The MAFFEO DRINKS Podcast

The MAFFEO DRINKS Podcast is a leading drinks business podcast, listened to in 120 countries worldwide with 125+ episodes. Honest conversations about how the industry actually works, from the bar and what it means for the boardroom.

This Episode is hosted by Chris Maffeo and brought to you by MAFFEO DRINKS.

Daniel Szor is the founder of Cotswolds Distillery, one of the first four distilleries ever to make whisky in England. 

How do you build a brand in a category that does not exist yet? 
Why does owning a clear drinking occasion matter more than chasing prestige? 
And why did Daniel pledge 100 days in trade after hiring a CEO, instead of stepping back?

Find all episodes featuring Daniel Szor at themaffeodrinkspodcast.com.

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Creators and Guests

Host
Chris Maffeo
Building Bottom-Up Strategies WITH Drinks Leaders Managing Top-Down Expectations | MAFFEO DRINKS Founder & Podcast Host
Guest
Daniel Szor
Founder | Cotswolds Distillery

What is The MAFFEO DRINKS Podcast?

The Maffeo Drinks Podcast is a leading business podcast in the drinks industry. More than 130 episodes. Listened to in more than 120 countries. This podcast closes the gap between Bottom-up reality and Top-down expectations with conversations about how brands are actually built, from the field, not the boardroom. Hosted by Chris Maffeo, founder of MAFFEO DRINKS, with over 20 years across 30+ markets.

Guests include some of the top voices in the Beverage Industry. Founders, Directors, Top Brands and Distributors such as Mark Ward, Jack Orr-Ewing, Maurice Doyle, Ben Branson, Heather Greene, Philip Duff, Steven Grasse, Francois Monti, Georgie Bell, Robert Simonson, Imme Ermgassen, David Gluckman, Brian Rosen, Danil Nevsky, Felice Capasso, Nick Gillett, Paul Hletko, Racheal Vaughan Jones, Andre De Almeida, Kaitlin Wilkes, Paul Thomas, Stephanie Jordan, Roberta Mariani, Adrian Michalcik, Hunter Gregory, Filiberto Amati, Julian Davies, Alex Ouziel, Daniel Szor and more.

Chris Maffeo:

You were one of the first movers in the English whiskey movement. And if I understood correctly, you were one of the first people of the English whisky guild to bring people together. Is that

Daniel Szor:

It is correct. But when I started this, I had no idea. We were the fourth distillery in England ever to make whisky. There are now 49 distilleries in England making whiskey. Who would have thought?

Daniel Szor:

This day after tomorrow in Birmingham, there's the English Whiskey Festival with 30 whisky brands exhibit with only English whiskey. And last year was the first of those, and I remember getting in the car with my wife to drive up there to get on our stand and saying, would you ever believe ten years ago that we would be driving up to an English whiskey festival? The vibe and the energy and the the passion that was there just completely blew me away. This is like a bonus for me because when I had this idea, I didn't think of being English whiskey. I thought a little bit about being Cotswolds whiskey, which is a funny idea because we were the first ever to make whiskey in the Cotswolds, and so that wasn't a thing.

Daniel Szor:

I felt that I was part of this movement called New World Whisky. So this idea of whiskey that's not made in Scotland or Ireland or Kentucky, but that's made in places you wouldn't have expected. The best known of that Japanese whiskey, which is now almost an established category. Even though they've been added for a hundred years, people didn't really know about that until ten years ago, but now it's considered almost a traditional whiskey making category. But, you know, French whiskey, Danish whiskey, Australian whiskey, New Zealand whiskey, it's now from all over.

Daniel Szor:

I feel a kinship with these folks who are doing battle in a friendly way, because we all love our friends in Scotland and we love Scotch whisky, created a thing, whisky, single malt whisky in particular, that we all appreciate and emulate. But we also are challengers. We're outsiders.

Chris Maffeo:

And this is very interesting. If I take my, let's say history lover hats off, ultimately somebody invented those denominations, you know, they were in a way artificially created. Now, if you take champagne, if you take cognac, if you take, I mean, Scotch Irish whiskey, you know, all these categories, but they were created for hundreds of years of or a DOCG in Italy or whatever. But, you know, nobody said that you cannot do it elsewhere. No?

Chris Maffeo:

And this is the what the world whisky movement actually did. They took off the lead of this.

Daniel Szor:

So we have a very interesting model of history to look back on, which is about 50 years old now, and that's new world wine. Right? Because, you know, there was a very famous don't know if you heard of the the judgment of Paris in 1976, I believe it was. They made a movie called Bottle Shock, Very entertaining movie about this moment where a British sommelier in Paris went to visit Napa when Napa was unknown and realized that these guys were making some really good wine and brought back a bunch of bottles in his luggage and entered them in one of the most prestigious tasting competitions in Paris. To their shock and horror, had voted California wine in I think the first, second, and third place.

Daniel Szor:

That the whole growth of new world wine, wines from Australia, from South Africa, from South America sort of comes back to that moment realizing that there's great wines being made elsewhere. And they're perhaps a little bit less traditional. They're a little bit less wrapped up in their own rules and their own appellation. They're maybe a little bit less structured. You could almost say they're not your parents' wine.

Daniel Szor:

The new generation was looking for something to call their own, was looking for something that represented more kind of their values. And I feel very strongly that whiskey is at that inflection point as well. The wonderful work that was done in, in that is done in Scotland and Ireland, Kentucky to create these superpowers. It's wonderful. To love whiskey, do you need to love all of the Scottish tropes?

Daniel Szor:

I mean, do you need to in other words, you can find values if that's what you're into. If you identify with a brand or a type of a spirit because of how it's made, who makes it. You can find amazing stories now. One of them that I found before I had even started the distillery was in a whiskey made in Taiwan called Cavalan, which was similarly disruptive because this was Taiwan known to be whiskey lovers, but not whiskey makers. But this was a a very well off family.

Daniel Szor:

They decided that they wanted to make whiskey in Taiwan, and they made an amazing whiskey, which won great awards, including world's best single malt for a four year old whiskey from Taiwan. And I loved that whiskey. I loved its flavor. I loved its taste, and I loved what it represented. I loved giving it to my friends blind and saying, guess where this comes from?

Daniel Szor:

And they said, well, that's clearly a 15 to twenty year old sherry bomb or something like that. It's four years old. It's made in Taiwan. And that's the same kind of thing that I think to some extent people do with us. People who like it will tell their friends.

Daniel Szor:

People like passing on it. And if you've seen a good movie or been to a good restaurant, you tell your friends because you, there's that joy in letting them in on your little secret kind of. Think we are still at that level. We're still the little secret people who've come to see us have seen with their own eyes. A lot of it is word-of-mouth and that comes full circle back to brand awareness.

Daniel Szor:

I know you're very much for building brands one bottle at a time, and we are very much for building brand awareness one customer at a time. We've now done the first ever advertising campaign for our whiskey. We've tried to encapsulate into one image everything that we think our whiskey represents. Because if I go on for half an hour about every little artisanal thing and bit of geekery that we do, you'll probably forget by the end of it what I said in the beginning. But what I've realized, what I've learned in my ten years is that you do have to boil it.

Daniel Szor:

You have to distill it down, no pun intended, to a message. And if we are disruptive, if we are not like your dad's whiskey, if we are English, not Scottish, how do you show that? And I thought about the traditional image of whiskey advertising. You know, you get some old guy in a tweed jacket and a leather armchair in front of a fireplace with a crystal glass. Right?

Daniel Szor:

And I thought, well, what's the kind of person I think of as a Cotswolds drinker? And first of all, it's not necessarily a guy. It could be a girl too because whiskey is now very much enjoyed by women as well. It's not indoors. It's gonna be outdoors.

Daniel Szor:

It's not gonna be a fireplace. It's gonna be a fire pit. It's gonna be a bunch of guys around a fire pit. They're not gonna be wearing tweed jackets. They're be wearing jeans and jumpers and moccasins, and they're gonna not have a fancy glass.

Daniel Szor:

It's more about inclusiveness, unstructured enjoyment of something that's real. That's what the Cotswolds, and I hope one day you come up and pay us a visit, represents. It's a beautiful place where if you live in London, if you live in Birmingham, you're an hour, hour and a half away and you come out and you go walking and you go sit around a fire pit and have an ice whiskey. That's the occasion.

Chris Maffeo:

You you anticipated a question that I had in mind because you spoke about the liquid. So like the liquid before the brand, you know, first of all, you wanted to create something that you could drink and that people would enjoy. And then like the occasion. So what is the actual target occasion? So it's it's not that people cannot drink it on the sofa, on the indoor.

Chris Maffeo:

When you think about it, the taste profile helps that kind of moments. People drinking outside in a younger setting, a more relaxed, more informal setting. You mentioned distilling that story down to a simple message. When your team explained that to consumers, bar owners, bar managers, so on. What do you use to explain that?

Daniel Szor:

There is no right message. It's a message that you feel comfortable with. Since I tend to hire folks who I can relate to, they tend to have messages which are similar. And it all comes down to the reality of things. It's not pretense.

Daniel Szor:

It's not artifice. It's not just snobbism. Take, for example, we have now nine whiskeys in our range, of which six are core and three are limited editions, which change all the time. Like, we have two that change yearly and one that's a single cask program. But the six cores, they're all wonderful.

Daniel Szor:

It was very important for me to create a good, strong core range that was always there, always available. I felt that lots of distilleries either because they didn't have enough liquid in stock to ensure the continuity of a core range or maybe because they felt they could get better money for things that were limited edition, would come out with limited edition up to limited edition. The problem I had was that by the third or fourth limited edition, you don't know what they're about, what they stand for, what is really representing them.

Chris Maffeo:

I agree.

Daniel Szor:

So I, from the first whiskey that came out, which I pre sold before I even owned stills online, I needed the money. While we were distilling, while we were aging, we were pre selling this. And when it came out, it was and is the same whiskey that we now have today that's called Signature, which is the flagship of our range, the core of who we are, the one that most represents us, and the lowest price of our whiskeys. I mean, it's still a premium product. It's a 45 pound whiskey.

Daniel Szor:

But for what it is and the work that goes into it, it's incredible. And I think mostly what you get out of the glass, the flavor, it's incredible value. Saying, what is your whiskey? I always start with signature. And the way that I usually kick it off is saying that, you know, we've done with all our limited edition single casks, I don't know how many things we've come out with, probably 30 whiskeys over time.

Daniel Szor:

I've got all of them on that shelf in my living room, but I only have one in my kitchen on the counter, usually half empty, and that's Signature. Because that's the go to. That's the one that, you know, the end of a hard day, if you just want a little bit of whiskey, a little bit of flavor, the late Michael Jackson, the whiskey critic, used to call the contemplative dram. I I'll drink the signature because it's had an ABV that's immediately sort of manageable 46 ABV. That's as low as we go, but it's not one of our sort of 58, 59% ABVs.

Daniel Szor:

We have things that are much more intense in different flavors that explore different woods. So we have a bourbon cask, which is a 100% bourbon cask. And we have a peated cask, is coming from peated cask and an ex red wine cask. But the signature is a it's it's a mix of two casks, red wine and bourbon, and it's delicious. And actually, one of our nonexecs was a guy who helped build the Macallan brand over twenty years, so certainly knows a thing or two about describing whiskey and sort of representing it.

Daniel Szor:

He came up with one word, which was deliciousness. And so that's kind of how I would basically go out to a bar. We trade in deliciousness. And most of our customers buy both our gin and our whiskey. They love them both.

Daniel Szor:

And why is that? Because they're both delicious. That that's what they have in common. But I wanted to put the Cotswolds in a glass. I wanted to show this beauty in a liquid.

Daniel Szor:

I had no idea how to do it, but luckily, I had an amazing pair of Scotts and some incredibly diligent distillers who followed the process that we created. You know, choice of wood, the long fermentation, two different kinds of yeast. We use a French technique called marriage where we will intermingle whiskeys and the cask management aspect of it. But forget about all that. It's delicious.

Daniel Szor:

It's more delicious than you would expect whiskey at its price point to be. It's more delicious than any other whiskey that would come out of Scotland, to my knowledge, at that price point. There's a few that blind taste tasting, I put at the same level, but it's surprising. And the most surprising is it's three years old, and this whole arms race about the bigger the number on the label, the better it's gonna be. And that's just one of many myths we try and dispel.

Daniel Szor:

It's not about the number. It's about how it tastes. Most of our work is done with tasting, explaining the story, telling the story. And then we'll talk about serve and different things you can do with it. I spoke to my on trade guys and I said, what's the messaging if you were on this thing?

Daniel Szor:

What would you really like to say about the relationships that you've built in the on trade? They said that it's really all about trust, persistence, and delivery.

Chris Maffeo:

That's a great trio to work with. That's the flagship for you, the signature. But do you go there like with that as the foot in the door in the on trade for listing? Or do you go with a wider portfolio with a six range? How do you usually, like, how did you start?

Chris Maffeo:

Like, because probably you developed that through.

Daniel Szor:

We didn't have any sales guys in the beginning. So like I was a sales guy. I mean, I mean, we had the, had gin. Basically, we didn't have whiskey in the beginning. I remember once I had a tire kind of flat in my car, and I I need to get it fixed in Chipping Norton.

Daniel Szor:

And I had an hour while they're working, and then I said, well, I got a couple bottles of gin. Why don't I go walk around the pubs in Chipping Norton? I I was blown away by the reception because I worked for thirty years selling a very complex product, which nobody really wanted. And now I'm selling a relatively straightforward product that everybody wants in that they want the category. They're not always gonna buy what you are selling, but they're willing to listen.

Daniel Szor:

So it I didn't, for me, feel hard to go in and make an initial sale. I think I made three sales when my tire was getting fixed. But of course, that's just a bottle. And again, as you said, it's not just about selling a bottle. It's about selling the second, the third about, and when we finally were able to start hiring sales people and brand ambassadors, they have taken us to a completely different level where they're putting the time and they're putting the effort in.

Daniel Szor:

We're starting to realize just how hard it, you know, it is sometimes the headwinds, the fact that everybody is out there and the competition has gotten greater. But the results that they have had have been fantastic. I've decided that last year, I hired a CEO, Paul, who made a comment in your podcast about trying to fire yourself from every role you can get fired from, except for that one that you can't be fired for, which has been the crazy guy who started the brand. That's kind of what I've done. I fired myself from everything except being the crazy guy who started the branch.

Daniel Szor:

On hearing that, I I I thought I need to work harder. Then should I go out and be that guy and make those calls. So I went back and I said to all the sales guys in the company that I was gonna spend a hundred days in trade before next summer. I made this kind of pledge. I don't know what day I'm up to now, but I've been going out a lot next week.

Daniel Szor:

I'm out on the road three days just going to the bars and stuff. And so just to answer your question about what I come out, what we come out with when we do a tasting, there was probably a hiatus of a few years where I hadn't really watched the guys in action, really, in a cold call on the first call. But I'm thinking to one that we did recently at a top 20 bar in London with Katie, our newest Hertz brand ambassador. It was at a bar in Soho, and the team were very nice. They all came in early for them.

Daniel Szor:

So we were in there early afternoon, and we did a tasting. And she let me kindly, she let me do my one man show, my one act show. The only thing I I mean, it's like I have one routine. If you've heard it, don't you ever wanna talk to me again because it's all I know how to do is tell you my story. And then we took them through this.

Daniel Szor:

We typically do the whiskey first and then the gin and then for dessert, our cream liqueur, our whiskey cream. And all of a sudden, they were very enthusiastic, super nice, got up and all started wanting to make drinks with it. Came up with cookie cocktails, and I hadn't even had breakfast yet or lunch. And, yeah, they're giving me their cocktails to try, but it was such a nice vibe. Now, of course, then they're gonna get set up for work that day, and they're gonna have a million things.

Daniel Szor:

And then tomorrow, probably some rep is gonna come in, and they're gonna forget about it. So how do you carry on that goodwill? I don't know of any other way but just to continue to work at it. It's about persistence more than anything else. There's no magic to it.