Making A Big Deal (Whisky) In Middle-earth
Diageo's Game of Thrones range disenfranchised two powerhouse fandoms. Pōkeno could have done marketing with a side of whisky too, but instead it's all whisky-first, with a side of Elevensies.
This is whisky with a side of fun, which is something desperately needed. That’s what comes to mind looking at, tasting and seeing The Lord of the Rings™ Ringbearer Single Malt Whisky released to market this week, released by Pōkeno and made in collaboration with Syzygy Forge. But it’s also something to take very, very seriously in the whisky stakes.
There is perhaps no greater evidence for the power of a well-loved brand than what happens in a licensing deal. And making something in collaboration with Syzygy Forge is a big, Big Deal. There are few brands loved with the devotion of Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit/JRR Tolkien fans. The epic film franchise is a masterclass in the depth, spending power and spinoff opportunities that a fandom can create, and why wouldn’t a whisky brand want in on that? You are essentially negotiating access to someone else’s devoted fandom, where quality, alignment and execution all multiply brand trust — and sales, when done well. And this is why big licence deals are complex, challenging and expensive.
Often the bigger the brand, the more guidelines to follow, the more can go wrong and as a producer you have to make compromises along the way—while hoping you don’t lose your way—while bringing the brands together. And usually, it’s the licensed brand that rules them all. Unless you’re Taylor Swift and Toy Story (IYKYK - Taylor rules everything).
A brand pays for the license to put a famous name, movie franchise or TV show on a label, and the retail price of the base product can triple based on absorbing the licence fee alone. Most importantly, you have two groups of ardent fans to get it right for.
Can You Break A Targaryen Curse?
Does anyone remember the Game of Thrones whisky series? Let me fill you in on how bad a marketing campaign with a side of whisky can get. They managed to annoy almost everyone.
A licensing deal that mostly started in travel retail, before finishing on the retail clearance floor, the Diageo/HBO Game of Thrones series matched a distillery to each of the Houses represented in the rocketship series. They said “we get to bring some of Scotland’s best whiskies to the world.”
Somehow, they managed to disappoint both fans of the show and of the distilleries involved. A rolling wave of cynicism struck even the most sympathetic of reviewers, with most bottlings labelled average to below-par for the distilleries involved and questions looming on integrity, intention and whether Diageo were simply looking for ways to move large amounts of otherwise unusable stock in a highly lucrative collectibles market. It was, after all, at the peak of collector’s fever and high-stakes whisky commodities.
Even the whisky writers who defended the range started with the assumption it was a gimmick, not a serious whisky venture. And as far riling a devoted fan base: some of the actual pairing decisions did the sceptics' work for them: giving the southern, rose-and-thorns House Tyrell a whisky from Diageo's northernmost, coldest distillery is the kind of detail that instantly discredited the thoughtfulness of "each dram matched to its house".
Pricing told its own story too — the Cardhu bottling was sold at roughly 20% above the standard release for the same liquid, while the Royal Lochnagar was priced identically to its standard edition. A new label and a 20% premium over the exact same liquid in its regular packaging. Ask me to name the most passionate fans on the planet and I’ll give you sci-fi/fantasy fans, followed by whisky enthusiasts/whisky bros. Lack of attention to the most obvious details and charging more for the privilege is the fastest ticket to a fight you’ll ever get.
One Ring To Rule Them All
So when Matt Johns told me how the Ringbearer project started, with an approach from the licence holders, I wanted to know how a distillery that has built its reputation on singular focus around the liquid holding their brand values close, navigates something as big as a Warner Bros. Lord of the Rings deal. What follows is our conversation, with a little unlicensed opinion from me on the side.
None of this happens by accident. Matt and Céline Johns spent 20-plus years in Scotch and spirits before launching Pōkeno to market. From the beginning, they’ve had clear ideas about what they wanted the whisky (and the brand) to be and do. He’s been generous with that broad whisky knowledge, sharing it with other New Zealand distilleries as invited, rather than guarding it. So from one of the NZ whisky industry’s strongest voices, this execution is a masterclass for those paying attention.
Pōkeno has long been creating a beachhead for New Zealand whisky offshore, in part with the bold packaging that leans so heavily into flora, fauna and culture of its place alongside explorations of native timber. At times, I’ve wondered how far the boundaries can be pushed before toppling over into appropriation, but in Ringbearer, Pōkeno answers the question with a stronger argument.
Pōkeno have been building brand love at home through approachable, accessible spirit, ongoing local beer collaborations and cask plays showing the versatility of their sweet, fruity spirit. But Matt is not a Lord of the Rings superfan (at least, not up til now) and definitely skipped that class in his New Zealand residency exams. But I think Matt and the Pōkeno are the only New Zealand whisky brand who could have tackled this opportunity with absolute clarity of vision, keeping both fans front and centre and with a quality of liquid to take Middle-earth back to a global stage. Here’s why:
Is this just a golden marketing opportunity to align with a powerhouse fandom? How did you stay true to your values as a company and a whiskymaker?
This is the question Johns kept coming back to, asking himself several times. I asked him too.
Matt: I’m still not quite sure how it all happened, to be honest with you. This has been going on for about a year and a half, and it started with a visit to the distillery by a couple of American guys. Apparently they were on their way back from Hobbiton. They’d come in, tasted our whisky, loved our whisky, and then said to Gareth — our head distiller — “Are you interested in producing a whisky bottled in Middle-earth?” Gareth called me up: “You interested in doing that?” And I’m going, “What? Lord of the Rings? I’m really not sure.” I suppose I’d taken it at the start as being only half serious.
The underlying thing for me is we’re not a marketing company. My big resistance at the start was that I’m never going to do anything which is only marketing. It has to add value to the product, and I have to be able to stand up and defend it. I’m not going to get dressed up in a hobbit costume and run around saying I’ve got a Lord of the Rings bottle just because it’s Lord of the Rings.
Tash: Although some people may pay good money for that, as a bonus with the bottle.
Matt: Some people may pay good money for me running around in a hobbit costume, yeah. But we went on this journey with these guys, and it worked out that they were from a creative agency (Syzygy Forge) in the US who are licensed by Warner Bros. to produce collectibles for Lord of the Rings — and they also hold the licence for spirits from the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films. They are the only people in the world to have this licence. Which is crazy, because you have to go through this complex and complicated thing — Warner Bros. has part of the licence, there’s a group in Sweden which has another part, and everybody has to agree. Even Hobbiton does not have a licence to sell spirits, which is why you cannot buy a bottle of spirits at Hobbiton. They can do their beer, the stuff they do out of the Green Dragon Inn, but not spirits.
So gradually, over the course of about six months, we went: okay, they want to license us. We’re the only whisky distillery in Middle-earth [Pōkeno is about a 1hr 15min drive from Hobbiton, in the Waikato region — Tash] — okay, we get that. But can we make this fit with our philosophy of producing creative and innovative whiskies which are a true reflection of our culture and climate? That’s our underlying thing, that’s almost the means test.
Is it innovative and creative? Well, it’s creative because it’s Lord of the Rings — that I get. And I can make the whisky innovative. Middle-earth is intrinsically associated with New Zealand. There are 650,000 people a year who come and visit Hobbiton in the Waikato. We’re in the Waikato.
So I can make this fit within my philosophy of what I’m trying to do, providing I do something special enough with the product that it’s not just about the marketing, and providing I position the product at a price point which fits with our philosophy — whiskies people can go and buy, taste, and buy again. We’re not hitting this $800 collectors thing, which doesn’t fit with what we’re doing. It took about a year before we actually pushed the button and said, yep, we’re willing to go. All of the commercialisation of the product is done by ourselves. We are controlling the route to market, we’re controlling the price points, we’re controlling everything. That was really important to me.
Two key elements worth underlining here: Pōkeno kept control of commercialisation — meaning instead of the licence holders picking up pallets of Ringbearer to sell wherever they like, the whisky goes primarily to whisky lovers first. And the price has held with Pōkeno’s philosophy: Ringbearer lands at $229, deliberately still accessible. The other standout is that this wasn’t a simple selection of casks that already existed. Sure, they have an amazing bond store of stock, but this project was thought through from the get-go with the brief of what a Middle-earth whisky should represent and include.
How do you actually put Middle-earth in the glass?
The answer is sweet and strong, in literal and figurative layers. Matt went back to what tourists flock to New Zealand — Middle-earth — for, and some of the key flavours people associate with it.
[Note: small tighten on the setup sentence, meaning unchanged.]
Matt: This is going to sound a bit poetic now, but this is the way we did it. Lord of the Rings is all about strength — the strength of the Fellowship. So it had to be a whisky which is robust and strong. Okay, I’m going to add an element of virgin cask in there — that’s where the virgin cask came from.
In cask maturation, virgin oak refers to casks that are previously unused. When new make spirit meets virgin oak, the interactions are intense, pulling bold flavours quickly. Typically in American oak this means oodles of vanilla, caramel, coconut, some baking spice and nuttiness, depending on levels of toast or char. Often use of virgin oak can also give a textural element from barrel spice and freshness. — Tash
Matt: And you’ve got a whole mixture of personalities in the Fellowship, the nine companions. So we wanted to give the whisky different personalities. And especially, I wanted to give it a real touch of Middle-earth. What is the biggest thing associated with New Zealand for people around the world? Mānuka honey. So I had it in the back of my mind for a while: I need to play around with something with mānuka honey. Which becomes challenging, because you obviously cannot flavour your whisky with mānuka honey.
We actually found a local honey company who wanted to do barrel-aged mānuka honey. So we lent them barrels to age their mānuka honey in for six months. Then they drained the barrels — which is actually quite complicated, because when you’re draining mānuka honey out of a barrel, you have to heat the barrel to get the honey liquid enough to tip out.
Tash: Otherwise it’s very sticky.
Matt: Otherwise it’s very, very sticky. And we rinsed the barrels with hot water, because we didn’t want honey residue in the barrel — we really wanted the wood to influence it. We also seasoned some mānuka honey casks ourselves, by buying some very expensive mānuka honey, mixing it with new-make spirit, and rolling it around in barrels for six months. Then we put whisky in there to finish for a year — stock which is four and a half, five years old, to see how it came out. And it’s pretty incredible how much impact that honey has on the product. Anything more than about five or six percent in the blend is too much. So there’s only a small percentage in there, but on the finish especially, you really get those mānuka honey notes.
The final cask bill: mānuka honey casks and full-maturation muscat, both firsts for the distillery, alongside virgin oak and first-fill bourbon. The blend took six days and fifty or so attempts to balance.
Matt: We started off with fifteen different cask types when we did this product, and some of them just didn’t work together. Some stuff I thought was going to work didn’t. I was convinced an amontillado cask was going to work with mānuka honey. Didn’t at all.
Does it stand up in the glass — and does it taste like Middle-earth while still being Pōkeno?
[Note: small merge — you had this as two questions (”does it stand up” / “does it taste like Middle-earth while still being Pōkeno”), reading them as one keeps the section headers consistent in length and rhythm with the others. Split back out if you want the double-barrelled version.]
I tasted it on camera with Matt, first pour, no preview. You can read the tasting notes all day, but then you go: okay, let’s see how we go.
Matt: On the nose, you’re always going to have a bit of our — Pōkeno’s signature — citrus and tropical fruits, and you’ve got almost a bit of a herbal thing going on from the honey. Then you’re going into a robust middle palate from the virgin casks, where you’re getting the creamy vanilla bean, the stuff you’re expecting. And then it just seems to launch into this almost hot-toddy-like mānuka honey citrus ending, which I find really interesting.
Tash: Immediately in the mid-palate, it gets into that really chewy sweetness. Citrus, there’s grain happening, but there’s also some really condensed, quite intense fruit character. And then it starts to pull through that hot toddy quality — when it’s viscous with honey and whisky and lemon juice.
Matt: The crazy thing is it’s almost textural. Which is strange, because this product has been filtered through our systems like everything else. There’s no turbidity, nothing any more than our normal products, but you’ve got this real chewy, textural thing going on.
Tash: Every whisky has texture, but I don’t necessarily think about Pōkeno traditionally being texture-led, because it has that lightness, that sweetness, that fruit-forward component — the spirit underneath is a really elegant backbone. But here the texture is coming to play, and in a really exciting way. The virgin oak is definitely adding structure right from that first sip.
A note on the honey, because a common assumption is that the primary notes and impact are sweetness: mānuka is herbal, floral, spicy, almost minty, with the sweetness arriving only at the finish. The muscat cask is doing a lot of sweetening in this whisky — that zesty orange roundness sits right in the middle of the nose and balances the honey out, along with the robustness of that virgin cask.
Matt: We did a tasting at a Liquorland about three weeks ago. Twenty people there in the evening, and I pulled a bottle of the Lord of the Rings out at the end and said, “Guess what you’re going to taste — you’re the first people in the world.” Everybody between about 50 and 70, everybody sipped, and out of 20 people, 16 pre-ordered a bottle. And that wasn’t done on the basis of Lord of the Rings, because they couldn’t care about Lord of the Rings. It was done on the taste profile. That for me was important.
Where does this take New Zealand whisky next?
For me, the mānuka honey seasoned cask reads like a maturing of our technical sensibilities around mānuka as an ingredient — smoke, honey, the lot. It’s almost the next step on from a mead cask: getting really focused in on the ingredient itself. When I put that to Johns, he went one further.
Matt: Imagine a mānuka honey seasoned cask with a mānuka-smoked malt in it. Watch this space. That could be even better.
Tash: Those are words I almost never thought I’d hear you say, Matt Johns.
Matt: I know, but it’s fun. For me the product is fun. We’ve managed to keep this at a price point which is really good for the level of product it is, and the collector’s item it will become. So again: the idea is get out there, drink it, enjoy it. Don’t just put it on the shelf. Be a shame not to taste the whisky.
Watch the whole interview here, including first tastes:
Mānuka can be decisive in whisky, particularly in mānuka smoked malt, which creates a radically unique flavour profile that is both herbal, floral, sweet and smoky. But while New Zealanders think nothing of a mānuka smoked bacon butty or drizzles of honey, thinking comprehensively about how else we might treat the base ingredient with respect while pursuing new techniques and influence has required ongoing evolution for NZ whisky makers.
While mānuka honey doesn’t carry the same spice as rye grain, there are similarities in the menthol, bush mint and gentle floral profiles. And New Zealanders are really embracing rye whisky right now, which opens yet more possibilities.
So where are we left on the big question — does a licensing deal like this challenge your integrity as a whisky maker? Only if the liquid doesn’t match both brand promises and here, I think it’s clear it delivers clarification, that Middle-earth, specifically Pōkeno, is making great whisky, true to their values. And they are taking it to the world stage at volume. The personality, boldness and depth of complexity is there with genuine roots in LOTR mythos and lore. The core of New Zealand whisky making is there — and from there...
”The greatest adventure is what lies ahead."*
*This isn’t a Tolkien quote. It’s actually from “The Greatest Adventure” (The Ballad of the Hobbit), a song written by Maury Laws and Jules Bass for the 1977 Rankin/Bass animated Hobbit film. It gets attributed to Tolkien constantly online (Goodreads, AZQuotes, all the usual quote-mill suspects), but it’s not his text. Still holds true though.
The Lord of the Rings™ Ringbearer Single Malt Whisky — $229. In New Zealand now, direct from Pōkeno online and through selected Liquorland stores, plus duty free at Auckland Airport. Australia via The Whisky Club, with the US and other markets to follow.
From Tash: AI was only used to transcribe this interview and spell-check this article. For less AI and only my spelling capability, please consider upgrading your subscription — I’m only 14 subscriptions away from my next goal.