Brand Heritage Manager
Glengoyne Distillery

Stuart H

00:02 I’m Stuart H I’m brand heritage manager Glengoyne distillery.

00:06 It involves communicating everything that’s great about a whisky to anyone that will listen, both at the distillery or overseas or where ever they may be. We have around forty thousand people a year come to see us to try and find out more about Glengoyne.

00:23 I got this job by badgering the company until they, until they gave me a job. My father had always drunk Glengoyne, I’d always had a desire to, to come and work here, I came home from holiday to be told by a friend that a job had been advertised I’d missed the closing date by around ten days and I thought well I’ll try anyway. I went there and I bought a bottle of Glengoyne, once the bottle was empty I could, I wrote out my CV and a letter I put it inside the bottle, put the top back on sealed it all with wax, put it back in the tube and I think I wrote on the packaging you, you will live to regret it if you don’t open this, or something along those lines, something kind of cheeky, sent it off and the next day I got, well I got a phone call saying yeah OK we’ve interviewed people but we’ll interview you as well.

01:16 I had no direct marketing experience at all but I was I think they just liked the fact I was cheeky at the interview. I was in my late twenties at the time and they were really looking for someone a bit older because I looked old and was quite fat then I would be suitable for the job you know because I could run round in a kilt with a bit of kind of gravitas about me and I said, no that’s great thanks you I’m getting a job cos I look old and fat.

01:40 My father was in electronics and there was a kind of perception probably with me and my, and my father that I would leave school and go into electronics and in fact I went and that was the first qualification I, I tried to gain realised after about two months that it wasn’t really for me, I didn’t do very well at school qualifications wise, I had a great time but I think that might have been part of the problem I’ve had to restart my higher exams to allow me in to, go to university eventually.

02:15 I went to do a hotel management course and I really, I really wanted to work with people as I said I was quite a hospitable person and then that was the ideal for me, I like food and drink, still do and I worked out it was kind of everything you need to know to run a hotel funnily enough, at the same time to pay my way through university I had a job at a wine retailers and when I, when I finished my degree I ended up going and working for them and really concentrating on, on wine and I love for the next few years I learnt an awful lot about wine but gradually all the time there was this burning desire to, to you know wine’s great but it’s all imported you know and, and yet on my very doorstep we’re making some wonderful malt whiskies so.

02:57 The distillery used to be owned by a one of the largest players in the industry, a company called Edrington, who were terrific to work for and that, that was all very good. They then sold Glengoyne to the present owners it’s Ian MacCleod distillers this is the only distillery that they own and I was presented with a decision I could either have stayed with the larger company and gone to work for them in another distillery they asked me to stay, and also the new owners asked me if I wanted to work for them. I realised then that my, my heart probably lay in this place and I would it would be I thought that Glengoyne as a distillery could really prosper and that the brand of whisky could really prosper under this new company and under the focus it, the, the private small company was gonna give it.

03:42 I came out of school thinking what the heck am I gonna be doing I certainly didn’t think I’d be doing what I’m doing now, but gradually by trying to enjoy myself on the way I sort of stumbled into something that I, that I really, really enjoyed and, and I’ve no intention of going anywhere.

03:57 END