43. A Day with Angel's Envy and Wes Henderson

Oh my gosh.

Somebody just brought in cake balls. Have you heard of cake balls before until now? I have. Oh my gosh. I think they're millennial. Oh, this looks just like, this is like, Oh my gosh. I'm going to wait till we taste before I eat those. Usually it's on a little stick.

Really? What'd you, did you pull the stick out? You didn't think he'd be able to deal with a stick on there.

It's like a cake balls, Batman, cake balls and rye whiskey. So we're going to jump into the rye whiskey now. This,

Welcome to another trip down the Bourbon Road with your hosts, Jim and Mike. So grab a glass of your favorite bourbon and kick back.

We would like to thank Tommy and Gwen Mitchell from Log Heads Home Center for supporting this episode of the Bourbon Road. Find out more about their fine rustic furniture at logheadshomescenter.com. Hello everyone, this is Jim and welcome to the Bourbon Road. It may be a day late, but hopefully our bonus episode gave you a little entertainment in the meantime. And in today's episode, Mike is flying solo at Angel's Envy as he interviews Wes Henderson. I think you're going to enjoy this show as the two of them get into some great conversation while tasting some fine Angel's Envy expressions. And later in the show, Wes announces his new seller collection release and talks a little about the 17 projects they have in the works and how it is working with his boys there at the distillery. And Wes really gives me a hard time for being absent at the interview. And I really feel bad about that. And Wes, if you're listening, my apologies. I promised to make it up in the future and I hope there'll be a next time. Now, without any further chit chat on my part, let's get on with the show.

Hey, this is Mike Hyatt from the Bourbon Road and I'm here at Angel's Envy Distillery in downtown Louisville. Wes Henderson, we're going to have him on today and he was good enough to have us in here. And we've been trying to work on this for a while, right?

Yeah, it's, you know, it's a, the bourbon business is crazy right now, as you know. But I'm glad we finally got together and I'm glad you got to come down and see the distillery. And I understand we'll talk about it later. You got to try something pretty special too. So, I mean, it was worth the wait, right? Oh, definitely. shit turns out, whether or not it's worth it, whether I'm entertaining or not. But we'll see that here in a minute.

Well, I hit you up probably a bad time. I hit you up in a bourbon heritage month, and then October comes around. That's a busy month for bourbon. And then the holidays come on in November, and then there's deer season for us. December, which is Christmas time.

There's always something. And anymore, it seems like there's always something, something. I mean, now we're already in Derby planning, in earnest. And with the bourbon industry, the way it is, literally, I could be gone every day of the week doing something different somewhere else around the world. And when we started Angels Envy, I literally was. I traveled all the time, probably 80% or 90% of the time. But now, you know, I'm trying to spend my time in, you know, quality rather than quantity, so I have a life. But yeah, I'm glad we finally got together and it's always fun to sit down and talk about bourbon, especially with people that have passion for bourbon, and obviously your listeners, I think they're listening, plus they're your family members, they love bourbon too. Yeah, most of them.

Most of them, I hope they live, love bourbon. Or maybe they're bourbon curious and they just want to know, hey, what's in that Angel's Envy bottle? What makes it special? So that's why we'd like to get as many people in the industry and the culture on our podcast. Now, Gina couldn't come down today. He's a busy man, too. It's just me and you together.

Did he send a note or anything like that or a gift or an offering or anything because he wasn't here? He didn't.

He did say, come by the house and try this stuff. Okay. All right.

All right. We'll have to, we'll be good to him right now.

But as Jim likes to say every time, Hey, we like to get straight to the whiskey. So what's the first pour we got here?

We're going to start with our Angels Envy flagship bourbon. It's our Angels Envy Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey finished in port wine barrels. I say it's kind of the familiar Angels Envy. It's what we launched with. It's a Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey about four to six years old and then finished in a port wine barrel for up to six months or so. Ruby port wine barrel. And for those of you that are fans of Angel's Envy, it's very consistent, it's very reliable, it's very complex. And for those of you that are new to bourbon, it's a great bourbon to maybe introduce yourself to bourbon because of the taste profile. So I figured we'd start there and then we kind of work our way to something else. All right, let's do it. All right, let's do it. Cheers. Cheers.

You can definitely know when he knows you can smell that. I think that port a little bit.

You get a little bit of the hint of that port and those are some of the dried fruits and you get the dried fruits on the. you know, when you taste it as well. And it's your typical Kentucky bourbon notes. We've got just a little bit of oakiness, a little bit of woodiness. The oakiness comes out a little bit more if you add water to it, which I'm not a big fan of. You get maybe some, some vanilla, some banana on the nose for sure. And there are a million different, you know, you can sit here all day. There are 300 and some odd different aroma components for bourbon. Pretty much any damn thing you can think of as an aroma component. So, but what do you, do you get anything interesting or different in that?

I'm thinking like a, like a fig, like that, that, that a fig Newton cookie. I don't know. Everybody's different. Like you said, there's those three different deals, but each person has a diff, different sensory what we do.

And then, you know, we, we all, and when our senses change or anatomically, we change over time. Our taste receptors evolve, our tastes evolve. You can be educated on how to taste, by the way. By giving reference samples, you can teach somebody how to be a taster. But you have to be in tune to what those tastes are, what those aromas are, and oftentimes have a basis of comparison. you know, to say, oh yeah, that is that, that is a, you know, lavender or that is some exotic spice that, that I didn't realize before. But now that I smell it by itself, isolated, then you can find it within, you know, with kind of within the spirit.

You can get that class right here in Louisville over at moonshine university or the staving thief, right? I think so.

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a really good exercise. I started doing with scotch initially and now I'm seeing the bourbon. We do have a bourbon tasting kit. It's got 30 or 40 different aromas in it, which I love. And you know, when I was little, I would go with my dad down to Brown Foreman. I go to work with them on weekends a lot of times and at Brown Foreman in the R&D department. We can talk more about dad if you want to, but they had a wall that was probably. 10 or 15 foot long, and all it was were extracts, flavor extracts, and different aromas and things like that. So as a kid, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world to just walk up to that wall and pick out anything imaginable that you thought was cool, that there was an aroma.

You can smell it.

And I still probably have that little bit of kid in me, and every time I see that tasting kid or that aroma kid, I still pull it out, and I smell stuff.

So your dad, he is a legend in the bourbon world. He worked for Brown Foreman for how many years?

Dad was there almost 40 years. 40 years.

That's a long time. That's loyalty right there.

It is. And I think some of that's generational. The guys older than us a lot of times stayed in places a lot longer than what people do now. But that was dad's, I think, second job. His first job was right out of college. He was a chemist. He did analysis of samples from Churchill Downs, from horses. And so he did that for a while and then he went to Brown Forum as a grain chemist. And he spent his entire career there until when he retired after he founded Woodford. And the rest is kind of history.

So he left there after 40 years, and it was several years before U2 founded Angels in Me. How did that discussion go? How did you say, man, dad, it was you or was it him? Hey, we need to make our own bourbon.

Yeah, I worked in the industry years ago, and I kind of came out and started doing some consulting in the industry about the time dad was going to retire. I was never really interested in being in the business. A lot of it just had to do with because that's what my dad did and I didn't want to feel like I got any place because of my dad, which is kind of silly now if you think about it. Why not take advantage of those opportunities when you get them? Dad had been retired for a few years and a good friend of mine came to me. We were sitting talking one day and he said, well, it's just out of curiosity. why have you never done anything with your dad? You know, you've got a world renowned distiller, a great reputation, great family name. And my friend Jay, I said, Jay, I don't really know. I don't know why we never did anything, but then the wheels got turning. So I was living in Florida at the time and I flew up to Kentucky and it was a Saturday morning, Saturday or Sunday morning. And we're sitting in his basement and I told dad, I want to talk with him about something. I said, dad, I want to start a bourbon brand as a family. What do you think about doing it? Well, I want to do it. Do you want to come and do it with us? And he said, sure. No hesitation, no. Now, looking back, he probably had no clue what we were getting into. Actually, I had no clue what we were getting into. And dad did what dads do, even if their son has a crazy-ass idea. He's like, okay, we'll figure it out. So that's how the scheme was hatched.

Now, so who had the idea for the name?

It was our group, our partnership, all the guys, me, dad, the other guys that I brought on board. We did it all internally. All the design was done internally. All the concept was done internally. When we keyed in on the Angel's Share as being something we thought was a great part of the story that hadn't been told a lot yet, especially 10, 11 years ago. And truthfully, if there wasn't an Australian wine that was trademarked Angel's Share, We might have called this Angel's Share, but I'm glad that it was like that because it pushed us to come up with some other thoughts and other ideas. When we decided on Angel's Envy, everything else just fell in place. We loved the idea of wings. The shape of the bottle conformed to the shape of the wings. Everything just really, and you can see on my, I can't show this on the podcast, but you can see it on the wall there. See that clear bottle on the right-hand side? Yeah. That was one of the original iterations. Now, we only did two, but notice how that one's a little bit, it's a little taller maybe. And this, we did two iterations and we settled on this one.

Well definitely, I'll get a photo of that before we leave so that our listeners can look on our website and look at the blog and check that out. I think, you know, it's probably one of the most recognizable bottles on the shelf today. It's not a wine bottle, it's not a whiskey bottle, so much shape. It's its own shape, right?

It is, and that's a really good point when you say it's not a whiskey bottle shape. I say it quite often when I talk about this package. I was very scared of it when we first started doing it because it was so different. But the same reasons I was scared of it ended up being the same reasons I loved it. Because it was so different. I mean, it's a sexy bottle. Well, it is. And that's kind of one of the things that breaks the conventionality of it is that it's sexy, but it's not so sexy or feminine that a dude's embarrassed to take it to the checkout stand. You know what I'm saying? Oh, yeah. And women love it. But now, It's less and less about what the bottle looks like. As women drinking more and more whiskey, they're more experts on what's in the bottle than what the bottle looks like anymore.

And most of them have a better sensor than we do.

I don't know if I'd ever admit that, but I think that the science says that that's probably the truth. And so the little bit of femininity was great. The way you hold it in your hands, we talked to bartenders, the width of the bottle, how it pours. All those little things came into play when you settle on a bottle design. The height is important as it relates to the shelf height and everything else. But you're right, it's become a very recognizable, almost iconic bottle.

So we got through the bottle. You guys are deciding on the name and the bottle and stuff. When was the decision made, said, hey, we are going to take and put our bourbon and port wine barrels? Where did that decision come about?

So the challenge was to dad. And I wanted to keep dad really excited and really engaged and really interested in what he was doing all along the way. And I talked with that, I said, dad, let's think of things you did in the past. Let's say a Brown Foreman that you really enjoyed doing or different production methods or things that you enjoyed doing that for whatever reason, didn't ever make it out. And Brown Foreman on Glen Morangy for a long time, which is a very fine single malt, you know, Scotch whiskey that is finished, typically finished. and other barrels. So we kept coming back as Secondary Barrel finishes. He always loved it. He thought it was fun. And I thought it was a key differentiator. We were the first people to really do it successfully commercially with bourbon. And I became fascinated with it as well. And that's just what we locked in on. We locked in on that pretty early, too, what we wanted to do. It was risky though. We're talking 2009. It definitely sets you apart from anybody else. Absolutely. Especially back then. Now you see them all the time. Where were you guys distilling at then? We were sourcing. We were sourcing everything. We sourced from several different producers. The difference between us and a lot of other people though is we sourced it We did the finishing, we did the blending, we did the bottling, we did everything else related to, of course now all of our production is done here at our distillery. But we had several producers at the beginning where we sourced from very almost identical mash bills and then we just worked our magic on it.

And for our listeners that don't know what sourcing is, that's a mainly gigantic distillers that have, they'll have extra whiskey put aside and it can be any, you know, and it's been done for, you know, 150 years or more distillers.

You know, they, they, they swap sell whiskey all the time. It's still done now. They'll produce for each other after the Heaven Hill fire. Heaven Hill didn't have production capacity, so other distillers produced for them for several years. We helped them out, right? Exactly. We do that in the industry. We were very helpful to each other and very supportive of each other.

If you had to name one major person in the industry that helped you guys out, helped you and your dad start this, who would that be? Wow.

I've never been asked that question before. We were pretty self-reliant. I mean, we had help along the way. If we ever needed any help with anything or anybody had any questions. Bill Samuels is a dear friend. And I think Bill saw a lot of parallels between what I was trying to do and how he groommakers Mark. So we have a particular fondness for each other, I think. Um, uh, so I would talk to bill, but we just kind of locked ourselves in a, in a closet, you know, and just kind of did our thing, kept our heads down. We did all the bottle design ourselves. We did all the creation of the company, all the legal, all the label approvals, all the formula approvals.

I mean, your dad was really, did you really need anybody else besides your dad?

Well, no, I mean, I definitely, I, we, we did. And then what dad brought to the table was, is that, you know, I had a very distinctive view on what I wanted the product to be like. Dad was very much a validating factor and, you know, kept us on the right path. You know, I'd say, I'd take blends to dad. What do you think about this? What do you think about that? Should we take a look at this? Take a look at that. Dad was very, Dad was purposely very hands off because he wanted me to, you know, he wanted me to figure it out. but he was always there as a very guiding presence and a very validating presence. So, um, um, so, you know, but having dad's name and dad's pedigree in the industry absolutely helped us, especially at the beginning.

I'm sure that's something you miss every day passed away in 2013.

Yeah, I do. Yeah, it's been, it's hard to believe it's been six years. It, you know, unfortunately dad did not get to see the distillery completed. He got to see us break ground, but he got to see the brand grow. in a way that he'd never, I think we grew faster than Woodford did at the beginning. We may still be growing as faster than they have at this point in the longevity of each of the respective brands. But more importantly than that, he got to spend the last few years of his life, and I really believed I don't know whether dad felt this way or not. Dad was a melanoma survivor and for eight years after he was diagnosed. And I don't know whether in the back of dad's head, he thought that that would come back, you know, that he had a kind of a limited amount of time left. Yeah, and it may not be a conscious awareness. It just may be a sense. I might have sensed that too, that now is the time to spend time with my dad. For him to be able to spend the last few years of his life working closely with me and working with his grandsons, which he absolutely adored, was probably some of the best years of his life. To be able to share that with him, you know, forget about the building the brand, forget about the success of the brand, just, just the family experience together and creation was, uh, was, was a very blessed opportunity.

I mean, it's, it's also nice that you, you left his name on the bottle and you live that his legacy, it will always be there.

It will. And I stand pretty firm on that. People have come to me with the newer expressions and said, Wes, you've created these new expressions. Why isn't your signature on the bottom? I'm like, dad's the inspiration behind this company. Dad is our founding master distiller. And everything we do is inspired by dad. And so I believe that'll always be that way.

That's awesome. I think you do that. Let's take a little trip back in time.

Oh, here we go. So you're a young man.

You've got a dad that's in the business, in the bourbon culture. When would you think would be the first time that you had that first sip of bourbon?

Well, I was absolutely over 21. Oh, man. Look, I mean, for medicinal purposes, I'm sure that we had stuff. It's a very interesting thing. When you're in the industry and you grow up around it, it's like anything else. When you grow up around it, it's like a TV in the room. It's not taboo. It's not unusual. It's just part of what you do and a part of your life. My dad would keep Newmake under the counter in the bathroom and use it for aftershave. lab samples still had the lab label on it of new make. So I mean, I certainly had every opportunity in the world to drink whatever, but I think because that, that lack of a taboo and I didn't really drink a lot.

Honestly, I still don't drink a ton. So you can't remember that first sip of,

No, I can't. I can remember the first time I drank. Well, no. Yeah, I can. I can remember the time that I drank way too much, which I'm sure most people do.

I've got a long story about that.

But you know, the funny thing about it is, is I had access to probably some of the best whiskey on the planet. And when I was in school, I drank this crappy stuff, man. I mean, I drank Old Crow and I mean, actually Old Crow is not horrible, but you know, the stuff that just like, you know, you'd think that having access to the good stuff, I would drink some better stuff than But when you're that age, you're not thinking about the thing. You're not a connoisseur bourbon. You're just drinking whiskey that we can manage to find. So yeah, I wish I could tell you exactly when.

You said Old Crow, though. That's a grand old brand that we've talked about before. We actually had Michael Veach on a couple weeks ago. And Michael, we were talking about how we believe that Jim Beam should bring back that brand to its grandness. What do you mean?

You mean elevate it?

Elevate it to what it used to be. Maybe age it a lot longer.

If you're going to do it, now would be the time. I tell you who's done a really good job of this, and I said it to Brown Foreman for years, is to elevate Old Forester. Oh yeah. Which is one of the best whiskeys in the world, I believe. And to start elevating that to the place I think it deserves. So it's a good example of how you can take a product that has a lower shelf price and manage to, using packaging, using new expressions, reviving the store, remembering that it's the oldest continuously produced bourbon in the world, reminding people of that. So I think it's possible now to maybe do something like that with Old Crow. There's definitely opportunities there to do stuff like that. Now's the time if you're going to do it.

If there's other brands out there like that, I think that it'd be nice to see that they bring back like Cabin Steel, which was a Weller Cabin Steel. The name has changed. they almost killed that brand off before it was sold to Heaven Hill. And it may still produce today, but it could come back to being a grand, I would say a grand bourbon.

There's still a lot of, I'd be interested to see, I guess you could do a search to look at some of these old trademarks that have expired. And bring back those. Bring back those. I've thought about that off and on for quite a while, but I've just never gotten around to it. That would be very fascinating, especially in the history of Louisville. I look at some of these brands, I'm like, what the hell? There's thousands and thousands of bourbon brands out there I'm sure that nobody's ever heard of. And there's some history behind every one of them, most likely. And to be able to do that would be fun, I think.

We had another guy on, a guy named David Rich from Rich Green to Steeling down in Canton, Mississippi, and he brought back an old brand. He bought the trademark to it, I think, or the rights to the company, and it was out of, actually out of St. Louis, and he brought it. I don't know if he was the first in Mississippi to make bourbon, but he's definitely making bourbon in Mississippi.

The first person to make it legally. There's a, sure. There's a lot of whiskey being made in Mississippi that nobody knows always paying taxes on down there. Probably still a lot of that in Kentucky. I'm sure. Yeah.

So, um, so we went back in time and stuff. Let's talk about your, your, you walk in this place and it's great distillery. You broke ground on here in 2011. Yep. Was that a scary process? Man, I'm fixing to take this gigantic step.

Probably not so much because I was really more involved with building the brand. We knew we kind of had a tiger by the tail. When we built it, it was a $27 million facility. We've probably made a couple million dollars more investment here as well as investment elsewhere on warehouses and stuff. So, I mean, it's always scary when you're taking that next step. It was very exciting because then you're really controlling your own destiny when you're doing your own production. Who else was downtown at that time? And that was another thing that I believe took a lot of forethought. You know, we had Evan Williams down there, which is kind of like distillery light. You know, it's a great story. And it's definitely a great part of the story of bourbon in Kentucky, but there's not a lot going down there on a production level. We were the first full production facility downtown Louisville. And for those of you that are from Louisville and may or may not know the history, I started talking about this urban bourbon concept with Jerry Abramson back in 2006 or 2007. And Jerry was all for it. I mean, of course, Jerry was the biggest cheerleader for the city you've ever seen. But and then, of course, Mayor Fischer came in and Greg has been a tremendous supporter. But when we were talking about doing it in the in the late 2000s, it was definitely a novel idea. And, you know, the thought I had about it was that There was so much history downtown, and it really kind of got jacked. It kind of got jacked and taken out to surrounding areas. There's no need for the river no more, right? Well, yeah. That was the basis of the city. The city was founded because of the river, and the river was very important. And I still think that the river was important for commerce when these distillers moved out to other areas. But that history was forgotten. And to be able to bring it back to an urban bourbon setting, I thought would be a lot of fun. And we considered other stuff too. I mean, we considered, I thought about buying the old Taylor's Delray. I looked at the old, old Crow distillery out there on the same out in Milltown or Millville. Millville, yeah. Which is like, what, five people live there. They all work at the distilleries.

There's nothing but distilleries out there.

Yeah. So in the old Taylor place, I loved it, but it was, to me, it looked like a money pit, but it was beautiful. But then I started keying in on urban bourbon, so that's how we ended up here. I think it's awesome you guys

Revitalized downtown Louisville, I think, is one of the key points. You're right across from the ballpark here. There's breweries coming in, more businesses coming in. Louisville, it's making Louisville look nicer. How can you go wrong with that when you help a city out and bring more people downtown?

I don't think you can. And everybody works together so well. Everybody plays well together. All the distillers play well together. We've kind of got all different pieces of the puzzle. Like I said about Evan Williams earlier, I don't think you're going to go there and learn a ton about distilling, but you're going to learn a lot about the history of Bourbon and Louisville, the history of the river. And just a different piece, you know? And at Old Forester, you're going to get a different, another piece. You know, they've got a cuprage there, which is, which is cool as shit, you know? And not everybody gets to see that. So everybody kind of has a little something different they can add to it. And we all work together very closely. I work a lot with Campbell Brown at Brown Foreman and those guys. And, you know, we're all pulling, we're all pulling in the same direction here.

Well, so we'll go ahead and finish up. Yeah, cause I'll keep talking.

I'll keep yacking as long as you sit here. So.

Well, you put some chocolate out there.

Let's do that. Let's, uh, let's pour another, uh, we'll finish this up. Well, let me do this.

Do you want to take a break or yeah, we'll take a break and we'll come back and we'll drink some, we'll drink some bourbon, drink some bourbon and then we'll eat some chocolate too. And then we'll come back and we, you got a second expression for, for us to try. Um, and, uh, we'll see you back in a minute. Hang around.

We would like to thank Tommy and Gwen Mitchell from Loghead's Home Center for supporting this episode of the Bourbon Road. Loghead's Home Center, nestled in the hills of Kentucky, is an industry leader in building handcrafted rustic furniture. Family owned and operated, they take pride in offering only the very best for their customers. The Logheads, and that's what they like to call themselves, are skilled wood crafters who are passionate about creating rustic furniture for people who appreciate the beauty of natural wood. Owners Tommy and Gwen don't just sell the rustic lifestyle, they live it. And you can be sure that Loghead's furniture will always be handcrafted in Kentucky by artisans who embrace the simple way of life. Loghead's rustic furniture is made from northern white cedar, a sustainable wood that's naturally rotten termite resistant. Its beauty and quality will add warmth to your earthy lifestyle for generations to come. Be sure to check out everything they have to offer at LogHeadsHomeCenter.com. And while you're at it, give Tommy and Gwen a shout on Facebook or Instagram at LogHeadsHomeCenter.

So we're back for the second, our second half and for our second pour Wes, what do we, what do you got for us?

Let me ask you a question. You got through like one question in the last half hour, right? You got a long list and only let you get in one question. Is that about right?

No, I got a few.

I got down through there. All right. All right. Okay. That's cool.

You know, a lot of the questions were about the bottle, your dad, uh, this second half we're going to talk about family.

So we answered some, so we answered some even though we didn't like go to Ray. Okay. That's cool.

We have some extra stuff that I think our listeners will find interesting about Louisville, Kentucky. This second half, let's talk about the future and let's talk about your family.

Do you want to take a quick drink of this bourbon? What I'd like to do, if you don't mind, you've got a chocolate there, right? I don't suck that chocolate down. She actually poured me some extra bourbon.

Let's go back to the family stuff. So let's, let's talk about our first, uh, what, what do we got for this poor second poor second poor.

So the second poor is our angels envy rye whiskey. Oh my gosh. Somebody just brought in cake balls. Have you heard of cake balls before? I have. I think they're millennial. Oh, this looks just like, this is like, Oh my gosh, I'm going to wait till we taste before I eat those.

Usually it's on a little stick. Really? What'd you pull the stick out? You didn't think he'd be able to deal with a stick on there. It's like a,

Holy cake balls, Batman. Cake balls and rye whiskey. So we're going to jump into the rye whiskey now. This is our rye whiskey finished in X rum barrels. It's become one of those things that we see people talk about quite a bit. It's a 68 year old rye whiskey, 95% rye mashbill finished in a rum barrel for up to 18 months. And right off the bat, have you ever had the rye before? I have. Okay. All right. So I figured that silly question right off the bat on the nose, you get that molasses. It's almost like dessert in a glass creme brulee. Um, it, it, it, it does have an element of sweetness to it when you taste it, but I don't think it's as sweet as your nose believes it to be. And at a hundred proof, you still get a little kick there, but I also believe that if I didn't tell people it was a hundred proof, they wouldn't know. Cause it's, it just definitely drinks.

You think it's like a 90 proof or higher?

No lower, lower. I think it definitely, uh, yeah, somewhere in that range probably.

Now that's a rye whiskey I can get into right there. And a lot of our listeners know that I'm a weeded bourbon guy. I love some wheat bourbon.

My son Andrew keeps pushing to do some weeded stuff and one of these days we probably will get around to it. Let's do this, do me a favor, take another sip of that whiskey and then take a bite of that chocolate, that white chocolate. And then after you take a bite of the chocolate, take another sip of the whiskey and see what it does to the flavor there. We designed these chocolates, by the way. I sat down with a chocolatier. So after you chew that, take another sip of the rye, if you would. And it's a really good exercise in tasting and how things complement each other and how they can alter. It completely changes the taste profile, having that little bit of chocolate.

I actually think it takes some of the sweetness out of the rye whiskey a little bit. For me, it does. I kind of feel bad for chewing on these angel wings. I never thought about that until you just mentioned it. Yeah, well, it probably wouldn't hurt me any to chew on some angel wings.

No, we'll get some more. So, we do the same thing with our bourbon. If you want to tour the distillery, we feature some chocolates along the way as a pairing exercise. So yeah, that's our rye. The rye has been a lot of fun. It's very unique, just like anything else we do. It's very bold. The flavors or aromas are very much in your face. It's very aggressive in the finish. Unlike the port barrel finish, which is very subtle, this is not subtle. The rum barrel just jumps out and smacks you upside the head. I think a lot of whiskey drinkers, this would be perfect for them to start with. You know, that's a really good point. The high proof sometimes can be an issue, but I will tell you that people who don't drink whiskey drink this, and you're right. I mean, they tend to love it. And even people that don't like rye, they say, I don't like rye whiskey, blah, blah, blah. And I was thinking to myself, please, just do me a favor, just take a teeny tiny sip. And because of that finish is so dominant, you still get the spiciness of the rye, but it's unlike any other. It's almost its own category.

Some people say it's not its own category, but I think it definitely is. Rye whiskey is rye whiskey. And some of them are different, but this is definitely, it's got great legs on it in the glass. Still got that oily, that taste. Coat your mouth. I love it. I agree. Thank you. I'm glad you like it. And I'm sure some of our listeners are like, what? This weeded bourbon guy. is sitting there loving on some rye whiskey. It's all good, man.

You can love more than one thing. Yeah. Well, except for women. Yeah. One woman, right?

Right. So let's talk. You talked a little bit about your tour and how you have chocolates on your tour. What can one of our listeners, when they come in and take a tour, what can they expect?

I didn't expect to have a blast. We have a great team here, very engaging, our distillery guardians that do the tours. It's a full production facility, so you get to see everything that relates to Angel's Envy. We talk about the history of the family, we talk about the history of the brand, how it was developed. And we take you through the entire process here and up close. We also have some interactive tours where you can fill your own bottle. That's pretty new, right? Yeah, a few months old. We reimagined it a little bit. We tightened it up. We also have a behind the barrel tour for rye. So you're actually going and tasting rye out of the barrels. So we've created some other experiences in addition to our signature tour is what we call it. So we were consistently ranked one of the top visitors locations in the city on TripAdvisor, like two or three or one sometimes.

And you offer a military discount too, right? We do.

Free for military. Free for military. Military ID we've been working on maybe doing something with first responders as well so because that's very near and dear to my heart and You know we definitely as you can tell by the stuff in my office that I have from the military up here I'm a pilot as well. So anybody that flies airplanes.

I have a special affinity for so So yeah, we we definitely take care of those who've taken care of us over the years now I never have flown an airplane, but I've make a I've made a couple boats fly in my military career

Yeah, that's a whole different ball game right there, isn't it?

Well, there's more planes in the ocean than there are boats in the sky. I can always say that. There you go. That makes sense.

Yeah. Now that I think about that, you're exactly right.

So it's always safer to get on a boat.

But it's all physics. It's thrust and lift. Whatever you got. I mean you got a boat you got those things, you know, you can get out you get out of the water, right?

You can you can get them out of the water That's a that's a pretty awesome thing. So the tour I think that's a you know that you can fill your own bottle here And there are some other distilleries that have started that in the past couple years But what a great experience you can come here. You can get that bottle field You can actually get it laser engraved here, too

laser engraved. You also fill out the, we make you do the whole thing. If you're going to fill it, we're going to make you fill it. You know, you're going to fill it. You're going to sign, fill out your own side labels, uh, package it all together. We, we label it or we, we log it in a book. So if you come here 20 years from now, 50 years from now, you can see that bottle as it was logged in. And it's actually genius on my part because we make you do the labor and we charge you more for it. Yeah. It's perfect. That's perfect. But everybody seems to love it. It's a fun, it's a beautiful box. So we, the tour usually sells out.

You guys are just kicking on all cylinders. Now you got, you got a cast at strength release every year on this past year. You had a great one in the boxes though, for those whose idea was that to come out with that box.

The box has evolved over the years and I wish I had one of the first, I don't have one of the first boxes in here. I would show you and give you a picture of it. When we started Angels MV, my partner's initial, we did the first one in 2012, which was right after we launched the brand. They did not want to do a cast strength. They were totally against it. They said, Wes, if you want to do it, you freaking figure out how to do it. So I said, okay. So I designed the box. I came up with the concept, the whole deal. And we did the first one in 2012, which Paul Picaltine had the number one spirit in the world in 2012, which was pretty cool. But the box has just evolved. Now the box itself is a work of art. The way that my team has put that together, it's a display piece. As you know, you've seen it. Well, I got one on my shelf.

There you go. And I think that's the same thing about your bottle and that box. My opinion is I don't want to put a bottle whiskey on my shelf for display even if it's for drinking If it looks unpleasing, you know, it just to me, you know, I believe in feng shui Everything has a feeling to it I get that low and if I put something looks cartoony up on my shelf and everything else is old oak and wood.

You don't have a bottle of Ron Burgundy scotch. I do not. I like to, I like to have him on. Yeah, that's that was Jean. The thing, the genius about it is I bought a bottle of it.

Just kind of thought it was cool, but I just, that's my opinion. I guess I understand that.

I totally get it. I think there's also some pride behind it too. If you're going to bring people into your bar and you want to kind of, you know, you want to show off what you got a little bit, why not put your best foot forward? Yeah. That's the way I feel about it too. You know, Hey, here's some stuff from pre prohibition, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I looked around your office, you know, uh, and you do have some pretty awesome old bottles in here. Yeah. Thank you. Just amazing to me that the love for that history of the bourbon, um, culture and sometimes that's getting lost. And, um, some people don't appreciate that is a drink of dusty to drink a dusty.

Right. It's harder to find. That's one of the problems I see here lately is that I'm collecting stuff, a lot of it, for historic reasons and research, especially pre-pro things. They're so expensive now and so hard to get because people just want to covet them. It's okay to drink them. It's okay to enjoy them. It's driven the prices up to where we want to be able to preserve as much of the history as we can and to have samples of that and to be able to reference that enables us to do that. But I still buy stuff. I pay stupid amounts of money for stuff that's crazy. But I want that for research, so I'm willing to do it.

Let's talk about that a little bit since you brought it up. What's your thoughts on the secondary market?

It is what it is. I mean, if there's a demand for something, there's going to be a market. The market's going to figure out how to deal with it. And I think it's unfortunate in many ways because it blocks people out. Prices block some people out from enjoying certain things. And people that collect just to collect. It drives me nuts when I meet somebody and the first thing they say is Pappy Van Winkle and that's all they know. Um, not because it's not a great brand because they're dear friends and it's a great brand, but you know, it's, I want this because nobody else has it and because I can afford it. And, and most of them think they know everything they know, they know in the world to know about bourbon. And I'm just like, okay, you know, have at it.

But they don't like the Pepe Van Winkle. They, they do not like that secondary market at all.

I talked to Preston about that a few months ago when they came out saying they were going to go after everybody in the secondary market. I don't doubt their sincerity at all because they're wonderful people, but in a way they ought to wake up every morning and say thank you to the secondary market because that's one of the things that's driven that brand to the spot that it is now. But it also comes back to what I said a minute ago is that it takes it out of the hands of normal, I say normal people, that's a good of your average working guy isn't going to pay $2,000 for a bottle of something, and I don't blame him. Like me, I can't. I'm not going to pay. I can't pay $2,000 for that. No. And even if I can't, I'm not. So, you know, and especially not and put it, and then put it on my shelf. Sure. And not open it. There's something wrong there. So the market is what it is. The market's always going to drive where things go. It's unfortunate in many ways, but it's also raised the profile. We've got Cast Drink, 2012 Cast Drink, that's seen for $4,000 online.

That's crazy.

Part of me thinks, oh my God, that's ridiculous. I can't believe that. The other part of me thinks like, oh yeah, that's really cool. Somebody will pay two, you know, $4,000 for it. Um, but, um, I don't know what that is. That's a long winded answer to your question, but Hey, so let's talk about family. So this is a family business.

Got a lot of kids. How many boys you got? I have six boys. How many girls? No girls. I have two granddaughters though. So you've got two boys that are in the business big time with you.

Now I have four. Started out with two and early on Andrew and Kyle were with me early on. Kyle was with me before he was even actually Colin Andrew joined before they were 21. You know, doing blending and stuff like that. So and then the last year and a half or so Spencer came on as a distillery guardian initially and now he's in production and Connor is in production as well. So my four oldest are active or full time members or workers working with the distillery.

Now, is there any plans for you guys to do something special together?

I thought you were gonna ask me, are there any plans to have any more kids? And I'm like, no, no, that ship, that ship sail.

I don't, I don't wish our age. Probably. Uh, we don't wish that on anybody. You know, my grandkids wear my ass out.

And I often say to my wife, I'm like, how do we do it? You know, we had, you know, one time had like kids, you know, four or five kids between five and newborn. You know, I mean, I don't know how the hell we do it. So, so doing things with the boys, that was the question. We were already doing things. It's very collaborative effort here, especially on the cast strength. They, they contribute a lot to that as they pull out barrels throughout the year that we, we ended up selecting for cast strength. We have meetings regularly about innovation and, and I pushed them out. I pushed them out of the nest on a lot of stuff. you know, Hey, you know, Andrew came to me with an idea of some barrels he wanted to finish in. Uh, I don't know about eight months ago. And I think he expected me just to take the idea and do it. I'm like, I said, no, do it. Go ahead. Find the barrels.

We're walking in here. I seen one of them in his desk. His head was down. He is working.

They work their butts off. They really do have an amazing work ethic. They're very respectful of the industry. They don't take anything for granted as to why they're here. I mean, sometimes I think you see a little entitlement because they're kids. That's not unusual, right? I think anymore it's sad. It's really sad. But look, I've had to work my ass off my entire life. And I think that the kids see that and they appreciate that. And they know the meaning of hard work and the rewards you get from hard work. And they know the meanings behind doing the right things and being charitable and working throughout the community to do the right thing. So I've got great kids. Couldn't ask for better kids.

So you talk about charity there with your kids. You guys do some great charity here, right?

I think so. I mean, we do a lot of that. I mean, on a daily basis, I think we're doing something that I consider, I don't know if I, I guess you would consider charitable or being part of the community or, you know, giving little pieces of ourselves that can maybe be beneficial to others on a sustainability issue or sustainability platform or toast the trees. is huge now. In September, the month of September, we, for every hashtag toast the trees that someone posts on social media with a picture of something angels envy, we plant an oak tree. And it's our way to give back some of the oak trees that we've used to build, to make barrels. This past year, we did over, I think, like 34,000 hashtags. So we are going to plant 34,000 baby oak trees. That's a lot of trees. It's a lot of trees. And we plant a good, I don't want to say a majority of them, we plant a good slug of them.

How long is it? Was it 50 years or 60 years before that tree could ever become a barrel? At least. At least, yeah. At least. That's thinking of the future and our future children and their children. Well, they can enjoy bourbon just like me and you do.

It is, and I think that it's funny, and not just in life, it's the same way in business. You set out, you start doing things for a certain reason or a certain way. Let's say you're going to do this, and it's interesting how it evolves over time. When the Toast the Trees thing first came out, I just thought, oh, this is a really cool marketing idea. I think it'll gain some traction, it'll get us some recognition, but then it took on a life of its own. then we realized the impact of what we were doing and how it's been embraced and all the good we're doing. So it's turned into almost a platform of sustainability. So something that just kind of started out as maybe being a good way to get people's attention and do a little something has turned into a lot of something. And it's really been great to see it grow.

So you're a first responder also. You're a certified firefighter. Yep. So how do you guys do anything with that, with first responders?

We do. We do a lot of special tours. We do a lot of special engravings. We're looking to do a first responder program. We do it for military now, active duty military and retired military. They get free admission. We're also working on a program for first responders. Four of my family members are state certified firefighters. I'm also a death investigator with the coroner's office. We're all involved in fire or law enforcement in some shape, form, or fashion. We have a keen sense of That also adds another layer of social responsibility to what we do here, and consuming spirits responsibly. Because we're out sometimes seeing the consequences of bad decisions, and people who don't consume adult beverages responsibly, that gives us a heightened awareness of how important it is that we play a big role in making sure that we communicate and do the right thing as far as responsibility goes.

You talk about that, and I think some people have asked me about that. Why do you buy so many bottles of bourbon or something? And to me, it's a safe, responsible thing to not go out to the bar every five or six days. Plus, I can't recover like I used to.

Oh, I'm into that. But guess what? Now, there's Uber.

Well, not out where I live.

Well, you live out in the sticks, which is beautiful out there where you live. But we're seeing those trends change with younger people, whereas my generation, we'd often drink and get behind the wheel of a car, which was totally insane, totally wrong. But now with the advent of Uber and other things like that, we're seeing that kids are taking, and adults now, there was never an excuse to do it before. There's no way there's an excuse to do it now, because there's so many other options.

A lot of people gather at home these days. and share a bottle together responsibly. For sure. And I think that's, you know, that thing, me and my wife, we will set out on our back deck and you know, there's not a very far commute from our back deck to the, to the bed.

No, it's not. You're not going to get pulled over walking from the, from the deck to your bedroom either.

Now, she might say, hey, you need to come to bed, because you're out there singing on the back deck to some old Hank Jr. or something.

There you go, scaring the squirrels and the deer away back there.

Well, our neighbor's far away. I think she's afraid they can hear me singing.

They promise me you're going to sing if you came today. No, that's not going to happen.

All right. OK. All right. I do not sing very well. OK. I can sit here and just shoot the shit with you and bullshit all day long about bourbon. That's all good. So whiskey guardians, tell me about that.

We, we keyed in on very early that it was going to be important for us to be involved in the bartender community, especially when we're bringing something to market that has a story that's a little different, you know, the finishing. So we aligned very early with bartender. So we, we sought out some of the top bartenders in the world in their different markets and we brought them on as what we call our whiskey guardians. So they are our active promoters and guardians and ambassadors of the brand. They also still work at local bars. So they're plugged into the community. Many of them are members of the US Bartenders Guild. So they do trainings in market. They do staff trainings with other bartenders. They do our charitable endeavors. They'll do tastings. When I go to market, they set things up for me. And it's turned into a program that a lot of people are trying to emulate because it's been so successful. So we have 70 or so of these folks around the country. They're extended family members, not extended. Well, I mean, they're extended. They're family members that are out telling the story and we bring them all here once a year and we have a big family party and great. Just the most amazing people you'll ever meet.

I think that's a way to not only tell people about your whiskey and your bourbon, but it's also an expert in those 50 different cities.

And it's real. It's real. It's people that have a passion, not just for Angel's Envy, but are respected as bartenders, respected as recommending great spirits. And the people we hired, there's good humans. I don't really know any other way. The spirits industry is so diverse. It's so caring and so willing to help out and to have all those people on my team that are out there doing it all over the world now because we're launching internationally is really an amazing thing to be a part of.

So you guys got a great bartender here too from what I understand.

Yeah, but don't tell him that because the last time somebody told him that he wanted more money and his head was too big and everything like that. Yeah, we do. We've got a team of bartenders here. Mike Bone heads up the team and they just created the new menu. Did you see that?

I haven't saw it. Jim was here the other night with you guys and he got to see everything.

It's the Seinfeld menu.

This he was just bragging all on everything. He was so excited. I think he heard him a little bit. He couldn't be here today, but he was like, man, they're bartender. They're just make some awesome drinks.

He's phenomenal. So this menu is their theme menus every every quarter or so. This is the it's a menu about nothing this quarter, which is a Seinfeld based Menu we've done what Willy Wonka. We've done Game of Thrones I can't think of all the different, but they're all themed cocktails and and if you come to our distillery here You can go to the bar and have a cocktail. It's a mad scientist laboratory. Oh going on over there They've got stuff growing over there that I don't even know what it is and some of it may be deadly I don't know, but I mean they make all their own fuse all their own infusions their own You know, the spices, their own syrups, their own bitters, all that stuff is done back there. And they're artists and scientists.

It's nice that you have that. You know, some people might not want to come in here and just drink that straight pour of bourbon or whiskey. I mean, Louisville's home of the old fashioned.

Why not show off the versatile, bourbon is one of the most versatile spirits in a cocktail you can get. And I can, even people that don't drink whiskey, I guarantee you to the largest extent, from 99% of the people that say they don't like whiskey, I can find a whiskey cocktail that you will like.

There's no doubt about that.

I was making Kentucky Ritas at the music festival, music festivals in September. Kentucky Ritas. Kentucky Ritas. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's got some bourbon in it. It's got some bourbon in it, but it's got some, some jalapenos in it and some, uh, some lime juice and you know, I mean just what you would expect.

It's a Kentucky Rita and it's really fricking good. That does sound good. I'm gonna have to look that up and figure out how you can't look it up.

It's just a, just think margarita and substitute whiskey. Well, you're just gonna have to send me a, send me a, I'll send you a care package out to Shelby County.

Maybe I'll come over to LaGrange to see you. So the future, let's talk about the future a little bit. So before I came here today, Jim came out here the other day and you guys had a media event and he got to try your new Tanny port that's coming out for 2020. And I tried that and it is fantastic.

I'm glad you like it. The Tawny Port finish will be out any day now. It's a 10-year-old bourbon. It's the oldest bourbon we've ever released. Then it's finished in that Tawny Port barrel for another 10 months. Very complex, very deep, dark, great color, great aroma. It's fun because as we get older, we have availability of different stocks. Not necessarily has to be older stock, but different stocks and different taste profiles we can play with. The Tawny has turned out amazingly well. Now is that going to be in a box or anything? Nope, it's not in a box, but it's in a special, it's our seller collection, which is the second release in our seller collection. The first was the Oloroso Sherry we did last year. This is the second piece of the seller collection puzzle. The bottle is a little more upscale, a little more, looks a little more frou frou, you know, kind of a nice frou frou is not a good word for it, but it's just a little more, it's a beautiful package. I don't know any other way to describe it.

Can the bottle get any sexier than it already is?

This one's a little sexier, I think. The gold lettering on it is really cool. We've changed the labeling around the label schematic a little bit, but we wanted to have a consistent labeling within the seller collection.

I mean, up on your shelf up there, I noticed you had a bottle that's been bedazzled. I do.

That was a gift. Um, I don't remember who gave that to me. Um, uh, yeah, she sent me a bedazzled bottle and the, I've never bedazzled anything, but looking at the intricacies of what, so she bedazzled for those of you, obviously you're listening, you can't see, but she's bedazzled the wings on the bottle. It's pretty awesome. And I would assume that the detail to do that has got to be incredible.

It definitely took some time.

Yeah, I mean, I don't even know how you bedazzle. I don't know how the hell you do it. But yeah, she's phenomenal and she did a great job. And some of the other bottles up there you see, some of them are bottles dad signed. Some of them are bottles with different labeling that we didn't end up using. So I just like to keep those things around. It's a cool reminder of how we got where we got.

So what can our listeners, you already said that there might be a weeded expression in the future.

Yeah, that's probably a way out. We've got 17 different-ish, different innovations in progress right now. And we don't have a timeline for this stuff. It just so happened we had a seller release last year. We've got a seller release this year. That's more happenstance than anything, because we're not on that gerbil wheel where we're going to spit out something every six months or every year.

put it out when we're ready to put it out.

So of those 17, I don't really have any, there's several leading contenders, but I don't know where we're going to go yet. I'm not quite sure what we're going to do, but, but rest assured they're, they're all fun. They're all unique and they're all within the kind of the same spirit, you know, what we're, what we've done up to this point.

So where can our listeners find you guys on social media?

Everywhere. Everywhere. Of course, Angels Envy, our website, www.angelsenvy.com. I encourage you to join our 500 Main group, which is a little group of folks that have Angels Envy in common. You get advanced notice of special releases. As a matter of fact, if you're a member of 500 Main, you're able to pre-purchase your tawny bear or your tawny bottle before anyone else. Please follow me. I'm at kyburbanmaker on Twitter and Instagram. I interact a lot with my followers and that's a lot of fun. You can find us all around. I do events all the time.

Wes, it's been great having us on day out. We'd love to come back and maybe sit down with you and your boys. Would love that. All at once. That's fine.

We're going to make you sing for your supper next time you come back.

Sing from a bourbon. There you go. It'd be great to hear their stories about their dad and about their grandfather.

We'll see about the dad stories. I'll have to hear those in advance from them.

I'd like to hear their stories of their first drink of bourbon.

I don't want to be in the room when that happens, but it is interesting to hear their perspective because they have a totally different perspective than I do because they've, you know, they've been a part of it, but they've also seen it from a periphery as it, as it developed. So yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll put you, we'll hook you guys up and I think it'd be fun, but you're welcome back anytime. And thank you so much for coming today. I appreciate it. Even though only, you know, even though you didn't bring everybody, that's okay. I got abandoned by the rest of the team today. It's okay, man. It's all good.

Yeah. Jim, Jim, Jim, it's going to hurt his heart. I'm going to rub it in.

I'm going to rub his ass, rub it in his ass really good here for not being here. But, uh, uh, you know, we were glad we got to see him. Uh, was it yesterday? Was it day before yesterday, Tuesday? I lost total track of time, but any time my friend, thank you very much.

So listeners out there, you can find me and Jim on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. You can find me at OneBigChief on Instagram and on Facebook. I'm on Twitter a little bit, but not too much. Join our Facebook group, The Roadies. We're on there all the time talking. You can also find us on Spotify and on Apple iTunes, iHeartRadio. Almost anywhere you can listen to a podcast, listen to us. If you like us, leave us a five-star review. If you don't, just don't bother.

No, we want those five star review anyway. Yeah, but they're going to love you. So it really doesn't matter, right? They like my deep voice. Oh, there you go. There you go.

Perfect. Perfect. We'll see you on down to bourbon road.

We do appreciate all of our listeners, and we'd like to thank you for taking time out of your day to hang out with us here on the Bourbon Road. We hope you enjoyed today's show, and if so, we would appreciate if you'd subscribe and rate us a five star with a review on iTunes. Make sure you follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, at The Bourbon Road. That way you'll be kept in the loop on all the Bourbon Road happenings. You can also visit our website at thebourbonroad.com to read our blog, listen to the show, or reach out to us directly. We always welcome comments or suggestions. And if you have an idea for a particular guest or topic, be sure to let us know. And again, thanks for hanging out with us.