58 . Wilderness Trail Distillery - Haley Perros

already since the first time we had gotten a bottle. Me and my wife had come out on a tour early last year and picked up a bottle of it. And to me, you guys are right on par chasing Weller, I guess is what I would call it.

I appreciate that. I do. As someone who is a fan of Weller, I appreciate that a lot. I think they put out a lot of really good products. So that's a huge compliment for sure.

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

We would like to thank Tommy and Gwen Mitchell from Log Heads Home Center for supporting this episode of the Bourbon Road. Find out more about their fine rustic furniture at logheadshomecenter.com. The times are tough and we're all stuck at home, but... You know what? We can still drink some bourbon and we can use some technology to get online and talk to each other. And today that's exactly what we're doing. Mike's at his house, I'm at mine. And we've got Haley on from Wilderness Trail Distillery. And we're gonna do our best to knock out an episode and do a good interview here and let you guys hear a little bit about what Wilderness Trail has going on. I have to warn you though, we did have some technical difficulties. We were fighting microphone problems and a little bit of internet issues and, but at the end of the day, I think we're able to squeak out an episode and I hope you all can appreciate it and give us a pass. Anyway, we're doing the best we can. You know, the bourbon road likes to be on the road, but during these times we've got to do what we can and make do and. Hopefully when this is all over with, we'll get back out there and pick up where we left off and well, it'll be good times again. So please enjoy the episode with Wilderness Trail.

Hello everyone. I'm Jim Shannon. And I'm Mike Hyatt.

And this is the Bourbon Road. And Mike, we're sitting at home today, right? Three different places.

Well, we're on stream yard. We're doing a video conference with Haley from wilderness trails. She is one of their brand ambassadors. She's their social media guru and she's an American badass. So welcome Haley.

I'll never retire from being called something like that. So great.

Well, Haley, welcome to the Bourbon Road. It's nice to have you on today.

It's great to be on. It's great to be here in our virtual hangout space with you guys. So it's been nice.

Yeah, this is the Bourbon Road speak easy, you know, virtual speak easy. And Haley's bringing the whiskey today, huh?

That's right. That's right. I am. I'm bringing a few different whiskeys for you guys to try with me and partake in. It'll be fun.

So Haley, what's the first whiskey that you got for us today?

So the first missy I have for you guys is our weeded bottled and bond bourbon. We're starting with this one first because it's the first one we ever released, which is, you know, we're pretty proud of that. You know, it's being a bottle and a bond, four years old, it's 100 proof. And four years is a long time to wait on a baby. So we were extremely excited when that first came out. You know, we were proud to have our name on it. This is our 64% corn, 24% wheat, 12% malted barley mash bill. And with that, you know, using all local grains, everything like that. Sweet mash, non-chilled filtered. all the other fun wallards you want when it comes to drinking your bourbon. So we were thrilled to have it out. And it's just a delicious product. I'm 100% bias, right? But it is a delicious, delicious product. A lot of very sweet dessert type notes on it. Um, you know, Mikey and I have mentioned this before, but and talking, but you know, just fruit notes as well. So I don't know. You guys want to go ahead and dig in with me or get to it?

Yeah. So when I'm nosing it, I get those fruit notes, um, some caramel, some, some toasted marshmallow in there. Um, you had talked about before about a chocolate covered, uh, like a citrus candy, um, Christmas time. I could get that too. Just a very sweet bourbon, a good representation of a weeded bourbon. I'm all about the, the weeded bourbons, about the wheat, you know, profess myself as the weeded king of Kentucky.

I can agree with that for sure.

I like that. So I would say, you know, I've drank a couple of bottles of this already since the first time we had gotten a bottle, me and my wife had come out on a tour early last year and picked up a bottle of it. And to me, you guys are right on par chasing weller, I guess is, you know, is what I would call it.

I appreciate that. I do. As someone who is a fan of Weller, I appreciate that a lot. I think they put out a lot of really good products. So that's a huge compliment for sure.

This was the first distillate that you guys made. And what year was that?

We released this. Well, our release for it was back in 2018. We basically started making it back in 2013. We have released two products prior to that that we still carry to this day. This was the first whiskey that we ever ever released. So, you know, it's exciting to, you know, we were able to have our vodka and our rum prior and kind of start to make our name for ourselves. But when you call yourself a bourbon distillery, but you don't have bourbon, you're kind of a big tease until then. So we were we were very excited and very proud to have have this one out.

So we've been out to Wilderness Trail a couple of times. We came out there and we did an interview with Pat and Shane, the founders and owners. And then I came back out, Jim was on the road out to Colorado for some vacation time. And I came out there and did the Kentucky Barbecue Festival. And actually we interviewed you that day too.

That's when I met you, yeah, absolutely.

So what's changed since then, since our first interview with you guys? Has anything changed there at Wilderness Trail?

Oh, let's see. It's so funny. So much has changed. I was reflecting on that the other day. I just celebrated my three-year work anniversary there. and in that amount of time alone, if you've gone there, if you come to visit back in 2017 when I first started and haven't been there since, you might think it's a whole new place. So a lot has changed and we joke that we are one of the only distilleries that I know of that expanded, oh gosh, three times before we even released this bourbon. So, so a lot's changed, a lot continuing to change. We've expanded our visitor center, our brick houses have grown exponentially in our growing so that's been an exciting process. We've also recently acquired a property right across the street from us that we are working to actually allow them to grow maybe on that on that site as well so we can help kind of allocate for more land and kind of have maybe a little bit more hands-on approach with our grains as well. We're pretty hands-on with everything we do anyway so but having that grain literally across the street from us is an exciting option to have. So those things have all been in place and we're excited to see what happens with that land as well as far as hopefully having it for more rick house spaces because barrels are pretty big.

They take up a lot of room.

And so those things One thing that you can't currently see to the public, one thing I know I'm really excited about, I think we all pretty much are, is we just expanded our bottling line. And so I would say to probably most distilleries, it doesn't look like a whole lot, but to us, it was a huge expansion. We went from having, you know, a six nozzle, it looked like a fountain drink dispenser, you know, for our bottling line, all hand done, six at a time, that's all you can manage, hand label it, move on. And now we have a beautiful automated city art bottling line. Still does six at a time, but a lot faster than we can manage at a time. Labels it all for us and everything and that has really been nice. Our bottling and warehouse people have truly enjoyed. not feeling so behind and not feeling so rushed in the process. So that's been a nice expansion. Maybe not so nice for the public because it's not so, oh wow, I'll see this. But for us as the workers, we're pretty pumped about it.

Oh yeah, I would think so. So what fueled those early expansions before you guys released your first bourbon? What caused you to, I guess the vision grew, right?

Yes, the vision grew. You know, one of the beauties of where we've started and where we've come from is that we had Farm Solutions, our fermentation and consultation company prior to wilderness trail, which had allowed us to really be self funded throughout this whole process. And, you know, patent chain are you know, two experts in this field as far as knowing, knowing the behind the scenes. And basically from doing that, you know, and opening the distillery and saying, hey, this is, we've seen, we've seen on the other end of this, where this is going, you know, we've seen their expansions, their things, we've seen where this is going. And even then, once we already opened, kind of you know speaking speaking to other industry folks speaking to to you know other council and things like that it kind of just became apparent that we we would need more than what we were working on already you know so we had a we had a small doubler column still situation that we were working on and it grew to a an 18 inch continuous column still, which then grew to a 36 inch continuous column still. And so and going from 4000 gallon tanks to, you know, 20,000 gallon tanks. And so I think really, it was the idea of just kind of You know, listening, listening, listening to council listening to other people to and you know not only listening to our consumers and kind of seeing the demand. But also listening to other people in the industry, which is the nice thing about this industry is mean. Especially for Pat and Shane, there's no secrets to them, right? Everyone talks in this industry. We all want to share and help each other and do those things. But even more for Pat and Shane, where they help fix those problems and those secrets that other distilleries might have. But I think definitely one of the big eye-opening things for us was after we released our first bourbon. how fast it just all went and how quickly we realized we needed to resupply and keep up with the demand. So that was probably the big indicator for the later expansions. It was just realizing, oh boy, okay, they really want this. So we got to keep up with it.

I still remember when the first delivery of your product came to my local liquor store. And how many of your bottles are in a case?

Six, correctly.

So my liquor store got one case and, you know, I'm really good friends with him and he's like, you've got to try a bottle of this. It's the very newest stuff in the world. So, yeah, of course I got a bottle of it. I took it home and absolutely blown away. Bottle and Bond and a Weeder. And just very delicious. You didn't taste, it didn't have any youth to it. It was very, very soft up front and sweet, but it had a nice, you know, caramel vanilla. And then it had so many other notes that kind of exploded in the background and presented themselves. I was like, man, I can't wait to see where this thing is in a couple more years. It's delicious today. So, wow. Sure.

Yeah. So it's exciting. Yeah, and especially for a wheat, you know, four years for most wheat is fairly young. And so you're used to kind of expecting those young flavors and kind of that more I always feel like young wheat are very parsed out in their flavors. They're very compartmentalized when they're young. They're not so melded together. It doesn't, for me, a young wheat doesn't take you on a seamless journey when you taste it. It's more like, oh, there it is. Oh, there's another one. Oh, like it's very abrupt the way the flavors come through. So this was a nice, a nice surprise for all of us, I think. So especially I love wheat too. So I was excited that the first thing we came out with was a wheat. So yeah, delicious.

So I guess when a new product is released, I mean, a lot of times there's a lot of fanfare around it. There's a lot of excitement. And if it tastes good, then it doesn't deflate. It doesn't fizzle out. The shell's just empty, right? And that's what happened to you guys.

Yeah, it's well and for us to I mean it was yeah it was not only you know because we started with a small well small fan base you know we started very well unheard of so. I think it's still continuing to grow just because people are still learning about us and hearing about us. When we first released, we were only in Kentucky and some parts of Maryland and DC. That was it. You had to come find us, you had to hear about us, those things. So I think now that we're expanding to new states and branching out from the central Kentucky nucleus, excited because it's still growing. It's still brand new to so many people. So even after it's been out for two, three years now. So it's cool to see, it's cool to watch it happen all at once.

So Haley, so you've been there for three years and have you worked in the discovery before or in the spirits industry? And if you haven't or hadn't, what have you learned in those three years?

Sure. Great question. So not exactly. No, I did do some things for Kentucky Eagle a while back. But really, no, I am no stranger to bourbon. on my personal life, but I was a total stranger to more of the distillery life. I've gone and done all the tours that I possibly could. I kind of was a bourbon nerd before, but Well, I definitely wasn't as much of a nerd as most people are out there, right? I have been bested by so many, but I was very interested in it. My dad kind of taught me at a maybe younger age than appropriate, but that, you know, if you're going to drink bourbons, this is how you do it. These are some of the brands you drink. Don't, you know, don't sit here and take a and put coke in it, you know, and so, you know, taught early by that. And then my mom started working with Woodford. I don't know, probably five or six years ago, she started off as a tour guide. And then she actually kind of was an interim event coordinator after Tim Middle had moved on to do his own thing. She kind of took his place temporarily and then went back to tours after that. It's by no means her everyday job, but she just loved it out there so much she could do it. So she kept up with it. But otherwise, my background is in biology and marketing. So I actually had a background in biology and was actually on the road to being a dentist. for a long time and I worked in the dental field a lot. I'm very familiar with more of the laboratory side of things and I'm very familiar with more of just how yeast works and how all those nitty-gritty molecules come together. So that was really my background and then I went to school again for marketing and then ended up having a distillery open up in my down and went from there. So that's kind of my, uh, zag pattern way through life to get me to where I am now.

So are you Danville born and raised?

I am Danville born and raised. I am. I've lived in Lexington now for 11 years. So that's more like home. Um, but yeah, Danville born and raised for sure. For sure. So it was pretty exciting. I, uh, back in my day at the 10th grade, back in my day, I had to drop them. to the next county over to get my underwear on. So, so I, so Danville, Danville was a dry town when I grew up and it went to like a, like a semi wet or moist town. Probably I was later in high school or maybe even after I left. I remember Applebee's getting to Danville and that being just the biggest thing to ever happen in that town. And now there's a full-blown distillery there, which is insane. And I was thrilled about it. I went on our open stand before I was ever employed there. I went up to the grand opening back in 2016. And that's when I met Pat and Shane. kind of got the ball rolling on my way to being employed there in the next year.

So what did you start out there as? Did you start out as a brand ambassador or as a social media director?

Yes, so that is what I was initially hired for, was to be a brand ambassador, be our social media coordinator, manager, We have a marketing team of three really. So we all wear a lot of hats around that place. My my initial but that was yeah, that was my initial start there. I had to train as a tour guide though for let's see a few months. And that was kind of as a way to make me, you know, train how to be well spoken as I possibly can about this bourbon tour guides get grilled for everything, right? If you've ever if you've ever gone on a tour ever given tour or anything like that, tour guides get grilled for absolutely every question possible. One out of genuine curiosity too, because people want to try to try to show off their skills too, which is great.

I love it. But also,

it means that you got to be ready to answer any question possible. And what better way to train somebody for the field than by throwing every question possible at this day in a day out. So that was my initial training. I also think it was kind of like a vetting process because I had to drive to to and from Lexington to Danville. And Yeah, that's a lot of time in a car, uh, for to get up, you know, got to get up a little earlier to make it to that.

So how long is that drive?

It's about 50 minutes. Um, so it's not terrible. Uh, but you know, it makes for, you know, 10 hours a week, just getting to and to home or to work, uh, which I, you know, there's been other employees that do that to just end up moving to Danville.

So did you ever get caught off guard by one of those tour questions?

Oh, sure. Absolutely. Especially early on, just kind of being new, you know, throw me a science question my way. I got you. But throw me more of like a distillery mechanic, you know, distillery function question my way. That was news. That was all new to me, you know. So, yeah. Sure.

Yeah, I've got a science question for you. So last episode, we were tasting butterscotch and I said, Mike, that's a chemical name for that. What is the chemical name for butterscotch?

For butterscotch? Oh, Lord, I don't know.

He said it was anise. No, acetyl is what I said.

Acetyl.

But I don't think it's acetyl. I think it might be diacetyl or something else, but I can't remember.

But anyway, it is. Well, because it's but for butterscotch, it's got to have one of the single. Yeah, it's diacetyl. It is.

Well, I got it wrong anyway.

I said it was acetyl, but you're close, though.

He said he said mint mint was ants.

Mint would be more than an Indian restaurant.

You said those little seeds that you clean your clean your palate with.

Yes, yes, exactly. And yeah, so yeah, that would be for sure. And so yeah, acetyl diacetyl. Let's do it.

I'm gonna wait a minute. I'm gonna put up my Walter White background.

Did you? Did you just Google that Haley while we were? Google this.

Well, it's a different, I wanted to make sure it's a different chemical structure the way it is. And I couldn't remember what happened. I'm a visual person. So if I can remember how it looks, like the shape of it, then I'm okay. But I've been bested a million times in this industry. And that's, as someone who likes to learn, I am always taking notes. Always taking notes. I have a whole notebook right now just of me notes that I'm taking for different things. So there's a chance for me to learn or if it's an opportunity for me to say, okay, I didn't know that, then I'm going to try. I'm sure I'm going to remember it next time because I will not be embarrassed by you again, you know. So yeah.

So Haley, I gotta say sipping on this wheat, you still get all those, like I said, almost the same notes you would get in the nose as the palate. It finishes nice and long. It just begs for you to take another. drink of it, you know. And that's what I love about your guys is weeded bourbon expression. It's good to drink almost any time. You can drink it by the fire, down by the creek, get off my farm here, share it with friends. A great bourbon. People should go out there and buy it. So we'll take a quick break. When we come back, we got two expressions to drink. We're excited about those. And we'll get you to catch us up on what the future looks like for a wilderness trail.

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

So Haley, so this expression right here, are you guys moving to that sixth year with both expressions or just with a rye?

So it's actually going to be just with the well, we're starting with the wheat for the six year, only because the wheat is actually what we started making first. And in fact, that's what we, you know, the wheat was going to be our flagship, that was going to be our kind of golden pony boy. And then the rise, we're just going to be kind of like, And here's another option, you know, essentially that we were going to present to our markets. But once we released this ride, once we released both of our rides, we found quickly that they were maybe more popular than what we had planned for. So we've had to restructure a lot of the ways that we've planned on what we're going to focus on, what we're going to shift gears to. It's always, we're constantly in a turntable of, OK, no, no, no, wait, let's try this, and experimenting with that, and seeing. And a lot of it has to do with just hearing from You guys are consumers, people out there that are trying it for the first time. After releasing the rye, we realized quickly, okay, we should probably focus more on this a little bit too. Also with that too is why the rye was a small batch when we released it. Why it's still a small batch now is because um we didn't have that much of it compared to our our weeded you know that was so you know where we did the single barrel we were just like pumping wheat let's go let's go okay let's make a rye here and pump some more wheat let's go and let's make another rye um and so we we were like okay we can we can we now have enough age product to make a four-year-old small batch, we can release that out, go from there. And so once we realized, okay, we got to change gears here, so we've really upped our ride production. Whether or not we will go to a six-year, that's kind of always been the goal for our bottom bond, especially, is just saying, hey, we really want to make it to that six-year point. it has increasingly gotten harder to get to that six year point, just to keep up with the demand of the four year. So we're hoping to reach that six year point. It'll be probably further down the road than our six year week. But that's kind of the goal. For now, of course, we have the right to change that, as we see. But I mean, that's always kind of been the goal, though, is that we get to that point with each of our bourbons. So eventually, you will see a six-year of this cross your fingers. The one thing, the one nice thing about RYDO especially is, you know, at a four year, it's way more likely to be at a mature, more mature tasting flavor profile, right? So you don't have to worry so much about as much anticipation of what it's going to be like when it ages, you know with wheat it's just like oh gosh let's see it for let's be that six because you know it takes so much longer and those flavors evolve so much more whereas rye is just more much more of an abundant spice it's much more of an abundant grain that um as far as the activity of it and the way it's going to, you know, work to penetrate wood and what the work it's going to do in the barrel. So tasting a four year old is very mature, you know, as far as it can have those mature flavors as far as those flavors go. So I think we feel a little bit more comfortable on on hanging in that four-year-old area for a little bit while longer, whereas with the wheat we're just like, oh, all right, it's good now. We know what happens as it goes a little bit longer. So yeah, so we'll see how this starts to develop over the next couple of years. We've just been kind of drained with the market, but we also just want to get it out there for you, especially, you know, and just kind of keep the keep the flow, keep the wilderness trail name going for people, you know, our goal is just to be a household product. You know, so that's, that's the exciting point for us is really more than anything, you know, for our longtime lovers, which long time being since 2013, you know, We know that there's been that anticipation, but for so many people just within this last year of, you know, this is just a phenomenal product as a four year old, you know, we just now started releasing to I think 22 states. is what we're finally in. And that's only been within the last like probably nine months or so that that expansion has happened. So it's kind of interesting to see still how the market takes it and how we can adapt to that with that growth.

So your capacity is pretty big. I mean, you guys are able to make a lot of whiskey, right? I mean, 200 plus barrels a day.

Yes, yes it's it's astonishing so we we obviously came from very humble beginnings, you know we at the very beginning, we were making maybe two to three barrels a week, you know, and that was. That was pumping it full steam as much as we could. I say we, I wasn't there for that part. But Pat and Shane and a couple others, Jared and Mike, and really just trying to pull out some of the best work we could. And then once we finally graduated to that continuous column skill, that allowed us to pull about 12 barrels a day. And that was a phenomenal step for us, right? That was a pretty big number. That was a pretty big jump. But with our latest, our latest and greatest expansion with the secondary continuous column still, that has allowed us for about a maximum of 230 barrels a day. That said, you know, we still do a lot of other work for other distilleries. So, you know, we're probably for ourselves only producing upwards of 150 to 200 barrels where those other barrels, there's still a lot of production work going to other distilleries, either through contract production or, you know, sometimes we'll run will run a mash to help doing any kind of troubleshooting or things like that. So there's still quite a bit of barrels that are going out to that. But yeah, it's been quite a big step for us. We took a big boy step with that, with that continuous column still with all those different fermentation tanks, and it's really been phenomenal. to see and of course that means more everything right more rich houses more space more all that so um but it it's been really really fun to watch to watch grow and and see how everything continues to change. So yeah, it's been nice. Of course with that, you know, we find because of that we finally reached from a numbers standpoint a level to where we could actually be on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, the main trail with all the other big boys that are out there.

So congratulations on that. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. This was suited to be a big year for us until So the virus happened but this was going to be our first year on and I mean still technically is our first year on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and of course, you know, that is a it is a pay-to-play organization, but that being said you do have to meet a minimum standards to be on the main part of the trail and a lot of that has to do with production and distribution and things like that. So Interestingly enough, most of those numbers, although are currently active, we're making those barrels, but those won't be reflected to the market for another four to six years. So we still feel very small by comparison.

So Haley, one of our, I would call him our super fans or super listeners. He, and we just named him as, or set him up as one of our moderators in our private group. His name's Adam Boothby and him and his fiance, Sarah, they actually got engaged out there at Wilderness Trail on a Valentine's Day pick, I think.

Yeah, they did. Yeah, which, congratulations again to Adam and his fiance. Yeah, they, we had a really great Valentine's Day and they came out and surprised us all with that. So I think they, I think I'm sure he can tell you better or probably has, but I think he asked to kind of be slipped away into the to the Rick house for for a little private moment there for his now fiance. So yeah, it was super exciting. It's really, really cool to see things like that happen. Because you know, for better or for worse, we're part of their story at some point now, right? And that's always really exciting. I think that's kind of for me, as a marketer, especially, you know, is the telltale sides of actually becoming that household brand, that household name, things like that happening, people choosing to spend their anniversary out there because now wilderness is their spot, it's their hangout. I have couples that people tell me, oh well this is this is a special place for us so we do all our events here we spend Christmas here we kind of come back for this or our son goes to center so we always come to wilderness and that's like our family time. One of my favorite kind of moments for that too which was I was looking for a house for sale and of course you look through all the pictures and I saw this their bar set up in front row and their bar was a bottle of the yellow wilderness trail weeded label. And I was like, we made it. We made it. I don't know why that was the moment for me of being like, I'm in someone's house right now looking it up for sale. And that's what I see on their bar. Not, you know, not any other bottle, not any, you know, some of the guys that have been around for a while, but we were there. And it was just, I don't know. So yeah, but congratulations to Adam. That was so exciting.

And he

He is, we've interacted before via the socials for some things and he feels like a part of the family now too, which is really exciting.

I was trying to get Adam to get married out there at Wilderness Trail and where I could be their ordinate minister.

That would be awesome. Are you ordained?

I am.

All right. There we go. There we go. So Adam, if you're listening, these are, these are plans that we can set in motion for you.

I think they have a whole bunch of family down in Chattanooga to be upset.

So that's right. That's right. I can't, I can't, I can only fight so hard on that.

So Haley, our third pour, which I'm drinking out of a distillery products glass.

Oh, are you switching labels on me here, huh?

I am. I thought Haley was driving the boat. Oh, yeah. Well, I was. I was ready to move on.

You were ready to move on.

Look at her down that thing. I'm a professional.

This is what we do.

So our third pour we have, what did you bring for us?

So our third pour is our rye whiskey. And this is actually the second of the whiskeys that we produced or released. So we released our Weeder, then we released the rye whiskey, and then we released our rye bourbon. So this was the first of our ryes that we released. Like you, Mike, I am a wheat fan. I love wheat. I have had, you know, I've had some experience with rice in the past, but I guess I just was always put off by them. I just didn't find one that I really, really liked. And I wasn't that far into the bourbon world as I am now. It's amazing how far you can get when you take a just nose dive right into this world and really just eat, drink and breathe it for day in and day out for three years. That being said, I was like, okay, here's a rye. All right, buckle up. Buckle up, Paros. You got to do it. This is yours. So, you know, and one thing that I loved about wilderness, you know, to this day and prior to especially someone who sells this product is that I don't have to lie. About this right, I don't have to lie about a single thing that I say about this product down to the fact that I love it right I don't have to even with our vodka which. I have maybe a little bit too much PTSD when it comes to vodka. Maybe a couple bad nights in college that got away from me. But even with that, I don't have to lie about the vodka. I like it. I enjoy it. Will I drink it neat every day? Absolutely not. But as far as being a good vodka, I can back that. And I don't have to have a guilty conscience about that whatsoever. So here we are with a rye and I was worried, but I have absolutely loved this product. I have enjoyed it thoroughly. It is so complex and so beautiful. So what we have is it is also a four-year-old product. It is a, so we are going a little bit different on the mash bill of course. So this is a 56% rye, 33% corn, 11% multi-barley. So for a rye, so whereas our rye bourbon was a high rye, this is actually a pretty low rye concept for a rye whiskey.

What they call a Kentucky rye, right?

Right, Kentucky rye, exactly. You know, we've got other distilleries, you know, I think Newport's is like, 98 or even 100%, you know, rye. So but this is this is more of a traditional Kentucky rye and even more Kentucky because we're still using Kentucky native ryes in this product as well. And so, so four years old, low rye mash as far as that goes. But it is a cast strength. So it's anywhere from 111 to I think the highest I've seen with our cast right so far is 120 maybe 121. This one I have right here is 113 proof. It is our and they are this one is also a single barrel. So this is products. So the weeded and the rye whiskey, we make things confusing. It's fine. But this is so this is our, I don't know what, what proof you are drinking on over there. But mine's 113 proof. Got a couple. All right. 113, a couple different variants there. Oh, a barrel pick to the lion's share. Even better. Even better. I love it. So that's what we're going to drink on. For me, what I love about our rise is it's very in depth. I love I've grown to love Rye's in a lot of ways. For me, Rye's in the past used to be just something that was just all spice, all heat, and just punch you in the mouth kind of stuff, which some people, that's what they want, right? They want that spice. They want that kick in the pants. They want that invigorating drink. I always kind of call Rye's the Marlboro Reds of bourbon or whiskey just because it's just that hefty level you know it's the Cowboys drink right the more traditional flavor but and especially what I I think that rise done poorly often tastes like you know here's this beautiful plate of food and now I'm just gonna dump all this Tabasco sauce on it right all heat no flavor and And I think ours, you know, I think if you do a right well, you actually have a beautiful bloom of expansive flavors. And that's what I like about ours is, you know, I get everything from floral notes. I get a lot of I get a lot of like lavender, a lot of hibiscus, honey in there, even I get the spice that I want in there, especially I get a lot of the spice towards the front, the florals in the middle, and then it's a nice finish of her mint flavor in the back. And just like a little dinner mint, it's great, the whole meal.

I know this is definitely Jim's jam, probably, is the rye. But I would probably like this rye more than Jim likes it. Because I think I'm a big red freak, like big red soda. I love it. I'm a Texas guy. And when I smell this, I smell big red gum or big red soda. And big red soda has that little bit of spice to it, just enough to let you know it's there. And this has been sitting in glass for a minute, so the nose on it is just wonderful. Oh my gosh.

Opened it up a little.

And now I've had some of your right and now I've had some of your right, your right picks that are I'm just one word would explain these epic. They were epic. I mean, they were just absolutely phenomenal. So we had the Lexington Bourbon Society on one show and I'm a member there, but we had them on. Yeah, we had them on for a show and they had one of their picks that they had chosen with you guys. And it was just. Absolutely. Candied orange. Just amazing. And then, you know, since then, I've had a number of your single barrel rise and they're just so different. They're so they vary so much all over the board. Now, this one here, the one that I'm drinking is a lion's share. And it is, you know, this is a black licorice and Wrigley's gum. combination it's just it's absolutely delicious and it's got a little bit of grassiness to it but in a good way it's and it's definitely in a good way and i like this a lot and i i just picked up this bottle today by the way this it's a good pour fresh all right fresh off the shelf um yeah that uh that latinia bourbon society pick i actually sat on i got the privilege to sit on and on that one um

They had teamed up with a couple other, you know, local establishments and ended up, we ended up with two picks, two different barrels because you couldn't narrow it down and they are entirely different. entirely different but from one pick to the other they were so different and That's that's the other great thing about it, right? So that's an excellent pick and some of the lion shares have been phenomenal That's yeah, that's the other great thing about it is is especially either from a single barrel, you know or from batch to batch you're gonna have those variances you're gonna have those different nuances and they're going to either be right up your alley or maybe they'll intrigue you, maybe not at all. I think one of those picks ended up being much more on the smoky side of things, much more of that just like smoke oak barrel flavor, toasted marshmallow kind of flavor profile. It was very different from that fruity, floral, like you said, this is the mint and things like that. So two entirely different picks coming from the same, you know, same branch, not the same barrel or anything, but just it's so interesting to see that. And that's what I like about it is there's just so many different flavors and One thing I like about this rye, as it's a Kentucky rye, that low rye level, is I think it allows for those variances very well, but with it being at a cast strength, you still get that kick that you're looking for when it comes to a rye, right? You're still going to get, you know, alcohol alone is going to give you that punch that most rye lovers are looking for. So I think it's kind of the perfect, both of our ryes are kind of that perfect bridge of of flavor profiles that you want, you know, and maybe that's why I like it so much. I might be totally biased, you know, who knows.

Mike, I got a question for you. So this, well, first of all, Haley, this rye, you call it your settler select rye. This is something that's always been a cast ring. It's always been bold and spicy and just a menagerie of flavors. Mike, do you have a country artist that you want to apply to this one?

Oh.

Probably Dolly Parton.

Dolly Parton.

Oh, apply. I like that.

Yes, it's a it's smoother than what a regular rider would be to me. It's not that kick in the throat. It still has that Kentucky hug on the back end where it's not, you know, it's not punching the back of the mouth. It's actually give you that nice warm feeling and stuff. Like I'd said, like a cinnamon gum. I just. I didn't really dig it. If I was going to have to drink a rye and I'm not a rye drinker, this would be one of the ones I would pull off the shelf. I would put this right up against maybe a wild turkey rye or somebody right there. Somebody's been doing ryes for a bit. Jim's probably better at that than me. I could drink this all day long and that is saying a lot for me. Jim will tell you that.

Yeah, so with the Wilderness Trail Rise, I'll just tell you right now, I've never seen so much variation in the barrels. So I've seen such a wide variety of flavors come out of your picks that I'm always excited to try a new one. So when I went out and got this this lion's share today. I was like, I can't wait to go back and try that. It's going to be different. I know. Now this doesn't have any orange in it as far as I'm concerned. I get orange, candied orange in a lot of your ryes and this one not. So big difference.

They will vary. They will vary. And that's the exciting thing, right? And what I like about that, too, is then you can almost go and like try to collect it, right? I mean, even from batch to batch, I was on our rye bourbon. I was thinking the PO2, which is like our second batch of the rye bourbon that we released. And it's still probably one of my favorites. So I saw that total line the other day and I was like grabbing it. So yeah, I mean, just the variances, those little nuances are so fun to try to find and see what you like. Yeah.

Are you guys excited about your tours coming back once the governor opens everything up?

Yes, we are excited about that. One thing we are trying to actively can work on is just how to do that in the safest, healthiest way possible, whatever we can do to follow guidelines and make people comfortable doing that. You know, one big thing about us is, you know, obviously, or any distillery is part of the tour experience, right? We're very proud of our tours. We love the the experience that we offer. So we want to get that ball rolling as soon as possible. Of course, you know, my Pat and Shane are no doctors. Well, Pat is a doctor, actually. They're not medical doctors, should I say, but they do know a lot about science and knew a lot about microbiology and they feel comfortable, you know, as long as we are allowed to do things in a really good way. So we're hoping to try to kind of start that process of saying like, you know, hopefully in the next few months provided that we're allowed to open up. How do we do that? How do we make people feel comfortable? So probably doing very limited tours, limited times a day, limited amount of people, things like that. Even with our six year release, we're planning that. We don't have a tentative date on it yet, but we're hoping for maybe even the end of the month. to do a curbside release for it, just to allow for people to pick up this product, finally have a six-year wheat in their hands. We've been talking about it forever, let's get it out there. And doing that in a safe way, and so likely that's gonna be pre-ordering and doing that. The same thing with the tours, it's gonna be something along the lines of probably calling ahead, registering, you know maybe even doing something along the lines of only allowing so many people at the gift shop at a time but we're excited to hopefully within the next month or so provided everything goes well caveats to all this to be open and and doing limited tours people should so people should like keep an eye on the website for any announcements or Please, website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter even. We, I, I, we are active on all of that. So yeah, all of those would be great resources once we start getting the ball rolling. So we're kind of in the planning for the planning stages of it, just because we are constantly being updated with things like OSHA guidelines, recommendations, and of course, obviously, We are getting new information day by day from the governor, from the CDC, et cetera. And so we just want to make sure we're following as much as we can with all that, whether it's through, obviously, six feet social distancing, good PPE, and, you know, probably making sure people take a good shot of barrel strength before they leave.

You guys are making a hand sanitizer as well, right?

We are making hand sanitizer. We have made about 40,000 gallons of hand sanitizer.

Yes.

Yes. And it has been another rapid shift in the way we've had to work and operate and things like that. So you know, we make it with with our new make. In addition to hydrogen peroxide, water, those things, glycerin, glycerol being the other component of that. So we do it as far as the World Health Organization standards goes, and we provide the label, et cetera, et cetera. And we've been donating almost all of it to local hospitals, first responders, et cetera, et cetera, to try to help to all that. We have sold a little bit, mostly to private consumers or small samplers. But most of it, I would say 98% of it has been in donations to just try to help if we possibly can.

Yay to you guys. Good job. Thank you so much.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, it's been a wild ride. That's for sure. But it's been great to be able to adapt very quickly to be able to make it all happen. And we've had a lot of help doing that, too. We've had several organizations donate and bring everything from grain to ethanol. So it's been, yeah.

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