Eulich in the Hildegard Bar by Thomas
Plant in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Fritz Hendrick Melle sits in a back room and waits. Melle is what you could undoubtedly call a multi-talent. Born in 1960 in Chemnitz (at that time still Karl-Marx-Stadt), school, high school diploma, training as a papermaker. Then jobs across the garden: drivers, stokers,
graves. The study of theology ended abruptly after four semesters.
In December 1985, four years before German reunification, I left for the West. In the previous years, Hendrick Melle made an unpleasant impression on the system: he published illegal magazines, was heavily involved in the creative underground, founded a music project with the wonderful name "criminal dance band".
His first book (“Richtiges Leben”) was published in 1990, with more to follow. Then in 1993 he founded the advertising agency Melle•Pufe. The world owes Hendrick Melle such iconic advertising slogans as "Berlin, you are so wonderful" for Berliner Pilsner.
2014: The agency, which Melle manages together with Stefan Hansen, becomes part of the joint venture Private Pier Industries - and now things are getting a bit more colorful in the work and work of Hendrick Melle: Irish dogs are first created under the umbrella of this company -
futter produced, subsequently founded a fashion label and in between founded the whiskey brand Grace O'Malley. How do you go from dog food to whiskey?
Melle: “Rather by chance. The dog food was Stefan and me's entry into Ireland. He's always had a high affinity with the country because he's played Irish rugby. Since rugby is an Irish national sport, contact with the people there was inevitable and we immediately had a good connection to Ireland. So we started making our dog food there. Then one day we got a call from a friend of a friend who owned the Grace O'Malley brand but had no idea what to do with it. Then we met him. And finally, from him we have the story of Grace
O'Malley heard..."
Grace O'Malley (1530–1603) was an Irish pirate and rebel. Legends surround her life at the time of the English kings
nigin Elizabeth I Grace fought upright against the English Ireland policy.
“My first thought was: Go for it! The story, the person - it couldn't be more perfect. And so we came up with the idea of making the first whiskey to be named after a woman.
And at this point I was completely an advertiser again: From my point of view, the campaign was rock solid, now 'only' the product was missing."
There's an old adage that if you want to sell whiskey, you need whiskey to sell - which is actually not as trivial as it sounds. With lots of support from friends and colleagues who all loved the story about the Irish rebel, the two partners ended up in contact with John Teeling, a living legend of Irish whiskey.
“We met John for a three hour meeting and he and Stefan talked about rugby for two and a half hours. Shortly before the end of the conversation, John said to an employee:
'Sell the boys what they want' - and that's how we got our whiskey. However, that was only half the fun. They say: 80 percent is the barrel, 20 percent the distillate. And since we didn't just want to resell whiskey that others had distilled, but wanted to produce our own excellent product, we weren't at the end of the journey." Someone then gave Melle and Hansen Paul Caris' phone number - a name, which they had never heard before - and they picked up the phone.
“Caris is one of the best master blenders in the world, award-winning. He has already made everything: rum, gin and of course whiskey. We didn't know that when we called - probably wouldn't have if we had.
knew."
Then everything actually happened relatively quickly: Caris had been given a free hand by Hendrick Melle and Stefan Hansen and blended an excellent Irish whiskey from the most diverse types of casks.
Grace O'Malley is the preliminary high point in Hendrick's exciting vita
Melle, a multi-talent and outstandingly exciting and interesting person. But only for the time being: there are already a lot of plans for all sorts of things. You can – no: you should – be excited.
