478. Travel Guide to Experiencing American Whiskey

Hello 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 four and join us.

Hello there, this is Drew Hanisch of Whiskey Lore and I'm so happy that the Bourbon Road guys are going to let me promote a little bit about my new book coming out called Experiencing American Whiskey. It is a travel guide to whiskey distilleries in the entire United States. Lots of details in this book to help the traveler along the way and I'll tell you more about it at the break.

Hello listeners, welcome to another episode of the Bourbon Road. We've got a good old friend with us today who's been on a few times. He's not quite hit that magic five number where we'll have to bring us in on the second half, but Jim, who do we got with us today?

We've got Drew Hannish from whiskey lore, renowned author and podcaster and world traveler, and definitely a man with a palette for whiskey. So welcome Drew to the bourbon road.

Thank you so much guys. I appreciate it. I do feel like the chair is getting cozier the more I sit in it here for the show. So this is, uh, this is fantastic. Thank you.

So yeah, we drug you back on because you've got a new book coming out called the Whiskey Lures Travel Guide to Experiencing American Whiskey 2026 Edition. So it'll be coming out, I guess a few days after this one probably airs. I mean, there could be some, we may drop it a little early or may drop it a hair late, but yeah, I'm very excited. I've already pre-ordered two because I'm gonna give one away to a lucky bourbon roadie at some point. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about the thought process behind this new book.

Okay. Well, actually what inspired it was the second edition of my Kentucky Bourbon book. When I was driving home, I was thinking how everybody while I was going around to the Kentucky distilleries in February and March were all happy that I was coming out with the second edition of experiencing Kentucky Bourbon because the field guide for the KDA was going away. And so some, you know, a lot of people like to carry a book around with them rather than having an app, me being one of them. So, you know, for the longest time I would go down to Tennessee and I've been to all the distilleries down in Tennessee and they would say, when are you going to write a book for us? And then I was thinking, you know, I love craft distilleries and I'd love to put out a book for some of the major states, but it's such a laborious task putting together a book that it just seemed like, you know, I don't think I'm ever really going to be able to do that. Maybe I'll pick another state and do it. But then all of a sudden I thought, wait a second. I have a website up already that has research on all these distilleries across the country. I had over a thousand US distilleries on my website already. I thought, I've got all the information. All I need to do is start going through and verifying that information and make sure it's right and then figure out how I could place it into a book. And so I thought, well, actually I could break it down state by state, create a table, show all the distilleries in the table that are in that state, give the town that they're in, say what days they do tours and then say what kinds of whiskey they make and just keep it whiskey centric. So it's a very simple table set up. And then the distilleries that I had some relationship with, in other words, I've either been there or for I've done a, a whiskey lore podcast around them. Somehow I've got firsthand knowledge of them. I could do some little write-ups on those distilleries so that people would be able to get a sense of what these distilleries were doing, what made them special. So it would open up the ability for people to choose good distilleries to go visit or ones that fit their particular interest level. And so I started doing that and realized that I only was going to have about a hundred write-ups. And so I wanted to do more. So I actually started calling distilleries, reaching out to distilleries, did a survey with all thousand distilleries that are in the book to try to make sure that all my information was correct. And the original goal was for me to talk to every single distillery, which was insane. There was no way. It's like, it's like herding cats. It's so funny. I talked to distillers guilds and they would say, man, trying to tie down just, you know, our core people in our own state to get together and talk about things is impossible. I said, yeah, I think what that's like for a thousand distilleries across the United States. So, but I did get actually in touch with about 150 of those distilleries and had little 20 minute phone calls. And what I loved about the phone calls was I got to meet the person who was the founder of the distillery and they in that 20 minutes, would convey a feeling to me about what was important about that distillery. Why did they build that distillery? Why did they want to start a distillery? Or what was it that they were glowing about when they were talking about their distillery? Whether it be process, history, maybe a special style of whiskey that they decided they wanted to go with, family heritage, whatever it may be. And those conversations were amazing because I started finding out that some people were making bourbon off grain, some were making it on grain, some people were messing with different types of stills. And, you know, it was just like one distillery I talked to, they were distilling meat. I'm going, okay, now I'm hearing all sorts of really interesting things going on here. And the one thing I realized once I got done with all the phone calls was that this book is worthwhile if not just for opening some eyes to the fact that. It's not a landscape of distilleries across America that are all just making bourbon the same way. It is a bunch of distilleries who are kind of going off and trying some different things and rolling in some different directions or having different inspirations and sometimes doing some things that are pretty wild and wacky that you never really would think that somebody would do, but You know, somebody's figured it out and said, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to give that a shot. So it's been a real eye opener for me who thought that I knew what was going on in the American whiskey industry. And in reality, there are little distilleries all over the place that are doing some really fascinating stuff. So. The goal of this book has always been to try to get people when they are going somewhere to pick up the book and go, all right, I'm going to Utah. What's in Utah? We know high West is in Utah. What else is in Utah? Well, there's 11 distilleries in Utah that are making whiskey and have some kind of onsite experience. And those are the distilleries that I really wanted to focus on in this book. So when I say a thousand distilleries, there's a thousand nine. all of those distilleries make their own whiskey and have some kind of onsite experience. So it's not just a sourcing. It's not just, you know, these are people who actually have a still onsite somewhere and are doing the work. And so those are the people I'm most wanting to shine the light on in this book.

So I'm thinking that this is a book that you need to have in the console of your car, not on the bookshelf in your house.

Yes. And what's funny is that when I started working on this and I started thinking about doing the two page profiles for these distilleries, I said, Nope, can't do that. Cause if I did that, this book would be something that you would have to lug around with a forklift instead of something that's a nice light. And this is exactly the same size as the Kentucky bourbon book is. but it is really ultra condensed. So the idea being that, uh, everything's set up into regions. The regions are all color coded. So if you're headed to the great lakes area, great lakes are green. So you'll just run through there and you'll see Michigan, Iowa, I mean, Michigan, uh, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois, they're all in that same spot. and so you can quickly flip through or if you go into the northeast look for the blue or if you're going to out west you look for the brown and so you just pick the book up and you can just look by the spine and actually flip right open to the area that you're going to with the idea of just making this as quick and easy for people to be able to find stuff. But I also wanted this because what I'm going to do with it is make it an annual book. So this year I decided to focus on the live, uh, on the learn plan, uh, taste tour concept, like I did with the Kentucky bourbon book, where at the beginning. I give kind of a condensed, here's how you travel. Here are some tips on how to travel next year. What I want to do is I want to jump in and I want to start going into doing some features. And I also want to swap out the profiles. So I have 227 profiles in there this year. What I want to do is probably take about half of those out next year and replace them with another 150 that I talk to this year and get an opportunity to put them in. And the idea will be this year's book cover is red. Next year's will be white. The year after that will be blue. And then it'll cycle again with the idea that you can hold onto this book, keep it as a keepsake because every table that has all that list of distilleries has a little check mark by it. And anybody who's a baseball card collector, like, I am will know the old price guides. You used to be able to put little check marks by all the baseball cards that you got. Well, this is kind of the same thing. You can put check marks by the ones that you've gone to. And then there's a signatures page where you can go to your distiller, whoever the distiller, if you're talking to them and you got the book with you. hand it to them, let them sign in their section. And then you've got a keepsake for down the road when you are going, Oh, when did we go to such and such distillery? Oh, back in the 2026. And there's a signature. Yeah. We went there on such and such a day and met them. So, um, it's really kind of, as you say, something that you want to carry with you because it gives you the opportunity to not only find things in an instant, but also kind of preserve those memories of the distilleries that you've gone to.

One, I was so excited to hear from Drew that we forgot our most important thing and that's what's in the glass tonight. What's in the glass?

Oh my goodness. I know. Yeah. roadies are turning over in their grave. They're like, Oh my gosh, we were, we're 10 minutes in and we don't know what they're drinking.

And leave that to me because I'm the, I'm the king of the motor mouth. So mine actually is, um, There are so many things that I've discovered while doing my travels, my Great 48 Tour this year, trying to get to every state to be able to visit a distillery in each. And I did my Deep South Tour and I only went to St. Augustine in Florida. I had been to a bunch of different distilleries in Mississippi and Alabama. And so I was getting a common theme that everybody was making a weeded bourbon or a wheat whiskey. And I thought, well, maybe this is because of the harsh conditions. And then as I started researching this book and I started talking to distillers in Florida, there's 29 distilleries in Florida that will be in this book. And with those 29 distilleries, there's a number of them that are making rye whiskey and they are using local rye. So all those people who say, well, you know, down South, they can't really make rye whiskey because they don't grow it down there. Well, guess what? If they can grow it in Florida. And they can grow it just about anywhere. So this is from a distillery in Jacksonville, Florida. Manifest is the name of the distillery. They mostly focus on gins and vodkas, but they also do a 100% rye. And this rye is actually made from Florida grown rye grain and You would think, all right, we're not going to be using small barrels. We're probably going to use big barrels and we're probably going to be, um, not aging this for very long. Um, But, but this, um, I mean, there's nothing overly aggressive about this whiskey. It's actually nice, mild. It's, uh, it's not overly peppery in terms of, you know, you think about a rye whiskey and people will say, uh, I don't really want an overly pepper. This one picks up a nice amount of the barrel. It's got nice, uh, caramel notes on it. Nice little early note to it. Um, but it's a very mild, right? It's not overly herbal. Uh, it's not earthy, uh, to a, to a large extent, but you definitely know that it is, um, uh, that it is a rye grain that's in there.

Fantastic. I'm gonna, I'm going to switch to the, I'm kind of in the Midwest here. So I've got an American single malt, and this is from Iowa. This is from a distillery we've had on the show before. This is a Cedar Ridge distillery, and this is their quintessential signature blend, American single malt whiskey. And, uh, I love their whiskey. I think now this, the Iowa distillery, I think it's funny because when you talk to, uh, Murphy Quinn, who is the sort of the brains behind the operation there, the fa you, you see the founder, the son of the founder. He's the son of the founder.

So he went out to Stranahan's and his, his father said, you need to go out and work at Stranahan's for a while and then come back here. And they hadn't, they had no intention of making an American single mall until he came back from Stranahan's. And then he made that suggestion.

But he's sitting smack dab in the middle of corn country, Iowa. And so you've got to make a bourbon if you're in Iowa, right? I mean, you have to, because you're surrounded by it. But I think there's a love there for single malts and he's got a, because of strand of hands, he's got a, it's kind of one of those things. It's like his personal pet project and he makes some great single malt whiskey.

So. Cheers. Yeah, that's, that's definitely one that I want to try one of these days.

I've got a copper sky. This is their weeded bourbon. This is kind of an older release. It's a five year and it's, I guess they did batches. So this is a batch seven. out of Colorado. And I've heard it's closed, but I think I said something to you earlier, Drew.

It looks like it is.

Yeah.

Yeah. And this is, this is, yeah, it looks like they got evicted from their building. So I don't know what, what that means. Maybe, maybe they were just closing that building down and we'll see them again. Cause I've seen that quite a bit here recently, like Palmetto down by me is moving buildings. We hope they show up in the new building. We just don't know. So, I mean, that's the plan.

Well, I mean, if a distillery goes away because of hard times or because of other things, it doesn't diminish what they accomplished while they were here. So for those of us who have a bottle of what they put out while they were around, Cheers to them. Thank you for doing what you did and sorry. You couldn't, you couldn't make it. So, I mean, it, it does happen. Right.

Yeah. I have a fun story though, about one distillery, uh, that actually, while I was visiting with, uh, you guys on my first, uh, trip to the bourbon road, um, I left with a bottle of rich grain. whiskey out of Mississippi. And I was talking to, I knew they had gone out of business. I still have that bottle and it actually is a really nice bourbon. And I was talking to, uh, Brian from 1861 distillery, down in South Georgia. And while we were chatting, he said, and yeah, I found this distillery that was getting rid of their still. And that's what I bought. And I said, where'd you get it? And he said, from rich grain in Mississippi. And I went, Oh, I've had whiskey off that still. So, you know, the equipment goes somewhere else. Hopefully I always wonder what happens to the barrels. I will say that. you know, there are blending houses like forward slash down in Florida and Joshua tree out in California that source barrels from craft distilleries to do their blends. And so I keep thinking now, I bet you when these distilleries go out, there's probably somebody kind of fishing out there to see, you know, what are you going to do with those barrels? You know, we can use that whiskey somewhere down the road. So, And they become part of some blending magic somewhere else in the U S. So, I mean, it's great.

Yeah. I've got a bottle of rich grain downstairs that I need to go back and revisit now that you mentioned it because it's just been sitting there.

Yeah. Even Bardstown, uh, they source some Virginia, uh, I believe it was Virginia bourbon and put in some of their discovery there for awhile. Yeah. So.

Yeah, it's interesting to, um, you know, it's funny because I, as I say, I'm trying to find distilleries for this book that are making their own spirits, but you never want to completely dismiss the ones that aren't. Um, that's, this was the hard part about Vermont. I had 16 distilleries or 17 distilleries that were going to be in the book from Vermont. And then I talked to, um, I talked to their distillers guild and they're like, well, they don't make whiskey. They don't make whiskey. They don't make whiskey. And I was like, all of a sudden now I'm down to 10 distilleries in Vermont. So what I decided to do in the book was actually do a little call out, uh, because I had extra space and say, you know, there are distilleries up there that are sourcing bourbon, but they're also doing some very interesting things with maple and maple is. quintessential Vermont. And so don't, you know, if you're going to go to whistle pig, stop by Vermont spirits because they're both in the same town and you have the opportunity to taste some vodka that's made out of maple syrup. I mean, that's unique or, you know, local locally harvested, uh, maple, uh, that's been put into barrels and then they're finishing bourbon. That's even though the bourbon is sourced, you're still getting a taste of Vermont. in that barrel. So that's, that's where it gets a little tricky and you go, yeah, I'd like to sneak this one in. I want to tell that story.

So your book is releasing here shortly. Uh, probably right around the time this podcast airs, but, um, if, if somebody tries to find it just before its release date. So, so normally they would find it on like Amazon or at their favorite bookstore, but, but for now, if they, if they get on there and they don't see the book available, they can order it on your website. Right.

Yeah. I am trying to figure out how to do pre-orders on Amazon, but I have never quite figured that out completely. So it may end up showing up as a pre-order on Amazon potentially, but they can always pre-order it through the, the advantage to getting it through whiskylore.org slash shop. is that I will sign the book when it goes out and the price is not going to be any different because I'm going to ship it out on free shipping as well. It just will take an extra three or four days for it to arrive if you're a Prime member versus what Prime would ship it out as. So that's the main difference. But Yeah. Now the goal is, uh, you know, always to try to, uh, get as many books signed and out as I can possibly do. Uh, so anybody listening to this now can order right away and I will ship them out as soon as I, I get copies in.

So if somebody were to take your book and say, okay, I'm retired. I just retired this year. I want to put this book in my, in my console in my car. My wife and I are going to start our travel and we're going to hit every one of these in the book. How long would that take? I mean, you've done it.

So, I mean, but how long would that take? Oh man. Well, the hard part about it is, let's see, well, let's break it down by state. Cause if you think about Kentucky, all right, I have 66 distilleries in Kentucky that are in the book. So how long would it take for you to go to 66 distilleries? You could go, if you did three a day and Kentucky's easier because most of the distilleries in Kentucky are open seven days a week. The issue that you're going to run into when you go to Utah is they're open Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. You're really open to only nine visits in Utah over a period of a week, and there's 11 distilleries. It's going to make it a little bit awkward. Are you going to stay for four more days to hit those last two distilleries? Of course, if you're van-lifing it or you're in an RV, You can probably handle that and it wouldn't be, and actually what's cool is some of these distilleries like Revelton in Iowa has Harvest Host. So you could actually, uh, get a tour of Pathfinder Farms in Maryland has Harvest Host and we'll actually do an evening tour for you when you come in. If you're coming in that particular way, no behind the scenes thing. Let's take a moment and let our listeners know what Harvest Host is. Okay, that's true. I take for granted because I'm in that travel mindset. It's an app that you sign up for. I don't know if there's a cost for it or not, but it basically shows you all the places across the country where you can park your RV or van overnight. And that you're welcome to do so. And sometimes it's a parking lot of a, of a shopping center. And sometimes it's a distillery parking lot, which is the case here. So I only found about three or four of them that I mentioned in the book. So, but that's something I'm gonna keep my eye out for because I know there are people who love to travel that way.

Yeah. So Melody and I have done a number of those and, and we've really enjoyed it. Now we don't own an RV, but we've actually rented an RV and then went out on the road and hit harvest host sites along the way and spent the night and had a great evening in the gift shop and having a few pours and just enjoying ourselves. And it's a great way to experience a distillery, a brewery or a winery when you're out and about. Yeah.

Well, you know, I was thinking I'm going to ask chat GPT right now. How long would it take to go to a thousand distilleries? If you went to, uh, let's say 12 a week, uh, This is, this is where AI becomes very handy.

It doesn't take 83 weeks. Oh, two and a half, two, two years call it. That's not too bad. Yeah. If you're going to retire at 65 and you want to like disappear for like two years, jet, it might go a little quicker.

You can fly and you know,

Yeah. All right. Maybe that's a retirement plan for me. I don't know. So the hard, the hard part is that I'm usually carrying microphones and stuff with me. So that kind of heats into my time, uh, doing interviews and all of that. But, uh, you know, and then the extended, well, let's show you this, let's show you this, uh, kind of thing. But yeah. Well, you would definitely taste a lot of different styles of whiskey and different quality grades as well on that kind of a journey. The question is what your budget would be like for doing something like that. If you go to North Carolina, most of the tours are complimentary because that's the way the law is set up. The base tours and tastings are supposed to be free. If you do something beyond, then they charge you, make a charge of fee for that. So you'll see like Southern Distilling does have a charge for their tours, but they're doing a full hour instead of Uh, like South Carolina, a tour is considered you walk back. Uh, you're not allowed to actually do a tasting without a tour, but the tour can be, you can see the stills and somebody tells you what they do. And that's enough. You don't even have to go back into the room. So, um, that was probably one of the most interesting, uh, projects that I did with this book. I wanted to. have people be able to understand what they could do when they went to different states, how many bottles of whiskey they could buy, if there were any restrictions, if there were tasting rooms available or no tasting rooms were allowed in the state, any kind of regulations that they would have. And so each state, has basically at the end of it, a listing of the laws and regulations that would affect the traveler going to a particular state as to how, how many samples can you have? Um, you know, and again, how many bucks in South Carolina, you have to basically, uh, give them your information so that they can't sell you another bottle of whiskey for the rest of the month. Uh, Cause that's the way the state law is set up. So, um, that's, or if you're in Montana, eight o'clock at night, if you're enjoying a cocktail, they rip it out of your hand if you haven't finished it. Cause they can't, it can't have you have alcohol in your possession after eight o'clock at night. So it's, you know, all those kinds of things I wanted to toss into the book so that people would have an expectation of what might happen when they go to a particular state and go to a distillery.

Yeah. I was going to say, you probably have a really good grasp of like a lot of state laws now because of your tours and travels. Yeah.

Well, and my hope is because the issue with it is that some of that research was based on me digging through what records I could find, but I'm not big into reading a lot of legalese. So what I did mostly was I talked to distillers and distilleries and said, you know, what are the limitations there? But then I found sometimes the distilleries didn't quite know themselves a hundred percent. Or they would say, yeah, well, the law is this, but we kind of do this. And so, you know, you may find that some distilleries will walk a little outside the law, maybe potentially, usually with samples, because the thing with samples is a lot of states have a very strict defined amount that you can have. You can have two drinks in Montana and a drink is considered like a half a half ounce, I think. Uh, so a drink is a cocktail or a drink is a, um, you know, it just having a sample of whiskey. Um, and so it makes for a very creative job for the cocktail maker to figure out how to keep the alcohol within the legal limits to be able to do that. So yeah. And that's why I say you're going to find like, uh, Utah, Sugar house is a distillery that I would recommend that people check out. However, when you go, you're only going to walk up to the front room and the front room, they'll let you do a tasting, but they don't necessarily do tours, but they will walk you back and they'll show you around and let you see some things. but that's because the laws in Utah are somewhat strict in terms of what they're allowed to serve and how they're allowed to serve it. And some like Virginia, you have to have the ABC store is actually in your distillery. So you're actually walking into a store to buy your whiskey instead of, uh, it being sold somewhere within the distillery itself. Uh, same crazy, crazy, crazy. Same in Idaho. I was told, okay, if you want to buy whiskey, you know, you have to go out the front door and you have to come in this other door because that other door is the official entrance to the ABC store where you can buy your spirits. We can't sell you through this door. So, um, Yeah, it is interesting. Prohibition really wrecked this country in terms of comments.

I mean, we're 100 years out. We're four or five generations out from the prohibition. How many more generations do you think it's going to take to get rid of those crazy laws?

I don't know, but you know, what's funny is as I watched some states that I would think would be a lot more strict on things, Kansas, for example, Kansas went into prohibition in 1880 and they were one of the last to come out of prohibition. Yet I talked to Union Horse and they're like, Oh no. I mean, when we started talking about opening up a distillery, they were like, Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah. No. Oh yeah, that's fine. No, we can do that. So, you know, it's a state you wouldn't expect to be that way. Oklahoma, the way it's set up in Oklahoma is basically they make the whiskey. They have to ship it to a, um, to a state agency and then the state agency basically just ships it right back to them. So it's like, so they can sell it, but they can't sell it without it first having traveled to a government facility before it comes back and is sold again. Yeah. So, I mean, It is, it's, it's wacky, but it does lend to some really interesting research and, and a lot of laughs when you see some of the ridiculousness that that's going on. So, all right.

Well, Todd, what do you say we take a short break here and, uh, and when we come back, we've got more from Drew and a couple more pores for us to talk about.

That sounds like a plan.

All right. Folks stick around. We will be right back.

Hello there, Drew Hanisch, Whiskey Lore, and I am excited to announce that I have a brand new book coming out called Experiencing American Whiskey. Now, if you have checked out my travel guide to Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon, you'll know that I go deep into the details of Kentucky Bourbon. Well, imagine that I've spread this out across the entire United States now, and I'm covering a thousand distilleries, coast to coast, and even Alaska and Hawaii, I have 227 detailed profiles in there from the distilleries that I've had firsthand contact with. I give you all the details that you need to know, like when they have tours, if they do tastings, cocktails, and everything is in a state-by-state format so that you can roll through, find your particular state that you're traveling to, and have all that information at your fingertips. On top of that, I have a website resource where you can bookmark and actually create a wish list of the distilleries that you'd like to visit. I cover state regulations so you know how many bottles of whiskey you can walk out with from a store from a distillery and so on. So it is an exciting book. It is the biggest thing that I put together to this point. And right now it is going to be going on sale on January the 13th, but it is actually available for pre-order right now at whiskylore.org slash shop. That's Whiskey Lore's travel guide to experiencing American whiskey.

All right, listeners, welcome back. We're in the second half of our show with Drew Hannish from whiskey lore, and we're talking about his new book and we're all drinking different whiskies from a craft distilleries around the country. In the first half, we had a few really good ones and let's talk a little bit of all what we're drinking now. Todd, what is in your glass for the second half?

I have, while I run, malted rye whiskey from New Holland out of Michigan. And this particular bottle is a pick some of our friends of ours have done. Dusty Dan was on this pick. Dusty Dan Trout, our friends from Hello Again Whiskey Friends who've been on the show, and Jeff, Jeff Wack. And yeah, it's delightful. Like I said, it's grilled peaches. And I know some of our Ohio crew roadies up there, they're big fans of New Holland. So, Drew, what about, what's in your glass this time?

So I am go with a Virginia whiskey. This is from murlarky, which is a interesting name that is actually made up of the founders last names. The whiskey is called smokehouse. I actually had a podcaster turn me on to this. Uh, we were going through and tasting a bunch of different whiskies. And then I, I tasted this one and I'm like, Whoa, I love smoky whiskey. This one was very unique. I said, this is kind of reminds me a little bit of an Isla whiskey, no medicinal notes, but the meatiness was in there. And so he said, well, you know, basically what they do with this whiskey is they take their standard whiskey, their standard, uh, single malt. And then they take wood staves, they stick them into a cooker where they're cooking pounds of bacon and they smoke those staves and then they drop them down into the barrel and they let them absorb all that barbecue smoke. And so all that bacon smoke. So if you like bacon. Yeah, so that's exactly where it's getting it from, but it's really interesting too because it has kind of a chocolatey note to it that reminds me of a Tootsie Roll. So it's kind of like a bacon smoky Tootsie Roll, if you can imagine that.

That is awesome. I think I need to try some of that. I always wanted some bacon flavored whiskeys. There you go. It hits the mark. Bacon makes everything better, even whiskey, right? There you go.

Makes me want a cheeseburger or something to go with it.

All right. Well, I'm sipping on a little bit of rye whiskey out of fray ranch distillery out of Nevada. And I think we're all familiar with Colby and his farm out there and what he does. He, he, they, they, he and his wife put some great whiskey in the bottle, no doubt about it. And I've always enjoyed their stuff. And so today I'm drinking, uh, they're a state grown rye whiskey. Nice. Cheers to that. Cheers.

So Drew. What kind of what state kind of like really surprised you with like the whiskey scene they had there? Was there anything? I mean, obviously, Kentucky's, you know, yeah, had it going on for a while. But was there a state that kind of really surprised you with the scene that was going on there?

I think the most surprising state of all is New York. And the reason that New York is fascinating to me is that when I was doing my New England trip and I drove back through New York, I was on my way to Cooperstown to go to a distillery in Cooperstown. And, um, on the way I passed by at least four distilleries and I just driving down the road. I'm like, Oh, there's a, there's a distiller and I knew the names because I'd been writing them all down. Um, I originally started with a list of 72 distilleries in New York. Now, some of those got knocked off the list because that they either weren't making their own whiskey or, uh, some, something was going on with them. Some of them had shut down maybe, but, uh, I ended up with what 60, uh, 65 New York distilleries. There are 66 Kentucky distilleries. So they're like only one behind in the count. And the thing is, is that it's all because they opened up regulations and they really wanted to support agriculture in the state. And so they went above and beyond to try to encourage Distilleries opening up and when you have a fertile area like the Hudson Valley for distilleries and there are a number of distilleries there. Then you got the finger lakes region, which is known for wine, but there are a lot of distilleries that have popped up around that area. And then you go back into history, which this is an interesting part of this book for me is that, uh, for the first time I wrote the history of American whiskey rather than the history of Kentucky bourbon with a little American side note. And what I was discovering was how big New York was in distilling in the 1830s and 1840s. Uh, but a lot of what they were producing were what they called high wines. And the idea of high wines were it was so expensive for you to ship your whiskey on trains that what they decided to do was basically create high proof alcohol. and then ship it out from Buffalo, New York. So Buffalo was the center of distilling in New York, not New York city. And, um, it was because it had canal, it had the Erie canal, it had the great lakes right there. It had easy access to everything. And then it also had access to the rails. And so they would send this high proof whiskey out, uh, in barrels. And then once it reached its destination, they would add, a flavoring agent to it, which the flavoring agent was originally bourbon or rye or whatever to kind of give more flavor to this, this high alcohol, uh, high wines, then they could proof it down, uh, and save money on their shipping. But, um, so New York has had a long legacy of being tied into the whiskey industry, but it's really interesting that, you know, they didn't really start this journey until 2010, 2011, and they have that many distilleries. And that shows you how a States like Kentucky and Tennessee and New York and Colorado are very open to distilleries. And it shows in the number of distilleries that they have Colorado. I knew they'd have a lot of distilleries. They have 63. So they are, you know, those three are huge in the United States in terms of how many distilleries they have. The reason Kentucky of course stands out is because they have big distilleries and they have historic distilleries where these other two states are all fresh new distilleries that have popped up within the last 15 years or so. But some of the surprises were some of the smaller states too. North Carolina blew me away. There's like, I have 30, I actually have a little list here of how many, North Carolina was 30 distilleries. which was a lot more than I expected. Michigan had 36. I had no idea when I went up there the first time that Michigan had so many distilleries. Ohio has 45 distilleries. So Ohio's, but Ohio is another state that is very open to Getting distilleries up and running, which you wouldn't think from all the stuff that you hear about their ABC system and how restrictive things are on the distilling side, they're wide open and really encouraging the development of trail and getting these distilleries on board. So they're actually the sixth biggest state in terms of the number of distilleries, um, I had a Pennsylvania, which surprised me.

So do you think this is mostly the, the, the distilleries in the state, the vocal, very loud distilleries in the state making this happen? Or do you think it's the legislatures in each state that are really like, uh, progressive and moving forward?

I would probably push it towards the legislature because I think until the law loosens up, it's really hard to get momentum. I mean, there are states that I'm sure would love to be able to grow a lot faster, but they have their hamstrung by the legislatures in their state. Whereas, you know, Tennessee is a great example of that. Tennessee would have been in whiskey a lot earlier than it was if it weren't for the fact that the state and really religious sensibilities and the rest were keeping them from, from opening that state up. And, but once they did, then, you know, it just took off and now you're at 43 distilleries where they only had three at the beginning of the 21st century. So I think having a state that is very open to it does make a huge difference. It shows in the numbers. Florida appears to be open to it. They've got 28 distilleries, 29 distilleries down there as well. Missouri is another state that I would say is a surprise. in that they looked at the Kentucky blueprint and actually worked with the KDA to try to develop their trail, uh, which is called the Missouri expedition trail. And that is, uh, they're impressive in terms of what they're doing. Very diverse set of distilleries in Missouri. They have the advantage that they have the barrels as well as the grain. So, you know, they can marry the best of both worlds. So Missouri's a really good spot for, for doing that. And because it's an open state that there's a lot of activity and distilleries don't mind popping open and getting started because the risk is lower for them to be able to do it in those states. So, yeah.

Yeah. So Todd, we've had some great Missouri whiskey, right?

Yes. Holiday is one that comes to mind and it's actually a fairly big one too. I mean, that's what's great. And I was going to ask this, you know, Obviously, we'll have done our favorite bourbons of the year and there'll be some heritage in that. But I think this year, there's some smaller distilleries that have put out some great product that are going to be in the mix. And I think that's what's great. sure we have interviews with the smaller or the big guys, but I don't know. It seems like our focus has kind of shifted to like the lesser knowns. And I also feel like that's kind of been your transition too. I mean, you, you know.

Yeah. No, I mean, this is the, the main thing for me is the more I have traveled around to the smaller craft distilleries, the more I see really interesting innovation going on. And I get this sense that there is going to be a point, especially when you have somebody like Buffalo Trace who's now on their third expansion. And they are going to start meeting the demand for the stuff that's been on allocation for so long. Once those bottles no longer become those hard to find, I want to go seek that bottle type of a situation. Where do whiskey fans go from there? And for me, it's kind of, well, you can only buy Grand Traverse whiskey in Michigan. You can't buy it anywhere else. So if that's the case, and you're sitting around with some friends and you're sharing whiskies, some of these, distilleries that are in states that you may not expect, like me showing off a rye whiskey from Florida. And it's a conversation starter. It gets people interested. And there's also the scarcity part of it, that you can't just buy that whiskey anywhere. So it's kind of a little uh, bragging, right? That you have something that is, uh, something that not everybody can get their hands on. And so the hard part has been for these smaller distilleries is how do you know where they're at and who they are and what they're about? And so the idea of the book is to get you going. Oh, okay. Look, there's a distillery there. Maybe I'll stop off there and do a tour and see what they're, what they're making. And maybe you like it. Maybe you don't. But if you do and you take a bottle home, again, you have a conversation piece. It's like the days when I lived in Philadelphia and I was drinking Yingling beer, and this was in the early nineties. And then I went back home to North Carolina and I talked about Yingling and somebody said, well, next time you're up there, go buy a case, bring it down. I want to try it. And so it became a thing that every time I was going up north, go get me a case of Yingling beer. Then they bought a distillery or a brewery in Tampa and it was widely available then in North and South Carolina. And now nobody cares about getting a case of Yingling because you can find it everywhere. And so there is that kind of, you know, it's, it's our special, uh, whiskey that, that we can go get or that we have that, uh, you can, or you can bring home a bottle and some memory of a vacation that you took, you know? And so that's where the person who's driving around going to all 1000 distilleries over a two year period, uh, It probably just kills that effect of the specialness of a particular whiskey other than maybe you had the distiller sign the bottle or, you know, whatever it may be, or they took you on an extra special jaunt through the fields of grain or whatever it may be. So, yeah.

Well, let me ask you, Drew, will you indulge me for a few minutes as I shout out some States and you tell me about a distillery we need to keep her eyes on?

Okay. All right. Just don't give me North Dakota. No, I could give you one in North Dakota, but okay.

Okay. So I'm just going to bounce around a little bit because we've got listeners all over the country and they're there. I'm sure they're tired of hearing about Kentucky and New York and Colorado and the standard stuff. So I'm going to say South Carolina. Okay, South Carolina.

Well, the easy one is Highwire. Highwire making Jimmy Redcorn. Yep. The thing is, is that, uh, burnt church also does the Jimmy red corn now. And, um, uh, broodsy rye is, uh, popular in the state. We actually have two malters down here or, uh, uh, yeah, two malting houses down here that are working on heritage grains. So South Carolina's signature right now is becoming the rebirth of heritage grains. in the different whiskeys that are coming from across the state. Chetuga Bell Distillery is one that I would say would be one people don't know about right now. I haven't been out there yet. I only lived about 45 minutes from there. It's up almost in Georgia. And it's a farm that was once owned by Groucho Marx. And it was once the largest apple orchard in the United States or east of the Mississippi. And now it is, you can go out there and you can pick fruit and do all that sort of stuff, but they also make whiskey out there and they're making whiskey off of the grain from their own field. So, you know, that's, I think that's a fun story. So I cover them. in the book as well. It's fun when I called out there to talk to the distiller and he's on his tractor. So, you know, it's a real working farm going on out there. Please tell me they're doing a brandy too, right? An apple brandy. I think they are. I'm not a hundred percent sure. Okay. Not a hundred percent sure. Yep.

All right. What's another state, Jim?

New Mexico. Uh, well then I have to give you as above so below cause and I've actually been to that distillery. Um, Absinthe is something that they're making, but they're also now coming out with their first American single malt. It's a very interesting, the bourbon that they have actually came from the owner's time at Hanger One in San Francisco. She distilled the whiskey out there and brought, actually when they decided they weren't going to move forward with selling the whiskey, she bought it from them and she's finished aging it. and is that she bottles it by the stars. So she uses astrology to figure out when she's going to bottle the whiskey. So it's very interesting, but it's right in downtown Santa Fe. So if you're in Santa Fe, you could stop in. They make amazing cocktails. You can see the stills back there, but it is a sourced bourbon, but it's sourced from the owner's time at a different distillery. So she actually distilled, she started at Stranahan's, went out to Hangar One, and is now as above so below. And then there's Santa Fe Spirits, which of course does the Mesquite-smoked whiskey as well. All right. One more and then we can move on. Oh, I'm fine. Yeah, I'm fine. New Hampshire. Well, I mentioned this before. I wish I'd have gone to this distillery. I went to Flag Hill Distillery, which is a winery and distillery, and they've just set up a new still house. And it's beautiful out there, especially if you go out at the time I did, which was while the leaves were right in their mid change. But the distillery that I wished I had gone to or had time to go to while I was there was Tamworth. Tamworth is a distillery where you want to talk about experimenting. When the bottle says goose on it, that's because there's goose in the bottle. Yes, they are distilling some very like deer meat. There's a beaver. Don't they have some sort of beaver? I don't know if there's a beaver. Um, that's a good question. There is a, there's a deer and there's a goose. And so they are distilling, uh, this kind of reminds me of, uh, Delaware where they were making Scrapple, uh, vodka, uh, you know, let's put some Scrapple, um, basically like putting liver mush in a, in a still and let's see what, let's see what that makes. And so Tamworth is really interesting because the owner of that distillery, uh, started Hendrick's gin and sailor Jerry rum, and he bought the property for Tamworth off of the sale of sailor Jerry, uh, rum, which I think he sold to William Grant. So, uh, interesting and, I love places like that. I mean, I just love seeing the experimentation and he said, you know, that you'll see bottles here that they're just one time. I'm not necessarily going to make that again. So, uh, yeah, that's on my list for next time. So 48 states, we've got a distillery from every state. There's no U S there's a distillery. No, uh, all 40, all 50 states, all 50 states. Yes. So, uh, poor Chilkoot, which is in Alaska, uh, that's in a town called Haynes, Alaska. So if you're on a cruise, you can get to it. Um, you can also probably take a, uh, one of those scary little plane flights from Juneau to get to it. There are four distilleries in Alaska. What's interesting is there's one called Arctic harvest distillery, which is a farm to glass distillery in Alaska. So if you can imagine they're growing all Alaskan grains and they are making their whiskey out of Alaskan grains. So short growing season. For sure.

They got to get it in that three months, you know?

Yeah, exactly. But what's interesting is I've been to Alaska and I've been up in an area near there where everybody has a Midwestern Michigan accent. And I asked about it when I was there, I was like, why does everybody have a Michigan accent up here? And they said, well, because in the 1930s, a bunch of people migrated up from Michigan and moved to this part of Alaska because the soil was so fertile. that they grow vegetables that are three times the size of vegetables that you get anywhere else in the United States. So the soil is fertile. I don't know if it's going to put the inner bluegrass region in any danger in terms of growing grains or horses, but it's interesting to see that somebody would Go to the point of saying, Hey, we could make a distillery around farm to glass and even Alaska. There's distilleries in Hawaii. Um, you might think they're all making rum, but there are two, three bourbon distilleries, uh, in Hawaii. So, uh, even there, like I say, the toughest state I had was North Dakota. There's two. um neither one of them would get back with me one is called proof artisan and they're in fargo And the reason that I find them interesting is because they actually got sued by the Scotch whiskey association because they came out with a whiskey called Glen Fargo and they ended up winning the lawsuit against the Scotch whiskey association for their Glen Fargo. So, um, I've been to Fargo before. I think what's fun about it is if you're going to do all 50 States. If that is your goal to hit all 50 states and one distillery in each state, save North Dakota for last. Not because they have distilleries that won't talk to me, but because when you get to Fargo, you need to go to the visitor center. And when you go to the visitor center, they have something called the save the best for last club. And so they know in North Dakota that everybody always saves. North Dakota is the last state that they're going to go to because it's nowhere on the way to anywhere. So it's kind of like you have to go out of your way to get to it. And so they said, well, we'll just take advantage of this. Come in, you get to sign a guest register. You're going to get a t-shirt that says best for last club that this is your 50th state. And then you get to have your picture taken by the wood chipper. So they have a foot in a wood chipper from the movie Fargo and you get to have your picture taken with that. So yeah, great sense of humor that they have there. And it was, it was my 50th state. I went to Hawaii and then I was like, okay, I got to go to North Dakota. That's the last one. So, uh, yeah, the, to tell you what to do in Fargo. Otherwise you can go to the Roger Maris museum. It's in the mall. That's the only other thing it's in the mall. That's the only other thing I could tell you to do in Fargo, but there is a distillery there. So, uh, unfortunately when I went, I was not distillery hunting at the time. So I did not go to that particular one, but yeah. Well, fantastic.

Well, you know, I really look forward to getting the copier book and, uh, Todd, you said you already ordered two, right? So I need to get on and get mine for sure. And, uh, if we, if we order those, how long do they take to come in? Is it just a few weeks or?

So if, uh, once the book is out and available, um, it usually only takes me, I'll have some copies here, so I just ship them out as I've got copies. So as long as it takes for UP or for the postal service to get it to you, which, you know, it was probably four or five days for it to arrive. If you get it through the whiskey lore shop.

So this is great because this really appeals to every listener of our show right now, because I mean, I'm sure we've got people who, you know, or who live in Indiana or North Carolina or Virginia or New Mexico. And they're thinking, how many distilleries are in my state? And you've got them covered, right? I mean, you've got a thousand distilleries in 50 states. Everybody's going to have representation.

Yeah. And the, and the, I mean, basically all you have to do is if you're going to Virginia, just open the book to the Virginia page, you'll see a table with all the distilleries there. And since in the column, it tells you what days the tours are, you can actually just kind of glance over and go, Oh, okay. These are all happening on the end of the week. So I could maybe group these together and go to these distilleries on these particular days. And then you can actually, there's a QR code on every state page. If you take your phone and you scan that QR code, if you're looking at Virginia, it'll take you to whiskylore.org slash Virginia, which will have a map. And that map will show you where all the distilleries at. You can click on the one that you're interested in, and then you can add it to you to sign up for a free membership. And then you can add it to your whiskylore wishlist. And so when you're ready to travel, then all of the distilleries that you wanted to go to are all saved on your member page with a booking link so that you can go ahead and book. travel to those particular distilleries when you're ready to put your, uh, your plans in order. So I'm trying to make this as easy for people as possible to be able to connect with these distilleries. Cause as we all know, I mean, this is a time period where a lot of distilleries are kind of either they've gotten to a certain point. They're like, okay, we got whiskey. We got, where are the people? Let's get some people in. And part of the issue with that is that how do people find you? And so this is really an opportunity for people to, what made me very happy was when I sent the surveys out to people, one of the questions on the survey besides what do you make and when are your tours and all of that was, do you have a gift shop and would you be willing to carry the book in your gift shop? And I expected most would probably look at it and go, you know, maybe I get 10, 15% of the distilleries back. 90% of the distilleries that I sent that out to said we would like to carry this book in our gift shop, which tells me they are hungry for this. They want something like this. And that's what really drove me to make sure I got this done. by the end of the year. So, um, and as I say, uh, also to keep it as an annual, cause it needs to stay a trusted guide that people pick up with confidence and go, you know, I'm not going to be checking off a bunch of distilleries that don't exist anymore, that they're going to know that the, you know, there is a good chance. Yes, probably 5% of the stories in this book will probably not be there by the end of the year. And there'll be new ones that will come on board as well. Kentucky's got, Three new distilleries, I think, that are coming on board. Rhythm River is one of them, and Henderson, and I've read about a couple others.

And a few going away. And a few going away, yeah. It's, I mean, it's... It's the way it works.

It circles life. Nature of the beast, for sure.

So, yeah, but... All right, Drew, well, you're kind of the Rick Steves of whiskey, right? I mean...

I'm kind of picking up that reputation, I guess. Yeah.

He's better than Travelocity or something, you know?

That's true. That's true. Yes. No, that's, uh, that's fine. I I'll take that. I'd love to be in Europe, uh, you know, traveling around and seeing some distilleries there too. But, uh, I think I'm going to be hyper-focused on, uh, the U S there's with a thousand distilleries. There's plenty to keep me busy for, for quite a while.

Well, we've got a friend, Todd and I have a friend who runs the WTF festival in the Netherlands, the whiskey tasting festival in the Netherlands. So maybe you need to go over there next year.

Yeah, there you go. There you go. Let's see what's going on. I know there's, uh, uh, there's a bunch of German, this is over a hundred German distilleries. And I'm like, I don't, I think I know three. So, um, yeah, that's another grand mystery, but it's the same problem we have here. I mean, how many people knew that South Carolina had 19 distilleries? So, uh, you know, it's gotta open, open the doors and, and, uh, let people know what's, what's available.

All right, Drew. Well, we'd like to give you a chance to let our listeners know where they can find you, your podcast, your books, your website, all of that stuff. Take a few minutes and, uh, fill them in. Where can they find you? Perfect.

Well, always the hub is whiskylord.org. It has all my social media links on it. I will say that I am mostly on Instagram in terms of social media. So if you go to, uh, Instagram.com slash whiskey lore, and then. I do the podcast, of course, the Whiskey Lord podcast, which sways between, I'm going to start bringing a lot more history in again in this upcoming year. So looking forward to doing that. And that is just the Whiskey Lord podcast. The interviews podcast has gone away. It's now folded into the regular Whiskey Lord podcast. You can find everything in one spot. And I have my shop, which is whiskylore.org slash shop. If you want to buy books from me directly, but everything is also on Amazon or any online store because it is set up for international sales as well. And I'm also on Patreon at patreon.com slash whisky lore as well. And we're getting quite a community going there, especially with my fan favorites. you know, um, craft distilleries voting that I'm doing, which was really what helped get this book put together was getting people to nominate these distilleries from all over the country that I had no idea existed. That's what got me thinking, okay, I need to look into this. I got to see what's going on. Cause there's a lot more here than I thought. So, We're going to start the nomination process actually pretty early next year. So Patreon or Instagram is a good way to get involved in that and support your favorite craft distillery and get them known.

Cause you gave a title away, right?

Oh yes, I did. Glenn's Creek. And I have to tell you that Glenn's Creek He unloaded his whole mailing list on Patreon. So I had somebody, I had somebody saying, um, what is the deal with Glenn's Creek? Because other distilleries were getting like 40 votes and they were getting 200 and nobody could figure it out. I could see by probably the gold round that Glenn's Creek was probably going to wrap this up unless somebody. just came along and, but the whole thing for me is that it's really not who wins distillery of the year as much as it is, um, that these guys are getting promoted week after week after week as people are voting for them. So the longer you stay in it, then you end up on the podcast. Like I did an episode today. That's the top 40, um, craft distilleries from that countdown. So I'm promoting people on the podcast and books and also on my social media to try to get people to pay attention to these craft distilleries. So hang in it for as long as you can, if you're a distillery, so you can get all the free pub you can get.

All right. Well, Drew, it's been a pleasure to have you on again. It's, uh, it's always great to have you on the bourbon road podcast. You've been a long time a guest. And, uh, we look forward to your next release and we hope our listeners will come out and order your book, pre-order your book and, uh, put it in their console or their car and drive the U S and see what's out there.

Well, you guys are the best. I appreciate you having me on and, uh, it's always fun chatting with you.

We can find the Bourbon Road on all social media outlets. You can find us on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, threads. We do all those. Todd and I try to get together every single week to an episode. Sometimes it's just Todd and I sitting down with a few pours. Sometimes we'll have a guest on like Drew. It's always fun. We're always drinking whiskey. We hope you'll join us every week. The best way not to miss an episode. is just go to the top of that app you're on, hit that subscribe button. That way you'll get that notification when we've dropped the next episode and you can put your headphones on and join us for another fun time. We hope you'll check out the bourbon roadies, our Facebook group. That's where all our friends hang out. Come to our website, the bourbonroad.com. We got some swag on there. Every time you buy a piece of swag from us, you help Todd and I get down the road to the next interview. We certainly enjoy talking to you every week, but until the next time we'll see you down the burn room.

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