Meet Glaschu Spirits - coming to Inverurie Whisky Shop on 7th September

Glaschu Spirits Co are based in the West End of Glasgow. Starting in 2020, the company was formed by two workmates, Paul and Julian.

Having spent College and University together doing courses in aircraft engineering, the pair got jobs at the same company and unfortunately 9or fortunately!) lost their jobs together during the initial lockdown of 2020.

Leaning on Pauls knowledge of a good dram and an eye on what to buy for accumulating value, they discovered the independent bottling side of whisky through consuming some damn fine expressions. The pair found a market brokering for independent bottlers that they enjoyed - selling bottles on their behalf. This led to the creation of Damn Good Drams, before as Julian put it “why don’t we start our own one here?”.

The first bottling of Glaschu launched in September 2022, a Jamaician Rum finished Blair Athol and in the first 18 months, 11 releases followed. Always on the lookout for something different, but ultimately quality, Glenglassaugh, Glengoyne, Tomintoul and Burnside releases, usually released by stalwarts of the independent bottling category, have been bought, bottled and sold by the pair.

With hours of market research now under their belt, and an ever-improving eye on the market, Paul admitted that getting casks early was extremely hard.

 “With zero contacts in the industry   whatsoever when we started, and I mean   zero, so we had to try and spin it in a way   where people would take interest. A Rum   cask Blair Athol for example got people   interested, as did our unnamed Glengoyne   which we finished in Pedro Ximenez.”

 “We want to keep things interesting,” adds Julian, “We don’t want to hammer people with lots of Red Wine casks, or Port Casks, even though we have access to them and we know they’re good.”

“But in general, we only bottle things that we would want to drink!” Paul emphasises! “But it’s finding a balance between what’s good, what’s interesting and what will sell.”

The labels also tell interesting stories, delving into

their engineering past and passion they try and feature marvels of Scottish engineering. “For example, not many people know that one of the very first people in the world to fly was Scottish. On our Tomintoul release we feature the balloon flying over Glasgow and Edinburgh.”

Glaschu Spirits and, indeed, Damn Good Drams, are going from strength to strength and we are very excited to see what’s coming next both in terms of the business and new releases. You can join the journey with the guys at Inverurie Whisky Shop when Paul joins us for a tasting of current, past and potentially some future releases on the 7th September.

To join us for an evening, either in person or online via our tasting pack and room set up, of great drams by getting you ticket here.

You can also find out much more about the company in our online chat with the Paul and Julian when we met them for an episode of our A Blether With series.