365. Copper and Kings 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.

We're very excited to have Blanton's bourbon shop.com is a new sponsor for the bourbon road podcast. In fact, this podcast was brought to you by Blanton's bourbon shop. Blanton's bourbon shop.com is the only official merchandiser for Blanton's original single barrel. Looking for a unique gift. Blanton's bourbon shop has got you covered. Blanton's bourbon shop.com is your home for all Blanton's gifts. You know friends, it's never too early. 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 Frankfort, 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 Brian Hyatt is with us today, your co-host. We're down in Butchertown. I guess this is Butchertown in downtown Louisville.

That's right.

And today we're at Copper and King's Distillery. We've not done this show before.

We have not.

I'm pretty excited about it. We're going to take kind of a little bit of a side road today. I promise you one thing, folks, we are going to drink some bourbon today, but we're going to drink some other stuff that'll just, I think it'll get you pretty excited. We've got a guest on the show today. Today we've got Brandon O'Dangle, he is the distiller for Copper and King's Distillery. Brandon, welcome to the Bourbon Road. How's it going, guys? Thanks for having me. It's going really good. And we've got four tall bottles standing in front of us today. And, you know, I'm thinking back, Brian, and I'm not sure if we've ever had a brandy on the show. I know we've had brandy-finished Bourbons, but I'm not sure we've ever had an actual brandy, have we?

I have not.

Yeah, I think it's new for us. But it's about time we do. You guys are kind of neighbors for us. And it's a shame we haven't been here already. But man, when we got word that you had a bourbon, Brandon, it really got our attention.

I have noticed that, yes. So thank you guys so much for coming. Today is going to be a good day for a change for you guys. We're going to taste some fantastic fruit spirits today. And then yeah, we're going to talk about my new bourbon that has just come out as well in the last couple of weeks.

Oh, fantastic. Well, we do like to get straight to the spirit. And today we're going to, so what do you say you take us through what's in our first glass?

Awesome. So this one is the workhorse of the distillery and one that is so true and near to my heart. This is our American craft grape. This is a blend of three different grape varieties, Chenin Blanc, French Columbard, and Muscat Alexandria, all grown out in Central Valley of California. We then bring that wine back to Kentucky, double distill it on those beautiful copper pot stills you guys saw as you came in downstairs. Then we barrel-aged this in one-choose bourbon barrels from in-state distilleries, mainly Wild Turkey, Willett, Four Roses, and Heaven Hill. I absolutely love those guys. They are my heroes. That is the main reason why we're in Kentucky, is to chase barrels. This particular brandy is a blend of three different vintages, a six-, seven-, and eight-year-old. 100% copper pot distilled here in Louisville, Kentucky, 90 proof, non-chill filtered, the way brandy should be made.

Well, why don't you treat Brian and I like we're complete novices when it comes to tasting brandy and sort of lead us and the listeners through a tasting of this particular branding.

Fantastic. So just for everyone to be on the same page, the main and really one of the sole differences between Brandy and bourbon is really its base. So Brandy starts out with fruit, bourbon starts out with grain. The process, though, after that, especially mine, is very, very similar to bourbon. So, when you go to taste this spirit, we're kind of trying to do the balance of 50-50 on the first half is all the fruit and the wine, the second half are those barrel notes. Most whiskies are very heavy from the New American Oak, where this one's only 10% New American Oak. I'm really trying to showcase those fruit flavors and put those in the forefront. But that being said, this is brandy for the bourbon drinker, so you're going to get a little bit more of a zip on the tongue. You're going to have those traditional bourbon notes hit on the side palate, but the finish is a little bit softer, a little more round, and a little more lingering. That's really when those red fruits come in and some of the stone fruits kind of show up and just kind of give a little bit of a softer edge.

We sort of nose it and taste it in a similar manner.

Exactly how you drank all your other Brown spirits. So if you're drinking bourbon every day, you just switch out the glass and that's the only change you need to do. Sorry if you already told us, but what's the proof? This is 90 proof. We came to play. So when you actually look at a lot of these traditional cocktails, and we're seeing this big cocktail resurgence come in these days, a lot of them were actually made with brandy. And the problem is, though, when you go to replicate these classic cocktails with most traditional brandies, they kind of fall apart. They're a little flabby and lackluster. And a good chunk of that is because they're just lower in proof. So when we decided to come out with Copper and Kings, we wanted to be very much for the bartender and really make pre-Prohibition-style brandies. So all of our brandies are 90 and above. All right, well, cheers. Cheers, guys.

Nice fruity nose, huh?

Yeah, the grapes really come through, especially the muscat. It's definitely on the forefront. That chinense is going to kind of give you some of those buttery notes that you get in a lot of, like, barrel-aged chardonnay. And then that columbar is going to be right there at the end to kind of give you a lot of those citrus zips and give you a little bit of tingle there on the palate.

Yeah, it's actually very smooth. It does have a kind of a viscous feel in the mouth. I'm surprised by that a little bit, but it doesn't seem like it's, it doesn't seem like it's 90 proof.

No, it drinks really well. It gets me in trouble more times than not.

I can imagine that. I can imagine that. So you said that, that Brandy formed the base for a lot of cocktails that are where Brown Spirits are being used in them today. But originally Brandy played a big part in those cocktails.

Yeah, so when you look back in alcohol history, especially the American history, Brandy was way before bourbon. And a lot of these bourbons, especially in this area, were really being, in the first days, being made and replicated to replicate that Brandy aspect. Brandy was actually the first beer to be officially documented as being distilled here in the United States. Not necessarily saying it was the first one, but as far as the records go, Brandy was the first one out in Staten Island. The viscosity you were talking about earlier, that's where we don't chill filter our products. So the first year when we were distilling, I was tasting a lot off the pot and we still taste a lot these days. But one of my main contributors and one of my main factors on how I decided how to cut that distillation is really all about that viscosity and how it feels in between my fingers. I can put my finger into the spirit safe and then rub it and get you pretty close to telling you the proof and where we are in the run. Wow, that's amazing.

That's impressive.

Brian, what do you think?

So first off, I love the mascot. Thank you. That is probably my favorite out of all the wines that are out there I love. So when you said that and I took a nose to it and tasted it, I absolutely love it.

Yeah, that's one of those grapes that you can actually walk out into the vineyard at harvest and smash it in between your hand and smell it and taste it. And it's just so true to the fruit in the distillation process. And the wine is very true to the fruit and just really lingers from start to finish. The floral aspects from that grape and the sweetness notes that it kind of gives you on the back tone, just really a fantastic addition to our blend.

So this one kind of just hangs on the mid-palate for me. I get the barrel on the backside and it really comes across nicely up front. We get that fruit. It kind of hangs on the mid-palate. It's got that kind of buttery coating on my tongue, but the flavor just stays. It stays for quite some time.

Yeah, the breath out and the smack of the jaw, it's really where all that taste profile is. I try to make a spirit that as long as possible, and I feel like this one just lingers forever on the back note and couldn't ask for a better brandy, especially with the style that we're making here at Copper & Kings.

Let's talk a little bit about the origins of Copper and King. You've been here since the beginning. Since the beginning, yes. You are the distiller. There's pretty much everything that's been made here since day one and you've had a hand in.

I've had it, yes. At least a finger in anyways. I've got a fantastic crew. We are very small currently. It's just three of us including myself, but we are a very tight-knit group and it's very much a conversation piece from start to finish. But yeah, the distillery really started out as a mom and pop. It was originally a South African couple. This was their third entrepreneurship, so to speak. The first one was a nutritional soda that they sold to Pepsi Cola. They then came in and did Crispin' Hard Cider and sold it to Miller Coors. Then, when that aspect was done, they started the brandy game. And they ran Copper and Kings all the way up until 2020. And then Constellation came in and bought us fully outright. And we've been a Constellation brand ever since.

So Constellation is huge. Yes, they are big. And they kind of found their way sort of more from the beer side, right? And then into now into spirits.

Yes, they distribute Corona and Modelo. The original business was all about wine out of New York. They run Robert Mondavi, Semi, The Prisoner. So really nice collection of wines and beer. The spirit aspect of things is very, very small in comparison. They own Me Campo, Casanoble, High West, Nelsons, and Us. So really small, tight-knit spirit group, which has been really nice because we're a very small distillery that is definitely a bird of a different feather, so to speak. And Constellation has come in and allowed me to continue to play and create and innovate, but at the same time been hands-off enough to where, you know, as long as the place doesn't burn down, the lights are staying on, everybody seems relatively happy.

Well, that's good. Yeah, very cool. So what's it been like changing over to working with High West and having conversations with those guys, whereas before you didn't really have that

Yeah, it's been really a welcome change. Being the brandy maker in Louisville, Kentucky, there's so many distilleries around the state, but nobody's making fruit spirits. I've always felt like I've been on a bit of an island and trying to figure out a lot of things on my own. Everybody's been extremely nice when I ask, but a lot of these questions, they just don't have the answers to. So being able to go to such a large company and have somebody out in Utah, have somebody in Mexico, have somebody in Tennessee, the ability to get spirits, be able to get grapes, be able to get barrels, it's just really opened up. Most of my grapes are coming from the southern part of California to the mid. Now we're definitely moving further up the northern coast. So my grape quality is getting better. And I just have a lot more freedom to play with a little bit more funds, I guess.

Barrels play a huge part of this. You said earlier that one of the reasons you're in Kentucky is for access to barrels. Correct. What's that barrel market been like over the last few years?

Absolutely wild. I compare the barrel market, especially the used barrel market, basically to the stock market. You don't like the price this morning, wait a couple hours after lunch and it's going to change. But because that barrel has given me 50-55% of all my taste profile, it is imperative that I'm as close to those bourbon barrels as possible. These barrels also cannot be rinsed, so they just got to get dumped. They get dumped usually that morning. We're at either the dock of the cupridge or the distillery around lunch. We're picking out the hundred barrels that we want at the moment and then bringing them back to our distillery and having them filled that day. If I was out west or up north or down south or wherever it may be in the world, the timeframe for me getting a barrel dumped, let's say at Wild Turkey to a barrel filled at Copper and Kings, if I was in Washington State, would be weeks instead of hours. I always find that that first day or two, once that barrel gets dumped, is really the most imperative aspect. And again, because that barrel has given me so much of my taste profile, I can ship grapes in, I can ship apples down, but I can't really ship out barrels and still get the same taste profile that I'm looking for.

You mentioned you're getting barrels from a number of distilleries. I would imagine that each of those distilleries barrels play a little bit different role and flavor.

100%. You can go downstairs in the cellar, which we're sitting on top of right now, which is holding 1,100 barrels, and drill into a Four Roses barrel, drill into a Wild Turkey, drill into a Willet. All three had been filled that day, all the same batch. and everyone will be able to taste the difference between the barrels, which makes this job so much fun. Every time I drill into one of those, it's basically just like a Christmas present. It's one of my favorite things to do, especially on a Friday afternoon when things kind of settle down here at the distillery, is go grab the drill and a nice glass and just kind of get lost in the ricks for a little bit.

So you have to be careful in blending as well.

Constantly. We are tasting and smelling every single barrel before we fill it. We're tasting and smelling every single barrel before we dump it. We're having a huge conversation about that. And then we're blending, blending, blending, blending to manage our consistency. So because I'm doing fruit spirits and not grain spirits, if it's hot or cold in California or it's underwater or on fire or whatever it may be, that's going to change those grapes. And every year the weather changes the grapes way more than you'll see the weather change a grain. So we have to really manage that and pay attention. When you walk into my house, you always see the weather channel on the back television. And we're not only necessarily watching just the weather here in Kentucky, but all over the world. because we also do gins in absence and we get botanicals from everywhere. So even though I'm not in the vineyard and orchard every day like I used to be, the weather still plays such a huge role in my day-to-day game.

Let's talk about that a little bit. You just mentioned that you're not in the vineyard and orchard the way you used to be. Tell us about the way it used to be for you.

Yeah, so I got started in plants and I really had no intention to get into alcohol. The extended family on the Daniels side had been in the wine business since the early 80s. We were one of the first really commercial wineries to come back since Prohibition. Kentucky was a very lag state as far as growing grapes after that. But I went to University of Kentucky, got my bachelor's degree in horticulture, was going to go out west and just do greenhouse crops and do that whole California thing. Right before I was graduating from the university, I had to do a senior project. I had to go out and pick some sort of horticulture business and write a paper on it and do the ins and outs and do the Excel sheet. My cousin had just moved back to Kentucky and had opened up a consulting firm doing viticulture and just winemaking here in the state. He's about three or four years older than me. I thought for sure, man, I'll just go out there. We're going to drink a bunch of beer, hang out, listen to some dead. I'm going to write this paper in a week, and then my butt's out to California. At about day three, being in the Vineyard, it was just a complete change. I was like, I'm not going out west. I'm staying here. I absolutely love this. I changed my Western plans, stayed here in Kentucky, went back to school, and got my master's degree in viticulture for the University of Kentucky. They actually had to curate that program for me because I was the first one to graduate with that. And then from there, I worked for the university as an extension specialist for years, just bebopping around the state, teaching all these doctors and lawyers how to grow a couple acres of grapes and make some wine, just retirement aspect. Had an absolute blast at it, but eventually I kind of wanted to get a little more into the commercial side. So there was an opportunity at Elk Creek Vineyards, which is in Owen County, Kentucky. I moved up to Georgetown and took over Elk Creek and ran that vineyard and winery for another six years. And then that's where I met Joe and Leslie, who were the original owners of Copper and Kings. Fantastic. So really just right place, right time, kind of just hanging out my entire life until somebody said, hey, you, why don't you come show me how to do this?

It's quite a journey, but a lot of times that's kind of the way it works, right? You find your way through life, right? Very few people get to plan it out and it just works out that way, right?

So tell us a little bit about how you do quality checks on the grapes and all that good stuff. I've heard some stories about how grocery stores have these special guys that look at the bananas and make sure the bananas are right. And all they do is check the bananas and all that good stuff. So I assume it has to be similar.

Same exact process. We really start basically in February walking through these vineyards and orchards and just summarizing last year's crop, the shape of the vine and the tree, and then we watch it all the way through spring, through pruning, and then berry set, variation, and then harvest. Even though most of our grapes and apples are not grown here in Kentucky, I'm in constant contact with my growers out west and up north, talking about the weather, talking about what the pH is and the acidity levels, and what does fruit set look like, and how heavy of a crop do we have. And then I'll spend, I try to get out there once or twice a month throughout the entire year just to walk and poke and prod and be like, I think the fruit's a little heavy or this is not enough or I like this block and not this block this year. And it's always in constant flux. So it's very hands-on. It's definitely the artistic side of things, which I absolutely enjoy the best. There's nothing better than watching a sunrise in the vineyard with the dew on your feet and smelling that grapevine flower in the early spring. It's magical.

All right. Well, I'm ready to move on to something fresh here. What do you say? Fantastic. Let's start with number two.

Number two. What's in our glass? Alright, so this is another grape brandy, but we've changed our barrel management a little bit on this one. This is called Butchertowns. We've still got the three same grapes, the Shed and the Calling Bart and the Mascot. This is a blend of seven, eight, and nine-year-olds, so a little bit older than the last one. And then this is what I consider my honey barrels or my reserve cask. So, as we're going and walking the docks of these cuprages and I'm finding a barrel that sticks out, whether it's got another distiller's name on it or just smells different or whatever it may be, we'll pull that barrel aside, fill it with new make, write some notes on it, and it goes in a certain section of the rick house. When we are dumping barrels for the craft grape, the first one we just tried, we're smelling and tasting every barrel beforehand. If we find a barrel that we absolutely love and it sticks out, that barrel comes out of production and it goes into the Butchertown mark. So, when it's time to make Butchertown, it's always a very small blend. 75% of it is once-used bourbon, 25% of it is new American oak, and then we're at 124 proof. So, this is basically the best of the best that I can possibly do for an American brandy designed for the bourbon drinker.

Now is this 124 proof by chance or 124 proof because that's where you prove it to? That's where I prove it to.

So we're usually coming out of the barrel mid to low 130s. We're usually going in mid 120s to low 130s and they kind of varies. violently, depending upon where we are in the cellar downstairs. But 124 was kind of that spot that I always felt like I could hit. I personally like my brandies at a higher proof. I find they hold better in the glass. They hold better against ice and definitely in the cocktail. And then I really just wanted to give a by the bottle of experience of what Copper and Kings truly represents and what that experience is when you drill that hole into that barrel. All right. So select barrels.

A little bit higher proof, a little bit older, uh, distillate. And, uh, these are, this is kind of, you pay a little more attention to this one.

Yes, this one will get you. Uh, this is what the wife and I drank on Wednesday when the kids go to bed. Uh, and it either really turns out really well or horrible. Uh, it kind of depends on who gets started first. Cheers. Cheers guys. So you're still getting those fruit notes, but it's a little bit tighter on the palate. It's definitely more bourbon forward because you got more new American oak in there. You know, you're 25% instead of the 10. And then that 124, she's got a little bit of a ripple on the tongue, but I feel like drinks just so well. It's one of my favorites.

I really like the high proof. So anytime I get a chance to move up the ladder there, I really enjoy it. Like you said, I mean, you definitely feel it on the tongue. It sticks around. It's got a nice long finish.

Yeah, the viscosity is still there, especially for as high a proof as it is. And then, yeah, you get the proof point on the front. But as far as the swallow and the breath out, I find it very smooth and very balanced. It's a conversation piece in a glass that you can either play with in a cocktail or let it ride on its own. But that's what we try to make here at Copper and Kings, our conversation pieces.

So how are brandies and cigars?

They are heaven sent.

Yeah. So it's really a match made in heaven. Yes.

I find a cigar goes, pairs way better with a brandy than even a bourbon. I find the brandy and the fruit tones and a little bit softer notes, that lingering aspect just really meld with some of those fruitier tones on the tobacco. And I just, they just make beautiful pairs.

It's kind of what I was thinking as I was tasting this. I started to think, wow, this is really, now the first one that we had at 90 proof seemed a little bit more like something that you could spend some time with with a pal or a soulmate out on your porch and you could really put a big dent in a bottle.

Yes, that fifth goes down a little faster than what it should.

But this one here is a little bit slower. You need to take your time with it. Probably have a cigar. Just enjoy a little bit slower of an evening because it can get out of control, like you said.

Really quick. 124 is definitely a little bit of alcohol. But it's just got so much character in there. And I feel like you're right. It's a back porch pour. We wanted to make Copper and Kings to be a brandy that's very accessible, to really bring in a lot of different drinkers that are looking for something different, trying to explore or just kind of change their palates a little bit. But this is just something that I just like to put in a glass, set it aside for a few minutes, let it open up. and then just continue to come back to it throughout the night.

You know, Jim, I really think what you said, Brandon, it's more pronounced for me on this maybe than anything else I've ever had, where you definitely feel the tingle and everything on the front of your tongue. But once you get past that, you don't really feel it. I mean, would you agree, Jim? More so, this is more pronounced than probably anything I've ever had.

I do have that chest hug, though.

It's still 124. I mean, it's not magic.

But yeah, so let's talk about a couple of things here. One being price. I'd like to go ahead and tell people what the MSRP is on these two bottles.

For the first one, you're bouncing right around that $30, $35 mark. For Butchertown, you're kind of in that $55 to $65, depending upon where you are. So that seems like a good value to me. For it being 100% copper pot distilled and one of the most hand-touch spirits that I've ever seen made in the United States, I think it's a hell of a deal.

We're sitting here sipping this stuff neat and enjoying every minute of it, but not everybody's going to do that. Some people are going to have it over ice. Some people are going to have it with some cola or something, sprite or something. I don't know.

I could care less how you drink it as long as you're drinking it and enjoying it. That's all that matters. So if you want to buy it and pour it out, I'm perfectly fine with that as well.

But what do people do? What are typical ways to drink these brandies?

Typical way for these brandies are in my house, it's neater over rocks. We are definitely made for the bartenders, so we're really kind of pushing that cocktail scene. We sell a lot of bottles on-premise, just kind of exploring new cocktail riffs and going back to the classics as well. But I tell everybody, drink it how you would your bourbon or your rum or whatever it may be. Brandy is so malleable and just wants to play with everyone. So she slides into even a few tequila cocktails. This will still work. But I'll use it for all my traditional whiskeys, a lot of my rye cocktails. Anywhere where I've got a brown spirit, this will slide in and give you a lot of something different to talk about, yet close enough to where it's still familiar to where like you're not completely out in left field, if that makes sense.

I have bellied up to your rooftop bar here and I've had a couple of cocktails on events that I've been to here. And I do remember having an old fashioned made with, and it was fantastic.

Yeah. Brandy old fashioned is the way to go. That's about as complicated of a cocktail as I can personally make. Um, and that's usually only a Friday or Saturday night when I'm feeling froggy. Uh, but yeah, it's just a, it's just a good spirit to drink. Uh, we didn't do any shortcuts. Uh, this was made with love and I hope you can taste the passion in it. Um, and we just, we enjoy spirits. We enjoy fruit spirits. Um, and that's really what I'm trying to capture in that glass.

Fantastic. Well, Brian, I think we ought to take a short break here. We can continue sipping on this nice high-proof brandy and we'll come back after the break. And we've got two more folks. We've got another brandy and we've got a bourbon we're going to talk about. So see you after the break. Any 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, so we are back. It's the second half here. We're at Copper and King's Distillery. We've got Brandon O'Daniel. How's it going, guys? Yeah, Brandon, we're having a good time. I tell you, you can feel this brandy.

I mean, I can feel this brandy. Can you feel it, Brian? I can feel it, and I love it. That's the name of the game.

Yeah, it plays a big part in bringing on the good feelings and the relaxation, I think. But we've got two more spirits in our glass for this half and let's get right to it. What do we have in our first class?

All right. So third one is going to be our craft apple. So this one's really fun. I had a blast trying to figure out how to do this. It took me a little while. to really kind of get the recipe and my apple list down. But this one is a blend, a 50-50 blend of five and six-year-old apple. We're pulling anywhere from 15 to 20 varieties of apples all out of Michigan at the moment. Mainly culinary, so sharps and bittersweets. We actually blend them as apples and then press them as one. We do a really cold fermentation at about 58 degrees with a two degree of freedom. It usually takes me about three and a half to four and a half weeks for a complete fermentation, depending upon the time of year. We're bringing it back down to Kentucky. We don't use any preservatives or sulfites. So once that fermentation is done, we drop the temperature down to 34, it goes into a tanker truck, and then we ship it direct. And then as soon as that tanker truck shows up, the pots get filled and the pots do not get cut off until everything's been run at least once to stabilize that alcohol content. Then once we get it distilled for the second time, it goes into 90% of its life, or 90% of it goes into the once used bourbon, just like we talked about with the grapes, the other 10% in New American oak. But with our New American oak, it's a little bit different than what you typically see. We traditionally go in and do a medium toast on those barrels, let those barrels sit and cool, and then come back and do a number two char. So I'm wanting to have some extraction out of that oak. But again, I don't want that barrel to be the predominant player. It just kind of needs to be a supporting row. So by doing a toast, we're comeralizing those outside sugars. The number two char just allows a little bit of penetration, but it's not so deep to where you're drinking liquid two by fours.

Yeah. And this is a lighter liquid. It's more on the line of your 90-proof brandy in terms of color. Correct. This one's at 92. Yeah. Wow. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers, guys. Thank you.

Just a straight laced apple. So I kind of compare our great brandies to more like a weeded bourbon. It's a little soft and it kind of sits on the side. Where the apple, I kind of compare it to a nice rye. It's just right down the mid palate. It's just straightforward. We're crushing apples. We're fermenting them. We're distilling them. That's all she wrote.

So when you crush apples, do you crush like the entire apple? Yes, yes. So this is seed, peel, stem, everything, right?

We'll crush all, we'll press all that. We collect all the juice. I'll throw a little bit of pulp in there, but not a lot. And then really we're just doing an apple juice, so to speak, and fermenting that out.

And the pulp is, what does it bring to the table?

So it gives me a little bit of viscosity. It gives me a little bit of elongation on that palate. I kind of get some of my baking spices from that. And again, it just kind of gives me some depth, I guess, is what I'm looking for. I like to ferment a little bit, or like to cook with a little bit of sugar and just a little bit of residual pulp in there. Not enough to where it falls onto the bottom of the pot and scorches, but enough to where it's got some umph in there, just to kind of give you some more of those classic, like, orchard notes that you're looking for. I find if I press it out too hard and drop it all the way down and get the juice too clean, that I don't have any character in my brandy. We don't rack any of our wines. I try to keep them as dirty as possible and putting all the good stuff in there so that all the good stuff can come out.

This is a totally different conversation, Brian, than you have with a With the bourbon distiller, right? I mean, it's an art into itself. And that logistics that you went through about getting the apples from up in Michigan down to here and the process you go through and the timing and how everything has to be just right, that's a... It's a lot to keep up with. Yeah, I can imagine.

It's a passion though. I love fruit. That's kind of where I got started. Really, I got started in the grain business and was doing small grains through college there and really was offered a master's degree and a PhD to go out to Kansas and do wheat breeding and rye. However, I spent so much time out in the field and I kept looking over at the grape The grapevines and the vineyard, they were eating fruit in the morning. I'm over here just looking at kernels of wheat. That's why things switched. I just love the fruit aspect. It's a completely different beast. The fermentation is so much longer. It's a whole lot harder than traditional bourbon distillations. It's closed top. Everything in the brother wants to get in there and spoil that wine. We spend a lot of time in the winery making sure that that wine is as good as possible. Because I am 100% copper pot distilled, I don't have any columns or plates whatsoever, I have to really make sure that what goes in that pot is as good as possible. Those pot stills basically magnify everything by 10, both the good and the bad. They clean very, very little up. A huge chunk of my job is making sure that what comes out of the vineyard and what comes out of the winery is as clean and as good as I possibly can make it.

Now, can you make a brandy out of pretty much any fruit?

Pretty much any fruit, yes. I've not met a fruit yet that I cannot distill.

But I mean, grapes and apples are kind of the big two.

That's kind of the big deal. It's the sugar content aspect of it. You know, grapes are coming in at like 20 to 24 percent sugar. For every one percent sugar, you're going to get a half percent alcohol, basically. Apples are kind of in that 10 to 12 percent sugar, especially with the pot stills. I need a little bit of alcohol in there to pull that out. If I go too low in there, my retention rate or my, I guess, overall productivity just drops. So I have to pick a fruit that gives me the character, but also has enough character in it to actually produce some booths.

Now the apple brandy, what do you think? I mean, do you taste like apple juice when you're drinking this?

I do, and I love apples.

The process of running your grapes through this process of making brandy and apples through changes the profile of the fruit quite a bit, but they shine through it in just a little whisper of a way and you can tell what they were originally. But it's not like, I don't want people who are listening who've never had brandy before to think you're drinking apple juice or you're drinking grape juice.

You're not drinking apple juice. There is no Jolly Rancher kind of green apple note in there. This is more of that pith, the skin, the orchard floor. It's very earthy. There are definitely some apple baking spices, especially on that back note. But it's a bit of distillation and fermentation is a transformation. A lot of fruits smell one way when they're in the vineyard, and then the wine tastes completely different, and then the brandy tastes even more different than that. I'm not sure that's the correct way to say that, but it's just so fun to follow. Every grape and every variety of apple gives me something different. They're always coming out with new types of fruits, and we're always looking for the next thing to add to the mix, so to speak.

And this is wonderful. I'm really enjoying it.

I was thinking too, you know, we dropped from 124 down to 92. So this goes down pretty smooth. I'm sure it does anyway, but especially right now for us moving Down that much. Down the scale too. This could be dangerous for me.

A lot of times when you go from 124 down to 90, 92, you tend to lose a lot in that spirit aspect because that's a drop and your palate's just not quite used to that. I'm very, very pleased to say we had some 124, we bounced down to 92, and I still feel like I'm drinking a full-bodied spirit.

It's so good. I mean, it really is. And the price on the Apple brandy bottle?

Right around 30 bucks. Same as the craft grape. Again, we want this to be an everyday drinker. Brandy markets crazy hard, especially here in the United States. I just want to put this on your back bar. I want you to be able to experience it on a Wednesday or Thursday afternoon, have something to talk about, and then wake up that Friday morning and feel like you didn't break the bank and you can do it again.

So people are not walking up to bars typically and ordering brandies. I mean, they do, of course, but not like in large numbers. Not in droves, no. So this is more about teaching the bar owners and the mixologists to use brandy in their cocktails.

So I tell everybody that I am not selling brandy by the palate. I'm not even selling brandy by the case or the bottle. I am selling brandy by the glass. Every time I walk into a new bar and find a bartender that's willing to explore and have a conversation with me, I find it a huge education piece that I have to sit down and talk about. As soon as I go through that and put my spirit in the glass in front of you, 90% of the time, I've got a pretty loyal customer after that. But there's just the American public, even in the industry, just knows so little about brandy. And it's got such a rich history worldwide and in the United States. We just have to kind of bring that back up to the surface, so to speak.

Is there one cocktail in particular that you've been more successful with bartenders?

So the old-fashioned is always an easy one, because it's really easy to make. Everybody knows how to make an old-fashioned, and our brandies really stand out. Typically, though, how I sell this, especially to a bartender, is we'll walk into a bar. I'll ask for the menu. I'll see what the cocktail list is. I'll say, what's your favorite, your best-selling cocktail? And then they'll rattle something off, and then I'll either slide a bottle of the apple or the great brandy across and say, make it with this, and just humor me. And then once they make it and see the difference and the familiarity, of it, I'm almost always in a menu the next time.

That's very cool. I mean, I know you see me smiling because I love the thought of you walking into a bar and creating that relationship and then being able to teach them and show them and, hey, this is why you should have it. It's so much fun.

It's really what I live for. I love talking about this stuff. I love being able to get to travel. And then when I run across some bartender that's just as passionate about their job as I am, and then I hand them a new tool, what's not to like about that?

So you have some other spares. We're going to get to the promise folks. We're going to get to the bourbon here in just a second, but you've had some other releases, uh, that are not brandy, uh, that are not bourbon that you've done in the past. Can you talk a little bit about those?

Yes. So, uh, we like to make a little bit of everything here. As a horticulturalist, anytime I can play with plants and booze, I'm a pretty happy camper. So one of the first things we really started to explore with was our absinthe. We're also considered ourselves alcohol geeks, so to speak, around here, and we love the history aspect of things. So when I got to looking up the relationship of Absinthe and Brandy and found out that Absinthe was originally made with a fruit spirit, and then you look at all the psychedelic history of things and how it fits into the American culture and really how it fits into the culture of Copper and Kings with the way we love music, Absinthe just seemed to be the next thing. The first batch of Absinthe we did on Magdalena, our 750 gallon pot, It just blew my mind. At that point, I knew I was in the game. Whether or not anyone else likes it but me, that is what it is. But I enjoy making the Absinthe so much. I will set my bottle Absinthe against any other Absinthe in the market and have that conversation. It's so fun to make. Everyone has a real curiosity about it because there's such a mystique to it. Absinthe is super fun to make. One of the other things that we really like to do around here, especially with our fruit spirits, our gins, I like to tell everyone we make gin for people that do not like gin, or the sipping gin, if there ever was a category. I'm trying to create, but we're on the struggle bus on that one. But our gins are absolutely delicious. Again, very botanically forward. But the fruit is the biggest botanical in that entire blend. And we do anything from apple-based gins to grape-based gins. We've got a pink gin that we cut with rose water that I make in-house. Just wild stuff. And then our barrel-aged single-barrel gins that are always changing are just super cool little expressions.

And we were talking about this during the break, but I managed to get my hands on a collaboration bottle from Peerless Distilling. Love those guys. Where you guys supplied the Absinthe barrel to their rye. And it just made something that was just out of the box, totally phenomenal to me.

Such a cool spirit. I always say it's a Sazeracan right out of the bottle. Absinthe has really played a huge supporting role in American history as far as cocktail scene, things like that goes. So when Peerless wanted to come in and do an absinthe finish rye, I was like, why not? We had no idea whether it was going to tank or be fantastic. We sold them four barrels. Actually, we traded them four barrels. They brought us four rye and we gave them four absinthe. We put a great brandy in the rye barrel and then they put their rye in our absinthe. An absolutely fantastic collaboration. Anytime I get the opportunity to work with those guys, I'm so happy.

And Brian, you have a special love for that, don't you?

I absolutely do. I think like I was telling Brandon, Jim had to hide the bottle from me because every time somebody would show up to his house and said, we got to drink this.

It's just so unique and like it's great straight. It's great in a cocktail. It's delicious over ice. It's very, very small batch from two super cool distilleries, at least in my opinion here in Louisville. what, Peerless is maybe a mile, two miles down the road. So like, they're our neighbors and we love those guys. And it's all about relationships, especially here in Kentucky. You know, there's so many spirit, you know, companies around, but like everybody is so close and everybody knows everybody. And it's just, it's just family.

So for people like me and other people that go into liquor stores and purchase Absinthe, the number one comment I get is you better be careful. Why do they tell me I better be careful each time I purchase Absinthe?

So our Absinthe is at 130 proof. So that's the first reason you need to be careful. And then you start putting botanicals in these Absinthe or these spirits. The effect changes a little bit. Now, I'm not going to say you're going to watch tulips grow out of the ground, you're going to hallucinate or anything like that, but plants definitely change the way that alcohol interacts with the body. Just like, you know, I can drink a brandy on a Friday night and feel one way and come back and drink a Scotch row whiskey on a Sunday night. And I'm just going to feel just a little different. They're going to change things. You start throwing plants in there, and it just kind of widens that spectrum. Plus, absinthe tends to go down a little smooth, especially if you like it. So two to three shots of absinthe is like five or six shot of regular brandy. And you drink enough, and you're for sure going to see the tulips grow out of the ground.

And at the core of that is wormwood, is that correct? Yes. And they call that the green fairy.

So yes, they call the absent typically the green fairy. The reason why they call it the green fairy is because after the absent distillation is done, they traditionally would throw in plants into the distillate and allow the extraction of the chlorophyll and that chlorophyll would turn the absent green. The problem with doing that is once you bottle it and the sun hits that bottle a little bit, it goes from green to brown. I didn't necessarily like that, especially on the longer barrel aged or longer aged absence. So we kind of cut that out. So mine is a clear Blanche Absinthe. We do a few in some wild turkey bourbon barrels on a very small batch, which is good. But traditionally, my absence is just as clear as it can be.

Awesome. So the future is bright for Copper & Kings, and part of that future is bourbon. Yes.

So, bourbon. I'm a brandy guy. I'm a fruit guy from the get-go, but I'm also a Kentuckian. And every good Kentucky distiller needs a bourbon in their back pocket. It was time for us to put a bourbon in ours. So this is a blend of a 5-, 10-, and 15-year-old. three Kentucky straight, so all from here in the state. And then we finished it for an extra 12 months in our Apple brandy barrels, which is what we just tasted.

So this has some well-aged bourbon in it.

Yes. We wanted to do this on a small batch scale. There are only 3,600 six bottle cases that were produced this year. We're not going to produce any more this year. We'll do another batch next year. It'll be a very similar size. But yeah, just really small. The bourbon kind of allows me to keep the lights on, make some money to do some other cool, interesting projects that kind of really got my lights flickering. And then it's only a Kentucky only release. So you've got to come here to the bluegrass to get it.

So the three bourbons that are in here of different ages, are they all the same mashbill?

No, so they are not. It kind of varies anywhere from 73% to 78% corn. On your rye, you're 10% to 21%. And then your malted barley kind of makes up the remaining points there. But they're all rye bourbons. Yes, they're all rye bourbons. Yes, sir.

Great.

What's this bottle sell for? This bottle is bouncing right around that $60 mark.

It sounds to me like you guys have priced all your spirits to move.

I want you to drink copper and kinks. That is really all it comes down to it. We could do the bourbon for several hundred dollars in the state and eventually it would move. I want you to enjoy it. I want to be able to talk to you when you come in. Oh yeah, we loved your bourbon. We bought two bottles. It was so good. I want that conversation. That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for that experience. If I can keep my products below $100 and you drink them two or three days a week, score. Awesome. Awesome.

That's awesome. And we love to always tell the listeners, you know, when there's something this good to make sure you pick up bottles. And I mean, I would highly recommend all of the brandies at this point. And I'm sure we're going to be blown away here in a minute by the bourbon as well.

I hope so. Let's check it out. Cheers. Cheers.

This is at 111, by the way.

So 111 proof. Brandy barrel finished bourbon for $60.

$60. And then the cool part is all these barrels were aged downstairs in our cellar. And for those that do not know, we're blasting music to these things 24-7. About two, three hundred yards off the Ohio River, our cellar is three quarters of the way surrounded by earth, so I'm way more interested in barometric pressure changes caused by storm fronts coming out west. That really dictates my in and out of the barrel, so it's much more like a fine wine once it goes into the barrel than a traditional rick house here in Kentucky. We kind of feel like that's the really final stamp of Copper and Kings, is that nice wine-esque, so to speak, finish.

I'm curious, what music do your barrels like to listen to?

It depends on what day it is. So that actually changes every single day based on artist's birthdays, national events. If we have an employee that's had a birthday, they get to pick the playlist, but you can actually go on Spotify and listen to what the barrels are listening to every single day. It changes every day. The only real requirement is that It's got to be loud. It's got to thump. It's got to give a little bit of vibration. We had Wayne Newton on last week because of Bourbon and Beyond. This last weekend was louder than life, so you had Poole and Megadeth playing, but all kinds of stuff. I know what I'm listening to at work tomorrow. So if they want to find this playlist, they just search Copper and King's playlist. Copper and King's playlist. They're on Spotify. I believe there's over 300 up at the moment. It's been a little while since I've checked on it, but yeah, every single day it changes and you can kind of come into the distillery and listen to what the barrels are listening to. The building here is 45,000 square feet and we have a rooftop bar that's open Thursday through Sunday. The right song will vibrate your cocktail on the roof. Like we came to Playboys. High five that.

Brian, I'm sipping on this. I've had a nose on it. I've sipping on it. This is a well-aged bourbon. There's no doubt about it. It did not spend too much time in those brandy barrels. Right at 12 months. Yeah. So it has a nice secondary finish that's not overpowering. It wasn't like, I mean, you must have tasted these very often.

so many times.

You pulled it out at the right time because I think that the bourbon shines through, but you've got that very respectful hint from those brandy barrels.

Really, the apple brandy just kind of elongates the finish. That's really where I see it. It kind of rounds out some of the sharper edges that you typically get in a grain spirit. It's still a bourbon and it's still a Kentucky bourbon and there's nothing wrong with a good Kentucky bourbon. Trying to make that better just seems foolish. I just wanted to add a little bit of a tale onto it. Yeah, this is an excellent bourbon, Brian.

I like it a lot. I think this is well-crafted. It definitely, at that proof level, at those age statements, the fact that you chose to use rye bourbon in there rather than like a weeded bourbon for a little softer approach, I think it makes a statement. And yeah, that apple brandy does kind of soften it up just a little bit. Just enough. Yeah, it's nice.

This could be one of those ones that kind of inches me a little bit closer to the ride train.

Yeah.

I'm working on it.

He's working on me. He's trying to convert me over. I love it.

It's a fun spirit. We really enjoyed picking out these spirits. When I became a sister distillery of High West, for those of you that know, High West just blends, blends, blends. That's what they're famous for. They have such a huge stock of Kentucky bourbons that are sitting in the state. So, one of the first things that I started at Pester and the master distillery out there for was his bourbon list. You know, what spirit is sitting here in Kentucky that I can just swing by and say hello for? So, he finally, you know, after like six months of me just bugging the shit out of him, he finally said, fine, Brandon, here's a list of some barrels. Pick out what you want and we'll talk about it. So I picked out a list and he's like, ooh, you got good taste. And I was like, I know. So we kind of played with the blend a lot. And I dealt with my team and then a high west blending team. And we were sending samples back and forth. And we were having weekly calls. And we messed with this blend for a month and a half. And then finally, Tara and myself, the master blender at High West, finally looked at each other one day and said, this is it. This is the Copper & Keynes Kentucky Bourbon finished in Apple Brandy barrels. So as soon as we got the sign off on that, we brought them into the distillery. And then I didn't want to necessarily put them in Apple Brandy barrels that I had been collecting for a while through the Apple Brandy sale. So even though it was a lot more work, What we would do is in the morning, we would bring in full Apple brandy barrels. We would dump those barrels into a tank. In the afternoon, we'd come in and dump all the bourbon barrels, and then the next day we would flip them so that the barrel was only empty for maybe 12, 14 hours, which really allowed us just to put as much freshness and complexity on there as we possibly could.

That's fantastic. It took you a while to get to bourbon, but I'm glad you did it. Thank you. Like I said, it's a very respectful rendition of bourbon and brandy. Brandy influenced bourbon.

Yes. It is bourbon for the brandy drinker.

We're going to switch them up there. Well, that's fantastic. At a price point of $60, this is a no-brainer. Go pick it up if you're in Kentucky.

So I'm sure you've got a lot of other irons in the fire, things that you're doing that you can't talk about, but I assume some of that has to do with new expressions of brandy and some of it maybe with new bourbon expressions. Are you going to ever do a rye, do you think?

I've definitely got a list in the pocket of things that I want to do. The Rye is on there somewhere. The cool thing about being in Kentucky is not only do I see so many used bourbon barrels come through the market, but Louisville is a huge hub for used barrels from all over the place. Because that barrel gives me 50 to 60% of my taste profile, we can take the same apple, the same grape, and the same bourbon and just put in all types of barrels, and our alcohol lexicon grows mainly based on our barrel management strategy. I always like to tell everybody I'm the Willy Wonka of the spirit business here in downtown Louisville. When you walk downstairs in the cellar, you're going to see over a thousand barrels that are painted all types of different ways. Every new paint job on that barrel is a new type of barrel. Plus, we have another warehouse on the south side of town that's holding 12,000 at the moment. There's all types of cool little expressions in there, whether they be gins or absins, bourbons or brandies, and all types of barrels as far as port and sherry and rum, tequila. It's a wide range of things. Here soon, we're going to do another distiller's dinner. where it's going to be a fall harvest and I'm going to release my peach, pear, apple, and grape on that one. So yeah, we're always trying something different. If you don't like me today, swing by tomorrow and I'll be doing something else.

So I guess your barrels, once you're done with them, they're also in demand.

Yes, very much so. The cool part about that, most of my barrels actually go to beer brewers. Do they really? Yes, and I like a good beer, so you will often find me trading barrels for six packs of craft beer. But yeah, that's typically where most of my brandy goes is to beer brewers all over the world.

Brandon, obviously we know people can find the bourbon only here in Kentucky. What about the rest of your spirits with Brandi?

The other three spirits that we tried today are coast to coast. I believe I'm in 48 states as of right now. There's a little bit there in the very center of the United States that I've not quite hit just yet. If you look hard enough, you can find me just about everywhere. The bourbon is Kentucky only this year. We are going to expand that in years past, but it'll definitely still be very regional. Rust Belt, Northeast, maybe the Midwest. Eventually, I'm going to give California some love because they treat me really well on the brandy game. Yeah, the three core brandies, the Apple, the Kraft Grape, and the Butchertown, those should be in most of all of your major liquor stores. Then if you're looking for my gins or absinthe, other than finding a unicorn every now and then out there, you basically got to come back to the distillery to hang out. Can they purchase any online? We are working on that. We are doing a DTC website here currently. I'm hoping to have it online before the holidays. Then as long as I can ship to your state, you should be able to buy off the website. And then once that occurs, all those little esoteric expressions for the single barrels and stuff, they'll all be available as well. So as soon as that website gets opened up, I'm going to get loose on doing a bunch of just crazy expressions. I've got so many downstairs, I'm just begging to release. And this is going to give me a nice little outlet to kind of express copper and kings. Awesome.

All right. So this is kind of the season when people like to travel to Louisville and experience the distilleries. Weather's great. Weather's great. And of course they do it year round, but the fall is kind of like the key time. And should they want to stop in and see you guys here at Copper and Kings? What could they expect on a visit?

So we are not your average distillery. We are very much a bird of a different feather. First thing you're going to notice when you get out of the car is our monarch butterfly garden. We are an official way station of the monarch butterfly. And then as you walk through the distillery, you're going to notice that we tried to repurpose as much as we possibly could. Building was built in 1947 as a seed packaging warehouse. We left the four outside walls, stripped out everything on the inside, and put as modern of a distillery as what we wanted inside. But the entire distillery is vibrating based on the music. We have a wide plethora of options to try anything from Brandy's, Bourbon's, Absinthe's, and Jen's. And then it just kind of has a very almost like lived in down home, like, man, this is home kind of deal on the distillery. You feel like the people here want to be here. You can see me walking on the floor, my production crew. It's just a very laid back, really nice place to come waste an hour or two.

So we're on the second floor in the building now, and you've got a nice tasting room out here. And then on the first floor is kind of your distillery, but you've got a nice courtyard there. It's a beautiful place to hang out. Yep. Up on top.

Yep, so up on top we have the Rooftop Bar and Restaurant. It's opened Thursday through Saturday from 5 to midnight, and then Sunday for brunch. We just hired Josh Slayman for about a year and a half, two years ago, as our head chef, and he is, in my opinion, the best chef in the city. just absolutely phenomenal bar food and American cuisine with a little bit of Japanese influence and all kinds of stuff. But the cool thing about the restaurant upstairs is 99% of everything that can be grown or raised is grown or raised within like 30 minutes of the distillery. So all of our meat and beef are all grown right across the river. All of our vegetables are grown within 20 minutes outside of Louisville. It's a very much a a hometown kind of feel. You can show up in a tux or a nightgown and feel just as comfortable either way.

All right. Well, why don't you tell our listeners where they can find you guys on like social media, the internet, your website, those kinds of things.

So copperandkings.com, that's where you're going to find the website. We're very active on Facebook and social media and all the other stuff. If you want to follow me personally, I'm at kygrapes on Instagram and then just Brandon O'Daniel on social media or Facebook there. But yeah, just look us up. You type in one of the best distilleries in Louisville and we're going to pop up in the top three. But yeah, Copper and Kings should get you where you need to go.

Fantastic. Well, Brandon, thank you so much for inviting us into your house today and sharing your spirits with us. We've had such a wonderful time. I would say that this bourbon is going to be a big hit.

I really hope so. We're having so much fun making it, and that's really all that matters. If I can show up every day and do this and hang out with my friends and drink a little bit of brandy and bourbon and then grow some grapes and apples on the side, I can't ask for anything better. This is awesome. I'm so humbled by this entire experience. It's crazy. People want to buy and consume some of the stuff that I make. Guys, thank you all so much for coming. It's been so much fun. Of course, you guys are always welcome. And then all the guests that are listening to me today, please come see me. All right.

Well, Brian, people can find us on all the social media outlets. They can find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, threads. Oh my gosh, TikTok.

We try to do some TikTok. We need to get a few more out there.

I mean, we're just, yeah, we're kind of busy doing it all. We don't do it all really well, but we do it as much as we can on our website, the bourbonroad.com. You'll find all of our gear, all of our swag. You'll find our articles. You'll find a contact us page where they can reach out to us. And why should they reach out to us?

Oh, if you have a cool distillery that's doing it right. Have them tell us about it. We can reach out to them. You can have them reach out to us. And we're pretty responsive.

Yeah, we are. We've had some distilleries on who have sparked the interest of our listeners nationwide. And we do reach out to them. We talk to them. We have them on, especially after we get to try their whiskey. Sometimes we're blown away by some of the just amazing stuff that's being made out there. And we also have a private Facebook group called the Bourbon Roadies. And on the Bourbon Roadies, we're about 3,200 members strong. And it's just people that just love to drink whiskey and spirits, and they just share their experiences with each other. What can they do to join that group?

Well, let me also say this. It's 3,200 for a reason. So we like to keep it tight. We like to make sure that folks are on there, treating other people the right way, making sure that we're not trying to sell bottles.

That's right. There's no sharing, but there's no selling.

There's no selling. We always love the sharing. We're all about the sharing.

You can go on Facebook. You can search out the bourbon roadies. Just answer three quick questions. You can become a member. You can come in and chat with us. Everywhere we go, we go to an event. We have a bourbon roadie bar where we share those bottles that have been shared with us on air. And you can try them. In fact, if you're going to be at Bourbon on the Banks here in a couple of weeks, you're definitely going to find the new bourbon from Copper and Kings. It'll be on the roadie bar. Fantastic. Thanks, guys. Absolutely. Every Wednesday we do a show. Every Wednesday we have a guest on. Like Brandon, we'll have a musician on or an author or a chef or somebody like that. But we're always having a good time. We're always drinking spirits. What do they have to do to make sure they don't miss a single episode?

Just click that subscribe button and you can do that on YouTube, Apple podcast, Spotify, Google podcast, and anywhere else.

You can even tell Alexa. And I hate to say Alexa on the air because it always knocks off.

My phone just went off.

You can even ask Alexa to play the bourbon road podcast, but we'll see everybody down the road. Thanks for listening. Cheers.

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