220. Old Dominick Distillery with Alex Castle

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.

So do you like maple syrup? Do you like bourbon? We got the best of both worlds with our sponsor, Seldom Seen Farms up in Ohio. You can't get any better than that. What he does is he takes bourbon barrels, pours maple syrup into them and lets them age six to nine months. That season's coming up where he's fixing to harvest his syrup out of trees. He's got 2000 sugar maple trees up there. A true farmer, a true craftsman. You want to check him out. Seldom Seen Farms. Hey, this is Big Chief from the Bourbon Road. And you know where I'm at? I'm on the road. And we're driving through Memphis, Tennessee, and I just happened to have some time to stop in the chicken district. and down in the chicken district they got guess's world famous fried chicken and right across the street there's this big rooster on the roof of this building and i was like wow i think i've been there before so i had to come in check it out we are at old dominic and the last time we were here we Didn't give them enough time, I think, on air. We punched them together with a bunch of other little distilleries. They're not little anymore. They've grown up. And we got Alex Castle, their master distiller, here with us today. Alex, thanks for coming back on.

Thanks for having me. And thanks for making the time to stop off in Memphis.

Yeah, I mean, I've tried to catch you when you were in Kentucky, but you're a hard woman to catch.

I'm never in Kentucky for very long, and it's usually jam-packed.

Well, you've been up there. You've been talking up there. You talked at the same place we talked, at the Rippey house, trying to help that house out and historical.

Wonderful story.

Yeah, pretty neat and stuff. And that was kind of your lineage anyways, right? Because you were the distillery supervisor at Wild Turkey.

Yes. So it was great actually getting to see some of my former coworkers who happened to be Rippey's.

Really?

Yeah. I got to work with Olivia Rippey. She was in the visitor center at Wild Turkey and was one of my travel buddies. And so I kind of didn't even think about the fact that she would be at that event. And I'll look over and there's some crazy lady driving a golf cart up the driveway and it was Olivia.

She's drove her golf cart over there.

Yes.

Kind of a creepy old house, really.

It really is, especially because the previous owner, who was not a Rippy, apparently had a thing for leopard print wallpaper.

Yeah.

That was not good.

Even the Rippies, when they built that house, it was... It was a little weird, I thought, going in there and seeing his office. They took us through the whole house. And I was like, wow, this guy went into the escape room from his escape path from his office, because he had like eight different doors in there that went out the porch. And it was pretty cool. But to even get to speak at the same place that you spoke at was pretty neat. And people come there to watch you and stuff. But one of my neighbors, he had saw you, came there and watched you. And he's like, hey, I'm watching Alex Castle speak here at the Rippy house. And I was like, that's pretty dang amazing.

It's crazy that people would actually like drive to the, not a very popular city. No one goes to Lawrenceburg for anything really. But for people to actually drive out there to see me, it's a little weird.

Well, you're a local girl to there, right? I am. Right down the road to Baghdad. And then you worked at, you know, you kind of that, I guess if Whiskey had a coaching tree, Jimmy Russell would have that umbrella tree, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. To be able to be trained by Jimmy Russell. And even Eddie, I got to work with Eddie as well. Couldn't ask for a better experience.

A lot of lineage is coming out of that distillery, but I don't think people realize how tight-knit that community is. Kind of like Dave Pickerell's, the Johnny Appleseed of craft distilleries, helping everybody out, a small community. And I love to see that. A lot of people don't know that insiders look at that and stuff. And actually, when we walked in here today, I would consider him a young man for me. I thought he was just working the front desk. And lo and behold, I said, so what do you do here? And he's like, I own a place. I was like, what? He's just up there working the front desk helping out today, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Chris Canale, our president and owner. Yeah, we don't have a receptionist. And so everyone has to take a turn at the front desk. And I guess he drew the short straw and got Monday afternoon.

Well, he's out there looking at, like, hunting places and stuff.

Oh, yeah, he's not. Yeah, he's not working that hard, I promise.

Well, that was pretty neat. Well, we've kind of cut into it a little bit. What's the first whiskey you got for us?

We're going to drink our healing station wheat whiskey. So in 2020, 2020 wasn't all bad. There were some good that came out of it. And for us, we had two whiskeys that we released in 2020. One of which is our wheat whiskey. It's an 83% wheat mash bill. So super high wheat content. And we do bottle this one at 90 proof. So it's our lowest proof straight whiskey that we have. But we settled on that proof just because it's where it sang. It's where it just performed its best.

Now, this is Contract to Steal.

Yes. So this, similar to our healing station bourbon, the red label, was all produced for us at MGP back starting in 2014.

Well, let's talk about that contract distilling. You know, so some of our listeners might not understand what contract distilling is. I was getting the nuts and bolts of that a little bit. What happens there?

So there are a couple of different ways you can do contract distilling. Sometimes a distiller or distillery will just buy already aged product. They really, they didn't have anything to do with it prior to that point. And then they just blend it and go from there. You can also just buy new make distillate. Maybe you didn't say anything about the mash bill, it's just what they produce and you buy some of that distillate and you put it in barrels and you'll get it when it's aged. Or what we did, and we were fortunate because we were able to do it because we got in so early, we actually did our own custom mash bills at MGP. This is something they don't really do anymore unless you're grandfathered in. And they will let you or they will make it for you, your exact recipe, your yeast. We even used our own barrels. So it really is, our whiskey, we just, our kitchen wasn't ready. So we had to use someone else's kitchen.

It's like going over your mom's kitchen. Your oven's not big enough for four turkeys. You gotta- Exactly. You gotta have another oven.

You brought all the ingredients over. It's your recipe, but you had to use mom's kitchen.

Well, I love that you did that and you went with a wheat whiskey, right?

Yeah, we wanted something unique because you gotta think 2014, whiskey is having a heyday. All these brands are popping up. how do you stand out? And so that's with our bourbon. We went with that super high rye bourbon mash spill. Well, we wanted another thing that would help stand out. And at the time, wheat whiskey still really wasn't a category. You had Bernheim and what, maybe one or two other wheat whiskies.

Yeah, I'm trying to think. Besides Bernheim, Redemption, I guess, versus MGP.

Yep. There were not many. And you're starting to see more come out in the last two years. But we saw an opening and decided to take a chance on it and hope that the consumer would eventually come around and like that category.

Well, let's taste this thing.

super floral nose, what you expect out of that wheat whiskey, the kind of the rainbow of walking into a floral shop for me.

Absolutely. One of the things I love about it is I always get a lot of hay characteristic, both on the nose and on the palate. And that's just, for some reason, that's a flavor note that I love.

I think there's nothing wrong. Some people don't understand. They might think that's off-putting, but for me living on a farm and that's what we have is hay farm. Um, That's like one of those beautiful times of the year when the hay's cut and it's being baled and you can just walk down there amongst it and you're just like, oh, it smells so good.

And that's how we look at it. Even doing the taste test internally, trying to decide what proof and everything. One of the ladies in our marketing team. She's in the lab doing her tastings and she's like, this just makes me think of my grandfather because he had a farm. And it just took her back to that timeframe. It's like, that's what we were going for. We want it to be nostalgic for you and take you to a place.

Yeah, we always try to say that is your memory sensors, right? It's not supposed to be some wheel that somebody hands you and says these. This is what you're supposed to taste to me that. That experience with whiskey is supposed to be those memories of eating a toffee bar, a heat toffee bar, chocolate ice cream or walking in a barn smelling cedar shavings or walking through a hay field or walking down a dirt road and you smell honeysuckle. That's those tasting experiences and those experiences that people are supposed to get. it's beautiful that you guys and especially you tell people that I love that that you're not just saying oh you should taste oak and leather and cigars and tobacco and

I always hate when people ask me, what am I supposed to taste? No, what do you taste? So when I do tastings, I really do try to keep quiet at first and try to draw it out of everyone that's in the room. Because if I say that, ooh, I get cherry, well, what's everyone in the room going to taste?

You already put it in their minds. Oh, I can taste the cherry.

And what people don't understand is there are no wrong answers when tasting whiskey.

I just like to go down a cereal aisle, take a dart and just throw it at a cereal.

We did a virtual tasting with a bourbon group where it really was just that. The descriptors they were giving us, I swear we were in a Kroger cereal aisle. It was amazing.

There's nothing wrong with that. If that's what you grew up eating cereal as a kid and watching cartoons in the morning, then if you had sugar smackums and that's what you get, then... Then that's what it is.

There's nothing wrong with it.

Yeah, people that snub their nose up to those kind of tasting notes probably take themselves a little too serious.

Oh, absolutely. I can't tell you the number of times I've gone to taste a barrel to see if it was going to be a single barrel or not. And instead of coming up with all these great descriptors, I literally will write, blah. Like if it's, if it's an unimpressive barrel, I don't even put the time. I'm just blah. And that works. You don't need all those fancy descriptors. It's whatever word comes to your mind is the right word.

While I'm sipping on this, this has got a little bit of strawberry jolly rancher candy to me. That floral notes are coming through, but that jolly rancher, that sweetness. To me, what a wheat whiskey is supposed to have. A little bit of that cinnamon spice to it.

Yeah, we definitely still get some of the cooking spices that you find in our bourbon are in this. We do a number four char. So that's a little bit of why you're getting that flavor.

Bringing those sugars, that spice out of the wood, right?

Yep.

Super beautiful. I love it. Now, why Healing Station? I know the story about this, but I got to ask you for the listeners. Why Healing Station?

Yeah, so when creating this line of whiskeys for everything that MGP produced for us, we knew we needed a way to distinguish the MGP produced product from our old Dominic Memphis produced product that will come out later. So we knew we needed another name other than just Old Dominic Bourbon, Old Dominic Wheat Whiskey. And we settled on Healing Station. It was a suggestion from Chris Canale that we were talking about earlier. His cousin Alex Canale threw this out. He said, why don't we call it Healing Station? And the reason we went with it, you know, it was a light bulb moment for the team is because I don't know about two blocks, three blocks down from where the distillery is today is a street called Hewling. And on that then it's on Front Street. At the corner of Hewling and Front, there is a very large building. It's an apartment building today. But it actually used to be called Hewling Station. And it was the warehouse where our founder, Domenico, actually would bring barrels down and bottle the original Dominic whiskey. And so this was our way of paying homage to Domenico and how our brand got started.

That's beautiful to me that you're paying homage to to really the founder of the brand, right? You know, you guys are hitting at a thousand for this and there's a reason why you were just recently won a big award, right?

I did, I did. I guess I was back in October now. I had the honor of receiving the Impact Award for emerging leaders from the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.

How did that feel?

It was humbling. To this day, I don't know who nominated me. No idea. Might have been someone's idea of a joke to get me up on a stage, but the fact that someone actually nominated me and then on top of it, the board of directors at Discus decided to approve my nomination and give me the award. Definitely didn't expect it. And just humbled to see that. Apparently, people are seeing what I'm doing here, what I'm trying to do in the industry. And I think it says a lot about old Dominic as well, and not just me. And so that was just, it was a great, great experience. And getting to get the award from Peggy Noe Stevens, who I absolutely love. To have her actually give me the award was kind of the cherry on top.

Yeah, she's like the queen of the south, almost, when I think of a southern lady.

Oh, she is the epitome of a southern lady.

Yeah. Just a wonderful woman and stuff. And I'm sure that did feel great and stuff. I'm sure it felt great being asked to be the bastard instiller here, too, though, right?

Absolutely. To be recruited to be what was the head distiller back in 2015 was something I honestly never really expected. I really thought I'd stay at Wild Turkey for a very, very long time. And so that was absolutely amazing. But then to have the owners think highly enough of the work I was doing to promote me to master distiller in 2019 and then promote me once again in 2020 to senior vice president. It's again, it's humbling.

So do you still keep that name as master distiller too?

I do. I have a lot of names on my business card. And I usually actually put master distiller first and a master distiller then I'm senior vice president.

Now, how many other women at that time in 2019 had been named master distiller? Do you know?

I don't know off the top of my head. I know when I came to Tennessee in 2015, I was the first female head distiller. And then shortly thereafter, we had Nicole Austin move to Dickel as master distiller. Maybe they use the title head distiller. I can't remember. But then actually at the same time I was coming to Tennessee is when Mary Ann Eves was named master distiller at Castle & Key. And then of course you have the ladies at Jepsa Creed. You've got the ladies at Silverback in Virginia. I mean, there's a, there's so many of us now. You just may not hear about all of them, but we're, we're taking over the industry.

I've heard about everyone. I love it. I think it's, it's not a wave or anything. It's just the respect is there. Only that my wife sitting over there behind me. So hopefully she doesn't hear this, but women typically have a better palette than men do. Yes. Unless you're, unless you're left handed like me. and have some weird thing that you can taste all kinds of crazy things. Usually they have a better taste than men do and I can pick out stuff so I can see how that plays important. It still comes with a background of kind of engineering and science though, right?

Absolutely. I mean, I have a degree in chemical engineering. It's definitely not a requirement. My boss at Wild Turkey, the head of production, I want to say he had an economics degree or something. So you don't have to go the science route, but that is becoming very, very common. I know a lot of the women in this industry have that chemistry, that engineering, you know, something in that field.

Now to Jimmy Russell, did he have a degree?

I actually don't think he did have a degree. He didn't need one. He started at Wild Turkey when he was, I'm sure he probably wasn't even 21 when he started there. And just learned hands-on, which at that time you could do.

So he's got the degree of hard knocks is what he's got.

100%. Yeah. 100%.

I think that's the best of both worlds and stuff though, but they took you and gave you a chance there. And then me and Chris were talking about how they came to hire you and talking about us going into distilleries and where I can tell that lineage isn't there with some distillers. I'm not going to say which ones, but I can definitely tell. And then I come to talk to you and you definitely know what's going on, how everything operates, how it's put together. That's nice. I remember I came in here last time and you took me through the whole steel house and Mike, this is what this is. This is what that is. Some of the stuff I didn't even know. I don't have an engineering degree, so I don't understand some of that stuff. I'm smart enough to figure it out, but I would have to be like Jamie Russell and get just that hard knocks degree.

I mean, for me, part of it is I knew when I was 15 years old that this is what I wanted to do.

That you're going to cook whiskey.

It was either beer or whiskey. It was gonna be one of the two. And I was 21 when I made the decision that beer wasn't enough. I needed the whiskey side of things. So this has been a part of my life and it's been a passion of mine for over half of my life. And so, yeah, I don't have the actual family lineage of this industry, but I've spent, I've dedicated over half of my life to learning. as much about it as I possibly can, because this isn't work. I love what I do. I'm passionate about what I do.

You grew up in Shelby County, Kentucky. For people who don't know that, especially the area from Baghdad area, Baghdad is a very, very small town, but they do have a silos there. A lot of corn is growing there. Lots and lots and lots of corn all around there, right?

Yeah. And that's even our corn that we use here in Memphis. I still get from a grain elevator in Louisville because the Ohio river valley has some of the best grains.

Yeah, there's no doubt about it, you know, because I watch barges come up down the river and grains coming out of those. It definitely makes some good whiskey.

Oh, absolutely.

Otherwise, the distilleries wouldn't be there.

No, no, there's a reason that that part of Kentucky and Indiana is so heavily populated with distilleries and always has been is because yes, you have the river. So transportation obviously is huge, but you were able to grow really, really good crops. You couldn't really grow rye. I think they're still trying to figure that one out in that area. But the corn is some of the best corn you can get. And if you have poor quality grains, you're going to have poor quality whiskey.

Yeah, I would imagine that's why you got Pennsylvania and Maryland and Northern States that make New York, that make great rye whiskey, right? Because they have great quality rye.

Yep. They're able to actually grow rye or very, very easily get it from Canada because Canada is a great place for rye as well.

Now down here, I would assume, because I'm from Texas and what you grow is a cover crop and wintertime is soft red winter wheat, right? And I would assume that we're riding that belt down here where that's going to grow pretty well.

It does. Um, but where we are for the most part, you're seeing cotton, you're seeing, um, soybeans, lots and lots of soybeans. Uh, and I mean, there's corn, but it's more for, uh, I think more for food than it is distilling.

Now, what about rice?

There's a lot of rice down here.

Well, let's get into that for a second. Have you thought about that as a, as a whiskey yet or?

I haven't, not seriously. And I think just part of it's because my background is so traditional bourbon that the idea of using rice is just, I mean, I can already see Jimmy Russell's face right now if he's about trying to make a whiskey with rice. It's not good.

But the nose did it this year, right? They released their toasted and it's got a brown rice in it. So you got to wonder if the nose took a chance. I wonder what Jimmy thought about that when they came out with it.

And he probably still is like, no, no, no. He's set in his ways.

What do you think he would think of it that you made a wheat whiskey? Um, Have you had a chance to talk to him since then?

I haven't. So I actually haven't seen Jimmy since I left. I do occasionally get to run into Eddie at festivals. And that's always good to see him. But he's usually so busy schmoozing with all of the people at those events that we don't really get to talk to terribly much. And we've yet to do an event together where we both have products. I'm usually just getting to attend it, whereas he's actually having to work and pour samples.

Well, that's, I mean, that's the price that comes with that though. You know, that lineage of, and I mean, I could see that one day here for you, right? That, I mean, this is your plan, right? To stay here and grow this. I wouldn't say you're going to be the Jimmy Russell of Tennessee, but of Memphis, Tennessee, right?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, we're the first distillery to produce whiskey in Memphis since at least prohibition might even be before that. We just we don't have the records to know if there were whiskey distilleries here before. And I'm incredibly proud of getting to be a part of of that. And so I definitely I definitely plan on sticking around and seeing seeing Old Dominic become a wild turkey becoming, you know, a meagre's mar- any of those where it's just, they're synonymous with where they're located and with quality and good whiskey and, and even more than just good whiskey because we, we do a lot more than, than just the brown spirits.

Yeah. I mean, you got a plethora of expressions here, but you're also located in a great location. Where's Wild Turkey? You can't just get to Wild Turkey. You got to know where you're going.

And you definitely don't want to go if it's snowing outside because that bridge is treacherous. But yeah, we're just a couple of blocks from Beale Street. in downtown Memphis. So we couldn't ask for a better location. And we're one street off of South Main, which if you've ever been to Memphis, that's a newly revitalized street. Some of our best restaurants are now on South Main. And it's really come back to life. And in the last year or two, we started to see South Front Street do that. You know, we were one of the first businesses to come in and revitalize one of the existing buildings. And in that time, we now have massive apartment complex and hotels on one side. They just demoed a building to do something. I don't even know what it's for, but we're starting to see the revitalization on South Front Street. So our location is going to be better and better as the years go on.

You're like a 10 minute walk from the Peabody Hotel, right? Yes. And people don't know what the Peabody is. We actually stopped by there today. We just missed the ducks, but they marched these Mallard ducks into a little fountain pool there.

Yeah. They have a penthouse on the roof of the Peabody where the ducks live. And what is it? Once a day they bring them down the elevator, march them into the fountain. And at the end of the day, they march them back to the elevator and up to the roof.

So if you are going to Memphis, Tennessee, you got to stay at the Peabody. The prices aren't bad. Calm down.

At the very least, go to the lobby bar at the Peabody. If you can't stay there, that's fine. But at least go and have a drink there, because the ducks are in the fountain all day, so you can still see the ducks.

And I saw your whiskey on the shelf there.

And we are served there, yes.

So that's pretty awesome. Then you got Beale Street right here. You got, like you said, some great restaurants. If you haven't had Gus's Fried Chicken before.

You got to have Gus's.

It's not Nashville style hot chicken. It's in the batter up.

Yep. Yep. They put the spices in the batter. So it's much more of a traditional fried chicken. It does have a little bit of heat to it, but it is some of the best fried chicken. If you've never had it before, you've got to eat at the location that's in downtown Memphis, across from us. It is the best location. Don't let your first Gus's fried chicken experience be outside of Memphis.

Man, that's hurts me a little bit because my first experience was in St. Louis.

How was it? I only say that because I know some people who went to the one in Lexington who had also been to the one in Memphis and they said it just wasn't as good. And I just, I would hate for people to experience Gus's in a bad way outside of Memphis first.

I actually loved it. The one in St. Louis, but here's the thing. If you took it and put 10 old Dominic distilleries across America, and you put a different distiller in each one of them, the whiskey is probably going to be different each one of them.

That is true.

They got a different palette. And the same thing probably with a cook. If they're not using some big bag of batter and stuff, how long do you fry it? How much spices do you put in that? Each one's going to be a little different. The one in St. Louis, which actually is Brentwood, we loved it.

Awesome. That's good.

And then we've eaten at a couple of them here in Memphis. We just like to stop by and stuff. Now today we ate at the flying fish because we wanted some catfish.

Oh, another good stop.

They got frog legs there too. Some people are like, oh my goodness, are you talking about really eating frog legs? But we're stone's throw from the Mississippi River.

So frog legs are, they are a staple.

Now, as we're driving up here from where the pea body is and the flying fish, you kind of got, you're driving back towards the river. You're trying to drive an uphill. And I'm thinking about it. I'm like, we're going uphill, but we're going back toward the river. And usually you would be going downhill. And I was wondering if the distillery is on part of the old levee system here.

Um, I don't know if we are on the old levee system. Uh, I just know because we're on that bluff and it, which is great because it helps break up all the really bad weather. Um, But yeah, Memphis is, we are the bluff city for a reason. We've got, is it four or five bluffs? So that's why it is a little weird because we are a pretty flat city, except when you're driving downtown towards the river.

You just drive up this little hill and it is kind of, it's a little awkward feeling.

It is.

Because you know, this is not supposed to be happening. I'm supposed to be going downhill, but I just thought that was a neat thing. Well, to kind of finish up this half, this right here, this whiskey, not any hug to it, just a little spice. Is that because you guys are using a sweet mash?

That's exactly why. And I like that because for me, the wheat whiskey category is kind of a nice introductory whiskey. You know, bourbons can be really bold. They can be really in your face. If your palate's not accustomed to them, you may decide you don't like whiskey in general because you've had only bourbon in it just as a kick in the mouth. Whereas a wheat whiskey, it's so light. It does have that sweetness to it. It doesn't burn as it goes down typically. It can be a great way to introduce people to just the overall whiskey category and maybe, maybe if they grow to like it, maybe we can get them to come over to the bourbon world.

Well, hopefully that, you know, that is always the hope, right? That people will buy more whiskey, buy more bourbon, buy more, buy more anything. It's with craft spirits, craft distilleries, kind of buy local is what we want them to

That's exactly what it is. We've seen that movement for breweries for years now. Everyone wants to support their local brewery. Well, we're starting to get enough distilleries that people can start supporting local by buying local spirits.

Well, a great wheat whiskey to drink if you're looking for a different wheat whiskey on the shelf. It's got a stunning bottle. I really love it. It's hard not to love it. But when we come back on a second half, we'll get into another expression. We'll talk about the future. We've covered pretty much everything from a kid up to now, right, with you. So we'll get into what you got planned as a kind of an evil scientist. Well folks, we brought up Seldom Seen Farms their maple bourbon syrup. It's aged in bourbon barrels. You can find it at a couple different distilleries across America. If you see it, you want to buy it, you can buy it on their website. It's fixing to be that maple time of year though. January through March is when they harvest it. This is the perfect time to buy a bottle as a gift if you got that bourbon drinker out there that just loves everything bourbon. You can get a bottle of that. Maybe even from his favorite distillery and stuff. Leapers Forks about to have some. New Rifts about to have some. But you can go to their website, buy it. They've got 2,000 sugar maple trees up there. It takes 50 gallons of that sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. What happens, these distilleries will send them three or four barrels. They'll pour that maple syrup in there, let it age six to nine months, pour it out, bottle it, ship it back to the distillery. You can buy it from them. And then sometimes they'll ship them barrels back and they'll pour bourbon back in there and make you a nice bourbon, maple flavored bourbon or whiskey, which is pretty nice when you think about it. But you can use this syrup for other types of uses besides putting on pancakes and waffles like this. I like to carry mine into Waffle House or I hop. I don't like their syrup. I like the stuff that has bourbon in it so it tastes a little bit better. But you can use it in your cocktails as an old-fashioned instead of using regular syrup. Use it in that old-fashioned, that Manhattan. Or you can make a bourbon glaze with it to put on barbecue or any type of pork, chicken, beef, venison like I love. Great uses. Small business is what I'm talking about. A guy that truly loves his craft. You could put this as a coffee sweetener too. You pour it over ice cream even if you want it. If you want a little bourbon in your ice cream, a little bit of maple syrup, it's perfect for that. So check out seldom seen farms today. Buy some bottles. Support local business. Support small business. That's what you're all about. Help this guy out. We appreciate it. Alex, we are back and you got a second expression for us. What do you got?

So this is our blend of straight whiskeys. It's still from the Hewling Station line. And this is this is what we call our blue label. So if you've ever seen our lineup, we've got the red label bourbon, the gray label whiskey, wheat whiskey. And then the blue label is a blend of straight whiskies. And it is a 50-50 blend of the high rye bourbon and the wheat whiskey that we just tried. And we bottled it at 100 proof.

So a little bit higher.

A little bit higher. And again, just kind of through taste test, that's where this blend really performed best. The 50-50 allowed for both flavor profiles to be present. We didn't want it to just be a slightly different version of our high rye bourbon. Or a slightly different version of the wheat whiskey. We really wanted something that was unique. Um, and somehow you're able to, I think, and I think you'll see it, you'll get some of that great high rye bourbon characteristic, but some of the wheat that we just tried, you're going to be able to pick up on it as well.

A little bit more subtle of a nose on this one. Not on that floral notes or not. There's much, I can still smell a little bit of that floral notes. I'm gonna get a little bit of vanilla in this one more than I was before.

Yep. From the bourbon.

Beautiful no, so a Little bit more drying I think yes. Yeah a little sweeter because of that bourbon probably A nice whiskey, nice balance too. And it doesn't drink like a hundred proof or it's not hot or nothing.

No, it does not drink like 100 proof at all, which is kind of why I like it. It works in cocktails and the complexity of having those two mash bills makes for a really good cocktail. And that higher proof means you can still taste it.

Yeah, I think that would be off-putting to some people that they're on the fence about whiskeys and they're thinking, well, I'm a wine drinker, I'm a beer drinker, and you give them a shot of bourbon that's a high rye and that rye just hits them with all the spice and everything, almost like a stag, you know, or something like that. Yes. Some people can't take that powerful something. They can't take the sour mash either. Yup. But the sweet mash, now you're doing sweet mash for the bourbon also, right?

Yes. Yeah.

So that's way different than wild turkey.

Yes.

Was there a reason why you went that way?

It was just kind of what was developed when it was time to work with MGP. That was really kind of the option. But also, do things different than what they do up in Kentucky. Let them do their thing. Let them have their thing. We're going to do our thing.

That's what you've got to love, though. We always talk about the back craft stories. If I wanted bourbon, right? If I want Kentucky Street bourbon, I'm going to go to Kentucky and get Kentucky Street bourbon. But, you know, if you're a foodie or you like different things, like different types of wines, then you're probably going to like different types of whiskeys.

100%. There's a reason there are how many different brands, like you go to a liquor store, how many different bourbons are out there now? And I know some of the brands all have the same mash bill, but How many are there? And we have that many for a reason. It's because people are starting to realize that, yeah, I can have my go-to. I can make sure I always have Wild Turkey 101. But I don't always want to drink Wild Turkey 101. I want to have a different whiskey each night.

Yeah, let's say, and listeners, I might be wrong, but there's 2,800 craft distilleries or distilleries in America, and each one of those at least produces two. That's a lot of whiskey. Over 5,000 different brands, right? That's a ton of whiskey.

Because you've got to think, if you make two different mash bills, that's not just two different products to put on the shelf.

That's even double that or even triple that. You can go more.

Because again, back to Wild Turkey, they had two mashbills. They had a bourbon mashbill and they had a rye whiskey mashbill. How many different skews does Wild Turkey have? because you've got the 101s, you got the 80s, but then you've got Russell's Reserve, and there's a couple different releases in Russell's. You have the, and they may not make all these anymore, but you had Kentucky Spirit, you had American Spirit, Rare Breed, of course you have the Masters.

There's a lot of different skates, but I'd say 10 to 12 just from- From two Mashbills. Yeah.

and they go into the barrel, all of them go into the barrel with the same proof as well. So not a whole lot of variety on the front end, and yet you're able to yield all of that variety on the back end. So back to your point, if every craft distiller in America did two mash bills, multiply that by anywhere from six to 10.

And what I'd like people to know is when they open that bottle at first and they're like, oh, I don't like this. And I'm like, you don't like it because you're trying to compare it side by side with like, well, Turkey 101. Don't do that. Stick with that bottle, let it open up, let it breathe a little bit. And then also stick with it for a little bit and introduce your palate. I bet you the first time you ate a strawberry as a kid, you're like, oh, I don't like that.

Exactly. Stick with it. Go back to it multiple times. Maybe you were drinking it with a food that just did not work with it. But absolutely, when trying a new whiskey, do not compare it. Don't sit there and intentionally compare it to something else that you've had, especially if it's one of the big brands. You need to look at it. as its own thing, let it be its own thing and try to appreciate it that way as opposed to just always wanting to compare it to, you know, it's not makers, it's not Pappy, it's not, don't. It's not supposed to be those things.

Well, if they wanted that, go buy that. Exactly. You're buying it because, number one, you like the small business concept, right? It's kind of what America's about, is that small business concept. But you might just run into something that's just going to blow your mind and say, okay, there's something special in this bottle and there's a reason that I love it. Um, and my palettes loving it and I've drank the whole bottle. Now I go back and buy another bottle of it. Um, it's just amazing to me. You guys are also doing a lot of experiments too though.

We do. We do a lot of distillery-only products. And we keep them that way, at least for right now, because it does give us the freedom to do some variety. Because we, in Tennessee, we're allowed to serve cocktails at our distilleries. But we have to make every drop of alcohol that goes into that cocktail. So we actually produce for our bar absinthe and for net and a Campari-like spirit. aquavie, orange carousel. We produce all of that here. So we kind of have that R&D line going. You can't buy it, you just have to order cocktails. But kind of alongside of that line, we also have our R&D line that is available in our gift shop. And we started that line back in 2018, I think, was the first release. And we released two gins under that line. And it's grown since then. We've done a barrel rusted gin. We've done a coffee infused vodka in that line. And then in 2019, it was late 2019, I started working with a brewery here in Memphis called Meddlesome Brewing. And they took, I don't know, like a dozen barrels from us and did five different beers in those barrels. And they had fun with it. They went crazy and did a barrel of one beer. One of them was Red Hot Candies. It had Red Hot Candies in it, like 50 pounds of Red Hot Candies. They did another one that was an oatmeal raisin cookie beer. Just this whole thing. They had so much fun, which is what I love to see. Well, then they asked, do you want the barrels back? I don't know. Maybe. Let's see how the beer turns out. So I go and try the beer. The beer is fantastic. So we took two of the barrels back. Then the first one to be released was our All the Cookies Bourbon. It was released in February of 2020, so right in time for the lockdown. But that was the start of the really fun part of that product line. And so this year, we really got to enjoy it a little bit more since we've been open, released Devil's Water Bourbon. So Devil's Water was a beer that Metalsun produced. And that one was fine. It was very smoky, almost Scotch-like characteristic to the bourbon. And then after that was our Hipster Barista Bourbon, which they did a coffee infused chocolate stout. And the reason we took that barrel back is because our bourbon does have a tendency to have dark chocolate notes. So I thought it would pair really, really nicely with that beer. So that came out earlier this year. And then at the beginning of November, we released our most popular release to date. And that was the second version of All the Cookies Bourbon. And for people listening, I promise you, if you like oatmeal raisin cookies, this bourbon was for you because it was oatmeal raisin cookie in liquid form.

Oh man, I didn't get any. I'm going to have to ask somebody for a sample of it or something.

Yeah. So the hipster barista sold out in three weeks and that blew my mind. I thought that was fantastic. And so then we do all the cookies and we actually were not typically open on Wednesdays and we opened up on a Wednesday night to do the release. And I think we opened at like four o'clock and by 4.35 o'clock the following day we were sold out and we did 495 bottles. So we sold all of that in 25 hours.

For a craft distillery, that's, that's a lot of whiskey.

That was amazing. I couldn't believe that it sold that fast. Unfortunately, people have to wait till next year for a little free 75 bottle. Yeah. So for the R and D line, we try to just keep it to the three seven fives. largely because our batches are so small, especially ones where we're partnering with a brewery, they literally only do one barrel worth. So I can't increase that. And so by doing the pints, more people are able to get their hands on it.

And what's some experimental bottle costs for people?

So we try to keep the retail on those at $30. Wow. Really?

Yep. So you're beating everybody else out across America that are selling those 375 special bottles for 50 plus.

You know, I want people to be able to afford it across the board and also hopefully be at a price point where they're not afraid to crack it open. You spend too much on a bottle. You're really hesitant to open it and really enjoy it. This product line is fun for me to make.

Are you not supposed to open bottles?

I want it to be fun to open it. But you know, they're like, well, I'll never be able to get it again. I paid $80 for it. I don't want that thought to even occur to anyone. I want it to be like, well, you know what? It was only $30. Crack that thing open. Enjoy it.

Well, I always tell our listeners this, is this year I've been lucky to get some great bottles. I got a Four Roses limited edition. I ended up with a birthday bourbon from this year. Oh, nice. A couple other great bottles and I've opened them. And I've shared them with people. I don't think there's but a quarter of that birthday bourbon left. I actually left at a distillery overnight, told the employees there. I said, hey, just go ahead and taste it if you want it. They were like, can we taste it? And I was like, yeah, go ahead. I don't care. It's just, it is just a whiskey. It's not an art object. It's not meant to be on a shelf. You're a distiller. Tell me what you think about people either mixing your whiskey, or opening it? Or would you rather just let it be on a shelf?

I don't leave it on the shelf. That's not what it was made for. I don't care how much you paid for it. Whoever made it, it was made to be consumed. So enjoy it. Whiskey is about sharing. So you said you open it and you share them. That's exactly what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to enjoy it. And if the way you enjoy my product is mixing it with something, I don't care. If you're getting enjoyment out of it, then more power to you.

Come buy another bottle, right?

I'm fine with that. Absolutely.

Yeah, because at the end point, it is a business, right? And, you know, if nobody was buying your whiskey, I'm sure you still would not be working here.

No. No, if I didn't sell a single bottle, my butt would have been on the street three years ago.

You'd have been back, probably working a wild turkey. Probably. Living in Baghdad, Kentucky. Well, heck, I mean, it sounds like you got it going on here. What's the next big thing for you guys?

It will be our biggest release to date. In 2022, we release our first Memphis produced Old Dominic whiskey. It finally is of age and so our Tennessee whiskey will finally be coming out the second half of 2022.

How old is it going to be?

So it'll end up being a blend of four and five year. The reason originally we were going to do it four year now in hindsight because the pandemic, I'm glad we decided not to do it. But we actually had to shut production down for about a whole year because we ran out of warehouse space. And so to help bridge that production gap, we decided to delay the release from 2021 to 2022. And in the end, I think it'll be better to be able to have that five year in there with the four year, give it a little bit more body, a little more oomph.

Now, will that end the old the healing station liner?

So right now, the healing station line is going to going to live on on its own. You know, marketing still trying to figure out how how we're going to handle basically two brands. So they're they're working on that. But basically, you will have your healing station line of products. And right next to it will be the old Dominic line of products.

Well, hopefully, hopefully you'll remember us, The Bourbon Road, and we'll be one of the first podcasts or social media influencers out there with a bottle of it so we can review it, let listeners know exactly what our thoughts on it are, because you know how we do it, right? Absolutely. We try to pay the utmost respect to every brand we work with, but we'd love to get a bottle of it. Hats off to you for sticking with it that 40 years not putting it out at two not putting out a three Waiting until it's right and you think it's right this next year.

I do I think it's it's come along incredibly well, and I'm just I'm fortunate to have owners who I Said very early on you know they didn't know me that well. I said very early on I We're not releasing this before it's four. Like, at least mentally, that's what we're going to do. If it is amazing at three years, then we'll release it at three. But let's just go ahead and set the expectation that it's not going to be good until four.

Well, he's up there pinching his pennies. He won't even hire a receptionist. He's got him working the front desk trying to save money waiting for that release.

We're pinching pennies because we've got to put all those pennies towards the custom bottle and the custom cork. Freight costs right now are insane. So we're trying to put together this new product, this biggest product for us, and we're dealing with all of these freight increases and price increases. It's a lot of fun right now.

I can't wait to see the label on this thing.

We haven't shown it to anyone outside of the team, but our creative director, he's been with us for I think almost three years now. He's the one who actually designed our gin label. That was his first label design he had ever done for us. And he knocked out the park with that. And so we've entrusted him with the whiskey labels and they He's absolutely nailed it the whole package. It's they they've asked me multiple times Because this will be my first real whiskey that I've done Start to finish and I go what what does it look like? What do you envision and I never could Figure it out. I was never able to tell them anything. And so he just kind of went with it and somehow managed to To get what was in my head that I couldn't I couldn't articulate and

Well, that's hard to tell other people what you have in mind without doing it yourself.

Yep. And I'm not artistic, so that was never going to happen.

Well, I'm hoping it will have a big rooster on it.

The rooster's not going away. I can tell you that. The rooster's not going away.

Well, Alex, thank you for having us in. I can't say thank you enough for letting us just kind of pop in on a Monday when you guys are closed. And you're a super busy woman. You're fixing to be up in Kentucky. We were talking about getting to see you, getting to learn about what's coming out, telling our listeners out there. firsthand of what's going to be going on. They're going to want it. I guarantee you that. So where our listeners find you on social media.

So you can follow Old Dominic on Instagram and Facebook at Old Dominic. And then you can follow me on Instagram at Memphis Distiller.

And she does answer her messages.

I do. It might take me a day or two, but I do respond to them.

And what about the distillery itself? What's the tours and stuff?

Yeah, so we do tours and tastings Thursday through Sunday. We open at noon all four days and we do tours. I think we're still doing them every hour and a half. Go on our website. You can see when the tours are. You can book your tour online. And then we also have our gift shop that's open the same hours. And we have our bar. So maybe you don't have time for a tour, but you still want to come in and see the place and try some of our product. Our bar is open Thursday through Sunday, open at noon. We close at nine o'clock on Thursdays and Sundays, but Fridays and Saturdays we're open till 10.

What if they want to get some gussets and eat it at the bar?

You are absolutely welcome to bring any food with you. We love having people bring gussets over.

Well, this has been an awesome experience. I'm sitting here looking back into really your steel house, watching one of your steels run right now.

We're making some Tennessee whiskey today.

I'm watching the liquid inside just cooking away. And I'm just like, this is just amazing right here. It couldn't get much better than this. I couldn't think of a greater guest to have on. I wish you luck. I'm sure we'll cross paths several times over the next couple of years.

We better. We better cross paths.

Yeah. So listeners come by here, go to Gus's, get yourself some chicken, come in here, support this craft distillery, smart small business. You won't meet finer folks here in Tennessee. The stone's throw from the river, stone's throw from Beale Street. Stay at the Peabody, go right down to Ellis's old kicking grounds and stuff. You couldn't get much better in Tennessee if you're in the western part of the state. It's a must. So you know where you can find us at. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok now. We are the bourbon road on all those social media platforms, but main place you can find us is on Facebook. We have a private Facebook group called the Bourbon Roadies. 2,500 strong right now. Just whiskey folks that love bourbon, love whiskey. We got a couple things you gotta do to be in there. Are you 21? Because that's the rule in America. Do you like bourbon? Yeah, everybody likes bourbon, right? And do you agree to play nice? That means we don't tolerate any rudeness in there. We don't let anybody bash on anybody in there. We got some great moderators in there that will take care of that. If you drink from the bottom of the shell, 10 high whiskey like I started out with in my military career, up to the very top shelf drinking Pappy's. Hey, let people drink it. Don't bash what they're drinking. We celebrate life in there. We celebrate retirement's promotions. Congratulations on your promotion, Alex. We celebrate stuff like that in there. We even celebrate life in there when somebody passes away. We raise a glass to them and say cheers to their life. So if that's what you want to do, come and join our group. Great bunch of people. You want to find out about some whiskey. You want to get some whiskey shared with you. We don't sell it in there. You'll get kicked out of the group for doing that. But if you want to share your whiskey, come into that group. The roadies are fine folks all across the United States and the world. So come in there and join us for that. So we do two shows a week. We do a long episode like this. 30 minutes at the first half, 30 minutes the second half. That's what the common American drives to work. 30 minutes there, 30 minutes back. It'll get to work and back. Pretty awesome. And then we do a short show, 30 minutes, 15 minutes. That's our review of a craft distillery. Every once in a while we do a big boy in there, but usually it's a craft distillery. Kind of showcase some whiskeys out across America that you want to try. I would say you can guarantee if we're going to have it on the show, you're going to want to buy it. So check that out. The way you can remember about those shows is make sure you hit that subscribe button at the top of your screen. It's either a check sign, a plus sign or just subscribe to our show. That way your app tells you, hey, these two jokers got a show coming out. And then you know what I'm going to say. You need to scroll on down to the bottom of that screen. Give us that five star review because you know what's going to happen if you don't. The big bad booty daddy of bourbon is going to come over to your house and bring some of this old dominant whiskey with him. We're gonna drink it all night long. By the end of the night, you're gonna give us that five-star review. I will guarantee you that. So that opens doors to distilleries like this. Great guests like Alex on the show, provide great content for you. That's what we like to do. You can always reach out to us at our emails. It's Jim at The Bourbon Road, Mike at The Bourbon Road. Tell us if your hometown has a distillery that you would like us to go into and do an interview, a whiskey you'd like us to review. just what you're thinking. Well, you're always open to suggestions to make our podcast better, but you can always reach out to us. The best way is on Instagram. He's jshannon63. I'm Big Bourbon Chief. And you know what we say, we'll see you on down the bourbon road.