Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another episode of Barrel To Bottle with Binny's Beverage Depot. I'm your esteemed host, Kristen Ellis, and of course, we've got Jeff Carlin. What's up, dude? Hey, how are you? I'm very well. I'm very excited about what we've got in store for our listeners. Me too. This is one of a kind. I mean, we compiled some audio, and you'll hear it over the next couple weeks of stuff we've done, but we were able to touch base and talk with some of the greatest whiskey makers in the world, as they would say. Right. So we did Bourbon Women, then World of Whiskies, and then we got to kind of hit it home with interviewing Jimmy and Eddie Russell. Oh my God. And talk about whiskey royalty. Exactly. No, pretty much. If you're going to talk about names that are the most popular and, of course, what's most important, the most respected. And identifiable. I mean, you were telling me this about this. These are the type of guys who get stopped in an airport and are like, holy crap, Jimmy Russell. That kind of thing. So we got to sit down with the Whiskey Hotline, who a portion of them happened to be here. Let's mention our guest host, Pat Brophy and Roger Adamson. What's up, guys? Welcome back. Good to be back. It's great to be here. Thank you. So we sat down after two nights of big events. We welcomed everybody from all over the world, right? We did Bourbon Women, which is a tremendous success this year. Sold out. We sold out World of Whiskies. And then we all got to sit down, picnic table style, in our tasting room at Binny's in Lincoln Park with Jimmy and Eddie Russell, and taste through new bourbon barrels that we're going to launch for our hand picks program. And then of course, we all got to sit around the round table and interview those guys. For those who don't know, the World of Whiskies is like the biggest whiskey tasting in the Midwest and the United States, which is huge. I mean, over 200 whiskeys. I would call it probably the biggest whiskey tasting in the Western Hemisphere, honestly. Sure, yeah. It's bigger than any whiskey fest around in America that I know of. I said that to a couple people, I got laughing. And America number one, so I got to assume it's the biggest in the hemisphere, right? I mean, it only makes sense. It does make sense. It makes perfect sense. It's a big-ass whiskey festival, if you will. We have a trade portion and a customer portion. So basically, the trade comes during the day. It's a bit, you know, it's just for them. It's just focused. We give them time with the producers and suppliers and whatnot to really learn about the products. We break for an hour, come back. You were there. It was three hours of just go time. Nothing but whiskey. But anyway, Jimmy and Eddie Russell were there. their table, I think, was probably the busiest. There was a line for those guys. People were really excited to meet them. So we sat down. We talked about what it was like for Jimmy Russell to get started. He's celebrating his 64th year in the business. He is whiskey royalty. There are a bunch of other masters, those that kind of came up around the same time as him. They're gone now, you know, and or their brands are gone or their positions have been diminished. He is the one guy that that single handedly held that banner for American whiskey and American made bourbon globally through the downtimes. You know, James Bond, everybody else in the 70s, took away our love of Brown spirits. Everyone had to be drinking white, you know, clear vodka with club soda, just to be a cool sign of the times guy. And Jimmy Russell was still there, you know, waving that bourbon flag through all those decades of bourbon diminishment. And he's still there. To the fact that he's still there today and coming to Binny's Beverage Depot for an event like that, you don't get that every day. Wild Turkey, too, it's one of those iconic brands that has been around, you know, and you want to be behind it, you want people to always have some story, either it's like their grandfather or their uncle or something like that has a back story on. Totally. Everyone has a story about Wild Turkey, you know. The first time I tried Wild Turkey was my grandfather's basement, like, oh, my dad used to drink this, or I had this one uncle who always brought this bottle to the party. He drank it. Everyone has a Wild Turkey story, everybody. For as straight of a shooter as he is, too, and adhering to just tradition, it was also fun to listen to him talk about designing American Honey. And people forget about it, they don't know. Because I think they lump it in today with all the others and they think, man, maybe kind of snuff it off, but they don't understand that. The reason you have all of this choice within that kind of flavored bourbon flavored whiskey category is because of Jimmy Russell in the 70s. God, we love Wild Turkey. So without further adieu, here he is. Please enjoy this interview, extended version dare I say of Barrel To Bottle, because we're going to let this baby run. These guys are icons, so I hope that you guys enjoy it. We did. Okay, so we are here with Jimmy and Eddie Russell, famous distillers, Wild Turkey and Russell's Reserve. Thanks for coming in today. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us. So Jimmy, how long have you been in the business? Well, if I make the September 10th this year, it'll be 64 years. 64 years. So what was it like 63 years ago compared to today? It's completely different now. Back in that day, I started out in the still ring quality control. The only difference was you go get your samples of corn, grain, fermenters, you go back and rum in the lab, and maybe for the days of week, you just had to scoop some of the corn out of the truck. But nowadays, everything's done in the lab and people unloads the grain. But you done a little bit of everything. When I started, you had to do a little bit of everything. So it's a lot more laborious many years ago than it is today. Everything's mechanized for you guys? Yes. Talking about the lab, do you think that science plays a much bigger role in your product today than it did even maybe 20 years ago? It doesn't think so much for us. There is a lot more done. I used to be just a lab guy writing down ballings and things like that. But with Jimmy, it's always just been about the taste. You do it a certain way and if it tastes right, that's what he looked at. We do take samples every day and we check everything to make sure, but it really just boils down to the taste before it goes in the barrel and as it's aged. So when you're picking barrels and you say, okay, this is a wild turkey barrel or this is a Russells Reserve barrel, what are some things you're looking for? It's kind of your house style. Well, the different things, because we only have two formulas at the Wild Turkey Distillery. We have our bourbon formula and our rye formula. So the day it's made, everything is the same process. So it's selecting the barrels for different ages, for each one of the different products to keep consistent taste and flavor. So it's basically a taste profile. I mean, you know, if you look at 101 and Kentucky spirit and Red Breed that Jimmy came up with, it's a taste profile. So you look for barrels that you're going to blend together to give that taste. Russells is a little more my style. So I have a different taste profile. It's a little more creamier, a little more sweetness. Jimmy likes the older style bourbon. It's a little bolder and bigger and spicier. So you have those taste profiles. So you try to match those. It's, to me, that's what bourbon is about, especially for us at The One Recipe, is the art of picking those barrels out and making sure that you're keeping a consistent taste. It is an art. You know, we just picked barrels for the Whiskey Hotline and the Binny's Handpick program. And we just did, what, 14, 15 different barrels and my mouth is on fire, so I can't imagine you guys having to do this every day. What's the most amount of barrels you've tasted, do you think, in one day? Well, we're tasting the samples at the store and doing the aging process. We might taste 30 or 40. We'll never taste over five or six at a time and then go back and do the job for 45 minutes. Of course, you keep on tasting. You can taste, again, your taste buds. You might miss something, especially during the aging process that you're looking for, so. So you might come back to the same barrel over time just to keep track of it and see how it's aging. For what Jimmy taught me is, you know, the nose is, you use basically all your senses. So if I have 20 samples, I go through and smell them all first. And then taste six or seven. Like he said, we'll go back to work and come back, taste six or seven. So during a day's time, I do the private barrel program there at Distillery. So, you know, most days it's two groups. So there's 15 or 16 in that that we're tasting, you know. So you don't want to taste too many. And it's sometimes with private barrels, it's a lot of people don't understand when you taste a seven or eight, you're sort of dead in your senses. So 64 years in the business, Jimmy, and you're called, one of your nicknames is the Buddha of Bourbon. And I'm just wondering, first, if you like that nickname, and two, does your wife call you that? No, my mom doesn't like that. I got that name in Japan many, many years ago. You know, in Japan, he sat on the floor with eat. Yeah. And most of the time, we got a drop off. This place was that night, wasn't a drop off. What was it like back then when you were a kid? Well, it was still based on the same more population now. It was a farming community, dairy farmers, tobacco farmers, and distilleries. Linesburg were, we lived, it's always been an old distilleries, family and town. A four-pole base, it was 12 distilleries there. Okay. So you were kind of born into the bourbon industry, literally. I've lived around it all my life. Yeah. So when did you know, what age were you, and what moment did you know that this was kind of your calling? Well, I went to work there when I was 19. And my dad worked in the bourbon business. You know, nowadays, younger people, they get out of school, what's the first thing you want to do? Get as far away from home as you can, and back home in 10 years. But my age, we want to stay at home. There was four of us that were there at that time. And my dad worked for Old Joe's at that time. Old Joe's is still in the company. And I was fortunate enough to get on with it, to go where I am now. So was there a time where you decided that you wanted to make your own? Well, there was. There is a farm that's been the same the same farm as when I went there. We make our own heath. We still have our own heath stream. And as far as I know, it's at least 64 years old. It was there when I got there. So basically, all that's been the same. And we stuck to it mostly. And basically for many years, we had some other brands made there. But for a long time, 101, that's all we had. We didn't have anything else. All we had was Wild Turkey 101. And really the first thing we come out with besides 101 was the Honey Burton. It was 1976. You used to call that Honey Liqueur? Wild Turkey Honey Liqueur. And that was kind of the first of its kind. Right. Just now come another Honey Burton. That was 1976. 1976. And did it take off right away or was it a little bit of a slow growth? It's slow growth. And how do you find it now for you guys? It's very big. I mean, I think we never sold more than 10,000 or 12,000 cases up until 2006 when we changed it to American Honey and it went to 300,000 or 400,000 pretty quick. And then everybody sort of jumped in. Of course, me being the younger guy, I was thinking, man, I need to do cherry pie and apple pie and this and that. But, you know, just knowing what Jimmy had built this business on, Wild Turkey was more traditional. So we didn't want to get into the game of doing the flavors because you have to keep coming out with new flavors. So it was really just the focus on doing great bourbon. American Honey to me is a great honey flavored bourbon. But it's just not something we really want to do with Wild Turkey. We just want to come out with the great bourbons. Was there a different flavor in the mix before the honey came out? Was there anything else on the table? You arrived at honey or was it set out to make the honey? No, we had several different forms of working on the different flavors. That's what everybody really liked. Okay. Well, what hit the cutting room floor then if you picked honey? What other ones were you working on? Well, I thought we had one with cinnamon. We should have stuck with that one. We had one with little different things in it. Actually, one of them was going to get approved by the federal government. They said it takes too much like bourbon. Too much bourbon. We had a different one. I think it was about eight or nine different ones for different flavors. Where do you source the honey? Is that sort of local? Is that kind of all over? Some bees? Yeah. That's where it starts. Is it good old Kentucky honey? Clover honey. It's really neat to see how rye has exploded lately, but I remember not that long ago there were only a few choices on the shelf, and you guys were one of the ryes. Has rye always been something that has been big for Wild Turkey? Jimmy doesn't like rye whiskey, so it wasn't a big thing, but he's always made a great rye. It's been sort of a fun thing for me, because I've been very lucky to grow up with Jimmy and Booker Noe and Elmer and those guys, and they were just very traditional about things. Rye just basically fell off the face of the earth, even though we made 101 Wild Turkey and Beam, and Old Over were basically the three you could find. As I got to start meeting new young bartenders, because we were really a retail product. And we had a lot of that older crowd in, it's a younger group. And now it's like all over the world, they see Americans are making the drinks with Rye, and they're begging for Rye also, but we've always definitely want to take care of America first. So just making sure I get enough of the 101 out there that it can be on the shelf, not only in a bar and the Russells Rye, and then we'll eventually get enough. But yeah, I'm making, I bumped it up almost 40% again this year. I used to make two days a year, one day in the spring and one day in the fall, and now it's almost two or three days a month. Is it a more difficult thing to make? You know, as far as, is it sticking in the mash tun more? Does it have a different fermentation time? It's more gummy, more sticky than every time. Yeah, the employees definitely don't like to make it because they have to do a lot more cleaning and stuff. Jimmy, what are some lifelong takeaways you would give to young and up-and-coming distillers today? Well, he'll tell you the same thing. Do it right, or don't do it at all. Don't try to push something out before it's ready. That's the big problem, but I see time to push something up. There's a lot of factors. I know he always tells some of these young guys because they do come up to us a lot, and he'll say, don't make big and hot mashes because you're trying to push too much in there. You're not giving enough beer gallons in there. You're running your stills too hard. There's just so many different factors, and it's sad that they have to put it out at two years when it's not really a good product yet. And that's the hard thing about our business. You make it today, we don't sell it for 16, 6 to 13 years. And you have to keep making it every year. You're only going to have one year of profit. So, especially the Bourbons. I think the rise are a little easier to put out at that 2 or 3 year old. Tasted some decent rise, but the Bourbons, to us, it's just, we don't even think 4 years is old enough. So at 2 or 3, it's just too young. But you got to make some money to keep going. That's the sad part about it. Eddie, what about you? What are some takeaways that you would give to young distillers today? Well, I have people ask me all the time about how can I get into it. And I'm like, well, you need to be born in the right family or rich. Because those are the two things really. But when I talk to them, it's the same thing. It's like nobody starts out making it good. The reason Wild Turkey and Jim Beam and Makers and all of those, because they've been doing it for hundreds of years and it's been passed down. And they've done with what all the new guys are going through. Because they're distilling, they're doing their distill at a too high perfs and bringing, not leaving some fusal alcohols in there and different things. So that's what I talk to them about. Don't distill so high perfs because that's a big factor in what Wild Turkey is about. I understand you can get more bottles when you can add more water to it, which is the idea of that. But when you put that first product out, people, they'll try it. And if they get a bad connotation, it's hard to ever change what people think about your product. So this was something that was really fun for me growing up. As I asked Jimmy, why do we distill with such a low perf? He said, how do you like your steak? I said medium rare. That's how I cook my whiskey because it's got a lot more flavor. But if you look at the chemical end of it, you're keeping more fusel alcohols in there. Fusel alcohols turn into esters, which are some of those fruity flavors. So you add more things in there that are going to stick around. The higher you distill, the more flavor you're taking out. Neutral grain spirits is odorless, colorless, and tasteless at 190 percent. So you distill the lower percentage. If you get in that 125 to 135, you're coming right in a right range for those fusel alcohols. Fusel alcohols by definition are bad alcohols, propanol, butanol, methanol. But those things have a reaction with the acids and the oxygen and turn into esters, which turn out to be fruity flavors. So luckily for me, learning in his way was exactly how he wanted me to learn it was, because it tastes right when you do it this way. But going back and then looking at the science behind it and really getting a deeper understanding of why those things happen. Is there a certain age that each of you prefer? We've run into this all the time lately that people assume older equals better. Yeah, Jimmy's definitely around that 8 year old to 10 year old. I love a 10 to 15. So we're a little different. That's what's so cool about us at Wild Turkey with Jimmy and me and my son. I mean, he thinks rye is the best thing we make and Jimmy doesn't drink any rye. So it's fun to have those three different perspectives in Wild Turkey. But, you know, I think like Jimmy's talking about, I did a 17 year old that was aged in brick, which was fantastic flavors. But on the very back end of it, it sort of had this little woody, almost bitter taste. And that's what we don't like in the in the older age. It lost fruits the whole time. Well, I wound up getting 16 gallons out of 53 gallon barrels. That's another reason you don't want to do it. Now, when you say aged in brick, was that in one of the old Taylor warehouse? It sure was. So, I ran out of warehouse space in 1995. And I actually put a little down at this ancient age, still, at the Buffalo Trace. And wound up renting two big 50,000 barrel warehouses down at the old Taylor Distillery. And Jimmy just kept saying no. And I'm like, we got to we're not going to make whiskey because we were completely full. And put about 80,000 barrels down there. And at eight years, it tasted like it was four years old. And normally at 12 or 13, where it starts going down that bell curve, it started going up that bell curve. And at 17, it was like the flavors were just amazing. But lost 20 proof points and two thirds of my liquid. Wow. We call it a 200 mile bourbon. What's it been like having your son, Eddie Bruce, working with you guys, your grandson? You know, that's the most enjoyable thing you can have when your family is all together. And that's one thing I've never done. You don't push your family into anything. They've got to make that decision. We have Eddie who's gotten older, we've got an older son. He never was in the business. But Eddie come there one summer. He's playing football for Western Kentucky University. What do you say? It's been a long 36 summers now. He didn't do this much. He stays. They got to want to do it. If you push them into something and they don't like it, then mama's mad when you go home. But they got to enjoy it inside what they want to do for themselves. My best story on that is the all-time best for me is I started there as the bottle man in the Union, rolling barrels, dumping bottles, stacking cases. And about four years in, Jimmy brought me into the stirrer and taught me how to make the yeast and the whiskey. And then I worked in ball and maintenance, took over the maturation and my son comes in and he's moved back home. We're going to work every day and they all call him Mimmy. And he said, Mimmy wants to talk to me this morning. I said, OK, because where he never did any computer work, I have computer work to do every day. And he comes back in about 10 minutes and he's got this big smile on his face and this notebook. And I said, what you got? He said, these are Mimmy's handwritten notes from 1956 and 57. And they was when he was training. I've been there 30 years. I've never seen that book. So it's a little different son and grandson. There's a lot of those experiments in that book, too. Yeah, a lot. A lot of those experiments in that book. So there's some interesting stories about, in the year 2000, I want to touch on the fire that happened. It's a very famous story when you guys had Rackhouse Burn by the river. Is it true? And Roger and I were talking about this before, that people were going down to the riverbanks with buckets trying to get, because the river was like 30 percent whiskey and trying to get some out. Is that true? And then crazy enough to drink it? Did that happen? There was probably a few, you know. It would be crazy enough to do that. I mean, yeah, it was not a great time for us. I mean, we don't know exactly what happened. We all have ideas. The warehouse had been in a tornado and it was leaning. If you look at a warehouse, we have plumb-bobs in them. And I think if they get over an inch and a half off, they do move a little bit. But you check those each month and from what our engineers talked about, it's like a million and a half pounds per square inch of pressure if it gets over an inch and a half off. And this warehouse was very leaning. And our company didn't want to do nothing to sort of stabilize it. The ATF did a 10-page report and it went through. There was some people seen smoking in there. There was this, there was that. But one of our guards told me, he said the back door was bubbled out. And when he drove away, it just collapsed. And from there, you know, you couldn't take a match and start a fire in a barrel of whiskey. But as it, barrels fell and busted those fumes, and then the electric broke loose and probably set it on fire. Just luckily for us, it was only one. You know, there's other distilleries of all six or seven, you know. Heaven Hill, all the distilleries and all of them. This is another thing I enjoy in our business so much. We're all close friends. If one gets in trouble, others will do everything they can. When Heaven Hill, you probably remember that. We all done everything we could to get them back on their feet. I was talking about the river and talking about the buckets. The city water works for Lawrenceburg is on the company property. And they had to quit pumping water into town for a couple of days for one lease. They, you know, were charged with a gallon and a bit of a drink. A very happy town for a few days. How many barrels of whiskey were lost in that fire? 17,262. I was the manager of the warehouse and my job was to sit down and make sure I had every barrel for the government paperwork figured out what was in there. You know, for us and through his knowledge, and I'm sure most people do it, you don't put too many any one year in a warehouse. You want to make sure. I think the biggest, the biggest deal for us in that warehouse was 2700 barrels of rye. And that was a big, big thing for us even back in 2000 because we just didn't make much. There was a lot of tax relief from the government. Not really money they gave you, but a lot of tax relief. And then there was an insurance company that paid off on as if that was bottled. But it was very sad for all of us. But it wasn't as big of a hit to the company as you would think. Now if I had had Savin burned down, we would have been very bad, Jay. That's what happened to that deal. It's been very few fires in the distilling business. Heaven Hill was the first big one. The first big one, only big one that we were hit. A few of us have lost a mega storage building. There's another one that Bean lost one a couple of years ago. Bean lost one a couple of years ago. But he had very little fires. Any other questions? Whiskey hotline before me. When you guys enjoy bourbon, how do you take it? I like mine neither with ice cube. I will drink a good cocktail. I like a Boulevardier. Jimmy, he's going to do it either neither with ice cube and no cocktail. But you drink it anyway you like. It's the way I feel about it. I'm going to drink it my way, but you drink it anyway you like. You like it in a cocktail or anything like that. Me, I'm going to drink it neat or on the rock. Do you ever drink anything but bourbon? Ice tea. Then that's true. You know, I've never been a big beer drinker or anything. I like wines. It's funny to say, by the time I'm out with people or friends, they get me to taste the wines for them. I could taste and tell you that I've never been a wine drinker. Yeah, it's a little different. I mean, he's very agreeable nowadays. But I can remember growing up with him and Booker. And they went out in the public and they said, here's my whiskey. This is what it tastes like. And this is how you drink it. You know, and that was meater with a little water and ice cube. Booker was famous for saying, here's my whiskey. If you don't like it, send it back. I'll drink it. You know, that's what I'll do. He's got a little bit politically correct nowadays. He'll say however you like it. But many of that generation still gave me a hard time because I've done some lower proofs. And I always talked about like an ice cube in it and stuff. So that's something we just talked about today. When I started, everything was really bottled in on the proofs. Wild Turkey's always been odd because it's 101 proof. And then we went down to the 90s, 86s, 80s. Now everything's going back to higher proofs. If you're selling more higher proofs, everybody's wanting to higher proof stuff now. They don't want to. One thing I've always wanted to do and never have. You go to the grocery store and it tells you how much it costs you per ounce. They'll put it on the bottom. How much benefit you're getting from 100 proofs, you know, from an 80 proof, it costs per ounce. You ever thought about that? Well, we will talk to people about that. We, our handpick program, we try to do at full strength as much as possible. And one of the big points for that is that you can decide what you're going to make out of it. If we give it to you at full strength, you can add as much water and not add anything at all if you don't want to. But it gives you the leeway to take what we've put in the bottle and turn it into your own. Yeah, we like saying there's no sense in paying somebody to water the whiskey down for it. Thank you, Jimmy. Thank you, Eddie. We appreciate you participating in our little podcast. No problem at all. It's been great. Glad to do it for you. Was an enlightening conversation with Bourbon Royalty. It really was. I can't believe what those guys did and have done and continue to do over that six decades of Bourbon experience. I was looking around at the table when, you know, going through the interview and the conversation and just looking at all of our faces and everyone was just, it was like Christmas morning, especially for Roger. He was just like, It's just fun to be around them and listen to them, bring a smile to your face. Yeah, it's pretty cool, man. It's great. It's wonderful. We're lucky to be able to do this type of thing, especially, and I think you guys, because I mean, Binny's are the ones who bring this stuff together. So kudos to you. If it weren't for the company that we work for, we wouldn't have any of these opportunities. We know that. We're very thankful. And because we do, we try to make the best of it. So I hope that this conversation came through as to just how special it was for us. I hope that it's as special for the people that are listening to it. Because it was. We were so excited for weeks before it happened. Yeah, and it all benefits the end user, meaning those of you who come through Binny's every week. Speaking of which, we do have questions from you. So we've reached that time in the show again where we have questions from our listeners. What are we in store for today? We've got Sarah Halsey, and she asks, How can I get my friends to try bourbon? Roger, have you ever had this question before? Um, I've definitely heard people say, you know, bourbon is just not for me. And one of the things that I kind of go on and on about is this misconception that you can't put ice in bourbon. This drives me insane. Especially when the trend right now is for these big single barrel cast strength. That's ludicrous. Put some water in it, put some ice in it, give it a try. If you're drinking bourbon that's 80 proof, I could see the argument that by putting ice in it, it's going to taste a little watered down. But if what's holding you back from enjoying whiskey is that the heat's a little too much, it's a little too intense, enjoy it with some ice. Ice is how I drink. I tend to drink bourbon around like 100 proof and almost always with ice. It's similar to like with wine where you want to air it a wine. You want it to breathe a little and the water gives you that same effect, right? That or rethink your mixer. People just always think that they have to drink bourbon in either a Manhattan. I'm not that big of a fan of Manhattans, to be honest, they're okay, but there's a lot of other good bourbon cocktails and otherwise if you're just dumping bourbon into Coke, maybe rethink putting it, put it in some fresh lemonade like a real whiskey sour is a great drink. Try bourbon and iced tea, that's kind of a southern staple. That's really good. Yeah, so maybe Sarah meant how do I get them to try bourbon straight up? Maybe it's mix it first. My favorite cocktail is a two ingredient cocktail, all right, whiskey and a glass, okay. My second favorite cocktail, whiskey, glass, ice. Yeah. Simple, easy. No shame in water and ice, not at all. I love that, that look where you watch the whiskey kind of pour off and melt down and you get the layers trickling down. I mean, that's fun. It looks so cool and then you taste it and it's delicious. There's just some bourbon is just a little too hot to drink without an ice cube for me. Well, and that's just it. Nobody should look at anybody else and judge what's in their glass and how they're drinking it if they're drinking it. I'm 100 percent on board with this. For another week of Barrel to Bottle with Binny's Beverage Depot, I'm Jeff Carlin, Roger Adamson, Pat Brophy, Kristen Ellis. Keep tasting, guys.