353. AI and the Future of Bourbon

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.

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What do you think? I think that's perfect.

Yeah. OK. So Chatty's coming on the show today. And this is going to be a dive into OpenAI. And kind of what OpenAI thinks about the bourbon industry, the whiskey industry in general, kind of trends, expectations, predictions, even though a lot of times predictions aren't in the generative AI's capabilities. But we'll certainly talk about some of those predictions. I've got a number of questions that I posed to the AI bot, and we'll talk about how we do that. why what we ask and how we ask it's important. I think we asked four or five questions, big questions, all kinds of whiskey questions that people want to know, but we'll see what the answers were and what Chaddy thinks is going to happen in the bourbon world in the future.

I'm excited. I've spent quite a bit of time on ChatGPT, on Bard, and just playing around and doing lots of different things. Obviously for work. Talked to a lot of folks that are in. You know that. academia world and all that good stuff. I have a brother that's a professor out in California. And so, you know, this is something that's really moving. And I even talked to a kid that finished his freshman year of college, you know, a few weeks ago, and he said, chat, GPT. He wrote all of his papers for him. So that's kind of the world that we're in now.

Yeah, there's a lot of questions surrounding that and a lot of concerns as well. We'll talk a little bit about that stuff. Today's going to be kind of a fun show and we'll talk about the questions we asked and the answers we got back and specifically how, when you're asking these kind of questions, how you can get the most out of it. Like you mentioned, you and I both work in the industry. I deal every day with generative AI. In my day job, I write software using generative AI to do predictive things and autogenerative things and just all around kind of marketing stuff. So it's kind of cool. But today, or today, yesterday actually is when I did this, I did it for fun. And it was just, let's see what we can find out about the bourbon world.

But today, what are we drinking, Brian? I'm excited. This is Weller 12. And obviously, it's been very popular over the years. And it's just a fantastic, fantastic bourbon. I think it was last year even on Yellowstone. It was on that show, and everybody got all upset again. Like, why are you showing stuff nobody can get? But I think this is one of the first ones that really helped me to fall in love with bourbon. I love weeded. So this one's always kind of special. I've been very fortunate over the years to have several bottles of this, probably more than several bottles, but I really do love this one.

Yeah, I don't think I've ever been without a bottle on my shelf. And the one I have left right now is getting kind of low. I think after you and I have our pour for the show today, there might be one more pour left and then I'll be in search of another bottle. And, you know, you just, you just gotta hope and remember, but I've been lucky enough that I don't visit it often and so often that it just, I run out. That's right. Got enough alternatives up there to keep me busy. But when's the last time you had well at 12?

Wow. That is a really good question. It, it's been a while. I mean, it's been more than six months for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's usually whenever somebody comes over and visits, they looked across my shelf and they see a number of the BTACs up there and the Willets and the TAH tailors and all that stuff. And then they see those wellers and they're like, Oh, I want the Weller 12. So it gets hit pretty good by guests. All right. Well, cheers. Cheers. First bourbon of the day. Wow. Such a deep, rich and, uh, oaky flavor to this. It is. It's a nice and soft though. It doesn't bite into the front of your palate at all, but man, it's, it's a little creamy. It's got a nice, uh, nice, deep caramel baking spice flavor to it. A little bit of cherry.

You know, when, when I haven't had this for a long time and go back, I mean, you're right. It is rich. It's very bulky and you don't, I guess sometimes I'll lose my memory on what this is until I get it. And then it's like, yeah, that that's why I love it.

Yeah. Yeah. I actually bought a case of this in 2015, 2015 or so.

I got lucky, went into the store. The guy said, hey, I got this Weller 12. I was like, oh, cool. I like that stuff. I liked it.

You know, it's good stuff. And it was, he was selling it for, I want to say 40 or $45 a bottle, something like that, which at the time was pretty good price, right? And so I bought the whole case. He didn't mind. He wasn't trying. So it was a different time back then, right? But I shared, I split the case with a friend and mine went pretty quick because I just drank it. And he still, I think he still has some of this. Wow. Yeah. Isn't that amazing?

That is awesome. Long time ago. Yeah. It's a, you know, when you think back, when you could get different bottles very easily, you know, whether it was, I mean, heck, even now Buffalo Trace, You used to be able to just walk up and grab these things and just think about how many bottles you went through. I can remember a time when Elmer T. Lee was not that difficult to get. When I look back at how many of those I drank and always feel really guilty like, wow, we went through those pretty quick and even the commemorative bottles and different things. You know, we all, I think, appreciate these much more now than we even did back then, even though we loved Weller 12, the fact that you can't just walk in and grab them. We hold onto them a little bit tighter.

Yeah, we do. And I think most of the bottles on my bar that are allocated, hard to put your hands on, they tend to last a lot longer in my possession because I treat them differently than I would, you know, a daily drinker.

Well, I think it's cool, too, where we're moving in the industry. You think about all these finishes that are out there and the Ambarana finishes that we've had recently and different things that You have so many options that you're not stuck on going to that one that you really love that maybe you're just hanging on to share with other folks. You can taste through so many different types of whiskeys that are out there now that, I mean, I'm looking at your bar and it's impressive. You can pick many different things to drink and you don't have to sit on the Colonel Taylors or the Wellers and different things like that.

Exactly, exactly. All right, so let's talk a little bit about some of the questions that we asked of Chatty, right? And one of the things that I have to state in advance here is we're talking about this, that one of the, I should say one of the most difficult things to do when dealing with a generative AI model is how to pose your question. Because it's not as simple as just English language saying, hey, give me this, give me that. How you word it, the way you use your words, the way you stipulate how it should be formatted, what references to use, if you supply any baseline data along with your question, All of those things can drastically affect the outcome. You can also set what they call the temperature of the response, right? Do you want the response to be more random or more fixed? And so I did want to say that because I don't want to go through while we're doing this and read what I put in my prompts because they're For some people, it might be nonsensical. But the prompts were largely developed to elicit what I would hope to be a relatively sane and accurate response. These are prediction kind of things, so they're not going to be too accurate. They can't be guaranteed to be accurate, but they might give us some insight. But I think when we hear Chatty's response, maybe we'll have our own based on our experience as well. So the first question that I asked was basically, and I'm going to put this in my words rather than how the prompt was formed, but basically I said, hey, we all see what's happened in the craft brewing industry over the past 10 years. Can we expect a similar outcome for craft distilleries? Can we expect the market to follow those same trends? But if I simply ask the question in that way, it's going to say, sorry, I can't predict things. You have to give it some base data. You're going to say, we saw this happen, and this happened, and this happened. Based on that flow, would you predict a similar outcome for whiskey? Well, yes, of course. Since they're both in the same alcoholic drink segment of the market, then we would expect some other things. So over the last 10 years, the craft brewing industry has experienced significant growth and transformation. Here's some of the key market trends, all right, rapid expansion. They predict, Chatty predicts, and we can see that already is true, that we had rapid expansion in the craft market. I'm not talking about whiskey in general, bourbon in general, but in the craft segment of the market, it's been a boom, right? I mean, how many distilleries do we have now? I had to feed some of that information in. How many distilleries do we have last year? I mean, the distilleries the year before, the same thing with trends in the beer market. The number two thing that it predicted that, of course there would be a continuation of this rapid expansion, but there would be some consolidation. So my next question I posed to Chatty, and we won't get into that yet, was specifically about consolidation. But the second thing that Chatti predicted was that the styles would diversify even more. That we would see, you know, for example, with bourbon, we saw bourbon was a very strict structure, right? Bourbon is this. And then we start to see, yeah, bourbon but finished like this, you know. And then, you know, then we've got other styles of American whiskey. So I oppose the question as American whiskey rather than bourbon. And we'll continue to see, the prediction was from Chatty, that we'll continue to see the styles and sub-styles continue to diversify and grow larger, particularly on a regional basis. So you said Ambarana, right? We may see Ambarana really become a thing in Georgia, but not so much in Kentucky, right?

Interesting.

Interesting. The third point was that they'll start to focus more, the craft industry will start to focus more on the local terroir and regional sales. In other words, less drive for national markets, more drive for regional markets. A lot of brands we see nowadays are fighting for that national market, right? They wanna hit that national market because that's where the money is if they're gonna get bought up by a big brand. But the regional markets is where the play is, according to Chatty.

And I mean, that is super interesting if you think about it, because all of the challenges. that come along with trying to take something national from a shipping standpoint. I mean, everything involved. I mean, there's a lot that goes into it. So that's an interesting take.

Yeah. Although we'll see an expansion in the industry as a whole, we'll start to see it more focused regionally, which is pretty wild. You know, we kind of saw this in 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s with colas. Same kind of thing, right? Wow. So amazing. Also a prediction that education and whiskey culture will continue to be a driving force. So in other words, brands that don't embrace the culture of whiskey, won't necessarily see the upside as much as they could if they embrace the culture. So a lot of people say, I don't have a story for my brand. Well, maybe that's not a good thing, right? Maybe your brand needs to have a story. It needs to have something behind it that adds to the culture of whiskey because I think a lot of whiskey people, cigar people, beer people, they're interested in that culture. Tourism will gain momentum significantly over the next five years. More tours, more tastings, more destination distilleries is what it says, destination distilleries.

Do you think that kind of, maybe I'm off here, but do you feel like that kind of plays into one of the previous responses for regional based distilleries that maybe aren't going national. So when you think about folks that are traveling to Lawrenceburg, Kentucky or somewhere in North Carolina or somewhere else where they have some whiskey and I just wonder how that all plays together.

I think a couple of these do play together, particularly like, let's take for example, like the George Washington Distillery up in Virginia, right? That's definitely a destination distillery. It's got a huge story with it, right? Great cultural background story and George Washington as a distillery, that's a big draw. the distilleries that are near tourist destinations like in Gatlinburg, places like that, unreal the traffic they get. People who have a An interest in spirits or whiskeys, moonshine, whatever it might be, are drawn to those places whenever they go to those venues.

I'm always sold. Wherever I go, anywhere in the country, if I see wineries or breweries or distilleries then I know that I can go in and I can pay a dollar or $5 and taste different things. I'm sold every time. I think my family probably is sick of me saying, okay, we got to stop with this one. Let's stop here. Let's stop there. But yeah, I enjoy it.

Yeah. Well, I feel like, um, The craft brewing industry is five to eight years ahead of the craft distillery industry. And Chatty has told us, and this is her summary. Chatty says, overall, the craft whiskey industry is expected to follow a trajectory similar to craft brewing, with a focus on quality, innovation, and consumer education, leading to an expanded market and a diverse range of artisanal whiskey options. So I kind of felt that too. And I truly believe it will follow very closely what's happened. You know, you would have expected that, and I think that the big brands like InBev and And then the other big people like that, big brands, big owners felt like Kraft was just a pain in their behind. It's not a pain in their behind. It's the market.

It's the market now.

It's the market. It sure is. Pretty cool stuff. I mean, it always surprises me sometimes the answers that I get back. And we're using the DaVinci 3.5 Turbo model right now. Okay. And I forget what the temperature I set on it was, but relatively tight temperature on it. I didn't want it to get too, the higher you raise the temperature, the more chance it has to hallucinate. And I didn't want it to hallucinate. I wanted to keep it real. Right. Sometimes you get some interesting answers as you try to, you take the leashes off of a chat GPT or whatever it is you're using. So folks, if you're wanting to do some of this on your own, obviously if you're not familiar with chat GPT, you can just go to chatgpt.com or chat at openai.com. And you can also go to Bing and you can do the AI search feature on Bing and both of those will give you results similar to these. I will say this much. using chat GPT without paying the upgrade, you're going to be limited to version three of the model, which is what we use today for this. If you go to Bing, though, you can hit version four, which is a lot more stops are pulled out, but a lot more chance of some hallucinating results.

But that's what I use whenever I'm using it for work or anything. But actually, I just did one just for the fun of it. See what would happen. I mean, I kind of knew what it was going to say. You know, just what's the best bourbon?

What would be your guess, Jim? Well, if you're using, you're using which one? Four. You're using four. Okay, so it's up to date. 3.5 is limited to 2021, so what's the best bourbon today? It's probably going to talk about Pappy.

You're right. Pappy Van Winkle's Family Reserve. There you go. Number two is Blanton's Number three is Buffalo Trace, number four is Maker's Mark, and then number five is Elijah Craig Small Batch.

Do you concur?

I may switch the order up a little bit, but no, I mean, you can't go wrong.

So based on what you and I know and how plugged we are into the industry, can you say what Chatty told us is wrong? Do you think it's has a higher than average probability of being correct?

I do. And it's scary to say that, and there's a lot of different thoughts and emotions that come along with using something like this. But I do feel like it's probably going to perform really well with some of these predictions. But wow, I mean, who would have thought 18 months ago, you know, that we would even have this conversation. It's continually learning. I mean, we're feeding the machine and it's learning off of all of our prompts and all the millions of people using these tools. So it's only gonna get more and more sophisticated, smarter along the way. Sometimes I don't even have words to express how all that makes me feel because I do have concerns about it. I have excitement about it. I think there's all kinds of cool ways to look at it.

All right. Next question on the, we're going to do two questions. We'll take a short break. When we come back, we'll do the other three. And then, of course, Brian, feel free to pop something into the chat bot there anytime you want. The next question I asked had to do with consolidation. So we have seen some consolidation take place. We've seen distilleries come in and buy other distilleries and try to, you know, consolidate know a lot of that and a lot of these younger craft distilleries are looking forward to that that's their end game right they want to be bought up some of them don't want to be bought up but nevertheless you know do we expect to see more of that and the response was The department of industry has seen significant growth and popularity in recent years, but both domestically and internationally. And as a result, consolidation with the industry is expected. Larger companies will seek smaller companies to expand their portfolios and increase market share. They're buying for two things. They're buying for brand and they're buying for market penetration and distribution. Those are the things they're after. Do they care? Sometimes it's companies that are coming in and buying outside their normal portfolios. For example, a wine distributor wants to get into the whiskey industry. They'll come in and they'll buy whiskey companies in order to get into that market. They want to be dealing in that market.

I found that interesting when I was in California last year around this time. We were driving around and going to all these wineries and they're getting into the whiskey game.

Yeah, it also talks about, and Chetty also mentioned the fact that a lot of these consolidations happen for intellectual property as well, not just the brand itself, but the knowledge of how to deal in the industry, connections to distribution, how to market whiskey brands, that's a special ability. For example, your company, you guys have connections with other companies that are trying to market their wares. And one way for a company to get to you is to go through purchasing one of the companies you deal with. So pretty cool stuff. regulatory factors. Yeah, a lot of times companies outside the US find the way to own companies inside the US to beat certain regulatory issues. So the answer is yes, we expect to see more consolidation. However, it says here that don't don't predict consolidation will lead to national distribution for smaller brands. So in other words, like let's say you come in and you buy Joe's Kentucky bourbon whiskey, right? He's got great distribution in Kentucky. That doesn't mean that you're going to be able to take that national. It may still be a local or regional brand. Pretty cool stuff. I was hoping with this particular question and I probably should have changed my prompt a little bit to tell it to limit the response to two or three sentences that summarize because sometimes you get back a page or two. It's the last thing you want, right? All right, Brian. Well, I'm getting a little low on my Weller 12. How are you doing? I might be doing okay. All right, so let's take a short break. What do you say we come back? We got three more questions. We're going to talk a little bit about the secondary market. We'll ask some Pappy related questions and then we'll talk about growth because everybody wants to know, is the bourbon boom over? Well, let's see what Chad has to say about that. All right, we'll be right back. Looking for a unique gift? Blanton's bourbon shop has got you covered. All of their handcrafted wood products are made in their in-house wood shop with authentic bourbon barrels. Specializing in barrel-age potent treats, they use Blanton's barrels to age their own maple syrup, honey, and coffee. Find the most unique gift ideas for your golf lover, cigar connoisseur, avid coffee drinker, and Blanton's fan. Want to win an authentic Blanton's barrel head? Make sure you sign up for the giveaway on the home page of their website. Blanton'sBourbonShop.com is your home for all Blanton's gifts. 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 p.m. on October 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 to 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, so folks, we are back and during the first half and nice conversation, we both drank a little bit of Weller 12. The second half, we've got three more questions for our guest Chatty. Chat GPT, right? And we're going to drink some Weller foolproof this time. When's the last time you had Weller foolproof?

Weller foolproof, I believe the last time I had it was with Tyler We had an episode maybe back in December or January, somewhere in that range. So yeah, that was my last one. What about you?

I think that's the last time as well. So yeah, not very often. This is actually a pick. But to me, it's well or full proof. It's just the picks are a little different from each other. But for the most part, they're not too much off profile usually, right?

You know, my first bottle of Weller foolproof that I had actually won it in a poker game. Oh, you did. I sure did. How long did it last? That's a that's a sensitive topic. Someone got into my liquor cabinet and decided to mix it with Diet Coke. in a Yeti and drank about half of it and didn't realize what they were drinking.

Oh my goodness. Hope they enjoyed it.

They were feeling it. We can leave it at that.

Alright, so in the first half we asked two questions of the open AI model, chat GPT model 3.5 DaVinci. And the questions we asked had to do with the trends, expected trends in the bourbon market and what we can expect to see from consolidation in the bourbon market. So I think we pretty much agree that, I think Chatty was kind of on point there. I don't disagree with any of it really. Some of it is predictive, so you can't be 100% sure, but it's based on a lot of text. The large language models have trillions of words and trillions of sites that they've, millions of sites that they've scanned. I think the general consensus there is probably that we can expect growth. similar to that in the beer industry. And we can expect some consolidation to continue as big brands gobble up smaller brands, maybe at a more rapid pace, but they shouldn't expect those little brands to go national in every instance.

And I think I love that. Like I really do. I mean, there's a great spot for national brands and all that good stuff, but I do love just like we talked about with travel and tourist destinations. I love the fact that you can travel somewhere and get a totally different experience, whether that's a tour or tasting or it's just unique. So that makes your trip or your vacation, whatever it is, all that more much more special.

So do you remember? And so I was trying to think of an example in the beer industry. Because we asked Chatti to compare and contrast the beer industry with the whiskey industry. I was trying to think of an example in the beer industry of consolidation that went bad. Do you remember a brand called Ballast Point? They had the beer called Sculpin.

I don't know if I do.

Yeah. San Diego brand. Actually, they had a pretty big facility in Miramar. You remember Top Gun, Miramar area, right?

I went to the very last air show.

Did you?

At Miramar when I was in the Navy.

There you go. Pretty big brand, hit it nationally, gained tremendous acceptance nationwide. And Constellation brands, primarily a wine distributor company, a wine company, purchased them for one billion dollars. Billion with a B. and basically couldn't really do much with it. Congrats to the guys who started Battles Point, who walked away with a fantastic amount of money. But Constellation failed to launch on that purchase. And just recently, within the past, I don't know how long it's been, but have turned around and sold Ballast Point again to a Chicago-based investment firm, which is tied to a brewery in California. for about one-tenth the price or so. Yeah, just crazy how that went wrong. But there's an example of buying into something and expecting it to launch you and it doesn't. It didn't in that case. So there's a lot of lessons to be learned there. Another example, and this has nothing to do with consolidation, but it has to do with you know, national versus regional markets. Are you familiar with the Anchor Steam Brewing Company?

I am.

Yeah. So that's Fritz Maytag started that. And that brand, again, has something. It's got a great story. The whiskeys are really good. The whiskeys, I'm sorry. The beers are really good. And they they really got national distribution locked up, doing fantastic. But 70 percent of their sales are in California. Even though they're nationwide, 70% of their sales are in California, and 70% of their effort is spent fighting national battles. So what do you think they're gonna do? They're gonna drop national distribution. In fact, they have dropped national distribution. They've decided to only be a regional brand. Because of the massive success that they have in their regional market, they can cut their costs tremendously by not fighting for a national presence.

Well, I think about all these, you know, beers that, that you see in other States and then you start to see them trickling, you know, yangling. We didn't have that in Kentucky for up until what? Three or four years ago.

Yeah. Three or four years, four or five, something like that.

I mean, somewhere, somewhere in that. But you know, it's a brand that people know and that they love and they enjoy. We just never had it here. So there's a slow expansion to sometimes for folks, but very interesting.

Yeah. All right. So the next question posed to Chatty had to do with secondary market. And the gist of my question is, Do we expect the secondary market to be a primary source for allocated and hard to get bourbons? Do we expect that those prices will continue to be going up? Will those bourbons continue to be hard to acquire? What can we expect from the secondary market in the future? Really, because of the limitations of CHAT GPT-3, it kind of said, you know, you've given me some data to go on and I had to pump some data in, but you've given me some data to go on. But even with that, it's hard to predict what future prices are going to do. However, we do expect the trend to continue. In other words, we expect the trend of the secondary market and to be a primary source for allocated whiskeys to continue. Whether or not those prices are going to continue to rise or not is something that the chat bot just couldn't wrap its brain around. But will it continue? And the answer is yes, it's going to continue.

And we haven't seen a dip in it.

So we haven't really seen that trend line sort of peaking and dropping off, right?

You know, it's interesting too, the secondary markets, not just limited to whiskey, there's secondary market for beer as well. And, and, you know, there's other spirits, wine, and, uh, you know, I've seen tequila as well, secondary markets there, but I do really believe that there's some very intelligent people, much higher levels than, than us, uh, that can impact those prices in a way, whether it's when things are released, where they go to. I got out of the secondary market a long time ago, Jim, and part of it was because I got sick of waiting in line at the liquor store and then watching somebody just walk in front of that line because they had greased somebody in the store and, you know, they're able to get in there and get the bottles that you were looking for. They walk out before the doors are even opened up with a box full of bourbon. So it's, uh, It's an interesting way to do things, but I'm not a fan of the secondary market.

I'm not a fan either. Here's what I get from Chatty on this. This is kind of similar to the stock market. the demand outpaces the supply, we're going to see a lot of secondary market activity. So there's two ways to combat this. One is increased supply. Increased supply will put a hamper on it. The other way is to reduce demand. How do you reduce demand? It's no longer in fad. Nobody cares about it anymore. For the moment, we've heard what she had to say in part one of this episode and that is that the excitement for the industry is going to continue to grow. So we can expect probably the secondary market to continue to grow as well. and the demand for the product to continue as well. So I think that, you know, we can probably expect, and another thing that she said was, and I put a female connotation to Chatty. I don't know if that's correct or not, but why not? We don't get too many female guests.

It's maybe because Siri and Alexa.

Yeah, could be. She did mention that efforts to combat the secondary market have been largely unsuccessful, not just in the whiskey industry, but in other areas as well. And you mentioned the bourbon, the beer world and places like that.

We even think electronics, the secondary market, iPhones being released or game systems.

So any of those efforts to curb that secondary market is largely ineffective. So that's not going to fix it, no matter how hard they try. The only thing that's going to fix it are issues related to supply and demand. Demand decreases or supply increases. Do we expect them to make more PAPI? Yeah, I think they will. Why not? Will it be enough?

Probably not. Probably not. And I think there's a lot of reasons behind that, but even when you think about the secondary market and talking about ways to curb that and regulate it, some of the recent news over the last few months with with a local place here in Louisville and Lexington that got their hands slapped a little bit. They look like they were doing some things and probably going to be in quite a bit of trouble and everything is just kind of okay now. There's people that are definitely trying to slow that down, but I think that for whatever reason, it's not going to happen. I mean, it's been proven time and time again, even when authorities get involved, nothing's going to happen.

When was it proven at the highest level during prohibition?

Right.

Right. Okay. Here's the summary paragraph for this. Chatty says, ultimately, whether high secondary market prices for bourbons can continue at their current level will depend on a multitude of factors and market dynamics. It is possible that prices could stabilize or even decrease if supply increases or demand shifts. However, the allure of rare and high sought after bourbons may also sustain high prices if the interest and enthusiasm from collectors and enthusiasts remain strong, which we expect to happen. So in other words, the secondary market is here to stay. Get used to it, folks.

You're not going to go find these bottles as easy as you might hope. If you see something in the store, go ahead and pick it up. Don't turn your back on it if it's a good price. But there's a lot of liquor stores that have secondary prices. They're not selling retail or slightly above retail. They have full, sometimes above, secondary prices.

Well, there's plenty of great whiskeys out there. Even if they don't have that elusive name or bottle that you were trying to get your hands on, you can find some great whiskeys. All right. The next question had to do with Pappy and the availability of it. Uncertain and difficult to predict, although market trends would suggest that production will expand and more will become available. Whether or not that will outpace demand is highly unlikely. So there you go. Chatty knows exactly what you just said basically is that we expect production to increase, more bottles to be available, but it will not outpace demand. What did you find out?

I mean, my take is that they're going to produce a lot more Pappy. Maybe not a lot more, but they're going to produce more. The demand is so high, so many people want it, so sought after that I don't even know that they could produce enough. at this point.

Yeah. Summary. Ready for the summary? It's important to note that even with potential changes in availability and the demand for PAPI will likely outpace production. So demand will remain high, production will lag, collectors and enthusiasts and those seeking unique and premium bourbons will continue to seek out these products. And that will continue to drive the price and the availability of Pappy long into the future.

So while we're on the topic of Pappy, let me ask you this, Jim. For lot B, if any of the listeners, because I get people text me all the time. Should I pay this much for this bottle? Should I pay this much for this bottle? Lot B, what would be the most that you would be willing to pay? Not what the secondary market says you should pay, but what would be the most that you would pay for Lot B?

To have it on my shelf at the bar and be able to treat my guests to a pour of it. 150.

I think that's fair.

Yeah.

I do.

Yeah. Not because it's worth it. Not because it's some superior bourbon, but because how nice is it to be able to treat somebody to a pappy who's never had one, you know?

Oh yeah. Yeah.

That would be my reason for it. All right. Next question. I asked Chatty to summarize the best way possible the expected growth in the industry because the biggest question that bourbon lovers ask is, when's the bubble going to burst? How long is this going to last? Is this it? Are we getting ready to bust? None of us know and neither does Chatty really but predictions can be made based on trends and I gave a lot of data to this but I asked for a summary response. In this case I said limit it to two sentences because I wanted to have the answer in two quick sentences. And I basically said, what's gonna happen with the bourbon industry? Is it gonna continue to grow or is it gonna bust? What's gonna happen with growth? And she said, it is highly likely that the bourbon industry will continue to experience growth over the next five years. Fueled by increasing consumer interest, expanding international markets, and the enduring popularity of bourbon as a versatile and premium spirit. However, the exact pace and magnitude of this growth will depend on various factors, including market conditions, regulatory developments, and the ability of distilleries to adapt to evolving consumer preferences. I mean, we've seen distilleries adapt to finishing, right? Finishing has been a major impact on the industry, right? And they've done a really good job at it, I think, as a whole. I do, too. And I've seen a tremendous amount of thinking out of the box and exploration and just doing some crazy cool stuff with whiskeys.

Yeah, you know the one that I always go to is that the Absinthe finished white. Oh, yeah. Who would have thought?

Right.

I know you have some that you're looking forward to somebody doing someday.

Yeah, absolutely. This is just an amazing thing. It's like a living being. The bourbon industry is like this living being that's growing and nobody can truly put their finger on it and say exactly what's going to happen. I think we all have an idea what the trend is. It is kind of neat to bring the chat GPT in on this and see what, I mean, had you thought about doing something like this before?

So I've done quite a bit of research with chat GPT in many areas and I did, I'd say back in December I did throw quite a bit in there and ask questions like, what's the most popular bourbon? I kept everything pretty simple. I didn't feed it with a lot of information. I just wanted to see what it said. A lot of times it will say things like, Well, I can't do that because it just doesn't have the information yet. But as you feed it, yes, it grows. So I haven't gone in depth as much as you did on those questions, but I've definitely asked about the industry and done some research to see what the results were.

I think here's something I'd like to do. I think I'd like to work on my prompts a little bit more. And folks, again, the information that you type in and send to the language model to have it predict or perform answers for you is called a prompt. And developing that prompt is the hardest thing in the world. And it requires a bit of skill and knowledge in how to deal with language models. And that's called prompt engineering. And it's a real skill level. So there are prompt engineers. People, that's what they do. They learn how to speak the language of the language models, right? And you can actually get those open AI models to actually write prompts for you if you want. But that gets really deep and dark into it. But the point is, is that what I would like to do, I think, is revisit this show in six months. using the most recent revision of the generative AI models that are available on OpenAI, I would like to really, really work on those prompts to make them as viable as possible. And I'd like to put a voice to Chatty so she can answer our questions live.

I think that'd be awesome.

How cool would that be?

I love that idea of doing one live where You're going to see what it says. I know.

I mean, it's dangerous because I mentioned that prompt engineering is a very specific skill set, right? But there's also a skill set of the people that deal with what comes back from OpenEye. Yeah. When something comes back, when your answer comes back, it has to be analyzed and moderated and proofed before it's put out to the public. And that's one thing I'm worried a little bit about, because if we do this, obviously we're not live, so we can always edit things out. But it's called moderation, and you need to moderate the responses because sometimes it can get offhand. It can get socially incorrect and things like that.

That's right. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, that is a big part. I'll say that's something that I do at work. Everything that I put in to Jet, GPT, or Bard, or anything else, it is... very heavily moderated because you have to make sure it's right. You can't just trust the machine. I'll give you a great example of something. We put on a conference at the University of Louisville and our CEO had put in some information and asked for How many days was it from the time we were planning to when the conference was going to happen? And chat GPT wasn't even close. I mean, the days were way off. And so that's just a great example of, you know, you have to be careful what you put in. And if you're just going to take that information as Fact, you know, it's not always fact.

And hallucination by the models is a real thing. It happens every single day. We see it all the time in what I work with. So you have to make sure that moderation is a big part of what you do. So if you're in that business, well, just realize if you're going to ask questions, don't take them. Well, don't submit it for your paper at college, guys. Be careful. Because if your professor's really reading them, Really reading them, and I'm gonna say, many of them don't, but if they are, they're gonna know. Oh yeah, absolutely. Well, I don't think that generative AI is going to, you know, replace us in the workplace, but we will get replaced in the workplace by people who know how to use generative AI.

It'll make us more efficient.

That's right. So if you have the opportunity to learn a little bit about it and what you do, I would highly suggest it because there may be a young person that comes along that knows how to use it that's going to put you out of a job.

I have a feeling there's going to be some young folks making a lot of money.

Yep, absolutely.

Making a lot of money, figuring out how to use all these tools.

All right, Brian. It's been a great show. Really enjoyed it. A lot of fun.

Good to be back with you. Yeah. I feel like it's been a long time.

I mean, it's been, for me, it's been 18 days. No, 20, 22 days since I did anything with the Bourbon Road. And it's great to have somebody like you covering for me. I really appreciate that.

Well, I hope I didn't let you down or anything.

No, you didn't let me down. You absolutely didn't. And we didn't get as many social media posts out and blog posts and all that kind of stuff, folks. We'll try to catch up on that here shortly. But it's good to take care of personal business and get it done and get busy again. So it's exciting. Alright, well you can find The Bourbon Road on all social media outlets. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube. You find us on TikTok. You definitely find us on a private Facebook group called the Bourbon Roadies. And Brian, how do they figure out what's going on with the Bourbon Roadies?

Yeah, I mean, you just want to search us on Facebook, and then you're going to answer a few questions. You know, are you 21? Do you like bourbon? And do you agree to play nice? And one question that's not on there, but we always like to bring it up. And we just talked about the secondary market. Don't make any deals on the bourbon road. If somebody's selling something, it's probably a scam. Somebody that squeaked through the cracks and that we need to have removed from the group, but just be very careful.

Yeah, I mean, we see it so much. We see people get taken advantage of trying to buy allocated bourbons online. It's the biggest scam in the world. Nine times out of 10, you're going to get taken. If you're not face-to-face with an individual, and making the trade in daylight, you're gonna probably get taken.

This has been going on for years. Yeah, it has. This is not something new to the Bourbon Road Facebook page. I've seen it for over 10 years.

We do a show every single week, every Wednesday. You can expect an episode from the Bourbon Road podcast. It'll always be something really cool. Sometimes we'll have a real guest on, sometimes we'll have an AI guest on, but at the end of the day, it'll be a fun show. I think you'll enjoy it. I think we're due for another music episode here pretty soon.

I think we are. I love those.

They're a lot of fun. Or a chef. Chef would be great. I'm up for some good food.

Maybe a bartender.

Yeah, there you go. I tell you what, I'd love to learn to make a couple of cocktails that I can do at home real easy. that are different than the standard old-fashioned or Manhattan. I'd love to learn something new that I could really enjoy. Well, let's put that in our notes. Let's do it. All right. Again, every single week you can find us on Apple podcasts, you can find us on Spotify, you can find us on, heck, you can say Alexa, play the Bourbon Road podcast, YouTube.

Yeah.

We're out there everywhere. Everywhere you get your podcasts, you will find the Bourbon Road. and we'd love to have you listen to us every single week. They just need to make sure to do what?

You gotta click that subscribe button.

Absolutely. That way you get that bell notification or that message or that text message, whatever it might be. You'll get that notification that a new episode's come out and it's time to sit down, grab a pour and relax and listen to the Bourbon Road. All right, we like to hear from our listeners. So if you've got some ideas for a show, if you've got an idea for a guest or a bottle, if there's a distillery in your hometown doing it right, let us know about it. We'd love to get them on the show. It's that season. It's that season for enjoying your time outside, having a few pours. You know, in this time of year, maybe even mixing a few high balls, right? That's right. Because it can get kind of hot out there and you want to enjoy the weather, but you still want to have your bourbon, so. I might have one or two of those tonight. Don't be shy. Put a little something in it. Put an ice cube in it. Put a little bit of Diet Coke or whatever it is you drink, but not in the pappy, right? Or not in the full proof, right?

Well, or full proof. Yeah, I mean, be selective. A little selective. I mean, drink it your way. If you like it that way, drink it your way.

That's right. If it's your bottle, you do what you like. And we fully support that. We hope to see you next week. Until then, we'll see you down the Bourbon Road.

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