Celtic Crossing owner D.J. Naylor has been hosting virtual whiskey tastings out of his home office in Midtown.
Point to a bottle, any bottle, of whiskey on the walls of D.J. Naylor’s Midtown home office, and he’ll launch into a detailed description of the vintage. And it’s not just a few varieties: The rows of liquor span distillations from all over the world, from the expected countries like Ireland and Scotland, to farther-flung locales like Japan. “Ireland, in terms of new distilleries, is on fire right now,” says Naylor. “Just like the beer business has moved to the craft revolution, now we’re seeing micro distilleries opening basically throughout the world, even in places like Taiwan and Japan.”
It might be a given that the Celtic Crossing owner knows whiskey, but Naylor’s first business in town was real estate. He arrived in Memphis after a decade of consulting experience at KPMG and mainly purchased rental properties. “Nowadays, we’ve got 65 doors, and then we have a few other projects going on,” he says. Naylor splits his time focusing on his real estate business (Naylo Properties) and Celtic from his home office, and runs them both with his wife, Jamie. (Their little dog, Milo, snoozing in a dog bed at the foot of the desk, does his part as well.)
A bobblehead of the Grizzlies‘ Jaren Jackson Jr. stands next to a custom-made model of Naylor.
The walls of the office are adorned with knick-knacks and souvenirs from all over the world, as well as plenty of family photographs. Everything on the shelves behind his desk pays tribute to Naylor’s greatest loves: “In order, I’d say it’s family, soccer, business, golf, pets, and until recently, travel.” There’s plenty of sports paraphernalia, too. A Liverpool fan, Naylor displays a photograph of himself at the 2016 Europa League final, contested between Liverpool and Sevilla in Basel, Switzerland. There’s also a personalized bobblehead of Naylor, wearing a red Liverpool jersey and holding a golf club, lined up next to Grizzlies star Jaren Jackson, Jr.
And while plenty of routine paperwork is done in his office, the space has hosted a much more exciting event since the pandemic hit. With business slow across the hospitality industry, Naylor decided to start holding virtual whiskey tastings over Zoom. Many of the massive collection of varied bottles in his office have been accumulated in 2020. “Every tasting has a particular theme,” he explains. “Sometimes we might be doing all single malts. Another time, we’re only focusing on whiskey from Canada.”
Naylor has a wall lined with whiskey bottles in his office. While many are recognizable brands, others are rare and limited-release bottles.
When he selects each option for the tasting, Naylor goes all in to learn everything he can about the vintage. For an upcoming Canada-based tasting, he points to a bottle of Waterford. “This will be my first time trying this, but I’ve already made a connection with them,” he says. “I will speak to the CEO and learn a great deal about them. And the idea behind these are that every field has different barley. So what impact does it have on the whiskey? Via the tasting, I’ll take you to Waterford, I’ll take you to meet the master distiller, and we’ll learn a lot of particular facts about Waterford.”
When it’s time for a tasting, Naylor sets up a high table in front of his whiskey wall. There, he details the rich history of each vintage before the viewers dive into the samples. And even though there are plenty of bottles, Naylor plans to continue with his due diligence. “I won’t do a whiskey unless I can figure out all the details about it,” he says. “If you picked a whiskey from up there or asked me to pick three for a private tasting, I’d have to know everything about them before I selected them.”
With the pandemic looking to stretch on for a while longer, Naylor’s whiskey collection will likely continue to grow as he dives deeper into research. But while he’ll keep putting the work in to curate the best possible tasting, the experience ties back to running Celtic Crossing, a venture that manages to incorporate so many of Naylor’s passions into one. There’s plenty of whiskey to be had at the Irish pub’s patio, shared among soccer supporters of many different teams who gather together for the communal love of the sport. When everything is in service of that passion, it doesn’t seem like such a bad way to work.
Naylor, an avid soccer fan, has traveled to plenty of matches in Europe, including the 2016 Europa League final.
