Brands/Heritage Assistant
Glengoyne Distillery

Stephanie M

00:02 My name is Stephanie M. I work as a Brand Heritage assistant at Glengoyne Distillery.

00:07 I’m a tour guide that takes people round the distillery, showing them how, how it all works and how we make whisky.

00:13 For the brand heritage I had no training, we were given that training as we arrived. I’d had no experience in speaking in public, speaking in front of people. I was very much beforehand working in an office, working under my own steam but always behind a telephone, never in front of people, so it was a total career change for me. Daunting, terrifying at first, but now I love it.

00:37 Well I wasn’t overly happy at school, I struggled with a lot of subjects but I still enjoyed my schooldays.

00:43 Just I think, academically, I struggled, you know, not all, some of the things didn’t come as easy and I found it hard on some of the subjects but that’s been, that’s improved on, I think. As I’ve got older I’ve been able to go back and get better. I struggled a bit with the sciences, struggled with the maths but, as I say, although I struggled at school, in jobs that I had later, I was needing all that, so eventually I got there in the end and improved on that, so even though you can, although you might struggle at school, you can, it comes to you later on, perhaps.

01:14 My parents they worked in the hotel business. They had a small country little hotel that we had in the village there. It was quite small, so I was brought up to do kind odd bits of waitressing work and cooking, and things like that, I was involved with, with them in that. It was a very small family-run little business.

01:31 I trained in, as a secretary, just in a further education college at the time. It was just a year’s course for doing secretarial work and my very first job when I left school, I fortunately got a job straight away, I worked for the harbour commissioners in Cornwall. I then progressed from that, going to another job. I worked for a magistrates’ court. It’s all very much office, office geared work, but specialised, which was how I liked to go, I liked to move on and learn something entirely new. So each job I moved on to, I went from like the harbour office to the magistrates, to the water authority, where else have I been? To the art school. I then travelled, I was probably later doing my travelling but I’m glad I did that, I went to Australia, travelled, did temping work out there and then came back here and spent, came up here, thinking that I would just do a bit more of the same, a couple of years and then go back down to Cornwall. But it just, I enjoyed it up here and then I’m in interested in lots of different work up here too, so I came up here twenty years ago and I’m still here.

02:39 I’ve always been in work, I’ve been very, I think I’ve been very fortunate actually, that I’ve had a lot of jobs, I’ve always been in work and I’ve had some really interesting variety of jobs. People that come to the distillery have no idea how whisky’s made and you’re going through the whole process.

02:54 Just public tours that are run every hour, so we’re available to do those, but in between the public tours we might have booked tours that might be special tours like a master blending session or might be a masterclass. A masterclass, that’s for people that maybe want to take their interest a little bit further, develop it a bit more, find a little bit more of behind the scenes of how Glengoyne gets its particular character.

03:19 I don’t think I’m ever totally confident but I don’t think I’d ever want to be. I think it’s good to be a little bit nervous cos it keeps you more aware and making sure that you’re going to do the best you can, but it’s got better because I’ve, I’ve learned more and I know a little bit more about the subject that I’m talking about. That gives you a bit of confidence. But I still get nervous. I love it. I do, I enjoy it’s great.

03:44 END