482. From the Battlefield to the Bottle: A Journey to Perryville, Kentucky

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.

Alright listeners, welcome back for another episode of the Bourbon Road Podcast. We're so happy and glad that you've joined us today. Todd and I are on the road. Good to be on the road, right Todd?

Yeah, it's fun. It's a little slow driving. It's got a lot of snow, a lot of ice. I actually got here probably earlier than I intended to, but I didn't know what to expect.

So I traveled about an hour and 15, an hour and 20. About the same for me. About the same for you. Okay. Well, we're at a new place. We haven't been here before. I'm pretty excited about it. Who do we have with us?

We've got Lizzie and Aaron Haynes with Peter E. Hart Spirits, correct?

That's right.

Welcome to the show. Thank you.

Thanks for having us.

So we are at their... historic homestead, if you will, in parable or purvel, however you want to call it, Kentucky. And if there's any Civil War historians out there that are listening, the ears probably perked up a little bit, which is going to kind of tie into why we're here as well. But one of the first things we like to do is get to that first pour.

Absolutely. And what is this in our first glass?

Right now we have in our glass, we have our rye whiskey. We finished it in a smoked bourbon barrel for about eight hours, and it's 100 proof. It's no younger than three years old, and it's got a good flavor to it. All right.

Well, you said smoked barrel.

Explain that. Extra char type thing? No, we took a freshly poured bourbon barrel. And we took some some staves and burnt them to create some smoke. And then we had a hose and we put it into the bourbon barrel and smoked that bourbon barrel for eight hours. Yes. And then we poured this right whiskey into it. Wow. Interesting.

So the journey that your palette is going to go on, of course, with it being a rye, it's going to have some traditional spice to it. You're definitely going to get that rye spice on the nose and you're going to get it on the palette right up front. But then in the back is when that smoky smooth finish is going to come in and introduce itself.

I was going to say, I'm not picking up a big smokiness on the nose, but it's like this nice, fresh minty nose. There's a little.

There's just a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't want to put too much smoke into it. Right.

It can scare some people off. Yes.

Right. Yes.

So this is 100 proof and this retails for about?

Right now it's at, depending on the retailer, it's 49 to 59. It's right in that sweet spot.

Yeah. I love the nose on this. I do too. Makes me think of a nice cool day, which got that space. This is sort of a milder weather zipper kind of nose to it, I think. Maybe it's just me wanting it to be milder weather. I'm kind of sick of the cold.

You're all ready.

We wanted to appeal to your bourbon drinker with this one, which is why we finished it in that bourbon barrel so we could smooth it down a little bit. We know a lot of people like high-rise and that really powerful spice, but we wanted to simmer it down a little bit and appeal to that bourbon drinker.

I think you've accomplished that there, at least with the notes so far. Thank you.

Yeah. Rye is polarizing. People either love rye or they very passionately dislike it. And we wanted to find something that felt approachable when, wanting to start and put our name out there, we went up and down bourbon barrel aisles and we'll see that, of course, bourbon is saturated. We know this, but there's very little rye. And we felt like if we could make a statement by having a rye whiskey that was enjoyable to the rye connoisseurs, but also something that could be palatable for bourbon drinkers as well. And that's really what we wanted to go for. And I think if I do say so ourselves, I think we did a pretty good job because I myself am one of those people that typically dislike the rye spice, but I personally love ours. It's just, it's very smooth and it has those sweeter notes and that smokiness really cuts through the spice and gives you a lot less of a punch.

Yeah, Liz can attest to this at tastings. We get a lot of people saying, oh, I don't want to try that. I'm not a rye drinker. No, thank you. Liz is really good at being like, well, why don't you give me a second and give this a try? Because I think you'll really like it. We tried to make it appeal to the bourbon and to people a little bit more. And every single, I wouldn't say every time, but most of the time, people are like, OK, I'm liking this. This is not what I was expecting.

You know, I'm getting those neko candy. Neko candy? Yeah, kind of chalky neko candy on the nose a little bit. That's an historic candy, so it fits right in with the C-16. That's right. That's right. And a little bit of light fruit, very light fruit. Yeah. Nice. All right. I've been waxing quiet. I'm ready to sip. Cheers. Cheers, you guys.

Cheers.

Soft, fruity. Definitely. And a whole palette impression, like everywhere. I'm even getting a little bit of sizzle on the front of my tongue. That's nice. I like to get that with a rye.

I was going to say, we're rye lovers, so this is right down our alley.

We've been recruiting for the rye army for quite some time.

I love that.

Rye's up.

Yeah, converting to the dark side.

Definitely. Rye needs a better PR team. And we're here to say that we're not up for taking the job entirely, but we hope that we can contribute to giving rye a better name.

We feel nice cooling. Yeah, so I really do think this has a place in spring. Maybe summer, I don't know. Fall, for sure. Like spring and fall kind of rye. It's got just enough bite to take the edge off a cool night, but it goes well on a hot day or at least a warmer day. I think it's really nice.

So Aaron, you went to the Jim Beam Institute at UK. So I mean, before that though, what kind of, or actually what kind of drove you both, what got you into bourbon in the first place? And then we'll dive into why you really dove into bourbon. So who wants to, Erin? Yeah.

I'm gonna let Erin take the first step here.

Sure, yeah. I think it all kind of started with your dad. Michael Wilder, he's a great man, shout out. He got me into bourbon. He's always had such a great collection of bourbon and anytime I would come while we were dating, he'd be like, oh, we should try this one. I was like, okay, give that a try. And just trying different bourbons over and over and over. really got me into it. And at the time I was studying for chemical engineering at UK, I hadn't yet got to the BEAM Institute because it hadn't started until 2018, 2019. And so I just fell in love with bourbon at that point and fell in love with her dad and her granddaddy talking over cigars and drinking bourbon. It was a good time, just got me loving it.

Yeah, there's a culture to bourbon that I feel we both really enjoy. It's just so much more than a drink. It in so many ways is conduit for community and fellowship togetherness. And my parents, particularly my dad and my granddaddy, really believed that. I was showing you earlier, there's an unfinished garage that used to be my granddaddy's actual garage where he would set up chairs. they'd smoke stogies and drink bourbon and they'd call it solving the world's problems. We're gonna go over and pour some bourbon and smoke some stogies. And when they came back, they're like, well, all the world's problems have been solved now. And I think that culture really embedded itself into really the both of us. And it made us fall in love with the idea that we can potentially create that conduit for not only for ourselves, but for other people as well.

Okay, so flash forward. You're like, Okay, we really love bourbon. What's like, oh, hey, let's, let's start a brand.

Yes. Well, I would say I take us to 2020. So at this point, Aaron had just graduated and At that point, of course, you were approached by the Jim Beam Institute. Was it even called the Jim Beam Institute at the time? It was just more of classes.

It was distilling wine and brewery for engineers.

Yes. We knew we were going to be moving to Louisville because his engineering job was taking us there. Where to know Aaron is to know that he has an entrepreneurial spirit. And he's humble, so he won't say that out loud. But he is a creator and a thinker. I mean, being an engineer almost requires that of you. So he definitely fits that description. And he's sitting in the car. He's always talking about this new idea. But after graduating with this certificate, Now talking about starting a bourbon, he's like, you know, the one thing that we need more than anything is a story. We need a story. And of course, that's kind of where I jumped in because my entire life, not only in my literal DNA, but also just the fabric of who I am is this, this house that we're sitting in and the people in it. And we always knew that we were sitting on something really special. And so we just said, you know, we already have a story, but we don't even need to make anything up. We don't need to even try to think of anything special. I think we just tell our truth of who we are and where we come from. And from there, it, I will take you to 2020. I've said before, whenever I tell this story, nobody actually wants to go back to 2020, but, um, but when you're in a state where you're doing absolutely nothing and the alcohol business is in a really strange. particular state of the world as everything else, we thought this is the time to strike why the iron's hot. And we just went ahead and we went for it. And we've, so this year, 2026 will mark six years in business as, as Petery Heart Spirits. And for the first five almost, we were really behind the scenes, just kind of doing this as a glorified hobby, if you will, that we were hoping would turn into something more. And so now, after launching, it's been really wonderful. But honestly, the best way to answer the question is we decided to just dive in fully and just go for it.

Such a great story. I'm going to go back to this. I want to say that for something that has some three-year barrels in it. This does not have any indication of being young whatsoever. I love that. And the finish on it is actually lengthy. I was surprised because I didn't expect it. I sat here holding the glass and just savoring the flavor of it. And I just found that as I was listening to the conversation, I didn't need to lift my glass up again. Not for a while. Not that I didn't want to, but I didn't need to because the flavor remained. So really good stuff. Thank you. That's all Aaron.

That's all Aaron.

So about how big was this release for you guys on the Rye? So you guys are let's petite. We're very small. Yes.

I mean, we are a very we're a little engine that could. And so we launched in November of twenty four. We launched in, I believe, eight liquor barns at the time, and then from there expanded into Total Wine. Do you remember how many cases we originally launched with the rye?

We barreled 15 barrels worth.

But three a year, you probably got a pretty good... We got a very good yield.

Very good yield. Yes. It took a while to finish it in those bourbon barrels, in those smoked bourbon barrels, but it yielded a really good product.

Okay. And then is there any way like direct-to-consumer type? Avenue for folks? Okay, it's only Kentucky.

Only in Kentucky as of right now. We've looked at different avenues, but haven't found anything that we liked. We like also like the stigma of only in Kentucky and we're Kentucky proud. All the barrels are from Kentucky. All the packaging is from Kentucky. We're just Kentucky proud.

There's a special twinkle that's there for people who travel out, and we've known that. Eventually, we will scale because we know that that is how we grow. It's just finding the right time, I think, for us. And I don't think that we're quite there yet, but soon.

So you get any smoke on the palate? A little.

It kind of reminds me of burnt tavern a little bit. It's like a sweet smoke a little.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm just picking up this super faint, very, very faint, like light iodine way in the back. And it's interesting because you don't typically get that on oak smoke. You get that on peat smoke, right?

So you guys want to tell us a little about Peter E. Hart?

Yes. Yes. So Peter. So the house that we're sitting in right now is Peter's house. But to go back before this house, it's important in order to understand Peter's full character. So Peter was originally from Bristol, Tennessee. And we have over there a really beautiful obituary that was written for him. And I'm happy to read some if you'd like. But what we know from the data of what we know from Peter is that he was the ultimate gentleman, just really appreciated valor and moral fiber. And that is very much present in that obituary is written by one of his neighbors that talked about how his ability to be a neighbor in the traditional sense went far past his physical neighbors and all the way into his entire community. And so we love Peter because of the value that he was able to represent. And Peter was also a war hero. So what brought him to Kentucky was that he was a Union Sergeant. And to be a Union Sergeant in Bristol, Tennessee meant that you were in a rebel union. And Peter's was no different. There's actually a book here called The Dreaded 13 that is all about Peter's cavalry. And they were called The Dreaded 13 because they would specifically train Black soldiers to fight alongside them for their freedom. So they were absolutely a part of the Union cause in every way that they could be. And their union traveled up to Kentucky, fought in the Battle of Perryville. And sometime later, Peter traveled back to Kentucky after the war with his son and his daughter-in-law, his son, Joe, his daughter-in-law, Minnie, and his granddaughter, Lucille, and they bought this house. And one thing I like to think about is I get the question a lot of why would Peter come back to Perryville? It's a place that probably held a lot of dark memories. And I always like to say that in my imagination, he was taking something that held a lot of darkness and redeeming it by bringing his children and his grandchildren out here. There's so much to love out here. I mean, right now it's a little icy, so it's hard to really appreciate the beauty, but this whole entire stretch of land really is Kentucky incarnate. It's just the beautiful rolling hills, green grass, big trees, just so much greenery, lots of beautiful land. And it really encapsulates what makes Kentucky so beautiful and special. So I do really understand why Peter wanted to come back to Kentucky, into Parable specifically. So the house itself became an heirloom. And so Peter eventually passed. And so the house was left to his son, Joe, daughter, Minnie and excuse me, a daughter-in-law, Minnie and granddaughter, Lucille. And upon Joe's passing then at the time, because we were, this was a particular time in history where women weren't really able to work and maintain a home on their own without a husband. So Minnie and Lucille ended up going into a shared home where they were able to stay and earn a living. And in tandem with all this happening, there was the Bruce family that came in from Scotland and they bought this house upon auction with all the furniture inside and for their son, Frank. And Frank ended up meeting a young lady, Lucille, and fell in love with her and brought her and her mom back home. And that is how this is the story of the farm. So when I, Lucille is my great-grandmother, who I had the pleasure of knowing when I was very little, and Peter is my great-great-great-grandfather. So when it came time to really naming this brand, we knew that we wanted to encapsulate all the values that we knew that Peter emulated, but we also really wanted to honor family. One thing that I feel really grateful for is to come from a family that understands the sacredness of understanding where you came from and the people around you, and that friends are lovely and community is lovely, and that all of those things are very important, but that family really ultimately is everything. And I feel really blessed to be able to say that. And we wanted to honor my family. And we knew that the best way to do that was to honor our family's patriarch.

What a great story. Awesome. I feel ashamed that my Civil War history is not what it should be, but can you tell me what the Battle here meant for the Union Army?

So I know that at some point I'm probably going to say something that's a little out of turn. But what I do know is that the Battle of Paraville was notorious for being one of the bloodiest battles in the entire Civil War. So that is one of the reasons why Paraville is so notoriously famous for the Battle of Paraville. But it was also a big turning point for the Union. So I think that this was a battle that signified things changing for the Union. And again, you're going to absolutely need to fact check me on this. But I think I'd be remiss not to say that the Battle of Powerfall was absolutely a foothold and a footstool for eventually winning the Civil War for the Union. And then, of course, if anyone ever gets the opportunity to come back, usually it's in October. Every year they have the reenactment. And it is so much fun.

It is a lot of fun. It went years ago. Kind of like stepping back in time a little bit.

It's unbelievable. I mean, they take it so seriously. I mean, these characters, they do not break character and it is a full reenactment. They do little segments for children where they teach children how to carry packs. and salute and walk to give them a taste of what it might potentially have felt like to be camping out there. And then they have a huge parade, food trucks. They hold like a little beauty pageant. Like they do all kinds of, I mean, the entire town comes out. It's really fun.

I want to go back real quick though, and you could ruffle feathers by saying he came back to Kentucky because he liked bourbon more than Tennessee whiskey.

Oh, I'd like to think that.

It's a true statement.

Yes, yes. That's right.

But you guys ready to move on to pour two?

Yes, let's do it. So this one's going to be our weeded bourbon. So this bourbon, honestly, I really like to say that this put us on the map. This is the bourbon that helped really get our name out there. You can tell immediately from the just the color of it that it's going to be a special juice. I mean, the moment that you put it up to your nose, then that's corroborated, but it. The color, the smell, and then the taste is just, forget about it. We really, we really love it. This is a special, special juice for us. And so it came out at the barrel at cask strength at 130. We proved it down to 112 and in doing so, We actually think it really yielded being able to appreciate those flavored notes. We've said before that the proof can almost act as, if you're comparing proof to the volume on music, if it's too high, sometimes you can't even really appreciate. It almost drowns out the music itself, and it's just noise. And it's not to say that high proof isn't valuable in its own way, but when you're dealing with really complex flavors, it's better to proof it down just a little bit. There's a sweet spot. And I think Aaron did a great job in finding it.

Well, I can't imagine this being 10% darker, but it was before you proofed it down. It sure was. So this is a very dark color. It's nice and mahogany with a hint of red.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

It is a beautiful, beautiful whiskey.

And like she said, this one, this was the one that surprisingly we were talking earlier, there are only three single barrels of this, which kind of blew my mind. I was thinking maybe, you know, five or actually double digits, like 10 or something. But this caught a lot of like the bourbon geek hype, which is, you know, that's what you want sometimes. But So I went and got a bottle and I've actually procured a few for some friends too. So there's one total wine that does not have any more and that's probably because of me.

Well, right now, as of today, we are completely sold out of this. So right now this is not available to purchase in stores. We hope we might be telling a different story, but we never know time is going to tell on that one. But we are really, really proud of this juice. Again, it put us on the map and with just three barrels, like you said, it was able to do something really special for us and get us recognized by connoisseurs. And we submitted it to the Ascot Awards and it won double platinum for us in its category of weeded. And you can truly tell how special it is, and that journey that it's gonna take you on, it has, so it's gonna take you on a slightly different journey where the rye, of course, is gonna hit with that spice, and you're gonna get some heat up front because, of course, it being 112, it's gonna deliver some heat to it. But really, more than anything, you're gonna meet all of those really deep caramel notes. It's gonna have a little bit of a butter pecan, finish to it, and then it's going to give you that same lingering notes to it, but all are going to be sweet. It's really going to be more on that sweeter, savory side.

This is a pretty unique mash bill. You guys, there's honeyed wheat, correct? Honeyed wheat, that's right. And then honey malt. Yep, that's right. 10% honeyed wheat. The first thing I get on my nose is like a nice toasty bread with like a little honey drizzle over it. And then, yeah, the caramel note.

So you mentioned butter pecan. Immediately, I went to butter pecan ice cream. I was like, oh, yeah, I get it. I get it. On the nose, yeah. All right, cheers. Cheers.

And there are none at the store? Anywhere that you know of? Maybe a few tucked in behind something kind of thing?

So when we went to Bourbon Con, we went in January. And they typically, so if anyone that's ever been, they have all of the tastings, they have a huge tasting room. And then right across from that, they have a vault where you can purchase anything that you've just tasted. And in 2025, they purchased a bunch of our weeded bourbon. And the whole concept was that eventually they buy in bulk from your distributor and then give back whatever wasn't purchased. But for this particular event in 20, when we had it this past January, We found out that they had a couple of cases of the weeded leftover that they hadn't sold but held on to. So we got to surprise everybody at BourbonCon by saying that we have some special limited edition cases. So if I guess never say never that there is the potential that maybe there's some tucked away and hidden away. But if you log on to the Glicker Barn site or Total Wines site, they're going to tell you that they're sold out.

Yeah, I can verify that. Yes. If somebody else was asking for one, I'm like, you're sorry.

Maybe if you make the right friend. We had someone reach out to us when we Instagrammed that that we had some left at BourbonCon. And I had people DMing me, like, can I come to BourbonCon and buy one? Like, what can we do? And we were like, well, we need to make sure that the people who paid to get a ticket can get first dibs. But it was definitely exciting to see the excitement over having that for a limited time.

Well, obviously there's some craft and mastery in this, but I mean, What's the secret sauce? How did you get to this bottle? Because this is really fantastic.

I mean, what was your... Yeah, so our main thing we like to do is we travel Kentucky and taste bourbons from everywhere, from little nooks and crannies throughout Kentucky, from people that we know, people that we've met. And we just try and we look for barrels that are good, but we feel like are missing some notes. And then we bring them back and try to highlight some of those notes that we think are missing. With our rye, we smoked it because we thought it was missing a little bit of that vanilla flavor with a little bit of smoke. We'll get to our double-oaked later, but with this one, we just thought it was delicious when we first had it. We were like, this is so good. I don't think we need to do much to it. It's amazing. The only thing that we thought was it's super hot. It was really hot at 130 and we proved it down from 130 to 125 to 120 to 118. We went down to 100, but we found that 112 was like the perfect flavor profile for this one.

I'm just curious what happened as you passed 112. What did it start to do that sort of made it depart from that perfect spot?

I feel like it got rid of some of the the sweetness a little bit because you don't get a whole lot of sweetness, but below 112, it felt like you didn't get any sweetness to it. You also didn't get that Kentucky hug around 105. It wasn't as hot as we like it.

And you want a Kentucky hug. And if you're using the same analogy as volume, if the volume's too low, now I can't really even hear what I'm listening to. And it's the same as if the proof is too low, you can definitely taste it has been watered down. And we wanted to make sure that you were still getting the bourbon aspect of it, of the heat and really being able to appreciate that proof. So I think definitely 112 was perfect for us.

Did bottles of these make it on premise anywhere, like in the back bar anywhere?

At Malone's. Malone's is at their bars. We had a couple of mom and pops throughout Kentucky, but not a whole lot of bars. We tried to get it here in Danville into a couple of restaurants here, but they never ordered.

Okay. So there's a possibility somebody could find a port at Malone's?

Yes, so if you particularly at the Paddock Shops location, so any new villians over there, they have...

I was just there yesterday in the Paddock Shops. Oh, nice. Yeah.

You're going to have to play little where's Waldo. I don't know if you've ever been over to that Paddock Shops Malone's, but they have almost like a floor to ceiling bar with nothing but different types of bourbon. You're definitely playing a little bit of an I Spy game, but they're there and we've seen them there. And so you ask the bartender and they'll make you whatever cocktail you want off of them. Or, of course, Neat, particularly with the rye. If you are in the market for a cocktail, that is the number one spirit of ours that I'd recommend for it. It makes a great old-fashioned.

I bet it does. Yeah, I think I would keep this one in a neat glass. Oh, yeah. Yeah, this one. Don't touch this one.

It's too special to make that you can't touch it. That one definitely is neat.

That praline note is just...

Yeah, it's really good. And I mean, I think you've obviously had this on many occasions. So you kind of perfected that butter pecan call out there. That's for sure. That's there. I love it. This is an exceptional recipe.

This one retailed for, it was one... 129.

Yeah. Yeah.

But well worth it. I'm so glad I got one. And like I said, it's the reason I reached out to them through their website. I was like, hey.

That's good. I know where to get a pour.

That's right. That's right.

That's right.

We love this one. And we've had people from all over the country hearing about it and being like, where can we get this? Can we get it in our state? No. But one particular guy is from Connecticut. He contacts us pretty often. He's like, are you coming out with one soon? When? And he's like, if you ever come to Connecticut, I already got a retailer for you. They want it. So it's been nice hearing all these people throughout the country wanting to try our juice.

So is it possible with your barrel inventories? Is it possible we could see something similar to this in the near future?

Yeah, I think so. We're working on it. We found some more barrels, which are now nine years old, almost 10, whether this this team, I will say team, wants to part with any of it, we'll see. But hopefully, hopefully in the near future we'll get some out.

Yes, so much of we've realized through through being in the industry ourselves is that so much of it is really just making the right friends and maintaining that friendship. And so we've done an OK job at it so far. And we'll see where it takes us. But it's been really, really fun. And I'll extend that, actually, to just tip my hat to the entire industry to say that when you are the new kid on the block, you never quite know how you're going to be treated. And of course, especially in an industry that's really heavily saturated, You never know how you're going to be accepted and of course there's a hint of imposter syndrome between the two of us to be like you know we standing next to we're just so such a small operation that then to call ourselves peers next to an industry like makers mark feels silly. But nonetheless, we have had nothing but the most incredible welcome from everybody in the industry. And there's this really beautiful idea that everyone kind of understands that all ships rise with the same tide. And success for our brother and sister in the business is success for us as well. And that's been so much fun to discover. So when it comes to being non-distilling producers, we've gotten nothing but love from everybody. And that's been really fun.

Yeah, they're great people and they do tend to make everybody feel like you're part of the I don't know, part of the crew. And with a double platinum in your belt, I don't think you have to worry about the imposter syndrome anymore.

I know, we have to remind ourselves it's okay to pat ourselves on the back a little bit. But our live right now, because it's really just the two of us, and my parents are certainly involved as well, because this is their home and their family story as well, so it was really important to us to make this a family business. But the majority of the operations is really limited to the two of us. And so our day, it's easy to have imposter syndrome when half of the day is really doing lovely things like this and then the other half is making lunch for our kids. We're humbled very quickly.

So when you guys decided to start this, I mean, what drew you to, did you try some other mash bills and things and what kind of drew you to this one? I mean, bravo for picking it because it's very unique. And do you actually know the mash bill for this?

Yeah. Yes. It's 70% corn, 10% honeyed wheat, 10% honey malt, and then 10% distillers mash. And that's the distillers mash that has a particular Mash Bill 2 itself, which I don't know that one in particular. And I know the people that do know it, but I have not asked until we decide that we want to distill ourselves, which is in the near future, hopefully. But yeah, we've tried many mashbills through Wilderness Trail, through New Rift, through a rabbit hole stuff, all kinds of different mashbills from all over Kentucky. And this one was just so good.

So between the two of you, who's got the master palette? Or is it both of you? Aaron.

Me, Aaron, and my father-in-law. Yes, we try them together. And Michael loved this one, too. He was like, this is something special. Yes.

It's awesome you guys have that bond. That's really cool.

Yeah. All right, we're going to take a short break and we're going to keep sipping on this magical whiskey. And when we come back in the second half, we have another whiskey from you and we'll dive a little bit more into your story.

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've 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. Welcome back to the second half of the show. We're at Peter E. Hart Spirits with Lizzie and Aaron Haynes. We had two great. expressions. I mean, like I said, that one knocked my socks off. So that was kind of, Hey, I need to reach out to these folks because they're both really one. I want to see if they have more, which that's, that's out the door. But, uh, yeah. So what'd you think, Jim?

I thought they were fantastic. I thought both of them were the ride was a really, really good. And I love that smoked effect on it. The, um, The single barrel.

Yeah, the single barrel bourbon.

112 proof, just out of this world good. Out of this world good. So if you can repeat that story, it's going to be an amazing thing.

And then we also had the rye, which is finished in smoked bourbon barrels, which is a very unique process. But we got a new one in the glass. Aaron, you want to tell us what we got?

Yeah, absolutely. Yes, we've got a double-oaked eight-year-old Kentucky straight bourbon. It's 105 proof. came out of the barrel around 109. We proved it down to 105. We thought that was a good sweet spot.

Now you've been pretty open about where you source, so is this Lone's Trail or New Ref?

This one we found from some people that we've met over the years and this one is from Jim Beam and it is one of the barrels that they use to blend for little books. So we found this one. We thought this one was missing a few things in it. We thought it was missing some oak flavors in it, and we thought it was missing a little bit of vanilla, which we really like vanilla in our stuff. And so we decided to double oak this one. I did a lot of research to see if they've ever double oak this barrel before. They have not. So we double up this one for three months and it came out very nice. We love this flavor a lot.

Yeah, we're really proud of it. We knew that we wanted to come out with a straight Kentucky straight bourbon. Of course, the expression that we had earlier is our weeded. And so we knew we wanted to come up with something else that was going to be in our lineup that that was going to be different than what we were already currently offering. And we knew that, of course, Kentucky straight bourbon was going to be the spirit, but we also wanted to be able to have a differentiator to that particular spirit. And we know right now that double oaking is an exciting, you know, it's an exciting, exciting word. People get really, you know, People get really excited at the idea of something being double-oked, but we realized through the process that it truly actually does make a difference. We used a level four char with the new barrel, and we did it before and after. The color, the smell, everything was darker, richer, sweeter. We really were able to pull all of those flavor notes, and then Erin was able to use your skills to be able to understand the particular time of year of when we were going to put it into the new barrel for double oaking, and then when we were going to extract it to bottle it, making sure that we did everything that we could to yield the best results with it.

Not a number four charred barrel, but was it also a toasted barrel? No, it was not. So just charred. Just charred, yes.

And how long was it in that secondary? Three months.

Three months, okay. We get our new barrels from ISC, Independence Day. They toast barrels in Louisville, and they just do their normal chars close to here. I forget where they're at. Yes, I think that sounds right.

Yeah, it's nice. It's got an extra level of sweetness on it, but the oak is nice. It's nice, but it's not over-oaked. It's nice.

The oak will really introduce itself on the palate. That's really when you're going to get that deep oak expression.

Still got a little bit of a freshness to the nose.

I do too, yeah. So this mashbill is 67% corn, 23% rye, and 10% malted barley.

Okay. And how they know if, you know, they were kind enough to tell us where this came from, it doesn't have that... nuttiness that you get on that sometimes.

I was going to say a lot of Jim Beam has a nutty flavor to it. And some people love that. And I actually enjoy it myself. But with the double oak that we did to it, it got rid of a lot of that nuttiness.

I'm ready to sit.

Cheers.

Cheers.

Wow.

Oh, nice.

Rich.

Wow. It's really good. Yes, it's delicious. Now, what's this one retail for? This is your latest release, right? It came out in November, you said, I think?

Yeah, this one's $99.99.

It's lacking like a super big sweetness hit that I thought I might get, but I didn't get it. I think that's the lack of the toasting on the second barrel. That's right. Actually, that was well thought out because this puts it in a place that's totally different than what somebody might expect from a double oak.

The double oaking was able to elevate the flavors and really bring a certain sophistication to the actual juice itself. But I also think not toasting it and just using that level four char was able to bring some balance back into it as well. That way it's not too overpowering.

Yeah, so the original whiskey, was it more mid to front palate? And then this kind of really gathers on the back a little bit.

It does gather on the back, yeah.

I don't know if the original whiskey had that as well. Or did it just amplify everything and sort of kept it where it was?

I think it kept, yeah. Kept it where it was a little bit. It brought out some of the vanilla flavors that we wanted. And yeah. It's bright, too.

For like, you know, when you think double barrel, you think they get a little more heavier and intense sometimes. Whereas this one is still pretty like there's some like big fruity notes to me.

Yeah, we love the number four char. We'll probably continue to do that on anything that we double barrel. But we also like to limit the time that it's in there. Not too long, not too little.

And what was the proof again?

This one's one hundred and five proof. OK.

Drinks. It's great drinker. Yeah, it's really nice.

It really also balances out our overall flavor profile. Having something with spice, something that's really deep and rich, and then having something that falls somewhere in the middle and gives you more of a traditional sip.

Yeah, this is really good. This would be great with a mild cigar.

On our label it says double oak series, which means we also have some of our rye whiskey that's being double oaked right now. We're waiting for that to have a good flavor to it to push out.

How involved are you in that process?

Very involved, yes. We bottle with Bluegrass Bottling right now, and they're wonderful, wonderful. They let us come in and taste, and if there's anything we want to do, they're really open to whatever it is that we want to do. They're like, yes, we can do that. And they're really good people. They love to taste stuff with us. They're fun.

So let's kind of jump into the future. You've got this great farm out here and you've got your Jim Beam Institute background. Are we going to go with this? Yes.

Obviously, there's a bigger, greater plan, right? Yes, sure it is. We're waiting for the right time for it, but we want to distill ourselves. We're working on building, not too far from here on the farmland, a distillery of our own with a tasting room and all that good stuff. We have plans. We know that we want to first start with a 500 gallon still. That will produce a barrel every time that we Distill so we have those plans and everything's ready to go We just are trying to look for the right time to to pull the trigger on that one As we know if I'm sure you guys know like the the bourbon industry is slowed down a little bit but for craft distillers, I think it's a good time because bourbon barrels are cheaper than they were before. And so it's a lot of fun finding these new barrels for cheaper than it was before and giving them a try and crafting them and see what we can develop.

Yeah, I still think there's this large number of Bourbon fans that were created over the last 10 to 12 years. Huge number of Bourbon fans. So the hype's kind of gone. The younger crowd isn't drinking the way they used to. We all know that's going on, but those bourbon lovers that were created over the last 10 years, they still exist, and they're looking for fantastic barrels. That's right. Nobody knows what's going to happen, but I feel like they're going to pull back to regional more and focus on companies like you guys that are really leveling up the craft and putting out one-off synergists. Well, standard issue, but also one-offs that are just fantastic.

We hope so. We think what's been kind of fun to see is that, of course, that concept of crafting and finishing and non-distilling producers in general, it's a very new age concept in the world of bourbon. But in doing so, we're actually like through this method or in some ways pulling back the reins on the modernization of bourbon and actually getting back to basics and back to the roots. Because as I was saying before, bourbon is more than just an alcoholic beverage. It's in so many ways conduit to community and togetherness. And it's that pouring a drink and sitting around with people in bourbon societies. I mean, it is able to yield togetherness and yield community. And that's really what Peter stood for. And in so many ways, Kentucky value as well is this idea of being a community. And the bourbon industry itself is a family. And we know that We want to be able to bring an experience to our bourbon drinkers, to anyone that tastes Petery Heart. We want them to be able to look at our bottle and understand not just what's inside, but also who we are. And so having some place out here where people can come and taste and try and giving them that full, full circle experience is definitely going to be a huge priority for us. And so that's a big plan in 2026 is to really get our ducks in a row and get to a place where we feel really excited about the future because we really, there's a lot to share here and of course we're sitting right in front of Peter's sword and his riding gloves and his pocket watch and there's a lot of really cool history here at this farm that we want to be able to share with people.

Yeah, we want to stick with our motto, which is steeped in history, always evolving. So we want to stay traditional and we stay that way in ways of always having a age label on our bourbon, even though like some people might pass our rye whiskey because it says three years on it. But we want to stick to that tradition, but always evolving, meaning like we're craft, we're coming in new, coming in hot, you know, and doing different things in the craft world and trying to be innovative at the same time. Let's go say that's one of the

you're seeing kind of a rise of NDPs right now because they're taking, you know, they're in that same barrel pool that you guys are that, and they're getting things and they're not just, I mean, in some cases they are really some straight single barrels, but then there's also, you know, like I think of dark arts and doing a lot of interesting finishes or double oaked and obviously the smoked barrel is that's a that's kind of a new one on me so I think it's a it's really awesome what you guys are doing and yeah I'm looking forward to more releases and then to see what you actually do with I mean do you think you'll kind of keep along with some of these same mash bills that you're playing with here or what's You're going to come up with your own thing.

Yeah, once we start distilling, we're definitely going to do this weeded bourbon mash build, 100%. It's so good. And we'll play with it a little bit. We'll stick with that one. We'll come up with our own. My time at the James B. Beam Institute really taught me how to distill. It taught me how to work with flavors in the barrel. It taught me a lot of different things. And through my engineering work as well, I'm able to use my engineering practice and put it into workmanship once we decide to distill. I hope that's soon.

So you talk about building a distillery at a farm nearby. So that will just be the production facility. And then this will still be the... This will become the...

Everything will be on this farm. This will be your home again. Yes. This is Nancy and Michael's home that we're in right now, which is Petery Hearts. How many grades is it for Nancy?

For her, it would be great, great, two greats. And so this is their home now. So it's passed down to everybody. So it's to Peter, then Joe, then Lucille, then Joanne, who's my grandmother, my mom's mom, and then now my mom. So it's passed down. Our children are the sixth generation to call this home. We really, we started, so a personal update of ours is that we sold our home in November and officially moved out here to be able to live the Peter E. Hart lifestyle. When y'all leave, you'll see that there's a big hole in the ground over there and that's where they're starting to dig. for our home. And then in between our home and this house will be where we open up our tasting room. So we'll have everything kind of blended. I've said before to some people that for us, you know, you hear sometimes that it's important to kind of separate art and artist. But for us, like there's having absolutely no end and beginning to where the business stops and our personal lives start. That actually has bared a lot of fruit for us is to just say there's absolutely no start and stop that everything's just blended together. So where we're living and our family story is that our business and and vice versa and it's it's worked really well for us and yielded lots of very good fruit for our personal lives and for our kids and for our business. And so hopefully this time next year we'll have a full house of our own. I'm sure my parents will be very excited to kick it up. So that was not be here to be much quieter in Peter's house. And then we'll have plans for a tasting room in progress, if not hopefully in process of being built. And we've, we're really excited about the future.

Yeah, absolutely. We'll probably start as storing barrels and crafting for a little while and then we'll buy the still, we'll start distilling and probably put out some white dog here and there. But yeah, we're excited about that.

I'm a big fan of white dog. Yeah, you are.

I love it. You do? Good. Oh yeah. I do myself too.

Yeah. I feel like I can just see the future in the whiskey. When you taste it, it's just like, oh, this is going to be really good when it comes out of the barrel. But I can sit and sip on White Dog all day long. I just like it.

Have you gone to Gatlinburg? I have.

We've had the moonshiners on the show. We've got to taste some of their real stuff and some of their not so real stuff. You know, whenever we do go to a distillery and we get a chance to take a little off the tap, we do, and we take it back. So we've got a pretty good collection of white dogs from distilleries all over the place. We thought we'd have a couple of white dog shows.

We haven't done it yet, but... Maybe we do that when... My bourbon society, we distill our own at Whiskey Thief there in Frankfurt, so they'll let us come and play and do a few barrels of a couple different mash bills. Maybe we can literally do it there while we're distilling one day and taste it right off the stage. That'd be cool. I'm really enjoying this. Yeah, it's really good. This has been three great expressions. When you said it was three, I was a little like, wow, that's kind of a young one. I've had young distill, it's been amazing.

Yeah, this double oak tier, I think it fits in a place where A lot of people have this preconceived idea of what a Double Oak is supposed to taste like. It's supposed to be ultra sweet. It's supposed to have a burnt marshmallow and all this other stuff in it. And it doesn't always work out that way. But this one actually took that second barrel and used it to just blossom the product. And I think that's really good. Delicious, absolutely delicious. I think it was a good whiskey to start with. And then you just made it even better.

That's what we were going for. So what's next release going to be? I mean, are we going to sit on this one for a while, or is there anything down the pipes?

Well, like we talked about a little bit is that we've got the Double Oak series. Hopefully, you'll see a Double Oak rye coming out. It'll be similar to the rye that you tasted first, but it's older now. It'll be an older rye whiskey. It probably won't be smoked, but maybe. But it will be Double Oaked. We thought about doing some wine finished of our rye whiskey. Is there anything else that we have going on? Do you remember?

Nothing official. We've had some really fun conversations. Again, we're enjoying making friends in the industry. And so nothing that we can say and mention on an official capacity, but I can say that you will see minimum of two releases this next year in 2026. So I would say be on the lookout for at least two new releases. And if We're lucky if we're able to really foster these friendships in the right way, then we'll have more. And we're just really, really excited for the future. I think a big thing for us this next year, we have put a really heavy emphasis on retail. And so we are available in liquor barns and total wines and is sprinkled in a couple of mom and pops ones. Notably, my favorite is is the blind pig over in Bardstown. We're there as well. But I think this next year, we're probably going to direct our focus on. on restaurants. I think we want to be able to really get into, we were in Malone's as we've talked about before, but we want to be able to really touch that next level of when you want to go out to a really fancy bourbon bar that we're on that shelf.

That makes sense. Especially when they're listening to these podcasts. It's good to say we know some people.

I know one of my good friends, I pulled him in for a show recently and he owns the House of Commons bar. Oh yeah. I know he knows of your product because I've actually shared this with him. Nice. Hopefully he'll be one of your... Bar fronts, if you will. We love that.

Yeah, hospitality will be our big target, as well as our new releases. But that's going to be where a lot of our focus will go this year.

So get yourself in a big, big bourbon bar in all the big places, right? That's right. That's great. And Bardstown and Lexington.

As she mentioned earlier, it's just the two of us. So it's really hard to get out everywhere and get people to know us and try our stuff. So that's our focus, like she said, is to get more out into the bar scene.

Slow and steady progress has been the name of the game because without that diving tool personal, because I'm sure no one wants to hear that aspect. But we have three children. They're young. And so because it's just the two of us, we've really enjoyed having slow and steady progress that feels right for us, because we want to continue to grow every single year. We want to expand. But we also want to be really mindful of making sure that we can still keep that priority of letting our family be at the epicenter while our kids are young. And so it's a delicate dance, and we're doing the best that we can to do it each and every year. But we are really excited to see growth and really just very thankful that people have been excited and received us really well.

You want to be careful not to get too far ahead of your capabilities, right? Because it's great to have those visions and those dreams and those ideas.

We've seen that backfire recently here and there, sadly.

Yeah, and to take it slow and just be very deliberate about what you do and put out a good product and support it. That's right.

Yeah, well, thank you. Yeah, and being intentional about it has served us well.

Yeah, one of the things we learned from the jump is, you know, we mentioned we bottled 15 barrels of this rye whiskey. And I After doing so, we're like, I think we bottled too many. There's just too many of this. We have a lot of bottles out there now. And these three to four to five barrel releases have really done well for us. And I think that's what we're planning on doing in the future and scale up from there. So four to five, then six to seven, then 10 to 15, hopefully we'll scale up that way.

Now the double barrel was about the same as the rye, about 15 barrels or so?

The double oak was three barrels. Oh, just three, okay. Just the same as the wheated. But we do have, we can get this one a lot more. Okay. So our next release of this one will be soon because it's doing very well out in the market and people are loving it. And right now it just turned nine years old. So you'll probably see the same product out, but just nine years old.

So will you keep it on the same label? Because I know TTB is fun to play with. It is fun to play with. It'll be the same label. Just nine years old. We'll just know deep inside our minds that it's a little bit older.

That it's just slightly older, yes. So you don't do any handwriting on the labels? Nope, not yet. That's good. That's really good you chose to do that because we've talked to a lot of people like they dread releases because they have to write a

on every label. And we thought about doing it with the weeded because we're like, oh, it's only three barrels. You know, it won't be too bad. But once we started bottling it, if we would have had to write stuff down at the same time, that would have been a lot of work.

I'm sorry. Is there a plan to like be able to differentiate your double loathe?

Well, once this eight year is gone, it's gone. So it'll be a nine year. So we will change the label to have it say nine years old.

Oh, you will change it? Yeah.

Sorry, I meant it'll be the same color. It'll be the same everything, double oaked, 105 proof, just nine years old. And we'll change that to nine.

Because bourbon nerds out there like to know what batches and things like that. Yeah. Right.

So we did that with the weeded. So everything being single barrel, we separated it into batches. I think fun fact about that is that we bottled that ourselves. So we had partnered with Left Bank. Ken is really fantastic. And he gave us all the materials and the tools to be able to bottle that ourselves and helped us. And we reached out to all of our personal friends and was like hey who wants to do us a solid for the day and help us like okay like you're going to be in charge of working you're in charge of filling the bottles and we have our own like little assembly line down there and even though that was so much fun we afterwards were like, OK, I don't think we have the capacity to be able to do that every single release. So I think maybe if we're really blessed and we're able to do the weeded again, we had so much success with the single barrel of it all that we will most likely revisit that. And just if it's not broke, don't fix it. We'll just keep in that same step. But with the double oak, we knew that we did not have the bandwidth to do that. So we went ahead. and just did more of a traditional bottle with that one.

I think Jim can agree. In consolation, there are bigger places than you that have bottling parties, that's for sure. Iron Root, I have a friend that goes to Texas, like Iron Root's in Texas. On occasion, they'll be like, hey, anybody want to come help bottle and label? I know.

My son just went to a bottling party at 291 Distillery in Colorado, and he said there was a ton of people there. They're all over the country. That's awesome.

I was going to say, you've got our info. We'll come out. Oh, heck yeah.

We love that.

Oh my gosh, well, we would love that. OK, well, we'll hold you to it because we needed all hands on deck. It's like we could have a sip or something there. Yeah, whoever has the steadiest hand has to be the one doing the labeling. And it's not me. So I was the corker. I was very good at using the cork machine. Everything else I couldn't be trusted with.

All right, we'd like to give you guys an opportunity to let everybody know where they can find you on the internet, on social media.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

So on Instagram, it's at Peter E. Hart Spirits. That's probably where we're gonna have the biggest footnote. We are on TikTok for any Gen Z-ers, but I would say stick to Instagram. That's really where you're gonna get the bulk of our content. And then of course we have our website, PeterEhart.com, and that has our story. It has pictures of the farm and of Peter and everything that you need to know about where to find our products.

All right, well, it's been a blast to have you guys on the show today. Thank you so much for inviting us into your home.

Thanks for getting back to me.

And sharing your whiskey with us. It was all very delicious. And I'm going to be hitting up Todd for a little bit of his stash. Love it. Yes.

Well, thanks, y'all, for having us. This was fun.

I went to do some sort of trade or something.

There you go. Right, yes.

All right, well, you can find the Birdman Road on all social media outlets. You can find us on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, threads. You can find us in all those places. Every single week, Todd and I put out an episode. We sit down with some good guests like we have here, or sometimes it's just Todd and I sipping on some whiskey. Sometimes we do winter, winter chicken dinner and let you know what we think's the best one of the day. But most of the time, we're just having fun, chuckling, drinking whiskey. It's a great time. The best way not to miss an episode is to scroll to the top of that app you're on. Hit that subscribe button. That way, every single time that we drop a new episode, you'll get that notification letting you know that Jim and Todd have dropped another one. You can put on your headphones and join us for a little bit of fun. If you get a chance, check out the Bourbon Roadies. It's our Facebook group. That's where our friends hang out. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of good folks sharing pores, sharing stories, sharing pictures. It's a great time. We hope you'll join in there. And also our web page, TheBurbanRoad.com, that's where you'll find our swag, our articles, our episodes are on there too. But until the next time, we'll see you down at The Bourbon Road.

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