Welcome back, you're listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. With me in the room today, we've got, my name is Dan, I work for Binny's. And I'm Lexi, I'm on socials. Oh, by the way, I'm Chris. I do wine and drink spirits. Today, we have a very special guest, it's Ashley Barnes. She's blending whiskey everywhere she goes. Pretty much. Ashley, what can you tell us about yourself? Why don't you just start with a little background? Sure. So I kind of came into the consulting world, but before that, I spent some time at a few slightly known places. Y'all may have heard of them, Four Roses and Buffalo Trice. What? These must be very small concerns. Grape distilleries. My background is kind of like molecular biochemistry. I was in the pharmaceutical world prior to being headhunted. At the time, they said, do you want to interview for a distillery? And I was like, cool, booze or drugs? All right. Same thing. Pharmaceutical still, I'd say. I can tell I'm a cop's daughter. Eli Lilly or Four Roses. It's a toss up. It was in that interview that I learned I had a really unique palate and I was not tasting the same things other people were tasting and being the whole hearted nerd that I am, that kind of kickstarted a passion to figure out what I was tasting, how Do you think you're a super taster or do you think you just are very perceptive or analytical? I think all of the above. I have been called a super taster and I am very, very much analytical. I can withdraw my personal thoughts from what I'm tasting and truly just dissect it down as far as I possibly can. That's a really good quality because I feel like when you're working with your own products, you tend to get some tunnel vision sometimes. In wine, they call it like cellar palate, where you're missing some flaw or you wrap it all into the idea of what you're tasting and it being appropriate. But if you can remove yourself, you can be more objective. Absolutely. And that's one of the hardest things to do. Because I was consulting once I left corporate bourbon in 2018. I started consulting and I looked at every sample, every client as if, okay, if this is my child and they have put everything they can into this, how would I want to break it to them that, hey, you have a bacterial contamination and none of your product is going to age out. How could I approach this and help make it better? And then use the skills that I learned through blending. Drew Mabel is the first person who ever introduced me to blending. And I of course fell in love, math, science, it all goes together within blending. And so I took all of those skills and kind of married it all together to start working in the craft world. And so I'm most well-known for these days, for EJ. Curley & Lucky 7, are two of our primary brands that we work with right now. And then Two Worlds Whiskey is another one that Binny's carries, that is also mine. And really like to have narrowed down who I work with. And I see we're not tasting that today, which is very cruel in your part. Sorry about that. That's for another day. Those bottles are a little harder to come by. Yeah, they are small production, right? Very small production. I think the Alliance batch had maybe 300 and some barrels. Although I do have more of that. I just tasted that we're pulling out a barrels very, very soon. So hopefully more bottles will be making their way here. And then I heard a little birdie is going to get behind that. And hopefully do a lot more with Two Worlds, because that's just an awesome program. Could this bird be? I don't know. I work with a lot of little birdies. You mentioned infections. Are you detecting these organoleptically with your nose, or is this through analysis, or both? So since leaving the easily accessible mass spec or GC, I do it all organoleptically. Oh, wow. But that's just some skill I've learned, what flavors tend to develop through certain infections, or if it's like a stressed yeast kind of flavor, and then kind of trace it back, you can use just like if you're trying to figure out what someone's trying to say, those context clues. I do the same kind of thing when I'm tasting. What other compounds? This is a stressed yeast flavor, but then these other ones over here, that's a contamination flavor, so that's probably stressing the yeast through fermentation. Or if it's just bacterial, maybe it's cleaning, there's a bend in a pipe that isn't quite getting flushed out. There's lots of opportunity there. Stressed yeast, what's the remedy there? Add some nutrient or? Monitor your temperatures. Usually, that seems to be one of the most common things that I've seen out in the world. People are just trying to get things done quicker, and they're throwing some enzymes and things, and faster, faster, faster, and their yeast just can't keep up with it, or just using the yeast that's not proper for what they're trying to obtain. Well, being from Four Roses background, yeast was the jam there, right? Yes, it is very much the jam, and I love playing with that. Biology on a molecular level is truly my passion, where I thought I would end up in school. I never thought in a million years I would be where I am today. Well, you know what? Dan is a biology guy, so am I. Yeah, I never thought I'd be here either. Here we all are. I've been told that making whisky or being in bourbon and spirits is a much better pitch than going to medical school or doing all the other things we do with science that tends to be the forefront. If I had to choose one, I would not be in the medical field. I mean, I'd have so many doctors come through my labs and do tours. I'm like, yeah, you did the right one. I was like, can you go talk to my mom? At that point, she was still not sure about it. I think she's on board now. When you detect a flaw, this is during fermentation. Is there a course correction usually? Or do you say, well, just make this into vodka? Or what's the next step? Or what are some examples of the next step for some of these distilleries? For the craft guys, it just depends. Is it something that has been carrying through since day one? Are we sitting on 100 barrels of not so pleasant bourbon? I do everything I can to try to avoid just chunking it. If they have a flavored product or something that could work with those, where the flaw is not coming off in a negative manner, that's always an option. Blending sometimes can really help to mellow those things out. The very first step is to identify it and then correct. Then we look back and go, all right, now we do damage control. What can we do to move forward? How much is affected? What can we do with this? Sometimes it's just one or two batches. I think this is such an important part of making good alcohol, and it's overlooked by a lot of people. People don't realize how hard it is to make a clean distillate. What we see in the beer industry is a lot of these small guys who don't have labs and stuff get a lot of infections and things can go awry really fast. But the end consumer is like, delicious, must have been easy. Thank you for that. That's an important role. That's one of the things when Monica Wolfe and I started off, because I came to her originally and was like, I love what I do. I'm not super happy. If I were to entertain some offers from other distilleries, I knew she and her father Richard Wolfe were in that area. I was like, would you guys help me vet them? Because I don't know. You guys would definitely know from a business standpoint, is this a good opportunity or am I going to go into somewhere and then the next day they're filing bankruptcy. I didn't want to take my family and do that. Monica and I, when we decided to start the Spirits Group, which is our consulting company, we wanted to bring her business knowledge and Barrel brokering together with the production and quality that I brought to the table from my experience with the big boys. That was our premise was there's so many amazing craft distillers, and you don't know what you don't know. We wanted to be able to help bridge that gap and that made us, I think, very successful in our consultancy because we approached it in that manner instead of like, hey, we know all the answers. It was like, okay, here's what we can do to help. She worked on one end, I worked on the other because no matter what you're doing, it takes everybody, it takes our sales force, it takes the marketing, it takes the accounting, it takes the entire team, your tour guides, that's your front line. I've been on this pedestal since day one. I don't care what level you are in the company, it takes everybody to make that successful. If that package is beautiful and on the shelf, you might get one buy. But when they taste it and you haven't put that same effort into the product, then they're less likely to buy another bottle. If they're not buying another bottle, then you're not going to continue to make it. Absolutely. We're not going to continue to stock it. Exactly. I don't want to keep harping on this flaw idea, but we do have some geeky listeners. What are the major things you run to, bacterially in particular? It's just cleaning errors. Yeah. It's all hygiene. It's all hygiene. I've never pushed it so far as, let's identify the specific bacteria, because another thing with Kraft distillers is, they don't have a big budget to go send testing off. Right. As a consultant, I definitely did not have the equipment. How about this? What's an aroma that you identify that really tells you something's wrong? There are two that stand out. One of them was one of my first clients, and they have some amazing whisky now, but I could not open their distillate in my house. Oh, wow. I cracked the seal and I could smell it. I was like, this is not good. It smelled like rotten pineapple yogurt. Eww. Yeah, interesting. It was very distinctive and it was absolutely bacterial. They found a curve in a pipe that they had some really good practices. They sent me all their SOPs and I'm like, these are thorough, but you're missing something somewhere. A seal, something, a clamp even has collected and built up. Actually, when I went on site, they were all completely nose-blond to it. Yeah. Because it had built up over time. That's what I was saying about seller palate or seller nose. You don't even recognize it when you're in it all the time. Yeah. They went through and they were like, wow, we found it. We found the spot. We got it cleaned and they're like, how did we not know that? Because you were nose-blended to it, but that's why you bring in an outside person. Right. Now, we've released a few things, some of our distillate that I helped them with is five years old and it's delicious. I'm not a weeded fan particularly. Personally, it's not my jam, but they have a weeded bourbon that's absolutely phenomenal. Wow. What a service you've done. Then the other one, I no longer work with this group and they never fixed their problem. Oh, man. But Fisher's baloney was left in the cooler over the summer. Oh, my God. Wow. Yeah. It's so bad. So bad. It is very pungent. Grain bins had leaks that were never fixed and they would just pile more grain on top of it. Oh, wow. You keep going and going and going. So there was all kinds of funky bacterial and extra yeast and... Fungal, I would assume. Just a little bit of everything and then it just... Just get a little ergot growing there. Everybody freaks out. Dancing all night long. Yeah. It's a funk and it carries through in those products. Amazing. Yeah. Interesting. Amazingly gross. And you would primarily... You'd be diagnosing distillate or would you ever go during fermentation or once you found a problem, would it be then you're investigating the fermenting stuff or...? I typically go straight for distillate and then diagnose from there and let them kind of take it in so they can take ownership of it. If needed, I would go in and taste this or mash and things. However, you know, the distillation process tends to isolate and highlight things. So it's pretty, at this point, I can taste and be like, you know, this is the area you need to look at. Your yeast is stressed, you've got a bacterial, you know, go, go forth and have fun. I was going to say, speaking of go forth, I see you've brought three lovely little bottles for us. And two of them are Binny's picks. Wow. It's a little special. They're going to be a cut above. I've heard I have a knack for single barrels. But we want to warm the palate up a little bit. We don't want to go straight into that barrel strength stuff. I know I've drank a little bit today, but others may not have. So the first thing we have for here. We're all professionals here. I mean, my day usually starts about five o'clock in the morning tasting distillant, not so much anymore, but five a.m. sometimes I am, because that's the only time the kids let me get a moment to taste. So what we're starting off with is the EJ. Curley Small Batch. This is what I would like to categorize as a house bourbon. That is the, oh my gosh, I need a birthday present. You can go and confidently grab this off the shelf. It is light and fruit, more along the lines of a Four Roses type palette. Approachable for a new bourbon drinker, someone who is wanting to dip their toe in the waters without being blown away straight off the bat. But it's also complex and versatile so that an experienced drinker can appreciate it as well. This was a fun and is one of my, it's my baby. It's one of my passion projects because as a native Kentuckyan, the opportunity to revive a heritage brand, that's not something everybody gets to do and it's an honor. EJ. Curley was distilling at the same time as EH. Taylor, and in the same volume and capacity. Wow. Biggest difference, prohibition rolled around, he sold everything and I think he died in Monte Carlo. He just sold everything and lived his best life. Could have turned out worse. I do not fall to you for that, but he was also selling and brokering bulk whiskey and at one point, ran a company that controlled 90 percent of the world's bourbon. This is like in 1901. This is before this was a big thing. EJ. Curley was creative, he was innovative and I got the opportunity to nod my head to that and revive his name in a brand, EJ. Curley, and create what I hope that becomes something as a staple, similar to how they feel about Four Roses and Buffalo Trace. But now we can add EJ. Curley to that. So that's great. We've got this on sale right now for $44.99, which I think is a great deal. Can you tell us what the mashbill is here? I'm perceiving maybe some rye. It is a high rye mashbill, around 21 percent. And I say that because it is currently non-producing. However, I am designing a mashbill and picking a yeast code for this to distill in 2025. So currently it is sourced. And one of the wonderful things about blending is I can source it from multiple sources and keep my flavor profile. We do have a consistent source though for this brand. Are you buying just distill it or is anything you're buying aged? It's aged. Yeah. Yeah, typically aged. So this is a blending project. But you're going to bring it all in-house. All in-house. Well, that's exciting. Well, we'll contract distill. And then my facility, the blending house, will be the maturation and blending epicenter for both of these brands actually. Do we get a sneak peek of what the mashbill will be? I have not decided quite yet on EJ. Curley. Okay. We did just distill a thousand barrels of Flicky 7 though. Oh. I'm pretty excited about those barrels hitting our rick houses and starting to age. Excellent. That's exciting for sure. Yeah. It's a long arc, huh? What's the average age in here, would you say? Four to five. Four to five. Yeah. The small batch will always be about four years old, possibly some five-year thrown in there, it just depends. Would you consider bottled in bond? First of all, what's the proof here? 95 proof. 95. Little shy of the requirement, but would you do a bottled in bond with this brand? Maybe, but I think if we were to do something else, we might do like a rye because curly rye was very well-known. Sure. Or maybe even branch off and do something different like a gin. There's the possibilities are endless with it. I mean, gin is always a good engine to turn around fast, right? It is and is the property that EJ. Curley, we do actually have access to the original property at Camp Nelson. The natural botanicals there, we could really do some fun stuff with what's naturally there. It was growing during the time period that he was there, and I just think it's an opportunity. If I were to ever do anything other than whisky, and it's not even a guarantee thing, I might do a gin some other time, but I think it would be a really cool opportunity with this. We're also big gin fans in this room. Huge gin fans. I enjoy it. I enjoy a nice gin. I think we're big everything fans. It's hard, I think. You can't go wrong. The whisky is great. It's spicy but fruity a little bit. There's like baked home fruit and agreed. I think the nose is really soft and pleasant. And the whisky itself is a little more aggressive on the palate than you expect from the nose, but it's pleasantly. So, you know, there's good kind of wintergreen and that rice spice on the finish. Yeah, that rice really coming through today. It really is. Yeah. I mean, that was the first thing that jumped out at me. I'm like, hmm, must be some rye in here. Long, clean, spicy finish. Very nice. I've been told I like long finishes. A lot of my blends tend to have them. I'm a little bit newer to experienced bourbon drinking, whiskey drinking, all of that general vicinity. And this is something that I would love in a little candle. It smells so good on the nose. I could just smell it all day. And I just set it on my desk. Very autumnal. If you let it sit overnight, till it evaporates, you will just smell the glass, the residual fatty acids and things that just sit in there. It's delicious. Yeah, this is great. Non-chill filtered? Correct. Yeah. Fatty acids. As 20 barrels or less, always. Actually, most of my batches that are bottled currently are around 10. Are you a cocktail advocate or are you promoting drinking neat? So funny thing, actually, this week kicks off Lexington Barben Week, which is all around cocktails and we are presenting sponsor. So I am absolutely an advocate of cocktails. Do you have a signature cocktail for this week? There are 20 different plus restaurants and bars. So each one has their own EJ. Curley cocktail. Wow, that's cool. Very cool. And I was on the morning news, and we were with Chef TJ from Rack House Tavern, and he made this cocktail with rosemary and some. It was so good. Oh, gosh, what else was it? Maybe I don't want to butcher his recipe. That's okay. I'm just saying at seven o'clock in the morning, it was. I mean, I can definitely see rosemary working with this flavor profile very nicely. Very, very nicely. Honey, rosemary. Producer Jim pulled up the cocktail from Rack House. It looks like a riff on a Boulevardier, if I may say so. And what are they calling it? The Curley's Campfire. So it's EJ. Curley, of course, Campari, Sweet Vermouth, Kina Kina, which is a French bitter, orange bitter, rosemary, honey, lemon peel, and a torched rosemary. Yeah, sounds fantastic. For extra aroma. Yeah, that sounds incredible. It really was. Like he just started put, he had everything prepped because we were on morning TV live and I was like, okay. He was just rolling through the ingredients. I was like, man, this, this smells so good. This is, this is going to be good. I mean, the Boulevardier is a fantastic drink to begin with. And he's really embellished it here with, with that honey and rosemary. So. And he used barrel strength since single barrel for it. That's the way to make cocktail. Oh, yeah. It is. It's so good. There was a restaurant in Northern Kentucky, don't ask me what it was called. They made a gold rush where they used like a half measure of pimento dram in it. Yeah. This would be outstanding. That's so weird because I was thinking the same thing because somebody said this was very autumnal. My first thought was one of our colleagues, Roger, recently made a Manhattan old-fashioned with pimento dram, and it really dragged it even further into that autumnal thing with the allspice, and I think that would be great with this. That sounds delicious. Yeah. Yeah. This would be really good with that. It works really well with citrus cocktails too. Paper planes are one of my favorites. But I also, especially during the summer, I like to take like a tea bag and let it sit in a bottle overnight with a little bit of sugar, and then I just pour that in my lemonade. That doesn't sound very Southern. Well, I don't like a lot of sugar in it, but the more sugar you add, I guess, the further south you get. Yeah, that's for sure. Any questions, do you think, on EJ. Curley? Have you done any special bottlings of that or is this just kind of a standard one for this? EJ. Curley's standard with small batch and then single barrels. He would do single barrel picks, of course. In part of my process, I look at every barrel. I don't care if I'm doing a 20-barrel batch or I'm doing a 50-barrel batch, whatever. I don't do those as much anymore, but in consulting, I didn't always control batch sizes as much as I'd like. I always look at every barrel because everyone's unique. In that process, I'm able to identify which barrels jump out at us and be like, wow, that was nice because you're like, okay, this is fine, this is fruit, this is spice. That one's all the things. I'll set those aside. Single barrels, I do not want them to drink their proof. I want them to be balanced and on their own, have some kind of a wow factor to them. If I look at 100 barrels and there are only three barrels that I feel that way about, confidently enough, I would argue to keep them, then we only have three single barrels. That's across the board, any single barrel program that I'm a part of. There may not be as many single barrels out in the world, but the ones that are, you know, are going to be awesome. You were talking about blending and the different characters of barrels. Do you find when you work for a large concern, position in the rick house was probably important for maturation, right? But when you're working with such a small number of barrels or even single barrels, I mean, single barrels doesn't matter, but if you only have 20 barrels and they're all next to each other, is there less variation or is it still quite wide? It still can be quite wide, especially on a craft scale. But in the big boys, they've been doing the same thing for 200 years. There's much, much less variation. But if I'm looking at barrels from a smaller producer, even though those 20 barrels have set beside each other for three or four years, they're all going to be, to me anyways, vastly different. And I think that's something important to note because that is a big difference and it's not necessarily a bad thing. But they may have had those barrels sitting on the floor next to the still for a while and then now we've got them up in some K-Racks or something, or now we've got an actual Rick House we've built. So you never know what kind of life they've led. I mean, there'd be no art to blending if they're all the same, correct? Exactly. That's what makes us all different, is being able to bring all the different flavors and components and opinions and unique personalities and creating a cohesive and well-oiled machine team. So let's talk about Lucky 7. We recently got in our first store picks for these two expressions of Lucky 7, the Frenchmen and Holiday Toast. We actually featured them in the email pretty recently. And I've tasted these. I'm going to taste them again. I was very impressed with all of them. Of course, they're fantastic whiskeys. But tell us a little bit about the Frenchmen and the process there. So the Frenchmen is actually my favorite. Lucky 7, and that is no secret. It's like you have to pick your favorite kid. It's a really hard thing to do. But the Frenchmen is mine. So what I would call Frenchmen or Holiday Toast would be like a curated blend. Like a targeted, I want this to taste in this manner to go towards this kind of a consumer. And one of the things we found, we're going to start with the Frenchmen, but Holiday Toast and Frenchmen kind of hit the same consumer base, but they either like one or the other. Kind of like you like wild turkey, a little more herbal notes, or you like Fort Rose's a little more fruity notes. They're both equally delicious and amazing, but you tend to gravitate on personal preference. So we've seen that with these two. Part of, again, I blend by the barrel, I blend going into a finish, and I blend coming out. And that enables me, one, to get some really cool single barrels, because I'm still seeing, even though I've blended going in, and those finishing barrels really are not moving. I'm still getting some really interesting and phenomenal single barrels out of that, but then I'm able to keep a very consistent and precise small batch out of it as well. The Frenchman, we use actually a refurbished French oak, was previously used for some red wine, and we will continue to do that. We actually switched over to some new French oak for a little while, and it was just not the same. There is a really rich vanilla note that comes through that it's like a new mommy kind of thing. It was not as well received on the back end when we went to the new French oak, so we kept with the refurbished and a custom toast and char on those barrels to really coax out those rich toasted spice notes and deeper vanilla and used it all. Yeah. The first thing I noticed was the French oak and the nose. You can tell that tighter grained spicier style, the less sweet. It obviously has lactones and lots of vanilla, but it doesn't have that really loud coconut. So this is a finishing barrel, obviously. It is. So how long does it stay in the French? Until it's ready. Excellent answer. I do not like saying we finish for six months or we finish for a year. Well, some barrels need a little more time and some barrels need a little less time. So I may have put the blend into the barrels all at the same time, but some might take a year and some might take three months. It just, I pull them out of the barrel by flavor. When you say refurbished, you're re-toasting and scraping? Scraping, re-toasting, and charring. So you're not getting as much of the wine essence as you might be, but you're getting a mellower expression than a new barrel. Correct. We're getting some richer. The sugars are still there. We're by the toast that we're doing, we're really coaxing out those richer sweet notes. For sure. Is it medium plus? You're not telling. I'm not telling. He tried. You have to try. He did try. He was sneaky on that. It was just a very casual question. There's a really nice caramelization on the nose as well. It does have a ton of savory character. It pairs well with cigars. Yeah. There's sweet spice and sweet vanilla, but there's also an undercurrent of savory spice, savory brown spices too. I might even say a hint of tobacco. That was a good idea to say. One of the things that I think probably what gravitates me towards this, my grandfather used to smoke pipes. I don't have a whole lot of memories of him. But on one side, I had a grandfather that smoked pipes, and it was always some of the best memories with him. But then on my other side, I grew up with my mom and dad, and we helped put up tobacco for many years. So you come home from school, you're going straight to the tobacco barn and stripping tobacco and doing that. So I think this embodies some of those memories for me. It is amazing how scent memories can be so evocative. I mean, it's mind-blowing. It just brings you right back. I have the same thing with cigar smoke with family members where, you know, it's just immediately transport. You wouldn't get a whiff of that. It's really fun. And like, for me, anyways, in those moments, I remember being like, especially stripping tobacco. I was like, why, why am I having to do this? Why am I having to do all this hard work? But now I look very fondly on those memories. And I'm like, wow, I just want to sit and remember, you know, my pa sitting there with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, needing to ash it, wondering if it's going to fall on me while we're doing this. But scent memories are one of my favorite things to sit and tell stories. That's why I tell people when I blend something, they're like, oh, I'm going to sign a bottle for them. They're like, oh, I'm never going to open this. I was like, please do. Please open it and drink it. And then you can set the sign bottle on the shelf and talk about all the memories you made. Yeah, absolutely. It's really interesting that the arc of your life, that you were putting up tobacco, something that cures and evolves in its aromas and flavors over time. And just like, you know, putting whiskey into a barrel. That's an interesting through line. I don't think I've ever thought about that, but it is very interesting. Yeah, we grew tobacco for many years. Maybe that's where you developed your hypersensitivity to aromas. I don't know. My dad likes to take a lot of credit for it, because, I mean, wild turkey and Jack Daniels' coughs are up, so. Here, have a taste, kid. Yeah, he's like, oh, you're up again coughing here. Here's a spoonful. Like I said before, you're still in the pharmaceuticals industry, so. Can't escape it. The best medicine. It really is. It's delightful. Now I make everybody's hot toddies when they're sick. Yeah. Medicine for the soul. I think with the spice and the savory elements, this would be like a great like highball for Thanksgiving dinner. It would work really well or an after dinner drink for Thanksgiving. Just it kind of fits with a lot of the different savory elements you have in that meal. Yeah, absolutely. What's the strength on this one? It's the proof. So this 116.2. So all the single barrels are cast strength, and then the small batch is 113. Yeah, 113 and holiday toast is 115. It doesn't drink its proof either. Told you that's a criteria. That's what you look for, right? It's how it made the cut. Yeah. I mean, that's a great trick is when you can have some barrel strength and we can sip it neat and it's really pleasant. That's saying something. Lucky 7 launched in 2020 and as we all know, the world shut down and just went crazy in 2020. We actually gained a lot of popularity online and we had some interesting single barrels then called the proprietor, and they were 12, 14-year-old. We won some pretty big awards with them. Lucky 7 became known for our single barrel program. Now, it's really exciting to get to offer the holiday toast and Frenchmen something we can provide and have more regularly and really get more barrels out there and showcase. Well, we're definitely happy to work with you, I think. Oh, yeah. Fantastic whisky. Yeah. Really nice. If you're listening in, that's a 64.99. Not bad for a single barrel hand pick. On sale right now, but- On sale right now. I think for a little bit too, if I recall. Yeah, that's a great price on it. Barrel strength, hand picked and versatile, just delicious. Indeed. So, in case you didn't know, kind of a fun backstory on Lucky 7, is two friends, John Pauls and Michael LeHannily, actually bonded over Bourbon and Old Hollywood. And I believe it was when they were both here in Chicago, in school. And so, two of the nicest guys you will ever meet, they're both hilarious, and I love them dearly. But that's kind of how Lucky 7 was born. They really enjoyed it, decided to launch a brand. So, on the packaging, you can kind of get that old Hollywood vibe with the Harlequin back and things. And it's named Lucky 7 after Lucky Stage 7, where movies like Casablanca and My Fair Lady were filmed. I was going to say, are there movie pairings that you would suggest? I mean, Casablanca, come on. All-time great. I would drink this whiskey all night long watching that. It is. And I am not versed well in film. I mean, I grew up watching whatever Western happened to be on the TV, and I was not allowed to touch. Or Walker, Texas Ranger was on a lot. I remember when I was in stores and Holiday Toast first launched, it was a revelation to me. It's perfect for the time of year that it suggests. I think, was that 2021? Am I remembering that correctly? 21 or 22? Because I remember 2021, we could hardly keep it on the shelves, then we got more the next year and it was still moving. Now, I believe it's an everyday item. It is. So we launched it with the intent of it being a holiday, like limited special release thing. But it went over so well that it is now a permanent skew in our core product lineup. In the holiday toast where the Frenchman was French oak, holiday toast is actually a new oak barrel, white oak barrel custom toast and chard, again, to coax out the specific holiday type flavors. I was going to say, so this is obviously a double entendre here, a holiday toast and a special toast. What would that toast be? Maybe when Santa's elf comes sitting on the shelf, he can tell you. So you're toasting and charring them? Yes. Yes. But both are targeted to bring out the cinnamon and the nutmeg and those Christmas-type flavors, absolutely. Well, the nice part is that our pick is 116.8 proof, which is just 1.8 higher than the standard, which is they're just great whiskeys and this one is just fantastic. It's 1.8 better. But you can get something like this on ourselves all the time. Get the Binny's pick if you can, but if you can't, for sure, check out the regular one. Yeah. Yeah. You can't go wrong with it. It is named Holiday Toast, but it is a double oak finish, and we found people love it year-round, so we've ended up staying with the holiday toast on it. I thought it was like, I don't know. So you're going into, obviously, charred new American oak barrels and then finishing again in a new barrel. Yeah. Are the original barrels toasted too or is it just char? I think most of them are just charred, just depends on where the barrels come from. Again, this is a sourced brand as well, so wherever they come from. So you're putting them in the finishing barrel? Yes. Okay, you're buying the whisky and then getting. So I'm blending it, I'm taking the barrels that we have, I'm blending it to prepare it. I want it to be very receptive to those specific flavors. Then we're doing the toast and charred, it cooks out those flavors and then marrying the two, and then I taste for readiness to pull out of the barrel. This specifically is one of the many drinks I have on Christmas Eve after we close our stores. One of the many. One of the many. I tried to have it early so I can fully appreciate it. But you know, I was thinking, I was like, I used to be like, oh man, holiday, but I mean, holidays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July. Memorial Day. Memorial Day. There's a holiday throughout the year. You can't go wrong. I used to live in New Orleans and we used to say, any day is a holiday if you want it to be. Exactly. So on this, any day is a holiday for this. I mean, nobody parties like New Orleans. I just got back from New Orleans and it was beautiful. It was like the perfect weather. It was like 70s, like low 70s. I could not have asked for better weather. Well, when you turn out that Curley right, we're going to make some Sazerac's. There we go. I will keep that in mind. I'm like, all right, this is what they want to make with it. As for now, there's no plans on Curley for anything else. There's just lots of ideas floating around. Of course. Some dreams and wants. The building of the Blending House has taken a lot of time away from new releases. Hopefully, we should be able to be in the Blending Facility by January 1. But we have over 50,000 barrels on site right now, so it's pretty cool to have something that we- Monica and I dreamed up six years ago, like, okay, this is our 10-year plan, and then it actually started happening at year three. Like, okay, sure, 10 years, three years, let's just do it. I actually read a story that you met Monica when she was leading a tour of Four Roses for some women that worked for Binny's. That's backwards, it is true, but it's backwards. I was at Four Roses, and she had a group of female managers from Binny's, and she, actually, I think her now husband, got the tour guides to call down and be like, hey, we've got a group from Binny's here, could they come down to the lab? I didn't have anything on my schedule. I was like, okay, Binny's, we're supposed to roll the red carpet out for Binny's. So, okay, give me a minute to make the room presentable. So she came down to the lab with this group. I did not know who Monica was. I just knew Binny's red carpet make it good. So I pulled out some stuff, we tasted through a few things, and next thing I know, I was getting a call or an email, one of the two I can't remember, to be a whiskey judge for American Craft Spirits. They were actually judging in Louisville. So I was permitted to go be a whiskey judge for the first time then, and that's where Monica was like, hey, I put your name in the hat. Here's who I am, and I came through your lab at Four Roses, and the rest is really history. Nice. Very cool. We schemed and came up with our little, let's take over the world thing. So realistically, we could just say that Binny's was a spark for your entire crew. Binny's has been there since the very beginning. Absolutely. So how long have you been judging then? You continue to do this? I do. As time allows, I still judge. So gosh, that was 2016, 2017. That's fun. That's great. Yeah. I've judged a few different large competitions. I really enjoy judging and being able to taste all the different offerings blind and then offer the critical feedback. We talked about tasting and, hey, you might want to check your cleaning schedule or those things that maybe they're not hearing because it's a truly unbiased opinion. We didn't taste blind today, but we're all about tasting blind here at Barrel to Bottle, too, because we think that's the most honest way to assess anything. You know what? I think having a palette like yours on judging panels really lends credence to the whole process. I mean, if you have reputable judges, then the medal actually might mean something. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's good to have the variety. Some of the groups have judged with Binny, or not with Binny, it's with Fred from Binny's. Well, he just drags the whole thing down. I know. But it's really cool to have the perspective of a buyer of a store such as Binny's, because he's going to look at things different than what I'm going to look at. Or a whiskey writer might look at it different than the way I would. I'll take all of those into considerations in what I'm doing, and I'm going to make the best thing possible out of the liquid, but their perspectives are so invaluable in creating a good product, that if I'm going to have a judging competition in Yeah, that's fascinating because you do get a completely different perspective from a critic and from someone like you, who is assessing probably on a level that is a little deeper, and focused on maybe different things. It's cool to see the scorecards. I've had very spirited conversations with other fellow judges. They're like, well, I like this and I think it would do well. I say, cool, that is great. Please put that on your card because it's critically flawed and the technique is not there. It does not fit the definition of this style of whiskey. I'm going to market for that because that is why I'm here. But I also like to be like, it's really cool and unique and I would enjoy having this on my shelf to talk about. That just points out how very subjective it is. Although I think you're bringing a slightly more objective point of view to it, which a lot of people might not. That's just like, yeah, does this have the flavors I like? Does it? That's really interesting. You're not always the favorite person in the room. I'm flattered. I'm like, sorry. But that is a skill I'm proud to bring to the table to help better the industry and the spirit as a whole moving forward. Awesome. Do you drink wine at all or beer? I am starting to drink wine because after tasting whiskey and bourbon all day, I usually don't want to sit down with a glass of bourbon. So I'm starting to. I am a very new person to wine. I'm not a beer person. It's hard for me to pull away from being critical or analytical, which is probably why I don't drink beer as much. My husband says I'm no fun to take to the liquor store or a bar anymore. But there's always, I like to say, and they can actually be bad, but there's really not a bad whiskey or bourbon, but there's a right one for you. Yeah. That's why I personally am not a weeded fan. However, my husband loves weeded. So I know when I taste, I'm like, hey, this is probably right along your lines. I'm not going to have another pour of it. Sure. You can finish mine. But it's great for him. It's not so great for me. I think there's value to that and to appreciate the flaws as well. That's really refreshing to hear that from someone on the spirit side of things. I bartended for too long, truthfully. Something I would always say is, I'll make you something that you want to drink. I'm not drinking it. So I want to make sure that you are satisfied with this. So it's nice to hear that on the other side of, that's not totally for me, but I'm glad that you like it kind of thing. Absolutely. Yeah. When are we going to see a weeded bourbon as a tribute to your husband, one of you guys? Never. I don't know if we'll ever get a tribute, but I have to give a props to him. He is a stay at home dad right now and he is killing it. So that's admirable. I mean, he was working as a butcher before, and so he's got a skill set. We have horses and things that the boys get to grow up doing stuff that not many kids get to do. And learn in lots of skills that are not around anymore. Chevelle Apoiv is pretty tasty. I'm not familiar. I'm just an engineer. That's a horse steak with pepper for us. That's our pets, dude. Those are my pets. I don't know. He's a butcher and they have horses. How do I know they're a little horse? They are pets and we definitely don't do that. Actually, when... Do you hunt? Is he a hunter? He's a hunter. I eventually will when I don't have a child that's so needy. I imagine the dinner pairings are incredible at your house. They definitely can make. He took over cooking dinner, so it's been very cool. Well, after that aside, where do we go with that? Squirrel. What's your favorite? What's your favorite bourbon cocktail? Probably a paper airplane right now. Paper plane, whatever. That's it's just a solid, solid pour, but also not everybody can do it well. So there's a little not so sure about it. But probably outside of bourbon, actually like a gin gimlet. It's one of my favorites. Gimlet's classic. I like refreshing. Yeah. And it's got to be gin. I agree. Wait, do you eat squirrel? Yes. Yeah. What, bergoo? What do you do with it? Squirrel and dumplings mostly. Squirrel. Amazing. That's a southern thing, I think. I was going to say, that sounds like something. Bergoo is a little farther north than where I was raised. And I have found, one of the guys at Four Roses has been like making bergoo for years and like world champion bergoo cook and his is good. Really? Does he use squirrel? He doesn't. But I mean, I could see it being good in there. Yeah, for sure. I mean, squirrel and dumpling sounds amazing to me. It really is. It's so good. Is your dumpling game pretty good? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I learned from grandma. Yeah, of course you did. What shape? What do you do? Oh, whatever it turns out because I'm making it from scratch, it's a secret. Well, Ashley, thank you so much for coming. Do you have anything else to say? You want to cap it off with some words of wisdom? I appreciate you guys having me on here. It's an absolute pleasure to finally get to be on the Binny's Podcast. I know. How prestigious. I mean, you probably won't do anything like this for the rest of your life. I don't think this is the top. I can't do anything. If you're lucky. I can't tell you how many people are like, have you been on the podcast yet? I'm like, at the Bourbon Festival Signing Bottles, have you been on Binny's Podcast yet? I'm like, yeah. This has been fun. I really appreciate you guys having me on. I really appreciate. Binny's has been a huge supporter of Mon and Monica's adventures for many years, and we're just super happy to be here and share the Bourbon knowledge and love. We'll just keep putting out great bottles and we'll be there. Y'all keep selling it and I'll keep making it. Because if you don't sell it, I can't make it. Well, hopefully, there are more single barrel picks in the future. Oh, absolutely. Excellent. Always got some for Binny's. There's a couple of EJ coming. Excellent. Yeah, we got some new EJ picks. It should be here within the next couple of weeks. That is great. They may even be here when this airs. Who knows? Well, thank you, Ashley, so much for coming in. We really appreciate it. Your whiskeys are excellent and I really appreciate your contribution to the industry. That's very impressive. Anyway, this has been another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Can tune in again sometime and we'll do something else. Who knows what? Could be beer, could be wine, could make some cocktails. You never know. Maybe Ashley will come back and grace us with her presence again. I mean, we could do a blind blending podcast. Oh, don't tempt us. Let's do it. Let's do that. Anyway, thanks for coming. I'm Chris. I'm Dan. And I'm Lexi. And I'm Ashley. Keep tasting.