176. TX Bourbon - The Science of Texas Whiskey with Rob Arnold

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, listeners, it's Big Chief from the Bourbon Road, and we are coming to you today from StreamYard online. We got a special guest on today, kind of near and dear in my heart, a distillery that I love, some whiskey that they're putting out there that I really, really love. We got Dr. Rob Arnold from TX, Bourbon, Firestone & Robinson out of Fort Worth, Texas, my home state. Rob, welcome to the Bourbon Road.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Now you're the master distiller there. You've been there as the master distiller for a while, but you're actually from Louisville, Kentucky, the Cherokee triangle right over there by Cave Hill. So you know Louisville and Bourbon really good then.

Yeah, I grew up in Louisville. My mom and my mom's family's from Louisville. So my grandfather and my All my uncles and my great uncles were actually in the bourbon industry. So most of them worked for Brown Foreman. My uncle ran an engineering firm there that helped to build distilleries. Actually kind of a cool full circle deal. Dave Pickerel was the consultant for us for TX back at the very beginning back in 2011, 2012. And he was the you know, master distillery for Maker's Mark and then became kind of the consultant to a lot of us craft distilleries early on. But Dave's first job in the bourbon industry was with my uncle's engineering firm helping to design and build distilleries. So, you know, small industry in hindsight, a lot of us have overlaps like that and fun stories and all, you know, in some way, you know somebody that worked with someone in your family, you know, and that's just, that's a cool part about Kentucky and about Louisville especially too.

Well, that's some badass lineage right there. Dave Pickerel, like the godfather of craft distillery. And now the ties are all fitting together. The links are all fitting together. That weeded bourbon that the weedy king of Kentucky loves so much. I'm infatuated with weeded bourbon and now I can see the tie there from Dave to you guys. Absolutely love it. But let's get straight to the whiskey because that's what we're here for, right? I got the TX blended whiskey in my glass. Almost everybody can get this across the nation. Why don't you walk me through this blend?

Yeah. So it's a blend of different styles of bourbon, And then a style of whiskey called light whiskey. And as of right now, this is whiskey that we source. So we don't distill what's actually in the bottle of TX blended whiskey. Now, starting here in a few months, early 2022, the bourbon component of TX blended whiskey will actually be bourbon that we distilled at TX distillery from Texas grains and our wild Texas yeast and the full gauntlet. But it's a really approachable, drinkable whiskey. It's sweet, it's vanilla forward. The finish is pretty light, it's not too heavy. It mixes very easily with a lot of different cocktails. You know, it's a good, one way we describe it a lot is entry-level type whiskey that can be a gateway into the category for a lot of people. At the same time, you know, I still like to enjoy it, especially in regard to certain cocktails that it can play a role in that whiskey typically doesn't do a great job. And it's just kind of got very versatile nature to it.

Now our listeners are going to love this because I, this is a great summer sipper. What's the price on this bottle?

Uh, it depends what store you're in, but you can get it for around 30 bucks, plus or minus a couple of dollars here and there. Just, you know, if you go to a independent liquor store, it's a little higher than if you go to one of the big places, but, um, you know, it's not a super high price point and it's a unique flavor. I mean, there really are a few whiskeys on, in my opinion, on the market that have this profile. Um, very prominent vanilla, very prominent sweet profile, very very quiet oak to it. So it's not going to be very astringent. There's very, you know, doesn't have that, that big bourbon bold oakiness that's great and bourbon and other styles of whiskeys, but we really tried to quiet it down in this, in this blend.

I'm actually getting vanilla ice cream on this with floral notes. It is super beautiful. Like I say, cheers. Let me taste this sucker.

A little bit of water opens it up. You get, I think, some more fruits, some chocolate notes coming out of it. But it's kind of the beauty of it. It's not super complex. There's not a ton going on. And it's OK in your profile of whiskeys to have these very sipable, drinkable, not meant to be taken too seriously, meant to be enjoyed and shared and by a lot of people.

Well, I think that's a great thing to have the summer sipper or something, the cocktail. It's 82 proof, 30 bucks. Um, I think you can get a little bit cheaper than that total wine.

Yeah.

Probably cause they're buying in such bulk of it. Um, whiskey to sip.

Yeah. Um, you know, like it's a summer sipper is a good way to put it in it. You know, you put it with some ginger ale or Sprite or carbon, you know, soda water.

I mean, it's, it's a nice whiskey.

Um, for drinks like that, especially.

So let's talk about how did TX Whiskey get started?

Well, it's founded officially in 2010 by our two original proprietors, Leonard Firestone and Troy Robertson. And they were here in Fort Worth had already led successful business lives. Leonard was in broadcasting and Troy was in oil and gas. But they wanted to try to shift into this new world of what back then was new of craft whiskey. Tito's Vodka is obviously massive and it was massive back then, but especially here in Texas. And, you know, they saw that and they wondered like a lot of us did, okay, well, what about Texas whiskey? You know, Texans drink a lot of whiskey. They drink a lot of Crown Royal down here actually. It's a Canadian whiskey, nothing wrong with that necessarily, but Texans are very proud of their state and proud of where they come from. And they reasoned that if we could make Texas, you know, some Texas whiskies, then why wouldn't Texans and people beyond Texas drink that? And so they, you know, we spent a couple of years, I guess probably about a year or so they were going about this path separately. And then they were introduced to each other. Coincidentally, I guess they were made aware of what the other one was doing coincidentally through Dan Garrison at Garrison Brothers, a couple hours south of us outside of Austin. Now, they already knew each other, Leonard and Troy, but they didn't know that they were both trying to start a whiskey distillery in Fort Worth. When Dan Garrison told Troy, like, hey, there's this other guy in Fort Worth trying to open a distillery too. He's like, it's Leonard Firestone. Troy called up Leonard. said, I heard you want to get into the whiskey business. And Leonard was obviously shocked because he had told no one besides his wife what he was working on. But they went and had lunch. Basically, the company was formed during that lunch. And they went about the process of the business plan, raising money, finding a site, equipment, the whole deal. I was in grad school at the University of Texas Medical Center. in Dallas doing a PhD in biochemistry. But during that, the first year of my degree, I started home brewing and then messed around with home distillation. Realized that a lot of the science I was trained on and learning could be applied to making whiskey. And then I learned more about my family's background in the industry. And I was just enamored by the whole thing. And so I had this idea, OK, I'm going to stay in grad school. And this is 2009. I'm going to stay in grad school. I'm going to open my own distillery on the side. which would never have worked, but I didn't know any better. I was 24 at the time, 23 year. But I started that process and through that, talked to a developer in Fort Worth because I kind of figured, well, Fort Worth has this cow town, it's where the West begins. It's maybe a better home for a Texas whiskey distillery than Dallas, even though I was living in Dallas. And so I was looking in Fort Worth and talked to a developer and he told me, well, there's these other guys doing a distillery too. They're not too far down the street from where you're looking. And he told me their names and I just Googled Leonard's name and his email came up, his Gmail account. So I emailed Leonard completely out of nowhere and just said, look, I'm also going to build a distillery in Fort Worth, even though I had no money. He didn't know that. But I guess I did. I kind of gave them this pitch. I was like, I'm trying to raise money and, you know, I'm a 22, 23 year old scientist. I don't know anything about business and how about we meet up just to talk. And if you give me a little bit of advice on how to do the business side of things, I'll give you some advice on how to do the whiskey making side of things. I guess I made an assumption that they didn't have a, that they weren't distillers and maybe that they would want to have that conversation. But ultimately what that led to was us having a conversation and The three of us realizing, well, we kind of all have very similar aspirations for what Texas whiskey could be and how we want to make Texas whiskey. Rob, why don't you join us as the head distiller? I jumped at it. And so I left my PhD program early with a master's. I'm a dropout, I guess, opted out, but I did pull off a master's degree through that. But I joined the company in the early summer of 2011. And we spent the next six to eight months building. We leased an old, really cool brick building 40,000 square feet outside of downtown Fort Worth. went about renovating it and installing the equipment and got to making whiskey. And, uh, I guess we did our first batch in February of 2012 and Dave Pickerel was, was there for all of, for, you know, that, that first, uh, for about a week or so during that, during that startup.

How lucky were you to have that meeting and be on board and even to get to meet Dave Pickerel. I'm sure that was an awesome experience. Now, looking back on it, you probably, at the time, did you really know who he was?

I actually, you know, I probably didn't realize to the extent, especially when, you know, he was working with us. I think we were like his, maybe his second or third client. I think Garrison Blair might have been his first. Either way, it was early on. He hadn't become the, I think he, you know, the Johnny Appleseed of craft whiskey, I think is what he's been, you know, the moniker that's been given to him because that's truly what he was. But back then it was all still pretty new, but I knew he was the former Maker's Mark master distiller. I talked to my uncle and talked to Dave. I was like, hey, my uncle, his name is Rick Panther. And I was like, hey, my uncle is Rick Panther. And Dave was like, no shit. So that was a really fun part too. I never actually got to hear some of these stories, but Dave said one of these days I need to have a whiskey and talk about some of the stories me and your uncle had over in China building distilleries over there. So too bad I didn't get to have the conversation. It was a really fun experience and it was the early days of craft whiskey and there was just this amazing amount of freedom when it came to what we were supposed to do. There was so little charted at that point as to what this craft whiskey movement was going to look like and it was fun to be a part of that from early on.

That I think the whole story to me is just awesome how, you know, three different guys wanted to start a distillery and all you got really came together to make a distillery in, you know, listeners, if you haven't been to Fort Worth, Texas. and seen a cattle drive come down through there. You still go to a rodeo pretty much any night of the week there. Eat some great steak. It's just an awesome experience. Great food there and go to a distillery. I mean, why not? Why not go and visit Fort Worth, Texas and get some other whiskey? So let's talk about your first bourbon, which is the TX, Texas straight bourbon whiskey, 90 proof. Let's walk me through that. I got it at my glass, but it's a bit blended whiskey.

We started distilling that in February, 2012. The Genesis for it really started like hands-on work actually started basically the day I joined TX and left school, which was the summer of 2011. Because my first job with the distillery was to go on a wild yeast hunt because we wanted to have a wild proprietary strain of Texas yeast. If you go to any of the big Kentucky heritage distilleries, almost all of them will talk about their proprietary yeast strains that their founders isolated decades ago before prohibition, sometimes even. And that's not marketing. That's true. And a big reason that They all have proprietary strains was that when those distilleries were getting started, there was no such thing as a commercial yeast supplier. This was uncharted territory back when a lot of those guys were getting going. You didn't have a ton of you know maybe a brewery wasn't close to you to go borrow their brewery so if you want to make whiskey you had to know how to isolate wild yeast from the environment you had to know how to make yeast that's what they used to call. master distillers, distillers and yeast makers. I mean, that's how critical it was to the job. And so it's... What it leads to, though, is every yeast strain can produce different flavors. And so by not using commercial strains, and there's really not that many, especially... There's not a ton of choices of commercial yeast, much less is there much diversity within what's available. So if you go out and isolate your own from the wild, you really can find something unique that lends house flavors, distinctiveness to your product. And so Troy and Leonard It really was during my interview, or what was more of a conversation at the time, but looking back on that, it was kind of an interview was, you know, we want to isolate wild yeast from the environment. Can you do that? And I wanted, at that point I was like, I want to join these guys. So I want this job. And so I was like, wow. Inside I was like, I'm not really sure, but I told them, I was like, yeah, I can do that. No problem. That's easy. I don't really know, but my background in school at that point was isolating marine bacteria from ocean sediment. Figured it couldn't be that different to isolate wild yeast to make whiskey. It actually isn't that different. So a lot of the techniques overlap. But that's what I spent the first, really the first, I guess it was like four to six months was trying to find a wild Texas yeast. And we eventually did find one. and it was on this ranch in Glen Rose, Texas that's only 45 minutes or so southwest of us. I was down at the ranch because it was owned by a friend of the company and he had some copper tanks that might have been something you get used to make whiskey with. But I was down there picking that up because I was going to go practice at TX because we were still installing equipment. And I was down there and I was with the ranch manager and the ranch was just beautiful. And there was just so much diversity out there in terms of the plant life. And wild yeast are everywhere, but they're like anything else that grows. They want nutrients. They like sugars. They like carbohydrates. They like fatty acids. They like proteins. So things like fruits and nuts and seeds and even the bark of trees are great places to find wild yeast. And so I went around this ranch all day with the ranch manager just isolating or basically taking samples of different fruits and nuts and seeds and soil samples and bark samples and went back to the lab at TCU. So Texas Christian University gave me lab space to do this work. we ended up isolating more than 100 different types of yeast from this ranch. Using DNA sequencing, we narrowed it down to, we had about 10, 11 that were actually the species that you want when you're making whiskey, succharomyces cerevisiae, which is the Latin name. Common name is baker's yeast, brewer's yeast, ale yeast, wine yeast. It's the same species that is used to make bread, ales, and wine and everything, anything else that's fermented more, you have a whole host of food and beverages that this yeast is essentially responsible for. So then we had 10 or so and at that point it was just to do a small scale brewing and distillations and flavor analysis and performance analysis, narrowed it down to one that we all picked in a blind taste test that we thought was very unique, and it also could thrive in a bourbon mash. And it had this very spicy sweet spice cinnamon, allspice aromas, dark fruits, very Hefeweizen farmhouse style to it, that Bavarian wheat strain characteristic. And that's the one we chose. And it happened to be the one from the pecan nut on the ranch. And this is where it sounds like marketing bullshit, but pecan's the state tree of Texas. I didn't set out, we didn't set out to find a pecan yeast, but it did happen that of all the samples we collected, it came from the pecan. But there's no pecan flavor coming from the yeast as far as I can tell. It's just a cool aspect of the story. But in our bourbon, there's prominent notes of cinnamon, of fig, of other baking spices. That's coming from the yeast. So it's really cool to see those flavors not just be present in the beer, not just be present in the new make, but even carry through all the way through maturation.

I think it's so neat that you went down to Glen Rose because I used to have to play football against Glen Rose because if you went through Glen Rose on Highway 281, you went down through HICO and then you went down to a little Hamilton and then you went a little bit further to a little bitty town called Evant, Texas. That's where I'm from.

I'm driving through there.

I can remember going up to Glen Rose all the time to see the dinosaur tracks in the river there. And I think it's the Brazos River that runs through Glen Rose. And I just think that's fascinating because on our ranch we had, um, there's wild pecan trees everywhere. Um, so when I first heard that this had pecan, pecan yeast in it, I was like, man, that's, that's super fascinating. And I was sure some of our listeners out there just gonna fall in love with this interview. Uh, cause you did such a great job of explaining, especially our good friend, Dr. Pat Heist at wilderness trail. He probably, yeah.

I know Pat Well and Shane at Wilderness Trail. We actually ended up working with them on this yeast. The first couple of years in production, we were growing it up from scratch for every batch. It's very time consuming. You essentially have yeast on an auger plate and little colonies and you You pluck a few colonies off and put it into some liquid yeast food and let it grow, and then it grows up, and the next day you transfer it into more yeast food. We were doing 1,000 gallon batch at that time, and so you need 20, 30 gallons of a thick yeast culture per batch. That takes time to get to that point. Cultivating, propagating yeast every day was kind of our life for a couple of years. But then we worked with Pat and Shane at Wilderness Trail, I guess really with their firm solutions, their biotech consulting company, they're able to convert our wild yeast into an active dry form. So genetically it's the same, the flavors, delivers are the same, but instead of having to grow it up from scratch, we are able to work with them and then a much more efficient process pitch our yeast in a dry form into the fermenter. So They had a big role, actually, with the way this yeast is handled. The mother strain is at Firm Solutions in Danville. They're the ones that store it.

So this, this TX whiskey is really you guys' first whiskey that came out. And the nose on this is just, when I think of Texas whiskeys, this is the nose I get right here.

The TX bourbon or the TX whiskey?

The TX bourbon.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we let it age for almost five years before the first batch came out in very, you know, December of 2016. But I mean, I, I do get a, prominent cinnamon fig, other dark fruits, other baking spices. There's a nice sweet grain flavor to it. It doesn't have as much of that vanilla kind of banana bubblegum pop that some of Kentucky bourbons have. I'm still not convinced that's due to anything other than the type of distillation system. The traditional operation system in Kentucky is a beer still, a big column still tied into a doubler, which is a smaller pot still. Very different bourbons are produced on those than on the pot stills that we were using at the time at the old distillery. Now here in a few, really in about six months, we're going to get into stock that was produced on our second distillation system that is a traditional beer still doubler setup. And I think that There's going to be, I'm not hiding anything, there's going to be a shift in some of the flavor of TX bourbon in all of our expressions. But in my opinion, it's actually heading in a better direction. And that's just something that we have to get comfortable with. I think a lot of craft distilleries are, this is just reality for us. You start off small, you make improvements, you only have a few barrels per batch. It just takes this evolution of flavor for some of these brands, it's a part of the journey for us.

Sure. That's totally understandable. So for me, it is for a whiskey nerd. You get that, especially as many craft of stories as the bourbon road goes into. Um, and I learned every time we talked to somebody, uh, and you can kind of see the evolution of craft of stories and how they kind of grown and, and their, uh, journey through making whiskey and stuff. And heck, You know, I fell in love with you guys. We've actually been trying to hunt you down, track you down. And I don't know, I came to Texas two times to visit family and I don't know how I missed not coming to the distillery, but I promise you this, next time I come, I'm going to definitely come to Fort Worth and come up there and bring the big chief there.

Yeah, that'd be fun. We started off, like I mentioned, in a distillery, an old brick building outside of downtown Fort Worth. But then back in 2014, we knew we wanted to expand. So we actually bought a golf course. I mean, it was still an operating golf course when we bought the property. And we built our second distillery on this 100-acre piece of land, still pretty close to downtown Fort Worth, maybe 10 minutes south. Um, and it's, it's, we call it whiskey ranch. It's so it's, it's a beautiful site. I mean, I'm biased, but, um, it's a really fun experience and it's a very Texas inspired experience. You know, you know, you're in Texas when you're here.

Now this has a little bit more, when I sip on this, it has a little bit more of a bourbon feel to it. It's got that Kentucky hug going on a little bit. What's the, what's the mash bill on this?

It's a weeded bourbon. It's 74% corn, 14% wheat, 12% malt. A very unique part of our distillery is we're actually a single farm operation. So one farmer supplies us all of the grain that we use to distill our bourbons and our rye whiskies that haven't come out yet. But the farmer's name is John Sawyer. He's in Hillsboro. you know, not even an hour south of Fort Worth. I met him years ago, probably in that 2014, 2015 range. And he's a very good friend of mine now, very good friend of the company. But it's a very unique thing for a distillery, especially when we do make about 40 barrels per batch now, and we're doing multiple batches per week. So we're not a small distillery. Actually, we're one of the largest distilleries in the country. potentially one of the largest west of Mississippi. There's lots of people be building new sites and stuff. So I don't know what the actual... At one point we were the largest west of Mississippi, largest whiskey distillery. I'm not sure if that's true anymore. But the point is it's very rare for a distillery of any bigger size to be able to say that this one farm supplies all of the grain that we use to distill our whiskies. And so what you're drinking contains his corn and his wheat. It took us a couple of years of working with him to learn how to cultivate both rye and barley on his farm in this environment. Texas is not known for producing rye and barley. Typically, those two grain species do better in colder climates, or at least they've been bred as of late to do better in colder climates. They have a certain requirement called vernalization where they need cold temperature before they'll actually start to fill the grain, to actually start to move away from just growing green leaves and actually produce seeds. But we figured it out. John figured it out really. We didn't have a lot to do with it. But he's just a very talented farmer. And so as of a couple of years ago, all of the barley that we use is grown by him and malted locally here in Fort Worth at a really good operation called Texmalt. And the rye as well. Now, we don't have a rye in front of you because we haven't released our TX rye yet. We've released a very small release under our experimental series, but the TX rye won't come out until probably late 2022 when those barrels turn four. It's pretty special that even as of now, everything in TX Bourbon and all of our various expressions, the corn and the wheat come from this one farm. And here in a few years, all of the grain in that bottle will come from this one farm.

that that's a pretty special thing there. I think there is a couple of distilleries out there that are like that. They, it's a one stop shop form, but well, at least for their corn and their rye or their wheat, but that malted barley coming from that one farmer. And I'm imagining that he has to grow that in the winter time too.

Yeah. Yeah. So the, The small grains, the wheat and the rye and the barley, he'll plant those in October timeframe, early November, and then we actually just finished up the harvest of the small grains a few weeks ago. a little later than we usually hope to, but it was very rainy here in Texas for a while and you can't harvest grain when it's wet outside.

So... No, that's definitely the truth. That probably used to be... Hillsboro used to be cotton country. But I'm sure people are nice to see that there's grain being grown on the ground there, corn and rye, and especially wheat and barley. That's the, I think it's just super neat. And I'm glad that you guys are expanding out there and putting a rye out and stuff. And hopefully the bourbon road will be one of the first people to get one of those bottles. That way we can do a review on it and say, Hey, we'll put our sample on it.

I'm very excited for the rye. The, the small release that we did, which wasn't actually using John John's rye. Cause it was early on when we were just trying to, not nailed down on Nashville, but just I really like our rye whiskey that we produce here. So that'll be a really fun release when we get to that point. We do really, I mean, working with John early on kind of set in motion a lot of things. For me personally too, as a whiskey maker and kind of journey, I've gone on It opened my eyes to the disparity between how whiskey makers have, for a long time in general at least, pursued grain selection. and comparing that to how winemakers pursue grape selection. And there's this, you can call it whatever you want. I think the word for it is terroir or terroir. I wrote a book on it called The Terroir of Whiskey. So I'm obviously again biased in this stance as well. But the point is that where that grain comes from, what variety you use and how that variety thrives in the environment that it's grown in and what kind of agronomic techniques you're using to cultivate that grain. those things impact the flavor of the whiskey. To what extent? That's probably never going to be decided on. It's not even figured out in wine because you can't really figure that out. It's not science at that point. You move away from science. We do know what flavor compounds are impacted by terroir, by the environment of the farm and the variety of grain you grow. These are meaningful ways to shift the flavor profile of your whiskeys in whatever way you want. And it's also a way to capture something that's distinct to a place that you can't replicate anywhere else. The fact that I can point to this one farm in Hillsborough and say that's where all of our grain comes from means that to some extent, least compared to buying grain on the commodity market, nobody can replicate that. There's something unique about our whiskey that will never be captured by anybody else because they don't have our grain. And that's something that's really cool. Not to mention that it removes the distillery from the commodity system and it engages you with farmers and direct contracts with farmers are almost always better for their bottom line. It's better for the environment. I think that you really have a hard time pursuing flavor and grain without also pursuing ecologically friendly methods to farm that grain. So I just think it's something the industry hasn't looked at a lot historically, but a bunch of us now are starting to, including in Kentucky, it's not just the craft guys. You know, Whiffer Reserve has got some stuff going on, a Flow Trace. I mean, a lot of us are taking aim at this idea of, okay, commodity grain, it makes good whiskey. No one's denying that, but what are we missing by commodity grain?

Sure. Well, we're up against that first half, Rob. So when we come back listeners, we'll take you through one of their newest releases at TX Whiskey, a finished bourbon. And then we'll finish off the episode with old big chiefs, the Weedy King of Kentucky, one of his favorite we did bourbons, a barrel proof from him. So stay with us. We'll be right back.

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All right, listeners. Hey, it's Big Chief and we are back. We're with Rob Arnold, the master distiller. I'd call him mad scientist of Texas. He's making whiskey down there in Fort Worth for TX Whiskey Firestone and Robinson Distilling Company. Rob, you guys is bottles, uh, all the other bottles on top of the bottle. What, what's so bad ass about this is there's a piece of real boot leather on top of each bottle, right?

Yeah. So, um, it's not, uh, boot leather that had been worn by anybody, but it's what it is. It's reclaimed boot scraps. So, Like this all started from the beginning when we were designing the bottle for TX Whiskey. And we wanted to incorporate Texas elements. We didn't want to be incredibly cheesy with it and have a big cowboy hat and a belt buckle and a massive star on the bottle. But we wanted to find ways to incorporate unique elements of Texas. And one idea was, well, how can we incorporate boot leather? Because Western boots are obviously big here. And so cowboy boots. This idea came up, well, why don't we get, you know, there could be a cap with boot leather on it. And luckily Troy was a woodworker as a hobby. And so he actually went home and cut up some boots and figured out how to make this cap with boot leather. So that was great. But then it was like, well, how do we make a lot of them? and how we get the boot leather to do it. We can't just cut up boots for the rest of our, you know, existence. And so we reached out to a lot of the bootmakers here in Fort Worth, cause this is where, you know, well, you've got some really neat boutique boot, really, you know, artists and style bootmakers here. ML Letty's was one that we worked with early on, but we have, you know, Justin boot is based here and some other, some other big bootmakers. So reached out to them. happens to be when you make a pair of boots, there's leftover parts. They call them boot scraps and that can be used to make belts or wallets or it's just trashed. So we essentially took those boot scraps, traded, you know, back then we were trading whiskey for boot scraps and that's where all the leather came from. So, It was fun because it was all unique. It was all different. There could be ostrich. There could be, you know, it could be full quill. It might not be. It could be red. It could be orange. It could be purple. It could be brown, you know, typical cowhide. It could be anything. You know, we had, we had stingray. We had, what else do we have? I don't know. I mean, python or not python, but some kind of snake, I guess, whatever, whatever kind of snake they, they use. But it was crazy. And you know, everyone's unique. And so it became this really fun aspect of the bottle because people would, you know, go to the store to buy it, but they would also try to figure out, well, what cap do I want to get? And so they would pull balls off the shelf and the liquor stores hated us for a while because there was, you know, people were messed up the shelves looking for the right cap. And here in Fort Worth, everybody wanted purple for TCU, but it was a really, it was something that I don't think we ever realized to the extent that it would that it would be. I don't know if it was the most important part of our success, but it was a damn important part of it all. And it allowed us to do some really cool charity stuff over the years. A lot of military stuff, a lot of working with military uniforms, firefighter uniforms. We don't have to use boot leather, we realize. And so we've done some really unique stuff, everything from tennis balls to baseballs for sporting stuff. It's a craft. I can't make them. Early on, it was me and Schwoen Linder making them. But quickly, we hired a bottling team. I'm sitting across the way from where they are right now making caps probably. So our bottling team doubles as our cap making team. If you come in, you can see it's not an automated process. There's no machines doing it, and it's not easy. You need someone there that knows how to make these caps to really pull it off correctly. So it's an integral part of our distillery.

Well, all the bottles I got each has a different cap on it. And I love them. And I still, every time I throw a bottle out, I'll pull the cap off a bottle and I throw it in a basket. And, you know, you could, you couldn't save all the bottles, but I always save the caps kind of like my wife says wine corks. So. I'm always excited to see all these. And one of these days I'll do some project with all of my guests. I don't know what I'll do with them. But let's get to the whiskey on the second half. In my glass right now, I have your Sherry finished TX Texas straight bourbon whiskey. Run me through this right here.

Yeah, so this is our base TX bourbon, you know, that is same wild yeast strain, corn and wheat that comes from Sawyer Farms. And all of our bourbon, by law, is obviously aged in new charred oak barrels. We use American oak like most bourbon producers do. The barrel, what you're tasting would have come from a three char barrel. And we let it age for four years, and then we transfer it into sherry casks. So what we used were Pedro Jimenez sherry casks. So it's a very sweet version of sherry, not molasses. And you have a lot of that sugary flavor. You have deep, dark fruit flavors. The sherry casks were American oak. They had been aging sherry for about 20 years. By the time they were emptied and sent to us, and then we let it age in the sherry cask for about eight, nine months and then bottled it. So it's got the base flavors of TX bourbon, but it's just layered on with some of that really nice molasses and sweetness and the super Um, there's some of those fruit flavors are very, are just very intense. You know, that didn't mean it tastes like Sherry and Sherry's delicious.

So, yeah, the juice inside the bottle is, uh, it is double in color of what your TX bourbon is. Now this bottle is a hundred and one point six proof. Um, what's this run for in the store?

Uh, I think that one's closer to 60 or 65. Um, a little harder to get outside of Texas as of now, but we're making more of it. We're making more, you know, a bigger batch for this upcoming year. And over time, it will definitely trickle out to other markets besides just Texas. It did pick up double gold in San Francisco this year, along with the port finish. That is the other expression that we released in the finishing series this past year. It's a fun whiskey to drink. and did very well with Whiskey Advocate and their ratings. Honestly, for the first couple of years, really for most of the TX's history, we really only had the Blend and then the Bourbon and that was it. We had two expressions that essentially changed overnight. And all of a sudden we were releasing a port finish, a sherry finish, barrel proof, experimental releases, balled and bond. I mean, in the past like two years really, year and a half, we've released all these different expressions. And so it's been really fun to get to do that and actually let them come to, you know, go out to the public.

Now this would be great by a winter fire. Um, it, it drinks a lot hotter than 101.6. Um, and maybe that's that Sherry coming in very spicy. Yeah. Um, almost black peppery spice to it. Maybe I'd say a little bit of jalapeno, uh, a sweeter jalapeno, I guess. Um, it just is a very rich, uh, very viscous. Very good. I'm not saying it's not a good, good finished bourbon. It just needs to be sipped on in the winter time. I'm surprised at how, uh, it drinks about, I'd say a 110 ish somewhere in there, which is good to me. You know, if you like those higher proof whiskies, this is going to be right up your alley. Um, if you like something like that, I think it's a beautiful expression of whiskey and you don't find that many weeded bourbons that are finished out there.

Yeah, that's actually, I've never thought about that, but yeah, you're right.

This would be a go-to before me for finished bourbons now because, um, I'm such a wheat nut. Those sweeter notes, I think, even though it's a Sherry or maybe coming from that, um, wheat.

Well, in this, the same mellow, you know, the same mellow, the wheat can, I mean, if you look at wheat versus rye, rye is higher in the precursors that lead to a lot of those spicy, not like black pepper spice, but cinnamon, allspice, clove, those very pronounced sweet baking spices. And wheat is going to lead to less of that and to a more mellow flavor. And that definitely can shine through. And with Finnish whiskey, that's always about, can you can you layer on what you want without covering up the things you liked in the base expression? Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. I like the way that these barrel finishes are still allowing the core profile of TX bourbon to shine through that cinnamon, fig, the sweetness, some of the sweet grain flavors. It's not covered up by the finish as much as, you know, to the extent that you can't recognize them anymore.

Now you mentioned the port finish. We have a bottle of that. We're going to save that back and we're going to review this, this bad boy right here. This is a Tony port cask and I can't wait to do a review on it. So listeners, make sure you're looking for that review on this. And those are probably pretty hard to pick up. So if you're down at Texas, You may want to look for that review to see if it's worth your while to grab one of these. If you're out there at the distillery visiting, look at that review we're going to release and we'll be fair to you. So the next bourbon you got for us, a lot of people know this, we did review this and gave you one hell of a review. It's one of my favorites. It's your barrel proof. Uh, this one is 127.2. I think the old one I had was 131 something.

Yeah. So the, the proof will change based on the batch that we're working, that we, we release. Um, that's, uh, it's, you know, the barrel proof was always the way for years that I would drink our bourbon. I would, go sample a barrel and take that home for the weekend. And I pushed and pushed for a long time that we need to release our bourbon at barrel proof. I felt that while the 90 proof expression, especially in the past couple of years has really come into its own, I always felt like at 90 proof early on, like we lost so much full with special at the higher proof. And finally I got the green light to do it. And we've been, I don't know, It's been a great experience because it's finally the bourbon out there the way that I have drank it from basically day one. You still get the same notes of cinnamon and allspice and fig and all that, brown sugar and caramel, but it's just amped up. I do think, and I think you agree, so it's not just me saying it, that it's a very drinkable, high-proof bourbon.

Well, I put this bottle in my top five of weeded bourbons out there, and that's high praise right there.

Yeah, it is. I like that.

Right up there with a well or 12 to me, a wilderness trails, some of their stuff they have, if you can get it, it had proof like one 10 or something. Um, one of their bottles, um, your guys's bottle, uh, comes to mind. Um, new legends one 15, um, is, is one of my favorite ones. Yeah. So right up there with those other weeded bourbons out there, this is one of my favorite ones. And me, you talked at length beforehand in the break about weeded bourbons and my love for them and stuff. And listeners out there, you know how much I love those. Everybody kind of makes fun of me for them. But hey, to each their own. You know, you guys keep drinking that rye bourbon and I'll keep drinking my weeded bourbon. Just leaves more for me. And more people are getting on the train. They're getting on a big chief train and learning that they got to make weeded bourbon. So, um, I say cheers. I'm going to sip on some of this. Um, so Rob, what are we, what do we got to expect from TX bourbon, uh, in the future?

Uh, well, not in the future. I just, we did just release the first Texas balled and bond expression. Um, it's a single barrel, uh, as well. And that was another big project that we've been wanting to do for a while. And that is going to be something that we'll work with liquor stores mainly to where they'll do barrel picks and be able to have their own you know, barrel pick of our bottom bond expression. But the next couple of years, we'll see a lot. I mentioned the rye, so we'll have TX rye come out. We have a cognac finish of our bourbon that will come out later this year. So the port and the sherry finishes will continue to be on the shelf, but we'll also add a cognac finish to the, we call it the finishing series. And I guess from not so much like what's happening at the product level yet, but we are engaged actively in breeding pursuits, plant breeding. So that's what my PhD is actually in is in plant breeding and breeding new varieties of corn for now. But we actually, we actually did just start breeding new varieties of rye recently. And this is a long-term play, but the hope is that we're going to, or the aim is that we're breeding varieties that are tailored for whiskey. which has never been done before. All the corn and the wheat and the rye that we use, and especially this is true with the corn, was bred for other purposes, usually to feed animals or make white flour for bread. We're trying to think back to the way grain used to be created and bred and selected and grown. There was flavor. That was a part of the situation. We want to bring that back and specifically in the context of whiskey. That'll be a big pursuit of ours for at least the next 10 years. Luckily, there's a lot of money behind us funding this. We have support from up top and other distilleries are actively engaged in similar pursuits. Westland out in Washington has got something similar going on for Barley. So I think that that is a massive frontier in general. for, for whiskeys, for American whiskeys, as well as whiskeys over in the, in Europe and beyond that is, uh, is really trying to refocus how we, how we do grain. Um, so that'll be something that we do.

So you are a true mad scientist. You're just out there.

Yeah. If I could, I would do science experiments all day out here, but unfortunately there's also, um, you know, the day to day stuff, but, uh, I think there's a lot there. We do have a new... I mean, this is getting a little detailed, but we have a new barrel program that we implemented a few years ago. It doesn't mean that our expressions are going to have name changes, but again, there's a gradual slow evolution to a flavor or to flavor in any whiskey brand. And especially for us younger brands, that's going to continue to happen for a while. And I would just urge people that are... Remember that as some of these younger brands evolve and change their process, change their ingredients, and the way that improves it. You're going to see some flavor changes, but that's part of the journey with all these craft distilleries. And so we're squarely in that as well. And that's fun. It's a good thing.

Well, I always try to point out to people, I'm like, Hey, uh, like Jim beam is, is over 200 years old, right? Right. And I think if you were to drink Jim beam whiskey back 200 years ago, it didn't exactly taste like it does now. No. So people need to remember that even our dad's whiskey isn't what we're drinking today. Jack Daniel's probably doesn't taste the same as it does today. You know, you see all these single barrels of that out there and it's totally different. So, you know, I think you're hitting the nail on the head. Bear with these guys and let them grow and let them taste their expressions and love them from what they are and get those different varieties and stuff. And I got to applaud you for what you put out there in bottles because this barrel proof right here is just amazing. it hits. I could drink this all night long and get, I can put off an entire book of layers, you know, complexities of different notes from this. You know, you get some cereal notes, like Froot Loops in this and some Honey Nutted Cheerios, some Fig Newton cookies. I can just keep going and going and going. You just get something different with every sip. And it's so beautiful. And it's nice to see somebody else out there love whiskey as much as we do from a distillery point. It's not just about the business. It's about the art of making a whiskey and a true artist and making whiskey in yourself. I called you a mad scientist and I'm kidding around, but I could see the love in your face. Pretty close. Well, Hey, you call a spade a spade. You know, you are a true scientist, right?

Yeah. I mean, to be, to be fair to not fair, but just to, you know, I'm much more on the science side and quality control side. My title is master stiller, but we have a very talented team of distillers who handle day-to-day operations here led by Evan Brewer. So I'm in a very talented blender in Aliochoa. So we have the, I guess you call it the luxury of having, um, resources and a team and, um, and freedom to explore. And, um, you know, we never assume we have it figured out, um, never get complacent. Cause if you do, that's, that's kinda, that's when you've lost the passion in the, in the, for the craft.

Now, can our listeners expect when that rye comes out, can they expect a barrel proof rye too?

I at some point definitely I don't know if it's going to be the first and then when we come out with with the Rye in late 2022 but it hasn't been decided yet I I'm always for pushing barrel proof. I'm always for pushing higher proof. I have to remind myself that that sounds a lot like the beer guys wanting to put out the hoppiest beer in the world every time. That's not always the right move, but for people like me and you, and there's others out there, obviously, big proof is something we like.

Well, so, you know, we talked about the future, we've talked about all your whiskies, we talked about, you know, the science that goes in the magic that goes in there, because there are some magic that happens in the barrels, right? And that Texas, you figured out that Texas heat down there. And I always compare a four year Texas bourbon to like a 12 to 14 year old Kentucky bourbon. So if you're listening out there and you just look at it and look, that's only a four year old bourbon listeners. don't be mistaken that there's some kind of magic that happens there in that Texas heat. And Rob, man, you've definitely got to figure it out. I know you guys work close with all the other distillers there. It's like a true Texas whiskey family from right up the road from you and Dennison from iron roof down to Waco, to the whiskey Jesus down there at Balcony's, Dan down at Garrison Brothers. You guys got the basics covered there in Texas and you guys have figured it out and you've kind of roped that Texas heat and got it tamed down a little bit. So I got to applaud you for that. Where can our listeners find you guys on social media?

So on Instagram, it's at txwhiskey. Same on Twitter and Facebook. And I'm at txdistiller. If you want to follow mine, mine's a little more geeky. sciency and not so many cocktail shots, but not a knock on our Instagram or anything, but it's just a different kind of approach. If you go on our website, which is frdistilling.com, because somebody else owns txwhiskey.com and they want a stupid amount of money for it, but right now, we're still frdistilling.com, which is a throwback to the original distillery name, Firestone and Robertson Distilling. but, um, you can look up where we're located and, um, you know, what States carry us and, um, and where we are in those States.

Now is your distillery open for tours at this time?

We're open for events right now. It's like tonight, actually we have, um, the release of our, I'm sorry, but it's a high ride bourbon, but we're releasing a high ride bourbon, um, which is really the base. It's the bourbon that goes into the blend. This is one that we distilled, but we're releasing it as a straight bourbon, not as a component in a blend. And so we're doing events. We're releasing that tonight. and tours should be happening here in the next couple of months.

Um, and what does a tour cost of cost anything or what would it cost?

Um, I think it's 10, 15 bucks. You get to do a tasting after, um, our mix, you know, we've got a, he hates when I call them mixologist, but our, we have an on staff mixologist bar manager that, uh, we'll make cocktails for you and you get to taste those too.

He's a whiskey slinger. Tell him that from now on. Say big chief said you're a whiskey slinger that night.

I like that. I'll call him that.

So they come in and do a tour. What about a military discount? Do you guys offer a military discount there?

It's a good question. I'm sure if we don't, we will with that question especially, but. I'm sure if we don't, you can get one. But if you're a military and you can hold me to that. So if you call up their email and they tell you no, tell them that they need the email or call Rob and and that they need to enforce that. So I'll double check on that for you.

We appreciate that, Rob. Rob, thank you so much for coming on the Bourbon Road. We appreciate your time. We know you're busy there. You know, keep doing what you're doing, loving your whiskey craft out there, putting great whiskey out there for our listeners to sip on. Appreciate it. And thanks so much, man.

Oh, thank you for having me, Big Chief. Enjoy the crisp cooler Kentucky night. Cause we sure as hell don't get those in Texas this time of the year.

It's supposed to be like 65 here tonight. So it's supposed to be nice and beautiful. Time for a fire down by the Creek.

Yeah, that sounds great.

So, so listeners, uh, We do two shows a week. We do a whiskey review on monies where we kind of pick apart a craft distilleries whiskey. Sometimes we'll throw in there a big boy. Check out those reviews. We'll post them on our website. Then we do a long episode, usually about an hour long, with great guests like Rob Arnold from TX Whiskey. Check those out. You know, if you got that commute to work, takes you 30 minutes to get to work. Play first half on the drive in. We'll get you home all the way home for that other 30 minutes. Check out those episodes. We are a veteran owned and operated podcast. Both me and Jim are veterans. So we appreciate your love. Keep listening to us. We want you to scroll up to the top of whatever app you're on listening to us and hit that subscribe button, then scroll on down and give us that five star review. Cause you do not want Big Chief's alternate ego coming at the big bad booty daddy of bourbon. You don't want me to come find you and make you give me that five star. So give me that five star review. You know you want to. You can find us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook. Heck, I don't even know what else is out there. Find us on all those. We have a private Facebook group called the bourbon roadies. We are 2100 people strong. Three things to get into that group. Are you a 21? Do you like bourbon? Hell yes, you like bourbon or you wouldn't be listening to my big ass. Come on. You like bourbon. And do you agree to play nice? Because we don't tolerate any rudeness as the great Texas Ranger. McCall said on most of dub, we don't tolerate any rudeness. If somebody wants to drink from the bottom of the shelf all the way to the top, we want them to be able to post those bottles and stuff. That's what we do. We don't do politics. We don't do religion. We don't do social issues in our Facebook group. We celebrate life. We celebrate whiskey. That's what we want you to do with us. Put your birthdays up there. Put your deaths of your family up there and celebrate their lives. Share a pour with us. We do great giveaways on there. You will find people in there from all the way from master stillers like to Rob Arnold all the way down there to your brand new whiskey enthusiasts. So come on in and join us. We'd love for you to be part of our family. We have a great website, the bourbon road.com where you can pick up our gear, the bourbon bullshit or t-shirt. Everybody needs to one of those, right? Um, to wear into distillery and they'll be like, where are you from? You can say, Hey, this is the bourbon road right there. We also have a bourbon road t-shirt that you can grab or one of our Glen carons that I'm drinking out right now from our great sponsor distillery products. You pick those up on there or one of our ball caps. You could also read my blogs on there that I write. It's not necessarily about the episode that day, just my thoughts on whiskey at the time. It could be from a place to visit or just about that whiskey industry. So check those out. Check out our reviews on there. That way you can kind of decide on what you want to buy. Adam Boothby from Chattanooga, Tennessee helps us out. He writes some of those reviews. Sometimes we'll have a guest reviewer on there that write a review for us. So make sure you check out those. You can always reach out to us for ideas. You've got something for a show you want to hear or a guest you want us to have on. We'll try to get them on here. You can always reach out to Jim at jshannon63. I'm one big chief and we'll see you on down the bourbon road.