498. Spirits of Lawrenceburg: A Bourbon Legacy Forged Through Time

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.

Hey there Bourbon Roadies, it's Diane Strong with Bourbon on the Banks Festival. We've got another amazing event coming your way this year. Be sure to join us at the half and I'll give you an update on our ticket availability for the event taking place on October 3rd, 2026.

All right, fellow roadies and new listeners, welcome back to the show. We are once again in the corner Rick house and we are sitting down to, well, there were about 12 bottles brought, but we're sitting down to six of them or think, or five of them. Anyway, it's going to be a fun show. We got some guests on today.

Todd, who do we have? We've got Jerry Daniels and Bo Cumberland is back for this one too. Jerry Daniels, you guys may remember from our chat with, uh, He and Drew Hannish came on and we tasted through some samples and Jerry kind of gave us an update on bourbon travel and things like in Kentucky. Bourbonism. Bourbon tourism.

That's what I was trying to say. Bourbonism.

Don't visit tours.

Don't visit tours. That's right. We have a great time. We have the honor of showing off central Kentucky and when people are drinking all day or seeing baby horses, it's a hard job.

I bet.

But as usual,

We're ready to get to our first pour, right? Well, we should probably introduce our other guests.

I didn't. I said, Beau. You just said it's back.

It's okay. It's okay. He got a glass right over you. This is your fourth appearance on the show. This is my fourth appearance. So, I mean, you're almost the number five.

Did you get a jacket at five like Saturday Night Live? Yeah. No, he gets to bring us in the second half is the way he gets it. He takes over the second half. It's a great honor.

Yeah.

Yeah. Only a few have achieved that. Yeah. Well, anyway, so we have what in our glass? We have, and we'll get to the reason behind this. This is a 1996 Dowling Deluxe 100 proof. 1996 Dowling Deluxe 100 proof. Yeah. This was made by basically like Heaven Hill back in the day.

1996, this is a, a very dark whiskey. Yeah.

Very dark. The plastic cap.

The plastic cap. Back then they made high quality whiskey in just average bottles. Yeah. There's plastic screw caps.

Not a whole lot of fancy bottles back then.

No, no.

That changed. I guess probably Blanton's was.

Yeah. 92 or something. Right. What was it? All right. But this is cherry pie, cherry pie all day long. Yep. Cherry pie and a buttery crust. And there is just a little bit of a, of a dusty funk to it, but it's very light. Maybe 90s, 90s didn't quite, hasn't reached to that maximum funkness yet.

Oh, that's just so good.

How do you do it, Todd? How do you always get the dusty bottles that survive and I always get the ones that turn bad?

Um, it's, it's a coin toss.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you just open this too. Yeah. Fresh crack. Um, and, but the reason we're doing this is because our good friend, Bo Kremlin has come out with a new documentary or it's getting ready to come out soon. I should say it's called the spirits of Lawrenceburg. Another short title here. I'm one of them. Spirits of Lawrenceburg, a bourbon legacy forged through time. It's a little shorter than your YouTube channel. But yeah, I'm very excited. He sent it to both Jim and I to preview, I guess. I think when I looked, there were only nine views. So we're honored to be a part of the early viewers.

You actually just finished watching it today and great. I didn't see how many views I was.

You had to be probably 10 because yeah, I mean, I was nine and I watched a couple of days ago, 10 or 11. Yeah.

I've watched it a couple of times, two or three times.

Does it count that way?

You can watch it, it'll count every...

So you can make yourself money? Yeah. I just leave it running. Just on a circle. I think just the four of us is the only ones that have seen it, the whole thing.

Okay. Yeah. I feel like special. Well, thank you, Beau. You're very welcome.

So gentlemen, give us a little idea how this came about, I guess.

Who wants to start? I'm going to let Jerry start because this was a brainchild of his actually. Okay.

Well, I mean, you all know that Bo made the heart of bourbon for Frankfurt.

We're in the presence of... The narrator.

Yeah, I'm going to bring that up. I'm going to bring up about the narration later. The voice of that.

Don't rag on me too bad.

I'm a huge history geek. I love bourbon history and I saw that and loved it. Bo did a great job on it. He did. And we have very local ties to Lawrenceburg and I just gave him a call and we're both part of the Frankfurt Bourbon Society. And I just gave him a call and I said, would you be interested in doing another city? And he's like, which one? And, uh, I think I said Lawrenceburg. And what was your response?

Well, I'm ashamed to say this and I'm going to say what I said. And then it, can I, can I get the whole. We'll give you your whole moment here. So I said, yeah, Jerry, that sounds awesome, but what's there besides four roses and while Turkey, like. And, but I will say this, I knew of Mary Dowling. I knew of all of these stories. I just didn't in my head place them all in Lawrenceburg. So if you're just a... bourbon novice or you're somebody getting into bourbon or whatever and you hear about Lawrenceburg. I mean, you jumped to Four Roses and you jumped to Wild Turkey, but I knew about the Rippies. I knew about the Rippie House. I knew about the Dowlings. I knew about all these stories. I just didn't in my head put them on Lawrenceburg. So when he said, let's do something on Lawrenceburg, I was thinking, cause the Frankfurt one was really, even though There's a lot of stuff in Frankfurt. We focused on kind of the big three, really. And so that was kind of where my mind went is like, I mean, that's fine, but it's just Wild Turkey and Four Roses. But little did I know that it's like, I tell everybody this film was like a tree root system. It was everything overlaps and grows into each other. It's not linear by any means and it's not simple by any means.

It's a complicated genealogy in Lawrenceburg. And if you read like David Jennings book, you see that it's just this patchwork of families, all the same kind of families, but so interwoven and intermarried. The distilleries were just, there's so many of them. Yeah. And even a beam gets drug in there.

Yeah, he does. He does. And we, I mean, we first heard about the story back in, gosh, 2018, 2017, when we were researching for our tours, because we wanted to be able to talk about families, those Samuels, the beams. Knew nothing about the rippies. Had no idea who they were. just going through Lawrenceburg and their history and all of a sudden pulled up this house, this mansion, on a website. I'm like, what is that? And after a while, I finally found the number and got in touch with Tommy Rippey, so Tom Rippey V. He had it set up as like a little museum at the time, but there was a lot of He invited me over and I was excited to go over and see this and there was a lot of work to be done on that house. They bought it in 2010 at foreclosure and had been two great-grandsons of T.B. Rippey, George Gohagan III and Tom Rippey IV bought it. They both were retired attorneys, so they're putting their money into it. When I saw this house and I was like, can we bring people here? And they were like, oh, of course. So we started bringing our tour groups there. And then eventually they were like, well, you know, we're doing some weddings and some things like that to raise money, but they wanted bourbon back in the house. So we kind of come up with the bourbon sessions at the Rupy Mansion, which Jim you have presented at in 2019. And we've been doing that ever since. And all the proceeds and everything go back to the house. But the family there was so accepting, so appreciative. I know Mr. Rupy, his thing was come in as a guest, leave his family. But all those families in Lawrenceburg, they were coming to these events and we were hearing their stories. And that's just kind of really, You know, drew me in and after Bo had done his one in Frankfurt, I said, this needs to be highlighted. Yeah. And I knew he was the guy that could do it.

Quality stuff, Beau. Thank you. Beau Cumberland, movie director, movie producer. The Ken Burns of Kentucky. I like it.

That's what my wife said when she saw it. She said, this is Ken Burns' lab.

I like that. The Ken Burns of Kentucky. I like that.

Of course.

But don't you want to be the Beau Cumberland of Kentucky, bud? I don't know.

I'll take what I can do. Like you said, the Frankfurt documentary kind of focused on the main three and it was more distillery driven. I mean, we dove into a little bit of history here and there, especially with Buffalo Trace, you know, because it's, I mean, it's the behemoth there if you will. But with this one, like you said, you did it more like a timeline thing. So you started the early days. What, I mean, so just kind of the way you guys decided to go with this or?

When we really first started kind of filling out how are we going to do this? Who are we going to interview? The one thing I'll say that's a little bit different than in Frankfurt is like people came out of the woodwork, they wanted to tell their story. And so, you know, I will say this one, Jerry and I were talking one day and our friend Drew Hannes, who likes everything, he likes everything historically accurate on the timeline. This is more like oral history. It's these people wanting to come out and tell their family stories. It's a little bit different in that aspect, but it's still telling the story of Bourbon in Anderson County. But it's through the lens of these, these family storytellers for the most part. Wouldn't you agree with that too?

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's, it's cool that, you know, we all know, you know, Four Roses and Wild Turkey. And most of these names have been lost in time. But a lot of these names are coming back now. We're starting to see them on names on bottles, brands, and distilleries being brought back to life. So I think that is so cool. And these farmers are so excited, and they're so happy that they're the Hawkins. Right. The bonds are just, they're so excited to tell their family story and they're just very appreciative that Bo was doing this for them and kind of showcasing these families. And it was, it was a lot. It was almost 30 interviews that we did about probably 40 plus hours of interviews.

Yeah.

Easily.

I think every project I've ever done, I have way more footage for this one than I have ever any other project.

And these interviews are hour and a half, and these people are gonna show up for a few minutes on this, but we told them this is a great diving board into certain families. I mean, you could separate off and do one on the McBrayers, do one on Mary Dowling, do one on the Rippies, but this is kind of an overall, getting 40-some hours of interviews down to 70 minutes is, you know, a lot.

And you had a lot of archival footage, too, that you had to work with, so that, in addition to the stuff that you shot, so.

that. Just even working in, not even just the older history, but also giving credit to the new people that are coming in. Old Commonwealth is coming in and redoing, picking up where that left off, and the McBrayers are coming in and revitalizing that history. Lerikin's coming in fresh. It's a completely new thing, but incorporating all that stuff and giving it the due credit, because it's part of and is going to be part of the Lawrenceburg bourbon story. I always like to include that stuff as well.

You see a lot of ag in this too. We purposely included I mean, I grew up in Eastern Kentucky. It was so cool. We got to go out to the Stevens farm and Bo never seen tobacco being processed, ever.

I really liked the tobacco segment on this show. I mean, it was great. It was really good. It definitely told a story and set the tone for what was to come. I love the way you guys did that.

The farming, the agricultural product, getting Owen from the Kentucky co-op extension to talk. And I think what he said about the farmers being unknown, I think that was maybe the most impactful statement of the whole thing, was seeing that farmer in that field.

And here, this is what I'll say. I said this about the Frankfurt one and I still mean it. And I'll say this about this one. The one thing that I I regret or that I don't like about this project. And it's nothing that I can change, but it's, there's so much that this literally just touches the tip of all of these, you know, like, like Jerry said, under the McBrayer, just that segment alone, we could do a whole two or three hour segment on that story. And then under, you know, wild turkey, we could do a 10 hour, you know, so all of these, it's just touches all that stuff. But the idea for this, just like the idea for the Frankfurt one, was to just be a conversation starter. Then if something leads to more in-depth stuff out of that, that's what I want it to be. Even as far as the agriculture stuff or the tobacco stuff, that played such a major part in the whole story. But, you know, it's just a small part of the film, but the idea is we can expand into that, you know, whatever, you know, what people want to hear or see or learn more about, we can dive into that and go as deep as we want to go with any of these storylines.

I think with each of those families, there's an opportunity there to tell a bigger story. Some people have done a little of that, you know, David Jennings, obviously, with his books and Kava with his book on Mary Dowling. We've seen some depth in there, but none of these things have made it to the screen yet.

So there's some opportunities there, Beau. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So before we jump into the next question, Jerry, tell the folks, you know, kind of like, early 1800s, who were these families? You've kind of mentioned them, but who were kind of the big families there during those days?

So early on, early on, there's this debate, which in bourbon, that's hard to believe there's a debate. We have the Hawkins and the Bonds. They both started around those 1810s, 10 times, summer of 1810, 1820. That was your earliest pioneers in Lawrenceburg. And we know there's earlier ones in that when you go to some of the other counties and some that were produced in 1790s. But that time period between 1810, 1820 would have been your first families and that was definitely the Hawkins and Bonds families.

Okay.

And then after that, that's when we start getting into these other families that are coming in with the McBrayers, the Rippies, and then around, you know, we always talk about Mary Dowling. We kind of forget her husband, John. He was involved with the Rippies. And when you trace these, these were all involved at the same time. The Dowlings, the Rippies, the Bonds, they all worked together. The McBrayers, they bought distilleries together. They sold distilleries to one another.

And that lived across the street from one another.

Yeah, if you go down Main Street, I mean, if you see a big home, it was built with bourbon in late 1800s. Right. So that's the way we wanted to follow this. And that was kind of your big core families. But there was also stories that we couldn't really dig into as deep, like Saffol. There would be Saffol, Waterfowl and Frasier, all those. Those are all more that you could just spend more time and and do another documentary on just that.

We were trying to just dig into Saffold, and there's just not a whole lot of stuff about him. There's the kind of stuff that's out there. He started with McBrayer, he owned his own distillery. There's all that stuff, but there's not a whole lot of... We couldn't find a lot of family members and just history.

I was going to say, it's impressive to see the number of folks you did find that were still in that area. I mean, I know what the odds are, but that's still pretty impressive to me.

Well, a lot of those families helped us find other members. I mean, finding Mary Dowling's great-grandson, that came from like Eric. who wrote the book. Hammond Covey wrote the Mary Dowling book. So he led us to land. So we could actually, we wanted to get family members as much as we could on each of these families to tell their story.

I think it's kind of the way it works, though, when you go back in time like that to build a story, you know, you get just a few tidbits of fact, whether it be tax records or business records or old newspaper articles and things like that, as you end up with this collection of what you call truths, or truths, and then you dig, dig, dig, and you find some lore, and the lore kind of fills in all of the gaps, and the rest of it, you just have to play with it, because there is nothing there, and if you wanna make a good story, you gotta fill in the gaps, and that's okay.

I think that's perfectly okay.

And I think Ken Burns does a bit of that as well.

There's value to that. Took him like nine to do his baseball, you know, he does Those aren't short either. I love those though. Yeah. So, you know, we talked about the Frankfurt Bourbon documentary. Was there anything you learned from doing that one that you either that you carried over into this one, or was there something like, I'm not going to do that again? You know what I'm saying?

He decided to narrate this one. He's like, I'm going to do this one myself.

The guy's right through too high. He talked to my agency.

And plus the 606 twang, it's hard for people to understand, you know, everybody to understand.

So Anderson County's next door and I can't do that.

you know that okay for those who don't know what we're laughing about so Todd did narrate right the frankfurt bourbon documentary so we're just giving them a hard time and let me say that oh does this one yeah and there's a reason why okay on my personal youtube channel i went through a phase where i was using some ai generated voiceover and because i hate the sound of my voice i hate narrating stuff. That is the one thing that if I could just outsource it to anybody, I would do that. I hate it. But believe it or not, I was getting feedback from people saying, stop using AI voiceover. We want to hear your voice. It's your story. You know, for my shorter stuff and whatever, we want to hear. I even tried to beg Jerry, will you please do the voiceover for this? And he was like, no, you know, so he, That's why I made him be kind of like the historian of the film. You see Jerry a lot in all the segments, kind of filling in the gaps, but I don't like my voice.

Did you use 11 lamps and clone yourself? No. You really read this.

Yeah.

Awesome.

That's why it sounds great.

It sounds great. You know, I think you asked me, I was like, you were like, should I do this? I'm like, yeah. I mean, it's your stuff. I told him to do it.

I mean, we all don't have the voice of Drew Hannish. I mean, Mr. Radio, right. But, you know, I know it turned out great. He did great with it.

That's the story, though. I just I don't like. But I will say this, I'm getting more comfortable doing it. I just I think because I'm originally from Mississippi and I think I sound like a Mississippi Hillbilly Hick from the sticks.

while you're talking to three Kentucky. And so we're not getting it. I don't hear it.

I don't hear it.

But I have had people say, we, we would prefer to hear your voice telling your stories. Then some AI generated nonsense. And I said, okay, that's fine.

Well, speaking of the AI, I mean, one of the cool things that I've seen you do is like take an older picture and kind of bring it to life for just a few seconds. Like.

Listen, there are some yourself or I mean, yes, there are definitely AI haters out there. And I am I am one of those people. I cannot stand to see a project that you can tell somebody said, hey, Chachi BT, create this video for me or hey, Chachi BT, create this whatever. But what I love is so I'm taking anything you see in this video is a real picture. or a real, it may not be, so some of the stuff may be like a scenario that actually happened, but there's no photos. So those are created, but it's either a real picture. And what I discovered early on is you can take like a real picture and take it into whatever your AI choice is and say, give me a different view of this. So those kinds of things, I don't think that's cheating. I think that enhances what you see.

picture of the distillery with the smoke coming out of the stall. So just the smoke coming out of the stacks is all you needed to bring that picture alive.

And that's what I want to do. I didn't want to recreate anything. I didn't want to add stuff that wasn't there and make it false. I just wanted to add a little bit of realism and to be honest, every place you see that in the film, I located it in the corner. You'll see this is AI generated, so I don't want any, you know, nobody's going to say, you know, look, that guy, you know, it's all...

I don't like my comments yet on the video. I'm kidding. Even the real photos he took though, even if he took those and showed like a side of Cliff Springs, you know, a different angle, he put their AI generated, even though he took an actual

Yeah, some of those are real photos just from a different angle. And I would go into ChatGBT and tell it, you know, I want this exact photo, this exact styling, this exact everything. Just give me a different angle, because in some cases, we only had one picture. And as much as we talk about, say, Cliff Springs or Clover Bottom, I didn't want to just throw the same picture over and over and over. So I would have it animated just different ways and, you know, do some push-ins and pull-outs and just, I just wanted it to add a little bit more to it. And I don't think that's cheating. I think it adds to it.

Like I said, I loved it. I'd rather make it look like a PowerPoint with just old pictures of the places, which, I mean, don't get me wrong. I love these old pictures. I've got plenty here and surrounded by them. But it took it to a different level, I thought. I mean, like seeing Judge McBrayer kind of move around a little bit.

It's amazing, but it's also a little... And it helps when you start with a super high quality antique photograph like that. That was a very good quality photograph to start with. Shall we move on to the next one?

We got W.E.B. Saffold, like I said, we could not find a lot about him. Actually, most of the information we got was from Bo Garrett of Wild Turkey. The information we got from him that he was Judge Rick Breyer's yeast man. Cedarbrook was this huge distillery in the late 1800s and Saffold was the master distiller there. He was really You know, it should have been given a lot more credit for the product that was coming out of Cedarbrook. So this is actually, so this is part of the Whiskey Baron section, the WB Saffle. They made three of them. O'Rippy, Bond and Lillard and WB Saffle, all these names that'll be in the documentary. And this is probably my favorite one of the three. Yeah. 108 proof. 107 on this one, but it's a blend of six, eight and 12 year old. And it's that famous wild turkey match.

For you SAFL fans out there, for those of you who experienced one, two, and three, and you remember one, Jerry's fresh cracked a batch one bottle for us here. So this is, this is special. Yes. That's a magical pour.

Yeah. And it definitely my favorite of the three. I mean, None of them were shabby, but this one just really stood out.

I remember when these came out, I don't remember what the price was, but I'm going to say there were $49 for $3.75. And everybody was like, oh, $49, 375 milliliter. But the minute they cracked the bottle and tasted it, all the complaining stopped.

It's got all those good turkey vibes, the cherry, the orange slice to me. Yep. Toffee, orange slice, cherry. Yes, toffee note's great. Shout out.

There's just this nice underlying citrus note and toffee, just toffee. I always get toffee. The cherry note's not overwhelming, but it's rich cherry. Yeah.

Such a great pour. It's been a while. Thank you.

Little bit of nuttiness to it too. Just a hair. I don't know, it's peanut. A Coleman shell. That is a great pour. So not a lot of information on W.B. Saffle, but obviously considered one of the whiskey barons of Lawrenceburg. And there is more history for him. He's got to dig a little bit, right? Trying to remember the part of your story that talked about Saffol. That had the picture of in the yeast room or something, didn't it?

Yeah. He was, he was running, he was working on a still.

Yeah. Um, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, he, like I said, he was yeast man for Cedarbrook and we talked about Cedarbrook a lot, you know, uh, winning all these awards and then, uh, McBrayer helped him get his distillery started. Uh, and it's funny, his house still stands today. It's one of those gigantic beautiful houses there on main street. And like a lot of them, it was a funeral home.

So all of those houses, all of those big late 1800 mansions on Main Street in Lawrenceburg, they're all with new owners and all being well taken care of?

Yeah. I mean, we'll talk probably more about Mary Dowling in a bit, but there's a couple of new owners of that house that are opening that up to the public and it will be open for our event and premiere. They're doing a great job. It's a young couple. How they can afford that? I don't know. I know I couldn't afford a house like that when I was in my 20s. They've done a lot of work to it. A lot of elbow grease, huh?

Yeah, for sure. You guys will have to post some pictures of the houses on the Bremen Roadies page and things.

We will. Bob's got a bunch of pictures. But all those, I mean, there's a Bond house right beside the Rippey house. It's a funeral home. The Sapphal House, which was their funeral home, was just purchased.

I think it's going to be an Airbnb now. Yeah.

And the McBrayer House is just past that. And then you go the next block down, you get the E.W. Rippey Senior House, which he was the founder of Rippey Brothers Stillery. Uh, we know what famous distillery that became later. We'll talk about that. Uh, and then past that as a, uh, the Johnson, who was a Bond descendant, great grandson or a John Bond that started a distillery on the other side of where Four Roses is today.

Yeah. So Bond was down on the salt river too, right?

The old Bond distillery was down in the salt river. The original Bond and Lillard is actually behind the cemetery there in Lawrenceburg. There was a little road that leads in behind the cemetery. Like the house is still there. W.F. Bond's house is still there also. And it was set back in that way.

All right. Well, this is probably a good spot for us to break for the second half, you think? Sounds great. We come back in the second half. We actually have a sort of a little bit of a play on the last four pours, right? We're going to split it up a little bit and we're going to keep talking about the history of Lawrenceburg and the film. So stick around folks. We'll be right back.

Hey there, bourbon roadies. It's Diane Strong with Bourbon on the Banks Festival, and I want to give you a quick update on Bourbon on the Banks. General admission is officially sold out. Don't worry, we've still got Twilight tickets, and they're absolutely worth it. You'll catch the final two hours of the festival. The energy is high, the crowd is buzzing, the music's going, and the bourbon is flowing. With over 70 distilleries to sample from, you don't want to miss it. It's all happening October 3rd in Frankfurt. Grab those Twilight tickets before they're gone. I can't wait to see you on the banks.

All right, roadies, we finally, finally released our brand new website. We hope you get a chance to check it out at the bourbonroad.com. It is a total rewrite remake revamped. We've done it for you. We have all 500 or so episodes on there with all the details searchable. All the show notes, everything, you can search by it. You wanna go find out what we talked about on an episode way back when you can do it. We've also got our tasting notes, our reviews of over 1,320 whiskies. They're all on there. Todd and I, our tasting notes, our rating for the whiskey. We even cue up the episode on the tasting notes to where we tasted it on the show. So as you're reading our tasting notes, you can play it and listen to us talk about it. So I think we're the only podcast that does that. That's pretty cool. So another thing we have on there is our blog articles. We've got over 250 blog articles on there. We're putting new ones out all the time. And the all new Roadie Bar is now on the Bourbon Road website. So if you're a Roadie, come on, sign up, get in there. We have a chat room. We've got a place where you can post what's going on in your Bourbon world. We have a calendar of all the events that are coming up. We'll be posting in there our drawings so as we're giving things away you'll be able to come in there and and sign up for the randomizer to get picked you'll also be able to sign up on list to come out come to something that we're we're sponsoring Todd's got a great event that we're putting on in the fall and everybody can come in and sign up for that and we've also got coupons from our vendors for so percentages off on stuff so Definitely take the time to come to the website. Check it out. We do want you to come in and sign up and join in. It's a lot of fun. It's free. It doesn't cost you anything. You're certainly welcome to donate if you want to, but it's free for all roadies. So come check it out.

All right. Welcome back to the second half of the show. We're here with Jerry Daniels and Beau Cumberland. We're talking about the spirits of Lawrenceburg, a bourbon legacy forged through time. And we had some great pours. know, got these guys together and whenever I can, I'd like to crack something a little fun. So I brought a 1996 Dowling Deluxe 100 proof. Good.

It was really good.

Yeah. You know, you were talking about, I get lucky on these, but yeah, you know, you always have your kind of have your fingers crossed when you crack those and open them. Cause I've had one really bad one. It's actually up there on the wall here at the Rick house. So this, you know, it was turned or something, but it's a bit of luck of the draw.

You've been doing pretty good. Yeah.

So you were able to get like a who's who of guests and for this, I mean, it felt like, you know, you have, Brent Elliott from Four Roses, you have Beau Garrett from Wild Turkey, even had like an excerpt, I'm assuming that was from an interview, right? The one with Jimmy Russell? Yeah.

So yeah, the Jimmy Russell. Uh, and, uh, Tom B was, that was from the, uh, uh, what the nun nun center. Yeah.

They had those old, how young interviewed them, right? Yeah.

How young had interviewed them like in 2013 or something. And so I reached out to them and said, you know, these interviews are great and they kind of fit what we're doing. And they were awesome. They were like, yeah, here's high-res versions. Use them. Just make sure, you know what I mean? And I would do this anyway with anybody, but just give us the credit. Give credit, right. Yeah, of course. The Brent Elliott and Jim Rutledge interview segments, those are actually from another project. We couldn't get them scheduled. So there was another project that I had worked on years ago that was very Four Roses-centric. And most of that interview, it's like any other project I work on, I have two hours worth of interview and we use a little bit of it. So a lot of the Jim Rutledge stuff that he had talked about several years ago fit what we were discussing here and then Brent and Elliot as well. So those are actually from another project. But yeah, so, but yeah, Bo Garrett was, he was excellent.

I'm sure he just was like, yeah, I'd love to.

Well, we interviewed him for the Wild Turkey segment. And then later on, when we were having trouble just finding some SAFL stuff, he offered, he was like, I got that information. And so we brought it back in and interviewed him twice. And yeah, he was, he was great.

That's awesome.

Got Cave. Cave, yeah.

That was the sack co-owner, Colt Hoffman was, got an interview from him. And like I said,

authors, but David and Eric, they were awesome to work with and very willing to just jump on a Zoom and do what they could to help tell the story. And it was great working with them.

All right. So we've, we've broken down these, uh, these bourbons on this half. Um, we've got two different, let me get this right. We've got two different bourbons split between the four of us.

Right. Yeah. And I guess team Lawrence Berg chose another product from this area to sample.

So we're going to need, we're going to need your guys. Uh, Best effort on calling out your tasting notes on this. And what, what are you guys tasting in this, in this second half?

We are doing Kentucky Nectar.

Yeah.

Which is, so at Oak Commonwealth, they're, they're buying barrels and they're, they're blending them. So Oak Commonwealth. You'll learn to the documentary was old Hoffman. A lot of great product was made there.

Are they on the original site?

Yes, they are. Okay. They're currently on the original site. You had brands like Ezra Brooks that started there. You had Pat B Van Winkle that kind of came there for a decade or so to be bottled there. great little site, and they've kind of brought the site back, and it's very cool. You've got a bunch of footage on that, and we talked to Zach, one of the co-owners of it, and this is a bottle I got, the Kentucky Nectar. So, it's a Kentucky straight bourbon finishing honey cast. It's a 104 proof bottle.

All right, let's hear some tasting notes.

You all are much better at this.

On the nose, I'm definitely getting like a, It's almost like an amaretto type, but like dark chocolate. I mean, it's definitely a sweet. It has a sweet nose to it.

Yeah. Sounds nice.

Okay. Maybe we have it afters. Amaretto is a almond liqueur, right?

Are you all big on the Honeycass?

Finish on Honeycass? We like Honeycass. I think we do. We just had the Green River, which is not really a Honeycass whiskey. It's more of a honey infused bourbon. So a little bit different, but that's good.

Yeah. And we had the one from Short Barrel. Oh yeah. Bees Knees.

Bees Knees.

Yeah, they also do Old Commonwealth, is that correct?

That's another... Yeah, they have a few different brands they've brought back, but it is, I mean, it's known as Old Commonwealth.

What's the Cromwell? DH Cromwell. DH, yes. This is really sweet. They do pretty small releases though, except I think Nectar is pretty big.

This was a 2,400 bottle release here of the Kentucky Nectar.

Beautiful bottle, kind of a hexagon shape and a black label. Looks like it's a top shelf kind of bottle. And what was that bottle priced at? Do you remember?

Uh, this one was around a hundred bucks.

A hundred dollars. Kentucky Nectar, Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. Uh, it's a four year old. It's a four year old, uh, bourbon and, um, what's the proof on it again? This one is 104. 104. Okay.

I can definitely get honey off of this. Yeah. On the finish. Yeah. On the finish.

Yeah, I'm going to visit that right when we're done, I think. All right. We'll wrap back around.

All right. Shall we talk about ours? Yeah, let's talk about ours. All right. So keeping with the Lawrenceburg theme, Jim and I chose a four roses, single barrel, barrel strength that was chosen some time ago by the Frankfurt Bourbon Society. This is an OESQ, which is their 20% rye mash bill. It's aged nine years, eight months. It is one 23 proof. And let's see. The barrel number is 85 5R. So 5R means on the fifth tier. Is that the way those are read? I think so.

Fifth Rick.

Yeah.

Fifth Rick. Yep. So OESQ, one of my favorite. I love OESQ. Yeah. Floral.

And I forget when they- Packs a punch. When they chose this. It's been some time ago. And you guys can have this as of your afters too.

Thank you.

But yeah, like we said earlier, we have a... There's quite a few.

We have a bevy of Lawrenceburg bottles up here. Yeah. So definitely like a brown sugar, like a sweet tea kind of nose to it, a little florality. I'm not really good with flowers, unfortunately, but...

I like that sweet tea note you're calling out though. Sip it. Cheers. Cheers.

A lot of barrel in that. Very nice. Very good. That's a big boy whiskey. That's good. That's got great barrel notes to it.

They have some of the best sweet oak notes you get sometimes.

It's the perfect marriage of that brown sugar, tea, and deep oak characteristics all coming together at once. It's really good. That's a delicious, delicious Four Roses single barrel. That is so good.

Wow. That's just been sitting in the back room, Todd.

It's been sitting in a box at the house. Oh, your place.

Okay.

I got a little Four Roses trivia for you. Okay. Can you name the two brands that started in the late sixties at Four Roses that they no longer have but are very well known brands? Benchmark. Benchmark. And Eagle Rare. Eagle Rare. Correct, Todd. Wow, Todd. Good job, buddy. Ding ding ding ding.

There you go.

A lot of people have no idea about, especially about EagleRare. That's where it started. Charles, it was a meme that created Benchmark. Oh yeah. It sure was.

So one of the things that interested me was, and I talked to you a little bit about this before the show, is why Lawrenceburg? Why Lawrenceburg in the first place, right? We can all understand why Frankfurt, right? Its proximity is a little bit closer to Louisville, which was where Kentucky, people started in Kentucky basically there and then down south of Lexington. But anyway, What made Lawrenceburg a good place to choose? And it had to do with the two rivers. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, Jerry, you want to talk?

Well, I mean, it's funny when you tell people, hey, you know, out of the 48 continuous states, Kentucky has the most navigable waterways out of all 48. And, you know, in Orangeburg, you have two big rivers, Kentucky River and Salt River, where all these distilleries are kind of accumulated. Tyrone had as many as four or five distilleries at one time. And Tyrone sat on the Kentucky River. Kentucky River, yes. And, you know, four roses and those distilleries, the Hawkins and all them were on creeks that led to the Salt River. So it was all about you know, these water, water was essential. And Lawrenceburg was such a great place with water. It was very fertile soil.

Closer to the mills too.

Yes. And so I mean, it was everything you needed back then. You know, today we don't necessarily need, you know, the water that we have, you know, they had back then. But it was everything essential to that early 1800s that you needed to be able to to do whiskey and then expand upon this from small farm distilleries to commercial distilleries. Everything was right there that they needed.

So when, when they made whiskey in the early 1800s, um, whiskey had to travel, uh, to the big cities or to, to other places altogether. Right. And the way to do that was via via waterway. And, uh, you know, some, you know, we had to get whiskey to new Orleans. Normal was kind of the port where things loaded on the ships and went to far away places, but also new Orleans had quite an appetite for bourbon. Right. But, um, one of the things that I kind of just like a light went off in my head, but of course they figured that out many a hundred plus years ago is that the salt river bypasses the falls of the Ohio. So it's a, it's a straight shot down river without having to disembark to get down to New Orleans. Whereas if you go up the, up the Kentucky, like you had to do from Frankfurt, when you get to Louisville, you got to make a decision. I'm either going to run these rapids or I'm going to unload wagon it down below the rapids and put it back on another flat boat.

That's a big deal back then.

It wasn't just a small story. That was a big deal. So salt river was. Big deal.

You wonder if there's any barrels that were lost to the rough rivers back in those days too.

There might be a few on the bottom of Mississippi.

I wonder if they're still sealed.

That'd be a good bird. Yeah, it would. I guess one of the things that brought the big families down to their knees were actually twofold, and that's the Whiskey Trust and Prohibition. So you want to kind of touch on that, Jay, a little bit about?

Yeah. I mean, the Whiskey Trust, it was, you know, it came in different iterations starting in the 1880s by a gentleman out of Illinois. And we talk about him on this. He owned a distillery, but he was a huge fan of Rockefeller. John D. Rockefeller, who owned the Standard Oil Trust. And he saw what Rockefeller was doing with oil and was like, I think I can do that with whiskey. And that's what he said about doing it. Buying distilleries, shutting a lot of them down. But you know, he was able to concentrate production, concentrate price. And it was not a good situation if you went against them. I was going to say, David touches on that a little bit. He does. David does talk about that. And there's a couple iterations of that. The second one was Kessler. We all know that name. And he kind of come in. And it was funny. I don't know if we mentioned this in the documentary. I don't think we do. The second iteration, they started in New Jersey. because the laws there did not stipulate about trust. They didn't call this necessarily a trust, which is what it was, but that's where they incorporated was New Jersey, because they found it easy to do that. So that was the second generation. So we all know Kessler. And then it transitioned during prohibition to different things.

So was that, along with Rockefeller's work, were those the things that led to the anti-trust laws?

It was. It was Rockefeller and the first trust. that kind of led to those antitrust laws was the second iteration that found a way around that. But that did that the Sherman antitrust act was adopted because of those trust.

So then, then prohibition hits and everybody's world falls apart except for Mary. Well, Mary Dowling's world fell apart too, but she figured a way to build it back up. Yep. But something like a trust re-emerged after the prohibition as well. Right.

Oh yeah, because you got National Distillers. I mean, how many distilleries did they buy during and after Prohibition? A lot. I mean, they acquired American Medicinal Spirits, which was really the whiskey, medicinal whiskey, who owned the medicinal whiskey rights. So they acquired that. And then there's a lot of famous distilleries that National Distillers bought that we know and love today. All you gotta do is go down towards Glens Creek. And you see something right there that they acquired.

That was what was surprising to me is to learn that, you know, when the truss came back, it became national distillers and American medicinal spirits, you know, and I had no idea. I mean, you hear these. But it was like, that was the baby brother of the trust.

National distilleries did a lot of the same thing. I mean, they shut all these distilleries down. I think with the first whiskey trust, there were, he called, Greenhut bought 80 distilleries and only 12 of them remained active.

Yeah. He would buy for the stock or buy for their production facility and

Once he got that, he didn't need to shut it down. A lot of people lost jobs. A lot of people.

Spring Hill here in Frankfurt is one that was bought up in, I guess that was like 1911 or something like that.

But one of the things with big laws like the Act, like the Intertrust Act, is that until they get tested, they're just paper, right? Right. It really requires that national distiller to come in. and push the limits and pull it back into court to put some meat behind the bones of those laws. And that's what ends up happening. And today we've got a very mature anti-trust system that works very well because of those tests that took place after Prohibition and other things as well, but the Bell and everything else. I think Bell is probably the most well-known anti-trust breakup. And then Microsoft. There's others, but there's a few that are well, I think Bell's probably the big one.

There's been chatter about like that now. I mean, with Brown Foreman sorta up for sale and like, there were people wondering if Sazerac did purchase it, if that'd be like going too far.

And you know, airlines are always on the verge. There's always people playing with it.

And I mean, like I said, it was a one-two punch to Lawrenceburg. I mean, there was big Danes that were lost to the whiskey trucks. big name distilleries. And then once, I think, you know, and part of what you see, Tommy talks about how many distilleries were in Lynchburg before Prohibition, how many survived. So, I mean, and we just, you know, we think, you know, when the Great Depression hit in the thirties, it hit in Kentucky in the twenties.

Right.

Because so many people lost their jobs.

Well, Lawrenceburg, there was literally no work to be found.

No. The big city of Tyrone, they talk about Tyrone, how much was in Tyrone when you talk about having four or five distilleries, right there in that little community, and how that community was devastated completely. I mean, we looked at populations. You know, the difference in populations, like the two biggest decades in population losses out of Lawrenceburg was the end of the Civil War and then Prohibition.

And that picture you show in the film, sort of the downtown view of Lawrenceburg with all the people. I was going to bring that up. Yes. Is that, that's what it looked like in its heyday, huh?

Yeah, even Tommy talks about that. That, that picture you're talking about that, that's a real picture. And it's, it looks like new. He even says it looks like New York city.

And it looks, I mean, there's thousands.

Yeah. I'm assuming that it was some kind of a event or something. I mean, I don't, I'm not sure.

Cause it's like that every day, but, but even so, but yeah, I mean, it, it looks like a concert at the biggest event today. Yep. And it's just, it's a nice small town. Yeah, it is.

Yeah. But I mean, you see that same thing when you see some of those older pictures of like old Taylor where, you know, that was a, that was a destination. There would just be like, the train went out there, of course, because you've got his train to go by and Taylor got his train to go by his place. So, you know, it was a destination and it was a place that could go for the day and then catch the train back. So, you know, We talked before you do a lot of short form and you say that's kind of obviously quicker and easier. So doing another long form documentary, has that changed your mind or you still kind of like the?

I do like the short form stuff just because it's, I can start a project and end a project within a relatively short amount of time and less moving parts. Get the endorphins off of that. But this is a lot more rewarding in a couple of ways. If you finish it and it's a big, huge project and I can look back and see, it's like cutting grass. You start and everything looks... out of chaotic and whatever. And then you look back and it's like, oh, I did all this. So there is that part of it. But all the people I get to meet in the process, that's what's cool to me. And especially this one, the Frankfurt one was like that too, but I was talking mainly to just distilleries and distillery people. This, I'm talking to families and they're digging out family albums and look at this picture and I got this and I got this bottle and they're showing us all their collections and stuff. So meeting the people, So it is rewarding in that aspect, but it's just like it's hours and I've probably spent 400 hours on like just... Our first, our text chain about this started July 15th of last year. And it's by the time you watch, and you said to me when I walked in this building, you said, I saw it, I like it. There's a couple of typos or whatever. And it's like, I'll go back and look at that. But when you watch it 400 times, it just, you miss that stuff. And so that's why I depend on other people watching it and saying, okay, this section, you could add a little bit of this or take some of that. And I, every step of the way, I would send it to Jerry and say, okay, tell me what you think about this section. Is it missing something? Is it, you know, and so it's just that process. And, but it's like, I remember that process. Yeah.

And we were trying to give these families kind of equal due. Cause they were all so important. So we were trying to balance that with the history and just making sure all these families were well represented, because there's a lot of pride there with these families.

There's a lot of pride. And what's funny is, and I don't mean this to sound disrespectful in any way, so if it does, you can take it out, but Every family we talked to, it's like their people or their family was the one that started it in Lawrenceburg. And it's like, well, this family said they started it. No, we started it. We were the first here. So every family was the first here. And it was kind of funny to hear those kinds of things, but yeah. I don't know. They're very equal. I like doing long form stuff. I mean, we definitely, we're already talking about.

I was going to say, what's the next town? Bardstown, Lexington, Versailles.

He wants to do Versailles, which I live there. I'm good with that. I kind of know that story. I'm a big, as you saw from the thing I did with Drew, I'm a huge Crow fan. So I'm good, but that will be a lot more streamlined. be more like Frankfurt. You're talking about these big distilleries and just a few, few names. That would be a lot more streamlined. But we've talked about other ones. We've talked about Lexington. We've talked about Bourbon County, like the original Bourbon County. That's what it is today.

And Jim and I have had conversations in the past about Shelby County. I think that would be awesome. I just, I think One of the things when I first started my YouTube channel and I was doing like five minute distillery tours and I was doing like bourbon folks and I was doing this and I still do some of that here and there. I try to keep it updated periodically so that people don't forget about that I'm there. But I think I do enjoy these projects more because they're I mean, they're telling a whole story of a place. And then I can take that one and that one's finished and I can connect this place to it. And now these two tell these two great stories. And then, so I'm hoping by a few years down the road, we'll have like all of these- The DVD box set. Yeah.

I mean, there's overlap. You hear names, I mean, you know, from one location to the next, there is overlap. I mean, there was a big, you know, E.H. Taylor and McBrayer were, you know, they were around the same time. They corresponded back and forth. That's how the McBrayers got their match bill, was finding correspondence between the two of them. So you see these names, they're traveling from one area to the next. So it's kind of cool to kind of connect that.

So did you go to the Filson Historical Society? Have you been in there to do some research? Yeah. It's a neat place. It's really neat. Yeah. Yeah.

So where are folks going to be able to see it? And I'm not just talking like local folks. So once it's going to be aired.

Well, So yeah, once the premiere is out, then- Which is?

Go ahead and tell the folks.

Which will be, so we're doing a premiere at the Rippey House slash the Dowling House. It's going to be July 25th and we're going to make more of an event out of it. So the actual film will show that night around 830-ish because we're going to do it outside on the lawn of the Rippey Mansion. And it has to be dark enough that the projector can display, but we're going to get everything kicked off around four o'clock that afternoon. And if you've ever been to the Rippy house to see any of their bourbon sessions, we're going to have many bourbon sessions.

With the people that we interviewed in the film. Kabe is actually going to do a mini session, Mary Dowling whiskey. He's going to do it in the Mary Dowling house.

And so yeah, then we'll have, you know, so we're going to have like Bo Garrett's going to come and talk about Wild Turkey. He'll do a session on that.

And then we'll, you know, so he'll just be walking across the street, the Dowling and back over just as their neighbors. They're right across the street from each other.

But yeah, we're going to have, we're going to have just some, just there'll be times where you can tour. The Dowling House, the Cassiolas who own the Dowling House, they have agreed to do some tours. There's a lot of historical stuff that's still in that house from the Dowling era. I don't want to ruin it, but one of the coolest things they found when they were redoing everything is they found these boards in the floorboard and stuff that had John Dowling's name on it, Mary Dowling's name on it. It was He thinks that it was when they were delivering the wood for the house, like it was like the four John Dowling or whatever, but literally you can see their names written on it. It's so cool.

I was hoping you were going to say they found a case of pints from like pre-prose.

Yeah, I mean, just stuff like that.

But the bars are going to be open at both houses. We're going to have food, all kinds of food catered in.

We'll post the event on the calendar on the website. Yeah, sure. That's great.

After that, I would like to, like we did with the Frankfurt, get it on some local channels around here. That's in the works. Eventually, it's going to end up on my YouTube channel. At the end of the day, I just want the stuff that I do to be accessible. My channel is monetized, so I get gas money out of it. I'm not going to be rich. I'm not going to be Ken Burns rich or anything. I make some money back for gas or whatever, so that's fine. I just want it to be where people can see it, and I want it to be accessible for them and easily to where they can share it with their friends. That's the ultimate goal, so it'll end up there. There are a couple of channels that I would like to get it put on. There's a friend of mine who lives out in California, and she runs a spirits-based, I think it's like a Firestick and Roku channel. She'll put it on there for a little while, and so it'll be on that.

I have a question about someone you're watching your YouTube things and those advertisements come up. That's where you get your money from. When we hit skip, do you get less money or do we get more money if we watch it?

I think it gets more money if you watch it, but I don't even watch it.

Is this event, is it ticketed the 25th? It is.

And so we're going to limit it to a hundred, a hundred folks. So you can go- Any media passes? Yeah. Don't worry. That's right. I'm a star. That event now is on Facebook. So if you look up- His short channel. I think it's its own. I mean, it's... It's through the spirits of Lawrenceburg. You look at the page, you'll be able to find it.

Or you can find it on this page too. And we put it on our page, the Stone Fences Tourist page, and the house puts it on theirs. Yeah. If you follow any of that stuff, you'll find it.

And it's actually been, you already dropped like the trailer on the Bourbon Roadies page and some other, some of those social bourbons.

So we did a trailer and I got two more teasers I'm going to put out like right before that event. Real short. Yeah, real short.

Like a minute, 30 seconds, a minute, something like that. Cool.

Awesome. This is all about this I don't know, it's just shining a light on, you know, what's, what's cool about Kentucky. I mean, you know, you've seen, like I said, just talking to these, these family members and to see them like get excited that somebody is talking about their family and they know this history. And, you know, we, we it's, that's been the fun part about it. He's the one put in all the work. He's the one doing all the editing and I mean, filming, editing, all this. So I'm, I'm, I'm getting to kind of. ride along and see this.

It's awesome. That's right. Sort of.

Which sounds scary, but. All right, gentlemen. It's been a blast to have you on the show today. This has been a great conversation, great whiskeys, great history. I truly enjoyed watching the film. I think it's a great work and I think other people are going to really enjoy it. I'd like to give you guys both a couple of minutes to tell folks where they can find you and find what you do on social media, on the internet. So after they're done listening to this, they can go seek you out.

OK, so we're Stone Fences Tours. We're the history geeks, I guess, of the Bourbon Trail. We're an official partner of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail for transportation. We've been doing this since 2019. You can find us at stonefencestours.com. We have all the social media, Stone Fences Tours and all that. But we also are the co-host of the Bourbon Sessions at the Rippy Mansion. And you can find those events on tbrippyhome.com. And like I said, those are just fun events. Beau was just at one here just a couple of nights ago. Usually just one a month, right? Usually about one a month. During the summer, we may take a month or two off because there is no central air and this house is getting pretty hot. But we usually do about, I think we've done 50-some, have 50-some speakers from all over the industry, from Bill Samuels Jr. to Freddie Noe to Freddie Johnson, to you guys in the podcast era, to a lot of craft distilleries, a lot of women with the Mary Downing House across the street. We have a lot of women. So it's a great event and you can be there with 15 to 30 people and sit down and talk to these superstars of the bourbon industry. I mean, it's hard. Where else can you go and be that intimate with one of these people and actually get to sit and talk to them afterwards?

Oh. And I am on the very short YouTube channel, My Journey. Get your pencils out. My Journey Through the American Spirit. That's where all my stuff is. I'm Facebook, YouTube.

Do you own the rights to the acronym of that?

My M-J-T-A-S. Yeah. We got it.

We got it. We'll see you there. But thank you guys for coming. And like I said, We'll let folks know. I mean, no, obviously not a lot of out-of-towners won't be able to make that event. But we'll let folks know when it hits your YouTube channel, because it's just like the Fryford Berkman documentary. It's great. You did a great job. Thank you. Thank you.

And can I say before we head out that I really want to thank Jerry for getting the idea started and kind of We don't really have sponsors for this, but the people that have contributed the most and done the most is the Anderson County, Lawrenceburg Tourism. Robbie out there, she's helped tremendously with this. Millie, who runs the kind of the behind the scenes stuff for the TB Rippy house. She has been instrumental in this and the Cassiola's across the street at the Dowling house. All of those people have been like tremendously helpful in this event that we're going to run and just helping get the word out about the film and helping with, you know, so I just want to thank all of them. I didn't want to go without saying that. Awesome.

All right. Well, you can find the bourbon road basically everywhere on social media. Todd and I get together once a week on Wednesdays. We put on an episode we'll have guests on like the two fellows we had on today. Always a great time. We're always drinking whiskey. When we're not on air, when you're not listening to us, be sure to visit the bourbonroad.com. That's our website. That's where the roadie bar is. It's a good place to hang out and chat with all our listeners. There's a live chat and posting and all the good stuff on there. So we also provide every person on the website with their own personal tasting journal. So make sure you pop in there and put in a few of your own tastings. You can share those out if you like, or you can keep them private. It's entirely up to you. But we hope to see you the next time we put out a show, the next time we're out and about in town, or in the bourbonroad.com. So until the next time, we'll see you down the bourbon road.

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