, but you're not going to offend anybody. And
I think that's sort of where we are with whiskey. you
know, what it then does is people that are interested go, well, hold on
a second, Sean, we can do better than this. What about that? What about this?
You know, and that's when you start getting a stratification. And

(10:55):
then the marketing guys jump on that because they can see they can make more
money. So, you know,
there's a sort of economic
and a social and an intellectual stratification and
one follows the other. Or does it? I don't know. That's
that. And the other bit you asked me about was... about

(11:20):
terroir, it never ceases to amaze me that this
one word can cause such confusion. Now,
some of it's deliberate confusion, some of it is troublemaking,
some of it's ignorance, some of it's opportunism, but
I mean, just the other day, there's a London wine

(11:45):
magazine and there was a whiskey person was
talking about his suspicion that terroir can't
exist, that if you took a wine,
if you took a distillery and you transplanted it
from position A to position B, the
whiskey would still be the same. Now

(12:07):
that's, you know, to carry that analogy forward, if you took
Romani Conti, and you moved it from, you
know, Von Romani, and stuck it in the Sahara Desert, I
can tell you one thing, it ain't gonna be the same, you
know, because it's about the, you know, it's that unbelievable, you
know, deliberate ignorance about what terroir is.

(12:29):
Now, you know, it's been, the trouble is, because there's
no sort of English language direct translation, it's
open to misinterpretation. The
word sounds, as it implies, it's to do with ground,
it's to do with place, but

(12:50):
not anything generic. It's what
happens that, you know, the true definition of terroir, it's
been used enlarged to
mean regions, to mean styles
of cheese and whatever. But the
true definition is what happens to a plant. That's

(13:14):
the real accepted definition. It's
the microclimate, the soil, and
the topography working on the nourishment
of a plant, any plant. your
mother knows it as gardening. It's the same thing. We
know that sandy soils, certain plants grow better. Acid

(13:38):
soils, azaleas and fuchsias and wet
soils, hydrangeas, north-facing walls,
not so good. South-facing walls, great for roses. This is
terroir. It's microclimate, soils and
the topography on a plant, what it does to
a plant, not a person, not a distillery or

(14:00):
a brewery or a winery. It's
what happens to the plant. And if you don't
get that, you know, and this is what I thought,
this dullard decanter you
know, you shouldn't really be writing about this stuff. You know, it's, it's,

(14:21):
it's, it's not that complicated. So, so, you
know, and if you apply the same thing
to a distillery, if you go back, as I said, to,
to the Middle Ages, where you had sort of a one
man subsistence farming, and
barley was being grown to feed the cows, to make

(14:44):
bread, and some of it was distilled. On
Islay, we know that it got out of hand, as
you were implying. More of it was being distilled than
was feeding these larger families that
were growing as a result of having
come up with medical advances that stopped a

(15:06):
lot of these children dying at birth. So families were getting bigger,
but more of the crop was being diverted into
distilling. So the island had a problem, it had a real
issue. But the
idea of the 1823 Excise Act was

(15:27):
to try and stop or stamp out that individual
distilling and get it done by somebody that could
be licensed. If you license them, you can make some money
from them, revenue. You knew where they were. And
that's what happened. That's what the 1823 Licensing Act was about. There'd been
various false starts trying to control it. This was the

(15:49):
best option. Everyone can distill. But two
rules. You've got to buy a license. That would be £10. And
your still has to be at least 200 gallons. Right.
In other words, stop all your local individual distilling stuff.
Somebody go legit. We can tax that. We

(16:11):
know where you are. And that's what happened. And of course, the
question is, who went legit? Well,
the guy with the barley went legit. The guy that
had the better fields, he had the better soils, he had
the better ability to grow barley, the primary raw ingredient.
And he was the guy that chucked out the cows, shoehorned

(16:33):
in the biggest pot still he could fit into a
Hebridean stable. And the
rest is history. So I think that's,
you got to sort of, wind back to how
it all started. And then, of course, those
farm distilleries got bigger and bigger and bigger until

(16:56):
eventually the consolidation. They were bought
up, shut down, capacity transferred to
bigger, more efficient distilleries. And that happened in waves. One
of the big waves for that was the OPEC oil
crisis of 73, saw 15 distilleries shut down.

(17:17):
to the extent that you end up with not very many farm distilleries at all.
Now, Islay, Bunahav and Brokladi were
both built the same year as farm,
sorry, not as farm distilleries, but as industrial distilleries because
the economics changed because all of a sudden you could transport the

(17:39):
two necessary thing, which is coal
to fire your stills, dry your barley, and
barley itself. So, you know, the economic imperatives changed
with the advent of steam commodity transport. And,
you know, the end, you know, that was sort of really heralded the end of

(18:00):
farm distilleries, certainly on Ireland, until,
you know, Kilhoman and sort of Ardenhoe-ish things
happened in the last sort of 15 years or
Does that make sense? Yeah, no, it absolutely makes sense. And I
think we see, at least in

(18:21):
agriculture in North America, a series of consecutive tough
farming years, what leads to farm consolidation in the same way that a
series of tough selling years for distilleries leads to
consolidation of distilleries as well. And so you have less choice and you
have all of these problems. Do you think that it's fair to
say that the farther the grain or

(18:43):
the distillate gets from the soil that it was grown in, the harder it
is to capture that terroir. Right. And so if you're shipping the grain, you
It's it's when it gets mixed up with everything else, you
know, when it becomes a commodity. I mean, buying if
you go to most distilleries, you know, they don't even

(19:05):
know where the body comes from. It's just pick up
a phone and it gets delivered. It may be coming from the Ukraine
or be coming from Australia. It doesn't matter.
This is why nobody talks about it, because part of it, it's
irrelevant. It's just where it is of the best
quality, the best economic return. That's

(19:29):
the driving force. So that link
with terroir, that link with plates was cut.
back in the 19th century, you know, in the Brooklyn, but was
almost you could argue that that was part
of the problem. You know, that was that was, you know, ending
that that local, I mean, Islay at the time had 20 distilleries.

(19:53):
20 little wee distilleries doing 70, 50,000 liters. And
that was all the island could produce, barley-wise, until the
economics changed and the advance of
steam power and commodity vessels,
flat bottom vessels that could bring, you know,

(20:14):
to the rocky shores of Islay, you know, and land on the beach at
high tide, be offloaded at low tide, and float away
again afterwards. You know, that was a, you know, that was the game changer there for
Islay. You know, for elsewhere in Scotland, it was the railway. that
did it. And then, of course, you know, in Ireland,
you've got the loss of, well, two things. One is its

(20:37):
independence, which heralded the loss of access to
the British Empire. The second, three years
later, was prohibition in America. And that was the end. That was
the death knell for Irish distilling. So,
you know, who could have foreseen? Well, I
suppose you could have foreseen the former, but not the latter. So

(20:59):
there are these other socioeconomic political
issues that come into play as well. But terroir is
what happens to the barley. It's
like the vine. If I take, for
example, if you transfer it to what if I have a winery in

(21:22):
Ireland and I'm importing grapes from Chile, What
is it that I'm making? Does
it have a terroir? No, it's
just generic international grapes from
wherever in Chile. The principle of

(21:44):
a terroir is this localization. It's microclimate, the
clues in the name, microclimate. Topography,
steep hills or slopes or flat slopes prone
to bogging, north-facing slopes that are
prone to frost, exposed slopes that

(22:04):
get high evapotranspiration, low-lying riverside
ones that suffer from mildew and humidity. These are
the aspects that affect those
2000 flavor compounds growing in that barley
grain. That's the miracle I find. That

(22:25):
little tiny little grain has got all that flavor.
Let it out. Let it all out. That's what it's about. That's
what we're doing at Waterford is I've got the infrastructure,
I've got the logistics to keep the farms separate. So
the 35 a year, 110 that we've distilled, we

(22:48):
can keep them all separate from the field to
the bottle. We've got our own dedicated malting
facility. We've got the
traceability in place that we can follow
it right the way through. And so
instead of having 110 distilleries,

(23:12):
farm distilleries, I've got 110 farm origins, terroirs,
that we can distill at the one place in
You know, and you're set up uniquely, at
least in my perception, as a consumer product,
right? Sustainability and organic farming are

(23:35):
all, you know, significant marketing buzzwords in the
industry, right? And in just about any consumer goods industry.
But right now you have more specific
information than many, many major players as far as
the sustainable tracking of your stuff. I
mean, you've you've indicated this a number of times. You can get down to the farm from each bottle,

(23:57):
and that's not something that most folks can do in any
industry. But so
let's let's talk about that a little bit, right? Are you
Yeah, I mean, you know, what I just described. I
mean, remember, you know, the drinks industry, spirits industry in

(24:17):
particular, is a hugely controlled
industry. I mean, the narrative, the whiskey narrative, everything,
you know, your listeners know about about
whiskey is because the large players,
that's what they want you to know. So

(24:39):
don't think too much, just take this, buy this, get on with
it. It's hugely marketing
driven. Both
Diageo and Pernod Ricard each, in their whole groups, spend
$4 million a year in marketing. It's ginormous.

(25:00):
And it's about producing the cheapest liter of alcohol possible,
and then making up a story about why you should drink it. And I
come from a wine background, and it comes back to the primacy of
the raw material. That's what I did at Brooklandi.
I showed that it is about the primacy of the raw
material, the barley, the most flavorsome cereal in the world, and

(25:24):
letting it do its stuff. Let it show you what it
can do. I
think the perception of our
industry is that you get what
they tell you. And organic

(25:47):
and biodynamic, that's
not new. I'm not an eco-warrior.
I'm a natural flavor seeker. Everything was
organic. Everything was biodynamic before
the 1900s. It's not new. Fred

(26:07):
Flintstone, you know, didn't go down in his car, you
know, to the local farmers market and stop up with agrochemicals and
fertilizers that everybody had to make do. And
so they, you know, this is this is not new. Everything
was organic, biodynamic before the advent of the agrochemical industry,
which incidentally came out of the munitions industry in

(26:30):
the First World War. So let's be
clear about that. It's not new. It's
not some eco lovey-dovey, save the world, blah,
blah. It's because they produce natural
flavors. And as I said, they're
all there. It's just let them out naturally.

(26:53):
So in fact, what we're finding is we, Waterford, we're
going backwards in time. I never intended to do it. We're
going backwards. Of those 110 farms
that we've distilled, increasingly, we're going
organic farmers. We started with six individual
farmers. We've now got 15 complete farms.

(27:15):
We've got three that are now biodynamic. There were none. We're
now using four
of our farms each year, we're peating them with
Irish peat that hasn't been seen for a
hundred and years, 105 years since independence. And of course, barley

(27:40):
varieties. We're going backwards. We're
going back to the future. We're going back to find out the flavors that
were there before the whiskey industry managed
to incredibly new to them accidentally.
But that's what they managed to do by picking two parents back

(28:01):
in 73 that were cousins from which everything's been propagated
ever since. And this we
discovered when we did our terroir study, you know, the first proof,
technical proof that terroir exists. Don't take my
word for it. It's a published peer-reviewed paper.

(28:21):
You can see it on our Waterford website. 2,000 flavour
compounds, 60% of which are influenced
by terroir. There you go. We all knew it. There
it is. You
know, I don't think it's, it's
not rocket science what we're doing. It's going back to,

(28:46):
it's because we're interested in natural flavor. And
of course the questions that keep being asked is, well,
what was barley like before they managed to neuter it? So,
well, let's go and find out. So we're
going back to barley varieties from 1959, the Hunter. which

(29:06):
we've got some in America at the moment, not very much though. Sensational.
And you go, wow. So this is what barley used to taste
like before they knew today. Unbelievable. 1900 Goldthorpe,
1920 Sprat Archer, 1870, the Middle

(29:26):
Ages, Bayer, all the
older varieties. And of course, the
question here is about barley varieties. And
you'll know this too, from the work you do. The
reason it's got 2000 flavor compounds is
because barley mutates a

(29:50):
lot. And so last 10,000 years,
it's done an awful lot of mutating. which
is bringing all these flavor compounds together. To
put it in perspective, wines have about
500 flavor compounds. Cheese has
10. And we're talking about 2,000. So it's

(30:13):
had a long time to, and it's this propensity
of mutating that does it. So Hunter, the
one from 1959, You know, that was probably the missing link
between indigenous wild barleys that
had evolved naturally in their own terroir,
their own environments, and had been brought together by

(30:36):
Dr. Hunter to create this, you know,
spicy, you know,
spicy, rich flavored barley
that is just You just
think, well, why on earth did we give this up? No idea. I

(31:03):
do have no idea. It
was for ever greater efficiency. So, you know, that
whole 73 onwards program was about increasing spirit
yield, field yield, climate
resistance, climate adaptability, disease resistance.
That's what it was about. And Flatewood

(31:28):
Yeah, it's, you know, you start entering into a time where, you
know, the people who control the pocketbook make the decisions as
opposed to the people who are concerned about flavor profiles. And, you
know, you make a really, really strong point that, you know, organic and
biodynamic are not new ideas. We're
just starting to re-understand them. But they can often be

(31:49):
used, you know, at least in North America, they're not legally defined. And so what
it means could be anything. But with your particular structure, and
being able to trace all of your farms, you can actually answer the
degree to which you are organic or biodynamic, which
many of the yeah, you've got the you've got to get
a tarot card on the back. You can trace all the way down to the farm.

(32:11):
And, you know, I feel like that would be probably a monumental task
for one of the larger distilling companies to do. But
it also feels like that's going to be the trend that consumers are going to
push for, because we even see it here in the states where
some of the small distillers are challenging the idea that every
distillery should probably have its own grain, right?

(32:34):
Through land-race gardening or whatever else, you identify what your local soil is,
you identify some heirloom or older grain
types that really fit that soil profile, and you're getting to
the best and most effective thing you can. And so we're introducing
these ideas of traceability, of terroir,

(32:55):
of local produce, whatever you want to
call it. I think the market is heading that
And I don't know if it's
heading that way, which is no bad thing. I
mean, these heritage varieties, of course, oddly
enough, it's not just the flavor that's so beguiling.

(33:16):
But of course, it begs the question of, you know, the
economic efficiencies, you know, can you marry them to modern
varieties, low straw, low straw varieties? You
know, yeah, that's where I'm going, I'm going to have my own, you
know, greatest hits of barley of
the past. And that's, that's my aim. And I'm halfway there.

(33:39):
You know, with Dr. Dustin Herb, you know, Oregon
State University, you know, he's been helping me do this. So,
yeah, it's about natural flavor. We
had it, we had lots more of it. Let's go and ferret
it out and find where it is. But then, of course, it begs the other question, which is
old-fashioned farming varieties, farming techniques.

(34:04):
And guess what? They work better with old varieties. You're
matching, you know, we have one biodynamic
farmer that every year, you know, He
really struggles. But when we gave him an old variety,
he was off to the races. It

(34:24):
was fantastic. So old farming techniques with old
varieties, of course, it makes a
So we've spent a good deal of time talking about farming practices
and traceability, biodynamic, organic, and
you've mentioned a few times some of the hydromilling and

(34:46):
the mash filter and stuff. So let's talk about that just briefly and then we'll Um,
head over to the whiskey, right? So we've talked about how to
make the whiskey. Let's get to the whiskey eventually here. But, um, you,
you mentioned a hydro mill and, um, I spent a
lot of time sort of nerding out on that one because, um,
I can see a lot of advantages and I'm curious why more people aren't

(35:08):
using a hydro mill. Um, because I've been in a million facility before and
the sheer amount of dust that is in there. Um, is
it's, it's a fire hazard to begin with, but beyond that, if you think about it
from your perspective, that's all lost flavor, right? And
so did, did, did you know you wanted to hydromill or
is it just, it came with the plant that you bought and you figured out

(35:30):
It came with, um, I mean, the
finish off your previous point, the clue is
we're dealing with an agricultural produce.
We put it on the label. It's on the front label there. It's not a
product. That's
a product, a manufactured product, a phone. It's

(35:54):
an agricultural produce. It
always was. And with me at Waterford, it
is again. It's agricultural produce. We
need to remember that. you know, it's
an agricultural produce. It's of
agriculture. Okay, that's that. Now the hydromill. Yeah. So

(36:16):
when I had the chance to buy this
super duper Willy Wonka brewery,
Guinness brewery, built in 2004, 40 million
euros, amazing thing. I mean, you remember, I come from the
wine world. And, you know, back then back in the 80s, There

(36:39):
was a big renaissance of the vineyards,
you know, stimulated by you guys, the Americans, Australians, and
the universities, Roseworthy's, Davis. And
the French went there, they learned the science of winemaking
and took it back to their old, old

(36:59):
world wineries. and
their lost terroirs, lost through excessive
fertilizers, agrochemicals, cooperative winemaking,
blah, blah, blah. And there was a renaissance. They
linked modern winemaking, the science of it, with
their historic terroir. and took

(37:22):
off. And the rest is, as we
know, a huge success. But of course, the technology in
the cellar, pneumatic pressing, temperature
control, stainless steel, wood integration, organics,
biodynamics, all of this I was exposed to. And
I've just applied this to another agricultural produce,

(37:46):
barley. So all
Distilleries tend to operate the same way. The
process is, you know, the mashing process, the milling, the
mashing, the fermenting tends to be pretty identical
wherever you go. I suppose

(38:07):
you could divide it between the big, big players, you
know, that go for a one-day high-density fermentation, time
is money, distillation is speeded up, fermentation
is speeded up, Barley comes from where it's all
about producing the cheapest liter of alcohol because it
was always going to go into a blend until single

(38:30):
malt took off. So the
processes, they may have gotten a bit shinier and a
bit flasher, but the principles are still the same. So
with Waterbid, I actually had two breweries, one
from 1792 on the left of the road. and

(38:51):
then the modern one on the right. And at
the heart of the mashing, milling process, fermenting was
a lot of stainless steel and a lot of technology that I frankly had
no idea whether it would work or not. And
if it didn't, I was going to import from the other side
of the road, the old mash tuns, the old mills,

(39:14):
the roller mills that I knew from my Brooklandy days. But
as it was, we realized that this
holy trinity of a hydromill incremental
mash converter and a mash filter actually
gave us total terroir extraction.

(39:37):
Now, the hydromill works on the simple principle that you're putting
water and the barley together
through the mill. So it's anaerobic. It's
being milled without air. And
so it's a total mill. You're not looking for a grist. A

(39:58):
grist, which is necessary for a mash tun,
because you build a bed of grist in your mash tun,
and then you percolate hot water at
incremental temperatures through the
body of the grist. It's a percolation. and

(40:19):
it flows through the bottom of the slotted mash
tun. This has been the principle everywhere.
It hasn't really changed, except here
at Waterford, Guinness decided to
commission a hydro mill. It

(40:39):
must have been for efficiency, but it
was the only one, I understand, that was ever
commissioned. It wasn't repeated, so perhaps it wasn't as effective
as they thought. But for me, it's
giving me this barley aroma. Now, when you go to
another distillery, which I did, and it was only

(41:01):
when I was standing in the much-loved mill, you
know, at Brookletting, this fantastic roller mill, bobby
roller mill with all the big belts that drive it
and the weighing units and
the rhythmicness of the belts and the units and the buckets and

(41:21):
the tipping. It's a pretty funky place to
be. It was one of my favorite places there. And it smells glorious.
But that's just it. The millhouse smells
glorious. And that's what occurred to me. We're
capturing all that. It's not escaping. That's why, with

(41:43):
Waterford, you can smell. It all smells of
barley, heaven forbid. The primary, and
it actually smells of barley. So that's
one of the things the hydro mill does for us, is it gives us that barley
forward flavor. And then, of
course, the incremental mash converter with

(42:06):
35 different origins a year ensures that
we get the right sugar conversion because
you're heating the whole thing up like a saucepan. And then
a mash filter that squeezes the wort
from the

(42:27):
residues of barley. And of course, here we're talking almost like sawdust.
And of course, pneumatically pressing it, like with wine, except
instead of having one pneumatic press, I've got 54 in a
row, squeezing every last drop of
terroir flavor from that barley. Now, I'm

(42:48):
sure it wasn't designed to do that, but
that's what it does for us. It repurposed this technology. And
then of course, we have the ability to temperature control the fermentation. And
I know that from my wine days, that the longer you ferment, the more intensity
of flavor you get. So why not with barley? So

(43:10):
we ferment for not one day, high-density
fermentation, not two days, which is what most of the whiskey industry
does, but for eight days, four
times longer. Because we keep, like
a surfer, we can keep the temperature low
enough to extend the fermentation in

(43:32):
a calm way. And that gives us purer
integrated flavors, more intense flavors. And
get this, it means we have,
I believe, the only malolactic fermentation in

(43:53):
the spirit world. Now malolactic fermentation
is a secondary fermentation that occurs after
the alcoholic one in
the right conditions. And it converts harsh malic
acid into softer lactic acid. And it's
well known in white wines. That's how you get sort of creamier white wines rather

(44:15):
than searingly acidic ones. Um,
and that's what we do here. And so the middle register
of the Waterford palette has a creaminess that
you don't see anywhere else. So, so, so,
so yes, you know, this, this super duper brewery

(44:37):
gives us, um, the technology that
I've always wanted to have to play with, um, to
do these things, temperature control. And
get that extra middle register to the palette, the more complete
palette than you'd ever find elsewhere. And maximizing

(45:00):
the terroir flavors and the
I think it does the grain
justice, and this is going to be one of those longer-winded statements,
because if you're going to take the time to be
that caring with the grain you're going to put in the soil, then you owe the

(45:22):
responsibility to the grain once you're going to start the mash process. The
way I reconcile this is… And maybe this
is the problem for Guinness is that it was too effective. Right. So they've got a pretty standard
flavor profile and always have. And if you all of
a sudden start extracting significantly more barley flavor, are they going to have a hard time
creating a beer out of it? Because it's not going to hit their standard profile

(45:44):
right now. You've got you've turned it up to 13. You know, it
Yeah. I never asked the reason why. But, you
But it feels The way out,
because I spent a lot of time looking at this and it felt an awful lot like, you

(46:04):
know, the coffee espresso analogy here where you're able to effectively control
down to the finest you can get. And so with espresso, you want it to be fine. You
want it to have pressure and you want to have appropriate heat. Not too much, not too little, because
if it's too much, it burns. If it's too little, it doesn't extract. And so you're effectively
taking a very caring process. On
the front end, we haven't even. mashed yet or we haven't

(46:26):
even distilled yet. Right. So we're making sure that everything is right. And one
of the unique things, at least I saw in y'all's approach, is
that you have a head of brewing and a head of distilling. And those are
two separate professional functions, whereas at least in
a lot of distilleries in the US, one person does both.
And I thought about, you know, it's the same everywhere

(46:48):
But that is exactly it. Every brewery, every
distillery used to have a head brewer. We
And it feels like wine, like, you know, I've always heard, you know,
you don't ever cook with a wine you wouldn't drink. Right. And so you shouldn't ever
distill with a beer that you wouldn't drink in the same fashion, right?

(47:08):
You shouldn't take a beer that you're like, you know,
if your goal is to make the cheapest liter of alcohol possible, come
hell or high water. Then you speed the whole thing
up. You lower the cost of all your ingredients, wherever they
are. You recycle the barrels. Everything is
a rush. Now, we know very simply from distilling purposes

(47:31):
that if you speed up distilling, you get thinner spirit.
You've tasted it. We've all tasted it before. Thin
spirit. It's because it's been produced at
speed. We know that if you slow
it down, what we call a trickle distillation,
if you just slow it right down, that middle cut, Well,

(47:54):
then you get more unctuous flavors. You get more oily, rich,
you know, you see it in the legs when you hold up a glass, you know, you see
it in the, you know, it's mouthfeel. The French, the
wine would call it gras, you know, the fattiness, the oily,
rich, unctuous, umami sort of flavors. Well,
that's just because we stir it very slowly, less than 300, 325 liters an hour. You can

(48:22):
I mean, you're absolutely right that the legs
on this particular whiskey. Well, so I have three of your whiskeys on
hand and the legs on them were pretty significant. And, you know,
we have this we have this situation in the US where with bourbon, you
can absolutely hide thin distillate in, you know, new
charred oak barrel aging. Right. Because we have such significant barrel extraction. The

(48:44):
thinness can get buried because you have all of these powerful punchy
flavors that sort of hide it. But taking the
care in what is, in my opinion, a
more delicate but more nuanced and flavorful approach
is really, really, really evident, right? Because you've

(49:05):
taken care of the crop, you have an agronomist on hand, you have a head brewer, you
have a distiller, and then you're going
to age it. And so we're going to go ahead and hop into the whiskey, right?
We've we've we've talked for 48 minutes and really haven't talked about the
whiskey offerings specifically, right? And so you have the single farm origins

(49:25):
Single farms are the ingredients. They're the building
blocks. They are the terroir defined flavors. Okay.
Now we put those terroir defined flavors together to
create the mind fuckery that is the cuvee concept.
And this is, you know, I'm ashamed, you know, hands up. I stole this

(49:45):
idea from the French, from the Champagne boys,
from the Bordeaux boys, the top Bordeaux chateaus, you
know, that, you know, the Latours, the Lafites, the Petrus, Leobo-Lascasse,
they don't just harvest the whole vineyard and lump it all together
and go, here you go, man. They do it all individually, like

(50:05):
any great chef does. You have five varietals
grown on optimized terroir around the
estate. They're cultivated
separately, harvested, vinified, barreled
separately. And then two years later,

(50:27):
like a great chef, they are assembled together by
the maitre d'ache to create the big wine. They
put it on the label, you know, Latour, look up Chateau Latour, the first words
you see are Grand Vin Deux, the big wine
of Chateau Latour, because it's made up of 35, 40 little wines.
It's the same as champagne, Grand Cuvée, Grand

(50:50):
Siècle. They're an assemblage, a
bringing together of terroir-defined individuality to
create multi-layers of flavor. that
are released in the glass for your enjoyment.
So that's what I'm doing with whiskey. I'm giving you that multi-layered

(51:11):
effect so that in your glass, as it warms up,
as time goes by, as water reacts
with those flavor compounds, it's
going to release its flavors to you. It's
like a giant ginormous dance of the
seven veils. It's going to release those flavors layer

(51:34):
by layer for your maximum gratification.
We've layered them in so that they'll layer out
in your glass. It's
a sensualness of drinking single malt whiskey.
This isn't whiskey for slamming. This isn't whiskey for

(51:54):
a chaser with a pint. This is
whiskey to savor the flavor over time.
And it's a sensuality. And as you know, most things
sensual, it's not wham, bam. It's
the other way around. It's take your time and let it perform. Enjoy

(52:16):
Um, so in, in, in, in, you touched on this just briefly
without actually saying it. And so you're, you're, you're okay with the terms Cuvée
and you're okay with the terms terroir, which you're stealing from, I don't know,
stealing, borrowing from or wine, whatever you want.
I didn't care. Um, you're right. Um,
Cuvée, I mean, what's a Cuvée? Oh, Christ. Now you've

(52:38):
got another, everybody going in. What's a Cuvée? A cuve, un
cuve is a vat, a tank. And
in wine parlance, whatever was in
that tank is a cuvee, the
contents of the tank. And therefore, quite often that is euphemistically
used as a bottling. So

(53:01):
you can see the origins of the term. The
grand cuvee, for example, of Krug, a
great champagne that I've always admired fantastically. And
it was Remy Krug who was
making the next bottling of the Grand Cuvée when I visited him

(53:21):
many years ago in Reims, in Reims. And
it was his explanation to me that was so inspirational, which
was that, you know, for vintage champagne, well,
it's the good Lord that decides on the quality. But
for the Grand Cuvée, I'm

(53:45):
God. And I remember this so vividly coming
from from Remy. And it really
made it resonated that yes, he is as has
taken these terroir defined individual wines,
vinified and separately from each
of these different origins, different soils, different microclimates, the

(54:09):
Montagne de Reims, the Vallée de Marne, the Montagne de
Blanc, the chalk soils. And
each of these he's assembled creatively, very
carefully, to create the
Grand Cuvée. And that's what

(54:30):
any great chef does. That's what, you know, the great Bordeaux's do. And
You know, and you've hit this, right? Because there's these
terms that don't have direct translations into the English
language with assemblage and melange and terroir

(54:50):
and cuvee. These are all maybe more appropriate terms. And
you're specifically avoiding the term of blend, right? Because
I hate that word. Because, well, as you know, you know,
the whiskey industry has co-opted these terms.
So in Ireland, the whiskey

(55:11):
industry has managed to co-opt an inanimate object into
a whiskey style. And I'm referring to pot
still. And blended
whiskey, a blended whiskey, a blend. Well,
yes, it's a verb meaning to mix things together, but
it's also a style of whiskey of column still

(55:34):
silent spirit with flavorsome single malt
whiskeys added as sort of whiskey essence. Well,
that's a style of whiskey, a legally determined style of
whiskey. So so sure, I want to get away from that term. So
assemblage, assembling, marrying, bringing
together whatever you want in

(55:57):
a creative way. And
that's quite a job. That's what Ned does. It's quite a job building
this millefeuille gâteau.
That will get you again. That's a French term, a culinary term for
a multi-layered cake. Yeah, sure.

(56:19):
You're really putting my, uh, high school French classes, uh, through
That's been, you know, very good, very
good at using, uh, or borrowing portmanteau words
from other languages that don't quite work, um,
or, or have an English equivalent. And that's one of the great things about our

(56:40):
It's one of the very few great things about our language. My wife is a
language teacher, and English is not
the greatest, most understandable language. So,
you've created these Cuvées, right? And the most recent one
A Parisian painter who he commissioned

(57:03):
to produce the label for this effect,
a harlequin idea
of this multi-malt approach
to creating the cuvee,
all the different colors of the terroirs, bringing

(57:25):
them together. And that's sort of, you know, we
call that, you know, it's the Waterford, it's the Waterford Cuvée. This
version, the second, is Cuvée Coffee. It
will be with us for a good two years before
we then refine it into a

(57:49):
And I was, you know, I was talking about this offline a little bit. The
packaging of this feels like some of the most appropriate packaging for
for a whiskey that's like this, where you have this assemblage of different
whiskeys. But in my
experience, whiskey is a very social
spirit, right? There's there's quite a few people that will sit at home and drinking alone, but it's

(58:10):
a great thing. When I look at the packaging of this, not
only is it representing that this is a blend, but it also looks like a community of
people, right? There's a community of people that's existing in the art
of it. And I like the idea of using art on
these models because it allows you to sort of
Well, you know, whiskey is for sharing. It

(58:33):
is a sensual thing, or it can be. You know,
there are whiskeys for different times and different moods and different moments.
You know, I've always felt very strongly about that, you know, that there isn't
a uniform thing. But
the principle of the cuvee concept is

(58:54):
to bring together terroir-defined flavors,
the single farms, and stack them together. And remember, those
single farms, they're not just single malts. They
are single, single malts. from the
ground to the bottle, they are standalone, single,

(59:14):
single malts from Waterford. You know, Waterford is the
distillery, the barley is coming from these myriad
of different farms. So it's like having, you know,
110 Kilhoman distilleries, you know, farms, and
we're bringing them separately to distill them at
Waterford. So the cuvées are bringing together those

(59:36):
single farms. So there you could really argue they are multi
single months. But I mean, let's not
go there. Just getting it to be
able to confuse them. They just taste beautiful. Okay. It's about
complexity. What is the how do you get the most
profound, the most compelling, the most beguiling,

(59:58):
the most sensual experience possible? That's
Mm hmm. And I think, you know, there's there's some some homage for
whiskey geeks here and that you have these cuvées, but they're
coming from the individual farms. And so you could pick up
some or all maybe of the individual farm
offerings. Right. And so you can understand how the

(01:00:21):
components become greater by becoming an assemblage. Right. Because
they're all fantastic on their own. But when you put them together, Um,
But this is it, the sum, uh, you know, the whole, the
cubic, the whole being even greater than

(01:00:42):
merely the sum of the parts. You know, that's, that's, that's
the, that's the principle here. Uh, um, And
that's the creativity. And that's what the cuvées
are to us. It's creativity. The single farms are
all about precision of place. There's nothing we do.

(01:01:02):
It is what it is. The flavor is what it
is. We don't do anything. Here
are the flavor differences. We do nothing. It's the precision of
place. Marvelous. Then we
can be really creative. And with our library of
110, at we speak 110, single

(01:01:23):
farm origins, we can then bring these together
to create an organic cuvee, a peated
cuvee, and the Waterford cuvee,
So when you set out for this, this most recent couvee that you've created,
did the team set out with an idea of a flavor profile they were chasing or

(01:01:46):
you just sort of, you know, threw stuffs against the
No, not at all. No, in fact, the very first bottles
we ever did, I remember Ned coming to me and saying, well, what's water meant
to taste like? And I said, well, Ned, it is what it is.
We know that you can deconstruct. We
know the barley flavor is going to come because of the hydromel. We

(01:02:09):
know the terroir intensity is going to come because we pneumatically
pressed every last drop out. We know the intensity of
flavor is coming from that extended fermentation. We know
the creamy middle is coming from the malolactic fermentation.
We know the oily, rich, unctuous mouthfeel is coming
from the very, very slow trickle distillation. We

(01:02:33):
know the purity is coming because we take a 10 degree
middle cut. We're not greedy. We
don't take too much. We take the purity, the best.
And we put it in to, I believe, the
industry's greatest wood policy going. Right

(01:02:54):
across the board, we do everything. Each
farm, 200 barrels. Each farm goes
into the same profile right across the
board. There is no shortcuts. There is no, oh, look at
this. And then over here, you do something completely different. An
old whiskey magician trick. We

(01:03:17):
do it right across the board. So more or less, 50-50
American versus
French oak. Now, first of all, people go, what, French
oak? Well, remember, before 73, before
the 70s, whiskey in Scotland, in
Ireland, was maturing in a large proportion

(01:03:41):
of French oak, because every wine came to the UK, came
to Ireland, from France, from Spain, from Italy, in
European oak. Simple as that. They came in barrels, not
bottles. So it's not new. So
French oak or European American.

(01:04:02):
Some Virgin American, some Virgin French, that's
where the color comes from. First Fill American, that's
where the creme brulee, vanilla-y flavors come from. First
Fill French, that's where the spice comes from. And
then the fifth grouping is pudding wines, sweet
wines, VDN, we call it, vin du naturel,

(01:04:25):
which is where the sucrosity comes from. And that's the same
for each bar. And we list every barrel
used in every bottling right down to the barrel,
the cooperage, the origin, the percentages of
the bottling. Because the percentages of the bottling may not

(01:04:45):
necessarily refer to the percentages I just gave you. That's
And, you know, I spent a little bit of time on the
barreling process because I think one of the best
things that I've seen in the last few years in North America is

(01:05:07):
kind of revisiting French oak as a aging barrel, right?
Because it wasn't it didn't play hugely in the North American marketplace. But
once it did, you know, it's It's just, it's a
different flavor profile and it's, and it's amazing flavor profile. And, and, you
know, I like to see more and more of it, but I can see how each

(01:05:33):
are, you know, the staves are twice as thick as
American. And that's down to Quercus Alba
versus Quercus Robar. Quercus Robar being
European, it has to be split. It can't be made the same way.
The barrels are twice as heavy, twice as thick. Therefore,
you've got to be really careful how you use them. And it's

(01:05:55):
about integration. And this is the thing about wood. We
all get our knickers in a twist about wood. Some distillers
go, oh, 80% of a whiskey's flavor comes from the wood. No,
it doesn't. It comes from the barley. And
that 2,000 flavor compounds in the barley are in the new spirit.
They're in the old spirit. It's what happens to those compounds

(01:06:16):
when they're in the barrel via the wood. the
micro-oxygenation of those flavour compounds through
the wood. The fresher the wood is, the more micro-oxygenation
you get, the more maturation you get, in
effect. That's more or less it. If you recycle the barrels again

(01:06:38):
and again and again, well, you get less of it. They're less mature.
So there's really no shortcut to
actually buying decent wood, putting your hands in your pocket
and buying the wood. People play music, ultrasound,
they scrape them, they rechar them, they do all these sort

(01:06:58):
of things, none of which is terribly effective. It's
having a robust, well-curated, wood
policy. I learned this, you know, back in my independent bottling days, broccolatti
days, there's, there's, there's really no shortcut. And
having that ability, therefore, to choose how

(01:07:19):
you put your bottling together from
those variables at your disposal. So it's
an organization, it's a financial thing, too, it costs a lot of money. But
you know, what you shouldn't do is taste the wood. I
mean, very simply put, if you want to taste oak, go

(01:07:43):
Yeah. There's, there's a handful of sawdust out in my shop that you can just get
If you really want integration and the
better the integration. and how
you put these bottlings together over time means you have a
more philosophically
integrated spirit, which means in

(01:08:05):
the glass you've got a coherent,
comprehensive spirit, which you
can now add water to it to your heart's content, you
know, because we've reduced it to 50 percent. So
now you're adding water to release those flavors, to
soften the alcohol and give you

(01:08:27):
the mouthfeel that you are happy with at
that time. So don't be scared to add water
because you're not going to dilute the flavor and you're not
going to dilute the texture. as much as it
sounds sort of oxymoronic, you won't, because
it's so well integrated. And that you will, it

(01:08:49):
will really open your eyes up to a new way of engaging
with whiskey. I mean, personally, I dilute mine, you
know, 50 50. Because I just don't want the high, the
alcoholics, the high strength. And because
I know that I can dilute it quite easily in the
glass without losing the texture or

(01:09:14):
So I've got a lot more questions, but I'm going to have to cut
a few of them out. We may have to try to do this again sometime. So
you've got component parts going into the final blend, right? And so
we have the ability to do this. Um, since you are a
brewery turn distillery, have you ever considered taking some of the initial work
and making beer to then have alongside the individual farm

(01:09:40):
One of the, one of the restrictions I had with
taking over the brewery was that we weren't to brew beer. So,
so, so no, is the answer to that. And
equally, we've got, we've got enough on our plates, you know, distilling. Yeah.
It's the question that, you know, all of the the people who don't actually have
to do the work are going to ask the question, right? Because, hey, this would be a super neat experiment.

(01:10:03):
But also you've got millions and millions of euros
invested in trying to be a successful whiskey company.
So why take the time to brew some beer? Right. You
know, it feels like or it looks like on paper, I
mean, you've made some some very, very smart business
decisions, you're able to acquire a distillery for Less

(01:10:26):
than 18% of its build value and overall
investment is less than 25% of its build value initially. And
I don't see how you have. It doesn't feel like you would have a hard time, you
know, finding investing partners, right? Because you've acquired this capital property pretty
at a pretty significantly low cost for

(01:10:48):
And then our shareholders are all people that have followed me
from from my wine days, from
Bratty days to here. They
sort of invested in me and my way of doing things.
you know, really, that that's, you know, and they're private, private

(01:11:09):
people. So they're really,
you know, how do you say, I
It's, you know, and, you know, it, it looks on
paper like you're, you're doing them justice at this point because you have one

(01:11:31):
of the most traceable whiskeys, one
of the, the best, you know, wood policies, um,
your farming practices, you know, the fact that you
have an agronomist on staff, there are major distilleries that
Sure, sure. This is all great. It's early days.

(01:11:51):
It's not plain sailing. You know, we're an independent company. We're
changing the mold, we're changing the perceptions.
We're even changing the categories, you know, so
we're sort of blazing a trail. And,
you know, this is whiskey for the curious of

(01:12:14):
heart, the curious mind. You know,
we're not piling them high, selling them cheap. We're not trying
to make the cheapest liter possible. We're trying to make the most naturally flavorsome
liter possible. So we're blazing a
trail, sort of going back to how it used to be. And,

(01:12:35):
you know, it's not for everybody. It's for
the people that, you know, whether they're,
you know, gastronomes and gourmets, you
know, foodies, wine drinkers, connoisseurs, whatever you
want to call them, people that are used to flavor and
rejoice in flavor, you know, and, you know, they

(01:12:56):
don't want to just accept the dumb downs, you
know, blandola, you know, they actually want to, you know, they'll drink
less, but they want to drink better. and get more connected
with where it comes from, how it was
made, the values behind it, and
to understand it. And that's what the terroir code

(01:13:18):
gives that validation of
what's in the bottle, the verification of what's in the bottle,
as well as validating what
In the tech world, you'd be called a disruptor, right? Like what you're doing is

(01:13:39):
disruptive to the natural process that exists among some
It's not perhaps the right word. The natural
process of the existing world is perhaps
that's the sort of misnomer, because it's not terribly natural. So yeah,

(01:14:00):
yeah, okay. You know, I'm Um,
you know, the big guys, I'm sure, you know, hate my guts. I know, uh, um,
you know, they didn't like, um, you know, it's their narrative,
they've paid for it. And so they don't like someone else, you
Yeah. And this, I mean, I think you hit on this, but this really feels

(01:14:22):
like, um, the brand, the whiskey, the,
the idea for, Um, the people that are really,
really invested in understanding what they're consuming in, in,
in exploration, maybe they're not looking for commodity whiskey.
Yeah, absolutely. Uh, in
2000, you weren't allowed in a distillery, you

(01:14:46):
know, you, they were off limits.
You, you couldn't go into one. And at Brooklandia, the
first thing we did was open the doors and welcome everybody in and
say, look, this is how it's made. Look, look, look, this is how it's done. You
remember, we put video cameras up and web cameras. We've got
web cameras, too, in Waterford. So you can see

(01:15:07):
what's going on. Transparency. It
goes back to that thing about terroir. We can
talk about terroir to the cows come home, and I'm sure there'll be a lot of people in
this industry that are going to co-opt that term, because
it's very easy to co-opt without actually having to do anything.

(01:15:28):
That's what our industry does. It sees something it likes, it goes, oh,
I'll have that, and they'll borrow it.
So I have no doubts that this term will be corrupted and
reduced to insignificance. That's the way this

(01:15:48):
industry tends to work. But it's
no use for me just having a tell. I've got to be
able to prove I've got it. I've got to be able to show you.
I have to be able to be transparent about it. So I have to have the
validation and the transparency to
share it. And that's what we print in the bottom of

(01:16:10):
the bottles. It's actually there in the glass, is
that creed of terroir, traceable and transparent. Because
it's, you know, real problems is all of
There's a portion of your website where you have years on

(01:16:32):
years of study, of crop
reports, because there's this projection that maybe 23 was
not a great crop year for most of the world and 24 likely
is going to be similar. Most consumers stop at
the what, right? What am I drinking? But you guys are answering, and
you said the why, but I think it goes further than the why. It's the why, it's the how, it's

(01:16:53):
the who, it's the when and the where, right? It's all of those
questions that a reporter is supposed to ask, right? To make a personal interest
story work. You effectively have warehoused
that information for any um, consumer to,
to self-serve, you know, they can, they can come and discover this information and
for the people who are that curious, who are that interested.

(01:17:17):
Right. And, and, you know, that tell our code, you know, it's
blockchain, uh, data, a lot of it, but there's
also stuff in there, which, you know, again, reinforces,
you know, fundamental. element
that this is about agriculture. That's where the
flavor comes from. It comes from that grain

(01:17:40):
and how it grew and where it grew, as it has done
for the last 12, 10,000 years. So
to ram that home, to ram it right home, you
can sit there with a glass of Rathedon or
Dunbell or Dunmore. one of the single farms, you

(01:18:00):
know, and you can listen to where that barley
grew. You can as you're drinking it, you smell it, you
can listen to where it came from. And
that is what I'm trying to do here is trying
to remind you it starts and

(01:18:22):
It's, it's, it's incredibly romantic, right? And so you're, you're, you're describing
effectively the green noise that exists within the bottle, right?
Um, the thing that is inherently soothing to a human's brain and
pushing the absolute narrative that this is produce, not product,
Only one lesser difference, uh, uh, produce.

(01:18:43):
Uh, that's what it is. Not a product. And,
you know, I love drinking whiskey outside anyhow,
you know, so for me, it's really, you know, whether
it's a riverbank or a sort of hunting lodge or, you know, I
love drinking whiskey outside or
on a bench, you know, on a beach, you know. But

(01:19:05):
I mean, no, again, it's just trying to remind
people that it starts, it
always did, it always used to start with
This product, if you were in a grocery store, this product belongs in the section with
the vegetables, not the section with the box macaroni. That's

(01:19:25):
effectively what you've got here. And I think it achieves
It's single malt whiskey that's made in Ireland because it's
the best barley in the world. Scottish double distillation. This
is, you know, this is single malt whiskey like it used to be.
I appreciate the time that you've given me and I hate to cut it here because I

(01:19:47):
have at least 20 more questions to ask. We'll
have to revisit this sometime. I've truly, truly enjoyed
it. I'll give you a couple seconds if you've got anything else that you wanted
to kick out and then we'll call it a
Thank you very much. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Very
good questions. We've now got to having

(01:20:08):
shown people the ingredients, the single
farm origins. We'll carry those on, sure. But
really now it's bringing those terroir defined
flavors together. And we've done it with
the cuvee, the Waterford cuvee. the
peated, which I think just got a double

(01:20:32):
gold John Barlicam award, and
the organic. And it just takes it into another level. There's
nothing else we can do. You know, this is, but
of course, remember, it's all getting older. This is
just the beginning. This is step two, you know, of the phase.
It's going to get older. So, so, you know,

(01:20:56):
Yeah. It's a prime opportunity to get in on effectively the ground floor
of this particular brand. And I'll have to keep my eye out for the
organic and peated. I've had the single farm and the, and the
It needs time. You've got to give it time. This
is not, you know, just think of that strict tease. You don't pay the
money and then go, woof. You know, it's about, you know, giving,

(01:21:20):
give the thing time, let it let it react to the air
to the water. And remember, we bottle these at 50. We fill,
we distill to 70. We fill the barrels at
70. Alright, so we start high, we then
you know, obviously, it falls with time, but then we reduce it
to 50 over three, four months. And

(01:21:42):
then it's up to you in your glass to
liberate that flavor with as much or as little water as
you like. Now, you know, I know, you know, in America it can be quite
hot down south. Well, fine. If you need to add a little bit
of ice, do a little bit of ice, but don't, don't anesthetize it, you
know, because you're just anesthetizing the flavor. You

(01:22:03):
know, keep the flavor cool by all means. Take water from
the fridge. And as I said, up to 50-50,
find your optimum. Depending
on your mood, depending who you're with, time of day, how long
you've got. And it just is a revelationary experience.
The whiskey changes, it transforms in front of you. I

(01:22:27):
mean, I mean, think of the bang for the buck that you get,
you know, this isn't one whiskey in a bottle. This is multi
It's an entire experience, right? It's a it's a
You get almost twice as much volume as you would do if

(01:22:51):
Right now, now your your your sales team is probably saying, hey,
stop saying that because it's going to make us sell less bottles because you're telling everybody, don't
do that. But it's
a testament to the intent of the brand is, you know, absolutely
cut it because that's how we expect it to shine. And you don't hear
too many brands that will say, yeah, you could take our 100 hundred proof

(01:23:12):
whiskey and cut it in half. And it's still going
Yeah, I know. I mean, try it just as an exercise. It's
extraordinary. I'm not saying you shouldn't, you know, that's
the way I enjoy it. You know,
a teardrop is the minimum, a teardrop is the minimum to
get those that reaction of the flavor

(01:23:33):
compound group known as the aldehydes, they react with the water.
So a teardrop is the minimum to release those flavors. After
that is really according to your personal taste.
And as I said, your mood, time of day, how
you like it. I personally don't like drinking

(01:23:57):
at 50% alcohol. I much prefer lowering
it. And so that extra addition of water at
the last minute in your glass is, you
know, think of it as a liberator. You're opening
up the flavors and you're making it

(01:24:18):
Yeah, I foresee an experiment in my future, my
very, very near future, where we're going to walk through a
drop and a drop and a drop and just keep going until we hit sort of
But I don't mean, you know, with pipettes and
all that sort of anally, you know, no, just a little jigger of
water, just add a drop. And then does

(01:24:38):
it taste a little bit more? You
know, there's there's no, you know, precise thing.
Well, that's good because I don't have I don't have a dropper. So it'll be,
I really, really appreciate the time. Thank you again, Mark, for hopping on

(01:25:03):
Let's do it again. Let's do it again. All right, man.
So thanks for tuning in for this offering from the Embellish podcast. If you
enjoyed this, please leave me a review on whatever platform that you have to
be consuming this on. Leave the comment. If possible, hit

(01:25:24):
me up on social media at Tik TOK or Instagram using embellish pod and
give me a follow. So you can keep up with what's going on here. I can be found
at www.embellishpod.com. Follow my links, accounts,