The Noble Dram | Noble Ardbeg Day (Season 2 | Ep. 10)

This week on The Noble Dram, we're trading Islay peat for Texas heat as we celebrate Noble Ardbeg Day 2026. We're joined by special guest, David Blackmore the Global Brand Ambassador for Ardbeg.

We're pouring  Ardbeg 10 and the highly anticipated Ardbeg Dolce for an unforgettable conversation covering David's journey through whisky, life with Ardbeg, stories from Islay, Fèis Ìle memories, and the passionate community that makes Ardbeg Day unlike anything else in whisky.

Expect smoke, stories, laughter, and even better conversations.
From Islay shores to Houston skies, pour a dram and celebrate Ardbeg Day 2026 with us.

🥃 Featured Pours:
• Ardbeg 10
• Ardbeg Dolce

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Transcript

Gavin 0:00

People dream of our bag day on Isla.

Aaron 0:04

The rolling hills, the ocean views, and smoky whiskey in your glass.

Gavin 0:09

Also, temperatures that make Texans regret their life choices.

Aaron 0:15

So, if Isla and that peated whiskey doesn't come with Texas weather, we're bringing our bag to Houston. Yeah, we're combining Isla Pete and Texas heat. Welcome everybody to this week's episode of the Double Dram. Aaron and Gavin here. We're going to take a journey today to Isla without ever leaving Houston. Not even a journey. It's an adventure. Okay, an adventure. We're tasting Ardbeg Scotch in honor of this Saturday being Ardbeg Day. But more importantly, we have Mr. Ardbeg himself, David Blackmore, the global brand ambassador for Ardbeg in Glenn Marengi. David, how are you doing this evening?

David 1:28

I'm doing great. Thank you. I'm very excited to be here. It's gonna be fun.

Aaron 1:34

Pales in comparison to Alex I think Gavin.

Gavin 1:36

I am so excited. And and uh the accent, I just there's just something about the accent.

Aaron 1:45

I pride myself on doing a little bit of background research, and when I was doing some digging, and I saw an article that referred to David as bringing the suaveness and scottishness to Ardbeg.

David 2:01

Oh my god.

Aaron 2:02

I don't know how you bring Scottishness, Scottishness to Ardbeg. It's pretty Scottish to begin with.

David 2:09

But well, I haven't read that article, so that's interesting.

Aaron 2:12

Suaveness.

David 2:12

I really enjoyed it. All right, so yes.

Aaron 2:17

David, we're yes. The episodes are a little bit bourbon, a little bit scotch, and so we always kind of like to give a little background. So um Ardbeg located on Isla.

Gavin 2:30

Yeah where's Isla?

Aaron 2:31

Isla, the Southwest Coast Escalatic, the greatest island on the planet.

David 2:39

I would say so. I would say so.

Gavin 2:41

Um actually, she is the Queen of the Hebrides. There you go. Look at this guy.

Aaron 2:46

He's poetic. I know. Um, yeah, so located there on this kind of the southern coast, right there along uh the heart of Isla uh distilleries, right?

David 2:57

Yeah, uh just down the road from the distillery.

Aaron 3:01

Yeah, excellent. Um, so the problem with this is we always start without a glass in our hand, and I think it's important for us to have a glass in our hand. So Gavin, would you be so kind?

Gavin 3:13

Let's do it. Um first and foremost, David. Do you have there your goods? All right. This David holds your glasses.

David 3:24

Oh my gosh.

Gavin 3:26

We need to get David a dream.

Aaron 3:29

Is that is that the kind of thing they give you after you've worked there for 20 years or something?

David 3:33

No, it's something that a buddy of mine gave. A good friend of mine who likes whiskey gave me this last week, actually.

Aaron 3:39

So oh no. Oh no, Gavin broke it. Gavin broke it.

David 3:46

We're gonna have to you know what has what you have to do now?

Aaron 3:51

We have to push it in there.

David 3:52

If the cork's broken, if the cork's broken, that's it. The seal's broken. You you have to you can't you can't leave that bottle undone. Oh, we got we got the bottom.

Aaron 4:01

There's there's lots of things we can do. Pour and I'll strain later.

David 4:05

All right. We're starting with the 10, right?

Aaron 4:08

Yes, we're starting Ardbeg 10.

David 4:10

There it is.

Aaron 4:11

So oh good lord. Do you pour as heavy as Gavin does?

David 4:16

Well, see, I've I've I've I've had a I'm on a one-man mission to prove to the world that this uh rumor that mostly the English put about that the Scots are are tight and mean is absolute bullshit. So, yes, I do. I pour pretty heavy.

Gavin 4:33

Yes, finally, a man after my own heart. I like it. Absolutely. And I like to dribble it everywhere. So if you've if you've never seen an episode, anything that spills outside of the glass, I haven't use it as cologne.

David 4:47

Oh, yeah, no, I do know what, guys, that's so funny. One of the guys, when I first got into the industry back in the day, when I I moved, I had a few years in London in Edinburgh working in the industry, and then I moved to London for a couple of years, right before I came to the US. And uh I one person in particular who um who kind of took me under his wing, and his whole thing was um was that he he he at the end of a tasting, particularly on Isla whiskies, he would dip his finger in it, and he was um somewhat follically challenged as well. And he would rub it all over his head like this, and then dap it behind his ears like this, and say, you know, I'm not I'm off I'm off I'm off on a date. I'm off on a date. How do you think it's gonna go?

Aaron 5:33

As long as you don't get pulled over by a cop, I think you'll be okay because you're gonna be able to do it. Yeah, yeah. Unless it's a female cop, that's true. Then she won his number. Yeah, that's that's just how it works. Exactly, right? All right, so Gavin, tell us just a little bit about the bottle. Um, and then we'll into stories.

David 5:56

Our Art Bake distillery, you know, has been around for a long time. It we've got foundation dates of 1815 and probably actually distilling before that. Uh, but we've had a very up and down history. Um, if you go to the 1880s, we were the biggest distillery on Isla. If you go to the 1980s, we were completely shut. And that leads me to the kind of uh the kind of most recent saving of Ardbeg, 1997. And that's when the Glamorange company came in and rescued Ardbeg. And why I'm telling you that is really the kind of that was where we decided um after launching the uh kind of Iconic 17, a few years after that, that's when we decided that the Ardbeg 10 needed to be the flagship expression of Ardbeg. So the bottle shape you see now, and to some extent the style of Ardbeg in the 10-year-old kind of dates uh largely from that era. Although, you know, it's very recognizably Ardbeg. Uh, we haven't changed how we distill, but what we put in the bottle as a 10-year-old, um, you know, this this is our flagship. It's entirely aged in American Oak ex bourbon barrels. We're using first and second fill, a little bit of third fill barrels. And, you know, art beg's all about all about that smoke, that peat. Um, we we we use more heavily um more heavily peat-smoked barley, higher phenolic content in the barley than any other distillery in day-to-day, everyday production. Um, so that maybe comes through in the whiskey. It might not as well, because there's a few aspects of the distillery like our purifier that kind of surprise people. It allows us to peat our barley to such high levels, but actually, when you get it in the nose, yeah, listen, it's Isla. It's it's big time Isla.

Gavin 7:51

It smells like Isla like crazy.

David 7:55

And you you're so right, you know. Um Ardbeg, one thing I always say about Ardbeg is I don't know another wine or spirit that instantly takes you to the place it's from, like Ardbeg. I I'm just sitting on I'm sitting on the end of that old pier, the mossy old pier with a bit of old seaweed and the sea spray and the smell of the of the distillery functioning, and maybe a waft from a few miles down the road from Port Allen Maltings, all of that just right there.

Gavin 8:29

So here's a question for you, David. Um what does Ard Bag smell like at like 6 a.m. in the morning? Like what when you walk in, what does it smell like?

David 8:42

Well, it doesn't it very much depends what part of the distillery you're walking into and what we're doing. But you know, because because because if the production is on and you're walking into fermentation, you might not get much of a smoking note at all. You get in these kind of lovely fruity notes. Um the sort of things you'd expect from fermentation. If you're walking into the still house, it's a different thing. Again, there's some of that smoke, but a lot of a lot of fruit there as well. Um if you are in a warehouse, you know, that's where it's really at. If you're walking into a warehouse, certainly if anyone's uh disgorging next door, any of that, then yeah, it's just it's this incredible smoky note. But what I would say overall is six o'clock in the morning, if you're walking around Ardbeg distillery, what the overall sense I get is of just purity. There's this fresh air, there's the crisp, there's the ocean. The and I'm not saying that directly influences the whiskey, it almost certainly doesn't, but it's you know, humans are we're interesting beings, we we make associations, and there's definitely an association there for sure, with that salinity, um uh that you would get if you just walked walked around the buildings there, and and and overall, just a sense of calm and and and freshness and purity if you were walking around that distillery at six in the morning.

Aaron 10:17

To your point, as big Isla whiskey fans, there is never a doubt when you put your nose in the glass that came from Arbeg. Oh, yeah, right? Yeah. For for most people who aren't real familiar with Isla, I think they all want to say they're the same. And when you really delve into some distilleries are closer to others, but artbeg really stands apart. I it's it's been a huge debate in my house between my father and I over which is quintessential. I mean my my greater the house mcombly. Um the that is the household.

David 11:03

It's like the royal household.

Aaron 11:05

Yeah. Well, that's how I feel about it. Like is is Ardbeg ten, Le Freud 10, or Logavulen, which is like the quintessential Isla. And I it's hard because they're so distinctly different. Those three, which are often lumped together, really aren't the same.

David 11:27

Here's the thing for me. I think that that you don't have to choose one as the the essence of Isla. I, you know, I'd love to be able to tell you, yes, I think it's art begg, and often it is, but artbeg is the essence of artbeg. That's fairly obvious, you know, the place it's from. Um Lagerville and Lefroig are epically good whiskies, they're amazing. And we're just we're we are so proud to be neighbors with these guys, and and it's that you know, generations of of families have family members working at each of them right now. I mean, one of the boys, one of the boys who used to work at Ardbeg, his social media, I can't remember exactly, but his Instagram handle has Ardbeg in the name. I mean, and he hasn't weared for us for like eight years, he's over at LaFroy. It's hilarious, you know. But his brother works for us.

Aaron 12:22

I I get the impression that if you live on Isla, you either run a bed and breakfast or work at a distillery, because that's about the only two things. Oh or farm.

David 12:33

Actually, uh, you probably do both. Really? I mean, the the thing about Isla is um it certainly has been for many years now pretty close to full employment, but it that doesn't necessarily tell the whole story. Not all the jobs are full-time, so there will be people doing more than one job, uh, one job at the same time. Uh particularly in the non-tourist season, you'll you'll find people, you know, some of the, for example, some of the guys that that work uh that I know of that work at the the three South Shore distilleries. Yep, they work at the distillery, but they're also fishermen. They also have a croft. They also, you know, our she's now moved on to Port Neutrun, but our Jackie Thompson, our our distillery visitor center manager until um about a year ago, you know, I wouldn't call it a job, but she she absolutely loves the fact that she has a croft, she's got chickens, all the rest of it. So, you know, there's a blurring of the lines there a bit too. But but yeah, um most people seem to have a couple of jobs at least.

Aaron 13:37

Well, so speaking of people at the distillery, I'm routinely amazed at such a small number of people that actually produce such a large amount of whiskey. I and you may not know the exact number, but uh ballpark, how many how many people work at Ardbag?

David 13:55

Um I I genuinely don't know the current number because there's been a few changes recently. We're probably if you if you took in the visitor center staff, and this would be a different number from summer to winter, uh, 20 20 yeah 20.

Aaron 14:12

That's amazing to think that a worldwide recognizable brand is produced by 20 people is is.

David 14:21

And this isn't actually that we have massively automated things, because actually, guys, the running of the the physical, yeah, the running of the distillery from fermentation distillation could be run by one guy on shift at any one time. You could totally set it up like that, and there are distilleries like that. Um the the the more labour-intensive part is is warehousing, that that side of things.

Aaron 14:51

Cleaning.

David 14:52

But but we definitely don't do that. We definitely don't do that. And you know, the the joke was uh this is a joke I heard years ago about you know some distilleries' um attitude uh to it, and that that's you know that they like their distillery run, distilleries run by one man and a dog, and the uh the man is just there to feed the dog, and the dog is just there to make sure the man doesn't touch anything.

Aaron 15:21

I like that. I like that a lot. Um that's really funny.

David 15:25

But certainly, you know, our our our ethos at the Glenmorangy Company with our two very different distilleries, Glamorangy and Ardbeg, couldn't be really much further apart physically and flavor-wise, but it's weird to think that we have the same ownership and this predates Moet Hennessy, and the same creative director, Dr. Bill Lumsden, is the guy behind both of them. Um, you know, it's kind of interesting.

Aaron 15:56

I I do want, I I don't want to spend too much time on Glenn Maranji just because this is about our big day, right? We'll we'll have you back on and we'll talk Glenn Morangy another time. That would be cool, yeah. There, yeah. It's it's been one of what one of the running jokes that anytime somebody asks me if I'd recommend a bottle of scotch, I always say buy something from Glenn Maranji. I've never had one that I didn't think was excellent. That's great to hear. And and then you guys came out with one I wasn't a fan of. But we'll we'll I think I know what that is, but I take that.

David 16:23

I I'm gonna I'm gonna I might actually even write it down right now, and then we'll I'll share it to you later after the recording if I can guess how much that is.

Aaron 16:34

But I I do want to talk just a minute about what you said. As a brand that has two Scots distilleries that couldn't be any further apart, and as a global brand investor whose job is to figure out how to sell two drastically opposite products. Yeah, I can you talk just a bit about kind of the struggles that you face being a sales group that needs to figure out how to sell two things that quite often don't have the same audience?

David 17:07

I I don't think there's a struggle at all. Personally speaking, from from my personal point of view, being an ambassador for both both brands, it just absolutely fits into everything that's me. I'm pretty much a very ADHD guy. Uh my my my team of ambassadors might have a nickname for me behind my back. I've heard it. It's ADH David. Um, but we all have negatives, it's okay. Joking aside, I I I think that what is the most fabulous thing about this whole global whiskey kind of hobby that we're all part of. And I think of myself largely as a hobbyist who works in the industry. Um, that's how I got into it. I I'm just passionately I love uh tasting these whiskeys. And and what I've really discovered is that the biggest um variable in the whole massively variable, complex world of whiskey is probably the human at the end of the whole experience. You know, the the day that the same bottle of whiskey can taste different two days in a row to me. And who I'm with, definitely how tired I am, how jet-like I am. You can tell I'm an ambassador, but how dehydrated I am. These things matter. And and and and what's brilliant about whiskey is that uh people, place, situation, environment, you know, who you're with, all these sort of memories um from the past and the memories that you're developing as you're uh drinking these whiskeys fundamentally um uh affect what you're into at that moment in time. And some days, some days Ardbeg is all it's about. I'm about to have you know 10 days of just our Isla whiskey, and and that's brilliant. But there are other uh there are other days when you know Glenmorangy is just such a such a such a uh precise, such a precise whiskey um that it takes my breath away sometimes. The Glenmorangy 18-year-old, as much as I'm passionately in love with Ardbeck, Glenmorangy 18-year-old for me is the whiskey that if I had a gun put to my head and told you going to a desert island, you are never getting off, choose your last bottle. Choose your last bottle. That's it. Glenmorangy 18.

Aaron 19:38

It's just I'm so glad you said that. So I mean, literally, like the second episode of the show we ever did was you're getting off the plane's going down and you're going to be stuck on the desert island. What bottle do you take? Um Yeah.

David 19:55

I love that question because it's different to what's your favorite whiskey? Because it has to be the one that you are reliably going to like every single day until you snuff it on the island. And Ardbeg, Ugedaile, or Coryvreken, very often is all I want to drink. But there are days where I don't want to see that in my life. So I have to choose the one that I know will absolutely blow my socks off, and that's Glamorangey 18.

Aaron 20:26

Eloquently put. Yeah, yeah.

Gavin 20:27

I mean, we we've done uh we did an episode at Easter where um we had to have our Easter basket of whiskies.

Aaron 20:35

And well, Nectar Duar. Yeah, Nectar Duar made that made that basket for us.

David 20:41

Yeah, yeah. That for me, the 18 is just, you know what, and I've finished it. I don't want to, but this this bad boy, I don't even remember the bottle. Oh, here's the old bottle. I literally have nothing left in this. This was the Azuma Makota 23 year old. I know we're getting into Glenmo now, but if there was ever a Glenmo that um impressed me more than our 18, that that 23 in um in um is it white burgundy? I forget. It's white wine.

Aaron 21:13

Anyway, that sounds right. That sounds right as the white burgundy, if my memory serves right.

David 21:18

Stunning, stunning, stunning, stunning whiskey. And the absolute alternate universe to Iron Beg. You know, it couldn't be more different. People are often kind of like Aaron, the dichotomy.

Aaron 21:32

Yeah. I'm good looking and Gavin is not very big. I mean, all those things that are different. When smart, I tend to wear black shirts with a collar. He wears black shirts without a collar.

David 21:43

As a slightly, as a very graying ginger now, um uh you're you're you're losing you're fighting a losing battle. Us gingers, you know, us gingers stick together. We're not we're not uh we've been we've been communicated so much.

Aaron 21:58

You know I'm not redheaded.

Gavin 22:04

He hasn't been in the sun much, that's why. He hasn't had a sunburn up there yet.

David 22:09

I don't know, and I don't want to find out.

Aaron 22:12

So we did get a little bit off into the Glen Rage. Let's come back to what's whiskey in the glass, and let's talk a little bit about um uh walk people through what we get in the glass um that haven't tried it. And I'll and what I'll say is if you've never tried our big ten, you're a you're a damn fool. Um it is easy to alert. No, it's it's not not only a very tasty Isla scotch, at its price point, it shouldn't dissuade you from trying something new, right? If you've never gotten into Isla impeded stuff, um, I think it's excellent. It's at a price point. I actually think it's fun to work Isla peded whiskies into cocktails, yeah, it adds a smoking note to it. Ardbag tins at a price point, I think what MSRP is like $55, somewhere in that range.

David 23:08

And actually, We Beastie. I know we're not talking about and tasting we beastie tonight, but you know, at the price point, we beastie is have at it, as we'd say in Scotland. You know, our Ardbeg. The only thing about uh Ardbeg cocktails is that if you do a version of a classic cocktail with Ardbeg, you might never want to go back. I mean, Ard Big Bloody Marys, Ard Big Bloody Marys have ruined early morning flights for me because nobody currently serves Ardbeg miniatures on board. So I can't get an Ard Bag Bloody Mary on board a flight. Can't you talk?

Aaron 23:42

Can't you talk to somebody about like a global ambassador or somebody?

David 23:47

Watch this space work in progress.

Aaron 23:51

I like it. I like it.

David 23:55

The interest the issue right now is actually not uh at the airline in question, it's us because the airlines either because of weight or are not sure if it's actually a uh safety requirement, they need plastic mini bottles, PET mini bottles, and we we're not set up to do them. We only have glass minis. So trying to persuade the team in Scotland.

Aaron 24:17

If you need a guy, I I've got a funnel. I'll start filming here for house.

David 24:23

He might nip a few, but unfortunately, re-bottling Scotch whiskey outside of Scotland is breaching the Scottish whiskey uh laws.

Aaron 24:32

Well then I got I got bad news for you because I got a box of breeches all over.

David 24:37

Well, you can even breeches.

Aaron 24:40

It's it's it's been a thing that I've done here for a while is that as we get near uh the end of a bottle, and I get down to that point, I'll I'll pour off and I buy several hundred of these empty uh plastic bottles at a time, and then I put a label on the outside as to what it is, and I have got a collection of these little bottles that's one last pour of all sorts of stuff I've tried.

David 25:03

I love that.

Aaron 25:04

Um the the problem I've run into is I'm not sure when to drink them because ultimately the reason I poured them is because it's it. What happens if I want that again and I can't have it again? Um, my fear is what I'm doing is creating boxes of whiskey for my kids to drink after I'm gone. That's my fear, right?

David 25:22

That's good. That's good. That's good. You should take little luggage tags and write messages on them and add them to the bottles.

Aaron 25:32

So you're you're implying that they're sweet notes of love and endearment to my children. Don't you dare drink this, is what mine would say.

David 25:41

So you could they could have things like surprise, I'm dead, I'm gonna haunt you if you drink this.

Aaron 25:50

All right, let's let's talk for a sec. Uh on the nose. Uh-huh. Get Gavin, like what I expect David to know what you should get on the nose. He's probably done this once or twice before.

David 26:01

I mean, I don't want to lead the jury.

Gavin 26:04

So I think um obviously you get smoke. I think there's a bit of um sea salt, uh, seaweed. Uh there's a slight sweetness. I even put bread. I think the the yeastiness, there's a there's a bread note that I get off of it.

David 26:25

Yeah.

Gavin 26:25

Um, yeah, uh citrus.

Aaron 26:29

Yeah, I I to me, one of those tippers that I'm sipping Ardbeg is the citrus notes. Right. Yeah.

David 26:36

So one of the funny things is when I first started with the company, um, going back to that whole idea like Glamorangey versus Ardbeg, I had very much coming through the Scotch Mort Whiskey Society for a few years working for them, I had become a raging Isla snob. All I wanted to drink was smoky whiskey.

Aaron 26:59

And when I moved to the US, you say that like that's a bad thing, and I'm not positive I agree.

David 27:06

It didn't seem like a bad thing, but what was interesting was the learning. When Dr. Bill Lumson first came to the States after I was working here, we're walking around here, working around America. Um, at one point he actually took me aside and he said, Listen, dude, um I I know you like hard big, but you need to figure out how to appreciate Glamorangey. And actually, it's maybe more demanding on your palate. Because once you get a taste for something like a smoky whiskey, like an Isla whiskey, people either hate it or love it. Once you love it, it's almost it almost becomes a lazy whiskey drinker's whiskey. And and I'm the Arbig ambassador, but you know what I mean? It comes to you. If you love it, it comes to you. If you don't love it, it's brutally in your face. Whereas Glenmorangy can work for newbies, sure. But if you have gone to the sort of Isla side of things, coming back and re-teaching yourself to sit and have a different approach to drinking your whiskey, and it requires a bit more focus, just like the whiskey itself, but it will pay you back absolutely. Um, so for me, uh the Glen Baronji thing, you know, it's uh it's uh it takes a bit more effort.

Aaron 28:19

I'm surprised at how quickly into my love of Ila whiskies, the the peat and smoke was no longer the predominant flavor that I picked up.

David 28:30

Yep, yep, big time.

Aaron 28:32

When you first when you first start drinking it, it's overwhelmingly smoky. And people are like, I it's like licking an ashtrack. And he's like, no, no, stick with it for a bit. Like you'll get past and and now people talk about how peated or how smoky it is. I was like, oh, I I guess I really hadn't. I mean, I know it's there, but it's not the only thing I taste.

David 28:55

Guys, when you've been to Isla, I don't know if you've had the same experience as me, but when I go to Isla, even for a couple of days, and certainly if I'm there for more than a few days and bouncing around distilleries, predominantly drinking smoky whiskey, right? Not entirely, but predominantly drinking smoky whiskey. Certainly when you go to a bar, that's probably what you're trying because they've got the limited addictions and everything. What happens with after about day two or three is you completely go nose blind to all the smoke. And what you start picking out is the distillery characteristics of each of the Isla distilleries. I absolutely love that. And then the other, the final point is when you when you finally either take the flight back to Glasgow or the or the ferry over to Kennecraig, and you get to your final destination, Glasgow or Edinburgh, probably your airport hotel, and you sit there and you grab a dram and you think, Wow, I've been on Isla, let's have something different. And the first non-smoking, non-Ila whiskey you drink doesn't half taste weird once you come back.

Aaron 30:00

It almost tastes candy sweet a lot of times. Yeah.

Gavin 30:06

I've often wondered, you know, almost like a bourbon.

Aaron 30:08

Yeah. Yeah, not quite that. Not quite.

David 30:13

I mean, if if you were a kid born on Isla, let's say if you were a kid born in the 50s in Port Ellen, just just just go with me here. You were born in the 50s in Port Ellen, right? On Isla. And the Maltings was doing its thing. And you probably back then, very limited transport, you know, probably you you may not have ventured off Isla until you were 10, maybe older. And and you were, I'm going somewhere with this because you would have been born on that island, and every day walking around the Port Allen, going to school and all the rest, you would have had the background smell of the maltings with peat smoke, and you would have not noticed it at all from the day you were born. It's just there. That's what the world, that's what existence smells like. And the first time. I was gonna say for Houston, it's refineries. You probably thought, geez, doesn't this smell weird? And the same exact same um response as when you you or I go to Isla. You smell and you smell Port Ella Maltings going.

Gavin 31:30

I just want to bottle it up. Every time I go, it's like, yeah, can I just bottle this smell? Oh, wait. I didn't know. There you go. Yeah, there you go.

David 31:40

And being being born and raised in Edinburgh, Edinburgh has to this, luckily, still to this day, has a particular smell. And I was always told it was the um it was the brewery, the Caledonian Caledonian brewery in Edinburgh, that that that was the smell, you know. But actually it's not. I think what the smell that uh pervades Edinburgh, um, particularly in like September, August, September, October, is uh North British Distillery. And it's it's the smell of the distillery. And you can absolutely it just for me that just is a flashback to to being a school kid in Edinburgh straight away.

Aaron 32:24

All right, all right. So we did Dr. This is what happens, like this is okay. This is part of what the show's all about.

David 32:31

You know what we were talking about? We were talking about you said citrus, and I never got to my point. Bill Lumsden, when I was when I was very much sort of way-laid in one direction, um, when I came to the States, Bill Lumsden told me um Ardbeg has this lime juice note in Ardbeg 10. Exactly what and that took me two years before I found it. Yeah, lime juice.

Aaron 32:55

It's to me, Laga Vudlin has lemongrass kind of note to it. Lafroig has distinct lemon, but Ardbeg is lime. And they are not like the acidity, sharpness, underlying sweetness that's different for all three of them. Yes, they're all citrusy, right? But it's completely different citrus. And it's to me, it's one of those things that makes it very easy to tell which of the distillery you're coming from.

David 33:28

And if you are going to make a cocktail with Ardbag, I would strongly advise you stick to limes over lemons when you're gonna be able to do that. I was thinking citrus.

Aaron 33:39

I was thinking a margarita that is I would go, I would go like a light blended scotch with about two-thirds that with one-third wee beastie to give that smoky punch to it. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying.

David 33:59

We just think I'd bank margaritas, I'd big daiquiries, hemmingways are the way forward.

Gavin 34:06

Like a classic daiquiri. I'm from Oklahoma and Sonic is king, right? So I know we've got Sonics here and there. You're gonna do cherry limeade with the colour. Cherry Limeade. Cherry Lime.

David 34:18

That could be interesting. That could be very interesting. Uh, my buddy who gave me this glass is my buddy who gave me this glass is from Oklahoma City.

Gavin 34:26

So uh Oh, very nice. Well, we're gonna have to meet up, have an Oklahoma.

Aaron 34:31

All right. When we give scores, David, we have always given scores based upon how much you would shell out of your pocket to pay for whiskey. Right?

David 34:40

That's a good way to do it.

Aaron 34:42

Regardless of how much the bottle actually costs. So I'll give you the the breakdown. Yeah, anything under 60 is undrinkable swill, even if it was free, I wouldn't drink it. Right. 60s to 70s, I'd only drink it if you were paying for it.

David 34:58

Right.

Aaron 34:59

70s to 80, I'd be interested in paying for a glass, but I don't need a whole bottle.

David 35:06

Yeah.

Aaron 35:07

80s to 90s, I'd love to have a bottle in my collection.

David 35:10

Yeah.

Aaron 35:11

90s, I would go looking for this. That's one that I might not even share with somebody else. And we all went to the upper 90s, they'll find it after I'm dead, and they realize he's had that bottle all along.

Gavin 35:26

It's it's never ended up drinking it. Yeah, no, no, it's the minis that his kids found.

Aaron 35:32

Right. So that being your scale, everywhere from wouldn't drink it if anybody else would pay for it, all the way up to I would sell my children to get another bottle. Gavin. Uh oh. Oh shoot, I'm supposed to do that. I I totally screwed this up. This is Gavin. I gotta give your screen. I gotta give a number first. All right. Yep. Let me write it down so Gavin can't cheat off me. Claim that I claim that I cheated. I give Ardbake 10 an 87. I think this is high in the keep in your collection list. Yep. Yep. There is no reason to sit in a chair out in front of your local liquor store overnight to get this because it's so readily available, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are other releases, pull strings and go get you one, right? But this one we might foreshadowing, we may get there. We'll get there. We'll get there.

Gavin 36:22

All right, give it a hundred percent.

David 36:23

I would probably put it at the same set of level precisely because it's great whiskey, but yeah, you don't need to you, you could you can get it. You can get it. So, but that that's also interesting, isn't it? Because it kind of brings up the whole idea of like, again, I said the number one most um variable factor is the human factor. And and you I see this all the time. If we have a if over the years we've had a few of our whiskeys from both brands that have, you know, we discontinued, and usually they're discontinued because they weren't the best seller, right? But as soon as people find out it's discontinued, there's a massive run on it. Everybody runs down to get it.

Gavin 37:04

It's just like a baseball card when a player passes away, those the value skyrockets.

Aaron 37:10

This this is your next wave of brand ambassador dominance in the industry, is you're just gonna make everything a limited release. That's kind of an artbig trick they're already doing, but that's neither.

David 37:24

We pull back from that a bit. Thankfully, thankfully.

Aaron 37:29

I I will I will say uh in my own personal experience, one of the problems I've always had with Artbeg is every year they have like two or three limited releases, and every one of them is tasty, so I feel obligated to run out and buy all of them. I mean, so I've gotten suckered into it. There's a reason we have an entire shelf of Ardbeg behind me.

David 37:46

I mean, it's a challenge because we kind of people ask. I mean, we started doing a few, and then there was such a literally, you can't believe the emails and calls more, more, more, more, more. So we do more, and then people start saying, Too much, too much. I'm like, Well, what?

Gavin 38:02

Never satisfy anybody. All right. We need a number from Gavin. All right, I said 88. All right, so right there with the 87. I think, I think um I I'm a We Beastie fan, so I have the We Beastie, I have the 10. This one just squeaks out just a little bit more than the We Beastie. I think the Beastie is a bit of a beast. Yeah.

Aaron 38:25

And so this one we had we actually had We Beastie on a previous episode that was surprise whiskies. Um, it was my dad was my dad was a special guest with us, and he came down and he had submitted that bottle. And his claim was he was shocked that Isla Scotch could taste that good that quickly, right? Like this idea that it's five years old and it's its price point made you think it's probably not that great. He's like, I was blown away by it.

unknown 38:53

Yeah.

Gavin 38:53

Well, when you when you look at a you know, age statement scotches, you know, you're getting up there. Ooh, you're setting the stage for my questions here. 10, 12, 18, 21 years, and then you get a five, you get a fiver in there, and you're like, oh I think Isla, Isla is probably the most the best placed.

David 39:15

Most distilleries on Isla are in the best position to be able to bring you a knockout whiskey very young. I mean, Khalilas I've had over the years, I think maybe the best Khalila I've ever had was from the Scotch Mart Whiskey Society, and it was six years old, cast train, single cast. Knockout, absolutely stunning. It doesn't have to be, you know, if everything's been done right. What you like about Isla Whiskey, if you're into it, a lot of that's programmed in before it even hits the still, let alone the cask. So that was the whole ethos behind We Beastie was let's give Ardbeg fans, Isla fans, something as in your face as we can within reason. And initially we were thinking it about it being illegally minimum three-year-old. It it that was a bit we we maybe gone a bit too far there. So we kind of pulled it back to five. Um, and but I'd be interested to see what you think.

Aaron 40:17

I have released it as a barely legal. Yeah, I mean, it's a whole different marketing strategy.

David 40:25

Exactly. But I I think WeBeastie's changed quite a bit in the last few years. I don't know about you. I think the flavor profile has become um a bit richer, uh, a little bit less grain forward, a little bit less barley forward. And I I whilst it's still obviously aggressive and young, I think the Wii Beastie right now is uh this is my preferred Wii Beastie over over the launch one for sure.

Aaron 40:52

I think that's I I'll be honest, I've I've never sat down and tasted old Wii Beastie against new Wii Beastie. But yeah, I I'm always pleasantly pleased with with the bottle. All right, cool. I'm gonna present bottle number two.

Gavin 41:05

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Are we gonna let David score it?

Aaron 41:08

No, he said in the same range. I wasn't gonna make him put a number.

David 41:15

If 19 above means a whiskey that you have to go get your lawn chair and sit outside specs with a with your dome tent for a week, you know, um, then then Ardbeg 10 isn't that because I know not because it's not that not as good as those whiskeys, just I know I don't need to. So yeah, if that's the if that's the ethos, then high 80s, yeah. Absolutely.

Aaron 41:37

Right on. All right, all right. Okay, so this next bottle is the release for Ardbeg Day. It is, is the Dolce.

David 41:50

Yeah.

Aaron 41:51

This one we we get the fancy box and everything. Yeah, I'll be honest, I got this, I got this bottle a couple days ago, and I I couldn't contain myself, and I went and cracked it open and started drinking some.

David 42:04

Have you seen mine? David, you might need to grab another bottle. You know where you can get one? You can do better, guys. Come on.

Gavin 42:17

We'll get there. Don't you worry.

Aaron 42:19

I'll pour heavy for Gavin because he likes it that way. Um, I love it. All right, so now the Dolce. Yeah, not only is it the special release here for Ardbeg Day, uh, which I want to talk about here in a second. But um, like all Ardbeg Days releases, this is something different and something fun. This has been aged in a mix. Yeah. And I'll talk a second about what this means. A mix of ex-bourbon and Sicilian sweet Marsala wine or dolce wine barrels.

David 42:56

Dolce, Dolce Marsala, so the sweetest of the marsalas.

Aaron 43:00

So come clocks in at 47.8%. Yeah. Um, I believe MSRP on this is right around 110. So we've limited release, right? Takes a step up. Yeah, yeah.

David 43:11

All right, so just for this year, it should be hopefully priced $89.99 to $99.99. You might see it a bit more. Obviously, we don't get to set those prices. Um, but that's the that's what I would recommend.

Aaron 43:25

I was I was running off of some of the international websites that have bottles available um and they're pricing. Uh I I happen to know, I happen to know my local, my local friendly bottle shop um had it had it under 110. Cool.

David 43:45

Um And I need to reach out to them, so I will do. Don't worry.

Aaron 43:50

I I've already told them just start charging your credit card. We'll figure it out. I also want to I also want to thank you for the several bottles of Glen Marange I picked up at the store too.

David 44:02

In the case of champagne.

Aaron 44:12

I had to cleanse my palate between samples, right? Like I needed something. Wait, you know it's you still get those? You know it's a a smoky scotch when a cigarette is what you use to cleanse your palate. Let's talk a little bit about face shield. Yes. And the the special day uh for for this episode, which is Artbeg Day. So for someone who's never one, either never been or never heard the details of Face Shield, can you give a little rundown of kind of what happens at Ardbeg for Face Shield? And then what makes Ardbeg Day special compared to the rest of the week?

David 44:58

So um Faciela is the Isla Festival, um, technically the Isla Festival of malt and music. It's actually this year is its 40th anniversary, and for the first, you know, 10, 15, 20 years, it was predominantly a uh a folk music uh festival. And it was only fairly recently that the distilleries started to kind of get involved. Initially, just organically, some of them started doing you know a facial bottling because some people were coming over for the music festival. It's very much snowballed in the last decade, 15 years into the Isla Whiskey Festival, basically. And yes, there's still a lot to do down the music, there's still lots of other cultural things going on which are brilliant and actually absolutely uh make it what it is. Um, but but it's very much become this um every distillery has its day. Um, and we kick off um, well gosh, what's the first day? Is it Brooklady? I think Brucladi is day one or two. Uh, and then Ardebeg has traditionally always had the last day of the festival. Although this year, as the number of distilleries has expanded, um, it used to be nice and simple, you know, seven days, seven distilleries, easy easy. Now there's some doubling up, and there's a a final Sunday of the fash as well now. Um darn it. Oh darn it, one day. And if you really want to go hardcore, um the the Campbelltown Malts Festival like uh latches on to the front end of the uh face dealer. So I have friends who are currently in Campbelltown and will then go straight to Isla. There you go.

Aaron 46:54

Saves money on the airline tickets, right? You only have a four months. I love this.

David 46:59

Um every distillery has had has its day. We've you know, we've always had a brilliant party. I think you know every every distillery has a does a great job. They're all brilliant days, and I and that's you know, I'm going and I'm gonna make my way to probably every day, although I I I have work to do as well. So uh hosting people and such like so. I may miss a couple, but I'm gonna do my darndest to get to the majority of the distilleries' days, you know, catch up with people I know who I who have who are friends, who have been colleagues in the past, um, all the rest of it. And then Ardbeg is the last, kind of still really the last day of the festival. And it kind of starts with Brooke Laddie, I guess, pretty much with a very big event. They do a huge, kind of almost a rock festival um with some relatively well-known bands in Scotland, at least, coming over this year. I'm really looking forward to that. Adam Hannett, uh, their distillery manager, brilliant. I'm looking forward to his seminar. I got myself a friend who gave me a ticket to that, very hard to get. And then uh what we got, we've got Bamor Day, Kilhomen Day, Lagovul and Lefroy Day, um, Khalila Day, somewhere in there, I forget which day. And then you know, we kind of round it out with Ardbeg Day. And what's great about Ardbeg Day is that um a lot of the locals who work at all the other distilleries have had a really busy time of it, right? And they're off, they're off scot-free. So they all come to our day, and and it is a lot of locals and a lot of craziness at Ard Bag Day. Um, and it's just bloody good fun. It's it's brilliant.

Gavin 48:41

So when you when you get together with the same kind of people in that kind of environment, um, other global brain ambassadors, um, we didn't even mention yet that you are a keeper of the quake.

Aaron 49:00

Yeah. Right? So when you we proudly say the second keeper that we've had on the show.

Gavin 49:07

Yeah. So uh we've had Sam Filmus, if you know Sam Films. Yeah, we've we've had Sam on the show. So um when you get together with those kind of with the that esteem of people, right?

Aaron 49:23

Like I can only imagine you mean like equivalent to like getting to come on the noble drink. Right. Same thing, right?

Gavin 49:30

Yeah, exactly.

Aaron 49:31

What an honor it must be.

Gavin 49:33

I can only imagine the conversations that are happening, like one being in Scotland on Isla, and just bringing because you we we mentioned um on the first bottle, um just the different brands, and you just listed a bunch of uh uh other brands. The idea that ever like it's just a big community, right? I mean, we all are whiskey nerds, yeah.

David 50:05

Not to mention Boon Haven, but one of my absolutely favorite whiskeys, accompanied on Mr. House. But yeah.

Aaron 50:11

One of the things that I've always loved about the whiskey community in general, not just scotch, but whiskey in a in a larger sense, is the level of camaraderie that exists amongst competitors.

David 50:23

Yeah.

Aaron 50:23

Right would be a good way to word it. Um the idea that I really want to see the other guys around me also succeed, and that we get together and share stuff, whether that's ideas or um approaches or sometimes it's equipment.

David 50:43

It really is equipment. You know, like, oh, and it's told a lot by by distillery managers and ambassadors for Isla Distilleries about, you know, oh, if a piece of kit breaks, one of us will loan it. And and I'm sure a lot of you know, whiskey drinkers outside of the industry think, I like bullshit. Genuinely, I know of occasions where that has happened. I know where in the middle of winter, when we've been on production and there's been a two-week bloody storm and no ferries and no flights are coming. Back in the Mickey Head era of Ardbeg, I forget the exact details, but we had something break uh on our boiler, I think, and one of the other distilleries had had the piece of kit, and we couldn't get it. We would have had to have shut the distillery. You know, you don't run a distillery without boiler. Um, so we we were loaned their spare piece of kit until we could get a replacement. Straight, there you go. I mean, it happened. And we are massively competitors at the at the coal face when it comes to sales and the sales directors. Yeah, absolutely competitors. Um, but when it comes to uh the guys on the island, um it's it's all hands to the to the to the pump, I guess. And the ambassador sits in in both camps, but I think the camaraderie of ambassadors is is what's the strongest thing. You know, we all got into it because we're passionate about it, hopefully.

Aaron 52:19

Okay, so there's there's a there's a couple questions, and and some of these can be yes or no's of the UD. So did you get into working in the whiskey industry because you love Scotch, or did you learn to love Scotch after you joined the whiskey industry?

David 52:35

The first, the first, the first. I I didn't like Scotch growing up, born and raised in Edinburgh. Had my first encounter with Scotch whiskey by stealing from my dad's drinks cabinet, you know, um as you do, Christmas holiday party in about whatever the year was, probably around about the 15th, 20th of December. My parents went out to a holiday party, left me at home. I reached to the back of my dad's drinks cabinet, found this dusty old bottle of cheap blended scotch, and went to town and wasn't very, didn't like it, wasn't very well the next day, and um in in hindsight, I realized why my dad had left the cheap bottle of blended scotch covered in dust where it was. Someone someone I asked him about it, someone had gifted it to him, and he thought, that's I don't like that, not drinking that. That's not good stuff. Yeah, it was. Um so that put me off all the way through college. So from the age of 15, I didn't really get into scotch until I was about 24. Took me almost a decade to appreciate it. Um, but there was uh you know, it was a six to probably six to nine month period around about then where all the light bulbs went off at once. And I just thought, wow, what have I been missing? And I was very much into wine, and my dad had been into wine from I remember being at that sort of age of 14, 15, and my dad, you know, really not having a huge amount of money with my parents were school teachers, but being very selective and and and particular about choosing bottles of red wine in particular, and letting me taste it. And I really kind of started understanding that. So that transferred when I was in my twenties to this, oh my God, I don't have to go to France and Italy, much as I still love that. We've got this amazing thing on our doorstep I never knew about. That that was it. Uh and it took me about from the moment I got into that light bulb went off and said, and I realized I was into single mortal scotch, it took me maybe 12 months, 18 months before I was in the industry. I I had to. So absolutely, no, no. I and I think I've seen a few ambassadors who have gone the other way, who have been hired, and you know, oh, they'll get it in the end. So it has, I can think of a couple of ambassadors who are absolutely brilliant, who who have actually probably gone in that direction, but most often that doesn't work, just doesn't work.

Gavin 55:09

Yeah, make sense. I like to consider us ambassadors.

Aaron 55:14

Yeah, we are we are we are local non-brand specific ambassadors.

Gavin 55:21

100% and I don't want to be considered a podcaster or a cre a content creator, I just want to be considered a whiskey ambassador.

Aaron 55:32

Yeah, don't get me wrong, if the money was good enough, we'd pick a brand. But like now, we are non-brand specific.

David 55:38

There's a few things, there's a few interesting things there, because first off, you know, I've been an ambassador now so bloody long that I predate social media. Exactly. Right. You know, and initially I I kind of I didn't see a problem, and then there was a period of time where I thought, oh my god, my job's done. Um the the uh the ambassador's dead, where it's it's all influences. But I think it, you know, as with all things, it it's it's evened out, and but there's room for everybody because if you're into it, you're into it. And the people that aren't will get shown up, ultimately, they won't succeed. Um, and then the other thing was you said, you know, if I got paid to do it, I'd do it. I I so I genuinely I was working for Scottish Smalt Whiskey Society as my first job, where I didn't have to choose a brand, but it was brilliant learning because I had to present any given distillery on any particular tasting night. So you you learn pretty quickly. Um and then when I moved to when I was looking to it for a job that paid better, I don't know how they pay now, but the the previous iteration of the Scottish Small Whiskey Society did not pay well at all back in the day. And I was looking for the city.

Aaron 56:51

You were getting experience.

David 56:53

I was getting tons of experience, and I was doing tastings. I got to, I in my first couple of months, I got invited into the tasting panel for the Scottish Mott Whiskey Society once or twice a week, sometimes twice a week, guys, over a year. And guess who was chairing that panel? Charlie McTwain. It's just wild. Like just and and Robin Lang, uh RIP, sadly passed away uh uh recently. But you know, and others, but you know, to think back now on the fact that I just got to to do something and it was after work, we didn't get paid, but we got for every every tasting panel I attended and volunteered at, I got, of course, to get the brain dump of Charlie McLean. But also we got to we got to notch up um the Kitta Tally, and every one we did, we got half a bottle of society whiskey. So I did I was doing two a week, and once a week I would go in there, and they didn't care what price point it was, you got to just pick a bottle out of infantry and take it home. Holy smokes. Yeah. So to me, Charlie McLean's like Charlie and Robin Lang, just pouring knowledge and and passion, more than knowledge, down onto me, and walking away with a bottle of society whiskey a week.

Aaron 58:15

I'm in. I'll do it.

David 58:17

Yeah, it wasn't bad.

Aaron 58:19

Sign this up. You earlier you were making this, you made a reference to the fact that as a brand investor, you kind of bridged the world of sales and production.

David 58:29

Yeah.

Aaron 58:31

I happen to also be in sales in a completely different industry. But one of the things I mean I'm in the production. He's in the production side, right? So it was it was a thought that came to me um as we were preparing for this. How much feedback do you get? Like how much say do you have as somebody who goes out and sees the market to come back to your production team and say, we should try something like this or we should do something different? Is it is does that loop close, so to speak?

David 59:05

I I'm very fortunate that even though we're owned by a big multinational, now Glamorange Company is still run as the Glamorangey Company as a separate business unit. And the ethos of Dr. Bill Lumson, arguably the most kind of awarded, most iconic whiskey maker, full stop, um, is that he's very open to ideas. And I have had many occasions over my career to input ideas, and a few of them have made their way into bottles, and several of them are in casks still to be you know uh unleashed on the world, and then also in terms of feedback for you know new whiskies that we bring out, or you know, some good feedback, bad feedback, he's he's all he is. I will WhatsApp him uh any time of the day or night. If I get some feedback, it's straight back to the man himself. Absolutely. Um that's fun. So so so it's it's you know, and I've had the huge, huge, huge, probably the privilege of my career um about four and a half years ago, four years ago, um, Dr. Bill, sorry, talking about Glenmorangy again, but opened opened this lighthouse experimental plant at Glenmorangy, where it's just a set of stills with all sorts of bells and whistles on it, set aside from the main stillhouse, dedicated to just doing experiments. And after a couple of weeks of just bedding it in and doing, making sure it could make classic Glenmorangy spirit, because we have to start there, the very first experiment ever run in history on the lighthouse stills was myself and my colleague Dan Kroll, uh, US National Glenmorangy ambassador, Bill flew us over, and we got to we had two or three experiments we wanted to do, and we got to do them in person on those stills with with the team with the team who run those stills. But yeah, they were our projects that got run first.

Aaron 1:01:05

Were those some of the things that made bottles?

David 1:01:08

Not yet. They're only um they're only just Scotch whiskey. Um I do have a couple of cast samples. I have a couple of new make samples and a couple of cast samples, and they're they're they're approaching four years old right now, so they are legally scotch. They'll be a while still. That was tiny production, um, but trying all sorts of funky stuff. I mean, stuff that on the lighthouse, we don't need to even for the experiments. Bill's like, don't even consider the Scotch whiskey laws, just try stuff to learn. Do stuff that break all the rules. If you want to make a gin or a pechuga, you know, whatever, make a mezcal, do or whatever, a million things, or make a Scotch whiskey, but use it, you know, do use different grains. Do anything you want. So it's open.

Gavin 1:02:00

So we touched a little bit on, and kind of to keep in essence of this conversation, we've touched a little bit on the legacy of Artbag. And yeah, uh, you've mentioned some of the folks that have been involved. 20 years from now, what do you hope that people look back on this era of Ardbag and say, I want to remember that. Like that is the one thing that really spoke to me for this era of Ardbag.

David 1:02:34

Okay. That's a question no one's ever asked me.

Aaron 1:02:37

Umishness.

David 1:02:44

I I think first off, the number one thing, if I had a prayer for Ard Beg for 20 years' time, is just a very simple one, that Ardbeg is still thriving and that it's still open, and that people still like Isla whiskey, um, and that it's still providing um jobs for for the community on Isla. Um, but really getting back to your question of like what do you what what's the legacy in 20 years from now, what are people gonna say about now? Again, I just hope they think we we we we were good caretakers of of a of a brand uh and a distillery that was around long before any of us were alive, and if we've done our job, we'll be in a healthier place once we're we've shuffled off, and we'll be around long after we're forgotten. And that the you know, it's easy as an ambassador to um to believe your own brand is the most important thing, and that is and I've fallen into that, I'm sure, over the years, but the biggest danger for an ambassador is to think you're bigger than the brand, and you're absolutely not, nobody is Bill Lumson isn't bigger than these brands. These brands hopefully will exist when we're all forgotten. We're in a footnote somewhere. If you I've look look back at the names of people that have run both R2 distilleries, I can't even remember them all, but they've all contributed through their career, it was their it was their brand, you know.

Aaron 1:04:24

I I think it's a a beautiful way to put it to say that we carried the legacy. Yeah, Scotch, maybe more than any other drink, has such a long life cycle from production to consumption, that the window in which you or anyone else gets to have been part of the beginning and seen the end, is a very small portion of your experience. So a lot of what you do is lay down whiskey for the next generation or blend and bottle whiskey from a previous generation.

David 1:05:07

Absolutely.

Aaron 1:05:08

And I've yeah, so this poetic look at it of we're carrying on that legacy, and we're just it's it's not ours, we're just carrying the burden for a short period of time.

David 1:05:22

I mean, I I remember my first day at Glenmorangy distillery, and I remember being allowed they unlocked the spirit safe, and they allow to put my fingers, my hands into the new spirit and like this. And I remember saying to the to to Kenny, it was Kenny McDonald, who is still there as our stillman. And I said to him right that day in 2005, um it's weird to think that this new spirit will be our 18 year old one day, maybe it might be bottled as a 10 year old, even that seems a long way off. But it might be our 18-year-old. Guys, that was uh three years ago that that spirit became our 18-year-old two and a half, three years ago. It just blows my mind that that cask, that that spirit was had its moment in the sun, literally bubbling off those stills, bright, and then it went into a cask and it sat in in in 100% darkness in a warehouse for like two decades. It's just madness. I love that. I could never work for a for a I could never work for a spirit that just came off the still and went into a bottle. I don't think so. It just there's no romance.

Gavin 1:06:46

I mean, in our industry, right, because we work in similar industry or same industry, essentially, in 20, 30 years, people are probably demoing out, trashing what we've done, right? Like and your industry, or in the whiskey industry, specifically in Scotch, it's just starting to hit people's palates at that point, right?

David 1:07:12

And I had a proposal in about 2011. I was over in Scotland and we did a little sort of called them a think tank, obviously, and we were blah, blah, blah. We were just throwing ideas around. And I came with a few proposals, and one of them got kind of laughed out of the room, particularly by the finance guys. Because I wanted to say, I said, you know, Glenmorangy's again, sorry, we're talking Glamorangy, but this was a Glamorangy-focused thing. I'll move back to Hardbag. But the idea was to try and adjust how we made the new spirit to actually make a Glamorangy that would be heavier and oilier on purpose and set it aside in the right sort of very almost tired casks, so that we could try and make the perfect balance of like a 60, 70-year-old Glamorangy in the future. How would you make an old whiskey if you started from scratch with every single parameter set aside? And the cost of doing it was going to be really high. So the CapEx was now, and the outcome, if it was going to work, which was not a given, was after everyone in the room was dead. So guess what? That one didn't happen.

Aaron 1:08:34

Yeah. Sadly. It's hard, hard to allocate resources to something you'll never see come to fruition.

David 1:08:39

Yeah, I mean, but not to say we haven't done projects like that, but that was maybe me pushing for an extreme uh on that. Um, but there's lots of things like that, you know. I'd beg, there's loads of things we've been doing to to try and um just add our little foot fingerprint to to it for the future. For example, you know, um fermutation and looking at um at slower fermentation times and longer ferment fermentations, that's something that's now rolled out pretty much as as a as a regular thing at Ardbeg with a longer fermentation.

Aaron 1:09:19

I have a question because Gavin made reference when sipping Rbeg 10 that he picked up that grainy note, and it made me think what is your typical fermentation time?

David 1:09:32

Oh gosh.

Aaron 1:09:33

For argument, do you know off the top of your head?

David 1:09:35

I don't know if just changed the last couple of no, things have just changed in the last couple of in the last few months, so I'm not 100% certain, but it has got a little bit longer again. And the other thing that's happened is the high gravity mash that we did for um gosh, what was the high gravity mash? I've just had a mind blank. Anyway, that's something that we have um decided to pretty much roll through as a permanent thing. So we're using less water, which which which will end up with a much richer flavor profile, we're hoping, much more fruity nose.

Aaron 1:10:16

All right. Well, speaking of flavor profiles, we we should chat about the dolce and what we have in the glass. So on the nose, I'll point to Gavin again. Uh so I will I will come clean. Sometimes before we get started on an episode, we we put a little pour in a glass to prepare a palette. And and Gavin was so excited because he didn't get to try the dolce the other day when I cracked the bottle open, he wanted to try it again. So we we did a splash and we did a splash both with and without bites of dark chocolate. So some of my tasting notes have still got my memory of the dark chocolate thrown in there, too.

David 1:10:57

So that's okay.

Aaron 1:10:58

With that being said, uh what I will say is if you get a chance to take a bite of dark chocolate with Dolce, it gets significantly better. And it starts pretty damn tasty to begin with.

David 1:11:10

I'm actually doing uh on Ard Bag Day, I will be doing a um, we're gonna have a pop-up kind of bar somewhere located around the distillery in the courtyard. And uh a good friend of mine, uh Tanny, Tanny Gill, who who has started the um Scottish Cheese Academy, uh uh and he is the number one expert in cheese in Scotland. Um, and I've actually had him do something a little different. He doesn't just he's not just an expert in Scottish cheese, and for Dolce for Art Beg Day this year, we've sourced a four or five delicious, unusual Italian cheeses, and we're gonna have a um David Blandmore and Tani Gill are manning a an art beg and uh Italian cheese pairing booth at Art Beg Day this year.

Gavin 1:12:03

All right, so I have a question. I have a question before we get into this, before we get into the notes. David's got a plane to get on. I know. You gotta cut it short. Are you are you a stinky cheese kind of guy? Or like what's your what's your cheese?

David 1:12:19

Yes. Yeah, all cheese, and stinky cheese is brilliant, all of it. It cheese is cheese is cheese is a few years.

Aaron 1:12:30

A few years ago, my dad and I find ourselves on a cruise and we find out that they had LaFroig tenure as one of the whiskeys on the boat. And if if we just asked, the wait staff would have a plate of blue cheese and a glass of of LaFroy waiting for us at dinner when we arrived. Yeah. And we every night showed up to a table with blue cheese and LaFroig in it. First two together were absolutely phenomenal.

David 1:12:58

Guys, the number one thing for me is uh, well, art bake 10 and Parmigiano Reggiano is salty. Oh my god. Honestly, try it. Ardbake 10, specifically 10 and Parmigiano Reggiano is is unreal.

Aaron 1:13:17

There is there is nothing about Italy my wife doesn't love, so there's a good chance I've got a block of Parmigiano Reggiano in the fridge, and I've got our bake tin here. That might be dessert.

David 1:13:28

I'm very excited that I literally woke up this morning. I've been trying to make this happen for about five years, but I have um a friend, I guess. Not a not that he's not a great friend because just I I don't I don't spend that much time with. A friend, uh a friend, I guess. Uh and he's also a friend of a friend as well, who owns a bar on the shores of Lake Como. And I've had this dream because I just stumbled in, but not literally, but I I I went in there when I first discovered the place for a drink and discovered Ardbeg, two bottles of Ardbeg on the bar and an Ardbeg-based cocktail on his menu. And then I introduced myself, and we were just, yeah, I was on vacation. I've been trying to do something there in my mind for years, and it's just never happened. And I thought this year it wasn't gonna happen again. And this morning he wats up to me to say, Hey, we're gonna at his bar. I've decided I'm gonna do an art big event. Um, are you uh uh are you by any chance gonna be in Italy on this date? And you know what? By chance, I actually am. So it's on, baby. It's on, baby. July 2nd, July 2nd.

Aaron 1:14:48

Uh I will have a hard time convincing my wife to go any place on the globe on a short notice, but Italy's totally a yes every time I would ask. So you've got on my email address.

David 1:15:00

If it comes up, do you mean it's part of the lake, the the the July, the the 4th of July weekend, if you if you're gonna leave the US and and do something different, the Lake Como Cocktail Festival is always that roundabout that weekend, and it might not be the worst thing in the world to do.

Aaron 1:15:18

So so as a Scotsman who now lives in America, this may we may see this differently, but there is nothing I can think that would be better than leaving the United States over the 4th of July and just running our mouth in every other country I'm in. All right, let's talk about what's in this class. Yes. Uh your bottle, you go first.

Gavin 1:15:41

I go first. And on the nose. On the nose. Um I think there is uh obviously there's some smokiness to it. Uh there's lemon, there's orange. I think there's a hint of dark chocolate, right? I you can't get away from that. Um there's a slight cinnamon almost.

Aaron 1:16:09

There's a spice to the backside of that. So what I'll say is from when we when we tasted it earlier, I I picked up on orange and chocolate to begin with, but I didn't find it exceptionally sweet, and then a bite of kind of bitter dark chocolate, and all of a sudden the one the orange became much bigger in the palate, and it really turned candy, like almost like a candy orange, like lollipop sort of deal. Like it really went sugary orange candy.

David 1:16:46

I get a lot of apricot.

Aaron 1:16:49

Yeah, I get the the challenge when you tell people orange is they think either orange juice, yeah, and sometimes what you mean is orange zest.

David 1:17:00

Yeah.

Aaron 1:17:01

And I'll say on the nose, I think it's a more orange zest than orange juice.

David 1:17:05

You're right, though, because orange could be anything from orange juice to orange zest to orange marmalade to bitter orange. I mean, the Italian, the Italian heritage is to have these. Have you ever tried? Here's one for you, quinotto. Kinotto is a soft drink in Italy, and it looks like Coca-Cola, the colour of it. But it is uh imagine Coca-Cola and Fernet or Campari or an Amaro had a baby.

Aaron 1:17:37

Okay.

David 1:17:37

It is bitter, and and so quinotto is a is a I think this is true. It's a bitter orange, much smaller, that was imported way back to Italy from China. Um and it it it's it's very much an Italian flavor, that kind of that imaro bitter thing. And and so, yeah, anyway, orange could be a whole load of different things, and particularly when you're talking Italy.

Gavin 1:18:03

It's bright orange or it's burnt orange.

David 1:18:07

When you get orange blossom, sometimes in glamorange, I get orange blossom sometimes. That smell of almost like honeysuckle as well.

Aaron 1:18:15

I I I like your reference to uh like Aperol spritz. Yeah kind of that kind of sharp orange, but yet still fruity sweetness. I I I see that as well. I think I think on the palate, I it turns sweeter for me. I think on the nose it's a little more bitter, sharp, and then it turns sweeter on the palate for me.

David 1:18:35

There's a salinity that's almost like um there's something on the nose that's like um salted cashews, but like there's chocolate coated or something like that. Like something like that on it.

Aaron 1:18:49

Like a like a sea salt and dark chocolate almond to me.

David 1:18:53

Yeah, yeah. There's um there was always a chocolate brand called Green and Black, so I haven't seen that brand for a while, but they always did a um an orange and sea salt crystal embedded dark chocolate. And that thing, if you want to look like a god with your whiskey and chocolate pairings, that chocolate bar pairs with every whiskey. You can't go wrong.

Aaron 1:19:18

We we live we live in Texas, and HEB is a HEB has a brand of dark chocolate sea salt uh roasted almonds, and they are absolutely the the best scotch snack I've run across.

David 1:19:36

100% I I have a theory that you can kind of you don't go too far wrong with with food and scotch whiskey pairings. If you choose, sadly, for for for my waistline, food that's got a relatively high fat content, because you eat the chocolate or the cheese or the even when I worked in London. So the Scotch Small Whiskey Society bar I managed in London was about a block away from Smithfield Meat Market, the original meat market in London, which is surrounded by traditional English butcher shops. And I would go and get handmade English banger sausages, and we would even, I would take some of the whiskey in and they would put it into the sausages, and then we'd do pairings. Again, fat content, the fat coats your palate. You do that first, then the whiskey, the alcohol strips it away, and you get this revelation of flavor. It it's it's an absolute no-brainer. Salmon, smoked salmon, all works.

Gavin 1:20:37

I'm so hungry right now.

Aaron 1:20:41

Well, what so one of the challenges we always have with on recording days, I have to eat lunch because by the time I get home, I don't really have time to eat dinner before. Plus, I do to our earlier comment, I don't want to eat something that's going to shift my palate before we before we sit down and take it.

David 1:20:55

I wrote a tri-tip for my family um right before we started this. So there's gonna be, I think, well, hopefully there's some left, but there's gonna be cold tri-tip downstairs later.

Aaron 1:21:07

I have I have eaten many a cold meal standing in front of the recording for sure. Shoveling it in. All right, we gotta give it a number. All right. Yeah, I've already written mine down.

Gavin 1:21:17

I've written mine down. Interested to hear. All right, I said 91 on this one.

Aaron 1:21:25

I'm at 93. I think this is excellent. This is um one of the challenges we run into on every Rbeg Limited release is there's going to be a moment where there's none left in this bottle, and I'm sad.

David 1:21:38

Yeah.

Aaron 1:21:39

Only till I realize I got two, so I've got one more to drag out.

Gavin 1:21:44

And one for me to pour some minis on the way in. Um, there you go.

Aaron 1:21:47

Yeah, though the only problem is uh my my dad's coming into town this week because my son's graduating from high school, and he's going to want to know if that bottle was the one I picked up for him, and I'm going to have to tell my dad no.

David 1:22:00

Now that I've for me, Dolce Dolce is one of the one of the one of the hard big day bottlings in the last decade that I'm most excited about, I have to say. It's really good.

unknown 1:22:14

All right.

David 1:22:15

And after a couple of years where I've been like, eh, maybe a bit more, this one's right up there for me.

Aaron 1:22:20

Okay. This was this is one of we we we create all these. We work really hard to come up with thought-provoking and entertaining questions, right? And then we always create a list of like if we just need to fill five minutes, what dumb questions can you ask? And maybe this isn't as dumb as that suggest, but of all the Ardbag Day releases, what's the one you're like, man, that one was killer? Don't tell us the one that's that don't tell us about the stinker. You don't have to, you don't have to out anything.

David 1:22:53

But remember what was actually an art bank day botling.

Aaron 1:22:59

Oh, I got a I got a list.

David 1:23:00

You want the list? Um uh dark cove was very high up on my list. Black, very high up on my list. Um my I mean the original Ardbeg Day is very hard to beat. 2012, 20, something like that.

Aaron 1:23:22

Crazy because you know, if you know where I can get a splash, let me know. I would love it. I was splash. I I do my research, right? I rent to come up and visit me. All of the art bag day releases, and I went through this list and realized that over the years, not currently, because some of these bottles have been finished and gone. Uh I didn't well over half of the artbag day releases I owned without really understanding that they were art bag day releases.

David 1:23:50

Right. And and the other thing that for a few for many years we did a committee version and a regular version of the art bag day bottling, right? So there was a cream label and a black label. Cream labels tend to mean it's a committee ultra limited. Cream labels don't have to be art big day bottlings. We all do committee bottlings that aren't art big day at all. Just to confuse everyone. But in the last few years, what kind of back to what you said like, oh, Ard Beg's got a million releases. We have kind of realized maybe we went over the top. So for the last two or three years, we've only released a single bottling of Ard Beg of the R Beg Day. There's not been a second version of it. I pushed very hard for the one version to be the higher strength committee bottling and lost uh that that argument for now, although maybe not forever. Um, I think all of us whiskey nerds would prefer there to be just the higher proof one rather than just the slightly. I mean, it's not low proof, but it would be fun if it was just the higher proof one.

Aaron 1:25:03

But there I it was it was always the fun when you went to the store and stumbled into the bottle, and you're like, oh, I have that one. Wait a second. No, that's the committee one, right? Yeah. Um, which is was always a fun treat when you were when you were rummaging through the shelves of the city.

David 1:25:20

The committee, the whole committee thing's been really interesting because you know, being with the company forever now, I remember when we didn't even bring committee bottlings to the states.

Aaron 1:25:31

And I know, me too.

David 1:25:34

And the committee, for me, the committee, if you're and to an extent, I'm always arguing in favor of uh the US-based committee. Uh, because I my argument to our to our team in Scotland is always, what's in it? Why would you sign up? What what what what's it what what do you what benefit is there? And so the first thing I I tried to do, what's that?

Aaron 1:25:56

You get the email that tells you about the things you can't have.

David 1:25:59

I get that, but I think we could do I think I think we could do a lot more. And so the first thing I did was I I was part of the uh two or three people that that kind of really pushed to say, listen, bringing the committee bottle to the US or committee bottlings to the US is going to be fraught with difficulties because of the law. You know, in the UK and many other countries, we can insist that you have to be a committee member. You have to sign into the committee part of our website, and then you get to buy the bottle. And if you're not a committee member, you don't. So there's a benefit. We can't do that in the States for many, many reasons that are very boring and immovable. And it is what it is. So my my point of view was well, no, the US is our biggest market. We have the most hard big fans here. We should be bringing it to the US and and recognizing that we are going to get a lot of people who are very frustrated that they didn't get it, but someone else did. But that's still better than just not bringing it here at all.

Gavin 1:26:58

You know, well, you got two right here. We're in so I know I know you I know you were running a little late and you've you're trying to prep for you know, yeah, gotta fly, gotta fly. But I do have a question for you. On this show, we often talk about bourbon drinkers and like what we would suggest for them to tippy toe into scotch, right? I'm curious, as somebody who also lives in Texas, as if you had a Scotch drinker that doesn't know much about bourbon, what would you suggest to them? Is there a bottle you take with you?

David 1:27:46

Well, I actually went out this afternoon and bought three bottles of a Texas whiskey to take to Scotland. To take to Scotland to give to Well, it this will be out. After I actually give it to them. So I think so. That's okay. You got about a week. Yeah. Yeah. So I bought three bottles of the same whiskey, um, which I it's a Texas whiskey, and I don't know an awful lot about it. I know that I've tasted it and I like it, and I've been to the distillery because it's not very far from my house up here. And it is Iron Root. Um, I got them three bottles of um, I think it's Harbinger, is the one I bought. Yeah. Okay. And I got a new bottle. Hey, I I met the guys last year. I went to their anniversary party, and uh what a lovely family they are. And I if they if they ever if they're watching this, first off, their new it's the new bottle shape. If you I don't know if you've seen the new bottle shape, wow, that's a trade-up. That that made me go, that made me do that, reaching out to the to the shelf straight away. Um, so I know it's great whiskey. Um, it for me it's my favorite Texan whiskey by some margin.

Aaron 1:29:03

We just had a a buddy on a couple weeks ago, and we asked him if you were describing which Texas whiskey turned you on to Texas whiskey. He mentioned that exact same bottle. So two endorsements.

David 1:29:17

Yeah.

Aaron 1:29:18

Right here. I guess I guess we're gonna need a bottle of Harbinger right here. I guess we're gonna have some iron ring.

David 1:29:23

When you when you come up to visit the distillery, you should do you should um do something at the distillery, and then I'm 45 minutes away. You can come into this room and we'll drink some hard button.

Gavin 1:29:31

Done. Sold.

Aaron 1:29:35

Um, but yeah, that's that's what we can be there in three and a half hours. We'll see you in a minute in a bit.

David 1:29:40

I'll be I'll be almost I'll be uh getting up to go to the airport, probably almost.

Aaron 1:29:44

To be honest, you don't need to stick around. We'll just drink whiskey in your room.

David 1:29:48

Dude, I've done that once before. I did that, I did that last year. I was very jet-lagged. We had a Halloween party, a bunch of friends and neighbors came over, and I put myself to bed because I was just exhausted at about 11:30 p.m. And at 2:30 or 3 a.m., the last of the guys in my neighborhood left. And um then I came back to my whiskey room and there were some bottles like, God damn you, you finished what?

unknown 1:30:14

Yes.

Aaron 1:30:15

Between opening bottles and finishing bottles. Yeah.

David 1:30:19

But to but to that didn't really answer the question. But so that's why I'm taking to Scotland. If I was trying to get someone into bourbon or American whiskey, even, um, who hadn't tried it. I mean, I just go back to what I first got into when I moved to the States. And this might not be this is a personal answer. I don't know if it's a good answer, but I don't think you can go too far wrong with four roses. I love four roses. I mean, just small batch, not even the single barrel. Four roses, small bats, just it's good.

Aaron 1:30:53

I was gonna say I was gonna point, but I I think that it's the shelf above the camera. I got about eight bottles of four roses, various releases there.

David 1:31:02

That stuff is do you know what? People love to knock the yellow label, even that stuff for what it is. There's there's nothing much wrong with that yellow label. Yes. I I I I'll I'll def there's there's many, many much more expensive American whiskies that aren't a patch on that.

Gavin 1:31:23

Agreed, agreed.

David 1:31:26

Um, it's but yeah, the small batch is is where I'd be at. Um what else? And uh this might not get your approval, and it certainly became it, but I think it deserves a lot more recognition for being right at the forefront of making American whiskey something people are into again. Just makers mark. I remember the day when people were like makers. I've been in this industry long enough in 2005. If you were drinking makers mark, you were at the vanguard of like geeky American whiskey drinking, genuinely. Um which is a weird thought, right? But but but um it's just well made. It may not be to everyone's taste, but um, but four roses, four roses would be would be my main answer.

Aaron 1:32:11

Can't argue with either picks. Both of them, we have several bottles of each. Agreed.

David 1:32:15

I could go esoteric, and there's all sorts of stuff. I'm not as big a American whiskey drinker as I am a Scottish whiskey drinker. I don't know that much about American whiskey.

Aaron 1:32:24

Um, I know what I like, but yeah, I mean this this may be part of it, but I'm assuming you have a pretty solid connection to uh a couple decent Scotch brands that make it easier to drink. I like I understand it. I'm gonna tell you right now, if if you told me I could drink all the artbag I want and you just keep sending me bottles, I'd stop drinking bourbon too.

David 1:32:51

It's funny you say that. I've had it, you know, art bag, being the art bag ambassador, you have to realize that a lot of people are very jealous of your job, but also there's a lot of people out there who who either want you to think they know more about artbeg than you do, or often genuinely actually do know a lot more about artbeg than I do. And that's cool. That's cool. And and but I've had a couple of occasions where people are just adamant in tastings, like trying to trying to trip me up almost. And I had to stop one guy years ago, and I just said, listen, mate, this is great. I I get it. You you know more about hardbeg than I do. But here's the thing: you have to pay to drink hardbeg, and I get paid to drink hardbeg.

Aaron 1:33:40

Yeah, that's that's a scoreboard reference for sure.

David 1:33:44

Might not have been my most diplomatic moment as an ambassador, and I'm not that true, it's true. Fair. I mean what really got me was yes, it was a bit of a dick there, but but at the same time, you know, most people that that's a rare that's a rare occasion because most people inside the industry and outside, but as the as our beloved, you know, fans um are not like that. And and there can be a bit of banter here and there about, you know, oh you didn't know that. That's great, but it's always good natured, it just very rarely becomes anything else, and that that's what I love about it.

Aaron 1:34:27

Well, David, let us first say thank you very, very much for being a part of the Noble Dram tonight. This was thank you for having us. It's been so much fun to chat with you. Uh we will absolutely be emailing asking about the next time we can come to Fort Worth and drink whether it's American-made whiskeys or Scottish whiskeys, um, we would love to do this again. So thank you very much. It's been a nice one.

David 1:34:53

Hey guys, we should do it. Why don't you come up here and we can see if we can we could film a Glenn Borangey one in in this room? Um I would love it.

Aaron 1:35:00

I'm in.

David 1:35:01

I can be sold.

Aaron 1:35:02

I'm in. Right. When would when do you get back? We'll figure it out a day. We'll figure it out today. So, uh how we end these, we raise a glass and say cheers and fanciva.

Gavin 1:35:20

We want to thank you, our noble listener, for joining us. We believe each whiskey has a story, and so do you. So give us your thoughts by leaving a comment. And if you have a whiskey you'd like to see us share, let us know. You don't want to miss a single episode, so subscribe to our YouTube channel and make sure to like and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to stay up to date on the Noble Dream. And if you find watching us difficult, you can always listen to each episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. As always, be noble and enjoy your journey responsibly.