Tiff Christie (00:10) - This is Cocktails Distilled, a podcast that takes your favourite spirits and liqueurs from the still to the cocktail glass. In each episode we talk to distillers and creators about particular expressions that their brand has released, what they are, why they were created and in what cocktails they can be used. Are you ready to understand what's in your glass, or perhaps should be? Welcome to Cocktails Distilled.
Welcome back to Cocktails Distilled. We thought we would start our podcast year off by talking to one of Scotland's best-known no-alc distilled spirits, Feragaia. You've probably seen a lot about no and low-alc spirits through dry January, but if the 2024 Bacardi Cocktail Trends Report is to be believed, you're about to hear a lot more. The report predicts that the sector will skyrocket by 67% to a value of 359 million by 2026 and that consumers will increasingly seek no and low alternatives year-round. So, with that in mind, we talked to Bill Garnock, one of the founders of Feragaia, about botanicals, experimentation and what it means to distil the wild earth. Thanks for joining us, Bill.
Bill Garnock (01:37) - Not at all, Tiff. Thank you very much for having me.
Tiff Christie (01:40) - Now, you've been distilling Feragaia since 2019. Back then, did you imagine that the category would expand the way that it has?
Bill Garnock (01:50) - Thanks for the question, Tiff. I did believe this was going to happen. I felt that, especially in the UK, where craft distillation is always at the forefront of the industry's minds, back in 2019, that first dry January was actually 2018 when we were dry January. Then we started noticing it across friends, family, trade, society. Really people started talking about it and so, you know, my business partner and I were having these thoughts and they were probably able to have other like-minded industry figures looking at their own relationship of alcohol and considering how they best want to apply their skills and their talents in the world of drinking and, as I said, you know the UK has such a long-standing issue of craft distillation and our food and drink innovation. I felt that this contemporary category was only going to grow from there, and I've been correct so far in those predictions.
Tiff Christie (02:48) - Has it expanded in the way you thought, though?
Bill Garnock (02:50) - That is an interesting question. The category to sort of answer your question with a sort of slightly abstract note. Since the days we were children, we have been playing around with our non-alcoholic drinks in our kitchen. You know whether it's fruit juices or cordials etc. So I think everyone in their mind has an idea of what makes a quality non alcoholic drink, and this has led to some really remarkable, interesting array of different categories and subcategories and from the wacky to the innovative to the funky. You know that there are all sorts of drinks out there, and it's interesting that almost every category of alcohol has now got some form of a non-alcoholic counterpart. I'm proud that Feragaia is one of the few that has gone on its own path to create just an interesting, independent, botanical-led wild set of flavours which can sort of appease all sorts of moments and drinkers. But yeah, I think it's been a very interesting journey in terms of positive and negative ways, in terms of how the categories developed since 2019.
Tiff Christie (03:58) - I suppose what I was getting at is whether the non-alcoholic category should be what you and companies like Seedlip are doing, or should it be mimicking existing alcohol but without any alcohol incorporated? Or is there room in the market for both?
Bill Garnock (04:21) - I think there's a food and drink, especially non-alcoholic, is extremely subjective to taste, so I don't think there's any right or wrong. I think what is right ultimately will be rewarded by the market forces in the long run. I think the mimic brands early on did a great job of getting a lot of the high streets into the category quick, to understand a mimic of your G&T, Vodka-Soda, etc. However, I think as customers become more educated, they want to understand more about why they're spending money on the product, about what they're drinking, about who made it, and so I would hope, like with categories of our favourite alcohols, the brands which will stand the test of time will be the brands that do have that individual story, process, taste and identity.
However, market forces do not act in predictable ways, and so which categories emerge strongest over the long run is going to be very interesting to see the acclaim and interest that Feragaia has developed over the last five years. Five years ago we faced a lot more questions as to what is it and why is it, and now a lot more people are interested in terms who are, you know how they can use it and you know where it's from and who made it. So I think the global audience is getting more educated. However, you know, as I've mentioned global, there's millions and millions and millions of people out there who have never heard of an alcohol-free alternative or free spirit. So I think the various categories will evolve at their own pace.
Tiff Christie (05:57) - When you look at alcohol categories, if somebody orders a whiskey or somebody orders a gin, they know what they're getting. But when somebody orders a no-alcohol cocktail or goes out to buy a non-alcoholic ferret, they don't really understand what the flavour will be or whether they like it. So do you think it's actually quite difficult for consumers to understand on that level?
Bill Garnock (06:26) - Absolutely, and I think the easy option is to attempt to mimic a flavour which is closest in association with a product that a customer already enjoys. However, as I think we can all agree, innovation shouldn't come through the easiest option, and so, whilst these particular serves, whether it's a faux-G&T, a faux …insert generic category … yes, the customer will be satisfied and have that question answered. However, I think this is a new category and there are so many from Scotland alone. I'm now working with five botanicals from Scotland.
I have never seen that many other brands from my country use in drink production, and so there's new flavours to extract, there's new flavours to enjoy, which customers, bartenders, sommeliers, and mixologists at home are really enjoying playing with, and they're adding a twist, a new chapter in their mind to what previously was their favourite drink. So, whether it's a Feragaia with soda and a slice of garnish, that's a new set of flavours for many people. However, it provides many people a placebo effect in their mind that this is the flavour I want to enjoy when I'm not cutting down or drinking Feragaia, and I think that's exciting. After thousands of years of food and drink innovation, to still be innovating and creating new flavours is something those doing it in the category should be very proud of, and if the customers and the bartenders can exercise their creativity with these new flavours, then that's you know. We've got an exciting couple of decades, millennia, ahead of us playing with these new flavours, so I welcome change in that sense.
Tiff Christie (08:18) - When somebody hasn't tasted Feragaia before, how do you describe it to them?
Bill Garnock (08:26) - I think there's a lot of sceptical thinking towards the alcohol-free category, and alcohol is, you know, like the dog man's best friend for millions of years. Everyone has their favourite tipple. However, what I try and get across to whoever I'm talking to is that the product I'm about to offer them has, at the minimum, the same level of care, craft, detail, quality and love that’s gone into it. Then, the drink they previously loved, you know, I explained to them that Feragaia is a free spirit, free in the sense of free of alcohol, free of sugar, gluten, almost no calories, almost no carb, however not free of taste. I explained to them that, from farm to one of the world's first 0.0% craft distilleries to bottle, we have managed to harness and work with some of Scotland, Europe and North Africa's best flavours to create a drink which is going to wow them, you know, and it's going to surprise them. And you know, the most common word they might say is actually actually it's pretty tasty.
So I think everyone secretly has a curiosity in their mind as to what this concoction is which is full of flavour but has no alcohol, no sugar. And then I try and work out. You know what they are, what they like drinking. So Feragaia does tend to appeal to dark spirit drinkers, and so you know we make a delicious old fashioned penicillin which will keep you warm during the winter or a Paloma in the summer. So these are all serves which many people probably ruled out ever enjoying in a non-alcoholic form. But Feragaia, I mean that sort of wild free spirit from Five Scotland, which is a landscape famous for drink innovation and drink quality. I'm always really excited to get into their hands and get into their glass and let them enjoy it and we can talk about it from there.
Tiff Christie (10:15) - Coming from a land that is famed for its whiskey, how difficult has it been to get that no-alc message across?
Bill Garnock (10:23) - So 2019, we sold our first bottle in Elie Fife. I'm not sure if you've ever had the pleasure of going there, but it's a great little pub on the sea called the Ship Inn, It’s somewhere I've been going for well since, legally, I was allowed to drink for that way and I knew that if Feragaia was going to succeed we had to conquer our home market and conquer is the wrong word. We had to prove that the Scottish customer service was going to be a good choice. Customer trade acknowledged and enjoyed and brought Feragaia again. In the big cities of New York, London, and LA, trends come and go very quickly there. You'll see new brands on the shelves of the big retailers every season and you never see them again.
But I was determined, and my business partner Jamie and I, were determined that this brand had the right and the quality to rob shoulders with the rest of the famous craft brands from Scotland that do so well now, today, tomorrow, 100 years ago, 100 years in the future.
So when we launched I approached all the best restaurants, our cocktail bars in Scotland, as I said, got the liquor in their hands and I have no credibility no one knows who I am but someone to Scotland's best bartender was real quick to pick up on the product and this gave everyone confidence that we were a little different when I highlighted that my family farm just up the road we grew from the botanicals.<br />
When I show people that the taste has a bit of kick, has a bit of punch, is unapologetic, perhaps like a Scot himself, we don't apologise who we are, we even enjoy our company or we move on, and so it's not trying to please everyone approach, which I think is why Feragaia is starting to really build momentum now and without those early stories.
I think one of the first things we did was we took over a boat in Edinburgh and we turned the entire hull into a wild earth pop hot bar and we hosted a national cocktail competition and the talent we saw from Dundee in Venice, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Fife, I mean some of the entries were just superb and delicious and I think we frame ourselves in craft in Scotland. Well, go on, make a delicious non-alcoholic cocktail and put your name behind it, and I think that requires more balls and more guts than just another alcoholic cocktail. So I sort of said bring on Scotland and Scotland, eventually, start listening. And you know, I'd like to think we work with some of the best players and have a great fan base back at home.
Tiff Christie (12:51) - Let's talk about some of your botanicals. Was it your aim to ensure that the liquid had a Scottish terroir?
Bill Garnock (13:00) - So I mean, I grew up on a farm which for hundreds of years has been growing cereals for the whiskey companies. Diageo's biggest grain distillery is 10 minutes from home. All our bolly and wheat goes there, peps goes up the road or oats go there. So, I grew up in a landscape where what we grow in East Scotland goes into premium global food and drink products. So, in my mind, I would be missing an open goal if I didn't work with the natural ingredients that grow in Scotland already due to our extremely good soil quality, sustainable farming practices and the skills of the farmers and foragers who live amongst it. However, you know, being coming out of the drinks industry and partnering up with Jamie, I didn't per se have 10 years of hard farming. You know the day-to-day experience. So we looked into it that summer before when we were doing R&D, and we said, well, what grows in Scotland naturally, which doesn’t require intensive farming, can be planted in the spring, can be harvested in the autumn and will still provide us with cracking flavours. I went in my mind growing up.
There were so many botanicals which I remember people complaining about as weeds. You know whether it's my mother saying cut down that damn baby bush, you know it's blocking the light. Or whether it's my friends falling down greenhouse with lemon verbena growing everywhere, or whether it's chamomile on the side of the road, or whether it's black currant leaves as a byproduct of the Scottish fruit industry, or whether it seaweed off the coast. So all these botanicals are things you might normally hear closer to food products: bay leaves, you know, curries, lemon verbena leaves, and so aromatics. And so to start working with them on a drink-level, I think, was the early step towards us creating a liquid with totally our own confident identity, where we had the right to look at any bot under chef and the ones they look. We've harnessed some amazing flavours natively that don't use intensive farming and we're not trying to just greenwash here. You know, when you plant native botanicals you don't need to spray them. You know they're native, you know. So it's a wonderful process to see these plants flourishing, and every year, we try and harvest more, and I'll work with students to pick for us in the summer.
But to answer your question, you know I didn't want to just limit us to what grows in Scotland, which is only a four, five, six-month growing season. I also wanted to work with some of Europe's best ingredients. Our European neighbours in Spain produce delicious citrus notes, whether it's lime leaves or orange peel. Turkey produces, you know, wonderful spices from that sort of spice roots, whether that's liquorice root, ginger root, peppercorns, and then, you know, north Africa has lovely spices again on the doorstep for us and chilli cayenne pepper. So we wanted to make layers, we wanted to create a story, we wanted to combine the best of Scotland, the best of Europe, and a little bit of kick and spice from Africa as well.
Tiff Christie (15:56) - Now give us a little bit of a peek behind the scenes, so to speak, and talk to us about the experimentation you needed to go through to arrive at the 14 botanicals that you ended up using. Was it a bit of a process?
Bill Garnock (16:13) - It was a process. Yeah, I mean I couldn't. If you told me to do it again, I probably couldn't do it again. It was a serendipity. Well, we made everything happen for a reason to that. We hit a speed bump or a hot hole along the way or got a metaphorical flat tire or all four flat tires. We kept trucking and we knew we had a goal in mind and we didn't waive in a matter of how strong were the headwinds from people, experts, equipment, all those sort of things.
So I think, to begin with, Jamie and I both came from premium spirit backgrounds. We liked drinks which made you stop and think and pause and enjoy the moment, and they tend to be drinks with a bit of intensity, a bit of a to make sure your palate sort of pause and wonder what you're tasting. And so we wanted to combine approachable, attractive sort of floral citrus notes, like your Lemon-verbinas, like your Camomiles, your Black Current Leaves, but then bring in a bit of cake, bit of spice. Trying to bring alcohol does a great job of making you drink it slowly and sip it, and I thought we wanted to make sure we had a drink which you didn't just plug in once and wonder why you'd spend eight pounds on a drink you could drink as quick as a cold deal. So we then worked with spices and peppers. But to get to the product, yeah, we sort of had an early recipe which we worked with a team on, and then I approached every distillery in Scotland, knocking on the door, ringing the bell, calling the central number thing. I've got a wacky idea. Can I come and trial it on your equipment? 99 out of 100 distilleries said no, quite rightly, because you know it's their baby. They want to look off their own equipment and their own crop process.
However, we were very lucky. We found a distillery in South Scotland that were willing to let us trial, and that first trial was a disaster. It was awful, disgusting, but crucially, we had created a very strong, punchy liquid which was no sugar and no alcohol and had gone through steam distillation. So we knew we were onto something and over the next three months I relocated to this small location unknown in South Scotland and I worked away, worked away, worked away, and it was either we never, at no point, did we get close to what we wanted and then, under the two weeks before, launch the Hail Mary Pass, as they say in American football are we?
I just whatever ingredients I had left on site you know wait for it and research, talking to experts where I could we landed on our product. So, as I said, persistence. I think you know this is not to be cliche, but it might have been. We created our own luck, ignoring the naysayers and combining phenomenal, modern, foolish innovation. Persistence with age old, contemporary equipment and methods of flavour extraction through distillation landed us a product which I think has got the qualities and the excitement of that, you know, old Scottish stiller in the hills. But then the modern innovation and contemporary message and flavours of the future of, you know all, inclusivity and health.
Tiff Christie (19:25) - It must be a bit of a nightmare to balance the delicate flavours and the citrus flavours with flavours that are a lot stronger and earthier from the root botanicals and spices?
Bill Garnock (19:43) - Definitely. And the recipe now compared to the rest. So we're on batch 30, so we just finished about 36 or about 38, I believe about 38. So batch one compared to batch 38, the liquid is significantly I won't say better, because in the beginning, we did have a team full of big characters, if you call it ingredients, characters and everyone was shouting for the top spot, whether it's the citrus, the spice, the earthiness, the roots, the pepper, the chilli. I mean there's a lot going on there.<br />
And having worked, you know, done this for five years, you know we reduced some of our ingredients which we used to get from sort of south east Asia. We've increased some of our native botanicals. At the same time, we've made it a more approachable, enjoyable drinking experience through the boost of the ingredients like lemon verbina, blackcurrant leaf, but the core body of botanicals which I think Feragaia owes a lot to, you know, the ginger roots, the licorice roots, the bay leaves, I think that's the, they're the first five names on the team sheet. Every time and when you finish a delicious Feragaia, or old fashioned, and you go, wow, I'm still tasting it, I think that's because of the big five, which are ultimately, you know, for me, my hero botanicals.
Tiff Christie (21:06) - If you're continuing to experiment and tweak the recipe, is that something that's going to continuously go on, or are you at any stage going to turn your attention to other expressions?
Bill Garnock (21:23) - So it's an interesting question and one that, naturally, we've probably faced once a week. However, the journey we've taken to get from a one litre still to a 50 litre still on a 1000 litre still to just a 1000 litre still to 1000 litre to 36,000 litres are whilst our R&D is continuous. However, there is no blueprint to what has been done before in this category, so we have to learn how we can scale this product without compromising on quality flavour, you know, resource energy going into it. So we've done a huge amount of innovation on a rolling basis to date just to get to a level where we are now exporting to I'm calling you from Dallas, Texas, right now, where I'm seeing Feragaia across the market, and I know that when I see a bottle in Dusty Saloon in San Antonio, that is a result of a pretty hardcore R&D process of scaling up a very craft product without ever compromising on quality, and to see customers in Amarillo, Texas, or Aberdeen, Scotland, acknowledge the same flavours, the same consistency, the same shelf life, quality, the same depth, the same interest from year two to year five. Now you know, I know that the bartender in San Antonio is having the same luxury experience as the bartender in Aberdeen, London, or Zurich, Denmark.
I think that is a testament to the R&D we've applied throughout, as there is no blueprint here to follow with regards to scaling up this product, and in my wild ambitions, I think Feragaia should be on the top shelf of every premium bar restaurant in any country which you know has a category emerging.
So in order to achieve that, we're going to have to really work hard to make sure we never compromise on quality. But we can still plug into the network of distillation, which Scotland is famous for and produces millions of litres a year. So that's where I see a bulk of our R&D efforts at the moment. Down the line, I would never say never as an entrepreneur, and it's going to be interesting to see where we go. But for me, Feragaia is so dynamic, led, interesting and it's so comfortable. Whether it's an Asian concept restaurant, or a steakhouse, or a cocktail bar, or someone's home, the product has so many different characteristics you can pull on and play with. I think that we've got a long way to go with this product before we start looking at any new sort of NPD flavours in that sense, Now you talked about bartenders in Texas and bartenders in Scotland.
Tiff Christie (24:15) - You've had five years of showing bartenders your liquid. What sort of unusual drinks have they come up with that you've seen?
Bill Garnock (24:27) - That's an interesting question. So with Alcohol-Free, there are new rules. So if you give a bartender what we'll see a Mezcal, tequila, bourbon Whiskey, et cetera and there's probably a set of directions they can take that liquid. When it comes to alcohol-free, they have a completely blank canvas whiteboard space to get working experimentally with. So I have seen some remarkable drinks.
For me, the rocks of drinks, where it's a big ice cube and there's not a huge amount of actual liquid in your glass, are the most interesting because you are creating something which is designed to sit on, designed to be savoured, is meant to be strong enough where it's interesting, but not too strong so you don't want to drink it, and then we can obviously drink it at once.
So I've had some phenomenal takes on some of our favourite serves, whereas old fashions and it's sometimes the most simple recipes To see a drink which the category with some of the big brands which have nine-figure RMD budgets and they will fail to create a product which a bartender and fairer guy have done in 20 minutes work is for me, my most mind-blowing. I think just the obvious ones with some of the whipped cream in some of them have all sorts of wacky flavours of smoke coming out of it. But to have a simple twist on our iconic classic, which only a Feragaia can create, is, to me, the most exciting because that's why we did it. I always say we do the hard work, let us do the hard work, a lot of distillery and then you have fun at the bar. A Feragaia’s take on a modern classic like old-fashioned gets me every time.
Tiff Christie (26:18) - No, you've been talking a lot about Old Fashioneds, and if you have a look at your website, most of the cocktails show a non-alcohol variation to an existing alcohol-based drink. Is that the way you want consumers to approach the liquid? To swap into something they know?
Bill Garnock (26:37) - I would certainly encourage everyone to get a Feragaia and find what their ideal service is. I think the exciting thing about the liquid is you can have a household of four or five different people, four or five different palettes and preferences, and each one will have a different Feragaia favourite, which I don't think you'd struggle to find that in any other product. I mean, you know, I got brothers who drink it with tonic ginger ale, some added to a G&T and some added to a tequila soda. I mean, there are no rules. We want to create a product which, whatever you create with it, you'll know that the Feragaia going in is the highest quality liquid we can create. And so I think we've got about 20 drinks on our website. We're adding about three more, adding a French 75 recipe, an old fashioned recipe, a mule recipe, and it's always evolving. So those drinks, yeah, I think you know.
I think people still want to be merry with their contemporaries, whether it's a Friday night or Christmas or, you know, the end of a long day, and so, to recreate one of your favourites, whether it's the Collins of Spritz, a mule, sour with Feragaia, I think you start to feel happy that you are living your best life and you're enjoying what society deems as iconic tipples. But you're doing it your way and you know, I'm delighted that we've been able to bring a product which so many people before thought they'd had. Their loss, probably had that will never, probably have a spare, a pair sour and Old Fashioned or Manhattan again, but they're not. You know, Feragaia’s here for you and we're not going anywhere. We're doubling down on our quality. We just hired a Michelin style sous chef, as I had to still.
So the lengths we go to to make sure what you put in your glass and all those iconic serves, I think, gives people confidence that they can enjoyably and excitably join the rest of the quote crowd and have a drink which is on par or if not better than their alcoholic counterpart. And so we're widening the goalposts, I think, of all these moving the goalposts. I have nothing against a nice martini or anything like that, but what we've done is we've added one new player to the team for people who want a nice drink, and that's feragaia. And Feragaia is there for you if you don't want to drink at that moment, but want to have something tasting our favourite instead.
Tiff Christie - (29:01) - So if people want more information, they can, of course, go to your website, which is feragaia.com, or connect with the brand via your socials.
Bill Garnock (29:15) - Yes, please. If you send Feragaia an Instagram message, it goes to one of the team I am. I'm in the US. I believe you have a decent US listenership. We do.
But, you know, get in touch if you have any questions about your state or your town or your home bar team in London. We have a team in Scotland, so please get in touch if you have any ideas if you want to try a recipe at home, your advice, if you have a question about anything, you know we have full transparency. We always have, for this, videos on YouTube showing which fields we plant and the botanicals, and we should look at the Feragaia YouTube channel has got some fantastic you know, this Sunday, cozy up and watch a Feragaia YouTube channel. You have nothing better to do. But you know there's there's there's a whole lot of information on our website and on our social channels, and please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions.
Tiff Christie (30:12) - Well, look, thank you very much for joining us, Bill.
Bill Garnock (30:15) - But I guess the last thing I should say is, you know this, this mysterious word I've been saying the whole time, Feragaia, what is it? Fair Latin, wild guy, Greek Earth, and that's you know, that's the basis of our brands. So, just in case people are wondering what that word is, he's saying it's Feragaia. Yeah, so it's a new word, is a new flavour, but it's, it's your flavour, and it's yours to enjoy. So thank you very much for your time, Tiff.
Tiff Christie (30:41) - And we'd also like to thank you for listening. Be sure to visit cocktailsdistilled.com to access the show notes, and if you like what you've heard, we'd love you to subscribe, rate or give a review on iTunes. Until next time, cheers.