88. Ashley Barnes Master Blender & Leipers Fork Distillery

And I've lost my train of thought.

We all went down the rabbit hole and ran the dog off.

He's seen of his little chipmunk out there, his harsh nemesis. That's what he's seeing. I know for 100% fact, he goes to that front window like 100 times a day. And that's what's out there, is a little chipmunk running around. Besides the birds, he don't like them birds either.

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 we're out here at Jep the Bin Farm, and I actually got some visitors here today. Jim can't be here because he's working, but you know, somebody's got to make the money in that family. So I'm out here.

I actually had the folks from Leapers Fork

distillery down there in Tennessee. They came up to visit me. I got Lee Kennedy. I got April Weller Cantrell. Yes, her name is Weller. That means her family's been making whiskey for a long time. And then I got Matt King, AKA Forrest Gump, the runner with me. And they actually brought somebody with them. She's a Kentucky girl. I brought Ashley Barnes from the spirits group with her. She's a mastered blender. So she's working with them to, uh, I don't know if you can improve their whiskey much more than it. It's pretty good juice. I put the cherry on top, put the cherry on top.

Yeah.

So I see all these SUVs pull up to my house and I'm thinking, well, who is this fool getting out with his polo on and his skinny jeans? And as Lee Kennedy shaved his beard off and he's got his hair pulled back in a ponytail. And I was like, man, that ain't Billy Ray.

I'm trying to clean up for you.

So, hey, thanks for coming out today. Thanks for coming out to Jeff the Ben farm. Thanks for having us. A couple of thunderstorms driving up.

As long as it wasn't a tornado, we were good.

Who was driving?

That's me.

Do you drive like an old man? Kind of.

I mean, it's about three hours up here from Leapers Fort. Not too bad. Just leaning on traffic in Nashville. Were you running late or? We're always running late. Yeah, that happens.

There's a few curves in the road up here, you know.

Just a beautiful part of the country. Just a couple curves. But Ashley, you're probably used to this kind of.

Very much so.

You live out in Harrisburg.

I do.

But you're like all over the world all the time.

Pretty much, yeah.

So before we get into the whiskey, which is killing me not to drink this, Ashley, take us through your background and what, how'd you become a master blender?

So my world started in this industry with Buffalo Trace. And I worked in quality control, did liquid quality, packaging quality, all the fun stuff. Worked with some great people out there, Harlan, Drew. Chris Fletcher was still there. He actually hired me in. He's now with Jack Daniels, so another Tennessee tie. And I kind of learned there that I had a really unique palette and I was able to taste things that I thought were just different, but was able to start learning what those things were. I could say, all right, something's different about this sample. But at that point, I didn't know what it was until I started working with Drew, really honed in my palette, my ability, started learning blending there. And I really enjoyed blending. So as time went on, I got an offer from Four Roses. I came down there and really honed in my ability with whiskey, specifically with bourbon, and spent four years there from 2014 to 2018. Working with Jim and Brent and great team down there. I worked quality quality control with liquid distill it to aging maturation projecting how things were going to age blending maintaining flavor profiles and products and just really fell in love with blending even more and honed my ability there. And once I created this company with my business partner, Monica Wolf, and she's the brains behind our business and really keeps me in check because we joke, I like to keep all the puppies in the pound. And she says, no, we can't do that. So we created this company and started it. It was then at one of the, we do whiskey judging, work with ACSA a lot. And I had several peers of mine that I look up to in the industry, been in the industry for a long time. Why do you not have master in front of blender? I was like, cause that's not my job to give me that title. I don't want it. And they said, well, you need to. So I gave in to peer pressure and. Just kept, kept trucking along.

So how do you, how do you have ties to Leapers for, did you contact them or did, did you guys contact her?

I actually heard, it's kind of funny we were on a podcast, but the first time I heard Ashley's name was on a podcast with a dad's drinking burger, bourbon with John. And Ashley was working or still does work with Pennington Distilling down in Nashville. And Jeff Pennington and Carter are friends of mine. So I was listening to the podcast she did with Jeff and Carter and walking through, walking the audience through kind of her process and of how she was helping them really build their whiskey post-maturation. So after that podcast, I guess, you know, we were kind of in that same boat. releasing some whiskey that we go and hand select once a year and so we were finally at a point where we've been releasing some single-barrel cash strengths and we were getting ready to start marrying some barrels together. So I knew that I needed some expertise. I got a lot of experience pre-maturation from grain through fermentation up through distillation. Post-maturation is a different animal, especially for new distilleries. I don't have somebody on staff who has a resume that Ashley has. I know I'll trust my own palate and I know good whiskey, but I also realize that somebody like her who has the experience with Four Roses and with Buffalo Trace, what they bring to the table and being able to take your building blocks, so to speak, for barrels and she's going to walk us through her process, but she takes what you have, what you've made, And she puts those together to create a pretty unique product. So anyway, that's how I came to find out about Ashley. And I will tell you one thing I did to kind of not validate her existence in my organization, but I went through some experiments with my CFO and it was pretty in my folks that worked there. It was pretty entertaining.

And I did not know this was going on and was not prepared. And I actually just sent something like, hey, what do you think of this? And then he says, I tested it with my people.

I was like, you did what? So being a new distillery, we've been distilling going on five years. So our Tennessee whiskey that's over four years old finally comes out this fall. And actually, our reason for being in Kentucky right now is one to do the podcast with you, the other to meet up with Ashley to put barrel samples in her hand so we can start that process of building that Tennessee whiskey that'll come out this fall. So when we were doing this with the rye as a baseline, we were only talking about 16 barrels of rye whiskey. They were all the same grain bill, pretty much the same age, three years, 10 months old, still a young whiskey. So as a baseline, I just took incremental samples, say 20 mils of each of those samples, married them together, let them sit, had them different proof points. That was our baseline because a lot of distillers think, hey man, you've got this whiskey you've made. Just throw them together, put in a bottle and go to market. Well, that's very simplistic. My CFO, he keeps us out of the ditch financially and I love him for that. He's like, man, I just don't know if that's something we need to spend the money on. I just don't know. Don't we just marry these barrels together, put them in a bottle? I said, well, let's get through an exercise and see what actually brings to the table. I took my little baseline, then she came up with a blend. Obviously, we ran that through about 12 to 15 people and everybody to a man except Forrest picked Ashley's product.

Maybe it's his wine background. Short story, you got to thank Big John Edwards, right? Yes. Yeah. Big John, if you're listening out there and you're new to the podcast world, uh, big John, John Edwards is for bad drinking bourbon. Great guy. Uh, I can't say enough good things about it. Anytime I've got a question about the whiskey world or I don't need a contact. He said, Hey, you need to reach out to this person or talk to this person. So John, Hey man, thanks. So you bring her in forest. Obviously he was against it. So he's vote. So, That was never against it.

Hold on. Working with Ashley was awesome. Such a great experience. That was never against it. What she created was amazing. I've got to say that.

Brilliant. Because I think whenever you, if I cook something, you know, I'm going to say it's the best in the world, right? But a good chef is always going to have somebody else taste his cooking and say, be honest, please be honest with me. You know, and my honesty is always my wife and she'll, she'll let me know, you know, Hey, that tastes like crap or this is wonderful. And I'm only going to tell you one time. That's wonderful. You'll know from now, now on, but, um, you could fool yourself though. Absolutely. Right. If I look at something I do and I'm like, and that's awesome. I mean, I got a big head, so I always think everything I do is the best. But if I'm honest with myself, it's probably not. It's not the best in the world. So to have an expert come in, but she's obviously expert. She has that background working it. you know, probably two of the most well-known distilleries in the world. You know, you got Four Roses, old school distillery, then you got Buffalo Trace that just has all kinds of heritage and stuff. She's kicked ass at those jobs. Why not bring her in and produce or help you out? Because if you put your whiskey out there, me and Ashley, we've had a couple of conversations about that. If you put your whiskey out there, and a couple of people drink it, a couple of people review it. And they said, this is just not good stuff. How much money does that cost you? Absolutely. To dump all that, not only dumping the whiskey, but you know, you're dumping those bottles, you're dumping everything you've put into the marketing and everything. And before it even gets in the bottle, have somebody like her come in and do it. Well, we've talked a little bit and I still haven't drank any of this whiskey. So tell me what we got today, April.

This is our straight raw whiskey. I'm really excited about this. As I think I told y'all before, I was not a huge rye fan whenever Lee brought me on, but he taught me a lot about rye. The blend here that Ashley put together and came up with that base and that flavor profile and put them together really, to me, makes a really beautiful full-bodied rye whiskey. I love the nose on this. I get some tobacco on the nose and I also get some red fruit on the nose. The flavor on it, when it's on your palate, to me is sweet and peppery. It's not overbearing on either side.

It doesn't punch you in the face.

It does not punch you in the face, yes.

I'm not a big rye drinker at all. And one of the things that puts me off about rye is the nose on it. I have never liked, maybe because it's a rye, I don't know. But this is more of a Kentucky rye, right?

Yeah. We call it a southern style of rye. My palate personally gravitates towards a corn-based distillate, Tennessee whiskeys, bourbons. So naturally, and the whole reason why we made rye, nothing to denigrate rye by any means. I mean, it's the grand old grain. I mean, the first whiskey that was produced in this country was rye whiskey. I think consumers probably, there's a little bit less market pressure on a rye. We made 50 barrels of rye our first year with the sole intent of knowing we would release that before our bourbon and our Tennessee whiskey came to market. Because of that, like a corn-based pallet, being myself, wanted to do a lot of corn content. So the grain bill on it is actually 55% rye, 30% corn, and 15% malted barley. So it does have a heavy corn content, which gives it a little bit of, I think it kind of softens, takes the edges off some of the rye. One thing back to what Ashley did for us is, as a distiller, I'm making these decisions on what the grain bill is going to be, what our exit proof is off the still, what our entry proof is into a barrel. At the end of the day, before that whiskey goes to market, Every distiller ought to want whatever goes in that bottle to be the best representation of what they're doing. I felt like Ashley gave us that ability to do that. Also, a lot of it is inventory management. This year for our Tennessee whiskey, we'll be releasing about 60 barrels. Obviously, it's a balance between integrity of product and then also cash flow and things like that. We hold back about 25% every year for further aging and things like that. As she's going through our barrel inventory, she's keeping that in the back of what our long-term goals are. in the back of her head. So it's not only is it helping us put our best foot forward as far as what we've, the whiskey we've made in the right mix in a bottle, but also managing that inventory of barrels we have for, you know, for further aging.

So let's, let's, let's taste this. I, I smell in the nose, I get that cinnamon, you know, a lot in this, but that malted barley is maybe that's what I get in her eyes, the malted barley that comes out.

Yeah, it's got a lot of malted character, but like what April was saying, there's like dried red berries in here. You know, dried strawberries, not not fresh, dried. There is a difference, but it's really nice and rich. It's got those deep fruit flavors and that's not Very typical of a rye. Rye usually get more herbal notes. And that's one of the things I love about this is you've got that sweetness and it's coming from, from the corn, but also in the style of rye as well.

Well, let's, let's taste this thing. Matt's already over there. He's almost halfway through his glass. You said let's taste it, man.

He's running.

You gotta keep him under check. There you go. Yummy. That's pretty tasty. Thank you. I get that cinnamon coming through, like that old cinnamon toothpick you could get back in the day.

And we actually, we use a, a toasted salt style of barley malt. So there's a little bit of, We treat our malt as a flavoring grain versus an enzyme grain. Most people are using a less quantity of malt. We use 15%, which is higher. We pay more for our malt because it's toasted before we get it. I love the history and the heritage behind malt. Anyway, we use a higher content, 15% of almost everything we do. And we spend more money on our malt because we do treat it as a flavoring grain. So I think some of that sweetness that you're picking up on the malt, and then Ashley was talking about a little bit of that sweetness, I think some of it has contributed from that malt as well.

I think that's a really important point too that separates this is you're treating it as a flavor added and everybody should do that. If you're putting anything in your whiskey on the front end, it's going to contribute flavors. So put your best foot forward going into the barrel. It's great. It's even better coming out.

It's very interesting as a new mate, like what she's talking about. You can see that. I love trying people's new mate whiskey because it's, you know, before the adulteration of a barrel, you can see what's coming off there still, what's kind of going on behind the raw distillate. And so I kind of feel like, of course, you know, you're always proud of your own baby kind of deal, but I feel like our new mate distillate is, it's a little different because of some things like with the toasted malt that it actually was talking about.

I've always thought it was because on our new make, as it comes off the steel with the malt, I get a lot more of a floral or an herbal scent that's like lavenders and stuff like that. I think it's really doing part to that malt.

I definitely get that, that malted flavor. I get that Kentucky hug going on when I try to though, you know, it's, it's most definitely.

The proof on that is 95. And I'll kind of tell you how we came up with that and actually might think this is funny, but so we try to, I feel like the whiskey will tell you what proof point needs to be. So once we figured out exactly what our blend was going to be through that process with Ashley, our barrel entry proof is about 110. So when we were coming out, we were a little bit lower than that. But anyway, so I took the whiskey that we came up with that she helped marry together the certain barrels and the percentages. And then we proved that whiskey from about 105 down to close to, I think 90 was the final proof point. But I ran that through a panel of our folks. And just weirdly, 95 proof, including myself, was the proof point that everybody selected. I didn't fail that one. I failed the first one. So I did the same thing for Ashley. I mailed her samples at the different proof points and she went through the exercise herself and she's like, hey, I thought mine would be higher, but actually like the 95 proof best. So her selecting that proof point that everybody else had that before I sent her the samples was kind of, you kind of lock that proof point in for us.

Another test.

Yeah. He just likes to test me. I love blinds, they said. I love them. No trust. Yeah.

Well, for that, trust. You ever heard of- Trust the Verify? Trust the Verify. You know who first said that? No teller. So Ronald Reagan's the one that said, you know, that everybody else, so why do you need to go over and ensure that the Russians got rid of their nuclear? And he's like, I'm going to trust them, but I'm also going to verify. When you're dealing with nicks, that's always good policy.

I appreciate it. Cause I mean, I know I'm good at what I do, but I love when it's blindly like verified and he's like, Hey, by the way, I did this and I wasn't prepared for it. The sample that he did that with kind of a fun story. Um, I was blending, I was going through the samples and blending and just kind of said, hmm, wonder what this will taste like. So I threw it together in a tasting glass, like a Glen Caron, like what we're holding now. And I let it sit while I did something else, came back and was like, man, this is good. Had my husband taste it. So what do you think of this? Because he's kind of my sounding board. And he was like, man, this is awesome. I was like, I think I need to mail this to Lee and let him check it out. See if he's following where we are. Well, by the time I walked from one room to the next, and I'm not talking like under the other end of the house, I'm just right around the corner to grab a vial that I could put it in and send it to him. I came back and it's almost gone. He said, what are you doing? And he said, you handed me a tasting glass and it was good. I said, well, I was going to send that to Lee. Hope I've got good notes as to what I put in it.

So your assistant Blender there, he, uh, he's not allowed in my office.

What's he called? The assistant, assistant taster. I'm not allowed to say what I call it in public space.

So how long did it take you to come up with this blend right here?

Probably a week, two weeks. Once I got the samples, it was pretty quick. So part of my process, and this is something that over the years in working with multiples, I found apparently I'm the only one that does it. I look at every barrel. So when you're working with small batch sizes, you're 50 less barrels. I've done 100 barrel dumps and I still do the same thing. I look at every single barrel because every barrel is a toddler. Sometimes they play nice together, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they're amazing solo and they are the worst kid in the batch when you blend them. Or maybe they're the quiet kid in the corner, but you put it in a blend, and man, they're a rock star. So for me, it's really important to look at every single barrel so that we can really capitalize and showcase what the distiller's done. Because after the maturation, we want to put that cherry on top. We want to make it the best it can be for what it is. And with Lee, he had an amazing product to start. kind of like stepping back in, you know, at Four Roses, I had a lot of really good barrels, a lot of really good batches. So that made my job even easier. And it was just finding a profile that really capitalized on that, but also keeping in the back of my mind, is this something that we can reproduce? Is it something that if I hold certain barrels back, can we maintain this profile in the next blend? How repeatable is this? And That's where we started as I was looking through those barrels. I have my notes and that's what I've got up here. Each barrel, this is a good backbone. This one's a good flavoring agent. That's what April mentioned a little bit. I had flavor blends and I had base blends. And then I took a combination of those two, and each barrel kind of fit into one of those two categories. And sometimes you might have three categories. I think with Pennington's we had two or three. So it just, the barrels decide. I just help funnel them into, okay, barrels one, three, 12, and 15 are all this kind of profile.

It was a very fascinating win. Before we selected what we were finally going to do, I actually came down to Tennessee, sat in our kitchen, and she walked us through her process. For one thing she does for us, I don't know about her other clients, but she walks us through her process of what she does from a mental standpoint. It was very interesting to see how what she was telling us bore itself out in the tastings we did with her. So, you know, like she was talking about, she identified certain barrels that made up the backbone of the whiskey that was a common denominator. And then they were flavoring outlier barrels that she, and there was about, there were two different base blends that we looked at and maybe two or three different flavor blends. And then the co-mingling those together and the percentages of what we were using. I mean, it's an art and a skill set that, that's hard to master. We're learning from her not to replace her, but just so we know the process she's going through so we can speak to our own product. I hope that makes sense.

At any point, has she told you something that hurt your feelings?

No, because I mean, she's never said, Hey, this is a terrible barrel. Dump it down the drain. It's like, you know, Hey, we need to let this guy sit for a little longer or, you know, I mean, I don't feel like we're, there's, there's no bad barrels.

You know, she had told you that though. What does she said? Hey, um, what you think you need to start over for that. Uh, no.

Or we just hire somebody else. That's what I'm gonna call it a quarter, I guess. And this first, this rye whiskey, this is a marriage of 10 barrels of which the sampling size for her was 16. So we ended up taking 10 of those barrels to marry together. So there's six left for aging. And then of those 10, we didn't use all the 10. We were using percentages and things like that. So, when we do this next deal with the Tennessee Whiskey, we've gone from 16 barrels to 60 barrels that she has to work with. So, to me, it boggles my mind when she was so much, she looked, analyzes each barrel. That's a daunting task. And so, I could see how that could get very, you could get lost in the weeds very easily doing that. I can drink 60 barrels of whiskey.

I had 30 some this morning before I left the house. So that is another kind of art form that you learn over the years. I take such a small amount, just enough to get a finish. I can taste, the most I've tasted in a day is about 200. And I was fine. I was not feeling it. I was not buzzed. So I just barely take enough to get the profile and the finish. And from that, I'll... kind of jot down those that I brought on my notes here. We were talking, touched back on the, if there was a bad barrel. I've got a couple that say blend off. And so what I'll do is when we go back to those, I'll look at my notes and I have notes where the compound and thing that I was looking at that's probably not the best, is it going to mature out? Some of them will, some of them won't. So if we need to use that barrel, is it something that we can blend off? So my note is to blend it off. It's not likely going to age out, but it's also not going to inherit, like inhibit the entire blend. And looking back here, I've got a few that needs age and then I think two that say blend off.

And when you say blend, I think what I'm actually saying is incrementally blend it over time.

Yeah, if we're doing a big batch, it might be something that contributes to like that base, like a real sweetness, but won't really contribute a whole lot of flavor. So that would be blending it off. You know, if you're doing a 300 barrel dump and you've got one that's maybe a little high on diacetyl, a little buttery and not quite But it's more of a, well, I just drank the movie theater better from the movie place down the road. Then, you know, in a 300 barrel dump, that one barrel isn't going to do nothing. If you're doing a 10 barrel dump, that one barrel is going to make a big old mess out of it. And that's a lot of hard work that you don't want to mess up with one barrel. You know, resin comes in a lot of times picked up from the barrel just at a finish. And we blended the whiskey before it went into the finish. But one of those wine casks was really resin-y. And that barrel was so muted and it muted the entire blend. So of the like 10 barrels, I was like, we got to pull this one out, guys.

I'm sure some whiskey company's distilleries don't want to hear that at all because that's money in their pocket. But as long as you're telling them the truth about it, then that's kudos to you to being honest and your company's only going to be better for that and making these distilleries better. The better they do, the better you're going to do because they're going to spread the word whenever somebody calls Lee and says, hey man, I need a master blender. Well, hold on. I got this Kentucky girl. She's spot on. So we'll get into that in the second half. We'll talk about what else Leaper Forks got going on. I'll bring up some press going on down there. Talk about what's going on in the world of whiskey. I got to say, Ashley, for me not being a rye guy, I'm still a whiskey guy no matter what. but this is pretty damn good. I enjoy it. Three years, 10 months. Um, I think that's a spot on age at four year mark for rise anyways. I think they're good at that. Yeah. Um, I like this all day long. I could drink whiskey all day long. Let me just be real, I guess. So I'm like forest over there. So the second half will get into that. Um, stay with us listeners and we'll be right back.

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All right, listeners, we're back here with the Leapers Fork Crew, as I call them, Lee Kennedy, April Weller Cantrell, the Urban Baroness, and then we got old Forrest Gump, Matt King. And Ashley Barnes, the master blender, she's contracted them for blending their whiskeys, which was probably a great idea on your part. Yeah. Instead of just using all your employees as guinea pigs. I don't know if this is making you go blind or not, but... Try this, see what happens. Man, it's great to just sit down and chew the fat with you guys and hear what you got going on in life. I love talking to other, I guess, whiskey geeks to me because you're just as excited about it as I am, whether it be your own whiskey, your other people's whiskey, you know? It's the process. I've heard all four of you say, hey, I've got to try this, I've got to try that, I've got to try this. Ashley's over here grinning from ear to ear because she probably gets to try all kinds of stuff.

I did.

And she probably came in here and was like, look at this poor man's whiskey collection. No, no. Such a sad looking bunch of bottles.

So what do we got in a second glass? So the second glass is a bourbon. So a little bit of the story on our bourbon. When I started the distillery, I've always been a bourbon guy. When I was messing around in my bar and I was making bourbon, I wasn't making Tennessee whiskey or rye whiskey, I was making bourbon. Actually, it was a weeded style, so this is a weeded bourbon. When we were going through our initial grain bills for the rye and the Tennessee whiskey for the rye, we went through seven different grain bills before we decided on one. They range from up to 90% rye all the way down to the 55%, which is what we came out with. On the Tennessee, we went through about three different grain bills. For the bourbon, I had one, and it was a weeded style. It's 70% corn, 15% wheat, and 15% malted barley, very similar to a lot of the other wheaters out there. Because it's weeded, you're trying this bourbon sample right now. It's about three and a half years old. It'll be turned forward this coming December. But I'm kind of hell-bent on waiting until five years for this bourbon. Right now, it's a three and a half year old, so it'll turn four this December. So I purposely wanted to go five years on my bourbon. One, because it was a weeded and it felt like it From everything that I've talked to other folks in the industry, because of the melaninous of that weed, I'm pulling some extra barrel notes out. It's probably a good thing. Further maturation. The first time we tried this was about a year old. To be honest with you, it was very underwhelming. You can really see why weededs are known for that little longer maturation. This will be the last thing we release, and it'll be at five years. You're trying it early. One reason we're up here right now is to drop off our samples, like we said earlier, to actually have the Tennessee whiskey. The first year, we only made probably about 30 barrels of bourbon, but right now our production is split between Tennessee whiskey and bourbon pretty much evenly. We didn't make rye this year because of COVID and some other bills. In rye, we'll probably make rye whiskey every other year. Right now, we're strictly bourbon and Tennessee whiskey. You're trying to sample that we actually, Matt and I, pulled a sample out probably about two weeks ago for the first time in two years. So it's, anyway, it's nice where it's at. You know, it's probably, we haven't, we didn't proof, I think we proofed this out about 106. Somewhere in there, I think 106.4. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

And Ashley hasn't tasted this yet?

No, and she hasn't. No. Oh, we're not in any trouble now.

Well, I have taken a sip.

She has, yeah. Let's, let's, let's, let's, let's see if that doesn't suck her. Yes, you do. And that's, to me, that even though it's almost four, still three and a half, that weed, that's why I say it needs a little bit longer in that barrel. Definitely. When your biggest barrel note is you're getting a lot of alcohol, you know, and Ashley can walk you through that, obviously. But you can see where, for where it's at, I'm happy. But it needs some more time in there.

I 100% agree with that. It's actually, it's very nice. And I know a lot of people, I'll put it in a bottle, but I love that you're able to step back and go, it does need, it definitely needs some more time. And what it's going to do, it's just really going to balance it out. I know you're getting ready to take a sip.

I'm going to take a sip.

I'm going to let you take your sip and then I'll finish that conversation.

All right, let's hear it.

So it does have a really nice nose, but that palette is still a little thin and a little, you can tell it's getting there. It's got the beginning stages of a really nice, really nice wheat, but it's not quite there. It's a little disjointed. You know, it doesn't quite add up and get the balance and complexity.

Getting a little bit of burnt sugar there, you know, where it is still probably young and I can taste the wheat in there. Just, you know, maybe you're right for the five years, you know, and that's a smart move. And I think it's how hard as that is a distiller to have to wait that you probably look at those books and say, man, I,

Well, to be honest with you, between the rye and the Tennessee, it takes some pressure off that. That's the good thing. I'm not downgrading. Our Tennessee, I love it. It's amazing how at almost the same age, four years with a rye component instead of the wheat component, it's a completely different distillate. Of course, it is going through the Lincoln County process. I went with a rye style on my Tennessee whiskey, knowing that that charcoal mellowing process that we employ for Tennessee whiskey through the sugar-rape charcoal, it's removing a lot of those heavier fusel oils, which equates flavor. So just as a distiller, knowing grain bills, In my head, you go into things with preconceived notion that the rye could stand up to that charcoal filtering a little better than the wheat, felt like the wheat would have a tendency to get lost. But the grain bill on the Tennessee is 70-15-15, just with the same grain bill as a bourbon, just where you replace the rye, I mean, sorry, the wheat with rye. And it really makes it a drastically different bourbon. Sipping this at the same age as the Tennessee is, it's very noticeably different. If I set that Tennessee up next to this, it would be pretty mind-boggling how different it is, how that weeded needs that extra time.

I've tasted some younger weeded bourbons, but they could be about the same age out of like Texas or something, but the warehouses there act differently in the maturation of stuff. And I would imagine Tennessee could be barrel sized too.

If it's the stiller you're thinking about.

No, they're talking about that. And the distilleries that we actually went to were all using 53, 53 gallon barrels. And they stuck to that, you know, that mantra. And, and I gotta say kudos to them. Um, you know, balcony is iron route and, uh, I don't even know how balconies does it because the warehouses, they're 136 degrees up in the fourth, fourth level of that thing. And I could barely breathe inside there. And they had people trying to fix barrels in there the whole time. So, but, It's just amazing to me to go to different parts of the country and see how different wheats act. I'm glad to see that more companies or more distilleries are coming out with weeded bourbons. I was the professed weedy king of Kentucky. I want to see everybody have a wheat. Even wild turkey down the road, I'd love to see them have a wheat or bullet doesn't have a wheat. I'd love to see them have a wheat.

That's one reason I did a wheat and actually maybe have an answer for this, but we don't grow rye that well. down south. Most of your corn-based distillates, Tennessee whiskey and bourbons, came from the southeast corner of the United States. It always intrigued me why rye became the predominant flavor in small grain in bourbon when we grow wheat a hell of a lot better in the south than we do rye. We grow all of our wheat in Williamson County that we're using in our bourbon, The rye we're using is coming out of southern Indiana. Of course, there's some guys locally now that are growing some southern strains of rye, so maybe it was different back then. I don't know. It's always kind of piqued my interest of why rye became such a predominant flavoring grain over wheat, knowing that we could grow wheat better in the south. I don't know.

And I don't, I'm not sure about when people started making bourbon and stuff. Um, I do know there was some heirloom grains used back then. And I think wilderness trail is big than that. Yeah. Yeah. On that stuff using the heirloom grain and stuff and something that's grown here in Kentucky, but that was kind of lost with time where that, you know, if you're a major distiller, and you can buy rye cheaper outside of Kentucky. You say, I'm going to buy my rye out of let's say Northern Indiana or Illinois or Iowa or something like that. If it's going to save you thousands and thousands of thousand dollars, you're probably going to ship it in. That's probably why they didn't grow wheat. Plus people just weren't using the wheat and bourbon that much. Maybe they just didn't like that profile, that sweetness.

Well, and also you have to think, rock kind of matures a lot quicker. So it's all about the money. People are wanting to get that turnover. So I think that would have to play a role in it too.

And what I actually just said, kind of we were going through that process that as we were coming up with what distillate we were going to distill and our timelines of releasing and things like that. The one reason we did that right early is because of the little bit faster maturation time with oxidation and things like that that tend to be a faster process with the raw base distillate. But going back to what you were saying about shipping in grains and things like that, to me, studying some of the early history of distilling, Those old Scotch Irish guys that came into North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina, came over the Appalachians into Kentucky and Tennessee. They were basically distilling what they could grow. Over in Scotland and Ireland, they grow barley very, very well. When they got over here, especially in the South, they had Native American corn. They were growing that for their cash crop and then distilling what they had left over in the form of whiskey. Then I guess some of these other flavoring grains morphed over time into bourbon, but they just distilled what they had on hand.

Well, then you and I in the history, I mean, in Tennessee history, when we were looking at grains have found where rye grew in Tennessee. We just don't know what kind of rye it was. And it was, what was that in the 17, late 1700s, early 1800s when we found the rye?

Yeah, about mid 1800s. Yeah.

Do you get all into that?

I do when I can. There's a whole lot of, didn't mean to hit that. I mean, I really am a history buff. And so when I get a chance to really dig into something, I'm all about it. I haven't gotten the chance to dig into Tennessee or Kentucky history. I just recently started working with a Coopridge. So I've been doing some hardcore research with that, which kind of gets my, you know, I actually worked on my masters for a little while, decided I didn't want to spend my life in a lab. in that capacity, living from grant to grant. And so I get to scratch that itch of research. I enjoy it. I just don't get to do as much of it, I think.

It's funny how similar Kentucky and Tennessee are. We talked about this on our last podcast when you came down to the distillery. Tennessee had its own prohibition starting in 1910, where federal started in 1920. In 1895, Tennessee had about 322 distilleries, registered legal distilleries, according to our local newspaper. Nashville, Kentucky had right at 400. The size and scope of the industry was very similar. You go back to some of those Victorian newspaper articles and things like that and ads. Tennessee whiskey at the time was actually called Lincoln whiskey. It's because down in that corner of Tennessee, they were using that Lincoln County process, the charcoal filtering, which the roots of that go back to Scotland and Ireland. People have filtered whiskey through charcoal. Even in Kentucky, they were doing it. Just in that corner of Tennessee, they made a really big deal about it. A lot of the guys of those 322 distilleries in Tennessee, a lot of them are making bourbon already. A lot of them were making peach brandy, things like that. After Prohibition, the two distilleries that came back, and that's a whole other history deal of why it was only two in those two counties, just so happened before Prohibition were making Lincoln whiskey, Tennessee whiskey. So that kind of put Tennessee whiskey on the map. But all those guys in Tennessee weren't making, uh, Tennessee whiskey. A lot of those guys are making bourbon in Tennessee, pre 1900.

Now we're going to get our argument started here. Michael Beach.

You need to get him on the, he's, he's. Oh, we've had, we've had him on here.

We had that discussion of that process and you really think about it. There's a Kentucky bourbon. Yeah. I might be wrong, but I think you're right. Um, Ezra Brooks that. They try to copy that process. I think there's another one. There's two right now. As I was growing up as a kid, our winter crop, which was a cover crop to stop erosion, was winter wheat. We talked about that on your podcast. down there where the federal government came in and did erosion control in the Tennessee and Cumberland valleys. And that was, they said you have to plant a winter crop because a lot of farmers wouldn't plant a winter crop. And then all winter long we'd have the winter rains and stuff and they'd have erosion control. of problems. Their shields are pretty much just dirt, useless dirt. Topsoil had been washed away. So they showed them what to grow. And I think that's what they brought in was that winter wheat. And that's maybe why you see more Southern distilleries go into wheat.

I don't know that. I look at the history of Williamson County. There's a guy in the mid-1800s that wrote the histories of a lot of the counties in Tennessee, and they gave their agricultural production. Even back then, Williamson County was the largest producer of wheat in the state of Tennessee, and that was in the early 1800s. I think a lot of the grain, too, that we consume today, before we started getting into grain modification and things like that, now Because of that, there's certain grains. It's almost like we put things into a box genetically where it might not have been like that pre-1900.

Oh gosh dang scientist. Let's make that sucker better.

I just like to make it taste good.

So what do you think just leaving this in the barrel is going to help it age better?

I think you're gonna say, you know, in another year or two, you're gonna see more creaminess come out from that. You can start to see it, but not your characteristic weak creaminess. It's getting there, but it's not there. I think you're gonna see a little more fruitiness come out in it. Probably not much more sweetness, but maybe those more herbal notes are gonna round off some too.

I like that you said that, uh, weeded bourbons have a creaminess and stuff. I'd said that on a prior podcast that I could taste some like, um, vanilla cream in there or something.

I think like melted vanilla ice cream and that mouth feel how it feels in your mouth.

Just kind of coats your mouth and stuff. And When I said it, the person who you're with, they were like, are you crazy? But that's just my tasting notes. I have different tasting notes and stuff. And I could see the potential on this. And I got applaud you for waiting that time. I know it was still, all you said, it still has to be frustrating to sit there and just kind of twiddle your thumb sometimes and just like, oh man. But you know, you know, from experience that once you wait, you're going to get a better product.

Well, yeah. And so as a small batch new distillery, you know, you spend, you know, the project for the distillery, we did, we put our first barrel back in April of 2016, May of 2016, but the project started in 2011. So it's like, you spend all this effort and it's no small task, as you know, going around and Ashley knows to start a ground-up distillery, especially in Tennessee. Our law changed in 2009 for the first time since 1909 to allow distilleries back into the state other than two counties. So there was a lot of misconception from a governmental standpoint at the local level, and the state was kind of relearning the process, even though Tennessee has a rich heritage with distilling. So, it wasn't an easy process. When you go through all of that and being a passionate distiller, you don't want to compromise the quality of your product. You've spent all this time, money, blood, sweat, and tears just putting something in a barrel. Obviously, with whiskey, everything's about time. It's just a time-consuming process, every step, whether it's the whole process. So I don't want to compromise what we're doing for the sake of return. That's why we do other things like the rye to kind of offset that. We're waiting at least, our Tennessee whiskey is, we're waiting at least four years. So that'll be, that whiskey is turning forward this year. That's why Ashley's getting a lot of it right now. We're having 60 barrels turn forward this year. So we'll have that out by the end of November. So we're really just trying to do our product justice and not compromise it.

And the Bourbon Row is going to get a bottle of that to do a review on, right? No doubt. No doubt. Well, you could just save some cash and send it to her and I'll just drive over to Ashley's and pick it up. Yeah, come on.

I'll put you up a blind tasting. A few different things.

She probably has some really good stuff in her kitchen.

My poor office. It looks like a bomb went off in there.

So who was it before you had brought her on? Who was doing, you just did a kind of a, let's get all the employees together and blend some stuff and let everybody try it.

I mean, we were doing, so our Hunter select barrel, it's a, it's a marriage of 30 barrels. We'd usually, uh, we would take, we would go through those 30 barrels and then we would select what we saw as a single barrels, things that, uh, and we would do that through a panel. of which barrels that we felt like we would pull out. Then we would start marrying the rest of those barrels together and see how it went. Most of those were all nine- and ten-year-old whisky, so a lot different than three and four. I actually can speak to this. you know, between three and four years old, especially with that rye was that whiskey is changing incrementally monthly. So it's like, it's kind of like, it's kind of like people, a baby, you know, that barrel is going to go through a lot of changes up to four years. And then there's a reason that on the bottle and bond act, we were talking about during the break, you know, that four years was a stipulation. And the reason now that after four years old, the TTB doesn't require you to put an age statement on it. So after there's a lot of changes up to four, and I'm talking, you know, generally speaking, I'm not getting, you know, but after four, you know, there's slower incremental changes. By the time that whiskey's nine years old, ten years old, it's a little more stable. It was a simpler process for us than really doing that with a three-year-old whiskey and a four-year-old whiskey, which Ashley's doing. It's a moving target, almost.

It really is. It keeps changing. You know, we talked earlier a little bit about my history with Four Roses. You know, throughout production, they're producing codes. Everybody knows you got the different codes, the different use codes. And, you know, that makes 10 distinct bourbons. I mean, that's 10 different products. Yeah. So we didn't really start looking at those and giving them product designations until four years old. I mean, most people don't like inventory days. I loved inventory other than how much inventory we had. But, you know, we would go through and that's when you start saying, all right, this is going to be a single barrel. This is going to go towards small batch or whatever, because that's also where you can really get a feel for how that bourbon or that whiskey is aging. And it's just like, you know, a toddler versus a teenager versus a 20 something. They start to age Let's quickly, you know, from week to week, I'm like, where, where did my baby go? Where did my little, you know, that little thing, the little blob I brought home from the hospital. Like I've got this like tiny man human. Where did it happen?

And, you know, if the shoe fits.

But the thing is, you know, it starts to age less, but you kind of hit that curve. You know, we've talked the bell curve. Everybody talks about the bell curve. Some of those barrels, they don't curve down. They just keep getting better and better. And that's where you get the really old good stuff. But there aren't that many of the barrels that keep getting better and better. And there's a lot that can go into that, you know, on the front end, like, hey, my intention is to age this 10 plus years. Well, there's some things you need to do on the front end to make sure you've got the best shot for that aging that well. And the same thing on the front end. But to speak to what Lee was saying, absolutely. Up to four years, you're getting a lot of change and a lot of things going on, and it is a moving target. So part of what I do with them and with other clients is, you know, when I'm looking at their distillate or I'm looking at their six month old or one year old, OK, your target is to release this at two years old. Here's what we need to do. But one of the things I do with some clients is they've got a aging warehouse type scenario will actually profile out that warehouse, kind of like with Buffalo Trace. You know, you've got certain products come from certain areas because you can start to see, you know, after four years. how those are aging. You can kind of start to see, all right, my rise are aging much better in this area at two years old. But at four years old, you can really start to solidify that.

That'll be a fun thing to be able to do. So she's predicting predictability, pattern ability based on position and warehouse.

Yeah. So, you know, put, let's put all our rye in this area. We're going to maximize our flavor profile as it matures. We're going to put all of our wheat. We know it's going to take longer, but it does really well with slower aging. Maybe we need to put it on the lower levels. So your target.

So what do you got, what do you got April and Matt doing now? What are you two doing?

Oh man. I don't think there's, there's a lot that we don't do. Um, April and I kind of lately been working together to just tackle everything moving forward, especially with this Tennessee whiskey release. The rye release was huge.

Um, I mean, April, uh, if you want to add to that, to add to Matt, what Matt was saying when you were down, I guess a year ago, um, Matt was more in marketing, retail role, dabbling, helping us with nosing, things like that. He's pretty much all on production now. Is he distilling some stuff too? Yeah, this morning he got the run going this morning. We run a four-person production, really a three-person production crew because I don't really consider them. I'm out there with them, but there's a lot of stuff that I have to do that doesn't allow. I'd rather just be on the distillery floor all day.

Are you called a assistant distiller now? Is that your title?

I think my title is just kind of whatever falls to the cracks that April and Lee need.

Oh no, I see us as tag teaming. In fact, my husband wouldn't even agree with that. I woke up the other morning tagging him going, tag, tag. So I was tagging Matt in.

Well, I gotta say, thanks to everybody for coming over to Jeff the Bin Farm. Matt, where can we find Leapers Fork on the old social media?

You can find us our website, www.leapersforkdistillery.com. That's L-E-I-P-E-R-S, fork, F-O-R-K. LF Distillery is our Instagram and then our Facebook is Leapers Fork Distillery.

And what about, they want to find you, they want to find the Forrest Gump of whiskey. What if they want to find you personally?

Don't find me yet. Instagram is going to be Forrest Gump. No, you won't find me as Forrest Gump on there.

You won't even find him on his real Facebook page, just him. Good luck.

I've seen it. He's all clean cut and stuff. Ashley, where can we find you at on social media?

So Facebook is Spirits Group. I'm also on Facebook as Ashley Barnes. I have a page on there. We're on Instagram, Ashley Barnes TSG, and the Spirits Group. And our website is www.thespiritsgroup.com.

I'd say if you're a craft distillery out there and you're looking for some help, this is the lady to come see. Reach out to her at the spirits group, get her to help you out. Don't rush it, you know? And if you're out there and you haven't tried a craft distillery and you're sticking with the big boys, I'd tell you, you're missing out. Absolutely. Go out there. Check out a craft distillery. Make sure you buy their stuff. Support local business and stuff. Most of them are, I call them the American dream. If you're going through Tennessee, you're going to be in Nashville. Take that short drive down to Leapers Fork. I will guarantee you this. It's absolutely gorgeous. One of the nicest distilleries I've ever been into, and I've been into a couple. So go down there and see them. Tell them all Big Chief sent you. The Bourbon Road sent you. and they'll hook you up with some whiskey. Thanks, Big G. So you can find us on the Bourbon Road, at thebourbonroad.com, on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. We do two episodes a week. Sometimes we'll throw a third one in there. On Mondays, we do a craft distillery review. Me and Jim will sit down and we'll give our honest opinion of a craft distillery. Sometimes we'll throw in a big boy in there. Sometimes not, but mainly craft distilleries. On Wednesdays, we'll do our main episode, about an hour long. It'll get you to work and back. We sit down with these fine guests like we're doing today, talk whiskey. If you listen to this right now, just scroll up until you see that button where it says subscribe and please subscribe if you like what you're listening to. And if you really like it, you scroll back down and you're going to see where you can give us a review. You just go ahead and pop on that five-star right there. Leave us a five-star review. It helps us get into doors. It helps us get into distilleries. It helps us get great guests like Ashley Barnes here and Lee Kennedy bringing us great whiskey. And I got to say, hey, thanks. You can find me at one big chief on Instagram and you can find Jim at jshanna63 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.