398. Chattanooga Whiskey - Tennessee High Malt

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'sBurbanShop.com as a new sponsor for the Bourbon Road podcast. In fact, this podcast is brought to you by Blanton's Burban Shop. Blanton'sBurbanShop.com is the only official merchandiser for Blanton's original single barrel. Looking for a unique gift? Blanton's Burban Shop has got you covered. Blanton'sBurbanShop.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 we have quite a treat for you. We have Chattanooga whiskey in the house. It's going to be a great show. Tim Pearson is with us today and he is the founder and CEO of Chattanooga whiskey. And my goodness. It's taken us a long time to get to this point, Tim. And even though we've had your whiskeys on the show on multiple occasions, they've always fared very well. This is the first time we're getting you on here. So thank you for coming on the Bourbon Road.

That's great to be on here. Thanks, Jim. Appreciate you having me.

Well, we do like to get straight to the whiskey and you have provided us with a couple bottles of your very fine bourbon whiskey. I think in the first half, we're going to drink your 91. Is that correct? Yes. So, uh, I've got a little bit of my glass. I'm assuming you have the same. Can you sort of walk us through it a little bit?

Yeah, of course. So, uh, chatter to get 91 is a straight bourbon whiskey at 91 proof. Um, the, the recipe was born out of, um, the experimental distillery that was established in 2015. When we established that distillery, our intent was to begin finally making whiskey on our own, but we ended up exploring the world of specialty malted grains in bourbon and in Between 2015 and 2017, we had put away over 100 different recipes, all with a minimum of 25% specialty malted grains. This was the birthplace of Tennessee High Malt, our own unique style of bourbon whiskey, and which produced the 91st recipe which became our flagship recipe that we that we tagged to replace the MGP that we were originally selling through our our law changing efforts. And so finally, after we scaled the 91st recipe up to our riverfront distillery that we established in 2017, we replaced the MGP product that was Chattanooga Whiskey in August of 2019. with Chatternougle Whiskey 91. And that is a four grain, three malt, salera barrel finished bourbon. The four grains are non-GMO yellow corn, all locally grown in Tennessee by a fifth generation farmer called Katisa Farms in Riddleton, Tennessee. It is a malted rye instead of raw rye. It is caramel malted barley and it is honey malted barley. and so you know four grains three specialty malted grains so very very designed to be rich and complex in character and and there's something that you'll you know a theme that i continue to To go back to discuss throughout all of our products is really the theme is is tennessee high models its utilization of roasted and toasted grains and that's where i'd like to say that you whiskey. Is the dark chocolate versus every other bourbons milk chocolate so well ninety one. is designed to be the most approachable of our products for the everyday bourbon drinker, priced at an amazing value at around $30 or $34.99 everyday price point typically. It's medium bodied compared to its big brother 111, which is a full-bodied bourbon. But 91, it's medium bodied. It has lot of those roasted and toasted flavor profiles that we like about all of our products, this one's going to be on the lighter side of that. So I like to look at 9101.11 like a s'more. You know, the 91 is really what you're experiencing on the outside of this more and 111 is like you're experiencing on the inside of this more. And so some of that kind of honeyed graham cracker, honey toast, maybe a little bit of sweet tea that you get out of 91. But I think that kind of that honey toast, honey graham crackers is prevalent. and then maybe a little bit of white fruit that you get out of the salera barrel character. Of course, it's going to be a medium finish and should be kind of... I use the word crushable responsibly, but should be a very easy sipping bourbon.

Well, it has a wonderful nose on it and it's very light on the nose. There's a little bit of a bite there from, you said one of the contributors was a malted rye. A little bit of a, I love, malted ryes is quickly becoming one of my more appreciated grains. I think they're gaining popularity and certainly you've been using them for quite some time.

Yeah, with our 99 rye. I mean, it's a 65% malted rye product.

But it delivers such a unique and enjoyable nose and palate, actually. And this is really a treat. But the nose is wonderful on it. I do get a lot of honey. It's a very honey forward kind of aroma. Not a lot of fruit for me, but I can see that there might be just a little bit in the background there. the barrels evident, certainly the honey and the, and the, well, that Rymond, I just love it.

Yeah. One thing also worth noting on the barrels, uh, we've utilized custom toasts and chars, uh, since we started distilling and in barreling back in 2015. We work with an independent stave company out of Lebanon, Missouri, and they have an operation in Lebanon, Kentucky as well. And we've worked with their R&D department on customizing different toasts that complement the different flavor profiles and recipes that we're after. So whether that be 91, 111, 99 rye, Bottle and Bond features a blend of multiple different recipes, including high roast recipes that we do, or high wheat recipes that we do, or maybe even a high peat recipe that we do. That's like a Scottish style that we've done. But we will work with ISC on custom toast profiles to complement Each of these recipes and flavor profiles and toasted barrels create a very confectionary flavor profile and 91 and 111 are a unique blend of toasted custom toasted and charred barrels. So like each Each batch that we distill, half of that batch will be a custom toasted barrel and the other half with a light char or a 3-char. And then the other half of that batch will go into a 4-char barrel with no toast. And it's bringing those barrels together in the Solera barrel that drives complexity and drives a lot of those confectionary notes as well.

That's amazing. I've heard a lot of people talk about the importance of choosing and treating a barrel correctly for your particular profile. I've heard a lot of people talk about how much grain bills play in the development of a profile, a unique profile for distillery. But I've not heard somebody talk before about how it's very important to marry the two very carefully so that one complements the other. And that's interesting. That's interesting to think of it that way, that the recipe is both a recipe for how to prepare the barrel and how to prepare the distillate. So we all know that every whiskey gets a barrel and every whiskey gets a mash bill, but to actually fit the two together like a key is kind of a really neat thing.

Yeah that's part of the Tennessee high malt style as part of why we say this is the Tennessee way as our campaign is that we go above and beyond in every step of the process of course foundationally it's the high malt the specialty malted grains that we use but then how we cook it, ferment it, distill it, barrel it, age it and finish it and bottle it. Every step of that process we go above and beyond to drive richness and complexity and pull as much out of the specialty malted grains, pull as much out of that mash bill as we possibly can.

Yeah, richness is a really good word. As I was tasting this, I mean, I'm definitely getting this nice, rich body, this good flavor, this wonderful. It's almost like a cool honey, but a little bit of dripping down the side of my tongue and this rich flavor that just just sort of takes over. It's got a nice mid-pallet presence. I mean, it really sits well on the mid-pallet. It's a little soft on the front and it doesn't bite you real hard on the back end. It just kind of sits in the middle. It's very balanced. It's nice for a $30 bottle, $35 bottle. This is delightful. And it's one that I've got in my pantry quite often. So I have, obviously I have the Bourbon Road bar downstairs, which is just full of tremendous whiskeys for all over the country. Then I have my pantry upstairs, which is where the stuff sits that's easily reachable, right? That you need to get to quickly on a daily basis.

That's awesome.

I'll be honest, there's always a bottle of Wild Turkey 101 in there. There's usually a bottle of 91 and sometimes, not always, but sometimes I'll have a bottle and bond of some sort, like something that's not too expensive, but has a good four-year flavor to it.

That's a real compliment. And that is a testament to one of our missions, which is whiskey to the people. And that is driving value. We want to drive high value for considering what we put into the product from a craft perspective and then what we're able to deliver on to the customer at that price point. I mean, for you to have a bottle of Chattanooga 91 in there next to a bottle of Wild Turkey 101, even though they're not the same price points, the fact that everybody looks at 101 as an amazing value and you look at Chattanooga whiskey like that, that's what we're trying to do.

Absolutely. Now you mentioned crushable. I often use the term sessionable. Sessionable is more in the beer world, but I do believe whiskeys can be sessionable. Does crushable mean the same thing?

No, I don't know. I, you know, I obviously don't recommend that anybody crushes whiskey, but, but I think it's to me, I use crushable interchangeably with approachable. I think approachable and crushable just means that, uh, it's really easy sipping and you get the flavor profile out of it. You enjoy it, but, um, but you know, it's, it's not something that you feel like. you can only have one sip of or one glass of. I think, you know, I look at products, there's products that I like or have liked in the past. I pretty much exclusively drink Chardonnay whiskey now. But, you know, several years ago at the beginning of this journey, there were a handful of scotches that I would keep on hand. And I've always appreciated smoky scotches and what comes from Isla. And I would keep, for example, something like Laphroaig or Lagavulin around and And I could have a glass of Laphroaig and really enjoy it, but it's not crushable. I'm not going to, I'm not going to go back. You know, I'm not going to sip on it for the entire night. Yeah. And I think, I think 91 is one of those products where you, you can, you can, you know, drink it on the rocks. You can drink it in a cocktail. It makes a great whiskey ginger, which is really light summertime drink. And, um, And it still tastes very high quality. Even in a whiskey ginger, it's a high quality taste. It's not like super, super duper corn forward, right? I mean, obviously corn is present because it's a bourbon whiskey, but So it stands up well in a cocktail. It stands up and it's also easy to sip neat, which there's not a whole lot of products that I feel like are that versatile. So maybe crushable stands for versatility and approachability.

Yeah, and I think this is a whiskey that's... I mean, the summer season is here, the warmer weather is here, and this is a whiskey you could drink during the warmer weather. It does have that cool wash when you take a sip of it. That's kind of nice and refreshing. And yeah, I could drink it neat in the summertime and it'd be just fine. I often put it with a little bit of like a mule or something like that.

So yeah, I love a good mule, especially with 91.

All right. Well, let's talk a little bit about kind of the history of Chattanooga whiskey and where things started. I know that long before you guys came onto the scene, there were some long standing issues in Tennessee with respect to prohibition and those kinds of things. And Tennessee kind of stood out a little bit and a little different from. the majority of the US, you guys had some different timeframes involved. Could you go over a little bit of that for us?

Yeah, of course. Um, it was, it was the history of whiskey, uh, pre prohibition that inspired my co-founder and I to start the company in 2011. And, um, and you know, we wanted to revise, we wanted to revive that in downtown and make whiskey once again. And so we started by sourcing a product from MGP. It wasn't multigrain products back then. It was actually Lawrenceburg Distillers of Indiana. So it was known as LDI back in 2011. And they were going through the acquisition process from MGP. And that actually made things challenging for us because All the original guys we were talking to, like Larry Ebersold and Perry Ford at LDI, who stayed with MGP, but they were a little bit more flexible. We were buying 20 barrels at a time and there is a great price. And then through their acquisition, we ended up having to buy a lot more barrels, which kind of forced our hands more heavily and get to get into the industry and ended up being a great thing. But entrepreneurially, it was an interesting challenge because we had to raise three quarters of a million dollars overnight, basically, in order to secure 1200 barrels of whiskey to get started. after buying our initial batch of 20 barrels to launch Chattanooga and launch Tennessee, it was illegal to distill whiskey, or not just whiskey, it was illegal to distill any spirit in the majority of the 95 counties when we started Chattanooga whiskey in October of 2011, which is why we had the source. We didn't really know the details of the law until we started digging. And we figured that by launching Chattanooga whiskey with a solid bourbon like the MGP product that we launched it with, that we could use that as a lobbying tactic and basically a rally cry, getting people to buy into it and enjoy it. And then look at it like a jobs bill, point to it and say, hey, look, everybody's already buying it at the liquor stores and everybody's buying it at the bars, but you're not getting any of the tourism revenue. You're not getting any of the jobs and the tax revenue. And so uh, we set it up that way to tell the story of bringing whiskey back to Chattanooga. Uh, but we ended up, you know, having a hard time with the local legislators wanting to move on this because just a couple of, you know, barely 30 year old guys that were wanting to still for the first time in a hundred years in Chattanooga and, and no one favored that from a, from a legislation perspective. So we created a campaign called the Vote Whiskey Campaign, which essentially just put the power into the community's hands to show their support online, show their support on Facebook, to show their support through, of course, buying our whiskey, and then ultimately show up to a vote at the county courthouse in which we requested the ability to form a new bill at the state level. And because essentially we ended up having to fight at the state level in order to do it. Our goal was that the 2009 bill that opened up a handful of counties in the state of Tennessee, and that's when your Corsair Artisan started, that's when your old Smoky Moonshine started, We were hoping that because originally it was a county, it was up to each municipality to opt into that bill. So it was originally a county to county thing. We were hoping that our county could essentially retroactively opt into the 2009 bill, but The state attorney general ruled against that, said that that wasn't possible or illegal, and that we would have to form new bills in order to legally distill in Hamilton County. So that's where Representative Joe Carr came into the picture and said, hey, look, I was partially behind the 2009 bill. I know there are other counties I want to distill. You guys are making a lot of noise and clearly driving this thing, I think driving this force and this momentum behind it with the crowd from Chattanooga that wanted to see this happen and through the Vowisky campaign. So let's form a new bill and let's write it better than we wrote it in 2009. So it wasn't a matter of whether or not municipalities could opt in or opt out. It stated more clearly that if there's liquor by the drink and if there's package retail sales, then you could also get a license to distill in that municipality. And that was House Bill 102 and Senate Bill 129. And it was a fight until the end. And finally, we got the votes we needed. And in May of 2013, that bill passed and distilling became legal in the majority of the 95 counties of Tennessee. And that, of course, opened up Hamilton County, which was what we wanted, but it opened up Some other significant counties like Knox County and Shelby County. And then it also did away with distance requirements between distilleries. So somebody can open up next door to you. And that happened in some other counties. And we were fought, actually, for that. But it wasn't just we weren't trying to amend the law, our bill, to do away with distance requirements. But other distilleries were. They were trying to get in on this so they could also distill in some of these like, like, for example, I mean, in in Pigeon Fours in Gatlinburg, or in downtown Nashville, you know, in some of these commercial spaces, there were there was there were existing distilleries, and there were other guys I wanted to open up next to them. So it ended up becoming a, you know, House Bill 102 that passed, that Chatterney Whiskey spearheaded It brought a significant impact to not only the distilling industry of Tennessee, but also agriculture and tourism as well. And so we're very proud to have for that to have been a big part of our history, the Vowisky campaign. But then we had to establish ourselves, we had to make a product, we had to officially say. And that took a little bit of time because there was a falling out between my co-founder and I. And then we were raising capital and We had to find a distiller, which we ended up, fortunately, through our relationship with Larry Ebersold out of LDI, he introduced us to Brian Sprantz at New Riff, who introduced us to Grant McCracken, who was at Boston Beer. And then I was fortunate enough to be able to lure Grant down here to help me build the first Chattanooga whiskey distillery, which is the experimental distillery on Marcus street. And that's where Grant brought his knowledge of specialty malts and fermentation and beer, of course, into bourbon. And it was, you know, the experimental distillery when we established it, it was, you know, and it still is, it's only 150, it's only one, uh, 100 gallon still pot still in three 100 gallon fermenters it can only produce on a week's production schedule we can only produce a barrel so we're only making about 50 barrels a year out of the experimental distillery. And that's not a lot. That's about 2,500 cases. In fact, we were already selling at that time, several years into distributing the MGP product, we were already selling north of 15,000 cases of the MGP product. And so there was no way we were going to replace that with what we were making at the experimental distillery. And that's when Grant challenged me to look at it as an experimental distillery and explore the world of specialty malts in bourbon. And that set us on a path to creating our own unique style that is Tennessee high malt that I think is, I mean, it is the reason for our success today because two years down the road, In twenty seventeen we put away over a hundred different recipes to choose from and then. We established the riverfront distillery in twenty seventeen which has a production capacity currently of two thousand barrels a year versus fifty barrels a year. And so then as a team, we got to select our favorite recipes to scale up from experimental to to riverfront. And which to this very day, I mean, we continue to scale up recipes, I think we've scaled up north of 30 recipes. And to this day, we continue to explore specialty malted grain recipes at The experimental story where we have produced approximately five hundred so we call that experience over there which is one of the top tourist experiences and in the city the only stand alone experimental whiskey distillery in the united states has to our knowledge no one has explored recipe development. and not just recipe development, but all the great things that go into making a great bottle of bourbon or American whiskey because we do single malts as well. We do rye malts. We do different barrel finishes. We utilize different yeasts. To our knowledge, no one has explored like we have explored and that's why we call it the only standalone experimental whiskey to store in the country. Now, here we are. We've scaled up 91. We've created 111 out of the 91 recipe. We've got 99 Rye that we launched in 2020, and it won Whiskey Advocate Top 20 in the first year it was released. We've scaled up Ballin' and Vaughan, which is one breaking bourbons best in craft. We've scaled up several recipes to be able to create founders through our three salera barrels. And in 2023, we won Best Craft Producer by Whiskey Magazine at the ICON Awards for both nationwide and worldwide. So it's been a wild ride. But I think I really do think that it's our Tennessee high malt unique style and the value that 91 and 111 that all of our products bring that has created so much success.

It's a fantastic story and yeah, amazing. Congratulations on all the awards that you won and the accolades that you've been able to achieve over this time. When you look back at the, what was it, 2015 to 2017 timeframe, you know, a lot of people might think, boy, that's a lot of time to spin, kind of spinning your wheels and developing recipes, but it paid off for you guys. It really did.

It was a huge risk. I actually would say it was the largest out of all the things that we've done with raising capital to build a much larger distillery, one of the larger craft distilleries in the US, especially at the time. to exclusively do Chattanooga whiskey and not do other products to build revenue, to just focus in on this. But above all that, to create our own unique style and rip the band-aid off of a really well-known product and MGP, this 3-grain high rye recipe that now I feel like every bourbon drinker knows about, uh, and appreciates, but to rip the bandaid off of that completely and go from, from that to our own unique four grain, three malt, you know, Salera barrel finished, uh, bourbon was a, was a massive risk and spending two years just, just exploring specialty malted grains, not, you know, we just had, we had faith that, you know, this, this level of complexity and richness that we get out of the specialty malted grains and with Grant's ability to make great beer that it would translate to making great bourbon, we had to have faith in that. And it did pay off. It is paying off. But it was certainly, I think, the largest risk we ever took and one of the cooler stories in modern day bourbon.

When you first introduced this and you were sort of departing from your MGP profile and moving into your own unique and developed profile, was there a slow adoption or was it kind of a rapid... Did you get a rapid feedback on it or was it something that took a while to prove itself?

I'd say it was fairly rapid. I mean, I kind of had this expectation that we would lose a percentage of our customer base. you know, maybe I was kind of hoping that it wouldn't be greater than 20%. My goal was that if we did lose 20% of our customer base because it was no longer a traditional three grain bourbon made by MGP, that we would make up for that with our authenticity and quality and time. But I don't think, I feel like we didn't lose anybody. And if we did, we quickly gained and surpassed what we lost. And we took off in 2020, 2021, 2022, and we saw massive growth. I think we grew 40%, 50%, 60%, upwards of 70% over the next few years. And we stayed We stayed fairly tight with our distribution. I mean, even today, we're only distributed in 16 states and we're still independently owned. I don't know a lot of 50 plus thousand case whiskey brands that are in only a third of the country. and are independently owned doing that kind of volume. And I absolutely attribute that to transitioning from a traditional bourbon that really anybody can source from to making our own unique product.

Great story. Wonderful story. Well, I've got a little bit left in my glass here. I think I'm going to continue sipping on this. We're going to take a short break and we'll both finish off what we have. And when we come back in the second half, you've got another whiskey for us, a little bit bolder, a little bit more full bodied, something that we're really going to enjoy. And we'll continue talking about Chattanooga whiskey. So folks stick around. We'll be right back. Looking for a unique gift? Blanton's bourbon shop has got you covered. All of their hand-crafted 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, you'll find the perfect bourbon gift. Pints and Barrels proudly supports the bourbon road and invites you to visit pintsandbarrels.com. 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, heightsandbarrels.com, the ultimate bourbon lovers gift shop and branding specialist. All right folks, so we're back. We had a nice little break there. We continued to sip on that Chattanooga whiskey, straight bourbon it. their 91 proof version. And it's interesting that that is both your batch 91 and it's at 91 proof. Is that just the happenstance or?

Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was a fun A fun thing that that happened and through our bracket ology of choosing our favorite recipes to scale up and really particularly looking for one recipe to become our flagship out of the experimental distillery and scale to riverfront. We narrowed this search from 100 down to 50 to 20 down to the final four. And we were obviously looking for certain flavor profiles to be able to complement traditional bourbon whiskey while still get the complexity and richness that we were looking for out of the specialty malted grains. While we did have some products in that first 100 that were more wild from a flavor profile and a recipe standpoint than others, we were very intentional about what we felt like would not alienate our customer base, but still provide them a unique flavor profile that would become Chattanooga Whiskey And the 91st barrel just happened to be in that final four. And in a blind taste test between Grant McCracken and I, at the very end of that selection process, we chose 91, the 91st barrel. Chatterney Whiskey 1816 Reserve, the traditional flavor profile and the traditional recipe that we were originally selling was already at 90 proof. And so Um, and I, and I'm, you know, we love, we love numbers and we came out of 1816. Of course that's four digits, which was a lot harder for people to remember. Uh, so we thought, oh man, here's an opportunity to go from four digits down to two digits and to, uh, to make it 91 proof. So bump it up one, one proof. And it comes with a really cool, authentic story behind it.

Absolutely. All right. Well, we've got another whiskey in our glass here, and this is, I don't know if you call it the big brother or the bolder brother or the big boy whiskey or whatever you want to call it, but this, this is your, this is your one 11. And why don't you tell us a little bit about it?

Yeah, we, we internally talk about it. Like it's the big brother or big sister to 91 because it's the only other label that shares the same recipe in our lineup. So every other label that we have is a completely different recipe and oftentimes a blend of multiple recipes together. So 111 is going to bring a lot of the the unique flavors that 91 brings, except it's going to go deeper, darker, richer, and almost more like dessert flavor profile, dessert character over 91, as it gets back to this whole s'more thing where 91 is the outside of the s'more or the exterior flavor profiles as you first bite in. And 111 is everything you get in the middle. It's the toasted marshmallow. It's the dark chocolate. And there is a little bit more fruit complexity that comes out of 111. People often reference maybe chocolate covered cherries, maybe a little bit of cinnamon that comes out of 111 as well. You're still going to get some of those maybe sweet tea components, but lots of caramel, lots of chocolate. It's definitely the more bolder dessert for flavor profile. And it coats your palate very differently than 91. It's like a warm blanket. It's a much longer, thicker finish. I like to You know talk like I like to describe the finish is almost buttery It was like a buttery finish versus the 91 in the way that it coats your palate and it's certainly a crowd favorite around here and For your colder months, especially maybe around a fire Of course, you can you can make a cocktail with it stands up really well because again, it has that 91 recipe in it You know, I like to throw a couple of cubes on it personally, make it last a little bit longer and it unlocks some additional flavors when you do that. But yeah, this is the, this is the Boulder dessert version of 91.

Yeah. When I take it to my nose, I get a little bit more of that. Uh, at first I want to say butterscotch, but actually the more I, I noticed it, I was getting more like a toffee. And, uh, yeah, very like a nutty toffee. And, uh, you know, I've made toffee before. I'm not very good at like putting the chocolate coating on the outside of it, like in an English toffee. Uh, I always mess that part of it up, but, um, I do like to dip my toffee. Brittle, I guess you call it into, into chocolate. If I can just eat it that way. And that's kind of what it's reminded me of. It's reminded me of this, this wonderful toffee that you can dip into a brittle. But as you mentioned, the tea notes and, uh, you know, a little bit of fruit coming off in the background, but for me, it's like, uh, like a cooked fruit, you know, it's not a fresh fruit. It's more of a cook, but yeah, definitely. I'm ready to take a step.

Go for it. And, uh, yeah, I think. One thing to note here that's important is the value as well. So this is not a Solera barrel finished bourbon. It is an unfiltered bourbon. So we do allow char-sed a bit to pass through from every barrel into every bottle, which enhances viscosity and of course drives the richness of the flavor. And we offer this 111 proof cask forward unfiltered bourbon at a mid 40s price point. And I would put that in the insane value category compared to anything else. There's nothing else on the market like it. And it's I would say from a flavor profile or from a value perspective.

Yeah, I can confirm the barrel sediment on the bottom. I hadn't noticed it, but now that you mentioned it and now I'm looking at it, that's, that's a good thing. Actually. I like that. Yep. I don't know if everybody feels that way, but I think it, I think it just shows that it's, uh, it's real and it's whole and it's, uh, unadulterated. It's just good stuff.

Yeah. That's the, that's the reason for it.

Wow. The flavor is just a big pal. It's, uh, definitely the big brother to the 91. It definitely carries a lot more, uh, body and richness. It is deeper. It is a little bit darker, but it's not like, uh, it's not like this super for me. It's not a super chocolate, deep chocolate. It's, it definitely has chocolate notes. It definitely has that for me that, uh, And a little bit of marshmallow, like you mentioned that, that, that schmor, that's more, the Oak plays a bigger part. It just, it has a wonderful, again, you've raised the bar with the proof. You get more concentrated whiskey here. It still maintains that balance very nicely. And, uh, it's a good drinker and it, and it mid forties is what you say. Did you say mid forties?

Yeah.

Fantastic. What a value. Awesome. Thank you. Yep. Really good.

Yeah, a lot of people ask me what I would compare it to, and I say nothing. I really don't think there's anything like it in the market.

Yeah, I think both these whiskeys stand on their own a little bit. Their profiles are not like anything else out there that you can get. It's always exciting for me to try something. Now, I've had both of these before, so I'm not totally surprised by their tasting here. I do know that I always get very excited when I get to taste something that's not like something else I've had. And again, some people like to stay in their little box and they like to drink the same thing all the time.

A lot of people.

Yeah. And there's a lot of us who like to venture out and try something new every day and just be an explorer. But when you run across that whiskey that you say, this is something special. This is something a little unique. This is something I want to revisit on a more than seldom occasion. Um, it's a good thing. And I feel like these fit into that because, and I've got a couple of friends that I sip with often and they're, they're guests on the shows sometimes. And we sit around and drink whiskeys together, but we've all kind of gotten into this, uh, I'm not going to call it a high malt, but we've all tried to focus a little bit more on malted grains. And, uh, it's just a very interesting place to be.

Yeah. Well, it's very dynamic and, um, and you pay for it too, which is why a lot of people don't do it. It's specialty multi-grains are on average 10 times the cost of the raw grains.

So now both of these whiskies had a nice, uh, medium to long finish on them. I'd say maybe the, the proof is helping this one last just a little bit longer, but, um, the flavor does stick with you and, uh,

Very nice. Very, very nice.

Thank you. So we, we aren't, we're only tasting two of your whiskeys on the show today, but you guys have a number and you mentioned the rye a couple of times now, but you have a number of other expressions or series that you do that our listeners can find side by side with your products on the shelf. Can you talk a little bit about those?

Yes, so beyond 99 rye, you have bottle and bond, which is, we have two releases per year, we have a fall vintage and a spring vintage, or I guess I should say, in order of operation spring vintage and then a fall vintage. And what's unique about the bottle and bond is, is that we don't just use our flagship recipe to create it. Oftentimes, our flagship recipe 91 is in it. Sometimes it's not. But like, actually, we have a we have a bottle of bond coming up where it is not in there. It is a it's heavily a roasted and weeded. But we we have a variety of high roasted recipes and high weeded recipes and and high rye recipes. And so a bottle of bond could be a number of recipes blended together. We've even had a peated recipe that we've used in bottom bond before. And so it's a really dynamic bottle and bond, not like your typical bottle and bond that is most of the time from other brands is just a bottle and bond version of their flagship recipe. So highly complex on our end. We also have the barrel finishing series, which we launched in 2020 with Tawny Port, which was a blend of different bourbon recipes made at Riverfront aged in Tawny Port barrels for an extended period of time. Then after that, in 2021, we released Scotch Cask, which was a blend of different bourbon recipes one of the recipes utilizing a peated malt in it, and then finished in Isla barrels for an extended period of time. So quite smoky for a bourbon. And then in 2022, we released Silver Oak I think I might be backing this up might be my actually tiny port might have been 21 and then Scotch cast 22. And then anyways, annually, we do a barrel finishing series. So then then our third release was a Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon, which they're a popular winery out of out of California makes very high quality stuff with their merit. We use their American cab barrels to finish a variety of single malt recipes that we blended together. for that, which was a super unique release. And then our fourth barrel finishing series release was utilizing white pork barrels with, again, a blend of different recipes. Our barrel finishing series is super complex, blending multiple recipes together in order to complement the finishing barrel that we're utilizing. Typically with these finishing barrels, we don't just use the same finishing barrels that everybody else does. We go after very specific, unique flavor profiles that are very high quality. We have a Pinot coming up, so there's a little glimpse into the future. So that's pretty exciting. We also have a triple Isla cask coming up. So we're going to revisit the Scotch cask, but in a different way. And then we also have founders. So we have three giant salera barrels, white oak salera barrels, one that is exclusively designated for 91, one that we call that our present, one that is exclusively designated for 1816, which is the only place we keep our past traditional recipe is in that salera barrel. And then we have a 1700 gallon white oak salera barrel that we call our future, which is infinity, and that has more than 30 different recipes and it from both riverfront and experimental and only one time a year we blend a different percentage of those of our past or present in our future together. to create our anniversary, which is founders.

And we just came out with our- You guys are having too much fun. You're having too much fun.

We do a lot of cool stuff, man. A lot. So that's another one of our cool- And then of course we do some single barrels as well, which We're not as big of a single barrel producer as a lot of our competition that is really focused on single barrels. I mean, we're lucky if we get 20 to 30 single barrels out a year across our 16 states. But we do have them. So yeah, we've got a lot of releases. But of course, our core is 91 and 111. You'll typically see In a store, you might see the lineup 91, 111, 99 rye, and bottom bond. You might see a barrel finishing series. You might see a founders in there, or maybe even a single barrel. But yeah, that's our everyday offering. Then of course, experimental, every couple of months, we're coming out with something new. We have a peach-infused high malt gin that is based off of a Tennessee high malt recipe that we have coming out in the next week. And so that's pretty exciting. That'll be our third gin that we've done. and maybe our tenth infusion that we've done. We've got a lot of really cool infusions. I would actually encourage all of your listeners to go to ChattanoogaWhiskey.com because it's an impressive amount of information from products and releases that we've done. I think we've done over 100 experimental releases that you can only buy at the experimental distillery. So, we do a lot, but it's all under the Chattanooga Whiskey umbrella. It's all based on Tennessee Highmalt. And we try to offer a great value with every single one of these releases. Our lineup ranges between $30 on the low end with $91. And in the market, it's typically 60 to 60 or mid 60s on the high end for single barrels. Uh, and then for experimentals, we might get as high as, you know, uh, high seventies or maybe 80, but everything is between 30 and, and $80 with the majority of that stuff being between 30 and 50 or 30 and $60. Yeah.

So you guys are on a major corridor. People travel going North and South, uh, in the Eastern U S you probably get a lot of traffic coming through. I mean, a good portion of the. of the population finds their way to Florida every year and back. And I imagine quite a few of those probably peel off in Chattanooga to visit you guys. What's it like to visit the distillery? What do you guys offer there?

So the experimental distillery is the only operation of the two between Riverfront and what we call the experimental EXP that you can visit. Riverfront is It's where we produce 2000 barrels a year, and at some point in the near future, we will open it to tours. But we're seven years in, and we haven't opened it to tours yet, so there's no telling. But with experimental, since 2015, it's been one of the top tourist destinations in the entire city. For a TripAdvisor, it's usually ranked in the top one or two. And we typically see 40 to 50,000 people a year come through from all over all 50 states and lots of international travelers as well. We do tours every hour on the hour, seven days a week between noon and 8 p.m. And you can come in, you can do a full tour where it's an hour of education and sipping one of the, I'd say one of the best bourbon flights in America where you have a sample, six different samples on a flight that bring everything from our flagships to potential experimentals that we've recently released that you can't get anywhere else. But you get to go through production, you get to go through the barrel house. We actually age all of our barrels underground at the experimental distillery, which is a really cool part of the experience because of our boiler downstairs. It really heats up that space and creates nice evaporation. So we get the benefit of that. Otherwise it'd be like aging your barrels in a cave and you wouldn't get any evaporation, but we get, we get a lot. And it's made some awesome products because of it. And then we have a beautiful tasting bar. Yeah, it's a very kind of unique, intimate and warm experience. And it's a 100 plus year old building. We use a lot of materials from our barrels and it's just a really beautiful space. You can actually see the space on our website or you can get on TripAdvisor and check out all the reviews, which are typically 4.9 out of 5 stars. So that's a It's been a great way to tell our story and introduce people all over the world to Chattanooga whiskey.

So I think you mentioned earlier, you guys are in about, is it 17 states? 16. 16 states. Can you rattle those off quick or is that too much to ask?

No, of course. It's all southeast, south, central and Midwest. So, um, so Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado was the furthest Western state. And then into the Midwest, you've got, uh, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin.

Fantastic. And what about shipping? How about, can your products be shipped?

So, we do work with Sealbox and you can access that through our website. So, you just go through chadrenwhiskey.com and access our products online at Sealbox. They don't always ship to even 30 states. Sometimes that fluctuates. It's typically around 30. Uh, depending on the walls, but, um, but so if, if you're, hopefully you're lucky enough to be in one of those States, if you are not nearby one of our 16 States.

Well, that's good information because I'm sure there are a few listeners out there that have heard this review and listen to your, you talk about the history of the company and it may want to put their hands on a bottle. And if they're not in one of your distributed States, they can give it a shot, get ahold of seal box, go to, go to your website, uh, link up to seal box and place an order. Tim, it's been a blast. It's been so much fun. I've had such a great time today drinking through your two whiskeys. I think they're a great value. They're definitely something people can can pick up without much taking too much of a chance. So if people are worried, you know, we talked about how some people like to stay in their lane, right? Well, if this is a little bit out of your lane, you're not going to, you're not going to spend a fortune to figure out, you know, I mean, $30 is a great way to figure out if this is a new whiskey you might like. And I'd be betting that there's quite a few people out there that are really going to like this.

Agreed. And I really appreciate you giving me the platform to talk about them. And I hope that if any listeners are nearby, they come in, take a tour. I think they will not regret it, especially considering it's only $16 to take a tour. And you can sample the products even without taking a tour. So yeah. And hop online. Follow us on Instagram. We're very active on there, kind of showing people behind the scenes what we do. And then, of course, with all the product releases that we have, which, as I mentioned, it's quite a few each year, they can track us pretty well on that as well. And subscribe to our newsletter through our website at chadnewiskey.com.

Fantastic. Well, thanks again. Thanks for sharing your whiskeys with us and thanks for your storytelling. It was a great time and we hope to have it on again sometime in the future and talk about new things that you do.

I look forward to it. Thanks, Jim. Appreciate it.

All right, well, you can find The Bourbon Road on all social media outlets. You can find us on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, threads. Yeah, I think all of them. It's a lot, but we get out there. We also do a show every single week on Wednesdays. We'll have a guest on. Sometimes it'll be a distillery, like Chattanooga Whiskey. We'll have a great guest on like Tim here. Sometimes, you know, they're not in the whiskey business. Sometimes they're musicians or authors or comedians even sometimes. It's just anybody who will love to have a good whiskey story with us and sit down and drink a few pours. It's always fun. We're always looking forward to it every week and we hope to give you a few laughs. Check us out. You know, one way to make sure you don't miss us though is to scroll to the top of that app you're on, hit that subscribe button. Every single week you'll get that notification saying Jim's dropped another episode and you better get on and check it out. But until the next time, we'll see you down the Bourbon Road.

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