334. So You Want to Start a Bourbon Company

Welcome to another great episode of the Bourbon Road with your host, Jim and Brian, where they talk bourbon and of course, drink bourbon. Grab yourself a pour, kick back and enjoy another trip down the Bourbon Road.

We are excited to have our sponsor Seldom Seen Farms with their bourbon barrel aged maple syrup. Kevin and his staff there do a wonderful job. We're excited to have them sign on again this year to support the Bourbon Road and we love their product. We hope our listeners will visit SeldomSeenMaple.com and check out all they have to offer. A lot of great gifts there. Bourbon aged maple syrup. bourbon barrel aged coffee, Rick house reserved barbecue sauce. You can buy it by the bottle. You can buy it by the case. You can even get bourbon maple candle and they even have maple cotton candy. Definitely, definitely check out seldom seen maple dot com. support our sponsors, support Kevin and his family there. They have a 5,000 maple tap operation in Ohio, and they're doing it right. You know, they don't just produce maple syrup. They're also urban enthusiasts, and we love them to death. Again, go check out CellroomSceneMaple.com. Kevin and his staff will take care of you. Welcome back listeners to another episode of The Bourbon Road. I'm your host, Jim Shannon. Got with me today co-host Brian. Welcome again. Thank you, Jim. We're in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, and you know, a stone's throw from where I live. I live in Simpsonville, so this is what, about a 30-minute drive from me. About 45 for you, right? Yeah, about 45. But still kind of close. We can call it local, I think. But the reason we're here today is to have a great fellow on the show today, Greg Keely. And Greg, you are the founder, owner, master of everything. Yes. Of Lawrenceburg Bourbon Company. Indeed. And my business card actually says wannabe distiller. Wannabe distiller. We're going to talk about why you're a wannabe distiller, but you actually are putting out some, at least I hear, some pretty fabulous whiskey. Thank you. I'm very pleased to hear that. And you have laid out a few bottles for us today. So we're down on, this is kind of Main Street, Lawrenceburg. Yep. You can almost throw a stone and hit Wild Turkey from here, but now it's a little bit further than that.

It's about a four minute drive up the road. Yeah. And you literally cannot get to Wild Turkey without passing our cellar door.

But this city, this town, has a deep, rich history in whiskey, and I can't think of a better place to start a new operation than...

I tell you what, Jim, the whole... We just landed in Lawrenceburg by mistake, right? I didn't even know where it was two years ago. And my wife and I were up here. You know, we didn't know a single person in Kentucky for that matter. And I had some work up in Lexington and Katie came up for a couple of weeks and we just fell in love with Lexington and then Kentucky writ large. And one day we were driving around, you know, looking at farms that we thought we might buy, but couldn't afford like in Midway and the sales and that sort of thing. or I say the sales now, I don't say the side anymore.

So I'm almost a local. Yeah.

And we, you know, we were just driving around and we thought, Oh, there's this place called Lawrenceburg. We were going, we're heading up to, you know, um, Danville and we thought, Oh, it was a Sunday. And we thought, Oh, we'll stop for lunch. And of course nothing's open on a Sunday in, you know, Kentucky. I don't think it was certainly out in the country. And, uh, so instead we did what we always do and pulled up Zillow and just started driving around, looking at farms, just driving past them. And we drove up on this farm, which incidentally is literally next door to Four Roses Distillery here in Lawrenceburg, which sort of tipped me over into the, I think we need to live here. I like this. Yeah. It's literally, you know, we're one farm away and we drove up on this farm and I'm like, if we can afford this, we're buying it and buying a farm. And that's what happened. That's how we ended up in Lawrenceburg, you know, nearly two years ago now.

Oh, fantastic. So you've laid out quite a spread here for us. a number of releases come out in the very near past.

So in fact, you had one today, right? We did. We released our one cask series rye, which is our very first rye release. We only had two and a half, three barrels of the rye. It's seven years old, it's cast-ranked, it's uncut, unfiltered, and it's really an approachable whiskey. For a seven-year-old rye, it drinks more like a bourbon in that it doesn't on the way down. It still has the spiciness of the rye, but it's a 90% rye, 10% molded barley distilled here in Kentucky. We've had it laying up for a few years now, three, three or four years in total. And it just came out way, way, way better than we were expecting.

Well, you know, listeners know me. I'm kind of a rye guy and you know, I've always kind of leaned a little bit towards the rise, but you've got two bourbons out for us today. These are two of your bourbons from your last release.

They're separate barrels. Yes, sir. So we bought out our first bourbon release, which was just a couple of weeks ago. basically sold out in less than a day, uh, which we were just stunned. It was three barrels. Um, and you know, this is something that I'm learning a lot. And I like people that come in to see this as well as like they were three barrels. They were laid down at the same time. The mash bill is exactly the same, but they are enormously distinct. Sure. If you did a blind tasting and gave them to people, people would think they were different distilleries, different mash bills, the whole shooting match, but they're not. And that's the beauty of doing the single barrel cast strength product. And that's what we're going to do certainly moving forward. But that's, you know, again, everything for me is new. Like everything we're doing now is new. So when we had a small event, uh, for the chamber of commerce for a little pre-release party. And we just, that was out of control and now the shop was packed. People couldn't get in. I'm glad the fire marshal didn't turn up kind of deal. We had to open this back area up here where we're sitting right now. Uh, we put Christmas lights up, so it looked a bit more festive and didn't look like a warehouse. Um, and it was crazy. And then I came in the next morning for our official release, which was a Friday and it was, uh, We opened at 10. I turned up at nine just to restock the shelves and things. There was a line of people going from our front door on Main Street here in Lawrenceburg, right down to the coffee shop, which is a block away. There must've been 40 or 50 people and it was 20 degrees outside. And I'm like, I wouldn't be lining up for this, but I'm glad you are. And people came in, everyone was so chipper about it. And we were sold out by lunchtime.

Okay. So we're going to take a certain order to this, I think, Brian. What do you think? Bourbons first. And then Rise in the second half, you think? I think so. And then he's got a special one. We're not even going to tell anybody what it is yet. But we've got a special one. It's going to be our fifth whiskey. So we're going to try two of your bourbons. Good. Now in the first half. And then we'll try the two Rise in the second half. And then you're going to treat us to this. this 10 year stuff that we've got that stuff that just sitting there. Yeah.

And I've got to say, uh, you guys will be the first, you know, media podcast people, whatever bourbon people, uh, to try our rise in the wild. Fantastic. I love being first.

All right. Well, if you're not first, you're last, right? That's right. All right. Well, let's get this. You've got two different barrels.

You have barrel... I think we're doing barrel one and barrel three. Barrel one and three. Okay. They're both four years old. They're about four years, eight months old. They're 75, 21, four. and again we've sort of leant into that higher rye kind of bourbon because I love rye bourbon now. Emily who runs everything for us is a rye girl and her aim is to convert one person a day to rye whiskey and so she worked a magic on me. So these are These were our first little babies and they'll always be pretty special. In fact, the third cast that we're having, we had to pull out of our VIP box, which are just the ones I'm taking home, but it sounds much better calling it a VIP box. Yeah, sure. Well, I love the sacrifice.

That's right. Just give and give and give. All right. Well, let's start off with barrel number one bourbon right now. All right. So we've each have a little bit of this, uh, barrel one bourbon. And what'd you say the proof was on this again? 122.2. Awesome.

Uh, and we've, we don't cut our bourbon. Um, and we're, we're. That's how we're going to keep all of our product is uncut, unfilled. And if it's 127 proof, it's 127. Sure. This one's 122. All right.

Well, I'll just mention this for the listeners. They're probably hearing a little bit of stuff in the background. And if they are, and if they're not, that's great. If they are, we're right next to the tasting room and there's a lot of people out there getting an opportunity to drink this whiskey for the first time.

Well, that's what happens when you do a podcast on release day. And it's nice after yesterday when it was like zero degrees.

Yeah, absolutely. It's a beautiful day outside and it's a great day to drink new whiskeys with a new friend. So cheers. Let's check this one out. Cheers. Cheers. Wow. That's kind of nice dusty note to it. I can't say anything because I'm biased, but no, you're, you are biased, but you're allowed, you're allowed to call it your notes too. I mean, you're, you're part of this, this tasting, my whole tasting, um, expertise gets down to, Oh, that's good.

Or I don't really like that. Um, I would like to say I'm more nuanced than that, but sadly I'm getting better.

I think that's the beauty of it too. I've said this a million times. Like it really does come down to what you like. You know, you can, you can call it a lot of different, uh, flavors, notes, tastings, you know, whatever people want to call them. And it comes down to, do you like it? And I'm a very high proof guy. Jim can tell you I love it. You know, the one twenties all the way up even, you know, the low one thirties.

It's funny you say that in that, you know, I, uh, my whole bourbon experience has been, you know, the big guys primarily until I moved here. I started getting into the more craft distillers and things. As a result of that, I've really gravitated now to the high-proof bourbons and whiskies. I can tell if I have a cocktail, it's not a high-proof bourbon now. It's just different.

Right.

Why bourbon? I've liked bourbon for a million years. It was one of those things when I retired from the military, I went and did the gun runner thing. I went and worked for companies that worked for the defense industrial complex, as my mom calls it. That was great. I just got sick of it. I didn't want to wear a tie. I didn't want to live in Washington. Didn't want to do all that stuff. And we moved to Lexington and then out here to Lawrenceburg. And well, if I'm in Lawrenceburg, you know, what else is there to do? I can't ride a horse. So, and I, I'm not a farmer as I've worked out in the last two years. So why not bring out some bourbon?

Well, I think one of the things we'd like to explore during this show, and you kind of mentioned this early on, that your business card says, want to be distiller. But you're going through this process. You're kind of going through this process of first setting up a bottle shop and a tasting room, and then, of course, being able to purchase barrels and bottle them yourself as a non-distilling producer. and then moving on to the next phase which is to actually be a distillery. So I think it's an interesting thing to talk about here is kind of the process that you went through and I'd like to get into that if it's okay with you and just talk about kind of the trials that you went through and the things that you learned because I think there's a lot of listeners out there that have certainly toyed with the idea of Opening it to story. Right. Maybe there's more than a few. There might be quite a few. I think I've probably even thought about it. Brian, you? I guarantee it. Sure. The thought crosses your mind, but a lot of times I think people get They're scared of the process. They're scared of the system. They're scared of how much money it's going to take, all of those kinds of things. So it'd be really cool if you could walk us through that process a little bit. Before we start that though, I'm going to take us on a slight detour. I'd like to know a little bit more about, you said you worked in the defense industry, but you're also a veteran. I mean, I could see it on the walls here.

Yes.

Can you tell us a little bit about your, and you also have this little bit of an accent.

So I do. I'm from Southern Alabama. I picked that up. You won't believe this. I actually told that to people in Alabama when we lived in Birmingham, that I was from Southern Alabama. And they all believed it. So I say it here, people don't quite believe it as much. No, from Australia originally, I grew up in the wine industry. My parents are in a place called Margaret River on the West Coast. And it's one of the most beautiful wine regions in the world. The wine's fantastic. But making wine, making wine is hard. And that just wasn't for me. It was too hard. So I joined the military. I did 11, 12 years in the Royal Australian Navy, served all over the place. And one of my tenures was as a military attache to the Australian mission in Washington, DC. And that's how I got to meet all the people at the Pentagon and people like You know, I was fortunate to meet Donald Rumsfeld and, you know, worked for him directly outside of his office. And he was like an extraordinary man. But, you know, just some great military leaders. When I was in Australian uniform, I then got recruited into the U.S. Navy after Afghanistan in 2012. Oh, no, it would have been Iraq 2013. And it took the process took nearly two years. It had to get through Congress, had to get signed by President Bush because I was coming over as an officer and I think I still am the only non-medical person to come into the US Navy as an officer directly from an allied service. But yeah, it was signed by the president. The waiver went through, my boss at the time was Jim Saxton, who was the vice chairman of the Armed Services Committee in Congress, and he and Ed Royce, who was the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, were instrumental in getting it through. But it was a great experience. I served for about 10 or 11 years, retiring as the executive officer. By the time I retired, I was the reserve executive officer at Combat Camera. uh, which is down at Virginia beach. And, uh, yeah, we had some great deployments and I had a great time, but your guests get too old and slow and fat. And eventually they're like, you're out the door. And, uh, you know, that brought my illustrious in inverted commas career to an end.

Well, it's always good to sit down with a, with an old Navy vet and one that's been in two different navies. That's pretty cool.

It was good though. It was remarkably different. Like in the Australian Navy, it's all tri-service, right? So what we did, uh, we worked this out just the other day that I didn't serve in an operational capacity on a ship in 22 years. I was transported on a ship. I've been transported on a submarine. I had my dolphins. I got qualified because we had to be. I was volunteered to get qualified. But I never served as an officer, an operational officer on a warship or any sort of ship. Gosh, they wouldn't even put me in a patrol boat. It was all land. But it was the time, Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa. it was all land for us. And, you know, I'll go, you know, on someone's boat or sailing or something. And they're like, Oh, can you like splice the main brace kind of deal? I'm like, what are you talking about? And people are always like, well, you're in the Navy. You must know how to do this. I'm like, I have no clue. I don't, I'd hardly know port from star, but let alone splice the main brace. So it's been quite an adventure. And I, you know, I met some wonderful people and some not so wonderful ones on the other side. And, uh, You know, in, in retirement, you know, sort of semi retired. And then I thought, well, what the heck? I can start a distillery like anyone else. Famous last words.

So just a quick note on this, this bourbon here, Brian, are you getting that nice spicy backend on it? I am. Yeah. I mentioned the first thing note that came out of my, my brain was it's got that dusty note to the front end of it. I honestly don't know where that note comes from, so I can't say anything. I mean, this, these distilleries, this is a Kentucky distillery. Yes. And, uh, and you're a non-distilling producer, so you acquired these barrels and, and you bottled them. Uh, what's the rough age on this? Uh, this is four years, eight months. Four years and eight months. This is really interesting to have that little dusty note on it. And I'm also getting kind of a, it's got kind of an earthy. It does. Kind of a, yeah, a nice earthy. I don't know what else to say. I don't want to call out a specific earthy note, but it's got a nice earthy note to it that I really appreciate.

So I do too. That's one of my favorite things about bourbon. I keep calling it like, and I get told off Emily and the guys out front always tell me off because I say it tastes a bit like dirt. And they're like, don't call it dirt, call it Rosemary or call it earthy or call it something, but it does. And you'll see as we progress through some of these other, uh, whiskies that that's something we really shoot for because it's my palette. I think it's, uh, I think people like it. It's a little bit different, right? It's not, it's not something you're going to get from a, you know, a bigger producer because it's not a mass market kind of thing, but I just love this kind of bourbon.

You know, you know what I think it is here? I got a tasting note. It's white truffle.

That sounds kind of fancy, doesn't it? Well, I've got my little pinky finger up now. I may have to change. Yeah. So look at that. It's a, you know, I, I call it barnyard and I'm not going to call it that anymore. We're actually launching a little fun thing on our Instagram that we're doing cocktails with goats. We have like 15 goats at our farm, and then every Friday we're going to set up and make a cocktail with all the goats jumping around. There you go. That could be where the barnyard comes from.

Wow. We have two goats and it's too many.

I love our goats to the best. They're all named after my family, funnily enough.

Well, they're actually not bad. They just annoy me because I try to go into the, we've got a, I don't know, a pretty decent goat area set up with a house for them to play on and everything. If I go in there to do work on something, they won't leave me alone.

They eat my electric cords. They, you know, there's just, they're, they're remarkably social. Yeah. Like they, I love goats and, uh, you, I think what you need is more. Oh, that would solve the problem. Don't tell my wife. That'll solve your issues. That'll solve the issues. More is always better.

Yeah, I guess so. Well. Great whiskey. Uh, I definitely appreciate that. I'm really excited to see how the barrel number three differs from this one. I'm getting a little bit of a nutty note there too.

I was going to say, I'm definitely on the nose and on the palette picking up nutty.

So what do you guys think of the nose on this? So I really quite like it, but it's a little bit different.

I like it too, but it does have that kind of that warehouse musty dusty kind of, yeah. And I call that, you know, it's kind of a. a dusty note. I don't know what else to say.

And that, you know, I don't think it would be crazy to say that's just not really all that common with a four year, eight month. Yeah.

I mean, that's, yeah, it's pretty unique to have that.

I mean, occasionally you'll have that, but not, it's not common.

We really lucked out with these barrels. We bought these a few years ago, a couple of years ago. And we were going to let it go to five years and, uh, we tasted them before Christmas. And I'm like, uh, one, we need the cashflow to, uh, it's remarkably good. It was, I gave it to a few friends and we can talk about this later, but people in the industry have been so amazingly helpful. Uh, and I took it to a few people and said, do you think I should Bottle this now, give it another few months, because it was already four years, eight months. To a person, they're like, no, you need to put that in a bottle. They knew a lot more about it than I did, so that's when we did it.

Well, good call. I think it was a wise choice to get this in a bottle and get it out there. It's obviously been wildly popular because you sold out pretty quick. Sorry, folks, if we're talking about whiskeys that have sold out, but I think there's a lot to come from.

Yeah. And we actually kept a few little, a couple of cases in the back because we wanted to be able, people to be able to try it when they came into the, into the cellar door here. Um, so, uh, we'll still have it on tasting. Uh, so people can certainly come in and try it now. Our next, um, release, which will come out in just a few weeks, uh, will be similar, but a little bit different.

Okay. Well, let's go ahead and pour the second bourbon, the cask number three, and then we'll start talking a little bit about your journey here to start a distillery. Well, the more bourbons I have, the better the journey is going to get. Awesome. Let's fill our glasses. All right. So we've got barrel three in our glass now. And Brian, do you see any difference in the color here? I think it's pretty much the same, isn't it?

Yeah, I do. I think it's pretty much the same.

I want to take a quick nose on it.

Oh, that is different. That's more floral. It really is. And you can tell it straight out of the gate on the nose. Oh yeah.

It's pretty, it's pretty amazing.

I mean, how does it, I mean, I, I've been experiencing this for a very long time and I know it's a fact that happens two barrels side by side, totally different.

These were literally side by side on the, and we only have a, a three level rick rack. So they were literally next to each other.

I mean, just where, you know, did the wood come from the heart of the tree? Did it come right? You know, all those things matter.

One was, this one was actually on the end, but they, the neck, the one barrel one that we had was next to it on the rack. So I don't know, maybe it got a little more air, got a bit more heat. We got, um, about 40, uh, 40 bottles less out of barrel three than we did out of the other two. Okay.

this is a one 27 proof. So this one's up higher than the other one. So it, it gained in proof significantly over the other one. So the barrels were obviously very different.

It had to be. And then barrel two, which we're not trying today. I've had it described to me as the bourbon you would pour into a big tumbler and watch a UK game and knock it off the couch and just crush them. It was very approachable, very drinkable. I think number one was more nuanced. It was good for a bourbon nerd to drink and dissect. Number two was a drinker. And this one, I just love our Cask 3.

So, cast three to me is definitely more floral on the nose. On the palate, it's a little more bold, I think. I feel like it is. And it's got something mid-palate that I can't identify. Kind of a...

I mean, what is that?

I recognize it, but I can't put a word to it. It's got a flavor that's in my memory, but I don't know what it is.

You know, I'd like to say it's tobacco or leather, but it's not quite.

Yeah. It's a tobaccoy kind of something.

Maybe it's a, maybe it's lots of leather bound books kind of deal. I'm sorry. I keep doing Ricky Bobby references, but, um, It's the sort I, I, I approached this. This is the bourbon that you have neat sitting on the porch, smoking a really good cigar and just sip it with a couple of friends or by yourself. If you don't want to talk to anybody, which I'd never do. So, um, yeah, I really, really liked this.

So if you remember those little, I don't know if you remember these, these little candies, Brian, they were shaped like little root beer barrels. Do you remember those? Yes. They were hard candies. Now it's kind of like that, but without the sugar, it's, it's got that kind of that non-sweet root beer kind of, I don't know. I don't know. It's really cool. I mean, it's really cool. I agree with that. Right. Maybe, maybe it's a Sassafras note or something. Someone else said that just yesterday.

Did they? Yep. I don't know what Sassafras is. So I just nodded and it's kind of root beer. Oh, it's like a root beer.

But, but you know, you can, I mean, if you take, Sassafras and sugar and put it in water, you're going to have kind of root beer, right? But take the sugar out and that's where we are. I think it's more of a dry Sassafras note.

I agree with the dry. No one's ever explained it like that. I think it tastes dry if that's a thing.

Does that make sense? It does. It absolutely does. I think a lot of those notes kind of come from the wine world, right? Because when it makes it back on your palate, it's not carrying any sweetness with it. It's kind of drying out the back end a little bit. You can almost feel it drying out as it's going back. This does not drink like a... essentially a five-year-old bourbon. This drinks like a much older bourbon. It's like it's aged beyond its time.

And I don't think, and we had this comment a lot, you know, it's nearly 128 proof. It doesn't drink like a 128 proof. When people come into the cellar door here on Main Street, We'll let them try these, you know, when they do the tasting, cause we do the full tasting thing. We generally don't tell them what the proof is just so they can, and no one picks it as a over 100 proof. I just love this, this bourbon, the castor. They're all good. They're all different. This was just my.

You were telling us earlier a little bit about this one compared to the first one when you tasted them out of the barrel compared to when they went in the bottle.

Yeah. Well, the funny thing was, you know, I'm like very hands-on, which means I just want to go and taste the stuff all the time because I want it to be ready last week. And we'd go down and for a year, you know, we'd go down every couple of months, just pull a little bit. I was all about cast one, cast one, cast one, cast one. And even I'd tell people that when they'd come in, because we had little sneak samples that we'd pulled. And anyhow, we get the bottles all back to the, to the shop here. And I was like, oh yeah, that cast one is delicious. Cast two is great. That's not really my thing, but that was funnily enough cast two was our most popular. in store bottle because it was so approachable, it was easy to drink. But then I had the Cast 3 and I'm like, holy cow, this is delicious. And I literally, the day before we launched it, I became Cast 3 guy. And I think it's because, you know, going from the barrel to the bottle, you know, it's had all that agitation, it's been pumped out, it's been moved around in the back of the truck, it's been all that stuff. I don't know whether it opened it up or it made it a little more approachable or it might, I don't know, but I was just, hit me with cast curry all day.

Yeah. I do believe exposure to air, particularly in, you know, dumping a barrel and then filling a bottle. You've seen bottles fill. I mean, there's all kinds of suds in going on while it's filling. And when you're dumping a barrel, you're filtering out the char. You're not filtering the whiskey, but you're filtering out the char. you'll find a bit of char in some of our bottles. That's good. I always like to get just a little bit, just to know that it hasn't been through that one of those really fine, uh, chill filter.

We don't do any chill filtering or anything like that. And I had one bottle, um, and it literally like had, it wasn't a chunk of chip bark, but it kind of like in respect to what you would expect to see was a big chunk of char. And I was like, how the heck did that get in there? But it was in there and I just like having it, I, I, I don't want to filter anything we ever make. If it's not good enough to go in as it is, we won't use it.

But how did you get started with Lawrenceburg and the store and the journey?

Yeah, I mean, it was just one of those things. And my wife, my long suffering wife, Katie is remarkably supportive. She's been in government service for federal government service for many years. And then one day quit and decided she wanted to be a nurse and help veterans. Uh, so we did that. Now she's a nurse. She teaches nursing as well. And, uh, so we've always had this, uh, mantra in our family that, you know, if you want to do something, you have a crack at it, but if you're going to do it, you, you know, you go hard at it. And, you know, a lot of that, uh, Jim, I'm sure you'll understand from military, you know, from your days in the Navy and things is that. know, you set your mission, your objective, and you just do whatever you have to do to get there. So, you know, it was literally one day I was like, you know, I've seen some people out there that aren't really like how they do things and but they're being successful. And I can do that. And most of these guys were, or most of these people I was using as an example were, and I have nothing against this at all. Um, but you know, they were simply buying barrels, finishing them or whatever, and then selling them. Uh, which is great. That's not what we wanted to do. If I was going to do that, it wasn't just a, uh, I just didn't want to like flip houses kind of deal. So we sat down and made a rudimentary plan that we wanted to bring our own bourbon to the market and we wanted to eventually have our distillery and we wanted to be making our own juice. So it was whatever was quickest flash to bang really. So we got this awesome little shop front here on Main Street. We totally gutted the front. As you can tell in the back, we haven't done anything, but the front, we gutted it. We set it up as a retail store because we didn't have any of our tickets or licenses or anything. And we also were growing hemp and making some CBD products and that sort of thing. So we were selling, we put that in the store. We had men's grooming products. We had a lot of bourbon trail kind of, you know, glassware and barware and all that sort of thing, mixes and things like that. it was all with view to getting our liquor license and then getting the next ticket and the next ticket. You'll hear a lot of people complain and moan about dealing with the ABC or the TTB, and I'm sure they're justified at some level in that. I found both agencies to be so helpful, it was silly. They knew I didn't have any idea what I was doing and I would submit them paperwork and they would literally write back with big red circles around it saying, that's not what this means, write this. And because I said to them, I don't know what I'm doing. And they were remarkably helpful. So I really tip my hat to both the state agency and the TTV. So we applied for our package license, and the ABC agent came out and inspected the premises. And it was kind of pie in the sky. We had to explain what we were going to do. And she's like, good. We can do that. We can work with that. Just send us the, when you're done, we'll come back and check it again, which they did. And we got our package license. So what we then set out to do was simply promote small craft distilleries in Kentucky. So what we stocked on our shelves, you wouldn't find it Kroger or, or total wine. So we had, you know, uh, small distilleries, most of whom, you know, we were going direct to, and we were doing tastes. Oh, then we went and got our tasting permit. We applied for them all at the same time, but they just were different, uh, times to get in. And it's just paperwork. You know, you've got to fill out the form. You've got to check the box. You've got to, you can't shortcut anything because if you do, it takes.

But you didn't hire a consultant or an attorney. You did this all yourself. Did it all myself. You've been, you've been in the military for many years. You've dealt with government process. So it didn't give you the knowledge you needed to get through this.

It gave you the patience you needed to get through. Well, as most people that know me will tell you, I have almost zero patients, like none. Yeah. And, but it's quite humbling when you're dealing with a bureaucracy, you just have to learn it. And, you know, for people out there that are thinking, I can't do it. It's too hard. It's too hard. Yeah, it takes work, but as long as you go into it humble and you ask questions and you tell people that, you know, I'm not Jim Beam. I'm Greg Keely, this little guy that wants to start a tasting room on Main Street. They're super helpful, but you also ask the craft distiller at the, you know, in your local County, your local town, Hey, what'd you do? They'll help. Like people helped at every step of the way. Um, so, you know, we got our tasting license and we started doing tastings of these. craft distilled products. And we would buy them and just taste them and then sell them to people. And it was great. People loved it because it was, you know, they'd go to, we're wedged between Four Roses and Wild Turkey where we are. Literally Wild Turkey is up the street and Four Roses is an eight minute drive from here.

Listen to that listeners. Hear what he said. When you're visiting and Woodford too is not too far down the street. And Buffalo trace is 15 minutes away. So when you're visiting this area around Lawrenceburg, what a great side trip, right?

We're on main street in Lawrenceburg. We do bookings, but. pretty much anytime you can walk in and do a flight and just come in. Emily's our bourbon steward and she's much more personable than I am. So that's a good thing. So if you come in and there's a guy behind the thing with an Australian accent, ask for Emily. That's what I would say.

But we got those tickets and

It was humming along great and we were getting really good support from some of these local distilleries that were helping us out, giving us promotional stuff and everything. And then I'm like, well, let's put in for our bar license. So we could sell by the drink because we could sell little like we're drinking now that the little half ounce pause, but I'm like, people actually want to have a cocktail. They've just, we get a lot of traffic after four roses and wild Turkey close at four o'clock and we stay open till six. So people it's four o'clock. You know, people are on the bourbon trail. I don't want to go back to the hotel. Yeah. So we get a lot of people come in then and they can do a whole tasting. They can do a whole flight. Um, and then at the end, they can have a cocktail or a beer. We, we only, the way we run our little bar, and this is a little bit of a sidetrack, but it's pretty simple. We have four bourbon cocktails. We have whatever red wine is open, whatever white wine is open. Uh, and we have Cig Lusher Pilsner in a can. And that's kind of it. Oh, we do have a bottle of vodka there for those people. Somebody's got to have it. Yeah, right. We just have that and we keep that under the counter. But what's happened is people will now come in and you've seen it today. We have people that come in now and they might bring their bottle that they just snag down a total wine that they haven't seen in 10 years and they'll share it with us. We'll share it with the people that are sitting next to them. And so we built this little community of folks in just a few months and it's really exciting. So once we got our per drink license, it really opened a lot more doors for us. And, you know, we're not a bar by any stretch. It's not a bar where we call it our bourbon parlor. And if you ever come into the store, into the cellar door, you'll see behind the bar, we call it the goat locker, uh, bourbon parlor in, in.

Yeah.

So in honor of all the awesome Navy chiefs that my wife and I have worked with. And, uh, but when I got the sign made, I didn't proof the artwork. So our goat locker bourbon parlor actually says goat locker bourbon pallor. And we were going to change it and we didn't. Yeah. So it's now the goat locker bourbon power. in downtown Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. There you go.

That's awesome. That's amazing. So just to recap here, you had to get a brick and mortar store. Then you had to apply for a package. A package license. And how long did the package license take? A month. A month. Okay. And then you had to apply for a tasting license so that you could sample out some of the whiskeys you were selling.

And that was, we applied for the both at the same time and the tasting license took them another couple of weeks, maybe.

Okay. So I'm not, I'm not feeling like this was too oppressive.

No, there was just a lot of paperwork. Sure. Like we had to draw it. Like this building was built a hundred plus years ago. So there's no floor plan. Yeah. So we had to go and sketch out a floor plan. We had to measure the building. We had to submit all that sort of thing. We had to make sure the bathroom was suitable, which it wasn't when we moved in. Um, Just little things like that. It's just work. You've just got to check each box and, but once you do it, you know, when I was submitting stuff, if I'd have known what to submit. like at the get-go, it would have been even quicker, but I didn't. And government websites aren't the best. No. And that's not self-explanatory.

So then you got your, so to get past pouring just like a quarter ounce or so for a tasting, you had to get an actual bar license so you can pour full drinks.

Yes. And that changed the game for you guys. It did. And apparently where the first store, sell a door, whatever you want to call it in Anderson County, to have a, uh, buy the glass license, uh, without having a food, um, component. Uh, so we were really people told, we were literally told by, you know, people that, that you wouldn't, I wouldn't, we wouldn't be able to get one. So we applied for it anyhow, again, called the ABC, called the TTB, explain what we're trying to do. They said, have you done this, this, this, this? Things we hadn't done, we did. They came and looked at it again. We said, well, this is our plan. We're going to extend where we're sitting right now in the warehouse part into a bit more of a tasting room. We're going to do this. And I said, great. When you do that, take photos of it, measure it up for us so we can approve that part of the building as well. So they approved our front, which is where the cellar door is and the gift shop and all that sort of thing. And once we fix this up, which is starts next week, Which I've been saying for three weeks, but right now it's a podcast studio. Right now it's a studio. Exactly. And, uh, you know, once we get this fixed up, uh, we then resubmit that and then this part of the building will get approved. So they've been great to work with, uh, and it's literally just paying attention to the detail, which I'm terrible at by the way. So. You know, people are sitting there going, Oh, I can't do that. I can't do that. You can do it. If I can do detailed stuff, anybody on the planet can, because I'm terrible at detail. My wife always says I'm big picture, which is her way of saying I'm lazy and don't want to. I don't want to read the instructions.

Well, I'll be honest with you. I like the finish on number three a little bit better and only because I've been sitting here listening to you talk. It's such a great recount of what you've done, but I actually forgot to drink because the finish just kept me satisfied for quite some time. It's got a nice long finish on it. Uh, the first one has a nice finish as well, but this one's lengthy and I like that.

Yeah. I thank you. I really appreciate it. I just really, really like this bourbon. I mean, I'm biased. It's mine. So I'm going to have to like it. It's like an ugly kid.

Just, just, just, uh, you know, just keep drinking other people's stuff so you can keep your, you know, and that's one thing we sell other people's stuff in our, in our store here.

So we have other craft distillers product in our store because it helps them out. And as I learned at the bourbon, the American craft distiller's conference in Colorado, in, um, Portland, Oregon last week, you know, it's, it's, it's every element lifts each other up in this industry, particularly at the craft distiller level. So if you know, we've got a distillery down the road, they're not competitors. They, if they're doing better, more people are going to come to the region and do the craft distilling tours. More people are going to come in our shop.

There's a saying about that. What's that? Rising tide raises all ships. That's what I was trying to think of, but I just couldn't get there. All right. Well, we're going to keep sipping on this. We're going to take a short break when we come back. Greg, we're going to kind of talk more about your distillery operations. That'd be great. So excited. Folks, we definitely encourage you to check out seldomseenmaple.com. That's Seldom Seen Farms. Kevin and his staff there are doing a fantastic job. And like we said at the beginning of the show, they've got a 5,000 maple tap operation. They're a first-generation farmer with a passion to produce the very best maple products available. They've won so many awards, and they have a very special unique aging method for their syrup and for their barrel-aged coffee. They provide quality at a very affordable price. They're not a maple factory or a co-packer. Kevin and his staff there are farmers with a passion for maple. Like I said before, Kevin is a bourbon enthusiast. He's not just a paid sponsor. He's a friend of the show. He's a roadie and he loves helping roadies get down the bourbon road. Make sure you check out seldom seen maple.com. You know, they're constantly producing great. bourbon aged maple syrups using barrels from the very best distilleries. They also return those barrels to the distilleries afterwards. Distilleries like New Riff, Leapers Fork, Treaty Oak Distilling, the Bard Distillery, Pine Bluffs Distilling, Mystic Farm and Distillery, Jay Riger, so many more to come. Kevin and his staff there just spreading the love, spreading the maple syrup, making it happen. And you know, at the end of the day, those barrels that age that maple syrup get refilled with some wonderful bourbon and make some great maple finished bourbon whiskey. How awesome is that? Definitely check out seldom seen maple dot com. Get yourself. We just took a nice little break here. We finished off that barrel number three bourbon, I have to say. It was delightful. It did have a very long finish for me. And again, it's amazing how much one and three differ. And I would imagine we're not having two today, but I would imagine it was the same story there.

It was like two was really the someone I think we mentioned, that was the bottle you could just crush without thinking about it. And when we released them that after people did tastings, that was the most popular barrel in store because it was the most approachable and easiest to drink. And, uh, which was entirely different to the other two. So three barrels literally sitting next to each other in the rack house. And one thing we do here is when you're doing the tasting in store here is we'll use four bourbons of our bourbons. They're all the same, but they're all different. And it's really a point that people are shocked that they're the same mash bill, same, they laid down at the same time. And it really gets people engaged and talking about, well, I like to, well, why is two so different at number three? And, uh, that, you know, that's something I'm pretty proud of is that we're able to, because they're single cask, we're able to do that. And, you know, they could buy barrel one or a bottle out of barrel one today, and then come back in and buy a barrel two tomorrow. And they're going to be different.

Well, first half, the story was bourbon. Second half, the story is rye. Are you excited, Brian? I'm excited. I do love a good rye. Yeah, I know you do. You're actually expanding your horizons just a little bit, aren't you? I am, definitely. I think you've always been kind of a... high-proof, bold-flavor kind of guy. But it's been mostly in the Bourbons, right? That's right. And now The Rise are kind of getting your attention?

They are. Very much so. I mean, we've had so many. I've had a lot over the years, really, probably, if I can think back. You know, obviously I've mentioned Angel's Envy Rye in the past, but probably the Sazrac Rye was one of the first ones that I really enjoyed. But outside of those, I never really ventured too far out into the rye world. So a lot of fun here.

You can kind of say Brian's rye curious. He's rye curious. Yeah.

And Brian's been with the Bourbon Road now since November. He is our new co-host. So he's going to get a lot of opportunity to drink Rye's. I guarantee it.

Well, I'm glad he's launching into some of them with some Lawrenceburg bourbon company. Absolutely.

Now he's got a long history of being in the bourbon industry and having quite an amazing bar at his own house. Well, I'm waiting for the invite.

Yeah, there you go. That's right.

Yeah, we can absolutely, absolutely make that happen. All right. So we mentioned this is the half where we're going to drink a little bit of rye. So we've got actually two ryes that you set out for us. And then that kind of that secret bottle we mentioned earlier, that's we're going to drink at the end of the show. So don't tune out early. You definitely want to stay for that.

Well, the Bourbon Road folks will be the first people to ever even hear about this last bottle.

but it's going to be available in your shop in a couple of weeks, in a couple of weeks. So definitely want to keep that in mind as you're listening to this episode, stay on till the end, listen to that last bottle because that's going to be the next one that comes across the counter. Indeed.

So tell us about what we're drinking now. So this is cask two of our seven and a half year old rye. We call it our one cask series, which the bourbon is called as well. Um, this guy is, um, one of my two favorite bottles. So it comes in at 116 proof, like on the, on the knocker. As I said, there was two casks of this and the cask two, is a little more approachable, I think, than Kask 1, which is a little more traditional. So it's their 90% rye, 10% model barley, seven and a half years old. I know I've said this before, but these turned out way, way better than I was even hoping they would.

I'm just curious. So you've had these barrels for a number of years. Did you try them early on?

Oh, heck yeah. Okay. So how much did they change? That's a really good question. The, We had the whole time I've all been barrel one, barrel one. I'm sorry. Barrel two, barrel two, barrel two.

Yeah.

Uh, the whole, like for two years, we got them into the bottle. They came back here and I switched because they changed like markedly. And for the better, I think it's because they were agitated and, you know, aerated and they got a bit of sunlight or I don't know. I'm, you know, I'm not the distiller. I'm the wannabe distiller, but I'm not the distiller yet. So. We'll get to that. Yeah, we'll get to that. So. You know, again, these two barrels sat next to each other in the same rick as our bourbon, and they've come out very different. And I'll be very interested to see what you guys think, particularly our Rye guy, what you guys think of the two and how they compare, because I really value that input. Okay. So this is the more approachable one.

This is cast to, um, at, uh, 116. You say it's more approachable, but it's not necessarily, uh, a beginner's ride. So this is not something you're going to give somebody as their first dry.

No, although the feedback we get off this is that there's no, The thing I don't like about right. I love the hug and I love the warmth in the mouth and all that thing. I don't like it when, you know, you've swallow it and then it's burning on the way down. I know people do like that. That's just not my thing. This doesn't do that at all. So again, with this right, I would be stunned if anyone thought it was a hun, you know, the proof it is. Because it doesn't drink the proof again.

One more time for our listeners. This is one 16 on the button, one 16 on the button. So this is actually the lowest proof thing we've had tonight so far. We had a one 22, one 27 urban, and now we're drinking a one 16 rise, which is kind of funny that one 16 is the lowest thing we're going to drink all day. Yeah. Wow. Well, let's get into it. Cheers. Cheers. Boy, it's got a nice clean nose on a very clean. It's not overly sweet. I expected it to be a little candy like at seven years, but it's not at all. Yeah.

I haven't tasted it yet, but what do you think?

So I agree with what you're saying. I did cheat a little ahead. I have a little taste here and Greg, I agree a hundred percent. Uh, you would not expect it to be one 16. Uh, that would probably be the first thing that jumps out to me for sure. It's very fresh.

It's, um, wow. Surprisingly, I almost hate to say that this is a warm season, right? Kind of for me because it's, um, it's hard to say that about a nine, uh, one six, 116 proof right. So here's 116 proof for I folks that is a summer sipper. Oh my gosh. It's very refreshing. It's light. It's clean.

People that have come in to try it, we get clean all the time. All the time. People that know a lot more about it than I do describe it as clean.

Well, you know, I like RISE year round. There are RISE that fit well into the spring, summer and early fall. They just have that nice refreshing light. a clean taste to them. And then you get the rise that are more spicy and deep and candy-like that are better in the winter months. Uh, this tends to be that more of a summer sipper rye. And that's doesn't usually happen at 116 proofs. So we were really lucky. This, this probably could be proofed down in the a hundred proof range of being an amazing session, right?

Oh, I'm sure. And you know, we, we looked at that. We did. proof both of these, you know, we cut them a little bit, just see what they were like. And you know, for some people it probably would have been more to their taste if we had to cut them down to 105, a hundred and whatever, but it's just not where we are as a company. Sure. Al we will, we will have a, uh, that in the future, but right now we're all about, coming straight out of the barrel and going straight into the bottle.

So single barrels, foolproof, that's your deal right now. And I get that you need to have a, you need to be, you need to stick to your guns and do what you do. Uh, there'll come a time when you need to do blending and when you need to do a proof down things. And when that, when that happens, I'm sure you'll do a great job.

Well, believe it or not, we already have our, um, label designed. We designed all the labels ourselves and it's not very hard. We just changed the color. So it wasn't a hard part, but as you've seen, certainly in the cell door, we really lean into the orange and the purple and that sort of thing. And let's call it our well bottle, which will be in a different bottle to our little bottles here. is going to have a bright orange label. So you're not going to be able to miss it from a hundred miles away.

This is a really good rye. It's definitely not a, um, one of those candy like rice, right? It's a little bit more, um, yeah, definitely a summer sipper for me. And I like that. And you said this is one that's more approachable. You think that people who, um, maybe aren't rye drinkers might like this one just a little bit better.

That's exactly right. So we've had, you know, we had our little pre-release event with the chamber of commerce and with our, um, with the Lawrenceburg whiskey club that we've just launched. Uh, and we do previews with those guys and they can buy bottles before everyone else, whatever. Anyhow. So last night that was what was coming out was the people that weren't right. People that like bourbon or they were just starting with right. to a person gravitated to cost two and that's why i started with cost two today cost one is a and again they sat next to each other and i'll rack. Cast one is little more spicy it's it's one point up on the proof scale which is much. but it's a different profile. Uh, but it has that same bit of dryness to it has the same palette. It's just different, which is to me, look, I'm not a bourbon guru by any stretch and it's very apparent to me that, and it's, I think it's just delightful.

So I know you were talking a little bit about the club. Um, do you have openings and how would people, uh, contact you about joining that club so that they can get in on these releases?

So when you say, do we have openings? Yes. We launched it literally a week ago because we thought it was a good idea. And, uh, the uptake's been great and how it works is, uh, the membership's $20, but you get a, tasting as part of that, which costs $20. So you get your money straight back. You get invited to our pre-release parties. If you can't make those pre-release happy hours, if you can't make those, you can pre-order and we'll hold them. As you've seen today, as we're doing the show, Emily's been coming back and forward grabbing bags and they're people from our whiskey club, the Lawrenceburg bourbon club. And They can pre-order, we'll keep them in the back and they can pick them up whenever. They also get other bits and bobs and they get discount in the general store and on our spices and glassware and all that sort of stuff.

Well, Jim, I'll say that that's a pretty dag on good deal. I think it's a pretty good deal. So today actually, so this, this episode will release on a Wednesday, but so today is actually Saturday and we're sitting in the back of your shop. Today was your release, but yesterday would have been for those folks who... From the whiskey club. From the whiskey club. And I'll just say this, I came here a few weeks back when you did your bourbon release. to find out that you had no bottles left. It was crazy. So folks listen in. It's pretty important. And how do they, how do they get to that whiskey?

They just go to our website, which is just lawrenceburgburbin.com. Um, just shoot us. We haven't, uh, you know, we're not very sophisticated. There's just a, just hit contact us, uh, shoot us an email and we'll get you all the info. And if you're in Kentucky, I have to check this, but I'm pretty sure if you're in Kentucky, we can ship it out to you. So if you're in, you know, Eastern Kentucky or wherever, we can get it to you. And, you know, this is part of the thing. We really want to embrace our community and the folks that can come in and, uh, we'd love people from Kentucky to be, if they're not local, to be members. And when they can't, when they do come to town, they'll have a tasting, we'll give them a voucher. They come in and they can do their tasting. That's perfect.

So we kind of left the conversation off in the first half and you had gotten to the point where you had your bar license, but you're not making, you're not producing bottles of whiskey yet. No, we're drinking your whiskey. So we know you got there. So what was that next step?

So the next step is the, uh, DSP. distilled spirits producer. I think that's what it stands for. I should know that off pat, but I don't. Um, and that's a bit more of an involved process and it's been made a little more complicated for us in that. we're right now developing our, um, distillery, like the location where we, uh, um, it's all done, but we couldn't go down the DSP route to, we could say, this is where it's going to be. So explain that.

So if, so in order for you to buy casks, on the wholesale market and then dump those into bottles and sell them, you have to apply for a DSP. But in order to apply for a DSP, you have to already have a plan in place to produce.

Got it. So as I mentioned earlier in the podcast, I'm terrible at details and I'm terrible at planning. All of these things mean I shouldn't have been able to do any of this. Fortunately, my wife's good at both and Katie's been sort of cracking the whip and in a good way. And, and again, it's just. paperwork and checking the box. And it's not paperwork. It's all online. It's just checking the boxes. It's pretty straightforward. If you don't know, you just call ABC in Kentucky or TTB federally and they help. Like they genuinely help. They're not there to stop you.

So if somebody wants to just buy somebody else's barrels of whiskey and just put them in bottles and never make their own. Can they do that? They can.

I mean, there's two ways to do it. Uh, they can work through like Lawrenceburg bourbon company and we can do that for you. Um, which is largely what we had to do out of the gate here. Uh, or they can go through that process. If they're, if they're like a club or, you know, a group or a company or whatever the case may be, my advice would be to come to us or whoever, And do a private barrel pick. They can pick the juice they want in their bottles. They're all personalized. It's much, much easier. Like it's a long process getting your DSP. It's, and it's only long because You know, they're not just handing out DSPs like candy on Halloween. They come and look at the site. They come and talk to you. They come and do all the stuff. They're not trying to stop you. They just need to make sure you're legit and you're not sitting in your garage buying, you know, some cheap whiskey and putting it in a bottle and sell it for a hundred bucks.

So the first order of business was to apply for the license that allowed you to go to wholesalers and buy a barrel of whiskey. Correct. And that means that you can buy a barrel of whiskey and you can then dump it, bottle it, and then ship it to a distributor. Correct. That's the key, right? It has to go to a distributor. Unless you do it in your pre-approved tasting room, where you can send bottles directly to the front from the back, right? Correct.

And, but the backs bonded. And backs bonded. Once it goes through those doors, uh, it's out the door. You can't move them back and forward. And you know, that's just a admin thing and, but you've got to do it. It's all about taxes, right? It's all about taxes. And as long as you pay your taxes and you do it properly and you check the box, You're fine. But if you want to buy a barrel, it's hard to buy it from the big legacy producers, like four rows or anything. Everyone in the world wants to buy a private barrel from four rows of walled turkey cause they make great bourbon, great whiskey. Uh, but they're big.

There's always MGP, right?

That's one thing we haven't, uh, we're not going down the MGP path. Um, But, you know, people are like, oh, not so much now, but, you know, people are like, I saw a t-shirt at this conference in the, these crafted stills conference in Portland that said sourcing is not a crime. I was like, that's great. I'm going to make that t-shirt and have it in the shop. And it's true. I mean, there's like MGP make great stuff. They do. They really do. Really great stuff. The only reason we're not using MGP is because everyone else does. And I don't want to do that. And so when we source our barrels, they're from small, craft distilleries in Kentucky, primarily, but if I found a great cask option in Texas, I'd buy it. You know, I, I'm not caught up in the whole, it has to be from Kentucky thing. I like it to be from Kentucky. We want to support Kentucky as much as we can. And that's the main reason we buy or we source our barrels from a craft. And that goes for the bourbon and now the rise as well.

So both the Bourbons and the rise are from Kentucky, from the same place, from the same place. Wow. Fantastic. Well, we won't ask you who that is. We know you had to sign on the line, right? And you can share that information.

I tell you, but that'd have to kill me.

But truth and bottling and putting stuff out on the shelf needs to be as transparent as possible. And I think I'm looking at your label. It's about as transparent as you can be without, you know, going against your contract, not to disclose.

Yeah. And we've made that decision at the very outset. You know, we're not trying, you know, in the old days, I don't think it happens so much now, but people would try and obfuscate where it was from, pretend it was theirs. I don't think that really happens now, but it certainly did. Uh, and we made the decision very early on. We weren't going to do that. I can't name who makes it because that's just part of the deal. And I respect that, but we can say it's from here. It's from a small distillery. Uh, and they make great stuff. And I love the, and the guy they're so good to work with. I love them to bits. Um, and we'll support them. We sell their stuff, their stuff here. Uh, so, um, Yeah. But when we get our own, um, uh, stuff out the door in four years, I'm just going to crush them. And I told, told him the other day.

Well, we've got, we've got another ride we'd like to get in our glass. So let's, let's pour that. And then, uh, we're going to talk a little bit about what's coming down the pike. What's, what's in the future. So terrific. All right, Brian. So we have. this barrel one rye now. This is our last released whiskey that we're going to drink. And then we've got a special thing coming out here in just a bit. But would you say this is the darkest whiskey so far?

I would agree.

And the funny thing is we're not, folks, we're not drinking out of Glencairn's. We're actually drinking out of Mason jars here. Cause this is Kentucky and that's what we do.

Very, very cool Mason jobs. I love you. Yeah. We, uh, we would get, we had these awesome little Glen Karen's that the, uh, the guys at, uh, all Louisville that almond put me onto. And, uh, then I saw these, I'm like, I've never seen those before. So they're literally Mason jars. They come with a lid. and it's got a handle on it. And it's funny, you see people sampling their bourbon and they've got their little fingers sticking out when they're drinking it and they have a lid and everything. And when you do a tasting, you get one to take home with you and stuff. So we've got people collecting them. They're turning them into salt and pepper shakers. Oh really?

I never thought about that. We might start marketing salt and pepper shakers. Well, I'm excited to try this because you've already told us it's very different. So like build it up so much. I hope you like it. Yeah, I'm sure we will.

But if you don't just don't say anything, we'll mute it out.

Yeah. The nose on it is more, it's got more of a, um, I'm getting like a little bit of a, like a sweetness, like a maple syrup sweetness at the base of it.

Yep. Oh yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm on, I'm onto something there. Definitely more sweet. And, and I am amazed, you know, as we talked through the, the bourbons, as we've gone to the rise, just, you know, what we've talked about the differences between the two barrels. Yeah.

I mean, next to each other on our rack. And they've sat there for four years or so. Yeah. Like we got, this is a three year old that set up there for four years next to each other.

Okay. So this one is definitely more candy-like. It's got a lot more syrupy sweetness to it. Um, I'm going to say it's not, this would not be your summer sipper.

Definitely not.

This will be more of a cozy Walt cold weather. I can't fire. Right.

When it's raining outside, you're sitting on the porch. Oh my goodness. Oh, that's perfect. And it's 40 degrees, 35 degrees. Yep. With a cigar perhaps. Yeah. Not that I'm condoning smoking, but that's exactly what this is.

Yeah. So this is definitely, and this one's, so let's talk a little bit. This is still a 90, 10 rye. 90% rye, 10% barley. This one's at, what's the proof? 117.2. 117. So just a hair, like a point more than the other one.

But it's so different.

It is very different. This is not clean and refreshing. I'm not going to say it's not a clean ride. This is a clean ride, but this is not that summer sipper refreshing ride. This is a little bit more candy-like, a little more syrupy.

I kind of feel like it's, it's almost more in the traditional ride boat without burning your face off.

Yeah. Right.

If that makes sense.

Yeah, absolutely. It does have a nice, um, Kind of a, um, and I say whore hound a lot, but the reason I get to that whore hound is because it's, what is a whore hand? What is a whore hound? Oh my gosh.

Australian licorice. Oh yeah. Like, uh, Daryl Lee or something. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's hard to describe, but when you've had it, you know exactly what you're talking about.

It's kind of a medicinal, but.

Root beer kind of, uh, so you can't throw out something like whore hound to an Australian guy sitting over here and think I'm know what's going on, but I'm like all confused. We need to start carrying candy with us.

So whenever we bring it up, we, it's like, Hey, we can taste that Australian licorice and you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Australian licorice is the best licorice in the world.

It is.

I have to say it is soft and it's like. Don't get me on for the licorice thing.

But you know where you can get Australian licorice, Brian? Where's that? Tractor supply.

Oh really? But they're, they do. Yep. They've got Koala Arama or something. Okay. And it's great. We won't start carrying. We sell Vegemite here in the store. Oh, do you really? Yeah. It's hand carried back from Australia. So it's not like imported or made here. Well, it's imported. It's just not made here. It's actually legit Australian Vegemite.

So are you a big Vegemite?

Oh my God. I love it. We had a lady in here the other day. We keep it in, you know, so people can try it. We had a lady in here the other day. We put it on like a little cracker or a pretzel or something. And, uh, she was so shocked by the taste. She ran into the back right where we're standing here into the bathroom and gagged.

It was like,

I'm like, well, it's an acquired taste. I don't think it's that acquired. So how do you like your Vegemite? There's only, well, there's two ways to have it. The best way is on toast with lots of butter. What kind of toast? I'm a, if you put it with a rye bread or a pumpernickel or something, it's still, it's so good. Very deep, dark rye, right? At the end of the day, Vegemite is, so the very quick story on Vegemite is it was invented in World War II to send the troops that were deployed like in Europe. And they used all the Australians drink a lot of beer. So there was it's made from the yeast from beer and a bit of vegetable extract and vegetable oil and stuff. And they literally put it in a tin at the time and sent it over. And it's just it's like eating a salt leek. that tastes delicious. I think it tastes delicious. Most people think it tastes awful. It stinks, but it's so good.

Yeah. I, I, I'm one of those people that like, like stinky, salty kind of things. And well, we got to my Vegemite's definitely on my list. We'll break it out after the show. Sounds good.

I'm excited. I've never had it.

So you're in for a treat. I am.

I'm definitely one to try anything that somebody puts in front of me. So I'm excited.

Maybe we'll do a Vegemite aged bourbon.

There you go. We've got quite, quite a large following in Australia. So there'll be a lot of our listeners that are listening to this right now going, yes.

Yeah.

That's great. Well, good day guys.

Hope you're enjoying the show. All right. So this is a wonderful whiskey, but I want to talk a little bit now about, you know, you've got that license that allows you to purchase barrels, put them in bottles and sell them. Well, of course they have to go through the distributor, then come back to you and then you can sell them out of your shop here because you're just another liquor store. Effectively. Even though you're, it's your whiskey, you're just another liquor store. So you have to actually take a delivery from your distributor, which is kind of crazy, but that's a whole nother show. It's a whole nother show. But the next step is that you, um, actually bring up a distilling operation. You install a still and you make your own juice. Yes, sir.

So we have our still it's, uh, sitting in box like in big boxes. It's an 800 gallon hybrid still. I'm so excited. I don't know where it's going to go yet, but it's really big, but we have the still where Just finalizing our actual distillery facility like the building, it's here in Lawrenceburg or Anderson County on 127. I'm so glad to hear that. And look, the people here have been great from the city hall down to the county, the judge and everybody. So our distillery will be on 127, which is the road that runs between Frankfurt and Lawrenceburg, the highway and down to Bluegrass Parkway. If you're at Buffalo Trace, for instance, If you want to go to Four Roses or Wild Turkey, you have to go past our new distillery. So we're hoping those people just veer off. If they can't get a tasting or a tour or something at the other two, they can come to our place and we'll welcome them to come in. We were introducing a tasting program, which will be around our fire pits. So you can have a cigar when it's nice weather, sit outside and do a full on legitimate tasting around the fire pits at the new place. Um, which I think it'll be, will be kind of fun. Um, will there be prawns on the Barbie? Well, yeah. Thank God you said prawns because I say shrimp to my mother and she's like,

You're from Australia.

So she doesn't talk like that by the way, because she'll listen to this. Now she'll think that's how she talks. But, um, yeah, we, we actually should do the shrimp on the Barbie thing because that'd be kind of funny. It would be fun.

Yeah. You're definitely, you're definitely speaking my language with the fire pit, the cigars, again, not condoning any kind of smoking or anything like that. Right. Uh, I think a lot of folks really do enjoy that.

Will you imagine you're on the bourbon trail and it gets to like four o'clock or something. You've done the big guys or whatever. And then at four o'clock you can roll up to Lawrenceburg bourbon company on the way back to your hotel or on the way to the next story, whatever, and sit around the fire pit, do a fully lead tasting, keep your little glass. and smoke a cigar if you want one. We sell cigars. We have really good cigars. We have a lot of bourbon flavored, or not flavored, but aged cigars here at the store. And we're going to bring that over to the new place. People love it, but they buy them here and they've got to take them away. Whereas in the new place, they'll be able to sit out on the, on the patio, looking at the lake or whatever and have a cigar.

And what's this going to take? I mean, when, when can people expect to see like the first signs of this?

Good question. We, I'm aiming for summer and it like, you know, again, you guys have both served in the Navy. I don't, uh, we set a target, a mission target and we go at it and we just. Summer 23. Yep. Wow. The distillery won't be running. No, no, but you'll have your facility. Yes. Yep. Wow. That's amazing. Well, we're doing everything in the back ground. And so, you know, that's why we already have our still and that's why we all have all our tanks and we've got it all.

Well, I mean, it's going to take time once you start creating your distillate and getting it into barrels before you actually be able to serve that out to the public. So we all understand that your sourcing and bottling is going to have to continue for some time. And you've really done kind of a great job of identifying really good barrels and putting them into bottles.

So, and we're trying to keep in that, you know, while they all taste different, I hope at least they have a similar you know, a similar base, a similar, they've got to, there's almost like a theme running. That's my intent at least, whether I pulled that off, I don't know, but that's the intent.

So the 7521 for bourbon, are you going to try and match that match bill?

So our next release, which will of our bourbon, which will come out in, uh, you know, mid March, uh, is a, we've just upped the, um, barley four points. Okay. That'll be nine, nine percent or five points. I'm sorry. Nine percent. And we've dropped the corn down. Okay. We're keeping the rye at 21% because I, we want rye forward. Sure. That's our share. Right. Sure. Now that uh, Brian and I, Ry guys. Totally converted. You're, you're, you're there. That's your wheelhouse now. Yeah, that's, that's, we're just Ry guys. That could be, that could be a new show. The Ry guys, the Ry guys. Ooh, I'm gonna get that.

You want to do the Ry guys take on Louisville or something. Yeah. In a great show so far, we've had four whiskeys that are just delightful. I have to say that you did a pretty darn good job of sourcing barrels and getting them in the bottle at the right time. I mean, sometimes you have to be careful about when they enter the bottle. You did mention that they changed a little bit during that bottling process. But I think they're all delightful. And I think if somebody shows up at your cellar here wanting to pick up a bottle, they're not going to be disappointed.

Well, the good news is we thank you. And I really appreciate that. I mean, coming from you guys, that's awesome. The, what we did after like, The bourbon release took us by surprise, right? I thought we had enough product for at least a month or so, and it was gone in less than 24 hours. So what we did with our one cask series rye was we just put out some for the pre-release party. There was enough for everybody, so that was fine, but we didn't want people walking. When we did the first one, they could walk out with six bottles. We sort of capped it. So, and then today for the release, you know, as we were talking about before, there's literally been no one here for two hours because the game's on. But we did the same thing and capped it. We just had enough out and then we'll have product out for people that want to come into the store or give us a call if they're in Kentucky or email us. that we can, we can sample and we can sell. So we will have product in store at least till the end of the month.

Oh, that's awesome. So if you're listening to this podcast now, you can hop in your car or shoot us an email.

It's just hq at Lawrenceburg bourbon.com and, uh, uh, we can get you hooked up if you're in Kentucky. Perfect. We can get it out. Yeah. Awesome. I expected the last, well, I expect the last lot would last a month.

When you say get it out in Kentucky, if you're in Kentucky and you want one of these bottles, you can ship it to them.

Yes.

All right. And if you're not, um, come to the bourbon trail, visit all the big guys and then stop in here.

Right. It's amazing. Greg. So we're moving on to, uh, the third part of our second half here with, uh, another rye. And I have to say, I am super excited. This is one that has not been released yet. And, and we're always excited to have the next one coming up.

Well, you guys are the first people outside of our little coterie here at the Lawrenceburg bourbon company to try this. Um, it's 10 year old Rye. We have 10 barrels of it, so we've called the release 10 by 10, 10 years, 10 barrels. It's 122.4 proof. And what it is, it's a blend one-to-one ratio of 10 barrels of rye that we sourced from Alberta, Canada, which in my you know, very, very humble opinion is, you know, where the best rise come from. All the big guys get them from Alberta. Uh, and we were just lucky. These were barrels that a very good friend of mine had for a lease. So we're going to do, and then COVID hit and they just wanted to reestablish their brands rather than launch a new one. And so we got access to these that you would never normally get. And we had, when I secured these barrels, I had zero money. Well, shit, goodness, we have zero money now because it's expensive. Making a bourbon company or whiskey company is expensive, but this was so good that I couldn't not take it. And I hope folks listening, I hope you guys enjoy it as much as we do. It's. I was saying to you guys off air that, you know, there was 10 barrels. Eight were remarkable. One was okay. And one was eh. The first nine, you could have bottled a single barrel and been really happy with it. The 10th, we probably would have had to have finished or done something to it. Anyhow, our distiller is like, you know, let's just try blending them. We'll do it. And I'm like, Ooh, blending, you know, I don't know about this whole blending business. Uh, and everybody has to go there eventually.

Oh my gosh.

But it's not in the first six weeks. And she's like, no, well, let me just play around with it. And she came in and started blending them. She cut it. She did this. She did that. Anyhow, after like two days of fooling around with those 10 barrels, she came and said, uh, one to one ratio. It's remarkable how it, and she said, because the 10th barrel wasn't bad. It was just hot, right? It was, it was too hot to just put in a bottle and drink. But what it did when you mixed it with the other nine or blended it with the other nine, it gave it that little touch of spiciness. but the other nine barrels meant it wasn't burning your face off. And the, the outcome, which we have here, and you know, this is a lighter typical of Canadian rise. It's lighter. Uh, it doesn't have that deep mahogany color. And you can see that looking at our, you know, at our Canadian right here versus the, uh, or our bird arrived versus our right from Kentucky. It's a lighter in color, but, When she blended these 10 barrels, the outcome has been remarkable. She was shocked. She's like, I've never seen that happen before where you're able to just go one-to-one and make something like this. So we're really excited. And you guys are the first people outside of Lawrence Boone Burbin company team to ever try this or anything.

I'm excited. Let's check it out.

And again, if you don't like it, we'll just hit the mute button.

All right. All right. So we've got this, this 10 by 10 rye. It's an Alberta rye whiskey. Um, it's 10 years old and you had 10 barrels that magically were able to be combined at equal portions to make a blend. So this is your first blended whiskey.

Yeah. Um, it came a lot sooner than I was expecting, but, uh, I'm so happy with what came out. It's funny, with our first release Bourbon, we played around with it just in the cell door here and we mixed all three together. It was fantastic. But that's not what we're about traditionally. Sure. But this was such a good opportunity to get in on a age rye. It's kind of a special project. It was. It's a special project. This will actually go to distribution. So our distributors, who are awesome, are out in Simpsonville, Heritage Wine and Spirits. That's a hometown, folks. Yep. They're great guys. And we talked about this before, about the industry and stuff. They were the guys that would return our calls when we're just starting out and it behooves us to, we have a lot of different, since we sold out our first couple of releases, that door sort of opened a bit, but we're going with heritage.

And you got people knocking at your door now, but you're like, wait, you didn't want, you didn't want to know me back then.

Yeah. And I don't begrudge it. I mean, they probably see 500 different things a day. Absolutely. But these guys did. They picked up the phone and they're small enough and they hit our sweet spot and we'll be one of their only Kentucky, uh, whiskies and, uh, We're really excited to put this out into the market, like into the broader market. I want to walk into a mom and pop shop in Simpsonville or wherever and go, Holy cow, we made that. Yeah. Or we put a label on it.

It's so cool. It's so cool. So this is a, uh, Alberta rye and, and let's just, Kind of educate the listeners who may not know what an Alberta rye is. Who's making Alberta rye?

Uh, so there's a couple of people up there. There's the main one is a company called Alberta distilling and you know, for want of, they make product for pretty much every big legacy company that you'll see on the show. Beam or Whistlepig or whoever. And I can't say for sure if they make theirs, but The vast majority of, um, Ryan U S comes from Alberta, big operation, big operate.

Yeah. Oh, it's huge.

It's like MGPs big, right? Right. It's the MGP of Canada, MGP of Canada. There that puts it in perspective. And if product is great, the, uh, the right comes from the Pacific Northwest, uh, It's sort of, it's been explained to me that it's a lot more plump and more developed. And that's why the grain is so good. Um, and you know, as we talked about off air, you know, we're very transparent where we get our stuff from and we bought this ride because we had the opportunity to, and because it's damn good. And traditionally we will use Kentucky product while we're still sourcing, but this was too good to pass up.

So opportunity trumps. Yeah, it did kind of in this instance. Let me ask you about the whole TTB and labeling thing, because that's another thing that people are probably got in their minds. That's a big ordeal they have to overcome. How hard is it to, so you got this 10 year rye, you blended it in and, and now you have to make a label. Right. What's, what's, what's involved in that?

Yeah, it's, uh, that's probably the most complicated. Well, certainly for me, because I didn't know what I was doing, uh, complicated part of the process in that because I don't have my DSP, my distilled spirits permit, I cannot submit. the label, which I didn't know for the first like six weeks. And I kept submitting it and kept getting rejected until I called them and said, I've done everything you said. Why is it getting rejected? And they're like, well, you can't submit it. I was like, oh, okay. So then we got our friends up at that are doing all that bottling for us up at Paris. to submit, they've got a DSP to submit the, um, labels for us. And they went straight through because they had a DSP. Um, so that's just one of those little things that had, I know in earlier, it would have saved me weeks.

Brian and I want to go get our license and buy a few barrels and And do that. We could just come to you and say, once you have your DSP, yeah, we would do it for you. Come and talk to you and say, help us out.

The process is super simple.

Yeah.

Like there's just parameters. You just check again, check the box. And if you check the box, you don't do anything misleading on the, on the label, they'll approve it. Right. It's, you know, we had things on our very first things I put in, which, you know, weren't deliberately misleading, but. or trying to be like deceptive or anything, but they're like, yeah, you can't say that because that suggests it might be this, which never occurred to us. And I was like, okay, well, I don't think that, but I'll change it. Um, and we changed, they were little things. And so we changed them and it was easy. And again, the TTB could not have been more helpful. They were so great to deal with. It's a government agency for the love of God and they were awesome.

So people don't expect that, but you were surprised by it.

I was not surprised. I was shocked.

You were shocked.

The perception is so different.

Yeah. All right. So this is the long awaited moment we've been waiting for. This is bottle number five. This is the grand surprise that we've had for the show. Yep.

I was going to say, I was going to tell you what actual bottle number it was, but this is, just pulled out of the barrel yesterday.

This is a sample. This is a sample, yeah. So this is a sample of 10 barrels that have been equally mixed of Alberta rye. They just magically came together in equal proportions to make a wonderful rye and we're going to taste it.

122.4 proof. 122.4.

Man, you guys sit right in that saddle between 115 and 130. That's our goal. Yeah.

just to keep really good quality product. And I would love to say I made this. I didn't. We source this, but we sourced it very carefully. We got it from generally. Well, all of this is from people we know. We haven't just gone to a big place to get it. We're not buying from some big broker in the sky. No, we're not. And we know everybody that made, well, I don't know who made that Canadian whiskey, but the people we bought it off do that for a living and they bought it for themselves and didn't go forward with that product. That's how we got this bourbon, no, this whiskey. And we were really lucky. We were just right place, right time.

What do you think Brian? You ready? Cheers. Here we go.

Cheers.

Oh, that's got a nice, a nice nose to it. And this is 100% right. 100% right. So in order to kickstart that process, they probably need to add a little bit of enzyme, but you would think you would think so because there's no barley in there to kick in that.

Right. Yeah. Not being the chemist, I really don't have any clue, but I'm guessing that's what they would have to do. I've heard that it's needed, but I have to, and I'm guessing that's what they did in this case. I mean, these guys know what they're doing.

That's just a nice, uh, it's kind of got a little bit of a, a fruity caramel nose to it on the nose. Yeah. Okay. It wouldn't like. I mean, I'm not a hundred percent sure I would scream rye when I knows that.

No, you don't. And I, I kind of, now that you said that, I kind of nosing it now. And I feel like there's like, uh, what we call in Australia, fairy floss or what do you call it here? Candy floss or whatever the pink stuff.

Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, cotton candy, cotton candy, the pink stuff, cotton candy until I'm a very, uh, educated fellow. Yeah. But I kind of get a little bit, very floss, very floss. Yeah.

Yep. My daughters would really enjoy that.

Very much better than cotton candy. Yeah.

Yeah. I think it's a better name. We should change. Yeah.

But I get a little bit of that off it when, when I nose it.

Yeah.

All right. Let's taste it. Cheers.

Cheers. Cheers. That is not 122 proof. There's no way. 122.4. Wow. It settles in as a, I hope I haven't given, sorry listeners, if I've given you too many mouth noises while tasting, but I did the whole Kentucky chew on it, right? I did too that time.

Definitely a little more salivation for me on this one.

Yeah, it definitely kind of pricks the taste buds to start the salivating process going. And I don't know what the key to that is, but when it happens, it's like, you know, you're tasting something you like, right?

Okay. So did this like for me, and I'm exploring this as much as you guys are.

This doesn't burn me at all. Yeah. I'm not getting that. We'll call it a Kentucky hug, even though this is a Canadian rye.

Right. You don't get it in the throat. No. I call it like heartburn.

Yeah. So I typically find that out of a sweet mash whiskeys, right? Right. You don't get that hug in the upper chest. So it's funny. I would almost wonder if this is a sweet mash rye, but it's not. It's not. No. Yeah. I mean, it just doesn't have that chest burn, does it? No, it doesn't.

What do you guys think? And I'm not trying to be a leading question here, how this would react in a cocktail.

So I don't know that it would punch through. Like it's not going to be one of those whiskeys that really punches through in the cocktail and says, I'm here. I think it would just marry well and be kind of, it would be a nice. Something a bit more subtle, maybe subtle. Yeah. It would be more subtle.

I think there's a great place for that.

I really do. I mean, sometimes they do punch through a little bit too heavy. This might be a good old fashioned. Yeah. It might be good and old fashioned.

We might have to make an old fashioned after the show.

Yeah, I think it might because sometimes, you know, like, and I'm going to bring up another name here. You know, we're from Shelby County. I'm from Shelby County. We got Bullet Rye down there. Bullet Rye makes a great old fashioned. Yeah, they really do. And it kind of punches through a little bit. So you get that old fashioned with that rye shining through. This would be more of a rye that kind of marries itself well with the old fashioned and doesn't compete for your attention.

Yep. And I'm very happy with that.

Yeah. I think I am too.

Yeah. The way this came out. I couldn't have been more pleased or surprised. And, uh, we have, you know, this is, as I said, this will go to distribution. Uh, so you'll hopefully, um, if heritage intent heritage, uh, do their job, we'll see this in stores around Kentucky. Certainly. Fantastic.

All right, well, I think our listeners should keep their eyes out for this. I mean, you guys are going to continue to grow and craft and develop over the course of the next few months. And certainly, if people make it to the Bourbon Trail, I would hope they Take an opportunity to stop in and please come and see us.

We're on Main Street in Lawrenceburg. You can't miss us. We've got a big orange sign out the front. You can walk in, do a tasting. If they're interested in the whiskey club, the Lawrenceburg whiskey club, they can just go to our website, Lawrenceburg Bourbon, or shoot me an email at hq at Lawrenceburg Bourbon and we can get you signed up. And what I need you guys to promise me is when we move into our distillery, our new tasting room, you guys will come out and do the first preview.

We'll do it. We're there. Send us an invite. Brian and I will be with bells on. I'm super excited. Thank you very much. It's awesome. Well, Brian, you know, if you were going to start a distillery, do you feel like this, this episode is kind of giving you a little bit of an insight on what it takes to do that? Definitely helps. Do you think you're less inhibited than you were before?

Absolutely. There's so much, you know, there's so many roadblocks. There's so many thoughts when you just start to go through a process of wanting to do something, uh, that this definitely shed some light on, you know, if you do things the right way. And you build the correct relationships that you'll be supported and you can get things accomplished.

Yeah. So is it, is it like crazy expensive? I mean, I've heard people say, yes, if you've got a lot of money and you want to make, and you want to make a little bit of money, like started, yeah, I've heard that so many times where my wife, Katie and I come from, you know, government service as a military, she was with state department.

So we're not wealthy. We now have a farm, which we have no business running, but is like the biggest suck on resources. You have goats and hemp. We have goats and hemp. Right. And soon to be corn. So we're going to grow some of our own corn on the farm. Awesome. I really want it for deer hunting, Susan, but I don't tell Katie that obviously.

She doesn't want you to kill Bambi.

Oh, she's fine with eating Bambi. It's just, uh, I don't think she wants to put our life savings into attracting Bambi to kill Bambi. Not that I'd want to kill Bambi, but in any case, so yeah, it's expensive and it costs more than you think. Right. And it's very upfront, right? You're buying barrels and you have to pay for them when you buy them. So all of a sudden you've got 50 barrels sitting there. You know, you've got, I don't know, quarter of a million dollars worth of checks you've just had to write. And that's a lot. Yeah. And that doesn't include, you know, buying a small bottling line. It doesn't include getting your labels printed. It doesn't include any of that buying your bottles. And when you start out, you're invariably not going to have your DSP like we don't, or maybe you will if you do it that first, but probably not. And so then there's all that added costs. You know, it adds, To a bottle of whiskey that we produce, it probably adds eight or $9 going through that third party to get it, or probably more than that, to get it from the distributor, to put it through the But you do the hard yards and you just juggle from credit card to credit card and, you know, tap into the savings and all that sort of stuff. If you want to do it, you have to, you know, you have to do it. There's no dip in your toe. No, you don't want to be that guy or that girl that's like, Oh, I'm going to give this a try. This could be fun. Someone at the conference last week said to me, Uh, was, um, Paul that founded few spirits. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Who's just recently sold to heaven hill. And he said to me, we're having a, we're having a drink in, uh, at, at West Westwood distillers in fantastic. It's so love Westford. So do I. They're, they're, uh, malts are just really good. And they're such good guys. In fact, the head of sales is a used to work with Richard Zeller. Who's my guy that got us this ride, but anyhow, I don't agree. It's all spaghetti, man. They're all tied together. But Paul said to me, he's like, there's two ways to do this. You can do it as a hobby, which is great. You'll have a great time. It's fun. You like meet great people and all that sort of stuff. Or it's a business. And they're not the same. And so you can go, if you've got a bit of cash lying around, you can go and start a brand. You can buy barrels. You can put a label on all that sort of stuff. But if you want to do it as a business, you've got to go in and commit to it from the get-go, because if you don't, it's not going to work. We've committed to doing this. We'll have a, well, we better have a distillery because I've got a still. So. You have to do it and be, but you've got to plan it. Like if it wasn't for my wife, I wouldn't have any plans at all. I'd just be doing stuff, but we do now. And you have to do that to make it successful, but you can't be as, uh, you know, Brian said, you can't be half pregnant in this. You've got to be. committed to it. And if you're doing it as a hobby, that's fantastic. It's great fun. But if you want to do it as a business, you've got to go all in.

Yeah. Well, I think Brian and I are very impressed with what we've seen today. Certainly your whiskies have struck a chord. They're definitely flavorful. They're well crafted. Thank you. And I think from the long lines outside your door when you do a release, you know already that you're doing something right.

It's so funny, Jim, the first day when we did our first release. We had a line, as I mentioned, going down to the coffee shop, which is a block and a bit away. It was 20 degrees outside. They're not going to line up if the product's bad and we don't want to give them bad products.

Yeah. But you know, let's be honest, they're out there sipping stuff out there.

They're not cold. We actually walked along the line giving people coffee and we said, look, here's a number so you can come in and we'll just let you know and you'll be first in line so you can go and sit in your car. It was 20 degrees and they're all like, oh no, it's fine. And so we're like, okay. So we went and made pots of coffee and I make Navy coffee and it's pretty strong and I could see people not really enjoying it too much. I expect, you know, that's what you're going to do.

All right. Well, Greg, we've really appreciated this. We've had such a great time sitting in the back office of Lawrenceburg, Birmingham here and just, just hanging out and drinking your whiskeys today. I think we're both kind of, you know, bowled over by what you've been able to put together early on.

Well, thank you. And that means a lot. And if any of the folks out there are listening, Call us, shoot me an email. We're little. Like we'll respond. We'll talk to you. Shoot us an email on Instagram or Facebook or whatever. And it's just Lawrenceburg Bourbon. Like I will respond or Emily will respond to be one of the two of us. We love to get the feedback and if we can help or whatever, we're here to do that.

That's awesome. That's so great. Well, thank you again. We appreciate it. I can't tell you how awesome it is for you to allow us to come into your house and drink your whiskey. And this is the first time you and I are meeting, Brian and you and I are meeting, and we appreciate the opportunity. I think we're going to be lifelong friends and we're going to definitely be back over and over again. I hope so. To see what you have released. Brian, where can people find us on the internet?

So as always, folks, you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even TikTok.

You can also find us on our private Facebook group, the Bourbon Roadies. 3,200 or so just close friends, right? Drinking whiskey. Can we join? You can join. You know, Greg, we'd love for you to join and come into the bourbon roadies and maybe offer up to answer some questions to our listeners.

I would love to do that. That'd be great.

So here's how you do it, folks. You go on Facebook, you type in the bourbon roadies, and it will come up as a group that you can join. Click the join button. It'll ask you three questions. Pretty simple, but you do need to answer them, right? Do you like bourbon? Are you 21? Yeah, you got to be 21 because we don't do that. And then do you agree to play nice because we don't accept any rudeness in our group. And the reason we're only 3,200 in our group instead of 32,000 is because we don't accept any bad stuff. So you can't sell, you can't cut somebody off at the knees for what they're drinking. You know, if somebody comes in here and says, I love Jim Beam white label. By God, that's what they like. Leave them alone.

I grew up drinking Jim Beam white label and I quite fancy it. I mean, it's solid. There's nothing wrong with it. I don't drink it now, but I certainly did for 10 years.

Yeah. But there are those out there that will try to tell people they're drinking the wrong stuff and they're, you know, anyway, if that's you and you end up in our group, you won't last very long. So you get one strike, you're out. We don't do three strikes. We do.

I love the one striker out. We could send some of my old team into sort those guys out.

Yeah, Jim, it's all about being respectful and being nice and just understanding that, uh, yeah, there is, there is a secondary market out there, but. That's not what we're about.

Yeah. I think, you know, you mentioned it earlier, Greg, you know, what you found in the bourbon industry is you found people that are humble and kind, right? And I think that's what we want in our group. We want people that are humble and kind that, you know, just try to humble themselves a little bit and they're kind to others. And if you're not that person, it's okay. There's other groups out there. Go do it.

Right.

Yeah. Just not here with us, right? All right. Well, we do a show every single week. Every Wednesday you're going to get an episode from us. It's going to be about an hour in length and it's going to be fun. We're going to have somebody on like Greg here who's going to talk about it. Well, I think you've been pretty fun. We've had a good time, but we'll have authors on and musicians on and chefs on and just anybody who'll drink bourbon with us today. We've had a great new startup whiskey company, Lawrence Berg bourbon company. We've, we've had such a great time here. But every single week, you're going to get a great story. You're going to get a lot of fun. We're going to sip through some whiskey. We're going to tell you what we think you ought to be out there looking for. And if you've got an idea for a show, if you live somewhere in America and you've got a local distillery that's doing it right, you want to shine a little light on, we hope you'll reach out to Brian and I and Tyler too. We hope you'll send us an email at team at the bourbonroad.com. You can also go to our website at the bourbonroad.com. There's a contact us page. You can fill it out, send it to us. We're very responsive. We will get back to you. But while you're there, we do have some swag, right, Brian?

That's right. We have the new OTDB beanies on there. What's OTDB stand for?

open the damn bottle. That's what people need to do, right? That's right. So we love signed bottles. And, you know, Greg, we saw you sign a bottle earlier for a guest.

I've got RSI. I've signed so many bottles in the last few days.

But as a distiller, do you hope they'll go home and open that bottle? I do.

They need to open it. You know, the bourbon's on the inside. I tell you, Jim, it's funny how many people come in and go, oh, I'm going to just put this on the shelf. And we say to them, We'll buy another one, one we want to sell another one, but we're like, buy another one and drink it. That's what it's for. I mean, I know this. I mean, I collected bourbon for a few years. I don't have anything in my house anymore. I drank all of it. People came over. I'd crack a, you know, I got an amazing bottle of Pappy when I retired from the military. A couple of my friends came over that was still in. That lid came off and we drank it. We drank the whole thing. And it was awesome. After the first three, I didn't know if it was Pappy or, you know.

Well, I mean, we're not saying that there's not a reason why you won't save a bottle. Like you won't hang onto a bottle for somebody's 21st birthday, right? Or you won't hang onto a bottle for that friend that lives overseas. It's coming back at some point. You know, there are reasons to do that, but in general, don't let them collect dust. It's been a great episode. I've had a great time. I definitely want to come back here again. And I can't wait to come to your new facility. I don't want 27.

It's going to be great. All right.

Well, folks definitely check out, uh, Lawrence Berg bourbon company, uh, go to their website, see what they have going on. If you're touring the bourbon trail and you're going to Buffalo trace and you're going to four roses and Woodford and all, and, and while Turkey who's literally right over the hill here. Make sure you stop in at Lawrenceburg bourbon company have a cocktail buy a bottle. Enjoy yourself great people here But until then we'll see you down the bourbon road

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