Seven Three Distilling Co.

Drew H (00:00):
Love bonus content. All you got to do is head out to patreon.com/whiskey lore to catch an extra few minutes of this particular podcast and many of our other recent whiskey flights. Get your free trial at patreon.com/whiskey lore. Welcome to Whiskey Lores Whiskey Flights, the weekly home for discovering gr craft distillery experiences around the globe. I'm your travel guide, Drew Hannush, the bestselling author of experience in Kentucky Bourbon and experiencing Irish whiskey and the brand new book that busts 24 of Whiskey's biggest myths, whiskey lore, volume one, and having left small town kiln, Mississippi and made my way into the heart of New Orleans. I got to say I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get to today's distillery. Sometimes you think about driving into a city and some of the hassles you're going to have to deal with. Well, I just popped off of I 10, took a couple of turns, and here I am in the shadow of the bridge above knowing that the Louisiana Superdome is actually just right on the other side of this bridge, and the French core is just a few blocks away.

(01:16):
If you want a distillery stop that has more than its fair share of great activities to do around it, well, you can't do much better than seven three distillery right in the heart of the Crescent City. As I pulled into the parking lot, I was met by seven three distilling companies, head distiller Luca Ra, and after a friendly greeting, he walked me through the distillery, let me taste a little bit of their rye white dog whiskey right off the still. We talked a whole bunch about process and what they're doing here at the distillery, and I got a great sense of the place. So I am ready for this interview. We're inside this beautiful distillery with a full cocktail bar, beautifully appointed gift shop that's filled with bottles of spirits. And it is time to let Luca show you some of this great southern hospitality that he's been showing me as we go in and chat about his spirits, as well as talk about some of the great experiences that you're going to experience here you won't find anywhere else. And we're also going to find out what it is that he takes pride in the process of making whiskey.

Luca (02:25):
I got to tell you, drew, welcome. Welcome to New Orleans. Welcome to Louisiana. Welcome to seven three Distilling Company. We call ourselves seven three Distilling Company because there 73 neighborhoods make up the city and New Orleans. So each label on our bottles is actually a neighborhood starting off with St. Rock, St. Rock Vodka Gentilly, gin by Water, bourbon, Irish Channel Whiskey, and so on Black Pearl Rum. So it's a great talking point for us to kind of segue from one spirit to another. I mean, I mentioned earlier when we were talking in the back about how New Orleans is truly the gym of Louisiana. People come from all over the world to experience. I like to describe the southern hospitality. I like to believe that nobody does it like us. Just last week we had our what, 11th Super

Speaker 3 (03:15):
Bowl.

Luca (03:17):
So we truly enjoy people. We love sharing what we're great at, and that's host and guest and telling 'em the history and telling them, sharing within our food, our spirits, and all having a great time while they learn about the history in New Orleans.

Drew H (03:34):
As I was in the bar area in the back, I was looking at your big map, which has all of those names kind of sprout it. And when you look at those names, there's a story behind every one of those names, a history and things that have gone on in that area or what that area was known for, the culture of people that lived in that area. One of the ones that stuck out to me was Irish channel. What's kind of the story behind that? Because you have a whiskey that's called Irish

Luca (04:01):
Channel. The Irish channel is where the Irish settlers settled, and a lot of Irish people when digging the Irish channel, they dug that channel by hand and a lot of them died, got a lot of mosquitoes down here and they died digging that channel. So that area is named after the Irish for the Irish channel, and it's where probably one of the most memorable St Patty's Day parades you'll experience goes through. But what is history? It's a story. And then when you get into the history of a neighborhood, how that history and those stories kind of spin off depending on who you talk to, the history of bourbon, you know what I mean, and how it ties in New Orleans. And I like to say that all great roads kind of end down at the mouth of the Mississippi River where it truly blossoms into another whole level of stories and love and enjoyment. You know what I mean? We just happen to do it over food, spirits and good times.

Drew H (05:03):
I think a lot of people when they think of New Orleans, think of the French Quarter and they don't think beyond in the other neighborhoods that were around on top of the French Quarter. And in a way it kind of reminds me of northern cities where you have a German town or you have Irish town or you have just, they get segmented sometimes that these populations came in and they moved in and they were comfortable neighborhoods for them to kind of unite and bring their own culture into.

Luca (05:33):
It's funny you say, because I was just last weekend, well, last week doing 120 person tasting at the Croatian Society. We have quite the Croatian community down here, and I'm first generation born and raised here. My family came over from Croatia and Bosnia in 1973, fourth grade education in the communist country. Second day in America, dad was on oyster boat. Now we have a fleet of oyster boats. And so people ask me, Luca, how do you get into the distillation business and all of that? Well, for me it kind of starts with entertaining. I was scraping the bottom of an oyster boat on a shipyard and a guy came up to me, he's like, Luke, you ever thought about doing swamp tours? So I started doing swamp tours back in 96, 97 and discovered that I enjoyed in the off season of fishing oysters, entertaining guests.

(06:27):
But all my life we've welded, fabricated, we built all the boats that we have except for one. And so when people ask me, how'd you get into the distillation? I look behind and I show them fermentation tanks, the stills and all. And I talk about how it's just a big problem to solve. You are always running into problems and from the cooking process, developing the recipes, the phs specific gravitys and how that journey of bourbon evolves all from the grain, the field where it's grown, developing your terroir, what makes you who you are, and asking what you cook and distill to mature in an environment that you're maturing in. Like down here, it's a hot, humid environment where the temperatures change every day and what adds to those flavors and what accents those flavors in this environment. And that's what makes bourbon so special because everywhere that bourbon's made, it's different according to their environment. Dr. Pat Heist with Wilderness Trail, and I mention other people's distilleries all the time in podcasts because it's truly about sharing the love. It's truly an art. He says, Luca, whatever you need, you give me a call, man, I ain't got no secrets. And I said, I'm thinking to myself, man. And he says, I can give you my recipe and you can make it down in New Orleans and it's going to be special in its own way, but it's going to be different than ours.

(07:57):
And it's because of maturation. And that's really what life is. There's a lot of parallelism between life on an individual and the journey of bourbon and how we become who we are by the environment that we're surrounded by.

Drew H (08:16):
Deep in the heart of Tennessee, distillery tour guides tell of a special ingredient that defines their whiskey. The Lincoln County process names like Jack Daniel Nearest Green and Alfred Eaton are associated with the creation of this special process, but is their involvement, fact or fiction explore the fascinating history behind a process that propelled a small town whiskey distillery into becoming the world's number one selling whiskey and find out if that process associated with these historical names was really their invention. The story and more in my new book, whiskey Lore volume available on Amazon or through your favorite bookseller or an audio book form on Apple Books, Spotify and Audible, it's time to find out the truth behind the lore. I sense this interest in mouthfeel, and this is something that I learned early on in my enjoyment of whiskey, was that I stopped putting water or ice cubes into my whiskey or a decent amount because I found that tasting a whiskey meat gave me that mouthfeel experience, which I think is something that a lot of people miss that they don't think about that they're just sitting there drinking it. But what an added pleasureful element that is to the whiskey. So how do you come about getting that mouthfeel into your whiskeys?

Luca (09:52):
The cool thing about it is that in this podcast, we're all over the place in the first five minutes.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
Yes.

Luca (09:59):
You know what I mean? And that's a joy for me because we're covering a lot of different things. We're not catering to one specific person's interest in what they like to hear and all of that. You talk about rum, you talk about where it started for us, but bourbon has always been our primary focus. But as a craft distillery, a small distillery, you try to create cashflow in so many different ways, and a lot of people look at it as clears and St Rock kind of carries us. People truly enjoy St Rock vodka and it's what sets your vodka aside from everybody else because a vodka is not just a vodka. When you talk about mouthfeel, there's specific things that we have a nod to Louisiana and every bottle and what's St Rock? It's the cane neutral spirit that we finish it with. It's a grain neutral spirit, but it's finished with a cane neutral spirit, which creates mouthfeel aside from the also accompanied with the filtration after the distillation process creates mouth feel, but yet vodka doesn't have smell or taste, but yet it's got body and you pay attention to the body. How do we get that mouth feel that everybody's looking for? I kind of talk about it with, I compare it with when people talk about cold chilled filtration, chill filtration. I'm sure you're familiar with that

(11:28):
And how it takes away the flavor. Well, the truth is, is we work hard on developing a product to where you have just the right amount of oils coming through. You go just deep enough in the tails. There's nothing automated about what we do back here, back at the house. Everything is manually done on developing that spirit. But most people in the bourbon world know that it's compiled of flavors, water and ethanol and the flavoring is which people say it's flavoring, but it's really fatty acids which are responsible for mouthfeel. So when you cold, chill filter and you filter that out, you're not necessarily getting rid of that flavor. You're getting rid of that second half of the experience that accompanies the flavor, which is called the mouthfeel.

(12:32):
So those two together is what is magical when you sip it. So circling back to what you're saying about how do you get that mouthfeel, I mentioned to you earlier, there's so many different levels about what we do, production side, sales side marketing events and all of that. But when you break it down just to the tasting side of our spirits, it is so important that I teach people how to use their senses. We're all blessed to have senses, but very few people actually know how to use them. And when you go in, people ask me all the time, Luca, we need a hazmat, we need a one 30 proof, we need a one 40 proof, whatever. What is the most consumed brown liquor in the United States? It's an 80 proof whiskey. Do you understand what I'm saying? So what are the masses looking for? The point is, is I have totally different markets. So when you sit down and you truly enjoy sipping meat, you might enjoy that a hundred proof, that 110 proof, but watch how it evolves when you put a drop of water at it. I have to do the same thing because understand that when I have a bottle that I'm putting in the bottle, I'm trying to develop the spirit. I'm trying to decide who my shelfer is catered to

Speaker 4 (13:47):
Because

Luca (13:47):
I could always sell a single barrel at whatever proof that you would like it. But the shelfer, who are we catering to? We catering to the masses, we catering to the true bourbon people that are seasoned and want higher proof stuff. But when I talk about different levels of how to taste, it's room temperature, it's proof, it's all enhances, it opens up, it changes the body and the profile of it every time you'd make a minute change. So when I tell people that like to dabble in doing this kind of thing, blending and all of that, teach your guests that's in front of you how to taste before them actually tasting because you never pass judgment on the first sip of anything. You allow your palette to come in and get acclimated, and you have to do that with every spirit that you taste throughout the day, throughout the sitting.

Drew H (14:44):
I have to say the first,

Luca (14:45):
Sorry for the long answer.

Drew H (14:46):
No, that's fine. The first distillery tour I went on in my life was Maker's Mark. And I have to say that it was an inspired choice from a standpoint that when the tour came to an end, you had a lineup of whiskeys in front of you to taste, including the white dog, and they walked you through every step of it to try to get your senses completely engaged with the experience. And I would go to other distillery tours and use that information because I wasn't necessarily getting that information from that tour. So I've always been very interested in the ones that do go in and try to get people to understand what it is they're drinking rather than just saying, here they are, here's what we put in them. Enjoy what do you think and try to get an opinion out of somebody because there are multiple layers to enjoying a whiskey. And boy, if you learn them while you're on a tour, you take 'em home with you and then whiskey becomes a completely different experience.

Luca (15:52):
I just had something happen to me when you're explaining that to me. And I completely changed my whole mindset about tours through here. While I have been through many distilleries in Kentucky and all, I listen to people, I tell people all the time, we learn every day, but if we don't apply tomorrow what we learned today, learning is irrelevant. And I listen to your opinion about how you most enjoy a tour and how I could bring guests in. And most of the time we start with a tasting where I think that we should be finishing with a tasting after they truly enjoy the back and they hear the stories of how we make things and they see how they make. We make it and we tell 'em the stories of the neighborhoods and everything, and it's time to enjoy the spirit, but the back could be enjoyed through sipping on a cocktail. You know what I mean? And then you finish with this spirit tasting. So my mind is always turning and I'm trying to learn new things because at the end of the day, everybody's looking for something different. How do you cater to

Drew H (16:53):
Most? So what do you decide to put into a bourbon that you're going to call Bywater? What was kind of your rationale for what that mash bill was going to be?

Luca (17:05):
That kind of evolved too by making tasting and settling on in a place that we look back now when we realized that we might or should have done it a little bit differently. It's a high ride, right? Actually, our original Bywater bourbon is a wheat. Oh,

Drew H (17:34):
Okay.

Luca (17:35):
It's a wheated.

Drew H (17:36):
And

Luca (17:37):
Most people don't realize that what 70% of the market, the bourbon market is rye. And that's for different reasons. People truly enjoy that dusting of cinnamon over rye, that flavor, but also a distillery can turn out rye quicker and you have a little more leverage because you have more room for error when blending rye. To sum it up, it rids its youthfulness at a younger age, whereas wheat takes a little longer to stride out. And while we have hot environments down here and temperature swings, and we can have what we would refer to as accelerated aging, the still, it takes a little while for it to read. Its youthfulness. People absolutely love our weed. Bywater bourbon, 64% corn, 26% wheat and 10% malted wheat.

Drew H (18:41):
Oh, okay. So you're not using malted barley?

Luca (18:43):
Nope. We're experimented with malted barley too. So we sacrifice enzymes by using malted wheat instead of malted barley, but we're experimenting both ways. That's the beauty of a craft distillery. But then we came up with our four grain too, corn, wheat, rye, and barley, and that's the one that we're putting out a lot of bottles and we're winning accolades with that we're very proud of and excited about. But then now we just developed our whiskey tree

(19:18):
And how did we come about the whiskey tree? The whiskey tree is something that we tell probably 150 to 170,000 people a year. This story about the whiskey tree, because we are a tourism forward company, we have Cajun encounter swamp tours that we started back in 1997, Jeff Rogers and Marianna Rogers locals in New Orleans, and wanted to really share southern hospitality in a way that we could touch a lot of people. And it was through swamp tours. It was through swamp tours in the Honey Island Swamp, Louisiana's last untouched wetlands. In that swamp lies a tree that we've always called the whiskey tree. Now the whiskey tree was left behind by the laggers. You'll know we had a great fire back in the late 17 hundreds in the French Quarter, and they had to build a rebuild, a lot of the buildings back, and they pulled cypress from many areas, but they didn't have a use for that tree because it had pky Cyprus. It's hollowed out.

Speaker 3 (20:22):
So

Luca (20:22):
It took a look of its own. It's really naughty, it's kind of short, but it overlooks a marshy area, so it kind of stands out. So it became a meeting place for the bootleggers that were taken, the high road from New Orleans, the high road, old Spanish trail, the highest ground between Lake Puncher train and the Mississippi River all the way out to the North shore, which led to the most beautiful black clear water bayou that you can imagine called Maple Slough. Now why this tree? Well, because they did this to get away from the G men, the government officials. They couldn't be tracked or anything, but it was also about halfway between New Orleans and the moonshine capital of the south kiln, Mississippi, KILN, where

Drew H (21:08):
I just came from. Yeah,

Luca (21:09):
There you go. And also a lot of moonshiners would operate in the swamp.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
Yeah.

Luca (21:15):
So they'd meet at the tree, they'd talk strategy, they'd talk pricing and really how to grow the market because after all, new Orleans is the origin of the cocktail. And I'm sure other cities say they're the origin of the cocktail too. We just always seemed to take things to a different level and then they'd go their separate ways. And we've always told that story. We've always shared it. And then it inspired us to start a brand called the whiskey tree that we're hoping to donation wide with right now. In the last two months I've released the, which was this years in the Macon, released our 45% wheat whiskey tree and our 36%

Drew H (22:08):
Rye. That's the rye I saw. Yeah, whiskey

Luca (22:10):
Tree.

Drew H (22:10):
Okay.

Luca (22:11):
And with those, I worked closely with Ms. Nancy Fraley last year's Master Blender of the Year, and she just helps us to take things to a new level. She's my mentor. I travel the world with her and blending arm cognacs, Armand Yaks in France. And let's just face it this year we were in distilleries over there in France that was started in 1296. So do you think that they've learned over the years, everything that we do is through experience tasting. What does this taste like in four years? What do we think it's going to taste like in four years? What is the maturation process in this area with this high humidity? How does it taste in a year, year and a half? A lot of forecasting, a lot goes into this, but I have to say, Mr. Drew, that's the art behind all of this. And it's the beauty about bourbon and whiskey in general, and that's why people's been doing it forever. How are

Drew H (23:16):
The tours tied into this? If somebody's coming to the distillery, they got plans to come to the distillery.

Luca (23:23):
Here at the distillery, we do tours and tastings seven days a week all day long, starting at 12 o'clock. We have head distiller tours, obviously barrel experiences, and we have cocktail classes too. We even put on quarterly blending classes and people are like, Luca, how do you know what people really want? And I said, well, I listen to the public, I bring them in, I provide 'em with some blends, make 'em feel like they're a part of something because they truly are. Why am I going to blend something that I like but nobody else does? Which it's hard to come by, but I mean, we listen to the people, they become a part of what we do. When you come to the city of New Orleans, probably the number one tour in the city of New Orleans is a swamp tour. And there's no better tour than the Honey Island Swamp, Louisiana's last untouched wetlands. It truly fulfills your image of the swamp. We put you back and back by. You're just wide enough to fit the boat through. But to experience the whiskey tree and hear that story and be able to toast the whiskey tree with whiskey tree at the whiskey tree is another whole experience. Not to mention, what I didn't share with you is back in oh eight, we had some guests in the boat and they were like, do you mind telling that story again? Can we come back and film it? And I said, sure. So they came back, they mounted 2 360 degree cameras on the boat. They had us come back and forth, back and forth so they can capture every angle.

(24:54):
That tree became the real life Wishing Tree on the princess and the Frog. Oh wow. Those people were Disney. So I don't know what I can talk about, what I can't talk about. I just share it all with you. At the end of the day, we've experienced many opportunities down here in New Orleans, but that is a story that Disney put together that really tells the story of us down here in New Orleans. Our neighborhoods are our culture, our love for people, and they tell it through animation. How cool is that?

(25:26):
The actual kitchen, the restaurant's right around the corner from here. It's just really fun. But it's always been our whiskey tree, so it's all connected. Our tour guides talk about different things. I'll go out there at the whiskey tree and I'll surprise guests sometimes as head distiller and I'll talk to 'em about, and I'll personally tell 'em the story of the whiskey tree and the tour guides won't even know that. But yet that experience for the tour guides, they share with the guests and then they realize, wait, where can we go experience that at? So it's kind of like at the end of the day, we're just trying to create an experience for guests when they come down to the city. It's not selling them on anything. It's creating an experience that they want more of and it carries 'em from one place to the other, one tour to the other, I should say.

Drew H (26:12):
So when somebody's playing, of course that's something they're going to want to mix in with their visit to New Orleans. And it seems like you could probably write, well, I'm sure there are plenty of books out there that tell about all the things that you could do in New Orleans. And of course, we're only a couple of weeks from Fat Tuesday. So of course that's another thing that draws a lot of people down here. The Super Bowl draws people we're right across from the Superdome. But what else would be interesting things for people who are coming down here to the distillery and they maybe want to pair something with this tour to experience New Orleans culture?

Luca (26:52):
So we talk about New Orleans, it's southern Louisiana. In southern Louisiana differs everywhere you go. You have the North Shore, which is where the Honey island swamp is about 40 minutes north of New Orleans. You have New Orleans, you have that Creole history, you have that touch of Cajun that comes in here too. But then southwest Louisiana, which is Lafayette between here and Baton Rouge, the food changes. You have more Acadian. But then in between Baton Rouge, Lafayette and New Orleans, you have all the plantations that's through there. So if you're going to ask me what do you need to do outside of the French Quarter, the river walk, all the stuff that you see on TV and the history of a really cool ghost tour or something like that, depending on where your interests lie,

(27:45):
You have to do a swamp tour, a plantation tour accompanied with what you experience in the French Quarter and what tops it off more. And sipping whiskey made, bourbon made five blocks out the quarter. We're the only ones making bourbon right here in Central New Orleans. You know what I mean? Yeah. Daily and maturing it right here on site. So when you ask what sets you aside, there's a lot to say about that. There's a lot of hoops, a lot of obstacles that we face daily. But people truly enjoy New Orleans in many different ways through living through their palette.

Drew H (28:30):
Luca, thank you so much for talking through things and again, for the walkthrough of everything. I know people will want to come down to New Orleans for just enjoying New Orleans, but also great whiskey distillery to come visit as well.

Luca (28:45):
Seven three Distilling Company, Luca the distiller, find us on social media. Look up Whiskey Tree Bourbon, Bywater Bourbon, St. Rock Vodka. We tell the story through Cajun Encounter Swamp Tours. So come experience, come find us. And we love to do what we do best, and that's deliver Southern hospitality in the city of New Orleans. Cheers. Thank you for that.

Drew H (29:10):
Well, I hope you enjoyed this visit to distillery number nine on the Whiskey Lo Whiskey Flight's Great 48 tour of America's great craft distilleries. And if I piqued your interest in visiting the seven three distillery, we'll make sure to head to whiskey lore.com/flights where you can view the profile of this distillery. Sign up for a free account, then add this in any of the other 600 distilleries on the site into your very own whiskey lore wishlist. Then when you're ready to travel, use the site's convenient planning tools, maps, tour dates, booking links, and more to create the perfect distillery itinerary. Start your journey@whiskeylore.com slash flights as we pack up and get ready to head East through the panhandle of Florida for our next distillery destination. Just a suggestion that what you might want to do on a visit to New Orleans is get yourself down somewhere near the French Quarter.

(30:06):
Then take an Uber up to the distillery as your first thing to do before you start touring the city. Kind of hang out at the bar, get yourself tuned in to what the locals suggest you might want to go do while you're downtown and just Uber back and head back into the French Quarter or whatever part of the city you want to explore. And if you're still on the fence about visiting the team here at seven Three Distillery, well, let me give you my three reasons why I think you should have this distillery on your whiskey. Lower wishlist first. Well, it's always easy to say the people are the reason to go, but some distilleries just have this hospitality thing down pat. And again, it's a great spot to start your journey through New Orleans. Second, I am a big fan of whiskey mouthfeel, and that's something that's often forgotten in the experience, but definitely something they put an exclamation mark on here at seven Three Distillery, even with their vodka.

(31:05):
And third, with a Cajun encounter, swamp Tours with Louisiana's Honey Swamp as the place to explore. And that whiskey tree, I mean, what other distillery has this kind of an adventure? Well, I hope you enjoyed this visit to seven three. Distillery got a long drive ahead of me, about eight hours across the panhandle of Florida and going to lose an hour because of going from central to Eastern time. But the distillery I'll be visiting located in what's known as America's oldest city is one that I have long been excited to visit and the town that I am definitely looking forward to checking out for its history and spirits. We're just getting started on this coast to coast journey of America's great craft distilleries. Make sure you've got your ticket to ride by smashing the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. I'm your travel guy, drew Hanish. And it's I next time. Cheers. And.