Nuanced. - 82. Matthew James: Whisky Tasting & Reviews

Episode Date: October 24, 2022

Matthew James and Aaron Pete sit down to taste a variety of whiskeys and review them. They try the Macallen 12 year, GlenAllachie, Shelterpoint, Crown Royal Whisky, Brothers Bond, Tomatin Highland and Laphroaig. Matthew explains why the age of the whisky matters, adding spring water, letting the whisky sit, and different regions in Scotland. The two also discuss fishing, finding your passion and so much more.    Matthew is a local whisky aficionado(read: geek) Over the last decade he has developed a passion for learning about “Aqua Vitae,” otherwise known as the “water of life.” This has involved taking part in masterclasses from whiskey experts all over the world, pouring whisky at festivals throughout the lower mainland and generally trying whatever new whisky a he comes across. He has a particular interest in Single Malt Scotch, specifically from the Islay and Campletown regions.  Matthew is endlessly curious to learn and enjoys every opportunity he gets to share this passion with others.Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

My name's Matthew Tanner. I live here in Chilac, British Columbia. I'm a law enforcement professional. I won't say with what branch, but, and I'm also just someone who loves whiskey. I love so many various aspects of it from the nosing tasting and finished of drinking it to the history, to some of the culture behind it, the tradition, and how it's tied to the land and it's tied to the people. So in that way, it's fantastic. About myself, though, went to university at the University of Fraser Valley, much like you, I believe.

Yeah. Grew up, most of my life out here. I'm from the East Coast, but grew up West Coast, so kind of a fusion of two sides of Canada there. And I just love being outdoors. Just yesterday I was salmon fishing on her lovely Vedder River. Just before this was actually dropping off a salmon to my mom. She wanted a salmon. So I was like, okay, I'll grab you one. That is really cool. Yeah. So yeah, I just love the outdoors, kayaking, fishing, hiking, and this is the perfect place to be. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. The reason I was excited to have you on is because I enjoy whiskey. I just can't put words to why I enjoy it. Like, I like the heritage aspect of you, as you've

kind of alluded to. And it's so cool when people have like an interest, a passion, and to hear people share why they're passionate about it. That's sort of why I wanted to start this. So I was eager to have you on because you're one of those people where it's like you want to share your passion with other people. And I think this is just a perfect way to do it. So today, we are going to be trying a bunch of whiskeys. What other, what other names are there for them? gin? Gin is not a whiskey, but we're going to be trying lots of different whiskeys. I've brought some single malt scotch whiskey.

I've brought some blended malt scotch whiskey. Blends kind of get a bad wrap, some Canadian whiskey, some bourbon, some American whiskey, and even some Japanese whiskey. So we've got, we quite quit the smorgasbord of options here. Perfect. Do you want to start there, or do you want to tell us where this passion came about for you? Let's start with, let's dive into a dram here. Sounds good. So in front of you right now, you've got two single malt whiskeys, both aged for the same amount of time, 12 years.

Now, when you see an age statement on a bottle, that's the youngest whiskey in the bottle. That's not the age per se of the whiskey in the bottle. So by law, through the Scotch Whiskey Association, it can only be as young as 12. It can't be any older if it says 12 on the bottle. So we got Mac Allen, the Mac Allen, 12-year-old single malt, the double cask. In that glass, you got your hand on right now. And then next to it, we've got the Glen Aliki, 12-year-old. They're both space-side single malts from the same region of Scotland.

And they're both sherry either finished or matured. What does that mean? So the type of cask that the whiskey is dumped into once it's distilled. Oftentimes, it'll be virgin oak, most times ex-burbon. And second most commonly, I'd say, is sherry cask. And so it held, it's a cask that held sherry fortified wine. line from the Juarez area's region of Spain. I don't know the pronunciation. Not great on that. And that imparts some flavoring to the whiskey as well. Why does it matter the age? Age seems like a

big deal to people. Why does it need to sit there for 12 years? It doesn't have to. There are plenty of fantastic young whiskeys. That said, aging has many benefits. It can oftentimes round out a whiskey. It can take something that's harsh and unrefined and kind of smooth over those rough edges. You'll oftentimes have a whiskey go into the cask at a high percentage, so something more akin to around 65% off of the second distillation on the still, or if it's a two and a half or three times distillate a bit higher. And at least in Scotland, with their climate, over the years, that alcohol percentage will drop and it will continue dropping as well as the volume in the cask depending on how tightly sealed the cask is the type of wood they use in the cask again how well it's

coopered is a big part of it and so you'll lose liquid you'll lose alcohol percentage and that's referred to as the angel share of the whiskey which is i like that term so they take their share we're left with the rest and it can just it can pull out a lot of lot of different flavors. It can mute some flavors and bring up others. Oftentimes a sign of faulty whiskey can be the presence of a flavor like banana. Banana is often the mark, hallmark of a young whiskey. And if you find that, it's typically known as a fault, but if you like it, is it really a fault? I'm kind of out of the camp. If you like that kind of like foam banana candy's flavor, I don't. I hate it. Yeah, same. I like the strawberries, though. Yeah, those

The foam strawberries are fantastic. But the foam banana one, that's seen as a mark against a whiskey. And again, oftentimes a hallmark of young whiskey. So that flavor oftentimes will be removed after maybe four or five years, depending on how good the distal it is. That's fascinating. So what do you look for? You've said some, you've made some comments about the McCowan.

Yes. What are we talking about here? What is your view on the brand? Oh, man, on the brand. I don't like the branding. I don't like its placement as kind of that ultra luxury item. It's being marketed as like, this is what you drink if you've made it in life. This is what the suits drink on the show.

This is what... Community does the same thing. Yeah. The show. James Bond. In one of the most recent James Bond, he's drinking Matt Callan. They just announced the release of a new James Bond series of Matt Callan Whiskey's. going for ridiculous amounts of money because James Bond's preferred whiskey is the McAllen.

It's all distracting you from what's in the bottle. And what's in the bottle should kind of be what the highlight is. Do you enjoy the taste? Do you enjoy the smell? Do you enjoy what happens after you take a sip? Yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot that goes on with presentation. And that can add to an experience to you. I'm not discounting that.

but dolling up a bottle to look pretty oftentimes is a sign that they're trying to kind of play that cup game with you and say don't look here, look over here. And so oftentimes that's the case with McCowne. The McCowne used to be renowned as like the connoisseurs whiskey, that and like maybe Kleinleash. Client Leach still is.

However, it's dropped. It's dropped in quality over. the last couple decades kind of tied along with this strategy. So I'll say there's some things they do fantastic. They don't add colorant to their whiskey as far as I know, E150 colorant, which a lot of whiskeys do, a lot of brands do, which I don't like because you're trying to cover up who they are, not really presenting us with what they are. They're trying to trick us with that. No, this adds some brown colorant to it, so it looks more rich. So people will. buy it. Yeah. I'd rather you just present me what you have, and then I can decide whether or not

I like it. Do you care about color? Does that matter to you? No, because some of the best whiskeys I've had are as pale, like nearly water, like very light straw colors. Um, and some whiskeys, yeah, I'll admit, I've got, I've had some like color lest when I look at a whiskey, like, if you compare the colors of the Glenaliki to the McCallin, one is much darker than the other. And that can be indicative of whether it was a wet cask or a dry cask that they used, which there's some disagreement on that practice. But a wet cask is basically when the winery, the bodega in Spain that produced the sherry wine, they might leave some in the barrel that may or may not be dumped out controversially. It also can be just that they had the

cast delivered from the bodega in Spain, and it didn't sit around at all, they just filled it up with whiskey almost immediately. So a lot of wine influence in there, because with the casks, and it's the sort of phenomenon called cycling, that wine, it gets pulled into the wood grain of the cask. And so it becomes almost part of the cask itself. The whiskey has the same process happened to it when seasons change, when temperatures go from hot to cold. The whiskey can be pulled into the grain. When it cycles back to the next season, it can be pulled out. It's in and out, in and out, taking out a lot of different flavor compounds, including that wine that was added to it beforehand. So it can be a sign of quality casks, so ones that haven't been reused a bunch of times

as well, the color. So for instance, if it's really light, that could be the sign of it being a second, third, or fourth refill sherry butt or other type of casks. There's a few different types of casks. And so if that's the case, tired cask won't have as much impact on the whiskey. It won't help round out some of those rough edges, as we've talked about earlier. It won't impart a lot of the flavors you'd expect from a sherry cask. So if you're looking for them, you might be a little disappointed. That makes sense.

Which one do you want to try the mackal in first? Yeah, it's lower in percentage at 43%. So I'd start there. Doesn't it say 40? I think it's 40? Oh, no, it's 40. Okay. Is that bad?

Let's have a sip and we'll talk, yeah. Slencha. What did you just say? Slantia. What does that mean? It's Gaelic or I'd say Scott's Gaelic. Slencha. Slunga.

Yeah, or slunge. Okay. Is it the equivalent of cheers? It's equivalent of cheers. It just means good health to your health. Slantia. that does feel different when it sits for a bit what does that mean oh what's the process what are you supposed to do am i supposed to leave it in my mouth for a while what's the etiquette some people like to try and go a second in the mouth for every year it's been aged some people do that i don't know the science behind that i will tell you when pouring in in the glass my rule of thumb typically is to let it rest one year in the glass for every year in the cast It's an easy way to remember it.

When I pour like a 30-year-old single malt whiskey, I usually let that sit for a half hour, longer if it's cast strength. It just needs some time to open up. Because oftentimes it'll be quite closed. If you try to nose it, you'll get maybe some more ethanol, and then you let it rest. You come back to it later.

You'll start picking up new and other flavors or aromas. That'll be a challenge in the podcast, because I don't know which one they're going to want to drink. Yeah. So I'd have to, like, pour it for them and then be like, don't touch it until for 30 minutes. That's interesting. Yeah, it's not a hard and fast rule. It's a best practice. If something's been open longer, too, you have some airspace in this Mac Callan 12.

Same with the Glenaliki 12 there. That helps too. Oxidation is an effect that impacts whiskey. If you have an open bottle, the whiskey itself will change as you have that bottle open over time. So the neck pore, scientists disagree on the neck fore theory. In my personal experience, I think it's a real thing because nothing necessarily chemically changes with the whiskey. I mean, the process of it being exposed to oxygen after being locked up tight with a cork on it for so long, I think it impacts the whiskey. I think it takes a little bit out of its impact. Yeah. Oftentimes is a good thing. Just like something being made with love. Like you could be like, well, technically, it's just like mac and cheese. Yeah.

But when it's made with, like, extra care, you feel that and you taste it. I think you do. Yeah, you can't point to it and say, this is the ingredient we add it. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So what makes a good smell? Whatever you enjoy. The best whiskey is always whatever you enjoy, how you enjoy to drink it, right?

Yeah. And so for this right now, because I know Matt Callan is known for their sherry finishing or sherry maturation, I'm looking for hallmarks of that. So I'm looking for a bit of spice or clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, these sorts of things. I'm also looking for dark fruits. I'm looking for perhaps some nuttiness depending on the type of sherry they use, whether it's Olerosa or Pedro Jimenez or any type of other sherry too. Because there's a number of different types of sherry, Montiato, so on, so forth.

So I'm looking for different hallmarks and whether or not they pulled it off well. How bold are they balanced in their presentation? Because sometimes if you get smacked in the face with one aroma, one flavor, that outshines everything else. And even if there was a whole bunch of things that were well done with it, it becomes like a one-trick pony. And it can be enjoyable, but it could have been a whole lot better. That's what I heard about when you go and try colognes.

They give you coffee beans to like refresh your nose palette. Resets your palate. Do you do that at all with whiskey? I do when I'm getting real serious about it. Do you? Yeah, absolutely. I'll grab some ground coffee beans. I'll use that to kind of reset my nose.

How does a day work when you're doing this? Like, what is the process? Do you just sit down by yourself and go through this? Yeah, do you write about it? I'll sit down, I'll close the door. I've done some reviews online. There's a lot of good communities in Reddit, a lot good sub-communities. I engage just with people online, just chatting.

I also do some online whiskey tastings with certain groups across Canada. Really? Yeah. That's cool. Virtual tastings. And so you'll have a couple hundred people or actually usually not quite that large, but I think the largest one I've done is about a hundred and a bit. And you'll be just sharing tasting notes in the comments.

You'll have people leading you through it. And you'll have, say, somewhere between like four to eight whiskeys that you're going through. And it's very quick. And so I will oftentimes use coffee beans to. reset my nose in between whiskeys on that because I want to figure out if I actually like this whiskey and if I want to spend some harder in cash on it too. Interesting. So how do you rate the McAllen? What is what's the conclusion? It's great, it's a great starter whiskey. I kind of gaffed at the 40% notion of it because that is the bare minimum you can bottle a whiskey

at. If you bottle any sort of whiskey spirit below 40% and no, longer is whiskey. Legally. What does it become? It would become a malt spirit. It was what I would suggest. It's a good question. I think I've seen it as malt spirit or malt beverage.

But it can't be called whiskey, at least in Canada, in Scotland. I believe the United States is similar. Japan, Ireland. So there's a lot of rules around whiskey. So you don't buy malt spirit? Like, I've never heard somebody go, I'm going to the store for malt spirits. Yeah, it's a similar thing with young whiskey. So in Canada, whiskey has to be at minimum three years of age before it can be called whiskey.

Before that, it's malt spirit. And so you'll have distilleries like McEloney-Calladonian or whatever they've had to change their name to now, unfortunately. They were releasing whiskeys under the age of three years old because they said, no, this is good whiskey. We've done a good job with it. We want people to taste it and try it and get excited about what we have for the future. And so they went ahead and they were releasing malt spirit. So they couldn't call whiskey. Right. Wow.

So, so Mac Allen, back to like what I think about it, it just could be so much better. And maybe I should just focus on what it is as opposed to what it could be. But when they've proofed it down, they've added water basically to the whiskey that came out of the cask. They added water to it and then they bottled it. When I see it at the floor at 40%, it means they're trying to stretch it out to make the most money that they can. They're not trying to present to you the best whiskey they can. So it's all about numbers. It's all about making money.

And I think they can make a lot more money, possibly, if they opt it to about 46% ABV as opposed to 40. Interesting. They wouldn't lose that many extra bottles. They could charge a bit extra for it, I believe. I think people would get on board with that. So, I mean, it's tough to say a whiskey is a bad whiskey. And I don't know how many bad whiskeys I've ever had. If someone offers you Mac Allen 12, I'll drink it for sure.

I enjoy it. But there's just so many more things I enjoy more. And my liver can only take so much. So I'd like to drink other stuff other than McAllen. If you had to give it a rating, is there like a process? Like a numerical or a alphabetical. Oh, which one do you want to go down? I don't know.

The numbers are probably easier for them? I think one to ten is a good way. Because I've seen a lot of people with like wine Like you'll see like oh 97 point wine What does that even mean? Is it like 97% sounds like it's going to be the best wine That's ever been made before I've never seen like a wine with an 80 point rating

Yeah or a one Yeah and whiskey it's the same sort of thing It kind of gets range bound between like 70 and like 95 or 97 I've never seen someone rate something in 100 So can we define what is one Because you're never going to have a whiskey that's undrinkable So what is a one? What are we going to say? That's why I don't use the 1 to 100 if I'm rating.

I like the 1 to 10. So I don't know if I've ever had a 1. Undrinkable. I spew it from my mouth in the moment it's in there. I would imagine it's something that bad. I imagine 5 being entirely adequate. It's good. You drink it if offered.

There's no obvious flound. bolts to it, it's done what it's set out to do, what it promised on the label. That would be five. If something is delivering that same sort of thing, but at a really good value, I'd give it a six. If something is a cut above the rest, probably seven, outstanding eight, nine, fantastic, and ten would have to be mind-blowing. Yeah, like you couldn't, you would only drink this moving forward. Yeah. That's your drink choice now. Yeah. Interesting.

So for the McAllen, if I was giving that a rating, I'd probably give it a four. Okay. Just because I think the value proposition is out of whack. Because the Glen Aliki 12 is about, depending where you buy it, it's about 30 to 60% cheaper. Wow. And I think it just delivers so much more. Interesting. So a one will say is if I tried to make whiskey and give it to people, that would be a one.

Sure. I don't know how to make whiskey. I think you might be able to do him a better job. I don't know. I don't know. So this is the one you like, and it's called Glenn Alliki. Yeah. Is it by the same people who do Glenn Grant?

And why is the word Glenn so common? So Glenn is just a Scotsky Alec word for valley. Wow. So if you see, in this case, Glenn Aliki means the valley of the rocks. And so I'm guessing it's just a very rocky valley. I'm sure there's a river running through it, like a lot of valleys. And it's just known for a lot of rocks, I suppose. interesting so this is one thing we learned about at a brewery in salt spring islands was this idea that you try and get fresh spring water and you want to be near like an ecosystem that has like healthy water in order to put into your drink is that the same kind of concept well any any any distillery any brewery any any drink manufacturing business they would need a water source they probably want a good water source um and

that water source is going to impart some character on it, I think more so for beer than whiskey. When you get into the concept of Torwar in whiskey, it can be a little tricky because a lot of people think it's bogus. If you're talking about like the malt that's grown on a certain area being different from the malt barley, I should say barley not malt. The barley grown in a certain area being different from another area, can you taste that in a product that's been distilled, that's been stripped down in its actual process, whereas brewing, you don't have that distillation part of it. You have, obviously, you have your mash, and you have the wart and everything else there,

but you don't take that extra step after the fermentation to go to distilling. And so you might notice it more in an beer. However, obviously, mineral content is going to have some sort of impact. I don't know what. a lot of in Scotland a lot of the water sources will be kind of like tea colored they'll have kind of a staining to it because they're filtered through peat peat moss and so peat has a very distinct flavor to it and I've been told through people who've had it that they can taste peat in water sources so if you're using a peaty water to start out with that might introduce some

peat into the final product what is pete so pete is basically like if you Think of like bog or marsh. So the kind of decayed vegetal matter, so whether it's heather, it's flowers, ferns, if you're a coastal area, seaweed, that decayed vegetation below the surface, that's in a sort of a low-lying bog area. And if the water is filtering through that, then you might have some flavor imparted from that. And also Pete is used in something like the Lerfroid quartercasts there. into the Ben Romick here, 10-year-old. Pete, because wood wasn't always accessible in places like Scotland,

for malting their barley, because they'd have to dry out their barley in the malting process in some way, they would use peat instead of wood to kiln their, to run their kiln, and to dry out their barley during the multing process, that introduces a lot of phenols to it. It's a lot like smokiness. which when you talk about smoky scotch, that will typically come from burning peat to malt the barley. And those cogeners and all these chemical compounds,

they will attach themselves to the barley, and that goes into the distillate, and that can come through the distillate. This is so crazy. The process in order to make something, like every piece of it goes into, like, making one drink, and you have to consider all of these things. Does it take, like, a long time to learn about just one?

And, like, obviously, you build up, like, a knowledge base. But, like, it seems like there's so much to know about each piece of the puzzle in order to understand, like, the final product. Like, it's like, you have to understand the history, the ecosystems, the people who worked through it, what they used to contain it. Like, it seems like a very complicated process. I suppose if you're, like, onboarding from the ground floor. Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's a bit overwhelming, which I think is why you see so many videos on, like, YouTube or so many articles online from websites.

saying like what you need to know, the 10 things you need to know about whiskey or the 10 things you need to know about single malt scotch whiskey. I think it's just one of these processes where it's just layering. You just start at the bottom and you layer and you layer and you layer and you get more and more into the minutia. And then after you get say an idea for single malt,

then you can go and focus on regions and within those regions and you can focus on distilleries. And once you're distilleries, you can look at the, you can get down to lightly peted, medium peted, unpeated, heavily peted whiskeys, but also in different cask finishes, ex-burbon, sherry, rum, so on and so forth. And you can just kind of go into H1, and then you can even look at like a big impact on a petted whiskey oftentimes is the cuts. So when they're running the stills, how wide their cuts are will determine how much phenols will come through from that pete, a lot of the smokiness.

That's one of the things that determines it, as does the height of the stills. So then you can start looking at the height of the stills. But the cuts, if they're narrow cuts, you'll have a less petted whiskey, even if the malted barley had a higher phenol count on it going into it, because they took a very narrow slice of the distillate at the, basically, the prime time of the distalate run. If they widened it and went further into the heads and to the tails to the beginning of the run and the end, end of the run, you're going to get more smokiness out of that. And you're also going to get some off flavor, sometimes like some funkiness, some industrial notes.

These sorts of things might have like, uh, might have, uh, something reminiscent of like an oily, like garage or something like that if you smell it. Um, it's really quite complicated. And it can, like I said, be a bit overwhelming, uh, the start of the process. And so I think you just build, build, build, build. And then you kind of can focus in. And then once you think you've got a good handle that, you can kind of jump to the next step. If we could smack talk wine drinkers, which one do you think is more complicated to learn long term?

Because wine drinkers sort of remind me of what you're kind of describing, but like, to a, like, I don't know, they seem more prissy. Maybe they are. I don't know. Whiskey drinkers are pretty opity and prissy, too. I don't know. I guess it just depends on the individual. I'd love to smack talk wine drinkers, but I have a huge respect for them because I think the differences in whiskey, I think, are easier to tell than the differences in a lot of wine bouquets. Like, if I'm, if I'm nosing a wine, I don't know where to go sometimes with it. I can get to, like, sometimes I can nail the varietal if I'm doing it blind, but I'm, I'm lost. I'm lost in what I should be expecting. I think wine might be a little more complicated.

There's so many different varietals. Like, how many types of grapes are there? There's a ton of different grapes. Wine, I think, has a lot more emphasis on Turwar as well, because they can even look at, okay, this is this a clay soil that these grapes are growing in? Is that suitable for this varietal of grape? That, because it's not distilled, I think you get a lot more of those differences coming out. And so, like, there's people that I've seen on, like, the Psalm documentary.

or they're like picking out yes this is this varietal from this region of the world and it was in this type of soil it's like what so i mean have you seen the documentary sour grapes i haven't yet okay it's all about how like people think that they're getting like this highest quality wine and it's really like just normal wine oh i love it and these people got it wasn't jeff bezos but it was a really wealthy person who got like ripped off because they thought they were buying like one rare I think like Lincoln wine and they didn't even realize that it wasn't any of those things

so it's just a normal wine so what am I looking for? What would you rate this before I drink it? The Glenalchi So what you're looking for in the nose I'd say there's definitely some spicing there

there's some prune so some sort of like dark Dark fruits. Oftentimes for prune for me, I think of almost like stewed. Stude dark fruits. Like if you, if you ever had like a jam made of like mashed or like boiled prunes, I think that's what I get for stewed. Oh, okay. Stude prunes. So there's a jamminess. There's also a bit of apple on the nose. But for taste, I get, I get sherry wine. I get again, spicing some cinnamon. I get some chocolate, some milk chocolate. Wow. in there, especially on the finish, as it's just rolling over the tongue.

This is higher an alcohol percentage, so there is a bit more bite. Yeah, I just felt that. You felt that? Yeah. Yeah. And you might not be able to taste a lot on your first few sips. Yeah, because you have to let that kind of ease in. Yeah, alcohol can anesthetize your tongue.

And it kind of, there's this thing with alcohol. Like, the burning sensation is your body telling you. you're drinking poison, basically. That's the way I think of it. And so your body's telling you, stop, don't do this. Please know. And eventually it gives up. A lot of people don't know that a hangover is actually just alcohol withdrawal.

Is it actually? Yeah. So like when you have like a hangover, your body is just like aching for alcohol to get out of that withdrawal process. Oh, wow. Okay. And so a lot of people don't realize that. That's wild.

Yeah. I always kind of associate it with like, dehydration, but... It's in part of that, because when you have so much sugar, like if you're drinking really sugary drinks that you're going to be dehydrated as well, but that process is your body fiending for alcohol. It's been a long time since I've been hungover,

but, man, I got the most banging headaches off of a wine hangover. Yeah. All that sugar. Yeah. We just did jello shots a couple weeks ago. Oh, yeah? Just because we got the Skittles jello maker, and then we were like, we've got to do jello shots of skills and it was really good but we didn't do enough and then we had a bunch of water after i'm sure it was good part of you though it was it was it was a good

get together and people never really have that so it's like a good opportunity i think it's important when you're having people over to try something new with them because then it like it brings you all together you share like an experience i think that's a great that's a great way to look at it and um it always brings something new and i think yeah um new experiences are something that's supremely life giving yeah like We often try and do, I don't know if you've experienced this, but like when you do gift giving, you'll get them like a hundred dollar thing and then they'll get you a hundred dollar thing and then you go like, what's the point in this? But it's like if you could both pool that money together and go, let's make a memory. Like, let's have a story that we'll tell in five years about how crazy and how silly we all were having fun together.

Like that's way more worthwhile than I bought you like this item for $100 and then you put it in your garage because you didn't really need it. Yeah, I would agree. 100% I think that's why I kind of veer towards experiential gifts too like if I know that person's going to enjoy this concert I'd love to get them tickets to that or even go with them and make that memory with them exactly yeah and then you're proud of something and then you can tell that for the next 20 years absolutely awesome so what are your thoughts on this Glen Alonkey 12 it's a little bit stronger I'd say than the Mac Allen 12 and so that that kind of punches you in the face but like are you getting any any sort of tastes off it yeah so it's smoother so it actually feels like good on my tongue in comparison like i notice that it feels good in my mouth interesting is a weird thing to say so i think i have a theory about that it does it feel a little more viscous like maybe a little fuller not not quite as thin yeah yeah okay so the glenaliki is um it's

not, it's natural color for one, as I mentioned earlier, but it's also not chill filtered, unlike the McCallon. The McCallin's chill filtered. So to kind of unpack that, chill filtration is a process where they cool down the whiskey and then they basically force it through a bunch of filters. I think they're typically cardboard or paper. Either way, they're pushing it through these filters. And they do this because If you have a whiskey below 46% alcohol and it gets cold, if it hasn't been chill filtered, it'll turn cloudy. And whiskey drinkers, or at least the companies, they believed that whiskey drinkers didn't want cloudy whiskey. They wanted clear whiskey.

Clear was a hallmark of quality. But what they're doing is they're stripping out all the oils, a lot of the oils that carry a lot of flavor in the whiskey, and that contribute a lot to the body of whiskey. and basically they're neutering the whiskey. They're taking off like 10, 20% of the flavor in the whiskey. And again, there's disagreement on this. Some people say it doesn't matter. I feel like I can tell the difference between chill filtered and a non-chill filtered whiskey. I think a lot of it comes across in the metal field.

Because, again, if you're taking the oils out of the whiskey, they carry a lot of the fats, which carry obviously a lot of flavor. I think I just want my whiskey out of the barrel. and if you think it drinks at a lower percentage, like 46%, add the water you need to blend it down to the point where you think it drinks the best. You're the whiskey makers, you probably know best. But I don't want you to be stripping things out of it.

I think it's probably better before that. I think you might be getting that on the mouth field. Maybe that's why I feel smoother. Yeah, it feels like stronger and more, yeah, not like it's thicker, which is interesting. And then when you're describing that, it makes me think of, like, people hate sweating. And they view sweating as like a bad sign. But sweating is actually incredibly good for you.

And it gets out heavy metals out of your body. It's how you actually lose weight is through sweating and through heavy breathing. And so, like, a lot of people don't realize the benefit of kind of going through those processes. Yeah, I feel absolutely disgusting when I sweat. But, no, I mean, like, it's a point. Like, you know you're doing hard work when you're sweating. If I'm running around at work and I'm sweating, it probably means I actually earned my pay for once. Yeah.

And, like, do you ever do sauna or anything like that? I've done sauna. You ever been to the Scandinave spa up in Whistler? No, we go to Luna float right here. Oh, Luna float. Nice. Yeah. So they have a sauna in there.

They have a halo therapy and a float tank and then this thing called Neurospa. So we love the sauna because then it's like, oh my gosh. Like, think of, and like you feel lighter afterwards, which is curious. Interesting. I like like some weight's been taken off your shoulders. Yeah, like you just carry stress and just seeing all that sweat come out, and then you come out and you like inhale that fresh breath of air. Yeah.

And you're like, whoa, like, yeah, we always just feel like rejuvenated afterwards. Nice. I enjoyed doing the sauna the few times I've done it. The one that I'm familiar with, they usually, it was like a eucalyptus sauna or whatever. So, like, you know, you take a breath and a deep breath. And you can really catch yourself. You might start. coughing and so you really have to be mindful of controlling your breathing and um it it is it is an

interesting feeling up there they do um i guess it's like hydrocycling where you go like cold hot cold hot um and you have rest periods in between and that was super relaxing um and i definitely felt um lighter but also just tired after doing that the mixture of cold shock proteins and heat shock proteins are really interesting so like um tim actually enjoys doing like ice cold showers because and like doing ice baths are like a huge kind of movement going on right now because you get like exposure and your body gets stronger and you realize you're capable more than you thought you were which I think is like rejuvenating in and of itself is like you don't think you could handle the ice cold water you always go like no it's too cold

and then when you actually endure it and you sit there for a few minutes I think you gain like self-respect yeah you're like capable I know one of the guys at work um is is huge into that And he's been wanting to get his own, like, chamber or whatever to be able to do that, like, at his house. But I think he just, yeah, he, I know this past January, he went and did, like, kind of like, a polar bear swim up the Harrison Lake. Oh, man. I did that once, one time only. I was like, no, that's enough. Enough for me.

Yeah, it's super interesting to see people actually take care of themselves in those ways. Because, like, I think that that's something we really struggle with. I just interviewed a lady and we're talking about like financial stress, like understanding inflation, how to have those conversations because we carry like a lot in a day and we don't do anything to kind of like relieve that stress, that fear that like I working in the band office now and like seeing people. It's like I got to meet people who have like four people to one bed in our community. Like they have to sleep perpendicular to the normal way you sleep in a bed so everybody can sleep on. on the bed because they have nowhere else to go. And so people carry a lot of stress and we're pretty bad at taking care of ourselves. And you're not funded for saunas or ice baths and stuff.

You're funded for just pharmaceuticals that absolutely those play a role. But how do you proactively take care of yourself, which is running saunas, stuff like that? Self care. Yeah. And we're not very good at that. We're not very good at making time to take care of ourselves. And I think a lot of people in the situation also, they probably put those that they care for ahead of themselves. And what happens when you break down and the people that you've been taken care of and rely on you.

Can't rely on you anymore because you've just been too rough on yourself. There's a study I'm actually writing an article about, and it shows that people are more likely to renew and maintain their pets medication before their own health. I believe that. Which is just, like, crazy because it's like, if you die, who's going to take care of your pet? Right? Yeah. Yeah, it's counterintuitive when you think it through. But in the moment, it's, I don't know, I feel like people, they feel the need to care for others.

And maybe that makes them feel better as well. But, yeah, you think that you would have the foresight to be like, no, I need to stop and I need to take time for me. But sometimes I understand that can be a luxury as well. How does this impact you? It seems like this interest kind of rejuvenates you and gives you energy and fuel. And that's sometimes I think, like, people don't get that. That, like, actually having an interest of your own that you're proud of and that kind of, like, excites you, carries into the other things you have to do in the day, taking out the trash, putting the dishes in the dishwasher.

Like, knowing you get to do something that you enjoy is, allows all those other responsibilities, tasks to become like a lighter load. Has that been your experience? Yeah, absolutely. I think there's, for whiskey, I think it's this way of drinking whiskey, you really slow life down. I think it's important to slow down and to think and to have contemplative moments. So like if you're having a glass and reading a book or having a glass and scrolling Insta, if that's what you need in that moment, I think that's definitely a rejuvenating thing. And for me, yeah, it can be part of self-care. Anytime alcohol is involved, you have to be very careful. You have to be very careful not to overuse, not to abuse, and to be responsible with it. But I think, as in like just having a glass of wine every now and then, I think there is that aspect of self-care, just taking some time for yourself. And it can renew and help launch you into your day or into your week if you're, say, partaking on the weekend. And I find that with my other other hobbies too.

Like if I'm out fishing, yesterday out fishing for salmon and I was only up there for I think three hours, but that helped launch me into the rest of my day. I was feeling great when I got back from the river. Being out in nature obviously has that sort of effect for a lot of people. But yeah, I think diving into something and really trying to get to the heart of it and not master it, but just constantly trying to get better at it. I think that's part of it too, because there's something creative in that. You're creating something inside yourself.

I'm not a terribly artistic person. I struggle with that. I cannot draw a straight line to save my life. That's not what I'm about. And my artistic sensibilities are more print than, say, like, poetry or something like that. I'll dabble in that, but I'm not going to paint you a picture. I'm not going to sculpt a sculpture. And so I think it's building that knowledge base inside you or that appreciation for something.

That can be, you know, that's creative in its own way. And so I think that's a positive thing. Do you think that Tim talks about this? Like, he's really interested in just heritage stuff, things that have been around for a long time. So, like, he enjoys leather work, he enjoys old whiskey, he enjoys learning about that side of the world. And, like, those past interests, things that last long. time. We don't have work boots that last a long time anymore. Everything's kind of like it's got to be new. It's not like we pass things on to our children anymore. Is that something

you also enjoy? I think so. I know when I'm looking at, like, I loved history. I still love history. Study history in university. And those antiquarian sort of things, they are really fascinating. The more hands-on approach to processes is really fascinating, too. So they Yeah, like if I find an old way to catch fish, like an old style. I write a book from like the 1940s on, 40s or 50s on greased line fishing. And it was using horse hair line to fly fish for salmon or steelhead. But you had to use kind of like a grease on the line in order to get float because it's not one of these polymer fly lines that naturally floats. And so it was an old way of doing it.

And I know there's very few people who still do it. And something about that, like, it draws me. And whiskey, yeah, similar thing. Like my favorite distillery, I'd say everything is old. The distillery, some parts of it are held together with duct tape and it's leaking all over the place. And everything is done by hand. Its hand processes, almost none of it's computerized on like some of the more modern distilleries. That appeals to me for sure.

It feels more genuine and more honest. And that distillery is also one of the few family-owned distilleries still in Scotland. Really? Yeah, there's very few of them. Springbank is the one I'm referencing. And they're just, they're known for that old style. So, yeah, I think how things used to be done and done for the sense of quality. Yeah, that appeals to me for sure.

You? Yeah, absolutely. I don't think I realized it. Like, I've developed a passion for whiskey through watching suits. And just growing up with it. very little made me want to know what the other half lives like, like what the 1% live like. And that's kind of my exposure to whiskey is like, I've never enjoyed beer. I don't really understand why people pride themselves on drinking like 15 beers in a night. Like,

that sounds like a lot of work and a lot of going to the bathroom to me. I'd rather try one thing that has a much more potent effect that you can have a story about, have an understanding of and you're doing it like one sip not I don't know whatever a keg stand is and like all these things where you have to do so much work to drink a lot of it in order to get the effect like that seems bizarre to me when people like explain that so that's what it has appealed to me is like I want to be able to sit in a in a nice room with leather chairs relax read a book and drink a glass of whiskey like that is where my mind goes beyond again whatever people who drink a lot of beer like to do.

Yeah, I would kind of echo some of that sentiment too, because where I started with my whiskey journey, it kind of evolved through university out of, like, craft beer. And for me, I never understood, like, drinking a whole bunch of, like, Budweiser or Alexander Keats or something like that.

And, you know, just going out your mind and getting drunk and falling over and feeling gross the next day. That's never been what I'm about. And so, for craft beer, it was like, this is focused on like flavor and quality and exploration that's one thing i loved about craft beers like they're all doing like such like strange things they're trying to one up each other they're getting real out there i know rogue brewing down in uh oregon at one point they made a beard beer which was they harvested yeast from the brewmaster's beard and used that as their yeast

to make the beer what yeah that is gnarly that was one step too far for me I didn't try that one. Yeah, fair enough. I'm curious now, so I probably should have. Yeah. But, yeah, so, like, stuff like that. Like, push the envelope, explore, have fun. And, yeah, I want to try something that tastes good.

Or possibly, like, in the case of whiskey, like, ties me back to the land. If I'm drinking something like LeFroid Quarter Cask, like, I find myself Oceanside most times. If I'm drinking something that's peaty and is used coastal peat in that process, I will find myself like on the ocean by a dock pier or something or on a boat surrounded by seaweed and shellfish and campfire like campfire on the beach like it's evocative it brings me to a place and my favorite people who write tasting notes they do that sort of thing i find um women are actually much better at tasting notes than than a lot of guys because they seem to have I've generalized maybe too much, but they seem to have this, like, amazing skill to call back to a time in place in their life that that thing reminds them of.

And then there's usually a story attached to it. And it's just like, my gosh, you have an amazing mind. On a site called Malt Reviews, there's a reviewer. I think her name is Catherine. She does a fantastic job of that. And I read almost every one of her articles because of that. I'm like, you put me in a setting, and I appreciate it every time. That is really beautiful, and I agree with you.

Rebecca is way better at recalling, like, the details of a memory. I can be like, yeah, I remember that. And she'll be like, what, do you remember how we were like on this side of the road? And, like, the night was like this. And it's just like, no, I didn't know. I was thinking of those things specifically. But now that you say it, yes, I agree with you. Yeah.

I'm much better at recording the moments. Like, on Instagram, we have, like, a bunch of stories saved. And it's like, that is my skill set. In the moment, we're doing something hilarious. I'm going to recording it and making sure we document it. You guys were over to Salt Spring recently, yeah? Yeah, and that was, that, traveling is like, you need to get good at it. It's a skill like anything else.

And I don't think people realize that because you get in the rat race. We went to Hawaii. It's one of our first ever big trips together. And we had a mediocre time. It was not what we thought it was going to be. But we were checking other people's boxes very effectively. Like, we were like, we need to go lay down to the beach and take photos of us being at the beach. Then we need to go on the tour of the island.

And then we need to take photos of all the spots that we were. And we just, we very much checked the boxes of like, if you go on TripAdvisor, the top ten things you need to do when you visit Hawaii. And we weren't really doing what we actually enjoyed doing. And so we forgot to, like, have an experience. And so Salt Spring Islands was like a huge moment of like, we're going. we were doing the Sydney whale watching tour, which was all about like trying different foods, trying different flavors.

And we just really got to focus on it. And there's this weird line, but having a video camera in front of you, to me, makes me more intentional with the experience. Like if nobody's recording me, I might try the chip and the cheese on top. And I go, not bad.

But then when Rebecca's like got the video camera out and it's a part of Indigenous tours in BC, she goes like tell me like what it tastes like well what is what stands out to you and then it's like oh okay well like this is very sweet and like the mixture with the salt is like I have to think it through more thoroughly than I would if it was just me by myself eating it and just going like okay it's cheese anyways and so there's a huge benefit to that but obviously it's dangerous because you don't want to just live for somebody recording your viewpoints on things and so it was an amazing experience because we got

to hear a lot of the things you're talking about. These people have been doing this for 40 years. They moved here. They got away from their life in New York, wanted to relax and start a cheese business. And now it's like a multi-million dollar business that's shipping cheese across all of North America. Unreal.

They're very successful. But they have this distinct process. And they couldn't do goats on the land anymore because they were having such demand. So now they have the goat cheese shipped in. And then they're able to make it from there. And it's like, it's all very close. complicated, but the people there actually care about the quality of experience you have.

And when you go to McDonald's too much or Subway or these plates, they don't care. And to be in a place where people are like, no, I actually want your feedback because we're working on a new recipe and we want to see what people like. Oh, it actually matters what I think. It's like, that's a very reinvigorating process to share that with other people and give it to them as a gift and say, here's a souvenir. It's not a T-shirt of something about Salt Spring Islands. It's actual food.

Give it a try. Let us know what you think you can order online. And then you're supporting the business. You're giving someone an experience. Like, it's all very wholesome in its kind of outcome. So, yeah, it was a really good trip. Fantastic. I love their sidery there, Salt Spring Island sidery.

Yeah, we have some in behind. Have you tried that one? Which one is it? So it's called bitter orange rosemary. And it's 7%. And it is their most popular one. I think that would work really well. Um, that mix. I can see why they went that direction. Um, the herbaceousness of the rosemary, the citrus of the orange, some bitterness in there too. I can see why that would be popular. Yeah. Their name is so funny too. So they're called Salt Spring Wild. They go out to random trees. And they have some trees on their property. But they use random trees to get the job done. And that's kind of like their style is like being less focused on like, we get these perfect trees that have never touched.

any other tree and they're much more like fun with it and so this one reminded us of fall and like autumn and we're like it tastes like you're drinking autumn and so we've also tried to get more into like experiencing the season rather than just being like it's fall it's just another season like enjoy the experience enjoy what you're supposed to drink yeah pumpkin squash stuff like that like really enjoy the transition um one i love their hopped apricot cider It's fantastic. That's probably, that's the one that stuck with me from them. And two, seasonal drinking is such a great thing. Or seasonal eating, obviously, on top of that. I know in the summer, I tend to more, more fruity, clean whiskeys. And in the winter, I'm going peat, I'm going heavy sherry. I want something just, like, rich and dark and just kind of, I want to snuggle up with, like, in the middle of a storm.

Kind of like that concept of like a big stout or something. something like that in the winter for beer. Yeah, or in the summer, like, ciders or I'll even say it, White Claws, yeah, they'll have their place, seasonal drinking and eating, I'm on board, 100%. And whatever's in season, one of my favorite times of the year for beer in the past was hop harvest season, because you get all these fantastic, fresh hopped beers that are at their prime, maybe like 14 days or 21 days after they've been bottled or canned. it's um it's it's like you can be standing in the hop farm and near the hop vines drinking the fruits of those vines and those farmers labor a few weeks after and it's it's a very cool thing yeah that is exactly what salt spring wild was like it was like you can go look at the tree that this came from in the apples and it's just such a trip to have that connection and i think that more and more we're missing out on that so it gets exciting when you get to actually experience it i love that that's great which one do you want to try and ask you

Um, let's, let's crack open this Ben Romick. Okay. Uh, it is from the same region of Scotland as the last two. And I think it's a good foil to the other two because it's a different character. Uh, it is lightly peted, uh, to about 15 phenols. Um, people use the term PPM. Uh, so if you hear me just casually reference, uh, PPMs, that's what I'm talking about. It's just measurement of how smoky, basically, it may or may not be.

Interesting. But it's from the same region. And I think it kind of bucks the trend of classification of whiskey regions in Scotland, which had its place at a time in history. And I'm not sure it's all that helpful now. So how big is Scotland? What are we talking about? It's not big.

It's not big at all. Did they vote on their independence? Are they independent? They're not independent unless something changed when I was in. that hurricane last week. They were, they are a part of the UK. Yes. Yeah. I know there was the referendum

a few years back Nicholas Sturgeon. There was the drive for independence and there was the vote and they voted the state. I think that was prior to Brexit though. Yeah. And I think Brexit has just pushed them closer to

independence if anything. I think it's going to be really fascinating to watch. I just watched John Oliver's interview on Scotland independence that's why I was Oh interesting It's old it's super old now yeah No it'll be interested to see what they do for the future I know a lot of the UK's oil comes from Scotland

Or at least off their shores And so there's been a lot of talk about whether or not Scotland Could be financially independent from the UK If it decided to go a separate way There's some disagreement there I think that's one of the main sticking points for people is like, okay, are we going to be able to maintain our quality of life? Are we going to be better off? Are we going to be the same? But there's also the

history and tradition of being part of the United Kingdom, part of the Commonwealth. And I think that's important to some people. But it's such a, I want to tread lightly here because it's my ancestor's history to a certain extent because part of my family did come from Scotland. They were forced off the lands during the Highland clearances, eventually put on boats and sent them to Nova Scotia. Hold on, what? Oh, yeah. Is this the Acadians? No, the Acadians. The Acadians were forced out in basically in Cape Breton and the Maritans, Nova Scotia, I believe PEI as well. I think they were forced out to make

way for Protestant English speaking and Catholic English speaking, mainly Protestant settlers to displace them. It's like a series of displacements, like British history. It's, it's so ridiculous. So what happened to your ancestors? So, um, there's a TV show that touches a little bit on it, but the Highland Clearances, um, basically they were amalgamating a bunch of small firms where a lot of, uh, small families like crofters, uh, I believe they're called. Um, so people who worked the firms and they were given a piece of land, um, as basically, um, a right, uh, for working the land and helping to farm. Crofters were basically moved off the land to make a larger, more efficient farms

that could be used in more industrial ways. And so they were kicked off the land a lot of times sent to the coast and told to basically go fish. And eventually they either decided to leave on their own accord for a better life because their land, their homes, everything they knew, their way of life was gone. What do we do now? Well, we hear it's better across the ocean. There's some amount of placing people on ships and sending a new world.

It also, the exodus is becoming too much, so they stopped trying to get people to do that eventually as well. So it's a very interesting history. I'm just starting to learn about it myself as well. But I know the ship Hector is the one that's referenced back in Picto, Nova Scotia, But I was bringing a lot of basically people who didn't have a lot, didn't have much money, had lost everything in Scotland, bringing them over to Nova Scotia to try and start anew. It's very complicated. But again, you have the displacements of the Acadian people, and you have displacements in that part of the world of the MiGMA people.

So it's just, it's a mess. Yeah, history is a mess. History is a mess. The fact that we're here today, the fact that we're not constantly at war, it's pretty miraculous. It is. Because we have really struggled to agree with each other. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It's really tremendously sad.

Yet we all seem to enjoy things in life. Most cultures have some sort of alcohol or some sort of substance they use to disconnect, to reconnect with maybe their mind, their community, something like that. Bring people together. Yeah. Yeah. Food. It's very interesting that we all have these, like, needs, and then we disagree on geopolitical issues. Yeah.

There's a number of distilleries that were created during the Highland clearances, basically using the farms that they took from people to grow the barley and using the water sources and the land that was taken to create new industries to make Lords wealthy. So the people who were basically given charge Like clear this land Do whatever it takes And they got quite brutal There was people murdered There was people beaten left for dead There's a lot of stories

There's a great YouTube channel called the Liquid Antiquarian That has a fantastic episode On the Highland Clearances Dave Broome And I can't remember the other gentleman But they go into it in quite some depth And they their whole schick is diving into the primary sources of these sorts of events. And so they're going back to reports from the time in

letters or the numbers of people, the difference in how many families are living in areas, these sorts of things. But back to where I started with that, there's a lot of distilleries. And one of my favorite distilleries, Kleinleash, is a Highland Clearance. It's a Clearance Distillery. It only exists because the Lord who was in charge of clearing the area of people, getting rid of the nuisance um because uh it only exists because he did that and he created it and it continues on to this day and it makes delicious whiskey and it's kind of a how do i feel about this yeah yeah that's so funny because uh we just listened and i talk about harry potter a fair bit but i find it's just so profound and one of the pieces was like the the the character was like uh the

evil person um he did terrible things but great things and there's like a distinction between the fact that something can be great and terrible like terrible in terms of the morality and the inconsiderate actions and the horrible outcomes it brought but great and that it's nearly incomprehensible and it sounds very similar to what you're saying

is like they made a great whiskey they did terrible things but they were able to do that and I think we struggle with that there was somebody who was talking about how not Thomas Edison Newton Yes, Isaac Newton had a lot of conspiracies about a cabal of government and that they were all behind the scenes influencing everything and there's a small group of people making all these decisions on everybody's behalf and wrong about that, right about physics and we just listened to his physics views and we don't go to him for understandings about how society kind of functions and so being able to just recognize people for where their expertise is and then not listening to that. on their nonsense.

Yeah. I feel like that nuance is really missing right now. Like that ability to say something's good or something's high quality, but the background of the people isn't great. Like that's everyone. Everyone has mistakes, flaws, a shadow, an id where they've done and made terrible decisions. You can't have an interesting person really without bad decisions at some point in time where

they go, yeah, I made bad decisions and I learned X, Y, and Z from it. You need the backstory. You need the development. I mean, I think, yeah, that's right down to that nucleus of the idea of, yeah, you take what's good. You leave the rest, especially conceptually. And, yeah, that's, I didn't know that about Newton. That's wild. There is a bit too much of, like, throwing the baby out with the bathwater these days.

I think we have to be careful with that because we will miss out on so many great things and so many great ideas. And we won't have the input of people who. really could give us something if we just push them to the side because they say something that we disagree with if we just mute at that point where we're going to miss a lot yeah yeah Elon Musk is probably one of the best examples because like a lot of people will be like he said this about this issue he said that about that issue and it's like look at him for batteries cars and space yeah do not look at him for relationship advice for insights on how to run a government, like, this is not his area of expertise.

He's spitballing, and that is the sign of, like, a great engineer, someone who's willing to take some risk. But that is not a diplomat, somebody who's expert at governmental relations. Like, this is not his skill set. No, I remember people, like, when he came out during the crisis with the cave, and he's like, I have this device that could help get these kids out of there. And there was some criticism, I think, of the device by one of the scuba divers. and he just started, like, railing against him on Twitter.

I think he got sued for that. I think he did, yeah. And it was just like, what are you doing, bro? And I guess a lot of people, like, wrote him off at that point, but I was like, yeah, but, okay, Tesla, SpaceX, PayPal, like, a lot of things that have actually helped a lot of people. It made him a lot of money in a lot of cases, too, but, like, don't. You like, you said, don't go to him for a relationship advice. I don't know if I'll go to him for investing. advice, even though he has more money than I could ever imagine.

Yeah, I'll stick to his engineer. There's this ability he has to conceptualize something and then follow through with it, too. It's incredible. So, I mean, cheers to him. Yeah, absolutely. So which one are we rocking now? Oh, sorry, did you rate the last one? I forget if you ranked the Glennacci.

The Glenaliki 12. I throw a six or six point five on that. Just because, again, it's a superb value for what you get. Billy Walker is the master distiller there. He worked some magic with glendronic distillery. He sold that. He bought glenaliki. Glenaliki is basically blend filler from back in the day.

You wouldn't see it actually released as a single malt whiskey. It was used to make things like Johnny Walker. I don't actually know which blend it went into, but things of that ilk. What does that mean? single what did you say so single malt whiskey which you covered with

Tim when you had him on talking about whiskey single refers to the one distillery malt refers to the grain used barley in this case a blended malt is going to be a blend

of malt whiskeys from different distilleries a blended scotch is going to be a mixture of both malt and grain whiskeys from different distilleries. And so glenaliki, for most of its history, was used in a blended malt or a blended scotch. So it wouldn't actually have its name on the bottle.

You wouldn't know you're drinking glenaliki. Until now. Until, yeah, until a few years ago when Billy Walker bought it. I think it's a great value proposition. It's packed with flavor. A lot. Good body to it. And 46%.

46% alcohol, non-chill filtered, no added cup. It's right where it should be, I think. Do they sell them at all BC liquor stores? You'll find that one in BC liquor stores, for sure. I believe it's in and around like $9,200, which I believe, I don't know the price point on the Mac Allen 12 these days. I would pick the Glen Alki up every day of the week over the Mac Allen. Interesting. I will say there's some batch variation when he first took over, and he was basically changing over what casks

Glenaliki was sitting in. They were sitting in a lot of ex-burban and a lot of old tired casts as we talked about earlier, knew we weren't getting much from the oak. He has good connections in Spain with the bodegas. He brought in a whole buttload of sherry casks, sherry butts,

if you all. And he basically transferred a lot of that whiskey into these sherry butts. And so the first release of Glenaliki 12 that he put out, I believe it was like 2018 or so. It's very very light. This is way darker. So there's batch variation. So if you're looking for it on a shelf, I would skew towards the darker one because Billy Walker's had more time to work with that. Interesting. So 6.5. Yeah, 6.5. And then this one's lighter. It is. And it is, what is it called? I'm going to mess up that name.

Ben Romick. It's 10 years old. It's from the same region. And it's for, 43% alcohol, so it's not that magical 46%. It is colored, as far as I know. So it has some E150 caramel colorant added to it. However, I think it's a great example of how there can be a bunch of differences in flavor profiles in Scotch regions. There's, I believe there's five Scotch regions, if I list them out, lowlands, highlands, spaceide, Campbelltown. I guess is that four? I didn't count properly.

Anyways, lowlands, highlands, Spaside, Ila. How could I forget Ila? Oh, my heart. Ila. And Campbelltown. Why is it a big deal to forget Ila? Oh, that's my favorite one.

Oh, okay. That in Campbelltown. So the fact that I forgot Ila. A wee bit embarrassing. But those are the five regions. They usually are described as having unitary kind of characteristics of flavor traits. and there's so much variety within them that I don't know if it's really applicable to say like, oh, it's a highland single malt scotch whiskey.

It's going to taste this way. And if you smell this, I think it's going to smell a lot different than that glenaliki that you had. It definitely does. Okay, don't tell me. Don't tell me what it smells like. I'm going to see if I can get it. Okay. It smells like wood.

Okay. Sort of like, it reminds me of cedar. It reminds me, this is going to sound weird. because nobody's been there. But it smells like the band office that I work at. Okay. And it's made of wood. That's what I smell.

Like a cedar? You said? Yeah, like our building is made out of cedar wood. I can see that. And then when we open the door, it has this. Like, if you're like, what is the band office smell like, I would say? You get a pretty good idea by smelling this. That's awesome.

I love that. I'm going to think about that now every time I drink this. I love the aroma on this. there's a bit of smoke in the background A bit of peat I think that Personally that gives it In this one because they use some sherry casks

It might even be exclusively sherry I have to start reading the bottles again So it's a family-owned distillery Handcrafted our whiskey in the traditional way Using senses of our experienced distillers To make a space-eyed whiskey With the subtle smoky Benromat

Cock character. I definitely messed up that word. Only ever matured in the finest oak casks. Our signature 10-year-old single malt delivers delicate forest fruits and creamy malt, a touch of smoke, and rich, lasting sherry notes. There you go. So, sherry casks. Yeah. Yeah.

I get a leathery note on this, and Tim might disagree because he was. works with leather a lot but the combination of sherry and pete for me uh i oftentimes will pull like tobacco notes or sherry notes um which uh that tobacco that's a good point i like i like pipe tobacco for me yeah and there's there's definitely fruit there too like i'm not sure if it's like a pear but i think like some sort of white flesh fruit yeah i don't think apple but closer to a pair that is a bold statement white flesh fruit. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that. I'm going to try not to get too ridiculous here.

That tastes nothing like any of the others. That is very smoky. Yeah? Yeah. My eyes are watering. Oh, wow. Okay. On the tip of my tongue there, I started with a cracked black pepper, which I oftentimes get, if I'm getting some prickle from The alcohol percentage.

This is 43%. So I shouldn't be feeling the ABV too much. It's not a strong whiskey. So I did get some pepper there, which I was surprised by. This is one of those bottles that once it's open, it gets better with development, with that oxidation. It honestly, it's a stunner once you get it past the shoulders for the value, because you can usually pick it up for about 60 bucks, 65 bucks. I really love it.

I think what is first fill cask so that's where we're talking you know those old tired casks the refill casks uh like say they um when we're talking about mack allen sometimes they use uh or maybe i'm entirely wrong but distilleries oftentimes will use um casts over and over and over again third fourth or fifth times um instead of using a wet cask or a fresh sherry cask a first fill Sherry casks. So if it says first fill on there, it means no whiskey's been in that cask before, unless they're talking about a first fill ex-burbon. Then obviously, bourbon was what was matured in that. It kind of helped season the oak for them. And then the first thing after the bourbon was the single malt scotch whiskey. So in this case, first fill sherry. So it held

sherry fortified wine. It was emptied either into bottles or more. times now they don't often bottle the sherry they're actually just seasoning them for the scotch industry most of the time these days and the history of sherry cast is actually kind of fascinating it's much different than it used to be but then they'll ship it over to Scotland and they'll put whiskey into them so that's what happened here what do you rate this one and i would say my big note on this one is this seems like the scotch that your grandpa would drink not your grandpa but somebody's someone's grandpa yeah that's what i think of when i think of this one i think it it deserves about the same value as the glenaliki 12 it's a different take it's a different style uh from the same region it's a little bit younger um the people behind it gordon and mcfail uh they're independent bottler who and a family run company who purchased this distillery i believe in the 90s and i've been making their own whiskey there um and they've been taking good care of it and there is some stunning whiskey that can come out of ben romic and it's a more old school styled whiskey that lightly peted.

Some of the Benromic ones, especially when you get higher proof, you can get some industrial notes off of it. So a lot of like greasiness, oiliness, and some funk, which is a tough thing to describe. I might struggle to describe what I'm talking about by funk, but I brought a bottle that has some funk in it to try and show you. I would give this probably like a 6.6.5 just for the value proposition. It could be better. They could have it.

I believe it's nonchill filtered. But they could have it natural color. Actually, you know what? It says right there, natural color. So this one's probably chill filtered because it's under 46%. And because they probably want it to keep it clear. So if they don't chill filter it, it's probably going to be a lot more viscous, a lot more oily. I have some cask strength, which is basically they didn't add any water to the whiskey when it came out of the cast.

They just put it into the bottle. Maybe some barrier filtration just to get pieces of char. Those versions of Benromic are just, they have some. much body they're they're unbelievable but they'll also blow your face off if you're not used to like 60% alcohol yeah if you had to choose because right now you're tying them yep which one would you choose you've given both a six six point five which one if you could only go home with one if you had to drink one for the rest of your life which one would it be i think there's more complexity in the benromic um oh man that's tough because they're they're so different i think i'd be happy

you're drinking something that has at least a touch a peat in it, the rest of my life, as opposed to the Glen Alickey. I think I would choose, no, I'm going to save my ratings until we're done all of them, and then I'm going to give, we're going to call them Pete reviews. Pete reviews. Because that seems like it's fitting. Okay, let me, let me grab something else here. You don't want to do, are you saving this one?

That is going to blow out your palate. If you go to Lefroid great now. I don't have any coffee beans on me. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that'll be an interesting reaction. Cool. Yeah, let me grab something here.

So, we're in Canada. We got to talk about Canadian whiskey. I didn't know Crown Royal was Canadian. Yeah, it's out of Gimley, Manitoba, I believe. That one there. This bottling is the Northern Harvest bottling. It was a special release a few years ago. It's the only Canadian whiskey outside a shelter point that I have open right now,

because I'm not a huge fan of Canadian whiskey. Canadian whiskey is a little bit nebulous What does that mean? Just going to throw out that word Yeah, nebulous And just like move past it Nebulous Why is Canadian whiskey a bit nebulous?

I guess it For me it stems from Is it actually whiskey? They'll oftentimes use grain So like wheat or more times corn Sometimes barley Depends what blend they're going with there's a rule in Canadian whiskey though I believe it's called like the one-eighth's rule

where they're allowed 9.09% foreign spirit or foreign alcohol in the Canadian whiskey 9.09? Yeah, I think I know weird, weird proportion. I think it's like the 11th now that I think about it. Math's not a strong suit. Anyways, they're allowed 9.09 I think percent other spirit in it. So they will add, for instance, with Alberta Preena Dark Horse, they added sherry wine. They just added straight wine to the whiskey. They will add cognac sometimes to whiskey. What is that? Conyc is distilled grapes, which actually I enjoy cognac and Arminiac.

Recently, I tried my first ones. I was like, they're pretty good. But you're adding distilled grapes to a whiskey. At what point does it not, is it not a whiskey anywhere? And so because there's like this veil of secrecy behind, well, what's in my Canadian whiskey? You're telling me it's whiskey, but you're also allowed to doctor it and still call it whiskey. So if they don't have a full disclosure of what they've done to it, I actually don't have interest in the Canadian whiskeys. Yeah, fair enough.

Canadian craft is a different thing altogether. Two brewers up in the Yukon does a fantastic job with their whiskey shelter point on Vancouver Island up near Campbell River. They're just knocking it out of the park. Those are probably my two favorites in Canada. Things like Wiser's, Alberta Premium, Crown Royal. They're capable of making great whiskeys. It's just whether or not they release them to us. So, yeah, there's...

So what can you say about this one? Why is it called Rye? It sounds terrible. It's the worst name. It's a terrible name. Rye not. So Rye, a lot of people use Rye. just colloquially to reference all Canadian whiskey.

They're incorrect. Rye is the type of grain that's used for the making of whiskey. And it oftentimes imparts of spiciness, a lot more like clove, sometimes like a pickle note, but a lot of spice, huge amounts of... A pickle note? I've gotten pickle off of rye whiskeys before. What are we doing? What are we doing, Ken?

What is this world coming to? Get it together. But rye would reference to the grain they use. to make the whiskey. It doesn't just mean whiskey. So if they used rye in making it, it can be a rye whiskey, if it has a certain proportion or more. You'll see a lot of 100% rye whiskeys out there now.

They're boldly proclaiming it. Again, I get a lot of like peppery notes, a lot of spiciness off of those whiskeys. This one's significant. It's the first batch of the Northern Harvest, Crown Royal Rye Whisky. It was awarded Best Whisky in the world by Jim Murray. A few years ago, I think it was like 2050.

Who is Jim Murray, though? Jim Murray, he's the guy who wrote the Whiskey Bible. And he wears this, like, Panama hat, and he's got this big beard. And he, he's been in some hot water, some controversy lately. And he judges whiskey. He basically writes tasting notes and all, and gives him a score. Certainly better than, better at tasting whiskey than me. But he awarded this best whiskey in the world.

This crown royal. This crown royal. He also did it recently with another Canadian whiskey, Alberta Premium Cast Strength Batch 1. Sounds like he's in the bed of big whiskey. I don't want to make any accusations, obviously. I'm going to make the accusation. Make the accusation.

Yeah, it's just interesting what things get picked each year for best whiskey in the world. I wonder, like, I've heard. I'm not going to speak about conjecture, but yeah, it just sometimes I'm like, huh, what I'm missing here so i mean you give it a shot um this has been the most underwhelming delivery on like i think that yeah i'm very nervous about this one it's special to me it's a decent whiskey i don't think it's best in the world if i had to guess it feels like i'm going to drink pepper water pepper water that's what that's the vibe i'm getting that is almost flavorlessness yep one sounds like canada

We're not known for anything bold. I'm surprised that they didn't just apologize to me. Did you at least get vanilla? I did get vanilla. Okay, well, which is... The worst. Yeah. The most boring flavor.

Yeah, that's why it's vanilla. Vanilla. Yeah, so it's fine stuff. This is the best whiskey in the world, and it tastes like vanilla. According to someone wearing a Panama hat back in like 2015 or 16 or so. Do you know what the controversy was? he made he's made some tasting notes in the past that make reference to like um typically um i i might be misquoting but i understand there was some comments made about um comparing

whiskey to like a woman's body or um a sexual encounter with a woman in canada i think was one of them actually he's made like yeah it gets really weird and i don't want to go too far into it Because it's been a long time since I read those articles. I kind of read them and went, well, I don't really read what he writes anyway. So I'm just going to move past them. I'm not going to pile on to the circus of people saying, oh, you're an idiot or something like that for doing this. But it sounds like he was being rather rude towards women in general. Why don't you just trust your own judge?

Like, you were like, oh, like he's more of an expert than I. I'm very happy with what I've learned here today. I don't trust this. I'm glad to hear that. Womanizing, whiskey drinking, vanilla taste. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely, I just kind of tune them out. I'll pay attention when I hear something's getting buzz, but. This is bland. Yes, this is, this is flavorless. Like, in comparison to the Glenelke, that one tasted like classy. This tastes like water with some

vanilla in it with a bit of a burn. I would basically agree. It's young, it's youthful. Um, I think they distill it very quickly. If you distill something very quickly, you can get, um, a lot of heat off the ethanol. So it might profile as being higher in percentage than other things. So I think they distill, quicker than a lot of single malt scotch distilleries. Um, what is it, 90% rye whiskey is what it says in there. So, I mean, I'm not a big fan of rye either. It's not for me.

I would give it a, it was an all right price when it came out. I'd give it like a four, like charitable four. probably a three. I give it a one. You get a one? I give it, I could make that. It's trash. It's trash.

Yeah. When I think I could make a whiskey better and I can't make a lot of things. Yeah. That's not a good sign. But this was very bland and boring and yeah, I feel like I'd like an apology for it. You're not getting one. Not from you. From the company.

This is not your fault. I think we need the apology from Jim for making his whiskey of the year. Yeah. And he, Alberta premium cast strength, better choice. I still don't think it's the best whiskey in the world. I want to try the one you were talking about on the island. Oh, Isla? No, the one you said on Vancouver Island.

Yeah, Shelter Point. We can grab that here. That one sounds. We're going to do Matthew's Whiskey of the Year. This is not my Whiskey of the Year. Oh, which one's your Whiskey of the Year? Is it this year? How does it work?

Do I have a Whiskey of the Year? Why don't you have one? Have you thought about starting like a Substack page or something? I don't know what those words you just said. A newsletter? Oh, a newsletter? Oh, I haven't thought of it. No.

Okay. Substack is really cool. Yeah, those are clean. This one's dirty. Yeah, substack is really cool. Canada invented by a guy named Chris Best. I have two substack channels. One's called Fresh Take by Here and Pete, where I review.

I really like music, particularly rap. And it feels like people say really profound things. And then nobody comments on. on them. So that's where a fresh take came from, where it's like somebody, like great rappers will say one sentence that's so profound. I have to listen to the whole song again and again to hear that one line. And then it feels like nobody else is aware that the sentence came about. And I think it's really amazing. And so that's what motivated that. And then I have one about the podcast where I kind of just reflect on what I learned, what I took away from it. It's a good process for me to kind of figure out what stood out to me, what I took away from it, like a good meditation on the experience. And then for other people, it's like, if they don't tune into the full interview, they can get an idea of what I learned and kind of connect and then go, oh, maybe I do want to check it out. I've been trying to do a better job of not just doing it as like,

this is what took place and more like what was my experience. But it's free and you get like a way of developing. You get to develop your kind of style and what it's going to look like. And you get to add photos. You can add a podcast element to it. and like a recording. So I did one, what does decolonization really mean?

There's a photo. And then there's a bunch of information. And so for premium subscribers, you can mark your price whatever you want. And then substack takes a cut of that, but they don't make any money unless you make money. Interesting. And so the cool thing that's really unique

that they just came out with is called recommendations. And so the problem with YouTube, the problem with Facebook, the problem with a lot of social media is the algorithm. Of course, the terrifying thing. Exactly. And so the difference with this is you get to choose who you highlight. So if somebody subscribes to me and they put in their email address, they get asked, do you want to subscribe to the other people?

Aaron recommends you subscribe to. So creates an ecosystem, but it's not based off of, oh, this podcast is like this. So we're going to recommend you this. It's I like these people. So if you like me, you might like these other. people too and you don't have to follow that but it's a different style than having an algorithm choose it for you which is a big step in my opinion and so it's really cool because they don't make money unless you make money you can make them as long as you want you can put out as much as you

want whenever you want you can do a podcast voiceover on your laptop and just go like and either verbally transcribe what you saw or what you wrote about or kind of give your your take and it's really easy i find a very accessible and so for someone like yourself who has so much knowledge of like five favorite whiskeys of 2020 or doing specific reviews, it's a good way to go into an ecosystem of other people who might have overlapping views and then people can keep up to date. And then it kind of flourishes from there because then you have like an audience space to grow from. Totally. It sounds like a really like a community based like the system. And I like the fact that it doesn't rely on the algorithm. It relies on people or people you followed or people

you've had dealings with and you have personal connections to them. That's really cool. Exactly. This here that I've poured you is the Smoke Point Batch 2 by Shelter Point. It is let's see here. I just want to make sure I get this

right. That's pretty brave, just calling it Batch 2. Yeah, the Batch 3 is out right now. Did they write their numbers on it by hand? Yeah, they did. For 1,500 bottles. That's a lot of rates. So this is aged in American Oak X bourbon cast for five years. It's finished in casts previously used by an ILA distillery for 18 months. So they did a second cast maturation of finishing for 18 months in a ex-Ila whiskey cask. It says single grain. I think they use barley, but they use like an enzyme to to malt it. But I might be off base on that. But it's nearly seven years old.

And again, it has used, actually, this is the unnamed Isla Distiliate that uses the casks of. They aged it in X. LaFroegg whiskey casks. And really good branding. Yeah? Like their image. No offense to Benromach. Oh, it's terrible. Yeah.

It's just not visually appealing. This is much smoother. It's a little bit more casual. is it in here is this the one yes yes so it does smell

more smoky there's definitely some smoke there I get some black licorish or like fennel or like anise there

like there's something underlying at the end of my nosing that is along those lines it does come I think you get the proof a bit on it the 50%

it does smell boozier than the last one. But I have a very small amount in the glass here. Oh, so it's more. It's more concentrated. It's 50% alcohol. Wow.

Yeah, Jeff and Blacklight Crescher. That one's probably the smoothest, even though it's the highest alcohol percentage. Like, I felt no burn, no nose. Is it a name for that? If there is, I don't know it. There's so much words about all this alcohol.

They don't have a word for the weird feeling your nose feels when it's strong alcohol. That's funny. Prickliness, maybe? Yeah, this one's very smooth. Like, I feel like you could be at risk of drinking a lot more of this because it's not hard to... There's some vanilla and, like, uh, taffy, uh, caramel in, in the front end of that, but... It'd be interesting for you to try. try the brother's bond with this.

Yeah. Because they're very similar. All right, let's do it. Okay. You get that touch of Pete at the end of the shelter point, smoke point there. You don't get it much on the nose, or at least for me. I can go a little peat blind sometimes. Oh, interesting.

If you have a lot of peaty whiskey, you'll start not noticing the lower levels of it. It'll just be like, wait, there's peat in that. but with this one I get it on the palette I don't quite get it as much on the on the nose it's a big deal to get a good review on this brother's bond one Rebecca loves vampire diary does she yeah that's a lot of pressure um it's a bit muted next to something as as bold as that 50% shelter point right I can I can smell rye in it um as far as I can tell I'm not sure if there's rye spice in it yeah there's rye and it's four grain mash bill. So I got the rye rate away.

Because there's just that spice at the end of it. It's got the sweetness of the corn too. It's fairly sweet. Yeah, it's a 40% so it's pretty low. If you say they're not similar at all, I'm going to look like a crazy person. I can see the similarities on the front end, like the early approach. The smoke point definitely goes in a different direction as the pallet develops. Again, it leans towards that smokiness. And there's kind of like those confectionary notes. Um, yeah, that buttercotch, a vanilla, that caramel sort of thing. Um, I think,

I think is that front end. That's the most similar. Just the beginning part? Mm-hmm. Not the end part. No. Yeah, it's very sweet It's not what I typically enjoy drinking Interesting It's very easy to drink though If you were to have a party Or if I guests over and they aren't whiskey drinkers

I would be pouring the brother's bond over the shelter point It's much more approachable I mean there are two men Trying to sell whiskey to teenage girls I mean, it's working It's the strategy It's the correct mixture if you're going to try and do that. I'm getting that wheat now, too.

Yeah, it's nice. I understand they sourced the whiskey. I'm not sure if they sourced it from MGP or elsewhere. So is there like a hotline you keep up with? Because for listeners, I purchased this alcohol. Rebecca's like, hey, they just released it. We've got to try and find a bottle. It was the first day that it had come out.

We were on the phone with BC Liquor Store. we need this where is it at and they were like okay we do have some and we pick it up and then tuesday a day after i talked to matthew and he's like oh yeah i heard about that i was like do you listen to vampire diaries how do you know about it and he's like i just keep up how do you keep up on this stuff is there a name for people who like watch vampire diaries is there like probably yeah there's the groupies yeah i was going to say i was one of them but i couldn't think of a good name Yeah. How would I keep up with it?

A lot of reading online. I do have a lot of emails that I get from stores. So different markets get products released at different times. This product had been launched a few weeks earlier in a market that I follow. So that's how I found out about it. And then from that, I went ahead and I researched it. And I just looked into it. I saw it was 40% alcohol.

It was a bourbon. It was sourced. And I was like, okay, probably not. I'm not the target audience. for that. And so I kind of just moved on. Interesting. Yeah.

Have you thought about making, like, this seems like such an interest of your, how many people read their email for funds? What? How many read reports that people get on those emails? Yeah. I get my reports now. I get to see how many people read the emails I come out. I get to see what people resonate, like, when you get a good tagline, the success of, like, how many people open that email.

Oh, man. And what's the percentage? On average? Yeah. It's like 70 or 80%, but on something... That's pretty good. And on something that hits, it can hit. Oh, man.

And you can get like a really good response, but... I need to run the wash from here. Absolutely, go ahead. How are you feeling so far? Good. Less scary than you thought it was going to be? No, it's about a scary. Really?

It's a nerve-wracking, man. Interesting. It is nerve-wracking. I think I've lost that over the... I've been doing this for close to three years now, so... Yeah, you become immune eventually, right? Eventually, I'm starting to hit that point where it's like, I'm just going to be myself. Yeah.

And just talk. Yeah. It's interesting, like, I've, at my graduation, I gave, like, a valedictorian speech. No way. You were a valedictorian? I was. Congratulations. Thank you.

For my program at the Justice Institute. Not at, like, high school or university or anything. But, so I gave a speech. I'm used to public speaking. And that doesn't get me nervous at all. But something like this actually is a bit more nerve-wracking for me. I'm not sure what. I'm the reverse.

Yeah, really. I don't like doing presentations where it's long form, but condensed in time. Like, people ask me to come do like 30-minute speeches. And it's like, I struggle with that because once I have a thought, I need to not stress about the time parameters of the thought. Like, I can think in like two to three-hour thoughts. Yeah. But I need the space in order to do that. So when somebody's like, come talk, you can talk, but do it for things.

30 minutes. It's like, well, 10 minutes here, 10 minutes, there 10 minutes. Like, how quick should I, and then I end up doing it all in like 10 minutes and I mess up the speed. So you rush through. Yeah. You don't get the right cadence and it's, yeah. I'm better at interviews where like, I just did one and they were like, oh, well, have you do a presentation. I was like, how about someone interviews me? Because I'm better at that. Because I can answer a question. And then I have this five minutes to develop on that thought. Yeah, you have a prompt and you launch off that prompt. Yeah. So interesting. I think I just like it a bit more scripted.

Like, I can, I have a starting off point and I can kind of develop an idea from there and kind of a direction. So maybe that's where I feel more at home with public speaking. But, like, I worked as a park ranger for nine years. Like, I like working with the public and working in a capacity where you're talking to people a lot. I enjoy that. And so maybe it's that aspect. It's just I like talking to people. and it's more of an informal sort of way.

This is very formal for me. Interesting. Yeah, because I think that's something Tim struggles with is I think he's used to scripting so much because his YouTube videos are maybe like seven minutes long. So he'll redo the take however many times he needs to to get it right. But then you start to hate yourself way more than I hate myself after an interview like this because you've gone through it. And, like, even when I do, like, a clip or something, it's like, if you miss speak, you're like,

and this is like the seventh time you've done it. Then you start to go, I don't like myself anymore. What can't I get through this? Where with me, it's like there's no retakes. There's no, you need to not say this or say it that way or do it this way. So I get to enjoy it a lot more because it's just a conversation where I think for him, the editing process of like, I should refilm that because I didn't say it right and what are you trying to say there?

I think that's really hard and I'm really lucky. Becca does all my social media because then she'll have to hear my sentence like seven times in order to like clip it correctly. I start to want to throw her phone and just I don't want to hear that. I don't know. How are you with hearing your own voice? Way better now. Yeah. But in the early stages, like if you go back, oh, we've got to do it because it's just so embarrassing and I hate it so much. But like those early podcasts are rough to listen to because you realize you're developing style. You're trying to get comfortable with yourself. and you don't know how bad you are until you're just.

But, like, we were trying to listen to it. And it's like, oh, that person just flies off the handle. And it's like, yeah, they haven't learned how to control their emotions yet. I sound so monot. And we need to figure those things out and teach that to people and at least have it as conversation so that we can start to work towards those things because... I just sound so monotone. It's very serious.

Yeah. Very serious. And it should be fun. Yeah. I think at the beginning of recording today, I was very serious, very monoton. And hopefully I'm loosening up a bit. But yeah, I mean, you've come a long way. You're a natural audit.

I mean, I was listening to actually a similar discussion you were having with Tim about the process where he was talking about some of the skill sets he got from a workshop. He was like writing out the script, putting things in bold. This is where you put your B roll. So you know what's going on in the background. like he sounds like he's got it dialed in he does he just brought on his first sponsor um a leather company is going to send him their highest quality leather for free to utilize and be able to work with and it's something i think probably out of his price range of being able to just shop that so big

step up for him and he's put a lot of work in and i think it's really again cool to see people like yourself grow into those worlds because we need voices like yours we need people who are just not weirdos who are raiding like whiskeys arbitrarily you will always connect with a personality more than just the facts like you could be like well he technically knows more than me and it's like but who do people want to listen to long form

it doesn't sound like people want someone comparing like their whiskey bottle to the shape of a woman like this is weird you want someone who you're going to connect with and enjoy just tuning in because a lot of people it's like their drive to work Like I listen to Ariel Hawani and half of the stuff, he doesn't talk about MMA, even though it's an MMA podcast. It's just like, who can you listen to on your car drive where it makes that drive that much easier? Totally. One of my favorite radio brock, I'm an old person.

I still listen to radio sometimes, but usually through like a podcast format and there's a show Halford and Brough on SportsNet 650. They're sports talk radio. I turn my mind off a bit. Yeah. But most of their show is just shenanigans. It's just like pop culture references and having fun and self-deprecating humor and they don't take it too seriously. And it's it's better than any of those other sports talk radio shows out there because they don't get like just hung up in this subject matter. It's free form and they're able to just go with it.

Yeah. It's pretty great. When I was considering like trying to like do like a whiskey tube sort of channel, that sort of thing, I always said myself like, man, if I ever got to the point where I was sponsored by NordVPN, I actually. I just close up shop. That seemed like the hallmark of success for like so many of them sponsored by NordVPN. Probably don't make any money off that sponsorship. It's like a free VPN you get, but it's like, I don't know, that would be great. I'd do it for the joke.

Yeah, for real. But like being able to sit down with him and see his passion kind of grow, he was the person who helped me take this less seriously because sometimes I'm interviewing like ocean pollution experts and that's pretty serious and I want to be able to show that I'm just a person. I don't want this to become like a serious vendetta of like just trying to get out voices and like I don't want to be boring to people. I'm just myself. I just want to talk to interesting people. It's interesting the poll you're getting for like guests because that that expert came over from Vancouver Island, right? Yeah. Yeah. I know you have like a lot of local people like

Darryl Plekis, obviously, and others. And so, like, it's going to be interesting to see where your reach goes, because I know you're talking about whether or not you'd be able to get Jody Wilson-Ra-Bald on. And I think that's, like, a huge, I mean, that obviously is a huge get for a podcast, and it'd be a very interesting person to talk to. I don't know. How do you feel about that? Because I understand you're considering changing the name of the podcast.

one point? Yeah, it's a struggle because people don't remember the name very well. And then what do you do with that? Like, there's a part of it where it's like, it's true, it is bigger than me. But when people don't remember that and then they go, what was his podcast? They remember your name. And so that's like the challenge. And then I think APP, Aaron Pete podcast would be easier for people to remember because it would just be my name with podcast. But there's a hesitation that when I started this, I was like, one day maybe somebody else takes this role. And it's been a huge opportunity to meet really interesting people and I like that idea of it and then but right now yeah I'm struggling with like I want to start to interview people across North America so it's

going to be more Zoom interviews which I've avoided like I don't want to have a laptop screen in my face and that be the quality so I'm working with Tim McElpine and co-work Chilliwack and he's got a professional studio where it would be like surround cameras that would be filming me and then getting them wherever they are and so that's the next iteration hopefully i don't know where it's going to take me but it'll have larger names which hopefully will allow potential guests like jody wilson are able to come on yeah yeah i mean once you're able to broaden your reach and in that facet be able to bring people on through zoom or teams or what have you i feel like that's a game changer i think so because i think it's like who has the pull on these platforms and so far i think i think i think i've

gotten my, what did they say, 5,000 hours? I don't know if I'm at that yet. We're getting closer at 100 episodes, three hours per episode usually. So we're getting up there. Yeah. But I've gotten the interview experience. I think I need in order to start to interview the bigger names that might be like, who is this person? And so that's exciting, nerve-wracking, but I'm excited to see where it goes. Nice. Yeah. Which one do you want to try next? I'm going to pour, let's get two clean glasses for you there. I think these are all clean. Perfect.

So one of the problems I've had with, we were talking about the regions earlier. That's a weird sound to have near that, Mike. I'm going to do this down here. The regions of Scotland. That's a little one. They are little ones. Is that there are distillery styles, like, again, not representative of the region of Scotland that are in.

I made mention to how, you know, the regions of Scotland made sense at one point. And that's back in the days when blends were king. If you had a, like single malt scotch whiskey is a really relatively recent phenomenon. It has been marketed as single malt for very long. I think it started in the sixth. is when they started marking like say Glen Fiddick, Glenlivet, as a single malt scotch whiskey. Before that, it was like merchants would have their own scotch blends. And so they'd have their own proprietary blends. And Johnny Walker, I believe, started as a merchant. And it was

basically their blend for their shop. It was the Johnny Walker blend. Becomes this company in the end that winds up buying a whole bunch of distilleries. Diageo becomes a big deal as a brand. And it's history. But at that time, when merchants were making their own blends, what they'd look for is not necessarily particular distilleries. They'd look for regions. They look, okay, that Isla Singamel is going to add an element of smoke to my blend. That space side is going to add fruitiness from the sherry cast that they're known to use to that blend. That Highland's going to add possibly some florals, possibly some depth of character to it typically relatively robust balloons are very classy, very understated Campbelltown has that element of funk. So they'd be pulling whiskeys

just based on regions to make a blend. But as you saw with Ben Romick versus Glenaliki and the McCallin, I don't think you can pigeonhole a distillery based on its region anymore. So I think that's kind of Yeah, a little bit of a fallacy that a spaceider is going to taste a certain way or so on and so forth. So with this I'm grabbing out right now, this is a single-mult distillery, Tomatin.

Back in the 70s, it became one of the largest for outputs of whiskey. They ran a number of still. They added a bunch of stills. And they don't make quite as much anymore. They run, I think, like, a third or a quarter of the stills that used to. But they were kind of a big deal back in the day. And now they're focusing less on quantity of alcohol that they can run off the stills and get to market. I think they're kind of focused on quality a bit more, which I think is a great thing.

Interesting. Why are the bottles so small? We'll get to that. Okay. So these are half bottles, obviously. And these bottles, one is an ex-Burban cask matured to matten. The other one is a sherry cask to matten. So they're different cask maturations on these bottles.

However, outside of that, they are nearly identical. What I mean by that is, if I look at the bottle here, So this ex-Burban cast will have the same years included in this vatting of single malt whiskey. It's different years. I say vatted to me and they all blended them together and then bottled it. So it's still a single malt because it comes from a single distillery and it still only uses malted barley. But it has whiskeys that were distilled in 1973, 1977, 1987, 1988, 91, 2002, and 2006 in it. So the youngest whiskey in that this is bottled in 2015, the youngest whiskey is nine years old.

They used a cask of that because there's only 5,400 bottles total. So there's not a whole lot of it. The youngest whiskey is nine years old. And the oldest whiskey is from 1973. So what's that, 27 plus 15, 30? Why can I do math? That's what, 43 years old? Yeah.

Yeah. So it's a blend of all. all those different years, but the only difference because they have the same years in them is the cask type. So it's an interesting way to see what a different type of oak cask imparts to this whiskey from the same distillery. That's fascinating. They're almost the same color, but you can see one is very clearly darker. Yeah. But they're very close. Do you have one that you like better? I think I like the sherry cask finished a bit better. Just because I get a lot more complexity in it.

I get that spicing. I get some of those, the pruned, kind of like red fruits. Right. I also, here, I'm going to pour that one, actually. The ex-burbon is a lot more like pineapple, apple, pear, some vanilla and coffee from recollection. That sounds like something I would like. All of the things you just said, I enjoy.

I guess the thing that like people call BS on like whiskey or like wine people when you're talking about cats adorable He's just playing with electrical sockets Nothing serious Nothing to see here Do you have cats? I don't I don't

I'm curious as to why he's so curious to be in here And this is his first time ever coming up here during a podcast I'm here for a podcast first. Where were we? You were explaining the differences between the two that you enjoy. Yeah, so I like the tropical element to the ex-burbon, but just the depth of character in the sherry cask. I think it's executed a bit better in this case.

But you said that the pineapple, the pear, the apple, the vanilla, that's more up your alley. So I'll be interesting to see which one you like a bit better. So why do they do small bottles? You're keeping that from me. Oh, it's just so they could sell it as basically a single bottle, but to give you both sides here so you can compare and contrast. That's why it's called to Matt in contrasts.

Spoiler alert. I think this one's my favorite. Yeah? Yeah. Out of all the ones I've tried, I really like this one. So you like the one that has 43-year-old whiskey in it? That makes sense. It tastes so sweet.

Yeah. Yeah. That would definitely be a big impact of the ex-burbon cask, for sure. And with that, like, for vanilla, oftentimes people associate vanilla coming out of, like, bourbon, the bourbon influence. But a lot of it comes out of the oak influence. Different species of oak have different levels of vanillains in the actual oak grain. Vanillins? Yeah.

That sounds like you can make a TV show because it sounds like villains, vanillaids. So it extracts it at different ratios depending on the porosity of the grain and the wood, whether it's been charred. Because if you charred, you caramelize a lot of those sugars and they're able to be extracted and accessed a bit easier. But I think a lot of that just comes from like the American oak, ex-burbon almost universally is going to be American oak. And they're known for high levels of vanilla in that species of oak. And so I usually get a lot of vanilla off of ex-burbon. in casks. Yeah, this might be my favorite one.

But wait, there's more. Yeah, it doesn't have like a harsh burn. It's got a really sweet vanilla taste. It does have like that kind of pineapple feel, that very sweet aroma. yeah it's dangerous though because it's so smooth I've heard the term coined it's quaffable you can just chug it why do you drink it out of the side of your mouth

oh so many people have asked me that I think it's probably because I have a big nose I don't oh there's no reason there's no reason I mean yeah it's probably a big nose problem interesting I haven't asked that so many times but just people I'm hanging out with

It seems professional. Does it? Like, when you do it, it looks like you've got, like, you know, you're in the node. Like, I thought you were going to say, like, it touches, like, this part of my tongue first, and I get, like, an aroma from that, or, like, you're able to smell. I don't know. I love all the credit you're giving me. I give you a lot of credit, man.

No, no, it is just a facet of living with my body. Yeah, this one tastes, smells thicker. It's rich. Yeah, so I do like that because it reminds me of the Glen Aliki. Which would also be sherry cask matured, so that's a commonality there. You want, maybe it's lazy people, want it to be simple and think that, like, I like to make fun of wine drinkers because I think that they're silly. I think that wine is usually wine, but I disagree with this, probably arbitrarily. I feel like this is more complicated, like the different colors, different Texas.

I just feel like you can get away with a bottle of wine and most people will finish the bottle of wine where you're really much more committing with a whiskey. Absolutely. It's something you're going to drink over the next couple of weeks. It's a longer term commitment. You don't like a bottle of wine. You'll be done that in one night.

I don't know what's going on. I love it. No, no, exactly. You're not going to finish a bottle of whiskey typically in the same night unless it's a very special night. things happen. It is a commitment and you're going to sit with that a long time. I think that lends to getting to know that arrangement of aromas and flavors a lot more too.

If you spend an evening with a wine, you're acquainted. I think if you buy a bottle of whiskey, you're going to be spending, like you said, weeks or months, sometimes years with that bottle. And you're going to know the ins and outs of that by the time you finish that bottle. Do you ever spit it out? At festivals. If I don't want to get drunk, I'll spit it out. Yeah. Interesting.

Yeah, I mean, people who were there may have told you I didn't spit it out. There have been times, for sure. But, yeah, there's times I spit it out for sure, just because you don't want to overindulge. You want to feel okay the next day. Because when we were at Salt Spring Islands, there was a lady who spat out the wine. And she wasn't getting, she wasn't drinking a lot. And it was just like, you can't.

it, swallow it. You can't just endure this two seconds. Like, what are we doing here? It's a wine tasting. You have to have this one sip and that's it. Yeah. And she was like, nope, I'm going to spin it in it. And there's just like, what are we doing? Shout out to hopscotch. That's

a festival I've gone to, I think, three times. Where is that? It's in Vancouver. I think there's one in Colonna too. It's BC's largest, like, craft beer and whiskey festival. And so because I worked part-time at a liquor store, when I was a park ranger

because I just enjoy the spirits industry. No way. That's commitment. Yeah. You get sometimes like industry passes. You get the go there and you can try anything that's on the tables.

Dangerous thing. First time going, it was a dangerous thing. I'm glad I had friends with me. That said, I've spat stuff out at that festival because you've got like 120 whiskeys. I'm not going to drink a sample of every single one of these 120 whiskeys because I might hurt myself. You've got to be smart about it.

But I understand, too, the finish of a whiskey is a thing. Like, there's whiskeys I drink and I will be tasting at five, ten minutes down the road. One sip can last me that long if I'm reading a book. It's a glass of whiskey, 15 or 30 mils, however much you pour. For me, it's never measures larger than that. Sometimes that can last me an hour, hour and a half if it's a really complex whiskey, if it just sticks with you. The finish is one of the things I appreciate the most. If it's quick, if it resolves too fast, and it doesn't stick around to just, you know, get to know me, I might not want to get to know it.

That's hilarious. So I don't think I've tried this one yet. It smells thicker. Yeah, that's jammy. you're right this is the first one that actually smelled like jam to me like it's got a jam note or jelly what's the difference jelly and jam same family different consistency oh yeah that one's really good that one's a good second place so it's still second to the other one there's a richness

on the finish there if you just like let it sit yeah The malt backbone, like the malt sugars coated with that, like, almost like, syrupiness of the sherry maturation on this. It just, it sticks around for a long time. I like that. I do like that. That is something that I didn't know I would enjoy. But yeah, there's a lasting flavor that the other one doesn't have when it tastes

better in the early phases, but it doesn't last as long as this one where this one, it stays with you and it literally feels like your face has become autumn become autumn i like that faces become autumn oftentimes people describe like christmas cake flavors in a lot of sherryed whiskeys because you get that spicing you get that fruit and it's kind of a denser sort of um presentation so people often associate it with like christmas time and with with thanksgiving and those sorts of things so autumn's an interesting pull there yeah are you So you said these are very similar? So they're distilled the same years.

So it's the exact same ages in them. It's the same distillery. It's the same percentage of alcohol, 46% in each one. Both non-chill filtered and they're both natural color. So nothing's been changed in that way. So there's just some water attitude and bring them down to 46%. They're basically as close as you can to getting them the same. Um, minus the wood.

That's fascinating. Because they do taste completely different in terms of the overall experience. And you're saying that's based on the wood that they sit within. Yeah. So this is like the best test case for like, how much does wood play a rule in the drink? This is like the perfect test case of how much of a difference it can make. 100%, which is exactly why I wanted to pour it for you. Because I'm fascinated by it.

That is fascinating. Yeah. It's, um, it's, it's, that's what I really enjoyed. doing is pouring two whiskeys and comparing them and taking notes on them side by side because if you go back and forth between these two bottles, I guarantee you'll pull up more aromas and more tasting notes as a compare and contrast than just by itself. I struggle when I'm doing it by itself. Yeah. But if you have something side by side, it helps to, it might even have like a coffee effect going to a different, entirely different smelling one

and going back to the other one, it emphasizes the difference and you can kind of just pull it. You get context. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, sometimes like if you just drink one whiskey by itself, sometimes it'll just take like whiskey. Okay. So one big thing that's within the culture is adding a few drops of like water to it. Yeah. Do you know about Chilliwax water? Do you know the water problem we have here? We had chlorine up the kazoo. Yeah. Yeah. Kizu, wazoo, whatever you like. So do you filter your water and then put it in? Do you buy spring water? What's your water approach? So most whiskeys, I will play around with water, especially if it's cast strength. If it's 46%, oftentimes I don't feel there's a need to play with it.

They've got it usually pretty dialed in. But before I had to fire, lots of things were destroyed. Some of my whiskey stuff, some of my bottles, but like my tincture with my water dropper to go ahead and drop water into a whiskey. Because I usually do a drop by drop. I haven't replaced that yet. So I've been a little relaxed on that. I'll use like a straw right now and try to drop a few drops of water. And I'll do that with most whiskeys when I'm first playing around with them.

It's a great thing to do with a whiskey. I wasn't aware that there was a cuffle with Chilliwack water right now because when I was growing up in Chilliwack, like the Vetter Aquifer, it was golden. It was the best water in Canada. Yeah, we won awards. It was delicious. I admired it. And then for some reason, we started having to chlorinate it. And it kind of just went downhill from there.

Yeah. Yeah. So I buy bottled water. I try to find stuff that's low in minerality, just something almost neutral. There's some people that are bottling and selling whiskey from the source, not whiskey, or water, water from the source in Scotland. So like, Ila water, highland water, spaceide water. and they say it's the same like minerality and has the same

dissolved like solids and all this as the whiskey does and so you should use that that's a gimmick to me see i believe that you believe it so we have to put this in the context we have what's called alkaline planet they actually came right at they started their business right after they added chlorine to the water yeah and it's basically a filter but it has all the minerals you need it has carbon to try and get rid of the chlorine from it it has all those things, and then it adds back in important nutrients back into the water that you lose by having it go through a filtration process. And so now me and my partner always notice the difference between bottled water that says

it's alkaline versus not, and we're very, like, aware, and we're like water snobs. Oh, really? We notice the difference between, like, good water, water that's been, like, sitting on the shelf for a long time, and we always have freshly, because you can get, what's those things called the machines that can in water and then they have another name, alkaline water that does it like through electrical process. Apparently that's not as good. So ours runs through like a natural process, but you have to replace the filter faster because you put chlorine in there and then it's running through the chlorinated filter. So it's not going to be as clean. So we have

to, we replace it every couple of months. But our big thing is like water quality. And so it'll be interesting to see how you try some well i guess it it's sort of that when we put the ice cubes in it hasn't gone through that process so yeah we're very water specific i could get behind like the differences if you're like using a lot of it i guess if you're using like uh like one or two drops like yeah i don't think i'm going to notice it in whiskey um but no i could see quality of water is is a big deal i don't like buying bottled water um just for like the ethical reasons behind it, not even so much the recycling, but like the concerns around who owns water and when companies have access to that. Nestle changed their name overhead. Have they changed

their name now? Yeah. So if you go up to the, so the hope for people with contacts, hope has a Nestle distribution plant where they take water for free, they don't pay taxes, and then they sell water that is from our community. So I'm a member of Chihuahua First Nation, which is the Hope Band, so we're not thrilled. thrilled that they're doing that. So they went under a lot of scrutiny for, and then Nestle started kind of getting like in trouble with public perception because of that, because they don't really pay taxes, they don't really bring in revenue to the community, and they're making a lot of money.

And so they went under so much scrutiny, all they did was change their name. And like, part of it is brilliant, because I don't even know off the top of my head what their new name is, which is brilliant because now I'm calling out Nestle. And if you go there, and if you look on the water bottles, it's no longer Nestle, which is sort of brilliant, but also evil and unhelpful and doesn't fix any of the problems. Well, Nestle itself is already so problematic as a company. And with ethics, I mean, even with calls for them to pull out of the Russian market after the invasion of Ukraine, like that's... I didn't hear about that. Yeah, they refused to.

I don't know if they've changed their stance. Yeah, because I haven't looked into it recently, but I would, that seems up Nestle's alley to me, checks out. out. And I think they've gotten into hot water in other markets too for their practices around drawing too much water. Water ownership, water sovereignty is such a massive issue and it's going to only become bigger, especially in Canada. I mean, you look at examples like in Bolivia where the people basically marched and revolted on the government because they sold the water rights to a company who was fleecing the people. And yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I don't like supporting them

However, the bottle I have with me is a Nestle bottle Because I bought it many, many, a long time ago Because I needed a bottle of water Yeah, so. Fair enough. Jokes on me. Yeah, there's one interview I just did And it will have released when our

It comes out before, I think it's 81 or something. Biologist from BCIT Basically has very little hope that the Fraser and Better River will continue to operate as normal rivers into the future. He said we were at like 500 or 700,000 fish flowing through there. It was like 10 years ago. It was like 10 million.

Yeah, it was. The decline is like that. It's like it's not good. And then I was like, what's going on? And he's like, I've done presentations to everyone. I've gone out. They give me pat, pat, pat. Thank you for coming.

We'll do something about this. And then nothing gets done. And then I go to another event and pat, pat, pat. on the way and it was like he just it felt like he had felt like there's no hope and it was like it was the first I interviewed an ocean pollution expert the guy who discovered that um killer whales are the most contaminated mammals in our oceans right now the guy who also helped uh understand that the Inuit are some of the most contaminated people even though they live nowhere near fossil fuels or oil industries or anything like that but because the animals eat so much

plastic and they eat the animals they're impacted he had more hope than the guy he was talking about the Fraser River and it was just like this is our river like um where he talks about the heart of the Fraser is within my community's region and it was just like he was like there's no nobody's got any plan to do any big meaningful step to fix this and I guess this year was like a higher fish yield in other years yeah and he was like this is nothing They're celebrating over peanuts. It was nothing. Yeah.

It was nothing. I mean, you look at even the last four-year cycle back in 2018, there was a lot more Sakai that came through in the summer run, especially I think the mid and late. Like the numbers were minuscule. I didn't think we were going to get an opening this year. And when they had an opening, I was kind of flabbergasted. I think that like happened just at the like September 8th or something. I was like, I don't have much hope for Rivers either, to be perfectly honest with it.

and you look at temperatures of the water, water temperatures for the sake. There's a huge fish mortality rate for these fish swimming up river. Once the temperature hits, like, is it 22, I think, for a water temperature, they start dying on their way to their home rivers. On top of all the challenges that they've had from hatching out as fry, making it out of the rivers, getting to the ocean, surviving the ocean, making it back to the river, now they're dying because the river's too hot for them to get.

No, it's, it's really, it is very discouraging. Yeah, when have we ever seen forest fires in October? Yeah, new forest fires in October. It's so smoky. It's October. It's supposed to be raining. I'm begging for rain right now, too. And I saw the forecast state it's another seven days of sun.

And I look at the Vedder River, and this is the lowest I can ever recall it for October. It's dire. It's really dire. Yeah, I hope my children and my children's children will get to know salmon in the fetter and Fraser Rivers and the other tributaries of the Fraser. There's a lot that needs to be done. Alexander Morton was a marine biologist, I believe, who was doing a lot of activism in regards to trying to close open-net fish farms on the migratory routes for the Fraser River salmon. and we're slowly moving towards, I think, closure of those. But that's only part of the puzzle.

I don't think we can blame everything on the diseases that come from the open pen fish farms. It will help. I hope it's the silver bullet. But the government's also very slow in acting on that. Possibly because of economic factors, I don't know. It's very disappointing, especially when you look at the number of salmon returning to Alaskan rivers. and even the recovery on rivers in Oregon and Washington State. For some reason, like, you look at the Skeena,

Schina has huge numbers of fish coming back, and their tributaries are having huge numbers of fish coming back. The Columbia, I believe, is much healthier than it's been in a long time. The Fraser is this quandary. For some reason, it's the outlier, and I'm not sure what the answers are. Did he have any hints as to... He thinks big reason is fish fire?

And then he was saying the other big reason is just, we abuse the shit out of the Fraser. And like he was one of the people who was trying to close down Gill Road because people just ripped through on their ATVs and had no understanding. And he was like, we basically, so the heart of the Fraser is from mission to hope. And his point was that we need to stop any abuses whatsoever from there to there because this used to be the most successful region for. fish habitats and now there's so much ATVs going through there's so when rebecca and i were there on a walk a plane landed in like in the middle of like one of the in-betweens and it was just like why and then they took off again it wasn't like they got out and they had lunch and they hung out and they chilled they just landed for the sick landing yeah and then took off again and it was just like

why what what is the importance of what you just did and so he was like we need to do that across those ecosystems. But then even within my community, there's proposals for more pipelines, for more like natural gas lines to run along the Fraser River from the entrance in Vancouver all the way out. Like we just,

we have this cycle of like needing to do business and it's never ending. And there's always like a financial incentive, more jobs, more financial opportunities. And during this time where people are having inflation, impact their pocketbooks. It's like we want more business. We want more money coming into our communities.

And so like, I don't know how you balance that. I don't know how you turn off the taps because, as I told you before, I have community members who are living like five people to a bed. Yeah. That's crazy. And then so it's like, so I say no to the economic opportunity for the sake of the environment, but how can that really fall on my community? Like, we are in poverty.

Like, that doesn't seem fair. Yeah. So how do we, like, it just doesn't seem. equitable and maybe that's just the biggest imperfection of our system is like if you live nowhere near the pipeline up in Ryder Lake or some spot where nobody's ever going to want to put a pipeline

through it's like you'll never have this problem but we run along the Fraser where it's very flat, easy to install pipeline so like there's no I really struggle with the balance between the two because to me it's like I want the pipeline so I can get my members out of poverty but I absolutely hear the argument

that this is going to be bad for the environment long term. Yeah. It's It's such a balancing act. I think many levels of governments go and struggle with it. But when you're down to that ground level that you're talking about that situation, you're describing how can you say no to bettering that family's situation or the potential for bettering their situation? And why should that burden fall upon small communities like yours?

It's the responsibility really does lie elsewhere. But you also need people to be open to hearing that and then accepting it. And like you said, if someone's, you know, in some other corner of the province and they're just hearing the difference in the economy, you're like, well, the greatest good for the greatest amount of people, some sort of utilitarian principle. But that's almost like that that's that's the problem right there because you have this localized impact and those people are suffering more for others. benefit. It really, it's a tough question. Yeah. The big change, I think, just if we were to have the silver bullet, I think it's long term going to be just the courts having another level of analysis, which is, will this better or harm our society over the next seven generations? Like, I think they just, they lack that ability to go, yes, there's economic incentives,

but is this overall good long term? Because, I like to ponder why people protest. I try and put myself in their shoes and not judge whether they're the truckers or environmental people. I just try not to judge and go, okay, what are they trying to say? They're yelling a lot. Let's try and glean some sort of insight from them. Then with environmentalists, it's like they're basically arguing the process in which our courts go to to decide whether or not there should be an injunction on protesting is flawed. It's imperfect because they go, this is busy.

business, we support business, the provincial government supports business, so this business should be able to proceed. Well, their argument has nothing to do with business. It all centers around how this is going to destroy trees that have been there for thousands of years. Like, that's not the argument they're making. So how do we add in an argument they can make that has nothing to do with business and economic incentives and revolves around whether or not this makes sense for the next

seven generations of people who are going to live on this earth? We're going to have access to the decision you made. And I feel like if we had a process like that, maybe some of these decisions would go differently. And then we wouldn't have people, I think the last one is like people parking their vans in the middle of a bridge and then just like leaving them, which seems bizarre. Like when you hit that point, it's like you have to ask, how do we not have that happen? Yeah. There's got to be some alternative to it. Yeah.

Like protest is a super healthy thing to have in democracy. It means people actually still care. Apathy hasn't taken root and it hasn't overrun. overwhelmed. I remember in my younger years protesting quite a bit. It was great, especially if I felt the cause was worthy. That's for me, obviously, the way you go about it is, it matters hugely. That said, I remember in university talking about the concept of monkey renters. And so monkey renters were people, environmental protesters. Are you familiar with the concept?

No. They had a process of going out and they were going to disrupt the industry by mechanical means. So they started putting like iron spikes and trees that were destined to be chopped down. And so when people using chainsaws would go ahead and use a chainsaw, it would break the chainsaw chain saw chain. And that would fly off and people were getting hurt. but they were stopping the process because obviously they couldn't continue on if someone's hurt on the job and so they would often the argument was if they aren't listening what options do you have because obviously that's not appropriate to protest in a way that hurts people

but at the same time they're saying well this is important it's life or death you know our planet matters and they chose to protest in that way. If they won't listen, we have no other option. And that's a tricky situation. I have time to hear those arguments. I obviously, I lean to the side of safety and security for all. I don't think we need to violate that rate

or for someone to protest. Yeah, that's how I felt. I don't know if you saw that TikTok video going around of that person. It was just up in, I think it was just past hope. And they were filming the person because the pipeline development they were doing was, like, literally stopping fish from flowing through. And the person went up to the employee and was like, why are you doing this? Like, how do you know this is destroying fish farms? It's like, this guy's just an employee.

Yeah. Like, and then I think the Hope Standard wrote a story on it, like how harmful this is. And it was like, this is the wrong way. You want to corner someone? Corner the CEO. Yeah. Do not corner some person going home to their family. Now he's on the news.

Now he's got a recording of him on TikTok that's got a million views. Yeah. He's just a guy. This was not what he signed up for. He's trying to pay his bill just like everybody else. You may disagree with it. But you could be mad at save on foods for unethical practices of bringing in like vegetables from countries that maybe don't take care of their vegetables the way they should. Like, you could be upset about anything.

This poor guy has to go home to his family and like explain like, yeah, I'm just doing my job trying to pay and make sure that our kids. have Christmas presents and here I am on like CTV news because some person approached me out of nowhere like I disagree with that but again I understand where they're coming from it's just like ah it's so tough and when you're talking about where does a responsibility lie like obviously you look at the corporations and what what responsibility do they have and then of course they're protected up the like they have so many legal rights now um I mean highlighted in the corporation I haven't seen the the follow up yet but um i interviewed the guy i know that's why i'm just like so good i'm jealous

but he was terrifying in his own way it was terrifying because so he went to have you heard of klaus schwab no so he wrote a book called the new what was it called it was like a bunch of people who were conspiratorial were like against it but this book was sent out to world leaders Jason Kenny from Alberta talked about receiving the book for free

and it was basically like how are we going to get out of this pandemic and like create a better

world from this pandemic everybody shut down how can we restructure the world in a better way

that sounds super conspiratorial it's the world economic forum oh yeah and basically

Joel back in who wrote this book attended the world economic forum interviewed

Klaus Schwab and it is so much worse than the conspirator people thought. These people basically argue

that democracy is not that effective. It's slow. It's not that quick. We're corporations. We're very fast at responding to things. We've got a business mindset. We'll get things done. And so don't bother with your democracy. That's slow. And so when he was interviewing people at

the World Economic Forum, they're like, yeah, when is democracy ever worked? It's slow. It's ineffective. We'll be way faster than that. And so he was like, it was terrifying. to have people basically say democracy's old school, our new school way of having businesses run things is going to be way better, and we're just going to get to work,

and we're just going to do this without anybody say so. And that was terrifying. That was like, what? And asking him, he was like, yeah, and people don't really realize how much people have lost faith in democracy. That's deeply unsettling. Yeah. That sounds like some, I was going to say a word there.

are swearing kosher? Kosher. That's some like bastardization of democracy. It's like Corpacrocy. It's like it's government for and by the corporation. That's their dream though. Yeah, well, of course, yeah. But they think it's a good thing.

That's the challenge with like just being mad about it. It's like they genuinely believe what they're selling. And that's the dangerous part there. Yeah. Because they're true believers at that point. Yeah. And it was so interesting to hear. hear him say that because I had seen posts on Facebook and stuff of like, oh, like the world

economic forum, Klaus Schwab wants to take over. And I was like, oh, it's worse. He thinks just business in general is going to be the thing that gets us out of all our problems. That's the savior there. That's the magic bullet. Yeah. And people, like, it was everybody there. Donald Trump was there. Justin Trudeau. These are the people attending that event trying to get the intel. How do we do things better? This is where they're going for knowledge. And it was just, it was very unsettling and the new corporation is even worse because, and I've talked at agnosium about the idea that like you put like a leaf on your product and people go, well, at least I'm doing good. And I do think that there is a certain amount of that's linked to like the idea of

original sin. I think people just always have a sense of shame about existing and have always had a deep sense of shame about existing. And then you say, well, you're contributing to climate change. And then people go, yeah, that makes sense. What do I do? How do I? How do I, how? How do I atone for my sin? And then you say, well, do you just buy this bottle? It's $4.99 and it's got a leaf on it, and you can live with yourself. We're giving you a way out of the guilt. Exactly.

And I think that's how people live most of their lives is with a feeling of guilt and with looking for a way to just have a moment of relief from that guilt of that you are imperfect and flawed and make mistakes and say the wrong thing to the cashier or the person and make mistakes and do the things human beings do. and we just we want a second of relief from that and I think corporations have gotten very good at saying you buy this product and we'll donate to a mental health cause do you want to round up your price to this cause and it's like no I do not want my corporations managing this is basically a tax I don't know how many times I've been asked now do you want to round up to the nearest dollar to donate to this cause

and it's like no if I want to make a decision like this I will think it through with my brain and make a decision I do not want to make an impulse decision and feel guilted into the idea that I'm doing good. Yeah, and obviously you're going to direct it to where you think the most good is going to be done with that money too. You're not just going to give it to some corporation to then claim a tax benefit for. Yeah, but how many people do you think do that?

Because if I go, do you want to round up your groceries to the nearest dollar, the money goes to children's hospital? And then you're like, what are you going to say? No, children, dare you. Yeah. There's like a guilt with that. And then you go, like, I don't want to be that person. is there any others you want to try absolutely um demonstration here first i'm not going to open it

because i think it would blow uh i mean it's strong stuff uh it's cast strength uh this is a bowmore an eyelid distillery uh but just as a demonstration do you see what's in the bottom i don't want to be rude oh yeah there's black dots yeah so So that is actually charcoal and pieces of the inside of the oak cask that that whiskey was filled into. So this is from a single whiskey cask. It wasn't watered down. It was dumped from the cask. And it was bottled as it was.

It wasn't barrier filtered. It wasn't chill filtered. Nothing was done with it. That's basically whiskey straight over cask. And of course, it has sediment because of all the particulate matter that's in the barrel with the whiskey. So when we're talking about filtration, I think it's a great thing that we have barrier filtration. It filters out those floaties and all that because I don't necessarily want to be chewing on charcoal while I'm drinking a whiskey. But it's an interesting demonstration of what they're actually taking out.

That is really fascinating. The snake is really fascinating as well. Yeah, I'm not sure where they got that branding from. This is an independent bottler. Independent bottlers buy whiskey casks from distilleries, and then they bottle them themselves under their own branding. because sometimes they just think they can do it better. October 15th, 2002. We're almost at that date.

That's funny, too. Getting close. Yeah, I do have some other stuff here. We'll go to Campbelltown. We've had space sides. We've had a number of space sides. I think we've tripped into the highlands at one point. Space that's kind of like a sub-region of the highlands anyway.

Some people think it's kind of bogus. Have you been there? I haven't been to Scotland. I was supposed to go this year. Trip was cancelled due to some personal events, hoping to get next year. Right. Which class there is? I think is that the last one?

Or this one, whatever one you prefer. Oh, let's go with this one. So we're going to Campbelltown. Cameltown was the whiskey capital of the world. I had the greatest proportion of scotch distilleries or whiskey distilleries, as far as I understand, in a small area in the world and it went through kind of a downturn a whiskey downturn eventually and today I think at their height there were somewhere's above 30 distilleries in this one town and today there are three and two of those are owned by the same group so um they they got

hit quite hard this label also got destroyed in an incident but it's a spring bank um they They're one of my favorite distillery is probably my favorite distillery. They're the one I described earlier as doing it old school. So everything's done by hand. And by that, I mean, they use Victorian-era machinery and nothing's computerized. So the old, like the rummager, which is something that mixes up, the mash in the mash ton, like that's this old Victorian area, like iron contraption. The pot stills there. they're old they've got dense um they have duct tape on some of the the arms carrying the

distillate like it is old school it's run by a small crew family owned i think it's under it's under like 20 or 25 people who run to the distillery um and those who actually have like are hands on the production is is smaller than that they do their own labeling and boxing it's not much to look at for branding um but it's such a characterful whiskey um i i i love Campbelltown whiskeys. They are, they're right there with Isla for me. Oh, well, you have to go back a little bit. Where did you rank Shelter Point? Shelter Point. I'll, it depends on the day for me with that whiskey. It's a lot, like, sometimes I love it. Sometimes I'm like, it's okay. I love what they're doing up there for, for Canadian whiskey. It's near the, the top for me. If I'm just

ranking it in a Canadian sense, I'd give it probably like seven and a half, an eight's pretty high praise. So I think seven and a half is probably where I'd lie. For whiskey in general, I'll give it, I'd give it a five. It's good stuff. Maybe actually, probably should be a little bit more charitable. It's over, it's 50%. So it's bottled out of charitable amount. You can play with water to kind of make it your own. They have that finishing with the Isla cask. I wish there I got more fruit off of it. However, I can't really knock it. So no lower than a five, probably, probably a six.

Okay. And then what about those other two that you just showed? Tomato, I give those an eight. If there's a difference, like if I had to pick one over the other, the sherry. Sherry cask maturation. And can you get all of those at BC liquor stores that we've seen? No, no. Where can you get those other ones?

The Tomatin contrasts was released in 2015. So it, for the most part, is long gone. I think there's some floating around in Alberta at this point, but it's like auctions or some stores in Alberta. I'm pretty sure still have it. No way. Spring Bank, you can't buy Spring Bank in BC, unfortunately. It's hard to get now.

It's kind of like the new It Whiskey. Everyone's jumping on it now. So it's hard pressed to find a bottle, but it doesn't get imported to BC anymore. You used to. Why? I heard it had something to do with their distributor here. The importer and distributor just didn't like working with the BC liquor distribution branch.

And so they decided to take their product elsewhere. And they do very small runs. Their total output is something ridiculously low, like 500,000 liters for a year or something, which I could try to put in perspective, like if I pull up like McAllen or Glenn Fittick's runs. But they're a small amount of whiskey. And so they're like, oh, we have other markets to ship it, too. So we don't need to, we don't need B.C. Fair enough.

And where do you rank this one? Oh, for a 10-year-old expression, this is probably my favorite 10-year-old in the world. And it's very different. I don't want you to be mad, but it smells like the McAllen. It does, eh? To me, yeah. I think you should pour some of the McCallon again. That's you just politely disagreeing.

Yes, absolutely. I get melon. off that or like cantaloupe there's some interesting fruiting and there's like some there's like a funk in the background um and that i kind of associate with like old uh industrial machinery uh yeah i just think of the distillery when i think of it um it's quintessential i think it's like associated to campbeltown there's a thing that people refer to called campletown funk it's just a character trait of the region um i don't think it applies as much to glenskosha but for Springbank and Kilkaren it's definitely a thing there's only three distilleries so for this

region two out of three yeah it Campbelltown funk we could we could call it I love it a huge malt backbone like there's just amazing malt sweetness to that yeah it has a lasting flavor again and to burn I don't know how to to describe it when my tongue was on fire for a second there. I've got pepper there, yeah, which I associate with the burn. It doesn't taste like the McAllen. Not at all. It still smells like it.

Yeah. See, this is one of the things I love about whiskey. Like, everyone has their own perception with it. Just like you're tasting anything, or your taste in music. Your own experiences are going to inform what you're tasting, what you're smelling. I mean, I've heard other people,

say things that I'm just like are we drinking the same whiskey yeah but if that's what it's doing for them like more power to them again the best whiskey is just what you like to drink how you like to drink it if it's in a big tumbler glass i don't use a tumbler glasses because they throw a lot more alcohol vapor at you i find the more like a bulb-shaped uh nosing glass like this i think it it traps a lot of the vapor lower down away from your nose that i don't know what the scientific explanation is, but if I poured a whiskey in a tumbler, I think you'd think it's much higher in alcohol. Interesting.

It smells a lot. Yeah, I just get like the ethanol smell off of it. Right. I don't like to nose off of a tumbler. I usually just pick up alcohol and maybe a couple little things. Yeah, it's also very, I find a very viscous, very oily. I oftentimes coat the edge of my glass. and I'll watch.

There's things called legs in whiskey terms. And that's basically when you coat the edge of your glass, if you do an even coating, how quickly the whiskey rolls back down. And how thick of a bead it comes down in. And so if it's small beads, if it's lacing, you can see kind of tracing there. They probably wouldn't show up on a camera if I put it close.

And you can't do what you just did, which is, like, put this on inside with other, with this. No, you can get a sense for it. Like, with your glasses over there, you could do that. And you could watch and see how quickly it's falling. But usually it's a marker of age. It's also a marker of, like, viscosity. Sometimes people can try to guess, like, an age off of legs. I can't do that.

I just know that typically if it has good legs, it's a little more viscous, a little more body to it. And usually that's an indicator that's going to be fuller. and flavor too. Alcohol is one of the most flavorful compounds in the world, so I'm told. And if it's 40% versus 46%, I think you're going to find a big difference.

So much is so very subjective with like whiskey tastes too. I was listening to a YouTuber Aquavite. He has a great channel. He's phenomenal and he's very articulate

in how he describes everything. and he was talking about someone starting their whiskey journey and starting off with like a 40% or a 43% bottling of something you can grab off the grocery store shelf in the UK where he's located and that would be something like Mac Allen that be Aberlore that would be I have some abelora right over there Oh nice! Is that 12? 12? Yeah, yeah. Tim brought it over.

Stellar whiskey again, sherry cows. I think I know where you're like wheelhouse is kind of, I think, I think you like the sherry, sherry cask finish and matured whiskeys. But like things, things like that, you, when you're starting out, you don't need something that's 60% alcohol, hasn't been watered down, is nonchill filtered, natural color, has peat and a whole bunch of intense, like, funky, cheesy aromas. It's like there's some whiskeys like Legig is known for a cheesy aroma, which they've referred to as well as a funk, a cheesy funk, or like a barnyard sort of thing, like horse blanket. I love those aromas in a whiskey. I search for those.

No way. Yeah. Someone's starting out, you put that in front of their face, they're going to backhand you. They're going to tell you to buzz off. So there's definitely a development, right? And he was talking about a Benevis, which is a famously, it's a dirty whiskey. Springbank is typically a dirtier whiskey, too, depending on the year.

And like a dirty whiskey, like nobody starting out typically wants that. They want something that's austere, that's elegant, that's easy drinking, that they can sit with and not have to think too hard about and just enjoy. What do you think of proper 12? You know, I honestly, I haven't had it. Okay. So I can't tell you what I think of it. What I know of it is it's young Irish whiskey that's sourced from one of their distilleries there. I'm going to guess it's maybe Middleton, something like that.

But it's young. I'm going to guess it's harsh. Just because it's young, hasn't been given time to balance out. it's 40% alcohol is my understanding it's going to be colored it's going to be chill filtered so when I'm shopping for a whiskey these are the hallmarks I'm always looking for

I'm looking at the proof is it above 46 or if not is it at a reasonable level not saying I wouldn't drink or buy something under 46% 46% obviously it would but I do consider it I do count it as kind of a knock against it

but I look for above 46% or at non-chill filtered natural color and an age statement. There's a shortage of a lot of whiskeys of stocks. And so they've started moving towards non-age statement whiskeys where they don't have to declare how old it is. And so you can reasonably think maybe there's older whiskey in there, but it's going to be mixed with younger whiskey. And so they're trying to stretch it out by doing vattings of different ages. And so they don't want to throw the youngest whiskey on there because the only age they could put on there, because we mentioned earlier,

is if the youngest is 12 years old, they have to put 12 year old on there, even if it's, say, they got 30-year-old whiskey blended in with it. So that's what I'm looking for. So when I look at proper 12, it's like an X on the proof, it's an X on the coloring, it's the X on the age, it's a non-age statement, but I'm going to guess it's young because they're hiding it. If it was a 10-year-old, they'd at least put that on there. Yeah, I don't know.

There's a local retailer in Vancouver. that their picture for proper 12 is actually a dumpster fire. No way. So for me, like, I, like, I, I was going to say I'm not rich. I'm rich compared to a lot of people in my community. I'm exceptionally middle class. I don't want to throw extra money at whiskey. I think it's going to be bad.

It's going to be bad. I'm going to be like, no, no, I'm done. Fair enough. Yeah. So have you, have you had proper 12? Yes. What did you think? I had none of the information I have right now with it.

And then I gave it, Tim and I tried it in our first podcast together, and then I give it to him. So obviously it wasn't so good that I was like, it's mine. But I thought it was good, but I had no concept of what was good and what was bad. I love the UFC. I love hearing their stories and stuff. And so that's just, like, if I could get Dustin Porrier's hot sauce, I would totally try that.

Oh, yeah? Yeah, so it's just, I just enjoy supporting their endeavors because, like, they give a lot of themselves to their sport and just, like, supporting them. And then it was just cool to be able to have that on the shelf of, like, have proper 12. So, just like McAllen. Yeah. I tuned into UFC a little while ago. I was, I followed GSP more than anything. I was just a fan of GSP because technically I just thought he was so amazing.

And to come back after retirement and to do what he did. A lot of people doubting him. I just, I love the way he carried himself. I love the way that he talked to people and he gave time to people. I don't know, he seemed like a class guy. So he was my type of like MMA guy. And I've kind of tuned out since. Interesting.

I didn't follow Connor McGregor and all that, all that closely. Yeah, I like Israel Adasanya. some people don't like him like one of our mutual friends not a fan of him because he's the other other people would call him chauvinistic and overconfident yeah i would just say he's very aware of his skill set and i don't think you can have too much humility in that area like you're putting your whole body and life and health and well-being on the line you you have to have a certain amount of like unrealistic expectations of what you're capable of And I just think that that's a necessary element And it's something GSP was more leveled at Which was like not being overconfident in his abilities But I think if you're going to do what Connor McGregor did Or what Israel Azanis is done

You have to be very You have to have that belief in yourself That's unwavering Because in those moments where you're being tested You have to be like no I'll get this done watch Like you can't be like I don't know am I going to get it done this time And that's what I like in Israelada Sanya

Sean O'Malley is, I don't know if you've seen him, but he's got very colorful. He's got the clown hair. It's very colorful, and he's very sassy. And he's very much that way, Paddy, the Baddy is another person. Paddy the Baddy, I like that. He's from the UK. And so, yeah, he's got a very funny name.

He's got a very funny blonde hair that, like, looks like, what did they call it, like, helmet? And, like, he has it all the way down to his head. Yeah, I don't forget what it's called. You have, you have to be somewhat of a, like, the egomaniac to play professional sports, I think. Yeah. Like, there has to be that core of self-belief in order to perform and get to that level. Yeah, and it's always impressive.

You have to work behind the scenes and be like, I'm going to be the best. And you can't turn that off ever. It has to be always something where you're striving towards being the best. And I don't think you get to turn that off. Like, when you're exhausted at practice, you have to be like, no, but if I'm going to be the champion, I have to go five more minutes. And, like, you have to have that all the time. If self-doubt slips in there, that's when you're not going to make that pitch in the strike zone.

You're going to get the yips and golf. That's when it starts unraveling and falling apart. Exactly. And you see that in people later in their career of like they still have that amazing self-belief in themselves, but they're not delivering the way they were. Like, I don't know if you know who Tony Ferguson is. No. But we're just seeing his career kind of, he was considered like the boogeyman at one point. And now it's like he can't win a fight to save his life.

And it's like just completely downhill from the icon. one he once was to where he is now. Man. Too much coffee. No worries. Go right ahead. Yeah, we have to do this again too because we're just clearly scratching the surface of your knowledge base.

This is the one you're talking about. Yeah. I'd love to have Tim here because obviously, like, the more the merrier. Yeah. The only challenge, and this is something we were going back and forth, which is why I took so long to, like, confirm a date with you, was we just, this room just doesn't have the space for the three of us. yeah and so we were like do we do it at his place and then is it under my name or is it under his name

what makes sense and then it was just like okay this is taking months and like we're not getting anywhere we were going to start our own podcast and the tap right yeah that's what we were thinking and then it just it's like who's going to edit it where are we going to do it all those type of questions all right with uh what class i think this one i'm going to pass you this then okay um yeah i'll use one of these because yeah you're going to have to get a good smell of that yeah no that would be great I think um just chatting and discussion and being able to focus on like a couple like one or two or three at a time I think is um is a great way to go and just yeah yeah you like to him so

oh yeah he seems great man he seems like a great guy and uh he obviously has a passion for what he does And he kind of just, there's a genuineness about his presentation and when he's talking. It's like, yeah, no, I'll talk about that. Why not? Yeah. Yeah, no, it seems cool. He is very cool. Yeah, we're always mess.

I just did an Instagram post with him that was pretty funny. Because he was like, I've been posting a lot more about my running. And then he, I don't know if you've heard of David Goggins. No. Cameron Haynes? No. Okay. So these are two people who run.

like ultramarathons. Okay. And they've both written books about, like, healthy living and, like, the adversity they overcame, how to live a meaningful life, those type of things. And Tim's been reading that. And then so we've been talking about running and competing, and then I posted this. Timmy, Timothy, this is your challenge. Do 8K this week.

And if you ask yourself, how am I supposed to do that? Just think, what would David Goggins say? What about everybody? And then so he met him. He messaged me afterwards. He messaged me, and he was like, fuck, I am aiming for a 5K this week. But I guess Goggins would tell me to get hard, motherfucker.

Nut up, man. Yeah. So it's just, it's such a funny friendship, and it's just fantastic. That's great. So this one, what did you say? This one's extra peedy. So this is Lefroid quarter cask.

There's some minutia to this one, but Lefroid, they're known for a big smack in the face of peat um typically they're about 35 ppm this was 10 or 15 uh over here so amped up quite a bit um bottled up 48% uh alcohol it is colored as far as i know it's probably chill filtered wow so do you think this one would be clear if they didn't color it most likely yeah They use quarter casks, a smaller cast type, to have more surface, basically like a surface to volume ratio, a higher one. They use those because they think they're going to age quicker. So I think this is closer to eight years old. It's probably one of the younger ones we are trying today.

But Lefroid, like, you pour me a glass of Lefroid, I'll be disappointed if I don't call the distillery, like, blind pretty quickly. It is rather distinctive You smell Lefroig And it's its own thing Which There's like this medicinal Like iodine sort of thing Which I love

What was that word you used before? Oh which one The cheers Oh slunge Slunge Slunge I do not like this one very much very much. I do not like the extra piti, which is weird because it's my last name.

Get with it, man. Live up to your name. Oh, man. I don't even know how to describe it. It sort of tastes like I'm licking a wall. Licking a wall, yeah? Yeah, that's the energy I get from there. Believe it or not, that's far from the most ridiculous descriptor for this type of whiskey. LaFroig ran an ad campaign years ago, and it was, basically giving people a glass of life right and describe it to us and one of my favorite ones that I've often quoted is it's like drinking a mermaid's bath water it's just it's so coastal there's there's a salinity to it um it's I feel like I'm drinking seaweed sometimes but it's got

that a medicinal note it's got a bit of like a like a doctor sort of thing for me too I love the smoke the kind of like campfire sort of thing going on in the back. There's, with old Lefroigs, there's a lot of fridiness going on. This has a lot of vanilla, a lot of vanilla from the castes they're using. So, like, you're hearing a lot of the flavors repeated, but these all are very distinctively different whiskeys. They have different approaches, but I love Lefroig.

What do you rate it? Oh, okay, this expression of Lefroid, it's a five, but I have very high standards for Lafrog very high maybe a six I'll say I'll go six I have high standards for Lefrog

though they're capable of so much better than this and the older expression you get a lot of fruitiness

it will be like um barbecued pineapple that's then been like re-smoked on seaweed and then dipped in the ocean

and served you on a tray like there's but there's so many other fruits with it it's it's a

of beauty when done really well. But I saved it for the end because this Lafroid will blow out your palate. You will go to Lafrey and you'll try to go taste something else and you won't be able to find anything. Yeah, I still have it. It's like when you get a campfire on you and your clothing smells like it. Everything.

And then your washing machine smells like it. Yeah. No, it's that sort of whiskey. So yeah. But as a callback here, so Lefroid Quartercast, that's its own thing here from the wonderful island of Isla, Scotland. that's a place I am desperate to visit. They're known for peaty whiskeys. There's some unpeated by Brooklati and Bonhaven,

two other distilleries on the island. But Lefroig is the distillery that provided us with our barrels for the finishing on the shelter point whiskey that we drank earlier. So it's interesting. I've poured a couple glasses side by side to try and pick out that Lefroig influence. And you can find where the smoke is. I wouldn't have been able to tell you. it was Lefroig, but I love it.

I think another description of the flavor was, it's like drinking damp seagull trash. I see it. There's the most ridiculous flavor descriptors for some of these things. And my partner, Kyla, she suggested, she's like, you know what, if you do like a whiskey, like YouTube channel or something, she's like, what you need to do is videos is you need to find these ridiculous tasting notes and you need to go and experience them if it's like someone says yeah it's like sitting

eating barbecue at a tire fire okay you need to find a tire fire and you need to eat barbecue and say you know what yeah pretty spot on or no no you're out to lunch that's a good idea that's a great idea can you tell us a little bit about that what has it been like for somebody else to watch this passion of yours develop over time oh man she's been so fantastic about it. Incredibly supportive. Ridiculously supportive with it. I think anyone else will probably have booted me out of the house or something when I kept bringing bottles of whiskey back because I'm just like, no, I need to discover this new thing.

And she just, she was excited for me to be coming here today. She wanted to be here. She's a huge podcast fan. Really? Oh, yeah. So, yeah, she's, she's been there with me ever a step of the way on this new experience. For me personally, like, if I want to get really personal about it, in my life, when I found myself throwing myself into passions, especially new ones, like, I get super deep into

it, like, anorac levels, just like I want to know every detail. And most of the times when I've done that in the past, it's been during times of trouble. So when I was in high school and things were not great, threw myself into like hockey, becoming like a hockey super fan and trying to know everything about hockey. And that became a huge part of my identity. And later on, outdoors, the outdoors became a huge part of my identity when I was going through trouble as well. And since 2020, I've picked up whiskey a lot more going through the pandemic. And also going through just various personal tragedies. It has given me something else to focus on that is a disconnect from the chaos around me.

And it's given me an outlet. Hobbies, I think hobbies are super valid and life-giving in that they can, they can help pull you out of the fire when you're in the midst of it. And so, yeah, that, I've thrown myself into this during some really hard times. And she's been there for the hard times, and she's experienced the hard times with me as well. Especially, I mean, this last year, I mean, I just got back home from a funeral. And earlier this year, we lost her home to a fire. And so she's gone through so much as well.

So her support has meant the world to me. And she's always, whenever I talk about it, because I talk ad nauseum about the things that I love, including her. And she'll chime in with facts about the distillery or, oh, that's not a good one. It's at such and such percentage. Oh, that's definitely colored. and she'd be like, did I get it right? And she's proud to be learning it along with me, and to have her in this hobby with me

means the world. She'll set up my blind tasting glasses for me if I ever want to do that. No, she's great. She's fantastic. Wouldn't want to go through life's journeys or this whiskey journey with anyone else. do you think the word hobby is the right word it's something i didn't call it a hobby when you were coming on it's a word i feel uncomfortable with because it almost underestimates the value that it can bring to a person's life like the impact it can have it's like with him you could say what

he's doing is a hobby but it's much more aptly put a passion and something he sees more depth in than the average person so the outlier will be like oh it's it's a hobby but like internally it doesn't seem like that it seems like there's more to it that meets the eye and so i'm just interested is his hobby the right word is that something that's easy for you like obviously we can get stuck on definitions but it's just one that makes me uncomfortable because a hobby just makes it sound like you're just sitting around doing nothing but to me you're you're building to something and you might not be the number one person in in the space yet but to me you're you're building towards that um certainly he's you're you're building towards that um certainly he

you've shown a depth of knowledge that only a small percentage of the world has in terms of this information. And so you are working towards that, even if you don't know it. And so do you think Halby is the right word to describe what you're doing? I may have downplayed it with that word because it isn't socially acceptable to, at least I haven't. I feel a little self-conscious about my whiskey collection, for example. I know plenty of people, like, I'm small fry amongst my whiskey friends. But I feel some hesitation to really see, like, show people how much I am into whiskey. Because sometimes I feel like it can be a bit silly.

It's barley water, right? How serious can be? It's not life or death. But it, the more correct term is a passion, yeah, I, much the same for like fishing for me. It's a passion. It's a lifelong passion. It's something I've done since I was 12. I did it with my father and I'll do it with if I ever have kids. I love sharing it with people. I love helping people learn on the river, learn how to fish ethically and correctly and successfully.

And I love sharing and pouring whiskey for people because I love to share the experience because alcohol is such an experiential thing. And so the more correct word, I'd say, would be, yeah, it is a passion, for sure. It just sometimes doesn't feel socially acceptable to have a passion for something that, admittedly, has caused so much harm for a lot of people. And so, as we discussed earlier, you know, you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. there's great input and great things can be added to our society by some things, but alcohol has had such an outsized negative impact. Sometimes it's hard to admit to having a passion for the study and for sharing it with

people. And so, yeah, no, I think when we're talking semantics, probably passion is the correct word for what I feel for it. But again, sometimes it's hard to kind of. convey that to somebody with them understanding where you're coming from. A lot of people will be like, oh, you're just like a closeted alcoholic or something. But it's like, well, no, I drink very small measures and I sit with them for hours. Yeah, I struggle with that as well because this has always been about having people who have their passions sharing that because you have a nine to five or you have a job that you're going to.

Maybe that doesn't inspire you. Maybe it is just work. But then what you do on that side, that is something to me that's oftentimes more sacred to the person than the nine to five. And that little passion can grow into their career and their life and something that they do full time. And that's why when I sat down with Tim, it was like, I'm not going to consider it a hobby. I'm going to let him tell me what it is first because maybe his end goal is to be the number one leather worker in the world. we don't know what the behind the scenes goal is that they set out with that they hope it becomes over time and so saying oh that's just a hobby to me it often comes across like it's downsizing

where they want to take it and when I was starting this they were like oh that's nice you want to interview a few Chilliwack people and it's like no my goals are far beyond just Chilliwack people but I always want to hear somebody's passion and how it's growing and it's so clear that it's beyond just a hobby because you're learning about the culture of the community. You want to travel there and learn about how they started and where they, that's a human element of careers and entrepreneurship and business and so much more than, and this has been something that people's livelihoods have depended on, but it's also a product that they put out into the world that the world was aware of that they respected and, and knowing about this, the work

that went into this takes years and like some of these are 10 years old. So it took somebody 10 years before they were able to even serve a product. And some of these have 35 years. Like, this is a long invested effort to bring something to people. And that can often be overlooked or downplayed. But there is a story, and that's what brings, I think, people together. Alcohol is often used in negative circumstances, but often as a way to reduce the barriers, the social challenges people have so they can get to the real conversation.

Because when you're meeting people for the first time, it's often. and nerve-wracking, and I've struggled with that with the podcast because I want people to feel relaxed, but I don't want them feel pressured to drink, but often those first 20 minutes for the person is very nerve-wracking. It's the first time they have cameras in front of their face, and how do I help them move on from that? And so alcohol to me is a tool in that regard and put a much more meaningful tool. If we can spend a few of those minutes going, this is where this is from, this is the person who helped develop it. Like, that creates a story, and human beings are very story-based and like your depth of knowledge on this is just so fascinating

to me and I think we are lucky when people like yourself choose to chase their interests again doing a Harry Potter reference the idea of the snitch is the idea of somebody chasing what calls to them and it's not always clear why it's calling to us that's something we have to figure out but why I wanted to start a podcast I was listening to them but then I was like maybe there's something I could bring about and highlight other people who are doing really cool things that other people miss out on because we get busy with work and other things going on in our life. And so chasing your passion is something I think is sacred. And when you do that, I think we're lucky. And so when somebody's telling you about their passion

and they just can't wait for you to know more, it's like we're lucky when people do that because so often people get jaded and frustrated and kind of lost in their work that they forget to kind of have a light about them, have a positivity. And when you can connect with something and share that, I just, I think we're all the better for it. Well said. Yeah. Well, I really appreciate being able to do this. I think we're going to have to do it again because there's so many more types to try and so many, so much more information for me to take on. But it has been truly humbling and meaningful to me to be able to try all of these, for you to share them with me for you to bring them all over for people who don't know there's like three or four bags you had

to carry over in order to make all of this possible and so that was very generous of you to share your time i'm grateful that your partner supports you and that because um i don't think you're able to reach your full potential if you don't have somebody in your corner behind the scenes encouraging you letting you have that space to read that extra blog do more research into one and so i think we're very lucky when people like you share this so i look forward to doing this again and i'm just incredibly grateful you were willing to share your time to do this. Thanks, Aaron. I'm humbled that you'd even want to have me on. So I loved doing it, and I'd love to do it again.