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
From Honey-Infused Craft To Port-Finished Guadalupe: How Garrison Brothers Built A Texas Original We talk about it with Dan Garrison
We share how a promise to make a honey bourbon became a labor-heavy infusion method, why Texas heat shapes price and flavor, and how Guadalupe evolved from a winery barrel swap to direct Portuguese port casks. The craft boom, bank-fueled bloat, and the power of fan communities round out a candid look at where bourbon goes next.
• honey-infused bourbon built with stave-soaked wildflower honey
• infused vs finished explained with TTB labeling choices
• texas heat, angel’s share, and the reality of higher prices
• small batch as the base, selective barrel routing to special releases
• guadalupe port casks sourced from portugal after early experiments
• single long distillation to retain grain oils and mouthfeel
• tasting notes beyond caramel: corn sweetness, pepper spice, milk chocolate, grape at cask strength
• industry trends: craft growth, looming glut, and bankruptcies
• texas whiskey identity, festivals, and devoted release-day lines
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Ohio River Valley. Their spirits honor their roots and reflect their originality as makers, their integrity as producers, and their passion for crafting spirits from grain to glass. The Mixalone Reserve line reflects their story from the start of the bottle to your glass, with unique wheat and rye bourbons, and also rye and wheat whiskeys. The Mixalone brand is actually it might start grain with a classic variant, but I like to think of it as uncut and unfiltered from their family to yours.
SPEAKER_06:Uh nope, I'm on with them right now.
SPEAKER_05:Unfiltered. We're diving straight into the heart of Kentucky permaculture. Let's get started.
SPEAKER_00:Woo!
unknown:Glad to be here.
SPEAKER_06:Thanks, y'all.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for being here, brother. And we also have the whiskey doctor. And uh welcome, Randy, for uh coming on and uh setting up this podcast. It's uh I we really, really appreciate it. And I've like I said, I've been looking forward to it uh for a while now. So um let's just let's just jump right in. We've already been a little bit um pre-gaming on Facebook and YouTube for everybody. I mean, if you ever want to get to see how we set up and all the fun technical difficulties that happen before we get to the point where we try and make this as perfect as we can. But you know, we're just uh the the podcast exists, uh, a bunch of guys hanging out, and that's what we've been doing, hanging out, talking about a lot of different things. And you know, uh just like it's been a good time so far. But for me, I've got nothing in my glass yet. So, Dan, should I put the Guadalupe in there or should I put this honeydew in there? What do you think?
SPEAKER_05:You know what?
SPEAKER_06:I would do is I would get rid of the glass and just drink right out of the bottle.
SPEAKER_10:No, I'm getting what's left in that bottle.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, well, then it then it must be straight from the honeydew, right?
SPEAKER_10:Because that's my that's what it straight out of.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's my my bottle.
SPEAKER_06:No melons were harmed in the process of creating honeydew. Um for 25 years, it's been on my honeydew list to make my wife a honey-infused bourbon. So uh I got together with Donna's and we pulled it off, and it's delicious, it's hay-proof, it's light, it's a cocktail bourbon. Um, when I say it's light, because all of Garrison Brothers' bourbons are stiff, they're they're tough, they're 94 proof and above. And so um, she wanted something lighter and more delicate, and um, she got it. Now it's grown to 15% of our sales in just the two years that she's managing it. So she's done a great job with the product.
SPEAKER_10:You know, one thing that's interesting, and I was actually asked to share this. I've had friends that thought that it was made from infused honeydew melons. And they're like, no, it's not a honeydew melon, it has no melon flavor at all.
SPEAKER_06:But Randy, that's a great concept. That might be kind of cool. Um, maybe someone should do that. And I think we're probably more prepared to do that than anybody else. We got a long-standing five-year relationship with Burleson's Wildfire Honey. Uh that's basically Waxahatchi. It's the oldest honey company in Texas, and they have honey hives all over the state of Texas. And so um, it's a great partnership, and I'm sure we could do that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So, my my question is so this isn't honey finished, it's honey infused. Talk about how you made the decision to infuse it with honey opposed to finish it, because you know, the it's like you guys have a lot of bourbons, and you've got the you know, the Guadalupe that's finished, you know, that's finished in the port port uh barrels. But the this is actually infused. What was that what what what went into that decision?
SPEAKER_06:It's the silliest uh business decision I've ever made. But um Donis, I sent Donis, my master, to still are Donis Todd, who's a lecture in the industry today. I sent him off to a honey conference, the National Honey Board, and they had a meeting in Nashville, and it was like a junket. They, you know, they played golf for a couple of days, but they also taught guys like Donis how to how to make food or beverage products with honey. And one of the guys that he met there had this process where he could take the the barrel stags and cut them into tiny little pieces, like about that big. And those little pieces of the bourbon barrel uh were soaked in a a Brilsen's wildflower honey batch, a 50-gallon barrel of Brunson's wildflower honey. And I sat in there for six months. So the cubes went in there about a half weighing about a half ounce, and they came out weighing about 1.5 ounces because the honey was infused into the wood. And then we put that those cubes into a um uh a cheesecloth bag and dipped it into the bourbon every single day for six months to create that flavor. Absolutely the most time-consuming, labor-intensive thing we could probably do. But mom is happy, and if mama's happy, I'm happy.
SPEAKER_00:And then it and then it turns out to be a huge seller that you got to keep doing over.
SPEAKER_10:So that is basically a combination of a honey infused and a honey finish, barrel finished, because you took stains and soaked them in it to basically make a honey barrel, a bag full of honey barrels, and you dipped it in there.
SPEAKER_00:But I I will say that that the honesty that you have here is that it's a honey infused. I mean, there are so many different ways of what would you say? You know, you get a barrel, and if you're gonna finish something like in a port barrel, what people like, you know, when you're talking about a finished bourbon, you're talking about those have been emptied and there's no port left in it. But there are some people who get the port barrels wet and then they say it's finished, but there's a lot more port in it because there was wine in it when you started the finishing process. So saying that it's infused, but you could have gone with honey finished, you know, based off of it, it was absorbed into the staves and whatnot, but you're being honest on the infusion, and quite frankly, I think you went the right way.
SPEAKER_06:I mean, out of all the the tax and trade bureau, or finally Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, is not gonna approve a recipe like that. They they they they would not have uh approved it. So I got kind of close to the Tax and Trade Bureau and I said, Hey, um, my wife really wants this, we'll make it happen, and they approved our permit to to our they approved our our cola, our certificate of label of authenticity, um, for that product as a bourbon. Not as a blended whiskey, not as a spirit whiskey, but as a bourbon. And um I think that's the first time that's ever happened. So it was it was a it was a difficult process, and um, I had to make a lot of friends in Cincinnati at the Tax and Trade Bureau.
SPEAKER_00:I would I would say that that sounds exactly why I'm in the bourbon industry in the first place, because making friends with bourbon involved is something that most people making friends is not an easy thing to do. And when you involve bourbon and the culture that of the industry and the people in the industry and the people who drink it, and the people who it is like like you said, it's like friendships and and those type of um relationships are so important, and that's not something that you just can do, like go there and you're friends with them. It's it's you have to have like you have to a time, you take it's about taking time to get to know people, and that's what bourbon is, and then tell that story that way. That that's fantastic.
SPEAKER_06:Tiny, that's precisely why I got so excited about joining the bourbon industry and becoming part of the bourbon industry. Um, when I went to Kentucky on my first trip, everybody looked at me square in the eyes and said, Why in the hell would you want to eat bourbon? Bourbon was granddaddy's drink. Everybody today drinks flavored tins and flavored vodkas. Nobody drinks bourbon anymore. Bourbon was what people got when uh they got back from on the off when they offloaded from the ship after World War II, and they were handed a bottle of of Old For uh Old Forester, and um everybody got that bottle, and they all remembered that, and they bought Old Forester for a long time. And then in the 1980s and 90s, things changed. Um, bourbon became granddaddy's bourbon and uh granddaddy's relicer, and they everybody drank scotch and gins and that sort of thing. So um when I got to Kentucky, the first trip I took up there, um, I was stunned. This was in 2001, and I was stunned because they all thought it was crazy. Why are you gonna make bourbon? Bourbon's sales are declining, they're not going up. And I said, I got a feeling something's gonna change. And I take a little bit of credit for kicking off the bourbon revolution that happened in about 2008, 9, and 10. I I think that uh Charles Cowdery played a big role in it. Charles Crowdery is a great bourbon writer. If you've ever read Bourbon Straight, it's one of the best bourbon books ever written. Um other people were involved too. Dave Picker was teaching the world. He acres mark at the time, and um Dave Picker helped rebuild the Mount Vernon distillery, George Washington's distillery.
SPEAKER_10:And um I I got I've got a bottle of that right in eyesight. I can see it from here. I've got another one on the shelf. I've got one in my house. And my son, my son was stationed, as you know, at the Coast Guard. He lived a mile from Mount Vernon, so he grabbed me a couple of bottles. Would you talk for just a moment before we get all things Garrison Brothers? The state of the industry now. You you led into how it was when you came in. What are you seeing now?
SPEAKER_06:Um we had a good idea at Garrison Brothers. I'm not gonna give us complete credit for the revolution that's happened, but um bourbon was old and booked bourbon was done, and bourbon was was not exciting anymore. And uh around 2006, 7 and 8, bourbon started to get kind of exciting. And that's because craft distilleries like mine introduced new brands to to to a new market of of individuals. And there were already um bourbon bourbon strike was bourbon strike probably had 10,000 followers that were going to the bourbon straight website. I don't know what it's like today, but back then, when I told them, I announced publicly on bourbon strike that I was gonna be making bourbon in Texas, they said, Well, you can't make bourbon in Texas. And I said, Oh, yes, I can. And I put up a letter from the Tax and Trade Bureau that said, Yes, of course, Dan, you can make bourbon in Texas, but why would you think otherwise? And I went, everybody thinks that bourbon has to come from Kentucky. And when I went to Kentucky, all the people that were working at these distilleries out there, and there were only 12 of them back then in 2001, they all said to me, You're crazy. Why would you want to do this? Why would you want to get into a business that's not making any money for anybody? And I said, I think it's gonna turn around. And I believed in it. And um back then, literally there were 12 distilleries making 35 bottles of bourbon. That was it. And you walked down the vodka aisle at a total of line or more, and there were thousands of vodkas. You walk down the gin aisle, there were thousands of gin products. You walked down the rum aisle and there were hundreds of thousands of different rums. And so they all thought I was crazy, and that's okay. I'm I'm I am crazy.
SPEAKER_10:Like a fox. Crazy like a fox.
SPEAKER_00:Well, well, I mean, I mean, you looked at what at the time when you were you're talking about 2006, 7, and 8. It's the time when the big people were starting to revive it somewhat when you're talking about the Bookers, the Knob Creeks. They were like, it wasn't Jim Beam. Jim Beam wasn't going to bring back the industry. It was going to be those special small batch brands. And then when you started with the craft distillery, uh, the craft distilleries, those became, um, what would you say? Uh, a way that somebody who didn't like, especially in Texas, you put it up there, people in, you know, to go, you had to travel all the way to Kentucky and go on the burr, you know, the bourbon trail was just being in its infant stage. And you had that when you went there, you saw them and you saw what they were doing, and they were starting to get it, but the but by putting it in in Texas, everybody in Texas could now come to a craft distillery and experience bourbon and whiskey. And definitely the craft distilleries. Um, I really got into this in 2019, and at the time, the craft distilleries were still trying to shake the few craft distilleries that did it, that weren't doing it right. Like there were some, there was there was a stigma about craft distilleries. But when I got in in 2019, that was being shaken. There was a lot of craft distilleries that were like yourself and whatever that were producing really good bourbon. And it also, like I've talked to many craft distilleries. Your bourbon is made, you it's in Texas and it's aged in Texas, and there's a certain flavor profile that is definitely Texas. And some people were always saying, Well, if you're in Texas, why in God's name would you ever try and make a bourbon that tastes like Kentucky bourbon when you know 85% of the industry is making Kentucky bourbon? You want to make a Texas bourbon that has a Texas flavor, and it probably took a little, it was took a little bit longer for you to get that, but you've achieved that at this point.
SPEAKER_06:So that was exactly the goal. We were gonna make the finest tasting, highest quality bourbon whiskey in the world. And that's been our mission since day one. I wrote that mission statement back in 2002. So that was the goal, was not to make a Kentucky bourbon, but to make something that excelled uh and was beyond a Kentucky bourbon. And I think we've done that.
SPEAKER_10:Um I'm gonna take a second, I want to share this. One of you guys read what the back of my shirt says, and then I'll explain it if I can turn it around without falling.
SPEAKER_00:Uh you gotta get lower. And go to the go to your right, I think, or left.
SPEAKER_06:And you know what it says, just tell them. Randy, expensive but worth every penny. That's what it's exactly. And um that that was I actually wrote that line, and uh every single time that we do a social media post or an advertisement in a newspaper or a billboard out on the highways, that line um gets more followers and and viewers than anybody. And and we really believe that. We think it's expensive as shit, and and I don't have a problem with that.
SPEAKER_10:Um you know, a lot of people are starting to make stuff that's expensive too, though they're catching up to you.
SPEAKER_06:It's expensive for a reason, you know. Um quality cost if you age bourbon in Texas for 10 years, um, there's not gonna be any bourbon left in the barrel.
SPEAKER_00:Or you bet you better figure out a place that might be a little bit underground.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, well, we're we're we're experimenting with that too, but I can't get anywhere. You see this bottle?
SPEAKER_10:That's a store pit. You recognize that on the back? That's Donna's signature. Yeah.
unknown:Nice.
SPEAKER_10:He takes up all the time. This was given to me by um a friend of mine that I that managed a liquor store. She gave me what was left to that's all she had. They had no more bottles for sale. So she said, here, just take this one. What's the name of the liquor store? B B in um Kingsport, Tennessee.
SPEAKER_06:Nine package. Yeah. Good people, good people. Good people, and one of the few places in Tennessee where we actually sell a lot of bourbon. Um, it all it all comes down to who your distributor partner is. And uh in Tennessee, it's a it's a franchise state, so it's a very difficult state for us to sell. Right.
SPEAKER_10:Well, and the fact that I also have a business up in that area, so I'm I'm always promoting Garrison Brothers. No matter where I go, I'm promoting. I can tell just looking over your right shoulder.
SPEAKER_06:Thank you for that. And my left shoulder. Both sides. Oh, yeah. Okay. Now I can see that. Thank you. Um this started for me. Um, I I lost my job in Texas. I was working for a software firm called Exterprise, and Exterprise was a real uh education for me. How do you build a multimillion dollar company as an incubator company? We actually stocked started in the Austin Technology Incubator, and I was employee number four at that company, and they hired me as their marketing director, and I watched this amazing Indian gentleman named Mano Saxena uh build a collaborative platform network that was just like uh Google or Amazon, and buyers and sellers came together to trade on this network on the internet, and I watched it happen. And one day I went to a presentation at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Austin on the river, and the speaker was a guy named Ken, and he talked about how great his oil and gas and uh solar program was, and it was all a collaborative network where people would come together on a training platform and buy solar gas and oil. And I was so thrilled by that. And the next morning I woke up and I opened up the Austin American Facebook newspaper, and it said, um, Enron is a fraud. And I turned to my wife over a cup of coffee and I said, Honey, this ain't good for us. I think that our business is gonna go down. We had already sold the uh business to Commerce One out in California for$178 million, and Commerce One declared bankruptcy that day, and we declared bankruptcy the next day, and I had no job. And so I had to figure out what I was gonna do. And I was laying in bed with my wife two years later. I still didn't have a job, and I was open opened up the Austin American Statesman, and there was an article about a guy who's gonna build the fourth vodka distillery in Texas. And I said to my wife, because she drank a lot of vodka back in those days, and I said, Why would somebody spend seven million dollars to to build a vodka distillery? Why don't they build something that tastes good like a bourbon distillery? Um at least at least that's got flavor and taste and and and composition. And she said, Well, you know, as much of that stuff as you drink, maybe you should. Maybe we'd save money. You know, and that sounded like an invitation for me to go to Kentucky, and I did. And I met some of the most beautiful people in Kentucky that I've ever met, and I still consider them friends today. I met Elmer T. Lee, I met Bill Samuels and Nancy Samuels, I met Dave Pickerell, I met uh the the guys over at Heaven Hill. Um, and I still consider them friends today. And I could pick up the phone, I could call them and say, Why is my fermentation only lasting five days? I want I want it to go to six. Why is why is my my sugar content so low in my fermentation? Why am I not getting uh absorption from the barrels? All the uh I'm getting complete absorption for the barrels to the point where it's after five years of aging in Texas, it's gone. It's there's only there's no liquid left in the barrel. And how do I fix that? And I got some great advice. And I I got to meet a lot of the most important people in the bourbon bourbon industry in Kentucky, like the calls beans at uh Kentucky bourbon distillers, and um they all gave me advice, they all gave me recipes, they all gave me barrel recipes because that's part of the quotient too. How do you find your barrel and how long do you char your barrel? And that's that's a big, that's a significant factor. And so I've been very lucky, lucky.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and and it is that you met the people, but that is the that's one thing that we just tell everybody in the industry. Everybody, like when you go to a bourbon festival, it's not like each place of the the people that work at the different distilleries, they're all just separate at each different, they're all hanging out at night together. The craft distilleries or the the what either whatever the people within the industry are so respectful to each other. I mean, one, I really think it comes down to there's not really you're the only thing that you compete against as a bourbon producer is yourselves. It's like you got if you're gonna put good stuff on the shelf and you market it and promote it the way it needs to be marketed and promoted, you're gonna be able to um be successful. For instance, you know, you're coming on the podcast. I'm sure you've done a lot, you've been a lot of different places, your distiller's been a lot of different places, you guys have been everywhere, and that's part of the industry that boots on the ground. It's kind of like when you meet somebody who has like you've started it from a point of love of bourbon, and you've taken it to this point, the and then you get to meet you. When you walk into the store on the shelf, you now associate you with your bourbon or your master distiller with your bourbon, and you've met them, and now you make a decision to purchase your brand. But if you just send it into the state and you don't put anything behind it and you don't get out there and promote it, and people don't get to meet you, that's then when they walk in, they really don't have an idea yet of what it is. And that's one of the things as podcasters that we love to do is promote the brand so that when someone walks in and they've seen you on the podcast, that they well, they're like, There's Garrison Brothers. That's what they were talking about, and they're gonna make that decision because there is so many, but then what makes them come back after they've made that decision is you're putting good quality in the bottle. And if you can if you're making good bourbon, um the the and that gets us to that part of the question of where the industry is right now, and that's where I really feel the people who do the legwork and they're doing the hard work and then they're producing good bourbon. The that it's not really um the people buying bourbon, they're buying these bourbons still, you know, especially the allocated stuff, the stuff that's a little bit more expensive. I see I see bottles now, just like what what Buffalo Trace does. They're selling, they come to Ohio and they might have three different events at in three different cities where they have 18$7,500 bottles in each place, and they sell it out. It's just it's like I don't see that that that the people are backing off these allocated, these well, you know, well-made whiskeys. And you know, I mean, what's your opinion on it? What are you seeing? You know, you're you're you're on the ground level there.
SPEAKER_06:So there's two big issues going on in the bourbon world. Um, I just read an article today um uh that was talking about how bourbon is not what it used to be. Um when Buffalo Trace introduced Pappy Van Winkle and Pappy Van Winkle just kept this linkprog in price. I used to go to Toddy's in the in Bargetown, and I used to buy Papi Van Winkle for$29.99 a bottle. It was no big deal. And when I tasted it, I also felt the same way about it. It was no big deal. It was it was yeah, it's 23 years old. Sure, fantastic, cool. How can they possibly do that? In Texas, you can't do that. In 23 years, there's no liquid left in the barrel. So, but what happens in Texas is the the proof goes up and the the the barrel liquid goes down. Um it's it's expected. We we know that's gonna happen. But the liquid that's left in that barrel after five or six or seven years is freaking fantastic. And and and because it's absorbed so much sugars from the the white American oak barrels. So going back to your question, which is about the industry and what's happening, there are, I think, 150 bourbon distilleries in Kentucky today. And they are all well financed. And then at the same time, you're seeing all these bankruptcies happen. Look at Uncle Nearest. Look at look at there's five or six monstrous bankruptcies happening because the banks have loaned money to these distilleries, which is insane, because the banks can't take possession of the liquid. They legally can't do that. They're not DSPs, distilled spirits plants. They can't take possession of the liquid. So why are these banks loaning them money? Because the bourbon boom was on, and the bank said, I want to be part of the bourbon boom, which is just stupid. I mean, I look at um the Uncle Nero story, and it just breaks my heart because everybody read that book about about um Jack Daniels and and how his his little I mean that book was put out by Brown Foreman, and I read the book. I read the book back in 2002. And so everybody knows the story behind Brown Foreman and Jack Daniels and the true story. And Jack Daniels went through the same shit that I had to go through. I I made the bourbon, I created the bourbon, I created the recipes, and I turned it over to my Master Distiller. In that case, it was Uncle Nearest. And in my case, it was Donna's Todd. I said, Donners, I got to go out on the road. I got to go sell some of this stuff. So that's the same thing that Jack Daniels had to do is go out and sell it. And so he he wasn't the maker anymore. Uncle Nearest became the maker. And then Fawn Weaver stumbles upon this story because she reads the book and she convinces a bank to give her$50 million to start that distiller. You know what? I don't want to talk any bad about any other distillates out there because we're all fighting for the same customer. Um Fawn Weaver is an awesome speaker and awesome woman. So no degradation to anybody else in the business, but I started way before they did. And um it wasn't my goal, it wasn't to create sensationalism around a particular brand or a particular story. My goal was to create our own story. And I hope I've done that. I think I have done that, and I'm proud of my story, and I'm proud of our story. Um, what's happening today is there's 150 distilleries in Kentucky, in Kentucky, that have taken in over$100 million in loans from financiers, and they're gonna have to pay that back. So what's gonna happen real quickly is in the next five years, there's gonna be a ton of bourbon flooding flooding the market. It's gonna happen. It's coming out.
SPEAKER_00:Which is which is great, which is great for the for the consumer, in my opinion. Sure. I mean, people, you know, they're talking to liver doctors, too. No, I mean, honestly, the the it'll it will the prices right now and how they go about it, there's a certain amount of whatever that you can demand for the price, but as more comes out, then the price will will steady and and it'll adjust based off of you know the amount that's out there. But I will also say the places and the few places that I know that have already started to declare bankruptcy and whatnot, including there, I could have I've been associated with those places in their earlier stages as they were coming up. And they were, in my just my opinion, uh it's not a cut on them or whatever, but they were not going through doing the sound practices that I saw in other distilleries, such as yourself, and the way to go about the business, and a lot of times how they treated either their customer or the people, because I'd I've visited many, many distilleries, and I've met a lot of distillery owners and um am friends with a lot of the distillery owners or the master distillers or whatnot. And I didn't realize it, but as it started to happen, it wasn't a surprise to me based off of what started to happening. Um you know, happened. People got fired. People who helped build the the brand were all of a sudden gone, and all of a sudden there was other people in there and whatnot. And then there was in some cases there we we were promoting them, and all of a sudden I had rules. And you know, when I'm promoting with you, I want to be as utmost respected, respected, and I want to promote the brand in a very um professional way, but I was all of a sudden getting told like I wasn't getting paid any money by them to promote the brand, but I was getting told how I had to promote the brand. And when that started to happen, that makes me kind of back away. And then when stuff like that happens, I get I wasn't surprised by what's been happening. And it's always based off of you know, you can it's they're not being run like the people that how you do it. That you this is a lot of work, it's hard effort, you're proud of what you do, and you're friends with the people in the industry.
SPEAKER_06:It's friends, I think it's too. Thanks. We're sorry to interrupt your ending, but um, I think that that comes with a lot of smoke and mirrors. Uh the whiskey industry has always been here's the story that we'll tell publicly, but here's what really happened. I mean, look at if you look at Woodford Reserve, for example, it's old forester. If you take a tour of Woodford Reserve, they're gonna show you barrels in the bottling room that are all Old Forester barrels. They had to take a product that was declining in sales and and increase the value of it. And and Chris did an amazing job there. He did. He created Woodford Reserve where they built one of the most beautiful distilleries in the world. It's it's gorgeous. I love going there and I love being part of the LeBron Graham distillery.
SPEAKER_00:So I mean, you you're right. It is it's it's the only, it is the only, in my opinion, in the industry, it's the only pot-stilled, column-stilled, blended whiskey on the market. Most of it's old Forester, and then they take those pot stills and they put that together to create a I think it's a unique brand. You know what I mean? It's still, they're using them and they're producing that, but they mix those bill, you know, they're blending those bales, whatever the proportion is. Obviously, it's it's it's old Forester um, you know, heavy with Old Forester. You're right. And but then a lot of Old Forester has a certain note, and they've actually used that pot-stilled whiskey to take the old Forester note that would say, oh, that's 100% old Forester away and produce what they're doing. But like you said, it's it's like it is smoke and mirrors.
SPEAKER_06:Well, let's talk. Let's talk a little bit. I'm sorry, go on. Go. I I love Brown Foreman. I have lots, lots of friends at Brown Foreman, including Chris. He and I traveled through Germany together a long time ago. And so I'm not speaking negatively about it. Brown Florman is a great bourbon. And the fact that they reintroduced it as something different and majestical. I mean, the bottle was gorgeous. Um, I I give them nothing but credit for that. So I'm I'm not putting down that product at all. I hope you all understand that.
SPEAKER_00:I didn't take it that.
SPEAKER_10:Yeah. Let's talk about what makes this, particularly this. For those that can see, this is the boot flask, this is their small batch, and a smaller version. So if you don't, if you don't want to buy a big bottle to start with to see if you like it, you can get this one for about half the price. Get get a feel for it. Uh, you can carry it in your golf bag, it's small enough to keep there, whatever you want to do. But the flavor you get out of this, which is just just your straight bourbon whiskey, not not anything that's finished or infused, is very distinct. And you're right around the corner from Andalusia, you're right around the corner from Myland Green, you're right around the corner of a little stretch from Still Austin. But yet your flavor is different than any of any of those. And there's a two more around, pretty close if I remember right, or three, but your flavor's different. And some of the Texas flavor comes from your limestone aquifer. Everybody has access to that. What makes your your bourbon so unique?
SPEAKER_06:Uh, the first thing that we do is we use well water from our wells on the property for all the cooking and creating of the match, the beer. Um, all Garrison Brothers starts with that that small batch bourbon that's right there that you just pointed out. That's our small batch bourbon. Um, and we age it for four years, and then we decide whether these barrels are exhibiting traits that should be accented, and if they're exhibiting traits that should be accented, we'll go all in, just like honeydew. If we pull barrels out, we pull barrels out of our barn, 55 barrels a day, uh, that become our small batch of bourbon whiskey. And if they don't, if they don't taste like chocolate and and honey and uh um uh uh vanilla, if they don't exhibit those flavors, then we're gonna leave them back in the barn and do something else with them. Uh we'll make honey with them, we'll make guadalupe with them. Um if they have sweet flavors and accents like like like a pork wine might have. And then we'll it will finish them in a uh a pork task barrel to make guadalupe, for example. But it all starts with the the base, which is the small batch bourbon. And that small batch bourbon recipe came from Elmer T. Lee and Drew Colesbean and the guy that I met in Kentucky, they share recipes with me and they said, here's what you want to do. And I told Elmer T. Lee when I took him to dinner at the Apple Lee's down there in Frankfurt, and we we had a snake together and we drank a bottle of his bourbon, his German bourbon that was uh blands that was only exported to Germany. And I said, I said, tell me how I can make something this good. And he did it, and we had a great night. Um, he was like 85 years old when I met him, and and um he told me, here's your recipe if you want to do something this good. And I said to myself, and I said to Elmer, I'm not gonna release Matt Berger and till I know it's better than Bland's. If it's better than Bland's, it's going to market. And he said, Good luck. That's that's Elmer. That's who he was. He was just that kind of guy.
SPEAKER_10:And uh so I released that's a pretty brazen statement to make. I mean you did it. Hey, you get it, what I like.
SPEAKER_06:I think my bourbon's better than Bland's.
SPEAKER_10:I mean, you know how I you can tell by looking at my shelves how I feel about your bourbon. And thank you for it. But I you also can look up there and see how I feel about Blandon's.
SPEAKER_06:Right. I love Landon's and I loved Elmer. I got to Elmer's wife had passed away, and after dinner, I got to go back to his house, and we sat at this little white formica table, it was about the size of the desk that I'm sitting at now, and we drank that that bottle of of 135-proof blends together. And I've got a picture on my wall at the distillery, and you and I'm sitting there, you know, smiling, and we were smiling because we were happy, because we had too much blends, and it was a great night.
SPEAKER_00:And that's that that those stories are are throughout the industry. Um there's just sometimes, like I'm sure that night when you were when you were finished and you were thinking about it, it just it resonates. There's so many of those stories that happen and the people you meet within the industry. And you know, you're talking about Elmer, and I mean, since the bourbon boom, you know, how how um those people in the industry, when you're talking about Elmer T. Lee, and you're talking about the people, and you're talking about Booker, um, no, at the time, and you're talking about uh Jimmy Russell, who's you know, still with us of the three, but you're still talking about a time period when they were in the industry and they were making good quality bourbon and trying to figure out how to get bourbon back on the shelves and going again, but they weren't didn't, it wasn't quite the same way as it's become where as the bourbon boom went and the stories got told, they've become almost like the icons, and they're almost like uh celebrities.
SPEAKER_06:And now I'm asking the same question that you asked earlier, but in a different way. They were the producers, they were the guys that made the drink that we love so much, and the producers today are going away because all of the distilleries that are making bourbon, from Diaggio, Cornova, Ricard, Constellation, whoever, they're they have ceased production today because there's gonna be a blut on the market and they all know it. Because there's 150 new distilleries happening in Kentucky right now, and they're gonna be releasing their three, four, five, six-year-old products right now, because they have to just to have gas infusion. And so the guys that were the producers, that were the the designers, the the distillers, the the craftsmen, they're gonna become spokesmen.
SPEAKER_10:You know what I'm looking forward to? When my son is my age, 35 years from now, he's gonna be talking with somebody, and they're gonna say, you remember the old guys that made the great bourbon like Dan Garrison? You're gonna be an Albert T. Lee in 30 years. You're gonna be the guy that's don't know.
SPEAKER_05:Sadly, sadly, but I'm predicting that.
SPEAKER_06:Sadly, there's no money in that.
SPEAKER_10:Well, that's okay. You'll make money doing other stuff.
SPEAKER_06:Well, I was hoping to retire this year, but I'm pushing it back for at least five years, maybe ten years, because uh I um I do want to retire at some point, and um I'm 60 today, I'll be 70 in 10 years, and I think I can hold off that long until well Dan.
SPEAKER_10:I retired, I retired at 57 seven years ago. Um, I will say, and I'm going back to work. So retirement's not everything it's gonna have to be. Who's hiring? Can you send me an email and tell me who's hiring? Well, you gotta do what I did and go back and get another doctorate or something. So make yourself marketable. I I went and got a sec uh second doctorate so I could teach public health.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I'm I'm not retired. I have a day job, and then I've been doing this podcast, which is pretty much taken off more than I thought it ever would. It's not yet to the point where we're making money, but we're it's the it's further along than I thought it was. But at 61, I'm I'm doing two jobs.
SPEAKER_10:Well, once I retired, I still own the business. So yeah. I do have to, I do have when when it hits the fan, I'm the guy they called. So, and then I put in four days worth of work in one day.
SPEAKER_00:So let's get into the Guadalupe, okay? Because you set this up, and this is the second edition of Guadalupe. Is that what you said, Dan? It is. And you are just go into a little bit about what we talked about for everybody on this. We're we're getting close to wrapping up, but go into what this meant what this means and what you were going to do, you know, with this brand and and where it's evolved to.
SPEAKER_06:So um I I apologize in advance because it's very difficult for me to tell a short story about any of our bourbons. But the Guadalupe has a legendary story behind it. Um, I had a guy on bike bottling wine. We had 28 volunteers to come and bottle for us every single day. And he had to work at Llano Estacado Winery up in Lovick, which is kind of the oldest winery in Texas. And he turned to me during the bottling and he said, I want to talk to you at lunch. And I said, fine. And he said, I want to take your barrels and I want to age our our wine from Llano Esticado, the the Cabernet Sauvignon barrels in your barrels and see what happens, because I think it'll be fantastic. And he did, and I sent him 20 barrels of bourbon that were really wet, and the llano esticato product that came out, we called it an esticado. We traded them barrels. They sent us pork casks, 20 pork casks. So we filled those with bourbon and we aged them there and at our place. And it was absolutely crazy delicious. They sent me uh the the Cabernet Sauvignon, it was 17% alcohol by volume, but it was fantastic. Um, we sent them a couple of bottles of our uh uh what we called esticado because they gave us for trademark rights to call it esticato, of their pork finished bourbons. And we it all sell out. So I called the president, CEO of Yarrow Estacado Winery about a year later, and I said, Hey, we got to do this again. This this limited time offer was fantastic, it worked out great for us. And he said, Dan, I'm way ahead of you. Um, I've already bought 250 barrels from Makersmart. And I said, Oh shit. I came up with this idea, I pitched it to you, and then you decided to turn around and sell it to Makersmart. Did an end around, yeah. Yeah, I was pretty pissed off. Um, so we got rid of the Estacado name, uh, which they gave us the trademark rights for, and we decided to go directly to Portugal to buy pork casks from Portugal, and then they were flown into Texas um to make the the Guadalupe bourbon. Um and it it was fantastic, it was better than it ever was when we we used the estecados casks. So that's the uh that's the estecados.
SPEAKER_10:Now you said something about the second, um, but you don't mean the second year. That bottle's not the second year that it's come out, because I've got a 23 here and that's a 25. I'm sorry, I may have misunderstood. Um but Tidy said that something about it being the second version.
SPEAKER_06:The second version was called Guadalupe.
SPEAKER_10:Oh, you're talking about Guadalupe versus Estecot. Gotcha. I see, I see. Um, but I've got a 23 here of the Guadalupe, and as you can tell, it's almost gone. He's got a 25, and then what I have here is the catheter version that you guys made. And it that's the first time this has ever been made. That is correct.
SPEAKER_06:And we did that intentionally to try to help the survivors of the Guadalupe River floods. Um, we introduced that bourbon.$50 from the sale of that bourbon, and it's expensive, um, goes toward the Kerr County Relief Fund. Uh the Hill Country um I can't remember the name of the organization, but it's the Hill Country Relief Fund for the floods that happened in 2000 and uh 2024. Right. So that's what you're drinking. You did a good thing by buying that bottle, and we really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_10:Thank you. Well, my pleasure. I've got a couple of them. I can only carry so many bottles home on the plane, and I had already promised somebody a uh honeydew cast drink, which by the way is a phenomenal, phenomenal bottle too. You're once you once you take your stuffed cast drink, it just and I don't normally say that about whiskeys because I mean I drink all different strengths, but I like lower proofs a lot of times. But your stuff just goes to the next level when you get to the cast drinks.
SPEAKER_06:It does. It's kind of amazing. I mean, I've I spent this morning working with a group uh who came out to the distillery to try to create tasting notes for the Cowboy 2025, which is 146.3 proof. Holy shit, your tongue is numb for for three minutes after you drink this thing. It's it's but but it's not painful, it it doesn't burn, it doesn't create anything going down your throat. Give me one second, I want to look at something. The cowboy is is my favorite Garrison Brothers brand, but I can't afford it. I wish I could.
SPEAKER_00:So what are we when you when you're talking about affordability, it's it there's been a little bit difference. Uh I think people are a little bit more um apt. What are we talking about? How how much is the cowboy like if you were to purchase it at your distillery?
SPEAKER_06:Great question, Tiny. Um, all of our bourbons are expensive as hell. I admit it, I I get it, I I I'm not walking away from that, but here's what happens in Texas. You put the bourbon in the barrel and it sits out in the heat for five to ten years. And during that time, we lose about 13% of the contents of every single barrel due to the angel share, the evaporation. So, how can you possibly sell a bourbon for$29 or$39? You can't, because 65% of the contents of the barrel disappeared during the aging process.
SPEAKER_00:And you already paid taxes on that.
SPEAKER_06:Absolutely, every single year. And the 35% of the liquid that's still in there becomes really rare. It becomes it becomes expensive. And there that's the only way we can possibly do this business model in Texas. We're gonna create a bourbon distillery that makes the highest quality finance tasting bourbon in the world, and the aging process is the reason why. Does it cost$79 at retail total water more? Yes. And okay. I'm sorry, go on. I just want to say we're unapologetic about that. That's that's the way you make great bourbon.
SPEAKER_10:But Tiny, to answer your question, the small batch and the honeydew are gonna be about 80 bucks if you get the honeydew on sale. The um cowboys are gonna run about 270 now. Um less than 300 for sure, but around 270, 280. The single barrels are gonna run, depending on which one it is, 110, maybe to up to 150. The Guadalupe is right at it, 150 most places. Um ninety, unless you get lucky like I did, and I bought five bottles at$90 each or$99 each.
SPEAKER_06:So a part of that purchase price is gonna go to a charity. Which makes sense.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. As far as I understood that as far as what that release bottle it was, it was a little bit more expensive because the you know you were releasing money to the charity. Um, but I mean, honestly, um it's like I would say if you would have been giving me these prices three years ago, I would be at the point where I mean, I don't know. I bought a bottle three years ago at the for um through Rabbit Hole, which was their founder's, and it was$330 out the door. And then, but I would say now I've gotten to the point as a collector where, or not a consumer, not a collector, because I can't really collect anything because I open every single bottle I get. Whether you send me, I would feel if if you sent me this bottle and I wouldn't open it, I would talk about it, but I wouldn't open it, I would feel guilty because you sent me this bottle to taste, so I could tell everybody about your bourbon, and that's kind of how it is with everybody. But I will tell you, like, I I'm friends with Mark Carter, uh, who produces old Carter. And those bottles, uh,$299 to$350. I mean, you've got consumers, you're right in the in the the rare bourbon category sweet spot where people are are paying that kind of money. I I I'm in lines where something will come out. Now, there's you know, there's been a couple bottles where I've purchased it, but I haven't gone back, you know, for instance, where it's$200, but it wasn't kind of like, for instance, it's old granddad, the 16 year that they released is$199, and it's just sitting up here because realistically, when you think about when you think about Dan, when you think about old granddad, old granddad's pretty damn good, but you can for like$29.99 get$114 proof or for$16.99 get their bottled in bond. And so to go from$16.99 or$29.99 to$200, that's a big leap, even though it is a 16-year, you know what I mean? So I didn't think that worked because obviously it's still on a shelf. But when it comes to your stuff, I think you're right in the price point. I mean, I don't think it's absorbently more expensive than anybody else that's producing a good whiskey that where the quality is, and like you said, in Texas, the only other place to not. I I mean, um I know um Smoke Wagon, I mean, he's he's aging stuff in Vegas. That's about the only worse place than Texas, right? Where it's even hotter in the desert.
SPEAKER_06:Right. It's delicious to think a great job.
SPEAKER_10:Yes, they do. But in a certain distillery in Israel that we did on the pilot.
SPEAKER_00:By the by the Dead Sea, right. I think it was called Apex, right?
SPEAKER_10:Yeah, Apex. And it's, I mean, it's the hot it's 140 degrees there.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I mean, I honor you for doing this in Texas, but I will tell you that when I drink the Guadalupe or the and I pick up, there's an aspect of a Texas that's different than Kentucky. And and one of the great things about the bourbon industry is that you know, when you first get in it, you're drinking all those Kentucky bourbons and everything. And then when you've drank them all and you want to start to do other things and you start to expand into different states, I think the state of uh um, I would say Texas, Indiana. Oh, I mean, I'm partial to Ohio, but Ohio has um a couple nice distilleries here, but they keep producing really good bourbon that isn't Kentucky bourbon. And like I like I said, I'm so happy that you're producing this quality bourbon that's different than what they produce in Kentucky. It's got a different profile, different flavor. You know, there the flavors are there. I mean, I really like the honey infused, and I'm not a huge um, but I really the I think this way the honey comes out perfectly. It's not too sweet, but you can tell, like when you buy a bourbon that honey's associated with it, you're looking for a little bit sweeter bourbon, right? If you're not, then you're not, you don't understand honey.
SPEAKER_06:Well, if you bought the jack honey and the the wild turkey honey and and and the beam honey, it's a sticky, gooey, sugary thing. It's not a bourbon. That's flavored, it's almost like a liqueur. Yeah. So what we talk about when with our honey is that it's totally bourbon forward, and you won't even taste the honey until you exhale after the sip. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_10:Oh, I I let's talk about enjoying what lupe, I get all of them. I get what I call earthiness. Yep. Just kind of right there, down-to-earth flavor. I get that off of all of yours, which is that on some other southern whiskies, too.
SPEAKER_06:So here's the here's the secret. It's single distillation. Okay. Takes about 14 hours to run or run off of all of our stills. All of our stills are modeled after Elmer T. Lee's original still that I bought from Buffalo from uh Vin Dyck back in the day. I bought Elmer T. Lee's experimental still, and then all of my other stills are modeled right after that still. And the idea is not to do a doubler. There's no there's no doubler down in the basement. Um, we're doing a straight run at 128 proof coming off the the the still uh for the entire day. And it takes all day, literally 12 to 14 hours on all of our stills, and we have seven stills today. It takes 24 hours to to run that run through. And the whole idea behind it is to capture all of the oils that come from the corn and the wheat and the barley into the distillant. Nobody else does that. They call it junky. In Kentucky, they call it murky. Sometimes they call it uh um have another name for it, but I can't remember right now. But I want you to taste the oils.
SPEAKER_10:Yeah, some folks call that funky. They call it that funk.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I don't I know that's a good description. The oil that he's talking about is more like he wants the grain, he wants the grain to come out forward. He wants, he doesn't, he's not trying to strip out the grain. Whereas that column still, you can really strip the grain flavors out because you're gonna depend on the barrel.
SPEAKER_06:When you fry fried chicken, you're gonna cook it in corn oil, most likely. And that's gonna leave the flavor into the meat. We feel at Garrison Brothers that we're distilling to leave the oil flavors into the bourbon.
SPEAKER_00:So it's not a pot still, it's a column still.
SPEAKER_06:It's a pot still with an eight-plate um on it.
SPEAKER_00:So it's it's a it's one what it's like a Franklin. Yes, it's an eight-plate on top of the pot still.
SPEAKER_06:So honestly, there's no stripping still involved.
SPEAKER_00:No, I get I get it. You're you're running it on on one thing, and you're in in that as it runs, you don't keep it running the whole time. You're not right. So it's fantastic. Um, there's a flavor on this that um I've gotten on a couple of those type stills, and I always pick up, and it's to me, I can taste a little bit. The sweetness is there, but I do taste a little bit of the corn, okay? So I almost get there's a spiciness on it that is like a peppery, but it's almost like a jalapeno pepper spice to me. So you've got the sweetness, you pick up that corn. So I'm looking at, I always, when I taste this, and it's funny because a lot of times you're drink you taste creme brulee, and I do taste a little bit of chocolate on the finish on this one, like a milk chocolate. But the between the pork finish and what's going on, I get this feeling, and I I want to have corn chips and salsa while I'm eating this or drinking this. So honestly, this is more like that front bourbon's I always want in looking for unique tastes. And this comes out as so unique. And I think in today's bourbon society, this is exactly the kind of stuff people are looking for when you're looking for something different. It's good, it's fantastic, but it's not um caramel with um brown sugar forward. It is more like you get that little bit of that spice with a little bit of the corn and and it almost like Guadalupe that it actually is a perfect name for it, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_10:Now, if you step up from the one that you've got to the cast strength, I pick up a whole bunch of the port. I actually can taste the grapes on the cast drink.
SPEAKER_00:I could see now when you have a chip, which is corn for flavored, and you're pairing chips with this, it does bring out a little bit of what you're talking about and a little bit more of the milk chocolate. So it's funny, it's not the chips aren't a cigar. They're different, but they have the corn, they add a little bit more of the corn. So that's one of the things I wanted to just portray to people. If you're if you're looking for something that's really good and different, this this is the type of things that you should be doing, buying bourbon off the shelf from other regions because you're gonna get those flavor profiles that are gonna be unique and keep you um actively involved in the bourbon industry. You have to agree with that, right?
SPEAKER_10:Yeah, and one thing I want to point out is if you can be lucky enough to find some of their older stuff, uh, for example, you don't do the star like this anymore.
SPEAKER_06:Oh, I wish we did. It's really cool.
SPEAKER_10:But this one actually says it tells what the corn is. This one says it's food grain, number one white corn from farms in South Texas. This one says it's number one panhandle white. Corn harvest on this one. You actually have the date, the year of the harvest, 2010.
SPEAKER_06:Out of Dallum County. And that bottle was designed after the second Jack Daniels bottle that was ever introduced. It was intended to be kind of antique y, if you if you'll um we the the star was etched into the glass as opposed to putting a star on top of the star. Uh today we've we've switched to another bottle design.
SPEAKER_10:And the uh this one's three-year because it was distilled in barrel in 2011 and released in the fall of 2014. Yeah, so that's a fairly you got I mean, that's you guys were still pretty young at that point. We were.
SPEAKER_06:I was two three-year-old and four-year-old bourbon. Yeah.
SPEAKER_10:But that's still good juice. It is beautiful too. I really like that. That's a second, I got two bottles like that. I drove actually to Melbourne, Florida from Gainesville to get it, so that's a long way. And and I picked them up there, and I've killed one of them already. And I'm just not opening that one. I'm waiting for something really special to open that one.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, we my wife and I would go to um restaurants and bars in Texas, and I would always the first thing I do is walk up to the bar and see if I can see my bottle behind the bar, and uh I couldn't see it. And in some cases it was there, it was back behind other bottles, but I couldn't see it. So we decided to change the garrison brothers language out of the uh the type style on the bottle and make it bolder. So that's what you're seeing today, right?
SPEAKER_10:And it's interesting, you've got different stars. This this star and that star are the same. This star is different. The balleria star actually has colors, it's in blue, and the ladybird star has different pictures on the star itself, and it's in blue and other colors, so it's interesting that you do different stars for different bottles.
SPEAKER_06:Randy, you need to uh get a plane ticket to come to Texas on Friday.
SPEAKER_10:I would love to, but I start my new job on Monday. That's why I'm gonna talk about finding a way to get me a bottle of that anyway. I'm dying to get that new bottle.
SPEAKER_06:I I know a guy, so I'll work on it for you.
SPEAKER_10:I just can't get there. I mean, I don't know how badly I'm going to be there.
SPEAKER_06:It's our first, it's our first new release in 10 years. It's called Sonora. What's it called? Sonora. Sonora, yeah. Uh it's named after a town in Texas where the Sonora caverns are. And the family that owns the Sonora Caverns has been um taking care of. I mean, they're all underground ground caverns, and they've been taking care of them for years. And for every bottle you buy, five dollars goes to the Texas Cavern Association, which is a real thing. Because there's all sorts of really cool caverns in Texas where you can go on around and see the stalactites and the stalagmites, and and you guys that a state park?
SPEAKER_10:Um, it's not a state. No, Balmaray is the one that's named after the state park. Balmarayas, yes, for sure.
SPEAKER_00:So my question is when are we gonna get the cavern-aged bourbons?
SPEAKER_06:Good question.
SPEAKER_00:It makes sense. It's a little cooler in those cabin, you know, those caverns.
SPEAKER_06:You may have hit on something important. We'll talk about that.
SPEAKER_10:That may cut the angel share down quite a bit. Double your double your um yield.
SPEAKER_06:I bet it will, but it will still take 20 years to create the same kind of flavor that we're getting now. Well, that's true. That part is very true.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, if it's cavernades, they they would have to definitely understand it's gonna be different.
SPEAKER_06:So, seven years ago, I went on an experiment and I dug some holes on the ranch with a with a backhoe, and I thought about putting uh transatlantic shipping containers into the ground so that we could have that cavern style experience. But then the bourbons that were coming out of our barns that were above ground were so good, I thought, what the hell am I thinking of?
SPEAKER_00:Why would I why would I mess a good thing up? Yeah. Yes. It's not messing it up. It's just, I I mean, seriously, it's as you the the aspect of what we're talking about is 80% marketing. Because yes, it would change it, it would be different, but it but like you said, um the amount of it does does the amount it would cost to do that um supersede uh what what it's gonna make the whiskey taste like? You know, uh I just you never know, right?
SPEAKER_10:Well, from a marketing standpoint, I can tell you, because I've been marketing for thir almost 40 years with my business. You say shipping container aged underground and you say cavern aged, you're gonna do a lot better with cavern. Yeah, it's not very sexy.
SPEAKER_00:But but if you put a shipping con if you put a shipping container underground, you're technically making an underground cavern. I mean, for God's sakes, I watched I watched a show where they just took like massive amounts of shipping containers and they whatever, and they ended up making and growing marijuana underground.
SPEAKER_10:Yeah. So what you're making is a storm cellar if you're in Texas.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Well, that's that's a good thing too, right? You're not gonna lose the the they won't the underground uh caverns aren't gonna be affected by the weather.
SPEAKER_06:So the storm cellar reference is fun because the day that I was gonna have uh the day before I was gonna build my distillery where where it is right now, where all the stills are are involved, um a a tornado hit Texas and it uprooted an oak tree that was probably 150 years old, right at the spot where I was gonna have to cut that oak tree down the next day to build the distillery. And that oak tree 50 yards off it in the distance. So God was telling me that I built the place in the right place.
SPEAKER_00:So he was actually excavating for you.
SPEAKER_06:Yes, he was.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I will go, I will go with that. I believe that 100%. That that is definitely how the signs work.
SPEAKER_10:So is there anything else that you would like us to know about Garrison Brothers family, Garrison Brothers distillery, or Garrison Brothers whiskey? What do you want the world to hear about that we haven't touched on yet?
SPEAKER_06:If you go to our website and you look at the videos of the crazy Texans and Alabamans and Georgians that line up to come and get a bottle, um, uh what's gonna happen on Friday on Saturday morning with the Sonora release, there are gonna be 2,000 cars lined up down High Albert Road to 290, Highway 290. And those cars are all gonna be filled with crazy ass Texans who spend the night out there to come to a release. And it's one of the most beautiful things you could probably see because I'll drive up and down the road, giving them shots of bourbon throughout the day to keep them happy, and the cars start lining up at uh five days before the release, and we open the gates at eight o'clock on Saturday, and all those cars come cruising in, and they all stay the day there. Um, we've created this unbelievable um following, and and these fans that love our bourbon. And I really wish you both would consider coming down for a release because when you see that and they all bring bottles and they're all standing out on the road sharing bottles of different releases from different years, and it it's just it's it's family.
SPEAKER_10:So and it is so much family. I was I was at the 23rd Cowboy release. As a matter of fact, I'm in the video you made on it. Oh, are you? I was number 12 in line for that one. Nice, a guy I did not even know I'd never met before at 3 a.m. made us all breakfast burritos. That's awesome. Just that's just the kind of people that are there.
SPEAKER_05:That's what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00:So you I I mean, doing a bourbon distillery in Texas makes sense in the fact that everything Texas does is big. So having those cars now. Do you get drone footage of those cars? Do you put a drone up there? Yes. Yeah, definitely. Now, there is a festival in Texas where you guys all have a whiskey festival. What is the name of that festival?
SPEAKER_06:It's the Texas Whiskey Festival. It's run by Jake, uh good friend of mine. Uh he's he's a great guy, and he he runs that for the Texas Whiskey Association and does a great job every single year.
SPEAKER_00:Now, do you do a release before that?
SPEAKER_06:We don't. Um, a lot of the other Texas whiskey distillers do. I I created the Texas Whiskey Association um along with Balconies and a couple other um Texas distilleries like uh Iron Republic and um uh I I I helped build that organization back in 2010. Um and it's a great organization. It requires that if anybody wants to be to say that they're made in Texas, they get to have a silver star on their bottle that says certified Texas whiskey. And um, that's a big deal. And uh, so that's the way we differentiate ourselves from sourced products. Because if you're a sourced product and you're buying from MGP, that's great, that's your business model. No, no complaints against that, but you don't get to have that text display on your bottle.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and I agree, but um I uh one one uh one person that you might know, Jason Giles, uh Rosewood Bourbon. I understand right now it's not whatever, but uh he talked up the the whiskey festival and you guys exclusively when we had him on the podcast. So um one of the things, when when is that festival?
SPEAKER_06:Um you know what I have to look it up on my phone and it's I think it's in October, but uh so it's it's is it has it happened or is it gonna happen? It happens every year. September, October, November. I I I don't know what the date is.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, well, one of the years we want to come down one of the the those times, and then when we come down, we will definitely because we pick one uh we go to a couple festivals, but we try and pick one festival a year that we can make where we come down um in in in another state besides Kentucky. So one of the we'd like to come down, but when we come down, we'd definitely like to visit the distillery and you know maybe do a podcast from right from the distillery with you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:Tiny, do we have one minute? Would you guys please send me your email addresses or after this call so that I can just send you an invitation?
SPEAKER_10:We'll get that. Um we got a comment in the chat. Let's see. Recording for somebody uh for note-taking purposes. Tiny, do we have a minute or two to show one of the videos from one of these that he did from a release? Because if you'll give me sharing, I'll put it up real quick.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, you're gonna you're gonna make me try and do technical things while the podcast is going. Great.
SPEAKER_06:Randy, Randy, the best one is the cowboy bourbon from 2021, I think.
SPEAKER_10:Oh, I was gonna do the 2023 because that's the one I'm in. Oh, that'll work. Yeah. Yeah, I've got it pulled up already. I can find the 2021 real quick while he's doing what he's doing. Oh, no, you use the one you're in.
SPEAKER_00:We're almost there. Uh just hit the zoom thing, right? Hold on, hold on. There it is. Where did it go?
SPEAKER_01:Should be right there.
SPEAKER_00:There it is. Oh, so I gotta come over here. I gotta go to Find Randy. Let's go to sharing. No, I gotta go to participants.
SPEAKER_10:If I go to sharing, I click on participants, and well, I can't do it from here because I'm doing it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Hello, Monty.
SPEAKER_10:And then Nancy's in this picture with you on the video, so that's pretty cool. He is such an angel, by the way. You know that already. You know that. But I've I've seen her down here a couple of times in Florida, I've seen you down here a couple of times, I've seen her in Total Wines, I've seen Charlie at one of the dinners that y'all put on down in Tampa. And of course, I've seen you up at Browdage a couple times. But we really, really appreciate how much effort you put in as the owners to get out among the people.
SPEAKER_06:Well, okay, let me see where to Nancy's a great spokesperson for us, and so is Charlie. Um they're both idiots, but I love them.
SPEAKER_00:Give me a second, I'm gonna share this one. That sounds like a business owner. This is the go full screen. Hit full screen. Oh, hold on. We heard it just fine.
SPEAKER_10:Give me a second to figure out how to get it back to full screen.
SPEAKER_00:I'm giving you technical brains. And don't make me don't make me keep that from you forever. Right there. Is that full screen? Full screen is right, is is right in the corner. Right, right, right, right. One more, yeah, hit that. Full screen. There you go. Now hit play.
SPEAKER_06:We're not getting any sound now.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no audio. Oh, I don't know. Cowboy Burbank release you had it. It had it now. Hit play.
SPEAKER_01:This is the ninth release of Cowboy, our first hazmat urban 140.9 fruit. We got a thousand bottles that were releasing here at the ranch this morning, and about 8,600 out in the mile.
SPEAKER_10:I flew in last night from Orlando, Florida. It is my first release. It was exciting. Got to meet a lot of great folks. Some of them have been here many, many times.
SPEAKER_04:I flew from Kentucky about 12:30 this morning so that we could get us a bottle of cowboy bourbon.
SPEAKER_01:It's a real struggle for me to work my trip up here in cheese.
SPEAKER_05:We were out here about um 20 after 12, 5 in the last two years.
SPEAKER_01:We have been to every release. Everyone. It's not just the cowboy. We came to Calvin last night. I got here a little bit before midnight. This is my third release. I've been to the taste.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, it's amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:The story, the way that they persevered and their character. It brings true and how they hold these events, like they come to it, and the way that they greet you and care for you.
SPEAKER_05:Very, very unique compared to a lot of the Kentucky bourbon.
SPEAKER_04:Just enjoy the atmosphere and coming out here, and everybody's so friendly and the like music. We went to a dinner together. And then we came up here and bottled the next year, and he preferred the TV.
SPEAKER_05:I think, you know, because it's a Texas place, it makes it more feeling. Put some bourbon on the map as far as the Texas eleven goes. This is the ninth release. Cowboy bourbon potentially delicious. I think there's the live puts out the fire. I hope you feel about 2,000 bottles that will be released thanks for live. Thanks for supporting Garrison Brothers.
SPEAKER_00:All right, all you have to do is hit stop.
SPEAKER_06:That's a scalar. There you go.
SPEAKER_00:That was that was uh awesome. I will have to say the one thing, let's uh we're ready to wrap up, but um, I will say, Dan, honestly, um what I find what makes whiskey, I always think that bourbon is just the glue of the industry. It's the people within the industry. And when you go and visit, and you know, if I we come down and we visit you guys and we share a pour together, it always makes, I mean, I've been in many distilleries thieving right from the barrel with the owners or the master distillers to, you know, of the bigger the bigger places. And whiskey always tastes so much better based off your experience. And people don't realize that that's a thing because you're producing, you're you're happy, you're producing end of you know the the chemistry that makes you happy, which then puts your taste buds your puppet and orphans out. Yeah, you're putting that and it makes your taste buds work better. And that's that's why whiskey and bourbon is so amazing. I always just say it's the glue. I'm in this for the people. And you know, you know, meeting you tonight makes me excited to come to your place and be able to share a pour in person with you, you know.
SPEAKER_06:I would love for y'all to visit together. Let's let's do it, let's let's plan it. I'll let you have the release schedule of next year, and I would love to have you guys there.
SPEAKER_00:That would be great. And a little bit about us is that there's um there's another couple people plus my wife that are all part of the podcast group, and we travel all along. And you there's certain like tonight you have um Randy, the whiskey doctor, tonight, but then some nights you might have other nights. But the one thing that you always get is me. It's like the technical aspect is what I have to do, but at the same time, um, I would have to say that you're doing you're doing everything right. Uh, it's been an honor to have you on the podcast.
SPEAKER_06:Well, thank you very much.
SPEAKER_10:And Dan, I know you've got that meeting tomorrow, so we will let you go. We're probably gonna stay on. We've got some friends that will join us. We'll be on for another half hour at least.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I've got to finish up the audio podcast too. So um and if you want to stay for a couple seconds, you'll get to hear our other theme song. Sure. All right, everybody, thank you, Dan. Thank you, uh uh Whiskey Doctor for coming on tonight. Remember www.scotchybourbonboys.com for everything, Scotchy Bourbon Boys. We're on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X, and TikTok, along with Apple, iHeart, Spotify, and anywhere else you want to listen or watch us. Um, make sure, no matter what, that you like, listen, subscribe, and leave good feedback. And then also remember good bourbon equals good times and good friends. Make sure you drink responsibly, don't drink and drive, and live your life uncut and unfiltered. And I have to find where the song is because it's buried in here. There it is. All right, let's and uh here it comes.
SPEAKER_10:I love the wine on this one, Danny. It's just I know you have no more bottles. I hate that. I don't even want to drink the rest of this one because I know I've I've got this one one more, and they'll be gone. All right. What I also know is you'll be making another very good bottle to replace it. That's the important thing. Cheers.
SPEAKER_06:Cheers, man.
SPEAKER_10:Enjoy documentary. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure for us and everybody over here.
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