Ep. 124 - The Return of the Irish Whiskey Bonder

Transcript

Drew | Whiskey Lore (00:00.979)
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, The Interviews. I'm your host Drew Hannush, the bestselling author of Whiskey Lore's travel guide to experiencing Kentucky bourbon, experiencing Irish whiskey, and the brand new book that busts 24 of whiskey's biggest myths, Whiskey Lore Volume 1. And today I'm going to be chatting with Shane McCarthy. He is the co-founder and lead blender of Two Stacks Irish Whiskey. Shane, along with his partners, Liam Brogan and Donal McClain, launched Two Stacks back in 2020.

reviving the lost art of Irish whiskey bonding and blending and giving it a modern twist. We're to talk about the origins of the distillery or of the, we're going to talk about the origins of this enterprise and the bonding and blending. And we're going to talk about that concept of blending in Irish history and also the groundbreaking individual size packaging concept that they have come up with and their new release double barrel.

Single Grain, which is already winning awards as a single grain whiskey. Shane, welcome to the podcast.

Shane McCarthy (01:06.252)
Hi Drew, thanks for having me. yeah, really love the summary there. It sums up a lot of who we are, the co-founders and very much what we do. So it'll be great to dive in today and really look at what bonding is. Sometimes I think...

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:25.672)
Yeah.

Shane McCarthy (01:27.714)
To me, it's a known concept and to many, it's a very unknown concept. So I'm very excited to delve in on the basics of what it is we do as a bonder here on the island of Ireland and what it allows us to do for the whole whisky category.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:43.945)
Yeah. So a lot of people will probably in the U S be thinking, Oh, bottled and bond. That's just for shipping whiskey around and for getting higher quality whiskey, which there's some myths in that and some truths in that as well. Um, but when it comes to Irish bonding, I mean, when we talk about the Irish whiskey boom of the late 19th century, bonding was basically what ran the Irish whiskey industry back then. it's kind of give us a little background on.

the significance of bonding in Ireland.

Shane McCarthy (02:15.245)
Yeah, you know, and it hit the nail on the head. It was the lifeblood of distilleries and very, very fascinating time even here in the island of Ireland, know, where Bonder's were the guys that really bottled, marketed and sold the product when Irish whiskey, you know, was booming in the period you mentioned.

distillers didn't bottle their own product. You most of them were focused on making great distillate and these bonders, you know, you think of the construct of the island of Ireland, it was made up of hundreds, if not thousands of villages across this island, all of which had grocers, merchants and bonders. They were responsible for really becoming the custodians of the distillate and building the trust with the consumer. So these

local grocers as we still have today you know you have your local shops that you trust buying your your vegelet or coffee at and these

bonding houses, unfortunately fell out of fashion with the demise of Irish whiskey. And luckily today we have all but a handful of I would say incredibly high quality bonders rejuvenating and reviving this space. And to me, know, playing in this space really opens up a blank canvas on flavor profile and really a playbook on

what you can do in the Irish whiskey category. Obviously we have almost seven centuries of heritage here on the island. And with that, we've come a long way with science and technology, but still to this day, I truly feel that whiskey brands and what's in the bottle is made by the people and the peoples behind it. And just, I suppose, to bring it back a step, bonding per se basically allows you to

Shane McCarthy (04:14.777)
bring in distillates from different distilleries across the island without paying tax and excise duty. So for a distillery, the reason that perhaps you can become the lifeblood, a lot of distilleries need to wait years on end to let their whiskey come of age or of a certain age.

where bombers will step in, buy new make, buy three, four, five year old, take it in, perhaps change the maturation direction of the distillate or start to blend that DNA up with the distillery. At Two Stacks, we actually take it one step further again. We actually go in and commission mash builds. Yes, we love the DNA from the lower of where the distillery may be positioned, but we actually love to take it a little step further where

We will sometimes work with local historians to revive old heritage mash bill, particularly in peated pot still, single pot still. again, you know, even the work that you've done drew the myths that have built over time in Irish whiskey. Two Stacks play a big part in actually, yeah, busting their myths in some way and showing the world that of course Irish whiskey was peated and of course we done had many different techniques of making this beautiful distillate.

So yeah, with Bond and it allows you to not just build trust with the consumer, but build trust with the distilleries as well. They're not necessarily going to open up their warehouses and give it to anyone. So I think we have good respect and kudos in the industry over the years, you know, to go in and take over their distillery and lay down our own recipes and bring it back to our bond with our own hand selected casks. And that's something that I think hasn't been done here in the island for a very long time.

and something that I hope excites not just people in Ireland, but the whole whisky category as a whole, because I feel Irish whisky has so much more to go.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (06:16.102)
Yeah. Well, this is something that as you're speaking, I'm going, well, of course it makes sense that bonders disappeared because basically the whole Irish whiskey industry consolidated down to one company. And when you have one company, you have no need for bonders because the one company can do everything. So

Shane McCarthy (06:29.389)
Yep.

Shane McCarthy (06:35.061)
Yeah, and that's it.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (06:36.668)
What was it that really kind of opened the door back to this concept? I mean, were you on the forefront of this return to bonding or was it already starting to come back?

Shane McCarthy (06:45.205)
No, there was a handful of great bombers that still exist today. You might be aware of JJ Corey on the west coast of the island.

But some of the independent ones, W.D. O'Connell, but also one that has really survived the test of time. And maybe isn't telling the story. Redbreast was once a bonder. The Spot Range is Mitchell's. These were bonding houses. So it really depends how people want to tell their story. And maybe they've come such a long way in their brand journey that it's somewhat been forgotten about. But these guys, that's their graph.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (07:12.712)
Mm.

Shane McCarthy (07:25.583)
That's what made the brand what it is today. So, you know, it's not up to us to tell their story, but we certainly are very proud of how we do things and the bonded story and how it is entangled in everything that Irish whiskey is still today.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (07:41.747)
Yeah. Well, what is John Tealings impact on all of this? Because, you know, this, it seems they call him the, the godfather of Irish whiskey. And, I love that he doesn't drink. That's, that's a fun little twist on that. But, cause you're working with, with John Tealings, company right now. And so kind of give a little background on how he helped sort of change this world so that bonding could happen again.

Shane McCarthy (07:56.287)
Yeah.

Shane McCarthy (08:10.421)
Yeah, think so. Like I would say John maybe has changed more the direction of independent bottling more so than bonding. But we work very closely with John.

They're 15 minutes down the road from us and then you know they they open up their lab houses for those that that have the confidence to go in and and to you know play about with the distillates come up with their own blends and the big thing that I think John offered was a variation They went heavy in single grain in year one That's their their main capacity their bread and butter is single grain production but then they also done double astil triple astil peated single pot still all the different pillars of the

And what that opens the door to is massive variation in flavor that you can play around with and profiles. At the same time, you're still dealing with the same distillate, and we would very much have the matter of good distillate in, good distillate out. And when you really geek out in different distilleries, I know you have Drew, sometimes you can actually taste and become aware of.

distilled itself, know, or some great distilleries really hone in on yeast profiles. And it does carry through and I've seen it time and time again. as a bonder, you know, definitely Great Northern have allowed that space to open up by providing the secondary market, almost like the is then M.G.P. of the United States. They are the kind of secondary provider into the bourbon space. G &D have done that. But to the extent that also there's a lot of

Drew | Whiskey Lore (09:19.602)
Mm.

Shane McCarthy (09:48.072)
mid-sized distilleries that are starting to come into this space. And when I say the categories evolving so quickly and fast, even this year is much different than what it was last year or the year before. You've got people coming in offering their secondary single malt or their profile, which again, just allows the bonded on indie bottling space to become more more interesting. as a service, John Therrien, I think his biggest influence was really cracking that void.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (10:03.848)
Mm.

Shane McCarthy (10:17.935)
in 1987 with Cooley Distillery. And it's interesting because he'll tell you straight up, it was a failure. Someone that can't sell their whiskey for 20 years, it's a complete failure. It did turn into a success story and it's funny because it's almost got like a cult following now, these aged kind of tropical Cooley's.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (10:26.28)
You

Drew | Whiskey Lore (10:30.64)
Yeah.

Shane McCarthy (10:44.353)
that have this really renowned flavor profile that people seek out and go after. But that is old and rare that really couldn't have existed or didn't exist due to the monopolization of the industry. And that's where the story's being rewritten. for me,

There's similarities, but there's big differences in bonding and Indy. You can be an Indy bottler, but you don't need to have your own bonded facility in warehouse. So it limits you to, know, for us, we have over 15 different distilleries under our warehouse with our own commission mash bills, loads of funky experiment metal casks. You know, we have our own bottle in line, can in line. So it gives a real one stop shop of the end consumer and almost creates a,

service like the old bonders perhaps would have done where you have bars or restaurants that want a deep sherry whiskey at this price point. you say, okay, let's go in and let's have a look at what we have here. Or I want something that's a 90-10 blend, but it needs to this really low price point. you say, okay, well, let's look at what we have here. And that to me is perhaps where bonding can play very strongly as a service to the market.

that's what we try and do and have done, I think, very well over the last few years.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (12:09.544)
So you have built up a lot of relationships, I'm guessing with distillers across the island because boy talk about going from one distillery to having two distilleries to now having, you know, I mean, and

Shane McCarthy (12:20.525)
Yeah, it's interesting, Jerry. I think five years ago, maybe even more, 6, 7, some of these distilleries were quite protectionist around their brand, their distillate.

Again, some of maybe didn't delve deep into mature categories such as Scotch or bourbon, but you look at these spaces and how the indie bottlers are the biggest brands or they actually create the category. And I think the last few years, the theories have woken up to how good these

spaces within the category can be for them if they are really good trusted indie bottlers or bonders. So, you know, even for us the last few years, you've noticed that they approach us rather than the other way around where, you know, you would have had to build that rapport. But it is also on the brand itself to build that trust with the consumer, you know, that then the distillery will...

I suppose they'll allow you or approach you to start using their distillate because of course they're thinking like I can do this myself with what why do I need a indie bottler to put a label on it. But it's a fascinating space and it's still being written here in Ireland. There's not a lot of if you look at the history there isn't a lot of text on the indie bottling plays in the Irish whiskey history over the centuries. Definitely in Scotch.

and they have some of the biggest brands in the world are indie bottlers. But yeah, that's where I think it's becoming really interesting here. And to me, it's a no brainer for distilleries to align themselves with really strong indie bottling brands and bonders to allow additional lines of service and cashflow and lifeblood into their distillery themselves. So yeah, it's definitely a...

Shane McCarthy (14:20.447)
An interesting time, but also I think a very innovative time as well here in the island.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (14:28.156)
first time I heard about you guys was I had gone to great Northern distillery and had the big tour around the plant there. And then the next distillery I went to, passed right through your town there and headed down to see, Brendan Carty at Culloan. And boy talk about two different worlds, this big industrial like, you know, old brewery that's a now a, a distillery serving out.

whiskey all across the island and then to this little shed. This, you know, this, this, of this whiskey that I'm starting to see come into the U S is, is coming from you had a hand in that talk about, how you got started with Brendan in terms of, a distillery.

Shane McCarthy (15:15.211)
Yeah, Cologne Distillery. So Liam and I, the co-founders of Two Stacks are also co-founders of Cologne Distillery. And Brendan and I actually have been very good friends since we were 10 years of age. we grew up together, went to school together. Liam and I went to college together as well, actually in Belfast. yeah, we've been long-term friends. And Brendan is a chartered architect by trade.

I myself have a more finance economics background, but all of it overlaps. you know, and Breton was coming back from Australia and came across some interesting kind of global distilleries and inspiration in, I suppose, the architectural world, but also perhaps a sense of lost history in the area.

You know, he was a big whiskey advocate, loved whiskey, everything about it. But I think the thing with Cologne and why it's so different is it almost didn't follow the blueprint of...

If you want to be a distiller, you know, this is what you do. You go to heart, heart, you do this, you do this. Brenton completely self-taught, self, you know, learned and bought from people and, know, everywhere from the United States to Tasmania. And, you know, he had this vision of building his own distillery. So Liam and I got behind that business plan with him. And, you know, between the three of us, we we we got a new farmhouse.

in the Nurean Moorne area, beautiful part just behind me here where I'm, led myself and yeah, built this distillery on a shoestring I would say. You know, everything was done out of blood, sweat and tears and...

Shane McCarthy (17:10.571)
you know, some, even for us, even thinking back, it's crazy the work that went into it. And people, you know, people over the years come up visiting and are like, you know, I want to replicate what Claude's doing and I want to do this. And it's like, okay, you know, this is how you, but if you do not have that love and passion and heart, you will not be able to replicate what Breton does up that furry hill or Kilfagan as it's known.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (17:36.371)
He, he, he, he is a ball of energy. When I, met with him and then I was up the next night at, in Belfast and they were launching a whiskey for McConnell's and he was up there late at night. They were doing the, whiskey tasting and, it's like, does this guy ever sleep?

Shane McCarthy (17:57.326)
Yeah, yeah. And know, Cologne, if you look at it as a whole and even what we're speaking about in the kind of some of the lost history or the revival or the Renaissance, whoever we want to put linguistics against it. Brendan has really built this distillery on how it would have been done. The flame fire distillation, worm tubs, wild fermentation, know, flaring fauna, know, wild yeast.

like you do not see that hardly anywhere in the world and to the kudos that know Klon this year picked up

best craft distillery at the World Whiskey Awards for such a young distillery. And we do get told sometimes, do you ever stop and pause and say, geez, we've done all right, but you can't really take the accelerator off whenever you're, and especially in current climates and environments, you're always a bit nervous and you just want to push that bit further and you want to learn a bit more, you want to accelerate a bit more.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (18:41.276)
Yeah.

Shane McCarthy (18:57.181)
And to the degree of the whole new partnership in the United States, that in itself kind of, I wouldn't say it fell on our lap, it certainly didn't. But we have this great new partner with Foley, Family Wine and Spirits, and Southern Wine and Glazier is one of the main distributors. And you think, well, aren't they the same guys that do Jemisin and some of the biggest brands in the world?

Yes, they do. But, these guys didn't just stop at us for no reason. You know, I think they've seen a lot of the hard work, but also the path that we were writing. And it's almost like a David and Goliath story to a degree, find, where you can change the path of history. You can change a whole category. If you have full integrity and you're doing things for the right reasons, people will pick up that authenticity.

And I think that's where Cologne and Two Stacks have really won the day.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (19:54.149)
all coming from this little white shed and in the hills down the the one track road.

Shane McCarthy (19:57.03)
Yeah, well, we've moved the barrels out of the side room and we put a third still in now so we can make almost two barrels a week now rather than one. We're really pumping.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (20:08.16)
Wow.

Yeah, that is awesome, that is awesome. So how did two stacks evolve out of this?

Shane McCarthy (20:13.621)
Yeah.

So Two Stacks, Liam and I have been in the business for about a decade and the ethos hasn't really changed. It is 10 years to this day where we both left quite coveted careers. Liam has an accounting background and we really wanted to build something similar to Brendan from home. And the ethos was to show the world a true taste of Ireland and to give that true taste of Ireland worldwide.

So we built a platform working with all these independent breweries, cideries, distilleries. There wasn't many distilleries 10 years ago. So it was somewhat following the craft beer boom and building these relationships with the new distilleries and the breweries. And to us, it just kind of opened up our eyes and doors of many of these indie businesses where family run, family and friends.

built in hard work and graft and grit. And as we evolved and we were consolidating these amazing products into shipments and building new supply chains around the world. And we were in some of these areas where open arms, we were sending containers to Japan, Middle East. They were like.

Well, know, Ireland just isn't, you know, perhaps Guinness and and Jemison and Bailey's. There's there's many more layers to it. you know, Brand Ireland has has a good trust in itself for food and beverage. So it was really supplying all these different layers and facets to the market. But, you know.

Shane McCarthy (21:50.304)
then getting deeper into the whiskey space. And we were asked by a couple of big customers of white labels and this and that. And even when we were managing these brands, sometimes there was a ceiling to how much you could do with them or how far you could take them. And, know, you could see that there was an open market in this and this. So it really was a natural evolution to jump into the indie bottling space. And when we built Cologne, our first few casts were actually at Cologne's wreck house.

we brought in these really mad kind of funky apricot brandy casks and we started doing some maturation plays and whatnot and yeah then we just started building our own brand.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (22:25.981)
Mm.

Shane McCarthy (22:34.859)
What we thought would really encompass who we were, you know, and hopefully when you look at it, you know, it's like colorful, contemporary, minimal. And, you know, our pillars ourselves are all about innovation, creativity. And we had this blank space to start with. And so Two Stacks, the name itself is derived from Olden Dock Distillery, which was a powerhouse, a massive distillery just down the road. So the logo is abstract.

for the two biggest chimney stacks at Olden Dock Distillery and the Northern Star that seafarers would have used to navigate their way into the island of Ireland. that was a nice way of looking at the heritage but also a contemporary way of us writing our own chapter. There are brands that do an amazing job at rewriting maybe lost brand history and they do it very well but for us we very much wanted to write our own chapter and do it in our own way and the right way. So holding our

Drew | Whiskey Lore (23:07.375)
Shane McCarthy (23:34.896)
to account all the time as well and never putting bad whiskey to market hopefully. So yeah, that was 2020 where we launched it with, we actually had a partner in the USA and locally. And with that, know, maybe not to jump too quickly onto the vessel piece, but then we kind of accidentally then fell into creating a whole new category, you might say, for how products and whiskey come to market.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (24:03.826)
So what is your setup there? you basically, cause we think of Bondur, I imagine that you are sourcing barrels from all around and are you bringing them in fully aged or are you aging them out yourself to a certain extent? How is that set up?

Shane McCarthy (24:23.149)
Yeah, it's a mixture of both, Drew. So we've got a new make one year old, two year old, the whole way up to old and rare 33 year olds, single casks at the warehouse. And it's really a balance in some times of, as much as love to bring it all in as new make and at a lower price point, you're sitting on a lot of stock there. with our volume products, we'll actually bring in the finished blend that we've done with Great Northern.

and we'd bottle it up or can it up in the facility and then send it out to our customers. But a lot of the more small batch stuff is all kind of hand managed at the bonded warehouse and brought in at certain, I think probably anything of age. I would say 80 % to 90 % doesn't get past the door without having.

having an idea of a crazy maturation or a finish or something new. So we do like to play around with the stuff that's coming into the bond.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (25:23.368)
Yeah. Well, you have, when I hear all of this, I, I hear that you have these great experiments, but then you also have a flagship. So talk about how much of your work is sort of play in these different kind of creative, spaces versus your signature blend that you started with. how did you, how did you figure to

divide your time between those.

Shane McCarthy (25:53.92)
Yeah, I think it's about 60-40, which is good. Like if you were following us on our socials, you would think that we were having fun and playing all the time. But it's actually the core products that allow.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (26:04.902)
Ha ha ha.

Shane McCarthy (26:11.721)
us to experiment and to explore lots of new products. you know, every single week we're either doing a new single cast product for a customer or we're working on our own, you know, limited release for the website or, you know, we're, blending up new distillates from indie distillers for pillars of creation project or, you know, there's,

There's a lot of spinning plates at the one time, but in terms of like what is churning and constantly going would be the core products and the trusted products such as Signature Blend and Single Grain. And then, you know, they just hit the market well where they're high quality and good price point.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (26:50.982)
Yeah. And you do. And so you're really looking for consistency in those particular products.

Shane McCarthy (26:55.771)
for sure. You know, we'll have full lab analysis every time to actually hit consistency, whereas the other stuff and that's where the variation really comes in in bonding where you can do both. You know, you hit the high quality consistency and you do volume and scale out to market. Whereas each batch, it might be, you know, a seven year old pot still in red ice wine next year. It's an eight year old next year to nine year old. Different variations every time.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (27:19.772)
Well, a lot of your reputation is gonna hinge on that signature blend when you put it out. So if this is the thing that everybody gonna probably be first exposed to, describe that process of trying to create a whiskey like that.

Shane McCarthy (27:34.866)
And yeah, for sure. And you know, when, when we first were bringing the brand to market and looking at the category and not so much how we could do things definitely, but almost, you know, bust a few myths if you want to coin the term.

And you know, the signature blend is a five part blend. So we spent a long time with Brian Watts, the old great Norden distiller at the time. And we wanted to bring together a scalable product, but also heavily flavor forward.

but also included peated malt, double distilled malt, know, pieces of history that Irish whiskey is not known for. And that's not the shy away from the triple distilled category. You know, we love it. It's a great way of making whiskey and there's lots of great brands doing it very well, but we wanted to show the other side of the coin that Irish whiskey is also. So with a signature blend, it's a very delicate blend of four different distillates, three different capsules.

grass types. I call it the 5-4-3-2-1. So it's a five part blend with four different distillates, three different blends, two great products, one great taste.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (28:52.04)
Very nice. Yeah. That's the thing that has surprised me in digging in and doing my research. I, in my, uh, whiskey lore volume one book, end on telling the Bush mills story. And I was shocked when I went back through old newspapers and found that in the 18 tens, they were making peated whiskey that they were a peated.

Shane McCarthy (29:14.189)
I'm glad you said that and I didn't. Yes they were. Yes they were.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (29:21.03)
Yeah. So, I mean, this was just a, I mean, you used the fuel source that was around. So, you know, if you, if you didn't get coal shipped in from somewhere and you weren't near the coast, but the amazing thing to me about that story is that they were on the coast, but they were still using.

Shane McCarthy (29:35.936)
Of course they were and that comes back to what story do you want to tell and especially as a heritage brand you've got a lot of great great stories to tell so it's which one do you want to double down on but you know to me I don't think there's a need to you know sweep that under the carpet I think we should be very proud of all of the different areas and all the different profiles that used to be here on the island so

Yeah, definitely with the Signature Blend, you're going to get a really beautiful...

Irish blend, you know, a lot of people are surprised. They're like, I don't, I don't drink pitted whiskey. If you didn't tell them, most people wouldn't know what's in there. You know, we give a full percentage breakdown. There's only 2 % Pete in there. It's almost like a seasoning. It helps lengthen and finish that whiskey. And so we spent a long time just playing about dialing things back and forth to create this five part blend. And it won a word whiskey award in 2020.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (30:20.712)
Mmm.

Shane McCarthy (30:34.065)
And again, being a new brand to market, it's like, but how do we show the world this new chapter of Irish whiskey? And it comes down to one thing in my thought process, was one thing.

is price psychology. People will not pick up in volume a $30 to $45 bottle if it's a new brand, but they won't think twice about throwing $5 at a drama they can't.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (31:04.167)
Yeah.

Shane McCarthy (31:04.173)
So that was the whole reason for looking at the history of the miniature bottle, the baby pars, you know, was 71 mils, was in fluid ounces, it was all about people taking their luxury nip on the cruise ships to holidays. So it's a really nice kudos I think that it has evolved from glass bottles to miniature can.

in Ireland again, we were the pioneers of doing this the same way that baby powers, yes, it may be replicated and copied many times over, but again, we were the first to continue that scripture of the first Irish whiskey in a can. And yeah, you know, it probably evolved out of even being heavy in the craft beer movement of things moving the can and people trusting the can vessel again.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (31:50.193)
Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's funny because my first experience with your dram and it can, and we'll kind of describe what that, what that is. Cause, some people may not have seen that can yet. I mean, it is a little miniature can, how many ounces is, or how many,

Shane McCarthy (32:08.907)
Yeah, it's 100 mils, so what is that about? Three, two, three ounces.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (32:10.951)
Okay.

Okay. Yeah. So funny because I was actually in Louisville, Kentucky, and I was chatting with somebody and they said, have you had two stacks before? And I said, no. And they said, I got a little mini can here. Here. should try it. And my instinct was open it and then take a big.

Shane McCarthy (32:30.369)
Yeah, right.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (32:37.052)
glug of it. It's like you're used to drinking a beer or something that is a lighter alcohol out of one of those cans. And it's just kind of a, it puts you in a, in a precarious position where you're guzzling this, this whiskey because the perception isn't there. I mean, it probably took a little bit of getting used to for a lot of people to be, you know, sipping out of, out of a can like that.

Shane McCarthy (33:03.733)
Yeah, it's funny, because people sometimes do mix it up with a ready to drink and

Interestingly, I think we were actually ahead of that ready to drink curve and boom. Whereas it is now very relevant and everywhere. So the cans have become part of that movement. yeah, you're 100 percent sometimes people say, oh, that's straight whiskey, you know. But in the same breath, you know, there are some really high quality cocktail brands that do straight Negronis at like 38 or 34. And our old fashions are real high ABV. So, you know, if

The whole concept, as you said, was, here, give it a try. And it's all about passing that vessel, passing that product to new people to get liquid and lips and be like, I haven't tried an Irish whiskey like that before. That's pretty good. So it's a great recruitment vessel into Irish whiskey, people that haven't tried it before, but also to showcase that there is many more layers to the category.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (33:43.122)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (34:03.09)
There's a mindset that when I first saw it, thought, wait a second. I come from a time period where I remember walking into a fast food restaurant and sometimes ordering like a seven up Sprite, something like that. And then all of a sudden it tasted like the the vessel that it came out of. So talk about how...

Shane McCarthy (34:24.395)
Yeah,

Drew | Whiskey Lore (34:30.02)
you keep this this metal from interacting with the flavor of the whiskey.

Shane McCarthy (34:35.285)
Yeah, that's it. And coming back to even fresh beer, know, cans have evolved and as I said, at the start, technology and science has evolved. these are the cans of double layer FDA approved. So the whiskey doesn't interact in any way ever with the can. And we would argue very strongly that it is a much better vessel than a miniature bottle. It doesn't break. There's less light exposure. There's less oxygen in the vessel. So when your whiskey is inside one of these, they're little miniature flasks, you know, and recycling.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (35:03.303)
Yeah.

Shane McCarthy (35:05.359)
flasks almost and you know for a couple of bucks you're picking up a really top quality whiskey and you know was a delicate, very delicate space to play in because if we didn't get this right, if the whiskey wasn't high quality, if the brand wasn't on point, you were just gonna completely from the get-go destroy the category so you know and for us it's just grown legs and we're pushing the premiumization of it. We actually do single casks with a handful of cans now because and we've really

that people just want to try maybe a 21 year old single cask and they don't mind paying 20 pound for it. They don't maybe want to pay 120 pound for the full bottle. So we're actually seeing a big surge towards the cans more more in the current environment.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (35:51.475)
I was going say with many bottles or even with regular bottles, you have the problem of, sunlight and other things that can deteriorate your, your whiskey. And so in that can, you're kind of sealing it in a space that it, it doesn't get all of those kinds of influences.

Shane McCarthy (36:08.343)
That's it. And until you're ready, you know, like, you know, whether you're out hiking all day or, know, dirty, gritty environments, I mean, you just want to sit down, relax. And in the moment, like any good whiskey experience by far camping, that's when you crack it.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (36:23.046)
Yeah. Well, and you can still pour it your favorite Glen Karen if you want to.

Shane McCarthy (36:26.477)
There you go. Yeah, I do that. Yeah, I'm so classy that I still pour it in a glass. A lot of time I'll have little camping cups and you'll still pour it in the cup. The same way with, I always come back to the beer, fresh cans of beer, I'll still pour it in my beer glass. Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (36:45.604)
Mm-hmm. Well, if you have a, the latest whiskey that you've released is called Double Barrel Single Grain. And let's talk about the single grain category and kind of what the perception has been about single grain and what you guys are bringing to single grain.

Shane McCarthy (37:05.407)
Yeah, so single grain, you know, I think to a large extent has been globally represented in volume in a large way by big scotch brands, you might say. And over the decades, I think it's probably deteriorated the trust in the category just with the quality that was coming to market.

you know, that in itself almost sometimes pushes people a little bit away from the category. So again, for us, was doors wide open. Let's show them how great single grain is. As a category, it's so close to bourbon. know, it's a slightly, especially our single grain, doesn't get enough kudos. I almost feel we should protect our single grain as a category in itself versus the rest of some single grain that goes out to market because

we're making incredible single grain. A lot of it goes to the Asian markets now. You look at some of the best Japanese single grains, actually they're coming from Ireland. again, it comes back to John Thelian and his team are laying down some of this incredible single grain. And for us,

Drew | Whiskey Lore (38:10.079)
Hehehehe

Shane McCarthy (38:21.299)
It was to look at the category and to bring it to the highest quality possible, but also at a very accessible price point. So our new product today, USA, is the Double Barrel, which is a bourbon sherry finish. So it just rounds out that nice sweetness and accessibility.

We find at trade shows when we have got like a whole lineup of our products, people love the single grain the most. It's the most accessible, just easy drinking. I don't know if I want to use the word smooth, but it just trickles down the throat. I prefer to use sometimes the word balanced, but it's an incredibly balanced whiskey. And yeah, it picked up best single grain, Irish single grain at the World Whiskey Awards this year, which was a really nice kudos.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (38:59.911)
Yeah.

Shane McCarthy (39:11.055)
to what we've developed.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (39:14.93)
Well, for the bourbon fan who's looking for something to jump into Irish whiskey, I, I find this very interesting because if in the U S we talk about mash bills all the time and we'll hear corn whiskey over here over in Ireland, we're hearing single grain. In reality, they're sort of the same thing.

Shane McCarthy (39:37.294)
100 % are, you know, it's funny. I was down with, with a great Northern a couple of months ago and John Teeling was saying the exact same thing. He's like,

It's the same thing. He's like, single crane is bourbon. He's like, I'm like, yeah, technically it's very, very similar. And, know, for anyone that's a big bourbon drinker or looking for something new and exciting from Ireland, you can not go wrong with opening or cracking the double barrel because yeah, the whole profile and it's interesting. You know, we could go off in a whole tangent here and mix mash bills, but I do feel the United States really and kept that story alive.

you know after the single pot still category in Ireland you know was really down to one or two brands and it was great to see that the bourbon category still geeks out on it and loves and adores you know how important it is in texture and profile of a distillate along with yeast and machinery so you know with our single grain it's a 94 we call it corn maize same thing just different different terminal

Drew | Whiskey Lore (40:43.453)
Yeah.

Shane McCarthy (40:46.465)
different words, know, trunk, boot, all that good stuff.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (40:49.468)
Yeah. Well, you know, you know, the reason why, it's so confusing as I find this in my history research is that in Europe and the UK, they were basically calling, malted barley corn. it was corn was a grain term. wasn't necessarily a maze. And so that's why it gets really confusing when you get overseas.

Shane McCarthy (41:12.289)
That was it. It really does. I mean, you go back through the historical texts and you say, well, corn, and then it's like, well, know, cereals and grain and what is it we're working with here? And that's where it gets so fascinating. And again, not to geek out too much on it, but when we do our heritage mashpills, we love to look at heritage grains that were maybe lost when, you know, the 1800s. What was used at that time? And, you know, the kind of Marsala. And there's some great distilleries like Blackwater.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (41:21.992)
Ha ha.

Shane McCarthy (41:41.28)
and other guys that are really geeking out and going deep into maybe the lost grains. So yeah, I suppose, yeah, in more general terms, you can see how the mass market gets lost if you start to say, it's the same thing or corn and maize and yeah, I definitely hear you in that one. But as a whole, they are very similar whiskies.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (42:08.368)
I think the thing that I would point out is that I think about, I bought a bottle of Mellow Corn, which is a corn whiskey that's aged in used barrels here in the U.S. And I don't necessarily take that as a whiskey to drink for flavor, to drink straight. It's a mixer, really, more than anything. And I think that's sort of the thing with the reputation of corn whiskey in the United States.

is that it is much more of something that you're either mixing or as, uh, uh, as, as Al Young from, uh, four roses said back a long time ago, when they came up with a whiskey called benchmark, was, it was to get the job done. That was his, his friendly way of saying, you know, it's for those people who just want to get the buzz and they're not necessarily worried about, about the flavor. This is a.

whiskey that I think if you put the words corn whiskey on it, it kind of would give the wrong impression that it really does with your mixture of, using, bourbon casks and using these Oloroso sherry casks is really bringing.

Shane McCarthy (43:13.367)
Sherry Chass, some multi-party in there. Yeah, think that the level of quality is certainly at a very high level with this whiskey.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (43:23.324)
Yeah, so it's very much a flavor focus on this and that, mean, I'm sure people could use this as a mixer, but the can actually kind of pushes you away from the idea of using it as a mixer. put it it front and center on the idea of doing that, that tasting. So talk about how you source your barrels then for the Oloroso and bourbon. Are you using first fill ex bourbon barrels?

Shane McCarthy (43:35.101)
Yeah, yeah, just tried straight.

Shane McCarthy (43:49.282)
So Morty is first fill, yeah, ex-Burban. And I think we're, what are we, six years in now. So what has tended to happen with this product as well, Drew, is you'll notice with two stacks, it's a lot of it's non-age statement.

But really what you have in front of here is probably close to a six year old. And so whenever we were doing stuff with Great Northern to get the best maturation, they were bringing in first fill. They were bringing in the best of the best barrels. So as it's evolved, sometimes you might move into second fill, but we've never went further than that. And so I think that is what really adds to the flavor profile here where people

Drew | Whiskey Lore (44:29.096)
Mm-hmm.

Shane McCarthy (44:34.881)
maybe look at it as this young new single grain whisky whereas when you go into the depths of the product you know it's first full of bourbons and shirries and it's up to six years of age before they're disgorged and then bald.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (44:52.379)
So are you going from a bourbon barrel and then putting it into a sherry barrel or are you vatting them together as separate entities?

Shane McCarthy (45:01.549)
So yeah, that's it. It's actually going from Bourbon into Shuri. And it's in there for, I think, 18, sometimes further than 18 months. But...

Drew | Whiskey Lore (45:06.287)
Okay.

Shane McCarthy (45:14.337)
Because the products become so popular, it's hard to keep an exact gauge. Sometimes it'll be 24 months, but what you're getting always is the consistent quality and that profile consistently. But as it's evolved, and we've even noticed it with our signature blends, we've been making this for, if you think through nearly four or five years, when Great Northern only really had four or five-year-old whisky. So even their tendin' to...

keep the same commercials but give you a way more mature spirit and it just adds that extra depth to the spirit when you go back to it. yeah, so it's a finish off Adoroso on the bourbon.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (45:59.909)
Okay. When I started going through and doing tasting notes on this, I, it really, I had to go back and remind myself that this is a corn whiskey because it doesn't remind me of a corn whiskey that much. really reminds me much more of what you get out of, Scotches and some more of the, maybe the stuff that you would get out of Cooley back, back in the day, a lot of fruit, notes coming through on it. get a lot of pear notes on the, on the nose.

Shane McCarthy (46:26.869)
Yeah, definitely. It's quite light and floral as well. And again, that's why I would say in terms of approachable whiskey, it's a really nice, light, elegant, sippable whiskey.

We find a lot of the female audience actually really enjoy this as their preferred whiskey in our lineup at trade shows or the start of their two stacks journey is what I like to call it. Whereas I'm probably at the heavy Pete.

complex mash build stage of my journey. But I really feel that this is such a great product for, especially for people that are maybe just starting their journey or sometimes you go full circle and you come back and you go, I just want a real trusted good whiskey. And that's the thing.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (47:21.02)
Yeah. It, it, what catches me is at the end, it's very much a apple and grapefruit, which was kind of an interesting note.

Shane McCarthy (47:28.939)
Yeah, grape through the pear. Yeah, yeah. I get the same when I sip on it. And it's not kind of, you know, the finish and the sweetness just trickles down really easily and almost moreish as well where you kind of go, I'll have another little sip.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (47:47.259)
Yeah. Yeah. So this is one of those things where you kind of have the behind the scenes on this. Cause you have tasted this through its maturation. Where do you think that that grapefruit note is coming in from? Is it coming from the distillate? Is it coming from the one of the barrel types?

Shane McCarthy (48:04.855)
I think it's the Marion of the bourbon and sherry is where I would say we were pushing that profile per se of the real grapefruit. And you get the kind of vanillas of the bourbon, but then you get the allorosso sweetness and the kind of figs and raisins and blend them both together and you get really beautiful fruit forward notes.

balance out elegantly and just give this nice finish on the green. yeah, that like we've done bourbon and sherry and a couple of other styles of whiskeys, we've done it with our malt, we've done it with pot still it goes really well as well, I would say. But yeah, they, you know, I'm coming back to good distillate and good distillate, like the single grain distillate itself is really high quality. So I find it such a good distillate to work with.

in a blank profile, especially with casks. can be really high quality, single grain can be the perfect distillate to start working with.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (49:09.65)
So I have to ask, is Ireland going to try to market turf instead of peat? That's what I found as I was going around the island was that some people were like, we should just call it turf because that's what we already call it. And the Scott's already kind of have peat settled on their end.

Shane McCarthy (49:27.573)
Yeah, we've done it. I think we've done it with one of our Cologne. We've it out as Turf. It's not a technical term in any way yet. I think Meckel distillery and Blackwater have a Turf addition.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (49:36.495)
Yeah.

Shane McCarthy (49:42.36)
true to its place. for me, it's truth on the label. Yeah, we can get technical on it and policy and all of that good stuff. But I think the authentic brands will put it on the label. I don't know if we will push it as far to make it a whole category. We have...

or peated malt, so we just said, you know, peated single malt. But yeah, true to place, probably should say turf. In the same breath, I don't know if it will explode too much. There's a lot of talk around, you know, the bogs and turf bogs and being quite protected. So, you know, to find these beautiful turfed whiskeys, they're gems, you know, they're definitely worth seeking out if you can find the distilleries that are doing whisky in that way.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (50:08.39)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (50:30.194)
So you now have distribution pretty clearly into the U S through Foley. you have to basically flagship whiskies now that are flowing into, but how hard is it for us to access in the U S, the other types of spirits that you're creating? see a Culloan on the, on the shelves. are the variations of two stacks going to be out there?

Shane McCarthy (50:54.859)
Yeah, hopefully exciting chapters to come, maybe even as close as the end of this year or early next year. I think the big reason for that is the Foley team really go after things with purpose and are incredible.

strategically. they brought in a guy Andy Wesley, know, one of the, I think only 16 master, masters of whiskey in the world. He's based out of Chicago. Andy was actually over with us only a couple of weeks ago and he went through the cask logs, the single cask. He was up with Cologne, spent a full day with us and, you know, blew his mind completely. We just sat and geeked out and whiskey all day. was a really fun time.

he is actually going to be specifically managing the single casks and maybe more the, you might say, know, the next step of whiskey or the, you know, the, I don't want to say, you know, the less accessible, but, know, perhaps ones that are just more limited releases, a little bit more complex, a little bit more storytelling and the depth of the distillate and the mash pills.

what it entails to make it. So 100 % you're going to see a lot more and probably to the extent that it'll be exclusive for the United States market. So, Andy took away some really, really interesting stuff. So for me, if we're going to bring anything, it's going to be top draw. And so it's probably going to be as good as what you get domestically or even a step above again. So excited to actually start

that journey and he's going to be managing that so yeah hopefully you're going to see some really interesting not just two stacks but single barrel cologne releases which I think the world needs to get more of.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (52:56.56)
Nice. Yes, absolutely. Well, Shane, thank you so much for spending time today and talking through your evolution and the evolution of bonding and giving people a sense of what that bottle of two stacks they see on their shelf. You know, the Irish whiskey category is growing here in the U S our shelves are getting bigger. It's not just this little section next to the Scotch section anymore. It's actually kind of getting legs of its own at this point, which is fantastic because there are some really great

Shane McCarthy (53:22.103)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (53:25.404)
whiskey is being made in Ireland right now. and I think that the term Irish whiskey being so dominated by one brand for so long, think it is very important that people get a wider sense of what Irish whiskey really means.

Shane McCarthy (53:44.011)
Yeah, couldn't agree more Drew. Again, thanks for giving me the time to chat with you and hopefully we'll meet up soon either here in Ireland or across the water in the USA. But it's always a pleasure and big, big fan of a lot of the books that you've written. yeah, look forward to seeing more of that come to market and listening in.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (54:04.572)
Thank you so much. Cheers.

Shane McCarthy (54:06.68)
Cheers, drink.