Tailored Talks #4 - All things Whiskey with Trey Wade

Welcome back to Tailored Talks! In this episode, we are joined by whiskey aficionado Trey Wade, the head of consumer experience for Coors Spirits Company. Trey, a prolific collector of spirits, shares his extensive knowledge and passion for whiskey and bourbon.

The discussion delves into the rich history and growing popularity of whiskey, including fascinating bourbon hunting stories. The panel also highlights their Mount Rushmore of bourbon and introduces some great brands to look out for.

Whether you're a seasoned whiskey lover or just getting started, this episode offers a deep dive into the world of bourbon, featuring iconic bottles, unique finds, and expert tips on whiskey hunting. Tune in to learn, savor, and share the spirit of whiskey with us!

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Music.

(00:34):
Welcome back to Taylor Talks. I am Brad, co-host and co-founder of OMJ Clothing.
Today, we're going to talk about something we are very fond of here at OMJ, obviously.
I'm pointing to our whiskey bar behind me for those listening that cannot see.
And we're going to talk about whiskey, our love for it, and why it has become so popular.

(00:57):
The story behind whiskey, whiskey and bourbon hunting stories.
We'll go over plenty of those, I'm sure.
The panel today are Mount Rushmore of bourbon and, of course,
some great brands to look out for.
So today, I am here to my right with co-host of Taylor Talks,
Will Jones. Hello, guys.

(01:19):
And then we have a very special guest today, a dear friend.
Dubbed by the Financial Times, Mr. Trey Wade is a prolific collector of American
whiskey and an up-and-coming spirit savant.
He is also the head of consumer experience for Coors Spirits Company,
which, and that is an extension of Blue Run.

(01:40):
Blue Run, so for those that may know Blue Run.
And just a dear friend who has taught me probably 90% of what I know about whiskey
and bourbon. Oh, you're too kind. And on all things.
And is also responsible for probably 90% of the whiskey and bourbon that we have in our store.
So he is our friend. You cannot have him. No, I'm just kidding.

(02:02):
The one thing I love about Trey is he is so kind and explaining whiskey to everybody.
And is not at all snooty about it, even though he knows more than anybody I've met. So, Mr. Trey Waite.
Thank you, guys. Super excited to be here. This is one of my favorite places ever to just hang out.

(02:22):
I'm guilty of maybe sneaking away for lunch breaks here and having to pour with the guys on Fridays.
I'm super excited. Well, first of all, I'm super proud of you guys for getting
this launched. I think it's a,
a great place to showcase some of the expertise that surrounds and ties itself to what you guys do.
And that's, you know, fashionable lifestyles. So, uh, thanks for having me. Super excited.

(02:42):
Absolutely. Always welcome. Yeah. We always love when we see Trey walking out
with a bag or a box usually has a bottle of something or multiple bottles and
the bottles are usually pretty hard are defined.
Yeah. I, uh, I'm pretty selective in my, in my purchasing now,
way back when, when I got into the game, you know, it was just whiskey curious.

(03:05):
I'm still whiskey curious, but probably bought a bunch of stuff that I'll never finish.
And now I've, you know, I'm pretty selective and do a little bit more due diligence
now that I'm a bit more educated on what's out there.
Very kind and sharing. It's a little like Christmas around here.
Yes. And I love it, right?
Like, uh, whiskey is a, it's a blue collar drink in my opinion.
And the best thing about whiskey is the experiences that you can create.

(03:28):
Freddie Johnson is third generation at Buffalo Trace. He's their ambassador
emeritus and a bunch of other great things for them.
And tells a great story of his father explaining, don't put the cork back in
the bottle because whiskey is meant to be shared.
They can always make more whiskey.
These experiences are kind of finite opportunities. So incredible.
I think too, before we get into it,

(03:48):
but one thing that i think has drawn so many
people to it in the past you know 10 15
years uh is that community aspect to
it yeah you know it's it's something for everybody i call
it the great equalizer kind of like the masters you know you know you have these
things that are across all blue color white color you don't have to be of substantial

(04:10):
means as well if you're a little bit resourceful you can hunt and find these
great bottles and be the envy envy of your friend group oh yeah and And then share,
and it's also meant to be shared.
And another interesting thing, I'm sure this is not the hard and fast rule,
but there's not a huge...
It i guess the intoxication is

(04:34):
not a spirit that's relying on
intoxication as you know like you think of tequila you're taking shots of tequila
it's much more of a social beverage in my opinion it's also it's one of those
spirits that you slow down i have this philosophy there's two reasons people
drink either drink to taste or you drink to feel you drink your unaged clear
spirits to feel right If you drink to feel, you'll never taste.

(04:57):
If you drink to taste, you'll usually never feel or you'll eventually feel,
excuse me. And so whiskey has a lot of flavor.
There's a lot of reason behind that, especially bourbon. We're very proud here
in America of the flavor that we can infuse naturally into this spirit that is a worldwide spirit.
And that is whiskey and the things that we do here in the States to make bourbon
bourbon are unique here and can't happen anywhere else. You can make the same

(05:21):
exact whiskey somewhere else, but you can't call it bourbon unless it's in the U.S.
But to that point, I think just the social aspect, the history,
the things that attract me to whiskey, the history, the economic impact,
the social aspects, the community aspects. There's a lot of chemistry.
Growing up, I leaned towards math and science and not necessarily English and history.
And so there's a lot of chemistry that can go into it. Most people now that

(05:45):
are in a laboratory and production process have a degree in some sort of science,
whether it's chemistry or biology, et cetera.
And now you can get distillation degrees at a lot of major universities.
But to that point, it covers such a breadth of topics that you can show up and
fit in in a conversation.
You might not be a multi-kazillionaire, but you kind of know where corn comes from. Sure.

(06:06):
Right? Because you might have grew it. So it makes a big difference if you can
include more people. And I love the contemplative nature of it as far as experiencing,
you know, a nice glass of bourbon or whiskey.
There's something about it that almost takes on an academic sort of perspective at times.
Learning about it, but then enjoying it with friends and so forth,

(06:28):
getting that scholarship and then sort of building upon it as well.
I think the hidden gems in today's society are the things that force you to
slow down. And whiskey is one of those things.
You know what I mean? If you're, and I think something to say about folks that
have accomplished certain things in their life, you see that they're not necessarily frantic.
And so whiskey has kind of that, that aura to it where it forces you to slow

(06:51):
down and it gives you that sense of, of inclusion because you've kind of gotten
to a level that most people have to search for.
And so whiskey, whiskey is great. It's, it is.
My personal opinion, the most influential spirit in the world history.
And with a close second, probably being rum, but whiskey for sure.
I love it. The scotch is what you enjoy on a private jet. Right.

(07:13):
I mean, it depends on where you're flying, right? If you're outside of the U.S.,
nine times out of ten, you're drinking scotch.
That's the world of gentleman's drink, right? I do enjoy a scotch.
As do I. I actually brought one. It's one of my sleeper bottles.
I'm still learning about scotch.
So scotch is great. I mean, so we'll talk about this. I think that a lot of
folks may or may not know what whiskey even is, right?

(07:35):
And I can get, I'm guilty of being, now that I've been on this journey for a
while, I'm guilty of getting super in the weeds, super fast and not leveling,
level setting a baseline because I still run into it.
People that are even in the industry say, well, what's the difference between,
you know, bourbon and scotch and single malt?
And the baseline is very simple as defined by pretty much every regulatory organization.

(07:57):
Whiskey is essentially spirit made
from cereal grain cereal grain means different stuff in different
countries here in the states it's corn wheat rye
and barley in other countries especially asian countries you'll see some rice
as a cereal grain but using those grains and a you know a variance of recipe
right and yeast and water to ferment creates whiskey right and you just you

(08:20):
do the distillation process of course and that's different based on the type
of whiskey you can distill whiskey a bunch of different ways.
And each, each category of whiskey has different distillation requirements, right?
Here in the States, you can't make bourbon without certain, without being within
certain distillation parameters.
Scotch has its own. Other, other countries that are coming up and being more

(08:41):
prominent are defining theirs now.
So I would say they're in the, you know, they're in their early 1900s phase
of where bourbon was, right?
They're about a hundred years behind us, but, uh, but I think it's gonna be
a very fast pace that they catch up.
And the idea of all bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon. Spot on.
You can make whiskey anywhere in the world. You can only make bourbon in America.

(09:04):
All 50 states, not just Kentucky, for the naysayers out there.
Although the predominant amount of bourbon in the world does come from Kentucky.
A few years ago, it was somewhere in the 95 percentile.
I would imagine with a lot more states participating at the craft level,
and it scaled back a little bit, but still probably in the 90s.
But yeah, bourbon as of 1967.

(09:25):
Or maybe 1964. Don't quote me on that. In the 1960s, Congress designated bourbon
the native spirit of the United States.
So it had been being called bourbon for years there. It had been being made
in the States for a long period of time, but until the 1960s was it designated
that you could only make bourbon in the United States. Interesting. Yeah.
And why is it that, what makes it bourbon versus whiskey?

(09:50):
So there's a couple of big ones, Right. So one, we call them the ABCs.
It's got to be made in America.
Right. It's got to be in a new on a new charred oak container is what the legislation says.
Not necessarily a barrel. So you can actually make bourbon in a oak box if you
wanted to. It's not not very efficient.
You know, we use barrels for a reason. You can roll them mainly because you

(10:11):
can roll them. They stack well.
It's got to be in a barrel. It's got to be at least 51 percent corn in the recipe.
Corn is the native grain of America. Native Americans lived off of corn.
And so it grows prominently throughout the US.
And so that was one of the reasons that separated us from a lot of other countries
was the grain availability, right?
And there's a bunch of other ones like the end of the D goes into distillation.

(10:32):
So on the still, you can't distill over 160 proof.
And so folks that don't have an understanding of kind of how that works.
So if you make your mash, which is effectively your distiller's beer,
which is taking those grains that I just mentioned, so it's got to be at least
51% corn, and then the remaining 49% could be a combination of what other cereal

(10:54):
grains you like. You can't put grapes in there and call it bourbon.
You can't put any type of fruit. It's got to be one of those grains.
Add some yeast, add some water. That fermentation process happens.
And then candidly, you just made beer, right? If I wanted a blue moon,
all they would do is filter that, carbonate it, and put it in a bottle once it's chilled.
And that's called beer, right? However.

(11:15):
Pull out the concentrated alcohol, you put it in a still. There's a variety
of different types of stills and essentially it's a boiler, right? It cooks.
But what it does is it boils at a controlled rate, usually using steam to pull
off the alcohol vapors, which are lighter and boil at a lower temperature than water.
So they come, they, the steam at a lower temperature is mostly alcohol.
So you're pulling that off, you condense that, and that's how you get your spirit.

(11:38):
And it's just, it's if you take a pot of water and you boil it, right?
There's going to be condensation on the the top, the lighter compounds.
And if you boil that water till it's empty, the pot's all burnt out,
you'll see usually minerals, calcium or salt, whatever's in your,
or sodium, whatever's in your,
you know, your water out of the tap will stick to the side of the pot.
All the lighter stuff comes off earlier and that's, that's whiskey.

(11:59):
So can't distill over 160 proof. You can't go into the barrel at over 125 proof.
Proof is just double the alcohol percentage. So if you ever see something that's
a hundred proof, 50% of that liquid is alcohol. The other 50% is sugars, oils, is water.
And so, and then you can't bottle it under 80 proof. So those are the big three in distillation.

(12:19):
There's a, there's a bunch of other rules as well, but those are the main categories
made in America, 51% corn, the distillation rules, which are really important.
And it's got to be in an unused charred oak container, which means you can't
make bourbon in the same barrel twice, which is another unique thing to us.
You can do it in every other country.
You can use a cask multiple times and still call it the native spirit,
but only in, uh, only in America and you only use a barrel once.

(12:42):
Awesome. I know a lot of people, you know, don't know that distinction.
So, you know, for those, I know I mentioned your current role as the consumer,
head of consumer experience at CoreSpirit.
Walk through sort of a day in the life that probably is no, every day is the
same, but a general day in the life of what you do on a daily basis.

(13:03):
Much like whiskey, it's unpredictable.
It's fun. I've got these big blocks of categories that I try to check and touch
every day. Usually I try to make sure I touch base with the team every day.
I try to be as much of a team player as possible, especially working from wherever my feet are.
And so I touch base with our team. We have an awesome team of marketing and
sales and operations that we're a small but mighty organization.

(13:25):
So everybody carries a lot of weight. And what I do specifically for the organization
is oversee our private barrel program, which we'll talk about here.
You guys participated in that last year.
And that touches pretty much every aspect of the business. And so touching base
with the team is a daily occurrence for me in some capacity.
I do spend quite a bit of time on the road serving as kind of quasi ambassador,

(13:46):
salesperson, fire putter outer, you know, fire starter sometimes.
Sometimes I was, I was about to say, I mean, here we jokingly talk about it,
but where in the world is Trey Wade?
But it's true. Yeah. Today I'm in Charlotte. Fortunately, it's not,
it's not often I get to say I'm here, but, uh, all the cool things you get to go do.
I mean, you know, I'm very blessed to say multiple continents,
multiple continents from the masters to the Derby within 30 days and Alaska

(14:09):
in between there somewhere and kind of all over.
And I think the beautiful thing about that is like, I guess to define mostly
what I do on a day-to-day basis is engage with both our internal and external
partners, our customers, our consumers, our business partners,
internally, our different team members that are championing their avenues of
the business and just try to be the conduit, try to be the glue for everybody.

(14:30):
It's kind of what I go for.
Fantastic. You know, I think, well, this was very inspiring for me.
And I think it's a great lesson for all. And talking about how you got involved with Blue Run.
And I'll just say from like, you know, my standpoint, point i
remembered you went from talking about it you

(14:51):
had no you know it could have no no ties
to it right you were just hey i really like this and you
literally made the job yeah that you have happened that's that's funny yeah
it's true and our former ceo now head of head of the spears organization at
cores so so i guess also i always assume that people know this because i'm i'm
in front of people that live and breathe whiskey a lot molson cores is the same

(15:15):
company that makes Coors Light,
Miller Coors, et cetera.
They acquired Blue Run Spirits in the fall of last year.
Blue Run and Coors Spirits Co. started about the same time in 2020.
And fast forward, our brand had eclipsed a lot of other brands in the market

(15:36):
from awareness, a volume, a bunch of other standpoints. And they brought us
on board as a stake in the ground of like, they're serious about being in the
spirits industry. It's their campaign called Beyond Beer.
And so I joined Blue Run kind of serendipitously. I was the VP of Partnerships
for an organization called the Black Purpose Society.
Over 30,000 people participate in this group in various capacities around the world of it.

(16:00):
And it's a group that advocates for the inclusion of black and brown minorities
and of all the kinds in the spirits industry, because candidly,
a lot of it was built off of our work.
And historically been very under-marketed to or marketed to in a very superficial
way, right? It's gotta be sweet. It's gotta be, you know, it's gotta be low proof.

(16:21):
And there's a lot, just like in every population, there's a large population
of people who go, no, that might be the loudest story, but it's not the full story, you know?
And so what my role was there at BVS was as a VP of partnerships,
was really focusing in on emerging craft brands and being a relationship builder
between our community and what they were aiming for.

(16:42):
And so Blue Run came across my radar and kind of shot a DM.
And it's funny, Mike responded and said, hey, we actually love VBS.
We mentioned them in our investor deck.
And from there, I started kind of quasi-consulting on sensory nodes and some
consumer practices that I had seen.
My background is in human behavior. I did that for a while before I got into whiskey.

(17:05):
And next thing you know, the first bottle of Blue Run ever sent to anybody was on my doorstep.
And I crack it open, I taste it, and it was like, holy cow. Not only is the
aesthetic and the mission of the brand.
Undeniably attractive, right? You can't look away from it. Like it's just, it's beautifully done.
It's just one of those things where even if you hate whiskey,

(17:27):
you have to appreciate what the aesthetic of the brand is.
And then if you love whiskey, you, you appreciate that it's happening in the whiskey space.
And then if you love whiskey to the point where you open the bottle and taste
it, it just, it's a, it's a trifecta of a, of an opportunity.
So, but yeah, so fast forward, I did that for a couple of years of,
you know, behind the scenes, century writing,
tasting notes, giving them feedback from the various places i

(17:49):
was traveling bringing bringing some to omj sharing with
a lot of friends you know and there's so many parallels to your story as well
yeah native spirit correct manifest destiny i dig that that's funny fast forward
i i needed i wanted and needed to make a career change for some personal reasons
and and me and mike had been going back and forth.

(18:13):
And he would always seriously, but jokingly, but seriously say,
let me know when you're ready.
Like, let me know when you're ready. Just tell me, you know,
let me know when you're ready. What you want to do. And it wasn't just him.
It was a lot of the folks on the team that started the business.
And one day I kind of just wrote down what I would do and I sent it over to
him and he was like, well, that's your job. What's your title?
And so, and so yeah, I wrote my job description.

(18:35):
I said, Hey, here's what I would do for the brand. And here's what it costs.
And and here's what we would generate.
And he goes, well, when do you start? And so it was a really cool opportunity
after two and a half years of nurturing that relationship authentically and
just being somebody who genuinely cared about everything that brand,
our brand now is and was doing.

(18:56):
To your point, I just, I shot my shot. You know what I mean?
And it worked. It's very inspiring.
There's not many people that, I want to bring that up because we have a lot
of people that we come across, and I even can get a little bit ranty and preachy on this.
People expect things, instant gratification these days.

(19:17):
And, you know, I think it's a great lesson in if you really are passionate about
something And you put in the time and effort.
You didn't go to him and say, oh, this bottle is beautiful and I want to work for you.
Yeah. You should hire me. Yeah. I'm the person you should hire.
Because I wrote you, you know, no, you were like, hey, I really like this and
I want to tell everybody about it.

(19:38):
And, you know, as we grow this relationship.
And so it was done the right way over time.
Yep. And you created this job, this amazing job.
Yeah. If it sucks, it's my fault. but a multi multi-million dollar brand yeah
yeah and now you know kind of multi-billion dollar and employee number.

(20:04):
In eight and sub 10 sub 10
yeah and you you you created that so that's that's
amazing you also obviously we'll get into in a
second you were very qualified for this role
so i drank a lot yes but before
we get into that a little bit about blue run tell a
little bit about what they're doing what they're building yeah we

(20:26):
can't it's not a very old brand right like i said we're talking 2019
2020 this thing emerged and the the
founders that came together very established professionals
and other careers you got executives at nike and prolific fundraisers and the
first director level employer for facebook who then worked for the nsa and a
bunch of other stuff and And they came together and they were intelligent and

(20:48):
apt enough to realize that no matter how successful we were in these other industries,
we don't know the bourbon industry.
And so one of our co-founders, Jesse McKnight, who is from Georgetown,
Kentucky, where our name state comes from.
He had done some business with Jim Rutledge in the past. For the folks that
don't know, Jim Rutledge is the legacy at this point behind Four Roses.
He was their master distiller for over 30 years, has been in the industry,

(21:13):
it's probably close to, if not over 60 years now, and actually saved that brand in the US.
Jesse, the founders and Jesse, they called Jim and said, hey,
Jim, we've got this idea. Here's what the business plan looks like,
the outlay, all that stuff.
What do you think about making some whiskey for us and helping us find some
more whiskey? And, you know, Jim is tinkering in the garage at the time and
then they get silent and they think he hung up, but he, you know,

(21:35):
he was excited because he had been at home and had been, had been working for
a while because he retired by choice.
And he goes, you know what? I'd love to make some whiskey for you.
And so these guys came together early on.
They brought on folks like Peggy Ngo and then, you know, in a minor capacity
myself, a guy named Sammy Halpern, whose family's in the wine brokerage and
distribution business.
So a lot of folks who had hands in the spirits business to coach them as they

(21:59):
knew business, they knew fundraising, they knew business structure,
they knew marketing, they knew a lot of those things outside of the category.
And so it was this really cool marriage of innovation versus,
or not versus, but innovation and tradition coming together.
And so fast forward, we launched the brand October of 2020.
First bottling happened October 10th, 2020. I think that bottle over there was

(22:20):
from that bottling behind me. The 13 year. The 13 year, yeah,
we came out of the gate swinging and.
Unexpectedly, we blew our wad. That whiskey sold way faster.
And 2020 was a bit of an anomaly year for whiskey, right? It was,
no one was going out to bars. Everybody was buying by the bottle as they could.
Laws were changing. Distribution opportunities were changing.
And so it was, it was somewhat of an emerging wild west that helped a lot of

(22:45):
brands get exposure really fast.
Supply and demand was berserk. Well, yeah, you're home, you know,
you can't taste, but you can drink and all this other crazy stuff COVID caused.
But it was a blessing in disguise that we launched in October of 20.
And we were actually behind schedule when we launched.
And so our first batch, it took like, I want to say like six weeks,
two months to sell out or something like that, which we thought was going to last almost six months.

(23:08):
And then fast forward, we did another batch that winter, same liquid blended
differently, 13 years, released that in December. And it sold out in less than six days.
So we saw this exponential catapult. We took a little bit of time to say,
okay, well, how do we do this next?
Because we're candidly running out of liquid. with. We did not have as much
juice as we expected to need, or we didn't have as much juice as we needed up front.

(23:30):
And so we did a single barrel series in the spring of 13 and a half year old single barrels.
And I, that's truthfully when I feel like the gasoline was thrown on the fire
for this brand, where the way that we did it was, was very different than any
other whiskey release I've ever seen.
I think that's ever been seen in the market every day for 10 days,
we released a separate single, no, excuse me.

(23:52):
The first one we did two to three single barrels a day, three weeks in a row.
And those barrels sold out in seconds.
13 and a half year old cash strength in a package that had just put the industry on its head.
I humbly believe that, and we'll talk about this on my Mount Rushmore.
There's only two other bottles from a bottle design standpoint that are as and

(24:15):
have been as iconic as I believe Blue Run will be one day. And that's Blanton's and Old Fitzgerald.
I can't think of another bottle design that is that age old,
maybe maker's mark, but it's less of the bottle, more of the wax for them.
And so, yeah, but from a bottle design and ornament, I think that's,
that's truthfully what Blue Run will be. But that release put us on the map.

(24:36):
Whiskey consumers were going crazy. Everybody that didn't know about whiskey
was hearing about it and they were thinking like, what the heck is this?
And then, you know, our CMO at the time is an executive director at Nike for
the Air Force One franchise, his name's Devin McKinney.
And he is one of probably the best minds in the creative industry right now,
in my humble opinion, designs a ton of stuff.

(24:58):
And he's one of those creatives that gets culture, he gets economics, he gets materials.
He gets more than just his job, and it makes him very fun to work with because
he brings in a lot of unique perspective.
He's the one that designed our bottle and the, the release strategy had a lot
of similarities to how shoot sneaker drops happen.
And a lot of that came from his kind of ideology. And so we.

(25:22):
We, we, I think we set the bourbon roll on fire for, for at least like a little bit of time.
And then we ca we, you know, we caught up to the fire and not a bad resource.
No, it wasn't bad. No, I've done Devin. They were very grateful.
There's no, there is no butterfly without Devin. Yeah.
And so that's a good way to put it. The, it was like a sneaker launch.
Yeah. Yeah. And you had I had to get it.
There was so many times I tried and it was virtually lining up because everything

(25:45):
was online at this time before COVID was over.
And I think the metrics were crazy for one of our releases that I did that December
called 12 Days of Bourbon.
We had like 4,000 people clicking for 1,800 or 180 bottles, excuse me.
And I was like, and, you know, and then we get the hate mail of, oh, the bots got in.
And so we, you know, we did a good job of being accessible and responsive and
saying, here's the metrics.

(26:06):
You know, we had 4,000 unique IP addresses asking for 180 bottles.
Every, no one got duplicates. Every single person like has a legit mailing address
and there's all unique mailing addresses.
So unless somebody's got multiple residents and try to, you know,
game the system, which it happens, you can't control that.
180 unique buyers got that bottle. Right. And I don't know how to do it even

(26:27):
any better than that. And so it was, so, uh, so yeah.
And then fast forward, I mean, three years later, we get acquired by this multi-billion
dollar organization, Molson Coors, and now we're in this evolution.
Right. It's, it's funny. I feel like we're going from the Caterpillar that we
were big, fat, juicy Caterpillar, we're in the cocoon.
And like, and once we nail and massage out kind of how we go forward as a,

(26:48):
as a, you know, a not scrappy startup, we're going to be a big,
big butterfly for a long time. Yes. I love it. Well put.
Tell us a little bit about the Whiskey Den. Hopefully, we can grab a picture
from you so we can put up. Oh, 100%. I'll share one.
But Trey has probably one of the, I know you will say that you don't,

(27:08):
but from my standpoint, the coolest whiskey collection.
He has a room in his house, floor-to-ceiling shelving, beautifully lit,
beautifully organized, I think.
Sometimes. At least when I take pictures, it is. It's probably chaos right now.
It's amazing and there are other you know the

(27:29):
first anytime somebody who comes in who appreciates where
they always get out their phone and show me and i love that and it's great but you
know they're like lined up on their table yeah or on their fireplace and i'm
like if you have a wife she's hates you yeah you're taking up a guest room yeah
yeah but the best collection that i've ever seen and again i'm sure you would

(27:51):
be humble and say that's not the case and then you share
so much of that collection. Yeah. It's amazing.
Tell us a little bit about the Whiskey Den. Yeah. It's my, it's my little, my little secret space.
That's not so secret. It's my, it's my, it's my little home oasis.
You know, I got into whiskey being whiskey curious, right? Like most consumers do.
And I'll tell more about that story, but the Whiskey Den for me is an opportunity

(28:14):
to like come home and just explore.
And it, it didn't start like that. So I moved from Chicago to Charlotte in 2015.
I probably had like 75 bottles of whiskey, a spirit. Cause some of it wasn't
whiskey at the time. Then I built a house in 2017.
By the time I built that house, probably had like 150 bottles.
So doubled over two years, which is still a lot, right? That's a ton of whiskey.

(28:36):
By the time I sold that house in 2021, I had like 790 bottles,
I think was the amount of whiskey I had to pack up to get out of there.
I just finished updating my inventory. I now have just shy of 2,200 bottles
in my collection of not just whiskey, about 1,600 bottles of that is whiskey.
And then the rest is rum and tequila and agave, but it is a culmination of just being curious.

(28:58):
And, you know, obviously you, I can't express this enough.
I'll say this, this is kind of like my AA for, for whiskey collectors,
be financially and fiscally responsible, just like any other hobby.
This is something that could put you in a bad spot and not just from consumption,
but accumulation as well.
So I, I have a piece of money, every income, piece of income.

(29:21):
I have a percentage that I always commit to my, my hobbies.
Right. And whiskey is usually where that goes.
So, um, and it's just, if you budget for it, you can be really fiscal about
it and then be savvy. Right.
I always do some research. Google is a great thing. You can find out what stuff
costs and should cost online pretty easily.

(29:41):
But for me, it's just a byproduct of being curious, traveling a lot,
bringing stuff home, trading whiskey and trying to genuinely find like the most
unique things that I can enjoy and share with others.
I don't buy to collect per se. It does accumulate and therefore,
I now have a large collection.
But I truthfully buy to consume and enjoy and share with others, create memories.

(30:05):
And so, yeah, I mean, the way it's organized really is two parts.
One by kind of distillery or family distilleries or, you know,
I've got kind of all the Kentucky stuff in one place and all the scotch in another place.
A bunch of heritage bottles, Jack Daniels called in one place.
But when I built that shelving so bought the house
in 21 and the complete renovation of the home it's

(30:26):
an older home and that was the first room that got finished we didn't
have toilets in the house and I put my whiskey but of course but the whiskey
didn't was uh priority yeah the shelving was built I was halfway through painting
it and we didn't have toilets and so that was pretty funny and but I did not
I mismeasured the top third two-thirds of the bar which is above

(30:47):
kind of the glass section of it that by three quarters of an inch.
And so your traditional like wine style bottles. So think of,
think of like, will it won't fit on the top shelf.
So I don't have, so a lot of, a lot of people think like, oh,
your best stuff's at the top. I go, actually, no, it's just based on the size of the bottle.
So I've got, you know, I've got some 21 year old, will it, it's like tucked

(31:09):
away on the bottom shelf behind six bottles. Cause it's come in later.
So, but yeah, it's, it's, it's,
it's a great place to hang out and bring people to. And it's always fun.
It's almost like having your kid and taking them to a big candy store or a museum
or, you know, amusement park and people's eyes just light up.
And for the first, you know, 35, 45 minutes, there's just this timidness of like, what can I touch?

(31:32):
And can I taste what, you know, and, and I, if you're in my home,
if you've made it through the threshold of my door, you're probably friend and
not foe. And so everything is fair game.
There's, you know, I always, if it's not open, you know, please do ask if it's
not open, it's probably because I haven't just got, I just haven't gotten to
it, but yeah, it's, it's just a really liquid library.
It is a liquid library. I can't, I can't take that. A good friend of mine,

(31:53):
Anthony Riccardi has the bourbon whiskey library, great friend,
phenomenal collection, true steward of the spirit.
So the whiskey den is my little, my little oasis. So cool.
I think, you know, this probably goes into whiskey hunting.
Oh, yeah. I think a big piece of the fun of whiskey and bourbon is the hunt
for it. Oh, yeah. And finding it.

(32:15):
So, yeah, I would love to hear some. So I have two perspectives on this.
I have what the people love to hear and then, like, my truth.
You know, I'll start with my truth. My truth is I like to discover whiskey more
than I hunt whiskey. And what I mean by that, there's your lineup of bottles.
If you're getting into the game, and back in the day I used to hunt.
My philosophy has evolved.
You got to find, you got to find a bottle of blends. You got to find a bottle

(32:37):
of Weller. You got to find a lot of those Sazerac products.
You got to find, you know, a Castron single barrel from a craft distiller that
you love, right? You got to find some of those things to start your collection.
After you check those boxes, it's like, where do you go from there?
Right? There's always new whiskey coming out and that hits the list,
but there's so much whiskey that's been evolved.
So out of the 2,200 bottles, I think that my, I can pull it up on my phone.

(32:58):
I think less than 7% of that room has a duplicate bottle.
So, and I don't have more than three of any bottle.
And I don't have more of three. I don't have more of two of a bottle that didn't
come from a barrel that I bought the barrel of.
So I'm very eclectic in my collection. And I think that is the true beauty of spirit.
If you can go discover new things, you might fall in love with something that

(33:20):
might be the next best thing because nobody was chasing it yet.
And whiskey, just like a lot of other consumables and commodities, it has its trends.
It has its ebbs and flows, you know? And so I like to say whiskey curious and discover whiskey.
But from a whiskey hunting perspective, Here are my pro tips.
Here's what worked for me. And here's what I've heard works for a lot of other
folks that have great collections.

(33:41):
Be authentic. You know, I spend a lot of time in liquor stores and I can't tell
you how frequently you hear store owners and people that work in those stores
gripe about people walk in and saying, hey, you got any blends?
A lot of folks don't understand what these stores have to do to get what are
called allocated items, you know, harder to find bottles.
Usually they have to carry exponential amounts of lower quality products,

(34:06):
you know, fireball to get a case of Blanton's, right?
And that might happen on a biannual or quarterly basis. And so they,
most stores, and I, and I, I subscribe to this, especially in states where it's
a franchise state or a private state and not a state controlled liquor board.
They, they try to reward their, their, their regulars. Right.
So when you walk in and you've never been there before, and you're just in your

(34:28):
car on a road trip, hopping in and out of stores and you walk in.
And the first thing you ask for is the hardest thing they, you know,
the thing they had to work the hardest to get.
And they've got, you know, John Doe down the road. Who's there every day.
He buys his, you know, his wife's sweet wine there. He buys his beer from him.
He buys everything from him.
And then also happens like bourbon, you're, you're, you're just,
your opportunity is diminished.
And so I would say be authentic is the first thing, be curious,

(34:51):
you know, my, my tactic, and this is not a uncommon tactic, walk into the store
and look around before you ask a question.
Most people have amazing things on their shelves, especially today,
you know, you can walk into a store and find something that was impossible to get three years ago.
Buffalo Trace is one of them, right? Like their core product at $30 a bottle.

(35:13):
It's a great, you know, starting whiskey. And if you haven't explored whiskey,
like don't walk in and say, I want a bottle of Blanton's because that's what
the internet tells you to say.
Grab a bottle of Buffalo Trace, keep walking around, find something,
discover something, pick a bottle up and Google it what it is.
You might find out that that's a pretty cool, interesting story.
Great whiskey, great reviews.
So I would, you know, be curious is number one. Walk in a store,

(35:35):
walk around, do your due diligence.
When somebody says hello to you when you walk into a store, always speak back.
Like politeness goes a long way, especially in the whiskey space.
And I think every space you walk into, you know, retail is not an easy job.
And so be polite when you walk in. If they say, hey, are you looking for something?
I'm just browsing around right now. I have an idea what I'm looking for,

(35:56):
but I want to see what you have. Like I want to invest in you first.
That's a really great strategy both ways. It'll benefit you.
You'll learn a lot walking around different stores in different areas.
And then it shows them that, hey, like even if I don't have what they have,
I might have something I can turn them on to.
And there are polite ways to say, no, thank you. Right. A lot of folks say,
oh, you don't have what I have. I want what I'm leaving.

(36:17):
It's like, hey, if you had a budget in mind, if you had a bottle in mind,
feel free to be honest about that.
Hey, look, I plan to spend X number of dollars, really want to find this bottle.
If there's something that really, really catches my eye, I might still pull
the trigger, but I'm looking around for this bottle with this money.
No one's ever going to turn their nose up at you for that. But if you say,
oh, you don't have what I want and just walk out.

(36:37):
Like you just, your chances have now diminished to ever get anything from that
store, no matter how much, you know, you come back and try to bring in that community aspect.
A hundred percent. And then, you know, and you don't know what the next person knows about whiskey.
And I've had so many times where I walk into a store and I'm whiskey curious,
never been there before.
I'm certain because of what they have in their store, they've got,
you know, regular customers that support them to get that stuff. And.

(37:00):
By the time I walk out, like they're, you know, store owners offering me stuff
because at that point I've probably bought three or four things that caught my eye.
And it's not always whiskey. Like I'll buy rum, I'll buy tequila because those
things are interesting me as well.
And for the folks that are interested in, in whiskey, you can trade bottles, right?
Like Fortaleza is a great brand, great brand of tequila. It's hard to find a

(37:21):
lot of whiskey folks are getting into tequila.
And so like, yeah, sure. I've traded bottles of tequila for,
you know, bottles of whiskey that I wanted.
And it's, it's like Pokemon cards for some people or baseball cards and they
hold their value pretty well as well.
So, so yeah, that's the pro tips there. Be polite, be curious.
Be fiscally responsible.
Don't blow your wad, don't ruin your marriage or your job or your, your life.

(37:44):
And so, so yeah, those are, those are some of my tips for hunting.
Any like top bourbon find in a retail store?
It doesn't have to be retail either. I love the one, you know?
Yeah, actually. So I brought a bottle in.
So, so back in the day hunting for me, it branched outside of stores.
And so I collect like antiques in certain categories, firearms, other places.

(38:06):
And I would do these estate sales and I'd go to these estate sales and kind
of find, I used to buy a lot of land to still try to, I used to go to these
estate sales just to see what I could find.
My grandparents actually got me into that. They were, they were,
they were hoarders. Let's just call it what it is.
And so most of our grandparents are hoarders. Let's be honest.
But we'd go to these estate sales and we'd, you know, see stuff.
And oftentimes you'll find empty old bottles of, you know, wine and cognac and sometimes whiskey.

(38:32):
And they'll usually be in a milk carton in a closet or, you know,
in a kitchen cabinet or something like that.
And so I was at an estate sale in South Carolina and this was 2013, 2014 timeframe.
And just kind of bopping around and looking in stuff. off. Usually some estates are different.
Some, they have lots, some, they let you walk in and you just,
you know, just can't, obviously can't take anything out.

(38:52):
You see something, you bring it up to the front and you tell them you want to
buy it if it's not priced already.
And, and found this crate of old decanters. So decanters were super popular
in like the sixties, seventies, eighties.
And that was a downturn time for whiskey. So brands were putting their product
in these really ornate, you know, glass and ceramic decanters.
And so found a crate of these old A lot of them were Jim Beam,

(39:15):
but then I found one and it still had, not only did it still have liquid in
it, I didn't know if it was the liquid, but it had liquid in it.
And then, but it had a sealed tax stamp, which is.
Oh, it's over behind you. That gold bottle there. So a tax stamp was kind of
a government-ordained strip to say that the whiskey was sealed,
kind of like your protective cover on your Tylenol. Hey, this was untainted.

(39:38):
So this is a bottle from the mid-1960s of old Forrester 86 proof.
Really, really cool. How much would that bottle be, secondary? It depends.
Just the bottle? Yeah, the empty bottle. I mean, I've seen them for $600,
$700, just an empty bottle.
You can and that's like ones that are pristine
and stuff like that you could probably find one for a couple hundred

(39:59):
bucks dirty and you might get lucky and find one at a
garage or a state sale that looks like a massive bottle of
perfume right it looks like a very perfumatic and this is one of the first bottles
that was functional so you could use the top as a shot glass so if you hold
it upside down it would pour a perfect shot and then you could turn it upside
down and usually their cork is the two-way stopper, but you could pour it into a cup.

(40:24):
So it pours a two-ounce shot in the topper.
So very, very cool. So it did have a tax stamp and it was sealed because back
in the day, a lot of these decanters had lead in them.
I took a two-ounce sample and sent it off to a friend who works at a lab and
fortunately it didn't have any lead in it. So I've enjoyed a couple of pours
out of it and share it with people all the time.
Is it the best whiskey I've ever had? Absolutely not. Is it freaking awesome?

(40:45):
Absolutely. And that was one of the coolest finds because you don't generally
find one unopened bottles to these decanters that don't have lead in them.
And, and yeah, and an old Forrester is a brand that still exists as well.
So it's kind of cool to be able to say, and I literally did this.
I went and bought the current bottling of the 86 proof old Forrester and could taste and compare it.

(41:07):
And it's really cool to taste the differences of the production back in the
day when things just went slower, slower and weren't as mass produced.
And so, so yeah, that's probably one of the coolest stories.
There's so many other ones that I could probably, I could probably rattle off,
but that's one of the coolest. You have one, Will?
Oh gosh, a whiskey story, perhaps.
For me, at least, you know, to speak to old Fitzgerald that you had mentioned

(41:30):
earlier, that was always a bottle that was particularly striking for me.
And that's, that's something that I've been able to enjoy in the last few years
and come to, to really enjoy is probably my, my favorite of the American whiskeys.
And just Just looking at this particular bottle, you know, it of course is quite
ornate as well and sort of speaks to sort of the old westerns and so forth.

(41:54):
And just incredible to sort of ogle but enjoy as well as a drink.
But I hope that at my next estate sale, I run across something similar.
Yeah, me too. I mean, I- Can we ask what you paid for it?
I paid $74 for that bottle. I had to buy the whole crate. So I just chalk up

(42:15):
the whole crate to what that cost.
Yeah. The folks managing the estate sale were kind of just more focused on getting
the house empty than what was in it.
And so fortunately, and it was in this small country town.
I felt once I realized what I had, I felt somewhat bad. Not bad enough to give it back to them.
But I was like, dang, this is really, really special. But I'm sure that,

(42:35):
I mean, that's kind of come to the territory of that process.
And so, so yeah, but I, I a hundred percent agree with you on,
on old fits it old Fitzgerald 15 specifically.
And I actually finished a bottle on Monday of this past of this week,
which was my son's fourth birthday.
Cause it was a, a bottle that I acquired while we were in the hospital.
He's been born. That's awesome. And bottled and bond has a four year age requirement.

(42:57):
You can't call anything bottled and bond unless it's four years old.
So I committed that I would not finish that bottle until my son was four years old.
And so I saved, I saved a two ounce pour for a long time.
That's a wonderful anecdote. Well, like you, I mean, I think my bourbon journey,
and I would say, you know, bourbon intermediate level over here,
whiskey bourbon, I like it.

(43:19):
Definitely went through the phases in the early 2010s of hunting and things like that.
So, you know, still have a lot of the bottles, you know, the Pappy Van Winkle
when you, you know, you might've had to be in a lottery, but,
you know, there might've been 200 people on the list. Yeah. It was just sort of, hey, it's here.
Great odds. If whoever gets here first gets it, you can't do that now.

(43:39):
But Will's actually involved in my best story, our 10-year high school reunion.
Indeed. So this past, no, I'm just kidding.
Almost 11 years ago, we were at this little Gastonia restaurant in the upstairs bar.
Lotus. Lotus, yes. Nice. And Will, I remember this, Will may not,

(44:00):
but Will was actually standing beside me and I'm like, they've got Pappy Van Winkle.
Oh, nice. And as I was swilling, probably Johnny Walker black label,
but I asked the guy, I was like, Hey, are you, are you selling that?
And he's like, Oh yeah, sure.
I don't know the price. So I'll just do it. I was like, well,
it's, it's really nice. He's like, okay, well I'll do it as a,
like a top show. $7 a pour.

(44:22):
And so I had a few, a few pours. As many as you could stomach.
Well, I was like, I feel like you, I feel bad.
Yeah. You know better. Yes. So I think I had two or two or maybe two or three. Yeah.
But that was still to this day is like my, you know, sort of your perfect fine story.
Yeah. It's always great to get, get something at what it should cost.

(44:43):
Sure. Right. Even though it doesn't. Right. And I, it's, there's a few and far
between. I mean, that bottle and that time, what he said, 11 years ago. 75 bucks.
Yeah. Yeah, sub-$100 bottle. So $10, $7 or $4, that should be what it's for
because of the rarity of it and how hard that store probably had to work to get it.
You know, they probably had to sell a lot of stuff they didn't care to sell to get it. Right.
Yeah, no, it usually goes $75, $100. I've seen it up, it depends on how old it was.

(45:08):
I've seen Pappy 23 for $100, excuse me, $700 a pour, and that's like half-ounce pours. That's crazy.
So, yeah, it can get pretty expensive. So, you know, for, for us here,
you know, we, uh, we give each other, you know, get some homework of your Mount
Rushmore, if you will. So your four favorite bottles.

(45:29):
So this was probably the hardest. It was, it was, it was hard.
It was easy for a couple of them because there's the obligatory and then the
genuine obligatory bottles.
But then there are so many whiskeys and whiskey is kind of like food or anything
else. Right. And clothing.
You don't wake up every day and say, I want to wear the same thing. you know
it's very mood emotion situational dependent and

(45:50):
so you might say today i feel gray and black you know
or i might feel blue and you know brighter or darker and
so figuring out four whiskeys to kind of put on my mount rushmore
is challenging i what i did is i didn't give myself more than five minutes i
said okay i've got to do it like you know i like this parameter yeah i can't
say i just did mine as we were talking i love it i love it so i actually i brought
the four that in the five minutes i said i'm i'm i don't feel remorse of not

(46:15):
having i don't the remorse of committing to these four.
And so the first one, we've talked about it a little bit. O. Fitzgerald.
So this is face number one. In my humble opinion, this is the best longstanding
decanter in American whiskey.
I think the story of it is amazing. Johnny Fitzgerald was a treasury agent,

(46:36):
was thieving whiskey out of barrels at Stitzel Weller.
And fast forward, their brand ends up with Heaven Hill.
And they pay homage because he was finding honey barrels.
That term is not necessarily actually honey in the barrel. It's more so of these
special barrels that are kind of like sweet spots. And, and so this,
this is, this is a very, very phenomenal whiskey.

(46:56):
And it's hard to say that it's hard to say, oh yes, the whiskey stands up to
the packaging for a lot of brands.
This is their neck and neck. It's amazing. Retail and secondary. dairy.
So Heaven Hill, which is my, it's my favorite distillery.
I always somewhat jokingly say if every distillery had to burn down,
and I only say this because we haven't built ours yet, and one could survive,

(47:17):
I would save Heaven Hill.
And it's, it's only ironic because they did have a tragic distillery fire in
the mid nineties and the, and it did burn down.
So I would save them if they had, if everybody else had to go through that again,
but they did a really good job
for a long time. So they would do about 10 bucks a year would be retail.
So a little while ago, this would have been 190 bucks a bottle retail.
I think when it came out in the fall of 22, it was right around that 240 mark, $240 retail.

(47:41):
I've seen these particular bottles go upwards of, you know, a thousand bucks, right?
It all depends. Like I said, whiskey fluctuates. And so the demand's higher,
the price is higher type thing.
Usually once you see these old Fitzgeralds that are over the 15,
16 year mark, their price is a little bit higher, even though some of the eight
year, 10 year that have come out are phenomenal.

(48:01):
And a little rumor has it, they're coming out with a mainstay Old Fitzgerald
that's age dated at seven years.
And so I'm excited for that in a different, in a different shape bottle.
But, but, but yes, this is, this is face number one on Mount Rushmore,
Old Fitzgerald. Face number two. Face number two.
I mentioned this earlier. I genuinely believe that if we continue to operate
the way that we are, Blue Run will be one of these faces that get etched.

(48:25):
We're the newcomer to the game.
This is our 13-year. This is from our inaugural release.
That's 13-year Kentucky straight bourbon, 113 proof.
And this bottle is French cut glass, 24 karat gold screen printing,
24 karat gold covered butterfly on the front.
It's one of these bottles that is, is it was instantly iconic to people who follow whiskey.

(48:47):
And I think as we continue to do what we're doing, we'll gain even more of that popularity.
And the evolutions of this product will cement us in whiskey history.
And I think that's, I say that, I would say that if I didn't work for the brand.
Actually, I used to say it before I worked for the brand. So I feel confident in this statement.
It is a, and then what Jim Rutledge did when blending this whiskey was phenomenal.

(49:13):
It won all kinds of awards.
It's, you know, it's, it's still, we started off and it's still one of our most coveted releases.
And we've probably released 120
plus different variations of our products since, since October in 2020.
So I would say blue run 13 years, specifically the fall batch of my personal
favorite, but either one of the 13 years is, is absolutely epic.

(49:34):
I'm going to, I'm going to fast forward a little bit to 2021.
You might have me that blue bottle of Russell's behind you it's my
will right diana our vanamite
excuse me so the next face on the on the on the mount rushmore
is going to be i i could put the entire distillery of wild turkey but i'll specifically
narrow it down to russell's 13 so russell's 13 was one of the first age-dated

(50:01):
larger batches of russell reserve that came out in in the recent history this
was released in 2021 2021,
and it was actually blended by a gal named Shailene Gammon. Now that name is extremely important.
Do not forget it if you're in the world of spirits.
She was a part of their sensory team at Campari who owns Wild Turkey for almost eight years.
And she blended this whiskey while she was pregnant, meaning she did not taste.

(50:26):
She blended it by its nose alone and it won Whiskey of the year.
And that is not, that is not by happenstance. She is truly a super sensor.
And fortunately we stole her from Kapari. She blends Blue Run now.
And so, and so she's blended countless award-winning spirits and whiskeys as well.
And she's in, she's, you know, she's, she's young, she's bright. She's a food scientist.

(50:49):
She went to UK. She's, she's top tier. And I think this particular whiskey,
I love the Russell's Reserve brand period for a long time.
It was the the best $50 bottle of 10-year whiskey you could get.
I put Russell's 10-year over Eagle Rare 10-year. I'm happy to say that on record.
So Russell's 13 from 2021, so the first batch specifically on Mount Rushmore.

(51:11):
And last but not least, if you don't mind, the gold, yep.
So this is, you know, the haters are going to hate like I, too, am not.
I, too, subscribe to some of the the clout shaming of Sazerac.
But Blanton's is undeniably one of the most iconic whiskeys in American history.
If you if you put your pride aside and kind of some of the hunt of getting it,

(51:35):
it is a phenomenal, phenomenal legacy bottle.
So a gentleman named Elmer T. Lee actually created Blanton's in honor of one
of the former master distillers.
And it really was the first marketed single barrel.
So way back when, when people were selling whiskey, you know,
at, you know, at the market, you know, they were just, you bring your container,
we'll fill it up out of our barrel. And it was all single barrel whiskey back then.

(51:57):
But in the, in the mid eighties, when whiskey was still on a decline,
Elmer T. Lee decided, Hey, we need to figure out a way to, to make this more of a prominent thing.
And so they They marketed Blanton's as the first bottled single barrel at scale,
and it just, it went bonkers.
These barrels came from a specific warehouse at Buffalo Trace,
which is, it truly is a historical site, like a historical monument in Kentucky, and so Blanton's.

(52:23):
And so I think these four whiskeys, and these are all modern whiskeys, right?
I tried to showcase stuff that you could still tangibly get Blanton's.
You can get Russell's Reserve, and they're coming out with additional batches
of 13. Old Fitzgerald is a line that'll continue.
Blue Run is a line that continues. So I wanted to say these are pieces of heritage.
These are older releases, but you can absolutely still find these brands.

(52:45):
And that's my, that's, there is only four phases on Mount Rushmore,
right? My American, again, I was, okay.
I was science in that. Okay, so that's my four. I'll quickly run through mine.
Again, I love all these. So my number one phase would be the Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve 15.
For no other reason than, you know, I read an article by Wright Thompson in

(53:07):
2011 on it, and that sort of tipped me off. And so that sort of got me into the hunting.
Eagle Rare, just, you know, your bottle you can find at the store. Yeah.
Our Blue Run XOMJ chosen bottle. That's a good one. You can put your amount.
That is my, that is my, this is actually my number one. That's a great, that's a, you guys.

(53:28):
So fun fact, you guys had, so this is for the whiskey nerds,
right? I told you I can get pretty in the weeds.
So an average barrel of whiskey that age should have yielded about 130, 140 bottles.
That barrel only yielded, I want to say 56 or 54 bottles or something like that.
And it might've been less than that, but it was, it was, it was a very,
very low yield, which, which for, so it was probably like 30 years old, right?

(53:52):
I wish it was 30 years old. We'd be killing that whiskey right now.
But, but, but it's super cool because one kind of what happens is that whiskey
concentrates in that barrel.
So you get a lot of, you know, concentrated flavors, but, but it just makes
it that much more sought after because, you know, everyone else is walking around,
you know, out of their barrel, 125, 130 plus bottles. And I think there's really

(54:13):
only like 40 of those available to the, to the market.
So it's a, it's, it's really, really, and it was a candy that was one of my
favorite single barrels of last year out of the hundred or so I did.
Yeah, we, we love it. And thank you so much again, Trey, for hooking us up with that.
My final would be just Noah's Mill in a great $75 bottle.

(54:33):
Yeah. And it, I mean, yeah, you can find that. You might be able to find that for a little bit less.
It fluctuates by market, but yeah, it's, that's a, that's me by will.
Distillery out of Bardstown, Kentucky.
Same place that Heaven Hill is, same place that Bardstown Bourbon Company is.
So, uh, great, great, great whiskey. Yeah.
Will. All right. So I'll be the resident contrarian. Okay. I'm going the Scotch route.

(54:54):
You're not a contrarian. I love that. So, so number one for me has to be Johnny Walker. Yeah.
And whether it's the red to the black, all points in between was sort of my
introductory Scotch to a degree as well.
But, you know, we're speaking about community. And I was lucky enough to share
a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label with my now mother-in-law the first time we ever met.

(55:20):
And so we've since bonded over our love of scotch.
And so that's just a nice sort of memory that I carry and build upon as well.
So anytime we're together, we'll trade notes and so forth, which is quite nice. Nice.
Number two for me, and I'm going to steal one of yours, old Fitzgerald.

(55:43):
I'd, I'd be remiss if I didn't say that my, my brother-in-law is quite the connoisseur as well.
And it's hopefully listening, but he introduced me to old Fitzgerald and, you know, for a.
More or less a career scotch drinker, let's say.
Old Fitzgerald sort of spoke to some of my preferences with respect to American whiskey and bourbon.

(56:04):
And so it's just been a phenomenal choice and such a beautiful bottle as well.
Definitely a perfume-esque bottle at that.
Number three, I'm going single malt, Lagavulin, 16.
Oh, nice. Petitskine malt, yeah. Yeah, indeed. So a little peaty,
you've got those smoky flavors and so forth. A nod to Parks and Recreation, perhaps.

(56:28):
That's a great recommendation, scotch, you know?
Totally. People always feel more culture once they know that one.
Sure. It's a bit elevated.
You know, most folks are aware of, say, the Glenlivet. Yeah.
But then Lagavulin takes it to another level.
I agree. Number four for me, I'm going Nica Coffee Green.

(56:51):
Yeah. So bringing in a Japanese whiskey, particular nod to production. Yeah, exactly.
Scotch production as well. And I think of, you know, we're always more or less
drawing comparisons to cinema.
And I think of Lost in Translation. Nice. I like that. Suntory time.
Yeah, I like that. With Bill Murray.

(57:12):
So, but just, just an incredible spirit as well. Yeah. So those are my four and my Mount Rushmore.
Awesome. Great selections. I like that you pulled in some scotch.
I, too, love to dabble in single malt.
I would say what is your Johnny Walker is my Glendronic.
I absolutely love Glendronic. The gateway whiskey that I give people is Glendronic

(57:36):
12, or scotch is Glendronic 12.
Do you know, I don't think I've ever had it. It's great. I brought a bottle. We'll have some today.
Fancy you should say that. Guys, this has been phenomenal. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Trey. For those, if you want to follow Trey,
at JustWhiskey. At Just underscore Whiskey with an E underscore.

(57:58):
This has been on Instagram and everywhere else that's relevant.
And yeah, I mean, this is a lot of fun. I can't say thank you enough.
I'm thirsty looking at all this whiskey. We're going to have a pour after this for sure.
But yeah, no, this has been phenomenal. On Instagram, Just underscore Whiskey
with an E. W-H-I-S-K-E-Y underscore.
And then please do follow Blue Run Spirits. We are a fast-growing,

(58:20):
consumer-focused brand.
I really, really, really want to make sure that people know that we are authentic
and care about, you know, the consumer experience and the longevity of the Native
American spirit of bourbon.
Awesome. We appreciate you so much and your scholarship and what you've brought to us.
I feel like we've gone to school today, Brad. I love it. Night school, yeah.

(58:42):
This has been fun, man. You guys are awesome. I wish school had bourbon.
I don't know if I would have paid more or less attention, but yeah,
I would have had a lot of fun.
This is great. Great selection, guys. Well done on the Mount Rushmore. That was fun.
It's one of those things where you don't want to exclude people.
I've got so many friends that we didn't really talk about a lot of craft brands.

(59:03):
I've got a lot of friends that are crushing it in the craft space.
And that's larger, not mass-produced stuff.
Brands like Pinhook and Rare Character and Penelope. And like,
there's just so many brands that are like right now, just crushing it and doing
the right things as it relates to American whiskey. And Oaklor here.
Oaklor, yeah, here in North Carolina. Shout out to those guys.
They did one of the OMJ Whiskey Club events recently.

(59:25):
And the quality of their whiskey.
The scale that they are right now, it makes me so excited.
Them and Broad Branch, I think, in North Carolina are two great representations
of what can happen with craft whiskey, especially coming out.
Did you guys know Statesville, North Carolina used to have more distilleries
per capita than anywhere else in the United States?

(59:45):
Wow. Because of the railroad. Yep. So where Southern Distill Co.
Is, is like three miles away from where there was like 75 distilleries within
like a five-mile radius in Statesville, Kentucky. That's phenomenal.
So yeah, it's been a lot of history. It's because of the railroad getting over
the mountains. So coming up and down. Yeah.

(01:00:08):
So fun stories there. So cool. Thank you guys for joining us.
It's been great. My final plug would be the OMJ Whiskey Club,
which Trey helped start.
Thankfully, yeah. OMJ Whiskey Club, we'll have a link to that as well.
We do quarterly events. We always have some great people coming.
They're free. Doing tastings. Tasting education. You can join the membership
club and get some major benefits.

(01:00:30):
Major benefits, discounts at OMJ. It's just a really fun time.
I actually think Will has it pulled up. Will, what are the benefits of the Whiskey
Club? All right, so 10% off all OMJ orders, custom engraved membership card, which is pretty badass.
And that continues to get you through the door thereafter. Yes.
Custom whiskey glassware. Yes. Which I believe our members got our last whiskey club event.

(01:00:53):
Obviously, quarterly tasting events. Yeah. So, led by industry experts.
These aren't like, hey, come have a bottle share.
You know, we've had, you know, master distillers from Oaklor and we've had,
you know, national ambassadors from Makers Mark and Jack Daniels and Old Forrester, myself.
Blade and Bow. Blade and Bow came in. So, we've got really, really great whiskeys
being presented. And we also will throw in at renewal.

(01:01:16):
So this year, which is our one-year mark, and everybody that's renewing in this
first batch will be entered into a raffle.
I am giving away my bottle of Pepe Van Winkle 15.
It's a very, very special bottle. So nobody's ever given this stuff away, but we are.
You're part of the whiskey club. That's just a perk. We're that magnanimous. Yes.

(01:01:37):
Anyway, thank you all. Thank you all for listening, joining,
watching, and thank you, Trey. Of course. Thank you, Trey. Yeah.
Thanks, guys. Cheers, guys.
Music.
So I think, I feel like we've got to like try something. We got to,
I mean, okay, so it's up. So I know the Glendrona came up, but Old Fitz came up twice.

(01:02:00):
It's hard to beat. I've never tried the Old Fitz. What? We've got to do Old Fitz.
All right. So Old Fitz 19 is what we're pouring here in a second.
And it is not 10 o'clock in the morning right now. It's 10.01.
Music.