From part-time pub shifts to slinging cocktails

 

Growing up in the heart of Speyside, it’s hardly surprising that I have ended up working in whisky.  I visited my first distillery when I was about seven or eight, and I still vividly remember the intense malty alcoholic porridge and CO2 sucker punch to the nostrils when I fully put my head inside the washback.   I tried to get my nose properly into whisky in my late teenage years with a very unfavourable impression on my olfactic memory, but I’ll come back to that later. 

 

When I hit eighteen years old, after finishing up at school in my home town of Forres, my sister landed me a job working in one of our local pubs, The Red Lion (or Beastie as it is still known to this day.)  My most prominent memory from those days, is learning how ‘not’ to prepare someone’s single malt, learning how to stack one hundred pint glasses in one hand, and my first foray into mixology.

 

The legendary ‘Vodka Fraus’ was born on a busy Friday night; a double shot of Smirnoff vodka, with equal parts lime and blackcurrant cordial, and about 25ml of lemonade, and maybe one half-melted cube of ice, served in a warm tumbler fresh out of the glass washer.

 

The year was 1999, and I had just inadvertently and unknowingly set foot down a path that would take me round the world and back, and round the world again, and back via a few pit stops. 

 

After moving to Aberdeen a few years later to study IT, I found myself working part-time in a local student pub called the Bobbin,

which was part of the Yellow Card/Scream pub chain if anyone reading this is vintage enough to remember those bargain outlets. 

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Part-time shifts very swiftly became full time shifts, and university became a masterclass in socialising and crowd management whilst serving inebriated rugby players and students. (Though I did carve out a degree in English & Film studies eventually.)

 

After a few more years of working my way around Aberdeen, stints in now closed venues such as Tiger Tiger & Beluga, I found myself in Edinburgh in 2006, having done a summer there a few years earlier working in a restaurant & cocktail bar called Hurricane, and feeling a need to return to the mighty Auld Reekie. 

 

The cocktail resurgence was in full flow, and I jumped in head first working at Candy Bar on George St, this time actually learning how to make cocktails that didn't require sour mix.  Stirring down Old Fashioned’s, mixing Mojitos and shaking up French Martinis, whilst getting multiple laybacks of Bacardi Oro on a Friday night from general manager & crowd pleaser, Colin Church.  My first foray into teaching cocktail classes involved large gaggles of inebriated hens parties, which helped develop an incredible reservoir of patience in my psyche.

 

The community and camaraderie of the Edinburgh bar scene in the 2000’s was more than palpable, intoxicating and inclusive, and anyone from that era will know exactly what I am talking about, including Garibaldis on a Sunday night.  After a landing a few bar manager positions around town and getting stuck into a few cocktail competitions, a sea change was soon on the horizon.

 

A short trip down under...

 

I landed in Sydney in 2008, the year of the financial crisis, with no job or accommodation lined up, a dilemma which would subconsciously plant a seed for a fairly big project further down the road.  After a few months working at the newly opened Kit & Kaboodle cocktail lounge in Kings Cross, I packed my bags for Melbourne, a thriving, graffiti laced, coffee infused, alley way culture driven city that I absolutely fell in love with. 

 

What was supposed to be one year in Australia turned into five, as I dug my heels into the Melbourne bar scene, which was very similar to Edinburgh in terms of the closeness of the cocktail bar community.  It was actually in Australia believe it or not, that I found my deep love for whisky.  I used to go down to a whisky bar called Chez Regine (now Whisky & Alement) with my best pal, Struan Ralph, after we knocked off at Tony Starr's Kitten Club, and we'd get stuck into delicious Aussie whiskies such as Overeem, Lark and Starward. 

 

My go to knock off half & half after shift however, was usually a Lagavulin 16 year old with a Stone & Wood Pacific Ale from Byron Bay.  The smell of Scottish whisky had finally come to remind me of home, instead of the enduring memory of hugging the toilet when I was...younger.

 

After landing a bar manager gig at the relatively unknown cocktail bar called The Alchemist in 2011, I could feel for the first time a chance and the challenge to really shape a venue and take a lead with it.  The owners were not from the hospo industry, so I think they were happy for me to just crack on and make the bar a success.