Not long to go before we have our biggest event yet, Bricking It, – when everyone that bought their brick for The Plenum Wall, gets a chance to come along to our site and cement their brick into the wall. For those of you that might need to refresh your memory, here’s a link to […]
Read MoreNot long to go before we have our biggest event yet, Bricking It, – when everyone that bought their brick for The Plenum Wall, gets a chance to come along to our site and cement their brick into the wall.
For those of you that might need to refresh your memory, here’s a link to the article that announced this as A Brick for Life.
Brick owners will be forever immortalised into our feature wall, with their name (or chosen name if they bought bricks as gifts for friends or family) engraved and painted into a stainless steel plate, that will be wrapped around a brick that will then be part of the wall at the main entrance to Building 3.
Additional perks for brick owners include a free measure of our finest spirit every single time the brick owner comes to visit our distillery – for life. Subject of course to the brick owner being over the legal age for drinking alcohol and they are not driving!
The event will be pretty simple and straight forward and an agenda will probably look something like:
Bricking It will be held on Saturday 29th July, 2023, starting at about 10am.
Longyan is blessed with some amazing infrastructure. It has high speed roads (you might call them motorways or highways) in all directions that connect with the national network of roads covering all of China.
Longyan has a fantastic, high speed train station, with trains coming in from all over China. It is served by both the G-series and the D-Series trains and most parts of China have multiple train options every single day of the week. Our site is a 30 minute taxi journey from Longyan station.
For those of you that prefer to fly to Bricking It, then the most suitable national and international airport is Xiamen. From Xiamen airport, you can easily get connecting trains to Longyan. Again, a short taxi ride will get you to our site.
Use this form below to register for your attendance.
If you enjoyed reading about how we currently don’t see any alternatives to Dramfunded, and you would like to catch up with some of our past articles, then please CLICK HERE and go to our News Section, where most of our other content is published.
One of the easiest ways to help our project succeed is to take an interest in anything we have for sale. You can find out what we have if you CLICK HERE and go to our shop. We’ll make a few percentage points (after sales tax) and this goes directly to our project.
You could help us by simply buying your very own Brick for Life – a brick with a steel name plate wrapped around it, which will be cemented into The Plenum (our feature wall) in July 2023. Every brick owner is entitled to a free dram for life every time they visit us in Longyan, Fujian.
Or, you could learn more about being involved and help us grow to our target of 1000 stakeholders. You can read more about how we are Dramfunded if you CLICK HERE. Remember, we currently have no alternatives to Damfunded!
Last, but as important as all the other points above, you can help us by reading, liking and sharing our content across some of the more popular platforms.
LinkedIn users you can CLICK HERE to follow us.
Facebook users, you can CLICK HERE.
YouTube users, you can CLICK HERE.
Twitter users, you can CLICK HERE.
Instagram users, you can CLICK HERE.
Or follow us on WeChat using the QR code below.
We’re almost half way through the year so it seems a good time for us to give an update on our construction progress so far and some of our favourite milestones alone the way. The Land Parcel Let’s start with our land. What did we actually buy and what did it look like before we […]
Read MoreWe’re almost half way through the year so it seems a good time for us to give an update on our construction progress so far and some of our favourite milestones alone the way.
Let’s start with our land. What did we actually buy and what did it look like before we started working on it?
The first major task was to level out land out. In total, more than 14,000 cubic meters of earth were removed from the site.
We had to prepare the land by installing some key infrastructure. Electricity, water, drainage and a foundation for the tower crane as pictured below.
Even with levelling the land and removing more than 14,000 cubic meters of earth, we still had to excavate for foundations. The first excavations were for Building 3. A total of 8,600 cubic meters were excavated. In total, we will have excavated 46,000 cubic meters of earth for the land levelling, the foundation pits for all of the buildings and all of the supporting infrastructure.
It wouldn’t’ be a construction update without some numbers right? The numbers behind the steel and concrete are something of a wow factor. Starting with the steel alone, there is a total of 3780 tons (over 3 million kilograms) of steel being used in our construction. Concrete comes in at 24,600 cubic meters. 45,000 square meters of wooden boards for concrete formwork and 750,000 bricks!
Finally for the construction progress in images, here are some highlights of how the site has changed over time.
One of the most frequently asked questions that we get is when will it all be finished.
We’re still on target to have construction completed before the end of this year (2023) and we’ll be producing spirit early next year in 2024.
That’s it for our construction progress update.
If you enjoyed reading about how we currently don’t see any alternatives to Dramfunded, and you would like to catch up with some of our past articles, then please CLICK HERE and go to our News Section, where most of our other content is published.
One of the easiest ways to help our project succeed is to take an interest in anything we have for sale. You can find out what we have if you CLICK HERE and go to our shop. We’ll make a few percentage points (after sales tax) and this goes directly to our project.
You could help us by simply buying your very own Brick for Life – a brick with a steel name plate wrapped around it, which will be cemented into The Plenum (our feature wall) in July 2023. Every brick owner is entitled to a free dram for life every time they visit us in Longyan, Fujian.
Or, you could learn more about being involved and help us grow to our target of 1000 stakeholders. You can read more about how we are Dramfunded if you CLICK HERE. Remember, we currently have no alternatives to Damfunded!
Last, but as important as all the other points above, you can help us by reading, liking and sharing our content across some of the more popular platforms.
LinkedIn users you can CLICK HERE to follow us.
Facebook users, you can CLICK HERE.
YouTube users, you can CLICK HERE.
Twitter users, you can CLICK HERE.
Instagram users, you can CLICK HERE.
Or follow us on WeChat using the QR code below.
I’m actually writing this on Sunday 14th May, the day after the Nine Rivers Distillery Open Day where some of us made a pilgrimage to the new home of whisky in China.. I was one of the attendees (I wouldn’t have missed it for the world!) and after what can only be described as an […]
Read MoreI’m actually writing this on Sunday 14th May, the day after the Nine Rivers Distillery Open Day where some of us made a pilgrimage to the new home of whisky in China.. I was one of the attendees (I wouldn’t have missed it for the world!) and after what can only be described as an amazing experience, I felt it was about time for me to step forward and write my contribution to the story of Nine Rivers Distillery.
I guess I should start with introducing myself, so here goes.
I’m Jan Lægaard Broni, and I come from the beautiful Kingdom of Denmark. Fun fact, the UK isn’t the only country in Europe to have a monarchy and despite what people might think, the Kingdom of Denmark is the oldest Kingdom in Europe, dating back more than 1200 years!
I’m from a small town called Grenaa, famous for fishing, white sand beaches, a ferry connection to Sweden (in Denmark we need to make sure we always have a way to send the Swedish back home!) and the home of “de Danske Sprit fabrikker” – a type of traditional distilled alcohol.
I have a mechanical engineering degree which I then furthered with a business management degree. My career spans a few different industries before I ended in in the medical and physical rehabilitation industry, where I’ve been for more than 25 years.
I first came to China for a short trip in 2003. I then had the opportunity to come back in 2007 as the GM for AluRehab, a leading manufacturer of high end wheelchairs. A few mergers and acquisitions later, and we are now part of a much larger group called Meyra. I continue to be the GM for the original AluRehab factory, but I’m also the EVP for Global Supply Chain for Merya Group.
It was here in China that I met my wife, who is originally from Yichun in Heilongjiang. We got married and we have a daughter. The rest as we say is history.
I’m blessed to live in Xiamen, which I personally consider to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It has everything for anyone that wants a peaceful life in beautiful surroundings but also enjoys the convenience of living in a large, modern and developed city. There really is no where I would rather be in the world.
As a Dane doing business in China, and having a place in my heart for both Denmark and China, it was important to me both personally and professionally, to involve myself in developing bridges between both countries, through business and commerce. So I got involved in the Danish Chamber of Commerce here in China.
In 2009 I was elected to the Danish Chamber of Commerce in South China. In 2014 I was elected to Chairman for the Danish Chamber of Commerce in South China. In March 2023, I was elected to Chairman for the Danish Chamber of Commerce for all of China.
As with all people from Denmark, we would traditionally drink either beer (Carlsberg of course is Danish) or Snaps (that’s not a typing error, this is how we spell it in Danish – in other parts of the world it’s spelled “schnapps“). Which I did too in my early years.
However, during the late 1990’s I was travelling a lot within the UK and mostly in Scotland. There were almost never any of the big brand international hotel groups in the remote places I was visiting, so I would always end up staying in local inns. Local hospitality was always underpinned with a dram or two from the innkeeper.
After a few of these experiences, I stayed at an inn very close to the ferry that took people to Islay. It was here that I was introduced to a heavily peated whisky that blew my tastebuds into another world. My interest in whisky turned into a fanatical obsession from that point. It was the first time any drink from any country in the world really make me say “wow”.
I joined a whisky club on my return to Denmark (a shout out here to everyone at the Braband Whisky Club, where my brother is the Chairman!) and even now, being in China for so long, I still attend one of their events each year, typically in January when I am on my annual holidays across Christmas and the New Year.
Ironically through wine – although no doubt a lot of the other people involved in Nine Rivers Distillery will scorn me for even mentioning anything other than whisky!
I started off in one of the many wine groups that are led by Jay and his team. I then found out about the whisky groups, and of course jumped straight in as I really do love whisky. I then noticed frequent references to Nine Rivers Distillery, searched the internet, found the website, filled out a form to learn more…….and then nothing.
After a few weeks I gave Jay a nudge and explained I’d heard nothing. A few hours later, my original message was dug out of a spam bin and then Jay and I talked over the next few evenings so I could understand more about the project.
Like many people, we’ve all heard about startup distilleries. There’s a new one every other day on LinkedIn. Whether it’s gin, rum, whisky or any combination of them all together. They are often little more than slide decks and wishful thinking. Being the naturally cautious person that I am, I put Jay through the mangle in terms of drilling down into the real details, to make sure that this project wasn’t just another one of those pipe dreams.
What really stood out to me, aside from the fact that every single base was covered, was the involvement of so many other investors. Sure, there are people that have invested because they want to earn a good return. I understand that. But the fact that there is an open door for every investor to get more involved with the limits only being how much spare time they have and their own imagination, is what really grabbed my attention. An opportunity for me to use some of my spare time to add value to the project pulled me in.
Most of my contributions to the project haven’t been that visible. I’m not a graphic designer, a branding guru, a social media expert or any of those skill areas that are immediately visible to the outside world. Where I’ve contributed the most in around the more strategic areas. The business side of things. The commercials. The framework of management that isn’t typically considered with most startups (let’s be fair, most startups just don’t have the resources available to consider mapping out an organisation for the next year – let alone the next decade or two). Policies, procedures, HR governance – everything we will need once we start producing and of course selling product. We’re anticipating a speed of growth that if we don’t plan and organise in advance, we’ll get buried in our own momentum.
Concurrently, I help organise regular whisky networking events in Xiamen with three other members of the Nine Rivers Distillery family, Jamal, Jeremy and Marc. Jamal is a long time friend, and also mentioned in one of our previous articles. If you missed it, you can find it if you CLICK HERE – a really fun read if you missed it the first time around. Marc was also featured in a previous article which you can find if you CLICK HERE.
My contributions resulted in an appointment as a board advisor and that eventually became a position on the board of directors. A role I still hold today.
Living in Xiamen, about 90 minutes away from the site, it’s close enough for me to visit regularly, and I have done. I was there on site in February with my wife and daughter with some of the other board directors where we stood in the pit that was excavated for what is now Building 3. At that point there was more than 8000 cubic meters excavated and it really was something beyond imagination.
I was there on site again, for the May 13th Open Day with lots of other investors. That very same pit now had the sub-basement water storage tanks for 1.8 million litres of water, the basement for the plant equipment, the first floor and the mezzanine floor all built. There’s a really good video of the day on our WeChat video channel. Just 3 months from a pit to almost a third of the steel and concrete being in place. There’s really only one place in the world that can build at this speed and that’s China. The term “China Speed” is one of the many unique things that make China the most exciting country to be in.
At the risk of sounding biased, there really are some exciting times ahead for all of us. We have the next big event in July (the last weekend of July – book it out in your diary now!) where we will all start laying the first bricks. These will be the bricks of The Plenum Wall, where hundreds of us (both investors and non-investors, who want to support our project and be a part of our story) will have our names on steel plates, cemented into the wall on the staircase of Building 3).
Then it’s full steam ahead to get the construction finished before the end of this year. Then install our stills and equipment, so we can start producing spirit early next year.
Feel free to get in touch with me. Everyone is welcome to our Xiamen Whisky Networking events and we have a WeChat group for organising it. I’m always there and happy to talk to anyone about our project.
Just remember. If you want to share a whisky with me, we’ll have none of that Slàinte Mhath nonsense toasting. Aside from the fact, it’s actually Irish Gaelic in origin (albeit spelt Slàinte Mhaith by the Irish) and only highjacked by Scotch drinkers in modern times, it doesn’t have the same history as a traditional Danish toast. Over in Denmark, we’ve been using “Skål” (pronounced like “Skoal” – rhymes with “coal”) for 5000 years. A good 4200 years longer than Irish Gaelic reached the lowlands of Scotland and about 4900 years longer than it became a hipster thing.
If you enjoyed reading about how we currently don’t see any alternatives to Dramfunded, and you would like to catch up with some of our past articles, then please CLICK HERE and go to our News Section, where most of our other content is published.
One of the easiest ways to help our project succeed is to take an interest in anything we have for sale. You can find out what we have if you CLICK HERE and go to our shop. We’ll make a few percentage points (after sales tax) and this goes directly to our project.
You could help us by simply buying your very own Brick for Life – a brick with a steel name plate wrapped around it, which will be cemented into The Plenum (our feature wall) in July 2023. Every brick owner is entitled to a free dram for life every time they visit us in Longyan, Fujian.
Or, you could learn more about being involved and help us grow to our target of 1000 stakeholders. You can read more about how we are Dramfunded if you CLICK HERE. Remember, we currently have no alternatives to Damfunded!
Last, but as important as all the other points above, you can help us by reading, liking and sharing our content across some of the more popular platforms.
LinkedIn users you can CLICK HERE to follow us.
Facebook users, you can CLICK HERE.
YouTube users, you can CLICK HERE.
Twitter users, you can CLICK HERE.
Instagram users, you can CLICK HERE.
Or follow us on WeChat using the QR code below.
Those of you following our story would have noticed we had an Open Day here on site in Longyan, on Saturday 13th May 2023. Some of our investors came to review the progress of the project so far, and to get a real, hands on experience of the scale of the project. While we live […]
Read MoreThose of you following our story would have noticed we had an Open Day here on site in Longyan, on Saturday 13th May 2023. Some of our investors came to review the progress of the project so far, and to get a real, hands on experience of the scale of the project.
While we live stream the construction and release regular videos on the progress of the construction, they don’t really do any justice to our project.
We have an event scheduled for the last weekend of July 2023, but the concern was simply that by the end of July, all of the steel and concrete will be completed for our first three buildings, and so a lot of the magic will be over and done with. Getting people to the site before July was something we really wanted to do and capturing some of their opinions on their experience.
We grabbed a few short videos from some of the attendees which we’ll put into a video and release soon (we just need to work out how to cobble together H.265 videos when we can only work with H.264….suggestions welcome in the comments below). In the meantime, here are some highlights below.
I won’t bore everyone with my story as it’s already been covered in an article. But one thing I will say is that this really needs to be seen to be appreciated. I’d been hearing “wait until you see it” for months now and so when the opportunity came up to go over and visit, there was no way I was going to miss it.
I arrived here last night from Guangzhou. Probably about 8 hours traveling door to door (and the same again tomorrow when I go home) but it was worth every single minute of traveling. Being on the mezzanine floor and thinking that there will be another 3 floors on top of this – and this is just ONE of the 4 buildings was a really amazing feeling. Especially when you consider that this is ours. It’s our project. It’s our money. It’s our commitment. It’s our dedication.
Most people would expect something of this scale to be put together by one of the massive industry monsters with their billions in the bank. But it’s not. It’s just a couple of hundred whisky enthusiasts and a lot of optimism.
I guess I should start with explaining why I’m “Spannerwoman”. It comes from the fact that my husband’s nickname is Spannerman (see above, Graham Bannerman AKA Spannerman) and some smartarse decided that Spannerwoman would be a more fitting name for me.
I actually got involved in this project because of my husband. He was keen to be a part of the distillery since the beginning and has invested in the project. I decided to come along and make sure this was all real and legitimate (we all know that men are often not the smartest of creatures, especially when under the influence of whisky) and, well there’s no denying now that it is real.
I’ll admit, I’m lost on the numbers. I don’t have a clue what 7.5 million LPA actually means (apparently it means a LOT of whisky) and it seems to be a huge challenge that these whisky lovers have taken on, but at least my husband hasn’t bought into some weird timeshare scam, or spend his money on some virtual nonsense coins or those stupid NFT things!
I came down from Wuhan last night with 3 others. We considered it to be a rehearsal for the big event in July when there should be more of us representing Wuhan.
Wuhan has been involved in Whisky Networking events since the early days, so logically there are Wuhan whisky lovers that are involved in Nine Rivers Distillery. We’re involved on a daily basis, even if it’s only sharing content on social media project.
It was quite amazing to finally see things in real life. Kinda like being a kid at Christmas for a whisky lover such as me. I ended up filling two memory cards with the photos I took. Personally I can’t wait until July. So I can cement in my bricks in The Plenum Wall.
I came down last night as one of the 4 people from Wuhan. We’re all friends through Wuhan Whisky Networking and we’ve all been involved in Nine Rivers Distillery since the early days.
Having seen all the architecture, the measurements, the 3D renders, and watching all of the update videos, I really thought I knew what to expect.
But then I didn’t.
When I walked onto the site, where we started with Building 1 (the first “rick house” as we would call it in the USA) and I saw the outline of the building with the concrete beams. It started to sink in a bit. But it was Building 3, where we all went up the steps and stood where the mezzanine viewing area would be. That’s then I realised that this distillery is huge.
I’m just really happy and proud that I decided to get involved when Lucas first brought us all into this project.
I’m another one of the Wuhan crew that came down for Open Day. I had actually just landed back in China the day before I traveled, and I missed my train on Friday to come down to Longyan. Drained with jet lag I managed to book another train and get there (albeit it later than planned) just in time for the Open Day on Saturday.
It really was worth the time and the effort to get there. A real game changer for me and many others involved to actually be there and see it for real.
Last but not least from the Wuhan crew, it’s me. Being the tallest person there, I can confidently say that the site looks even better, from up here, at my altitude.
I was originally introduced to whisky by Lucas, our glorious leader in Wuhan, who has been teaching us all about whisky over these last few years with whisky events. He then introduced us all to Nine Rivers Distillery and while at first I thought it was kinda crazy to try and do something on such a vast scale, having now seen it, I’m happy for the bragging rights that being involved is going to give me.
How many whisky enthusiasts can say that they are a founder, an investor and a shareholder in a 7.5 million LPA whisky distillery? Well I can. Plus I’ve got pictures to prove it because I was here on Open Day.
We have already published a video about our Open Day, so if you’d like to see that then here are the links:
If you’re based outside of China, then we have the video on YouTube, so CLICK HERE to watch it.
If you’re based inside China, you can find the video on our WeChat channel.
If you enjoyed reading about how we currently don’t see any alternatives to Dramfunded, and you would like to catch up with some of our past articles, then please CLICK HERE and go to our News Section, where most of our other content is published.
One of the easiest ways to help our project succeed is to take an interest in anything we have for sale. You can find out what we have if you CLICK HERE and go to our shop. We’ll make a few percentage points (after sales tax) and this goes directly to our project.
You could help us by simply buying your very own Brick for Life – a brick with a steel name plate wrapped around it, which will be cemented into The Plenum (our feature wall) in July 2023. Every brick owner is entitled to a free dram for life every time they visit us in Longyan, Fujian.
Or, you could learn more about being involved and help us grow to our target of 1000 stakeholders. You can read more about how we are Dramfunded if you CLICK HERE. Remember, we currently have no alternatives to Damfunded!
Last, but as important as all the other points above, you can help us by reading, liking and sharing our content across some of the more popular platforms.
LinkedIn users you can CLICK HERE to follow us.
Facebook users, you can CLICK HERE.
YouTube users, you can CLICK HERE.
Twitter users, you can CLICK HERE.
Instagram users, you can CLICK HERE.
Or follow us on WeChat using the QR code below.
We’re going to break the normal tradition for our article this week, and dedicate the day to our Whisky Cat. Sadly, Whisky Cat passed away on 3rd May 2023 and while she is gone, she will not be forgotten. Whisky Cat, (or Dengshan (登山客) as she was known to Daniel, her pet human) was our […]
Read MoreWe’re going to break the normal tradition for our article this week, and dedicate the day to our Whisky Cat.
Sadly, Whisky Cat passed away on 3rd May 2023 and while she is gone, she will not be forgotten.
Whisky Cat, (or Dengshan (登山客) as she was known to Daniel, her pet human) was our project mascot since the very beginning of the Nine Rivers Distillery journey. She was a part of our project since the earliest times, where she held a presence in numerous brain numbing, number crunching workshops where Daniel put his math geek brain to use checking, double checking and triple checking all of the numbers that underpin our project.
We’re not just talking about bean counting kind of numbers. Those are the easy things to work out. A spreadsheet and a few auto sums can do most of that legwork anyway, so it’s not really much of a challenge.
We’re talking about all the really hardcore maths. The kind of maths that would make an average person cry. The maths that underpin our IP and our patents. Really geeky statistical modelling that connect all the science to the real world that gave us the confidence to start this project in the first place.
We’ll be having a drink on site on Saturday 13th May (during our first open day) in memory of Dengshan and her name will be the first that is cemented into our Plenum Wall.
In the meantime, here are some pictures in her memory.
Rest in peace Whisky Cat.
If you enjoyed reading about how we currently don’t see any alternatives to dramfunded, and you would like to catch up with some of our past articles, then please CLICK HERE and go to our News Section, where most of our other content is published.
One of the easiest ways to help our project succeed is to take an interest in anything we have for sale. You can find out what we have if you CLICK HERE and go to our shop. We’ll make a few percentage points (after sales tax) and this goes directly to our project.
You could help us by simply buying your very own Brick for Life – a brick with a steel name plate wrapped around it, which will be cemented into The Plenum (our feature wall) in July 2023. Every brick owner is entitled to a free dram for life every time they visit us in Longyan, Fujian.
Or, you could learn more about being involved and help us grow to our target of 1000 stakeholders. You can read more about how we are Dramfunded if you CLICK HERE. Remember, we currently have no alternatives to dramfunded!
Last, but as important as all the other points above, you can help us by reading, liking and sharing our content across some of the more popular platforms.
LinkedIn users you can CLICK HERE to follow us.
Facebook users, you can CLICK HERE.
YouTube users, you can CLICK HERE.
Twitter users, you can CLICK HERE.
Instagram users, you can CLICK HERE.
Or follow us on WeChat using the QR code below.