Ep. 50 - Starward Whisky's Founder Dave Vitale

Transcript

Drew (00:00:09):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, Drew Hannush, the Amazon bestselling author of Whiskey Lores Travel Guide to Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon. And it's time to head to the land down under, and we're going to do that by way of the Pacific Northwest, where I'm inviting in as my guest Starward distilleries founder Dave Vital. And I've been long curious about whiskeys from different parts of the world. And Australia may not be the first place you think of when you think of whiskey, but they've actually had a pretty storied history. Not only that, but they also have gone through a very interesting period where the laws of the country actually worked against the development of smaller distilleries and it actually caused the industry to completely die out, but it's back in full force now, and there's some very creative and interesting whiskeys coming out of Australia.

(00:01:02):
Starwood, which is based in Melbourne, is definitely one of them. As you're going to hear in this episode. Dave's team actually uses fresh wet wine barrels that are free of charring to make their whiskeys. And David's provided me with some samples from their core line. So we're going to do some tasting. We're going to learn some of the history of Australian whiskey, and we're going to talk about Star War's latest achievement, which is partnering with the Michelin Guide. So let's go ahead and jump right into my conversation with Dave Vital of Star War Whiskey. Dave, welcome to the show.

Dave (00:01:37):
Thanks, drew. Thanks for having me on.

Drew (00:01:40):
Let's talk about Australian whiskey history, just to get everybody situated with where we are today. When the whiskey industry came to Australia, of course we think of people migrating down from England, and so I'm sure there were people who had distilling skills that they brought along with them. What was kind of the origination of the whiskey industry in Australia?

Dave (00:02:10):
Yeah, so it actually, in terms of distilling skills, very early on it was focused on rum in Sydney, actually. That was kind of the starting point of distillation. And obviously there's a very big rum distillery that's in the sugar cane fields in tropical North Queensland now called Bundaberg, and they kind of have the molasses literally right there, and then distill and the rum onsite. And that's been popular, well, I'm going to say since the late 19th century, but whiskey kind of came of age in my hometown and my home state of Victoria in the late 19th century. I'm going to say the 1860s, the late 1860s, Melbourne and San Francisco shed two things or one thing in common at that point in time, there were two richest cities in the world off the back of the gold rush. And so wherever you have miners, you'll have distillation, <laugh>, and mins in e r s <laugh>, obviously rs.

(00:03:30):
Yeah, great. So we had a very thriving whiskey industry that kind of hung on the coattails of that mining boom. And so the first large scale distillery was producing I, I'm pretty sure that was set on a volcano. I know the site very well. It had both natural mineral water and spring water as well. So it had bubbly water and literally the width of a dining table. On one side you had the spring that was sourcing fizzy water and the other side was natural spring water. So they were able to make amazing beer malted Bali was growing in an abundance at the time, and from that beer, they then distilled both Bali gin as they called it at the time, and single malt whiskey. So that was the starting point of commercial whiskey production. It was in the late 1860s. And from there the industry kind of grew. There were four or five different distilleries, both in the gold mining regions were true, which were about 60 miles north of Melbourne but also in Port Melbourne where our distilleries at the moment, there were at the beginning of the 20th century, that little pocket of Melbourne was making the most amount of whiskey in the southern hemisphere at that time. So it was a very, very big distilling industry and all backed off single malt whiskey because we just had an abundance of malted Bali growing.

Drew (00:05:05):
That's amazing. So mean we, I've done stories on Campbelltown, Scotland and how many distilleries they had they 30 at one time and called themselves the whiskey capital of the world. Was Melbourne getting anywhere close to that

Dave (00:05:20):
Approaching 30? I don't think at that point in time we had quite 30, but there were certainly five or six in Melbourne that were very big distilleries. So the throughput that they were making was quite substantial in the millions of liters of alcohol a year for a population of like a hundred thousand people. It was a small community, so we were solely drinking locally made whiskey. There's lovely records that kind of talk about, and I think it might have been slightly protectionist, but the talk about IPO imposing minimum requirements on whiskey because the quality and caliber of the product made domestically compared to the imported stuff from Scotland was inferior in their minds and they needed to make sure that there were controls in place.

Drew (00:06:11):
Did it ever get to that point that they did?

Dave (00:06:14):
Well, it did, and in 1,901 when we became a federation the first laws were enshrined on whiskey and they still persist today. There's only been one small change to the regulation. But basically at that time, whiskey was defined as a fermented grain mash that's distilled and aged inward for a minimum of two years. And I think Canada is the only country that predates that age statement in legislation. So we were the first countries in the world outside of Canada. You'd think it would've been Scotland or the United Kingdom,

Drew (00:06:56):
<laugh>

Dave (00:06:56):
Ireland. But no, it was the outposts that kind of implemented a minimum age statement. So ours to this day, is still fermented gray match aged in wood for a minimum of two years. And it's a wonderful, it's very elegantly simple is the way I phrase it, drew, because it touches on everything that you need to do well, and to call it a whiskey but you can shoot a cannon through it in terms of innovation,

Drew (00:07:28):
Which

Dave (00:07:29):
Is the exciting thing, which we'll get to later on.

Drew (00:07:31):
Excellent. Yeah, I was going to say with and we'll talk about the environment issues you have to deal with, but in a way, when I hear two years and I think about extremes, I go, wow, actually that seems like it could be limiting in itself in that one aspect, but to have everything else opened up.

Dave (00:07:52):
Look, and I think Texas in the United States is probably the closest we get to those sorts of extremes in terms of high temperatures and low for that matter. And then we've got other places around the world now like Taiwan producing amazing whiskeys, Israelis and they're doing crazy things like aging the whiskey in the Dead Sea or adjacent to the Dead Sea. So age is just that. It's a statement of age really. Maturity is impacted by the environment, and we say at Starwood that it takes three Melbourne years to age our whiskey. So two is a good age gate, actually, it needs a little longer than that, but you do need to be careful as to how you age the whiskey in that environment because you could end up even after two years spitting out wood chips if you're not careful.

Drew (00:08:47):
So as I understand it, there got to be a point where the Australian whiskey industry got down to just a couple of distilleries and then actually just disappeared for a while. How did that all come about?

Dave (00:09:01):
So in the 1920s, so we should also add that part of that 1,901 regulation was implementing a minimum still size, which was protectionist. It was basically the existing distilleries saying, you know what? We're onto a good thing here. We don't want more distillers. And so we're going to each take a look at our still sizes and then make a mandate, and I might get this wrong, but it was a thousand gallons, which is 5,000 liters now just after 15 years of production with a really strong investment mandate to make as much whiskey as we want to sell around the world have just purchased Distill that's a bit bigger than 5,000 liters. Wow. So it's about a thousand gallons in

(00:09:55):
American York. So it was a big hurdle that they kind of put in the way in 1,901 as part of that regulation. And so in the mid 1920s, Scotland started to take a keen interest in the United, what was going on in Australia, and the precursor to what is now Diagio, the maker of Johnny Walker and amazing single mots in the Reserve portfolio took a 50% interest in a new distillery that was going to be established 60 miles west of Melbourne. But if you think the North and the West kind of made a lovely triangle of where Bali's grown. So where the Bali was grown and where the city was and where this particular distillery was located, it was perfectly perfect geography. And that distillery was called Caro Distillery and it was set up in the 1920s as a joint venture between the

Drew (00:10:57):
Distillers Company Limited, I think, isn't it? That's

Dave (00:10:59):
Correct. That was, yeah. Yeah. And it was basically an amalgamation of all of those founding distilleries that made it through that sort of 1900 period. And so that was a huge consolidation of the industry at that time in 1920. There were other distilleries, the Gil's Distillery, I mean Gil's is a famous gin brand that was established in Melbourne a little south of Melbourne and others that were making federal distillery was around at that point in time as well. And so there were other distilleries, but they were it for a very long time. The good news is for a very long time, up until in the fifties and sixties when single malt was starting to become a thing around the world we were still the number Australians were drinking Australian whiskey. And it was great quality in Australian whiskey. And we've been able to source some barrels from the old Correo distillery.

(00:11:58):
And when you look at the layers of paint, and if you carefully chip away layers of paint, you find that these barrels were actually whisky barrels from Scotland that we used to age then Australian whiskey in it was a lighter style whiskey. It wasn't sort of poke in the eyes and big sherry bombs or anything like that, or pork bombs. Not withstanding, we still make a lot of sherry and port in Australia. It's diminishing, but there's a lot of it. So we were sourcing these barrels from wherever we could and recycling them and filling them. And coming back to that definition, fermented gray mash that's distilled in aged in wood, it made no mention of oak,

Drew (00:12:47):
Right? No charring

Dave (00:12:49):
Oak or charring or fill strengths, none of that, right? Yeah. So the wood policy that was used at the time was very resourceful. It was what was available to be able to be used. And I've heard some of that early stuff, and it's actually, it's light in style.

Drew (00:13:09):
These are probably third fill fourth Phil barrels that you're getting.

Dave (00:13:15):
Yeah,

Drew (00:13:16):
From the dcl, which is mass producing all over Scotland.

Dave (00:13:22):
Correct, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so they were sent over and repurposed. And so the rest of the world became fascinated with Scottish single malts. And obviously the first one to arrive in Australia officially as a single malt whiskey was the Fi. And in fact, if you ever go to the Fi distillery, there's an amazing kind of video directed by Ridley Scott Noles really, that they run at the beginning of the tour. And if you look very carefully, they talk about exporting barrels like single barrels around the world. And one of them went to Melbourne you know, can see him writing in the book

Drew (00:14:03):
Melbourne

Dave (00:14:04):
Australia. So we were very much on the whiskey map very early on. And Glen Fick kind of spearheaded it in Australia. And still I think for the time being until Starwood kind of gets the number one single malt sold in Australia. So incumbency is a very powerful thing. But over from about the fifties and sixties down to the eighties, there was a slow decline in both production and consumption of Australian whiskey. And that was part due to economic forces, but also as international whiskeys became a little bit more ambitious about their export plans, particularly in the eighties Australian whiskey's, relevance kind of was diminished. And there's quite a sad sort of end to that history. Most people, like a generation older than me, think of cario whiskey as rocket fuel.

Drew (00:15:09):
<laugh> nice.

Dave (00:15:11):
And there's a very good reason for that. The stills were in desperate need of refurbishment, and they were neglected for quite some years. And part of the reason was that they were owned by an international company at that point in time who had a vested interest in supporting the local market with their own product as opposed to the domestic product. And so in 1986 the distillery was closed down the last of those distilleries was closed down. So when did the, I guess the original kind of distillation from the 1860s legitimate whiskey distillation, I'm sure there was lots of illicit stuff going on <laugh> before and after that time. But we had a long continuous runt of whiskey, premium whiskey production in Australia from the late 1860s right through to the 1980s. And if you think about legitimate whiskey production in the United States, there was a huge gap in the middle there with prohibition. So it's funny to think of, and even Australians wouldn't think of it this way, it's funny to think that Australia had a longer continuous history of making whiskey for home consumption then America did because of the prohibition. And so it's quite funny, no one thinks of it that way, but we've got a very deep love for whiskey even today, and it's rooted in the gold rush.

Drew (00:16:51):
And then to get a distilling industry started again, or to get even a single craft distillery with that 1901 law that's not going to really help a small craft distillery get off the ground. How did, because now there are there's at least 40 50 distilleries

Dave (00:17:13):
And upwards of 200 in development. So it's a big industry. And Drew, it's quite interesting. It could have been over and that's it. No one would've kind of ever thought to make whiskey in Australia or any distilled spirit because that minimum requirement was for all distill spirits, not just whiskey. And so look what we had a vibrant brandy production environment and was used most of the distillation of wine was made for fortifying spirit for sherry and port. Okay. Why those brandy distilleries kind of persisted was cause they were taking thousands and thousands of subgrade wine and then turning it into fortification spirit for usin in Sherry and port, which was quite popular. But outside of the brandy industry, there was no real, and that one rum distillery, there was no real distilling scene at all in Australia and certainly not in whiskey. And then in 1992, the founding father of, I guess the modern craft spirits industry, not just whiskey, when fishing with his father-in-law name's Bill Lark, he went fishing with his father-in-law in the highlands of Tasmania, which is very Scotland, and he's pretty sure it was Glen, but he was drinking some Glen Glen FARs after having gone fishing.

(00:18:48):
And he said, we grow Bali here. We have amazing water and a very similar climate to Scotland. Why isn't anyone making whiskey? And he's a land surveyor, right? That's his day job. But Bill's quite inventive and not withstanding, he's quite traditional anti-establishment as well. So he was like, I'm going to find out why and what we can do about this. And so he started to look at the regulations and found this minimum kind of threshold, which was never going to work. And so he went to his local as everyone should, went to his local member of Parliament government and said why is this circulation in here? And I said, well, you know what? I'm not sure why either, but I've actually got a call with the Minister for Innovation who takes care of tax regulation as well. So I'll bring it up with him and see what he comes back. Anyway came back and the minister at the time said, yeah, that's a silly law. Tell Bill that he can get started on making some whiskey and we'll change it. How small does he want it to be? Wow. And they changed it to five liters, which is five

Drew (00:20:03):
Leaders really.

Dave (00:20:04):
They went from a thousand gallons to one gallon being the minimum size. Wow. Now you still need to go through a licensing process and all those sorts of things. And as much as you can be a home brewer and a home winemaker, you can't be a home distiller in Australia. So any still greater than five liters needs to be licensed and registered with the government and so on and so forth. And so off he went and started to make in literally on his kitchen bench started to make Australia's first single malt whiskey in six years, but the first licensed distillery in Tasmania in 150 years.

Drew (00:20:45):
And that's a pretty popular area for whiskey distillation. Now it

Dave (00:20:50):
Look, I mean in terms of today, if we talk about the Campbelltown being that I think Tasmania rightfully holds the, it's the epicenter of whiskey production today in terms of number of distilleries, but in interestingly, in terms of volume produced very low on the <laugh>. Yeah. So it's a lot of very well-crafted artisanal products. And I think that for them, the ambition is to really fully embrace the tourism opportunity because that's what Tasmania is known for domestically and internationally for that matter. The wilderness there is amazing. 40% of the island is just world heritage listed wilderness. So it's paradise, it's a beautiful place to visit and I can't wait to get back there for both the natural environment,

(00:21:49):
But it's quite artisanal and small scale. And that's representative of most of those distilleries that we were talking about beforehand, that really, they're in the regions, they're in regional Australia with smaller populations and they're ambition, I don't want to speak for them, but by and large in the domestic market for sure. And fortunately for them, they're able to sell, they can have a tasting room that is able to sell direct to consumers. And so that sort of margin that they're able to keep means they can continue to invest in more whiskey as time goes by. But Drew, I have to say, I take the keys to any Australian whiskey distillery such as the quality that's coming out of Australia and call it my own. Honestly, the, it's all amazing whiskey. And it comes back to that definition that we spoke of earlier, that you can shoot a cannon through it. And the amazing thing is that there's just so much diversity in the category now that means that whiskey drinkers can have a lot of fun exploring that all of the different variances and approaches that whiskey make makers are making at the moment.

Drew (00:23:04):
So in your area of Melbourne, would you say that it traditionally was a wine drinking area, a beer drinking area or a closet, whiskey drinking area?

Dave (00:23:19):
All of the above. I think beer by a long margin in terms of volume. And we had, for a very long time the largest brewery in Australia was located in Melbourne and served the nations up here. We've got amazing wine growing regions within 50, 40, 50 miles of Melbourne, downtown Melbourne, within a day's drive. We've also got amazing wine growing regions in AD South Australia, which is another state, but it's about an eight hour drive away. And for Americans, I'm glad when I say it's eight hours away in Europe, people think you just kind of cost two countries.

Drew (00:24:02):
It's a two week vacation for me to get there. Yeah. <laugh> far I'll never go

Dave (00:24:08):
Eight hours as a different kind of, it's the same sort of sense of scale as it does for Australians, not far away. And wine's a big part of our drinking repertoire, and whiskey's always been there. Like it said, it's still the pinnacle of flavor in my view, in terms of when it comes to sort of complexity and certainly in some instances intensity of flavor. Nothing kind of holds a torch to whiskey. And I think that as you, your palate develops in, that's where you gravitate towards is things that are a bit more intense and have a bit more complexity to them. And that's why outside of teenagers and people that shouldn't be drinking people kind of graduate from beer into wine into harder liquor as they grow older. What we've seen, I think globally over the last 15 years for sure has been a compression of that timescale and a promiscuity I guess across all of those three drinks and the three beer, wine and spirits. But also within itself, people will drink gin or vodka or whiskey.

Drew (00:25:34):
And it's an interesting point because that was my journey. I started out in beer. I drank beer most of my life. My initial experience with whiskey was not a good one, but the purpose for drinking whiskey back then was different, which was I didn't care what it tasted, I was going to chase it with something. So it just needed to get the job done. And that was the philosophy on it. And then I just got tired of beer after a while. It's like everybody's telling me what it is and what it's supposed to taste like, and I see these wine drinkers and they're all sitting here discussing their wines. I've never really discussed a beer other than say that that's hoppy or that's, here's the right basic element of it that I find interesting. And

Dave (00:26:24):
I don't know about you, but for me, I guess whiskey really had one role and that was refreshment, right?

Drew (00:26:32):
Right. Absolutely.

Dave (00:26:34):
Mowing the lawn, finishing up and then just cracking a can of icy cold beer was just the best way to end an afternoon, right? Yeah. Whereas I think when we are starting to think about wine, it is a different occasion. I mean refreshment nowadays with all of the frozens and all the things, right in roses. And back in the day, it was really a different occasion. It was about discernment. And certainly with food and good company, let's not ignore the fact that I think the craft beer movement also helped move beer into that a bit more of a discerning sort of space. But by and large, you're absolutely right. We gradu historically, we kind of graduated into a different occasion for drinking. And with that came more dialogue I guess, about what we're drinking too. And there's a magical thing about, and I've learned more about winemaking making whiskey than <laugh> I being a drinker, funnily enough. And we'll talk about why later on. But the interesting thing for me is that there is so much more scope for variation and for discussion, an approach with a winemaker and also mother Nature's their business partner. So from season to season, it's also going to change as well. So between just the seasons and an approach of the winemaker, you could be neighbors with a winery and make two completely different wines from the same grape.

Drew (00:28:09):
Well, and then different years, you're going to have different experiences. If it's a dry year, if it's a overly wet season, whatever it may be, can really, and I've even tasted that in whiskey before. I've heard of someone once told me, if you buy Weller 12 here, it has good years and bad years. It's sometimes the crops were good, sometimes weather was better, sometimes the weather. That's interesting because I wouldn't have thought you really could have gotten that out of whiskey.

Dave (00:28:40):
Yeah. Oh look mean, absolutely. I think it's starting with grains and I think today when you're talking about the fire hydrant of spirit coming out of some of the larger distilleries, the variation's been almost sort of programmed out of their production process because they want to deliver on a promise of consistency to the drinker from batch to batch. But certainly it's something that we've explored and validated. And we're not Robinson Caruso in doing that, not just a Starwood or Australian distilleries is a amazing distillery in the Pacific Northwest called Westland that kind of has built a reputation out of that in terms of really anchoring the terroir of whiskey to the Bali that's grown in the regions. And I think it's a fascinating conversation that needs to be discussed more and more of obviously the oak, the barrel that we're aging whiskey and has so much influence on the character of the whiskey, but it's not all of the influence. And the way I'm a frustrated home brewer, that's kind of my story coming into whiskey. I wanted to initially set up an organic Tasmanian beer. That was my ambition. But good beer doesn't travel well, <laugh> like we know

Drew (00:30:03):
That

Dave (00:30:04):
And we wouldn't be talking today. So for me, the next step up was, and that's how I actually got introduced to Bill, that the founding bar that Bill Lar of Whiskey and I worked with Bill for two and a half years, helping them scale up their operations and learning how to make whiskey and learning how not to make whiskey too. At that point in time, where do you look if you're making single malt whiskey, where are you going to look to, you're going to look to Scotland and see how that's, what are the boundaries of making quality whiskey? And so the early distillers in Australia were very much anchored in the finest. In fact, one of them said, we make Tasmanian whiskey in the finest of Scottish traditions that had relevance in the nineties when they're trying to sell this hand to hand. And so without any kind of credentials or so, they needed that kind of anchoring point for both the consumer and themselves.

(00:31:10):
But off the back of them being able to prove that they could do that in the finest of Scottish traditions, now all of them, including those distilleries that started at that point are starting to branch out and be a bit more innovative. And my kind of starting into whiskey was like, well, I know how we can, we've definitely proven that Australia can make great whiskey. And historically we were doing it. So that's not my job to do. We've done that. The job that we need to do is to get it out of the special occasion cabinet as this kind of obscurity, obscure kind of memento from a visit to a place into the sharing cabinet alongside great bourbons, great scotch, great Irish whiskey. More recently, Japanese whiskey is something that people can gravitate to and choose for themselves that evening because it stands for something different to all those other whiskeys.

Drew (00:32:06):
And so the thing that Bill would not have been familiar with, he would've known about Australia's climate, but he wasn't having to distill in a place like Melbourne where the temperature and humidity and the rest is going to be very different from the way it is in Tasmania. So how did you go about figuring this out

Dave (00:32:33):
For some context? For those that are listing, we basically Melbourne's kind of geographically unique in the world in that we have not much between the city and the Outback a big desert in the center of the country that everybody's familiar with. And so the predominant winds in Australia coming from the west. So if it's blowing from the northwest into the southeastern corner where Melbourne is, it's hot dry winds right now. And you'll see it. If anybody's curious about the Australian open, you'll see we'll get up upwards of 105, 110 degrees Fahrenheit for days in a row. But they'll be punctuated with huge swings, huge swings down into the sixties. Cause we've got another desert that's nearby, it's called Antarctica. And so if the wind is coming from the southwest, it's freezing cold, humid, picking up a lot of humidity off the water and coming into Melbourne again uninterrupted.

(00:33:42):
It's just coming straight in. And so we've got these two huge influences into the climate of Melbourne. And so it makes for quite dramatic weather, very frustrating to live in terms of, you dunno what you're going to get at the end of the day, but amazing place to age whiskey in because we do genuinely have four seasons in a day. And as I said earlier, in three Melbourne years, we come up with this amazing, well-crafted whiskey that's quite balanced in character and flavor. That would take upwards of eight to 10 years in Kentucky and 12 plus years in Scotland if we just used evaporative losses as a measure. And so the challenge for me was in two parts. The first was that no one was really doing this at scale and we needed so that was a challenge. And we were using, had this huge dural range to manage.

(00:34:43):
And so how do I'm going to start crafting whiskey at scale where an unknown quantity, what if it all comes to age sooner than I'm able to monetize it or adversely, what if I haven't, I've undercooked it and it's going to take longer than I thought. So there was quite a big process that went into kind of crafting the wood policy at the distillery to manage for that. And what we did was basically hedged our bets by filling smaller barrels about 13 gallon barrels 26 gallon barrels, and the standard 50 55 gallon barrels that we we're familiar with bourbon. So we could then think about production from a portfolio perspective or blending the whiskeys at the end of that so that we had light and shade, we had an abundance of extraction from those smaller barrels. We had some balance in the middle with the a hundred liter barrels, the 26 caliber barrels and some light delicate characteristics coming from the 200 liter casks. And the initial thinking Drew was that actually we'd launched with the thirteens, moved to the 26 s after a year or two, and then stabilize on our larger format barrels and look over, what is it now, nearly 15 years of production. That's kind of where we've ended up. But actually those first few years, the spirit was ready, the spirit was ready in the fifties and it was ready in the 200 s. What we were able to come up with is a far more complex whiskey because we had that light and shade

(00:36:27):
Coming from those three barrels so that we hedging the bets turned out to be not, how can I put it? It was unanticipated. I could have released any of those three whiskeys, those barrel shapes, but some of the parts made a better whiskey than any three could have made originally. So that was a big lucky

Drew (00:36:48):
<laugh>

Dave (00:36:49):
Coincidence for me. And that first product that we brought to market was called solar. It's available in the states on allocation because using a traditional method of production in fortified wines, we basically vat the 5,100 and 200 liter barrels after they've aged for three Melbourne years into a large container. And if you think of a bottomless cup of coffee, we only take out 20% for every release of solar and then top it up with aged whiskey again. So it's always aged whiskey that we're just topping up. And so every single barrel that we've released at Starwood is in your bottle, which is pretty amazing.

Drew (00:37:38):
That is amazing.

Dave (00:37:40):
And makes for a really consistent whiskey because that was really important to me. If we think about the whiskeys that I admire and have been a huge influence on me, there's five of them. Johnny Walker, black Maker's Mark, very different, right? The bell double wood.

Drew (00:37:58):
Okay.

Dave (00:37:59):
Laro 10 year old and Wild Turkey 1 0 1.

Drew (00:38:06):
Nice. Really

Dave (00:38:07):
Different. Broad.

Drew (00:38:09):
Yeah. Right. That's good. I mean, if you had a whiskey cabinet with those five whiskeys, you, you've got a lot of areas covered.

Dave (00:38:16):
Correct. And my ambition was to be inspired by them because they're amazing whiskeys. But if I want to sit next to them in my sharing cabinet, as we discussed beforehand, I can't be any of those three, those five things.

Drew (00:38:29):
Right, right.

Dave (00:38:31):
Because it's done. Yeah, it's already done. So that was kind of the mindset that I came to whiskey with the love of it spelled both ways from around the world with a huge amount of reverence towards what had been achieved by those whiskeys particularly and others of course, but with a strong conviction that if we're going to be relevant and move out of being and be a player in the international whiskey scene just as Japanese whiskeys and Irish whiskeys and scotch and bourbon is, then we've got to stand up for something else. And that kind of talks to the second part of aging, which was the complexity at Starwood. So fifties, hundreds, two hundreds kind of mitigated the climate

(00:39:18):
Early on until we found our feet and had enough inventory to be wiser with our decision making, with experience. The second was that we were aging exclusively, and we still do in Australian wine barrels. So I can count on maybe two hands the non wine barrels that are in there and it won't be any surprise. But years and years and years, we had four X American bourbon barrels in the bond store, and two of them were wild Turkey and two of them were Maker's Mark. Right? Nice. But that was it. And for an Australian distillery and in a modern single mot whiskey distillery to that uses second fill barrels to completely ignore effectively the bourbon sort of wood policy was a audacious to say the leaf. It was a very big step. But

Drew (00:40:16):
You've tasted those and do you feel like at some point this is a flavor that people need to check out? Or do you just want to stick with what you have? And I mean, you really have created with this idea of using wine barrels exclusively a very unique experience because I don't know of another distillery that on that doesn't char, that recharge their barrels that they use wine barrels exclusively that are still wet when they're putting whiskey into them.

Dave (00:40:53):
Right. And it's magical because it's bloody delicious. I know that at the time, right? But it turned out to be a wonderful thing. But those four barrels, we've actually launched them. And I remember I actually drank the first one when I was in the States and I texted employee number one, and now our heads up the whole production wouldn't be star without him and said, why didn't we make more of this bourbon

(00:41:30):
Probably not rated for a live show, but it was laden with a few expletive saying, because I didn't want to which is true, and because I knew it would be delicious, I knew that bourbon bourbon barrels with single malt whiskey, are you kidding me? I mean, they're delicious, right? Yeah. But what have I got to say? How am I going to, what's the story I'm telling and what's the reason why it has permission to be in that sharing cabinet if it's a single malt whiskey aged in X American oak barrels, when we have these amazing wine barrels that are yielding such a different approach to whiskey making from a process perspective, the more importantly create this amazingly delicious, really shippable whiskey, but also, which is really important for me personally, an amazingly brilliantly mixable whiskey as well. Because wine, as we know is food friendly.

(00:42:31):
So a whiskey H and wine barrels, of course, is going to be really versatile in cocktails. So it does these two, it kind of marries these two worlds in a wonderful way. And that was kind of the master stroke. But aging in wine barrels, we bet the farm on it. It was all chips on 22 red kind of moment. And it could have completely broken us, but frankly, if it didn't work and we gave it a red hot go, I don't know that I would've then said, oh, well, let's just age whiskey and bourbon barrels. Yeah, I probably would've said, this is not a job that I'm capable of completing to the way that I envisioned it kind of turning out.

Drew (00:43:15):
So your wine barrels are all locally sourced.

Dave (00:43:19):
So there are days typically from Victorian wineries, so Northern Victoria, so the hot dry climate but also just at the foothills of the Great Dividing range, which is cooler climate Shiraz and Cabernet and Pinot that kind of grow in those regions and more traditional Shen Cabernet in Northern Victoria. And then to our west, we have South Australia, which is kind of famed for making amazing Shazz and Cabernet Cas. So we've got all of these barrels that we are able to source within a day's drive. Wine goes out and whiskey goes in within 24 hours. And then that full aging begins often. It's becoming more frequent. Now we've kind of lined up great relationships with wine wineries, but we're not quite at the scale of being able to tell Penfolds when to discord their wine barrels. And so they'll basically say, look, we're emptying barrels on this date.

(00:44:25):
Do you want them And wine barrels as a substrate to age whiskey and is very, very different, not just because of the wine, but because of the wood policy of the wine maker when choosing the barrel from the cooperage. So there's french oak obviously that we don't see a lot of in American whiskeys. There's American oak, but then these are lightly toasted instead of charred. So that interaction with the woods going to be very, very different. And also the vintages, the number of vintages that a winemaker uses, the wine barrel at the winery is going to make a big difference as well. So if you think about it, why is a winemaker using wine barrels or oak create structure for the wine to age? And that structure comes from oak tannin. So we've got this wonderful, how can I put it? We've got a really soft oak character coming through without all of that tannin that can create some astringency on the pallet because all of that tannin is in the wine.

(00:45:30):
Nice. That works. And so our engagement with the barrels very different to different wine to different distilleries that are using brand new American oak or X American bourbon barrels. It's softer, but with some added nuance of flavor from both the different types of wood but also of course the wine that's in there. Now, as I was saying, if you are a wine maker that's dumping 400 barrels, we're not at the scale to be able to fill those barrels fastly enough. The wine turns into vinegar and we don't want to age whiskey in vinegar barrels. Trust me. Yes. Yeah. Ask me know how, I know why. So some of those barrels will be charred just because it will. We're better off having the barrels in the bond store, and this is the fifties and hundreds kind of had a bit more depth of character and flavor.

(00:46:29):
Those charred wine barrels also have, we're still managing that light and shade, but rather than using size, we're using how much of the portfolio has been charred or not. So definitely the majority are all wet filled, but we do have a percentage of them that are charred because just from a logistics standpoint, what we can't fill them all the time. So fine tuning all of that and getting it right and sort of dialing in a product that if we come back to those inspirations is as consistent as Johnny Walker has been for the last 200 years. Mm-hmm. Approachable maker's, mark, that's well crafted, the Veni, and as distinctive as Laro is, right, you pop the cork on it and what you're drinking not as intense as Laro, but as distinctive as Laro. And that is category defining as wild Turkey is. That was kind of my mindset. And I think after 15 years now of being in continually fine tuning, we've kind of hit our stride with those whiskeys.

Drew (00:47:48):
Nice. So I'm going to ask you some questions about your grains, but before I do, I don't want to forget to ask this, because when I was reading Tommy Doer's round the World book that he wrote in 18 93, 94, as he traveled the globe, the one place that he was most nervous about going to was Melbourne, Australia. And he said that the reason he was afraid to go there was because of all the snakes. Are there a lot of snakes because you're on the edge of the outback. So there are a lot of snakes in Melbourne.

Dave (00:48:22):
Well, I mean it's an urban environment now, so less, but back in the day. Yeah, definitely. And we, it's interesting, snakes in inspired as a, I guess they are a big deal. I mean, not living there anymore. I can kind of understand why people get a little bit freaked out about all of this stuff. But when you're there, it's just part of life, everyday life. So it's not that big of a deal. And what if you leave them alone and they'll leave you alone?

Drew (00:48:51):
He said after rarely, he said after all his worrying, he only saw one. Right. He survived. That wouldn't have been good for Melbourne to have Tommy doer bit and poisoned in.

Dave (00:49:06):
Exactly.

Drew (00:49:09):
So your grain is also locally sourced. Then I noticed you also you have a twofold whiskey, which uses wheat as well. Wheat,

Dave (00:49:20):
Yeah. So there's a tipular hat to make us there, right? Weed. We've got a 60% wheat, 40% malted barley release. It's called twofolds. It's still aged in those Australian wine barrels, A mixture of French oak and American oaks, some chard, some not charred, 1, 2, 3 vintages at the winery, Cabernet Pinot Shiraz. The wonderful thing about our inventory is that lots of whiskey distilleries love doing their single barrel programs. We could release a single barrel every week of the year and still not come back to the same type of barrel, let alone nuances between one barrel to the next. Yeah. But twofold, twofold.

(00:50:02):
If solar, the first whiskey we spoke of is my sentimental favorite, twofold, I guess is the one that gets me out of bed every day. Not literally but one that gets me out of bed every day because it's quite exciting to have a product that is so approachable, so delicious and easy to drink. And if you're thinking about expanding your whiskey repertoire outside of the traditional whiskey making countries, and you start here, I feel like we are going to encourage you to explore the category even more, which is exciting. And I think what wheat does as it does for great bourbons is kind of give it some space and some space to let those wine characteristics come through for you to sample those the toasted oak flavors from the barrel itself that come from the winery, but it's still got a really strong cereal backbone coming from both the malt and the wheat.

Drew (00:51:04):
It's really interesting because I, I'm nosing it and tasted it earlier and kind of jotted down some notes on it. And all three that I got a chance to nose all had this nice, warm, reminded me of baked goods. There was something about it that just had that really nice comforting feeling like you've got something baking in the oven but this one also had, it almost had a foresty kind of a smell to it. It's a kind of an urbanly spice, for lack of a better term.

Dave (00:51:41):
No, you're spot on. That's that's the French oak character coming through. So you can think, if we typically think of herbaceous whiskeys certainly American whiskeys we're in the rye camp, but this is really different. It's a lighter kind of herbaceousness that's not pokey in the, I mean I love rye whiskeys, but some of them can be quite

Drew (00:52:03):
Aggressive,

Dave (00:52:04):
Overwhelming with that's spice and herbaceousness and I think that's rye. It's the rye grain that's doing that here. That spiciness, that herbaceous and spiciness is actually coming from the oak and the French oak.

Drew (00:52:20):
All of them have a really nice mouth feel to it. This one though is, I don't know if it's because I just had coffee before I did my tastings, but I kept getting this coffee with cream kind of a experience out of it with that.

Dave (00:52:33):
Yeah, look, I think a lot of people, particularly with twofold sort of talk about a creaminess, but not from a flavor point of view, but more from a textural perspective that's quite mouth coating and round. And look, I think a lot of people on Nova, the next one pick up a merca kind of characteristic on it. So given they're using the same wine barrels and that effectively, so should point out the 60% wheat, 40% multi bar is separately distilled and aged, and then we marry them post maturation. And so the 40% malted Bali that you're getting in No, in twofold is actually the Nova product.

Drew (00:53:18):
Oh, okay. Really interesting.

Dave (00:53:21):
So we make substantially more Nova than we do twofold to make both twofold and Nova, if that makes sense.

Drew (00:53:33):
And then there's a nice little cinnamon to it. But I'll, another note I wrote down, and sometimes I'll go off from the standard tasting notes, just if something hits me is it was like waffle. It was having a waffle in the morning, the finish on it. Yeah. It was just and I think that's a grain that was coming through on it, and probably the combination of the

Dave (00:53:55):
Baking spices.

Drew (00:53:56):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Because there's a little cinnamon in there too that kind of rolls with that too. So that's a really interesting as I was tasting it, I was trying to pick out what was different about it from any other whiskeys that I had had because it was unique. And I think the thing is that there really is no char element to it. It didn't really have any of that kind of smoky, not Petey smoke, but kind of a charred barrel kind of a effect to it.

Dave (00:54:34):
Look, and what a wonderful kind of world now to discover. We've got all of these amazing ways of experiencing whiskey that are so different to the way scotch and bourbon and Irish whiskey turn up. And it's a lot of fun to sort of bring those to market because one of the things I was really worried about before we knew we could craft a whiskey twofold, for example, was that I didn't want to be the Aussie chara whiskey poke you in the eyes with intense flavor. And if you think about virgin oak barrels that are sort of straight from the Cooper region and aging whiskey, they can be a little intense. But the master stroke of all of this is the wine has taken softened the barrel, the wine has taken out a lot of the stringency that we sometimes see in that virgin oak expression. And at the other end, there's lots of amazing wine distilleries that are doing wine finishes. But it's a different approach. Effectively, you're getting two hits of oak in that. Right?

Drew (00:55:43):
That's true.

Dave (00:55:44):
You're getting the first aging process and then a finish in wine. So funnily enough, those wine finishes that see a lot less time and contact with the wine barrel often turn out being more intense than this whiskey that's aged for the full period in red wine. So it's been fascinating for me as a drinker to discover all of this as well.

Drew (00:56:09):
Yeah, you're getting local barley. Do you malt the barley yourself or do you have a malting house that does that for you?

Dave (00:56:17):
There's some bits of the process where it just makes it, you've got to pick your battles. And for me, me we're quite fortunate and coming from that sort of brewing mindset, that there are lots of artisanal maltsters in Melbourne that are supporting the craft brewing scene. So we could work with those maltsters to dial in a spec that was neither brewing malt nor distilling malting character that just became the Starwood spec, which effectively means that it has high dias static power. It converts all of the complex carbohydrates into fermentable sugars, but it's also darker in color. That means that it creates that luscious mouth feel that we were talking about and those baked goods characteristics that you were talking about as well, because we're effectively sort of roasting the Bali a little longer to get that darker colored grain. And just like coffee, the darker the roast, the more intense flavor that you'll get from it.

Drew (00:57:17):
And then I read that you were using a combination of brewers and distillers east.

Dave (00:57:23):
Yeah.

Drew (00:57:24):
Okay.

Dave (00:57:24):
For the same reason. We wanted to make sure that all of that hard work we put into crafting this work that we're going to then ferment was fully attenuated that we got all the sugar and turned it into alcohol, but didn't miss a trick by using ale yeast to drive a lot of flavor. And so if you think of, for example, a Belgian ale compared to Larga, the flavor profiles very, the grain itself is the same plus or minus, but the, it's the yeast that's kind of driving a lot of that different flavor coming through. And so inspired by that, we just took an approach of thinking about using al yeast to kind of drive more flavor into the spirit before it was aging because we knew, I knew the time wasn't going to be on my side, that I needed to have a spirit that could step up to the intensity of the environment that it was in and still be in balance.

Drew (00:58:18):
Yeah. So you had a very interesting beginning to, what year did you get started with the distillery?

Dave (00:58:27):
So officially we started in 2007. We were raising, it was my moment with Bill and his wife Lynn saying, okay, I think my ambitions for your business and your ambitions for your business are a little different. And I thought it would be a confrontational meeting. And they both kind of looked at me and said, look, we've been waiting for you to come to this realization for some

Drew (00:58:49):
Time. <laugh> nice.

Dave (00:58:51):
We should set up your own distillery. And so with their blessing we started a star war to kind of fulfill that idea of a sharing cabinet whiskey that should be in every bar around the world and in home bars are too.

Drew (00:59:04):
Okay. And then you have an interesting location for the distillery.

Dave (00:59:10):
So really, it's really interesting. I think that there are a lot of people, me included, that get really captivated by process and the maker's world. And I am too. But I knew very early on that I didn't really have much to say because all we did when we launched was maker whiskey and we knew it was going to take some time. I didn't know how long <laugh> and that even when we did get started, that our focus should be in the drinkers world and that the actual home of this whiskey was Melbourne's restaurants and bars, not the distillery itself. And so I took a really pragmatic approach to thinking about where am I going to distill was actually after visiting the Hangar one distillery in in San Francisco that I thought, well, we've got a secondary airport close to the distillery. I wonder if they've got any space there. So we started making whiskey in an old Qantas maintenance hangar about four miles from my home, which was great because I used to get up at 5 45 in the morning, literally get to the distillery at 6:00 AM turn the stills around from the overnight run get them going do the force cut the heads cut, then have enough time to drive home, have breakfast with the kids,

Drew (01:00:45):
<laugh>,

Dave (01:00:46):
Get them off to school, and then drive back to the distillery in time for the tails cut. And so just being close to home was really valuable with young children. I didn't have a story to tell. It's what security and airport's pretty good

(01:01:02):
Supply of power is pretty good at an airport. You don't want to power adage at an airport. And it was right by a highway. So it had all of the key things that we needed and they were very, very, very generous and friendly landlords as well. We were able to negotiate a very accommodating lease arrangement that sort of scaled as we went along, understanding that the early years of a whiskey distillery are very lean in terms of operations, but ideally longer term things will turn a corner. And I can say it now, there were, we were 30 days away from insolvency for a year and a half. And if it weren't for their generosity of just saying, don't make fools of us,

Drew (01:01:45):
We

Dave (01:01:47):
Don't want to fail just because you can't make this rent, we're going to be fine without your rent for a period of time. And it all turned out great. And so working with the airport was one of many lucky moments in the history of Starwood.

Drew (01:02:05):
Now, you had also, I had read that you initially started selling barrels of whiskey to people and then buying them back.

Dave (01:02:17):
So the challenge with production and being in the sharing cabinet is that you want to be at a price point that means that people aren't going to be like, oh, I'm not too sure if you are worthy of this whiskey that happens. And I wanted to avoid that. So I had in my mind that if we could be with twofold at a maker's market price point, then we've got a chance there won't be prices to the reason why we fail. And the challenge with that, the challenge is scale. It's that simple. Bali grains are a commodity. Utility prices are generally kind of universal, right? It's all of the overheads that you have in running a distillery that kind of mean that you're either paying 80 or a hundred dollars a bottle or $30 a bottle in state. So I decided to scale up, but I just didn't have the capital available to be able to do that. I don't have those that deep of a pocket. So I came up with this idea, which was modeled on something that I saw with lumber, believe it or not, where people that were kill drying lumber would basically create a future for it and sell it today per board foot at one price, and then buy it back off the person that had purchased it at a board foot price at a premium. And it would sort of be a certificate of deposit sort of arrangement. Nice.

(01:03:50):
And so we were able to do that for the first three or four years. But then very quickly my role became selling barrels of whiskey as opposed to thinking about building a brand. And so there's an interesting inflection point where that program doesn't necessarily make sense anymore. And so that's when we sought more formal investment to help us scale up.

Drew (01:04:16):
It was very interesting because I mean, distillers have to make some tough decisions early on to figure out how they're going to survive through time when they're waiting for whiskey to age. And that was probably one of the more unique ones that I've heard.

Dave (01:04:35):
It is a unique way of doing it. And look, I think they've been doing similar sorts of programs without the promise to buy back in Scotland for quite some time. But my thinking was like, no, no, no. I want the whiskey. I'm just can't borrow from a bank, so I'm just going to borrow from you. Yeah. And you do it one barrel at a time.

Drew (01:04:54):
So this is the Nova that I'm now, would you call this your flagship?

Dave (01:04:58):
Yeah. I mean it's interesting. I mean, they're all my kids, so I love them equally and they've all got a role to play. But this I guess is when we talk about the French Oak, the American Oak, all of those sorts of things, it's the epitome of all of those barrels kind of combined into one grand crew we're talking wine terms. And so it highlights just the depth and complexity that's available from whiskeys aged in wine barrels without the intensity, which is a real key point for me. I didn't want it to be too intense that people were like, oh geez, well that's a novelty. It's interesting. I'm glad I tried it, but I'm going to take a pass next time. I wanted to avoid that. And so it's still got all the hallmarks of a great whiskey in terms of that balance between spirit, the wine flavors, and the oak. It's really important to have that balance, but it just kind of approaches it from a different perspective of uncharted oak barrels and red wine being the previous use as opposed to, say for example, char American oak barrels.

Drew (01:06:09):
Yeah. This one is, the grain is always there. It's, it's always kind of tying it all together. But I get more of the fruit and kind of berry kind of a nose out of this one that kind of compliments that.

Dave (01:06:27):
Absolutely.

Drew (01:06:29):
It was very subtle the first time I nosed it because I think I tried the solar first and then came to this, and then this was a bit more subtle and I had to walk away from it and come back because and then once I did, I'm like, wow, there's a whole bunch of stuff here that I wasn't nosing before.

Dave (01:06:45):
Yeah, absolutely. The fruit profile, and even if you go back, I think to twofold, you'll see more of the fruit up. You've nosed it in Nova, it sort of presents itself. And look, water is Starwood's friend. These are quite low proof whiskeys. They're at 80 and 82 proof, so they're not kind of big baller whiskeys that you kind of having with a big cube of ice and a cigar can. But my point is that they're quite nuanced and delicate and water has helped them do that. And part of the reason for that is climate coming back to where we started, we actually go into barrel at a lower proof point. And I think also the wine barrels, the more watery you add to them, the more they open up as well. So we didn't necessarily want to create something that I just wanted to be, I wanted it to be ready to drink. Yeah, I guess

Drew (01:07:48):
So. I almost wanted to say on the pallet, this is a southern whiskey, and the reason why I say this is a southern whiskey is because around me, people talk about nano pudding. Have you ever heard of Nana Pudding?

Dave (01:08:02):
No. This, I love the food references to different states in the United States. It's been fascinating. I could write a book about it,

Drew (01:08:13):
<laugh>,

Dave (01:08:14):
All the different kind of cuisines of people that I've never heard of that people kind of use as the reference point. So

Drew (01:08:21):
Tell me about, it's like banana pudding with vanilla wafers in it. And so you get the vanilla, I get the banana is really, and then the really creamy mouth feel on top of that just kind of adds to that whole experience. And then you get a little kind of a cinnamon red hot effect on the finish as it's completing its journey. But yeah, I mean, you get a mouthful of it and it's like, oh yeah, I know that I that taste.

Dave (01:08:54):
So the banana interesting one, you lean up, it comes from that fermentation and using that ale yeast we talked about beforehand. Okay. So you can see how it's traveling all the way through the production process. Yeah.

Drew (01:09:04):
That's amazing. I have to go for a second taste because that's one of my favorite flavors. Yeah. Great. I like that. All right. Let's talk a little bit about what's going on with you guys now, because you just actually became the official whiskey partner of the Michelin Guide in North America. How did that happen?

Dave (01:09:28):
Yeah, look it's been amazing to kind of work with Michelin chefs and get them to be inspired by Starwood as much as a is a finished drink, but as an ingredient in a great drink and working with those beverage directors in restaurants. And I think, and if we come back to, I'm sure something you'd have an observation on, drew, that all great whiskeys talk to the place they're made. I mean, that's kind of default. We talk about the origins of the whiskey and the place, but to me, the best whiskeys in the world talk to the culture of the place. It's made as much as it does the ingredients and the location climate. And Melbourne, Melbourne has, we were just talking about this off air before, has been influenced by waves of migrations. We're talking from gold rush times. As we talked about beforehand. A huge Chinese population arrived then obviously with the Scott's Irish and British kind of colonization of Australia at that point in time. But there was my family of origins from Sicily. There's lots of Italians, lots of Greeks. In fact, Melbourne's the largest Greek city outside of Athens. That's how many

Drew (01:10:54):
Wow

Dave (01:10:55):
Greeks are in Melbourne, Lebanese, Taiwanese Thai, you name it. It's a cornucopia of an amazing, diverse melting pot of cultures. And that's best reflected in the food scene. It's created this environment that I think exists. I think there's a Melbourne in every city just in terms of little pockets of things, but we just kind of have it in suburbs. As much as we do this approachability to cuisine, that's very, very, very lacks airs and graces. It doesn't have that sort of fine dining, white linens, silver service that you might see in London or Paris. But the quality of the food and the intention behind it is best in class. And so for me, when we were thinking about bringing this product to market, and coming back to my history growing up, whiskey wasn't a thing for me, was just what we shivers, Regal 12 was what we gave our accountant for Christmas.

(01:12:03):
That was it. So for me, thinking about, well, how am I going to introduce whiskey to my family, my extended family, 60 cousins and all those sorts of things. It was with food. That's our common gathering place. And so from day one, Starwood, because of Melbourne and because of my origins was a whiskey that should be enjoyed with food. And three fingers need a bit of a push. But once we start to think about the fact that while we're aging in wine barrels, wine we know is food friendly. So of course, a whiskey aged in wine barrels is going to be the most food friendly whiskey of all. Right. It makes sense. And there's a great versatility to the whiskey that comes from those wine barrels that mean that when we work with Michelin restaurants and their beverage partners, I'm blown away by where they take the whiskey.

(01:13:04):
Cause that's what I do. I say take it for a walk that's a cast member are the director, and put it to work and craft something that's amazing. And so the wonderful thing for me has been that we've found some kindred spirits with these Michelin restaurants that are pushing the boundaries of cuisine, that are really thinking of thinking quite about food in a modern context, whether that's about sustainability about farm to table, whether it's about just turning things on their head a little bit from what traditions look like. And that's our world. That's exactly who we are as a company and a brand and something that we want to work with them. So what the way that turned out is obviously you can find Starwood and Michelin restaurants, which is exciting. But more importantly for me is that we're starting to share and collaborate with those restaurants with a video series that sort of inspires people to think about whiskey differently and bring it to the table.

Drew (01:14:16):
So a video series would be something that, where would you access that?

Dave (01:14:21):
I wish it was on Netflix, but for the time being it's going to be on YouTube. And if you register@starwood.com offer our newsletter, then we'll just ship you the next link of it as they become available throughout

Drew (01:14:34):
The year. Okay, nice. And so once you started diving in yourself into this world of pairings, did you find a perfect combo for each of your whiskeys?

Dave (01:14:47):
Yeah. I knew you were going to ask this.

Drew (01:14:50):
Well, because pairing is a challenge for me. There are times chocolate I can do it with, but nothing else.

Dave (01:14:58):
Well, you were just talking about flavor profiles before, right? Yeah. So maybe, and it depends where, whether we're talking neat or with the drink, because once we start thinking about a drink, you can kind of use some of the adjuncts to the drink itself to kind of influence where you go with flavor. So if you're doing Thai, then maybe a whiskey mule with ginger and some lemongrass kind of send you down the Thai path, right? Yeah. But neat. I love twofold with donuts.

Drew (01:15:39):
Okay. Any particular kind? Just plain cake donuts or

Dave (01:15:43):
Oh, iced iced glazed donuts.

Drew (01:15:46):
Okay. Yeah. What we call crispy creams over here.

Dave (01:15:48):
Yeah, you said it, not me.

(01:15:53):
And then Nova Nova is great. I mean, you can't beat it with a steak, just being really traditional from that perspective as a neat serve. Twofold, if we're getting into kind of mains entrees is great with sashimi and sushi as well, like a clean kind of flavor. And then coming back to your dessert kind of reference earlier, Solera. So there's an Italian Christmas cake called, and that's just basically the Italian version of a British Christmas pudding. But instead of all of those dark dried fruits, it's very light, airy, you know, raise the dough for three days. So it's very light and airy and has candied fruits in it, bright dried fruits in it. And so that to me is solar in a nutshell. So that's my go-to with solar.

Drew (01:16:58):
I think my challenge with pairing food comes from my history when I used to work in paint, because I try, you're blending colors, you're trying to find colors that work with other colors. Sometimes you don't want 'em to work with other, you want 'em to contrast to create more. So I take that kind of thought process, and when I go into food, my brain starts to cramp up because I go, if I am taking a whiskey that say has a heavy vanilla banana component to it, I could put it with banana pudding. But if I do, then I'm almost canceling out the flavors in the whiskey. Maybe it uncovers another flavor that I wasn't getting out of the whiskey, but it feels like maybe I need to find something that's chocolate over on this side to pair with banana and vanilla.

Dave (01:17:58):
Absolutely. So there's a really good tool that I'm going to give you. It's called The Flavor for Thesaurus. It's a book, and it does what the cover says and gives you the ability to look at compliments to different flavors,

Drew (01:18:16):
Which

Dave (01:18:16):
Is great. And you've got a wonderful flavor wheel on the front of it with different contrasting flavors. And you know, kind of go from one side of the meal to the other. You do a color wheel, and there's no surprise that bacon is on one end, and lo and behold, apple is on the other.

Drew (01:18:36):
Oh, that's great.

Dave (01:18:37):
It's great. But then adjacent to bacon are all of those sort of meaty kind of characters. So it's kind of gives you both of the Saru and, what's the word I'm looking? The synonyms. Synonyms of nys.

Drew (01:18:52):
Yeah, yeah. As well. Yeah, that's great. Because that's what I loved about the color wheel was that you could say as your blending paint, you could say, if I take red and I look on the opposite end of the spectrum at green because green has blue and yellow, which will cancel out the red, it graze it is what it does. And I thought, man, it'd be great if you could do that with food. But any whiskey pairing or any whiskey wheel, you see, they're not set up that way.

Dave (01:19:24):
No, they're not. So you need to be a bit more inventive and use the flavor. Flavor. The thesaurus is a great resource from that perspective. And I guess that's my ambition for Starwood, is that it is used as an ingredient as much as it is a drink. And that food lovers kind of become a little bit inspired to take it for walks that they wouldn't otherwise do with certainly whiskeys, but perhaps even other spirits. But an easy way to start is to say, well, what run cocktails could I make with whiskey? What cocktails could I make with whiskey? And some of them work and some of them don't. But for example, one that does with twofold is twofold and tonic. So it shouldn't work. I do it with bourbon. It's not that great, but you do it with, there's wine characters in the quinine, in the tonic, kind of just pair up magically. That's just a delicious

Drew (01:20:22):
Drink. Interesting. So the last one on my list is the solar.

Dave (01:20:29):
Yeah.

Drew (01:20:29):
Okay. And so is there a particular type of barrel that you said you use for this?

Dave (01:20:34):
Yes, it's still a wine barrel, but these are fortified wine barrels. So this is using the method that we discussed very early on. And basically the idea is that we have every single barrel of fortified wine that we've ever filled is in your glass right now, although we've ever emptied, I should say. And it's very consistent from batch to batch. This is my, so there's about a million dollars worth of whiskey that we never sell, right? <laugh>, like it's just sitting in this. So I call it my million dollar promise to consistency, because just like Johnny Walker has been able to craft a whiskey that over the years has changed, no doubt, but it's still Johnny Walker Black. I've had the privilege of tasting some from the sixties, nineties, and naughties, and today, and you can thread a needle through it

Drew (01:21:22):
Still has the same nice.

Dave (01:21:24):
So that was kind of the inspiration behind that because I know a lot of craft distilleries and drinkers of craft whiskey were always frustrated by the fact that I really like that last release, but this one's just not quite in the pocket. We just want to remove that because now I can say, well, 80% of this is exactly the same as the previous batch, so it's in the pocket, and the beautiful thing is just become more of what it is. So this has a lovely lingering mouth feel to it as well. And the flavors just keep going. Those fortified wine barrels are most sherry, but obviously Sherry comes from Spain in Australia that fortified wine's called a like aperitif. And so yeah, bright dried fruits. Like I said earlier, lots of candid characteristics. Stone fruits come through a bit more banana, I think you'll get on this

Drew (01:22:18):
As well. I got, I said actually the finish to me was chocolate covered banana.

Dave (01:22:22):
There you go. Yeah, that's a great description. Yeah, yeah,

Drew (01:22:25):
Yeah, absolutely. And the grain is still there. I got apple crumb cake actually on the beginning. I got very much into food names when I was nosing these.

Dave (01:22:38):
So that's the thing for us I think a food vocabulary is a really helpful tool. And the trick is, as you pointed out, drew, to think of, okay, what's a compliment to that food flavor that I've got in the drink already that I can accentuate all of these other flavors with and just make a wonderful drink?

Drew (01:23:01):
What is the weirdest thing? What is the weirdest food you've ever paired with a whiskey?

Speaker 3 (01:23:07):
Oh

Drew (01:23:11):
I'm thinking it's

Dave (01:23:11):
Pretty predictable. It's pretty, it's actually at a Scotch Whiskey Society event. The food was weird because I'd never had it before. Not that the pairing was weird, if that makes sense, but how is something that, let's just say it's an acquired taste.

Drew (01:23:29):
Yes. Yeah. So you had it paired was, do you remember the whiskey it was paired with? Yeah,

Dave (01:23:34):
It was the Glen Fi 15 year old. So they do a solar with that as well, which

Drew (01:23:39):
Is okay.

Dave (01:23:40):
Yeah,

Drew (01:23:41):
That's interesting. Oh, well, people laugh at me, but I actually look forward to going to Scotland partially because you wake up with Scottish breakfast at your b and b, and they always have black pudding and Haas, and I always eat the black pudding in the Haas. Now, I will say that that Haas is one of those things that if it's made well, it can be good. And if it's not made well, then I'm probably not going to eat it. Yeah,

Dave (01:24:13):
No, you're absolutely right. And this was made well, but it was just very, it's one of those moments where you just have to suspend understanding what it is that you're eating and just enjoy that

Drew (01:24:24):
Flavor. Yeah. I did that with some friends of mine who came up from North Carolina when I lived in Philadelphia. We had Scrapple. Have you ever had Scrapple? No. Okay. Do you know what Scrapple is? No. So Scrapple is basically all the leftover parts of the pig ground up with corn meal.

Dave (01:24:42):
Wow.

Drew (01:24:43):
It's delicious, but you don't want to know what's in it. Now I'm thinking, what whiskey could I pair with <laugh>? With Scrapple? Yeah. That'll be an interesting one. So yeah. What's next for you guys?

Dave (01:25:02):
We've got an exciting year plan. Look, one of the things I guess we've all kind of felt is a little bit a of cabin fever. And so as a brand, we really haven't been able to do the outreach that we, we've wanted to do face-to-face with people that are curious about whiskey and that want to learn more about Australian whiskey and Starwood. So stay tuned. We're going to be doing way more masterclass and events across the United States. We've got a few limited release products coming out, so there's going to be some more solar coming in time for Father's Day, but a couple of single barrels that we've got on offer and our first single estate whiskey, so this is whiskey aged in wine barrels from one vintage and one winery. So that's going to be a lot of

Drew (01:25:58):
Fun. Okay, nice. And where are you guys available in the United States?

Dave (01:26:03):
So depending on retail, different retails, we're available across 32 different states. You can kind of go to our website and order in more than 30 states now so that's great. But the key markets that we're available in terms of retail are the Northeastern states, Connecticut Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, dc, Maryland and then Illinois, Washington State, California. I'm kind of doing around

Drew (01:26:35):
<laugh>

Dave (01:26:38):
Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and Florida.

Drew (01:26:45):
I'm telling you, there's a lot of Americans that probably couldn't name off that many states. Yeah, you've done well. You've done well.

Dave (01:26:55):
Thank you.

Drew (01:26:56):
Well, and so what's the web address?

Dave (01:26:59):
The web address is www.starwood.com. Okay. And yeah, I think have a look at the store. If there's anything that's, you're not in those states and can't find a retailer, there's a store finder there as well. And yes, subscribe. Subscribe to the email database and we'll keep you up to date with those new releases as they come out.

Drew (01:27:18):
Very good. Well, Dave, it's been an absolute pleasure and thank you for introducing the audience to Australian whiskey history because again, sometimes it's nice to have a little foundation and know that this isn't just an industry that's popped up out of nowhere, that there is a legacy to it, although that legacy got interrupted somewhere down the road. But sometimes we have to take a break as we did here in the States and Exactly.

Dave (01:27:44):
Yeah,

Drew (01:27:44):
Make our way back and thank you for sharing some whiskey with me and an opportunity to taste the terroir of a completely different continent that that's a lot of fun.

Dave (01:27:59):
Yeah. Cheers, drew. It's been fun.

Drew (01:28:01):
If you'd like to learn more about Star War Whiskey, just head to star war.com.au, and for show notes, transcripts, social media, links, books and swag, head to whiskey lord.com or support this independent podcast by joining the Whiskey Lore Society at patreon.com/whiskey. And don't forget that I'm going to be sharing some excerpts from my Tennessee whiskey book that I'm writing, and I like to say that it's basically going to be part travel guide and part whiskey lore episodes. So can't wait to share that with you, and you can hear it by going to patreon.com/whiskey during the month of February. I'm your host, Hanish, and until next time, cheers and slung Ofk whiskey, lores of production of Travel Fuel's Life, L L C.