Ep. 56 - Dexter's Bourbon founder Doug Hall

Transcript

Drew (00:00:09):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, Drew Hannush, the Amazon bestselling author of Whiskey Lores Travel Guide to Experience in Kentucky Bourbon. And before we get into this week's conversation, I want to remind folks who are planning on heading to Kentucky for Spring Break, or maybe you've got some travel plans for April, may and into June. Please make sure that you are making reservations for these places before you go. If you've gotten the book, which there's a lot of people buying the book right now, and so I know a lot of people are in that planning stage right now, you're going to want to kind of draw out an outline of the places you want to go and then make sure to get your reservations lined up because I was recently talking to Jerry Daniels of Stone Fences Tours, and he and I are going to do a episode coming up where we're going to talk about the top 10 historic whiskey places to go in Kentucky.

(00:01:10):
But as we were talking, he mentioned that places like Buffalo Trace, you almost have to have a specific day that you're going to go in there. He said, Tuesdays, you jump in there and you'll have a chance to get the tours before they sell out, or Woodford Reserve has been selling out. And part of the reason that this is happening is because this pandemic has caused these distilleries to do smaller tours. And of course everybody's been cooped up for a long time. They want to go to Kentucky. And so it's creating sort of the situation where it's hard to get tickets to go to certain distilleries. So maybe you plan to go to some of the smaller distilleries or maybe you plan to go out to Western Kentucky where there's a lot of distilleries. You're probably going to have maybe a little bit easier time than going to the really big ones.

(00:02:02):
But this is just kind of a food for thought for you when you're making these plans. Cuz like I say, I know a lot of people are buying the book right now, so there is a lot of pent up energy going towards going to these distillery. So just use that as a word of caution for your planning. Now let's go ahead and get into this week's episode of Whiskey Lorey Interviews where my guest is Doug Hall of Dexter Bourbon. And if you're not familiar with Dexter Bourbon, well you're going to learn more about them, especially if you go to Kentucky because he has actually opened up a brand new crafting experience in Louisville on Whiskey Row. And so we're going to talk a little bit about that. We're going to talk about Dexter Bourbon, which is a brand from the 19th century, and we're going to dig into the history of that as well as the man who created it.

(00:03:05):
Edmund Dexter, who's a man that you probably don't know a lot about. Cincinnati you may not think about as a big area for bourbon, but it really was. And so we're going to dive into a lot of that history. We will also do a tasting of his Dexter three wood. So a lot of stuff going on in here got a lot of history you probably don't know that is going to be fun for you to hear. And then like I say, little tasting going on here and much more. So let's get into the conversation with Doug Hall of Dexter Bourbon. Doug, welcome to the show.

Doug (00:03:42):
Well thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Drew (00:03:45):
So first off, let's talk a little bit about who this Edmund Dexter person is because it's not a name that I was familiar with when you guys first reached out to me. And then as I started doing a little bit of reading on him, I'm like, wow, okay, here's a whole piece of whiskey history that's kind of been lost. So kind of give us a little background on who he was.

Doug (00:04:12):
So to understand him, you have to understand the time and the history of bourbon and whiskey in America. We tend to define it as prohibition and post-prohibition because frankly it was after prohibition that the big five or six or whatever it was who had medicinal permits and had juice basically created, took over the market. And they still, to this day, obviously those companies are still the vast majority of the share the descendants of those companies. As it turns out, being from Cincinnati doing a little bit of research on different things here cuz I've worked in the industry for many, many years as an inventor with my Eureka Ranch. And I learned that there was a whole story that the world had never heard. And of course you don't hear it because none of these brands existed really back then. And it's the pre-prohibition time, the 18 hundreds, 18 30, 18 50, 18 60.

(00:05:18):
That's really kind of the sweet spot. 1862 is kind of like the peak of it, which we can talk about when back then there weren't distilleries. Instead the farmers would make the grain and their way to get currency was to grow enough grain for their crops and their livestocks and to eat. And then the rest they would distill into spirit, which they would then sell. And this gave them the money to buy things that they needed. And it was basically the currency of the day were barrels. I mean, it's been said that even ministers were oftentimes paid with whiskey if they did a wedding or whatever, or funeral. And so now most of this stuff was kind of questionable. It was highly variable, shall we say. Yeah,

Drew (00:06:07):
Okay.

Doug (00:06:08):
And so in the 17 hundreds when they made, if you went to a pub, you wouldn't order a drink and you certainly wouldn't drink the whiskey straight. You'd have a punch. Mm-hmm Because they'd throw everything in there until the thing tasted. Okay. And you'd take a ladle from the punch

Drew (00:06:24):
Is what you right.

Doug (00:06:26):
Come the 18 hundreds. We have cities and the biggest city out here in the Midwest was the number six city in America was Cincinnati. It was the queen city of the west. It was the number one city for manufacturing. Why? Because when people were going west, they buy their goods in Cincinnati before they took off. And they're going against other cities like Philadelphia, Boston, New York, I mean the old colonial ones. And so this was the place where 85% of the whiskey in America came from. And it wasn't because of distilleries, it was because they made a market for, it was the commercial hub of bourbon. Bourbon was born, if Michael Veach will say 1830, I think it's kind of more 1851 that got the name, who knows. But somewhere in there it got the name. And so right there at one point there were 109, what were barrel blenders? Who would buy these barrels from the farmers? And you'd go in with your clay jug because glass bottles, I mean there's a little bit near the end of the 18 hundreds, but they really didn't come out until the 19 hundreds. So don't gotta find bottles of this cuz there were no bottles

Drew (00:07:36):
<laugh>,

Doug (00:07:37):
You'd take your clay jug in and here's the very cool thing, instead of going in and buying their brand, you would say, this is what I kind of like. And they'd say, oh, farmer Jones does this and there's a German farmer over there who does this. Let me put some Oh that, that'd be awesome. And they'd put it in your clay jug and that would be your whiskey, basically. Whiskey was really of the people, it was a customized thing. And if you look at the pre-prohibition brands, they were a gazillion, cuz every bar would put a name on it, which was basically there was no ttb. So it was just slapping a name on this thing.

(00:08:16):
And of these barrel blenders, probably one of the biggest dogs of the whole group was a guy named Edmond Dexter. Edmond Dexter lived on fourth Street which was the high society part cuz first and second were down near the river where it would flood. So when you got the fourth, you're up on the top of the hill there on the shore and he's right on fourth Street. And he was so famous, he'd come from England that Charles Dickens and the future King of England, king Edward of England came and visited with him when they made trips through Cincinnati cuz Cincinnati would be one of the big cities that you'd come to visit in the colonies. And so he was one of the biggest barrel blenders. His son went on to do it for many years. One of his sons raised the money from music hall. So when we were looking for something, we saw this and it really hit us. And so as you mentioned, our name is Brain Brew Custom Whiskey, and we'll talk about that later. But we do customized bourbon. But for a flagship product, we sat and we said, what would Edmund Dexter have served? And being an author of seven soon, eight books, when Charles Dickens came to visit,

(00:09:35):
What would he serve? And one was easy and I'm going to talk wood here because as we know, 70 to 80% of the flavor of whiskey comes from the wood. All of the color comes from all of the smooth. This comes from interaction with the wood as it gets warm and cold, warm, cold. And our specialty as a company is what we call Woodcraft finishing where we finish with different woods like Makers 46 does. And there's a number of brands.

Drew (00:10:07):
Rabbit hole, a bunch of scotch whiskeys do it. Yeah.

Doug (00:10:11):
And I've have worked for 23 years with the Macallan, the most expensive bourbon. In fact, they're a partner with us on a product called Noble Oak that we also make that's available. Everybody around the country, you can get Noble Oak. It's an amazing product. And so one of the things we did is we could find different woods. And so first thing we did is I said, I wonder what wood would've tasted if flavor comes from the wood, what would whiskey taste like? You gotta get wood from that time. So what we found with some old barns, which in this area there's a bunch of them that dilapidate broken down. Sometimes they'll even pay us to take the wood away because it's just a junkyard. We cut it off, we clean it up, we char it, we put it into the whiskey. And so we have 200 year oak, which is a time machine to take you back in time.

(00:11:04):
And so the base of this is a 200 year oak, which is just plain epic. I mean it's amazing. And then we said, well we could go European oak cuz they would've had Madeira casts. But I said, this Dexter guy, his son was into the arts, he would've been more artisan. And so we took Cherrywood and Maplewood, which are much more contemporary ones, and we said if he'd had it, that's what he would've served. Cuz it gives a brightness and a smoothness. And so thus is born Dexter three wood and we are pretty proud of it. And then we put it into the ultimate Spirits competition. And it was named one of the hundred top spirits, there were 12 bourbons. So suddenly we had one of the 12 best bourbons in the world, if you believe competitions. And this is of course one of the most respected. And we're like, damn, this is pretty cool now. And at the time we were going back and forth, should we put the Dexter name on it? But we won that award, we said it had to be Dexter, it had to be named after

Drew (00:12:03):
Edmond Dexter. So that was Edmond Dexter's original brand name, right?

Doug (00:12:07):
Yeah, it'd be called Dexter Bourbon. But it would rarely have gone, it might have been on the barrels and it might have been on some, but most of the time you would've just like John Walker over in Scotland, famous for Johnny Walker, his son created Johnny Walker, the Blend. Most of the time the name, there was no name. It was not a brand that was sold,

Drew (00:12:28):
It just came from this particular person.

Doug (00:12:32):
Yeah, the Dexter Okay. Whiskey company.

Drew (00:12:34):
Yeah. And so that's the thing that, it's funny, as I go back and I research and we talk about Old Crow. Old Crow really was one of the first that maybe was stamping on their barrels at least. Anyway, that old crow as a way to because it had a reputation, a way to show that you were getting old Crow whiskey and old Oscar Pepper the same way. But that really, when we look at Edmund Dexter, he started what, around 1830 or so? That's right. That would not have been a time period where not only would you not be necessarily putting your brand on something, but the other thing is, when he started out, I wonder how much he actually was doing aging because aging was still kind of a new concept to whiskey in this region. I think. Yeah,

Doug (00:13:30):
He probably would've been using some different barrels for different tastes because I mean, remember he's got 106 competitors down there. And so to compete my guess is they definitely would've been using Madeira oak casks from Europe. Cuz there was a lot of Madeira that was still being shipped in. Of course, George Washington, all them loved their Madeira and Ben Franklin. And so there would've been a Madeira cask and after they'd emptied it with Madeira, they would've filled it with whiskey. So I, I'm sure some of that would've been done as they did it. Mostly they were just, I mean, think about it, you've got not four suppliers, you probably could have 200 suppliers and you're trying to mix 'em together to get something decent. Cuz one's got a lot of high notes and one's got low notes and one's kind of gnarly and you know, gotta put it together. I mean this is the very, very beginning of this. We have this legend now that these master distillers started doing magic, which is all the industry for many, many years was, it was just a bunch of farmers doing it to make a couple bucks and these people in Cincinnati. And it's not because Cincinnati, it was just because all the money was in Cincinnati.

(00:14:42):
I mean, if you wanted to get money, I mean there's a book out now where they talk about one of the towns down in Kentucky, one of the famous facilities. It was a really amazing town with 2000 people or some craziness. And there's like 60,000 since, I mean this was the place where the, I mean that was when you wanted money or commercial markets, that's where the river boats were and that's where they went. And of course after Prohibition it all moved to Kentucky. So yeah, Kentucky's really born then, which is just wonderful. I mean we love Kentucky obviously. We just opened up in Louisville. So I mean we're big fans of Kentucky obviously.

Drew (00:15:21):
No, so are you originally from Cincinnati?

Doug (00:15:24):
I'm originally from Maine. From

Drew (00:15:25):
Portland. Okay. And how long have you been in Cincinnati?

Doug (00:15:28):
I've been here for 41 years. The Procter and Gamble company brought me here 41 years ago with my high school sweetheart, my wife. And we decided to stay. So we've been here

Drew (00:15:41):
Ever since. So I didn't look the last time I walked around town, but I remember at one point they used to have pig statues painted all around town because Cincinnati used to be known as pork. Are those still around?

Doug (00:15:55):
Yes they are. And again, that would've been our home, which is, and the distillery we're just east of the city in a little village called Newtown which was one of those areas. The Edwards family actually built our house on the historic registry and the Underground Railroad. This was a place where slaves hid. But the Edwards family would create a market for the hogs out here which would've been in the way out in the suburbs back then. And there was a train station behind us later. And would there's also the river, they could float down the river on a flatboat, but they would make a market and sell the farmers and then they would drive the hogs to downtown and they would also have been bringing whiskey from this valley out here. I you want to geek out, this is what's called the Virginia Military District. Okay. After the Revolutionary War, continental Congress had no money. So what they did is they gave the soldiers his pay land in Ohio that they didn't really kind of own and they would sell it to speculators. And in fact, I've got a neighbor down here who has a deed signed by George Washington when he sold some of his land and the Edwards family bought up the land and came out here.

Drew (00:17:16):
Yeah, yeah, that's a really interesting history. In fact, when trying to talk about Kentucky's distilling history, I've been going through this trying to define when was it Kentucky, when was it Virginia? And trying to get when Bourbon County came about and how it shrunk down. It's like those early days, nobody was really that focused on trying to split Kentucky off as an entity in Ohio, I guess was part of the Northwest Territories there for a while. And so trying to figure out how all of this developed, what's interesting, I guess because of Cincinnati's location on the Ohio River just made it a perfect spot to build up industry.

Doug (00:18:08):
And I mean they just started to form. And interestingly, I've been reading a lot of books. There's a wonderful book outta the University of Chicago by a PhD. He did it for his dissertation and then he expanded it into a book. And one of the reasons Cincinnati became what it did, a fascinating thing is they had, for whatever reason, it was very much, there was a real sense of helping one another. And there were nonprofits and every fire department were volunteers that would raise their own money and the street lights and all the rest of this stuff. I mean the kind of stuff Franklin did back in Philadelphia. And so the town was very much one of collaborative and part of the reason why it prospered he writes in this book was because of the nonprofit and the give back and supporting one another and helping one another that those ethics had been brought in. And now sadly, he goes on to explain that near the 18 end of the 18 hundreds and I don't want to get into a big debate on these things, but he said politics took over and instead of being a member of the local fire department, you became a member of the political party and the rise of political parties where instead of, hey my neighbors and I out here in the valley, Gary got Bush and others, we need to work together to figure out how to fix this. We go to the government to get them to fix this.

Drew (00:19:41):
Right. And

Doug (00:19:43):
That change she writes in the book, is what caused Cincinnati not to die. Cuz it's obviously prospered, but it was literally, it was a rocket ship that was just growing amazing. And the bureaucracy of government slowed it down.

Drew (00:19:59):
Yeah, well it was like a magnet to German settlers. It seems that whenever I would hear stories of Charles Nelson and Nelson's Greenbriar, he went through Cincinnati and the idea when he was in Cincinnati was New York was just too busy and it already had that political corruption going on in it. And so it was how do we get away and find our own space? And he felt very comfortable moving in with a German background into Cincinnati because it was still a city, but it was much more friendly to immigrants because it was mostly made up of immigrants at that time.

Doug (00:20:43):
And yeah, it was near the end of the eight towns in particular. They really, really grew. And in fact in downtown Cincinnati there was a little stream that came through and there's an area that they called over the Rhine where a lot of them would be. And it's an area that was amazing in its day, went into dispute. Now the millennials have taken over and says a whole lot of little restaurants and bars and pubs and wonderful food and stuff down there as it's prone to do they call it OTR over the Rhine. And it's an amazing place. So there is a hi history here. It is just fascinating. And what I like about the Dexter story is the fact that it's real, a real thing. And we at Spring Grove Cemetery, which is a famous cemetery, he's got a huge structure, I guess they call him. Yeah.

Drew (00:21:43):
Built mausoleum. Yeah. He actually had the local architect of some fame come in and design it looks like a church almost from the pictures I've seen. Yes.

Doug (00:21:52):
Yeah. It's spectacular. And it's really it is a simple concept. You got farmers doing different stuff, let me buy barrels, put 'em together and make some to export to ship down the river to New Orleans and the world. And so it's just a neat part of history. And what we find is when we go through the whole story, when we do our custom bourbon experience and people love to hear this story cuz it's a different story and it's approachable. And this is an industry both having worked in Scotland for a long time and in the US and whiskey, a lot of smoke and mirrors kind of stuff sometimes with some of these stories. And you know, I've been to some places and where they say on this site blank happened. And I'm like, Hmm, that's interesting. That's an interesting reading of history. And maybe,

Drew (00:22:49):
Well there's a lot of fable that comes in because over the years people pass on stories or marketing companies will embellish stories and so it kind of takes on a life of its own. But I'm finding that the actual histories are much more interesting because you do realize that these are real people. And here's a guy who came from England in the nine 1820s and then all of a sudden lands in Cincinnati and now we try to get a picture in our mind of what was Cincinnati like at that time. And that was kind of why I brought up the pork olos thing because I'd read something while I was doing my research about how there were complaints about pork olos because there were pigs that were just running rampant in the streets after a while they just lost control of it and it got so crazy.

(00:23:45):
And then that gets a picture in my mind of, well there's also a hundred different whiskey rectifier around this area. You start to paint a picture of what Cincinnati looked like and then you compare that to the way Cincinnati is today where you have Proctor and Gamble dominating the skyline and ballparks and that sort of thing. But one of the things I love about Cincinnati is that a lot of that great late 18th century architecture is all around town. City Hall is a beautiful building and that you can still walk around town and see a lot of that. So is the mansion still standing or was that torn down?

Doug (00:24:31):
No, that's been taken down. That's been taken down. There's an office tower there now is there, and in one of the conference rooms they call it the Dexter conference room. So there's there, it's no longer there. The, it's interesting because I think Michael Veach, the historian in Louisville, I, I've spent some time with him on this and of course this is the way it was. This is what happened. It's interesting that you used the term rectifier which is it's interesting cuz that term really didn't take off until prohibition. And what's interesting is that people mix up the twenties in the 18 hundreds and we think of ourselves as basically focused on 1862. That's the year that we think of as a focal point. One is it's the year that Dexter passed away, it's when King Edward came to visit him that same year. And so we think it's good for us to think of 1862 cause we're now going forward from when he passed. But at that time it wasn't the concepts of aging, the concepts of all this stuff just didn't exist. They just wanna make the stuff taste good. So whether they could filter it, whether they could throw some wood in to help it, whether they could heat it, which people would do they were doing what they could to make the stuff taste good. There weren't brands, there wasn't numbers and ages and it was just called can you make the stuff taste good? I mean, yeah, on Maslow's pyramid, we're at the bottom of the pyramid here. Yeah,

Drew (00:26:14):
There no, were no taste, there were no tasting notes, which we

Doug (00:26:18):
No

Drew (00:26:19):
<laugh>. Fascinating to see to have some tasting notes from those time periods to know what that stuff actually tasted like.

Doug (00:26:25):
Well, and we like 1862 also because that's the magical year that while there's a lot of things that people debate, nobody debates when cocktails really became cocktails in this country. It really was 1862 when Professor Jerry Thomas published the first book on cocktails and then quickly some others came out. But whether it's Dale DeGraff is a good friend or others will All point to Jerry Thomas's book, which is the first one that has I, it's all in, it's got the Old fashioned and it's got five recipes from the Mint Jule. And this was the first time that you could go in and you could get a cocktail, not a punchbowl. And it codified it so that other people could do that. And so we're working, in fact, my next book, my ninth is going to be on 18 hundreds cocktails. I'm doing a lot of research on 18 hundreds cocktails and we're putting together and I'm doing the original, which most of the time when you make them, they're like

Drew (00:27:30):
<laugh>,

Doug (00:27:30):
Not so sure. But at the time, compared to what they had before, it would've been a miracle step up. And so we're doing then some modern sort of refreshes of them if you would. And we're very fortunate with Charles Dickens cuz as he leaves Dexter's house, he writes a letter to Washington Irving of Sleepy Hall of Fame about this amazing cocktail he had, which today we would call a smash. And where it's got lemon it's like a sour, it can have mint in it. And the little twist that he had to it is he had orange juice with it. So in fact, listeners, here's what you wanna do. The classic recipe, if you wanna go back to Dickens, I'm going to give you the simple way to do it. You're going to be able to remember this. Okay, two 11 is the classic cocktail. So two parts, whiskey, preferably bourbon, okay.

(00:28:24):
Cause it blends better. One part sweet. So simple syrup. And Jerry Thomas even says it's better to not use sugar cubes. It's better to put in a syrup cause it'll dissolve better. He even says that in the book in 1862 and then one part sour only. What you're going to do is you're going to fresh squeeze lemons and oranges. So it's going to be half lemon and half orange. And what Charles Dickens did is he had orange when he went to Dexter's house with the lemon, not just straight lemon. And the orange gives in particular with that Dexter product cuz it's made to work with it it just adds a richness to it and it kind of balances out the sweetness. So yeah, so a half ounce lemon, half orange one simple syrup and two bourbon.

Drew (00:29:12):
I have to jump on the cocktail wagon sooner or later because I just haven't really dived that much into it. So I'm having so much fun drinking straight whiskey and tasting it and pulling all these flavor notes out. But someday, so being, I get that,

Doug (00:29:27):
Being Proctor and Gamble and with the Eureka Ranch, you can imagine I, we've kind of done compulsive research. We did 3000 experiments, my co-founder and I to figure out how to do this. Hundreds of paired comparison tests, quantitative tests, not old men sitting in rooms. They is little bit too much leather in it. No real people. So what percentage of bourbon do you think is drank? Neat?

Drew (00:29:53):
I'm guessing it's actually pretty low. Maybe 10%.

Doug (00:29:57):
Exactly

Drew (00:29:57):
10% Is it? Okay. Okay. 10%.

Doug (00:30:00):
10%. Yeah. And mixed is 55%.

Drew (00:30:06):
Okay.

Doug (00:30:07):
And the rest is with ice. So the majority of bourbon, and this sends people into horrors <laugh>, is strength mixed. And I can tell you one of the things we teach cuz we're franchising our custom bourbon, one of the things I teach them is cocktails sell whiskey. And so we'll give people a flight of three 18 hundreds cocktails and with three different whiskeys and they'll taste it and they'll go, I love this. Which whiskey is that? They buy that bottle, they take that recipe, they make that one cocktail. And you might say, well geez, yeah, I want them to drink any, no, no, we need to grow the number of customers and if I can get them to that one cocktail and do that, we've done our thing for the industry.

Drew (00:30:53):
Well there's a graduating also. I sort of graduated from beer to wine for a very short period of time and then into drinking whiskey. So going neat for me was made more sense. Although I started with ice I remember I used to order Macallan 12 on the rocks and it's like, okay, now that I'm a scotch drinker, I go, why did I do that? But

Doug (00:31:19):
Hold on Drew, wait a sec. Yeah, so I've, I've been going to Scotland for 23 years.

Drew (00:31:25):
Yeah,

Doug (00:31:28):
It is rare when I'm in Scotland that anybody drinks. And I've had every Macallan in the world that drinks that eat. It's almost always you get a little picture of water and they add water to it or they add ice to it. It's in America where we have this neat thing and I think it's a John Wayne thing in the movies

Drew (00:31:52):
Tough

Doug (00:31:52):
Guy if they hadn't drink it that way. But it is. And so I like it with ice and I respect everybody however they want to do it. Everybody can have their own, that's fine. It's about Ann not. And so we specifically design ours because there is a physiological issue as a scientist here, many whiskeys are really optimized for neat. The result is when you put even one ice cube in it, they collapse really quickly. And so we used the wood and increased the wood ratio a little bit and how we handled it so that when you do drink our whiskey with ice it over about seven minutes, it keeps getting better and better and better. And then she starts to tail off over the next seven minutes. And so for up to 15 minutes it's going to be great. And after that, damnit, you should get another glass

Drew (00:32:49):
I or just make sure you're drinking it within the allotted time. That's

Doug (00:32:54):
Right, yeah. Get a good proper, don't get the big serves, get a nice one, says you can try something else. But it, they're literally made to stand up to ice. And so for some people I can understand there's some that I can't drink even with ice because they just collapse on me.

Drew (00:33:12):
Yeah, well what I find is that I found the pleasure in the mouth feel of a whiskey. So if a whiskey really impresses me when I put it in my mouth and I'm enjoying that part of the experience, I will never put an ice cube in that kind of whiskey because to me, by putting the ice cube in, I've taken 50% of the enjoyment of why I like that particular whiskey away. But then I have other whiskeys that are really high proof whiskeys, they're hard to drink without putting something in them. And on a nice hot summer day tossing some ice cubes into bottled and bond whiskey or something that maybe you consider to be a little harsh on its own but you have the bottle around and you wanna do something with it. And since I don't make cocktails, I'm kind of out on that end of it too. Then throwing ice cubes in really seems to make more sense in that particular

Doug (00:34:11):
Case. Two things you prompt. One is the Jerry Thomas's 1862 old fashioned would be something that you should try. We can get you, we have some bidders that we make where we make it from really good whiskey and then we finish it with cherry wood and that are amazing. But he only used today, most of the times when they make it old fashioned, they're going to make it with a half ounce or an ounce of simple syrup. Jerry Thomas did it with a teaspoon of simple syrup,

Drew (00:34:42):
Just

Doug (00:34:42):
A very small hit. And so when you take a small hit like that with it, it just brightens it up, but it doesn't give it that heaviness. But it's gotta be a very good whiskey to do that with. You can't do it with a junk whiskey because it'll just be horrific. And I think that's what happened to us in the fifties, sixties, seventies, is the whiskey was cheapened so they had to throw sugar in it to make it drinkable. And we've not gotten out of that sugar. And we do a custom cocktail experience where we teach people you're old fashioned your way and we show them you can get it this way or that way. And people are shocked that they can have an 1862 version with Dexter and they go, damn, this is really good. And I usually put a lot more in. And of course that's very popular these days.

Drew (00:35:24):
Yeah, that's interesting. The thing is really the idea of a cocktail to me would be enhancing the whiskey. And that's kind of what you're talking about now. It's not necessarily making a drink that is just got alcohol. And if you're going to do that, you might as well make a cocktail with vodka because it's just going to get the job done.

Doug (00:35:48):
But interestingly, when we make the cocktail, people say, just drink vodka and make the same cocktail with vodka. And they go, well that isn't nearly as good. I said, that's why you need the whiskey. And Jerry Thomas was very big on what a cocktail is supposed to be is one plus one equals three. It should take you to a new place and you shouldn't taste this or that. You should just have this fusion that is a sensation that you can't get any other way.

Drew (00:36:16):
And

Doug (00:36:17):
That's the ultimate of what you're trying to do is so when you drink it, to me, one of the big tests of a cocktail, especially a whiskey cocktails, and the simplest one is juleps, is you shouldn't have a speed bump where you drink it and you go, Ooh, the, there's the whiskey and it's a speed bump, it should be a fusion. And the real art of making cocktails is to create that fusion where they come together. And when you get that right, they're magical experiences for a time and place and that they can be quite enjoyable.

Drew (00:36:54):
Are there cocktails that need to sit for a while before you serve them so that they actually can kind of marry together? Like when you're marrying different whiskeys together?

Doug (00:37:05):
I, some people will talk about some of them that you'll do, some of the Manhattans people like to leave them in barrels and do them for a long time and they'll do those. But in general because part of the magic of the cocktail is that you'd use the ice properly because ice has two rolls it, it's to bring the percent alcohol down to the right level and cooling and again geek them here. Yeah. That's what happens when a chemical engineer starts a company. Here's

Drew (00:37:40):
An old

Doug (00:37:40):
Fire, 12 seconds is the optimum time to get yourself to the cold before excess dilution happens. Yeah. 1,001, a two, shake it for 12 seconds or basically 40 stirs. If it's a stirred drink, then taste it and then you might add another 10 is to do it. And that's the part, nothing drives me more crazy than see order a drink and the bartender puts the stuff first off, they put the ice in before they put the juice in, which is put the ice in last and then they shake it and they set it down and go get the glass and then they get distracted and it's just sitting there diluting <laugh> and it's now a worthless drink. It's a no value because that is the magic. If you read Dale DeGraff, that magic is getting that right. And the difference between when you get it right and you get it wrong and you have the proper bidders and the lemon peel and the different things. I mean it is truly a magical experience, but most people have never had a good cocktail because most of them are junk. So

Drew (00:38:50):
Talk about how did you go from this engineering background into all of a sudden owning whiskey brands?

Doug (00:38:58):
So I did 10 years of proctor where I led the invention team, put nine products in the market in 12 months using a systems approach, created the Eureka Ranch, Nike, Disney, Diagio, Macallan, inventing new products. And I'd learned a long time ago from Macallan that 70% of the flavor came from wood. And being a chemical engineer with a concentration of pulp and paper, I said, that's kinda like paper making backwards instead of using heat to take the ligands out, the lignans. So to be able to use the cellulose to make paper instead they're using that lignan in the whiskey to help set off the chain reaction, the chemical reactions. And so I said, how hard can it be? Well, a few years ago I started running experiments and I found a crazy guy who thought it was a kind of cool idea and we ran 3000 experiments and then after 18 months we won two of eight gold medals at the North American Bourbon Championship. And I said this thing could become something. So then I went to the Macallan and I said, Hey, I got this idea for a bourbon, you wanna do a bourbon? I go, Jesus, we'd love to do a bourbon but you can, they're too expensive. And I said, well I think we can do it this way. And sure enough, we made this no bleat product and the thing took off and next thing you know I'm in the whiskey business.

Drew (00:40:18):
Very nice. So now you are actually acting as a blender on a team of people. Is that how I understand it? So

Doug (00:40:26):
What we do now is we buy spirit and then we what's called Woodcraft finishing. We invented a system and equipment and blah blah blah blah, all the craziness. And we finish it with different woods, anythings from the Great Oaks, European Oak, American Oak, 200 year oak, Japanese oak to artisan woods, maple cherry smoked. And we'll use those in different whiskey products that we'll make. But we also offer, it is a custom blending experience where the consumers can come in and they go through and are taught the art of blending and how to put 'em together and then they walk out with their own custom blended bottle just like they would've done at Edmond Dexter's place.

Drew (00:41:11):
Very nice. Well this is a interesting thing for me. I've had an opportunity to do that once where I got to walk amongst barrels with a whiskey thief and then take a little sample of this, a little sample of that, little sample of this. But I probably have more questions cuz it was kind of like, here are the barrels, have Adam see what you want to do. And I was thinking when you're trying to make a blend and the blends that were there, the whiskeys that were there to choose from were anything from light whiskeys to bourbons. And as I was trying to figure out what I was going to put into this blend, I kept tasting whiskeys that I said, it's just not there. I don't know what it is, but either the finish is not really great or it, it's just not got a nice mouth feel to it or whatever it may be. There was something that was missing in each. And so is there a technique that you use to try to do you start with one whiskey and then try to improve upon where its weaknesses are? Or do you come at it from an idea of, wait, this is really nice and I bet it would compliment some of the flavors that I'm tasting in this other. So

Doug (00:42:31):
Part of the challenge is that we're doing this thing and we just opened up a franchise store in Louisville on Whiskey Row and people buy their whiskey and then they wanna come back a year later and do it again. And so in order for us to make that reliable and reproducible and eventually, I mean cuz you can open one a bourbon blending franchise for a fraction of the cost of a distillery and we're going to open 'em up all across the US and Canada to start you have to have a more reliable reproducible process to do it. So we take the same 21% rye bourbon because in order to be called a bourbon, you have to work from the same Nashville. If you took light whiskey and bourbon together, it's now a whiskey. You can't be called a bourbon anymore.

Drew (00:43:11):
Right,

Doug (00:43:12):
Okay. So we take that same product and then we finish it with the oaks and the cherries and the difference between the cherry wood and the Maplewood and the two, it's epic, the differences the oaks being classical, the other ones being lighter, fresher, obviously a different note to them. And so that's how we do it. And then we take people through an experience. The key to being able to make this is, it's like the craft farm to table restaurants. If you start with great ingredients, you make a great product, you can't take crappy whiskey and make a great product. So we worked very, very hard. The six core whiskeys Japanese being more of a luxury cuz just the cost of the damn Japanese Mauna Oak is so crazy. But the six core whiskeys every one of them is at least 92 points and two of them are 95 points in ultimate spirits, which is the highest recommendation. So all of them are outstanding whiskeys. And so when you're starting with really good whiskey you can do that. Now for the classic bourbon person we have to teach you and we've got these little ladles we use that can measure precisely on what you're doing. And so you have to learn the process of putting together. So we open up your palette first to have you taste the six and record your notes on the taste and the finish. Yeah.

(00:44:34):
Then we give you and we say, okay, take two of your favorites and put 'em together and just, I mean here's basically what happens on your higher end whiskeys B, both bourbon and scotch is, it's rare that it's a single barrel. It tends to be one from the top corner of the rickhouse, one from the bottom that's colder. So it's gone a lot. And so the blender is actually paid 35% more than the distiller cuz the real skill position, even though here we made a mythos to rung the distillers, I mean that's a computer, dammit. They just hit the button in the damn

Drew (00:45:09):
Computer

Doug (00:45:09):
Run. Let's just get over ourselves. It's a blender. That's the real magician who knows how to take those barrels and put 'em together. And so we teach you how to do that. If you're into whiskey, you'll tend to then take the oaks and use the artisan as a spice. If you're new to whiskey, you're going to take the maple and the cherry and use the oaks as a spice.

Drew (00:45:34):
So

Doug (00:45:34):
We teach you to take instead of one whiskey two, it's like two notes, three or four, it's like a pipe organ and how you build layers of flavor. And that's the magic of the blending. Well, just wandering around with a whiskey thief, you had no chance, you

Drew (00:45:52):
Had no chin <laugh>, no chance. Yeah. Whiskey thief in the beaker. It was an interesting experience. I mean it was fun because, but you also have to taste a lot of different whiskeys. There were probably 60 barrels in there. I mean where do you even start with 60 barrels? So the first time

Doug (00:46:11):
We did the tasting experience, we had 24 4 people did that and said never again.

Drew (00:46:17):
Then

Doug (00:46:17):
We went to 12 and we had 30 people and they said this is too much. And then we took nine months to get six that were the most unique set that could allow you to make something Scottish or Canadian or Irish. And that had the right set. And then a lot of data analysis to get the right six. That from those six and six is plenty. People can do six beyond that and their heads blow up now <laugh>, even with six, some people who are kind, they're go, they're the plus one, they're there to support either the guy or the gal. I mean it, it's both ways. And what'll happen is for them it can be too much too. So we've also built, my ranch team has built them for Nike, p and g and other people, artificial intelligence apps. And so we have a bourbon wizard on our website where you answer 13 questions and the computer creates a recipe for

Drew (00:47:16):
You

Doug (00:47:18):
And it's an exceptionally high quality app. Yeah. I mean it's way beyond what you would expect. And so people that are new to it, they can just use the app, get to something, it gets them, as you'd say in the neighborhood and they can then fiddle with it and adjust it till they get so they

Drew (00:47:37):
Like it. Okay, that's interesting. So where are, you are on Whiskey Row right now, but where else are you planning on being sometime soon?

Doug (00:47:46):
So we're in Cincinnati, we have it in Cincinnati at our place just east of the city. We're a place called Barrels and Billets in the Louisville Slugger building. Barrows named after Jay Frederick, the original founder of the Hill Rich and Bradbury family, the Hill rich family, the created Louisville Slugger, he was a barrel maker and then his son Bud made billets that became baseball bats.

(00:48:12):
And so it's named barrels and billets and at the bottom it says a Woodcraft bourbon blender. That's us. And so we're going to do 'em under local names. So existing distilleries, breweries, wineries for very low cost can add custom bourbon to their thing, which very profitable for them. And so we're in Louisville right now and that's the flagship and the it's opening this month now we've got a soft opening and this month and it's been ridiculous how fast this thing is growing down there. We hadn't even officially opened yet and we opened the doors at one o'clock last Wednesday and I turned around in an hour and there's 12 people in the place. I said, where'd you come from?

Drew (00:48:54):
<laugh>

Doug (00:48:56):
February in Louisville. And then those people tell some people and next thing it grows. So we're very excited about that. But we've got conversations with people all over the country right now that we're talking to and I knew we either have something brilliant or stupid <laugh> because the website, bourbon franchise.com was available. Wow, okay. Well this baby, this is the only bourbon franchise that you

Drew (00:49:22):
Get. Well that works. And Whiskey row, you couldn't have picked a better spot because you've got people who can walk along and go to different distilleries, experience the distilleries, and then when they're all fired up to do something on their own, they just wander over and they have an opportunity to act like their own master blender and do what they wanna do with it. So that's a lot of fun. And

Doug (00:49:48):
One of the most important things that we provide, what we learned as we've been doing this, cuz we opened it two months before Covid. So you can imagine how crazy

Drew (00:49:55):
This has been.

Doug (00:49:57):
But one of the things we've learned is that giving people a little coaching because people are a little unsure. And so we do really deep training with all of the folks on how to coach people on it, not to design it for 'em. And I tell 'em, we're not going to create it for you cuz I can't create what your taste bud's like. We were down in Lexington, we were doing an event and we, the people made used the wizard and a lady made one and her husband made one and I walked over and I said, what do you think? And she says, well mine's wonderful, but his is horrible. I dunno why he made such a bad

Drew (00:50:36):
One to him.

Doug (00:50:37):
Yeah. I said, sir, what do you think? She says, well mine's amazing, but I would never dare drink what she's drinking.

Drew (00:50:43):
Then

Doug (00:50:43):
They start to fight. And I'm like, folks, the whole idea of the 18 hundreds was everybody can have their own. You don't have to compromise. And so we really encourage people to do it and it's the look on people's faces when they create their own and it's designed to them and you can't screw it up because the damn sh stuff we're working with so good is truly amazing. It's truly amazing.

Drew (00:51:10):
So I have some of your Dexter three wood here and figure we go through and do a nosing and tasting on this one. So talk a little bit about the process for this whiskey. First of all what's the mash bill on this one? Is this also the 21% rye?

Doug (00:51:28):
No, no. This is a 36% rye. Okay. It's a 36% rye. It is it's a straight bourbon. So again, we try to stay, they would've been in the 18 hundreds. So I work very hard to stay the 18 hundreds. And while there's some tasting notes, people write and do this stuff. And I understand that's the thing people do back there. Dexter would not have done tasting notes. So we don't do that

Drew (00:51:52):
Stuff <laugh>. Right.

Doug (00:51:54):
And that's why when people are blending, they say, well, I do the nose. And I said, let me tell you, Dexter wouldn't have talked about that stuff. I said, just talk to me about do you like the taste and do you like the aftertaste? I mean, let's just keep this simple. And so it's a 36% rye. It's a straight bourbon. It would be a mix of anything from two year to six year barrels. They all have to be at least two years. And again, a six year barrel that was at the bottom of the rick house is going to be more like a three year barrel. A two year that's been at the top of the rick house is going to be more like a six. So we've got this magic that the number matters. And so we'll have a hundred barrels and my guys have to go through and taste them all and put them together into sets. And I don't care what the number is. I mean it has to be at least two. And so sometimes it might be because it depends on where in that Rick house that bottle was. Yeah, the barrel was.

Drew (00:52:49):
So I love jumping in and nosing and tasting a whiskey before I read anything about it. And so I did on this and the rye on the nose comes right out. It's a very almost earthy kind of a rye note that comes in with the little bit of that vanilla going on in the background and maybe even a little bit of orange peel in there that I pick up on the Yeah, there's a citrus kind of note in there.

Doug (00:53:19):
And that's why when I said the dickens, yeah, you're very astute because that little bit of orange juice this product is really activates with little bit of orange, whether it's a little splash of control, whether it's a little orange bitters a little bit of orange activates with this quite nicely.

Drew (00:53:41):
It does have a really nice substantial mouth feel to it. There's a pepperiness and a smokiness actually that kind of comes on the end. And not like an Isla smoke, but just a kind of smoked kind of a character that comes through.

Doug (00:53:59):
Give it char. What it does is, so we have a smoked oak. There's no smoked oak in this, but just to, the chips are toasted and then the barrels, oftentimes you'll get it depending upon the barrel, you'll, you'll get it off of a regular bourbon barrel. But interestingly, over half the people when they make their own whiskey put smoke in it. But sometimes, but it's done in a very tiny level. I mean you can pick it up because you're used to tasting. Most people won't taste that. But what they'll taste is layers of flavor. What we're trying to do is to form that pipe organ those layers, and to give you a lot of layers of flavor is what you're trying to do. And so the cherry wood gives a brightness a lot of that. The long finish that the thing it has, that's the maple and the 200 year, mostly 200 year.

(00:54:47):
But maple has a way of just smoothing the things so that you don't get boom, boom, some whiskeys, you'll taste it here and you taste it there. And when we screw up, we'll get boom, boom, boom. But what happens is that the cherry, and I hate that the word cherry has a flavor to it. It's the tree cherry wood. Yeah. It's not cherry fruit. The cherry wood gives a brightness at the hits at the start, the Maplewood in the middle, and the 200 year is the finish. And those three just really come together into at least what Paul Paco says is one of the 12 best bourbons in the

Drew (00:55:24):
World. So you're, when we're talking about this 200 euro, I'm trying to get into my head exactly cuz you said you went and you cor sort of sourced this. Was it already cut or was we talking about trees that were still standing 200 euro trees?

Doug (00:55:40):
No, no, no. This is good question. These were barns that are over a hundred years old.

Drew (00:55:49):
Okay.

Doug (00:55:50):
And it could be 150 years old. And so those would've been made from trees that were a hundred years old.

Drew (00:55:56):
Right.

Doug (00:55:58):
So that means these are trees that, unlike today where they do tree farms and they spread 'em apart so they grow faster. These would've been Virgin American forests. And the result is the grain is much tighter. And in fact we've tested it and it's actually the wood is cleaner than today's American oak. Yeah. Cuz there were less pollutants in the air. I mean, it's literally cleaner wood. But the magic that happened here is that wood sat in that barn for at least a hundred years. And all of our wood, all of our wood some of the European isn't just because I can't verify the source, but every other piece of wood that we've got a little dirty thing that's going on in this industry is when the industry boomed. We used to air dry all our staves for two years and the expensive whiskeys still get those.

(00:56:56):
But when the industry went crazy, people went to kiln dried and the kiln dried, if you looked outside our distillery, you'll see pallets and pallets of wood crosshatched and the rain's coming on and the snow and they're getting wet and then they're drying and they're getting wet and they're drying. And so it sits out there for at least two years to season. And in some of our older stuff, the Dexter there, that's probably got four year cherry wood and Maplewood in it. It could well have because the air drying is really magical. And part of the reason that some distilleries are getting very frustrated is I just tasted, somebody sent me some five year stuff, I tasted it and I mean it tasted like a six month whiskey. And I'm like, what are you doing? And the guy said, I said, you got kiln dry barrels? He says, yeah, I couldn't afford the other ones. Yeah. I said, where are you storing it? He says, I've got a beautiful temperature controlled warehouse. I said, dude, you're doing everything you can to suspend

Drew (00:57:58):
<laugh> development as it is. Yeah, yeah. Cuz you're talking about the elements. I mean, the interesting thing about using barrels to make whiskey is that you're really asking Mother Nature to impact the flavor and the quality of your whiskey. And if you're going to do it through a process that you can repeat over and over and over again, you're not going to get the change of seasons and the different good years and bad years that you may have and all of those elements that make whiskey kind of an interesting thing to explore.

Doug (00:58:38):
Well, and I mean, you're right, the challenge is you can get a bad year and a good year and then add on top of it where you put it in the Rick house, the north side, the south side, up top down Bo, is it a metal one or is it stone? All of these things. Cause now when you've done whiskey, like Macallan has forever, they know how all those react. But when you're starting now with a dozen, two dozen, four dozen barrels, you don't have enough to work with. And so you need to have that. We control it to within a 10th of a degree. I mean, my dad worked with Deming and we're very big on quality. We've got the tightest quality control of anybody in the industry by far. Yeah. Nobody else is close to us because while it's charming to hear about the seasons, yeah, I want my whiskey to taste good.

Drew (00:59:29):
I hear ya. So let's talk about, and kind of finish out the story on Dexter. So his son takes the distillery over in 1862. What kind of happens after that? How did it, cuz it obviously disappeared. So how did it end up going away?

Doug (00:59:48):
Mean? He ran it for a while. He put out a brand in honor of his dad old Dexter. When it ran for a while, he then either merged or bought a distillery cuz distilleries were now coming to life actually just south of Cincinnati, maybe a half hour south if you're driving down there. In fact, I've met a guy who has pictures of the old distillery where Dexter was and then eventually as the family grew and that kind of stuff, they had interest in investments and other things and the business just ended.

Drew (01:00:24):
Yeah, well and the son died young, so I understand around age 44. And somebody non-family came in and took it over for a while. And then I guess around prohibition time, what do we know when Ohio went into prohibition? Was it I don't. Okay. I don't because we know

Doug (01:00:44):
Kentucky. The guy had a sawmill. He had a sawmill that they picked it up.

Drew (01:00:48):
Yeah. Okay. Yeah cuz it was 1917 for Kentucky. So I, I'll have to look up and see if Ohio just waited until national prohibition or if they had had slipped in a little bit early. All these stories, now we can get it. Once you get to Prohibition, then Cincinnati becomes all about George Remus and all the stuff that went on during That's right. That era. And it's funny because it just went through and was doing some research on George Remus. And so when I hear Cincinnati Dexter and Whiskey, I'm thinking, oh, I wonder if he knew George Remus. But they're two completely, they weren't even alive at the same time. So we are talking two different eras of whiskey

Doug (01:01:32):
And that's what people will confuse when we talk about this. You're talking about Remus? Oh no, no, no, no. That that's like a long time later. Yeah, we're talking about the commercial beginnings. I mean, so what happened is these entrepreneurs, like Edmund Dexter made a market for what the farmers had. So rather than having to trade somebody for a horse, you could sell it and get money that you could then go and shop with. And that market then gave people confidence to create distilleries and the rest of the stuff. And this was going on all over the world. As I mentioned, John Walker, a grocer was doing the same thing in Scotland. It was a very pragmatic thing. It wasn't a romantic thing, they were just making a market for things and making a business

Drew (01:02:18):
For it. So where can we find this Dexter three wood? Is it available regionally or

Doug (01:02:25):
It's available throughout Kentucky and we're very proud of the fact that Costco always carries just a couple craft things. And even in Kentucky at Costco, you can get Dexter, it's available up in New Hampshire and it's available in Minnesota in the Minneapolis area and up that way. And it's available in southern Ohio. So perfect. We're expanding, but we've got, because the franchise thing is sort of taken off, we're kind of going back and forth, so we're kind of pulsing it. My partner and I, we spent six months on one and then six months on the

Drew (01:03:02):
Other.

Doug (01:03:03):
So right now we're working franchises and then come June, July we'll start to work growing Dexter and then we go back to growing the other one. Cuz you can only do so much as a draft distiller, obviously.

Drew (01:03:13):
Well, next time I am up in Cincinnati area or at Whiskey Row, I will definitely check you guys out and see what's going on. And it's a great idea and a lot of fun to be able to interact with whiskey and those whiskeys you have on your shelf. Very unique experience I would say. Yeah.

Doug (01:03:32):
So yeah, very much so. All

Drew (01:03:33):
Right, well thank you Doug. I appreciate you being on and giving us a little background on some history that we don't know about, but now we do. And also letting us know what you're creating cuz it's fascinating and I think a lot of people will enjoy that. So thank you very much and

Doug (01:03:49):
Keep Thank you. And Drew, thank you. Keep focused on the history. I think the history is, as you said, the real history's actually more interesting than so bend of the marketing bunkum that people come up with. Yeah,

Drew (01:04:00):
Absolutely.

Doug (01:04:01):
And we wanna celebrate that. And the nice thing about whiskey is, I don't know a single whiskey person who has one bottle. And so it's not about us versus them, it's about enjoying it's and not, or it's about bringing us together. And that's what this spirit in this country, in today's world and this country, and now the world, with all the chaos going on, we need something like whiskey and some good stories to bring people together.

Drew (01:04:32):
And if you wanna learn more about Dexter's Bourbon and customize your own bourbon, then just head to brain brew whiskey.com. And if you want to expand your knowledge of whiskey and find some new spirits to try, well make sure to join me on youtube.com/whiskey as I present tasting videos with a little bit of history and maybe some backgrounds on some of these distilleries. And if you've not bought it yet, make sure to check out Whiskey LO's Travel Guide to experience in Kentucky Bourbon, available on Amazon or through your favorite online retailer. Don't forget to get those reservations in early. For your favorite distilleries, I'm your host, drew Hamish. And until next time, cheers and SL JVA whiskey lords of production of Travel fuels Life. L L C.