273. Makers Mark - Denny Potter and Jane Bowie

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. It 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 it 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 seldom seen maple dot com. Pick up some stuff from there today. We'd appreciate it. Everybody, this is Big Chief and you're listening to the Bourbon Road. And you know what I did today is got my pick up. We drove south from Shelbyville, driving through wheat fields. You know, the Weedy King in Kentucky just loves that. I almost stopped and got a photo in the middle of a wheat field today. Save two turtles, because that's what I do. You know, country boy, you're driving 65 miles an hour down an interstate trying to weave through the buzzards and I see two turtles and I had to save them. But About an hour south of Shelbyville, we ended up at one of my favorite distilleries of all time. It feels like home, Maker's Mark. And we got two special guests today, two true bourbon bullshitters. I found out I'm sitting in here with them for a minute, and I'm going to love it. And this is going to be a great conversation. But I got the master distiller, Denny Potter, with me. And I don't know, Danny, if she's just the master bullshitter Jane Bowie with me. She's, I mean, obviously she's our master blender. We can name her that.

But I think her official title is head of innovation and blending, which I mean, it's an interesting thing because, you know, I've been in the industry, this is my 25th year. And, you know, back when I got in the industry, like somebody with, you know, Jane's talent and ability was kind of frowned upon. Like the term blending was never something that you would actually use in our industry because it, you know, blending was associated with violating the rules of bourbon, right?

So somebody's just pouring, they were just back in the day, they just poured the barrels together and it's like, Oh, that's good right there. Put some water to it. And Let's prove it down and go to town.

You know, blending was associated with, well, you know, they're adding caramel to it or they're adding some kind of colorant that, you know, if it's a young... Or they're trying to mask inferior whiskey or neutral grain spirit. But the reality is, I mean, the term, the title Master Blender has been around a hell of a lot longer than Master Distiller when you look at the scotch industry. And I think one of the things that's been extremely interesting, and I give Jane all the credit, is making people realize that blending is a big part of what we do, right? Like, so it was a term that was a bit taboo, but we did it. The blending of the barrels, right? Like, none of us bottle our core product single barrel. Like, there's actually, you know, you can say mingling. Everyone says mingling or marrying. Yeah, it can be mingling, it can be blending.

They use any word but blending.

But I think what's been extremely interesting is, you know, just, You know, obviously Jane created our private select program and the evolution of that into the wood finishing and, you know, where you're marrying barrels together that have different taste profiles in order to create a final product, which, you know, is blending. So one of the things that I've truly enjoyed seeing evolve is the reality that blending is a big part of what we do and it's not taboo. it's actually that has been around a hell of a lot longer than the title master distiller. So I think one of the things that, you know, um, that Jane and I compliment each other very well, because, you know, I'm on the distilling side, right? So it's all about the grain. It's all about the process. It's all about the distillate. It's all about making it ready to go in the barrel. And then Jane has absolutely made a name for herself on the maturation side and then the blending of those barrels. So, um, I mean, pretty much every day we almost come to blows.

Every day.

We're both extremely stubborn.

In case you're wondering, I usually win.

She doesn't. I mean, I'm not joking. I mean, I would never punch a woman, but if I did, Jane would be the first. But I would destroy you. You wouldn't. You wouldn't.

I would destroy you.

You think that? Would you throw whiskey in his eyes?

I'm from Monticello, Kentucky.

Whatever. This has nothing to do with switchblades and whatever else you guys did down there. No, I would step into it. I would step into it.

I would kick your shin and glass your neck.

Let's back up because you said you're from Monticello, which for people that don't know, that's down by Lake Cumberland. Lake Cumberland, yeah. And they got a goat. God's country. They got a goat down there on the lake. Do you know about the goat?

I don't know where on the lake, because I grew up near Colleybottom, but now we boat out of Grotter Hill because my family's from Albany.

Supposedly it's a thing down there. People try to take a picture of that big old giant Billy goat. You know, he's just down there.

Well, that explains a lot, I think. Yup.

They just let their goats loose down there.

The most popular thing about Monticello is a goat that you don't even know about.

No, and I'm not going to, this is a clean show and I'll use my language for you later. But if you're going to Monticello, you want to go have a cheeseburger at the city pool hall. It's the best cheeseburger of your life. It's wonderful.

Our listeners need to know that because they, maybe they want to go down to Lake Cumberland and visit.

It is God's country. It's beautiful.

Little cheeseburger in paradise down there.

Hell yeah.

So you got some whiskey in front of her. I know our listeners are like, God dang, is this guy going to talk about whiskey? Well, there's only one kind of whiskey here is weeded bourbon, right, that you make. But this is a pretty special bottle to me. It was the FAO2, right?

Yeah, FAO2.

It's got a little fairy in the bottle. Cause that's what Faye is right?

We've laughed about, cause it stood for fatty acid esters. So we have kind of a taste goal for all these wood finishing. And so Andrew Webrink at independent stave company actually names the staves based on the project we're doing. So last year's taste goal was all around fatty acid esters, but everyone was like, aunt Fay, what's Fay?

We have to tell the story about Andrew from last week. Oh my gosh.

It's the best story. Um, but yeah, this one was, um, actually speaking of our arguing and coming to blows, we ended up doing two whiskeys last year cause we could not agree. Um, And we decided the first, the FAO one was more taste flavor driven and this FAO two is texture driven, which Denny, this is really kind of, I think Denny's sweet spot. If you were to say what's Denny in a glass as far as what he loves and what he looks for, I think this one along with that 2020 release were really kind of your wheelhouse.

Yeah, no doubt. I mean, that was the focus. I mean, one of the things when we were talking about fatty acid esters, I mean, it was, the debate could go on and on, which basically, if you're non-chill filtered, that's what chill filtration does, right? And people don't realize, and chill filtration was not anything anybody was interested in until probably the last seven, eight, 10 years, but we don't chill filter anything. And so, you know, what I enjoy about the fact that we don't chill filter is there's a texture to the liquid that I think we really captured with the fat in it.

Yeah.

And so, you know, it coats, like it really coats your mouth. It coats your tongue. It's got kind of a velvety buttery type feel to it.

That spices there though.

Oh yeah, no doubt. Yeah. Like when you're describing like the, like the taste and the finish, no question. But when you're talking about the feel, like it's got a really nice.

It's a very warming spice. Like it's a very subtle spice and what I love about the spice and makers. Like you got to get savory spice out of the brain. And I always say, you got to go to grandma's kitchen at Christmas time. It's all those baking spices.

That clove and cinnamon. Yeah. Maybe a little nutmeg. Yeah.

What was so amazing about this whiskey, I think, and I mean, it's interesting when you get in the mindset of these, of what you're going for, it really becomes about the whiskey and less about your own preferences. Cause my palette's more of an F-A-E-O-1. I like the fruit and the funk and those danky warehouse notes. But this, we argue about finish a lot, because we enjoy different finishes. I love dry kind of astringent. I don't want bitter, but I don't mind astringency. And Denny hates astringency. So we'll be tasting the same whiskey, and I'll be like, oh, this finish is amazing. He's like, it's the worst. The finish on this is so clean, which is so interesting. You've got all this mouthfeel, you've got all the spice, but then the finish is quite clean. It gives you a little bit of a lingering spice, but it's not hanging around and tannic or astringent. It's quite a clean finish.

This is that atomic fire bomb or that Jolly Rancher cinnamon candy to me right here. that finished so long on this, it leaves with you and you're like, man, this is just a beautiful bourbon. And then you don't, I don't know if you know this or not, but actually for the past two years, Makers Mark, we've named Makers Mark Cast Strength was our bourbon of the year, I think 2020. Then last year, 2021's Bourbon of the Year for us was this bottle right here, Feo II. And that's my co-host.

I made it just for you, Mike.

I felt like that. You said this guy's the wheel of the King of Kentucky. We've got to make it just for him. We felt like this had everything that both of us were looking for. Jim's a rice spice guy. And for him to agree with me and say, hey, yeah, this is the bottle right here. Me and him, we probably downed two bottles of it. And we were going up, you guys went up against like Russell's Reserve 13 year old, some other great bottles out there. And we were like, this is the bottle.

Yeah, that Jimmy Russell, he does okay.

He knows where he's going real quick, right? But this right here, to me, had so much more texture, not too much oak in it, where that 13-year-old, some people were like, they just look at the year. That's all they're looking at. They judge stuff off a year. And I'm like, don't do that. Just drink the whiskey, open the bottle, and enjoy it, and then let it speak to you. Don't look at the label, because the label really doesn't mean anything.

I mean, I've been saying it for I don't know how many years, If you're judging the quality of a whiskey by age or price, you're missing out. You are legitimately missing out on so many good things. The great thing about these wood finishing series and I think the great thing about Jane and I working together is We can agree to disagree, but we also realize it's not just about us. I mean, it is about.

Because if it was, I would always win because I'm the alpha.

Again, I would step into it. You'd never. I mean, you'd probably see her, but she'd probably have a stutter or something like that. But. She'd get a nervous tick going on. The tough thing, especially for us being in the industry as long as we have, is understanding you're not creating a whiskey for yourself. You're creating a whiskey for a lot of other people. It's been one of the big learnings for me as I've come back to Makers. is understanding the benefit of that. And it's fun because I'm somebody that naturally leans towards things that I like. And I'm just, it's safe. Will you let me talk?

It's true.

Let's talk about your descriptors. No, let's talk about, no.

James descriptors are- Everything's a hybrid.

If an avocado and an acorn had a baby, this is what it would taste like. Well, what the hell is that delicious? I think they can't even breed, but that's what I eat.

But Mike, Mike, when I say if I say an avocado and a pineapple have a baby, you know exactly what that tastes like.

He does. He's going to say yes. Yes, he does. Because you can visualize the pineapple.

You can visualize the creaminess of an avocado and the earthiness with that and the freshness.

I cannot believe you're justifying that explanation and that descriptor.

I'm sorry. I have more than three adjectives in my vocabulary.

Let's, let's get into Jane's blending. How did you like, this is what you came into bourbon for is blending, right?

It's not. Um, I got hired at 25 years old by Rob Samuels to be the first international employee for Maker's Mark. So I was our global brand ambassador, and I spent five years launching makers in different countries, export markets around the world. So I was an educator. I worked in advocacy. I would go in and I would train distributors and work with bartenders in restaurants primarily.

So pretty much just drinking whiskey with people.

Hell yeah. I mean, they could have not paid me it was for a 25 year old girl from Kentucky that just loved bourbon and everything about it. And I was the same as you like makers was what we drank at home, even though I grew up in a dry town. once I got older, it was everybody. My grandma had makers and I didn't know.

So you're like seven years old just getting big old glass of whiskey.

No, I thought my family were teetotallers. It was literally not till I got older in college and they were like, we drink too.

Wow. My family was the exact opposite. So what you're describing, Mike, is exactly how I grew up.

Yeah, I didn't grow up like that.

But she grew up in a holler down there, like Cumberland.

Yeah, it's not cash.

You heard her switchblade reference. There's some truth to that.

It was brass knuckles.

Listen to Loretta Lynn and stuff like that.

Yeah. It's very different than this part of Kentucky. I think it's what's so amazing about Kentucky. It's a very dynamic and diverse state when you look at the east to the west to central and then, you know, northern Kentucky is more like the Midwest to me. It's, I did not, but the thing about, I always say about advocacy, you know, the burning ladders of the world are few and far between. When you look at him as the face of heaven, one of the faces of Heaven Hill and Jim Beam before as a national ambassador, like he is amazing. I never felt like that was the path for me. And the reality is you kind of have a foot in sales and a foot in marketing. And I did a lot of different jobs, and I loved the industry. I started here that first week, actually trained. Denny taught me. He was running the distillery at the time. I learned the distilling operations from Denny when I first started.

Did you really want to fire that first week?

No. I just couldn't figure it out. I mean, it was strange. Like, one, it was great. But we never had an international employee, ever. So I was trying to figure out, okay, she's from Kentucky, but we're gonna train her and then send her over to London to be really our first international employee. And she was 25, 26 years old. I couldn't wrap my brain around what that was.

You would never hire that version of me today. The industry's moved on too much, I think.

But what was really cool about it is obviously we worked together here at the distillery and did a lot of things just from a process standpoint to help Jane out. But then when she moved over, and then I got to go over and do market business.

Oh, we had the best time.

To see exactly what that was and how she did it. It was... I mean, it's a part of the business that I could never do. Like the energy involved, the networking involved, the, I mean, just the handshake.

I mean, all of that was completely- It was selling a drink at a time. It was not a bourbon market. It was a jack market, but it was not a bourbon market and people didn't know. So you really felt like it wasn't even about makers. It was just about letting people peek into our industry. And it was a shot at a time. I mean, there was no, we're selling bottles. It was one person at a time. It was True Grassroots, which was how this brand was built. And for a 25-year-old, it was the greatest job in the world. But then when you start getting older, it's, what do I do? And I think knowing like, hey, maybe I want to have a family someday. How does that compute? What does that look like? I want to stay in this industry. I love it. And the liquid was what I loved. I love the liquid. I love whiskey. And not just makers. I mean, Denny can tell you, my bar at home is vast. I just love everything about our industry. And so I wanted to be the person. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And it was never about titles. And then when I learned what an actual master distiller did, it was like, oh, I can't do that. And I know master distillers are different at different distilleries, but at Makers, it really is the person that understands the operations holistically. And so I just started saying, I want to be the person that decides what liquid goes in the bottle. Is that a job? And they were like, that's not a job. And I want to do innovation. And Bill's always like, what can you do? And so Private Select was kind of the opportunity to just, Rob was like, go see what you can do. We want to explore this. And I worked with him and Bill and So from 2014 on, innovation became the side hustle. And then finally they let me drop all the other jobs about two years ago, two and a half years ago.

You were already doing 100% innovation before that, but to be able to do it full time.

You were our innovation at the time. Here's what I'll say. I think tasting is practice. I think some people are natural, God-given talents with smelling and tasting. But I am a big believer in it's like anything. If you want to be good at something, it is practice. It is that muscle memory.

The big thing about tasting, and we were talking about this not that long ago, it's not just being a great taster, it's the ability to describe what you're tasting and for it to be accurate. Because trust me, I've seen tasting notes on things that we have released and it's like, I have no idea where that's coming from. It's that ability to describe what you're tasting and for it to be accurate. That's a tough one. It's a tough one even in-house with our own taste panel or with Jane and I and Beth when we're working on wood finishing, just to be calibrated to terminology and describing what we're tasting. That's the talent. She's really, really, really good at that. I do have three or four adjectives, but pretty much when I say them, everybody knows what I'm talking

I give you shit, but you're actually a really, really good taster. It's annoying. I'm so glad that was recorded.

Let me ask you, you know when she walked into the room, I knew she was going to be fun because she already had a rocks glass in her hand with bourbon in it. I gave her that, Mike.

Can you let me have nothing? Actually, this is Denny's favorite tasting glass. I stole it.

Yeah, we've got a guy that made those.

So has there ever been a point, uh, Jane, where you were like, you tasted some barrels and you're like, Hmm, I'm gonna have to tell Denny, this doesn't taste quite right. Has there been that point?

There, there wasn't the hesitation is I can't wait to tell Denny, this doesn't taste.

Now that is the accurate version.

No, here's what's so amazing about makers. Um, And this is not just because I work. It really is incredible how much as a distillery at the size and scale we are, how much we still rely on the human nose more than any other piece of equipment. It is very rare something goes wrong. in our process, knock on wood, because from Doug Wade unloading the corn and doing a sniff test as basic as water with corn and heating in the microwave for 20 seconds and having a smell, because if that grain's been sitting in a bin a long time, you can smell it. um to you know travis has the team really looking at each fermenter and it's very rare now granted some weird things happen rarely is it this tastes bad it's this tastes different and why and we normally know

before it goes in the barrel, if it's a little off. From a distillation standpoint, if something's going to go wrong, it's going to be in the distillery. As Jane said, whether it's the grain coming in, whether it's the water that we use, and we use our own lake. We don't use city water. We use our own lake that comes directed in the distillery.

Yeah, you have an algae problem.

We propagate our own yeast, right? So, do we have, you know, when it comes to fermentation and using your own yeast, it's a numbers game. So, are your yeast healthy enough to pretty much out compete all the other bacteria that naturally exist in the environment? You can have things that can go wrong in fermentation. As Jane said, Travis and the team over there, our distillery runs seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 48 weeks out of the year. I know I've got the title master distiller. The reality is we've got 20 master distillers. what they're able to do to control the consistency and the quality of that distillate is pretty phenomenal. So typically if it's going to be off, we're going to get it in the distillate and then we can kind of flag it as it goes in the barrel and then pull samples through maturation to see if it's anything that might be picked up on the finished whiskey side. And it's very, very, very rare that it is. It's hardly ever a surprise. I'll say that. Yeah.

not a lot of surprises and certain compounds you can mature out. Others are gonna be there and the barrel can exacerbate. So there's maturation techniques that you can either try to limit that as much as you can based on the environment you give the barrel to, or you know, hey, I can blend a couple of these into a 378 batch or whatever it is.

So when I was talking before about blending, that's exactly what happens, right? So it's not like we're basically a six-year-old product and we'll do 700 barrels a day easy. It's not like in six years, we dumped those exact same 700 barrels that were made all on the same day. Like you will kind of flex that a little bit, maybe 30 days forward or backward. And you're trying to blend it so that it's very consistent. It's still high quality. And so there's all those things that go into it. Like when we formulate our dumps, it's a pretty intense process. It's not an easy thing.

One of the things we've been working on, Beth and I, the last two years, and it's been so much fun because the quality department is so far reaching and they're so overwhelmed between bottling and all of the food safety stuff because we have the highest ISO standards and all those things, and there's not been time to really play a lot of offense necessarily down here traditionally is how I would say it. And so Beth and I have been building, we have 49 warehouses over four different locations housing 1.1 million barrels of Maker's Mark. So for the last two years, Beth and I have been actually studying each individual warehouse to build maturation scales. So as you start thinking about formulation, it becomes easier and tighter because What I love about this place, you turn around, Mike, and there's an 1889 rick house that's 4,000 barrels, open floors, three stories. But then you drive into town and there's a 58-8. That's seven stories that the ricks look totally different. You don't have those open floor. You have two totally different maturation environments. What's the behavior and personality of each to help create more consistency? It's a very different way of thinking about it.

And the bigger you get, the tighter you have to be about that. The bigger you get, the more you have to understand all these influences on the whiskey. whether it's in the distillery. And I mean, we need 11,000 acres of corn every year, right? So whether it's really understanding that and dialing in on that to the barrels that we need every year and the specs that we need to build those barrels to, as Jane said, 49 warehouses or warehouse sites, different elevations, different number of barrel capacities.

Different bodies of water and air that's gonna change the humidity ratio in those warehouses.

So just when you think like, well, the industry is the industry, you have it figured out, then you really, when you want to dig in. really start to figure out there's a lot of variation that can exist. Even in a brand like Maker's, when we've been making the same mash bill for 68 years, you have to understand these things in order to keep that consistency. And it's awesome. It's a lot of fun, but it's a lot of work, too.

As the distillery's grown, though, when was your first day coming here? Do you remember?

The first time that I was here, I came in January of 2003. And what about you, Jane?

I came in, I want to say it was like March 7th, 2007.

I want to say 2003, 2004 was the first time, uh, my wife and I had ever came here. Uh, we were on the way to Texas, uh, from Michigan. We were stationed up in Michigan at the time and we drove down Texas to go hunting. And one of the way back, it was just her and I, and we're like, Hey, let's stop in Kentucky and drink some bourbon. Just like, it sounds like a great idea.

Before the bourbon trail. Yeah, there wasn't, there was no, nothing was called a bourbon trail.

Um, we stopped here and I think that little building right there was where you dipped under the stairs.

Yeah, it was really weird.

It was the first time we dipped a bottle of stuff. And then the next time I got to come down here was with our son and his his wife now. That was the next time, almost 20 years later, and I was like, what the heck is this? This is so much bigger. He dipped his bottles over the new gift shop and stuff, and I was like, this is I personally don't like it because I liked the little old place. To me, I was like, man, I pretty much put my hand in a barrel of beer and suck on my fingers. I was like, oh, this is so good. Funny thing about that bottle of Maker's Marks that we got that day, we let somebody stay at our house on Thanksgiving. Why we did that, I don't know. We said, hey, nobody else comes over to our house except for your girlfriend and you. Here's the turkey you need. Here's all the food you need. But stay away from our liquor cabinet. Stay away from our wine. Do not go in our bedroom at all. Stay out of our bedroom. And that's pretty much it. So we come back. That maker's bottle was empty. several bottles of German wine were gone that were, I don't know, from the seventies. Oh my God. And somebody had, she, my wife automatically known, she was like, somebody slept in our bed. Oh, I was furious. But how much of this place has changed and probably you two kind of grew up here in the industry and watching it change. And maybe that's a little difficult or maybe it's prideful and saying, man, we've really built this into a great brand.

I, I, It's so funny. We talk about this all the time because this distillery is the town. It is Loretto. The community works here, essentially.

Well, yeah, it's the analogy. When people talk about a college town, we're a distillery town. We are a distillery town. Without a doubt. It's like bourbon town. To the extreme, yeah.

And I think you have multi-generational employees. And we all remember, I mean, the first time I visited was a college class at Transy in May of 2003. And then when I came back to work four years later, you're right, it was totally different even then. And we were, gosh, I think when I started, we were like a 600,000 case brand. And we talk about this because it's hard, right? People remember what it was like 20 years ago and it wasn't as busy and it wasn't as crowded and it wasn't as hectic. But the reality is... The growth is great. Bourbon is having a moment and it provides jobs, good jobs. It provides a tourism base for Kentucky where we get 170,000 visitors a year. People make the pilgrimage. And so part of that is we loved that little gift shop just like you did. But we also, when people come this far, whether it's driving on their way to Texas or We want to be able to show them the hospitality that this brand has always been known for. So we've had to grow to keep up with that demand because we never turn people away. That's the number one rule here.

Well, and what's been interesting about that from a production standpoint, I don't know that you would know the difference, right? Like you might go in the distillery and notice we added another mash tub, another distillation set. But it's not plainly evident. If you go into bottling, you're going to see that it looks identical to what it did 20 years ago. We're still hand dipping every bottle. Maybe the line's running a little faster. Maybe we've got six dippers now instead of four. But I don't know that you would notice it from a production standpoint. But as Jane said, from an experience standpoint, it has changed. because when I started in 2003, I mean, we were like at 25,000 visitors.

You couldn't even taste whiskey then legally. You weren't allowed to even host a tasting.

Yeah, there was no, nobody could taste. I don't think we tasted whiskey that day. Until like 08, 07, 08.

Yeah, it was 08 and we built the new gift shop to be able to do tastings.

The idea of having a tasting room, our tasting room was our lab because That's where we tasted the distillate, the bottling samples. There was no thought that a visitor would ever taste.

How many employees came here on a third grade field trip and got to dip a bottle 30 years ago?

Could you imagine?

It definitely has evolved greatly from the visitor side. I think the core of it hasn't changed, especially as you go into production. We're also cognizant of the fact that the Bourbon Trail has evolved. People that come to Kentucky, they're now coming for three, four days to do the Bourbon Trail. And we have to offer different things too. Like you get still fatigue, right? Like we talk about that. Like have you seen one still? Have you seen them all? Well, maybe not all, but it's a still. So what are the things that we can do that are a little bit different? That's why the bulk of our tours are outside. You'll be able to go in the distillery. We've got nature trails now. We've got different tasting experiences. We have an incredible restaurant that serves cocktails. So yes, from the visitor experience side, I think it will continue to evolve and change. From a production side, when you're in the heart of our operation and the nuts and bolts.

There's just more of everything. It's more, but it's very- There's 62 fermenters instead of 20. There's, yeah.

Well, we're going to take a break real quick. Listeners, stay with us. When we come back, I want to talk about distilling. We've talked about blending a little bit. And then let's talk about 46, changing your bottles out. Absolutely. And the other thing I'd like to discuss is what else you got coming down the pike, if there's anything coming down the pike. So stay with us, listeners. Hey, listeners, if you want to come see us, we're going to be at USA Cares Gala on July 23rd at the Galt House in downtown Louisville. You can check out usacares.org. Get your tickets for that. We're going to be there with a bourbon pool from many, many distilleries. I think the ticket's $50 for that bourbon pool. There's going to be other awesome items there for auction. So come check us out. We'll be in our bow ties, our black suits. Come see us there. We're also going to be, August 6th, we'll be at the Southern Whiskey Society's event down in Franklin, Tennessee with Maid South. We got two two amazing picks that we did for that. One from Leapers Fork, another one's from Leapers Fork that you will have to be at the event to get. A bottle of bourbon does come with your ticket, so check that out. You go to madesouth.com and buy those tickets today. We'll also be at Bourbon on the Banks October 1st. in Frankfort, Kentucky, the capital of Kentucky. It's a super quaint capital city. You don't want to miss that event. We'll have the Bourbon Road Lounge. We'll have a sponsor in our tent with us. There will be a distillery. You want to come check it out. One of the biggest things this year that changed was House Bill 500 that allowed distilleries to sell at festivals so you can buy whiskey there. I just talked to Diane Strong and she's super excited. She's fixing to put some information out. Come hang it out in the Bourbon Road Lounge. We'll have our bourbon furniture there. Both of our sponsors will be there. Also, Cruise Customs Flags and Seldom Seen Farms with his amazing maple syrup aged in bourbon barrels. We would really love you to come drink at our tent with us, take some photos, buy one of our bourbon bullshit or t-shirts or any other piece of our swag that we have. We would appreciate it. All right, listeners, we are back and I'm with these two jokers, Jane Bowie and Denny Potter here at Maker's Mark, worried about background noise in this room. We are having a good time making some memories here drinking whiskey together. And they've already made me feel like family inside this room.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

You sit in our heritage room.

You're definitely family. The only thing that bothers me in this room is that that decanter sitting over there. And I just want to, if I thought nobody was watching, I probably would have snuck some whiskey out of that. As far as we know, that's tea.

Really? We have no idea what's in there. It's been there a million years.

When I started in January of 2003, it was there and it's been at that same level since 2003. So I'm pretty sure.

We should taste it. I've never tasted it.

Can we do it?

Hell yeah, we can.

Let Jane do it because she'll get in trouble. No, Jane's the type that can get by with it.

Well, Bill and Rob stay mad at me, so whatever.

Can we taste it? I want to taste it because Rob said that that is he told me that's whiskey in there. I got to figure this out.

Did he so uncomfortable about tasting it?

I'm uncomfortable about your ability to pour it out of that.

My guess is whatever's in there tastes like absolute shit, but I say we taste it.

If it's whiskey, I would disagree with that.

Do you want me to pour it now?

Let's let's go ahead and pour it. We can sit on that. All right.

I'm going to look, Danny.

I'm going to give a play by play because I'm not worried about whiskey. I'm worried about.

Are you capable of giving a play by play ability? I feel like you're more the color commentary play by plays. Probably a little too skilled for you.

I mean, you argue everything with me.

Even your birthday card, Diddy's birthday was fun. Even your birthday card was like me being competitive and it really passive aggressive.

She got you cause she can get you a gift.

I did. I brought cupcakes to work.

No, a lot of cupcakes for the entire leadership team. No, they were, they were excellent. Supposedly drink. So I don't know what's in that bottle. You came like, because yeah, this is going to be killing you too. Well, you know, what's fun. I mean, I just never, I just, It's one of those things I just kind of never paid much attention to.

I'll tell you what, we've been in so many different distilleries. Um, and I mean, like we were talking about balconies in the, in the, uh, break now she's got this gigantic, that thing is humongous too.

Yeah. She's trying to get the stopper out of it. It's not going well. The way she's holding it. I'm just glad I'm not married to her. I'll tell you that right now. There's no love in that look at her she can't do it My god Oh sure, it's glued in there It's a rubber stopper

Now Denny's gonna try to open it up. Maybe it's no go on the 1965.

I'll do the play by play. He leans down to pick up the decanter.

Oh, it's got a glass stopper.

It's a glass stopper. It's not budging.

I bet they did glue it in there.

I think it's glued in there.

Well, dang it. Got me excited for nothing. Got a lighter. I know you do.

I don't, but I can, I can find one within a stone's throw because the distillery is right behind me.

That difficult to get open.

I'm more worried about snapping. Oh, don't do it. Don't do it. I don't want you to snap it.

I want to know what's in it now, though.

We'll do this. Now we know where it hasn't evaporated. We'll take another break. And after we finish this discussion, we'll see if we can get that open.

We'll call the engineering department.

This was presented in 1985. So it's probably a 1985 something.

It's not. You don't think so? I don't know.

Well, I mean, it's at least before 2003. Jane, were you born before 1985?

I was born in 1981. I love that you thought maybe I wasn't though.

So this is, you were like four when this came out.

The shape of the decanter, this is how my brain works, is going to, what is that? How's that oxidizing? I bet it's, it's, it's good because if you look, the headspace is quite.

I really do think it's probably, bourbon in there. It looks so healthy. We're too lazy to mix up a batch of tea to put in there.

Bill Samuels would never, ever, ever do that.

It is dark too.

It's dark.

Maybe that is some of the original.

Well, because it's oxidized though. Look at that. You've got some evaporation in the neck.

I think it's going to be good. We'll take a break and we'll see if we get this thing.

I might text Bill and say, how do I get into this thing? It's probably nobody's ever touched it.

No, this is the rules of makers, right? Ask for forgiveness, not permission.

I'm sorry, I broke your decanter and drank the whiskey inside.

We snapped it at the neck.

Janie, I don't know why we let you touch anything down there.

And we don't know why you put iced tea in there, Bill.

This is from, it says from New York, New York in it. I wonder if that was like a bottle of somebody.

There'll be a story that might be true or not, but it'll be a good story.

You know, the gold wax and stuff we used to do back then.

Yeah.

Very well.

I've never seen a decanter like that.

It's pretty nice. I think that's more of a wine decanter.

It kind of looks like a bowling ball and a bowling pin had a baby, doesn't it? For those of you that need a visual.

Like the avocado and the acorn. The one thing that I would hate to say is that it's an extremely accurate descriptor.

It is.

I mean, it pretty much is, yeah.

So Denny, you're the master distiller here, but you didn't start out as a master distiller in your life, right?

No, I've always been kind of rooted in operations. So I'm our master distiller, but I'm also our plant manager. So it's really, I'm our plant manager and our master distiller. Yeah, I mean, you know, when I started out in the industry, I started out in the lab at Jim Beam in 98, you know, working quality and, you know, I've always got a background in science and ended up being kind of got on the environmental side. As you said, I mean, you've already alluded to it, but, you know, one of the things that people don't think about is there's a backside to all these operations that you have to be concerned about. whether it's the byproduct coming off the bottom of the still or the fact that these distilleries are located in the middle of nowhere and you're not tied to a city or a county wastewater treatment plant. So when I've started out at Jim Beam, I ended up becoming the wastewater supervisor slash operator. So I had to get certified. in wastewater. It's always been rooted in that. It's funny, that's really what allowed me to make some of these moves in the industry. It was really about the environmental and the wastewater side because nobody else wanted to do it. I get asked all the time, what's it take to be a master distiller? What do I have to do to be a master distiller? The reality of it is, the easy answer is you got to be willing to do what nobody else wants to do. You have to like these are, you know, you got to be, you got to be willing to work nights, weekends, holidays. You got to be willing to legitimately play with crap. Right? So it was the wastewater side that nobody in our industry had a lot of experience with. So when I, when I left Jim beam to come to makers, I came as quality manager because that was a lot of my background. But the reality was they needed somebody that knew environmental. because they had a wastewater treatment plant and the guy that ran the wastewater treatment plant was leaving. And you had to have a certified wastewater treatment operator. That's why I got hired. Like they liked the fact that I was great in quality, but it really was about, I mean- This is killing Jay. No, let's hear it. Get it out. Come on now.

No, I have two things. What's funny is Um, it wasn't until he came back and didn't, I've been friends for 15 years and she calls it friends, um, Stockholm syndrome, whatever.

Um, so everybody that doesn't know what Stockholm syndrome is, that is when somebody takes a hostage and they get to be such, uh, together for so long that the hostage gets to start loving the hostage taker question. Yeah. Who's the hostage in this? So,

Not questioning the fact that it's Stockholm syndrome. We'll debate till the day I die who the hostage is in this.

You got to remember, I'm 25 years old. We have a heritage team and I want you to go back to this in a minute, but this story is funny because I never knew why I thought your job was your job until you just told this story. We have a heritage team. We've never had just a single spokesperson for the brand. So now our heritage team is Bill, Rob, Denny and myself. And we split kind of the PR ambassadorial work amongst the four of us. And so back then when I was in London, the heritage team was Denny, Kevin Smith, Bill and Rob.

Rob, yeah, Rob was, yeah.

And so they said, you need to request, you get one heritage team visit. And I requested Denny because London bartenders were so into environmental stuff. And so I remember being like, this is Denny. He's our environmental engineer. And for a decade, I told everyone Denny was an environmental engineer because that's what I thought his job was. And so about when he came back three years ago, he's like, why do you keep telling people I'm an environmental engineer?

No, you kept telling everybody I was a turd herder. There's a big difference.

Well, no, they're like master distiller. Master distiller, my ass. He makes cattle feed for a living. Makes cattle feed. But that's why I never clicked. It never clicked till you started telling this story. But I always thought that was your background. I didn't know you were a biologist.

Well, it's very specialized, but it's not.

You're also passionate about it. You're acting like, well, this is just what you have to do. watching him like look at an anaerobic digester in Japan. It's like the most alive I've ever seen. Denny Potter. It was like Christmas morning. You were holding shit looking at it giddy with these people in Japan at the, with the digesters. Am I wrong?

Yeah, that's, it's fascinating. Like it, you know, it's so what you do on the wastewater side is no different than what you do in fermentation. It's all biology. It's all microbiology. It's all, you know, you're just using different, whether it's anaerobic bacteria or aerobic bacteria, like you have these You have these bugs that are naturally designed.

Twinkle and is that right?

Listen, I want to remind you, listen to a bourbon project. There's no bugs, I don't think, in your bourbon.

No, but we can't have bourbon unless you're taking care of the back end of that. It's the tail that wags the dog. As Jane said, we produce a hell of a lot more byproduct than we do whiskey. And if you can't, if you, if you don't have an answer for that, the rest of it, everybody is enamored. Everybody's enamored with distilleries. It's fascinating. I'm fascinated with it. I love it. I love the fact that we can bring in grain, bring in water, turn it into liquid gold.

Manufacturing agriculture into whiskeys.

It's fascinating. So where does your spent grain go to right now? So we actually, we'll take our stillage and we'll dewater it through a centrifuge. And so we'll create what's called a wet cake. It's about 35% solids, but 35% solids, it's a solid. Like you can have it in your hand and squeeze it, no water comes out. So that gets brokered, gets sold as an animal feed. The water that comes out of that, the centrate that comes out of the centrifuge will run through an evaporator. And so we'll condense that and we'll create a syrup. So it's a syrup that can go on the wet cake, which is more nutrients, more protein, or we sell it separate where people feed it straight up. How do I get some of this for beer feed? And then all you have to do then is create the condensate that comes out of the evaporator. And listen, man, I mean, I'm telling you right now, Mike, like if People want to know what's going to happen to our industry. People got to get on board with the byproduct side. People have got to get on board with what an industry solution is for byproducts. It's not a, you know, we, we, we have solved it for us today singularly as makers Mark, but it's going to be an, it's an industry thing that we need to continue to discuss.

Some people have though, you know, you I'm a big deer hunter and, um, here in Kentucky, there's a product called bucks bourbon deer feed. Um, and it sells great. But it's just the by-product, like you said. And maybe he even sells that syrup part too.

He might. I mean, listen, if he's marketing that way, it's the volume side. What we produce per day, you cannot package singularly, right? Our feed goes out. buy the trailer load. Yeah. That's how much you produce. Like dump trailers, semi-trailers.

Now times that by 92 distilleries.

It's great to have something that's packaged up, whether it's in a 50-pound sack or whether it's... But that will never be the answer. It's the answer if you're doing one to 10 barrels a day, but the long-term solution and you know, it's an industry. I mean, we're in a great place. Like we're in good shape, but those are the things that, so there's that part of the business that when people want to jump into distilleries, nobody wants to think about or worry about. And then the other side is the packaging side.

Well, I think it, you know, you're looking at a single package, but when I walk into a tractor's plier or a real king and I see pallets and pallets and pallets of that, because hunting industry is so big. And then you take and multiply that across every tractor supply in America. But here's the deal.

And I don't know this specific product. What I can tell you is That's not normal. So wet cake lasts four days. It spoils in four days. DDG is, it's got a little longer shelf life. It's the shelf life of this product. So I don't know exactly what they're doing. I'd love to understand, but the shelf life of this stuff, I mean, that therein lies some of the issue, right? If you're giving away as a liquid, you've got a day, two days. It'll spoil. They won't eat it. If you've got a wet cake, you got about four days or mold will start growing on it. If you're a DDG, you have more time. You definitely have more time, but there is an absolute shelf life on this stuff. Really? Absolutely. No question about it.

Folks, this is the insider baseball. You've all been wondering what we sit around and talk about.

You're welcome. So I mean, back to the whole, yes, I've been rooted in operations. I've always been intimately and passionate about the wastewater and the byproduct side. But that's, that's allowed me, you know, at least the first couple of moves in my career to get to where I am today.

Cruisin' for sure, right? Yeah.

I mean, we were, you know, I was asked to go down and run Cruisin' Rum for three years, which was a sister operation. as general manager, but it was mainly because a lot of your rum plants that are located, they're all located in the Caribbean or Latin America or, you know, Dominican Republic, they're direct discharge to the ocean. So whatever's coming off that still gets directly discharged to the ocean.

Really?

you know, had an ambition to eliminate that direct discharge to the ocean, which is exactly one of the main reasons why I went down there. Um, one was his general manager cause they had just come into, you know, our organization. So we had other things that we had to, you know, kind of bring in line and put structure around. But the reality of it was we also had a goal of eliminating the direct discharge to the ocean and That's how I got on there. So we were able to put in a system that took the, you know, the it's called spent Vinass or spent molasses where we could run it through an evaporator. So condense the molasses and then take that condensed molasses, ship it back to the U S and that's a great cattle feed. Like, you know, the nutrients involved in that, but then you got to deal with the condensate that comes off of that. So we were able to treat that multiple times through RO, and then take that as an absolutely clean water on an island that only has access to salt water. We had access to fresh water, but it was well water, so there's only so much you can use. We were able to clean it up enough that we could take that water that was treated as the condensate and put it back into fermentation. We created a zero discharge facility. You know how hard that is in our industry? It's near impossible. and we were able to do that. And so those are the things that are super exciting to me, especially in an environment like that. Like we're lucky here in Kentucky, we got cheap energy, we've got all these other things, but when you're on an island and what you discharge to that ocean directly impacts everybody on that island, and not only that, the jobs associated with that distillery are so important. To me, that's what's extremely rewarding. Um, so anyway, I mean, long story longer, I've done a lot of things in my career and I'm proud of a lot of different things that I've done, but it's things like that that people may never ever know about. I mean, people are snoozing right now, but it is the part of our industry that to me, if you, if you know that side of it, the rest we'll figure out.

It makes it probably makes your job as a master distiller a little bit easier to have that background. I mean, you, we're working right down the road, right? You know, 45 minutes as a master still are there and then heaven at heaven Hill. And then they ask you to, Hey, would you like to come back to makers Martin? Jane's like, hell yeah. He's coming back.

Oh, we, I remember us talking about it a lot before you made the decision. Cause we were still friends. Like we've stayed friends through the years. Um,

It was a tough, I mean, you know, leaving Heaven Hill was probably the toughest decision I've ever made in my career.

Some people might not realize these, even listeners right now that have just gotten kind of into whiskey or they really don't know the inside game of whiskey, but Maker's Mark is actually owned by Beam Subtorium, right? What year did that happen?

2013, 2014. So yeah, right around there.

Yeah. And did that, do you think that changed, uh, makers at all? Um, no, it's one of you kind of shaking your head. No, we're in agreement.

I think what's been interesting, you know, Bill's bill senior sold makers 1983 or I think it's 81, 81, 83 to Hiram Walker. Hiram Walker dissolved and it went to Ally Dimeck. You joined during Ally Dimeck. I did. Ally Dimeck dissolved and it was Fortune Brands, which owned Jim Beam. So it's never been owned by Jim Beam. It was, I joined right after that. And then Suntory came in. And I think what's interesting Suntory's probably been the most closest aligned to makers as a company, but what's been amazing, and Bill always says, the only contract we had was I keep the keys to the warehouse. I have no idea if that's true or not. It sure feels true because Even though we've not been family owned since the eighties, we have been family operated all 68 years.

But Bill could still walk on campus today to the distillery and he could go anywhere he wants.

Rob is our managing director globally.

Painfully so. Yes. He just has a drill in hand.

If you're listening, Bill, you're a pain in the ass. But Rob is our managing director. I mean, he runs the brand globally. And so this brand has been family operated. It's kind of the best of both worlds because you have this wonderful family. We teased Rob and Bill. They think we're still eight people in a loft. We're kind of a big brand. They're like, we don't need hierarchy and let's stay flat. And it's like, well. we have 274 employees now, like we need, you know, but, and then Suntory is such a fabulous owner because they're family owned, they're family. I mean, and I've been training under the Suntory Blender for the last two years. So getting access to really learn how Yamazaki is put together and Hakushu and Hibiki and understanding what they do and their commitment to quality is just, I've never seen, it is unbelievable. So it's really, you've got this great owner who's like, we're just going to leave you alone. If it's not broke, don't fix it. We're here if you need us for things like learning and best practices, but we're family operated for sure.

Well, let's talk about something that wasn't broken. You fixed it.

46.

No, I, well, you know, it's debatable. So you had maker's mark cast strength in this just amazing little bottle. I loved it. It was one of the nicest looking bottles on the shelf. And one day I walk in a liquor store and I'm like, just broke my heart almost.

We took the price down. Did you like that part?

I don't even care about that. $10 a bottle.

Yeah, we made it more affordable for people.

A lot of people probably do enjoy that, but that bottle was just, I don't know. I look at that bottle and I'm like, yeah, that's just, you know, it's funny. I can't even remember what it looks like.

Squattier and heavier. Rob loved it. I did not like it. We were really, we were a house divided on that bottle.

So here's a big difference on that one too, Mike. Like that was a bottle that a lot of the, the labeling like was done offsite. Like that product, a lot of the packaging from the exterior side of the bottle was done offsite. Yeah. I'm sure for a cost wise and we didn't have control of the package.

It was a quality issue. If you, I don't know if you remember all the labels, part of what pushed us, the labels kept falling off. We couldn't keep them on. It was. We're control freaks at Maker. We are control freaks. Our print shop produces 70,000 labels a day.

And now you're 46.

It was part of the same reason, oh, sorry, it was quality. Let's bring it all back in house. And I like a label versus a Deco, personally.

Quality and understanding what it is. I mean, listen, Kevin Smith and I were big parts of the project to create Makers for 2006. With Diane Rogers. Give Diane a chance. With Diane. So back in 2008 is when Bill tasked us with that. When we were able to finally come up with his taste vision on the liquid side, and then we saw the package, this is the first thing we've ever done outside of Classic Makers. And all of us are like, oh my God, that's a beautiful bottle. We love it. We love it. We love it. The problem we had for 10 years, we're going on 11 years, 12 years of Makers 46 is nobody understood it. That 46, I couldn't tell. So it's 46 months old. It's 46 proof. It's, and I mean, so trust me, we've got 5% that understand everything. You've got 95% that have no clue.

Oh, I've had people tell me that about 46 before. They're like, oh, it's only 46 proof.

I'm going to say it. It's a stupid name.

Oh, I've had somebody tell me that it was 46 years old and I was like, no, no way. Nope.

Well, and then he made it 47% ABV just to.

So it was, and then, you know, so there was some of that, like, you know, even, you know, 10, 11 years later, it was about 10 years later, we started looking at, we really need to think about this package because there was so much confusion around it. And as we went out and did focus groups and everything else, it was evident that we needed to change the package. And so really what you see now is one, so all that package, like that bottle, even when you look at the wood finishing bottle, which is the same 46 bottle, that's all done offsite. That's all pre-decoed off-site. We are at the mercy of a third party on our package quality. Mike, I couldn't tell you how many times, one, it never shows up on time, and then two, when it does show up, you're having to reject 20% of your bottles, which, oh, by the way, impacts launch dates, impacts availability on the shelf, and those are the things that people scream about. for us to have the ability to bring that package in-house, do the label in-house, and then on top of it, it tells the story. Because the thing that stands out prevalent on that, one is Bill's name, and then two is French Oat. I've got family that have known 46 since before we even introduced it. I have family that have samples of stuff that we rejected that never came out to be 46, but it was like profile 37 or profile 42. When we released that package, I'll get a text, I love this French oak. I mean, how did you guys come up with that? And it's like, it's makers 46. I've been telling you for 12 years that they're French oak staves and they're, and they have no idea. So it's, it's telling the story. I also love just having a label like, yeah.

So, so the new bottles of any of the private select will be in the standard maker's bottle. No.

No, that's staying for now. You know, operationally that bottle, it's beautiful. It's a, it's a nightmare logistically.

I can get that, you know, when you outsource something, you know, and those hassles that it probably drives both of you insane. I get it. And I wanted our listeners to know the reason why.

And I can tell, just speaking from the quality side, so look at that FAEO2 bottle, which was a 46 bottle.

All of our woodfinishing lives in that bottle.

Is a private select bottle. But look at that bottle, right? Narrow base, thick shoulders. Imagine trying to run that bottle on a bottling line on a conveyor. What do you think's going to happen when that bottling line's running and you get any herky-jerky motion or anything else? Oh, it wants a tip over. It's going to tip over. From a food safety standpoint, your number one concern on packaging is glass inside the bottle, not glass breakage. So you're taking a big drink and there's glass. Glass inside the bottle. So if you get a chip finish on the lip of that or anything else, so when we have a bottle that tips over, we remove 10 bottles before it and 10 bottles after it. And when they're not only that, it's the tipping when they're already pre deco, we've already bought it.

I've actually had a bourbon bottle with glass inside of it before. That is our worst nightmare.

That's what keeps him up at night.

Well, it scared me because I poured the glass and I drank some and I'm looking in and I'm like, what is that? Did I drink glass?

No doubt about it. So when you think about things like we love the package, we love all of it, that is an issue running on the bottling line. And people don't ever want to think about the packaging side. But if you're thinking about not just packaging, but package quality, Right? Those are the things that absolutely, absolutely.

Don't even get us started on cork versus screw case.

Well, I've drank some cork before. I'm pretty positive. I mean, we could do a hundred podcasts on the packaging side, like why people choose what they choose and, you know, why you do what you do or why you alter or, you know, kind of,

This is, this is literally, this is, yeah, I didn't know it's not super interesting to people, but I think it is because they want to know when they go in there and they see a change and people notice change, maybe there's that five or 10% or that one.

A lot of what you see too, Mike, like especially the last five years, people are putting liquid in, in, in packages that. It's not, it's not their desired package. It's whatever glass mold they can get their hands on. You see a lot going in wine bottles right now because they can't get round molds are typically easier to get because of wine. And so, yeah, I mean, you get in the packaging side. a whole nother conversation.

Since we're talking about production, let's shift over to the future innovation because I've got Miss Innovation in here with me. Are we going to see something new from Maker's Mark in the near future?

Yes.

And what is it? You got to tell me.

Come on now. Yeah, right. Here's what I would say.

We're not going to see a rye though. Hell no.

No. Unless stuff's going on that I have no idea. We'll quit that day. Here's what I'll say. Toasted? Our innovation department, which is two people, myself and Beth Buckner.

I'm kind of included because I have to be.

You're like the mascot.

Well, it's part of the title.

So we are set up. Our primary objective is to study where flavor comes from. whether that's the agricultural side or the manufacturing side. So things like that entry-proof project, you know, that was an eight-year project looking at process, looking at things that we do and we don't really know the impact necessarily they have from a flavor perspective. We're doing similar things with fermentation set temperatures, fermentation times, looking at, you know, back set percentage, like all these things that are just handed down over generations, but you don't really know why it matters or how it would change if you changed it. On the agriculture side, you know, you talked about wheat. I want to walk you out. We're growing barley here and it's the most majestic looking grain. I'm a wheat girl through and through. Barley is beautiful. It looks majestic and we've been growing our grains here Not to really use, but just to understand that flavor source and looking at varieties, looking at seeding rates, looking at cover crop rotations, looking at nitrogen inputs and farming techniques. Because when you look at the last 70 years with wheat production, it's changed drastically as it's become more commodity driven and more yield. And so what was full flavors lost along the way. And with modern varieties, you can breed for yield and disease resistance. You can also breed for flavor. And there's a big movement in the baking industry that that's happening. And so Beth and I spend our days just studying where flavor comes from. So what I feel like we're doing for Makers Mark It's not even for our generation. We are building the blueprints for future innovators at Maker's Mark to understand all these flavor levers, to dream up these new whiskeys and to understand how to go make them, whether it's changing up the agriculture or tweaking the processes. what I'll tell you, I'm not going to tell you what's coming from us, but what I'm going to tell you, it's thoughtful. It's different, right? We are not a me too brand in terms of, you look at our single barrel program, it's different because it needed to be. We couldn't do it the way Heaven Hill does it or the way Four Roses does it. And there's a wonderful, we had to do it the maker's way. So yes, there will be things coming. Yes, I think it will surprise traditional makers, consumers. But I think it's work I'm super proud of and that we've worked hard to be really thoughtful about the next generation of whiskey coming out of Star Hill Farm.

Any Triticalia in there?

No, I can't even spell that.

You can't even spell it?

Do you even know what I'm talking about?

Yeah, the green, yeah.

I'm just wondering, now I'm wondering about the barley. How much different does barley look than wheat? Totally different.

It's feathery.

We'll show you.

Yeah.

I don't know if you noticed when you pulled in and parked, but we've got about what? What do we have, like seven acres out here?

Right here.

Half wheat, half barley, because it's kind of cool. It's amazing.

And we've got test plots with the University of Kentucky. We've been doing for five years where we grow different varieties of wheat and we look at, You know, Tawhar and whiskey, we were talking about Texas raw bar and I wrote a book about it. And five years ago, I'd been like, let's take this outside. That's bullshit. The truth is, it does exist. Now, by the time you grow it, mill it, cook it, ferment it, distill it, age it, there are correlations. That work takes, that is decade long work, right? And we are looking at that stuff just to understand, But it is definitely, we are an agricultural product. And I think people don't think about whiskey being agriculture, but it is.

I personally do because I work for the Coast Guard and I'm always worried about barges moving up and down the river, right? And I don't think people realize how much corn travels up and down the river. Wheat and rye, not so much, but corn. There's more corn rolling up and down Ohio and in Mississippi areas than people eat.

Well, and then international now. I mean, barley and rye. I mean, those are big international products now.

And barley traditionally was, you know, it was a horse feed. You didn't have malting quality barley. And there's two varieties now that are being grown in Kentucky. Denny and I sit on a small grains council.

Yeah. Why they let us on, I have no idea.

I know why they let me on.

I don't know why you're there, but- No, I mean- Because she walks in with a rocks glass full of whiskey. No, that's exactly what- No, no joke. First meeting. That's exactly what happened.

I love it. It's so fascinating.

And they had pizza, which I was all in.

You know, barley is not, it's a cooler climate, weather, green, but the barleys they've developed here, there's two varieties. They're called Violetta and Calypso. The Calypso is a little more fruitful, the Violetta is more your traditional, and the flavor is unbelievable. But imagine right now, right? Look at barley. It's coming from the plain states, Canada, and Europe. We are living through a pandemic and supply chain is a big problem. Imagine if you can change the supply chain in Kentucky where suddenly farmers can grow all of our ingredients right here. It's better for the environment. It's more sustainable. It's more cost effective. You don't write like these. So a lot of what I do is dream about what the world looks like in 50 years.

I'm sure that if you guys could get to a point where everything that Makers Mark needed would be within 15 or 20 miles from here, that's the dream, right?

And everything we do, everything's 60 miles except the barley. The corn and the wheat are right here.

But soon to be the barley from here too. From a business standpoint, I mean, that's the dream. Our most expensive grain is barley because we do not

grow it and source it here. They've got to get on a rail car, then into a truck and it's still got to be a lot of times got to get on a barge.

Yeah. Right. And come in.

I mean, it's so, I mean, and this is, this is not fast work. This is slow. It's a slow grind.

Well, let's talk about something that you could do fast, like a finishing.

Yep.

We do that because, well, I know you do in 46, but people tell me other distillers say, Hey, uh, we can't make a toasted wheat because it will be too sweet. And bourbon drinkers won't drink it.

Um, we've done a lot of, So here's what I'll say about toasted barrels.

I mean, who would ever say that there's a bourbon that's too sweet that's not a flavored bourbon? I get it if it's a flavored bourbon, but.

Here's where I struggle with toasted barrels for maker's mark. And I think the Elijah Craig one's delicious, the basil Hayden toast. Andrea Wilson's my personal hero. I'm obsessed with her. I try to like really be cognizant of how often I text her because I'm obsessed with her.

Stalker status.

Very much so. I love her. So Mikters, you know, they wrote the book on toasted barrels.

Delicious. Delicious. My favorite Mikters right there.

And they get better and better. I think we have every distilleries got to have their own guardrails for innovation. What's right for one doesn't mean it's right for another. So like some of the things we focus on is agriculture. So Sherry finishes, or you look at Angel's Envy and what they do, it's wonderful. It works for them. We would never do that because one of the rules for ourselves is flavors coming from agriculture. Is it right? Is it wrong? I don't know.

Isn't an oak tree agriculture?

It is. That's why we do it. We're not doing these finishes. One of the other roles with finishing, and this is a personal thing that I feel pretty strongly about and again, I don't know if it's right or wrong, it just works for us. I don't want to taste how the sausage is made. And what I mean by that is we will have these products and Andrew Weaver will be like, Oh my God, I love it. And even though we love it, I can taste the barrel influence. If I can taste the wood influence, we've not made something new. All we've done is we've taken this really great whiskey and we've taken this wood and we've just said, here you go. The whole goal for us for finishing is to create something new where the two things come together to be cohesive and harmonious, to really give you something different. The thing we have found with toasted barrels, and again, I think they're delicious, you can taste the toasted barrel. The flavor is so impactful. We've not found a way to integrate it where you're not getting the whiskey. You're not getting, and I'm not saying again, not right or wrong. That's we've not found with our whiskey, how to integrate them in a way that we feel like is magical.

You gotta find out. You gotta find out. What again? I mean, we've tried. No, listen. I mean, Mike, there's no doubt we could do it. And so every bottle, Every bottle, but we're already allocated. It just isn't us. Makers is already allocated.

So it's one of those, you got to be very purposeful about- 98% of our finishing experience end up on the editing floor. Like if I walked you over to the lab right now, There's hundreds of bottles of experiments, toasted barrels, open fire precision toasting, water baths, double toasting, different things. We've tried it in pursuit of flavor. It just hasn't worked for us.

I guess this fat guy will just have to keep dreaming. I just have to keep dreaming. Now, while she's talking all that, and then she said she didn't want to see where the sausage was made. I don't want to taste how the sausage was made. Well, I was like, she's an Instagram stalker. I know, because we had this guy say that we were giving away some Woodford.

He got that from me.

The guy said, I don't want to see where the, it was a tour at, at Woodford. And he was like, I don't want to see where the sausage was made. And I was like, wait a minute.

That's a Bill ism. Who is this fella? Yeah. Yeah.

No, I just, I don't want to taste.

what I want it to be something new.

It's a bit synthetic, right? Like for us, like it's just a bit. If you can taste process or you can taste influence.

I will tell you, you're going to love though, we just put to bed a couple of months ago, this year's wood finishing release. And the whole thing with this series is we planned the first five years before we started. So this first wood finishing series was a five-year installment of stories we wanted to tell, flavor stories. And they're very process-focused. So, you know, year one was yeast, year two was air drying the wood, year three was fatty acid esters. This year, we're gonna do barrel rotation. And so what's also happened is we started quite close in and we felt like we've earned the faith of our consumers to start getting a little crazier and creative and outside the box. So this is going to be, it's the first time we wanted true toasty notes in a makers. You're going to love BRT01.

It's... BRT Mike, did you catch that? BRT.

Barrel rotation.

We suck at naming things, but...

That's all right. We've embraced it. I'm embracing the bad. Has this already been bottled and it's ready to roll?

It's not bottled. We finished. SC4 PR5?

4 by 5. RC6? RC6, that was a good... Is that E01? Is that E02?

What's Willy Wonka is, if you guys could get a better naming convention out there, we'll give you... Why is this on us?

Our distillery... Are you talking to me? No, the listeners. The listeners. You saw 170,000 people. I was getting defensive too.

Denny, quit making it about you.

God, I hate it when you say that.

Because I say it all the time.

Again, I'm going to step into it.

But you will love this one. It is purposely toasty because when you walk to the top of a warehouse and you get that dry spice in the wood and it's a really certain smell and extraction and you get those toasty wood notes, that is put into this whiskey.

I think I probably will love it. You'll love it. Well, I know we're up against the time here. Um, I can't think. Are we? Well, we could keep talking forever.

He's like, please shut the hell up. We could do this.

We could do this episode one and two. Um, but I can't thank you two enough listeners. This has been story time with Jane and Denny.

I like that I got top billing. Or Denny and Jane.

Stick with the first one. Cause I don't want to have to deal with the fallout once we, and all this.

I didn't want her to leave here and be like, big son of a bitch, he didn't name me first. What is going on with him? No, seriously, I just can't thank you both enough for bringing me inside your house and sharing your whiskey with me. We're still going to try to open this decanter. We'll break it, I think, before we officially get it open. But thank you very much just for bringing us in here, letting our listeners know about everything Makers Mark. Kind of the inside on both of you, some inside stories and stuff. That's what a podcast is supposed to be about. Just in-depth knowledge, I think. We do have a giveaway before we leave here for our listeners. What do we got, Denny?

Well, I mean, I think would be really cool is, you know, a bottle obviously signed and we'll figure out what it is. I mean, something that's kind of hard to get.

Um, but I think the really cool thing is if that was his whiskey of the year, it was our whiskey.

Yeah, maybe so you got some of those. Cause I mean, you. You stash them away. I never know what you have.

Real quick, do you know what he does? This is so annoying. So we're neighbors. He comes to my house. We live 0.2 miles from each other as the crow flies. So he comes over.

Or a minute and a half by electric bike.

Then he has an electric bike.

It looks like a motorcycle and I feel like such a badass.

He thinks it looks like a motorcycle.

I look like a 49-year-old badass.

Sure. My five-year-old makes fun of you. Anyway, he comes over to my house and the next day I'll go in to put glassware away. We have about three different bars in our house and he'll have signed like 20 bottles while he's in my house.

Every time I go over a Sanna bottle, don't even have to be a Maker's bottle.

It's not even a Maker's bottle.

It infuriates her.

It'll be like, Jane, I blended this one just for you.

Yeah. So RC6, which I just came on board, it was literally getting released. And there are people, we're seeing, I'm getting emails and feedback like, oh, Denny, since you came back to Maker's, thank God this RC6 is amazing. So I will, you know, originally when I went over, I would sign a bottle of RCC. Jane, aren't you so thankful that I was able to finish this whiskey and turn it into this beautiful juice that it is? Dennis P. Potter Jr. master distiller. I bet she does have at least 40 bottles that are signed.

He just signs random stuff in my house. Um, but I think FAO two would be a great bottle of giveaway and Danielle sign it and hand deliver it to your house, no matter where you live.

And then I think, um, yeah, we got a barrel head. I think that, you know, Jane and I, we'll sign and then rob and bill and those don't exist. So that's a pretty cool one.

I think that's a amazing giveaway. So listeners, what you got to do to win that is comment hashtag makers, mark, on the comments below this post right here today on Instagram, from the time we do the post until 10 o'clock at night, and I'll pick a winner. But hashtag MakersMark, you gotta reside in the United States and you gotta be 21. You know how we do it and stuff. Well, Jane Denny, like I said before, man, what an amazing conversation. I think our listeners are just gonna love this. We've kept it pretty clean. We've tried really hard. I'm sure this is a struggle. It's a big struggle.

Diddy deserves one. As soon as we end this, there's going to be a string of F-bombs.

We didn't finish the Weavering. We never told the Weavering story. We'll tell you offline.

He left the gas station, never pulled the nozzle out.

He drove around our campus all last week with gas.

With the gas nozzle sticking out the side of his truck. No, this is the independent stave guy.

Oh, it's our friend.

That's horrible.

You should get him on the show. You'd love him.

He's a good one. So where can our listeners find you guys on social media?

That is a wonderful question.

Yeah.

I don't have social media.

Like I have an Instagram page.

I have an Instagram page, but I mean, I've not been on it in probably two years.

I have an Instagram page and I I'm sporadic. I'm Jane Thomas Bowie.

Jane Thomas Bowie. I mean, isn't it appropriate that she has, you know, a middle name?

I was one of those two named country kids. Thomas was my middle name. I was Jane Thomas until I was six.

Of course you were. She got a bad ass last name though.

That's my married name. Bill and Rob still refuse to acknowledge I got married. I'm still Connor to them. Sometimes Bill hyphenates me if he's feeling generous.

It sounds better Bowie though.

Jane Connor, Jane Bowie.

It's like you're a knife.

She is she stabs deep and she was she already said she carries a switch blade because she's from Monticello So you can find makers mark at makers work on Instagram.

I would just follow makers mark We're there's just dribble coming from us.

I've got a Facebook page, but I mean all you're gonna see here lately or pictures from my daughter's high school graduation. Well, congratulations on that and becoming an empty nester.

Yeah. So I was like, Jane's got a couple of years to go. She does.

My daughter's third parent.

Oh, B built in babysitter.

He does. He picks her up from school like once a month.

B Bowie. Not bottled in bond.

She's five, but she's like 25. I don't know that she cares for me a whole lot.

Yeah.

Uh, you get on our nerves.

Why is Denny Potter here?

Cause we're doing a podcast.

Well, listeners, you know where you can find us at. You can find us on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and you can find us almost anywhere. But our main place is on Facebook. We have a private Facebook group called the Bourbon Roadies. Whiskey drinkers in there that just love to share their whiskey, share their stories. You know our three rules. You got to be 21. You got to love Bourbon Hill who don't like bourbon, right? and you gotta agree to play nice whether you're drinking from the bottom of the shelf like I started out with that old tin high or you're drinking the top of the shelf like Jim likes to drink from like the Pappy's bottle or this beautiful Feo II from Makers Mark. We want you to be able to enjoy that whiskey with your friends, with our family. So no haters in there. If you are, we got three badass moderators, Drew, Jason, and Adam that will cut you off knees and kick you out. You can go find another group. That's just how we are. No rudeness. So we do two shows a week. We do our weekly craft distillery show or we'll review a whiskey. We'll break it down for you, tell them whether we like it or not. Usually if you see it on our show, we love it. Um, you check that one out. It's about 15 or 20 minutes. Then we have an hour long show like today's show with Jane and Denny. Hey, this is going to be a little bit longer one. Um, but Hey, it'll get you to work and back and get you on that lawnmower for a little bit. Um, but you want to check that out so you know what we always say the way to check that out is you need to go to the top of that app hit that plus sign that check sign that subscribe sign that way that app will tell you hey these two jokers got a show that just released And then we need you to scroll on down on that app. Hit that five star review. Leave us some comments because you know what I'm about to say. The big bad booty daddy of bourbon will come to your house carrying this fail to in his hand. You'll drink all night long. Just laughing away. By the end of the night, you'll leave us that five star review and some comments. I guarantee. No, seriously, those comments, that five star review opens up doors to distilleries like Makers Mark to us. Gets great guests on our show with great conversations like Jane and Denny. Gets great whiskey in our hands for reviews like this 2021 limited release Feo II that we named our 2021 Bourbon of the Year. No doubt we loved it. We're very approachable. You can go on our website and leave us comments. We'd appreciate if you read our blogs on there, our reviews. You can shop for our swag. We'd appreciate if you purchase that, our Bourbon Bullshit or t-shirt, our Bourbon Road shirt, some of our whiskey glasses, any other swag that we have on there. That helps this veteran-owned and operated podcast get on down to Bourbon Road. we are as far as i know one of the only podcasts that get on the road and visit distilleries that bring you these gross stories in person that way we can look somebody straight in the eye and get a good story out of them that's the way we like to do it um You can always email us. He's jim at the bourbon road dot com. I'm mike at the bourbon road dot com, but you can always reach out to us on our Instagram. That's probably the best way to send us a DM. He's Jay Santa 63. I'm big bourbon chief and you know what we always like to say. We'll see you on down the bourbon road.