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An English Bourbon That Will Leave You Saying ‘Never Say Die’
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Oct 7, 2024
Never let your ideas die. Martha Dalton and David Wild certainly don’t every time they send their bourbon across the sea, in “the world’s biggest cocktail shaker”, to produce a pretty tasty drink for the City A.M. team. Here’s how it all began, and subscribe to hear more inspirational entrepreneurial stories like theirs. 🌐 www.cityam.com X(formerly Twitter): http://twitter.com/CityAM Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cityam Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/city_am LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/cityam TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@city_am
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0:00
Never say die
0:13
Talks through the idea. So the idea was born at the Kentucky Derby
0:21
I were now in business parliament, Pad Madden's bus. And I say boss, it was more like a lead-set tour bus
0:30
And Pat then started telling, just shooting the breeze, telling the story about this horse that had been born on his dance farm
0:39
was very sickly, and had been saved by being given a shot of burbot
0:45
over the nose. And an hour later, it's running around the public
0:50
And so they called this horse, Never Say Die. And that horse went on to become the first American race horse
0:57
to win an English classic. In mentality, in 1954, from the Queen, Winston Churchill
1:03
You know, obviously the bourbon sent the new runs around the pastor
1:06
and I just said to Pat, let's do a bourbon and call him, never say die. And he's went, well know, the best bear the story
1:13
The best brother story is in Liverpool. This poor woman, poems owner Jewelry, totally desperate
1:19
Goes to the book, he's, never say die, loves the name. It's this, you know, massive outsider American heart
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33 to 1 ridden by a nobody a 17-year-old apprentice jockey called Lester Piggott
1:33
who no one had ever heard of and the horse wins with that money
1:38
she invests in getting a club together called the Kathbad book and her son
1:45
Pete Best his drums and his mates Paul and George their first electric instruments So we could just like that That an amazing story So it was from that we then just carried on talking about it
2:00
And they thought, do you know what? What we really need to do something and follow the course of the horse
2:06
So that's why we ship the barrels over. So it's straight Kentucky bourbon
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You know, it's Asian America, conforms to all the rules, all of that
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Comes over to England, finished in England, I.E., he's stored in England for a while, I would sell us down
2:24
And that ocean aging, plus that time in a total of a different climate
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alters the carriage of the whiskey, and, you know, to be frank, this was a bit of a bad
2:44
This is a side hustle. Yeah. How many, what challenges does that throw up
2:51
It throws up a lot of interesting challenges in the, every single person involved on the board and with the
2:59
with never said I, has got other jobs. So this has always just been on the side as a bit of fun
3:06
And as time's gone on, it's got more and more serious. And obviously, if that rings with it, the time
3:13
that needs to be devoted because we thought there's no point in doing this
3:17
unless we're going to try and create quality product. You put the time in to
3:22
invest in the brand, the bottle, the label, the market, we've done all
3:29
And that seems to be paying off now. We knew we had a really good story
3:36
And it's a story with a basis in reality through parts it was on this So there so there a whole and the fact that this was born as a project amongst friends
3:49
based on serendipity thing, you know, coincidences, and we liked all of that
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And that's the sort of spirit in which we've tried to run the business
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I mean, we're now realising that if it's successful, it then has to transform into a different
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more coherent, more business-like, business if you like. But up till now, it's been a lot more fun than it has been out of work
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So tell me what's the most exciting thing about, The most exciting thing about Never Say Die is that we're genuinely pushing the boundaries of what a bourbon can be
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And so the fact that we've made a Kentucky straight bourbon rested it in Kentucky, so it's matured for about five years
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And then pretty much gambling, you know, with the gods of the ocean by putting it on to a container ship and shaking it up
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makes it really fun and also really unique. It genuinely changes the liquid inside the bottle
5:12
It's not a marketing gimmick. You know, ocean ageing. If you imagine, most barrels go into a rick house
5:18
and they stay in one position. What we do is we do that
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and then we put them onto an, you know, onto a container ship and basically do this
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The world's biggest cocktail shaker, right? Yeah for six weeks And then we take it to the Peak District you know another very different climatic condition where it then kind of softens it And so for us we been released at the moment
5:42
we've got three skews. So we've got a barrel strength, a small batch and a rye. And each of the
5:48
barrel strengths, because they are single barrels, they all taste different and that's, you know
5:52
quite special and quite exciting. Yeah. It's quite an entrepreneurial thing to do. What gives the
6:00
of entrepreneurialism to you. Obviously, there's trepidation, but there must be exhilaration
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in equal measure. Yeah, I think it's about doing something, you know, from your gut
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trying new things and not having shareholders or, you know, other people to tell you you can't do
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something. It means that we can do, you know, doing something for this first time. If you looked at it
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purely from a business planning point of view, you wouldn't do it because it's expensive. It's
6:28
risky, but that's what makes it exciting. And when you got the coverage from Forbes, Best
6:34
Berman in the World, taught me through how you felt when you found out about that one, that popped in
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the inbox. Yeah, I mean, I had a little kitchen disco, I must say. You know, toasted my, you know
6:43
toasted a bit of Never Say Die. You know, I, my other, my other job is, you know, working in PR and
6:50
political communications. And I know that, and we had no idea that that story was coming. So it was just
6:56
you know, it was genuinely an organic bit of coverage, which is just super exciting
7:00
And for us, it came the week before we launched in America. And, you know, Forbes obviously a huge title in the state
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So, so really exciting. Perfect timing. Well, we're about to have our own kitchen disco now because you're one of your colleagues who's whipping up a storm
7:12
So should we head over? Let's do it
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