Journeyman Distillery

Drew H (00:00:08):
Welcome to Whiskey Lores Whiskey Flights, your weekly home for discovering great craft distillery experiences around the globe. I'm your travel guide Drew Hannush, the bestselling author of Experiencing Irish whiskey experiencing Kentucky Bourbon, and today we are about to head out on a huge 3,200 mile 10 plus distillery journey across the Midwestern United States. It is a journey that I am calling the Midwest Great Lakes Tour of 2024, and we are going to be in Michigan for six episodes. We'll be in Wisconsin for at least three, and then we'll be in Minnesota and Indiana for at least one each and for the first time, rather than creating a path to the distilleries out of my knowledge of travel and experiences in the area, I'm going to be physically driving to each of these distilleries, so less theater of the mind and creativity on my side here, and actually now telling you of my real experience of getting to these distilleries.

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And I'm going to tell you I really want this to be the way that I do this moving forward. I met some amazing people while I was on this trip and just really thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think it's going to be better giving you the real world experience that I went through, even though a lot of the stuff that I talk about comes from experiences. I've been to 50 states and so I've had experiences in each of these states, but it's just better to do this from real life experiences. Now, of course, it's going to be hard to do with overseas experiences. Those are likely still going to stay on doing Zoom calls and that sort of thing for a little while. But occasionally I'm going to try to plan some overseas trips as well to be able to go out and meet distillers and founders.

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Now, the first day of this trip was an absolutely crazy long drive. Some people might think I was nuts to do it. The alarm went off in Greenville, South Carolina at 4:00 AM Everything was packed the night before. I had put grounds into the coffee maker with a filter, so all I had to do was come down in the morning, click the brew button, and then go back upstairs, take a quick shower, and then get out and hit the road. And I did what I always do, which is throughout the week I start putting things by the door so that I don't forget them because if you try to plan at the last minute, you're going to leave something behind. So I thought I had it perfect. I thought I had everything that I needed, all sitting there by the door, put it into the car in the morning, the evening before I had ordered a pizza because I was like, well, I'll eat two thirds of the pizza and I'll save a third for breakfast in the morning.

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As I started driving down the highway, the first thing I realized was the pizza was still in the refrigerator. You have to remember, it's not just a step by the door, but it may be something else that you're forgetting on top of that. Well, there were no other hitches beyond that. The morning drive went incredibly smooth. I try to get through Asheville as early in the morning as I can, but this was a Sunday morning, so I didn't really have to worry about traffic and actually flowed through all the way to the Kentucky State line by 8:00 AM I posted a picture on Instagram, stretched my legs, got back in the car, and then kept on going through Kentucky into Indiana. This is part of Indiana I've not been to before, so I was checking things out as I went through. It was a prettier drive actually than I expected.

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Got to the town of what's probably Edinburgh, Indiana, but I see it as Edinburgh, just so used to traveling in Scotland. And what I found was this was like a low price gasoline oasis in the middle of gas was what, three 40 and a lot of places I was looking, but it was actually at 3 0 4 in this spot and just this one exit. So I gas the car up thinking I should be able to get all the way up to Michigan. I do try to figure out what gas prices are in different states, and I try to fill up in the states that are lower when I can. Once you get into the Midwest, it gets a little bit expensive around Chicago going up through Michigan, it can be somewhat expensive. I mean, if you're around Traverse City, it gets much more expensive and then get up into the upper Peninsula.

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Still not very cheap, little cheaper in Wisconsin, Indiana decent. But like I say, this was one really, really good spot to stop off in. Now as I'm heading into Indianapolis, I'm thinking, let me check and see because it's trying to send me in two different directions on my GPS and one way was freeway all the way, and that was going to Michigan City, but it was backing up it looked like in a couple of spots. So I decided to go up US 31 to South Bend. It was a great decision because it's not always freeway up through there, but it is four lane highway and there wasn't a lot of traffic. And so I got up through there pretty easily and my destination was Three Oaks, Michigan, the home of Journeyman Distillery. This was going to be my first distillery stop on this whole entire trip.

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I had a 6:00 PM tour all booked, and then I had gotten in contact with the founders, bill and Joanna Welter and asked if I could come in around five o'clock and maybe do an interview with them. And we just ended up chatting and chatting and chatting, and you're going to hear it here. We had so much fun stuff to talk about. When I got in though, I was getting in a bit early. I actually showed up in the area around four and thought, well, I'm just going to head over to my hotel, which was in New Buffalo, Michigan, which is about a 10 minute drive away from the distillery and just off I 94. So I checked in, took a quick power nap, went and checked my notes, went back out to the parking lot to get in my car, and there was a man outside of my car and he was looking at my license plate and he's like, oh man, coming all the way up from South Carolina.

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What are you doing here? And I said, well, I'm going across the state to go on a distillery tour and go to a bunch of distilleries. He said, oh, you're into pot. And I said, oh, what's he thinking? Dispensaries? No, no. I said, distilleries. I'm doing a whiskey trip through here. And he said, oh, well, don't drink and drive. And it was funny when he said that because the first thing that went through my head was, is this the marijuana guy telling the drinker that he shouldn't be drinking instead he should be doing his thing. I was like, okay, whatever. And that was fine, and I wanted to say, that's not really what I'm doing here. I mean, I go in and I want to sip something. I'm not here to get inebriated and go driving down the road afterwards. I tend to not drink too much when I go on these distillery trus because I don't want to go out and drink and drive.

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But it's funny, after I left him, I realized there were a lot of dispensaries in this part of the country. So as I was starting to head to the distillery, I passed by a casino on the side of the road. That's about the only thing that didn't make me feel like I was going back in time to the place that I grew up. I'm originally from Michigan, spent the first 10 years of my life in Michigan. Came from what was then a small town of Brighton, Michigan. It's now a much bigger town with a lot of stuff going on, but the center part of town is still that old quaint Michigan feel, and that's exactly what I was feeling as I was driving two Three Oaks Michigan, one stoplight, lots of houses. You just kind of felt like this was small town America. I drove across the railroad tracks that took me back to when I was a kid.

 

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My mother worked doing crafts and stuff in this caboose that was like a stationary caboose along the railroad tracks. Just everything was taking me back. I pull up, I see the distillery is over to the left. I pull in the parking lot, this big gray factory looking building with the name journeymen across it. I walked in, got to check out kind of what the place looked like, took a quick glance around. They had a gift shop that you first walk into. The distillery itself is behind the bottles, and then there's a big long bar and restaurant. Then I met Bill and Joanna Welter, and we sat down for a conversation, which was only supposed to be about 20 minutes, and it ended up being about a three hour conversation. And then I had food in the restaurant afterwards. It was a great conversation. I'm not going to share all three hours with you, but I will give you an hour of it right here. You're going to learn a lot about Michigan distilling and the journey of craft distillers in getting something set up from scratch. Enjoy my conversation with Bill and Joanna Welter of Journeyman Distillery. I heard that you went to Scotland True. And you were spending some time in Scotland. What sent you to Scotland, first of all?

Bill (00:09:16):
Yeah, I mean, it's a bit of a long story Drew, but my trip to Scotland was a bit of a pilgrimage. I had grown up playing golf as a kid with my dad and friends and went on to play in high school and then eventually played division one college golf and a lot of young people. After graduating from school, I didn't quite know what I wanted to do with my life, but what I did know is that it seemed like every decision I made revolving around golf was a good one. The game had been good to me, and so almost as a default decided that I wanted to learn more about the history of the game of golf and applied for a British work visa obtained that and ended up hopping on a plane and then a train and a bus, and I found myself in St. Andrews.

Drew H (00:10:11):
Wow.

Bill (00:10:11):
And from there, of course, I learned many of the great things about Scottish golf, but at the same time discovered the other great love in Scotland, which of course is whiskey.

Drew H (00:10:29):
And you actually had a roommate who got involved in the industry. Was he involved at the time that you were roommates?

Bill (00:10:37):
Greg Ramsey was his name, and that's a great story in itself. My first job in Scotland when I arrived, basically I was just trying to find work, and back then, of course you couldn't jump online with Indeed or whatever else and find a job real quickly. You went to a job placement place in a building on a street in St. Andrews. And I walked in the door and they said, well, we got to, guys are looking for dishwashers over at the old course hotel. And I said, well, I'm familiar with it. I know where it is, and I'll go over there and apply and got the job. And about two days in Greg Ramsey, who was working as a master barman at the Road Hole hotel bar there, which overlooks the St. Andrew's famous old course

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And a beautiful view you can see out into the fourth of Firth and just incredible. And Greg comes around the corner, I can see him in my mind right now. And he goes, Hey mate, what are you doing here? That was my bad Australian accent. And I said to Greg, I said, well, I'm washing dishes. And he says, no, what are you doing in? And I said, well, I'm here to learn more about the history of the game of golf. He was a great lover of golf as well. And in fact, he was in St. Andrews basically pitching the idea of building a world-class lyx golf course in Tasmania.

Drew H (00:12:09):
Oh, wow. Okay.

Bill (00:12:11):
So Greg was, I think we were both 22, 23 years old, and he said, well, hey, first of all, I know somebody down the street who's the GM at a restaurant and they're looking for servers, and I think you should go do that. And I said, well, I think that's a good idea. My back is killing me. And that was one of the first great lessons I learned in hospitality where I called home, I said to my dad, I said, dad, I don't think I can do this dish washing anymore, and what do I do? He goes, well, you got to go find the guy that hired you and let him know. And that's a story that I tell to every new hire team. Every month we do a new hire orientation. And I tell that story and I said, well, I gave the guy two weeks. And fortunately he said, well, you don't need to work that out. And I got a job waiting tables. Greg and I became fast friends, actually ended up becoming roommates in St. Andrews. And of course the great story there is that he ended up actually building that golf course in Tasmania. It's

(00:13:16):
Barn Bogle dunes, and today that golf course is in the top 100 in the world.

Drew H (00:13:22):
Wow. Okay.

Bill (00:13:24):
He'd later on, go serial entrepreneur, brilliant guy. He was 22 years old going, I'm going to build this golf course. I remember we drove him to the airport on his way home back to Tasmania that following year, and he said, and kind of tongue in cheek, I said to him, yeah, good luck with that golf course and thinking there's no way in the world this guy's going to get this thing done. Well, he did, and as we've seen, it's not only a golf course in Tasmania, but it's one of the world's very best.

Drew H (00:13:58):
Wow. Well, he got involved in whiskey too.

Bill (00:14:00):
He did. He followed that up with building out a distillery near his hometown, and he took an old grain mill and renovated that factory and turned that into a whiskey distillery. And at the time I was working in the family business for my dad as the third generation thinking I was going to carry on that tradition and never thought in a million years I'd be distilling whiskey. But at the time, I was fortunate enough to go to Tasmania and actually see the site and the distillery and was amazed by it. Everything that Greg did just was amazing, frankly, and from the golf course to the distillery and many other things that he's done. And I said, well, congratulations. And he was honored to be there. And little did I know very shortly after that the family business was going to be sold and I would be looking for a job,

Joanna (00:14:57):
And

Bill (00:14:58):
I followed up with Greg and said, you know what? I think this distilling idea might be a good idea. That was 2009, a few years after he'd built his distillery and I had an opportunity to go to Tasmania, and that's where I learned enough to be dangerous and spent time at Greg's distillery as well as several others in particular, bill Lark at Lark Distillery, who's quite a guy and was quite generous with his time. Like I said, just learned enough to come back and have the courage to do it. And in 2009, there was hardly any distilleries at all in the us and it seemed like a wild idea. And as you know, we all know craft distilling would have one hell of reemergence, and we were happy to be a part of that.

Drew H (00:15:48):
You are the second person actually that I've talked to who went to Tasmania that wasn't from Tasmania, and got into the whiskey industry. Cooper King out of England, a husband and wife went down there. They were just vacationing.

Bill (00:16:05):
No kidding.

Drew H (00:16:05):
But they saw what was going on with the whiskey industry down there, and they were the same. They said everybody was so helpful.

Bill (00:16:12):
Oh, yeah,

Drew H (00:16:13):
Bill Lark, they worked with him as well. Incredible. And it's amazing to think how big that industry has gotten. They probably have more distilleries than Ila has,

Bill (00:16:23):
I

Drew H (00:16:23):
Think, at this

Bill (00:16:24):
Point. Yeah. Oh, by far. In fact, when I went there, I believe there were only four or five at the time, and that was January of 2010. And today, I know there's over 50 on Tasmania, which by the way is not a big place,

Drew H (00:16:38):
Right?

Bill (00:16:38):
So there's amazing natural resources, incredible place to visit. If anyone ever gets a chance, it's hard to beat.

Drew H (00:16:47):
So what is it like going to the bank and asking for a loan to get started on a distillery in a state that doesn't really have much in the way of distilling going on?

Bill (00:16:57):
I mean, I can tell you my grandfather Bill Welter, also my dad, Chuck, my grandfather Bill, was dead set on multi-generational family owned and operated businesses and believes strongly in their impact on community, but also the importance to families that own 'em. And my grandfather was in the auto business for a number of years, and for some reason he got the idea he wanted to get into banking. And in 1972, he sold his dealerships in his late fifties. Mind you, at a time when I think most people are thinking about retirement, he was thinking about getting into an industry that he knew nothing about, bought into a bank in Valparaiso, Indiana. Small community bank, I think at the time had the main location in two branches, and Bill was supposed to be led by a guy named Wayne Stoner who was the bank president and owner. And when he sold the bank to, my grandfather was going to stay on for a year. Unfortunately, Wayne died of a heart attack that week. My grandfather called up his oldest son and what would be my dad, and said to Chuck, he said, Chuck, you got to get down here and help me run this bank. And my dad said he'd come down. He was working for Eli Lilly at the time and had recently graduated from Notre Dame with his MBA and said, dad, I'll come down and help you for a year. A year turned into nearly 30.

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I would go on to work in the family business. And we grew up in the business. It was a true family business. We as kids would leave notes for the tellers and at the different desks in the bank. And I can remember working with the Vault manager and counting coin and rolling coin and things like that as a really young kid, and it was an essential part of our family. So I really learned the importance of family business in 2007. My dad's siblings unfortunately decided to sell the family business. They didn't work in the business and didn't have a generation that was going to work in the business. And unfortunately, it was quite a family row, and my dad tried to prevent it, spent over a year trying to halt the sale, and one day I was working in the family business, presumably to be the third generation to run it.

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And next day I was looking for a job, to be honest. And that's really where the name journeyman comes around, where at that point in time, my favorite Robert Frost quote of, there was a two paths in a wood, and he chose the one less taken, and that made all the difference. And for some reason, life brings all of us to these points where we have to make a decision of what direction we're going to go in. And I suppose in some ways, I took a bad situation and took the same values and ideas of a multi-generational business, and my wife and I have brought those ideals to journeymen with the idea that we're creating something, we call it a lasting legacy, but something that hopefully will last for something well beyond our time on this planet.

Drew H (00:20:42):
Yeah. Well, you're both learning about whiskey at this point and getting comfortable with it, I'm sure. Did you have any experience with whiskey in the past or what was your background?

Joanna (00:20:57):
Yeah, I mean, ultimately for Bill and I, people often ask, how did you guys meet? Truly? I was a city girl living in Chicago, and Bill and I met at a mutual friend's go away party. He was going back home to Bulgaria. So here it was, I met this guy with a beard and he had just started, well, like the

Bill (00:21:18):
One I'm wearing today exactly,

Joanna (00:21:21):
A little darker in color, but

Drew H (00:21:23):
Yeah,

Bill (00:21:24):
That

Drew H (00:21:25):
Happens. That happens.

Joanna (00:21:27):
But yeah, so he introduced himself and I thought he was quite handsome. And ultimately we had a mutual bond and love for whiskey. I was a novice at that point. I think all thin times. Women, we tend, during that time, we drank cosmos and vodka sodas, and then I think Bill was intrigued that Kara was drinking whiskey.

Drew H (00:21:52):
So I have to ask you then. This is interesting. When I first went on the Bourbon Trail in Kentucky, my very first experience really with whiskey at that level, there were a couple of distilleries I went into where they said, women don't like rye whiskey. It's too aggressive. What do you think about rye whiskey?

Joanna (00:22:14):
I think as a category, it used to be, but I think that, for instance, for us, our first spirit we ever produced and our flagship whiskey is a rye, and it was originally called Ravenswood Rye, which then later had to change the name to last Feather Rye. And with that, our mash bill on that is 60% rye in 40% wheat. And so I think most of the rye that people talk about or have tasted in the past were a hundred percent rye, super sharp and abrasive, probably a little too rough on the edges of the flavor profile. Whereas when we built ours, we wanted a enjoyable drinkable rye. So we went heavy with the wheat.

Joanna (00:22:59):
And

Joanna (00:22:59):
I think that truly opened its doors to women with more complex pellets. I think we truly enjoyed building that for everyone.

Drew H (00:23:11):
Well, you hit the nail on the head with the response that I got when I had gone into a local bar with a great selection of whiskey, and the woman behind the bar, I said, what do you think of or What would be a whiskey you would recommend? And she brought a rye over to me, and I went, so why are you recommending this to me? And she said, because it's complex.

Joanna (00:23:33):
And

Drew H (00:23:34):
I said, okay, so there's something else here I need to dig into. And that's what I found over time is that women actually tend to gravitate towards rye more than push it away. And that you got to get rid of those thoughts of, oh, it's aggressive. Somebody that's too harsh for a female palate. I mean, women are all over the industry right now. So I think that's showing the fact that we were selling people short.

Joanna (00:24:03):
Yes,

Drew H (00:24:04):
Early on. Whiskey is not gender specific.

Joanna (00:24:06):
Absolutely not.

Drew H (00:24:07):
Exactly. So we're in a very interesting building, has a very interesting history and an interesting name Feather bone. So what is a feather bone, first of all, to have a factory that's called a feather bone factory.

Bill (00:24:24):
Yeah, I mean, I think you're being quite kind, drew as we're sitting in the back of our marketing office

Joanna (00:24:32):
Storage room.

Bill (00:24:33):
Yeah, storage room, which is the only, we're the real workplace true. But we are, as you mentioned here in Three Oaks, Michigan, and we're at the Feather Bone Factory. The story there is, this is an old corset and buggy whip factory. So this dates back to the early 1880s in which a guy named EK Warren, an entrepreneur in his own right philanthropist, a guy that was a true innovator, started his process by taking the quill of a Turkey feather. And he turned it into a lightweight, flexible stave.

Joanna (00:25:11):
That

Bill (00:25:11):
Stave was then used to replace whalebone and corsets, which of course, at the time was hard to find. It was inflexible, it was brittle, and it just wasn't a great product. Warren used the same product to make buggy whips, which of course, pre automobile people were riding around on horses, believe it or not. And the buggy whip was an important part of that process. So overnight, Warren revolutionized the women's clothing industry and basically was a massive success. And these buildings in Three Oaks are a lasting testimony to I think his commitment to the town. I think the way he built these structures, they're still standing, they're held up by wood as we'll. Walk through the building later, you'll see it's a brick exterior, but all of the internal columns are old growth wood. So the really interesting side note is that Warren was a huge prohibitionist. So he kept the town of Three Oaks as a dry community for over 55 years. And a lot of people say, well, he must be rolling over in his grave now. And I say, well, yeah, he probably is. But obviously the ironic component to all this is that Warren's name really in many ways is living on through our whiskey brand, is we tell that story all the time.

Joanna (00:26:39):
Absolutely.

Bill (00:26:40):
And Warren was, as I mentioned, a very generous man. You're a Michigan native. I know, but many folks, if you're not familiar with Michigan or the specific area of southwest Michigan, there's an area called Warren Dunes, which is land that EK gave to the state of Michigan. And it's incredible, four or 500 foot tall sand dunes. It's a state park, and it's an area where many, many visitors travel every year to see that natural, amazing, wonderful resource that we have here, which is Lake Michigan, just a few miles down the road from Three Oaks here.

Drew H (00:27:21):
So was this the building you started in, or did you start working out in a smaller facility and then come in

Bill (00:27:26):
Here? This is the building we started in, and there were older buildings in town, but they were torn down over time. And in fact, there seems to be a consistency in, I guess the journeyman mantra, if you will. This building had been scheduled to be torn down. In fact, I have a copy of the article hanging at my desk, the building, as you probably likely know, as many Americans do, there's a period of time where these old buildings that people just tore 'em down, they didn't see a benefit. Perhaps they were an eyesore or even an area where kids could get hurt in the building, so they were torn down. But with it, it went that amazing history in that storytelling. So I think one of the great things about our brand is we've done it a second time now in Valparaiso, Indiana, which I also have an article about that building stating that it was scheduled to be demolition. So we have two old historic buildings now that we've renovated. But I think the important story there is, as people have found, that when these old buildings are brought back to life, the stories come with it. But also the community generally has found it to be a tremendous benefit in that oftentimes they become anchor tenants for commerce, but also that storytelling that is so important in life and in communities is revitalized.

Drew H (00:28:53):
Just so you share one thing in common with Jack Daniels, which is you're in a one stoplight town. True.

Bill (00:28:58):
Yeah. Yeah. I know. I love the brand. I love the marketing. Frankly, anyone will listen. I've said, in your lifetime, you should go see Jack Daniels because I mean, really it's a national monument. It's tremendous historic importance for America. And I think in so many ways tells that amazing story of the American way. I think one guy can start something and look where it is today. It's an opportunity.

Drew H (00:29:33):
So where did you start with this? Because you're starting at the very beginnings, really, of Michigan whiskey. Now there are distilleries all across the state, but back then, did you kind of research and look to see what may have been made in Michigan before? Or did you take an approach where you're like, I want to define and see what is around and make something a statement myself?

Bill (00:29:58):
Yeah, I mean, originally the hope was to put the distillery in Indiana, which I grew up in northwest Indiana in Valparaiso. And at the time, craft distilling wasn't allowed. They didn't have the laws in place to allow for craft distilling in Indiana. And then, so fortunately, we were just a handful of miles from the Michigan state line, which was more progressive with alcohol, had an amazing beer industry, tremendous and long wine industry that really started it all. And then distilling had, there were a few distilleries in Michigan, and we were fortunate, I think to have found Three Oaks and maybe Three Oaks found us in some ways. But I remember driving down the little one stoplight town here, and my eyes got real big and said, well, this is one of the coolest little towns I've ever seen. This would be an amazing place for a distillery. But we were looking for an old factory building that was always from day one part of something that we wanted to do. And I would say that it was a minor miracle that I drove down the street here in town and took a left at the post office, and lo and behold, there was this old factory building here, and it's just meant to be.

Drew H (00:31:19):
So what was the first whiskey that you created here?

Bill (00:31:21):
Yeah, as Joanna mentioned, we did get started with a little bit of whiskey at Coval Distillery in the Ravenswood neighborhood. So our very first batch of whiskey, I went to Robert Bernicker and his wife, the owners of Coval, and I said, well, we're opening this distillery in Michigan. We're kind of shooting to be up and running and distilling in 2011. And this was the summer of 2010. When I approached them, I said, we'd love to have a one year, one-year-old rye whiskey when we open. I said, our game plan and our thought process is we never want to source whiskey. We always want to be able to say that we made every drop. So he was kind enough to allow us to use his equipment. He helped guide us in some of those early mashes and distillations, and we made a small amount of whiskey that we did later on sell when we opened journeymen here in Three Oaks. And then from that day, we can say that we've made every drop of whiskey. That authenticity I think is critical to our brand. It's important to who we are. And I don't think there's anything wrong with buying sourced whiskey and opening your own whiskey brand, but for us actually making that product from day one and having that authenticity was just, I dunno, I wouldn't have wanted to do it any other way.

Drew H (00:32:49):
Yeah. What philosophies might have you brought back from Tasmania in your time down

Bill (00:32:55):
There? I don't know if I had any philosophies per se. And I always tell everyone, I look back on it now and think, what the hell were you thinking? I mean, to think that such little training, and I'll just say, honestly, it was almost all entirely on the job training those first distillations. I mean, we just didn't know what we were doing. But I also say to people, it wasn't like it is now. The resources weren't there. And if you were going to do this, you had to learn to do it on your own at that point in time, or it was hire some distiller from Jim Beam or Jack Daniels or one of these legacy brands, which we couldn't afford, I can assure you. And so the only alternative was trial and error, figure it out yourself. And there weren't even craft distilleries around to say, well, let's hire Bob down the street. He is been running a still for a while at least he's been doing it.

(00:33:58):
And we didn't even have anyone to say, well, we could hire that craft distiller down the road. There weren't any, and I know I talked to the TTBA number of times and was trying to get some real hard facts on it, but finally I got something out of them that they said there were 250 licensed beverage alcohol distilleries when we got started with journeymen in 2009. I think that's probably reasonably accurate. And I would say that we were at the time, one of 250 distilleries in America, and I think it was a truly exciting time for Joanna and I. There was unlimited potential. We didn't know where it was going to go. And the bar was low, the bar was very low at that point in time, if you're going to open a brewery or something, the beer had to be great right out of the gate, or you're going to be panned with distilling. Frankly, no one knew what it was. And in fact, I would say in the early days and maybe even for the first few years, people would walk in the door and say, well, what kind of beer do you have? And sometimes you'd explain to people, we actually make distilled spirits. And they'd still say, well, what kind of beer do you have? And we'd say, well, we don't have any.

Drew H (00:35:14):
Yeah, or you don't want to drink the beer that we're making

Bill (00:35:17):
Because it's not really

Drew H (00:35:18):
Meant for that. Exactly.

Joanna (00:35:20):
But I mean, as you were saying, I think that because the entry to starting a distillery expectations were lower. I think he just also then gave us the courage. Just try it. Yeah,

Bill (00:35:32):
There's no risk there. But

Drew H (00:35:36):
People would have a little bit more leniency in terms of expectations because I mean, if you had started a brewery, then we're talking about, I think about Michigan and Grand Rapids and I live down there, Asheville, North Carolina, Portland and Grand Rapids, they're fighting over beer city USA constantly. So that would be a really hard game to get into and not have your act together.

Bill (00:36:01):
Yeah, that would be scary

Drew H (00:36:02):
Versus this,

Bill (00:36:03):
I mean, trust me, it was scary and just the unknown of it, can we do this? Can we make whiskey? That question was asked every day.

Joanna (00:36:13):
Every day.

Bill (00:36:14):
I mean, can we do this?

Joanna (00:36:15):
And I think that's where our grit truly came to the forefront where every day we're showing up, opening that door, doing the best that we could. Yeah, I think we

Bill (00:36:27):
Just

Drew H (00:36:27):
Didn't know what

Bill (00:36:27):
We were doing.

Drew H (00:36:28):
Did you have people coming in going, Hey, you should do this, you should do that

Bill (00:36:33):
Next experts. And who's to say they weren't? Right. But I mean, I think what kind of developed out of it was this craft distillery movement. And Joanna and I were in California recently at the Bulk Wine and Spirit Show. We actually had a booth. We're trying to work on some contract distilling on our end, and we had actually never done a show out west. And we showed up and there were at least a half a dozen or more different people over the course of the show. I'm talking about other distilleries and people working in the industry, and they came up to us and said, I wanted to meet you. You were an inspiration for us and us starting our distillery. And that, I know in the early days we had, and I'm not kidding, it would have to have been a hundred or more different people over those years saying, Hey, we're interested in starting a distillery. Could we come by? We want to see what it's all about. And to a T, we said to every single one of those people, we'd love to have you here. We'd love to tell you what we know, which was not very much, but they just wanted to see that it could be done.

(00:37:46):
And I think that was a really important part of our role in some of what happened. But I'll also say, and just to craft distilling as an entire segment, in the early days, we did a ton of education. We had people coming in asking for beer, and we would just take them and walk them over to the still, which was full floor to ceiling glass. We wanted people to be able to see the process and really have that transparency and authenticity of making it. And we would explain to 'em what we were doing. And we were distilling early on. It was only three days a week. And then that would grow and people could try things off the still. And unlike the big legacy brands, we had to have people walking in the door. We weren't going to make

Joanna (00:38:36):
It.

Bill (00:38:37):
And that mentality, and Joanna brings a lot of hospitality expertise and this idea of whiskey hospitality is what we call it. We kind of coined that term of having people walk in the door, educating them, treating them. They're the first person that ever walked in the door. And you can imagine opening a business and that first person walks in and you'd practically want to give 'em a hug, which we did. We gave many hugs the beginning. And I mean, I think we've done a tremendous service, and I mean craft distilling as a whole to the industry because we approached it in a different way because it was really about survival. And when you have people running a business and they're saying themselves, we may not survive, we may not make this. That's a different approach than, and with all due respect to the amazing legacy brands in this country and in this world, well, that's a different mentality. If you're selling multimillion dollars or sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars or more whiskey every year, well, the necessity for survival isn't there. And that's a different experience to the consumer. And I think people could feel it every bit of that. This is a young couple trying to get a business off the ground.

Drew H (00:40:04):
Well, you get people rooting for you.

Bill (00:40:05):
Yes. And then craft distilling, I think grew out of a lot of those experiences, whether they had it here with us or Grand Traver up in Traverse City or so many of the great craft whiskey brands that started during that period. And I mean, there was that amazing period out in California and even in Washington state and Oregon where some of those Clear Creek. And one of our favorites is St. George Spirits and Char Bay is another amazing distillery. And some of those guys out in the west now, they're the real industry leaders as they got those distilleries off the ground and sometimes in the 1970s. And so we're fortunate to be part of that second wave. And the country has an amazing history of distilling, and we're at kind of the golden age of distilling right now.

Drew H (00:41:01):
Yeah. Well, somebody asked me the other day, they said, don't you get tired of going to all these different distilleries? And I said, the thing is, is that when you go to the larger distilleries, you can sort of fall into process. I'll relate it back to beer. When I went to Boston, I went to the Sam Adams tour up there. Now the Sam Adams in Boston is not their production facility, it's their experimental facility. They do the rest of their brewing down in Cincinnati. That's where the mass stuff goes out from, but it's still up. You felt like it was almost a craft, and that's what they sell themselves

Bill (00:41:37):
At. That was the culture.

Drew H (00:41:39):
But then I went to Miller and Bush

(00:41:43):
Or Budweiser, and it's like, okay, now their purpose for this tour is to demonstrate how they can be Henry Ford and how much beer they can ship out across the Midwest in a matter of days. And so you can have that experience if you go to some of the larger distilleries, although I still say they'll throw stories at you that will entertain you and be very personal for those particular distilleries. But the craft distilleries, the thing is there's so much nuance to distilling and one person in one region can really almost have a completely different philosophy on how to make whiskey because it's maybe more of what the culture was there or because of what's growing there or because of something they learned. Or as you go to Tasmania and all of a sudden you're bringing things back and Cooper King in England is bringing back a still from Tasmania, and they're bringing some of that personality back to what they're doing. So it's like, yes, if you're going to go on a distillery tour and just say, okay, I'm there for the tasting distillery, tours are going to get boring after a while because there's only so, but if you're listening to what heritage grain are you bringing back or how are you doing your longer fermentations? Why are you doing those longer fermentations? That sort of thing, you learn and then you hear the stories of the people.

(00:43:19):
And that's part of the reason why I'm doing this podcast is because I want people to hear the stories of the people because I think that is what makes me continue to want to go and see more distilleries and really focus on the craft distilleries because you guys have that real experience of trying to pay the bills at the end of the month. And so when you got this started and you've got this big building, what was your first plan in terms of doing tours? Or were you going to start with a bar in here, a restaurant? What was the progression of that?

Bill (00:43:56):
I mean, for sure, the first thought was let's try and get our distilling process to a point in time where we felt somewhat confident that it was repeatable and that we could be producing quality spirit. And I had a guy come up from Woodford Reserve, Dave Hurwich. He is the production manager there. And we've had a lot of great people visit here over the years. And I remember him saying to me is good in is out. And that idea of really focusing on trying to make really good whiskey. And then what followed was a small area for tastings and cocktails. And I remember that's actually where I met you at that concrete U bar. The restaurant didn't come for nearly five or six years later, but the cocktail bar had five drinks on the menu. It was really simple,

Joanna (00:44:54):
White whiskey, lots of vodka,

Bill (00:44:57):
A lot of on H spirit. And then we had that one H product that was basically a year 14 months old that we made up in Chicago. And it was more about the storytelling, and it was a lot less about the whiskey, to be honest with you, because I mean, let's be honest, it wasn't the world's greatest whiskey. I mean, it was good, I think for a one-year-old rye whiskey, but it told a story of risk-taking. It told a story of in some ways innovation, I think. And it told all of those stories of entrepreneurship and heritage and all the different things that you just referenced. And it's that storytelling that I think we had to use as a catch to get people to be interested. And it's still, I think something that craft distillery face, how do you beat Buffalo Trace at their game when they're putting out 8-year-old whiskey and it's 29 99 and their costs are just lower? But a lot of times the consumer doesn't understand that the buffalo trays can make whiskey for a lot less than we can. And that's part of the reason why it's 29.9

(00:46:10):
And ours is 44 point 99 or 49.9. And I think what we have to do is beat them on experience. And again, I'll use that term again, whiskey hospitality is something we talk about all the time, and we have to give the consumer more than just a whiskey. Now, in our case, as we're coming on 15 years since first starting on this project, we're starting to have some whiskey that I think is pretty damn good. And we have a lot of whiskey now that's 4, 5, 6, 7 years old, and some of it's even older. So I do think journeymen and a lot of the craft distilleries are finally kind of trying to edge into that quality conversation with the bigger distilleries who have been around for hundreds of years. And I do always tell people as well, I say, well, Jack Daniels has had a few centuries to figure out how to do this.

(00:47:09):
And yeah, we're celebrating 13 years here this year open to the public. And I think that 13 years we've worked about as hard as maybe 25 years in that period. So I mean 13 years, but really closer to 25 to be honest you. And as much as we put into it and we're finally in those conversations and in fact even beat a lot of the legacy brands and several hundred entries when we won Whiskey of the Year twice with Fred Minnick and the Ascot Awards, and look, that was a double blind whiskey competition that we sent some of our very best stuff and a product. And you talk about innovation and terroir and doing things differently, I said to people, we would've never made a hundred percent wheat whiskey had I had formal training,

Joanna (00:48:06):
If

Bill (00:48:06):
I had gone through a traditional path and maybe had gone to Harriet Watt University and did an internship and worked for years at some large distillery, I think that never happens. And those are happy mistakes, frankly. And I think that's one of the great things about craft distilling is you already referenced, there's innovators out there, people like Chip Tate at B'S and so many others that were doing things differently that no one had ever seen. And that doesn't happen if we had gone down a traditional path of making whiskey.

Drew H (00:48:40):
Yeah, that's funny. I write music, but I had never learned how to actually read music. And somebody said, you should learn. I said, well, Paul McCartney never learned, so why should I learn? That was my first answer. They said, oh, well you should take it a little more seriously. You could really develop something. And I had this attitude, if I learn the rules, I'm going to write what everybody else is writing. I want to stumble into something. So talk about the wheat whiskey and how this is the corsets, whips and whiskey. And this is a 12-year-old, you

Bill (00:49:15):
Said.

Drew H (00:49:16):
So this was one of the early things to come off the still.

Bill (00:49:20):
And I mean it kind of does tell you a little bit that we did figure it out and we figured it out pretty quickly actually. But the story of the label, of course, and a lot of people think, well, what's the story on that label? Of course, it's whips and whiskey and it, it's really just a story of the building and what has happened here. It's a record, if you will. It's a one page history lesson on the front of this whiskey bottle. And that of course is the fact that EK Warren made corsets and buggy whips here, and then we came along many, many years later and started making whiskey. So corset whips and whiskey is a tale of history here at this building in Three Oaks, the idea of making a hundred percent wheat. I mean, you mentioned influences. I was in Scotland, I went to Tasmania, but one of my favorite distilleries for sure was Buffalo Trace. And I found an old bottle of George Stag that I remember buying in 2008 or 2009, and quite quickly thought, well, I wish I had acted on it thinking this is amazing. This is really incredible whiskey. And that whole antique collection was really well done, and I wish I had bought 10,000 bottles of it instead of opening. Instead of opening a

Drew H (00:50:45):
Journey, you wouldn't have had a business here.

Bill (00:50:47):
Yeah, I know. So of course, even the bottle was influenced by Buffalo trace's, early bottles, which almost had a gin apothecary look for their whiskey bottles in the 18 hundreds. That's where we got the idea for this bottle. And then of course, the style of whiskey. And it was long before people started talking about Pappy Van Winkle and wheat at whiskeys and weller. I said, when I went down there on a number of occasions, I said, there's something special about wheat and I could see it and taste it and what they had done at Buffalo Trays. And in a way you talk about these distilleries having centuries of research and development, and of course, as we all know, Buffalo Trace is the longest continually running distillery in America in a way, I suppose I just kind of stole a little bit of what they had done all those years to determine that wheat had something really great. And so we started making, as Joanna mentioned, this rye whiskey with wheat being a secondary grain in the rye, which is really unusual as something you don't see. And I just said, look, the sweet is coming off the still. I mean the rye whiskey with the secondary wheat was really coming out the still, and we are not whiskey tasting experts. And then certainly at the time, all I knew is from my own senses that it tasted really wonderful

(00:52:20):
And we were even using terms elegant, whatever, but I mean there seemed like a sophistication to the whiskey as it came off the still. And I said, I think it's the wheat.

Joanna (00:52:33):
And

Bill (00:52:33):
I said, why don't we start making a hundred percent wheat whiskey and let's see how it comes out. And at the beginning, we hardly made any, and then we just kept increasing it. And frankly it never really sold that well. I mean, it's a category that no one knew anything about. And even arguably Bernheim is by far the number one wheat whiskey maker, but I mean, it's almost a pseudo bourbon, it's for sure a wheat whiskey, but there's a lot of corn in there.

(00:53:05):
And I think what we did is this a hundred percent wheat is just something very different. And we had some really old stocks of it because it never did sell very well. And we were selling this stuff on the shelf old whiskey for $59 and 99 cents, and it was kind of sitting there. So the stocks got older and older and older. And then I said, look, I think this stuff's really great. Let's send this to Fred. And I didn't know Fred from anyone other than he was really coming on the scene really strong. And we sent it into the Ascot Awards. And then of course those old stocks sold almost like the next day. And then now our average age on the wheat is four to five years, and it's still really great, but those older stocks kind of disappear. But we've got a plan now to try and get our average age for the course. It's up to eight to 10 years, but that's going to take a while.

Drew H (00:54:12):
This is the tough part about the whiskey business. I mean, you're going to find out what is the sweet spot of a whiskey long after you've distilled it.

Bill (00:54:21):
So

Drew H (00:54:21):
It's like you can't go, okay, we know four years from now we're going to love this whiskey. You just have no

Bill (00:54:27):
Idea. And it took us 12 years on this. Now we're back to square one in a way.

Drew H (00:54:32):
And so many of those wheat whiskeys are usually longer age. So you feel like we talk about when you're in Scotland and everything seems to start at a 12 year age statement there, but that's because of the weather more than anything. Yeah, it's

Bill (00:54:47):
Second use barrels or even more.

Drew H (00:54:51):
That's something else that you have to deal with here that you wouldn't really be able to talk to a Kentucky distiller about. Is the weather off of Lake Michigan then how things age in here, did you find any peculiarities about it, humidity, that sort

Bill (00:55:06):
Thing? I mean, and you're touching on an area where I think craft of distillers oftentimes know very little about and we're trying to learn more, and that is w warehousing and blending, and we continue to try and learn more and more about it. And in some ways, you're just picking up bits and pieces. I've always been someone who has sought out experts. I've been the first person to say, I don't know what I'm doing. Can you please help me? Jim Rutledge recently has been someone that we've spent quite a bit of time talking with, and what a generous and incredible guy who retired from four Roses. And I don't think he felt bad for us, but I think he recognized certainly there was opportunity to help us out. And he has quite a bit. And we've always sought out industry experts where we could, whether it was in distilling or my wife brought a lot of expertise to the hospitality and events business, and we seek people out in that category. And we've always felt like, we'll never use the term master distiller. I just think in fact, one of our company core values is called Always a journeyman. And it's almost like an eastern philosophy of you can never become a master because it's always just one step away and you keep pushing for it, but it's not achievable. And I think it's that mentality as well of continual improvement, which Toyotas is famous for a lot of their work in that area and that there's always more to be learned.

Drew H (00:56:52):
It is great to hear you say that because it stuck with me sometimes. In fact, I think one of the myths of whiskey is that the master distiller is a certification of some form. It's a job title, and you can just walk in and start up a distillery and call yourself master distiller. But it's in talking to Richard Patterson 50 year Master Blender and distiller in Scotland, I asked him, I said, what do you think about, what do you feel like master when you hear that mentioned about yourself? And he said, I do think you need to have a term of time that you have an expertise. And to me it's actually more of you really shouldn't use the term until you feel like you've gotten to a point where you can't learn anything else. And if you're there, you've mastered it.

Bill (00:57:43):
And guys like that, I mean, who really truly are masters usually they're so humble, they're just like, oh, it's a marketing term, because they know that there's more to be learned. But I mean, I'd say that for us, we believe in Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours for sure. And I think that's something that we talk about a lot in our business that if we're going to promote ourselves, which we don't do a very good job of, to be honest with you, but I mean our team and the team we have here, and we distill a lot, and there's truth to that. You got to practice.

Joanna (00:58:28):
And

Bill (00:58:28):
I always kind of have had a little saying of be wary of the clean still. Now, of course you want to clean on the inside, but the patina on the outside always tells me when I walk into a place that they're using it. And if they're using it a lot, that probably means that they have some pretty good spirit that they're making.

Drew H (00:58:46):
That's so funny. Don't go to the Evan Williams experience in

Bill (00:58:49):
Louisville

Drew H (00:58:50):
That is the most

Bill (00:58:51):
Polished still I have

Drew H (00:58:53):
Ever seen in my life.