Thank you for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Dan. I work in Spirits. I'm Lexi. I'm on social media. Hey, I'm Chris. I work in wine, but I drink some whiskey occasionally. I'm Drew Mayville. I'm the master blender for Sazerac. All right. You work at both main distilleries, is that they? I'm based out of Frankfort, Kentucky at Buffalo Trace Distillery. I get involved with projects from around Sazerac, basically, because it goes back to when we were very small, when I joined Buffalo Trace and Sazerac, is that we didn't have a lot of people. Actually, I wore about 10 different hats. And as we grew, obviously, we hire people. And some of the other distilleries, like in France, in our Cognac distillery, we would hire a cellar master. In Ireland, we have a master blender now. So as we grow, then I have less to do with those facilities. So how did you end up at the store, which is quite arguably the one that our customers probably get the most excited about? Buffalo Trace? Yes. You said it, not me. Well, it wasn't planned when I started. Actually, my background goes back 46 years in beverage alcohol. So it wasn't like it's a new thing for me. I started out in a company called Seagram. That's an old company. Started out in the distillery learning all about the distillation process. At that time, what I wanted to do is work in an industry where I worked in the lab. That was it. That was my dream. I ended up working in the lab in the distillery. Almost two years later, they were looking for someone to move from that area to the bottling area where quality was. Back in those days, it was more voluntary. They didn't tell you to go over there. Nobody volunteered, obviously, because everybody loved the distillery. It was the job that you wanted forever. It was just a beautiful environment, not pressure, nothing. They said, well, someone's got to go. They took the youngest person, which was me. I went to the bottling operation. That's where you really had to work. It was the best move in my career ever, because what happened is you learn about quality and you learn about tasting products. That's where I was exposed to that whole journey that I've experienced through my lifetime of tasting. Eventually, I moved up through different positions in Seagrams to become the last master blender for Seagrams in North America. That's because Seagram was sold to two companies, Pernod Ricard and a company called Diageo. You may have heard of those. I've heard of them once or twice. I think so. Tiny concern. Yeah. Then because Diageo bought all the Seagram Brown Good spirits like Canadian or Crown Royal and things like that, I stayed with that, with Diageo. I worked for them for several years and then I got the call to go to a distillery in Kentucky called the Buffalo Trace Distillery. We didn't know how long that would last. We wanted to explore, so we went down and 21 years later, I'm still there at Sazerac at Buffalo Trace. You have been around for seeing the rise of Buffalo Trace and the popularity grow of pretty much, I would say, almost all their brands top to bottom. The bourbon industry too. And the bourbon industry is correct. You know, it's funny, I heard that as the rise of Buffalo Trace, which being from Canada, whiskey, there's a lot of rye, right? Yeah, traditionally, yes. The definition of Canadian whiskey in Canada, you can call it rye whiskey, and it doesn't have to have any rye in it. Well, that's interesting. It is interesting. But typically, Canadians come to the US to vacation, they ask for a rye usually. And in here, it means a different thing in the US. A lot of Canadians are discovering bourbon and products like that because they love the flavor profiles of them. So well, speaking of flavor profiles, we have some bottles to try here today. I think that main focus is going to be the benchmark expression. So I guess we'll let you decide the order and maybe talk about the inspiration behind what your approach was for these different expressions, what you're looking for and how they kind of came together and the whole project itself. The benchmark name actually goes back to the Benchmark Distilling Company late 1800s. Sazerac bought the company and I think in the early 70s. So there's a lot of history of distillation with Benchmark and like a lot of brands in our industry, they get bought and sold through to different companies from around the world. But Benchmark happens to be one that goes back quite a lot, quite a long time. This is an effort to show people the differences depending on where they're aged and how they're aged and the different expressions from the base, which is our regular benchmark. And it's usually a value proposition. These are not $100 bottles of bourbon. These are just great quality bourbons and typically around four years of age. And to give people exposure to where we're aging these, how come they taste differently. And I think people will really enjoy these at a very economical price. So the mash bill is the same on all of these? Yes. Just the aging and then whether you water them back and to what extent. Right. But some of them are bottled in Bond and some of them may be aged in the top floors of the warehouse, which is warmer. So it's giving you a different expression. Right. There is one called top floor, isn't it? Yeah, that's correct. And then when you have your single barrel, it's going to be one that's chosen by us to be single barrel. You have your foolproof, which will give you a different sensation across your palate. And the bottled in bond, obviously 100 proof from one distillation season. So it gives you those differences between them. And so people can appreciate it. And again, these are not typically aged longer than four years. And so it's giving you that early, the sweeter taste profile of bourbon. It's something I think that people will enjoy because they can appreciate the subtle differences between all these. So I think you're going to find it comes across spicy, a little bit, you know, a little more bolder than you would say words mellowed with aging of eight, ten years. Sure. Well, why don't we start with what one you think would be best to start with there? Well, they're all good. Well, I would start at the lower proof, so we'll go with the single barrel. Okay. You can take a pour there. I got a glass for you here. Okay. I didn't know I'd be drinking on the job today. One of the hazards of your profession. Yes. Single barrel bottled at 95 proof. Yes. Typically, with the Benchmark, you're going to see a lot more of that fresh fruit up front, sweet. You don't get the, and I don't want to be negative, but you won't get all those complex leather notes, waxy. I mean, you're going to get that more with the older products, which this is on the fresher fruit, sweeter side, almost corn-like. Yeah, there is a lot of... Because of the distillate character. So it hasn't had the years to mature yet. So what is the match bill here? This is at least 51% corn. Well, yes, by its nature. That's all you're going to get out of them, I think. I think you're right. I'm not the distiller, I'm the blender. The distiller would answer that question. No, he wouldn't. Arlen wouldn't answer that. So when you choose your single barrels, how many samples do you go through? Are you batching them up? Are they true single barrels? They're true single barrels. So each sample is reviewed by us as our taste panel, basically. We have almost 40 people on our taste panel. This is a little youthful, but it really does have a lot of flavor. It does. It has a lot of what I think people are really truly looking for in bourbon. A lot of times, our customers are looking for age statements and they chase those high age statements. But the reality is if you were to ask them, what do you like in bourbon? A lot of what they would say is in this class in front of us. Correct. You can't get a more versatile product, not just drinking straight as you can enjoy straight, but even mixing, the mixability is fantastic. This is a $24.99, by the way, on ourselves right now. Oh, wow. Wow. I'll take a case. There's a lot of fresh red fruit, a lot of hallmarks of Buffalo Trace bourbon. It's Buffalo Trace, except it doesn't have the added layers of complexity because it hasn't aged. Some people do like the oakier, heavier flavors of an aged bourbon. This is on the younger side, so it's going to give you a different flavor profile. That's the whole idea behind these expressions. Yeah, absolutely. I think you're dead on. There's plenty of spice on the finish. Oh, yeah. It'll knock your socks off, right? It is a bit youthful, but I think that's nice. I think it has a little aggression to it in a positive way. And that's why I think mixability is important, because that will help when you mix it with different cocktails. Exactly. At 95 proof, that'll be a good cocktail. I've traveled around the world, and a lot of places really enjoy this sweeter taste profile up front versus something that's really old and heavy and oaky. Yeah, for sure. And dry and bitter. I mean, like Dan said, there's lots of fruit character. There's lots of palm fruit and red fruit in here. There's enough oak to bring caramel and all that spice. Right. It's a nice balance between the two, but it's a little bit more on the fruitier, sweeter side. For sure. How did you settle on the proof choice for this bottle? It just works best on the taste as far as the finish. Well, you want to be different from some of the others because the full proof will give you a different taste profile, too. But 95, just a little bit above the average of 90, and it pops a little bit more. I'd agree with that for sure. Yeah, definitely. We're seeking out. That's actually not hard to find in our stores. Well, it's pretty good price. Yeah, actually, definitely good value. Did you like it, Lexi? I did. But you can see that. Yeah, you can see, though, a little bit of that corn is coming through a little bit more, whereas in our say like Buffalo Trace, it kind of is different. It's shifted the balance a little bit. That's got to be quite the challenge for you when you're batching up Buffalo Trace for market you're tasting, and you're looking for a consistent profile. How many barrels do you sample? What's some of your approach there as much as you can share? Well, let's put it this way. When I first started, Buffalo Trace wasn't a very big brand. We would look at all the barrels and then put them together. Now, we do composites of different areas. Even though it's not a very big batch bourbon because it's limited by the size of the tanks. So you might have 150 barrels in that tank. And that's not exactly big batch, is it? And so there's quite a few lots that we have to actually go through. But I don't know if I want to tell you all the secrets. That's okay. We'll take any you'll give us. Clearly, you note that the difference is about where the barrel is stored in the Rick house. Well, in this case, yes. But that's true with Buffalo Trace too. So, you're pulling from different parts of the Rick house to get the right balance. And that's kind of why we call it blending, although we don't describe it as blending in the industry. We like to describe it as mingling. But I always kid people on... Sounds so genteel. It does. It sounds sophisticated. I never want it to be called the master mingler. So that's why we call it blending. You would be great at cocktail parties. Maybe at parties, but not at all. But really, all you're doing is taking various barrels to make the taste profile be consistent. Right. And that's actually the primary role of a blender. Whether you like it or not, people want to taste the same product consistently, especially like a product like Buffalo Trace. Sure. So I can actually tell you, when I first came to Buffalo Trace, the brand Buffalo Trace was targeted to be about an eight-year-old bourbon. To this day, it's still targeted to be around an eight-year-old. Okay. And so that means it's been taste consistent since I've been there anyways, and I know before too. And that's really hard to do for companies because most companies would try to recoup costs and de-age something, whereas we haven't done that. And I think it's the beauty of Buffalo Trace and Sazerac is that we actually are not driven by cost 100%, even though we want to make money. We want quality and we want the quality of taste. So it's been like that since I started, and that's one of the reasons I'm still working for this company. That is laudable because we do see products lowering their age or removing age statements entirely on a product we were used to seeing an age statement on. Yeah. So what do you think a blender does? That's what I can do. If somebody wanted me to de-age a product, I could de-age it over time and you would not know the difference. Well, that is truly masterful. Yeah. But we haven't done that. Yeah. Right. Right. And I think that's a lot of credit because we're not publicly traded. Oh, yeah. Well, it is a big advantage. You don't have to answer to the stockholders who just want their money. Right. And I'm sure that you've been involved with getting several projects or new line extensions and things off the ground with Buffalo Trace. What was a memorable one or one of your favorites to have worked on? There's so many. I'm sure there's one that you have in front of you is the Buffalo Trace Cream. OK. There's our last drop release that I released that I blended from components, vintage components from Buffalo Trace. There's another one that you may have not even heard of. Maybe you have Mr. Sam, which is a blend of Canadian and American whiskeys. So we have a lot of products. Even our newest, our Weller Millennium, which is a blend of whisky and wheat at Bourbon. Our 25-year-old, the 27-year-old, last drop from Buffalo Trace. I could go on. Every two weeks, there's a new product from Buffalo Trace. It's just hard to keep up. Even some of our experimental releases have been phenomenal. We're not getting rich off experimental releases. Nobody's getting rich. We just want to show people what different variables in the process. If you change them, this is what you're going to get. Absolutely. A little R&D never hurts. Yeah. You know, there's nobody that's even a close second to us in R&D. We are constantly trying to make better whiskeys, and we're investing a lot of money in doing that. OK. I mean, you mentioned 27-year-old. That's some deep time in Barrel. Do you ever... I assume when barrels start to get really old, you're monitoring them closely. Do you ever find things that you think have gone a little too far, maybe too tannic, dried out a little? In the... Yes, I have seen that. And if you get too old, you can actually salvage that sometimes depending on what you... When I say salvage, I mean, it's still good. So what you do is actually you can blend it. Yeah. Put a lot of backbone into something else. And depending on the product, you can chill filter and that removes some of that. Okay. And so people don't realize filtration removes things, different tastes. And so that actually will help reduce some of those tannins. Our thinking is not to think that way. Our thinking is not to have them there in the first place. Right. And so that's what some of our experiments, like our warehouse P is involved with, is trying to learn what's happening and how we can control that in a controlled environment. So, tell us more about warehouse P. I can't. Okay. That's what I thought you'd say, but I... No, but I'll give you a good example. Our warehouse P had stored our Eagle Rare 25 in five years in that warehouse. Okay. This is like the Area 51 of... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not on any maps. We actually have a building in 52 and we used to kid around just like that. Alien technology going into all of your buildings. So it's a lot of fun. You know, when you do things all the time the same way and you do it day in, day out, you can get bored. But what we do is we have a lot of fun with experiments and trying different things. And so our warehouse P evolved. It started off with a really small room that we control the environment. We don't say what we're doing, but obviously, you know, temperature is one. Humidity. We know there's a lots of variables through our experiments that can control the taste. So in our controlled environment now, we found such positive results in that small little experimental warehouse that we had, and that we actually made a much larger one because of the positive results. But our 25 year old Eagle Rare started out in the regular warehouse. And as you point out, after a period of time with bourbon, when you age in a new barrel in a quite warm temperature, you're going to get some undesirable components, right? That overwhelms the palate. And so this is all about like our Eagle Rare 25 is changing that, at least for the first few, you know, latter years of its life and seeing how it tastes. And we had pretty good success so far. Yeah, I imagine the goal is to limit extraction from the wood at that point. Our goal is to make something that you'll love. That's going to be 50, maybe 100 years. Wow. Neat. Wow. But I won't be here to taste it. Neither will I. Yeah. But that's the whole beauty is we keep trying different things. We don't know what's going to work. What if it didn't turn out? I mean, that's just, oh, well. Sure. Actually, most of our experiments that we have fail. They don't turn out to be better. They turn out to be different. But most. Not in a good way. But actually, the one that we did win, I think, successfully was our four-grain EH Taylor. That was an experiment, turned out to be voted best whiskey in the world. That's what we want to do is make better whiskeys for the future, better bourbon. Like I said, most of the time we fail. But we do put it in our little experimental bottles, and I'm sure Binny's must have that once in a while. We've seen those one here and there. Yeah, it's here and there because the reason is there's very few made, right? There's only a few barrels that we experiment with. Sure. Even though we have thousands of barrels aging now of experiments. Well, with age spirits, that's a long arc for an experiment. It is. You have to wait and see. I think people inherently understand that, but they can't wait for the next. Right. You know, our EHTailor is a good example of a line that we have a core release, and then once in a while, you'll see one of those come in, those exceptions. That's kind of keeps everybody, wow, that's pretty cool. Yeah. No, I mean, being in stores, you definitely get a lot of questions whenever there's a new label floating around on the Internet. And it starts almost immediately with you guys. So yes, friends, media as well. We do have a lot of people watching those sites to see what labels are coming out. Right. Maybe we don't put them out. Maybe some are fake. Right. That'd be really funny. And on April Fool's Day. Yeah. Why don't you make up a product right now? Let's bring up a new EHTailor together. All right. We'll workshop this. Cherry Berry Blast. Yes. There you go. EHTailor, Cherry Berry Blast. Perfect. Perfect for mixing with Mountain Dew. We don't tell you how to drink. Of course not. We wouldn't listen anyway. That's true. Right. Right. We're all different. Well, that's the whole thing is the Holy Grail for us is to make the perfect bourbon, but we will never make the perfect bourbon. Because your definition will be different from your definition. And the idea is that we keep striving to make better products. And that's what we do at Buffalo Trace. And that's something that was actually refreshing to see because we have experimental meetings. And that's the whole idea behind the experimental meetings is to make better products. And it's evolved from just a few people now to the whole company, because we have probably about 11 different distilleries around the world. And now when we have these experimental meetings, we have all of these distilleries on the same call. And we're all feeding off each other, learning from each other, and also exploring other types of experiments. Very cool. And Harland leads the program. And all the top people in the company are on that call twice a year. So it just shows you the commitment to do this. So with that kind of cross-pollination, cross-styles of spirit, have you picked up anything, say, from the Cognac distillery that you found really useful in Bourbon? Yeah, there's ideas, yes. But again, as you pointed out before, it takes years before you see the results, right? And vice versa. You know, we tried to look at all those things. And what the distilleries will do is take some of those ideas and actually execute in their distillery. So, it's kind of one of the best meetings of the year. I'm sure. I'm sure you kind of look forward to that. Yeah. When you're tasting these products as they're aging, you're seeing how it's evolved and what's going to happen. And you get excited about it. You know, unfortunately, I can't tell you what I'm excited about. We usually don't talk about it until it's released. Mr. Stonewall here. That's okay. Let's drink more bourbon. Yeah, let's try the next one. Okay. So, let's do the Bond It. This one is 100 proof. Yeah, see, even on the nose, you're going to see a difference. It's got a smoothness to it. And actually, some of the cornyness has gone down even on this side. Oh, yeah, it's much rounder. Yeah, I think so. Although, you know, you don't have the wood, you don't have the oak coming through so strong like you do when you have an older product. You can really get a lot of brown sugar on the finish on this. This really smooths out on the finish. You can see quite a difference from the previous one actually. This Bottled in Bond Act was actually back to EH. Taylor, who helped implement the Bottle in Bond Act back in the late 1800s. And so this one is by law has to be 100 proof, same distillery, same distillation season, and at least four years of age to be bottled in bond. And so this was back in the days when people could add things like chewing tobacco, iodine, to make their products. And really the quality was going downhill. So the Bottle in Bond Act was to represent here, this product, if you buy this product, it's great quality because it's under government supervision, has all these requirements, and this is what you're going to get. So this is a tribute actually to EH. Taylor in a way. A food quality act before our own Chicago's own meatpacking district was put under a microscope. No, but this has, I mean, this has like, it has some wood, but it's very rounded. For me, it's got more dessert quality than the previous one. To me, in the mid-palate, the cherry just explodes. It's really nice. You get cherry and apple, I find, on Benchmark quite a bit. And this is $19.99 on our shelves right now. That's a bargain. Bottle in Bond is just generally a great category for value and quality, I think. 100 Proof really pops on the finish of the rice. It really does. The spice just really explodes on the finish here, too. Everybody's enjoying this one. Again, I think this is good meat. Yeah. But I mean, with that 100 Proof, it's going to make an incredible cocktail. And at that price, easily affordable to make something nice. That's the only thing that I really It concerns me, is that people won't try it neat. I think they'll just want to mix it. Being from Buffalo Trace, I think people are probably more inclined to try something like this neat. People do have a preconception about this price point, but I agree with Dan that the provenance of this whiskey is what everybody is after, you know. And it's worth trying on its own. I agree. And, you know, I'll tell you a story that when I first joined Buffalo Trace, we were making Buffalo Trace, and not too many people were buying it 20 some years ago, right? Eagle Rare, we were worried it wasn't even going to take off, which really seems funny today, right? But back then, I was concerned because we were not charging very much for our products. So like Buffalo Trace being inexpensive, I thought maybe naively that it's not going to take off because if it's cheap in terms of dollars, people aren't going to buy it. And maybe that was our success is it was reasonably priced for a great quality. And so today, it makes sense what we did. But if it wasn't for our CEO, maybe we wouldn't be here where we are. Because people tend to think it has to be a lot of money to taste good, right? And this is, I think we proved them wrong. Yeah. And I think that's why we have such a following every morning. When I go to work, there's probably a couple hundred people lined up to try and buy our products. Absolutely. So I think it worked for us. Yeah. And that takes you right back to that privately owned thing, right? I agree. I mean, you have the flexibility to price things the way you want. It's all about building a brand for us. It's not about the short-term profitability. It's about the long-term game. Well, you already got 200 years or something under your belt. Yeah, almost 250. Long-term. Yeah, it's long-term thinking. Yeah. Yeah, you consider the history of Buffalo Trace, you know, back to the late 1700s. And the names that distillery has gone through, which we celebrate with the products that we actually make, like EH. Taylor owned it and called it the OFC Distillery. Yeah, one of the few distilleries opened during Prohibition. So there's a lot of history at Buffalo Trace. It's got that providence and that history. And if you do visit, which I know you guys have, you feel that when you actually walk in there. Absolutely. So your lack of disclosure on the Mash Bill. On this, I just took another sip, and I'm getting more and more kind of wintergreen, minty notes on the finish that I think are clearly speaking of. Rye. Well, there's rye in it. Yeah. Good catch. Between 1% and 49%. Somewhere in there. Well, I mean, I maintain that you can actually taste the percent just by the amount of rye and the sweetness. So if you actually taste enough of where you get a higher rye content, you'll see the rye predominate, the spiciness come through a lot more. I mean, there's more than just the recipe, it's the distillation methodology and things like that. But generally with us, you can actually taste the recipe, I think. I'm not going to disagree. I'm just going to come up with percentages myself. Exactly. You're not going to hear it from anybody at the distillery what it is. There'll be a lot of information online, people saying what it is. Oh yeah. You guys must have a field day with some of that. I don't even look at that. Well, someone somewhere in Buffalo Trace probably has. I always learned that when making the Antique Collection every year, I used to get involved a lot. Who's saying what about this year's release? This particular release of George T. Stagg, WL. Weller, and one writer, a very famous writer, trashed it one year. Me and Harlan were crying in our room. No, we were, oh, gee, that's not good. And two months later, another very famous whiskey writer said, it's one of the best he's tasted. OK. And so that just, in my mind, I started thinking at least that everybody has an opinion. Don't get down about your critics and just try to do better all the time. So that's kind of our philosophy, is you don't listen to your own press. So if you get wrapped up with, even now, when we get all these accolades, we're not involved. I don't, that doesn't concern me that. I don't even get, you know, I don't want to even listen to that. It's all about doing our job and doing it better next day. Sure. Awesome. All right, what's next? I don't know. Foolproof. Oh, there we go. That's the first one I bought when they came out. Did you say foolproof? It is April Fool's Day. Foolproof. So this is actually the proof that we put into a barrel, 125. And for those who don't know, in Kentucky, with the aging, proof tends to go up as it gets older. Some go up to 140. By law, the maximum that you can allow adding to a barrel is 125 proof. Then when you consider our weeded bourbons, go in at 114 proof, at a lower proof. So this is at the max, which most people do. This is not barrel strength, but it's foolproof. Correct. Got it. Definitely. This has a ton of power and richness. Needless to say. And I like when the proof is higher, it accentuates the flavors more than was previously. So it tastes entirely different from previous ones we've tasted. So and it pops every flavor on your palate. So if you taste it, apples and some stone fruit notes, baking spices, it just amplifies that in this, especially after you take the first sip, once your palate adjusts to the alcohol. That's it. I mean, it's even got like a touch of like creaminess. Yeah, there's a nice like caramel character to it. Agreed. I think the body up front is really rounded and kind of lush at, and it gets a little leaner and spicier on the finish, but it's it's fun, you know, it's it's I just like, I like the balance. Yeah, this one. Yeah, I get I get caramel and maybe an undertone of chocolate. Absolutely. You do get chocolate on the dark chocolate, though. Yeah, I'm not going to test that it makes a killer old fashioned. Oh, I imagine. And this one is twenty two ninety nine on our shelves. These prices are stupid. Yeah, it's crazy. Throwing it back to the 90s. I know. I love it. Yeah, we've had these on ourselves for just about a year. I mean, we're cool like that. So all your blending decisions are done at full, full proof. Actually, most of the time, most of our sensory decisions are made at 20 percent or 40 proof. Did you see my leading question that dragged some information? No, I can tell you that. The reason- Damn. You're not going to keep it. Trained so hard over there. The reason that we do that is so that you can see differences easier when you have 40 proof. If you actually go to labs around the world in Scotland, whether it be Cognac or Rums in Jamaica, everybody reduces it to make quality decisions because you can see the differences easier. We're not there to enjoy the flavor and drink. We're just there to evaluate. So most places around the world will decrease the proof. But when you have a product like George T. Stagg, that's actually sold at quite high proofs, you have to taste it both ways. This lingers and it changes as it sits on the palate. Your palate is adjusting to the alcohol too. I mean, I hate to say it, but no adjustment required here. It's pretty simple but beautifully balanced, I think. Yeah, I mean, the fact that that's 125 proof and around four years old is pretty phenomenal. Isn't it? For the experience. You see some of that cornyness disappear too, and that's remarkable actually. Yeah. Maybe it's the people who pick the barrels, right? Might be. I have some talented folks here. I don't know about that. They're talented, but... Seems unlikely. Yeah, probably. Talented, but they won't tell you much. We do have a couple of bonus bottles. We got Sazerac Rye in the previously mentioned bourbon cream. Probably start with the rye, huh? Yeah. We did a little episode recently for Mardi Gras where we made a Sazerac. What a great with the Sazerac Rye. Well, of course. Of course. Would I mention it if we had? I thought maybe you used the Cognac. Well, we did discuss that. Yeah. Actually, you can have it. If you go to our Sazerac House in New Orleans or the Roosevelt, have you ever been to the Roosevelt, had a Sazerac? I've been to the Sazerac House. I used to live in New Orleans for a little while. It's a great place. It's a fun place. Yeah. Very fun. You can have it with the Cognac or the straight Rye, because we make straight Rye at the Sazerac House. Or you can have a combination of both. Yeah. Which is really good. It gives you a lot of flavor. But this is our straight Rye, and this is the entry level of our straight Rye, which is at least 51% Rye, just for your information. Thank you, sir. You're welcome. I'm writing that down. It's very informative. But I'll get back to tasting the recipe, because after we taste it, I want to ask you, is there a healthy portion of corn in this particular recipe? Yes. You know the answer. Well, I've tasted this a few times. It starts out kind of candied, sweet, fruitiness. Some people get some orange, candied orange. But you do get candied flavor, like very sweet, and then the rye spiciness takes over, increasingly on the palate. I think it's well within what we consider a Kentucky style rye, which is very friendly. Yeah, it's very friendly, yes. And it's very popular and very cocktail-friendly, 100%. No, it's a classic. I mean, I think everyday price for us is $29.99, often on sale for $24.99. That's great. It tastes familiar to me. It's one of those that just tastes familiar, you know? Yeah, I agree with everything that was said. It's like comfort. It's a very, very comfortable rye, a very easy drinking rye. I think that's why it's very popular, is just because of that. And people don't realize it's aged around six years, and if you were to take this same type of product that you don't filter it or you don't actually reduce it with water, it can become Thomas Handy. So Thomas Handy has one best whiskey in the world, and it just shows you the quality of this whiskey even though it's diluted and chill filtered, but the quality is there. Absolutely. Because this is a good example of what I give people to taste of a whiskey that doesn't have to be old to be a great whiskey. And everybody wants these days to have an old whiskey, and it's 20 years old. That's great. It has its place, but it doesn't have to be an old whiskey to be a great one. Absolutely right. Now, do you think that coming from a Canadian background, do you think that this style of rye is more appealing to the general Canadian palate, or would it be more of like a higher rye or like super high rye? For Canadians, it would be a little intense. Although Canadians are becoming more bourbon drinkers and more flavorful, they are demanding these things as far as these types of flavors. But there will always be a more mild, gentler whiskey that Canadians like because that's what they're used to. Something that you mix. Right. I was going to say, if you compare this to products you used to work with like Crown Royal, this is much spicier. Right. This will be strong for some people. But I'll tell you, the palates are changing even in Canada because a lot of our products sell very well there. People are looking for those more intense tasting products. Although, like I said, there will always be a need for this gentle Canadian whiskey. We actually have a single barrel that's called Caribou Crossing, which you may be familiar with. You probably have picked a barrel. Yeah, it's been a few years since I've seen a barrel picked. But if you taste that, it's a Canadian rye, which, like I said, it doesn't actually... Canadian rye whiskey doesn't have to have rye in it by law. It doesn't have to. But this obviously has rye in it. But it's very easy to drink. It's very smooth and velvety, buttery up front, and then spiciness will take over. But it's a sipping type Canadian whiskey. But this one here is very easy to sip on too, whether it's in the Sazerac or not. Absolutely. What is your absent of choice or absent substitute of choice for that drink? Herb Sink. Yeah, of course. Was that a good answer? Yeah. Oh yeah. It's the only New Orleans answer. Right. Well, when they just rinse it and then throw it out, you know, gee, that's not good. I wouldn't throw it out. You should drink it. Yeah, right. I never figured that. Always drink your rinse. That's right. That's what I would say. And finish strong with this bourbon cream we have in front of us. Yeah, this is a project that I personally worked on. Not only did I develop it, but I actually developed the marketing and sales plan. And I'll tell you why, this is back many years ago when I first started at Buffalo Trace, is I brought to the CEO's attention that we should do a bourbon cream. We were having dinner and my wife and I were both there. And I said to him, I says, why don't we do a cream product? And he says, go do it. There you go. Sure. It seems to be the philosophy, just do it. Because I came from some large distilling, the largest distillers in the world. And I said, well, I'm going to make up some samples with maybe some young bourbon all the way through just to see what they would be, he would be interested in. And before I even tasted him on it, he says, put in it what tastes the best. This is from the CEO of the company, Mark Brown. And it kind of gives you an idea of the company. So what I did is I put in Buffalo Trace bourbon in this cream. And so that's why it tastes the way it does. And actually, I prefer it actually room temperature because you can taste a lot more of the bourbon flavors rather than chilling it. So we put in the best cream I could get at the time and the best bourbon. It's got Buffalo Trace bourbon in it. And that's why it was allocated for so many years because we didn't have enough bourbon for Buffalo Trace because we didn't have everybody, well, I can't get more of that. So in other words, it's bourbon, all bourbon in this versus flavors and things. And I think that's the beauty, this is simplicity of the success of it because it tastes pretty good. Yeah. So there's no added spice or anything like that. No, this is bourbon. Great. Isn't it? Yeah. So a lot of cream products, they'll have flavorings and probably neutral grain spirits is the base. For sure. But this doesn't. So this is why I think it tastes so good. It's pure and I think people will enjoy it. It started off in our gift shop as a trial to see if it would sell because Bailey's is quite large and not too many people try different things. But it started out in our gift shop and it became the number one selling item in our gift shop. Wow. Yeah. Not the easiest thing in the world to find an Irish cream with actual whiskey. Well, yeah. An aged whiskey and neutral grain spirit, for sure. But again, that's why this wasn't available as much as it could be because we needed aged bourbon to go in. Did you source your cream locally? No. It was up in Wisconsin. Oh. That makes sense. That place. Does it make sense? That makes sense. They don't know anything about dairy up there. Well, just to be funny, one person asked me, what kind of cows made that cream? I don't know. I'm going to go Guernsey. Oh, look at this. He wouldn't know, I guess. All I knew is I sampled from several suppliers and this was the best quality in my opinion. Then I had to develop the sales and marketing plan because back in those days, there was nobody around at Buffalo Trace and Sazerac. There was only a few people I had. I was in charge of processing. I was in charge of quality. I was in charge of new products. I was in charge of Blanton's Bottling Hall. So and actually Lagoons, we have wastewater. I was in charge of that too. So you have all these hats and then, well, you're going to develop this product. Now you got to develop a plan. So I had to find the packaging. I had to have the sales plan and I had to get it made at a company, because we didn't bottle cream at that particular time. And so that you basically did everything on it. So I started from there. And then now it's taken off through the gift shop. Everybody wanted it, that tasted it. And gradually we released more and more. And now it's available in most states. Well, let's taste this creamy goodness. Come on. Both this and Sazerac are everyday admins for us now. They're not on allocation anymore. But I do remember the days when you'd get a few cases of Buffalo Trace bourbon cream right before the holidays and it was gone in a day, usually. But we still still move through some of it. Well, I would say that this is a good product to drink anytime of the year, not during holidays, only. We are famous for our root beer float, for those who have been on the tour, where you can actually mix this with root beer and it's like an adult root beer float with alcohol. Freddy's root beer, right? That's right. Freddy's root beer. Yeah, it's rich and obviously creamy. Well, you get a lot of vanilla. But it's not overly sweet, which is really nice. Can you taste the bourbon? I can taste the bourbon. Even the finish, you still taste the bourbon, right? I think that's why it's so popular is that America's only spirit recognized by the US in that it's not Irish, it's not anything else. It's America's spirit. It's delicious. You know what? That was the funny part is that when I first saw it in the gift shop, I would be going around watching people tasting it and they loved it. Even I went to the gift shop and I saw these bikers come in, they were buying the bourbon cream and I thought, God, that is cool. Everybody likes it. Yeah, it's it's just not one segment of the population. Even people who drink bourbon will drink this. I mean, I could probably use this bottle in a bar fight later. It is pretty heavy. It's a kind of a weird geeky question. Is this full heavy cream? Like is the what's the butterfat content? You know, not not right now. Approaching 40. It's it's probably pretty high, but I don't know if it's that high. Because there's so much maybe 38. Yeah. But but the butterfat is is so buttery and rich. It's delicious. And it just dovetails with that bourbon so well. Just that's why I picked it. Nice job. It's always about you, isn't it? No, it's about the product. Oh, right, right, right. It's a delightful vacation morning kind of little. Add that to your coffee. Lots of people mix it with their coffee. Oh, yeah. Some people to their cereal. No, I'm just kidding. You probably could be crazy. You could. This on Lucky Charms? Cocoa Puffs. Didn't they have chocolate Lucky Charms at one point? That might be a good one. Count Chocolate or whatever. Cocoa Puffs, yeah. Or lots of people mix it with ice cream. It's good. Oh, sure. You can probably make ice cream out of this with a little bit more. For sure. Cream and milk. Well, actually, it goes back to when I worked for Seagram, we made a product, a cream product called Myers Original Rum Cream. For those who know a little bit of trivia, we used to make butter with the cream coming in and take it home. But it was rum-based cream at Seagram's, and that's where I got, hey, why can't we do one at Buffalo Trace? Sure. So it's part of my history that this became developed and executed. So I'd say it's really excellent. I'd say it was a success on both sides, being both good and selling very well. So what would you say? What is your favorite bourbon that you buy? You know, they're all my children. Yeah, but you've got a favorite though, right? No, I don't. Oh, okay. Nobody has got it out in the universe. We make so many products, always evolving and the next one will be my favorite, you know, because there's so many that we make. Keeps it interesting. Yeah, we are never stagnant. So we always have ideas and we're always making new products. Right. Well, George T. Stagnant? George T. Stagnant. Oh my gosh. I actually thought that, but I'm sure Chris is going to say that. I am the voice of all the worst inner thoughts. But I think it's pretty well known, even our Sazerac that you just taste it, we're bringing out a hundred proof, right? Yeah, we did hear that. Yeah. I don't know if I'm supposed to say that or not, but. Whoops. But beautiful. How red is Liz's? Can't wait. Attention to the list. Well, thank you for guiding us through these incredible benchmark expressions and. Oh, you're welcome. Guiding us through the stories of how they came to be and what your approach is and all the history of Buffalo Trace is. You're so welcome. Thanks for having me. Do you have any parting words of wisdom? Cheers. Cheers. Smartest thing I've heard all day. Yeah. Thank you for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. We had a great time today with Drew Mayville from the master blender of Buffalo Trace. I'm Dan. I'm Lexi. I'm Chris. I'm Drew. Keep tasting.