Speaker 1: It's Kentucky Derby day nine and the bizarre chapter in
Speaker 1: American history known as Prohibition has just ended. A whiskey salesman,
Speaker 1: Julian van Winkle, merges two smaller companies and forms the
Speaker 1: Stitzelweller Distillery not far from the Louisville. The man's preferred
Speaker 1: recipe for bourbon is a little different. He likes wheat
Speaker 1: as the secondary grain to corn, not ryan. The man
Speaker 1: knows what he wants. He demands quality. He says, we
Speaker 1: will make fine bourbon at a profit if we can,
Speaker 1: at a loss if we must, but always fine bourbon.
Speaker 1: The company flourishes. He passes it along to his son,
Speaker 1: Julian Jr. But then tough times sales drop. Bourbon becomes
Speaker 1: uncooled to drink in the sixties and seventies, and Julian Jr.
Speaker 1: Has to sell. Eventually, his son, Julian van Winkle, the
Speaker 1: third pathy's grandson, takes over the company and with some
Speaker 1: help and some good fortune the mainly just one of
Speaker 1: your hard labor, stubbornness and faith, he rebuilds the ben
Speaker 1: Winkl brand and reclaims the family legacy. It's an honor
Speaker 1: and a lot of fun They have Julian as my
Speaker 1: guest in this podcast. His story of how Pappy ben
Speaker 1: Winkle became one of the most coveted bottles of spirits
Speaker 1: in the world. It's really incredible. It was. It was stressful.
Speaker 1: You can ask us my wife Cissy, and our and
Speaker 1: our children even um, you know, I don't know, um
Speaker 1: what they thought of what I was doing back then,
Speaker 1: but I was just hanging on with my fingernails. And
Speaker 1: it's the only thing I really knew how to do. UM,
Speaker 1: so I wouldn't And I knew it was good a
Speaker 1: good product. I mean, I knew damn well as a
Speaker 1: good product. So um, I just was gonna go down
Speaker 1: with the ship, so to speak. It didn't work out,
Speaker 1: but keep trying and trying and trying, and and I
Speaker 1: you know, I am stubborn. I'm gonna ride this baby
Speaker 1: all the way down down to the grave or up
Speaker 1: to the heavens. But it luckily worked out. With a
Speaker 1: lot of doubt from a lot of people. I've talked
Speaker 1: about the book, but it's, um, it was, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's do or die. But I believe in it,
Speaker 1: which is the main thing these days. Patty van Winkl
Speaker 1: bourbon is produced at the Buffalo Trace Distillery. We'll get
Speaker 1: into all that with Julian. Why pappies is so delicious
Speaker 1: and why it's so damned hard to find even in Kentucky,
Speaker 1: whereas legend has it, there are two barrels of bourbon
Speaker 1: for every person. My first guest on the podcast says
Speaker 1: he is at least harshly to blame for pappies being
Speaker 1: so hard to find. He's right. Thompson, my good buddy
Speaker 1: and ESPN senior writer who's been writing passionately poetically about
Speaker 1: pappies more than a decade and now regrets it deeply.
Speaker 1: He says he blew that way. Wright got very close
Speaker 1: to Julian writing his excellent book Happy Land, a story
Speaker 1: of family, fine bourbon, and things that last. So right,
Speaker 1: h What is the first time that you make acquaintance
Speaker 1: with whiskey as a young lad in Clarksdale, Mississippi and
Speaker 1: the River Delta there where Tennessee Williams grew up. First
Speaker 1: time whiskey hits the taste buds? God? Uh? First of all, sorry,
Speaker 1: mom uh, I I think it was don't say age four, No,
Speaker 1: I think we were fifteen sixteen, and it was probably
Speaker 1: Jim Beam were listening to a lot of Hank Williams Jr.
Speaker 1: In high school. So I'm assuming that's probably what it was.
Speaker 1: I mean, I hope, my god. I don't try to
Speaker 1: think where we got it. There was this liquor store
Speaker 1: in Clarksdale that famously didn't I d and like, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you could see over the counter, they were gonna
Speaker 1: sell it to you. And uh. And then the convenience
Speaker 1: stores I did really hard. And so we had this
Speaker 1: bizarre experience of whiskey being very easy to get and
Speaker 1: beer being almost impossible to get, which is not really
Speaker 1: what you want with high school kids and automobiles. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people have a gym Beams slash
Speaker 1: Jack Daniel Sir. A lot of guys do from that age.
Speaker 1: What about the first time that fine whiskey or fine
Speaker 1: bourbon kind of hits the taste buds. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: a I'm a devout Maker's Mark fan. And uh, I
Speaker 1: mean I started drinking Maker's Mark in college. Uh, and
Speaker 1: you know it it's still is sort of because and
Speaker 1: we'll get into this maybe, but I mean it's a
Speaker 1: weeded bourbon and I like that immediately long before I
Speaker 1: even knew what Pappy van Winkle was. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I've been a I've been a Maker's Mark
Speaker 1: de vote, if that's a word, for a very long time.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I get these emails and messages
Speaker 1: and people are like, you know, I want to get
Speaker 1: my friends something. He's getting married or he got a
Speaker 1: job promotion. What kind of bourbon should I buy? And
Speaker 1: I almost always say, get him a real nice crystal
Speaker 1: decanner with his initials on it and then filled up
Speaker 1: with maker's mark. Like that's that's almost all. I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's what you should do. It's a good idea. Maker's Mark.
Speaker 1: As an interesting story, we'll get into the marketing of
Speaker 1: bourbon because it was not a long time brand. It
Speaker 1: was basically created late fifties early sixties. And I imagine
Speaker 1: these conversations in offices like Don Draper's and Mad mem Or.
Speaker 1: They figured out, let's make it the most expensive bourbon
Speaker 1: and brag about it, and we'll dip the bottle in
Speaker 1: red wax like a fine cognac. And here you are
Speaker 1: in college. Must have feeling pretty damn sophisticated drinking Maker's
Speaker 1: Mark bourbon. Right, Oh, I thought, I was quite something,
Speaker 1: especially with the diet coke I was putting in it.
Speaker 1: It took fine weeded bourbon and put diet coke with
Speaker 1: chemical sweeteners on top. I know. I mean it's like
Speaker 1: it wasn't just enough to Coca cola I had that
Speaker 1: whatever is in that stuff strict none, I don't even know.
Speaker 1: But like, sorry, coke, describe what a fine bourbon taste
Speaker 1: to somebody that that isn't a devote do use your word,
Speaker 1: or or comes from another planet and doesn't really know
Speaker 1: what what good sipping bourbon? When you when you you're
Speaker 1: you're a writer used to describe in things, how would
Speaker 1: you describe that that taste of what it makes you
Speaker 1: feel like? I mean, well, there are two ways to
Speaker 1: do that. I mean there's the one way that is
Speaker 1: very much about the taste buds, and I'm less interested
Speaker 1: in that and more interested in this description, which is
Speaker 1: it tastes very much. It tastes so familiar that it's
Speaker 1: sort of taste like home with a capital H. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I like like, I like the gestalt of it,
Speaker 1: like I like the way the ice sounds. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll tell nice bartenders, I don't want that one big
Speaker 1: cube because that that that that messes it up for me.
Speaker 1: I like the way ice sounds. I like, I like
Speaker 1: a really heavy bottomed crystal double old shouldn't glass and
Speaker 1: the way it feels in your hand and sort of
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, moving it around. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: I can still see my dad and his friends. You know,
Speaker 1: you know you hold court with a glass like that,
Speaker 1: you know, and uh so all of that is part
Speaker 1: of it to me. I mean, you know it is.
Speaker 1: Uh it's not just you know, here's the science of
Speaker 1: taste buds and as it moves from the taste buds
Speaker 1: at the front of your tongue to the back of
Speaker 1: your tongue. I mean, there's an entire process and it's
Speaker 1: really I mean interesting actually, and when you talk to
Speaker 1: people know a lot about this. But you know, I'm
Speaker 1: after something very different. I don't think of myself as
Speaker 1: a very sentimental person. I don't live in nostalgia. I
Speaker 1: never shared a bottle of bourbon with any dead ancestors.
Speaker 1: I don't have memories of childhood drinking bourbon. So am
Speaker 1: I completely out of step and ill equipped to appreciate
Speaker 1: bourbon and all those different layers Because for me, right
Speaker 1: it's very much about the president. It is about when
Speaker 1: it hits the taste buds and how it tastes, but
Speaker 1: how it makes me feel and the appreciation of the
Speaker 1: product and the handcrafted this. I'm not going back generations.
Speaker 1: I'm just right there in the moment. So some people say, well,
Speaker 1: bourbon is about myth and history and family connection, and
Speaker 1: so you're missing the point if you're not understanding on
Speaker 1: that level. No, I have very little patients with any
Speaker 1: sort of dog bone. Uh, there is no you know,
Speaker 1: I'm there's a sprint speech Bruce Springsteen gave somewhere and
Speaker 1: he was talking about music, and he was like, there's
Speaker 1: no right or wrong way of doing it. There's just
Speaker 1: doing it. And I mean, I think that's true for everything,
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's food or bourbon, or a great
Speaker 1: restaurant or a book or whatever, a movie. But I
Speaker 1: don't I don't think there is a right or wrong
Speaker 1: way to do anything like this. And if you enjoy it,
Speaker 1: like lots of people get different things out of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've got to know a lot of people
Speaker 1: in the bourbon community who are very, very into you know,
Speaker 1: who have a much more sophisticated palate than I do,
Speaker 1: and who can really taste the difference, and who like
Speaker 1: to seek out bourbons with very subtle differences in mash
Speaker 1: bills or in how you know what the barrels are
Speaker 1: made of, or how you know the barrels are rotate,
Speaker 1: like all sort of entry proof into the barrel, And
Speaker 1: so there are fifty different ways to enjoy anything, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of like, uh, you know there is.
Speaker 1: It's like there's no right or wrong way to love sports,
Speaker 1: whether you love to go and think about your dad,
Speaker 1: or whether you love statistics, or whether you love to
Speaker 1: try to you know, the predictive nature of artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: and what that allows you to know about what these
Speaker 1: seemingly sentient human beings are going to do in the future,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like they're just they're's wasn't
Speaker 1: really caught up in right or wrong. I just depth
Speaker 1: of understanding. I mean, I can't mean as much when
Speaker 1: you don't have that family history and grain and you
Speaker 1: just love how the ship tastes when you drink it,
Speaker 1: and then you make your own you make your own
Speaker 1: memories as you become an adult. I don't go back generations.
Speaker 1: My first experience with whiskey was siphoning off my dad's
Speaker 1: j and b into a mason jar and meeting the
Speaker 1: other kids on the golf course and we all, what
Speaker 1: do you got? You got some vodka? I got some
Speaker 1: Scotch gin and let's try that. And that's that's how
Speaker 1: you sample liquor. And then you get sick and go
Speaker 1: to the high school football game. But but that's not
Speaker 1: very romantic. I later, I later gained the appreciation for Scotch.
Speaker 1: I say, I'm not sentimentalists. I think most of us
Speaker 1: had here for being honest though, whether it's drinking course
Speaker 1: or or something else. I mean, I I went to Oban,
Speaker 1: Scotland and drank open single malt whiskey and the West
Speaker 1: coast of Scotland when I was with a buddy right
Speaker 1: out of college. And I still it's not my favorite brand,
Speaker 1: but I still keep it around, and I still maybe
Speaker 1: that is a subconscious romantic going back to that, because
Speaker 1: you discover this product that you've never heard of in
Speaker 1: a town you've never heard of, and it just it
Speaker 1: tasted great when we'd rank it there, and it still
Speaker 1: does well. That is incredibly sentimental, by the way, And
Speaker 1: because mean the that version of you who uh wanted
Speaker 1: to discover a mountain and climate as opposed to the
Speaker 1: guy who is standing on top of a mountain, still
Speaker 1: lives in that bottle in some way. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: why you keep it around, probably or maybe you just
Speaker 1: like it. I do like it, but maybe why do
Speaker 1: I like it? Do I like it because of that?
Speaker 1: And I like lots of single mall scotches and and
Speaker 1: and different flavors of it, But I do. I do
Speaker 1: keep an open bottle right there, and I go back
Speaker 1: to it with affection and probably a more sentimental than
Speaker 1: I admit. But well, I mean, you know, if if
Speaker 1: all of those college football games haven't made you a
Speaker 1: little nostalgic, I feel like that's a conversation for your therapist.
Speaker 1: But uh, but but if we talk, we talk about bourbon,
Speaker 1: because it's a uniquely American product, and we'll get into
Speaker 1: all this. It's made you know, from corn is the
Speaker 1: as the main grain, and then what you put as
Speaker 1: a secondary grain is is either rye if your most
Speaker 1: bourbons or or wheat if your pappy is and other
Speaker 1: kinds of bourbons that are uh that have an initiati
Speaker 1: or considered fine but then it's the barrels that it's
Speaker 1: age in charred oak, which gives it that flavor that
Speaker 1: sets it apart. And it is uniquely American and finally
Speaker 1: has its place worldwide as that, But the way it's
Speaker 1: been marketed and sold is also uniquely American. You write
Speaker 1: in the book a lot about the mythology that just
Speaker 1: the flat outlies, bullshit and tall tales that have gone
Speaker 1: together with it with the selling of this product, because
Speaker 1: people aren't buying a bottle of liquid, they're buying a mythology,
Speaker 1: they're buying a story. Well, and if you go to
Speaker 1: a liquor store, they'll be, you know, a hundred that's
Speaker 1: an exaggeration. They'll be forty or fifty different kinds of
Speaker 1: bourbon there, and of them come from the same six
Speaker 1: or seven distilleries. I mean, the only difference between a
Speaker 1: lot of them is the story they're telling and their
Speaker 1: hope that either you will have a nostalgic connection to
Speaker 1: this or the story will make you pick that. Because
Speaker 1: every new customer, if they don't have some sort of
Speaker 1: connection with the brand, is the potential starter of a
Speaker 1: tradition that might extend generations. Does that make you sad
Speaker 1: that that only a few distilleries are making all the
Speaker 1: juice that's out there now. And then, um, I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of products have gone that direction. Not you
Speaker 1: can do to turn back the clock. No, and and
Speaker 1: as if you know, you get a couple of drinks
Speaker 1: and anybody in this industry, and they will tell you
Speaker 1: that the accountants are running it at the detriment of
Speaker 1: the consumer. And there are a lot of sort of
Speaker 1: you know, the uh, the entry proof of the barrel
Speaker 1: entry proof. You know, there are a lot of different
Speaker 1: things that because of the tax the way this stuff
Speaker 1: is taxed, that it would be better for the product
Speaker 1: to do it one way, but it is better for
Speaker 1: the huge global conglomerates beancounters to do it another way.
Speaker 1: And almost always the accountants win. I mean Maker's Markets
Speaker 1: one of those places that actually you know doesn't do that.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know it makes the whiskey smoother and
Speaker 1: saw after and uh, all of that stuff is very
Speaker 1: it's sort of sad. I mean, like if you get
Speaker 1: you get old bottles, I mean not even that old
Speaker 1: seventies eighties of not even expensive bourbons. You just get
Speaker 1: them and you can sort of taste the difference. Uh,
Speaker 1: you don't even have to be that sophisticated. You know,
Speaker 1: my brother in law gave me six pints of like
Speaker 1: nineties seventies old charter, which is not I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not crazy expensive fancy, and I love to bring
Speaker 1: those out and pour them for people know what is
Speaker 1: this And I'm like, this was a three dollar pint
Speaker 1: of whiskey, and it's that it would be the best thing.
Speaker 1: It's people, you know, people go crazy for it just
Speaker 1: because of the old method. You you do write in
Speaker 1: the book about all the things that go into the
Speaker 1: flavor that maybe you have to have a somewhat suphisticate
Speaker 1: power to understand. But the machinery of this still was
Speaker 1: it old fashioned machinery, which you know, Pappy is when
Speaker 1: it sits so well or distillery made up until what
Speaker 1: the early nineties, and people say that tasted dramatically different
Speaker 1: in their experience from newer machinery that distilled the bourbon.
Speaker 1: And well, you know, it's the way the grains are
Speaker 1: ground is different. Uh, the the yeast is different. I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: they went from a live yeast to a powdered yeast
Speaker 1: in most places. Julian thinks that the original stutz a
Speaker 1: weller live yeast is still in existence in some freezer
Speaker 1: and somebody like he's like, it's out there somewhere. Uh,
Speaker 1: And there's the next book. Man. They the al Capones
Speaker 1: vault quest for like they find the frozen yeast and
Speaker 1: then unleash it in the world and sell it for
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars a bottle. That's what we should do. Uh.
Speaker 1: The you know the water, you know, they don't use
Speaker 1: the limestone aquifers because of pollution anymore. I mean the
Speaker 1: Kentucky reason why Kentucky became the bourbon capital is because
Speaker 1: farmers basically got tired of paying taxes, left Pennsylvania, New
Speaker 1: York came down there. Instead of growing awry group corn
Speaker 1: couldn't sell it. Surplus corn ends up getting distilled. But
Speaker 1: people talk about this special limestone filtered water in Kentucky
Speaker 1: being like an essential ingredient. Is that myth? Or is
Speaker 1: that real? You know? I thought it was myth. Uh,
Speaker 1: But Julian swears it's real. And he's not one of
Speaker 1: those guys who really he loves to poke holes in
Speaker 1: his own mythology. I mean, it's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a party trick, but it's also real. I mean, he
Speaker 1: will you know what I mean. He liked like, you know,
Speaker 1: he loves to be like, well, I've never made a
Speaker 1: drop a whiskey of my life, you know. And people
Speaker 1: call him a master distiller or something in an introduction.
Speaker 1: He's like, Nope, never done that. Uh. And so you know,
Speaker 1: certainly that's part of it. I mean. The larger thing
Speaker 1: that you just touched him, though, is that this is
Speaker 1: an agricultural product. And if you go back to rest
Speaker 1: like the idea, the word that should make you most
Speaker 1: suspicious is when people start using the word of recipe,
Speaker 1: because this is not This was something like the earliest
Speaker 1: whiskey making manuals is like use what grains are available,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, and and it was entirely it
Speaker 1: was a way for farmers who lived too far from
Speaker 1: the supply chain to get their crops to market without
Speaker 1: them rotting. It was a way to keep them from rotting.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing. It's the reason why country hams
Speaker 1: developed so much on the frontier of sort of western
Speaker 1: Virginia and Kentucky when that was as far as America went.
Speaker 1: And so these places that have traditions of smoked meat
Speaker 1: and smoke houses. That's the exact same thing as whiskey.
Speaker 1: That's just a way for farmers who have pigs to
Speaker 1: not have the meat rot before they can sell it.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, one of the reasons there's a
Speaker 1: whiskey tax is because I mean, there are a couple
Speaker 1: of reasons, but I mean one is that that people
Speaker 1: were using in his currency and so the government won
Speaker 1: had their cut of it. And uh. And then I
Speaker 1: just love this debate. You know, when Alexander Hamilton's was
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to pay for the Revolutionary War,
Speaker 1: he looked around the city where he lived, which was
Speaker 1: full of saloons, and said, what we need is a syntax.
Speaker 1: Let's put a tax on these taverns and on this
Speaker 1: booze as a way to raise the money to pay
Speaker 1: for the revolutionary war, which is a worldview perfectly grounded
Speaker 1: in facts and in his experience in the world. The
Speaker 1: problem was as if you were a farmer on the
Speaker 1: far western edge of Pennsylvania, that was a huge tax
Speaker 1: on you. And so it's just I love having the
Speaker 1: history of whiskey. You find, you know, the roots of it.
Speaker 1: Seems like every political debate we're still having. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: history of whiskey is inner time of the history of America.
Speaker 1: People may or may not know that George Washington was
Speaker 1: a distiller, and he's always right into the argument. And
Speaker 1: many many signers of the Declaration Independence, many early a
Speaker 1: couple of few presidents, by the way, have been have
Speaker 1: been distillers as well. I love the fact, though, right,
Speaker 1: that no one's really sure who who invented bourbon, who
Speaker 1: who distilled it for the first time, all kind of
Speaker 1: tall tales about Elijah Craig because having something, having a
Speaker 1: Baptist minister be the inventor of this devil's brew, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a nice story. It's been debunked. Is just
Speaker 1: about every other story has been debunked. But I love
Speaker 1: the fact that no one's quite sure. In the late teen,
Speaker 1: late seventeen, hundreds out there in Kentucky, it was the
Speaker 1: first guy to do it. Everybody knows the stories in
Speaker 1: the back of those bottles are bullshit. Everybody everybody knows.
Speaker 1: You just choose to believe it. It's interesting, I mean,
Speaker 1: the commerce of this, you know, the I don't want
Speaker 1: to get bogged down too much in that, but you're
Speaker 1: you're right, you it's these global blant brands. I mean,
Speaker 1: you look at all industries, but the beverage industry, which
Speaker 1: has been romanticized, so you can strip that away. I
Speaker 1: mean you look at, um, the fact that it's a
Speaker 1: few conglomerations make most of the bourbon You you look
Speaker 1: at the at the fact that people have reacted against
Speaker 1: that though they're craving something. The number one selling spirit
Speaker 1: in America just became Tito's. Uh, handmade vodka in Texas,
Speaker 1: made with corn by the way, like like bourbon is
Speaker 1: and not the traditional Boka ingredients. But but if you
Speaker 1: look at that, how can something be handmade and yet
Speaker 1: also be the biggest seller. But it but it's that
Speaker 1: uniquely American thing. It's it's it's it's made in Texas,
Speaker 1: it's not associated with Russia. And here it is the
Speaker 1: number one it's pretty good vodka to number one selling
Speaker 1: spirit in America. Now, Uh, I didn't know that, But
Speaker 1: that's not surprising. I mean, uh, it's interesting. Uh. So
Speaker 1: we have a bloody Mary bar in our Thanksgiving uh
Speaker 1: family Thanksgiving and have forever, and so it's interesting to
Speaker 1: watch the vodka. And so at some point it changed
Speaker 1: from spearnofs to titoes and I don't know which of
Speaker 1: my uncles started doing that, but now you see it everywhere.
Speaker 1: And of course it's not handmade. I mean, of course
Speaker 1: it is. They're selling the story. But it's not just bourbon.
Speaker 1: It's all it's all spirits. Of course, who cares, you know,
Speaker 1: one it is really good, you know, uh at a
Speaker 1: Teto's and Tonic the other day, Uh and uh. But
Speaker 1: it is a great marketing to the biggest They're tapping
Speaker 1: into things that we crave. Now. We we tried to
Speaker 1: get a present for a friend's mom and they were
Speaker 1: going to Sicily and she drinks Teto's and we're thinking,
Speaker 1: how in the hell we're gonna find this in a
Speaker 1: small town in Sicily. You know what, It was really
Speaker 1: freaking easy. Who walked into the store and it was
Speaker 1: sitting on the shelf and so here's this handmade product
Speaker 1: from Auston in a little town in Sicily. It's it's everywhere, obviously,
Speaker 1: as as most of the global brands are. And by
Speaker 1: the way, no one who buys a bottle, including me,
Speaker 1: feels ripped off. Nope, you know what I mean, it's it.
Speaker 1: It's all a little bit of a winking thing, and
Speaker 1: they make a really great product and they are unbelievable
Speaker 1: marketers I got, I mean Teto's Tito should have been
Speaker 1: in charge of, like all of the COVID vaccine marketing.
Speaker 1: They should have just called those guys were like, look,
Speaker 1: what do we do? Like you know, we don't know,
Speaker 1: we we don't know how to do. What are we doing?
Speaker 1: You're right about that? The marketing of I mean you
Speaker 1: look at I mean, look, I like Guinness and I've
Speaker 1: been to Ireland and I've drank Guinness near the Guinness
Speaker 1: brewery and they used They'll tell you in Dublin that
Speaker 1: the closer you out of the factory, the fresher that
Speaker 1: Guinness is not Guinness made in fifty countries. It's made
Speaker 1: everywhere around the world. And I don't know if it
Speaker 1: would I would They'll tell you that it doesn't taste
Speaker 1: the same in one of those far fun countries it
Speaker 1: does in Ireland. But do you really know when you're
Speaker 1: drinking a glass of that delicious stuff some people would
Speaker 1: say sitting and grow. Yeah, and maybe this is almost
Speaker 1: certainly romance, and but like drinking a pint of guinness
Speaker 1: at Grogan's and Dublin is my happy place, like I
Speaker 1: love that so much. And by the way, Guinness is
Speaker 1: owned by Diaggio, who also owns Bullet and who now
Speaker 1: owns the Stutzelweller Distillery, which used to be owned by
Speaker 1: Ollian van Lincoln's grandfather and father. And uh, the only
Speaker 1: thing I was worried about the book was like I
Speaker 1: sort of write pretty honestly about how they screwed all
Speaker 1: that up. And I was like, man, I hope I
Speaker 1: don't end up on some sort of Guinness blacklist, like
Speaker 1: a no fly list, where I can't give it, Like
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be like, you know if I just go
Speaker 1: into the Grogan's, like I'm sorry, sorry, you can't your
Speaker 1: pictures on the wall. You know, we danced around, let's
Speaker 1: dive in. I mean, your book is brilliant. Um. I'll
Speaker 1: have mentioned that already in the introduction, but I'll say
Speaker 1: it to you now. It's not, uh a book really
Speaker 1: about bourbon. It's about lots of stuff. And I think
Speaker 1: that when you read about this topic and I did
Speaker 1: some research and I'm interested in that period. A lot
Speaker 1: of the books about this spirit are are they're drier
Speaker 1: than prohibition. Frankly, I'm not trying to criticize the authors.
Speaker 1: They had they had a mission and they accomplished it,
Speaker 1: but they read pretty dry. Your book is the exact opposite,
Speaker 1: because this is intertwined with rich history, really rich interesting characters.
Speaker 1: It goes really deep. Your your book does brings a
Speaker 1: lot of that stuff out. But so what what would
Speaker 1: you say after after four years of four or five
Speaker 1: years of researching it with Julian van Winkle and being
Speaker 1: around here, how did your sort of relationship with the
Speaker 1: spirit change? Well, One, I did learn a lot. I'm
Speaker 1: really worried that I'm in the process now forgetting it all.
Speaker 1: Like I feel like six months ago, I was like,
Speaker 1: I knew as much about Bourbon as I would ever know.
Speaker 1: Your Bourbon nerdness peaked there six months ago, and it
Speaker 1: peaked hard. I used to I've already forgotten, Like it's
Speaker 1: pretty embarrassing. But I mean, you know, a couple of
Speaker 1: things happened. I mean, one, I just I got to
Speaker 1: do really close with Julia and everything he was going through,
Speaker 1: and I found that the most interesting parts of the
Speaker 1: trips to see Julian were the conversations we were having
Speaker 1: about life while we were drinking bourbon, not about the bourbon.
Speaker 1: And and you know, I always had this idea of
Speaker 1: wanting to write the book from two perspectives of people
Speaker 1: who make it and people who drink it. But I
Speaker 1: didn't really know what the thing was gonna look like.
Speaker 1: I had a lot of false starts that I hated.
Speaker 1: And it sort of bummed me out that the most
Speaker 1: interesting version of this, that the most interesting version of
Speaker 1: the four years I spent doing this, would be something
Speaker 1: that I couldn't figure out how to get into the book.
Speaker 1: That felt like a tremendous failure. You know. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you go, if you go do a
Speaker 1: really big game, and the story you tell your wife
Speaker 1: when you get home is more interesting than whatever you
Speaker 1: told the audience. That's not good, you know, and and
Speaker 1: and you know, and because you could have written a book,
Speaker 1: I mean that the story is interesting. You could have
Speaker 1: written a book about three generations the Van Winkle family. Pappy,
Speaker 1: by the way, grew up like you was son of
Speaker 1: a lawyer, went into a business that was pretty sketchy
Speaker 1: at the time, selling whiskey. When as a teenager, take
Speaker 1: so we're so so well everything that builds the empire.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, but it's not as interesting or as deep
Speaker 1: or as colorful as what you ended up writing. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I thought a lot about that, and you know,
Speaker 1: what I hoped eventually is that it was a book
Speaker 1: about me and Julian and Julian's family and my family.
Speaker 1: But what I really wanted was for all for both
Speaker 1: Julian and I to almost be proxies, where there was
Speaker 1: enough of sort of a universal river flowing through it
Speaker 1: that that it was about the reader. And you know,
Speaker 1: I when I when I see the reactions to the book,
Speaker 1: it feels like you know whether or not you liked it.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I've been very flattered by the sort
Speaker 1: of outpouring it's been. It was pretty shocking and gratifying
Speaker 1: and a relief frankly that people liked it. But you know,
Speaker 1: I think whether or not you identified with the questions
Speaker 1: that we both he and I were struggling with in
Speaker 1: our own way goes a long way to determine whether
Speaker 1: or not you like this, you know, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: very much it's a little bit of a magic trick, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it has to be about two people, but
Speaker 1: it also has to be about you. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: don't relate to past generations of ancestors that much. I
Speaker 1: don't have kids, so a lot of those themes wouldn't
Speaker 1: directly overlap my experience. But I got what she were saying.
Speaker 1: It was a very compelling story. Nonetheless, this friendship, your
Speaker 1: Julian is much older than you, so it's a you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's a father figure or just two dudes from
Speaker 1: a different generation. And you're sort of sponging up not
Speaker 1: just his knowledge about Bourbons, knowledge about life and life
Speaker 1: lessons that you learn, and you're forming perspectives as a
Speaker 1: new father and as a as a guy who's kind
Speaker 1: of coming into middle age, and and it's it's shaped
Speaker 1: by this dude's wisdom, which is cool to see. And
Speaker 1: I had a job thing recently, like you know, opportunity
Speaker 1: and wasn't sort of sure what to do. And my
Speaker 1: phone call was to do you know uh, which is like,
Speaker 1: let me just lay all this out. That's your one
Speaker 1: phone of friend I got. I got a tough decision
Speaker 1: to make, and my phone of friends Julie Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean like I'm gonna lay all this out and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to be as pro and con on
Speaker 1: both sides and honest as I can be, and then
Speaker 1: I'm gonna talk for a while, and then you talk
Speaker 1: for a while. And uh, I mean it was tremendously helpful.
Speaker 1: But you know, he's that, you know, I sort of
Speaker 1: feel bad for him. He he didn't ask for that,
Speaker 1: you know, Uh, he's stuck with It was fun like
Speaker 1: I go to the Masters and I stay in the
Speaker 1: house with a bunch of sports writers and uh, this
Speaker 1: year I brought Julian and so I just looked over
Speaker 1: at one point it's you know, uh, Steve Politty from
Speaker 1: the Newark Star Ledger and uh Andrew Beating in the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal, and Julian van Winkle was sitting in
Speaker 1: the kitchen, and I'm like, oh my god, worlds are colliding.
Speaker 1: I hope they in corner him because he, Julian has
Speaker 1: a cult of personality now in the bourbon industry and
Speaker 1: and been been beyond where he He's seen as this
Speaker 1: like the Yoda rights. He's like the current Yoda bourbon
Speaker 1: and so people have not only don't they want his product,
Speaker 1: they want to be friends with him. So so at
Speaker 1: the end of the night listening Give Give me your address,
Speaker 1: I mean, don't lie and that that that's one motive
Speaker 1: for writing this book that it happily didn't become. The
Speaker 1: main motive for you was, I want to get access
Speaker 1: to this juice that's impossible to find except in the
Speaker 1: black market for three granded bottles. Let me let me
Speaker 1: tell you, Uh I one thought that not true? I like, there,
Speaker 1: did you think after three years with this guy, he's
Speaker 1: gonna take you down to this cave in the hills
Speaker 1: of Kentucky and he's gonna open the door and there's
Speaker 1: gonna be a stash of barrels of stitzel well or
Speaker 1: pappies that only you are aware of, and you're just
Speaker 1: gonna get siphoned off for life. Yes, I thought that
Speaker 1: was gonna happen. And uh so, either that doesn't exist
Speaker 1: or I didn't make the cut. You know, the cultup
Speaker 1: it's funny. I mean, you know, uh Julian tells his
Speaker 1: funny story about you know, he's often surrounded by people
Speaker 1: and uh he was at some Kentucky derby party and
Speaker 1: hold him cord. I think, like Ashton Kocher, something was
Speaker 1: there and people were like surrounding and asking questions like
Speaker 1: cal Ripken was there. One of my favorite story Julian
Speaker 1: stories actually is this. Uh I kind of forgot about this.
Speaker 1: He uh he he just is not He's not scared
Speaker 1: or intimidated. I don't think about anyone and just you know,
Speaker 1: he just lives in a world that that he makes
Speaker 1: and has been made for a very long time. He's
Speaker 1: at this thing and Wayne Gretzky is sort of hovering
Speaker 1: around and interrupting him and uh, you know, bothered him.
Speaker 1: And uh, finally Julian just looks up at Wayne Kretsky
Speaker 1: and says, why don't you shut the funk up? Wayne?
Speaker 1: It is that it's just a blood right out of
Speaker 1: Gretzky space. And he's sort of like inst away, but
Speaker 1: it was just like Julian is not impressed. He tore
Speaker 1: the great One right down to the ground. I mean
Speaker 1: not probably not. Then many people of tone Wayne Gretzky
Speaker 1: that since he's about eleven years old, So no, andre
Speaker 1: like that. There you go, like you're in Kentucky, this
Speaker 1: is my world. At what point does the the pursuit
Speaker 1: of it, the acquisition of it, just overtake the the
Speaker 1: consumption and the enjoyment of it, And and and is
Speaker 1: that a bad thing. This is now this commodity which
Speaker 1: all the all the ego driven people in the world,
Speaker 1: they gotta have the nicest toys. The difference is this
Speaker 1: toy was made years ago and there's no more of it,
Speaker 1: and so it's it's like art in that way. It's
Speaker 1: like a liquid art. Not to get too high minded,
Speaker 1: but it's a limited supply of it, right, and so
Speaker 1: now it becomes this crazy status symbol and it it's
Speaker 1: a little bit distasteful because it tastes great. It's great
Speaker 1: at three bucks a bottle. I mean, I like find spirits.
Speaker 1: I'm not spending three thousand dollars for a bottle of anything.
Speaker 1: I mean that that's that's or or or or you know,
Speaker 1: you know it's I like find one. But ship there's
Speaker 1: a there's a point where what are you doing now?
Speaker 1: You get it? If it gets more expensive than like
Speaker 1: a recent bottle of Arista on a one list, I'm
Speaker 1: not getting it, you know what I mean, Like, I
Speaker 1: start looking at that and like that's tough. And Julian
Speaker 1: will tell you nothing is worth three thousand dollars a bottle.
Speaker 1: And so I mean, I think there are a couple
Speaker 1: of things I mean one, the commodification of it is
Speaker 1: a little gross because I mean, I think Jillian wants
Speaker 1: to live in a world we would all live in
Speaker 1: where old Rippman Winkle ten year old is your decan
Speaker 1: or whiskey, and that the other ones are things you
Speaker 1: pull out on a special occasion. It's also as a
Speaker 1: as a side note, the fifteen, twenty and the twenty
Speaker 1: three are not designed to be graduated steps up. They
Speaker 1: are three very different special occasion whiskies depending on your palette.
Speaker 1: Julian and I both like the fifteen. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're just they're whatever you like. But it's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's bronze, silver, gold, which is what a
Speaker 1: lot of people think of. They think of like, you know,
Speaker 1: I gotta get I've had the fifteen. I gotta get
Speaker 1: the older. The older must be the better right now. There,
Speaker 1: it's designed for what you like when you make this
Speaker 1: this bourbon, and it's made to be aged. I mean,
Speaker 1: Julian's got to try to figure out in whatt like,
Speaker 1: what are people gonna feel like drinking? He's not gonna
Speaker 1: be around. Maybe his son pressed him will run it,
Speaker 1: who knows, But I mean that's what's what's being put
Speaker 1: I don't think people really fully appreciate that that what's
Speaker 1: being put in in barrels and bottles now is to
Speaker 1: be had in and beyond well. And he's got to
Speaker 1: predict what the American population is going to want to drink,
Speaker 1: because you know, they've been caught out before with warehouses
Speaker 1: full of stuff no one wanted. And so when everybody's
Speaker 1: going crazy about make more, make more, make more, that's
Speaker 1: fine as an idea for a consumer. But if you're
Speaker 1: the person who has to pay to make this stuff
Speaker 1: and then pay taxes on it sitting in warehouses, I mean,
Speaker 1: Julian will be dead when the when whatever they put
Speaker 1: in barrels to be twenty year old Van Winkle comes out,
Speaker 1: and so you know, he he is. It's a very
Speaker 1: weird thing to be in this business if you really
Speaker 1: start to think about it, because you really are. You
Speaker 1: have to live so far in the future that I
Speaker 1: think it gives you a perspective on the day to
Speaker 1: day that in other industries. You know, I mean, certainly
Speaker 1: I work for you know, we work for a cable
Speaker 1: news network. I mean that is the opposite of a
Speaker 1: bourbon company in terms of sort of how time is
Speaker 1: divided and thought of. And you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things being around Julian is that that kind of thing
Speaker 1: rubs off and subtle but very visible ways in his life,
Speaker 1: just what his industry requires of him and how it
Speaker 1: requires and be in the world. And that's really seductive,
Speaker 1: Like you start wondering like could I do that? You know,
Speaker 1: their life has a real rhythm that, uh, that I
Speaker 1: found very attractive. So this this great American spirit which
Speaker 1: has all these generational connections. I mean your family as well.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it if you feel like you're
Speaker 1: sitting with your grandfather when you have it. But if
Speaker 1: you were to sort of sum up your relationship, You've
Speaker 1: written articles, you've written this book, You're gonna continue to
Speaker 1: enjoy it. Don't forget everything you learn when you research
Speaker 1: the book. But but uh, is this something You've got
Speaker 1: two daughters now, But that doesn't mean they can't be
Speaker 1: fine bourbon drinkers at some point. You do you expect
Speaker 1: this to be a generational thing in your family going forward? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, or three months right or something like that.
Speaker 1: So they got a ways to go, They have a
Speaker 1: ways to go. I mean I sort of lied earlier
Speaker 1: when I said there was no free whiskey, because julian
Speaker 1: Is sent me to free bottles of pappy. And uh,
Speaker 1: they both arrived after the birth of the first, one
Speaker 1: after Whillace and the second after Louise, and their bottles
Speaker 1: of pappy with hand written labels with their names on them.
Speaker 1: This bottle of old Rip van Winkle was to still
Speaker 1: was bottled especially for Wallace right Thompson and Louise Mackenzie Thompson.
Speaker 1: And so I have those and I think on their
Speaker 1: twenty one birthdays, Uh, they'll be in college, they really
Speaker 1: won't want to see me, But it doesn't matter because
Speaker 1: I'll be paying for college and I could come whenever
Speaker 1: I want. And uh, I imagine I'll go up there
Speaker 1: with that bottle, take all their friends out, Uh you know,
Speaker 1: and let's let's go pour that thing around. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, those bottles are gonna sit there
Speaker 1: for twenty one years. Such a love. The mental image
Speaker 1: of those two father daughter moments in the Thompson family
Speaker 1: eighteen and twenty one years from now and that fine
Speaker 1: bourbon is finally cracked open. Family is such a rich
Speaker 1: theme in its book Pappy Land, The generational push pole
Speaker 1: the ties that bind a really enjoyable read. Now, Julian
Speaker 1: Van Winkle the Third became the third generation and his
Speaker 1: family to take over the whiskey business. He was just
Speaker 1: thirty two years old. He had four young kids and
Speaker 1: man that he struggled for about a decade and a
Speaker 1: half before his hard work and the bourbon boom arrived
Speaker 1: to make Pappy van Winkles such a coveted sought after
Speaker 1: its status symbol. It cannot be a coincidence that the
Speaker 1: Pappy's delivery trucks are hijacked or rerouted as often as
Speaker 1: they are. His son Preston is going to be the
Speaker 1: fourth generation of the family to run the whiskey business,
Speaker 1: and Julian's triplet daughters, Louise, Carrie and Chennault run Pappy
Speaker 1: and Company, a merchandise company that sells Pappy branded glassware, bourbon,
Speaker 1: maple syrup, cigars, and a whole lot. More so, if
Speaker 1: they have something nice to pour and sip, I suggest
Speaker 1: you do so. Here now is the man who has
Speaker 1: Yoda like status in the bourbon industry. Julian P. Van
Speaker 1: Winkled the Third, Well, Julian Bourbon Whiskey has been described
Speaker 1: in many ways by many people, and some of the
Speaker 1: descriptions are quite poetic and quite layered. But as an
Speaker 1: expert who has a world famous palette, what do you
Speaker 1: want your bourbon to taste like and feel like as
Speaker 1: it hits the taste buds? Well, it's it's not so
Speaker 1: much what I wanted to taste like other than being
Speaker 1: something that I grew up with and being familiar with. Um,
Speaker 1: it's what I don't want it to taste like. Um,
Speaker 1: which these days there's a there's a lot of what
Speaker 1: I don't want it to taste like out there, which
Speaker 1: makes mostly because it's kind of young with all the
Speaker 1: new craft is theories. But are whiskey having grown up
Speaker 1: with it since I was ingesting it as a child
Speaker 1: for cough medicine, I'm sure um, and I sat along
Speaker 1: to my kids, by the way, I guess, because I
Speaker 1: guess that's why they all enjoyed bourbon. But little lemon
Speaker 1: juice and honey and bourbon when you have a cough
Speaker 1: is uh, you know it's either that or night Well,
Speaker 1: it's all about the alcohol, I guess, but you sweeten
Speaker 1: it up a little bit. But having grown up with
Speaker 1: a certain flavor profile and my in my in my
Speaker 1: brain and in my taste buds and so forth. It's
Speaker 1: it's obviously the sweetness and the smoothness. And and we've
Speaker 1: designed our whiskey to be aged a little longer than
Speaker 1: most so um and a certain each distiory has its
Speaker 1: own yeast profile, so that's very important. Um. So we've
Speaker 1: come up with something that that that I really like,
Speaker 1: you know, our family likes and uh with buffle traces
Speaker 1: distillation that we're doing for us as of eighteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: twenty years ago almost now. Um, but it's it's it's
Speaker 1: that's kind of what we're looking for, is that sweet, smooth,
Speaker 1: distinctive flavor that you know, it's it's it's a pleasant experience,
Speaker 1: not something you just have to it choked down because
Speaker 1: it's whiskey. Well, it's not just you and your family,
Speaker 1: it's people all over the world that that covered that flavor.
Speaker 1: You guys who created So you had no idea as
Speaker 1: a little kid with a cough that you're gonna be
Speaker 1: used getting stuff as cough medicine and people were gonna
Speaker 1: be spending thousands of dollars for and then trying and
Speaker 1: trying to hunt down and cover that that that's a
Speaker 1: lucky young kid at the time. Yeah, obviously had no idea.
Speaker 1: Nobody in my family did either, otherwise I wouldn't have.
Speaker 1: You know, there'll be a bunch of it sitting around.
Speaker 1: There's not much, unfortunately, just a few bottles here and there.
Speaker 1: But that that was it we were, and that's just
Speaker 1: what we like to say. All the other products are
Speaker 1: out there are not good. That's not it at all.
Speaker 1: But it's just everybody has their own flavor profile, enjoyment,
Speaker 1: and that just happens to be mine, which is the
Speaker 1: weeded Bourbon recipe. We'll get into the weeded Bourbon and
Speaker 1: how that sets it apart from from the majority of Bourbon's.
Speaker 1: I I'm gonna imagine there's arrange of people listening to
Speaker 1: this that have novice level to PhD level knowledge of bourbon.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to leave anybody behind. But but
Speaker 1: what sets apart weeded Bourbon is that, after corn, which
Speaker 1: it must be corn, you choose either rye or wheat
Speaker 1: as the secondary grain. And and your grandfather just kind
Speaker 1: of preferred that. It's what he kind of grew up on,
Speaker 1: happy and and began to sell it at a young
Speaker 1: age as a teenager, and then began to market it
Speaker 1: and develop the family business. Um. But more people don't
Speaker 1: do it that way, and I think it's a it's
Speaker 1: an obvious question. Why why isn't your mashed bill as
Speaker 1: it's called, or you're formula for success more imitated? Why
Speaker 1: why is it? Why are you the exception? Well, more
Speaker 1: and more it is there. There are more weeded bourbon
Speaker 1: recipes out there in these new new craft stories, and
Speaker 1: even some of the established story has been around for
Speaker 1: years or are trying, um, the weeded recipe and including
Speaker 1: it in their their profile, I mean, their their whole
Speaker 1: whiskey categories. So it's um. It's obviously it's something we
Speaker 1: have always enjoyed, and it kind of amazed me that
Speaker 1: it never really took off years ago as far as
Speaker 1: other people trying it. But now obviously, you know, people
Speaker 1: see the success with the brand and the and the
Speaker 1: flavor profile that are whiskeys have and they're trying it themselves.
Speaker 1: But it's becoming more and more popular with some other
Speaker 1: distilleries too. You know, Pappy's exists and thrives today in
Speaker 1: large part because, as you said yourself, you were just
Speaker 1: damn stubborn, and and sometimes it's better in business to
Speaker 1: be stubborn then then smart. All the times when you
Speaker 1: just don't give up, and there there were some, there
Speaker 1: were some lean times. I mean, we won't trace the
Speaker 1: entire long, colorful family story, but but your father, Pappy's son,
Speaker 1: UM went through some rocky times and bourbon fell out
Speaker 1: of favor and sales dropped and all that stuff. And
Speaker 1: then you kind of came in at the time and
Speaker 1: and worked your butt off to sort of resurrect the
Speaker 1: brand end and and and kind of set set it
Speaker 1: up for future generations. But what was that like when
Speaker 1: when you're sitting there in a room late at night,
Speaker 1: wondering if you're gonna make it through? It was it
Speaker 1: was stressful. You can ask uh as my wife, Sissy,
Speaker 1: and our and our children even um, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know um what they thought of what I was
Speaker 1: doing back then, but I was just hanging on with
Speaker 1: my fingernails. And it's the only thing I really knew
Speaker 1: how to do. UM, so I wouldn't and I knew
Speaker 1: it was good, a good product. I mean, I knew
Speaker 1: damn well as a good product, So UM, I just
Speaker 1: was gonna go down with the ship, so to speak,
Speaker 1: if it didn't work out. But kept trying and trying
Speaker 1: and trying, and and I you know, I am stubborn.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ride this baby all the way down down
Speaker 1: to the grave or up to the to the heavens.
Speaker 1: But it luckily worked out with a lot of help
Speaker 1: from a lot of People's talked about in the book.
Speaker 1: But it's, um, it was, you know, it's to do
Speaker 1: or die. But I believe in it, which is the
Speaker 1: main thing. And um, and then it gradually, you know,
Speaker 1: it gets a little traction, a little more traction, and
Speaker 1: and then things started to take off with press and
Speaker 1: shows and chefs and all that stuff. So it was,
Speaker 1: it was, it was an amazing, amazing journey, so to speak.
Speaker 1: And my dad kind of went through the same same issue.
Speaker 1: Um uh, you know, they're my grandfather and father were
Speaker 1: doing what I'm doing now. Unfortunately they were forty fifty
Speaker 1: years too early. Um. Selling we died bourbon whiskey. Um,
Speaker 1: and it cost a fortune to age whiskey that long
Speaker 1: in a warehouse. You put it in the barrel and
Speaker 1: sit it in a warehouse for years and years and years.
Speaker 1: Your interests and your property taxes, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: just very expensive to do it, so um it's it
Speaker 1: would have been impossible for us to hang on as
Speaker 1: a family unless we've got other investors. But uh, my
Speaker 1: dad kind of like myselself, just hung on and sold
Speaker 1: it to steroids and went on to continuing to sell
Speaker 1: our whiskey that he bought back from his from the
Speaker 1: people that bought it from us, our family, and and
Speaker 1: sold it in the fancy sometimes very ugly to canners. Um,
Speaker 1: but it was a way that I mean wild turkey
Speaker 1: and beam and everybody was doing the same thing at
Speaker 1: the same time. Selling whiskey was not favorable that the
Speaker 1: canners were now just the opposite. People will buy to
Speaker 1: the canners to get the whiskey that was inside those bottles,
Speaker 1: you know, filled up in the seventies and eighties and nineties,
Speaker 1: So buy your stuff in Amazon Jockey. That is an
Speaker 1: amazing was the vessel, not the juice inside that was
Speaker 1: the main selling point. That that's almost hard for people
Speaker 1: to imagine as the cult of bourbon has grown and
Speaker 1: exploded and and your brand has been centerpiece, that it
Speaker 1: had more to do with what it came in. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and we had, you know, a couple of artists that
Speaker 1: help us out and come up with ideas, and Dad
Speaker 1: would have an idea, and I'd have an idea, and
Speaker 1: and you know, just something new, just some way to
Speaker 1: get rid of this whiskey because um, you know, it
Speaker 1: was evaporating, so we had to sell it and that
Speaker 1: was very popular until the price of those decanters got
Speaker 1: to be forty and above and that's when that market
Speaker 1: died completely. So that's that was after my dad's death
Speaker 1: in eighty one, so you know, the late eighties kind
Speaker 1: of had to switch over and back to selling whiskey
Speaker 1: again instead of the canners because that that issue was
Speaker 1: dead in the water. You know, Pappy's grandfather, so that
Speaker 1: generation among the first to settle Kentucky when it was
Speaker 1: a wild territory, long before it was a state. It
Speaker 1: was a part of Virginia, and they came came there
Speaker 1: to farm and and whiskey kind of grew out of
Speaker 1: that because corn fed people and animals, but there was
Speaker 1: still some leftover they couldn't get to market, so distilling
Speaker 1: it was a good thing to do. And just for
Speaker 1: the fact that it's just an agricultural product and and
Speaker 1: kind of grew out of that, and it's intertwined with
Speaker 1: the history of the state and the country in a
Speaker 1: very unique way. I mean Bourbon now being um a
Speaker 1: uniquely American product that that that rivals with anything produced
Speaker 1: around the world, and from humble beginnings. Yeah. And also,
Speaker 1: if you're growing all this corn, um, that's a lot
Speaker 1: of money tied up. But if you grind it up
Speaker 1: and mash it for a minute and distill it, you've
Speaker 1: got acres and acres of corn into several cases of whiskey.
Speaker 1: So it's UM. And that was used in the bartering situation.
Speaker 1: So instead of ten bushels of corn or a truck
Speaker 1: float of corn, it would be you know, ten or
Speaker 1: twelve cases of whisky or whatever for the same amount
Speaker 1: of money invested. And it's a lot easier to deal with.
Speaker 1: And UM that was you know, that was a great
Speaker 1: way to UM to use their crops up because there's
Speaker 1: plenty of corn and grain out there, UM. And and
Speaker 1: the whiskey industry kind of thrived from that. Of course,
Speaker 1: the methods have changed. The way that you grind the corn.
Speaker 1: Does bet sheen reas changed? UM, I think you're probably
Speaker 1: using powdered yeast, the live yeast was was was the
Speaker 1: thing in the past, the water which a big deal
Speaker 1: was made of, the Limestone water in the city of Kentucky.
Speaker 1: But that that's so longer. There can can the new
Speaker 1: whiskey still be as good as the old juice? Or
Speaker 1: or is that stuff irreplaceable because the ingredients aren't quite
Speaker 1: the same. There's so many variables that I don't think
Speaker 1: it can be reproduced. Um, we're trying to get as
Speaker 1: close as we can, and this is gonna be a
Speaker 1: lifelong project, probably for me and my children behind me,
Speaker 1: to kind of get closer to that. But these experiments
Speaker 1: in Bourbon, I mean, our youngest bourbon is ten years old.
Speaker 1: So if we start a project today and put it
Speaker 1: in a barrel, it's ten years before we decide if
Speaker 1: it's any good. It's another ten years to get it
Speaker 1: to the market. So it's a it's a ridiculous business plan. Really,
Speaker 1: we'll tell you Worrey about that. Um. Yeah, it's definitely
Speaker 1: unique and it's uh ridiculous. I'd be one way to
Speaker 1: say it. You know, you're too modest to say it.
Speaker 1: I've talked to write about this, I've read a lot
Speaker 1: of profiles to you know, your contribution to this is
Speaker 1: considered so viable slash priceless because you know exactly what
Speaker 1: that WHL whiskey tasted like, and you know exactly what
Speaker 1: you're trying to make every bottle you manufacture now going
Speaker 1: forward kind of taste like and feel like and and
Speaker 1: there're not many around that that do remember that, and
Speaker 1: you see, you you grew up with it and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. So when you taste the new pappies
Speaker 1: that will be on the market and what and you're
Speaker 1: putting it in a bottle, you're trying to take yourself
Speaker 1: back to your youth and remember how how closely this
Speaker 1: stuff tasted of that stuff? Is that is that fair
Speaker 1: to say? We're just trying to get as close to
Speaker 1: that as possible. I know it can't be duplicated, but
Speaker 1: what we've got is damn close. And uh Son Preston
Speaker 1: went down to Buffalo Trades today. I was busy to
Speaker 1: taste some twelve year old barrels because we taste everything
Speaker 1: before we bottle it to make sure it's good. And
Speaker 1: he said it was just incredible. It's um, um, you know,
Speaker 1: even better than last year. Um. So it's uh it's
Speaker 1: it's something we're striving for. I don't think we'll ever
Speaker 1: quite get it just right. But just one reason is
Speaker 1: because the yeast is a little different from what we
Speaker 1: had back when we had our own distillery. Sits weller
Speaker 1: so UM, and that's kind of a flavor profile and
Speaker 1: kind of a back flavor that that you taste UM
Speaker 1: that particularly use from that distillery is very distinctive, as
Speaker 1: each distillery has its own yeast flavor profile. UM. But
Speaker 1: that's you know, we're just trying to get as close
Speaker 1: as possible. What's the best way to enjoy happy? How
Speaker 1: do how do you enjoy it? When you when you
Speaker 1: crack open the bottom, I usually just um put it
Speaker 1: on some ice with depending on if it's ninety proof,
Speaker 1: I'll just let the ice melt, and if it's one
Speaker 1: oh seven are higher proof, I'll put a little splash
Speaker 1: of uh distilled water and they're not tap water because
Speaker 1: chlorine and whiskey don't mix that well. Depending on what
Speaker 1: part of the world you're from, UM, and a twist
Speaker 1: of lemon, which has become kind of a I'm just again,
Speaker 1: I'm just promoting what how I learned to drink it?
Speaker 1: Grandfather I guess Pappy used to drink it that way
Speaker 1: because my dad drank it that way, and I drink
Speaker 1: it that way. And everybody I've talked about, you know,
Speaker 1: I tell people somewhere I've heard about you drinking with
Speaker 1: lemon or orange or something. Just a twist of lemon
Speaker 1: around the edge edge. It gives it a little bit different,
Speaker 1: uh flavor profile. And they taste it. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they're lying or what, but they say, Wow, that's
Speaker 1: really good. So uh it's that's that's the way I
Speaker 1: enjoy it. IM gonna try to I'll be more conscious
Speaker 1: when I put a little water in there, or I'll
Speaker 1: be more conscious of how probably make the ice that
Speaker 1: I'm using. If you think it's got to be a
Speaker 1: certain kind of water not to ruin the whiskey, I'm
Speaker 1: all into for for keeping it as good as it
Speaker 1: can be. Chris, we can go deep on this ice
Speaker 1: deal and water deal. Got Your ice has to be
Speaker 1: made of pure water, and it's got to be really
Speaker 1: old ice. People say, cold ice, what's that? Well, it's
Speaker 1: clear ice that's white that comes out of your freezer.
Speaker 1: It's got air in it, so you're you're watering down
Speaker 1: your whiskey a whole lot more than you would if
Speaker 1: the ice was clear. So you got a good gotta
Speaker 1: get a good ice machine or ship. You're killing me.
Speaker 1: I gotta. I'm thinking about all the times and I
Speaker 1: put ice out of the freezer into this stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: I could be you can get expensive talking to me.
Speaker 1: I'll talk into a good ice machine and all kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Wait, a bit expensive whiskey is not enough.
Speaker 1: Now I have to buy expensive water. I'm an expensive
Speaker 1: machine to make the expensive ice. Right there you go,
Speaker 1: and then nothing but an organic lemon for the twist.
Speaker 1: I'll try the lemon twists for people to love bourbon.
Speaker 1: Explain what magic happens in the barrel because unlike wine,
Speaker 1: where a lot of the magic is in the grapes,
Speaker 1: maturing that the sun and the rain and the and
Speaker 1: the heat combining, and then it's put in the barrel
Speaker 1: for not very long compared to whiskey, and then that
Speaker 1: ages in the bottle. Now what bourbon doesn't age in
Speaker 1: the bottle? Right, it's all it's all within the span
Speaker 1: of time that it's in those charter barrels. So what
Speaker 1: is going on with the whiskey? Is it sits there
Speaker 1: for twelve years, fifteen years, twenty years and twenty three years.
Speaker 1: Well it's uh, it's really where the I think the
Speaker 1: magic happens. And you can you can age whiskey in
Speaker 1: barrels that are heavily charred. Um, just the heads toasted
Speaker 1: and the staves charged. You know, a lot charred, A
Speaker 1: lot of different variables as far as what the barrel
Speaker 1: can be made of. On the inside, we obviously still
Speaker 1: use number four heavy char on the heads and the
Speaker 1: staves inside. And where that barrel is put, what type
Speaker 1: of warehousing and what floor and um, you know which
Speaker 1: is produces different temperatures and different whiskies. But you pour
Speaker 1: out a whiskey from a barrel that's in the top
Speaker 1: four versus the bottom floor. Would you expect that your
Speaker 1: average Pappies customer would be able to taste any difference?
Speaker 1: Would Would they know something was off? Or would it
Speaker 1: just they'd read the label and think it's great and
Speaker 1: they wouldn't know the difference. Well, if you're just taking
Speaker 1: great taste in one bottle at a time, and I
Speaker 1: don't think anybody would really notice it. Um, I might,
Speaker 1: but but um, just because I'm used to what I'm
Speaker 1: used to. But if they took a cool floor barrel
Speaker 1: versus the top floor barrel and tasting them together, it's
Speaker 1: a it's pretty much a no brainer. I think even
Speaker 1: even if Uh a beer drinker or somebody that never
Speaker 1: even has whiskey but had whiskey before in their life,
Speaker 1: could tell the difference. And that's pretty obvious. It's clear
Speaker 1: your passion for the hands on, you know, barrel by barrel,
Speaker 1: staying very involved in the process. I don't have three
Speaker 1: examples of this off the top of my head. My sense,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of businesses that are passed down in
Speaker 1: families generation by generation. Maybe the maybe the patriarch, the
Speaker 1: initial guy was was the creator, he came up with
Speaker 1: the product. He he was the inventive side. And then
Speaker 1: and then other generations were interested in sort of growing
Speaker 1: and marketing and they were less concerned maybe with the
Speaker 1: hands on manufacturing. That's not been a case in your
Speaker 1: family at all though. I mean Pappy himself was a
Speaker 1: salesman and a genius marketer, right, and that that initially
Speaker 1: got the the the labels that he was producing off
Speaker 1: the ground early. But but as it's been handed down
Speaker 1: and you still seem as passionate, as interested in in
Speaker 1: the hands on as anybody could be, well as much
Speaker 1: as I can be, not exactly doing everything myself, and
Speaker 1: no Van Winkler has actually produced any whiskey than him
Speaker 1: themselves period and where the words none of us have
Speaker 1: been mastered distillers, but we try and get people who
Speaker 1: know what the hell they're doing to do it, you know,
Speaker 1: the way we want it done, as far as we
Speaker 1: can do that. Now, we're still trying to tinker around
Speaker 1: with all types of different distillation proofs and barrel entry
Speaker 1: proofs and warehousing techniques and so forth to get it
Speaker 1: to what, you know, what we think maybe a little better,
Speaker 1: it may not, but you know, we're still trying to
Speaker 1: monkeyr on with it too, to get it closer to
Speaker 1: what what we uh, what we'd like like to be.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is fitting her ironic, but
Speaker 1: obviously that the family name and and old Rip van
Speaker 1: Winkle was one of the original names for the whiskey,
Speaker 1: and watching irving story is about someone who fell asleep
Speaker 1: for twenty years. I don't know that's a coincidence. Some
Speaker 1: of the whiskey's aged twenty years and and one of
Speaker 1: the morals of the story is that it's if you
Speaker 1: resist and fight change, you do sort your own peril.
Speaker 1: That there's a constant need to kind of change and evolve.
Speaker 1: I don't know how that ties into the family business
Speaker 1: and the production of whiskey. It is relentlessly consistent over time. Well,
Speaker 1: they kind of got lucky on that whole story deal.
Speaker 1: It kind of parallels what what we're doing. Um. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the old rip Van Winkle was my dad bought that
Speaker 1: label back in the fifties, I believe, and never really
Speaker 1: used it. Um with old he had some ideas to
Speaker 1: use it along with the old Fitzgerald brand, But when
Speaker 1: we sold the distiory, he kept that brand name. And
Speaker 1: that's what we've ran with. We ran with that at first,
Speaker 1: and then um uh, you know that asleep many years
Speaker 1: in the wood and all that. You know, those little
Speaker 1: terms came up an old ripped next to the tree
Speaker 1: sleep and through the Revolutionary War and in the twenty
Speaker 1: year thing, Um that was that was pure luck. I
Speaker 1: guess you call it because I wanted when I came
Speaker 1: up with a poppy label, I found that picture my grandfather,
Speaker 1: you know, lying that cigar, and I wanted to honor
Speaker 1: him with a label, and I had some twenty year
Speaker 1: old whiskey that I hadn't sold at eighteen or nineteen,
Speaker 1: so I said, well, in twenty has a nice round number.
Speaker 1: But I really didn't think about old ripped being sleeping
Speaker 1: twenty years in the woods. So that's another blond luck thing.
Speaker 1: I didn't have luck. I wouldn't, you know. I'll take
Speaker 1: whatever I can get. You've got the fifteen, the twenty,
Speaker 1: and they three dispel the myth that older automatically means better.
Speaker 1: The assumption is well, because it's rarer, it's harder to
Speaker 1: find the older stuff than it is the fifteen year.
Speaker 1: But but you never intended those to be grades of
Speaker 1: quality right in the in the product. No, it's is
Speaker 1: um Obviously you start younger, and they all became available
Speaker 1: because of um uh. You know, they weren't back in
Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties. They weren't selling that well. So
Speaker 1: I had access whiskey, as did every other distillery. That's
Speaker 1: why you can buy and sell bulk whiskey by the barrel.
Speaker 1: Every distillery would buy and sell from different ones, and
Speaker 1: people like myself would buy from other distilleries because there
Speaker 1: was excess product. But uh, you start out at ten
Speaker 1: and the first Pappy label was a twenty year, and
Speaker 1: then was the twenty three, and we had a fifteen
Speaker 1: year old ripped band Winkle and we changed that into
Speaker 1: a Pappy label to kind of get it more popular,
Speaker 1: and I put it in line with all the pappies
Speaker 1: were in the same package in the Pat ban Winkle
Speaker 1: versus old RiPP band Winkle fifteen year, So they kind
Speaker 1: of bounced around from year to year. But the twenty
Speaker 1: years Stize Weller was was was incredible. Whiskey UM and
Speaker 1: we are The fifteen year happens to be my favorite
Speaker 1: because it's kind of right in the middle, but it's
Speaker 1: doing these whiskey shows with Whiskey Fest and so forth
Speaker 1: in different parts of the country. Back when we used
Speaker 1: to do that, UM, people would taste the twenty or
Speaker 1: twenty three or even the fifteen and say, well, that's
Speaker 1: that's too too old for me, too Woody, I like
Speaker 1: the ten or twelve. It's just different flavor profiles of
Speaker 1: people enjoy and they're not used to it. Obviously. I
Speaker 1: am used to older products. That's why I'm not not
Speaker 1: too much of a fan of younger whiskies. But that's
Speaker 1: that's just a personal preference really, not just because it's
Speaker 1: older definitely doesn't mean it's any better. It's just um,
Speaker 1: some people can do it, some people can't. As far
Speaker 1: as um producing that brand, you know that the product
Speaker 1: is at this point, like it or not as famous
Speaker 1: for being almost impossible to get accept the ridiculous black
Speaker 1: market prices as it is for the you know, sublime
Speaker 1: quality of it. Um. I think that that that's not
Speaker 1: that's not a bad the thing, but the brand necessarily
Speaker 1: that I'm sure it creates frustrations, But when when the
Speaker 1: pursuit of it and the acquisition of it supersede just
Speaker 1: the enjoyment of it, I don't know that that's what
Speaker 1: a whiskey maker wants his customers to be focusing on. Right, No,
Speaker 1: there's I may not keep seeing these pictures on Instagram
Speaker 1: or whatever and Facebook of collections of tons of bottles
Speaker 1: of our whisky just sitting there and people's collections and
Speaker 1: are surrounded with old ripped bottles, pappy bottles. I'm going
Speaker 1: we don't make it to put it on your shelf.
Speaker 1: We make it to drink it and enjoy it. Please do.
Speaker 1: But there's too much hoarding and too much collecting, and
Speaker 1: all this secondary market is is a mess. Um as
Speaker 1: far as you know the pricing, legitimate pricing of it.
Speaker 1: The bother is to bother you that people. Your your
Speaker 1: price initially between a hundred three hundred bucks is the
Speaker 1: top um reach out price for it, and now it's
Speaker 1: sometimes times that, right, Yeah, it's I mean, it's um,
Speaker 1: it only bothers me because, uh, the poor people that
Speaker 1: brought up I say, the poor people meaning that they
Speaker 1: can't find a whiskey legitimate price anymore. They they built
Speaker 1: our brand, they bought our brand, they believed in this
Speaker 1: and they supported us, and now they can't get it
Speaker 1: for under several hundred bucks or seven several thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: So it is frustrating for that. And there are several
Speaker 1: stores obviously around the country that do sell at a
Speaker 1: regular suggested retail price, but um, they those bottles are
Speaker 1: snapped up immediately or they're you know, in lotteries or
Speaker 1: raffles or whatever. But there's one one good thing that's
Speaker 1: happened from this, uh secondary market pricing, is the charities
Speaker 1: are just doing great with it, so that that really
Speaker 1: is good. We're just amazing amounts of money raised and
Speaker 1: all these stories, all the good products are doing the
Speaker 1: same thing, offering bottles for charity, and it's just a
Speaker 1: raising tons of money for charities where if the secondary
Speaker 1: market hadn't happened, Um, you know, they wouldn't be close
Speaker 1: to what it's but they're they're bringing. Now that's a
Speaker 1: great point that that's that is a great byproduct of
Speaker 1: the of the difficulty of it to get. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: you're right though, people I don't I don't have a
Speaker 1: stash of bottles. I have some, but you tend to
Speaker 1: not want to drink it because once it's gone, it's
Speaker 1: so damn hard to replace. So you do kind of
Speaker 1: sip it on special occasions and it can't be and
Speaker 1: every day enjoyment for a lot of people unless I
Speaker 1: just uhr going to those auctions and getting it right, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's uh, it's a lot of little stories about
Speaker 1: um anything from my brother in law came over and
Speaker 1: I unfortunately had a bottle of Happy out and drinking
Speaker 1: his buddies drank the whole damn bottle and shoot, I'll
Speaker 1: never do that again too. My son found it or whatever,
Speaker 1: and i've got or I've got I've just got an
Speaker 1: inch left in this bottle, and I'm not gonna drink
Speaker 1: it until i get another bottle. So it's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's crazy. Some of the little stories about it. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you a story. We we have a place in
Speaker 1: the Colorado Mountains. So I'm going to football game. I'm
Speaker 1: in a rental car. My wife's in New York, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the alarms start going off on
Speaker 1: the app that the cameras are going crazy in the
Speaker 1: in the mountain house. So she's looking at this thing
Speaker 1: in real time. She calls me up and said, there's
Speaker 1: someone who's working on something outside the house and now
Speaker 1: inside the house, and he's standing at the bar in
Speaker 1: the living room. We converted this little closet to a bar.
Speaker 1: It's kind of fancy. We actually got some antique mirror
Speaker 1: glass from Kentucky coincidentally. And on the shelves there's a
Speaker 1: great single mault shelf. We like tequila mescal. There's a
Speaker 1: chef shelf of that, and then there's a bourbon shelf.
Speaker 1: And she's describing this guy standing at our bar public
Speaker 1: glass at and starting you're starting to sample things, and
Speaker 1: you know what I'm thinking, I listen, I don't care
Speaker 1: what he does in the house. Do not drink the poppies.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a bottle there that this is about
Speaker 1: five years ago. I've had it fifteen years. It's fifteen years,
Speaker 1: so I think it's it's still so well or distillery
Speaker 1: era pappies. And then there's some Van Michael family reserves
Speaker 1: sitting there, and I'm just thinking, I mean horrified, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is this would be a terrible way for that
Speaker 1: stuff to go down, and and uh, fortunately he bypassed that,
Speaker 1: and he drank the bourbon that was made about four
Speaker 1: miles up the road in breck and Ridge, which is
Speaker 1: perfectly good stuff but very easy to get. And I
Speaker 1: guess the moral of the story because I was just
Speaker 1: I was, I was. I wanted to turn on the
Speaker 1: Mike Julian and say, listen, step away from the bar,
Speaker 1: whatever you want, do anything, but don't touch those two
Speaker 1: bottles right there. And no questions asked, no no charges pressed,
Speaker 1: just leave. And he was drinking the local bourbon, and
Speaker 1: I guess and he was having a fine time with it,
Speaker 1: and I guess it goes to show you you drink
Speaker 1: what you know, and thankfully he didn't know what he
Speaker 1: saw there. I don't want that old whiskey. I like
Speaker 1: this two year old stuff made down the road. That's funny. Yeah, disaster,
Speaker 1: disaster was averted. Uh, can you de mythologize the process.
Speaker 1: There's an employee, understand it, Buffalo Trace, not you personally,
Speaker 1: that decides which distributors get this, which liquor stores get it,
Speaker 1: and which customers even have a chance in hell of
Speaker 1: grabbing it. Twice a year when when the allocations go out,
Speaker 1: how does that work is? That must be a serious
Speaker 1: headache for that person in fault of making those choices. Well,
Speaker 1: it's once a year. It used to be twice a year,
Speaker 1: and now just once a year. In the fall, President
Speaker 1: and I will sit down with our bourbon manager there
Speaker 1: at Buffalo Trace and and we get to play god actually,
Speaker 1: and we decide which distributors you know, get how many cases.
Speaker 1: And pretty much it has stayed the same for several
Speaker 1: years because it only goes up and down depending on
Speaker 1: evaporation levels or leaky barrels or empty barrels. Even um,
Speaker 1: you know, our supply we make more. We've been making
Speaker 1: more whiskey every year for eighteen nineteen years, a buffalo trace.
Speaker 1: But the demand keeps going up also, so we can't
Speaker 1: say catch up. But we decide how much the distributor
Speaker 1: get and that changes just a percentage wise from some
Speaker 1: last year. Say we have more or less than last year,
Speaker 1: than that percentage increase or decrease is going to be
Speaker 1: the same. Um. The distributors decide who gets it from there,
Speaker 1: We can't we can't mandate what liquor store or what
Speaker 1: restaurant get it. We can suggest it we'd like it
Speaker 1: to go and so and so. But but that's where
Speaker 1: the drama happens. The distributors have the power to decide
Speaker 1: whether two bottles get to this guy's liquor store or
Speaker 1: this restaurant and that and that. I'm sure they must
Speaker 1: be pressure on them. Yeah, it's um. You know, we
Speaker 1: get a lot of um problems because they can't get
Speaker 1: what they used to. But there are more stores, are
Speaker 1: more people getting into the business. So the whole the supply,
Speaker 1: which is tiny back in the day, is even tinier
Speaker 1: because they're more more stores or restaurants or whatever getting
Speaker 1: the products. So everybody's allocation is going down every year.
Speaker 1: It seems like um or. It is Pappy's initial motto,
Speaker 1: make a great product. And I think at that point
Speaker 1: the supply was can roll. You wanted to make it coveted,
Speaker 1: you wanted to make it precious and hard to get.
Speaker 1: But I know that hasn't applied lately. They people think
Speaker 1: you're like Opec. You just let's let's drive the price
Speaker 1: up and and and the hype up by just cutting production.
Speaker 1: And I know you're not doing that. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: sure I'm an Arab whiskey make well. I said, you're
Speaker 1: not like that because I think you guys, you guys
Speaker 1: are trying. I'm sure you're trying to make it as
Speaker 1: well as you can, as fast as you can and
Speaker 1: satisfy a market that now, yeah, you have to try
Speaker 1: to project what that's gonna be in that's when the
Speaker 1: stuff that's going in the bottle now is going to
Speaker 1: finally be be brought to market. And and you've got
Speaker 1: people all over the world, not just America clamoring for this.
Speaker 1: You've got you've got global markets who want a piece
Speaker 1: of the magic you're making. Yeah. Yeah, it's um uh,
Speaker 1: you know, once you put it in the barrel, obviously,
Speaker 1: it's a long time for it comes to market. But
Speaker 1: it's a it's it's a tricky deal week. But we
Speaker 1: we're not holding back inventory to increase our prices and
Speaker 1: so forth. With every drop we can, we hold back
Speaker 1: these days a supply for charity events and so forth.
Speaker 1: And that's really about it and a little bit reserved
Speaker 1: for I mean, it's crazy, but for some reason, our
Speaker 1: trucks seem to have accidents or somebody robs the trucks
Speaker 1: when it goes to the distributor. We have a few
Speaker 1: occasions of that, and said, why would wow, would our
Speaker 1: truck that gets thousands of truck loads of spirits going
Speaker 1: to Louisiana or Michigan or wherever? Um, why would our
Speaker 1: truck get hijacked or have a wreck or whatever. It
Speaker 1: seems very very odd. But I think it's just bad luck.
Speaker 1: But um, you know, if if that happens, we try
Speaker 1: and give them a few bottles to cover their Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, there's people believe there there are no such
Speaker 1: things as coincidences, So maybe maybe it's not just bad luck.
Speaker 1: Who knows, hey, man, when when when a product is
Speaker 1: that priceless and that and that precious, Weird things are
Speaker 1: going to happen. I'm sure it's very suspicious. And I'm
Speaker 1: wondering what the insurance adjusters do with all that product
Speaker 1: that's sitting there that maybe is not damage, but it's
Speaker 1: just got a bad label or something. But it is
Speaker 1: a business plan. You called it ridiculous. It's it's certainly unique.
Speaker 1: You're trying to figure out what what's the consumer gonna
Speaker 1: want in how much are they gonna want and then
Speaker 1: trying to try to it's a time capsule thing. You're
Speaker 1: trying to make those decisions right now. It's it's kind
Speaker 1: of mind bending. I mean, right now, everybody wants to
Speaker 1: get the thing to market as fast as possible. Every
Speaker 1: prody you can think of how to get it to
Speaker 1: market as quick as possible to satisfy an immediate consumer demand.
Speaker 1: And that's and that's what defines success or failure. Lots
Speaker 1: of times, you guys are the direct opposite of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's as I said, it's a weird business plan to
Speaker 1: put something away for that long and and have a
Speaker 1: drain your bank account, you know, every every day, every month,
Speaker 1: every year. But that's we have. We're lucky enough to
Speaker 1: have a product that age we think makes it better
Speaker 1: and it's ridiculous business plan, but I wouldn't. Everybody came
Speaker 1: to me the first suggestions of getting in the whiske
Speaker 1: venis I basically tried to talk him out of it,
Speaker 1: not because it being competition, just because, um, it's a
Speaker 1: very low percentage it's going to be successful because it's
Speaker 1: so tough. Um, we're lucky enough to have Satisrack Buffalo
Speaker 1: Trace got some deep pockets so they can afford to
Speaker 1: do that. But and that's because we have a very
Speaker 1: old old liquor or whiskey profiles very much. It's lot
Speaker 1: older than other distilleries, but it's it's it's hard to
Speaker 1: um to keep that thing going, but it's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's worth We're lucky that it's it's worked so far.
Speaker 1: We try and not get too greedy and make too
Speaker 1: much whiskey every year because someday this thing will slow
Speaker 1: down and UM, you know, we don't want to be
Speaker 1: caught with too much inventory, which is which has been there,
Speaker 1: done that, so I'm I don't want to do that again.
Speaker 1: But being a privately held own company, UM, I think
Speaker 1: we're not gonna let the profit get in the way
Speaker 1: of a good product. But it's rare that that money
Speaker 1: doesn't drive a product quality, uh, and I think it
Speaker 1: it hurts in a lot of cases. Is when you
Speaker 1: make a product less expensively, obviously, and we're really not
Speaker 1: trying to do that at all. We're going to opposite way,
Speaker 1: and it seems to have work force so far. I'm
Speaker 1: sitting here sipping in glass as we speak, and I'm
Speaker 1: very much in the moment, and then my enjoyment of
Speaker 1: any spirit is is very much in the presence. So
Speaker 1: if I'm not a sentimental person, I don't consider myself
Speaker 1: to be and I'm not, uh that nostalgic and i
Speaker 1: never shared a bottle of bourbon with any dead ancestors.
Speaker 1: Am I missing the point when it comes to enjoying
Speaker 1: this spirit? Because so many people connect in all those
Speaker 1: ways when they sip it, And for me, I just
Speaker 1: like how it tastes when I'm drinking it. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: you got you got that too. It's enjoyable. But if
Speaker 1: you really get sentimental and emotional and you know, right.
Speaker 1: Brought this to my attention when he um talking about
Speaker 1: the book for CBS Sunday Morning with Lee Cowen. He's
Speaker 1: sitting at our table in our living room right over there,
Speaker 1: dying room and sipping open the bottle of this happened
Speaker 1: to be stits a weller, But with our whiskey that
Speaker 1: we're putting out now ten to twenty three years old.
Speaker 1: You pop that cork out and that's a bottle of
Speaker 1: history right there. This stuff was made ten to twenty
Speaker 1: three years ago. What was going on there? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's like a little town capsule, really is. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm plagiarizing rights words, but I think that's what he
Speaker 1: was talking about. It. It's pretty special to um, just
Speaker 1: something to take that long to become equality that it is.
Speaker 1: And it's like wine, um are you know our whiskey
Speaker 1: can last longer than wine in a bottle because it's
Speaker 1: got alcohol content. Play about wine, but it really is
Speaker 1: quite You can you can go deep on deep on
Speaker 1: this thinking about what's in that bottle of what was
Speaker 1: going on back then. No, No, I I guess when
Speaker 1: it comes to that, I'm more sentimental than I let on.
Speaker 1: I'm not sentimental and most things, but for all the
Speaker 1: things you just said, you know, it does feel really
Speaker 1: good going down and it feels good to think about
Speaker 1: the craft that went into it and how it's not
Speaker 1: just fifteen or twenty years old, but the idea of
Speaker 1: how to make it goes back eighty years, right or more? Yeah, exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty very lucky and blessed to have been
Speaker 1: born into this business and and not have screwed it up.
Speaker 1: As Bill Samuel says, I'm just trying to not to
Speaker 1: screw up what my dad started, and I'm kind of
Speaker 1: did the same thing for my father and grandfather and
Speaker 1: your son pressing you hope we'll we'll continue on and
Speaker 1: keep the family legacy going. Yep. He's sure plans on
Speaker 1: it because that's his his life right now and future
Speaker 1: you know, generations after that too, so we'll see most
Speaker 1: of the third generation screws it up. Well. Congratulations on
Speaker 1: on doing the opposite. I'm so grateful to Julian and
Speaker 1: to write for sharing their stories and their knowledge. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this different kind of an episode. I
Speaker 1: had a lot of fun researching it had included sampling
Speaker 1: and sipping a lot of different bourbons. You have to
Speaker 1: know your your topic well, don't you. By the way,
Speaker 1: I was left with one question that neither Julian nor
Speaker 1: Wright could really answer, Bourbon is a uniquely American product.
Speaker 1: It is our country's great contribution to the global world
Speaker 1: of spirits. So why aren't the families who have built
Speaker 1: legacies producing fine bourbon generation after generation. Why aren't they
Speaker 1: viewed with the same kind of reverence as the winemaking
Speaker 1: kognac making families of France and Italy are, or this
Speaker 1: single malt distillers are in Scotland. Why isn't bourbon the
Speaker 1: same source of national pride for Americans as vodka is
Speaker 1: for Russians or tequila is for Mexicans. Maybe you have
Speaker 1: a thought, give you some feedback on Instagram, or maybe
Speaker 1: it'll just take a few more generations of bourbon producing.
Speaker 1: This episode wraps up season two for the podcast. Like
Speaker 1: co executive producer Jennifer Dempster and Jason White, felt really
Speaker 1: thank you for listening to these episodes. Will be hard
Speaker 1: at work producing a whole new batch of episodes for
Speaker 1: season three and look forward to connecting with you. Then.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, cheers to your health and please break responsibly.
Speaker 1: M M.