71. Ironroot Republic Distilling

Well, you know, it's only four hours from where we lived to get over to Louisville. So that's where we headed.

Mom takes her sons on the bourbon trail. Can't everybody have a mom like that in America? You are the American mom everybody dreams of right there.

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.

Hey, this is Big Chief from the Bourbon Road, and I'm in Denison, Texas, visiting Iron Root Republic Distillery. And they definitely hit the ground running. Not that old of a distillery. And they actually won World Whiskey Awards from Whiskey Magazine Bourbon of the Year. Now that for 2020. Now that's some amazing stuff. And I've got Marsha, the mother of Texas whiskey with me, and Robert, Licorice, one of the founders and owners.

How's it going?

It's going.

It's going good, huh?

It is. We're about to drink some whiskey. Yeah. So I'm excited to be here with you guys. We like to get straight to the whiskey. All right. No doubt about it. Let's do it. And you got something in front of me. What do we got?

So that is going to be Harbinger 115. That is the one that won the award this year. It's our flagship whiskey. It was the very first whiskey we ever released. And it's our bourbon. It's made from three different corns, bloody butcher corn, purple corn, flint corn, and then a low rye. And then also some yellow corn in there too.

A lot of floral on that nose.

Yeah.

Now how old is this? So that, the youngest barrels in the blend are going to be 32 months with this one. The oldest ones are going to be just over four years old.

Now our listener's probably saying, man, that is a young whiskey, right?

It is a young whiskey, oh yeah.

It definitely doesn't look young. It's that dark amber color, just the amber goodness, the American spirit in the glass. You're looking through it, beautiful looking whiskey and stuff, but it's a Texas bourbon.

Oh yeah. And the Texas weather isn't shy and so the color comes out pretty darn quickly around here.

So you ever heard that song? Chris will do this, this cowboy hat. You ever heard that song? I don't think so. You should listen to that hat. Cause I said, you, uh, I wrote a blog yesterday and I said, Texas whiskey, they should have a sequel to that, to that song, just about Texas whiskey. Cause he says I roped a white Northern or a Texas tornado or something in that song. And, um, I think, uh, Texas distillers have harnessed and tame that Texas heat to make some whiskey.

That's the goal. That's the difficult part of making whiskey here, but it's also what makes it so much fun.

This is a young whiskey. I don't get a whole lot of alcohol just punching me in the nose. I get some vanillas, that floral I was talking about, maybe some peach in there a little bit.

We tend to see a lot of peach, apricot, those type of notes. Orange marmalade.

Orange marmalade. I could get with that.

Some nice baking spices with it.

Let's taste this sucker. Oh, that's nice.

That pot still distillation, that just coats that tongue and really gives you kind of a flavor all throughout from the beginning to the end.

Yeah, that's got a nice finish on it. The taste, though, is just, to me, is amazing. A little bit of cinnamon candy with that. I was trying to think of something else I've tasted before that maybe there was just a little bit of Pop Rocks maybe there. Pop it on the back end.

We like to say that it's brunch. You get a lot of those little bit of that, some molasses, the pancakes, then with that orange marmalade and the light fruit with it, it's kind of a...

Man, you're making this sound good.

It does.

It's like she's a professional. We'd had breakfast with Peggy Nell Stevens and we'd pair some whiskies with breakfast with her one time. That was one of the best interviews I'd ever done before with her. It was amazing to sit down and listen to her pair of foods and to hear people say, you can drink a bourbon or a whisky with this brunch. There's nothing wrong with that. That's one of my favorite things to make. Oh, heck yes.

Now you've got me thirsty over here.

I don't know. We've done some breakfast old fashions with a little bit of bacon and maybe one of those little- Agle waffles.

Agle waffles with the cinnamon on them as the- You had a little bit of candied bacon.

Yeah, candied bacon.

That's good right there, right? Best part of waking up.

So what year was Iron Root founded? So we were, we started distilling 2014. Before that we took probably a good four or five years of just kind of studying and research just because both my brother, myself and my mother did not come from any sort of beverage making background, distilling wine, beer or otherwise. So when we first decided this was kind of the thing that Inspired inspired us to go in a direction start our own business we knew we needed to take the time to really learn what the heck we were supposed to be doing and So we kind of tried to like find out what people who we thought were doing a really great job I mean, that's how we ended up talking with the guys down at Waco down Balcones it's how we ran into Bear and Nancy Fraley and that's kind of then that led to the kind of the the French connection and the inspiration of how they do stuff in France and kind of how to use what they do here in Texas again to help tame the Texas weather.

That's why we always say that it's fate that brought us to Denison because it is that relationship with Cognac that was developed because of the history of Denison and a lot of the techniques that we used to harness this Texas heat come from a lot of the techniques that we've learned through them. So it's been, we think we belong here.

Rob, you didn't start out in whiskey. You said you and your brother started out doing stuff. What's your background?

I graduated from undergrad in economics in Sherman, Texas. It's right next door to here. From there, went to law school in St. Louis. I graduated from law school, got my JD. but never took the bar exam. We immediately went from graduating law school to the Bourbon Trail with my mom to go learn about distilling.

Your mom took you on the Bourbon Trail.

Oh, my mom took me on the Bourbon Trail.

It's only four hours from where we lived to get over to Louisville. So that's where we headed.

Mom takes her sons on the Bourbon Trail. Can't everybody have a mom like that in America? Exactly. You are the American mom everybody dreams of right there.

Jonathan didn't get to go. He has a little bit different background. He's an industrial engineer. He has a master's in biomedical engineering. So he really had a real job over in Fort Worth. He was designing saw blades for surgery. And once we got into it, he said, I'm not working over here in a cubicle. We're all going to do this together. And so we all took the leap of faith.

Could you ever imagine, Marshall, whenever you're raising your two sons, that you guys were going to own a distillery together?

I didn't even know what a distillery was. I grew up in Montana. They didn't make a lot of it back then. They've got some good distilleries now, but back then there was nothing. Usually I think we had more Canadian whiskey coming over from the order than we did anything else. But we actually discovered this on a family reunion up in Washington State. And we visited our first distillery. And that was the first point where we thought, well, we could do this.

It was in a shopping center next to a Thai food restaurant that we were eating. Do you remember that distilling? Oh yeah, it was dry fly distilling.

Dry fly distillery. So did you notice that you probably don't keep up with Instagram or anything, but my post today was about dry fly. And our episode that we released today was about dry fly.

Yeah. See, look at how things interconnect.

It does.

They went up there and they went up there and actually did their first internship was with dry fly.

I love that. See, everything ties, our whiskey culture and our community is just, is more tight knit than most people realize.

That's exactly right. And they're doing great up there still. So that's wonderful.

So you're out in Montana, you raise your boys, uh, and you know, you get them off to college. One's got his job. The other one you're taking around on the old bourbon trail. They're just getting him boozed up on whiskey.

That's right.

Not the, not, not, not to leave it to Beaver family though. I was going to say they are the Beaver boys, but they're like straight off that show. You got the clean cut looking, um,

And this is just for you. This haircut is just for you.

But not your typical American family dream right there. Let's open up the distillery.

When they first mentioned it and you think you've got it, OK, they both have real jobs. We've gotten through college. Life is good. And then at Christmas, he sits down at the dinner table and tells us he's going to start a distillery. And everybody just kind of After the initial few minutes of trying to process what he just said, everybody kind of fell into it and their dad had always teased them about wanting to.

We had joked about it since we had visited Drive Fly in 2007. When we retired, that's what we were going to do was start a distillery because copper is kind of in our blood a little bit. My parents are from Butte, Montana, which is home of the Copper Kings and all that. Copper country, yeah. And so there's just something, they were so primal when we saw the copper stills, because we had been to wineries, been to breweries.

But we're still in the metals business. Dad's been in the metals business for 50 years.

He's been in coppers forever. But it's just something about the warmth of copper that really kind of, we're like, you know what, that's what we're going to do when we retire. But I graduated and was like, no, let's do it now.

So was there a possibility there's some of the copper that he's mined or that went through his hands?

I mean, it probably was used long ago.

Who would know? He does.

That'd be a question more for Vendome, I think. I guess.

I don't know where they get their copper.

I could definitely find out. I know a person at Vindome. I'm going to have to ask her. So Gina, if you're listening to this episode, I need to know where they got their copper for their steelette.

There's only so many copper mines. And you know what? It's a tight knit community in the mining business, just like the distilling business. You know, most everybody after is 50 years, right?

Yeah, I would think that'd be true. Me and my wife actually, about a year ago, we stayed up in the UP of Michigan and a lot of copper up there. And the hotel we were built was on an old copper mine, on top of an old copper mine. I could barely sleep at night because I thought, I just know that this whole entire hotel, as far as leaning in it, because you're in the UP of Michigan, and I just knew the whole thing was just going to fall down inside that mind in the middle of the night. So I just didn't sleep very well.

Just heard the creaking. I'm like, oh boy.

So we got this and down it. I can see definitely why it won Bourbon of the Year. It is just creamy velvety. Actually, on the couple sips after the first one, I got a little bit of almost like a spicy butterscotch to that. Not Werther's candy, but just that old butterscotch. I'd love that taste. Very good.

Thank you very much. I think we can contribute a lot of that type of flavor profile comes from, again, the barrels. Those wavestave casks have that kind of smokiness, but particularly just that butterscotch note that you're talking about. It's really, really ramped up in those wavestave casks.

The purple corn is such a great partner with the European oak to pull in some of those cloves and that cinnamon and the baking spices you get in it.

Yeah, definitely. I can see why everybody loves it and why everybody's craving it. You know, we actually stopped at a liquor store here before and only thing I could see on the shelf was one little lonely bottle. Um, and I was like, but there's, you know, I think they had four or five different places for your guys's product there, but everything was gone.

It's the wonderful and terrible thing about awards, again, for us, a huge blessing. I mean, it's, again, for us, especially during this time, it's been just huge for helping us get our whiskey out there and getting to enhance people. But now it's tough to keep stuff on shelves because we're, again, as you saw, we're a small distillery. So now keeping everything stocked up is the challenge. So I think we've already this year bottled more than we did all of last year, which is crazy.

And you said you guys are only producing 200 barrels. 200, 250 barrels a year, yeah. And that's it. Yeah.

We're working on making more. As you saw, the back's getting kind of filled up. So we're working on getting the next barrel warehouse up and going. And then we'll be able to crank things up to a little bit different level.

The stills, we have the capacity. We just, the storage and balancing everything out when you're a small distillery is, I mean, people say, well, why don't you have more? And I said, Do you know when we created this whiskey, how old this distillery was? This was a two year old distillery and you don't even know what your whiskey is going to taste like. So you're going to be careful on how much you make.

It is a balancing act for the giant guys. You know, I think if they could look back 10 years ago and said, there's going to be this bourbon boomer whiskey boom.

You don't think they wouldn't put up double what they put up?

They sure would have. They'd have filled those coffers up, but they'd have been whiskey poor for a little bit. Some of our good friends have told us before, everybody thinks they're millionaires, but they're really just whiskey poor. You got a lot of liquid assets.

There's a lot to say.

A lot of warehouses out there. Let's get into that second port.

What do you got for us for the second port? For the second segment, I'm going to do the bloody butcher corn versus the purple corn. I think the other ones can be one of our other mashbills is a low rye mashbill. This is going to be the more traditional mashbill. You'll see even the way that we make it, it doesn't quite really have a traditional Kentucky profile.

Let's do it.

I was just going to say, you didn't do Promethean?

Oh. Yeah, we can grab Promethean.

Because Promethean, I really like to pair, actually, my choice is to pair the Promethean with the Harbinger. And the reason why I like to pair it that way is because the Promethean is really the inverse of the Harbinger, where we have our four primary mashbills, the purple corn, the bloody butcher corn, the red flint corn, and the rye, where we showcase the flavors of the purple and the bloody butcher and the harbinger. On the flip side, Promethean goes, we feature the flint corn and the rye. So you're going to get the flavor profile, you'll be surprised. And this is where you can really showcase and understand what five percent difference in some of these mashbill with these heirloom horns can do, because this one to us goes more to the darker fruit and the dark tea. You're going to get a little a totally different finish with it. This is the brand new one we just actually bottled the Saturday, and it is a nice hundred proof.

So yeah, traditionally we had bottled it at 103, but we made a decision about a year ago that we wanted Promethean to become a bottled and bond. And that means we've got to bottle it at 100 proof. So we've raised the age statement, moved it to 100 proof, and now we're going to slowly march to that four year age statement to become the bottled and bond.

So you got two different bottle styles here. Walk me through that real fast. How did you go from that?

I can tell you that. The original bottle is the horseshoe shape and we really enjoyed that. When we started with it, they came out of China. Then we had two reasons for changing. was the fact that when we realized when it goes into on-premise or at bars, it's a little tippier. It's a little bit harder to deal with. It's got a short neck. Also, when they turn it sideways, you have no Branding. Branding on it at all. The second reason was that with the new tariffs, it went from a 30% increase to I think it's a 285 or 89% increase on the glass. And we'd rather drink our whiskey than look at the bottle.

So it was going to change the price point. So by the time it got to shelf, the price would be $15 more bottle. And that was not something we wanted to do. When you and I were talking earlier, I have a very strong belief in different price points on whiskey and that I want to be able to afford my own whiskey. And so for me, keeping our price point was more important than keeping the old bottle shape.

There's going to be some really nice upgrades on the labeling that will be coming. Probably out by the fall, I think. We're just waiting to get everything finalized on the label approvals and things. So there'll be another change in the labels, which I think everybody will appreciate.

These are holding pattern labels right now.

There's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes you got to kick that can down road a little bit to get where you're going. And I still think that new bottle is super beautiful. To me, that's what I could imagine John Wayne carrying around.

I mean, it fits in a holster pretty well. Does it? Is that what you do? No wonder you're not married yet. So cheers.

Let's taste this thing. Man, I get some dark, rich toffee in that. Almost whenever you walk up to a kettle corn, smelling that kettle corn cook.

Sometimes you get a nice light chocolate, get a little bit of cinnamon with it.

Maybe some toffee. That's a little bit lighter than the last one. Um, but more rich, I get a little bit more of the Oak out of that one. I do get that, that chocolate taste, maybe more of a Baker's chocolate, you know, that not bitter, but in some of our listeners might, it's not candy bar, candy bar, super sweet, but Baker's chocolate is just, just raw chocolate. That's, that's good. I used to eat my mom's all the time. She'd be like, where's the chocolate at? Took a whole big old chunk off of there.

Said chocolate, right?

Is that what you did with a kid with a kid?

No, I'd sell a lot of other stuff out of the pantry though. I was always stealing food out of the pantry.

Robert wasn't as big on the sweets.

No. Still the macaroni is one of what I was going after.

My dad always had the chocolate and whenever you went to visit him, he always had a can and then he'd have the chocolate and that was kind of the treat when you got to go to his work and you'd find the can of chocolate.

I just get so much out of this. I get the vanillas and the caramels, everything is just, it's very complex and layered. I think the longer it's in my glass, the more it opens up and the more I'm going to get out of it, especially for a hundred proof. Usually you would say that out of something that's, 120, 130. I'm just amazed when I look at these colors because whenever I see a Kentucky bourbon or a Tennessee whiskey, to get this color, you would have a nine-year-old or up to a 12-year-old whiskey. Sometimes even older than that, 15 to 20 years old is not even as dark as this.

You get really deep into the wood. We always get asked what is the Texas profile. It's a really hard thing to nail down just because there's so many different things being done in Texas, different styles of whiskey being done. I think that with the weather and the intensity, you do get this really deep, deep density of flavor that you typically get just because you're getting so deep into that wood. I think that's one common aldecy. Again, with balconies, garrison, what we do is that it is a very dense flavor profile typically, so even at lower proofs.

I think Texas has got it going on right now. If people aren't down here trying to buy the whiskey, if you're not trying to find it on the shelf, if you're not searching it out, probably something I think that you should have on your shelf. I really can't get enough of it at my house. I'm just like trying to seek it out. And in Kentucky, your guys's bottles are on the shelf, but I don't see enough of them up there. And I'm sure that is a, that's a growing thing. And eventually I think you'll be all around the United States and hopefully overseas.

We're working on it. We're working on it. Right now we're in about 35 states. Again, with Total Wine, anywhere you can get their stuff, you can find a couple of our bottlings. Right now we've only got two that go nationwide. The rest of the stuff is Texas only for the moment. Again, I think that's one thing. Again, with the smaller distilleries, it's just building up to where you can get that whiskey out there. But you are nationwide. We are, yeah. I think it's 35 or 38 states. I forget. Total Wine was opening up some new states, I believe, this year. I think it's 35 states right now.

What about in military bases?

Military bases right now, we're in the Navy bases. So you can get Promethean, Hubris every once in a while at the naval bases for us. We do a lot of them.

And the Harbinger 90.

Yeah, and we just got an order for the 115 proof Harbinger. So a few cases will be going out to the Navy bases for that one as well.

Well, that's nice to see that the military guys, you know, me and Jim are both veterans. He's actually a Navy veteran, a submariner, and he'll be happy to hear that it's in Navy bases. The sailors actually can drink something besides rum. So I got to say, this is, this is some excellent whiskey. How did you decide on Dennis in Texas to put a distillery at?

So when we first, we knew that we were going to come back because Jonathan and I had both left Texas to go to grad school. And we knew he had come back to Fort Worth for a job. And his wife said, you guys can do something this dumb as long as we're still in Texas. So we knew we were going to stay in Texas. At the time when we were looking at where distilleries were, there was a bunch down the hill country and not really any above Waco. And so, we were like, you know what, let's start looking around North Texas and kind of see what there is to find out here. And a lot of the towns at the time were dry. They did not want distillery. You go in there and be like, hey, we want to put distillery there. They're like, next town over, sir. Not interested in hard liquor. And then we ran into Denison. And Denison was a town that they said, how can we get you here? We want you here. We see this as something that can add value to our community. Dennison actually has a history. Back in the late 1800s, a gentleman lived here named T.V. Munson. He was a viticulturist trying to figure out how to grow European grapes here in the U.S. And he was bringing French grapes over, but they plant them and after a few years they die off. And so we discovered we have all these plant diseases here they don't have over in Europe. And so the European plants had no immunity to them, but the Texas grapes did. And so he found a particular Texas grape that was essentially immune to something specifically called phylloxera. And he started grafting the European grapes on top of a lot of the French grapes. and he was able to start growing them here. Well, around that same time, phylloxor got transferred from the US over to Europe, and it decimated the French wine industry. About 80% of the French grapes were wiped out. So Cognac, Bordeaux, Burgundy, all those regions were just decimated. That's why Cognac fell out of favor and single malt whiskey became so popular. It was because there literally wasn't Cognac to be made because the grapes had died off. And so the French freaked out. They started basically going all around the world, trying to find solutions. And one of the solutions they found was through the Smithsonian, because this crazy guy in Denison, Texas had been sending them all of his papers on this Texas grape root with the French vines attached to the top of it. Next thing you know, they're shipping the Texas grape vines over there. So even to this day, a large portion of the grapes around the world are grafted on top of descendants of this Texas grape root because it is so resistant. That's where the Iron Roots from Texas, the name comes from. For that reason, Cognac and Denison became sister cities. Every few years, the mayor of Cognac and even some of the master Cognac distillers will come and visit. We've gotten to develop this really great relationship with a lot of the Cognac producers. Even enough so that two years ago now, Marsha and I actually went over to Cognac. They put us up in one of the French chateaus, one of the producers put up in their big mansion. And then we got to tour around Cognac for a week, just like, you know, again, visiting all distilleries as they were doing all their distillation runs and going and tasting stuff off the still with them and talking about stuff. And then even one producer had me go out for a couple of days and I went and ran his stills for a couple of days.

What would Marsha do in that time?

Oh, she was drinking, eating cheese and drinking wine and rum. Is that what you were doing? Little bit of bread and cheese. She told me she's not getting up at 5 a.m. on her vacation.

A lot of them are small distilleries. Actually, we spent a lot of time visiting and touring. We got to do a toner. What do they call their cap cool bridges toner?

Tonneries or whatever it is. My French is failing me right now.

So we had a wonderful opportunity to go out to Vacard and then we had a friend that had moved and been distilling over there and he had contacts and we were invited to taste some of the oldest cognacs from some of the in some of the cellars that most people don't get to do. So we just had a phenomenal time over there visiting and meeting some people and tasting things that were made.

We taste some stuff from the 1800s. Again, they asked us if we want to do a decades tasting. So I was like, oh yeah, 100%, maybe like 60s, 70s, 80s. Now it was 1880, 1819, and 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, and then the last one they said was an interesting one because it was like 1941. It was distilled when the Germans... The Germans are the ones who harvested that. And so it was really interesting that they were showing the differences of what they did and what the Germans did while they were there. The Germans do know how to make some wine. Oh, they do. They do. They were successful. It did not taste bad, but it was one of those things that just kind of puts the world in perspective. And talking with the cognac producers, I mean, they kind of have the opposite system in cognac, where there's 6,000 distilleries, but there's only about 150 brands. because the brands, they actually will contract out to all the small, you know, craft producers. Even the big, giant brands like Hennessy, they buy basically all their cognac from small farmers. And that's what they used to make all the, so it's the big brand source from all the little guys there.

And Marcia, did you feel pretty special to get to drink some of that stuff from the 1800s?

It was so amazing. And it really puts in perspective what, you know, there's a difference between a bourbon and a cognac. And a lot of it is, there's a lot of soft finesses and things that that take that delicate time. Brandies, you have to treat them a little more delicately than you do the bourbons, I think. It was amazing, the flavors and the depth.

You kind of said something I noticed in our list. Some of our listeners might not understand the difference between Cognac and Brandy. So Cognac is kind of like bourbon, where all Cognac is Brandy.

Yeah, not every Brandy is a Cognac.

They're very strict on their rules.

So bourbon, all bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon, right? So Cognac is kind of that special.

Yeah, it's a special designation of brandy, yeah, for sure.

Well, let's finish this, what we have in our glass up and we'll take a break and we'll come back from the second half and we'll try two more expressions. Perfect.

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 woodcrafters 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 rot and 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 LogHeads Home Center.

Hey, so it's Big Chief. We're back here for our second half with Iron Root Republic Distillery. Rob, what's the third pour you got for me?

So the third pour we're doing, this is now you've had kind of our standard products. I'm breaking it down into our different mash bills. So this one is our purple corn mash bill. It's in Euro Oak. It's a three-year-old sitting right at Castranx, 121 proof on this guy.

It would be a single barrel.

Yeah, this one's a single barrel.

100% corn.

You ever had those red, red fish, spicy red fish. I'm getting that on it. I was going to say Twizzler, but I get a little spice in there. So those red fish, I think have a little spice to them. I don't know what those are called. I just call them red fish. Swedish fish. Let's taste this thing. You get some honey off that nose and some, the vanilla's again and stuff. Most people say that just that typical bourbon well, but I think that candied redfish or the sweetest fish is a different note. That's my note.

So it coats your tongue, but it makes it, it makes it your mouth water almost with it.

Oh yeah, it does.

Yeah, it does. And you just want to have another drink.

Well, it just beckons to you to say, please just have another sip.

Just a little bit more.

Now this is a by the fire and people would think it doesn't get cold up here in Texas, right?

It definitely gets cold up here.

And what's your lowest temperatures?

During the winter, like December, January, February, we're typically, I mean, at night we'll get below freezing and then during the day we're generally in the 40s. So it's not freezing, but it's warm for sure.

Sometimes we get the humidities up and whenever you have a higher humidity, even if it's warmer, it's cold. So everything's a little bit relative with that.

And what's your hot, the hottest?

Hot, I mean, it depends on the year. We had one year where it was like 100 straight days above 100 where it never got below. But typically, like this year, we've only had one day that got 100 and the rest of it and only a handful in the 90s even. So we've been most in the 80s this year. It's only June 20th.

It was only summer last weekend, Robert.

We haven't had the hot days yet, but it's been a fairly mild year so far overall.

August and September will heat up pretty good. But we're not doing, in our warehouse, we do not do temperature control, but the building is really well insulated. So even when it's really hot, it'll get into the mid-90s or something in the warehouse. But it really, even when it doesn't go below and then it'll It'll cool off into the 70s easily in the evenings and so we get a really nice fluctuation of 20 degrees easily almost daily even in the summer.

I noticed you do have some louvers in there too that will open it up and let it breathe a little bit.

Yeah, we do. I like air flow. Again, especially if you go back when the humidity is up and it starts feeling a little stuffy, we'll open up the doors and let it breathe a little bit.

It was a boat dealership. We've got six great big doors.

So, you know, when you say craft distillery, you guys are true craft. So how many barrels stored inside there right now?

I think we're closing in right now. I think we have about 700 back there.

Yeah, I see, 760 on the last one.

And now you guys decided, hey, we're going to get a little bit bigger. We're going to have to have a place to put more whiskey.

We keep getting yelled at for not having enough whiskey right now. We've been working on another warehouse that can hold another about 2,000 barrels. The goal is to get up to about 3,000 barrels. As you and I were talking about earlier, just on the way that we manage our barrels, I don't know how much larger beyond 3,000 we can go, just because we do take a very individual approach to each cask. My liver can only take so much at the end of the day, so.

That's why you gotta have a master taster. That's right. Bring Big Chief back to Texas.

We're tasting through 300 barrels today. Let's go.

So whenever you're deciding, hey, let's bring out a new product. We're going to do something different. What's on the scope for the future for Iron Root?

This year, there's a number of barrel finish things that we're doing. We've got a couple different ways that we do single barrels. Again, we've got a new one that my brother's rolling out. One of our single barrel programs we call the Evolution Barrel, which is where we Have a group, they'll pick a barrel and we'll actually only pull about a quarter out of that barrel at a time. And so the first quarter will come out, we'll bottle the rest of the whiskey, never gets pulled out of the barrel, it stays in there and it will continue aging. And about six months later, we'll pull another quarter out of the barrel. and let the rest of the whiskey continue aging. We'll do that until the barrel is empty. You get to see how the barrel ages over a couple of years. One of my big things is I want to show people what we experience here at the Stillery, which I think watching whiskey age is one of the most fun things. How did that barrel taste when it was two versus three versus four years old? How did it mature? What is maturation really doing to that whiskey? And so he's doing the same thing with barrel finishes.

We do that specifically with a restaurant. And we only will do one in a certain area where it's something we can do with everybody. And the reason it's neat to do it with our restaurants is the fact that they embrace it so much. And then at the end of it, they'll feature cocktails, but at the end, they will have a dinner. And they'll use our different corn to make different portions of the meal. And then they will take it and let people taste and have a flight of their barrel through the ages of it. And so that has been a really fun experience for us and for our restaurants.

Jonathan's developed a new thing that we're going to be releasing this year where also he wanted to take the same whiskey and show people what different finishes the exact same whiskey would do. We've taken a barrel of whiskey and divided it up amongst two or three different casks. You're going to be able to have the original barrel Bourbon as is and then as it is with different finishes on it. So what is that same whiskey like with a cognac finish or with our maniac or Madeira or whatever? And so I think that's kind of a really fun thing that you can really see how these impacted and how much the the finishing cast really impact the overall flavor.

And that's a revolution barrel as opposed to an evolution barrel.

So this whiskey, the more I drink it, the more I'm falling in love with it. It's really good. Maybe it's cause we're in the second half already.

It's barrel 199. It was really good.

So I'm getting, um, almost some hot pepper jelly on that, or my wife had bought me some jalapeno infused honey, and I get that honey and that spice together, and I love that sweet spiciness.

Yeah, kind of that candied jalapeno.

Yeah, you can't get nothing better, right?

No.

So what's the second port?

Second port we got going. So now you've had purple corn, now we're going to do bloody butcher corn. So again, as we said, that's part of our four core Mashbills. So we always like to isolate them because again, when we're doing blending our philosophy, rather than trying to create something that's uniform in the warehouse, we want to create the most options. We want different barrels to be spicy, different ones to be sweet, different ones to be heavily tannic because most of our work is done on the blending table to get to our final standard product is to try to put all those components in balance. When we're putting a blend together, because we only do blends of about 30 barrels, if you've put a blend together but it just needs more sweetness or needs more spice or needs more tannin, we can go to individual barrels and add those to the blends in order to shift the blend to where we want it to be. And so we're very much cognizant trying to keep things very separate and kind of push things in different directions. And so that's why we do all the different corns separately. But also I think it's really cool to see what is purple corn versus what is bloody butcher. Because I think that's part of the journey that we've gone on through exploration was trying to find what these different corns, how would they impact whiskey because that's, you know, the not something that was this small guys are the ones who really started experimenting with this. And you've seen Buffalo Trace start doing some experimentation with it as well as some of the other guys with like the Amaranth and some of the other heirloom grains. And so to me, it's really, really interesting to see them on an individual level as well as the blend.

I've got to say this, out of all the bottles that you put out for us to sample today, this is actually the darkest out of all of them. We got Jep the Creed right down the road from us and stuff, and they were using Bloody Butcher. I've heard some other people say, oh, we're the only people in America doing this. It's hard to say you're the only person doing something in America.

Even when I think we started, Bloody Butcher was our first. It's actually in our moonshine, which was our clear spirit.

So we've been doing Bloody Butcher the longest.

Somebody else had had it. I grew the first Bloody Butcher corn for us at home in Illinois. We have some acreage in order for us to try it out. And then we had it for a while from the Amish country. And now it's it's actually grown right over here in Denton locally for us. And each one of them is a little bit different in the corn. So even when you do bloody butcher, it's going to depend where it goes. It's got, you know, where it's grown reflects its flavor just as much as a lot of things.

That was one of the big inspirations for us. You saw Jeptha doing Bloody Butcher. You saw the guys doing Jimmy Redd out in South Carolina. I think it's Highwire. There you saw Wiggle up in the Northeast was doing a lot of experimentation. Then the first time that I tasted something made with a different type of corn was Balcones. Did you say Wiggle? Wiggle, yeah.

No, I was right. Jim, did you hear that wiggle? Yeah. He said it's waggle.

Oh, it could be.

I'm hoping we're both mean, you're right. OK, we're both mean, you're right.

And then balconies with their blue corn. I think that was the first time I tasted one that was made with a different. It's a completely different animal. And so that was like, well, if that's what blue corn does and we see these bunch of people doing, what else can we find out there that'd be something that's cool, different flavors? And so that was kind of a... experimentation train that we've been on. And so every year we distill two or three new different varietals of corn.

Marsha grows, she's actually grown some- You see my corn as you came in, the wind got it a bit last night, but it is atomic orange. Now I haven't seen anybody use an atomic orange.

Not yet. How much of that did you grow?

Well, it is six feet by 60 feet and it's about 10 inches apart. So we'll see how much we get.

So it's enough to do basically to grow enough to get an acre grown next year and for us to experiment a little bit on a small scale.

So what's an acre of corn? What would that produce?

It depends on the corn. Some you can get quite a bit of bushels of final grain off of and some of the older corns yield one cob on each plant maybe and so some of the older corns you can get very, very low bushel yields.

It just takes a while to develop your seed corn but when it's $4 for a packet you can't You can't make whiskey out of that.

So I've asked another distillery this, and since you seem like you know your dang corn pretty well. So I think yelling always grows a lot of popcorn, like actual popcorn. And I'm wondering what that would taste like in whiskey.

The biggest issue with using flint corns and popcorn is that because they're so high in protein, the yield is super low. We do use a flint corn for part of one of our mash bills, the flint corn.

The one you just had, Amindigo Promethean.

It has a lot of that flint corn on it. They've got tons of flavor. I think that's really fun. Again, I think when I was talking with a friend up in Oklahoma that did a 100% match bill with one of the Flint corns, he was getting something like 20% of the yield that he typically got.

So the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

Yeah. At least to him, the cost starts jumping up because you're already paying more for the heirloom corn than for the Flint corn, and the yield is significantly lower.

That's a better explanation I got this time. At least I know that it was possible, but it's probably not financially feasible.

I have people that keep talking to us about trying to do one like that. And I was like, but that'd be like a $200 bottle of whiskey. And they're like, yeah, that'd be so cool. I'm like, I don't know. I don't think so.

So like your last name, I'd get a lot of black licorice in the nose on this.

And now you have jumped yourself up to 131 proof.

Yeah, that's the same.

Right? One thing, isn't it?

Yeah, it's 131 proof. That's a big guy. Big boy whiskey out here.

Or big lady, big, big woman whiskey, I guess.

Big flavored whiskey.

Let's sample this thing. Man, that is, uh, that's rich. Just coat your mouth with just so many oils and. Very buttery.

Yeah, and a lot of those nice oils because we are a pot still distillation and non-chill filtered with it.

So you're asking about the swan neck off the still.

I was very impressed. I was actually going to ask you what the degree on the neck is.

45. 45 degrees. So it's a sharp downward angle.

Yeah. I've talked to other distilleries about the angle of that and how important it is, the angle of that neck and how, if you adjusted it just a little bit, how much different your- Distal it is. Distal it is, yeah.

Yeah, the line arm, because that's where, when the condensation changes, it doesn't travel. It goes straight down, huh?

Yeah, when you hit the top of the... When you hit the top of the still, anything that condenses up there is coming through the condenser. It's not going to fall back in the pot. How much reflux falls back to the pot is zero when you have a downward angle. Especially some of the scotches, some of the highland scotches, they'll tend to have more of an upward angle. The condon will condense and come back to the pot, so we'll have a higher reflux rate than it will off a still like that.

Well, it's nice to see that you're using a sweet mash, not a sour mash, and doing something not a whole lot of people out there are doing. I think there's more and more and more we're seeing distilleries go into a sweet mash, not that sour mash.

Yeah, breweries can do it. Why can't we?

Yeah. I mean, it takes a little bit more work and it costs a little bit more, but I think you get a better product in the end.

I really like it. I think there's certain notes that you can sacrifice some of the ester production that you can get off of doing the sour mashing with sweet mash, but I do think there's a lot of really great flavors that come from sweet mash. Again, it's one of those things that I Yeah, saying whether one or the other is better is tough, but at least to me, it's something that you get a lot of richness in something that's very different than you typically see.

This right here, this is some phenomenal juice. I would put this right up there with logic correct barrel proof. Thank you very much.

That's high praise.

I think it is. It's just so much complexity in there that caramels are coming through, that toffee's coming through to me, that some rich, warm leather. When I, you know, you tell people that, but I do get some of that. And the oak is coming through on that a little bit too. Not very much, but it's there. And it's a dark, beautiful whiskey.

That's a 32 month old.

And which one of these, you said somebody special picked one of these bottles.

So this is YouTube. A lot of the YouTubers come down to Texas every year for the Whiskey Tribes, they call the Bastards Ball. And so when they all got together, one of them asked if they could do a barrel pick with it. So we brought a bunch of barrels for them to sample. And this is the one that they selected.

So this is the YouTube barrel.

And Jason from the Mashing Drum.

He's one of the guys.

He's the one that picked this. Jason, that's a great pick, man. I think it's definitely a little delicious. It's too bad Jim's not here with me to try this. I love it.

And this is Bloody Butcher corn and wastes.

Yeah, it's an American oak rare. Working together as a family, there's not very many people and it kind of picked up on something you said when you, Marcia, as you walked outside, you said, Hey, I've got my granddaughter here and I'm going to try to get her to do some labeling today. And you were like, does she say eight years old?

Did I say that?

You're like, one of these days she's going to be running this place. Is that your guys' concept that this will always be a family-owned and run distillery?

It's always going to be a family-run distillery. I think part of the heart and soul of Iron Root is us. If we were gone, I don't know if it would be the same. I think that also when you start looking at the way people blend, every time big or small, they switch over who's the one that's doing the blending and there is a shift in the way that the whiskey is going to come out and the way it expresses itself. So I think no matter what, that in order for it to stay the way it is, you have to have the family here. Besides, Marcia is the one who keeps us all in online. I don't know if she was gone, it'd be the same around here.

Now, how did you get the nickname Mother of Texas Bourbon?

Actually, we were over in Houston and we were at Reserve 101 with Mike Raymond. We were talking about the distillery and everything we were doing. We'd met him a number of years earlier, I think at the Tales of the Cocktail, when everybody had aged whiskey at the tasting and we had moonshine. Then he followed us through and we were down there talking. And that's what he called me that at one point. And then it kind of just started sticking. Other people would pick it up.

And Dan Garrison started calling you mother in Texas. And once he did, I think it was like, all right, that's actually her nickname now.

And Jared from Balcones. And it's because Roberts and Jonathan say, I mother them all to death, you know, because we all, you know, as you say, even Jared, she mothers.

Yeah.

He's such a sweetheart, isn't he? I think that everybody's so close and there's such an age difference between myself and most of the distillers. If they can't remember your name, it's easy to call you mom, right?

Well, that would be true and stuff. Me and you might be around the same age. I still think that's cool that they have that, to me, that is just a show of respect of the respect they have for Iron Root and they have for you, Marcia. I'm just super impressed sitting down with you and listening to you tell me about the whiskeys and stuff here. I really didn't know a whole lot about Iron Root until today. I looked up a little bit and did a little research and I knew you guys were a family distillery and I talked to Robert a couple of times, but to hear your knowledge of whiskey and how much I can, I can hear the love for it in your voice and hearing you talk about growing corn and how you want to see this grow. And then you want to see your granddaughter get into it and the pride that you have in your two boys. I just, you know, I, I think that's awesome. Thank you. To me, it's amazing. That keeps that bourbon culture, that whiskey culture going for people like you.

Well, even if you look back to your Kentucky, those are old family. They're all related. That's how the bourbon community, I think, has grown up forever.

Someone's got a mom on. I've had people tell me that they're not related, but when you really do look at it, there were just a couple of gentlemen that started distilleries in Kentucky. and those families kind of morphed out into all kinds of stuff. You have W.L. Weller, and he really is the grandfather, granddaddy, or whatever you want to call him, the OG of weeded whiskey. There would be no Makers Mark without him. There would be no Pappy Van Winkle without him, because he's the guy that said, let me take some wheat and put it in whiskey and see how it tastes. Guys like Elijah Craig and JTS Brown, there would be no Brown formula without JTS Brown, I don't think. There would be no Wild Turkey. Those distilleries just wouldn't be there today.

There's the family you're born into and the family that you grow and develop with. And I think that there can be a combination of both.

That's definitely so true. You know, I think me and Jim are always, we always feel like we're family when somebody invites us into their distillery and says, hey, let us share our whiskey with you. Um, and we're like so honored that you opened up your doors and today you brought me in here, not only me, but I brought my son along with me and said, bring him on this. And we went back in your warehouse and you know, you, you thieve some whiskey for us and let us taste some pretty special barrels back there. Um, I was trying to carry one out with me. Um,

But we have those big 63s. Now you just can't do those, right?

I don't know. I can give it the old college try, right? I'm a big fella. I might be able to get one of those things. I can roll it around for sure. I don't know how to get it off that top shelf, but I figure a way out.

It's kept there in cake, right?

So, you got one other expression for us to try today.

One other one. So, this one is going to be off the beaten path with this one. So, this whiskey is kind of a fun special whiskey for us because this is one that we did with one of our mentors, Nancy Fraley. We developed it with her over drinking lots of very old Armagnac, another type of brandy.

One day in her house.

Her and my brother decided that corn whiskey, and again, Marcia doesn't like when I say this, but it's the redheaded stepchild of the whiskey world. Most definitely. It's the least respected category. What would happen if we took corn whiskey and we treated it like scotch? most revered of all the whiskey styles, I guess, if you would. And so, we took a corn whiskey and we aged it in port barrels and the other part was in old Scotch barrels from Islay. So, it's got this smoky, peaty-ness that you're going to get from the Scotch barrels and then it's also got that port cask influence, but the richness of a corn whiskey. So, it's Iron Oats Ode to Scotland a little bit, but it's kind of a fun little whiskey.

And it's going to go back to your purple corn, purple mashbill. And the reason why we chose it was because It's the basis of our hubris, which is the corn whiskey, which was our first whiskey that was recognized at a young age. It won the best corn whiskey in the world a couple of times. Jonathan, this was his pauper that he treated like a prince. When we started with hubris, the name Icarus develops from it because we took hubris who got so full of himself that he flew a little too close to the sun and became Icarus.

That's a good tie in, right?

Yeah. So the joke is he's a little smoky because he got burnt by the sun when he was a little too close to him. So it's going to be a little bit of Pete character that's all from cask influence as well as the port.

So if people are coming to Denison, what else is there to do up at Denison?

So we've got, again, you've got a number of, you've got 903 Brewers down in Sherman that's really well known for their slushy beers, which is kind of like a mixture between a health drink and beer, if you will. It's got a lot of fruit in it. It's kind of a cool style of beer. You've got one of the largest vineyards in the state. It is about five miles from the distillery. This was planted in the 80s, so it's a bunch of old growth vines called Hidden Hanger. It's absolutely gorgeous. You've got Eisenhower's Birthplace is here in Denison, so you can go visit old lake's place. Then you've got Lake Texoma here that's the largest lake in the state. It's a huge, huge, huge lake.

You can put yachts on it.

Striper fishing out there is phenomenal. I'll tell you a story about that lake. It can be told on there though.

We have a really nice downtown and Denison is just beginning to flourish again downtown. We've got some nice little restaurants that are starting up. They're even redoing the old hotel. It's being refurbished and started. There is so much growth and excitement going to be coming to Denison. We've got a number of new restaurants.

And if you get a wild hair, the casino ain't too far from here either.

So there's a lot to do to come up here. If you say, Hey, I'm in Denison, you know, stop by the distillery. They're right off 75, exit 67. Yep. You know, come in here. Uh, they're not doing tours right now, but starting in July, end of July, we'll start doing tours again. You'll come back for tours and come in here and buy some whiskey for them for sure. Um, so this expression, I'm nose a little bit. It's got that, I don't know, something a little bit different there.

There you go to the port. It's the port and the peat is what's going to be coming through on the nose. Again, Pete has this crazy flavor profile they talk about, like medicinal, where it's like, get a little bit of iodine saltiness, a little bit of smoke, but it's not wood smoke. So it's not quite barbecue, but it's got almost again, medicinal, again, the sketch.

But yet the pork comes through with the sweetness of it.

I could smell the sweetness coming out there, almost like a floral, like some roses or something.

Oh yeah. Or candy, cotton candy.

Cotton candy.

It's an old Tawny port barrel.

It is an old Tawny port barrel.

It was originally filled in 1969. It was dumped in 2016. So yeah, it was an old vintage port casket.

So I used to think Tawny meant old dirty woman.

I mean, he could. I don't know. It depends on your reference points.

All right, let's taste this thing.

And I think this is at a nice 107.2. Yeah.

I can get that smokiness and a little bit of just a little bit of peat coming out.

Yeah, we wanted to go milder on the peat. And again, that's where the podcast kind of helps. So if you're not like a Laphroaig fan or one of those Ardbeg or one of those really big peat, this isn't that level of peat. It's going to be much lighter.

on Pete profile, but that, that Tony port barrel is just coming through on this. I did that sweetness that it's just like, I've actually drank some of my wife's, uh, she's got, she loves hummingbirds. She loves feeding them suckers. And before she went to cook at her home, uh, sugar water for him, she'd buy the concentrate. So I was like, I want to see what this tastes like. So it says do not, not for human consumption, but Hey, whatever.

I put all the red in it, right? Yeah.

So I drank a little bit and it is super flavorful. So I wanted that I could taste that on there. Just that kind of cooked sugar water a little bit, not honey-ish so much, but I can definitely get that ports coming through too. And that just coats the mouth. It's a thick whiskey for sure.

And I think that with some of the peats, you get some of that sweetness with it. And so it's not like the campfire style of the smoke. It really pulls up that sweetness of that type of the peat finish.

Yeah, whenever I think of smoke and stuff, there's different styles of smoke. You know, if you've got a Pete smokiness, but when I think of barbecue smoke, I think of fruitwood, but you know, I'm from the hill country. So we used down there, we use a lot of pecan to smoke stuff with it. And I can get that, that pecan smoke is a more of a sweeter smoke where Hickory or Mesquite is going to be that more rough and ragged kind of smoke, but this is a more of a fruitwood, like an applewood or a peachwood or something like that.

Yeah, that lighter, sweeter smoke profile for sure.

Definitely another great expression. I don't know if you picked all these six barrels and said, damn, we're going to impress this guy, but six great whiskeys that you've put out in front of me today.

Icarus came out about two weeks ago and it's primarily distillery. It'll go out to a few stores.

Mainly we do it for here.

Only once a year though.

You guys just had a release on Saturday and sold out and said before, two hours before you even opened the doors.

Yeah, with the COVID stuff, normally we'd have a line and we'd do fun stuff out with people on the line. But with COVID, we were just, when people were showing up, we were giving tickets going, hey, go get breakfast, drink coffee, show up any time between when we're open and come pick up your bottle. But this, if you're the first 60 people here on that, we were giving out tickets. Typically, when we do releases, we try to have 300 bottles of whatever we're releasing. This one, we did not just because we're trying to get it more into market because the stores have been dry for quite a while now, so we're trying to make sure we got more whiskey to them.

That's what we're working on today. Labeling whiskey. Labeling and bottling whiskey today.

We might just have to take a couple bottles with us back to Kentucky and share them with our listeners because we love to do that. Some of our listeners that are very passionate about whiskey, sometimes we'll send some samples out to them that we've had on the show that they might not be able to get their hands on, and that we'll drink it along with them. I think they like that, that we're going to share some whiskey with them that we've picked up and that other people can't get their hands on. I just think our bourbon culture is that way. where people are sharing and sharing knowledge. Sharing whiskey. That's what it's about. I'm not a bourbon expert. Like I say all the time, I'm just a bourbon bullshitter. So where can our listeners find you guys on social media?

On social media, you're going to find us at Iron Root Republic or Iron Root Whiskey. So on Facebook, you type in Iron Root, we're going to pop up. On Instagram and Twitter, it's Iron Root Whiskey. That's the best kind of place to find us, public.com on the website.

And that's where you sign up for tours and we also have sales. You can buy bottles online, but you have to pick them up at the distillery, but we'll give you a year. So if you're from out of the Texas area and you say, gee, I think I can make it down there, but I really want this release, once you've purchased it, we will hold it for a year for you. Um, that gives an opportunity for you. If you think you're going to have a chance to come on down, come and visit.

She's trying to get that Texas twang coming out a little bit there.

You always get a little bit when you live here, you know, it's like y'all or all y'all, you got to know the difference between your sick killers and plurals right there.

So Rob and Marcia, I just from the bottom of my heart, thank you for letting us come into your distillery.

Thank you for driving all the way to come over here.

I appreciate it. Lovely to meet you and bring in your son.

Yeah. Thanks for sharing your whiskey with us and your knowledge of whiskey and your guys' take on Texas whiskey.

It's a great place to be.

I think you guys are just putting the whoop ass down on people with this whiskey. I love it. And if somebody else sells different wines, say you go see Big Chief. Appreciate that. You can find The Bourbon Road on Instagram and on Facebook at The Bourbon Road. You can go to our website, thebourbonroad.com, where you can find our blogs about our episodes. You can find stuff about me and Jim on there. You can also order our Glen Carons, The Bourbon Road Glen Caron on there. Also on Facebook, go into our Facebook group. We have a private group on there called The Bourbon Roadies. Go in there. We have distillers in there and part of that group. We have master tasters. We have whiskey experts, historians. Go in there. Show us what you're drinking. Take photos and show us what your bourbon road is. We'd love to see that. And I'm sure everyone else would too. And we'll see you on down 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 on 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.