The Auld Alliance Singapore - Learning with Emmanuel Dron
As a whisky lover, it is my great honour to interview Emmanuel Dron, the founder of the whisky bar - the Auld Alliance (Singapore), which allows me to learn more about the stories of this legendary bar in Singapore. Also, it is a very great chance for me (and the new whisky lovers) to know more about how to build up ourselves to taste whisky with some insights into the recent whisky industry. Well, please let us enjoy those stories and tips.
How did Emmanuel start his whisky journey?
Emmanuel started his journey when he was in Lille (northern France), back to the mid-1990s. Actually, the first bottle was a single malt. Although he didn’t drink much alcohol, he really enjoyed that bottle! That is why he started to buy books and study whisky. Then he utilized the knowledge from books and tasted different types of whisky in a Jazz bar. At that time, there were about 150 types of whisky available in that bar.
With passion, he studied a lot and created a newsletter about whisky and sent it to La Maison du Whisky, a famous French company. And the company was very happy about that newsletter, then Emmanuel started his career in this liquor industry. And this built the foundation of his path for the future whisky bar - the Auld Alliance.
How did Emmanuel learn whisky by himself?
Since I tried to learn about whisky by myself, I really feel that it is very difficult. That’s why I hope to consult with Emmanuel about his experience. He gave me a few very good tips!
1) Take a whisky note at the beginning - Because keeping those tasting notes can help us think and categorize the profile of the whisky that we drink.
2) Drink with tongue but not drink with eyes - This is a very interesting tip for me. Since I have never thought about “drinking with eyes”. And Emmanuel explained to me; some people really drink with eyes more than the tongue. Because this type of people may just want to focus on the label (it means the distillery, the age, the cask, etc.), instead of the actual taste of the whisky, so they may get influenced by the “seeing”, as the taste got biased by some of the info.
3) Leave those whisky notes when you gain more experience - This is very interesting since it sounds like it conflicts with the first point. But it is actually not! Emmanuel shared with me that some people like to write very long whisky notes with a lot of special/fancy terms. However, we need to know that taste normally is very subjective; even though there is the same taste, there are a lot of different ways to express that in different languages. In this highly globalized world, when a Chinese guy reads a tasting note from a French person, this Chinese guy may not fully interpret those favours because of the difference of the culture and experience. That’s why when we enjoy whisky with some experience, we need to focus more on the whisky and try to see a bigger picture of the whisky profile, instead of trying very hard to find the “perfect” words to describe the bottle. Emmanuel also gave me some dimensions about what is the “big picture” of the taste, such as body & texture, complexity, diversity, and openness (vs dry aroma), powerful or smooth.
How to gain more knowledge & experience of the whisky?
Emmanuel also shared the methodology of gaining knowledge and experience of whisky. Firstly, we can read more books to understand the knowledge of what is whisky, the process of distilling, and the terminologist, etc. Secondly, we can consider knowing more about the diversity of the whisky distilleries, like different regions in Scotland and some of the famous world whisky regions. When we get deeper, we can experience more about different types of wood and their characters by a whisky tasting.
Other than the above, we can also have some comparison of the whisky from the same distillery with different ages. And if conditions allow, we can compare the bottles of the same age and the same distillery by different release years (like the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, etc.)
With this approach, we can experience “the rainbow of taste of whisky”! Try to imagine and utilize our creativity to understand each whisky family. And this can be a very solid journey of the whisky adventure!
What are the unique points of the Auld Alliance?
Back to 10+ years ago, the Auld Alliance actually was the first whisky bar that always opens a lot of old & rare bottles for customers to order by the glass in this region. With this unique point, it attacked a lot of whisky lovers to visit and experience. Because some of those bottles are extremely difficult to find in the market, or the price will be not that user-friendly. So the whisky lovers can taste those old and rare bottles without purchasing the full bottle at a very reasonable price.
The Auld Alliance has more than 50 BOTTLES of exclusive private single casks. This is also very special! Some of the private single casks are very rare, such as Port Ellen, Ardbeg or Longrow, etc.
Additionally, Emmanuel is also the author of the book Collecting Scotch Whisky. This book includes very comprehensive knowledge of the old bottles for all of the distilleries in Scotland. Also, it collects the interviews of those legendary bottlers such as Silvano Samaroli, Pepi Mongiardino, and collectors from all around the world.
As a very legendary whisky bar in this region, the Auld Alliance has around 2,500 bottles in the bar and stocks more than 6,000 bottles in the warehouse! This means we can try as much as we can without getting bored. ;)
Any special story behind any private bottles?
In the mid-1990s, Emmanuel started collecting whisky, and Port Ellen was the first bottle he collected. And with this reason, he always hopes to have an exclusive cask of Port Ellen. However, it is not that easy to find a good one in the market. And luckily, in 2012, he found a very nice cask in Italy. He was very happy about the cask and hoped to bottle this cask as a project to present in the whisky live TW event.
However, after booking that cask, the bottler told his connection that the cask was not for sale anymore! This was very disappointing, and Emmanuel didn’t have much clue about that. And he had to use another amazing cask (Highland Park 2012 - 30YO) to present at the event.
Time flies, Emmanuel actually didn’t manage to find another good Port Ellen cask in the next 3 years. Then one day, he met an Italian photographer in his own bar. Emmanuel just talked like usual with a new friend, sharing his nice drams and the stories. And one of the stories was about that “long lost Port Ellen cask in Italy ''. After listening to the story, the Italian photographer was very surprised, because he actually was the owner of that Port Ellen cask!
Obviously, Emmanuel could catch that second opportunity and closed the deal with the Italian photographer. We can then enjoy a glass of the beautiful Port Ellen 1983 in the Auld Alliance.
Drink with your tongue, but not drink with your eyes.
There is another meaningful private bottle - Glenturret 2014 - 36YO.
Actually, Glenturret Distillery is not on the top of Emmanuel’s list when he chose cask because he doesn’t like its character.
In one cask-choosing session, Emmanuel decided to have a blind-taste of the samples. He found that one of the drams was very outstanding. Naturally, he wanted to know what cask he chose. When he opened the label of the sampling bottle, he felt a bit disappointed, as that dram is from one of the distilleries that he didn’t enjoy much.
However, Emmanuel understood that he should “drink with the tongue, but not drink with the eyes”. So he followed his tongue and bottled that cask of Glenturret 36YO, as another great dram that we can enjoy in his bar now.
Emmanuel told me that this story was also a very good lesson for himself.
What do you think about the recent whisky market?
Part One - Find great casks is very difficult nowadays
With decades of experience in the whisky industry, Emmanuel can feel that the market landscape is changing. Also, the way people enjoy whisky is very different.
In the early 2000s, there were around 50 bottlers in Scotland. As there are not many bottles, this means private casks are very limited in the market. And the insiders, like Emmanuel, will put a lot of effort into choosing the best cask when they can then bottle them. Because those insiders really love whisky and hope the consumers can enjoy the taste of the whisky. (In my opinion, it is like craftsmanship, trying their best to approach the perfect point.)
However, things change from about the mid-2000s. A lot of new bottlers were booming within a very short period of time, to about 1,000 bottling companies.
It is very easy for us to understand, some of the newly opened bottlers really hope to acquire more revenue, so that they would just hope to sell as many casks as they can, as fast as they can. Some of the cask buyers even don’t need to try the bottle before purchasing.
We need to know that normally the bottlers would get the casks from the brokers, then resell to the other insiders. So when the bottlers purchase the casks from the brokers, the casks would have very similar characters. Since they were distilled at the same time, with similar cask type, they even were stored in the same warehouse.
Well, you can imagine if there are a lot of single cask whisky with very similar profiles being sold to the market. You will easily find that although the labels are different, the whisky inside tastes the same! This led to less fun and made some of the whisky can’t make people excited.
Part Two - Tasting the marketing element instead of the whisky
With the context of part one, we can imagine when you are a marketer, we got a lot of bottles that are very identical but should be sold as different products, what would you do?
We can rebrand them as totally different unique things. But as whisky single cask bottles cannot be adjusted, the only adjustable thing is THE LABEL.
So in the very recent year, you can realize that there is a very obvious trend of those diverse whisky labels. And collectable labels. This includes a lot of marketing elements and brands the whisky as a “product” instead of a piece of art.
That is why some people would like to drink whisky with their eyes, instead of using their tongue because the label tells a lot of marketing information that influences the essential element of the bottle - THE WHISKY!
Endnote by Fai
Actually, after listening to Emmanuel’s stories and insights, I realized that whisky is a piece of art. It requires a lot of passion and effort from multiple people before we can enjoy it! We should actually put a bit more effort into choosing our casks, doing that to respect the efforts of the upper-stream workers.
As consumers, we may want to calm ourselves in this fast-moving world. Try to learn how to enjoy the whisky with our tongue, but not our eyes! We should enjoy the most important part of the whisky - WHISKY; the other elements are definitely less important since they are supposed to support us to understand the taste of the whisky. But not bias us before we drink.
At the end of this article, I really want to thank Emmanuel for his time and for being so kind to share his stories and experience with us again!
Writer - Aukingfai
Appendix
Lastly, I hope to apologize, and this is my first time conducting an interview. I realize that there are a lot of rooms to improve. I will do this better in the future.