Around the Barrel - Transcript: Ep039 Mark Gillespie

 

Mark Gillespie: I'll give you the same answer I give whenever anybody asks if I have a favorite whiskey: I haven't tasted them all yet.

 

Lucas Hendrickson: Whiskey lovers adore a good story. And even though we're deep into telling our stories here, we also love a good storyteller’s story. On this episode, we talk with Mark Gillespie, host and producer of the long running spirits podcast, WhiskyCast, about what's new in the whiskey world while so much of the world is still shut down, how spice racks are key to establishing one's tasting vocabulary and we continue the age old discussion about whiskey and the fifth letter of the English alphabet Around the Barrel.

 

Welcome back to Around the Barrel, the official podcast from the makers of Jack Daniel’s. I'm your host, Lucas Hendrickson. 

 

Anyone who's ever spent any time consciously trying to get better at a skill knows that repetition is key. Getting good at making podcasts takes repetition. So does getting good at tasting whiskey. And Mark Gillespie has been doing both simultaneously for more than 15 years. Mark's voice will be instantly recognizable to podcast-loving whiskey fans, many of whom likely came across his show while building their own lists of must listen to audio experiences. If Around the Barrel is also on that list for you, thank you. 

 

But WhiskyCast is also a regular destination for professionals in the whiskey space with its up-to-date news sections, in-depth interviews, dedication to whiskey history and comprehensive tasting note segments. 

 

That insider role is something Gillespie takes incredibly seriously – a commitment that American Whiskey magazine honored with their 2021 Icons of Whiskey Communicator of the Year award recently. It's a position that never would have happened had it not been for Gillespie’s supportive family sitting him down to tell him he was terrible at his job.

 

Mark: Well, I'm Mark Gillespie. I host and produce WhiskyCast, the oldest, longest running podcast series on whiskeys anywhere. I grew up originally in central Indiana and now live in the charming yet regrettably dry town of Haddonfield, New Jersey.

 

Lucas: Mark Gillespie, welcome to Around the Barrel. 

 

Mark: Thanks for having me. 

 

Lucas: In that intro, you did some things that are very familiar to those folks who have been listening to WhiskyCast for any length of time, especially the dry nature of your current home. And I know you've been asked this a billion times: Tell us a little bit about how you got started in the world of podcasting. And even before that, you know, what led you up into this pursuit?

 

Mark: Well, I've been in broadcast news my entire adult life. I literally got my first radio job the day I got out of high school, a small part-time job at a radio station in Columbus, Indiana that no longer exists.

 

Lucas: As many of them do. 

 

Mark: Yeah. Back in 2005, when podcasting was in its infancy, I was working for a company here in New Jersey that produced some content for CNN, and I was responsible for all of our broadcast content. This was when people were starting to talk about podcasts, because Apple had introduced support for podcasting on the old iPods. 

 

And somebody in the company got the great idea that we should be doing a podcast in addition to all of our other stuff. I was the poor guy that was going to have to make all this work, so I said, “Hang on, guys. Let me go play with this for a little while and see what we're getting ourselves into.” I had been making some noises about doing a whiskey podcast earlier that year and even asked – well, my own little bit of market research.

 

I asked on the Whisky magazine message boards of the day in one of the groups, “Hey guys, if I produce a whiskey podcast, would you guys listen to it?” We had 17 responses. One said, “Yes.” Two said, “Maybe.” The other 14 said, “What's a podcast?” 

 

Lucas: There it is. The question that still gets asked to this day. 

 

Mark: Yep. And son of a gun, if I didn't build an entire career off of three responses out of 17 that said they’d listen.

 

Lucas: That's a decent middle infielder, I guess, numbers.

 

Mark: Yeah. But anyway, we went back after – I took my recording gear to Whiskey Fest that fall, did a few interviews and produced a couple of episodes. And then folks started to realize, “Oh, that's what you meant by a podcast.”

 

I went back, told the brain trust at the company that, “Yes, we can do this. This is what it'll take and how we work it with the IT guys and everything.” And a few months later, they shut down my operation in Princeton, move it to Washington and lay me off and hire a kid at a third of my salary to produce the podcast in Washington. 

 

Lucas: A tale as old as time. 

 

Mark: Which is how media works these days. 

 

Lucas: Sure does. 

 

Mark: But no hard feelings. I wound up with a job a few months later at Bloomberg Television in New York. They graciously allowed – probably because I didn't say much about it. They graciously allowed me to continue producing the podcast, and that lasted for 3 years until the financial crisis hit. I survived the first round of layoffs in Bloomberg history in the February of 2009. I did not survive the second round. 

 

And by this time the podcast had started attracting a little bit of advertising revenue, and that was what sustained us after. While the severance package was good, that's what sustained us and let me keep our oldest daughter in school. But a few months into that, my wife and my three daughters sat me down for the Come-to-Jesus meeting. 

 

The family sat me down and said, “Look, this podcasting thing is cute, but it's got some potential to be a business. The trouble is you stink at the business side.” And they were right. So, they said, “You can keep doing this, but you gotta let mom take over the business side,” because Christina's background was in marketing, public relations, small business consulting, basically everything I did not know how to do. 

 

I was a control freak, and this was my one thing that I wanted to do myself, but I said, “Okay, let's try it.” Within a year, we were tripling our income from advertising. Things were working out nicely, and to this day, in 2021, it is still our full-time jobs, running our production company. 

 

Lucas: That's very cool. 

 

Mark: So, it worked out well. And actually I learned a really important lesson from it, because being a control freak tends to strangle what you're working on. But by learning to let go of what I did not do well and let somebody else do that, we were able to succeed. And I learned an important lesson about letting go of some things and not having to be such an anal-retentive control freak.

 

Lucas: We can all learn lessons across the course of careers. Many of us, many times. 

 

Mark: It is possible for old dogs to learn new tricks. 

 

Lucas: I couldn't agree more. So, obviously you've been involved in the professional media world, but what was it about the spirits business that interested you enough to start kind of pursuing this? Had you been involved in writing about whiskeys before getting involved in the podcast, or was it just kind of a fan situation leading up to that?

 

Mark: It was a fan situation. As a journalist, I learned by asking people questions. And at the time, I was just a whiskey nut and enjoyed it, but I didn't know a whole lot. And so I figured, “If I'm going to do this, why not go out and start asking people and talking to the experts just like I would if I was covering it, and do it that way?” 

 

And by doing it as a podcast, I can bring other folks along with me in my journey. And if you listen to those early episodes that are still available on our website, and a lot of people do still listen to them, you'll hear my evolution from learning the basics about whiskey to being able to hold my own with the real experts who make it and have done so for years and years. 

 

I mean, I don't – I do not consider myself an expert by any stretch, since I've never made a drop of whiskey. I know a little bit about a lot of things when it comes to whiskey.

 

Lucas: I know that feeling. I tell folks all the time, “I can tell you how to get from point A to point B as far as the production of specifically Jack Daniel's, but I couldn't make a drop of it to save my life.” But it's certainly been an interesting journey in learning about it over the past several years as I've been much more immersed. 

 

How do you think – you're a little over 850 shows deep right now. How has that show changed and evolved over the close to 16 years you've been doing it?

 

Mark: Well, the first show, I think, was about eight minutes long. Today, we have interviews that run longer than that. I did not start out doing Tasting Notes at first, because I did not consider myself qualified. And after a few years, I was sort of forced into it. People started saying, “Well, you know, gee, you get to taste all these really great whiskeys. It'd be nice if you'd share your tasting notes with us and tell us what you think of them.” 

 

So, that's when I started doing Tasting Notes. I had always formatted the show loosely in sort of the same way it is now, but we created more delineated segments of the show. Our In-Depth segment is usually one long interview that can be anywhere from 10 to 20, 25 minutes, depending on who I'm talking to and what we have to talk about.

 

But we still talk about whiskey events that are taking place, or these days, not taking place or taking place online now around the world. We always still start off with the news each week, because there is almost always something happening in the whiskey world that both consumers and folks within the industry need to know about. 

 

We do the Tasting Notes after that In-Depth segment. We've always had consumer feedback and listener feedback in our Your Voice segment. And a couple of years ago, we started this Behind the Label segment that we close out the show with. Christina actually came up with the idea for this. “Why don't you take a topic and explain it?” So, we look at the science or the history or something unique about whiskey.

 

Lucas: Going back to that Tasting Notes segment, which I think is probably one of the more certainly educational aspects of what you're doing with WhiskyCast – there's documentation, there is, you know, belief that without training, most people are only able to taste about 24 of the 200 distinct flavors in bourbon, whiskey. 

 

How long do you think it took you to kind of build up not only your ability to differentiate between those tastes, but also your set of descriptors, your vocabulary, for what you want to say within that Tasting Notes segment?

 

Mark: It took a while. It's one of the reasons I did not start out at first. I didn't feel like I was qualified, but over time I started figuring things out. I will give Christina a lot of credit, because she is an excellent cook. And one of the things I started doing early on was going through her spice cabinet and opening up various containers of spices and sniffing them and trying to learn the aromas. 

 

Things like that, like being focused at the grocery store. Going through the produce section. What does anise smell like? If you haven't eaten it or tasted it, what does it smell like? Cooked bananas, things like that. What do, say, plantains as opposed to regular green bananas? Things like that, that you can go through the produce section and it's a lot cheaper than buying one of these nosing training kits.

 

And then you just start paying attention. And one of the things that I've found over the years is that the descriptors come naturally once you figure things out. Because really aromas are nothing more than mental memories of what we have experienced over time. 

 

In some whiskeys, you'll get a coconut note, for instance. For me, that brings to mind the coconut cream pie my grandmother made for holidays when I was a kid. So, that's where I get that reminder from, of that whiff of coconut, is it brings back that memory, and that's where I associate it. And that's where you pick up your descriptors.

 

Lucas: Mhm. How many different descriptors do you think you've used over the years in your tasting notes?

 

Mark: I don’t know. I've never kept track. I will tell you some that will usually get an immediate response from upstairs, because my studio is in the basement. And as I'm recording a show, I will mention occasionally things like driftwood smoke, like from a burning campfire on the beach. And I will hear from upstairs, “Where in the hell did you get that from?”

 

So, yeah. You get challenged at home every once in a while, but I'll get notes like that. Driftwood smoke is the one that they like to throw in my face, going, “Yeah. Driftwood smoke. Where'd you get that?” I’m going, “Yeah, let me see. I've been to campfires on Islay and in Scotland where they do burn driftwood. That's where I got it from. I'm sorry you weren't there, but.” Little fun stuff like that. 

 

Lucas: How often do you think you add a new descriptor to that list?

 

Mark: Oh, good question. Two or three times a year, because sometimes I'll try something new, and then I'll start saying, “Oh yeah, I get that in this whiskey. That's where that's coming from.” Because I'm still evolving – your taste and your palette evolve over time. And what you taste one day may taste completely differently in six months from now. 

 

The other thing you have to think about is if you're on medication. I was judging a competition for the Malt Maniacs back in 2008. Invitation only group, and they had just invited me to join the group. I was judging in my first competition. I go through 183 different whiskey samples. And once the competition is over, I'm talking with the chairman of the maniacs who was running the competition, and we're going to do a quick interview on the results.

 

And he looks at my scores and he goes, “Boy, you really must've hated this one whiskey.” I'm not gonna name the name of it. I'm going, “Are you kidding? I love that whiskey.” He goes, “Well, you scored it a 70 for crying out loud.” And I went, “What?”

 

Lucas: Oh, okay. Sure.

 

Mark: I went back, checked the spreadsheet and checked the notes and, yep, I scored it a 70 because it was overly tart. And I'm going, “Wait a second. That's not right, because I've had that whiskey many times.” 

 

It turns out that I had been on medication for something that my doctor had given me in the weeks during the judging, and it threw my taste buds off. And we had to throw out my entire 183 tasting notes for the competition, because it threw me off. So, now my doctor and I have an agreement between us that he knows if he's going to prescribe something for me, he has to check the side effects first to make sure it's not going to mess up my taste.

 

Lucas: Sure. Yeah. So, you've got this very extensive journalism background, and you cover a topic that has a lot of products and history and personalities and some politics involved. Do you ever allow yourself to have favorites? Do you find yourself, you know, ever quietly rooting for certain distilleries or brands or styles of whiskey? Is it, you know – or do you try to, you know, stay above the fray, stay objective as much as possible?

 

Mark: I stay above the fray. I have friends all over the industry, so I'm not going to pick one side or another. Because I have friends in Tennessee whiskey and bourbon and Canadian whiskey, Australian whiskey, Irish whiskey, scotch, of course. I've got friends all over the world that I've made because of this job, so it's not in my interests to – it would be hard for me to want to see somebody succeed over another person at all. 

 

And so I just try to stay above that. I prefer the approach that a rising tide lifts all boats, because if we're attracting more people to drinking whiskey and trying it and experimenting, and they start trying something new that they hadn't tried before and they get out of their comfort zone and decide they like it, then we all win. 

 

Lucas: Right. Absolutely. Because we talk mostly on this show about a certain brand of Tennessee whiskey. 

 

Mark: No.

 

Lucas: What's your feelings about Tennessee whiskey as a style, as a portion of the overall, you know, brown liquor spectrum, if you will?

 

Mark: I love Tennessee whiskey. Tastes just like bourbon to me. I'm kidding. I'm kidding, of course. No, I love Tennessee whiskeys. I think the stories behind – the whiskeys are all good. 

 

I mean, it's really hard to make bad whiskey these days. If you're making bad whiskey, then there's no excuse for it, because we know more now about the distillation process than we ever have. And it's impossible. It's really hard to make bad whiskey. You got to really screw it up to make it bad. 

 

But the stories are really the fun parts. When you hear about the stories of Jack Daniel and Nearest Green back in the day, talking to folks like Chris Fletcher, his grandfather, Frank Bobo, talking with Jimmy Bedford, Jeff Arnett and then Chris over the years – and you get to meet these folks and you learn their stories and you learn about the family history that connects all these people.

 

I remember the day Chris Fletcher got the job last fall when he was promoted after Jeff Arnett left, and he was telling me about going over to the distillery with his grandfather as a kid on the weekends and playing around out in the woodpile and stuff by where they make the charcoal. And doing all that while his grandfather was working and having a pass to run around the whole place. 

 

And it's stories like that that really help connect people to the whiskey. So, Tennessee whiskey has some great stories behind it, and that's why I like telling the stories so much.

 

Lucas: Yeah. We kind of went through your tasting notes of Jack products. Things seem to hold up fairly well in your estimation. Do you have – if you, again, allow yourself, do you have a favorite expression of Jack Daniel's?

 

Mark: I will give you the same answer I give whenever anybody asks if I have a favorite whiskey: I haven't tasted them all yet. There are still whiskeys out there from both Jack Daniel's and all over the place that I haven't tasted. 

 

So, for me to define a favorite, I would have to say that it would be a whiskey that I could drink for the rest of my life on a desert Island and not regret it. I haven't found those whiskeys yet, so I'm still looking. And there are some I haven't tasted from Jack Daniel's yet, so until I taste them all, I really can't give you a favorite.

 

Lucas: Right. That's very diplomatic. I'm impressed. My answer on that when people ask, “What's your favorite?” – “My next one, whatever that might be.” 

 

Mark: Whatever the one is in front of me.

 

Lucas: Exactly. 

 

Mark: I will tell you that I've been really impressed with what the folks in Lynchburg are doing with the Tennessee Tasters series. 

 

Lucas: Yeah. The innovations that they're using with these Taster series options – doing one with Jamaican allspice wood.

 

Mark:  I liked that one. 

 

Lucas: I did too. The barrel reunions that they've done with Tennessee wine makers and breweries around the state – you know, I think it's such a fascinating way of really kind of letting everyone there kind of get their creative juices flowing as far as figuring out what you can add to and enhance Old No. 7 with.

 

Mark: Right. And what I think is going to be the ultimate test for that is if they can take one of those Tennessee Tasters products and turn it into a full range, into a core range whiskey. If they get an innovation out of there that really works, that's when that project will have been deemed a success. 

 

Lucas: Yeah. Yeah. You know, again, we are kind of still very firmly in the age of COVID, and we're in season two of talking about that on this podcast. Obviously your show ends up a lot of these days in that news segment talking about the things that are being canceled or turned virtual or being postponed. And it's probably been that way for quite some time on your show. 

 

Where do you think – you know, whatever we're able to emerge from this with, where will both the U.S. and the international spirits markets be, do you think? I mean, I realize it’s a lot of projection, but what kind of shape are we going to be in when this is all said and done?

 

Mark: Well, I think the problem is bigger than just COVID, because we also have the trade tariffs on both sides of the Atlantic, where the Europeans have been issuing, or adding, a 25 percent tariff on Jack Daniel's and every other American whiskey that hits the European Union. And the U.S. has done the same with single malts from Scotland and Northern Ireland, along with liqueurs and wines from all over Europe. 

 

The problem with that is that none of those products actually were involved in a trade dispute on their own. They're all collateral damage from other things. And so what you have is a bunch of smaller distillers that have really been hurt by this. 

 

Let's be honest. A company like Jack Daniel's can afford to eat the cost of those tariffs in key markets. When they export to Europe, they can afford to eat some of that cost to try to keep their pricing consistent so that consumers aren't paying the tab, but smaller distillers in Tennessee, for instance, don't have that luxury. And it has really cut into the American whiskey profile in Europe. 

 

I talk about that rising tide lifts all boats. Well, the problem with the tariffs is that we have really hurt the profile of American whiskey in Europe, where it was really growing every year. You have the same problem with scotch whiskeys over here in the U.S., where imports are down 35 percent since October of 2019, when the U.S. tariffs went into place.

 

What you have are markets that are going to become entrenched in their home whiskeys. And it's going to be really hard to build market share back up when all this is said and done, let alone deal with the impact of COVID. In an interconnected world, you really have to look at the entire global situation here and realize that the politicians aren't doing anybody in the whiskey world any favors right now.

 

My hope is that consumption remains steady because people are drinking at home now instead of going to bars and restaurants. Our hope is that the bars and restaurants will survive long enough to be able to come back when we're allowed to go out to restaurants and bars again on an unlimited basis, that there’ll still be some for us to go to. 

 

And that's going to be the big key. And I don't know where we go from there quite yet. I mean, it's really too soon to tell, frankly. 

 

Lucas: Yeah, even a year into this now. 

 

Mark: I hate to throw politics into it, but you have to, because this whole world is driven by politics. And when the politicians basically are determining what whiskeys we can get on a fairly priced basis and the prices we're paying for them, then you have to look at that point and you have to pay attention to it.

 

Lucas: It is the process of doing business in the 21st century. So, going back to WhiskyCast itself, how would you best describe your audience? How does it break down, do you think, across, you know, fans of whiskey like you were before getting involved in all this and hopefully still are versus industry folks? How much do you have a sense of percentages as far as the people who are listening to your show?

 

Mark: We think based on the surveys we've done that it's about 25 percent industry, 75 percent consumer, but in the news section, we cover stuff that hits across both sides. We try to balance it out so that we're not too industry centric for the consumers, but not too consumer centric so that the industry folks don't feel like they need to listen to make sure that they're staying up to date. 

 

Ideally, if you're a fan of whiskey, or if you're in the whiskey business, you need to be listening to the show every week, because there's something that you're going to learn from it. And that's our goal each week. We're about 55 percent North America, 45 percent the rest of the world. And the show – from our server logs, we can calculate that we've been downloaded in at least 180 countries around the world. 

 

Lucas: Oh, wow. Okay.

 

Mark: Including a few countries where alcohol is illegal. And we think that was mostly Western expats in places like Saudi Arabia and places like that. One of the things we found very early on in the first few years of the podcast when we really still had active conflicts overseas and a lot of military overseas is that we had soldiers who were listening to the podcast and sailors. 

 

And basically trying to – just using it to decide what to get on their way home at the duty free shops and things like that, or when they were on liberty or on leave, what they could go find or distilleries that they could go visit if they were, say, on leave in Germany and places like that. So, they were using that as a learning tool. And they'd email us and tell us about it. And that was great.

 

Lucas: Well, that's kind of just a continuation of the history of the military being involved in spreading the gospel, if you will, of American spirits brands all over the world. It's certainly part of Jack Daniel's lore over time. 

 

So, I'm sure this is an age old debate that you've probably addressed several times, but whiskey with an E versus whisky without an E. Where do you fall on – obviously with the title of your show, you've got it minus the E, but where do you – is there a difference of opinion? What's the history of that particular word in its various forms?

 

Mark: Well, I stand on the without the E unless it's in a brand name, only because when you're heard in 180 countries, most of those countries don't use the E, so we keep it that way. Plus, it looked better on the logo, frankly. I kid about that, but it was easier. One less keystroke.

 

Lucas: Especially paying a designer for the logo. They probably charge by the character.

 

Mark: Something like that, yeah. But whiskey with an E – I think it goes both ways. The Irish use it today primarily with an E, but they didn't always. One of the stories about whiskey E and no E is that a Dublin whiskey – there was a specific type of whiskey that was made more than a century go when Dublin was the center of distilling in Ireland that was called Dublin whisky. That did not have the E in it. 

 

They just called it Dublin whisky, no E, but then whiskey that was distilled outside of Dublin had the E, because it was considered country whiskey, and they did it – they wanted to differentiate themselves from the oilier, thicker, heavier Dublin whisky. And the whiskey they were distilling out in the country was a little bit lighter, a little more refined, and they wanted to sort of separate the two.

 

Lucas: Interesting. 

 

Mark: And essentially, remember that American distilling was fueled by Scotch and Irish immigration during the colonial days. And the Scots were using the no E. The Irish were using the E. So, you had it both ways over here in the states. And primarily the Scots went into Canada, which is why they still use the no E for the most part. 

 

The reason the Irish settled on the E version of whiskey was only because in the mid sixties, when the three remaining families that controlled or that had distilleries left after the Irish whiskey industry collapsed – you had the Jamisons in Dublin, the Power family in Dublin and the Murphys down in Cork. 

 

Along with Bushmills in what is now Northern Ireland, they essentially merged their companies together between – well, the three families did in 1965, ‘66. Bushmills joined in ‘72. And they were both spelling it different ways between the families. 

 

They decided to settle on the whiskey with an E version just to keep it consistent across the company. And that's why everybody in Irish whiskey, except for a couple of newcomers, uses the whiskey with an E today.

 

Lucas: Where can people also follow you on the social medias for the WhiskyCast brand, universe of brands, in the social world?

 

Mark: It’s very simple. Just search for @WhiskyCast. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. You can probably find me on LinkedIn if you search hard enough. And I think I'm getting into Clubhouse. I signed up for a Clubhouse membership the other day, so we'll see how that works out to do an audio chat in social media. 

 

Lucas: There you go. 

 

Mark: And see if that works out and makes any sense, but yeah, we love to hear from people. And I read all my emails, and I respond to as many of them as I can. And I get emails. All sorts of questions about whiskey, and I do try to answer them and try to find people – I've always said if I don't know the answer, I'll go find out who does and get it for you.

 

Lucas: Sure. Well, Mark, again, thank you for what you do with WhiskyCast. Thanks for spending a little time with us today. Thanks for joining us Around the Barrel.

 

Mark: Thank you for having me and slàinte mhath!

 

Lucas: Thanks for checking out this episode of Around the Barrel. If you want to hear other conversations with commentators in the whiskey world, check out our episodes with Noah Rothbaum and Dan Dunn in season two and Fred Minnick and the guys from The Podcask in season three. 

 

You can find all our archived episodes on all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and more, plus on the web at www.jackdaniels.com/podcast. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate and review while you're at it. Cheers, y'all, and join us next time for more conversations Around the Barrel.

 

Your friends at Jack Daniel’s remind you to drink responsibly. Jack Daniel’s and Old No. 7 are registered trademarks, Copyright 2021 Jack Daniel’s. Tennessee whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof, distilled and bottled by Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. Around the Barrel is intended for listeners 21 years of age and older.