FAMILY SPIRITS: JULIAN VAN WINKLE, WRIGHT THOMPSON

knows what he wants. He demands quality. He says, we will make fine bourbon at a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always fine bourbon. The company flourishes. He passes it along to his son, Julian Jr. But then tough times sales drop. Bourbon becomes uncooled to drink in the sixties and seventies, and Julian Jr.

Has to sell. Eventually, his son, Julian van Winkle, the third pathy's grandson, takes over the company and with some help and some good fortune the mainly just one of your hard labor, stubbornness and faith, he rebuilds the ben Winkl brand and reclaims the family legacy. It's an honor and a lot of fun They have Julian as my guest in this podcast. His story of how Pappy ben Winkle became one of the most coveted bottles of spirits in the world. It's really incredible. It was. It was stressful.

You can ask us my wife Cissy, and our and our children even um, you know, I don't know, um what they thought of what I was doing back then, but I was just hanging on with my fingernails. And it's the only thing I really knew how to do. UM, so I wouldn't And I knew it was good a good product. I mean, I knew damn well as a good product. So um, I just was gonna go down with the ship, so to speak. It didn't work out, but keep trying and trying and trying, and and I

you know, I am stubborn. I'm gonna ride this baby all the way down down to the grave or up to the heavens. But it luckily worked out. With a lot of doubt from a lot of people. I've talked about the book, but it's, um, it was, you know, it's it's do or die. But I believe in it, which is the main thing these days. Patty van Winkl bourbon is produced at the Buffalo Trace Distillery. We'll get

into all that with Julian. Why pappies is so delicious and why it's so damned hard to find even in Kentucky, whereas legend has it, there are two barrels of bourbon for every person. My first guest on the podcast says he is at least harshly to blame for pappies being so hard to find. He's right. Thompson, my good buddy and ESPN senior writer who's been writing passionately poetically about pappies more than a decade and now regrets it deeply.

He says he blew that way. Wright got very close to Julian writing his excellent book Happy Land, a story of family, fine bourbon, and things that last. So right, h What is the first time that you make acquaintance with whiskey as a young lad in Clarksdale, Mississippi and the River Delta there where Tennessee Williams grew up. First

time whiskey hits the taste buds? God? Uh? First of all, sorry, mom uh, I I think it was don't say age four, No, I think we were fifteen sixteen, and it was probably Jim Beam were listening to a lot of Hank Williams Jr. In high school. So I'm assuming that's probably what it was. I mean, I hope, my god. I don't try to think where we got it. There was this liquor store in Clarksdale that famously didn't I d and like, I mean, if you could see over the counter, they were gonna

sell it to you. And uh. And then the convenience stores I did really hard. And so we had this bizarre experience of whiskey being very easy to get and beer being almost impossible to get, which is not really what you want with high school kids and automobiles. I think a lot of people have a gym Beams slash Jack Daniel Sir. A lot of guys do from that age. What about the first time that fine whiskey or fine bourbon kind of hits the taste buds. You know, I'm

a I'm a devout Maker's Mark fan. And uh, I mean I started drinking Maker's Mark in college. Uh, and you know it it's still is sort of because and we'll get into this maybe, but I mean it's a weeded bourbon and I like that immediately long before I even knew what Pappy van Winkle was. So, I mean, you know, I've been a I've been a Maker's Mark de vote, if that's a word, for a very long time. I mean, you know, I get these emails and messages and people are like, you know, I want to get

my friends something. He's getting married or he got a job promotion. What kind of bourbon should I buy? And I almost always say, get him a real nice crystal decanner with his initials on it and then filled up with maker's mark. Like that's that's almost all. I'm like, that's what you should do. It's a good idea. Maker's Mark. As an interesting story, we'll get into the marketing of bourbon because it was not a long time brand. It

was basically created late fifties early sixties. And I imagine these conversations in offices like Don Draper's and Mad mem Or. They figured out, let's make it the most expensive bourbon and brag about it, and we'll dip the bottle in red wax like a fine cognac. And here you are in college. Must have feeling pretty damn sophisticated drinking Maker's Mark bourbon. Right, Oh, I thought, I was quite something, especially with the diet coke I was putting in it.

It took fine weeded bourbon and put diet coke with chemical sweeteners on top. I know. I mean it's like it wasn't just enough to Coca cola I had that whatever is in that stuff strict none, I don't even know. But like, sorry, coke, describe what a fine bourbon taste to somebody that that isn't a devote do use your word, or or comes from another planet and doesn't really know

what what good sipping bourbon? When you when you you're you're a writer used to describe in things, how would you describe that that taste of what it makes you feel like? I mean, well, there are two ways to do that. I mean there's the one way that is very much about the taste buds, and I'm less interested in that and more interested in this description, which is

it tastes very much. It tastes so familiar that it's sort of taste like home with a capital H. And uh, you know, I like like, I like the gestalt of it, like I like the way the ice sounds. I mean, I'll tell nice bartenders, I don't want that one big cube because that that that that messes it up for me. I like the way ice sounds. I like, I like a really heavy bottomed crystal double old shouldn't glass and the way it feels in your hand and sort of I mean, you know, moving it around. Uh you know,

I can still see my dad and his friends. You know, you know you hold court with a glass like that, you know, and uh so all of that is part of it to me. I mean, you know it is. Uh it's not just you know, here's the science of taste buds and as it moves from the taste buds at the front of your tongue to the back of your tongue. I mean, there's an entire process and it's really I mean interesting actually, and when you talk to people know a lot about this. But you know, I'm

after something very different. I don't think of myself as a very sentimental person. I don't live in nostalgia. I never shared a bottle of bourbon with any dead ancestors. I don't have memories of childhood drinking bourbon. So am I completely out of step and ill equipped to appreciate bourbon and all those different layers Because for me, right it's very much about the president. It is about when it hits the taste buds and how it tastes, but how it makes me feel and the appreciation of the

product and the handcrafted this. I'm not going back generations. I'm just right there in the moment. So some people say, well, bourbon is about myth and history and family connection, and so you're missing the point if you're not understanding on that level. No, I have very little patients with any sort of dog bone. Uh, there is no you know, I'm there's a sprint speech Bruce Springsteen gave somewhere and he was talking about music, and he was like, there's

no right or wrong way of doing it. There's just doing it. And I mean, I think that's true for everything, you know, whether it's food or bourbon, or a great restaurant or a book or whatever, a movie. But I don't I don't think there is a right or wrong way to do anything like this. And if you enjoy it, like lots of people get different things out of it.

I mean, I've got to know a lot of people in the bourbon community who are very, very into you know, who have a much more sophisticated palate than I do, and who can really taste the difference, and who like to seek out bourbons with very subtle differences in mash bills or in how you know what the barrels are made of, or how you know the barrels are rotate, like all sort of entry proof into the barrel, And so there are fifty different ways to enjoy anything, and uh,

you know, it's sort of like, uh, you know there is. It's like there's no right or wrong way to love sports, whether you love to go and think about your dad, or whether you love statistics, or whether you love to try to you know, the predictive nature of artificial intelligence and what that allows you to know about what these seemingly sentient human beings are going to do in the future, you know what I mean, Like they're just they're's wasn't really caught up in right or wrong. I just depth

of understanding. I mean, I can't mean as much when you don't have that family history and grain and you just love how the ship tastes when you drink it, and then you make your own you make your own memories as you become an adult. I don't go back generations. My first experience with whiskey was siphoning off my dad's j and b into a mason jar and meeting the other kids on the golf course and we all, what do you got? You got some vodka? I got some

Scotch gin and let's try that. And that's that's how you sample liquor. And then you get sick and go to the high school football game. But but that's not very romantic. I later, I later gained the appreciation for Scotch. I say, I'm not sentimentalists. I think most of us had here for being honest though, whether it's drinking course or or something else. I mean, I I went to Oban, Scotland and drank open single malt whiskey and the West coast of Scotland when I was with a buddy right

out of college. And I still it's not my favorite brand, but I still keep it around, and I still maybe that is a subconscious romantic going back to that, because you discover this product that you've never heard of in a town you've never heard of, and it just it tasted great when we'd rank it there, and it still

does well. That is incredibly sentimental, by the way, And because mean the that version of you who uh wanted to discover a mountain and climate as opposed to the guy who is standing on top of a mountain, still lives in that bottle in some way. I mean, that's why you keep it around, probably or maybe you just like it. I do like it, but maybe why do I like it? Do I like it because of that? And I like lots of single mall scotches and and

and different flavors of it, But I do. I do keep an open bottle right there, and I go back to it with affection and probably a more sentimental than I admit. But well, I mean, you know, if if all of those college football games haven't made you a little nostalgic, I feel like that's a conversation for your therapist. But uh, but but if we talk, we talk about bourbon, because it's a uniquely American product, and we'll get into

all this. It's made you know, from corn is the as the main grain, and then what you put as a secondary grain is is either rye if your most bourbons or or wheat if your pappy is and other kinds of bourbons that are uh that have an initiati or considered fine but then it's the barrels that it's age in charred oak, which gives it that flavor that sets it apart. And it is uniquely American and finally has its place worldwide as that, But the way it's

been marketed and sold is also uniquely American. You write in the book a lot about the mythology that just the flat outlies, bullshit and tall tales that have gone together with it with the selling of this product, because people aren't buying a bottle of liquid, they're buying a mythology, they're buying a story. Well, and if you go to a liquor store, they'll be, you know, a hundred that's

an exaggeration. They'll be forty or fifty different kinds of bourbon there, and of them come from the same six or seven distilleries. I mean, the only difference between a lot of them is the story they're telling and their hope that either you will have a nostalgic connection to this or the story will make you pick that. Because every new customer, if they don't have some sort of connection with the brand, is the potential starter of a

tradition that might extend generations. Does that make you sad that that only a few distilleries are making all the juice that's out there now. And then, um, I mean a lot of products have gone that direction. Not you can do to turn back the clock. No, and and as if you know, you get a couple of drinks and anybody in this industry, and they will tell you that the accountants are running it at the detriment of

the consumer. And there are a lot of sort of you know, the uh, the entry proof of the barrel entry proof. You know, there are a lot of different things that because of the tax the way this stuff is taxed, that it would be better for the product to do it one way, but it is better for the huge global conglomerates beancounters to do it another way. And almost always the accountants win. I mean Maker's Markets one of those places that actually you know doesn't do that.

And uh, you know it makes the whiskey smoother and saw after and uh, all of that stuff is very it's sort of sad. I mean, like if you get you get old bottles, I mean not even that old seventies eighties of not even expensive bourbons. You just get them and you can sort of taste the difference. Uh,

you don't even have to be that sophisticated. You know, my brother in law gave me six pints of like nineties seventies old charter, which is not I mean, you know, it's not crazy expensive fancy, and I love to bring those out and pour them for people know what is this And I'm like, this was a three dollar pint of whiskey, and it's that it would be the best thing. It's people, you know, people go crazy for it just

because of the old method. You you do write in the book about all the things that go into the flavor that maybe you have to have a somewhat suphisticate power to understand. But the machinery of this still was it old fashioned machinery, which you know, Pappy is when it sits so well or distillery made up until what the early nineties, and people say that tasted dramatically different in their experience from newer machinery that distilled the bourbon.

And well, you know, it's the way the grains are ground is different. Uh, the the yeast is different. I mean, uh, they went from a live yeast to a powdered yeast in most places. Julian thinks that the original stutz a weller live yeast is still in existence in some freezer and somebody like he's like, it's out there somewhere. Uh, And there's the next book. Man. They the al Capones vault quest for like they find the frozen yeast and then unleash it in the world and sell it for

ten thousand dollars a bottle. That's what we should do. Uh. The you know the water, you know, they don't use the limestone aquifers because of pollution anymore. I mean the Kentucky reason why Kentucky became the bourbon capital is because farmers basically got tired of paying taxes, left Pennsylvania, New York came down there. Instead of growing awry group corn couldn't sell it. Surplus corn ends up getting distilled. But people talk about this special limestone filtered water in Kentucky

being like an essential ingredient. Is that myth? Or is that real? You know? I thought it was myth. Uh, But Julian swears it's real. And he's not one of those guys who really he loves to poke holes in his own mythology. I mean, it's a little bit of a party trick, but it's also real. I mean, he will you know what I mean. He liked like, you know, he loves to be like, well, I've never made a drop a whiskey of my life, you know. And people call him a master distiller or something in an introduction.

He's like, Nope, never done that. Uh. And so you know, certainly that's part of it. I mean. The larger thing that you just touched him, though, is that this is

an agricultural product. And if you go back to rest like the idea, the word that should make you most suspicious is when people start using the word of recipe, because this is not This was something like the earliest whiskey making manuals is like use what grains are available, you know, I mean, and and it was entirely it was a way for farmers who lived too far from the supply chain to get their crops to market without them rotting. It was a way to keep them from rotting.

It's the same thing. It's the reason why country hams developed so much on the frontier of sort of western Virginia and Kentucky when that was as far as America went. And so these places that have traditions of smoked meat and smoke houses. That's the exact same thing as whiskey. That's just a way for farmers who have pigs to not have the meat rot before they can sell it.

And so, you know, one of the reasons there's a whiskey tax is because I mean, there are a couple of reasons, but I mean one is that that people were using in his currency and so the government won had their cut of it. And uh. And then I just love this debate. You know, when Alexander Hamilton's was trying to figure out how to pay for the Revolutionary War, he looked around the city where he lived, which was full of saloons, and said, what we need is a syntax.

Let's put a tax on these taverns and on this booze as a way to raise the money to pay for the revolutionary war, which is a worldview perfectly grounded in facts and in his experience in the world. The problem was as if you were a farmer on the far western edge of Pennsylvania, that was a huge tax on you. And so it's just I love having the history of whiskey. You find, you know, the roots of it.

Seems like every political debate we're still having. Yeah, the history of whiskey is inner time of the history of America. People may or may not know that George Washington was a distiller, and he's always right into the argument. And many many signers of the Declaration Independence, many early a couple of few presidents, by the way, have been have

been distillers as well. I love the fact, though, right, that no one's really sure who who invented bourbon, who who distilled it for the first time, all kind of tall tales about Elijah Craig because having something, having a Baptist minister be the inventor of this devil's brew, it's kind of a nice story. It's been debunked. Is just about every other story has been debunked. But I love

the fact that no one's quite sure. In the late teen, late seventeen, hundreds out there in Kentucky, it was the first guy to do it. Everybody knows the stories in the back of those bottles are bullshit. Everybody everybody knows. You just choose to believe it. It's interesting, I mean, the commerce of this, you know, the I don't want to get bogged down too much in that, but you're

you're right, you it's these global blant brands. I mean, you look at all industries, but the beverage industry, which has been romanticized, so you can strip that away. I mean you look at, um, the fact that it's a few conglomerations make most of the bourbon You you look at the at the fact that people have reacted against that though they're craving something. The number one selling spirit

in America just became Tito's. Uh, handmade vodka in Texas, made with corn by the way, like like bourbon is and not the traditional Boka ingredients. But but if you look at that, how can something be handmade and yet also be the biggest seller. But it but it's that uniquely American thing. It's it's it's it's made in Texas, it's not associated with Russia. And here it is the number one it's pretty good vodka to number one selling spirit in America. Now, Uh, I didn't know that, But

that's not surprising. I mean, uh, it's interesting. Uh. So we have a bloody Mary bar in our Thanksgiving uh family Thanksgiving and have forever, and so it's interesting to watch the vodka. And so at some point it changed from spearnofs to titoes and I don't know which of my uncles started doing that, but now you see it everywhere. And of course it's not handmade. I mean, of course it is. They're selling the story. But it's not just bourbon.

It's all it's all spirits. Of course, who cares, you know, one it is really good, you know, uh at a Teto's and Tonic the other day, Uh and uh. But it is a great marketing to the biggest They're tapping into things that we crave. Now. We we tried to get a present for a friend's mom and they were going to Sicily and she drinks Teto's and we're thinking, how in the hell we're gonna find this in a small town in Sicily. You know what, It was really

freaking easy. Who walked into the store and it was sitting on the shelf and so here's this handmade product from Auston in a little town in Sicily. It's it's everywhere, obviously, as as most of the global brands are. And by the way, no one who buys a bottle, including me, feels ripped off. Nope, you know what I mean, it's it.

It's all a little bit of a winking thing, and they make a really great product and they are unbelievable marketers I got, I mean Teto's Tito should have been in charge of, like all of the COVID vaccine marketing. They should have just called those guys were like, look, what do we do? Like you know, we don't know, we we don't know how to do. What are we doing?

You're right about that? The marketing of I mean you look at I mean, look, I like Guinness and I've been to Ireland and I've drank Guinness near the Guinness brewery and they used They'll tell you in Dublin that the closer you out of the factory, the fresher that Guinness is not Guinness made in fifty countries. It's made everywhere around the world. And I don't know if it would I would They'll tell you that it doesn't taste the same in one of those far fun countries it

does in Ireland. But do you really know when you're drinking a glass of that delicious stuff some people would say sitting and grow. Yeah, and maybe this is almost certainly romance, and but like drinking a pint of guinness at Grogan's and Dublin is my happy place, like I love that so much. And by the way, Guinness is owned by Diaggio, who also owns Bullet and who now owns the Stutzelweller Distillery, which used to be owned by

Ollian van Lincoln's grandfather and father. And uh, the only thing I was worried about the book was like I sort of write pretty honestly about how they screwed all that up. And I was like, man, I hope I don't end up on some sort of Guinness blacklist, like a no fly list, where I can't give it, Like I'm gonna be like, you know if I just go into the Grogan's, like I'm sorry, sorry, you can't your pictures on the wall. You know, we danced around, let's

dive in. I mean, your book is brilliant. Um. I'll have mentioned that already in the introduction, but I'll say it to you now. It's not, uh a book really about bourbon. It's about lots of stuff. And I think that when you read about this topic and I did some research and I'm interested in that period. A lot of the books about this spirit are are they're drier than prohibition. Frankly, I'm not trying to criticize the authors. They had they had a mission and they accomplished it,

but they read pretty dry. Your book is the exact opposite, because this is intertwined with rich history, really rich interesting characters. It goes really deep. Your your book does brings a lot of that stuff out. But so what what would you say after after four years of four or five years of researching it with Julian van Winkle and being around here, how did your sort of relationship with the

spirit change? Well, One, I did learn a lot. I'm really worried that I'm in the process now forgetting it all. Like I feel like six months ago, I was like, I knew as much about Bourbon as I would ever know. Your Bourbon nerdness peaked there six months ago, and it peaked hard. I used to I've already forgotten, Like it's pretty embarrassing. But I mean, you know, a couple of

things happened. I mean, one, I just I got to do really close with Julia and everything he was going through, and I found that the most interesting parts of the trips to see Julian were the conversations we were having about life while we were drinking bourbon, not about the bourbon. And and you know, I always had this idea of wanting to write the book from two perspectives of people who make it and people who drink it. But I didn't really know what the thing was gonna look like.

I had a lot of false starts that I hated. And it sort of bummed me out that the most interesting version of this, that the most interesting version of the four years I spent doing this, would be something that I couldn't figure out how to get into the book. That felt like a tremendous failure. You know. It's like, you know, if you go, if you go do a really big game, and the story you tell your wife when you get home is more interesting than whatever you

told the audience. That's not good, you know, and and and you know, and because you could have written a book, I mean that the story is interesting. You could have written a book about three generations the Van Winkle family. Pappy, by the way, grew up like you was son of a lawyer, went into a business that was pretty sketchy at the time, selling whiskey. When as a teenager, take so we're so so well everything that builds the empire. It's interesting, but it's not as interesting or as deep

or as colorful as what you ended up writing. Well, you know, I thought a lot about that, and you know, what I hoped eventually is that it was a book about me and Julian and Julian's family and my family. But what I really wanted was for all for both Julian and I to almost be proxies, where there was enough of sort of a universal river flowing through it

that that it was about the reader. And you know, I when I when I see the reactions to the book, it feels like you know whether or not you liked it. And I mean, I've been very flattered by the sort of outpouring it's been. It was pretty shocking and gratifying

and a relief frankly that people liked it. But you know, I think whether or not you identified with the questions that we both he and I were struggling with in our own way goes a long way to determine whether or not you like this, you know, I mean, it's very much it's a little bit of a magic trick, right, I mean, it has to be about two people, but it also has to be about you. Yeah, And I don't relate to past generations of ancestors that much. I don't have kids, so a lot of those themes wouldn't

directly overlap my experience. But I got what she were saying. It was a very compelling story. Nonetheless, this friendship, your Julian is much older than you, so it's a you know, whether it's a father figure or just two dudes from

a different generation. And you're sort of sponging up not just his knowledge about Bourbons, knowledge about life and life lessons that you learn, and you're forming perspectives as a new father and as a as a guy who's kind of coming into middle age, and and it's it's shaped by this dude's wisdom, which is cool to see. And I had a job thing recently, like you know, opportunity and wasn't sort of sure what to do. And my phone call was to do you know uh, which is like,

let me just lay all this out. That's your one phone of friend I got. I got a tough decision to make, and my phone of friends Julie Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean like I'm gonna lay all this out and I'm gonna try to be as pro and con on both sides and honest as I can be, and then I'm gonna talk for a while, and then you talk for a while. And uh, I mean it was tremendously helpful. But you know, he's that, you know, I sort of

feel bad for him. He he didn't ask for that, you know, Uh, he's stuck with It was fun like I go to the Masters and I stay in the house with a bunch of sports writers and uh, this year I brought Julian and so I just looked over at one point it's you know, uh, Steve Politty from the Newark Star Ledger and uh Andrew Beating in the Wall Street Journal, and Julian van Winkle was sitting in the kitchen, and I'm like, oh my god, worlds are colliding.

I hope they in corner him because he, Julian has a cult of personality now in the bourbon industry and and been been beyond where he He's seen as this like the Yoda rights. He's like the current Yoda bourbon and so people have not only don't they want his product, they want to be friends with him. So so at the end of the night listening Give Give me your address, I mean, don't lie and that that that's one motive

for writing this book that it happily didn't become. The main motive for you was, I want to get access to this juice that's impossible to find except in the black market for three granded bottles. Let me let me

tell you, Uh I one thought that not true? I like, there, did you think after three years with this guy, he's gonna take you down to this cave in the hills of Kentucky and he's gonna open the door and there's gonna be a stash of barrels of stitzel well or pappies that only you are aware of, and you're just gonna get siphoned off for life. Yes, I thought that was gonna happen. And uh so, either that doesn't exist or I didn't make the cut. You know, the cultup

it's funny. I mean, you know, uh Julian tells his funny story about you know, he's often surrounded by people and uh he was at some Kentucky derby party and hold him cord. I think, like Ashton Kocher, something was there and people were like surrounding and asking questions like cal Ripken was there. One of my favorite story Julian stories actually is this. Uh I kind of forgot about this. He uh he he just is not He's not scared

or intimidated. I don't think about anyone and just you know, he just lives in a world that that he makes and has been made for a very long time. He's at this thing and Wayne Gretzky is sort of hovering around and interrupting him and uh, you know, bothered him. And uh, finally Julian just looks up at Wayne Kretsky and says, why don't you shut the funk up? Wayne? It is that it's just a blood right out of Gretzky space. And he's sort of like inst away, but

it was just like Julian is not impressed. He tore the great One right down to the ground. I mean not probably not. Then many people of tone Wayne Gretzky that since he's about eleven years old, So no, andre like that. There you go, like you're in Kentucky, this is my world. At what point does the the pursuit of it, the acquisition of it, just overtake the the consumption and the enjoyment of it, And and and is

that a bad thing. This is now this commodity which all the all the ego driven people in the world, they gotta have the nicest toys. The difference is this toy was made years ago and there's no more of it, and so it's it's like art in that way. It's like a liquid art. Not to get too high minded, but it's a limited supply of it, right, and so now it becomes this crazy status symbol and it it's a little bit distasteful because it tastes great. It's great

at three bucks a bottle. I mean, I like find spirits. I'm not spending three thousand dollars for a bottle of anything. I mean that that's that's or or or or you know, you know it's I like find one. But ship there's a there's a point where what are you doing now? You get it? If it gets more expensive than like a recent bottle of Arista on a one list, I'm not getting it, you know what I mean, Like, I

start looking at that and like that's tough. And Julian will tell you nothing is worth three thousand dollars a bottle. And so I mean, I think there are a couple of things I mean one, the commodification of it is a little gross because I mean, I think Jillian wants to live in a world we would all live in where old Rippman Winkle ten year old is your decan or whiskey, and that the other ones are things you

pull out on a special occasion. It's also as a as a side note, the fifteen, twenty and the twenty three are not designed to be graduated steps up. They are three very different special occasion whiskies depending on your palette. Julian and I both like the fifteen. Uh you know, they're they're just they're whatever you like. But it's not like, you know, it's bronze, silver, gold, which is what a lot of people think of. They think of like, you know, I gotta get I've had the fifteen. I gotta get

the older. The older must be the better right now. There, it's designed for what you like when you make this this bourbon, and it's made to be aged. I mean, Julian's got to try to figure out in whatt like, what are people gonna feel like drinking? He's not gonna be around. Maybe his son pressed him will run it, who knows, But I mean that's what's what's being put I don't think people really fully appreciate that that what's being put in in barrels and bottles now is to

be had in and beyond well. And he's got to predict what the American population is going to want to drink, because you know, they've been caught out before with warehouses full of stuff no one wanted. And so when everybody's going crazy about make more, make more, make more, that's

fine as an idea for a consumer. But if you're the person who has to pay to make this stuff and then pay taxes on it sitting in warehouses, I mean, Julian will be dead when the when whatever they put in barrels to be twenty year old Van Winkle comes out, and so you know, he he is. It's a very weird thing to be in this business if you really start to think about it, because you really are. You have to live so far in the future that I think it gives you a perspective on the day to

day that in other industries. You know, I mean, certainly I work for you know, we work for a cable news network. I mean that is the opposite of a bourbon company in terms of sort of how time is divided and thought of. And you know, one of the things being around Julian is that that kind of thing rubs off and subtle but very visible ways in his life, just what his industry requires of him and how it requires and be in the world. And that's really seductive,

Like you start wondering like could I do that? You know, their life has a real rhythm that, uh, that I found very attractive. So this this great American spirit which has all these generational connections. I mean your family as well. I don't know if it if you feel like you're sitting with your grandfather when you have it. But if you were to sort of sum up your relationship, You've written articles, you've written this book, You're gonna continue to

enjoy it. Don't forget everything you learn when you research the book. But but uh, is this something You've got two daughters now, But that doesn't mean they can't be fine bourbon drinkers at some point. You do you expect this to be a generational thing in your family going forward? Well, you know, or three months right or something like that. So they got a ways to go, They have a ways to go. I mean I sort of lied earlier when I said there was no free whiskey, because julian

Is sent me to free bottles of pappy. And uh, they both arrived after the birth of the first, one after Whillace and the second after Louise, and their bottles of pappy with hand written labels with their names on them. This bottle of old Rip van Winkle was to still was bottled especially for Wallace right Thompson and Louise Mackenzie Thompson.

And so I have those and I think on their twenty one birthdays, Uh, they'll be in college, they really won't want to see me, But it doesn't matter because I'll be paying for college and I could come whenever I want. And uh, I imagine I'll go up there with that bottle, take all their friends out, Uh you know, and let's let's go pour that thing around. So yeah, I mean, you know, those bottles are gonna sit there

for twenty one years. Such a love. The mental image of those two father daughter moments in the Thompson family eighteen and twenty one years from now and that fine bourbon is finally cracked open. Family is such a rich theme in its book Pappy Land, The generational push pole the ties that bind a really enjoyable read. Now, Julian Van Winkle the Third became the third generation and his family to take over the whiskey business. He was just

thirty two years old. He had four young kids and man that he struggled for about a decade and a half before his hard work and the bourbon boom arrived to make Pappy van Winkles such a coveted sought after its status symbol. It cannot be a coincidence that the Pappy's delivery trucks are hijacked or rerouted as often as

they are. His son Preston is going to be the fourth generation of the family to run the whiskey business, and Julian's triplet daughters, Louise, Carrie and Chennault run Pappy and Company, a merchandise company that sells Pappy branded glassware, bourbon, maple syrup, cigars, and a whole lot. More so, if they have something nice to pour and sip, I suggest you do so. Here now is the man who has

Yoda like status in the bourbon industry. Julian P. Van Winkled the Third, Well, Julian Bourbon Whiskey has been described in many ways by many people, and some of the descriptions are quite poetic and quite layered. But as an expert who has a world famous palette, what do you want your bourbon to taste like and feel like as it hits the taste buds? Well, it's it's not so much what I wanted to taste like other than being something that I grew up with and being familiar with. Um,

it's what I don't want it to taste like. Um, which these days there's a there's a lot of what I don't want it to taste like out there, which makes mostly because it's kind of young with all the new craft is theories. But are whiskey having grown up with it since I was ingesting it as a child for cough medicine, I'm sure um, and I sat along to my kids, by the way, I guess, because I

guess that's why they all enjoyed bourbon. But little lemon juice and honey and bourbon when you have a cough is uh, you know it's either that or night Well, it's all about the alcohol, I guess, but you sweeten it up a little bit. But having grown up with a certain flavor profile and my in my in my brain and in my taste buds and so forth. It's

it's obviously the sweetness and the smoothness. And and we've designed our whiskey to be aged a little longer than most so um and a certain each distiory has its own yeast profile, so that's very important. Um. So we've come up with something that that that I really like, you know, our family likes and uh with buffle traces distillation that we're doing for us as of eighteen nineteen,

twenty years ago almost now. Um, but it's it's it's that's kind of what we're looking for, is that sweet, smooth, distinctive flavor that you know, it's it's it's a pleasant experience, not something you just have to it choked down because it's whiskey. Well, it's not just you and your family, it's people all over the world that that covered that flavor.

You guys who created So you had no idea as a little kid with a cough that you're gonna be used getting stuff as cough medicine and people were gonna be spending thousands of dollars for and then trying and trying to hunt down and cover that that that's a lucky young kid at the time. Yeah, obviously had no idea. Nobody in my family did either, otherwise I wouldn't have. You know, there'll be a bunch of it sitting around. There's not much, unfortunately, just a few bottles here and there.

But that that was it we were, and that's just what we like to say. All the other products are out there are not good. That's not it at all. But it's just everybody has their own flavor profile, enjoyment, and that just happens to be mine, which is the weeded Bourbon recipe. We'll get into the weeded Bourbon and how that sets it apart from from the majority of Bourbon's. I I'm gonna imagine there's arrange of people listening to this that have novice level to PhD level knowledge of bourbon.

So I don't want to leave anybody behind. But but what sets apart weeded Bourbon is that, after corn, which it must be corn, you choose either rye or wheat as the secondary grain. And and your grandfather just kind of preferred that. It's what he kind of grew up on, happy and and began to sell it at a young age as a teenager, and then began to market it and develop the family business. Um. But more people don't do it that way, and I think it's a it's

an obvious question. Why why isn't your mashed bill as it's called, or you're formula for success more imitated? Why why is it? Why are you the exception? Well, more and more it is there. There are more weeded bourbon recipes out there in these new new craft stories, and even some of the established story has been around for years or are trying, um, the weeded recipe and including it in their their profile, I mean, their their whole

whiskey categories. So it's um. It's obviously it's something we have always enjoyed, and it kind of amazed me that it never really took off years ago as far as other people trying it. But now obviously, you know, people see the success with the brand and the and the flavor profile that are whiskeys have and they're trying it themselves. But it's becoming more and more popular with some other

distilleries too. You know, Pappy's exists and thrives today in large part because, as you said yourself, you were just damn stubborn, and and sometimes it's better in business to be stubborn then then smart. All the times when you just don't give up, and there there were some, there were some lean times. I mean, we won't trace the entire long, colorful family story, but but your father, Pappy's son, UM went through some rocky times and bourbon fell out

of favor and sales dropped and all that stuff. And then you kind of came in at the time and and worked your butt off to sort of resurrect the brand end and and and kind of set set it up for future generations. But what was that like when when you're sitting there in a room late at night, wondering if you're gonna make it through? It was it

was stressful. You can ask uh as my wife, Sissy, and our and our children even um, you know, I don't know um what they thought of what I was doing back then, but I was just hanging on with my fingernails. And it's the only thing I really knew how to do. UM, so I wouldn't and I knew it was good, a good product. I mean, I knew damn well as a good product, So UM, I just was gonna go down with the ship, so to speak,

if it didn't work out. But kept trying and trying and trying, and and I you know, I am stubborn. I'm gonna ride this baby all the way down down to the grave or up to the to the heavens. But it luckily worked out with a lot of help from a lot of People's talked about in the book. But it's, um, it was, you know, it's to do or die. But I believe in it, which is the

main thing. And um, and then it gradually, you know, it gets a little traction, a little more traction, and and then things started to take off with press and shows and chefs and all that stuff. So it was, it was, it was an amazing, amazing journey, so to speak. And my dad kind of went through the same same issue. Um uh, you know, they're my grandfather and father were doing what I'm doing now. Unfortunately they were forty fifty

years too early. Um. Selling we died bourbon whiskey. Um, and it cost a fortune to age whiskey that long in a warehouse. You put it in the barrel and sit it in a warehouse for years and years and years. Your interests and your property taxes, and you know, it's just very expensive to do it, so um it's it would have been impossible for us to hang on as

a family unless we've got other investors. But uh, my dad kind of like myselself, just hung on and sold it to steroids and went on to continuing to sell our whiskey that he bought back from his from the people that bought it from us, our family, and and sold it in the fancy sometimes very ugly to canners. Um, but it was a way that I mean wild turkey and beam and everybody was doing the same thing at the same time. Selling whiskey was not favorable that the

canners were now just the opposite. People will buy to the canners to get the whiskey that was inside those bottles, you know, filled up in the seventies and eighties and nineties, So buy your stuff in Amazon Jockey. That is an amazing was the vessel, not the juice inside that was the main selling point. That that's almost hard for people to imagine as the cult of bourbon has grown and exploded and and your brand has been centerpiece, that it

had more to do with what it came in. Yeah, yeah, and we had, you know, a couple of artists that help us out and come up with ideas, and Dad would have an idea, and I'd have an idea, and and you know, just something new, just some way to get rid of this whiskey because um, you know, it was evaporating, so we had to sell it and that was very popular until the price of those decanters got to be forty and above and that's when that market

died completely. So that's that was after my dad's death in eighty one, so you know, the late eighties kind of had to switch over and back to selling whiskey again instead of the canners because that that issue was dead in the water. You know, Pappy's grandfather, so that generation among the first to settle Kentucky when it was

a wild territory, long before it was a state. It was a part of Virginia, and they came came there to farm and and whiskey kind of grew out of that because corn fed people and animals, but there was still some leftover they couldn't get to market, so distilling it was a good thing to do. And just for the fact that it's just an agricultural product and and kind of grew out of that, and it's intertwined with the history of the state and the country in a

very unique way. I mean Bourbon now being um a uniquely American product that that that rivals with anything produced around the world, and from humble beginnings. Yeah. And also, if you're growing all this corn, um, that's a lot of money tied up. But if you grind it up and mash it for a minute and distill it, you've got acres and acres of corn into several cases of whiskey. So it's UM. And that was used in the bartering situation.

So instead of ten bushels of corn or a truck float of corn, it would be you know, ten or twelve cases of whisky or whatever for the same amount of money invested. And it's a lot easier to deal with. And UM that was you know, that was a great way to UM to use their crops up because there's plenty of corn and grain out there, UM. And and the whiskey industry kind of thrived from that. Of course, the methods have changed. The way that you grind the corn.

Does bet sheen reas changed? UM, I think you're probably using powdered yeast, the live yeast was was was the thing in the past, the water which a big deal was made of, the Limestone water in the city of Kentucky. But that that's so longer. There can can the new whiskey still be as good as the old juice? Or or is that stuff irreplaceable because the ingredients aren't quite the same. There's so many variables that I don't think

it can be reproduced. Um, we're trying to get as close as we can, and this is gonna be a lifelong project, probably for me and my children behind me, to kind of get closer to that. But these experiments in Bourbon, I mean, our youngest bourbon is ten years old. So if we start a project today and put it in a barrel, it's ten years before we decide if it's any good. It's another ten years to get it to the market. So it's a it's a ridiculous business plan. Really,

we'll tell you Worrey about that. Um. Yeah, it's definitely unique and it's uh ridiculous. I'd be one way to say it. You know, you're too modest to say it.

I've talked to write about this, I've read a lot of profiles to you know, your contribution to this is considered so viable slash priceless because you know exactly what that WHL whiskey tasted like, and you know exactly what you're trying to make every bottle you manufacture now going forward kind of taste like and feel like and and there're not many around that that do remember that, and you see, you you grew up with it and that

kind of thing. So when you taste the new pappies that will be on the market and what and you're putting it in a bottle, you're trying to take yourself back to your youth and remember how how closely this stuff tasted of that stuff? Is that is that fair to say? We're just trying to get as close to that as possible. I know it can't be duplicated, but what we've got is damn close. And uh Son Preston

went down to Buffalo Trades today. I was busy to taste some twelve year old barrels because we taste everything before we bottle it to make sure it's good. And he said it was just incredible. It's um, um, you know, even better than last year. Um. So it's uh it's it's something we're striving for. I don't think we'll ever quite get it just right. But just one reason is because the yeast is a little different from what we

had back when we had our own distillery. Sits weller so UM, and that's kind of a flavor profile and kind of a back flavor that that you taste UM that particularly use from that distillery is very distinctive, as each distillery has its own yeast flavor profile. UM. But that's you know, we're just trying to get as close as possible. What's the best way to enjoy happy? How

do how do you enjoy it? When you when you crack open the bottom, I usually just um put it on some ice with depending on if it's ninety proof, I'll just let the ice melt, and if it's one oh seven are higher proof, I'll put a little splash of uh distilled water and they're not tap water because

chlorine and whiskey don't mix that well. Depending on what part of the world you're from, UM, and a twist of lemon, which has become kind of a I'm just again, I'm just promoting what how I learned to drink it? Grandfather I guess Pappy used to drink it that way because my dad drank it that way, and I drink it that way. And everybody I've talked about, you know, I tell people somewhere I've heard about you drinking with lemon or orange or something. Just a twist of lemon

around the edge edge. It gives it a little bit different, uh flavor profile. And they taste it. I don't know if they're lying or what, but they say, Wow, that's really good. So uh it's that's that's the way I enjoy it. IM gonna try to I'll be more conscious when I put a little water in there, or I'll be more conscious of how probably make the ice that I'm using. If you think it's got to be a certain kind of water not to ruin the whiskey, I'm all into for for keeping it as good as it

can be. Chris, we can go deep on this ice deal and water deal. Got Your ice has to be made of pure water, and it's got to be really old ice. People say, cold ice, what's that? Well, it's clear ice that's white that comes out of your freezer. It's got air in it, so you're you're watering down your whiskey a whole lot more than you would if the ice was clear. So you got a good gotta get a good ice machine or ship. You're killing me. I gotta. I'm thinking about all the times and I

put ice out of the freezer into this stuff. You know, I could be you can get expensive talking to me. I'll talk into a good ice machine and all kind of stuff. Wait, a bit expensive whiskey is not enough. Now I have to buy expensive water. I'm an expensive machine to make the expensive ice. Right there you go, and then nothing but an organic lemon for the twist. I'll try the lemon twists for people to love bourbon.

Explain what magic happens in the barrel because unlike wine, where a lot of the magic is in the grapes, maturing that the sun and the rain and the and the heat combining, and then it's put in the barrel for not very long compared to whiskey, and then that ages in the bottle. Now what bourbon doesn't age in the bottle? Right, it's all it's all within the span of time that it's in those charter barrels. So what

is going on with the whiskey? Is it sits there for twelve years, fifteen years, twenty years and twenty three years. Well it's uh, it's really where the I think the magic happens. And you can you can age whiskey in barrels that are heavily charred. Um, just the heads toasted and the staves charged. You know, a lot charred, A lot of different variables as far as what the barrel can be made of. On the inside, we obviously still use number four heavy char on the heads and the

staves inside. And where that barrel is put, what type of warehousing and what floor and um, you know which is produces different temperatures and different whiskies. But you pour out a whiskey from a barrel that's in the top four versus the bottom floor. Would you expect that your average Pappies customer would be able to taste any difference? Would Would they know something was off? Or would it just they'd read the label and think it's great and

they wouldn't know the difference. Well, if you're just taking great taste in one bottle at a time, and I don't think anybody would really notice it. Um, I might, but but um, just because I'm used to what I'm used to. But if they took a cool floor barrel versus the top floor barrel and tasting them together, it's a it's pretty much a no brainer. I think even even if Uh a beer drinker or somebody that never even has whiskey but had whiskey before in their life,

could tell the difference. And that's pretty obvious. It's clear your passion for the hands on, you know, barrel by barrel, staying very involved in the process. I don't have three examples of this off the top of my head. My sense, there's a lot of businesses that are passed down in families generation by generation. Maybe the maybe the patriarch, the initial guy was was the creator, he came up with

the product. He he was the inventive side. And then and then other generations were interested in sort of growing and marketing and they were less concerned maybe with the hands on manufacturing. That's not been a case in your family at all though. I mean Pappy himself was a salesman and a genius marketer, right, and that that initially got the the the labels that he was producing off

the ground early. But but as it's been handed down and you still seem as passionate, as interested in in the hands on as anybody could be, well as much as I can be, not exactly doing everything myself, and no Van Winkler has actually produced any whiskey than him themselves period and where the words none of us have been mastered distillers, but we try and get people who know what the hell they're doing to do it, you know, the way we want it done, as far as we

can do that. Now, we're still trying to tinker around with all types of different distillation proofs and barrel entry proofs and warehousing techniques and so forth to get it to what, you know, what we think maybe a little better, it may not, but you know, we're still trying to monkeyr on with it too, to get it closer to what what we uh, what we'd like like to be.

I don't know if this is fitting her ironic, but obviously that the family name and and old Rip van Winkle was one of the original names for the whiskey, and watching irving story is about someone who fell asleep for twenty years. I don't know that's a coincidence. Some of the whiskey's aged twenty years and and one of the morals of the story is that it's if you resist and fight change, you do sort your own peril. That there's a constant need to kind of change and evolve.

I don't know how that ties into the family business and the production of whiskey. It is relentlessly consistent over time. Well, they kind of got lucky on that whole story deal. It kind of parallels what what we're doing. Um. Obviously, the old rip Van Winkle was my dad bought that label back in the fifties, I believe, and never really used it. Um with old he had some ideas to use it along with the old Fitzgerald brand, But when we sold the distiory, he kept that brand name. And

that's what we've ran with. We ran with that at first, and then um uh, you know that asleep many years in the wood and all that. You know, those little terms came up an old ripped next to the tree sleep and through the Revolutionary War and in the twenty

year thing, Um that was that was pure luck. I guess you call it because I wanted when I came up with a poppy label, I found that picture my grandfather, you know, lying that cigar, and I wanted to honor him with a label, and I had some twenty year old whiskey that I hadn't sold at eighteen or nineteen, so I said, well, in twenty has a nice round number. But I really didn't think about old ripped being sleeping twenty years in the woods. So that's another blond luck thing.

I didn't have luck. I wouldn't, you know. I'll take whatever I can get. You've got the fifteen, the twenty, and they three dispel the myth that older automatically means better. The assumption is well, because it's rarer, it's harder to find the older stuff than it is the fifteen year. But but you never intended those to be grades of quality right in the in the product. No, it's is um Obviously you start younger, and they all became available because of um uh. You know, they weren't back in

the eighties and nineties. They weren't selling that well. So I had access whiskey, as did every other distillery. That's why you can buy and sell bulk whiskey by the barrel. Every distillery would buy and sell from different ones, and people like myself would buy from other distilleries because there

was excess product. But uh, you start out at ten and the first Pappy label was a twenty year, and then was the twenty three, and we had a fifteen year old ripped band Winkle and we changed that into a Pappy label to kind of get it more popular, and I put it in line with all the pappies were in the same package in the Pat ban Winkle versus old RiPP band Winkle fifteen year, So they kind of bounced around from year to year. But the twenty

years Stize Weller was was was incredible. Whiskey UM and we are The fifteen year happens to be my favorite because it's kind of right in the middle, but it's doing these whiskey shows with Whiskey Fest and so forth in different parts of the country. Back when we used to do that, UM, people would taste the twenty or twenty three or even the fifteen and say, well, that's that's too too old for me, too Woody, I like the ten or twelve. It's just different flavor profiles of

people enjoy and they're not used to it. Obviously. I am used to older products. That's why I'm not not too much of a fan of younger whiskies. But that's that's just a personal preference really, not just because it's older definitely doesn't mean it's any better. It's just um,

some people can do it, some people can't. As far as um producing that brand, you know that the product is at this point, like it or not as famous for being almost impossible to get accept the ridiculous black market prices as it is for the you know, sublime

quality of it. Um. I think that that that's not that's not a bad the thing, but the brand necessarily that I'm sure it creates frustrations, But when when the pursuit of it and the acquisition of it supersede just the enjoyment of it, I don't know that that's what

a whiskey maker wants his customers to be focusing on. Right, No, there's I may not keep seeing these pictures on Instagram or whatever and Facebook of collections of tons of bottles of our whisky just sitting there and people's collections and are surrounded with old ripped bottles, pappy bottles. I'm going we don't make it to put it on your shelf. We make it to drink it and enjoy it. Please do. But there's too much hoarding and too much collecting, and

all this secondary market is is a mess. Um as far as you know the pricing, legitimate pricing of it. The bother is to bother you that people. Your your price initially between a hundred three hundred bucks is the top um reach out price for it, and now it's sometimes times that, right, Yeah, it's I mean, it's um, it only bothers me because, uh, the poor people that brought up I say, the poor people meaning that they

can't find a whiskey legitimate price anymore. They they built our brand, they bought our brand, they believed in this and they supported us, and now they can't get it for under several hundred bucks or seven several thousand dollars. So it is frustrating for that. And there are several stores obviously around the country that do sell at a regular suggested retail price, but um, they those bottles are snapped up immediately or they're you know, in lotteries or

raffles or whatever. But there's one one good thing that's happened from this, uh secondary market pricing, is the charities are just doing great with it, so that that really is good. We're just amazing amounts of money raised and all these stories, all the good products are doing the same thing, offering bottles for charity, and it's just a raising tons of money for charities where if the secondary market hadn't happened, Um, you know, they wouldn't be close

to what it's but they're they're bringing. Now that's a great point that that's that is a great byproduct of the of the difficulty of it to get. Yeah, it's you're right though, people I don't I don't have a stash of bottles. I have some, but you tend to not want to drink it because once it's gone, it's so damn hard to replace. So you do kind of sip it on special occasions and it can't be and every day enjoyment for a lot of people unless I

just uhr going to those auctions and getting it right, right. Yeah, it's it's uh, it's a lot of little stories about um anything from my brother in law came over and I unfortunately had a bottle of Happy out and drinking his buddies drank the whole damn bottle and shoot, I'll never do that again too. My son found it or whatever, and i've got or I've got I've just got an inch left in this bottle, and I'm not gonna drink it until i get another bottle. So it's uh, you know,

it's crazy. Some of the little stories about it. I'll tell you a story. We we have a place in the Colorado Mountains. So I'm going to football game. I'm in a rental car. My wife's in New York, and all of a sudden, the alarms start going off on the app that the cameras are going crazy in the in the mountain house. So she's looking at this thing

in real time. She calls me up and said, there's someone who's working on something outside the house and now inside the house, and he's standing at the bar in the living room. We converted this little closet to a bar. It's kind of fancy. We actually got some antique mirror glass from Kentucky coincidentally. And on the shelves there's a great single mault shelf. We like tequila mescal. There's a chef shelf of that, and then there's a bourbon shelf.

And she's describing this guy standing at our bar public glass at and starting you're starting to sample things, and you know what I'm thinking, I listen, I don't care what he does in the house. Do not drink the poppies. There's a there's a bottle there that this is about five years ago. I've had it fifteen years. It's fifteen years, so I think it's it's still so well or distillery

era pappies. And then there's some Van Michael family reserves sitting there, and I'm just thinking, I mean horrified, I mean, this is this would be a terrible way for that stuff to go down, and and uh, fortunately he bypassed that, and he drank the bourbon that was made about four miles up the road in breck and Ridge, which is perfectly good stuff but very easy to get. And I guess the moral of the story because I was just

I was, I was. I wanted to turn on the Mike Julian and say, listen, step away from the bar, whatever you want, do anything, but don't touch those two bottles right there. And no questions asked, no no charges pressed, just leave. And he was drinking the local bourbon, and I guess and he was having a fine time with it, and I guess it goes to show you you drink what you know, and thankfully he didn't know what he saw there. I don't want that old whiskey. I like

this two year old stuff made down the road. That's funny. Yeah, disaster, disaster was averted. Uh, can you de mythologize the process. There's an employee, understand it, Buffalo Trace, not you personally, that decides which distributors get this, which liquor stores get it, and which customers even have a chance in hell of grabbing it. Twice a year when when the allocations go out, how does that work is? That must be a serious headache for that person in fault of making those choices. Well,

it's once a year. It used to be twice a year, and now just once a year. In the fall, President and I will sit down with our bourbon manager there at Buffalo Trace and and we get to play god actually, and we decide which distributors you know, get how many cases. And pretty much it has stayed the same for several years because it only goes up and down depending on evaporation levels or leaky barrels or empty barrels. Even um,

you know, our supply we make more. We've been making more whiskey every year for eighteen nineteen years, a buffalo trace. But the demand keeps going up also, so we can't say catch up. But we decide how much the distributor get and that changes just a percentage wise from some last year. Say we have more or less than last year, than that percentage increase or decrease is going to be the same. Um. The distributors decide who gets it from there, We can't we can't mandate what liquor store or what

restaurant get it. We can suggest it we'd like it to go and so and so. But but that's where the drama happens. The distributors have the power to decide whether two bottles get to this guy's liquor store or this restaurant and that and that. I'm sure they must be pressure on them. Yeah, it's um. You know, we get a lot of um problems because they can't get what they used to. But there are more stores, are

more people getting into the business. So the whole the supply, which is tiny back in the day, is even tinier because they're more more stores or restaurants or whatever getting the products. So everybody's allocation is going down every year. It seems like um or. It is Pappy's initial motto, make a great product. And I think at that point the supply was can roll. You wanted to make it coveted, you wanted to make it precious and hard to get.

But I know that hasn't applied lately. They people think you're like Opec. You just let's let's drive the price up and and and the hype up by just cutting production. And I know you're not doing that. I mean, I'm sure I'm an Arab whiskey make well. I said, you're not like that because I think you guys, you guys

are trying. I'm sure you're trying to make it as well as you can, as fast as you can and satisfy a market that now, yeah, you have to try to project what that's gonna be in that's when the stuff that's going in the bottle now is going to finally be be brought to market. And and you've got people all over the world, not just America clamoring for this. You've got you've got global markets who want a piece

of the magic you're making. Yeah. Yeah, it's um uh, you know, once you put it in the barrel, obviously, it's a long time for it comes to market. But it's a it's it's a tricky deal week. But we we're not holding back inventory to increase our prices and so forth. With every drop we can, we hold back these days a supply for charity events and so forth.

And that's really about it and a little bit reserved for I mean, it's crazy, but for some reason, our trucks seem to have accidents or somebody robs the trucks when it goes to the distributor. We have a few occasions of that, and said, why would wow, would our truck that gets thousands of truck loads of spirits going to Louisiana or Michigan or wherever? Um, why would our truck get hijacked or have a wreck or whatever. It seems very very odd. But I think it's just bad luck.

But um, you know, if if that happens, we try and give them a few bottles to cover their Yeah, you know, there's people believe there there are no such things as coincidences, So maybe maybe it's not just bad luck. Who knows, hey, man, when when when a product is that priceless and that and that precious, Weird things are going to happen. I'm sure it's very suspicious. And I'm wondering what the insurance adjusters do with all that product that's sitting there that maybe is not damage, but it's

just got a bad label or something. But it is a business plan. You called it ridiculous. It's it's certainly unique. You're trying to figure out what what's the consumer gonna want in how much are they gonna want and then trying to try to it's a time capsule thing. You're trying to make those decisions right now. It's it's kind of mind bending. I mean, right now, everybody wants to

get the thing to market as fast as possible. Every prody you can think of how to get it to market as quick as possible to satisfy an immediate consumer demand. And that's and that's what defines success or failure. Lots of times, you guys are the direct opposite of that. Yeah, it's as I said, it's a weird business plan to put something away for that long and and have a drain your bank account, you know, every every day, every month,

every year. But that's we have. We're lucky enough to have a product that age we think makes it better and it's ridiculous business plan, but I wouldn't. Everybody came to me the first suggestions of getting in the whiske venis I basically tried to talk him out of it, not because it being competition, just because, um, it's a very low percentage it's going to be successful because it's so tough. Um, we're lucky enough to have Satisrack Buffalo Trace got some deep pockets so they can afford to

do that. But and that's because we have a very old old liquor or whiskey profiles very much. It's lot older than other distilleries, but it's it's it's hard to um to keep that thing going, but it's uh, you know, it's worth We're lucky that it's it's worked so far.

We try and not get too greedy and make too much whiskey every year because someday this thing will slow down and UM, you know, we don't want to be caught with too much inventory, which is which has been there, done that, so I'm I don't want to do that again. But being a privately held own company, UM, I think we're not gonna let the profit get in the way of a good product. But it's rare that that money doesn't drive a product quality, uh, and I think it

it hurts in a lot of cases. Is when you make a product less expensively, obviously, and we're really not trying to do that at all. We're going to opposite way, and it seems to have work force so far. I'm sitting here sipping in glass as we speak, and I'm very much in the moment, and then my enjoyment of

any spirit is is very much in the presence. So if I'm not a sentimental person, I don't consider myself to be and I'm not, uh that nostalgic and i never shared a bottle of bourbon with any dead ancestors. Am I missing the point when it comes to enjoying this spirit? Because so many people connect in all those ways when they sip it, And for me, I just like how it tastes when I'm drinking it. Right, Well,

you got you got that too. It's enjoyable. But if you really get sentimental and emotional and you know, right. Brought this to my attention when he um talking about the book for CBS Sunday Morning with Lee Cowen. He's sitting at our table in our living room right over there, dying room and sipping open the bottle of this happened to be stits a weller, But with our whiskey that we're putting out now ten to twenty three years old. You pop that cork out and that's a bottle of

history right there. This stuff was made ten to twenty three years ago. What was going on there? I mean, it's it's like a little town capsule, really is. I'm I'm plagiarizing rights words, but I think that's what he was talking about. It. It's pretty special to um, just something to take that long to become equality that it is. And it's like wine, um are you know our whiskey can last longer than wine in a bottle because it's

got alcohol content. Play about wine, but it really is quite You can you can go deep on deep on this thinking about what's in that bottle of what was going on back then. No, No, I I guess when it comes to that, I'm more sentimental than I let on. I'm not sentimental and most things, but for all the things you just said, you know, it does feel really good going down and it feels good to think about the craft that went into it and how it's not just fifteen or twenty years old, but the idea of

how to make it goes back eighty years, right or more? Yeah, exactly, Yeah, it's it's pretty very lucky and blessed to have been born into this business and and not have screwed it up. As Bill Samuel says, I'm just trying to not to screw up what my dad started, and I'm kind of did the same thing for my father and grandfather and your son pressing you hope we'll we'll continue on and

keep the family legacy going. Yep. He's sure plans on it because that's his his life right now and future you know, generations after that too, so we'll see most of the third generation screws it up. Well. Congratulations on on doing the opposite. I'm so grateful to Julian and to write for sharing their stories and their knowledge. I hope you enjoyed this different kind of an episode. I had a lot of fun researching it had included sampling and sipping a lot of different bourbons. You have to

know your your topic well, don't you. By the way, I was left with one question that neither Julian nor Wright could really answer, Bourbon is a uniquely American product. It is our country's great contribution to the global world of spirits. So why aren't the families who have built legacies producing fine bourbon generation after generation. Why aren't they viewed with the same kind of reverence as the winemaking kognac making families of France and Italy are, or this

single malt distillers are in Scotland. Why isn't bourbon the same source of national pride for Americans as vodka is for Russians or tequila is for Mexicans. Maybe you have a thought, give you some feedback on Instagram, or maybe it'll just take a few more generations of bourbon producing. This episode wraps up season two for the podcast. Like co executive producer Jennifer Dempster and Jason White, felt really

thank you for listening to these episodes. Will be hard at work producing a whole new batch of episodes for season three and look forward to connecting with you. Then. In the meantime, cheers to your health and please break responsibly. M M.