Freddieʼs Early Career You're listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Jim. I'm in the Communications Department with me today. Lexi, I'm on socials. And Brett from the Whiskey Hotline. And we have a very special guest, Mr. Freddie Johnson from Buffalo Trace, global ambassador right now for Buffalo Trace. And he's in Chicago for an event, which you won't be able to go to because it's too late, but you should always check the events page on binnys.com because we always have exciting, fun events with bourbon and other spirits luminaries such as Freddie. So Freddie, how long have we known each other? My goodness gracious, that puts us back into the early 2000s. That was, I'm thinking you started in 2003? 2002. 2002, so I've known you since 2002. Isn't that crazy? I know, who would have thought it? We both look the exact same now as you did. Yeah, I'm taking on the profile of a barrel right now, so I gotta get busy again, you know. Crazy times. So 2002, you know, it's funny, you're here, everybody knows your name. You're arguably the best-known tour guide in Kentucky, but I think the tour guide sells you well short of what you've contributed to Buffalo Trace over the years. You know, you were your third generation, and you were there at a time when both your grandfather and father, certainly your father, were still there. Yep. And your family has participated in one way or the other, the rolling out of every single millionth barrel, and you're up to 7 million now? 9 million. 9 million. And there's... Working on 10 right now. And there's been a Johnson there for every single one. Yeah. Just real quick, it's interesting, this isn't your first career. You actually had a bit of a career before you started a Buffalo Trace in 2002. What was Freddie's life like before 2002? Let me say it this way. When folks ask that question, you can certainly go down a rabbit hole, and you can start talking about from your infancy to when you grew up, and where you ended up now. I'd just like to surmise my background as probably three little segments that changed my life. And the first was, Frankfurt is kind of an agricultural kind of a little town at the time it was. And so, 4-H Club was a big to-do. And if you wanted to get into a social environment, you got to the 4-H Club, then you got a chance to meet a lot of other folks and maybe make some connections. Well, it worked, but the Bill agent spoke to me one day and she said, have you ever thought about what you do? And I said, I don't understand. And she said, you create projects that I think need to be recognized. And I did a lot of stuff with electricity and fiddling around and stuff like that. And I said, no, I hadn't really thought about it. So she said, why don't you put together a project for our next event? And I said, okay. So I put this thing together. My father thought I was going to burn the house down. I was actually doing things with circuit breakers and fuses and that kind of stuff. And when I presented it, they looked at me and they said, well, where did that come from? And I said, in school, we have science and all that kind of stuff. And I said, and these things just kind of made sense. And she said, well, we're going to enter it. And it went from local to regional to divisional to national. And I ended up in Washington, DC on a little old project that I filled around with in my own house. And that started it. And when I hit high school, I had a science teacher, Mr. Logan asked me one day, he said, where did you learn all this stuff? And I said, just seems to make sense. And so he said, you probably need to pursue that. Never thought any more about it. But he started to present me with challenges. Never thought about it, Brett. And then I hit college and I was going to Kentucky State University. I remember in the middle of my history class, going into my, I was into my second semester and I remember getting up out of that class and I went up and I talked to Dr. Smith and I said, I'm not coming back. And I left, I get home and my dad said, what are you doing? And I said, that's not where I want to be. And he looked at me and he said, well, if that's not where you want to be, you better find a job. And I'm like, okay. And I realized I just started looking at things. I looked at, I started appreciating time. And I realized that we lose sight because we're doing what we're supposed to do. We lose sight of the creativity and the skills that we have that we're not using. And I realized I was sitting there in that history class and I was bored. And so, I just went into my own little world. I got hired by a hospital and I was making money. It's a cool thing to do. But then I got hooked up with their lab and from junior lab tech, I then got hooked up with the health department and worked in the chemistry lab and did some stuff there. And because of that, one of my buddies back in high school in science and industrial arts, Binny says, you need to come to do an interview with me. This is the third thing in my life to change me. And I'm like, for what? He says, well, it's with AT&T. And I said, oh, no, no, no, no. I said, I already know what we do. So, we were part of that little group of kids. It's another manholes that used to be out in the middle of the street and they would be down in there trying to work on the cables and we'd drive right up to them. He's cut off to one side and scared the hell out of the guy. I was one of those guys and I'm like, no, I know you guys will know that that's me down there in that manhole and you're going to come after me. And he started laughing. He says, no, he said, this is a different part of the company. It was microwaves and a lot of programming for the major networks and stuff like that. And I started off in operations, did very well. They put me on an accelerated program, went from there, went into engineering, put me right back in school again, schools all over the country, Georgia, Georgia Tech. I did some stuff with Dr. Max Kostik at Harvard. I was at University of Michigan. And it was like just a crazy, crazy world. And all of a sudden I realized we all have skills. And it's not until things happen that you realize you have skills and then things just start to fit together. And that changed my life. And so that's how I ended up up in New York, working with Bell Labs and doing network configurations and digital time analog to digital converters and data bit sampling and all the kind of stuff. And I was part of the old school Fortran, Cobalt and all that. That was the world I lived in. And I was like, where the heck did that come from? And it was all because people planted seeds and they gave you opportunities. So from that, I'm happy doing a bunch of stuff with Bell Labs and AT&T. And I'd made a promise to my dad that I would take care of him. And I promised him that I would work at the distillery at some point in my life. And what happened to me was he became terminally ill, calls me one day and asked me, will I come home and be his caregiver? And Brett, I called him coulds and shoulds in life. I thought that what I could do was continue my career and take care of him at the same time. But what I've learned in this industry, I've learned in dealing with families, when people care about you, they would rather suffer than to change something that they consider what you really want to do or to be supportive of what you're doing. And when I saw what he went through, I looked at him and I said, I'm coming home. I said, I'm taking an early retirement, I'm coming home. I'm gonna leave that part with you because of all the gifts I've ever given my dad. Do you know keeping a simple promise meant more to him than anything else I've ever done? So I called them coulds and shoulds in life. You and I have had some moments where we've had to make decisions. There are things that we could do. And for some reason, something tells us what we should do, what's the right thing to do. And ultimately, that's put me in this seat chatting with you. That's what, almost 20 years later, 20 plus years later. 20 plus years. And we're much the better for it. Yeah. So... 9:03 Buffalo Trace Homecoming So, you come out of a heavily technical background and you're coming back to work at the distillery. Where did you start when you came into the distillery? Here's what's crazy. So, I started playing at Buffalo Trace Distillery when I was five years old. So, at the time, at the time, Buffalo Trace was just like a kid working on a farm. It was ancient age. Yeah, ancient age. That's exactly right. And so, I played around the distillery. I mean, I hung out with Ronnie Eddins, Leonard Riddle, Elmer T. Lee. At the time, Mark was just starting out there, but this was before Mark Brown was there. Elmer T. Lee's wife used to make me cookies when I was a kid. I could just do things at Buffalo Trace Distillery and I learned about fermentation, distillation, just as a kid. And it didn't really sink in that that fitted in with all the other engineering and stuff that my skill set was made for. And I had this crazy knack of taking complicated things and saying them to people in such a way that they just made sense. And so, when I came back to Buffalo Trace, that was the question that they asked me. They said, well, what do you want to do? And my dad was like, I don't care what you give him, but give him something that he can't screw up. And so, they said, how about if you become a tour guide at Buffalo Trace? I said, well, that sounds pretty cool. And so, we started doing some things and some things came up. And I started putting pieces together and I started doing more and more complicated tours with people that understood the industry and the business and how pieces fit. And they would try to take you down rabbit holes and I would just go down the rabbit hole with them and come right back out. And they were like, who the hell is this guy? And how do these pieces fit? So one day, they came back to me and they said, okay, Freddie, what do you want to be? What do you want to do here? I said, I just want to be a tour guide. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no, come on, talk to us now. What do you want to be? What do you want to do? I says, trust me. I've been in the other world. I dealt with performance indicators. I dealt with appraisals. I said, I dealt with finances. I dealt with people. At one point, I had 750 people reporting to me. I said, I don't need that anymore. I said, I just want to be a tour guide. And they were like, well, okay, we'll try to work with this, right? And out of that, the world that we live in today is the world that brings us together, is I, because of the skill sets that I'm blessed with, I have been able to actually just walk through different procedures, different processes, and meet with different groups, and articulate things in such a way that people get it. But they don't just get it like I'm just dumping something out there. They get it because they get an emotional connection to it. And so that's what I bring to all of this is, I'm not the smartest kid in the world, but I've learned that when you're dealing with folks, if I can get beyond what I see, and I appreciate who I'm working with, and they can do the same thing with me, it works every time. That makes the point that just calling you a tour guide is way, way underselling. Well, you contribute because just because of your childhood and growing into adulthood and professional career, both pre-Buffalo Trace and with Buffalo Trace, really are the through line from ancient age. One of the things we talked about earlier is just some of the people that you have seen and have been able to experience that are now just sometimes just pictures on a bottle and parts of a label that were really incredible humans. Elmer. Yeah, Elmer. We talked about Elmer Roddy Eddins who ran that warehouse, started out when he read out of high school, right? And was running the, was in charge of all the warehousing. Yeah. And transitioning from what ancient age was at a time when the bourbon business wasn't exactly on the top of the hill in the spirits world. And I think that the timing, your timing perfectly coincided. I remember the first time meeting you and how much the visitor experience of Buffalo Trace has changed because there was kind of the visitor center was that little, was little front bit of one of the buildings and you had a little office on the side. And you might have, you know, I mean tell me if I'm wrong but you might have just sometimes had to hang out for a half an hour 45 minutes waiting for somebody to show up and want a tour. Hey man, if we had 25 people in a day, that was just a busy day, Lord have mercy. Now we're running between 2500 and 3000 people a day. Right. But you were, you know, you did that and you provided the through line and it wasn't just, you know, you've grown and evolved. I guess it's that curiosity that's helped you because you go from sitting around. I mean, I remember going to the distillery and meeting you and it was always, hey, you know, I see the car over there, Mark's in the office. Yeah, just go say hello. Where you would go to Buffalo Trace and walk and knock on a door and Mark would be sitting at his desk and he put down, you know, put down the phone. How are you doing? How's Binny's? Yep. Or whomever and had the chance to chat. And he still is very much that personality, just like you really are the same personality you were 25 years ago, at least to me, whether you're walking through 25 people in a day or 25 people every hour. Yeah. You know, that hasn't changed. But you've been involved in a lot of other changes at the distillery. We've got a few bottles sitting here. So, when your family started, it was ancient age distillery. So, what were, before you came back, what were the main brands that your father and your grandfather would have worked on when they were at Buffalo Trace, the ancient age then? You know, the old expressions of ancient age, ancient, ancient age, you know. And then, you had Blanton's, Elmer was kicking off Blanton's. Hancock Reserve was there. You know, you had old charter, you had a bunch of, you know, things that are, they're still there but you don't hear very much about them anymore. So, a lot of other things going on in ancient age because there's, I mean, the path of the brands even before, you know, Sazerac purchased ancient age and turned it into Buffalo Trace. I mean, Elmer had started with Elmer T. Lee. Elmer had started Blanton's, right? Blanton's was the baby. He came up with that concept and it was out of granddad, Colonel Blanton would have these parties. They were called Bird Goose Soup Parties, but Colonel Blanton must have been realized he was a master chef. He was into herbs and bird watching and he was an amazing guy. But to get back to the point, he would want to have these special parties. The Scottish and Irish had taken a liking to my grandfather and showed him how they built the old warehouses, like Warehouse C, A, B and C. Well, A is now the gift shop, but they showed him how they built those. They were built for a specific purpose. A is rectangular, long, with very few windows. B sits over next to the river. And then C is the one everybody is crazy about, but it's like a giant box with a lot of windows around it. And each of those was based on the rotation of the earth, the exposure to sunlight, barometric pressures and airflow. And so when Colonel Blanton would want to have one of these parties, he would have my grandfather go in and pull what they called honey barrels. And he would use those to entertain these folks with. And during Prohibition, that's how Warehouse H got built. It was a metal-clad warehouse without any insulation. So it was very aggressive aging in the summertime, but it got damn cold in the winter. Taylor had introduced climatically controlled warehouses and using steam heat. So he incorporated the aggressiveness of summertime with the steam heat during the winter. So that's why Blanton's, when it was introduced, is very spicy and robust and fruity on the front end of the palette. But it sits very light on the palette because it's a quick aging without a lot of age. So you get a lot of flavor, but it doesn't just, you don't cook the whisky. Because of that and because of that knowledge, Elmer says, well, how about this? He says, Jimmy, I want you to go into the warehouse and pull some barrels for me. He told dad what he was trying to do and dad dropped down some barrels. Elmer tasted from those and from that, Blanton's got created. My father and Elmer never talked about that. Dad, we get the barrels, Elmer would make the Blanton's and it was Elmer, then the latter part of his career was recognized as one of only three living master distillers have whiskey named after him. The other two was Booker Noe with Jim Beam and Jimmy Russell with Wild Turkey. During that recognition, with all the journalists and all the others, we were up in the clubhouse at Buffalo Trace, and they were basically praising Elmer for all that he had done and the creation of Blanton's and all of that. And in the middle of that, Brett Elmer very nicely, he looked out at everybody and he says, I appreciate all the recognition that y'all have given me. He says, but y'all need to know that Jimmy sitting over there is the one who chose the barrels. And my father looked at me and he says, he didn't have to do that. So they would have carried that to the grave. And dad, I said, what's that about? And he says, he didn't have to tell anybody that I was the one who did the barrels. And afterwards, Elmer came over and Elmer said, Jimmy, he says, yes, I did. He says, people needed to know. Coulds and sheds, because Elmer could have never told that, he could have never revealed that, but he did. So that's the level of respect that when you ask about what's really going on at Buffalo Trace, Brett, it's about inclusion. It doesn't matter whether you're a visitor, you work there, you're part of a contract team or whatever, it's inclusion. Mark Brown set that culture. You can walk into his office. If something is going on, you can find somebody to help you. And that, I think, is what got us past that. So Elmer understood that. Elmer, believe it or not, in the latter days, Tuesday was his day. My job was to meet Elmer at the door. When his daughter would bring him over to do his barrel picks, and he would sign a few bottles and take some pictures with folks, I learned so much about. There comes a point when you realize, okay, I've got a hand off the baton, but I want people to know I'm still here. And so it was a way of gradually going quietly into the night, but keeping that culture alive at Buffalo Trace. So I mean, you've got me thinking so many darn things right now. God, Lee, man, you're just- Well, when you bring up, I mean, much shorter, but you bring up great memories because Elmer was, as long as Elmer was on this planet, Elmer was at every single Binny's handpicked that we did, including the first one. Yeah. In fact, in What's Wonderful Elmer, who was never a salesman, he was a bourbon maker. He wasn't a salesman because the first time we picked, I remember going down. This was 2002, 2003. The bourbon business wasn't really what it is now, and things were coming around, and there was this new brand, Buffalo Trace, that was really only sold in Kentucky and maybe Tennessee, that was just starting to come to Illinois. I thought, well, why don't we go down? There's the single barrel thing that nobody was doing, but we were obsessed with. I went down with Joe Conjuiste, who you would have known, Joe C, who's still for everybody out there, if you're lucky enough to have a bottle of Eagleware 10 in your cabinet or on your shelf, we lost Joe in 2004. Bottom right hand corner. If you look above the UPC code, bottom right hand corner, the black label, Joe C's name is still on the Eagleware label to this day and has been there since Mark put it there in 2004. So, Joe was really, Joe was a mentor to me and was really, truly the first person that actually operated this thing that we call the Whiskey Hotline, which started out as an 800 number in a broom closet in our 3,000 North Flag Street store. Well, he's now gotten a little bit bigger than that. But that's really where it all started. And again, that tells you something for everybody out there, the thoughtfulness and evolution, the thoughtfulness of Mark Brown. Culture. Culture. And the culture of the distillery. And again, whether you're 25 people a day or 25 people an hour, you're still family. And the passion is always there. And Elmer, I remember the first time we picked, and I just, this is all new to me because it's really kind of new to everybody. I mean, except for Elmer. And so, we're picking barrels. And I think the first year, it's like we tried some Blanton's, and we tried some Buffalo Trace, and we tried a little bit of Eagle Rare, and we tried some Sazerac Rye. And I'm looking, okay, I want a Buffalo Trace, and I want a Blanton's, and I want an Eagle Rare. And Elmer looked at me and said, you sure you can sell all that bourbon? That's a lot of whiskey. I said, that's all. I said, yeah, Elmer, I think this bourbon thing is kicking off. I think we're going to be able to sell this. 22:48 EH Taylor Exploration We happen to have a bottle of EH. Taylor, which for the luck of everybody has started, availability started getting a little bit better on EH. Taylor, and we're able to take care of a few more folks that we haven't been able to take care of. But now they're getting greedy, so they know that they're different expressions. That's good. Thank you. Yeah. So we've got some EH. Taylor coming around. So because you were here, Freddie, for the development or you were at Buffalo Trace, full on for the development or redevelopment of EH. Taylor. Tell us what went into constructing this. We were just up at his gravesite. Taylor Hay, who was EH. Taylor's great-great-grandson, he and his wife Joanna were out on the family farm, and they were fitting around in some old boxes and stuff, and they found some of the original EH. Taylor. They were like, they bring it in, and they bring it into Mark's office, and he says, would you be interested in something like this? Mark said, would I? Would I? That actually started the whole thing. Taylor had done some pretty cool things that nobody even realized what he was doing. He was considered an eccentric, and no one appreciated column stills because the Scottish way, the traditional way, was pot stills. And when Taylor came up with this concept for column stills, it was like, okay, what's going on here? And he said, well, my objective is to make a really good whiskey, but I want to be consistent with what I make. And that's what most people don't realize about the beauty of a column still is, once I lock in on a certain flow through that still, and I've got a steady stream of heat coming up from the bottom, it can run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They're self-purging, and the quality is the same. Once you clip the heads and tails off of it. And Taylor had figured that out by going over to Scotland and Ireland. And I said, and when he came up with this, and he discovered how he could do this, and use the pot still as a doubler, I said, that's where all these expressions and all these flavors were getting captured, but no one had ever done that before. So I said, that's why they consider him the father of this type of whiskey making. And I'm just sitting here playing with this, and just even when you swirl it around and you look, the first thing you look at is, how does it coat the glass? And does it look like, basically like a cognac in there? Because you can see a very definitive line, and you can also see it takes a moment or two by swirling it around before it builds up enough that the legs actually form. So that tells you a lot about the mouthfeel, about how it's going to interact with the enzymes on your palate. I mean, I just, I get crazy about this stuff. But I think that Taylor had stumbled upon something before you even get to the whiskey in the glass. Presentation. He was a showman and that sleeve, they go bananas over that sleeve. We have people that collect them and they'll show me their, and they've got the whole wall with nothing but these sleeves of the Taylor bottles. And so, when you talk about what he was doing, he was making small batch, but small batch, as you know, there's no set number for small batch. And so, he was making it in such a way that it looked like something that was well worth the money. It's a younger bourbon, a little bit aggressive, but the way it sits, it averages about six years, six to seven years, but it's the middle to the lower floors. So, it gets a little bit of spiciness, it gets a little bit of the influence of the heat fluctuation, but it also gets the influence of the barometric pressure, which is because it's down near the earth, that you don't get as much of a dramatic swing. So, that gives it softer, fruitier notes, gives it a fullness because it goes deep into the wood, but it doesn't just hang around heavy on the palate. So, that's what I like about it. Right, and so you get more of the still. It honors the still a little bit more than it honors the wood in the warehouse. That's exactly right. Just because of the lower floors. Yep. And it really is beautiful. And again, and that's the point that a lot of people go crazy over this whiskey, and again, it's not super old in terms of you know, it brings up why in a lot of cases, bourbons don't put age statements on the label, because again, they're created for the taste, they're not created for the age. That's exactly right. And sometimes people have preconceived notions, sometimes to the negative, about chasing things, because they have big numbers. And a big number doesn't always mean a big whiskey. They go bananas over a high price on a young product. Yeah. That just drives them bananas, you know. And how do you justify that, you know? So, but I, you know, we're sitting here playing around with nosing it right now. I wish people could see what we're doing. I, this is like an appetizer, right? And this is a true story. So, very, very fortunate. And I got to go to Scotland. And while I was over in Scotland at the Hall of Fame, over at the castle, over at Damien's Castle, Joanna had, she had touched base with some folks and I, they had said, is there anything else you want to do? Why are you over here? Because I was down in the space side. And I was like, I said, you know, I said, I have always been fascinated with the Glencairn glass because this is the one that we traditionally see. She places a call and Raymond, who was the, Raymond and Paul were the two. And the other brother was, they said, he's the bookkeeper. Yeah, Paul's definitely got to print in the Davidson. So we go over there and I get a chance to tour the factory. And then we get into the same level of granularity that we go through with our grains and our process. They do the same thing with the different sands and the locations in the different parts of the world. And we were talking, you know, we've been talking about bourbon. And I was noticing that you've got one of the kind of the designs that were set. It's called the fluted design now. And when we were talking about what they were doing, they said one of the things they noticed was the proof keeps going up and up and up. And this narrow chimney on the traditional Glencairn glass, it can be very overwhelming to the nose, just because you can do that with one of those hazmat ones. And you go to nose it like that and you can actually feel it burning the hairs in your nose. And they said that tulip design allows to basically to disperse some of the alcohol concentration, so you don't get as much on the nose that you would normally get, but all by design. And so I said, okay, isn't that crazy? We're making whiskeys and products, we call them expressions, that do that part. And then you take the glass and the glass is the other piece of that to help you appreciate the pour. So a lot of people don't realize that the type of glass that you're using to present your pour can have a lot to do with your initial encounter with the product. Absolutely. And that was at a time when you remember Ray, because we've been lucky to have a very good relationship with the Davidson family almost since the beginning of Glencairn. And when Ray started that company, nobody knew that they needed that glass. He really was like, you know, like Elmer making Blanton's. Everybody is like, okay. You know, the company that he worked for, he had to leave that company to create his own business just to do that. Yeah, but it was amazing because nobody knew they needed the Glencairn glass until the Glencairn glass was made and then everybody realized, wow. Which is funny because they're now kind of synonymous with each other. He don't, I mean, people drink out of it. This is just what you drink out of. You just don't call it. It's just a Glencairn. Yeah, it's just a Glencairn. Yeah, look at you. That's very good. Yeah, that's beautiful. Let's talk a little bit about Buffalo Trace because that's really the namesake of the distillery. It's the driver. So when the Sazerac company purchased Ancient Age, they got a couple of brands, the biggest one being Ancient Age in terms of volume. Yeah. And Buffalo Trace, the distillery was renamed Buffalo Trace, and a flagship product was created. So what was when you were there, and I suppose that would have been Elmer at the time and Gary, right? I want you to try something. Okay. So get your EH. Taylor first. So I'm going to show you. Remember, these are all the same match built. Your EH. Taylor, six to seven years old, and Vaughan, a hundred proof. What has been surfacing of late is we've got this subtle transition of folks that are into wines and whiskeys, wines, craft beer, stuff like that, and they're coming over into this bourbon world. Here's where this water comes in. So watch this. So what I do is I call it, I got hooked up with Drew Mabel doing some stuff. When I get with the group, I will ask, how many of you are going to have a drink in bourbon? Most of them will hold up their hands. I don't worry about them. They've already got a fixation on what they think they like. I look for the ones that don't hold up their hand, or they're saying they're doing it for the first time, they're there with a friend or whatever. So if you have to think about the products that you like, it was probably because they were introduced to you in such a way that it made a favorable moment for you. And that makes you want to go to them. So what I help people understand is this. I always make sure that I have water on the side, and I show them this little trick. A lot of times they give you eyedroppers, and they'll tell you to put a drop or two of water in there. I don't want them to do that, especially when they're doing barrel selections. If they come in with a group to do a barrel pick, water is on the side. And what I do is I'm going to show you this, and we're going to do it with the EH. Taylor, they would do it with the Buffalo Trace, they would do it with the Eagle Rare. And you'll see even though this is the same recipe, with a little bit of water, you can actually open it up, and you can actually appreciate what lies just beyond the obvious. It's kind of cool. So take a sip of water, hold the sip of water in your mouth, and while you're holding that sip of water in your mouth, just a little small sip of water in your mouth, now take a swig of your EH. Taylor while you're holding the water in your mouth, and roll it around on your tongue for a little bit, and now you get those softer fruitier notes. Notice it's a lot sweeter. The finish is unbelievably smooth on it. It's still light on the pilot, but it's clean. Even though it's 100 proof, it doesn't even feel like it, and you get those softer, sweeter notes. You got that? That's fantastic, because we preach. I've done a lot of seminars over the years, and we do talk about water and how important, in the whiskey world, how important water is, because we do like to bottle things at higher proof, not because they're higher proof, but we figure we would rather give it to somebody and say, you have water, you decide what strength you want to drink it at. We're going to give it to you at high. If you want to drink it lower, grab some good water and put some water in it. But so I've done the water thing in the glass. I've never ever in the whole career doing tastings, ever put water in my mouth and tasted the whiskey. But what comes out is pretty amazing. You ready for this? I like this way way more. All right. And I'll tell you, so here's the reason I do that is if, especially if I'm doing a barrel selection, I get my pours. All right. Now I'm playing with them. The problem with doing that is when I start sipping on them and adding drops to water, I've reached the integrity of my pour and my sample. I cannot go back, but I can do it in my mouth and I can always return to those pours, and I'm still comparing apples to apples. The reverse of this, I do a lot of kooky stuff. So I'm a little nerdy when it comes to this kind of stuff. Watch this. We're going to reverse it, and I'm going to show you why when you're doing this, you'll see a lot of people do this. They'll go in there doing their barrel pick. They'll take the whiskey, and they'll do all this, and then they'll take a swig of water. They say that they're cleansing their palate. All right? Watch what happens. Now, take a swig of your EH. Taylor, hold a Taylor in your mouth, all right? And while you're holding the Taylor in your mouth, now take a swig of the water, and nothing happens. All you got was the burn of the alcohol, and basically, that's it. So what happens is the alcohol dominates the palate, and you can't get to those other fruity soft notes and that viscosity because it's been destroyed. So that's why I tell people all the time when I watch people, when they do barrel selections and stuff, and if I see them taking that swig of whiskey, then they throw in some water behind it. To everybody, just so you know, to everybody that's listening to this, it would be a good idea at this point in time to pause the podcast and get a glass of whiskey and a glass of water and walk through that whole experiment that we just did in the last three or four minutes because it is, again, having never done it, it's amazing the difference because you're right, the whiskey on the palate that gets hit by water on the back end just kind of gets dry and alcohol-y. Whereas dumping the whiskey on top of the water that's already in your mouth just kind of like blossoms into the fruit and the sweetness and the character. And really, I think back to what was created on the still as much as the wood, because then you get the more estuary fruity sort of character, which is almost always going to come from distillation rather than from aging. And the cool part about that is that if there's an abundance of tannins, when you do that and then you swallow, it leaves your mouth dry. I mean, right away, you can nail that the oak has basically been influenced a lot of the flavors on their product. Isn't that crazy? And if you do it with barrel proof, like a George T. Stag or one of those, or your Wimberoo Wellers, thermically, you'll actually feel it warming up in your mouth. You will feel the viscosity change, and then you'll start getting these really soft, buttery, fruity caramel toffee notes. Yeah, because water and alcohol interacting is a chemical reaction that's taking place, and one of the things that generates is heat. Yep. So, it's called the lingual artery. So, the surface temperature of your tongue is like 93 degrees, and when you do things like that, like the introduction of the water, you actually change the temperature inside of your mouth, which tells your body, wait a minute, something is going on here. The enzymes, they get secreted because the enzymes break down the solids, and that's when you taste things. So it's kind of a cool thing. So what you do is you can play around with different amounts of water in my mouth, and the reason I like to do that is not everybody likes their bourbon neat, so I can play with, if someone likes their bourbon in water, I got that. If they like it on the rocks, I got that. It tells me if I dilute this product down, can it hold up? You know, some of them are really, when you do your barrel picks, some of them are dynamic on the nose, you just think they're going to be the cat's meow, and you get to in your mouth, and you take a little sip of water, and all of a sudden it just goes away. So when I hold that sip of water in my mouth, and I take a sip of a product that I'm really kind of focusing on, and it does not hold up when I have that water in my mouth, it tells me that if you like your bourbon on the rocks, that product is not going to get you where you want to be. And so it's kind of a cool thing. So as we go through this, we can do some more, right? No, but that's amazing. You should try that. And so if I'm going to have a drink in wine, I'm not going to 100 proof, I'm going there quietly. And so it doesn't overwhelm me and it allows me to be inclusive with the group because I'm not busy trying to get rid of it because I can appreciate it. And I just start with a bigger sip of water and then just gradually reduce it down till it get down to neat. And I like what you said too about the nose because a lot of the process, the one thing that I've discovered, and it doesn't mean absolutely 100 percent, but it's certainly 98 or 99 percent. It's very rare that I have ever smelled a bourbon that just doesn't smell good and have it turn out to actually be great on the palate. There are numerous times when I've smelled things that I thought were wonderful and like you said, just don't finish the way that they started with the nose. But I think that people also underestimate a little bit the power of the nose in tasting because they have to, if you can't smell, you can't taste. Yep. No matter what, if you can't smell, you can't taste. Yep. Got to get past your nose to get to your mouth. And your tongue really and people don't understand too. One of the things we always recommend is when you take a nose of any product, you should have your mouth slightly cracked because it changes the way that the air flow goes through your mouth and you basically are allowing the back of your tongue, the sort of retronasals, I think what they call it, but you're allowing the back of your tongue to help your nose do its job. Yeah. So, because not only is your nose smelling, but it's kind of hitting your tongue, even though it's just air. Have you seen them do this all side to side with the nose? Have you done that yet? Yes. There is an, I'm a firm believer that everybody has a dominant nostril, just like you have a dominant hand or a dominant eye. Yeah, but it changes roughly every, most people don't realize, it's a cyclical thing. Every two to four hours, your body will change the dominant nasal passage you breathe. Really? Yep. You don't control it. It does it to protect itself. So what happens is it shuts down one side and re-moisturizes. That's why your nose runs like during pollen season or when you're in a dusty area and your nose starts to run. If you'll notice, it's one side and you'll blow and a little bit later on next time the other side's done. So what it does is it shuts down one side to re-moisturize, and that moisture collects dust and particulates that would normally go into your respiratory system. So what it does is it flushes them out before it gets in there. So that's why when you're nosing, if you can do it to any one of these, I love to do it with Buffalo Trace because then you'll realize, well, I can smell it better on one side than I can on the other. A little bit later on you do it, it'll be reversed and it's not even political. So you're going to raise your hand. 42:02 Buffalo Trace Strategy Let's try some Buffalo Trace now. Again, the flagship, was there anything special, any thoughts that went into constructing this, putting this together when the distillery is named and they decide to create this as a flagship product? Yeah, Holland Wheatley calls Buffalo Trace one of the most balanced bourbons that's ever been produced. You get it on the nose, you get it on the palate. When you swirl it around, if you'll notice, just in doing that, notice the difference. Remember when we were doing this with the EH. Taylor, and you could just swirl a couple of times, and all of a sudden you'd see it all, you'd see the coating on the inside, but this takes a little bit longer for it to build up, all right, and it's a little bit lighter. Did you notice that? Watch this. Take that sip of water with the Buffalo Trace, take your sip of Buffalo Trace and just chew on it, and you will actually feel the viscosity change. You still get the punch of the rye, you get the spiciness, but the fruity notes that you experienced with the Taylor, they're not as pronounced, and it's more of a candied fruity kind of a taste profile. Midways of your palate, it's pretty much mellowed out, nice to take it on the traditional format of a bourbon, and the finish is still relatively smooth. I call it, it's not a long finish, it's middle ways, but it's clean. So that's what I like about Buffalo Trace. Yeah, a little bit, and it's sort of like a little vanilla, a little bit of caramel, a little bit of butterscotch. You're right, the character, the sweet character is there, but it's definitely, it's definitely less ester and has changed a little bit, and it's still not aggressive wood. No. I mean, the wood is certainly, especially if there's vanilla in there, that's probably starting to come from the wood as much as, but that's still, you know. Isn't that pretty cool? Still, and it's amazing, and these could have been, you know, an EH. Taylor and a Buffalo Trace could have come off the still at the exact same day, at the exact same time. Yeah, so I tell people, this is really kind of funny, so we could make a batch. We're averaging probably, depending upon what we're making, but 90,000 gallons of mash will net us about 15,000 gallons of white dog. But when we do that, when we're running like Mash Bill 1, a lot of people don't realize, so if they look down through there, we've got 32 of these suckers. And so you look down through there, and let's say if we just took 12 of them, and you do 12 times 90, and then say, okay, I'm getting 15,000 out of those 90s. But I do 15,000 times 12. That gives you the number of equivalent gallons that that batch will produce. And then I divide that by 52, and you then dissect that down into what you think the forecasted amount of this product will be out for the next 50 years, because we're already at 30. And so, and then what are all the expressions that are in Mashbill 1? So when we make a batch of Mashbill 1, we're making whiskey for at least the next 30 years with today's portfolio of products. And in there, we have to have Benchmark, EH. Taylor, Buffalo Trace, George T. Stag, Eagle Rare, begin to make sense. And so then you go like, okay, and as Mark Brown says, no matter how much you drill down, you're still gonna be wrong. And so that's when Holland began to realize the atmosphere is actually affecting where we put the barrels long term. And we've had a couple of surprises. I remember a couple of years ago, we got hit with the George T. Stag that it didn't fall into its stage profile. People thought it was a disaster. Could and should. They know that they could have released it. And people would have probably bought it. But then the feedback would have been, well, I don't know what they're making now, but it doesn't taste anything like what I remember George T. Stag to be. So we got more positive recognition for not releasing the George T. Stag than if we had released it. Isn't that crazy? So. There, you know, but there's, it goes back to the winery analogy and the way you're getting that credit, because wineries have done that in the past with bad vintages. If they have their top end mark, you know, rather than rush something out that isn't going to meet the quality standards that they've set previously, they just, you know, that's when you buy the second, that when you don't do Stag, that's when you buy up all the Buffalo Trace you can, because they're going to do something with that liquid, right? Aren't you a smart fella? So, it is very, very, very, very rare that we don't put that whiskey somewhere. Sure. Yeah, of course, and it fits, like I said, because we'll, you know, we get to try things for barrels that are, you know, that, at least for us, that are wonderful whiskeys that just aren't necessarily in profile. And you had mentioned something earlier about when we were dropping down barrels sometimes, and those barrels were crossing taste profile boundaries. We had a few barrels of Eagle Rare that that happened to, and a couple of others, and that's when we realized that we need to really look closely at what is going on with the atmosphere when we're trying to do this aging. So Harlan went through and he actually mapped all of the warehouses. And when we built the new warehouses up on top of the hill, those things are 58,800 barrels each. He has the ability to control the temperature within five degrees from the ground level to the top level. So there, he's got a patent on that the only warehouses like it in the world. But with that raised floor and that tubing, going through that flooring, it's like a radiant heat, so it's a universal heat coming up from it. But he can run warm water or cold water through there, so we can regulate it. And we've got like 341 windows in each one of those suckers. So he can control airflow, temperature. It's got an R-factor rating of a brick-mortar type of a building. Sure. It's pretty cool. So you've got how many warehouses up there? Bunch. It's basically a bunch of convection ovens, kind of. Yeah. So I find it interesting. So there are just some things, people go back and they do the research and they'll try to figure out how many warehouses up there and what we got in each one. What are we doing? And we're playing around with a lot of that. At the end of the day, you can't rush mother nature and you can't cheat father time. But you can consider how they play into the taste profile of your product. So we are now learning that molecular infusion is a factor and that product even after it gets into the bottle. So that's why we're talking to more and more people about if you're getting some of our really nice products, they're not trophies meant to be displayed with a lot of light shining on them and stuff like that because that does affect the product over time. Sure. Well, they're not meant to be displayed at all. They're meant to be popped and drunk with your friends. Yeah. And that's a whole other story. We'll talk about that later on. So what do you think about the Buffalo? So what we did was that the change was we actually, we left the traditional Mash Bill 2, which was the Blanton's ancient age, Rockhill Farms, Hancock Reserve. That was the traditional one. And Elmer's State under that too, right? The Elmer's under that umbrella. And Mash Bill 2 was an entirely different Mash Bill. And so we backed off on the amount of rye and the increased amount of corn. So that's why you get softer, fruitier, some of your sweet notes coming out of it more. So we play around with seven to nine years with Buffalo Trace, depending upon where it's sitting. But traditionally, it's middle to the lower floors. Right. So, yeah, I mean, it's beautiful. And this is the one, you know, it's funny, it's a lot bigger volume than I think, it's a lot bigger volume than people think that it is in terms of what gets bottled and sold. But so many people are looking for it. You know, we're still probably a ways away. Still get emails every week, Hans. Yeah. Yeah, actually Buffalo Trace is well-branded in some places. So that's pretty kick. Well, I know that they're, you know, a benefit. And of course, we like to yell at the sales and marketing people when we don't get our way. But, you know, I know that there are some states now where we're kind of based on available product. Again, not compromising the integrity of the product by overbottling. That you sort of have gone market by market and have done increased releases in some states that you don't get in others. Like we're lucky in Illinois because we've started getting more EH. Taylor. And we seem to be getting a little bit more Blanton's now. Whereas I know that we have at least one neighboring state where Buffalo Trace is floor stacked. I mean, if you think about this wave, and you think about the period of time where things were slow. And so now, you know, in the industry, you know, one of the things that we had been concerned about was overproduction. And some of these, the sewers are shutting down and they're not making any more and all that. People are asking, well, what are y'all doing? I mean, y'all are just continuing to crank it up. And, you know, we just picked up another 400 acres of land that they're building new horizons at another location. So the deal is, we're not like a lot of the other distilleries. So a lot of people thought that the reason that we were under allocation and we were in short supply and you couldn't get it was because we were sending all of our product overseas. That was the perception. Quite opposite. I mean, quite the opposite. You ready for this? We only have, currently, we only have one retail store outside North America, and that's in London right now. So, yeah. Yeah, they're not. I mean, people say, what are they going to do with all the whiskey? It's like, they're not in Asia, and that's a big bourbon consuming communities all over Asia, all over continental Europe. You think about Asia. I mean, if you just do the countries like China, India, Japan, they're pretty good consumers. But Australia, I mean, you start to think of these other countries. And last year, we cranked out, I used general numbers, but we cranked out over nine million cases of product and less than 5% left North America. Geez. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but remember, inclusion. So what's actually happened is a couple of things. Culturally, and you think about ethnic diversities of culture, and you think about the number of women that are now drinking bourbon, that never drank it before. And then you start thinking about now, all of these different cocktails and things that are coming out there. And I find it amazing that even though there's this vast array of cocktails, Manhattans and old fashions are still smoking paper planes, and now in there, you know, but they are easy transformation drinks. So if I'm in the habit of drinking wine, and you want to convert me over to bourbon, make me an old fashion with a good wheaty bourbon like a welder, and those soft fruity notes will just jump out at me, and I'm a happy camper. So I can do things like that. I can do my Manhattans with the rye. And you start looking at the opportunities that good bourbons and some of the whiskeys that are being made now. And yeah, it's not what I want to drink every day, but yeah, and that's just here. And now you're looking at, well, what's all this extra whisky for? And the extra whisky is for, as we start to expand, you've got to have the product, but you can't have, like you just mentioned earlier, I can't have Eagle Rare 5-year-old and have somebody saying that they got it in another country and it doesn't taste anything like what they remembered. So people collect and they constantly do comparisons. Well, and you're going back to your analogy of the, you know, people who supported you from the beginning. And to your credit, you could have long ago opened up all kinds of export markets. And you really haven't opened up export markets because right now, they're still not enough for the United States. I mean, you're exploring a little bit. But at least, you know, but at least, at least this market and, you know, we're doing everything we can to get what we can. We're happy with what we get. Yeah. So, yeah, so anytime, anytime when you come down and they've blocked out two of our conference rooms or our visitors' rooms, and I look in there and I see this vast array of glasses, I'm like, okay, Benny's is back in town. Grace is slowly but surely moving us across to where the new cafe is. Above in the back of that, I think, because we have had people in the past like open up the door and walk in, it's like, hey guys, what's going on here? Can I join in? Yeah, yeah. Which is the other part of, again, about the culture. Isn't it amazing to be at a facility that is so inviting and so welcoming that you feel comfortable coming in and asking. And they'll do it on tours and stuff like that, and oh, what are y'all doing in here? And so sometimes like if I'm on a behind the scenes tour and they are potential clients or someone that they're in the raffle and they're hoping they get a barrel selection, and they tell me that, I'll say, okay, well, there's a barrel selection going on right now. I said, you can't participate. But I said, I'll take you down and let you see what it's like. So because of that interest, we now have this special tour that it's like if you were going through doing a barrel selection and we see from the barrel and we let them see that. Again, it's about inclusion, but if I can keep you excited about being at Buffalo Trace, it makes you want to come back. Yeah. No, 100%. And everything's complimentary. So, I mean, unless you get one of the special cocktails, you can come in, visit, do a tasting, do a tour, and bring your family and no big deal. And it really is 100% transparent having gone through distilleries all over the world and pretty much all of the major ones in Kentucky. I mean, you see everything. You walk them through the still room. You walk them by- Almost everything. Yeah. Well. You might be some of the experimental stuff, maybe not, but really, I mean, you're pretty transparent. Yes. Right, in terms of letting people see just if everybody, there's not the, and it doesn't destroy the mystique, it adds to the mystique because it's like, okay, what am I missing here? They've showed me everything. You know, where's the man behind the curtain? Right, but there really isn't a man behind the curtain. You're just a whole bunch of people making very good whiskey. You know, what's even more amazing is that they can come in there and they'll see somebody that's one of the workers, they'll stop and talk to them, and they'll share with them what they're doing. And that, I think that's just, it's something that it's not pretentious. They'll laugh about, sometimes they'll come in with somebody else's t-shirt on, somebody's his hat, and we'll joke with them and stuff like that, but it's not malicious, and they get a kick out of it, and all of a sudden, we praise them and say, well, we're glad that you went to more than one distillery. Glad you came to Buffalo Trace, but it's good you went to the others, because you can see how we're doing things here. Sure. Well, and that's, and look, that great generation of distillers that really kicked off the bourbon boom, Elmer, Jimmy, Booker, Jim Rutledge, that whole gang of people, there was, Jimmy Russell's got a couple of good Elmer stories. One of them, apparently, they were together at a tasting in France, and they're tasting out at some place that's selling in it. So they're tasting out Wild Turkey with the Bourbon Club or Whiskey Club, and then they're tasting out Elmer T. Lee, and at one point in time, somebody gets up and they start to talk about Wild Turkey. Jimmy says, so I'm sitting here with Elmer, and they're talking about Wild Turkey, and they're talking about the fruit and all these things. Elmer looked at me and said, damn Jimmy, I didn't put anything like that in the barrel. I just put whiskey in the bottle, which is a great Elmer story. Jimmy said, it cracked Jimmy up. And that was always all those guys, if you talk to any of them and they said, what's your favorite whiskey? And it would be, well, I like this but that's why I make it. He goes, but there's a lot of good whiskey out there you ought to go to. And those guys were always ambassadors for the bourbon business, and friends, and it's just like, they want everybody to make good product, and they want everybody to make product that folk like. Because that very much the attitude arising tied in that generation, you know, the Elmer, Willie, Jimmy, and that gang. Yeah, so I was actually, I was just down there at his place, so he's one of the few down there. Corky is another one with Peerless. You know, if you didn't know these guys, I remember when Lincoln Henderson had just put Angel's Envy. He'd started, just started making it. We were doing a panel at a Bourbon Classic down in Louisville. We're sitting there between events and we got to talking, and he looked at me and he says, Freddie, I have created something. I'll never live to taste it. And I just looked at him, I'm like, no, don't talk like that, Lincoln. And he was like, he says, but here's what I want you to do. He says, when it comes out, he said, I want you to get a bottle of it, do a pour and raise a glass to this moment that we shared here this evening. He said, I've really enjoyed this moment with you. He says, but do it in remembrance of me, which is something that you hear in the Bible. I'm thinking, how profound is this? It was angels and they finished an important sherry barrel. Now, Wes Henderson, he was the recipient of what Lincoln had put into the barrel. But it just stuck with me. Then when we did the oral history thing with Elmer and Leonard and Ronnie and all of those, and I remembered Leonard and Ronnie getting into a discussion. Ronnie says, well, we've already made some stuff here that we're never going to live to taste either. And it just all of a sudden, it began to dawn on us how much these folks cared about making a good product, that I'm going to make something that's going to be my legacy. This is going to be my footprint. You can make some more, just make it better than what was done. Hey, this is Jim with Barrel to Bottle. That was part one of the Freddie Johnson interview. As you can tell, it was chock full of interesting stories from his life, too much to fit into one episode. So we're going to come back next week for part two of our wide-ranging interview with Freddie Johnson, Global Ambassador for Buffalo Trace. Until next week, keep tasting.