355. Dueling Grounds Distillery

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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Sure. In addition to the two bourbons that we sell, which is our small batch bottling bond and our single barrel cast strength, we also sell our white dog, which we call Kentucky Clear. We bottle that at 91 proof. Sweet corn flavor almost has like a tequila like finish to it. So we actually use it for margaritas here We're not gonna have some of that during the show.

Oh my goodness.

That sounds good We use that clear with a little bit of local apple cider apple juice little brown sugar and cinnamon. We make a nice little apple pie We also have a tin botanical gin made by our master distiller, Steve Whitledge, perfect for gin and tonics. We take that 10 botanical gin and we also barrel age it in an old bourbon barrel for about a year and a half, which kind of mutes the juniper a little bit, adds a little bit of like a honey vanilla flavor. We almost advertise it as just like a sipping gin, just like it chilled straight up in a martini. Then we also have, for the other side of people that don't like spirit forward liquors, we've got some fruit liqueurs. Vodka based, raspberry, blueberry, strawberry, and peach. Two easy things we tell people to do with those are to add a little bit to your tea or lemonade. Oh yeah. Perfect for summertime.

In the south, down here in the south, we like that tea and lemonade, both of them. Yeah, absolutely. Raspberry liqueur and it's going to be really good. Absolutely. Well, we are going to drink bourbons today. I appreciate hearing about the other things you have to offer. I'll often say on the show that gin is my other bourbon because I'm a big gin fan. In fact, my wife and I both, and Melody's here with us today, my wife and I both like to have our gin. I like to sip on it straight or pick a cocktail out of it, either one.

It's really good. And I tell you what, I did not like gin or I didn't think I did until Steve had that recipe of his. And now I have a gin cocktail daily. There you go. There you go.

All right. Well, we like to get straight to the whiskey. And today, the first thing that we have in our glass, I'll let you introduce it.

Yeah, so this is our four-year-old small batch bottle and bond. And if you know by definition, small batch just means a blend of more than one barrel. Doesn't necessarily mean it has to be small. But ours is.

Ours is.

Ours is no more than four barrels. Whereas somebody like Jim Beam or some of the bigger guys could be over a thousand barrels. So I feel like ours is very true to being a very small batch. We add water to that blend of barrels to get it right at that 100 proof point so that it's also our bottling bond. The stuff we're drinking today was actually made by me and Mark and Steve back in 2019.

When we were talking before the show, you mentioned that you were heavily involved in the production of whiskey, distilling it, up until about 2019 here. Correct. And so this would be whiskey that you made. Yeah. So I'm excited to try it. I'm sitting here right with the chef in the house.

Yeah, exactly.

All right. Well, cheers. Cheers. It's a sweet but also spicy whiskey. When I first nosed it, I kind of got a little bit of crackerjack corn on it. the spice really starts to come through.

So what's the mash bill on this? So the mash bill on the bottle and bond and the single barrel is 66 corn, 22 soft red winter wheat, and 12 malted barley, which is a little high compared to some other people's with the malted barley. So, and I don't know, but for me, I feel like that malted barley gives it kind of a nutty flavor for me.

little nutty, a little bit, a little fruit note there, kind of, but you know, we're getting that spice on this, right?

And that's got to all come from the barrel, right? Cause this is definitely not coming from the wheat. Correct. And a lot of people question whether or not we have rye in this because of that spice that's in there, but I definitely think most of that is coming from that barrel.

Yeah, it's kind of like a spiced candy a little bit. It's not sweet enough really in my mind to be called a candy. It's a little softer up front a little bit. I've got a little bit of bite on the back end, but it is rich and there's a lot of barrel influence on it. So that's pretty good. There we go. I'm passing my glass along to my wife here.

She wants to try it.

But I'm impressed. You know, this is, I haven't tried your small batch yet. So at a hundred proof, a bottle and bond whiskey is always something good to have on the table. But I've only had your castring stuff in the past. So this is, this is really, I think, proofed at a very good level for the flavor I'm getting from it.

Yeah, absolutely. And that, this bottle and bond was also on Fred Minnick's top 100 whiskies last year.

As it should be because it's a really good whiskey and it's a you know it's from this it's from what the what do they call this part of the bourbon trail.

The Western region the Western region so anything on the.

I guess west side of I-65?

Pretty much, you know, there's one, it's on the west side, which was Boundary Oak. So yeah, it's Boundary Oak, Dooling Grounds Distillery, the Bard Distillery, Casey Jones, and Embi Rolland. We're all on that western region of the craft tour.

What about Owensboro people?

What are they? So they're Green River, which you're asking about. So Green River is on the Bourbon Trail. So there's a separation between the Craft Tour and the Bourbon Trail. So they're big enough to be on the official Bourbon Trail instead of the Craft Tour. And the distinction between that is really just volume, how much you're producing. Yeah.

They're in Western Kentucky, but they're on the Bourbon Trail. That's exactly right. Well, I'm really enjoying this. As I revisit it though, it presents a little more sweetness. I get, but that spice just never leaves. The finish on this is a good medium to long probably. Before we get into the history of Dwelling Grounds Distillery and your history and the owner's history and how this came about, let me just preempt that a little bit by asking why did you choose for your flagship bourbon to be a bottle and bond?

You know, I think just to kind of show that we never sourced anything. It was kind of like a benchmark for us to be able to get to that bottle and bond part. And, you know, we tried this at different proof levels before we decided on the 100 proof. And I think Mark himself said that he would never bottle any bourbon below 100. Well, there you go. It's good to have scruples, I guess. And for me now, drinking anything under 100 is watered down to me.

Drinking bourbon on a regular basis will do that to anybody, right? I mean, the more you drink, the higher you need that proof. But, you know, personally, my daily drinkers are all going to be right around 100 proof or they're going to be bottling bonds because I like that level too, just like you do.

Will I refuse a 90 proof whiskey? No.

No. Of course not. Not at all. Would I prefer the cast drink? Yeah, but not every day.

Exactly. Not every day. Now, the cast drinks are kind of like a nice treat. It's not like your daily that you want to have every day. And then this 100 proof is a good proof for making cocktails too. And this is what we use for all of the bourbon cocktails that we have in houses, our model and bond.

But I would say that, and you, I would say that the spiciness of this and also how well rounded it is, is gonna play well in the cocktail. It's gonna poke through just a little bit. You're not gonna hide it with simple syrup and a few shakes of bitters. It's gonna be punching through. So, Dooling Grahams Distillery, it started when?

So as far as I know, the idea for it started around 2010, 2011. Mark is still in the music business, in the management capacity, and he was looking for a business to start here in Franklin. He had been living here for a while, had a little place in Nashville that he would commute back and forth to, but he really wanted to stay grounded and stay here in Franklin and start something that was Good for the community, place for his friends to come hang out, a way to increase tourism for Simpson County. So his original idea was actually a brewery. He had home brewed a little bit with a friend of his, and actually Steve, our master distiller, was also in that brewing club as well. So he started visiting some small distilleries and was like, you know what? This is not bigger footprint than having a brewery. You're making a beer first and then you're distilling that beer. He's like, if I'm in Kentucky, why not make bourbon? So that started happening in 2013. I think he moved into this building. At that time, he was working on a little 30 gallon hillbilly still, trying to perfect his recipe. I think he even had his boat stored in here at one point, you know, there was not much at all.

I think we'd be surprised how many of those hillbilly stills are out there birthing distilleries. Yeah, yeah.

So he moved in here, got his license in 2014, still trying to perfect that recipe, getting some input from other distilleries and some consultations from other master distillers and owners of those smaller distilleries. He filled his first barrel in 2015 and that was on that hillbilly still. with working in the music business and trying to do that at the same time. It took him six months just to fill that one 25 gallon barrel. He filled one more that year. And then 2016, I think he filled four more 25 gallon barrels. So now we're up to six 25 gallon barrels. That was the end of the 25 gallons. After that, he moved up to a bigger still and started going to the traditional 53 gallon barrels. We'll go now to 2016 and September. That's when he finally opened to the public. Now, a cool little story about how I started here. My wife actually started here first. My wife works at home part time and she does a lot of the graphic design and some of the social media stuff. So her and her mother were actually on their way to the gym one day. They had some signs out front that said moonshine, apple pie tastings, come open, stuff like that. So they skipped the gym, came to the distillery and started sampling some of the stuff that Mark had. So at that point there was no whiskey, of course. It was just the clear and the apple pie. They start having a conversation. She just kind of flat out asked, do you need any design help? He was like, sure. We've got this cocktail idea that I've got that we do on Sundays. We've got a different menu that we do every weekend. She was like, how about I do a free menu for you and see if you like it. And then if you want to, we can move forward. She got the job and started making menus for him. And then about six months later, we're about April, he was super busy with his management company, needed someone to come in, kind of manage the place, especially kind of like the front of the house. I was in the restaurant business for most of my life. So I was used to doing all that kind of stuff. Also needed someone to help with production. So. I was a home brewer as well. I went to school at TSU in Nashville, which is an HBCU in the agriculture program. Did projects on hops and grains for alcohol production because I wanted to be in that business. I actually wanted to grow my own hops and have a brewery and all that stuff. But once I got finished my project, I saw how expensive in time, how much time and labor that was going to take. So I was like, I'll just find somebody else to work for. So We had a meeting at Brickyard, the local nice restaurant in town. And, you know, we just kind of hit it off right at the beginning. And I started working in April of 2017 and cooking mash, cooking mash, stripping it off, stripping, bottling, hand cutting 50 pounds of strawberries for the strawberry liqueur. Oh, wow. We, you know, it was a lot of, We had one steel and that was it. We didn't have a mash ton, so we did everything in that steel. We would cook, then we would strip it, then we'd cook another one, strip that, cook another, strip that, and then we'd have those strips and we'd put those back in for the final spirit run to get that final product.

So you got pretty good at it?

Yeah, I got pretty good at it. I had done some fractional distillation in some of my organic chemistry classes with my major and stuff. So it was not new information. It was just on a different scale. So it was kind of easy to jump in and learn the process. And he sat down with me and taught me how to make the cuts. We would take little tiny samples, like every minute. And he would be like, you can see how it's slowly starting to change. And then this right here, this is where I'm going to cut. That was where I'm going to make my final cut. By taste, by gravity, by? Mostly by taste, aroma, smell. Yeah. And also temperature. Cause once you get past a certain temperature on the steel, you're going to get some different alcohols. The gauge will show you, right? Yeah. I was happy to be able to learn all that stuff.

Well, that's good. I mean, there's two things about cuts, you know, flavor and cost, and there's a balance between the two, right? You're always leaning towards flavor, I think. I've heard this. We've had 354 or 5 podcasts over the years, and I've heard this story from multiple people. You always lean towards flavor, but you never forget about cost. Yeah. That's true. You want to make sure that you're getting the most value out of the work you're putting in and the materials you're putting in, but at the same token, you don't want to sacrifice flavor. It's always interesting. At some point, you decided or the business grew to a point where you could work on the front of the house more.

Yeah, so we'll go to about middle of 2018. Mark comes to me and asks if I would rather keep doing production and working in the back or if I would like to take over and manage the front of the house pretty much and the POS system and all that stuff. And you said, where's the AC? I was more comfortable with the management part because I didn't have the experience to come up with new ideas for distillation. I knew how to follow the process and all that stuff. So he had been talking with Steve Whitledge, who at that time was employed by Corsair. He used to make the gin for Corsair. They were moving all of their operations from Bowling Green to Nashville. They were split between the two cities, but they were moving all of it to Nashville. Steve had just had a child, bought a house, and he was like, I'm not going to Nashville. I'm not going to do that commute. So we were able to hire him here as our head distiller. And that was pretty much December of 2018 when Steve came on.

Well, this is really good. I mean, you know, Everybody is making a, let's call it a top shelf weeded bourbon in Kentucky. There are some that do and we're very familiar with them. But typically more often what you find are rye bourbons. Rye bourbons tend to reach maturity a little bit faster than the weeded bourbons do. A four-year-old is certainly achievable, but a two-year-old weeded bourbon can be a little rough, right? How were your two-year-olds, by the way?

It was good. Yeah. You could see the future in it. We could see the future. But it's still a little hot, a little corn heavy, a little too much bite on it. But it did win an award in the Heartland Spirits Competition for best of Kentucky for that two year and under. Fantastic.

Yeah, I was absolutely surprised. So I came here. with my son-in-law and he and I visited one day and we came in and just enjoyed visiting one day and I picked up that bottle of Castorine from you. And I just thought, you know, here's another distillery, I'm gonna get a bottle, we're gonna go back, we're gonna taste it, we're gonna see what it's all about. And I called my co-host up and I said, we've got to do a show on this whiskey. It's like really super good. And it's from this really small distillery. Super small. Super small distillery, but it is equal to some much more prolific weeded bourbons in the country. He tasted it and he agreed completely. So we did do a show on it. I think we reached out a couple of times to try and get down here. It's just, it's a two hour drive for us. It just, we didn't quite work it up, but finally we have Made it down here. You're here. And we really appreciate you taking time to sit down with us. Absolutely. All right. Well, we're going to continue sipping on your bottom and bond bourbon, and we're going to take a short break. When we come back, we'll have something else in the glass. Sure. 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. They'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, listen, as we were back, we had a nice little break there. We chit-chatted for a while in the air conditioning here.

Drank some more bourbon.

Drank some more bourbon. Finished off that four-year bottle and bond. That was really nice, really nice. But we're stepping up our game here just a little bit. Step it up. What do we have in our glass?

So we're drinking our single barrel Cast Strength, which is handpicked by the guys that work here. It's usually me, Steve, our master distiller, Robbie, the distiller's assistant, and Mark, if he's here. So we'll kind of blind taste a few barrels. We'll write down the top two that we like, the ones that get the most votes. We'll kind of grade them and the best one will become our single barrel.

Awesome.

Like I said, this is also cast strength, so we don't want to add water to these. So these are going to be different from barrel to barrel. We're looking at anywhere from 115 to 125. I think it's as high as we've gone.

And these are 53 gallon barrels now. 53 gallons. 25 gallons were just that first couple of years.

Yeah. And I'll tell you a little bit more about what we did with those 25 gallon barrels here in a second. So this single barrel that we're drinking today is barrel 126 and it is coming out at 117.6 proof. All right. Yeah.

All right. So I'm ready for some castering. You know, I've only tried one of your single barrels and it was like I mentioned earlier in the show was was phenomenal. So I'm interested to see if this one can measure up. The nose on this is, you would never, ever, ever guess it's 117 proof. No way. Not even close. You sip it and you don't either. The nose is really kind of light, soft, not a lot of spice. Caramel, vanilla, a little bit of like, light baking spices, but hardly just, I'm gonna taste it. Cheers. Cheers.

Man, it's just smooth.

Smooth is a bad word, right?

Well, it's hard to drink slow, really. Oh my goodness. You could really get yourself in trouble with this stuff. Dangerous, yeah. It doesn't drink anything like it's 117.6.

So I'm going to say this right off the bat. What I thought maybe was like a unicorn barrel that I might have got a bottle from, that's not the case. This is really good as well. I think they're different. I think the other one's a little spicier than this, okay? But this is kind of just floats across your palate. It goes straight from the front, nice and soft, middle of your palate. tack you at all, get on the back of the pot, you start to get a little bit of that spice, starts to drip down the sides of your tongue a little bit.

Yeah, I think it has less spice than the 100 Proof. And I don't know if that, people ask me that question all the time, why is this 100 Proof feel spicier than the Cast Strength? And sometimes when you add water to something, it's gonna bring out that spice in it. So I think that spice is a little more muted in this Cast Strength, because we haven't added any water to it.

It has some spice, but it's like a real lightly spiced candy. I almost want to say like a root beer, but it's not root beer. Have people told you root beer before?

No, but. It's something like that. I almost. Sassafras or something. Right, almost like a Angostura bitter kind of flavor, but not bitter. Yeah. That kind of spice.

Yeah, it kind of reminds you a little bit of some of the notes you might get off of an old fashioned.

Yeah. But the sweetness isn't there from it, but boy, it's really nice.

I could sit and drink. This is a porch whiskey for sure. I guess you've got a couple of porches here. You've got a front porch and a back porch. I'm sure people are drinking this all the time on your front and back porch.

All the time. Usually on that shaded patio out there, which is pet friendly. Yeah. We let people bring their dogs.

So I know there's a tremendous story. We talked about the story of the distillery and why it was started and how it was founded and kind of your history here. But one of the things we didn't talk about is Why do you call it Dueling Ground? Sure.

So about four or five miles from here sits an old stagecoach inn called the Sanford Duncan Inn. We actually opened that up during the summer for tours on Thursday, Friday, Saturday from 10 to 4. People can go out there, they can tour the inside of the inn. There's also a family graveyard where the whole Sanford Duncan family is buried out there. They actually just restored that recently. It looks really nice. So that inn sits adjacent to an old farm that was known by the name Lincoln Pinch Farm. So that's where the name of the bourbon comes from.

Your bourbon is Lincoln Pinch Bourbon. Correct. Comes from the name of that farm.

Correct. The Dooling Grounds was located on that farm. It was home to over 40 documented duels. The majority of those duels were between lawyers and politicians, mostly out of Nashville. As it was in that time, right? Yeah. Now, it's not like we see in the movies. They weren't trying to kill each other. It wasn't take 10 steps, turn and shoot. This was to disarm or injure. you weren't trying to kill the other person. They took solid spots. There was a countdown by an officiant, three, two, one, and then that's when you fired. The most famous duel that was there was in 1826, and that was between Sam Houston and William White. And it is the Sam Houston that we know from Texas history. At this time, he was a state representative in Tennessee. He got challenged to a duel because he was trash-talking the postmaster general appointee, mainly because it was a political enemy of his friend, Andrew Jackson. The postmaster wanted to send a professional duelist. I guess that was a thing back then. But Houston refused, mainly because the man wasn't from Tennessee. So instead, the postmaster sent his friend William White. They chose to have it up here at the Dueling Grounds because of its proximity to Nashville, where he was a representative. Already kind of a famous place for hosting duels. And the fact that dueling was illegal in most places. However, there was a plot of land between the states of Tennessee and Kentucky that was a contested area between the two states. Neither state really had jurisdiction there, so it was kind of a no man's land. So people could come into that area and fight their duels without fear of prosecution. Sanford Duncan was actually the officiant for most of those duels. The pistols that were used for dueling were kept at the inn. They were identical pistols so that no one was bringing in their own. They had a fair fight, pretty much.

And those are the pistols that are on your logo?

Yes. Which everybody loves. It's good branding, right? Yeah, it's great branding. Guns and bourbon. The better it goes together, you know? So, Houston actually came and stayed at that inn for a couple weeks before the duel so he could practice. He even fashioned his own bullets while he was there. The inn also had a tavern, so if anybody needed a little liquid courage before they go out. They could get one there at the bar. Even Andrew Jackson spent the night there before he fought a duel on the Red River. So the area where the dueling grounds was, this contested area right at the border is kind of in like a little dip off the state line. So the state line's fairly straight between Tennessee and Kentucky, but right here in Simpson County, it dips down a few miles. So, in that dip currently is Kentucky Downs and the Met, which is a gaming center and horse track, and that's where the dueling grounds used to be. So, if you imagine a straight line over that little dip, that little triangular area was that contested area between the bulls.

At that time, obviously there were no vehicles other than horses, so if they wanted to get to Kentucky by the most expedient means, they'd go to the place where the border dips down a little bit.

Yes, so the road that goes through there is now currently 31W, which goes all the way from, I can't remember the southernmost point, but You can get to Nashville all the way to Louisville from that road. And that is where the stagecoach inn was set, was along that road. So lots of travelers would stay there. Andrew Jackson, as I said, spent the night there. There was a famous entertainer, I can't remember her name right now, that did a show there. And the horse track that is now Kentucky Downs used to be called Dueling Grounds Racecourse. they changed the name to Kentucky Downs in the late 1990s. So when Mark was coming up with the concept for this place back in like 2013, he just felt like that was a perfect name to revive, to use for the distillery, which also gives us a connection and lets us kind of showcase some of the small town history that we've got here in Simpson County. He always wanted it to have a good connection with Franklin and Simpson County.

That's fantastic. I mean, it's a great story and it does tie to the local area here. So Lincoln Pinch was the farm and Dueling Grounds was sort of the place where Tennessee legislators came to settle their disputes. Settle their disputes. And my understanding is even today when you pass the bar and you take your oath, that one of the things that says in there is that you cannot Duel is like you promise not to duel, right?

Yeah. So anybody in the state of Kentucky that is elected or is a public servant either has to get up in front of a group of people, which usually gets a laugh or sign a piece of paper that says that I, being a citizen of the state, have never fought a duel in or out of the state, sent or accepted a challenge for a duel or acted as a second. So they still have to say that to this day.

There's a lot of those old laws like that that sort of stick around, and sometimes I think they leave them there just for fun.

Yeah, and I think that's one of the reasons they do. It gets a laugh when some governor or something is sworn in.

I think, Melody, you know a few lawyers. Maybe we ask them if they got a laugh out of it. That's pretty cool.

But yeah, every once in a while I'll have someone here that's just like a firefighter or something and they're like, yeah, we have to say that when we swear in for... Oh, so it's firefighters too. So it's anybody who's a state sworn in state employee. Got it.

But I guess you're a notary. I guess notaries don't have to, maybe. They do. They do. Yeah, public notaries. Well, that's really an amazing story. And I can remember the last time we came down here and you had the story up on the wall. And today you have a TV that kind of goes through a slide presentation out in the lobby, out in your tasting room.

that sort of tells that story.

And so what happened to William White?

He got shot in the groin.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Which is not fatal.

That's not fatal. But not fun either. Don't know if he wanted it to be fatal or not. He probably was like, why didn't you just kill me? So yeah, as he got shot in the groin, he screamed out, you've killed me. Sam Houston said, I'm sorry, it was forced upon me. and William White said, I forgive you. And they were actually friends after this happened. Houston actually sent money to make sure that he was taken well care of with his doc.

I'd always heard that, I mean, duels were very commonplace in both state legislatures as well as in Washington as well. That there were a lot of duels that took place between lawyers yeah and it just blows my mind because of course there's none of that going on today right not that we know of that we know yeah i mean you might like shake your fist at somebody or something right but nobody's pulling out a gun well there are people pulling out guns but nobody's doing it in the gentlemanly way right that's that's so amazing so let's talk a little bit about what A guest to Doling Grounds Distillery can expect when they come here.

Sure. We've got many options for people when they come in. I would say more than half of the people that come through are wanting to get a tour, whether it be the first time they've ever been to a bourbon distillery or if they're trying to get their stamps on their passport. So, we offer tours Monday through Saturday. They run at the top of each hour. The first one's at 11, last one's at 4 if people don't want to do the tour, which we don't require people to do that if they're getting the stamps. We're aware of something called tour fatigue. So, you're doing the tour for two weeks straight. 15 tours already, we're not gonna force you to take another tour. But we'd love for you to try some of our stuff. You can try flights of just our bourbon, or you can try some of the other spirits that we have. We also offer multiple ways to try all of those in different cocktails. For those people that don't like liquor, we also serve country boy brewing beers, which they're based out of Georgetown and Lexington, Kentucky. We also offer some wine for people, And then I think the kicker now that we just started last year is we opened a little pizza kitchen.

Now, did you remodel the lobby to support that? Because I remember a smaller tasting room before with a door leading back here.

You were correct. So there used to be a wall as you came in on your right. We took that wall out, extended the tasting room, added that little pizza kitchen there, and then there's a different door that takes you back into the bottom area.

So you can get pizza. beer, wine, cocktails, straight bourbon. You also have a couple of outside patios out front and out back that are kind of comfortable. Also what we noticed is you entertain campers, overnight camping here. We do.

For people who are part of Harvest Hosts. Correct. So we are a host for Harvest Hosts. which most of those places don't have hookups. So a lot of it is you have to be self-sustainable. You can run a generator if you want, doesn't matter. But we have two spots where we let RVers stay overnight. There's no cost for them to stay there. I think the Harvest Host program asked them to come in and patronize and spend them 20, $30 or something like that. But for the most part, we're getting people that like bourbon, wanna buy bourbon, and they're spending a hundred dollars or more. Probably eating pizza too. Eating pizza.

Yeah.

Having beers. Yeah. And the Harvestos, they live right outside, so. Yeah. They can have a drink or two.

No, you're open till about 6 p.m. in the evening.

We're only open till 6. We did attempt to run some after hours until 9, and it just didn't get a lot of traction. Yeah. Most of our local business happens on Sundays. And Sunday is when we have our little weekly event called The Cocktail. Right now we have Zach Smith is our mixologist. And he comes up with four different specialty cocktails using our products every week. He also has a mocktail. We do a different mocktail for people that can't drink alcohol or just want to hang out with people that are and can't. We also serve pizza on that day. And the funny thing is, is Zach is actually a lawyer. But he has a very huge love for bourbon and everything associated with it and is a bourbon steward. And so he loves, I think it's probably the highlight of his week is coming in there on Sunday and making cocktails for people.

Well, that's awesome. So you are at exit six off of I-65, Southern Kentucky, just a stone's throw as we've talked about from Tennessee. And if someone is traveling, north-south either direction on I-65 going from Nashville to Louisville or back and forth or they're in Bowling Green or any number of places nearby. Absolutely.

So we are the closest Kentucky bourbon distillery to Nashville. Mammoth Cave and the Corvette Museum. And those are huge tourist spots every year. So we get a lot of people that are like, I'm just visiting Nashville. I saw that I'm only like 45 minutes away from Kentucky. I've never been to Kentucky. I've never had bourbon. You guys are the first ones there. And we're right off the interstate. It's less than five minutes to get here from the interstate. And we're actually accessible from two different exits, exit two and exit six.

Exit two and exit six. Fantastic. Well, I mean, I've had a wonderful time here today. We've had two really good whiskeys. I'm hoping, I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping you got a bottle of your white dog open up front. We do. And I'd like to just try that and we're going to try that after the show. Okay. But I'm really looking forward to that because I've I don't know. I just, I think ours is really good. I've got a taste for it.

I've had people that they're like, they scoff when they hear white dog. Cause they're like, every one I've tried is mostly terrible. Uh, but I think ours is really good.

Yeah. Fantastic.

I grew up on moonshine.

Yeah. I mean, whiskey is whiskey can be white whiskey can be very delicious. Uh, if you appreciate it for what it is when it first enters the barrel. With that first year, it takes on a lot of those green properties of the barrel, which give it those off notes, those youthful off notes that you don't want. But those mellow out over the years and disappear and become something beautiful. But whiskey before it ever enters the barrel. can be beautiful just by itself. And if you were a distiller, you know, you have to drink that and you have to taste it and smell it to see what the future is, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what we're doing every time we're making those cuts. All right. Well, I'd like to give you an opportunity to let folks know where they can find you on the internet, social media, all those kind of things. I'm sure you're going to get some followers from this.

I hope you get some followers. Yeah, absolutely.

And some visitors into your tasting room as well. Come on by.

So, we are located at 208 Harding Road, Franklin, Kentucky, 42134. You can reach us by phone at 270-776-9046. We're also accessible online at duelinggroundsdistillery.com. Of course, you got to say that you're over 21 to get past that first page. We're also on Instagram as Dueling Grounds Distillery and Facebook. You can reach us at the tag DG Distillery. Email Dueling Grounds Distillery at gmail.com. We also have the Sanford Duncan Inn that's open and you can also access all that information on the Dueling Grounds website as well.

Fantastic.

Well, Santos, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show. We've had a great time. I've enjoyed your whiskeys and enjoyed your hospitality. Thank you for making time for us after hours. My pleasure. And we wish you all the luck in the world with the distillery operation here. Let Mark know we missed him. Yeah. And hopefully we'll catch him the next time around.

Absolutely.

Thanks for being here. Thank you. Well, you can find The Bourbon Road on all social media outlets. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok. You can even find us on threads now at The Bourbon Road. Thank goodness we were able to pick that same name up on all social media outlets. So not too hard to find us. We do a show every single week, every Wednesday. There'll be a new episode coming out. We'll have a distillery on, we'll have a chef on, an author, sometimes a musician, but we're always drinking bourbon and we're always having a good time. I would love it if you would scroll up to the top of that app you're listening to us on and hit that subscribe button. That way every single week you'll get that notification saying a new episode is out and it'll be downloaded and ready for you to listen to. If you've got an idea for a show, a guest, if you've got an idea for a bottle that you've tasted recently that you haven't heard we've had on the show, make sure you reach out to us and let us know. You can always find us at those social media outlets. You can also find us through email at team at the bourbonroad.com. And we do have a website, the bourbonroad.com. Our swag's on there. There's also a contact us page. You can reach out to us. We're pretty responsive. We'll get back with you. We hope you enjoyed today's show and we'll see you down the Bourbon Road.

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