IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE GLENDRONACH
In October, I visited Melbourne to speak to Linus Schaxmann, one of the original Australian brand ambassadors and someone who has been at the gig for 18 years now.
We caught up to discuss the latest addition to the portfolio from The Glendronach, which is a trio of whiskies: Ode to The Valley, Ode to The Embers, and Ode to The Dark. They’re all non age statement whiskies, and they show a different side of The Glendronach than you might normally see (they’re also rather delicious).
But I also spoke to Linus about whisky more broadly, why the barrel finishing process some brands use isn’t his cup of tea, how bartenders can talk about The Glendronach to punters, and loads more — you can hear the full chat on Drinks At Work this week.
You really get a sense for Linus’ passion for sharing what he knows, and I could have sat and fired him questions about whisky and drinks all day.
Below, we’ve got a look at the new bottles, and a brief lightly edited and condensed Q&A.
Q&A with Linus Schaxmann, brand ambassador extraordinaire
SAM BYGRAVE: Tell us a bit about you and your career as a brand ambassador? Because you’ve been at this quite a while.
LINUS SCHAXMANN: Many, many years. It’s 18 years this year as a brand ambassador for Brown-Forman. I remembered being a bartender in London in the 1990s, and desperate to learn about spirits and bartending, and there was no one. Then I met Wayne Collins, who was a legend, and Jason Crawley, and Angus Winchester, three legends of the industry. And they gave me some pointers. And I thought, it’d be amazing to pass on what I’ve learned in the last 30 years of bartending and spirits to bartenders. I’d done bars for a long time. I had small kids, it was getting harder to work in bars with kids who wanted to play at 6am.
SAM BYGRAVE: Yeah, those late night closes and the early wake ups are not great.
LINUS SCHAXMANN: And I was obsessed by Woodford Reserve. That was my favourite spirit as a bartender, it really was. I kept winning cocktail comps for a while, and then I did a cocktail comp for Jack Daniels. Because I was winning them, I got a little bit arrogant.
SAM BYGRAVE: You’re also a bartender...
LINUS SCHAXMANN: Right. So they called out third place, second place, first place, I went to get up, but no — I didn’t win that one, but I’d met the team from Brown-Forman and they were great people. And they said, do you want a job? I’m like, you’re going to pay me to drink the whisky and talk about it? Where do I sign? That was good.
SAM BYGRAVE: Because the brand ambassador thing wasn’t as understood then as it is today.
LINUS SCHAXMANN: At the time it was just me at Brown-Forman. I was the national brand ambassador, I did the whole of the country. There’s now three of us and we’ve never been so busy, it’s crazy. So you’re right, it’s more recognised, it’s more part of the industry. Love this job, love what I do, love the brands, love the people.
SAM BYGRAVE: What is a normal week, if there is a normal week, what does that look like for you as an ambassador?
LINUS SCHAXMANN: My kids have only ever known me as a brand ambassador. They’re 18 and 17. And even now they go, Dad, what do you do? It’s so hard to explain. I will say what you see in Instagram and Facebook or the platforms is us on a boat or us at a really cool event. That’s two percent of what we do. Most of the time it’s strategy sessions, it’s paperwork, it’s lifting heavy boxes into events. It’s so unglamorous.
But it’s a great job. But a normal week is, I couldn’t tell you. I was in Perth last week. I was in Christchurch the week before. It’s always changing. It’s always different. That’s part of the appeal. You never know what you’re going do next week. But I will say it’s a lot more admin heavy and strategy than you think it is.
SAM BYGRAVE: What’s the part about the job you love the most then?
LINUS SCHAXMANN: Two things. It’s meeting the makers. The people that make our alcohol whether it’s online or in person and seeing their passion and what they do, it’s so exciting. The other part is bartenders — I just love bartenders. I was a bartender for 30 years. They’re my people and to work with the bartender and give them knowledge or ideas or thoughts, and they give me ideas and thoughts. It’s good for the soul. I love working with younger bartenders and helping to accelrate their careers, that’s the part that really excites me.
SAM BYGRAVE: We’re going to be looking at a few new releases from The Glendronach. What’s the idea behind the distillery?
LINUS SCHAXMANN: We are a sherry bomb. We’ve been doing this since 1826. We turn 200 next year, which is kind of crazy. Anything we do from the water from the Glendronach burn, from the local grain, from the Porteous mash tun, from the wooden washbacks to the short, stubby coppers stills, is to make a blackberry, blueberry, spiced, leathery, robust new make to go into sherry casks.
And Dr Rachel Barrie, our master blender, if you’ve met her, she’s an extraordinary person. She’s just amazing. What she’s done for the last few years is maintained the 12, the 15, the 18, the 21 and maybe tweaked them here and there. But this is Ode To range is her saying, let’s have some fun. Let’s show what we can do. And this is all an ode to the base spirit.
SAM BYGRAVE: And these are called, an Ode to... something?
LINUS SCHAXMANN: Ode to The Valley, Ode to The Embers, and Ode to The Dark. The Ode to The Valley is just a nod to the environment. So Glendronach — Glen means valley, dronach means brambles; valley of the brambles. And guess what? There’s a valley and there’s brambles there. Who would have thought?
SAM BYRGAVE: Not everyone in Australia knows what brambles are, can you explain?
LINUS SCHAXMANN: Think blackberries, blackberries are brambles.
When you go in the valley, there’s blackberries, there’s raspberries, there’s apples, there’s pears. So Rachel said, let’s have some fun and let’s make a whisky that just epitomises where we actually make our whisky.
This is probably the fruitiest Glendronach you will ever try. The nose is, I’m getting raspberries, blackberries, a little bit of chocolate today, but definitely a cooked apple, toffee apple character.
This whisky is [aged in] ruby port barrels and oloroso barrels.
SAM BYGRAVE: And is it finished in those barrels?
LINUS SCHAXMANN: No. So one thing that we don’t do, and I love about Glendronach, we only do full cask maturation. We blend at the end.
SAM BYGRAVE: And there’s no age statement on these?
LINUS SCHAXMANN: It’s all NAS. With the Ode To whiskies, we’re actually playing with the spirit influence. Again this is fruity, this is not overly sweet. It’s playing more with the new make.
SAM BYGRAVE: If you’re talking to bartenders about The Glendronach, and wanted to give them two key things about the distillery that they should know and be able to tell customers, what would those be?
LINUS SCHAXMANN: It’s the full sherry maturation — it’s the PX, figs, raisins, Christmas cake, sultanas. Oloroso is more like stewed fruit, cacao, nuttiness and coffee. I’d say it’s a sherry bomb. And what I love about this one, I love the mouthfeel. I love how lush it is. I love the richness as well. But I always break down things into flavour.
I’m not a fan of a lot of finishes, because the finishes just teases my palate. I taste the flavour, it goes, I’m trying to chase it.
SAM BYGRAVE: Sometimes the finish doesn’t feel like it’s fully incorporated.
LINUS SCHAXMANN: There, it’s teasing you, it’s flashing, it’s gargling, it’s chasing you. With this [Glendronach], it’s all there. It’s front, mid, back, palate, it’s rich.
We’re going to go to Ode to The Embers. So in 2010 we actually did our first Glendronach peated whisky.
What Rachel has done now with Ode to The Embers that I love is that she’s going oloroso, pedro ximenez.
Just to understand what this peat is, we’re a Highland peat. You go to Islay, beautiful Islay, I’ve been there few times, it’s stunning, the coast of Scotland, desolate, no trees, but beautiful. They dig up their peat, there’s no trees, so there is heather, bracken, seaweed. You can taste the sea. Maritime, burnt rubber. I love it, but it’s like Marmite, you love it or you hate it. It’s quite polarising.
SAM BYGRAVE: Yeah, you take the top off the bottle and put it in the corner of room, everyone can smell it.
LINUS SCHAXMANN: Ode to The Embers uses peat from the north of Scotland, an old pine forest that’s broken down and decomposed. Really rooty. So when you smoke the barley, lots of the vanillins — think applewood smoke, like when you’re having a brisket. That campfire, you walk in and you smell your clothes, that trace smoke.
People think it’s PPM, Parts Per Million, is how peaty is. For me it’s more terroir. This goes in at 45 to 50 PPM, which is quite high, but because it’s that campfire applewood smoke, it’s a much more gentle smoke.
SAM BYGRAVE: Tell me about the ABVs on these because I noticed the Ode to The Dark is up at 50.8. You haven’t bottled them down to 40 percent ABV.
LINUS SCHAXMANN: So we could go 40 percent ABV, but Rachel Barrie says, this is the ABV where the whisky sings. Whether it’s 50.8 for The Dark or the 48.4 for The Embers. It’s a harder road, but that’s the ABV that just sings.
SAM BYGRAVE: Talk a little about the Ode to The Dark.
LINUS SCHAXMANN: This is the one I think everyone is going to lose their mind over. This is the purple looking bottle. The Ode to The Dark is the ode to the base spirit. This is just PX. We use European oak for our sherry casks. It’s a softer wood, it absorbs the whisky better, it has more spice, more tannins, more flavour.
SAM BYGRAVE: You were saying New American Oak doesn’t play so well with the bass spirit. The grain structure in European oak and American oak is different as well.
LINUS SCHAXMANN: Yeah, there’s a different density. It’s harder, softer. It’s actually harder to work with.
And this again, this is a 50.8 percent ABV whisky. There’s just no messing around. This is just high proof, beautiful creme brulee, moccaccino, dark chocolate. I think it drinks way below its ABV.
