Brenne Available in EU Online

As someone who regularly tries to keep her emails distilled down to just the point (very different from my emoji-filled texts), I can only assume that the email I just fired off to my social media guru may have seemed like someone has been hitting the espresso a little hard today.

It started out like this:

“This is HUUUUUUUUGGE for us!!!! SOOOOOO many people in Europe have been asking for a place to buy Brenne online — now we finally have a partner!!!!”

Believe me, the authentic excitement is warranted. It has only taken 1.5 years (yes, years) to find a suitable retailer in France who has an online shop set up, is willing to create a link for Brenne (you’d think I have been asking people for their first borns) AND who will actually ship (aka: fill orders). In my opinion, this should not have taken this long. Hence the original title to this post: Seems Easy, Was Hard.

In my experience, France is a country where, on average, whisky over a certain price is primarily bought as gifts and thus picked up after work on the buyers way to X … why put in the extra work of selling it online? “Because,” I have pleaded, “I receive a wonderful amount of requests from people who are asking me ‘from where can they order a bottle of Brenne in Europe?’ and I would LOVE to have a site to where I can direct them!!!”

“Eh…. Peut-être un jour” (translation: “(sigh) … Maybe one day”)

[Insert spike in blood pressure for one particular whisky loving entrepreneur]

But alas, on my most recent visit to France just last week, I had the absolute pleasure of touring the brand new Whisky Shop Paris, located in the very chic 8th arr. at 7 Place de la Madeleine. I told Imogen Bankier, the inspiring director of the shop, that it felt like I was in the Dior of whisky stores. It’s DIVINE inside – especially the first and currently only “House of Walker” in Europe, located on the 2nd floor (it’s so new that at the time of publishing this post, JW hasn’t even listed it on their site).

The House of Walker, located on the 2nd floor of The Whisky Shop Paris

Guess what? They sell Brenne. Guess what else? They now sell Brenne ONLINE.

But wait … it get’s even better. Now through the end of 2016, The Whisky Shop Paris will offer FREE SHIPPING to anywhere in the UK, France and Belgium. 

Did you just fall over?! I did. I’m so excited I just stopped my day to write this post and make this little graphic:

 

So, if you have emailed the Brenne website with this specific request recently, get ready to finally hear back from me with good news. 😀

 

Advertisement

Trying to Restart

I am shaking my head as I type this … where do I begin? It’s IMPOSSIBLE to share what has been going on in my world with a single post – so I am going to begin with a “restart”. I’ve had months of “publish block” — unable to hit “publish” on posts I have taken hours to write. Why? Because of fear. SOOOO appropriate considering the last post I DID publish was on how to PUSH THROUGH fear! Ugh.

So on the 8hr+ flight home to NYC from Paris yesterday, I asked myself: what are you ACTUALLY afraid of with regards to this blog? Not being perfect? (kinda, but not really). And then I realized: I just can’t talk exclusively about “whisky” … my life is so much bigger than that one topic, and since whisky IS my life, they are interwoven so tightly that I do not know how to separate them. For me to write authentically, I simply can’t just share about whisky.

“SO F*** IT” I told myself, “The Whisky Woman” doesn’t have to mean anything beyond my “nickname” so to speak. I can just share the happenings of my life because what is happening is so wild I feel like some days I am living inside a really incredible movie.

In fact, when things have become nearly paralyzingly tough this year, the catch phrase that my friends have started saying is, “Well, it’ll be GREAT for the book!” And to repeat, since my life’s work IS whisky, our favorite topic will always be invariably involved in the subjects.

In January I had a sense that this year was going to be “big” … how big I did not know. But at least I was right about that. One of the awesome things that happened was that I have been blessed to welcome Katie Schloss to my team – an incredibly savvy woman with an eye for design, a brain for social media that intimidates me in the best possible ways, and a heart as big as Manhattan. Katie has taken Brenne’s Instagram from my “of the moment/on the fly” posts to a page that actually helps tell our story and inspire people (myself included!).

My last email before boarding my flight was to Katie. In it, I shared how I wanted to recommit myself to my blog and really start sharing again. That I am going to do my best to move through my fears and actually DO IT. To that, she responded with this:

---

“Erin Fetherston had a collection of dresses titled “Urban Flowers” when I was a freshman in college.  “Urban Flowers,” to her, are the tiny, little weeds and flowers that look dainty, but who are able to work their way through the elements, through the concrete, and grow through the surface into the light.  Being one of the only women to own her own whisky company (period, end stop), going through everything you’ve overcome this year, you have a beating-the-odds story of resilience that resonates; it just needs to be told, and it’s been an honor helping shape your story and watching your brand come to life on social platforms. :)”

---

Photo credit: Emmanuel Huybrechts from Laval, Canada

So with this, I am hoping I follow my own lead and truly “restart” my engagement here. No matter what happens, I am so incredibly grateful and blessed that you all are still here, still supporting me, still behind my goals of being a successful entrepreneur igniting the conversations of “French Whisky” and “terroir-driven Single Malts” around the world.

With a lot of love and a dram raised way up, THANK YOU. xo – Allison