Ep. 78 - Reviving a Historic Grain and Going All In On Single Pot Still Irish Whiskey

Transcript

Drew (00:00:09):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, Drew Hamish, the Amazon bestselling author of Whiskey Lord's Travel Guide to Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon. And today I have, as my guest, someone that I got to visit with when I was doing my big drive around the island of Ireland and seeing all those distilleries. And this was about three quarters of the way through the trip into a town that I've been to before and really loved visiting the first time. So it was great to get back and actually this time learn a little bit about whiskey. So I have with me the founder and CEO of Clo Hill Distillery, Michael Scully. Michael, welcome to the show.

Michael (00:00:52):
Thank you, Drew. It's a pleasure to be on and meet with you again.

Drew (00:00:55):
When I was planning all of these distilleries out, I had this big long spreadsheet and I was trying to find a contact at each place. And I was actually traveling, I think in in Florida or somewhere, and I got a big long email and it said, Here's all the stuff we wanna do with you when you show up. And I thought, Wow, this is this is even better than I could have hoped for, which was to drive me out to see where you're actually growing your barley. Which we're gonna talk a bit about that, about the barley strain, because that's an interesting subject as well, as well as the place that you're growing it, because that is related to your family. So, and then we'll talk about the whiskey and we'll do a tasting on the whiskey as well, and a little bit about the history of Colonial Hill, which has quite a history in and of itself. So thank you for unwinding and unpacking all of this stuff for us today and getting us more familiar with your distillery and, and the town.

Michael (00:01:53):
Great. Looking forward to having the chat.

Drew (00:01:56):
So let's start out with the farm, because when I arrived, that was the first thing we did. We got into your vehicle and we went out and visited this gorgeous plot of land, which is right on the coast. You don't realize when you're at the distillery how close you really are to the Atlantic Ocean. So talk about that farm, how long it's been in your family and what drove your interest in bringing distilling into the equation.

Michael (00:02:26):
Yeah, I I, I'm very fortunate to be the eighth generation of the Scullys on the family firm. It goes right back to to what I called Rick Scully, who as the far that's the farthest back, we, we can trace in the family history. And we believe that he came as a tenant, a poor tenant farmer in the year 1647 to the farm. So that's before Cromwell came to Ireland. That's a long

Drew (00:02:53):
<Laugh>

Michael (00:02:54):
375 years ago, Drew. And so in the eight generation Scully to farm on the farm, my son Sean, who who now works in the in the business in Oregon, in the us in the, the whiskey business. Sean is ninth generation. So it's a proud tradition that we hope to continue. It's a, it's an amazing place, fabulous place to grow up in. Fabulous place to live surrounded by history, very maritime. We're out on a peninsula on the southwestern coast of Ireland, and in fact our warehouse of whiskey, but Ation warehouse is on the family farm as well. And it's the most southerly whiskey warehouse on the island of Ireland. So it's 200 feet above sea level wind swept in the winter time. You just get those Atlantic gills coming in and the last you know, blowing all the way in. So westerly prevailing winds coming all the way in from the Caribbean. A lot colder, of course by the, but it's yeah, a pretty it's an elevated site, amazing views clean, fresh air on spoiled water. Beautiful place to go up in a great, great community in art field where we live as well. So very proud of that very nice place.

Drew (00:04:08):
Yeah, you have the cliffs there, which we got out of the vehicle and we were looking at the barley and I couldn't get my eyes off of the shoreline cuz it's just absolutely beautiful. It's what you expect to see in Ireland.

Michael (00:04:21):
Yeah, for sure. I think we'd, we'd see ourselves as Ireland's maritime distillery. Everything we do is, is right next to the ocean. Even the distillery itself, while it's into town with planet guilty, the the sea comes right up, the y street to planet guilty. And we are, we're, we are right on the edge right next to it actually. So so we grow our barley right in the edge of the ocean. We distill our whiskey by the ary in the town of Atlantic Kte and we we matured our warehouse on the cliff top at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean in, in the south of Ireland. So it's a, it's a unique place to to grow and distill and go barley and distill whiskey and mature whiskey. And it's probably one of the reasons why why I had this crazy idea back around 2014 to to embark on this amazing journey mm-hmm. <Affirmative> we've been doing now for, what, eight years. And it's yeah. So it's it's been a special journey and it's I think one of them main reasons is I, I recognize that that it's a very special place to operate a whiskey business. And that's what drew me to the, to the whole idea.

Drew (00:05:28):
Yeah. And what, there really weren't a lot of distilleries at the time you came to this decision especially in your area. I guess West Cork was probably the one I think Waterford didn't really come about until maybe a year or two after that. And and then of course Middleton.

Michael (00:05:48):
Yeah, well of course you, you have the older distilleries in Ireland, You know, you have Irish distillers and Bushmans Tomore Cooley, you had you had GaN so there, there were, there were some of the the original older distilleries and then there's been an amazing renaissance in Ireland over the last 10 years. Just incredible. It's, it's, in my opinion, it's the most vibrant whiskey scene in all of the world, actually, what's happening in the Irish industry right now. We well, while I got this embryonic idea back in 2014, there was probably only two or three new distilleries planned at that time, but it actually, you know, from the time the seed of the idea started to actually finding a location, getting it, getting our plan, our building permits, getting our funding, getting everything done and dusted and, and actually distilling our first whiskey, it took, took five years. So at that stage we were distillery number 23 to open on the island of Ireland. I think there's just over 40 there now.

Drew (00:06:53):
Yeah. So when you are starting out, because the first distillery I went to in Ireland was Dingle. And I remember when I was visiting Dingle, this was 2019, beginning of 2019, I remember them saying that there were, there was really only one other independent distillery in Ireland at the time. And I maybe yes, open to the public or, you know, but now that I'm going back and learning a bit more about the, the formation of the industry over the last 10 years, there seems to be a few more that were getting their start. And as you say, they were 23 by the time you got started with it. Did you, did you have people you could kind of confide in and, and help you to, you know, get through all the legal stuff that you have to get through and, and all of the process stuff that you have to learn?

Michael (00:07:48):
Yeah, I've gotta, even though I'm a farmer by background, I did I, you know, on from the construction perspective and and process planning, all of those things, I'm pretty comfortable in that area because I had done some work in a, in another life in the, in the, in the in the construction side as well. But and I think farmers, by their nature are what we call an Ireland jack of all trades, so mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and, and masters of none properly possibly. But but we tend to be good at just chaning our arm about anything. It's yeah, so, so, but we did, and we're very fortunate in that we, I have a partner who embarked on this journey with me, Project call and project lives in, in Florida in the us. He operates our US business from a sales perspective.

(00:08:35):
So so Patrick and I quickly realized that we needed some detailed industry expertise because we didn't have the, well, we had a lot of the knowledge and everything. We lacked the study inside our industry expertise. So we we, we, I suppose fortuitously, we we, we met with a really good guy who's become a really good friend of mine now, and a business partner, Dennis Lin. Dennis had a lot of experience. He was very high up in the whole per record Irish Distillers operations throughout the years. And when he retired from those, he joined Client Kill. So he's, he is, he's been on the journey with us now since I think 2017 or thereabouts. And he's been a great help in just steering the business in the right direction and yeah, a good a good guy to have a chat with and just shoot the breeze and discuss strategy and all of those really important things.

Drew (00:09:34):
Did did you have a moment where you thought you would maybe build a distillery out on your property, or was Colonial K always the target for you?

Michael (00:09:44):
No, actually, you're, you're very right on that. The original plan was that we were, in my head is that we were going to build a distillery on the farm and which is five months outside of the town of planet guilty. And again, it would've been an amazing location, probably a bit more difficult from a building permit perspective because it's, it's rural, it's a highly cynic area, and it's probably a little bit more difficult to get something like that across with our planning conditions in Ireland. But I suppose the other thing I realized at the time is that the whole like is wanting to make whiskey, I think the really hard is actually to build your brand and to sell it making it's actually part. And we realized that we need we needed a, a showcase to be able to show the world and tell the world.

(00:10:39):
And this amazing site became available within the town of chronic ki It was actually a site that was it, it was a series of buildings that would've been built in 2006, and they fell victim to the recession that were never fully occupied during the crash of 2008. And they had been lying idle put an amazing location on the wild Atlantic way right next to the center of the town, highly visible glass fronted buildings. So we so I was just driving past one day and just a light bulb went off in my head, Hey, I can put a distillery in there. And so we we managed to acquire those buildings and had a lot of, had a lot of engineering challenges and all that together with the fit, but we did fit it. And no regrets about that. It's actually turned into a really good site, highly visible, and we've got an amazing visitor experience there. So that allows us to showcase our brand to the world. And especially does it become very obvious this summer since Covid restrictions have left and people have started traveling again, and we are getting a huge amount of very American visitors to us only, only the day actually, we had about 20 really happy Americans in on a bus doing a tour of whiskey distilleries in Ireland, and they thoroughly enjoy themselves.

Drew (00:11:59):
Very. How do people find you then, at this particular moment? Cause I know that the Irish Whiskey 360 guide is out there, but you know, you really don't, I don't think an American would know that that exists until they walk into the first distillery that has it sitting up there on a counter. So how do you think people are discovering you?

Michael (00:12:20):
I think that, I think there's two types of people come to us. There's the type of, there, there's, there's the visitor that comes to our, our area, which is a really popular tourist roast area, and they're looking for something to do on a rainy day, or maybe they'll get tired of spending six days on the beach and they want to spend the seven day somewhere else. So so they come to visit us. But more importantly, it's the people who are specifically interested in whiskey and want to experience these things. And I think that if people want to go out and and look for something, then we're very identifiable. Once you get on the internet, we have a, we have we, we have all our social media pages are pretty well known. We've got a good website and all of that, so it's it's very easy to find us once you get onto the, the digital media

Drew (00:13:09):
<Laugh>. Well, I'm sure the Wild Atlantic way doesn't hurt you at all, either since you're on the southern end of it.

Michael (00:13:16):
Yeah, exactly. And it's yeah, very much so. It's very highly visible. Anybody driving on the wild Atlantic way or visiting anywhere in the, in the whole cork region, West Cork region, they just can't miss us. They have to drive right past our front door where we've got this big glass frontage and three amazing copper pot stills. So it's in a building. Actually, there was meant to be a bank

Drew (00:13:39):
<Laugh>, so

Michael (00:13:40):
Never, It's a bit ironic. So we're building yeah, we're, we're, we're no distilling whiskey in in a, in a building which was meant to be a commercial bank. So it's an entirely different spirit, I think of far better. You was

Drew (00:13:54):
Actually, it's interesting too that it's the one of the few distilleries where you kind of have to leave one building to go into another building to go do the tour, but it's just like, you go outside and then you go right into the next door and on your way up. So it must have been interesting trying to figure out how to arrange that distillery to make it work for visitors and for your distilling process.

Michael (00:14:20):
Yeah, it was, and it, it was I suppose obviously the, the primary function was to have a building that was totally efficient and fitted everything we wanted to do to make our own pots still whiskey. But outside of that, we very much did want to showcase the visitor experience and everything. So my wife, Helen and I, we yeah, just became a real passion. And we spent about two years traveling all over the world looking at various distilleries and visitor centers and, and even other businesses that had visitor centers and took a little bit away from all of them, I think. And did all that planning beforehand so that we had a pretty clear idea of the real things that we wanted before we actually built the place. And very happy with the result. It's, I think it's going to standard test of time.

Drew (00:15:11):
Well, it's interesting too because when doing the tour, they talk about the football pitch across the street and that the waterway used to come up into town. Was that actually would you have been Oceanside at one point or a waterway that was coming up to your area?

Michael (00:15:31):
It would, yeah. Yeah, there, there was, there was actually a key right outside our front door where where the ship used come up, where the they, they, they used called sand liters, actually. So there were shallow bottom sailing ships. This is back probably around the 1850s or thereabouts. And Solon of <inaudible> would've been very much a trading port at that time. And the smuggling court, there was a very, very strong smuggling tradition in this area. And bear in mind, that was a time when smuggling was very much a profession which was seen as, as worthy. And it meant that we weren't playing taxes to our English landlords. So, and he read blooded our Irishman was, was quite happy to avoid paying his taxes

Drew (00:16:14):
To this <laugh>. You have cork down the road, which had a lot of historic distilleries. There were historic distilleries around the area, but I don't think there were any actual established legal distilleries that I can remember in my research in Klon Kilty. Was it were there any there or was it mostly probably illicit distilling going on in the countryside?

Michael (00:16:40):
Yeah, it would've been illicit distilling and there would've been distilling in some of the neighboring towns, But Klon Kti was more famous for brewing rather than distilling. And one of the one of the famous breweries, but the famous brewery in the town was called DC's Brewery. It was founded by the DC family way back in the, which back in the early 18 hundreds. And that would have, the DC's would've been well known smugglers in the area, so that the money they made from smuggling was put into the brewing. And they they made DC's DC's beer, and then they started a bottling operation as well, so that they actually bottled a lot of, a lot of whiskey for a lot of people. So while they didn't make the whiskey, they became bottlers. And what's really interesting, and that actually is that they, they brought, and when I did my research, they they, they bottled a lot of whiskey for Dublin whiskey companies like the Dublin Distillery. And the bottle pictures that I came across are almost exactly the same shape as the Kilty bottle that we have. Oh,

Drew (00:17:50):
Really?

Michael (00:17:51):
That's a total coincidence. Absolutely. We have bottle designed before that happened, but they used empty casks and they put their own, so they, they'd take the whiskey casts, they'd empty them, and they'd put 'em into the bottle, send them back to the, to the owners of the liquid. And they, they kept the casks and then they put their own beer, their own stout into the casks. And it made a rule called Thelan Hilty wrestler, which became really locally very famous. So this was a stout, and because it had soaked the whiskey out of the wood in the casks, it had an adv of about 10, 12%, which would be their 2025 proof Wow. Was rocket fuel. And obviously very, very popular locally. <Laugh> dcs was also famous in that in 1893 at the World Fair in Chicago, it beat Guness to second place thing. So that's a, that was his claim to fame. I think Guinness has since well surpassed it, but

Drew (00:18:49):
It's a <laugh> That's all right. To add your moment in the sun. Yeah,

Michael (00:18:53):
Exactly. Exactly.

Drew (00:18:55):
Now what's interesting too, when you go through the distillery and do the tour, you highlight some of the famous people and families that actually originate from that area. And of course you, you know, I probably have a little bit more of a US audience than than otherwise. And that connection between Ireland and the US is, is very strong. In fact, I, I heard bits about that while the whole Brexit thing was going on while I was driving around the island. And they were talking about Northern Ireland and all that, and they were talking about how many representatives there are in the us congress that are, you know, it's like, don't cross these guys. <Laugh> don't cross these guys cuz they, they got higher Lynns back. So it's, you, you still see that there. But but we've had a few people that you mention up on your board that have some origins from colonial kill.

Michael (00:19:48):
Yeah. There's quite, quite a, quite a few famous people that have come from chronic guilty probably yeah, of the interesting ones that William Ford, who was the grand, sorry, he was the father of Henry Ford of Ford Motor Company. So so Henry Ford's dad was actually born in chronic guilty and left chronic guilty at an early age probably in the mid, So Will Ford lived from yeah, so he, he left around 1847 or thereabouts to go out to the States. And and the rest is history only for that. We might have a an amazing car company in plan, Guilty going forward, but <laugh> well then to him. Yeah. And and I think the other really interesting one is that James f Hickey, who was the father of John F. Kennedy or President John F. Kennedy. So his, his, his father was born here in, sorry, Grandfather. Grandfather,

Drew (00:20:46):
Okay. So Joe, Joe Kennedy's dad, then

Michael (00:20:49):
His dad. Yeah, Yeah. So he came, he was 1836 to 1900. That was his that was his time. And he, he was born just said kind of guilty.

Drew (00:21:00):
I like, I like putting two and two together. And so part of me would think that if there was a lot of smuggling going on in cl of Kte that maybe the Kennedy's, cuz Joe Kennedy was was big at bringing whiskey in during prohibition. So maybe it was in the family blood <laugh>,

Michael (00:21:20):
Maybe it was, maybe it was. And it's really, really interesting story. And I think that's one that's well worked some further investigation. Good point. Yeah,

Drew (00:21:28):
Yeah, absolutely. And then of course when I went through the, the person I was interested in learning more about, and he has a statue right downtown is right in the center of town is is Michael Collins.

Michael (00:21:40):
Yeah, yeah, Michael Collins. He yeah, actually only, only two days ago his was the 100 anniversary of his death. So Michael Collins in, in 1922, so Michael Collins was born just outside the town. He's Michael Collins would've been for those of you that, those Americans that would not have heard of him. He was Ireland's, she va he was the the freedom fighter. He was the guy that that actually led the War of Independence against the English and tragically killed in a, there was a very short civil war in Ireland just after that. And and he, he, he was, he was leader of the Irish free state. He was a leader of the army and effectively our prime minister. And and he was a, he was shot in a down in an ambush very unfortunate just a few weeks before the end of the Civil War. So he has since gone down as a legendary figure in Irish history. So Michael Collins would've been born just outside Klan Hill. He would've spent time living in the town of Clinic Hill as a young man. And he actually went to school for a period in art field, which is just where just next to our family farm only a few hundred say one way away. Yeah,

Drew (00:22:56):
I was gonna say, I think what got me interested in him was the movie that came out, Liam Niso and Alan Rickman, which to me Julia Roberts, which sometimes I worry about American actors and actresses trying to do an Irish accent, but she seemed to do pretty good. I guess you would have to tell me whether that that was passable or not.

Michael (00:23:19):
No, I think she did a great job. Yeah. She, she played Kitty Ki and Mike Collins's fiance. Yeah. So yeah, Adam Rickman did Devil Era Yeah. Which was his nemesis. So it's something that has actually split split Irish politics for generations. I think at this stage it's, it's, it's over and done with it. I think I think Civil War politics has finished in Ireland, but really only with the last 20 years. I think before that it would've it would've been been quite controversial and a lot of the people, including my parents, would've lived through it. It's so they, they all of very strong feelings about what happened in that.

Drew (00:23:54):
That was a very interesting direction I took on this particular trip because I first went through Northern Ireland and then made my way down and it kind of put all of it in context as I was making my way through. And then when I came to the area, I went to the site where he was killed, which is out in the, out in the country. Yeah. and I went to his birthplace and that's not too far outside of town. In fact, I went there right before I showed up for my visit there. And really interesting to see that, that bit of history in person after you've kind of learned about it a little bit through a, through a movie and you're kind of getting the idea of what it's all about. And then having traveled to Northern Ireland and see, you know, what the more recent history was in the conflict and, and that it lasted for so long.

Michael (00:24:51):
Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, he was a man born of humble beginnings, but I achieved a, a huge amount in his short life. And probably the enigma is that you know, everybody asks what would Ireland be like the day if he left? And it's, it's a really good question and it's a difficult question to answer. I think the only really answer you can give is that it would've been different.

Drew (00:25:13):
Hopefully he would've been kinder to whiskey because Devil Valera, I think sometimes gets talked about as the, the guy who was picking fights with the, the British and that, that that didn't help.

Michael (00:25:25):
That was the, the, the trade war. Yeah, for sure. That was that was not good for, for the, the whiskey business. I think yeah, that, that was over land annuities and taxes that the farmers were meant to continue paying to the British. So the Valera decided that we no longer needed as a nation to actually pay former British colonizers and to all those fabulous British people that are listening to this podcast. I'm not anti British by any means, but yeah, DeVera, he devil era ran a protectionist policy for the country. And it's an open question as to whether that was the right policy. I think it was continued for maybe a decade or 15 years too long, actually. But, you know, it's, it's a product of its time. So we can't really be too revers in this to revisionist when it comes to to whis to our history either.

Drew (00:26:20):
Yeah. It's

Michael (00:26:21):
Interest and Collins's Tipple was a glass of Sure.

Drew (00:26:23):
Oh, okay. Right. Well, we could've used his barrel after he was done with it. <Laugh>. Yeah, yeah,

Michael (00:26:30):
Sure. <Laugh>,

Drew (00:26:32):
One of the things that I learned while I was traveling around Ireland is the loss of some forms of barley over time. Mainly because once you get accountants in on the action, then you've got lar larger businesses there going, Hey, we need yield out of this barley. And so a lot of different strains of barley sort of disappeared, but you found one that you wanted to bring back. So kind of go through the story of that and how you how you came upon this idea of maybe reviving a lost grain and where that grain was for a hundred years, that you would be able to do that.

Michael (00:27:21):
Yeah. So so the grain in question is, it's a variety called golf harp, which would the last have been last blown in Ireland, probably around the year, around the turn of the 19 hundreds, 1910, about then. And it, it would've gradually have been phased out as newer higher yielding varieties came along and varies that had less you know more disease resistance and better ability to stand up to the storms and the wind prior to harvest so they wouldn't lodge and lose some of the grain. So these are all, these, all those attributes are, are, are, are very noble and that is the reason why people you know, develop new strains of barleys and breed new breeds of livestock and all of that. So that's human progress, and I think that's, that's to be applauded. But I just said that maybe we want to, we're a new distillery and we're very clearly a new distillery in Ireland.

(00:28:20):
But just as a, you know, as a token to the past, I wanted to do something new, which actually would be a world first and and, and bring something out of the past. So I embarked in this about 2015 before we ever built a distillery, but I said, We're going to build a distillery. When we build a distillery, we want to do something special. It's going to take me three or four or five years to get this project off the ground. So, so in 2015, I went to I, I, I started what it say, I started researching different older types of <inaudible> varieties that were available in the country. And this led me to the National area Seed Bank in bequest and in county Kilder. So this is where they, they keep and, and develop the ancient seeds. And I managed to persuade 'em to give me just a handful, literally a handful about, but maybe one pound in weight of barley to start off with.

(00:29:22):
And I grew that out in the first year. We planted it and in a small little patch size of your small garden and and maybe got a bucket of seed. And then the next year we planted it out, cut it with a garden trimmer because it was way too small an area to to actually do this with, with big agricul and machinery. And and got a probably equivalent to a wheelbarrow full of seed. And then we went to something bigger thereafter and the year after, So eventually we got to the point last year where we were able to have enough to grow our first commercial crop of a about sort, have enough quantity to be able to fill our stills, to be able to, to, to, to, to have enough grain to be able to do a full mash with it.

(00:30:10):
So we did that, bought our, and because we use a pot, because we are a pot still distillery, where we used malted grains and done malted grains. So we kept some of our grains did the unmalted grains aside, we sent this batch of another batch of this gold top barley off to a specialist monster who who kept it separate and malted that portion. We brought that back and we did our first distillation about maybe only six or eight months ago. Okay. And that will take another five years probably before it's ready. So, so this is going to be a 10 or 12 year project. So it's a, it's a real long term project. It will become the premium of our, of our offerings, we would hope. And it'll, it's gonna be very interesting to see how the flavor develops. We have we've tasted a new make and the new make is really interesting.

(00:31:05):
It's different. You could probably say it's a more earthy flavor. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> probably because the grains are smaller, you know, this, this doesn't yield as much as a standard modern commercial barley. It's a lot more difficult to grow. It lodges faster in the winds because we were growing to barley right next to the Galled lighthouse in, in where, where, where you stood drew. And it's you know, it, it's a wild wind, sweat place. And normally we'd harvest at the end of August, early September. And you know, and it's, it's a, it's a pretty challenging place to be able to bring in a crop barley every year. But we've managed to do it over the years. It's there are other, a few other Irish distilleries that are doing something with Gold Turk as well. But I think we're the only triple distilled pot still whiskey in the world. That's that's doing Gold Cup barely. And this will become our, our signature heritage variety. And we're going to have a very special release of that in about four years time, and we're gonna continue that then. It's gonna be very limited edition, but but we will be continuing it. It'll become constantly available for people.

Drew (00:32:13):
Very nice. Did you find, did you hear more complaints out of your distillers when you first got started with it, that it was that different for working with the standard types of barley?

Michael (00:32:26):
I, you know, we, we, we've got a great bunch of guys working for us and they love challenges like that. So they see this as as you know, this is a special day where we we're distilling our heritage barley this week. And so yeah, there, there's more work because we take our, you know, we separate our cuts. We, we, we do it. We're, we're, we're absolutely clear that we don't want to that, that we, that we want to keep this absolutely genuine. So we'll take the we'll take the cuts away from the, you know, before and after. We'll separate out those sort of, what we distill here is absolutely pure only our heritage variety. And and so there's, it is a bit disruptive and there is a lot of extra work in it, and it doesn't yield as much, but that's not the point.

Drew (00:33:13):
<Laugh>

Michael (00:33:14):
Something that nobody has done before. Yeah. And I think we're, well, well unchecked now.

Drew (00:33:20):
So while I was at the Warehouse, we got a chance to taste some of the new make that you have. Well really still, I guess considered new make, because it hadn't quite hit three years. It was two years, nine months, so it was it was really close. In fact, now it probably is whiskey. And you actually just had your first whiskey reach that, that age of maturity just a few months ago. How did that feel?

Michael (00:33:46):
Yeah, I mean, great, really great. And we're so happy with the, with, with the outcome of what it's we're so happy with host tasting. It's it's going to be special. I think anybody has tasted it. They there, there, there's a sweet caramel, vanilla type wonder tone to it. It's a very elegant whiskey. It's delicate at the moment. It's again, it's, it's got this earthy sort of a tone feel to it as well, not not too far from our h barely, but there, there's, there's a gentle sweetness. It's, it's actually we're really, really happy that we're going to make an amazing whiskey. We could release that on the market right now. It's three years and three months at this stage, but we're not going to, I think the temptation is for any new distillery to release their own whiskey as soon as it comes of age.

(00:34:40):
But I think that what is really good now, it's gonna be great in two more years time. So we're gonna release it when it's ready. We believe it will be ready in two years. We'll probably finish it. We, we'll experiment then. Actually for the last few weeks now, we've just had this internal discussion as to the best type of finishes to to give that whiskey. So we're going to play around with a few different expressions and and see, you know, maybe some surey finishes, maybe something different as well. Yeah. And and see what that might make. But you get one chance to make a good first impression, and we're gonna make sure that's right. And, and anybody that has tasted it, by the way, has absolutely loved that. It's yeah. So it's, it's going to be something special,

Drew (00:35:22):
Very nice comes

Michael (00:35:23):
Up and we are proud of

Drew (00:35:25):
That. Yeah. Well, I, when you have a product, and we'll do a tasting here now on your Irish whiskey, and maybe talk a little bit about this, when you have a product that's already really good that's out on the market, I guess that takes some pressure off in terms of having that need to rush something out to market.

Michael (00:35:43):
Yeah, it it does. It does. Yeah, it does. And our, our long term goal on Adly is to make the world's best single pot still whiskey. And I think we're well on track to do that. And I'm, I'm personally convinced we will get there someday. I hope I'm around for that day when it happens. <Laugh>, it's it will happen. I know that our, our product, everything we do here is, is about quality. We can't compete with the big boys when it comes to to, to, to the price and stuff. So we just we just make sure that everything we do is premium and this is leading into that as well.

Drew (00:36:21):
Yeah. Well, I've said this a few times I think on this podcast that since I've come back from Ireland, I have had this, I, I feel like somebody who knows something that everybody else doesn't know, which is that I've tasted this pot still whiskey across Ireland, a lot of it new, make some of it reaching maturity. But I talk to people about it and they still really, here don't have a clue what I say. Pots still whiskey, and they go, Oh yeah, you know, I like single malt too. And it's like, No, no, no, this is this has got un malted barley in it. And that, that gives it a characteristic that is very different from any other whiskey that I've had. And the problem when you taste something like that and you really like it and it hits the sweet spot, and then you come back from Ireland and there's none of it on the shelves.

(00:37:15):
I mean, there, there are some pot still whiskeys that we can get. And of course everybody talks about red breast and the spots. I'm the rare person that's not an overly big fan of those two in, in terms of I like them, but I don't, they don't wow me like they seem to wow everybody else. But I was wowed throughout my trip through Ireland tasting what was coming in the way of potstill. Do you kind of have that feeling like you're, like, you've got a little secret weapon here for the world of whiskey and that's gonna be part of the fun of getting it out to, to the world?

Michael (00:37:55):
Yeah, yeah, I do. I think that from the Verde Day, we actually, generally right back when we designed this distillery, first day, we designed it as a distillery to make pot still. So, so there's only two distilleries in I that were designed from the very first day to actually make pot still. We have one of those. So they're designed with a, with a mass conversion vessel, which is, which is needed to actually soften the raw, barely the unmalted barely portion when it goes in. So, so we are very unashamedly. We, we see ourselves as a potstill distillery. We think it's going to be the super premium offering in the global whiskey market in years to come. And and we're just, we're just making you as much of it as we can at the moment, because we're confident that there's gonna be a great demand out there for it.

Drew (00:38:47):
So let's talk about the Irish whiskey that you have now. Is this a Irish whiskey that is a blend of grain and pots still?

Michael (00:38:56):
The, we're talking about our double oak. Is it the one with the blue? This

Drew (00:39:00):
Is the single batch

Michael (00:39:03):
Single batch, double oak. Single

Drew (00:39:04):
Batch. Okay. I'll take, I'll take your word on the double oak, maybe I just have, Yeah, let's see. It's European Oak and American Oak. Yep.

Michael (00:39:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, so this is this is a blend of malt and grain. It's it varies depending on the, the, the, the makeup of the, of the, the percentages vary, but it's around 60 40, 50 50 thereabouts. Okay.

(00:39:29):
it's generally we'd see it's probably around the seven or eight, three old grain and maybe a five year old mal or there about sometimes six year old malt goes into it. It would be finished in in European Oak, as you said. We use these knee up casks, which are, they're like shaved and toasted and and re toasted casks. So they're European oak. They would be shaved internally, long iud, they would've held normally red wine beforehand. And then they're re toasted. They give they, they impart really sweet vanilla flavors a lot of color into the whiskey as well. And we we really like them. I think they do a great job. And and then of course we have we have the the exor and barrels as well. And occasionally, we'll, we'll add the we, we, we add the whiskey from other interesting barrels as well, so that every batch is that little bit different. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. And this, this is this is one of our flagship brands that comes in at 43 6%, 43.6 abb. Which is which is what? 86 87 proof.

Drew (00:40:34):
Okay. So

Michael (00:40:35):
Of this is what, So we do this for the American market, and we also do a Port Cas finish, which is finished in port same liquid. Very interesting. Actually, one of the things we specialize in our distillery and is different finishes. So we've done a huge amount of collaborations with American breweries and yeah. And yeah, I do bar selects as well where where we just finish in different type casts. We do IPA casts. We we did a really interesting one this year actually with O'Hara's Brewery in Ireland where we had a Winter Spice sta and at one day the world's best small batch Irish Irish mal this year. Very

Drew (00:41:19):
Nice. And

Michael (00:41:19):
So it was really, really good. Yeah. So you know, we do barely wine with Pelican Brewing in Oregon. We, we, we've collaborated with a lot of distilleries all over the US and sorry, a lot of breweries and some distilleries, which we're doing something with Catton Creek at the moment, and we've got, we've got Garrison Brother Burs, so it's yeah. So it's, it's a really interesting collaborative community that we live in and that we're, we're finishing some really interesting whiskeys. Yeah.

Drew (00:41:50):
You're, you're playing off of your beer history in Clil. It sounds like

Michael (00:41:55):
<Laugh>. Yeah. It's a little bit like we talked earlier about the about Clil wrestlers. So, so we're doing it in reverse <laugh>. So they, they took the, they took the whiskey barrels, the beer into it, and what we were doing is we're taking the the beer barrels and we were putting whiskey into them. Very nice. And that's actually interesting you talk about that, that the so we, we've got this really good relationship with with some great brewers out in, out in Oregon and West Coast us called Pelican Brewing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And we've done work with them in our barley wines. So they've, we've ship, we ship over their barrels, air freight them over to Ireland. We put our whiskey in there, and then we we sent it back to that market. People love it. But we've also sent back the casks. So the boys in Pelican now are actually filling the Lon Hilty whiskey casts, and they're putting a beer into it, and they're putting that into their local market finished in Lon Hilty whiskey. So it's yeah, it's, it's, it's a really interesting collaboration and it's the way that the world is going, I think.

Drew (00:42:54):
Well, I was gonna say with the recent barrel shortage that's been going on, it's probably handy in that way too. Let's get as many uses outta these barrels as we possibly can. <Laugh>. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. So interesting. Interesting nose on this, when last night I was sitting there with that bottle of of whiskey and tasting it and going, There is a flavor here. I really I know I should be able to identify, but for some reason my mind wasn't, wasn't on it. And so and then on the nose I was trying, and maybe you have days like this where I just really struggling to smell something. It's like if I wait one day I'll be fine, and all of a sudden I will pick everything out or maybe I'm in the wrong room or whatever it may be. But as I was nosing this, when I wasn't picking up as much as I was on the pallet and on the pallet, I was act actually picking up pineapple, which I thought was a interesting flavor kind of pineapple mixed in with kind of that lemony grain note. And a I was just getting a lot of fruits and I'm sort of getting those fruits again today as I'm nosing it. And, and now those are that along with kind of a peppery note coming in on the nose.

Michael (00:44:19):
Yeah. A little bit of spice, I think spice maybe on the nose, bit of vanilla, vanilla coming through there.

Drew (00:44:24):
Yep. Yeah. And

Michael (00:44:25):
It's, it,

Drew (00:44:26):
Yep. And I think that's the missing piece that I wasn't getting yesterday was the was that vanilla component, especially on the palette. It's really nice and creamy on the palette. Yeah,

Michael (00:44:38):
It is. Yeah. Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Drew (00:44:41):
Yeah, it's one of those whiskeys that I, I almost get like lemon pie. Do you get lemon?

Michael (00:44:48):
Yep, I do, I do. Little bit, I think little bit of ginger maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Ginger hazzel not sort of spicy sort of flavor to it. Yeah, Yeah.

Drew (00:45:00):
And you have a little bit of that heat lingers on the pallet towards the end, but then all of a sudden it's like, I'm surrounded by that lemon again. I want to jump right back in and, and get another sip of it.

Michael (00:45:11):
Yeah. Yep, yep, yep. No, it's yeah, I think bit of toing, bit of caramel, You get a lot out of a lot of whiskeys, but it's yeah, no, we, we, we really like it. It's and because it's a blend of, of, of both malt and grain as well. I think it's there's a softness of course, triple distilled. Yeah. So this would be, this would be typical of a, of an Irish whiskey. You get the smoothness and the accessibility that you get in an Irish whiskey, which you don't necessarily get in, in, in other ones.

Drew (00:45:43):
Well, it's interesting too that there's that much body to it being a malt and, and grain whiskey, because I sometimes think in triple distillation that you could sometimes kill off some of those oils if you distill it too much. But if you're slowly distilling it then you probably have a better opportunity to retain some of that. And however this was distilled, it, it retained those, those oils in that body, which is really nice.

Michael (00:46:12):
Yeah. And I think, I think a lot of it actually depends on the barrel finishing as well. And I think that's where it, these New York casks come in, they they give a body, they, they, they actually bring a lot of body into the visia. It extracts these flavors from the wooden, and certainly the vanillas come true from the, from, from these these french haw casks. So it's yeah, there's a, there's we use a little bit of Virgin American Oak Inness as well. Okay. That would be, that would be contributing to the vanillas. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. It's, and we're very happy with that. I'd wanna double gold in San Francisco. So it's, it's, it's not just <laugh>. People can't get here saying that. It's really good.

Drew (00:46:52):
Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So, but you are also doing a lot of experiments with different types of barrels, from what I understand.

Michael (00:47:00):
Yeah, yeah. So we're, yeah, exactly. So as I was saying earlier, so we're doing I supposed to, the most, the really interesting one was the Winter spice stale, which was almost by accident. But we, we do we do some stouts, It's a really nice finish with, with St. Stoks, we do IPAs. I think the IPAs are more they're either love them or you hate them. They actually fight the pins, but those people that love, love them actually really do love them. So so there, it's a different sort of a flavor. You, the we, we do obviously pork cas and we'll do the, you know, the cherries, we'll do the we, we've a we had a really amazing finish limited Quantit air recently in a, a Reva Salt Cas, which is a sweet wine for Reva Salt is a, it's a, it's a sweet wine from the southern France and the Long Luck region in France. And it just, the color, the flavor, the sweetness that this brings out is totally unique. It was just an amazing limited edition whiskey. We have more of those guys cooking in the in our warehouse. Hopefully we'll be able to get some of those to the US at some point soon.

Drew (00:48:11):
Is there kind of a feel that you want to avoid what everybody else is doing? They, they all gravitate to the aroso sherry casks. Do you have many of those in your warehouse?

Michael (00:48:24):
We do. We do. We do. But we're by no means are we, we're not exclusively doing that. We're doing all the other types of tasks as well. I think I think within the Irish whiskey industry, we've got an amazing opportunity to be adventurous and to, because of the, the, the technical file that allows us to do this. And it's it's not something the Scottish have really been able to do. So, so I think the whole Irish industry has been, has very much gone down that route. And then because there's so many new Irish distilleries, we've got to we've got to differentiate in some ways. So as well as doing everything we can as guards quality, I think we, people are starting to differentiate between by using different casts. And we started set up, we, we've got a full service distillery here, so that we do our own distilling.

(00:49:15):
We do our own, our own blending, bottling, packaging, all of that sort of stuff. Everything is done in house. So we're, so we can actually do these small batches and sometimes we'd only do one or two Cass at a time in a special offering, which is, which is real and micro distilling. But it, it, but it's something that the customer likes and it's, it makes everything unique and it gives us an opportunity to learn about different tasks and what they impart in doing it. So we've probably got, I would say at least 15, maybe 20 different cask types throughout our whiskey stock. Okay. Which is an amazing it's amazing palette to work of. Yeah. And plan going forward is to keep that going so that when it gives us the opportunity to blend our pot stills once they, once they come true that we're gonna have this, this, this, this opportunity to try different, different flavors. And some of those might uniquely be just a single batch, a single cask or some of them, you know, we might be blending it in whatever, but others. But it gives us yeah, it, it gives us a big pallet to work off, which is exactly the way we want to do

Drew (00:50:23):
It. I was gonna say, you can do something, you could do something that the Americans can't do do too, which is using different types of wood rather than oak because we just had the American single malt rules put out, and I was kind of curious to see if they were going to open up to different types of wood, but they didn't. It's again, still just oak. So that you guys are gonna get to tell us which types of wood leak, <laugh> and which ones don't. Cause I know that's, that's a big issue with using something other than oak.

Michael (00:50:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I, I, I actually don't think we've ever used anything other than oak. I know you got chestnut, you get Zu Cass and all of that, but we've I think everything we've done, they've been oak, but oak from different parts of the world. And I think living in Europe as well, I think it gives us great access to a lot of these sweet wines and different wines and, and, and finishes, which, and I'm not saying they're not available in America, but they're probably are more readily available in Europe. So so we'd be very active in that and very interested in in all of those different finishes, cognac, for example. So we do, we do quite a bit of cognac as well. So it's yeah, it's really interesting.

Drew (00:51:35):
Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about another thing that you guys do that I, I've not really heard being done, but it's part of, it's part of the reason why I like to get my whiskey from the distiller at the proof that they think is the proper proof. Because when I add water into a whiskey, if it's a cast strength whiskey and I douse it with some water to try to bring it down to proof, there's really no time for that water to marry in with the whiskey. To me it's like, it, it it, if you could give it enough time to work in, you'd probably have a better experience with that whiskey. And so you do something called a gentle cut. Can you explain that?

Michael (00:52:21):
Yeah. The, the gentle cut is is just a description that we here at Konic Kill. Do you have given to ourselves to the process we use and we actually, we actually probably display it on the front of every bottle. Gentle cut is on our front level. And what it, what it means in practice is that when it comes to blending to, to cutting a whiskey, so it comes out of the casket at our own 125 proofer, thereabouts, 120 proof. So, and our bottling strength can be anything from 80 proof up to one under proof on average. So the way you do this is by adding water. What we do is that we add it really slowly over time because if you take a, if you take a liquid that's at a certain temperature at, at, you take a whiskey and it's at 120 proof.

(00:53:09):
And if you add in cold water or any water in any one go, what you're doing is you're mixing molecules. The molecules are break apart and they don't always come back together the same way. So if that happens too quickly, you get a process, it's a chemical reaction and it heats up. And it's, it's a process called solidification, which can lead to a, a soapiness in your whiskey. So this is something, again, I referred earlier to the point that everything we do here at Client guilty is, is driven by the by, by quality, with the wish to make everything a premium whiskey. So even though this costs us a lot more and it ties up extra tanks and it's, it's really difficult for our distillers we, we want to do this. So, and it's, it's something that we got from Theia, we took from the cognac region.

(00:53:58):
So we slowly add our water, we dilute our whiskey from 120 proof down to it's 80 proof over a period of about two weeks, adding maybe 2% water a day. Slowly, slowly, slowly. So it doesn't shock the whiskey, it allows the two liquids to marry gently. It's a gentle cut to marry gently together. And we believe that that does make a, a big difference to the to the whiskey we use. There are one or two other whiskey distilleries, one in Scotland, a few in the US recently I've heard that actually do this as well. It's it's something that only a smaller, medium size distillery can do. The big boys are not able to do this because they just wouldn't have the tanks space to be able to, Yeah. To be, to be that patient when it comes to cutting their whiskey. But so if we can do it, and if it's different, then we, then we, then we'll do it.

(00:54:50):
Yeah. And the other thing we do actually, which I truly believe makes a difference, is that we filter our whiskey to 13 microns, and then most people don't talk about filtering, but as, as your whiskey comes out of the casket, it's naturally full of char and they're, they're little, little, little pieces of char in it. So that's not that's not something the consumer really likes to see is that the black spots floating around inside in your whisky, even though the human eye cannot see below 50 microns, but most distilleries will actually filter through to about six or seven microns. We filter the 13 micro, which allows a lot of the fatty assets, which are the flavor compounds to actually get through the filter into our whiskey. And we genuinely believe that that does make a difference to the taste as well. Yeah. So all our, all our whiskeys that we have, that we sell in the US are all that they're all filtered through the 13 micron filter, which which takes out the char, but not all of it. But it doesn't take out the other compounds. And I think that's something, again, it's just part of the commitment.

Drew (00:55:57):
Well, I think you'll get a lot of people when they hear filtering, they'll immediately go, Oh, you know, we have people like Ralph on YouTube who is driven to get chill filtering completely out of the industry. This isn't chill filtering, right? This is just filtering that everybody really does.

Michael (00:56:18):
Correct. This is nothing to do with chill filtering. So chill filtering is an entirely different process where the liquid is cooled down. And that's, that, that's, that's absolutely, absolutely different. I agree. So this is just, this is just to physically take the you know, 30 market is quite a large aperture actually. So so it's just to take those big lumps of cherry, you want a, a piece to size of a penny inside in your whiskey bottle <laugh>, but its tracking up the bottling lines. I think the consumers will be sending it back to you.

Drew (00:56:48):
Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I feel like at some point we're gonna have consumers, not everybody, you're gonna have your people who are just always, they're drinking whiskey to, you know, it's just this week I'm gonna have a bottle of whiskey next week I'm gonna have something else. And they're never really gonna pay that much attention to it. But it would be really nice for the whiskey fans out there as they grow in their knowledge to realize that it's okay to have cloudy whiskey. It's okay to have whiskey that has little bits floating in it that may have come from lighter filtration versus what everybody else is doing. I look at it and I go, if I see that it's, it's a character added to it, people will drink what's called gold schlager here that has little flakes of gold in it, so why not have little flakes of char to continue the maturation process in the bottle <laugh>?

Michael (00:57:43):
Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're, yeah, they're, I forget the name right now, but there actually is a whiskey in Scotland that does this as a selling point, <laugh>, so you could remember seeing it. I forget the name. Huh.

Drew (00:57:54):
Very nice. So another thing too, when I was traveling through Ireland I would hear certain distilleries talking about distilling potatoes, which of course I've always thought of for vodka, but haven't really thought of necessarily for patina or for doing some, some type of aged spirit. But then your distillery was the first one where I heard about actually using way for distilling. How did you guys come up with that idea?

Michael (00:58:28):
Yeah, I suppose actually it's interesting if you asked me when was the, the very first tiny germ of a seed of an idea about starting a whiskey distillery. I was telling the story recently. I was, I was out of my wife in a really nice restaurant back in 2014, and it was it was a tasting menu where they normally give a different wine for for the the, the for, for each course, but in this case it was a different vodka. So it was seven course meal. And after two vodkas, my wife decided she didn't want any more vodka. So you can imagine what happened to my partner. Yeah. So, so the, the, the very last the, the very last vodka we were given actually was, was a vodka that was derived from Coles milk. And and I said, Whoa, this is really nice. Now I can't remember, was it really nice or was it just that I was after 12 vodka at the time,

Drew (00:59:28):
<Laugh>. But yeah,

Michael (00:59:31):
It was but I said, Well, I'm a dairy farmer living in among the most amazing places in Ireland. We can grow great grass and we grape, we, we make great clean milk and and we can grow great grain and all of this. And I said, Yeah, well, why can't we do this? And that started my journey. And so the whole and that journey led into whiskey then and led into the, the, the, the, the, the whole the whole whiskey distillery the, the, yeah, the journey we've been on for the last eight years. So so the whole, the whole thing started with milk and vodka and g so so it turns out actually that our milk that we grow on the dairy farm, which comes from grass, that it actually goes to the local cooperative. And one of the byproducts that they have is hu Alcohol.

(01:00:25):
They make hu alcohol. So we, we, we send our milk to the cooperative, if it comes back, we buy back the Hu Alcohol and we use that as a base to to, to make our gin and our vodka now. So that's distilled with our, with the various botanicals that we use local mechanicals, and it's so, so it gives a real smooth, creamy, velvety mo feel to the, to the gin. It's people really like it. It's one of those gins that you try it once and you actually keep going back to it because people really like the flavor of it. So it's, and it's unique and it's different. So it's it works for us. Yeah,

Drew (01:01:00):
Very nice. And you actually run a gin school in your distillery as well?

Michael (01:01:05):
Yeah. That's really cool. That's really cool. It's so we've got yeah, we've got a little, a little educational room where people sit around the table and we give them all the, we give them little jars of botanicals and they get a, a small little wings skills and then, and a little Tumblr, and we teach them what each botanical will do with regards flavors and what difference it'll make and give them guidelines as to how much they should or shouldn't put in. But then they decide themselves what sort of flavors they wanted at their own gin, and they create their own recipe and they take the botanicals and put them into their little Tumblr, take it across to our distillery, and each person gets a small little one liter still independent, and they independently distill, actually distill their own gin and put it in the bottle and take it home with them, with their name on it. And it's a great night out. The girls really love it. It's it's a, it's a fun night out. We just do it every weekends and it's, it's good for spreading the world for minky gin as

Drew (01:02:04):
Well. Yeah, very nice. So when people are coming to the distillery and they're doing the distillery tour, as I understand it, I didn't see the video, but I understand that there is a video that gives you a view of the farm, but you can actually, you can actually drive out to the farm, right? They, they're just head out to gal head. Yeah,

Michael (01:02:28):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. And it's a spectacular place. It's, it's beautiful. And we have a small little viewing platform in there, so yeah, people can drive out to the galley head, they can they can walk down, see the barley fields right on the edge of the ocean. You're literally on a, on a windy day, you'll get the salt spray in your face.

Drew (01:02:48):
It couldn't have been more picture perfect the day we went out there. Beautiful sunny skies and I mean, I'm sure it's not always like that <laugh>. No,

Michael (01:02:57):
No, it's not. But you know, in, in, in a wet day, on an rainy day in the middle of winter, actually probably the nicest place time to be there is in the middle of a winter storm just standing there and just just, just admiring this awesome part that nature has and respect for the sea of course, as well.

Drew (01:03:14):
Yeah. I, I feel like every time I go to Ireland, it's sunny. Most of the time I'm there and I'm going, I just don't feel like I'm getting the right experience out of this <laugh>. Yeah,

Michael (01:03:23):
Yeah, yeah. You're very lucky to have managed that because most people have a different experience.

Drew (01:03:27):
Yeah. So although I will say I had one day I was in Galway and I <laugh> I went into the distillery and the rain was coming down sideways and and it was cold. And then after two hours in the distillery, I walked outside and it's beautiful and sunny. I'm like, where did I just walk out into? This is like a completely different world.

Michael (01:03:51):
That's interesting. And that's why Ireland is such an amazing place to mature whiskey because if you were, can you imagine if you were a whiskey cask? So you get this rain and this cold and this wind, which, which whistles to our warehouse every night and are on a bad day. And and then you get sun two hours later. So the whiskey is, is interacting moving back and forward inside in the wood with these, these, you know, in Ireland they say you get the four seasons in one day, and that's absolutely perfect environment for actually maturing good whiskey. So it definitely does make a difference. You, you know, we talk about the maritime influence, that that, that having the location of our warehouse, that, that it makes, and I think it's not the salt, it's actually the changing climate and it's the it's the whole, it's the whole different changes in atmosphere and the, and obviously the angel share would be higher in our warehouse than, than than a a cam normal place, but that will impart a different flavor to our whiskey course. And we're really looking forward to seeing what it does over time. It's, it's, I'm not able to tell you right now what it's going to do, but it will make a difference and it's going to be an interesting journey.

Drew (01:05:00):
Well, especially between what you're growing there and then how you're maturing it there as well has to impart some kind of a maritime, whether it be kind of arinie kind of a note into the, the whiskey or, or what it may be. It will be fun to, to see how that Yeah. Plays out. So if somebody is coming to the area, what how often are you running your tours there?

Michael (01:05:27):
So we run tours two or three times a day. All you have to do is get onto our website. We've got a, we've got a booking system there and and the streak in we're for the winter time, we, we won't be opening Monday, Tuesday, so we're, we're Wednesday to Wednesday to Sunday for the winter time, but most of the year we are on seven days a week. It's two street tours every

Drew (01:05:49):
Day. And as I walked around the distillery, you had much more than one bottle of whiskey there, one type of whiskey. What other kinds of whiskey are you selling there in in Ireland?

Michael (01:05:59):
Well, with all our collaborations, so we try to, in our shop here, we try to offer people the the, the, the full range of what we sell worldwide. So we've got, we've got probably, we've done about 15 different 15, maybe 20 collaborations at this stage, but with breweries in the US and in Europe and, and in Ireland. And we don't have all of them there all the time because they're all limited releases, but we try and we try and do as much as we can. We've got some aged whiskeys there, so we, we would've a 15 year old whiskey available here, obviously sourced, but finished differently and and some interesting grain whiskeys. We would we would, this is all on top of our standard skews and, and we would've fill your own from from a cask so that you can fill your own cask and put your name in a bottle, which is really interesting from a gifting perspective as well. If, if you want to impress a, a long last relative column to kind of guilty for a bottle before you get there, to give it to him with his name on it

Drew (01:07:00):
Too. Very nice. Very nice. Well, Michael, I appreciate your hospitality while I was there and having the opportunity to go out and see the farm and take that in and talk with you one on one about all of this. And then your, your staff is amazing and I, I was there that day, I don't remember, I think I showed up at two o'clock and I left at like seven that night. It just that there was plenty to talk about. So it's, it, it's a fascinating distillery and, and one of those that I think people need to keep on their radar and watch out for those bottles. How, how far across the US are you right now? Are you in a, a few states or are you kind of spreading your way through?

Michael (01:07:44):
Yeah, we're in 18 different states at this point, so most of the East coast states and in the, and the west coast we're presently just, just in Oregon and and San Diego actually. And hopefully spreading into California shortly. And yeah, there's, there could be some exciting things happening with our, with regards to chronic in the States in the next six months or so. So hopefully we might get a, a wider distribution to those that we haven't been able to

Drew (01:08:14):
Reach quite yet. Fantastic. Bring on that Irish whiskey. We need more <laugh>. Great. We're there to give it to you <laugh>. Fantastic. Well, thank you Michael. I appreciate your time today and, and again back when I was visiting and I wish you guys the best of luck moving forward. Thank you, Joe. If you'd like to learn more about Klon LTE Irish whiskey, just head to klon lte distillery.ie. And you can find show notes, transcripts in my YouTube tastings or whiskey lores, other social media channels by heading to whiskey lore.com. Join me on Monday for the Whiskey Lore Stories podcast as I continue my journey through Irish whiskey history and around the island. My stop at John TE's great Northern Distillery, and I've also been reading some 18th century newspapers looking for the earliest stories involving the use of the word whiskey. I'm gonna share some of those coming up on Monday. There's some fascinating ones in there. And next week's interview is with Burnt Church Distillery in South Carolina. I'm your host, Drew Anish. Thanks for listening, and until next time, cheers. And SLO of A Whiskey Lore is a production of Travel Fuel's Life, llc.