S2 E17 - The Art of Collaboration: Through the Irish Whiskey Glass

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You. It is 05:00 somewhere and you've tuned into season two, episode 17 of BRC. For those of you who'd like to. Watch this episode, I highly recommend it. We're live in person on the emerald aisle.

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You can view season two on our website, YouTube, spotify and newly added whiskeynetwork.net. I'm Kerry Moynahan, and today in our whiskey whereabouts segment, John Ralph checks in with some updates about mad march, hare and bar 1661. But first, I speak with Rosi Goswell, managing director of Irish Whiskey Glass Limited, on our journey to making the Tua whiskey glass. I first met Rosie on the east coast of Ireland, just north of Dublin, in a beautiful seaside town called Scaries. I had the pleasure of sitting down with her in the cozy white cottages where I stayed for the night.

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Unfortunately, I had some technical difficulties that forced us to re record part of the interview virtually. Coming up, I'll show you as much. As I can from that on location interview. Tales from the still is next. Stay with us.

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Tua, from the old Irish for family or nation, is a conical shaped nosing and tasting glass for whisky that functions superbly by concentrating and capturing all the aromas and flavors that make Irish whiskey unique. The generosity of Irish spirit is reflected in the enhanced capacity of this beautiful unleaded crystal glass, delivering a more generous drinking experience. With the rebirth of Irish whiskey production, the development of new world class distilleries and visitor centers, and the development of the Irish whiskey tourism trail, it's time for contemporary glass to become the iconic symbol unifying Irish whiskey drinkers around the world. Tua. The Irish whiskey glass.

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Well, we are here today at the. White cottages in Scaries. Is that how you say it? Scaries. Scaries.

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Scary. Scaries. Scaries. Beautiful. In Gaelic.

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It's nascari. Oh, nice. And I'm here with Rosie, who's the designer and creator of these wonderful glasses that are, in my opinion, the answer to the Scottish Glen Karen, but for Irish glasses. Thanks for joining me. I know we had a conversation when I was in Ireland and we had a little bit of technical difficulties, so we're doing some reshooting here.

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But I did want to bring you back on and have you tell us from the beginning, how did you come up with this idea to do these glasses? And yeah, tell us the story from the beginning. Okay, well, lovely to see you again, albeit digitally. I was living in the UK and I was looking for a project at the Very. I had taken a step back from my original career, which was working in chemicals for the pharmaceutical industry.

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And I was doing some charity work and some projects and I wanted to think of a new project that would enable me to move back to Ireland. And a group of mutual friends were looking at a project in the whiskey industry and they wanted somebody Irish and who was going to be based in Ireland to help them out with it. So the main guy, actually, at the time was Chris, and he was a friend of a friend, and he had worked his life in design areas, specifically in the spirit industry, a point of sale material, and particularly glassware for the drinks industry. And himself and another friend of mine, James, were looking at this imminent sort of renaissance of Irish whiskey and all the distilleries that were in the planning. And we kind of got together and thought it's about time that Irish whiskey had its own glass.

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There were several glasses that people were using, rocks glasses, kind of popular for bourbon in the US. For ice, and also in Asia, and then also the Scottish glass called the Glen Cairn, which I'm sure lots of people are very familiar with. Lovely little glass, but very Scottish identity. And we just felt it was a little bit too small. And also we wanted there to be an Irish glass for Irish whiskey, because Irish whiskey was going to go out onto the world stage and try to say, here we are, the people who believe in the absolute knowledge that they invented whiskey and that the Scots came afterwards, although I know they would dispute that.

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And that if Irish whiskey was going to try and take its rightful place back on the stage, it needed to have an Irish glass. Using as part as a brand partner for the whole family of Irish whiskeys, our thought was to create a glass that would represent the category, not any one single brand. The idea being that when you saw somebody drinking out of this glass, you would know necessarily which brand of Irish whiskey it was, but you'd know that it was Irish whiskey. And that was the starting point of the seed. And that was in early 2016 when we started as a concept.

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Okay, and let's talk about the development of the glass. And can you talk to us about the bottom, the top and this beautiful base? I want to say the beautiful base here. So, as I say, Chris's background was glassware and things to do with glassware. James was involved in whiskey sales, distribution, and I am actually a chemist, an analytical chemist by trade.

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So Chris wanted something beautiful and I wanted something functional. So we got together our heads and our minds and we start describing what were the good things about a rocks glass. What were the good things about a Glen Cairn? What were the bad things about a Glencaron, what were the bad things about a rocks glass? And so if I hold up one of my glasses here so that you can see it.

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What was important to us was that our glass would be a little bit bigger for a couple of reasons. Because my own late father was a whiskey lover, but he always took some water in his whiskey. Because there's a whole science I won't bore you with it now, but there's a whole science around the chemistry of when you add water to whiskey and how it reacts with the molecules and changes the profiles. If you add a small amount, et cetera, it's all to do with molecules that are hydrophobic and hydrophilic and they like and they attach to each other and how it changes the profile. And we wanted a glass where the bowl was generous, so generous for home pours and free pouring, generous enough to take water, also generous enough to take a single cube of ice, if that's what you wanted to do, because we don't believe that anybody should tell you how you drink your whiskey.

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So we wanted our glass to have the freedom to let you do that. So then we also, in terms of the base, you can see the bottom of the glass. It's like all about the base, as they say. And we have the widest part exactly. The widest part here is there an Irish measure is 35 mils.

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And if you put 35 mils into this glass, it fits exactly to the curve on the bowl, which is the widest part. And the idea behind that is, so your greatest surface area is around here. And the greater the surface area, the quicker a whiskey will open up and breathe. And there is a saying from the ex Master Distiller from Brooklyn where he said that aged whiskey in theory should be allowed 1 minute for every year to open up and breathe. So the greater surface area you have, the quicker that's going to happen.

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So that was why the base is fatter. The height of the bow was to do with this glass was always meant for kind of high ABV, pot, still cast strength whiskeys, maybe less so than lighter grain whiskeys that are down at like 40%. And the idea being, these whiskeys needed the space so you could swirl and sniff and get the aromas. And also alcohol as a substance is made up of various components. Some of them are heavier than others, some of them are lighter than others.

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And the lightest component is the ethanol. And that comes off first and you want it to come up and out of the glass, but you want the heavies, like the esters, the aldehydes, which form kind of a lot of the aromas of the whiskey. You want them to hit the side of the glass and come back down. So that was why we wanted it sort of tall. Also, the flare at the top, as you can see it, if I sort of put it sideways, you can see there's a real flare.

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We took inspiration from other glasses that had a flare at the top that were meant like, for grappa, for really high ABV spirits. When you nose a glass where the top of it is too tight, that first phase of ethanol comes up and gets you in the nose. It's quite pinchy. It's called ethanol burn. It can be quite unpleasant.

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And for somebody who's new to a spirit, they get that and they're like, oh, gosh, I don't know how you drink that because they're getting the ethanol vapor. And so we wanted this to be wider so you could drop the cube of ice in, but also so that the ethanol could come out away from the nose, dissipated out. You'd still get the aromas, very much so, but not that compressed, tight pinch that you get. And that flare allows the ethanol to travel along the surface of the glass and out the sides. And so you just get a more pleasant experience.

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And then also, we wanted the glass to have a stem or a base because so you could hold it without touching the bowl and warming the liquid. So if you have a stem or a base, you can swirl and look at a whiskey, look at color, look at the legs. I have one that I filled earlier, so say, here's one I made earlier. So here's a lovely Dunville whiskey. Lovely color on it, as you can see.

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And this is a full measure. And so I have full freedom to swirl and sniff beautiful. And really give it quite a vigorous swirl. And you can do that. Now, I don't know if your camera can pick up the legs on that when I go like that, but by holding the base and not touching the bowl, you really have complete freedom to do all of that and inspect it before you drink it.

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And it's in the glass. So it would be rude not to drink it now, wouldn't beautiful. So, yeah, that was a big part of it. Now we wanted something original for the base, so we thought we wanted to try and incorporate the beauty of Ireland. So we were looking at various kind of landmarks in Ireland.

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We looked at Newgrange, which is this wonderful UNESCO heritage site near Drahoida, sort of north of Dublin, about half an hour north of Dublin. Really beautiful place where fantastic history, if you're ever in Ireland. Definitely worth checking it out. It's amazing. So we looked at that, but there's a whole circular motif with that.

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And structurally, in glass, a circle with a hole through the middle of it. Not the most practical thing to be doing on a production line. So we looked at various things and then we had a bit of a eureka moment with this fabulous rock, like a mini island, like a rock off the coast of Kerry called Skellig Michael. And it has around that time, it started to become very famous because one of the Star Wars movies was actually filmed where Luke Skywalker is exiled to this fort. It's actually filmed on Skellig Michael and it's a rock in the sea.

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If you look on our website, you can see images of it. So we took inspiration for that. And that's what this mound is supposed to represent. Skellig. Michael, and it offers a really good anchor for your thumb so that you can really give it a good swirl.

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And then the other thing we did is we gave it these symmetrical linear sides, because the other thing we've done is in that vein of increasing the surface area, opening the whiskey up. I'm going to do this balancing trick and hope I don't end up spilling this beautiful whiskey. Yeah, so I don't know if you can see that, but the glass actually will take a double pour, and the height and the angle upwards allows it to stay balanced and open like that. So it's a really cool way to sort of use your glass as a decanter, so you've got the patience to pour it and let it breathe. It's actually quite a cool thing to do.

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So that was all about the base. Yeah. So that was really how we ended up with our form and our function, I hope, as well. The glass is crystal. It's unleaded crystal.

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So we wanted our glass to be premium, we wanted it to be crystal. So obviously, we've gone for leaded crystal, which makes it completely dishwasher safe. And a big part of what we do, as I talked about, is working with particularly craft Irish whiskey brands, and we brand the glassware for them. So you can see this one. Dunville's is the brand on this one.

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We're working with so many brands now. It's wonderful. We've been adopted. You have barrel room. Chronicles has its own.

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Yes, we do. Yes, you do. That we made for you. We have the beautiful McConnell's whiskey. I don't know if you can put a book behind that.

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That's a beautiful gold logo. We've done from them. Another distillery in the Belfast area in Northern Ireland. We've done one for Copeland, also in Northern Ireland. Another interesting one with their compass.

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They have quite a navy and nautical theme going on with their motif. That's very nice. Yeah. And Rowanco, I'm sure you've heard of Rowan. They are owned by a tiny little company called Diageo.

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Tiny little company called Diageo. So this is a lovely copper. That's organic copper. We've done that one for Rowanco, for their visitor centers. So now tell me about these other.

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Two glasses you have here. So we kind of started to mess around with different designs, as I had said, and different things we wanted to do. And a lot of people had gold and platinum and copper in their logo, in the designs. And we had seen there was a little bit of a return to the whole sort of cocktail and sort of era of the ritz look in glassware. So we decided to kind of try and create something that would kind of match in with that.

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So we had a look at what we could do and so we came. Up with this gold rim. Beautiful. And a platinum rim. And they're made with real gold ink and real platinum, which makes them food safe for consumption and stuff.

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And they're hand painted because of the shape of the glass, they have to be hand painted. There is actually somewhere on our instagram, there's actually a picture of the lady with the wheel. It's like a potter's wheel with the brush doing and how she spins them and the speed she does in that is really quite incredible. And so we actually they look machine made, I mean machine. And what's so funny is you see every time you get a batch, the depth of this is very slightly different on each batch because they literally are handmade.

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It looks like a calligraphy pen almost. Okay. And it's really interesting. And so what we've done for some people is so for Cullen, which is part of Paris court, we've done a gold rim and a gold logo. For Egans, we did a platinum rim and a platinum logo.

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And also there's a brand called Lambe whiskey, which is actually really close to here, lambe island. As you can see, it actually the beach just beside us here. It's just around the bay. That's a joint venture between a French cognac house called Camus and an Irish family who live on the island, part of the Berings family from the Berings bank. And they specialize in whiskey finished in cognacs casks, which come from the Camus family.

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So we did a very nice platinum one for them as well. And that's been quite fun, actually, over the last sort of five years has been creating out of what is one glass for the Irish whiskey family, creating all these different permutations of how we can decorate. You know, there's a whiskey club in Northern Ireland that's affiliated with Powers Whiskey. So they've had a black logo with a gold rim and someone else has just had a gold logo. And it's creating all these different versions.

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That are tweaking it so that it's part know that brand's identity, which has kind of been fun working with people to create that's been fun. Yeah. Hi, Casey. We're not going to play ball right now. Come on, honey.

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And what's also been great has been more particularly in the last sort of. A year or two, is that we. Have quite a few speciality whiskey bars in Ireland, like the Palace Bar and others in the west of Ireland, and they've really started to adopt it now. Whereas I think in the beginning, people were kind of like, oh, it's too nice. It's too pretty.

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It'll get stolen. I'm not having it in the bar. Well, it will get stolen. So what we've kind of done, rather than sort of high traffic bars, we have had some very interesting sort of partnerships with some very nice hotels like Adair Manor, ashford Castle, carton house, really lovely hotels that have sort of premium whiskey offerings in their bars. And I think, I suppose maybe different kind of clientele who may be more interested in drinking the whiskey than stealing the glass were.

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We were very lucky that a lot of our distillery partners went online and created online stores. So we were doing merchandise for their online stores, which was terrifically helpful for us as a startup company, we've had tremendous loyalty from the smaller sort of Irish craft brands. It's been really terrific. And we work with the Irish whiskey awards. We're a sponsor of that.

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We work with whiskey, live in Dublin, we're a sponsor of that. And so bit by bit, we've sort of become, I hope to say, I hope it's true, we've become sort of really the adopted and recognized glass for Irish whiskey, certainly in Ireland. And we're moving out into countries around the world. We've distribution in many European countries. We're in South Korea now.

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Oh, wow. We're in the USA. We have a distributor in New Jersey called Hospitality Brands who can certainly look after people if they want the glass in the US. And they can do branding and stuff. And bit by bit, we've sort know, become adopted.

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And what's been really lovely to see in the last year or two has been that bars, there's a lot of very specific whiskey bars in Ireland where lesser pubs, but they have a really strong footing in premium whiskeys and the broad range of whiskies they carry. And then what we've really noticed recently is that what we would call very ordinary bars, but beautiful whiskey bars around Ireland. And bit by bit, these whiskey bars are branding their own tour glasses, so they've got their house tour glasses, which has been beautiful to see. Yeah, so it's been really lovely and it's given us a sense of kind of belonging within the whiskey community, which was really the purpose all along. I don't know.

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I don't believe anyone ever got incredibly wealthy on glassware. The margins just aren't there. That was never really the purpose of this project. It was as somebody who had lived abroad a lot of their life. I lived in Boston for a few years and as I said, I lived in the UK for a long time.

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You develop this heightened sense of national pride when you live know, we talk about the dysphoria or diaspora of Irish people who live away, and you latch on to your nationality as something you're super proud of. And so for me, this was all wrapped up in my sense of nationality, my sense of coming home, my sense of creating something bit, of legacy that was tied to the Irish whiskey industry. My late father died when I was really young, and he loved whiskey. And I just kind of almost part of it is wrapped up in the memory of him, in that he would just think it's so funny, cute that his youngest daughter was now working in the whiskey world or anything to do with the whiskey world, and had created a glass for his love. His whiskey.

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That's fantastic. Yeah, it's been a really interesting journey for me because obviously chemistry and pharmaceuticals, as I say, was my background. So the world of spirits and the world of whiskey and the world of Irish whiskey in particular, it's just really interesting because very exciting times in Ireland with all these new brands, propping know, every month there's a new distillery, opens, all doing something slightly different to somebody else, and all those nuances are making it really know. And particularly if you like whiskey, it's really interesting because you get to try them and sample them and it's yeah. Doing this tour in Ireland for the season has been so fun and I've gotten to taste so many different varieties of Irish whiskey and I've gotten to meet so many different people and it's been a blast.

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And I'm so very glad that I was able to meet you and hang out with you, not only in skieries, but in Belfast. We had some good times. Yes, I think we had one or two up there, if I remember rightly. Didn't I remember feeling a little bit seedy the following morning?

00:21:16
But I also love that when we were at the hotel, we went to the bar at the observatory, was it the other observatory?

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And I introduced you to the bar people and they had already had your glass. And then I showed them about this and then now that's how they serve it. They serve it on the side. Yeah. I obviously don't do a good enough job of putting that out there about the wrestling on its side.

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I need to put more effort into that because yeah, there are always those moments where people go when we do that. There's a little show moment. It's always good, actually, when people discover that. But it was lovely. And to be honest, that is something that has been really lovely for me personally in that, because obviously, when you produce something, we have the design, the patent, the registration, the IP, all of that, and the glass is manufactured for us.

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And then you have to establish a distribution and a logistics network. So you need supply and distribution partners. And at the moment, we don't retail ourselves directly, so we work with wonderful companies like Celtic Whiskey Shop in Ireland, who I'm sure everybody's heard of. And as I say, we have distribution partners in France, in Germany, in Holland. So they sort of get to meet the end users more than sometimes.

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So I don't necessarily know where my wholesalers are delivering glassware all the time. So sometimes I've had these moments where I've gone into a bar and I'm sitting there and go, they've got my glasses, and it's really lovely. And people are probably thinking, what is up with her? What's she getting?

00:23:04
That's me. Yeah. So there's a really beautiful hotel on St. Stephen's Green called the Shelburne Hotel, I don't know if you know it. And we were in there, my husband and my nephew and his girlfriend.

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We were in town in the city for St. Patrick's Day, for the parade, and we decided go into this very nice bar in the front of the Shelburne Hotel and kind of sitting there. And suddenly we see this guy walking with a tray with four glasses on it. And there are two glasses with whiskey. And we're like, I didn't even know they were and, you know, getting texts from friends in random sort of places.

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Dick Max pub down in Dingle. Who doesn't love Dick Max? Great pub. Now I know my glasses are in dick. Max.

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I'm very proud of that. But I'm getting texts from a friend. I'm in dick max. And your glasses are so it's so cute. Yeah, so yeah, I do, I enjoy it.

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I suppose I'm a bit of a. Girly nerd about oh no, I would totally be too. I spent many a good night. Many. I mean, I was there for three or four days and I think I spent at least part of half those days at Dick Max.

00:24:14
Oh, that was in where Dingle Whiskey were launching their sauen yes range good. Time if anyone hasn't watched that episode at season one premiere. So take a look. It's a good time. Yeah.

00:24:28
So Rosie, what's your five year plan. For the oh, my five year plan is I'm supposed to say world domination at this point, aren't I? Oh yeah, exactly. Of is to it's to partner with more of the Irish whiskey brands for sure. I suppose for us to be honest, what has eluded us are the very large corporate Irish whiskey producers.

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So the big household names in Ireland are generally foreign owned businesses in Ireland. Perner Ricard, William Grant owns Tollamore Jew, et cetera. Beam Santori owns and I suppose for have they're corporate. They have a different agenda around what they're doing in a good way in terms of I don't mean that in a bad way. They have different goals and they're out on the world stage on a much bigger level than some of our smaller craft Irish whiskeys who we're partnering with.

00:25:26
And I suppose they have a voice, they have a know, they have the ability to elevate anything. And we hope that in time they might consider partnering with us to sort of raise the profile of the category and that the glass will partner with that, that it gets out to Asia that it gets to know and that the glass helps people understand that Irish whiskey is a premium spirit. There has been a perception in the US maybe in particular that certain Irish whiskey is for shots, for picklebacks and that single malt scotch is the premium whiskey that's the one to have. But there are some stunning high end super premium Irish whiskeys and we kind of hope that the Tua goes hand in hand with those premium whiskeys as premium glassware and as time evolves, that's really what we want to be. We want to be sort of brand partners for those premium whiskeys on a global stage.

00:26:29
Yeah. And just to continue to grow it, we do a little bit of charity work. Not a lot, obviously. We're a startup company, so our resources are limited. The whiskey Awards that I mentioned earlier, which is actually run by Celtic Whiskeys, is a charity event, and it's to do with a charity called Mary's Meals, which is an African based charity which provides meals for children.

00:26:55
So kids go to school to get fed, and while they're at school, they learn to read and write. And that's something I feel very strongly about. We've done a little bit of work with Pieta House, which helps people who have emotional and mental health issues, and I want the freedom to do a little bit more of that kind of work. I want the business to grow to a level where when somebody approaches me for charity donations, it's a decision about whether I want to rather than can we afford to. That's always been something that I wanted to be intrinsically part of the business, so I hope to be able to do more of that in the next five years.

00:27:39
And other than that, just to keep tasting all these beautiful new releases and work with all these craft distilleries. Yeah. One other thing that we didn't talk about this time, that we talked about last time, is the name of the glass. You want to tell me exactly how that came to be? So it's tua is how you say it in Ireland.

00:27:57
We don't pronounce our THS. I'm sure lots of people have figured that over the year with tree and turty trees, people think so. It's pronounced tua, as in the number two, and then ah. And basically it's an old Irish word and it means family or nation. So a lot of people would be familiar with the word clan, which is a Gaelic word, both Irish Gaelic and Scots Gaelic, and it means family.

00:28:21
But all of those clans gathered together in an area that was called a tour, I suppose in sort of modern day living, it would kind of be like a suburb where you have families living together in groups. And that group was a tour. And the whole idea of and the reason behind choosing Tua was, as I said earlier, the glass isn't for one single brand, it's for the family of Irish whiskies, the group, the nation of Irish Whiskies. And so we felt, or I felt quite strongly about the fact that we needed to pick a name that reflected sort of the essence of the brand. And therefore Tua is to do with a in Irish folklore, there was a tribe of very strong, powerful women called Tua de Donnen Nice, and I.

00:29:07
Kind of liked the idea because it was a sort of female led business, that we were sort of encapsulating that spirit of powerful women and tua de Donnen. So that was kind of part of it, too. Women who use their powers for good, not for evil. There we go. Sounds great.

00:29:22
And then when I was there, you also gifted me a beautiful glass for gin. Are you guys going to be doing. Any other types of glasses coming up soon?

00:29:33
Obviously, as I said to you, this is our design and patent, but obviously we had to find a production manufacturing partner to make the glass for us. And our production partner makes only crystal glassware, really beautiful, high end glassware, but they have a whole range of other glassware that they do. So we now represent them in Ireland and we work with them across a range of glasses. We've been doing some beautiful tumblers which are being used for gin. We have a small, little, really miniature, sort of snifter glass.

00:30:10
So it's kind of used in a way where obviously there is a movement towards very much so and rightly so, towards responsible drinking. And if you go to any of these whiskey societies or whiskey tastings, even if they are within a distillery, and you may be doing five, if not six tastings, so you can't really have five or six full well, you can, but you shouldn't have five or six full measures of whiskey and then go on your way. So it's very hard to put a very tiny sip of whiskey into any normal sized glass. So we wanted to have a smaller glass that still had some functionality to it.

00:30:47
We have a glass that we call the Crew It, and that's the sort of mini DRAM glass for those really tiny measures. We've been working with that. Do you have any there to show me? I do have one somewhere. If I step away, maybe, I don't know, you'll press pause and edit it later on.

00:31:02
Yes, I will press pause right now. So it's quite small. It has a nice little fat bottom as well, a flat base, so, again, a wide part of the bottom. So you will still get a good surface area for it to open up. And it's tall enough that you can do a swirl.

00:31:22
So if I just put really the smallest amount in here, you can see it doesn't look lost in a smaller glass, but you can still do quite vigorous, nosing tasting and always hard to see in 2D. But there's a pinch where it comes in and so that pinch where it comes in helps concentrate those and retain those sort of aromas estrozaldehydes that really are that fruit essence of a whiskey. And they keep it inside the glass. And again, even though it's a small glass, the aperture at the top is actually quite a decent size. So, again, you're not getting that pinch.

00:31:59
And it's a great little glass. Can you hold it up next to the tua so I can see the size difference scale? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Wow.

00:32:08
Okay. So the capacity of this glass is I'm really sorry, I don't know in emphasis, but in metric it's 21 CL. And this one is twelve and a half. Okay. They're both beautiful.

00:32:21
And then did you come up with the name for the crewit or is. That yes, so Cruet is I mispronounced it Cruet because it's how it's spelled, C-O-U-I-T. But there's an island, a tiny little flat bottomed island off the coast of Donegal called Crutch, or Critch, as the locals call it. Critch. Yeah.

00:32:38
So I kind of wanted our glassware to have know that were Irish and to do with Irish. And we thought, well, this is the rock of Skellig. Michael. So now this is the large rock that is Crich off the coast of that's fantastic. Yeah.

00:32:51
So they're kind of our main two. And as I said to you, we have gin tumblers. And the reason we're doing those is because so many of our whiskey producers, as you know, they make the whiskey. They have to store the whiskey for a minimum of three years to age it before they can sell it. But a lot of them want to go into five, six, seven, so they can really develop their personal style on casks, on finishing, on styles.

00:33:16
And they need cash flow in that interim period. And so a lot of them have turned to making gin and making beautiful gins. Lots of gins along the wild Atlantic way that are marine gins, clonak Hilti have a beautiful gin skellig. You can make your own at Clonakilti. This is.

00:33:39
They'Re so adorable. Yeah, beautiful. I think Lock Re do that as well. They have a gin school and a beautiful seaweed gin up in Donegal. Sleeve league distillers make this really interesting dulamon gin.

00:33:53
So lots of really lovely gin. So we've been doing tumblers for people with gin, but something that's kind of added a little bit of something to it is our manufacturing partner has a fabulous 3D printing technology. And so they can print fully 360 around a glass, but in three D. So the gin glass that I gifted to you was one we did for Glendalock for their new launch this summer, where they have a beautiful new bottle with the botanicals which are tooled on the glass bottle. But we don't need to do tooling for the tumbler we can print on.

00:34:32
We can really create incredibly interesting and brand specific kind of looks. So we've been working on that. And also there are some nice green sustainability benefits to going with digital print rather than traditional. Ceramic inks would have heavy metal content, very low, but they would still have metal oxides as part of the ink. And everything we can do just to move the needle a little bit more into the green is a good thing.

00:35:02
So it ticks the box for our sustainability goals, which obviously is a good so, but it's very interesting. It's very cool as well. And I know that when you saw the Glendalock glass with those botanicals on the surface, you thought it was fabulous. I did. It's gorgeous.

00:35:20
And I'll pop up a picture of it when we do the edit. So I should have brought it up here with me. I don't know why I didn't, but yes. I love your glasses. This is all I drink out of these other I have all these glassware everywhere.

00:35:35
Well, take it back. If I'm having a scotch, I will pull out a Glen Karen, just to be true to its thing. But this is all I use. It's all.

00:35:47
Yeah. I have a lot of pictures with it on its side, with the bottles that I drink and on its upright. And I love this glass, and I love the way that you can hold it nice and put your thumb here. Without losing your liquid. Some people in Dingle were holding it like this, which I'm sure is fine, but I like that it's as long.

00:36:10
As you can hold it and drink out of it, that's all that matters. Right, yeah. Well, I need to cheers you, but I ran out of whiskey, so I'm going to try this pouchin. Okay. Pochin pouchin.

00:36:19
Pochin. Pochin, yeah. So your friendly hotelier here has provided you yes. With somebody named Tony, made this tony? Tony.

00:36:26
It's a famous brand of Tony. It's a moonshine pouchin. Okay. And is it a potato based one. Or I don't know.

00:36:34
Doesn't say.

00:36:38
We'll know what's in it. Isn't this like a yeah, it's a sparkling cider or sparkling water. So.

00:36:46
I mean, I don't know if. You'Ve seen on your travels, Kerry, in Ireland, but there also is a huge revival of pochein as a drink in Ireland. We discussed it heavily at Bar 1661, which is a protein bar. The terrific Dave Mulligan. Yes.

00:37:00
At the forefront of pushing protein in Ireland. And also Egan's, one of his partners. That's right. Moynahan or John. Ralph Madmark hair.

00:37:10
So cheers. Cheers.

00:37:14
Well, Rosie, thank you so much for spending your morning with us today. And this has been very educational. I love these glasses, and everyone who comes to my events will love these glasses as well. So thank you so much. Thank you.

00:37:26
Don't touch that device. We'll be right back with whiskey. Whereabouts.

00:37:32
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00:38:35
John Ralph, it is so wonderful to have you back on the show today. Thank you so much for taking time. Out of your travels to step in and talk to us here on Whiskey whereabouts. So tell me what has been going on with Mad March, Hare and 1661 since last we spoke? Yeah, Jesus, it's been a pretty busy year.

00:38:52
Well, I think now that we're finally throwing off the shackles of COVID from the last couple of years, it's giving us the opportunity to really get back out into the trade and speak to people. And we've been doing a bit of work in the US. Seeding the market, getting ready for a big push in 2024. We won a few nice awards. We picked up double gold at San Francisco again this year.

00:39:17
The brand itself continues to sort of win lots of claudits and awards from both the trade and consumer. We've had really interesting results in the US this year on e commerce as well, which really tells us that the consumer is ready to see this bar and see this brand out in the bars and out in the know, going slightly afield from the US. We've actually launched into the Japanese market and quite interestingly, Japanese consumers are sort of equating it to Irish Shochu. So Shochu being a white spirit that is well drunk in Japan and Chuhais. So that seems to be getting a little bit of an interesting traction, albeit from a small base, but we're a small brand, small category and we like to find these kind of niches where we can start to capitalize on and build some awareness.

00:40:08
And obviously most important has been the work we're doing back home here in Ireland. We've built out a larger team here in Ireland to really sort of help support the brand and help make sure that we are kicking ass in our home market. A lot of that is really driven by the work that Dave has done at 1660 116 61 continues to go from strength to strength, I think. When did you visit? It was last year, wasn't it?

00:40:38
It was last October. Yeah, last October. Had we won best Bar of the Year at that point or was it a fresh so we won best bar in Ireland last year. In the whole country. In the whole country.

00:40:50
And that's quite a know. We are known for our bars in this country. So, yeah, like, the previous year, I think we won best cocktail bar, but this year we won the best overall bar, which was a huge accolade. And I think it was quite interesting because we were in the final against not against, but we were up for the award with Conor McGregor's bar. It's the Black Forge in, I think it's called.

00:41:17
And we won. And funnily enough, knowing Conor McGregor, he wasn't up there shaking our hands or anything like that. He wasn't particularly sportsman like in his last but I know, I'm only kidding. It was an incredible award for the team at the bar. They just kick ass every day.

00:41:34
So, yeah, it's been quite exciting. But it's all part of this, I guess, the punching revival that we're all chasing. Right? So I've probably spoken to you at nauseam about it, but the other product we launched in Ireland last year, which is kind of like a joint venture between the bar and all of our punching brands. So both Dave and I own separate putchings.

00:41:58
So we own Mad March hair. And Dave owns Bourne. Right. So we created a brand together called Little and Green, and it's a premix cocktail, essentially, in a can. And Little and Green is actually the bar is on the corner of Little Britain and Green Street, so it's a cool little story behind it.

00:42:18
But the idea with that is to really take sort of punching consumption to that next level, right. So to really demystify it. And we've had just a phenomenal response to it this year. So we just did some really light seeding within the Irish market this year, but we're now planning a sort of major spring launch where we'll roll it out into national retail and potentially take it to the UK and Europe as well. That's fantastic.

00:42:44
And how many flavors do you have for the different cocktails with Green? So we developed three, we've launched two and we're hoping to get the third one out with the spring launch. Great. And what are the two that are on the market right now? So one is called Shady Bramble.

00:43:01
I love that. Which is a riff on the Bramble cocktail. So it's raspberries. It's a raspberry and a berry flavor is probably the best way to put it. A BlackBerry and raspberry.

00:43:10
There we go. And the other one is called Sneaky Orchard, and that is apples and pears and I think a hint of plum as well. So, again, it's all Irish sort of native fruit blended, mixed with punching and really well balanced. So it's like a perfect cocktail can. That's fantastic.

00:43:29
Yeah, we went next door, where they were kind of where the wall is full of.

00:43:39
Our other that's another business we have here in Ireland, myself and Dave. We're very fortunate to have actually built a new business during the Pandemic out of necessity. So it's a ready to serve cocktail brand called Craft Cocktails. So cuckoo Lane craft cocktails. And that brand has just gone from strength to strength.

00:43:59
It started during the Pandemic because we couldn't actually open the bar. So we turned the bar into a production line. And then as everything started to open up again, the brand actually really took hold. So post Pandemic, people still wanted it. So we ended up expanding next door into that facility you saw where we hand bottle and sort of craft with care.

00:44:21
Every bottle of craft cocktail. Yeah. It's a pretty cool little room. We actually interviewed Fanon O'Connor in there. Oh, right.

00:44:28
Okay. Very good. Yeah. So you're on the road right now, and are you promoting Mad Marcher right now or what are you promoting on this trip? This has been a big trip.

00:44:39
So we've just done a major deal in Japan, which our business we've got a reasonable business in Japan. One of our brands, Cocalero, is the number one liqueur by value in Japan. So we just did a major distribution switch there. So I was out there two weeks ago visiting our meeting with our new customer, getting set up for the big launch on the 1 November. I then came back here.

00:45:04
I was back in the office during the week, last week. Then we went down to the tax free show in Cannes. We were meant to be in BCB, in Berlin. But as you can hear from my voice, I decided I'll let the guys go to BCB. I'll come back to the office and get some work done, and then I'll head back to the US.

00:45:19
On Thursday. So it's been a bit of a whirlwind. Couple of weeks, put it mildly. Nice. And then how long will you be back in the States before you have to hit the road again?

00:45:26
Or is that indefinite right now? One week straight back to Japan because we have the official launch on the 1 November. So we're visiting our new partner, Kokabu Group. They have divisions across Japan, so we have to do kickoff meetings in each of the major divisions. So busy couple of weeks ahead, and I'll be looking forward to Christmas at this stage.

00:45:50
I can't believe we're actually already talking about Christmas. I know. I can't believe. Where did that come from? It's almost exactly a year since I was in Ireland the first time.

00:45:58
And then I went back in May to Belfast to the Titanic opening and see the stills being lifted into the jail for McConnell's. Excellent. Yeah. That was a much quicker trip. Yes, indeed.

00:46:15
I wasn't over the jet lag before I left. I know that feeling well, John, it's always good to catch up with you. I really appreciate your you know, we will talk again in the New Year and see what's going on with all of your businesses. Yeah. Looking forward to it.

00:46:32
Very good. Thanks, Gary.

00:46:36
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00:46:53
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00:47:19
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