387. Redemption Whiskey with Alan Kennedy

Welcome to another great episode of the Bourbon Road with your host, Jim O'Brien, 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 as a new sponsor for the bourbon road podcast. In fact, this podcast is 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. The Bourbon Road is excited to have pintsandbarrels.com as a sponsor of this episode, as well as our official custom apparel provider. Be sure to check out pintsandbarrels.com and browse their ultimate online store for bourbon lovers. Hello listeners, and welcome back to another episode of the Bourbon Road Podcast. I'm your host, Jim Shannon, and today... Today we've got a special guest on the show. Alan Kennedy is with us from Redemption Whiskey. We're going to drink through a number of their expressions. I've actually been looking forward to this for a while now and I'm kind of excited that the day is here and I get to drink some new whiskeys with a new friend and we're going to have a great time. Alan, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. So we're going to talk about all kinds of wonderful stuff today, but I'd like to get straight to that first pour as we usually do here. And can you tell us what we have in our first class?

Yeah, our first one is going to be our redemption bourbon. This is going to be one of the core of what we do. It is a 21% rye mash bill. Everything we do has a lot of rye and I'll talk about that one. But this one is kind of our ode to, you know, our nod to Kentucky style bourbons. Um, you're going to get, you know, a nice little caramel and you're going to get that, you know, that sweet corn coming through in a vanilla and just a good pour. This is, you know, it's what I used to make a high ball with. This is, you know, sipping after a hard day of work. This is, you know, that kind of beautiful whiskey. So.

All right. Well, I'm ready to check it out.

So you said 88 proof. 88 proof on this one. The average is going to be about three to seven years. Majority of it going to be in the four to five range. Use a little bit of the younger when I need those notes. When I need the higher sweet corn notes, I'm going to use a little bit of the younger. And then when I need the more vanilla and high fruit notes, I'm going to go with the six and the sevens and try to come up with something that gives the soul to it and portrays what we're looking for in the whiskey.

Well, it has a really nice and gentle and just kind of a soft nose to it. It's not, it's not overly right forward on the nose for me. I think it's, uh, it's got a nice aromatic touch to it, but there is a little bit of spice just hanging in on the back.

Yeah, we want that balance. The rye for us, rye as a grain when it comes to distilling is the most unique one there is for me. It gives that spice, but it also has that floralness and it's something that on a bourbon gives such a great backbone to it. It doesn't overtake the corn because I mean, this is corn whiskey in the end of the day. We want those notes to come through as well, but it's that balancing note to it. It's just beautiful.

It has a nice sweetness to the nose. I'm ready to taste it though. Cheers. Cheers. It does kind of have that balance between the... When I say youthful notes, I'm talking about those wonderful bourbon notes that come in the two to four-year-old whiskey that tend to disappear later on as it matures. You can miss it.

You can miss it. Exactly. And it says part of as a blender. And I know, you know, with the way the TTV set up laws, you know, where we don't have to say age after four years, a lot of people just went to four years and on, but there are things that happen in those early years that, that give you notes that just, they're never going to be back no matter what you do. So using as a blender, having those tools there is not something, you know, I don't want to forget those notes as well. It's, it's gotta be balanced. but I want them there partially as well.

Do you think it's a hard message to convey to your customers that there's a good reason to have those younger notes in a whiskey? I know that. A lot of my listeners know that because I'm constantly saying it. But do you think that's a hard message to get across?

It's weird because with the customers, we have such a loyal base at Redemption. And we've never really gotten notes back from our customer base about it. It's understood and respected that we're doing things to create, as I love to say, the soul of it. And what we need to get there is what we're going to use. I do find, though, that as an industry, we have overly focused in on age sometimes. And we've overly focused on proof sometimes. i also see that coming back the other way now you know we went we went too far too far in the 70s and 80s as an industry and now you know then we went the other way and now we're kind of equalizing out um It's more about creating an amazing product than it is checking boxes.

Yeah. I tend to agree with you. I think that the consumer base is becoming a lot more educated and a lot more understanding with the variety that's out there, the number of brands that are out there, the expressions they provide, and people are able to find what their saddle is, where they're happy, and whether that be With the more sweet notes or the more floral and maybe even the tobacco and leather notes that you get in the more aged expressions, people can find that place where they're happy, that place where they like to sit. I love a blend of those that just gives you this round, full-bodied solution that's just wonderful for a wide variety of people. And I think you've done that here. This is really nice. Thank you.

One thing we also like, I like to talk about is the fact that like, I, you know, I make a very large range of different whiskeys and one is not better than the other. They're just for different moments in time. They're four different experiences. I, you know, we have ones like we'll taste later that, you know, are developed and have finishings and all these nuances, or we have another one that we'll taste later that's highly innovative and has never been done before, but that doesn't make one better. They're just for different times. You get off work and you just need that quick drink, that shot in the beer, you've had a rough day, we want to be there for you. If you're celebrating with your mom on Mother's Day, we want to be there for you. You've got that really rough day. Your friend had a really hard day at work. We want to have a whiskey made for those moments. And using all of the tools in your toolbox is way, way smarter in my opinion. Absolutely.

Well, let's continue sipping on this. I've got a few questions for you, though. I'd like to know a little bit more about the name Redemption and kind of what was the origin of that.

Um, so redemption, the name redemption of the brand is, is focused in and based in the, you know, the, the rye grain, you know, pre-prohibition rye whiskey as a whole was like, it was king of the whiskey world in the United States. Uh, the number one brand in the United States was actually a rye whiskey out of Statesville, North Carolina. Shockingly, that's where prohibition started. Um, And as we saw the end of prohibition coming, you know, to help farmers in the US, we had corn subsidies come through and it was a very good thing for them. But what it did was it made bourbon cheaper to make than rye. Rye grain as a whole is not the cheapest to make. So what you ended up getting was a start of the bourbon boom, which is we have the initial one starting post prohibition. And then in the 50s, 60s, 70s, you kind of have the die out of a lot of American whiskey. Redemption, along with a few others, we saw the value in that grain. We saw the value in the beauty of what rye grain and rye whiskey can be. And we wanted to see the redemption of that, you know, it's something that it's wasn't thought of, you know, it's more in the forefront now, due to us and a few others that have really heralded it. But you know, rise a grain is the most unique of them all, as I talked about earlier, it's You know, it's got that spice, it's got that strength, but it's also got this floralness and this delicacy that, you know, when it's all brought together, it makes this beautiful whiskey. We see, you know, the Scots and the Irish and the Japanese all making, you know, either already putting out or starting to produce rye whiskies now because it's, they're seeing the value in it as well. It's one of those things that nothing else like it, you know, is like that in the world. Our core rye whiskey was the first thing we put out. It's a 95.5, 92 proof. It's just this beautiful whiskey that, again, aged between three and seven years. There's notes that I wanted a rye whiskey that come in younger as well, and ones that come in the background later. Then when we started making bourbons, even our core bourbon that you just tasted is 21% rye. So it's got a lot of rye in there. We also make a high rye bourbon as well at 36%, one of the highest in the industry. And we want that spice with that. We want that development of flavor that only comes with the rye grain. And, you know, as I said, our view is, you know, with the name redemption, it's all about bringing that back to the forefront. Cocktails as a whole, you know, if you look pre-prohibition, the founding cocktails, you know, of that movement in the old fashioned, you know, the Manhattan, these were all rye based when they were whiskey based. It's something that, you know, consumers as we've done testing and, you know, we've been in the market and we get to go out and we get to have a drink with people. It's something they love the notes of. And it's just something that's true to our heart. Everything we've done continuing that has been, you know, almost all of it has been rye based. We did look at the fact that, you know, rye does not grow everywhere. It's, you know, I'm from Tennessee, I'm from Nashville, and you don't see like, you know, fields of rye grain everywhere near us. So we did actually make a, you know, we have a weeded recipe as well. We wanted something that showed what other distillers were doing, you know, pre-prohibition that didn't have access to the rye grain. And then we do some finishings as well. I think we're going to be tasting our cognac finished high rye here in just a minute. It's something that we wanted to look at. We look at through the lens of what was going on pre-prohibition. So with our two finishings, which are going to be our rum and our rum rye and our cognac bourbon, rum was one of those things that was one of the biggest spirits in the United States all the way back to the founding. If you look at the founding of the United States, I mean, the first guy that got decided was John Hancock and he was a rum runner. He paid for it. So rum has always had a basis. So it's something we wanted to show. And then if you look directly pre-prohibition, other than rye whiskey, the biggest spirit in the US was cognacs or brandies. And so we wanted to do something with that as well and bringing that feel into it. Having that basis and that core foundation of the rye and the heritage of what was going on pre-prohibition is where we've set the foundation of the brand. And now we were taking it and we're innovating. And we're looking at what can we do? What other techniques can we do? And how do we develop from there? Um, so now our mission has kind of gone, you know, it's continuing the redemption and now it's, you know, adding to the redemption of American whiskey, trying to be part of that zeitgeist of what, you know, what is and what can be, um, American whiskey, while there is a lot of things out there and we've done as a community, done amazing things, there's so much growth left and so much knowledge left. Um, and we want to be a core part of that.

Well, I'm kind of a rye guy myself, and our listeners know that I tend to lean in that direction, and I always have. But it's so refreshing to see a company that has kind of centralized their focus on the rye grain a little bit, even though they have expressions that are outside of rye. And you've mentioned some of those rye sort of forms, that core grain that you built the business on, and you are trying to show it off. Do you think that the rise we make today, the rise that you guys have in your portfolio are significantly different from those that existed pre-prohibition? Do you think they're better today? Do you think they're different today?

You know, we do the traditional Indiana rye. There's Kentucky ryes that are going to be 54, 55% rye in there. You've got the Maryland ryes, which are some of the originals. You have the New York ryes, you know, the empires. I will say, I still, I started learning blending from a gentleman named Dave Pickerel.

And he's kind of like the Johnny Apple seed of American whiskey, especially rye whiskey. Bit of a legend.

Yeah. And, and it was, it was an amazing person to learn from. Um, and I'm, especially for someone who loves rye, like myself, um, but watching the techniques that are used at Mount Vernon, because Mount Vernon is, is a great way to look at what's happening because it's all, there's no machinery, you know, it's all handmade. It's all like hand stirred. Um, a lot of the things that have gotten better, and I think in now compared to the, you know, Previous technology does help. We get more efficiencies when we're brewing. Efficiencies from the brew masters is one of the biggest things. We do have, with aging, we have a little more understanding of exactly what's happening and how to manage that and how to manipulate that as needed. But the brewing is where the big part of it, especially with rye. Rye is not an easy grain to mess with. It is not an easy grain to brew.

Yeah, I would say that the old way, the old copper pot stills over log fire, scorching was a problem, I'm sure, and you had to deal with that. So, we haven't really changed the process. We've just refined it and added technology to make it more efficient and less waste and less toil and trouble. What is that? Bubble bubble, toil and trouble, standing over top of the kettle. You know, to make sure you don't scorch.

I love the barrels there, even though they didn't use the barrels the same way as we do. We didn't have the charring and the toasting understanding that we do now. Their barrels were probably way better though, because I mean, you have way older oak. So you have a lot more, you know, development. You know, we don't have the luxury of aging, you know. I've heard, I've read stories and, you know, cutting down, we need barrels. We're going to cut these ones out of a 20 year old, you know, forest. And it's like, I would kill for that now just to see what it would taste like, but they don't really have that luxury anymore.

Yeah, I'm sure that makes a tremendous difference. I hadn't thought about that, but the maturity of the forest and the tightness of the grain must have so much to do with it.

Tightness of the grain, maturity of the forest. The environmental impact that we're getting with the heat and humidity, it changes trees. They have to adjust to it. There's no way to do it, but I would love to just be able to see what was happening with theirs, especially with the modern techniques of charring and toasting and all the other fun things that we get to play with now.

Well, you mentioned earlier that you were from Nashville. Can you sort of give us a little bit of a background on yourself? Where did you come from? What brought you up into the industry? What's your passions? What drives you every day?

I'm a ninth generation Nashvilleian and a 12th generation Tennessean. When I say I'm Tennessean, I'm a true unicorn of the state of Tennessee. My family helped found it. And, you know, I grew up in, you know, around the whiskey world. I grew up cooking though. So I'm one of three sons. When my youngest brother, I'm the middle and the, you know, the artsy middle child. And then, but when my mom was pregnant with my little brother, she wanted something just for me and her. And she taught me how to cook. to bake specifically. And so that led me down a path and I ended up going to culinary school. So I'm a ACF certified pastry chef. Making pastry, making bread and making whiskey are very similar. So that passion, you know, very, very well connected. While I was in culinary school in Atlanta, I found out that I needed this thing called money. I don't know if you've heard of that one. It's kind of needed. So I started serving in restaurants. I ended up at a restaurant that had a very large wine list because the guy that owned it just really loved buying wine. I then figured out I could make more money selling that and got a bug for it and ended up becoming a sommelier, a multi-level Psalm and found this passion for wine. And it's having those two bases when it comes to what I do now is amazing because becoming a Psalm, I learned to use my nose and my palate in a whole different way. And then with pastry, I learned how to put everything together in the science of it. And the two work really well hand in hand. Got tired of the wine world a little bit, though, and started learning the cocktail world and the spirit world. Took every paycheck that I got every, you know, every week, two weeks and would go out and buy a spirit I'd never had before and learn literally everything I could. I am what you would define as a nerd when it comes to spirits. Got in heavy into the cocktail world. Created cocktail menus for bars throughout the country and a couple places throughout the world, helped write cocktail books, ran cocktail competitions. That led me to work with brands, doing brand ambassador work, teaching about spirits, and led me to meet Dave Pickerel and work with WhistlePig. And that started a whole new path. Being able to travel the South with that man and just vicariously learn and ask questions and break bread with him and just, you know, I learned a lot from him work-wise. I wasn't part of his blending team. I was, you know, part of the sales master team, but you know, we're traveling constantly. And if you can't tell, I like talking and asking questions. And he was always willing to teach and it led me down a new path. I'm lucky to have him as a friend and a mentor. That led me to Town Branch Whiskey in Lexington, Kentucky, Town Branch Distillery. I took that over as the head blender and then after a year was awarded master blender, one of the youngest master blenders in Kentucky urban trail history that we know of. And I got to just play and learn and develop and create. It allowed me to take something and find what drove me when I made a whiskey. I had a lot of hands-on time in a small blending area and with a small crew of people during COVID, where it's just me and two other guys every day, and learning from them, from the things that they knew from the past, and learning what made me want to do even more. created my passions. I'm a weird one when it comes to blending. I you know, anyone can blend a whiskey based on numbers. Nowadays we have enough science ability to where you could, you could pull enough lab reports and pull it together at 91 92 scoring whiskey. Um, I, I blend based on emotion based on sense memory. Um, I want something that evokes something for like, as a, you know, a soul, I want a memory. Um, My favorite memory making whiskey, not last Halloween, but the Halloween before, I have two young daughters. I have a now six-year-old, now three-year-old, but we were going trick or treating. And, you know, we got about halfway through and my youngest, it was her first time and she was, her legs, you know, she's got small legs and she was, she was done walking. So she and I stopped by at the house and passed out candy while my wife and my older one continued trick or treating. Um, and I passed her a bag of candy cause I, I'm not, you know, cruel here. She's going to get to eat some while we pass out candy. I passed her a bag of, I don't know if you remember them, but sugar babies. Oh yeah. little candy coated caramel candies and I watched the look on her face just explode because it was a new flavor and a new experience and a new love and she's got that like you know that that that sweet bug that I got you know obviously I'm a pastry chef and I got to watch this and I got to watch her passion and then my feelings as a father and I went and I made a whiskey and I pulled 700 barrels and found 50 of them that had caramel and butterscotch and vanilla and I brought it together to show not only what I saw her feel, but what I felt. I wanted to put that in a whiskey. And when the reviews of that came back, people were just fervent about it. They just fanatic about this whiskey and they felt something themselves and it made them remember something. And they had no idea what I was doing, but it made them feel something. And if I can do that, if I can express my love, my passion, my feeling, my memories, you know, into a whiskey or anything that I make, that is what is successful for me. because it's those moments that make you want to share this with someone. Fantastic. What a great story. What an amazing story. It's one of those things that I want you to have. I love it when people have brand loyalty because they've had great bottles, but I want someone to have loyalty because it makes them feel something. There's a lot of choices, a lot of great choices, but I want to mean something for somebody.

So did you find out early on, like maybe when you're in the kitchen cooking with your mother, that you had this palette, this ability to take flavors and create things that was something that you could do going forward or just have fun doing it? Did you realize there was some kind of a skill internal to you or did you just love what you were doing?

When I was young, no, I didn't. I was just cooking. I was cooking with my mom, right? It made sense. I could make additions. I learned when it comes to baking a pastry, you learn the site. Here's the core of how you make a cookie. And now you learn what you can add. I didn't know that was a thing until I was, I'm 43. So the upcoming, the buildup of Food Network, oddly enough, I was watching these shows and I was like, oh, I do that. And it, you know, it made me realize at the time, like, maybe that's something I should be looking at. You know, I was trying to figure out what I was wanting to do when I was in school and college. And I was like, I don't think I want to be in advertising. I think I want to do this instead. So I went that route to, you know, the chagrin of my father, who now understands my path and is more than OK with it. But, you know, tell your dad that like, hey, I want to leave advertising and go into pastry. It's a big movement, you know? Oh yeah, definitely, definitely. 20 years ago. Now I guess it wouldn't be a surprising thing at all. So 20 years ago, though, it was a lot.

Yeah, the world has changed. So we're going to keep sipping on this redemption bourbon. We're going to go into a short break here. And when we come back, we've got two more expressions and a lot more great stories and anecdotes to come back to. Folks, stick around. We'll be right back. 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'sBurbanShop.com is your home for all Blanton's gifts. If you're a bourbon drinker, and I bet you are if you're listening to this podcast, you need to head over to pintsandbarrels.com and check out the ultimate online store for bourbon lovers. Pints and Barrels company was started by bourbon lovers for bourbon lovers from spices to t-shirts to find the perfect bourbon gift. Pints and Barrels proudly supports the bourbon road and invites you to visit pintsandbarrels.com. Do you need a custom apparel or swag for your bar, distillery, maybe even your bourbon society? They can do that too. As a matter of fact, they print our apparel. We're so happy with the quality and fast turnaround, pintsandbarrels.com, the ultimate bourbon lovers gift shop and branding specialist. All right, listeners, so we're back. We had a nice little break there. We managed to finish off that glass of Redemption bourbon. Very enjoyable. I really like the well-rounded flavor. I love the contribution that Younger Whiskey gives to it. I think it's an 88 proof. It's a good solid pour. It's great for cocktails. I think it's good for you can have it as a straight pour as well. It's really nice. I think you did a good job putting that one together and I think our listeners are going to really enjoy it. Thank you.

It's also, it's also a nice one because it's, I mean, it says that around 29.99. It's not, this isn't one that's going to break the bank. You know, it is supposed to be there for that daily pour. As you said, you know, that, that after work, that cocktail, it's, it's, you know, we price it to be that. So.

Awesome. Well, what do we have in our glass for the start off the second half here?

So the second one is going to be our cognac finished high ride bourbon. Uh, so I was told a long time ago that, you know, if you really care for something that, you know, as a, as a blender or distiller, that you should always have a flask with you with, with something that you really love in it. So cognac is what's always in my flask. This is, you know, I don't love any of my children more than the others, but I do love this one a lot. So we take our five to six-year-olds high riburbans or the 36% high riburban that we have. Most of it's going to be six. I sometimes have some five-year-olds that are ready beforehand. We age them for one year in fresh cognac casks. So we have a deal in which we work with the producers in cognac and the barrel owners in cognac. And so when they're dumped in October, they're put on a ship and set here. And we finish those off. We pour it in. And we let it sit for one year. And after, when we disgorge the liquid out of it, we actually put water into those barrels and roll that around and let, not only we're letting some of the thermoreactions happen with the water for those nerds that are, you know, that really worry about that, but we're also pulling some of that bourbon and cognac out of the wood as we're using warm water. And we use that to actually cut the bourbon down to its proof. Oh, what a great idea. Very old technique. Takes some time, but I've got great partners. And you know, this one is our partner in making this one is Castle & Key, and they are an amazing team that allow me to do all my weird, wacky ideas. These are very old school ideas, but this is just something that adds to the development of the flavor.

So how much of your of your whiskey remains when you dump a barrel like that? How much is still sitting in the wood? Typically, do you guys have an idea what that is?

It depends on the season. Yeah. Obviously, so in wintertime, you're going to get more in the woods, summertime, you're going to get less in the wood. We dump these in winter. Um, it's, it's tightened up. It's allowed more to come out. So when it's warm in the summertime, it's allowing more to, you know, go into the wood. Uh, we jump in the winter, so we have a little bit less out. And then when we heat it up, it kind of opens the pores.

Um, you're looking, they, they always say between four and 6%.

Oh, wow. Um, on new Oak, I mean, the first year, usually when you, when you lay down new bourbon, you'll lose about 10%. Um, in, in casks, it all depends on how dry they are. So usually about four to 6%.

So you're, you're, you're kind of looking at two to three gallons trapped in those, in those woods. Wow. Fantastic.

And obviously there's people that have been doing a lot of work for many years pulling out the devil's guts, such as Jim Beam. They've done, you know, they do a pretty good job, like, figuring out the technology needed to do it. It's just, it's a lot, a lot of investment to be able to do that. So obviously it's a weird vacuum contraptions and stuff to do it too.

Now, does that whiskey that comes out of the wood after dumping, does it have sort of a different profile than the whiskey that was poured earlier? Or is it, is it pretty similar?

When the people that are pulling the straight whiskey out of it, the people that I've tasted, I haven't seen a lot of them. They're a little stronger in the wood notes and the char notes, but it's a good blending part. I haven't had a lot of time or practice with what I can do with it. The way we do it, because we're adding the water, I'm not tasting it straight from the wood just because it goes immediately into that. But there's a lot of reactions that happen when you add water to ethanol. that can actually negatively change your whiskies or any brown spirit. Brandy is affected by this really greatly. And it's something that is called pontification. It can add like soapy flavors. If you ever had a bourbon that had soapy flavors, that's exactly what happened. and taking the slow time to put it in. You'll hear distilleries saying they add 1% water a day for a month. And there's other techniques that have been found over the years to try to help stop this. This is one of those techniques. I just like it because it also pulls it back some. If we're cutting this down, it's a little bit harder of a cut process, but it allows us to have something magical going in. Fantastic. Using amazing Kentucky limestone water and cognac bourbon to cut with. It's great. That's great. All right. Well, let's check out this whiskey. Please do. Should get the apricots and the baking spices from the cognac, but I still wanted it to taste like a bourbon.

Yeah, I mean, on the nose, I mean, I can, it's been a while since I had a glass of cognac, but I'm getting it. I'm definitely getting it. It's definitely apparent on the nose.

Thank you. This is that, how I like to describe it, my fanciful tasting notes. This is like melting into a couch at three o'clock in the morning with that final drink of the day. It's that whiskey. It's that moment.

Yeah, this is a great, this would be a great cigar whiskey too, I think. It's very nice, yeah. Yeah, apricots is a good thing. I drank a whiskey actually yesterday that had some apricot on it, and this is reminding me of yesterday's pour a little bit. This is wonderful. Thank you.

This is my baby. It's got a little bit of vanilla cream to it too. Wow. Good mouth feel to it. Good body to it. Finish is medium, so it's not overwhelming, but at the same time, it stays with you for long enough to evoke those flavors and those moments, but it's not overwhelming.

Well, the oak on the pallet is definitely very present. It kind of hits all over all at once. It doesn't like present heavily on the front or heavily in the back. It just kind of gets me and it makes my... I'm salivating from the sides of my tongue. I'm really getting a great impression from it. It has a, I mean, you said six-year-old, right? It almost drinks a little bit older than that, I would think.

It's very nice. So if you're looking at it, it's going to end up being around seven because it's got another year. I just legally, we can't call it a seven year because, you know, there's these weird governmental laws. But so it spins that cognac year is another year, but this year in French Oak. So which is giving, not only do we have the cognac influence, but you do have a French oak influence as well. So in French oak, French oak is going to give you different vanilla types. You're going to get almost cedar notes in the background sometimes. You know, there's a lot of great little things and nuances that come from that.

And some nutty notes too. So I'm definitely getting that. It's, it's, uh, this is a wonderful whiskey. This is, and I'm sitting here to look at the bottle too. And I'm just like drinking this whiskey, looking at this, uh, this bottle that has like, it almost looks like blown glass with the bubbles in it. It's very antiquey. It looks like it came off a shelf from 1910 or something like that.

This one's about $69.99. It's an amazing sipping whiskey. And it's also like, I will tell you, it makes the best old fashioned I've ever had.

I can imagine. Yeah, I think I'm going to try that here in a little bit. But this is a great sipping whiskey. This is definitely a thinking whiskey. It's something you want to sit on the porch with. You can drink it alone, but it's so much better to sit and enjoy this with somebody else, I think. I think my wife would like this, actually. It does seem to me like a profile that she would really enjoy.

My wife is the true master blender of the house. Everything I make has to go through her approvals. I know she loves it. She has a great palette, I'm sure. No, she honestly does, but she's my rock on it. I always go to her to make sure that I am seeing the right path. You know, like I have the blend is right. She'll tell me if I, cause no one's going to be more honest to you than your wife. We have two kids together. We've been together for a decade. If I, if I messed it up, she's going to be like, Alan, go back. This isn't okay.

This isn't good. Yeah, that's fair. I mean, and you can say sometimes, why are you so critical of me? But the honest answer is if not your wife, who, right? I mean, not your spouse, if not your partner, if not your best friend in the world, who's going to be honest with you? So exactly.

And you need, you know, especially when you're creative, you need that. insanity check, I guess is a way to put it. You need that moment of being like, cause I'll come up with ideas and she'll just be like, yeah, that sounds cool, but you're, you're not going to do that. You're not going to go find an ice cream factory and freeze Jack whiskey to get it higher proof just to see what happens. That doesn't make sense, Alan.

So you reside in Lexington, Kentucky now. Are you a big horse fan? Are you all about Kentucky now, or are you still like 50-50 Tennessee, Kentucky?

I mean, I'll always be a Tennessean. I love Kentucky, though. My kids love the horses. I, you know, I'm a, I'm a Sunday drive kind of guy. Um, and there's nothing more beautiful than central Kentucky for that. So it's, it is, uh, My wife and I were talking about this the other day. Cause you know, with, with redemption, having locations and things, so many different places I could move if I wanted, but I think we're home. It's just beautiful. And the kids love it. And the outdoors are really big and conservation is really big to my family. And, uh, you know, I'm an hour from a national forest and two hours from a national park. And then, you know, then all, you know, I think my kids right now are off to the library. There's like 30 of them in this town. Lexington is an amazing place. It gets overlooked a lot because it's not as big as Louisville, but it's an amazing place to visit.

Well, one of the great things about Kentucky, and Lexington is very special, but one of the great things about Kentucky is as you travel around, Uh, it's, it, there's a lot of difference in the area. It's like Louisville is very different from Lexington and it's also very different from Ardstown and, and Northern Kentucky up on the river by Cincinnati. So a whole, a whole other kind of place. So, I mean, as you travel around the state, you get to see some great variety and. And Lexington's kind of sitting right in the saddle in the middle of the state and it's a wonderful place. The drives through the country there with the stone fences and the horse farms is just, there's nothing like it.

Nothing.

So you must get out and travel a lot now representing your brand. I would imagine that you don't get to sit in Lexington all the time. You got to get out there and move around a little bit.

At least it's an easy airport to get it in and out of.

So true. So are you, are you spending a lot of time on the road now? I speak about 40% of the time on the road. Yeah.

You guys doing events and events and then also just checking in with my distillery partners. You know, I'm the master blender, uh, I also like to say I'm the master distiller for, you know, I have a very large distilling background at town ranch and a few other places as well. And I have degrees in it. I am not the master seller of this though. I have great partners, but I, you know, I need to go check in and talk to them and make sure, you know, I don't need to check on what they're doing. I just need to make sure that, you know, in the path that we're setting for three years, five years, seven years, 10 years down the line, you know, that it's all the, you know, every bit is on the, on the, on the right path. Cause it's not. It's, you know, not just about what we're doing right now. We've got a plan. So, you know, the, the, the weirdness of, of the, uh, whiskey industries could teach a Ted talk on time, you know, like I'm looking at 10, 12, 15 years down the line sometimes. So, yeah.

Well, I'm sitting here sipping on this, this whiskey, this, uh, this cognac cask finished whiskey. I'm just thinking, I'm seeing myself grabbing this bottle, putting it under my arm and sneaking out to the back. We've got a sunroom on the back of the house, sneaking out here this evening after dinner and just, just sort of sequestering myself away with it.

It's like melt into the leather couch at three o'clock in the morning and just enjoy.

Yeah, absolutely. This is really, really good. I'm really enjoying this. Folks, if you're listening to this podcast right now and you have an opportunity to put your hands on a bottle, of the redemption bourbon whiskey finished in cognac casks. I highly recommend it. Let's go back over the specifications for it again. This is a 99 proofer, is that correct?

99 proof, five to six year, mostly six year high-ride bourbons or 36% bourbon is finished for one year in cognac casks.

Where can people find this? What's your distribution look like?

everywhere. So we have, you know, our, our, we're part of the Deutsch Family Wine and Spirits group. Deutsch Family Wine and Spirits is famous for Yellowtail and Josh wines. So we have a very good distribution foot and we get to, you know, with our, our big brother and big sister, we get to, we get to follow with them. So we are available in almost in basically every state and we are doing international expansion right now.

So, yeah, my wife and I were talking about that a while back when it comes to Josh wines, because we're big fans of Josh wines. And one of the things we said about it was, is that no matter where we are, we can be sure to find a bottle. And that was, that was great. So that goes for your whiskey as well.

It goes for our whiskies. And if you ever pick up a bottle of Josh bourbon barrel of cab,

Thanks Redemption.

Fantastic. Those are our Redemption high rye barrels that are used there. So we like the life of the barrels. We don't like, you know, to end them. So they go to our wine group. They also go to our partners in Mexico that make canterro negra tequila, including the cognac asks actually from this, go down to Mexico when we're done. So find more life, find more innovation.

I almost hate to set that glass down because I'm just enjoying it so much, but we have another expression to get onto here.

So this is our next one is going to be a redemption surly rye. This is a whiskey that is unique to the world. There is nothing else made this way. Never has been. And the reason I kind of mentioned Josh is because this is one that is the brainchild of my boss, the winemaker at Josh Wines and head winemaker for Deutsch and the president of our company. And they had an idea. In the wine world, there's a process called the Surly method. And the Surly method is when you age wines, usually white wines or sparkling wines, in the barrel with what's the lees and the lees are the yeast so you kind of ferment it in the barrels and the lees are when the yeast kind of die down the cells go to the bottom and it's aged on those and as they age new flavors are created and this had never been done you know there's you know how are you going to do this in the whiskey world and so they started coming up with an idea they started you know going through this brain child moment And what happened, what we do with Sir Lee is so we make our 95.5 rye whiskey, we take the back set and the back set is what's left over, right? It's dead yeast cells and all the stuff. We centrifuge that to get the solids out and we take that liquid and we actually put some of it into the fresh barrel, the unused barrel, and then we put new make on top of it and we age them together. We age them for three years. We roll them during this process to keep that all mixing together. No one had an idea what this was going to do. And it is just amazing. So you get the spice and you get the strength of rye whiskey. So it's three years old, which is kind of the place we hit this one, where we really liked all the aspects coming through. But you get umami and you get like forest floor and you get like food notes and you get like, oh, marshmallow at the end. And all these notes that are new to rye whiskeys and new to US whiskies. This is to me, like the ultimate food whiskey as well. Like you're gonna sit down and have like a roasted meat or a steak or mushrooms, like Thanksgiving dinner. Grab you. You could go for that glass of red, but I think this pairs is just well to it. It's got these new flavors and these new feelings to it. That is just beautiful.

All right. So surly is S U R and then a second word L E E. So it's a two word phrase surly. What does that stand for? Uh, on the leaves and leaves are like the yeast cells. Okay. Got it. Fantastic. All right. Well, I'm going to check it out. Cheers. Cheers. Wow, it does have sort of a nice earthy nose to it.

But when you sip it, that will be balanced with the sweetness of a young rye. It really is just unique. When I started with this company, I had nine interviews of three and a half months and go through all the things. And the end of every interview, they asked me, you know, like, do you have any questions about this company? And I just, every time, yeah, tell me about Surlee, tell me about Surlee, because the press release had come out, you know, out a few months before. And like, I wanted that if I didn't get this job, I wanted to know every bit of information, because this is fascinating. It was just, it is a brilliant moment. And I love this whiskey. It's $59.99. It's light. There's a little bit left in the market. We're about to release batch two in the next couple of months.

Wow. So I'm getting kind of a a little bit of a sour yeast note on it a little bit. And, uh, it kind of reminds me of, uh, the dough for making bread a little bit.

It's, it's, yeah, that smell, that smell of like, um, of proofing dough. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. When you open, when you, when you like, if you use like a plastic wrap specifically for my mind on this one, when you open that plastic wrap, that smell that wafts up from proofing bread.

Yeah. And as a, as a pastry chef, that's right up your lane.

Yeah. Right up my line. Yeah. And then, but he's got this Umami on there as well that like I've never had in a whiskey. I've never tasted whiskey with Umami before.

And I love it. The palette is totally different. I've got a buddy that will just eat this up. He loves this stuff. He's a rye fanatic to start with. He loves malted rice, you know, for different reasons altogether, but he's going to go nuts over this. I can tell you right now, this is, this is wild. I love it when I get flavors that I've never experienced before, but they remind me of things totally unrelated, totally unrelated. But wow, this is a thing. I got to think about this one just a little bit.

It's one of those ones. And this is, this is what I like. It evokes memories and senses and like, I think with this whiskey and the reason I love it so much is yes, you can sit there and you can think about this and find all these new things, but it is also not so esoteric that you can't just drink it.

Yeah, that's true.

You know, we've all had those whiskeys and those esoteric whiskeys that are like, this is great for thinking, you know, but like, I'm never going to want to just grab a glass and like cook dinner with it. This is that too. It can go both routes. And I love that.

Yeah, I think I can just sit down and drink a glass of this and be perfectly content with it. But also, I'd like to have an ounce or an ounce and a half in a Glencairn and just go off to myself and just drink it for a while, see how it develops and changes, how my palate sort of conforms as I drink it. Because this is something that I've never experienced before. It's something that's totally different. And, uh, it's, it's good. It's delightful. It's wonderful. I mean, I'm really enjoying it, but, um, I want to explore it. I want to really want to find out more about what it is. And I'm not going to do that on the show with a half ounce pour, but I will go, I will go and drink it further. This is amazing.

And nobody else is doing this. This is the technique. It's not a, it's not a, it wasn't, it didn't exist when we went to the TTV, the, uh, the governing body. It's, uh, that took a while. And they weren't, they weren't negative against it. It was just, it took a while to get through the process to figure out how this set, because there had to be judgments made because it's a straight, it's technically a straight ride.

Yeah.

Cause with why you can add a certain amount to it and still be straight. And it's, you know, all those little details of how to, how we do it. we are going to look at doing a bourbon, but we want to, you know, beyond the fact that rye is our core, when we do the bourbon version, because of the laws of bourbon, this becomes, we think it would be a flavored bourbon. Got it. So looks a lot weirder, but you know, it's one of those ones we would, this early rye will be here. It is permanent.

Yeah.

But certainly bourbon might just be something we do one off to see how it is at first and work with the TTV again, but it's, it's a new technique to world.

So, This particular one we're tasting now, the rye, this is something that can be found wherever redemption products are sold?

Should be. What you're chasing is batch one. It's a little bit low. It came out not last September, it's the September before and it's finishing up. And then the new batch, batch two is coming out in the next couple of months. So if you can't find it right now, you will be able to find it later this year. It'll be a little bit allocated this year and then it'll go full non-allocated next year. I'm not talking like Pappy allocated here. You know, normal, you'll still be able to find it in all states.

Sure. Well, let's go back through the three expressions that we tried today. So, we had your redemption bourbon and that was an 88 proof bourbon that, if I remember correctly, I don't remember correctly. What did you say? 29.99, right?

29.99, some states 27. We like to keep it under 30. 21% bourbon, three to seven years old. Just your good. This is that everyday moment whiskey. This is that highball. This is that cocktail.

And then the Redemption bourbon finished in cognac cast. This is a beautiful bottle, just an amazing looking bottle. We're looking at $69. Is that correct?

Correct. That should be available all the time everywhere.

And that's the one I'm going to tuck under my arm and go out onto the All Four Seasons room this evening and just really enjoy.

Then the Redemption Surly, this is a rye whiskey.

This is something that is altogether different from anything else on the shelf out there. This is available at your distributed locations for $59.99. Correct. Fantastic. So amazing. So what else is going on with you guys? I mean, we've talked about these three expressions. But I mean, what else is on the road for you guys? I mean, obviously, you're dipping your toes in the Finnish whiskeys. I mean, is that something that's going to play a big part in your future portfolio? What about extra-age whiskeys? I did peruse your website a little bit before we got on the air here. And I see you do have a lot of stuff in the elevated age range and elevated Proof range.

Yes, we have a series of our 10 year barrel proofs. We've got next rounds of them coming this year and next year. This is basically when the stock is ready. We have some other older ones that possibly could be coming out a little bit. Can't really talk about what. But we have a very good library of barrels and we're looking at some of our older stock and doing taste analysis and things of that to see if it is worthy of it. You know, just because something's a very old whiskey does not mean it's worthy of becoming a bottle. So we want to evaluate that and find out if where it fits in the story. We're not going to become a house of finishings. We have a lot that we're playing with. I've got a lot of barrels down. I've got a lot of finishes down to see what happens, um, to see where it would fit. Uh, I, I, I go in the, the feelings of life that, you know, you, you do stuff and you do projects and maybe 10% of it is going to go into a project later. That's going to become something magical, but not everything right away. Um, but I don't, I don't see redemption becoming a finishing house of, you know, just a whole bunch of finished whiskeys. We like things to be part of our story. So if it fits in the emotions and the feeling and the soul and the story, then it will come. Uh, we do have some other things working as well. You know, we're playing with different proofs and, uh, some different mash bill ideas. Um, always, always working. A lot of what I'm working on now is. innovating with technique and seeing what techniques from other parts of the world's worlds as in, you know, what if there's techniques and other techniques out of wine or baking and pastry or brewing techniques that can affect and create something magical. And it's a lot of time and expression, you know, to go through, you know, goes into making that. Uh, but I have some very, very supportive bosses that allow me to create some fun stuff.

So, well, can I, can I put an idea in your head? Is that okay? Yeah. I would love somebody to make a good colonial rye.

Okay.

I would love that. I mean, I'm not sure that it would be huge in demand, but boy, for the geeks of us out there, the rye geeks out there, I'd love it. And I've had the rye from the estate of George Washington, and I mean, it's good. But I would like to have that rye made with new technology commercial version of it. I think it would be really good. I've had some, uh, I've had some Rye moonshines, you know, basically that were made by, No name guys out in no name woods and no name city of no name States. And they're just amazing.

And they're based more about this than I ever will. Potentially. Potentially. I've known a lot of those guys growing up in Tennessee and living in Kentucky for a while. By God, the amount of knowledge.

Yeah. But the, but the right versions of those shines are just. unbelievably good. And I think that, I don't know, I think there's something there. I'm just saying, I don't know. But it's fun to think about anyway. Well, Alan, it's been a blast having you on the show here. We've drank through some amazing whiskeys. You guys are killing it, no doubt about it. Thank you. I appreciate you taking time to share your whiskey with me and share your time with me. You've left me with quite a bit of liquid here to sit and think about, enjoy, and Brian and I are going to have many moments together drinking through your bottles. We'll share out with a lot of our friends as well.

Please do. That is very important to me, so please do.

I would like to give you a chance to share out to our folks here your social media. handles, how people can get in touch with you, your website, where you guys are located, your email addresses, whatever it is that you want to share out for people to reach out and get more information about your products.

Yeah, of course. Please visit us at redemptionwhiskey.com and we, you know, our handle on Instagram is at redemptionwhiskey. So it's, it's easy, easy to find us on there. Um, and you'll see me personally tagged all over there. If you want to follow me as well, I don't post that much, but you know, I, I spend more of my time out in the world talking and making whiskey than I do. Uh, You know, do do an Instagram, but I do love it. It's funny. I basically live in a country song at this point. I'm just, you know, making whiskey and raising babies. So I don't have a lot to take the Instagram pictures, but you get a lot of great, great stuff coming off of our Instagram handle with Redemption Whiskey.

Well, we appreciate your dedication to the craft. And like I said, I think we're going to really enjoy both myself, my co-host, and our listeners are going to enjoy tasting through your whiskeys after the show is over. So thank you again.

Thank you.

All right. Well, you can find the Bourbon Road podcast on all social media outlets. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, threads. There's too many now. I'm getting tired. It's wearing me out, but we still do them all. Every Wednesday we put out a podcast episode. You can listen to us as we have a guest on like Alan Kennedy with Redemption Whiskey. We'll drink a little bit of whiskey. We'll have fun. We'll share some great stories. Sometimes it's not a good story. Sometimes it's an author or a chef or a comedian or a musician. We're always drinking whiskey and always having a good time. We hope you'll join us every single week. We know you're listening to us. Scroll up to the top of that app. Hit that subscribe button. You'll get a notification every week on Wednesday when we release. But until the next time, we'll see you down the Perman Road.

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