When John O’Connor stood in a barrel-filled warehouse deep in the whisky heartland of Scotland, it was the beginning of his own spirited journey. Kim Berry talks to him about the birth of Goodradigbee Distillers. This article was first published in Food & Drink Business April 2021.
It was while standing inside a warehouse in Pitlochry, Scotland, staring at row after row of whisky barrels that John O’Connor had an idea.
“I love whisky, but I looked at this warehouse with all these barrels, taking up all this space, costing the distillery all this money, while it could literally do nothing with it for six years,” O’Connor tells Food & Drink Business.
O’Connor was living in the UK at the time with an established reputation in advertising and consulting. To call that moment in the warehouse an epiphany would be an understatement.
“I started working in distilleries for free to learn the craft. Tony Reeman-Clark at Strathearn Distillery taught me the most important thing – if you start with a good spirit, then you end up with a good spirit,” he says.
It was that knowledge and the nagging “there must be a better way” feeling from standing in the warehouse, which became the foundation of his own company, Goodradigbee Distillers.
“Our entire philosophy is about creating something that hasn’t been done before. The biggest variable in whisky is the barrel it is aged in. So, what if we changed the shape of barrel? And all whisky barrels are made of oak, so, what if we tried different woods? Specifically, Australian hardwoods.”
The result of O’Connor thinking outside the box was… a box. It was 2017/18 when he imported Australian ironbark and jarrah to the UK. He says even that part of the process was as new for UK Customs as it was for him.
What O’Connor came up with was a wooden cube with ‘veins’ inside it – two pieces of wood that cross each other diagonally, maximising the spirit’s exposure to the wood.
“Australian hardwoods smell amazing, and the question was would the smell translate to taste. I started with a single malt barley spirit and two stainless steel cubes that had been purpose built, with the interior lined with wood. One was ironbark and the other jarrah.”
Eight weeks later the results were in. “The bottom line was it worked. Our maturation process was validated so it was time to concentrate on developing a retail product while continuing to experiment with different woods. Red and yellow ironbark from the New England region is wonderful to use and imparts incredible flavour. Jarrah is more mellow and takes longer but also produces a great result,” he says.
In developing a retail product, O’Connor had export as a primary goal. While scaling production for a bottled range, he was working with Japanese woodwork craftsman Takashi Nashura on a retail range of wooden cubes.
“Takashi has been in Australia for thirty years and is an incredible woodworker. We met after I was scouting local carpentry places for someone to build the boxes. One guy said to me, ‘I can’t help you, but I know who can’.”
They are up to the fifth prototype, creating exquisitely crafted wooden boxes, which owners will then fill with the spirit, ultimately creating a spirit individual to each box.
“It harks back to the 1600s when a local inn would have a barrel called a solera that was filled with spirit. Overtime every inn’s solera would have its own flavour profile. That is was a Goodradigbee box will be,” O’Connor says.
For the bottled range, a square, handmade bottle from France was chosen for its characteristics – it is heavy, each one is slightly different, and it has shelf presence. But one aspect was not considered.
“There are no labelling machines for square bottles,” O’Connor laughs.
With label design by Lucy Edison and Peter Ogden, each label is still hand applied.
Despite this minor hiccup, the initial product range – a single malt barley spirit aged in red ironbark, yellow ironbark, or jarrah; and two gins – is now for sale in a number of select, independent outlets as well as online.
O’Connor and his partners are now on the hunt for an investor with alcohol export experience to help deliver its export vision. Goodradigbee Distillers shows just how interesting thinking outside the box can be.
