June 2011 at Portsoy

It has been over a month since I last published my blog and we have been through another busy period and this is the perfect time to update you all on progress on several fronts.

Changing Faces

As I announced last time, Graham Eunson will shortly be moving on and therefore the search was underway for a new manager. Although I received a number of applications and interviewed some top candidates in the end I decided that we already had some excellent talent on the site who were ready to take on larger roles and so decided to share the role between Mhairi McDonald, who will become Production Manager and Graeme Morrison who will be Maturation Manager.

Mhairi has a first class honours degree in Brewing and Distilling from Heriot-Watt University and has previous experience working with Diageo and Chase distillery as well as working in a marketing role with us a couple of years ago.

Mhairi checking the quality of the distillate

Graeme has previously been in charge of a large filling and warehousing complex operated  by Chivas, in Keith.

Graeme Morrison

I know that both of them will do exceptionally well and for those of you that visit us then you will get the chance to meet them in due course.

This of course left a vacancy within the team and when we combined this with the need to increase our bottling rate due to increased orders then it resulted in a need to recruit 2 people. We duly advertised in the local paper and to date have received around 150  applications, I am not sure if this is a reflection on the(un)employment situation or the attractiveness of working in a distillery.

New Importers

As mentioned last time we have been working hard on extending the numbers of countries where Glenglassaugh is available and within the last month we have received orders from 3 new countries. 

In Switzerland our importer is “House of Single Malt”, in Singapore “The Whisky Store” and in China “Xiamen Spirit Empire Corporation”.

This brings the number of countries where Glenglassaugh is available to twenty-four and we are continuing to work on increasing it further.

The overseas importer page on the website, www.glenglassaugh.com , has been updated with details of each country where we have an importer appointed and their website.

In addition we are working hard with each importer to increase distribution throughout their own country and for the USA, there is an updated list in “Friends of Glenglassaugh” of which state has Glenglassaugh available.

New Products

Exclusive Bottling

As well as interviewing  for new roles and searching for new importers we have been busy working with some of our existing importers to release new exclusive single cask bottling for their specific market. These follow on the success of exclusive “Andrea Caminneci” bottling for Germany in 2010. I cannot reveal details yet but will shortly be able to let you know of when and where these will be available.

The Chosen Few

As announced last time this will be a new series of single cask releases, each cask chosen by a different member of the distillery team. The first cask selected is Ronnie Routledge’s choice and is from a 36 year old butt.

Following the success of “The Manager’s Legacy” series where we have sold out, then we will again need to release this on an allocation basis for each market.

We hope to be able to confirm release date, and retail price shortly.

First Three Year Old

There is nothing new to report, except to say that the cask is still maturing silently in the warehouse and we are working on the packaging design. As you can tell, we are all multi-tasking!

The Weather

I couldn’t end without mentioning the weather. At one stage is looked as if we were going to have a warm and very sunny summer, however that has turned into a wet and cool summer – good for topping up the water supply for the whisky but not for sun-bathing on Sandend Beach. Oh well there is always next year, when I will be able to also enjoy Glenglassaugh Whisky that the new team have produced!

Finally

A plug for Anne Smith who is a local photographer who we almost use exclusively when we want professional images, the two photographs in this blog were taken by her.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Photography-By-Anne-Smith/169154283136420

Slange.

Stuart Nickerson