Ep. 106 - Diving into the Rich History of Blanton's Bourbon

Transcript

Drew Hannush (00:00.923)
Welcome to Whiskey Lord, the interviews. I'm your host, Drew Hanisch, the Amazon bestselling author of Whiskey Lord's travel guide to experiencing Irish whiskey, experiencing Kentucky bourbon, and soon the lost history of Tennessee whiskey. And today we're gonna be talking history with, well basically we're gonna be talking about what is probably one of the most prized and also most maligned bourbons in the world. It's the one that new whiskey fans seek, Blanton's fans.

cry over when they see the price and availability. And it's the one that long time whiskey bourbon drinkers will sometimes eye roll when they hear the name. It's got a fascinating history and my guest today thought it was so fascinating he decided to write a book about it. And the book is called Warehouse H, The Story of Blanton's Bourbon. And its author is Dominic Guglielmi. And you're gonna give me the Italian pronunciation of this in just a second. But

uh... welcome to the show dot

Dominic Guglielmi (01:00.31)
Great to be here, Drew. Thanks so much for having me.

Drew Hannush (01:02.351)
Yeah, so give me that Italian pronunciation. Okay. That's a challenge for me. I guess I could practice it enough if I needed to. So let's jump in and talk about first kind of where your relationship with Blanton's started because you have quite a collection from what I have heard and seen. And of course your book.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:05.743)
Cool, yell me cool. Yeah me the fun one

Dominic Guglielmi (01:11.746)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:29.639)
covers a lot of those different variations of Blanton. So where did it first come onto your radar?

Dominic Guglielmi (01:36.702)
Well, you know, so I've, I'm relatively new to the game. I was not a bourbon person at all. I think the, the closest I got to whiskey was probably Canadian Club or, um, you know, perhaps Crown Royal, which my grandfather's drank. Um, and, and really up until probably 2017 hadn't, hadn't probably tried anything more than wild turkey and Maker's Mark. Um, about that time, probably 2017, 2018, a former boss of mine gifted me a bottle and said, you know,

If you want to try bourbon, here's a good one to start with. And it happened to be Blanton's. I didn't know anything about it. Knew knew nothing about the brand. Thought like everyone else that the horse on top looked cool. And so that started me down this journey that I had no idea it would take me on. Physically around the world, financially, bank depleting. It has been a journey unlike, unlike none other. And, and here we are today. I think the, the ultimate sort of.

accomplishment in my journey has been, or the result of it rather is the book that's now getting published this month.

Drew Hannush (02:42.343)
Very nice. Yeah, you probably would have saved a lot more money if you became an old crow fan. Although you can really chase after some old crow dusties, that's for sure. Yeah. So how big is this collection gotten and where have you had to go to purchase these bottles?

Dominic Guglielmi (02:46.952)
Yeah. Yep. Absolutely.

Dominic Guglielmi (03:00.262)
Yeah, so, you know, as I started the journey, I'll tell you a little bit more about the backstory. The, the, well, to answer your question first, specifically, the collection is probably about 130 bottles right now. How it got there, first started off with, you know, I finished that first bottle of blends and I can't even remember what it tasted like. Might have been deep, you know, I didn't have a much of a taste for bourbon at the time, but you know, I liked it. And more importantly, I liked having it. And so I wanted another bottle. And so just like everybody else.

Drew Hannush (03:09.298)
Okay.

Dominic Guglielmi (03:29.854)
I went to the internet, I searched, and I quickly found it's hard to get. I went around to the local stores, couldn't find it. So I soon discovered other varieties as I was Googling it. It was interesting to me because I found these black labels and the gold version straight from the barrel. So quickly I learned, okay, these are all international exclusives, or at the time were.

Drew Hannush (03:35.54)
Ha ha.

Dominic Guglielmi (03:58.698)
that just made me want them more. And it happened to be that I was going to Japan on a business trip right around that time. And of course, several of those varieties are exclusive to Japan. So that right there piqued my interest. And I kind of said, okay, I want to collect all the blans. And there's seven varieties currently produced. And it kind of became a quick obsession, but it was something I could actually achieve. It was something that was possible. And sure enough, I went to Japan.

found all the Blanton's, found it to be an amazing place for plans. And, and soon I had all seven. I thought I thought it was done. I've had the lineup, you know, it was cool. I can flex posted in my Facebook groups and other sort of, you know, internet forums and, but there was one problem that I ran across. And that was in my Google searching and in my online research, I found other varieties that I I'm like, what is this, you know, weird labels and sort of beautiful, you know, versions of the label.

Drew Hannush (04:31.325)
Mm.

Dominic Guglielmi (04:57.53)
And that then led down the rabbit hole. And so I discovered the other sort of special releases they do annually, the L'Hommasson de Whiskey releases. And then after that, what bothered me was I couldn't document them all. I needed to document them all because I couldn't find a good list of them rather. And it sort of bothered me that there was no comprehensive list. And every message board I was in or Reddit, somebody would post.

Drew Hannush (05:00.775)
Mm-mm.

Drew Hannush (05:18.949)
Mm-hmm.

Dominic Guglielmi (05:26.686)
one of these rare bottles and say, what is this? And then it would be answered, but then you'd see the same post two weeks later in a different form. And so there was no real resource. So I've got a little bit of undiagnosed OCD and that led me to really saying, okay, I'm gonna create a list. And it started off as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, as I just learned, I tracked, and then that morphed into a website, which is my current website, warehouseh.com.

And it really became just a resource and a guide for those like me who were looking for these bottles or wondering what they were. And then from there, grew into the additional collecting and, and of course the book, which we can, we can dive into as well.

Drew Hannush (06:07.747)
Yeah, that's fascinating to me, the transition from blog into writing books because I don't know if you're like me, but I mean somewhere along in my life I said, you know, oh, I'd love to write the great American novel, but then you kind of brush it off and say, yeah, everybody says that. So when is that ever going to happen? But then all of a sudden I was at a...

I was at a podcast convention and they were like, if you can teach somebody how to do something you should write a book about it. And I thought, well, I have a blog about how to do the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. So why wouldn't I write a book about doing the Kentucky Bourbon Trail? How did the logistics and everything that's all built around that, what bourbon is and all the rest. So what was it that kind of got you going, you know what, this blog needs to be a book.

Dominic Guglielmi (06:41.431)
Mm-hmm.

Dominic Guglielmi (06:46.038)
Why not? Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (07:00.37)
I really had a passion for setting the record straight. There was so much as I learned, I should mention my website became sort of a go-to resource for others. So I found myself learning and being able to share what I learned through numerous emails and blog posts and things like that. And as I learned more, I recognized how much false information or misinformation existed in very common sources. I'm not gonna name them all or anything, but

Drew Hannush (07:27.114)
Mm.

Dominic Guglielmi (07:28.482)
you know, common sources, common writers, popular writers in the field, the genre, you know, innocent mistakes, right? People just repeating stories of the past or perhaps what the distillery themselves has sort of marketed as the story. So as I learned more, I said, I need to share this. And I think probably the tipping point for me was...

contacting and establishing a relationship with the son of one of the former owners of the distillery back when Blanton's was launched. This is pre-Sazerac ownership. And once I connected with him and I, you know, basically heard his version, his name is Chris Falk, his father was Bertie Falk. Once I heard his version of sort of, here's what happened. Like nobody had really heard before. That really was the tipping point that I said, boy, there's a story here to tell. And

Drew Hannush (08:05.32)
Mm-hmm.

Dominic Guglielmi (08:17.194)
And I also grew in my appreciation and love of history to understand this is a historic brand. And I think we all know that everybody always talks about it being the original single barrel and all of that. But, you know, the argument I make in my book is that it was the seed that really was planted that others copied and, you know, other small batch and single barrel products soon emerged. And that grew into sort of the, the market, excuse me, today that we have. And the, the

the premium tier of bourbon. It really helped. It took a while, right? It took maybe 20, 30 years, but it really planted that seed. And so you love it or hate it, you should respect it. And that's really the position I take in a book in sort of educating people into the history and details like they've never seen before.

Drew Hannush (09:03.227)
Yeah. And it's interesting. David Jennings, who I've had on the podcast before did the forward to the book and, uh, kind of the same experience of really embracing a brand, but then wanting to get the full and real story out there because that's the thing about whiskey. It is something people like to weave tales around. And I find myself now in working on the book on Tennessee whiskey, that that's all I'm fighting are.

you know, these assumptions that have been made over the years or marketing that has taken over our, our thought processes. And that's what I loved about the going through the book. I mean, once you start getting in to the first 50, 60, 70 pages, you're really digging into history and not just telling the history of Blanton's, but also giving us some background on things that led to the ability for there to be a Blanton.

Dominic Guglielmi (09:33.721)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (10:02.295)
the background of Lee's town and really the origins of Buffalo Trace, which go back to the mid-1850s. I have not actually done that much research on Buffalo Trace and so on George T. Stagg and Old Fire Copper and all the other names that it's gone under. And so it was fun to go through and read that. And so how did you go about collecting all of that?

Dominic Guglielmi (10:16.483)
Mm-hmm.

Dominic Guglielmi (10:21.295)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (10:30.707)
that older information.

Dominic Guglielmi (10:32.734)
Yeah, it was actually challenging. My passion certainly is Blanton's, sort of the modern history. I mean, it was launched of course in 1984. And so everything has been recent with the brand. It has its namesake of course, Albert Blanton, Colonel Blanton, who goes way back and roots obviously in history. My challenge with the book was I wanted to open it with a way that sort of gave some of that history, but it didn't.

labor on it for too long. So I definitely have the first couple chapters are a snapshot. They're a snapshot of what bourbon is for those who don't know, very high level, and a brief history of the distillery itself, which I thought was important to sort of set up the background. I sourced a lot of information from great authors, Paul Pekalt and his book on Buffalo Trace, which was released a few years ago. Just a fantastic read and very detailed on the history of sort of

Drew Hannush (11:26.96)
Hmm.

Dominic Guglielmi (11:27.862)
the entire, I mean, he goes back literally to the buffaloes that roamed the grounds and much detail. So great, great resources there and sort of the background and history. And where I had the challenge was not getting too lost in that, recognizing that my book was really about the brand and it has only been around for the past 20, 30 years. And so you kind of need to not spend too much time back in the past and kind of get on with it.

But I, and also Paul's already done that book. And so I didn't, you know, I didn't need to repeat sort of what had already been done there, but that's a fascinating read that I recommend for everybody who really wants to know the kind of the entire backstory of what happened at Buffalo Trace and how, how it got to be what it is today.

Drew Hannush (12:11.491)
That was really my challenge in doing the Tennessee book was that as I was going into it, I'm like, I'm telling Tennessee history. I'm not just telling Tennessee whiskey history. And then I'm going, I'm going to bore people to death if I stick in this world too long, because it's not what they really bought the book for. But then there are components to that history, that it's backstory. And it needs to be told, because if it's not, you don't understand how things evolved.

Dominic Guglielmi (12:19.826)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (12:38.783)
to where they are now. So it's kind of like, did you write a longer intro and then all of it, or longer beginning and then have to just keep pruning it down?

Dominic Guglielmi (12:46.251)
Yes.

Dominic Guglielmi (12:49.55)
Absolutely. I very much my first couple chapters of the book were substantially longer and I Caught myself numerous times going back saying okay, you know This this is just a little much and get on with the Blanton's. So, huh? Yeah, that was a challenge But you know I think the good news was whether it was those initial chapters or even where I get into the sort of the meat of the Blanton story and the brand either way, I had plenty of material I much preferred the process of cutting out versus scratching my head going

What do I add next? It was not difficult to write an entire book about one brand. I thought it might be, even with the depth and sort of amount of history around this brand, it was not difficult at all. So that was good.

Drew Hannush (13:21.299)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (13:32.743)
That's what surprised me when I first got your email and I looked and I went, history of Blanton's, 1984. Okay, I don't know how much of this is gonna be. And then I started diving in. I'm like, okay, now I get this and definitely a much richer history than I ever would have expected. It's interesting, I was talking not too long ago with Brown Foreman and we were talking about

Dominic Guglielmi (13:40.01)
Yeah, sure.

Drew Hannush (14:00.203)
In the 60s, they came out with the president's choice, which was not labeled as a single barrel whiskey as far as I know, but it was kind of that idea of here is somebody going into the warehouse and picking out a specific whiskey to release. But that was in the 60s when bourbon was still somewhat in favor. People still, there were enough people around that were enjoying it.

By the time this came about in 1984, the whole whiskey market was heading into a depression or in a depression at that point. So talk a little bit about what Blanton's is and why it stood out from the rest of the market at that particular time.

Dominic Guglielmi (14:35.03)
Yeah, very much.

Dominic Guglielmi (14:45.486)
Sure. Absolutely. Well, one of the things you allude to is, you know, sort of in the definition, if you look at Blanton's, you say it, you know, the world's first single barrel bourbon. Not really. First mass marketed single barrel bourbon. There's been documentation, several authors, Fred Manick, et cetera, have documented single barrel expressions that have been done previously, but just not marketed as single barrel. There are few and far between. But you also go back to the 1800s.

at a point, particularly before the Bottled in Bond Act, single barrel was effectively all that there was. They distilled it, they barreled it, and then after it aged, they shipped those barrels off to the taverns or what have you and filled them from there. So the concept itself wasn't new, and it particularly wasn't new even as the decades progressed, where, as the story goes that you hear from Buffalo Trace, Albert Blighton loved his single barrels and so forth.

all of the distilleries had leaders that loved their single barrels because they recognized that there was the honey holes in the warehouses. There was the places that the barrel aged different. It wasn't just the leadership and the master distillers. It was Joe, the warehouse foreman. They all knew where the good ones were. The concept, Blanton gets all the credit, but really they were just the first ones to take it to market. What happened throughout the 1960s, as you mentioned, is that the

Drew Hannush (15:49.501)
Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (16:14.346)
know, bourbon really crested and then towards the end of the decade, it started to just fall off a cliff. And, you know, as the 70s progressed, numerous distilleries were shuttered. The entire industry was just near collapse at one point. And, you know, the 80s ushered in more of the same. Charles Crowdery calls it, says that today's the best of times with bourbon. Those were the worst of times. And they were. And it's...

Drew Hannush (16:41.108)
Mm-hmm.

Dominic Guglielmi (16:43.178)
It's interesting because when Blanton's was launched in 1984, nobody was asking for it. And it really wasn't something that, you know, by any means, the market said, Hey, we need this. But what you had was a rising export market, Japan in particular. And you had two guys that came in to the distillery and bought the stag, what was then the stag distillery. And when they bought it, they, they were marketing guys and they said, what can we do? How can we create a premium product? And so.

Elmer T. Lee sort of gets all the credit, right? And he certainly was a big influence on the decision. But the reality of it is, and this is one of the undercurrents of the book that I write about, the reality is two more guys, Bob Baranaskis and Ferdy Falk, the distillery owners at the time, they're the ones who asked him to do it. They said, hey, what can we do that's premium? How can we sell a more expensive product to a different target audience? And so I try to give them credit for this journey and this product as much as Elmer gets.

because it really was them. It was a trio. It was a trio, a magical trio as I refer to it, that really launched Blanton's and kind of again, sowed those seeds of the eventual bourbon comeback that we have today.

Drew Hannush (17:55.291)
Yeah, it's really interesting to also dig into the fact that you're discussing the fact that Elmer T. Lee was a plant manager and that's what he saw himself as, was a plant manager. He didn't see himself as a distiller. They tagged him with the name Master Distiller, but to him, he wasn't the guy running the stills. He was the guy making sure that the books were kept and everything was up and running properly and that sort of thing. So he...

Dominic Guglielmi (18:07.609)
Yeah. No.

Dominic Guglielmi (18:20.466)
Yes. Yeah.

Drew Hannush (18:25.471)
We'll dig a little bit into him here in a moment, but first let's get back to the namesake of the whiskey. So talk a little bit about Albert Blanton and what his role was and experience at the distillery.

Dominic Guglielmi (18:42.646)
Yeah. So Albert Blanton started about age 16 at the Stag Distillery. It was his late 1800s. And he was an office boy, as his title was known, in just miscellaneous sort of tasks. And it's sort of that fairy tale journey, right? He rose all the way up to become the distillery president in the early 20s. That coincided, of course, with the onset of prohibition, which was obviously just a terrible time for the industry. And his leadership...

helped the stag distillery survive through that. First, he led them into the medicinal whiskey bottling. They couldn't produce more of it at the time, but then still more of it, but they could essentially bottle what was already barreled. And as those supplies ran dry or ran low in the late 1920s, he pushed for additional distillation of medicinal whiskey. He worked with other distillers, they lobbied the government, and essentially were granted a few licenses.

to produce one of them at the Stag Distillery. So he sort of had the leadership that got them through all of that. By the time the 1930s came and Prohibition was over, he led the boom, you know, all the way to World War II, which was another interruption in that production. Relatively minor. They still did produce bourbon during the war, but they also produced wartime alcohol, which is used to create different products and support the war effort.

But he got him through that. And then the late 1940s and into his early retirement years, which was in 1953, it just really started taking off. And so he was a key player in the distillery really for the first 50 years of the 1900s.

Drew Hannush (20:29.743)
interesting that you also brought up the fact that when Shinley bought them that there was this you were talking about how the brands were positioned and where they were being aged or where they were being distilled and so on because they also had the Bernheim distillery was another one of their and I've been tracking the George Dickel story which it was distilled once at Buffalo Tray or at George C. Stagg and it was also at Bernheim so it's like you know trying to figure out where all these different whiskeys

Dominic Guglielmi (20:49.326)
Mm. Right.

Drew Hannush (20:58.907)
were being made at that time though, what would their standout brand have been? Because you mentioned Old Charter and I find that interesting because that was the first, actually the first Buffalo Trace product I ever had was Old Charter.

Dominic Guglielmi (21:15.242)
Yeah, they, you know, there's a few brands that I didn't dive too much into the early brands of stag and so forth. They continued to produce OFC, which was one of their staples. They also introduced a few that were, I think, post prohibition brands that soon disappeared. I think there was one, Mirrorbrook was one that I remember. Their big brand, which kind of goes back to the distillery name even, is the Ancient Age brand.

that was released in 1946. So it was post-war and that quickly became their top seller or certainly one of them. So much so that name really became adopted as an unofficial official name of the distillery. And that is an entire subject of its own right. Much discussion on the internet about this. I dove deep into this and kind of summed it all up in the book, but it's an interesting.

Drew Hannush (21:44.218)
Okay.

Drew Hannush (22:02.143)
Ha ha ha.

Dominic Guglielmi (22:11.322)
story that is told around the name of the distillery, both from the official Buffalo Trace accounts and what locals remember it. And then you get into the minutiae on, well, what's technically the name like on paper from a legal perspective versus what everybody calls it. So there's definitely competing names there. But Ancient Age was the brand that sort of then became the name of the distillery and for all practical purposes was known as Ancient Age distillery for the latter half of the century.

Drew Hannush (22:40.799)
I think what's surprising about that is that I expect that in the 19th century, because in the 19th century, you didn't have trademarks until the 1870s. All of this business names, me trying to research business names, there was no old Crow distillery that James Crow was distilling at. It was whatever. They would call it Crow's distillery maybe, or they would call it old Oscar Pepper's distillery.

Dominic Guglielmi (22:49.744)
Mm. Yeah.

Drew Hannush (23:09.987)
you know, whether that was an official name or not. It made sense back then because the, you didn't have excise tax. You didn't have all these other things that were forcing you to have to define yourself. And then here we are in the 1960s, 70s and 80s and we don't know.

Dominic Guglielmi (23:14.69)
what they're doing.

Dominic Guglielmi (23:26.442)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, it's, it's a, it's a fascinating part of the book. And one of the things I'll tell you is that I was able to find out, you know, Buffalo Trace says it was OFC. And then in the early 1900s, 1903 or something, they changed to Stag. And then from there, it was that all the way until 1999 when it became Buffalo Trace. Yet their press release in 1999 refers to the name change as going from ancient age distillery to

Buffalo Trace. So clearly the vernacular, the common use of the name was ancient age. But there's many more nuances to it. At one point, at Albert Blanton's retirement, and getting back to him, they renamed the distillery the Albert B. Blanton Distillery, and the board approved it. So that actually happened, but then everybody kind of forgot about that. So it's quite the tale.

Drew Hannush (23:57.609)
Ha ha

Drew Hannush (24:14.448)
Okay.

Drew Hannush (24:20.703)
That's true. And even the OFC, that, you know, when you go to the distillery, you hear, was it old fire copper? Was it old fashioned copper? I have to assume that it was old fire copper. And EH Taylor, the master marketer after a while went, that doesn't sound sexy enough. We need to come up with something. Because old fire copper was a style of whiskey. So it, yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (24:26.998)
Oh yeah. Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (24:37.85)
Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (24:41.09)
Right. It does sound, yeah. And I believe this has been research I ran across, you know, as I was just trying to put together my little bit of Buffalo Trace history, I sort of ran into that issue, researched it. I did not go anywhere as near as deep as folks like Fred Minnick has, but I sort of went, okay, not going down that rabbit hole, I've got enough of my own. Um, we'll let that one sort of be up to the opinion of whoever, whatever you think. So, but yeah, I agree. I agree with you. That does sound plausible.

Drew Hannush (24:53.887)
Hahaha

Drew Hannush (24:59.026)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (25:06.219)
Was there a rabbit hole that you really wanted to go down that you just said, uh-uh, I can't. I just can't do it.

Dominic Guglielmi (25:12.598)
Gosh, you know, I would have loved to, I would have loved to know a little bit more about the early years of the ownership of the distillery from when it was purchased by Takara who owns the brands now, they spun off the distillery immediately when they purchased it to Sazerac. I would have loved to know more about the complexities of that transaction. There was a lot of contentiousness. I do write about a little bit of that.

Drew Hannush (25:28.659)
Mm-hmm.

Dominic Guglielmi (25:41.41)
There was some litigation and some back and forth between Falk and Baranaskis, the previous owners, and Sazerac at one point. And, you know, it's one of those things where it's either been lost to time, or nobody wants to uncover those old wounds and kind of dig into the archives. And, you know, but there's more to that. And if nothing else, just from a historical perspective, might not be that juicy or worthy of, you know, getting it on paper.

Drew Hannush (26:05.615)
Yeah, I can tell you that sometimes digging into oral tradition, even modern, you know, uh, commentaries from two combatants, it's really hard to figure out where the actual truth lies in the midst of all that. So it may be one of those things that even if you could interview them, you would still kind of get a confusion at the end as to which way it actually went. But, uh, let's talk about, uh, Elmer T. Lee. So Elmer T. Lee,

Dominic Guglielmi (26:25.088)
Mm-hmm.

Dominic Guglielmi (26:30.246)
Yeah, absolutely.

Drew Hannush (26:36.952)
I love the story that you brought in about when he first came to get a job there. Talk about that if you would.

Dominic Guglielmi (26:47.846)
Yeah. So, uh, there's a great interview, uh, for, for all of your listeners. Uh, it's on YouTube and it's from the Kentucky, uh, oral history project. And it's with Elmer Teeley. It's fantastic to hear, hear his own version of it or hear his actual words. But essentially what happened is he had already been working at the distillery during his summers while he was going to college. So he had went to World War II and served in the Pacific.

after that returned home. And so during the late 40s, while he was enrolled in the University of Kentucky, those summers he spent at the distillery. And that part hasn't really been documented previously very much, but he was there and he did have some familiarity with some of the folks there from his summer work. So 1949 comes along, he graduates, he's looking for a full-time employment, a chemical engineering degree. And so he goes to the distillery and he meets with Auroville Shupp, who was the distillery

manager, I believe at the time. And Shupp takes him into Colonel Blanton's office, who kind of had the say so, the final say so on any new hiring. And, uh, effectively Blanton barely looks up from his desk and says, we're not hiring anybody today. And so that was it, right? The Colonel has spoken. And so, um, you know, Elmer tells it where he, he heads outside and essentially he's, you know, distraught. He thinks, well, that's it. I'm not getting a job here. And Shupp tells him, Hey,

Drew Hannush (27:56.978)
NNNF

Dominic Guglielmi (28:11.926)
Don't worry about it. Show up on Monday. You got a job. And so they don't really ever fill us in on what happened. You know, either, either Shupp had enough clout to ignore what was going with what the Colonel said, or perhaps he convinced them, you know, behind closed doors, but Elmer showed up and, uh, you know, the rest is history, of course. But he does make mention of the fact that early on he would pass by the Colonel out, you know, walking along the campus of the distillery of the grounds.

and he would sort of get this cross-eyed look and he thought the Colonel was looking at him saying, how the hell did you get in here? And that just, that's such an awesome story because you do kind of almost picture that scene happening. And yeah, it's pretty neat.

Drew Hannush (28:51.299)
Yeah, well, I think the exclamation mark on the end of it is that somehow Elmer T. Lee thought Blanton's name is the one that should go on this particular whiskey.

Dominic Guglielmi (29:02.238)
Yeah, yeah, that's a fantastic point. I mean, he clearly revered him and it sounds like by all accounts over the next few years that they worked somewhat together. You know, remember Elmer was starting off and the Colonel was effectively the president who was getting ready to retire, but there was some knowledge that apparently was transitioned and certainly some respect for sure. And that was a great piece that he was able to sort of honor his legacy with the naming of Blanton's.

Drew Hannush (29:29.415)
So talk through the coming up with this particular whiskey. There's talks of kind of what inspired it for him.

Dominic Guglielmi (29:41.758)
Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier, getting with the bourbon market sort of bottoming out, there was nobody was interested in it, certainly domestically. And that has a lot of explanation and detail in itself. The market, the baby boomers, as they sort of became of age, they didn't want what their parents were drinking. And so effectively, they switched over to the whiter goods, your gins, your vodkas, and then also wine.

So they were rejecting the parents drink of choice, which was bourbon and whiskey. And again, there was just no demand. And so enter the early 80s, Elmer is ready to retire. I mean, the place is just a shell of what it once was. And he's ready to retire and call it a career. Ferdy and Bob come along by the distillery and they were just looking to make a buck. They did not just want to produce bourbon.

They wanted to distribute alcohol. They were, they both came from a company called Standard Brands, which owned a portfolio of companies, Fleischmann's being one of them. And they were actively involved in the acquisition of brands or the importing rights for a bunch of different things. Not even, not even distilled spirits, but beer, for example, they brought Moosehead, Dos Equis, and Foster's, I believe, to the U S market in the 1970s. And so they, they had all of this experience and they had all of this.

sort of rich marketing tradition and understanding brands. And the distillery, they didn't even want it first. They just wanted to buy the brands. They ended up with it. And as they settled in, they recognized that their revenue streams needed to be much more than just bourbon. And so they explored those other routes. They did contract distilling for other distilleries. They also, as I mentioned, dabbled in different import and export venues. But they recognized they needed a premium, they wanted a premium product.

Drew Hannush (31:16.944)
Mm-hmm.

Dominic Guglielmi (31:39.51)
They wanted something they could sell to people that had a little more cash to spend. And so, you know, that's when they tapped Elmer on the shoulder and said, all right, you know, what can we do here? How can we take this bourbon that's in all these barrels and sell it at a higher price point? And the three of them effectively, you know, came up with the details are unfortunately lost to history. I mean, you know, who suggested it was to say it is called Blanton's, you know, whose idea was it to, you know, use that whole story and so forth? No doubt, Elmer.

Drew Hannush (31:53.031)
Mm-hmm.

Dominic Guglielmi (32:08.05)
educated them, but I'm sure their marketing prowess Spiced things up and really, you know helped bring it to fruition and actually get the product to market Elmer probably told him the story and you know in one afternoon and that was it right? That was his actual contribution I'm not trying to take anything away from him Certainly, but you know, it's it is interesting how he gets so much of that credit

Drew Hannush (32:23.608)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Drew Hannush (32:30.107)
Yeah, the brand actually, it didn't, wasn't called Blanton's right off the bat, was it?

Dominic Guglielmi (32:36.754)
Now, that was one of the things that a lot of your listeners probably knew to them and many people, but effectively, Ferdy and Bob didn't want to name it at all. It was just this sort of super premium bourbon. And the label didn't carry the name Blanton's until the early 1990s. Until then, the neck label, for example, just said Blanton Distilling Company. And so there was even an actual article.

Lexington Herald, I believe it was, that mentioned that it was going to remain nameless. The problem was, as they brought it to market, they effectively realized, how do you market a nameless product? Yeah, right, right.

Drew Hannush (33:09.705)
Ha ha.

Drew Hannush (33:15.903)
How do you ask for it? Yeah, I'd like that. I mean, that's where having that iconic bottle shape makes such a difference because you could say, hey, what's the one that comes in that round bottle? Ha ha.

Dominic Guglielmi (33:22.806)
Yep. Yes.

Dominic Guglielmi (33:28.682)
Yeah, exactly. It just wasn't very effective. And so that quickly fell, you know, fell off. It became Blanton's. And what's interesting is you see a lot of referrals to early articles and early, you know, even interviews with staff from the distillery at that time refer to it as Blanton singular, not Blanton's. And, you know, that kind of goes along with, you know, just the name that they've originally adopted and Blanton Distillery. It's just it's an interesting sort of side note. But.

Drew Hannush (33:48.019)
Hmm.

Dominic Guglielmi (33:58.434)
definitely wasn't, you know, referred to commonly as Blanton's with the apostrophe s until a little while later.

Drew Hannush (34:06.448)
So to rip us out of the 80s and into present day for just a moment, have you been on the tour of the distillery? And so this is what makes me laugh about this. Out of all the whiskeys that they have at Buffalo Trace, the place that we go to visit when we go through into the bottling hall, it's the Albert Blanton Bottling Hall and we get to watch them bottling whiskey we can't buy.

Dominic Guglielmi (34:12.542)
Oh yeah, yes, absolutely.

Dominic Guglielmi (34:28.278)
Yeah, absolutely.

Dominic Guglielmi (34:33.642)
Yep, yep. It is, you know, it's right there across from the gift shop. It is, uh, you know, when you pull the parking lot, you're looking at warehouse age, um, you know, it's the most popular brand and, you know, it's, uh, it's just a amazing, um, you know, what it's grown to be in these subsequent years. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's absolutely a behemoth today.

Drew Hannush (34:52.931)
The first time I walked in there, I really didn't know much about Blanton's. It was my first trip through Kentucky and I looked and I thought, these are awesome looking bottles. And then I asked somebody, I said, where's this sold? And they said, oh, we're shipping these overseas. And I went, oh, well, what good is that?

Dominic Guglielmi (35:02.702)
No. Ha ha.

Dominic Guglielmi (35:07.086)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, right. Well, and you're touching on something that's important, you know, for listeners. And most folks do know the basics. And that is that, you know, the brand, Blanton's, as I alluded to earlier, was owned by the Japanese, Takara Shuzo. And they bought in the early 90s. They effectively bought out Ferdy Falk and Bob Baranaskis. And they were not interested in U.S. market distribution or creating the actual distillation of the product.

So they had already been working behind the scenes to spin off the physical distillery property to Sazerac. And so that's what happened. And when that happened, they retained the rights to Blanton's as well as several other products that were produced with the same mash bill. And that still continues to this day. So effectively, you know, kind of like I alluded to Elmer T. Lee getting all the credit for creating Blanton's, Buffalo Trace gets all this credit for making it. They certainly do make it, but they don't.

they don't have really much to say with the product. I mean, I can't go into too much detail, but in my various discussions with them, not a lot they can talk about with the brand. They just make it and it's under contract. And so people associate it with Buffalo Trace, rightfully so, but it's really this behind the scenes age international company, which is Japanese owned, that calls all the shots. And people don't complain to Buffalo Trace about not getting more bulletins or not getting the varieties that you want because they can't help you. It's not them.

Drew Hannush (36:07.304)
Hmm.

Drew Hannush (36:23.901)
Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (36:34.43)
Yeah. Yes, exactly. Yeah, in a way it is. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Drew Hannush (36:34.546)
It's a weird concept to think of, but basically it's a sourced whiskey.

from, yeah, as is Pappy Van Winkle. Owned by someone else who just contracts them and tells them how much they can make and what they need to do to make it and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, it's really interesting to see that relationship there. So let's talk a little bit about, because the last time I went to Buffalo Trace, it's, well this is what I love about.

Dominic Guglielmi (36:48.206)
Yep.

Dominic Guglielmi (36:52.563)
Yeah, that's right.

Drew Hannush (37:04.871)
tours, it all depends on your tour guide and where their passions are. And at Buffalo Trace, the first time I went, I got a nice general tour of the distillery. The second time I went, I got somebody who just loved warehouses. And that's all. I mean, we got a deep dive.

Dominic Guglielmi (37:07.626)
Yeah. Yes.

Dominic Guglielmi (37:21.952)
I'm sorry.

Drew Hannush (37:24.055)
into warehouses and I thought that was great because they are now of course trying to double their capacity. They got all these new warehouses they're building and he said, you know, each of these warehouses has a specific kind of a personality. They're all made out of different materials. They were built at different times. And so now your book is called Warehouse H. So of course the question comes up. We assume from that, that is where Plans is coming from.

Dominic Guglielmi (37:38.654)
Mm-hmm.

Dominic Guglielmi (37:49.048)
Thank you.

Drew Hannush (37:51.451)
But first of all, have you had a chance to tool around inside of Warehouse H yourself?

Dominic Guglielmi (37:56.67)
Yeah, absolutely. I've had the benefit, the fortune to, could kind of be there alone, just by myself for several hours, just wandering the Ricks and, you know, maybe getting a few looks from different foremen and so forth. I was there, I was allowed to be there. So, but yeah, I've had that pleasure several times and it is, it's a magical place, you know, and it's magical to me because of my love for the brand. I don't know that it's all that much more magical than other warehouses, to be honest with you, especially the older ones that are historic, but...

Drew Hannush (38:13.424)
Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (38:26.582)
You know, just something about being in the middle of the wrecks and kind of smelling that, you know, that bourbon in the air, the angel's share or whatever. It's just a great, great experience.

Drew Hannush (38:37.587)
So how did warehouse H end up being the one that they pegged for picking out this perfect bourbon?

Dominic Guglielmi (38:43.894)
They, that goes back to, you know, what rightfully is probably one of Elmer's contributions to the brand. And that is he remembered how Albert Blanton really preferred barrels from warehouse H. They all have their favorite warehouses. All the master distillers, all the, you know, the foremen again, everybody's kind of got their favorite and Colonel Blanton preferred warehouse H. It was built in the 1930s very quickly because of the post prohibition demand.

And so they used a metal cladding on the outside versus more of your traditional brick or stone. And so as a result, and the story has been told many times, but as a result, the weather sort of permeates the structure differently than a traditionally built warehouse and it ages the barrels a little bit differently. And so within the warehouse as well, you've got those honey holes or sugar spots or, you know, just places that effectively aged maybe the bourbon a little bit better as well. And Colonel Blanton knew what he liked.

Drew Hannush (39:27.931)
Mm.

Dominic Guglielmi (39:42.302)
and it was Warehouse H. And so Elmer Teely brought that story out as part of the reasoning for selecting Blanton's from Warehouse H. It just made sense because of the Colonel's love for that warehouse.

Drew Hannush (39:55.631)
Yeah, was that, who was behind Mash Bill number two? Because that is, it seems like all of a sudden other whiskeys branched out of that. But do you know much about the origin of that Mash Bill?

Dominic Guglielmi (40:09.314)
I don't know extensive details. Effectively, Mash Bill 2 was the primary mash bill that they were using at the, well, what is now Buffalo Trace, Stag, Ancient Age, whatever you want to call it, back in the 80s. And they developed several products out of that. There was Hancock's Presence Reserve, Albert T. Lee's Namesake Bottle, and others. And so they, I'm not sure how many different mash bills they had back then, but by the time

Drew Hannush (40:23.463)
Mm-hmm.

Dominic Guglielmi (40:38.674)
Sazerac bought the distillery or became the owners of the distillery and began to introduce their own products or acquire their own products. They started segregating out what was effectively the age international owned brands, including Blanton's and referring to that particular mash bill, the yeast that goes into it, the actual recipe, all of that as being an ancient age owned brand, or age international owned brand, excuse me.

Drew Hannush (41:04.859)
Yeah. And it's not a whiskey that's ever really had an age statement to it.

Dominic Guglielmi (41:08.734)
No, no it hasn't. At the time, I don't know why that was. It definitely gives flexibility in what they can bottle. And it's probably a stroke of genius retrospectively that it doesn't because I suspect now, and I have no knowledge of this officially, this is my own sort of going out on a limb conspiracy, but I have a feeling now that it's bottled at a lower end of the range versus what it once was.

And Buffalo Trace has alluded to it being a six year bourbon. Elmer T. Lee in various interviews referred to it as being eight year in the past. The Japanese exclusive varieties have generally been known to be aged about two years longer than the rest of the standard varieties. So, you know, it's somewhere in that six to eight year, but what's to say? It's not a five year. And it's, you know, especially with the market demand it is today, who knows how.

how long it's really sitting in there. It's gonna fly off the shelves no matter what. Of course, they can't go too low in their age because there's legalities around labeling, but certainly it could, I don't think it spends much more time than five to six years in the warehouse, at least the bulk of the product.

Drew Hannush (42:22.047)
I think what I also found interesting was the fact that they really aren't looking to... This warehouse that they're potentially building to mimic warehouse H, they're not going to make and store Blanton's in that warehouse as I understand.

Dominic Guglielmi (42:37.367)
Yes. And this is another piece that will be interesting to see how readers react in the book. But I was able to discover that even today, effectively what happens, if you do the math, the amount of bourbon, of Blanton's that they are producing and bottling cannot effectively be stored in warehouse age. It far exceeds the capacity, especially if you consider a minimum of six year aging.

Drew Hannush (43:00.261)
Hmm.

Dominic Guglielmi (43:03.146)
What happens is, and the reality of it is they're already doing barrel shuffling. And what's, what's happening is they'll start barrels aging in other warehouses. And then at some point during those six years, maybe, maybe after year five, for example, they'll bring them over to warehouse age, throw them in the ricks and finish them up and therefore it's a warehouse age product. Um, that is not, you know, I don't want to make it sound like they're doing something sinister there that happens everywhere, you know, there's been a lot of natural disasters and one of the, uh, that have affected distilleries in Kentucky.

Drew Hannush (43:26.984)
Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (43:31.618)
you know, fires, floods, et cetera. One of the things that you can do as an insurance policy is don't have all your, your eggs in one basket. And, and effectively that practice probably goes back multiple years where they don't exclusively use warehouse age. I do believe everything that goes in the bottle, spend some time at warehouse age. So I don't know that, I don't know if there's any benefit to them saying, we're going to use this other warehouse because you'd lose the lore of warehouse age, if you, if you say that.

Drew Hannush (44:01.265)
Right.

Dominic Guglielmi (44:01.406)
If they can sort of continue to masquerade that, you know, that's okay. One of the things that has happened is in the past few years, especially as they've released, Buffalo Traces released gold and straight from the barrel in limited quantities domestically, they added a third shift to their bottling haul for blends. That has increased output tremendously. Their biggest bottleneck, if you will, to getting more out to the consumer is probably not the aging process at this point, for the reasons I just mentioned. It's likely...

due to the capacity to bottle it. It's a very manual process still. There's only a few lines there that they're bottling and so forth, so they can expand that. But that might be the actual reason that we're not seeing more of it is that they just don't have the ability to actually get it into the bottles any more quickly than they already do. And frankly, that's where Age International comes into play. They may control that whole process. We just don't really know the details where they don't want more of it. They're happy at this.

Drew Hannush (44:35.176)
Wow.

Drew Hannush (44:58.151)
Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (45:01.138)
increased level, they don't want to double it for, you know, who knows why.

Drew Hannush (45:04.716)
This is where Buffalo Trace can say, it's not us, it's not us. Ha ha ha.

Dominic Guglielmi (45:06.746)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a, it's a, you know, everybody says, like, you know, why can't you ship the, all these good varieties here? Why is it overseas? Because it's owned by overseas company. And why can't you make more of it? Well, they actually are they're making, you know, probably now I think over 20 times more than they were just 20 years ago. So they're doing a lot. They're not just sitting back and, you know, trying to keep it off the shelves. You know, it's a pretty popular brand.

Drew Hannush (45:25.undefined)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (45:33.711)
There's a lot of good reasons to enjoy a whiskey boom, but some of the drawbacks to a whiskey boom are because so much whiskey needs to get pumped out there. The old idea of picking the sugar and honey barrels, if you're using the whole warehouse H now, you know, it's not coming from that special location anymore. So have you in your collections, have you found dusties that you have had a chance to taste?

Dominic Guglielmi (45:51.178)
Yeah. No.

Dominic Guglielmi (46:01.258)
Yeah, absolutely. I drank extensive amounts of Dusty's. In fact, it helps. I mentioned earlier I travel to Japan quite often and they are really where the majority of the Dusty bottles that end up here these days come from. Certainly people find them in their grandparents basement or something like that. But over there you can still find them relatively easily on the secondary market, which in Japan is legal. It's very different than here. So not an issue at all to, you know.

Drew Hannush (46:19.635)
Hmm.

Dominic Guglielmi (46:30.39)
Buy and sell it over there very common. So I've had in numerous varieties My the oldest I've had is a 1984 and it actually wasn't that good. It was it was it was it was disappointing You know, I'll be honest with you Most of the late 80s I've actually tried probably every year up and up until at least the 2000s and then hit or miss between then and common ones current ones, but early 90s Takara read the Japanese 93 proof version

Drew Hannush (46:43.272)
Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (46:59.898)
are considered a really delicious pour. Most of the 92s, 93s are fantastic. So there's, I can attest to those being exceptional and markedly different than today's varieties, which definitely shows you something's changed a little bit. There have been some changes to filtering and things like that, but it's a very different expression if you get into the Dusties.

Drew Hannush (47:27.575)
I think that's what we have to keep in mind with anything that's a single barrel product is that you have to expect variation from one bottle, even in the same year, to recognize that there's going to be differences in those bottles.

Dominic Guglielmi (47:40.93)
Yeah. One of the, one of the interesting things there as well is, you know, we talked earlier about the, or I mentioned briefly, the bourbon glut, you know, it's sort of as the market downturn of the seventies and eighties occurred, the manufacturers didn't really slow production enough. And so what you had was a lot of aged bourbon sitting in barrels longer than they intended. It was over-aging in some cases even. And so a lot of products though, benefited from that, that unintentional gift of those extra, you know, the unwanted demand.

Drew Hannush (48:03.283)
Mm-hmm.

Dominic Guglielmi (48:10.706)
And so there's no documented proof. Some, some will say on the internet there, there is, but there's no documented proof that coming from Buffalo Trace that earlier Blanton's were aged nine, 10, 12, 13 years. Um, but there's a high likelihood. Some of them might've been, uh, there, there really was a surplus of bourbon at all the distillers and particularly Buffalo Trace and what went into the bottles probably was, was simply older at that point.

And therefore, you probably had some that hit the mark a little bit. I think there is overaging that can happen. But I think within, you start getting that nine, 10 year range, that was maybe the sweet spot for Blanton's and those early 90s bottles certainly could have been that.

Drew Hannush (48:55.476)
Yeah. I also found it interesting that Buffalo Trace, uh, well stag at the time or ancient age, whatever it may have been, um, decided to send a bottle of whiskey to the president, but I don't think, uh, Reagan ever got a chance to taste that one, did he?

Dominic Guglielmi (49:02.135)
All right.

Dominic Guglielmi (49:13.142)
Yeah, the second bottle that came off the line in 1984, August 30th, first day, was sent to Ronald Reagan, the president at the time, and they sent it back. I don't know why. What happened there was then the bottle remained with one of the executives at the distillery who owns it to this day, and I've been in touch with them and it's gonna go on auction here at some point. I think still yet this year, but perhaps next year. So hopefully we'll find out.

Drew Hannush (49:25.715)
Ha ha.

Drew Hannush (49:37.769)
Oh wow.

Dominic Guglielmi (49:42.918)
when that goes up and we'll have to see. It's gonna be a charitable action, which is great. And I would imagine it's a fairly pristine example. It's been kept in great condition. Second bottle off the line, which the only documentation we have is the oral documentation from this gentleman, but sounds very plausible. You know, I would have to think a bottle like that. It should get at least 10,000 at an auction situation, at least. Early 1984 bottles without that provenance.

Drew Hannush (49:47.935)
place.

Drew Hannush (49:54.579)
Wow.

Dominic Guglielmi (50:11.514)
fetch nearly that today in good condition. So it should be pretty exciting to see.

Drew Hannush (50:18.363)
So I only have one bottle and it's a little mini. And, but I love it because it's my, it's my mixer. It's where I do my blending in this. And it's a beautiful bottle for, for doing that. Let's talk about this bottle, not this one specifically, but the, the shape and, and how they came up with this. Cause this is really unique for even the time period when they were doing decanters and that sort of thing. You know, I mean, amazing design.

Dominic Guglielmi (50:19.798)
Nice! Yeah? Okay, there you go.

Dominic Guglielmi (50:31.17)
Sure. Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (50:44.65)
Yeah, it really was. And so you go back again to the early eighties when Falk and Baron Askus were working with Elmer and as they, they created their premium product. They, the marketing, especially with a pretty Falk, the marketing side of him really said, we need to put this in a premium package. And so he reached out to a long time, uh, advertising firm, uh, design firm, rather, that he worked with in New York, uh, De Adario design. They were very

famous and especially in the spirits world and creating packaging and design. And he had worked with them previously at standard brands several times. So he reached out to, uh, to the D'Addario's and said, what can we do here? Initially, they presented a bunch of options and some of them included, you know, even molding or getting a mold created for their own bottle design. Unfortunately, the money wasn't there. That process is apparently very costly to sort of start from scratch and create something unique. So D'Addario was able to.

effectively find the bottle we use to choose today for the entire production of Blanton's. It was used twice previously, twice known. Glenmore Glass Company, I believe the manufacturer was, let's see, it was Bourbon Supreme, used it in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. Kentucky Tavern used it at least in the early 80s. There are documented examples. I have in the book shown.

Drew Hannush (52:06.591)
Wow.

Dominic Guglielmi (52:10.13)
examples of those bottles provenance on the newspaper articles clear advertisements clearly show that decanter that bottle in advertisements all the way back to the 1960s so it was not you know this is where you mentioned earlier like the tour guides i love the tour guides at buffalo trace but uh you know again i've heard some interesting concepts you know elmer tealy designed the bottle you know you even hear freddy mentioned that down there freddy johnson a great guy by the way no offense freddy i love you but uh

Drew Hannush (52:36.281)
Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (52:38.43)
Elmer did not design the bottle and it's got a great backstory, but obviously they adopted it and it became just synonymous with the brand.

Drew Hannush (52:48.859)
Well, and of course we have the topper there with the horse on it. So it was the inspiration behind that.

Dominic Guglielmi (52:50.282)
You do. Yep. Yeah, the topper. This is another Deodario design inspiration. And this is one I was particularly happy to kind of reveal in the book. And that is that, cause I don't think anybody knew this, right? You do look at sort of folks that have done other blends topics or blogs or, you know, mentions in books. And, and, uh, when I spoke to the, uh, Adam Deodario, the son of the founder of that company, um, he told me the whole story. And I don't think he'd ever told it to anybody outside of his media family, but essentially.

His mother had a antique wine stopper that had a horse on it. And it was sort of a silver plated or silk, maybe it was sterling silver, a topper on this longer sort of maybe two inch long cork. Just something she had in her collection. I guess she had several wine stoppers that she had over the years. And as, as Fertifal sort of asked for something to adorn the top of the bottle, she was the one who said, how about a horse stopper? It's Kentucky. It feels like it's perfect.

And that stopper was what effectively then led to the design of what we know today. And they still have that stopper. And I have a picture of it in the book. I'd love to have it for my collection, but I don't think that's going to happen. But yeah, it was a piece of the history of the bourbon that I don't think anybody knew. And it was real exciting to kind of see that.

Drew Hannush (54:02.131)
Ha ha

Drew Hannush (54:12.495)
Well, and then the topper also got a little bit of a controversy, kicked up with another brand that was trying to stage itself as a premium bourbon brand. Talk about that.

Dominic Guglielmi (54:20.329)
Oh yeah.

Yeah, so you had Maker's Mark, right? And their iconic red wax, you know, what transpired, you know, is they, as they bottled or they topped their bottle up, Blanton's did with the horse, they needed a way to seal it. And so effectively wax became the solution. No big deal. Doesn't sound like there was any real controversy there. And during the latter half of the 1980s, again, kind of nobody was buying bourbon. So what's it matter, right? Nobody had the money to litigate, I guess.

As you get to the late 1980s and early 1990s, what transpired was there was a blind taste test that was done by Washingtonian magazine, which I believe still exists. And in that blind tasting, Blanton's came out number one. And I don't believe this was inspired by Ferdy Falk or Bob Renascus or anything. It was just truly a blind taste test that happened. They published results. Well, Ferdy and Bob noticed that.

And they said, the marketing side of them said, we got to jump on this. So they soon began putting out advertisements, you know, touting sort of this, Hey, we're, we're number one. Um, and then they, you know, not a lot of response initially from makers. Soon after, maybe it was a year later, they ran another ad kind of touting it. And they called out makers by name in that ad. They mentioned, you know, being makers specifically, and, and that sort of set things in motion for the next few years and there was a back and forth battle that sort of happened. Um, makers came back and said.

you know, you need to effectively, they set a letter from their lawyer, their legal counsel saying cease and desist with your wax covering on the top of the bottle. Ancient age or age international responded with an ad making fun of that letter saying, are you, is makers afraid of what's on our bottle or what's in it? You know, and then again, back and forth. So then what they quickly did was Bill Samuels Jr. of Makers Mark had a brilliant idea. His response.

Dominic Guglielmi (56:18.274)
to that was to ask his consumers, right? His customers to say, what should we do about this? And he put that in an ad and somebody responded a dual, ancient kind of hearkens back to the ancient Kentucky tradition. They said, let's have a dual, and the dual would be in the form of a taste test. And so that's what then transpired. And there was a series of about five taste tests throughout the early 90s. Makers won one or two of them, but Blanton's won the majority of them.

Actually over my shoulder, I have a plaque from back then. It was the actual list of all the years that Blanton's won and their awards. So yeah, it's a, but yeah, it's, it was quite the back and forth. And, um, there was no mention of whatever happened with the lawsuit. I was never able to get anything from, um, the Bill Samuels or the maker's side regarding that. And couldn't, couldn't find out anything from Buffalo Trace either, but I think it was dropped. One of the reasons I believe it was dropped was because.

Drew Hannush (56:57.157)
Oh wow.

Drew Hannush (57:02.12)
Uh.

Drew Hannush (57:11.762)
Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (57:17.93)
at one of the tastings, Furti Falk presented Bill Samuels with one of the iconic sterling silver bottles that are well known throughout the Blanton's collecting community as sort of the holy grail of Blanton's. He gave him one of those and that bottle is still in possession of Bill's son today.

Drew Hannush (57:36.264)
Oh wow.

Wow, that's a great story. No, the things that we will never know that, this is what will keep the stories alive, because I bumped into a newspaper accounting that George Dickel was suing Jack Daniel, and it's like, oh, that's interesting.

Dominic Guglielmi (58:00.638)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Drew Hannush (58:03.871)
And so I chased after the court records and come to find out it was just dropped. So we'll never know why that particular thing happened. Of course, there was a big dust up between Wild Turkey and Jim Beam over the old crow Wild Turkey give them the bird campaigns that were battling back and forth. So those just make it, they make it entertaining for us. I'm sure the lawyers are happy about it too because they make some money off of it.

Dominic Guglielmi (58:08.854)
Yeah. Yep.

Dominic Guglielmi (58:19.932)
Yep.

Dominic Guglielmi (58:23.554)
That's fascinating, yeah.

Yeah, certainly.

Dominic Guglielmi (58:30.794)
Yeah. And what's interesting too is you think about where Blanton's is perceived today, especially by those who have been in the market or have been in the bourbon world for a while. And, you know, sort of maybe have graduated to different higher, higher levels of bourbon and certainly makers mark being a staple, you know, a nice weeded bourbon, great product. But to think about there was a time when those two products were, I hesitate to say to use the word worthy. But

Drew Hannush (58:31.459)
I don't know how the brands really enjoy it.

Dominic Guglielmi (58:58.122)
where they were really battling it out for this prestige, now I don't know that those would be two that I would sort of pick to say, you know, let's see who's better. You know, sort of, you know, and I'll say that fully transparent, right? I'm a fan, but I recognize the position the brand is from, you know, within the wide world of bourbon today.

Drew Hannush (59:08.964)
Yeah, yeah.

Drew Hannush (59:20.307)
So do you, how do you, you're just starting on this journey of releasing this book and you're probably, do you feel like you have to sort of apologize at the beginning sometimes that you're talking about Blanton Stew, people who are like big bourbon aficionados or is it just you're, hey, this is the brand I love and I'm full bore into it.

Dominic Guglielmi (59:48.65)
You know, mixed answer on that. So one of the things that's interesting is for me, I almost give fodder for the people that sort of like to hate on Blanton's or disrespect it. And I say that because one of the things I fully admit is I'm actually not a big bourbon guy. I'm more of a historian, particularly of the brand of Blanton's. I'm all in, I'm obsessed. And so to them, that is just even more ridiculous. Like, how can you, you know,

Drew Hannush (01:00:06.111)
Mm-hmm.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:00:15.362)
covet this brand that clearly is overhyped and overrated. So I definitely have thick skin. I make fun of myself. I've been called the ultimate tater. Tater, of course, being the widely used expression for a variety of bourbon sins, such as overpaying for bourbon, diving in and obsessing over an overhyped brand, et cetera, waiting in lines, all that. So I am in that sense, and particularly because I don't...

Drew Hannush (01:00:16.202)
Hahaha! Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:00:45.318)
really do. You'll notice like on my website and certainly in the book, I don't do a lot of exploration of the flavor profiles. I'm not really into the nuances of that. I mean, certainly I can get into that and with friends and several other interviews I've done with tastings and so forth. It is fun. But for me, a lot of that, you know, sort of the word I use in the book when I'm describing all this is a little pretentious. I kind of, everybody is like hints of dark chocolates and cherries. I'm just not into that, right? If you are great. And I recognize the...

Drew Hannush (01:01:13.759)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Dominic Guglielmi (01:01:14.622)
I recognize your audience and the folks I'm speaking to mostly are into it and I'm the outlier here. So full respect, it's just not my thing. I'm all about documenting the brand. And so, you know, I do have to apologize a little with that. But you know, regardless of that, there's still a story to be told. It's still a fascinating history. And again, the impact of the brand and what it's done today has been tremendous. And all of those folks that hate on the brand.

Drew Hannush (01:01:19.023)
Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:01:44.522)
more than likely, either you'll still spot Blanton's in their pictures of all of their bourbon bunkers and basement bars and all of that, or at one point they were part of that too and they just have moved on, but at one point they probably had to have the bottle themselves. And so, you know, it's everybody, they like to hate on it, but there's, most people do respect it to a certain level.

Drew Hannush (01:01:51.657)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:02:07.051)
I wonder in a way, because I've seen this with brands like, you know, in Heaven Hill used to do a six year and you could buy it for 15 bucks at a bottled and bond. And then all of a sudden now they're selling seven year and it's gone to $45 a bottle that there's kind of maybe some of this, this backlash or this feeling about Blanton's is more out of frustration for the price level and the, um,

Dominic Guglielmi (01:02:12.394)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:02:35.259)
rarity of it, the problem with getting it, plus the fact that it is the first brain. I call it the Kentucky version of Johnny Walker Blue. Everybody that doesn't really know a lot about Scotch whiskey will covet a Johnny Walker Blue. Me, I'm a Scotch drinker. Honestly, if I have a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue, it's just something interesting in my cabinet. It's a nice bottle and beyond that, I don't know that I really care.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:02:43.882)
Yeah, that's fair.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:02:52.11)
But John, I want to know. Yep.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:02:59.095)
Yes.

Yes. Yes, absolutely. Now you're 100% right. It's an interesting thing. You heard me mention taters and sort of that concept. I have mixed feelings on all of it. And I write about this in the book because I am open with the self-procress, professed taterness of my own collection. However, I do respect people that really want a bottle and they just can't get one and they're new to bourbon or newer. And it is. It's iconic. You have to have it.

I think there's a fine line there though. To me, I don't wait in line for bourbon. Any bourbon, no matter what it is, how allocated, I just, I rationalize time equates to money. And so as long as you're using that time valuably elsewhere, it is not worth it. Or better said, the time, why not pay double MSRP if you can get it immediately and save that time? I don't think that that's particularly bad if you're doing it once or twice because you just really want a bottle.

But whether you wait in line or pay double, that's okay on occasion, right? It's when you do it, you shouldn't consistently be paying $200 for Blanton single barrel. And one of the things that I also write about in the book is that, this kind of gets back to my collecting, that the bottles that I covet and collect, there may be only be 200 bottles that have existed. The current seven produced varieties of Blanton's are mass produced.

Now, you might not find them in your local liquor store, but there's no reason to consider them unicorns. And I always sort of cringe a little bit. I guess a little bit of the bourbon elitist in me when I see people finding a bottle and then saying, oh, I'm saving it for my son's 21st birthday. I don't know, the blants will be the bottle I'd save for that. Again, I'm a big lover, but it's just not a unicorn. Drink them if you got them. You can definitely get more of them. Certainly, if you don't mind spending a little bit over MSRP.

Drew Hannush (01:04:30.928)
Hmm.

Drew Hannush (01:04:46.663)
Hahaha

Dominic Guglielmi (01:04:58.85)
but don't let the current varieties that they still make today sit on your shelf for years because they're not as good as the old ones anyway.

Drew Hannush (01:05:09.007)
Yeah, this was what was interesting for me in terms of my experience with Blanton's. I've only had Blanton's three times in my life. The second time, the first time I was in a bar and I just tasted it out of curiosity sake and I wasn't a great taster at that time. I am sort of like you in a way that I love the history of whiskey and that's what drives me, but I'm also learning to taste and smell, which is something that I never did when I was...

younger I just ate to eat and drank to drink and had no idea really what anything tasted like. But you know the second time I had it I was in Kentucky and I got a big deep pour for like $10 and I thought wow this is great you know that I got such a deep pour I couldn't finish it. As I was drinking it I was like I'm really not enjoying this as much as I thought I would enjoy it.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:06:05.713)
Yeah, right.

Drew Hannush (01:06:07.763)
But then I had a friend of mine who, I guess he probably bought it through travel retail or somewhere, I'm not sure. But he got Blanton's Gold and he let me taste some. And when I tasted it I went, this is awesome. I mean it tasted like peanut brittle to me. It just was an amazing flavor to me. And I said, that's the moment that I said, look, it's a single barrel. You can't.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:06:27.543)
Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:06:36.354)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:06:37.575)
judge it off of one tasting.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:06:39.454)
You can't, you absolutely can't. And there is definitely exception. Buffalo Trace, across all their products, they try to use tasting panels to narrow down the flavor profiles and try to pick barrels that are within sort of a range of what is acceptable for a particular brand. But absolutely, there are times where I've had them and I'm choking it down and there's others that are pretty delicious. One of the things for your listeners I recommend, certainly if you can get it a dusty, particularly pre-2000.

highly recommended. For modern day expressions, the special releases that they do every year, either for the La Maison de Whisky, LNDW, which is a French alcohol importer and whiskey shop, they do a special release every year, and several of them usually, and then also in the European market there's actually what's known as the special release. And those two products which are annual releases, very limited, are usually exceptional.

Several of them, LMDWs in particular, released a different proofs. I certainly haven't drank the older ones due to their value and rarity, but the newer ones every year, I'd make sure to get a bottle just to enjoy in addition to one to put on the shelf for my collection. And I drank them with bourbon snobs who just cannot stand Blanton's, and they all agree, they're phenomenal. They're really hands down a different product.

Drew Hannush (01:07:38.714)
Mm.

Drew Hannush (01:08:05.488)
Again, that's the thing about single barrel. We just have to keep that in mind. So what's the furthest distance you've gone to buy a bottle of Blanton's?

Dominic Guglielmi (01:08:08.953)
Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:08:14.538)
Well, you know, I was a year ago, probably this week, I was in Paris. I was at LMDW visiting them. I wasn't actually purchasing anything there. Ironically, I thought it would be this Blanton's Mecca. You know, they've had a relationship with Age International going back to their early 2000s. And that's when they started importing Blanton's for their store. And then starting in around 2006, they have annual releases, as I mentioned.

And so they've got this deep history with Buffalo Trace and Age International. And when I went there, I thought it would be this Blanton's paradise, right? This Mecca. And they had like four rare bottles on the shelf and that was it. And I had all of them already. So I was actually spending more time maybe educating their employees about what they had on the shelf than anything. So I didn't purchase anything there, but Japan would be certainly the market I've traveled to the most, you know, bringing back some dusty bottles.

and things like that. It's just a heaven for Blanton's fans. Usually fairly obtainable if you know where to look for it. And again, their secondary market is fully open. So even Amazon over in Japan, you can fully buy alcohol and have it shipped to your hotel. That's one of my tips I give people when they go on trips over there is, don't even walk around to the stores unless you wanna waste time, just ship it to your hotel. And there you go. So, yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:09:40.436)
So is there a bottle of Blanton's that you have wanted for a long time and you just haven't been able to get? Because this is something that I try to do is always have a whiskey in mind that's that one that I'm just always going to keep my eye out for.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:09:56.87)
Yeah. Yeah, I am. There's two really two or three bottles that I'm missing to have a complete collection as I define it, which we can we can go into that as well. But the one that I will say is on everybody's list or should be certainly all my big Blanton's collectors is the 2011 LMDW, the Miss Honda whiskey bottle. It was there's only one picture of it that's known to exist and nobody has ever seen one.

surface in any collections and any secondary anything nothing. Occupied sites in Europe that kind of thing. So it is the everybody talks about the sterling silver which I have here a couple of them. Being a holy grail, really the holy grail for me is that bottle because it's truly none exists. Now did it exist? Yes, we believe it did. I actually asked by email and in person when I was visiting LMDW about it.

In person, they didn't know anything. They couldn't find records of it in their computer. And via email, when I was seeking permission to reprint the one picture, which is owned by LMDW, I wanted it in my book, obviously, I inquired about it. Can I print this? And what do you know about it? And crickets, they said, yes, you can print it, but no information was given about the bottle. So it's this big mystery. We believe it existed. It was certainly on their website at one point. It was in their catalog. But, and how much would it be worth? Well, several less of.

probably said you'd start at 10,000 for a bottle like that. You know, so, which I'm sure your listeners are choking at thinking of Blanton's, but the highest, yeah, the highest sale ever for a Blanton's that's been recorded is 22,500 for a empty version of the Sterling Silver Edition. So, so there's a market out there for these rare ones.

Drew Hannush (01:11:26.343)
Haha, wow.

Drew Hannush (01:11:31.879)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:11:37.438)
Wow.

Drew Hannush (01:11:41.231)
Ooh, there is, there definitely is, crazy money. So is there one in your collection that you prize and that you probably will never open?

Dominic Guglielmi (01:11:50.922)
Um, certainly I probably wouldn't open 90% of them only because of the value of them. I'd love to try them. Um, some I would expect rare ones would be disappointing. Some of the early, um, Polish, uh, special releases, which were done starting in 2014 were 80 proofs. So they're rare, they're, they're valuable, but they probably aren't any good. So, uh, but to answer your question, I think probably the most valuable one that I'd love to open, but I never would is a, um,

highest proof Blanton's ever bottled, which is 141.9 proof, and it was done in a release that's called the My Only Blanton's Release. And there's only three of these bottles known to exist with other collectors. This one is the only one that is 141.9, which Buffalo Trace has confirmed is the highest ever. So that is, in addition to my sterling silvers, that is probably my most coveted bottle because it's, until another one appears, it's one of a kind, at least from a proof point.

So that's, I'd love to try it, but it probably tastes like gasoline, you know, 141 proof. How good could that be? But I'm sure there's people out there that like that. Yeah, I never know. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I remember hearing that. Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:12:54.075)
Yeah. Never know. I've had some stuff that's been that pretty, you know, close to that. Those Coy Hills down at Jack Daniel's, everybody was raving about those. So, uh, yeah, it definitely can happen. Have you, uh, gone over the border to, uh, collect any of the Canadian, uh, Blanton's the caribou crossing. Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:13:15.49)
In a caribou? No, you know, and you touch on an interesting subject there, it sort of is or no. When it comes to collecting, you heard me mention earlier, what I define as a collection, it's really all about for me distillery affixed labels. The uniqueness of a distillery affixed label is defining what's a bottle I want to collect. When you get into you know these bourbon groups that dip their bottle in their own wax and affix their own

tater sticker, if you will, to the bottle. Hey, listen, if that floats your boat, good for you, right? But that does nothing for me because it's an aftermarket thing. If Buffalo Trace did it, it's a little different story. And so I don't get into the Canadian Blanton's or whatever, none of that stuff to me is real. And even within the Blanton's world, there's nuances. For a number of years, there was different private label bottles that they did under the Blanton's name. For example, the Food Network.

Drew Hannush (01:14:02.61)
Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:14:14.23)
for their 20th anniversary put out one that has a Food Network logo on the label, on the neck label. Well other than that it's really regular Blanton's. I don't even think it was a special pick. I think they just said, hey we you know Buffalo Trace make us you know bottle 800 of these things and you know put our label on it and they did. So yeah that's one I would collect because Buffalo Trace stuck that label on there but is that as remarkable as what I you know just mentioned earlier with this you know coveted one of three high-proof Blanton's? No not at all.

Drew Hannush (01:14:16.391)
Mm.

Drew Hannush (01:14:37.373)
Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:14:43.83)
But the devil's in the details, because then you start getting into boxes, and you say, well, this was a unique box. Does that count? Even though the bottle and size is the same, you know? So everybody defines it differently, but that's sort of how I characterize it.

Drew Hannush (01:14:57.615)
I kind of go back to my days of baseball card collecting when I was a kid and you used to be able to go to like Burger King and Burger King had baseball cards. They were tops cards. But yet when you look through collectors and you see what they value, they don't value Burger King baseball cards. So yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:15:02.977)
Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:15:08.395)
Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:15:15.906)
cards. Right, right, exactly. Yep, yep. Very good analogy. Yep.

Drew Hannush (01:15:22.139)
Yeah, that's really interesting how all that goes. So there are seven varieties. How did the seven varieties break out? The seven bottles.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:15:27.938)
So probably the easiest way to describe it, because some people who know Blanton's might be going, seven and add them up in your head. The easiest way is of course you've got single barrel, the original, the one we all know and love, mostly love, 93 proof. That is obviously the most common wide distribution. Beyond that, you've got the gold, which is now, it used to be international exclusive now, limited US, as well as straight from the barrel, barrel proof.

same story there, limited US distribution. Then you've got Special Reserve, which is an 80 proof, mostly only international distribution for that. A lot of Europe for that market, but it does get into Asia as well. And then you've got the Takara Red and Black, which are Japanese exclusives. And finally, the one that a lot of people forget is the Takara Gold, which is the Japanese gold exclusive. So kind of how those all break down, if you start from a proof perspective,

you've got Takara Black in Japan, and you've got Special Reserve elsewhere internationally. Both 80 proof, the Black being aged about two years longer. So a little bit better product, if you will, for the Japanese market. Then you step up to your original single barrel, 93 proof, along with the Takara Red, which both 93 proof, Takara Red aged a little bit longer than the traditional single barrel. Then gold, 103 proof, again, Japanese.

Takara Gold, aged longer, and then finally, you know, Pure Barrel Proof, which varies, you know, based on barrel, straight from the barrel.

Drew Hannush (01:17:04.827)
Yeah. And then the stuff that you've included in your book, the other variations in there, are these, have you basically collected in that book every variation that has been out there that you're aware of or is this kind of over a period of years?

Dominic Guglielmi (01:17:18.806)
Yeah, I definitely have collected, you know, when you talk about variation, it can vary. So I guess what I mean by that is, you know, you look at bottle size, for example. So Blanton's traditional single barrel is released in 750 milliliter, 700, 375, and 50. So of course, I would want all of those sizes, even though the label on them, it's the same product. I've been less, to me, it's less important.

always do that. For example, special reserve is made in both 700 and 750 milliliter. It's nice to have both, but is it essential? I don't think so. There are variations there. Now, where the nuance comes into play is in some of the more rare bottles. For example, I've got some early 90s dusties that are bottled at 92 proof, not 93. So effectively, it's the same label as any other dusty at that time or current.

Drew Hannush (01:18:01.096)
Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:18:17.238)
current one for that matter, but it was done at one point lower in the proof. Why? Nobody knows. Haven't been able to find the answer to that one. But it was done for a while. There's several examples in collectors' collections that have surfaced over the years, both in a mini and in a 750 milliliter size. So to me, that nuance, that variation is worth collecting because of the obscurity and the fact that label is just a little different. So it becomes essential to the collection. So I guess a short version of all that is if you look at my website.

which is warehouseage.com, you will see pretty much any bottle pictured other than a few I mentioned I've got in my collection. And that's why they're documented on there because I consider them to be essential.

Drew Hannush (01:19:00.999)
Very nice. So who ended up doing the photography for you?

Dominic Guglielmi (01:19:03.258)
Great, great photographer, local to me. You know, it's interesting. His name's Nick Fancher, and he has just a tremendous portfolio of work. He does everything, but I don't know that commercial type still photography is really his go-to, what people hire him for. He's very capable and did a fantastic job, but he is local to me. I'm in Columbus, Ohio. And what's interesting about the book is, beyond the photography, it became an entirely Central Ohio-based publication.

in my journey to find a publisher, I settled on somebody local here to me, which was fantastic. And then ultimately with a printer, we were working together to find a printer. And I found a printer who was also local to central Ohio. So it's a very interesting journey. I did not sort of set out on to say this has to be an Ohio based book that is produced and edited and distributed all from Ohio, but it ended up being that way. And it's really kind of nice.

to have everybody local and work with. But yeah, Nick Fancher, fantastic photographer, and just really brought the book to life in ways that I just never imagined.

Drew Hannush (01:20:11.763)
Very nice. So where is the book gonna be available when people are looking?

Dominic Guglielmi (01:20:13.782)
Book will be available on Amazon. Amazon, you can find it certainly there starting this month as well. They will have the ebook as well. Ebook's available, of course, across multiple platforms, Google, Apple Books, et cetera. But any reader that wishes to purchase the book directly from me, just visit either warehouseage.com or blantonsbook.com and all copies that go through me, I will autograph. So it's a good way to get the autograph if that's what you want.

Drew Hannush (01:20:41.203)
Perfect. Excellent, excellent. And your website?

Dominic Guglielmi (01:20:44.234)
warehouseh.com or blantonsbook.com.

Drew Hannush (01:20:47.423)
Where's...

Very good, very good. Well Dominic, thank you so much for sharing your joy and love of Blanton's and getting people a little bit more familiar with it who may not be familiar. I have a feeling there'll be some people searching on YouTube and going, Blanton's, oh, you know what? I was thinking of getting into bourbon and everybody talks about it. I wanna know what it's all about. They can start here, get a little overview and then go buy your book and get beautiful pictures and the full story rather than this.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:21:08.075)
Yeah.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:21:17.238)
That's right. That's right.

Drew Hannush (01:21:20.275)
a little bit more of an abbreviated version. So I wish you so much luck with the book and thanks for being on.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:21:21.09)
Sir, I appreciate it.

Dominic Guglielmi (01:21:25.974)
Thank you, Drew, really great, and thanks for having me.

Cheers.

Drew Hannush (01:21:31.022)
Cheers.