The Scotchy Bourbon Boys
The Scotchy Bourbon Boys love Whiskey and every thing about the industry! Martin "Super Nash", Jeff "Tiny", Rachel "Roxy" Karl "Whisky" and Chris "CT" all make up The Scotchy Bourbon Boys! Join us in talking everything and anything Whiskey, with the innovators, and distillers around the globe. Go behind the scenes of making great whiskey and learn how some of the best in the whiskey industry make their product! Remember good whiskey means great friends and good times! Go out and Live Your Life Dangerously!
The Scotchy Bourbon Boys
Exploring Green River Bourbon’s Meteoric Rise with Aaron Harris at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival
What’s the secret behind Green River bourbon’s meteoric rise? In this episode, we chat with Aaron Harris live from the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, where he sheds light on the brand's incredible journey and ambitious plans for the future. With only a year and a half on the market, Green River is already making waves, and Aaron shares exclusive details about their upcoming product SKUs, including the much-anticipated Kentucky Bourbon Festival Single Barrel Pick and the versatile 1885 blended whiskey. Don’t miss his insights into what makes Green River’s offerings stand out, including the delightful dark chocolate notes in their new 85 proof bourbon.
Curious about what makes a bourbon perfect for both sipping and mixing? We dig deep into the importance of drinkability and mixability with Aaron, exploring how Green River aims to create bourbons that shine in any setting. Whether you enjoy your bourbon neat or in a cocktail, Aaron explains how Green River’s well-balanced 85-proof bourbon meets the market's demands for a versatile, enjoyable whiskey. Tune in to discover how Green River is setting new standards in the bourbon industry and why their focus on quality and innovation makes them a brand to watch.
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What's up? Scotchy Bourbon Boys fans. This is Alan Bishop and if you have ghosts you have everything. You may know me better as Indiana's Alchemist of the Black Forest, but if you're at all interested in the Fortean, the paranormal and the unexplained, then you should tune into my new podcast. If you have Ghosts, you have Everything available now, wherever you get your podcasts including Spotify, google Podcasts and Amazon.
Speaker 2:Hey, this is better than under a shade tree right now.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, it's cooler, I have to admit, but the noise in here is crazy.
Speaker 5:Really.
Speaker 1:Really it's just so loud. Yeah, it's loud, eat it.
Speaker 4:All right.
Speaker 3:Welcome back to another podcast of the Scotchy Bourbon Boys. We've just done a back-to-back podcast, but we're here with Aaron Harris of Green River. Welcome, and a friend of the podcast, I think, with your special surprise. It's, you know, surprise, I think you like are the fourth most on the podcast right now, but realistically there's an, there's eight, seven and you're in the sixth realm, so one of the people that we love to podcast and you like to podcast with us. So welcome Super Nash and Roxy. I'm going to hand this to you right now, right after. So we're at Kentucky Bourbon Festival. This is your third one, second for Green River. Okay, so tell us about what the experience has been like. You know, coming down on your second one, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Again, I love being with you guys. You guys are awesome fans of not only me and whatever I'm at, but also the bourbon industry and and craft distillers and major disorders like. So I appreciate your all's efforts, uh, to help expand our market reach. So you guys are awesome. Um, green river uh, we're looking at possibly having eight skews within the next year. Uh, total, so we have a ton of products we're pushing. The brand has only been available since spring of 2022. So 18 months, 19 months, the brand is blowing up better than we hoped and, quite frankly, we just need to be good stewards and that's my main goal right now is to be a good steward, to have the grit and hustle to get our brand to where it needs to be and foster great relationships, like with you guys brand to where it needs to be and foster great relationships, like with you guys.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we've talked about a lot of different things, uh, over the last couple years, so just tell us what you brought. Let's, let's talk about this. It's a festival, it's a party, right? I mean, that's what you at the booth, we see you all over there and you're just serving it up to everybody today. Everybody seems to be in the mood.
Speaker 4:And if you can't tell, you can just listen to the atmosphere that's around us.
Speaker 2:Would you just pardon that I'm just doing this live at the festival, yeah, you're getting the ambiance if there is one. Today I brought for you the Kentucky Bourbon Festival Single Barrel Pick for Green River. This is a 126.8 proof gas drink and it's delicious. I also brought for you our new release of our 1885 bourbon blended whiskey. This will be on premise only and you can find it available at our stores. This is our intro to get into every well pour in America, right here. So it's delicious. It doesn't have the same flavor profilers no green liver bourbon and it's not supposed to. It's not something we went after. We want it to be in a different market and also not deter from our standard 90 proof bourbon.
Speaker 4:Yeah, wonderful hey pour it up. Hey, Carlos, hop in, we're about to see Pop it open.
Speaker 2:Crack wonderful Pour it up.
Speaker 4:Pop it open. Pop it open, crack it open.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you put 1865 on it and you can change the profile right 85 proof 1885.
Speaker 2:So 1885 1885 is the year our distillery was founded.
Speaker 3:And talk about that distillery. You know what?
Speaker 4:I mean.
Speaker 3:It's been through a lot of different things, but it's not stopped in operation, has it?
Speaker 2:Well, it went on hiatus for probably the better part of 30 years, kind of mothballed, but the bones never failed. The bones were there. We just had to clean it up a little and make it operational again. And that's what the company did when starting up With Bardstown Bourbon, acquiring the facility and bringing in experience and know-how and really a desire to produce quality spirits over higher quantities. We don't deter from that ever and we feel like that shows in every bottle we put our name on.
Speaker 4:Wow.
Speaker 3:It's got a really nice dark chocolate note on the back palate, like wow, like you know, as you're saying it's, you want that on the bar, so we're, and it's an 80, 86 proof, 85, 85 proof. But at the same time this is when you get into these types of bourbons you want drinkability. It's got, it's good. It's got to stand out for mixers, but it's a good. You know someone orders a pour. You know you're not looking for that. Some of your single barrel, really big, bold, whatever. You want this to go be drinkable, do what it needs to do.
Speaker 4:And on several markets right now are trying to do businesses at an 85, and so that's nice I don't care what anybody puts in their whiskey.
Speaker 2:I don't care what anybody puts in their whiskey. I don't care what anybody puts in their whiskey. We got plenty of it. You drink it how you want to drink it. Personally, I love it neat how it is, and if I'm going to have some lemonade or a Coke with it, I'm going to do it. It's going to be great.
Speaker 3:I'll also say that with this and you can talk about this. Nash, this is like I'm going to drink this when I do my fantasy baseball drafts or my fantasy football drafts, because you know, it's not when you want to sit there and it's not like you want to sit there and analyze it while you're doing it, but you want to drink a nice bar that tastes good and this is it. You want to be kind of cognizant. I gotta say that this is a very good drinkability to it, but the flavors are still.
Speaker 4:they're bold and they're there, yeah, and they're popping, you know. So, like you said, even if you do want to put something in it, this will stand up to those mixers that you want to put in it. Or if you just want to drop a cube of ice in it, for those, some of those that like to do it, I probably will just make it open up a little bit more, but I'm like.
Speaker 4:Jeff, this one right here would be one that I would like to grab and just drink neat, and you know, at the proof and all, that I would probably have this a lot more over other pours that I have in my collection. Because, like I say, it's just got a good drinkability and a low proof and all and easy to drink.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it's a good starter bourbon. For anybody that has never tried bourbon, I think you would really enjoy it. It doesn't have that, like you know, light you up, burn, which is not always a good thing, but it also tastes like you're drinking s'mores. That's what it is. It tastes like you're drinking a s'more, Like I would want to drink this with my s'mores, which I love. Now you do.
Speaker 5:Or make a great bourbon martini with the chocolate and the marshmallow foam, and I think I'm going to mess around with some cocktail recipes. That would be really good. There you go. Yeah, one other thing.
Speaker 4:I don't know if you covered or said it while I was a little bit busy there, but what's the price point going to be on this?
Speaker 2:So, again, it's only going to be available on premise, so you're going to see it at the bars and restaurants in their wells. Price point's probably under that $24 mark, so something that's very affordable for restaurants, store chains and your liquor stores, bars. So it's going to be something out there that we want to definitely support our 90 proof bourbons and our single barrel program and foolproof. But we also want to be able to be in every category while you're at the bar while you're at the restaurant.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. Well, everybody drink up.
Speaker 4:One of the things that I like to add is that one of the things that we always try to push is there's all these allocated bourbons that people are hard to get. People are sought after, set in the lines, and then they're disappointed when they can't get one because they run out. This is something that's going to be readily available at a really, really good price point you know $20, $25.
Speaker 3:So yeah, at the distillery you can get it at the distillery, which is even better to come out and check out Green River Distillery.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but that's exactly what I'm getting at. Is that this once we had a little bit more time and we do get into podcasts is comparing this to some of those other ones. And hey, here's a $25 bottle that you can get. You know, or making the effort, but a lot less effort than allocated bourbon and all that high price control.
Speaker 2:This is the lowest $25,000.
Speaker 3:Lower, lower, excellent. So well, we got this, so now we only brought $7.
Speaker 2:What up, Big Mike?
Speaker 4:For you.
Speaker 3:We're honored. We are honored. Okay, so we got the next one, the single barrel, which talk about the bottle real quick, because at the festival you can win some shit yeah.
Speaker 2:So the original Green River label Superhero Horseshoe they went across the front. When we brought the bottle back out, or the brand back out in 2022, we honored the original label by putting a horseshoe at the base of the bottle. What we didn't know is we created our own little bar game with that. So we have a little game with our tokens. Don't shoot the shoe and you can slide the quarter or our commemorative coins right underneath the bottle and have your own kind of a shuffleboard game if you will, and our festival goers can come play at our booth today or at any activation you see in your market. So it's a square, rounded bottle. It's a lot of fun to bottle on a bottle in line. It's very temperamental, but it's a gorgeous bottle. It really puts the shine on our juice that's inside and it puts a great spot for my autograph right over here.
Speaker 4:So it's really good. Oh wow, Even better Nice.
Speaker 3:So when you win the coin shuffleboard game, okay, everybody hears it. It it's a lot like horseshoes. It makes the clink, like you. Just all of a sudden everybody, as you know, everybody's tasting at the booth all of a sudden you hear and just makes that little noise and it's just like you know. And it's really a cool kind of thing. I mean for you guys in the marketing. What a great thing because it ups the fun at the booth.
Speaker 1:There's no doubt about it.
Speaker 3:Right. So let's make a memory right now and let's have you. So the Cherry Jubilee bottle is still. That is just unbelievable. So you didn't put cherries in there, did you? It tastes like you spent a little bit of time.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 3:He popped the top. So I would have to say, aaron, I think mine and your palates align really well Because you know, ever since I met you, we talked about where you started and what you guys were able to do with changing what was going on at the distillery. And I know that you and Ann gimmick and you know what you did there, the quality of what you were running that pot still a lot. You were the quality I can't wait to. How much longer does that does it take to get that there? And do you have a secret spy just kind of in there waiting to to make sure it gets, sure it gets processed properly?
Speaker 2:I like to think that I've made lifelong friends and peers while I was there at Watershed. Some of those relationships are a little bit closer, but no, I wish nothing but the best for the future of Watershed, and if I had any part to play in making the juice any better or helping the brand grow, I'm honored to do that and I agree with that.
Speaker 3:Then you come, you come here and like everything. It's funny because when you sent, when you, when I purchased, and you sent up the one bottle for me and I opened it and we were talking, you wanted, you want, you like to find out what my palate's like, and I was not. That night I was not getting the cherry aspect of it until all of a sudden it just slapped me across the face. But it's like now I drink that and as it gets further and further down the line and it keeps getting lower and lower, further and further down the line and it's getting lower and lower. But it has that and the same thing. When I taste the dipper, the stuff that's coming out, the Green River, the weeded, knowing that you have a part of it, I don't worry usually, because as soon as I taste it it's you have what would you say, the classic bourbon drinker's palate. But also you think outside the box, so there's little extra things. It's like you're not always thinking it's got to be this one way.
Speaker 4:I was just going to say that this is almost like a holiday drink tasting to me. Like a holiday drink tasting to me, I'm getting this cherry and I'm getting this like a nougat type vanilla nougat there in the middle and then, like you just said, it is sitting and sitting and sitting After each sip and I'm waiting a little while. It's still there and it's like the flavors are developing, so it's a very, very nice finish on it.
Speaker 5:Yeah, you get some really nice warm baking spices and oak notes and sweet vanilla with some butterscotch or caramel and the cherry of course. But it's very complex and really lovely to just sip on, makes you all warm and toasty inside Like I want to put it in something you know, hot right, like apple cider or yeah.
Speaker 3:This is your range, so I it's this, this. I have no regrets. So what I would say now, this is the pick for the Kentucky and the team comes in. Now were you a part of the team? Yes, so I think now for the Kentucky, for people who aren't at the Kentucky Bobon Festival and need to come next year, explain that the importance of a barrel pick at Kentucky Bourbon Festival, of the barrels that you pick, the taste opposed to groups coming in, or whatever. I mean it's like the showcase, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah absolutely, and I won't say that it's just a showcase for the distiller as well. The team that came in for us were the actual organizers of the Bourbon Festival.
Speaker 2:People are out here right now in their work boots, sweating up a storm, trying to make sure that distillers and crews that are working have everything they need to give the best offering or pour for their patrons that are here People like Stacy Pritchard, steve Coombs. We had a fellow local guide, jacob Piper, who is a brand ambassador for Bourbon Pursuit, a great, great follower and patron of Green River, probably one of our number one fans. So he was a part of that group. The entire group has to look at something and say how does this promote Green River the best it can and also fit among the other picks that we've done for other distilleries. So, really, and for myself, I get to say whether or not a single barrel can be a single barrel, but I don't always get to sample it after a bottle. So, really, every time I get a chance to do this, it's kind of like Christmas for me, because I'm like, okay, I was right, we were right.
Speaker 3:So I will say I agree, the more picks that we do, I haven't had a pick go the wrong way after it left. You know you make that pick. We take a couple 200 milliliter samples everybody samples and when you open up that bottle and you taste it it's usually a plus one than what you were doing. It's even a little bit more. It's like it's. I just always find that I haven't been let down by the bottling process.
Speaker 3:They get it in there, whether it's in the barrel for a couple more days or whatnot, but it just seems like it's. Let's just say it gets put into the stainless steel holding tanks but it's still now not aging in a barrel, but it is aging, it just keeps aging. I mean, we just Heaven Hill is. They did a 13-year that they let sit in vacuum-sealed stainless steel tubs for 12 years, so it's a 25-years-ago whiskey and honestly it comes out tasting like a dusty, a brand new bottle.
Speaker 3:It's got that flavor of a 1974, you know, but not a funk on it. You know, sometimes they have a little bit of funk, but they got that rich, bold taste and it's the same thing. But I just find there's so much to do, so many things that infiltrate the process, right? I love it when someone tries to tell you that if you let it get hot in the car it's going to wreck it. I'm just like you do realize it sits in a warehouse waiting to get shipped. It's shipped on semis that are not refrigerated and then it sits in another warehouse. You know it's just part of the process, right.
Speaker 2:And I will say if you do leave a bottle sitting in the sun in the car, your pork will pop. That's the part that may wreck, now, your spirit. Unless you left it sitting on your side, which I've done, it will ruin your seats. So I have driven around for months at a time with my car smelling like booze.
Speaker 4:But yeah, you gotta be careful with that. Basically, you guys have covered everything that I wanted to know, except for maybe one other thing. Do you know what states you're all available in right now? Is it all 50 states? We're not in all 50 states.
Speaker 2:I believe by the end of the year 2024, we hope to be in about 38 markets, which is opposed to two years ago when we were in four. I think that's a huge testament to our bourbon growing legs and running around the country, but also our sales force has doubled since then.
Speaker 3:So the last thing I'm going to say you're working at your sister company's company and they participate a little bit in you can't get it all the time, or higher price, so you're producing the most reasonably priced whiskey. You look at it on the shelf. You've got a weeded Now we've got a full proof. I saw the full proof. You've got a high rye Now we've got a foolproof. I saw the foolproof. You've got a high ride.
Speaker 3:You know you've got different expressions, but they're all in the $30 range, all affordable, and no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not saying that, but everybody can get it. So how do you counter that? Because we all know the other places. They have a lot of stuff, but what they do is they short it so nobody can have it, or everybody can't have it at any time, so they're not interested, because even that place puts out something that everybody can have and all of a sudden, all you hear is that, well, that's not very good, that's crap, it's like they can't get it. They can't get it if they want it and it's the greatest thing ever. So how do you contradict that? As what you're making? Because you are making really good stuff, but it's available to everybody.
Speaker 2:I will say to that that the team over at Bart's Unburden Company Nick Smith, steve Nally, justin Willett, all the guys that are there have done a phenomenal job since day one. Are they a victim of their own success? Possibly, but they have put out so many amazing brands that sometimes you have to stop for a second and take care of your in-house brands. That's what they are in process of doing Now. You look at a company like Green River that's put out $80,000 plus since inception in 2015. There's that stock that you need to continue.
Speaker 2:The growth of the entire company to help benefit all those that are under our flagship. The growth of the entire company to help benefit all those that are under our flagship. And you know we are at a wonderful price point that all can enjoy and we are kind of that added benefit, someone that already had Bardstown on their shelves. They can now pick up our line pricing, three or four options to bring in um, and, quite frankly, we only benefit from the experience that comes, uh, from the teams at bardstown bourbon company and hopefully, um, that feeling I believe that feeling is felt, the same side, because we truly do try to work together to put out the best spirit, and yeah, I mean I, I just like everybody out there.
Speaker 3:Um, we gotta try green river, it's on the shelf for you. I mean also, do you find that? Do you find that that market is a lot bigger than the collector's market? I mean, everybody knows that the collector's market of whiskey is like 12% of the whiskey connoisseurs and the really big market is Jack Daniels and Jim Beam and everybody. That's the people who buy the most, obviously. And then you're looking to get on the well at the restaurants with them, because that's where they, you know 50% of the market. It's pouring into the glasses with coke, or just you know you got a chance to meet, or whatever.
Speaker 2:There you go espresso martini, which I know she loves, with 95 rye alright alright, everybody, it's just Aaron, thank you for coming on.
Speaker 3:All right. All right, everybody. It's just Aaron, thank you for coming on.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Are we finishing up? Okay, all right, everybody, we're going to finish this up. We're going to be on Facebook Live for a couple more minutes, but I'm going to end the podcast right now. All right, stop recording. All right, we're off that, but we're still live. Don't be saying bad things.
