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Owain - The King of Old & Rare

S1 E7 · Non Chill Filtered

0 Playsin 4 hours

This week on Non Chill Filtered, Jez hosts Owain Phillips from Baxus, the peer to peer marketplace to find a home for you gran pappy's booze collection or take a bottle off some else's hands. We cover Owain's origin story and what led him to being Australia's go to guy for vintage spirits. We taste through some crazy vintages and deep dive into what made them special for the time.

Pour a glass of something old and throw on some headphones, you are in for a journey.

Owain does an occasional pop up at Goodwater Bar for a tasting or keep an eye on his socials for further vintage tastings!

Transcript

Intro

Introduction of Owen as Special Guest

00:00:18

Jez

What's up guys, Jez here from non-chill filtered welcome back to another episode. This week I am grace with the beautiful presence of

Whiskey as After-Work Ritual

00:00:27

Jez

Owen. Owen sir, how are you today?

00:00:30

Owain

Good mate, good mate. How are you?

00:00:31

Jez

Yeah, good, good. Do you know what? Happy to be drinking whiskey at four o'clock in the afternoon. It's, it,

00:00:36

Owain

Yeah, I got gotta to make it work. where um well butre both We're both early workers. So I feel like it's the after work time anyways.

00:00:41

Jez

ah Yeah, absolutely. Like we've been up since crazy hours of the morning. both got the gym workouts in today. So we ticked all those boxes.

00:00:50

Owain

Yep.

00:00:50

Jez

It's like treat yourself, earn your bourbon, if you will, earn your bourbon.

00:00:50

Owain

Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Owen's Whiskey Journey Beginnings

00:00:55

Jez

ah So how did you become the go-to guy for bourbon in Australia? Well, aged whiskey in Australia, because you're um you were the go-to guy at AWA.

00:01:03

Owain

Yeah.

00:01:10

Jez

We'll touch on your origin story actually, because you're,

00:01:12

Owain

Yeah, for sure. So I'm 25, so I'm probably one of the younger people in this industry to have that kind of depth of knowledge. But it ah it comes about 16, 17, 18.

00:01:19

Jez

Wild.

00:01:20

Owain

so sixteen seventeen eighteen My dad was putting whiskeys in front of me and saying, you know, Try these, try these, understand why you like these, why you don't like these. And it took me quite a few years of of sort of going, that's awful. Who likes whiskey too? Oh, wow. This, this thing that's in front of me is actually really interesting.

COVID Era Whiskey Experience

00:01:35

Owain

And then come end of 2020, start of 2021, as we we head to, um head to COVID, there's a shop in, in Melbourne called Casa Divinos run by Jose. though They, they specialize in old and rare whiskey and they needed some, some hands to fill sample bottles essentially during COVID.

00:01:52

Owain

So I headed down there as a sort of, well, I'm i'm not doing anything on my sort of gap year slash sort of first year of uni. You know, we're all working from home. ah I'll go and get a job, go and go and make some money in the process. And basically we were decanting full-size bottles into a little miniatures, send them out, doing virtual tastings online, as was the the trend for the COVID era that everyone had to put up with.

Role and Learning at AWA

00:02:14

Owain

Uh, and over the time, I think, I think we were doing three tastings of four or five whiskeys a week for, think I was there eight, nine months, maybe even a year. So it was just this blasting quick fire knowledge of this is what a Tomatin at 25 year old tastes like. This is what a Glen Glassow and Sherry tastes like. This is what old bourbon tastes like. It was just a hyper education within a very short period of time.

00:02:37

Owain

And, uh, I got to the end of about a year, I think with, with Castamenos and sort of looking for something new. And I'd really found a love of old vintage whiskey. through to the tastings we'd done. And Sean at AWA, Australian Whiskey Auctions, was looking for an extra pair of hands.

00:02:50

Owain

So I came on to AWA. I think it'd only even been running about six or seven months, but it was ah a cool new opportunity. And I went with Sean almost three years. And my experience at the auction house is essentially what formed my my familiarity and my expertise with bottles themselves.

00:03:06

Owain

So I saw so much come through the auction house. New and old, I learned all about those old stories, those new stories, uh, found, learned how to authenticate bottles, um sort tons of seals, tons of different paper labels and those kinds of things. And got got a good familiarity with what the physical bottles are doing.

00:03:23

Owain

And ah yeah, it it kind of spiraled. Sean was great. He gave me a lot of space to learn about those bottles. So when we had an old Johnny Walker come in from the 60s, it was my job to to date that, authentic authenticate that, understand the story around it, what could be in the blend, what is different today. And i just working for an auction house, you you know its it's it's my day job where a lot of people with whiskey, it's their hobby. They ah like to spend time learning about it. For me, it was it was a passion that was happening every day.

Innovative Work at Baxus

00:03:51

Owain

um And then come October, I believe last year, moved over to a company called Baxus. Baxus is American company. It's a combination of the crypto space and the whiskey space. we We have kind of somewhat similar to an auction house. It works as a little bit of a hybrid um out of New York, New Jersey.

00:04:08

Owain

We vault bottles. So just like an auction house, people send bottles over to us and we we hold them. We do 360 scans of them and then they can put them up on our marketplace for sale. And that's all powered by blockchain. So every bottle has ah an individual Chain Asset ID.

00:04:22

Owain

And these range from, i believe, the oldest thing we have in the vaults from 1770, Madeira from from literally the 1700s. free Pre-Civil War whiskeys, I believe, are in there as well.

00:04:31

Jez

Thank you.

00:04:34

Owain

Absolutely crazy old stuff all the way up to the... high-end Macallans from the nineteen twenty s and everything. So there's kind of the full spectrum of whiskey kicking around there.

Whiskey Education and Absorption

00:04:43

Owain

But yeah, it sort of, my my origin started as just fill and sample bottles in a whiskey shop and and being exposed to this industry and these types of whiskeys to just within three or four years, diving headfirst into the literature, the bottles, the history, the the books, anything I could find on on old and interesting whiskey.

00:05:02

Owain

Yeah.

00:05:03

Jez

truly become like a whiskey sponge here and just like soaked up as much information as you possibly could. i

00:05:09

Owain

That's the thing with this with this industry, you think you know everything or you think you know the whole story and then someone will pull up some piece of information or archived history and who go, wait a minute, that no one knew about that until now. It's 100 years since that happened.

00:05:23

Owain

So you you never know everything. And I've worked my way through the different categories little by little. I kind of say that at the moment, for example, i'm not particularly proficient in cognac and brandies and that kind of thing. But at some point I will just throw myself into that and I will buy nothing but cognac and brandies and I will read nothing but those books.

00:05:40

Owain

Same way I have done with rum, same way I did with American whiskey versus Scotch whiskey. You just sort of, why I refer to ah my role in and similar roles that folks have at auction houses, spirit specialists. We like to be that broad spectrum of that we cover everything.

00:05:54

Owain

But these are very large industries with huge history and everything has its own unique niches and communities. So we sort of tackle, I've been finding that I tackle them one at a time. So I know my rums, I know my American history, I know my my my bourbon and my Scotch whiskeys very, very well.

00:06:07

Owain

know my Australian very, very well. But yeah, it's it's just a fun experience.

00:06:14

Jez

It sounds like a fun place to start. Our little journey here, you graced me with a shitload of samples. And i was like, I'm like, look, let me pay you for some samples, send them up to me.

00:06:26

Jez

And ah like, you sent me to like almost a pallet worth.

00:06:26

Owain

na no, no.

00:06:30

Jez

there I saw the bag turn up. I'm like, it's this big. I'm like,

00:06:35

Owain

and i kept I kept having to go up a size in AusPost about three times when I was getting the the mailing bag. And I was like surely that will fit. Oh, no, go up one more. it's It's part of the hobby, right? Everyone wants to share.

00:06:46

Owain

that's That's why the bottles you can see in front of me are open.

00:06:47

Jez

Yeah.

00:06:49

Owain

they've They've been used to tastings here in Melbourne. they've been used They've been taken over to the States and shared with folks as well. It's great to talk about bottles and write the history, but it's just as important to be drinking them and and learning about these things. So a great example is this old overhaul in front of me. So before I headed away on my last US trip about a month ago,

00:07:08

Owain

I did a tasting at Goodwater down here in Melbourne and we cracked a whole bunch of closed distilleries. I wanted to focus exclusively on closed distilleries and mainly the national distillers, closed distilleries. And I found ah this 1981 vintage. So this was bottled in 81, Old Overholt.

00:07:24

Jez

you

00:07:24

Owain

And Overholt was a brand that really, I love the story behind It's really interesting, but it's kind of a mystery from about the nineteen fifty s onwards. So There's this large gap in period of time where Overholt closed their distillery in 1953, Broadford closed, and they were still bottling.

00:07:39

Owain

Pennsylvania distilled rye up until Jim Beam acquired National in 1987. there's this almost 35 year gap. fiveyear gap where I asked everybody in the vintage whiskey industry and anybody who may collect these things, where did this whiskey come from? And nobody could give me a solid answer.

00:07:54

Owain

So it was a moment when I saw it pop up in auction of, I need to know what kind of whiskey Overholt was producing in this era, potentially sourced.

00:07:58

Jez

Yes.

00:08:03

Owain

We cracked at the tasting, gave it a taste. And just like that, I went, that's a mix product. That's Mictus Rye, without a doubt, because it had that same unique distillate note that that is intangible until you've tried old-school Mictus.

00:08:17

Owain

And i think I believe you'll have tried it as well. Kier from Honey Barrel sent us some samples of that Hex bottle. and i think i

00:08:21

Jez

yes

00:08:22

Owain

And i I was also privileged enough, my last trip, to try the Hirsch Blue Wax, the 1974, this crazy old um vintage whiskey.

00:08:26

Jez

yeah

00:08:30

Owain

that All three of these whiskeys had the same distillate note. So yeah, I would put my money on it being a Mictus product, a Penco product of that era. And I now get to having opened this bottle. I now get to talk about in my tastings and I get to write about that and say, never going to be a hundred percent accurate. No one's ever going to know, but here's my theories on the story and here's my lived experience on on where I think this whiskey comes from.

00:08:54

Jez

it's only because you've touched on so many different bottles, right? And it's just being able to encapsulate all that knowledge.

00:08:58

Owain

Pretty much. Yeah. it's it's that yeah It's that point of difference of of trying different eras. So i'm so of privileged. Again, there's there's a group of folks in in kind of New York and Ohio and Kentucky called the Vintage Whiskey Society folks. So i actually went out to mission Missouri sorry for tasting with them.

00:09:18

Owain

And they opened stunning bottles. think we tried a rye 1881, 19-year-old rye in this tasting.

00:09:26

Owain

But I was privileged to and overhaul it from 1911. And it was just fundamentally an entirely different spirit. It was made at a different distiller. It was produced in a whole different way. Whereas this was maybe a little bit lighter and fruitier.

00:09:37

Owain

That 1911 was like brioche bread. It was a wild style of rye. But it it is exactly that. I don't have those opinions until you try those whiskeys. So it's why sometimes I look at my bank balance as a 25 year old and go, what am I doing here?

00:09:51

Owain

But I have to remember that I purchased drams that are often once in a lifetime experiences that add to that knowledge base. And almost, always call it a jigsaw puzzle. The jigsaw puzzle is never going to be complete, but it's another piece in the puzzle to get an idea of the wide spectrum of whiskey, how it tastes and how that informs both my writings and my my authentication experience and kind of adds to me...

00:10:12

Owain

to my value as someone in in a whiskey business.

00:10:16

Jez

yeah i that Yeah, you're right. That jigsaw is never... I was just thinking about it as you're talking about it. I'm like, no, the amount of whiskeys we've tried and like you are on another level to me.

00:10:28

Jez

like I'm just an alcoholic white boy from the hood. But the fact that you're like you're trying all these whiskeys and you're slowly putting these different pieces together in your head and you're like, all right, well, that distillery was producing this at this time.

00:10:41

Jez

And it's like, yeah, that juice is very similar. It kind of goes back to that Mictus. And it's just like...

00:10:44

Owain

getp

00:10:46

Jez

Yeah, okay, cool.

00:10:46

Owain

And

00:10:46

Jez

I know where that kind of grabs from there, and this is that, but...

00:10:49

Owain

yeah, yeah. And we can we can point, for example, to to Old Crow as another good history piece. Old Crow today is a bean product that is quite literally on the bottom shelf. I believe when i when we road trip through Ohio, I saw it on the 86 proof black label for maybe $8 a handle.

00:10:59

Jez

Yep.

00:11:06

Owain

Like it was just nothing.

00:11:08

Jez

Oh.

00:11:08

Owain

You go back and Old Crow, there's tons of stories about why it changed.

00:11:10

Jez

Finally.

00:11:11

Owain

This is another one that we opened in that that National Distillers tasting. And there's, I had heard stories and rumors that old crow from the 60s, 70s and 80s was very different. So I opened a 1973 and I had already tried an 80s product.

00:11:26

Owain

And the 80s is very sort of, ah sort very bland, maybe it's still tasty, but very straightforward whiskey. Whereas this 70s bottle is is way more funky. It's almost like a red wine. It has this very ah gunji yeasty profile.

00:11:38

Owain

And

00:11:38

Jez

Interesting.

00:11:39

Owain

Looking at the history, there's suggestion that in kind of the late 60s, I believe, maybe early 70s, Old Crow had their yeast lost or destroyed.

00:11:40

Jez

Of

00:11:47

Owain

And yeast is such a fundamental part of the production process that...

00:11:50

Jez

ah

00:11:51

Owain

you lose that or you change that you change your entire distillate so i but that's exactly the thing i opened these and i tried these and i went now i have a point of if i was going to go and buy old crow i would buy 70s or 60s i would skip the 80s but someone may find that 80s profile but more of a preference than the slightly more funky 70s But i it's why a lot of people come to me when they find these old old bottles and they go, what's your opinion here?

00:12:16

Owain

And whilst I never want to be responsible for someone's good or bad purchase, it's, it's, I, people come to me because I've had that lived experience and that lived taste experience. Uh, it's, it's great fun.

00:12:29

Owain

It's often very expensive. I mean, I'm, I, I get some wonderful deals in the process. I spend a lot of time in auctions and and private seals and working it through. I'm not even on close to a level of the vintage whiskey guys opening these stunning $10,000, $15,000 bottles, but we kind of find our eras within the history and find what we like and and focus on that.

00:12:49

Jez

Just go hard in the paint there. I love it.

00:12:51

Owain

Yeah, pretty much.

00:12:51

Jez

I love it. Well, you said your your whiskey journey kind of started with your dad.

00:12:53

Owain

Pretty much.

00:12:58

Jez

What was his drink of choice? Because as i said, you sent me up a shitload of samples. So I'm like, if we can find pour to match that, I'm like, it's going to perfect way to kick off the journey.

00:13:01

Owain

Yeah.

00:13:08

Owain

That's so he was, uh, so he kind of started me with with single Motscotch. I believe I put, a he he was, but so his favorite is always, Highland park.

00:13:14

Jez

Oh, okay. Okay.

00:13:18

Owain

That was always his, his go-to and it still is. We, for his 60th last year, we opened the 1964 Highland park. So it was kind of.

00:13:25

Jez

OK.

00:13:26

Owain

I know there was a lot of lot of those wonderful experiences and some of the oldest vintage models he's acquired are stuff like 55 vintage Highland Park car strength. So eight that's always been his favorite distillery that he's focused on. But he's um he's he's a closed distillery collector.

00:13:40

Owain

So he his his aim before...

00:13:40

Jez

okay

00:13:43

Owain

He moves off the mortal coil is to own a bottle of every Scottish clothes distillery. And I've tried my, I'm, I've helped him considerably in that process over the last three or four years. It was, it was quite interesting watching him teach me in my teens.

00:13:56

Owain

And then through my experience in the industry, me teaching him most of the history and having that switch point you know,

00:13:58

Jez

you

00:14:03

Owain

student becomes a master kind of thing where he was he was coming to me for should I acquire this at this price? Is this sensible? Like, how will this taste compared to the other one? So we're um we're big fans of, you know, um I live vicariously through his his wallet. Essentially, he will pick up Glen Vores, Glen Albans, Magdalen's, those kind of things and and always open them and share them at but special time so whilst i can't afford a 1500 st maggie i'm i'm very privileged to be able to try them through him and again gain that experience and know where to drink uh so i my dad otherwise bourbon he he loves his bourbon he loves his american and that was kind of my that was my introduction to whiskey as well uh working for an american company now almost feels like i'm i'm coming back to my origins in my home and

00:14:45

Owain

I'm talking about the thing that I fell in love with. Uh, Micta's was actually my, my first big, big love in the, in, in the whiskey industry. um I think the very the first paycheck Jose gave me at Casa Divinos, I immediately bought a bottle of the blue label unblended American whiskey ah on the shelf.

00:15:01

Jez

Ooh. Yep.

00:15:02

Owain

That was, that was, and that goes straight. That was 18, you know, 19 straight in the tumbler.

00:15:05

Jez

I think i have a bottle behind it.

00:15:06

Owain

Easy peasy.

00:15:07

Jez

Yeah, I think I bottle behind me. Like, unblended is easily my favorite Micta's core range.

00:15:11

Owain

Yeah. It's just solid. It was, it was, uh, I like Mictus and that was, that was that.

00:15:14

Jez

Yeah.

00:15:17

Owain

And, and so early into my journey, I remember going on ah a trip with my partner, first international trip with my partner in 2020, we went to, to London and I, I tried the toasted sour mash, the 2019 release, and I spent all my time looking for it.

00:15:30

Owain

I paid way too much money for it in London, but I knew nothing about whiskey. I just knew that I loved that bottle. And I, I, I, I drunk that like nothing else. Like it was, it was a wonderful early formative experience.

00:15:42

Owain

And I look back on those and understand how my palates changed from where I may have searched for those new releases, those limited offerings. I'm much more now enamored by the history and looking for something along there. Uh, I can't recommend ah companion Paul.

00:15:55

Owain

I'm not sure what you have behind you. Cause it looks like quite a bit, but, uh, yeah.

00:16:00

Jez

I was like, if you started with Mictus, I'm like, we can kick off with Old Overhaul.

00:16:00

Owain

Uh,

00:16:05

Owain

yeah. Did I send you the overhaul?

00:16:06

Jez

ah Potentially.

00:16:07

Owain

I can't remember. I sent you quite a few. I don't know what I sent you anymore.

00:16:09

Jez

You did. Yeah, 81.

00:16:11

Owain

I did? There you

00:16:13

Jez

Yeah, all right. That's, yeah.

00:16:14

Owain

So that's this.

00:16:15

Jez

Absolutely. I'm like, well, if you're a big Mictus guy, I'm like, well, it's a perfect starting point here. So I just like filled these sample bottles. Good Lord. and

00:16:28

Owain

So I was so working for the company, work for Vaxxas there, headquartered in um and New Jersey. But we often, so I go out there and I inspect the bottles physically in the vaults, but it means I get to spend some time in Kentucky when we're down there. We have we have a house and an office down in Kentucky. So in in in the middle of Louisville, it kind of makes everything easy. It was the first trip in in February.

00:16:49

Owain

I went out to pick some barrels at Wild Turkey. We did the private barrel experience, chose a couple of I one Camp Nelson, one Tyrone. So there'll be some sort of tasty liquid coming soon. But kind of got to grips with Kentucky on that first trip and realized how fun everyone was. And then the second trip in April, gosh, it's been April, put May, gosh, it's been a while. um I went out for the Kentucky Derby. So that was was a once in a lifetime kind of feeling. and sitting in a box right at the finish line was was amazing having those juleps the first time but we i stayed in kentucky for another week and did as many this there as i could so went straight over to mictus picked up a handful had that great experience got to see the actual pot stills that that essentially what we're drinking will have been made on those original shapers town pennsylvania pot stills so mictus is a very funky distillery it it

00:17:39

Owain

realistically doesn't have much to do with its actual origin. It sort of was just a revived brand, but, uh, you know, it's Kentucky whiskey, Kentucky spirit, not Pennsylvania spirit made in a, probably a much better way than these were.

00:17:43

Jez

Thank you.

00:17:53

Owain

But, uh, yeah, they're one of the few, one of the few brands that I think are doing some, some quite good old style whiskeys. Uh, but this, this will be 1970, probably thereabouts distilled.

00:18:09

Owain

uh, will probably be, so the only two distilleries that were operating in Pennsylvania that time were Publica, I believe, and Penco, which is Penco's MGDAS. And Publica was the one that you may, I believe you may have seen some in Sydney from some, some collectors, the Barrett's, the 12, uh, 12, 18, 20, these older, um, 1990s bottlings.

00:18:30

Owain

Uh, anyways, Publica did, Publica was essentially an industrial alcohol producer that also made rye. And Mikitas is one of the few producers that was actually still focusing on whiskey.

00:18:36

Jez

okay

00:18:40

Owain

So some of those Publica stocks were left for quite a bit, meant that in the 90s, I think it's ah possibly the Franklin Company bottled a few of those for the Japanese market, as is the common story whenever we talk about bourbon.

00:18:52

Owain

Japan always loved that well-aged, that well-aged distillate, that well-aged stock. And so they went over there. But Penco was kind of the source for a lot of the the rye brands.

00:19:03

Owain

The rye is that a lot of our favorite companies were bottling in the 60s, 70s, 80s. There's a wonderful quote, I believe it's from Jimmy Russell that says, if if the rye is not from Pennsylvania, the rye is not worth drinking. Something along those lines, like the best rye is made in Pennsylvania.

00:19:18

Owain

And it took that. So 70s wild turkey rye is Micta's. It's Penco distilled rye. And I believe it's only until the early 80s, kind of late 80s, maybe that wild turkey actually started making their own rye.

00:19:31

Jez

They shifted, yeah.

00:19:31

Owain

and that was And that was one week a year. Like they had a single week of rye production an entire year. So those Christmas ryes that everyone goes crazy for is there.

00:19:39

Jez

For the people playing at home then, was there ah reason why they shifted from like a Pennsylvania Rye back to, say, now a Kentucky Rye? Like, because Pennsylvania was...

00:19:48

Owain

Well, the big one is that Micta's closed in I believe about 1985, so that's certainly a factor. um But I think it was also just getting too expensive. ah no one Nobody was drinking rye post-Prohibition.

00:19:57

Jez

Yeah.

00:20:00

Owain

it um Unfortunately, the there was a bit of canoodling in the then the government during the the providing of licenses. the and Actually, the owner of Oval Overhaul, Andrew Mellon, was the Secretary of the Treasury during Prohibition.

00:20:15

Jez

you

00:20:17

Owain

He owned overholt and he was responsible for choosing who was granted the licenses. So yeah, and and there's there's plenty of corruption involved, but primarily he was, he was giving them to, to wealthy individuals and they just happened to be almost entirely Kentucky bourbon producers. So prohibition pretty much killed that rye production.

00:20:37

Owain

Very few were able to to survive post prohibition. I believe four or five maybe that reopened and by the sixties, I think it was only publicer and Penco left. So rye was just not produced. People just weren't drinking it.

00:20:50

Owain

It was, you look at the 50s, 60s, 70s, people were wanting lighter whiskey, softer, more mixable, more mellow. They didn't like that hyper-industrial, that heavy, that ah thick style of of whiskey that was quite common pre-prohibition, primarily made in copper, primarily with long ferments, good quality grains, lower fill level.

00:21:02

Jez

you

00:21:11

Owain

it and from about the 40s and 50s onwards, you start to see everything drop to 80, 86 proof. Everything gets advertised as mellower and lighter, you know.

00:21:22

Owain

I believe I actually have a medley here.

00:21:28

Owain

Yeah, a 1971 medley that literally on the label says rich and mild.

00:21:33

Jez

Ah, okay.

00:21:33

Owain

Like, mild mild was a selling point for whiskey back in the day.

00:21:39

Jez

Which is very boring.

00:21:39

Owain

So... Yeah, absolutely. But is is they preferred that style of whiskey. So right rye was sort of counterproductive to that style of asset style of of whiskey that people were drinking back then.

00:21:53

Owain

Is that a Wathens?

00:21:54

Jez

fun ah Yeah, it was just like, just checking out one of my 70s bottlings. And I was like, oh,

00:22:00

Owain

So i Bourbon Supreme was produced by um ah Continental in... Perioia in Illinois.

00:22:10

Owain

so that's Illinois distilled bourbon.

00:22:12

Jez

Peckin, Illinois?

00:22:13

Owain

Sorry, Peck in Illinois, not Preoria.

00:22:15

Jez

Yep.

00:22:15

Owain

Preoria was the Hiram Walker site.

00:22:15

Jez

American Distilling Company Incorporated, yes.

00:22:18

Owain

So same producer of Stillbrook, this brand.

00:22:21

Jez

Yep.

00:22:24

Owain

And same producer for Penny Packer, which was a, so both, they were one of the last remaining producers out of Illinois.

00:22:28

Jez

ah Ah...

00:22:33

Owain

Most of the distilleries in Illinois were closed.

00:22:36

Jez

was that Was that purely just from like Prohibition and then?

00:22:41

Owain

Again, same thing. Big big businesses ah were killed. So if you weren't Kentucky or you weren't involved, Illinois was was actually pre-Prohibition. Illinois was one of the biggest producers of whiskey in the country. I think it was almost 50% of the whiskey was coming out of Illinois.

00:22:57

Owain

It was where the Whiskey Trust, the company... You have to go back a couple names, but National Distillers acquired American Medicinal Spirits Co.

00:23:04

Jez

Yep.

00:23:05

Owain

and And American Medicinal Spirits Co. was kind of the evolution of a company called the Whiskey Trust. And the Whiskey Trust was 60 distilleries that essentially conglomerated to control the price of alcohol coming out of of the US.

00:23:18

Jez

Yeah.

00:23:18

Owain

It was... it was organized monopoly essentially.

00:23:22

Jez

yeah

00:23:22

Owain

So the, yes, the Illinois was the location where a lot of that happened. I believe it's, it's, it's not continental. I will.

00:23:33

Owain

Anyways, they, they lasted until about the 1970s and 1980s and then MGP or Seagram's acquired them and they now produce industrial alcohol only by bioethanol. So they're not, they're not producing actual age spirit anymore.

00:23:48

Owain

Um, it's I'm almost certain Ross and Squibb still owns them. But yes, there's there's a lot of those unique sort of off-brand areas that are very confusing. Like, I believe we actually saw some Bourbon Supreme in Australia at one point, but it was again watered all the way down to 37%, as is ah unfortunate for our post-wartime ruling that never came back.

00:24:11

Jez

Yeah, that's that's always something that's upset Jacob, is that 37% ruling, and i I don't understand.

00:24:16

Owain

Yes.

00:24:20

Jez

Well, actually, I know why we do it. Yeah.

00:24:23

Owain

So it the story, so Australian history is, but Australian spirits history is is A, undocumented, and B, not very cared about most of the time.

00:24:35

Jez

Yeah, spot on.

00:24:35

Owain

So ah shout out Luke here, Luke McCarthy, he's just written a fantastic book on the history of distilling in Victoria, which is the first time someone's really put this history to page, um which I believe is just just about to come out.

00:24:36

Jez

but um

00:24:47

Owain

But A lot of my, I feel like I'm probably one of the only people educated on on a lot of the ah systems that we have when you look at Australian market bottles, because I've seen so many of them come through auction and I've i've i've marked a lot of those notes down to kind of have some theories. so So 37% alcohol,

00:25:06

Owain

according to the literature that I recall, was a World War era rationing measure, essentially.

00:25:13

Owain

So where 40% alcohol, 80 proof or 70 imperial proof back then, was the minimum, they were allowed to drop it because a lot of these spirits were coming from you know Scotland, from America, from the Caribbean, from from very far away to get to Australia.

00:25:13

Jez

you

00:25:30

Owain

So the intention was that by dropping it down to 37% alcohol, we would make that stock go a little bit longer and instead of and and hopefully use you know keep people drinking or keep people buying things during the wartime.

00:25:42

Owain

So it was it was an it was a measure that at the time, it was it was totally nothing to do with tax. ah Today, the conversation is tax, but we we we had a highly advantageous tax system to domestic producers until the 1980s.

00:25:56

Owain

We had a massive tax overhaul in the 1980s that made it way more expensive to to produce domestically than it was to to actually import products. So Corio, the distillery in in Victoria, in Geelong, was opened in the early by a company called DCL, which we know today as Diageo, essentially because it was so expensive to ship Johnny Walker all the way around the world, all the way from Scotland.

00:26:19

Owain

Often those those are actually shipped in casks. So and kind this is why I sent you a Johnny Walker from the 60s. There's an argument to made that vintage Johnny Walker, because it was shipped in barrels, actually has maybe another six months of aging on it for the Australian market than it does anywhere else.

00:26:33

Owain

But I mean, that's that's a very expensive endeavor to ship around the world. So it was often seen as the premium option. So when DCL were looking for, a we need to make something affordable, the actual more sensible thing was to start a distillery halfway around the world than it was to keep shipping product.

00:26:48

Jez

Makes sense.

00:26:49

Owain

1980s comes along and we flip the script and suddenly it's actually way cheaper to import Johnny Walker than it is to create Corio. So the distillery closes. There's no reason to keep, to keep bottling this stuff and and making too much, you know, having it be too expensive.

00:27:04

Owain

So the 37% alcohol kind of comes a tax conversation as we head into the 80s where it's like, well, if we can bottle at the minimum and the tax is extremely high, let's take that extra 3% alcohol that we were otherwise going to have to pay and lose that.

00:27:17

Owain

And it's why we see our Buffalo Trace at 40%, our Maker's Market at 40%, our Jim Beam White at 37%, which is always controversial when you talk to an American. They go, well that's not bourbon. You go, well, it says it on the label.

00:27:30

Jez

I was having, this is is my favorite topic at the moment because I was having this argument with one of the beam execs um in a back office when I was in the US and they were talking about, actually we sitting in old Carter's um like upstairs clubhouse, just drinking with Mark Carter and

00:27:30

Owain

You know, something's happened here.

00:27:50

Owain

Yes.

00:27:54

Jez

was talking Beam exec and he's like, you know, we're we're moving like how you were saying there were shipping casks. these These guys are shipping essentially these plastic containers full of um a Canadian club. And then I was like, just explaining how important RTDs are to Bogans.

00:28:13

Jez

and making sure we um we get our hands on them.

00:28:15

Owain

Yes.

00:28:16

Jez

They're all laughing at that. And I'm like, well, get a load of this Jim Beam White label. I'm like, well, it's about 55 bucks and it's 37%. They go, no, that's not bourbon. I'm like, well... It is because your bourbon ruling has zero law in Australia.

00:28:28

Owain

Yep. yep

00:28:32

Jez

They go, what do you mean? Well, once you guys put it in a container and it leaves the U S at 40% and they bring it to Australia and they can drop it down to 37, they can really do whatever they want to it and still call it bourbon.

00:28:43

Owain

And yeah, and it happened with so many brands. Like there's old Charter and Rebel Yell bottled in Australia and in kind of the early 1990s. There's 37.2, which is old Bernheim and some potentially Stutz at Wellerstock. There's 37.2% alcohol, which is which is criminal.

00:29:00

Jez

Yeah.

00:29:01

Owain

ah And and hi I strongly believe... So the Gilby's distillery, which was in Moorabbin in Victoria, was actually closed in the early 70s because it became more affordable for their bottling operations. bottling Coca-Cola, bottling Jim Beam, bottling, I think, Hennessy or Martell or something like that.

00:29:23

Owain

And they they stopped making whiskey because it was much more cost effective to bottle everyone else's spirits and distribute it. Now I firmly believe, because on the side of the label it says, on the on the beam white labels, ah made with imported ingredients, local ingredients.

00:29:38

Owain

And it's 37% alcohol. Every single 80s-ish white label that I've seen bottles at Moorabbin site has some disgusting sediment and cloudiness and gunk all through the bottle.

00:29:51

Owain

I firmly believe either that was not filtered correctly or they were using local tap water. It is just... Night and day, when you look at the bottles, how disgustingly gunky these things are.

00:30:02

Owain

And it was it was because it was bottled in Oz and extremely low proof with probably not very well-regulated products. And it's it's one of the reasons why we don't ship things halfway around the world now and bottle them here.

00:30:13

Owain

You know, we only stopped that practice really in the late eighty s johnny ah it was It was still legal to bottle Scotch whiskey outside of Scotland until 2000. So it's kind of only technically a recent development that we put an end to that.

00:30:25

Owain

But 37% alcohol, has to get it's getting bottled in the US and then shipping over here, I believe, unless Beam is still bottling here. But like it's um it's crazy.

00:30:35

Jez

I think it's still being bottled here. I've probably got a ah Is it within grabbing distance? so I'm trying to see if I've got a oh I've got a weird-looking Jim Beam white label. Really unfortunate. Me too.

00:30:48

Jez

That is also the turks of having bottles nearby. All right, what have got? This is, ooh, 40%. It's actually got no stickers on it.

00:31:00

Owain

Interesting.

00:31:02

Jez

That is very strange. Why does it have...

00:31:04

Owain

Curious.

00:31:07

Jez

Huh, this must have been a...

00:31:11

Jez

Yeah, there's literally no stickers. This must have been a cruise exclusive.

00:31:16

Owain

Is that no, no, no, other there is there is a UPC. Yeah, you're right, probably.

00:31:19

Jez

This is...

00:31:20

Owain

but show you i think i think i sent you some white labels.

00:31:20

Jez

for

00:31:22

Owain

let me

00:31:23

Jez

Yeah, I'm like, I've probably got a bottle of 37% White Label kicking around too. This is fun fun podcast chat for people playing at home.

00:31:34

Jez

This is what people care about, Jim Ben White Label. Here we go. Now we're cooking.

00:31:41

Jez

So surely they've got... Oh, good Lord. Oh, actually, I've got some...

00:31:45

Owain

my

00:31:46

Jez

ah I don't actually have... Oh, no, I've got a Beams choice.

00:31:48

Owain

I've always been quite a fan of of having large law format beams on hand because they're just such a fun pour and a fun comparison for most people that kind of don't understand how vintage whiskey works.

00:31:56

Jez

Oh, like...

00:32:00

Owain

So what I what of got in front of me and I sent that large 100 mil is this this big three liter here.

00:32:00

Jez

Yeah.

00:32:05

Owain

And it's 1978 private stock.

00:32:05

Jez

Yeah, glorious.

00:32:09

Owain

it was Just one that I saw pop up in auction that I was just confused about because the color of the liquid is so dark for AD proof, what should be Jim Beam white.

00:32:16

Jez

Yeah.

00:32:19

Owain

And it was privately selected. The black strip label on the front is for a private Swiss client. Yeah, the larger one.

00:32:25

Jez

and That dark.

00:32:26

Owain

It'll be, it'll be. Yeah, for for normal Beam white label. And I've compared it to, so this, for example, here is an early 1970s white label, but actually holds a five-year age statement. I think this is kind of in 73, somewhere around that.

00:32:41

Jez

Yeah.

00:32:42

Owain

quite possibly. And, and then again, by comparison, a late sixties, uh, green label. And this is when the green label was an eight year old product at 90 proof.

00:32:48

Jez

I was just saying, yeah.

00:32:50

Owain

This was essentially the premium beam offering. This was the, the most special thing you could buy from them at the time, really outside of the bottle and bonds. So the, the color of the, the big one is, is just really dark and it, it, it's fun.

00:33:04

Owain

It's interesting.

00:33:04

Jez

Mm-hmm.

00:33:05

Owain

It's going to on. I'm going take it to a whiskey show and it'll be really fun. Send the piece on the top of an old and rare bar. or head into a tasting and that kind of thing. But yeah, they're just they're just funky old bottles and they they taste fundamentally so much better than the product we have today.

00:33:18

Owain

And I'll give you a little rundown on why that might be, but modern modern bourbon has that 125 proof limit gone into the barrel. Now, back in the day, i think i believe it was basically 100 or 110 or 150, like it was much lower.

00:33:34

Owain

they They were maximum, they were allowed to bring that into the barrel. The other conversation is wood. There's the average age of a tree today, I think is somewhere around 40 to 60 years old, if we're lucky. Most of the old old growth trees went that they would have been using in these in the 30s, 120 years old, 140 years old.

00:33:54

Owain

So older tree, more rings, usually the way we tell those age of those trees, right? it means a tighter packed grain, higher concentration of vanillins, just good compounds that give whiskey flavor.

00:34:06

Owain

which is often the reason why the combination of lower barrel entry proof, that tighter quality wood, that good quality wood, the use of non-GMO corn, so you're looking for often flavor over quantity, and more often than not, longer fermentation times. Most of these distilleries were not commercially driven or as commercially driven as they are today.

00:34:25

Owain

a lot less stock prices to to satisfy. So they're able to to be either left in barrel little bit longer or admittedly they were off to draw their age statements. But this five-year-old, for example, is perfectly fine, enjoyable tasting whiskey.

00:34:40

Owain

actually has like a biscuity, like a shortbread note, which is nowhere near.

00:34:42

Jez

Ooh. Very...

00:34:44

Owain

This is actually the one that you'll have tried last year.

00:34:46

Jez

Yeah.

00:34:46

Owain

And that tasting with me. And it's just fundamentally nothing like the product that we have today.

00:34:48

Jez

Yep.

00:34:52

Owain

It was made with more care. It was made with more approach, more, more, just more passion behind the modern, than the modern products have. A lot of it today, whiskey whiskey to me is 50% art, 50% chemistry.

00:35:05

Owain

It's, there's a human element in everything. And as soon as you pull that human element out, it just becomes chemistry. It's just amazing. A plus B equals this flavor profile. And as much as we think that works, it doesn't always, and you need that human element.

00:35:15

Jez

Yeah.

00:35:20

Owain

And if there's going to be human introduction, a human impact on this, there's always going to be some element of art and interpretation and decision-making. So yeah, it's,

00:35:30

Jez

It's interesting how you you phrase that, though, because majority of these mega distilleries, like, I guess my my knowledge is purely just bourbon, but like going through in April, watching them do spirits runs and you're like, this is all done by computers.

00:35:44

Jez

Like you're just making sure the place doesn't catch on fire.

00:35:45

Owain

Yep. Yep.

00:35:48

Jez

Like it's...

00:35:48

Owain

That's, yes, that's that's that's so much the case today. It's it's control panels and ah the people are essentially managing deliveries and and maybe rolling some barrels downhill if they want something to show.

00:36:01

Jez

Yeah.

00:36:01

Owain

But like it is when you're, bourbon is bourbot is a high volume product. versus is something compared to like Scotch whiskey. Rum is a high volume product. It is a short fermentation time. It is a grain that provides lots and lots of spirit.

00:36:15

Owain

Whereas something like, so it's a continuous production. So you just keep feeding grain in in that column still and it'll just keep kicking out spirit. Whereas you look at something like malt whiskey, like so single malts from Scotland, it's a batch production that often has to be a little bit more human element. Someone has to pull that stuff out the still. Someone has to come in and clean it. Someone has to...

00:36:33

Owain

to ah often fill the fermentation tanks, the mash tuns and stuff like that. There are still hyper, hyper automated Scotch whiskey distilleries.

00:36:43

Owain

Uh, Locke Lomond is is one that I visited that i love, but it's, it's still often called just called a factory, but the, the human element can come realistically at that end point. And it's why I think we have these rockstar master distillers that everyone goes crazy for, uh, how much of,

00:36:58

Jez

Yeah.

00:37:00

Owain

That term is always funny because it can vary distillery to distillery, industry to industry. like the As much as I love the Russells, I imagine not a lot of what they do is is but is day-to-day blending of the eight-year, the core product.

00:37:14

Owain

I know they'll certainly have a heavy hand in their own named products and have a heavy hand in the master's keeps and the 15s and the 13s and stuff, but the type control that they have over that product is probably, it actually is considerably less than they would have had 60, 70, 80 years ago when those were smaller batches that they had to put their names to. And and the company was reliant on that being good whiskey for them to maintain that that that viable commercial nature.

00:37:40

Owain

So it's...

00:37:41

Jez

But even if you look at the other end of the scale there, like, say, Angel's Envy, um like, Owen, just, like, having so much control over that the spirits and, like, different finishing.

00:37:47

Owain

Hmm.

00:37:51

Owain

Yeah, absolutely. It was certainly.

00:37:54

Jez

Because I know you dropped into the office as well.

00:37:57

Owain

Yeah, it was he was wonderful.

00:37:57

Jez

um

00:37:59

Owain

And the it was so wonderful tasting all the different cast finishes and and and projects that he was working on.

00:37:59

Jez

He's a good egg.

00:38:04

Owain

i think I think Angels is a good example of ah ah a large conglomerate distillery that is that is still human-driven and is still not in such a large not such a large volume producer that they feel that the human element has been reductive.

00:38:10

Jez

Yeah.

00:38:20

Owain

ah Owen, his limited editions, 3,000 bottles, I think, sometimes less for the...

00:38:26

Jez

Yeah, it was super limited, especially on that tequila cask.

00:38:28

Owain

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

00:38:28

Jez

I'm sure you tried it. Like i I was able to try some just before they were going into bottling and they were just tidying it up and they go, all right, try this.

00:38:30

Owain

And

00:38:38

Jez

And then I was like, the fuck is this? He's like, yeah, it's coming out like in days. I'm like, and you haven't? He goes, no, it's just, it's haven't figured out the box yet, but the whiskey's ready.

00:38:49

Jez

Like we'll just make it happen.

00:38:50

Owain

Yep.

00:38:50

Jez

I'm like, mind blowing.

00:38:50

Owain

Yep. And it's, it's, it's great. And, and those are the, those are the folks that, that are able to put something to their name that, that is maybe less market first and more flavor first.

00:39:02

Jez

Yeah, of course.

00:39:03

Owain

Whereas a lot of times that that it will be right. We need a limited product. You need to go and do something. It's angels feels like maybe they've given him a little bit of space. He's kind of managed to cover his own niche. Some of the projects they're doing amazing. The peach brandy finished that I tried there was just spectacular. And as as sweet as it was, I know he he's he's like, I've got to blend this into something more formative.

00:39:23

Owain

and And that's great fun. the The story always tell with Springbank is is when you've got on your so far the opposite end of being commercial. It's a great quote. I think it's in one of David Sturk's books. And he's talking to Frank McCarty and he says, right, so you're bottling the Springbank 10. So, you know, how are you blending this this release?

00:39:41

Owain

And Frank says, I go into the warehouse and I choose the barrels at 10 years old. That's it.

00:39:47

Jez

Yeah, easy. Yeah.

00:39:48

Owain

It's like, it's like, we don't make enough whiskey for me to be able to blend more than, than what I've got that we aged for 10 years. Like I have to, if it's 60 sherry, 40 bourbon this year, it's because we had 60% bourbon at 60 sherry, 40 bourbon ready for this release.

00:39:55

Jez

yeah

00:40:02

Owain

It's not because 60, 40 was the best ratio ever for this release. And, and, Distilleries like Springbank embraced that batch culture. It's, and it created, you know, obviously at the end of the secondary end where I work, sometimes it creates that FOMO where it's like that batch was incredible and that batch not so great, but I know that the next batch coming could be similar or unique enough for me to, for me to trust it and want to chase it.

00:40:23

Jez

Well, Mictus operates.

00:40:23

Owain

I mean, I've, I've, behind me, i I have, I have a hundred, but yeah, you're right. Mictors with their shanks and their bomb because it could be very, very different year to year.

00:40:28

Jez

Yeah. Yeah. they um even

00:40:31

Owain

Um, but,

00:40:32

Jez

I think their like stuff their stuff is like a 20-barrel batch or something, however they sell those batch releases.

00:40:38

Owain

Something around that 2025 barrels, I think.

00:40:40

Owain

Yeah.

00:40:40

Jez

Yeah.

00:40:40

Jez

And it's like, once again, it'd just be selecting those ones that tick those boxes. I'm sure it's not blended, whatever.

00:40:45

Owain

Certainly. I think Mictus, the nature of bourbon is they have a lot more freedom, so they can afford to ah blend out those barrels, maybe sometimes that don't work.

00:40:47

Jez

So even...

00:40:55

Jez

yeah

00:40:55

Owain

But Mictus is one of those unique brands that where a lot of these, a lot of these facilities are selling to the open market to brokers. I don't think I've ever seen and a Mictus, a Shively distilled Mictus product bottled out in the open market.

00:41:07

Owain

see a lot of Beam, a lot of Heaven Hill, lot of um CMGP, but Yeah, I think Minktas is very very close with their barrels. you know it's a lot of that They've really worked hard to be able to produce their own distillate and they don't really want anyone else bottling it.

00:41:19

Jez

Well, they don't offer Micta's single barrel picks. So that's like the, yeah, because there's, I'm sure there's demand, but it's like they can't do the cool stuff back of house if they're handing out barrels, right?

00:41:24

Owain

Yeah, which has always been surprising. But debt there is absolutely demand. That 15-year-old charity barrel, that single barrel was...

00:41:38

Owain

unbelievable amounts of money and, and that's credit to the, the work that the team have put together. um there's, there's, I mean, there's a fun connection there. Joe's business partner, dick Newman was one of the ah head operators at national distillers in the seventies.

00:41:53

Owain

So Joe had some like absolute top tier consultation and and partnership there when he was opening the distillery. So it's a, it's a thing of beauty.

00:42:05

Owain

Anything else you want to jump in and try?

00:42:07

Jez

um

00:42:07

Owain

Anything else I sent you that that feels...

00:42:09

Jez

Yeah, do you know what? i'm I've got this this private so ah yeah private stock beam sitting in front of me. I'm just going pop that. i'm I was thinking about it I'm like, who would want three liters of beam single barrel?

00:42:17

Owain

Definitely.

00:42:22

Jez

Like it's...

00:42:24

Owain

So it's one of those curious bottles. I don't know if it's a single barrel. I don't know if it's just a beam white label.

00:42:28

Jez

i yeah

00:42:30

Owain

I don't know what it is.

00:42:31

Jez

it

00:42:31

Owain

And whenever I've asked anybody in the vintage space, the logic has been, we think it's essentially a core bottle, but we're not so certain.

00:42:37

Jez

Hmm.

00:42:39

Owain

Similar to the ah the Weller ah personalized labels. This is a 107 from 1977, but there number but there is a number of labels out there that say personally selected for XYZ and they were often given as gifts. They were corporate gifts for friends, for family, for company relationships.

00:42:59

Owain

The working theory that I have is essentially this is a ah specially labeled, I think it's for an Italian guy, Paridi and Gianetti and it's a Swiss import.

00:43:11

Owain

So

00:43:11

Jez

Yeah, you see a lot of those on the the auction site.

00:43:15

Jez

I don't know if it's that one particular company, but it was a name I was coming across fairly often.

00:43:21

Owain

So you'll probably cost Gianvenetti or something along those lines.

00:43:24

Jez

Yeah.

00:43:24

Owain

Those, yeah, so often, so so Italy was one of the biggest markets vintage-wise for whiskey. They were buying, collecting, and drinking whiskey long before anybody else really was appreciating it. You know, the 70s, 80s, and 90s, everyone was drinking tequila, rum, vodka, anything neutral spirits that you could mix into a daiquiri or a sex on the beach or something super, super fruity that you couldn't taste the alcohol with.

00:43:47

Jez

Yeah.

00:43:48

Owain

But Italy was looking for an alternative for grappa. The after dinner drink was fire water. It was this this neutral brandy spirit that was often made quite rough and quite poor.

00:44:00

Owain

So the Italians had kind of been introduced in the seventies to malt whiskey. And then that kind of spiraled into just whiskey in general. So Valentine's was a really big seller.

00:44:12

Owain

Glen Grant, McCallum, the notorious one was that people that were looking for grappler alternatives were buying these five-year-old vintage Glen Grants. It's very few producers were bottling their whiskey at five years old, but Glen Grant saw it as It's five years older than the grappa you were drinking and it's extremely cheap. It's really affordable. it's kind of almost the same color, but it's so much better than drinking grappa.

00:44:34

Jez

It's an easy selling point.

00:44:34

Owain

So absolutely. And the consequence of that is is Italy has a ah collecting culture. they They have this wonderful culture of There was a lot of whiskey imported to there, but there was also a lot of whiskey that was kept, a lot of whiskey that was not actually just collected, but but people people had ah a moment of pride of having a large amount of bottles that they could either share with people or that they could they could look at and and tell a story with.

00:44:58

Jez

Which is...

00:44:58

Owain

So you'll find that, for example, this overhaul is a, I think it's a Sofianto import. Where am I? It is ah yes, a Sofantino import from 1981.

00:45:12

Owain

So that's, that's an Italian import to Genova. sorry So it was a wonderful podcast recently with Luca Gargano of Veliair talking about how he started as the Valentine's and Cal and import and all these kinds of things and how Italy changed and,

00:45:26

Owain

the The markets are dictated by the importers. you know we don't we don't no We don't learn new brands and drink new things without these importers pushing them forward. And he talks about how he how we built these brands into large case sellers because they took a risk on these new brands and they they took them out there and and people tried them and loved it and watched those cases sell.

00:45:46

Jez

It's so funny you mentioned that because we're the exact same way here, right? Like the only way we see like new brands is like importers taking a risk, like even see Discus doing a lot of work, just bringing a lot more American whiskey brands out here and, you know, showcasing them at the whiskey show and people are rating them, trying them going, ah, yeah, I like this.

00:45:50

Owain

Absolutely. Absolutely. if Yeah.

00:46:08

Jez

And look at Saisagamal for a great example. Like it showed up on the whiskey show guys three, four years ago.

00:46:12

Owain

Absolutely. Yeah.

00:46:16

Jez

It's now being distributed by the whiskey list because just an overwhelming support for this rye that came out of nowhere, pretty much.

00:46:24

Owain

So yes, we're we're ultimately beholden by the importers. certainly Certainly from a vintage perspective, I buy a lot of my whiskey in Italy, England, Germany, Japan, some from New Zealand, but the nature of the American market is getting anything out of the States often quite difficult unless I'm jumping back and forth and even then it's quite expensive.

00:46:45

Jez

Yeah.

00:46:45

Owain

So I can get quite a lot of whiskey from Japan from the 80s because they were drinking it during that period of time. I can buy quite a lot of bourbon from Germany ah and Italy from the 60s and 70s because again, a lot of those were exported. I have 60s Four Roses for the German market. I have 1967 original dent from the Gethsemane distillery that closed in 61, bottled for the Japanese market.

00:47:07

Owain

But getting past that point is essentially nigh on impossible because if they weren't being exported to those countries, you can't really, they're not going to turn up in those estate sales or those public auctions.

00:47:20

Owain

So the same today, we are beholden to what comes into the country because that's the only way for it to to appear affordably. And i you know we'll pivot and talk about some modern brands. I absolutely love ah Starlight and Peerless.

00:47:35

Owain

Those are two of my favorite current modern distilleries.

00:47:36

Jez

Oh, stop it. Yeah, I'm with you. Nice.

00:47:38

Owain

i brought i brought plenty back from my trip

00:47:41

Jez

I saw how much you brought back. I, um... Because i I saw that Double Oak Rye pop up and I was like, I have to buy myself one of those.

00:47:53

Jez

And even Starlight too, like just going through and doing a hand fill and tasting some weird stuff they've got sitting in the barrel mind blowing. It's just, we're hoping it comes here.

00:48:03

Owain

it's it's It's crazy. So I mean, I walked into a Cambridge wines in the middle of New Jersey and just picked up a random starlight bottle. And I was like, oh, it's five years old, toasted barrel, whatever, 75 US.

00:48:14

Owain

s I mean, that's that's like, I think I've been home a month and a half to drink this. And we took it to a Goodwater event and it was just everybody adored it and drained it and went, this is fantastic.

00:48:20

Jez

ah

00:48:24

Jez

Yeah.

00:48:26

Owain

And went, this is, if this came to Australia, this theoretically would be about $150 a bottle.

00:48:30

Jez

Which is amazing.

00:48:31

Owain

And it would, it would be fantastic, but we are just beholden behind between whether or not starlight feels like they want to export and whether or not we're going to have an importer that is willing to take a risk and do the hard yards on those brand.

00:48:44

Jez

so Starlight doesn't have the stock to send over here.

00:48:44

Owain

And

00:48:48

Owain

certainly.

00:48:48

Jez

Like I was talking to them and they're like, yeah, we can. I'm sure I have them on soon, but ah like they just, they were saying they don't have the stock to distribute. I'm like, you guys will kill it here.

00:48:58

Jez

And then doing the numbers with them.

00:48:59

Owain

Yeah.

00:49:00

Jez

It's like, yeah, you. Yeah.

00:49:00

Owain

And it's ah more and more of these brands are starting to look overseas. I, at the moment, well, it started the year when all the Trump tariffs were starting kick in, a lot of people were realizing that, oh, wow, i actually really, really need to diversify.

00:49:08

Jez

Yeah.

00:49:13

Owain

I need to be, if, if the U S market drops out, like it has done multiple times in history in the last 200 years, as the mark, the whiskey market in general is just a cyclical thing it up and down, up and down, up and down.

00:49:25

Owain

essentially kids rebelling against their parents in some capacity, either drinking whiskey or not drinking whiskey, always flip-flops.

00:49:30

Jez

Yep.

00:49:32

Owain

They need to be able to find export markets that will sustain their spirit, like Japan that was willing to take all of the old bourbon in the 80s, like Australia, which has always been happy having...

00:49:40

Jez

With Jeff Daniels, yeah.

00:49:42

Owain

Jack Daniels and RTDs and all of these kind of ah much more affordable versions of of of brands.

00:49:44

Jez

Yep.

00:49:47

Owain

Like Cougar at cougar is ah Australian market MGP.

00:49:51

Jez

Which is, think I've got a Cougar Black, the 45, kicking around.

00:49:52

Owain

It's bottom shelf Australian MGP. And it's been going since the early 90s.

00:49:58

Owain

Yeah.

00:49:59

Jez

I'm like, ah you can't go wrong.

00:50:00

Owain

that So that stuff ah of is not great, admittedly, right?

00:50:04

Jez

No.

00:50:04

Owain

Like, great yeah, it's not great. But the point is MGP has had a secret. They've had a diversified... export market brand for their liquid that has been solidly selling and is still one of the most affordable products for 30 something years, 30, almost 35 years in this market.

00:50:17

Jez

Yeah.

00:50:20

Owain

But we are then reliant on on a business in Australia wanting to take the risk buying pallets of stock in a very difficult climate with an ever increasing tax rate.

00:50:32

Owain

And often with the way the consumer is moving, it needs to be higher proof for it to be interesting and justify the sale.

00:50:38

Jez

Yep.

00:50:38

Owain

So I but you always use it as an example when I go overseas to to the States and and talk about how bad our taxes, it how how out of date our tax system is and say, hey, you know, you guys, oh, Granddad 114 is really great. It's really tasty. Like it's 30 US dollars a bottle can be had even cheaper at 25, 22 US s dollars a bottle.

00:50:57

Owain

said, just so you know, The amount of money you're paying for that doesn't even cover the alcohol tax and GST to get it to Australia.

00:51:05

Jez

ye

00:51:05

Owain

Nevermind the cost to make it, the the transportation costs, the retailer margin, all the overheads, everything. i was like, this is your $30 bottle would be 65, 75 US dollars. It would be more than twice because of that high proof aspect.

00:51:21

Owain

So a brand like Peerless, when I spoke to the folks down there, they said, oh, you know, we we want to export.

00:51:24

Jez

oh

00:51:26

Owain

We're ready to. But these bottles were already quite expensive in the in the US market, 130, 140.

00:51:31

Jez

it's like a hundred bucks yeah yeah yeah so paid 100 at uh in cincinnati um

00:51:33

Owain

Yeah, they can be. So the Double Oak Bourbon i purchased was 80 bucks, which was fine. I think the Double Oak Riot justin I bought from Justin's house of bourbon about 135, 140 US. They're not, yeah, crazy pricing, crazy and consistent pricing.

00:51:48

Jez

Which is like, that is a problem in itself.

00:51:50

Owain

But yes, yes.

00:51:51

Jez

Like sort out your pricing first, because the fact that you can go to the distillery and buy it for 130, or you can go, I don't know, an hour up the road, I was next door.

00:52:00

Owain

So that was, yeah. So I, so the, the double oak bourbon was 120 at the distillery. And then I went to evergreen liquors and I paid 80 bucks, which is supposedly it's a bureaucratic thing that they weren't even allowed to sell at the distillery.

00:52:08

Jez

Yeah. Wild.

00:52:14

Owain

It was only going to be allowed to sell in retailers. And the compromise was that they could sell at the distillery if it was a high market cost, right?

00:52:22

Jez

Yeah.

00:52:23

Owain

As to however legitimate that is, I don't know, but that is that was what I was informed of.

00:52:28

Jez

Yeah.

00:52:28

Owain

ah But yeah, so there's that's the pricing alone. But because Peerless is bottling everything at Barrelproof, 55, 60% alcohol, great, exactly, awesome, wonderful brand to get behind doing the right things.

00:52:40

Owain

No one's going to buy 300, 350, 400 Australian

00:52:40

Jez

at

00:52:44

Owain

palla

00:52:45

Jez

You're spot on.

00:52:45

Owain

Like it's just not going to happen.

00:52:47

Jez

Yeah.

00:52:48

Owain

i know I know a few of these bottles came in, i believe with a private importer almost almost six years ago. It was almost pretty much just as I started working in the industry. But they were 300 and something dollars for at the time, three or four year old rye.

00:53:01

Jez

Yeah.

00:53:02

Owain

And it was tasty, sure.

00:53:02

Jez

I think it's come down now to like $220,000. But even then, I'm like, yeah, I'd buy it.

00:53:06

Owain

Yeah, it's still, it's it's an uphill battle, right?

00:53:09

Jez

But yeah, it's that price isn't getting any cheaper.

00:53:10

Owain

Yeah.

00:53:12

Jez

like They'd be losing money on it. I think we're talking about the same retailer here in Victoria.

00:53:15

Owain

yeah

00:53:18

Jez

But its yeah, we're not gonna they're not going to come in.

00:53:22

Owain

And it, it, no, no.

00:53:23

Jez

We're not going to see PLOS because it's way too high.

00:53:25

Owain

And, and it's, it's a shame because those products definitely deserve to be here. It's, it's a, it's, it's a product the Aussie market should be able to, to enjoy, but it just doesn't make economical sense for a small importer. If you look at the importers that are in Australia, there are pretty much two or three large importers and they're mainly focused on high volume core SKUs.

00:53:46

Jez

Yeah. Yeah.

00:53:49

Owain

you know Dan Murphy's has branched out here and there on a few smaller importers, but 90% of the time just gives up because it just doesn't sell at the volume that they want or at the margin that they want to.

00:53:56

Jez

yeah

00:54:00

Owain

and And if Dan's doesn't want to bring it in, we're reliant on those smaller importers like the Whiskey List, like Casavinos, like um Honey Barrel, here obviously doing great work trying to push those new brands. But it...

00:54:11

Owain

It just becomes so prohibitively expensive. Nobody really wants to spend almost $200 Australian on a granddad 114, knowing full well that it's sub 30 US dollars if you go overseas to pick it up.

00:54:18

Jez

No.

00:54:23

Jez

So what's the trade-off here? We just get a meal to keep shipping over like cases of 114 then just go to every liquor store and send it over?

00:54:30

Owain

I think, yeah, yeah, no, that's true. ah

00:54:35

Jez

Because I'm like, then it'd land at a hundred bucks.

00:54:35

Owain

i I'm not endorsing the dodging of um not endorsing the good dodging of alcohol tax for Australian government purposes.

00:54:40

Jez

No, no, no. But like even if you do it properly, like we'd have it on shelves for, I don't know, what?

00:54:46

Owain

It has to be something that you you purchase directly.

00:54:46

Jez

110, 120? Yeah. No, exactly. Hmm. yeah

00:54:49

Owain

Yeah, but because a retailer can't sustain those margins and sell those bottles out. It's just, it's it's not achievable.

00:54:54

Jez

no exactly

00:54:55

Owain

And I mean, i what so I've been in in the industry now four or five years and that's almost 10 alcohol rises because we're every six months. So where I was at five years ago with both the margins and the nature of the tax, you could purchase bottles quite comfortably in the $100 to $120 range.

00:55:14

Owain

Now, whenever someone says to me, I've got $100 to buy a gift for someone, that that quality liquid in that area just gets squeezed. And I think there's still some good deals to be had in in the American category.

00:55:25

Jez

Oh, yeah, like...

00:55:26

Owain

But certainly when you look to Scotch whiskeys and especially higher quality Scotch whiskeys, you just priced out quickly. ah Interesting, maybe sub-100. It was Baker 7. I've seen that go on sale quite a few times.

00:55:36

Jez

Oh, bakers...

00:55:36

Owain

That's rock solid at 80, 90 bucks whenever it's going really cheap. ah

00:55:39

Jez

Yeah. Well, we were able to clean up at like 50 bucks a ah bottle.

00:55:41

Owain

Mictus, you got very lucky on that. Yeah, and I was very i very upset when I saw that.

00:55:44

Jez

It's...

00:55:46

Owain

I missed out.

00:55:47

Jez

ah it's Yeah, like the fact they just put them on clearance and they were just like, oh, tax? I think they do it with the tax purposes because like picking up Eagle Rares for 70 bucks a bottle because they're like, oh, whatever.

00:55:55

Owain

Yeah.

00:55:58

Owain

Yeah, wait we're um we're in a weird stage. Certainly six to eight months ago when I was was working for the Orchard House, we saw it happening a lot. Importers, especially small importers, were just dumping stock across. They needed to get some cash flow through the door.

00:56:11

Owain

So it wouldn't surprise me if if either the the heavy discount came directly from the importer with Beam or if it was Dan's just saying, i we need to get some stock or we need to get some people through the door.

00:56:21

Jez

Yep.

00:56:22

Owain

And unfortunately, the nature of obviously the Dan Murphy's is some's an app deal, some's a local clearance sale, some you have to get just delivered online. like I think Blanton's stake from the barrel I saw was under $180 if you got it delivered on the app, which is bonkers because it's it's I think it's $200 at

00:56:30

Jez

Yeah.

00:56:35

Jez

yeah Yeah, that's right.

00:56:40

Owain

Buffalo trace now, if you're lucky enough to have it put out on day. So there are, there are certainly deals to be had in that process.

00:56:44

Jez

I saw a lot of that kicking around.

00:56:47

Owain

Um, as much as I love old whiskey, it's going to be, there's a lot more new brands coming out that I think are worth mentioning.

00:56:54

Jez

Oh, yeah, like I'll i'll definitely take your recs and then I've got to get you to run us through something real quick too.

00:57:02

Jez

What do we have popping on the market at the moment? Ah, okay. I've never seen this one before. This is this is curious to me.

00:57:15

Jez

So everyone playing at home that isn't watching this... Owen's just put down four bottles on the table. One I'm familiar with. um The other three I have never seen.

00:57:32

Jez

Looks like it's from one particular brand though.

00:57:38

Jez

It's a lot of whiskey in the background.

00:57:38

Owain

we are

00:57:40

Jez

You guys should be watching this. Ah, yes.

00:57:41

Owain

That's the whole collection, right?

00:57:42

Jez

Yes.

00:57:45

Jez

Ah, yes. Some bangers. Okay. Okay.

00:57:48

Owain

So and NDPs are obviously a hot topic in the industry. i Didn't make the whiskey, but bottled the whiskey and put it out.

00:57:51

Jez

Oh yeah.

00:57:54

Owain

So some great new brands popping up. So we we did some work with these guys out in Lexington called Blackwood. So Blackwood is sourcing minimum seven-year Barton, minimum seven-year MGP. So seven-year MGP for their rye, seven-year Barton for their bourbon.

00:58:08

Owain

But where most NDPs have been bottling pretty straightforward whiskeys recently. They have specifically gone out and looked for different mash bills or different yeast profiles.

00:58:16

Owain

And then they're finishing these in toasted barrels. so So whilst these NDPs

00:58:16

Jez

okay

00:58:20

Jez

Ah.

00:58:23

Owain

You know, once we've kind of got accustomed to four-year products getting bought from someone and shoved out at at quite expensive prices, there are some NDPs out there that are still looking to provide value or provide provide some kind of USP.

00:58:35

Owain

So Blackwood is one that I think would be great, hopefully, through retailers like like Honey Barrel that we can get through into the country. And, and you know, again, shout out Kee, who's just done the the new Augusta picks that they're an NDP right now, bottling Beam, Barton, and, you know, all those kind of brands and Heaven Hill.

00:58:50

Owain

And the liquid is really good.

00:58:51

Jez

Yeah.

00:58:52

Owain

The liquid is great. As difficult as NDPs are to get behind sometimes when brands are pretty transparent and kind of let the liquid speak for themselves rather than screaming about come and buy this $300 product, i.e.

00:59:05

Owain

old Carter, old charter, a lot of those those kind of COVID NDPs that could really bump their prices and just people would buy them.

00:59:08

Jez

yeah

00:59:11

Owain

there are people starting to come back and say, right, we need to provide some value or provide something properly different in this market and do something a little bit cool. So whilst they may sound a little bit boring and seven-year, you know, toasted barrels, this 105,

00:59:27

Owain

at 100 US is one of the most solidly drinking, tasty MGP 95.5s that I've tried in a very long time. Again, same thing. It's been open like three or four weeks that I've been back and it got shared at tastings and it was just supremely smashable.

00:59:38

Jez

Dangerous.

00:59:42

Owain

And 95.5 MGP is never going to go wrong.

00:59:44

Jez

dangerous nor

00:59:46

Owain

it's It's just rock solid stuff. But there are producers out there that are doing great new distillate. holiday is kind of almost impossible to go past. the The liquid is finally at a point where it's got enough age, it's got enough strength, it's got enough blending behind it that the liquid's really good.

01:00:04

Owain

The story behind Holiday is really fun. And for me, as a vintage enthusiast, it's kind of almost like a pivot. <unk>s it's it's It's like a brand turning itself around. So Holiday was made is made by McCormick out in Missouri.

01:00:17

Owain

McCormick, for their entire history, has made terrible whiskey. Terrible, awful. I don't know if you've ever seen them, but those old Marilyn Monroe and Elvis decanters.

01:00:28

Owain

Those are McCormick distillate.

01:00:29

Jez

Oh,

01:00:29

Owain

That's McCormick corn whiskey, Platte Valley, all that kind of stuff was in that with was McCormick's product.

01:00:30

Jez

Okay.

01:00:34

Jez

Yeah, Platte Valley, very familiar. Yep.

01:00:36

Owain

that's That's McCormick. So holidays, same distillery, right?

01:00:38

Jez

Ah, yes, yes, yes.

01:00:40

Owain

And they pretty, like most of what they made in the 60s, 70s, 80s, pretty terrible stuff. They mainly focused on making like fruit liqueurs and vodka and brandies and like neutral spirits.

01:00:53

Owain

Just the the running a distillery to keep the the money flowing, right?

01:00:53

Jez

Just the easy stuff, right?

01:00:57

Jez

Hmm.

01:00:57

Owain

But it's this great story that, you know, I think it's almost 10 years ago now. that they pivoted and went, we make this great stuff. We made great stuff at one point in history. Let's turn it around. And they they were clever. They were sensible.

01:01:09

Owain

They came out with with the Ben Holiday brand rather than just... McCormick distill it again.

01:01:14

Jez

Hmm.

01:01:14

Owain

And this, this bourbon law brand, for example, was one of the kind of early big, like everyone look at this distillery and you go into the States and you can find the Rick house proof and stuff.

01:01:25

Owain

I think it's 65, 70 us dollars. Like it's all rock solid.

01:01:27

Jez

Yeah.

01:01:28

Owain

They're distiller six, seven, eight year bourbons now at great prices. So they're kind of the, the, the poster boy. I find that, that we need these kinds of brands in Australia.

01:01:41

Owain

Yeah.

01:01:41

Jez

yeah

01:01:42

Owain

Because if the market falls out of the States, these are the people that probably going to suffer the most. People that haven't quite fully got their beam level distribution or their they kind of their reputations out there.

01:01:54

Owain

So kind of fingers crossed, hoping that we get some more of that holiday product, that we get to talk a little bit more about the brand here.

01:02:00

Jez

Can you see it be more of like a scramble at the the finish line? So say the bourbon market does drop out in the US and they're like, how do we get distribution in Australia and reach out everyone and start sending cases?

01:02:08

Owain

Sure.

01:02:11

Owain

right so much So much of it, sure. So much of it though is is is is because it's still, Whiskey is still a personal business. it's It's about knowing who to reach out to.

01:02:18

Jez

Yeah.

01:02:20

Owain

I mean, we saw so many quality brands end up in Dan Murphy's and and basically dead on arrival. the

01:02:25

Jez

Which is a shame.

01:02:25

Owain

the The MGPs, the Rossville Unions, the Remus, they are, the Ezra Brook stuff, they are all great.

01:02:28

Jez

Yeah.

01:02:33

Owain

The Ezra 7 barrel strength is one of my favorite brands.

01:02:35

Jez

Oh, especially on clearance.

01:02:36

Owain

value whiskeys in the world. it it is

01:02:37

Jez

Stop it.

01:02:39

Owain

is 85 Australian dollars is is mental for how good that liquid is.

01:02:41

Jez

Yeah. Yep.

01:02:43

Owain

But it's dead on the shelf. No one has not been in tastings. No one's gone around talked about it. We haven't had any limited editions, no store picks. like

01:02:49

Jez

No.

01:02:49

Owain

it's It's just a volume brand. And that's fine until the brand stops selling and Dan Murphy's just drops it. Whereas if they had gone with a a distributor and importer that really cared about it. They would be doing probably boom both the volume and they would have a long-term sustainable customer base in this country that when that demand drops, they're still maintaining sales.

01:03:10

Owain

So it's kind of a two factor. You know, you choose the one that gets you the most amount of liquid through the door and can take the biggest pallet, but,

01:03:16

Jez

So cougars. Just cougar.

01:03:18

Owain

cut Yeah.

01:03:18

Jez

Yeah. Yeah.

01:03:19

Owain

Right. Seagram. Yeah. You're, you're, you're, yeah, pretty much. But the, that doesn't help when the market has a downturn or there's an economic industry and economic issues. So it's, it's, it's a give and take, right? It depends on who the business is and it depends on who they reach out to.

01:03:34

Owain

So

01:03:34

Jez

That's a win for us, right?

01:03:35

Jez

Because we end up just buying at clearance and we just leave it on the shelf and

01:03:38

Owain

that's the hope, but like we said with Dan's, it sometimes a clearance doesn't end up being clearance or it has to be done in such a rigmarole way. You actually miss out on half of this good stuff. So,

01:03:47

Jez

Yeah, that's that's fair. that's Because like I guess people are keeping it for themselves and they're not sharing it out.

01:03:51

Owain

um

01:03:54

Jez

or light it yeah Yeah, exactly.

01:03:54

Owain

yeah yeah I mean the amount of times you see well like the bakers you go and clear the shelf because why wouldn't you but by the time that by the time everyone realizes they're clearing the shelf it's gone

01:04:03

Jez

Yeah. Like I was sending bottles left, right, and center. Like I just like, all right, who wants some?

01:04:07

Owain

yep yep because absolutely why wouldn't you

01:04:08

Jez

I'm going out for a drive. And like, I ended up coming back with six and I sent majority of them out. Like i already had a heap here. Just like, it's like, yeah, share the, share the love. Cause $50 for bakers. It's like, even if you're going to drink that in a cocktail, who cares?

01:04:23

Jez

and

01:04:23

Owain

Exactly. It's, it's, it's Jack Daniels price at that point.

01:04:26

Jez

Yeah,

01:04:26

Owain

So, um, ah yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:04:26

Jez

absolutely. Cheaper than Jack actually, but it's mind blowing.

01:04:30

Owain

Gosh, which is a whole nother, whole nother argument, but there you go. Um,

01:04:34

Jez

But Pursuit there as well, another banging brand.

01:04:35

Owain

one of the other yeah one of the and this is in the new glass as well which is uh i i love so much more it was actually my my big um i i literally said it to kenny and his uh the team's face i was like was literally said to them on the day i because i turned up on the day they changed the glass and i said wow i really liked your whiskey but the one thing i really hated was your branding i'm glad you've changed that today and they both looked at me and went yeah no we've heard that before don't worry know like

01:04:46

Jez

Kenny and Ryan, yeah.

01:05:00

Owain

We've done something with it. So the raised glass and stuff's really fun. But um these guys, I mean, the the blending that they're doing is amazing. They they evoke, in the Scotch whiskey term, stories of stuff like Gordon MacPhail, like classic blending houses are buying from all across the country and blending something really cool and unique.

01:05:17

Owain

ah it's It's pretty affordable. you know Again, 60, 75, 85 US dollars for these bottles. They have a loyal fan base that they've built up very carefully over time.

01:05:28

Owain

They care so much about the liquid. The team they've built there is wonderful. the They care about the history as well. The Melwood and the Derby town and everything that they're putting together is labels.

01:05:35

Jez

I was going to say, yeah.

01:05:37

Owain

I actually have have a couple of them, I think.

Historical Tasting at Melwood Distillery

01:05:40

Jez

Because like they were they hadn't released those properly. um They were just up for tasting when we're at the distillery. But yeah, they're gorgeous looking bottles and the fact that they're just dipping into, say even Melwood, because that's the ah location the current warehouse is in.

01:05:49

Owain

Yeah.

01:05:57

Owain

So I'm Yeah, so they're on Melwood Avenue and around the corner from the distillery was the site of the original Melwood distillery, which was a whiskey trust distillery that was closed, I think in the 1950s.

01:06:06

Jez

Mm.

01:06:10

Owain

But Melwood, so I'm very privileged actually. the We have a couple of original bottles of Melwood from like 1912 in the vaults.

01:06:17

Jez

a

01:06:18

Owain

But the the big deal is we opened a pre-prohibition pint called Gold Seal, which was distilled in 1917 at Melwood. So I tried a 13 year old expression of the original Melwood distilled 17 bold 1930.

01:06:31

Owain

we We cracked that on the roof of the pence the Pen Hotel in New York for for a cut for a private tasting.

01:06:37

Jez

Beautiful.

01:06:38

Owain

And it was the first pint, the second sorry second pre-pro pint I've tried that was was good. lot of the most than are Not in the best condition or maybe the whiskey just tasted terrible anyways, a hundred years ago, but this, this gold seal was wonderful.

01:06:51

Owain

So we linked up with Ryan and Kenny and I sent them a sample of the, of the gold seal that we opened. So we're kind of very proud Baxos.

01:06:58

Jez

beautiful

01:06:59

Owain

We have sent original Melwood back to its original location, essentially for the guys to try. it was, yeah, it's, you know, we get to have those kinds of fun stories as well. And and seeing the the resurrected labels makes me very happy as as a nerd and a geek.

01:07:13

Owain

So yes.

01:07:13

Jez

Which is exactly where I got into whiskey, right? Because like being able to acquire those bottles and then share samples with people, like it's, I guess, opening bottles that people wouldn't typically be able to find.

01:07:21

Owain

yeah

01:07:28

Jez

It's like, yeah, let's share it with people at this moment.

01:07:29

Owain

Yes, exactly. This, this is, this is it. And, and whilst I I've never been, ah I wouldn't, I was never really a huge history person.

01:07:32

Jez

Yeah.

01:07:36

Owain

I wasn't, uh, I wouldn't read history textbooks and go crazy into, into eras. The reason why I love whiskey history is it's tactile.

01:07:44

Jez

Yep.

01:07:44

Owain

What you've tasted. Sure. It's changed in a bottle in the 40, 50, 60, sometimes a hundred and something years it's, it's existed, but it, it is a time capsule and it is as a representation of what, how that industry was at that time.

01:07:57

Owain

how your grandparents or your great grandparents along those lines tasted those those liquids versus what they taste today. And i a lot of what drives me when I'm working on these bottles for for my for my for work is that I want the person that buys that bottle and opens that bottle to you know every single thing about what they're drinking and understand if they're drinking a beam, these beams from the fifties and sixties, hey, these were probably made with non-GMO corns with a lower barrel entry proof that they were made in this climate versus this climate. Like this is why a plus B equals C for your thing here.

01:08:31

Owain

And no, wow, I tried it from this era and it had this thing and and and and he made it this time. like i um On that vintage whiskey tasting in Missouri, we tried a Pebble Ford from 1904, which was ah produced at Clear Springs, which is the original.

01:08:42

Jez

you

01:08:45

Owain

It was made by the original Jim Beam. And it was just so much fun to learn about that bottle and go, that's that is a whiskey from the origin name of this huge brand and kind of bring that back to that point of learning why, who, what, why, when, where, you don't just read a textbook and and learn about a person.

01:09:06

Owain

you You taste the liquid and the care and the knowledge and and the history that they put into that liquid. A hundred and something years past when it was made. So it it's just this Wonderful. time like History is great. You can look at an art gallery and see visually that that process, but whiskey, you get to taste it and you get to compare it and you get to learn about it and you get to get a little bit drunk in the process and happier.

01:09:27

Owain

like It's just this this wonderful loop of history, social socializing with people, sharing with people, generating community. It's a hobby that really, I think, stands by itself. There's not many other hobbies like that.

01:09:41

Jez

No, not even not even close. They're going to start putting like scratch and sniff on textbooks. So I might start paying attention.

01:09:47

Owain

Yes, yes, yes, very much true.

01:09:48

Jez

That's ah sneak a sneaking couple of dreams in there. I'd be like, oh yeah, so you put that in schools and I'd be actually willing to go back. That's

01:09:56

Owain

Yeah, I mean, the i'm I'm from a place called York in in in the UK, and that's notoriously where the Vikings kind of invaded or spent a lot of time. And there's a place called the Jorvik Centre down there that is a recreation of the huts and stuff that the Vikings are And you go through on the in this cart, and all you smell is human excrement basically all the way through.

01:10:16

Jez

Oh.

01:10:16

Owain

it's designed it's The whole place is a tactile... reimagining of the history of that time and all you smell is human waste essentially because that's what it smelled like but it was a way more engaging way of telling the story than it was just reading about it or seeing a ah video or something of a kind and whiskey's the same thing although it tastes a lot better so

01:10:25

Jez

Great.

01:10:34

Jez

Yeah, it's ah well, actually, I've had some pretty shitty tasting whiskeys, so.

01:10:38

Owain

that's true i've seen some drain pools from you so yeah

01:10:40

Jez

Yeah, that's a comment around here.

Whiskey Collecting Strategy

01:10:43

Jez

so You got to get rid the bottle somehow. I'm like, stuff I ah can't even give away because it's just been open for so long and the profile on it's cooked.

01:10:48

Owain

yeah And I've said this enough times, like, do you need another 700 ml bottle in your life? Sometimes you need to get that 700 ml out the way so you can get another 700 ml in that's better.

01:11:00

Jez

Which is...

01:11:00

Owain

Because I'd like to think we're always improving our ah collections in some capacity.

01:11:04

Jez

Yeah. Spot on.

01:11:08

Owain

be it looking more for vintage bottles than a new release. So like when those bakers came out, they were at such a low price that I was after one, but I don't go out and buy a $100 new release that's a core release bottle because it doesn't teach me anything.

01:11:22

Jez

yeah

01:11:22

Owain

I can go and try a dram of that for $10 over a bar and I don't get stuck with another 700 mils in my house, but I'm happy to take a $300 punt on something from the 60s, 70s or 80s that might teach me something new in the process.

01:11:34

Jez

ah Spot on.

01:11:35

Owain

So

01:11:36

Jez

I wholeheartedly agree.

01:11:36

Owain

very different style of buying compared to a lot of people, but it just is that little extra layer of knowledge and that that uniqueness to it.

Very Old St. Nick Brand Evolution

01:11:42

Jez

No, it's right. Plus, like, a good deal in bourbon is never a bad time because, like, even if it is ah even if it is, say, the bakers, for example, it's like you just take it over to a mate's place and you're like, yeah, this cost me fucking nothing.

01:11:57

Jez

You just leave it there and, yeah, that's it because it's like you would have paid that for three pours at a bar anyway.

01:11:58

Owain

Yeah, you could hit we've enjoyed the first 100 mils, you can keep it. you know

01:12:05

Jez

So it's like, yeah, that's solid.

01:12:05

Owain

Yep. Yep, definitely.

01:12:07

Jez

um But you've got that final bottle there as well.

01:12:11

Owain

Yeah, this is this is so this is a pick that we we did with ah Very Old St.

01:12:11

Jez

It's another...

01:12:16

Owain

Nick.

01:12:17

Jez

That's cool.

01:12:17

Owain

So preservation, this is kind of one of the combinations that i like to talk about of NDPs that are moving to their own spirit. So this is a very old St. Nick straight out of Bardstown. This is a nine year pick that we did for Baxus with Marcy from Preservation Distillery. So for anyone that doesn't know, very old St. Nick was a brand that started in the 80s and 90s, basically, and was a export brand for the Japanese market.

01:12:41

Owain

the The story is supposedly according to Clay Risen and the folks at Bourbon Law, that a Japanese japanese customer of Marcy, so Marcy was the ah representative for Julian Van Winkle in the Japanese market.

01:12:56

Owain

One of these Japanese customers was looking for a Christmas bottling and they wanted, the Japanese love Americana at that time in that bubble period, that sort of grandiose style. That's why they love KFC for Christmas and kind of this this wonderful this wonderful cross-culture exchange.

01:13:10

Owain

And he wanted a Christmas bottle.

01:13:10

Jez

I'm all about it.

01:13:11

Owain

And what's more Americana than Kris Kringle, you know, the the the Santa on the on the bottle. And they put the brand together and they missed the Christmas date. And it was a few months after Christmas. And Marcy basically said, you know, i do you want me to rebrand it? Like, do you want something new? And the guy said, ah, just ship it anyways. Yeah.

01:13:29

Owain

And it was a huge hit, huge, huge hit. And this is ah in the, i think it was 84, she started doing this in the, in the 80s, the bottles available to brokers, that the the sorry, the barrels available was to brokers at that time were genuinely phenomenal.

01:13:42

Jez

Yeah,

01:13:42

Owain

but Liquid from Medley, Yellowstone, Stitzelweller, Bernheim, like old barrels as well. We're talking sort of early glut era where,

01:13:51

Jez

yeah because that would have been after the decanter series and know everyone just trying to move whiskey.

01:13:55

Owain

Yes, you get into a point where, yeah, and you get into a point where they are 10, 12-year-old whiskey is pretty much like classified as young. Eight-year-old whiskey is young.

01:14:05

Owain

12-year is sort of in the middle and 15, 18, 20-year-old barrels were available to buy. So the very old St. Nick brand kind of evolved and and over the following 10, 15 years, you kept exporting it to Japan.

01:14:17

Owain

These were sometimes 20, 25-year-old barrels at barrel proof, proof that today are worth

01:14:22

Jez

mind-blowing

01:14:24

Owain

multiple thousands of dollars that are stupendous. I was very lucky. I tried a 25 year old from the nineties, one of the old back country, old man back country, something along those lines that's reported these Stitzelweller.

01:14:37

Owain

And whilst that wasn't a particularly phenomenal bottle, it was a very different experience to a lot of the ah whiskey I tried from that that modern system. But what Marcie has done, she's kept that brand going.

01:14:48

Owain

which has kind of blurred the lines a little bit on the sourcing, but we're almost certain this is a a wheated bourbon to my palate from Heaven Hill. And this is one of those examples where we're talk about something that's way too expensive to come into Australia, but the actual fundamental liquid speaks for itself.

01:15:03

Owain

So these retail in the in the US for 400 US dollars. So we're talking close 750, 800, maybe even close to ah you know a thousand dollars in in a worst case scenario for these sorts of things.

01:15:08

Jez

seven fifty and hundred yeah

01:15:16

Owain

But it is truly phenomenal liquid. Marcy has 40 years under her belt of sourcing genuinely phenomenal barrels. And whilst the market has dried up for those kinds of options, she's still been able to secure fantastic stocks.

01:15:28

Owain

And i when i when we put this out as a business, I sort of said, oh, you know i'm I'm not really super happy with the price. Like it feels very expensive. And it's, oh, you know this is kind of, this is what they cost. This is the situation. But I was like, oh, it's okay, but still not my not something I'd put my name to.

01:15:44

Owain

And then we opened the bottle and we shared it. And I went, fuck.

01:15:48

Jez

okay

01:15:49

Owain

Yeah, this is this is a $400 bottle. This is genuinely fantastic. you know it wass like Essentially, it was it was a barrel-proof old Fitz decanter. It was a ah a last knee barrel-proof on steroids.

01:15:57

Jez

Glorious. Yeah.

01:16:00

Owain

It was just kind of that like wheated Heaven Hill profile done perfectly.

01:16:00

Jez

yeah

01:16:04

Owain

And it's a bottle I'm really happy to have a drink. But... She has worked really hard to to mimic that flavor of some of those older barrels whilst also working on her new distillate. so the preservation distillery brands are coming out now that she has exclusively done pot distillation, mostly wheated bourbon, six, seven, eight years old that's coming out slowly.

01:16:23

Owain

And whilst these brands are on the higher, more expensive side, even if the liquid is relatively young, it's one of the few that really kind of stands up and says, we know we're expensive. We know I have history. We know we're not really being super transparent in this scenario, but we have this much history. You can trust us that when you buy this liquid, you'll at least be enjoying something.

01:16:43

Jez

Yeah.

01:16:43

Owain

So the stuff that they have over there as well is just just absolutely crazy. I was lucky enough to try the 17-year-old. I don't know if you know about the ancient cast 17 preservation.

01:16:53

Jez

Yep.

01:16:55

Owain

Tanked Stitzeltweller that she has let sit for like 15, 20 years and has created a absolutely phenomenal product that is, again, very expensive for 500 US dollars for a half-size bottle, but...

01:16:57

Jez

Glorious.

01:17:08

Jez

yeah

01:17:09

Owain

stands by the fact that it was worth the wait and this is the right way to do this kind of liquid. So yeah, some of the more premium brands that we'll probably never see in Oz, but should they ah appear on a bar, it's basically worth taking a punt and and and try that.

01:17:25

Jez

It's stuff I want here, but at the same time, I'm like, i don't want these bottles in the wrong hands.

01:17:30

Owain

It's that that torn feeling, right?

01:17:32

Jez

Yeah. Yeah.

01:17:32

Owain

Like we don't want we don't want to encourage $400 US dollar whiskey in our market because we can't sustain it, but we should also be able to have access to this if we want to buy it and drink it

01:17:44

Jez

It's such a shame, but I'm like, ah, I get it. I get it.

01:17:48

Owain

it. It is what it is.

01:17:49

Jez

But since you do have so much knowledge in buying all this old whiskey, are you able to tell the people what they should be looking out for if they're coming into this this old whiskey and they want to make sure that they don't want to get stitched up?

01:17:54

Owain

Yeah.

01:17:58

Owain

Absolutely.

01:18:03

Jez

I know you put out a lot of information on AWA. Yeah. um

01:18:07

Owain

Yeah, so one of the...

Authenticating Vintage Whiskey

01:18:10

Owain

One of the articles i think still up there is is a piece of reference material on how to date Pappy Manwinkles. So that's certainly if you're buying anything in that that family, I've done a whole breakdown there on on laser codes and different eras of the releases and the productions to kind of understand that if you're buying Pappy 20 from 2007, it's probably going to be Stitzel Weller juice, whereas if you buy it today, it'll be Buffalo Drace product and kind of understand that fundamentally they're different products from different distilleries that taste very, very different um there. But vintage whiskey and buying vintage whiskey is

01:18:40

Owain

It's always a gamble. you you you absolutely It's just a fundamental reality of of buying anything on any secondary market. You are never 100% going to be guaranteed it's it's real. it i I can spend hours, days, weeks authenticating might with a microscope, looking at paper and and and looking for it. I can spend all my time looking at a bottle.

01:19:01

Owain

And I can give you a 99% chance that it's it's real, but that 1% is still unknown until you crack that bottle and dry it. it's It's this unfortunate nature of buying something from somebody else that isn't the original retailer.

01:19:14

Owain

ah But what we do and the authentication that we do is about limiting that that chance, about about reducing and any errors that may...

01:19:22

Jez

Reducing that 1%, yeah.

01:19:23

Owain

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. right And trying to understand that We've put the this this treasure in front of us, a plus B equals C. this This little jigsaw puzzle fits together here. Here's the reasoning and logic why we think this.

01:19:37

Owain

ah The most important thing when you look talk about American whiskey, understand eras. So understand that the prior to prohibition, tax stamps were not a thing. They were just sealed the way that they were just big boxes.

01:19:49

Owain

big corks, big foil. Prohibition comes around with American whiskey and and everything gets concentrated. They have to have bottled and bond stamps. They have to have all these these um these specialist green stamps, all these sorts of things.

01:20:00

Owain

Post-prohibition, part of the deal, again, tax stamps.

01:20:05

Jez

text strips.

01:20:05

Owain

understanding that different tax stamps are formatted different ways so one of the ways i can tell eras on bottles it's probably not going to show up very well on camera but tax stamps on will have uh different lettering above and below depending on different eras so the ends for example if the end say for fifth court it's pre-1961 if they have ah Bureau of ATF instead of US Internal Revenue. They're from like 77 to like 82. And like there's different formatting to understand different eras.

01:20:36

Owain

So vintage American whiskey often has tax stamps. And then on the base of the bottles, they'll also be ah glass stamps. Again, I don't think that's going to show up on camera, but whatever, close enough. And on the base of this one, on the right side, it has the has the number 73 in the glass.

01:20:50

Owain

That was quite a common way of producers identifying which year that their glass was produced. know this was a 1973 bottle of Old Crow. bottle of old cro

01:20:58

Owain

At least the glass was manufactured in 73, could have been modeled in 74 or otherwise. But it's that understanding the tax stamp, looking at going, right, I know that this is 1961 to 1977 tax stamp.

01:20:59

Jez

Mm-hmm.

01:21:10

Owain

I know on the base it has a 73 in the glass. I know that both the stamp and the glass suggest they're in the same era. This makes sense. This this is accurate. You look at other examples of the bottle. Okay. other Other ones that have turned up in auction, do they have the same label? Do they look the same? Do they have ah the same kind of seals? Or if they were different seals, is it maybe one was for a different exporter and one was for another market that that had different types of seals and those kinds of things.

01:21:33

Owain

So it's... b It's being critical in everything you buy and understanding that there is always a risk. It's why I'm always looking for bargains. It's why I'm not someone that is happy to go out and spend 10 grand on a vintage whiskey bottle personally, because there is always the caveat until that it could be a fake. There could be a refill.

01:21:52

Owain

That's the biggest issue we run into is somebody buys a bottle, someone drinks that bottle and someone refills that very easily. Someone glues a new tax stamp over the top or someone... puts a new seal and shrink wraps over it.

01:22:02

Owain

It's kind of the problem when you enter so many of these distilleries, you know, these are wrapped in parafilm, but this holiday is just ah just a standard piece of tape over the top.

01:22:10

Jez

Hmm.

01:22:11

Owain

And the um pursuits are just a very cheap shrink wrap on the top of them. So the reality is that a lot of these producers are not sealing them in ah in a particularly anti-theft, anti-fraud way.

01:22:24

Owain

And how we negotiate that is just... We do our best. you you you investigate as close as you can. You look at seals, you look at labels and you say, well, yeah, I'm 99% sure this is real. I reckon it's a genuine article, but any bottle you buy is always at your own risk and you understand that it's a problem.

01:22:35

Jez

Oh, yeah.

01:22:40

Owain

Certain companies will have certain, their own ah policies on this. If you open it and you find it's terrible, I find most auction houses will will take it back and say, actually, that was just a terrible bottle of whiskey. You're wrong.

01:22:53

Owain

Or you're right. Give us it back. We'll give you a refund. We should have been more aware that this was a fake. There's there's plenty of stories, McAllen from the...

01:23:00

Jez

oh yeah

01:23:01

Owain

mid-1800s that were opened at Swiss hotels. And it turns out it was a blend from the nineteen fifty s something along those lines, right? We've seen plenty of those stories come out. There are some authenticators that believe it's almost 30% or 40% of all Scotch whiskey and, sorry, all whiskey sold at auction is fake.

01:23:18

Owain

I don't know if it's quite that high personally, but I know that it's it's a big game, certainly in the wine industry. So one of the other things, just from a quality perspective, not even from a fake perspective, is is looking at consistency of liquid.

01:23:29

Jez

Oh.

01:23:29

Owain

So fill levels is a big important thing. If a bottle is... Perfectly filled and there's no issues. It's probably been stored quite well, especially if it's an old bottle. I mean, to this is a wonderful example of an old granddad from 1973. The label and the the tax stamp are absolutely phenomenal because it spent its entire life inside of its box.

01:23:47

Owain

I actually had to ask the auction house to open the box because the auction house only had a photo of the box. And I said, just can you check, can you can you open the box for me and check that there's actually a bottle inside? And i need to I need to see the thing I'm buying before rather than buying an empty box.

01:24:00

Jez

Yeah.

01:24:01

Owain

Right. But yes, they opened the box the first time and this thing had spent 50 years inside this box. There's no fading. It's like it came off the production line yesterday.

01:24:10

Jez

That's incredible.

01:24:10

Owain

So, and I was so happy when this arrived and it was just, it's, it's, it's vibrantly orange, which is very rare for an old granddad of this era. But yeah, i consistency, the liquid is important as well.

01:24:21

Owain

So i i got very I got stung, unfortunately. I bought this old tailor from 1970, a large quart. I bought it for dirt sweet, fuck all, basically. I paid 50% of what the market value on it was.

01:24:33

Owain

but I wasn't paying attention when I purchased it. The fill level was essentially down down here. and I sort of didn't really pay too much attention to it. Maybe that's that's normal or didn't quite catch it. Normally, the old Taylor Quartz, you can't see the liquid because they're up into the neck.

01:24:45

Jez

ah

01:24:46

Owain

So the liquid level was down. And again, I don't think it's going show up on camera. But when it arrived, it was all it it's cloudy and orange rather than being...

01:24:53

Jez

I think you can see a little bit of clouding going on there.

01:24:56

Owain

Yeah, rather than being brown liquid, it is orange, cloudy, and gunky.

01:24:57

Jez

Yeah. Yeah.

01:25:00

Owain

So the the whiskey has probably spent quite a lot of time inside a hot environment or direct sunlight or or been negatively affected.

01:25:07

Jez

oh Oh, mixed with Meraven water.

01:25:10

Owain

And it's fine, tastes okay, but it just tastes like it just tastes like alcohol. It doesn't actually taste like bourbon. It just tastes very neutral. Makes it a nice fruity old fashioned actually, but doesn't actually taste like an old tailor from that era should.

01:25:19

Jez

Hey.

01:25:22

Owain

So it's, it's never be afraid to ask the the person that you're asking, you're purchasing from for more, more, more photos, more questions, more angles, always challenge anything you see, doing a little a bit of research about the history of that bottle.

01:25:35

Owain

If it was, you know, if it's a seventies, Ballantyne's or something like that, understand the difference between seventies or an eighties, you know, different markets change their units from like Imperial to metric and different eras. So the,

01:25:47

Owain

Americans, for example, used four fifth quart. So on the back, it will say four fifth quart rather than 750 ml. That was used until 1976. So bottles post-76 in the US will say 750 ml, although I have both of the fluid ounces in the milliliters.

01:26:03

Owain

The UK didn't change from, they were using proof and fluid ounces until 1980. Australia is a little bit contentious. There was about a seven-year allowance for beverages to change their format system.

01:26:16

Owain

There's plenty of of Australian market bottles that don't have alcohol strength on them as well. They just say fluid ounces or one pints. It's fluid ounce, something long along those lines. like It's a little bit of nicheness within those bottles. but always bid at a price that you feel, if it ends up being a fake or terrible, you feel comfortable, you know, essentially throwing that money away, right?

01:26:37

Owain

Like i i never buy, if if something is worth four or 500 bucks, I'll probably bid two or 300.

Community Engagement for Whiskey Authentication

01:26:41

Owain

And if I ah get it at that price, I'm happy, drink it, share it, put it a tasting, do something with it.

01:26:48

Owain

If I pay more than that, eight it creates almost a sense of like anxiety for me where I'm like, I'm getting closer and closer to the point that if it's fake, I'm throwing a lot of money away here. So this Weller was one of those examples where i was sort of getting a little bit anxious because I i was very lucky.

01:27:04

Owain

These these are about 2,000 US dollars in the States.

01:27:06

Jez

You did so well on that one.

01:27:08

Owain

it was very good i think i paid just shy of 1500 australian so probably less than 700 or 800 uh us so it was less than 50 the the market value of these bottles and we we shared this at cost in ah in a tasting basically last year which was a great way to to have it right ah amazing right but the the higher that bid price went the more i went i'm getting closer and closer to throwing you know like 1400 down the drain potentially

01:27:24

Jez

It was good water. It was amazing.

01:27:35

Jez

Yeah.

01:27:35

Owain

if it's a fake or if it's bad liquid or it's it's been in a hot room or something of those kinds. So we're very lucky in that scenario that ended up being good liquid, but there's there's always that caveat when you buy anything vintage,

01:27:49

Owain

Just be cautious, do your own research, ask opinions. You know, the amount of times I get tagged on Facebook, when was this from? Is it from the 70s? Is it from the 60s? even Even though I don't work for AWA, I still help the guys out every so often. They'll drop me a message and say, hey, when was this from? And I'm always happy to help because the end of the day, people get the information, they get that knowledge.

01:28:08

Owain

Everyone is happier in that process.

01:28:10

Jez

Yeah, everyone's safer, right? Like, i guess...

01:28:12

Owain

Yeah, exactly. Like, and fundamentally there's a lot of difference in value. You know, a Laphroaig 10 year old from the sixties is worth tens of thousands of dollars than one from the early nineties. So. differentiation factor both for the the buyer and the seller is important and and you we we're a we're a in the vintage whiskey space we all rely on each other it's and no one knows everything as we've said you always rely on someone else's experience that they've had so even when i'm i'm authenticating a number and working through a number of bottles for a collection at the moment for for

01:28:45

Owain

huge collector of vintage whiskey in the US and there are bottles I'm looking at that I've just no idea so I talk to him I understand his story where he acquired them where he's on his research then I speak to other folks in the industry and other folks in the whiskey space and say what do you know about these is there any any brands or any history you can tell me that isn't documented online and yeah we kind of we have to it's it's a personal industry so we have to build those relationships and build those connections to work to work on it professionally so

01:29:14

Jez

Yeah, it's incredible. Owen, thank you so much for your

Passion for Vintage Whiskey Narratives

01:29:20

Owain

of course

01:29:20

Jez

time this afternoon.

01:29:21

Jez

I'm like, fuck, I've kept you for an hour and a half. It's been talking shit. um

01:29:27

Owain

Always.

01:29:27

Jez

Did you want to round out with like a little quick fire closeout just so people can understand your palate and what you really love?

01:29:34

Owain

Yeah, so i love I love vintage things. I love the old history of bottles.

01:29:37

Jez

Yeah.

01:29:38

Owain

I love the stories of clothes distilleries, the story of craft, the artistry and the history behind these bottles. And and after having so tried so much whiskey in those years of working in the industry, I just found that old whiskey to me tasted better than new whiskey.

01:29:52

Owain

And... The story is the history and the quality is where I, that's why I chase vintage bottles and why I chase that new experience. Whilst new whiskey is fun and interesting and always great to support, my personal preference is always those older bottles.

01:30:07

Owain

A couple of brands I love, Old Overholt, Awesome History, Old Grandad, absolutely my favorite vintage whiskeys ever. Old Grandad, I have, I have, gallons of vintage old granddad hiding, including decanters and stuff from the fifty s It's just beautiful.

01:30:20

Owain

In fact, i will I will go so far as to show you that today i had a parcel arrive from

01:30:27

Jez

What is that?

01:30:30

Jez

Oh.

01:30:34

Owain

ebay

01:30:35

Jez

That's cool. Little cufflinks?

01:30:37

Owain

So these are old granddad cuff vintage original, like national distillers issued old granddad cuff links and neck pin tie that I'm wearing for my wedding next year.

01:30:42

Jez

Oh.

01:30:46

Jez

That's amazing.

01:30:47

Owain

So I got to wear some vintage whiskey memorabilia on my wedding day with, with, with my suit. So like I, I, that's how much I love this stuff.

01:30:53

Jez

It all,

01:30:55

Owain

I want it to be. shared I want it to be understood. i want people to know everything about what they're purchasing and enjoying. And I'm always happy to be a point of contact. So if someone ever has questions on things, it it brings me joy letting other people know about those

01:31:09

Jez

Well, I have a couple of questions for you then.

Preferred Whiskey Proofs and Stories

01:31:13

Jez

What is your favorite proof point?

01:31:19

Owain

I'd like to say 107.

01:31:23

Jez

Okay.

01:31:23

Owain

But I think 101 has a special place. twelve Eight to 12 years 101 is objectively where I found the most success in modern bourbon.

01:31:35

Jez

What about vintage though?

01:31:35

Owain

But vintage vintage is hard.

01:31:36

Jez

Since that's your gem.

01:31:38

Owain

Above 86 proof is hard to acquire. Bottled and Bond whiskeys are actually quite rare ah in certainly the export market.

01:31:41

Jez

Yeah.

01:31:46

Owain

And stuff like the 107 and the 114s, those are crazy, crazy rare, crazy expensive things. Bolin and Bond, 107, I just, yeah, I can't go past the 107s I've had in the past and and the BIB.

01:32:01

Owain

I probably say 107 and I would argue, I've had two two funny stories about why 107 is so popular because it's the classic Stitzelweller barrel entry proof is 107.

01:32:13

Jez

Yeah.

01:32:14

Owain

And Bernie Lovers from Heaven Hill told me that he he asked why it was 103, 107, 110. Why was that the barrel injury proof that everyone did? He said, well, because 110 was the limit. And we wanted to go in a little under just to make sure we never went over because we couldn't.

01:32:27

Owain

And then the other reason I heard the story from Pappy was that his he didn't go in at 100 proof. He went in at 107. because his doctor told him that he was only allowed to have two whiskeys a day.

01:32:40

Owain

So he wanted them to be stronger so he could have that little bit of extra alcohol.

01:32:44

Jez

Done.

01:32:45

Owain

So 107 for me is just that. I think I see i i love the Modern Wella 107 Antique. I think that was a wonderful drinker. I prefer that over full proof. ah The classic seven 107 proofs.

01:32:57

Owain

I think that is where my my palate would sit if it wasn't going to be a 100 proof bottle of bond.

01:33:05

Jez

I love it. Okay. ah During a whiskey apocalypse, all the bottles are gone, but one, which one are you going to be drinking for the rest of your life?

01:33:12

Owain

No,

01:33:17

Owain

it's a hard one. We always, we, I always, we've talked to my dad. We always talk to distillers and we say, you've got three bottles, your desert Island whiskeys, you know, what are what are they going to be?

01:33:24

Jez

Yep. Cause I know we can't pick bottles on a daily basis, right?

01:33:26

Owain

I think for me, i think for me,

01:33:30

Jez

Cause like, like,

01:33:30

Owain

Absolutely. I think it's going to be this well. I think that's probably the one that I find the most personal connection to because it was a great auction buy. It was shared really well. It's now my special pour. It's going to be poured on my wedding.

01:33:41

Owain

know, I've got a little private selection of bottles that I'm putting aside for my wedding day to pour, to, to have after the the event. Um, Otherwise, I was very privileged. I got try barrel sample of of ah of a whiskey from 1824 whilst I was overseas.

01:33:56

Owain

A 21-year-old malted rye whiskey. Yeah, bottled

01:34:02

Jez

It's mind-blowing, the fact that, yeah.

01:34:04

Owain

21 years later, it was it was stunning. I'm not allowed to talk about it online.

01:34:08

Jez

Yeah.

01:34:08

Owain

That was part of the the the negotiation. But yeah, we tried whiskey from 1821, 1836, 1876.

01:34:11

Jez

Yeah.

01:34:15

Owain

Tried an 80-year-old American whiskey from that same producer as well, 80 years in a barrel. ah those those If I could bottle those, probably 18... probably that eighteen 1824 or the 1836 one of those two was particularly amazing it was like a very very old cognac in terms of quality so that just for the wow factor of whiskey apocalypse but um otherwise otherwise yes otherwise i think in you talk scotch whiskey probably some pre-warren Laphroaig some um some some 50s we've got to get you pre-warren it's like lychee and smoke

01:34:28

Jez

Yeah, yum.

01:34:35

Jez

A bottle of bottles just to drink.

01:34:43

Jez

Way too smoky for me, but I can appreciate it.

01:34:49

Jez

Ooh, okay.

01:34:49

Owain

yes Hyper-fruity 70s, 80s pre-warrant laugh. Those are the real.

01:34:53

Jez

ah Okay.

01:34:54

Owain

That's actually.

01:35:00

Owain

One of my other like wedding day pours is a a mid 80s 10 year old half bottle that again I purchased for $150 in auction, which was which was absolutely nothing in the in the grand scheme of things. So that goes on my wedding' my little private section for my wedding day. But yeah, those are the two bottles I've found the most personal connection to in my collection over time.

01:35:20

Jez

Yeah, I'm gonna have to.

01:35:20

Owain

So probably probably the ones I would take on a desert island or on a whiskey apocalypse would be the 107 and a pre-warrant

01:35:21

Jez

All

01:35:29

Jez

right, and my my final wrap up question for you. If you could share a dram with any historical figure, who would it be? Yeah.

01:35:38

Owain

So there's too many to to narrow it down because I've read about so many wonderful his wonderful characters in history, but I would love to pick the brain and sit there with but the original Colonel Taylor and hear his story.

01:35:48

Jez

yeah

01:35:54

Jez

Ooh. Agreed.

01:35:56

Owain

because he now i We're working on this Baxos, but he has a wonderful six-page editorial on how whiskey everywhere in the world is shit unless it's made in Kentucky.

01:36:05

Jez

ah great

01:36:05

Owain

how how american bourbon is superior to scotch whiskey and superior to brandy and superior to irish whiskey and truthfully when i read some of his writings i went oh actually he's quite correct in a lot of a lot of this assessment here at the time of where the industry was so i think and his story is incredible of of being the custodian of of another person's distillery, building his own distillery, having his son build a distillery, losing everything and then slowly reviving it. And, and you know look at the the impact that his name has still 150 years later, that he was not a particularly nice person, a lot of a lot of problematic ah situations in his in his history, but I think it would just be amazing to sit with him and talk about where he thought the industry would go and where it had been. and

01:36:51

Owain

and see what he would think of of where his name is today being such a sought after product.

01:36:57

Jez

That is a round table I'd love to be on.

01:36:57

Owain

um Otherwise, absolutely. Otherwise, it would be Bessie Williamson from Laphroaig, who was the first female distillery owner. And she ran Laphroaig in the 50s.

01:37:09

Owain

And I think hearing her stories of going from a typewritist working on Islay supposedly for two or three months and ending up being this this legendary distillery owner who who pioneered women in in distilling and created truly some of the best Scotch whiskeys in history would be would be pretty special.

01:37:26

Owain

So those are probably two I'd want to sit with.

Whiskey in Personal Celebrations

01:37:28

Jez

two absolute legends as well like i'm not much of a scotch guy but i'm like yeah i can i can definitely get behind that it's just like a rags to riches story like i there's no way i could be like a ah typist and then end up just running a company it's completely mind-blowing i've got to get my name down for this this wedding though or at least get a virtual tasting going on all these samples you're pulling for is it

01:37:37

Owain

Definitely.

01:37:44

Owain

That's it. Yep.

01:37:53

Owain

I'm actually getting married at at a distillery in, uh, in Gitland.

01:37:56

Jez

That's beautiful. Do you know what?

01:37:57

Owain

Yeah, i'm it does.

01:37:57

Jez

That screams you. That's...

01:37:59

Owain

My distillery opened in the hometown of my partner, where he's from.

01:38:04

Jez

Yeah, that's...

01:38:04

Owain

So I'm actually getting, like, it was it was genuinely made to be. And people run around looking for vintage bottles with, like, dates, like Blanton's and stuff with specific dump dates of their days. I'm going to fill a barrel of rum on the day I get married so I i can manufacture

01:38:15

Jez

I was going to say, yep.

01:38:18

Owain

ah ah bottle with with my with my wedding date on it. So I'm going to, yeah, we're working towards it.

01:38:23

Jez

No, that's amazing. That is, because it it has to be, right? Like, you're just like, yeah, but that's going to be our fill date. And it's like,

01:38:32

Owain

That's it. We're going to get a 50 liter bourbon cast, something along those lines, fill it up with but with ah with rum that we make there on the day or a couple days earlier and then mature it for two or three years and then send everyone ah a little 200 mil bottle or a 500 mil bottle or something years in the future.

01:38:33

Jez

i

01:38:45

Jez

that's amazing. That's, and then, do you know what? Everyone gets to relive that moment again.

01:38:51

Owain

That's it. And then I have for the rest of my life, I have bottles of a barrel that I filled on my wedding day. I never have to go out and look for Blanton's dates that specify specifically to these things. Like I don't have to look for specific vintage Scotch whiskeys or anything. Like it's just there.

01:39:06

Jez

I can see Blanton's doing that or like Buffalo Trace doing that in the future. It's just like people going in and filling barrels on their wedding day.

01:39:11

Owain

Yeah.

01:39:13

Jez

That's bourbon tourism.

01:39:14

Owain

Yeah. Well, if anyone, one day, one day.

01:39:18

Jez

that's ah But that's a whole nother podcast episode, that is.

01:39:21

Owain

Definitely.

Upcoming Whiskey Events and Collaborations

01:39:22

Jez

but Owen, thank you so much for your time this afternoon.

01:39:24

Owain

Thank you.

01:39:25

Jez

You've been an absolute fucking legend. um Do you want to I guess, plug businesses, we'll plug businesses will plug any tastings that, because I know we'll probably have you here for the American Whiskey Show in Sydney come August.

01:39:32

Owain

yeah we...

01:39:38

Owain

ah don't know if i'll be I don't know if I'm around for Sydney in August.

01:39:41

Owain

I'm back in Kentucky the beginning of September for KBF, yeah but I should be around, I think, for the the whiskeky show and the US Whiskey Show in Melbourne and in October.

01:39:41

Jez

Oh.

01:39:45

Jez

Yep.

01:39:52

Jez

Okay.

01:39:52

Owain

Otherwise, we'll probably we will probably run a tasting around that. in Melbourne, probably a good order again, and I'll throw some interesting stuff up. But otherwise, I'm just doing lots and lots of work with the Baxxas team over in the States.

01:39:59

Jez

I'll calm down. Fuck yeah.

01:40:04

Owain

I'm back and forth from the US three or four times a year now. So yeah, next time, next big thing for me is KBF. And then and I think we' we'll do some more work, maybe some more barrel picks next year as well. But yeah,

01:40:15

Owain

Take a look at Baxos. AWA is where I'm originally originally from, where I built my stuff as well. Those guys are fantastic, running the best auctions in Australia. Yeah, and you know tag me on Facebook if you feel like you need need any help with vintage bottles. Reach out to me on Instagram, TheWhiskyO.

01:40:30

Owain

um' I'm easy to get access to, and I can help with any old and rare needs.

01:40:35

Jez

I love it. Thank you so much again for your time this afternoon, Owen.

01:40:38

Owain

No problem.

01:40:39

Jez

Definitely appreciate it.

01:40:39

Owain

Thank you.

01:40:40

Jez

I will drop all your socials in the description there as well.

01:40:43

Owain

Legend.

01:40:44

Jez

But thank you guys for tuning in. Hopefully you guys have enjoyed and please reach out to myself or Owen for all your whiskey needs. Cheers, legends.

01:40:54

Owain

Thank you.