Cask to Glass

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.

“If you’re looking to create a whisky,” says John Moore of Stirling Whisky Company, “you need two things. You need the body to be fit and healthy. So the distillate must be good.

“And then you need to put a really good suit on it. And it’s got to be a suit that complements the whisky. And I think the GlenAllachie 15 does that perfectly.”

GlenAllachie 15 is John’s “banker”; his “go-to”; the one whisky he “would never grow tired of.”

It’s a full-bodied whisky, he says, with “complexity”, which “coupled with the Oloroso and Pedro Ximenez that they have in it, gives it a sweetness and additional notes.

“I just think it’s wonderful.”

John’s been thinking a lot about creating a whisky.

He’s trying to get a new distillery off the ground in Ardrishaig, a coastal village on Loch Gilp on the west coast of Scotland, “at the gateway to Kintyre and the gateway to Islay, the gateway to Campbeltown,” as John describes it.

All this talk of Adrishaig is enough to distract the other John - our John, you know John Beattie - from whisky chat.

“I love Adrishaig!” exclaims JB. “It’s a strange wee, run-down place nowadays. But it’s on the way to Kennacraig, on the way to Islay, on the Crinan Canal.”

“Yeah, it’s a wonderful part of the world,” John Moore responds. “I’ve been going up to that area for all of my life.”

And the two Johns are off.

They’re talking about the views: “Yeah you can look right down the loch, can’t you? See right down the loch. And I remember thinking, what’s that?” JB enthuses. “It’s Arran. It’s the island straight down the middle of the loch.”

They’re talking about the history and the standing stones: “You know the history,” exclaims JM. “I mean, it’s a beautiful, unbelievably beautiful part of the country. But the history that is immersed in the soil up there.”

“I mean,” he continues, “it goes back 10,000 years.”

And that’s the attraction. That’s why John Moore wants to start a distillery in Adrishaig. It’s the spirit of the place. It’s the legacy in every nook and cranny; in every view and vista.

And he wants to give something back; stop the decline.

So the new Adrishaig Distillery - “There used to be a distillery called Glenfyne, which closed in 1936.” - is intended to capture the spirit of the place.

“Our belief is all about place,” John tells John. “We’ve been speaking to Mark Reynier of Bruichladdich fame. And he obviously introduced this sort of really barley focused, terroir driven kind of whisky that they have down there.

“And that’s something I believe in as well.”

For someone who got into the whisky industry “purely by accident… 12 years or so ago”, John’s become a whisky evangelist.

So join the two Johns as they discuss John M’s journey from corporate finance to cask investment to distillery founder.

There are some cautionary tales along the way as John M warns about the risks of investing in casks and offers invaluable advice on how to do it safely.

And find out how he ended up with a rugby ball from Scotland’s 1984 Grand Slam match against France, which John Beattie doesn’t remember signing…

Here’s to the spirit of a place, literal and physical.

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 no scientific reason that a blend should be inferior to a single malt,” insists Alasdair Stevenson of blending house Turntable Spirits. “In ways you could argue the opposite in terms of flexibility and the creative opportunities that blending gives you. It’s really all down to the strategy of the blender.”

Go back 150 years or so to when blending started, Ally argues, and “it was about consistency, quality and flavour combination.”

“I mean, if you take it into the world of wine or cooking, you would think about combining different components, different ingredients, different elements in some way to try and create something that is more than any one of the components.”

That’s why Ally says he and his brother Gordon started Turntable: “To change the way people think about blended whisky. The idea was to turn the table, flip the record, do something different.”

“We both grew up in the world of whisky in some way,” Ally explains. “Our dad Graham, he worked in the industry for 30 years or so. So it was always in us to an extent, and we both joined the industry quite young.”

Out of uni Ally joined BenRiach Distillery, which was then owned by legendary Master Blender Billy Walker and two South African partners.

Billy, he says, “was a great mentor; great person to learn from.” And when Billy sold BenRiach and acquired GlenAllachie from Pernod Ricard, Ally went with him.

“I worked with Billy on the wood management and getting a better understanding of the blending and the strategy on that side of things. But,” he continues, Gordon and I, we’d always wanted to work together… wanted to start our own journey.

“We both had this shared frustration in some ways that all around the whisky world it felt like people had this perception of blends being inferior in quality to single malt. Obviously we didn’t agree.

“So we almost thought when we were starting Turntable, can we try to combine how we see the best of the two categories? Can we go to the original idea of a blending house and the opportunity for creativity, for flavour combination but then combine that with the care to detail that you would usually find in the single malt category today?

“Basically everything we do is small batch blended whisky, natural colour, unchilled filtered, at least 46%. And we try to really differentiate ourselves by focusing on transparency as well. So really drilling into the breakdown as to what is going into the blends, what percentage, what distillery, what cast type.”

Turntable was launched in 2023. But the Stevensons had been acquiring casks from across Scotland since 2019.

Today they own about 1,300 casks “that could be anything from new make spirit through until 40 years old”.

Join John as he and Ally celebrate "the beauty of the blend"; and learn how the Stevenson brothers are collaborating with “New World” distillers like Starward in Australia to produce international blended whiskies in Germany.

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

Special thanks: The Piper Whisky Bar, 57 Cochrane Street, Glasgow, Scotland
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.