You are listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg. I do communications at Binny's. Hey, I'm Pat. I'm the in-house Instagram model at Binny's. Hands only. We have some fun guests today. Returning fan favorite, Monique from Wine Vos here. Hey, Monique. Hello, Pat. Hello, Greg. Nice to have you back. Very excited to be back. You don't look that excited. This is an audio medium. Listeners, you can't see how disappointed, profoundly disappointed she is right now. Every time I am here, I think I might get banned. It is always a pleasant surprise when I get invited back. Our special guest who came all the way from Texas day is Ms. Marsha Milam. How do you do? Nice to see you guys. Thanks for joining us. Marsha is one of the founders of Milam & Greene, which is now the second name of the distillery. Is that right? Yes. You want to walk us through how this thing got started and where you came from and why we care about your bourbon now. Right. I'd love to. It's a long story. How long do we have? Jim will trim it up, I'm sure. Then everyone tuned out just then. Sure. I grew up in Central Illinois, 200 miles south of here. Welcome back. My father was in the oil business. Anytime anybody did you a favor, he said, buy him a bottle of whiskey. At Christmas, my mother's counters were lined with gold bottles with red bows. I don't know the brand. I was too young to care. I grew up just believing whiskey was currency. Then I was in the music business in Texas, and I had a mountaintop experience. Jimmy Vaughn is a dear friend of mine. Some of you may know him as an incredible guitar player. Stevie Ray's brother? Stevie Ray's brother. No kidding. Yes. I had worked with the Vaughn brothers early on, and then Jimmy and I continued to be friends. And Jimmy just always thinks I'm his PR girl, which I'm happy to be Jimmy Vaughn's PR girl. Anytime he wants something. So that's my relationship with Jimmy, and I adore him. So when Stevie was getting inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Jimmy called me. He's like, this is a big deal. I need your help. Will you go? And so I met he and the band out there, and John Mayer inducted Stevie, and it was John Mayer and Gary Clark Jr. and Jimmy, and Doyle Bramhall Jr. And they were all playing Stevie's music live and loud again. And Paul McCartney inducted Ringo that day. That's a bit of a lineup. That was more name-dropping than we've ever had in such a long time period. That's why I said, you really want to know. So Jimmy and I went over to do a run-through on Saturday afternoon, and we're standing here. He's by the mic, and 15 feet away are Paul and Ringo at the corner of the stage. And Jimmy did his thing, and then we got off, and it was so cool. The stage manager, Paul and Ringo, were next. So they came up, and they're standing on either side of her, and she's trying to talk to everybody and say, here's what's going to happen. And she said, may I just have a moment? I have a beetle on either side of me. And just like that, Paul and Ringo threw their arms around her and jumped up and down and said, beetle sandwich, beetle sandwich. It was just like they were 19 again. And the whole weekend was like that. It was glorious, and it was so professional and so marvelous and so heartwarming. After I did that, I was like, I'm never gonna do anything again that is gonna be anywhere near this. I called my best friend from the airport, and I said, I'm not having a premonition, but I want you to know if my plane goes down, I died happy. And I was really like, what am I gonna do next? And two months later, I was in Kentucky and I did the Bourbon Trail. And I don't remember which distillery I was visiting, but I walked into this Rick House, which you all know is a warehouse full of whiskey, the size of gymnasium, but nine stories tall, and they'll hold 58,000 to 78,000 barrels of whiskey. And it was May and the weather was perfect, and there was a slight breeze. And I felt like I was by myself, although I was with other people. But I walked in there and I could smell the ground, and I could smell the wood, and I could smell the bourbon. And what struck me was that nothing was happening in this place, nothing. But bourbon was aging. And I thought this is the antithesis of the way we live our lives. We're all multitasking, I think, especially women. We're always doing 10 things at once. Men, not so much. Sorry. Yeah, I'm that lazy guy. Matt can do all kinds of stuff while he scratches his belly. There you go. Or watch TV. So many. I'm sorry. But I just fell in love with this whole concept of slowness and aging and savoring and stopping and taking time. And I had a dear friend who had just sold his company, and he was pretty bored. And he was looking, we had worked together before, and he's like, let's come up with something. And I came back from that trip and I'm like, we need to open a bourbon distillery. No idea what I was doing. And he said, great idea, let's do it. Also no idea. No idea. So I came to Chicago and I knew the guys at Kaval. I took classes from them and I would sit there and when they'd have the class where they're showing the mash, it would be for 30 minutes. And all the brewers and distillers are just salivating over that and I'm like falling asleep. You know, but they get to the marketing and PR part and I was right in there. So I initially thought I would distill and do the marketing and the sales and the press and I would do it all, but I soon realized I was not going to be a distiller. So, let's taste our Single Barrel, which is the first product I put out. Cool. Pat, I don't think I've ever had any of these. Really? I don't think so. Your life has been incomplete. Yeah, they don't suck. No. This seems really bright and focused. I don't usually pick up that kind of texture on bourbon. And it's not as like, sometimes Tennessee bourbons tend to have a very distinct Tennessee bourbon character that some people might say is kind of minerally or vitamin-y. And it's not really there in this. This is, it is bright and focused. I like it a lot. I mean, when you're doing single cast, they need to stand out. And to me, that's intentional. Why did someone bottle this as a single cask as opposed to a small batch? You can get the intention out of the glass on this, absolutely. Yeah. And there's 200, we get about 260 bottles per barrel on a single barrel. Is this numbered in any way or is it just like an ongoing single barrel line? It's an ongoing single barrel. Sweet. So I love it. It's like these are like children to me. Everybody says, you can't have a favorite child. But every time I come back to this and have a sip of it, I just I'm so proud and so happy, you know. And it's 86 proof, four years old. And hopefully by next year, we will have our own distillate out in our single barrel. On sale for $51 at your local Binny's. Oh really? He wasn't just playing Tetris on his phone. He was looking at it. No, I know. I know. Yeah, I swear. That was a legitimate search. You can't memorize them all. Yeah. He never memorizes a single one. Well, there's more important things to remember like species of insect and things. Yeah, right. Names of children. We were in the Wild Turkey Visitor Center yesterday and Jeff was like, hey, Brophy, what's this bug? I was like, well, it's obviously a brown marmorated stink bug. It's invasive. It's from China, but it's relatively harmless. That's a different podcast. Yeah, sorry. And I've already forgotten the price of this bug. And I know what they look like. They have two red stripes on them. I mean, part of the story of this, we had gotten requests for a while. The other half of the Milam and Greene, Heather Greene, Brett has known for a while through like judging at ACSA and ADI and things like that. And he called her and started bugging her to get it into Binny's. So we had it. We had a cushy little like Justin, just Binny's in Illinois thing going on with it for a while. And then Monique swooped in and stole our thunder. Womp Womp. You know, Binny's is, Binny's is the best of the best. But then, you know, it's it's interesting with like founders. And I think to like, you know, Marsha or Heather, whoever it is, it's, you know, we always have to ask people when you start working with them, is it do you want to drive a bunch of volume into a retail stores, which is super important? But like, what about seeing it on back bars? What about seeing it at, you know, like whiskey bars or in a cocktail? And both of them tug at different parts of your ego and they both feed each other, getting the opportunity to go taste something somewhere drives you to go to retail. So, you know, so working with a wonderful distribution partner is great. Yes. It's crucial. That's exactly what I implied. So, Binny's really brought us in. And so, long story short, I put out a single barrel and it was whiskey that I sourced. I worked with Koval. I'd bring up samples and they go, that's okay. That's good. And I was like, I'm not doing okay. I'm not doing good. If it isn't great, it's not happening. Finally, I found some whiskey and I brought it up. And Robert put his finger in there, put it on his tongue and said, that is good whiskey. So, I bought as much of it as I could. It was four years old at the time and that has grown with the company. It's now 10, 11, 12 years old. And that has really formed the basis of a lot of things that Heather blends with. Can we ask you where that whiskey came from? You can. But you wouldn't. Will you answer? Yes, it's from, you can read the back of the bottle. This is the Tennessee stuff, yeah. Yeah, Tennessee. So, we put it out as a single barrel and entered it in the San Francisco World Spirits Competition and lo and behold, won a double gold. At this point, we'd probably sold four bottles out of the distillery. I didn't even have a tasting room open. I got picked up by a big distributor and our first order was for 468 cases. And I was like, oh my God, I need help bottling. So, it started like that. But the one thing I always knew is you can get something going, but you have to surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. I did not, to use a musical reference, want to be a one hit wonder, you know, put out this one single barrel, won these awards and then what does she do next? So, I was really fortunate through a mutual friend, Randy Allender, who had worked at Beam, he told me about a woman named Marlene Holmes. And Marlene was hired by Booker Ngo, first woman ever hired there. And he said that he had heard that she was interested in trying her hand at craft distilling. Now, keep in mind, Marlene was making 1,700 barrels a day. We were making two and a half barrels a week with our pot still. So, I said, let's try it, you know? So, I talked to Marlene, she came into Austin. I had her lined up. I mean, I made it irresistible. I had front row seats at every great show that was going on, you know? It was the first year of a Texas whiskey festival. So, I think Marlene had a chance to check out what was happening in the state. And by Sunday morning, she was like, I don't know who else you're interviewing for this job, but I'd like to have it. And I'm like, I'm not interviewing anybody. It's yours if you want it. She went home. She and her partner sold their farm. They kept 10 acres in case it didn't work out. And they moved to Texas and she became our distiller. And she is the most marvelous human being. I mean, she's a phenomenal distiller because she has 27 years' experience. She's still Dog Creek, Basil Hayden, everything that you are familiar with. But she's also the most generous, kind person. And when I got into this, I noticed just like in music, there can be people who think they're so cool or that their product is so precious or it's... I won't tell Brett that you're talking about him that way. But Marlene, she's just so down to earth. And we'd want a double gold. I had this great single barrel. I'm like, don't mix this with Coke. And Marlene's like, Marsha, if they want their bourbon on their cornflakes, if that's how they like it, that's okay. And she's just so magnanimous and open to all the Texas distillers, all the young Texas guys love her. So, you were in need of a blender then. You wanted them to start making small batches. And that brings us to this triple cast. Right. And there was a first book I read was written by a woman named Heather Greene. Whiskey distilled the populous guide to the spirit of life, to the water of life. Through a mutual friend who was also a musician, he said to me, if you're getting into whiskey, you need to meet my friend, Heather Greene. I'm like, oh my God, are you kidding? I'd love to. So, I talked to Heather on the phone. She came down to consult with us. And together with our team, we created this triple cask. And this has our Texas distillate in it, which Marlene makes. Marlene also goes to Bardstown twice a year and distills there. We do not contract distill with Bardstown because of her connections. They allow our distilling team to go in. Nice. And she distills for a week. We have two pot stills. In Texas, we can lay down about 500 barrels a year. Marlene goes to Bardstown in one week, lays down 900. That is how we're able to grow. So this has our Texas distillant in it. It has Marlene's Kentucky Distillant, and it has some of the aged Tennessee in it, which Heather says gives it structure. So this is our lovely triple cast bourbon. Heather, it's 94 proof. Heather and Marlene proved that. That's where they felt it should be. I like it on the rocks. I just think it's delicious. I was really nervous about this. I will tell you, it's like your sophomore album, because our first single barrel was so good. I was like, oh my God. What if this comes out and nobody cares? Yeah, but everybody cared and people love it. It just makes a killer cocktail because of the proof. I think it's great on its own too. I do too. The structure thing is I think a key comment there. You can tell it's got some of that bright corn oil kind of character that you get out of some younger Bourbons, but there is actual robust oak in the background on this. It's really well-blended, really well put together. Rich and it's a lot darker, like brown sugar kind of notes. And what's so fascinating about blending? For a time, blending had a bad name, but to watch what Heather and we blend a lot. I mean, Heather, if she came in here, she would blend this. I mean, she blends. And to watch what she went through on this, you have to blend to taste first and foremost, but you have to blend to inventory. So Heather was limited to our young Texas whiskey, no, and our youngish Kentucky whiskey and this aged Tennessee. So you blend to taste, you blend to inventory, and you have to blend to your financial endpoint. You know, if we wanted this to be delicious and affordable, so you have to keep that in mind. If you dump all your old whiskey in there, that is not going to be an affordable bottle of whiskey. So it's fascinating and I wish I could have, if you would see the formulas and the things and the amounts that Heather goes through to come up with something that works on all three, it's really mind-blowing. It is sneaky affordable too. We're running this on sale right now for $41. $41. Yeah, pretty screaming deal. I was expecting it to be more. Yeah. How difficult has this been to maintain consistency through batches blending this with diminishing stocks of that older Tennessee stuff or what's the backup plan when you start running low on that? Well, of course, the backup plan is to keep sourcing. If Heather could find a great barrel of Japanese whiskey, she will use it. So our plan, of course, is we're laying down as much as we could. We're aging our whiskey in Texas and in Kentucky. So just like I say, our goal is for next year, our single barrel to be our four-year-old whiskey, not sourced, and we will keep sourcing older product. Interesting. It was really challenging. And I'm sure there's the idea of having to plan out a consistent, something that's consistent, but has three distinct ingredients. And maybe it ends up needing four or five or two or whatever it is, but that's really challenging. And they change. Keep in mind, you, especially in Texas, they change because things age quickly there. Like you may taste it this month and three months later. That's why Marlene says we baby our barrels. I will tell you that Marlene and Heather are checking on our barrels constantly. Do you have to, have you tried doing anything different in the warehouse? I know a distiller in Colorado at high altitude that has to, they have these huge industrial humidification units going in their warehouses just doing anything they can to avoid some extra loss because their angel share is just ludicrously through I went to one in Reno where they were essentially humidifying and almost air conditioning, kind of like swamp coolers. Yeah. Oh, wow. Not that it was the right idea, but. I mean, Anna, it seems like a lot of trouble. It's like why not just put a distillery in a more reasonable place? Well, because you live in Texas or you live in Las Vegas. People actually live in Las Vegas. Somebody has to. Yeah, that's true. We don't do any tricks. Our warehouse is very well insulated and it has about a foot cut out along the base, the bottom, and a foot at the top for air flow. The first thing they do every day is open the doors. We're in the Texas Hill country, so there's always a nice breeze. We do have that airflow, which is good for aging and we do have humidity, which is good. But I will tell you, we just launched in Kentucky because Marlene distills in Kentucky now. They think we're Kentucky whiskey, which is fine with us. To be able to be in Kentucky, when we did that launch, we did it at Bardstown. It was like being nominated for an Oscar along with Meryl Streep. It was pretty heady and pretty humbling. Heather did a blind tasting. A lot of Marlene's folks came out, a lot of former Bean people, guys that know the industry and know whiskey. Heather did a blind taste test. She took the two-year-old Kentucky and the two-year-old Texas and said, okay, everybody tasted it now. Which one is from Kentucky? Which one is Texas? I knew because I knew, but 80 percent of those people picked the two-year-old Texas as a two-year-old Kentucky. Because it had more color and it had more flavor. Because it was two years old, but it had aged sooner. Whereas the Kentucky whiskey was tepid. I mean, the color on it was kind of was not a beautiful color yet, and it was very green. So they all thought the Texas whiskey was the superior one and it was really fun. Then of course, that goes to a certain point. I don't know if anybody will ever have a five-year-old Texas whiskey because of the wood, and our angel share is 13 percent. It's about as high as you hear domestically at this point. So yeah, that's insane. I think to the level of transparency that you all have always offered, not just in conversation, but what you see on the bottle, what you can find online, what you talk about in tastings, it's refreshing in the world of NDAs and everyone being so secretive about it. At the end of the day, you've got, they're like painters, you've got these artists behind the whiskey. So even if we all know the Mash Bill and how old it is, we can't recreate these things. So it's really refreshing now to hear people be so transparent about something. That always cracks me up when people are like, well, we can't possibly tell you're a Mash Bill. It's like, okay, Buffalo Trace, you're right. That's the only thing keeping everybody else from making weller. Yeah. Exactly. Even if you had that Mash Bill and did it in Texas, it wouldn't taste the same. Do it anywhere else, it wouldn't taste the same. There's a microflora in the fermentation room going on. It's so goofy. How's your water, by the way? Our water is excellent. We have limestone water. Really? Yeah. Texas Hill Country. I wasn't expecting you to say, it's pretty bad. Well, of course. No. We have limestone water. You know, LBJ was president when they set down the rules for what makes a bourbon a bourbon. Blank of Texas is about 10 miles from Johnson City, LBJ's birthplace. I just always in the back of my mind think about LBJ thinking about that limestone water out there and making sure that bourbon could be made anywhere in the US because he knew someday there would be all these little distilleries sprouting up out I'm not sure I totally believe that, but I'm happy to pretend I do. No, that's just, that's my, that's what makes me smile. We don't get a lot of fond reminiscing about LBJ, but I guess it just hasn't come up. It's, I love it, I love it. Well, and I don't think we really touched on, but you went from Milam to Milam & Greene at some point. Right. What was that transition like? That transition was pretty fast. By Heather's third time down there, we were like, will you please, and you know, Marlene was in Kentucky, Heather is living in Brooklyn with her born and bred New Yorker husband and their dog Franklin, who I wanted to give a shout out to. Shout out to Franklin. Love him. And so, we're like, and Heather had already lived in Scotland. That's where she learned blending. And then she worked in Japan. And so, now she's in Brooklyn. And I'm like, why don't you come to Texas, you know? And you and your husband. She's like, I don't really know, you know, if we want to do that. And so, eventually after her third time down, I think she loved, she got to know the team and she was impressed with what we were doing, impressed enough. And she gave me a dollar amount that it would take to get her to move. And it was exactly twice the dollar amount I had. And I was, I think Heather was like somewhere in New York on her cell phone. And I was in my kitchen and there was no focus group. There was no consulting anybody. I just said, what if I put your name on the bottle? And she hesitated and she said, okay. And we became Milam & Greene. And I mean, I loved that, you know. We didn't do any research. I didn't check with my financial partners. I'm just like, that's what we did. One of the best decisions ever. Go with your gut. How many years after the start did that happen? Oh, let's see. I opened in 17. Let's see, Heather's been there three years now. Okay. So. Yeah, about when we got it in up here, right? Cool. Yeah, she'd been there a little while. And yes, us being in Binny's, you know, Brett was very gracious. He said, we've, you know, we've watched you. We've seen what you've won, da da da. But he knew Heather and you guys brought us, we launched Milam & Greene in September of 2019. And then of course, March COVID hit, you know, and and we expanded with you during COVID. So it was a good time to sell booze. We love Binny's. Marsha, what should we taste next? We have two limited-release Bourbons here. Well, let's taste it. At least I think limited, and then there's a rye, too. Let's jump to the Portfinish rye. All right, good, I love this one. I do, too. Everybody does. On this, we just won, what was last year, the American Craft Distillers Best of Show Award with this. We won Best Rye, Best Whiskey, and then we won Best of Show, which I, of course, am a fan of the Westminster Dog Show. Who isn't? So, I love that we got Best of Show on this. If you had to compare this rye to one specific dog breed at the Westminster Show, what would it be? Well, I think maybe because of the color, the Irish setter. I just got you something because it's port finished. It makes me curly haired. It's got a little sweetness to it. Portuguese Water Dog. That's a layup. There you go. You really want to get crazy with the hair, then we're going to say it's a Commodore, right? Nobody else watches the dog show? Come on. What are you talking about? Oh, the What's Mr. Dog Show? I know they have a dog show. I know that they have a dog show with pinkies out. Oh my God. You've got to watch it. It's the best. My dog loves watching the dog show. Just stands in front of the TV and just barks and yips and just watches it for hours. We missed a real opportunity earlier. We said shout out to Franklin, but I wanted to say, hey, Franklin, who's a good boy? Who's a good boy, Franklin? Hope people are listening right now. Well, then I have to say hi to Wookie. That's my rescue pup. But anyhow, we'll stop there. Heather and I want to do a whiskey and we want to put our dogs on the bottle and call it dog paw whiskey. Why haven't you? Yeah. There's so many dog people that would just blindly buy that without not even caring what it is. Dog people are insane. They're just gonna throw money at things. He's got dollar signs in his eyeballs right now. Dog paw whiskey. That's our next release. Coming out. So this is our port finished rye and this is lovely. It is MGP rye. They make the best rye. Yeah. There's really no arguing that anymore, right? No. And according to Marlene to make rye, it's sticky and it messes up your still and it's hard to clean it and she wants to have nothing to do with it. So we buy it young, we age it in Texas when it's between three and four years old. We put it in tawny port barrels from Portugal. Tawny? Uh-huh. And when we started this program- That's different. We just, we got four barrels. And Heather talked to folks she knew in Scotland and they said, oh, it'll take a year to finish, you know? But everything takes a year up there. I mean, it's cold. And we put that in, I think, in March and Marlene called like the end of May and said, this is done. I need a new vatting tank because I have to dump those. And that's what so everybody talks about the effect that climate has on wine, but it has a tremendous effect on whiskey, just like the Kentucky versus the Texas. And this, in Scotland would take a year, in Texas it took three months. Well, Marlene and Heather now oversee 60 barrels full of rye. And it's fascinating to me because if you have a barrel, a cask that has not been used for whiskey yet for finishing, and you put that rye in there in May, it will be done in three months. But if you have a cask and it's going to be used on its fourth finishing run, and you put that whiskey in there in November, it can take eight to ten months. So I marvel. That's what I mean about the art and the craft of this. I marvel at Heather and Marlene's palette and how they are able with all these moving parts, just like finishing, just like proofing to taste, to inventory, and to budget, and then keeping track of 60 different barrels at all different ages, and Well, let's see if we agree. I love this whiskey. It's decadent without being cloying or too much. It's still got that rye spice and the structure to it. There's still a bit of mint in the finish, but there's just gobs of dried fruit. This has always been one of those hidden gems on the shelf. There's a lot of different finished whiskeys out there now, and a lot of them have, they're just thrown in a barrel with put on a label, and they'll reuse the barrel six, seven times over. How many times would you use a Tawny barrel here? Four. Four, yeah. It's also, I think, the Tawny versus the Ruby, is where it's not cloying, it's really complimentary. It's also, I always say this to people, but for a bourbon lover who's never quite found a rye that they like, it gives it a viscosity, a roundness, a sweetness that allows you entree into the category and it does it really well. It's a friendly rye, very friendly. The fruit quality that you're talking about, it's more subtle and it's more varied than a lot of the pork cask finish stuff that we usually get, that's just like cherry bombs, cherry balls, and there's a lot. There's a whole fruit basket here. I love how caramelized it is too, like just sweet caramel. It's so good. When you guys come down to Texas to visit us, we will go out into the warehouse and Marlene will let you thief some right out of the barrel, and boy, you talk about delicious. I love the color, it's just unbelievable. You only get that through finishing. Letting them taste out of the barrel is pretty dangerous, Marsha, because then they're just going to say, let me buy that whole barrel. We want to buy the whole barrel. Barrel disappears from the warehouse, we'll know. That's when you see the Binny's muscle get squeezed around. It's our version of running around. I've seen it, you've seen it. Monique is nodding. It'd be a lot easier if you sold us this barrel. I was trying to be secret. Forty six bucks on the podcast fund. Pretty damn good. Wow. That's a great price. Great price. Okay, so we do have two other things that I would love for you guys to try. We have our distillery edition, and we've talked a lot about sourcing and blending and all of this. This is straight ahead Texas juice, single barrel cask strength, unadulterated, right out of the cask. Nice. I gotta tell you guys, I were out at this beautiful store in, where are we, Lincolnwood, right? Lincolnwood, yes. And I bought this off the shelf, and there's four other bottles on the shelf. Yeah. We got a very small amount of this. So initially, if you look at their website, this is only available in Texas. But- Because we love Binny's. But your whiny friends at Binny's managed to get some for you. No, and we're out at the distillery. I mean, you guys, you have it. We got maybe like 22 cases or something, so it's spread around. It's in about half the Binny's. This is pretty cool though. I think we're selling this for 120. 120, something like that. It's the first time I'm tasting it. 1999. When you can buy it. When you can buy it, which is never. Then like you said, it's sold out at the distillery. It was fun. Even last night when I was at this event with Marsha, people saying, I didn't know that this was even available here outside of the distillery. We've kept it pretty hush hush till now. Marsha, your whiskey has been pretty good so far. This is awesome. Oh, all right. Well, that's Marlene. It's such a dense, chewy whiskey. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of wood, but it's just huge. Yeah. Humongous. It's not unbalanced though. I do think that's what tipped Heather over because she tasted what we were making there. She's like, this is good. It's also, Marsha, really brilliant to know your strengths. Like you said, you surround yourself with really brilliant people. I think there are a lot of people who'd stop at getting a distiller like Marlene. Then even Marlene knows, I'm very good at this part of it, but hey, we need this other person to be great at these things. It's really those elements. I mean, all of you that come together that end up getting like an end product is really this phenomenal. I would encourage anybody listening to there's on the website, the Milam & Greene website, there's segments called Moments with Marlene. Yeah. They're on YouTube. They're 30 seconds long. They are hysterical. Her personality comes across. I mean, she's brilliant. We'll have to get her on sometime. Oh, Marlene is so good. Did we get the wrong person? I'm just going to ask her questions about Beam for two hours. I can call her. She's got that accent that you just die over her Kentucky accent. That's going to have to be a Joey episode. Yeah. It's so sweet. Then every now and then she'll say something and you go, Marlene said that? I mean out of that little mouth. So just a few fun Marlene facts. We put our whiskey into the barrel at 120 proof. A lot of people do it. I think legally it has to go in at, cannot go in over 125. Correct. We played around, Marlene played around with putting in at 110 and 115 and 120 and she and Heather have agreed that they like putting it in at 120. Our mash bill is 70% corn, 22% malted rye and 8% malted barley. We malt our rye and Marlene feels, when you malt something, I think you crack off the shell and you start to let it sprout. So she, it's more expensive, but that's the way Marlene and Heather like it. And that's something that we do that everybody's going to be doing now. That explains some of the fruit here, honestly. Like, malted rye tends to give like this real rich fruitiness. What's the, it's, so there's like an orange cream thing and then it's like vanilla ice cream on toasted waffle cone. It's so good. Yeah. And what is that wood? What is that? That's a combination of wood and grain. But I'm going to make sure that gets in the podcast so I can hear that again, so I can start saying that. Turn it in your ringtone. I'll be watching for my check, please. We can totally turn it in to a ringtone for you. I'd love it. I'm going to start an ASMR channel where I just say descriptors. Black currants. Wow. That's awesome. That's really good. Yeah. That is, wow. Especially considering it's not particularly old. No. But it's mature. That's the thing. There's a difference. It's also, I mean, some like Marlene going in, she knows that she has technical skill obviously, but you don't know what the end result is going to be of your new baby in Texas. So to have it be this standout, and this is cast strength too, right? This is 56 something percent alcohol. It's pretty mild for cast strength. I will tell you, when you come to Texas, you can taste some of Marlene's Distill, right off the still, and you will not wince. 113.88 proof. All right, so what's this other one you brought here? I've never seen this one before. You are one of the first. Fun little sneak peek. Well, you're the first Binny's to see it, yeah. So, ha ha, Brett and Joe. Oops. Knock it off, they already complain that they don't get to come on the podcast at all. So, this is Unabridged, and every year Heather creates something that's limited edition. Last year, we had the Castle Hill, which was delicious and sold out. This, we are doing 1,100 six-pack cases. So, that's a big run for us, really. This is Unabridged. This is a work of art that Heather created with two other whiskey writers who are old friends of hers from New York, Noah Rothbaum and Dave Wunderich. If you are into whiskey, you know these guys. You know those names, yeah. And Dave Wunderich especially is noted, eccentric and mustachioed cocktail writer. Well, they decided if any of them ever ended up really in the distillery industry, that they should create something together. And I think they forgot all about it. And then Heather ran into them and they ended up doing this. And it's called Unabridged because it's like in writing, uncut, you know, uncensored. And I love the back label on this. It is a blend of 38 casks that run from two and a half year old Texas whiskey up to 14 year old Tennessee. There's a spreadsheet on the back. Yeah, this is a spreadsheet. I love it. Tell us how many casks. This is so good. It's got so much. It's so different than the distillery edition. Hold on a second. Pat's not nerding out about the whiskey. He's nerding out about the data on the back. Yeah, I mean, this is amazing. Amazing. But there's so much fruit in this whiskey though. It's so different than the distillery edition, but they're both awesome and they're totally distinct. And that, I want to give the credit to Heather on that. When we first started talking to her, she came down and she wrote some things on the whiteboard and the distillery about it. Here's what we do. And her goal, because she had consulted with a lot of distilleries, and she said some of them will have one thing that's good, and then the rest of it is a variation on the theme. And she said, the goal is to create individually separate, distinct, unique products that are all great, that are all delicious. Yeah. This is so good. That's what she's done. And we were just at Bardstown at the Kentucky Birdman Festival, and there was, I love getting great feedback in Texas or anywhere on our whiskey, but getting great feedback in Kentucky was really cool. Yeah, it means something. And this one gentleman who grew up in the business, his father owned a liquor store and he tasted everything, and he could not wrap his head around the fact that we had four different offerings, each one totally separate from the other, and all four of them delicious. I mean, it just blew his mind. And the intention for this is that this is a regular skew at some point. This is the first edition, but at some point this is kind of regularly occurring. It hasn't landed, it hasn't gotten to Illinois yet, hasn't gotten on the shelves. It's not on the shelf in Texas. It's gonna be under a hundred bucks. Yeah. But especially this like first edition of it. I tasted it briefly with you last night. This is kind of the first time I've been able to sit with it. It just brings a smile to your face. There is just a little bit of everything in here. But you look, we've tasted five products and each one of them is different. Yep. And can stand on their own. I think we have a beautiful portfolio. Yeah, yeah. There is not much to add to that. I mean, these are all great whiskeys, all distinct. They all live in their own lane, but they all work together. Because they are related. Yeah, so good. And they are all affordable. Yeah, they are all appropriately priced for sure. Well, and we've done, there might, I don't even know, there might still be some Castle Hill from last year floating around at Binny's because they got some things. You guys have also been able to do some single barrels. Right. Might still be floating around the system. I know that pipeline dries up typically this time of year before we go into the holidays. Your single barrel was 12 years old. Yeah. Your barrel pick. Yeah, we had some old stuff. I don't know that we have it anymore. At least if we do, it's not on our website anymore. Castle Hill's still on the website. I think this hometown girl, it gives a lot of special treatment to Binny's. Yeah. A little bit everything. You've gotten a lot of accolades for this line of spirits. Well, what are you going to do when this buzz wears off? You already saw a beetle sandwich, and now you have at least five highly regarded spirits. Is this going to become passe and then you have to take hang gliding or bungee jumping off of helicopters as a hobby or something? I'm going to move back to Chicago and get a job at the Art Institute. I'm going to be a docent, a volunteer docent. I mean, you got to watch it with docents. I once heard a docent at the Field Museum tell a kid that the holes in a dinosaur bone were bullet holes. Oh my God. That's a Chicago docent. That is a true story. So, I don't know. This will probably, I'm just having, we've been in Texas five years now. So I love doing things in Texas because it's where I live. But it's been so fun. I was in Seattle. I've been in Palo Alto and then we were in Kentucky. And now I love coming home to Chicago, sweet home Chicago. So what the charge I get now is seeing other people's reaction to our whiskey. Like being there at that event last night, you just, people really respond to it and they love it. And to me, that is such a treat, you know? Yeah, I mean, they're pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, they're pretty good. How many states are you in now? We're in 17. Okay. And I mean, we're not everywhere in 17. You know, you have to find us, but we're opening up Tennessee right now, because I had to give them my driver's license, and we're opening up Colorado. Cool. Cool. And that's enough, I think. We done? We good here? Yeah. Any other dogs? Anybody, any other dog shout outs? Is your dog still wearing that stupid hat? Yeah, yeah, for one more week. Yeah. Oh, the- Crop to your thing. Oh, bless his heart. Yeah. Shadowfax Brophy, Lord of All Horses. Yeah, my dog's name is Shadowfax. This scans. Yeah. I mean, we just call her Shadow, but- I was going to say, should we encourage anyone down to Texas? Is there kind of a public facing tasting room facility? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we love to have company. Yeah, we have a tasting room and we're open, I always say Tuesday through Saturday, but I should probably walk. And it's near Austin, right? Or in Austin, Broward? Yeah, we're in the Hill Country, which is beautiful. So we're- Like the one acceptable area of Texas. Austin is acceptable. We're 50 minutes southwest of Austin or 40 minutes northwest of San Antonio. Well, you might want to call it Blanco, but it's called Blanco. Blanco. Blanco, it's pronounced Blanco? Well, we're in Texas. Some of you have to pronounce it wrong. Is that the rule? It's well, it's a take on- It's like in Kentucky, it's Versailles. Yeah. It's Blanco. Blanco. So do I sound Midwestern to you or do I sound like I'm from Texas? Not from Texas. Not Texas, no. Okay, just curious. Because you don't say Texas. You know, I did. I was talking to someone last night and I said, I mean, the way I said Texas, I was just like, oh my God. I'm not from Chicago, but what did I say when we were trying to get her attention? Like, hey, hey. You went, yo, Marsha. Hey, yo, Marsha. You only have a half a second. It was good. I responded well. Well, you guys, this has been delightful. Thank you so much and thank you for your time. Thank you for caring us. It's an easy choice. It's delicious product. And that means we get more single girdles. Yeah. And, you know, when I talk to people like when we were in Kentucky, there were people from the Midwest and it was such a point of pride to be able to say Binny's carries us because everybody knows Binny's. And so I bragged on you guys quite a bit. Oh, we appreciate that. Thanks. All right. I'm getting cavities. This is too sweet. Well, thanks for coming on our show, too. And if you guys like our podcast as much as we like this whiskey, leave us a review on the podcasting platform. Is that how it works? Yeah. On the podcasting platform of your choice. Apple Podcasts. And tell your moms and tell your neighbors and tell your friends. Thanks for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. We'll be back in your feed next week with something less famous. Until then, I'm Greg. I'm Pat. I'm Monique. I'm Marsha. And I'll say keep tasting. All right. Oh, keep tasting. All right.