146. Peerless Distilling with Corky Taylor and Cordell Lawrence

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.

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Hey, this is Big Chief from the Bourbon Road and I'm downtown Louisville today and I'm at Hearless Distilling Company and got some special guests with me. But Jim couldn't be with us today and that's why he's not talking, not leading us into this episode. Jim's got a business and he had an appointment he had to make, so that's called life and we're going to make this happen anyways. But what I did bring with me is one of our bourbon roadies one of my good friends Steve Johnson's with us he's he's in here listening to the episode gonna get drink a little bit bourbon get to see the behind the scenes of a distillery with me and pretty great but I got two special guests in here with me I got Corky Taylor he is the man that brought this distillery back to life. An amazing story. He's going to tell it to us today. And then we got Cordell Lawrence with us today too. He's going to tell us about the bourbon we're going to drink today. And we're going to have a great time in here. And we're in their speakeasy, which is a beautiful room. Corky, Cordell, welcome to the Bourbon Road and thanks for having us here.

It's a pleasure. Thanks for joining us today. We kind of kid, these seats are hard to get out of, so make yourself comfortable.

Now, Cordell, we ran into you down at Bourbon's Bistro. Jason's place. Yeah, just- It's the place to be. That's where everybody goes to hang out, right? Exactly. A bunch of Bourbon, I guess, executives in there that night. Yes. And it was nice and you said, hey, we need to get you back down to the celery. almost a year and a half as October of 2019 was the last time we were here. We were with Caleb and we'd ran into Corky that day and Corky was busy. Obviously he's a businessman, right? That's right. But I got to hear some stories that day. We talked a little military and you got me laughing pretty hard, which is not hard to do at all. So I would like to get straight to the whiskey. So what's in our first pour here?

So we have our Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. This is always going to be sweet mash, so fresh grain, fresh water, fresh yeast every distillation. We're going to serve it at barrel strength. We're not going to water this down. We are going to come off the still at about 131. We're going to go in the barrel about 107, and then we're going to let it naturally age for a minimum of four years. We're going to do nothing to alter that. So what you're enjoying right now is truly unadulterated and, um, some of Caleb and team's finest whiskey.

So I'm looking at the bottle. This is 114.8 proof. That's, that's a, that's on the higher end.

So normally we're about 110, 111. And then we have these offshoots with small batch and single barrel. The single barrel you have there is available down our gift shop and it's a vintage cigar box.

Vintage cigar box. Which is pretty interesting. That sounds interesting and stuff. Well, heck, let's, let's taste this before we get started talking.

It's got a beautiful nose on it. Very complex. What you'll notice, too, is it's not overly astringent. It has a soft mouthfeel, kind of a lingering finish that sticks around, but not overly spicy. Very palatable for barrel-strength whiskey. Very easy drinking. The spice is there.

Very, very spicy. Little sugars in there. I'm getting some funky on that, though. I don't know what that is. It's a memory. It's coming back. By the time I'm finished talking, it'll probably be there.

When we were first tasting this, and that's kind of the name, as you can imagine, we thought almost of a dusty bottle is what this reminded us of. A vintage pour, if you will. And then we noticed that kind of real distinct tobacco and kind of cigar tobacco note. within that, that made it taste older than it was, as if it was a vintage pour.

I get just a hint of sweet green on this, but not a lot. Maybe it's all the leather in this room and old wood and stuff, but it's almost like I went into a saddle room in a barn a little bit to me. This is definitely a gentleman's whiskey. I like how Dr. Pat Heiss says it about sweet mash. He said, sweet mash is like taking the heartburn out of whiskey. It is. That's exactly right.

It's that rear palate finish. It's not that deep chest burn. Makes it very easy to drink and very palatable.

I tell you, if you're a whiskey drinker out there and you're looking for something, there are very few people that do a sweet mash because it's labor intensive, right? Correct. If you're looking for that, you don't like that burn so much, look for a sweet mash, and Peerless is one of those that's making a sweet mash. That's all you guys do here, right? Right. Exclusively sweet mash. It costs extra.

More labor and more time. Think about it. We have to have the guys go back there and steam clean at 212 degrees and maintain that temperature for a number of minutes to then sanitize all the sanitary vessels. All the stainless steel pipes, fermentation tanks, everything is cleaned twice a day, not once a day, twice a day. Most distilleries may do that once or twice a year. We do it twice every single day. So Corky, you know, you retired.

When did you retire from like business? You're down in Florida.

I was down in Florida. I moved a company I had here in Louisville to Florida, about 30 years ago. We moved to Sarasota, Florida. I sold out in, I think, end of 2009, first of 2010. walked on the beach in Sarasota for a year and a half, most depressed I've ever been in my freaking life. I said, man, I got to go back to work. So my youngest son, Carson, that's here in the distillery, he was a builder. I said, let's, Let's build a distillery." And he was all for it. So he was able to come in here and he did most all the work and headed it up. And then this old building was a tobacco warehouse. So that's where you're getting probably a little bit of tobacco in this bourbon. But he did a great job, took him two years. We wanted that feel where people come through the door and they want to feel like they're going back in time 100 years. And this building is 130 years old, so it gives you that feel. And you just, you know you are someplace when you walk in the building. And of course our history with, you know, with the name, the DSP number, everything involved.

So when did your family, when did they start the actual distillery?

1889, my great grandfather Henry Craver. Interesting story about him. He was a Polish Jew, moved to New York City to Manhattan when he was five years old, selling newspapers on the corner when he was seven, eight, 10, 12 years old. And when he was 19 years old, he saved up some money. He says, I'm gonna leave my family in New York. I'm gonna get on a riverboat. And when I run out of money, that's where I'm gonna end up. Why he didn't get off in Louisville, Kentucky, I have no idea. He must've been drunk or something. He went on down to Henderson, got off the boat, walked to the top of the hill, one bar up there called Puckets. He walked in, he says, I have no money. I don't have a nickel in my pocket. Can I sweep the floor and can I live in the attic until I get myself squared away? And they said, sure, come on in. A couple of years later, he bought the bar. But he was a very interesting man. He built the distillery in 1889 and it was one of the largest distilleries. There were 200 distilleries in the state of Kentucky. And at that time, he was one of the largest distilleries in the state during that era.

And how long did they operate before it went defunct?

1889, shut it down in 1917. He shut it down because of World War I purposes. And then, of course, prohibition came along in 19. So he shut it down in 17. Of course, I thought he was a genius for doing it. He sold all his stills to United Distillery in Vancouver, British Columbia. So they came in. He had a family in Louisville. Are you familiar with Vindome that makes all the stills? Yes, sir. So the Sherman family, he got a hold of Mr. Sherman in 1917. And he said, you know, I want you to come to Louisville. I want you to break all the stills down, put them on train cars, take them up there. And he brought the Sherman family back to Louisville. And that's where they got part of their money to start Vindome. My great grandfather sent them by breaking down those stills.

Wow. That's a unique part of Vindome right there. It is. It is.

And they put a picture downstairs in our still room that's really unique. It's got their great-grandfather, Mr. Sherman. It's got two of the sons in the picture, and it was taken in 1938. But 1917 was the year that he broke the stills down.

Now, how did you figure out, hey, my family owned a distillery? Did you always know that in your family history?

Oh, I knew that. Um, you know, his grandfather was Henry Craver. It's my great, great grandfather, great grandfather. So we always had in our home in Henderson, we had a lot of pictures of the distillery, the brewery, bottles. just his whole office. He had a big office at home and always had a lot of information. And Henry Craver, he was a banker in Henderson, so he started First National Bank. He owned the theaters there, the Craver Theater. in another theater there. I mean, he had a brewery there, a huge brewery down on the river. So he was a pretty big industrialist. And then he actually owned the Palmer House up in Chicago during Prohibition. So that was, and he stayed up there a lot. And there's some really neat stories that Cordell and I heard up in Chicago that My great grandfather, when he owned the Palmer house up there, his two buddies up there were the Walgreens brothers. Everybody's got a Walgreens. And during that era of prohibition, my great grandfather sold the Walgreens brothers 40,000 barrels of bourbon. There's a lot of sick people in Chicago. So, you know, that's kind of a unique story. So I never met my great grandfather. They said he was a party animal. So, and I believe that he probably was.

Do you get a little bit of that from him?

I think I probably, yeah, I'm slowed down in my old age, but older age, not old age. But no, I think I, I think I had that for quite a while.

So you, you have in your, you know, just opening an instillery is awesome, but you've got a pretty amazing background starting with your dad, right? And being a aid to general patent. Can we go into that just a tad bit?

Sure, sure. You know, I grew up in Army, Brett. My dad was in the military basically the whole time until we moved back to his hometown of Henderson. So I grew up in Hawaii. I was surfing. I was having a big time. I thought, man, this is a life that I want. And he was in course, he was a chief aide with General Patton. was with General Patton, and there's a picture down at the Patton Museum in Fort Knox of my father standing right next to General Patton. So they were together from 1943 to the end of the war. And then dad was in Korea for two years. He was a first officer in Vietnam sent by General Westmoreland. And then he was He was the officer in charge of Bay of Pigs down in the islands down there in Cuba. So he was just, that was what he did. He went to Castle Heights Military, and talking about my father, went to Castle Heights Military cabinet and lived in Tennessee for 14 years. So the time he was five years old till he retired, that's all he knew was military.

Now you're an alumni from there too, right?

Well, not exactly. I was there for a short period of time and my two roommates were the Almond Brothers, Greg and DeWayne. The real Almond Brothers? The real Almond Brothers, yeah. Did they play any music while they were there? You know, they had a guitar in the room. I'll tell you the quick story about them. Their mom was a single mom. Their father was killed when they were two and three years old. I'm talking about Greg and DeWayne. Their mother just happened to work for my father's roommate at Castle Heights for 12 years. His name was Jay Sand. I call him Jay Boy Sanders. And he owned two companies, one in Nashville and one in Shelbyville, that made these yellow number two pencils. You know, we use those in school. And she worked for him and he was watching these boys grow up. So when they got to be 13 and 14 years old, he got ahold of my dad. He says, I'm sending these boys to military school. They're out of control. He says, your son going, he says, he's gone, but he don't want to go, which I did not want to go. But I went, hell, I went down there. But we didn't hang around long enough to graduate. We all went home, so we had more fun than we should have in a military school. But they did, they had a guitar in the room, but they didn't, you know, on Sunday afternoon you have kind of like a do what you want to from two to four before dinner. They played the guitar some, sang some, but we weren't in there jamming or anything.

Did you keep track with him or keep up with those guys throughout their career?

Wayne was killed when he was 25 years old. I saw Greg a couple of times, but I never did. We were buddies, but when we left Castle Heights, we weren't together. We didn't see each other. And it wasn't until I guess three or four years ago, Craig died a couple of years ago. And it wasn't until three or four years ago, I was in Sarasota and I was getting acupuncture and a guy laying next to me, he had getting acupuncture and he had real long hair. And I was thinking, that guy's either in the music business or he's some kind of entertainer. I said, what'd you do for a living? He goes, I was the Allman Brothers manager. I said, well, good, I was their roommate. You can imagine what he said then. I said, well, get Greg on the phone. So he did. And then Greg came down to Sarasota. And I thought he's just come flying out. He ended up staying five months. He found a new girlfriend on Main Street. So I'd see him. I'd see him drink a beer. We weren't We were buddies and we knew in the past, but we weren't, you know, running buddies by any means.

But there ain't no, not too many people could say, hey, I was roommates with the Almond Brothers before they were really the band.

Yeah.

Right. Some of the greatest classic rock out there. And just to get to see the forefront of that as a roommate had to still be an awesome experience.

Oh yeah.

Now, you also have a pair of, or maybe one, I could be wrong, of Patton's famous pistols, ivory-handled pistols.

I do. I've got his Colt 1911 silver-plated ivory-handled 45 that General Patton carried all through the war. Two weeks before General Patton, the war was over, just at the end of the war, two weeks before General Patton was in the bad car wreck, he gave that to my father. My father owned it for 30 years. I've owned it for 45 years. My sons will own it. My grandsons already know they'll own it. So, as far as I know, it won't leave the Taylor family. It's really something to have. I mean, when I get army generals, there's not an army general probably in the United States military that doesn't know I have General Patton's gun. And they will come in here, they'll call me and say, would you bring the gun in? I'm going to bring it in next Friday night, I think. And I'll show them the gun. I've seen army generals actually cry in this distillery. When they, some of them went to West Point, that's where Patton went to school. They've been in, you know, They were in the military for 30 years, 35 years, they're generals, and they've idolized Patton their whole career. They fought wars, they fought conflicts, like they thought Patton would have done it. And when they put that gun on and touch that gun and feel that gun and know that General Patton carried that gun all through the war, they just emotionally lose it. So it's pretty interesting.

Yeah. That's kind of that brotherhood. And he was, Patton was kind of a man's man, you know, carried himself a certain way. Definitely probably wouldn't be the most liked fella today. Even at his time, he wasn't the most liked fella, but well respected in his military thoughts. He also liked a little bit of whiskey.

He liked a whole lot of whiskey.

So much so that they called, they said he would put it in old fuel drums and ship it over to his guys.

Oh yeah. I mean, my dad said, hell, he drank every day. He said, they'd be in Europe fighting a damn war and Patton's drinking and they're getting ready to take over these cities. And hell, the damn, he starts yelling and screaming and shooting and he's drunk and the lights start coming on. They said, dad's trying to get them to back out. And he said, it was just wilder and wild back then. He said, you know, it's just, you don't think about World War II. He says, like on Friday afternoon, it's okay, let's quit fighting. Patton and my dad get in an airplane and go, they go to where Patton loved these Royal Lipizan horses, white horses, and there were 58 of them. And he wanted to go see these horses. So he'd take my dad with him to go see these horses that General Padden loved. And they'd go in there to the cave. They were hidden in a cave in Austria and they'd fly up there and drink whiskey all weekend, play, pedal around with the horses, go back on Sunday afternoon, start the war back up again.

It's too bad though that he didn't have a little bit of peerless bourbon to drink.

Yeah.

Well, it would have made it all that much better, right?

Sure would have, but that's, you know.

Now, cause as a kid or a teenager, do you remember your first sip of bourbon?

My dad drank a lot of bourbon. So I, yeah, I, I can remember in high school drinking bourbon and, and it's, and it's funny. I mean, all my buddies Henderson's a small town, so all my best friends, their fathers, just like Bill Lattice, you know, my closest friend. Well, Bill Lattice's father and my father were best friends. So it's just, and everybody drank bourbon. So, you know, from the time you're in college, Maybe a little bit in high school, but time I was in college till here lately, we drank bourbon until all my buddies now like our rye whiskey. It's funny, I've been drinking bourbon for 50 years, but rye whiskey, we've been making it and they just seem to like the flavor profiles. And I've got five or six buddies that grew up on bourbon, but now they're drinking our rye. It's something.

Might be a nice segue into our next pour here.

Yeah.

Yeah. In a second half, we'll get into that rye, that rye whiskey and stuff. Cordell, what's your position here at the distillery?

So director of global marketing and strategy and have grown up in the business. So still have two aunts of mine that work over at Brown Foreman. I myself previously worked at Brown Foreman, both on the Jack Daniel's global marketing team and Southern Comfort marketing team.

So you, you're a whiskey man. How long you been in the whiskey business together?

Oh gosh. Let's see. Now about, uh, 17, 18 years.

His voice sounds like he's young, but he's not a, he's not a young man. That's right.

I'm not a young man. I might look pretty, I might like older than I am. I get that from my dad, right? So you say global marketing.

So we were back here in October of 2019, I think. And I don't think that you guys were in a ton of states then. How many states are you in now?

We're in 44 states and three foreign countries. Three foreign countries being the UK, Australia, and Canada.

Our Australia and our UK fans will love to hear that stuff. We definitely got fans there. And what about expanding to like Japan, Spain?

We're looking at a lot of opportunities in terms of export markets right now, but I'll tell you what, the demand within the continental US is pretty phenomenal. Right now, our bourbon is completely sold out before it even leaves our door. Allocated to that account and people are lining up and it's selling within 24 hours of hitting the shelf.

Now, Corky, is that a good feeling to you that you know that you've brought this family legacy back to America?

It's a great feeling and it's a good feeling for everybody, for everybody that works here. I mean, we feel like we're a big family here. So to have everybody, everybody knows what's going on in here. We don't keep, there's no secrets in this building. So when we sell out and we sell this one or we got a big order going to California or we have a big one going here to Louisville or Florida, everybody knows that that's going out the back door. So everybody's excited about it and You know, I think it's a testament to everybody that works here. Everybody works hard. We make the right product and you got to have a good product to sell out. So we're honored to have that product.

Well, I tell you what, that's been amazing. You know, the quality above all else mantra, if you will, that Corky's instilled from day one, I think has been testament and it's shown itself through the dedication everybody here has. That's making the finest quality rye whiskey and bourbon out there.

Well, and I've worked with some of your team before. I actually had called here and asked a favor one time. We had a Coast Guard Admiral that was coming into town and I called a couple of distilleries. It was a last minute thing. My work said, Hey, you think you could get him into a distillery? We're not having any luck. I find it a private tour after hours. And I said, let me make a couple of phone calls and a couple of texts. And you guys were so gracious. And it last, I mean, it was last minute. After hours, I said, hey, could you get this Coast Guard Admiral in here? He only controls, I think, 42 states of the United States in the center of America. And this is really one of his states, Kentucky is. And you guys were gracious enough to host him and a couple other officers on a tour here. And I know that made the world of them. Just your, how you hire people and your team that you've kept. You took Caleb and pretty much brought him into the bourbon community and now he's your master of stiller and that loyalty you'll pay off dividends. You know, it's kind of like having a soldier that stays in for 30 years. they don't know anything but loyalty to the United States. That's all they think in their mind. You don't want to stop. And it's hard when you take off those boots, those fatigues for a Coast Guard member, you know, for 24 years, that's all I did. And, you know, you take that uniform off and you're like, you kind of feel a little bit lost, right? But building that loyalty here at the distillery, kind of that same attitude, I could see that in bread and you from your, from your, probably your dad, you know, that loyalty. to your family, your brand and building that brand and that'll pay a long ways. There's a lot of moving around in the bourbon community though people don't realize.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

But on Corky's part, bringing you on board and saying, Hey, how long have you been with Peerless?

So since about 2016, so almost five years. So five years now. So even before the rye whiskey was on the market. Correct. And your plan is to stay here. This is it. Absolutely. Let's hope so. Not forever home, if you will.

Corky takes good care of us. We want to keep everybody we have. I mean, we just have a really good group and, um, You know, we do a lot of things together and we eat lunch together every day. We have lunch, you know, so it's it's it's the camaraderie is here in these walls.

So we all collectively buy into that vision, you know, every day that we're going to make the best product we can and we're going to deliver a first class experience every single time people people come in these doors.

Yeah, you got a great experience and you guys are open for tours right now. We are.

So we've got to reduce that down a little bit in terms of capacity from 25 people per tour to 10 and now three tours per day. But what's amazing is, you know, the level of proficiency of the people that are coming in, in terms of visitors now, you're getting the diehards, the truly passionate people. They're here for a reason. They're here on a mission. They're here to taste through some of these exceptional single barrels that Caleb and team have put together. And it's an amazing experience for the tour guides as well. They compliment the level of knowledge that people bring into this building on a tour and the way they push them with information and questions. So it's been all in all kind of a silver lining.

Well, we'll get into that a little deeper on the second half. Obviously, my glass is empty, so that means it's time for a break.

I think so. This was a beautiful expression right here. Thank you.

A very tasty bourbon, 114 proof. That's that sweet spot for me. I always bang on people when they're putting out 90 proof. I always say, hey, man, I wonder how that would taste in cask strength. For me, that's where it's at. But in the second half, we'll get into a rye expression and we'll go and see what the future for Pyridos looks like. Sounds great. All right. Stay with us.

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All right, listeners, this is Big Chief and we're back for the second half with Peerless Distilling Company here in downtown Louisville. I'm gonna tell you, there's a stone's throw from the river, a river that I know so well, the Ohio River down there, the Falls of the Ohio. You can look at the dam here. The river is up right now. The way I know that, not only by the, some of the waterfront down there is underwater, but the dam gates are completely lifted out of the water. If you go down to the Falls of Ohio, it is just a ripping down there. And you guys are right on the canal here, really the entrance to the canal. So a beautiful place. I can't wait to take some photos of your bottles. I got some special ideas, but we're here with Corky and Cordell and on the second half you guys poured us some of your rice. So what do we got Cordell?

We do. We actually have a Kentucky straight rye whiskey that in this case is a single barrel. And we named this single barrel Caribbean cured sugar cane. So you're going to pick up in this case, kind of a sweet tobacco note, you're going to get brown sugar. You're going to get a bit of charred citrus as well. Pretty interesting. One of my favorites as of late, at least of 2021 is this single barrel. Fantastic. You knew an old dirty seller was coming with that name, right? When I have a Coast Guard man in the building serving this.

Exactly. Well, let's let's taste this thing. Absolutely.

What you'll notice, too, is that we're most often referred to as a bourbon drinker's rye. Our rye whiskey, yeah, you pick up the oak and the pepper spice, but it's not, again, overpowering, overwhelming. You're going to pick up a lot of bourbon notes that are nuanced things within the caramel and vanilla wing of the flavor wheel, as well as fruits and florals, herbaceous notes, botanical notes. You say floral notes and stuff.

Me and Jim always, Jim says, I'm the flower guy. Oh, nice. I like that. I always think that this is a, almost a hibiscus flower. That's a great description. Like get out of it and stuff. Um, Not as sweet as I thought he was going to be. Very spicy. Spicy, though. It's got some spice to it, definitely. Almost some of that spice you would get down in the Caribbean, down in Jamaica, maybe. I like it. This is more of a bourbon drinker's rye. Absolutely. That's what they call it. Than most people would think. If you're looking for that rye out there that's more of a Kentucky rye, right? High corn content. Yeah, high corn content. You know, that's what I think of is this right here.

Well job. Still no hug there. That's right.

Not that Kentucky hug. People, when I say there's no hug, you still get that spice on the back of my tongue. I get that spice. It just kind of rolled back nice and easy. Not overpowering, but enough to say, Hey man, this is a sipping man's whiskey. Slow down a little bit.

Lingers in a pleasant way. Now what's the proof on this one? So in this case, it's 111 even. So this is towards the average. We tend to be about 110, 111, but again, never adulterated. Whatever it comes out of the barrel at we bottled at that. So barrel entry is always 107.

Now have how many people make a cocktail of this?

Very few. We won't say we recommend against it. We want people to enjoy it how they want to enjoy their whiskey. But this is a true sipping whiskey, neat or on the rocks.

I tell you this, I hate to say this, but I'd almost like to taste this in old fashioned. Be interesting. Call it a spicy old fashioned.

It's a great Manhattan. I love this is Manhattan. It's really good.

Yeah. I tend to go with our small batch rye for a cocktail, uh, with these single barrels. I kind of want these, uh, these one-offs, these unique barrels to kind of stand out on their own.

Yeah. We always say you're bourbon your way, you're whiskey your way, you're, you buy it. And I always say the best bourbon is free bourbon, uh, best whiskey is free whiskey. Um, which is, this is pretty damn good whiskey right here. Um, but I love that stuff. So let's talk about the future of, Peerless. Absolutely. And I hit you in the break and I want to ask you this question. So Peerless is at the higher end of a whiskey buy, right? $69 for your small batch bourbon, right around $79.89 for some rye on a shelf in a liquor store. Is there any, is there any chance you guys are ever going to come out with something that's below the $50 mark?

You know, it's something we always think about, you know, in terms of how we expand the net, if you will, of consumers that are out there that can be interested in our brand, our product. So never say never. We'll see. Right now we're really focused an immediate term in the next three to five years on a lot of barrel finish products. Sure. Stay tuned for that. We have a lot of other, a lot of other tricks up our sleeve.

Let's back up there. You said, you know, you piqued my interest. I love barrel finish. What kind of barrel finishes can we look for?

So I would look around probably the wine finish range. I won't give too much away there of the varietal that we're going to use there, but there's some things we're looking at there. We're also looking at the rum category, orange curacao. We've done absinthe as well. You've probably seen our rye whiskey finish and absinthe barrels. I've seen that, yeah. We'll definitely pour some of that after this interview, if you have time. That just came out, right? That just came out, correct.

Maybe we can get a bottle of that. Maybe we can do a review on our Monday review show. I'm sure our listeners would want to hear that.

The idea with that really was a Sazerac and a glass, right? If you take an absinthe barrel that's been used, in this case from our friends down the street at Copper and Kings, and then you finish our rye whiskey in that barrel, you essentially get a Sazerac that's poured in your glass. So it's a pretty phenomenal experience and great job, Caleb and team pulling that together.

Now, Corker, what do you think about finished bourbons?

You know, the ones we have, I like them, but you know, you get some of the older guys that have been around and say, Bourbon is not supposed to be finished. It's supposed to be bourbon. And if it is, it isn't really bourbon. So I'm listening, but you know, the new hot thing and the new flavor profiles and people, what they enjoy, you know, give them what they enjoy and they like it. I mean, so to answer your question, I like it. I taste it. I'm all in on it. But everything runs in cycles. That'll run in a cycle. What we're doing hopefully in about two or three years is we're going to have a Henry Craver product that's going to be an eight-year-old bourbon or older. So we're thinking down the line of what we can do and what we'll have. So obviously we have the products we have now, but in eight, nine, 10 years we'll have a Henry Craver product.

Well, the thing is, you gotta look at your drinkers, right? And how do I get more people to drink whiskey? How do I get more people to come off craft beer or come off vodka or come off rum and taste my whiskey? Or how do I get a wine drinker to drink my whiskey? And you gotta have something. there. I always take a finished whiskey that's been finished in a wine barrel, can get a lot more people drinking whiskey just to get it in their mouth and let them taste it and say, man, this is pretty spectacular right here.

Luckily for us, our production practices, no water added, always barrel strength. We're hitting on a lot of recent trends in the industry, if you will. And within there, we're able to appeal to a lot of people that would say, ah, you know, barrel strength whiskey isn't for me. You know, we kind of threw Caleb and the team downstairs, set the stage for very easy drinking, palatable barrel strength whiskey that can turn people on to this type of product. And kind of branching out into the nuances, if you will, the flavor wheel, uh, with these barrel finishes and other exotic things we're going to do with the product allows even more people to be interested in what we're doing.

Man, you got me excited now. I can't. Hopefully maybe you'll come out with a honey barrel one, but, uh, I'm always Pete my estrus. I'll give you credit. Um, My listeners would say that they would be upset if I didn't ask this question. It's a rye bourbon or rye whiskey. I'm going to self-proclaim Weedy King of Kentucky. Any chance for a weeded bourbon in the future?

You know, we've really stuck to our guns on that in terms of using a rock horn and multi-barley. In our case, we've done a lot of experimentation and that just tends to be what we're skilled at in terms of what our team can distill the best and in terms of the flavor profiles that we're after. But that doesn't mean that we're not fans of weeded by any means, but probably not in our future.

I'm looking for that first distillery to come out with a toasted, weeded bourbon.

That's not a bad idea either. Jason Brawner, owner of Bourbon's Bistro, may be able to help you out there.

I actually said it on that show about that. Maybe one day somebody will come out with it. Who knows? That's a good idea though.

I think that'd be a great product.

Somebody better pay big chief is what I'm doing. You get credit for sure. Consulting it. Yes. Yeah, this is a, I would say this is a sailor's rye whiskey right here.

That's a great description.

You definitely, those spicier notes that, you know, us old sailors, we kind of like that spice of life and stuff. And this is would be it right here. Definitely a sipper, you know, you don't want to. Yep. sit down and just chug this thing, because that's not what it's for. When I thought of whiskey back in when I was a young man, and maybe both of you thought the same thing, right? That's what I thought. As a man sitting down on a leather chair, neat glass of whiskey, just sipping on it and pondering his day and saying, how do I become a better man? And how good of a man was I today? That's what whiskey was to me when I was a young man. Yeah.

I like that thought. That's a great mantra. We like to say sip and savor, kind of savor the product and savor life at the same time.

Yeah. If I have a fire at my house and my dog Woodrow and my wife sitting down with me at the end of the day, it's a perfect day for me.

What else do you need? You don't need anything else.

I don't need whiskey in my glass. Exactly.

That's true.

Exactly. So, Corky, your son is here too. Carson is here, my youngest son. And he's the one that helped you get back in this game, right?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it was his vision to get back in here and do this. He was building houses at that. But he knew all about Granddaddy Craver and the history that we had. And we thought that by being close to Main Street, that this would be a good place some years down the road. Because Bourbon was obviously picking up. You could just see it. It was getting bigger every day. and some of the other distilleries, you know, with Heaven Hill down here, and some of them, you know, on Main Street. Now we've got Michter's, we've got a lot of them, you know, are here. So it's a big business in downtown Louisville, and we're fortunate to be right here at the end of it, on 10th Street. We were able to capitalize on people going to the Louisville Slugger Bat Museum to come here and to go into hotels. Everybody helps everybody, so it's been good.

We're truly grateful. I was going to say court for the amount of traffic that people send our way. You know, nobody's looking to steal that traffic from us per se. They're looking to help us out and we return the favor. So it's a great community.

Yeah. There's enough signs that show you the way down here. So you, you kind of start out, you can stand all the way at the other end of town, right? Right at rabbit hole. And then, work your way down to Angel's Envy, then Old Forester, and Adam Williams, and then Michter's, and then to get to here. You've had one hell of a day. You ended at a great little distillery here in Louisville, Kentucky. Look at the river. Now you got to walk back or you can get an Uber ride or

Well, as they say, you can't walk Napa Valley, but you can walk the Bourbon District and Whiskey Row in downtown Louisville. Yeah. It's right here.

Great restaurants in that area. Some great hotels to stay at. If you haven't stayed at the Brown Hotel or Sylvak. Awesome experience. Or the New Distille or even the Galt House, any of those, which you can find all of those hotels has peerless on their shelves and be part of that urban bourbon experience. Man, you guys are kicking ass down here. That's what I would say. Well, thank you. That means a lot.

where we stay focused and we're serious about it, but we want to still have some fun doing it.

So we talked about your tours earlier. Your tours are running, you got tours coming in today. And you also have a barrel pick where you can come in here and buy a barrel if you want to, right?

Correct. How's that work? So right now, as you can imagine, the demand for that is definitely outstripping the supply. So we do have a limited number of both rye single barrel selections and bourbon single barrel selections that we partner with accounts in key markets around the country. So those are typically the best performing markets and the ones that have really bought into the vision and the family history of Corky and Carson from day one and have been big advocates and big cheerleaders for us. And we return the favor.

And then the bright mean you were talking about, Cordo, was the Some big laws are coming up here in Kentucky where you guys are going to be able to ship your product out. How soon do you think that's going to happen?

We're planning on launching our direct-to-consumer, which they also call DTC, website in March. Within the next few weeks, that will be fully operational for us. How many states will you guys be able to ship out to? Right now, it just actually was added up to 15. Previously, it was 11 states. Now, 15 states.

So listeners, look out for that. Keep your eye to the grindstone and watch Peerless' website if you're a fan of theirs, where you can buy their whiskey. Now, will there be an upcharge for that besides shipping?

Besides shipping, it'll be the same price you would pay in our retail gift shop here on site.

So if you can't come to Kentucky, you know, and you got to have some peerless whiskey, um, definitely that's where you're going to want to go. And you could buy it straight from your guys's website at that time.

You can buy it direct from our website. The other interesting thing that we're going to do within that shipment is a personal invitation for you and your family to come join us at peerless complimentary. So, you know, really building that relationship, not just a transaction. This is truly a relationship we're building for life.

Now, if somebody does come into town, what's that costing to come in here and take the tour?

So $20 is our standard tour experience, but we're going to experience here is a full intimate experience. We see every part from grain to bottle of how our product's made. Is there any military discounts you guys offer? There is. Active duty is free and veterans are 50% off.

And I see that's even better. You guys have sold me a long time ago on your stuff. I remember your first bourbon release, me and my wife stood out in the rain and we were probably, I don't know, we were probably 300 deep. We were around the corner and we were lucky there's an old shipping warehouse or something, loading docks, and we were up underneath there. Had some cover.

Yeah.

I remember your staff coming out and asking people, hey, be patient and saying thank you and stuff and shaking hands and shaking babies or kissing babies. But yeah, I was here at that first release and I was excited to get those bottles, not only for me, but for another person really wanted a bottle and stood out here. And one of those bottles, actually, I think we were able to get two each. My wife got two and then I got two. And one of those went to a charitable auction. We don't enter that for a charitable auction and stuff. And I think it went for around three or $400 just because Corky signed it.

Famous man. Well, very generous of you. Thank you for doing that on our behalf. We appreciate that.

Well, you know, it's, I think it's always good to give back. If you're not giving back, which you guys have did plenty of, always giving back to the community here in Louisville, and especially to our veterans and our active duty members and stuff. I know a lot of people do come here because of Corky's history with military and stuff, and I think that's always good to pay it forward to the soldiers, sailors, airmen, coasties that are out there, Marines. and you're offering them something they might not be able to afford. You know, military is not that greatest of paying. Um, so, and there was a lot of whiskey drinkers in the, in the military. I'd say, you know, I cut my teeth in the military drinking a little whiskey. So. Some, some whiskey that's not all that good, but that's what I could afford. So you got your experience, you're in a crap ton of States, right? It's just amazing to me how many States you guys have gotten out there. Very fortunate. And now you're going global.

Yes.

Trying to take over the world.

Slowly but surely. Like we say with Corky, right? Patience pays off eventually.

Is Vindome going to show up with another steel here?

We'll see. We'll see.

We bought 19 acres out in Henry County. We built our first rick house out there. Who knows? We might end up with a still out there someday.

Now, Henry County for everybody. It's just get up on I-71, drive north past Oldham County where all the money in Kentucky is. Get past that rich part of Kentucky and drive on up a little bit. And that's Henry County.

34 miles from here.

34 miles. Door to door. So you got one Rick house. How many barrels are up in there? 5,300. 5,300. So a smaller Rick house. Correct.

We have room to build five of that same size. Five on that 19 acres. Correct. Wow. We can also build multi-story on that property as well. So you can build five, you could build five larger ones. Correct. Yeah. Five in terms of multi-story. Sure. Same footprint. Same footprint. Correct. So still around that 5,000 barrel range. Well, no. In fact, the one we have now is 5,300 and that's single story. So we can build multi-story that would be either 10, 15, et cetera. Wow. Yep.

I would imagine you're going to stay under 25,000 barrels. We are. We're not that big. Well, there's a magical to that. What Pat Heiss told me is you got to put a different fire system.

There's a lot of things come along with that.

But he also said that those fire suppression systems, uh, you know, they're just good for code. It's not going to put out. It's Rick house catches on fire. It's probably going to, it's going to burn.

There's a reason they have that retention basin built around that to catch all that. Yeah.

Nobody ever wants to see that happen and stuff. That's how that'd be as bad stuff. And I'm just sitting here enjoying this ride. Hopefully Steve here, uh, he's enjoyed this and drinking on your guys's whiskey. I know we're coming up on, uh, having to get quirky out of here for, uh, uh, for some business and stuff, but I, I, appreciate you guys letting us come in a second time and visit with you. Last time we didn't get to talk to either one of you. Hopefully I'd come back a third time in the future and we can get your son on. It's an open invitation.

You're always welcome.

We'll see if we can get him to tell some stories about his dad and whiskey. Or maybe stories you haven't heard about his first sip of whiskey. Who knows? He might have a few. But he's got some stories. I got one last question for you, Corky. You know, when you were a kid, was there any of that pre-prohibition whiskey around the house that you can remember?

No. I mean, he had a couple bottles in our home in Henderson, but not growing up. When my father passed away in 1975, my mother, It was a terrible thing, but her house caught on fire and everything in his office burned up. The roll-top desk, everything went. We had a lot of really neat pictures and a lot of things that belonged to my great-grandfather. I've spent years trying to gather some of the pictures and some of the things that he had, but he had some of that whiskey. I don't think that he ever drank it. I think he had a couple of brands he liked and he drank a lot of it.

Unfortunately, though, we've had a lot of peerless fans bring to our attention some of these Prohibition Era bottles, and we've been able to obtain those once again. We have them in our archives here.

We have them in right here in Carson's office. We've got some bottles.

On display. Yeah, last time I was here, I got to look at a couple of those and maybe I can take a couple of photos before we leave today. Let's take a peek today. I hate to bug Carson in there because I know he's in there. This is an active distillery, folks. They are making whiskey here. Don't get it wrong. Don't say, hey, they're sourcing from there. I'll tell you, it smells good in here. They're stills going. Well, thank you. They're working. They're working hard to put whiskey in the bottle for you to drink. So where can we find you guys on social media?

You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and of course, KentuckyPeerless.com.

Listeners, go out there, follow them on Instagram, like their page on Facebook, come to Kentucky, spend your money here with these fine folks at Peerless, visit the Urban Bourbon Trail, help them make it better. It can't get no better than that stuff, right? I love it.

So thanks so much for your time.

Thank you very much. You're welcome anytime. Please just come in and see us again soon and I'll get Carson in here and he'll probably tell you some stories. Some I want him to tell, some I don't want him to tell.

That's okay. So you can find us on all four social media platforms, actually five now. You can find us on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. We still have no videos on there. Jim's trying to get me to dance around or something like a chicken. I don't know. You can find us on one of those social medias at The Bourbon Road. Go on there and give us a follow. We have a Facebook group called The Bourbon Roadies. We're almost 1,600 members strong. You got to be 21. You got to like bourbon. You got to agree to play nice. We don't tolerate any rudeness in there. Like-minded folks in there. You never can tell who's going to be in there. Maybe Corky's in there. Maybe Cordell's in there talking to you if you've got a question about peerless bourbon. We've got all kinds of fine folks in there. If somebody posts up a bottle of Jim Beam in there though, or Kentucky Tavern, or Ancient Age, we want you to leave them a great comment. Don't bash them. We always say, you're bourbon your way. Everybody's got to start their bourbon road somewhere. So just remember that when you're in there and stuff. We have a website called the bourbon road.com. You can find our swag on there. We have our whiskey glasses. Um, we have our hats and we have some t-shirts on there. Our bourbon bullshitter t-shirt. If you don't think you're a bourbon expert, don't take yourself seriously. Buy one of those t-shirts and wear it around. Tell people, Hey, this is a bourbon road t-shirt, just bourbon bullshitter on there with a, uh, with a whiskey glass. Let everybody know that you just a regular old bourbon drinker like big chief.

Um, you can also find our articles on there.

I write a blog once a week with our guests like this right here. It's not always about the distillery or about the episode. It's just kind of my thoughts on whiskey or bourbon for that day. I dive in a couple of different things. So check those blogs out, our reviews. We do two shows a week. On Mondays we do a craft distillery. Sometimes we're throwing a big boy in there. Check those reviews out. On Wednesdays we have our long show. And that show is where we feature guests like Corky and Cordell here at Peerless Distilling Company. Please check those out. If you like what you're listening to, scroll up to the top, hit that subscribe button. That way your phone will tell you, hey, the Bourbon Road dudes, they are putting on a new episode this week and you need to listen to it. If you really love us, scroll on down to the bottom, hit that five star review. We really love those. Write a review for us. If you don't like us, if you don't like what we said, leave us a one star, but please be honest with us. Tell us what we need to do better so we can improve it. And so you'll go back and leave that five star review for us. You can find myself, one big chief on Instagram. You can find Jim at jcentor63. If you have any ideas, just reach out to us at team bourbon road at the bourbon road or at info at the bourbon road. We're always looking for great ideas. If you have questions about whiskey, I'll tell you, I'll try to find an answer for you. And as we always like to say, we'll see you on down the bourbon road.

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