Ep. 7 - Nelson's Green Brier's Co-Founder Andy Nelson

Transcript

Drew (00:15):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, drew Hamish, the Amazon best-selling author of Whiskey Lores Travel Guide to Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon. And I want to welcome you to an encore interview that I recorded back in Nashville in 2020. It's where I got a chance to talk about a Tennessee whiskey, one that you may not have heard of before, but one that back in the late 19th century was the most popular Tennessee whiskey, even beyond George Dickel and Jack Daniels. What's really fun about this story is that even the ancestors of this distilling giant had no idea how big it was, so it would end up taking a historic marker and a trip to a butcher shop to get those descendants, the descendants of Charles Nelson, curious about their family's distilling past and the results of this curiosity, what would find two brothers hunting down not only their family history, but reinvigorating the family brand.

(01:22):
So join me from within inside Nelson's Greenbrier Distillery in Nashville, Tennessee as I have a chat with one of the co-founding brothers of the distillery, Andy Nelson. And I'll seek to uncover more information about the harrowing journey that the family's patriarch John Phillip Nelson took getting his family to America. A story that you can hear in season three of whiskey lore. That's John Phillips dream. And we'll also look at Charles Nelson's journey in getting into the distilling business. And we'll look at Andy and Charlie's journey as brothers over a hundred years after that distillery faded away, and how they reinvigorated the name and brought it back along with the name Bell Mead. So join me now as we sit down and chat with Andy Nelson of Nelson's Greenbrier Distillery. How did you come about finding this family history involving whiskey?

Andy (02:31):
Yeah. Well, we came about it because, so growing up, my brother and I had heard a little bit about the distillery, but we didn't know if it was even necessarily a distillery. We just had heard little bits and pieces of the idea that there was some sort of whiskey thing in Greenbrier, Tennessee. And so Greenbrier, of course, is about 30 minutes north of Asheville, but at that time, we didn't even know where Greenbrier was. We had just kind of heard of it. We didn't know if it was a real legitimate business, if it was legal, how big it was or anything like that. And so then the thing that really kind of brought us to it was my dad went in with some buddies to buy a full cow worth of meat from a butcher up in Greenbrier. And so dad asked us, this was summer of 2006, and I had graduated from college the previous year, and Charlie, my brother, had just, he had a semester left before graduating, and so dad asked us if we wanted to go with him to go pick up this meat, our quarter of the cow worth. Yeah. So we said, sure. So it was me and Charlie and mom and dad, and we get in the car, we go up to Greenbrier and we stop to get gas right before we get there. And at the gas station, it's at Springfield Highway in Main Street in Greenbrier, and there's a Sitco station now, and there's this historical marker that says Nelson's Greenbrier Distillery on it. And when we were pumping gas, we saw that and we're just blown away thinking, this must be it. Right.

Drew (04:10):
So at that point, did you know that you specifically had had a family member who had built a distillery? Or was it you'd heard echos of something? It was,

Andy (04:24):
Yeah, I mean a little of both, if that makes sense. I mean, we knew that Charles Nelson was his, that's my brother's name. I mean, literally there's a William and or a Charles in every generation of our family going all the way back to this Charles Nelson of the distillery. So we knew that Charles was a name, and we knew that he was the one who had the whiskey thing in Greenbrier. It was that. But once we saw this marker, it was like, oh, okay, this is a little bit of, this is the first breadcrumb we're going to see for this thing, a big clue. So it said, one mile east on Long Branch Road, Charles Nelson opened the Greenbriar distillery. It goes on to talk about the economic prosperity. It brought the town and the county and such. And so it was like, wow, this was a real thing.

(05:10):
And it was just really, really this surreal, amazing moment. But the fact was we were still at a gas station pumping gas, so we filled up the tank and figured out, let's ask the butcher if he knows anything about this, because he only lived about a mile away. So we get to his house, and as the sign said, one mile east, well, a butcher lived about a mile east. So we get to his house, and by the way, this is, it's not a fancy butcher shop, it's just this small country town butcher, this guy named Chuck Grissom, and it's just his house. And then behind his house is his slaughter house. And so we're introduced to him through, I guess a mutual friend, and we got there. We asked him what he knew about the old distillery, and he said, well, look across. And we looked across the street and probably no more than a hundred yards away was this original barrel warehouse.

(06:04):
And it was like, we saw it on the drive up, and we were kind of like, oh, that's a cool building. But of course, we didn't even know enough to know at that point that that looks exactly like an old distillery barrel warehouse, and that's exactly what it was. And so this old building sitting there, and then behind the creek was this old springhouse, and the creek was being fed by that spring, and then sitting right above the creek was this old, it looked like a grain house or something. I think we figured now that it was likely a fermentor building that held fermentation vats. So we saw these things and it was like each building that we saw and walked into was just more and more surreal. And that was the experience of that first day of recognizing like, holy crap, this is a big thing. And Chuck the butcher, he told us to go over back about a couple blocks from where we came to the Greenbrier Historical Society, where it's just a small little Victorian style house dedicated to the history of the town of Greenbrier, and it has a little kind of library in there and everything. So we walked up there and the nice lady at the library asked what we wanted to see, and we told her, well, our name is Nelson. And she kind of like, oh, that's an important

Drew (07:29):
Name.

Andy (07:29):
Yeah, a fun fact. We have since not too far after that, someone told us kind of jokingly, my brother, Charlie, Charles Nelson, they're like, I bet you anything, even at 23 years old, I bet you could be mayor of this town based on the name recognition alone. Yeah. So anyway, we got there and we walk into this room that was dedicated mostly to the history of the distillery, and we saw these old artifacts and things that people had dug up or found from kids playing in the creek over the years. And among them was, there's this glass case with these two original bottles, a Greenbriar Tennessee whiskey with our name on it. And that was really just the moment it was being struck by lightning, as Charlie will say, it was really that moment where we knew this is what we're here to do. Nice. Again, I was just out of college, Charlie, who's still not even graduated yet, but we knew, all right, well, we've got something we can do and we can just put our whole life into it because we didn't have families of our own or kids or any careers, anything like that.

(08:37):
I was going to

Drew (08:37):
Say, did you have any kind of career direction at that point, or did it just fall into your lap at that minute? It

Andy (08:43):
Kind of just fell into my lap at that minute for me. I mean, Charlie, obviously not because he was still in school, but at that point, that summer, I was, let's see, I can't remember if it was that or after. Anyway, I had interned at the Country Music Association for a summer and then was doing video editing for a software publishing company as well. But it was really, I didn't go to school for that or anything. It was just they needed someone to do it, and I did it, and I actually liked it, and I think I was pretty good at it for a very beginner, but that's what I was doing. So it was nice because it's not, I don't know, I was able to take something and do the research on the side after work and stuff, so it worked out well.

Drew (09:31):
Okay. So this was 2006. So in 2006, there still really wasn't an open landscape for building a distillery in Tennessee. Correct. That was still, there were still some legal battles to be fought to open Tennessee up beyond what, three counties I think at that time? Yeah,

Andy (09:52):
That's exactly right. And yeah, big time struggles. So at that point, we were looking into, okay, yeah, just typical starting a business plan. What does it take to open this business? And it's a highly regulated industry, of course, beverage, alcohol. And one of the things was that, to your point, it was only legal to distill in three counties in the state. Davidson County, where we are in Nashville was not one of them, nor was Robertson County, which is where the town of Greenbriar was and still is. And so we found that we would have to, gosh, now if I can remember the details, that we would have to start get a referendum in the county and get some percentage of voters who voted in the last election to back this referendum to allow us to allow distilling, I guess, in the county. And even, of course, with all that, the whole political process, it was like you had to wait till the next election cycle and all the years it would take. And so it was pretty daunting at first, but it was like that was the only thing we knew we could do. So we started that process.

Drew (11:03):
I was going to say, you probably didn't take a political science career or tracked in college.

Andy (11:08):
No. I took a political science class, but politics are not my favorite thing. But simultaneously, there were some folks in here in Nashville, which we lived in Nashville, but we were trying to do this thing in Robertson County. And so there were some other folks in Nashville who had begun trying to get it legal to distill in Davidson County. And kind of long story short, by 2010, it became legal in 40 some odd counties with throughout the state. And so that was great help for us, of course. And so we were fully supportive of that venture as well. By that time, we had figured, all right, for various reasons, it probably isn't going to work initially in Robertson County, just based on a handful of other factors that are not. Were

Drew (12:10):
You thinking of potentially putting it back in the same spot that it came from? Oh, yeah. I've seen that strip of land. It's not very wide. So that wouldn't be a very big facility, would it?

Andy (12:19):
Right. There's a bunch of housing around there. I mean, the fact is, it's just essentially what we found is that if we wanted, which we did, this was absolutely our plan. We wanted to build a distillery on that original ground and that original lands, but we found that it was going to cost us many millions of dollars just to acquire enough land to not only build the distillery on, but in practical terms, we would likely have to buy land and property and houses from people just so that we could tear them down and build roads to have the appropriate access for a distillery and a commercial business like that, and in sort of an industrial business. So it just wasn't, we just became a little too much for us at that moment. And so we said, okay, well, let's maybe wait for the future on that, but in the meantime, let's start something in Nashville where we're a little more familiar. Maybe we can start smaller. And so that's what we

Drew (13:28):
Did. So talk a little bit about how you came upon the history then, because you've done some extensive history. So it sounds not knowing anything about Charles Nelson or how much did you know about Charles Nelson when you started this process?

Andy (13:47):
Yeah, we started from that day in 2006. We realized, all right, we've got some history to learn here. And in the process of building the business plan, it was like there were almost three phases of learning that we had to go through. There was learning how the industry works, just the distilling and beverage alcohol industry. There was our family history of course, and then there was, and which kind of goes along with the distillery history. I guess those were two, they're really the two main phases. I don't know what the third was. I was just making up the number three. It sounds good. You

Drew (14:27):
Really wanted to work that into the marketing part of the whole thing as well.

Andy (14:32):
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, we just jumped right in and started going to city, St City county, state archives, libraries, whatever we could do, talking to family members, getting somewhat of oral histories and just from generations older than us, and going to folks in Greenbriar and just trying to mean almost like journalists, honestly, just trying to follow a story. Okay, you give me a lead. Tell me about this one other person who you think may know something more about it. Maybe they have an old bottle, maybe their grandfather or grandmother worked at the distillery or has some story about it. And that's as simple as that. I mean, it just took, but over the years, and I mean, we still nowadays will, every now and then come across, someone will reach out to us and say, I knew this story about the old distillery, or you name it mean, we continue to learn a whole lot about it into the present day. So it wasn't like we figured it all out within that first year

Drew (15:41):
Or anything. Well, I know from my own studies on things that you kind of go through layers and you find one layer, you solidify that layer, and then you have to move on to the next layer and try to get after that one. So how long was it before? Because it's a very interesting story, and maybe you can relate it to us, the story of John Phillip and Charles and the journey across the ocean and all of that. And when did you find that information? How early in the process did you find that story? Well,

Andy (16:18):
That was one of the first things we found out, but the details of it took essentially years to uncover themselves. So I say it was kind of the first thing that we learned, because I mentioned earlier that we grew up hearing a little bit about the idea that there was some sort of whiskey thing in the town of Greenbrier, as little as we knew about that. But the other thing that we had grown up hearing was this kind of fantastical tale of our family member coming over from Germany on a boat with the gold sewn into his clothing. And then he sank, and the rest of the family made it, but with nothing but the clothes in their backs. And that's kind of the extent of the detail that I remember hearing. But this is of course, as me as a little kid, and honestly, I, it's funny because I remember only so much detail, but I do definitely remember knowing, have having some inkling that when I'd hear my dad tell this story occasionally, I mean, he's an old southern storyteller kind of guy. And I remember my mom occasionally teasing him about the old, never let the truth get in the way of a good story kind of

Drew (17:33):
Thing.

Andy (17:34):
And so as a kid, I was like, is he just lying about what's going on with this? But I very least knew or thought that maybe he was embellishing this just for the sake of a good story. And then over the years, we found out that not only was he not embellishing, it was actually wilder than he even knew. Wow. And so basically the story is basically that, so Charles Nelson, who is my great grandfather, my triple, so he grew up, he was born in Germany on the 4th of July in 1835, and it's a small town called Hagan. And his father, John Phillip Nelson, who would've been my quadruple great-grandfather, owned a soap and candle factory there. And so in 1850, he decided that he wanted to sell the soap and candle factory and moved the family to America. So he sold the factory, and he had all the proceeds from that sale and the rest of whatever the family owned converted into gold coin could have been gold bricks for all I know, but gold in any case, that he had special clothing made to sow the gold into his clothing, literally just in his clothing.

(18:50):
So they got on a boat in October of 1850 from Hamburg to New York. It was called the Hellis Loman, and it was the third voyage that the Helen Sloman had taken from Hamburg to New York. The previous two voyages had carried a couple other now at least name recognized German immigrant families, and that'd be the Hines family of Hines tomato ketchup and stuff who settled in Pittsburgh. And then Steinweg, which was anglicized into Steinway of Steinway pianos. Oh, okay. Which is kind of cool. That actually came from, this was years ago before we opened the distillery and everything. And my dad called Charlie on a Sunday afternoon, and he said, Charlie, you watching the History Channel? He was like, of all the things in the world, I could be like, no, I don't happen to be. He's like, well turn it on. They're talking about the Helens Loman. So he turns it on and they talk about the Helena Sloman, and that's where we found, they didn't mention anything about Charles Nelson at that time, right on the show, but they talk about the Hines and the Steinweg families. So that's how we learn about that. So some of it kind of accidentally comes to us. So

Drew (20:08):
You've walked into a museum basically in the town of Greenbriar devoted to your part of your family's history, and now you're watching the History Channel and your part of your family's history is showing up.

Andy (20:21):
Yeah, that was pretty wild. So yeah, now I'm like, God, man, we got to tell the history channel about this and tell 'em that Charles Nelson was on that so they can kind of amend their little, edit their program, include him. So the crazy thing about that voyage, and it was the third and final voyage, and we know that because the boat, I don't know exactly what, but I know that it went down at in the same general vicinity as the Titanic. So it is entirely somewhere off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. So it is entirely possible that it was swiped an iceberg or something like that. But the point is, it was in sinking, it was taking on water for about a week. So it wasn't a really terrible,

Drew (21:09):
It wasn't immediate. It didn't go down in minutes. It went down in, the passengers knew something was going on, but communication back then, right. Wouldn't have been with the Titanic where they could just send out an sos.

Andy (21:20):
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So this was 1850, and so there ended up an American rescue ship kind of passing by, called the Devin Shire, and I guess they kind of morse coded over to them, Hey, we're sinking here. Can you get us? So they start rescuing passengers and just sending the rescue dinghies sort of little back and forth boats, 10 or 12 at a time. And Charles's father, John Phillip let everybody, he said, I'm going on the last of these boats. So the family makes it to the Devin Shire, and John Phillip gets on that last rescue dinghy, and I don't know if it was a rogue wave or what, but that boat capsized, that rescue boat capsized in the transfer of passengers from Helen Loman to the Devonshire. And so, and the other, I want to say it's 12 people on board died. I mean, again, Titanic like this is cold, cold water in the middle of October,

Drew (22:20):
Survive.

Andy (22:21):
But to add on that, he didn't have a chance because he had the family fortune and gold sewn into his clothing weighing him down. So he just sank to the bottom of the Atlantic pretty much immediately. And so that was this crazy tale that over the years we kind of found these details. And I mean, there are numerous newspaper accounts and things like that, so it's pretty well documented mean it was just so wild to learn about these passenger manifests and everything like that. So really cool documentation. But anyway, so then the rest of the family got to New York safely, but of course, again, with nothing but the clothes in their back, literally. And Charles was the oldest boy. He was the oldest sibling that was there, his oldest sister. He was one of six kids, his oldest sister, who was the oldest of all of them, she had already moved to the US with her husband.

(23:14):
And so it was Charles and his four younger siblings who were on that boat with mom. And he kind of took the place of dad, I guess he and his mom kind of head of the household at that point. And so he found work. He was 15 years old, found work at a soap and candle factory in New York City called the Hayes and Schultz firm, where he worked for a couple years and with his little brother. And then he moved the family up to Cincinnati or over to Cincinnati, Ohio where his older sister had moved, big German population, slower pace of life. Another kind of really interesting contextual clue that helps me to visualize just the world that they landed in. The movie Gangs of New York takes place in the 1850. I mean, that's the world that he landed in. So just pretty wild stuff and

Drew (24:07):
A immigrant friendly, well, I wouldn't say it was an immigrant friendly New York City, but it was definitely heavily

Andy (24:13):
Rich immigrant,

Drew (24:14):
Populated by immigrants big time. And then Cincinnati was a big farm community and a lot of, well, of course, they're famous for pigs now, so yeah. Yeah. I'm sure their livestock was world famous or growing that way at that time.

Andy (24:33):
Oh, yeah. We came to learn that in fact, from a gentleman from Cincinnati when he was on a tour here at the Distillery, let one of our tour guides know that it was known as pork opolis exactly for their pig farming. But in fact, that's exactly what Charles did as when he moved to Cincinnati, he became a butcher. And as a butcher, he learned a lot about the sales and production of whiskey, of which again, these clues that kind of keep slowly coming to me and letting you know over the years form this picture is that, so as a soap and maker, some of your vendors would be butchers because butchers, they take the leftover fat from animals, they've butchered, and they give it to soap and makers to make their soap and candles. And similarly, as a butcher, the animals that they're butchering while they're alive are being fed, spent grains from nearby distilleries and breweries. And so he had those relationships and he learned from them. And

Drew (25:37):
Does it seem kind of interesting that he was a butcher and that it was a butcher that led you to him? Oh,

Andy (25:46):
Yeah. That is not lost on us. It's a butcher's. Yeah. They've been a big part of our story and our history, not only back then, but then today, I mean of a butcher that we really even are in this business in so many ways.

Drew (26:04):
Wow. Yeah.

Andy (26:05):
Very cool.

Drew (26:06):
So he ends up in Nashville somehow. How did that come about?

Andy (26:10):
Yeah, so they get to New York, 1850. He lives there for a couple years, about 1852 moves to Cincinnati, and then about 1858 moves down to Nashville, Charles does and starts his own wholesale grocery business down on what is now Second Avenue. And back then it was known as Market Street in downtown Nashville. And there he really had the foundational products of his business were coffee, meat, and whiskey. So what he quickly realized was that the whiskey was actually being distilled by a distillery up in Greenbrier, Tennessee.

Drew (26:49):
Okay.

Andy (26:49):
And he was, so back then it was like, it's called rectifying. And it was extraordinarily common where shopkeepers or owners would essentially take a spirit, take a whiskey, and then kind of brand it themselves and have their own unique brand and label and everything. And so that's what Charles did. And it was called Greenbrier, Tennessee Whiskey, who was, as it turns out, very good at that, had quite a mind for marketing in sales, and it quickly became one of the most popular brands in the country. But what he did, or at least in the state at that point. So what he did was he realized that his whiskey was, the demand was exceeding his supply for sure, quite by quite a wide margin. And so he decided to go ahead and get into this whiskey business exclusively and let the grocery business kind of go to whomever it may.

Drew (27:43):
Isn't it time you knowed and tasted your whiskey like a master distiller? Enhance your whiskey experience with an elegantly branded whiskey lore, COTA drinking glass. Find yours today@whiskeylower.com slash shop.

Drew (28:02):
I hope you're enjoying my interview with Andy Nelson of Nelson's Greenbrier Distillery. They actually have a new loyalty club that they started up called the Coopers Club. And why I bring this up is because on whiskey-lord.com, I am always trying to bring you some really cool, interesting information, stuff you may not be able to find elsewhere. And so I have created a list of all of the really cool loyalty programs that I know more than just a newsletter, but something that you might actually get some perks out of. And you can find that entire list of the ones from the US and Scotland, and the list will continue to grow by going to whiskey lord.com/loyalty. That's whiskey lord.com/loyalty. So now he's moving up to, is this post-Civil War when he moved up to Greenbrier, or do you

Andy (29:04):
It was, yeah. So again, yeah, timeline. So 1858, he moves down here to Nashville. It was 1870 that he made that move. So he had been in the grocery business for about 12 years. By 1870, he actually let Hill and Cheek do what they wanted with their products, and he purchased the distillery in Greenbriar to make it all his own. He bought a patent for improved distillation and expanded the capacity by quite a wide margin. And so by about 1885, he's selling 380,000 gallons of whiskey a year worldwide. He is from coast to coast in the us. We have evidence of him selling in Europe, even Russia, the Philippines. And it's crazy to think about that pre 1900, but again, another little contextual clues. We also found that he was one of the first people to put whiskey in a bottle by, sell it by the bottle instead of the full barrel or jug. And that would make sense that it's a whole lot easier. You can send just a few bottles on a ship. It's a lot easier to transport those and purchase, of course, as an individual, you got a lot more sales that way. So that all that to say just helped him expand globally in a time where it was just not like it is today.

Drew (30:30):
Well, and you get to brand it so people are seeing your name, which on a barrel, yes, you could probably brand your barrel, but then what happens to that barrel as it goes overseas? Because those were notorious times for people taking a barrel and taking a little bit out of it and adding something back into it to make it look like they hadn't ripped anything out of it.

Andy (30:52):
Yeah, I mean, I think that one of my favorite words from back in the day would be a schwag,

(31:00):
People doing sort of nefarious, well, that's a bit of a strong term, but yeah, exactly. I mean, people kind of taking something out of a barrel and putting their own name on it or putting additives in it that were or not healthy or safe, things like that, and just kind of tainting things in the sake of making their own buck off of someone else's hard work or whatever it may be. So yeah, exactly. The selling by the bottle was a huge help in growing his business and getting his name out there and the brand recognition kind of thing.

Drew (31:41):
So after that occurred, then he passed away in the 90, 18 91, is that right? Yeah. And during that time period, I mean, Jack Daniels and George Dickel were around, I think George Dickel was actually bigger than Jack Daniels at that point. You guys were bigger than both of them, were he not?

Andy (32:05):
Yeah. Yeah. We were far and away the largest in the state of Tennessee. And both George Dickel and Jack Daniel were contemporaries of Charles Nelson, although they were n none of 'em were the same age as each other. I can't remember the age difference, but I mean, it's within, I want to say Charles and George Dickel were, I think within 15 years. Don't quote me on that internet, but something like that. And then Jack was a bit younger, I believe, but yeah, mean they were all certainly familiar with one another. So it's just a really fascinating cool time. Some of the stories that we've heard about them coming across each other, and George Dickel I know had, this is again, not official, George Dickel historian here, but I had just heard a story that Charles Nelson's spot was on, basically in the center of Second Avenue or Market Street rather back then, and at the corner of second and church there. It is now a candy store, or at least has been in the past, haven't been down there in a while. But the thing was that George Dickel had a saloon there, right in that building, and maybe there was a brothel on the second story or something like that.

Drew (33:27):
Well, because he had sort of a similar start as well, he was kind of a salesman slash rectifier. I think at one point. Also, I haven't dug enough into his story, but it, it's interesting to see some of the correlation between your two businesses because he also, the story of when your great-great great grandfather passed away, it was not too long after George Dickel had passed away, and he passed it on to his wife, but he had told his wife to sell it, although she defied him and decided to keep the business. And did you ever hear any of the details about the move over to Louisa? Did he want her to continue on the business, or do you know?

Andy (34:21):
Well, that's really interesting. I've not heard that before, but we've not found any evidence to suggest that he didn't want her to do anything with it. It just shows it's actually, it's a really interesting thing because that's role in all this is something that we have found extremely important, and honestly, very a big motivation and inspiration to us, because again, the context of the time, she did not have the right to vote, which at the time we're recording this, today is the hundredth anniversary of the Tennessee passing the final vote in allowing women, the federal, the right to vote in the United States. So it's kind of a big day for us here. But Louisa played a big part in our business because when Charles died in 1891, she took over control and she didn't sell it. She kept running it and kept growing it up until statewide prohibition hit 18 years later, which is 1909.

(35:30):
And so the thing about that that we find so fascinating is that over the years in doing our research, there was so little about Louisa and what she did. I mean, we knew that Charles's wife was named Louisa, and then we came across her obituary and it said, well, I'm kind of paraphrasing, but it said essentially, born this day, died this day, son or daughter of so-and-so and blah, blah, blah, blah. And here's what her husband did and the point. And it was like, all right, well, that's kind of insulting. And on one level it's like, okay, that's the time they lived in. But it doesn't make it any less insulting to us in the modern day. And so we thought that this is an opportunity here to highlight her story and be able to get that out there and be proud of it, because she helped this company grow in a big way. And the strength of her knowing all the obstacles she had in front of her was pretty astounding. Without the right to vote, I mean, it was a woman in the south running a business quite by many accounts, not me, but by many accounts, such a sinful enterprise and in spirits and all those things. Well, we're in the

Drew (36:52):
Middle of the Temperance movement at that point. So she probably was getting a lot of flack from her female friends as well for what she was doing.

Andy (37:03):
Yeah. So she had had a big role in that. Well, speaking of that, the sinful enterprise there, I'll just tell another funny story, little anecdote that we heard from a Greenbrier Tennessee resident, and it was, we're driving with them, they were showing us around town, and they said, you ever heard this story about this church? And there's this church in Greenbrier, and they said, Charles Nelson helped build this church. And the story is kind of funny. She said, when the folks first came by, they were looking for money because they had to build this church, and they just had to get it by hooker, by crook. And they finally asked Charles Nelson at that point, wealthy business suc, successful businessman and all this. So they asked him for essentially an investment to help build their church. And they said, Mr. Nelson, can you lend us some money to build our church? And he said, well, I just want you to know this, as you probably do already know, this money is made from whiskey. I don't know if you approve of that. And their answer was, Mr. Nelson, we don't care if this money comes from the devil himself. We need this money to build our church.

Drew (38:27):
Nice.

Andy (38:27):
And so he did. So it was with some of his donations that first church was built. But I've just found that a really funny, I've given you a fair warning here. Yeah.

Drew (38:41):
So speaking of money, when that distillery shut down in 1909, a hundred years later, you are now on the path of trying to open a distillery yourself. You're not long out of college. What was it like and how did you approach going to finance what was sure to be in the millions over a period of time?

Andy (39:10):
It was the worst. I

Drew (39:11):
Mean,

Andy (39:12):
Raising, trying to raise money for that, because again, more context around the time was 2008, the big recession hit, and we had already begun at least trying to raise some money, and we heard an official no for two solid years of trying to raise money because again, we had at that point, I guess 2000, 2006, I was 24 years old. Charlie was 22. And it was like, people's questions, of course, were all right, well, what do you prove it to me? What experience do you have? Do you have a business degree? Nope. Both of us studied philosophy, and it was like, you have any experience in business? Nope. Have you ever run a distillery? No. Have you ever worked in a distillery? Nope. How do you know you can make whiskey? Well, trust us. And with the added bonus of making whiskey and then letting it sit for four years or whatever, while your money just sits there, hopefully can be sold

Drew (40:23):
Hopeful, get these guys know what they're doing that have never made whiskey before.

Andy (40:28):
So it was a tough sell, and eventually we had to keep evolving the business plan and starting out a bit slower than we wanted to. I mean, the initial plan, of course, was to, right, well, to show how naive we were. I thought at the beginning I was like, we know some rich people, surely this won't be hard to do. We set our time horizon as like, it'll take three months to raise this money, and then we will build a distillery, put some barrels, fill some barrels, and let it sit for four years and then start selling product. Well, that did not happen. So we figured, kept doing our business planning and whatever kind of research we could, and we found that there were multiple brands, about 30 different labels that Charles produced one of them, which one of which was called Bellmead Bourbon. And it in fact was a brand that he produced in conjunction with another company.

(41:26):
So he never actually distilled it himself. We found that, hold on. Okay. So essentially it was kind of rectifying, but it was a bit of a different setup than just buying whiskey from a distiller and making it your own. He worked in conjunction with this company that had the Belmy distillery and would, it was more of a partnership where they would distill it and then Charles Nelson would sort of bottle age and help sell it as the marketing force that he was at that time. So we realized, okay, well, we could potentially do that. And so that the point is that helped us get a brand off the ground without having all the overhead of building our own physical distillery yet.

Drew (42:16):
So you basically reached out to somebody like an mgp, somebody like that, to get started?

Andy (42:23):
Exactly. So we started out with mgp, and it took us probably a year to really nail down the blend and exactly the barrels that we wanted to use for the product. Got that going, started the brand and got, got some experience under us all the while still continuing to beg for money from people. It's like we still have this dream and this plan. We want to build our distillery that never left our minds. And so after a year or two of having the brand out there in the world and showing people that we can talk the lingo of distributors and all that you need, it was just kind of a proof of concept for people. So eventually we're able to raise enough to build the distillery that we're now sitting in. Nice. And our still started laying down barrels, and in fact, it was not too long ago, the sixth anniversary of the sixth birthday of our first barrel that we ever filled. So that was August, 2014.

Drew (43:30):
So because coming out of college with a philosophy degree, you had to learn how to make whiskey some way somehow. And so while you, were you learning this while Bell Mead was now getting off the ground and you were developing it?

Andy (43:48):
Yep. Yeah. So we bought our still from Van Dome Copper and Brass and Louisville. But before that, we, we'd started a relationship with them because we told everybody in the world, in the industry, Hey, we're still trying to do this. Can anybody help us out? Kind of thing. And Rob Sherman at Vome told us about this guy who had just started a consulting gig helping out smaller craft distilleries, and his name was Dave Piro. And so he introduced us to Dave. And at that time, Dave had only had, I want to say one other client, and if I am not mistaken, it was Willett or Kentucky Bourbon Distillers. So we were technically Dave's second client, but it also took us way longer to get the business started than many of his subsequent clients. And so we had this aggravating game of like, oh, this is another of Dave's clients who has the money ready to get going. Meanwhile, we're sitting here struggling to get our money raised and get going. So we see all these people come in after us and are just ready to go. They have enough money for whatever reason, and it's not like we're upset at them. It was just like, man, what is the world doing to

Drew (45:09):
Us? You feel like the train is kind of passing you by while you're Yeah, you're doing the hard work and they got the capital to jump ahead of you in the line.

Andy (45:17):
Yeah. So I, in retrospect, of course, a lot of it is due to the fact that we were 24, 25. It's like, who's going to trust us for that? Of course. But anyway, it ended up working the way it did. So we released Belmead Bourbon in March of 2012, got our distillery up and running here in 2014, and yeah, started Distiller distilling in August, 2014, opened to the public in November of 2014, and have since released our Greenbrier Tennessee whiskey this past October of 2019. And so that was really the Greenbrier, Tennessee whiskey is the reason that we started this company to begin with. And so that was a big kind of relief that we finally got to the starting line in some

Drew (46:10):
Ways. And it's had it, and I really like it, and it is a weeded Tennessee whiskey, and as far as I know, it's the only, or it was at that point. Well, there are other Tennessee whiskeys now coming about, but for the size and you guys at the stature that you've gotten to, it's kind of like you are pushing out into the market ahead. And was that a move that you made because you were following a recipe that you had from the family, or was that a strategic decision because the Dickel and the Daniels had already gone into the rye version of whiskey?

Andy (46:56):
A little of both. I mean, it really honestly just was because it was the original recipe, and that's that it just happens to be that I was ve, I mean, I think we're all very excited about it because of exactly your point that it's different than I there. Yeah. Again, I know a lot of the distillers in Tennessee, but I can't say for sure, but it's one of the only weeded Tennessee whiskeys for sure. And so that was very exciting, and it certainly was the only one when we first got plans to do this whole thing.

Drew (47:29):
It's shocking to see how many distilleries are popping up so quickly in Tennessee, because when I started thinking about traveling across Tennessee to go to distilleries, I just looked at that map that I had, that I got a year and a half ago, I think I was, and they had 24 distilleries listed. And when I was at the first distillery on this leg, I picked up a new one and I looked and I was like 37. Yeah,

Andy (47:54):
I mean, it's almost double. Yeah, it's crazy.

Drew (47:57):
Yeah, it's growing in a hurry, but when you talk about only really three distilleries up until 2011, it's there was just this interest probably has always been there. It's just legally nobody's been able to do it.

Andy (48:15):
Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty wild too, because I remember when we were first starting this, we found the history and everything and we're like, this is just a big, big plan of ours. And I remember people telling us, well, you're really getting in at the right time because craft distilleries or craft whiskey's really booming. And I had no idea that that was actually the case. And it's not like we're doing it because it was good timing. It just happened to be that that's the day we discovered the butcher and then the old distillery. So it serendipitous, I suppose. But it worked out Well.

Drew (48:54):
Well talk about the label on the bottle, because that label adds some history to it, doesn't it?

Andy (49:00):
Yeah. So that's the label that you'll see of the Tennessee whiskey is as close to the original label as we could get. Had to add a couple little things on there for legality's sake. But you look at an old bottle next to that new bottle, and it's almost as it's close as you can get. One of my favorite things is that it's so kind of busy in some respect, but it makes it stand out. And the funny thing is the actual brand name is one of the smaller words on the label, and so it kind of breaks all these rules of modern day marketing and advertising and such. But that's exactly what I think is the appealing thing about it, that that's why it stands out more. Yeah. It's not just one clean single letter and one color. It's like, oh, that looks really cool and old. So

Drew (49:55):
You have to send a thank you to your great great grandfather. Oh,

Andy (49:59):
Yeah.

Drew (49:59):
For giving you a retro label, a century plus later. Marty

Andy (50:05):
McFly, where are you at? I

Drew (50:08):
Pat on the back. Go

Andy (50:09):
Talk to him. Yeah.

Drew (50:10):
So there's another interesting element that I found when I was looking at your Bell me label, and that is the horse that's on it, Bonnie Scotland.

Andy (50:24):
Yeah.

Drew (50:24):
How did you go about discovering that story, and do you have details on that? It's very interesting, his pedigree.

Andy (50:33):
Yeah. So Bonnie Scotland was a famous race horse at the Belmy Horse Farm back in the day, and he is one of the founders of what they call the Northern Dancer bloodline. And so a lot of his descendants are kind of packed in today, the modern day Kentucky Derby. Most horses that run in the Derby nowadays can trace their bloodline back to Bonnie Scotland, including War Admiral Sea Biscuits, secretariat, some big time horses. So that was kind of a cool, yeah, cool

Drew (51:06):
Addition. And so when did you discover that the first, when did you discover this label for Bellmead? Because there's another brand that you didn't really have to design that bottle label. It just came with the package,

Andy (51:20):
Right. We discovered that, God, I don't know what year it was, but I mean, it was somewhere in between 2006 and 2010 in the midst of all of our research and stuff. So we found this newspaper advertisement. It was a newspaper from May 1st, 1885, the Daily American, and we have it up in our tasting room right now, and there's about a quarter page ad for Bellmead whiskeys, and it shows the original label and everything. So that's where we found it, and just kind of a cool old graphic there as well.

Drew (51:59):
So are you going to go beyond a Tennessee whiskey? Do you have further plans, or are you just enjoying the launch of this one right now?

Andy (52:11):
Kind of just enjoying the launch of this one for the moment. But yeah, I mean, we're never been shy about saying, we're not trying to just have a nice regional business or anything. It's always been our plan to take over the world with this, so we definitely want to grow and build up more of the brands that Charles had and more line extensions and such. But yeah, for right now it's like it's hard to do a whole bunch at one time. So we got our hands full with this for

Drew (52:48):
Now. And Bellmead is nationwide, I'm

Andy (52:51):
Assuming? Almost

Drew (52:52):
Close.

Andy (52:52):
Okay.

Drew (52:53):
Yeah. So where is Nelson's Greenbrier at the moment?

Andy (52:57):
So at the moment, as of August, 2020, we are in, I think we may only be in Tennessee. I think we're about to get into South Carolina.

Drew (53:08):
Wow, that's good for me.

Andy (53:09):
Yeah.

Drew (53:09):
Yeah,

Andy (53:10):
Exactly.

Drew (53:11):
Nice.

Andy (53:12):
That's good. Honestly, now we've been, the nice thing, it's kind of a weird thing because as the business grows, it's like we get more employees and people and kind of specialize in things, so to speak. And so I'm more of the production distillation world, and Charlie is more sales and marketing and stuff, so he's more as and more happens. There's just so much going on, and it's like if I tried to stay in all of those categories, I would go nuts. So yeah, I'm like, there's some days where I like, oh, cool, we're in a new state now. That's cool. All right. I'm almost glad I didn't know that. Yeah, because there used to be so much stress for me to do

Drew (53:54):
It. Well, congratulations on your success, and I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.

Andy (54:00):
Thank you. Yeah, no problem. Thanks for coming in.

Drew (54:03):
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Andy Nelson of Nelson's Greenbrier. And if you want to learn more about the distillery in their brands, just head to greenbrier distillery.com and to keep up with my distillery travels, make sure to join me on social media at instagram.com/whiskey or facebook.com/whiskey. I'm your host, drew Hamish, and until next time, cheers and SL JVA Whiskey Lores a production of Travel Fuel's Life, L L C.