On this special partner episode of Scran where we are visiting Annandale Distillery in Dumfries and Galloway. Established in 1836 and reborn in 2014, Annandale is one of Scotland’s oldest operating distilleries.
Owners Prof. David Thomson & Teresa Church, purchased the site in 2007, and reopened in 2014 following a £12.5 million restoration that now welcomes over 50,000 guests a year. The Distillery has won numerous accolades to date.
As we approach their ten year anniversary Rosalind wanted to learn more about the distillery and the impact it is having both locally and on the whisky scene since it opened.
You'll hear from Tour Guide Emma O'Neil who showed Rosalind around the distillery. She also chats to James Rogerson, Annandale's Spirit and Tasting expert, Mark Trainor who is Head of Production, Buildings and Estates at Annandale and Grant Warwick who is a Cask Custodian.
Rosalind learns all about the restoration of the distillery, how they are doing things differently and the huge effort being put into creating a real community that is invested in its people and its legacy.
You can find out more on their website annandaledistiilery.com
Owners Prof. David Thomson & Teresa Church, purchased the site in 2007, and reopened in 2014 following a £12.5 million restoration that now welcomes over 50,000 guests a year. The Distillery has won numerous accolades to date.
As we approach their ten year anniversary Rosalind wanted to learn more about the distillery and the impact it is having both locally and on the whisky scene since it opened.
You'll hear from Tour Guide Emma O'Neil who showed Rosalind around the distillery. She also chats to James Rogerson, Annandale's Spirit and Tasting expert, Mark Trainor who is Head of Production, Buildings and Estates at Annandale and Grant Warwick who is a Cask Custodian.
Rosalind learns all about the restoration of the distillery, how they are doing things differently and the huge effort being put into creating a real community that is invested in its people and its legacy.
You can find out more on their website annandaledistiilery.com
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Welcome to this very special bonus episode of Scran, where we are visiting Annandale
00:09Distillery in Dumfries and Galloway. Established in 1836 and reborn in 2014, Annandale is one
00:15of Scotland's oldest operating distilleries. Owners Professor David Thomson and Cesar Church
00:20purchased the site in 2007 and reopened it in 2014 following a £12.5 million restoration
00:26that now welcomes over 50,000 guests a year. The distillery has been named Best Single
00:31Malt Whisky Distillery in Scotland in the SME Scottish Enterprise Awards and is home
00:36to Man Awards and Man o' Sword, both who have won awards.
00:40As we approach their 10 year anniversary I want you to learn more about the distillery
00:43and the impact it's having both locally and on the whisky scene since it opened. First
00:48up I joined tour guide Emma O'Neill to have a look around the distillery and learn more
00:52about its origins and how they operate today. You'll hear lots of background noise from
00:56this busy working distillery but also a little beeping every now and then. That's an ethanol
01:01meter Emma carries to ensure visitors and workers are safe at all times. In this first
01:06clip we hear about the history of the distillery. After that I chat to James Rogerson, Annandale's
01:11spirit and tasting expert, who fills me in on what's happening with the spirit and how
01:15the business is developing.
01:17We're known for being single malt, single cask, at cask strength. This first one I've
01:22got for you is a blend. So it's 24% other grains, 76% cask. We've got four single malts
01:30in there, mostly unpeated, vintage bourbon, refill bourbon, red wine cask and then about
01:378% peated refill bourbon in here. Do we recognise the gentleman up in front of you? Famous Scottish
01:44actor, James Cosgrove. He was in Trainspotting, Braveheart, Game of Thrones. Have you seen
01:52that? Yeah. Of course, a wee drama, Leatherman. Thank you. You're welcome. So Storyman took
02:01about three years to develop. The whole purpose of it, with the name Storyman, is you could
02:07sit and enjoy wee dramas, pals and sit and have blethers, tell stories because of the
02:12unpeated and the wee bit of peat in there. You're mostly getting like honey, sweet notes
02:16coming through and then it tapers off into a wee peppery finish. So we were established
02:21in 1836 by a gentleman called George Donald. Now he was an excise officer from Sandhurst,
02:28well way along that way, which meant he was going around taxing everybody that made spirit.
02:33Didn't he make them very popular? So he flipped the script and along with seven other people
02:39from Annan and the surrounding area, they set up a syndicate, established the distillery.
02:44Now a wee point to note before we go forward. Yes, we're a lowland distillery, but we were
02:51unique in the fact that George Donald had access to a peat bog at Creca, about two to four miles
02:57in that direction. So we were making peated spirit from the get go. So he ran the distillery
03:05for nigh on 50 years with his wife Margaret, who ran the stills and their 12 children. So
03:12upon his death in 1883, none of the kids wanted to take it on. So the lease was passed on to a
03:20gentleman called John Sykes Gardner. Now he was from Liverpool and he was in the spirit trade.
03:26So they've got a harbour down there. You can import and export. We have a harbour up here
03:31too, so you could import and export. His business mind was on. His plan was to pass the distillery
03:37on to his son. However, in his early twenties, he passed away due to ill health. So in 1893,
03:45the land, the lease, the buildings was bought over by John Walker and Company,
03:48also known as Johnny Walker and Sons. Whilst they were here, they've upgraded some things.
03:54In 1896, they fitted the Doig Pagoda ventilator system in here. So if you want to have a look
04:01up, see these grey, darker beams? Those are the originals. It was invented by Charles Doig,
04:10who we've got pictured over here, and were one of five originals left in Scotland. The whole
04:16purpose of it, being inside the kiln, is to create a steady airflow all the way through.
04:23Now, 1914, World War I broke out. So the majority of the production workers, they had to go fight
04:29in the war. Materials like for barley, those got rationed. So in 1918, the distillery is
04:35mothballed, and then in 1924, the last cask left the site. At that point, the lease was bought over
04:43by a farming family called the Robinsons. So here in the kiln, they've stored their provis porridge
04:49oats, and over at the bonded warehouse, they'd get the cattle. But over the years, the buildings
04:55fell into disrepair until 2007, where current owners, Professor David Thompson and his wife
05:03and business partner, Teresa Church, were reading a book called Scotch Mist. Now, it depicts all the
05:08lost distilleries to time in Scotland. Now, him being a local man from Dumfries, didn't realise
05:13there was a distillery down here, so they come down and they had a look. They bought the site
05:18for £1.3 million, and a three-year plan has turned into a seven-year plan,
05:28and approximately £12 million in renovation costs to get it to what we see today.
05:33So we had our first spirit run of November 2014, which was our unpeated spirit, which we call
05:40our man o' warts. And then in December, we moved over onto peated spirit, which is our man o'
05:46sorts, and we've just been rolling like that every month ever since. So for the month of October,
05:51we're making peated spirit.
06:02Okay, hi James, how are you? I'm good, thanks, yourself? Yeah, good, yeah, enjoying my day so
06:06far here at the distillery. And how long have you been here? I've been here nearly eight years.
06:10So I came in as basically as a tour guide, and worked my way up. I've worked in most departments,
06:19which has given me a good insight into basically how the business runs. And I'm now at the level
06:24of being basically in charge of all the cast stock that we hold in our bonded warehouses,
06:29which is about 15,000 barrels that we hold. And, but you're nosing and tasting the whisky,
06:34aren't you? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's a part of my role is to do that, which is a, you know,
06:39it's a real ongoing learning situation as well with that. If somebody says they know everything
06:44about whisky, they're a liar. So you need to sort of, you grow and develop. And my sensory journey
06:49is, you know, just barely just begun. So there's still so much to do there. But that's just part
06:54one part of it. And I buy in all the wood that we fill our spirit into. So bourbon cast from the US,
07:02sherry wood from Spain, wine cast from France, some Mizunura from Japan, and wherever we get
07:09some, basically what we call some weird and wonderful wood to see how it affects the spirit
07:13that we're trying to mature here. Is that a type of thing for your cast program for people to buy,
07:18but you're also, you're also making the two core whiskies here as well? Yeah, exactly. So as much
07:23as we do offer private ownership casks, we're very much keen on laying down a wood policy for
07:29the future of Annandale Distillery so that we can offer a variety of single cast, single malts,
07:35which is something that we really push as being basically a gold standard product.
07:40And being a single malt, single cast whisky distillery, like that's all you do, right? That's
07:46relatively rare in the industry? Yeah, most distilleries will do the odd sort of release,
07:53which is a single cask, but most of their stock is vatted together. So they'll bring in maybe
07:58a thousand casks, vat them together, and look for something that's as consistent as possible every
08:03time. Whereas we take the individual units, which is your casks, and they're all unique, and we like
08:10to celebrate the fact that every single cask has sort of got a unique characteristic to it. The
08:16fact that you can get two casks that were filled within a minute of each other, sitting in the same
08:21warehouse, and they can have such flavoured profile differences is quite spectacular to look at.
08:27So the two whiskies that people will be able to buy readily, easily, is the Man o' Wards and the
08:31Man o' Swords. Are they the same? Are they single cask, single malts? So the Man o' Wards and Man
08:38o' Sword is the core range line, but they're from different casks. So you can have Man o' Wards and
08:45Man o' Sword from different bourbon casks, or sherrywood, or red wine casks. So the actual
08:53physical design of the bottle stays the same, but the liquid is going to be different
08:57inside there. That's why we encourage people to try different runs of our ranges, whether it could
09:02be two bourbon casks from two different years, and the flavour could be completely different
09:07in a good way. That's really interesting as well, because most other distilleries, like you say,
09:10are vatting together for consistency. So if I bought a bottle of Man o' Wards today, and then
09:15in a year's time, it would be slightly different. Yeah, exactly. So if you buy one from one cask,
09:21say cask 500 from one year, and cask 17 from another year, it could be unpeated spirit bourbon
09:27cask, but there's going to be slight flavour differences between them. We like to really
09:32sort of exploit that fact that that unique sort of difference between each cask is something to
09:37celebrate, as I say. Can you tell us about both whiskies for anyone that's not tried them? At the
09:41moment, we're doing quite a lot of work, sensory work at the minute, to sort of find what we call
09:45the distillery character. So the wood, the barrel is going to have a flavour impact, but there's
09:51going to be sort of an undercurrent right through both our peated and unpeated spirits that will
09:57carry through whether it's in a bourbon cask or a sherry butt or a wine cask. The main characteristics
10:03of Annandale is orchard fruits, so apples, pears, tropical fruits as well, and some sort of grassy
10:10notes a little bit as well too. And obviously with peat, you've got the peat smoke coming through,
10:15but to different levels because the cask is affecting the peat levels that we've got and the
10:19types of malt that we use as well. But I'd say the orchard fruits is the thing to look out for
10:23with our Annandale, and it's nice and sweet. Most of our whiskies are nice and sweet as well.
10:28So when people come to visit, can they taste a variety of different casks?
10:31Absolutely, yeah. They come and visit, they can come and taste whisky from bourbon casks,
10:36sherrywood, wine casks, also what we call double oak bourbon casks. So yeah, there's a whole host
10:43of different things they can try. It's always interesting to see how people's perception of
10:50young whisky changes. The fact that actually it's young, but it's excellent whisky. It doesn't have
10:56to be 10-year-old to be a good whisky. Try and change that perception of whisky as well.
11:02Yeah, but you are going to be releasing a 10-year-old soon, aren't you?
11:04Yes, we will, yeah. And there'll be a release of some whisky from some cask from 2014.
11:11It'll be very select, and then more mainstream 10-year-old into 2015 and beyond. That's what
11:18we're looking to do. You will have been monitored in those casks, obviously, in the build-up to
11:23releasing the 10-year-old. Can you tell us how you think it's going to all come together and
11:26what it's all going to taste like? The main thing for us is the distillery
11:30character is going to shine through, which, as I said before, is that sort of orchard fruity
11:34characteristic. And that's what we want. We don't want it to be over-mature, too woody. We don't
11:40want it mass. We want the character of Annandale Distillery to shine through in these 10-year-old
11:44bottlings and to show that it's got that really smooth fruitiness that we're looking for,
11:48that we're aiming for. And where will people be able to buy that?
11:51So the whisky for that will be available, the 10-year-old will be available online,
11:55and the customers will be able to buy it on-site as well at the distillery,
11:58so they can pop along and buy some. So you've got Man of Words, Man of Swords,
12:01and you've got Stony Man, which is with James Cosmo. Is it a core one as well, or is it limited?
12:07It's sort of a core range as well that we do with the blend. As much as we do single cast,
12:13single malt, we also do the very other end of the spectrum, which is blended whiskies. So
12:17we're buying in some small proportions from other distilleries of grain whisky and making
12:22up small batch blends. And one of them is the James Cosmo Storyman bottling that we've done.
12:29So it's a high malt, low grain blended whisky. It does sing Annandale right through it as well.
12:36Very easy drinking, and it's down to 46% as well. So it's actually quite a good introductory
12:41whisky to Annandale as well for people that maybe not so keen on a higher strength cast strength,
12:47single cast, single malt. So it's a good stepping stone into our brand and then going up from there.
12:52This is an ongoing range and it has been really popular with both our whisky fans and also James
12:57Cosmo fans as well. Well thank you very much for your time and I hope you enjoy the celebrations
13:02around the 10-year anniversary. Thank you. Thanks for your time as well. Thanks for having me on the
13:05show. Now we've got this black line that goes all the way round about. That is where the original
13:18suspended floor would have been. So they would have brought the barley in through the windows
13:23at the top, spread out over the flare. You'd have your furnace burning down here because we were a
13:30peated distillery. They would have brought the peat through these two windows, which were the
13:35peat shoots, land on the furnace. As that starts to burn and smoke, it releases a biochemical called
13:43phenols, rise up, latch on to the barley. That is where you get that peated smoky flavour from.
13:51It happened right at the start and will carry all the way through production. We've now got the
13:57space to do that because we've got a coffee shop next door and a fire alarm in here. So we get
14:03orders from the Crisp Malt Group up in the Highlands in Port Gordon every eight days.
14:09They will bring us 30 tonnes of barley. So I'm going to bring you around two samples just now.
14:21My next guest is Mark Traynor, Head of Production, Buildings and Estates at Annandale.
14:26One of the first staff to be hired, Mark has worked his way up through many different roles
14:29and is very passionate about seeing Annandale and his sister businesses succeed.
14:37Mark, hello. Hi there, how are you doing? Good, how are you? Not bad at all.
14:41How long have you been in your role? I've been at Annandale just coming up for 11 years.
14:46I've probably been in the Head of Production, Buildings and Estates role for about the last
14:50five years. So do you remember me? I don't, actually. I did the distiller for the day
14:56thing. I think it was you that was there. Oh, it would have been me. I was basically following
15:00you around all day. Yeah, I was the mashman at that time. So I was like the kind of supervisory
15:04type thing. But yeah, I'd be the mashman. No, but I can't, sorry. Well, I clearly didn't mess
15:08anything up too badly. No, definitely not. Yeah, so anyway, I kind of know, we talked at the time,
15:13I kind of know a bit about you. But could you tell us what you were doing before this, before
15:17you got into wee whisky? Yeah, so my whole career has been mechanically. Since I left school when I
15:23was 16, I became a motorbike mechanic. And then after that, I was a roofer for a little while.
15:28And then I went back into mechanicing again, and then to the REC after that. So Breakdown Patrol,
15:32and then obviously got the job here as a mashman at Annandale Distillery about 2014.
15:36So it's quite a bit of a change. So has that been like a theme for other people as well?
15:42Yeah, I mean, we've got people that's worked, you know, people that's worked on the road,
15:46we've got a butcher that works here, we've got a mental health nurse. So we've got all different
15:50people that come from all different backgrounds. Just, I mean, when I first thought about whisky,
15:54I wasn't very sure about how it all was. But once you start here, the love that you get for it,
15:58and obviously, I speak to my friends, oh, can you get my job? And it sort of started from there.
16:02So when we first met you were the mashman, you're now head of production and estates. So can you
16:07tell us a bit about your career trajectory here? Like how you went from mashman to what you're
16:12doing now?
16:13Well, I think obviously, at the very beginning, I was just a normal working boy here. I got
16:17employed as a mashman. And I was the sort of maintenance boy at the very beginning.
16:21I obviously got in touch, speaking to David Thompson and Teresa a bit more often.
16:25You know, I think they've seen the passion in me. I've always been very driven about
16:28my job that I work at. And I think they've seen that in me. So as I started being the mashman,
16:34I obviously achieved my goals here. And David and Teresa come and spoke to me and the original
16:38manager had left and asked me if I'd like different opportunities. And just from there,
16:42I've sort of moved from being mashman, supervisor, senior supervisor, head of production, then from
16:48head of production, buildings and estate. And that's what sort of has just been my passion.
16:53And David and Teresa have, you know, believed in me and given me these opportunities,
16:56which I'm very thankful of.
16:58And so we've seen a little bit of production. I've obviously worked in production. And all I
17:02can remember, there was more maths than I was ever expecting. But for anyone that hasn't visited,
17:06could you sort of talk us through because it's quite a small little, it's very nice room,
17:10but it's quite small.
17:12Yeah, so we're a very small distillery. At the moment we're doing double production,
17:15but originally we were just on single production. So we're just doing six mashes a week,
17:19two and a half tonnes per day. So it was about 1000 litres of 100% alcohol per day,
17:25six days a week, so 6000. And a maximum of 240, 250,000 of 100% alcohol per year.
17:32That was just very, very small school.
17:35And you've been here from the start?
17:37Very, yes, the very start.
17:38You'll have seen it go from...
17:40Yeah, I mean, I wasn't here, you know, I was here before a lot of the buildings were
17:44done, the North Range wasn't finished, the stills were in, the washbacks weren't finished,
17:49but a lot of the stuff wasn't, the Malton's coffee shop wasn't done. So yeah,
17:52not at the very start, but quite soon after the start of that, yeah.
17:56Yeah. And what's it been like to see it sort of transform as much as you have?
18:00It's fantastic. We walk in here in the morning and look at the building,
18:04you just think, wow, this is just incredible to work here. And, you know, Dave and Teresa's
18:08legacy trail to put all the effort and money that they've put into this business to leave
18:12as a legacy, you know, it's just, for me, it's massively, that just inspires me.
18:16And what has the impact been on the local community?
18:19Yeah, I think for the local community, it's been fantastic. You know, obviously we started,
18:23initially we've had three staff at the very start. It was just like me,
18:27Daz and the original manager at the time. And since then, at this moment,
18:30I think we've got about 51 staff actually on the site at Annandale Distillery.
18:36And obviously Dave and Teresa have got other projects within the area between the Globe
18:39and the bakery and the bank. So I think we've got about 91 staff. So, and I mean,
18:44the business has just been growing and growing through the whole time. So we really try our best
18:48to use all local contractors, local people. I think the furthest away person we've probably
18:53got working here is probably Dumfries, but probably I would say about 70% of our staff
18:58at Annandale are all from Annan. So Dave and Teresa are very passionate about bringing this
19:02back to Annan, bringing this back to the community, which is, you know, fantastic.
19:06And now, so you're head of estates as well. What does that mean? Are you looking after this?
19:10Yeah, so I basically look after Annandale Distilleries as the whole. So we have the
19:15bonded warehouse there. We have the Henry Duncan Bank Museum. We have Culloman Castle.
19:23We have three houses at the castle now that we've got. And we have a bakery project,
19:28which is next to the Globe. So we're trying to renovate that at the moment to make it a Burns
19:33Quarter and a secondary kitchen for the Globe, because they're obviously wanting to make that
19:37a fantastic success. And we feel that by doing this, that will bring the Globe, I mean, we're
19:42hunting for this Michelin star there, you know, and the chefs are working fantastically hard at
19:46the moment. So fingers crossed when we get this bakery project, get it through planning,
19:51that's going to make a massive difference to us. And that's, again,
19:55more employees to employ, you know, so that's very good.
19:58We visited the Globe recently and had a lovely lunch and saw the bottles of whisky,
20:02Man o' Swords and Man o' Wards. Could you just tell us a little bit about the two whiskies?
20:06Yeah, well, we've got Man o' Wards, which is Robert the Burns, and we've got the Man o' Swords,
20:10which is Robert the Bruce, Earl of Annan. So when David obviously bought the distillery,
20:14they went into a lot of research on how they were going to design this bottle with the quill,
20:18the shard, and where it all comes from. Robert Burns was an excise officer here at the distillery,
20:24so the whole thing that David had done with his sensory team was to actually work out the type
20:29of bottle they wanted, what they wanted it to look like. So it was very, the time and effort
20:33that they put into making that bottle look as that single malt, single cast, cast strength,
20:38Annandale, Man o' Wards, Man o' Sword, peated and non-peated. So that's what it was all based
20:43on at the very beginning. And I suppose it's quite,
20:46the people who don't really know whisky well know peated and un-peated, so it's a very sort of,
20:50they're beautiful bottles and everything, but if you don't really know about it, it's an easy
20:55choice. You like peat, you don't like peat. Yeah, exactly, and that's why I think there's 151
21:00different distilleries in the UK now, because everything, everybody likes different types of
21:06whiskies, and Jim Swan, he obviously advised us at the very beginning, so we have a good wood policy,
21:12so we have everything from sherrys to SDR, hoggies, bourbon, double oaks, and all different
21:17makes and models to try and get as many different types of peated and non-peated whiskies out there,
21:23because everybody likes a different flavour profiling, so that's what we try. We're trying
21:27our best to do even more profiling with different casts, just to try and see how it works out,
21:32just to see where we're going, just to offer the client more samples to try.
21:36Yeah. Did you meet Jim Swan?
21:38I did. He was, you know, he was a fantastic man. You know, I didn't come from this, I was brand
21:44new into this job, so I come out with an REC van, repairing cars at the roadside is something I'd
21:48never done before, you know, and having people that's there beside you with his skill set is
21:54just, it's phenomenal, it's phenomenal. There was never a question I asked him that he couldn't
22:00answer. He always gave me a logical answer for everything, and it all made sense, but sometimes
22:05you don't get the answer, and you're like, why are we doing this, and if we don't do this, what is
22:09the impact? He always gave us the answer, so it was fantastic. When he went, it was very difficult
22:15for me to try and replace somebody to advise us, you know. So is there anything exciting coming up
22:19in the next couple of years? So we're doing our first 10-year-old single cast release soon, so
22:23that's very exciting for us as well. Is there anything in particular you want to achieve
22:27before you retire? Not that that's anytime soon. Well, to be fair, you know, we've got an amazing
22:35team here. I just want to make sure that everything works, and everything's running, and everything's
22:41right, so when this legacy does, God forbid that anything ever happens to David and Teresa,
22:46that these businesses go forward, and strive, and make their legacy last for the next 200 years, so
22:52they will be known for this. You know, it's not just somebody that passes away, and it's forgotten
22:57about after two or three weeks. This will live on, like the Robert the Bruce, the Robert the Bruns,
23:01and all these other big people. So hopefully, I will try my best. I'm not saying it's just me.
23:05We have a great team here, and I've got a great support network running about me, and as a team,
23:09I think we do a fantastic job. And hopefully people will be drinking Man O'Words and Man O'Swords all
23:13over the world. Absolutely, and that's what we're trying at the moment. We're obviously a new
23:16distillery. We've been basically concentrating on cask sales at the moment, so our revenue's basically
23:22been from cask sales. Private customers, private equity, people that buy it, different companies
23:26that buy in, but we have an actual team now that's a part of David's bigger company that's
23:32getting involved now, and they've got a lot of fantastic ideas. So what we want to do is push
23:36our bottle sales to be all over the world. The key is to get them bottles out there, and get that
23:42on all these different shelves, and the more shelves we get on it, the more we'll get known.
23:45We know we make fantastic whiskies. We just need to get it out there. Well, thank you very much for
23:49your time. And thank you very much for your time. Have a lovely day. Thank you. I was showing you
23:53photos at the beginning, and it was just the courtyard. Yes, we had the building here,
23:59and we had the chimney, and all this was covered. So our owners, David and Teresa, they invited
24:08Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division, also known as GARD, to come down and
24:14tell them why there was a chimney in the middle of the courtyard. Now they did some scans, and
24:19they started excavations in the summer of 2009. It took a year, and this is what they discovered,
24:25and it is a still house. So where we were all roasty toasty upstairs, this is actually Johnny
24:30Walker's still house. So on the left-hand side, you've got the wash still. On the right-hand side,
24:36you've got the spirit still. Now they would have used gravity for their production. So where we
24:42were at the mash tun, up there, that's where it would have been. Down here, you would have had
24:47your wash backs, and the spirit would have flowed to the wash still, and then over onto the spirit
24:53still. The wee trenches underneath, they were using coal to heat up their stills. And you can
25:00see the erosion in the stone as well, where the workers would have been running back and forward,
25:04back and forward, to keep those fires fed. You've got the wee chutes at the back of the trench
25:10that would draw up all that smoke and stew it, and tuck it away at the top of the chimney.
25:15Now, obviously they've ripped out the copper stills because they mothballed the distillery
25:21after the outbreak of World War One. We don't know where the stills have gone,
25:26but you can see with how bent the metal arms are that they have literally just went,
25:31taken them out. Now, Gard asked us to keep this site because there's not a lot of Scottish
25:37industrialism left. I am by no means a history buff whatsoever, but I think it's really cool
25:44you get to see the old with the new. You can appreciate what they were doing.
25:51When it came to renovations, all they had to do was strip the ivy and then replace
25:56some of the keystones and pins at the top. Testament to design and construction.
26:03My final chat on my visit to Annandale is with Grant Warwick, who's a Cass custodian.
26:08Grant is the newest member of the team I spoke to, and who's come from a very different background
26:12you wouldn't immediately associate with whisky production. He tells me about how his start as
26:17a tour guide led him to other parts of the business. He also talks about the vast range
26:21of Cass Annandale are using and their hopes for the future. Hi Grant, how are you? Hi, I'm fine,
26:29how are you? Good, yeah, it's a little cold but it's fine. We've just come from the still room
26:33so it's been warm. Absolutely, it's completely different, yeah. So could you just tell us a bit
26:38about your role here at the distillery? Okay, I'm a Cass custodian, one of a small number of the
26:45Cass team. I deal with new make spirits, so essentially selling casks of new make spirits
26:52to customers and sourcing interesting and unusual casks from other parts of the world as well.
26:59And how long have you been here? Right, I've been here just under two years. My previous experience
27:04was completely nothing to do with whisky whatsoever. I was a police officer for 30 years
27:10in Cumbria, retired in 2015, took a break for seven years and it was my wife who saw a job
27:17advertised at the distillery for a tour guide. A lot of my background was in police training,
27:23so she says you like telling people a good story and you like standing up in front of folk and so
27:30she was the one who kind of persuaded us to join and so that's why we arrived here in November
27:36two years ago. So went from tour guide to Cass custodian? Went to tour guide into being a Cass
27:41custodian, yeah. Mainly because I found out fairly shortly after we obviously take the tour and then
27:48take people into the shop and I found that I was quite good at selling things and gained quite a
27:56interest in casks and the different types of casks and how wood interacts with spirit and
28:01all those type things. So when the job came up went for it and successful. And here you are.
28:07And here I am. So when you say taking new casks of new mixed spirit to sell to customers is that
28:12like you know your man on the street or me or is that to other distilleries or what would you mean
28:18by that? Our commercial director does sell casks to other distilleries or brokers or whatever
28:25but my role is to sell into private individuals that's our role in the cask program. And that's
28:31become quite big in recent years was it been quite successful? It has become big in recent years
28:36we currently have 781 cask owners with us some of those are multiple casks and but we are one of the
28:44very very few distilleries in the country that actually has a cask program like we do. When I've
28:50done a little bit of research there's less than 10 distilleries in the country regularly provide
28:55casks. Ours is kind of unique in that we don't release 10 casks a year or 30 casks a year like
29:03a lot of other distilleries do. We have a whole range of casks in excess of 40 at any one time
29:10that we have access to which people can can select and buy at any time of the year. And what
29:16are the positives of that? We have a lot of people who come here wanting an emotional connection
29:22with whiskey and with the cask it's not about necessarily about I'm going to make a lot of
29:28money out of this it's about I want to be involved from the very start to the very end of the process
29:34we provide a 360 degree offering around that so an individual come to us say I want to buy a cask
29:42so we would explain how that would work we look at their tastes and what they would like it's not
29:48about us forcing a cask on someone it's about them deciding which is the best fit for them
29:54once we've chosen or they've chosen the cask then you have a choice of peated or unpeated spirits
30:01we offer people to come to the distillery to fill the cask depending on the type of cask it is
30:07and there's a little ceremony that surrounds that cask and personalization so individuals can have
30:12their name or a family name or a joke or whatever put on the end of the cask and you may have seen
30:17some of those over in the warehouse and then from there it's about building that relationship with
30:23people over the following 5, 10, 15 years whatever and eventually hopefully get into bottling
30:31along the way we encourage people to come back to the distillery and take we take samples each
30:37year at the customer's request so that they can chart and see and smell and taste the development
30:43of their whiskey in their cask from start to finish. And so you're also buying in casks for
30:48the distillery to mature whiskey? Essentially when we started we had sherry and bourbon casks
30:54and the customer could choose peated or unpeated spirit we've kind of developed that massively
31:00since those early days so as I say we've now got over 40 different types of casks bourbon, sherry,
31:06wine casks, unusual and rare casks like your tequilas, Chateau Rothschild,
31:14Sasakaya, Tokai to name a few wines and then recently we've sourced a few mizunaras
31:22which have been extremely popular with clients as well. Yeah it's become
31:27so rare Japanese wood but more sort of more distilleries are popping up with this cask
31:33either finish or something to do with mizunara so if you notice that over the years there's
31:37things that are sort of coming up and becoming a bit more popular when it comes to casks?
31:41Yes we do kind of goes in waves I would think bourbon and sherry will always be popular in the
31:47industry because they're just the standards aren't they but what we've found is that wine casks were
31:53particularly popular those big names like your Rothschilds always attract a lot of attention
31:59but at the moment we are kind of quite confident that wood, the actual wood itself is becoming
32:06more and more popular and of more interest to clients so asking for particular types of wood
32:13or a cask from a particular distillery or bodega so we would actually go out and look to try and
32:20source those casks. And but has there been any that you've seen and thought oh that looks like
32:24it'd be going to be really interesting? If I could have a cask it would definitely be a mizunara
32:30the rare wood as far as we know there's never been a single cask strength mizunara
32:40most of you alluded to before was like cask finishes so mizunara finish for three months
32:45six months nine months whatever so we're really excited about being the first in the world as far
32:51as we know to actually offer that to clients. Yeah that is exciting so do you still get involved with
32:58the tours at all? Very much so yeah yeah yeah part of the cask offering as well is a free complementary
33:03tour when people come to actually fill a cask or a cask owner who we fill the cask on their behalf
33:10because they're from perhaps Germany or the Netherlands or whatever when those visitors
33:15come over we would still do those tours probably in my fashion probably quite longer than they
33:22should be go into quite a bit more detail yeah absolutely love it still doing those tours yeah
33:28and what can people expect from anyone that's never been before? Starts with history a little
33:34bit of history because we are a reborn distillery with a long history going back to 1836 then
33:42showed production side of things go through the whole from taking the barley from the field
33:50to actually producing the spirits then over to our exclusive bonded warehouse for private owner
33:57casks for a tasting with five cask strength whiskeys along the way. Wow and to make sure you're
34:04not driving? Make sure you're not driving bring someone who can drive for you or get a taxi yeah
34:10definitely although we do provide a little sample for drivers as well to take away which is
34:15all five samples which other people have tasted on the tour there's a little miniature pack so
34:20they can taste the exactly the same as the as the other tourists did. And so where are your
34:25visitors coming from? All over we get a lot of international visitors especially during the
34:30summer from the Netherlands Belgium and Germany this time of year it kind of switches a little
34:37towards Scandinavian countries but obviously overlaid on that we have a lot of a lot of
34:42locals and people who are just simply driving by see the signs on the motorway or the A75
34:49and literally turn left and pop in to see us so it's a whole range of people from around the world.
34:55Do you have any exciting future plans you can tell us? We've just agreed a deal for some
35:00Mongolia casks and we have a whole host of others they'll be coming online next year people
35:08will be able to choose particular unusual wood types. So how do you go about choosing the kind
35:13of new casks you're going to bring in? We've always got one eye on what the trends are in
35:17the industry we have one eye on what our customers want because one branch of our business in the
35:23cask team is to challenge the cask team to find a particular cask so that's always a bit of an
35:28indicator of where we're going but we have contact with a large number of suppliers regularly so they
35:35will let us know what they have available and then it's literally marrying all of those things up and
35:41saying this is interesting let's have a go at this. It's interesting because it's all quite
35:46experimental as well like you know how you know you have your the two that you're bottling all
35:50the time and then you've got these really wild different casks for your new experiment you don't
35:56really know what's going to happen. I wouldn't say wild, experimental. I mean at the end of the day
36:04single cask strength whiskey we never actually know what's going to come out the other end do
36:11we? We're 99.8% certain that what we're going to produce is a particular thing but casks are
36:18kind of like children in a way that they behave most of the time but you know you can have two
36:23casks right next to each other which will behave and of the same type and filled on the same day
36:29but they will react slightly differently because of the wood so for us it's about
36:35experimentation pushing the boundaries and being for certainly for for us in the casting being
36:42right on that cutting edge of what's available what will be interesting and and what's exciting
36:47for for our clients as well. Yeah well it sounds like very exciting time so thank you very much.
36:58The first thing that strikes you about Anadale when you speak to the staff there is just what
37:01a community is as well as a business. Most of the people in management roles have graduated
37:06from more junior roles and are fiercely dedicated to the success of the business.
37:10It certainly appears to me that David and Teresa are investing in much more than just a business.
37:14It's also the history, the location and the local community.
37:19This podcast really isn't long enough to talk about everything that happens at Anadale
37:22but it is that community element which reaches right around the business.
37:26We had a lovely lunch at the on-site cafe The Maltings before we left and on a previous visit
37:30I stayed on one of their distillery cottages which often play host to wedding guests attending
37:35ceremonies at the distillery.
37:40Anadale is clearly a distillery doing things differently
37:43and reaping the rewards for all involved as a result.
37:46Thanks to all my guests on this podcast today.
37:48You can find out more about Anadale on their website anadaledistillery.com.
37:55Thanks to you two for listening. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe
37:59so you never miss an episode of Scran.
38:01Scran is co-produced and hosted by me, Rosan Durskin and co-produced, edited and mixed by Kelly Crichton.