Daniel Whittington's Instagram bio reads: "A whisky youtuber, a whisky somm, a whiskey drinker, a Chancellor, a musician, and a business consultant with a reasonable taste in hats." That description barely seems to scratch the surface of what Daniel has done in the whisk(e)y community.
Daniel's Whiskey Vault YouTube Channel has nearly 450,000 viewers and approximately 2,100 videos. Daniel founded the Whisky Marketing School in 2015, where he created the Whisk(e)y Sommelier course, and he is the Chancellor of Wizard Academy in Austin, TX, a "Non-Traditional, Non-Profit, Non-Boring Business School." Daniel also co-founded the Whiskey Tribe community and YouTube Channel, and co-founded Crowded Barrel Whiskey in Austin, TX. Before Daniel's whisky journey started, he spent 20 years as a studio and touring musician.
Our chat with Daniel covered, among many other things, spirits education (including which programs and certifications are best suited for which purposes), the importance of knowing how and when to communicate about whisk(e)y (and when not to), the overlap between the sensory experience of a spirit and EQ (for all you spirits and music nerds like us), the current state of the whiskey industry, and how to make a great gin and tonic that actually tastes like a cocktail.
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