Hi, welcome back to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Pat, along with me is Roger, as always. Hi, Roger. Hi, I'm doing well. How are you doing, folks? And our guest this week is Wes Henderson, co-founder of Angel's Envy Whiskey, one of our favorite barrel finish whiskey brands, one of the original barrel finish whiskey brands, and owners of one of the newest, fanciest distillers in Louisville. Welcome, Wes. Thank you so much for having me. Wanted to have you in today. You're in town visiting, doing a couple of events at our stores. Always a great time. People are excited about your brand. It's an interesting, innovative brand. So we want to hear about all things Angel's Envy today. The first thing that comes to mind with Angel's Envy, being port finished and all that, is what was your aha moment where you guys arrived on that barrel finishing with the bourbon? I mean, you're long-time bourbon vets obviously, but what led to that being the focus of the project? It wasn't really a long journey to get there, which surprises a lot of people. When I started the company and got dad out of retirement, one of my challenges to dad was, let's think of something that you enjoyed at Brown Forman when you were there for 40 years that you thought was really cool and maybe for whatever reason, didn't make it into the bourbon world. Brown Forman on Glen Morangy at the time. Glen Morangy is known for their secondary barrel finishes, so we kept coming back to secondary barrel finishes as something we thought might be fun, and dad was really excited about that. We also knew that our first releases, we were going to be sourcing bourbon, so we knew that if we're going to source product, even though it was sourced our specifications, we needed to do something special to it as well, to put our mark on it. So it all just came together in a really cool way. At that point in time, once we decided we're going to do secondary barrel finishes, just a matter of deciding which one we wanted to do. Now, how many did you go through before you arrived on port being the one to go to market with? We experimented with several. We liked them all. By the way, the prototypes that we did for secondary barrels that we were messing around with were incredible. And not just fortified wines, there were some others, but the port barrels were the easiest for us to get. You know, we had a broker in Portugal. We wanted to launch. We had a timeline to launch. So we said, okay, you know, we were able to get the port barrels, the Ruby port barrels quickly. So we said, okay, this will be a jump point, not necessarily where we're going to stay, but where we were going to start. So that's how it came about. You got them from Broker. Are they coming from all over Portugal there? We have a broker in Portugal, Armindo. He's a great guy. We have a guy. Everybody should have a guy. You got to have a barrel guy. I think that's probably the Chicago way too. You got to have a guy for everything. So Armindo is our guy and he does source those Ruby port barrels from around the Douro Valley. Not all Ruby port is barreled in those 60 gallon barrels. So we have to search for them a little bit. We toyed with trying to get things to come from a single producer, but we found out it really wasn't necessary. We have consistency through several different producers with the Ruby port. So that's what we do. That's cool. How did those barrels come to you? I mean, do you have to reject a lot or some dried out by the time they get here? I mean, what's the journey like for those barrels as far as timeline from when they're dumped to when you're filling them? I don't really know what the timeline is from when they're dumped and he ships them. It takes about a week to maybe sometimes two to come across the water. When we get them, we ship them with a leader or so of port remaining inside the barrel to keep the staves moist. The barrels are pristine when we get them. They're wrapped. Each one of them is individually wrapped. Oh, wow. I mean, really, they look like brand new barrels when we get them. Because of that leader of port and that sloshes around in transport, we know that they're not going to be dried out when we get them. Were there old timers that just weren't ready for this? Was this something you've experienced any blowback like, this isn't bourbon, this is the world of scotch? Did you have to let people taste to believe? All of those things. We're talking, we launched in 2011. If you really think about, and your listeners will probably agree with this also, and you guys are in the industry, how much the bourbon world has changed just in that period of time. Oh, yeah. It's like I'm talking about ancient history, but we only launched that brand in 2011. It hadn't been that long, which is hard to believe. At the time, certainly, there was a little bit of static, that, okay, you're finishing something in another barrel, then it's not bourbon. We certainly vetted it with TTB, but really, what Angel's Envy is, it's not Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey, it's Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey finished in port wine barrels. And as long as, and that's the statement of contents, that is the legal statement of contents, Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey finished in port wine barrels. As long as you say that entire phrase, then that's an accurate description of what we have. So, but by now, I never, I very rarely do I ever hear that brought up. Yeah, I mean, it's become such a ubiquitous thing with bourbon now. I mean, it's like you guys started this wave of, oh, that's right, I can make my mark on source juice if needed. We can buy source juice, we can finish, we can double air, barrel it, triple barrel, whatever. There's something to be said for complexity and subtlety, I think, with your product specifically. And I appreciate that. So, how's that been for you with the transition to the new distillery? I mean, what did you guys have to do to make sure that you transition from this kind of age of source goods to your own? Is that going to be a slow blending thing or is this trying to replicate things best you can? It's going to be a slow blend. Originally, I had it pegged to do like a three-year blend out. Remember also that the things we sourced were where we wanted to be mashbill wise. So, there wasn't a huge deviation when we started making our own product at the distillery in Louisville. But the original plan was to blend it out over three years, but really because of some experimentation we've done and research we've done, and we've got such demand. We're not going to take three years to stretch it out. We're going to try to put the stuff in the Louisville distillery online a lot sooner. So, it may be like a year blend out. Can you share the mash bill with us? Yeah. It's 72% corn, 18% rye, 10% malted barley. Fairly common mash bill. It's a little higher on the rye. It's very similar to Woodford. Of course, dad created Woodford, so we like that. We're also experimenting with some other mash bills just for fun. Yeah. Any weird grains that you've been messing around with? Not yet. That's something that has always fascinated me. I've been working a little bit with the University of Kentucky on legacy grains and looking at non-hybridized grains, and then looking back at pre-prohibition production methods and trying to lower barrel entry proofs, different non-hybridized Can you talk a little bit about the new distillery and... Right now, the new facility, we're doing about 40 barrels a day. It's coming out the still at about 138 barrel entry proof at 125. We've got an 18,000 barrel warehouse close to the distillery, which we're filling up rapidly. We're going to build some more warehouses. As I mentioned earlier, the new fermenters, we're adding four new fermenters, which will double our capacity that we have. Now, we can also increase capacity by adding... We're going six days a week right now. Six days a week, one shift. So we can add shifts, we can add Sunday, and the new fermenters will go on line. The still we have can handle that. The still was oversized, so we knew that... How big is this still? It's about 35 feet, 28 inch column in diameter. Wow, pretty big. It's big, it's not giant, but it's something that you see in places of our size. Vindome created it, they're right up the street. You throw a rock and hit their place. The best stills on the planet come from Vindome. We do everything right there. We're the only full production distillery in downtown. When you come to do the visitors' experience, you can see we've got the milling. Most of our grains are local. A huge majority of our grains are local farmers, one particular farm. We have our silos out back, we mill on demand, we cook, and then we do a fermentation. It's about a minimum of 70 hours for the fermentation. Then we run it through the still and 40 barrels a day, barrel it up, ship it out to Lively Shively, is what we call it. Somewhere outside of the city, and everything's right there. What would be, to put this in a consumer perspective, how many cases of Angel's Envy would that be making a year? I knew you were going to ask me that question. If I was going to ask you, I would have asked for LPA output per year. No, no, no, no. Hold on a minute here. I'll tell you. Let's see. All right. So that's about 10,800 bottles. Let's see if that's right. So I'm in here. So we got, I wish my son Kyle was here. We don't do math too good in Kentucky, by the way. You all sure play basketball good though. That's all that counts. So we get about 45 six packs out of a barrel. Okay. So let's see here, 45 times 40, right? So that's 1,800 six packs times six. 657,000 six packs of Angel's Envy a year. That's about right. You're turning out there. Something like that. It's a lot of whiskey. I don't do numbers. I do tastings, which is fine. I want that job. Look, we've got amazing people that do that better than I ever dreamed of doing. But Kyle's really, Kyle and Andrew, my two oldest, they're incredible. Kyle's the production manager, Andrew's the lead distiller. Kyle's 29, Andrew's 24. They probably have more experience than anybody in the industry at their age and to see them grow up. They've all came out. Kyle came in before he was even 21. Wow. On the production side, working with my dad. To see how far he's come and how far Andrew's come is one of the biggest joys I have. That's great. It's keeping that family history, that one thing that cuts through real bourbon brands, like you mentioned earlier, have that family history and their icons. I mean, all great bourbon brands have some family hierarchy that has always been in charge. I hope it will always stay that way. That's one thing you have to be on guard with, all these acquisitions and all these things that are happening. I hope that you will never lose that allure. I think that if the bourbon industry loses that allure, you start to lose customers. That's one of the things that people find attractive about what we do, is that personal nature. We, I know, as retailers, hear a lot of buzz about weeded bourbon. Has weeded, weeded mashville, anything you've considered or? We've thought about it, and you're right, there's definitely, you know, a lot of talk. My dad never was a big fan of weeded bourbon, and I don't, that doesn't necessarily mean that that's why we're not doing anything like that. My son Andrew, who's one of our, is our lead distiller now, he has an interest in playing around with some weeded bourbon. So one of these days, I'm sure, well, right now, truthfully, we're working so hard to keep up with demand of our Angel's Envy Port Finney's Bourbon, that we don't really have a lot of time to get too distracted from that. Right. That's a good thing. It's not bad. You've established something that people obviously enjoy, so sometimes that's what gets frustrating now, is everyone's always asking us for, well, what's new? What's the one-off? What's the specialty? And how about just returning to something that you like? Well, that's a gerbil wheel you get on, as a producer, you have to be careful. If you want to get on that gerbil wheel, that's fine, but there's this desire to, what's next, what's next, what's next? And sometimes the things can be forced, and you get stuff in the market that just for the sake of having something new. I've always said that we're not going to really make a lot of noise about something new until we're ready to release something that we're extremely excited about, and it can add to the conversation. And if it's something that new that comes out that doesn't add to the conversation, I don't know what the point is. So on that note though, what is next with Angel's Envy? What are you working on with different barrels or different mess proofs or anything that you can share? We're still working with the fortified wines work very well. Madeira is something that I've always found exciting. Different ports, Taunys, some late bottled vintage ports with some really good stories, with producers that have been around for a couple of hundred years. I was in Portugal earlier this year visiting some producers. I can get excited about that. There's some other spirits we've been talking about. We just got some Japanese oak in about a month ago, which were incredibly hard to get. Those barrels were... Misenara? Yes, yes, yes. That was a really good find. My son Kyle tracked those down for us. So we're just trying to decide what we're going to put in them. We don't have a lot of them. Okay. That'll be fun. That should be cool. I don't think I've seen that. Have you seen that? I don't think I've seen anybody do that with bourbon or American whiskeys. I've seen it with Irish whisky and that's it. We've got a lot of cool things happening, but like I said a minute ago, a lot of it is just keeping up with the demand we have, and we're adding four new fermenters at the distillery already, which was happening. We already had space set aside for those, but we didn't plan on doing it right away. So those will be finished October right around the corner. So we got more capacity. Wow. Did you bring some whisky with you to Portugal? What did they think? They love whisky in Europe. The Portuguese are just kind of starting to get turned on to it a little bit. The US ambassador to Portugal is a huge Angel's Envy fan. That doesn't hurt. He did a reception for the Portuguese, like the generals in the army and the prime minister and, you know, all the big wigs in Portugal. And he took Angel's Envy because of that port barrel finish. Right. And I like that. I like maybe highlighting some relationships with Portugal, with some of these barrels I'm looking at, with the Portuguese people. And we don't sell there. One day we probably will. But, you know, why not? You know, we've got such a great story with Angel's Envy about the family and about how the brand was created and why not introduce into the story the backstory from the port wine producers and in Portugal. Look, you know, what we do, bourbon is stories, right? Yeah. And anything that we can do to, when you open that bottle of bourbon to have a conversation is what makes it special. And to have a story that deviates a little bit from the traditional one. When people ask me about going on tours down in Kentucky, you start to see the same thing a little bit over and over again, as much as you want it to be different. And I think that's what's starting to really appeal to a lot of people with with barrel finishing is changing the game a little bit. That's like, it keeps me excited about what we're doing. I mean, I wake up every day excited. Every time I drive up in front of that distillery, I'm blown away at what we've created. I'm blown away with- It's an impressive distillery. I tell you what. Can you talk a little bit about how the rye came about? Sure. The rye really- We should probably have some too. We probably should. That's a great idea. Let's do this. So the rye was, somebody asked me, and it was our partners in Angel's Envy, they said, Wes, what do you think about doing a rye? And I'm like, guys, rye, that rye trend is here and gone. Forget about it. Here you go, guys. Cheers. Cheers. Good to see you all. Thank you. I think I even, I'm almost proclaimed, stood up on the table and said, rye is not going to be around five years from now. How often do they remind you of that now? They, well, so there's a couple of things I proclaimed very loudly, but I'm glad I was wrong about this. But we started, we thought about it a little bit more. We thought about the finishing and the taste profile of rye. And when we decided to do a rye, immediately I knew what I wanted to do with it. I knew that the spiciness of the rye would work marvelously with a rum with a lot of molasses, aroma and flavor. It was just finding the right one. I mean, there wasn't a second thought about which barrel to use when I wanted to do this. It was just finding. So we researched, I went through probably 150 different rums until I found the one, and I settled on plantation. It's a plantation, XO 20th anniversary. It's a Barbados rum. It's a favorite for our staff across the chain. We sell that a lot of rum. I'm sure. Anybody that knows rum really well, knows that that's just a fabulous rum. Unfortunately, when I talked to Alexander, who's the owner, and he was really excited about the possibility of doing something together. So it wasn't just a matter of finding the right rum, was finding a rum producer that would give me the barrels or sell me the barrels. So Alexander and Guillaume, who's here in the United States, they're runs the US operations for those guys, said Sher-Wes. So those barrels were previously used for cognac, cognac verand, then plantation XO 20th anniversary rum, and then to finish our rye whiskey. That's really how it was born. It really does give you a punch of rum, and the first time I tried it, I thought, man, this thing doesn't know what it wants to be. It's just flip-flopping back and forth between rye rum, but it's cool because of that, and I really like it because of that, but I never even stopped to think when you put it in perspective, how truly subtle the standard bourbon is. Definitely, and that was the artistry with the rum barrel finish. In this case, it's easy to get this jumbled up mess that you can't pull anything out of. So the way that the rye was blended, it was blended in a way that you can pull out all those little nuances. You get them at different points, but it's not this jumbled mess that you can't figure out what the hell it is. So, it's not a batch of barrels that all get finished for the same period of time, or is it similar to bourbon where you're taking different ages of... Up to 18 months for the finish in the rum barrel. So, Angel's Envy Port Barrel finishes up to six months, up to 18 months for the rye finished in the rum barrels. They're beautiful barrels, man. They're sexy as hell. You go to the distillery and see them, they're lined up. And they're French oak too, right? Yeah, I mean, so that's pretty interesting. That's adding a whole different component as well. A whole other component. And you don't normally see that with rum at all. They're beautiful. They really are. Now, how's that relationship with Plantation Blossom? They just bought the West Indies Rum Distillery, I think earlier this year or late last year. Are you locked into these things for the long term then? We're not locked in. We don't have a contract. We don't have any type of agreement. Now, of course, now we're part of the Bacardi family. So, I've looked at different Bacardi rums. I like the Facundo line, which is something that's... Unfortunately, we don't get it here in Illinois. We were just talking to them about it. I mean, it's in three states or something right now. It really is, and it's great rum. And Bacardi is such a great company. But right now, we've got a steady source of barrels where they're coming. One of the many great things about our partnership with Bacardi is that they want us to produce the way we know how to produce things. And there's never been since the acquisition any effort to have us do things any differently than the way we want to do them and the way we think things need to be done. That's right. I was going to ask you how this has changed operationally for you since the acquisition. It sounds like it's leaving you alone. You want to talk? Yeah, I mean, we can discuss that a little bit if you want to. Bacardi is a family company. They've been distilling rum for what? Almost 160 years or somewhere along those lines. And they have a huge amount of knowledge in distillation. And we all know this here at this table and our listeners are going to know this too. There's this personal family history with bourbon. There's this handcrafted aura around what we do. And you really don't, if you mess with that, you can lose the magic. We do our thing and we've got an amazingly supportive parent company and it couldn't be a better situation. Can I just say about your rye here, when you initially said rye might be a fad and it'll go, I think I understand in a way where you're coming from and why I think this succeeds so well is that the rum softens those somewhat vegetal edges that rye can have. Because I think it's important, we take a step back. Now that there's so many different ryes on the market, you're getting at least closer to 100 percent ryes and you're offering them to people and they're not digging them. They're too much. I think this is just so beautiful, the way the rum contributes that perfect bit of sweetness to it and makes that spice transmit into an all spice flavor to it. It's really a phenomenal whiskey. I appreciate it. It works. It all came together in a really cool way. I'm also seeing it on menus as an after-dinner drink, like a cognac or an armagnac or something like that, as a dessert or after-dinner. Like a steve-o. Absolutely. I didn't aim to aim for that. But it's hard to get. You guys know that. It's highly allocated. We do it a couple of times a year. It's achieved this crazed status and it's really exciting to see it. What's it like having been in the business for a while to experience the last decade or so? I mean, the tourism? There's no, I don't have any really barometer to gauge it. And nobody in the industry does. Anybody that says they could predict what happened, what's happened with the growth of this industry is full of crap because you never could have guessed. And that's why there's allocation, is because there weren't, nobody knew how much to... People say, well, how do you choose what to do production-wise? I'm like, just put a damn dartboard up there. You might as well, because you don't know what the trends are going to be. Now, that's kind of an exaggeration. You still have to make some gauges. But when I was growing up, nobody cared who made the bourbon. Dad really didn't start becoming somebody that was known in the public until he created Woodford. And when Woodford, which I think Woodford was, in my opinion, was one of the first craft, small, I hate to throw around words like craft, small batch. But Woodford was one of those first products that kind of had that feel. And for dad to get out with that and people, nobody cared who made the bourbon before. He kind of knew the big names in the industry, but it wasn't something that people would line up. You know, 15, 20 years ago, nobody would line up to have a master distiller to sign their bottle. Yeah, no, that's true. And we have a wait list for your event tonight. My gosh, well, those people are crazy. I can't believe that. I can't believe that they're paying to come and say, that's even more outrageous. Well, they assume they're going to get a couple of sizeable pours of whiskey. I assume they're ill, you know, something. No, they're great people that come out to these events. And I'm very humbled that there's an interest enough to come out. I mean, I'm doing stuff that I never would have expected to be able to do. Everybody loves bourbon. You know, I used to think that I got invited to parties because of the nice guy, you know. Now, I kind of finally get it, understand, you know, that Wes, come on, I want you to come, please, come, please. Oh, can you bring some bourbon to him? I'm like, oh, now I understand. But that's OK. I still get in the door. Doesn't matter what it takes to get there, right? You're in the building. I made it in the building. That's right. To bring up rum again, what do you end up doing with the rum barrels once you put the rye in there, you've emptied it, do they go back to plantation? No, they don't. We'll use them for point of sale and other things like that. That might be cool to hand them back to plantation. They put more rum in it. It's very possible. You never know. We've got some other, a couple other collaborations that we're working on now with other producers that are a very limited release. I got eight barrels from a winery out west. It's an interesting collaboration. That'll be out next year. Eight barrels. What are you going to do with that? Sell it at the distillery, I suppose. Some of it. I'm sure you guys will take all of them if they're out there. Yeah. If you're offering, yes, we can take all eight barrels. That'd be like a sneeze for you guys, man. Those are just fun little things to do. Some of them will come here. A lot of them will, but having stuff at the distillery is kind of neat too. Just distillery only things. Yeah. It makes it more of a special place, a different place to visit. For sure. People have a lot of options with distillery tours like Roger was saying these days. You see a bunch of them now. You got to give yourself a point of differentiation. Exactly. On that note, I get asked for this all the time, and I think I'm going to get a straighter answer from you than the Picardy suits. I don't know. Could be. Maybe. Those suits are a little elusive, aren't they? We get asked all the time about when we're going to get another hand-picked, hand-selected batch of Angel's Envy. When we can get the Binny's Blend Angel's Envy back. Interview over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Podcast over. We were talking, we had a big, our management meeting, we do it once a week, or once a month. We had it Tuesday, and we were talking about this very thing. One of the issues we had, number one, is supply. We're on allocation, so we don't have a lot of stuff. One of the other things too, is in the new distillery, we did not have the scalable equipment to do those special blends. Our tanks are too big. So it was just not thinking far ahead enough. So we've had to, in order to accommodate the special kind of special blend or whatever, because we're really not a barrel pick brand, because we're finished in Port Wine Barrels. So it's not a matter of just going and, hey, picking barrels off, it's a final blend. So we're in the process of looking at building another, like a room that will allow us to do some special blends. But we're trying to phase that back in slowly, and I don't have a timeline on it. It was a great program and we're really one of the first ones to do it in a very unique way. It wasn't just a barrel, but it was a special blend. The first time I met you, I thought, well, it was probably right when the brand launched, but then shortly after you came up and we're up in the Taster Room itself with a graduated cylinder, making a couple of blends. That's really cool. Yeah. I tell people all the time, people say, well, when's more coming? Why can't we get it? I'm like, it's your damn fault. You're drinking too much of it. If you guys weren't drinking so much, we wouldn't have this problem, so I deflect it back. Yeah. Push it back on the customer. That rarely works. No. I don't think there's a lot of studies that show, I don't think Harvard Business School tells you that that's the right thing to do, but it's fun to have that discussion. Well, I hope I've evaded the answer in a way that made it a little bit fun. It was the expected answer I've been getting, but I'll reiterate that we will gladly stand in line first. I know you guys will. There's no doubt. You all are a fantastic partner of ours, and if I had an answer, and I think you guys know this about me now, that I pretty much say what's ever on my mind, even to sometimes the chagrin of others, but it's common. We're working on it. That's better than no. Right. No, it's not a no. It's a soon, maybe. Kind of, sort of. Ish is my new word. Soon-ish. That allows you to avoid any responsibility for being precise about generally anything. That's how I'm living my life now. Ish. All right, so we've come to the Q&A portion of the podcast here. We hand out a gift card if we select your question. What kind of question are we hitting today, Pat? All right, our question this week comes from Brad P on Facebook, and he asks, how does different levels of charring of the barrels affect the flavor profile of a bottle of bourbon? There are so many things in play there. You're talking intense chains of chemical reaction. The longer the char, the more caramelization you're going to get, you know, with the natural sugars in that wood, which is really to me one of the most critical aspects of not just flavor, but color. Think about it. The longer you char something, the darker color you're going to have, the more sugars that are caramelized, the vanillins and the other components that have to do with the charring are going to come into the bourbon. But you can also get to a point too to where you get a higher char and you start to taste more of a char, as opposed to the other desirable. Exactly. So there's that fine, we do a light toast and then a 2-3 char. So it's kind of a happy middle there. The toast is something that I believe is underrated and a lot of people don't talk about. I 100 percent agree. Big fan of toast. For sure. So that's- Can you guys explain that for our listeners who might not be familiar? Yeah. I mean, it's very similar to what they do with wines. Wine barrels are toasted. It's a more gentle reaction happening there. And then to put the toast right over the top of it, it's just something that really works for us. Yeah. When a barrel is charred, it literally catches on fire. Right. And when Wes mentioned those kind of barrel, that caramelization, that's the oak trying to heal itself. It's pushing all these awesome sugars and flavors up through these charred wounds to try to heal up and seal up the oak. And when you toast, it's slower at a lower temperature. The barrel never actually catches on fires, but you're still converting a lot of those delicious sugars and bringing out a lot of like coconut and vanilla flavors. Hepsley, you said it better than I could have. Not the first time. Well, thank you for the question. You've won yourself a $20 Binny's gift card. Just a reminder. Do I get a card, a $20 card for answering the question too? We'll talk later. All right, good. Thank you. So if you got any questions for the Barrel to Bottle podcast, hit us up at Binny's Bev on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. You can reach me at KYBurbanmaker, KYBurbanmaker, that's on Twitter. At KYBurbanmaker on Twitter and Instagram. And that's it. All right. All right. No, none of the other ones. I canceled all those. Okay. My wife wasn't impressed. So yeah, they're done. Make sure you give them a follow. Please do. I really like followers. And I talk with people too, especially after a few drinks, I'll get on there. This is going to get fun. Yeah, yeah, it's good. So yeah, give me a follow, please. So if you've got questions for the Barrel to Bottle Podcast, hit us up at Binny's Bev on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. And if we choose your question, you'll win a Binny's gift card. Thanks again for being here today. Thanks, man. You guys are great. Thank you. Thanks for joining us on another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Pat, along with Roger. Keep tasting. All right, we've got a very special guest with us today, and industry dignitary, so to speak. We have Wes Henderson from Angel's Envy Whiskey. How are you doing, Wes? I'm doing great. Is that what they told you to say, that I was a whiskey dignitary, or did you just kind of pull that one out? We're trying to get you to pour the good stuff for us. Okay, I didn't do that. There had to be some type of, yes, I'm a whiskey dignitary. We'll go with that. Thank you. Good to be here, man. Thanks for having me. It's a step above master distiller, I think. Thank you so much.