00:00 Alex Chasko's Journey Welcome to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. They were pleased to have a guest from Dublin, Ireland, Alex Chasko, the master distiller of Teeling. My name's Dan, I work in Spirits. Brett with Whiskey Hotline. And Alex Chasko from the Teeling Whiskey Distiller. It's great to be here. Oh, thanks for coming. And also from you, from Teeling, but obviously the voice is not what we would call pure patty. No. Where are you from originally? Oh, I'm originally from Portland, Oregon, yes. So, I'm the first employee of the Teeling Whiskey Company. I've been with the family since the very beginning. And then I would have been the Innovation Manager at Cooley before that. So, I worked with Cooley for about two years doing, you know, interesting and unique things with those whiskies. And then an opportunity came up where Stephen and Jack were going to start the Teeling Distillery in Dublin. And I jumped ship and became the first employee. So, when you say innovation, what was your technical background going into Cooley? Ah, so I started out in the craft beer industry in Portland, Oregon back in the 90s. So, a little place, Bridgeport Brewing Company, which was actually the first place to brew IPA in the US. And then I was at Pyramid and Thomas Kemper up in Seattle. And as a young guy going around the west coast of the US in the mid to late 90s, interested in beer, you could talk to anybody. You could go, you could walk into wherever you wanted to go to and people would start talking to you. And I had a lot of questions and people were like, you got a lot of questions. There's a place you can go to where they have answers for you, the Harriet Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. And so I went back to school to get my master's in brewing and distilling. And that was an amazing experience to learn from the living legends of the industry and to walk into a lecture and say, well, I don't really understand what's going on with the enzymes there or what's happening with the fermentation, right? I know that there's the order that the amino acids are taking up, but like, how do you, what does that do actually? Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's amazing. And we're going to sort of jump around a little bit here and jump immediately for the time being to where you are now, which is not fermentation. It's actually the complete other end of the production process, which is wood regimen, which I think Teeling has set some world standards for quality and variety in terms of what has been released in the last five to ten years. 2:41 Teeling's Flavor Focus For me, it all goes back to flavor. So like, it's all part of the same pipeline or the same continuum or spectrum, if you want to use that way of looking at it, right? Of like, how do you create a flavor? Do you do that at the beginning of the process? Do you do that at the end of the process? Is that something that's a, you know, a long time scale or with cask finishing or relatively short? Right? But like, it's all about, for me, what does the consumer want? How are you going to try and achieve that in a flavor profile? And then, you know, what's the scale of that need? Sure. Sure. You're still very heavily involved at the front end of that, which is fermentation, because we always want to stress any time we talk to a whiskey producer just how important that is. Yeah. Because people lose sight that if you, people forget that distillation is actually concentration, not extraction. Right. Except extracting water. So if you're messed up before you go to the still, you're not saving it with anything. It's a series of compromises. You're right. You're laying down those flavors, and then you have a series of compromises as to like, how are you going to try and, yeah, concentrate or remove or what are you doing along the process that's hopefully improving the flavor? And cask finishing, as you guys know, is one way in which at the end, if you have a quality spirit, you can put it into a cask that maybe held something previously or a unique type of wood, and really have a large impact on the flavor of the product in that last. Well, for us, our shortest finishing would be probably nine months, right? There's no regulations there. So some people do it for a very short period of time, weeks, months. We typically would use at least nine months, but it could be years. We have some that are still, the clock is up there, ticking in the warehouse where it's been five, six, seven years. And is that double maturation or what's, I don't know, I just concentrate on the flavor. Yeah. Well, and I think too, one thing that I've seen, having been there for the first time recently, is your beer lineage really shows in your whiskey with the different malts you use, like the Crystal Malt most famously. But we were able to taste some casks. We used basically a Porter Mash Mill. Yeah. And just really interesting things that I think just bring more flavor to the table. Yeah. That craft beer side, I think, is a big part of what I bring to it, of like, well, what if we did this? And like, well, okay, there's a logic here and like, how could we try and execute that? And that experimentation, that willingness to like, I don't know how this is going to turn out, but like, it kind of makes sense and let's give it a try and see what we get. Has your mindset, so you said you were in innovation at Cooley, which was a Teeling family property. When you went in, how much has your involvement in the distillation evolved based on the evolution of what you might have thought you were doing with casks 10 years ago versus where you stand right now? I think when I was at Cooley, I was basically trying to take a place that had an established structure and not break it. Every time I'd come in with a new idea, people are like, here's Alex again with his new idea. Okay, what is it this time? I always felt like I was pushing things, but not trying to break it. Now with being in control of all of it at Teeling, it's about trying to have a logic to it where it's not just like, do it, don't be weird just for the sake of being weird. Like, what are we trying to do? And also, like, how are we trying to communicate that to the consumer, right? So like, what's the message? How do you, in a very short period of time, explain what you're doing and then give the consumer the opportunity to taste it themselves and make up their own mind as to whether or not you're as successful with that or not. And I like that approach, only, you know, it's an, I'm gonna probably piss off some Psalms right now, but there seems to be a mentality when people are given that much leeway to innovate and do things, that they do exactly what you said you don't do, which is something for the sake of something. In other words, go to a restaurant with a master of wine or with a son and try to get a just, give me a simple great wine period. It's like, well, this is harvested by virgins on the sun slope of this obscure country, just to prove that they know all those things about the wine versus here's a solid Cabernet that's gonna go great with this steak or whatever. So there's, I would assume, because you've done some really interesting and certainly off the beaten path in the Irish whiskey world. You've done a ton of those innovations, starting with the Maltz. 7:20 Organized Chaos & Partnership Yeah, we've got over 300 different cast types, right? Like there's, yeah. And some of them, and we've probably pointed at 270 of them and said, is that available for sale? Well, the warehouse is literally, you go in and a lot of these whiskey warehouses, it's, you know, I don't want to say that your warehouse is disorganized, but you have so many different casks. Yes. Sizes and shapes. It looks like organized chaos. Yeah. And you just look and it's crazy. Like you kind of just want to spend three days crawling around the warehouse and seeing what's in all these casks. Cause it's just, it's like nothing I'd seen before. Yeah. I think of them as being like Easter eggs, right? It's like, we're going to go up there and we're going to like sort of knock on the side of it and then like crack it open and see what's inside and see if it's ready. See if it doesn't need to go back. But it's more, it's, but again, it's still going back to the fact that there is playing within the chaos. I mean, it seems chaotic, but you, you, you have commercially viable volumes of all these different experiments. It's not as if you're doing something with one or two, where you get some learning. But if you want to replicate it, it might take five years, 10 years, right? Yeah. However long. Whereas when you've done, you know, the controlled chaos, I think is the fact that you've done a lot of these experience with the mind, that we think this is going to work. And so we're going to lay down enough. What I really appreciate is, is how Benny's has been part of that process for a number of years with us. And that you've actually become a critical part of our new product development where we, we know that like you guys get us, right? You've shared that same ethos of like, you know, let's go unique, let's go unusual, let's see what, you know, that being flavor focused. And it's a great place for us to try and dip our big toe in and see like, okay, if we do a single cask of this, right, are people going to bite? Is it going to have any leverage or excitement there or no, we weren't really hitting the mark there, let's try something different. And the confidence that Benny's gives us to be able to go out to very specific markets, right, of people that are looking for very unique and unusual and different whiskies and to get that feedback to then take it to a larger scale eventually, What do you do, or what have you had that just hasn't worked? Or hasn't, I don't think anything doesn't work because you have Small Batch in a lot of different ways. It's not that it doesn't work. What thing didn't resonate that was disappointing that you thought? One that like really stands out for me, if I was to call myself a master blender at all, and I'm not sure that I can do that, but I think it's about my ability to remove myself from the situation, right? To like step back, because you know, you put whiskey in a casque type, and you've got an idea in your head, you have those hopes and those aspirations and those needs and desires and all of that, right? And then the whiskey, the whiskey doesn't care about all that, the whiskey does whatever the whiskey is going to do, right? And so you're there trying it, you're like, I thought it was going to be more like this, or I thought it was going to be more like that, and that didn't really quite get there, but like you then evaluate it and say like, actually, it's a good whiskey. I'm happy with that. If it was a whiskey drinker, I would drink that and, you know, okay, how do we try and present it? The one though that I thought this isn't going to work, this is going to be horrible was the Aquavit, right? 10:48 Unexpected Cask Success So like, I don't like Aquavit. I'm not a big, I don't like that, like real smack you in the face, right? Herbal note that you get off of Aquavit. But the guy that was offering us Aquavit cast, he came to Jack and he said, I'll give it to you for free. And Jack Teeling, if you say, I'm going to give you something for free. He's like, are you kidding me? Like, we're taking them, Alex. We're doing this, right? Like, it's not even your question. We're doing this. And I was like, okay, I'll do it, but I'm going to wait six months to be like, I told you so, right? Then six months later, went back to the cast and was like, actually, this is good. This is interesting. This is that aquavit flavor that's very strong and in your face. When you put a whiskey in there and you let it mature and develop, it gets this lovely berry, floral fruitiness. And it took us about a year and a half of trying it before finally, one of the guys in operations, Ian Wood, came in and he said, blue blast. It's like blue Gatorade. That's what I was like, how the hell does blue Gatorade come out of an aquavit gas? Well, you've got some influence on that too, because we sort of just step back a little bit. You guys produce primarily two different whiskeys on the stills. You make single pot still, which is a uniquely Irish product that involves a combination of unmalted barley and malted barley. And then you do a single malt, which is, of course, a hundred percent malted barley of a sort. How much do you have to think about that or how hard is that decision when you decide to put single pot or single malt in the different woods? Or do you just kind of do both and find out what's going on? No, we, so pot still would have more of that oily mouth feel, right? And that spice to it, right? And so there is definitely like the wonders of wood. We had the chinkapin edition, right? And that chinkapin is primarily used for rye. And so it was like, OK, we've got basically the Irish version of a rye whisky. Why don't we take the American rye casks and pair those together? And that should work well. What's it going to come out like? I don't know 100 percent, but like you get a feeling, right? Like rye whisky, pot still, those could go right. If you've got like PX sherry, right? Like single malt, right? Like that's just why would you not do that? Right. So it's things like that where it's... And you do try, let's say you've got 30 casks and you're like, OK, we're going to take 24 of these and we're going to go pot still. And then we'll have six of them. And we're going to go single malt. We've also got the peated, right? And then there's about 15% of our production every year. That's something new, something different, which changes. I'm sorry. And there's also the crystal malt. So we have crystal malt, single malt, peated, pot still. And then we do an innovation every year. That's about 15%. Right now we're doing that at the moment in distillery. And we used the Vienna malt for the first time. Yeah. A number of Scottish distillers are doing it. Have you done a rye run? Yes. Yeah, we did rye. We did crystal rye. So we had done rye before and the impact wasn't that big. So we thought, okay, how can we make the rye flavor more impactful? And there's a small malting company in England that makes crystal rye. So they crystallize all that sugar in the rye. And when you taste that, for us in the distillery, it tasted like a pizza crust. Interesting. Yeah. So the difference, just for people who don't know the malting process, what is the difference between conventionally melted and crystal malt? 14:32 Craft Beer's Influence So what you're doing is you're caramelizing all those sugars, right? So you think about like you take like white table sugar, put it in a pan, put it on the heat, right? And it starts to caramelize. That's the exact same thing that happens in the grain when you're making the crystal malt. A big coffee roaster is basically what they're using. They take wet malt, they put it in the coffee roaster, they heat it, and all those sugars start to caramelize in the grain. And that's where it gets that crystal, both color and like hardness and consistency. So that's why they call it crystal malt. But it's used all the time in craft beer. It's used in specialty beers, right? Your Oktoberfest are going to have it. Your Porter's, your Stout's, your Dark Beer's, your Box, are all going to have crystal malt in it. It's not used very often in the distilling industry. So as a brewer, as somebody who's fundamentally a craft brewer, that somehow ended up in the distilling industry, that's one of the things that I think I can bring to the table is like, don't be afraid of the crystal malt. It's not bad. Yes, it's dark, but it's not scary. Yeah. It's what gives IPAs and pale ales and that stuff there. The amber color and the caramel sugar and all that. I think that comes through in the whiskey for sure, the ones that I've had. It makes a difference and I think it works really positively. The last Crystal Mall we did was what? Was that PX? We had a Crystal Mall. We've had quite a few of them. Calvados? Yes. Calvados. Yeah. Yeah. That was excellent. Yeah, that's still out there. That was a great guess. There's still a lot out there. There are a fair amount out there, too, if you are interested. Yeah. Like I said, really support Binny's. I'm happy to be here and to the fact that you back up those innovations for us, right? That there's that understanding of like, this is something that we do that's unusual. This is unique and that you're willing to showcase that and give consumers a chance to try that. It's been amazing. Yeah. Well, speaking of new stuff, do we want to talk about this bottle here we got in front of us? 16:24 Accessible New Flavors There you go. We have the Curacao Cask. That's something we were talking about with you guys. When you came up to the warehouse for a number of years, you've been going around and like, oh, what's that over there? Oh, what's that? You're like, I can't talk about that. That's not the way. And then you have a few whiskeys and okay, we're all friends. Yeah, okay, this is a Curacao Cask over here. And you're like, what's the story with the Curacao Cask? What we did with this is we took the same blend that we used for our small batch and instead of putting it into a rum cask, we put it into a Curacao Cask. It's pretty unbelievable. I think what's also important for me is that it backs up the logic and the impact of small batch, right? That like fundamentally our most popular whiskey out there is just a small batch blend goes into a rum cask for 12 months. And when we come out with it, be it a Curacao or a different wine finish or a beer finish or what of that small batch blend, right? It just highlights how much that process influences the flavor. Well, this is new territory for us too, because everything we've done with you prior to this has been single barrels. Yes. And this is a small batch. So it's coming in at 80 or 92 proof. Yeah, 92, 46 percent. Yeah, 92 proof. By the way, we won't have in-source till February. So it's kind of a sneak preview. This is new territory for us to something that will be a little lower price point to introduce these great finishes to people that might be a little gun shy. It really does make it for everybody because it's not as if all the single cast that we've done for the number of years that we've done. Single cast have always been very reasonably priced and very accessible. You know, it's really focused on flavor, but this made that even more so just because it's going to be closer in the range to the small batch pricing. Yeah, and more of it, right? So this one's the first release, right? But limited to a thousand bottles. I love single cast, but the problem with single cast is that they're very unique. They usually have a great nose or an amazing finish, right? But they're fairly one-dimensional and they're very limited. So if you love it, if you're like, oh my God, that's the most amazing whiskey ever, you go back to the store and it's gone, right? Yeah. And that's a bit disappointing too. So if you have a limited release, there's a chance for more people to try it, right? To have it be something you could come back to the store and buy another bottle of. And by making it a blend, I think we're also showing that blends can be interesting. Yeah, single malt's great, single pot still is amazing, but you can make a blend that's a cracking blend and do it in a unique way that's quite individual. That's excellent. I mean, the Curacao shows real well. It does. And I was really nervous about that when we put it in because it's not a particularly strong flavor, right? It's not like we're taking orange extract and added it in there, right? So how are you going to try and have an impact with that orange cask there? And I'm delighted that it actually worked. How big are the barrels and is there a use before Curacao? When they, because this particular one is from, can we say it's from Sure, yeah. So is there a use that they have for the Curacao barrel before they use it to age Curacao and soften it up? No, and Alexander, I'd say most likely it was a rum cask. Most of them are the 220 Bordeaux size casks, right? And if I was to guess, I'd say they probably had aged rum in there previously. But I think that they reused them several times for the Curacao, right? So I don't know exactly how many times it was used for Curacao, but it was ones where he thought that it was going to be impactful. Yeah, that's another producer that we have done a number of single barrels with that also has a very, very wide and deep swath of different casks that he's doing rum, especially rum. Small amount of Cognac, but a lot of rum. Yes. In that regard, we're two peas in the pod, really. His ideas around like, oh, I've heard about this, or have you tried that? I'm like, oh yeah, well, okay, I'll do you one more there. What about this other idea here? Sure. 20:55 Notre Dame Partnership So, you visit us in Chicago a number of times. You're here for one specific thing right now. Yes. And let's talk about the relationship with Teeling and Notre Dame football. Notre Dame, yeah, amazing. Okay, so I have to admit, like, I'm a duck, right? I went to the University of Oregon, right? So, like, do I have any, like, connection with Notre Dame? Not really. But as we started to learn about them and their history and their values, I was like, actually, there's a lot of synergy there that you wouldn't necessarily think. There's the tradition. There's the fact that they think of themselves as a family, and the Teeling Whiskey Company thinks of itself as a family, too. There's that wanting to honor the past. There's about trying to forge things forward in a new direction, but taking the scientific or learned, you know, experience, right? The education and all that that goes in there, too. It's really just amazed that like, wow, there's a lot of things that like, we're saying the same thing in a different way. And one of the things that they wanted to do, which I'm very happy that they suggested and that we are doing, is a series of high-end single malts. The first one was to commemorate the first national championship that they had with the Four Horsemen. This one is to commemorate the USC rivalry specifically, and the rolling out to the green jersey for the first time. So back in 1977, a little guy named Joe Montana was quarterback for Notre Dame, and they played against USC for the first time in green jerseys. Again, we were talking about this in Dublin a few weeks ago. I was like, green jerseys, like, who cares? Let's say Will Oregon wears green jerseys all the time. We have a new one every game, right? Like every game Phil Knight has a new jersey. So it's like, well, but that's exactly the point. When I saw the video, because they still have the YouTube video up there of it. And you see that it's like the wide world of sports quality of the broadcast, right? And it's not this fast fashion world that we live in where you can order something on an app and like a gray van comes by two days later to deliver it. Right? Like there was before all of the Nike and Adidas and Puma and all the branding and all of that sort of stuff, where like Notre Dame's jersey was just blue with a number on the back of it. And most likely if you were number 74, you were wearing the same jersey that number 74 the season before had been wearing. There was only 80 guys that only had enough jerseys for the team, right? You couldn't go out to the store and buy your favorite players jersey. So for them to come out in a much more vibrant, flashy green jersey was a big deal. And you see the reaction there in the video of the crowd going crazy. And then the players from USC even now talking about it and saying like, as soon as they came out in those jerseys, we knew we were done. We knew that it was over. They did, they annihilated them that day. Yeah. Which as a Duck fan, I have to admit like, okay, maybe not the biggest Notre Dame fan, but I can get down with beating up USC. That's okay. I can agree on that. Growing up in Indiana, but growing up an IU fan. So we had a very good weekend against you guys a couple of weeks ago. All right. We don't need to get personal. Yeah. But that's college football too, right? That's what I like about that is that yes, you have a great season, but it's also like we ruined your season. That's another element too of which we grew up. Well, and with Notre Dame especially, and of people growing up in Indiana and growing up in the upper Midwest, there's a passion and a following that is not unrivaled, but very religious for a lot of reasons. Yeah. When the very, very strong alumni association, very, very strong association with Chicago area, so we're ground zero for that. The fact that that stadium is front and center in the campus, it's not like it's like five miles outside of town or where it's like right there in the heart of it, right? Like, yeah, you can walk through. You've also done for them as part of this activation with Notre Dame. You've done a small batch bottling, which we have on the shelf. Yeah. There's also, you know, the, the, the, the, what's the price on the? It's right now it's on sale for 26.99. How about the Notre Dame, the 16 year old? Oh, 350. Yeah. For the 16 year old. Yeah. Somewhere in that neighborhood. So we do have one that's regular small batch. Was there anything that you did to just tweak it to make sure that there is a parallel release for the small batch? The Notre Dame. Notre Dame small batches, the small batch whisky. We did that because I think one of the big challenges that Teeling Whiskey has is getting people to just try it. In the industry, you said the juice, try the juice. So being able to use the Notre Dame Association to introduce people to Teeling I think is very powerful and very impactful. So it was people, let's be honest, buying the bottle because it has a big N and a D on it, and then opening it up and discovering, well, actually, you know what, this stuff isn't half bad. And yeah, I think that's been great for us. And then we have that Phoenix series, those limited releases of the older stuff for the collector and for the people that are looking for something unique and unusual. But there is something to be said for that because we're involved in a lot of celebrity brands. This is in a form, a celebrity brand. But the ultimate success of the celebrity brands are whether or not they're repurchases. Because then you can tell, do people buy their one bottle, maybe two and they'll buy one bottle to drink and they'll buy one bottle to put on their mantle with an autograph or some sort of symbolism on it. And then they try it. It's like, you know what? Well, it's got, it's got, you know, Notre Dame on it. That's great. Whereas this. Or it has the celebrities, you know, shine. Yeah, right. You know, it's funny to that. I was doing tastings and signings before the game, right? Just this last weekend. And the number of people who were buying the whiskey and two packs. And then there was people that were coming back to say, I know this. I love this. They bought a case. They're like, can you sign this? Like to Tom and to Sally and to like all the different people that they wanted it. And then there was a guy who wanted me to write on the side of the bottle, all of the years of every member of his family that had graduated from Notre Dame. Oh, wow. He had had a few whiskeys before, and he was like, 1705. And I'm like, I don't think that like Notre Dame was around in 1705. Things like that are nice because you know that eventually they have to buy another one to drink. Yeah. Right. And they want to, and they become true believers and true fans of it too. And look, I've taken this whisky all over the world and had people try it, and in numerous countries. I know that not everyone's going to like it, but on average about 85 percent of the people that try the whisky are going to like it. And so that gives you the confidence though to be able to say like, look, just give it a go. You're most likely you're going to like it. And you're getting a good worldwide reception when you're launching these things. 28:14 Differentiating Irish Whiskey How much of a battle do you think or what's your approach with? There's a lot of Irish whisky piling up and I think sometimes, wrongly Irish whisky sort of takes a almost like a third seat to either Scotch, Single Malt Scotch, or to Bourbon, which is obviously in the last 10 years or so had a big Renaissance. What's your approach to get sort of shaking people and saying, hey, Ireland is just as good of a production company? It's precisely what you guys do of those single casts, right? It's precisely that like idea of like, we're going to give you something that you've never seen before and something that's like the chestnut cask, right? Something that's completely unique and unusual and challenge those norms, challenge that idea like, oh, Irish whiskey is not very interesting, it's light, it's smooth, it's sweet. And you're saying, yes, it's light and smooth and sweet. And when you put it in a carousel cask, it's got this amazing orange, it's got this burnt orange flavor, right? Like there's all these different, it's a canvas that can take on lots of different flavors. I think as long as you're true to that message, and it isn't another celebrity, oh, we're trying to take a bit of the shine off. No, like we're like that craft ethos to the heart of like, make something good, make it unique, put your best foot forward, go out there and try as hard as you can. Which again, that's Notre Dame, right? Love them or not, like Notre Dame, they are smart people who are very passionate, who are very dedicated and, you know, try and do the best that they can every time. Yeah, yeah. No, I think it's important it's been because the, you know, the main, just like in a lot of categories, the main driver of the category in terms of volume is something that is, that's pretty simple, that's made for everybody. Yeah. You know, that's made for everybody, whereas this is something that isn't that far out of the price range of the category leader, but is a lot more than pretty simple. So, I as a former brewer, the way that I look at that, right, is that, like, if you look at, like, I can talk about these brands because they're not, let's see, if you look at Miller, right, Budweiser, your Heineken, right, your Fizzy Yellow Lager, right, they're all fairly similar. They're not the same. I know Highlife isn't the same as Budweiser, right? But like, they're not a million miles apart. And I think that that's also true in the spirits categories, where like, there's those big industry leaders are more similar than they are different. And what we're trying to do is bring something new to it, right? We're trying to be the IPA or the Hefeweizen or the porter of the Irish whiskey category. We're trying to have that thing that people are like, what is that? I don't know what, what? And you're like, that's taste. That's actual like real aroma and flavor. And yes, you can just go through life, washing your palate with large produced, fairly lowest common denominator brands, or you can seek out something that's unique and unusual. And Binny's is a great place to go to find that. And look, I'm like a kid in the candy store when I go around to your guys' shops, because like there's all the cool stuff to like, I never heard of that before. Where's that? Oh my gosh, look at this. Wow. No, I mean, definitely, the, the night, one of the things I like about the brand too is that you have every level. Yes, we tried to create that, that ladder. Right. So you can have a great, you know, round $30 bottle and then you can go up from there and taste everything you guys have to offer. The sky is the limit. That's 33,000 is the highest that we go up to. Yeah. People don't usually buy two or three bottles of that. 32:00 Visitor Center Insights You guys have a very successful retail and hospitality operation. Yeah. Just off of city center Dublin. Yeah, the tours. Just outside. How much of that has been a great laboratory for you in terms of gauging consumer sentiment because, you know, we talked about doing innovations, but doing innovations large enough that they can be scalable. Sometimes you're going to have some things that aren't scalable. I'm assuming that's been invaluable in terms of learning. And again, that like craft beer, like the tap room, right? Like that's where you can have your seasonals. That's where you can try your unusual things. That's where the thing that maybe didn't go according to plan, but let's see, is it actually, you know, good? And the visitor center is a place where we can both educate people. We can take them around a real live working distillery. They can see million mashing fermentation distillation taking place. They're there right now. The WhatsApp group is blowing up for some reason on my phone, whatever is happening there in the distillery at this very moment. As long as they're not sending you pictures of a still fire. Yeah, exactly. No, there's like toy trucks or something. I know they're having fun. People can come in and see an actual, genuine, real working distillery and that they can then ask those questions and get involved and try both, you know, our core range and, you know, some of the more unusual stuff too. We have distillery exclusives. That's a great way where we can get like feedback. One we had just like, when you guys were there a few weeks ago was the Patagonian Beach cask, right? When we bought Patagonian Beach, was I like, oh, I have a clear picture in my head as to where this is going. Like, no, I had no idea. But we've sold out of it in three weeks. And you're like, well, people are liking it. I don't know exactly what's going on. Like, it's a lovely whiskey, but it's also unique. And people are like, Patagonian Beach? Like, I've never heard of that before. And again, they can come into a Binny's and you can say like, okay, well, I like the single malt, but like, wait a minute, there's this cherry wood or there's this other thing that's there. And like, wow, I didn't know that they did that. Is that closest to the edge of having, of making Jack or Steven look at you and say, what the hell, right? If you like, if you walk in and I'm sure that there have to be some times where you walked in and said, hey, we're going to do this. And they look at you and it's like, what? Yeah, that goes both ways though. I think we are simpatico when it comes to that idea of, let's push the limits. And they're saying aquavit and I'm like, are you crazy? Aquavit. And then I'm coming in and I'm like, chocolate malt. Chocolate malt would be great. And they're like, is there actual chocolate in it? And I'm like, no, that's not the point. It tastes like chocolate, but it's not actual chocolate. All right, well, how do you get that across to a consumer? How do people understand what you're... Okay, so we challenge each other. And I think that that's great to that. It's not just like a rubber stamping of people's ideas. And like, well, he's the whiskey guy, so we're gonna go with whatever he says. They're like, no, why would that work? And I'm like, okay, I understand what you're saying, but here's the major flaws that I see with that idea. The relationship has to be fantastic because you're talking about, you know, I've known the family going back to Cooley, and this is a family that's very, very fiercely, proudly Irish. Yes. But it's not, this is what Ireland was, the whole approach is this is what Ireland can be. It's knowing the past, being respectful to the past, but having the confidence to go forward in your own direction, right? And when I said that to the people at Notre Dame, they're like, that's exactly what Notre Dame is. It's like being aware of the past, knowing about Aristotle or whatever, and then like being having the confidence to move forward with your own philosophy there. Yeah. So it's been great to have that relationship with the Teelings, who are like, yes, we know where we've come from, but we also want to be able to have our own thinking mind and our own ideas and be able to move forward in our own direction. Keep going in that direction because as long as we're invited, we'll certainly come back. Oh, welcome any time. We just have to hide all of the stuff that we don't want you to see in the warehouse. You do the same thing that a number of different people who invite us into warehouses do. It's just like, yes, yes, no, you can't have that. It's not ready yet. Yeah, come back. You know the one thing, you won't like the price, you won't like the volume. But you got to keep asking. I mean, if you keep doing stuff like that where you can just literally wander in is like, hmm. But also, in fairness to you guys, you come in and there's the things that have been there in the warehouse that we're kind of like, I don't know what we're going to like, is this going to really work or not? And we maybe don't at that moment in time have the confidence to go forward. And then Benny shows up and they're like, are you kidding me? That's unbelievable. That's great. What's coming up besides the just sort of the tease what's coming up in early 2026, we know we actually saw this small batch being bottled with the Curacao casks. 37:16 Inspiration & Future Yes. We have a Black Pitts coming. Yes, we got, yeah, the first single cask of Black Pitts. Yes. That's right, coming in, that was ex Cognac, correct? Yes, yeah, very good. I mean, you guys pick so many different casks that even I'm like, what does Binny's have next? I'm not allowed to go there alone. Somebody else also has to be with me because then eventually, it's like, what did you do? It's like, I don't know, did somebody take notes? Yeah, he bought it all. Or is it just going to show up? It's like, oh, yeah, right, I remember that. That was really good. We talk about potential future bottling. Yeah. We asked for a sample. When we were there last, we saw they have these, like we were saying earlier, they have these just piles of all these different shapes and sizes of casks, and they have like a list at the end of the row that shows you everything. And we were reading through it and they had a peated single malt. Yes, and a pineapple rome cask. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So we got samples of that today, and I have a feeling those will be hitting ourselves sometime. They might be pretty good. Yeah. That's right. That's really cool and unique stuff like that. I mean, you just don't know what you're going to come across. Yeah. There were some Rivasole in that row. I remember that. Yeah. We have to have that list at the end for customs reasons, but it's dangerous when you guys come into the warehouse because you can read. And you look at the list and don't have to guess as to what's in the row. Right. Well, you've always got to be, you've always got to be, it's just like, no, that's too far back. So for anybody that's been there, it's funny because it's a palletized warehouse and it's really made for efficiency. And the climate is the climate, but sometimes you could be looking at barrels that seem to be very attractive, but they're either too young or they're 120 casts in front of you. Yeah. And 40 feet up in the air. And you're like, yeah, we could, but we'd have to get a ladder and then somebody would be literally 40 feet up in the air with a drill, put in a hole in the side of the cast. I don't know if that's really... Can I get you a sample later on? So what else do you have? We're experimenting with this new idea of doing customized small batch. We've got single cast. What else do you have coming down the pike? Loads of stuff. Really, I think that the small batch limited edition is a place where we can really start to push the boundaries in ways that maybe single cast can't. Because single cast, as you're saying, have a certain price point, have a certain limited amount of availability. But if you are talking about a unique blend that's in a variety of different cast, we've got tequila casts, we've got different spirits from around the world. We've got one that I don't know if you guys got to taste it or not, but it's one that I was truly shocked. A chocolate cask, and when I say a chocolate cask, there's a cask that we aged cocoa nibs in for a chocolate producer. It had a whiskey influence on the cocoa nibs. That part I was pretty clear on because of the fat content in the cocoa, and that's going to take the flavor. But we then were like, okay, well, we fill it with whiskey. And I thought, well, that's what we do, so why not? It's easier to do that than to say no. So we filled it, but I didn't think it was going to have much of... And look, there's a real cocoa nib, baking powder flavor that comes through and that liquid. And those sort of things are things that you can do in that blend world that is a little bit more difficult to do in the single pot still category or in the single malt category. You can start to play around with things. You can start to play around with different mash bills because like crystal rye, is that a single malt? Well, it was all malted, but is it... malt or is it malt? No, it's not malted barley, right? And like, but like if you put it into a blend, then it doesn't matter, right? And if it's all about the flavor, if the focus of the flavor is what really counts, then like why wouldn't you do that in the blended category? And you can get more people to try it. Sure. And not have to get in a fight because that's the issue. All the ryes that have been coming out of Scotland and any ryes, 100% ryes, are malted. It was an argument that we had with codifying American single malt was whether or not you were going to allow. And at the end, they didn't because SWA doesn't and Irish rules don't allow it. Yeah. So it's a single grain. But then is there or do you just ignore because you've done so much education, do you just ignore that barrier and say, yes, it's a single grain? Are you allowed to put the grain on if you call it a single grain? I don't know is the answer to that. What I think really matters though is that the consumer is going to make the choice. The consumer, if you're going to be able to sell 5,000 cases of it, you can call it whatever. As long as people are responding to it, then that's what matters. In the end, we were talking about the other brands and what's going to happen if there's going to be a shakeout. That's not up to me or anyone at the state. That's consumers that are going to decide that. Are you going to go out there and part with your hard-earned cash for that bottle of whiskey? That's the thing that the Teeling Whiskey company and any whiskey company has to try and convince you of. For success, it's not just that first sale is the easiest sale in the world, it's the second and third and fourth. Exactly. That really let you know that you've had some success in what you're doing. Yeah. I think that it's been great that we've had that success. We have a fan base out there that is real dedicated, true believers. Yes, they're going to try loads of other stuff too and that's fine. I'm not saying you have to be only a Teeling Whiskey drinker. Go out and see what else is out there in the world and then when you're ready, come back to us and we'll have something else that's unique and unusual and different. That's great. And Small Batch is an amazing daily sipper. Well, this is great when is your next trip back after you're done with the Notre Dame Tour. Yeah, I don't know exactly. We have to figure out what the calendar is there. We used to come to the Whiskey Fests and that sort of stuff. I'm not sure if that's going to happen or not or what's going on in that world, but it's always great to come to Chicago. It's always great. Well, you're invited to come in mid-April and what I believe is the 25th this year might be the 25th annual Binny's World of Whiskey, which is going to be in April. Yeah. Do we tease the date? I don't. I have not been a part of that. We'll just leave it at mid-April for the time being. I'll mark it in my calendar. Love to have you back in the future because that's always been a fun week. It is. A lot of involvement in the city and the area. It's funny. I've done that a few times. I learned something at those events. I am like, what's the story with this thing over here? You start talking to somebody and then you realize, I had never thought about that. That's interesting. I wonder, can you do that in Irish whiskey? I'm not sure. Or somebody has got some other product that's not in the whiskey category and you're like, you know what, it'd be great to be able to try and incorporate that into our next cast. That's where I get a lot of my inspiration from, is like going out and actually doing those events, talking to people and seeing what are people interested in. Yeah. Great. Cool. Well, we hope to have you. Yeah. This has been another episode of Barrel to Bottle The Binny's Podcast. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Dan. I'm Brett. I'm Alex. Keep tasting.