Whiskey galore for Tullamore

FRIDAY INTERVIEW:STELLA DAVID LOVES nothing more than curling up on the couch, preferably with a Hendrick's Gin and cucumber in hand, watching darts on Sky Sports. Yes, darts. A favourite sport of the beer swilling working class in Britain.

It’s certainly not something you’d associate with a Cambridge-educated business leader. For a start, David prefers spirits to beer, which is no surprise given that she heads the Scottish family-owned distiller William Grant, owner of the Tullamore Dew Irish whiskey brand.

Also, she’s slim and trim and doesn’t have any garish tattoos – at least none that are visible in her working clothes – or wear lots of bling jewellery.

So why the fascination? “I absolutely adore darts and watching it on TV,” she says from the boardroom of William Grant’s facility near London. “It’s my favourite sport. Everyone says to me ‘I cannot believe you’re a fan of darts’. But I just find it incredibly therapeutic. I could watch it for hours.”

She plays “terrible, absolutely terrible”, darts. “We have a dart board at home and if I can get all three darts on the board it’s like a red letter day for me.”

David is little known in Ireland but she’s the woman who in March pressed the button on a €35 million investment by William Grant to build a distillery for its Irish whiskey brand in its home town of Tullamore. Plans have been drawn up to build a pot still whiskey and malt distillery on a 58-acre site in Clonminch on the outskirts of Tullamore, which is being acquired from Offaly County Council.

This will bring whiskey production back to Tullamore for the first time since the original distillery closed in 1954. More importantly, it will create about 100 jobs during the construction phase and about 15 positions once it has opened.

A new visitors centre for the brand is also close to completion. These are the latest building blocks put in place by the Scottish company since it paid €171 million to buy Tullamore Dew from Irish listed drinks group CC in 2010. Many in the industry thought the Scots were overpaying for the brand. David says it was a “very good price”.

It has also established a global marketing office in Dublin, from where a number of its key spirits brands are managed, and it is investing €10 million in a global advertising campaign and new packaging for Tullamore Dew. The packaging makes its debut this week.

“It’s a great ‘good news’ story for Ireland,” David says. “It’s very good for the Tullamore region.” She looked at “four or five different sites” around the country before plumping for the Co Offaly town.

“At the end of the day, to be able to produce it in Tullamore itself is a huge attraction. Taking the brand back to its original home felt compelling. Thirty-five million euro is a lot of money to be investing in a distillery anywhere at any time so we had to make sure we were doing the right thing.”

Ireland might be in a mess economically and the euro might be in trouble but David says her board of directors were unconcerned by these matters when deciding to proceed with the new distillery here. “We didn’t take them into account at all,” she says.

On one level, this is understandable. Irish whiskey can only be made in Ireland, after all.

And Tullamore Dew needed to take charge of its own destiny. At present, it sources its golden liquid under a long-term contract from rival Irish Distillers, the Pernod Ricard subsidiary that numbers heavyweight brand Jameson among its portfolio.

“We’re laying out significant investment for Tullamore Dew’s future success. We’re not doing it to own the brand for just five to six years. It’s about a long-term ownership.”

Irish whiskey is hotter than the African sun at present, especially in the United States where Pernod Ricard’s Jameson brand has led the charge. Irish whiskey sales in the US rose by 24 per cent last year to 1.7 million.

Tullamore Dew is the second biggest whiskey brand in the world behind Jameson, but it’s only a tiddler in the four biggest markets for the spirit: the US, Ireland, France and the UK.

About 700,000 cases of Tullamore Dew were shifted in 2011, up 15 per cent on the previous year. Just 15,000 of those were sold in Ireland and about 80,000 in the US.

David wants to change that and believes its distribution capabilities in the major markets will boost sales of Tullamore Dew.

“It’s got a very interesting geographic footprint and it’s also got great growth potential in places like the US.

“In the US ... it could easily be 200,000, 300,000 or 400,000 cases. We see it as having great growth potential and it was very complementary to our portfolio.”

She admires Jameson and how Pernod Ricard has successfully grown the brand but insists that Tullamore Dew offers a different experience for whiskey drinkers.

“Jameson feels like it has an international, cosmopolitan feel whereas Tullamore Dew is going back to some sort of iconic historical feeling of being Irish in terms of its attitude.”

Make of that what you will.

William Grant’s stable of Scotch whisky and other spirits is formidable. Grants is the third-largest blended whiskey in the world while Glenfiddich is the number one malt, breaking through the one million case barrier in 2011.

“It’s really doing well in all markets around the world at the moment,” David explains.

It also owns Balvenie. “We position it as the world’s most hand-crafted malt whiskey. It’s growing substantially, particularly in Asian markets. It hit record sales last year, too.”

Then there’s Hendrick’s Gin, a “super premium” product, according to David. “Its packaging is very distinctive, almost like a medicine bottle. What differentiates it from any other gin is the fact that it goes with a slice of cucumber. The taste is completely different.”

To that lot, you can add Reyka vodka, Monkey Shoulder whisky and Sailor Jerry rum, edgier brands.

William Grant’s latest published figures show it made a profit of £132 million on turnover of £951 million in 2010. David is coy about its performance last year.

“It was good, very good. Our core brands grew across the board. Overall our profits were up year-on-year, our turnover was up.”

Irish whiskey might pre-date Scotch but famine, a lack of innovation and high taxes imposed by De Valera post second World War to protect stocks, mean we lag our Celtic cousins in terms of global sales.

About five million cases of Irish whiskey are shifted annually around the world compared with 90 million cases of Scotch.

“Irish whiskey is dwarfed by Scotch but there’s no good reason for that,” David says, adding that Irish whiskey’s moment is very much now. “Irish whiskey globally is really an undervalued category. It’s so small versus its potential.”

What’s the difference between the two?

“I think it’s slightly sweeter. It’s probably easier on the palette for male and female drinking. It also mixes very well.”

The Englishwoman is coy about which she prefers most. “I love them both,” she giggles. “Of course I do. It would be like asking which of my children do I prefer. You can’t ask me that. They’re very different.”

Her route to the top job at William Grant was a circuitous one. Born in north Yorkshire, David studied engineering at Cambridge, sponsored by British Aerospace. “I started out designing aircraft,” she explains.

After university, she joined Thorn EMI, where she made the move into marketing.

“I think I was a better marketeer than an engineer. It was just one of those things. I was good at sciences at school so I went that route at university.”

After a spell marketing snack foods at another company, David left for Bacardi, another family-owned spirits group, where she spent 15 years.

“I moved to Bacardi as marketing controller for the UK, then I was marketing director for the UK and then managing director for UK and then I ran the UK, Ireland and Holland. I was global chief marketing officer there for a number of years, too.”

She is credited with the successful launch of Bacardi Breezer into the UK. “It was the right product at the right time. It looked good, it tasted good and it exploded in the UK.”

Does she still enjoy a drop of Bacardi from time to time? “I tend to drink Hendrick’s, which is my favourite, if I’m honest with you. One has to be loyal to the brands that you look after.”

She took over the top job at William Grant in August 2009, a logical upward move in her career. “William Grant are of a size where lots of people know each other. We’re not small but we’re certainly not one of the big players. The key thing is to capitalise on the strengths of what you are.”

The company celebrates its 125th anniversary this year but nothing more than an internal celebration is planned.

While the family still controls the business, no member of the clan currently has a senior role in the running of the company.

David thinks her first alcoholic drink was a sup of someone’s Advocaat liqueur one Christmas as a kid. “I certainly didn’t want to drink anything afterwards,” she says.

She’s hazy about her first “real” drink or when exactly it was imbibed. “It was probably sweet wine to be honest with you. I don’t drink sweet wine anymore.”

So how big could Tullamore Dew become?

Initially, David is cagey speaking in generalities about it having “loads of potential”. “Ultimately, I can’t tell you how much bigger it is going to be. That would be folly but substantially bigger than it is today,” she adds.

After a bit of chipping away, she eventually relents. “ five to 10 years it could become a 1 to 2 million case brand. It’s about growing it in a way where the consumer is pulling it off the shelf … rather than it being pushed on price or pushed into too much distribution, too quickly.

“At the core is building the relationship with the consumer such that they choose it by name and want to pull it off the shelf.”

Cheers.

Name:Stella David.

Position: Chief executive, William Grant & Sons.

Age: 50 in November.

Family: Married.

Lives: Sunningdale, England.

Hobbies: Bridge, skiing and keeping fit.

Something you might expect:She "loves" all of William Grant's spirits.

Something that might surprise:She's a big darts fan.

Irish whiskey globally is really an undervalued category.It's so small versus its potential