Everyone has their own story of how they got involved in the Nine Rivers Distillery project, so now it’s my turn to tell my story of how I travelled from France to Futian and became involved in the Nine Rivers Distillery Project. Le Mans, France I’m originally from Le Mans, a city in northwestern France, […]
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Everyone has their own story of how they got involved in the Nine Rivers Distillery project, so now it’s my turn to tell my story of how I travelled from France to Futian and became involved in the Nine Rivers Distillery Project.
I’m originally from Le Mans, a city in northwestern France, known all over the world as the host location of the 24 Hours of Le Mans (24 Heures du Mans in French). Racing fans will know that it’s actually the weekend of the Le Mans race tomorrow and Sunday (11th and 12th June).
Le Mans is also home to some of the most interesting history in Europe. It has an amazing historical cathedral (Cathédrale St-Julien du Mans) which dates back to the 6th century.
The ruins of a 3rd century Roman amphitheatre are still available to see. Other interesting places include the Musée de Tessé (a fine arts museum), Arboretum de la Grand Prée (a botanical garden), a medieval church, a neogothic church, and an ancient Roman wall. After the first four, that last one doesn’t sound all that impressive, but it’s still worth a look.
I graduated in 2014, with a masters degree in product design specializing in luxury brands. I had already decided that China was my destination because I could see what a market leader China was becoming. The European markets were stagnate; staying there meant a boring future. I succumbed to my wanderlust and bought a one-way ticket to the city whose profile excited me the most and offered me the best opportunities to flex my creativity.
That was Shenzhen. All throughout the 2000’s, Shenzhen’s name appeared in everything new, exciting, and cutting edge in technology. Western media seemed to mention it at every publication. We’ve all heard of a “New York Minute,” but Shenzhen puts it to shame; a new product that would take months or years in other cities could be done in weeks here. I say that with total pride as a “shenzhen ren” (a Shenzhener, if you will).
My initial interest in whisky was actually created through the Shenzhen Whisky Networking Events. I was originally invited to one by my friend Lee Beaudoin (a whisky lover from Canada who’s also involved in Nine Rivers Distillery… hi Lee!). I guess it’s only appropriate that Shenzhen cultivated my affection for whisky, the drink officially responsible for my divorce with my previous love, rum. I’ll come back to that later.
It was through the Shenzhen events that I got to know most of the original founders of the project. Over the years they have all become good friends – even the farfelu d’anglais – the crazy English man we all know as Jay.
Everyone brings something to the table in the Nine Rivers Distillery project, and as a patriotic Frenchman, I wanted to bring fine food and rich cheeses. But I’m a useless cook, and I don’t like sharing my cheese. So I contribute design and branding to the project.
I work alongside Darryl and we have been responsible for pretty much everything you see – online and offline – and also a few products. The bespoke glass and packaging for The Founders’ Casks was something we both really got into. Additionally, we designed the packaging for both last year’s Whisky Advent Calendars and the whisky stones.
This year we’ve been busy with distillery layouts and on some future product launches, including a couple of different ranges of whisky glasses (keep watching out for those because they are going to be something really special!)
Apart from the expected branding and packaging on future bottlings and products on the development docket, something that I’m really looking forward to is the integration between design and technology to create the truly immersive visitors experience at Nine Rivers Distillery. I really want to talk about it, but I’m sworn to complete secrecy until the time is right.
What I’m allowed to say is as follows: The whisky world will be decades behind what we have planned – it will blow people’s minds! But, if you keep reading our updates, you’ll be guaranteed to not miss it!
Fabien Dupont
This is the third (and final) update for this series and we are overjoyed to finally reveal our first bottles to the world. You will also have a chance to put down a deposit on the first of the 6 planned releases! If you’re the impatient “shut up and take my money” type, and want […]
Read MoreThis is the third (and final) update for this series and we are overjoyed to finally reveal our first bottles to the world. You will also have a chance to put down a deposit on the first of the 6 planned releases!
If you’re the impatient “shut up and take my money” type, and want to skip all the interesting elements to this story, then you can CLICK HERE.
Thanks for continuing to read! If you’ve missed the previous two articles, where we told you about our journey to this point and what it actually took for us to be able to release our first bottles, then you can catch up with the following links:
CLICK HERE to read part one.
CLICK HERE to read part two.
Much was revealed over the last two episodes. We shared our intention to have a bold, embossed brand name on the glass with our logo on the base of the bottle. We also shared some images of 3D-printed samples, glass samples and one of the molds that we used to prototype with.
Here’s the finished glass.
One of the important decisions we made very early on was to make these bottlings much more inclusive than simply being the Jay and Jeff sideshow. When we named our first bottles to be “The Founders’ Casks” it logically followed that we wanted to showcase everyone that was involved in our project, up to that point, on the packaging.
Internally, the packaging introduces each of the expressions, giving the name, the style, an explanation of how the whisky was matured and finished, and ending with tasting notes. The bottom displays an artist’s impression of what our distillery will eventually look like.
One benefit of using recycled materials for our packaging is that we were able to go slightly larger in size than a typical box. The box opens up to become a presentation stand to show the bottle off for everyone to “oooh” and “ahhh” over.
There are six expressions in the Founders’ Cask line, all released at cask strength and each showcasing an important element of our approach to whisky maturation and cask finishes.
The Founders’ Casks Expression 1 Madeira – bottled at 53.40%
The Founders’ Casks Expression 2 Baixo Corgo – bottled at 55.30%
The Founders’ Casks Expression 3 Kentucky – bottled at 56.70%
The Founders’ Casks Expression 4 Jerez – bottled at 55.80%
The Founders’ Casks Expression 5 Virginia – bottled at 52.10%
The Founders’ Casks Expression 6 Cima Corgo – bottled at 58.10%
Expression 1 is initially matured in virgin American oak, first-fill ex-bourbon casks from the USA. After its initial ageing of almost 5 years, the whisky is then finished in carefully hand-picked Madeira wine casks.
Thus concludes part 3. If you’ve read this far and want to get your hands on one of our first bottles, then CLICK HERE and put down your deposit today.
The Founders’ Casks Part 2: This time, it isn’t part 1! But, if you missed out on The Founders’ Casks Part 1, then CLICK HERE to go back and catch up. Go on, we’ll wait for you. The Box Paradox (Don’t worry, we’re not talking about Schrödinger’s Whisky Cat.) We think you would agree that excessive […]
Read MoreThe Founders’ Casks Part 2: This time, it isn’t part 1! But, if you missed out on The Founders’ Casks Part 1, then CLICK HERE to go back and catch up. Go on, we’ll wait for you.
(Don’t worry, we’re not talking about Schrödinger’s Whisky Cat.) We think you would agree that excessive packaging isn’t a good thing. Whether it be board game or courier boxes that are too large, or companies that put unnecesary filler when all you wanted was what you bought. You don’t need to be a tree-hugger and wear hundred-dollar yoga pants to know that. For us, we want to showcase a product that can immediately be identified as premium without something fancy wrapped around it. Even a re-gifted present can feel elevated and original with a bit of wrapping paper and a ribbon, right? Don’t worry, we’re not accusing you of anything.
Sustainable packaging and recycled materials were our go-to for resolving that challenge, so we initially explored using reclaimed wood. After all, if the wood would just end up in a land fill or burned, why not rescue it to adorn whisky? As far as condemned wood goes, that’s quite a rags-to-riches story. Luckily for us, we’re good friends with Mr. Bill, a Shenzhen legend known for his abilities with wood.
Often in disguise as a hobo (his words), and pushing along a two wheeled cart, he consistently scavenges some amazing pieces of wood that he delicately rejuvenates with a bit of elbow grease, a sanding machine, an (un)healthy portion of whisky that we may or may not provide, and some varnish.
Sadly for us, Mr. Bill left China before we were ready to start mass producing The Founders’ Casks packaging, so it was time for Plan B. We found a company in the Longgang district of Shenzhen that fabricated packaging from recycled materials and sustainable fibres. We just needed to design it.
If you know us, you know that meant more workshops, whisky, random scribbles, doodles, giggles, animal chaperones, and fun.
It turns out designing a box isn’t as easy as it seems (hence the …parabox?). But with more whisky, Zoom meetings, and professional opinions (on boxes…who knew?), we ironed out the problems and came up with something that worked.
Glass, boxes, labels, stoppers, and closures were loaded into a shipping container to our friends over in Wales.
57 days later, the container arrived in the UK and got trucked to our friends in the UK. Yes, we have a lot of friends. Unpacking and bottling soon followed.
While some brands choose to be difficult and even secretive about who they work with, transparency is one of those words that we consider a foundation and cornerstone to the morals and ethics that we want to build upon. In other words, if a company is dodgy or “acting sus,” we’re not interested.
Our friends in the UK are Penderyn. Yes, THAT Penderyn, the company that brought whisky back to Wales in 2000, when the first spirit came off their stills at their distillery.
Officially launched on St. David’s Day in 2004 by HRH The Prince Of Wales, the Penderyn team, under the leadership of Stephen Davies, have gone on to put the flag of Wales next to their torrential amount of award-winning whiskies across 45 countries.
Stephen and his team did much more than just bottle some whisky. It was the expertise, experience, and passion of Laura, Aista, and Bethan that helped our two grey-haired whisky lovers determine how to shape and craft these whiskies using different casks and cask finishes to create the six different expressions of The Founders’ Casks.
The result? Six distinctly unique styles resting in a cask maturation warehouse in an environment not too dissimilar to our own in Da Chi, Longyan, Fujian province: The future home of Nine Rivers Distillery.
We’re hoping by now you might be eager to see what the final bottlings are, what they look like, and how you can get your mittens on some.
All will be revealed……next time!
31 of our team have been involved in some capacity to help bring The Founders’ Casks to life. We give our thanks to all of them. However, there are two people here that really need to have some trumpets blown and confetti thrown for just how much they have put into this regarding their time, skills, experience, and delivery.
Darryl, a creative genius from sunny South Africa, has guided us creatively since the very start of the project. He was the first member of the 9RD team that we wrote about last year and if you missed his story you can read it if you CLICK HERE.
Fabien, the yin to Darryl’s yang (platonically), a creative genius from France who has been around literally as long as Darryl has, offers a contrasting experience to create the perfect balance in our visual identity. We’ll be featuring him soon in an article and you can read more about him then.
Before anyone takes the initiative to try and nick either of our guys…..be warned. They are ours. We don’t share. We have a manic mutt, a whisky cat, other faithful familiars from our dedicated team members, and we know how to use them.
There probably couldn’t be a more appropriate day for us to announce the launch of our first series of bottlings, The Founders’ Casks, than World Whisky Day 2022. So let us tell you all about it and you might even be able to snatch a reservation on some of the last few bottles… The Backstory […]
Read MoreThere probably couldn’t be a more appropriate day for us to announce the launch of our first series of bottlings, The Founders’ Casks, than World Whisky Day 2022. So let us tell you all about it and you might even be able to snatch a reservation on some of the last few bottles…
Way back in 2017, on a rather grim Saturday morning, two grey haired whisky lovers piled into a coffee shop in the hinterlands of Shenzhen and started to scribble out some early concepts of how Nine Rivers Distillery could work as a business. 4 or 5 coffees into it and with some 30 pages of scribble and doodles spread across three tables, the idea came up about being able to demonstrate the types of whisky we would want to craft as an introduction to prospective investors. After all, no one really wants to be a part of something that they might not even like, do they? No one wants to be part of a distillery that makes whisky that they wouldn’t even want to drink themselves.
They worked out how many casks they already had between them, which whiskies might serve best as base whiskies, what types of cask finish might help to create the styles that would best define 9RD, who we could involve to help create these cask finishes and how to eventually bottle them.
After what felt like an entire cask of coffee between then, they shook hands, patted each other on the back and both decided that this would be a doddle. It was only days before they both realised it would be anything but a doddle.
While neither of them will want to be named, they don’t write this content, so we can tell you all anyway – it was Jay and Jeff. So if there are fingers to point and blame to be thrown around, you all know the correct direction to face.
The concept was talked about with other founders of our project, and suddenly they all wanted bottles. Some founders wanted a keepsake. Some founders just wanted something to chug with their friends. It turned into gossip, the story got dropped into a whisky group, and suddenly the demand was for hundreds of bottles. Everyone wanted in on it.
That’s when we realised that this would end up being considerably more than just a few dozen samples. It was a “thing”. So if it was going to be a “thing” then we would make it into a real, serious, professional “thing”. If bottles with our name were going to face the public, then they had to set the benchmark for the quality and standards that we wanted to underpin our name with to the world.
While Juliet argued that names are arbitrary in Act 2, Scene 2 of that literally classic penned by Shakespeare, when it comes to products a name can have a significant impact on success or failure. Brand names are normally the first interaction that a consumer will have with a product. Typically, when consumers hear a name it will immediately create a positive (or negative) impression within the mindset of a consumer. It’s the very first word, of the first chapter in the story of the relationship between a consumer and a brand. An impression that will normally last a lifetime.
After a lot of brain farts, and a few near misses with suggestions from people that *might* have been a tiny bit drunk we had a list of names that ranged from eyebrow-raisers to absolute horrors.
Luckily for us some sanity kicked in and we decided to call our first release exactly what it is. A selection of bottlings to demonstrate the types of whisky we aim to craft conceptualised by two of our founders – so logic led us to call them, The Founders’ Casks.
The next big decision to make was whether we used generic glass, or designed our own bottles from scratch. Bespoke glass would have massive MOQ’s and costs for mold. So we explored a few different ways to make generic glass look a bit more interesting. Hand painting each bottle was going to be a challenge, so we tried a few different types of screen printing.
A few of the screen printing concepts worked quite well, but it was still a bit, well, “meh”, and that just wasn’t good enough for us. It was time to roll up our sleeves and work out how to design our own bottles. What better way to do that than a 9RD workshop exploring various bottle shapes while emptying them of their contents? All in the name of research of course.
We tried to capture all of the elements of who we are as a company, what we want to be as a brand and communicate to the world that we aren’t just another startup distillery. We wanted to share our name with the world and have it on our glass. Bold. Prominent. Distinctive. To demonstrate the pride that we have in who we are and what we are doing.
We wanted a modern style in the branding, the labelling and the packaging. We knew we wanted a tall bottle, with a long neck, creating synergies with our stills. We also agreed that the brand engagement with our customers would last right until the last drop – hence the embossed bottom of the bottle, with our logo, which every whisky lover will see as the last dram pours out of their bottle.
It’s quite amazing how a good lashing of whisky can fuel creativity and under the leadership of Muffin the manic mutt, we thought we were onto something.
Half a dozen workshops later (both online and offline) we had enough to start cranking out some 3D printed prototypes of our bottle concept. This helped it to see where there could be potential problems in glass production. Little quirks in the detail that could potentially be achieved with a glass mold that aren’t so obvious on a digital image.
With the glass designs completed, we sent them up to Yun Cheng County, in Shandong, where we had the mold engraved ready to make the glass bottles for The Founders’ Casks.
Then it was time to get the old sand cooker up to 1700 degrees C, and we were ready to start making glass. Being a heavy, flint-style glass, it needed a few more things thrown into the mix, but let’t not turn this into a boring science lesson (yawn). Let’s keep it simple – it’s liquid sand blown into a mold, allowed to cool, annealed briefly, allowed to cool again – then bingo bongo we had bottles.
19 concepts, 5 different design work-streams and at least 2 jingley meltdowns before we eventually came up with the design for the labels. We got them printed, shipped out to the bottling company and sat back in comfy chairs relaxed and content. Another job well done. Bring on the next challenge!
There’s more to this story. In fact, an entire part 2 to look forward to. But you’ll have to wait until next week to read the conclusion and find out how you might be able to get your hands on The Founders’ Casks.
If you enjoyed reading this, 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.
If you have enjoyed reading this and want to learn more about Nine Rivers Distillery, then use the QR Code below to follow our WeChat Official Account.
Alternatively, if you prefer Linked In then you can CLICK HERE to follow us.
Facebook users, you can CLICK HERE.
One of our founders, Steve Alexander, was a guest today on the Breakfast Business show with Gavin McLoughlin, on Friday May 20th, 2022. Click on the image below if you’d like to hear it what Steve had to say. Would You Like To Read More? If you enjoyed reading this, and you would like to […]
Read MoreOne of our founders, Steve Alexander, was a guest today on the Breakfast Business show with Gavin McLoughlin, on Friday May 20th, 2022.
Click on the image below if you’d like to hear it what Steve had to say.
If you enjoyed reading this, 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.
If you have enjoyed reading this and want to learn more about Nine Rivers Distillery, then use the QR Code below to follow our WeChat Official Account.
Alternatively, if you prefer Linked In then you can CLICK HERE to follow us.
Facebook users, you can CLICK HERE.