Ep. 8 - Four Roses Distillery Manager Al Young

Transcript

DREW (00:06):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm Drew Hannush, the Amazon best-selling author of Whiskey Lore's Travel Guide to Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon. And I want to welcome you to an encore interview that I recorded in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky way back in November of 2019. And to set the scene, I am sitting in the boardroom with a Four Roses Distillery and in walks Al Young, the senior brand ambassador and former distillery manager for the Four Roses Distillery. And this was my first interview for the Whiskey Lore podcast. And if you would think that, well, Hey, I have a Kentucky legend just about the sit down with me and have a conversation. Was I nervous? Yeah, I was a little nervous, but I'll put me at ease right away. And I had just read his book called Four Roses, the Return of a Kentucky Legend. And in that book, it details the long history of Four Roses from all the way back when the Jones family was working out of a grocery store in Georgia, rectifying whiskey all the way through to the move to Kentucky and then Prohibition.

DREW (01:21):
And of course, just after ,World War II, Four Roses was actually one of the most popular brands of whiskey in the country. And so he goes through all the advertising and all the promotion that was done around that and talks about the popularity of the whiskey. Then it got passed over to Seagram's and few years pass and suddenly Four Roses straight bourbon is nowhere to be found on American shelves. It all moved overseas. And so the only thing that was left here was a bottom shelf, blended whiskey. And so Al tells a lot about that story. Then he talks about how Jim Rutledge came into the company around the same time he did back in the sixties. And he was very modest about that period of time in the book. And to me, that was a fascinating time. I really wanted to know more about what was going on at the distillery while they were making it here, but shipping it overseas.

AL (02:23):
And what did he and Jim have to go through to get the whiskey back on the shelves in the United States and also how did they bring it back to the level that they did? I mean, a great story that needs to be told. And so this was my opportunity. And in season one of Whiskey Lore, I tell the entire story there with little clips out of this interview, but this is my opportunity to share with you the entire interview to give you an opportunity, to hear more out of a man lived through that transition. And sadly Al passed away just a month after I did this interview really demonstrating to me how important it is to get these stories while we have these legends around. And I really am glad that we got a chance to chat about this. I know a lot of stories are still left untold, but right now you're going to get to hear some really great stories. And I look forward to presenting this episode to you. So here is my interview with the late Al Young of Four Roses.

DREW (03:38):
So we'll talk a little bitat first here about the, the history of the company where it basically started as a Paul Jones company, is that correct? Yes. Uand they S they started as rectifiers.

DREW (03:51):
Yes, they did.

DREW (03:52):
So rectifiers in the 19th century, some had a good name, some had a bad name. How did they go about keeping a good name?

AL (04:02):
Well, first of all, a rectifier was an honorable title back in med day because there were a lot of people that were doing it. If you go down a main street and Louisville, Kentucky, you'll be traveling where before Prohibition, there were 125 different offices representing brands right there in that one, two or three block, long stretch of main street where Paul Jones was doing his business. But as a rectifier, that meant that he would buy whiskey and Louisville, Frankfurt, Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, take it back to his central place and mingle them together to make his products. So the interesting thing there is he would not use any whiskey that was under seven years old.

DREW (04:45):
Okay. And so when it got to a point where they came out with the Pure Food and Drug Act there was a real push to define what whiskey was, but they didn't really do a great job of it. And so what part did the company play in trying to get that settled before the Taft decision?

AL (05:09):
Well, the Paul Jones coming, he made a big, big effort to say we comply and they did because they weren't putting any artificial additives into it. You know, like they weren't putting barbwire in it that was rusty to give it color. They weren't putting off flavors in it like shoe polish or whatever to give it that kind of brackish association with bourbon at the time. So they were very, very strong on that. In fact, we have an old photograph that was putting in a book, right, where Macy's is today in New York City. And the Paul Jones Company had a opposite there right above a jewelry store. And they put banners out saying we conform. We conform to make sure that everybody knew that we were doing right thing.

DREW (05:58):
Did it feel like after the Taft decision, they didn't have to do that as much? Or did that practice continue all the way up to Prohibition?

DREW (06:05):
Well, they stayed that way all the way up to Prohibition. They didn't, to my knowledge, they never tried to, to deceive anyone about the products that they were putting out. That was a funny enough, they were in for the long haul. They weren't just trying to make some money real quick and then disappear from the scene. So, but they, they rode the tide of what was there and what was offered and over so many years and so forth, they were slammed with Prohibition, slammed with temperance, slammed with women and the right to vote. And you say, well, what in the world is that got to do with whiskey as well? It has absolutely nothing yet. Everything

AL (06:53):
Because the women could sway that vote on Prohibition in one direction

AL (06:57):
That's right. And their husbands, you know, after they were working all day in the factory all week long, they get paid on maybe Thursday or Friday, and there are Saturday even. And they would take the money home and maybe they passed a saloon and some of the money stayed there on the first floor. And on the second floor, maybe they gambled some of it. And we won't talk about the third floor, but basically the women were getting a little upset with that because they needed money to run the family. So when they got the right to vote and the referendum came to for Prohibition or whatever, you can bet they were in land to make their presence known.

DREW (07:39):
You made an interesting observation in your book, which really does seem to hold water, which is that it was almost an opportunity with World War 1 for them too. And maybe the only opportunity they had to get Prohibition passed because the men were off the war and the government had already suspended alcohol sales at that time.

AL (08:04):
Right? Oh, you know, people that had wanted Prohibitions since the Mayflower landed, but they'd never had the forces martial together to make it happen. Every time they got a good speed built up, we had a war, we had an economic downturn. We had things that aren't even in the book about the financial disasters of the 1880s and so forth. For example and whiskey and alcoholic beverages have always added to the coffers, whether it's in increased taxes, general sales tax or whatever, they've always added to that, but here we sail along and we're going into World War I. And so they said, well, now, you know, we think we want to do a ban on alcohol production so that we can, the grain to making bread for the troops in Europe, I mean, you think about when the bread is made in the United States and how long it tastes to get across the ocean.

AL (09:08):
And what's it going to end up like when it gets there, it was a little convoluted, but it worked and they got some sympathy for that as well. And they told the major producers, look, we're in the war now, but we're really thinking about extending this thing about making whiskey to drink and turning it into Prohibition in 1921. So that'll give you time to get everything out of the way that you need to get done with a business so that when it comes, you can explore other interests or whatever. And then somebody said, Hey, wait, how are we, how come are we being so charitable? We're already in it, although it's not defined. So let's just do it now. And when they did, they caught a lot of whiskey in the warehouses that people couldn't get rid of. So they ended up selling it to people who in time bought a license to sell for medicinal purposes only and gave their producers pennies on the dollar for the whiskey sometimes, unless they were good buds. And you saw a lot of cross bottling, you saw a lot of label attempts to stay alive, but followed by other people, even, you know, like old hooky or whatever, being put out by a different distilling company. So it was a desperate time for the alcohol producers. Four Roses was lucky enough that the Jones family got a license to vend alcohol for medicinal purposes when they purchased the Frankfort Distillery.

DREW (10:58):
Okay. So that was an interesting time because they weren't allowed to produce any alcohol, but they could sell alcohol. Is that true? Or were there any, are there any of those six allowed to actually produce?

AL (11:14):
Well, nobody could sell on the open market alcohol. It had to go through a really tightly controlled system for medicinal purposes. So consequently, some of the big producers resorted to making different products, whether it was like Anheiser Busch, even though they were in beer, they made near beer, which was just slightly under the alcohol limit. And then they went into baking business and they went into all kinds of stuff to try to keep themselves alive. And it was pretty rough

DREW (11:53):
It's interesting. I grew up with Stroh's Ice Cream.

AL (11:57):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it was, it was, but the devastation had already been done when they did Prohibition. They took away the revenue that the United States needed an income in taxes. Thank goodness for income tax that helped to save a little bit about the revenue that was beingavoided in terms of the government. But it, it bit pretty heavy into the treasury of the United States to have Prohibition. Then of course, as everybody knows through television and everything else, Prohibition brought about its own spoilage with gangsters and that sort of thing. But I like to look at it as being a caveat because of the speakeasies that attracted some of those women, they wanted to have Prohibition now found out that they would go out and have a drink at a speakeasy. So unofficially, I think there were more women that went into the, into the drinking culture then than there were before them. But to make that palatable, then the bartenders who were doing this probably more in the open than people would like to think had to make drinks that were appealing to women. So they perceived it. So they added, produces and made different cocktail variations to make it profitable.

DREW (13:23):
Well, I'm guessing that a lot of times they were also masking rock gut and stuff. That just was a very low quality, whatever they could get their hands on

AL (13:31):
That's right. So it was, it was it was a time when the law was drying, the country was wet.

DREW (13:41):
So it was interesting to see that when it came time for them to repeal Prohibition, there was this, okay, you can go and get started, but we all know that whiskey doesn't just come right out of the still and suddenly get on a shelf. It takes time to go through that process. And one of the things I read in your book was about a Stitzel a distillery was actually the first one because they still had all their equipment that we're able to start producing in the late twenties. And then I saw that that company was bought by Frankfort Distilling was that purchased because they knew that was probably the quickest way to get back on the market.

AL (14:30):
Well, they didn't have a distillery themselves, Frankfort didn't up until this point. And most of the other distilleries had to sell off their equipment by law. So there wasn't anybody really out there doing it. If you recall, I believe is what, 1928, they had what they called a distillers holiday, where they say we're using so much alcohol for medicinal purposes. We've got to make so many million gallons to take care of that void. Well, there was nobody left to do it. So A. Ph. Stitzel did it for all of them. They made their whiskey. So it was natural for Frankfort who want to pick them up. And it's odd how this works. They always seem to have some money.

DREW (15:21):
Well, another thing I wonder about Prohibition is, was Prohibition pretty much the end of family distilleries.

AL (15:28):
It was the end of no, actually it really wasn't. It, it, but it was, it took a dent in it put a dent in it. A lot of the small mom and pops went by the way. And there were a lot of producers, you know, we got our origin with the farmer distillers that were making whiskey or alcohol out of excess corn, excess corn, and selling it off to make some money while those folks, if they had anything about them at all, and tried to produce a brand, they were hit hard. And probably didn't come back. For example, here in Anderson County that were probably 12 to 15 distilleries before Prohibition. And when we came back, there were three. Mm.

DREW (16:17):
And how does a town or an area recover from that sort of thing? What did the towns do?

AL (16:23):
Well, they reached out for other businesses and here they attracted a meat packing company. They attracted a tile company, a button factory, anything to try to make it more palatable for people to stay here in the community rather than to try to get jobs somewhere else.

DREW (16:45):
So a distillery pre-Prohibition versus now, do they pretty much need the same amount of manpower to run them or has it increased since then, or

AL (17:00):
It's hard to say don't really have any accurate figures of the manpower to run this place. For example, Four Roses, just right, before Prohibition, I do have the union rolls that are available. It looks like we had quite a few people on there, but over time we have dropped the number of people to actually make the process from about 11 down to five per shift. And we've done that. It wasn't wholesale bloodletting. It was done through attrition. As people retired, we reduce those numbers of people in each area needed to five. Although there are 25 because we have a 24 hour operation and it's a three shift day and we always have crew kind of running around there somewhere. That's either on or off, maybe it's 20 instead of 25, but, but that's a close look at how the stabbing is done, but now we have support groups with maintenance. And, you know, that's an interesting thing that you asked that because this is the home for Four Roses. There is no other, so we have all of our marketing team here, our county team personnel, and all of the things that it takes to run a very small corporation are right here. So we certainly have more people than they would have had before 12

DREW (18:25):
Ish. Okay. Yeah. Marketing was always a big thing for Four Roses from the sign and tTmes square to even when Seagram's took over the advertising, it was very creative and, and trying to create that whole brand image that for roses would want it to be known for.

AL (18:49):
It's amazing. It really is. It started out as, as more or less a, what do you call it? A line of graph kind of, kind of adds in the, in the, before the bro Prohibition. And then shortly thereafter, they had a few more of those and then it jumped a coat of color and then it got more creative with different themes. But, you know, in 1938 after Prohibition that everybody got together and said, well, we got to regulate advertising a little bit because, you know, we don't want to let this thing run away with us. So they finally came to a common agreement that they wouldn't use women in advertising because they thought that was demeaning and they wouldn't use animals. And they wouldn't use members of the armed forces because that would kind of may paint him to be a little bit different than they were. And then they kind of got a little lenient on the animals and threw a dog in every once in a while or whatever in the ads.

DREW (19:52):
And they didn't realize that pets do sell products.

AL (19:58):
Yeah. And then they said more importantly, we can't use center clause. Uwe can't use,the people of the day that indicate a seasonal influence on the product. So you won't see a lot of ads from that time up until the sixties that,uhad any kind of,ubow to women, bow to animals, you saw more of a product centered thing. And then I think in the fifties, the late,the late fifties before,all of the craziness came about in sixties, we did a lot of ads that were regional, like city ads, building up different cities and trying to increase the market share there. We even had the Four Roses Society that,was our,glee club, if you will, for the brand. And they had a bulldog as a mascot called Battlin' Bill. And,he was in a lot of ads, even when they did one for Alaska, when it became a state, they had a bunch of stuff about him being on a dog sled, which I thought was kind of funny. And then they had him on a surf board for Hawaii.

DREW (21:24):
Nice.

AL (21:26):
So, and then in the sixties, in the late sixties, early seventies Seagram's was on the cutting edge in terms of working women into advertising on television.

DREW (21:37):
So one of the things that the product has held for most of its life is this feeling of quality. And during Prohibition, I know there were special packaging that you guys were doing for the product. What kind of innovative packaging?

AL (21:55):
We had a, we had a carton that was developed that was supposed to designed to guarantee the purity of the product by being a tamper-proof seal. Once you put the product in there, you put a metal closure on the top and bottom of it that if it was tampered with, you could see it and the revenue people that were out there looking at all these shipments suddenly got to recognize this and figured that it was okay when it was being shipped out, even for medicinal purposes. Yeah. So that helped a lot. And the idea of guaranteeing purity and quality was something that never left the brand. I mean, even when the Seagram's bought the whole operation in 1943, after the last Jones family member died in 1941, they didn't really care a whole lot about how Frankfort made their whiskey. They wanted to add their own flourish to it. But the one thing they did was they always adhered to quality, integrity, and craftsmanship in everything they did. So they elevated the Four Roses brand and first into enabling, which was a blend of all whiskeys before they thought about turning it into a B blend, which indicated that they had something in it less than bourbon.

DREW (23:18):
So 1952, an article came out in Spirits Magazine pretty much said thatFour Roses was one of America's best known and most admired brands in America. Was that pretty much the top of the hill before Seagram started diluting the product and making it a blend rather than a straight whiskey. And was it a straight whiskey at that time and

AL (23:47):
Was slowly being all evolving into a blend with the, with some other things in it, like less age on the alcohol neutral grain, alcohol blending spirits, stuff like that, being put into it. And you have to remember that this was done during a time who went, and it wasn't just prevalent in Seagram's hierarchy, but all of the other major producers like Schenley, they were masters at it too. We'd actually influenced the public as to what you were going to drink and how you were gonna drink it in addition to telling you where you could get it. So we were shaping the public's preference and backing that up with a lot of salespeople going from door to door in all of your major cities to just tell retailers, you know, anything we can do to help, what can we do for you that we can make, you need a little bit of a price reduction. We might be able to work out something for you. So it was all legal, all labor. Yeah,

DREW (24:59):
But it was kind of the industry saying maybe it's better for us to move towards blends rather than straight

AL (25:05):
Whiskey taste preference in the United States was being shaped that way as well. So you know, we, after that, after the war and all that sort of thing, we're doing a lot of home entertaining blended whiskey was in vogue. People like that the heavy bourbons and so forth were looked upon as grandpa's whiskey. So consequently blends were the tour de force until somebody realized, Hey, we've been over in Europe, we've been fighting over there and we has vodka. And that was pretty cool. Why don't we get somebody to bring vodka over here? And then another ones spoke up and said, well, we've always known about it, but we never took it seriously. How about scotch? Maybe we should become upper crust by drinking scotch. Like all the big people back did, did back in the thirties and forties. So preferences change. And Seagram's tried to keep up with that change by having over 300 different products on the market, including Four Roses blended whiskey, but they had always decide, well, they decided after the war to take Four Roses into the export market, because they had a lot of whiskey aging in the warehouse and they thought maybe this will work if we just take it over there and sell it in the export market is a full blown bourbon with putting all of America behind it.

DREW (26:34):
So how did that transition happen to where suddenly Four Roses went from being a straight to suddenly being sold in Europe and Asia, and then all of a sudden disappearing from the shelves of the United States all

AL (26:52):
The way it went very carefully. It was very orchestrated and it was, I'm sure it was our question of supply depletion to the point where, you know, when it, when it got, when they got done with the Four Roses straight bourbon, they had the blend ready to go in his place.

DREW (27:13):
Okay. And you joined the company in 1967?

AL (27:17):
That's correct.

DREW (27:18):
So you were kind of coming in when these plans were already done and there was nothing being sold in the United. Was there nothing being sold in the U S or was there a bottom shelf brand at that point?

AL (27:33):
Well, Four Roses was being so old in the United States as a blended whiskey only. So when I was coming in, they were making plans down the road to turn it into Four Roses premium whiskey, which would have taken the advantage of light whiskey, which is distilled above 160 proof and his age only for a short period of time and previously used barrels. So, I mean, these guys were always thinking about, well, how can they squeeze that nickel out of whatever they can make? I mean, they were certainly not short when it came to the creation and innovation.

DREW (28:14):
So like whiskey is a fascinating thing to me because I missed that. I didn't even know it existed. And when I read about it, it just fascinated me because light beer came out just a couple of years after like whiskey. So this whole light trend was, was rolling in, but it wasn't about keeping calories down. It was more about trying to soften the whiskey up a little bit or make it more palatable. Well,

AL (28:41):
It was to try to make it more identical with some of the lighter alcoholic beverages, the route there, like vodka and so forth. There were some companies and we did not engage in that to try to put out a clear whiskey that had no color to it at all. And it was moderately proved and it dad and he noble death because the drinking public was too astute to fall into that trap. Yeah. You know, if you had your people that really like bourbon, they gravitated toward the brands that were still around old Crow and things like that on the American market. But if they want a blended whiskey, they stayed with the blends as long as they could. Or when James Bond movies came out, they wanted that vodka martini that was shaken, not stirred, which caused quite a flurry in the alcohol industry.

DREW (29:40):
Do you, James Bond had a lot to do with the fact that people were moving away from...

AL (29:45):
I can't negate. It,

DREW (29:48):
I love that because that is a story I'm kind of following. It's interesting to see the different opinions, especially since in the books, Ian Fleming had James Bond as a bourbon drinker more than anything else.

DREW (29:59):
Yeah.

DREW (30:00):
So, yeah. It's fascinating. So you were also...were Benchmark and Eagle Rare around already when you started with the company or were they, did they come up?

AL (30:11):
They came in after I was with the company.

DREW (30:14):
Okay. And those were sold as straight whiskeys?

AL (30:17):
Yes, they were.

DREW (30:17):
So why did they decide to go with those instead of Four Roses as well?

AL (30:22):
They were making an attempt into a market that was trendy. They were trying to look for something that, that would be sophisticated. You had something that had a regional flare for it. So the Eagle Rare came about because they decided that they would tie that in with saving the American Eagle. So they had a big campaign that if you bought you donated to the, say the Eagle campaign, it was a very good whiskey at 101 proof. It was excellent. As a matter of fact, and I was infatuated with it when I first came out here because we made all that whiskey for it here, Benchmark was made in Louisville and it was a little higher in phenol is out of the, has an esters, which you made it highly conducive to short return. In other words, you drank it and you were intoxicated. You were on the verge of feeling the effect of your alcohol.

DREW (31:27):
Yeah. So you came out here in 1990?

AL (31:33):
1983. I was here first time. And that was when they were doing the big shutdowns. They shut the I was here in 82, 83, and they shut Louisville down in 83. So I was out here and given the opportunity to go to Indiana and worked for what was Seagram's and sons in Lawrenceburg, Indiana for approximately seven years. And I worked in warehousing in the distillery there.

DREW (32:00):
And then when you came back here, you came back as distillery manager?

AL (32:03):
I came back as the shift supervisor actually quickly made it to distllery manager.

DREW (32:08):
Okay. Very good. So you were here really well, actually, Jim Rutledge is a master distiller started with a company in 66 and you started in 67. So you guys knew each other

AL (32:20):
Long time. In fact, Jim often tells the tale that he gave me my first tour in Louisville, and he was lucky we got through it because he said, I'd probably didn't know more than you did. So we knew each other for a very long time, Very long time.

DREW (32:36):
He was a strong supporter for Four Roses as a bird.

AL (32:42):
He had, he had followed the brand and he had gone up the corporate ladder very well. And ended up going into working in New York for a long time. If you will almost sitting at the right hand, you know, that sort of thing. And then when the opportunity to come back to Kentucky presented itself, he said he wanted to do that and see what he could do to bring the quality up of the brand itself and try to re-establish it.

DREW (33:13):
He probably had to fight for that. I'm guessing because that was not an easy road for him. Yeah. So he came back here in 1995. I understand. But in 94 was a year where you guys actually got back into the United States.

AL (33:31):
Well, no, Jim was back here in 93.

DREW (33:34):
Was he?

AL (33:34):
Okay. He was down at Cox Creek in 92, 93, somewhere in that area. And he was working at budgets and he was becoming a slowly it Kentucky area manager before he replaced Ova Haney. Here has him as a master distiller in 1994. Okay. So Jim was here to begin to get his influence known in that area.

DREW (33:57):
What was it like to finally see Four Roses on the shelves in Kentucky? Again,

AL (34:04):
It was exciting because for years we had made poor roses and couldn't buy it. I mean, you know, and, and it's, it's frustrating to be able to tell people how good it is, but if you can't get to it, what are you going to do

DREW (34:19):
That premium light Four Roses never hit the U S shell. The

AL (34:24):
Premium light whiskey did hit the shelves yet. That was the bad part we had to get rid of all

DREW (34:31):
That stuff. And

AL (34:33):
If I buy up as much of it as we could, I mean, you probably might find a couple of bottles out there even today, but we try to get everything off the shelf so we could bring the whiskey back into the market.

DREW (34:45):
Okay So 19 when that happened and you were trying to make that, and you were just selling this in Kentucky. What, I mean, how long did it just sell in Kentucky? How long was it before you finally could start

AL (35:00):
It wasn't a long time? It was a relatively short time in the late 1990s, but we, we huh. It was kind of funny. They had misquoted the price on the bottle and it was selling for 9 95 per seven, 50 mil Four Roses bourbon. So we were all at running out, buying everything. We could just to keep it in the market, but to take advantage of the price. And we went to the first we went to the Bourbon Festival in Kentucky and in Bardstown rather with special permission. And we had to get that to bring the whiskey, even in to Kentucky to bring it there. And I mean, we had a borrowed rug. We had a card table. We had, I brought my champagne bottle from home and we had roses in it. And we're all standing around over on the other side where some of the bigger producers with their pre-made front porches and so forth. And we thought, man, how we're going to compete with that? And the door opens to bring everybody in. And the first people that came in were the Japanese and they saw our Four Roses and they kept running across the floor, yelling Four Roses, Four Roses, Four Roses!!!. And we haven't had to worry about looking back since.

DREW (36:19):
Wow. So that was the introduction of straight Kentucky whiskey again to the market. Very nice. So there was a period between 1999 and 2002, where you had to feel like a ping pong ball going between corporations.

AL (36:35):
You know, we didn't re I mean, Jim probably did and kept it to himself, but we didn't really look at anything. We just figured we're making whiskey every day and making it the best way we know how keep doing that. Everything's going to be fine. We're going to be sold. What are we going to do? Now? I was concerned actually, as distillery manager, I was concerned. I had kids in college. I had kids in high school. I went home and told my wife. I said, it doesn't look good. She said, well, what's going to happen. I said, well, if they could do two things, they could either sell the whole place out from Honduras. And other people would come in and bring their people in to run it. Or more importantly, they could take the brand and make it somewhere else. And that third ideas, they could shut the whole thing down by the brand and retired because we'd seen him do that with other brands in the 1980s.

AL (37:31):
So she said, well, what are you going to do? I said, I had to ride it out. So I had calls from people in Bardstown that said, if things get bad, you always have a job with us, which helped a lot, you know? But Jim tried all kinds of things to get people interested. He even told us we should all invest our retirement funds in it. And then when we looked at how much everybody had in retirement, we figured it wouldn't be near enough. So then we were fought over by Pernod Ricard and Diageo, neither which could buy without getting to be the monopoly holder in Europe. So then Karin, who we'd had a business relationship with since 1971 found that we were available and Jim courted them, they accorded Four Roses and ended up buying the Whole thing.

DREW (38:28):
This is the part of the story that I absolutely love the irony that it was sold in and Europe and wasn't being sold in the United States for so long. And then a Japanese company comes in and makes the purchase. Did what was your, so you guys already knew because of your relationship with them through the Seagram's distribution channels, that they weren't going to go back to just Europe and Asia with that, this was going to be opening the door to the United States.

AL (39:03):
Well, that was one of the basic things they said. You remember that? And the picture of the nurse and the sailor at the end of the war and New York city with a big time, big sign, they said they wanted to bring it back into the United States and make it as strong as it was back then. So that was a win-win right there.

DREW (39:23):
Beautiful. Yeah. So now you have a damaged brand or a brand that's had some time where it's been seen as a bottom shelf whiskey, or is completely forgotten by the American public. How do you go about bringing that back to not only being a whiskey that somebody wants to drink, but one that again gets its stature amongst the best whiskeys.

AL (39:54):
A lot of foot pounding, a lot of attraction to the press. A lot of distributor interface, you know, we started out in Kentucky, grabbed up Indiana, Tennessee. Then we got into Illinois kind of baby steps, trying to get everything back in order. We even had people that came down with pickup trucks to buy whiskey from us that they couldn't get in their respective areas and take it back with them because they knew it was so good. So it was just a question of concerted effort. Jim was running all around the place or one of our engineers, John Ray made up shelf talkers or knickers to put on bottles here in Kentucky, he was running around, we were going to bars, anybody that would, Deb would take a bottle in, we'd give them a bottle even to let them just put it on the shelf to see how it would work.

DREW (40:56):
And we had time on our side in a way, because a lot of the people that had followed the ran closely were getting older. So consequently, we had to do more of an educational technique to get new drinkers involved with the brand. So we started doing some of that. And then we increased our efforts with international sales teams, brought them over here from Japan and Europe to teach them about bourbon. And it just had a trickle down effect all over the place. As we began to teach, they began to disseminate that information out to everybody else. And, you know, are we masters at it? Heck no, we've got a long way to go. But it seemed to work

DREW (41:43):
Well, you also came out with two products, small batch and single barrel were those concepts that were out there already had you seen other people doing that?

AL (41:56):
Other people were doing it , but we thought being as unique as we are with 10 different recipes, we ought to be able to come up with something that would set us apart from everybody else. So the, I believe I got it right. The single barrel came out in 2004 and Jim chose the OB SB recipe for that. So that was the high rise Nashville and the fruity yeast. And they were the barrels he chose were eight or nine years old and it was a hundred proof and the gamble paid off because the single barrel suddenly jumped to the top of the charts. It's interesting to know that it was at one time, the best-selling bourbon at the maker's mark lounge and Louisville and forestry. Yeah, very interesting. So that was 2004, 2006. So we came out with a small batch, which we had helped from the blender from Kirin and Jota Tanaka who came over here and decided a ratio for the K and the O yeast with both mash bills. And everybody agreed that this was just, if you liked it, we've accomplished our objective.

DREW (43:06):
Yeah. Well, another thing that I noticed about the product or the bottles, the bottles feel very substantial. Was that a, a conscious decision as well?

AL (43:20):
Well, we had a choice. We could go cheap or we could invest in bottles that are singularly unique and, and readily identifiable. So we went that way and we tried to get bottles that no matter what you do to them on the shelf, you can't crowd them out. So,Uh,we,made the small batch to resemble a rose. If you turn it over,the statuesque single barrel is the way it is. And so that it doesn't look like a trade bottle. And then a small batch select has a bottle of just like the one for a regular small batch, but it too, can't be muscled out of the shelf.

DREW (44:06):
It has elbows.

AL (44:06):
[Laughs]

DREW (44:10):
Well, thank you so much. I appreciate your time doing the interview today.

AL (44:14):
Well, thank you for coming by and I appreciate the opportunity to sit and talk with you as well,

DREW (44:19):
Gone too soon. And I definitely appreciate Alison from Four Roses for helping make this interview a reality. Do you want more information about Four Roses? So you can head to fourrosesbourbon.com and for on taking a trip to Kentucky and planning out a bourbon journey of your own. Make sure to grab a copy of my book Whiskey Lore's Travel Guide to Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon, featuringe 32 distillery profiles, travel hacks and everything you need to plan a perfect trip it's available from Amazon or whiskey-lore.com until next time. Cheers and Slainte mhath. Whiskey Lore's a production of Travel Fuels Life LLC.