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. […]
Read More
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.
Introduction So let’s put our cards on the table right at the beginning. This is intended to grab the attention of whisky lovers all over the world and hopefully encourage them to be a part of our project. It’s a fairly chunky read but our opinion is, if you don’t have the interest to stick […]
Read MoreSo let’s put our cards on the table right at the beginning. This is intended to grab the attention of whisky lovers all over the world and hopefully encourage them to be a part of our project. It’s a fairly chunky read but our opinion is, if you don’t have the interest to stick around and read what we have to say, you were probably never seriously interested anyway. Right?
Primarily it’s about making better whisky and more interesting whisky for whisky lovers and making that whisky more affordable. But within the context of being a business and operating under normal, logical approaches to business. Business, profitability, creating a return on investment for shareholders, and offering world-class products that are great value for consumers really is possible. ROI, quality, and value can all exist in the same place.
As a startup that has been bootstrapped since day one and essentially funded by the drinking money of what is now over 200 people, we’re not about to start taking gambles with laws, rules, and regulations around investment offerings and opportunities. We think we need to be aware of certain things we believe we can say, and probably can’t say.
Ironically there seem to be stacks of people flaunting the rules that we think exist and do regular shoutouts to fundraise publicly, and even right here on LinkedIn. But we’re going to err on the side of caution and simply tell you all about our project and encourage you to get in touch if you’re interested to learn more about what we’re doing and find out ways that you could perhaps get involved.
It’s 2023, and everyone is either too busy with their life or has the attention span of a root vegetable, hence the popularity of those TikTok-type things. So if you want to just jump right in and reach out to us, you can CLICK HERE. But please do us the favor of at least skimming the headings here to make sure your first questions aren’t already covered. Remember, bootstrapped, every penny counts, we don’t have armies of people sitting around waiting for your questions because they are all busy working day and night to make this project the success that we know it can be.
Let’s run with the good old-fashioned (one of our favorite whisky cocktails for the record) who, what, why, where, and when.
Who are we? We’re Nine Rivers Distillery. We’re made up of just over two hundred whisky lovers from (literally) the four corners of the globe.
While that might initially sound like a rag-tag band of misfits (and it kinda is) there is a serious board of directors that lead this project.
Stephen Davies – our Chairperson who has been involved as a mentor since our project was just a monthly debate at whisky nights in Shenzhen.
Jeff Olyniec – the second investor and our deputy Chairperson, who helped shape our idea into something that resembled a real business, starting on the back of napkins in a McDonald’s in the ‘burbs of Shenzhen.
Joy Tan – a passionate whisky lover and a founder investor since the very beginning of the project.
Daniel Liang – a founder of the project and a mentor to many of the people working on the numerous work streams required to deliver our project.
Jan Lægaard Broni – our resident Viking (doesn’t every startup distillery need a Viking?) and another leader and mentor to many of our work streams.
Jay Robertson – our CEO who has moonlighted on our project as an excavator operator, loader operator, truck driver, steel fabricator, welder, plumber, bricklayer, and drone pilot – all within our project.
What are we? We’re a startup whisky distillery that aims to be something of a disruptive force in the crafting of world-class whisky and making it affordable for all. Consider us the caped crusader and the likes of Diageo and Pernod Ricard being Lex Luthor (Diageo) and The Silver Banshee (Pernod Ricard) – the DC Comics Nerds will get the references there.
However, we’re not your typical startup.
While not taking anything away from a typical startup distillery (sincerely, we admire them all because we know what it takes to turn an idea into a distillery – we’re living it) we’re bigger than most. In fact, we’re building towards a 7.5 million LPA (LPA = liters of pure alcohol – essentially 1000ml of 100% alcohol by volume – an industry standard for measuring capacity) distillery. An average startup distillery could be 100,000 to 200,000 LPA and even a big startup would almost never be more than 500,000 LPA.
If you prefer bottle numbers, 7.5 million LPA is likely to be about 17 million bottles (depending on bottling strength that might fluctuate a little) a year, or around 50,000 casks a year.
Why – in the context of why do we exist? Why did we start this project? Well, that’s an easy one to answer. We exist because of two drivers. Firstly, because a bunch of whisky lovers over here in China, got into the habit of debating three things:
We came to the same conclusion pretty much every time. Big corporations pretty much control whisky production all over the world, and being driven by shareholders and the need to shell out dividends, everything is driven by profit.
Why in the context of why did we go so big? Surely by building something that will eventually have 7.5 million LPA of production, then we become the very thing we are trying to beat? Nope. We simply need economies of scale.
There are literally hundreds of startups across the world in the last decade or so. Some of them are creating some really amazing products. Far too many to list. But it really doesn’t matter how amazing a product is, when you’re mashing, fermenting, and distilling at a small scale, your costs of production are so high, that you don’t have enormous amounts of money to spend on marketing and advertising that the big players have.
It’s a never-ending circle that almost always constrains small startups into only ever being small startups – unless of course, they cash in to one of the big multinationals, get a big injection of moola to brand build and save money using the distribution network of the big multinational……and of course then they become part of the monster.
Larger scale production = lower production costs per bottle = we can pass on savings to end consumers with better pricing, and we can make more money to help us brand build. But let’s come back to brand building.
Where are we? We’re in China. To be specific, we’re located in Beixi Village, in Da Chi Town, Longyan City, Fujian Province, China. Probably not somewhere that anyone outside of China would have heard of, but Longyan is a city of 1.4 million people, it has connectivity to the national high-speed road network in all directions. It has a significant high-speed train station with trains to every major city in China multiple times each day. It has a small airport just outside the city with another one being built in the south of the city in 2 years. It’s also about 50 minutes by train to a significant international airport at Xiamen.
At Da Chi, we’re surrounded by mountains up to 1500 meters above sea level, and our site is at 515 meters above sea level. So we have our own special microclimate that can be between 10 and 25 degrees cooler than the downtown city of Longyan (which is about a 40-minute drive from us). It can result in a daytime temperature fluctuation of up to 40 degrees celsius. Even an average swing can be 20 or more degrees. As all whisky lovers know, the change in temperature each day can be very good for maturing whisky.
People typically ask us “do you have enough water to make whisky”, which is when we typically point out the name “Nine Rivers” comes from the fact that the mountains around us have literally Nine Rivers every time it rains, which at this time of the year (August through September) is multiple times each day.
When did we start? The history of this project goes back to 2016 at a network of whisky nights that popped up all over China, starting first in Shenzhen. There was a lot of time invested into researching the possibility of making whisky. Then some of us spent a lot of time developing processes to make better whisky – some of which has resulted in patents being filed and granted. But in terms of real tangible and visible things, we’d probably frame the start (as in forming a company, and the founders chipping in their coins) to 2019.
We first visited Da Chi in February 2020. It took us about a year to find the perfect location and secure the land. We had a “groundbreaking” (a bit early in all fairness, but there’s a mildly amusing story about that) in February 2022 but the really good stuff (the excavation and construction) really started to happen in February 2023. It took from December 2022 through to the end of January 2023 just to level the land parcel.
When are we looking for more people to get involved? Right about now. Now is the perfect time for anyone interested in whisky to get in touch and learn more.
The timing of this is deliberate, and we’re happy to explain why. For one simple reason – credibility.
The 200-odd people that have helped us to get to where we are today are people that are connected to us. Typically they are personal friends, or professional contacts of either one of our board members, or someone else that is involved in this project.
The starting group of founders was made up from whisky lovers who regularly attended one of the whisky nights – in Shenzhen, Dongguan, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Shenyang, Shanghai, Beijing and Xiamen. Everyone that has got involved since are in some way directly connected to one of these founders or one of the board members. That friendship was important for the huge amount of trust it has taken between us all to fund this project and get it to where it is now.
But now we’re at a point where trust is mitigated by the fact we’re no longer just a slide deck and wishful thinking. We’re real.
How are we going to make better whisky, and still make it affordable?
Quality is massively influenced by the quality of raw materials, the production process, and the maturation process. Sure, cuts on distillate could be included in this, and there’s lots of marketing and PR around the mythical “Master Distiller”, but let’s not go down that Rabbit Hole and end up with every single self-appointed Master Distiller having a rant about how we have belittled their skill. Let’s stick with what we can prove.
Using the best grains for purpose (we’ll not use the word quality as that can be argued as a matter of opinion). Let’s simply say that we will be using the grains that we believe carry forward the most flavor and aroma as opposed to the grains that will give the best yield of alcohol per ton of grain – which is how the big corporate producers determine if the grain is good or not. We’ve talked about our approach to grains in some of our previous social media posts. The grains we will use will naturally cost more per bottle produced.
Using yeasts and fermentation timescales that again, focus on developing flavour and aroma as opposed to just converting as much of the grain-derived sugars into alcohol as quickly as possible. Big producers focus on what we refer to as industrial yeast. They need as fast a fermentation as possible. Faster fermentation means more batches of wash per month, feeding more wash stills, and producing more whisky.
We’ll be taking a craft beer approach to our fermentation. Longer, slower, and cooler, to utilize yeasts that are specifically developed to enrich fermentation with much more flavor and aroma that would typically be associated with large-scale alcohol production. Plus, lots of variants as opposed to just cranking out the same old wash, going through the same distillation process, to create the same, bland, mass-market offerings that most large-scale producers have got into the habit of churning out, year on year.
Leading this part of the production process is Neil Playfoot, a brewing consulting with 27 years of experience crafting world-class beers.
Anyone who knows anything about whisky will know that wood (in the form of oak barrels) is responsible for around (let’s not split hairs) 60% of the final aroma and flavour of the bottled product. To state that wood is critical to good whisky is fair to everyone but wood for the sake of clocking up the required years is currently the industry default.
There is an accepted shortage of oak barrels across the world. Reasons why aren’t important but the big producers are struggling to get enough oak barrels for their own production. There are barrel brokers popping up all over the world quicker than anyone can count because where there are shortages, there is money to made by those with little or no ethics.
Smaller producers are mostly being dumped with low-quality and well-used barrels. Of course, many of them have spun this as part of their marketing, proudly labeling their product with subtitles such as “Made with STR Casks” or quoting a plethora of random wines that would never have been considered suitable for whisky just a decade ago. Second and third-fill casks are the new norm for mass-market products and all those gardening enthusiasts are unable to find any wooden barrels to make planters for their garden anymore, because what would normally be up for grabs in their local garden center, is now being repaired and filled with bulk spirit for export markets.
Quality has dropped everywhere. With the two major barrel producers squabbling with each other and shaving dollars and cents off production so that they can supply the massive bourbon producers, by the time those ex-bourbon barrels trickle down into the whisky industry they are already much less of a barrel than they were a decade ago. That’s without us even touching on the whole barrel rinsing that now happens because even bourbon producers are not immune to the demands of shareholders and the need to cut costs and deliver better returns to investors each year.
The only solution to all of these problems that affect quality is to simply make our own barrels in our own cooperage. Sourcing our own green timber, cutting it to rough staves, seasoning it on site and then crafting our own barrels.
None of this is going to be easy. Coopering is an ancient art and training an apprentice to the status of Journeyman Cooper takes years. Having a few power tools in your shed and having done some DIY is far from coopering and although there are some really exciting success stories for boutique cooperages across the world, we decided to bring on board one of the best in the world to lead our cooperage project – Stuart Macpherson, former Master of Wood with Edrington and Macallan with a 43-year pedigree in the industry.
Better grains, longer fermentation, better quality barrels – they all cost money right? So how do we offset these costs, and make amazing whisky while not only being competitive – but being better value?
We have a few tricks up our sleeves which include some really clever tech (that we have patented) around energy recycling throughout the production process. We have some patents around crafting casks too. We’ve got some smart architecture which again massively reduces energy consumption and that makes a huge dent in the overall costs of producing whisky.
But the real big game changer comes from the people involved in our project and what they bring to the table. Literally, everyone who has invested in our project brings something, and absolutely everything helps.
We have a pool of investors that includes architects, structural engineers, mechanical engineers, product designers, graphic designers, copyrighters, marketing gurus, business leaders, experts on literally everything that any startup business needs.
Whether it’s as simple as just sharing content on social media or running workshops on designing our building, layouts and immersive visitors experience when we are producing spirit and have our doors open – this has made a massive impact into our costs and will continue to do so.
Let’s make a quick comparison to help you to understand just one benefit of having all these whisky lovers with a shared passion, involved in our project.
Before we look at how much this project is costing us to build, we need a baseline.
Here’s a press release from November 2021 (click here) where some blobs of concrete, some roofing tiles, and some grass was reported to be a US$150 million investment, which at the time was equivalent to 1 billion rambos (renminbi, or Chinese yuan). Forget all the other waffle in the press release, what matters is it’s a 2 still setup and believed to be about 1 million LPA of production capacity.
Diageo’s project up in Sichuan province on a press release the same month (click here) seems to be half the money (US$75 million, or 500 million rambos) for a 4 still setup and believed to be about 2 million LPA.
We’re going in on 10 stills, 7.5 million LPA and (with all due respect to both architecture firms involved in those other two projects) something that we think looks infinitely better visually. Our total budget to build? Considerably (!) less than both Pernod Ricard’s and Diageo’s for sure – especially since we don’t have all those suits to pay for!
We didn’t have armies of top-tier consultants in expensive suits, and we definitely didn’t have a second (smaller) army of consultants supervising the first army either. We just have a bunch of whisky lovers all chipping in when they can. A few even rocked up on-site and had a blast on the excavators and the loaders with some of them living on-site in dormitories for weeks on end just to be a part of what we’re doing. That has created massive savings for us and it benefits everyone invested in the project.
But it won’t end there.
Everyone invested in our project, from the smallest micro-investors to the ballers with a wheelbarrow full of greenbacks, is an Ambassador for our project. They tell everyone that they know about who we are, our mission, our commitment and our drive. Essentially grass routes brand building and creating brand awareness.
When we’re producing, this Ambassador approach becomes our default marketing. With everyone having a bit of skin in the game, we all benefit from sharing the story of Nine Rivers Distillery and creating an interest in our products. We all benefit from sharing a bottle with friends, which solves the biggest challenge in any business in any industry – getting new customers to take a chance and try your products.
That’s the other major cost-saving for our business. Brand building, marketing and advertising. All huge financial drains on any business in any industry. So to essentially have all this not just in-house, but in-house at almost zero cost, is a really big benefit for us.
We’re looking for people who are interested in being involved in our project as Ambassador Investors – owning a stake in our business as a micro-investor, who want to contribute as little as an hour a week of their time to share our story with their friends in person, and on social media.
We don’t think we can legally outline the terms here (although, as mentioned, others have) but we encourage everyone to reach out and contact us for a one-pager overview of the numbers and all that legal stuff.
For anyone worried about the fact we’re in China, the opportunity is with our parent entity, which is registered offshore. Essentially it’s a huge challenge for non-Chinese to invest directly into China, hence the offshore entity that ultimately owns our Chinese operating company.
As for the buy-in. We want people more than we need money. The more people we have involved as Ambassador Investors, the faster awareness of our project will grow. With more awareness, there’s logically going to be more people interested in trying our products once they are in the market. And of course, we’re quietly confident we’ll deliver on quality, and customers will come back time and time again.
That’s why the buy-in is 500 bucks. Yes, $500 (or the equivalent in other currencies so at the time of writing this it is €466, £400 ₣445, $682 in Canadian dollars, $784 in Australian dollars, or you can look up your own currency on the internet. Sure, people are welcome to pile in more if they want to, but $500 is the entry point.
If that’s enough to get you interested and you’d like to know more, you can CLICK HERE to go to our website and find out how to contact us. If you’d like to read more first, here are some links that might be of interest:
Here’s a quick summary video that tells you our story.
Here’s our company page on LinkedIn.
Here’s our company page on Facebook.
Here’s our company page on Twitter (not sure if it’s still called that, but anyway…)
If you use WeChat you can scan this QR code to follow our WeChat official account.
If you use WeChat the short videos platform, you can scan this QR code to follow our channel.
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 […]
Read More
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?
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.
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.
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!)
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.
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.
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!
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.
Not long to go before we have our biggest event yet, Bricking It, – when everyone that bought their brick for The Plenum Wall, gets a chance to come along to our site and cement their brick into the wall. For those of you that might need to refresh your memory, here’s a link to […]
Read MoreNot long to go before we have our biggest event yet, Bricking It, – when everyone that bought their brick for The Plenum Wall, gets a chance to come along to our site and cement their brick into the wall.
For those of you that might need to refresh your memory, here’s a link to the article that announced this as A Brick for Life.
Brick owners will be forever immortalised into our feature wall, with their name (or chosen name if they bought bricks as gifts for friends or family) engraved and painted into a stainless steel plate, that will be wrapped around a brick that will then be part of the wall at the main entrance to Building 3.
Additional perks for brick owners include a free measure of our finest spirit every single time the brick owner comes to visit our distillery – for life. Subject of course to the brick owner being over the legal age for drinking alcohol and they are not driving!
The event will be pretty simple and straight forward and an agenda will probably look something like:
Bricking It will be held on Saturday 29th July, 2023, starting at about 10am.
Longyan is blessed with some amazing infrastructure. It has high speed roads (you might call them motorways or highways) in all directions that connect with the national network of roads covering all of China.
Longyan has a fantastic, high speed train station, with trains coming in from all over China. It is served by both the G-series and the D-Series trains and most parts of China have multiple train options every single day of the week. Our site is a 30 minute taxi journey from Longyan station.
For those of you that prefer to fly to Bricking It, then the most suitable national and international airport is Xiamen. From Xiamen airport, you can easily get connecting trains to Longyan. Again, a short taxi ride will get you to our site.
Use this form below to register for your attendance.
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.
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. Remember, we currently have no alternatives to Damfunded!
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.
Facebook users, you can CLICK HERE.
YouTube users, you can CLICK HERE.
Twitter users, you can CLICK HERE.
Instagram users, you can CLICK HERE.
Or follow us on WeChat using the QR code below.