Announcer 0:00

Welcome to Spirited Discussions, a podcast by Alcohol Beverage Services, exploring alcohol products, trends, and policies in Montgomery County.

Jocelyn Rawat 0:12

I'm your host, Jocelyn Rawat, and today we're discussing whiskey barrel picks. I'm joined by Jay Spiegel, who is the retail operations manager at Alcohol Beverage Services. Welcome, Jay.

Jay Spiegel 0:24

Thank you.

Jocelyn Rawat 0:24

I'm also joined by Mark McLaughlin, who is the co-founder of Old Line Spirits, which is based in Baltimore. Old Line Spirits is a veteran-owned business that produces a range of spirits with a focus on the emerging category of single malt whiskey. Welcome, Mark. Hey, thanks. Okay, so Mark, let's start with you. Can you tell us what is a barrel pick and what makes it so special?

Mark McLaughlin 0:47

Sure. It's a great question. I think the term is out there a lot, and not everybody, to your point, really knows what that means. So the simplest way to put it, in my opinion, is that a critical part of aging a whiskey is being in a barrel. It's where all the color comes from, it's where a ton of the flavor comes from, absorbing it from the ocean. And each barrel, even though they're very made in a very industrialized process and there's a lot of similarities, each barrel fundamentally is going to be unique, largely because, you know, a tree is an animal, or excuse me, a tree is a living being, and one tree versus the next based on where it grew up and what the temperature was. All those things are going to affect the chemical makeup of that tree, which will then affect what flavors the wood will give out when made into a barrel. So, you know, for us, you know, we fill up, you know, typically anywhere from 20 to 50 barrels at a time. And even if we fill these barrels on the same day and put them in the same part of the warehouse, uh, you know, two, three, four years later, you'd sample each one, and they're all gonna have a little bit of a distinctive character. So it that's the beauty of barrel aging a whiskey. When you start to empty them at the same time and and batch them together, the flavors kind of revert towards the mean, if you will, but taking each individual barrel, each one's gonna have its own special character. And that's that's where barrel picks come in because people can determine by tasting different barrels what profile they like the best and and pick that barrel and it's and it's all theirs.

Jocelyn Rawat 2:09

Wow, that's uh that's really interesting. So I heard you talking a little bit about age aging the barrel. So it's my understanding that the barrel may have a different proof depending on on how it's been aged um or for how long it's been aged. And then sometimes uh either the distillery or the consumer will proof it down. What does that mean?

Mark McLaughlin 2:27

So uh yeah, to your point, the proof will typically the product will come out of the barrel pretty high proof. So for us at Old Lime, we we fill the barrels at to exactly 120 proof. And as the evaporation occurs over time through the barrel aging, in the environment here in Maryland, very similar to Kentucky, the water is going to evaporate at a faster rate than the ethanol. So the proof will go up. So each barrel will be different. One barrel might be 124 proof, one might be 124.6. You know, they're either going to vary, and that's what the term barrel proof means. That, you know, and that's gonna usually gonna be a moving target because each barrel, again, will be slightly different. Now, proofing down is the uh process of taking pure water and adding it to that whiskey to bring it down to a targeted strength. So not everybody wants to drink their whiskey at 124 proof. So proofing down is is adding pure water and bringing it down to a specific target. So for example, is you know, our flagship product is at 95 proof. So the barrel, the product comes out of the whiskey barrel around 124, 125, and we add the water to it to get it to exactly that proof.

Jocelyn Rawat 3:26

Okay, so that's that sounds pretty complicated. And with each barrel being different, now you have uh a master distiller who's who's looking at these things, and it sounds like it's an art and a science. So how does the master distiller kind of look at that? Does he have a he or she have a way of looking at it?

Mark McLaughlin 3:43

Yeah, absolutely. So uh Jerry has been doing this for a long time. He was a brewer first, uh, our distiller Jerry, uh Jerry Rush, um, and got into the distilling world. And you're 100% accurate, I think, in saying that it is, it is certainly an art and a science. Uh, for example, in my simple mind would be if you want to prove something down, here's the volume of liquid, here's the proof, here's the proof we want it to be. It's a very simple equation of how much water do we add. But the reality is that it's not as simple as that. If you were to, because the water molecules and the alcohol molecules don't necessarily sit together perfectly at first, it's like a settling period. So there's a whole thing with Jerry has to do to proof, which is to say if he does the math and he says, we need to add, I'll make up 50 gallons of water, he's really going to add 45 gallons, let it sit for a day or two, then measure it again to kind of dial it in because the art of it is just doing that in the in the right way to that you uh there's a number of things that you can do, such as uh if you add the water too fast, there's a process or a reaction called saponification, which will make the whiskey cloudy. So all these things that, you know, they're science, but there's an art to how you execute it to get it to where you want it to be, if that makes any sense.

Jocelyn Rawat 4:49

Oh, that makes that makes great sense. And now what I really want to do is sample it. So let me uh let me move to Jay and find out how I can do that. So are we in Montgomery County able to buy old line spirits in any of the 27 ABS retail stores?

Jay Spiegel 5:04

Absolutely. Actually, all of our stores have uh the old line brand, uh, as well as a couple barrel picks available from them right now.

Jocelyn Rawat 5:10

Okay, so we so we have old line spirits and we have uh we have a lot of other brands too. We have all the national brands. Right. And you can go into the stores and you can you can taste this one or you can taste any of them. Is that correct?

Jay Spiegel 5:21

That is correct. So we do have we do have tastings that are set up by suppliers constantly every weekend at all of our stores.

Jocelyn Rawat 5:27

So how does ABS decide which barrel picks to carry in the stores? I imagine there are a lot of them, many of them local, like Old Line Spirit, um, many of them national. How do you how do you make that decision which ones to carry?

Jay Spiegel 5:39

So we look at a lot of uh market trends. We get a lot of customer feedback. Uh we use our our in-house experts as well. Uh a lot of them are based on allocations and you know, uniqueness as well. We love having some some unique barrels that uh to offer our customers as well. So okay.

Jocelyn Rawat 5:54

So I heard you say the word allocations. What does that mean?

Jay Spiegel 5:57

So a lot of suppliers have limited amount of products to supply to all the states, uh all retailers around the country. So we have the ability to uh be included in those allocations as we are our own jurisdiction. So a lot of the barrel picks fall under these allocations, and we are able to, you know, uh be kind of at the front of the of the line for these. So we get products that most other retailers, whether it's out in the open state or in other states, don't get offer uh offered.

Jocelyn Rawat 6:24

So I think you're sort of uh getting at this. I I've heard that Montgomery County is a really great place to be if you're a whiskey lover and you're talking about the size and scope of alcohol beverage services. But can you go into that a little bit more? Why is it great to be here if you love whiskey?

Jay Spiegel 6:39

So we have the basically the ability to buy anything and anything that's available to us. So whether we have some at some stores or something in every store, we try to do what we can to get the most selection for our our consumers.

Jocelyn Rawat 6:51

Okay, Mark, let me come back to you. So as a local producer, what's been your experience selling your products in the 27 ABS stores?

Mark McLaughlin 6:59

It's been actually just telling Jay in the walk-in here, uh, it's been fantastic. We were very lucky that as a local producer, that uh the ABS uh stores have a local program, which really you know gave us an opportunity to get our brand out there in front of consumers. So part of that program is why, as Jay mentioned, that we are in all the stores, which is a wonderful opportunity. So uh we found, I mean, working with Jay has been awesome. It's been a breeze. The managers are all, uh the store managers are all engaging and willing to help us schedule tastings. And we really couldn't ask for for a better partner. So for us, it's been um the willingness to work with a small company like us has been very much appreciated. It's been great.

Jocelyn Rawat 7:37

Well, that's that's good to hear. So, Mark and Jay, um thank you for uh participating in today's spirited discussion about barrel picks. If there's a topic that you out there would like us to cover on spirited discussions, you can email us at abs.spirited discussions at Montgomery CountyMD.gov. Anything you'd like to add, Mark or Jay?

Mark McLaughlin 7:59

Thanks. Thank you for letting me be here.

Jocelyn Rawat 8:01

All right, well, thanks for coming and thanks for listening to Spirited Discussions, a podcast by Montgomery County Alcohol Beverage Services. And always please remember to drink responsibly.

Announcer 8:12

Alcohol Beverage Services is the alcohol wholesaler of beer, wine, and spirits for Montgomery County. And it operates neighborhood retail stores. ABS also manages alcohol licensing, enforcement, and education for more than 1,000 businesses. Its profits are used to pay for resident services that otherwise would be funded by county tax dollars.