Never Say Die: How an American bourbon has been given a Yorkshire twist
Todmorden businessman David Wild is living the American dream by making an award-winning bourbon whose name has a very English backstory, writes Louisa Gregson.
A group of friends, an amazing backstory and a few twists of fate have all been behind one Yorkshire man’s foray into the world of bourbon production with an English take on an American favourite. Never Say Die was founded by Todmorden businessman David Wild alongside a transatlantic group of friends.
“When we set out to create Never Say Die, we always knew we wanted to be experimental with the ageing process and challenge the traditional bourbon-making process,” he says.
“As such, we are excited to now ‘bring bourbon home’ as we venture into the USA; bringing something completely new to the table with our English take on bourbon."
Explaining the story behind the business David, who has working class roots, adds: “I was born in the Sixties and we used to play out, and Todmorden was a good place to be brought up. I never had any thought for being in business. I’m not from a business family. It just wasn’t in the family make-up.
“My dad was a gas fitter and trade union guy, my mum was a school dinner lady, but I was lucky enough to be very good at passing exams and got to Cambridge to study natural sciences.
“I didn't really like it for a couple of years. I was like a fish out of water.
“But there were some other Northern lads – one from Redcar, one from York – and we were friends because we sort of stuck together. Part of our little group was this American guy Patrick Madden, and he was part of our group because he was also like a fish out of water
“He was an American. So he wasn't part of the upper middle class, southern English type of person you would usually find in a Cambridge college in 1983.
“Then 30 years later, we all met up again back in Cambridge for a 30-year dinner and Pat invited me and one of the other lads, Stewart, to the Kentucky Derby. “
After flying over to the States, David realised that Pat was a serious player in the American racehorse industry and a big businessman in Kentucky.
“During the day, we were just talking business with some of the guys in the box type thing and drinking bourbon. And one of them started talking about how he was in the bourbon business and so we just got interested, and a bit later on I was talking about this horse, Never Say Die,” adds David.
“The horse was born and it looked as if it wasn’t going to be very healthy or was going to die that night. And they stuck some bourbon up his nose, which is what they did in those days to give it a bit of a shock like smelling salts. And an hour later, the horse is running around the paddock, and so they call it, Never Say Die.
“That horse is then brought to England. That horse was the first American racehorse to win an English classic, the Derby in 1954 with odds of 33-1 in front of Queen Elizabeth II and Sir Winston Churchill.”
David suggested Never Say Die as a name for a bourbon. “It was just an idea that I had over a few, like I’m sure millions of people have.
Then Pat said: “Hang on a minute. You haven't heard the best bit of the story...”
After the horse went on to win the Epsom Derby, a woman in Liverpool named Mona Best had fallen in love with the name and story of Never Say Die. On a leap of faith, she pawned all of her jewellery to place a bet on him. With her new fortune, she purchased a historic Victorian home in Liverpool to transform it into a music venue.
The basement was a low-key stage for up-and-coming musicians called the Casbah Coffee Club. The opening night of the club featured a band called the Quarrymen. The band members, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, were each paid three pounds for a weekly gig.
The Quarrymen hired Mona Best's son, Peter Best, to be their next full-time drummer and he was eventually replaced by Ringo Starr.
McCartney was quoted as saying “There Would be no Beatles without Never Say Die” – and the Fab Four went on to conquer America.
“I said ‘Just think about all these big brands and stuff that are just based on frankly made up stories. And here is an unbelievable story.”
The friends then started talking about creating a bourbon brand over a period of months.
David says: “Pat brought together the finance, the boutique bourbon distillers, and we decided we were going to do it.
“We decided what we’ll do is we’ll produce a bourbon and we'll make it really good and bring it over to England in the casks. It turned out nobody's done that before and our bourbon guys said ‘We think this will really improve the flavour’.”
But then the friends faced an obstacle. Donald Trump and Michel Barnier started a trade war over aluminium and steel, and it meant the EU slapped a tariff on American products such as Harley Davidsons, Levi jeans and Kentucky bourbon, making it prohibited to import.
David says: “So that meant when we were going to launch the bourbon, we just couldn’t do it. We had to put it back. But the good thing about bourbon is the longer you leave it, the better it gets.
“So we produced bourbon, we produced it every year, and we produced some rye whisky as well. It all sat in Kentucky until we helped get together something called the Bourbon Alliance.
“In a totally different business, I’m the chairman of APR, a public affairs firm. So we set up the lobbying front of the Bourbon Alliance with Jim Beam, Jack Daniels and some of the big Americans and we lobby to get the tariffs taken off, and finally we get the tariffs taken off and we import the bourbon in the barrels.
“We launched it at the London Whisky Show a couple of years ago, the idea being that we bring it over in the barrel like the horse – we hopefully win awards, win things in England, and then we can sell it back into America like the Beatles.
“So we just thought, let’s follow the horse and that’s exactly what’s happened. That’s exactly what we're doing. Turns out it’s an absolute bomb with bourbon lovers. We’ve won all kinds of awards."
David says he and the rest of the team are proud of their unique bottle design.
“We’ve thought about it a lot. The design of the label down to the typeface is 1950s.
“The label’s meant to look like a betting ticket in the colours that Lester Piggott was wearing when he won on Never Say Die as an apprentice jockey who had never won anything before and turned out to be the greatest English jockey of all time.
“We were the best bourbon of 2023 in Forbes magazine. We've won award after award, and now we've started exporting it back to the US.”
The brand recently expanded into European markets Germany, Austria, Luxemburg, Denmark, Italy and France.
David says: "It's been incredibly good fun. And from my background, never in a million years would I have thought I've got my name on the bottle. My signature is on the bottle along with Pat.
"I love the act of the creativity involved with it, the fact that from nothing from the idea between a couple of mates, we've taken an idea and we thought about it, and we've made it a real thing that is now out there in the world.”
For more information visit https://neversaydiebourbon.com/ or @neversaydiebourbon