Last week we had a vote to create a short list of the 5 most popular names for two of our first 3 stills – not it’s time for The Final Vote off. The Results So lets start with the results from last week’s vote. There was a total of 1079 votes and although we’re […]
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Last week we had a vote to create a short list of the 5 most popular names for two of our first 3 stills – not it’s time for The Final Vote off.
So lets start with the results from last week’s vote.
There was a total of 1079 votes and although we’re pretty sure that Mischa made 120 of those to get his nomination into The Final Vote, we’ll run with it as it is.
The 5 most popular suggestions The Final Vote were:
Some of these suggestions were nominated multiple times. In fact, one of them was nominated 23 times. But, we can’t share a prize between 23 people, so we’re taking the first person to nominate each idea, as the potential winner in this vote off.
Nominated by Tim Shaver for The Final Vote
Nominated by Chris Policari for The Final Vote
Nominator – Pritesh Desai
Nominated by Mischa Veenhuysen for The Final Vote
Nominated by Tyler Nickerson for The Final Vote
The final vote off from the short list of 5.
If you enjoyed reading our article and being part of The Final Vote to name our stills, 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.
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.
Last, but as important as all the other points above, you can help us by reading, liking and sharing our content across some of the more popular platforms.
LinkedIn users you can CLICK HERE to follow us. Over 7000 people are following our story on LinkedIn right now.
Facebook users, you can CLICK HERE. 2652 followers so far.
YouTube users, you can CLICK HERE. We’re at past 1000 subscribers and growing.
Twitter users, you can CLICK HERE.
Instagram users, you can CLICK HERE.
Or follow us on WeChat using the QR code below.
Let’s start with the introduction to the public vote and to explain why at this stage, there is no identification of anyone who has made any of the suggestions. We want to keep this vote as fair as possible and for everyone to pick the names that they think best suit our stills (as opposed […]
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Let’s start with the introduction to the public vote and to explain why at this stage, there is no identification of anyone who has made any of the suggestions. We want to keep this vote as fair as possible and for everyone to pick the names that they think best suit our stills (as opposed to just voting because they are supporting a friend).
Next we have all the names that have made the short list for you to pick from. Then finally we have a list of those suggestions that didn’t make the cut for the vote.
If all you want to do is vote for your favourites, then just pile in and make your vote.
We will do a second vote off for the top 5 next week.
The voting is now closed. The results are below.
The top 5 will go into a second round vote off.
Sorry, the voting for this is now closed. But thanks for being a part of it.
These are all copied directly from the entires. Some just aren’t names. Some just don’t work. Some are a bit stupid. Some just don’t make any sense at all.
As is the jovial nature, there were of course a number of suggestions that just can’t be listed, so if you can’t see your suggestion here, then you know why. Let’s just say there were 123 suggestions that were a bit naughty.
If you enjoyed reading our article and being part of the public vote to name our stills, 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.
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.
Last, but as important as all the other points above, you can help us by reading, liking and sharing our content across some of the more popular platforms.
LinkedIn users you can CLICK HERE to follow us. Over 7000 people are following our story on LinkedIn right now.
Facebook users, you can CLICK HERE. 2652 followers so far.
YouTube users, you can CLICK HERE. We’re at past 1000 subscribers and growing.
Twitter users, you can CLICK HERE.
Instagram users, you can CLICK HERE.
Or follow us on WeChat using the QR code below.
Now we finally have our first three stills right here on dry land in China, it’s time to NAME OUR STILLS! That’s where we need your help. Everyone reading this right now. We want you all make your best suggestions to us and we’ll put them all into a public vote over the next few […]
Read MoreNow we finally have our first three stills right here on dry land in China, it’s time to NAME OUR STILLS! That’s where we need your help. Everyone reading this right now. We want you all make your best suggestions to us and we’ll put them all into a public vote over the next few weeks.
Let’s start with a big shout out to Forsyths who are the company that have crafted our stills, and especially to Darren Hosie and Neale Boag (we’d link to Neale too, but he doesn’t seem to be on LinkedIn), who have both been supporting our project since way back in 2019 when we were still nothing more than a slide deck and a lot of big hopes and dreams.
Our first three stills finally arrived on Tuesday 5th December 2023. We have a 15,000 litre wash still. We also have two spirit stills that are 5,400 litres each.
They have a different shape, to help us create two different styles of spirit as part of our longer term plan to create some really unique styles of whisky. But what they both desperately need are names.
The wash still already has a name (we’ll talk more about that in a future article) but the two spirit stills don’t. So that’s the point of today’s article. For everyone to send in their ideas for what we should call these two spirit stills.
Complete the form below, and make your best suggestions for what we should call these two stills AND WHY. There needs to be a reason for suggesting these names. It can be absolutely any reason. Perhaps something to connect the two stills? Maybe some names that you think connect them to our project. Maybe you just want to name them after your two favourite dogs. Whatever it is, please share the reason too, and it will be taken into consideration.
We are going to go through a list of every single entry submitted, and everyone that is invested in our project will get to pick their favourites. The suggestions that are chosen the most as favourites will go on to be part of a short list that we will ask the world to vote on.
Aside from the obvious bragging rights about being the person that won the right to name our stills, you’ll also get:
A bottle of the very first whisky we mature, which you can either come and collect when it’s ready, or we’ll send it to you in the post.
Reaching out for the input from the global whisky community, to help us to name our stills – 征求全球威士忌群体的意见，帮助我们为自己的蒸馏器命名。
If you enjoyed reading our article and being given the chance to Name Our Stills, 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.
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.
Last, but as important as all the other points above, you can help us by reading, liking and sharing our content across some of the more popular platforms.
LinkedIn users you can CLICK HERE to follow us. Over 7000 people are following our story on LinkedIn right now.
Facebook users, you can CLICK HERE. 2652 followers so far.
YouTube users, you can CLICK HERE. We’re at past 1000 subscribers and growing.
Twitter users, you can CLICK HERE.
Instagram users, you can CLICK HERE.
Or follow us on WeChat using the QR code below.
For those that don’t know, Journey To The West is a famous work of Chinese literature, written by Wu Cheng’en who lived between 1500 and 1582. In Chinese, the novel is known as Xiyouji, which translates as Journey To The West, but is also known as “Monkey” in the 1942 English translation by Arthur Waley. […]
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For those that don’t know, Journey To The West is a famous work of Chinese literature, written by Wu Cheng’en who lived between 1500 and 1582. In Chinese, the novel is known as Xiyouji, which translates as Journey To The West, but is also known as “Monkey” in the 1942 English translation by Arthur Waley.
It tells the story of the adventures of a 7th century buddist monk called Xuanzang (who lived betwen 602 and 664 CE). Xuanzang embarked on a pilgrimage to the Western Paradise (Sukhavati) with three animal spirits. Sun Wukong, the Monkey King. Zhu Wuneng, literally “Pig Awakened to Ability”. Finally, a river ogre known as Sha Wujin, or “Sand Awakened to Purity”.
It’s based on the true story of Xuanzang who travelled to India via Gansu province, Qinghai province, Xinjiang province, and then through regions that are now known as Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and then Pakistan before reaching India.
While we’re not claiming that any of us are taking a journey of thousands of miles from China to India, we simply thought that the proximity of our site (to the west of Longyan City) was an interesting way to introduce the team in Da Chi to the world and so off even more of our really really really bad photoshop.
I joined Nine Rivers Distillery back on 1st December 2021 and took on the role of Finance Manager.
I’m originally from Xiling Township, Pingnan County, Ningde City in Fujian Province. Pingnan County is home to about 180,000 people and is famous as being the capital of summer mushrooms in China. In fact, Pingnan exports more than 6,000 tons of shiitake mushrooms, known locally as xiānggū (香菇) which essentially means fragrant mushrooms.
I think its about 500 kilometers, (310 miles) or about 6 hours driving if I don’t stop. Alternatively it’s just over 3 hours on the high-speed train from Ningde to Longyan, and then a 40-minute drive to Da Chi, to the west of Longyan.
I studied Finance in Fuzhou, the provincial capital of Fujian.
I worked in finance for about 5 years, at two different companies, both of which were in Fuzhou.
I wanted to move to Longyan, which is my husband’s home city. My husband and I wanted to be closer to his family so that our son can spend more time with his grandparents. I looked around online for any suitable roles and 9RD caught my attention because it was just so different to everything else.
I knew nothing about distilleries (I originally assumed it was a place for making beer!) and had no knowledge of whisky or other western alcohols. But I clicked on a link for their website and saw some really interesting pictures and read some content about there being lots of foreigners behind the project. I thought it could be a great way to practise and improve my English and get some experience in a completely different industry.
The fun. Sure, we all work hard and we carry a lot of stress because there are so few of us on the team, but we have really good fun as we do it. The atmosphere in the office is almost always full of laughing and Jay’s constant practical jokes that he plays on everyone. If you ever get a chance to talk to Maggie, just ask her about the joke that was played on her on Wednesday (20th September), when we had a guest at the office.
I tell my friends about what our working environment is like and they are all surprised that a company like this can exist. We all get on really well, as if we’ve been friends since grade school. We all hang out sometimes on weekends with all our children and it really does feel like a family.
I’ve been involved since the beginning. When it was nothing more than whisky fuelled ramblings at Shenzhen Whisky Networking. So you could say as long ago as 2017.
I’m from Birmingham, or as we say in our local accent, “Buuuurninguuum.” There are rumours that there’s a lot of inspiration from Birmingham in our architecture.
According to the interwebs, it would be about 9,558 kilometers from Birmingham to Longyan. Although technically, I came to Longyan from Shenzhen, where I’d been based since about 2015.
From Shenzhen to our site in Da Chi is about 400 kilometers. It’s typically about 4 hours on the high speed road, or 6-8 hours driving, depending on traffic.
Life, all over the world. That’s not me trying to be flippant. I simply don’t have any formal education.
I sold booze in China. Wine, liquor and of course whisky. Before that I used to be a bit of a geek, working in the IT industry bashing code, typically in a dark room, locked far away from other humans.
I’m the only person involved (or ever likely to be) that just didn’t really have a choice. After a group of us decided that we were going to start exploring the concept of building a distillery and it came to picking someone to lead the project, everyone just pointed at me.
I’m just keeping the big chair warm. Until someone else that has 100 a hours a week to put into a job, comes along and relieves me of my dutie.
I joined in November 2021.
I was born and raised in Putian City, in Fujian Province. It’s a city that’s between Fuzhou (which is to the north) and Quangzhou (which is to the south).
Putian is famous for many things, but my own personal favourite thing is Mazu.
Mazu (there are another 10 different names for Mazu, but let’s keep it simple) is a Chinese sea goddess and is a popular deity all across Chinese coastal regions because she was traditionally worshipped by fishermen and sailors.
She is believed to have come from Meizhou Island (part of Putian) over 1000 years ago, and was a shamaness and features in many Chinese myths and legends. Worship of Mazu (or Mazuism) is actually practised in more than 1500 temples in 26 different countries around the world although it is usually mixed in with Taoism and Buddism.
There are 20 temples for Mazu on Meishou Island, about another 100 across Putian, 70 more across Fujian province. There are 40 more temples in Guangdong Province, 30 in Zhejiang province and Jiangsu province and there is even a Mazu temple as far north as Tianjin
About 270 or 280 kilometers. Between 3 and 4 hours drive. It’s much faster on the high speed train. It’s just over 2 hours.
I studied foreign trade and English in Fuzhou, at Fujian University.
After graduation, I worked for a few years. Then I met my husband, got married, had a family and prioritised my life with my children. When our youngest child was old enough to stay at home with her grandparents, I decided to look for a new job.
I actually found out about the job by pure chance. My husband was having lunch at a local noodle shop and overheard someone talking about needing someone that could. bean administrator and an office manager but was struggling to find anyone because the work location was in Da Chi town. They exchanged WeChat IDs, I sent in my CV, had a telephone interview a few days later, then a face to face interview the following week. I started work on the following Monday.
My husband works in Da Chi town so I used to visit there regularly. I know a lot of the locals and have done for many years. I’d heard a bit of local gossip that the company had lots of foreigners involved and that everyone in the local town thought the project was going to be huge.
Da Chi is just a small town so if there was something happening there that everyone was talking about, I wanted to be a part of it.
There are so many reasons that if I list them all it will just sound too cheesy. But first and foremost, the working environment. It’s unlike any I’ve ever experienced. It’s a really positive balance between hard work, challenges, and the space to grown and develop as a professional.
I’ve had a lot of coaching in this job. Not just in terms of being taught new skills but also in helping me develop the confidence in myself to take on what is now such a senior and challenging role.
In less than 2 years I’ve gone from being an office manager to now being the person that leads all of the official processes, procedures and governance that underpins the company. On a project such as ours, a distillery, it falls under the same strict standards for construction and operations as a chemical plant or an oil refinery. So as you can imagine, there’s a lot of official processes and procedures that we have to comply with on all aspects of the business.
I also manage all of the government relationships that we have across Longyan City, Xin Luo district and Da Chi town. A project such as ours is not just important to Da Chi. It’s important to the whole city. So we have everyone right up to the top of the government of Longyan city closely monitoring our project and ready to help when we need it. So part of my role is to ensure that everyone is kept updated – sometimes weekly to some departments, while other departments it’s only monthly updates.
I spend a lot of my time downtown in Longyan. The distillery site is at least 40 to 50 minutes drive from downtown so to save all that lost time from travelling, we have a small office just a few hundred meters from where most of the central government offices are. It’s nothing more than some space for a few desks but it makes a huge difference to my day to save all the driving time.
Despite working harder in this job than I’ve ever worked before, I still have more free time. Not just because of the time saved from driving, but because we work in the only company I’ve ever heard of where the boss tells everyone to go home at 6pm. It’s not some casual, meaningless throwaway comment – if we’re still in the office at 6:05 he starts ranting! A huge chance from the typical 996 (9am, to 9pm, 6 days a week) that seems to dominate so many industries these days.
10th February 2023. Weirdly, it was a Friday.
I’m from Du’an Autonomous County, Hechi City, in Guangxi province. One of the many, many places that no one outside of China has heard of. Even within China, most people from outside of Guangxi province probably don’t know anything about Hechi City, or Du’an County.
I’m Zhuàngzú (壮族) with Zhuang being one of the 56 ethnic groups in China. There are about 18 million Zhuang people in China, with most of them living in Guangxi province, but some also live in Yunnan Province, Guangdong Province, Guizhou Province and Hunan Province.
I actually studied foreign trade in Sichuan province.
I worked in a number of foreign trading companies and did many different roles including customer services, sales, translation and also some financi and commercial work.
My husband and his family are actually from Da Chi town. Our village is just a few kilometers from the site so I actually applied for the job initially because it was so convenient. To take a job in Longyan in the city would mean I would drive at least 40 minutes each way to work while the location of Nine Rivers is actually just a few minutes away on a scooter.
To have an opportunity to work in a company where I can continue to use my English language skills, literally on my doorstep, seemed like an opportunity that was too good to miss. So I applied and got the job.
As I mentioned, it was initially about convenience. But now it’s because the role is so varied that it never gets boring.
When I first interviewed for the job, one of the things I was told at the interview is that a startup company is always going to mean that everyone will end up getting involved in many different things because the team is so small. In a typical day I can be doing finance work, investor relations, interpreting at meetings, translating official documents, writing content for social media, and even helping to organise events. No two days are the same and it never gets boring.
I also enjoy being around the team that we have. We really do get along well and that makes the working day so much easier. I’ve had many jobs before where you literally just bite your lip and endure 9 or 10 hours with grumpy, stressed out people (with their stress also affecting your own mindset) in a soulless company that just see employees as headcount and a cost base.
How many companies do you know where your boss comes over to your village to advise your parents-in-law how to improve their crop yield? We had a really poor rice harvest this year, and when I was talking about in in the office, it turns out that Jay is something of a closet farmer.
He came over that afternoon, checked our rice, looked over the field, pointed out some issues with storm water runoff (which apparently washes away the good nutrients from the soil), and told us which legumes to use as a second crop each year to create nitrogen fixation in the soil.
He then told us how to save money on fertilizer by making our own through composting kitchen scraps and the leftovers from whatever crops we grow. Definitely not a typical company and just one of the many reasons why I’ve stayed at Nine Rivers Distillery.
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.
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.
Last, but as important as all the other points above, you can help us by reading, liking and sharing our content across some of the more popular platforms.
LinkedIn users you can CLICK HERE to follow us. 6500 people are following our story on LinkedIn right now.
Facebook users, you can CLICK HERE. 2652 followers so far.
YouTube users, you can CLICK HERE. We’re at 500 subscribers and growing.
Twitter users, you can CLICK HERE.
Instagram users, you can CLICK HERE.
Or follow us on WeChat using the QR code below.
The ninth day of the ninth month and a load of people from Nine Rivers Distillery. While 8 might be considered a lucky number for most, it was the number nine that blessed us last weekend where we brought together about 50 of our Ambassador Investors for an amazing day on-site, bricklaying to create The […]
Read MoreThe ninth day of the ninth month and a load of people from Nine Rivers Distillery. While 8 might be considered a lucky number for most, it was the number nine that blessed us last weekend where we brought together about 50 of our Ambassador Investors for an amazing day on-site, bricklaying to create The Plenum Wall, right here in Da Chi, Longyan, Fujian.
For those of you that have been following our story, you might recall two things. Firstly, we had an open day back in May, where a group of our Ambassador Investors all came over to review the progress so far. We then scheduled a follow up to this in July, where we planned to start cementing bricks into The Plenum Wall. But this got completely wiped off the calendar due to typhoon Doksuri.
The typhoon didn’t affect our site (we’re a bit further inland and we’re pretty much protected from those severe storms due to the geography, including mountains, that protect us) but it did result in a shut down on trains and flights that would have to pass through some of the affected areas. It turned out to be one of the worst typhoons to ever hit the coast of China, with winds reaching 185 km/h and rainfall that broke all records, dropping 644mm of rain in 24 hours.
So, we rescheduled for 9th September (August is typically a holiday month and after so little travel for the last few years, we knew most people would be going to visit family in faraway places) and started crossing fingers that we’d get a good day with good weather. Rain hasn’t been our friend for the last few months, so a day of sun and clear skies wasn’t likely.
Despite having something that resembled a schedule for the day, there were, of course, those who thought 11 am sharp meant “yeah, whatever, it’s a weekend, I’m sleeping in, I’ll get there when I roll out of my bed”. It would of course be unfair to name Lee B for holding everyone up until way past noon, but now we know he’ll be a bit more punctual next time.
We started with Building 1, the first of our cask maturation warehouses. Coming in at 50.40 meters long, 28.40 meters wide (1431 square meters internal footprint), and with an internal ceiling height of 13 meters it was much bigger than most people expected.
The shock hit everyone when they found out that we needed to build another 16 of these buildings to cater for the casks we would be filling when we were at full production capacity.
Building 3 was next. 54.9 meters long, 35.4 meters wide, 1943 square meters of foot print over 4 floors. The ground floor has an internal ceiling height of 8 meters and there is a 576 square meter mezzanine floor allowing visitors to look down into the beating heard of the milling, mashing and fermenting area.
378 square meters in the basement house the pipework and the pumps to take care of our fire suppression system. Behind the wall on the left of the image above, is a 678 square meter area that holds 2 vast water tanks. Each one holds 900,000 liters of water. The pipes are actually the biggest currently installed in Longyan for fire suppression.
Onwards and upwards, there was a tour of the malting floors and the storage on upper floors.
Then finally the roof of Building 3, where there are rumors of there being exclusive social events in the future. Of course, we completely deny this.
Last but by no means least, Building 4, the still house. 50.4 meters long, 28.4 meters wide (1431 square meters) with an internal ceiling height again, or 13 meters.
Everyone got to stand in the central open plan area of the building, which is almost 1000 square meters, where our 10 stills will be located.
Barbecue lunch time and then, with everyone fed and watered, it was time to get on with the bricklaying.
This isn’t the entire wall as there were still bricklaying to be done at the end of the day and the very last bricks will be added next week. So don’t start freaking out if you can’t see your name.
We’ll publish complete photographs when all of the bricklaying is done.
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.
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.
Or, you could learn more about being involved and help us grow to our target of 1000 stakeholders. You can read more about our story and how to get involved if you CLICK HERE.
Last, but as important as all the other points above, you can help us by reading, liking and sharing our content across some of the more popular platforms.
LinkedIn users you can CLICK HERE to follow us. 7000 people are following our story on LinkedIn right now.
Facebook users, you can CLICK HERE. 2652 followers so far.
YouTube users, you can CLICK HERE. We’re at 1100 subscribers and growing.
Twitter users, you can CLICK HERE.
Instagram users, you can CLICK HERE.
Or follow us on WeChat using the QR code below.
