259. Limestone Branch Distillery

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.

Hey, this is Big Chief and you're listening to The Bourbon Road. You know what I love to pour in my old fashions? Is a little maple syrup. Can't be just any maple syrup. It has to be from seldom seen farms up in Ohio. He takes bourbon barrels, pours his syrup in there. and ages it for six to nine months making for some delicious just some delicious syrup that you could pour on pancakes you could pour on waffles chicken waffles like this fat guy likes but seriously you want to make a delicious cocktail with some maple syrup and not that old simple syrup check out seldomseenmaple.com pick up some stuff from there today we'd appreciate it

Hello, everybody. I'm Jim Shannon. And I'm Mike Hyatt. And this is The Bourbon Road. And today, Mike, we are actually out on the road. We are. Not far from home. This is still home. This is still home. I mean, we're just outside of downtown Louisville, Kentucky, a little place called Irish Hill.

Yeah.

Kind of it's got a little bit of history with respect to the river, doesn't it?

Yeah, a whole bunch of history up here. You know, 1937 was a nice, uh, it was a big year for America. A lot of rain. Um, matter of fact, one of the largest floods in America happened in 1937 and the story goes is that the hill we're standing on is the highest point in Louisville and all the citizens ran up this hill and stayed up here in that flood.

One hell of a party. Yeah.

You imagine all that whiskey just floating around.

Well, anyway, so we're here, we're sitting in a backyard. It's, I mean, this is something else. I mean, this is an, we've got a little, uh, uh, what do you call this place? This is now it's backyard bar, right? Yeah. Kind of this is man's land here. It's definitely, there's a wood stove out here to keep you warm though. Got a fire burning. It smells great. Got whiskey in our glass. We got two whiskey dogs here with us. Two whiskey dogs with us. But who else we got with us, Mike?

Well, you got the man, the myth, the legend. We got Stephen Fontaine from Yellowstone Distillery down in Lebanon, Kentucky.

Lebanon.

I might not say it. Did I say it right? Stephen Fontaine. Yeah, a lot of people say Fontaine. It happens a lot. Did I say Fontaine? It does. It happens a lot.

Well, heck, I don't always get it right. I apologize. And you haven't even started drinking. I haven't even started. I haven't had a drink today. That's the problem. I think that might be it. That is the problem. But from Limestone, which they got some pretty famous brands, and the brand we got in our glass is pretty famous, right? Old school. I'd like to call it.

Stephen, you want to tell us about it? Yeah, Yellowstone is one of the oldest bourbon brands on the market. It goes all the way back to 1872, and Bernard Dant was the one that created it. Bernard had this salesperson for Taylor and Williams, and Taylor and Williams was rectifier, so they didn't have stills. They were buying their juice from Cold Spring Distillery, Bernard's Distillery down in Getsemane, Kentucky. This salesperson was in Wyoming in 1872. He was riding back, of course, on horseback. You can't get back any other way in 1872. It's horseback or nothing. Walk. So it was a slow ride. It took a minute to get back to Kentucky. When he got back, he had a buzz. He said, Bernard, you gotta name a bourbon after this park out west. It's getting worldwide attention. Our first national park was being incepted, Yellowstone National Park. And so Bernard decided, you know what, let's give it a try. We'll name a bourbon Yellowstone and see how it goes. Well, it went so well that eventually changed the name of the Cold Spring Distillery to the Yellowstone Distillery. And they were selling very well. Never did come off the shelf. During Prohibition, it was sold for medicinal purposes. And so that'd be brilliant marketing by great-uncle Bernard. You see, the boys that built our distilleries were beams their whole life. The mother was a dant the whole time. The boys weren't born. They were distilled.

Yeah, there's a little bit of bourbon knowledge, a little bit of whiskey knowledge in that family, I'd say. And to be able to keep your whiskey on the shelf through prohibition, that wasn't done by too many people.

That's a true story. They didn't get a medicinal license. I believe at that point, they sold the brand to the actual stock, not the brand. Sold the stock to Brown Fullman, and then Brown Fullman bottled it medicinally for them during that time. And they took a percentage of each bottle sold, I believe is how it worked. I'm looking at this whiskey. I already took a sip.

Jim, I couldn't take it. Yeah, I'm ready. I'm ready. Cheers. Cheers. Oh, that's got a sweet nose to it though. Doesn't it? I like that. It's fresh. It's a good spring whiskey. It's feeling a little spring like out here too.

It does. Thank goodness. You get a lot of caramels, a lot of vanilla's off of these bourbons. They're higher corn content and higher corn content is the way Kentucky always made bourbon originally. We didn't grow wheat. We didn't grow rye. We grew corn. And so when first distillants in the state of Kentucky came out, they were corn whiskey. And then as it evolved, there was always higher corn contents in the early days in the bourbons, which gives bourbon, in my opinion, a lot of caramels and vanillas and marshmallows. And you get creme brulee on a lot of things. A little smoke sometimes comes off of a barrel.

It's all fun.

Now, this has rye as a flavoring grain. It is. Yeah. Mr. Beam's mash bill for Yellowstone was 75% white corn, 13% rye, the rest in malted barley. And that was of a traditional mash bill that he knew from his family history that he felt would be perfect for Yellowstone's future. And so that's what he had been doing.

Well, I get a little bit of kettle corn with peanuts on this right here. I love it. Just, you know, that caramel, it's just, they just, I don't know if they just pour that caramel in there on the corn and just pour in like a bunch of peanuts. And then it's just covered and that it cooks. And that's called Cracker Jacks, right? Yeah. Kettle corn is a little bit different. That's an old country boy thing, right? Yeah. Big old, big old pot, you know, and you, you go to like Cabela's or Bass Pro shop or Any of those stores that sells hunting and camping gear, they'll have it out front. They'll be cooking that stuff up.

Bringing everybody in. Yeah. This does have a little bit of a nutty flavor to it. I like that.

The four-year distillate that's in that gives it a little grainier taste to it, which holds up really nicely to cocktails. The seven-year distillate that's in that gives it all of those overtones of the caramels and the vanillas. It just is a nice blend of bourbon. When you're in a national brand, what are you most concerned about? Consistency. We want you in Texas buying a bottle of Yellowstone that you fell in love with. And then in New York City, when you're on vacation for something, yes, you bought a bottle of Yellowstone and it was identical to the bottle of Yellowstone you bought originally. So the biggest thing with a national brand is getting it to be consistent more than anything.

And then a brand like this, you want it to be good straight, like we're drinking it now.

Yes.

You want it to be excellent when over ice, like you're drinking it right now. Block ice. And in a cocktail as well, you want it to shine through. Yes. I think that little bit of rye lets it do that. I don't have a cocktail in my hand right now, but I can imagine.

It makes great old-fashioned.

It's got enough mouthfeel to it and spice that a cocktail wouldn't overpower it. And I think you're right, Jim, that spice right there is what you want, right? Yeah, you definitely do.

And it's 93 proof, so it's not lacking on proof. 93 is a really nice proof for a bourbon distillant. I like it because with high blood pressure, You can have two of them and not get crazy. You get all this castrank stuff all the time and you have a poor bourbon and your blood pressure's a little bit tight. Getting a little warm in the ears. Not necessarily a good thing to have two.

I think Mike and I got on that castrank train for a while. We got to the point where we had to look at each other in the eye and say, you know what, we need to spend some time in the 90s because we're going to lose respect for it, because there's a lot of respect in the 90s. There really is. There's respect in the 80s too. But when you sit there and you drink 120 proof bourbons all the time, your palate gets kind of burnt out a little bit.

It's turned into volume all the way out. When you turn the volume all the way out, what happens? Your ears start bleeding. So I mean, it's the same difference. You're turning the volume all the way out all the time and you're getting all the characteristics out of a barrel. Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes that's a bad thing. What'd you say over there? Listen to that rock and roll music, I can already tell. I don't know about that.

I might listen to more country than I do rock. Just a tad bit more. Yeah, what a great, great, great whiskey. I'm looking at the glass I'm drinking out of, Jim. This is one of our good friends, the old bourbon life, Mark Rucker's glass that you got. Good guy.

I've got the winter bourbon bash.

Yeah. Man, this guy's been all over.

I love the Glen Cairn collection.

Let's talk about you for a minute. You're from here. You're a native boy right here in Louisville, Kentucky. I am.

Born and raised in Louisville. I went to St. Rayfield and St. X. Catholic raised in background and lived in the Highlands all my life. A short stint in Lexington, Kentucky when I went up there to start a lawn care company years ago. I was living over off Tate's Creek Road on Malibu Drive. And that was an experience. I love Lexington. I love the state of Kentucky. I love Louisville. And I love the Highlands. I don't think there's any place better in the state of Kentucky than the Highlands. Always felt that way. My grandfather, he built most of the Highlands. Fonte Brothers Building and Construction. He built a guy's house that knew a little bit about wood. He built Mr. Hillerick's house of Hillerick and Brad's Big Bat Company. Peg and groove, no nails. My grandfather worked without anything electric. He worked with hammers and nails and pegs and grooves and everything that he did was all, you know... Craft. Craft. Totally craft.

That was the back of the day when men had real forearms. Yeah, you know. Like Popeye, right? Well, like that form right there. All right, Popeye. So you said you're born and bred right here, raised right here. In your family, actually, Cave Hill is not that far from here either. And I didn't know that that used to be a farm.

Yeah, that is a historian in our family is my cousin in California and he sent me some paperwork that showed that my, I think it's my fourth great-grandfather had a farm. It was called Cave Hill Farm and it is now Cave Hill Cemetery. So he's got documentation on it and I truly believe that that That was on my mother's side of the family, that that property originally was part of their family. The cooler thing was the... fifth great grandfather that was at 8th and Main that had a roadhouse that did such great game kill. Everybody came to the roadhouse there because he had better food. And from what the documents show is he was the harbor master for Sand Island, which if you know anything about Evan Williams, he was the harbor master at Sand Island. So on my mother's side of family, which she lived here her entire life without knowing she had any family relatives that had been here. She felt like an orphan almost, out of Oklahoma, peanut farmer's daughter, but the Byrd family, he researched it, and he researched it right here to Louisville, which makes total sense because everybody came down from East on the river and they stopped in Kentucky and Louisville because of the falls of the Ohio. Right. Most of them did not make the next trek. A lot of them stayed right here in Louisville for a time period. And so it looks like my mother's side of the family stayed in Louisville. So there's five generations on mom's side that have been here, and then there's three generations on my father's side. My great-grandfather was a tobacco barn builder in the state of Kentucky. He did everything peg and groove. That's where my grandfather learned his trade. And then my grandfather Leo Fonte built the Highlands. Wow. That's some great history there. Was it fun digging it all up? Oh, you know, I knew a lot about dad's side of the family because dad, you know, had grown up here and he brought my mother back here from Oklahoma because he had more of an aspiration of taking over the family business. What he didn't know is my grandfather had disbanded the building business when he When he got here out of Korea, Dad came out of the Air Force and thought he'd come back to a business and Grandpa had sold the business. He was done. He had retired.

Done, broke his heart. So at what point do you say, okay, I want to get into this whiskey business?

Well, dad owned a Delta bar and lounge, which was one of the first whiskey bars in the state of Kentucky, I think. It had a huge following, the Delta did, down on Market Street. He had three bars in the city of Louisville that he owned and managed. My mom ran the kitchens, my dad, and that's what they did when they came back to Louisville, is they went into bar business together. And so, that was always in our history. Bourbon was always on our shelf. I got pictures of my dad drinking Forester and ginger ale. High balls. Forester and ginger ale is what his drink was. So it goes back those years. Brown Foreman Corporation was a big client of mine. I was in the coffee industry for 26 years and in being there the first 16 was with John Connie and my client that did the most business volume wise was Brown Foreman. They had like, I don't know, I'm thinking 27 kitchens at Brown Foreman. That's their international headquarters down at 18th. And I'd service each one of those kitchens with coffee and a coffee truck, deliver the coffee, make sure that they had what they needed and all the different supplies that they needed in the kitchen. And then I became the key accounts manager for Brown-Fulmer Corporation when I was in sales. And that was always one of my key accounts. And when I left there, I went to work for another company for a short time as a non-compete. And I came back to work for another coffee company called Consumers Choice. The very first day that I'm there, well, you're going to be the key accounts manager for Brown-Fulmer Corporation.

Surprise, surprise. Yeah.

And so I went and got to be back on campus again down there. So I knew that I'd like to be in the bourbon industry. Even being in the coffee business, I knew that bourbon would be a fun gig to have. I just didn't know how I'd get there. It requires a master's degree to work for Brown Foreman. You're not going to get in on Brown Forman unless you have an education background that has a master's degree in it. Oh, sure. OK. So that looked like a very far thing for me, being out of high school, working straight out of high school. And Stephen Beam came, and he and I had known each other since I was about seven years old. He was my brother's friend. My older brother, Leo, went to Trinity High School with Steve Beam. And one day I had a call I was making. I had developed an iced tea program. I worked the tea division for John Connie Coffee Company, and became the tea sommelier on staff. for John Connie and ported all the teas from all over the world and I developed a con-tea ice tea program that went real well all over the nation. And so I was the national sales manager for con-tea ice tea. Steve Beam thought I was coming in to sell him some coffee at a pizza restaurant. It wasn't quite what I had in mind. I came in and I sold him an iced tea program with sweet and unsweet fresh brewed iced tea and by the gallon so that when they bought a pizza they could buy a gallon iced tea delivered to their house. And it took off better than he had expected. And his brother came on board. His brother had a Baranos also. And they're the largest franchisee of Baranos. They have more of the Baranos franchises than anybody else. The Bean Boys do. A lot of people don't realize that, but if you come to Kentucky and you want the best pizza in Kentucky, you need to go get a Mama Baranos Pestle over at Preston Highway, Paul Beams Restaurant. You'd love me some Baranos. Oh my gosh, it's so good. And it's a brick oven at Baranos Preston Highway. And the majority of the, I don't think any other Baranos has a brick oven. So the crispy crust mama Baranos special could be had where? Paul Beame's restaurant on Preston.

So at some point he convinced you, you need to join in on this, on this distillery, right?

Actually, I think I pestered the heck out of him and to the point where he said, Oh geez, I'll just give you a job. Just come aboard. I think that's pretty much how it was, because I asked him like seven times. On the seventh time, I told him I was unemployed because I'd been downsized out of the coffee industry. And he said, well, I don't know anybody better to take us to market than you, so come aboard.

And pretty close to it. What do you say we have another pour here? You've got some rye whiskey for us. It's one of the sleepers

in our distillery that most people may not have experienced, but once they've experienced it, it becomes their favorite thing that we produce. There's 50,000 or so visitors that come through our distillery each year, and they pay their money to go on a tour. They get a tasting at the end of the tour, and then they go buy a minor case rye. And my point to all the liquor stores that come through to buy single barrels is, if you taste this with your clients, they will buy. It is the fastest selling item we have in our distillery gift shop. Now this particular rye is a sherry cask finished rye. Now what is a rye whiskey? If you've got to be 51% corn to be bourbon, what do you have to be to be rye? 51% rye, right? That is correct. Now, if you want to mess with somebody's mind that's a bourbon drinker, what are you going to put out for your rye whiskey? 51% right. Yeah, you better put some corn in there, too.

51% right. Yeah. You're going to be right on that cusp, aren't you?

Yeah. Because that's an introductory right. That's a rye whiskey that's going to be different than anything else that they experience because a bunch of rye is on the market. But if they're at higher rye contents, 70%, 80%, the rye contents on the majority of those rye whiskies are way high. This is 51% rye. So if you just added just a little bit more corn to this mix, you'd be a bourbon distillate. So, therefore, he finishes it in a cream sherry cask. It just happens to be Meyer's Winery cream sherry, and that's the oldest operating winery in Ohio. It was John F. Kennedy's favorite cream sherry. He served it after every White House dinner, after every state meal. There was Meyer's 44 cream sherry at the White House being poured. So he took those casks and he finished his 51% rye in those casks, giving it a fruit nose with a fruit finish. It makes the best damn Manhattans. We put it on all of our advertising. If you do a Manhattan with a minor case rye, you can whisper sweet vermouth over the top of it and just put some Luxardo cherries in there and be done. Sounds great to me. Let's just check it out. Cheers. Cheers. And at 90 proof, it's, it's not overpowering.

It's a very nice, very floral, very, um, um, again, like the, uh, Yellowstone Select is very refreshing. Uh, it's got, uh, it's not deep. It's not dark. It's not heavy. It's light. It's very floral. What do you get, Mike?

I already drank it. I get it's, it's chewy. The spice, uh, It doesn't attack your tongue. It attacks the top of your mouth on this right here. Really, maybe that's because it's 51% rye. It is a spicy, spicy rye. And that's why it works in that Manhattan, I think.

It does a good job in a Manhattan. Not to say that I've had many of them, but I have.

It's got a little bit of a secondary sweetness, almost like a syrup sweetness. It's almost like it's got a little bit of simple syrup in it or a little bit of something because it kind of washes on the back of the tongue, gives you that nice little sweet kick.

Like I said, it's kind of, it is chewy to me, which to me for a rye is good. You know, like you said, if you're going to be a bourbon drinker, you're going to drink a little bit of rye, you want to get as close to that bourbon as possible for bourbon drinkers, right?

Well, it's a different, it's a different scenario than most. I've tasted some rye whiskies that are very grassy in nature and the minty kind of flavor. And I don't get that out of this rye. I get spice. I get just wonderful. And the history is Minor Case Beam. I mean, Minor Case Beam was Stephen Paul Beam's great-great-grandfather. and Minor Case Beam made great rye whiskey. So the very first thing that Steve Beam wanted to do as a distillant was to honor his great-great-grandfather, Minor Case, which was Jim Beam's first cousin. And Minor Case had a distillery down in Gethsemane. We already talked about Bernard Dance distillery down in Gethsemane. What most people don't realize and what I couldn't put in my head until Steve Beam took me on a tour that was taking me to the old distillery sites and walking the grounds in Gethsemane to show me exactly where the distilleries were located, who they were owned by, you know, the generations of distilling in his family and then to all the grave sites of all these people, including J.W. Dant himself, which is right up the street where it was Chicago, Kentucky. There's a chapel in Chicago, Kentucky, and all the glass inside that chapel, Catholic chapel, was donated by J.W. Dant. It's written into the glass. So I got a chance to see these things and then it put together in my head. Well, both of these distilleries were within a rock's throw of each other on the same street, on the same train line. Cold Spring on one side and the old Trump distillery on the other. The old Trump distillery was Minor Case Beam's distillery. He took the branding of Minor Case Beam. It's an M, a C, and a B in the background. And he placed it right on this beautiful bottle. and he did it in porcelain with porcelain paint across the top of it and that is traditional of the old back bottles of yesteryear when you would have bought your barrel of whiskey, not your bottle of whiskey, you would have bought your barrel of whiskey and the distillery would have given you a hand-blown glass bottle with porcelain paint on the front of it.

So it's very traditional to old school Kentucky bottles. It's always nice to nod your head to the past and give credit where credit is due. I know that the, you know, the beam family tree is as wide as it is deep and the dance played a big part in that. Huge. A lot of history there. Yeah. A lot of history there. A lot of, uh, A lot of the branches of that tree, and I think if you go to the distillery at Limestone Branch, you can see some of that. They've got it on display.

You do. At Jim Beam, you see a big display of the Beam family history from their side. You come to our distillery, you see a big display of the Beam family history from this side of the family. And one of the things that Jimmy, Steve's dad, wanted to see was a tree. in the entrance would have been a tree with all the branches of the family dance on one side of the tree, beams on the other side of the tree, all the distillery names on the branches, and then the leaves would have been all the brands that they created. So that would be an impactful look at just how much the two families have influenced the bourbon industry in America. would have been incredible, but that would have been a lot to put together. Never happened, but if it ever did happen, that would be an impactful sight to see a tree with all those brands.

And it's still ever expanding today, you know? You always run across somebody that... either works at a distillery or they're starting a distillery, and they still have that lineage to the Beam or the Dant family.

Craig Beam's in a distillery down in western Kentucky right now. I just spoke with him at his mama's passing. Stepmother just passed away. Parker's wife, Linda Beam. And yeah, I'm looking forward to taking Stephen going down there and seeing his distillery and what he's doing down there. So there's more than one Beam in the distilling industry right now, I know.

So let me ask you this. Uh, so the distillery limestone branch distillery is situated in, um, Lebanon, Kentucky. It is, uh, which is kind of, uh, dead center state of Kentucky dead center, but kind of, you know, certainly south of Louisville and it's almost a no man's land down there near Campbell's Ville and, uh, Springfield and what's God's town is a little bit of minutes from Varshtown.

Right. Beautiful road to it stuff.

It's kind of like Loretto where Maker's Market is not too far away, right? It is.

Listeners, Jim almost got attacked by a squirrel.

He was flying around. He jumped right next to him. That was pretty cool. So I like to take, if you drive an hour and 20 minutes a day to go to work, Some days you just don't want to see the same thing you see every day. So you take a different route. I take a different route quite frequently. I like to go to Boston, Kentucky and get off at the Boston exit off I-65 headed toward Nashville. I'm going to go past the Booker No plant. And what happens when you go past the Booker No plant? I don't care what you're doing, you're going to smell mash. If it's a rainy day and you've got the air conditioning on in the car, you're still going to smell the mash as you pass the Booker No plant. It's an amazing amount of liquor that they're producing out of that facility and you're going to smell the mash. And I love that smell as a Kentucky boy. And then I want to head up toward Makers Mart. and I'm gonna slip past Maker's Mark and I'm gonna head over, actually before that, I'm gonna hit Heaven Hill. I'm gonna go on past Barton's, so Boston to Barton's and downtown Bardstown, then past Heaven Hill and then past Willett and then on up into Loretta and then past Maker's Mark and by the time I get to my distillery in Lebanon, Kentucky, I'll have passed all these big major distilleries and it's just incredible. That's a beautiful drive. It is a gorgeous drive. That's a gorgeous drive. You gotta be on it. You gotta be paying attention. You're not on a cell phone. You're not playing any games. You're watching what you're doing because it's curvy roads. But, uh, Louie's got his head out the window. He's looking at all the cat, my dog Louie, he's looking at all the cows and I'm just driving.

Now see, when we go, we're heading out from like where bullets at, right? So we're heading south out of Shelby County. Then we're going out past, uh, Taylor's field lake. We go out past the. Yeah. And then down that way.

Do you pass the Bullet Distillery? Do you pass the Netheray Distillery over there? Jephthah Creed? Jephthah Creed. Do you pass those?

Yep, we pass those. And then we're heading down and then you've got the Heaven Hills new rick houses, they're popping up there. Beautiful. And what's the name of that little town?

Cox's Creek. Yeah. So go through there. Massive barrel houses that you pass.

You can't hardly drive a country road in Kentucky without seeing a Rick house, can you? That or tobacco barns. One or the other.

True story. One or the other. I guess there's hemp hanging in those houses and the bars now though, right? More hemp than the good kind of hemp. I guess so.

All right, fellas. Well, what do you say we take a short break when we come back? You've got some single barrel pours.

Yeah, some single barrel pours. Pocket whiskey. That's what Bernie Lubbers always says. Pocket whiskey is pocket whiskey, son.

Everybody needs pocket whiskey. I agree. We'll be right back. Man, Jim, you know what I've really been enjoying lately? Oh, you're going to tell me. some of that seldom seen farms maple syrup that's been aged in bourbon barrels. It is absolutely delicious. Not only in a cocktail, but you can cook with it, right?

You can, you absolutely can. Now Mike, Kevin just sent me a new shipment. So I got a little bit more and I've been making some beef jerky lately. Really? Yeah. Now I know you're the meat master, but I tried my hand at it. I said, you know, I want to make some beef jerky and I've got a pretty decent beef jerky recipe and it's got a little bit of soy sauce, a little bit of Worcestershire, a little bit of, you know, onion powder, garlic powder, those kinds of things. But I always put brown sugar in it. Well, this time Kevin sent me a bottle of his granulated maple sugar. Wow. And I decided that I was going to substitute the maple sugar for the brown sugar. Oh, game changer. Let me tell you. Total game changer. Total game changer. Some of the best beef jerky you've ever had. So I'm going to make another batch here in about a week and I'll be sure to get you some.

Man, that sounds delicious. Vivian took and we just got an air fryer like most people got these days, right? And she took and soaked fresh pineapple in that maple syrup and then put it in the air fryer and it kind of crisp up a little bit. Sounds good. It was just magically delicious. And people probably wonder why we love it so much. Kevin competed in the Maple Festival last year, 2021, and he was named grand champion. That's saying something.

So Stalem seemed farms. grand champion of the 2021 Maple Syrup Festival.

Yeah. Wow. That's saying something. Yeah. You're going up against some heavy hitters in Maple Syrup. And I know we're talking about just the syrup, but that's something to be proud of. Hats off to you, Kevin, for winning that. Kevin's also competing in a couple other competitions. Make sure you check out his website. Check out his social media on Instagram and Facebook. You won't be disappointed. If you want to buy something, From him. Where can they go, Jim?

You can go to seldom seen maple.com and Kevin and his crew. They've got a great website, very easy to navigate. They've got all their products on there. You can buy their maple syrup by the bottle. You can buy it by the case. Uh, you can buy that sugar.

oh my goodness mike that stuff is so good and they've got some other gift sets there too so you definitely want to check it out well he's also going to be in some distilleries pretty shortly here some distilleries from that i love that i know you love he's going to be down leapers fork you could find a syrup down there aged in their barrels Trudy Oak down in Dripping Springs, Texas. I was just out there. His syrup's going to be there. Awesome. And at Garrison Brothers in Texas, if you think you love some maple syrup, make sure you go to Garrison Brothers and pick up a bottle from them also. Kevin appreciated, I know he loves people. You're supporting a local farmer, a local product, a small family. This is no factory place that's putting out maple syrup, right Jim? This is a good man, do a good work. Yeah, gotta love it. Well, make sure you check out his site. Like Jim said, seldom seen maple.com. Pick up a bottle today. All right, listeners, we are back. We got the man, the myth, the legend, like I said before, um, as Southern as can be, Stephen Fonte on our show from limestone distillery. You know, they're whiskey Yellowstone, minor case. Um, you might've even seen it on a show lately, Jim. I don't watch that show, but I know you do. Shame on you. Shame on you. You're hooked. I am hooked 100%.

Steven, what am I talking about? Well, you're talking about Kevin Costner on that show, Yellowstone. It's pretty incredible. I guarantee you that if you watch one episode, you will sit through the second one and the third one. And he'll binge that thing. It's tough not to just binge it because it just sucks you in. It is such a great show. It truly is.

And then they'll take you to a new show and a new show and a new show and new show. Yes. Well, to me it's neat because the creator of that show went to high school at the same high school I did.

That is awesome. I did so that.

So a couple years younger than I am, but to see somebody come out of a kind of a poor Texas town and make it big in life and bring stuff back to Texas because he's given back to Texas now. He bought the Four Sixes Ranch, one of the largest ranches in the United States. And I'm talking about Taylor Sheridan as the creator of Yellowstone and the Now he's going to have the four sixes 1863 on a Paramount channel. But you're right. Almost every episode, Jim, you're going to see Yellowstone whiskey in an episode.

I hadn't yet seen Yellowstone in an episode, but we do have commercial in front of it that makes it apparent that that should be what they're drinking in the show.

One of the episodes I can remember him pulling off, I was like, bam, there it is right there. There you go. And I was wondering if in 1863, you know, when they're in a saloon drinking, if you would see or what is it 1863 or 1893, 1883, 1883, what whiskeys they're pulling off the shelves to drink. And if I would have seen one of those up there at that time.

That's what they should be pouring, for sure. The things that are accurate to the old days. But it's a little newer era on that show. It's not all the way back. They got choppers, they got helicopters. Dutton Ranch is a little bit newer era. But yeah, Yellowstone would fit it no matter where. which direction that they'd started in the old days or the new days. In the old days, it would have been a porcelain bottle like the Minor Case Rye would have been a Yellowstone bottle painted in porcelain paint on a back bottle. We've got some of those in our history center there at the distillery. So when you come to the distillery, you get a chance to see some of that old school stuff that was from yesteryear, back when it was first incepted.

I always like to see, you know, whiskeys and shows like that and stuff. And you're definitely, like you said, your commercials are definitely right there. My wife always points it out. She's like, look, they placed the commercial. I was like, yeah, of course they did. Perfect placement, right? With a perfect show.

The first regional, you know, you can, with cable, you can place a commercial regionally and it doesn't cost you a ton of money to do that. And, They did a test market on it in front of the show. They created the commercial and did a test market. We ran out of glass. Literally, it ran us out of glass. And then the president of Luxco Corporation, David Bratchett, said, we're not going to run out of glass again. So they bought them. bunch of glass for the product line and then we went to a national commercial and that has really been impactful for the brand. I believe that right now we are the fastest growing bourbon brand in the United States. Wow. We're up 144% from last year and so Yeah, the show's done incredible things for us. The bourbon that Steve Beam has done has done incredible things for us. You put the two of those together and you got lightning. And it's hard to create lightning when it happens. It's just special.

Yeah, you've got the right time, right place, right everything. The right show that is hugely popular. You got their people's attention. They don't want to miss a second of it. You've got a great whiskey, so put the two together, you're going to sell just a little bit.

Enough to run out of glass. Well, speaking of lightning, what have we got in our glass here?

We've got a single barrel. I like to say that I've had many. jobs, any missions. I go missions. Missions at the distillery. When you're a craft distillery, you got a certain amount of people, you got a lot of missions. You got to wear several hats. And in this particular mission, I am tasting single barrels with potential clients frequently. So I sit down with a potential client and I try to explain to them that castrank is not always the way to go. So many of the bourbon groups and aficionados are all about the castrank, castrank, castrank. They come to the distillery, they want castrank. Well, in my program, we taste them at 102 proof, 109 proof, and 115 proof on the same barrel. and we want them to pick the proof that it's the best tasting at. And what you will find out is sometimes a barrel of whiskey will taste great at 102, not so great at 109, and even better at 115. And then the next section of it, you're tasting a 115 that's extraordinary, the 109 wasn't anything, and the 102 was weak and watery. So when you get that epiphany, When that moment comes to you where you've tasted enough barrels in your life that you realize that proof influences the flavor characteristics of a barrel of whiskey as much as the master distiller or the barrel house manager, you realize that it haunts you. Because I've done a lot of barrel picks outside of our distillery. A lot of people ask me to come on a barrel pick, my palate. I've heard that you've got a great palate. I know that you've got a great palate. Come on this barrel pick with me. I want to pick the best thing I can pick out of this distillery. And I've picked barrels from other distilleries. And it haunts me that when I taste cast dry clicker with a dropper of water, and they tell me that it's going to be the same thing that I get when it comes to the store, I know it's not. I realize it's not. And when I provide an opportunity for a customer to taste at 102 proof, 109 proof, and 115 proof, and they say, you know what, that barrel of whiskey was extraordinary, 109 proof, then we bottle it at 109 proof. And their customers taste the exact same thing they tasted at our distillery. Yeah. So this is a hundred and nine. This is a hundred and nine. We're going to go to one 15 after this. Okay. Sounds great. And see what the difference is. Cheers. Cheers. Glen can glasses and the toys from putting all the ethanol up top. I always blow across my glass to get the better nose blows the ethanol off the top. And then you get a deeper, more scented nose.

I'm tasting it again. Yeah. I don't mess this whole web soda up. Just tasted it. That's all right. That's all right, Mike. I'm tasting it too.

I looked over and saw you doing it. So I'm going to drink too. So yeah, nice, nice, uh, um, aromatic nose, a little bit of, um, well, I'm going to say a lot of nutmeg on this one. A lot of baking spice, a little bit of, um, but like kind of a floral nose too, right? What would you get? I did get florals.

I get some, some floral, deep floral like roses though, like deep, deep red roses. Um, On the palate though, super, super sugary to me, sticking to your tongue, almost like you got a little bit of cactus burr there because that spice is biting in a little bit. Or as I've said before, Kentucky Wildcat just chewing into that tongue.

It is numbing my tongue just a little bit. I get that little bit of sizzle, a little bit of that rye sizzle in the middle of my tongue kind of numbs it a little bit. This has got a nice texture to it though. I think I'd say it's really good as far as the viscosity goes.

Yeah, this is some dangerous pocket whiskey right here.

I like to say it's got fatter legs than Rosie O'Donnell, along the high time of Michael Jordan.

You're dating yourself a little bit there.

A little bit. Rosie's lost weight since then, I know. Has she really? Yeah, I'm going to have to find a new candidate. Might be me.

So what's it typically come out of the barrel at? What's the proof that comes out of the barrel? So you're taking it to 115, 109, and what did you say, 103? 102. 102. So obviously it's coming out of the barrel always greater than 115.

Yes. It is. And then you proof it down. through an Anton PAR, it's a proofing machine, very expensive piece of equipment we have at the distillery. You take a distiller offline, that distiller goes in and proofs a 750 milliliter bottle they've pulled off of a cask, off of a barrel. and they proof it at three different proofs so that you can taste it at three different proofs on that Anton Par. And that's a lot of dedication. That's a lot of extra work that a lot of people are not willing to do at a barrel pick. We do it on a daily basis and we feel like our customers came away with a higher knowledge about how those influencers are made. and they pick better whiskey, which gives us a more favorable line in their stores, in their restaurants. Because when you drink some of this Yellowstone, which I feel that it's had excellent reviews on the single barrels, you're going to have something that has been vetted. It's been vetted by Mr. Bean. It's been vetted by myself. It's been vetted by the customers that are coming in to buy the barrel. So they've, all of us have tasted through these whiskies. When you come into a liquor store and you see a single barrel pick up there, it's probably gonna be some of the best damn whiskey you ever drank because so many people have already tasted it and put their stamp of approval on it. Much deeper than anything else that you know of.

I mean, single barrels are, Right now, in my opinion, there was a time when, you know, I feel like single barrels were taking a back seat to unicorn bottles, right? I mean, they were. So people out there hunting, you know, the hard to get bottles. And now it seems like single barrel picks are at the forefront and the chasing has decreased a little bit and people are looking more to single barrels and to picks and how to get their hands onto special bottles. And I love that. And they've found out how wonderful these bottles can be. True.

I'm going to say Westport Whiskey and Wine in Louisville, Kentucky, because Chris always has a huge amount of single-barrel picks on his floor. If he has 10 single-barrel picks on his floor, his customers are asking, where are all the picks at? And the thing that I like that he does at his particular store, is that he allows you to taste those single barrel picks. You spend a buck to do a tasting, you get your buck back if you buy the bottle. That's a pretty cool way of doing things. So you can go into a location now, and this is not only Chris's location, I'm sure others are doing this, but you can go in and you can taste through some single barrel picks and find something that you really like with a small quarter ounce pour and say, wow, I'm gonna buy that bottle. and have something unique and different than anybody else has so when they come to your house you've got something exclusive to your home that they can't get anywhere else other than that one location because it's a single barrel pick. Only 240 bottles typically come out of a pick And that's it. How much more exclusive can you get than that?

You can get some amazing whiskey, you know, that it'll just, like you said, Jim, just blows people's mind. And what a great story you're talking about, Westport Whiskey and Wine over in Westport Village in Louisville. If you come to Louisville, you're on the Bourbon Trail. Everybody always asks me, which store should I go to? I've heard of this store, I've heard of that store. I'm like, go to Westport Whiskey and Wine, let them treat you great in there. Like you said, if they only have 10. They're slacking that month. You go in the back room though, you could try almost anything on the shelf.

They've got an educational center in the back. There's a ton of great liquor stores in Kentucky that have educational facilities now and they do great jobs with their bourbon and they have lots of single barrel picks. I like Chris for his palate. He comes to my distillery, picks a barrel, and he says, oh, I don't want anything that you're chased. So why? Well, you like that smoky stuff. Anything that's got a smoky finish on it, you like that. I'm going to pick something different. And everybody's palate is different. And that's the fun thing about doing bourbon in Kentucky is you're tasting through all these different samples. And whether your palate's phenomenal or not, doesn't mean anything. It means what you like in whiskey is what you're gonna buy. And so I deal with a lot of different pallets and I deal with a lot of different people and I like to do blind tastings where it takes it out of their head what they think they might like. It completely is blind when they do a tasting at my place at Limestone. And when they come off the end of it, they've chosen it for its flavor. Just the flavor. They don't know how old it is. They don't know how long it's been in a barrel house. They don't know what rick it's from. They don't know anything about this whiskey other than zone in on the flavor. Because one thing that your customer is going to zone in on is the flavor. They might read the bottle after that, but if the flavor's incredible, they're going to love everything that you've done.

Absolutely. Well, Stephen, besides running the barrel program at Limestone, these whiskey dogs, boy, they're hyped up. But besides doing the barrel program at Limestone, you're also the brand ambassador. So you're on the road like all the time, right?

It's my primary mission is the barrel program. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, you're going to find me on the porch doing barrel picks most of the time. And on Saturdays, I'm going to be out in Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio and Indiana. That's my regional territory that I cover doing events. And then you will see me all over the United States As certain events are prioritized, they give me my mission and I just execute it wherever it is. I was on for a Las Vegas thing coming up and that was then brought back. So I'm not going to Vegas. I just got back from New Orleans. I'm going to Indiana and St. Louis, Missouri coming up. So, I get a mix of things that I do. It's not just one thing every day over and over again. I get an opportunity to spend some great time with some great people from all over the United States at the distillery. My dog is with me every day. You get a chance to meet Louie. And then I get to go out on the road, and sometimes I take Louie with me to the liquor store. When we do a tasting at a liquor store, a lot of times you'll see Louie with me with his paws crossed, hanging out. He goes pretty much everywhere I go.

You know, I'd almost say that's almost the perfect retirement job. Because most guys, when they say, hey, I'm going to retire, most people don't want to retire. They still want to work. Yes.

Now you're a young fella though.

You're not retiring yet. 55.

Yeah. You're still young fella.

I'd be pretty bored if I was retired. I guarantee it.

I've always told my wife and I told Mike the same thing. I'm like, you know, I'm not going to retire. I can't do it. I got to have something to keep me busy. But I think there'll be more fly fishing for sure.

Yeah, controlling your schedule is a wonderful thing. Being able to control your schedule. However, having a schedule is even more important. Just having a purpose to get up in the morning and go out and do. I'd be afraid I'd die.

You stop, you're gonna die. Yeah, you stop moving, you die. Keep moving. But I think, you know, that just seeing you all around, you're always on social media posting, always having fun, always with a smile. You just got that personality that people love that they gravitate towards. And I'm sure that's what Steve Beam saw in you as a friend was, man, look at this guy. You know, we spread into you the other day at the stave over in, I guess, Frankfurt, really. It's not Frankfurt, though. That down there is not Frankfurt. It's not. It's Millville, right? Millville. Yeah. We're taking our wives to eat after we did an episode over at Castle & Key, and we bumped into you. And heck, you're smiling away. Smiling away. And you actually bought us a drink. I can't thank you enough. Two special pours and stuff. Absolutely. Came by and said hi to our wives.

The Stave has been a very significant, good client since the beginning. They embraced us from the very beginning and I gave them a personal tour And I do that on occasion, and I'm coming up again on another one for those guys. They're going to get on a bus with me, and we're going to take them to Independence Stave. We're going to show them how they make the barrels, how they tear the barrels apart, how they fire the barrels. Hardest working job in the bourbon industry is Cooper. And they're going to go there first, and then we're going to visit Limestone Branch Distillery after that. And they're going to get an opportunity to see how pot stills are run. different than the column stills, different than the perpetual stills. They're gonna get to see how craft distilling works and their entire staff is gonna come back to the stave with a deeper knowledge of bourbon than the majority of the restaurants in the state of Kentucky. and they have asked me to do this tour for the second time. They said, you know, COVID really hit us hard. We were able to keep the doors open on the place, but you know, we've had a total staff turnover and we'd really like for this new staff to have the same experience that the old staff has to bring them up to the knowledge that you gave our original staff. So we're getting ready to do that coming up. Another mission on my mission list.

Mike, I finished my glass. I know you got drops left to drop. But it's always great when you empty your glass to go back and nose the empty glass, because you really get the aromas when you do that. And man, it's just, it's a caramel bomb. It really is.

So you're a bourbon educator. You're a brand ambassador. you're the barrel picker king for limestone distillery. Friends with the president there. Man, Jim, he's got a perfect job, I think. I think he does. And he gets to travel around with your dog.

Yes, that's a key ingredient to the whole thing is being able to have Louie with me.

So you're going to show us something that was good at 103 or 115? 115. 115.

It's not cast strike. It's close to cast strike. Let's taste that one next.

Let's do it. So this glass has the 115 in it. It does. And this is the high end of your proofing scale. And it's always at one of those three, 102, 109 or 150.

For single barrels. That's where we put it at. Yeah.

I just had some dribble done down my mustache by accident. I tipped it up a little bit too much.

Does that ever happen to you, Steven? All the time. So this one's got that same nice sweetness on the nose.

Yeah, this, this has to me more of a serial note to it for some reason. Uh, a deep cabin crunch. Exactly.

Crunch spot on.

Yeah. Um, that serial notes coming out to me with the crunch berries. I don't know. Watch your gums, boys. That's a cereal you can drink the milk after with right there.

Oh yeah. Did you talk one day about making ice cream out of that?

Yeah, there's actually a company out there now that makes ice cream out of cereal milk, like Fruity Pebbles. That is so good.

We just went up. from 109 proof to 115 proof. And if I'm not mistaken, it's smoother. Oh yeah. It's easier. It is captain crunching a glass. Yeah. I'm thinking it is.

Yeah. There's a, there's a little bit more of a wow factor on the flavor pal there. It's got a lot more flavor. The Captain Crunch, man, it's been a minute since I had Captain Crunch. That has to be too. I'm struggling just a little bit with that note. But I remember it.

I do remember it because I had a lot of it as a kid.

Now Charlie, Charlie the whiskey dog had jumped up here beside me and he's trying to get some whiskey. I don't know if he'd like that too much. He just knows I'm a dog guy.

He probably smells Woodrow on you. Yeah, yeah. We got a whiskey dog. Well, Mike's got a whiskey. I say we do, but he's the show's whiskey dog.

And, uh, Mike's probably got a smell all over him. Just a little bit, just a little bit. This whole change over from days and nights to back to days is messy bump a little bit. I think he's, uh, he's like, this is weird.

So he Woodrow matches your hours.

Yeah, he kind of does. I think that's the job of a dog, right? Match his owner's hours. He sleeps all day and he waits at the door when I get home and he's ready. He's ready. Yeah.

That's a, that's a fantastic whiskey here now. I'm not trying to grade them or anything, but I do like the 115 just a little bit better, but it's not because of the increased proof. Today. Today, yeah. That's the point. I think that the profile on this particular bottle, this particular single barrel, is to my liking, a little bit more than the other one.

Now, are these still in the barrel, or are these just some samples you took and said, okay, I'm going to take these?

They were samples from things that weren't chosen. These were the leftovers of things that weren't chosen. So you can imagine what was chosen. Sure. So when a barrel's not chosen, does it go for another round? It does. It does. It'll go back into the mix for the next barrel pick, because what one person likes is not necessarily what the next person's going to like. And so you put it back there. Only four times in about 165 barrel picks have I sent barrels back and said they're best for blending, they're not best for... you're going to eventually have some that slip through that are like that, that just don't, uh, that don't hit the pallets of anybody. Now does this barrel still out there?

No, that barrel is no longer out there. If it's still out there, somebody should get it. Uh, this thing has almost a, so it does have that captain crunch taste to it. Right. But the heat on it is a different heat. It doesn't like, It's more of a poblano pepper spice to it, where the heat kind of builds and rises up. It does do that, doesn't it? Very, very beautiful whiskey. I always enjoy drinking something different and getting that different taste feel from it, that different spice. Jim would say it kind of flows down to your jawline. This says right on top of your tongue.

Yeah. Sometimes you get all that flavor up, up in the top of your palate, but then sometimes it just, it goes down the sides of your tongue and sort of tingles that jawline. It's like, Oh, that's special. That's special.

Yeah. Let's talk about some prices. So Yellowstone, um, your select, what's that run a bottle.

You know, that's going to be your distributor selling to your liquor store. And whatever volume that liquor store is doing is what price point they're going to put it at. You know, we don't set prices at the distillery level. So you don't have an MSRP. I'm going to say around $48 for Yellowstone Select is an average cost. Yes, we have an MSRP, but that's done by the state managers of Luxco Corporation. I'm not involved. So I'm guessing from buys that I've done personally from Yellowstone Select that it's about $48. It might go down to $42. It might go up to $60 a bottle. So what about the minor case?

What are we looking at that?

And it's in a similar character. It's $48, typically $49, $48.

And what about us? If somebody's out there, let's say they go over to Westport Whiskey & Wine. They find a single barrel, $58 would be probably about where it would be. Now that's a bargain. That is a bargain.

It's not extraordinarily expensive. It's an opportunity to buy. And I've had several liquor stores buy barrels at 102, 109 and 115 just to take back to their organization and show them how proof influences the characteristics of bourbon. Buy a three pack at that price you're paying. only what you would pay for a limited $158, $160 and you're getting three single barrel picks and you sit down and you open those bottles with your friends and you pour them and you taste them all at different proofs to show just how much proof influences the characteristics of bourbon. barrels are coming harder and harder to find, barrels tightening up a little bit. But if you get that opportunity, that's a great opportunity. There's some stores out there that got three barrels of Yellowstone bourbon from us, and there's an opportunity for you to buy 102, 109, and 115. I suggest highly, yet buy all three. And you do this experiment yourself, just to prove to yourself just how much proof influences it. It'd be a lot of fun. It is fun. And it's not that inexpensive of a extort, you know, I've spent $158 on a bottle of bourbon multiple times. Oh, we all have. Yes. Yes. If it's extraordinary and I know it is, that separates my wallet from my mind.

That's all. It has to taste good. If I taste it, If I can taste it, it's probably going home with me. Unless it's a weeded bourbon and I've never tasted it in my life, then it's going home with me.

So let's talk a little bit more about the distillery. So the distillery is open for business. It's open to the public. People are taking tours now. So give our listeners a little bit of an idea of what a tour is like. What do they get to experience on a visit to the Limestone Brace Distillery?

Casey Shirley is the front of the house manager. It's doing an extraordinary job for our distillery. She's got the place ship right ship. I mean, it is dress right dress. And when you come into the distillery, the hospitality level is at a level that I aspired to have from the very beginning. And that is you're greeted at the front door. Welcome to Limestone Branch. You got an opportunity to take a tour, do a tasting, have a flight, go out on the porch and smoke a cigar. Get yourself a cocktail that is of the highest quality cocktail in Kentucky. Our cocktail specialist Derek is incredible at his mixology. So if you want a mule and you want to taste the best mule you're going to get in Kentucky, come to the limestone branch, get yourself a little time on the porch, slow your life down. That's where our distillery hospitality is. You want to learn a lot about bourbon, then take the tour. You're gonna get a chance to see a lot of the history of the state of Kentucky in our tour. Seventh generation beams meet all those damp folks. You're gonna get to see all sorts of things in the back of the house on pot still, craft distilling. And when you're finished, you're gonna have a great cocktail out on the porch and a great gift shop to buy all sorts of things from. She keeps that place incredible, Casey does. It's got lots of cool stuff, Adidas, limestone branch shirts, you know, it's high quality stuff that will last you for a long time that you can pick up as souvenirs to take with you after that. We get a lot of international travelers. Most of the people who come to Art of Story are not from Lebanon. They're not Lebanites. If they are, they're having the cocktail on the porch, they're smart and go straight to the cocktail. Otherwise, it's people from Europe, there's people from Australia, got a lot of Australian visitors. We bring a lot of tourism to Lebanon, Kentucky from international, Italy, Japan, China. And they're looking for the unique things that they can't get. Most of those folks are going for the juice and they're looking for the unicorns. And we always try to keep a single barrel unicorn up on the shelf for sale. I believe wholeheartedly that if you're a distillery in the state of Kentucky and you do not have single barrel picks on your bar for tasting and in your gift shop for sale, you're doing a disservice to the entire industry. This is the Mecca of Bourbon, Kentucky. 95% of all the bourbon whiskey in the world is made right here in Kentucky. And by God, you should have some unicorns on your shelf. Well, the state just helped with that, right? They did that. They did. They approved, just recently, single barrel picks. An ounce and a quarter is really not enough to do for a single barrel pick. And they were allowing us to continue to do this. However, they gave us a deadline that it had to be cut off. if we didn't get approval to do more than that. So now we have approval. We have the ability to do a barrel pick and you can drink a little bit more than that. You have to have a driver. We're not going to allow you to come to our distillery without having a driver. but you can actually go through more barrels now and you can pick what is the best bourbon whiskey that you want to take back with you as long as you have a driver.

And now, and the law has just passed, so it's going to take a year or more for this to work out, but the law had just passed in the state, right? Yes. That distilleries can now sell single barrels directly to groups, clubs outside of the three tier system.

Yes. Pretty cool. And bottles. And bottles. At festivals. Yes. I could go to a festival now and I could sell a bottle of Yellowstone to a client as well as the tasting that we're doing at the festival. They'll get a chance to taste some whiskey. And if they want to buy it, I could sell it to them directly. We've got a pretty good size group.

Just, yeah, just few people, few people. But no, that did change things because always, you know, Mike and I are thinking about, okay, who can we use as our sponsor to get this barrel? You know, what, what store is going to be our, and that's no longer going to be necessary. I'm not going to say it's available now, but the law is there. It just takes a while for things to work out. And we'll be able to eventually come down and say, hey, Steve, we'd like to have a barrel for the bourbon roadies and we can make that happen as long as you have the allocation.

Yes. And the way it would work through our distillery is you'd reach out to your local state manager and he would coordinate that or she would coordinate that for you. So Luxco state manager would coordinate your barrel pick with me and you'd come down and you'd pick your barrel and you could buy it through the gift shop or you could buy it through a local liquor store.

Just back up our truck to the gift shop and load up the cases.

Yeah, literally load you up. It's a new day with the barrel.

I think, you know, Kentucky is kind of coming into its own right now with these distilleries. Man, you hit everything on the spot about distilleries. When I think I want to go to distillery, I like going to craft distilleries, like Limestone, because I'm not a big crowd person. I understand that. And Limestone is not that big crowd place. It is a smaller distillery. It is. Smaller parking lot. You're not going to have the giant crowds and there are few people in there always, but it's nice to go to a story like that and get to see that and get to see your staff work and just, you're right. Great staff, great program.

Well, speaking of where people can find you. You've got an Instagram account, a Facebook account, you've got a website. Where can people find you guys?

www.limestonebranchdistillery.com www.limestonebranchdistillery.com will lead you to all the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all this stuff has been, you know, managed by our corporate partner, Luxco Corporation. And they update all the information. what's going on with the distillery most recently, what's getting ready to come out most recently, all those things you can find at those locations. I personally have a Bourbon Scout 1872 was something that I created back in the early days of our partnership. Bourbon Scout 1872 represents the Very first park rangers at Yellowstone National Park were scouts. They were not rangers. They were scouts. They got a scout badge with a number on it. The higher the number on the badge was the higher ranked that they were. And the very first national park incepted in America's history was 1872. So Bourbon Scout 1872 is my social media on Facebook and Instagram. And you will see my things that's going on, where I'm going, what's happening in my life in the world of Stephen Fontay and Brandon Baster for Yellowstone Bourbon.

Well, we certainly encourage our listeners to follow Limestone Branch and everything that's going on there to also follow Bourbon Scout 1872 on Facebook and Instagram. Mike's been following your page already. I think you guys have got a lot going on and it's always exciting. Steven, we want to thank you for being a guest on the show today and even more for inviting us into your home and sharing your whiskey with us. Always welcome. Heck it.

Sharing your love of your dogs. That's the best thing for me right there. And your wild squirrel over there.

I didn't see it, but you had me worried there for a minute. I thought he was going to take out my ear or something.

Well, listeners, pay attention to what's about to be said here. Pay quick attention to what we're about to say. You know, Yellowstone, Limestone Branch has been really good to us. They're about to be really good to you guys because you know how we like to do things. We like to do some giveaways.

Steven, what do you got for our listeners? I think we'll put together a gift basket for you. How's that sound? Something special, something unique and different. And Casey will work with me on it, I'm sure. And we'll put together a special gift basket with some of the Yellowstone swag and some of the minor case stuff. And it'll be special. And if you win this gift basket after this podcast, You can pick it up at the distillery with a free tour, tasting, and cocktails on me. Wow.

That's pretty awesome. That's a pretty awesome giveaway. So listeners, here's what we gotta know. What Louisville neighborhood does Stephen live in? You're going to have to listen to the whole podcast for that. You can't just go to the end and check it out. You got to go listen to the whole thing. So tell us on Instagram at 1300 on the release day of the podcast in the comments. Tell us what Louisville neighborhood Stephen lives in. You also got to be 21, obviously, and you got to reside in the United States. We'd appreciate that. If you can't come to Kentucky and pick up the gift basket, we'll make sure it gets shipped out to you. Tell us that. Make sure you follow. Bourbon Scout 1872.

Make sure you follow. Who else? www.limestonebranchdistillery.com And you got to follow Yellowstone.

Obviously, you already follow on Jim and I anyways, but we'd appreciate that follow if you're not. Give us a listen. We want to get a review out of you and stuff. What a great giveaway, Steven. Like Jim said, we can't thank you enough for having us into your home, sharing your whiskey with us. That's what Whiskey Fellowship is all about. That's what our whiskey community is all about, is creating these relationships and stuff. Listeners, if you're out there, make sure you go to your local store. If it's not in the store, request it to be in your store. You won't be disappointed. I'll guarantee you that.

Absolutely. Well, you can find us on all the social medias. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube. You can even find us on TikTok. You won't see Mike Danson. Nope, no sir. But you will get some video content in there. We don't do Twitch. We don't do Discord, but you know, the ones we do, we do well. So we appreciate you following us on those. We also have a private Facebook group called the Bourbon Roadies. Quite a few members on there, a lot of members on there. We don't count call out the number today, but man, it just keeps growing and growing. And we really appreciate all the people that follow us there. It's a great place to chit chat about bourbon, take pictures, share pictures, tell everybody what you're drinking today. A guarantee that you will not get cut off at the knees for talking about what you're drinking.

If you want to drink from the bottom shelf all the way to the top of the shelf, that's what we want you to do in there. If you're a bourbon troll in there, you're probably going to get cooked out real fast. Three easy rules to get in there, Jim. Are you 21? Do you like bourbon? Hell yes, everybody loves bourbon. And do you agree to play nice because we don't tolerate any of that rudeness in there, like we said? We really appreciate it. To make sure that you get one of our shows, to listen to it on your app, Make sure you scroll on up up there. Hit that check sign, that plus sign, that subscribe sign. We would really appreciate that. Then you know what I'm about to say, right, Jim? Mm hmm. You want to scroll on down, hit that five star review, leave us some comments on whatever app you listen to us on, because what will happen is if you don't, the big bad booty daddy of bourbon is going to come over to your house carrying a bottle of Yellowstone in one hand, a bottle of minor case in the other hand. We're going to drink it all night long. Big old smiles on our face in the morning. We'll be laughing. We'll have a good time. But by the end of the night, you're going to give us that five star review in those comments. But seriously, those comments, those reviews get great guests on our show. Get great whiskey in our hands to drink. Great whiskey like Yellowstone, great whiskey like Minor Case, great dudes like Stephen Fonte from Louisville, Kentucky.

Yeah, so we do two shows every week. We do a short episode every Monday, a single expression review, usually from a craft distillery, sometimes from the big boy. But we'll take about 20 minutes of your time. We'll tell you what we think about the bottle and whether or not you ought to add it to your bar. But every Wednesday, it's a full length episode like today's with Stephen, where we'll get you two 30 minute halves. That'll get you to work and get you back. Make sure you listen to us. Both shows every week. Mike and I are very approachable. We'd love to hear from you. If you've got an idea for a show, if you live in a small town, it's got a distillery and you want to shine a little light on them, let us know. Uh, you can reach out to us. You can hit us on our website. We've got a contact us page. You can send us an email. I'm Jim at the bourbon road.com. He's Mike at the bourbon road.com. But like we always say, probably the best way is hit up our DMS on Instagram. I'm Jay Shannon 63. I'm big bourbon chief and we'll see you down the bourbon road.

You're the reason I'm here