Cask to Glass

By day, Sarah Russell is “Miss Sarah”, an Australian primary school teacher in Adelaide. The rest of the time, she’s “That Whisky Girl”, an Instagram influencer and whisky podcaster breaking down barriers in a male-dominated industry.

“I just wanted to get the girls going,” she tells John from Kyoto, Japan’s “cultural capital”, where she’s just back from visiting the Miyagikyo Distillery founded by Masataka Taketsuru, the Father of Japanese Whisky.

“I got into whisky into whisky a few years ago,” Sarah says, “and I’ve just found that it’s a very male dominated field. And every time I go to whisky events, I’m usually the only girl or it’s a couple of girlfriends and they don’t really love whisky.

“But I meet lots of girls who love whisky and they talk about how maybe they don’t feel so comfortable going to these events. So I just really wanted to get everyone into it.”

“You know,” she continues, “it’d be fantastic to have a bit of a girls’ night out at a whisky event rather than just it being a bit of boys’ night thing. And I’ve met so many women who are whisky distillers in Australia and brand ambassadors and amazing bartenders. So I really just wanted to showcase everything they’ve got going on.”

But she adds: “I feel anytime I'm in a whisky bar in Adelaide or at a whisky show the amount of times I've had people say, ‘Do you even like whisky? Do you even know how to drink whisky?’ Or I've had like men stop me and just be like, ‘This is how you drink whisky.’ I'm like uh-huh I know.”

So at the start of the year Sarah launched a fortnightly podcast on Instagram called “She’s On The Rocks” to do just that.

Sarah’s whisky journey started off with whisky and cola when she was younger. But as for whisky on its own, “I was like, nah, it's not for me. It's a bit burny.”

Yet, while she found she “struggled with drinking it”, she loved the smell of whisky; liked nosing it. “So I just kept trying it,” she says. “And eventually it just clicked for me. One day I was like, ‘What is this? I love whisky now’.”

But not just the taste.

“It's the memories behind things and it's the experiences, it's the people. It's just such a wonderful community as well,” she explains.

Join John and Sarah as they trade memories made over sharing a dram; discover Sarah’s three favourite Australian whiskies; and find out just how much heftier the Angels’ Share is in Australia compared to Scotland, which is why, Sarah says, “It’s so hard for us to get older age statements.”

Slàinte!
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Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie

Creator & producer: David Holmes
Art work & design: Jess Robertson

Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)
Vocals: Andrea Cunningham
Guitars: John Beattie
Bass: Alasdair Vann
Drums: Alan Hamilton
Bagpipes: Calum McColl
Accordion: Gary Innes
Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie
Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you want to get David Thomson, co-founder of Annandale Distillery, started, just tell him, “You don’t make peated whisky in the south of Scotland.”

“Yes, we do!” he’ll thunder.

Then expect a wee history lesson.

“If you go to Barnard’s book, The Whisky Distilleries of the United Kingdom,” he’ll tell you, referring to Alfred Barnard’s definitive whisky guide published in 1887, “you find that all four of the distilleries that were in the south of Scotland did make peated whisky.”

“I mean,” David says of Annandale, “we live in a bog frankly, so why wouldn’t we make peated whisky? But you know that gets me to one of my sort of pet things, which is I really don’t like the kind of Lowland moniker that we get labelled with, because I don’t think it’s got very positive connotations. So I always think of ourselves as south of Scotland whisky."

In 2007, David and his wife Teresa Church took over the derelict remains of Annandale Distillery, in Dumfries and Galloway in south west Scotland.

Started in 1836 by an ex-excise officer, Annandale was taken over by Johnnie Walker in 1893, precisely because it made peated spirit.

“The peated spirit they were getting previously,” David speculates, “was coming from Islay. So into a ship of some sort, onto the Clyde coast and then presumably by train to Kilmarnock. Whereas with Annan, they could simply take it to the train station and whip it up to Kilmarnock.”

In about 1919, David continues, Johnnie Walker experienced “liquidity problems” and sold Annandale to a local farming family, the Robertsons, who made Provost Porridge Oats, and it ceased to be a distillery.

Until 2007, when David and Teresa decided they’d buy and restore the derelict distillery.

They didn’t have a background in whisky, but David was a specialist in food chemistry. And more importantly he's an expert in sensory psychology and sensory evaluation. In 1989 David and Teresa had started MMR Research Worldwide, a market research company for the food industry.

With MMR behind them, they decided to identify a whisky profile that would set Annandale apart.

"If you ask people what sort of whisky they like, you're gonna get 101 different answers. Different people like different things even within the same quite tight product category," David explains. "But although you take 300 people, there's not 300 points of view. There's probably five or six points of view. And being able to identify these is quite important."

"We were able to take expert tasters of any type of food, and we could look at the relationship between the sensory characteristics of the products and what people liked. So if you think of these different kind of liking segments, you can build a separate mathematical model for each liking segment, and then you can tell you clients how they should change the sensory characteristics of their product to make it liked more."

David and MMR applied the "algorithm", as David calls it, to whisky. And they identified a flavour profile for peated and unpeated whisky which no-one else was doing. David gave the two profiles to his long-time friend Dr Jim Swan, the so-called "Einstein of Whisky", and asked him to design two whiskies that matched the profiles.

After several iterations, Jim did just that. And in 2014 Annandale Distillery was back in production, producing its first new spirit in nearly 100 years.

Join John as he chats to David about the rebirth of Annandale Distillery, guided by sensory science and data modelling. And discover how Scottish actor James Cosmo became the inspiration and face of Annandale's Storyman blended Scotch Whisky.

Slàinte!
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Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie

Creator & producer: David Holmes
Art work & design: Jess Robertson

Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)
Vocals: Andrea Cunningham
Guitars: John Beattie
Bass: Alasdair Vann
Drums: Alan Hamilton
Bagpipes: Calum McColl
Accordion: Gary Innes
Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie
Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two months ago, in Episode 48 with Paul Bock and David Reid, they mentioned one of the regulars at their whisky and cheese gatherings brought along two bottles of Romanian whisky, which they agreed were “excellent”.

“Romanian whisky?” we thought. “We need to find out more.”

So we reached out to Téa Nicolae, Paul and David’s guest. And we got more than we bargained for, because among other things Téa’s a researcher working in the phenomenology of taste, with a focus on whisky and its cultural perception.

In particular, she explores how women taste and experience whisky through her companies TasteVera and Women Vitae.

“Women,” she says, “are more likely to be supertasters and have more tastebuds.”

But their taste changes during their menstrual cycle. As hormone and oestrogen levels fluctuate, Téa explains, so does a woman’s “sensitivity to bitterness, to sweetness, to spiciness, et cetera.”

The research is in its early stages, Téa, continues. But she says there's a growing body of "white papers" about individual female taste variations, much of it led by the research and writings of the Indian physician and ayurvedic practitioner Sumit Kesarkar.

And she concludes: “Taste is a full body experience. It’s not just what happens in the mouth.”

Téa’s originally from Romania.

She came to the UK to go to university when she was 18 and eventually moved to Edinburgh. As well her two consultancy companies, Téa’s a co-founder of the Scottish-Romanian Business Alliance.

Her “love affair with whisky”, as she puts it, started three years ago after reading Kesarkar's book “Single Malt Whisky”.

“It was new way for me to access different parts of myself that I wasn’t accessing before.”

“Whisky,” she says, “helps me ... because of the insights that I gain from interacting with people and understanding myself through drinking whisky... It's just about, and has always been about, just aiming to understand myself better and the world around me as well."

When pushed by John: "So whisky is a gateway to that?" Téa replies: "I would say everything is the gateway to that, if you know how to maximise it. But whisky is a very powerful gateway for me, yes."

So settle in as John explores the intersection of science, gender, and the personal soul of spirits through Téa’s story

And as for Romanian whisky?

“Very few people know Romanian whiskies exist,” Téa admits. “Even Romanians don’t know that.”

The two bottles she brought to Paul and David whisky are both produced by the Romanian drinks company Alexandrion. The first bottle was a Carpathian Single Malt.

“That was the first single malt that was released from Romania,” Téa says.

The other was JA.AR.

“Jaar actually means embers. And it points to the fact that all the whisky that they produce and bottle is matured in charred casks,” Téa explains.

These casks are usually wine casks used to make Fetească neagră, a native Romanian grape.

“It’s translated as dark maiden and it’s a very dark luscious spirit,” Téa says of the grape. “And it was fascinating for me to drink a whisky matured in that particular barrel because the characteristics it had were very different from the wine in itself. But then the flavour of the wine was quite delicately coming through it.”

Slàinte!
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Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie

Creator & producer: David Holmes
Art work & design: Jess Robertson

Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)
Vocals: Andrea Cunningham
Guitars: John Beattie
Bass: Alasdair Vann
Drums: Alan Hamilton
Bagpipes: Calum McColl
Accordion: Gary Innes
Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie
Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There’s only one way to drink whisky properly, insists Annabel Meikle, whisky consultant and educator, and that’s on your own terms and without regard for any supposed rules.

You can have it with water, with ice, in a highball, as a cocktail, frozen, or even with green tea…

Green tea?

“When I travelled through Asia,” Annabel recalls, “people were drinking whisky with green tea, with ice and with water. And, you know, if you’re in a warm, humid climate, that’s a really pleasant way to enjoy it.”

“The most important thing,” she says, “is to drink whisky in the way you like it and what’s appropriate to the occasion.”

By her own admission, Annabel’s been “around the whisky block”. She started in the industry working behind the bar at The Vaults, the Scotch Malt Whisky Society’s original home in Leith.

“It was really by fluke. I’d been working in a delicatessen, and the guys in the deli said: ‘You must go to this place. It’s absolutely fantastic.’ And I walked into The Vaults, and there was this huge, big room with log fires and Chesterfield sofas.

“And I just thought this is my world. But they didn’t really have a job. So I said: ‘Well I can work on the bar.’ And I did a couple of shifts on the bar, and I made sandwiches for the chef who used to buy cheese from me. And that was it.”

From the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, Annabel became a global brand ambassador for Glenmorangie, a whisky that has a special place in her heart.

“My grandfather was a Glenmorangie drinker. And when my father met my mum, that was the first whisky that he drank. It was the first whisky, I hate to say it, that I dipped my finger in when I was a wee nipper.”

Many years on, and Annabel feels “very passionately about getting people to understand whisky, because there’s an awful lot of supposed rules about liking whisky; and you can only drink it in a certain way at a certain time of and day; and you generally have to be a man. There’s a lot of that, which I think you can just sweep out of the way.”

“I feel I almost have a duty to get people to understand and like whisky on their terms,” Annabel continues. “And I take it as a bit of a personal challenge to find a whisky that somebody [who says they don’t like whisky] will like, whether it’s soft and gentle or whether it’s a big smoky, peaty monster. There’s something in there for everybody.”

Join John as Annabel takes him back over her whisky journey and introduces him to three incredible whisky and food pairings:

Clynelish and Caerphilly cheese
Glenmorangie and really, dark 85 percent cocoa chocolate
Ardnamurchan and Kielbasa (this one produced in Portobello by the award-winning East Coast Cured charcuterie company)

And share in a passion that sometimes transcends vocabulary, and can only be expressed in simple three letter utterance: “Mmm, mmm, mmm…”

Slàinte!
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Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie

Creator & producer: David Holmes
Art work & design: Jess Robertson

Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)
Vocals: Andrea Cunningham
Guitars: John Beattie
Bass: Alasdair Vann
Drums: Alan Hamilton
Bagpipes: Calum McColl
Accordion: Gary Innes
Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie
Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imagine a Scottish bar that didn’t sell Scotch whisky.

Kinda defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

But for almost seven years that’s exactly what Jason Waddleton, founder and owner of The Haven Scots bar in Boston, couldn’t do.

“We had a real weird anomaly that people would walk in, ask for a Scotch. We couldn’t serve them, because we had a beer and wine license only for the first six years,” Jason explains. “It was brutal.”

Jason started The Haven in 2010, offering authentic Scottish cuisine, beers, and hosting Scottish events like Burns Suppers and Stonehaven Fireballs.

“Talk about being a salesman and turning a negative into a positive. I had to do that daily,” Jason continues. “I’d be like, well, we don’t have that, but we’ve got great beer. And thankfully at the time, we had the whole Williams Brothers range of beers.”

That all changed in 2017 when Jason got a liquor license. Now his “whole back wall is all single malts”. But he adds: “We eschew the bigger names.”

“We’re not an airport bar. We’re not a downtown hotel bar, where you see those big names. They’re always there, great whiskies, but we can get them anywhere. So we actually don’t even have them on the back block. And that’s not being snobby.

“It’s just that we want to have a different experience with people. We want to talk about what we’ve got. And that’s part of it, creating that experience in the dialogue, communication, and without overthinking it.”

Besides, he adds, “no one’s ever walked out because we didn’t have Macallan.”

Boston is famous for its Irish bars, and The Haven is the city’s only Scottish bar. It’s also the only Scottish bar in Massachusetts, which Jason is very proud of.

And, with 70 days to until the start of the FIFA men’s World Cup, Jason’s gearing up to be the Tartan Army’s home from home.

It’s been 28 years since Scotland last competed in the World Cup. And with two of Scotland’s three games taking place at the Gilette Stadium just 40 minutes away, thousands of Scottish fans - perhaps as many as 40 thousand, Jason surmises - are expected to travel to Boston.

And Jason can’t wait. He was in France in 1998 for Scotland’s last match at the World Cup, when they lost 3-0 to Morocco. So he knows how big a deal it is.

“When that draw came, well when we qualified in November, of course straight away I’m like, ‘Well there’s a one in 12 chance-ish of them being located in Boston.” And then the draw happened.

“I couldn’t believe it! I was just like: ‘Wow! Here we go.’

“And then they did the exact draw the next day on the Saturday to locate the specific games to the specific stadiums. And here we got two games in Boston. Crazy!”

Since then, ESPN has been in touch. Scottish radio stations have been in touch. One’s even planning to base itself at The Haven to record podcasts and programmes.

There’s even something being planned with the Scottish Football Association, which Jason can’t talk about yet.

And he’s got a tie-in with Kilwhang independent bottlers from his hometown of Stonehaven to release a private bottling of cask strength 14-year-old Dailuaine single malt.

So pour yourself a dram and tune in.

As John says: “Every whisky has a story.”

Slàinte!
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Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie

Creator & producer: David Holmes
Art work & design: Jess Robertson

Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)
Vocals: Andrea Cunningham
Guitars: John Beattie
Bass: Alasdair Vann
Drums: Alan Hamilton
Bagpipes: Calum McColl
Accordion: Gary Innes
Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie
Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.