339. ASW Distillery of Atlanta Georgia

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.

You know friends, it's never too early to start planning your trip to the Bourbon Trail for 2023. We hope you'll join the Bourbon Road crew as we pull out all the stops this year at Bourbon on the Banks. So mark your calendars for October 6th and 7th and we'll plan on seeing you in Frankfurt, Kentucky. Be sure to listen in during the halftime break for all the details on Bourbon on the Banks. Hello listeners and welcome back to another episode of the Bourbon Road Podcast. I'm your host, Jim Shannon, and today we are in Atlanta, Georgia. Melody and I here today, we've been invited into ASW distillery. We've got Chad and Whit with us and we're in their house today, but we're going to drink their whiskey. Why don't we start by saying a little bit about what you do here. Chad, what do you do at ASW?

Yeah, I try to provide value where I can, mainly on the sort of design marketing front. So I head up marketing and then help with out-of-state sales as well, so new markets. We're in Texas and Southern California and East Tennessee and Florida in addition to our home state of Georgia. And obviously, as everyone probably knows or is familiar with, every state is different in terms of its distributors and regulatory requirements and administrative filing stuff. It's a process. It's a process, yeah. That's why we have whiskey to make it significantly less boring. So your job is to shout ASW from the rooftops. That's right. But the more whiskey you have, the more your paperwork gets sloppy. So you've got to find a balance.

Yeah, you got to keep discipline in it too, right? That's right. And Whit, how about you? What do you do for ASW?

Yeah, so I work in production. I'm a distiller here. There's two of us that make whiskey. Justin Manglitz, who's our master distiller, and then me, I'm the distiller. And then we actually also have Justin Camp now. He's just started making some whiskey mash with us.

So what specifically were you doing? We had to wait on you to come in here because you had to go off to the still house and do something. What were you doing out there?

Yeah, so I was just making sure. I just made my cut. So I was just making sure everything was running properly. The steam lines were running smooth. So sometimes the steam lines get a little clogged. You have to blow it down, release some of the water flow. Any condensate that might be trapped in there. So just making sure steam's flowing properly, slowing down the distillation could obviously change the distillate to, just making sure everything's going good.

So not everybody, not all our listeners are going to know what making the cut means. So the whiskey is being distilled and it's coming off the still and being condensed. And you've got some things coming off early that you don't want. And then the hearts, you're getting ready to cut for the hearts. It just started to come off the still.

Yeah, so I just made the cut. Now, essentially, so we do double pot distillation. So we have two pot stills. We have our wash pot still, and then our spirit still. And the spirit still is where we make all these cuts. That's our second distillation. It's going to be different than what most American whiskey is distilled on, which is a column still. Those column stills run continuously. So there's actually no cutting involved in column still distillation.

It's where on the column they pull it off.

Yeah, exactly. So every plate in the column essentially removes some of those off flavors, off alcohols that you don't want in your finished product.

The hangover.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Or in some cases, the get really sick stuff, right?

Sure, yeah. So removing those in pot distillation is completely different because in column distillation, the still is designed to do that for you. In pot distillation, you have a little more control over it, so you can decide how much of that head you want to get rid of, how much of that tails you want to get rid of. And making those decisions and making those cuts will really be what the finished part of the process, the finished product is. So the head parts usually going to have what you said, like the hangover, the methanol. Yep, almost all those go down the drain.

Except if it's a plastic bottle, in which case they put it directly into it.

Exactly. It also gives us a little more control over the finished product as well.

So you can really control the flavor and the viscosity and all those things by how you make your cuts.

Exactly.

And you also affect the bottom line, right? Because you're throwing away things that you don't keep.

Sure, exactly. That's a big part of it, just knowing what part of the alcohol you want to get rid of, because there's some flavors that come off the still that are bad flavors, which will actually turn into good flavors later. And there's some flavors that may be deceivingly good that are actually bad flavors that you don't want in your final product.

See, folks, that's why distillers are not just plant operators. They actually know what they're doing, you know, because they're making whiskey good. They're not just making it and putting it in a barrel, and the barrel makes it good. It has to be good first. All right, so we're going to drink through five of your whiskies today. You've set them out for us. Thank you so much for doing this for us. But I think we're going to start with a bourbon, aren't we? We sure are. Well, our listeners do love to get straight to that whiskey, so why don't we do that now? What do we have in our first class?

So this is Fiddler Unison bourbon. This is our flagship. It's 90 proof, high wheat bourbon. It is, I'll let Whit talk about some of the technical details, but it is our best seller here in Georgia. And it makes a great neat pour, but it also, if you're an old fashioned drinker, I find that it, I may be biased, but it makes a really good one as well.

Now, are there multiple expressions of Fiddler? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So it's branches out from there. This is the unison though. This is your flagship product.

Yeah. You know, whiskey itself is a tree, right? With multiple branches and Fiddler within the whiskey tree is its own little tree.

So it's like a tree grafted onto a tree. Okay. So the Fiddler unison, now what's the proof on this? 90.

Yeah, so the Fiddler Unison, it's actually two different whiskies blended together. So we have a sourced MGP high wheat mash bill that is 51% corn, 45% wheat, 4% malted barley, blended with our Fiddler Soloist, which is a high malt bourbon that we make in-house, which is a four grain, all malted secondary grain bourbon. So we have two types of malted barley, Malted wheat, malted rye, and then a chocolate malted rye. If I told you the percentages of all those.

It's going to get too complicated.

Well, it's like 13.3% of this and like 9.2% of that. It's like, I really, honestly, I would have to look it up. I could tell you the exact mash bill in bags. We use this many bags of wheat and we use this many bags of rye. So I could tell you in pounds, I could tell you in bags, but percentage, I would have to actually look it up on the computer.

That's fine. We understand. So this is a marriage of two bourbons, so it's still a straight bourbon.

Yes. And the age on the two products? Yeah, so the MGP right now that we're sourcing is anywhere between four and five years old. And a lot of it's hitting that five-year-old mark for the products that are put out right now. I think at some point it was three years old, but we're kind of getting away from that product. We're trying to make this a four to five-year-old product. The bourbon that we use that's in-house is a four to five-year-old bourbon as well, the in-house bourbon. And the blending percentage is roughly about 25, 75, using 75% of the sourced MGP, 25% of ours. And one of the main reasons for that is that the Soloist itself has a very distinct flavor profile, and we still want this to be kind of like an entry-level, traditional flavor profile bourbon. When you start introducing more and more soloist, it's gonna start hitting some of those kind of funky, malty, leathery notes that you're gonna get from the soloist, which is very good, and it's delicious in the soloist, but for a new bourbon drinker, sometimes it might be off-putting.

So, I mean, long-term, if you want to, and we're gonna cut to the chase here in a minute and actually taste it, but in the long-term, if you wanted to slowly get away from the MGP edition, if you ever got to that point, you're going to have to try and reproduce that weeded mash bill in order to try and keep that profile.

Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, I think right now just with we would have to actually build a new facility. Our facility maxes out at 500 barrels a year. Yeah. And we sell pretty close to, I think, 1500 barrels of a year of whiskey. So most of our products, the Fiddler Unison and Fiddler Georgia Heartwood those two are the and the Fiddler Amburana now those three are the only three source products and then we have dozens of small brands that we release that are all made in-house that these tiny brands Kind of make up a majority of our catalog, but they make up a fraction of what we produce out to the market So I think making it we would have to build a whole new facility to make that type of product

Well, and just to note, generally about Fiddler, we talked about it having multiple little offshoots. The concept with Fiddler, the whole name even, is we knew we were going to be making a bunch of whiskeys, grain to glass, here in-house on our pot stills, which largely trends towards the malt side of the world. But Fiddler, the name itself was because we knew we wanted to have a brand where we don't necessarily make the whole brand, but we fiddle with it. And as you might imagine, you know, towards the end of a night of drinking was when the name came about because puns are definitely funnier after you've had a few.

They certainly are.

Yeah, so Fiddler, this first one is, as Whit mentioned, a marriage of, you know, the MGP high wheat mash bill and our soloist in-house high malt. And then other line extensions of Fiddler are sort of different compositions as well. Like we've got one that we haven't released yet, Fiddler syncopation, which is 100% Bloody Butcher malted corn varietal that we distilled entirely in-house. We'll also be sampling through Fiddler Georgia Heartwood and Fiddler Amberana today, which are that high wheat bourbon that we then do things to. So, yeah, it's a pretty, it's a fun sort of sandbox, I guess, is maybe how I'd describe it. Yeah, that's so cool. All right, let's check it out.

Yeah, absolutely.

Cheers. Cheers.

I heard that cheers. I'm not quite close enough. I reached for it. Here, cheers. It's actually got a nice nose, and there is a bit of spice on the nose. Not a lot, but it's kind of a softer spice. And that's that rye. That's that malted rye.

Yeah, so the portion of malted rye that's going to come through will be pretty subtle, but you will get a hint of that. I do get hints of it here and there.

And the color on it's kind of a sort of a medium amber and at 90 proof. It does have a bit of legs on the glass. I'd say I'm ready to taste it. Cheers guys.

And the inclusion of some of our hot distilled distillate adds some nice body and viscosity that a lot of 90 proof bourbons that I've had don't necessarily always have.

Yeah, this has a pretty good malt component to it. I definitely, I mean, by the mash bill, it has a good malt component to it, but by flavor as well. So it plays a big part. And, uh, I want to say that the malt kind of overtakes the wheat and the softness of the wheat upfront a little bit. It's a little more fruity. Yeah. Got a nice, uh, got a nice spice to it. That's interesting. Um, kind of, uh, unique. Have you ever had anything out on the market that you think comes close to your filler?

I mean, Fiddler Unison, the design of it is supposed to be kind of like our entry-level bourbon. It's supposed to be the most approachable. It's supposed to be something that you can either drink neat, you can blend, you can make cocktails with it. It really is, I think, the answer to most of those questions, but it does with the high malt bourbon. percentage in there it does add a little bit of nuance of something that may be like Curious like oh, there's something a little bit extra about it.

So so you've got this mystery. You've got this distillers palette On this do you get kind of a nutty? pair kind of a little bit of a nutty pair sure yeah, so I

When you say distiller's palate, so when I talk about flavors, everything is subjective. There's no objective truce when you're talking about flavors that you get. So one person's pear might be another person's apple or might even be another person's cherry. So like you can talk fruit. I usually will use broad terms and then once we kind of agree on a broad term, we can go a little bit deeper past that. It's like, does everyone agree that there's some fruit here? Let's go a little bit into that fruit. Is it a tree fruit, like an apple or a pear? Or is it more of a stone fruit, like a cherry or a peach? Like what is that fruit component? And if everyone can kind of agree on that, then you're kind of getting somewhere. But the only reason we use Flavor Notes is to be able to understand what other people are tasting. Because at the end of the day, it tastes like whiskey. It's whiskey that we're drinking. It is whiskey. It's whiskey that we're enjoying. So tasting it, we didn't add fruit to it. We didn't put apples in the mash bill. That's correct. It's just corn, wheat, malt.

But it is chemistry. It is chemistry, and all those flavors are chemicals. That's true. At the end of the day.

Yeah, there's different esters that can give you, like, there's certain flavors that give off the banana flavor, which Jack Daniels is extremely famous for, is that banana flavor, or Jim Beam's famous for that peanut flavor that it has in it. You know, if there's something that we're famous for, I think it's a lot of flavors. We have, through our various whiskeys, a lot of different flavors.

So do you consider this kind of de facto Atlanta whiskey? You guys have three tasting rooms here in the Atlanta area, right? We do. So you're serving a lot of Atlantean's whiskey every single day. ATLians, yep.

ATLians. ATLians.

Has this kind of become Atlanta's brand?

By sales volume in terms of, you know, bourbons that are made here in Georgia, I think, yes, it sort of has become that. As to what people, you know, any particular individual thinks of when they think Georgia bourbon or Atlanta bourbon couldn't tell you. But I know a lot of people who love it.

So you're tasting rooms. You have tasting rooms in all three locations. They all stay pretty busy, I would imagine.

Yeah, especially the one. Well, we've got one at the Battery next to the Braves Stadium. If you had a really good arm, like the uncle in Napoleon Dynamite, who wanted to throw the football over the mountain, if you had a really good arm, you could throw a football and hit the stadium. So that's where our vodka and gin still are. That's a Vendome-Copperpot hybrid still. And we've got a tasting room there, like you mentioned. So during baseball season, that just gets a ton of traffic. I mean, the Braves development arm has put together a really cool ecosystem over there of a lot of local vendors. Our whiskey exchange, which is where we age most of our barrels, that's on Atlanta's beltline development, which is for folks who aren't familiar, was 22 miles of abandoned railroad tracks that they have now redeveloped into not only kind of a sidewalk and transit corridor with a lot of cool plantings and everything, but it has a ton of breweries, restaurants, apartments that have sprung up next to it. Pont City Market, like we were talking about earlier during our walkthrough, is also right along it. So yeah, that's where our Rick house is, store in a lot of our barrels. And then our facility here is actually not very far from the Beltline, which is just around the corner. But our distillery here is right next to Sweetwater Brewery. overflow from their tasting rooms and everything.

So cool. Yeah. Let's move on to our second whiskey and we can talk about that a little bit. This was really good, by the way. I really enjoyed this Fiddler Unison and I hope I get a chance to try some of the others.

By the way, your tasting notes are awesome. You think so? Yeah, I mean, you didn't throw out asparagus, which is ideal, because that's probably wrong. Do you get that sometimes? I've only gotten it once. It was actually with duality, which is going to be the third one we're sampling today. But somebody threw out asparagus right after I got done saying, just as Whit said earlier, everybody's taste is subjective, nothing's wrong. And I was like, that one actually might be wrong.

But it makes people feel a little bit better when they know they just can't be wrong, right? You just can't be wrong. Because it's your palate, by goodness. Right.

Whatever you think it tastes like. Exactly. That's your memory.

So I've never got asparagus before. Neither have I. I have got charred hot dogs, though. Out of a whiskey. Out of a whiskey. Yeah. No. It was a smoky, sort of savory whiskey. And that's the first thing that came to mind. Sure. I felt bad about it when I said it.

Better than hot dog water. Better than hot dog water.

That's right.

All right, so what do we have in our second glass? Yeah, you've got resurgence rye. So this is, as Witt can probably talk to in more detail, we distill it from 100% malted rye. So most ryes on the market, even still today, are distilled from some combination of unmalted rye, corn, and malted barley. So we went in a little bit different direction here. So Jim Chastain and Charlie Thompson were our founders. They had been rye whiskey drinkers starting about a little over a decade ago. And when they got in touch with our master distiller, Justin Manglitz, through actually Jim's younger sister had been good friends with Justin in high school. So it was one of those where Jim's younger sister said, oh, I've got a friend who's really talented, kind of eye rolling. Oh yeah, I'm sure. But turns out his portfolio was fantastic. And they said, we really want to make a rye whiskey. Justin had a pretty extensive background in home brewing. He owned the home brew supply store in downtown Athens for close to a decade. Actually, that gave him access to ingredients to learn on. He said, why don't we make a malted rye, a rye malt whiskey. pretty unique. Very few, if any, distilleries at the time were doing it on, at least on the East Coast. Old Petrero, I think, out West had had come out with it and that was one of his favorite whiskeys. So he was inspired by that. And yeah, so this was the very first whisky that we distilled here in-house on our double copper pastilles from Vindome. And it's just really We talked earlier, you mentioned s'mores in a glass type way of describing a flavor profile. I think this one actually is pretty close to that description as well. I get a lot of graham cracker. I think one of the common threads through a lot of our whiskeys, maybe not all of them, is a subtle chocolate note. I definitely get that in the resurgence rye. And I don't know if that's the power of suggestion Whit may be able to help us understand. It uses about, what, 3% chocolate-malted rye?

Yeah, so there's 5% chocolate-malted rye. And it doesn't take much of that.

No, it doesn't take much of that at all. I think Woodford Reserve had a chocolate-malted rye bourbon that came out a few years back, and it was kind of overpowering.

Yeah.

They used too much. Yeah. Maybe too much.

A lot of people liked it, but... Yeah, it's a very... It is a very powerful grain indeed as far as like... Flavors that can translate through the distillation because a lot of flavors you can actually Some esters you can lose in the distillation process some flavors of grains Like corn for example, especially yellow dent number two, which is like the most common corn used for bourbon You almost lose any corn flavor through distillation, which is honestly a good thing. And the best thing about yellow hit number two is because a lot of people don't want their whiskey to taste like corn, but it's good that you lose the flavor of those grains. But chocolate malt, chocolate malted rice specifically is one of those that translate heavy through the distillation. You can get that later.

Yeah. Let's check it out, guys. Cheers. I heard that again. I reached, but I didn't quite reach far enough. And yeah, the power of suggestion is amazing because I'm picking up those notes that you mentioned earlier.

And your point about the Yellow Dent number two, I mean, the amount of flavor that comes from the barrel for a typical bourbon is pretty high, right?

Yeah, it's usually like 70, 75, sometimes even 80%. Because we use pot distillation, we actually lower that number from being higher on the barrel flavor profile to a little bit not higher on the grain in the distillate profile, but our distillate doesn't take as far as a backseat will say. It's usually about 65% barrel and maybe 35% distillate. We do, I mean, we're only almost seven years old as a distillery, so our oldest stuff is still five, six years old, so we still have a pretty distillate-heavy flavor. But the distillate doesn't, it's not like an off-putting distillate. You get the flavors of the grains without like any off-alcohol flavors.

And what's the reason for that? I mean, why does the pot still produce a distillate that carries more flavor into the barrel?

Yeah, absolutely. So I'll take it back to column distillation. So in column distillation, the stills run continuously. There's no cuts that are made. Just pieces of the heads and tails essentially are removed with every plate in the column. So as it's distilled, it's losing a lot of that. But it's also losing a lot of the oils. It's losing a lot of the thickness that the spirit has. So in a pot still, we are able to Translate everything there's not a whole nother distillation. We only do two distillations really two and a half because we recycle a lot of the faints But in our distillation we're able to translate Any of the thickness that's in the spirit some of the oils can translate through the distillate and it will give our spirit a or our white dog essentially a thicker a body, thicker texture. So whenever we put into a barrel, we're actually not counting so much on the barrel to make up thickness, which is one of the reasons why you need a new charred oak barrel for a lot of American whiskey. Light whiskey is one of the ones that doesn't use that. And because of that, they have to put it into a barrel or distill it at a higher proof, or it's usually bottled at a higher proof as well. But bourbon needs the thickness from the new oak to thicken up that spirit so that the final product is really thick, because the distillate going in is really thin. We take our distillate, which is a very thick distillate, and we put it in a barrel for four to five years, and we have just as thick of a distillate as you would a 12-year-old bourbon. So we're able to get that thickness, we're able to get that mouth feel.

And what proof are you going into the barrel at, typically?

So ours actually ranges. It ranges from about 108 to 120. We've done a few off ones that will go in and 125 and we've done a few in the past They've gone out a little bit of a lower proof But usually that's our range and it really depends on Because we make so many different products or if we're not able to keep filling up our tank and cutting it to the same thing So once we're finished making a product whatever distillate will just cut it to the amount of barrels that we need. So there's not as much of a science as much of an efficiency behind that.

That is so cool, because we've got a lot of listeners that are just whiskey geeks. They want to know all that stuff, like what kind of still, what's going on, how you guys are using your barrels. You just made their day. Basically, you gave them all the stuff they needed to feel satisfied, kick back, and just enjoy their whiskey now.

Absolutely. And about Resurgence, obviously podcast isn't a great format to show the label, but I can describe it. It has a phoenix on it. Resurgence is the city motto of Atlanta, rising from the ashes. During the Civil War, it was burned. And the artwork on it is a phoenix done by a really great artist out of Athens named David Hale, who He professes to have a direct bloodline connection to Basil Hayden. Oh, really? Yeah, who was the first person to introduce rye into otherwise corn whisky or bourbon mashbills centuries ago. So I've always thought that was kind of cool since our rye is, the artwork is done by him who has a connection to the person who introduced rye into

Well, speaking of the label, I just noticed that you actually print on the back of the label as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's cool. Little Easter egg R as the bottle, you know, as your contents of your bottle decline and you're getting sad, at least you have the artwork to... That's pretty cool.

Well, it's a fine whiskey and I really enjoy it. And this one here kind of goes back in history in the company, like you said. But this one would be one that you have some older barrels of probably that someday we might get to taste, right?

Yeah, so we still have the first barrel of whiskey we've ever made here in-house. So it's going to be seven years old this year, same age as our distillery. And I can't say for sure, but it'll probably be a few more years before it hits that shelf. But we'll probably do a first barrel special release of resurgence rye in the future.

So what's the goal of that 10-year rye? Is that to have like a candy-like kind of well-aged rye?

Yeah, I think, you know, you can look at it and set goals and set expectations, but really it's just going to be whatever it is. We can move it around in the Rick House to kind of maybe manipulate some of that a little bit, manipulate the proof by going a little higher, a little lower, so on and so forth. But we're just going to kind of let it be what it is. Right now, it definitely has some sweetness. It has some thickness to it, so I can't wait to see how it evolves.

So this one, we also have a very limited amount of cask strength that we bottle of this as well. And each of those have won a double gold at San Francisco. The cask strength won it in 2020, like the week that we all went into lockdowns, at least here in Georgia. And then resurgence, the 86 proof, which is what we're trying right now in 2021. So to Whit's point about the distillate forward product. They seem to enjoy it at San Francisco as we do.

Well, I am getting a little bit of the cocoa on this. It might be the suggestion of the tasting notes that you gave earlier, but I think it's there. It certainly seems like it is.

Yeah. Usually resurgence for me is a honey forward whiskey.

All right, well, folks, we're going to sit here and sip on our whiskeys. We'll be back after the break. We've got three more to taste on. Don't go away. As we mentioned earlier in the show, we hope you'll join us this fall on October 6th and 7th for Bourbon on the Banks. The festival itself is from 2 to 6 PM on October the 7th, and you can pick those tickets up at bourbononthebanks.org for $65. They also have an early access ticket for $75. It'll get you in an hour early and definitely get you access to some special pours. But if you always like that VIP access, this year they're bringing in the VIP access tickets. We'll give you access to their VIP tent and all the great things that go along with that for $175. Be sure to check out bourbononthebanks.org. You'll get all the details on this year's event.

All right, folks, we are back.

We are still at ASW Distillery in Atlanta. We've managed to get through two of their whiskeys so far in the show. We're having a great time here. We've got the third whiskey that's in our glass now. And why don't you tell us what it is?

Yeah, so this third one is duality double malt. And this is, it was originally an experiment gone right, happy accident. So when Justin was really perfecting resurgence, he didn't have, or at least the story goes that he didn't have enough rye malt, malted rye, to make a full batch. So he added, I think it was about a third of cherry smoked malted barley that he did have on hand. And it turned out really well. And so just decided to keep experimenting with it and up that cherry smoked malted barley all the way to 50%. So this is sitting at half and half malted rye and cherry smoked malted barley. And when we started doing some research, we had not and still have not come across anyone mashing, fermenting, and distilling those two malts in the same batch together. In near equal quantities. Yeah, that's right. That's right. In near equal quantities. And so we said, well, let's call it a double malt. And then when we did some more research and at least three pages worth of Google results didn't show that anybody else had done it, we said, well, I think we're the first ever double malt to come on the market. I don't know if that's still true, but at the time it sounded really fun to say. Well, it's in print. I can see it. I can see it from here.

Duality double malt. That's right. At the very least, there's prior art now.

Exactly. Speaking of art, we nerd out pretty hard on all of our labels. Duality may be the nerdiest one. Not only does it have lots of Easter eggs of dual theme, It has a halo and a trident on it, but it also has a Scottish Gaelic translation of the passage from Macbeth that goes double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble. We thought that was pretty fitting for a double malt product that is double distilled. So yeah.

When we were kids, we would sit at the table in the morning with our bowl of cereal, and we'd have the cereal box in front of us. We would read every word on the cereal box, right? Because that's what you did as a kid. As adults, we'd do that with our whiskey bottles. That's right. I'm glad you're putting the Easter eggs on there for us.

We just can't hide toys inside. That's, I think, still illegal.

Yeah, that's an idea.

Is it illegal?

It kind of messes with the whiskey.

It messes with the whiskey, yeah. Don't do it. That's right.

That's pretty cool. All right, so we have a double malt. This is a rye and a barley malt whiskey. Two separate malts. You've coined the double malt. It's called duality. Cheers. Cheers. That is really soft. It does have a little bit of like a, I don't want to call it a grassy note. It's kind of like a hay or a light hay note to it.

Normally when you're getting a note like that, like there's a lot of scotches that kind of have kind of like hay-like qualities. So it would probably most likely be the barley that's contributing to some of that factor.

Yeah, I mean, we've had a lot of malted ryes on the show. Malted rye as a kind of a category of rye is becoming very popular at least. Because it is delicious. It is delicious. It is definitely different and it softens the rye to a point where it's a little more approachable by people who are not spicy whiskey drinkers. But I always have trouble identifying what defines, in the flavor profile, what defines that malted rye. It always is a little softer. It does have a little bit more of a stone fruit kind of quality to it, I would say. But a lot of times you do get that from the malted barley as well, right? You get those stone fruits.

Yeah, so really with this whiskey, and I think it's kind of become this bridge whiskey that both parties of whiskey drinkers can appreciate. When I say both parties, usually American bourbon drinkers and Scotch whiskey drinkers, those are the two main parties. You obviously have people that drink Irish whiskey and people that drink whatever, like Tennessee whiskey, but both I think the Irish whiskey drinkers would definitely feel more similar to some of the European, like Scottish whiskey drinkers as far as their flavor profile hits. And the Tennessee whiskey drinkers would probably agree that bourbon is their flavor profile as well. So I usually just say American, European, but this is going to really hit both palates. And I kind of think of it as a bridge for a person that might find themselves in one camp or the other to try something that might get them more open-minded to the other camp. So an American whiskey drinker is going to drink this and be like, oh, it's aged on New Oak. It has that rye-like flavor profile that is familiar with bourbon, maybe a high rye bourbon, but also the malted rye does kind of soften it up. So it's not like a rye whiskey almost consider it more of that bourbon, sweet American whiskey category. But then the malted barley, it's not a peated malted barley, it's a cherry smoked malted barley. So there are going to be little hints of smoke there and a little hints of leather, but they're not overly aggressive to where it's off-putting to the American whiskey drinker. It's like, oh, there's a little bit of something there that's different that I can appreciate as well. And then the European whiskey drinkers are gonna taste and be like, oh wow, I like those notes that are familiar to me, the leather, the smoke, stuff that they might find in a more of a scotch or a malt whiskey, but then having that new oak sweetness and rye to kind of bring it together. So it really does, I found it to hit more pallets from both camps than I found it to hit neither, I would say.

Sure, like the grand negotiator between the two.

Well, let's taste it. Cheers. Cheers. Yeah, for me, I get more of the malted rye than I do of the malted barley. But that's probably the way you would expect it to be, right? Sure. Because even in equal parts, the rye is going to play a bigger role.

Yeah, I think that's, again, one of those things where it's a subjective opinion. Someone that's more sensitive maybe to smoke might think that cherry-smoked malted barley is very potent and very overpowering. But it really is just, what are you looking for when you taste it?

I guess you're right. So the smoke portion of it seems to be more prominent, but the actual component of the malted barley is a little bit less. So you had to kind of back it off a little. I get it. I understand. It's very interesting, though. I don't really get it as a very smoky whiskey, though. Very light.

Yeah. It is one of those that the smoke is there and present, but it's not so aggressive that someone that's sensitive to smoke might.

It's also interesting, the smoke coming hot off the still is a lot more pronounced, isn't it? Sure.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So as it sits in a barrel over time, like some of our older dualities are definitely less smoky than our younger dualities. And when duality was first released, when they actually won a double gold medal at San Francisco, it was a one year old product. We've actually bumped that up to a three and a half year old product.

Okay. Well, that makes a difference, I'm sure.

Yeah, the reality is significantly older, significantly oakier than it originally was. But it used to be a lot smokier, a lot maltier. But even then at that 12-month age statement, it won a double gold medal. So I'm super proud of that.

Yeah, it still has a nice barrel profile to it. I mean, it's got a nice bit of oak in it. It definitely picked up a lot of the barrel, I think.

Yeah, we've used a blend of 30 gallon and 52 gallon barrels for duality for a majority, at least more recent majority of its life. So we'll probably continue doing that soon and then probably back it to just 52 gallon barrels, eventually.

Sounds good. On your mic, you can actually let it come in towards you a little bit closer. You just don't want it rubbing against your t-shirt. Gotcha. That's the only thing. So you're fine.

Yeah, sometimes I talk with my hands and move things around, bump things.

Oh, you're fine. Get crazy. You'll never even hear it. It's just me being kind of nerdy about it. Sure. It's all good. I appreciate it. Yeah, I love it. Well, this is really good. I'm enjoying it a lot. One thing I want to make sure is we don't confuse our listeners too much, because this category is an American whiskey. Absolutely. So this is clearly an American whiskey. We don't have an American single malt category yet, although we do know it's coming. It's on its way. We'll have it soon. Probably within a year, I hope.

And this will not qualify. I think the category has to be malted barley, specifically. And because this is 50% malted rye and 50% malted barley, it may not. Once the standard of definition is finalized, I don't know that this would, but this would definitely fall under the category of whiskey.

So an American single malt is not under the same definition as a Scotch single malt.

I actually don't know the standard of definition just for Scotch single malt, but I do know Scotch whiskey has to have a three year minimum age to be considered Scotch whiskey.

Scotch single malt has to be distilled in a pot still as well.

In a pot still. And the single malt is from a single distillery. It's not blended product from multiple distilleries.

I think American single malt.

Will be a single, from a single malted grain like

I think that'll allow diversity within the malted barley subset. But it will be barley. I think it will have to be barley. That's what the rumblings we're hearing.

Okay, cool. Unlike the double popped still whiskey, which would be, no, actually it would be the same as a double, except that's not all malted. That's half or partially unmalted whiskey, right?

Yeah, and Irish whiskey, the triple distilled uses partially unmalted and malted barley with our Irish style whiskey. But yeah, I think one of the things that you'll find through our catalog, too, is that we make a lot of different styles of whiskey. And really, big shout outs to Justin. I want to make sure he's getting fair credit. So he taught me how to make all this whiskey. He's been making whiskey for 25 years and makes really fantastic stuff. He's learned, designed this whiskey just over years of experience and has found stuff that really translates fantastic. I've been lucky enough to learn under him, train under him, and he's actually let me start making some of my own mashbills. They'll be ready in a few years. So hopefully when they come out, they'll be as exciting as Justin's.

Well, that's awesome. That's so awesome. Well, it seems like you know your stuff. I appreciate it. You definitely talk the talk. And the whiskey's good, so hey. Let me back up a little bit. We've had the Fiddler bourbon first in the show, then we had the resurgence rye, and now we're having the duality double malt. This is an American whiskey, but it is a malt whiskey made with malted rye and malted barley. These three bottles, where are they priced at on the shelf? Just so our listeners have an idea where they can kind of find these bottles.

Yeah, Fiddler Unison is, it depends on which store, but anywhere from 35 to 41, call it. Okay. Resurgence Rye sits anywhere from about usually around 44 on the shelf. Duality is, that's, do you remember what? I think that's sitting at like 50, 55.

It's a little more crafty, right? I mean, you would expect there's a little bit more.

I think you can find it from 45 to 60, another price range. We do offer cast strength versions of both resurgent and duality double malt, so.

Yeah, people do love the cast strength.

But that is a very popular drink.

Yeah. Yeah. That is a rumor has it.

Castor. And that kind of leads us into, so we're going to, we're going to have a couple more of your whiskeys here as we finish up the show today. But, um, uh, you guys do single barrels as well. We do. And, uh, so you do castoring versions of your whiskies as well as single barrel offerings. Correct. And what's it like? I mean, what's the, What kind of groups are doing single barrel picks with you guys? I've never really had to define this. Are they liquor stores primarily with groups behind them? Are they liquor stores that are looking to just expand their offering? I would say it's...

about maybe half to a little more than half are liquor stores who just love having single barrels on the floor. Maybe a quarter are liquor stores with groups behind them, and then a quarter are working directly with groups who might have a partner liquor store that they work with, but it's ultimately just corresponding directly with them, having them in, thiefing from the barrel directly for them, et cetera.

What's it like to visit the distillery here? I mean, if you're a... It is a blast. I bet it is. It's a pretty grand place. This location, we haven't seen your other two locations, but this one's, you said it's around 60,000 square feet.

The whole building. And our space, I think by now, when you include the Rick House space in the back that we've recently annexed to our facility is probably around 30,000 square feet at this point.

Does that sound right, Whit? Yeah, I would say so. I don't know. I'm a little bit of a numbers guy, but not the best numbers guy.

It's a long walk, right, to get to the back?

Yeah, it takes a minute.

Yeah, you get your steps in when you work here, you know? I bet, yeah. So the tasting room here is at the original distillery, about 1,500 square feet, and then you get to see the production area. Our Rick house on the Beltline in the West End is about a 2,500 square foot tasting room. And there you get to see even more barrels. People love looking at barrels because they're really pretty. And then we've got our battery facility, which the tasting room there is about, I think, 2,500 square feet when you factor in both spaces. And you can see our vodka and gin still there.

So if somebody comes to your armory place location where we are today, this is the main distillery. This is your still house. This is where you produce the majority of your distillate, although you do make distillate at the other location as well.

Clear spirits there, aged spirits here.

Right, exactly. Somebody can take a tour here. They walk on a tour. Everything's explained to them. They get to see it from grain to glass basically here, right?

Yeah, so we do tours on mostly on weekends, Friday, Saturday, Sundays. We have some guided, I think we call them barrel tours, which are like super special tours that I think it's like a paid tour you can do on Sundays. But on Friday and Saturdays, we do just our standard tours and those are fantastic. Those are really the times our tasting rooms open. Jesse Colleen usually are here. They're fantastic and do a great job. They're always asking me questions. So they've pretty much heard me say everything, and they're really good at repeating whatever.

On your barrel tour, do they thief from the barrel?

I do believe so. Don't quote me on that for sure.

Okay. Well, that would be really cool. People love that part of it.

Whatever is legal, they do that. They do what's legal.

Yeah. Don't quote me. I don't know.

So we had to get really creative early on. When we first opened our tasting rooms, we were not allowed to serve cocktails, and we could only serve three half ounce samples, which, I mean, it wasn't a huge draw, right? That's like three thimblefuls of whiskey. Fortunately, the laws have gotten a lot better. Now we're able to, you know, if you want to sample anything we make, you can come and sample anything we make. And we now are allowed to make cocktails so long as we don't use any alcohols that are made outside of our four walls. So what that means is, for example, in Manhattan is difficult to make, right? Because we don't make a vermouth. So they've gotten really creative on ways to make the classics while still just using alcohols we make. And so, for example, with a Manhattan, they infused Fig into our Fiddler Unison and that Fig infused Fiddler Unison became effectively the Vermouth. It was just an extremely boozy riff on a Manhattan because Vermouth is a lot less alcohol than You're not alone.

We've toured a lot of distilleries around the country and we've been places where they're not allowed to put anything into their drinks that they don't make at all. So they're, you know, they're... So they're having to make their own juice.

They're making their own bitters.

It's really something. The laws are a bit archaic and they're hard to overcome, but they are being overcome slowly and surely. And the more we get around and the more we talk to distilleries, we find that they're working with state legislatures to get things changed.

That one you mentioned is a really weird law because you'd think lawmakers would want these spirits to be diluted a little bit.

The rules are made to basically prop up prohibition after prohibition and then slowly it's going to take two, three generations for all that to disappear. That's right. Anyway, it's great to see that those things are happening. So you have a full cocktail bar. We sure do, yeah. And you've got people working behind the cocktail bar that know how to make things happen.

Exactly. That's awesome.

And you also have like an event center here. You have people come in and weddings?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So all three of our locations have private event, separate private event spaces, as well as the ability to rent out the tasting rooms for private events. So we've hosted, as you mentioned, weddings. We've hosted corporate fundraisers. We've hosted holiday parties for companies, you know, that just, it runs the gamut. We've hosted like DragonCon related. Are you familiar with what DragonCon is? I don't know what it is, but it sounds like some like,

That's not that far off.

So every Labor Day weekend, there's just a gigantic, I mean, people dress up for it. It's really, really fun institution in Atlanta, but people, you know, we've had adjacent things related to that. So it really does range. All right. Well, I finished off what I was drinking. I reached for the next glass and I can see the bottle from here. We almost, I think we messed your segway up because you had this single barrel cast strength segway teed up and then we, sorry. We went down that rabbit hole. That's okay though. People want to know what they can see when they come visit you guys.

So that's good that we took that little side road for a minute. This is the Fiddler Georgia Heartwood. Can you tell me a little bit about this single barrel?

Yeah, this is the MGP 45% wheat mashbill that is delicious of its own right. And then Justin, would you say every January he harvests or at least the last few January's he's gone and harvested oak up in North Georgia?

Yeah, he spends a lot of time working with oak specifically for this product.

Yeah, so the premise of this product is it's that 45% wheat mash bill that we then finish on anywhere from 15 to 30 staves of Georgia oak that we harvest. The very first round of harvesting was Justin and his dad up in, I think it was Jackson County, Georgia, who harvested three white oak trees that had fallen during a storm, split out the heartwood from the sapwood into slabs, seasoned the slabs for, I don't know, 18 or more months, and then from there they quartered those slabs into little staves that are then hand charred and then we put those into the barrel. They fit through the bunghole. Exactly. Got it. Exactly. So this most recent, I think he was on a friend's property in Haversham County or Raven County. That's correct, yeah. And yeah, so they just go out and harvest every January when the sap is not in the oak.

Yeah, so essentially what happens is during the winter, the sap gets pulled away from the wood and the wood is nice and dry. harvesting a tree exactly within, I think it's a two month range where the sap has left the wood and that's when you want to harvest it because if you harvest the tree, felt it when there's still sap in the wood, it's going to reduce the amount of usable wood that you can use for a barrel or at least the amount of good tasting wood and you could still use it for staves or for finishing wood but it wouldn't taste good.

Something tells me that sap wood would be bitter.

Yeah, it's not great. It's not great.

Except maple sap.

Maybe.

Exactly. We're talking about oak here, though.

That's right. Yeah, we're talking about oak. A lot of people can just take whiskey, put it in a barrel, or take whiskey and finish it on wood. But having that knowledge to understand the trees and understand this tree being this old or the sapsan on the tree at this point will affect the flavors in this way just makes it a super like well thought out process. So the way that we fiddled with this fiddler whiskey is by adding Georgia oak to it, which is the first whiskey ever legally aged on Georgia oak.

Oh really? Yeah. Yeah. And that, that Georgia Oak, I mean, it, it affects it pretty much every way it could possibly. I mean, you look at it in the glass and it's just this incredibly dark red, beautiful hue. It adds not only Oak character, but a different, uh, I almost get a maple style note to it, even though it is Oak, um, that, that I have quite frankly never, um, I was going to say that it's kind of a, kind of a mix between, for me,

Anyway, the nose is kind of a mix between like maple and like sassafras, a little bit of sassafras on it.

Like root beer style?

Like root beer style, but without too much sweetness. I mean, it's got a little bit of sweetness to it, but it's got that extra spice that comes from sassafras. It's interesting. How do you think of this? How does he think of this stuff? I mean, it's just I guess you're from Georgia. You want to put a little Georgia in every bottle, right?

I mean, I think Justin is like thought of creativity specifically behind this product was wanting to I think they wanting to have a single barrel program, but our unison was a blended product. They're like, well, how can we fiddle with a single barrel that we source and it not just be bottled sourced whiskey? How do we make it special? How do we make it our own? Because we don't want to just take someone's whiskey and put it in a bottle. We want to make sure that we do something to it. And most of our products, most of our line is made in-house. But this one, we're like, well, let's do something that hasn't been done. Let's put it on Georgia oak. Let's use unused trees, unused wood.

That has a sort of a spice combination that's different than anything I've had before. I want to say that it's very similar to the nose on the palate. It's got that kind of sassafrassy, spicy note to it. It's really good.

Yeah, this is our answer kind of to the oak balm. The bourbon heads that are looking for the 12, 15-year-old bourbons, they want something that has that thickness, that has that oak. And this is kind of our answer to it right now.

This is very dark. I mean, it's mahogany in color. And it does have a bit of viscosity to it. It does.

Yeah, this one is our biggest single barrel offering. I mean, we'll have, I don't remember how many barrels this year, but we have a good number of them for not only Georgia, but outside the state as well. And it has really, a lot of the bourbon groups we send samples to really, really gravitate towards this.

We might have to do a bourbon road pick.

Yeah. I was about to say, how many podcasts have we had? New mural picks.

Yeah. I don't think we have.

Could be the first one. Yeah.

Could be the first one. We might have to do it. We need a partner though. We have to find a partner. You guys don't sell from the...

Do you do sell bottles from here? We do, and it actually is a good segue that, you know, we're in, I think I mentioned earlier this episode with states we're in, but probably the next state we would expand to, we don't know the exact timeline, but would be Kentucky. So, yeah, we've gotten a lot of interest and feedback from people. Hey, please come up here. Well, yeah, I mean, why not?

I mean, Kentucky is, We've got a lot of bourbons up there already, but we also have a big appetite for bourbons in Kentucky. So, and a lot of people come to Kentucky looking for bourbon and they can't always get those, those unicorns they're looking for. In fact, most often they don't get the unicorns they're looking for. But they're, the second thing they're looking for is single barrels, you know, special offerings, things they can't get anywhere else. And a Georgia heartwood fiddler, my goodness, that would be something that people would look for, I think.

That's really good, by the way. That's an excellent bourbon.

Thank you. Thank you. And what was the proof on this, like 108, 109?

No, this one ranges from, I think it's like 115 to 120. So I think this one's closer to the 116, I think.

It's a full flavor on the palate. And it's got plenty of power behind it. So it's a good solid whiskey that is for sipping. You definitely don't want to mix this with anything. Just enjoy it the way it is. That's right. And if you need to put it on an ice cube, put it on an ice cube. But I think it's really good the way it is. Yeah. OK. I see another bottle we haven't touched yet.

This one, I think, is all wit.

It's all wit. Yeah. So this one's a newer product line, Fiddler and Urana. So, if you're not familiar with the wood, it is a tree native to Brazil. And the wood's, I think, genus is very closely related to legumes. So, I don't know if any nuts actually grow on this tree, but it would be in the family or the genus of that style of tree.

Now, is an oak tree a nut tree? Because of the acorns?

Yeah, because of the acorns. This one, I don't believe is... I may need to double check, but I don't believe this is a type of oak. I believe this is kind of its own separate thing.

This has been a sufficiently nerdy show, by the way. So this is great.

I love it. But Amburana has an extremely unique flavor profile, like super different, super unique in what it offers to the whiskey. The barrels that we used did help hold cachaça, which is a Brazilian, I want to say it's a rum style liqueur, but it's I don't know if it's a liqueur or spirits. It's kind of like in the rum style though, cachaça is, but these previously held cachaça, but the flavor is like super floral and the aroma is extremely fragrant. So yeah, when you stick your nose in there, you'll know exactly. what I'm talking about.

I mean, even just pouring it right then with, it just filled the whole room with bouquet.

So in our rick house, there's a spot where the amburanas are. And as you're walking towards that area, you can smell it.

I actually had the opportunity to, Chad walked us past those barrels. And I have to say that we got to really put our nose up to it. It's different. It's totally different. So is anybody else working with that wood at all?

Yeah, there are a few. I do believe Starlight and Nulu have kind of, at least when it comes to barrel finishes, they've been experimenting with many barrel finishes and I think that they do that. Some places will do a cigar batch and they'll use a portion of Amburana or full Amburana in what they call cigar batch just because it pairs well with tobacco because of how potent it is. We try to make our Amburanas not overpowering because it doesn't take long. Really a few weeks, a month, two months, that's all it takes. It does not take much time in this barrel at all to get the flavors that it needs. Much more time it's going to kind of blow out.

So these barrels are pretty expensive, I would imagine. Are you able to use them more than one time?

Yeah, so we've actually been able to use girls two, three times. We're gonna experiment and try to use them up to four times if we can. I mean, the potency of them, just ridiculous. Being a first fill will only take a few weeks, a month. And then from there, the second fills take about two months. Third fill, we haven't fully matured ours in a third fill yet, but I mean, it still has a lot of flavor to give, so.

And then when that's over, you'll give them off to a brewery in town or something, right?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's going to be something that... I mean, brewers are always trying to experiment, always trying to push the boundaries. So, I think that's easily something that they could experiment with.

So, at the core of it, what is Ambiorana?

So, Ambiorana... Do our Amburana finish bourbon? I think our goal is to kind of push the boundaries of what whiskey can be I mean other people are experimenting with it, but we want to kind of put our own spins on it and this has been something that has I mean, a lot of people interested, even non-whiskey drinkers have tasted this and like, wow, that's super different, super unique. My father-in-law who's really into rum, this is his favorite whiskey of our offerings. So this is kind of an opportunity for other people to try something and be like, wow, that's not what you expect when you taste whiskey. And I think also for the whiskey drinker too, the average whiskey drinker, Some whiskey drinkers are thrown off by it and maybe even off put by it, but others are looking for that. They're always looking for how can whiskey be different? How can I find something new? I mean, the collector, this is right up their alley, just trying to get something really different, really unique.

Yeah, this has some spice in it that's not typical to whiskey. This is something I think I heard you mentioned earlier, something about cinnamon rolls. You know, I do believe it's got that. It's probably a little bit more of a what would a whiskey be like if we treated it a little bit like a gin? I mean, maybe?

Yeah, I definitely think, I mean, because there's very heavy floral notes on there. So on the nose, like you're getting floral. I mean, if you overdo it, like we've seen some barrels that almost get a little perfumey after a while, and that's just how aggressive it can be. But yeah, and on the palate, that cinnamon heavy, I have like, one friend that's like, oh, it tastes like cinnamon toast crunch. That's the only tasting note they get on it. They're like, cinnamon toast crunch breakfast cereal.

Yeah. So what's the core whiskey here?

Yeah, this is M.G.P. weeded bourbon. So most of the whiskey that we fiddle with in our fiddler line, if it is a sourced bourbon, it has been that weeded M.G.P. We may consider some different mash bills in the future, but really the weeded M.G.P. is what we fiddle with the most.

So this is one of those whiskeys that is a bourbon, starts as a bourbon. It's still a bourbon when you're done, more or less, but because of the wood aspect of it and what you've done with it and the finishing, it comes off as something altogether different. I mean, I've always said that gin is my other bourbon. I love gin. I like it a lot. And the varieties of gin really get me excited sometimes. This is kind of that bourbon as a gin kind of thing. This is a bourbon. Yeah. Wow. Fully qualifies as a bourbon, but it's got those great floral notes.

Well, I don't know if we're going to have time for it today, but we got to sample you on our barrel-rested gin, because it was aged in bourbon barrels. Yeah. You're going to love it.

I think I'd like that. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, gentlemen, I've had a fantastic... Oh, by the way, what was the price on these two, just so people know? Are they in that same typical range? The Heartwood sits usually around 80 on the shelf. Okay, so these are single barrels. That's right. And then the Ambarana usually around 85 on the shelf. Okay. And that's fair. These are sort of specially single barrel whiskies. And what was the proof on the Ambarana, do you remember?

So this one is usually similar to Heartwood, but I think it's a little more dialed in right at the 114 to 116 is usually where this one hits.

So we're paying a little bit more for these, but we're getting a little bit more. We're getting a single barrel. We're getting it at cast strength and we're getting something that has a little bit of special craft touch.

And the Ambarana barrels are a G. So you're getting a little bit of an Ambarana barrel in every bottle.

That's awesome. That is awesome. Guys, we've had such a great time today. And I know when we're finished here, there's a couple more we get to try. Absolutely excited about that too. Absolutely. Five Whiskeys, a great view at the ASW distillery and what you guys are doing here in Atlanta. We've had such a great time. We hope we get to come back again and test some things in the future.

Thanks for having us on the show and for dropping by on your way back up to Kentucky.

Absolutely. So how can people find you guys on the internet, on social media? Where are you at?

ASWdistillery.com and we're on Instagram and Facebook, ASWdistillery. We also, for people who gravitate more towards the single barrel into the spectrum, we have a barrel group as well called All Things ASWdistillery on Facebook so that we're a little more active there on just posting where single barrels are dropping and stuff like that. They call me Witsky on Instagram.

They call you Witsky? Witsky. Only Instagram for you?

It's all the time you got. You're a distiller, right? Yeah, I'm usually on Instagram. He's also a great skateboarder.

He's done some, like what have you done in the over barrels and stuff, kickflips and whatnot?

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes I skate in the Rick House when I can.

Oh, wow.

There's plenty of room back there to do it. Yeah, right. Well, until you fill it up for now anyway, right?

Well, thanks again, Joe Mo. We really appreciate it. We had a great time today and we kind of look forward to introducing these to some of our listeners. We hope they get a chance to try them. Well, we are The Bourbon Road. You can find us on all social media outlets as The Bourbon Road. You can also find us on our website, thebourbonroad.com. where we have our swag, we have our articles. You can also listen to our podcast there. We have a private Facebook group called the Bourbon Roadies, kind of our core followers, our core listeners, about 3,500 of them that just love to listen to the show and share their whiskies and talk about things that have been on the show. We hope you'll check that out. Just go onto Facebook. and type in the bourbon roadies and I'm sure it'll come up. You'll have to join, answer three questions. Want to make sure you're 21. You know you're getting yourself into a bourbon group and you agree to play nice because we just don't accept any rudeness in that group and definitely no selling of whiskeys. But you can share them with each other. In fact, we encourage that. You should always share your whiskeys with your friends. We hope you listen to every single show that comes out on the Bourbon Road. Every Wednesday we come out with an episode. We'll be out on the road. We'll be at a distillery. We'll have somebody in house. We'll have a musician on or a chef or sometimes an author. It's always a fun time. We're always drinking whiskey. Make sure you check us out every single week and make sure you don't miss one. be sure to scroll on up to the top of that app and hit that subscribe button, hit that plus sign, that join button, whatever it might be to get that app to remind you every single week when an episode comes out and you won't miss one. If you've got an idea for a show or a whiskey, if your hometown's got a distillery that's doing it right, make sure you let us know about it. We'll shine a little light on them. I am Jim Shannon, this is The Bourbon Road, and we will see you down the Bourbon Road.

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