Ep. 167: High Wire Distilling Co. with Founder Scott Blackwell

Episode Transcript
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(00:04):
Hey folks,
welcome to a new episode of the Whiskey Ring Podcast. Today we are back in
South Carolina, which we've been visiting the Carolinas a bunch recently, which
has been brand new states for me in terms of distilling. And
to talk about today, I should say, let's see,
I'm going to start that over. Today

(00:28):
we have on Scott Blackwell. He's the founder, co-founder of
High Wire Distilling in Charleston, South Carolina. So
to talk with us about High Wire's history and the very
famous corn that is Jimmy Red, we have Scott. Scott, welcome on.
Absolutely. So getting, we're going to jump right in. Uh, I'm going

(00:49):
to skip, as I said, just a little bit
of the, uh, origin story of, of Highwire from
the background, just cause, uh, it's, it's a story that's been,
that's on, I mean, it's on your website. It's something that's front and center. So I'll
leave people to, you know, go visit the website for some of the things
we'll miss, but I wanted to start with your, uh, with

(01:11):
your background. And so you are
a serial entrepreneur. You've been restaurants,
coffee, baking and packaged food, ice cream distribution, and
now distilling. From your experience
in all of these different industries and different categories,
et cetera, what have you found is unique or

(01:40):
Well, I think I understand the question. Ultimately, I'm
a like you say, it's
funny to say serial entrepreneur. It's basically, it's
a very organic path that I've followed and it
makes sense when you hear the whole thing. But
ultimately I'm a flavor person. I'm a food person. I

(02:04):
love food. I also love culture
and I love sort
of experiencing new new
cultures, new flavors, and, you
know, it's the basic, you know, we all eat,
of course, but, you know,

(02:27):
living in the South, it's not just, It's
not just one thing. It's not like Southern food is that it's
very layered and it's, you know, like the rest of the country, we've got
all these influences coming in from all over. And that's
been sort of how I've sort of stumbled

(02:47):
through over the last. It'd
be almost 40, 40 years now, 40, well, 45, if
you include some of the high school stuff, but
that's less impactful. And we,
you know, I was originally wanting to do a brewery. And

(03:10):
my wife, Anne, was the one who suggested that we do
spirits. And I was definitely like, I
don't know anything about spirits. In South Carolina, you
may or may not know this, we were a mini bottle state. So
if you went to a bar when I was growing up, There was just a
whole bunch of mini bars behind the bar, mini bottles. And

(03:33):
so a complex cocktail just didn't happen. It was,
you know, open the bottle, pour it in, and you might have a you
know, gun of coke or a gun of soda
or tonic or whatever it was, or maybe some canned
juice. And I think that's, you know, the cocktail scene
has evolved everywhere around the country, but it was

(03:55):
especially rough in South Carolina. So spirits were something that I
didn't have that much interest in, to be perfectly honest.
But as we started to get
into really the first few months, I
realized that, wow, there's this direct relationship between agriculture

(04:16):
and flavor and the end product.
And that's something that I had a lot of experience with, with the other
businesses, because I was, you know, if you sort
of use a unique or really great ingredient
and you don't mess it up along the way, it should taste pretty
great and unique when you finish with it.

(04:39):
So, I hope that answers your
question, but that's ultimately sort of how, you
know, in a nutshell, how the experience has really helped
me sort of get my head around this where
we fit in the distillation world and

(05:03):
And the uh the mini bottle state was uh it was I
hadn't known about this but it was uh mentioned by Chris,
when we talked about Burnt Church, the story, and
I hadn't, I just hadn't heard of that before. And I
get it. It's easy way to control, you know, there's no such thing
as a strong, you know, pour me something stronger. It's just whatever is in

(05:24):
the bottle. And of course, whatever's available
I mean, you've got, you know, you sort of have, if you look at many bottles and,
you know, we have a pretty good collection of them. Anne's

(05:46):
mother lives in the same house Anne
grew up in, and that we sort
of dig around whenever we're there. And
we found a whole box of
all these mini bottles that were really cool, artsy, intricate.
That stuff was not available when I was growing up

(06:09):
myself, because by that point, sort of people, everything
was becoming more homogenized. And it was sort of
like, you know, just the big brands, you know, because those little
mini bottles are not super profitable because of
the packaging and, you know, the process of them and how
you have to make to make a lot of

(06:29):
them, you have to make them very fast to make any money, which
means it has to be volume. It is a volume business. So
it was not a very interesting sector to me. I
mean, I drank gin in college.
I preferred it because it had flavor versus other

(06:50):
clear spirits. I didn't really drink a lot of bourbon
or whiskey because most of the stuff that
was available was just not, I didn't think it was that great. And
I didn't go into the liquor store and buy 750s in
those days because, you know, it just was not really, it wasn't on

(07:12):
my mind. And, you know, we just drank cheap beer. It
was kind of a, Kind of a, you
know, we weren't that picky, I guess, I
would say, or discerning. We weren't making cocktails at
home or anything like that. So. But
yeah, many bottles were ruled. And

(07:34):
it's like every state. Yes, it
was for control, but it was also political. There
were some politics behind it, of course. And
we also live in what's called a class B state.
So Texas and South Carolina are the only
states in the country that do this. where we

(07:57):
sell to a distributor, the distributor sells to a store, a
retail store, and then the retail store sells to the bar
or restaurant. And so in
those days, the stores were not allowed
to deliver to the restaurants or bars. So
they really wanted to make it very, I think, difficult and

(08:20):
complicated and there were layers and taxes all
along the way and, you know, all that. So, you know,
sort of for whatever reasons, but
I'm sure there were interests that were being served.
So always. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
But regardless, you know, I was

(08:43):
not definitely not that When
we were looking at distilling, there weren't that many distilleries in
the US, and there definitely were not any in South
Carolina at that point. I
had never been to Kentucky. Of course,

(09:06):
I knew there were a lot of big producers there. Coming
from the food business, I felt like that I would go there and
more or less just see big factories, you know, and I'm like,
you know, that's not applicable to what we're going
to do and. um so
you know we made a pilgrimage to Portland, Oregon

(09:29):
to see sort of like kind because there was a there
were 12 distilleries in in town in Portland there
was nothing like that anywhere else in the U.S. so New
York had a few um you know
but otherwise they were kind of scattered around and you couldn't see
12 in like three days or two days like you could there

(09:53):
And just to set a little context for
where you are, you and your wife are
both native South Carolinians, live there, as far
as I can tell, the majority of, if not your whole lives. And
But having said that, you said you thought about starting a brewery first, before

(10:17):
Ann convinced you to go into spirits. Did you know
much about Charleston's or South Carolina more generally's distilling
Not really. There again, most

(10:38):
of the alcohol that was distilled in the state
up where I'm from, which is the upstate was, you know,
real moonshine. So not the stuff you get on the
shelves today that say moonshine, because that's, you know,
a lot of that's kind of more vodka like. And,

(11:00):
doubt we were, even though we were from the state, Charleston
is three and a half hours from where I grew up. And, you know,
came down here at the time, was very aware of
the city. But I wasn't like looking around and trying to
figure out what the distilling history was, I suspected, you
know, sort of colonial era, there would have been rum, And

(11:24):
there were rum distilleries. It turns out there's a street here
called Romney Street. And back in those days, it was called Romney.
And there were three distilleries on that street. Now,
that would have been in the country because it's
up the peninsula. It's not that far now. But in those days, it
would have been like, you know, out in the Netherlands,

(11:47):
you know, basically, you know, of Charleston, but
there, you know, we were, when we came to town, there
were no distilleries in Charleston, present
day, and there hadn't been, South
Carolina after prohibition was a dispensary state.
So the state controlled and dispensed alcohol from

(12:10):
Columbia and they had bottles, official South
Carolina bottles that they put that alcohol and they dispensed it
to, I guess, probably state controlled stores
back in those days. There's a guy, you know,
that we, you know, like,
ultimately, we sort of

(12:33):
just consulted local writers, etc.
And really ended up, you
know, just sort of diving in, more or less while
we were doing construction, and, you know, basically being
able to, you know, kind of dig around
there weren't like ad old ads or anything. It's not like, you

(12:56):
know, Kentucky, you know, or Virginia, Virginia is
a great example, Pennsylvania. So
a writer named Robert Moss, who lives here, has
written a book on spirits. And
he is a rum, kind of a rum aficionado. And
he gave us a lot of background on what was around here. But it

(13:17):
wasn't like a It wasn't like
a heavy-duty, legit
operations happening around Charleston. Now,
with that said, down here, there was a
lot of illegal stuff happening. And the slang out
on the Sea Islands would have been, they would

(13:39):
have called it, the slang word, instead of calling it moonshine, they
called it scrap iron. And that was sort of like
code, if you will, to say hey you got any scrap iron
and it was more or less coming from the
fact that the stills that they were using were scrap metal or
piece you know they weren't they were homemade so that was sort of

(14:01):
the you know sort of the just
the you know vernacular if you will uh
for what would have been being made around here and
mostly like um They're sort of out on
these outer barrier islands where they're hard to get to,
et cetera. But yeah. So

(14:22):
we've looked into that a little bit. But while
that's important, that wasn't really
for us We
don't have a family history, neither Ann or I have a family history
in distilling. There was no grandfather recipe

(14:44):
or something that was made here back in the day that we sort
of resurrected or whatever that kind of thing. It
was really sort of more based on the agriculture here
And the culinary side has included
people such as Sean Brock, who I know he no longer drinks,

(15:07):
but he was known for having a pretty good
bourbon collection and his
stuff there. Of course, we respect his decision for many reasons. So
jumping to still, I
guess, not jumping, still with the creation of what is
now Highwire. When starting out, your wife

(15:29):
Anne said that, she said on Proof University that you
both also looked, in addition to the trip to Portland, you also looked at Highwest
as an inspiration or an idea as a
potential model, albeit minus the sourcing aspect
of it. So I'm curious to
hear a little bit more about that. And just, you know, who else did you look to for inspiration and

(15:55):
Yeah, they were, I mean, they were really sort of
popping right when we were starting to look
and like, I remember seeing those distinctive tall
slender bottles. And then going, where's
this stuff from? And then found out it was from Utah of
all places. And I'm like, oh, wow. Well, that's cool. These guys from

(16:16):
Utah have proven that you can do something that sort of
tells a story of a a
place, Stranahan's had done that, of course, but with
a what they call Colorado whiskey, as you know, but it's a
single malt. So we knew of that and
High West also just had a fun kind of approach to

(16:38):
the business. They were, you know, sort of Disruptors, if
you will, a little bit where they weren't naming things, uh,
necessarily, you know, traditional and they weren't going on tradition.
It wasn't there again, there wasn't some family story or
something like that. And I thought, you know, they have their own identity
and that's really, really cool. Um, source

(17:00):
that they were also pretty transparent about the sourcing. And,
um, I thought that that was admirable. Um, and,
um, you know, just sort of how they approach the business was really, really,
I thought, great. There's
also, we met a guy in Portland, Oregon named

(17:21):
Christian Krogstad, who was the founder of
House Spirits. So he started Aviation Gin,
which of course, eventually sold to Ryan Reynolds,
and then started Westward Single
Malt Whiskey. And Christian had been in the brewing industry and

(17:42):
he'd been in the wine industry. And just
there again, just doing what he knew and really bringing
sort of, I think, a Pacific Northwest approach
to distilling, which I think, again, I was
like, we're not in the Pacific Northwest. We don't tell that story.
That's their thing. We tell our story. And

(18:06):
what is our story? And that's really where
I like to say we wandered in the wilderness
for about four years. We, we
basically, you know, we had glimpses of
what we were going to be, but we weren't, it

(18:28):
wasn't like we said, this is what we're going to do. And, you know, we, we
didn't write this plan out per se, because, you
know, how would we know?
And the idea of
sourcing was something that really for
us was a struggle because it was like, how does that ever become

(18:50):
our story? How does that become
part of our fabric or our DNA? And how does that,
we're not really great at like, spinning yarns
about how this is the best whiskey from Charleston and

(19:12):
not made in Charleston, you know. Okay, we're putting
bottles, putting batches together and proofing it
down or finishing it in different barrels or whatever.
That just wasn't our thing. It's not a criticism
of that at all. It just was we wanted something that
really told a story and really told

(19:34):
a unique story and brought a unique flavor. That was
kind of a Again,
if you think about it, it's not that kind of ingenious
or whatever. But when you look at it and you
look at things like wine,

(19:56):
well, yes, grapes grow in
specific areas better than they do in others. But Pinot Noir,
grapes do kind of grow. They will kind of grow wherever. Now,
whether they grow really well, that's a different story. We
know a lot of winemakers and they have a passion for

(20:18):
doing something outside, you know, sort of the traditional, you know,
sort of Napa Cabernet or whatever it is. And they want to
tell a story about maybe about their personality and about how
they're approaching things. And then experiment with grapes that
may have been around pre-prohibition and they're bringing those
back or they're in a similar area in Italy

(20:39):
but they're going to grow them in California or in Washington State
and obviously get a
different flavor profile due to that. We were sort of thinking,
we need to bring something that really tells a story about
how we approach things and from

(21:02):
this place. And Jimmy Redd is The
slang for Jimmy Redd is James Island. It's James Island
Redd. James Island is literally one bridge away from
downtown where we live. And
Anne's family has been in the farming business for
years. Her grandfather was a dairy farmer.

(21:24):
Her cousins are farmers. the,
a lot of the farms we work with are 30 minutes from her childhood
home. And she's probably, I mean, she's
definitely more, it's more personal for her than it
is for me. Uh, and more, more hometown pride,
if you will, uh, to say, you know, this is something that

(21:46):
we can do that is of place and tells
a story. And, you know, I, you
know, kind of like, any
beer drinker, wine drinker, spirits drinker, you
come home from work and you want to have a beverage.

(22:07):
If you drink the same thing every night, I personally
think it's kind of boring. So it's nice to have an
IPA when you want an IPA or when you want a
Pilsner. Or you know what, I'm going to have a glass of Pinot Noir. Or
you know what, I think I'm just going to have this white
wine. or rosé, or maybe

(22:29):
I'm going to have a bourbon tonight and
a rye. But you know what? I'm not going to have the same bourbon. I'm going
to try some from New Riff, or
I'm going to try some from Frey Ranch, or I'm going to try
some from Woody
Creek. Nowadays, there are so many more

(22:50):
choices. you know, that's what
I think is really exciting. And I feel like that we're adding
another thread, if you will,
to that fabric of what's of the US whiskey
landscape. And, you know, we're not trying to
conquer the world or anything like that. But I

(23:13):
do think that, you know, we should own this
piece of it, you know, we're pretty competitive, you know, and we want to,
we want to represent this area, the best and sourcing just never really
would have worked for that. And, you know, it's, I'll be, you
know, be perfectly honest. It's, it's, it's, uh, Any

(23:33):
business is hard. I've owned several, and
they all have their challenges. But
I will say, this business, you're
constantly living in the past and in the future. And
what you're making today, you're really excited about. and
go, wait till this is five years old or six years old. This

(23:55):
is going to be really great. And in a year, you're doing that
same thing. You're constantly sort of that. I
mean, there's a Japanese term Kaizan, that,
you know, there's always that sort of pursuit of perfection, and
sort of constantly doing that intentional, focused,

(24:18):
deliberate work on something like
a spirit or, you know, if you're Trying
to do knife work on carrots or whatever, you know, we have a lot
of chefs and they're just constantly getting better and better and better. Well,
the problem with whiskey is you're doing it, but then you, you know,
you see the results or you kind of put a finger in the wind of

(24:38):
like, oh, that white dog is really,
really, wow. That seems like that's a lot better than what we made, you
know, a year ago. well, maybe,
you know, you gotta put
it in a barrel and just wait and see. So that's
definitely been sort of that challenge. And, you

(24:59):
know, we hope that we're, you know,
sort of our grand experiment has been, you know, it has proven,
now we're starting at this point in our
business where we're starting to see those results of like, okay, our
hunches were, a lot of them were pretty right. So we feel

(25:20):
good about it, you know, but there were a lot of years there where I was definitely like,
is Jimmy Red the thing we
should be doing or should we be doing another variety? Should
we be making more rye? Should we, you know, should we put
rye in there or wheat in there or, you know, some
make it a part of a four grain, you know, it

(25:42):
was just sort of a, it's a, you
know, there again, just sort of guessing, you know, and
So, a couple of different directions I want to go here. But
I think we'll start with is the I

(26:05):
want to bring in before getting really into the Jimmy Redd,
I just want to bring in Dave Pickerel for a second. So Dave's
been talked about a lot on the podcast, he's kind of unavoidable
to talk about in American Craft Spirits. Timeline-wise,

(26:25):
you said on the Vint podcast, I believe, that Dave worked with you not
once, but twice. The first one being, I'm
assuming, was in 2013 when he came down for that first distillation.
You described it as you didn't know how to turn the machine on, basically. Dave
came in and said, all right, we're going to turn off the computers, we're going to turn off this, and we're
going to teach you this way. So, I think

(26:48):
that was the first time. What was the second time that he came
So, he actually, we worked
with him up at Asheville Distilling,
which is now gone. They moved and,
you know, different name and all that. they sold that business.

(27:09):
But Asheville Distilling, so when I was in the bakery
business, the prior business, the packaged food company, I
used to do a radio show with this guy, Oscar Wong, who
owns Highland Brewing up in Asheville. And
we would just get together and talk about beer and
cookies. And, you know, we would pair, you know, say, which,

(27:30):
which cookie you think goes with this beer? It was a sort of
a, and we would just talk about sort of the philosophies of how we were
running our business and stuff. And it was, you know,
kind of a local regional radio, AM
radio kind of thing. So a lot of fun. But I
went up to see Oscar at one point and visit

(27:53):
with him at his brewery. And he says, hey, hey, let's
go next door. There's this distillery. And I
was like, huh, we're actually thinking about getting into the distilling business
now. This was already sort of where it was, the idea had been
planted. And so we walk over next door and he introduces me
to the folks there. And they

(28:15):
have a German still, Kota,
it's a pot with the onion kind of on top, helmet pipe,
the bulb on top. And Dave, fast
forward about two months later, by this point, we know we're
going to do distilling. We actually have worked with these guys,

(28:35):
and we're going to buy that still from them because they've ordered a bigger one.
And, uh, we, we're going to buy the small still from them. That's
going to be our first still. And we said, well,
you know, it'd be kind of cool if we could make some stuff here just
to get a headstart on like kind of the thinking. Cause like,
who are we, what are we going to do? So I went up and worked

(28:57):
with, uh, we made a rum of just a molasses based,
uh, rum. Cause I thought Charleston port city will
probably sell a lot of rum. Um, and, um.
and then a rye whiskey. And we
went up and, you know, worked with him for
three days at that point. And alongside the actual

(29:20):
distilling guys, because they were also doing some rye
experiments. And, you know, they were also making
a light whiskey is what they were basically going
to make, you know, they called it blonde. So it was going to be a coming
off still at, you know, 170, 180 proof,
uh, and putting it in used barrels. So he was working

(29:42):
on that with them. And I definitely, I didn't even know what light whiskey was. And,
uh, so he was educating me on a lot of the basics at that point. I
thought, you know what, we should, we should see if he'd come down
and work with us. So that's really where it all started. And
then after that, we would see him at shows. We
would see him, um, at. tails

(30:04):
of the cocktail, et cetera. And he would always come
over and taste things and go, it's getting better.
Or, you know, have you thought about this? Or, you know, it's a
little, you know, a little hot or whatever,
you know. And I would, you know, I would ask him
occasionally just like, you know, kind of a refresher of questions

(30:26):
or whatever, that kind of thing. So it wasn't, you know, it wasn't just
a one and done relationship. We also
watched, you know, sort of him working with other peer, like
the guys at Nelson Greenbrier. And we
know Andy and Charlie who started that and And

(30:46):
then the guys at Woodinville.
So we were we were watching a lot of that happen and
sort of seeing how they approach the business there. Again, we were just wandering
in that wilderness. And so he helped out.
Sort of as much as he could, you know, but he couldn't tell us who we were going to be,

(31:09):
he could just he just told us maybe like kind of what not to
do, you know, his opinion. So it was very
And to keep with that, the beginning
of the timeline, I
think High Wire now is synonymous with the Jimmy Redd. It

(31:29):
has become very much, if not the
sole identity, it's certainly the strongest identity, I think, for
consumers and for the brand. But I was interested
to hear, you didn't actually start with Jimmy Red. You started with an heirloom open pollinated
white corn. And you said

(31:54):
Yeah, Dave, Dave, that's the, some of the whiskey Dave, uh,
we made with Dave that first time. And originally we made
it a hundred percent heirloom white corn. And it
wasn't like we ran out to say, we're going to do a hundred percent. Cause
we're going to be weird or different or whatever. I
just really wanted to understand the flavor of that corn.

(32:16):
Like, what is this going to do now? Step
two, scientific process. Let's
just put some wheat in there. How's that? Let's
put some rye in there. How's that? Use
the same yeast strain, malted barley,

(32:36):
enzymes, different fermentation temperatures.
Uh, there's a million different variables. So that's
really where it all started. And then, you know, I
thought, you know, I was very, I had a lot of angst about
it. Um, and I thought, you know, this airline white
corn, this guy's making grits out of it and corn meal, and

(32:59):
it makes great grits and corn meal. But I was like, I don't
know, nobody's making whiskey with it. So, you know, we're
going to make some whiskey and see what it's like. And. It
was okay, and at one point, Ann said, you know, we need to
make some more. We eventually made a four grain with
that whiskey, and we used a malted barley wheat,

(33:21):
a soft wheat, and then we were using Carolina
gold rice, which is, you know, was a
huge crop back in the sort of 17, 1800s, and was resurrected in
the 70s around here. And

(33:44):
so I thought that'll help tell that, you know, that was sort of a first
scratch at sort of something that we could do that would be
of place, if you will. It was
okay. It didn't
scratch the itch, basically. It didn't hit
that place. And we didn't know Jimmy Redd existed

(34:07):
at that point. So when we did Jimmy Redd, that
was an introduction with Glenn Roberts, who is an heirloom grain
savant, basically. And he just happens to
be based, Anson Mills is his company. It just happens
to be based here in South Carolina. We had known Glenn, but we didn't know him that well.
And I said, well, Bourbon, when

(34:29):
I see all these mash bills on all these forums and
all these guys talking about, well, this one's got more rye
than that one or that one's got more wheat or whatever, you know, it was like, is
that enough? I mean, what is that going to really make
things that different? But
I said, ultimately, these recipes all have like 70 plus

(34:51):
percent corn. So let's start there and
learn more about corn. And who do we know that knows a
lot about corn? And that was really what led us to Glenn. And
at that point, I said, you know, this white corn is fine. What
else is there? And I'm also like this white corn is
like. Not. I

(35:13):
get a lot of people say, well, we use heirloom grain. And it's
like, well, that's great. But why
that specific one? Just
because it's heirloom, it's kind of
like the word gourmet or the word all
natural. What does that really

(35:35):
mean? It's cool you're
working with an heirloom. why did you
get to that specific variety? And having
been in the food business, I've heard all the terms, I've heard the,
you know, I was in the organic and natural business and I watched that
business go from sort of cottage, very

(35:57):
true tribe and through hardcore organic to
what I call very factory level organic. And
just because it's organic doesn't mean that it's
going to taste good, you know, so,
or it's going to be the best ingredient, you know, it's

(36:18):
certified organic. So that heirloom thing was
not holding water like we wanted. And,
you know, it was fine whiskey and looked at me at one point and
said, we need to make some more for green. And I
said, We have
this Jimmy red. By this point, we had Jimmy red. I said, we

(36:38):
only have so much money and so much space
at this point and all that. And we need the
race horse. You know, we, we're not going to, we can't spread
our money across sort of six horses. We
need to focus and become known for
something that really is sort

(37:00):
of what we think is the best that we can. do
and the best vehicle to tell that
And it's funny hearing you and Ann talk about not
only the story of how you found Jimmy Red and the many different

(37:20):
characteristics. So when I do tasting notes on
the site for the Jimmy Red,
the Bottle of the Mond version, both of which you were generous enough
to share, and the Rye, you know, I'll include a lot of the information, kind
of more science-y stuff and things like there's a
lot of blue corn in the heritage of Jimmy Red. But

(37:42):
it's funny to hear you both talk about it because you talk very
confidently and very naturally, I would say, about the genetics
of it, the story, this
idea of phenotypic changing
I'm blanking on the word, phenotypic plasticity. Right on

(38:03):
the way. And, you know, for people who both of
you and I've heard you both now say that you're not great salespeople or
don't think you're great salespeople. You know, you tell
the story quite well. I
hear you when you're saying like the idea of it can't just be
heirloom. It's got to be something that's important. It's got to taste good. You

(38:25):
also compared it. At one point you said, you know, we've also tried millet,
quinoa, different grains, and that, you know,
interesting stuff will raise interest and it might get
people to buy one bottle of that, but ultimately they're going to they're
going to buy what they like. You compared it to your experience with

(38:45):
cookies. You can make any flavor you want that
you think will be interesting, but chocolate chip is always going to be the one that sells the most. So
I do want to now jump into the Jimmy Redd a little bit more. And Jimmy
Redd was known before it was forgotten. It was

(39:08):
known as a moonshiner's corn. as you
were saying earlier, in scrap iron and it was
used. And I was thinking about this and I
said, I don't see on your site any
quote unquote moonshine or unaged spirit on
your site. And I don't remember you mentioning it in any of the interviews and such. Was

(39:32):
that a conscious choice to forego that product?
Because I feel like that on paper that could be a good
seller as this connection to moonshine history, but not
Yeah, no. It's definitely
been an internal. It's not

(39:54):
a hot potato, probably as a extreme, extreme word
for it, or extreme words for it, but
There was a lot of white whiskey when we were first starting out.
The craft distilleries were releasing and there was a bit of a moment there
where bartenders were looking at it. It was kind of an
interesting thing. And Dave Pickerel even

(40:17):
said, you could do a white whiskey, you know, and I'm like, well,
who buys that? How many people sit around and drink white
whiskey? I remember High West, one
of the things they did not source was their silver early
on. And it was an oat whiskey. And it
was really interesting and really delicious. I

(40:41):
have one bottle of it. I still have that bottle. I've had
that bottle for 14 years. It's
interesting, it's delicious, but I don't sit around and sip that.
Now, were I a better mixologist bartender, maybe
I could have plowed through it with some cocktails or whatever, but it
wasn't something that I would sit around and sip. But with that

(41:02):
said, we did an event with Bill Thomas, who has Jack
Rose in DC, probably going
back three years ago now for an event. We've
done a few things together over the years and he came down and
we did a barrel pick class and it
was all about how he selects barrels and what he's looking

(41:24):
at and the effects of wood and
the effects of finishing wood. So he
brought in some examples of exotic finishes some
tequila barrels, some sherry barrels,
and I don't remember all the different ones, but he brought a bunch of other

(41:44):
people's whiskeys that had been finished in different barrels, and
then also French oak from some
other distilleries. I said, well, why
don't we do this? Why don't we use Jimmy Red? We'll have Jimmy Red
in that mix up as well. But
we'll also have a Our Sherry finish. And

(42:06):
then we'll also have a White Dog version, just
so people understand. Because we get questions all the time at the distillery of
like, does it come
out of the still brown? Or where does the color come
from? And it's a fair question, because
if you don't No, I mean,

(42:29):
you would assume that it comes out of the still that way. And
a lot of folks ask us, do you char your
own barrels? Do you make your own barrels? I'm like, absolutely not.
We don't have a cooperage. We
leave that to people who are skilled craftspeople

(42:50):
to do that. for us. So it was
a fair enough question. So we took that white dog
just to show them what it looked like before it went in that barrel.
And we said, let's proof it to barrel entry proof 110, so
that when they're tasting these barrel proof whiskeys at 116 or whatever,

(43:15):
118 after it's been sitting the barrel, they can understand not
only that evaporation maybe a little better, but they can also understand how
that wood sort of takes the edges off. So
yeah, it's higher proof, but there's maybe
more sweetness, there's, you know, just more, you know, more of the layers and
the character there. So, Ultimately,

(43:37):
wood is an ingredient. Barrel is an ingredient. And
if you use good barrels or not so good barrels, that's
going to show through. So we

(43:58):
had probably 30 people in
that class, I think. Of that class, probably 15 of
them said, why don't you sell this white dog? It's delicious. I
don't understand. I would buy this. And I was like, you
know, people say things like that. And it's like, well, would you really buy it?
You know, so I mentioned it to Anne and she's like,

(44:20):
we Who's going to buy that? We don't have time for that
right now. And we've got to get a different label made.
And there's a whole. So we've definitely been back
and forth. But lately, we've been getting
more and more interest. And it really does show
how the unique flavors of Jimmy Redd

(44:42):
versus say
another white dog from another distillery that's using
a traditional mash bill or whatever, and it really
shows off that corn. And the
properties that are in that corn that aren't in a white or
yellow corn. Um, we've talked about

(45:03):
it. I think we're going to do it. Um, we will probably
be releasing a small format though. Um,
probably not except 50 to start. So it'll probably be a flask, something
like that. But I do think, I do think that it would be a
cool, um, thing to show
now we've done blind tastings etc with

(45:25):
heirloom white corn heirloom yellow corn with
when we've had a room full of people that want to go a little deeper where
they'll taste jimmy red against white or yellow and you
blind you can there's it's it's you can
totally i mean it's It's like, okay, it tastes different
than that. Well, guess what? The barrel can do a lot, but it can't fix

(45:48):
that or it can't change that. It can't make it more uniform like,
you know, it can't transform it to a yellow corn or
white corn flavor or a corn that's going to have
you know, be honest, the yellow corn and
white corns that we worked with didn't have the starchy

(46:09):
qualities of the oil. So it didn't have the same mouthfeel and
it didn't have sort of that, I
don't know how to say this, but ultimately a lot of folks will say, is
there wheat or rye in here? when they taste the
Jimmy Red and they don't know, we haven't told them that it's 100%. And so

(46:35):
ultimately that starch in
the Jimmy Red almost gives it sort of a
light wheat doughy character. We tasted somebody
blind on it recently and we said, this is a
weeded version of Jimmy Red. Um, they
tasted it and they're like, Ooh, yeah, I can tell that. And they were talking about

(46:59):
it. We'll be honest. I grabbed the wrong bottle.
And it was 100% Jimmy Redd. And I didn't know that. And I
wasn't playing a joke on this person or whatever. But
we both tasted it. And I was like, yeah, it does kind of have some
soft notes to it. And it didn't
have any weed in it. So it does come across

(47:20):
that way. I mean, we've had folks that Bill
Thomas is one where he has said, man,
this stuff just drinks different. It's got a

(47:44):
unique character and there is a lot of sort of rye wheat
characteristics. Julian Van Winkle, a friend of
ours from the Van Winkle family, and
he thought there was wheat or rye in there when he tasted it years
ago. So You don't get that
at least with the yellow and white corns we've done. So to

(48:07):
a long answer to your question, but yes, I
think the white whiskey would be kind of a cool, um,
educational piece. I wouldn't say it's, you
know, I could, I mean, people
would use it in cocktails. It'd be good in a cocktail bloody berries or
something like that. I don't know. I'm not, I'm not a, I'm not

(48:30):
I mean, I like the idea of the smaller format. It's you're right. People are not going to, most
people I think don't just sit around drinking white whiskey, but the small format,
they can at least taste that maybe taste it with a few friends, have
a full bottle of the Jimmy red in whatever
variation they choose and be able to say, All right. This
is where we are after, you know, at least four

(48:52):
years with the bottle to bond or however long it is and
really see where, where this stuff goes. Cause
I agree too, you know, the, the barrel I've come
to kind of describe as it can hide or it can enhance.
And then enhance can go either way. It's going to enhance whatever you
put in there. So if it's bad, it's going to enhance the

(49:15):
bad. If it's good, it'll enhance the good, but you got to have good stuff
going in to begin with. Talking
about the oiliness in particular. So I noticed this on the Mouthfeel for
sure when I was tasting at both versions and
actually I should say all three versions. So the two versions that you shared and then the single barrel from

(49:35):
Lost Lantern as well. So
according to something Ann said, the Jimmy Red
gives you a crazy oil cap on top of the ferment after
a couple of days, two, three days, that has a ton of flavor. You blend
it back into the mash and it's part of the distillation and
those flavors really come out of the flavor and nose. I

(49:58):
have to assume that that happens with other corn varieties
that have a higher fat content in them or high oil
content, but it hasn't, to my remembrance, come up on the
podcast before where someone said, oh yeah, we get like a oil cap on top.
Well, for me, yes, yellow

(50:21):
corns, white corns, definitely. There again, we had distilled, by
the time Jimmy Red was coming out of the ground that first year or
that first fall of 2014, you got to remember
we had been making whiskey for almost a year and a half at that point. So
we were making a lot of whiskey with heirloom varieties
of yellow and white corn that,

(50:43):
you know, definitely had little puddles,
I would say, of oil on top. When you looked
at the fermenter there would be like, you know, little, you know, because it's
corn oil, you know, we all know oil, corn has oil
in it. But it wasn't, when
you tasted it, it was like benign-ish,

(51:07):
you know, if that's a word. It wasn't really like,
you know, it might have a mild corn flavor
to it, but it wasn't like, whoa, you
know, whatever. This is sort of a cool
thing that happens. So when we made that first mash
with the Jimmy Red and we had the we

(51:29):
were converting starch to sugar in the mash
process. And it was ultimately that break happens when
you get to about 190 or so degrees. And
it goes from this really thick kind of porridge to this sort of
soupy consistency, which
is where once that starch breaks and starts to convert to

(51:51):
sugar, it gets thinner again. So when
you're tasting it, and it was almost like honey,
earthy, mineralic kind of sweetness.
And then some like nutty qualities to it. And
then in the ferment, we came in, we, you know,

(52:13):
of course we're obsessed with it because, you know, we were excited and
waiting for months to taste this stuff. And
we opened up the top of the fermenter and looked in and we're like, whoa, that's
a lot of oil. Now we haven't seen that before. It was a,
it was a, a steady cap. It wasn't just a
little, puddles. And,

(52:35):
you know, we smelled it. It smelled like, kind
of like peanut butter-ish. I mean,
it's weird because it smelled a little like peanut butter, but and
smelled like a banana Laffy Taffy kind of
almost smell. And, You
know, we're on the grain when we ferment and distill. So

(52:59):
we, of course, pump it all over into
the still. And when the distillate was
coming out of the out of
the parrot, you're tasting it coming off,
you know, whatever. And sure enough, the that There

(53:20):
were little pearls of oil there that
were really almost like mild
like marzipan kind of notes to it, and
just really rich, richer, and
that, you know, that kind of heavier viscosity, which

(53:42):
we think is where a
lot of, I mean, it's a consistent thing that's said to us, this
stuff just drinks older than what it is. And
like that lost lantern barrel was three and a half years old. And
people wouldn't have guessed it. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. No. And we will often, when

(54:05):
people come in and pick single barrels, we'll
tell them how old they are. And Some
people like the younger character because
that kind of peanut brittle, nut
brittle, hazelnut kind of flavor is

(54:27):
more predominant in when it's a little younger and
the barrel sort of starts to take over a little more the
older it gets. But it does, I think it's
different, but also good, but
it's different as it gets older. But it's not
like you're having it at three and a half years old and

(54:49):
going, like some
distillate that I've had from
other distilleries, unnamed. I've had
whiskey from some bigger
folks that was, You know, two

(55:10):
and a half, three and a half years old. And it was, you
know, it was not anywhere near ready to bottle.
So, um, you know, we, we felt like
that. That's that's Jimmy red, you
know, and, and I think, you know, it's not just one thing there's,
um, there's this, uh, this oil, there's also

(55:32):
a huge starch. Um, the, the kernels are
pretty large. They're not huge, but the. the
whole head is super starchy. And one
of the things we learned, and we went on a trip, two
trips to Mexico in 2019, and we
went to a tortilla making village. And

(55:53):
these families grow these ancestral varieties, and
they use these different varieties for different purposes. And
a tortilla, corn
tends to have that heavier starch because it's kind of more
of like a cross

(56:13):
between a corn tortilla and a flour tortilla. And
if you taste Jimmy Red tortillas versus
say a yellow or white or whatever, there's a
big difference. And there's a huge difference in that texture of
that tortilla. and that really appealed to me being
more from a pastry background and more from a food

(56:36):
background and also there again you know sort of this um
pursuit of flavor that we talk about you know
of saying there again are we saying that
you know it's we're you know people
say we make the best whiskey it's like well we make the best whiskey we
can I

(56:59):
like to think that it's something that's like in the rotation and
it's like hitting a thing that you're kind
of craving for a nice sip. you
know, if you're drinking four nights
a week of whiskey, you know, it'd be nice to

(57:21):
be in there every couple of weeks or so and just have a little pour of it
or whatever. We don't have, we're not expecting people to just buy
our stuff or whatever, but it's, it's, it's hopefully bringing something else
to the party. But ultimately we do think that oil
adds some level of that, um,
flavor carrier, but also that texture and viscosity to

(57:46):
That answers, I was going to ask you if you had been to Mexico yet, because
I know you had said, you know, in the late 2010s,
let's say, it must have been before you went, you really wanted to go to see how
the people were treating the corn and using it, particularly the
original Teosinte strain. I

(58:07):
want to I'm going to close this out a little bit later on that
agriculture question, too. But.
So the. In
the evolution of of high wire, and this can be. You know,
distillery wide, this can be specific to the Jimmy Redd. When

(58:30):
Jimmy Redd was first ready for sale, like the first batches were ready, they'd
been aged to a point where you and Ann felt like they were ready
to be put on the market. The
day that they were going on sale, you left to go to
the fields and was in the shop. Clearly
you weren't expecting what was about to happen, which was that they

(58:50):
were going to sell out in 11 minutes. Yeah.
Looking back on that, eight years later, what
do you think drove that intense interest?
Was it just word of mouth? Was there work done on your part to
kind of hype it up? Or was it just filling a niche that

(59:13):
Well, I definitely think Glenn Roberts is
I wouldn't say guilty of this. I'll just, you know, that's the best word I can
think of at this moment, but, you know, I would say he, this is
sort of, you know, his thing, my thing, Sean Brock's
thing, you know, tons of other winemaker

(59:36):
friends, chefs, et cetera, anybody or art artists,
you know, musicians were very passionate people.
And we're excited to share, and we're excited to
share the story, and we're excited to talk about it
and let folks kind of go on that adventure with us. So we've definitely
been doing a lot of that. But there

(59:59):
was just a buzz that we weren't really
turning ourselves. It wasn't really a
conscious effort to be like, you know, hyping
or any of that, it just sort of was, if anything, I actually was
excited, passionate, but I also had a ton of insecurity about

(01:00:21):
it. So I was
hoping that people would like it, hoping, and when
people would, I would share it, just
taste out of the barrel pretty regularly with folks, chef
friends, writer friends, whiskey
enthusiasts, et cetera. just

(01:00:44):
sort of getting feedback and saying, what do you think, you
know, and people would be like, and it was like, was
it, you know, you can kind of be, um, I
don't know, led astray by your
friends and family focus group. Uh, so, you know,
um, you have to sort of put a filter on

(01:01:07):
things, but It wasn't like, wow,
this is really good. It wasn't simple. They weren't saying
things like that. People would go, whoa. And
then they would go, and I'd be like, whoa, OK. This
person's really thinking about it. They're talking about it. And they're truly,
or at least I think they are, truly excited about

(01:01:27):
this. And that's really what happened for
that first, I would say, three
years. Yeah,
because we we put it in the ground. We
talked about it a little bit. Some of our friends even went out to the fields with
us and we watched it grow, you know, germ and

(01:01:49):
then, you know, get to a plant, you know, do this and
it grows very pretty quickly. You know, at that first stage, you
know, corn gets pretty tall pretty quick and this
stuff gets, you know, 10, 12 feet tall. And
then. It's just sort of sitting there green
and then the. Cobbs start to form and the

(01:02:10):
tassels and, um, and I, I've not,
a lot of this stuff was new. I mean, of course I'm driven by cornfields many
times in my life. Um, I've hung out and drank
beer in them in high school, uh, that kind of thing, but
I had not really, I didn't understand the science of
corn and nor did I know where corn came

(01:02:32):
from. Um, you know, you
know, we all hear the word Indian corn, you know, whatever.
That's actually factual, you know, Native American, Native
Americans are the ones who they're the ones that are responsible for
us having it. So I

(01:02:52):
didn't know any of that. So I think
when we put this stuff on sale, we put
it out on social media, I think, and I
don't even know if we had a newsletter at that point. And I don't really
remember how we got word out, but we were like, you know, we would, it was fall and
we would do release special releases. And, you know, then we had a little

(01:03:14):
bit of a following and that's why I was like, you know, maybe
we'll sell 50 or so bottles of it. And we
had some folks in town and we were pressing sugar cane that day. And,
you know, it's kind of like, it's agriculture.
So, When it's ready to happen, you've got to

(01:03:34):
do it. So we were ready to press the cane, because the sugar,
the bricks on the cane was at the right spot. You
get a sunny day. Sunny day yields more
sugar, because that photosynthesis is
happening. And it's like grapes.
It's the same thing. Wine grapes. Etc. So

(01:03:56):
we had a great day. We were like, OK, we're going to go press Cain. So
it's like, are you really leaving? And I said. yeah,
we've got to go, you know, can't be in two places at once and
I've got to go do this. And I'm, you know, very passionate about
this agri-coal style rum that we were making as
well. And they're getting very fascinated by the process

(01:04:20):
and then what flavors are we going to get from this variety of
cane and from this specific farm that was in the Ace Basin. We
had been making agri-coal from another farm in
the, in the PD area. So
I was very curious. So it's like, you know what, I'd
love to stay here, but I got her to go do this. And then we

(01:04:41):
didn't have great cell service. And when I finally got in touch with her, I
said, how'd it go? She's like, it's gone. We sold it all. And
I'm like, oh, wow. Yeah.
Well, um, good thing we made a
little more, you know, wish we had made, you know, but it was sort
of that. You know, we were

(01:05:03):
just sort of finger in the wind and that's why I continue to say wandering
in the wilderness, you know, my first four years. And
that's the tough part about, um, you
know, that I'll pat us on the back for is that, you know, while
we, we took the chance to do this, we

(01:05:23):
also had to grow it, which, um,
that's been a huge learning curve as well. And
we didn't wanna, of course, if we had
just said, let's make some money, let's grow a lot of it, that
would have been a mistake. We had to learn how

(01:05:45):
to properly grow this corn, and we had
to learn alongside that
sort of the best fermentation, mashing procedures, And
then, you know, the distillation and, you know, sort
of the aging, you know, there are a lot of, you know,

(01:06:05):
people talk about the mash bill or whatever, that's like, you
know, it's obviously important, but if
I gave 10 people
the same chocolate chip cookie recipe, And
said, make it, you're going to get 10 different cookies

(01:06:26):
because that process baking is a process. And
that is one thing that has really helped. I think us is
understanding that it says little attention to
detail along every step and learning
about those details. Like
barrels or yeast or fermentation temperatures are

(01:06:48):
milling or farming practices. We do what's
called no-till farming. We didn't do that originally. And
it's made a huge difference. So it's
just baby steps. But that takes a lot of time. And that's why
we're sitting here 11 years into this. And we're just really

(01:07:09):
finally hitting a stride with that piece. Now,
with the whiskey, we're releasing our
first age-stated whiskey this
month. It's a seven-year-old weeded
version of Jimmy Red that we've never released and

(01:07:29):
it's You know, it's cool. It's, it's,
it's, it's different, but it's not that different to be honest, as
far as the wheat, it didn't really, to me, it didn't
make that, it didn't make so much of a difference that I didn't even know
when I drank that a hundred percent Jimmy red and thought I had weed in it, you know?

(01:07:51):
So, you know, like I said, it's good that
you ramped up production after that, but you were limited by,
you know, you want to use a Jimmy bread. You got to wait until it's until you grow enough to
distill with, and you're talking not just a
couple of acres. You know, I think the first, the first crop
that you were able to distill from was two and a half acres or something like that. Now

(01:08:13):
you've got quite a bit more, but you know, it took time to
grow that as you're approaching
this point where you're starting to release this older stock, first
of, as I said, the weeded Jimmy Red, and I would figure
eventually it'll be the 100% Jimmy Red at whatever
age statement you'd like, six, seven, or older. Is

(01:08:41):
there... Actually,
I'm going to cut that question. I think answered
it already, so I don't wanna duplicate up on that. So
there's a lot, as I
said, to talk about with High Wire and with Jimmy Redd,

(01:09:02):
but one other thing that I've enjoyed asking
distilleries about around the world when this is
relevant is, you are proudly
a downtown Charleston distillery. you're in
city, and not even kind of
on the outskirts, you're, you're in the city. And

(01:09:24):
right, you know, pretty close to the water. And so what
does it mean for, for you to be truly
downtown in the heart of the city, in Charleston,
Yeah, well, it makes it harder. Urban

(01:09:45):
distilling, I mean, there's several around the country. But
you've got deliveries of grain. You've got waste
that you're basically working with farmers to
give them all your waste so they can feed livestock. And
all that is a heck of a lot harder in the city. And

(01:10:08):
then you also have the
rent, of course. We don't own our building. It
would be pretty impossible to buy a downtown Charleston
building. So all of that definitely
makes it more difficult. Our tasting room, we

(01:10:30):
passed some laws in 21 and we've
thankfully been able to modernize some
things in the state with that and been able to Get
to a place where we can make cocktails. Now we can serve food. We
can do, you know, we could do other people's whiskey. If

(01:10:50):
we want to, we can do other people's liqueurs and
we can do other folks. Um, um, you know,
we could, we could do rum if we want, you know, or whatever. Um,
which is great. Uh, so our, our bar, we can
do proper cocktails. Now we're not sort of making
cocktails with one arm tied behind our back. And

(01:11:12):
we can really highlight and show off why
we do what we do and how to really make
spirit forward cocktails that really tell the story properly. Our
food program is very hyper focused on
telling part of that story as well. So we don't just, you know, we

(01:11:32):
don't just make hot dogs and,
you know, I don't know, whatever else. We
have a cornbread in a cast iron skillet
that comes out, and it's made with Jimmy Red. So
we make a Jimmy Red cornbread, and then we slice
Alan Benton of Benton's hams. We slice his

(01:11:56):
country ham super thin like a prosciutto that goes alongside.
And then sorghum is a big thing in the south, you know, sorghum syrup. So
we make a sorghum butter and that's on the side. So we
have the sorghum butter that's from a Mennonite farm. We
have the Allen Benton's ham, and then we have
our Jimmy Red cornbread, all telling a story about where you are

(01:12:17):
and giving kind of a unique experience. We're making crackers from
our spent mash from Jimmy Red. So our
pimento cheese, which is a Southern delicacy with
those crackers. So field pea
hummus, one of the farmers that we work with,
he grows field peas. That's where we get our peas and we make hummus from it.

(01:12:39):
So it's kind of a cool, helps us kind
of tell that story. So we get seven and a half million visitors
downtown for a town of 55,000 people.
You know, we've got great restaurants here
because of those tourists. And that
really helps us out. So I always tell our folks, we don't call

(01:13:01):
our folks at work that work up front bartenders, because
they're really marketing, they're really, you
know, I said that room is 50% marketing and 50% sales,
because they're up there to help tell that story. And
to really shine

(01:13:23):
a light on what we're doing. And we, you know, of course, do tours and
things of that nature. And they That's
our direct connection with that customer that walks in the door. So
we would not get
that or the level that we get if
we were out in the country, I don't think. And

(01:13:47):
so it's a double-edged sword. But we feel like it's
worth it. We live downtown. We
like being in town. At
the distillery, we're about five blocks
from the water. So there are days where
we will wake up,

(01:14:10):
you know, drink our coffee, whatever, and you go outside with
the dog or whatever, and the air is just heavy and it's
got an ocean-y smell to it. I mean, it's just that sort
of, it's like, it's not salt water, it's like ocean,
you know. And, you know,
the barrels are sitting in right there, you

(01:14:33):
know, absorbing a lot of that. So I feel like
that that adds a complexity. If we
just built out in the country sort of up, you know, we would lose that.
So a lot of that, a lot
of that I think matters. And, you know, I say
it's a, I guess a sacrifice, but

(01:14:54):
not, you know, it's also a gain. So, you know,
So before I ask our closing question, one
more kind of quirk that I wanted to bring up that I've seen a
couple other places, which is that you keep a library of
everything you've made, good and bad. And

(01:15:17):
I've seen a couple places, Kings County does this
in New York, they honestly to my knowledge they don't keep
everything they have what they call their wall of mistakes. Stuff
that they tried just didn't work. Barrel craft spirits,
I've seen they have mixed most of the blends that they've done.
So, you know, some people like to do that, to keep this history and

(01:15:40):
this heritage of everything that they've tried, whether it worked or didn't, just
to see what they've done, where they've come from. Do
you ever go back and taste some of those older ones
that maybe didn't work at the time and think, you
know, we've been doing this 11 years now, I think either, you know,
I think we can make it work now, or I think I know how to fix this or

(01:16:06):
Yeah, no, I mean, it's always fun to look at. I mean, I'm sure chefs,
for instance, look at their opening menus and
they look at their menu 15 years later. And
I'm sure they're looking at it and going, wow, we were buying from some
of these farms that aren't even around anymore, or we were buying from
these farms and they weren't that good a

(01:16:27):
farmer or, you know, we've learned a lot about,
you know, our ingredients or this stuff was
pretty basic that we were doing or whatever. I
think for us, you know, of course we want a
record of it for selfish sake, but also
to be able to share with folks if they're curious. But

(01:16:52):
there again, I think that comes from that curiosity of like, that
not just a gut check, but also saying, how
bad was it? What did we not know
at that point? And what have we learned here? And then
the other piece of it is, we keep a lot of our white

(01:17:13):
dog as well. And the reason for
that is, we want to say, that white dog that we made
in 2016, now we're going to release that
barrel. What does that taste like? What
was the white dog? We know what it tastes like at seven years
old, but what does that white dog taste like? Was the

(01:17:35):
white dog, did it have flaws? So
maybe the seven-year-old that we're releasing really isn't
the best we can do. Fast
forward five, six years later, the white
dog that we taste and go, wow, this, this white dog,
we've seen market improvement in AR equipment and

(01:17:57):
processes. Um, and
we can, I mean, it's, we've got it so we can look
at it, we can taste it. And, um, that's been
really important because like I say, you know, if
I make a batch of chocolate chip cookies and I mess
them up, put too much salt in them or mess up the process and.

(01:18:20):
you know, pretty often back in the day, I'd
make them, I'd go, and I'd toss them. I
could just make another batch right away and take 16 minutes
or whatever to bake off some fresh ones and taste it again and go,
okay, those are better. Well, that's not how whiskey works. It takes
years. So, that library is important. But

(01:18:42):
also, I think the bigger thing about that library and
the the
golden nuggets in there, if you will, are that we
have distilled Teosinte. We have
distilled other varieties of corns, sorghum.

(01:19:03):
We distilled some, we distilled recently,
we made some 100% Carolina gold rice
whiskey, but we used, we malted it first, and
we played around three different malts. And
we've got all of those. So now we have that

(01:19:24):
in barrels. We also went to Mexico in
19 to learn about corn. And what was mind blowing for me was,
cause I was like, I'd heard there are 59 to
63 unique varieties of corn that all sprang from five
varieties of Teosinte. And I'm like, there

(01:19:45):
are more than 59. to 63 varieties of
corn. Well, not really. There
are 59 unique varieties,
and everything we know otherwise, as far as even
on the modified stuff, has
had some sort of human intervention and either been crossed

(01:20:08):
up or whatever. So ultimately what we have, these heirloom varieties
that we have, that a lot of folks around here grow, are
all mutts. So you
might have a Datsun that's been bred with a Labrador and
maybe it had a one time a love affair with a
chihuahua somewhere along the way. And that's what you've

(01:20:29):
got. That's why your dog is short, little short legs
with a big head and doesn't look like a normal Datsun. So
it's very much like that. So we
went down to originally
Texcoco to the Maize and Wheat Research Center there, and

(01:20:50):
then INAFAP, which is the sort of USDA outpost, and
there were these magos, the maize, the magicians of maize, these
older gentlemen that are geneticists that went
through sort of the history and what that of
the varieties and sort of humans cultivated

(01:21:11):
corn from this grass, teosinte. So,
without human intervention, it would have just been a grass forever. We
would not have had corn. And the original corns were that
big, the cobs. So, My
point, you know, our point of this trip was to
learn as much as we could about that. But in the back of our

(01:21:33):
heads, it's like, wouldn't it be cool if we could sort of find the ancestor
to what we know as these varieties, these
famous Southeastern dent corn varieties around that, you know,
we use for grits and hominy and cornmeal
and things like that for, for cornbread. And
we thought it was pretty lofty. But it

(01:21:56):
wasn't as lofty as we thought. And we stumbled on this variety,
Tuxpeno. And in that variety, there's a yellow, a white,
a blue, a red. So
we found a village down that grew this
variety in Southern Oaxaca that grew
out some of that tuxpanio for

(01:22:19):
us. Well, we have the white dog of that, and
we've made whiskey. They grew it, we imported it,
and we've made white dog. So we have that in our library. But
we also have several
barrels of it. aging that will eventually release,

(01:22:39):
that we feel tells a story about that
origin, but also migration,
diaspora, and through flavor, and
through sort of educate folks

(01:23:00):
on the fact that this was indigenous
Native Americans, because Mexico is
Mesoamerica, and there was Zapotecs, Mixtec,
Mayans, etc. that had these varieties. and
they migrated up into the U.S.,

(01:23:22):
what is now the U.S. So anyway, that
library has a lot of valuable things. We also did a terroir study
at one point with Clemson University, so we had four farms
growing jimmy red in the state. We have this really cool thing
that they did with, they did, they studied kernels

(01:23:43):
from each farm, but they also did gas
chromatography on all four farms. And there were
pretty significant differences between those four farms. And
we have all the white dog from those runs
that we did. So we have, I
don't know, six cases probably of white

(01:24:06):
dog from each of, you know, from those farms. So
that's in that library. So there's a lot of things that are irreplaceable really.
And then I think really have, it's, you know, it's kind
of like keeping your textbooks, I guess. So,
yeah, this is our education. The

(01:24:31):
I like it.
I think that number one, I'm fascinated. I'd love to
be one of those people tasting the different white dogs and different products. I
love things like that, getting really into the varieties. So
maybe one day, for sure. It's exciting to
hear about. And I think it leads

(01:24:52):
really well into my closing question for today. And like I
said, Before I ask this last question, of
course, there are multiple other products coming from HiWire that we
didn't get to discuss, the Rye, the different,
as you mentioned, a couple of different varieties of the Jimmy Red that are out there. There
are different products that come up as you create them

(01:25:14):
as well. So please do visit the website that we
linked in the show notes, as always, so you can really see what
else is happening there. So
this last question is, about legacy.
And as you've made abundantly clear,
you love highlighting the agricultural aspect of this. You call

(01:25:35):
yourself an agricultural distillery. And back
in 2019, I don't know if this was before or after the Mexico trip, but you were on
a Lush Life podcast and said that if you can taste
the agriculture in the spirit in 20 years time, so
long-term, then you have succeeded.

(01:25:55):
Uh, now that's something that not every
distillery cares about. I happen to care
about it. I think it's important. Clearly you care about it very much. And
by you, I mean the entire team. So in
looking at that and adding in the fact that you will forever be

(01:26:16):
associated with the revival and regeneration of Jimmy red corn, what
do you want your and Highwire's legacy
Well, I, it's personal, you know,
um, I think the thing is, is like, you know, you taste something

(01:26:36):
20 years later that we made, or
we taste something 20 years later, it's going to stir up memories
because the farms that we're dealing with are all families, you
know, and it's very, you know, we have a, um, relationships
with these folks. We, you know, I've been to their houses and
eating dinner with them and, um, spent, you

(01:26:58):
know, lots of hours. Um, they
saw something in this beyond money. Um,
and if we were buying, say truckloads of heirloom
corn or no name rye
or whatever, Um, from where we

(01:27:21):
didn't even have a relationship. Um, I feel like we're
kind of missing something, you know, and, um,
I think that link to me is
much like the care that, you know, a carrot or
a, um, a winemaker's grapes, a certain style

(01:27:41):
of growing, um, has an impact on
that end. sort of product,
if you will. I think that, you
know, we feel there is a direct
connection there. So, you know, I think for
us, if we, I think we've started to

(01:28:04):
do this. I think, you know, we're finally there where people come up to
us and tell us our story. And that's when, you
know, you know, you've really, succeeded
or started to succeed and that when
people are telling you and you're going, yes, you got
it, you figured it out, you know, and it's not because you went on

(01:28:27):
the website and read. You know, you've digested, you
were curious enough and it made you excited to want to dig
in and learn more. And it's
an adventure for you as much
as it is for us. And that's really great. That to
me is sort of the, when we know we've sort of succeeded

(01:28:48):
and what we also, our goal is really. Otherwise,
you know, we would just buy whiskey and put it in a bottle and Put
a label on it. And, um, that's
just not, you know, I
mean, we would, we could do, we
could have a business doing that, of course, but that,

(01:29:10):
uh, to, to Ann and myself, that just doesn't really scratch that
itch. So, um, you know, we,
we were one product I'll mention since she brought up,
you know, other expressions of Jimmy red. We mentioned
Alan Benton, who has Benton's Country Ham. We
just released a smoked whiskey that

(01:29:32):
we did with him. And we were in Oaxaca, we
went to a Palenque fifth generation distiller,
a company called Real Monero, and
Graciela is her name. She
is very passionate about agave and doing

(01:29:55):
seed propagation versus plant propagation because she believes
that plants are healthier. Why does that matter? Well,
she believes that matters. I mean, it's a it's it's. you
know it's kind of worth doing to her
and that's I think the legacy that she's built and we've heard
about her since we went there from other people telling

(01:30:18):
her you know her story and how her mezcal is
very different from other people's because of that passion and
because of those extra steps. and
she took us over to one of the ovens you know the rose
whatever with the you know you've probably seen them with the the
dirt the earth and the wood and all that and you know and they were pulling

(01:30:41):
the piñas out and she cut the heart out of one of the
piñas that had been been smoked and
we were eating that and I was like whoa this is like delicious
this is this is like a food ingredient and it wasn't
just smoke for smoke's sake and I thought wow you
know this is really inspiring I'd love to do something that really tells a

(01:31:03):
story about this area with smoke so we're not just gonna try
to figure out that on our own. So we know Alan
and Sharon Benton very well up in eastern Tennessee and
he's a pretty famous country ham and bacon guy.
So we went to him and asked him would
he smoke some of the corn And, um,

(01:31:25):
in his smokehouse. So he hung it in these, um,
I'll send you a photo, but he hung it in these, uh, ham
bags, these mesh bags and smokehouse with the
bacon and ham in it. And it stayed in there for about a week. And
when those bags came back to us at the distillery, it
smelled like Benton's. It

(01:31:48):
had like an unctuous kind of smell. And I thought, what a
cool compliment. For this guy
that's been smoking hams for 50 years and he's
really built this legacy and how cool it
is we were able to collaborate on this and we've got
this really special corn that's near and dear to our heart and we were able to
bring those two things together. And

(01:32:12):
when people sip it now, they're like, God, that is like just,
that's Benton's. It's smoky. His stuff is very smoky.
His bacon is the gold standard with bartenders for fat washing.
And really, really smoky. So and
he told us once, you know, his
father, he was in the ham business for

(01:32:36):
a few years at this point. And he said, boy, these other
ham companies are coming out with this country ham, and it's a lot cheaper. And
he's up there in eastern Tennessee, where,
you know, country ham was just kind of like a pack
of bacon or a You know, it wasn't like, oh,
this is Benton's. It was like, you know, he's competing. Cause people were just like,

(01:32:57):
it's like, you know, country ham. I'm not like, you know, seeking out
the best country ham per se. Um, and,
um, it's like the prices are just getting cheaper. And
he's like, dad, he talks to his dad and he says, dad, I'm thinking
about, maybe I need to cut some things out
that I'm doing to maybe, you know, do it more like what these other guys are

(01:33:17):
doing it. Um, as opposed to all this stuff, I'm doing
this a lot harder. And he said, son, let
me just tell you something. You need to stick with the way you're doing it. Cause if
you play the other man's game, you're always going to lose. And
I was like, you know, that's
how you build legacy. You know, I mean,

(01:33:41):
your DNA is going to be in there if you just sort of stick to
that road. And it's
a harder path a lot of times, but it's
an original path. And that ultimately is what we're, you
know, does everybody like what we do? Probably not. We
don't have to have everybody. We just have to have a

(01:34:05):
good following and people like yourself that appreciate, you
know, sort of those differences enough to,
you know, it's kind of a fun ride and part of the exploration of
American whiskey, you know, and I think that, you know, what Kings County,
those guys are doing is really cool. To

(01:34:30):
me, it's like, that's really cool. I want more of that. I
personally want distilleries like that all over the United States.
That's more fun to me. than a lot
of the whiskeys that I'm seeing on the shelves, you know, so anyway.
I hear you. Well, with that, Scott, thank

(01:34:50):
you so much for coming on, talking about a high wired distilling, talking about
Jimmy Redd, said there'll be more information in not
only in the show notes, but also when I talk about tasting notes
of the products I got to try, we'll get some of
the You know, in the weeds technical stuff will be in those
as well. Things like, um, Scott mentioned earlier, they don't

(01:35:13):
make their own barrels, which like how many places do three,
four at this point, it's not, it's not worth it. Um, but use
Kelvin barrels. So we'll have information like that
as always. And, um, yeah,
Scott, thank you so much for coming on. I'm hanging out with me for just a second after we finished

(01:35:34):
Absolutely. And this has been another episode of the Whiskering Podcast. Thank you everyone for listening. Like,
rate, and subscribe wherever you can. Share with your friends. And as always, see

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Ep. 167: High Wire Distilling Co. with Founder Scott Blackwell

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