Cask to Glass

"Whisky is for stories. Tequila is for jail,” jokes Chris Greta a Texan story hunter and advertising copywriter, who travels the world helping distilleries look past the stills and mash tuns to find the magic, whether it’s in people, the place, the birds, the trees, and the rivers.Chris doesn't just look for tasting notes; he looks for the “Capo d’ Astro bat", that hidden, unique detail that makes a distillery truly special. Whether it's an "inconvenient" distillery at the southern tip of the world, a rock that becomes a holy object, or the legendary "resistance cognac" hidden from the Nazis, Chris shares why the magic of whisky lies far beyond the machinery and process.In this episode, we explore:➡️ The Inconvenient Distillery: How making a weakness your biggest strength can create a powerful brand.➡️The "Whisky Stone": Why the water at McHenry Distillery is like a "vitamin for yeast."➡️ Belgrove’s "Holy St":** The incredible story of Peter Bignell and his homemade, sheep-dung-powered stills.➡️ Tasting History: Chris’s time in Scotland and the discovery of pre-war cognac.➡️ Selling the Sizzle: Why whisky companies often miss the most interesting parts of their own stories.Slàinte!-------Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie Creator & producer: David HolmesArt work & design: Jess Robertson Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)Vocals: Andrea CunninghamGuitars: John BeattieBass: Alasdair VannDrums: Alan HamiltonBagpipes: Calum McCollAccordion: Gary InnesMusic & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John BeattieRecorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland

Founding US President George Washington once said alcohol was a business for "scoundrels." So how'd he end up owning the largest whiskey distillery in the United States?Cue James Anderson, a Scottish farmer and 18th century expat.Join Scottish artist Ian Gray as he takes the whisk(e)y trail from Mount Vernon to Louisville; Lynchburg to Islay; Speyside to Shimamoto.Slàinte!-------Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie Creator & producer: David HolmesArt work & design: Jess Robertson Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)Vocals: Andrea CunninghamGuitars: John BeattieBass: Alasdair VannDrums: Alan HamiltonBagpipes: Calum McCollAccordion: Gary InnesMusic & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John BeattieRecorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland

If you love whisky, there are hundreds of distilleries across the world pursuing flavour based on passion, provenance and a “taste of place”. Just look "beyond the glens" and the global "big five", says award-winning indy bottler Georgie Bell from The Half Cut.“I know I’m on a Scotch whisky podcast,” Georgie Bell co-founder of indy bottlers The Half Cut chuckles, before pressing home her point. “It’s Scotch and, not Scotch or…” she insists.“Whisky is now made across the world, and there are passionate individuals who are making whisky to the quality of Scotch. You just have to take a look at the recent World Whisky Awards and who the award winners were.“Scotland was there of course, but there were distilleries all over the world who were racking up gold medals right? Taking home best-in-class prizes. And these distilleries across the world, they’re making whisky that’s at that quality, but they’re not trying to replicate Scotch.“They’re trying to make whisky that tastes of home to them; that has a sense of place. And that is very exciting because actually when you think about it, what you need to make whisky is grain, yeast and water. You need time. You need a lot of money. And you need patience.“Those six factors don’t have any geographical boundaries. You can make whisky across the world. You just have to have the “why not, what if” mentality to be able to bring that to light. And those are the distillers that we partner with at The Heart Cut”.Georgie’s been in the whisky business for 19 years; since she was a 19-year-old bartender in Edinburgh. She was a global whisky ambassador for eight years, four with Craigellachie.Two and half years ago Georgie and her husband Fabrizio Leoni started The Half Cut. (Three days later she gave birth to their twin daughters.)The name comes from “the heart cut of the distillation process,” Georgie explains. “When the spirit runs off that final spirit still, distillers never take the first bit of the cut. They never take the last bit of the flow because of the undesirable flavours. They’re just not the character they want the whisky to be, but they always take their prized half cut.”“The heart cut is different from distillery to distillery,” Georgie continues, “because of the way the spirit runs off the still. Different flavour congeners are going to come off at different times.“We chose the name The Heart Cut for our independent bottler because we’re working with distilleries to find these incredible gems of casks within their warehouses. Kind of those prized one-off casks that really show the heart and soul of that distillery.”Distilleries like Stuaning on the west coast of Denmark, which was the first distillery Georgie and Fabrizio partnered with.It was founded by a group of friends intent on making a “distinctly Danish style of whisky,” Georgie explains. “I think four of them were engineers. One was a doctor, one was a butcher, one was a teacher, one was a banker.”They had the water. They had the grain. But they didn’t have peat.“But,” Georgie continues, “what they do have is heather. And once a year, they cut down some of this heather and they put it in the kiln during malting and they create a heather-smoked single malt. A flavour, that because of the heather and where they are, can’t be replicated anywhere else in the world.”It's whiskies like Stauning, "whiskies with a story", that Georgie and Fabrizio are bottling. Others include Starward in Australia and Thomson in New Zealand, as well as Nc'Nean and Lochlea in Scotland.So as Georgie says, it's "Scotch and, rather than Scotch or..."Slàinte!-------Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie Creator & producer: David HolmesArt work & design: Jess Robertson Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)Vocals: Andrea CunninghamGuitars: John BeattieBass: Alasdair VannDrums: Alan HamiltonBagpipes: Calum McCollAccordion: Gary InnesMusic & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John BeattieRecorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland

Most Scottish whisky distilleries produce millions of litres every year.But Stirling Distillery?They produce what their owner, Cameron McCann, calls a "puddle."Yet in 2025 this tiny family operation won Best Scottish New Make Spirit at the World Whiskies Awards.Join John as he dives into how Scotland’s smallest distillery is beating the global giants, the 172-year history of their building, and their innovative approach to the future of spirits, including sustainable aluminium bottles. Plus, Cameron shares three "undervalued" whiskies that every enthusiast should track down right now. In this episode, we discuss:The "Becoming" of Stirling Whisky: Transitioning from Gin to Single Malt.How to attract 25,000 visitors a year to a tiny distillery.The reality of the current whisky market for small producers.Sustainability and the future of whisky exports.Cameron’s personal recommendations for bottles you should buy now.Slàinte!-------Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie Creator & producer: David HolmesArt work & design: Jess Robertson Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)Vocals: Andrea CunninghamGuitars: John BeattieBass: Alasdair VannDrums: Alan HamiltonBagpipes: Calum McCollAccordion: Gary InnesMusic & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John BeattieRecorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland

By day, Sarah Russell is “Miss Sarah”, an Australian primary school teacher in Adelaide. The rest of the time, she’s “That Whisky Girl”, an Instagram influencer and whisky podcaster breaking down barriers in a male-dominated industry.“I just wanted to get the girls going,” she tells John from Kyoto, Japan’s “cultural capital”, where she’s just back from visiting the Miyagikyo Distillery founded by Masataka Taketsuru, the Father of Japanese Whisky.“I got into whisky into whisky a few years ago,” Sarah says, “and I’ve just found that it’s a very male dominated field. And every time I go to whisky events, I’m usually the only girl or it’s a couple of girlfriends and they don’t really love whisky.“But I meet lots of girls who love whisky and they talk about how maybe they don’t feel so comfortable going to these events. So I just really wanted to get everyone into it.”“You know,” she continues, “it’d be fantastic to have a bit of a girls’ night out at a whisky event rather than just it being a bit of boys’ night thing. And I’ve met so many women who are whisky distillers in Australia and brand ambassadors and amazing bartenders. So I really just wanted to showcase everything they’ve got going on.”But she adds: “I feel anytime I'm in a whisky bar in Adelaide or at a whisky show the amount of times I've had people say, ‘Do you even like whisky? Do you even know how to drink whisky?’ Or I've had like men stop me and just be like, ‘This is how you drink whisky.’ I'm like uh-huh I know.”So at the start of the year Sarah launched a fortnightly podcast on Instagram called “She’s On The Rocks” to do just that.Sarah’s whisky journey started off with whisky and cola when she was younger. But as for whisky on its own, “I was like, nah, it's not for me. It's a bit burny.”Yet, while she found she “struggled with drinking it”, she loved the smell of whisky; liked nosing it. “So I just kept trying it,” she says. “And eventually it just clicked for me. One day I was like, ‘What is this? I love whisky now’.”But not just the taste.“It's the memories behind things and it's the experiences, it's the people. It's just such a wonderful community as well,” she explains.Join John and Sarah as they trade memories made over sharing a dram; discover Sarah’s three favourite Australian whiskies; and find out just how much heftier the Angels’ Share is in Australia compared to Scotland, which is why, Sarah says, “It’s so hard for us to get older age statements.”Slàinte!-------Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie Creator & producer: David HolmesArt work & design: Jess Robertson Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)Vocals: Andrea CunninghamGuitars: John BeattieBass: Alasdair VannDrums: Alan HamiltonBagpipes: Calum McCollAccordion: Gary InnesMusic & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John BeattieRecorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland

If you want to get David Thomson, co-founder of Annandale Distillery, started, just tell him, “You don’t make peated whisky in the south of Scotland.”“Yes, we do!” he’ll thunder.Then expect a wee history lesson.“If you go to Barnard’s book, The Whisky Distilleries of the United Kingdom,” he’ll tell you, referring to Alfred Barnard’s definitive whisky guide published in 1887, “you find that all four of the distilleries that were in the south of Scotland did make peated whisky.”“I mean,” David says of Annandale, “we live in a bog frankly, so why wouldn’t we make peated whisky? But you know that gets me to one of my sort of pet things, which is I really don’t like the kind of Lowland moniker that we get labelled with, because I don’t think it’s got very positive connotations. So I always think of ourselves as south of Scotland whisky."In 2007, David and his wife Teresa Church took over the derelict remains of Annandale Distillery, in Dumfries and Galloway in south west Scotland.Started in 1836 by an ex-excise officer, Annandale was taken over by Johnnie Walker in 1893, precisely because it made peated spirit.“The peated spirit they were getting previously,” David speculates, “was coming from Islay. So into a ship of some sort, onto the Clyde coast and then presumably by train to Kilmarnock. Whereas with Annan, they could simply take it to the train station and whip it up to Kilmarnock.”In about 1919, David continues, Johnnie Walker experienced “liquidity problems” and sold Annandale to a local farming family, the Robertsons, who made Provost Porridge Oats, and it ceased to be a distillery.Until 2007, when David and Teresa decided they’d buy and restore the derelict distillery.They didn’t have a background in whisky, but David was a specialist in food chemistry. And more importantly he's an expert in sensory psychology and sensory evaluation. In 1989 David and Teresa had started MMR Research Worldwide, a market research company for the food industry.With MMR behind them, they decided to identify a whisky profile that would set Annandale apart."If you ask people what sort of whisky they like, you're gonna get 101 different answers. Different people like different things even within the same quite tight product category," David explains. "But although you take 300 people, there's not 300 points of view. There's probably five or six points of view. And being able to identify these is quite important.""We were able to take expert tasters of any type of food, and we could look at the relationship between the sensory characteristics of the products and what people liked. So if you think of these different kind of liking segments, you can build a separate mathematical model for each liking segment, and then you can tell you clients how they should change the sensory characteristics of their product to make it liked more."David and MMR applied the "algorithm", as David calls it, to whisky. And they identified a flavour profile for peated and unpeated whisky which no-one else was doing. David gave the two profiles to his long-time friend Dr Jim Swan, the so-called "Einstein of Whisky", and asked him to design two whiskies that matched the profiles.After several iterations, Jim did just that. And in 2014 Annandale Distillery was back in production, producing its first new spirit in nearly 100 years.Join John as he chats to David about the rebirth of Annandale Distillery, guided by sensory science and data modelling. And discover how Scottish actor James Cosmo became the inspiration and face of Annandale's Storyman blended Scotch Whisky.Slàinte!-------Socials: @C2GWhisky | @JohnRossBeattie Creator & producer: David HolmesArt work & design: Jess Robertson Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)Vocals: Andrea CunninghamGuitars: John BeattieBass: Alasdair VannDrums: Alan HamiltonBagpipes: Calum McCollAccordion: Gary InnesMusic & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John BeattieRecorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland