The History of Whiskey: A Deep Dive with Robin Robinson (S4 E14)

[Kerry]

Well, good afternoon everybody. I'm gonna say afternoon. Usually I say whatever time it is But obviously we are out in the bright sunshine here in New York City and I have the pleasure of actually meeting Robin Robinson in person We've had him on the show before back when it was a spirits of whiskey back during the lockdown Where we talked about his first book, but today I I came out to New York just for the day Just to speak to this gentleman and I got this beautiful location. So here we are Robin. How are you?

[Robin]

Oh, I'm great. And thanks for having me and thanks for picking such a fabulous back. No, it's great.

Yeah, it's not AI generated No, it's real.

[Kerry]

It's real except for now. My glasses are dark because they're transitional, but that's right So we're gonna talk about a couple things first off Welcome back to the show. It's been quite some time about five years since we had you on Thank you, and I'm very glad that we could do it in person this time now that we're not in the lockdown The last time we had you on we talked about your first book this time we're talking about your new book which comes out October 21st October 21st and We're gonna have a little sippy sips.

Yeah, it's nothing wrong with that Yeah, anything that's in your book, but it's something that relates to yes your book.

[Robin]

It's close.

[Kerry]

Yes. So same company So first of all, we have to take oh, yeah, let's do that Hmm Nothing like a good whiskey in the afternoon. Hmm.

All right, so let's talk about the book. So What when did you decide to write this book? Was it immediately after the last book and what was the what how did you come up with the idea for this one?

[Robin]

Well, I'll be honest with you. Um, I had been Going back and forth on what would be the follow-up to the complete whiskey course? And I thought well, maybe it would be a revised edition of that I also have sort of them in the back of my mind and somewhere up on the Internet.

I've got all types of drafts of a graphic novel, okay on whiskey, but my My former editor actually contacted me and said hey I've got this idea about like a history book for whiskey is what do you think and we started batting some ideas back? Back and forth and he said can we do it like with like a bunch of objects like, you know Like the history of the world and a hundred objects and I said, yeah, we would have to be kind of like, you know Bottles and then barrels and then vessels because bottles only go back a hundred fifty or so years, right? so eventually we came up with the idea of the history of whiskey in 100 bottles barrels and More because somebody in the sales department didn't like the word vessels Vessels is a very romantic word.

Oh, yeah, but it actually was accurately described stuff that holds other things Anyway, so it showed it turned out like that.

[Kerry]

Yeah, I'm so in the book you start off with like Prehistoric times practically. Yeah, and you go all the way up to current today. Okay?

Yeah, and how long did it take you to do the research for this book?

[Robin]

Well, I will tell you the research is The research had been gone for four years You know, I started getting interested in a whiskey back in the 1980s I Started putting together educational things for friends of mine back in the late 90s and early 2000s And I kept all that stuff When I got into the industry in 2008 with compass box, then I got deeper into it and then started teaching Which is still a whiskey class at the Astor Center in New York City, right 16 years now So yeah, so it just I mean the the research just keeps going on you keep getting deeper when I did the first book I traveled all over the world from India to Japan to Scotland and Ireland Scotland Ireland been back and forth many times Kentucky so I've been deeply invested in this for many many years and So I drew on a lot of that old research that I had and then I added to it This time by actually hanging out with archivists. Really?

Yeah, because this really was about the the deep down history. It wasn't really as much about how do you make the whiskey? How do you age the whiskey but let's go down deep into that where was the origins of this right and So I end up in museums in libraries in archives You know hanging out with people who spend most of their time with white gloves on, you know and have not never seen in daylight, right and And that was a whole other a whole other aspect of it.

It was you know, then you really kind of feel like there's a little bit of And well, no and there's an archaeological aspect to this yeah, there's an ethnographic Aspect to this whiskey doesn't occur in a vacuum as I say in the introduction it was part and parcel of Life events. It was a witness to some events in some cases. It was a catalyst, but it takes place, you know With the rest of humanity going forward and that's what I was trying to capture With this and that's why I go back to antiquity.

Yeah with the pot

[Kerry]

You know, I think it was very interesting I think it was maybe a little bit serendipitous that we connected about this when we did because We as we talked last week when I was on the plane coming back out to the east coast to going to DC And I spent the day at Arlington Cemetery Yeah And I took the little tour and in in the in one of the museum things there They had the quake the Scottish a quake. Yeah, I was like, oh, okay And so I was looking on and I was like, okay and then hours later I'm back on the plane and talking to you and you're sending me a digital copy of the book to read and I was like Oh, I just saw one of these.

[Robin]

Yeah, and there's a quake in there. Yeah, exactly Yeah, I actually believe it on this sound morbid in some other context. I spent a lot of time in cemeteries Morbid, it's beautiful.

No, it is It's not only beautiful, but that's really where a lot of history gets written I live in a part of New Jersey that is an ancient Dutch area I found an old cemetery that actually has the the headstones in Dutch Oh, wow, you know or German or whatever that language they were speaking and So typically if I go to some city somewhere the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna look up what the local Cemetery is and go take a walk through there because that's when you find like for example hodling Right hodling who appears in here about his warehouse and is the name of a company right now.

That is an importer of of spirits I found his Graveyard. Oh really in upstate, New York I just you know, I was in I was in a town and I said, oh here's a really neat old churchyard right here And I came across H-o-u-g-h-t So they spelled it in the old-school way of hodling, you know, I found his whole family there So I said, oh my god, that's just like the one of the best discoveries in the world.

[Kerry]

It is great Reminds me of a of a little snippet we did on the cocktail guru when Jonathan and Jeffrey were out and about they did some summer follies last year and There they they spent some time in the cemetery and found a whole bunch of very interesting people.

[Robin]

It's just wonderful, you know cemeteries libraries museums, I Remember being over here at the New York Public Library I had been running down something called The whiskey ring, okay. Now the whiskey ring was before the Whiskey Trust and the whiskey ring was essentially the first Example of political corruption involving whiskey. Yeah, and it happened during the second term of Ulysses S Grant and It was America and the government.

Oh, no, that would never happen. No right now Going up up that far. No, no But I had tracked all these little pieces of information down and then I'm in the library and I find the book Written by the one man who did time For that it was General John McDonald.

He was one of Grant's generals, right? and he was the only guy that actually got convicted did time and in and this was just so beautiful in the Introduction of the book he describes the events that led up to that and then he said and so I appealed my conviction to the powers that being and Mentioned that if I'm not absolved of this, I will name names and within 17 months it was sprung out of jail like something else. Yeah It just keeps repeating itself, right and and he writes this book ten years later And I'm in the library in the Rose room, you know And I'm reading this and I start giggling and I'm getting all these people But you don't know what it is I just found so that's it gets really kind of exciting like that that's cool

[Kerry]

Okay, so when I know the research has been going on forever But when did you talk to the editor and they said okay you want to do this and you said yes and from that date? Until now I had one year one year.

Okay.

[Robin]

I had one year and I had 50,000 words so that was the restriction put on me and Because my first book I had no idea what I was doing. So after many Mental breakdowns of I can't do it. I can't do it I finally did it and I went three times over the word count and As I yeah, and so in that respect I said, okay, I'm gonna stay with the word count 100 stories.

I've given 50,000 words. Each one of these has to be at the 500 word mark more or less So I was actually very proud of myself. I I learned how to write much more succinctly, you know Tight a tighter.

I learned how to kill my darlings, you know, like that is the most magnificent paragraph I've ever been in my life. It's gotta go. Yeah, right And you gotta cut out the best scenes.

Yeah, you gotta cut. Yeah, exactly. So I learned how to do that.

[Kerry]

Yeah, so let's talk about The format of the book. Yeah, so It's not written in a in a normal fashion. I would guess you have it's it's it's basically chronological order from the beginning of time to now about whiskey and where whiskey came from Even before whiskey was whiskey And it's told in a hundred different stories it's a hundred different stories and each one of these

[Robin]

bottles barrels and more are portals into some aspect of the history of not just whiskey which only goes back 500 years but of distilling and even before distilling what were the ideas what were the Anthropological seeds that got us to the point where we realized if we put this together and this together and this together and we're gonna Get this and that comes from many many different directions. So I had to go find a beginning point, right?

And that was the pot So the book starts out a pot that looks like a gourd. Okay, because we use the word today Cucurbit, right? so cucurbit is what describes the bottom pot of the of a pot still a cucurbit is the genus of of gourds and pumpkins and and and cucumbers From the Latin word and that describes that so when you put the cucurbit together and then God knows how many thousands years of later someone put another pot On top of it and that came from the Arabic alembic.

Yep Which means pot and now you actually have your pot still so for me Getting back to the beginning ideas of how this all came together. I thought was incredibly important. Otherwise Everything's out of context, right?

You know, so I wanted to build it up from there So we this is how we you put something in a pot you put something else in there You put something else in there and then you get something different, right? You get a stew you get a soup you get a Collaboration of flavors. Well, yeah, that sounds like a mash bill to me.

Yeah Right. Yeah, right.

[Kerry]

Okay. So what is your when you I know you had years and years of research of other things but when you started doing the research for these hundred stories was there one Particular story that you came across that you didn't know about yet and we're like, whoa I got to put that in the book because that's really interesting

[Robin]

Well, one of them was that okay was the one about the whiskey ring, okay I Had little it see and it's as in bits of all kinds of stories that floating in my head and all kinds of notes that I had Taken before which I drew from It's when I ended up going into one area Thinking oh, I know where this story is going.

Oh, wait a minute. That's not the story at all. The story is over here Yeah, that's when the surprises came one of them for example was I Knew about the end of Irish whiskey Sadly, yeah, I know Yeah And I knew what I I knew what the factors were that brought about the end of Irish whiskey There's about six or seven of them in all But what I didn't know was how it got revived how it came back together how the IDL right how the Irish Distillers Limited was formed and it was formed from a secret meeting of The secret secrecy. Okay We're up high and we can hear it was a secret meeting between the last generation of power the last generation of generation of Jameson and the last generation of Murphy's yes There's those three they met in secret over many many different Occasions and realized we're gonna lose this whole thing because we've been competing with each other down to the death for the domestic market of Ireland, right and It's killing us and we're gonna lose this whole thing and that's when they said we have to join forces and now be as one and Then they got the Irish government to back them and then they did bright when the IDL was formed they did bring Bush mills in for a while then Bush mills left after a while and then They got this influx of money from Pernod Ricard and Pernod Ricard I tell you what I got to give them props especially in that part of their of their corporate life because they not only did that for Irish whisking they did it for Canadian whiskey to make sure they rescued Canadian whiskey, right? So yeah, so that was really interesting to find out how that came about and then of course What's interesting is that you become a monopoly? Yeah, right and then you have someone like John Teeling the Teelings right John Teeling, you know who I in the book, you know, what a great guy to interview Cooley You know, I was broke I was broke married and And a student, you know and and and no way to start a company but but he writes his Harvard PhD his dissertation on Ancient Irish whiskeys and brings back the whole idea.

It's not just pot still style, right? Right. It's not just this blend It's these other formations and that's how Cooley comes into being and then that Revitalizes it even more and of course now Irish whiskey is like, you know, they've got 45 50 different distilleries Yeah, it's blown up in the light just this the last five years, especially but it's yeah, it's especially in Northern Ireland Boy, a lot for Northern Ireland, right?

It used to be just bush mills up there. Yeah, and then the whole thing about bush mills Okay. Yeah, we know with the we know the the date that's on the label has nothing to do with anything, right?

So so those things right getting underneath I got a feeling that Any of you corporate types that are out there gonna read this I got a feeling this is gonna push against a lot of what is market speak out there But I like I say in the introduction I'm a storyteller first. Yeah, and then it's a storyteller based in fact Factuality and when it came to areas in which it was seemed like it was really gray I started following if I get three different independent viewpoints that lead me in that direction That's where it's probably gonna go right and if that makes actually makes the best story then that's where I'm gonna go so a lot of it's gonna Be a little bit counter to what the official stories are out there, but you know, I'll stand behind it.

[Kerry]

Well, there you go Yeah so what is your favorite story in the book hmm, oh Boy boy, that's that's a tough one.

[Robin]

I like to throw out the tough questions. I know all my children What are your favorite? Oh, I've only have one child, but then she's your favorite.

Yeah Boy, I I know there were just so many really wonderful surprises my most personal is my visit to Talisker, okay, and I realized that I'm gonna be in this whiskey industry somehow in my life This was back in the late 90s, right? Oh, oh, I tell you one of my favorite stories is golden wedding rye What's that? Yeah, right.

What's that? Well right now you can find some stores and if you look way down on the back of the bottom shelf You're gonna find golden wedding, but it's you know, it's gonna be hard that one golden wedding rye Probably is the one whiskey that traces American whiskey right from the very beginning because it started out as Western Pennsylvania rye whiskey, okay, okay and Western, Pennsylvania was where whiskey actually was first commercialized With rye with the over holds you know and then The Monongahela River that they were on became the locus of this style of whiskey that people started making And it became known as Monongahela rye. Well, there's three Rivers in Pittsburgh Monongahela Allegheny in Ohio, and it doesn't really matter which one you on you can call it Monongahela rye So up on the Allegheny River was this one Distillery and it got taken over by one other guy and they started making a whiskey called golden wedding there and that brand Was a perfect example of how to trace the corporate influence Oh, yeah of how these modified brands and how brands travel it must have gone to Seven or eight different companies Wow.

It's actually in the hands of Sazerac right now.

[Kerry]

I've never heard of it Maybe we don't get it on the West Coast.

[Robin]

You don't get it on the West Coast is probably has very limited It may only be actually In Canada right now because it's primarily made in Canadian distilleries, but that'll give you an idea about how far it's traveled Yeah, but it was to me. It was like wow. This is really the wake-up call about corporate Ownership of brands and how they're just traded right and left and you know, you know when you think about Pat the Van Winkles and and and the beams the beams were owned by a company right called American brands later called fortune brands and the other things that they own were Kohler sinks and Titleist golf balls

[Kerry]

You're gonna go golfing with your whiskey and then go wash your hands they go wash our hands it makes perfect sense

[Robin]

Yeah, right that that you know what that wouldn't you would have been the influencer for? Hands But here we are on the golf course wash our hands through a Kohler pump. That's pumping out being whiskey.

[Kerry]

There you go Yeah, yeah, but yeah, but that was great when you're at every hole you go to you Just kind of go up to the little faucet and you just refill your cup It's much better than that tank of old water that I have.

[Robin]

Yeah, the ball washing good takes on a whole completely different Yeah, it's very sterile now. It's very sterile Frankly But that was a great example of like corporate ownership, you know And all the Scotch whiskeys. I mean the Scotch whiskeys have gone through so much corporate ownership Oh, yeah, and then the rise of the DCL right the distillers company limited which was essentially Came from the first families of whiskey and the first families of whiskey go back Well depends on how far you want to go back a knight named Petrus de Haga is One of the Knights that accompanied William the Conqueror during the invasion of Normandy in 1066

[Kerry]

I'm like we just that wasn't that long ago, but that's a different.

[Robin]

Oh, that was different.

[Kerry]

Yeah

[Robin]

They went the other way and and then that de Haga eventually became the name Hague and Yeah, and then Hague's actually became very very politically and culturally Integrated into the lowlands of Scotland and when they met up with a family called the Steens who had been around Hague's and Steens became the first families of Whiskey Wow and from them came the Jameson's and this was all in Ireland.

[Kerry]

Yes.

[Robin]

No, this is Scotland Scotland first No Scotland first and then one of the Steens Jumped across the channel. Okay landed in Dublin opened up a distillery on Bow Street Okay, right and then a little bit later his Newly married nephew came over and that was John Jameson the first and he could took over his manager then bought the distillery and Now was Jameson and then Jameson and sons

[Kerry]

Okay

[Robin]

So now so you see how all of this and then what the Hague's and the Steens eventually became the DCL That is now today's Diageo.

[Kerry]

Ah, yes.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Kerry]

I want to know though How is it and you probably know this and I should know this how is it that we are getting so many French names over whiskey things like Diageo and Pinot Ricard aren't those?

[Robin]

Diageo is actually a It's a portmanteau. What does that portmanteau is when two words come together to create a third word? Okay, like motel is motor hotel, right?

Okay What this was is dia Which means day, okay and geo which means the world and essentially what they're saying is that all over the world every day In other words, yeah, we're gonna take over the world. Yeah, that was and essentially you have to bring consultants in Oh, here's another great one. Here's another great part of the story Consultants of which I am in real life, right, right.

So I know the destruction that we can have it So Iris distillers the IDL is actually formulated now in in Ireland. What are we gonna do? Okay Well now we actually have to take this whiskey out of Ireland now, we're gonna export this Okay, so where are we gonna export it?

Well United States seems to be the biggest market So we're definitely gonna go the United States, right? So they bring in a team of consultants because what they've got is Jameson power and the record distillers here, right at that time Power was the most popular whiskey in all of Ireland Okay, and they figure okay well power is gonna be a natural for this right but they bring in a team of Consultants and the consultants do what consultants do, right? They go out there and pick up information from outside the world and find out at that particular time in the late 60s Right and in the early 70s and it kind of the word power Had negative connotations Yeah There was all kinds of different near Soviet power and over in the United States or have a problem over there, right?

Our may not work it. You know what the nods going to Jameson now The best part of that was when Jameson I think about maybe 20 years ago They started advertising heavily when you could do that on TV, right and there was these Commercials really elaborately Staged the commercials of John Jameson himself diving overboard and rescuing a barrel of whiskey that had flown off the that have fallen off the boat and he drags it on to shore and it's like You know this whole thing about purity.

Here's the beauty behind this Jameson says so Jameson hated the column still so much when it was invented by another Irishman and Anais coffee that he wrote 90 page screed Wow Hey It's called the truths about whiskey and published it and they accused the column still of everything from corrupting Your your children to poisoning your family to stealing your wife away It was like what the worst thing in the world right column still was the worst thing in the world pot still whiskey That's the only way to make it that chased coffee out of Ireland.

I can't sell my invention here the Scott said Yeah, Scott should do bring it on right this right here is an example of the the Tokai Yeah, there's an example of how important that was because this is all essentially column still whiskey so they bring it over to Scotland, right and and then when the idea when Pernod Ricard takes over the IDL one of the first things they started to do was change the formulation of the original pot still Jameson and powers and they both became a blended whiskey with grain whiskey in it And I can just imagine John Jameson turning around Open I mean, hey, it's the number seven.

It's one of the top seven most consumed spirits in the world Yeah, so they did pretty well for themselves.

[Kerry]

Yeah, but you know, you never want to You never want to change That's what it gets me with corporate stuff there I mean, oh, let's find a cheaper way to make it yeah, and then you know, you could have this great product and then you've changed the flavor profile and it's You're lucky if it hits if it hits great, which luckily for them it did but you know I I've had a few green whiskeys that are pretty good. But overall I'm more of a more malted I'm a massive faint a fan of green whiskey.

[Robin]

I've got some being with compass blocks for those many years the original hedonism Was grain whiskeys and so I got to taste some absolutely spectacular stuff with John Glazer at the time In some warehouses and and like I was bowled over by it So yeah, there's some out there that are really great. I'm a malt whiskey person myself, you know, that's kind of where I cut my teeth Smoking malt whiskey, you know I don't like the smoky.

[Kerry]

We were talking earlier about The band-aid flavor how the band-aid flavor yeah, they died.

[Robin]

I know and yeah Yeah, band-aid and iodine and a little bit of kelp. Oh, man. Yeah.

Yeah had me Really light on the Pete and it just tastes like a really good barbecue and yeah, I'll be having the bar Well, that was kind of like like how Talisker actually how I got you know, cuz Talisker actually has that's a little bit of oyster Shells, it's got you know a little peach in there. You know, yeah. Yeah.

It was just these gorgeous blend of flavors and Entrancing, you know, I think there's a whiskey out there for everyone Yeah, yeah It's just you have to you know, a lot of people jump into the deep end of the pool You know like a ten-year-old LeFroy guess what man? You ain't coming back out. Yeah People that that's was they cut their selves on a on a LeFroy or an art bag And nowadays we have a big thing about hazmat whiskeys, which is a whiskey way above proof Oh, yeah, especially in bourbons.

I got news for you pal That I just did that and hazmat whiskey. I can't use my nose anymore for the 30 minutes. Yeah So I love it going to whiskey festivals and about nine o'clock at night.

Yeah, like yeah. Yeah, I'm going dude I know you can't smell things Because you've been snorting up high proof whiskey through that glass Okay, so Robin, so are you gonna go on a book tour with this bad boy? I hope so.

Yeah The first book that came out I did a book tour that was combined with a bunch of whiskey tastings Uh, and so I'm gonna do a variation of that. I'm gonna call it the history of whiskey 60 minutes of bad stand-up comedy punctuated by drinking right and hopefully I'll get some bad then I thought no, yeah, but if you're expecting bass that I'm comedy, believe me, I will fulfill your dream I just do nothing but