Tiff Christie
We live in a time when people often refer to Scotch, not only by brand name but also by the age of the liquid. In executive boardrooms and exclusive gentlemen's clubs, the names of single malts are mentioned with a certain reverence and a hush will come over the room as a Glenn Livett 74-year-old or a Delmore 45-year-old are discussed. They are expensive, they are exclusive, and they have given Single Malt Scotch an air of rarity and distinction. But there's one brand that seeks to throw all the trappings of labelling aside and seeks to challenge the drinker to look to flavour and taste as the benchmark. With Smokehead, the liquid in its bottles is Islay Single Malt, but there is no mention of distillery names or age classifications. In other words, Smokehead looks to take you down a road less travelled and present cask-finished whiskies that have the pedigree but without the labelling. To find out what all this means, we talked to Michael Brown, global whiskey brand ambassador for Smokehead's parent company, Ian McLeod Distillers, about flavour, smoke, and what disrupting Scotch whisky actually means.
Thank you for joining us, Michael.

Mike
Hello Tiff, thank you so much for inviting me. It's great to be here.

Tiff Christie
Now, Smokehead is not a distillery; you're not a blender. So, how would you describe exactly what Smokehead does?

Mike
Well, Smokehead is an award-winning Isla single malt, but we're also independent bottlers. So we come from Isla. We are one of the nine distilleries on Isla in terms of whiskey, but the brand is Smokehead. So we purchase the whiskey or swap New Make Spirit and get that whiskey, and then it's our wood policy that makes Smokehead.

Tiff Christie
Now, Smoker has a reputation for rebellion. What does that mean in the modern day Scotch whiskey industry?

Mike
So, obviously, Scottish whiskey is so steeped in history and tradition, and it's amazing. It's really important to be able to look back at that tradition as well, but equally, it's just as important to look forward and try something different and be disruptive. And that's sort of where Smokehead fits in. We try to do things. We sort of look at the world the way a five-year-old looks and think why, and we're not afraid to do that.

Tiff Christie
When you say disruptive though, what exactly does that mean?

Mike
So for me, using a single malt in cocktails is a big no-no in Scotland. Trying to convince a room full of very traditional whiskey drinkers, like the Glenn Lividts and the Dan Mores you've just spoken about now, that a smokehead rum cask in a Pina Colada is absolutely fantastic, can get me into quite a lot of trouble. Things get thrown at me very, very quickly in a master class if I start to talk about that. But from a flavour perspective, pineapple and smoke work together so, so well, but why wouldn't you do that? And if that's going to help someone get into smoky whiskey, then I've done my job.

Tiff Christie
Why do you think putting a single malt in a cocktail is so looked down upon.

Mike
I think for a long time the whisky industry has always been really interesting how it's marketed itself. For a long time, Scottish whisky was marketed as the pinnacle of liquid, one of the best, most prestigious brown spirits there ever is. It was all to do with the water and how amazing Scotland's water is in comparison to other countries and that's why it's so good.
And then I think the Scottish whisky industry backed itself into a corner after a while because they realised that other countries have amazing water as well. So that's not the unique element to it. The unique element comes from the history and the time spent. Now, I'm trying to then say to people, this liquid that has taken 200 years to create, I'm going to put it in some pineapple juice and coconut syrup. For a lot of people, that can be a big no-no.
I think that there is also a way of looking at cocktail culture in general as looked down upon, but actually, the way that I look at cocktails, I'm more of a liquid chef than a mixologist. So I look at the flavours and really try to tell that liquid story. I'm not just making it for the sake of it, if that makes sense.

Tiff Christie
Yeah. Well, what, in that case, can a single malt add to a cocktail?

Mike
So using Smokehead as an example, if you look at our core range, I'm in Prague right now, I've just finished the Prague bar show where I taught 30 mixologists, and the Prague mixology scene is fantastic, by the way. I just taught 30 mixologists about an Eyeless Single Malt Smoky Whisky using every single one of our SKUs and our different expressions because we have a tequila cask, a rum cask, a sherry cask, a stout cask.
And, so, as a cocktail bartender, I'm now allowing other bartenders to be able to play with that smoke, but in a way that you would normally use rum or tequila. It opens that world up completely because suddenly, instead of just making margaritas and making Palomas, I now have the ability to use peated scotch and control that smoke in that cocktail or in rum or in the sherry casks for example with manhattans or old fashions. It opens the doors to so many different possibilities because the liquid itself is so packed for the flavour. You know, it's salty, spicy, sweet, barbecued smoke almost. It's just another flavour that you can add as a cocktail bartender within your repertoire.

Tiff Christie
Okay, well, look, tell us a little bit about your process. How do you pick the casks that you use and how do you decide what to do with them?

Mike
Great question. First and foremost, what we do is we take the liquid from that distillery, and it's entirely in the cloud's wood policy. For example, our original and the unfiltered, which is our newest expression, that's going to mean a lot of refill bourbon casks, because what we're looking for with that is more liquid-lead than wood-lead, if that makes sense. We want the peat to really shine through, rather than be dominated by any other cask policy. Then what we do is we look at what people for example, aren't doing. And at the time of us bringing out the tequila cask, I don't think there was a tequila cask expression or certainly wasn't one when we did it. And so we thought, look, we know Smokheads, we know they like flavour. Tequila is very, very popular right now as well. And it's perfect for mixology. So it makes sense that we sort of be that missing link between Mezcal and tequila and Single Malt from Islay.

And so it just made sense. It was a decision that was very easy to come across. The Sherry casks, well, that's even easier because, with Sherry casks, Ian McLeod distillers know everything about Sherry casks because we produce some of the best Sherry cask whiskey in the entire world. Tam Du and Glenn Goyne have the Rolls Royce of Sherry casks. Our Sherry casks take six years just to make. So it was very easy for us to take some of that liquid from Islay and just put it in the same sherry casks packed with flavour. With the rum, again, Mixology led. It made sense. Sweet Smoke was our style. It made sense to then put it in some Jamaican rum barrels and open up that door and possibility for other people to do Mixology.

Tiff Christie
Speaking of the sherry casks, though, there's been a sharp drop in the number of people who drink sherry. It must be difficult to get the casks these days.

Mike
That's a really interesting question because the more that you look at the sherry industry, the more fascinating it is. And, actually, quite often, so whenever I'm delivering a masterclass in regards to either Smokehead or TAMDU, it quite often turns into me delivering a masterclass on how sherry is made. So, it's a very common misconception that you think if you buy more sherry, it causes more sherry casks. To make sherry, first of all, you're using an American white oak in a Solera system. That will be moved from one barrel to another barrel to another barrel over a period of a few months because the wood in sherry production is not used as a maturation vessel. It's used as a fermentation vessel and it's used as an oxidisation vessel. The wood will never leave that bodega and is probably up to 100 years old. So how does the Scottish whisky industry

get those sherry casks? Well, 90% of the Scottish whisky is ex-Bourbon cask. It's 90% of Scottish whisky is ex-Bourbon cask. Only 5% is sherry cask. And even with that, that number is huge. So what happens is companies like Ian McLeod Distillers and Edrington were first and foremost with McCallan. They approached these bodegas.

and they will have these casks seasoned specifically with their exact requirements to be made for the Scottish whisky industry. So 50% of a bodega's operation will just be creating and seasoning these casks to the exact specifications of what you want. You have so much control over what you want. If I phone up a bodega and I already have that connection and say I would like 50 European oak Oloroso hogsheads and 50 European oak...

Oloroso punch-ins or butts, you then have the control of exactly what you would like. But what's even more interesting is that the Scottish whisky industry has never used X sherry bodega casks. Traditionally, they've always been transportation casks. These were casks that once the sherry was made, would be then put into a European oak and shipped from Spain to Scotland, and that cask would just end up in the docks.

Mike
Scottish whiskey makers would be putting anything into barrels. Everything was in barrels at this point, right? So fish, gunpowder, animal fats, all the lovely things that you want your whiskey to taste like, not. But then these sherry casks kept on turning up in the docks in Leith and in Glasgow. And when the whiskey was put into that, it tasted much nicer. So let's continue to do that. And then the industry just built up and built up over 150 years into the point where there's now an entire industry just built on seasoning casks. And Ian McLeod distillers, our casks take the longest to make in the entire whiskey industry. And those books are now full. So yes, Sherry is scarcer and scarcer, but we already have these relationships that we've established over a long period of time.

Tiff Christie)
Now let's get away from Sherry and back to the smoke. Since smoke is in your name, is it fair to say that the peatiness of the liquid is one of the most important aspects for you?

Mike
It is definitely important, but it's actually much more important for us to talk about the smokeheads themselves. These were the people that inspired the brand. So smokehead is more a mentality and it's a state of mind as much as it is a brand. To be a smokehead means you're rebellious. To be a smokehead means that you're a rebel, but you're an intelligent rebel. You look at the world slightly differently.
And the people that love smoky whiskey really, really love the flavour of smoke, but they also have this mentality around them, which Smokehead sort of encompasses. So I would say, yes, the smoke is very, very important, but it's equally as important for us to be able to be a smoke head.

Tiff Christie
Okay. Now, as I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of secrecy around where your barrels come from. Do you think that actually adds to the brand or do you think it kind of frightens people off a little bit?

Mike
I mean, it certainly does appeal to some people, the idea that it is a mystery malt, that they don't know which distillery it is. And I just want to clarify, the barrels themselves are Ian McLeod's. So what we're doing is we're taking the new-make spirit from that distillery, of which I won't mention, and then we will be maturing ourselves. And so that does affect the flavour in a big way as well. So yes, there is a secrecy.
They're not knowing, that's part of the fun. I mean, once you know how a magic trick is done, are you still interested in the magic trick or do you just go on and live the rest of your life not caring anymore? But we don't want to just be another independent bottling of that Islay distillery. We want to be something else. We want to be disruptive and stand out in a different way. So when people buy into that and when they discover Smokehead and we discover what we're about, then it doesn't matter anymore that you don't know. You buy into the brand after that.

Tiff Christie
But we live in a world that relies heavily on labels. Why should consumers look to a brand that doesn't have any?

Mike
When I do a master class with Smokehead, for example, I was in Germany three weeks ago. It was a sold out master class. Fifty people sat down with notepads and pens in a very traditional whiskey festival. And I opened with, I'm so sorry if you're here to listen to me talk about fermentation times, about distillation. It's not what's going to happen. What I'm going to talk about is, do you like that whiskey?
And I'm going to talk about that for an hour because that is everything we do. So yes, it's fantastic that there's brands out there that are very transparent with what they do. But I think equally as important, if you do have this world of transparency, sometimes it's better to just stop thinking about it. Stop thinking, am I worthy to drink this? Because this entire, you know, for someone who's maybe new to whiskey, to look at this and say,
It's 50% this cask and 20% this cask and it's been aged for this long. It can be actually quite off putting for a lot of people to try and get into whiskey. And there are rituals that have been built up over time of how to drink the whiskey that do make certain people question themselves: am I worthy? Well yeah, if you like whiskey, if you want to drink this, give it a go and see if you like it. That's what we do. So that's why we don't have these age statements on or anything like that. It's just not what Smokhead's about.

Tiff Christie
In that case, how do you want people to approach your liquids?

Mike
So I'm a big proponent for drink your whiskey however you want to drink it. The second that's in your glass, that's your whiskey. You can do whatever you like with it. So for example, drink it neat. If you want to drink it neat, it's brilliant neat. It's fantastic. I'm a huge lover of neat whiskey. But then also, if you want to put a cocktail together and pick different flavours and drink it like that, I mean, that's amazing that you're doing that and you're not afraid to do that.
So I think drink it how you want. That would be how I would say.

Tiff Christie
Now, speaking of cocktails, one of your expressions, the twisted stout, is meant to be one of the better ones for cocktails. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about that?

Mike
Yeah, well, the Twisted Stout, it was a really interesting collaboration. So Pilot Brewing is a brewery based in Edinburgh. They got in touch with us and they said, is there any chance that we could get some of your smoky whiskey barrels for one of our projects? And we said, no problem, but it works two ways. So we'd quite like to get some of your stout casks, please. And they were working on a moccaccino stout. So it had flavours of coffee and chocolate. And when we barrel aged some Smokehead with that.

We found that the flavours of the smoke were slightly softened by the stout. It was a little bit creamier, but the flavours of the chocolate and the coffee came through really, really well. And my first reaction was, I mean, this is going to be the coolest espresso martini you've ever had. I mean, really, and it is, it is really cool. You know, you have the smoke that we, we have inside that, that liquid. Really, really intense, but just super fun at the same time. Again, if I opened in a master class in Scotland and said, Hello, I've got a round of espresso martinis coming up with some single monk from Islay. I think I might have things thrown at me, but that's it's good liquid. Does it taste good? It tastes absolutely fantastic.

Tiff Christie
And what other things other than an espresso martini could you make with that expression?

Mike
You could do a Revolver. In fact, I have done a Revolver. Absolutely delicious. I work in mil, I am afraid. For anyone listening that works in ounces, you might have to do the math afterwards. But 50 mil of the Smurkhead Stout Cask, 30 mil of your favorite premium coffee liqueur. Helps if there is a little bit of vanilla inside there as well. A couple of dashes of chocolate bitters and a little sprinkle of sweet vermouth. Stirred down over ice, big block of ice. If you want to add a cocktail smoker, you can. Doesn't need it, but if you want to go crazy, you can. And it's absolutely delicious. I called it the first smoke of the day. So, I'm quite happy with that.

Tiff Christie
Now, I imagine that over your time, and especially over the brand's time, they've seen a fair number of cocktails made with your liquids. What are some of the more unusual ways that bartenders have used your scotch?

Mike
I've been very fortunate that I've got to see a lot of countries, and in my position as Chief Smokehead, and worked with a lot of amazing cocktail bartenders. Each country works very differently with their approach. So obviously, with Scotland, they have a slight phobia of using single molten cocktails, but then if you go to Germany, then it's very experience-led. So they're really considering those moments and memories that you're making whenever you're drinking that whiskey or in a cocktail.
So it's about having something like an old-fashioned but with food pairings. So like using a Smurkhead but then having a food pairing with oysters as well as a Smurkhead old-fashioned on a boat in a harbour in Hamburg. It's just really, that's what they're all about, that's amazing. In the Netherlands, they're a lot more business-minded but fun, I would say.
And so they do some really interesting things like, like they have a very serious food culture as well. They do a lot of barrel aging hot sauces and fermenting chilies, and they'll apply that to their cocktails. And for them, Smurket is amazing because it's a really approachable smoky whiskey. They wouldn't be able to do that with another brand like Lefroy or Aardberg, which are all amazing, but it just opens the door for them in a little bit way, a little bit differently.
And then I would say, for example, in Prague last night, we did a takeover. We call it School of Smoke. It's a bartending academy that I run. We took 30 mixologists and they all did something very, very different. You know, traditional cocktails, you know, your, for example, your Naked and Famous' or your Paper Planes. But then I also saw someone last night do a last word with a Smokehead tequila
Absolutely delicious. The smoke wasn't overpowering anything. It was in harmony with other flavours. I've seen someone do a Corpse Reviver number two with Smoke Ked. That was absolutely delicious. And do you know what's really interesting is that you can also do things like split base. You don't have to just use two shots of Smoke Ked. If you want to do a tequila old fashioned, one shot of your favourite tequila and one shot of Smoke Ked tequila cask. It applies different flavours. It's about controlling flavour.

Tiff Christie
Now, controlling flavour, I think, is relevant to what I wanted to talk about next, which is your very unusual drinking vessels.They're quite bizarrely shaped and you describe them as a smoke mask. Tell us more about that and how it came about.

Mike
So going back to how we sort of see ourselves as intelligent rebels, you know, we're not rebels without a cause. We're rebels with a cause. We're doing things and thinking about it the whole time. So what we wanted to do is we wanted to look at the way that you would traditionally drink a whiskey and how we could do it in a way that would be Smokehead. So we're not trying to completely reinvent the wheel. We're just looking at a different wheel and thinking, we can do this differently.
We got in touch with one of the world's best glass blowers. There's a man called Elliot Walker, and recently won the Netflix composition, Blown Away. And we approached Elliot and said, we'd like you to try and come up with three different glasses and drinking vessels for Smokehead. And he came up with three different prototypes. All of them add something different to the traditional whiskey-drinking experience. There was a vapour chamber, which was this very beautiful glass, an ornate lid that you could smoke a cocktail and trap that smoke inside, but still drinks that either as a cocktail vessel or as neat. There was the ice heart, which had a separate chamber that you could place ice inside the glass, and then add a separate chamber on top so that you could chill your drink without adding dilution to it. Again, being an intelligent rebel, right?
But the one that won, because we actually put this to our Smokeheads, which is our membership program, for anyone listening, it's completely free to join. You can become a Smokehead. We'd love to have you. Just go to Smokehead.com and say, yes, please. But it was our Smokeheads that chose the gas mask. Now, the gas mask, it just looks super cool. It is in the shape of your nose and mouth. So there is a slight skull element to it as well. And the idea is that you pick it up.
And you're forced to nose the whiskey while drinking it because it covers your nose. First of all, it's not see-through either. So it's a dark glass, which automatically removes one of your senses. So you're then forced to focus on the others. And then you have to nose and drink at the same time. And the aromas are completely amplified. It turns everything up to 11. And you're just forced to have this amazing whiskey drinking experience where you have all of these flavours rushing up to your face while also drinking it. It's really, it's really, really fun.

Tiff Christie
I'm curious, have they sold well?

Mike
So we made a thousand and they are not cheap to produce. So the price point is not very cheap. But what we're doing is we're looking to try and remake them in a way that's more approachable. So we've been running a competition where you can join to become a Smokehead and people can win a chance. And I've had quite a few people that I've done master classes for in different countries have messaged me on Instagram and said, I can't believe I've won, which has been amazing. So there's been a real buzz around them, but we still have a few left. So I think we're gonna rework the way we're doing it, and we're gonna try and produce it in a way that is more approachable for people.

Tiff Christie
Now, tell us more about your smokeheads. What sort of advantage of… What do people get by becoming one?

Mike
So if you become a Smokehead, first of all, you'll be kept up to date with all of the things that we're working on. If we're doing a tour around a different country and doing takeovers and guest shifts, then they'll be kept up to date with that as well. But also, if we're running really fun competitions or a chance to win things like the smoke mask, that'll also be a way we can keep them up to date. Merchandise is also great.
So a lot of people really love our merch. I'm currently wearing a Smokehead baseball cap right now. We've got fantastic t-shirts and various badges and stuff. So this is the best way to get that. Depending on the country that you're in, there might also be discounts on certain things like the whiskey and the merch as well. So yeah, it's definitely well worth doing it.

Tiff Christie
And speaking of that, where are you available?

Mike
So we're available globally. If you're listening in America, I believe Total Wine & More will be the best place to get. But globally, we are available. Certainly within the UK as well. We're at the minutes, the fastest-growing Islay single malt. So readily available, I would say.

Tiff Christie (27:46.802)
Okay, cool. And what does the future hold for the brand? How are you disrupting next?

Mike
What are we disrupting next? Wherever the wind takes us. We are working on a few things. In terms of liquid, I have been working with the blending team and putting a few different things together. I cannot reveal too much, Classic Smokehead, but we are looking at the idea of bringing different fusions together. I would love to be able to, say for example, someone like a graphic artist and produce some sort of graphic novel that would tell the story of Smokehead but do a limited edition bottling with that. This is all early works but yeah, something about kind of having an attitude and rethinking drinking in that way is what I'm all about. We're doing a few tours as well so I'm hopefully going to be in South Korea this year for the where we'll be bringing Smokehead to South Korea, and a tour of the states in the summer as well, where I would love the opportunity to find some really cool venues. So if anyone's listening and they want Smokehead to come to our venue and do a takeover, maybe some food pairings with some barbecue sauce with Smokehead would be great.

Tiff Christie
And when, theoretically, would we expect that release that you were talking about?

Mike
Well, it's still very much in the early works right now. I actually took a little bit to the Prague Bar Show that I was at last night and offered a few whiskey connoisseurs a chance to try some of the NPD, the new product development. And we got some feedback. I'm going to take the feedback back to the guys and we're going to have a kind of a look at what went well. So, hopefully, this year, that's all I can say really. Fingers crossed.

Tiff Christie
Now, since today is International Whiskey Day, what does that mean both to the brand and also to you?

Mike
To the brand and to me. To me, every day is International Whiskey Day. I love whiskey. I live and breathe it. I talk about it all day, every day. And I'm very fortunate and I get to spend a lot of time in different parts of the world talking about it. To the brand, it's an opportunity for us to all celebrate whiskey. Because like I said, we are a traditional Islay Single Malt. We just talk about it and drink it in a non-traditional way, but the rest of the world all drinks in a different way. So it offers everyone an opportunity to showcase how they drink it and why they're happy about it. And whiskey is something that's meant to be shared. Whiskey is something that's supposed to be shared with friends and have memories. No one has a whiskey and doesn't feel any emotion to it. So having that chance to share it with other people is amazing.

Tiff Christie
Now, if people do want to share it and perhaps get a little bit more information, they can of course go to your website, which is Smokehead.com, or connect with the brand via your socials.

Mike
Yes, so we have Instagram, we have a Facebook page as well, and Smokehead.com, you can join to become a Smokehead. I'm thinking about maybe starting some kind of Smokehead Facebook group, would be quite cool to connect with everyone. I'm also available on Instagram, where I'm producing a lot of different cocktail content, and you can kind of do some home bartending as well. So I'm WhiskeyMikeIMD on Instagram. Feel free to add and follow, and you can also make cocktails and tag me in them as well. That'd be quite cool to see what you guys are up to.

Tiff Christie
Thank you for taking the time.

Mike
Thank you so much for the invite, Tiff. It's been great.