Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm your host, Pat Brophy, of The Whiskey Hotline, our all-encompassing specialty spirits team here at Binny's. And this is a special Whiskey Hotline episode. I've got Brett Pontani here with me. Hey, Brett, how are you doing? Pat, I'm well, how are you? I'm excellent. Joe, how are you? We got Joe Maloney here too. Oh my gosh, I'm doing so good, Pat. Thanks for having me out today. Yeah, we got a very exciting guest here today. We have Ian Chang, Master Blender for Kavalan Whiskey. Ian, thanks for joining us today. Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me here. Well, we've got some really, really cool subtropical single moths, I guess we can call them to talk about today, right? Yes, that's right. So a little bit about Kavalan first. I know Kavalan as a whiskey has been around since what, 2005? That's right. 2005, we started construction of the distillery. So 2006, I would say that was the first year when we started our distillation. So it's been 24, 7, 365 days a year, nonstop. The distillery opened and immediately started running 24, 7. Holy cow. That's pretty incredible. And pretty much since, I mean, the first bottles of whiskey came out when? Probably 2007. So our very first bottle was released on the 4th of December, 2008. Okay. So that was our Kavalan classic. And it seems like pretty much every year since, I've seen a Kavalan whiskey win a major award. It's been really incredible to see this distillery develop. All right. And now we have a bottle here with us called King Carr Whiskey, and that's a throwback to the history of the company, correct? That's right. So King Carr is the name of the group which owns Kavalan Distillery. By the way, King Carr is a family-owned business. So the owner, Mr. Lee Senior, and also Mr. Lee Junior, the father and son, they run the company. Because Mr. Lee, that was in, I think, in 2010 when he wanted a whiskey to represent the whole group. That's why we created the King Carr Whiskey. So can you take us through the day-to-day life of a master blender for a single malt whiskey? Basically, what I do on a daily basis at the distillery, which is very rare these days because since I took on the role of being a brand ambassador of Kavalan. So whenever I'm not traveling at the distillery, what I do is basically quality control. Being a blender, what I do is I nose all the samples right from the new make up to the matured whiskey from the barrels. So by nosing the samples, I determine whether the new make quality is good enough to be put into the barrels for maturation or if the matured whiskey is matured or not, in terms of its maturity. So that's what I do at Kavalan. You guys use three different yeast strains as well? Two. Two strains, which is also completely unusual. So what was the purpose of doing that and how does that work? So basically, when Dr. Jim Swann joined us in 2006, we started to use two types of yeast. One is there for what we say the efficiency. One is there for quality in terms of congeners. So by combining these two together, not only we can produce plenty of alcohol, but also plenty of flavors for connoisseurs to know and also to appreciate. Flavorful, but still high yield. Yes, that's right. And you had mentioned that the fermentation is flavor controlled, which is also something we don't normally see in the world of single malt scotch, for example. And is that a necessity of the climate there? Yes, that's right. It's basically all to do with the subtropical heat of Taiwan because it is so hot in summer time. So mostly we control the temperature during our very hot summer period, which is between May and October each year. So these are the months when we have to switch on the cooling water in the jacket of the stainless steel fermenters in order to control the rate of temperature rise during the beginning and the end of fermentation. So it just makes for a very long, slow fermentation? That's right. What is your ferment time? So our fermentation time is 60 hours. 60 hours. So during the 60 hours, the temperature rise will be very steady and also very gently. This way we not only we want to make sure congeners are formed, but also to avoid any unnecessary bacterial infections. Before we move too far away from the fermentation, I'm curious on the sourcing of the barley that's used. Is there any specifics you can go into on that? So when it comes to multi-barley, we have our multi-barley imported, I would say 90% from the UK, about 10% from continental Europe. So these are the places where we buy our multi-barley from. Unfortunately, the climate of Taiwan is not really suitable for growing barley. It's too hot and also too humid. So that's why we have to rely on import. Yeah. But so basically what we have to make sure is the barley has enough starch content. So for each intake, our quality control personnel, once again, they would take samples and analyze the starch content, the enzyme activity and so on, so that we can make sure that during the mashing process, we can convert maximum amount of starch into glucose, which is what the yeast like to eat to produce alcohol and congeners. Yeah. Well, this is fascinating, but I would like to try this whiskey in front of us here too. So we have in front of us the Distillery Select, which is one of the newer bottlings, correct? That's right. This is our latest single malt whiskey just released last year, 2018, in June. So basically, Distillery Select is something that we designed as an entry level for consumers who wants to try Kavalan for the first time. Something that is very easy drinking, very smooth, but at the same time, we don't compromise the quality. So when consumers see the end price, end consumer price of this bottle, they are always very amazed because this is the very first time that Kavalan has launched something that is so affordable, but also with very good quality as well. So since last year, since June, this has now become our best seller in terms of volume for Kavalan. In the past, Kavalan is always about quality and not much volume quantity. So Mr. Lee realized that we should have a volume maker for Kavalan and this is something that we did together with Dr. Jim Swan right before he unfortunately passed away two years ago. This is something that we created. So by looking at the color, the color is quite dark. And also when you nose the whiskey, it is very fruity, very clean. Very fruity. That's right. With green apple, honey, and also pineapple, mango juice, and so on. Yeah, tropical fruit. Tropical fruits, yeah. So you wouldn't realize that actually we use refill casks for the maturation of this particular single malt. It's a very dense nose for a refill cask. That's really fantastic. Yeah. So what is really remarkable about this particular SKU is that whenever consumers or our colleagues from the industry, when they know that this is actually 100% refill cask, and most of our refill casks are very old, 40 or more than 50 years old. We managed to create the color and the flavor. Once again, this is to do with very good quality of the new make, combined with the high heat of our subtropical climate. So I would say once again, this is something very unique to our climate in County Elan. Before we buy the cask, we actually did some wood analysis with Jim Swan, who was, as Brad mentioned in the beginning, an expert in wood and also cask management. So once we did the analysis, we realized that even though these casks were considered to be exhausted in cold climate, but actually they still have some wood contents in terms of these wood related flavors and chemicals. So by combining the heat of Taiwan, we can push these contents further out into the extracts more from the wood and from the wood. Such a high temperature. Exactly. Yeah. So this is something very unique to the climate. It's really a fantastic whiskey. That's the first time I've had it. Actually, we've had a sample bottle for a while. I just haven't gotten around to tasting it yet. Just trying to wrap your hands around how much different the aging regimen is and everything that you had to do just to account for the climate and account for the weather. And again, that's using barrels that everybody else in the business might consider exhausted yet. For you guys, it's making gorgeous whisky and this is beautiful whisky. So, which one should we go to next from the Distillery Select here? So, after the Distillery Select, I think we should try perhaps the Concertmaster. Okay. This is something that we produced with the so-called Finish Method. For the first three years, what we do is we would mature our new make once again in Refill Cask. So, for the first three years, this is actually exactly the same as the Distillery Select. But then, for the final and the fourth year, we would transfer everything into Portuguese Ruby Port casks to do the so-called second maturation or the finish process for one year. So, during the last year, the color coming from Ruby Port will go nicely into the whiskey, and that's why it has that very nice red hue to look at. And red is considered, once again, to be a very lucky color in Taiwan. So, consumers really like the red color. But also, during the final year of the so-called finish process, we can have the very nice chocolatey characters going into the whiskey, especially dark chocolate and also berry fruitiness as well. This is a gorgeous whiskey. Thank you. This is just fantastic. I can't get over the difference. I mean, Distillery Select is a great whiskey. The depth that it gains with one year in port here is really fantastic. And it kind of gets lost in the shuffle because it's something that's been around as part of the line for a long time. It was the second one right after King Kong, right around the same time. And there's always something new that comes down, you know, that comes down the pike. Yeah, this one is always there, and it's always consistently, hopefully not missed by people. Yeah, top notch whiskey. And this is one that's usually, that's pretty much always around too. I mean, we have this in stock in most Binny's locations. I mean, you can go in and even if they don't have it, it can be ordered anytime. You guys have some relationships with American Wineries as well. We have a very good agent, we're a reliable agent in the US. So basically what he does is he sources these wine casks for us from these US wineries, mostly Californian ones. Where should we head next in our journey through Kavalan here? So speaking of wine casks, maybe that's the one that we should try for the next one. What we have to do before we put our new make into the cask was that we need to do the so-called STR process. So S stands for shaving, T for toasting, and R for recharging. So once you do the STR process to your wine cask, whether they can be red wine cask or white wine cask, with STR, we can make sure that by the end of maturation, the color will always be like this. So many times when consumers, when they ask me, you know, when they look at the color of this whiskey, it's red as well, similar to the Concertmaster, they say that, oh, so Ian, this must be red wine cask, you know, to mature the whiskey. The answer is with STR, you can also have the same results with white wine cask. Wow, that is incredible. I would have never thought that. STR is the key. So STR process is something that Jim Swan and Kavalan did together back in 2008. Because at that time, there was a very serious shortage of refill cask to buy from the industry. But Jim Swan noticed that there are so many wineries globally. But why not many distilleries in the world use wine cask for the maturation? That is because most distilleries, they don't really understand that STR is the key. Because when it comes to wine cask, you need to remove some of these so-called organic acids in order to remove the sourness. So if you know the Vino Barrique, you'll notice that once again, it is very clean without any sourness on the nose. That is because the shading part, we already removed these unwanted sour characters from the wine cask. Yeah, no sour fruit, no sulfur. I mean, this is- No, that's right. For, and this was 100% in the wine cask. That's right. That's probably the cleanest wine cask aged whiskey I've ever had. You're kind of starting, you have some oxidation, I mean, I would assume the way it works, you have some oxidation with the wood inside, but you've removed the layer, because wine doesn't penetrate like spirit does, generally. So, and you write no sulfur because you don't have to preserve anything, because if anything had gone bad in the cask, you're removing it anyway when you shave it down. So that sulfur notes that I pick up sometimes in wine barrels comes from? In a lot of cases, honestly, it's preservative. They'll put sulfur in casks to keep things from growing inside them before they ship them to their next use. And then the people that fill them with whiskey, they'd end up tasting like sulfur, don't take the time to clean them? Correct. Well, in some cases, if the sulfur was done poorly or if too much was put in, you just can't get rid of it. A sulfur in a whiskey can come from cask, can come from distillation, can come from fermentation. It's not just, yes, you can get a sulfuric note and malt from a lot of wine and fortified wine barrel-age malts, but that's not necessarily always from the cask. But it could be like odolized yeast. It could be, you could run too deep into the faints, and when you start to get into some of the heavy alcohols at the back end of distillation, you'll get those notes. Yeah. But is it butyl can be really sulfury? And then I guess sometimes too, if you're taking a cask and you're recharging it, if there's some of the liquid left in there, and then you're cooking the wine, I imagine that can get transferred in as well. So many variables. Yeah, so that's the role of the master blender, you know, eliminating variables and making this frotted. And what is your fill strength? So our filling strength into the cask is 59.9. So 59.9 was determined by experiments because with Jim Swan, we tried many different strength. And in the end, 59.9 was the best strength, mostly for flavor creation during the maturation process. Are you losing alcohol through aging or are you gaining? Our strength actually goes down. So we lose more alcohol than water during our maturation process. And that's because of the humidity. That's right. Because the alcohol goes away, but the water can't, there's no place for the water. Yeah, we normally associate high temperatures like that with gains in alcohol strength. But if it's, it's humid and subtropical, I mean, it makes sense. That's right. But I was told that perhaps in Kentucky or Missouri, for bourbon warehouses, they lose more water than alcohol. Absolutely. Because it's not as humid. Yeah, it's not as humid. Yeah. With bourbon, the maximum they can go into a barrel for aging is 125 proof. But we've seen bourbons come out over 170, even had some really old barrel samples from high floors. That's right. Very concentrated. Well, this is a gorgeous whiskey. This is one of the more notable award winners, right? That's right. This was, what was it? Whiskey Magazines Awards? World Whiskey Awards. So in 2015, I would say this was the whiskey that made Kavalan a big hit globally because in 2015, the WWE awarded this one as world's best single malt whiskey. So ever since, it has been very popular with consumers globally. Most of these wine casts you're getting for this bottling are, they're coming from America, correct? 80%. 80%. Now are they still mostly French oak though? No, American oak. That's right. We always specify to all of our car suppliers, whether they are Spanish sherry car suppliers or wine car suppliers here in the US., that at Kavalan, we use only American oak because American oak is the perfect solution to the high heat. French oak or European oak, they can have too much tannins. Yeah, too much tannin for that. That's right. That's right. So with the heat, you are very easily making your end product to be bitter and astringent. What a gorgeous whiskey. Where should we go next? So I think the next one we should try is the one, our sherry oak, because this is to demonstrate how clean our Oloroso sherry casks are. Virtually no sulfur at all in the cask, because once again, in Spain, we have a very reliable partner who not only produce the casks, but also he produces his own sherry wines. So that's how we can make sure that our sherry cask is very clean. Yeah, you have to go right to the source, right? That's right. That's right. So ranging from Fino sherry cask all the way to Oloroso sherry cask, no sulfur at all in our cask. And that's why it is very clean. But also if you look at the color, very dark, this is once again- Yeah, this looks like iced tea. Once again, this is caramel free. Wow. So basically at Kavalan, we don't use caramel at all because with the high heat, it's not really necessary to add caramel. Many consumers say that this color reminds them of very old school 20 or 25 sherry cask mature whiskey from Scotland. Very much so. This is seven to eight years only. Seven to eight years. Wow. And so this is the sherry cask that's bottled at 46 percent. This is on the shelf at most Binny's. It's in a fancy kind of red velvet and gold box. And you said 46 percent still gets non-chill filter, or still gets chill filtered? Still gets chill filtered. Okay. So the sherry oak we have here on the shelf, the 46 percent we're tasting now, this is a variety of different styles of sherry that this was matured in? No. Basically, this is what we call the small batch Oluroso sherry oak. Instead of cast strength, which is single cask, single malt whiskey, this is a small batch. Normally, I would say 50 to 100. For example, if this one is Oluroso, it's 50 to 100 Oluroso sherry cask, vatted together, and then diluted to 46 percent. We also have another one, which is called the X-Burban Oak. That is a small batch X-Burban cask, vatted together, and then diluted to 46 percent. So this one, some consumers also say that it goes very nicely with cigars. It's got the weight and the intensity to hold up to the cigar. You still don't want a really full cigar. You still want to taste the whiskey afterwards. But this is gorgeous, and like you had mentioned earlier, this is so clean, and it's fruit-forward, and you get a lot of the dark fruit, but none of the really heavy, over-the-top sherry flavors that you tend to get from some Scottish things. You get the dryness, so you get it's like black tea, and it's leathery, and it's slightly cedar-y, without crossing over into that sulphury, sort of burnt metallic flavor that I think a lot of people... You know, how many times do we get comments on the shelf when somebody tries something like the McCowen says, well, I don't like it, it's too peaty. And what they're picking up are those Sherry characters, there's no smoke whatsoever involved, but those same things, because it reacts in the same part of your mouth, I think people confuse that and say, oh, well, it's peaty. Well, no, it's just, it's tannic and it's too dry, and you get a little bit of that sulphury character, which you would never ever have come across in something like this. When you've add together the barrels for the small batches, is there a set period of time you let them marry, and are you marrying in a big steel vat, or? We do about one week, one week marriage period. So after the vatting process, we would leave everything to do the so-called marriage process for one week in oak vats. So we have a huge oak wooden vat with 35,000 liter capacity. So that is what we use for the vatting process, the marriage process. Balvany, Glen Fittick both use the vat. Glen Fittick's Salera Vat. That's right. Well, Salera Vat, and then you also, I'm guessing as you're marrying, you're also adding water slowly as you're marrying to get. When do you cut to proof? We would add the water before chill filtration, right before chill filtration. So do the vatting first without any dilution. Then after one week, right before we do our chill filtration, that's when water is added to dilute the strength down to 46%. So the reason for doing that is actually quite simple because we want to make sure that the water added is also physically filtered to prevent any unwanted foreign materials going into the whiskey. And your water source is right there at the distillery? That's right. Brett, when you came to see us four years ago, you saw that Kavalan distillery is actually surrounded by mountains. So all our water comes from the surrounding mountains. They would initially flow through the layers of rock, sands, stones, and so on, and then go underneath the distillery. So what we do is drill a well, so the natural spring water will come up to be used as our production water. And it is very cold, very clean, and very pure. The reason why I mention cold is because we can also use our natural spring water as the coolant for distillation, so that we can save some energy without refrigeration. Very cool. Yeah. That's right. Well, I mean, the Sherry Whiskey is fantastic. And anybody listening who's a fan of Sherry Malt Whiskies, whether you're talking things like McCown or Balvini or Glendronic or something, you owe it to yourself to try this bottle because it is reasonably priced and it is an absolute stunner. That's a fair review. I will agree. I will agree. With these four SKUs, I don't know if you have noticed that on a palate, the liquid is actually very smooth, very oily. And it has the natural sweetness on the tip of the tongue. That is actually very pleasant. And I think that is one of the qualities why consumers like Kavalan so much. And that really ties all the way back to the beginning when we started, when you were talking about fermentation and using two yeasts and having that very, very steady fermentation to develop the maximum amount of those sweet, silky, sort of, estuary Yes. But it does carry through. It does absolutely carry through all the way to what's in the model. Pat, what do we have over there next? I think we ought to try the ex-Burban cast next, probably just as a nice kind of other side of the coin here to this big Sherry cast. The ex-Burban oak and the Sherry oak is what we say in Taiwan, the yin and yang, because one is dark, one is light, one is fresh fruits, one is dry fruit. So these two are the perfect opposite of each other. We tend to just kind of look for dark colors in malt whiskeys, and we're looking for these heavily Sherry, these wine cast things, but the color on this bourbon oak is really something else. I mean, it's just this gorgeous dark honey. Yeah. It's just a beautiful whiskey. Like an aged Saturn or something like that. First thing, I like to drink malts that are matured in bourbon barrels because I've drunk so much bourbon through my life that when I taste the malt, I can kind of extrapolate out a little bit of the bourbon flavors and get a better understanding of exactly what the malt is tasting like on its own. It's fun to compare the two and then get a solid understanding of exactly what the sherry barrel does after I've understood the bourbon barrel. Wow, that's all like candied an apple. That's all of that apple. Honey drizzled apples. This is something else. And popcorn as well. Yeah. Yeah, there's not a bad whiskey here. This is fantastic. I like that it shows that it lets the distillate shine a little more. It's kind of more, you know, this is kind of framed around, I think, that fruity but rich character of the distillate here without, you know, it's distillate first cask, cask second almost. And the mouthfeel certainly is nice and fat and oily. How many times do we use a bourbon barrel? So, we only use it once. So, we buy these ex-bourbon casks from the US, from producers like Jim Beam, Heaven Hills, Buffalo Trays, Wild Turkey, and so on. So, we only use them once. So, first fill, ex-bourbon cask. But after that, we would treat them as refill casks. So, that's when we use the refills for something else. At Kavalan, we always try to use first fill as the main type of cask. And then after that, we would use them for something else. Because we want to make sure that consumers can experience and also taste the character coming from the cask themselves. So, then the use for life, once you've used it once, for a named bourbon cask, that cask still has a long life for you. Yes, yes. Because of everything else you can do with it. That's great. Yes, that's right. And because I know that you've done single port casks and different phenol sherry, Manzanilla sherry, and Muscatel. That's right. PX. PX. Anything else? Any named red wines or like varietals? So, for later this year, we will have more surprises for our global consumers. Something like the Concertmaster, but with another type of cask for finish. But also, apart from whiskey, something that perhaps I would like to mention is that last year in November, Kavalan also launched our very first gin as well. Really? Yes. So that is something that is also very exciting and something that is unique for consumers to try. And this year, we're going to develop our gin number two. Which is different to our first gin. So in the future, I think, in addition to our whiskey, single whiskey portfolio, Kavalan will also have gin portfolio as well. And also last year, we have launched our beer as well. Really? Yes. So in the future, Kavalan will be more focused on all kinds of alcoholic beverages. He's the beverage empire over there. Into the future. Now, is the gin made on the same stills, or do you have to put new stills in for that? Right. So what we do is, in order to make full use of our German Holstein pot stills, because we don't use them for single whiskey production anymore, but we use them for our gin production. Because with these type of German stills, we found that the distillate can be much lighter, which is ideal for gin production, to go with the botanical, and also with these fruity flavors. So that's what we do with our gin. And what's the sugar source on the gin? So our gin is also multi-barley based. It's a single malt gin. Wow. So right before the blending of these botanical flavors, it is exactly the same as our whisky new make. Just in the German stills instead of the Scottish stills. That's right. So much lighter, much more neutral. So instead of doing double distillation for whiskeys, we do triple distillation for gin, but also with additional double carbon filtration process in order to remove these congeners from fermentation for whisky. What we want to retain is the multi-character. That's why if you try our gin, number one, you can experience that biscuity multi-character as well. So that's, you know, it is a multi-body based. A triple pot distilled single malt gin. That's cool. That is really cool. We are definitely going to be politely asking your importer for some information on that. Where did Jason go? Coming soon to the US. Apparently, we are now in the process of TTB approval registration. So it should be in the US very soon. That's exciting. Never a good feeling when your fate is in the government's hands, but, you know, hopefully we'll get that soon enough. So for the beer and for the gin, are you going to come up with any fancy mascots? Right. That's Mr. Brown for our coffee. Because the coffee has a mascot and the shrimp has a mascot. Yes, that's right. But I think you need something for the beer. And the gin. And that's for some other beverages. I mean, you can't just make a new beverage and not have a mascot, I suppose. There are two other Kavalan whiskeys still. I mean, are these something that... I know the emphasis tends to be on the 46% cask finishes and things like that. We also have a King Car Whiskey and a Kavalan Classic. Are those here to stay or are those de-emphasized a bit? Yes, yes. These are also here to stay. Basically, these two, the main difference is that the King Car is actually, I would say, a heavier, more complex version of the Classic. So the Classic, we have some feedbacks from consumers saying that it is quite light, not complex enough. So Jim Swan and I, we did a modification of the Classic recipe. We add more types of casks to our formula and created the King Car. At the same time, the alcohol strength is raised from 43% alcohol to 46%. So King Car is something that is much more heavier, more complex, more multi-layered of flavors. I think those people are nuts. This Kavalan Classic is beautiful. It smells great. It's so ripe and tropical though too. It's delicate on the palate, sure, but it's not like water. I mean, it's certainly a whiskey. There's a lot of flavor in there. But the Classic would be once again, more to do with first fill. First fill types of casks. And then the King Car Conductor would be also first fill, mostly first fill, but more varieties of these casks in our so-called secret recipe, just like Colonel Sanders. You know, if there's one thing I was going to compare these whiskeys to today, I would have not said mass market fried chicken. The question is, is which one of these whiskeys would pair the best with fried chicken? Any of them. I'll tell you, I'd take any of these with a bucket of chicken. I think the bourbon cask, obviously. Yeah, I liked the classic a lot. The sherry notes were, I guess you do a secret combination of bourbon and sherry barrels, is my guess. Yes, that's right. What would you say, 30, 70, 60, 40? 50, 50? In that range. This kinkar is notably heavier. Yeah, heavier and fuller, a little richer on the flavor. It's not quite as ripe and tropical, but it's still very fruit forward. I mean, it's still great. These are all just great. Thank you. I mean, so if you had to, one question we do get asked by a lot of customers is about how old these whiskies are. None of them carry age statements. That's right. Is there a broad range you're looking for across the board, or do you find you need more time in sherry or need less time in bourbon, things like that? Yes. Basically, the minimum age at Kavalan is four years, but it depends on the type of cask. For example, with the Olu Rosso sherry cask, which 500-liter big sherry buds, these require six to seven years in order for the content to be matured. But when it comes to experiment cask or port cask, four years is long enough for the maturation. It all depends on the cask sizes, but minimum is four. Any Kavalan that you tried, there is a minimum age of four years maturation. But actually in Taiwan, we only have to mature with the minimum of two years. So four years is to meet the foreign export requirements, for example, in the EU and also in some other countries. That's why we do a four years. Three, Canada's three. Yes, that's right. Wow, these are great. If there's one thing that you could let, that you would want a Joe average consumer to know about Kavalan, Whiskey. What's going to be Joe average? What's going to be Pat average? At least he's, it's your cousin, Joe average. They're just picking on me all the time. I may have only been looking at you when I said it. Come on. So if Steve average consumer, how about that? That's much better. Needs to know one thing about Kavalan, Whiskey. What would you like that message to be? That's a tough one to put on the spot. It was a pretty tough one. It's hard to narrow down on one, I suppose. What's your favorite color? Right. So, my favorite color, it all depends. What's your favorite Kavalan bottle? How about that? Right. I think the classic is something that is very good for everyday drinking. This is something that I have in my office, in a crystal decanter-like container. So, whenever I go back to the office, I would have some, you know, just to relax and think of what to do next. So, this is, I would say, a very good everyday drinking whiskey. But when it comes to car strength, I think this can be a special gift when you want to give a gift to someone. Or what I used to do with Jim Swan, when we want to discuss something, solace is something that is perfect. Drink slowly, so that you can appreciate the complexity and also each individual type of car's character slowly, so... Different whiskies for different occasions. Exactly, exactly. But Kavalan has one for all occasions. That's the main reason why we have so many SKUs, because Mr. Lee wants to make sure that every one of our consumers will have his or her favorite Kavalan SKU to enjoy. That's my answer. Okay, that's fair. That's a fair answer. That's a great answer. Gotta fill that golden car up with all the whiskey. I'd say mission accomplished on that. All right, this brings us to the Q&A portion of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Today's question comes from Aaron Walsh, and Aaron asks, how does placement of a barrel, for example, top, bottom, middle, in the rack house influence taste? What's your answer to that, Ian? In the case of Kavalan, in our warehouse, we have pretty much the same temperature and also humidity throughout the floors of our five-story warehouse. So we have noticed that only in summertime, when the top floor is very hot, that's when maturation, especially in terms of extraction, takes place very rapidly. But if we look at any corners within our warehouse, in terms of temperature and humidity, they are more or less the same. So we don't experience much difference. Even in the center versus the outside? That's right. So it's only to do with the different floors where we have temperature variations, especially in summertime, with 42 degrees Celsius, all the way down to 25 on the ground floor. That's when we see a lot of difference in terms of extraction, in terms of color. So more color, more wood flavor on those upper floors in the summer. More heat, more extraction, more penetration. So yeah, we definitely see wild swings like that with bourbon here. If you tour a bourbon distillery in Kentucky in the summer, it could be 100 degrees outside. You could walk into the first floor of a rick house, and it's actually cool and comfortable. That's right. Whereas you can't even get to the upper floor sometimes without specialty respiratory care. Right. Did that with Parker Beam one time. It was 95 degrees. Walked into the center warehouse. One was probably 72 degrees and actually quite nice, as nice as it was at any point in time during that day. Climb the steps and get up to the third floor already. You're in the 90s, and we talked about it. I talked about going to the fifth or sixth floor and go, you're on your own because nobody's living up there. Aaron, I think your answer is, it can be quite a bit in Kavalan specifically though. They have some pretty remarkably consistent aging outside those summer months. Yes, that's right. All right, cool. That's $20 for Aaron there. $20 Binny's gift card. If you have any questions for us, just email us, comments at binnys.com or hit us up on social media, at Binny's Bev, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. And if we choose your question, you win a free $20 out of Joe Maloney's pocket to spend on a Binny's product of your choice. You just realize this now, it's been a year and a half. You're wondering where that extra $20 every week was going. I didn't realize it. Now it explains a lot. It explains a lot. I'm in shock. Well, this has really been wonderful, Ian. I can't thank you enough for coming on with us today. Thank you, Pat. There's so many great whiskeys here. And not that they're underappreciated or anything. I mean, they're award-winning. We sell out all the limited releases we can, but it's always one of those things where people tend to get in a groove with kind of their favorite single malt. I think more than any other style of whisky. Single malt drinkers, do yourself a favor and try some of these malts because whether you love heavily shared stuff or, you know, just ripe, fresh honey, kind of orchard fruit stuff, you know, Kavalan has something for you and they're reasonably priced. All right. So been another fun episode, an all whisky hotline episode of Barrel to Bottle. I'm your host, Pat. I'm Joe. I'm Brett. I'm Ian. Keep tasting.