Reviving A Forgotten Bourbon Name with Bill McBrayer Of McBrayer Distilling

We sit down with Bill McBrayer to trace how a forgotten Kentucky bourbon legacy turns into a living brand, starting with a family story, a trademark deadline, and a mash bill hidden in the historical record. We talk through the hard parts of building a whiskey company the right way, plus the joy of watching family history become something you can taste and share. 
• the moment a trademark requirement forces real bourbon production 
• digging up William Harris McBrayer’s story and why it matters to bourbon history 
• finding the 1870 mash bill reference and recreating a high-corn legacy recipe 
• partnering with Wilderness Trail and using heirloom Bloody Butcher corn 
• navigating licensing, controlled-state hurdles, and early bottling decisions 
• securing the Cedar Brook trademark and rebuilding brand identity 
• visiting and buying land tied to the Cedar Brook distillery site near Lawrenceburg 
• Whiskey Trust and Prohibition context that shaped Kentucky bourbon brands 
• walking through the current lineup: legacy mash bill, bottled-in-bond, and weeded bourbon 
• single barrel releases, Legacy Club access, and expanding distribution 
Sign up for the legacy club, doesn't cost anything. 
A family name can disappear from bourbon shelves for decades, but it doesn’t have to stay gone. We’re joined by Bill McBrayer, president and steward of McBrayer Legacy Spirits, to unpack the true story behind bringing an old Kentucky bourbon lineage back to life and why it started with something as unromantic as a trademark deadline.

We talk about the rabbit hole that begins with genealogy research and a historic blog post, then turns into a real distilling plan when Bill learns he has to “use” the brand to keep it. From there, the conversation gets wonderfully specific: an 1870 letter connected to E H Taylor, a high-corn mash bill, heirloom Bloody Butcher red corn, and working with Wilderness Trail to recreate a legacy profile that stands out in today’s crowded craft whiskey market.

The story also moves beyond the bottle. Bill shares what it takes to navigate licensing, distribution, and the slow economics of aging Kentucky bourbon for 8, 10, or 12 years. We dig into Lawrenceburg history, the Cedar Brook distillery site, the Whiskey Trust era, and how protecting a heritage brand becomes a responsibility, not a hustle.

If you care about bourbon history, bottled-in-bond releases, single barrel picks, and building a family-owned whiskey brand with long-term purpose, you’ll want this one. Subscribe, share with a bourbon friend, and leave us a review with your favorite “lost brand” comeback story.

If You Have Gohsts

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 2:57

All right, exciting tonight. Another week loaded up. It's a Tuesday night, and welcome everybody that's watching on Facebook and YouTube, and then all of our Apple iHeart Spotify listeners. But we have a special podcast for you tonight. We've got Bill McBrayer. Welcome, Bill.

SPEAKER_03 3:16

Hey Jeff. Great to be here this evening.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

And we've got CT. CT.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

Hey, I'm uh, you know, just hanging on. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here for the show. I brought my popcorn and I'm gonna sit back and watch the movie.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Yeah, but you know, having uh tonight is I I think the way that I would like to uh like to to to outline it is that it's historical. I mean,

Meet Bill McBrayer And The Mission

SPEAKER_01 3:43

what what what you what you guys are doing there with that distillery is establishing, you know, the you know, they say right online that the one of the things I noticed is that not only are you the president of McBrayer's distilling, but you're also the steward of the brand and bringing the brand back. And you guys, I will 100% say that you're when it comes to the whiskey and everything that you're doing, you're spot on on what you're doing with the whiskey.

SPEAKER_03 4:13

So yeah, thanks. You know, it was about 14 years ago when I learned the story about who William Harris McBrare was. And as a McBrare, I didn't even know it. And, you know, I got obsessed with it, figured out, you know, I thought it'd be pretty cool to retell his story to the bourbon community, and and it's been a journey, you know, 14 years later, and we've been releasing product for five years, and it's been a passion project of mine, but every day it's getting to be more and more of a full-time gig, I guess you would say, you know. Oh yeah, and it's a lot of fun. You know, dad just turned 79 maybe a month or two ago, and and you know, it it's been great spending that much time with him and and bringing this back together, you know, bringing these brands back. And and uh we're gonna just have a lot of fun. And and we feel like even after all this time, we're just starting to get going. You know, more and more people are starting to hear about us, our products are getting older and more mature, and you know, we did some things different, we did it unique, and I'm excited to tell you more about it this evening.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Okay, absolutely. That's perfect. CT, you're gonna control what what we uh taste, that's for sure. And and uh well, you guys are gonna, yeah, yeah, you are because you better get something important than if I'm gonna be controlling that part of it. Yeah, that's for sure. The question, uh okay, so was there a defining moment when you knew you wanted to revive the McBrayer name in in when you guys were doing it? Was there like a specific thing, or did it just kind of evolve?

SPEAKER_03 5:55

Well, I guess the story goes is about 14 years ago, my daughter was we were looking for colleges for her, and somebody told us to check out Center College in Danville, Kentucky, small schools, maybe playing some sports and things like that. And I was telling dad about it, and he said, Well, you know, the McBrares gave some money to that school, and I was like, Who are you talking about? And he said, The McBrare in the whiskey business. And I was like, Really? I said, So, you know, my kid wanted nothing to do with going to Danville, Kentucky from Cincinnati. However, it I was looking for the McBrare Scholarship at Center College

The Trademark Twist That Started It

SPEAKER_03 6:27

because if there's going to be one, she's definitely gonna apply for it. And, you know, so I was home all weekend looking at it and couldn't find it. And I Googled McBrare whiskey in McBrare Bourbon. And there was a blog post that came up from Jack Sullivan on prepro.com. And if you've never read his blog post, he actually passed away almost two years ago now. A lot of stories, a lot of blog posts about all these pre-prohibition whiskey people and brands. And it was WH McBrare, the judge of good whiskey, is what the title of it. And I read that and I literally got obsessed with the story. I probably didn't work for six weeks. I was in my office Googling things and doing family research and and tracing the brands and found out that the brands had, you know, survived from the 1840s all the way up to the 1980s. So when National Stillers owned the brands and they sold to Jim Beam in the 1980s, Jim Beam let our trademarks expire. And I was like, wouldn't it be cool just to own the family brands? And that's really how I started, just wanting to own the brands. And that getting trademarks and all that stuff was was pretty interesting. And there's a lot of stories behind that. And I was able to trademark, I couldn't trademark Cedarbrook right away, which was his most famous brand. And his cousin, who started the old McBrear distillery, I was able to trademark that one. But he had started as the WH McBrear distillery, so I trademarked WH McBrear as a brand. So I had the two trademarks I thought was really cool. I'm like, hey, I own these brands. And six months later, the attorney sent me another bill for $600. And I called her up and I said, I thought I had the brands. What's in the trademark? She goes, Well, have you used them? Have you put them in use? I go, Well, no, I just want on the brands. And she said, Well, you have to, when you have a trademark, you have to use it. And I was like, Oh, okay, cool. Can I just use old McBrare on a t-shirt? And am I good? And she said, No, you said you're gonna have bourbon. I'm like, oh great. So I'm gonna make bourbon then. So, you know, my wife walks in the door one day and I just said, Hey, honey, I'm gonna get in the bourbon business. And she said, Really? And I said, I don't know anything about it. I'm just gonna drink a whole bunch of it. I'm gonna figure it out. And so that was the defining moment that we were gonna go down this path and figure out how to make bourbon, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:37

And so seriously, it's been the defining moment was when they told you that that you had to that you actually had to make bourbon to obtain the trademark. And then you just then you told your wife that's what you were gonna do, and she's just like, okay, cool. That is like pretty much that's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 9:00

Yeah. So, you know, at that point, my kids are teenagers, right? And and so after dinner, you know, I'd grab a glass of bourbon because and she said she'd say, Well, honey, uh, you're gonna have a glass of bourbon tonight, it's Monday. I said, You don't understand. I am doing product research, right? You gotta do product research. And so, you know, and when you have teenagers, you have a lot of reasons to do a lot of product research, right? Yeah, because I didn't really know that much about it. And and so doing all this product research and learning all the different types of bourbon that's out there, and I continue to do all this research, right? And so we're pretty blessed as a family. The McBrears have been studying their genealogy and documenting it for over a hundred years, and so I have this genealogy book here, and this is from the 1980s, and this is just a book on the McBrears in the United States that was published in the 1980s that goes all the way back from where we came from Scotland to the United States. So the first generation that talks about it, and there were these three brothers that came from Dumfries, Scotland, through Northern Ireland, through Pennsylvania, fought in the Revolutionary War. And one of the brothers that supposedly they were seven or 21 foot tall and 900 pounds combined, according to our lore there in the book. And James had a son, his name was William, and he was a surveyor, and he came down in the James Harrods settlement, and he was surveying the wilderness trail, and some say before Daniel Boe, right? Went back and got his family, and they came to Harrodsburg, the Harrodsburg area, were granted a couple thousand acres for their service in the Revolutionary War. And then, so you know, I was doing all this research, and I went up and met one of the historians

Finding The Lost Mash Bill Letter

SPEAKER_03 10:47

who's now in his 90s, whose dad was doing the research back in the 50s. And he said, I said, Hey, I want to bring back our brands and we have all this stuff. And he said, Hey, that's really cool. That's it's not that easy. Are you gonna use the family match bill? And I'm like, what do you mean there's a family match bill? And he goes, We don't know, but we know there's a match bill of our from our family floating around. On page like 1000 on Google, there's a there was a blog post by bourbon enthusiasts from 2005. Okay, so it's like a message board, and it's got Michael Beach on there, it's got Chuck Crowdery on there, and these other folks. And this is when Michael Beach was working for the Philson Society in Louisville. And he said he had this letter from William Harris McBrair to E. H. Taylor from 1870, and on the back of the letter had the mash bill he was using, and it was this 88% corn mash bill that they talked about. And they said somebody needed to remake this bourbon and go in the barrel to 105 fruit like they did in the old days and bring back this bourbon. And I was like, Well, there's my business plan. That's how we're gonna get started. Well, that's so told, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

That's that's not a bad business plan, honestly. One, it's like you got Michael Veach talking about it and it the fact that he wants it, and that's one, what would you say, person in the whiskey industry. If he wants it, he probably knows what he's talking about, right?

SPEAKER_03 12:14

Yeah, yeah. And Chuck Brownry too. Like at that time, you know, he was very involved in the history of bourbon, and that's before bourbon really was taken off. And and so it took me a little while. So then, you know, I told dad, I said, Dad, you gotta hurry up and retire. I've got a warehouse here in Cincinnati that I run a business out of. And I said, We're gonna put a still in my warehouse and we're gonna figure out how to make that mash bill. And so, so he's like, Really? I go, Yeah, we're gonna figure this out, right? So, yeah, I mean, I think I think exactly he said, he goes, he said something to the effect of Bill, we are consumers, not producers of alcohol. And I said, Well, and he said, I don't think you're very good at in science, and neither was I. So I said, I don't, we're gonna figure it out. So we went down to the craft distiller shows in Boulevard at that time, and this is probably around 2014 or something. And we're walking around there, and all these craft guys are getting started. And this guy said he was a quarter million dollars into setting up a still before he ever started, you know, putting some grains in there. And I'm like, oh, all I need is a barrel to and again, I just needed to fill my trademark. Like, oh, I just wanted to own the brands, right? At this point, I'm not even I'm not even doing this, right? I'm just wanting to get my trademarks done. I had five years to figure it out, and and that's how I was kind of going down this path. And so then eventually I thought that was kind of stupid to spend a quarter million dollars on a still that I didn't know how to use in my warehouse. And I was talking to some other guys, I was gonna use their still, and they didn't they didn't get set up very well, and they introduced me to Pat and Shane down at Wilderness Trail in 2016. And so I took this blog post that had all these notes on it, and and I saw Pat and Shane. I said, Can you make this bourbon like this letter says? And they said, Well, yeah, we could do that. I said, Cool. I said, Can you make me one barrel? I just need one barrel for my trademarks. No, and they said, they said, no, that'd be that cost too much. I'm like, why not? You got this little pot still, and they said, no, Bill, that costs too much. But we know who Mick Brair is, and this is a big deal. And we have this 18-inch column still, and if we do one run for you,

Partnering With Wilderness Trail To Distill

SPEAKER_03 14:33

which we don't do for people, but if we do one run, we'll get 10 to 12 barrels and we'll do that for you. I go, really? And so then they told me how much that was gonna cost. I was like, huh. But I had to do it, right? So so then my dad had a buddy that was growing bloody butcher red corn in his in his farm up here in Ohio. And we said, and they always said, you know, boy, it makes some pretty interesting bourbon. And I said to those guys, hey, we want to use some heirloom corn. What about bloody butcher? And Jeff the Creed, I don't even think was around yet, because this is 2016. And he said, Well, yeah, that makes good bourbon. There's a guy out in Missouri called Wood Hat Bourbon, and he uses some bloody butcher corn, and we'll call him and get some and we'll bring it back here. And I said, Well, guys, I said, How do you know it's gonna taste good? And they said, they looked at me and they go, it was kind of like we're patent chain. Why do you think it's gonna taste good? You know, and uh, and so anyway, we made these, we got 10 barrels that first that December of 2016. And I called my attorney and I said, We made some bourbon. Are we good? And she said, Well, have you sold any of it? I said, Well, no, I haven't sold it, I just made it, you know, and so so at this point I'm four years into my five years almost with this trademark thing, right? I after one more year, I was gonna lose it and I was gonna have to reapply and all this other stuff, right? And so I said, Well, how do you how do you sell bourbon? Right? I didn't know any of this stuff. Well, first you need a federal license, right? You gotta get a federal license from the government, right? And that takes a few months typically. And then you gotta get a state license. And I live in Cincinnati, and so I got my federal license and I called the state of Ohio and I said, I need to sell some bottles of bourbon, some one-year-old bourbon or new make bourbon, and you know, white dog or whatever. How do I do that? They said, Do you not understand? We're Ohio, we're a controlled state. We don't do that. They said, Go to Kentucky, right? Oh, Kentucky, right? And they said, No problem, we'll give you an out-of-state wholesale license to do that. We just need your InSight license for Ohio. And I'm like, Well, they don't give me a license. And so that's like dealing with the mafia, right? Down in Kentucky. It took several months, and it probably took well, it took a it took an interesting thing. You know who represents the Craft Distillers Association in Kentucky? What law firm? It's the McBrera ball firm in Lexington, Kentucky.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Oh, that's

Licenses And Learning How To Sell

SPEAKER_01 18:12

interesting.

SPEAKER_03 18:13

Yeah. And so, you know, there were some phone calls made, and eventually we got our wholesale license, and and we were able to bottle one year old, one year and one day old whiskey becomes Kentucky bourbon or becomes Kentucky Bourbon. Yeah, one year and one day.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

Not straight, but Kentucky bourbon.

SPEAKER_03 18:34

It's Kentucky, it's not just bourbon, it's Kentucky bourbon. Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 18:39

Right. I think you can call it bourbon the minute it hits the barrel.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Yes, you can, but to call it in the state of the state Kentucky, it has to be in there one year and one day. And then you could ship it off to Ohio and finish it off and still call it Kentucky, but it has to spend a year in Kentucky.

SPEAKER_03 18:58

Yeah. And it it's the first, it's just one year for the barrels. But anyway, so we're bought on this one-year-old bourbon with and we have these little 375 milliliter bottles, and you stick on labels, and we're just doing 50 of them, right? Dad and I are down there and we're drinking it and we're bottling it, and we're like, doesn't this taste good? And I said, It's not supposed to taste good. And and there was a guy there that day who was working down there. His name was Kevin Curtis, who used to be a master distiller at Woodford. We had lunch with him. He is a great guy. And he came by, you know, and and we're doing the stuff. And I said, Do you want to try this? And he kind of did one of these things. He grabbed his glass and he smelled it, and he gave us this funny look. And he goes, What'd you do to this? We said, Nothing, man. We're taking out this barrel and we're putting it at 100 proof and putting in this model. He didn't believe it. How are you filtering this? And he went over to the guy that was pulling out of the barrel. He came back and goes, Guys, this is some of the best one-year-old bourbon I've ever tasted. And I'm like, You're just you're joking. He said, No, it's really good. So that second year, we were making more whiskey and we got 12 barrels, right? And so I was like, man, this stuff is good. We're gonna be great. Let's double our capacity. We got 24 barrels our third year.

unknown 20:12

Right.

SPEAKER_03 20:13

And then the fourth year, we got 34 barrels made. So for four years in a row, we went from 10 to 12 to 24 to 34 barrels. And then and then when it became four years old, we did a release, right? And so we bottled at barrel strength five barrels. It was our batch one. And we have it set up on our website for our legacy club. And we sent our note out to our legacy club, and it sold out in a week. And it it it was great. And I'm like, oh what an awesome business this is. My little hobby, I want to make this my retirement gig. So how do I how do I do that? So then we started laying down 300 barrels a year, right? And and then we did, then I told Pad, yeah, I said, I'd really like to do some more. And they said, nope, we're sold out. You can do 300 and that's it. And the price is going up. I'm like, really? And and so we're starting to lay down these barrels, and then I sourced some bar bourbon to do our old McRae label because I wanted to get that trademark. I want to keep doing that one. So then we got some barrels from Barntown Bourbon, and and you know, that's kind of how the journey, I guess, just started. It's a long story, but that's how we kind of got started and down this little rabbit hole.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

Well, that's a phenomenal story. I really, I mean, it's it's just kind of like, and the whole time you're the you what would you okay? So the industry ha as you know, you have the McBrayer name of all this, and you're trying to obtain these uh iconic brands to bring it back into the family, and then you're basically the industry, it's almost as if the industry, I feel like it's so okay. This is gonna be a crazy thing, but if you watched ever seen the movie Moana, it was almost like the water was calling her and whatever. It's almost like the whiskey industry is basically doing the same thing the water did to her is doing to you because you're just going, well, what's next? And then you find out about that, and what's next, and you keep on this journey, but but at the same time, well, let's just let's have the greatest ending or or whatever is that you like become the greatness back, you bring the that greatness back of your name. You are picking, you did pick great people to help you, you know what I mean. These the people who are there make a lot of money, uh, and not a lot of really good bourbon, not money. I didn't mean that, but a lot of money too, they used to. But Greg said he would take you and because he worked for Wild Turkey, Greg Schneider, and he also does four branches now, and he used and used to do chick distilled chicken cock at Bargetown Bourbon Company.

SPEAKER_03 23:07

Oh, I know I know Greg Schneider. I love Greg Snyder. We've never met before.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

Okay. So he said that he would take you on the wild turkey property where the what was it?

SPEAKER_02 23:20

He said, it's uh it's the remnants of the Dowling and Cedar Brook distilleries.

SPEAKER_03 23:27

Well, let me tell you about those a couple more stories about that. So a couple things there. So we'll we'll start about the Cedar Brook brand. So I couldn't get the Cedar Brook trademark. So I got I got the WH McBrear trademark, I got the old McRair trademark. We're putting four year old juice in the bottle. We're selling it through our legacy club. And I really wanted to get the Cedar Brook trademark. And I couldn't get the Cedar Brook trademark originally because there's a wine called Cedar Brook out in California. And actually, it has the same font as our old Cedar Brook models on this wine bottle. So I got denied twice and I called this attorney and I said, we need to figure this out. So what we did is we were able to trademark W.H. McBrayer Cedar Brook Bourbon, excluding wine. And it cost several thousands of dollars and it cost several times going through it. I really wanted that brand. So we got the Cedar Brook brand, and that was pretty awesome. So then we so at that point, we've got we're we're just continuing to acquire our intellectual property, right? We're we're bringing back his old trademark that we have on the bottle with the McBror monogram. We're doing historical mash bills. Our old McBror bottle is a remake of a bottle from 1910, which I can talk about. And so anyway, for all these years, I said I wanted to go see the old Cedar Brook distillery in Lawrenceburg, right? And they said, Well, Bill, it's down Cedar Brook Road. I go, but they said there's some homes back there now. I said, it's fine. I'll go down Cedar Brook Road and I'll just go look around.

Cedar Brook Trademark Battles And Wins

SPEAKER_03 25:00

And they said, Well, Bill, don't do that. Because the guy that owns that property out there, he's kind of crazy. And if he sees you, he will shoot you. I said, Come on, man. Really? And so I'm talking to I'm talking to Bo Garrett there at Wild Turkey one day. Yeah. And he said, he said, I love your history. We could, you know, they helped us get started. And so T.B. Rippe worked for McBrare in 1860 as his master distiller. And he helped him buy his first distillery as his partner. And then T.B. Rippe bought him out a year later. Now, at the same time, he's buying the old McBrare distillery over in New Market, Kentucky, that was started by his cousin. You know, and then a few years later, he's doing all kinds of other things. So I you can kind of picture, you know, bourbon starting to take off right around or right after the Civil War, right? So he established a distillery in 1847 down on this property that's down on what's now Cedar Brook Road. So long story short, we're, I don't know, this would have been almost three years ago now. I'm looking for a place to set up a tasting room. And I live in Cincinnati and I'm looking at this fire station in Covington that's from the 1800s. I thought it'd be kind of cool. And I think this deal is gonna happen. And it just gets stupid and the deal falls apart. And I tell these guys to pound it because I got dumb. And I'm just like, shit, I gotta start over. So then I get this call from Joni Clark, who is a friend of Bo's, who goes to school with Danny and Celeste Robinson, who owns the property where the Cedar Brook distillery was. And she said, I'm gonna take you down there and introduce you to him. So we we drive down the Cedar Brook Road, and if you ever have a chance, we'll get you down there someday. It is way off the Ver Sales Road. Okay, Versales Road is from downtown Barnesburg towards Wild Turkey and Larrickon, right? And so we go down there, we go to this guy's house, and he comes out and he's got a beard down in the middle of his chest, he's got hair down the middle of his back, you know. He's also in the documentary you just watched, Chris. And he comes out and I hand him a bottle of the judge, and he gives me this huge hug, right? And we go into his house, he's got six 10-point bucks on the top of his mantle on his fireplace. And I get talking to him, and I said, I said, Hey, you seem like a really nice guy. I heard if I didn't come down here, you'd have shot me. And he smiles and he says, You know, Bill, I've had this property, I had 50 acres out here, and I've had it for 25 years. And when I moved

Walking The Cedar Brook Distillery Land

SPEAKER_03 27:32

out here, there was a lot of bad stuff going on in these woods. There was meth labs and all this crazy stuff going on. And he said, I had to, I had to get these people out of here. And he says, So I kind of have a reputation around town. I said, Yes, you do. And he kind of smiles, he kind of looks at me and goes, Let me tell you something. I've never shot anybody. He didn't say he didn't shoot right above their heads or right at their feet, but he said he never shot anybody. And so, anyways, he takes us around the property and he had taken care of this property and loved the Cedar Brook. He loves this piece of property. And he shows us this spring in Cedar Brook Creek that's never gone dry and where the pump house was right off of the spring, takes us down where the very first distillery was, takes us up on this hill where the McBrears built the house in the 1700s, and then takes us down to where the expanded distillery was and showed us all the stuff. And it was remarkable, right? And so we go home at night, and the very next morning, eight o'clock in the morning, he calls me. He says, Bill, I had a great time with you. And he said, I couldn't sleep last night. I got on the internet this morning, and the the attached farm that was part of the property, that was part of the distillery property is for spent for sale, and you need to come back down here and need to check this out, right? So I go back down there, and this is 130 acres of farmland that is where Minnick Brair also put the rail line through Anderson County. So towards the end of this, he was the he was the first judge in Anderson County, he was a state senator, ran a merchant store, huge distillery, right? Cattle rancher, and towards the end he put the rail line through there. He knew how big a deal it was. And so he donated a portion of that land, of his distillery land, so the rail line would run by it by his distillery, right? And it and on this property is the old rail line that the city had already started funding to be a rails to trails project. So this trail starts at this piece of property, goes a mile to the Cedar Brook Bridge, that looks down at the old distillery site. And when you go over that bridge, you're gonna end at wild turkey. And I'm like, and it's this beautiful piece of property. And I called my wife and I said, Well, honey, I think I found what I need to do next. And she says, Really? And I go, Well, here's this piece of property down here, and you know, she says, Well, you better buy it. I go, Well, it's 130 acres. She said, Well, you better figure it out. And so I'm like, Okay. So, you know, so then I bought this, but it was this thing that happened, right? Like you talk about it, those things I don't think happened by accident. Nope.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

No, it's right, a calling. You're it's called and and it is in the it it it this kind of stuff does happen in the whiskey industry or the the whiskey world, the whiskey life. People are so similar in their values, it's just a value. And when they see people who have shared values, things seem to work out. And that's just kind of like what I that's why when I got into this, why I never got I've not gotten out of it. And it's another reason why I love to do the podcast, is because I get to meet people like you, and it, you know, people are like, well, you should start your own brand. And and you know, that that's but I'm I'm like, but that would mean I would be working on my own brand, and I would not be able to keep meeting all the great people that are have their brands and talking with them and seeing them, you know, because you know, seeing you guys go through the journey and all the great things, and to be a little bit of part of that is what's so much fun for me.

SPEAKER_03 31:23

Well, you are right. There are so many wonderful people in this that are associated with bourbon, right? It I can't tell you how many friends of mine I've reconnected with over bourbon over the last 10 years because of this. And, you know, like Bo Garrett, I saw Bo Garrett Saturday at the Rippey House when they did this documentary film release, right? And I mean, he gives me a big, huge hug. You know, he's just like the nicest guy ever. Bo is and and all these Kave from you know Rabbit Hole and now Mary Dowling, he was there, just wonderful, nice, down-to-earth people that I really enjoyed being with.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

Yeah, and our big spokes spokesman for Lawrence Berg, you know, like Bo being that I mean, Bo was Bo was willing to be the mixologist, if you will, at Wild Turkey's temporary thing that they had set up there when they were doing their renovation. Bo was doing bartending. You know, he was doing that. He wasn't able to do tours and all that. As much knowledge as the guy had, he was willing to do whatever it needed to be done to keep that, you know, the stories going and all that. I do have one question about the property because and you we talked about that property before, but is it so the property that you acquired, is it part of what the original distillery set on, Cedar Brook, or is it next to it?

SPEAKER_03 32:51

Like yeah, so it was a portion of the land that McBrare owned that was next attached to the distillery site. I think there's another parcel that's been attached to it now, but I don't really know because the the courthouse and all the old records burnt down like in the night eight 1960s. So, really getting the history behind it. I do know it was documented when Julius Kessler and the whiskey trust owned it. There was 222 acres that was part of the Cedar Brook distillery site. So it could have all been there, but I do know that the portion that the rails to trails part that we that goes right to the middle of our property was owned by McBrie and part of the Cedar Brook distillery. So, yes, the where the homes are now, you never want to have a distillery down there now because it's way down the hill and it's all flood area and and different things. So it was definitely part of the old distillery at one time.

SPEAKER_02 33:47

Well, and I think that's the thing too, and you said that about the flood area and people, you know, especially with the recent stuff that's gone on at Buffalo Trace for one, and then Glenn's Creek, you know, because he's gotten hammered with a couple of really bad, you know, floods. But people don't realize they were all put there for a reason. You know, the the the water was the way to get the whisky or bourbon on to the market to sell it. You know, you didn't have a semi that showed up and had a forklift and loaded it into your truck and took off with it. You had to get it on a boat, get it down the river so you could sell it. And then the judge comes up with this, you know, the thinking about this guy's mind to me is pretty awesome. Like thinking, like, here's a judge that's doing all these other things. Like you said, he's he's an owner of this, he does that. But then he thinks, you know what? Uh you know, the boats are doing great, but the trains are where it's at. And he puts that crazy brid that train track across that gorge.

SPEAKER_03 34:51

Yes. So the one that's built, we know how to be built in the 1880s is the Cedar Brook Bridge, right? It's not the Kentucky River Bridge where Wild Turkey is, it's on around the corner. And you the you look at the construction of that bridge, I think there's more carbon in that steel. That steel is so hard, the welding is unbelievable, the strapping, it's it's still sturdy. You know, 150 years later. And now the rail, you know, the railroad uh ties and all those things are all you know rotten and things like that. And they have a plan on how to make it a walking path, you know, across it. And so, you know, what a journey this has been, right? And, you know, I own another business. I'm in the commercial loading dock and door business. I started that 30 years ago out of my condo. And, you know, I was 25 years old, and and I needed to provide my, you know, start a family, provide for my family, right? And that business was about making money, right? And when you get to start a business that's just about purpose, right? The purpose was to retell the story of William Harris McBrear. And really, the original goal of mine was to put him and get him in the bourbon hall of fame. I didn't even know if there was a bourbon hall of fame. I'm like, man, is there a bourbon hall of fame? He needs to be in the bourbon hall of fame. And that, and that was really the purpose, right? And then eventually, you know, this purpose, let's let's how do we make this a retirement gig, right? I learned that I'm not gonna ever be able to just not be doing something every day, right? I'm I'm built to be doing something every day. And and and so here we are, you know, going through this, and and you have all these things that keep happening, and and are they, you know, what we say now is that the spirits are guiding us.

SPEAKER_02 36:42

So, real quick question from somebody on uh Facebook. So Oceen Smith asked two two parts to this question, Bill. So he said, curious on how big you want to take McBrayer, and if you think there's any concerns for sourcing ingredients. And then, second, are you planning on trying to harvest any of the old yeast from the distillery still hanging about?

SPEAKER_03 37:06

Yeah, great questions. So, you know, I think we have to think about business maybe different today than they did say even five years ago about this business. And for me, you know, it was a 25-year business plan. It was not a five-year business plan, wrap this thing up and try to sell and do what you can. This is something I want to do the rest of my life. These are legacy things for my family. I have no intention, I don't care what the number is, they're they're not per se, right? These are meant to be back in the McGrear family, and we need to protect our family's legacy, right? And so, so where do I want to take it? Right. So we started out with 10 barrels, right? Now we're putting down 300 barrels. So we have a couple thousand barrels now in our inventory of three different mash bills. We have our piece of property, we have our we have our three brands now, our three family brands. And now we're starting to kind of figure out you know, can we sell 300 barrels of whiskey a year? Right? They're not ready yet. And then if you can maybe

Lawrenceburg History And The Whiskey Trust

SPEAKER_03 38:10

do a couple hundred, then maybe we'll do 600 barrels a year, or maybe we'll do a thousand barrels a year. And we just started distributing in Tennessee and just take it one day at a time, right? There's no nobody, the only board of directors I have is maybe probably my wife, as you know, she's a very patient lady and willing to let me do what I need to do, right? And and we're having fun with it, right? We kind of and but you know, it's an expensive business. I didn't really realize what it meant to be in the bourbon business. It's a very capital-intensive business, right? You're putting down barrels that you might sell eight, 10 to 12, because we want to we want our barrels to get older, right? We don't want to put we don't want to really put out four-year-old bourbon. We want to put out eight and ten and twelve-year-old bourbon, right? Um, and so it's gonna just take time.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

Well, that's that's a good thing when you put eight and twelve-year-old old. That means when you lay down the 300, you don't have to sell all 300 barrels when they become four years old. You can wait a little bit and you know, as your inventory, but but your story is so so cool in the fact that you you've you you're reviving your family brand, that in itself, but you know, you didn't have to go if people have the the time and the patience. You can start out like you did. You started out with 10 barrels, you only wanted to make one, but you knew, but you had to run a run. And then, you know, and and as you keep going, I do want to say that Kirk said hi. He's out in Montana, so he wanted to make sure he did a super chat for that. And then Greg Snyder. Hi, Kirk. And then Greg Snyder said he's hunted the wild when he was with wild turkey. He hunted that land and he's actually found the remnants of the cedar. Oh, here we go. And the dowling uh spending, all right, hold on. It was back. I we're just getting so far down. Yeah, he says he's walked the property and he found the remnants of the Cedar Brook distillery. So he's he, you know, he knows you've seen those already?

SPEAKER_03 40:28

Oh, yeah, yeah. So we've been down there, we have some documents of it. Some of it, so they just released a documentary. We haven't really talked about that this week by Bo Cumberland, right? And it's the Spirits of Larnsburg, and it talks about the history of bourbon in Larnsburg, Kentucky. And the McBror was a big part of that, right? Helping TD Rippy get started, you know, a brand that's also out there today called WP Sapple, right? He was McBrair's master distiller for 25 years, and he helped him start his distillery 25 years later. And you know, those are pretty big brands out of Lawrenceburg. And Bo does this did this documentary. And if you have a chance to look at it, anybody here and it's tagged on our so if you're watching this, it's tagged on our page.

SPEAKER_02 41:15

I posted it on the the Scotchy Bourbon Boys and so forth.

SPEAKER_03 41:19

So and Bo does it's about 70 minutes, and he does a great job for me.

SPEAKER_02 41:24

Bo's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 41:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 41:26

But there's so much history, there's so much history in it because you know, like the Bond family, the Saffle, you know, and you know, to hear it told by people like like Bo or you know, whoever is is talking during that. But I did not realize because I have been into Wild Turkey a couple of times, and they've been they brought out some Bond and Lillard bottles and the Saffle, and they're like, oh yeah, we found these in one of the warehouses, and we were like, Yeah, we just need to put it out and sell it. And never knew how the relation to the the area was, you know, and how you know.

SPEAKER_03 42:03

Yeah, well, they started this thing called the Whiskey Barons that was TB Rippy, WB Sapple, and Bond and Lillard, right? Which are all featured in this documentary. But I always kind of said, and I think they started that after I got my trademarks, right? So if I didn't get my trademarks, they probably would have trademarked McBroran Cedar Pro. Yeah. Right? Because he was one of the originals, right? I don't, you know, we've kind of focused our brands on 1840 when McWh McBrear established the distillery. But we know the McBrors were there in the 1770s, right? So I'm sure they were making whiskey, but we've never really gone back and did all that research and deep dive where these families, like the Hawkins and the Bonds and the Ripies, right? They they talked about those things and they were all kind of related. And uh, but McBride really influenced all of them, right? And then where he really made a name for Lawrence Burg is when he won the gold medal in Vienna, Austria in 1873. You know, that really he is really known for putting Kentucky bourbon on the international map. And as it talks about in the documentary, he kind of proved the concept of Kentucky bourbon. And then Rippey really scaled fast. Like he went bigger faster, right? And I have this book called about the history of Marinsburg, and it was written, it started in the 1800s and it was finished in after Prohibition was started. And they said that the Rippy How Rippy was a bigger distillery, but McBrear was by far the most famous distillery. You know, and this bottle behind me here, the old one there, uh the Cedar Brook one, it says it's the best known brand in the world, right on the bottom. When and that's how they advertised it. And supposedly King George, old King George in the early 1900s requested Cedar Brook for his coronation. And so we're still trying to figure out where that's come from. But that's that's family lore that's been passed down by generations. That's cool as hell. We want to prove that one, right? And they talked about it in some of Julius Ketzler's ads, you know, that it was a drink to drink of the aristocrats, right? They drank Cedar Brook bourbon. And and so you when you learn this history, you just feel this obligation to retell it and to protect it.

SPEAKER_02 44:28

And you know what, you know what I wish, and and I I think Jeff and I've talked about this, and I understand the alcohol behind it, you know, for t teaching purposes, but this is the part of history that we don't teach people in school, we don't learn about it, and so kids learn about the wars and they learn about that stuff, but they don't really learn what caused these things to happen. Because to me, that's important, just like for Lawrenceburg, what went what happened there in the late 1800s, and then with the acquisition of the the bourbon, what the heck, the trust. The whiskey trust, yeah. That literally smacks the living shit out of the bourbon industry there. And then you go through a prohibition, and it's like that's stuff we need to understand and teach because if people knew those things, we wouldn't do it again. You know, we wouldn't let those things happen again. But we don't want to talk about it like in schools, and I feel like it should be.

SPEAKER_03 45:32

Well, you know, I never really thought of myself as a history guy, but I'm now a history guy, right? I'm really diving, I mean, I I really enjoy it. And one of the things I found I've heard, and I I still want to do some more research on it. So the whiskey trust was they were controlling 90% of the alcohol in this country up to prohibition, right? So you had the EH tailors that were fighting the whiskey trust as independents, right? And that's why he's he was influential in helping with the bottle and bond back. Now, some will say he didn't have as much impact on that as history, you know, as the marketing says. However, he's competing with that. And what I heard was that the whiskey trust based in Chicago was controlling 50% of the federal taxes that were paid to the U.S. government from the alcohol taxes. That's why all our presidents came from the Midwest in the early 1900s.

SPEAKER_08 46:29

Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_03 46:30

And could you imagine if one industry had 50% of the taxes controlling our government today? I mean, what a what a crazy thing. And then when they started prohibition, that's why we had to implement an income tax to replace all that money.

SPEAKER_01 46:46

And from a history perspective, if you really understood that, you know, you might that income tax goes in effect in 1916. And then between 1916 and 1920, that's when prohibition is and and the you know the Volstedt Act. But I mean, once they established that, they so it's a it's a huge mistake by our government, honestly, because in 1916, they think through income tax, they can supplement the alcohol tax, you know what I mean, and then make it up. But it starts in 1920. They did it, I mean, it was so devastating to the farm, the farm culture, it put us in the Great Depression. I mean, I don't care what you say. When you can no longer distill the corn and the wheat and the rye that's left over and it rots, people don't grow it. And then it leads to a dust bowl. And so what's even what's even the when you look at it, it was twelve, it was 1920 to 1932, 12 years. You want to know why they repealed it? One, yes, we're in the Great Depression, right? But the other one is everything the whole they had such a huge storage that when the politicians no longer could get the bourbon out of Kentucky, yeah, they repealed it so they could start making it again. It's just, it's just and then that's not in our history at all. Like there's yeah, but but it's obvious, right?

SPEAKER_02 48:23

Here's another one to tie in there that's political that goes a little different route. But do you know why we're not able to get Cuban cigars? No, why is that? John F. Kennedy. John F. Kennedy found Cuban cigars to be so good that he bought as many as he could get bought, and then he put the embark and the embargoes and stuff on Cuba so they could not bring Cuban cigars into the country anymore. Oh my goodness. But that's the stuff, you know. Yeah, we we've dealt with this throughout history. But the one thing I was gonna say about that that goes back to Judge is he died in the 1880s, correct? Somewhere about there. And then the turn of the centuries when this trust comes along. I wonder had he been alive with his political hand, I wonder if they would not have came in and been able to acquire all the brands like they did, and then basically say, We're shutting them down and not gonna do anything.

SPEAKER_03 49:24

So McBrear had a pretty interesting thing. So he was a devout Presbyterian, as most of the Scottish people were. He and his wife built the church there in Lawrenceburg. When he passed away, his will said he wanted it as his he won he willed it to his grandchildren. His their mother had passed away, their father was a distiller, his name was D. L. Moore, and he had a distillery. D. L. Moore comes to run the family distillery, and he said three years after his death, he wanted his name stricken from the brand. Now, some people would say you know that had to do with his the Presbyterian church, the rise of the temperance movement, and things like that. Well, then D. L. Moore has to sue his wife, who was very big in the church, right, to continue to use the McBr'n name with the whiskey. And he said at the time that the McBrare name was so influential it was worth at least $200,000 to keep it as part of the brand. He actually lost it originally to her, but he won, he appealed it to the state senate, where McBrare was a state senator, and he won it. And what they said was his argument was that he didn't really mean he didn't want his name part of the brand. He just wanted his estate not to be attached to the distillery over time, so his state was protected because we spoke different back then, right? And so then he won, and he was able to keep the McRare name associated with the Cedar Brook brand, which if he hadn't done that, who knows where we would be today, right?

SPEAKER_08 51:00

Right.

SPEAKER_03 51:00

And but what was interesting to me was he sold to the Whiskey Trust in 1899, and we were just having a conversation about it after the documentary because it came up so prevalently there. I wonder if there's records of what he sold for. There's gotta be somewhere, right? Yeah, and and and how much he got for it because we know he remarried and he went to Harrodsburg and he built what was called a castle in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. And then he, you know, he had all these cattle farms out in the like Oklahoma area. He was a banker and did all these things. So, you know, I don't know. I assume his children got some of the money, but I don't know, right? And and then the whiskey trust, you know, they got Cedar Brook first. Now, towards the end of them acquiring things, they were buying it pennies on the dollar because they were just putting pressure on these distilleries to sell it, you know, those things. So the history is pretty fascinating, and you know, there's just always so much more to learn, right?

SPEAKER_01 52:02

Yeah. Do you think of this? Do you think about this? Like you you found your mash bill through Veach who dug up a letter where the mash the mash bill was on the back to EH Taylor from your from your family, you know, your it's your family talking about that. So when you went to wilderness trail with the mash bill, did you like write a letter and have the mash bill on the back so that someday, like 150 years from now, someone can find that letter?

SPEAKER_03 52:39

But that's a great thing, right? That would have been pretty cool. So no, we didn't do that. That's that's pretty interesting. But we are documenting things now.

SPEAKER_01 52:48

Yeah, right now you're you did it right here on the podcast. Maybe someone 100 years from now will watch this podcast and find out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:57

Well, we did start a book though. So we we have a book, yes, right? And so we're a brand new brand, we're a brand new brand with an 85-page history book. That's cool. 85-page coffee table book documenting kind of where we've been on this journey so far.

SPEAKER_02 53:11

And then where's your book available at, Bill? Where can you get it?

SPEAKER_03 53:14

It yeah, it's available on our website. So, you know, it's a coffee table book. You know, my wife was very nice of putting that together for us and and things one Christmas for me, just to start documenting our our history. And and you know, that's where it is kind of interesting, right? So Bo just did this documentary, probably telling some of the story of Larsburg that most most of us don't know, right? And how rich the history is in this little 12,000-person town in Anderson County, right in the middle of all these distilleries, which is interesting too, right? So that documentary talks about there was 14 distilleries right around the Civil War. I looked up a census of 1860 of the people living in Larnsburg, Kentucky. Guess how many people were living there at the time with that many distilleries?

SPEAKER_02 54:11

Probably still it's it's gonna be 50,000. Yeah, 500 people.

SPEAKER_03 54:18

500 people are living in Larnsburg, and there's 14 distilleries in 1860, right? And that and we know McFrair had 11 children, right? And the bonds had 11 children, and the repeats had 11 children, right? So there weren't that many families making up all this whiskey.

SPEAKER_01 54:37

Well, you guys accounted for like 30 percent of all the children and and family.

SPEAKER_03 54:43

Absolutely, and then they re they married each other, right?

SPEAKER_02 54:46

So so but yeah, but she says that in the documentary, and that that's another good point. Is that almost everybody in Lawrenceburg, in some way, shape, or form, has ties to somebody in that spelling because of of where they came from and how small it was.

SPEAKER_01 55:04

Yeah, bo is that home.

SPEAKER_03 55:06

You know, so oh, so anyway, you know how great is it that Bo did that? How great is that Jack Sullivan wrote that blog on prepro.com 15 years ago that allowed me to, well, even 20 years ago, right? And he's and I I found that letter, which got me going down this other thing that you know, and our family did all this research for a hundred years and all these other things. So documenting what we're doing, telling our story, getting those things out there, I don't know, it's kind of kind of cool stuff.

SPEAKER_01 55:43

You're you're it you're in this, and you it seems like you're feeding your desire to never to enjoy yourself, but not stop working. And I mean, I'm I I've talked to my I I talked to my wife about the exact same thing. I, you know, I work as a plant manager at a recycling firm, and it's it's actually gotten to the point where I've gotten been there 20 years, I've I've trained staff so I don't have to work as hard myself, all this kind of stuff. But at the same time, I look forward to doing this podcast because you know, I'll go on vacation and and rest and relaxation is overrated. I mean, if I'm not doing something, my body starts to hurt, or I just get out of sorts, you know what I mean? And it's just like you just gotta keep going. And that's when you said that, I I related to that completely. Now we've we've done all this, but let's talk about what you guys, as far as the brand goes and like your new releases and all the stuff that you've been going, because we got to promote the whiskey, because quite frankly, your mash bill is is phenomenal. I mean, I love you got a high corn mash bill right there, and that is is that adds to sweetness, and there's so much that can happen. Plus, you have the you know, it's being the distilled at the right places and in the right way. So talk about that.

SPEAKER_03 57:16

Yes. So so we'll just stay on that. That's our WH McBrear mash bill. So at the time, if you like I said, we didn't have the Cedar Brook trademark, but we really wanted to reintroduce William Harrison McBrear and somehow honor him when we're telling his story. And so we thought, well, what a great way to do that. And we put that product in a box. Uh Chris, you got one right behind you there. And it and it, you know, you can open it up and it tells our story, and then it's got the bottle inside, and and I don't know if that one's got a bottle in it or not. Well, it's behind it. Yeah, that it's behind you, right? And so so that that is our 88% corn, uh, bloody butcher heirloom corn, right? 105 barrel entry proof uh product, and we call that our legacy mashbooks. We've we call that a legacy mashbook. Nobody does that anymore. You know, 88, it's really 88.4, and I think it's 5.8% rhyme, 5.8% barley. What was nice about it is wilderness trail was able to use an enzyme to help us get the right yield, right? And it's got the nice butter note to it, it's got that nuttiness to it, and it's completely different than anything out there on the market. That product is one of double platinum in the Ascot Awards, our batch five did. And so we call that our legacy match bill. So then our old McBrare product, I'm gonna grab the bottle behind me real quick.

The Current Lineup And Flavor Profiles

SPEAKER_03 58:47

That is that is this product, right? And so that is our bottleneck and bond product. So that's a traditional bird. So WH McBrayer's cousin John, he bought this distillery and started the old McBrare distillery in New Market, Kentucky in 1870. WH later bought it, sold it to his distributor, who then later eventually sold it to E.H. Taylor because E.H. Taylor liked the McBrare brand so well. He he later moved the brand to what is now at the Castle and Key distillery in the early 1900s, and JH was still around. And this this drywaller got a hold of me maybe six years ago. He was he was taken down the drywall on a bank in Utah, and he found an old McBrell bottle in the wall. And he he he sent that to me, and it was that label, and I have that bottle at my at my office. Okay. And you know, if you look at some of our stuff, I don't know, it maybe on Instagram, right? That particular label was in a ton of movies. If you go to watch Untouchables, uh, when they go and break into the bank, if you look in the background, they're all cases of old McBride, right? And it was this label. So we're like, man, let's make this label. And I got some signs and ads back here. Back in the 1940s and 50s, it was considered a favorite of old Kentucky. So we were able to retrademark that. We're a favorite of old Kentucky. It's and we added it to the bottle right here. So this is now an eight-year stated product. It won a platinum award at the Ascots as well, right? Which we're really proud of because when those judges are tasting all those things, they're tasting everything from whatever 90 proof to 130 proof, and to to really stand out at 100-proof on that lineup really kind of is a big deal. And so that's our bottled and bond, uh, traditional bourbon. It's hunter-proof, eight-year-old age statement on it. It's a $65 bottle. We've had many people put it against Wild Turkey's date year, right? We'll put it against the Heaven Hill seven-year bottle and bond, and then we feel like we do pretty good against it. So that's our traditional bourbon. It's a 70, 18, 12 match bill with rye. And so then so then then we got the Cedar Brook trademark last. We got the Cedar Brook trademark last. And so you know, to make yeah, to make that one different. There you go. We've we decided to make that a weeded bourbon, right? So that's our weed. And so that's a 70, 21, nine weeded bourbon. That one's 100 proof. We've never really entered that one in competitions, but we'll we'll blind that next to Weller all day long. And that's a $55 bottle on our website, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:40

Well, I'm gonna, I'm I'm in, I mean, I I the Kentucky Bourbon Festival is coming quick, and then same thing with bourbon on the banks, but I'm definitely in you you have the sparked. I I I would say last year at Bourbon on the Banks, definitely talking to you and your dad, and that was that was kind of special. And you you could I got the got the feel overall, but I didn't walk away. I should have walked away with some, but I didn't. I was just talking, and then I I can't wait. I'll be in and we'll have to do we'll have to do something when I get down there.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:20

Yeah. Well, and we've been doing uh so we've been releasing on our website some single barrels, right? So we're doing a single barrels of old McRare. We're doing some Cedar Brook single barrels. I think when you did some samples, you really like the the weeded single barrel that we did.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:33

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I remember.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:36

Right now, we're actually sold out of the old McRare on our website, but we have two, we only have like two bottles of a of a barrel pick left. That was really good. And then we have one we call it chocula. And it's a weeded bourbon that's got chocolate notes in it all day long, and it is absolutely phenomenal. There's like 25 of those left on our website. We can ship those to like 40, almost 48 states now.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:00

So chocula. So that you're chocolate is what we call it. So you so that's the the count chocula cereal kind of reference, right? Yeah, definitely. I I know what that tastes like.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:13

Yeah, and if you I love a char or a chocolate note or whatever you want to call it on a bourbon. I mean, to me, that's one of my favorite notes in a bourbon. And uh that one's full of it, so it's one of my favorites. So we're doing single barrels. We we we release stuff through our legacy club, and then we are distributing limitedly in Kentucky right now, and we just started distributing in Tennessee, and so we are starting to distribute a little bit, and we're starting, you know, we can do restaurants and bars in Ohio, uh wholesale only. So if you have some bars that want to get stuff in Ohio, and you you know, you're up in Canton, I love Canton area. My wife's from Akron, right? I went to Baldwin Walls College up in Cleveland, so love that area. Spent a lot of time up there and and things.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:58

Well, if it's uh there's a place in downtown Canton called Oh my god, Allegra. And they just opened downtown. I know the bartender was used to be at Dravasi. I will get get you in touch, touch with those guys, and we'll get it up here, along with benders probably. They would love to have your stuff too.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:21

That'd be great. Yeah. And so, you know, we're just having a lot of fun. We're gonna see. We we I don't remember talking about it. We just broke ground. We're just moving some dirt later this week to put our first building on the property. We're putting a little pole barn up. We're gonna get all the tractors in the pole barn. We're gonna take the existing pole barn and we're going to get it cleaned up and put in a small still, and we're gonna put in a bottling line so we can be a distiller and then put a tasting room out there. And then probably the next phase would include a rick house, right? So we can really put our stuff out there on the property, go out, taste some barrels, bring it in and bottle it, right? We want to our goal is to do a traditional rick house. We are a very old, traditional legacy brand. You can't be doing this, you know, palletized stuff. We got to do it the old way, right? And and that's our goal, right? So we got a lot of work ahead of us the next couple of years. We've got bourbon that's continuing to age. We're we're looking at some, you know, we think this is a great time for NDPs, right? We've got these three mash bills and we want to have our core lineup that we just talked about, right? The WH product is a little bit unique every year, but these other two, we want to make those staples. And then, you know, how do we do something unique and different? We're still thinking that through. We've got some ideas with some different labels and something that is part of our legacy that we can talk about, and and uh it's gonna be exciting.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:49

Well, I'll throw out I know that Liberty Pole in Pennsylvania had the Kentucky,

Single Barrels Shipping And Limited Distribution

SPEAKER_01 1:05:58

uh I forget, I can't, I'm not gonna, but the main Kentucky coder, I believe, uh it came out and built them a Rick House, and they they were able to do it in two days, a smaller Kentucky style Rick House. It was like they because it because if you get it at a smaller proportion, it goes fast. I mean, they just had it. I mean, he he was like, yeah, it's something a large rickhouse in a matter of a couple days.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:30

Well they bring it in ready to go.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:32

Yeah, but I don't think he's gonna be doing 20,000 barrel rick house.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:37

No, but maybe 10. Right. If I got if if the goal is to get the 10-year-old products, you gotta have enough space, right? And right, and we've got three different mash bills that we're trying to age, and and honestly, there's a lot of barrels aging in Kentucky that are gonna need a home someday,

Building On The Property And Future Plans

SPEAKER_03 1:06:54

right? So who knows where that might go.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:57

Well, and Greg, Greg says building on Cedar Brook Road, wish you best of luck.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:06

Well, we're a little bit off of the road now, right? And so then we've got some we have the opportunity to put a road in off of Versales Road onto the property. It's a beautiful piece. I'd love to get you guys out there and show you the property someday.

SPEAKER_08 1:07:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:21

And well, we'll be down there for for a week during KVF, which that's kind of crazy, but we'll be down there for a decent amount of time during bourbon on the banks, too. So we we stayed the the one year we stayed in Lawrenceburg during the bourbon on the banks. Tell 'em. That was interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:43

Well, tell them the house that we stayed at. Well it was historical.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:49

It was is it the boys and girls house? Is that what it was called?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:52

It's it's the house in it's a it's a large house. It's got a historical marker, and it's right uh it went right outside of town, and it was the gym, the gym that J Jimmy Russell played basketball as a as a kid uh in high school is right behind the house.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:15

Oh wow, that's cool. So it's it's still in town though. It's on your way like from in town going out to uh wild turkey. It's on the left, but it's right at the edge before you get to like the gas station.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:28

But oh yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:30

It's a big old white house that we we did a we had the whole group, like all of the Scotchy Bourbon boys, we stayed there, which it was fun. They had a there was a pool and it was brick as crap, and we had we an interesting time. We started our no drama that became the new theme of anytime we went anywhere. No drama.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:51

Well, I tell you, if you want to, if you wanna, it's only 20 minutes up to Frankfurt, right? If if you can get in the Dowling House, man, I that's a great place to go to. I would love that. That would be awesome, right? So, you know what we got new coming up? Well, we just did our 250, our 250th release back in June for the 4th of July. I think I got one of those left here. Well, I think the bottles in my bag, but we we did a red, white, and blue label. Uh this one sold out in like a week and a half, right? We sold this one out. This was the WH McBrayer mash bill, we but we did a completely different profile. It was more like an apple and and pear notes, like a fruit notes, almost like an apple pie, right? From 4th of July. And we called that, you know, Scottish Roots, American Spirits, right? And if you're gonna do a 250th release of something, what better brand than the McBrare brand? Because you know, we were here for all the wars, right? And we've had there's a McBride spot in every war this country's ever had. And so that was that was really special. We still got a little bit of batch five last last that was our award-winning deal, and so we're not sure when batch six is gonna release. Or we're thinking about potentially doing a ride just for the winter time, a small small release to our legacy club, and thinking about you know a couple other things.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:11

So was it as you go down this journey? You know, as you went trying to make one barrel to keep a trademark, and then making 10, and then you're up to 300 barrels at the moment, and it's becoming it's I would say it's no longer a hobby, it's more or less a passion, and uh, and as it goes, but are you surprised at the response of like when you do a release, it just is it just that's one of the things that I've always said about the craft distillers right now. It just sells out.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:52

Yeah, I mean, we're getting we have this cult following, right? And and the the following's continuing to get a little bit bigger, you know, every year. We're trying to, you know, we kind of were we're we were in this little funk where we were just we didn't have enough barrels, right? So we were trying to do some things. And so now we're getting, you know, our our names getting out there more, we're meeting a lot more people, they're coming back because they like the product. And yeah, it's it's it's like a it's like a drug, man. Like you just you get so excited when you're like, man, I hope somebody buys something, and then it's like gone in a week, and you're like, oh man, that was awesome. What can we do next? Right. And uh, you know, would I have ever dreamed I had 2,000 barrels aging and 150 acres of property and all these trademarks, and I feel like I'm just getting started 14 years ago. I was in a documentary, we were just in Bourbon Plus magazine last month, a huge article about us. No way, man. Like this this is like way better than I ever dreamed it would be, right? And what was really cool, probably the let me tell you the best thing about what I've done. And and she just texted me. So, you know, my kid, my daughter that was looking at this college thing, I learned the story about McBrear, and she's a little volleyball player. And you know, after a volleyball game, we go out as a family with all the other parents and we go get drinks or whatever and food. And I'm telling these bourbon stories as I'm learning

New Releases And The Cult Following

SPEAKER_03 1:12:20

them, and I know they're really cool, right? But you know, I at least I think they're cool. But my my family has to hear the same story like 50 times, you know, and and so then you know, when your daughter's a teenager, it's really easy to embarrass her. So eventually it becomes hey dad, we're going out for drinks tonight with the families. Can you do me a favor and not talk about bourbon because you're really embarrassing me, right? And I'm just like, come on. Well, now, you know, my son is 26, my daughter's 29, we've got this thing, and now we're cool. Like now bourbon's cool, right? And and you know, and I said it was always cool, right? But what was probably the best part about it is is that you had this silly idea sitting in your chair that we're gonna figure out how to get bourbon. Uh, you know, at some point after dinner, the kid started betting when dad would pass out in his chair because he was drinking bourbon, doing product research every night, right? And and it became this joke. But you just keep plugging away after 14 years, and now you got at least something, right? We're stumping. And and and they get to see that and they get to watch it from the beginning to where it is now. And then now they're starting

Family Legacy Purpose And Doing It Right

SPEAKER_03 1:13:31

to get old enough to say, Hey, how can we help you with this? And how can we be part of it? And I'm like, you guys need to figure out your own thing, right? But they can help do something, right? Yeah, because it's still it's just this small little business that is a hobby that I don't take any money from, and you just keep reinvesting and you just keep reinvesting and do these things. And they're like, Well, do you want your kids to have it? I'm like, you know, yeah, if they want it, but that's a burden too, right? Family businesses can be a burden, so it's not their burden. If you know, it's my thing, and as long as I'm alive, it's gonna be happening, and then after I'm gone, hopefully they'll have it and they'll want to take care of it. But I don't ever want it to leave the family, but it's been pretty cool for those guys to see the journey and to do it with my dad, and now my wife is involved, and we're starting to get a team around us that's starting to help us out, and they do it because they love the story and they want to be part of it. And and how cool is that?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:31

Yeah, it's it's the fact the fact your dad is involved, and I mean, your dad is just I mean, and and I know he wasn't on tonight, but your people have to know your dad. He's just the sweetest guy, like he's just nice as could be. He's just so soft-spoken, just I I mean, what a he has to be an awesome grandparent to them. So for your kids to see dad and grandpa working together on this legacy, I can't imagine they don't want to be involved.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:02

Well, you know, that's pretty fun to hear that, right? Because, you know, dad just turned 79. Dad's up in Alaska fishing today, so he does that every year, and and uh he and his buddies go fishing, and and that's his thing. So I'm sorry he couldn't be on tonight. But you know, dad, when he was younger, man, he was a hard driver. Like, I mean, he he kicked our butt, right? And and now, you know, as we go through this, and you know, at some point you're always working for your dad, but I think he's starting to understand that maybe, you know, I'm able to do some things now without him, and you know, as far as running a business, but we do it together. We've only argued maybe a few times about it, you know, got a couple, a couple disagreements about it, but he is such a wonderful guy, and he's starting to he's mellowed out and he's gotten older, and and he loves being part of it too. And he's you know, the house that we bought on the property down there, or part of the property, he's been down there helping run the renovations and getting it, you know, cleaned up. And again, I think, you know, going back, going back where we were we were talking about things, you know, you gotta have purpose every day. You gotta get up with purpose every day. And you know, that's what that's what this is, and that's what it is for him too. And when you're doing something that's bigger than yourself, right? You're doing something that's that's historical, you're you're bringing back a legacy, you and when you do that, right, you have to protect it, right? I can't I can't screw it up. I'm I'm building on somebody else's back that started this thing 170 years ago, right? You have a responsibility there, right? You have a responsibility to not screw it up, not you do the right thing every day, right? Protect the brands, and and that's a big responsibility.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:51

So great, great said just to throw this in there. Yeah, so the the retained attorney for wild turkey, guess what his name was?

SPEAKER_03 1:17:02

Was he the McBrare?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:03

Yeah. Really? Yeah, he says, he says, I believe it it was your dad.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:10

No, it wasn't my dad, but um it's not Carl McBrare, he's the historian. The McBrare that was the retained attorney that the McBrare firm, you know, he he was pretty big in the bourbon space. It might have been from the McBrare firm that was working with Turkey.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:25

No, he said it was here in Lexington.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:27

They said it was from Lexington.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:29

Yeah, he said they they they retained him while he was there, and then at one point they realized they didn't need him because they never needed any because so they left well and then you know the head of operations right now at Fort Roses is a Brian McBrider.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:46

Okay, from from Moorhead, Kentucky. Wow, and so a lot of McBride is still floating around. It was a forgotten name in the bourbon space, right? But the brands were part of bourbon for 140 years. It wasn't just a small amount of time, it was 140 years, yeah, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:18:03

That's a long time, and you know, and and not just small, not just a small amount. I mean, made a humongous impact in what became Lawrenceburg's bourbon, you know. It's like it's it's well, it's it it's cool. Would Rippy be there? Would any of those really have taken and done what they did if it weren't for that path, you know, put down?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:28

So so Rippy became Turkey, right? Rippy became turt wild turkey. And then you you're restoring the McBrayer name, and then Mary Dolling's restoring the Dolling name. So they're all being they're they're all you know going forward, you know, and becoming part of the bourbon industry again. And it's the history is just so amazing in the fact that, especially in the bourbon, you know, you people don't realize that it's it's something that is that just keeps going and lasts, and it might be shelved for a while, but at one point it comes back. Now, how it comes back is there's there's many different ways for stuff to come back. Some some of it can come back poorly, other times other things are much better, and I think you're doing your family name, you know, justice. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:34

One last story about his influence. So his sister Mary was very influential in his life. It's long story there. And she she remarried later in life, and she had a she remarried uh a doctor in town, and they had a kid together, and he was orphaned. They both had passed away when the kid was six years old, and the judge adopted him, and his name was CM Dedman. And he helped him buy he helped him for his wedding present, he gave him the money and land to start his distillery over in Harrodsburg, and his brand was called Kentucky Owl. And so Dixon Deadman is a McBrare in some ways. Okay. And so when I went to the Beaumont Inn and I met Dixon for the because I learned the story, right? I actually read about it in our in our family history book, and and I'm like, I was going around asking these people, hey, I need to make bourbon. They go, I tell them the story, they go, Oh, that's a really good story. You're doing like Kentucky Allen. I'm like, I don't know who Kentucky Al is, I don't give a shit. I just want to do this because I want to, right? And so then I learned the story that you know he he was influenced and started by the McBrear, the judge. And I went to I went to the Beaumont Inn and I asked for Dixon when I had a one-year-old bottle, and I said, Hey, I want you to try this. And he took me to his tasting room, and he has a picture of the judge in his tasting room. And I was like, No way. And so that was pretty cool. He's been such a good person at the beginning that I was able to bounce ideas off of. He actually helped me blend batch one, showed us kind of how he did something with a five-barrel blend. And he's so talented, and he's such a great guy. And I'm so happy for what he's done with 2XO.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:24

And yeah, and then your his association with Mark Carter. I mean, it's just like, yeah, and and the old Carter brand. I mean, so it's just like like what's great is we don't real sometimes you don't sit back and realize that in a hundred years there's going to be an aspect of what h what's happening now that will have been written about, and people a hundred years from now that will be doing things completely will be reading about this and us, and you know what I mean, and you and what the the whole thing where they might put together Mark Carter with Dixon Deadman and then yourself and how it all evolves, because that's what we're doing right now. The history, reading back about the histories, and it's like that's one thing that this this like that's where you where you become the steward because time this is timeless, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:22:24

Yes, bourbon will always be around, Kentucky bourbon will always be great, and you know, we'll see what happens over the next generation or two. And when but if you build a solid foundation and you're doing it the right way, you know, you know, it should be a it should have the opportunity to succeed, right? You know, and and it is a tough space, right? I mean, I was just talking to somebody about one of the big brands who was working there who'd left and they was part of they bought some of such a said, man, these corporate guys, they don't know anything about what they're doing, right? About the entrepreneurial side of maybe starting a brand. And a lot of these brands are probably not gonna make it, right? But when you don't have anybody you have to report to, do whatever you want.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:09

Yeah, you know, so and you grow organically instead of buy a spreadsheet and have the meet meet quotas for investors.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:19

Yeah, and we're doing it slow, we're doing what we can when we need to. We don't have to talk to a bank, we don't have to talk to a board of advisors or b investors. It's me, my wife, my dad, right? We're doing this because we want to. I'm gonna do it the rest of my life, and it's my job to protect these brands and to put out good products. And and really, I hope that people will try us. I hope they'll give it an honest review. I think we're very proud of everything that we have out there. We like all of our products.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:53

Your your products are great, and I can't wait for a 2XO collab.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:59

That would be cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:01

Would that be a double oaked or double barreled or an extra oaky? It's it's just gonna be called the oak. The oak.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:10

It'd be called McBrayer XO.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:13

Yeah. McBrayer XO. Well, you know, what's probably true is that Dixon's great-great-grandfather or whatever it would be, probably ran around the property that we have today.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:25

Well, that's cool. Well, I mean, you could even the the brand could be based off of the judge and him, you know, those two, and you could come up with the name just off that collaboration.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:39

You know, you never know. I uh really want to do a father-son release, like Father's Day release type of thing that's a unique release just for Father's Day, you know, and take advantage of that while we can and and you know, do some other fun stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:54

So so I think we gotta we should wrap up the audio part, and then we do if you do you have any time after for about 15-20 minutes because we do invite people to come on. And I think Greg Schneider is, you know, he does a lot of consultant and everything, and I he's basically dying to talk to you because all night long be great. So throw it out to them, and I'll end up, I'll end the podcast right now, real quick, uh, as far as audio, and then we'll we'll still be live on Facebook and YouTube.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:25

All right, everybody enjoy being out here today with you guys.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:28

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:29

Thanks for coming on, Bill.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:31

Hey, this has been in the works for at least two bourbon on the banks. I'm glad we got it done before we made it to the third one.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:40

Thank you. Yes, all right, everybody. Oh, your website. Tell everybody about how to find you on your website.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:47

Yeah, so it's McFrair Legacy Spirits. We're also on Instagram and Facebook, and we communicate to people through our legacy club. So sign up for the legacy club, doesn't cost anything. They get first opportunities when we do releases. If there's anything left over, then we'll go maybe to some stores and things like that. But you know, we we we do a lot. The Legacy Club bought out the 250, right? And hopefully we'll have more of those in the near future. So McRae LegacySpares.com. You ever want to get a hold of me? Go to the contact me page that comes straight to me. And uh would love to hear from any

Where To Buy And How To Follow

SPEAKER_03 1:26:23

of you.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:24

All right, great. And we're www.scotchyburbonboys.com for all things Scotchy Bourbon Boys, Glenn Cairns, t-shirts and stuff like that, bourbon balls sometimes. And then remember we're on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X, and also Apple, iHeart, and Spotify. No matter what you do, whether you listen to us or watch us, make sure that you leave good feedback, become members, leave super chats, all that fun stuff. We put it right back into everything that we do. And then also, good bourbon equals good times and good friends. Make sure you don't drink and drive, drink responsibly, and live your life uncut and unfiltered. And our AI will take us.