13. Bourbon Air Tours - A New Way to Visit the Bourbon Distilleries

But when that happens, it's a tragedy. The bourbon drinkers all shed a tear, I'm sure, the minute they heard it.

Well, we were all very happy that there weren't any workers in the rick house when that happened.

A friend of mine over at Barton was in that rick house two hours before it fell.

Wow. Yeah.

It's amazing.

Yeah. Very lucky guy.

Lunchtime.

Yeah.

Everyone was out of the building and when it fell, It's a horrible mess.

Well, God was smiling that day.

He watches out for the bourbon folks.

I guess that's one way to look at it.

Any more interesting stories? Because inquiring minds want to know if people are thrown up in planes, you're doing barrel rolls over the barrels.

Well, we try to avoid that.

Welcome to another trip down the Bourbon Road with your hosts, Jim and Randy. So grab a glass of your favorite bourbon and kick back.

We would like to thank Tommy and Gwen Mitchell from Log Heads Home Center for supporting this episode of the Bourbon Road. Find out more about their fine rustic furniture at logheadshomecenter.com.

Hello, I'm Jim Shannon. Randy Minnick, and we are the Bourbon Road. And where are we at today, Randy? We are in Bardstown, Kentucky, the bourbon capital of the world. And we're at a place called Samuels Field. So this is the airport here at Bardstown. Bardstown Airport. There you go. To talk about bourbon air tours with Terry Welshens. Terry, welcome. Thank you. Welcome to the show.

Thanks guys. Well, we don't waste a whole lot of time jibber jabbering at the beginning. We like to get right to the bourbon. Let's go. What do you think about that? Well, for first pour today, what we've brought is, um, is Rebel Yell, but this is actually the 10-year version of Rebel Yell. And folks, if you hear that in the background, we are at an operating airport. Not only will you hear planes coming in and out of the runways, but you'll probably also hear a little bit of the weather report in the background. We're just gonna make do.

That's one of the challenges of being out on the road and going where the people are.

So, back to the bourbon. This is Rebel Yale 10 year. This is actually a single barrel whiskey. And it is, this is an older bottle though. This is a bottle that was, began its aging process in 2006. And to my best guess, probably entered the bottle in 2016. It's a 10 year old juice. And it's kind of hard to find sometimes, 10 year.

Yeah, I've looked around and it is hard to find.

It's a 100 poof bourbon, and like I said, it is a single barrel. Let's go ahead and try it and see what we think.

I know, it has a nice smell, yeah.

I don't know, what kind of glasses are these by the way?

My son-in-law, who works for one of the larger liquor companies around here, suggested I try them. I don't know the name. It's a baseless, wide mouth design. It really has a venturi effect. You put your nose in a sweet spot and the nosing of a bourbon is, you're right on top of it.

I was noticing that. Glencairn's very small opening, so this is...

It's kind of a wide-mouthed Glen Caron with no base.

It kind of subdues the nose a little bit. I noticed that right off the bat. It doesn't concentrate the smells as much as it kind of opens up a little bit more. It does.

Get some oxygen and molecules with that little sniff there.

This bourbon has a kind of a, you know, a light nose to it. Yeah, it's not heavy at all. Now, Rebel Yell is a weeded bourbon. Correct. Like the Wellers and some others out there.

Yeah. Makers, I think.

Makers. So this bourbon, I don't know what the mash bill is on it, but it is made in Louisville, Kentucky.

Right. I believe Heaven Hill started this off and it's put together over at LuxRoe.

Got it. Yep. But I'm getting the typical caramel. The funny thing is I'm getting a little bit of spice there. Even though we don't have a rye in this, I'm assuming we don't have a rye in this. This is not a four grain bourbon. It's simply a weeded bourbon. Correct. I'm getting a little bit of spice on those.

I think I'm liking this.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's good stuff. You got a good pick going here.

Well, the first time I had it, I had never had it. And I said, rebel yell, Jim goes, you need to try this. And of course he's got a hundred bottles open of any kind of bourbon you want just about. And I said, let me have another little bit of that rebel.

Yep. It's not what you think.

It's got a bit of barrel to it, doesn't it?

Yes, it does. I think the 10 year does that to it. Yep. Comparing it to the regular 80 proof, the woodiness in this is coming out.

Definitely. And I'm getting a little bit of cherry on it. Just a little bit of cherry on it. It kind of warms the center of my tongue. It's got a pretty decent finish. And oh, a Kentucky hug.

Yeah. So I talk about when it rounds the corner, but what I noticed is the finish on this was almost in two parts. It's almost like it disappeared real quick, but then I was like, whoa, what is something that was sticking around? So that finish kind of stayed with you, even though it seemed like it went away at first.

I noticed that too. The heat, when you first take a sip, just it's there, right there. And then it fades out and then it seems to come back in. I'm feeling it on the roof of my mouth at the back. I can feel that warmth coming back out. It's pretty tasty. Yeah.

So this is a pulsating bourbon.

Reciprocating.

There you go. It's coming back at you. That's good. So Terry, are you originally from Kentucky?

No, I'm not. I married a Kentucky girl in 1970. So I've probably got closer relationships to Kentucky than about half the people alive here.

So where were you born and raised?

I was born in Iowa. OK. My old family came from Massachusetts, headed west. Some headed south here to Bardstown. But the branch I'm related to wound up in 1840s in Iowa. And all my nearest grandparents are there. Then my dad one winter after I was born decided he'd had quite enough of the snow and headed to California and that's where I was raised.

Oh, okay.

Ten months old.

Yeah, it can get cold in Iowa. My wife's from there actually.

Oh, you know what I'm talking about.

Yeah, it's very chilly up there. A lot of corn.

Yes. Something about the West and corn.

So, one question we usually always ask our guests, and one of the reasons you're on the show is because you're actually part of this, but we go send it to you and ask you, what does the Bourbon culture mean to you?

That's a very good question. I've developed a lot of close friends because of the bourbon industry. I've met a lot of people here since I've been in Bardstown and they're all warm and friendly people. I've joined a couple of associations and they all seem to, I don't know, the fellowship more than anything. It's like family.

It's a- Very welcoming.

Yeah. And a brotherhood. We're all close. I've met people They're board of directors of very large corporations and I've met people just walking down the road and they're all bourbon drinkers. So we all hang out.

So on any given day, what would you say your daily drinker is? If you just pull out a bottle of what you want daily. My go-to? Go-to.

Well, it used to be, and one of the weeded bourbons, one of the weller products that I happen to have a good supply of. But I discovered Rubble Yell and it's right there. And then the good news is it's relatively inexpensive and readily available.

It is. It is. Now, the old Fitz, right, was another weeded bourbon, right? And I guess there's some others too. Okay.

Okay. So would a rye be something you would drink on a special occasion? What would you drink if you were pulling out something for a marking anniversary or a birthday or some kind of special occasion?

Eagle Rare. Eagle Rare, really. Yeah, I've got that. Larceny. Those are special occasion bourbons. And I do have a very special, special occasion. I've got a Van Winkle in the closet that close friends and son comes over, we sit on it.

The Van Winkle is a weeded bourbon. The Larceny is a weeded bourbon. I can see where you roll here.

And Bernheim.

Yeah, Bernheim. Now, Bernheim's not a bourbon, but it's a wheat whiskey, right? Yeah, so I've... You see a trend. Yeah, I can see a trend there. Bernheim off the shelf is not something that I kind of go to personally. It's not my thing. But I've heard there's some Bernheim picks out there that are really good, some store picks.

We're not be surprised.

Yeah.

A weeded bourbon has a distinctive difference to it from a regular corn-based bourbon.

In your opinion, what would that difference really be? Where would you get that? In the nose? In the actual tasting? In the finish?

I think overall the sweetness, the initial sweetness is lower in a weeded bourbon. The corn just seems to bring that up and I taste the sweetness first. I lose that with, I think the more wheat you put in, the lower the sweetness goes. That's just my personal taste.

That's a personal preference, sure. Absolutely. Well, one of the things we probably ought to square away already at night now, so we don't have any nervous listeners, we are drinking bourbon and you are a pilot. Yes. But there are some rules that go along with that, right? Yes.

Yeah, we're not flying today.

That's good. Not flying till tomorrow.

Till tomorrow morning.

So what did you tell me earlier the rule was?

Well, the federal regulations say that there could be no less than eight hours after you finish a drink before you go flying. So we call it the eight hour bottle to throttle rule.

Eight hour bottle to throttle. Bottle to throttle. That's a good time to sleep is that eight hours.

Yes. And the same applies to medicinal things, pain relievers or whatever. It's the same rule. You don't want to be impaired when you're flying. You need all your faculties in attendance.

I actually took one lesson. They didn't let me do a whole lot on the ground, but I did a pretty good with a 30 degree bank. But some of those planes, those smaller ones. Am I going to get out of this alive? You know, it's the bolts are rattling, folks. Anyway, so you're a vet. Yes, sir. Was that where you learned to fly or was your first experience flying there or what? If you're comfortable talking about your military service, what was it that you actually were involved in there?

Well, I was actually a pilot before I went in the Army.

OK.

So I didn't get my license, certificate is the correct word. I didn't get that until 1968. But I've been flying since 1963. So it took a while to get my private pilot certificate, mostly because it's expensive and I didn't have any money. It takes cash to do this. When I enlisted in the Army in 1967, I had wanted to fly helicopters. That was the going thing at that point. I knew the Vietnam War was going and I thought it'd be kind of nifty to fly a helicopter there. And they said, no dice, you wear glasses, you can't do it. So I was disappointed. So I went into the mechanical side of it and repairing things instead of flying them.

So you served our country in the Vietnam War. Correct. Yes. Thank you for your service. Yes.

A lot of people say that and they don't know really what it means. There's a lot of dedication. There's a lot of growing up. There's a lot of self-reliance that comes out of that. And I did learn all those things. And a lot of people respect that, that there's a difference in people once they've served in the military.

Right. Well, I think it's important for somebody to show their gratitude. Now, I'm a vet as well, but I think it's important for someone to show their gratitude and respect for those who serve. And, you know, a lot of times it's not just military service, but it's, you know, public servants as well. You know, police, firefighters, people like that who, you know, put their lives on the line every single day. Right. And there are those of us who served in different capacities in the military. And I don't think it's the responsibility of your average citizen to understand exactly what we did or what we went through. But the fact that they take a moment to thank us for that service, I think that's important.

Yeah, I welcome it. I get it a lot. I often wear a hat that has something about being a veteran on it. And I get questions. Where did you serve? When were you in? And the fact that I was in Vietnam in 1968-69, a lot of the people I talked to weren't born then. They have no idea what happened. And I'm not there to educate them. to just to let them know that I appreciate that they're thinking about us.

Yeah, absolutely. John, that was the first war that brought the images into your living room. Correct. The tape and stuff, I mean, it's not instantaneous like it is nowadays, but back then, you know, some of the images.

Very real.

Yeah.

Very real.

Very real. As I continue to sip on this bourbon, it starts to mellow a little bit on the tongue. I think it starts to get a little bit more rounded and sweeter. I'm not saying, yeah, I'm acclimating. I don't think the bourbon's changing in my glass, but I'm changing. This is an excellent sipping bourbon. This is one that you can sit with for a lengthy period of time and just enjoy. You don't need to take it too quick. Just take it nice and slow. Kind of like we're doing today.

Yeah, this is, I call it porch whiskey.

Yeah.

Definitely. Or airport whiskey in this case.

Airport whiskey. We do have some benches right outside.

Hey, watch them take off and land, huh? That's it, yeah. So what type of planes have you flown?

My certificate is for airplane single engine land, which means I can fly about anything that has one engine on it. I've flown Cessnas and Pipers and Grumman Americans, and I was up in a carbon cub just this last weekend. But it's typical planes you'd find here at a general aviation airport. I'm going to call them run of the mills. There's nothing unusual about them. We've watched a twin take off here a few minutes ago. I'm not certified to fly a twin, but I have flown a Cessna 421, which is a 250 mile an hour twin engine airplane.

Okay, you just turn one of the engines off and then you're okay?

It'll take you to the scene of the crash. No, you have to learn the techniques.

Sure, absolutely. I understand.

It's a very regulated business and rightly so. Extremely. In talking to you, I find it interesting here that we can bring this a little bit back to the bourbon. So you were talking about, or we found out about this whole class six wild turkey 101 that you were responsible for in the military. If you want to tell us a little about that, I think it would be interesting.

That's a cool story. Yeah. In fact, two days ago, I was talking to a lady at a liquor store here in town. I was looking for one of my favorite products. She noticed my hat and asked about, was I in the military? And I said, yes. And she said, well, what did you do? And I explained to her the class six story a little bit because it just fits into the liquor store.

So tell us what class six is. I never had a clue. And you know, there's people out there I'm sure that know. And then there's class six. Class six, yeah.

Well, the military has all of the supply system categorized into classes. Class one being very vital items such as food. Then class two is shelter and class three and ammunition and so on until you get to class six, which are the less mandatory items, but they're kind of nice to have along. And that's the liquor store.

Cigars. Cigarettes.

Yeah, everything that you would find not in the regular post-exchange would be there.

That the government will tax.

Yeah. Well, we get it tax-free, and that was a good thing. Oh, okay. There you go. Yeah. But yeah, I was a bootlegger, I think, in Vietnam, is the best description. The lady I was speaking to in the liquor store, I said, what do you know about the military? And she says, well, I was at 95. And I'm thinking, I don't know that that's the military occupational specialty. I don't know a 95. And she said, it's an MP. And I went, oh, never mind. But one of my responsibilities when I was in Vietnam, although I was in the mechanical side of it, and I was in charge of a shop office where we would bring vehicles in, I would inspect them, prepare a parts list, write up the orders to repair it, talk to my counterpart on the mechanical repair side and give him the work order for it and he would prioritize it. And then I would process the paperwork when it was finished and put it back into service. So one of my many responsibilities was escorting, I've got to call it special material. We captured a lot of Vietnamese materials when I was in Vietnam and we would box that up into foot lockers and various boxes. And I would escort it as the official courier back to the main base at Cam Ranh Bay. So I would pack up three or four foot lockers and some boxes and I'd load it in a helicopter every week. And I would fly from this remote location out in the middle of nowhere back to a big base on the South China Sea. Cameron Bay is a very, very nice place to be. I would turn in the materials. I would distribute the paperwork that I had. I had some secure documents that needed to be placed in certain places. I would take my parts list from the shop and I would put those in the parts department. And once that was all done, I'd usually then lounge around the rest of the day, stop by the Class 6 store, reach in my pocket and pull out all the ration papers, the ration cards that we had that allows you to buy things like tape recorders and television sets and radios and Class 6 store items. And I would have a pocketful of those from my friends back at the remote site. And I would have their money and their ration cards. I had a letter of travel authorizing me to do what I was doing except, well, maybe not that part. But we would stop in and I would hand them my order saying, oh, I'm from here and here's the ration cards and here's the money, square me up. And they would give me bottles, quarts, fifths, whatever they were at the time. I would sometimes order cases of beer. I had a whole pallet shipped once. and square that up. I put those in my suitcases and in my boxes and foot lockers and take them back to the field.

So the, the foot lockers and cases that you came there with, uh, you were returning normally returning empty, but in this case you were filling the back.

Well, we're carefully padded.

So do you remember some of the more select items that you would, uh, let's talk about bourbon here. Were there some bourbons that you would?

Yes. Well, my favorite at the time was wild turkey.

Okay.

So most of the guys like wild turkey. So I'd pack up several bottles of that, but there were vodka drinkers and a little bit of this, a little bit of that. 1960s, there was a lot of brand names out there. The store carried Old Forrester, Fitzgerald, you just name it and it was there.

Now the 60s was a heyday for bourbon. Oh yeah. Now the 80s, not so much. Not so much. But the 60s, definitely.

Cheap too.

Yeah.

We were at five bucks a bottle.

And wild turkey was a different animal back then.

Yes.

Altogether.

Yeah. It was, well, in the field you weren't real picky. The fact that you could get it and drink it in the afternoons when the work is done and you sit around the table and talk to your friends and play little cards. It's good sipping whiskey at the time.

So wild turkey was the go-to back then.

It was one of my favorites, yeah.

One of the things that we had chatted about a little bit when we first got here was the fact that you've got a little bit of kind of bourbon royalty in your family tree, right?

I've got relatives that are in the business, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Give us kind of the brief overview of that and, you know, where does your lineage go back to?

Well, Jim, as I mentioned earlier, my family came to Bardstown in 1797, and I did not know that. It wasn't until we moved here after we retired that although I knew Catherine Ambrose was my sixth grade aunt, I didn't know anything about her family. I knew she was buried here in Bardstown in 1805. That's all I knew. She came here in 1797 and was buried in 1805. So I went to the genealogical society here and I discovered that she had married a fellow named Johann, call him John Weller. And all of her kids came with her after he died. He died in 1796. He was a Revolutionary War soldier. He had a land grant here in Kentucky. And after he passed on, she gathered up her kids and grandkids. She was 60 something years old. We found out that her sons and grandsons all lived here in Bardstown at one time. And it's her great-great-great-grandson was William LaRue Weller. Oh, okay. So that tripped my trigger and I said, well, I've got to find out more about this family.

So you started the whole genealogy research effort.

Yeah, I had no idea that it was, and at the time, I got to be honest with you, I had never, from California, I had never heard of Weller.

Yeah, because you went Iowa to California, then to here, you wouldn't think, you know.

Had no clue. No clue. I knew of Makers Mark and I knew of Jim Beam. Those are nationwide brands. But William LaRue Weller's W.L. Weller brand name did nothing about it. And I was quite impressed to discover that. I mean, at the time I was able to find bottles of it in the liquor store and I kind of liked it. So I figured, you know, that's not a bad thing.

Well, we brought a bottle with us today, so maybe when we're all finished today, we'll take a cheers to your ancestor. Oh, thank you very much.

That'd be cool.

That would be cool. So you come to Bardstown, start getting into the whole bourbon scene, and I noticed on the website, the whole stave and thieves society.

Well, that's interesting. Some of the online bourbon things, they have a thing called the taters. Have you ever heard of the taters? The taters.

That's what I usually get at Waffle House with my bags. I like fried taters and gravy. There you go.

Some of these loosely knit web organizations talk about people who have an over enthusiastic view of bourbon they call them taters because they get to the things like collecting empty bottles and things like that and Well, they don't consider being in something like the stave and thief as being very important But what I do with it It taught me how bourbon is made and It taught me the history of bourbon itself. It taught me the laws regarding what makes a bourbon a bourbon, the distillation process and the proof levels and the aging and all that, all the terminology. I had to learn those things to pass a test. And once I passed the test, they awarded me this stave and thief pen.

So you are a certified bourbon steward. Correct. Which we have interviewed a few people in the past who are also certified bourbon stewards. But it seems that this is extremely important if you're in the bourbon service industry, whether you're pouring drinks for someone or you own a restaurant or you fly for bourbon air tours. Correct. That you properly represent bourbon to our visitors every year.

I believe that's very important, Jim. The fact that I know enough about it not to say the wrong things, and I don't guess. I'll tell you if I don't know something. But there's a few things about bourbon I know. And to pass that test, I had to know some of the important ones.

And if you don't know, you know the important people to go ask.

I know a few people who know the answers. Yeah.

So how long ago did you do that?

About a year ago.

About a year? Yeah. And if you noticed a difference, do you feel more confident now when you're talking to your passengers and your customers that you feel like, you know, I do know what I'm talking about here, right?

Well, that's true. It helps my confidence, but it also tells my customers that I'm not telling them some line that they'll get some place. You know, I've learned one thing about this bourbon business. There's a lot of lore involved. Almost every distillery I've been to, and I've been to almost all of them around here, I've taken their tours and I visited with their people. Almost all these distilleries have a lore that they carry through as part of their branding. And some of it is factual and some of it is not quite so factual. But I've read tons of books on this. I've learned from some of the masters who have written these things. And I've gone back to the old gazettes and there's one on the table over there we could talk about later. This is the history of the business and this is who owned the distillery and who they sold it to and who they sold it to and what it became later. I think with the truth of it, trying to get to the truth when you're trying to assimilate four or five stories that don't exactly match. how you can rationalize that into one consistent thing. And that's the story that I try to tell the people. I give them a history lesson. So I try to be as truthful as I can blending this lore into the most, I'm going to say, rational story I can tell. And I'm not going to bad mouth any of the stories. I think they're very entertaining.

No, some of them are great. There's truth in some. There's, well, I don't know. You don't want to call them lies. They're not lies, but they're embellishments.

Yeah. Right? It's lore.

There's something there that's true, and they just make it sound.

Yeah, part of the experience.

Yeah, you got to give it a life to make it attractive.

I like to drink something with a story. You know, that's one of the reasons Randy and I do this is for the story. We want to hear your story.

That's why that's why we're here today And I guess we're gonna get to more of this story and how bourbon air tour started in the second half all right good place to have a little break and All right, and so when we come back you'll have something for us to try and we don't know what that is yet.

We're kind of excited Yeah, and then we'll talk a little more detail about what you do look forward to it. All right. All right sounds good. Oh We would like to thank Tommy and Gwen Mitchell from Loghead's Home Center for supporting this episode of the Bourbon Road. Loghead's Home Center, nestled in the hills of Kentucky, is an industry leader in building hand-crafted rustic furniture. Family-owned and operated, they take pride in offering only the very best for their customers. The Logheads, and that's what they like to call themselves, are skilled woodcrafters who are passionate about creating rustic furniture for people who appreciate the beauty of natural wood. Owners Tommy and Gwen don't just sell the rustic lifestyle, they live it. And you can be sure that Loghead's furniture will always be handcrafted in Kentucky by artisans who embrace the simple way of life. Loghead's rustic furniture is made from northern white cedar, a sustainable wood that's naturally rotten termite resistant. Its beauty and quality will add warmth to your earthy lifestyle for generations to come. Be sure to check out everything they have to offer at LogHeadsHomeCenter.com. And while you're at it, give Tommy and Gwen a shout on Facebook or Instagram at LogHeads Home Center. Okay, so we are back for our second half and what have you got for us today?

Well, I brought my go-to Saturday afternoon through Friday night sipping whiskey. It's a Rubble Yell 80 proof. Very similar to the one we poured that you brought, the 10-year, which is, I think, a real special one. I've been looking forward to that one. Thank you for bringing that.

Not a problem. Yeah, normally you want to go lower proof to higher proof as you're drinking, and today we're going the other direction, which is fine. But we'll get a chance to see what its younger brother tastes like, right? Exactly. And I'm assuming it's a younger brother.

Correct. More than likely, yeah. Yeah, there's no age statement, so this could be four years, five years.

All right, so we've already poured these, so let's go ahead and try them.

I'm on.

Now, this liquid's a little bit lighter than the 10-year, and I would expect that from a younger bourbon. And in the glass, I would say probably a light amber. Correct. Light amber color.

And look at how long it takes for those legs to form on that. Isn't that beautiful? Yeah.

And this is a weeded bourbon as well. So these are the same mash bills. The difference is the proof and the age. Correct. And the barrel selections for this batch.

There's always that. I think the thing about this is the lack of woodiness compared to the tenure. Otherwise, they're very similar.

Yeah. So on this one, I am getting a little more alcohol in the nose, like up front. I tried to let it sit there for a minute.

Well, it could be the Glencairn glass too.

Yeah, that's right. So we drank the first one out of a much more wider mouth glass. The Glencairn does tend to focus that a little bit. But this does have a little bit of a younger note to it. It's a good nose. I mean, I think it's good.

But you can actually taste the wheat grain in this one. You couldn't quite as much in the tin.

A little bit of the cereal. I haven't tasted it yet. Cereal.

That'll work. Cereal.

And I think the sweetness is higher, a little bit higher.

Yeah, so this is definitely more in the front of your palate. where the tenure definitely tends to migrate to the back of your palate and give you that oak presence. This stays up front a little bit. It's definitely sweeter. You get that corn, that cereal note up front. It's pleasant. It's very pleasant.

It reminds me of being in a corn crib. The smell of fresh corn that's been aged in a corn crib. You get the aroma of the corn. I smell that in this.

But it's not bright. It's not brittle. It doesn't have that green kind of young bourbon flavor. So I would say... Finish doesn't quite last as long either. There's not much of one to speak of really.

Yeah. It goes away pretty quick. Now it's got a little bit of a hug there. Not much, but you know. Oh, come on, Jim. You acclimated it like... Yeah.

I mean, we did start out with 100 proof. Now we're down to 80. Yeah. Yeah, it's good. So this is a fine choice for a daily drinker. I mean, this is bottom shelf, right? Yes, it is. Pretty much. And what's a bottle of this cost?

Well, $17.18. $17.18? Compared to as much as $20, perhaps. Okay. All right. I bought a bottle, $175 the other day for under $25. Okay. At a local liquor store here.

Very respectable. Very respectable. I was really good. Good, solid bourbon.

So the, uh, the 10 year is going to set you back closer to 50, 60 range. I think if I remember correctly, it's been a while since I bought a bottle. Um, and this is so clearly a, a difference in price and a difference in, in what you get. Uh, but they're both very nice bourbons.

There you go.

So what prompted you to start Bourbon Air Tours?

Well, last October, a friend of mine brought a group of his friends here to the airport. They were having a, I guess you'd call it a mini convention or a fly-in, and they all had carbon cubs, which are two-seat sport airplanes. They're very lightweight. And their organization had put together a tour. They had a representative from one of the major distilleries come along. And as they flew around the countryside here over the distilleries, they spoke about each one. And my friend said to me, maybe that's something we ought to do more often. Someone ought to consider doing that here at the airport. and that lit my light.

The entrepreneur in you.

Yes, it triggered, it tripped the trigger. So this is a fairly new venture then. Right, it started, my initial work started in October of last year. Wow, that's... And we were up and flying by March.

Very good.

Yeah. It took a little while to get the paperwork squared away. There's a lot of paperwork in flying, no matter what you do, but this was something I'd never tried before, getting a certified letter of authority. It's kind of special.

So the letter of authority is issued by? Federal Aviation Administration. Now, do you have any communication with the distilleries you're flying over at all?

No, we don't speak with them while we're flying.

No, no, I mean, but in advance. Say, hey, we're going to do these.

Yes.

I've gone to each of the distilleries here, all the way out to Buffalo Trace, all of the locals, and I've discussed this with them, and I've asked them each to give me a history of their distillery and what they want me to say about it. I want to speak their line. I don't want to make stuff up.

So for those who are just now hearing about this, give us kind of an overview. What is Bourbon Air Tours?

All right. Well, I'm a commercial air tour operator, which gives me authority to fly for hire and I can take as many as three passengers. We take off out of Bardstown and we fly three different routes. I take you over the top of all the active working distilleries as well as the historic distilleries that may or may not even exist anymore. That left me thinking history. I'm a bit of a history buff. So I did some research and I found all of the 1890 distilleries around Nelson County. A lot of them are gone. A lot of them, there's nothing that remains. Others, there are fragments that you can see from the air that you'll never see on a ground-based tour.

Which distilleries did you can see these fragments?

The nearest one is T.W. Samuel's in Dietzville. There's a large distillery there now and you can see the chimney and you can see the rick houses and all that.

Now, they still store some barrels out there, right?

Heaven Hill owns it, yes. Actually, Heaven Hill owns the warehouses and the distillery is owned by a private individual.

Because I had always heard that Parker Beam always considered that his prime location for storing barrels.

Wouldn't be surprised.

It's a good spot.

There are unique warehouses there too. They're triple roof construction. They have three tiers like a Chinese pagoda. They have a narrow roof on a clear story, then a couple floors down there's a wider roof, and a couple floors down there's an even wider roof. So, I don't know what the advantage of that is, but it's unique. It's very unique. You're the only one I know with that, right? But just north of there, one mile, is the 1844 T.W. Samuel's distillery that was at W.I. Samuel's farm. All these Williams get mixed up with the Samuel's people. The Samuel's family has a lot of people named Bill in it. William is first initial, or William is the second initial. But the original buildings from 1844, the only two that exist are some old rick houses that they had, and they're about a mile north of the existing T.W. Samuel's distillery. So you go up there and you can see them if you drive to them, but that's not on anybody's tour.

Right. And so this is kind of an archeology site. Yeah, I think you're right. Now, Deetsville is still partly in operation for storage. Yes. But you go north of there to this site, and now you're talking archeology.

Archeology, yeah. The funny thing is, the first time I found those, They have the same physical structure as the newer T.W. Samuel's distillery rick houses. They're the same three-tiered roof arrangement. They're just much smaller and they're very old. All of these buildings were designed by a company called IDEC and they are very unique. They're balloon frame made out of riveted together iron covered with sheet iron, where most rick houses of course are wood. But they do have the wood ricks inside. The old warehouses, that distillery burned in 1906 and the frames, the shells of the building is all that's left. They use it for hay storage now.

So you've got a couple of different types of tours that you run. What's the length of a typical tour?

I have three routes here out of Bardstown and one route out of Frankfurt and all three are about 30 minutes apiece. The three here in Bardstown we can link together for a 90 minute tour if you want to do all three. I have to pick you up and load you at Frankfurt to do the Frankfurt tour.

Okay. So you fly out of here in Bardstown, you fly up to the Frankfurt airport. Correct. And then you load your passengers there and you go back up.

Correct. Yeah. Something about the, there's a 25 mile limit to how far I can take a tour.

Oh, really? Yeah. And then that's decided by the FAA. FAA, yeah. It's part of the rules.

So you touch down. So if somebody wanted to Oh, so if somebody wanted to do all of them, could they meet you here, do the tours here, and then you fly them to Frankfurt, touch down, and then take off again from there?

They actually have to get out of the airplane. They have to get out.

It's a new tour.

New tour. Got it. You have to get out of the airplane, get back on. No shortcuts. No, and then I have to land back in Frankfurt, and you have to get out. And then I can fly it back here.

Okay, so don't combine the two.

No, it's not practical.

Pick one or the other.

Yeah. So on the Frankfurt tour, you go over, I guess, which distilleries?

Start off at Buffalo Trace, head over to Old Grandad, from there south down to Glens Creek, which used to be Old Crow, and then on to Castle & Key, which was Taylor back in the day, over to Woodford. on down to Wild Turkey, on over to Four Roses, and then back up to Three Boys, which is up closer to Frankfurt.

It's kind of in Georgetown, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. Midway. It's west.

It's west. Oh, it is? Yeah. OK. I'm not familiar with it.

So what we have basically is a clockwise circle. with a couple of jigs and jags to hit all the places.

And there's three different tours, two here that hit, I guess, everything down here with the beam and everything down this way. And then one in Frankfurt that hits all that in the more central part of the state.

Yeah. Out of Bardstown, we'll have a West tour that goes out to Claremont, over to Boston, over to New Haven, and back to here. We'll go down to a goose enemy. There's a new, uh, hollow log. I think it's called this just starting up. It's going to be at the old, uh, JW dance distillery at this enemy. That's just starting up right now.

Yeah. I just heard that one of the dance boys has decided to start that back up again.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. That's going to be pretty cool.

Now, that name is owned by Heaven Hill now, right? I believe so, yeah. So, he'll have to do something different.

He may have already purchased one of the many brand names.

Okay.

I don't know. It's kind of like... Old cabin or something.

I heard something like that, like old cabin or old... Yeah, I don't know what it's going to be. Long cabin or something. I don't know.

It's kind of like Paul and Steve Beam. They've got Limestone Branch. They're producing Yellowstone, which they had to buy the brand name for that.

Yeah, it was decided a long time ago in court battles that we've read about that just because your last name is Beam, you can't go out and use it. Or Dant, or Samuels, or any number of things like that.

So three people can go on a tour. Correct. What kind of plane are you running around in these days?

We have a, it's a Cessna 172, it seats four, I have to go, so that leaves three other seats.

Okay, that makes sense.

And normally my tours are two people. The third person sits behind me, the third passenger sits behind me. And when I do my turns, I try to always turn to the right. So the passengers on the right side of the plane are looking right out their window and they can see what I'm pointing to where the third person sitting on my side has to kind of dodge and look around to see over there. So most of my tours are two people, sometimes three.

And do people give you feedback sometimes and tell you whether it's better to visit the distilleries first and then take the air tour or the other way around? Yeah, that's an interesting question.

It is. I've never heard anybody talk about that. I personally think you ought to see it first on the ground because you're going to see what it looks like and you can familiarize yourself. Oh, I've been to that building. I know the visitor center here. You know, over at Barton, for example, the distillery is huge and the visitor center is down in the middle of it and you can hardly see it. So once you're there, you walk in to their visitor center, you can look up at these immense brick buildings. And now from the air, you can recognize the brick buildings. And then from that, you can say, well, there's the visitor center.

And their rick house farms go well over the hills. So you're not even seeing those unless you take a drive back into the property there. And they won't let you do that. Yeah.

But I can show them to you.

You can.

I can show you the one that fell down last year.

Have you got any interesting stories about some of the distilleries? Yeah, speaking of distilleries falling down, Lookout is gone.

I mean, there must have been a lot of requests to fly over Barton when they had the big collapse.

There were a lot of people wanted to see the remains of that wreck house. And over time, I'm going to say a couple of months, there was a cleanup going on that was very entertaining from the air.

Oh, really?

Yeah, you could not see it from the ground at all.

So how was it entertaining?

Well, the equipment they used, they had built a dam to keep the whiskey from pouring down the hill and into the creek. Some did.

Yeah, because I'd have been waiting downstream, but whatever. Randy's swimming in the creek.

They said a lot of fish died, but they died happy. I don't know what to say.

Their mouth was open, they were smiling.

It's a horrible thing. It takes the oxygen out of the water, the fish suffocate, so it's not good at all. They do their best to mitigate that. They built a dam as quick as they could to keep the spillage to a contained area. I could see that from the air. They have a little pond up there that they had for a while. I could watch them deconstruct the Rick house. They used a small backhoe with a grapple and they were selectively plucking the barrels out of the wreckage and then someone would inspect them and if they were good, they put them on a truck and if they were bad, they put them over there. All the ones that were put over there are still over there. Oh, really? Yeah, there's a pile of wreckage up there beside the... Now, these are barrels that likely still have liquid in them. Some. I think most of them are broken.

Broken, okay.

Yeah. Anything that was damaged, they couldn't reuse that.

Yeah, because that was how many stories? Three stories? Oh, more I think.

I don't know how high up... I'm guessing it's five or six.

Really?

Wow.

Yeah, that's a lot of bourbon.

Yeah, they said it's 20,000 barrels.

Wow. Now, we just had the Ozzie Tyler went down here just a week or so ago.

Yeah, fortunately they didn't lose a lot there.

About a fourth of the rick house, right? Right.

And the rest stayed up, so.

Now, you don't fly that far.

No.

That's all I'm saying. Not even for a personal look?

I might. Not this afternoon, no.

No, not today. If you decide to go over there, let us know. All right, we'll go take a look. We'll go take a look. I thought that that was really interesting that it hasn't been that long. Now, I wonder how many of these have happened in the past and just didn't quite make it to the media.

That's interesting. I know we had a tornado go through Boston here in the 60s, and it went right across the Jim Beam Booker No facility. And it took down a good bit of the exterior, and a lot of barrels fell, but the building stayed pretty much upright.

So they were able to keep the building. Now, what happened at OZ Tyler was a storm related. So, I mean, they didn't really do anything wrong. There wasn't a failure of the rick house.

Right, the rick house didn't fail. But when that happens, it's a tragedy. The bourbon drinkers all shed a tear, I'm sure, the minute they heard it.

Well, we were all very happy that there weren't any workers in the rick house when that happened.

A friend of mine over at Barton was in that rick house two hours before it fell.

Wow.

Yeah, it's amazing.

Yeah, very lucky guy.

Lunchtime.

Yeah.

Everyone was out of the building and when it fell, It's a horrible mess.

Well, God was smiling that day. Yes.

He watches out for the bourbon folks.

I guess that's one way to look at it.

Any more interesting stories? Because inquiring minds want to know if people are thrown up in planes, you're doing barrel rolls over the barrels.

Well, we try to avoid that. I've had people ask me if they can bring a cocktail or a sippy cup on board.

A flask.

Yeah, I've had that. What I tell them generally is I have to quote the federal regulations because we're a very regulated business and the federal regulations cover this. They say clearly I am not allowed to board a passenger who is under the influence of alcohol.

They don't say anything about getting them off the plane though, right?

That's exactly right. I tell my passengers, if you are sober enough to be able to get in the plane, you're probably not under the influence.

There you go.

However, if you bring a flask and you pour a sip, or if you bring a cocktail and a sippy or you want to just chug a lug out of a bottle, I personally don't care. And the regulations say nothing about your condition when you get off.

Right. And you're flying the plane, so you've got more important things to worry about.

Yeah, I don't have a rear view mirror.

OK, so what are your rules then? If I go to take a tour with Terry with Bourbon Air Tours, what are the rules and things I need to be aware of then?

That's an excellent question. I have to follow the federal regs 100%. They start off with, while we're in the building over here, we're going to talk about a safety briefing. I'm going to discuss with you that we're going to put on our seat belts, that we're going to keep our seat belts on until we stop after we've landed and the propeller has stopped turning because I don't want to make anybody go to pieces. I tell them that the doors are on each side. I tell them that they open like a car door. And I tell them, we don't have to wear any type of life preservers or life vests because we're not going to fly over any water deeper than what you can wade through. And I tell them, nobody's going to have a parachute. So you can count on me being with you the whole trip. And other than that, I welcome them aboard and help them put their seat belts on and I comfort them and offer them whatever support I can. And I've had some people who are apprehensive. It's their first flight in an airplane. I try to calm their nerves. I tell them I'm going to do my very best and their interest is my interest and that first interest is safety.

And so when you're flying, you're flying at an altitude that is considered safe by the FAA.

Correct.

That gives you, and being an experienced pilot, you're always looking for that emergency landing spot. Always, yes. And should you have an engine failure or something happen to the plane, which is highly unlikely. It's possible. It is possible. You've always got in your head where you're going to put that thing down at, and you've got enough altitude to allow that to happen.

Correct. That's part of the safety that's ingrained within a pilot. When I'm flying, I'm constantly looking for a landing spot in the event something happens. I've continuously scanned the area. I'm flying over an area I've flown over hundreds of times, so I pretty much know where the good places are going to be. I tend to fly over those on the way to wherever I'm going so that in the event something happens, we have a safe place to land.

Yeah. And being a light aircraft, you've got a lot of opportunities there. And there's a lot of beautiful green pastures here. Absolutely.

Yeah, I've had a lot of experience with preparing for emergency landings. Every two years I have to go with an instructor and we practice those. At some point in that two hour or hour trip, however long it's going to be, he will ask me to shut the engine to idle and then pick a landing spot and go through my emergency procedures, all the steps necessary to try to restart the engine or whatever has gone wrong. I'll commence lighting myself up to make a safe landing at a spot. And then at a safe altitude, you'll power back up and fly out.

So you don't actually have to land in the cow patties is what you're saying.

Yeah, I'm prepared to though.

Well, the trip home would be interesting.

Well, I do have a radio and I do have a cell phone. I hear you. Yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's always on, I'm not gonna say in the front of my mind, but it's always there. It's always something to think about.

Well, an experienced pilot always has that in his head. He knows what he needs to do, I would say. So do you have any plans for the future? I mean, for expansion or adding new parts to your tour?

I mean, maybe taking on a partner and running two planes or maybe, Hey, hold it. Maybe even getting that twin props so they can take six or eight. Or a helicopter. With a stewardess.

Yeah, there you go. The steward, we already have the steward, now we need a stewardess. There you go. Well, I have in fact explored that and I have friends here at the airport who are rated commercially. They're legal to fly commercial operations and I've spoken to them about helping me out when I have more than one set of passengers to fly at a time. I just got a new letter of authority from the feds this week, authorizing me as many as four airplanes. I've given them the four tail numbers. That's not one of them there, but it's one that looks a lot like that when I'm sitting outside their window. And I've got three commercial pilots ready to go and I've got their paperwork all filed with the random drug test program that all of my people have to be in. I've had to check their maintenance records and logs and make sure everything is legal and up to date on the airplane. And the feds have just authorized me to fly as many as four airplanes now.

So business is booming.

It's flying.

Oh, you're flying.

Turn them on to bourbon and teach them the history then, and you're ready to go.

Well, matter of fact, last weekend on the 21st, It's a little over a weekend, isn't it? I escorted 10 carbon cubs on another fly-in. I was in the lead aircraft and I narrated all four of my tours. on one flight with these carbon cubs. We landed up like a string of pearls, one behind the next, taking off 10 or 15 seconds apart. And we flew along the sky, a string of yellow airplanes.

Wow.

About two miles long altogether.

As you narrated the tour.

Yeah. And we set up a special frequency and everybody was listening with their headsets. And I would press the talk button and do my spiel. and then fly a little bit and talk some more and I talk about the way the barrels are charred and I talk about why they're charred and the aging process and all the all the bourbon steward

So there's the Thunderbirds and then the Bourbon Birds, and then there's the flying, you know, the Blue Angels and the Angel's Share. The Angel's Share, exactly. So, all right, I'm seeing how this works. This is going to work great for you, Terry, I think.

Yeah, and I did that as a cop because he's a friend of mine. It's actually the fellow that got me involved in this. I said to him, you know, I owe you this.

We'll go for a flight. There's an awful lot of people coming to Bourbon Country every year to go on distillery tours and to experience the Bourbon Trail.

This would be a unique experience for some of those who, hey, I'm pretty good. I know some of these places, a little bit of the history. I've seen them from the ground. Maybe this is the way to do it, see it from the air.

Well, it's a different, I'm going to say point of view, of course. But you're going to see parts of the bourbon industry that you will not see any other way. I will show you the Maker's Mark big factory. I'll guarantee you the two little ladies that sit at the end of the table don't do all the red wax dipping. They just can't fill that many cases that fast. So I'll show you where the big building is and we can't go in there, but I'll guarantee you that there's more to this business than what meets the eye. It's kind of like an adult version of Disney World.

So if you're in, if you're in Bardstown and you're visiting distilleries here and we've got a number of them here, how long does it take to drive, let's say from Heaven Hill to your front door?

It's less than five miles.

Less than five miles. So if somebody's doing a distillery tour, this could very easily be one stop on that distillery tour.

It'd be a great thing to do just before or right after lunch while you're waiting for your next tour.

There you go. Okay. So say I want to do this. How do I get in touch with you and find the information that I need to book one of these bourbon air tours with Terry?

Well, there's two ways. I have a webpage. It's bourbonairtours.com. On there is a link to, I'd like to book a flight. And that will take you to a page that right now goes to my phone number, my home phone. And that's 502-233-4772. And my wife or I will answer, we'll take a look at our schedule and fit you in someplace.

So it's real simple. They're not filling out forms, buying online tickets and all this kind of stuff. They're just talking to you.

To me and my wife, yeah. And you'll talk to her if I'm flying.

And you take cash, card, PayPal, what do you take? Bourbon. I take bourbon. So people can pay with Rebel Yell, right?

I'm set up right now to do credit cards. The iPad that I fly with is my navigation tool. I've got it set up a square so I can process cards. Of course, cash is always welcome. I don't know about PayPal. I could look into that. But most people I've talked to, they have a credit card.

Yeah, they're going to face to face with you at some point. They've got a card. Yep.

And we'll process that on the site right here at the airport.

Now, do you fly year round?

We can't fly when the weather is very, very bad. Right. No matter what time of year.

I don't mean winter, summer, spring, fall, all seasons.

If we have a nice day. Yeah. We don't need blue skies.

We don't need crystal clear air. Well, we don't need Thor the Thunder God working out there either.

No. One thing we have to think about, visibility.

Yeah, sure.

We're going to be a quarter of a mile. And legally, I can't fly with less than three miles of visibility. So you'll be able to see. If we can fly, the visibility is good enough. We can fly. You're going to have a good trip. Yeah. We can fly in a light rain, as long as the ceiling is high enough. But nobody wants to fly in a rain.

No, people want to really enjoy the experience, I'm sure.

That's what it's all about is actually seeing what it is we're coming here to see.

And if somebody schedules a date with you and that day happens to be a rain date, you give rain checks.

Absolutely. Yeah. I have gift certificates available. And if we can't fly that day, I'll comp you with a gift certificate and we'll schedule another time that fits your schedule.

Well, that's great. Well, Terry, we really appreciate you being on the show today.

Yeah, it's been very, very interesting, Mr. Rebel Yell down there.

Randy and I have not been on a flight with you, but I can say that's in our future. That would be fun.

Yeah, we'll do that. I think we'll really enjoy it. I like talking bourbon while we fly, and because of the background I have, both on... I like to call it the hardware, which is the buildings. and that side of the business, and the software, which is the people side of the business. I'm comfortable on talking both sides of this.

Awesome. Well, thank you, Terry. Thank you for having me. All right. We appreciate it. Thanks, Randy.

We do appreciate all of our listeners, and we'd like to thank you for taking time out of your day to hang out with us here on the Bourbon Road. We hope you enjoyed today's show and if so, we would appreciate if you'd subscribe and rate us a five star with a review on iTunes. Make sure you follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at The Bourbon Road. That way you'll be kept in the loop on all the Bourbon Road happenings. You can also visit our website at thebourbonroad.com to read our blog, listen to the show, or reach out to us directly. We always welcome comments or suggestions. And if you have an idea for a particular guest or topic, be sure to let us know. And again, thanks for hanging out with us.