136. Davidson Reserve - Nashville's Pennington Distilling Co.

He's a huge bourbon fan. He was drinking it before it was cool. He has all these old OFC bottles and little bottles that just had little bits left that he saved and didn't want to drink them, right? Just because they were collectors and said he comes home and he's like, he's a 6'6", big guy, his pores are Cooked four-finger pours at the end of the day. Said he comes home and his wife's like, hey, you want a bourbon? You want me to pour you a bourbon? And he's like, oh yeah, I'd love that. And he sits on the couch and she brings him this big old glass. He pours it on ice. He fills it with ice and fills it up. And she hands it to him and he said, he takes a sip and he's like, Hmm. That's really interesting. Drinks it again. He's like, I can't recognize that. I can't recognize what that is. And he says, hey, Gani, what did you pour me? I don't recognize it. And he's got a pretty good bourbon. He said, oh, you had like 10 bottles that had just a little bit left. I wanted to get rid of them. So I just kind of suicide him to get it for you. He was like, you did what? I thought he was going to start crying.

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

We would like to thank our friends at Premium Bar Products for sponsoring this episode. If you're ready to step up your game at your home bar, check out premiumbarproducts.com to choose from their wide selection of glassware, all of which can be custom engraved with your personal message or logo. And there's no minimum order. So after the episode, head over to premiumbarproducts.com and check out everything they have to offer. Now let's get on with the show. Hello, everybody. I'm Jim Shannon. And I'm Mike Hyatt. And this is The Bourbon Road. And today, Mike, we are on The Bourbon Road, are we not?

Yeah, well, the Tennessee Whiskey Trail, right? I'd consider this. We're down here in Nashville, Tennessee, and we've come into Pennington Distilling Company, right here in downtown Nashville.

Yeah, it's a good, good day.

Yeah, we got Jeff, the owner in here, Jeff Pennington, and we got his mastermind mad scientist, the man, the myth, the legend Carter in here. He doesn't like to be called master distiller, right?

It's a new term.

When we put it on his business cards the first time, he came and just threw them back. I'm not giving those out to anyone.

So what you could do is, everything I said, you could put that on his card now.

The Swiss Army knife of the place.

So we always like to get straight to the whiskey, because you guys got a little bit of it set out here for us. Good Lord, Carter's got a heavy pour for us here. But what's the first whiskey you got for us?

Well, we got three match bills, so we're going to start off with our weeded bourbon. This is 60% corn, 22% wheat, 18% malted barley. It's a blend of about five and a half to six-year-old barrels. What was it, an eight- or nine-barrel blend is what you and Ashley came up with?

Nine-barrel.

Nine-barrel blend. This is our first small batch. Is this the first blend or the second blend? This is the second. Second blend. I've always been a weeded fan. When we started this six, seven years ago, we said, I'm going to have to drink this the rest of my life. I might as well make one I like. We don't charcoal mellow it, so technically we call this our bourbon. Hope you enjoy it.

We're going to find out if the Weedy King of Kentucky here, see if See if I like it or not. I got a sweet tooth for wheat, so we'll see. Davidson Reserve is not Pennington Distillery on the bottle. It's Davidson Reserve. Let's make sure we get that right for everybody. What's this cost on the shelf?

The bourbon is anywhere between $39.99 and $44.99 on the shelf. It's $101.7 proof. Then we have some Cast Strengths single barrels around town. But we've actually, for the first launch, if you go out around Nashville, there's some out there around $39.99, although I think most of them sold out. We kind of did that for the launch. But you'll see the cast strength out at about $49.99.

Maybe we can find a bottle of that for me to take home today.

Yeah.

We did pop into a few shops today, didn't we? We did. We tried. And I took a poll. I said, how's that Davidson Reserve? And you guys, liquor store owners, They had nothing but great stuff to say about you. So at least your Nashville shops are loving you. Let's, uh, let's know this. That's got a little bit of chocolate in us and some floral notes on it right away.

Yeah, I'm getting, I'm getting that sweetness, but you know, I think there is a little chocolate to that.

Oh, cocoa powder, I guess.

Yeah.

That's got a beautiful nose on it.

A little bit fruit. I'd say it leans, it leans cherry a little bit. Now, how old is this one?

This is a blend of five and a half to six year old barrels. Okay. Or six year old is probably the oldest six years in one month. To be technical. To be technical. We get excited when it's one day over six, it's six years old, but the youngest whiskey in this is about five and a half years old.

All right. All right. Let's taste this thing. Cheers. Cheers. That's a beautiful expression. That little bit of peppery from the barrel, I think, I'm getting. Especially with that age, I would expect a little pepper from that barrel, that spice. Chocolate notes, I'm getting.

Yeah, I'm kind of, I'm really interested in what it's doing to my tongue. It's got that little sizzle going on there. A little pop rocks. A little bit of pop rocks. We've noticed that a little bit lately. I guess, you know, a lot of times when you get a new note, you got a new note that you've tasted, sometimes it kind of stands out a little bit to you when you're, but yeah, I'm getting a little bit of that cherry, not too much. I love that sizzle. You said that's just north of a hundred proof.

That's a nice, beautiful whiskey and stuff. I got to compliment you guys. I'm telling you, I love weeded bourbon like no other man alive, I think. Maybe Bill Samuels Jr. or if W.L. Weller was still alive or somebody like that, they might beat me to it.

Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. We're excited and you know what, I think a whiskey like I've always said, wheat can always, time can't hurt wheat too much. So I think this is one that can keep getting better and better. You know, our dream ages for a small batch is all my favorite bourbons can always go into in the six to eight-year-old range. So I really think this one's going to, so it gets into that seven and eight-year-old range. I'm excited to see what it does.

I'm getting chocolate covered cherries on this. This is exactly what I'm getting. That's what I always say. When I sit there and it lingers on the mouth, I'd say this has that medium to long finish that I love about weeded bourbons. It's not overpowering. I'm not getting that big hug on it or anything. Just enough to say, hey, I'm a nice whiskey and you're going to enjoy me. What does our buddy Parker say? Doesn't give you the neck tie. So how did you come up with Davidson Reserve?

My wife and I, when we started this, originally we launched a brand called Whisper Creek. It's a Tennessee whiskey cream. We originally thought that we would launch that, take it out and then build a whiskey brand under that name. Try to build the name out and then come out with one later. We kind of changed and pivoted in 2014 and kicked around a lot of names. And no matter where we went, you know, it seemed like most were named after people or places. And so we're born and raised Nashvilleans. And so to me, it's Davidson County. It's a way for to say Nashville without saying calling it Nashville whiskey. So if you're from here, you'll get it. And if you're not from here, it still sounds regal. Sure.

Most people are going to want to know who's this Davidson guy, right? Yeah.

Yeah. I got to say though, even the bottle, I love that bottle. That's that kind of a master's keep bottle. It's got a nice long enough neck that you're not going to spill all the bottle. And you got a classy design on your label. I like that. And you separated your notes on the bottom too, with your mash bill and your proof and stuff on there. That's to me, I like that. That's, that's a clean bottle right there.

And I love that bottle. I like the base of it. It's a good solid. I like a bottle that has a good solid base too. So was that the bottle from day one? Well, day one was going to be our Whisper Creek bottle, which is a custom bottle up there. And then we just didn't say bourbon or whiskey to me. It was kind of the turns of it. So my wife does all the designs. So I'd have to kind of lean on her. She's got a wall of just puts up little things that she likes of all the different kinds of bourbons and whiskeys. She says it's got feminine and masculine things to it. It's got the curves and feminine appeal, but it's also got the masculinity of a good base. She's real big about trying to market to both. She loved that bottle the day she first saw it. She's like, I like this bottle. If you'll see, it's a little bit different between those two. The one on the right is the one we're going to go to. It's out of Italy. Get the glass, and we're going to customize it a little bit. Now that we've got enough juice to start selling more, we're going to lengthen it just a tiny bit, raise the height by building a little bit more base, and then probably put some embossings of the Tennessee stars on it or something. That'll be nice. We did whiskey. We did wax diploma at the beginning. Carter hated that. That was a mess. So I love the leather straps that she went to. We got away from that and she thought it was a little naked. I hate that word, but naked on top without the wax of that. So she just did those leather straps that pop off and makes a great key chain holder, keeper.

Yeah, a lot of people collect those and stuff. You could have the greatest bottle in the world. Let's be true about that, right? You have the greatest bottle, the greatest label in the world. It could be absolutely beautiful, but if you don't have good whiskey inside of it, does it all really matter? Exactly. So, I don't know, Jim, what do you think? You're not a weeded guy.

I'm not a weeded guy, but I'm liking this. There's no doubt about it. It's not that I don't like weeded bourbons.

I love weeded bourbons. You loved them last night.

I did love them last night. I just, I kind of gravitate more towards spicy stuff. You know, I kind of like the spice. So I like, I typically like rice, but that's just me. You know, everybody's got their preference.

I got that big sweet tooth and this right here, it hits it.

I'm a sweet tooth guy too. I always have cookies at night, something. I like that you said chocolate covered cherries because that's one of my favorite things to go after. Sometimes I get peanut butter on the finish on this. I don't know if y'all get that. Carter, what do you get?

I get a little bit of the peanut butter on the end, but my flavor profile that I enjoy is very similar to yours.

Sorry. You're all right. Actually, she knows our preferences. I'm sure y'all know Ashley Barnes. She does our blending and helps us do all this. And she's funny. She knows what I like and what Carter likes. So when she sends samples in, she's like, this is going to be a Carter blend. It's going to be a Jeff blend.

All your whiskeys before she blended it set in my driveway. It actually sat in the back of an SUV out there and it got moved from one SUV to the next so she could blend it and stuff. So that was a kind of a new experience. You have a master blender, distillery owner. I wouldn't call her royalty, I guess, but a weller sitting at your house and another guy I call Forrest Gump. Forrest Gump of whiskey sitting at your house. Matt King. Yeah, Matt King from down there at Leapers Fort. But it was kind of neat to see, you know, how the insides of the business really work. And I got a compliment even for hiring her, you know, to help you blend and stuff. You know, if you think you might be missing a little bit or something or that more refined touch, that's definitely a woman to bring in and help you out.

You guys have been in the business for a while, right? I mean, so you kind of blazed the trail in Tennessee for a new craft distillery.

I mean, we weren't the first. Corsair, I believe, was the first. And then, technically, Old Smokey's got the second license, and we were the third license to open up in the state. I mean, outside of Jack and George and Pritchard's. Pritchard's was here for a while. Again, my wife and I were competing distributors, sales reps, so we were selling bourbon. My wife was on-premise spirits manager for Sazerac when she used to give you a flat-screen TV if you would buy some Buffalo Trace from her. Now you'd have to give her a flat-screen TV to get some, but she's telling me she begged people, give them a bottle free on five of Eagle Rare, and used that to beg people. When we started this, we really believed in Tennessee in general, and I know you guys are from Kentucky, but We love Kentucky. I know there's a little competition between the two states.

Healthy.

Healthy competition. But together, I love that our two states exports more whiskey than the whole country of wine and beer combined. It's our America spirit. But I think Tennessee really didn't get to keep the legacy going outside of the one big brand because we stayed in Prohibition so much longer. So up until 2009 when Corsair really kind of led the charge on getting the distilleries open. But we were excited to jump in because I think the runway is long for Tennessee whiskey. We like to always say, if everybody's going to assume Tennessee whiskey and Tennessee bourbons all taste like Jack, that's like saying all bourbon is going to taste like bean. And I'm excited to see where it goes. And speaking of Ashley, you know, You do this, you lay down all these barrels and as you all guys know, you can lay down the same whiskey and the same barrels on the same day and come back in three years and they're all different. I think the blending is one of the forgotten about parts in America. They don't get a lot of the credit that I think they should. You go to Scotland and the master blender is the rock star. Here, they celebrate the master distiller, But I mean, all these distilleries have these tasters and blenders that's really impressive. And I think it's going to be for the small craft guys that we're trying to do eight, 10, 20 barrel blends, you better pay attention to what you're doing if you want to stay consistent. And so Ashley's just, I mean, it's amazing to watch her work and she's taught us a lot about it. And in fact, we did a whole podcast with another team and with Ashley and talked about it. And then Lee from Leapers Fort called me and he's like, I didn't think about that blending technique. Can you give me Ashley's number? I think she's gotten a little business off of that too. We've got single barrels. With the weed of bourbon, she and I really kicked around the idea of almost going to Blanton's model because there were so many different profiles she was getting from these barrels. She was, we almost went to just straight single barrels only with it. Um, but we needed a small batch and, and I'm really, really excited about what she came up with.

Yeah. And now you guys are, you guys are putting whiskey in barrels, storing it here on site. You got Rick houses that are in the future.

Yes. Land in Nashville is not as cheap as you'd like. We're actively searching for some rural locations a little bit farther out. Obviously, you spent the night in Nashville last night and you can see it's growing so fast. It's not the cheapest place to age whiskey. Right now, everything is aged on site here. We've got a little over 2,000 barrels we've laid down. We're really proud. We're big on authenticity and heritage. We've made a point to not source anything for our own products, not to say we wouldn't do that in the future. We've bottled plenty of sourced products, not against it. We wanted everything from the grain to bottle to be done right here. So that was important for this brand.

So Carter, how do you feel? You're the guy that's, you're the cook of the kitchen, right? How do you feel about that, the blending, bringing in a blender?

I think it was a great experience. Ashley is a great person to work with and having somebody that has the knowledge and skillset that she has acquired for years, working with Buffalo Trace and Four Roses, to have that knowledge and be able to train my palate and learn to pick up things and the nuances, it's been amazing.

How long have you been cooking whiskey?

Since 2012.

Yeah. We technically started in 2012 when we had a partner here. And then in 2014, he went and opened up his own space and we kind of restarted over. The first brand we did out of here, we did in smaller barrels and younger age. And we learned in that time that the whiskey got better. We talked about this earlier, but there's a lot of people who tasted it when it was younger and they weren't given another chance. So we kind of sold off all the whiskey in 2014 and got to restart. And we were lucky enough to do that with a new investor that came in and said, we said, before we're going to do this, we want to age it in big barrels. We want to do, you know, take the tried and true heritage way and make our own twist on it. And he was like, he said, yeah, I'm down. I'll back you. And so We were excited to be able to go about that. Watching him from Ashley, and we can tell you from the company's standpoint, Carter's a brilliant mechanic and he's our right hand for everything here. But watching him learn from Ashley, just his pickups and his tasting techniques, she's taught us all a lot on that. So has it been kind of an awakening of your palate?

Absolutely. One of the things that learned from Ashley is women typically have about a million more sensories than men. I think the first day she came in and worked with us, we were in the other conference room next to where we're sitting now, but somebody literally had put some chicken noodle soup in the microwave, five rooms away. And she picked it up immediately and goes, who's making chicken noodle soup? And I'm like, I don't, didn't smell this at all. It's pretty amazing.

She wants you to get rid of that chicken noodle soup because it messes with her a little bit. I lit a candle when she come to our house and she said, Hey, could you put that candle out?

You have the experience with her.

She's great. And I think it's a compliment to you guys that open yourselves up to that. And some people can't do that. You know, they'd be like, I can't, this is my baby. And I think it's great. No matter what it's like having a kid, you know, you always think your kid is going to be great. And they go through some trials and tribulations and you're like,

That's one of the fun things with her. She eludes barrels as children. And when a barrel hits about two years old, you kind of have an idea of what child it's going to be. Sports player, musician, studious. Every month when our barrels turn, barrels that turn two years old and barrels that turn four years old, we pull samples from them so we can go through and profile them and see the directions they're going. And having tasted barrels that have got samples from when they turned two, when they turned three, when they turned four in the development of flavors over time, and then working with Ashley, I've now you start to see identifiers. So when I smell things, just pulling a sample out, I'm like, oh, this guy's going to be one of these guys more than likely. And then I'll get an email from her and she's like, that's, you're right. So starting to get confirmation that your palate is picking up some of these nuances from a very experienced person is, it's a wonderful thing.

Well, should we get onto the next expression?

I was going to say, speaking of different, different expressions. Yeah. So what's the second whiskey you got for us?

We have our 100% rye whiskey. So it's a mash bill of 90% rye grain and 10% rye malt. The grain is sourced, we have a farm that we work with out in West Tennessee, Renfro Farms. They grow our grain for us. Take a taste.

Yeah. So before we do, so what's the proof on it? A hundred proof, I believe.

A hundred proof, I think you said that. This is technically a bottled and bond. We just don't put it on the label. Okay.

And what's the age on this one? Five and a half. Five and a half years old, bottled and bond, even though you don't put that on there.

She didn't want us to do that. So it leaves us, she didn't want to close the pallet down, right? As we get more and more of different ages, kind of gives you a bigger pallet for her to work with. So we didn't want to lock ourselves into that term.

And what's this cost on the shelf?

This is $49.99 to $54.99. It's definitely more expensive, right? Obviously, it costs a lot more. As Carter knows, I've learned you don't get the yields, and it's a nightmare to cook.

Is it more sticky to cook?

Absolutely. It's a very challenging Nashville to cook successfully.

And you have to start with less because it tends to rise up in the fermenter? That is a true statement too.

After every time you cook it, it leaves a film on everything. So every time the cooker, the still, the fermenter, you have to get in there after every still run and really scrub it off good. I mean, we learned the first time we cooked this. distilled it. We put it in the still, we ran our stripping run. We usually run two strips in a day and then we'll collect it and after four strips, we'll do a spirit run. And so the second strip run we put in, three hours, four hours, five hours, nothing's coming through. We're like, the steam's turned up. The film had created such an insulation that the still wouldn't heat the mash up. Oh my goodness.

So our distillers don't like cooking this one. But, you know, you've learned how to deal with it. You learned how to overcome some of those issues or at least learn how to play with it.

I think the word learn how to play with it and manage it's the correct thing. We strive very hard here to be very consistent in an inconsistent world. Oh, there's that rye.

Here's that rye nose.

It's not a pungent rye, though, nose like I'd get in some other ryes. I get more of a baking spice, allspice kind of rye.

This is definitely a little more, like you said, baking spice. It's not the dill, pepper, licorice nose that you get on some ryes.

This is my favorite of ours to do cocktails with. I think this is, I call this our cocktail whiskey personally. It smells like a great cocktail whiskey.

Let's taste it.

Oh yeah. That is a, that mouth feel is over the top. That's your jam. That's my jam right there. That has got some body to it. You guys are not filtering this at all, right?

I mean, this is... All of our stuff's pretty much unfiltered. If we didn't need some water in there, we would uncut and unfilter everything.

I mean, for me, that's oily, that's viscous, that's full-bodied. It's got a great... That's the first thing that caught my attention was that texture.

That's the first thing Ashley said when she tasted through them and she was shocked at how much body and viscosity the rye has with no corn in it. Because a lot of that, sometimes the corn is what gives you the body, but I think it's also that it's all pot distilled and there's no column process.

I'm getting dried dates on this. That's a good thing for me. I like dried dates. If you get something to eat or maybe even a little bit of fig.

You say that, that's funny. I always say people dried apricot. I get it's dried though. It's like a dried apricot. And I think that's cause my great grandmother used to make apricot pies for me.

So I always get a remembrance of that. But you know what? I'm getting a little bit of that mid palette sizzle that I got off that bourbon. So it's kind of a, almost like a signature note for your, for your whiskeys. It's different. I mean, they're the same in that way. I don't know if you've noticed that Mike. Oh yeah. Yeah.

You notice what I have right here, Jim. Yeah. I always find a whiskey dog, don't I?

Yeah. What's his? It's a he? She. She? Tully. Tully?

It's Tuggle.

Tuggle.

Tuggle. Carter's always had a whiskey. We used to have two whiskey dogs forever. And Carter had this dog named Emma. She's got a picture on the wall. She's never met a dog that was better than a distillery cat. This dog could catch mice. It could catch, I mean, she was an impressive dog. And most people have distillery cats, we're more distillery dogs. As long as they're a mouser, right?

Yeah. Well, Tuggle here, she's a, that's a great dog. And I think a lot of people don't understand that. If you're listening out there and you haven't been into a distillery, you're probably going to go for the first time. You'll see a cat running around or sitting up on a man or something, or you'll see a dog. And that is the, the kind of the thing at a distillery to catch mice. Cause you've got lots of grain and where you have grain, you're going to have mice no matter what.

Yeah, we learned that when we used to use super sacks. We no longer use those. We now have full containers to contain it. If you control the food supply, you can control them. But man, you get a super sack that opens up, and they can invite their friends and their friends' family and everybody real quick.

Yeah. I mean, I would really be looking forward to this as a, as a extra aged rye at some point. This is very tasty. Um, I, I love ryes just like Mike gets all excited about weeded bourbons. I get, I get just as excited about a good rye and this is a good rye.

I think this would taste amazing in a old fashioned right here.

Um, unbelievable.

It almost would. You wouldn't have to put any syrup in it, I don't think, because the sweetness is there for me. Yeah.

It's beautiful. Put some betters in here and we'll go to town, right? Yeah. I mean, sometimes I get surprised by it. You know, 100% rice can be, you know, creamy, candy-like. I mean, it can happen. I mean, this thing here is definitely creamy, no doubt about it. We'll call it oily, viscous, whatever you want to say. It's got a great mouth feel. The spice is, I think it's well balanced. I think it does lean a little more towards the baking spices, though.

Yeah, we only did a six barrel blend on these and we don't release as much rye because we only release about 20 to 30% of our inventory because we want everything to get a little older. Carter and I joke, how many people have walked in this building with their magic black box?

At least 40.

They have this magic black box that you put whiskey in, and it ages at 10 years and 30 minutes. I've yet to taste a whiskey that has cheated time. So we're really excited about it, especially the rye. We're really excited. We think that it's going to get really good as it gets older.

I'm with you on that cheating time thing. We've actually reviewed a whiskey and I was mad because I bought it. I got, I got cheated.

They didn't cheat time, they cheated you.

They didn't cheat me. I felt, I was, I was all kinds of angry about it. I was like, Jim, take this home.

I have to be honest though. It seems that anymore, we're more times surprised and delighted than we are disappointed though. Cause craft distilleries are really, doing a great job now. Great job. I think in the early days, maybe there was a little bit of a rush to do things, but I think lessons been learned and there's some great whiskeys being put out.

So are you guys, I know you're on the shelf in Tennessee, what other states are you in right now?

With our whiskeys, that's primarily in Tennessee. We've got a little bit that's gone to South Carolina and Georgia, probably a little bit in Oklahoma. When I say a little bit, like 50, 60 cases, not much. I'd say 90% of our stuff is primarily in middle Tennessee right now because we don't want to sell too much of our supply. I mentioned earlier, we want to get all our stuff to that six to eight-year range for blending. So this is kind of our year where we're expanding out, and I think we're planning to expand to about 10 states with it.

And what about the bars here in Nashville? You guys own a lot of shelves, right?

Normally we would be. There's not many open in Nashville. 2020 was a rough year for the bars. 2019, us as a company, with all of our brands, about 48% of our revenue typically comes from the bars and restaurants, what we call the on-premise trade. Bars, restaurants, hotels, venues, anyone that sells it by the drink. Last year, unfortunately, with 2020, it was less than 10%. Luckily, retail was strong. People drank a lot, a lot at home. We made up for it and we ended up kind of almost being flat even with the losing all the on-premise, but hopefully they start opening back up. In fact, our mayor I think announced starting Monday that they get to stay open till midnight. As you said, they can stay open regular hours till 3 a.m. as long as they're not serving alcohol, but I'm not sure who stays out till 3 a.m. without serving alcohol.

I don't understand the alcohol part of it. How does that contribute just into stupid?

They say you get drunk and you start screaming and spreading it more, I guess is what their argument is.

Well, I tell our listeners, if you're coming to Nashville or Nash Vegas, as I like to call it, you come in here for a conference because there's a lot of conferences here. If you're coming here just to visit and you go downtown, make sure you drink some Davidson reserve. But if you're looking for something to fill the middle of your day, you drive west on I-40 a little bit. stop by here, it'd give you something to do. And if you don't have a bourbon drink or a whiskey drinker in your family, you guys also have some vodka. We don't like saying that too often, but you got these little drinks too called pork pickers or is that what they're called?

They are canned cocktails. And then, you know, that's, we, we learned, we actually, my wife, we hate saying this, but when we started the distillery, our only promise to each other is we would never sell vodka. And after a few years in, we did stuff with younger whisky. So we had some flavored rise, we had the Whisper Creek, and then we kind of realized if we keep using up our younger whisky, we won't have older whisky. And so we were actually in New Orleans sitting at a bar and someone walks up the shirt says vodka pays the bills.

We're like, yeah.

Yeah. But yeah, and also Whisper Creek. That's in 35 states. That's our farthest out. So if anybody's listening and haven't tried Whisper Creek, it's delicious.

What is that? What's that for our listeners?

It's a Tennessee sipping cream. We have the trademark to that. That's what we call it. But it's a whiskey cream liqueur. They can pour in that coffee. Pour in the coffee or on the rocks. Everybody's like, what do you do with it? You keep it simple. You pour it on the rocks, you pour it in your coffee.

Carter, do you pour it over your cereal or what do you do?

It works very well with ice cream.

There you go. There ain't nothing wrong with that. Well, Jim, man, I think, uh, they fed us something here. They let us try two whiskeys that it's almost like they knew we were coming or something. Yeah. It's kind of signatures for us, right? Yeah. I think, uh, both of them were fantastic. Um, cheers to you guys for, uh, holding true to yourselves and producing something that you want to produce. I think a hundred percent right. I don't have, we had a hundred percent ride before.

We have, but they're few and far between. Yeah.

Uh, and I've had a couple of Tennessee straight bourbon whiskies, um, very few out there. A lot of people don't think that, you know, they just think Tennessee whiskey, but, um, I like that you guys just said it straight out right there and it's a weeded, which you don't get a whole lot.

Yeah, I don't know if anybody else, I know that Lieber's Fork is going to have their bourbon, straight bourbon is going to be weeded, but I think we're the first straight bourbon whiskey out of Tennessee that's weeded. Nelson's Tennessee whiskey is weeded, but it's the charcoal. It's a Tennessee whiskey. But this is the first one. I'm really excited about Tennessee in general. We formed the guild a long time, you know, seven, eight years ago. And there's a lot of us that are now starting to have our own juice come of age that are coming out. Nelson's has theirs out, Leapers Fork has theirs out, Chattanooga's got theirs out, and they're all completely different match bills and different styles. I'm really excited. There's probably going to be eight to 10 more over the next year or two. Exciting times. It's really exciting to see people come out with their own juice after four or five years.

Well, let's take a short break here. When we come back, you've got a couple more expressions for us to try, and we'll talk a little bit more about your company and what's going on and what's coming in the future. Awesome. But you know, you can't drink whiskey without glassware. And Mike and I are extremely pleased to have a sponsor like premium bar products. Premium bar products offers direct to consumer, the finest whiskey glasses, cocktail glasses, and bar tools with your own personal engraving. I mean, you can write anything you want on these glasses, anything from a company logo to a personal statement. And there are no minimum orders. Their direct consumer platform offers you the opportunity to purchase small quantities of your favorite glass shapes that enhance the pleasure of enjoyment and drinking a whiskey and make it all very positive. They offer the absolute finest trending and handmade glasses, as well as a comprehensive range of styles. And all of their items have been designed with purpose, practicality, and longevity in mind. So if you're a bourbon or whiskey group and you need custom logos, you need to reach out to Premium Bar Products. If you're an individual, you just want a few for your bar to impress your friends, to give out as gifts, you need to call Premium Bar Products. They need to be your one and only source for custom glassware. I can tell you right now, the Bourbon Road, that's who we use. Janie and Carson and the team there at Premium Bar Products will take care of you. They'll treat you like family and they'll take care of you with every order. Okay, we are back from the break. We got Pennington in the house. Actually, we're in Pennington's house. Yeah. And we got Jeff and Carter with us. And we're continuing on now with a couple of other expressions that you guys have. And what is in our glass for this second half?

Well, Being in Tennessee, you'd be fools to not have a Tennessee whiskey, right? So a true sour mash Tennessee whiskey. I think you guys are right. It's funny when people always ask us, like, sour mash.

That's a Tennessee thing.

As you know, that's really a bourbon thing. But I think Tennessee just kind of always put it on the... the label. So this is our true Tennessee whiskey mashbill. It's a high rye mashbill. I guess you could call it 70% corn, 25% rye, 5% malt, malted barley. So the malted barley is not really there for a flavor component. It's there just for some enzymatic power. So hopefully you enjoy it as a rye fan. We do charcoal melo. We do our charcoal mellowing in a much different, we try to make it more of an additive than a subtractive. We don't want to rip too many of the fusel oils out and some of the things that we think kind of gives it more depth in the long run. So we kind of, we go through a little six inch tube, just gravity, let it go through pretty quickly, try to pick up maybe some of the sweetness and some of the mouth feel from it, but not strip out too many of those fusel oils that give it some of that depth. Uh, so really excited. We launched this, this, this blends of a five-year-old blend. We did launch it first, a four-year-old blend. Uh, this one double gold invests in class at San Francisco last year, beat out the Jack single barrel, barrel proofs and in the category of Tennessee, uh, tastings gave it 94 points and a beverage BTI listed as a number three North American whiskey of the year. So we were pretty excited about it. So congratulations. Lots of awards from what I could deem the big time awards companies, because I like anybody that does their test blind. There's so many of those contests that are, I guess, who advertise the most. So I prefer, San Francisco to me is the Olympics, just from being in the industry for 20 years. You can't really cheat. You can't buy them. So we're excited about this one. Okay. Well, let's get to it.

It's got a softer nose on it, right? Definitely softer nose. Yeah. Yeah. So in the first half we had, we had the, the weeded bourbon and the rye. And now this is the, this is the Tennessee whiskey. The nose on this is definitely subdued. Not, not as aromatic.

I still get that corn sweetness on it. Um, just a little bit and stuff. You know what I can't stand is, uh, You get some bourbon drinkers and they're like, I don't like that Tennessee whiskey cause it's sour mash. It's sour to me. And I'm like, um, what are you talking about? It's either 90% of them. It's a super, uh, irritating. I'm like, man, please just educate you. I don't say that to them, but I'm like, man, It's kind of our job to educate them too, right? Yeah. That's kind of what we do. So for people that don't know, a sour mash is, Carter, why don't you explain to our listeners? Am I going to explain it right? The sour mash is a process. You're reusing part of that first cook to start your second cook, right?

You're using it so you can help lower the pH. In cooking whiskey and your fermentations, pH is very critical. It allows your yeast to perform correctly and give great flavors that you're looking for. Then, technically, pretty much all whiskey is sour mash.

I mean, there are sweet mash whiskeys, but I would say 90% of the bourbons in Tennessee whiskeys use the sour mash process because it's a lot cheaper to use previous mash than citric acid. You always, when you're doing your cooks at different steeping points and different enzymatic, it's really important to be in the correct pH range, like you were saying. So it's just using your previous mash as your pH, instead of citric acid.

And a lot of times if you're running batch, one batch at the tail end of the other one, doesn't it also introduce some temperature, some additional temperature in there as well? It can, yes. So there's some energy savings there, I guess, for bigger distilleries. Smaller distilleries probably doesn't make that big of a difference.

I love that you brought that up though. Some of those big guys have some processes that you walk in and you're like, man, that's awesome. Like what a, it's so green in a way, I guess, if you're... Yeah.

It was green before green.

You have to look at old drawings of like wild turkey and you could see how they had everything ran. And there's drawing of cattle pens and there's a tube that goes to the cattle pen. So all the spent grain ran downhill to the cattle pens, like feeding their cattle or livestock. That stuff was pretty a neat process. They already had it set up. I like to see that kind of them old drawings of that stuff, but To my point, uh, Tennessee whiskey is not sour at all.

No, there's no sour in this whiskey. Well, let's taste it. All right.

right there with Dean Dillon's song, right? Do you guys know who Dean Dillon is?

Oh yeah.

A lot of people don't know who Dean Dillon is. Dean Dillon was the songwriter that wrote Tennessee Whiskey. Tried to sell it to George Strait. George Strait passed on it. He said that's one of the biggest mistakes of his career ever. Not that he did bad in life, right?

But he did all right.

Yeah, he did all right. Yeah. But Dean Dillon wrote it. He got a, inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame this year, and I'd say it's smooth as Tennessee whiskey right here.

One of our top accounts in the whole country is a little beach bar that probably many people in the southeast know is called Floribama. This famous beach bar, it's right on the Florida-Alabama line. It's a really fun place, never been there, called a melting pot. You can have a millionaire on one side and a bum on the other, and you can't tell them apart, and you're all having fun. But Dean Dillon did a show there for their, they have a songwriters, one of the oldest songwriter series down there, Frank Brownfest, and he was the headliner. We got to sponsor that night. It was kind of pretty cool. Oh yeah. Meeting a Tennessee legend at that, right?

Yeah, exactly. So for me, this is definitely very well balanced. I mean, I'm feeling the impression of the flavor across my palate all at one time. Very well balanced. I love it up front, I love it in the middle, I like it on the back. It's definitely smooth, but you did carry a little bit of that character over, that viscosity over. You haven't lost all of that in the filtering process. Very nice.

Yeah, that was one of the biggest, we didn't want to lose, Carter loves the viscosity of mouth filled. That's one of his favorite tasting characteristics is having a, he calls it a big mouth fill. Like you said earlier, viscosity, whatever you want to call it. So that's one of the reasons we didn't want to do the filtering real slow or too much of it.

Now, Carter, can you, can you take our listeners through that filtering process so they can kind of understand how, what process of the whiskey making does that happen in? Cause some people are confused about that.

To become Tennessee whiskey, you've got a charcoal mellot, and that is the distillate before it goes into the barrel. Once the distillates come off the still, we run it through like Jeff was saying. For us, we have a very small six-inch diameter tube that's packed full of sugar maple charcoal, and we let it flow through it. Fairly rapidly. There's no definition to how much speed, time, et cetera. Some distilleries like to let it soak in it for days. Charcoal is sandpaper to whiskey. It sands out and smooths a lot of the big sharp edges, but those edges are what we like for big mouthfeel and flavors and some of those components. To me, some whiskeys that are very linear, you taste it and it's immediately gone and that was it. I think with our whiskey and a lot of other ones being pot distilled, you've got a front, a middle, back like you were saying.

Right. So when you were developing this process, you were obviously tasting the before and after the column, right? Yes. And how big of a difference is there?

Oh, on the distal? On the distal. Oh, it's massive. Massive distal.

Very noticeable.

Very noticeable. I mean, that's why we kind of sped it up a little bit, tested it different types. Yeah, I think this process was created back when, most people don't remember this, but y'all, I'm sure you're historians, you know, bourbon and Tennessee whiskey used to be unaged. That's how it was sold, right? I know that I've heard a thousand stories, I think, of how bourbon came along. I think the one I believe most is the barrels that were sent down to Bourbon Street from Kentucky and they figured out when it got there, it was tasted better. But what it does is it smooths it. It makes it smoother. For an unaged or a younger whiskey, a lot of craft whiskeys, they'll make deeper cuts on the still to cut out some of those rough edges, or they might do a bigger filtering process. That's really important for moonshine or unaged or younger aged whiskies. Well, the barrel's doing the same thing. You're doing the same thing in a barrel. It's going in and out of that barrel and it's filtering and the barrels. So age is also doing the same process. Right.

But just so everybody's younger, we got a new whiskey guy out there that just hasn't really, he's just gotten into whiskey or she's just gotten into whiskey. The. The sugar maple process, Lincoln County process, it's not adding any flavor to it. It's not adding any coloring. It's just straight up, it comes out white after that, right?

No, it comes out dark. I mean, you filter it back out. I heard that Jack runs it through bed mattress style things. It's just the dust. I mean, it settles out. It doesn't come out. It comes out colored. It settles out over time. But it's just a filtering process. It's just a different. It's just using sugar maple versus oak char, right? That's in the barrel. I do think it adds a little bit of sweetness, I think, in my opinion, but it was mainly used to make it smoother and smooth as Tennessee whiskey.

I think for somebody that's trying to understand the question you're asking, a brittle water filter is always a good example because you take your tap water and you put it through the brittle water filter and it tastes different.

You still call it water though.

What do you call it?

Carter calls it wooder. Wooder.

Wooder.

Wooder. Some people actually, I chilled their whiskey down and then put it through the process. So, cause they really want to filter out, you know, as much of those rough edges as they can. Sure. Sure. I, you know. So they're combining two processes there kind of. A little bit. One of the things we do with our whiskey that on the still that's much different than most craft guys is we don't make real big cuts. We want to leave, we'll make a big healthy cut on the front, on the heads. We'll let some of that tails drip in there. We think that that gives it more depth and more viscosity, but it needs time.

Yeah.

Now, if we weren't trying, if we didn't have four years, we would definitely make a deeper cut and probably do a bigger filtering.

Oh, that's good to know. That's good to know. You guys are really, really thought this through. I mean, you've really got this worked out.

We got a couple of years of doing it learning. Yeah. You know, sometimes learning what doesn't work is as good as learning what works.

Well, you better, you better dang sure figure it out. Cause if you put a bunch of bad barrels out there, bad, you know, bad bottles, people definitely are going to notice and you're probably not going to sell as good, right? Yeah.

And we were lucky. All the small guys in Tennessee, when we formed the guild, Jack and George joined our guild and helped us. And they opened up their chemistry departments to distillers down there and ask questions. The big guys in Kentucky have helped. Everybody says, why do the big guys help you? They're like, well, they're not scared of us making good whiskey. They're scared of us making bad whiskey. Sure. Yeah. You had us and Leapers Fork and Nelsons and all of us together and our annual production equals the morning run at Jagged.

But you can drive people away from whiskey very easily by putting out some bad stuff, which are, you know, rising tide raises all ships. Right, Mike? That's the way we look at it.

That's the way it goes. So you notice my glass is empty already.

That's a good sign for a reader.

Yeah.

Well, hey, let's get around.

I'm more of a whiskey guy. I've been drinking whiskey for a long time, sometimes straight out of a silo that the roof had blown off.

We try to tell people, this is a bourbon-style Tennessee whiskey. We try to get people, don't not try it because it doesn't say bourbon. Well, there's the great debate really. Is it really just bourbon?

Is this a three-hour show?

We don't want to get into those politics, right, Jim? Yeah, I think it doesn't really matter because if you wanted to call it bourbon, you'd put bourbon on the label. You guys put Tennessee whiskey on the label because you're proud to do so.

I tell people all the time, I could call it bourbon.

They're like, no, you can't.

Yeah, we really could. We follow the five laws of bourbon.

Yeah, trust me, get it from all ends. I've had people tell me that there's no bourbon outside of the state of Kentucky and I'm like, well, you know, you're a little bit wrong there.

I wish you would have saved a little bit of that because the next one's really cool, thanks. If you go to Jack or George, you know, that's been around forever, you can taste the distillate before and after the charcoal milling process. I don't know of anywhere else you can taste the difference five years later. And so the next one you're about to try is the same exact mash bill, same exact process, everything, but without the charcoal mellowing and five years of aging.

Tell us a little bit about this bottle. I'm kind of excited.

Well, we mentioned earlier that we were lucky enough to work with a gentleman named Larry Resauld, who I think most everybody in the industry probably knows was the master stiller at Seagrams and then MGP. He's done a lot to help the craft distilling industry, works a lot of different craft distillers that you guys know. And he came down and worked with us for a couple of weeks. And the first 25 barrels we made, we really honed in our Tennessee whiskey recipe. We didn't charcoal mellow it in front of him. The first 25 barrels we made, we did not charcoal mellow. It's technically a bourbon because it can't be called Tennessee whiskey.

It definitely does not qualify.

It does not qualify as Tennessee whiskey. It does qualify as bourbon. Tennessee whiskey is bourbon, but bourbon is not Tennessee whiskey. So what we did is we released 1,017 bottles of this every year on October 17th. That's because that was the first day we laid down whiskey, and so we consider it our whiskey birthday. I guess you could call it our birthday whiskey or birthday bourbon, whatever you want to call it, but we call it our Genesis. This one right here is our six-year-old bottle and bond. Our Genesis is always bottle and bond. It's the same recipe. 70% corn, 25% rye, 5% malted barley. Everything else is the same. Literally, the whole process is the only difference. We don't charcoal-mell it right before the barrel.

So this is some history here in a bottle and every year it gets a year older and you introduce 1,017 bottles into the market and it's to celebrate your birthday and at some point you're going to run out though, right?

We do make 20 barrels each year, and we've been kicking around what to do here in the next few years. We'll probably start some kind of solera with the old juice to try to always have some older stuff. And if we laid on 20 barrels each year, we should always get still older. So we're, you know, we've got probably about seven years where we can run it and then we're going to, we'll run out of the original. So we've got, we've got about four more years to figure out how we want to do a solaris style or how we want to, we've, we've drawn up a bunch of different ways to do it. So how much fun is this? This is fun. Just to be honest, everybody asked me like, would you love it? You probably have the best job in the world. And I'm like, we really do. Yeah.

The ability to walk into a distillery and smell the smells of a distillery every morning makes a great cup of coffee.

I used to have to drive between Anheuser-Busch. There's like a road that goes down in St. Louis and to the waterfront on the river. And I worked right on the river. So you'd have to drive through pretty much through Anheuser-Busch to work every day. And as you're driving through almost a tunnel of brick buildings, you smell, that's all you smell is their beer cooking. And all day long you smell beer cooking, which is a beautiful smell if you're a drinker. It's like torture.

I love walking in and smelling that mash in the mornings.

All right, well, let's check this thing out. Oh, wow. There's a, there's a stark contrast there.

It's almost like a toasted marshmallow on this right here. Toast almost toasted oak. I don't know if that's who you getting that or what are you getting Jim?

Yeah, I mean, I'm getting I'm getting a burnt sweetness kind of burnt. It's probably a strong strong term there. I don't think it's burnt. I think I'm getting a Cooked sugar caramel cooked sugar.

Yeah. Yeah that kettle corn you get in front of like a fast pro shop or the state fair or something like that.

It's definitely different, significantly different than what we just tried on the nose.

I always kind of say, take this from Zurb, I get a lot of creme brulee where this is, I get a little bit more of the marshmallow kind of kettle corn. It's funny, you said toasted marshmallow. That's in our actual tasting notes that Ashley wrote. So you nailed it. She and I's favorite probably blend we've done of anything so far.

When you were a kid, did your mom ever make those popcorn balls? You know what I'm talking about? What? That sounds delicious. I get a little bit of that in there. It's like a caramel marshmallow popcorn ball. I remember as a kid that we'd get those as treats sometimes. Carter's like, man, you're taking me back to my childhood.

Oh, those are great tasting notes.

I'm ready to taste this.

Might borrow a couple.

I'm going to Google that, figure out how to make it. I've never heard of popcorn balls.

Oh, they're delicious with the caramel and they kind of get stuck in your teeth and you're a little upset, but you're happy. Well, let's taste this.

Cheers. Cheers.

I still get it on the taste too. You know, I get that caramel goodness. Um, and I, I hate popcorn. Like regular old popcorn. I can't eat it is a childhood memory. I just can't get away from. I don't eat it. Um, I can't even smell somebody pop it, but caramel corn, uh, What's those cracker jacks? Yeah. I tear up some crackers. Jacks, man. That's what the peanuts, right? That's a fat kid and the cake together.

Yeah, this is a, this is a big, there's a big difference here between this and what we just tried. This is, this is full bodied. This is it's on the verge of bold. I would say I don't want to call it a bold whiskey. It's not like, uh, taking me by surprise or anything, but it's got a, an extra measure of flavor. I'm going to try to pick out a few notes here though.

I don't get any burn at all on this. It's just, this is a perfect sipping whiskey and stuff. And I'll be honest with you guys. I searched this bottle out. I tried to get a bottle. I had people texting me here in Nashville saying, Hey, you want me to find you a bottle of this? And by the time they tried to find a bottle, it was all gone. I just a whiskey, I guess a whiskey nerd a little bit in me wants to.

I've got a little personal stash. So I'll send you home with the bottle. Since you, since you tried that, I got my little secret stash. I keep them office.

Well, it's nice to have those whiskey friends that even offer you that that's.

It's a pleasure to hear that people are out there talking about it.

Because you're never going to get this bottle again. Yeah. And that's what I love about this. It's only going to be once a year and it's kind of... And they know I appreciate whiskey and stuff.

Last night I got a little bit heartburn and, you know, our friends tried to feed me pretty, pretty nice bottles of whiskey. He's trying to say, Hey, try this, try that, try this. And I was like, man, I'd ate some chicken Parmesan the night before and that that red sauce on there, that gravy is Italians caught. Um, it was getting me a little bit of ass root flux. So whiskey drinking and that together is not the most pleasurable thing.

Oh yeah. I don't have my Prolisac.

Jim said the same thing at the night. He's like, I don't have no Prolisac with me.

I tell you what, I think I picked it out. Um, it's good and plenty, but it's before you get to the core. before you get to that licorice core. It's like just the hint of it from that rye, but it's a good and plenty candy. Yeah. But it's been a while since I had a good and plenty.

Never had one, so. My dad used to love those, girl. I've had plenty of those.

It's like night and day when you're eating them. There's sugary goodness on the outside, and as it starts to melt away, just as you get to that licorice center, it just gives you that little hint of licorice, and then the sugar's gone, and then it's all licorice at that point.

Now, a lot of people don't know that Nashville is famous for their moon pies. Yeah. Right. And I get a little bit of that Moon Pie in here, just a tad bit. There's also another candy here that Nashville is famous for. Goo Goo Clusters.

Yeah. Goo Goo Clusters and Moon Pies. Moon Pies, is that more of a Chattanooga? I think that's actually Chattanooga. Chattanooga, Tennessee thing. Which is Tennessee, hour south. If you haven't gone to Chattanooga, beautiful city.

It may just be the flora and fauna of Tennessee.

And Chattanooga Whiskey down there is doing some really cool stuff. They're doing really high malt whiskies. Right.

They sent us some stuff and we reviewed one. We loved it. You know, there's a lot of people were like, how could you like that single malt? You're bourbon guys. And we're like, no, we're whiskey guys. And we appreciate every region for what it brings. You know, if Texas, You know, I'm a Texas boy and you know, they're doing their own thing down there. It's their own style that Texas heat. Somebody's figured out how to, uh, tame it. Yeah. And, uh, that's, it's just a different style.

I'll tell you, some of those garrison brothers bottles, man, those are some big boy bottles. Oh yeah. I like them.

People bang on them because of their price and stuff, but by the time they have their loss, what's that bottle cost them? What's it take to put it in that beautiful bottle and stuff? The whiskey's still good though.

We appreciate whiskey for what it is for each region, I think, Jim. Absolutely. No doubt about it. Yeah, they do have some huge losses down there. When they put something in a barrel and take it out two years later, they've got a large loss.

I could see that. But if y'all haven't tried, I've actually gone through a couple of bottles of the Chattanooga whiskey, they're 111. Yeah, we've had it. I like that 111. Yeah, it's good.

Yeah, you just got to appreciate whiskey for what it is and where it's from and realize that not everything's going to taste like that belt of Kentucky, you know, or Tennessee. Some places are going to be different. I think your whiskey is special to Nashville, to Tennessee. And all four expressions have been excellent.

I think that's the beauty of whiskey, right? Should all taste different.

Yeah. I'm excited. You know, up in the Northwest went up there and Although there's so much room for malt whiskeys up there. I think they're going to wow us in a few years with some of these distilleries. They're really getting into malts there. Texas always loved balconies. I heard that the Chip had started another distillery down there. I don't know if it's ever... come out, you know, the founder of Balcones, I think he was doing, he'd been working on something I heard down there. But Texas has its style. You know, the Northwest is going to have their style. Tennessee obviously has a style. So.

Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of people out there that are, I mean, the market for malt whiskeys is pretty, pretty big, right? I mean, it's a big market. It's bigger than, I mean. Bigger than bourbon. Bigger than bourbon globally. We're going to catch them eventually. Eventually we will. Yeah. but we're going to have our own American malts. So in various, like you said, various places are going to have their own styles. Colorado is coming on too.

Yeah. You know, there's a lot of places coming on not to take away from your guys whiskey. There's a lot of people coming on, but that's the love of craft distilleries. I think people would be shocked at how closely knitted the craft distilleries of America are and how much they'll help each other out. You could make a phone call one day and say, Hey, I got this problem. And more than likely somebody's going to help you out. I'm sure you guys get called for help too.

Oh yeah. I mean we've always, I mean we've gone and helped other distilleries fix. He's a mechanical genius over here fixing anything equipment wise. He's helped out vice versa.

Carter, you know what I heard right then? Raise. That's what I heard.

You don't want to be called master, but genius is okay. Yeah, exactly. But you know, you said all the different areas, and Larry Russell always uses this word, and I try to use it a lot in tours, but he uses the word flora fauna a lot, and let the environment, and it always reminds me, I started selling wine. When I got in the business, I was first selling wine, and you know, you'd always hear the master ventners talk about letting the grapes do the talking, and letting them bear, you know, not doing too much to it. I think it's the same thing with whiskey. You can make the same stuff in Colorado and here, Texas. The flora fauna and the environment and the grain, it's going to do the talking. It's going to make it different.

Then once it goes in that barrel, each barrel could be different because that could be a different tree. You know, it could be grown in a dry region.

He's been wanting to mess around with more barrels and getting into that stuff.

But even in the same tree, right? It could be a center cut.

We've all know the single oak project and just everything in between. The barrel is the most amazing thing to me. The QC measures we do here to ensure all the distillate going into the barrels matches and we grade everything. I mean, the backbone system to what we've built here, it's pretty top notch actually. But like I was saying, you can fill 20 barrels with the same distillate, put them up right next to each other, and they all start taking on their own flavor profiles. You'll see some continuities, but the finished flavors and some notes and everything will vary from barrel to barrel. And like Jeff was saying, I think the art of blending is that's when it takes in.

Yeah, I think the barrel overall, but I mean, you can see just in the finishings now and how popular that's becoming. Sure. Right? When Angel Zimmy first came out and all the bourbon purists were like, that's not bourbon. But Scotland's been doing it for centuries. And now, I mean, look at all these great sherry cask finish and Madeira cask. And maybe not my thing on some of them personally, but I mean, like I had a honey barrel finish. What was that thing we had at Wesley's that day? Good times. Yeah.

I got a bottle that we still haven't cracked, and it's like 135 proof.

I didn't think I would like it. I was pleasantly surprised. It was awesome.

Well, we'll get back to Kentucky. We're going to have to do a review on it.

Remember, all bottles are meant to be opened, not take pictures of.

We're trying to personally start a thing on these Reverend groups, maybe to get people to stop buying up all the weller. So we started to do hashtag open the damn bottle.

little over 600 bottles that were open at my house. So I had to figure a way to start getting rid of some of that besides drinking it up. One man can not drink 600 bottles and not two men can't drink 600 bottles that quickly. So we've shared, we, we shared a lot of whiskey. Yeah.

Share a quick funny story with one of our good friends. His great aunt was one of the first female chemists at Sazerac or OFC back in the day. She's still alive. She's in her 90s, still kicking and doing great, but she gave him a lot. He's a huge bourbon fan. He was drinking it before it was cool. He has all these old OFC bottles and you know, little bottles that just had little bits left that he saved and didn't want to drink them, right? Just because they were collectors and said he comes home and he's like, he's a six, six big guy. His pores are, you know, cook for bigger pores at the end of the day and said he comes home and his wife's like, Hey, you want a bourbon? You want me to pour you a bourbon? And he's like, Oh yeah, I'd love that. And he sits on the couch and she brings him this big old glass. He pours it on ice. He fills it with ice and fills it up and she's hands it to him and he said, he takes a sip and he's like, Hmm. That's really interesting. Drinks it again. He's like, I can't recognize that. I can't recognize what that is. And he says, hey, Gani, what did you pour me? I don't recognize it. And he's got a pretty good bourbon. He said, oh, you had like 10 bottles that had just a little bit left. I wanted to get rid of them. So I just kind of suicide him to get it right. He was like, you did what? I thought he was going to start crying.

Well guys, so in the future, what's the future look like? Is anything else special coming up for you?

I think we've got quite a few things special. I think the excitement is we've got three consistent mash bills that we lay down daily and we have a nice pilot still and working on some new things. I don't want to let the cat out of the bag yet, but innovation is rampant here right now.

I think Carter nailed it. He said earlier that we keep data. It's hard enough. Consistency in an inconsistent world is really tough, as he said. Carter's team back there takes 25 to 30 data points on every part of the cook. The distillation controls as much as we can before it goes into the the barrel because you can get enough variance from the barrel. Now that we feel like we've done a good job of that, we've got that out. We're expanding the distillery this year. We're adding about 40% capacity to our current lines so we can increase those match bills. But then also we've invested in a pilot steel program, just a little 130 gallon steel cooker, and now going to get to start playing around with smoked malt or maybe some malts and some other things, you know. We wanted to make sure three mash bills, I mean, heck, you can see what... what some of the stories do up north with just two mashbills and four yeast chains. Right. So we're going to start, we've been getting a play around and I know Carter's team is super excited to just, they can, they've now got the reins to hear the pilot still throw anything in there. Now we've tried some pretty bad things. Yes. You know, we had some leftover blood orange pulp one day we decided to ferment off and that didn't do too well.

We've had some pleasant surprises as well.

So. So you've got distillery tours going on now. Yes, sir. Even in the midst of what we're going through, but your distillery is open for tours. Yes, sir. What can somebody expect on a tour here?

see a working plant. Yeah, it's a hard hat tour. When we opened up over here, this neighborhood you didn't come over to five years ago, four years ago. We built it for production. So I always say you can kind of get three different tours right here within five minutes of each other. You've got a tour down the street that's beautiful and the history of whiskey and You've got another tour at Corsair where those guys will try any kind of grains. It's crazy. They'll throw anything against the wall, come up with some fun stuff. And then you come here and you really see, it's very hands-on compared to, I call it kind of a hard hat tour. It's not the fancy dog and pony show. You're going to see how whiskey's made and be able to see it.

Do you guys still have the wooden catwalk in there?

Oh yeah.

I did the tour, I guess it was almost two years ago. I came over here in the middle of the day, kind of burned some time up. So I think it's a great tour. I think if you're, like I said before, if you're looking for, burn some time in Nashville in the middle of the day before the honky tonks open up, before you can go over to Robert's Western World and get yourself a fried bologna sandwich.

Oh, you know about those. That's the locals, that's the locals honky tonk right there.

It used to be the recession special. PBR, fried bolognans, Lay's chips. Um, and a moon pie and you can get some boots while you're sitting there too. Yeah. Music, uh, brass ability music with big bass playing and stuff. Um, a great place to visit, but this is a great tour to come get some local whiskey, a craft distillery. So where can our listeners find you guys on social media?

Pretty much, uh, at Pennington distilling Co or at Davidson reserve. Um, both those on Instagram, uh, Facebook, not big on social media.

I'm trying to think we're on Pinterest as well. There's Pinterest users.

Carter still doesn't even have a picture on his Facebook page. Are you on, are you on tech talk though, Carter?

Is there a clock going off?

What are you talking about? We realized we talked about last night when we now old, when, uh, only one person that feels this older than us.

We encourage our listeners to check you guys out, give you a follow. And yeah, if they're in Nashville, definitely stop by, take a tour, try your whiskeys. I think they'll be pleasantly surprised. Take home a bottle, right? Yes.

Yes. And please sign up for our reserve club. We've got a reserve club that we just kind of started and that'll keep them up with up-to-date releases and special things coming.

Well, we really appreciate the invitation to come down and spend a little time with you guys here in your house. We have been kind of stuck in our house for a while. It's nice to get out again.

Most definitely.

Oh, yeah. You can find us on the bourbonroad.com. You can also find us on all social medias at The Bourbon Road. Mike, we're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube. Soon to be TikTok. Soon to be. One of these days.

One of these days we get that done. So on our website, you can go check our website out. We have our reviews on there. We'll be reviewing some whiskies on there. We've got them up on our website. You can listen to those on our podcast, but we also write blogs on there. I'll write a blog about Nashville in this episode right here. It won't be about so much about the whiskey. Just some of my thoughts about Nashville. Go on there and read those blogs. You can go on there and buy our whiskey swag. I'm actually wearing one of our shirts today, the bourbon bullshitter t-shirt. We would appreciate if you go on there and buy that, buy a glass, buy a shirt. That helps us get back on the road. It pays for rooms. It pays the bills. Yeah, there are bills when it comes to a podcast too. It helps us put our podcast out on air. That costs money too, right, Jim? It does. It does. I don't have to do any of the books or the bills. Jim does all that. I just spend the money.

Yeah, and drink the whiskey.

Drink a lot of whiskey, yeah. But you can check that out. We also have a private Facebook group, 1,400 people and growing. Last year we were at 75 people and we're at 1,400 now.

It's amazing to watch the growth. Good people too, right?

Yeah, we got master distillers in there, master blenders, just whiskey drinkers like ourselves, people that don't take themselves seriously to be in that group. You got to be 21. You got to like bourbon and you got to agree to play nice because we don't have to tolerate any what.

We do not tolerate any rudeness. So you cannot come down on another man or another woman because of their preferences in whiskey. If they do a review and it's of a bottle of Jim Beam, Lift them up. Don't tear them down.

Yeah. We like everybody to... Some people are just starting out on that bourbon road. Some people have been on it a long time, like me and Jim, but we want everybody to feel welcome like a family. We don't do religion in there. We don't do politics. We don't do social justice. We're just talking about the whiskey. That's what we know best.

Yeah. We got three moderators that will enforce very tightly our rules. Yes, sir. Glad to hear that. Yeah. So we invite you guys to come in and join the Bourbon Roadies. I'm sure our listeners and our roadies will have some questions for you following the show. So feel free to come in, join up and yeah, it'd be great to have you.

And everybody, if I could just give a shout out, come back to Nashville soon. Nashville is a tourism town. We like to say it's a drinking town with a music problem. It's been a tough year. I know everybody's been at home, but Nashville, don't forget about us. Come back soon. Cause it's, it was a great city.

And we were down, we were downtown last night and it's still alive. It's still going folks. It's a, it's not shut down completely. It's controlled. Yes. It's socially distanced.

Now Carter, I know you're wondering what the entry fee into that bourbon group is. It's only $1 million, a one-time entry fee.

Carter's got some single bells. He might be on the private. All right. So we do two shows a week. We do a short format show every Monday. It's a, it's called our craft distillery Monday where we review a craft distillery expression. Sometimes it's a big boy, but usually an up and comer, somebody stepping out of the box a little bit. And every Wednesday we do a full length episode like today, right, Mike?

Yeah. Full length episodes. Yes. Sometimes just me and Jim like sit down and shoot the shit. That's just what we do. Um, Check us out. If you liked our episodes, make sure you go up there and hit that top button. Subscribe to it. That way your phone, Alexis, she'll play your next episode. Tell us. Tell you that we have an episode coming out. If you really like us, please go down to the bottom. Hit that review. But give us a five star. That gives a one star if you want. But tell us how we can get better or what we're doing bad. We'll try to improve. We always want ideas for shows. You can send us an email at team at the Bourbon Road. That'll get us some ideas and stuff.

You can find me at One Big Chief, I'm JayShannon63, and we will see you down the Bourbon Road.