Podcast appearances and mentions of aaron goldfarb

This week, we're wetting our whistles with an array of historic, rare and homemade drinks. Journalist Jonny Garrett tells the true story of beer, including its use as a dietary supplement for children, a religious rite in prehistoric caves, and as a form of Ancient Egyptian currency. Plus, Aaron Goldfarb tells us about the collectors who hunt for very old bottles of booze; Alex Aïnouz cries over a sip of his homemade red wine; and JM Hirsch shares a delightfully salty cocktail tip. Listen to Milk Street Radio on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Cooked or uncooked? Fresh or aged? Bourbon, Cognac, or rum-based? For this festive Cocktail College and the ultimate guide to Eggnog, we're joined by returning guest Aaron Goldfarb, author and VinePair writer at large. Listen on (or read below) to learn Aaron's batched Eggnog recipe — and don't forget to like, review, and subscribe! Aaron Goldfarb's Eggnog Recipe (serves 12) Ingredients - 12 eggs, separated - 1 cup demerara sugar - 3-4 cups milk - 1 16-ounce carton heavy cream - 12-16 ounces alcohol, such as bourbon, Cognac, and/or aged rum - Garnish: nutmeg Directions 1. Beat egg whites to a soft peak and set aside. 2. Separately, mix egg yolks and sugar until sugar is dissolved. 3. Add cream and milk until thoroughly combined. 4. Carefully fold in egg whites then add alcohol. 5. Decant into a punch bowl and ladle into Old Fashioned glasses to serve. 6. Garnish with freshly grated nutmeg.

Jaega Wise and Robbie Armstrong explore the exponential growth of celebrity-backed drinks brands. She asks why so many stars want a piece of this rapidly growing pie, and charts the rise of everything from A-Lister tequilas and rums to supermarket shelves stacked with celeb-branded wines. Jaega heads to one of UK's biggest drinks events of the year, Dr Dre and Snoop's Gin & Juice launch, where she speaks to Shaquille O'Neal, Yungblud, Ella Eyre and Yasiin Bey on the star-studded red carpet. She hears from Blur's Alex James about his English sparkling wine, and chats with Emma Watson's brother Alex about the premium gin he's launched with his sister.Brett Berish of Sovereign Brands talks about the process behind creating some of the world's most popular celebrity-endorsed spirits. Filling up his cup with more than a splash of cynicism, Aaron Goldfarb guides Jaega through the winners and losers in his list of the best and worst celebrity spirits on the market. Jaega sits down with Noble Rot founder Dan Keeling, who discusses his previous career in the music industry, why he thinks celebrities should leave the winemaking to winemakers, and the growing trend of vigneron-as-celebrity. Producer Robbie Armstrong pops a few star-studded corks with wine writer and author of ‘Corker', Hannah Crosbie, explains the appeal of celebrity booze for consumers, and talks us through which ones might be worth your money. Jennifer Creevy, head of food and drink at trend forecaster WGSN, predicts what the future holds for the celebrity category – and which drinks might come of age while others spoil. Presented by Jaega Wise. Produced by Robbie Armstrong.

In this Episode of The Bourbon Life Podcast presented by Liquor Barn, Matt and Mark spend some time hanging out with Aaron Goldfarb, Author, of Dusty Booze: In Search of Vintage Spirits. The guys talk with Aaron and his time in film school and how a move to New York opened the door for him to become a spirits writer, the writing of his book, Dusty Booze, from concept to reality, and some of the interesting people and vintage spirits that he met along his journey, as well as a discussion about the current state of the Bourbon industry and what the future of the industry might look like.   They also taste and review the 2024 Michter's 10-Year Bourbon, the newly released A. Overholt Monogahela Rye, and the James E. Pepper Decanter Barrel Proof Bourbon. This Episode of The Bourbon Life Podcast is presented by Liquor Barn and is also sponsored by Penelope Bourbon, Limestone Farms Bourbon, Repeal Steakhouse, Bluegrass Distillers, The Stave Restaurant, Three Chord Bourbon, James E. Pepper Distillery, and The Kitchen Table at James B. Beam Distilling Co. Check out all of our amazing sponsors online at:  www.liquorbarn.com  www.penelopebourbon.com www.limestonefarms.com www.repeallouisville.com  www.bluegrassdistillers.com                   www.thestavekentucky.com  www.threechordbourbon.com www.jamesepepper.com   www.visitthekitchentable.com

Aaron Goldfarb has been a journalist for over a decade, frequently writing on the subjects of cocktails and drinking culture for such publications as the New York Times, Esquire, Playboy, and PUNCH. His latest book, Dusty Booze: In Search of Vintage Spirits, digs into our ongoing obsession with old spirits and the people who chase them. We talk about the real bourbon grails and the fake ones, and if there is any remaining Stitzel-Weller juice to be drunk. It's fun catching up with Aaron. Do you enjoy This Is TASTE? Drop us a review on Apple, or star us on Spotify. We'd love to hear from you. MORE FROM AARON GOLDFARB:The Craze for ‘Dusty' Liquor [WSJ]Why Anyone Who Loves Rare Bourbon Should Visit Japan [Matador]See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Historian Hadley Meares looks at how Hollywood sips cocktails on the big screen. From Prohibition bourbon to dolce vita amaro, journalist Aaron Goldfarb follows collectors hunting for vintage spirits. Frank La of Be Bright Coffee heads to Busan to compete in the World Barista Championship. Memo Torres of L.A. Taco introduces us to the Carnitas Queen of Los Angeles. Finally, Clémence de Lutz heads to the farmer's market for cherries she can feature at Petit Grain Boulangerie, her new bakery.

You hear us talk about dusty bourbon on the show too often. We keep beating that dead horse because it's a chance to drink history and have a completely different whiskey than what's in the bottle today. Vintage spirits are on the rise and have gone from an underground enthusiast crowd into the mainstream. Aaron Goldfarb is a distinguished author and he joins the show to talk about his new book titled Dusty Booze. This books has a storyline with finding a dusty goldmine but goes into the story of decanters, minis, and the hunt for rare bottles. It's now available on Amazon and lots of different outlets. Show Notes: Above the Char with Fred Minnick (@fredminnick) talks about bourbon with malted barely with the highest secondary grain. What made you want to write a book on vintage whiskey? What were some of those iconic decanters that were made? What was the story you saw form out of the glut era? Did you ever talk to store owners and ask why they would sit on inventory for this long? Why did decanters become so popular or unpopular? What makes a dusty spirit different from today's current releases? Did anyone come up with a better term other than dusty funk? Why was there a bigger market for minis back in the day? Talk about the storyline and how Kevin came across this goldmine and any legal implications. How many bar owners did you talk to about running a business on vintage spirits? What do you think has to be considered vintage? Was there any information in the book that teaches you how to date code vintage whiskey? Is there a chance that any store is left with any dusty bottles? Do you need dusty cocktail ingredients? @aarongoldfarb Support this podcast on Patreon

This week we welcome Aaron Goldfarb, author of "Dusty Booze", and we sit down and talk dusty's! He has written this book, which I am completely enamored with about the whiskey loving publics fascination with spirits from yester-year and how there is an entire community of whiskey hunters tracking down whiskey's from the past. It is a phenomenal read and it was a pleasure talking to him about the book and the dusty culture on this weeks episode of The Bourbon Showdown Podcast!

In this engaging episode of the Rolex Whiskey Passion Project, host Gavin welcomes Aaron Goldfarb, a seasoned journalist and author who has recently published a noteworthy book on vintage spirits. Listeners are taken on a journey through Aaron's personal and professional whiskey encounters, revealing how his experiences have shaped his understanding and appreciation for this timeless beverage. The conversation kicks off with Aaron recounting his earliest memories of whiskey and how his palate evolved while attending college in upstate New York during the bourbon renaissance. Drawing from his firsthand experiences in New York City's burgeoning cocktail scene of the early 2000s, Aaron offers an insightful glimpse into the industry's emerging trends of the time, including his tasting encounters with craft beer, bourbon, and beyond.

The bottles may be dusty but the conversation sure isn't! Aaron Goldfarb, author of the new book "Dusty Booze: In Search of Vintage Spirits”, sits down with the band to talk about the wild paths you wind up on when you write a book about spirits that can be over a hundred years old, and the people who collect them. Learn why some things don't taste like they used to and why some things never change, and what drives people to seek these relics out in the first place. Plus, Icelandic prohibition! Possibly the world's weirdest? Tune in to hear some semi-informed, wildly unverified history. Additionally, here at HRN we're celebrating our 15th year and deepening our commitment to giving voice to the next generation of food systems storytellers. And we need your help. Our internship and fellowship programs help activate new possibilities for underrepresented and underestimated young people—through experiential journalism, audio engineering, and production training. When you donate to help support these programs, you can be entered to win a dinner for 2 at an amazing restaurant in 1 of 8 cities, and tickets to a concert at a great venue in one of those cities. Thank you for supporting our work to educate the next generation of food systems storytellers! Love The Speakeasy but wish there was more? Check out Bottled in Bond, our new Patreon podcast exclusively for you, our best regulars! Join now for sponsor-free listening, video podcasts, access to pre-sales and drink recipes from all our guests. Higher proof and aged to perfection, check it out now at patreon.com/BottledinBondPhoto Courtesy of Cory Smith.Don't forget to click SUBSCRIBE and RATE the show if you can. 

Diageo Bar Academy: https://www.diageobaracademy.com/en-us/home Order Aaron's Books: https://www.aarongoldfarb.com ____________________________________ Join us every Monday as acclaimed bartender, Erick Castro, interviews some of the bar industry's top talents from around the world, including bartenders, distillers & authors. If you love cocktails & spirits then this award-winning podcast is just for you. SUPPORT US ON PATREON: Get early access to episodes, exclusive bonus episodes, special content and more: https://www.patreon.com/BartenderAtLarge WATCH OUR VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/bartenderatlarge FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM: Erick Castro: www.instagram.com/HungryBartender Bartender at Large: www.instagram.com/BartenderAtLarge FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: Erick Castro: www.twitter.com/HungryBartender Bartender at Large: www.twitter.com/BartendAtLarge

Joining us on Cocktail College today is Aaron Goldfarb, a longtime VinePair contributor and author of the recently released “Dusty Booze: In Search of Vintage Spirits.” As the names of both today's episode and Aaron's newest book suggest, this episode will take us on a historical deep dive, and shed light on one of the most fascinating facets of modern drinks culture: vintage cocktails. Listen on (or read below) to discover Aaron's ultimate vintage cocktail recipe — and don't forget to like, review and subscribe! Aaron Goldfarb's 1953 Vintage Vesper Recipe Ingredients - 3 parts 1953 Gordon's Gin - 1 part 1953 Smirnoff Vodka - ½ part Kina Lillet Directions 1. Add all ingredients to a mixing glass. 2. Stir until well-chilled. 3. Strain into a vintage cocktail glass.

It's a bit of a departure on the show this week as we're talking about spirits with long-time beverage writer Aaron Goldfarb. He has a new book out: Dusty Booze: In Search of Vintage Spirits. Goldfarb has been a journalist for over a decade, frequently writing on the subjects of cocktails and drinking culture for such publications as the New York Times, Esquire, Playboy, PUNCH, and VinePair, and has had features written about his career in the New York Times, Forbes, and the Boston Globe. His previous books include Hacking Whiskey, named a finalist for Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards Best New Book, and Gather Around Cocktails. In 2020, Tales of the Cocktail named Goldfarb the Best Cocktail & Spirit Writer for the year. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, daughter, son, cat, and a lot of bottles of booze.For more Drink Beer, Think Beer check out All About Beer.Host: John HollGuest: Aaron GoldfarbSponsors: All About BeerTags: Booze, Books, California, Tequila, Bourbon, Cocktails 

In this fascinating deep dive with Aaron Goldfarb (@aarongoldfarb), author of Dusty Booze: In Search of Vintage Spirits, some of the topics we discuss include: What constitutes a “dusty” or vintage bottle and some of the historical forces that created the trend of hunting for them, especially in the Bourbon world. Some tentative answers to the question, “Did it really Use to Taste Better?,” featuring oak tree rings, barrel entry proof, and cedar fermentation tanks. How dusty hunters use label cues like importers, tax stamps, DSP numbers, and Julian dating to determine the true age and origin of the bottles they encounter. A romp through some of the packaging gimmicks that dominated the Bourbon world in the second half of the 20th century. And a look at today's secondary market for spirits with respect to how it started and where it might be headed. Along the way, we consider the historical impact of Howard Hughes' liquor collection, salute the unwavering faith and confidence of bourbon distillers, get Aaron into bed with a sultry bottle of pre-phylloxera Cognac, and much, much more. Dusty Booze: In Search of Vintage Spirits will drop in about a month, so be sure to pre-order your copy if you've got some time on your hands and think you could uncover the next outrageously valuable bottle hiding in a storage unit or estate sale.

There's a unique subset of whisky collectors who spend their spare time scouring obscure liquor stores for vintage bottles. In some cases, the distillers no longer exist or the brands have been sold to their current owners, but in some cases, it's possible to find vintage editions of today's classic whiskies. Aaron Goldfarb has been chronicling so-called “dusty hunters,” and his new book “Dusty Booze” will be published on March 5th. He'll join us on this week's WhiskyCast In-Depth. In the news, U.S. spirits sales were flat in 2023, with concerning drops for Irish whiskies and Single Malt Scotches in particular. We'll have the details, along with a new report showing Kentucky Bourbon generates $9 billion a year in economic impact for the Commonwealth. 

Episode 459 - Aaron Goldfarb, author of Dusty Booze, is back Happy Monday, Thieves! Our good friend Aaron Goldfarb is back this week. He has a new book about vintage spirits out called Dusty Booze. Tune in now to hear all about it and revisit some classics in the black glass. ***As always, you can email your questions, complaints, whimpers, or whines to us at stealthisbeerpodcast@gmail.com. We read everything we get and we'll try to respond as quickly as we can. If not online, then on air. And THANKS! You can subscribe to STB on iTunes and PLEASE LEAVE US A REVIEW!!! Co-hosts: Augie Carton & John Holl Producer: Justin Kennedy Engineer: Brian Casse Music: "Abstract Concepts - What Up in the Streets" by Black Ant.

In this special holiday-themed throwback episode, we've decided to re-release part of an episode from 2020, where Eric interviews acclaimed cocktail author Aaron Goldfarb, author of the book, Gather Around Cocktails. Some of the topics covered include: How to master eggnog, even in a New York City apartment Ways to think about seasonality in cocktail ingredients and custom drink specs Special drinks for Jewish holidays like Hanukkah, Rosh Hashanah, and Purim And much, much more

Joining Taplines today is longtime beverage-alcohol journalist, VinePair writer at large, and author of the hotly anticipated forthcoming book "Dusty Booze," Aaron Goldfarb, to discuss Other Half Brewing Company's meteoric rise from humble beginnings to coveted hype brewery. Having found himself a few times in the line that formed outside the brewery on release days, Aaron witnessed firsthand a shift in the Brooklyn brewery's clientele and cachet as New York City's contemporary masters of the universe — finance bros — became enthralled by the drinkability, variety, and most importantly scarcity of the brewery's liquid wares. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What attracts you to a brand? It's that unexplainable underpinning called Brand Mysticism. I'm joined by author, Aaron Goldfarb and brand icon builder Steve Grasse to talk about this very subject they happened to publish a book on called Brand Mysticism. Steve has a lot of feathers in his cap such as being the brains behind Hendrix gin and Sailor Jerry rum. These aren't typical brands like we see in bourbon but this book is how to brand almost anything. It's a teaser into figuring out how to transform an idea into a brand, evolve an existing brand, and even some of the best lessons to take away in the book. Plus, we even dive into the brand mysticism behind Pappy Van Winkle. Show Notes: Above the Char with Fred Minnick (@fredminnick) talks about other spirits to be curious about Give an update to your backgrounds and how you got into spirits How do you transform an idea, such as a tshirt, into a brand? Can you just make up a brand today without a deep story? Do we need celebrities in the alcohol industry? What was the basis of the book? How do you constantly evolve a brand and adapt to lifestyle changes? What are some of those great lessons you've learned from Steve? How does Pappy fall into Brand Mysticism? Support this podcast on Patreon

Zach and VinePair managing editor and Cocktail College host Tim McKirdy discuss a recent piece by Aaron Goldfarb about the future of non-alcoholic cocktails, and what it might take for a non-alcoholic cocktail to become a modern classic. Please remember to subscribe to, rate, and review VinePair on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your episodes, and send any questions, comments, critiques, or suggestions to podcast@vinepair.com. Thanks for listening, and be well.Instagram: @adamteeter, @jcsciarrino, @zgeballe, @vinepairTwitter: @adamteeter @joannasciarrino, @zgeballe, @vinepair Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Follow Steve on Instagram and check out Quaker City Mercantile.Brands mentioned: Hendrick's Gin, Sailor Jerry Rum, and Fistful of Bourbon, which are owned by William Grant & Sons. He's also worked with existing brands like Miller High Life and Guinness (see Open Gate Brewery). Steve and Aaron Goldfarb co-authored Brand Mysticism: Cultivate Creativity and Intoxicate Your Audience. Steve's distillery Tamworth created a whiskey for the book called Dunce Whiskey, commemorating John Duns Scotus.Influences: As If by Michael Saler, Jules Verne, Malcolm McLaren, and J. R. R. Tolkien, Starbucks has ties to Moby Dick, Disney, Star Wars, The Simpsons, Hermés, Doug Aitken This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit decodingcocktails.substack.com

In this Pocket Sized Pep Talk, you'll learn:The unusual way Aaron and coauthor Steve Grasse came together to pursue the writing of their book, Brand Mysticism: Cultivate Creativity and Intoxicate Your AudienceHow they crossed over from lessons in branding alcohol to lessons in branding for businesses.How to cultivate your own inspiration, mine it, and then turn it into something truly unique and interesting. Two life lesson that will entertain, educate, inspire, and spark your creative energy.  Mentors  that played a part in Aaron's pursuit of writing.To learn more about this guest:aarongoldfarb@gmail.com 

• Steven Grasse takes risks and is rewarded • “The reason I like money, is it's a tool to create more” (TRT is 26:14) It is said that to be creative you need to have lived an interesting life. But Steve Grasse says that with the right awareness and attitude, anyone can hone their creativity and inspire change in their field and the world at large. Mr. Grasse is the founder of Quaker City Mercantile in Philadelphia and creator of brands like Hendrick's Gin, Sailor Jerry Rum, and Pathfinder. He says by keeping an open mind, taking risks, and developing authenticity, it is possible to channel basic entrepreneurial spirit into a brand, a business, a creative practice, or a life that breaks with tradition to achieve the remarkable. Steve Grasse goes into detail in this edition of Bizgnus Interviews. Please click here to watch the interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N4HSD9NyEs&t=4s Mr. Grasse has seen his creativity help create a large branding company, launch numerous products and bring him a comfortable life. “The reason I like money, is it's a tool to create more,” Mr. Grasse says. “We don't view money as a means to an end. And it's a race against time as we're only going to be on the planet for so long.” Steven Grasse is co-author with Aaron Goldfarb of the new book, “Brand Mysticism: Cultivate Creativity and Intoxicate Your Audience (November 2022 Running Press). His previous books include “The Evil Empire: 101 Ways That England Ruined the World,” “Colonial Spirits: A Toast to Our Drunken History,” and “The Cocktail Workshop: An Essential Guide to Classic Drinks and How to Make Them Your Own.” He lives in Philadelphia and New Hampshire with his family. For more information: https://quakercitymercantile.com/

Steven Grasse is the founder of Quaker City Mercantile and the creator of Hendrick's Gin, Sailor Jerry Rum, Art in the Age Spirits, and Tamworth Distilling, among many others. He has also helped revive legacy brands such as Narragansett, Miller High Life, Guinness, and Pilsner Urquell. His previous books include The Evil Empire: 101 Ways That England Ruined the World, Colonial Spirits: A Toast to Our Drunken History, and The Cocktail Workshop: An Essential Guide to Classic Drinks and How to Make Them Your Own. His new book, with Aaron Goldfarb is Brand Mysticism: Cultivate Creativity and Intoxicate Your Audience   Outline Introducing Steve Grass. 0:02 Why do you do what you do? 0:53 How I create in a similar way that bands create music. 2:47 The interesting life comes from getting off the internet. 4:17 If you don't read interesting things, where do your interesting ideas come from? 5:26 Who is a hero of yours and why? 7:16

Steven Grasse is the founder of Quaker City Mercantile and the creator of Hendrick's Gin, Sailor Jerry Rum, Art in the Age Spirits, and Tamworth Distilling, among many others. He has also helped revive legacy brands such as Narragansett, Miller High Life, Guinness, and Pilsner Urquell. His previous books include The Evil Empire: 101 Ways That England Ruined the World, Colonial Spirits: A Toast to Our Drunken History, and The Cocktail Workshop: An Essential Guide to Classic Drinks and How to Make Them Your Own. His new book, with Aaron Goldfarb is Brand Mysticism: Cultivate Creativity and Intoxicate Your Audience   Outline Introducing Steve Grass. 0:02 Why do you do what you do? 0:53 How I create in a similar way that bands create music. 2:47 The interesting life comes from getting off the internet. 4:17 If you don't read interesting things, where do your interesting ideas come from? 5:26 Who is a hero of yours and why? 7:16

In this episode you'll learn why the most celebrated drinks marketeer alive believes that you have to get mystical when creating brands, cultivating curiosity and captivating consumers. Steve Grasse is the man who famously pitched the concepts for Hendrick's Gin and Sailor Jerry's rum in the same day. Steve is a marketing agency chief, distillery owner and author, together with Aaron Goldfarb, of the new book, Brand Mysticism. Together they explain how they have captured Steve's unique approach to booze marketing and how to take the lessons from his success to your own business, career or brand. Will and Foxy also talk distillery tours, cask strength whiskies and Foxy's fleeting moment of fame! Support the showFor more high-lights and low-downs follow @BizBevPod on Twitter or LinkedInBusiness of Beverages is self-funded and hosted/ edited/produced by Will Keating.Pádraig Fox co-hosts in a strictly personal capacity.All opinions are those of the person expressing them at all times. We're not sponsored but we would appreciate it if you could click the link above to support the show.

When I listened to @bourbonlens interview I knew I had to absolutely copy them. Today we will talk with the brains behind BRAND MYSTICISM, from the marketing mastermind behind mega-viral whiskies made with crab, venison, and beaver castoreum, as well as countless iconic booze labels, comes an irreverent and wide-ranging treatise on building and maintaining a standout brand in business and life: BRAND MYSTICISM, is penned by spirits maverick Steven Grasse(@stevengrasse) in collaboration with celebrated writer Aaron Goldfarb(@aarongoldfarb). Through his work in advertising and marketing on brands like Hendrick's Gin, Sailor Jerry Rum, Narragansett, Guinness, Miller High Life, and more, Grasse is an authority on building an authentic, enduring, and deeply beloved (viral) brands.

Our guests this week are Steven Grasse and Aaron Goldfarb who are set to release their latest book: Brand Mysticism. The book releases on November 8th and is a must read for anyone looking to add creativity to their life and brand.  This isn't your typical "booze book" and definitely will raise some eyebrows in the marketing world, but Steven Grasse doesn't mind that one bit.  His portfolio speaks for itself; he's created some of the biggest brands including Hendrick's Gin and Sailor Jerry Rum and helped bring new life to some of the world's best brands including Guinness and Miller High Life.  Steven Grasse is an authority on building an authentic, enduring, and deeply beloved (viral) brands.  And Aaron Goldfarb, he's the novelist, author, and journalist responsible for wrangling all these ideas and creativity into one cohesive book.  Bourbon Lens has followed Aaron's work for a long while and were honored to pick his brain for this episode.  A huge thank you to Steven, Aaron, and Punch Media for making this episode happen.  We hope you enjoy it and grab a copy of the book for yourself! Pre-order or purchase your copy of the book via Amazon or buy wherever you find books locally.  Stream this episode on your favorite podcast app and be sure to drop us a review while you're there.   We are thankful for everyone who has supported us. A huge shoutout goes to our growing Patreon Community as well! We'd appreciate it if you can take the time to give us feedback on our podcast. If you enjoy our content, consider giving us a 5 star rating on your favorite podcast app, leave us a review, and tell a fellow bourbon lover about our show. Follow  us @BourbonLens on Instagram, Facebook, & Twitter.  And please check out our Patreon to learn how you can support our endeavors, earn Bourbon Lens swag, be part of future barrel picks, and more. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, please email us at TheBourbonLens@Gmail.com. Check out our freshly redesigned website BourbonLens.com to check out our blog posts, whiskey news, and details on our upcoming single barrel picks. Cheers,Scott and JakeBourbon Len About the Book: BRAND MYSTICISM: CULTIVATE CREATIVITY AND INTOXICATE YOUR AUDIENCE Written By Steven Grasse & Aaron Goldfarb;Illustrated by Ron Short  From the marketing mastermind behind countless iconic booze brands comes an irreverent and wide-ranging treatise on building and maintaining a standout brand in business and life: BRAND MYSTICISM. Steven Grasse made a name for himself as not only an offbeat distillery owner but also the brains behind beloved brands like Hendrick's Gin and Sailor Jerry Rum and the guy who made cheap-beer-standbys like Narragansett and Miller High Life cool again. Through his work in advertising and marketing, Grasse has changed the game in the booze world and become an authority on building an authentic, enduring, and deeply beloved brand. Food & Wine has called him “the punk-rock prince of small-batch spirits.” “Think of me as the Ben Franklin of hooch, the Thomas Edison of booze. Or just think of me as a crazy middle-aged man who is going to tell you some really funny sometimes slightly fucked-up stories that will hopefully make you laugh and maybe realize there's quite a bit of merit to having fun trolling people doing art for art's sake, simply trying shit and not really giving a rat's ass,” said Steven Grasse. “You might wonder how I became such a Big Cheese in the world of booze. I sometimes wonder the same thing, and while everything you read in my new book is true, it is also total bullshit.”  So how did he do it? Through irreverent tips (why being a troll can be so vital), case studies (when marketing cigarettes taught him about virality) and magical ingredients (who knew beaver anus would change his fortunes), BRAND MYSTICISM guides you through the steps it takes to channel your own entrepreneurial spirit into a business, a creative practice, or a life that breaks with tradition to achieve the remarkable.   About the Authors:  Steven Grasse is an entrepreneur equally influenced by punk rock and New England transcendentalism. Steven has created some of the most outrageous booze brands of the twenty-first century: Hendrick's Gin, Sailor Jerry Rum, Art in the Age Craft Spirits—all seemingly out of thin air. He is the part-owner and creative mastermind behind Narragansett beer, and his agency, Quaker City Mercantile, has brought similar success to beer icons Pilsner Urquell, Guinness, and, most recently, Miller High Life. His first distillery, Tamworth Distilling & Mercantile, opened in 2015 and gained international press and awards within its first year. Steven is also the author of The Cocktail Workshop, Colonial Spirits: A Toast to Our Drunken History, The Good Reverend's Guide to Infused Spirits, and Evil Empire. He lives and works in Philadelphia.  Aaron Goldfarb is a novelist, author, and journalist, who frequently writes about the spirits industry and drinking culture for Esquire, Playboy, PUNCH, and VinePair. His two most recent books are Hacking Whiskey: Smoking, Blending, Fat-Washing, and Other Whiskey Experiments and Gather Around Cocktails: Drinks to Celebrate Usual and Unusual Holidays. His 2018 VinePair article on Grasse, “How Do You Make a Booze Brand Go Viral?,” fittingly, went viral itself and has since been shared online hundreds of thousands of times. Press and ‘In The News': Purchase your copy of the book via Amazon Meet Steven Grasse | Quaker City Mercantile Steven Grasse | Official Publisher Page | Simon & Schuster How Do You Make a Booze Brand Go Viral? The Master of Craft Explains | VinePair  20 New Cocktail and Spirits Books to Read in Fall and Winter 2022 Brand Mysticism: Cultivate Creativity and Intoxicate Your Audience New Hampshire Distillery Makes Whiskey Out of Invasive Crabs | Smart News| Smithsonian Magazine Invasive Green Crabs Turned Into Whiskey By Tamworth Distilling Worldwise: Gin Distiller Steven Grasse's Favorite Things in Philadelphia & Beyond | Barron's Art in the Age: Ex-Ad Man Steven Grasse's Wonderfully Weird Spirits How Guinness Became a Global Powerhouse | Wine Enthusiast These New England distilleries are among the best in America, according to USA Today readers Sacred Profane: The Anti-Hype Brewery in Biddeford, Maine | PUNCH 13 New Ecommerce Books for Fall 2022 Check out Aaron's Work: Hacking Whiskey: Smoking, Blending, Fat Washing, and Other Whiskey Experiments: Goldfarb, Aaron: 9780999661246: Amazon.com  How Do You Make a Booze Brand Go Viral? The Master of Craft Explains | VinePair  How the ‘Cigar Batch' Became a Bourbon Industry Sensation | VinePair The Most Famous (and Infamous) Moments in Modern Bourbon Collecting | VinePair How Heaven Hill Bounced Back From Disaster to Become One of the Most Successful Bourbon Brands in America | VinePair Wilderness Trail and the Rise of Whiskey's Fermentation Fever | PUNCH Your Guide to Bourbon Whiskey Terms | PUNCH Bourbon Thrives in a Post-Pappy Era | PUNCH

Episode 387 - Aaron Goldfarb, co-author Brand Mysticism Happy Monday, Thieves! We're talking to our old friend Aaron Goldfarb this week. Longtime listeners of the show will be familiar with Aaron as not only a frequent guest but also a co-host stand in while Holl was out a couple of times. (See the Sour'd in September episodes from 2016). Fast forward six years, and we're having Aaron back on to talk about his latest book with Steve Grasse titled Brand Mysticism: Cultivate Creativity and Intoxicate Your Audience. We chat about how the project came to be and why Aaron stepped back from writing about beer to focus on more “adult beverages.” It's a great time and we hope you dig it. Tune in and let us know what you think!***As always, you can email your questions, complaints, whimpers, or whines to us at stealthisbeerpodcast@gmail.com. We read everything we get and we'll try to respond as quickly as we can. If not online, then on air. And THANKS! You can subscribe to STB on iTunes and PLEASE LEAVE US A REVIEW!!! Co-hosts: Augie Carton & John Holl Producer: Justin Kennedy Engineer: Brian Casse Music: "Abstract Concepts - What Up in the Streets" by Black Ant.

In this episode, I talk to Aaron Goldfarb. He's a novelist, cocktail writer and critic for Esquire, Food & Wine and other publications. His upcoming book, Brand Mysticism, is co-written with Steven Grasse, the marketing guru behind Hendrick's Gin and Sailor Jerry Rum. We talk about: What makes a brand mysterious? How to get novels published The right (and wrong) way to pitch a journalist your brand A few bourbon recommendations This episode's got a little something for everyone. Cheers! If you like what you heard, pre-order Aaron's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Brand-Mysticism-Cultivate-Creativity-Intoxicate/dp/076247582X To make sure you never miss an episode of The High EQ Market podcast, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and the website. Listening on a desktop & can't see the links? Just search for The High EQ Marketer in your favorite podcast player.

This week Jimmy is talking doomsday drinking with Chris Maestro, owner of Bierwax, Thomas Gaulkin, editor at The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, and  Aaron Goldfarb, journalist, and author of Hacking Whiskey. From nuclear apocalypse to climate change, how might a disaster affect your favorite beer? Thomas talks about some of the little-known science of the food industry, including the radiation that might be used to produce some of your favorite foods. Chris gives an exciting window into the history of Japanese record bars and the opening of Bierwax's new location in Queens. And Aaron talks about some of the more creative developments in the whiskey world. Grab your desert island beer and give it a listen!Support Bierwax's IndieGoGo campaign.  Heritage Radio Network is a listener supported nonprofit podcast network. Support Beer Sessions Radio by becoming a member!Beer Sessions Radio is Powered by Simplecast.

The pod is BACK! Old friend, super-journalist and whiskey personality Aaron Goldfarb joins the SmokyBeast in his kitchen. They discuss his many books (Hacking Whiskey, Gather Around Cocktails, etc.), the joys of fatherhood, and beaver anus whiskey. Find Aaron's work in Esquire, PUNCH, VinePair, and the Whiskey Advocate.  They taste through our Ezra Brooks, Starlight and Starbright, Knob Creek and Lucky 7.  Clink!

In our 15th episode, we speak with Aaron Goldfarb, a novelist, author and journalist who frequently writes about the spirits industry and drinking culture for Esquire, the New York Times, PUNCH, VinePair, Whisky Advocate and many other top media outlets. ⁣⁣Aaron has written four novels, a short story collection, an essay collection and three books on the drinks industry. His two most recent books are “Hacking Whiskey” and “Gather Around Cocktails.” ⁣⁣In this episode, he breaks some exciting news about his upcoming new book.⁣⁣This year, Aaron won the “Best Cocktail & Spirits Writing” Spirited Award by the Tales of the Cocktail Foundation. ⁣ ⁣⁣⁣Tune in to hear this booze writer share his thoughts on:⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣1) How he transitioned from being an aspiring filmmaker and novelist to covering the world of spirits, beer and drinks⁣⁣2) How writing for the New York Times and Esquire differs from publications with more of a trade audience⁣⁣3) Why his New York Times story on Cecil B. DeMille’s whiskey collection broke through to a mainstream audience, including non-drinkers⁣⁣4) Why it is a better strategy to build relationships with 10 to 20 key booze writers, rather than try to target thousands of them⁣⁣5) How he scours the Internet to uncover the geekiest beverage trends and translates them for general readers⁣⁣6) Why pitches to him should take into account his past stories and offer a customized angle⁣⁣7) Why follow-ups to pitches via multiple channels, e.g., email, DMs, cold calling, texting, etc., are not a good way to ingratiate oneself to him⁣⁣Aaron also answers a listener question from Iain McPherson of the acclaimed Panda & Sons and other Edinburgh, Scotland bars, who is curious to know what it will take to place Scotch whisky at the forefront of the cocktail repertoire.⁣ ⁣⁣Connect with Aaron on Instagram and Twitter at @aarongoldfarb. ⁣⁣ ⁣In this week’s “HLC Innovation Report,” we feature:⁣⁣ ⁣#1: What We Are Reading This Week - “On the Road with Flavor Forays: An Insider’s Tour of Four of America’s Hottest Food Cities: Austin, Charleston, Portland, New Orleans” by Barbara Mathias and Beverly Stephen. Check out @hlcbookmedia for the full interview on how Barbara, Beverly and Kindle Direct Publishing brought their book to life (https://bit.ly/35HdJVo).⁣ ⁣#2: Who We Are Honoring This Week - ⁣Cha McCoy, a global sommelier and wine authority who joined Cherry Bombe as Beverage Director and is the force behind Cherry Bombe Drinks (https://bit.ly/3nzDtcp).⁣⁣#3: What We Are Celebrating This Week - Double Chicken Please, a new bar on New York City’s Lower East Side by two alums of The World’s 50 Best Bars, GN Chan and Faye Chen, that serves complex, multilayered cocktails on tap. The duo explores the concept of “hacking design,” where cocktails and food are deconstructed, redefined and rebuilt in inventive ways (https://www.doublechickenplease.com/).⁣ ⁣#4: What Podcast We Are Listening to This Week - “Bartender at Large,” hosted by Erick Castro. He recently interviewed Mark Sansom of The World’s 50 Best Bars and the dynamic trio of Agostino Perrone, Giorgio Bargiani and Maura Milia of Connaught Bar in London, which took the #1 spot this year (https://apple.co/38VuX3l). ⁣⁣#5: Who Is Inspiring Us This Week - ⁣John deBary, Co-Founder of the Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation, an advocacy and action nonprofit created by and for restaurant workers. John is working non-stop to help those in the industry impacted by the pandemic through its COVID-19 Relief Fund (https://www.restaurantworkerscf.org/).⁣ ⁣Follow “Hospitality Forward” Podcast hosts Hanna Lee at @hannaleeny and Michael Anstendig at @michaelanstendig on Instagram. For our agency, follow @hannaleepr and visit http://www.hannaleecommunications.com/. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this convivial and wide-ranging chat with drinks writer Aaron Goldfarb, author of Gather Around Cocktails, some of the topics we discuss include: Aaron’s experience writing for major publications in the drinks space beginning in the early 2000s straight through the cocktail renaissance to today, including his recent Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Award for “Best Cocktail & Spirits Writing.” The story of Gather Around Cocktails, which started with an Eggnog obsession, and grew into a book that’s on a mission to make parties more fun and less lame. Of course, we do dig into eggnog a bit - talking about the most important tools and techniques for batching this rich, creamy drink and even some of the surprising ingredients you can use as dietary substitutes (lookin’ at you, avocado).  Then we take a trip around the calendar year, dipping in and out of seasons and occasions for drinking and learning about the little things you can do to crank your most festive occasions to 11. We talk about everything from Eric's yearly tradition of wearing tricorn hats and drinking colonial era punch while watching The Patriot every 4th of July to the innovative cocktails that Aaron and others have designed to complement traditional Jewish holidays, which can sometimes be solemn occasions. Along the way, we cover why the gimlet is the perfect quarantine drink, how to order a frozen daiquiri in the style of Hunter S. Thompson, and much, much more.

On the 400th episode of the Speakeasy Aaron Goldfarb and Janee Nyberg join the band to talk going viral, telling your side of the story and what a truly bizarre thing a legacy can be. #HRN10Years #DrinkingOnTheRadioDon’t forget to click SUBSCRIBE and RATE the show if you can. 

Prolific author and whiskey expert Aaron Goldfarb breaks down all the new and weird things people are doing with their drinks, some much better than others. Listen in as he discusses the life of a novelist, a transformation to whiskey expert, and why he may be just the best damned guide out there for a night of spirited adventures.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW3B9BXuy3k&w=560&h=315] In this special bonus podcast, we take a moment to talk to Aaron Goldfarb, whiskey and cocktail journalist and the author of Hacking Whiskey. We talk about his origins and how he got into journalism. The state of NYC at the moment during COVID-19. Then we talk about what led him into covering spirits, his thoughts on the secondary market crackdowns, some of his favorite articles, and where inspiration strikes. Show Notes: Hacking Whiskey Transcript 0:00 Alright, you knew I couldn't do a whole podcast without screwing up. You're gonna think I'm a boomer all these guys at home. 0:07 I'm Generation X. I swear it. Starts from the top. 0:22 Welcome to this special bonus episode of bourbon pursuit. We're all stuck at home during quarantine. So I can't think of a better way to make the time go by faster than bringing a few bonus podcasts to you all. In this episode, we're joined by Aaron Goldfarb. He's a renowned whiskey and cocktail writer. So you've likely come across many of his articles through vine pear, calm, esquire.com, whiskey advocate, bourbon plus, and many more. He has a book out called hacking whiskey and we talk about that later in the show as well. Now at the beginning of this podcast during that blooper, it sounded pretty good. Did that sound about normal? Well, it's about the sound a bit muffled because I 1:00 wasn't paying attention and didn't realize that Aaron was talking into his computer microphone instead of the external one. But don't worry just a few minutes in, we fix it and it all gets squared away. Now make sure that you are subscribed to our Facebook and YouTube channels because we are doing live streams pretty regularly now, and we'd love to have you join us. So enjoy this bonus episode and remember, keep those hands sanitized. We're all in this together. Cheers. 1:30 Welcome back to another episode of bourbon pursuit, a special COVID-19 edition. Kenny here and we are talking with somebody that had tried to join us in the last roundtable but we had some technical difficulties so I wanted to reintroduce everybody to the man Aaron Goldfarb. So welcome back. Take us back to the show. Yeah, I think I might have faked those technical difficulties just because I wanted that one on one conversation with you. You know what? I you're you're making a little money. 2:00 blush a little bit. I appreciate the appreciate the kudos there. But honestly, we're happy to have you. You know, actually, I got a message from Ryan and Fred earlier. They're like, hey, Are we recording something tonight with Aaron? And because I just I just put it in our BP calendar. And Ryan was like, man, I hurt my back today. I can't make it. I feel so bad. And then, Fred's Fred's. So everybody probably knows that he's doing live streams every single day at one o'clock and nine o'clock. And he's like, he's like, I can't make it just let Aaron know that he's one of my favorite writers. And I was like, it's like it's okay guys. Like I can I think I can handle this on my own. 2:35 I don't get double team. Yeah, when we start talking about whiskey and it's an easy way to kind of get going. So I kind of want to you know, learn more about you, I guess, you know, we've I've read a lot of your stuff before, through various media outlets and everything like that. But you know, I, we don't really know much about you. So kind of talk about a little bit like about your entry, like, first into journalism. And then really what 3:00 got you into whiskey as well? 3:02 Yeah, you know, my entry into drinks writing and whiskey is kind of just consistent failure over 20 years I, I went to film school 3:12 at Syracuse and I wanted to be a filmmaker. I kicked around in the early aughts and Manhattan, writing screenplays and trying to make films that didn't work very well. 3:24 wrote a few novels those worked a little better. But this whole time, like any good writer, I was drinking heavily. 3:33 helps me get through the good times in the bed. Right? But unlike the other writers who might have been slugging handles of vodka, I thought, well, you know, there's a better way to get drunk. 3:44 And luckily, you know, I moved to Manhattan in 2001. And that was right as craft beer was emerging. That was right. As you know, the craft cocktail scene was emerging in New York, the epicenter of all places. That was as you 4:00 You know, bourbon was again becoming hot, you know, Pappy 15 comes out in 2004, I believe and you know, you can get on the shelves for 30 bucks or 50 bucks. And that was a lot of money to me back then. So I didn't buy as much of it as some of my friends that had normal jobs did at the time. But, you know, it's very lucky to just be old and growing up at the right time, that naturally I was in all these scenes at the same time. 4:33 So I developed a knowledge base. I never had any plans to write about this stuff. 4:39 You know, your college counselor or your high school counselor doesn't say, you too, can be a whiskey writer when you grow up. 4:46 You know, maybe they say that these days, but they weren't saying that in the late 90s and early 2000s. 4:53 You know, I think maybe David wonder was the only booze writer on planet earth Michael Jackson, maybe 4:59 I've heard that name. 5:00 Before I know Fred's talking about Michael Jackson before, and everybody wants to think of the pop singer, but no, there was somebody before that, that or maybe not before that, but still a person in the scene that was writing a lot about about Jackie and about cocktails. Yeah, you know, Lou Bryson, I guess was there, he's always been there. 5:18 But you know, I built this knowledge base. And then, you know, around 5:23 the late aughts, the early 2010s. Now, all of a sudden, the mainstream publications were realizing, you know, these things are red hot, and we haven't cultivated any writers that necessarily know about these things. So I was a writer, not a magazine writer, or website writer, and I knew these things. And so my first gig ever was for Esquire, I kind of fell backwards into one of the best, you know, in my opinion publications in in the history of America. And I was writing beer and whiskey and cocktail stuff for them. You know, from 6:00 I don't know 2008 2009 on and then I kind of worked myself backwards and started writing for more niche publications, you know paunch fine pair whiskey advocate bourbon plus, and, you know, everywhere I've written for everyone by now, you know, I'm sure I'll be fired from jobs and right for new ones I mean it's the life of a freelance writer you take what you get and move on to the next one. That's it's interesting to like just like fall into Esquire that's like somebody like in my world just saying like, Oh, I got my first job. It's a Google right it's like in the in the tech world. So I think it's it's really interesting and cool like how you want to do that so have you been Have you been in Manhattan in New York most your life or like his his New York something? Are you your homeboy, you Norco your whole life? No, I kind of have a weird growing up too. I'm, I believe, a fifth or sixth generation. 6:54 Born in New York, and I lived there till I was about three or four and then, you know, this was the early 80s 7:00 In New York City, which I don't know if you've heard there were some issues. My my family moved to Oklahoma City. So along with Fred, I would be the second Oklahoma regular. I'm here. 7:12 live there till high school then, you know, back to New York since then. And I went to college at Syracuse and upstate New York, and I've been in New York City, now Brooklyn, since 2001. And I've been a Brooklyn since 2014. And so you're also in the kind of like the epicenter of what's happening right now with the Coronavirus I mean, especially with I shouldn't say the episode that's actually in China, but I'm saying like in America, like where all the eyeballs are on right now. It's like where you're at because it's it's the most you know, between you and San Francisco. It's the most densely populated area inside of the United States and you know, the numbers that are coming out and staggering like, I'm assuming that like right now it's it's pretty chaotic, like you'd be able to just like, look out your window and just like to see the rat start scurrying because there's no people out like, kind of give us an idea of like, what what's 8:00 Life in New York City right now. Well, you know, it's funny, I'm, you know, I've had some professional successes in my life, you know, books and whatnot. And that doesn't lead to strangers from my past necessarily writing me but this everyone I've ever met in the world who's got my email or phone number has been messaging me i think i think people assume with all the death and whatnot. It's a zombie apocalypse here, but 8:30 you know, I, I go outside every day. Some days I take a jog. There are not a lot of people on the streets. I am in a quieter neighborhood in Brooklyn. I'm in Park Slope, which is a family friendly neighborhood, but it is. It's, you know, a brownstone neighborhood. It's not the sticks by any means. I don't know what it's looking like in Manhattan now. I haven't been there in a month and I'm not sure if I'll be there for another several months. But um, 8:56 yeah, the streets are empty. 8:59 There's a lot 9:00 around the block space by six feet to get into every supermarket I go, I go Trader Joe's he's going crazy for Trader Joe's during this and it's it's funny like you say that cuz I've noticed that even our Trader Joe's there's people like lined outside so we'll say I would never go to Trader Joe's because the aisle width and news York is incredibly tight so I kind of go to the places where I don't want anyone bumping into me getting close to me. 9:27 You know of course unlike a lot of places we shop in New York by carrying it home so I go to my you know, snobby supermarket across the street and I put as much as I can possibly carry and I don't even really think that hard about what the week of meals is going to look like. And today my family just ate a grilled chicken with you know, whatever scraps we could also find some days we're eating incredibly and others were not like we ordered delivery about once a week that's still very avid here. 10:00 If you haven't heard just about every great cocktail bar is delivering cocktails right now. I haven't done that a lot. Because I have lots of booze myself, as you can see, and I know to make cocktails, and I'd rather deliver him and not coming to my house, both for both of our sakes but um, you know, if if you 10:19 you know, if I didn't have a family, I would just be reading a book a day and writing an article a day and watching a movie every night and drinking some whiskey and 90 days later, I'd come out of this, but I'm living in a house with a three year old and a newborn, and a wife who's on conference calls 10 hours a day for her busy job. So it's it's very stressful. It's very hectic, I'm outside of this dwelling 30 minutes to an hour a day if I'm lucky. 10:46 And you know, that's life right now. It's it's for people that are single and alone. It's probably lonely and incredibly boring. For people with families. It's It's It's probably the most stressful 11:00 In aggravated and tense I've ever been, you know. 11:05 So I kind of want to get back into your a little bit of your your journey into bourbon and your journey into whiskey. Like Did you have a Sherpa along the way that kind of taught you? You know, because I can look behind you in the camera right here and I see a bunch of wild turkeys decades. You got some knobs you got, but I mean you got more Russell's picks than probably rare bird 101 so 11:28 that's, and that's that's part of it too. So kind of talk about like, who was who's kind of like taught you the ropes. 11:36 You know, I kind of have a weird Sherpa. It wasn't you know, an older gentleman. You know, a good buddy of mine from college. You know, we were talking about I was kicking around making, you know, $15,000 a year writing screenplays no one wanted he became a salesman from day one. And this is my friend Derek. 11:58 And, you know 12:00 He had a massive expense account. So he didn't know more than me. But he could afford to learn things on someone else's dime. And I mean, a massive expense account. You can't even get guess the number and I won't say it in case there's 12:18 lessons and causes Listen, well, he doesn't work there anymore. But in case any litigation is pending. No, he lived in DC, which, you know, of course, at the jack rose. We've heard about what's going on with them right now. 12:31 And we, you know, he'd come to New York a lot for business. And again, this was when the emergence of really great bars in New York were coming, you know, milk and honey 1999 pegu club, I think that's 2005. 12:48 PDT 2009. Now New York's never been a really great whiskey city. To be fair. There's just too many rich people that, you know, if jack rose existed in New York, it wouldn't exist on day two. 13:00 They just got to make their prices even higher than if that's what it takes. You literally cannot price trophy bottles high enough in New York to keep them in stock. 13:10 But anyways Derek, you know we'd come to New York and we just spent silly money trying every cocktail on the menu at PDT trying any good thing in the house and you know, in the in the arts in New York City 13:26 it was still a wine city. So, you know, things like Pappy were in George t stag and stuff you could, you know, get for a reasonable Port $20 report wasn't reasonable to me back then. But of course it was reasonable to people with money so you know, even when I wasn't a writer, even when I had absolutely no money, I tried every every great whiskey released from you know, the late 90s on I never owned any of these bottles till till you know the last decade when I actually started making money by 14:00 You know, I remember when Derek got I think a case of tornado survivor and just all this stuff we were we were trying all this stuff and I you know, we were both learning together on on his his company's time. I mean, learn the learn on a case of tornado I think that's your living right are you know the right people I mean that's that just kind of give us the whole thing of like, you know you never own a boat, but you have a friend that owns the boat. And even better if the friend owns the boat and someone else is paying for it. See, there you go. That's, that's 10 times better. 10 times better. You know. And there's one thing that you kind of mentioned right there about, you know, trophy bottles like in New York just being always astronomical and always rocket high. I mean, I'm assuming at this point, like you've given up the chase in regards to finding something around New York, you've got your local spot, or do you just rely on as you mentioned earlier, just like buying pics from some of your favorite people in the scene? 14:57 Yeah, well, you know writers like me. 15:01 are lucky I get to at least try everything 15:06 released because because companies send it out they don't necessarily send full bottles but Buffalo Trace since you know the B tech lineup every year and you know, every company wants you to taste their stuff. 15:18 And I like all that stuff if I ran into, you know, George t stags or hands at reasonable prices, I do buy them. 15:27 But you know, one of my favorite things to drink is is Russell's reserve pics and they're 50 bucks or 60 bucks. That's what I'm drinking most nights. That's what I was drinking earlier tonight. This is what I'm drinking right now. 15:40 Oh, there you go. The bourbon Community Roundtable internet friends pick. I thought I thought I'd kiss some ass. We'll take it. But you know, some of this stuff is extraordinary. wilderness trail is extraordinary right now and even though I have you know, thousand dollar bottles in my house that I really don't give a crap about them being 16:00 drained. I'm reaching for wilderness travel right now I'm reaching for Russell's reserve single barrels almost every single night that I'm drinking. 16:09 So, you know, I don't I don't know why. That's what interests me. You know, Blake said to me, you know, he's drank so much great stuff that he kind of enjoys the rawness of young young craft whiskey. And I wouldn't say I enjoy that that much. But you know, wilderness trail has a flavor profile, you're just not used to, you know, how many more, you know, aged mdps can you drink? How many more you know? 16:33 weeders from Buffalo Trace, can you drink you know, at a certain point, it's fun to try new flavor profiles. And that's one reason I think you're seeing a lot of bourbon geeks get into Armagnac or wine or other stuff just because they're bored with with their palates. After you've drank everything. You're just like, you know, I need something else to excite me. Yeah, that's true. I think you I think you bring up a pretty good point too, especially when we talk to a lot of people in the whiskey realm. And I think it was probably what 17:00 Three years ago, maybe two years ago when this whole like MGP craziness, like what? A Well, I mean, just it went off the off the rocker. And there are groups that were searching and hunting and just trying to find this, you know, anything over 10 year MGP and just clearing out these smaller distilleries that had anything left of it. And people are really hung up on it. And, you know, when they look at even like what we did, and starting on whiskey line and saying, like, Well, why don't you go MGP right, because everybody else was doing it. Right. And, and I think that's, hopefully it's at the point that you people will start getting that sort of fat or palate fatigue of trying the same thing over and over and over again. I think Blake's a little bit of a special character thinking that like, Yes, I want young, young Raul whiskey. 17:43 I wanted to see if he get that tattooed on his back or something like that. But um, I think I think you do bring up a solid point there because there's a lot of not only great values, which you just talked about in the Russell's world, and you get a lot of diversity, especially with those pics 18:00 There's a lot of good stuff coming out from younger distilleries now that are starting. And I think this is a while we see the the plunge of MGP stock in B, you know why I think people are going to start changing their their minds here in a little bit. Because there has been this idea that, oh, like, I'm not buying gun whiskey, I'm not buying something that's not from Kentucky. That's I, I was that person like two years ago, maybe even three years ago, I was that person too. But now like, we're starting to get to the point where a lot of these distilleries around the country outside of Kentucky are having products that are four years old that are their knockouts, I mean, they're fantastic. And we're going to get to the point here in the next, maybe another two, three years, where the shelves are just gonna be littered full of just goodies like that. Yeah, well, you know, it's funny, a lot of people used to think craft whiskey sucked because it wasn't old enough. And now you have craft whiskey. 19:00 That's you know, and it's second decade and some of it still sucks which proves 19:06 the reason it sucked was not because it was young and then you have wilderness trail and new riff which are you know, four or five years and they're they're incredible you know a lot of craft whiskey I drink one time just to see what it tastes like well there's Tron New Roof I actually reach for over you know, the big boys 19:25 So, you know, it wasn't he that a lot of these brands that I will not name unless you you know, get me in a bar, not on your podcast were bad was because they were bad because they were distilled poorly because maybe they were fermented poorly because who knows why. 19:41 But you know, wilderness trail is as certainly shown that youth is not 19:47 any excuse for not being great. So so you know a lot about whiskies we can get that we can look behind you can read a bunch of your articles about whiskey, but you make a lot of different articles about mez cows and 20:00 About everything, like, kind of talk about your journey into other spirits like, it's it's cool to have your buddy that helps you get into this wonderful world of bourbon that probably spoiled you beyond belief. But then how do you how do you get into all these other sex of like figuring out I know you've done stuff on like the perfect Martini or stuff like that to like, kind of talk about, like, how do you get into the realm of doing that as well? Well, the cynical answer is I'm a freelance writer, and every article I write makes money so 20:32 you tell me what to write about. I'm in exactly. I'm writing an article right now. I'm sorry, Fred. Pay to pay was good. 20:41 But no, you know, I have a theory that guys like us. 20:47 We collected things and we were obsessed with things from day one. I collected baseball cards, comic books, anything and I collected them as hard as but I needed full sets. I needed everything I needed to know every any passion I need. 21:00 To know everything, and then you know on to the next one. So at a certain point, you don't know everything about whiskey That's impossible. You're still learning stuff. That's why I think a lot of people have moved back towards towards dusties. Because, you know, once you've kind of mastered the modern whiskey culture, you got to start learning. Oh, that distillery produced that Oh, that's where you know, you know, stilts or whatever. And then you start moving on to other things and other tastes. 21:29 You know, as I said, Armagnac has become an inexplicably kind of big amongst, you know, upper echelon geeks. You know, it's just fun. I do drink neat whiskey almost every single night. I'm not, you know, reaching for other stuff every single night, but I like to learn 21:47 other things. 21:50 You know, I drink a lot of rum rums a very weird category as I'm sure if you've read ROM curious. You might know Yeah. 22:00 down around here somewhere. Yeah, yeah. 22:03 A lot of cool things in ROM. You know, I'm Mike my quarantine drink of choice has actually been gin cocktails, which are fun. Yeah, I will say that I am a big fan of gin cocktails. It's just something that is it's light refreshing guys. Actually gimlet is like my number one. That's what I always reach for. That's actually my my wife and his official cocktail of quarantine the gimlet. See, we can hang out. It's like It's like Gatorade and cocktail form. And I'll tell you 22:34 and shout out to new riff. They've got a barrel aged gin, and that's what I've been drinking and it really is. Yes, it's fantastic with it. I have a bottle of that over there. I like their gin, but I've never thought to use a barrel aged and am I gimlet? Alright, tomorrow. Here you go. We're creating new traditions around here already. Yeah. So no, I you know, I'm just a fan of everything except vodka actually, but I will write about it. 22:57 You know if if something's interesting, I want 23:00 Drink it if something's tasty, I want to eat it. If something's good to read, I want to read it. You know, there's lots of things in this world I don't just don't understand people that you know, kind of get stuck in their lanes and don't try to enjoy and learn as much as they can about everything. It's It's fun to learn things. I mean, that's kind of the most fun thing is, you know, I'm trying like everyone else. I'm also getting into arm and Yak and it's fun to start at zero. And you know, after a year ago, I kind of know a little about Armenia. I could I could tell someone about that. Oh, I know a little bit about mezcal. I don't know a lot about mezcal, you know, that article you're referencing, we did a blind tasting with two bonafide experts. And, you know, I think I have a pretty good palate. So I can say what I think is good and bad, but I can't tell you about you know, the varietals of a golf a or you know why this one tastes like this or where this grew or you know, the different ways of fermentation but they knew all that, you know, and it's inspiring to think, wow, I could learn all that, you know, bourbon kind of really only has one way to make it 24:00 mezcal is infinite. You know, rum has so many. Just lots of stuff to learn and so little time, except now when we're all sitting home. 24:10 So you're, you're like a leech of information is that what it comes down to? Because you're able to kind of just talk to a lot of these people that are really, really know it alls in this world and just kind of really take their story and harness it and develop something that is appealing to a visual reader. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'll never convince my parents that the most fun thing about writing about alcohol is is actually getting free education is not free booze, but, you know, it's, it's really great. You know, some of my story ideas are literally like, you know, I'd like to know a little bit more about that. And, you know, it's like a con game, I can reach out to the most important person on the topic, and they're going to talk to me if you're an average off the street, and you email the most important, you know, Armagnac maker Gen distiller and said, Can I talk to you for an hour they'd be like, 25:00 know why, but you know, they'll move mountains to talk to me just because I will write about them. So, you know, it's it's not just a way to pay the bills. It's not just a way to get free drinks. It's, it's, it's a free education on topics that interest me and you know, after over a decade of this stuff, I still have a passion for it all. So when we get back to like a whiskey article, is there one that you've written over the years that you look back and you think like, man, I loved writing that one like was, you know, was it the person? Was it the? Was it the whiskey? Like, what was it that that really like, drove you for that article? You know, my favorite articles are kind of goofy or dumber, less prestigious ones. I mean, I will admit, like the one you did with, what was it? Janae Yeah. Janae. And she made that ridiculous, old fashioned way back in the day that went viral. And you kind of said like, all right, where's she now sort of thing? Yeah, I mean, those are my favorite to write. 26:01 You know, I can I can write a, you know, 26:04 interview with a distiller or an article on how a whiskey is made, you know, in my sleep but you know, the kind of weird ones one of my favorite articles I wrote for ponch probably four or five years ago was the history of when it became very trendy in New York and Miami for bars have beds in them literal beds in them. 26:23 And those stories are always very hard to report. You know, if you if you want to write a story about you know, a distillery today, it's very easy to get these people on the phone to talk to you, they'll talk to you all day. But if you you know, I wrote a history of of foam parties a few weeks ago for fine pair, How the hell do you find a guy in the 90s who decided you know, we should blast foam into these a booth in nightclubs. It's not easy. 26:49 And it's, it's, you know, I could write a lot easier stories I could write, you know, what we call listicles Top 10 whiskies and, and, you know, get paid And work for an hour but you know, I just thought 27:00 have a passion for finding these really stupid, weirdo stories and bringing them to you. I just had flashbacks of like Panama City Beach, Florida next spring break. It's just what happened right there. 27:15 I can't wait to read that article and it comes out. So there's nothing that you'd mentioned right there about like, top 10 lists. And it seems like that is that seems to be a driver for a lot of lot of articles. It seems that it I mean, it could be articles, it could be YouTube videos, it's anything anything as a top whatever. It just drives people to it. I mean, do you have a like a love hate relationship with it? 27:40 Yeah, I mean, you know, every time uh, you know, 27:45 Esquire, GQ, you know, best whiskeys to drink right now. 10 best, whatever lists come out, you know, I see the Facebook comments I'm not seeing articles written by me articles written by anyone. And people resume their, you know, the, the brand paid for them or whatnot. 28:01 It's it's not that insidious but you know it's it's kind of like an ecosystem. You know, the brand hires a publicist and pays them, the publicist and bottles to a writer. The writer drinks the bottle, the writer wants to keep the publicist happy. The publishing company asked for a top 10 whiskies list. They publish the last 10 whiskies the last 10 publicists they like sent to them, rinse repeat, so I don't really like that stuff. 28:27 publicists probably hate me more than most writers in New York because, you know, kind of 28:32 bitchy and I don't play those games. But you know, every writer on planet earth writes listicles whether it's David wonder richer, you know, whoever, you know, they pay the bills. They have good SEO. Everyone argues about them. It doesn't matter what website it is. If you write the top 10 whiskeys right now it'll do pretty well for the day. I try to write those as little as possible. They do not interest me 28:59 if I'm doing 29:00 Those kind of lists I tried to make them interesting. I did a 29:04 about every year or two, I try to pick the best whiskey in every state for Esquire. 29:10 That'll keep you busy drinking. Yeah, it's tough. It's tough. And you know, people get furious. That's not North Dakota's best whiskey house as this guy ever tasted, blah, blah, blah. The answer is probably no, I've tasted maybe one or two Caesar, but I'm trying my damnedest unlike a lot of writers who are listening, you know, but as I said, the last 10 whiskies they've gotten the mail. 29:33 But, you know, it can be very tough to be thoughtful in this industry. When a lot of 29:42 you know guys like me, or girls like me that get paid to do it can kind of just phone it in, you know, the amateurs actually put more work in it because they're doing it for a passion not to make money. So you know, whisky blogs are some of the best smartest out there. 29:59 Whereas 30:00 You know, a lot of professional websites and magazines, it was just, you know, Hey, could you write this over the next hour? Well, I don't know anything about vodka. Okay, well, right, it's 30:09 go to the store, get five bottles, review it come up with a list. Yeah. I mean, is that is that something that in the writing world, I mean, I guess I can kind of even picture it my own world where it very beginning of my career, like I was gung ho, and I was trying to cut my teeth doing grunt work and trying to, you know, doing a lot of like, like, really hard kind of it stuff and like working insane kind of hours. And then at some point, you're just like, Okay, give it up. I'll focus on what I'm good at. And then, you know, kind of just like, let the professionalism take off from there. I guess in like, the growth pattern of what a writer is like is does it kind of have that same sort of trajectory or path in regards of, you know, you start off early, as you kind of mentioned as an amateur trying to like write a top 10 list and then you're like, Okay, I'm done with that, like, I'm going to try to find some more 31:00 Interesting. Well, I mean, food and drink writings unlike any other, you know, we're so close to the subjects, you know, we have friendship with bartenders and distillers and whatnot. 31:15 And if we weren't doing it, we'd still you know, drink these things and go to these bars. I don't think anyone would, you know, hang out with politicians if they weren't a political reporter. You know, and there's, you know, the famous thing that just sports writers hate sports by the time they've been a sports writer so long. 31:33 Yeah, you know, when you're early on trying to break into writing, and it's probably different now. 31:38 Or maybe it's even tougher now. You'll take anything someone gives you it just seems like so hard to get paid a literal dollar to write something. So it's less early on for a lot of these writers and I noticed it amongst younger younger writers right now about finding your voice and trying to do in anything interesting. 32:00 And more letting you know the site's dictate you. And the funny thing is, if you came to these sites as a, or magazines or newspapers as a 22 year old with these outlandish ideas with these crazy ideas with these ideas that no one else is writing, you probably have a better chance of selling it, you'd probably have a better chance of making good money 32:21 and it took me a while to figure that out. 32:25 figure out exactly like Oh, you're gonna pay me more I'm gonna go over this way. Yeah, wait, I'm gonna give Redbird a shout out. Yeah, go for it. David's a good friend of the show. So he's an adult and I can see you've got all you got a lot of Turkey breaks over. Okay, yeah. wrestle wrestle the muscle there. so fantastic. So I guess another question is, is that you know, once you start getting into this world, and yet, I can always understand as a writer, you have to be conscious of, you know, where the money's coming from. And so that's what you focus on. But is there something about whiskey that keeps you intrigued or keeps you kind of always tied to it? 33:01 We're like, What is it? What is it about whiskey or bourbon that like keeps you wanting to come back for more? Well, the one thing I don't write a lot about is mine. And I never really understood why I don't dislike wine. I'm not a connoisseur. And then I realized and I said to my 33:18 editor, puncture Italia, I just don't find wine funny. But whiskey is so funny. And if you've read a lot of my stuff, it's about you know, secondary markets. It's about Turkey dues. It's about you know, California gold. It's about infinity bottles. It's about, you know, geeks lining up at jack rose, even though you know, there's a pandemic, you know, there's just so many funny characters. The distillers aren't necessarily funny character characters, but they're not necessarily funny characters. But the collectors the the people that drink it and pursue it and and the people that listen to podcasts about it. They're just funny characters. 34:00 Probably a funny character to look, I live in a 1200 square foot apartment with two children and I got an entire room of whiskey. That's, that's, that's not probably a good use space. 34:12 But um, yeah, it just infinitely cracks me up to to go on the internet every day and just see what whiskey geeks are talking about doing and drinking and trading and arguing about meaning and all that stuff. And maybe one day it won't, but it's really funny to me. And, you know, if you're writing a boot story, and there's not something funny about it, it just doesn't interest me that much. As Sure. There are some of the good memes that come out of whiskey and come out of bourbon, especially, you know, even those secondary markets where people get butthurt. And then you've got the the other groups where there's people that basically have court hearings about you know, stuff like that. I'm kind of like, what at what other point would people just have this like fake court system over a transaction of bourbon that happened on the black market, like 35:00 It's it's comical. Yeah, I mean, you know, my like, career like, ethos has been trying to explain this weird world to like normal human beings like no you you first of all you have to know like 10,000 acronyms. 35:15 Yep. Yeah, I always I always thought that there'd be like a good t shirt like just full of acronyms like everywhere. You have to have like a stock market ticker in your head. What? Happy 23 Pv w 23 is now worth 19,000 You idiot. Then you just have to I mean, you have to know like if I don't pay attention for a week I come back and I'm I'm I'm messaging my friend Derek who's still locked in on it. Like what the hell is going on with this? Is that a real thing? You know? Is this is this will it box club a real thing? And you know, that was I tell you what, that's been one of the greatest recent ones when it's you can just tell the the oh geez versus the new people that are into it. They're like, Where's the signup button? I don't see it. Yeah, well, that's you know, that's 36:00 Also really funny to see you know, it drives me nuts because you know even though I said you know from the get go I was trying very good stuff I still you know, paid my dues and spent money on regular Maker's Mark and odd and stuff and these guys who were you know not even drinkers last week or you know, thinking they can just go from like nothing to balling out with you know George t stag or whatnot, it's like you know, slow down 36:28 train your palate start with 80 proof let's, let's get you up to 36:33 this level. I will say that is is like one of the corner cuts that you are, you know, corners that you can cut here in the in the whiskey world is that if you come with a big enough checkbook, you could have one of the best collections that are out there in bourbon, you know, because it's still, you know, especially in regards of what scotch prices and everything like that our whiskey prices even Pappy 2318 1900 dollars a bottle. That's that's a drop in the bucket for what some scotches go for so 37:00 If you come with a big enough checkbook, you could have one of the most insane bourbon collections that are out there just by buying directly off the secondary. Yeah, that's why it cracks me up you know? 37:10 Every so often there's yeah well constantly there's How do I get Pappy post have money. I mean, it's not hard. 37:17 You know, my friend of mine, Alex Bachman, he, I think he still does he used to 37:24 fill bars with with with spirits that was his job to find, you know, a new bar opens and they want the you know, most sick list he'd fill him up and you know, everyone Oh, we got the full Pappy collection. We'll just give him $10,000 and he can do that. It's not very hard. What's hard is finding 1960s tomorrow. What's hard is finding you know, 1950 stencil well, or what's hard is finding, you know, obscure scotches you've never heard of, or Japanese releases of, you know, whatever. That's hard buying, you know, Van Winkle or B tech that comes out every single year. You just need market rates. 38:00 Money. And again, it's not that much. You're right. I know you've written on the secondary market, but I want to kind of get your idea of like, Where is your stance on it in regards of how it was taking down or how it was kind of like ripped out? Like, was it a good thing for distilleries? Is it bad for the overall ecosystem of bourbon? Like, what's your what's your take on that? 38:18 Well, you know, I used to say, I was a free market capitalist. Now I'm stuck in a pandemic. 38:26 You know, you don't really see the secondary market for new scotch. And why is that? It's because it's priced correctly. 38:35 A lot of bourbon is not priced correctly by the distilleries. 38:41 Because they want to be the good guys who, you know 38:44 20 years ago, there was no such thing as bourbon that cost more than $50. And you know, Blanton's you know, in the 90s didn't sell for $30. So they remember that time, and they remember that time is bourbon being in every man's drink. And so 39:00 They don't want to charge what it should cost. 39:05 And, you know, I'm very friendly with Buffalo Trace, but I don't think you know, releasing their press release every single year and saying MSRP, Pappy 15 $80 or whatever it is, I don't know what it is right now. I don't think that makes him look like a good guy. It just makes everyone else fight over what the accurate prices. 39:26 So I don't begrudge anyone for charging what they charge. I don't begrudge anyone for paying what they pay. 39:33 And I think it's kind of ridiculous that the distilleries get mad at so called gouging. Well, they should price it what its price because no one's bought an $80. Pappy and, you know, a million years unless they live in a control state I suppose and won a lottery, which is likewise absurd. These places. These places would need lotteries if it was priced correctly. 39:56 So now, you know, I think that the the online Secretary 40:00 The market does the job that the distilleries didn't do and that everyone's mad at the liquor stores for trying to do. 40:08 Do you think that this is also a play by some of the distilleries to say, well, 40:15 let's look at the long game here. Let's not try to make a quick buck off of it and price it at the market instead. And you and you know that you've seen pretty much every distilleries putting in multimillion dollar expansions and everything and so they're betting on this on the long term. And it's it's the Amazon model, right? It's it's like let's let's do, you know, massive scale and not try to do you know, just short bursts of high volume? Yeah, you know, that that's true, and that's, that's a fine way to work. You know, how many total van winkles are released a year 80 to 100,000 compared to how many Buffalo Trace Eagle rare whatever. So you know, how much of a moneymaker is it for them, whether it's 41:00 Priced correctly or priced at whatever they want to call the MSRP. Yeah, I think that's a fine strategy and I guess honestly, Buffalo Trace is maybe the only distillery that has to deal with that for roses one release a year old forester one release a year, you know, all these places with one release here. 41:21 have to figure out what it what it should cost. So, you know, if that's what they want to do, I think that's fine. It feels a little hypocritical for them to price it at, you know, a very low MSRP and then get mad at people for pricing. It is the correct one. I likewise think it's silly for 41:40 liquor stores, though to you know, proudly put up their George t stag for $900. It's like, you know, I think you have better goodwill. If you sold it to your best customer for $90. I think you'd have better goodwill if you figured out a way to get it to a true lover for $90. Instead of making that extra three or $400. 42:00 But you know, I people, 42:03 economist aren't necessarily opening liquor stores. So 42:07 that's, that's for sure. Everyone's trying to figure out what works best for them and and pays the bills. Well I think the moral of the story there is that every other distillery needs to come out more special releases. Because if you do that, then they just keep following that same exact trail, every release should be a special release, right? Absolutely. Every bottle of special bottle. 42:30 And so I'm gonna just kind of like go back to like one of your stories real quick, because you had mentioned the California Gold stuff. And I know the person that makes that he's a good friend of mine. And I know that when you write stuff, and whether it be about secondary, whether it be about something like that, you might get a lot of blowback catch a lot of flack online, like have you ever like felt like Oh God, like people are really attacking me over something like this? Yeah, I mean, you know, 43:00 If you're a writer on the internet, you get called an idiot everyday your life. 43:05 But if you feel like you're exposing Fight Club or something, well, you know, it's tough because you know, I'm both a part of the hobby, I enjoy drinking these things. And I don't want to ruin the hobby, but I'm also looking for interesting stories. And after writing these stories for years, it's impossible to ruin the hobby. California gold was again, something I drink at my friend Derek's house. 43:28 And for a year or two, I was like, you got to get me in touch with our friend. 43:36 And, you know, he's he didn't want he didn't want press and then for whatever day when he said, Okay, I'll talk to you. 43:44 And 43:46 my daughter was a newborn then and it was about the worst behave she's ever been. And I was conducting this really tough score of an interview while she was just losing her shit. And yet, it did very well and 44:00 Now people I see a story came out and 44:04 can't even remember a literal magazine citing California Gold the other day and it didn't even it acted like everyone knew what that was. It was very weird, but I've become friends with Mr. California gold. 44:17 We talk occasionally. He's always got interesting takes on things. And I think it's great even though most of the commenters under Facebook will say it's not that good. 44:28 Well, most of the commenters are probably the ones that never actually had a chance to try it. And that's what it comes down. Yeah. So joke's on you with that one. 44:37 Whiskey. Awesome. So, oh, yes, yes. Make sure you're talking about hacking whiskey real quick. I want to give you a plug for that. Sorry for the shameless plug. No, at least through this is actually a perfect book for this time. came out in 2008 18. has a lot of my funny stories like California Gold, infinity bottles, I think I think I'm the first person read about infinity bottles. Maybe the second I don't know. 44:59 But it's 45:00 Really funny geeky stories plus experiments you can do from home blends. 45:08 Like you know, Travis hills. 45:11 The four roses thing Yeah, barrel proof yellow label. Yeah, really fun. you acquire every single four roses and make a barrel proof yellow label. And we did that and he also tried to do creating his own Moray mirages or marriages or whatever they're called, looking all the small batch limited edition selects and then actually trying to go and find those exact age ranges and try to do the race and ages and stuff. Yeah, I wrote about Yeah, I wrote a punch article about that too. 45:41 Where Blake mentions that he likes to Vitamix his blends because he puts them together and people were furious about that. 45:47 But yeah, there's fun experiments fat washing which is infusing you know, meats and butters and stuff into whiskey for cocktail, smoking cocktails. 45:57 Making foods out of whiskey. It's it's a very fun book. If you're 46:00 stuck inside with nothing to do except a lot of whiskey and how am I going to use this for everything I'm going to do for the next 90 days? A lot of fun experiments. There you go find it on Amazon I'm guessing Yes. Like everything else and they're still delivering so you don't have an excuse go by hacking with order it right now. It'll be there tomorrow. Well, you know, Aaron, I want to know like I said, this is a really good opportunity to kind of catch up talk about more I guess more about you your writing career and as well as just talk about whiskey in general, and kind of get an update on what's happening instead in New York. So it's been a pleasure getting to talk to you this time. It was fun. We didn't have any kids run in and yell at me. 46:40 Technically, I could hurt I hurt I hurt him a little bit the background so yeah, I mean, we'll we'll clean it a little bit and post but yeah, it turned out I think the biggest technical difficulties my quarantine beard. 46:53 are you growing it out until you until you can walk outside and and shake hands with somebody again? Or until my wife divorces me? 47:01 Whichever one comes first. No a day for whichever one comes first. There you go keep that razor handy though. Yeah. 47:10 Well Aaron, that was awesome talking to you. If anybody like wants to get in contact you or wants to, you know follow you on social media how they gonna do that? 47:20 If they want to yell offensive things at me Twitter's fine at Aaron Goldfarb, 47:25 also at Aaron Goldfarb and Instagram. 47:29 And you can probably figure out my email address too if you want to send me crazy tips about blends you're making or weirdo stuff going on in the secondary market that I can turn into a story and get everyone mad at me for ruining bourbon. I guess it's another thing is like, do you actually search Instagram to be like, Oh, that's interesting. Like I could write an article about that. Like, is that are there ideas that pop up like that? Yeah, like like most human beings on planet earth when I have nothing to do, I'm looking down at my phone looking at Instagram, not necessarily whiskey stores. 48:00 But there's just so many bottles out there and things so quickly become hot. You're like why is this cool guy making a big deal about something that what is this? 48:13 And I usually as Derek I say what is it? 48:17 You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you see weird stuff on Instagram and you file it away I usually screenshot it 48:25 to pay attention to it because I'm usually looking at Instagram late at night after a few and the next day go Is that something and you know if you see it happen a few more times. Okay, now you got a trend. Let's follow this. See what's going on. But yeah, yeah, that's a good place to find stories. See if you can get inspiration from anywhere then. Anywhere just when you're in the house, the only place you can get inspiration from is your phone. 48:46 Awesome. So Aaron, thank you again for coming on the show is a pleasure to have you. Make sure you go you follow Aaron on other social media channels. You can follow bourbon pursuit as well. And we'll see you next week. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

On this episode, we discuss two topics that are top of mind. First, is the Coronavirus and how it's impacting the bourbon industry. Then we take a look at the hype and hysteria that surrounds Blanton's. We dive into the recent news of Blanton's Gold making its way to the US and if we think $120 SRP is a deal you should jump on. You will hear a new voice for a few minutes and that is Aaron Goldfarb. You may have seen his work on various publications around the web. He wasn’t able to stay on due to some technical difficulties, but we hope to have him on again soon. Show Partners: The University of Louisville has an online Distilled Spirits Business Certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry. Learn more at uofl.me/bourbonpursuit. Barrell Craft Spirits has a national single barrel program. Ask your local retailer or bourbon club about selecting your own private barrel. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: Barrel Shortage: https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-there-a-bourbon-barrel-shortage-on-the-horizon This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about taxes. What are distilleries doing for coronavirus? History of Blanton's. How did Blanton's become so popular? Will limiting the purchases of allocated items work? Why don't distilleries use technology to manage this problem? Blanton's Gold coming to the US. Is it because of tariffs? Are they taking away from the European allocation? How can you make more product with only one warehouse? Will quality suffer with increased production? What other companies have a similar strategy to Blanton's? What do you think of the price point? Will Straight from the Barrel ever come to the U.S.? Thanks to Blake from bourbonr.com, Jordan from BreakingBourbon.com , Brian from sippncorn.com, and Aaron Goldfarb for joining. 0:00 Have you ever thought about a career in the whiskey industry? I'm not talking about being the next master distiller. But if you want a leg up on the competition, you need to take a look at the distilled spirits business certificate from the University of Louisville. This six course program will prepare you for the business side of the spirits industry like finance, marketing and operations. This is 100% online, meaning that you can access the classes at anytime, anywhere. So what are you waiting for? all that's required is a bachelor's degree, go to U of l.me. Slash bourbon pursuit. 0:35 So if you think back in the 1980s it was a bleak period for bourbon. 0:39 Thanks, thanks, Ryan. 0:43 Is poppin bottles they don't their shit what's going on around here? I'm listening really. I thought it was a good timing. 1:01 This is Episode 245 of bourbon pursuit. I'm one of your hosts Kenny. We've got a lot of news to cover. So let's hit it. Cova 19 are the corona virus is hitting everyone extremely hard. Now, I'm not sure why people are stocking up on toilet paper like they don't plan on leaving the bathroom anytime soon. But I'm sure most of us have enough bourbon to get us through this time. At this point, every major distillery has shut down tours. So if you had plans to visit the bourbon trail, please make sure you do your research before coming to see what is and what is not open. likely it's going to be nothing because even at this time, all bars and restaurants in the city of Louisville are admitted to shut down in person patrons. And in more coronavirus news. We've talked about this before about one of the benefits of having a state run liquor is that the product is always sold at SRP. Well, who could have predicted this but Pennsylvania one of those states where all spirits are government sanctioned and controlled have closed 2:00 All liquor stores in the state in definitely on Tuesday this past week. This also includes all online orders. So that means the entire state of Pennsylvania has literally zero access to bourbon. I guess after all this time we call them bourbon bunkers for a reason. 2:17 In a shocking vote, a bill is passed by the House licensing and occupations committee that allows Kentucky residents to get alcohol shipped to their door, but get this directly from the producer and wait for it without going through a distributor or retailer. This is a huge modernization and reform that could lead to a larger domino effect across the nation. Now this bill would require alcohol shipments meet very clearly labeled and an ID check and signature upon delivery. The producer would still have to pay the excise tax on all inbound shipments coming to Kentucky. However, retailers testified in front of the committee to express concerns about how the bill would negatively impact their businesses because people would be able to 3:00 for alcohol from their homes, and have it shipped to their door instead of going to the local retailer. In my head, I'm thinking, Well, yeah, that's kind of the whole point, right? However, that didn't matter. And now this amended House Bill 415 is going to the full house. We're going to keep you updated as this progresses. Is there a barrel shortage on the horizon? Well, Lou Bryson over the Daily Beast wrote an article where he interviews everyone from Cooper's to loggers and Miller's themselves. The loggers fear a shortage of white oak while the Cooper's really don't. Wood scientists see wetter conditions now than they have in previous years. And the increased deer populations actually eating acorns, which means less trees, and at this time, there's no plan to actually manage oak populations so it could lead to more maple and pure white oaks. However, independent Steve company says that they are coming off to rainy years where prices for logs were high, but now they see plenty of oak across 20 different states. Brown Forman cooperage says that they see more white oak now. 4:00 They have in the past 40 years, and the industry is doing better sustainability by harvesting oak at the right time to allow newer growth to form loosens up the pose talking about the coop urges only using about 2% of the hardwood industry. But he reflected upon his time spent with the logger. And he said that there is a lot of oak out there, but it's actually impossible to mill it because there's no Mills around and it's hard to get it out of the forest as well. So bourbon is gonna continue to be produced, but we'll have to see what the future entails. For the barrels themselves. You can read this story over the daily beast with the link in our show notes. Can bourbon be made in US territories like Puerto Rico and Guam? Well, Josh Peters over at the whiskey jug took this question to the TTB regulations division to see if it actually still would be legally called bourbon. Sure enough, they confirmed it that bourbon whiskey can be produced in Puerto Rico and Guam with reference to 27 CFR five dot 11 where the USA is defined 5:00 As the United States, the several states and territories and the District of Columbia, and the term state includes a territory and the District of Columbia, and the term territory means the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. So there you have it. 5:15 Booker's bourbon batch 2020 dash one also known as Granny's batch will be released at 63.2% ABV or 126.4 proof. It is named after the sixth generation master distiller Booker knows mom, Margaret beam note. Although she never worked in the bourbon business herself, she certainly played an important role in keeping the bourbon family tradition alive, carrying the legacy on from the fifth to the sixth generation. She was very close with her oldest son Booker, who was instrumental in getting him his first job at the distillery where he would eventually go to become the master distiller. This bourbon is be released at six years, four months and 21 days in age. It would be available sometime around this month for around $90 for real 6:00 is setting aside six barrels to be chosen for and exclusively sold to the four roses mellow moments members. mellow moments is a special club organized by four roses that allows members of the general public to be a part of special gatherings, tastings. And you can stay up to date on for roses news. Plus get some cool trinkets sent in the mail every once in a while. new members can apply at select times during the year when the window opens, and the window to join when that membership does open is only for a handful of minutes so you better at quick. You can see their website for more details at mellow moments club.com. Now some pursuit series news episodes 22 and 23 are now available on sale box comm so if you're looking to get some killer bourbon shipped to your door during this time, head on over there and get stocked up. Episode 23 I'm super excited about because it's our oldest release ever at 15 years old. 6:57 Now today's show, we talk about two things 7:00 Things that are top of mind. First, it's that Corona virus, we had to talk about it. But we decided to change topics up a little bit because you've been hearing all about it on the news. So we got to kind of break away from it. And what are the bourbon is out there that can be just as argumentative. It's got to be bland. So we take the whole entire episode and talk about it. We take a look at the hype and the hysteria that surrounds it. we dive into the recent news of Blanton's gold making its way to the US and it do we think of $120 SRP, there's a deal that you should be jumping on. You're also going to hear a new voice for a few minutes when we start this. And that's Aaron Goldfarb. Now, you may have seen his work on various publications around the web, but due to some technical difficulties, he wasn't able to stay on for the entire podcast, but we hope to have him on again once in the future. All right, it's show time. Here's Joe from barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred minich, with above the char, and remember, Go wash your hands. 7:58 Hey everyone, Joe here again. 8:00 I know I talk a lot about blending here. But we also have a national single barrel program, ask you a local retailer or bourbon club about selecting your own private barrel. Find out more at barrel bourbon calm. 8:12 I'm Fred MiniK. And this is above the char, death and taxes. So those are the two things that we are guaranteed in life to have to do taxes. April 15 comes around and every year I'm like son of beep, beep beep, had a night not remember to put all this together. And every year from a business perspective, I tell myself, I'm going to do a better job of keeping my books. And I never do. I never do I just focus on what I do. And then toward the end of the year, I rush and do all my books and well, I'm a procrastinator, if you will when it comes to the accounting side of my world. I need to get better at it. I will. But you know what, at least I don't have to pay 60 to 80% 9:00 Have taxes on everything that I do. And that, my friends is what Kentucky distillers have to pay about 60% of every bottle of bourbon that you buy, if you tally up all of the 60% of that goes to taxes. What's interesting about this is that Kentucky bourbon gets taxed six to six different times off the still in the barrel in the case in the bottom, and then the consumers pay a sales tax and in Kentucky, they have to pay a wholesale tax as well. So you have all these different taxes that they have to pay, that leads to leads to basically more more and more money that has to go to the government just for them to produce whiskey. Now, here's what's messed really, really messed up is that the distillers don't mind paying the taxes necessarily. They actually look at it as like hey, you know what? 10:00 This is not necessarily a bad thing. All that money a lot of that money gets earmarked to go to roads and schools of Kentucky. So like in Anderson County, you drive through there, and you see the nice roads and schools. Those were basically built by wild turkey and for roses, which puts a lot of money into that government infrastructure. Also Kentucky bourbon, the taxes are specifically earmarked for education. I think a couple years ago, when when things started, you know riling up with the teachers here, it became public that bourbon pumped $30 million into the education system. So I've always said like, if you want to, if you want to improve the Kentucky education system, buy more Kentucky bourbon. In fact, when you buy Kentucky bourbon no matter where you are, you are actually helping the roads, the schools, the children, the teachers, you're helping our entire state. So thank you 11:00 Because we have pretty nice roads out in the rural areas because people buy a lot of bourbon. But here's another fun fact, it wasn't until 2011 that the distillers were even allowed to write off their, the fact that they were paying these taxes, they would have to wait too until they bottled it and put it in the market before they could write off the expense of the the out of alarm tax that they were facing. So American whiskey has all these weird, awkward tax laws, that every time I start complaining about having to do taxes or do my books, I kind of look at myself in the mirror and say, Well, at least I'm not a distiller. So remember that this year, as you're going to put your taxes together, however you do it. At least you're not having to do 60 to 80% on the taxes and you get to write everything off when it's time to write it off. And that's this week's above 12:00 The char Hey, if you have an idea for above the char hit me up on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, until next week, cheers 12:11 Welcome back to another episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon Kinney and Fred here tonight people's champ isn't able to make it because of Corona virus things that are happening. So we'll go ahead and, you know, we'll send our best wishes to Ryan, he doesn't have a Corona virus. I don't want to make that make that clear. The way I said that probably sounded like really dire. No, he's actually trying to do some things for his for his job and set up daycare because we've got a lot of things happening where schools can be shut down for the next few weeks here in Kentucky. So he's got to make sure that he's taking care of his employees tonight. So we're gonna miss Ryan tonight, but we will go on without him. So before we kind of introduce everybody here, I kind of want to talk to Fred Are you are you Doomsday prepared? You guys got enough bourbon and toilet paper to get you through for the next month? Well, you know, 13:00 Like today was you know, I wasn't supposed to be on today because I'm supposed to be in San Francisco for the competition but last minute 13:08 you know we had a scare ourselves and my wife she's the on the committee for like getting the Louisville VA hospital prepared for the coronavirus. So we've been getting prepared I think for the last three months in fact, we we thought there's a tornado coming. Yeah, there might be a tornado coming. So we had a little tornado drill with a family. We all went down to the basement and I was really proud. We brought chips and toilet paper and you know, the baby had something to play with. So we got this. You Baby could play with toilet paper too. Well, he went he went down there and he went straight for the bourbon. I'm like, this is my kid. 13:48 It's in the DNA. Yeah. Alright, so let's go ahead. Let's go around the horn real quick. And but first before we hit some of our regulars, I want to introduce somebody that's new to the podcast and we have a special 14:00 And tonight so Aaron Goldfarb, who you will have probably seen from a lot of articles out there online. So Aaron, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me even though I don't know how to use a computer apparently so 14:14 it's okay. Well let it slide this time. We'll we'll do some tech support next time when you do calling a pinch hitter here. Absolutely. So just kind of give everybody a quick recap or kind of summary of like, who you are, where you write and everything like that. Yeah, I'm a, you know, accidentally fell into becoming a blues writer. I write a lot of whiskey articles, but I write cocktail articles, beer articles and food articles for places like Esquire punch, fine pair whiskey advocate, bourbon, plus my favorite place to write. 14:48 I've written a few books to hacking whiskey, most notably for your audience. Gather around cocktails was my most recent book and 14:57 just learned that my kid has been 15:00 next two weeks off school. So I think this is the end of my writing career for a while, at least. 15:05 We're all trying to set up some sort of daycares at home or, I don't know, maybe we should just like go out and like, buy the like 5000 piece puzzles off of Amazon and be like, here you go. This is your next two weeks. Exactly. 15:18 Alright, so, Blake, how you doing tonight? Doing well? Yeah, always good to be back. Just straight into my intro. I feel like we're kind of changing things up. So, you know, do I give the regular Hey, I'm Blake from bourbon or do I just talk about coronavirus or, I mean, you can talk about what's happened in your area. I mean, it's ya know, our craziness happening. No, it's well, I had the flu last week. So I feel like I was out and wasn't the corona virus was just the flu. So we're not we're not born. Yeah, yeah, I got tested. I got tested. I tested positive for the flu. So I decided, I guess I didn't test negative for Corona. But there's been no cases in Florida that I'm aware of. But no, it's just it's crazy. I mean, 16:00 The TPC, that's a huge thing in this area. And so they actually announced today that they're suspending all all fans from the tournament. And you know, this golf tournament will bring in over 100,000 people to come and watch it. So it was pretty disappointing. You know, I was supposed to be 16:21 I was supposed to be going out to a tournament with my son tomorrow. So that's a little disappointing. And it's spring break for us. And as you can see, my daughter's like in the background. So they're talking about extending spring break here as well. 16:39 But yeah, yeah, this should be interesting. I don't know. I'm, I'm one who, I just think you've got like a 1% chance of actually hitting and being devastated. So I'm like, I'll just be unprepared and 99% of the time, I'd be correct. So it's just that 1% gets me But no, so 17:00 lost interest for the longest episode we're about to get into. 17:04 You're right on point there. So So Jordan, what's happening? You're part of the world. Well, the Quran hasn't been declared so Western Eastern pa right. There's a bunch of cases nothing in Pittsburgh. So Pittsburgh's I wouldn't say naive, but like right around today was the first time a little bit of unease and unsettledness kind of kicked in. Right? And now that the NHL canceled the penguins, right, people are super upset. But I'm sure we'll be seeing cases pop up super soon. I don't really even know if they're testing or if they have test kits here in Pittsburgh yet so I'm sure there's cases that we don't know about. So I don't know. Thankfully, it's a state run liquor system. So there's tons of tons of bottles still on the shelves. I think people want to buy that one. But it's there slowly. And Brian in our part of the world Yeah, you're part of the world. Thanks for having me again, Brian with sipping corn Find me a bourbon justice calm. And I my only effect so far is tonight. Instead of doing this, I was going to be 18:00 Drinking an Evan Williams 23 year old old fish Gen 15 in the in the 101 12 year Evan Williams with a client and client had travel restrictions and wasn't supposed to go anywhere and so got my thing cancelled so now it's personal because it kept me from ever. But other than that, it's it's hasn't really affected me. I've got my daughter home from Dayton. They kick them out early. They won't be going back 18:28 to just I've got my bourbon Splott I'll be alright. And at one point for Aaron Aaron, I have to tell you this before I forget I tried to do from hacking whiskey the the bacon infused bourbon. It was probably the biggest flop that I have ever created in my life. I will need to talk offline. I need to know the secret because theoretically, everything about that I should just love and I ruined both urban and bacon doing. That's funny. I always tell people it sounds harder to do. 19:00 Fat washing that it is and it's almost impossible to screw up. But I guess 19:06 I've actually had a very similar experience, Brian, so I have a few minutes. You don't you want to slowly render the bacon made the mistake of like, crispy and I think just the brightness came through so that's what I yeah, yeah. Can't get black. Yeah, absolutely no Okay, good bacon pursuit come and say, 19:29 Hey, I'd go for I'd listen to that it sounds delicious peppercorn all over. So Fred, you've been kind of close to this, because I know at least with the corona stuff, you've been actually reaching out for distilleries kind of give us the latest on what's been happening with what the Steelers are doing for preparing for this? Well, I mean, you ask them personally, a lot of them will say it's all bullshit. And then when it comes to like a corporate message, they'll come out and say, 19:56 well, we're closing visitations starting 20:00 Monday so beam has closed visitations for you know Maker's Mark and the other properties. Starting on Monday, 20:11 brown Forman announced the closures of their Kentucky facilities for visitations on Sunday. And jack daniels on Monday. New rep has made similar announcements I have not heard yet back from heaven Hill. I've reached out to them a couple times. I've not heard back from them yet. Interestingly, places like the smaller distillers seem to be the ones that are kind of like, you know what, we're still doing tours like NB Rolen 20:40 in Western Kentucky was very proud to say that, you know what, we're still doing this. And, you know, so a lot of them have these kinds of plans in place, or for the visitor side, and they're all continuing production. I think production is like I think that's one of the 21:00 The hardest questions answers like what if one of the workers gets test test positive? what's what's the protocol? They're like? I mean, I really don't know what the manufacturing protocol is for when you have a pandemic and someone tests positive for something that gets out into the market. You know, do you have a recall? I mean, 21:19 I mean, those are the kinds of questions that they have to be taking. But at the same time, the Kentucky distillers association is meeting with the governor's office who has been meeting with the vice president. So I mean, we're like three degrees away from, you know, the highest office in the land here, when it comes to what can affect the Kentucky distilleries. So I'm not a I'm not an expert. And I'm not going to claim to be but from what I understand is that this is all basically through respiratory and oral is kind of how it gets transferred really easily. So unless people were like spitting in the mash tubs, I'm not too sure exactly. Even that it's probably because he's in a hallway. Yeah, and so I'm not too sure. Honestly, if even if 22:00 worker does, you know, come in and it actually is affected. I think the only thing that it might actually affect is just the production. Probably just send everybody home do shut down production for X amount of days, come back, do a deep clean, you know, go back, go back to work. Yeah, but there is this whole thing where you have to 22:19 the government's issue, like, where people had it, what would what they touched where they went, you know, I was, you know, I was somewhere and got it in and someone was there the day after me and I got an email about it. And, you know, that was kind of one of the personal scare for me, but, you know, I don't know, like, if somebody works in a factory, you know, does the government then require the that factory to issue a statement to its consumers, and I just don't know it. There's not really a precedent for any of this. 22:54 It's very, very scary. And I think it's more so right as much as they might want to keep many 23:00 fracturing right there just one part of the manufacturing puzzle. So if a farmer who distills the grains and drops them off, right not to sales, I'm sorry for the farmer harvests the grains and drops them off for the trucking company, he drops them off, or they can't drop them off because they have the colonel virus. Got any random ash, you're not doing much, right? Same with barrel, stuff like that. So I think it goes the whole or friends point, maybe you don't have to notify consumers, but then you got to notify your whole manufacturing chain, right. And maybe folks then don't want to drop off supplies because they're afraid that they're going to catch it for their employees. So I think it's just not as simple as you know, the virus doesn't survive much longer. You know, once it's out of somebody's system in the air wasn't just something for more than a few hours. So consumers should be safe, but it's more How does it impact everyone they interact with up and down the whole supply chain? Yeah, I think probably the biggest issue that's really is facing right now is the tourism aspect, which has been really it's been what the industry has been hanging his hat on, you know, with the with the rise of these like, the trade wars, you know, 24:00 This was the one thing that everyone said, Well, we still got like, domestic growth and we got tourism. And so you know, this is you take out the more than 2 million people coming here to visit Kentucky distilleries. I mean, my god there, there are talks in town about impacting the derby. I mean, I can't even imagine not having the derby. Brian, can you? I mean, I just can't I can't, I can't envision it. Now. I heard that today, too. They're talking about maybe postponing and it's, you know, they're still looking at it. No decisions made yet but that's, it's just crazy talk. I mean, let's face it, Churchill. I mean, there'll be like, I just bet from home. Oh, 24:44 yeah. Where's that from all right, no, fancy sign up for twin spires club and they'll give you you know, $50 free or whatever, and they'll be laughing all the way to the bank. 24:56 The other the other component of this, that 25:00 should be getting Blake excited, actually because a sale box is that this is going to be one of the moments where we see an enormous increase of shipments and people don't want to get out of their house. So they're not going to go to a liquor store. What are they gonna do? They're gonna buy, like, going to visit seal box calm or wherever. And 25:25 go Fred. Yeah. 25:29 It's 40 like 40 25:33 but uh, you know, that's that's what's going to happen. Is there going to get deliveries? I mean, we're all right. We're getting deliveries from, from Whole Foods and Kroger right now. So it's crazy. Yeah, I think there was somebody had actually talked about on our discord chat a little bit earlier through Patreon. And they were saying, Well, what happens if Corona gets spread into Amazon into these delivery services? And it was like, yeah, it's 26:00 It's a true concern. The other part of this is thank god they're heavily automated, right? There's robots that basically pack those boxes for everybody. But when someone sneezes on a robot, 26:11 what 26:14 are they ended to? Whatever this was all just a way for the robots to take control, actually run a virus. I'm with you on that. Now. I mean, everyone's talking about walking dead. But what if this is really Terminator about to happen? 26:29 They planted the seed. 26:32 conspiracies, Fred. What? 26:35 Surprise now pushing back in conspiracies speaking of vodka conspiracy, Jordan was today's email like a backhanded compliment to 26:44 Tito's yesterday What are we taught Hey, hold on. Let's let's set the stage here because I have no idea what 26:51 newsletter right for whiskey Wednesday, I went out and it was a PSA on how to make your own hand sanitizer. So he did give Tito's the nod and the fact that they are 27:00 aggressively letting consumers know whenever they tweet or interact with them on social media that no you cannot use Tito's for hand sanitizer because it's not 60% alcohol right so we did harm we do give them credit on that one right but I mean, let's be real if you're going to use hand sanitizer and you must use bourbon we prefer you drink it, but at least use 120 proof bourbon to do something right. But there's a comment in there too. Tito's about like, well, at least they're clearing some of the facts up and 27:27 crafted you know, made in Texas kinda 27:31 just made sure wasn't reading into it. But once again vodka fails. I mean, you look at it it's like everyone's like starting to champion it for something that it can make me be valuable for and again even do handsome. 27:46 That's that's a perfect way to end this. I don't really talk about coronavirus anymore, do you? Oh, yeah. No, no, no, that was much hysteria. Yeah, that was a nine. All right, good. So let's move on to the kind of the meat of the show here. Let's Shall we 28:00 Wait for Blake to open his bottle here because we can all hear it all that loud. 28:06 He had the mute control to hear it immediately. It's like gay. There we go. I'll mute him. Alright, perfect. 28:15 before the show started, you know, Aaron, you would think 42 times into this he would have figured it out. 28:23 But this is this is just like it's everything about get sanctioned. Yeah, it's it's either that his Wi Fi dies. I mean, it's, it keeps going. So, Alright, so let's kind of get into the meat of the show. Because the one thing that we've all kind of seen is just the hysteria that is surrounded Blanton's. And to kind of just give a little bit of background and context there is a great article that was posted by Chuck Cowdery back in 2013. And he gave a history of bland so I'm just gonna go ahead and just take like a minute or two just to read this just so everybody kind of gets up to speed on it because I know we've had people requests 29:00 Like, Hey, why don't you do an episode on the history of blends? Come to find out. There's probably not a whole lot that we could do a whole episode about. So this is gonna be it right here. So if you think back in the 1980s it was a bleak period for bourbon. thankthank Ryan 29:18 is poppin bottles they don't. They're shit what's going on around here? I'm listening Really? I thought it was a good timing. See, Aaron? This is what I'm talking about. Nobody, nobody's learned the proper or how to pour their PR, or I've got my mute button. I'll use camera but I pre poured everything and sure your next go. I've already popped a bottle or two on the show. So I think we're good. All right. I think everybody's got their bottle pops out of the way. Alright, so in the 90 or sorry, in the 80s. sales were down. inventories were high profits were under intense pressure and whiskey assets were changing hands. Most large producers were no longer independent. Instead they were part of conglomerates and with a portfolio of a household names back then. 30:00 Back then F Ross Johnson was the powerful CEO of Nabisco. Nabisco had a subsidiary called standard brands that included fleshman distilling. 30 Falk was the CEO of Fleischmanns and Bob Brandt and this guest Moran discuss my I'm gonna screw that up was the president. In 1983, Johnson decided to sell standard brands to Grand Metropolitan. A few years later, green Metro Metropolitan merged with Guinness to form biagio. Green Metropolitan already had a thriving drinks business that included JMP scotch and Smirnoff vodka, assuming they would be replaced after the sale folk and burnt Miranda's kiss. I know that's bad, resigned and started to start their own company. fulke was previously an executive with schenley. So he approached Muslim reckless, whose conglomerate own schenley about selling some assets Falk and Baranski has originally tried to acquire old charter, but reckless always needed money, so he agreed to sell ancient age bourbon brand and the distillery that produced 31:00 It then it was called the Albert B Blanton distillery. Today's Buffalo Trace folk and Baranski is called the new company h International. As the name suggests, they believe Bourbons future was outside of the US. One of the first moves was to enlist the master distiller at the time Elmer T. Lee with the creation of Blanton's single barrel bourbon to appeal to the Japanese market, but with multiple extensions in Japan and the US in 1991, fulke and Burns has sold 22 and a half percent interest in Asia international to Japan's to current shoes a with the right of first refusal to purchase the remaining shares in 1992, Fulk and Burns has sold their shares to Tucker for $20 million to car immediately sold the distillery to Sazerac but retain the corporate entity and brand trademark. Today Sazerac still owns Buffalo Trace and Buffalo Trace still produces all the whiskey for agent age, Blanton's and other age international products and brands using Nashville number two, which is also being used for Bourbons like Rock Hill farms as well. 32:00 Well, Chris Phalke commented on the article, and he said that that was his father ferdie had passed away from cancer in 2000. But Blanton's was the original super premium brand. And he said he can remember watching him draw the packaging idea on a napkin back in 1983. So follow all of that. Very. So. Yeah, I'd like to add, I'd like to add to that, because this is something that gets really lost in the history of that brand. And I would argue we could have a whole show on the history of it. 32:31 But in the 90s, basically, when the Albert Blanton was was head of the distillery he used to, 32:42 he used to take people out, and he used to pick barrels for him. And then he would actually put that into the Kentucky retail market, effectively making it like a single barrel asset, but they weren't really calling him single barrels back then. And so people you know, Sazerac were always you to use 33:00 It in their marketing that it was the first commercially available single barrel that often got pushback by people. But indeed, it was, but that brand had a huge impact on the world. You know, in my book bourbon I wrote about like how important it was for Japan and how it kind of opened that market up. Another thing that Blanton's did that was really important is it pissed off Maker's Mark and it started making fun of Maker's Mark and advertisements for the saying like, Oh, you have to talk about your wax because your whiskey isn't any good. So they kind of like you know, played with Maker's Mark in their own game and they went back and fourth. And so they had like this state, but blends created this statewide tasting competition, in which they selected tasers and Lexington and Louisville to to have a taste up between makers and blends. Blanton's one Lexington and makers one Louisville so plans is a really really important brand. 34:00 The return of bourbon and this Return of the the introduction of the gold. Blanton's is like For God's sake, it's about time. You know, it's about I want to want to get to that, because that's a that's a big part of today's show. But what I want to do is I kind of want to just trace this back about two years. And I want anybody that has a theory on why the hell did Blanton's just skyrocket in popularity? I know that we've seen it on some TV shows and everything like that, but was there was there something that happened that I missed that all of a sudden this round bottle the horse on top just just went crazy? I have a theory. So I want to jump in, but I guess I will. So I think it's and I wish I had notes because I talked to Chris Comstock about this the other day about 35:00 There's supply the supplies, not 35:04 the supplies, basically, I think it's like five x of what it was a few years ago, is what they're producing now. So it's not nearly as bad as people think. But in my opinion, what started to happen was a lot of these distributors in the store started seeing what was happening with Pappy and you know, the antique collection. And so they started allocating on the distribution side. So then instead of stores just like yeah, or whenever you want, they'd say, Oh, we can only give you two bottles. Well, then the stores start telling the customers Hey, look, I'm only getting two bottles of this. It's at that price point that makes it you know, the high end the bottles cool, it's it's, it tastes good. And so then as you know, that started building, you go into a store and see two bottles, you grab them and then there's an empty shelf. So then the I think the hype just started building and scarcity sells. So now every time people see it on the 36:00 shelf, it's like, oh, I've got to grab as many bottles as I can find or as I can get, because who knows when I'll see it again. 36:07 And that all seems to be happening happening over the last two to three years. I tell the story of that blanes was actually the first barrel pick I ever did for bourbon er, and that was back in 2015. And I remember the the retailer marked it up to I think it was $64. And I lost, you know, so many people saying that they're not going to work with a retailer that was trying to gouge like, I bought five cases, I had a few friends buy a bunch of cases. And now if I got a Blaine's barrel, you know, it'll be gone in a day and you could probably sell for 100 bucks a bottle or something crazy like that. But I still think it's all kind of like a an artificial demand or artificial shortage created by that middle tier. But that's just my opinion. I think it also has to do with the fact that right, so around that time, and don't get me wrong. We've been fans of Blanton's I think back in 2014 we caught 37:00 Call it out on the site that we weren't sure why people were overlooking up. But then is Buffalo Trace in general, right? So all their Bourbons started becoming more known to folks people started realizing Oh, pet Van Winkle comes from Buffalo Trace. Oh BTC What's that? Okay. And then Elmer got really big, right? And then others started getting big. So especially if they wanted a single barrel, right, they go in Hey, can I get an armor? Oh, you can't get an armor. But look at this cool bottle. You get this little horse top or his little wax on little bags, and I'm just finding the box. Why don't you go for that instead? Right? And it was just one of the it's just one of those things where people just want the next thing right so all right, so I can't get any other Buffalo Trace product. What else you got? You got plans, you can get that pretty easy. I'll take one of those. Right and then people start doing a little research, especially if people are really into bourbon. They realize that there's Blanton's gold, there's plans straight from the barrel, which used to be again, easy to find. So two years ago, it was what around two years ago I think master mouth stop shipping right and a lot of store shop stopped shipping from over in Europe. And it was just that snowball effect, right? There's no rhyme or reason to a lot of stuff. It's just people like to hoard people like to know what's cool. 38:00 Blanton's cannon right? Everyone, I'm sure has friends who asks, What should I buy in the store used to be really simple to say, Oh, just pick up a bottle of blends. It's great bourbon, reasonably priced. Just go for it. Right. I still say that. And then I catch myself going, except you're not gonna be able to find anymore, which stinks. But I think a lot of it is just that snowball effect that took place with consumers, especially around Buffalo Trace products. You brought up something very important. Jordan, as you brought up, Elmer T. Lee, and I've been thinking about this a lot since Kenny posed the question to us before the show about why did planes take off and I remember specifically after Elmer died, you could not find a martini you could not find it. And the one bottle that everybody recommended after that, because it was accessible was Blanton's, you know, it was a Rock Hill farms. It was always Blanton's was the was the bourbon that people recommended after Elmer T. Lee passed away. There couldn't be a more fitting bourbon to recommend since that was the 39:00 One that he brought, you know, he brought to life. And, you know, Elmer kinda gets forgotten. You know, Elmer doesn't get talked about as much as you know, some of the other deceased distillers like Booker know and Parker beam. And it's a real shame because he was a Titan of a distiller and I think that he would be, you know, smiling quite happily to know that his stuff was being It was very difficult to get he wouldn't be very happy with the price gouging. But I do believe that that is when it all started was in the in the quest to find Elmer. They got Blanton's and liked it. Fred, I kind of remember a little there was a at least a couple year time period where to me it was the opposite of that. People wanted Blanton's and and Elmer was aged couple of years more than Blanton's and I couldn't figure out why people wanted Blanton's instead of Elmer. I mean they're 40:00 is a time period where it over took Elmer. And I don't know anything about the production. I don't know anything about what's being withheld. But it it to Blake's point, it sure looks that way. So there's another thing that's sort of happening right now. And that is Buffalo Trace and heaven Hill are implementing new systems where you can only purchase allocated items that haven't healed sometimes it's once a month. And in the case of Blanton's at Buffalo Trace, they're now doing this once every three months of actually scanning your driver's license and turning people away. And this is because if anybody is unaware, the line that has been growing for Blanton's at the distillery has just gotten chaotic. I'm talking like two to 300 people that are waiting at six o'clock in the morning to get a bottle of regular Blanton's at the distillery. And so, you know, Aaron, kinda want to pose this question to you and get you get you involved here. Do you think this new system has a chance to actually succeed and work 41:00 Well, I was gonna 41:03 Aaron, you're cutting out, buddy. I think we lost him. Yeah, he and Blake or Sharon schleifer. 41:10 Want to bring them on camera? Yeah. 41:15 Yeah. Try to try to drop and come back on and come back if you can like maybe plug in or something. I'm not too sure. We'll, we'll get you. We'll get you in here. 41:26 All right, so so we'll take that in a different direction. So, Blake, do you think that has an actual chance to succeed with this particular kind of system? So what's the actual system again, sorry, I was typing whatever you know. 41:43 Loud they're only allowed how many bottles like one a month or something? It's this is what happens when like the teacher calls in you and you weren't paying attention. 41:53 Helen has placed they've had an in place for like two years they haven't held where they scan your license when you buy. Like buffalo grease implemented the same 42:00 Yeah, I mean you know you think about will it did that for a while and then they had their their do not sell to lists and everything, it'll, it'll definitely slow things down but I don't know. I mean, I think that's good because 42:15 ultimately you want some bottles at the distillery whenever people come and visit you. I had this experience a few weeks ago and we're up there and a friend of mines like, man, none of these, you know, these distilleries have any bottles like I thought it'd be able to get something cool. You know, heaven Hill, at least had. I remember what we got. I think that William heaven hill there. So at least there was something but that's the hard part is you don't want just the locals to come grab everything that is available. Turn around and throw it up on Craigslist or wherever people are selling these days. We don't do that in Kentucky man. Yeah, it's never happened. Right? Yeah. But you know, so you kind of want to spread it out a little bit. So I think that'll help. Um, but you know, it's 43:00 Like anything else, people are going to do what they want to do, they're going to send their sister they're going to send their cousin they're going to send, if they really want it that bad, but overall, hopefully it kind of spreads the allocation a little bit further. And I'll say, since I'm not located in Kentucky, right, I, at least from heaven Hill standpoint, I actually appreciate that they do that now, because it seems more often than not, whenever I go down to Heaven, Hell, and I always stop by when I'm in town, these tend to have a few bottles, right? That's, I think, based on the fact that they're helping to limit people from buying them. So from that standpoint, I think it's fantastic, right, especially being somebody who's visiting Kentucky and wanting to go I make sure to stop by the distilleries and buy stuff, but now they have stuff to buy, which I'm super appreciative. Yeah, and that's actually part of the reason this was actually implemented was Freddy Johnson was on the stage with Fred at legend series recently, and he talked exactly about this that this is all because of just trying to counteract the flipping game. And if you can limit of what people can get, then you can do that. And plus, they want to 44:00 Word people that are traveling from all around the country to go and visit the distillery and they want to get something unique while they're there. And this is an opportunity to actually make that happen. It's you know, they could release a lot more bottles to 44:15 we'll get to that option. Yeah. It's a difficult it's difficult, you know, I look at it, I look at it from the perspective of like, every time, you know, they, they, the distillers, like, wish for something and then they get it. And then like, five years later, they're like, Oh, shit. Yeah, like net. Like, I remember when they were lobbying for this. They were like, begging to have special bottles. They were begging to have this attention and this FaceTime with the consumers. And now you hear them and they're like, crap, what are we going to do? You know, like now they're facing some of the same problems at their retailer partners have so a lot more headaches for them for sure. 45:00 him personally, you know, three months is, I think a little bit generous. I would have rather seen a year. Because if there's two to 300 people lining up to do this, and they're bringing their brothers, their sisters, their cousins or aunts and their uncles to get a bottle of Blanton's. Like, let's just nip this, like it's Blanton's after all right, like it is it's good whiskey. But let's let's try to let's try to curb this because I don't see a reason why people should be going this nuts over and if they have a bottle of bourbon. And I think I remember seeing a lot of comments when people announced that this system is getting put in place. They're like, Oh, like why are you gonna hurt your you know, your biggest consumers and your cheerleaders and I'm like, they make a lot of different whiskey. There's a lot of different bourbon out there on the market. Like don't pin yourself into just like that one bottle. You know like that Nashville makes a lot of different stuff, right? So like you don't you don't need to be pigeon holing yourself and it just one particular kind of whiskey for everything. 46:00 You drink? Yeah, I was at a store one time and a guy was asking the clerk for it he's like you guys got any Blanton's as a total wine and and so everyone having plantains and I was like hey man like actually they've got a Hancock single barrel pick that they've done and it was like I think seven years old or something 46:20 the exact same mash bill you know, maybe it wasn't in warehouse H or whatever it is, but pretty much the exact same thing is like I don't want that crap. I'm like, Okay, nevermind. No, I mean why bother? No, you bring up a really good point though Brian right? The whole point the whole reason they had the horse in the first place right and way back when wanted spelled lens which is cool, but to entice people to keep buying it. So then you do find people who actually you know, for multitude of reasons right and I'm not judging whatsoever who once they find something and they do want to collect it just for that purpose. I realized you can buy the stopper from Buffalo Trace itself right? But they actually didn't want to start collecting the bottles just to get the topper so not only do they like up and other like corn 47:00 I need to get all the rest of them. Right. So now their demand is well, I just don't need one or two. Now I got to find all I got to the letters, I got to fill it out. Exactly. Right. So it's it's, they've kind of created a little bit of a headache in that sense for themselves. If there was no letters on the bottle, that would definitely eliminate a little bit of that from some well, and a lot of people in the comments have said that the dump date being on every bottle, you know, how many posts have you seen, you know, oh, my kid was born or you know, oh, I'm looking for this dump date. Yeah, work on whatever they want. Yeah, whatever it is, they they want that data on there. I mean, it's it's marketing genius is what it is. It's a product of success. You know, I think Fred alluded to this a little bit of they worked really hard to make these things popular and, you know, get special releases out of the distillery. And then I don't want to say it backfire, but I think it caused them more headaches, and they probably they were thinking it would but it's a product of success. So at the end of the day, I don't think they mind it. 48:00 No no no one thing that none of these companies are doing is they're not utilizing technology you know and Kenny I'd like to get your your thoughts on this because you're the tech guy but How hard would it be for them to like create like an order and hold or some some kind of system for online to connect with a point of sale where someone could plan their trip and then come pick up a bottle I just I just feel like there's so many opportunities to alleviate these problems that they never seem to explore they they're stuck in these inundated antiquated stand in line look at an ID kind of crap. I think it's just simple ecommerce is that a lot of and I think we've touched on a lot of times, even just retailers and everybody else in general, like this type of market is is behind the curve of what we see in every other type of industry. And so if they don't take the initiative to try to figure out like, how do we get our hands in the how do we get our product into the hands of consumers faster, easier, and less friction and make them 49:00 A happy consumer. If you don't take that into account, then they're not gonna do anything about it. You know, the other thing is, is that if you look at what the SAS rack is building with blends and Buffalo Trace and everything, like, they don't really, I mean, they're gonna sell out no matter what. So do they need to go through all that extra effort to invest in an e commerce platform to invest in something where like, I don't know whether they have their own online, put your email in a database and come and pick your bottle up on this date kind of thing? I don't know if they really need to. So it kind of like I said, there's there's, it's a double edged sword from there. And you do actually so Fred, I mean, that's a great point that you make both Kenny and Fred but you do see some distilleries doing that, right. So look at new ref. Look at angels MD with their main club, right? They both do that when they have special releases come out, you can pre buy and they give you a 30 days to pick them up or X number of days to pick up. I think that's it's great. And it's also great for again, if somebody is out in town to be like, Alright, I got a month to go pick this up. I'll plant quickly. 50:00 trip around this or something like that, right? And it drives people there. And then I'm sure once they're there, they're like, Well, shit, I'm here by some other stuff, whether it's from that distillery or local store around there, whatever. But it's just great for the local economy in general. And I wish more distilleries did that. He was envies absolutely crushing their special bottles. People make events out of that. And I have never talked to one unhappy person out of there. I mean, I hear I hear so many unhappy people coming out of heaven Hill, there's so many people, unhappy people coming out of out of SAS, right. Really no one from being but I don't think anyone's necessarily going there for special releases. But the key distilleries that have special releases of all them angels envy is crushing it by far that program that they have people love it. Yep. And plus, it's an easy way for you to kind of like allocate these things online. And not only that is you basically sell it before anybody actually picks it up. So it's, it's, it's instead of like putting it out there and hoping people come like, it's all online if you make it easy and frictionless 51:00 Then you're gonna have a much better way to you don't have that kind of like cash flow in that pipeline coming into man. What if they did like bourbon futures where you could like, you know, buy like a case of Blanton's five years from now. So technically that's kind of what Bardstown bourbon company is doing. So they their barrel pick now is you pay $1,000 deposit to get it, and then which I guess not technically futures, but then you let it age as long as you want. And essentially you just pay the same price for whatever the standard bottling is whether you let it go to 10 years or you let it go six months. 51:39 Yeah, yeah, I'm familiar with that. It's just not it's not proven, but like Blanton not nearly as exciting to Yeah, I mean, that it is it is a concept for sure. But like, I mean, imagine like if you could, if you could buy a futures, Pappy 23 right now when your child is born, 52:00 or something like that. You do it in a heartbeat. Yeah. Now, right now I would nobody would want to track that accountant. Somebody put in the or Aaron put in the chats about basically that's how Bordeaux works and yeah, you know the it's not like a Pappy 23 where you're waiting 23 years but there is some time there and it is interesting to see how that whole market works and I mean, it's pretty crazy. We may get there one day, the ghosts Yes, that's the one thing that we don't that we don't have that the wine world has is like these really high level business people call negotiators who basically broker every single thing. And I think that's why angels envy so successful with that program as West Henderson is kind of like a hybrid, you know, in this world. He's such a business forward leaning mind and you know, it has his dad's DNA. Anyway. All right, I want to shift topic a little bit because this is still gonna be Blanton's, but the biggest news 53:00 That happened last week or was it two weeks ago whatever it was was the idea and the announcement of Blanton's gold coming to the US 53:11 What do you get if you mix Seattle craft, Texas heritage and Scottish know how that's to bar spirits to bar spirits traces its roots to a ranch in rural Texas run by the founder, Nathan kaisers family for six generations. Nathan grew up on the ranch with stories of relatives bootlegging moonshine, and after moving into Seattle, he wanted to keep the family tradition alive any open to bar spirits in 2012. They're very traditional distillery making everything from scratch and each day starts by milling 1000 pounds of grain. Their entire product lineup consists of only two whiskies, their moonshine, and the only bourbon made in Seattle. Both bottles are being featured in rack house whiskey clubs. Next box, rack house whiskey club is a whiskey of the Month Club. And they're on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories that craft distilleries across the US. 54:00 Have to offer rack house ships out to have the feature distilleries finest bottles, along with some cool merchandise in a box delivered to your door every two months. Go to a rack house whiskey club comm to check it out and try some to bar for yourself. Use code pursuit for $25 off your first box. 54:21 The biggest news that happened last week or was it two weeks ago, whatever it was, was the idea and the announcement of Blanton's gold coming to the US. And for anybody that has been a bottle chaser or you've been into bourbon for a little bit. We've all known that. Blanton's gold and Blanton straight from the barrel are something that we gravitate towards because you like oh, it's higher proof and, and now we're all like oh, and it's got a shiny gold horse. So of course I want all these. As Ryan said earlier, I want the I want the ski with all the gold letters on it now. So the there's a few questions that arise with this and the first one. I'm going to 55:00 Come to his tariffs, because one thing that we've seen is that tariffs are being it's being catastrophic to the whiskey industry in regards of just it's both sides of the coin here. Now, there is the idea that people are saying, Okay, well, if we are going to have to pay tariffs, then let's go ahead and hold more whiskey back that we know that we can sell to our existing consumer base here in the US. Do you all think that this is a reaction to that? Or do you think this was planned out a little bit further in advance? And they said, You know what, we're going to just do this because we're, let's go ahead and make some more headlines. I'll go first, right. I think 100% has to do with tariffs, right? I think they are looking in real time and how to react. I think they saw a business opportunity. And they're going for it right. They don't want to have products sitting there, or they don't want to overcharge consumers, 55:55 to needlessly sell to no one in Europe, if no one's gonna be paying that price. 56:00 They saw Hey, Blanton's is hot, let's make it happen. And 100% that played into it, whether there's a little pre work behind the scenes going into it potentially. But don't get me wrong, that current tariff situation 100% played into this. I also want to mention that in the press release, they also said that this is going to be an SRP of $120 for this particular bottle too. So don't forget that. 56:21 I like to say that at the top of Buffalo Trace is probably the single smartest person in the entire spirits industry, Mark Brown. That man had this plan probably five years ago and had a rollout leading up to it. And this year is probably going to be like, like some additional Weller products, maybe a single barrel or something like that. I mean, you're going to start seeing like Buffalo Trace, kind of like, take their super premiums and dice them up into more limited edition releases. And it's it's all about getting another skew getting another press release at another company. 57:01 They they own a lot of the conversation market, they own a lot of the store they own almost all the skews that all the retailers want. And if they every time they add one, they've got another one. So they have another reason to have a meeting with a retailer they have another meeting to have a meeting. Another reason to have a meeting with a an on premise person plans goal, in my opinion, is probably just one of the actually well they're foolproof last year was the beginning of the rollout of seeing the kind of evolution of what Buffalo Trace is planning to do with their premium product. They're dicing them up gradually raising those price raising the prices up a little bit more and making them even more valuable. Yeah, and I don't know that's a it's looking at it from a marketing standpoint. Genius. Yeah. 57:57 I don't know there's there's a lot better 58:00 Values out there in my book and I just I I try to resist so much of the hype and I I like the ancient age products probably better than than their other mash bill and and other than some Weller 12 or the the B tech, William LaRue Weller the ancient age math is my favorite Mossville. 58:25 But the marketing just it rubs me the wrong way. I get it. And I wish Aaron was able to stay on because he could speak very highly to this with his experience at Esquire and some of the other more industry facing publications. I'm just telling you, man, you could just throw you could you could dangle any Weller Blanton's, even Buffalo Trace, you know outside of a Manhattan window and you'll have like 50 bro dudes chasing it down. It's the stuff is crazy. And it's genius. And congratulations to them for doing it. It's absolute genius. 59:00 But there's so much for roses and wild turkey out there that that in other brands that are so much better and so much more of a value, I just don't get it personally. So so then that then that then that that's not really a knock on them. That's basically that's our job to say, hey guys can't get this, you know, try this and i and i think Jordan does a great job of that. I think Blake does a great job of that. Kenny, you really just drink it all. So 59:30 Equal Opportunity drinker. That's right. 59:33 And so Fred, I kind of want to like take a counter argument to kind of what you said a little bit, because there was something that came up in the chat by Dave Preston. And he had mentioned that, you know, he thinks that this has to do with like, increased stock that's resulting from ramped up production. However, I kind of look at it and think like, well, maybe they're just taking and to take Jordan's side of this. Maybe they're taking away from the European allocation now and just shifting to the United States, because we've all been 1:00:00 on tours here, right. And we all know we've been in the Blanton's bottling Hall, every day you're in there. They were bottling plants, and they're doing it around the clock every single day. And it doesn't seem that they can keep up with the demand. So where is all this extra inventory coming from? If you don't think it's just like taking away from European allocation and from tariffs, if, like how to keep pumping out more product. So again, this is my opinion, this is all been planned. These are not knee jerk business people. These are very smart strategic, especially when it comes to marketing, and they happen to have great whiskey. And I just think this was a part of it. Did they change their European allocation? Hey, maybe they did, but I think this product was always planned. Maybe Maybe it got bumped up a little bit for for anticipation of more terrorists or continued tariffs. But I think this has always been in, in creation. And I think we're going to see a lot more 1:01:00 from, from that distillery with new products coming out of their heavyweight prop brands like Weller and Blanton's, and, you know, I don't think we'll see anything added to the Buffalo Trace antique collection. But I think you'll start seeing more limited releases. I got to push back just a little bit on that too, though, Fred. So I think, don't get me wrong. I think it's super smart if they were planning this for a few years, right. But I think I would categorize them just as smart for being a very smart businessman. If they read the current situation. They read the current landscape, the current tariffs and said, Alright, how can we capitalize this? Right? How can we turn this around and make it so that it works in our favor? Right, I'd say that'd be a just a smart individual and just a smart move. So while it may be planned, right, I got to give them I hope I'd give them credit for reading the current landscape and saying, what can we do to make this work in our favor? And hey, maybe both are Right, exactly. You know, so like, what I know is I'm not running a billion dollars. 1:01:56 I'm sitting here. So I am, this isn't 1:02:00 Confirm, but it was basically like kind of backdoor confirmed of Buffalo Trace production. So they were producing about 12,000 barrels a year in 95 by 2010, that was around 100,000 barrels. And by 2018, it was 250,000 barrels. 1:02:17 So may not be exact, but gives you an idea of the ramp up. They've been doing over the last, you know, two decades. So when you talk about they may not have had to steal from the European allocation. That's where I think there is more barrels that are going around now whether or not it's just a you know if it's really because of tariffs or is just because, you know, take advantage of the US market a little more. I think it could be a little bit of both, maybe it turned out to be good timing. But at the end of the day, I think they love the new press releases, they love the new brand extensions. You know, what was it 1:02:54 is it benchmark that's getting the next redo You know, we've seen them do it with well are now the 17 1:03:00 to benchmark and I think well, you know, they've kind of evolved the H Taylor brand to have a new release every year. I think we'll just like Fred said, we'll just keep seeing new bit several new releases each year because they want to be able to go back to t

This week, Joe and Drew interview Aaron Goldfarb, writer, journalist, and author! His writing about drinking culture has appeared in Esquire, PUNCH, VinePair, and Whisky Advocate! In the Stogies of the Week, we welcome back the return of the "Kingpin" himself, Paul Asadoorian! Joe and Drew then talk the sticks they've had over the past week!   Joe's Cigars: - Drew Estate Herrera Esteli Miami - E.P. Carrillo Elencos - Southern Draw- 300 Hands - Crux Epicure Drew's Cigars: - La Aurora 107 “Zeppelin” 4 x 58 - Macanudo Inspirado palladium Lonsdale 6 x ¾ x 43 - Joya De Nicaragua Antano CT Toro 6 x 50 - Joya de Nicaragua Número Uno L'Ambassadeur 6 5/8 x 44   https://www.aarongoldfarb.com/ Follow us on Twitter: @stogiegeeks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stogiegeeks Instagram: https://instagram.com/stogiegeeks

Aaron Goldfarb is a writer, journalist, and author. His writing about drinking culture has appeared in Esquire, PUNCH, VinePair, and Whisky Advocate. He is the author of several novels, and has most recently authored a cocktail book for whiskey lovers titled Hacking Whiskey: Smoking, Blending, Fat Washing, and Other Whiskey Experiments (Dovetail Press, 2018). He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Betsy; daughter, Ellie; Maine Coon cat, Hops; and around 1000 bottles of whiskey, give or take. https://www.aarongoldfarb.com/ Follow us on Twitter: @stogiegeeks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stogiegeeks Instagram: https://instagram.com/stogiegeeks

Campbell Brown, President and Managing Director of Old Forester is back on the show. If you've been a long time listener, you may have remembered him back on Episode 98. As the President of Old Forester, he oversees a lot of the brands momentum and strategy. We get his take on bourbon tariffs with international expansion along with his hope for future movie partnerships. Anyone interested in a business background, you're going to find this one entertaining. Show Partners: Barrell Craft Spirits takes blending seriously. They spend months obsessing over hundreds of combinations until they figure out the perfect blend for you. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order with code "Pursuit" at RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about Marianne Eaves. Talk about the Brown influence on our city because you've got the Brown Hotel, The Brown Theatre, the Hot Brown, etc. Is there pressure to keep the Brown tradition going? How did you work your way up at Brown-Forman? What got you into the Old Forester category? Talk about the building and distillery. What about the fire in 2014? What chapter are we in right now in Old Forester history? Let’s talk about international markets and tariffs. What was the international growth plans for Old Forester prior to all the tariffs? Did they change or are they staying the same? Where do you see the Old Forester brand? What are you doing to elevate the Old Forester brand into a premium category? Talk about your team and what goes into the bottle. Do you take a Bill Samuels approach about not interfering with what goes in the bottle? Is there a brand rivalry in the company? Do you have to fight Woodford for barrels? Will you ever have 100% of production here? What impact did the Kingsman movie have on Old Forester business? Do you have a strategy to do more than Statemans? If you could do a movie tie in, which movie past or present would you do? How far down the gene pool are you to George Garvin Brown? 0:00 Basically what I'm hearing is Chris and Jackie go into a room, and they're fighting over a barrel. And Jackie's winning the fights right now. You know, I wouldn't say that I would say I mean, I mean if it did come down to a physical battle, I would put my money on Jackie. 0:28 This is Episode 201 of bourbon pursuit. I'm one of your hosts, Kenny. And let's go through a little bit of news but really the big news this week, and maybe you're living underneath a rock you weren't looking at social media you weren't looking at any of the news articles that came out but Marianne Eave's the master distiller castle and key, the one that was renowned as being the first female master distiller since prohibition, in a joint press release has announced her resignation from the distillery with mixed emotions and various news articles she expresses that she isn't done yet being a master distiller. 1:00 And we'll continue to stay in the industry as a consultant. We recorded an episode back on I think it was actually was 18 back with Marianne and this is before castle and key the name was even ever conceived and it was being referred to as the former old Taylor distillery. So make sure you go and you check that out and kind of check out her past and her you know, everything that she had built because we started this podcast pretty much the same exact time she was coming online with castle and key. So we wish Marianne all the best and her future opportunities endeavors. And we look forward to having her back on the show. Once again. This didn't get much publicity, but I was a part of Media Day at Churchill Downs during Derby week. And Fred along with I we got to hear Chris Morris and listen to the call talk about Woodford batch proof. And we didn't really know all the details about it. But come to find out it's going to be a new product line extension and will only be released one time per year at the beginning of spring which happens to be around Derby time. Of course, batch proof is somewhat like barrel proof but not exactly what's 2:00 they do is they have their standard offering of Woodford Reserve. And then every barrel is rinsed out with a gallon of water and added back into the batch. And most of us kind of know that or we call it the devil's cup. So just a little tidbit of information. So if you're looking for a more higher proof version of Woodford, and it's gonna be different every single year, go and check out Woodford batch proof 2:22 on our news pursuit series episodes 10 and 11 are now on sale this week to our Patreon community at first, you know, we've been talking about Episode 10 for a while and we're super excited release it because this is a five year we did bourbon coming from Finger Lakes distilling, and this distilleries getting crazy good accolades. We featured them back on the Empire right episode, and they get good reviews from pretty much everywhere. bleak driver of bourbon or as well as and Aaron Goldfarb of hacking whiskey sold out a barrel of their Ice Wine finished bourbon in 48 hours. Michael Veatch recently reviewed their Mackenzie bottle and bond bourbon and breaking bourbon even named that 3:00 bottle and bond bourbon, one of their best Bourbons of 2018. And now we have the first ever barrel proof release at five years old. Episode 11 is right around the corner as well and it's a short barrel. And who doesn't love short barrels only 112 bottles were in this barrel. And it is the second highest proof we have released thus far coming in at 114.3. It's also 10 years old. So it's got that good middle age Eurostar, middle of the road sort of age to it. As usual, first access is to our Patreon community, so make sure that you're checking out your emails to get your password for access. We're excited to have Campbell Brown back on the show. If you've been a longtime listener, you may have remembered him being a part of the legend series partnership that we have with the Kentucky Derby Museum. And that was back on episode 98. As the president of old forester he oversees a lot of the brand's momentum and strategy with anyone interested in a business background. This is what you're going to find entertaining and with that, 4:00 Let's go hear from our good friend Joe at barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred Minnick with above the char. 4:06 Hi, this is Joe from barrel craft spirits. I work with a team that takes blending seriously. We spend months obsessing over hundreds of combinations until we figure out the perfect blend for you. lift your spirits with barrel bourbon. 4:22 I'm Fred Minnick, and this is above the char. When I walked into the brown Forman office to interview Chris Morris, I sat down in a nice leather chair. The PR person's office was surrounded with like fishing photos and family photos. It felt very friendly. And then in walked a young woman I hadn't ever met before. She was tall, blond hair, very pretty. And she extended her hand and said, Hi, Marianne Epes, so nice to meet you. 4:52 Chris looked at me and said, Marianne is our new master taster. Brown Forman had just named Marianne 5:00 To be the master taster of the Woodford Reserve brand. I later learned that she was on a path to become the next master distiller for Woodford Reserve. Imagine that being in your early 20s and having the opportunity to become the master distiller for one of the greatest bourbon brands on the market. Now, at the time I thought to myself, I never met her, and what is this young woman know? And despite my 5:32 my background and covering women in whiskey writing the book, whiskey women, I had only just met Marianne, I felt like Marianne needed to prove herself a little bit before I could officially think in my mind that you know, she is capable of being a master distiller and so I talked to her. And what I learned from her within 30 minutes, was that she was one of the brightest young minds, not just in Kentucky, but in all of 6:00 American whiskey. She could tell you everything there was to know about corn and how much starch to extract and how to distill it and what are the different distillation techniques to get whatever you need out of something. She was an engineer. And she chose to go into bourbon versus making ethanol or something else because bourbon was her passion. And when she announced her departure of brown Forman for a new distillery that would be starting up at the old Taylor facility, which is actually near Woodford Reserve. I was kind of stunned because who, after all, would leave the opportunity to become the master distiller of Woodford Reserve. And then I got to know Marianne even more. She has that entrepreneurial spirit. She wanted to do her own thing. She wanted to be a part of something new. Well, this past week, Marianne announced her departure of castle and key 7:00 It's a little bit of a historic one from an American whiskey perspective. You see, Marianne was the first woman to take the title master distiller at a Kentucky distillery. Now don't get me wrong, there were women in the past, who actually were doing master distiller work, but they did not take the title. And I think when you put the master distiller title on your card, you got a little bit of a target on your back. And after her departure, you saw that target, getting pelted for Marianne. There were people who were making fun of her for her how she is on social media saying things like well who will take selfies now, at the distillery there were people who were pointing out the fact that heard bourbon had not yet hit the market. How can she call herself a master distiller and I gotta tell you, all of that disappointed me greatly because here was a young woman who took a risk 8:00 And left one of the most comfortable position you could possibly be in the distilling business. She took a risk for something new. It didn't work out. It happens to all of us. We don't know the reasons. It could be personal, it could be professional, there could have been conflict there. She may have not gotten along with her bosses and who here has not? Who here has not been in a position where they were working for someone they couldn't stand? Maybe that's what it was, or maybe it was vice versa? I don't know. I don't know the reasons why Marianne left. But she did not deserve the vitriolic comments that she got from people on social media didn't deserve a single one of them. But I also know Marianne rises above all that, because at the end of the day, she's a very talented young woman, and she can do whatever she wants to include being the first master distiller and Kentucky whiskey history. And that's this week's above the char. Hey, if you have an idea 9:00 For above the char hit me up on Twitter or Instagram at Fred Minnick. That's at Fred Minnick. Until next week. Cheers. 9:11 Welcome back to another episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon. The whole team here today recording at the I guess you could say me, the old forester studio, something like that. We're actually in the old forester distilling tasting room, actually seeing a pretty cool behind the scenes, kitchen esque cocktail mixing sort of area. But this is going to be a fun episode because our guest today was actually somebody that unbeknownst to him, he was he was on the show before from the Legends Series, but of course, 9:45 yeah, the Kentucky Derby Museum legend series that was that's probably my favorite of the of the legend series I've done because Campbell's one of these guys have been so instrumental not just in bourbon, 10:00 But all spirits and people, people just here you know, he's a member of the brand family and everyone thinks I just get things handed to him. This guy worked his way up, you know, worked in foreign markets did a lot of grunt work that a lot of people in bourbon royalty wouldn't do. And so he's one of those people I like bringing to the forefront and telling his story a little bit because he's done a lot. He's done a lot to help people like us. You say grunt work I also know that at some point he was the the soco Ambassador at one point right so that's a little grunt work. This is so co by Soca we mean Southern Comfort and you know i one time that was a that was a brilliant brand. Oh yeah, absolutely. And it helped it was a part of the brown Forman family of course they sold it to SAS rack and and you know, I think we should ask him about like what was that like for him because he did have such an emotional connection to it and of course he's also came out with soco long shots you know. 10:58 I'm not really interested. 11:01 Well you You're always wanting to drink fireball or something comfort sounds right up my alley, you know, should we really mean should we have him on anymore? With all this like, whiskey? I don't know. I mean, he tell you what we before we started recording, you know they offered us a drink and Ryan kind of piqued his interest so tell everybody what we're drinking as well we got him in front of us. Well, so Jackie was in the cabinet, you know picking some selections when she said I have some president's choice barrel she kind of whispered Campbell and he was like No, no and I was like I heard that will be like that barrel proof or appreciated Jackie. But as you can see, I think this episode will be a lot juice here then the legend series because we've been here boozing all day and the the research lab Yep, just kidding responsibly, we respond. 11:44 Absolutely. So with that, let's go ahead introduce our guests. So today, we have Campbell Brown Campbell is the president and managing director of old forester for brown Forman. So Campbell, welcome to the show. Good to be here. Thank you. Absolutely. So, you know, we kind of gave you a little bit of 12:00 Have a head start of what you did and growing up into here and doing some grunt work and kind of cut your teeth in the history but I kind of want to take it back a little bit because as some of our listeners may not know, you're from originally Montreal. I was born here in Louisville. I turned five I moved to Montreal and I turned five in Montreal. Yeah and I grew up there Wikipedia my research Yeah. 12:26 We get it right. So somebody update the Wikipedia page before I have to but I also want to give anybody that's from out of town in in fretted already hinted at it to have the name Brown. And what that means to the city of little because you've got the brown hotel, you got the brown theater, I mean, you got a damn the Buddha Cancer Center, you got the brand, you've got all different browns, you've got the hot brown you got every night, right. So kind of just talk about kind of wish that one was 12:53 but kind of talk about the brown influence of just in Louisville just for anybody that's listening. That's across the nation. 13:00 Well, our families, you know, been a part of this city 13:05 in for generations even going back before George Garvin Brown, you know, we've had, you know, family in Kentucky and and i think involved in, in the state from a political standpoint from a commercial standpoint, philanthropic standpoint. 13:24 You know, it's it's our home. I think we're so proud that you know, the city's been really quite good to our family and to this business. 13:34 My, you know, my, you know, I was born here in 67. Kind of spent my early years here, but growing up in Montreal, it was all a little bit foreign. I remember, you know, coming back here in the summers for a couple weeks and just remembering how incredibly hot sweating your ass off. Yeah, yeah, it was I was like, wow, that's, that's a new heat that we don't get up and can 14:00 Uh much and then, 14:02 you know farms everyone like everyone had a farm and so we would go out to my grandmother's farm 14:08 or you know, an uncle and and you know, you just, you know, see these animals you just don't see and in West Mountain Montreal where we grew up and then you know eating like lima beans I never really was into lima beans until I got here and frankly, I don't think I've been into lima beans until about 10 years ago. That's really an acquired taste. That's something I never thought we would start talking about. 14:32 The lima beans is Pat Steakhouse. It does Yeah. Yeah, right. 14:37 on track. We expect a royalty check from Pat's after the yes he 14:42 Well, he's a cash operating business. He actually started taking credit cards. Yeah, yeah. 14:51 That'll do it. So yeah, I mean, look, Louisville, Kentucky, obviously, you know, our family's been around here for a number of years and generations. I 15:00 I think, you know, it's a great city. 15:02 It's got a great attitude. I think it's an exciting time to be a part of the city. And I think, you know, 15:10 I like having a family here, Mike, you know, I, my eldest child was born in Annapolis, my youngest was born here in Louisville. You know, 15:18 it's great raising a family here. It's 15:22 good. I just I like, I like what's happening and sitting, I want to be a part of it. And I think that, you know, most people that have been a part of this city for a lifetime, you know, we talked about our high schools and where we went to school, I mean, that I think there's a reason for that is that we all have these great, really strong emotional connections that go back to childhood and you've got people that come in and out of the city. I mean, I was out of here 15:44 for six or seven years, always knowing that I was going to be coming back in so it's, yeah, it's a unique place. And I think we've been fortunate that we got into the right business at the right time, and it's thrived for for quite some time. Now. And 16:00 gives us a chance to 16:03 kind of enjoy being in an industry that's got so much to do with, with the city in the state. And I'll add to, you know, a little bit of the brown legacy. You know, 16:11 Campbell mentioned politics, they've, they've had a lot of people in high places there. But to me, the brown family is really about philanthropy. And 16:21 if it was not for the brown family, I mean, we wouldn't be talking about whiskey row today. I mean, they essentially saved whiskey row where we are right now. And they when a Louisville was crumbling from an art perspective, the brown family kind of held it up, you know, so you go around our museums here, and you'll see a brown at the top of every one of the donors. So they're a very, very important family for our community. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so is there like, you know, as Kenny and Fred said, the Browns are like one of the most famous families probably in the city is there like a pressure or like something to get out like, we got to keep this 17:00 thing going or How's that feel to be a part of that tradition and keep it going? 17:04 Well, 17:06 I don't know. I mean, I think you just, you certainly you want to be respectful to what the city represents and reflect that, you know, appropriately. I think, 17:18 you know, I don't know if it's pressure. I think that at all, really, I think, you know, you're many of us have different jobs and doing different things. And I think there's a, there's a, I think, a bias towards staying engaged, staying interested understanding kind of the issues and the opportunities of the city and figuring out ways in which we can help, like anybody would really in our own individual ways, 17:45 you know, to help to find solutions and empower people and empower ideas. And I think that, you know, frankly, there are so many people in this city in particular that are doing that every day. I mean, I work with Holly McKnight, her husband, JK me 18:00 ignite is done a ton for this city through, you know, his Philip philanthropy, philanthropy and through his interest in music and they can throw a party party. Greg great taste. You know, so I think that and there's, like, individual after individual like that are that are here, you know, looking I think because it's a city that's fairly manageable size it gives individuals an opportunity to kind of make things happen that would be much harder to do even in a Nashville certainly in a New York or Miami but I think there's still as an economy of scale that allows a good idea or a strong individual to make something powerful happen. It's a big small town. Yeah, yeah. So also want to kind of just talk about your, your rise with inside the ranks of brown Forman too, because little research shows that you started off in the mailroom at Brown Forman so kind of talk about the steps that you took up the ladder to to kind of where you are today. Well, I mean, we've got 19:00 Great internship. I mean, the internship programs gotten a whole lot better since I was a part of it. 19:06 And that's how I got involved. You know, I didn't know anything about really the business I grew up in Montreal, had a chance to move spent a summer in Louisville. I got a job in the mailroom. I think, you know, those types of opportunities in a mailroom gives you a real perspective on who people are in a company, what different groups do individuals do you learn about the brands, I remember walking in and to my cousin Mac Brown's office, and I think he was part of the Jose Guarino company at the time, and was running maybe Martel and just seeing the point of sale in his office and going God, he got this job, this would be great. Look at that. I mean, you know, just some neat stuff and, and I think it's a business that kind of captures your imagination and you see kind of neat things that you can touch and feel and and so that certainly gives you a nice kind of 20:00 insight into, 20:02 you know how people get their jobs done. And it's a beautiful campus. If you've ever been down to brown Forman it really is set up like a university campus. And it's a great place to work and so that that certainly draws you in. And then, you know, I went and got a graduate degree and came back in 94 and started to work actually, we were talking you're talking about in the intro about Sasha Sasha Mark Brown, who run says rack was hired me at Brown Forman when he was running the advancing markets group. And so I began working in that like our emerging markets group in 94. I went to Chicago for a bit of supposed to be there for a couple years and an opportunity opened up for me overseas and I got asked to come back to go over to interview for the job, but they wouldn't tell me what the job was. And so I you know, I spent basically the better part of a day trying to figure out why 21:00 I was in what I was, what job and then I kind of figured it out. And as it turned out, they wanted me to go to India. And I think they were just nervous about telling me that while I was living in Chicago thinking I might not come for the interview, just because it's such a far way to go. And you know, it's a it's a difficult market. It's not like, you know, when you're 2425 years old, and somebody says, Hey, do you want to go to Australia? Yes, I do. When did you want to go to India, it's such a foreign place. And you really don't have the same kind of immediate 21:34 interest, frankly, and kind of moving up there and go into a country that big and that vast, 21:41 and I ended up moving there. I was supposed to go there for four months, ended up spending a year and I left that place in tears. I absolutely loved it. It was one of the best experiences of my life. I got to travel all over the country helping set up a joint venture where we were local bottling Southern Comfort. So that was my first kind of 22:00 introduction into a relationship with the brand that I had off and on for over a decade at the company. And I was just great. It was fantastic. Great people great food. What was your favorite Indian food dish? Chicken Tikka Masala. Oh yeah, yeah, like Assad pioneer London on yet naan bread delicious. I mean everything about it I loved 22:25 and then I moved to the Philippines to help set up the joint venture over there also around the Southern Comfort brand, and was on my way to Thailand to be a country manager and I got 22:39 persuaded to go help open up an office in Istanbul in Turkey for regional marketing office that we had there and I went to do that and I ended up staying in Turkey for three and a half years before coming back to the US. As a US brand manager for Southern Comfort. You should have been the dosa keys and World's Most Interesting Man 23:00 Well, yeah, maybe like some nice locations, but not nearly the exotic experiences that that guy had. For sure. Yeah. And so what got you into the, I guess the old forester category? Was it to the point where you said, I kind of want to move on or was at the sale of Southern Comfort and you said, Okay, I'm looking for a new home, you know, what it was? 23:20 I think we began to see some interesting things happening for old forester. We had we had had a great brand team that was coming up with some pretty wonderful ideas that are now we're drinking, you know, the whole whiskey roll concept. And there was an opportunity with the, you know, with the we finally got the approval to go build this distillery at the location we're at today. 23:45 And we wanted to bring that story together a little bit like you know, the story of a brand that's been around for 100 and almost hundred and 50 years that's been in our family and our company. That kind of the business we started with was old forester and 24:00 Bringing that story of our family, the business and the community together. At that point, I had about 20 years experience. So, you know, here's a person that actually, you know, may have the, you know, commercial sense to go lead this and, and, and had the, the obvious, you know, the right DNA to connect the dots on this five generations story and so I, you know, I was asked to kind of head up the building phase of this and the capital project and then help lead the brand and tell the story of, you know, one of America's unique alcohol products and and it's really been a pleasure to be able to kind of have that role. Let's go to the, the construction part of this first. I mean, first of all, 24:52 it from a business perspective. You gotta be nuts to try and build a distillery in a good little lab. 25:00 better places to do this right? I think this area burnt down yet two times. Yeah. Can you take us through that process of like? 25:09 Well, I what I loved it what makes me feel good, like smarter people than me made the decision. 25:16 So, yeah, that that location site was picked well before I started. 25:21 Yeah, I think it will I mean that but that's what makes it so special. You know, like, here's a location that we actually like our founder office out of, for from whatever 25:33 1882 to 1919. And, you know, we get to move back in here decades, generations later, I mean, so that's a special thing that when you get a chance to take advantage of that you do it. 25:47 We I feel like one of our core capabilities at the company is building wonderful home places that allow us to tell 25:56 great brand stories while displaying a process. 26:00 And we worked with some great partners here in town and out of town that 26:06 you know, frankly put together a proposition that was hard to say no to and that you know, and frankly, you know, as you get into these projects, you like any kind of renovation or building you know, something happens all the time that you're not expecting certainly the fire being a big obvious one. Tell us about that. let's let's let's let's go there because 26:30 Was it 2014 Yeah, the right one. I started right when you started so 2014 fire there's smoke all downtown Louisville, the news crews are here. I see it on the news. That's how I find out about it. How did you guys work because it was over you your tweet, you know through here I'm a first responder so I was I was the fights right? I actually I forgot I came on the site and I was tweeting about it. I forgot about that. But what was what was that like for you? Where were you? Yeah, what was going through your head when 27:00 When the fires when the fire hit, so I was in the office at 850 Dixie Highway and I got a phone call from a buddy of mine in corporate development who had a friend down here works for one of the law firms or one of the banks I don't know and he was looking out his window and called my colleague and said look, I think think buildings on fire and so I got the phone calls I get Look, I just got a friend a call from a friend who says that the buildings downtown on Main Street are on fire I don't know if it's the distillery or not but you may want to check it out. And so I just you know, I had my computer up and I i there was this live feed on I think wave or one who is one of the stations of a helicopter and I pulled it up and 27:46 for sure, it was obvious that the block was on fire. less obvious was was it did we was it in our building or was it down the block and you knew no matter what it was going to be a problem. 28:01 And your first reaction was, it was shocking how violent the fire was how much flame there was the, the number of the amount of smoke, the amount of water being thrown at it. It was it was a big, big time fires like yeah, like watching a movie almost. And you're kind of paralyzed. And I called Mike beach and Mike and his team are already down here. And Mike is the project manager who really is the guy that built this place, manage all the of the contractors and whatnot. 28:34 And so, you know, we had our folks down here and kind of trying to understand it and really you're thinking about safety. I mean, what happens if somebody is killed as they're trying to kind of put this fire out what you know, and you know, that they're taking the right precautions, but it was pretty 28:51 it's pretty devastating. You know, 28:53 I and my wife You know, my wife hears about it, you know, we're then we're later at night we're at home, the things still burning 29:00 I begin to get a lot of phone calls, just from friends and and, you know, they're trying to find out about it, it was pretty awful. And you know, 29:10 you we were already planning on the groundbreaking right? Like, what that ceremony was going to look like and everything else and, and so that everything gets put on hold and Now fortunately there there were no injuries. You know, we're standing we're sitting in the building today So look, it was it was a horrible thing when it happened, right? It's now a chapter and a long story. And this whole block looks stunning, you know, and so I think we're pretty fortunate and given the work it took to get it there because you a lot of people would have just let it you know, kind of tear down the facade and start from scratch. You all invested the money to actually save the the front Yep. And hold the brick in. I mean my I mean the we have braces out here for months. Yeah. 30:00 You guys are trying to protect the integrity of the bill as much as you could I mean, it was a dangerous dangerous 30:06 construction site for a long time. I mean, even as you're trying to clean up the inside in there been so much water put on the on the on the building site to to extinguish everything that it just eroded the ground and eroded all the brick and then you know, things are loose. When you're up front on Main Street on this side as we're trying to kind of dig through that and brace it all things are kind of crumbling as it's happening. And, you know, 30:35 we had to call in special engineers, it took a lot of time. A lot of smart minds looking at it, figuring out ways in which we could make it a safe environment to allow people to go back and work and so we really just had, you know, you know, 30:50 experts in there and just very few at a time and that took it just took a lot of time and you know, you kind of make these connections in the romance copy of what we do you know, we're in a business 31:00 Uh, you know, we're we spend our time waiting around for stuff to get ready. And so 31:06 you know, you want to you want to be you want to be quick and you want to make decisive decisions, but you also want to make the correct decisions. And, you know, 31:13 we took our time, I think we've got it right. You know, 31:17 this building, I think is fascinating the way that you have constructed it now, and it's a beautiful facility, I think, you know, 31:25 whether you're coming in here on a tour, or you're going to George's or you're just here to, you know, 31:31 walk walk around Main Street, it's, it's been done right. And, you know, 31:35 again, the fire is a chapter of the long story. Where are we at right now in the chapter? 31:42 Yeah, I think this is that whole fun Renaissance chapter. Right? It's, 31:46 it's the chapter you want to be writing and, you know, we're thrilled with what's happening with the brand. I mean, even in Kentucky, I mean, this brand has always been a great brand for the city and for the state but to see it grow 32:00 And the out, you know, the rural parts of Kentucky, embrace old forester in a way that I mean, I just never saw in my lifetime. It's fantastic. You know, there's, there's always been this core heartbeat of the brand here in town. And it's just kind of expanding there. And then you see what's happening in these other markets. And you know, how people are responding to some of the whiskey, the innovation, it's exciting, you know, I think there's a lot more to be written 32:27 with the whole category, right? I mean, we're just scratching the surface as it relates to bourbon in an American whiskeys outside of the US. And I think that's going to be really exciting and a lot of fun for us. I think innovation continues to kind of push the envelope of the category in a neat way. You know, 32:46 we've got bourbon in general, you know, it's just, it's, it's, you know, it's, 32:53 it just can be consumed in so many fun, different ways. I think it's really really versatile. And so you bring it you bring up the international 33:00 markets and, you know, this is very, very crucial time in American whiskey history because we haven't had this kind of export interest before. And now, we're in addition to having that interest we have we have some trade concerns where people are pressing tariffs. And 33:21 and, and you know that I can't think of a company that's more vulnerable to tariffs than brown Forman. Yeah. And, you know, I think that's, that's one of the tough outcomes of this as as these this terror of things going on. You know, we're an industry that's for the most, in most cases, it's single source production, right? We don't, the inputs of this product are 100% American. 33:51 And so it's an easy target for tariffs outside of the US because it doesn't really impact 33:59 any of the 34:00 Any supply side stuff that would be occurring from a European market for instance. I mean, pretty much everything is for bourbon and American whiskeys are made in America. So it's isolated. And so it's the perfect target to be in the middle of a territory, unfortunately. And it's it's a timing couldn't, you know, it's it's, 34:21 it's not great, you know, it's not a huge deal for old forester. Obviously, we're, we're a smaller brand that's got, you know, some nice momentum. 34:33 But it's not, it's not, you know, 34:36 it's not it's we don't have a huge footprint, a global footprint yet, but jack daniels, you're in the sister brand that's in Tennessee. That's, that's correct. It hit some hard. It does. It does. So you're not going to think of any sort of long term effects that old forester could have on this. I mean, is it because I'm sure you've had some sort of international expansion and thoughts. I mean, so we're lucky we actually have a nice 35:00 Really nice business. That's, that's got some great momentum in Australia. But that's not a tariff issue. You know, 35:06 we're in the UK. 35:09 And and that is more of a thing for us, but it's still a small brand that's being built in the on premise and, you know, 35:17 friends, right, I mean, this is really about the Woodford and the jack daniels of the world and and, and that that this has a real impact on on those brands and how we go about resourcing and how we go about brand building in, in in the European and Asian and Latin American market. So I'm not the best guy to talk about, you know, the, you know, 35:39 how that's impacting those brands, but it's obvious that I do think that like, yeah, you get the PDF every morning that says like, Oh, I will. I will say that. If there's, if there's a brand within the brown Forman portfolio that would survive like a tear for the countries that would be old for sure, because 36:00 It is. It is such 36:03 that powerful. Yeah, there was an article. My brother lives in London. And there was an article that came out and it was kind of a tongue in cheek thing. Okay, five things to do facing this terror floor on bourbon and American whiskey and I think one of the points was make jack daniels popsicles and last longer. I think people are coming up with ways in which to survive this period of time, I think will will survive, although i've i've screamed about it enough for the past. 36:39 So I want to ask a question is about the old forester brand and kind of where you see it. 36:45 You've probably heard of finishing beer using whiskey barrels, but Michigan distillery is doing the opposite. They're using beer barrels to finish their whiskey. New Holland spirits claims to be the first distillery to stout a whiskey a folks at Rock house whiskey club heard that claim 37:00 Had to visit the banks of Lake Michigan to check it out. It all began when New Holland brewing launched in 97. Their Dragon's milk beer is America's number one selling bourbon barrel aged out. In 2005. They applied their expertise from brewing and began distilling. At beer barrel finished whiskey began production 2012 and rock house was the club is featuring it in their next box. The barrels come from Tennessee get filled with Dragon's milk beer twice, the mature bourbon is finished in those very same barrels. rack house whiskey club is a whiskey the Month Club on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories from craft distillers across the US. Along with two bottles of hard to find whiskey rack houses boxes are full of cool merchandise that they ship out every two months to members in over 40 states. Go to rock house whiskey club com to check it out. And try a bottle of beer barrel bourbon and beer barrel rye use code pursuit for $25 off your first box. 37:55 So I want to ask a question is about the enforcer brand and kind of where you see it. Do you see it as a 38:00 An everyday category premium category in are you doing anything to kind of elevate into a premium category? Well, for sure, I think it's a great question. And it's the one we wrestle with most regularly 38:15 is, you know, one of the wonderful aspects of the brand, if you talk to anybody that's been drinking it for a while, or that's familiar with it. 38:24 It's so accessible, you know that it's a great value bourbon, and, and I think that's something that is core to that brand DNA. And so maintaining that accessibility, both in the flavor profile and the price point. It's part of how we look at brand building for old forester so that's always going to be a thing. 38:46 Now, recently, we've been we've had some success with the introduction of whiskey row, which allows us to play in price points that are, you know, attractive, you know, these are $40 and above price points. There's a ton of 39:00 consumer interest in those price points and I think if you create a bourbon that's worth that price, or even considered a value at that price, it's a special place to be. So I think we'll always try to look for ways even at $40 and $55, or even looking at birthday bourbon, which is basically 100 bucks. Now, that's still a good value for a 12 year old, you know, 39:22 a highly allocated bourbon that you know, is got a recommended sales price at 100 bucks, it's hard to find it for that, but 39:31 know that that's, I think that's, that's part of, you know, what we look at and in our strategy so I'll say that, you know, if we take a look at some of the, of the releases of the last two or three years of what's really hit the mark, and in our community, old forester has been right there in the thick of it. The 2018 birthday bourbon, has probably the best birthday bourbon of the past decade. The 39:58 camera should have some 40:00 By the way, me a bottle. But I think you know, you never gone well you all. 40:08 But I mean, everybody really regarded the 2013 is one of the best. Yeah, it was very good. And then then the old forester 1920 is fantastic. Yes. And I look at i and i look at, you know, what has changed within your within your team. 40:23 And I think I feel like Jackie, and you may be a moral compass it like have happened. I feel like you've got somebody inside, you know, who's doing a great job of selecting stuff for you. So what Yeah, and I've also noticed that you walk around here, this is probably the most diverse distillery in the state. 40:49 You see more diversity, see more women, more people of color here, and I applaud you for that. But talk, talk us through your team and who's actually you know, picking 41:00 What what's going into the bottle right now? Yeah, well, I mean, I mean so Chris Morris is the continues to be our master distiller and leads the innovation. 41:11 You know, one who works at this distillery is you know, he's a big part of making sure what's coming out of here. Tastes like what we've got at Brown Forman distillery where the vast majority of old foresters made. Jackie's came on board I think about three years ago, right when I came on board, she was one of the first people that kind of was on our radar screen and the first person I think I hired as when I took over. 41:39 And there's no question that she has had an impact on how we talk about these brands, how we present them both in flavor and in kind of the copy and the positioning of them. She's allowed us to think differently about innovation. I think she's worked really well with Chris 42:00 And helping kind of you've got these two characters, two individuals that are really good at what they do that have I think fairly 42:13 I mean, they I think they just have they they have very well refined palates. Basically what I'm hearing is Chris and Jackie go into a room, and they're fighting over a barrel. And Jackie's winning the fights right now. You know, I wouldn't say that I would say I mean, I mean, if it did come down to a physical battle, I would put my money on jack. 42:34 But I think that they work well together now and Jackie, I mean, look, the birthday bourbon, how we proofing some of this stuff. I mean, she's really the the brains behind president's choice. 42:47 You know, it's we are lucky to have her and and she had a great impact. Do you take a little bit of a bit bill Samuels approach, or at least what he used to say is like, I don't mess with the whiskey. Do you? You let people kind of 43:00 make the decisions on what's in the bottle and you just kind of official Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 43:05 I'm a great consumer. Yeah. 43:08 And and I'm proud of my, you know being a good long time responsible consumer. 43:14 But I mean, since I've been in this job I've probably spent more time thinking about, you know, my palate and like, frankly my biggest problem with you know, being like a whiskey taster is that I just don't have the reference points like I don't know what a scone Welcome to the crowd. 43:33 Like I can't Fred starts revealing or like, Yeah, he's got he's got his t shirt on it says like got marzipan. Yeah. 43:42 I don't know. I mean, I just so I mean, I feel like I've got a sense of what I like But yeah, I mean, Jackie's I can feel it yet figured out what consumers would like. Yeah, yeah. You know, 43:54 and there's frankly there's just people that are you know, it's in their DNA and 44:00 They've worked really, really hard to develop a palette that's responsive to liquids that they're tasting. And we've got some really good people at that, that do that here. But there's a little bit of responsibility your shoulders because there's another bottling called president's choice, that kind of falls within your realm. Now, I can talk about that more involved with that. But, you know, 44:24 Jackie, narrows it down to a point where it's hard to make a bad decision. Yeah, it really is. And will you were part of the first one I've leaned into, you know, a lot of really good. I know. 44:41 We all we all certainly looking around the room and look at how people are responding. But I mean, it was it was, it was interesting, you know, and, look, I'm still learning you know, frankly, you don't want me picking going out there. And, you know, you've got to understand where the barrels are and why those are 45:00 barrels would possibly taste different than another barrel. Certainly as you kind of fluctuate the proofs around, you know, it's easier for me to kind of taste stuff that's below 110 proof and get a sense of, you know, the character of that whiskey. But 45:18 yeah, I mean, I, I'm not the whiskey. 45:23 I want to I want to talk a little bit about that culture of brown Forman, you know, so you have three really prominent, you know, arguably all three iconic American whiskeys and jack daniels, Woodford Reserve, old Forester, and it feels like within the company, it's a little bit like University Kentucky versus University of Louisville. Like there's like a rivalry rivalry with within the company. would you would you do you see that or are you too close where I think Fred's creating one. 45:59 I have never 46:00 Done. Yeah, no, I I don't look I mean, the one thing you recognize any if you're fortunate enough to have a brand in your portfolio that's jack daniels or anything remotely close to that. It's a benefit. There's no doubt about it, you know it in so many different ways it's even hard to put into words opens a lot of doors I mean, it sure does and but they don't have a president's choice jack daniels you know you can hang your hat on that 46:29 they have a Sinatra Yeah, they got great they got a great portfolio I mean what if it's got a great portfolio you have to because 46:38 Woodford does you guys kind of share some some barrels you know, they you know, the warehouses Do you ever have to fight for barrels? Or do you already have everything kind of allocated to you within the company we have we need? Yeah, yeah. When will you be closer to like 100% of production here. Never. 47:00 They'll always be you'll always have a little share a little still time at Shively. Oh, for sure. I mean, that's Yeah, I mean, we have the capacity to do about 100,000 cases here. The brand's already, you know, everything all included is over 200,000 I think and so we're, we're, we're, you know, 47:19 we're growing so the majority will continue to come out of Shively. 47:24 Another question I cannot bring up is the statesman. Right? What kind of impacted old forts or statesman and aligning yourself to a movie? kind of have it as an impact on the business? 47:36 Interesting question. Yeah, so that was a little bit out of left field, right. It's not you know, if you look at how we've innovated or come up with products, it's been basically using our, our history to drive that and we had, you know, a really unique shot, that brands of this size with the kind of awareness we have would never get and we jumped at it and it basically 48:00 We took a brand that didn't really exist, and we put it on the market. And so that's, you know, close to 10,000 cases in under 12 months. And it was a, it was a huge impact for us. It You know, 48:13 it got us new points of distribution, all of a sudden, we're in all these amc movie theaters and, and around the introduction of that film when it came out, and we're doing, you know, some menu development in those places. And so, you know, 48:26 we got, we had a great partnership going with total wine, they got behind the product, and so it opens a bunch of doors, it allows you to talk for one, it you know, 48:37 that that movie itself has such a huge following in the around the world, that I think it probably gave us an avenue into consumers that would never ever buy a bourbon, or old forester for sure. But they love the movie and they see z and the cast drinking and they're like, well, geez, I gotta try that and wonder what that's all about. And so you get your already 49:00 Kind of as a recruitment tool it's wonderful market like Korea where we're nowhere we really don't have any product if it's there it's come through duty free in some way shape or form. 49:11 That's the number King's been was the number one movie in the country historically, it's the biggest movie. It's there like Star Wars. And that's weird. You explain I know I have no idea. No idea. But I mean, and so all of a sudden, you know that our Korean markets call and say hey, we got to get some of this stuff. So we're like getting pallets of it and flying it off to Korea. So that's available in the market there and you know, if you look on you know, I follow whatever old forester on Instagram and so I'll see a lot of these Instagram posts from Asia 49:46 as tax days when Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then the kind of what you know, Campbell from, 49:53 from a historical perspective, that was very big for bourbon like I I'm glad to hear that. It in it. 50:00 was a success for you but from a category perspective, if you look back to the 1960s you know James Bond really started dictating what a lot of people would drink from a spirits perspective. You would start seeing people go to white spirits over brown spirits in large part because he wanted a martini shaken but not stirred. And so to see bourbon to continue to have this pop culture presence and madmen Boardwalk Empire the state's been that's a huge play for continuing to capture consumers are you will? Do you have a strategy, you know, to do more than just the statesman. I mean, are we going to start seeing you when 50:36 some TV series or anything like that? I mean, look, our strategy is like, be lucky. And and so I approached us about it. Yes. 50:48 So there's a show that just started I think on 50:52 Amazon called the Romanovs and so they reached out to us and they needed a, you know, a period type of a decanter. So 51:00 Grab them one of our old holiday decanters. And they use that in the TV show. I have not seen the show. But I mean, you know, you're always getting these types of opportunities. This movie came out recently called, like, father was like a huge hit on Netflix. And that movie has old forester in it and Woodford Reserve in it. And that was something that just came around because, you know, somebody knew somebody and they needed a, you know, some Bourbons for the scene and turned out that movie did really, really well on that Netflix platform. So a lot of people saw it and, and I think, yeah, you look for opportunities to do that all the time. It's a great tool. It's fairly inexpensive and it gives you a huge audience if it turns out to be a hit show or hit movie. Alright, so are you a movie buff by any means? I like movies. So if you were to do a movie tie in and have old forester being anything, what would it be past or present? Oh, gosh. Oh, good question, man. I mean, you already said Star Wars. So I don't think I'm 52:00 Lucy sitting there, oh, he's afraid that star wars are handled it. Like, you know, it's it's tough because movies I like are a little darker and so you don't always want your product feature 52:15 darkness 52:17 like like Unforgiven you know, okay, I love that movie, you know, but pretty dark, you know. And and so that that's a tough one. I mean, I look, I think it you know to me, jack daniels is the example of great products showing up in great scenes of great movies that are unforgettable. I mean, whether it's Animal House or any Paul Newman film, I mean, that that jack daniels is by these heroes and villains by their sides, and it's, they become it becomes part of the character and I so I think that's what's important that if you're going like we're with Matthew Vaughn and King's Men mean he really built a big portion of his movie, around the 53:00 idea of distillers from Kentucky. And that's pretty spectacular. I mean, each of the his characters were, you know, had a very specific trait and they were, you know, associated with a particular style or a whiskey or a tequila or whatever it was. And it made sense. I mean, the story when we got into the how we got old forester that was that is that he actually referenced as he was kind of given us the short stick on it that look, this is like 1919 pre prohibition and he goes on and fit in. So he finished his telling me the story. I was like, hey, look, you mentioned pre prohibition. Is that why? Why would you know about that? It's like, well, I just need something if these guy if the the agency was started in 1919, Kingsman, right, you know, on the heels of the First World War, you know, 53:50 that would have been around 1919 so have been pre prohibition. So I think you need to have this, like look, the brand new want to do it with that is old forester. We're the only brand that's been around before 54:00 During and after prohibition is like you're right, I'm going to do with old forester and so just fit his story and I think that's when these things work well, and it's something like that. I mean, do you have to 54:11 how does how does it work? are they paying you a royalty? Are you paying kind of like a get in any of that? 54:20 He's because he's not going away to expand the Ascot business. 54:25 By the way, 54:27 I did their main, the guy 54:31 who plays The Big Lebowski, what's his name? 54:34 is 54:36 Jeff Bridges he weren't asked God in the film. He was here for Derby. Who's the worst Fred minute this guy? 54:45 Is that you said there's only three people in the world. It's still women. Yeah. So now we got two of them. Got to find that third. Yeah. 54:51 Guys, some random winemaker in France. 54:55 And so there's kind of like one last question that we got to do and just part of the service of this is you 55:00 You know, you'd mentioned the history of this building and being able to be at the place where we're George had his own office and stuff like that. We're actually sitting in his office. Oh, can see that photo right there. That's him and whether 55:16 that's him sitting back there leaning in the chair. Oh, it's amazing. Is there a cool windows? Is that a Samsung or an iPhone? It's an iPhone. 55:24 I think it's a Canadian, Blackberry. 55:27 Pony Express. 55:29 But the how because I guess we everybody kind of wants to know is either I'm sure you've looked it up in the family tree like how far away You're moved from the gene pool of George himself. I'm George Garvin. 55:43 Fifth Generation fifth generation so as your great great, great grandfather, okay. Yeah. Now the internet. The funny thing is that So Mike is gonna want to swab your cheek later 55:54 on a test we're going around right now. So we're going to get the 23andme this done the 56:00 So my dad was a George Garvin brown the third. I was born in 67. 56:09 My grandfather, George Darren Brown, the second passed away in I think 69. And so my brother was born in July of 69. And he was named George Garber on the fourth. So you can imagine, as the eldest child, why, how come I didn't like Hamlet? 56:33 How come I don't get the loom? The Roman numeral, you know, and so you end up there. I mean, the reason was, is that I think it's a little distracting when you've got three gardens running around the same kind of household. And my grandfather just passed away and my my, you know, my mom, my dad had got my my brother and so that was a nice tribute to him. So yeah, we're so he's my great, great grandfather. real cool. Well, yeah, definitely a good story. And I want to say also 57:00 So thank you again for taking the opportunity in time to come on the show and tell us your story. The history. More about statesman. I think it was your favorite movie. Yeah, then yeah, yeah. So that movie was cinema, movie tickets, and then we'll go watch a deep dark mystery movie or something. I would like to say that I think old force would fit very nicely in the hustler. But yeah, was actually centered around a lot of bourbon. Oh, yeah. It wasn't here. He was a he was a wholesaler. Yeah. He was a wholesaler. And he was like a big he came down to Kentucky for tournament. Yeah, I'm getting hammered on JT is brown eight year old and it was eight year old bourbon that that drew him in. So it's a Seattle thing. For sure what a fit there. I was thinking like Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump would be a perfect fit. Yeah, I know that Lieutenant Dan needed rock get stuff. Yeah, he didn't want anything in quality. He just wanted to get hammered. Very true. Yeah, yeah, what do I know? I would just say like something like Jurassic Park, just like running through the rest of the fields at the bottom portion here and I can see it right. 58:00 Yeah something like yet the short Art Museum Park 58:07 Well, thank you i this is a lot of fun. I appreciate you guys having me always a pleasure. Absolutely. And you know people want to learn more about you they can Google apparently there, you know getting the Wikipedia and fix all the stuff that I was getting incorrect. I'm very nice if there's anything I mean Wikipedia. You'd be surprised most of what's good. Yeah. Most of it. 90% Yeah. But make sure you also you follow actually, you should come to the old forester distillery distilling company here downtown, go and take a tour. It's a great experience. They've got literally everything here. They've got bottling, they've got Cooper fridge, they've got distilling, they've got a barrel warehouse, you mean you name it, the lady salary? As you can see, get lit on fire. It's it's the coolest elevator experience you'll ever see. There's an elevator here at the old forester distillery that I would say rivals something Disney. It's a fantastic elevator ride. I'm going to say Charlie mention 59:00 aka flattery, something like that I was gonna rival that one too. I haven't seen that in a while. I mean, you know, it goes up it goes, maybe it goes in there like can have like, Charlie Chocolate Factory bourbon ball with old forester. We're thinking, now we're thinking. So make sure you go you check that out follow bourbon pursuit, as well as Fred Minnick on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And also, if you haven't done so yet, subscribe to bourbon plus, because there's a lot of great news stories that come out through their great magazine. It's thank you again, just great imagery and everything like that. But if you also like what you hear, support the show patreon.com slash bourbon pursuit, because without you the show, it would be very tough to keep going. So we want to say thank you, for everybody that helps support the show to do that, as well as all the questions. I mean, some of the questions we asked, are actually from some of the Patreon supporters out there today, all the show suggestions, questions, feedback, we've listened to you all, and we asked, so we really appreciate everyone listening and keep those comments. And, Fred, good to see you, man. Always a pleasure to see you. Thank you. So we'll see you next 1:00:00 Cheers Cheers.

This week on Beer Sessions Radio, Jimmy explores the phenomenon sweeping Brooklyn: Rothaus Pilsner. He is joined by Tobias Holler of Black Forest Brooklyn, Josh Van Horn of Gold Star Brewing, Kim Mercado from Brouwerij Lane, and Aaron Goldfarb, a writer from Punch. Rothaus Pilsner is an unpasteurized beer imported fresh and cold from Germany. Tobias is originally from the Black Forest region in which this beer is made and explains why he wanted to share his culture with New Yorkers. From the beer’s iconic logo to it’s short shelf life, these guests talk about why Rothaus Pilsner is good enough to compete with local brews. Beer List Rothaus Pilsner Andechser Vollbier Hell, Klosterbrauerei Andechs Palatime Pils, Suarez Family Brewery Homespun, Suarez Family Brewery Purple Haze, Abita Brewing Co. Beer Sessions Radio is powered by Simplecast.

Aaron Goldfarb is a writer who lives in Brooklyn. He’s written the novels “How to Fail: The Self-Hurt Guide” and “The Guide for a Single Man/Woman.” He writes about beer, whiskey, and drinks culture for places like Esquire, PUNCH, and VinePair. His latest book is “Hacking Whiskey.”

In a special bonus podcast this week, John is joined by Aaron Goldfarb to discuss the best way to drink your way through this year's NCAA Tournament. There's a lot of beer talk, some Nashville shade, and we crown this spring's one true champion. We also manage to avoid talking about Syracuse, because bitterness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Beer Sessions Radio, we’ve got some special guests joining us to talk about an article that our friend Aaron Goldfarb wrote for PUNCH called “When Did Rarity Start to Equal Greatness in Beer?” So joining us is Aaron himself, as well as Greg Doroski from Threes Brewing, Gage Moody-Siegel from BeerMenus, and our buddy Chris Balla is back again from Grand Army Bar.

John is joined by special guest Aaron Goldfarb to chat through their picks to drink their way through the NCAA Tournament bracket. There's plenty of bracket talk, some basketball and of course, a ton of beer industry discussion too   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John is joined by former TNIAAM contributor Aaron Goldfarb to discuss his new books, "The Guides for the Single Man/Woman," his recent SU-related version and Orange basketball (plus beer, of course). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Author of The Guide for a Single Man and The Guide for a Single Woman Interview starts at 19:11 It's a lot of effort to get one book, but two simultaneous books, where you're timing and syncing everything. It was just a huge challenge for the entire FG Press team, even beyond me writing the books. Show Notes […]

Take a tour of Vermont beer on a brand new episode of Beer Sessions Radio! Jimmy Carbone is in studio with Dave Brodrick of Blind Tiger, Worthy Burger & Worthy Kitchen, Sean Lawson of Lawson’s Finest Liquids, Aaron Goldfarb, beer writer and author and Augie Carton of Carton Brewing. The crew reflects on Vermont’s prohibition past and current role as a craft beer trendsetting region. The guys taste some beer on air, share some favorite brew styles and discuss recent and upcoming beer events. This program was brought to you by GreatBrewers.com. “Whatever’s near you and fresh is always going to be better than those old bottles. It infuriates me if somebody has an old bottle and says its not good.” 43:00 –Aaron Goldfarb on Beer Sessions Radio