194. A Salute to Horse Soldier Bourbon

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.

Hello, everybody. I'm Jim Shannon. And I'm Mike Hyatt. And this is The Bourbon Road. And today, Mike, we are in StreamYard yet again. Yeah. But that's OK, because today we got somebody pretty darn great in the house, don't we?

I would say we have an American badass, we have an American legend, somebody that ensured that we had freedom for so many years. We have retired Master Sergeant Scott Neil, the founder and COO of Horse Soldier Bourbon in the house. Scott, how you doing, man?

Another happy day in paradise. I'm actually in Tampa, Florida. So I get to enjoy the palm trees at times and suburban at night.

Sounds good to me. It's always a good day to drink bourbon with new friends. And we consider you a new friend of the show, Scott. Thanks for being on.

Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. And thank you for giving me a voice to our brand as well.

Well, we usually like to get straight to the whiskey and you've got a couple of them here for us today. Uh, so we're going to get straight to the first pour and this would be, this would be your 87 proof of bourbon.

So this one here we call our straight bourbon. It is a higher rye bourbon. Um, if you think about rye bourbons, you think about Woodsford or Eagle rare or any of your popular ones. And with this, You know, it's interesting. I'm sure we're going to talk about the origins and how we got started and how we started developing our mash bill. But this came from a lot of conversations with bartenders about what goes in a good mad hat or an old fashioned. And the right kind of it comes through a lot of those other you know, ingredients that are in your mixed cocktails. And if you look on your menu and you look about the bourbon that's on most of the old fashioned Manhattans, they tend to be either a rye whiskey or a higher rye bourbon. And that became the origins of our very first kind of experiment when we're starting to set our recipes on what we wanted to present. So what you're trying here is a straight bourbon. It's four years old. Uh, we produce this in middle West and in Ohio, and it really is kind of our flagship out of all three of our brands. This one is probably 50% of our sales.

Okay. Well, let's, let's get right to it. Mike, what do you think?

I'm already nosing on this sucker.

Yeah, I'm getting a nice little spice on the nose and a little bit of sweetness along with it.

I got a hint of oak on there. I would expect a little bit more for something that's over four years old. Um, that rye spice is coming out to me, a hint of vanilla, maybe that bubble gum, uh, starch that you always smell like on big league chew.

Yeah, I'm definitely getting honey on the nose too. Kind of a sweet honey, a little bit lighter note, but let's taste the sucker. Let's taste it.

Cheers.

Yeah. So that's, uh, that's sweet and spicy at the same time. Kind of nice level balance across the palette.

That's what a bourbon should be right there. You know, you get a little bit of that hug going on. You get a little bit of that Oak. Um, this one has a little bit of that drying finish on the back end. I think Jim, um, still a really beautiful bourbon.

Yeah. I think the Oak shows up a little bit more on the palette than it did on the nose, but it's definitely there. And you know, it's a mid palette, it's in my mid palette too. So it's kind of an even, nice, even presentation across the palette. I would say it's not heavy on one end or the other, but yeah, that hug is there, isn't it? Most definitely.

Scott, let's get into, now that we've sipped on your bourbon a little bit, let's get into, let's get into horse soldier. Let's get into this bottle. Um, Let's get into your background a little bit. We're only we're only days away from the 20th anniversary of 9 11, a terrible day in America's history. Something that kind of reawoke a giant here in America, though. And I can remember back to those days of how much American pride came out and patriotism.

I think for us, there's two sides of our story, right? There's the horse soldiers soldier story. Then there's the horse soldier bourbon story. So, obviously, the horse soldier soldier story started on 9-11. I think we're all of age that remembers exactly where you were. I was already in the Army. I was part of the 5th Special Forces Group. I'd been in and out of the Middle East since the early 90s doing various special operations. All the things you hear or read books and movies about, you know, we were part of. And on September 11th, I was at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. And I remember it very vividly because we were in a training exercise simulating an attack on the United States of America. We were getting ready to be over in the Middle East on 1 October as part of a normal rotation in case there was a terrorism event. And we had different elements of our team out across America sending in field reports and communication reports of the activity that we're seeing. And I remember our intel sergeant walking in because we were in isolation. And that's just basically where you have no outside television or influences or any family members calling you. And he wrote on the board behind us that the World Trade Center has been hit. And we just thought it was part of the exercise. Hour later, he comes in, writes, the World Trade Center, second one's been hit. OK. part of the exercise. It wasn't until four hours later that then Colonel Mulholland came in and said, stop what you're doing. This is for real. And just like everybody else, I suppose, we went in to the mess hall and saw it on the television. So that really was my story of 9-11. And then it became the rest of a story of America's response. As little as 14 September, President Bush got the national security team together They were going over various plans. You had big army invasion through Pakistan. You had the Marine Corps coming in, and it would take six or seven months to get everything together in the Middle East and the Gulf and then try to have this invasion. And the president didn't want anything to do with that timeline. He actually wanted something sooner. And if you think about World War II, the Doolittle raid, right? It was this kind of first punch at Japan, these air crews that bravely had a one-way mission to go forward and drop a couple bombs just to let the Japanese know that they're not invincible. And so this plan came together by inserting small teams of Green Berets and the CIA behind the lines and see if we could link up with any resistance or Mujahideen fighters and really assess the Taliban and understand what kind of grip Al-Qaeda had on them. So by 19 October, two small teams were inserted behind the lines. And initially we linked up with two of our counterparts, one being General Dostum. And that next morning, General Dostum come riding up with 30 horsemen. Why horses? It's because the Taliban had all the roads, because they had all of the tanks that the Soviets had left during the Russian invasion. So they're very competent, capable, maneuver army that had some of the most modern mechanized warfare equipment available. And the resistance basically were these small ethnic fractions that were being overrun by the Taliban. And they would start hiding in the mountains. Just think about the American Indians. You know, you would just basically do hit and run tactics. And that's really how the war began. You know, as little as three weeks, we had raised a horse cavalry of 3,500 cavalry and 1,000 infantry that basically took on 50,000 Taliban. And we began to pick apart their command and control. We began to use our Air Force assets. We began to conduct behind the lines special forces raids on helicopters. All of these effects of unconventional warfare, we started to break the back of the Taliban command and control. And really, within 90 days, less than 100 special forces, along with our CIA partners, had overtaken Afghanistan. Fast forward to today, what are we seeing? We're seeing kind of the reverse effects, right? This unconventional force overtaking this established Governance and within, you know less than a month or two. They have overtaken Afghanistan All within 20 years Wow So how did we get to horse soldier bourbon bourbon, right? So that's the horse soldier soldier story We're a group of friends who served together. We went into Iraq the same way behind the lines we did Africa and you know, other locations until either we started getting injured or we started retiring or we moved on. And in 2015, a friend of mine, John and I went to Yellowstone for about a month, just to kind of go back to nature and try to discover ourselves again. And we rode horses, we climbed the Tetons, we did everything you would do as a group of guys. And then we went to our first craft distillery tour. And I remember vividly. It was the Grand Teton's distillery and they made vodka. And we went into their bar and we tried potato vodka, potato flake vodka, weeded vodka, all these things you don't think about when you're a consumer, right? You just have your favorite brands. And so the wife and husband team showed us, you know, their bottle And the wives started talking to the wives about why did you choose that color on your label? Why that type of bottle? Why that type of closure? And then the guys, we went in the back with the husband and he started showing us the stills. And out of the whole month in Yellowstone, that's all we talked about for the next three days was that one craft distillery visit. We then decided to Google the next one. And then the next one and then the next one. And it took us about three weeks of driving from Yellowstone back to Tampa, Florida, where it was my friend's mom said, you drunks need a hobby. And we kind of got the bug. Right. And then not only do you visit these craft distilleries and ask a thousand questions as just a curious consumer. Right. You kind of blossom. And if you think our special forces team, each one has a mission now. whether you're a communications sergeant, weapon sergeant, or a engineer, well, you start to look at this business and break it apart. You take business, you take finance, you take packaging, you take production. And so we started to read everything we could read about bourbon, the history of bourbon, the business of bourbon, packaging, suppliers. We went to our first conference, our American Distilling Institute in San Diego in 2016. We traveled to Scotland. We had a friend that was in the British SAS that started Wolfburn Distillery in Thorsow. So he let us work on the stills there. We went into Ireland and spent weeks in Ireland and Kelbegan and Teeling and got to know the Teeling brothers very well. So this really, if you think about it, was like Kung Fu. We just started learning all these styles, these ideas and theories and truths of the warehouse, not the myths and the fantasy, but, you know, everything about whiskey. And then as we went into Kentucky, everything about bourbon, we started producing probably 2016. We found a partner distillery. We didn't have enough money to make our own or build our own. So we would fly on Allegiant Air and we would ask if we could work on the weekends and at night. And we started making our first 10 barrels. and then 20 barrels and then 60 barrels. And then as we understood the business more, we started developing our branding and everything until when finally there's movie from Hollywood came out that we had nothing to do with called 12 Strong, the true declassified story of the horse soldiers. Now imagine having a big movie made about you and you have nothing to do with it. So, you know, we made a kind of a self-determination that maybe we should launch our brand now called Horse Soldier. Nobody knew who we were. Nobody in America, right? We had a statue at Ground Zero called America's Response. We had a book called Horse Soldiers, but all of the names inside the book are fake. And now you have a movie which you didn't even participate. And, you know, it became a platform for us to have a conversation about the horse soldier soldier part. And now what we're doing today, and that's the horse soldier bourbon part. So hopefully that answered your question about, you know, the past and how we got here.

Now, what about the bottle? Is the, is it true that it really did come from steel? The mold for the bottle is from steel from the nine 11 hours.

Very interesting story. So if you think about your back bar or if you go to a bar and you look across there, you know what a Jack Daniel's bottle looks like, don't you? You know what a Crown Royal bottle looks like. You know what a Woodsford bottle looks like. And that's because as you're sitting 20 feet away from a bar, we have old tired eyes and it's usually dark. You can go right to your brand and say, they've got it right there, right? So we learn these aspects of packaging. Well, the other thing you'll notice about craft is they all have almost the same bottle, that same round squatty bottle or, you know, this Tennessee bottle. You could line a hundred crafts against each other and there's probably three bottle selections. And what we learned is it's because most craft brands don't have enough money for their own bottle mold. So we know that we didn't want to buy from China. Or Mexico, and that's where typically most glass suppliers come from that supply very cheap glass. So there's a company here in Tampa, Florida, called Anchor Glass. It's where their headquarters are. They have two factories. One is in Oklahoma and one is in Indiana, the old Seagram glass modeling company. So we went and met the executives here in Tampa and they say, would you like to take a factory tour? Us being curious guys said, yes, you know, who doesn't want to do dirty jobs and go make some glass just to see how it's done. So we flew there and spent about four days going through the whole glass factory from how the silica is to basically the furnace, how it shoots it across the floor. It drops it down. This mold smashes together. A air nozzle comes in and just like glass blowing, poof, a piece of glass is made. So as we go through this whole process, we go into the final boardroom and then the sales teams come in and say, would you like your own glass? And we're like, yes, we would love our own glass. Well, a bottle mold is $60,000. And we about fell out of our chair because we didn't have $60,000. And of course, I could see that your first question is, is why in the heck does it cost $60,000? And then they began to explain it's the type of steel that takes that kind of high heat. And I'm like, well, what kind of steel is that? And they start telling me. And I recall something in my mind. And it's because when we first went into Afghanistan, we buried small pieces of World Trade Center all across the battlefields. And we got to know the head of the Port Authority and the team that preserves all the pieces of World Trade Center steel. Why? Because we have the statue at Ground Zero called America's Response Monument. So I said, well, let me think about this. If I was to get you the steel and that's the biggest price, could I get a discount? And they all laughed because once again, nobody knew our background or a story. They thought we were just a craft startup. And this is 2000, 17, I believe. And so I said, no, no, no, if I get you the steel, you know, could I get a discount? And they said, sure, if you get us a steel and it's the right kind, we'll do it. Well, I called the Port Authority. They sent us probably a ton. It got sent to a foundry in West Virginia, the very same foundry that originally cast some of the World Trade Center steel in the early 60s. And it turned into this this kind of bringing together the steel industry and the glass industry. And lo and behold, we got seven molds for free. So when we say, if you look at your bottle down there at the lower label, forged in fire, right? It's true. You know, just like we were on the battlefield and just like this World Trade Center was when it was created and the fire that tried to destroy it. All of this was, uh, It was just kind of the American dream talking to us. We didn't do it for marketing, right? We're not that smart. We're not Madison Avenue. We did it because we were a bunch of broke vets trying to start a business. And we, uh, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer at our way into some free bottle molds.

Well, I think, I think you're very humble and, uh, you know, what you've accomplished to this point is, uh, very notable. Um, but I have to say that I've always believed that The military is a great training ground for entrepreneurs and that it gives you the tools you need to be a successful entrepreneur. What is that? It's drive and determination, right? It's organization drive and determination. All of those three things you mentioned as you were telling us your story and hats off to you. Great job.

Well, thank you. I think, you know, I like to call us expeditionary entrepreneurs. Green Berets are a little different. At the time of 9-11, we didn't have the big budgets, right? We didn't have the fancy equipment. We had to make do with what we had. And I think that's how we were successful with the Mujedin. We just sat around the campfire and told stories and had a drink. And even though that drink was tea and sometimes it was vodka, you know, that is a trademark of somebody that makes a lot out of nothing. And we found out we had the skill sets when we started this business that were necessary. Even though when you're veterans, you get out, you don't know what you're supposed to do, right? Typically in the Army, you already had, you know, two formations to tell you what you're doing tomorrow. And then tomorrow you get up and you do what, you know, sergeants do or captains do and colonels do. You're part of this system. When you get out of the military, you don't know exactly what to do. And for us, this became our purpose, right, is to beat the competitors next to us in the spirits business. How about that?

Definitely a beautiful story to me as a is not only a veteran, but serving in the army at that time. I can remember those days, you know, not knowing what was going on and the fear of what was about to happen. You know, nobody really knew those first couple of days. I'm sure you guys probably had an idea of what was about to happen for you. But being a regular soldier and I didn't know what was going on. I was like, man, but looking back, you know, 20 something years later, but what a great story. Great story about the bottle too, that it came out of a bottle mold from the World Trade Center. And what about the label on the front of itself?

So the label, there's lots of hidden meanings in here and these were the wives, right? You know, the, The thing about our business is this is a family of families. Our kids grew up while we were gone together in the same cul-de-sac, right? Our wives were the ones holding the fort down. So a lot of these hidden meanings in the bottle came from what they realized our background was. So big broad shoulders, like the weight we carried overseas. The medal is not a medal label as Emmy T-E-L, right, is that grit and courage that you display. The image on front, that's the statue of Ground Zero, the America's Response monument. It's not an image of any one person, but a collection of special operators, the image that folks saw when Donald Rumsfeld picked up that picture and said, this is America's Response. There are other hidden things. The cork. I love the sound of a cork. We initially tried those composite corks so everything could be made in America. Well, it just doesn't sound quite the same unless you pop a good cork. So a lot of attention to details, even the military challenge coin on the top. So just a lot of hidden things went into the design of this bottle to what you see today. And it all came down to Elizabeth, who's one of the co-founders. She is definitely Snow White. She is beautiful. Everything beautiful about her brand and design. And, you know, she wanted bar jewelry, something that is in the back of the bar that stands out. and makes you ask about it. It's also premium, ultra premium. So when you look at this bottle, you hope and expect that it actually is very good.

Now you'd mentioned, as you were telling us a story, you know, mentioned a little bit about the movie and a little bit about the book. Most people don't have access to your story and the accuracy of your story as you tell it. What they have is the book and the movie, right? So what would you have to say to those people who after listening to this are going to want to go out and read the book or watch the movie?

Well, there's a few things I want to say. Number one, Green Berets are quiet professionals, right? So because of the command wanted the author to help tell the story, a lot of us spent very little time less than a day just trying to recount our story. We were still operational. And that's why you see all the names in there are fake names. The same thing with the movie. What could Hollywood get right? And what did it get wrong? What it got right was kind of this impossible mission with a small team alone and unafraid. What it got wrong is, for example, Bob didn't get blown up in the movie, or he got, in other words, Michael Shannon got blown up in the movie, Bob didn't get blown up by a suicide bomber. Hollywood did it because Michael Shannon had to go do the shape of water, right? Nobody wore body armor. In the movie, they all wore body armor. That's what happens when you get the seals as technical advisors on Green Beret movies, kind of get a little sprinkle in there. Mark did not ride on a beautiful black horse stallion gallantly down the hill charging, you know, the Mujahideen fighters did. We were more in the background commanding and controlling, helping control the close air support by with and through is how Green Berets operate. Now, I think Mark and Bob are going to release their book called The Swords of Lightning, which is more of a true account. It's more of a historian reflection of what's going on. We also participated in a documentary called Legion of Brothers. And it's very powerful because it's just us talking and our wives talking about the early days, right? You know, I think what people forget and Hollywood tries to create are these super soldiers, these superheroes, right? These barefoot ninjas that could on a dead run, shoot somebody in the forehead at 500 meters. That's not true, right? What we are is we're just like everybody else. Um, yes, we have some technology. Yes, we have some training, but we're Americans. We were clever and we outworked the Taliban and Al Qaeda along with our Mujahideen partners and we won.

Well, Mike, let's, let's take a moment and just revisit this whiskey one more time. Uh, we're coming up on the break and I'd like to have a few final thoughts about this as it sat in your glass. What do you think? Well, I didn't let it sit in my glass.

Jim, you know me. Come on. That would be my moniker, Big Chief. I emptied my glass and I poured another pour of it. A fine bourbon to me. I'm always glad to buy a bottle of it because I know who the money goes to. It goes to fine military families like Scott. It goes to support them and their story. I think their story needs to grow. And in the second half, we're going to get into their future, which part of that future is here in Kentucky. So I'm excited about that. But hey, what a good bourbon to drink, a great representation of what a bourbon should be.

Happy to sip on this any day. I think that, you know, it is a beautiful bottle and it's a beautiful story. But what's inside the glass is also quite beautiful, very delicious, very light. This is a honey bourbon right here. I really like it. We'll come back from the break. We'll get into more details and we'll try one more of your expressions. So hang around.

All right, listeners, we are back and as everybody has heard, we are with Scott Neal, a retired veteran. That's always a good thing to say, right, Scott? Yeah. From horse soldier bourbon. He's got that. He's got that blue ID card like we do. I love having that thing. I always show people it. I'm like, it took me 24 years to get this dang thing. Big PX in the sky. Yeah. yeah um so on the second half we're gonna drink something pretty special a special ball to us anyways this is your horse soldier um barrel strength bourbon whiskey the bottle we have is 115 our listeners are gonna know because this bourbon simply kicked three big boys' asses on episode 124. That's where we did a blind bottle challenge of cast-strength bourbons. We had our good friends on. A couple of them brought bottles. Jim brought a bottle, and I brought a bottle. Jim brought, he thought what was a ringer, E.H. Taylor Barrel-Strength, Another guy bought Elijah Craig barrel strength, a big boy bourbon right there. And then another guy brought Makers Mark 46 cast strength, which was our bourbon of the year for 2020. Nobody knew that at that time, but what I brought was horse soldier barrel strength. not only for the reason of the bottle itself, but because I got to sample it at liquor barn that day. And I was like, this is going to win. Um, plus it's a weeder. I mean, so I was like, this is going to whip everybody's ass right here. Um, and I gotta say it did.

Yeah. And we were all surprised not that we didn't think horse soldier was a great bourbon, but because we thought we had all brought ringers, right? And little did we know Mike is the one that brought the ringer.

We were Rocky Balboa. We punched up.

Yeah.

Well, the horse-holder bourbon, you know, all of them, you know, we had to, we had to look across all the lines. Once again, nobody, no, none of us knew what we were doing when we had this idea and started traveling around the world, learn how to make it. But we also spent a lot of time at the bar sampling thousands upon thousands, just like you and your consumers. And, you know, now imagine the fight to determine what you really want to make. And as we talked about earlier, why did we want to make the straight? Well, some of the younger guys had the palette for the rye. And also the conversations with the bartenders that, hey, part of your business, you need to be in mixed drinks, right? And predominantly it's a rye bourbon in your mixed drink. OK, made business sense, right? But what we all liked was the little victory of a weeded bourbon. We're older. We want a cigar. We want an after dinner drink. We wanted something that we didn't have to fight through if you drank it neat or on the rocks. Right. And whenever you drink a high, high rye to me personally, bam, you know, I'm about ready for a fistfight. You know, I've got to get on that, that, that cow and ride it bareback, you know, that's what it seems like charge to me. But the weeded bourbons were little victories. It meant for a long conversation. And so when we started tasting Our first one, we have a small batch. We started going through each and every proof, you know, at 100, at 98, at 95, at 80, and we would just taste every day and see what it said to us. That's why our small batch is 95 proof, right? And then finding the barrel strength, it lost its character when you started to cut it. Right? And we began to learn what a lot of people learn is just how each bottle can speak to you differently. That's why it ranges between 107 to 125 proof. And that goes to show you what Mother Nature and Father Time gives you in the barrel. So the barrel strength has by far won the most awards, which we're happy about. That's just four out of five dentists telling you that they like your bourbon. Um, and just like your podcast, you know, we didn't have a lot of room to crow about this. We're a new brand. So I want to say thank you for your thoughts and thank you that, you know, it's a blind test, but out of all of these, these are by far barrel strength is the house favorite here at Core Soldier Bird.

So this is, uh, this is what you make for you as well.

Oh yeah. Remember when we started this, uh, what we didn't drink, we'd sell. We didn't have a lot to sell in the beginning, but luckily we're making a lot more. It comes into a pricing too and what a lot of viewers and folks don't understand and we had to learn equally was the business of bourbon. The making a part of bourbon can become routine once you find the recipe and the mash bill you want. Once you have a barrel supplier, once you create consistency, across your brand, you now have something that you can replicate like we talked about earlier for 100 years. Now the business, okay, who are you competing against? What's your price point? How much taxes do we pay on this barrel strength versus a lower proof bourbon? And so we had to start figuring that out very quickly. And since we launched in 2018, we haven't increased our prices or done anything. You know, we're very proud of what we have. I think we got it right for a bunch of amateurs for the first time.

Well, you're probably used to getting it right because before you retired your life, depending on getting stuff, right?

Well, not a lot of second chances in combat, right? There's no tap out in combat. I like watching UFC and I'm always giggling, you know, because you get to tap out if it gets a little tough. Well, in combat, you don't get to tap out. And whiskey, when you open it up in four or five years later, you don't get to put it back. It is what it is. So you got to get it right. And there's a lot of tradition and history, but there's a lot of modern history here, too. And there's going to be things we're going to try later on.

I'd tell you sipping on this right here, Jim, you know, they got it right in this bottle for sure. The barrel spices there, which, you know, I was listening to somebody else today and they said that wheat doesn't give a lot of flavor to whiskey, which I don't know if I agree with that. It mainly takes its flavor from the barrel. And, but I agreed with that. You know, I think wheaters get that, that we've talked about that before where it gets its spice, from the barrel itself, and this has that right amount of cinnamon spice to it.

Well, I think the wheat gives it that softness up front that just sort of is signature for a weeded bourbon. As I'm sipping on this, Mike, I remember that day, and I remember sipping on this bourbon and thinking, oh no, I'm in trouble. But I'm getting ginger. I mean, I'm getting ginger. I don't know if you are, but that's a spice that you don't often get, I think, with a with a weeded bourbon, but you definitely get it here.

Yeah, I couldn't, they couldn't have went any, did anything better on this bourbon right here. One of the best bottles of bourbon I've ever had in my life. And that's, that is saying a lot from a weeded guy that just loves some weed. I dig it, man. Now I got to go get another bottle and I'll keep getting bottles of it because I enjoy it that much. When everybody comes over to my house, I love to pull open this bottle and say, let me give you a pour or something and show them what they're missing out on when they're they're buying the same brands over and over. As me and you always talk about venture out there, grab something else, grab that craft distillery that's going to support a small family, a group of families as in horse soldier, help build a new legacy. you know, Buffalo Trace and Four Roses, Heaven Hill, Jim Beam, those legacies are created and they will last for a long, long time, but it's time to create some new ones. And how could you not back a group of veterans, right? And that have put some great whiskey in bottles.

Thank you very much. I think, as you said earlier, you have it in a younger generation that started going to their brew pubs. right? And really change craft beer and local beers. And they weren't afraid to do a vanilla stout, pale aged in, you know, some barrel with pickle juice. And, you know, it's really kind of allowed a new generation now to start trying something different, especially in the craft spirit space. They're not afraid to go in and get an odd bottle and give it a try. So you're going to see that come up more and more. You know, I really can't, you know, talk about the history and the legacy of some of these bigger brands and their distilling and these celebrity distillers that have 20 years. Right. I can only learn from them. And with my brand, you know, how do we stay true to tradition on one hand, and how do we grow the brand in some different directions? And that's the part that we get excited about. We have put away some things that I'm anxious to see what they'll be in three, four, five years from now. Right. Because we have the freedom to do that. We're not a publicly traded brand that's mandated for profits. And you know what I mean? Managing the brand lifecycle and things like that. So. That's the unique craft, emerging craft plug that I'll give here is, you know, a lot of these up and coming brands are learning their way, but then again, they're trying different things and they may change the industry 50 years from now.

Well, let's, let's talk a little bit about Florida in Ohio and Kentucky. So you guys kind of got things going on in all three, right?

So we started here in Florida because the headquarters of special operations is in Tampa, Florida. So the four-star headquarters. And you can't swing a dead cat without a retired general or sergeant major here from the special operations community. And there's only a few bars that we'll kind of go to and enjoy. And so we wanted this to be our home base. And when we started this business, we knew that you really couldn't age bourbon here in Florida because it gets too hot. Now we spent a lot of time talking to some very fine folks in Texas. And if you tried some of their whiskeys and bourbons, you know what I'm talking about. If it gets a little too hot, it imparts certain characteristics from the barrel. They've even tried burying them down. So we listened to all of this. And so we went into Kentucky and we realized we didn't have enough money. And at the time there wasn't any really partnership capability in Kentucky. And so we found one in Ohio, and he was the first one to say, if you fly up here, I'll right seat ride you, right? I'll be a mentor, but you're going to have to do the work, which is what we wanted. And so we would take Allegiant Air and stay in an Airbnb, and we would work the night shift. And in the bottling and our first bottles, we would lick the labels. That's why they're all crooked, right? Our kids, it was like our own sweatshop. right, would be in there licking labels and doing things. So it was truly, you know, you only hope if you're an American, that's the story of entrepreneurism, right, is against all odds just making it happen any way you can. Now, you know, fast forward, the brand has legs, right? There's three principles we learned. Number one, it had to look good and compete against others on the shelf and have a good brand story. Two, it had to taste good because nobody buys the second bottle if it sucks. Right. And three, you had to have enough of it because you can't start and stop production. And then the distributor and the retailer has an empty space on their shelf. They'll just close it in and put another brand on it. Right. So we had to grow our brand smartly like a game of risk. We all played risk as kids. Right. And if you spread your pieces too far over the map, somebody else came behind you, marshaled forces and wiped you out. So that's why we're only in 12 states, right? Because we only have so much inventory to do. We wish we were in 50 states, but that's not business practical. So now we're at a point where our brand It has traction. We won an award. It looks beautiful.

We're cutting the cost on all of our goods from the bottle to the labels to the corks.

And now we need to expand. We need to get out of mom's basement and find our own place. And about two years ago, we started looking in Kentucky. Now remember, we were all at Fort Campbell when 9-11 happened, Kentucky. So Kentucky's in our blood. I was there for 17 years before I came to the headquarters here. And we started looking in Louisville and Lexington and Bartstown. And, you know, the cities themselves were less than receptive initially. You know, there's kind of a behind the scenes economic development aspect of how towns attract things. And there was just too many big companies in these towns, right? That would require a tremendous amount of money. We're talking 50 million plus just to get to the starting line. And so we were reached out by the mayor of Somerset, Kentucky, which I had no clue where that was. I had to look at the map like everybody else. And he said, we're a small town and we would love to have a bourbon company here that would help our town. And so we traveled there and met the mayor and just fell in love. The town's in the southeast corners right there on Lake Cumberland. I didn't even know what a houseboat was. Apparently, houseboats are bigger than my house here in Florida. But it was like you step back in time that you remember as a kid, right, with this old fashioned downtown, with this simple lake life. And we realized that if we invested there and built something, the community would embrace us right away. We would be a big fish in a little pond, not a little fish in a big pond. So we set about on, now we knew the location. We wanted to build something that would be here for the next hundred years. And as we visited every distillery, we kind of saw that they all look about the same, right? Now production is similar of bourbon. There's not too much innovation on how you produce and distill bourbon. And if you go to these distilleries and you see what you see in Louisville, kind of the facade tourists facing historical kind of aspect of production. And you go, you see Makers Mark and Wild Turkey. You kind of see these big plants, you know, that show up on the horizon as you're driving there. You also see the dirty side of the business, the black mold, the smoke, you know, these communities where some of these areas were at. So we thought we had a blank canvas. So as we put out a request for proposal, we took all the usual builders in Kentucky and we also sent it out to Scotland. And we asked them to give us a response to our building. And the one that came back that we chose was Roger Stinks and Harbor from England that just built the McCallans distillery. And if you haven't seen or looked at Google McCallans new distillery, it is a hundred years to the future. just in its design and its beautiful lines. It makes you believe that beautiful scotch is made there. They stepped away from the traditional aspect and looked ahead, and that's what we wanted. So today, our project is about $150 million. I about fell out of my chair. Remember when we couldn't even afford a $60,000 mold? Now we're into talking about super budgets of $150 million. But it's horse soldier farms, not horse soldier distillery. Yes, we'll have a three million gallon production facility. Yes, we'll have some of the most modern warehouses with the most enabled technologies for monitoring our barrels. But we'll have an 80 room hotel and a five star spa. You think, who inspired that? The wives. As we would go to these different distillery experiences, they became bored. And our trips were always short because they want to get back to the hotel and relax and have a spa day. We'll have horses, retired military mounts from the army. Think about what happens to all of the honor guard, the old guard, the third cavalry mounts when they retire. Well, just like us, we want them to retire at horse soldier farms.

Wow. So that's amazing.

Exactly. We want ropes courses for the kids. You know, there has to be a family and community aspect as well. So we wanted a destination much like Blackberry Farms, someplace that you could spend the weekend. Yes, we'll make great bourbon. Yes, you can come see us and participate. Yes, if you're a bourbon group, you could probably come to one of the most beautiful barrel selection rooms you'll ever see. But Right? You can also do outdoor activities. We bought an old golf course and it's old Kentucky, right? Think of those sweeping rolling hills and that tree line as you enter, you know, almost like some of these equestrian areas that you see in Bardstown, some of these beautiful, you know, rolling hills that lead you up into this arrival. So we have a grand vision, not a view. Our vision is the next hundred years. something our kids will inherit and be proud of and also will support the community. That's the future of horse soldier bourbon.

So in this timeline of getting to that point, where are you guys at now?

So right now we're working, the last piece is the financing piece, which we're working with the state of Kentucky and their board of tourism. If you read the Lane Report or several other Kentucky publications, you always see a $50 million expansion from Wilderness Trail. Angels Envy, you know, is building a new facility. Well, you know, to reach what we thought would be impossible, that kind of price tag, there are incentives that Kentucky gives that enables us to reach the right type of financing. What we didn't want to do is give up our dream by giving away everything. to get to it, right? So we had to build our brand slow and steady to make sure the brand value is there so that what we do borrow, right, is enough to help us finance and fund this until we get our operations going. So we're also smart and clever business people too. This isn't fantasy, you know, just reach over reach and then the limb snaps and you fall to the ground. This is very achievable. Once all that packaging gets together, we're hopefully looking for some ceremonies. October, obviously COVID slowed everything down. We can't get the engineers on site. We can't get the architects to come from England. So this has all been virtual. And once we turn it on, it's on like Donkey Kong. Three years of construction. It would take three years for building, right? And then it's going to take five to six years. Once we start producing the agent, it'll be 10 years from now before we'll be able to drink any of that bourbon. That's a legacy.

Well, hopefully we'll still be kicking it down the bourbon route. Me too. But I think you guys, you keep saying about building a legacy that your children will be proud of. I don't think you got to say that at all. I think you've already built that legacy that your children are going to be proud of. I imagine they are proud of what you've accomplished through your military service. Not only that, but starting a company that a lot of Americans are falling in love with, just like I did.

Well, thank you. There's a book out there called Bullets and Bourbon, and it documents the warrior's transition in the bourbon industry. So if you look at some of your greats like Pappy Van Winkle, we're in the army. Colonel Taylor, right? If you look at the majority of the staffs in the distillery served at one point. And I think people have a hard time sometimes wondering Well, I get it. You're a great veteran and maybe you're a hero, but what the heck do you know about making bourbon? And I say the entire history of the United States is built by veterans and the history of bourbon and whiskey is built by veterans. So why would you think it would be impossible for some veterans to start a business today?

I mean, general Washington supplied his whiskey to his troops, right?

Exactly.

Yeah.

Hopefully I'm not a general one day in some kind of, you know, something going on and I have to supply my own troops. Maybe you never know.

Jim, any final thoughts on this, uh, this barrel strength bourbon?

Yeah, it's still a winner. I mean, it's still a winner in my book. I mean, I, I kinda, like I said, when we had our blind challenge and this was, this was totally blind. It was a bottle challenge. We all brought a bottle and then we voted on them independently and nobody knowing who's what, what it was. But, um, when I tasted this one, I kinda knew I was in trouble. And I get that now. I understand why this is a great bourbon. It's a weeded bourbon. It's got that nice soft upfront, that sweetness, but at the same time, it gives you that quite unique spicy back end that I don't know where it's coming from. You say barrel spice, I don't know where it's coming from, but it's unique. It's spicy. It's almost holiday a little bit. And I love it.

Yeah. Well, Scott, man, I can't say thank you enough from, you know, two old veterans, Jim and myself to you. Not only thank you for your service, but thanks for coming on the Bourbon Road, sharing your whiskey with us. You know, we love it that much. We love when people share their whiskey with us. That's what the whiskey community is about. And we wish you guys the great success. Hopefully we'll get an invite, get more bottles from you, get some swag to give out to our listeners that are listening today. Um, we look forward to partnering with you in the future.

Well, as I stated earlier, thank you for giving us a voice. You know, that's the hardest part is just, you know, we don't have million dollar promotional budgets like some of these big companies. It's word of mouth, right? It's, it's talking to a thousand people and telling them a thousand stories and For us, COVID hit us hard because we weren't able to go out and tell our story. And we lost a lot of relationships in the restaurant industry. And we're going to have to rebuild that. And we're going to have to get back on the road. We're going to have to go see and see who's there in Las Vegas, who's there in New York City, who's there in Dallas, Texas, and rebuild his brand on the restaurant industry. But the best way to do it is for your viewers and customers to be our ambassadors and say, hey, You know, I want you to carry this for me. I want to come in and who wouldn't want a Manhattan from the Green Berets who responded to 9-11 whose bottle molds are made from ground zero and that the Taliban hate the most about us, right, is our freedoms and liberties. How can you win and have a little victory as getting a war soldier?

And what bar wouldn't want to have that drink on their menu, right? Exactly.

But it takes a consumer to do it. I can't walk in there with my carpet bag full of whiskey and be another brand. It really is the consumer is the one that drives the beverage manager to decide to purchase it.

Well, Scott, where can our listeners find you guys on social media?

On social media, we're at HorseSoldierBurban.com is our website, obviously. At Facebook, it's HorseSoldierBurban and Instagram, it's HorseSoldierBurban. So across the platforms, you know, I'm not the Instagrammer, right? That's what the daughters are for. Apparently they have lively and fun posts. Some other things to know about us, and you can keep up with our adventures. Two years ago, we jumped into Normandy for D-Day for the 75th anniversary. This year we went back to Special Forces Dive School to get recertified and we're going to Saipan and we're diving on some World War II aircrew wrecks to repatriate the bodies and effects in partnership with the Department of Defense POW and my agency. So there's a lots of things to follow us for.

You guys just keep giving and giving. Awesome. Awesome. Yep. Well, Mike, where can people find us?

Well, our listeners can find us on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, pretty much everywhere. You can find us on social media. Coming up, though, you're going to find us in the public's eye. We're going to be at Habitat for Humanity, Shelby County's Duck Duck Bourbon. You want to go check that out. I'll be emceeing that event. We'll be on Bourbon on the banks in Frankfort, Kentucky on the 23rd of October. How can you not love that right there? Not a lot of big college football games going on that day. Kentucky's not playing that weekend. So, what better way to spend the afternoon with a Bourbon Road lounge? We're actually going to have a whiskey sponsor there. I can't say it quite yet, Jim, but you want to come sit in some chairs with us, sit down and sip on some delicious whiskey? Come see us at Bourbon on the Banks.

Absolutely. Well, we have a website, like Mike said, the bourbonroad.com, and on that bourbonroad.com, you can find our blogs, our articles, find our podcasts. You can also find our swag, our glasses and shirts and hats, all of those things. We'd love to have you pick up a few of those items to help support the show. Gets Mike and I down the road to talk to people like Scott here of Horse Soldier Bourbon. We, uh, we'd love to get your feedback, Mike. We always want to hear what people have to say. Uh, we'd love to have you leave us a comment on the website. You can also leave us a comment on Apple podcasts, right?

Heck yeah. What we really want you to do is go up there to the top and hit that subscribe button. on any of your social media, hit that subscribe button, whatever app you're listening to this podcast in, and then you know what I want you to do. I want you to scroll on down to the bottom. I want you to hit that five star review. Otherwise, what do you think is going to happen, Jim? The big bad booty daddy of bourbon is going to come visit you. Oh, bring me some horse soldier bourbon with us. We're going to drink those bottles. And by the end of the night, we're going to get that five star out of your ass. So just leave us the five star.

All right. Well, we do two shows a week. Every Monday we do a craft distillery episode where we kind of take hold of a craft expression and we dive in on it and we taste it and we tell you what we think. We're trying to shine a little light on some of the smaller distilleries and give them a chance to show their stuff. If you have a small distillery in your town and you'd like to see them Spotlighted on the craft distillery Monday. Just like Mike and I know we'll make sure to get them on every Wednesday We do kind of a a little bit more of a deep dive where we have a guest on like horse soldier bourbon and we go into About an hour's worth of discussion. It'll get you to work and back right Mike

Heck yeah. 30 minutes there, 30 minutes back. That's what the average American drives to work. So let us fill them, uh, speakers up with these, uh, buttery voices we got like we like to say.

All right. Well, make sure you reach out to us. You can, uh, you can reach me on Instagram at J Shannon 63. I'm one big chief and we'll see you down the bourbon room.

Bye!