So how does a 54 year old Star Wars nerd from Seattle, Washington, USA that has never stepped foot in China, and prefers a Long Island Iced Tea to whisky, get involved in a project to build a single malt whisky distillery on the other side of the world? I’m Kevin Skraban and here’s my story.
Skipping the first 8 years of my life (all rather boring, starting with nappies, bottle feeding, screaming and progressing about as far as being able to ride a bicycle without training wheels) I was blessed with the privilege of seeing the first Star Wars movie at a drive in theatre when it was first released in 1977.
Becoming a Star Wars Nerd was a pivotal point in my life that ranks up there in life milestones such as meeting my wife Ardene, having my kids (Emily, Abby and Adam), walking my daughter down the aisle and of course having my first grandchild. (If any of them ask, of course Star Wars is less important than all of those……let’s not disappoint them all with the truth!)
Logically I collected the Star Wars figures and still have most of them still today. Which is kinda how I ended up being part of Nine Rivers Distillery. I’ll explain.
As with most people in the west, I use Facebook to stay in touch with friends and family both here in the USA and some in other countries. One day I noticed an update from an old friend Shaun, sharing some content about 9RD and I pinged him a message to ask him about it. He passed me the contact for one of the leaders of the project and that’s when I noticed – we were both in the same Star Wars nerd groups!
As every other Star Wars nerd will know, there are many groups on Facebook about George Lucas’ world and some of them are specifically about the collectible figures – if the very same Nine Rivers Distillery guy was in the same groups as me, he was worth a chat at least right?
The Force Is Strong With This One
I reached out to him, and we talked a bit of nerd. I gave him a grilling (verbally at least – my Traeger is more for smoking – not grilling!) and I wanted to know if he could tell the difference between a Kenner 38260 Han Solo with a 12-Back Star Wars card and a Kenner 39339 Han Solo. If he could, well then he’d be my kinda Star Wars nerd.
Jay passed with flying colours and actually, outnerded me. This led on to talking more about the 9RD project and his nerdiness went beyond Star Wars canon.
Over a few evenings we covered everything about the project. The amount of research that Jay and the team had put into this project before they even started was absolutely amazing. All leading to the goal of doing things better. Making better products at better prices for all whisky lovers. This is something that really grabbed my attention. The force was strong with this one!
Up until this point, I wasn’t really what anyone would consider to be a whisky drinker. I knew very little about whisky. In fact, my go to drink would have been cocktails. But hearing how much variety there is in whisky as a category, made me curious enough to explore a bit, to learn some more, and understand what I might be getting into. I’m still exploring whisky now and learning something new every day.
Sure enough, I ended up getting involved in the project as an investor and the rest as we say is history. I’m now part of a community of whisky enthusiasts and contributing an hour or two a week of my time to try and make something really special happen.
How Dodgy Is It?
A few of my pals back home thought I was absolutely nuts to get involved. As I’m sure we can all agree, there is quite a lot of negative press about China in the west, which leads to most people thinking it’s just a land of hustles, scams and cheats.
The words “It’s a Ponzi Scheme” get thrown at me a lot. I can’t really be bothered to point out how Ponzi is a type of scam synonymous with the USA as that’s where the original Ponzi scheme happened and all others have mostly originated. It’s kinda like playing chess with a pigeon. If they don’t have the intellect to grasp the basic concepts and principles then it’s pointless bothering to try.
For the record – Ponzi schemes take money from new investors to pay returns to earlier investors. But if no one is taking anything out from the project, then it can’t be a Ponzi scheme. Every single penny invested is going into building a massive distillery. I had one friend suggest that the videos were all CGI – I guess he didn’t realise that it would cost more to fake it all with CGI than to actually just build the damn thing! As a Star Wars nerd I know my CGI!
I did as all people should do – I looked into things in as much detail as I needed to feel confident with the opinion that if anything just didn’t sound right or feel right, I’d have walked away. Sure, we can laugh and joke about the Star Wars connection (which, for the record is actually legit) but having put one of the senior people leading the project through the wringer, and having absolutely every question I asked answered to my satisfaction, I was confident enough to get involved.
Skip forward to today, halfway into the construction of the first three buildings, with video updates every few days and the live streaming. It’s probably fair to say I’ve got a couple of friends that are about 6 months away from eating their hat. I’ve got my salt and pepper ready for them to start chowing down on those baseball cap brims.
My Involvement
I’m involved in a few side groups and contribute my ideas and my opinions to a couple of work-streams. I’d love to be able to talk about them, but they are both a bit *top secret* as we think they are going be pretty significant when they go live. All I can say is that when they do go live, you’ll see me bragging about it.
I also ended being the face on one of the video thumbnails recently on our YouTube channel. I’d asked the team to make a video showing what’s going on inside Building Number 3. The tradeoff was to use my mugshot. But it’s all good fun! Most of the people involved are great fun to chat to and work with. I don’t know them all (there’s more than 200 the last time I counted) but there’s a dozen or so that I speak to regularly and we all get along well.
I’m also a touch point for anyone in the USA that is interested in our project. Time zone differences can be a challenge between the USA and China so it makes sense for me to be a first point of call for anyone in the USA. There’s about 20 of us in the USA that are actively involved in 9RD but there is always room for more. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn – just CLICK HERE (better than adding an email address to a webpage, for one of those interwebs bots to add my address to all the spam lists!)
I Got My Bricks!
As with everyone involved in 9RD, both investors such as myself, and people that haven’t invested, but really believe in what we’re doing, I’ve got my bricks for The Plenum Wall. Essentially bricks with steel name plates that will be cemented into a feature wall on the staircase that leads up to the mezzanine floor for Building 3.
I’ve got bricks for the wife, the kids, my grand daughter and for me too. Having all our names up on the wall will be a nice touch. It creates a connection between all of us and our project.
I was hoping to actually be there at the big event in July, with everyone else, to cement my bricks in. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it so I’ve got a deal on with Jay where he’ll cement in my bricks for me, in exchange for a Kenner 39030 Hammerhead – I’ve got two of them anyway so it’s a fair trade from my point of view.
Would You Like To Read More?
If you enjoyed reading about how we currently don’t see any alternatives to Dramfunded, and you would like to catch up with some of our past articles, then please CLICK HERE and go to our News Section, where most of our other content is published.
Would You like To Know More About Helping Nine Rivers Distillery?
One of the easiest ways to help our project succeed is to take an interest in anything we have for sale. You can find out what we have if you CLICK HERE and go to our shop. We’ll make a few percentage points (after sales tax) and this goes directly to our project.
You could help us by simply buying your very own Brick for Life – a brick with a steel name plate wrapped around it, which will be cemented into The Plenum (our feature wall) in July 2023. Every brick owner is entitled to a free dram for life every time they visit us in Longyan, Fujian.
Or, you could learn more about being involved and help us grow to our target of 1000 stakeholders. You can read more about how we are Dramfunded if you CLICK HERE. You don’t have to be a Star Wars nerd to be part of our proejct!
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