465. Rocking with Bluegrass Distillers in Midway

Oh friends, and welcome back to another episode of the Bourbon Road Podcast. I'm your host, Jim Shannon. And I'm your host, Todd Ritter.

We've got a great show for you today. So grab your favorite pour and join us.

All right, listeners, welcome back to another episode of the Bourbon Road Podcast. I'm your host, Jim Shannon, and Todd is with us today. Todd, we're on the road. Yes, we are. We're right up the road from my house and your house. Really close to you. Well, no, not too far for you. 15-minute drive.

Yeah, 20-minute drive.

More like 45. So we've traveled towards Lexington, not all the way there, but we're in Midway, Kentucky today, and we're hanging out with Sam Rock of Bluegrass Distillers. And Sam, welcome to the show once again. Thank you. It's always nice to see you all. Third time's a charm, right? Third time's a charm. Now, you know the rule on the Bourbon Road podcast is if you make five appearances on the show, you get to bring us in on the second half.

So you got two more to go.

Two more to go. When you come back for your fifth episode, we'll treat you to a special surprise.

Okay.

That sounds good. I'm ready. Sam was on episode 40. 40. 356. 356. Yeah. So we caught him early on back in maybe 2018, 2019, had them on when they had just their, uh, their Lexington operation, 6th street, I think, near West 6th anyway.

But it was in the building, on the back of the building. Yeah.

Three different places you've interviewed now. I know. Yeah. I know. It keeps us, it keeps us like hunting them down. Like where's Sam at now?

I'm on the lam with this barrel.

Well, you're in beautiful Midway, Kentucky. Now you're on your own property here. It is absolutely fantastic. It's amazing. I got to see it in the very early stages during episode three 56 and, but everything that's worth. Where we are right now wasn't here yet. So it was very early on. This is an amazing place and we're gonna drink some amazing whiskeys today. I think we should get straight to that first one. What do you say? Let's do it. Yeah. See? Sam even agrees.

All right.

What we got, Sam? Okay, so here we have a seven year old blue corn bourbon that we made on a 250 gallon pot still. Um, blue corn has always been our thing. We started out doing it in. I think 2015, you know, you can't really buy the corn commercially. So we had it raised for us. And we've had some non-starters that were years that it blew down. We just actually harvested this year last weekend and I think we got about 120 bushels an acre.

Bullers, I was just up here a few weeks ago and you, what was your goal to get? Do you remember? 200. 200, so you're a little off, but okay. But that would have been outrageous.

Yeah. I mean, we've had years when we had 30. Right. So it is, I think corn was down maybe in general this year. We had full current, we had full cows, but the kernels just didn't fill in because of the, of the shortage of rain. But we did get in early this year. It's hard to grow. You can't put ground up or anything on it after it's in the ground because it's non-GMO. So you basically get it in as soon as you can and hope for rain. And if it can basically beat the weeds out, you're going to have a pretty good year, which is what we did. So it looked great. we cut it down, we have about 300 or 3,500 bushels, which makes approximately 400 barrels. And then we have another 300 left over from last year or 3,000. So between now and October of next year, we'll make 650 barrels of it. So this year we made, I think we have already made about 600 barrels of it. When you make it, the mash is fascinating looking because it starts out as an indigo and it changes to a purple. It's kind of like a unicorn, you know. But people really like to see it. It's different. Other places they go, they just see sort of the yellow mash. And it's really something that we love that the taste is different. Now this is a weeded bourbon, but we make another weeded bourbon which we really like also. Same Nashville, which is 75214. And the weeded tastes different. I mean, the normal weeded, the yellow corn weeded. It's a sweeter product than this. This has a nutty flavor in a good way, not a peanut. I think it's a real balanced flavor. It ages a little bit different than the yellow corn. People always talk about the secondary grain being the driver, but this is a really good example of where the primary grain is the driver. We have not always had it because we were making such low volume in the past. we would sell out of it in the spring and the fall. It hits one of our main maxims of what makes a really good bourbon and a demand for bourbon, which is, uniquity, authenticity, or age. It's unique and it has age now. For a pot-steel product, I personally believe that you need a little bit more age to bang it out. But once pot-steel product gets older, I think it's just fantastic because of the mouthfeel. It's a thicker, heavier, oilier flavor because it has a lot more oils in it than a column-steel product. It's also different. I mean, every barrel is going to be a lot different because, at least in our circumstance, we were making one barrel a day. And so when we would batch it and then we would basically fill seven barrels at a time from a tote, now that tote would be a lot different than the tote that came next to it. Now that we call them still, everything comes off in the 140s or the 150s, so it's really consistent, which we love. And I really love White Dog off the current column still. I think that all distillers should start on a column still because you learn sort of the the different flavors at different temperature and different temperatures. And when you get to where you're running something at 150 proof on a consistent basis, you just feel like you're totally blessed versus on a column still, you'll have, you know, it's a bell curve. And what we would call the hearts of heart, heart of the hearts would be like 145 and that would be 15 to 20% of the run. So then the rest of it, you're focused on making good cuts and redistilling and it's just a much harder and consistent process. So what we do now is a lot different and it's going to lead to more volume and more consistent barrels. But it's still the same process. The mashing is the same. Everything is the same. The volume is just different. The people are the same. So the love is the same for the product. We've always had really good partners at BlueCorn, but we have a partner that we work with in other areas too. They really love the BlueCorn. They do a great job for us. know this is sort of the only farming they do so they put all that they've got into it so it's really great. Farming to me is really fun. I grew up in Woodford County and was not really a farmer but you know I worked on farms and I love how you do it, you rotate the crops, you put the nitrogen back in after the corn basically extracts all the nitrogen. And I just think it's so cool. It's just such a cool part of this part of the country and especially bourbon. So we're blessed to have enough acreage that we can do a lot of it on our own. And it adds a lot to the farm because people come up and they are just really blown away by sort of the agricultural presence in their experience here because they go and they see the corn, they look at the house and the distillery and everything around it so that, you know, for you all who have never been out here, everything is, a cornfield surrounds everything. So a cornfield surrounds the house. In between the house and the distillery, you can walk there, but between the house and the rick house is a cornfield, and you can't even see the rick house when the corn's at full stand. But that's enough about the agricultural part. This is our real flagship product. We now are going to be able to offer it more consistently in distribution and online. And it's something that we'll be able to share with a lot more people.

You know, that's really interesting. I, I'm sitting here nosing this and I am getting a little bit of kind of a, like a honey nut and a honey nut Cheerio kind of one Cheerio or a little bit more like a, like almost like a granola honey granola with you're right. It's not peanut. It's just,

I like their granola. Never heard anybody say that, but.

But the honey, like the honey drizzle granola. I'm going to throw a fruit out there. I'm getting like a little blueberry.

Oh, blueberry from the blue corn. Yeah. How's that? You know, the funny thing is I've, I always thought when I drank, when I ate blue corn chips and you've probably had blue corn chips, I'm sure, but that they, they just didn't have the same like level of like corn sweetness that the yellow corn chips corniness. Yeah. They always seemed a little bit crispier, tighter, a little more nutty, a little more nutty maybe.

I mean the yellow corn weeded bourbon is sweeter for sure than this. I do like the Cheerio concept, a sweet Cheerio. Yeah.

So this is the oldest age statement you've had on the blue corn? I'm pretty sure.

You said you were six or seven. We had an eight weeded, yellow corn weeded, which was really good. But yeah, this is definitely the oldest. And what's the proof on this? Oh, this is a bottled in bond, so it's a hundred proof.

Bonded blue corn bourbon from bluegrass distillers Hmm seven seven years old You don't see a whole lot of seven-year-old bond is although a couple did come out this year Yeah, some of the big boys brought some to the game, but Usually it's four.

Yeah, use this for it hits the number and then it stays for you Now you guys are kind of an old hat

As far as like craft distilling in Kentucky. I mean, you started what? 2011, 12. Yeah. We should be more successful.

You guys were one of the first to allow visitors to the distillery to fill their own bottles. I remember that.

Yeah. It was, it was way back. We did it because we actually ran out of bottled product. And so we did it out of necessity. Um, and it became a thing. Um, for us. And it was we had we were doing it in the tasting room, actually. And then. We during Covid, things just, you know, they just happen and we got out of the habit, basically, and just now we do it again. But yeah, we were early in that and we. People did love it. And what was really interesting about bourbon back then, I think, is before COVID, although people talk about how bourbon exploded during COVID, blue-eyes distillers really was, I want to say that we weren't part of that, but in many ways we weren't because we were distilling And we were doing basically what we had always done, which is just sell our products out of the tasting room. And it was crazy. People would come from everywhere. to drink bourbon because we were open outside under a tent in the sleet and the snow. But we weren't releasing new products. This was sort of the age of single barrels and selling single barrels to everybody. And that's really not what we were doing. We were also doing a lot of sanitizer. So we had a lot other business models going at the same time. But our tasting room did mad numbers. And we met a lot of friends during that time period. But before COVID, if we would do a release, people would like a blue corn release. There was not, there were not that many brands. So there wasn't a lot of. noise to cut through. So if we put something out in the Herald Leader in the bourbon section, if Jane and Patton put something out, then people would just come over because there weren't a lot of brands. Today, there's just a lot of noise. There are a lot of brands, and you really have to make some moves to make some noise. So it's just different. I want to say that sort of like that was a period of youth in bourbon. And people were really excited and people are really excited about it now. It's just different. People are very discerning and age is one of the things people want. And pricing is very important. All the stuff that we ever always believed in is still what makes a good bourbon and a good following.

Early on, of course, when I say early on, I say pre-COVID timeframe. If you put out a bourbon, people just wanted to buy it. They were uneducated bourbon-loving people. They just wanted to own it. They wanted to own it, they wanted to drink it, they wanted to enjoy it, they loved bourbon. Now your consumers are educated. They know what they want. They know exactly what proof range they want, what age range they want, what finishes they like. It's just a more educated consumer today.

Oh, yeah. What's the Nashville? Who made it? Yeah. And a lot of times that answer is easy because it's us. We just say it's us and this is the Nashville. So it's just matured. I mean, the number of people that are involved in bourbon is more. And I'm sure we'll talk about this as we go through the other spirits too. So I don't want to take up too much time, but you know, the COVID sort of explosion has slowed down and gone in his back sort of where it was before COVID, you know, and people just had a whole lot of disposable income. So now, is when you got to really fight hard for your space and you got to have these things, authenticity, iniquity, or age. Those are the kinds of things we think about on a daily basis when we're working on our brand. And not just our brand, but our the product, but our product is also the service and the physical experience when people come here. So that's something we're all always thinking about too, is how do people leave when they come here? Do they just feel like that's been the greatest experience I've ever had from the tour guides to the entry to the whole thing, the people, the farm, the cleanliness, all kinds of things. So just real quick, what's the MSRP on this? This is $80. $80.

OK. So a seven-year bottle and bond, $80, blue corn. Cool, cool. Yeah. All right.

Solid pour.

Yeah, a great pour. I really enjoyed it. Very tasty.

What do you all think about the taste? What kind of tasting notes did you get? And your nose, what kind of nose did you get?

Like he said, blueberry, like, uh, like I, he was like, on the honey nut, like an almond. There's like, I think it is. I think it is. But maybe, yeah.

Yeah, on the palette, though, it's got a nice crisp finish. But up front, I think it's a little caramelly, not too much. A little bit of vanilla, but not too much. I think it's mostly that honey-drizzled granola bar. I think the nose and the palette really do match up pretty well on it. And I think the nuttiness does come through. I didn't pick up the blueberry, but I mean... It was more on the nose. There was like this little like, yeah, it's to me. But yeah, I think you're right. You said it wasn't peanut. I think it is almond. I think you're right, Todd. I think it's an almond slivers inside of granola, some kind of thing with honey drizzle. So good stuff.

If it were a peanut, we'd dump it. Would you really?

I mean, I've had some, I've had some peanutty whiskeys that I kind of like.

Well, no, I'm not a fan of peanut. Peanut shell or peanut. Either or. Either peanut. But I like, although I do like peanuts with honey. I like the, it's sort of a smooth ride for me. I mean, sometimes when I drink bourbons, the beginning and the finish change a lot. And to me, when that happens, typically the finish is not great. But you don't have that in this. And so I think the barrel has done a good job of hammering out the rough edges to it.

It's also got that really soft texture from the pot still, I think. Yeah. And when I said it's got a crisp finish on it, what I mean is there's no spice kick at the end. It just kind of comes in with this nice, well, we've said it a couple of times here, this nice honey granola. sweetness with a little bit of caramel on it, comes across the palate nice and smooth. And then that sort of just, it drops off on the finish and there's no spice kick, which I don't know. You expect it to be a little bit softer with the mash bill you've got?

With wheat as opposed to rye. I mean, you don't have like the baking spices and things like that, which you don't get in a weeded product. It's just different. I mean, they're, weeded products are, typically they have this sort of dimension.

They have great color, good texture. I think it's a great pour. Yeah, really good.

I love the nose. I just think the nose is fantastic. It smells like a candle, a vanilla candle.

So are we ready to move on to the second pour?

Yeah. I think we should mention that you're toasted oak just to the regular 95 proofer, right? Well, it's 100. Usually it's 100. Okay. is the gym is the gym. Yeah. And it's a solid, solid pour. It might be one of the, my favorite toasted Oak pours out there. It's always delicious. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you want to do this one? Then we'll go to that one.

Yep. Let's do this a midway. So this is the midway and this is a, So most of your brands have the bluegrass distillers label on it. Midway is another brand that you have. Yes. And what's the purpose of the Midway brand?

So Midway, it's all rye. And so they're all finished ryes. They're all 95 fives. We came up with this, Midway was an old distillery here that at one time burnt down in downtown. We actually looked at the property that that distillery was on. Also known as the Park and Tilford distillery. Also known as the Park and Tilford. We resurrected Park and Tilford as well as a brand, but that's sort of a different story. But Midway, we wanted to do something with the town. The town had been really great to us. And so we came up with this product. We wanted to have a rye. I like Rize when they're finished. Rize you can do just so many things with because the base product is so powerful and so spicy so you can get all kinds of different flavors. And so we came up with this during COVID. Maggie Young, who's our marketing director, actually spearheaded this. We came up with different sort of famous things about Midway. So Lee's branch is the main creek. Colonel Francisco is the person who sold the land probably to the railroad where they built the town. Midway is a railroad town. So the railroad comes right through town. We have a couple others that are other famous parts in town. Dudley and Gratz is a corner of where the original distillery was. And so she worked on a label. She did the research and basically found the famous cool places. And then we came up with these labels and we attached a finish to all of them. So it is kind of fun, you know, other brands call their, they name their bourbons and we don't typically do that, but in this circumstance we are. And this is my, this is my favorite actually though. So the Lee's branch finished in toasted French oak is really fantastic. It is, you know, these are relatively old products too. So this is at least seven years. Okay. And we finished, anywhere from six months to two years. So they can be in a used barrel for a long time. So we have one that's been finished in the South Terrans barrel and it's been in a barrel now for at least two years. Now South Terrans, we were sort of an early person to do South Terrans and people just really didn't understand it. It's a Spanish dessert wine. And then some other big brands did it, and South Terrans became a rage. But that's a really great product.

And they can really stand those lighter wine barrels. The whiskey can really stand being in those barrels a much longer time than it can like a red wine barrel or a port barrel. Oh, for sure.

They just take it over.

The Colonel Francisco is finished in a rum barrel. it's really great. People like the Colonel Francisco and the Lee's branch the most of them. We also have another one called Reclaimed and Recharged and it's in a re-chard barrel. So this is a re-toasted barrel, re-toasted, but the reclaimed and re-chard, which is the only one that's not named after a place or a person in Midway is exceptional. And it's like a traditional double-oaked product. Now we have some of those that were in barrels for a couple of years. Yeah. And they were kind of orphan barrels. When we were moving out here, we weren't moving through it in Lexington. Because we just didn't have the space to showcase the products here. You all can see we have two different spots. People can walk around and they can see all the products. It's more like a a bourbon department store, where you have more expensive products over here, elite, super-aged products, and then you have Midway in one section. And we'll put some of our contract bottling clients out at times, too, when we're bottling for them, which is nice. So we get to showcase their products. But this rye is... You know, usually for me, I like to drink rye whiskeys only in cocktails, but I do like to drink this one.

That's a good sipping rain. Yeah. It's got a nice like that minty spice is still kind of hanging there, but there's like this nice like toasty marshmallow going on with it too. That's the French oak.

Yeah. Yeah. And it does have a nice like, um, like a little bit of a Christmas spice to it. If you just sit here and just analyze a little bit, just a little bit, it's kind of, I always talk about those. I would think of this, the spicy gumdrops. And I get a little bit of that. The nerds, those are really good. No, no, spicy gumdrops. The nerds with the little covers on there.

We talk in old candy school.

Oh, okay. So you remember the little dish of candies that your grandmother would put out and they would be the gumdrops, but they had like the sugar crystals on the outside. Oh, yeah. And then you would bite into them and they have a little bit of a spicy kick. Like a, I don't know, like a Christmas spice kind of thing. Yeah.

And I get that with rice sometimes. Oh yeah, for sure. Um, I think, so this is interesting about this product. When I smell it, I, I smell like cola, like, like a, like a Pepsi kind of Pepsi cola.

Nice. And this one's a hundred and 110.

So all of these are 110.

Okay. And retail for 60. 60. You've had the Midway brand for a while.

Yeah.

And it's been around. I think I had it the last time I was with you.

Yeah, we've had it for at least since 2021. Okay. It, you know, we probably looking back on it, I think we would have focused on one or two of them rather than going into the market with four or five. So we learned a lot. So, you know, during the bourbon craze, distributors were, they were willing to take almost anything. And so just having sort of a shelf space was very interesting. But, you know, really you want to basically say, look, take this one, this is the one that sells the most. And, um, cause really you want, everybody, all your partners, you want them to be successful. So, I mean, it's kind of like when people are in the candy store, it's like, you can't take everything. Just take these ones that are, we know you like. But this one in the Francisco, the Francisco is different, obviously, because it's filled, you know, finished in rum and it has a whole different flavor. But this, I do like the marshmallow on this. Obviously it has spice because it's, because it's rye. And it has that funny... Yeah, mine's gone too. I love this.

All right, folks, we're going to take a quick break here. I do have a little bit in my first glass. My second glass is empty. Go back and sip on those during the break. When we come back, we have two more expressions. Maybe a bonus, actually. Maybe a bonus. We've heard rumors there could be a bonus. That's right. More from Sam Rock and Bluegrass Distillers. So stick around, folks. We will be right back.

All right. Welcome back listeners. We are here in Midway, Kentucky at Bluegrass Distillers and we're rocking with Sam Rock.

Yeah. Earlier you were telling us, Sam, I'm going to break in here. You were telling us about this guy who had this really cool name from Texas, a distiller down there. Oh yeah, his chip. Chip Tate. Chip Tate. But Sam Rock's pretty damn cool. I have to say. Well, thanks.

Maybe I should have been a movie star. I was going to say, there was already Sam Rockwell, right? That's right. Yeah, people always, yeah. Should have been me.

Should have been you. There was a Sam Slade, wasn't there?

That was a character though, right? A character, yeah.

Or Sam Spade. Sam Spade.

Spade or Spade? Was that what it was? Anyway. Little kids say Sam Rocks. I'm like, I do. So my son's name is Sam Rock, too. And so was my grandfather, although my grandfather did not have a middle name. He was just Sam Rock. Born on the 4th of July.

Oh, nice. Wow. All right. So what's in pour three here? This is kind of a special single barrel tonight.

So this is the... The toasted oak bourbon, this is our real flagship. We try to price this bourbon very reasonably so that it's a good value for people on the market. This particular barrel, a portion of the proceeds go to the Broke Spoke in Lexington, which was right next to us. We did this barrel in conjunction with the Bourbon Burn bike ride. They were all here last weekend. It was awesome. Those people do a great job. It's wonderful for all the towns. It's great for us. So we had all the riders here. This was a really nice experience for them. In the past, we didn't have the tasting room done. Now the tasting room's all done, and they can come in and chill out. We have nice couches. We had it painted. It has sort of a speakeasy feel. But this product, we started doing this probably four years ago. And what we do is we take the barrels that we dump, and then we have them reconditioned, bored out, and then re-fired. Well, we have them re-toasted. So they're not re-fired. They're just toasted, meaning they're heated. And basically, the sugar comes to the outside of the wood. And then we refill them. And the alcohol and water basically just sort of melt that sugar off immediately and give it this really sweet flavor. This is always, it's a really balanced product. It's very consistent. At one point we could not get our barrels reconditioned because the company that does it, Kelvin, was so busy making new barrels. So we used brand new barrels and it made a really different flavor, like a green flavor, like a greenwood flavor. Because it's a younger oak. It's a younger oak. It was really piney. and sort of the proof is in the pudding. Now, for our new fill barrels, we only use barrels where the wood has been aged for a minimum of two years. And, but, you know, that we, we sort of gained that perspective from just having to go to Spain to try to find barrels during the barrel shortage. And that's all they had because that's kind of used barrels they use in in wine barrels. No, they do use American oak, but they take the wood over there and then it stays outside and dries out and leaches all the tannins out. And that is really the same concept that's used in this toasted product. And it's really been a great seller for us. People like it. And we have it all the time, so we're able to distribute it consistently. We're always trying to to price adjust so that it's a value for people. And so, yeah, it's just been a great product. It has nice vanilla. I get a lot of brown sugar. Very sweet on the nose. Very nice.

You get a little smoke, almost like s'mores, like a toasted marshmallow.

I would even say there's a little bit of chocolate going on in there. Oh, OK. I call it the marshmallow because it does have a marshmallow taste to it, especially like a fired marshmallow, like you would put on a s'more that has that wonderful just charcoal and blackened mushroom all in there. Not too, but I just like mine. I like my marshmallows slightly toasted like this.

Yeah, I always like to let them catch fire and then blow them out and then pull the skin off the outside and eat that part. And then just throw the rest of it away because I just like the skin. Yeah.

So Sam, tell us a little bit about this place. I mean, I think it's a jewel of a place. I mean, it's very unique. It's definitely a place that I think a lot of folks need to come check out because It's just cool. I mean, Whiskey Thief is one of our locals at the farm, but it doesn't have quite the farmhouse that you got here. Tell us a little bit about Elkwood itself.

OK. Well, thank you for that. That's very kind. And we bought this farm back in 2020. And it was on the National Historic Society. So it took us a while to get through some administrative stuff to begin construction. And we renovated the house first. Well, at the same time we were building the warehouse. So we didn't have any heat in there. So we'd be, well, there was heat. It was the old boilers. And so for about a year we were stripping wallpaper, sanding floors, there's not that much you can do to the house in terms of like new utilities because the walls are brick. So if you go to the basement, it's the same footprint as the whole house. Cause the walls go all the way to the dirt below the floors. It's just stone. So, um, So we renovated the house first. We added on a big porch. The house was built, took them three years from 1833 to 1835. It's a traditional pre-Civil War story. They had, this family had a thousand acres and they did cattle, bluegrass, all kinds of things. Then we bought it. We renovated it. We built the warehouse. first to generate revenue, which we did. We were lucky to get some customers early on. That was probably an end of... 2022, I think we turned it on at the beginning of 2023. So the warehouse has really been a workhorse for us in terms of income. And in many other ways too, we have a wholesaling business that we partly own named Chevalier. And one of Chevalier's things is we try to be a concierge service. And so we've used that warehouse as a way to enable people to come and test the barrels and things like that. it's really been a nice showroom for that business. And, you know, the other brands really enjoy coming to see and touch the barrels. So then we built the distillery. It took us about a year and a half. And we built, you know, we put the grain bins in, the boiler in. Building the facility took about six months, but then Putting all of the equipment in took probably eight months. The steam piping, the stainless steel, the chillers, the electrical, the controls, all of that stuff just takes a really long time. Like the controls probably took 60 days to do the controls. So then we have offices on the second floor here. And then the first time we did the tasting room, we painted it all white. And, you know, our staff just, they really wanted more out of life. So they, you know, they really pushed me to, because I was the GC, to be open to the concept of really a speakeasy type thing. So we have a designer, her name is Alex Barnhart, and she came in and she came up with some really awesome ideas. to paint the whole room the blue that is the color of blue grass distillers, which is a really dark blue. And so we painted the walls that she got a lot of eclectic, very comfortable furniture. So we have a lot of couches. She put this really awesome wallpaper up in these picture frames that is essentially a landscape scene. So you look out the windows and you see trees and then you look the other way and you see these landscape scenes. And I couldn't see it in my head, but everybody else could. And they just kind of said, Sam, get out of the way, which is what I did. And so then we've painted the ceiling black and it's really changed the feel totally. I mean, now when people come in, we got rid of the high top tables except for a couple. And people come in now and they sit and they stay. I saw people playing cards out here the other day. We have these two huge blue chairs that y'all are sitting in that, you know, really those are two for chair.

It's a chair and a half.

And that feel is what really we wanted. We wanted people to get off the highway and walk into a metal building and be blown away. And that's what they are. They think, oh my gosh, this is just incredible. It's in many ways, I want to say it's museum-like, but it's not stiff and stale. And our staff loves it. Perspective helps everything, right? So you work in a place that's all white and it feels like a surgical center. And you go to this and you just have smiles and people feel like it's where they want to be.

I just love it when a room is painted dark like this. And you know, the chair railing's dark, the baseboards and the wall trim is dark. Everything's the same color. It's all painted the same with a black ceiling. It does feel speakeasy-ish, you know, kind of.

And also a little cozy. I feel like this were all white like it used to be. Yeah, I don't know. Totally different vibe, I think. But I like the the wallpaper. It's kind of kind of got like a Renaissance.

Oh, it's so cool. It's kind of. Yeah, it's different.

So Bravo to Alex. Yeah, Alex.

She did a great job.

Yeah, this is a really good bourbon. It's kind of a traditional toasted oak bourbon, but it's got this deep richness you don't usually get. It's not overly sweet. But it is sweet. But it's one of those things, you know how you get fooled by dark chocolates a little bit? You eat a piece of 70% cacao, and even though it's not got much sweetener in it, you still get fooled into that sweetness a little bit.

This is like a dark chocolate.

This is like a dark chocolate. Yeah, this reminds me of that effect you get from a dark chocolate when you get fooled into the fact that there's a sweetness there when there's really not. Very nice, very, very nice. This is good. And this bottle retails for what?

Well, this is a single barrel. The 100 proof, the single barrel is 70. The 100 proof is 60. Okay. And then out in the world, it's cheaper. Right. But you know, when you're at Disneyland, the mouse ears are a little bit more expensive.

That's a great idea. I am very aware of that.

Yeah, I mean, people are pretty used to that. You know, if you come to the distiller, you're going to pay the suggested retail price because you have to protect your shops out there, your bottle shops.

Yeah, that's the thing is they don't want us underpricing them. Right. Right. And, you know, we would never do that. So that's part of being a good partner is we don't want them calling over there saying, Oh, you know, they can get it over there for $10 cheaper. Why are you doing this? We wouldn't do that.

Right. But people come in here, they experience your facility, they experience, you know, the farm. They want to buy a bottle here. Yeah. And they want to they'll pay, you know, MSRP for it. Yeah. So.

Awesome. Very, very good.

Well, if we're going to get to that bonus pour. Let's just say we got to keep moving.

Yeah. I'm excited about this one. Our good friend Amzie Winning at the Frankfurt Bourbon Society. He brought this bot or well, I think it was Amzie Winning.

Is that a real name? Yeah.

He was our president. You met him. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Now that's another great name. Yeah.

Yeah. And, uh, His was a different single barrel, but he brought that to one of our board meetings and I was wowed So tell us about this Spanish oak Okay, so this is dark as the night.

This is gorgeous It is It is almost red. Yeah, it's mahogany. I was gonna say mahogany. It's mahogany so this Spanish oak is from a Cooperage in Spain. We met these people during, right after, well, 2022, we were trying to line up barrels and we just couldn't find any. I mean, everybody, the big distilleries had bought everything up and we were just trying to get enough stock to fill the small contract distillation contracts we had and we were totally locked out. And so we went to Spain and we bought, well, we met a bunch of cooperages. It was a totally awesome experience. I have a really longtime friend who was a former lock client of mine. named Arturo Aranda, and he is from Chile, but he lives in the Netherlands. And I called him and he was in the oil business. And I said, Arturo, we're very sophisticated sage guy. And I said, we're looking for barrels. And he said, or betas some. And I said, no, I said wood barrels. And he said, Sam, I don't know anything about wood barrels. I said, well, I know, but they make them over there and they make them in Chile. So they make them in Chile for the wine. OK. And so. He called around, he said, well, we can't find any in Chile, but we found some in Spain. Spain makes an enormous amount of barrels. And Spain is a huge producer of spirits, not just wine, but they also make, you know, Pedro's and I days and and all kinds of Sherry's and Brandy's and things like this. And they have a lot of cold packing. And so we went over there and we met with three or four. We went all over Spain. We went to separate trips. This particular coverage is called Tana Tana Maria is the word in Spanish, but it's again, Gutia and this. Cooperage has been in the family for probably a hundred years. And so you go to these cooperages and they, everything's handmade. They, they don't have conveyor belts. They just start a little kindling fire and put the outside of the barrel on top of the kindling fire. And then that's how they catch it on fire. And then they put it out with a hose. So we have great videos of that. We spent a lot of time with these people, got to know them really well. They really educated us on the concept of aged barrel staves, because we would go out and look at these tarmacs full of staves. And at that point, they were just blank. They're just square. They haven't been bent. We said, you know, what's this all about? What are these all out here for? And I said, well, you know, we, we age it because the wine can't handle the tannin, which made total sense. You know, if you don't want tannin in wine, why would you want it in bourbon?

You get enough from the, from the grape skin. You don't need more added in. Yeah.

And so same sort of concept. You know, we want vanilla. We don't want bitter. Yeah. And so. We worked with these people and initially we're bringing over barrels that were white American oak because they were buying them and they're a really radically different quality, which kind of also put us into the quality barrel business. They're really tight. They don't have any skinny staves. And we can find that quality. There are other American makers that do that. But the main thing is they put us onto the concept of aged wood. And so we now buy these Spanish oak barrels from this one particular coop ridge. And they are fantastic. We just bought another round of them. We have 24 coming in. So they're expensive. We'll reuse them and recharge them and things like that. But we initially bought French oak, Spanish oak, and then we had the American oak ones that were made. But the Spanish oak, is a really fantastic product. Well, the French oak is too. They are just different. Now, they are the same genus in terms of wood, but the terroir is different because they're grown in different places. So the French oak Well, we're talking about the Spanish oak here, but I think it has a more traditional French oak finish, you know, which is like creamy on the end. But this, I'll let you all say what you think about it and then I'll lean in.

Yeah. So this one, it has a little bit more of a, I think you brought this up earlier, Todd, a little bit more of a savory kind of aspect to it.

I mean, there are some baking cabinet spices there for sure, but like on the palate, you know how sometimes you get that like sweet oak. There's like this nice savory spicy finish on this that I just.

Yeah. And it has a richness to it. And, and, and it has a little bit of a drawing effect on the back.

Yeah.

Um, it's dry. Yeah. The sweetness doesn't carry all the way to the back. Um, but it, it has this, uh, I mean, a concentrated richness to it is the best way to say it.

Now, this is 11 years. It's due source, but like you said, and I thought the last time we were here, like I said, I came up with my Bourbon Society. You guys were like opened up your doors for a small number of us and we had a great time. The one thing I thought was really cool, you were telling us about the Spanish oak barrels. They're all All the staves are the same, right?

Well, they're not all the same, but they're wide. Wider? So they're at least two inches.

They just don't have any skinny staves.

They don't have any slivers. Gotcha. I mean, they make them like they make wine barrels. If I said, you know, make just a rough barrel, they wouldn't know what to do. So they sand them all. There's no gaps. One of the things that we've learned in the wholesale business is that wholesale barrels are basically bought as is where is. You buy these barrels, you get some empties, it can kill the margin. For little brands, that can destroy their margin. They spend all this money, their savings to get these things. One of the concepts, the other concept other than age wood that we leaned into on our new make barrels is also barrels that have a specific spec in terms of the tightness when we fill them and no gaps in between the band and the stave. So that in 15 years, they're not gonna get any empty barrels. Rather than going from 110, the hope is that they'll go to 140 or 150 bottles. So all those things sort of like, dictate how we make our new make. Now, these barrels are these wine barrels and they're not leaking, which is great because we don't have much to lose when we're dumping an 11 year barrel in there. this barrel only yielded 130 bottles. So when you put it in them, they're going to soak some up too. But this is dry. And it was already, I don't want to say oaky, but it's 11 years. And then you put it back in in a new barrel. And so it's going to grab some smoke, which you can definitely Smell in these.

I mean, it's, I mean, you can tell this is like, I mean, it's special.

I mean, yeah. Well, thank you. But I agree. I think it is. I think it's, um, I think it's a really wonderful product and we're glad to have these other barrels where we can put it out. There's a lot of demand for it. Um, the barrels are hard to get, you know, you can't just. Sure. Order two or four. I mean, they're hard to, they're hard to come by. Um, To me, it smells like a sweet cigar. I'm kind of a nose-driven person. Oh, now that you mentioned that.

Subliminal.

Now that you say that.

Right.

Yeah. I'm just glad that you have it, because we were here two weeks ago. And like I said, after I tried it, I was like, I got to get a bottle of that. And we came up, and we got to taste the French one, which is knockout good, too. But you didn't have it. So you literally bottled this probably in the last week or so.

Yeah, we just bottled it the other day.

That's the way he knows how many bottles came out.

Yeah.

That's right.

I'm in the middle of paying the tax. And I'm so happy.

This is delicious. Well done. We wanted to have it out for the bourbon burn people. Um, so we had the blue corn out this, this is the season, right? So I mean, um, so fall season is release season. Yeah, it's really, and that's when we have the traffic. So I mean, unlike liquor stores where it's sort of their best time of the year. is November and December distribution. As we get closer to Christmas, the liquor stores, that's really their time to shine. Our time to shine is September, October. Yeah. Once people take the kids to college or the kids go back to school, the long vacation, the summer is over. They get out. The parents can go for three days. This is when. And Kentucky is just fantastic this time of the year.

That's bourbon heritage. And festivals, a lot of festivals. Festivals, yeah. Yeah. We love the festivals. All right.

Yeah, that's what about fruits. Do you have any fruits that you associate with this?

I think some darker, like almost like we often say, like stewed fruits, like like.

Yeah, I didn't get a fruit on this one because I get like the darker fruits a little bit. If I had to choose something, it would definitely would be more of a, like a, maybe a dried plum. I just love that finish. I don't know. It's hard to say. It's, I'm not, I'm not great on the darker fruits. I've just, I just, do you guys eat dark fruits normally? You mean like blackberries? Well, not berries, but more like, um, I eat like the darker cherries, plums occasionally. Yeah. Grapes are darker. Plums.

I love figs. And I like fresh figs, which you can't hardly find at all here. If I find a bourbon that has like a real fresh fig taste, which is lighter than a raisin.

We had a turkey fig bourbon about a few weeks ago, didn't we? We did. We had a bourbon that had turkey fig notes on it. It's very unusual to get that. It just really is. Fig Newtons, we get those every now and then.

This has a little cinnamon. Not too much. I'm not a big cinnamon lover.

It's just a great, well-rounded whiskey. I mean, the finish on this took very well.

And this one, 139. 139. Yeah.

That's a steal for this. It's really good. Again, we're trying to keep the value for the customer.

You know, I'm feeling like we're going to get to the bonus port, Todd. We're going to make it, aren't we?

Yeah. I think I actually have a bottle of this at home. Like I said, I came up a couple of weeks ago and was blown away by this. So this is my second go around with it. Oh.

Yay. Yay. All right, Sam, what do we got? So this is an 18 year bourbon. That's right folks. 18 years old.

It's of legal drinking age. It could join the army. That's probably the best way to say it. That's when I was, when I was a kid, when I was younger, when I was a teenager, you always wanted to get to 18 because you could start drinking. It hasn't been that way for a very long time.

Are you from Ohio?

Yes, I'm from Ohio.

So they had 3-2 beer back then?

They had 3-2 beer, but it didn't matter that you could, what it did was it got you into the bar. You got into the bar because you could order a 3-2 beer. So the 3-2 beer was 3.2? 3.2%. Normal beer is five. Right. So you're not that far off, right? So yeah, the 3.2 law in Ohio allowed you to get into the bar at 18 years old to start drinking. But once you got into the bar, you stepped up to the bar and ordered your wild turkey or whatever it was.

Okay. So 18 year, I mean, 18 years in a barrel just turns into a wonderful thing.

Right.

It's just, you know, it's just, uh, you get now sometimes I, It can get a little too oaky for me, but this is perfection.

It really depends on where in the Rick house, right? Sure. And the finish can kind of help that a little bit if it does.

Well, we never finished anything this old.

Yeah.

So like we wouldn't finish anything older than 12 probably. a 12 or a 15. No, maybe, I don't know, we might. Something that was really unique. There's a lot. But you almost probably got to hate to do that though. Oh yeah, you hate to. I mean, it's already great.

Because if you try it and it's like, oh, this is magical. Right. It's like, why spoil it, you know?

It's magical. And this is magical. The thing that drives the taste for this to me is a burnt cherry. I was going to say, that's what I get, like a dark, dark, the darkest of cherries.

You don't normally get fruit notes on an 18 year old whiskey. So that, that right away is something that's quite unusual, right? No, I'm not mistaken. This one's one 26 proof, I believe. I'm not sure.

I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure like two weeks ago, that's the proof I got.

Oh, and it's got a little bit of cream on it too.

These were about that. I mean, all these 18-year-old barrels were in the 120s. We haven't had any hazmats or anything. We did have 107, which I thought was great. I bet that was really like, kind of like a, yeah. Yeah, it was, yeah, it was, it was a, um, now I think when you get into really old bourbons and they're super high proof, um, it does taste great. I mean, when you get a hazmat 18 year old bourbon or a 12 or a 15, to me, they taste really soft. Um, but these, the, the only, the only barrels that I've, we've had of this that, that, that had that were really hot were the ones that were they or really oaky um was when we did they just didn't have any bottles left yeah 17 bottles and below i mean there's just you're only dealing with you know eight inches on the bottom of a barrel right so there's just so much ash it dominates the flavor um now this is wonderful and i and i really i You know, I really love this project, the older stuff. This is something our whole team really enjoys to do. I mean, this sort of search for the, you know, this is sort of like the Raiders of the Lost Ark concept. I mean, everybody's in search of this stuff.

And this is one of those that makes you just pause and just stop and stop talking. It takes you to places. This is a phenomenal whiskey. It is.

And you know, I'm getting, I'm getting some sweet cream. I'm getting those cherries you were talking about on an 18 year old whiskey. Are you kidding me? You kind of expect, you know, a little bit more like leather and tobacco and you know. There's a little bit of that. But it's not, it's not like, it's not like red man. You know what I mean?

This is really good. It's just a special, special whiskey.

When I, really the way that I can figure out the nose of a bourbon is when I finish it, I smell the glass. And that's where you really, the essence of it. And with the old bourbons, there's such a spectrum of flavor is that it really expands my palate. People will talk about things that I've never, you know, grasped in bourbon. But when I get some of these older bourbons, I can really taste it. You know, like the burnt cherry, um, you know, you don't often get plum, but tobacco. The oak spice is like sweeter oak spice. Yeah.

I'm getting fruit cake. I'm getting a little bit of that like holiday fruit cake. That's so good.

Wow. Now this one's $3.99? This one's $3.99. Yeah. And well worth it. I mean, this is one to put up there with, you know, people clamor over some of the pappies and things like that. I think I'd rather have this. I'm going to be honest. I mean, it's phenomenal. Great. I do have one. You have one.

So I'm glad you're going to do it.

Yeah. This is something that you're proud to have in your bar. If I had a Pappy, I could have folks compare, but I don't even own a Pappy and I live in the town.

Oh, I don't think you can compare the two. Yeah. I don't think so. This is phenomenal. Pappy wouldn't hold a candle to this. This is really, really good. Mm. We haven't had a bonus pour at this caliber in a while. We've had some good bonus pours, but this is, it's very special. This takes the cake.

It's really good. After four, the bonus pour, you can still tell the difference.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. These are light. These are light pours. Yeah. Yeah. This is, uh, this is a memorable pour.

Well, we have a, we only have, I mean, people, We're holding some of these back to turn 19. And during the summer, they're all indoors so that we're afraid of continuing to lose more. So at this point, we're just trying to not lose any to the angel. But so we'll probably release a couple more in the spring or in January, February, March. We've got some bourbon clubs that are looking at them now in liquor stores. And what's interesting about the liquor stores is this stuff sort of hits certain areas. Like Nashville is a big area for, for really high-end bourbon. And then there are other places that are sort of like a desert. And so they don't get a lot of the really age stuff, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, South Carolina, even Atlanta. And so we get, we're starting to get a lot of calls from retailers down there and those places, you know, looking to do single barrels of just Elkwood stuff in general and blue corn and some of the other stuff. So the Elkwood has really enabled us to jump into markets that we weren't able to do before. And what's so fascinating about it is, is people are or people say, oh, you know, premiumization is dying, it's declining. From our standpoint, it's the driving force in the industry because it's unique and it's scarce. Just like scarcity and luxury, in my opinion, are always going to be winners. You know, even in the worst of times, people always want iniquity.

Yeah, I think that, you know, that the days of people blindly buying everything that's on the shelf, those days are over. At least for now. It'll come back again. But we have such a... a large community of bourbon knowledgeable people now that we didn't have 10 years ago. The population of bourbon lovers is huge. Even though they're not flipping bottles as much, even though they're not grabbing every bottle that's on the shelf, they're very discerning and they know what they want. And it's older, well-crafted whiskeys. And yeah, so you shouldn't have any trouble getting rid of these.

Well, thank you. And the other owner, Ben Franzini, he lives in an area where he's got a bunch of guy buddies that really just seek this kind of stuff. So he uses them as sort of a sounding board, I think, to figure out, you know, what do people want? And, you know, which is kind of cool because he has his own sort of like test kitchen out there.

His own tasting panel. Yeah, he does. And, you know, he really likes it.

And the rest of the crew, that's sort of the other thing is we always wanted to sort of be able to say we were producing sort of like something in a leader in the industry. And now we really can. Yeah. I mean, for a lot of years, we had we had tools that we thought were great, but now we have tools that objectively other people believe are too totally wonderful and they sell like mad on the secondary market. And we get pictures of people saying, Oh, look at the collection. I've got them all. And you pay this. And, you know, so, um, you know, as, as you said before, when you hit the secondary market, you've arrived and, and I feel like the work has just be done for us. And, um, It's just begun, so I never feel like that. And I don't think anybody that works here feels like. The work has done anything but just begun, but it's nice to be recognized finally and have people calling us rather than us doing all the calling.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, for those who are not aware of, you know, where's Midway? Where's Midway? So Midway is about halfway between Frankfurt and Lexington. Yeah. Right?

About Midway between Frankfurt and Lexington. Right on I-64.

It's an awesome town. Awesome little town. Great restaurants.

It's kind of like a mini Frankfurt because the whole railroad going through town, which is very similar to Broadway in Frankfurt, Kentucky.

But- I was just in Frankfurt this week. We have a restaurant that we're starting here and a lady named Beth Carter from Frankfurt who's got a little restaurant called Bee's is gonna be running it. And so we went down just to eat her stuff and I haven't been down there for a long time. It is just really charming. It's so nice. It's beautiful.

It's gotten a lot fun. I mean, it was going really well pre-COVID and COVID happened and You know.

Bourbon had its way.

Yeah, Bourbon had its way, but then after COVID, like, it just kind of kept on going. We've got the Ashbrook Hotel where E.H. Taylor, that was his home. It's kind of a bar, restaurant, hotel, and there's a lot of things going on. So maybe you could put a tasting room there someday.

Maybe. I think Frankfurt might be the next place where you see a lot of tasting rooms, though. I mean, Louisville seems to be... It seems like they're going to run out of space because there's a lot of them.

Well, the new law in Kentucky that allows distilleries to have one satellite location, that's a big deal. It's a big deal. So, and a lot of them are choosing to go to Louisville with it, but you know, that can change.

Yeah. I mean, there's a lot going on in Midway. You have Buffalo Trace, obviously. Jay Mattingly down there, you have just the people. I mean, there's probably as much volume of people going through, or Frankfurt is through Louisville. Louisville has the convention stuff.

When I drive around town, you'll just see all kinds of people just walking around. And I'm like, you know, and I know a lot of people in my town because I'm a downtowner kind of guy. And I'm like, don't know that person. And like, there's a house across the street that's a VRBO or whatever. Yeah. There's people in and out of there every other day. Getting up every morning to go to Buffalo Trace. I'll do my work. I'm like, hey, how are you guys? And I'll go to induce myself and I'll spread the word about Whiskey Thief because it's one of my locals. I'm definitely going to start talking about this place because I love this place.

Listeners, if you want to get out on the road and find someplace new and exciting that you haven't been before, Bluegrass Distillers is the place to come. I don't want to sound like the guys or the bourbon drinkers because that's not the case. We've got a lot of roadies who are ladies. Midway is a great little shopping district. It's a great little craft town with a lot of little shops and stuff and good restaurants. They're basically your neighbor here. Oh yeah.

The people who live there are Midwegians. Midwegians.

I love it. It'd make a great day to spend the day and divide it between Bluegrass Distilling and Midway and just have a wonderful day. It's a great place.

They want you to leave, though. They don't want you to develop it. No. You can come and stay in a house that's already built there, but no new houses.

No new houses, huh? I mean, you're also in horse country, too. Oh, yeah. You could take some roads that are just. It's beautiful. Like fall, spring, any time, just drive a minute, you kind of get lost in it.

Oh, it's, I mean, the whole area out here is just fantastic. And the people are wonderful. The town has been really great to us. You know, it's great to go into town and people know us. Steve Zahn is opening a bar in town. Did y'all know that?

No, but he is someone that's, he's on my bucket, you know, cause he's one I might run across. Cause I come up here occasionally to have a drink with.

So an Irish pub right in town. I'm excited. That is cool.

Well, Sam, it's been wonderful to have you on again. This is three times a charm, but we're going to get you to five at some point, so we'll keep coming back.

Well, next time you all should get somebody else other than me. We have other great people. They have a lot of great things to say, and you've heard what I've had to say, so you do a great job.

We can certainly do that. Thank you for inviting us into your home. This is your home, I guess. I mean, you spend a lot of hours here.

I spend a lot of time here.

Yeah.

My kids spend a lot of time here actually, yeah. Yeah, we have a room upstairs that has a TV. So we call it sort of the nursery. They come and when they're sick and they step there and watch TV and they're not that age anymore. But yeah, Ben and I have children and we wanna make, actually we wanna make the place very family oriented. So it's not just trail driven. So that was part of the reason why we're doing the restaurant. bring people out more of like a brewery and orchard kind of concept. And so we're we're moving that direction. So in the future, we'll have well, next year we're going to have a barbecue festival and we're going to have music. We have the day after Thanksgiving, we have what's called Brown Friday, where we have all kinds of specials and a band. And we're going to be doing Christmas tree distribution for this philanthropy thing we do for Christmas trees. And then the very next week we do a Christmas market. So, you know, we, we just, we want to embrace the community and have local people come and it just not be a tourist destination.

That's awesome. Yeah. Awesome. Yes. Thank you for sharing your whiskeys with us. I have to say that, you know, when somebody comes here to visit, there's definitely going to be something on the shelf they're going to be happy about. And maybe you're not the person that buys the 399 bottle dollar bottle. Can they get a pour of it? Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

Come get a pour of it. I was going to say, I'm looking forward to an 18 year old blue corn.

Me too.

Let's get there.

Oh, I mean, that's, I would, I want to see that in my lifetime. Um, and, I do believe it'll happen. And it's a matter of volume and being able to just hold on. And that's what this business is. It's just, you know, never quit. Always, always.

Just label it Todd's barrel and put it in the corner somewhere. That's right.

I had nothing to do with it. I just want to see it. Well, you're part of the dream. You said it. So you said it. You made the idea real.

I can make it a vogue or whatever. It should come to life.

Well, this has been a blast. Had such a good time here. We definitely need to do it again. Let's just keep this on cadence to get back here once in a while and just have a great time. Yeah, we'd be happy to talk with somebody else on your staff. I think it'd be fun. But where can people find bluegrass distillers on the internet, on social media, and on the shelf?

So on the internet, you can buy it through our website. Often we do releases through bourbon outfitters. We also do them on seal backs. We partner with both of those. Actually, we recently partnered with Sealbacks on a charity barrel and all of the profits went to a county in Texas that was really devastated by the flood. So that was really great that Sealbacks was willing to do that with us. In town, We, you know, we're in Liquor Barn. We're in Cork and Barrel. Cork and Barrel has us in the airport, which they have been a wonderful partner for many years. And they're just wonderful people. Bev and Jim are just awesome. We're moving into other states. We're in Nashville, a lot of places we're in. I think we're going to be in probably Maryland and South Carolina. We're in Michigan, and we're just in a bunch of states. And it's growing constantly, and we're trying to get into new places. But if you go to the website, you can find when we release into a new state and things like that. We're in Nebraska. Our sales representative is going out there this week. We've got a great sales representative. He's doing a great job selling single barrels. It's his passion. He knows about every bourbon that's sold, the pricing, the mash bill. You know, he speaks the language. So, yeah. And our marketing department does a really wonderful job of telling people where to find us and explaining what our expressions are. We have a new person who does social media, so she's really dynamic.

So bourbon clubs, bourbon groups, places like that, you're open to single barrel picks from all these places.

Yeah, we do these. And this year we're going to By the end of the year, we are going to do a membership group. So our own bourbon club. And that would be, we do picks that are available only to the bourbon club. Probably four or five expressions a year.

Like a mailing thing or would it have to pick up here? We're not sure yet.

Okay. The mailing thing is complicated, but we'd prefer that it be that way. And we're still working on sort of some of the other concepts and pieces that'll be part of it. So that's exciting. I mean, there are two parts of that, which is the product and also the culture. Really bourbon people want to get together and talk about bourbon. And they wanna talk about the heritage of it, the people, the tastings, you know, it's not like when you were in college or, you know, you're just blasting through it, you know, not wanting to talk. It's about wanting to talk and, you know, tell stories and about the future. about the past and the product that you have in front of you. So that's part of the two main purposes of the group are to develop a culture and also, and those people will help us do selections and things like that, but also help get out wonderful product. So you have the two pieces, the two main prongs.

All right. Well, thanks again, Sam. We loved having you on the show again. And like I said, let's keep this an ongoing thing. Thank you. Yeah, we'll do it. All right. Well, you can find the Bourbon Road on all social media outlets. You can find us on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, threads, all those places. Todd and I get together every single week. We do an episode. Sometimes we'll have a guest on like Sam, sometimes a musician, sometimes, you know, just Todd and I in a room with some bottles, having a good time. It's always a great show. We're always laughing, always having a good time. So you make sure you want to join us. Uh, the best way not to miss a show is to scroll to the top of that app. You're on hit that subscribe button that way every week when we drop an episode, you'll get that notification and you can put those headphones on and let Todd and I be a part of your day. We appreciate your patronage. Check out the bourbon road.com website, our bourbon roadies group on Facebook. Uh, a lot of great people on there having a great conversations. But until the next time, we'll see you down the Bourbon Road.

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