It all began with Edradour for Desiree Reid, founder and managing director of the award-winning Cardrona Distillery in the Cardrona Valley on New Zealand's South Island.

For her 21st birthday, she and her mother backpacked around Scotland. (Both sides of her family came from here way back when.) But something about that whisky in one of Scotland's oldest distilleries in Highland Perthshire (featured in Episode 15), ignited a spark.

"I can't say that I sat there with that dram and thought that I'm gonna open a whisky distillery one day. But that is certainly where the seed was sown," Desiree tells John in this episode.

Had something in her bloodline been awoken?

Maybe. For as Desiree admits, her great, great, great grandfather had been an illicit whisky producer in Applecross, historically an isolated peninsula in north west Scotland that looks out onto the Isle of Raasay and beyond that Skye.

However Desiree didn't know that at the time.

Fast forward several years, and Desiree, now a very successful diary farmer, was looking for a career change, and... well it's her story. So lets let her tell it.

But suffice it to say she, with the help of her teetotal parents, founded Cardrona, an award-winning distillery 600 metres above sea level producing traditional single malt whisky ("our three year old was rated as one of the top 50 malts that Whisky Magazine had ever reviewed"), vodka, gin and liqueurs.

Along the way Desiree was mentored by Dave Pickerell, the founding father of American craft distilling and the master blender behind rock band Metallica's Blackened Whiskey.

Today Cardrona is part of the International Beverage Group, owners of Old Pulteney, Speyburn and Balblair.

So pour yourself a dram and tune in.

Slàinte!

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Socials:

@C2GWhisky

@JohnRossBeattie

Creator & producer: David Holmes

Art work & design: Jess Robertson

Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)

Vocals: Andrea Cunningham

Guitars: John Beattie

Bass: Alasdair Vann

Drums: Alan Hamilton

Bagpipes: Calum McColl

Accordion: Gary Innes

Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie

Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland

Special thanks: The Piper Whisky Bar, 57 Cochrane Street, Glasgow, Scotland

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