Ep. 103 - James A. Miller & Chicken Cock: The Forgotten History of Bourbon

Transcript

Drew Hannush (00:00.797)
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, The Interviews. I'm your host, Drew Hannush, the bestselling author of Whiskey Lore's Travel Guide to Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon and Experiencing Irish Whiskey. And today, I'm excited to share a long lost bourbon whiskey story with you that goes back to the very origins of the spirit. We're gonna talk a little bit about a whiskey legacy that originated in Bourbon County, Kentucky in the 1830s.

and an iconic brand that came about around the 1850s and 60s that seemed to disappear into obscurity around World War II. It's a brand you've probably seen on your shelf and maybe gone, what the heck is that? It is the brand Chickencock, and we're gonna be talking about that brand, its origins, and its founder James A. Miller, and then we will also jump in, do a little bit of tasting on the whiskies and find out where the brand, or how the brand.

came back into the market. So to do that, I have with me as my special guest, Will Woodingham of Grain and Barrel Spirits. Will, welcome to the podcast.

Will Woodington (01:07.231)
Thanks so much for having me, Drew. It's a pleasure always to talk about the history of chicken cock. Usually I don't get to touch on it for this extensive period of time. So I'm really excited for that. But thank you for having me.

Drew Hannush (01:18.486)
Yeah, yeah, pages and pages of notes and full disclosure that I was in on some of this research. So we may jump into a little bit of conversation back and forth through this. I just find it an absolutely fascinating story. And to me, it really shows how little we really know about Bourbon history, that a lot of the stories that we've learned over time.

have been just kind of rehashed and thrown back out there again and then once you actually dive in, it becomes much more fascinating.

Will Woodington (01:52.883)
Yeah, absolutely. There's always something that people miss or that the story's told one way for so long that a lot of the amazing touch points throughout its history get lost. And like I said, there's so many amazing touch points throughout the almost 170 or plus, honestly, year old story of this brand. So it's fascinating.

Drew Hannush (02:16.661)
So let's start at the end and then we'll go back to the beginning. Kind of tell me how this brand was rediscovered.

Will Woodington (02:23.739)
Yeah, so like you said, Grand Embryal Spirits is our parent company, and we have a few different craft brands that are underneath our umbrella. It was around 2011 when our founder wanted to add a whiskey brand onto our portfolio. Whether or not he had his mindset on completely starting up a brand new whiskey brand, or reviving an old one, I'm not sure. But either way, he was in the Oscar Getz Museum.

in Bardstown, Kentucky. And I haven't had the chance to go by there just yet on my own, but I've heard it's a real. I know. I figured you would tell me definitely go there.

Drew Hannush (02:58.823)
Oh, gotta do it.

Drew Hannush (03:04.688)
Yes, that's where I first saw the bottle, actually, and I was like, that's interesting.

Will Woodington (03:06.547)
Oh.

Yeah, so I think our founder, his name is Mahdi, and he was in that museum. He was in the Oskar Gutz Museum and just happened to be passing by that case that has the chicken cock bottle in it. And I always tell people, I'm like, just like I did, or anybody else, when you see that brand name, curiosity strikes you immediately. What is that about? What is that name? And

So he did just that. He saw that bottle, did his research into finding out whether or not the brand was still being made, if anyone owned the rights to it, and found out how historical it was and how well it was known for its quality reputation for a very, very long time. And decided he wanted to kick things off. So decided he's going to revive this brand. And that officially happened around 2011 or 2012.

And here we are today, and we're making some great award-winning whiskey. And we've got a really cool story to tell with our production process in modern day. And we're super proud of this brand and very proud to be the stewards of it in the 21st century.

Drew Hannush (04:17.781)
So I never really heard his reaction straight out, but was he surprised at how much deeper this story actually was?

Will Woodington (04:25.551)
Oh, absolutely. I think that anybody you tell this story to is really taken aback by how far it goes back and all the amazing historical touch points throughout its history. I didn't really know about it until I started working for the company this year. And it was just amazing. I mean, I sat there and I read all the historical documentation that we could find on the brand. I started acquiring numerous.

physical pieces from the brand's history, including old bottles and old relics, which they're hard to find. But I just wanted to kind of have physical touchpoints to the brand because it goes so far back.

Drew Hannush (05:07.933)
Yeah, so let's jump back into the history and find out about this guy, James A. Miller. So when did he get started on all of this and kind of what was his pathway to the 1856 date when he built his distillery, his big distillery?

Will Woodington (05:25.711)
Yeah, we've got records that indicate that James A. Miller was actually distilling bourbon whiskey down in Paris, Kentucky in the 1830s and into the 1840s. And he was making some pretty well-aged product too. His whiskey was over 10 years old in a lot of instances. So he made quite the name for himself just in that time when he was distilling whiskey on his farm.

for making really high quality juice. So he gained the reputation. It was called James A. Miller's or J.A. Miller's Old Bourbon or there were a couple of different variations of it, I believe. But yeah, he gained a lot of good notoriety for making great quality whiskey and gained enough venture and capital from that to really make a proper distillery in 1856 in Paris. So he started buying up land.

And it cost a pretty penny to build a proper distillery back then. It was estimated to cost around $75,000. And today's money, that's about $2.3 million. So.

Drew Hannush (06:26.41)
Mm.

Drew Hannush (06:30.389)
That's something, and you wonder. I mean, the statistics I saw was that I think Sam Clay was the second biggest distiller in the area in Paris, and he was like half of the output. And I've seen Sam Clay's name show up in Tennessee records that I've been researching, but what was shocking was seeing how many times James A. Miller's name was showing up in New Orleans and Alabama and places like that.

Will Woodington (06:57.679)
Yeah, that's definitely something that we're very proud about too. You know, that the very early touch points of James A. Miller. I mean, he was he was shipping his whiskey really to a lot of different states back then. And so it just showed you that it was a popular product. It was in demand, not just in his local community in Kentucky, but but, you know, all the way down to New Orleans and, you know, all the way to the West Coast and everything. So it's really amazing.

Drew Hannush (07:25.225)
Have you been to Paris, Kentucky?

Will Woodington (07:28.207)
I have not and it's been on my so-called bucket list of things to do as soon as I started representing Chicken Cock is to go to Paris, Kentucky and you know.

It's funny because I've actually got a reprinted old map of Paris, Kentucky from, I believe it's 1870. And it actually shows a, you know, it's an aerial artist's depiction of where the distillery is. It's small, but just even seeing that physical representation of it. I know that in today's age, I think there's maybe what, just an old stone fence from where the property was.

Drew Hannush (07:49.033)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (08:05.045)
there is actually still a building that exists and it's behind a restaurant. I've looked at it, I've walked up to it. The best I can guess is that it was probably used for grain and that was all that remained because the distillery itself, it was being used for making cotton rope or something. I forget exactly what it was, but the man that owned it.

was not allowed to make whiskey, so it was just being used for another purpose and then it burned down in 1961. So this one particular building still exists and yes, there are actually lines or these walls that exist all the way down through there and going back through the old records, the title deeds, they mention those being there. So this is something that goes all the way back

Drew Hannush (09:03.721)
those walls that they built there, which is really interesting. Because it's like you'd like to see the distillery itself and understand what it was like. And I looked at the plot maps and I'm like, I don't even know how to figure out where this was at. But you have to look at the bend in the river or in the creek to try to figure out maybe it was here, maybe it was there, because it was a pretty large complex.

Will Woodington (09:28.752)
Yeah, absolutely. You know, and even looking at that reprinted map that I have, I mean, it was, it's so cool because I mean, it took up, it was right pretty much in the heart of Paris, Kentucky, where Stoner Creek kind of forks off. And so it was such a vital piece of the area.

so much so that when you look at old maps and they give you the little references to where the courthouse is and the post office and everything they list the distillery down there with everything else. So it was a major landmark in that community and it was obviously vital to its to its to its commerce and everything else.

Drew Hannush (10:06.741)
This is what I find interesting too, is that as I did my own research into this, and I find this in Tennessee as well, we expect everything to have a name. We expect everything to have a branded name. And back then branding wasn't really necessarily a big thing. And so the name of this distillery is sometimes a little hard to pin down, but what's interesting is finding ads around 1856 where he was actually calling this

the Bourbon Distillery because it was a distillery in Bourbon County and there was a distillery that was called the Paris Distillery, so obviously it was in Paris, Kentucky. Whether it was its official name or not, that's the hard part to know, but what it gets in your mind is this idea of how influential James A. Miller's popular whiskey might have been going down to New Orleans with the name Bourbon on the barrel.

Will Woodington (11:05.435)
Yeah, I mean, you know, we talk about that all the time. And Greg Snyder, our master distiller, will mention it as well. But just the history of how bourbon got its name, right? And that goes back quite a while, but it comes from Bourbon County. And people were saying, give me some more of that whiskey from Bourbon County. Give me some more of that bourbon whiskey, and then eventually give me some more of that bourbon. And to know that James A. Miller's whiskey and his distillery was called the Bourbon Distillery at that time, I mean, that's pretty massive in the historical trajectory of the spirit.

Drew Hannush (11:36.989)
Yeah, and I think what it does is it kind of de-emphasizes this idea of firsts. It's like we want to find out who is the first person to say the word bourbon in association with a whiskey. But in reality, in this particular case, it may be that he's the guy that actually made bourbon stick as a name because his barrels were being shipped all the way out to California and Arizona and all of these different places by the 1860s and 70s.

Will Woodington (12:06.299)
Yeah, you know, again, we pride ourselves on the fact that James A. Miller and then, you know, even after that, after his death, that we played, you know, this brand played a very vital role in the popularity of the spirit and what it ended up becoming. Right. And and the bourbon name itself. So it's big. And people here, right. People do always try to pinpoint to who invented bourbon, who made it first, and how did they make it? How did they come up with it? But, you know, we actually have some great physical ties.

to really early bourbon pioneering here in America.

Drew Hannush (12:42.293)
So talk about how he, because he didn't survive very long, from what I understand. He built this really huge distillery, but then it kind of went through some other hands, kind of go through that bit of the history.

Will Woodington (12:57.192)
Yeah, so James A. Miller, he wasn't that old when he was making his whiskey on his farm and he became this celebrated bourbon maker. This is 1830s, 1840s. He's in his 20s, maybe early 30s at this point. He's not an old man, right? You see a lot of bourbon brands have these old man, whether it be Pappy Van Winkle or old granddad and it's always these older guys who you think have just been making whiskey for centuries. But he wasn't that old when he really started to get his success.

And yeah, built the physical distillery in 1856. And unfortunately, you know, just passed away. We're not sure how, you know, but he died at the age of 42 in 1860. And you know, that really shook things up. I mean, it was this distillery still had the varnish on it, right? I mean, it was brand new and he unfortunately passes away. And you know, that.

It was pretty solid in terms of who owned the distillery throughout the later half of the 19th century. But it exchanged hands, just like many other brands out there. It exchanged hands a few times up until it kind of went into the shadows around 1950.

Drew Hannush (14:03.261)
So the name Chickencock kind of comes along in the either late 1850s or early 1860s. And kind of talk about that name because people will probably be tuning in first to try to figure out why does this thing have this particular name? So what are the thoughts that you have on where that name came from?

Will Woodington (14:26.063)
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of speculation, just like anything else in early bourbon history. But James A. Miller dies in 1860. And prior to that, the brand had really been centered around his name, because he's the one who built the quality reputation of the whiskey that he was distilling. So it was primarily called James A. Miller's Old Bourbon Whiskey or something along those lines. But it's not until the 1860s when

an old clerk of his ends up buying some of the brand rights along with William Tarr, that you start seeing this chicken cock name come around. It is the first question that people ask us when we go to work at Tasting, do an event, anything is like, how did you come up with that name? It was in the 1860s that they did.

Drew Hannush (15:11.987)
Yeah.

Will Woodington (15:12.823)
I wish we had one piece of paper that told us exactly this is how we came up with this, but we don't. So there's a few different things. First and foremost, James A. Miller, like I said, was a farmer. And they actually had some farm animals on site at the distillery. I tell people, if you go to a distillery today and see farm animals roaming around, it looks pretty out of place. But there, it was commonplace for them. So...

I like to think that early morning on site at the Chickencock Distillery, there may have been a rooster crowing because they had those farm animals. What better way to emulate the whiskey that you're making the property, you're making it on with a rooster crowing in the background than Chickencock. It's supposed to mean a crowing rooster. We always say that they were so proud of the whiskey that they were distilling that it was worth crowing about.

So whether or not that's accurate, I'm not sure, but you know that's definitely an influence that I can see behind it.

Drew Hannush (16:12.873)
I think the funniest thing that I saw when I was doing searches, because I was going back through old newspapers trying to search up that term, just be glad that you weren't starting a cigar brand. There was a cigar brand called Chicken Cock, which more jokes piled on top of that one. But it was interesting because when first diving into the history, it was kind of trying to find...

whether there was an association with cocktails or not. But I mean, we're talking about the South and it's a different lingo. And for them, that was just, that was their term for a rooster. So, and you wonder, because, and this is something else that I've found recently in doing research on old crow whiskey, is that old crow was originally sold as just crow's whiskey.

and you could find Crow's Whiskey in Vicksburg, Mississippi. There's an ad that I found in the 40s, 1840s for it, and it was just called Crow's Celebrated Kentucky Whiskey. It wasn't called bourbon. And so it's kind of like you see the evolution there and you see that brand was making its way down the river and you wonder whether they, knowing how big Old Crow or

Crow Whiskey at that particular time was getting whether it was kind of let's get another animal in here You know that seems to be working for them

Will Woodington (17:44.527)
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, there's a few different brands who, over time, have utilized the old English way of speaking. And those brands are really historical and everything. And Chickencock is just one of those brands that carried on with that. I'm sure that even into World War II era, where the brand was still around, that people were even wondering, then, what does this brand name mean? Right?

Drew Hannush (18:07.923)
Yeah.

Will Woodington (18:09.363)
But yeah, that's definitely the number one question we get. So that's what I like to think. You know, they could have had other influence behind it. There's obviously a few different speculations, but yeah.

Drew Hannush (18:20.081)
As I understand it, they tried to get for the longest time their own grain from Bourbon County, but then it just got to a point where they were so big that people don't realize how big that brand actually was for a good period of time through the mid 1800s.

Will Woodington (18:39.087)
Yeah, I mean, it was it was huge. You know, if you kind of look through when James A. Miller started, you know, open up the distillery and they started making whiskey, I mean, you know, they were producing some barrels, but it was.

you know, not that much. It was kind of a rare product, I guess, during that time. But then you get into where George G. White takes over. And I mean, they're pumping out thousands of barrels, you know, and tons of bushels of grain per day. And it's just amazing. It seemed like every decade they were pretty much double or tripling their business from the original founder. So it was a monumental huge brand.

Drew Hannush (19:18.141)
So what's interesting about that is that when a brand gets that big, you get imitators and there was a famous imitation that actually ended up in court. Talk about that one.

Will Woodington (19:31.195)
Yeah, so that happens around the, I believe it was the 1880s or 1890s, but so they came to find out that there was this whiskey company owned by, I think it was John Miller Co. And they were making what was called Miller's Gamecock Whiskey. Now, if you look at that on its face.

Our original founder was James A. Miller, same last name. And then they're using Gamecock, and we're calling ours Chickencock. So obviously, clearly they're trying to reap the benefits of the quality reputation that Chickencock had put forth and kind of play off that. But unfortunately, their whiskey.

couldn't hold a candle to the quality of whiskey that Chicken Cock to Story was making. So they were making some whiskey pretty much in their backyard or back shed or whatever. And it was a blend. It wasn't even a proper bourbon. And it was a pretty cheap product. And George G. White and co. found out about this and took them to court for trademark infringement. And they ended up winning. So it's a very documented case.

uh... you know very early trademark infringement suit where they won

Drew Hannush (20:38.889)
Well, and interesting that it was in a Boston courtroom that it happened that the court case was heard. And here you have a Kentucky whiskey going up against a local boy and the local boy loses the court case. So I think that too shows how big a name that Chickencock had at that time.

Will Woodington (21:00.755)
Yeah, if you kind of go through the transcript or the documents with that court case, yeah, you bring up a good point that you would think that a local court might side with the Boston, Miller's Gamecock Company. But they did side with George G. White. And the reason for that was because this brand had been around and celebrated and known for its quality reputation for decades at this point. And they were trying to imitate that. And so that's all documented, that Chickencock has been around. It's been an esteemed brand of the highest quality.

Drew Hannush (21:24.094)
Yeah, yeah.

Will Woodington (21:30.81)
And yeah, so that's how they won that case.

Drew Hannush (21:34.353)
So it's interesting to see all these brands come back as it gets in my head, you know, thinking that William Tarr was a short term owner. I think he basically was there just to get George G. White on his feet. And then once George was on his feet, he was the bookkeeper that William Tarr said, okay, I'm gonna go off. Cause he went right off and started Ashland Distillery and was the owner of Ashland Distillery for a long period of time. It makes me wonder if there'll ever be a point where

you know, Ashland Distillery now was, it was RD-1. And so that's where RD-1 Spirits gets their name from. And they came out with a William Tarr whiskey. It just makes me wonder if there'll be a day when all of these, you know, brands like collaborate on something to kind of tie their histories together.

Will Woodington (22:22.855)
Yeah, no, it's cool. You know, when I was kind of taking a deep dive into the history of chicken cock, I'm like, I recognize that name, William Tarr, because they came out with their own bourbon brand with his name on it. And I believe his house is actually still down in Paris, Kentucky. I don't know if it's vacated or not, but yeah, he was, I mean, he was one of the bourbon barons back in that day.

I know there's been some bottles that celebrate early Bourbon barons of the 1800s, but yeah, William Tarr was definitely one of them, so it was interesting to see his name mixed in there. And yeah, I mean, 1860 rolls around and William Tarr invests in it, and then he got the Civil War ripping through America, right? So it probably wasn't a super ideal time to invest in a new business. So yeah, I think you're right that he just kind of invested in it, got George G. White on his feet, and then George White is really the one who took off and ran with the brand for the later half of the 19th century.

Drew Hannush (23:15.525)
So we get into the 1890s and interesting to note that there was an event that was going on that was a pretty big event that chicken cock whiskey is associated with out in Carson City, Nevada, which now this is going to show how far this whiskey spread out across the country. Can you go into that a little bit?

Will Woodington (23:41.083)
Yeah, that's a really amazing thing that I try to bring up to people all the time is just, you know, picture yourself. It's 1897. You take a train out to go see a heavyweight boxing match, a world heavyweight boxing match in Carson City, Nevada or whatever. And for I think it was about 45 barrels of chicken cock whiskey were shipped. They were rumored to be about 18 years old and they show up at this heavyweight boxing match. And it's the first ever filmed heavyweight boxing match in the world.

And to just think that there were so many people in that crowd, there's pictures of that Boxe Mansion, of course, video, because it was filmed. But to just imagine how many people were drinking really super well-aged chicken cock whiskey in that audience. But also, like you said, to know how far and wide this whiskey reached in the United States at such an early point in time, that it was making it all the way out to Carson City and being shared is really, really cool.

Drew Hannush (24:39.165)
It was interesting to see that one of the guys that bought into the distillery after there was a guy named Charlton Alexander that owned it for a while and then when he left, a guy named Yates Ferguson who was a spirits dealer out of New York, but he decided to buy into the Chickencock distillery. But he had a situation back in 1870 during the whole whiskey ring era that was interesting to see too that he was finding in California there were people that were imitating.

chicken cock whiskey but coming out with like a cheaper version of it.

Will Woodington (25:13.095)
Yeah, yeah, there's a couple of different brands that were really trying to play off Chicken Cock for sure. So you can see old bottles that have rooster iconography on the front. And again, like you said, branding and logos weren't as commonplace. They started to become that way in the later half of the 19th century. But yeah, just a lot of brands that were just trying to make cheap whiskey and pass it off with the same quality reputation that Chicken Cock had.

Drew Hannush (25:40.797)
Yeah. So what happened after George G. White and his ownership of the distillery?

Will Woodington (25:48.327)
Yeah, there were a lot of crazy things going on at that time. Really, what you saw was the whiskey trust starting to form back in those days, just before the turn of the century, before the turn of the 20th century. So they had been trying and trying and trying to acquire the distillery off George G. White's hands, and he didn't want to give it up.

And what ended up happening, at least based on the documentation, is he got outbid eventually right around 1900 or so, give or take a few years, and ends up losing the rights to the distillery to this really large conglomerate that existed back in that day who was buying up, really trying to make a monopoly for themselves and buying up very small and large-scale distilleries and to make it all under one roof. And

You know, there's some crazy stories that I've read about, you know, the Whiskey Trust and the people who didn't want to get on board and sell off their distillery. I mean, these guys would go so far as to sabotage them by planting dynamite and blowing up their warehouses and doing all this crazies. It's like mafia-level insane stuff.

Drew Hannush (26:54.41)
Hehehehe

Drew Hannush (27:00.073)
Yeah, it would have been an interesting time to live. I think what's interesting about the Whiskey Trust is the fact that they were basically told and shut down, and then they splintered into all of these different pieces, and then they came back together ultimately after a while under a completely different umbrella. It's like, okay, government.

see if he can stop us, we're just gonna do this again. But that one branch of them is what basically tried to buy up every single distillery in Kentucky that they could. I thought it was interesting because there was a quote in there. On the day that they bought the Chickencock Distillery, the man who was in charge of the Kentucky Distillers and Warehouse Company, which was that whiskey trust arm, basically said, if we haven't bought it, we don't want it.

Will Woodington (27:28.317)
Yep.

Drew Hannush (27:52.761)
So that was their attitude at that time period was, hey, we got the muscle and we don't care what you say about it, we're just gonna go in and buy up whatever we can. But they kept making the whiskey at the white distillery at least for the next few years.

Will Woodington (28:14.023)
Yep. Yeah. So they acquired the distillery off George G. White. And I don't think he lived too much longer after that anyway. I think he was he was kind of old at that point. But but yeah, the this conglomerate, this huge company, they I think the chicken cocked distillery had just undergone. I don't know how severe a fire, but a fire at the at the distillery. And so they rebuilt and began distilling whiskey there again.

at the original site in Paris, Kentucky. That didn't last a terribly long time, because I believe that they shifted production to their massive Louisville plant in the 1910s at some point.

Drew Hannush (28:55.349)
Yeah, it went to 1911, it was when they shut it down and they sent it over actually to Camp Nelson to E.J. Curley. So E.J. Curley was a higher up in the Kentucky Distillers and Warehouse Company. And so when they sent it over to him, this is why I say, here's another connection because somebody has brought back E.J. Curley's name as a whiskey and so E.J. Curley would have been where they were making chicken cock whiskey up to

prohibition and then after that they sold the building, they sold off the warehouses, basically wrote into the documentation saying you cannot distill whiskey to the new owner, you cannot distill whiskey on this property. So that's how we kind of know. And that's where history has kind of gotten it wrong for a long time because there's been talk about, oh well the distillery survived all the way into the 60s so after prohibition they were still distilling there.

They had abandoned that place in 1911, around that time, and then it was just being made offsite. But it did survive prohibition, correct?

Will Woodington (30:08.051)
Yeah, the brand did survive through prohibition, absolutely, in a couple of different really amazing ways. The first way was being made as an American whiskey by the American Medicinal Spirits Company. And not a lot of brands survived through prohibition, and even fewer were made during it. And Chicken Cock, we're proud to have that history behind us, that it was made as a medicinal whiskey. So you could.

Go into your, you know, if you were smart in the 1920s, they said you'd be sick every day of the week, and you'd get whiskey prescribed to you, and you could go into a general store and pick up a bottle of chicken cock for your medicine. So, and the other way that it was being made was as a pure Canadian rye for a brief amount of time. We pull some of our influence for our limited time offerings from.

Drew Hannush (30:58.097)
Yeah, that's an interesting story too. I was gonna say with the, when looking at those bottles, cause this is the fun part, that I went to the Oscar Getz Museum and had them open up the glass cases to look at the back of a bottle of chicken cock whiskey from that time period, one of the medicinal bottles. Take a look if you ever get one, because it will tell you where it was distilled and after American medicinal spirits took it over.

it was distilled in a number of different places. In fact, even post prohibition, it was showing up with Baltimore, Maryland. So they were making some of their rye whiskies were coming from Maryland as well. So it's kind of a interesting thing to note that was part of Kentucky Distillers and Warehouse Company, which turned into American Medicinal Spirits, or it's really convoluted because one owned another and then it came back to one owning it. And then, you know, it was, it's a...

It is a mind twister to go through all of that and try to figure it out. But the Canadian whiskey was interesting because it actually wasn't necessarily a product of American medicinal spirits. This was, there was a little underhanded action going on with that as I understand.

Will Woodington (32:00.009)
Yeah.

Will Woodington (32:17.583)
Yeah, yeah. Just to touch on your point about the lineage and where chicken cock was being made at what certain time. I ran into that myself. It's all over the place. But yeah, the Canadian portion, a guy by the name of Sam Bronfman, who was the big lead at the Secrums Corporation back during that day.

He was a smart businessman. I'll say that because he was making spirits in America while Canada was going through prohibition and smuggling spirits up. And then when the script flipped and the United States started going through prohibition in the 20s, he shifted all production up to Canada. And it was legal for Canada to produce spirits as long as they were exporting them. So that was his get around, I suppose. But...

He was beholden to the bootleggers of that day, probably during that time. And so he was trying to acquire and make as much whiskey as possible up in Canada during Prohibition. And one of the brands he got the brand rights to was Chickencock. And some people don't know this, but Chickencock was already a registered trademark brand in the United States. At that point in time, it had already been around for almost 70 years or so. And

So there was a little bit of that. You know, he was able to get the brand rights and produce the brand, even though it was registered here already. But he was producing chicken cock as a pure Canadian rye. And he was putting it into an interesting packaging. He was putting it into a tin can that you basically had to use almost like a key to cut open. And it was to prevent the smugglers from tampering with it as it came back across the border. So they were shipping all this chicken cock rye to an island off the coast of Newfoundland.

Drew Hannush (33:58.041)
Hmm

Will Woodington (34:03.487)
and then it would make its way predominantly onto the East Coast of America. But it was showing up all over the place. So that's a really, really cool, interesting piece of history right there. That's why we, so our whisky is, we call it the whiskey in a tin can from that era.

Drew Hannush (34:18.373)
It has a little musical tie in as well from that time period.

Will Woodington (34:22.767)
Absolutely. So yeah, you got to think about it roaring 20s. There's a lot of speakeasies across the nation. There's plenty of them in today's age, too. But, you know, plenty of speakeasies going on. One of the most famous ones was called the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York. And it was it was extremely well known, popular jazz and speakeasy bar. And all the jazz legends played there. Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong. I mean.

If it was still around today, that's where I'd be going for a cocktail, that's for sure, and some music. So Chicken Cock was showing up there. And it was one of the house whiskey at the Cotton Club. And again, it's always fascinating to have physical traces and documentation to look at when you're tracing the history of this brand. But one of the cool things is that Duke Ellington, the V.

extremely famous jazz musician listed in his memoirs that chicken cock was his favorite house pour at the Cotton Club during the roaring twenties. He called it very good whiskey and I think chicken cock costs around $14 a pint if I'm correct in the 1920s. And in today's money, that is 243 bucks. I mean, you're missing a car payment to get a pint today.

Drew Hannush (35:28.225)
Ha ha ha.

Drew Hannush (35:35.994)
Yeah, that's amazing. What it would be like to get a chance to taste that and see what that is like. And so once we get past prohibition, what happened with the brand at that point?

Will Woodington (35:54.143)
So out of prohibition, then you go into Great Depression, and you got World War II, and alcohol is really just being predominantly made for industrial purposes, not as much for consumption. And so by the time that 1950 had rolled around, the larger conglomerate who owned chicken cock during that time, they were still making chicken cock.

But it wasn't the same like it was 70, 80 years prior. It was a blended whiskey. It wasn't a proper bourbon like we'd know today. And so the quality went down, the price went down, and unfortunately, the brand just didn't have the popularity that it did 50 or 60, 70, 80 years ago prior to that. And so they just decided to kind of put it into the shadows. Coinciding with that, the original distillery did eventually burn down around that time, but that's not the reason why the brand.

faded out, it was just because it wasn't popular. And they just kind of killed it off, unfortunately.

Drew Hannush (36:52.649)
Did you see the story? It was like it came out of Lexington Herald, I think, from 1961 about the bottle of chicken cock that they found inside the foundation of the distillery after it burned down.

Will Woodington (37:06.875)
Yeah, yeah, I did read that. That is just, I mean, that's amazing. I don't know if that bottle still exists or where it's at, but I would love to see it. Heh heh heh.

Drew Hannush (37:16.241)
Yeah, as I understand it was like the guy was saving it for his grandson and so he sent it out to California somewhere. Hey, if anybody knows where this bottle is, it'd be fascinating to see. What would be interesting to see too is that none of the workers who got a hold of the bottle knew when the whiskey, what time the whiskey came from. So that tells me that whoever was working at the distillery at the time put that into the foundation while...

it hadn't gone through full stamping and everything by revenue. And so it makes me wonder, you know, how it got in, because otherwise it would have a tax stamp on it. And that tax stamp would tell you when it was produced. But the thought was that maybe this was one of the last, when they sold off the thing to have it no longer be distilling whiskey, they just put the last bottle in. Because when it was built,

in 1856, they weren't really bottling whiskey back then. So it wouldn't have been an original bottle. Plus, yeah, again, it'd be interesting to see what the logo and all of that would be like.

Will Woodington (38:26.779)
Yeah, I love seeing all the old labels, all the old logos. I've actually got a, it's a remake of the old chicken cock logo. It's a tin sign that I have hanging above my whiskey cabinet here. And it's just, I love that stuff. I, yeah, I love the old branding from the old days in the 1800s. And I've gotten to hold some old bottles of chicken cock. I actually have an original pint of medicinal chicken cock whiskey right here. That's still got some whiskey in it.

Drew Hannush (38:53.266)
Oh nice.

Will Woodington (38:55.503)
I don't know how drinkable it is, but it's still technically sealed. Yeah, it's just evaporation. This does have the tax stamp on it. It was distilled in 1916, bottled in 1933. So it's during that medicinal timeframe.

Drew Hannush (38:58.981)
Is it still sealed? Is that all just evaporation?

Drew Hannush (39:13.757)
Yeah, oh yeah, well it would have come out of E.J. Curley distillery now we know. And do you see on the bottom of the bottle, on the back of the bottom of the bottle, does it say what distillery it came out of?

Will Woodington (39:17.459)
Yep. Ha ha ha.

Will Woodington (39:25.844)
produced by Kuhn Hollow Distilling. It doesn't say a city.

Drew Hannush (39:30.213)
Oh, okay, Coon Hollow is from New Hope, Kentucky, which is south of Bardstown. And Coon Hollow would have been part of the Stoll organization. The Stolls were part of that Kentucky Whiskey Trust, and they were the ones that kind of snuck in and outbid William Tarr by a dollar to buy the distillery from George G. White.

Will Woodington (39:56.062)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (39:56.493)
And Coon Hollow, I've actually been to the site where that distillery was. It was right, where Log Still distillery is now, the train tracks would run further east. And as you pass the town of New Hope, and then you go a little beyond it, that's where the Coon Hollow distillery was. There were 11 distilleries in that area, in that one little area at that time period. But Coon Hollow was one of the ones for some reason.

they decided they wanted to hang on to because they mostly, when the Whiskey Trust came in, they just shut down the distilleries that they weren't interested in. So that is fascinating actually, that you got a little bit of juice from that distillery. And that tells a story too, because the story that I read was that production went to the E.J. Curley distillery, but apparently, Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse Company was basically just grabbing it from wherever.

they could get it from to put it in the bottle. So, interesting, very interesting. The stories those bottles could tell. Ha ha ha.

Will Woodington (41:02.481)
Yeah.

I know, I know, it's fascinating. I just love just even looking at it. I mean, I love, I'm super, super honored to have an old bottle of chicken cock medicinal whiskey that's still sealed from that long ago. You know, it's very, as I'm sure you probably know, it's very hard to find physical relics of the brand in modern day, so.

Drew Hannush (41:09.426)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (41:26.877)
Yeah. Does that bottle have any kind of contour to it? Some kind of, cause now we have these embossed bottles and I know they were making embossed bottles back then. Does that one, is it embossed or did a Kentucky distillers and warehouse company cheap it up a little bit by not, not going big on the glass detail.

Will Woodington (41:43.442)
Yeah.

Will Woodington (41:46.991)
Yeah, so it says American Medicil Spirits Company on the back on the label. And it's got the AMS sort of embossed logo at the very bottom. But other than that, it just says Fulpint. And the rest of it is just labeling. So.

Drew Hannush (42:00.977)
Yeah, I guess if you're going to go get a prescription for this stuff, you're not really shopping by bottle design as much as you're just waiting, get me my medicinal whiskey so I can drink. Yeah, different time period. So let's talk a little bit now about the current bottle designs because you're...

Will Woodington (42:14.663)
Yeah, exactly. I got to be cured.

Drew Hannush (42:29.177)
Was there inspiration on those bottle designs? I've noticed that the double oak bottle has kind of almost a sun ray kind of a pattern on it, whereas when I first looked at the rye, I thought, oh, wait a second, what is this honeycomb thing? But then I was like, oh no, I bet that's chicken wire.

Will Woodington (42:48.087)
Yeah. So that's a really cool piece. You know, the question that I get a lot after I get done telling kind of the history behind the brand and how far it goes back, people always ask me once I start talking about sort of the revival of it, do you guys use the original recipe? And I'm like, no. You know, that's long gone information that we absolutely don't have. Exchange hands.

throughout the years and the decades and fires and the distillery and who knows what else, but no, unfortunately we don't. But a couple of places where we do draw inspiration from is our packaging. Every single bottle that we offer in our lineup is a callback to, or similar to what chicken cock looked like back 100 years ago. And so our bourbon and rye whiskey, as well as a couple of our other limited time offering bottles with what looks like honey come on the outside is actually chicken wire.

And these are exact replicas of what chicken cock looked like during Prohibition when it was being made as that pure Canadian rye whiskey and packaged in a tin can and came in that $243 pint. They're exact mimics of it, which is cool. And I've got one of those original bottles as well. Now it doesn't have whiskey in it, unfortunately, anymore. But it's really cool to showcase to people and just put it side by side with our current bottle.

Drew Hannush (43:46.974)
Mm.

Drew Hannush (43:59.16)
Ah.

Will Woodington (44:04.367)
And then the other bottle design that you're referencing with the sort of the sunburst, Art Deco, 1920s look to it.

That is exactly what chicken cock looked like when it was being made as a medicinal whiskey by American medicinal spirits co And they had a few different brands that they that utilized the similar or same exact bottle design I think old rip van Winkle was also one of those brands during that time But it comes with the cap on top So our island rooster rum barrel finish rye our double oak some of our other limited time offerings have utilized this bottle design And I love it. It's it's beautiful but

Drew Hannush (44:27.391)
Mm.

Will Woodington (44:39.371)
As mentioned, you get your whiskey prescribed by a doctor and you pick up chicken cock from the general store and you go home and you measure your medicine with the cap on top. So that's just like Nyquil is today. That's the same thing we're emulating in today's age. So it's a really cool bottle. It's a fun story to talk about.

Drew Hannush (44:49.409)
Mm. Ha ha ha.

Drew Hannush (44:58.577)
Absolutely. So let's talk about the current brand and what you're doing in terms of producing the whiskey. So the idea being that you're kind of drawing upon your own inspiration to figure out what your mash bills are, you'd make no secret about the fact that your whiskey comes out of Bardstown Bourbon Company as well, which kind of talked through that process and the idea of the use of a

supplier like that versus somebody like an MGP.

Will Woodington (45:31.687)
Yeah, so around 2017 is really when we shifted gears into the chicken cock brand that you see before you today. All made in Kentucky, proper bourbons and ryes for the most part. And one of the first things that we did was you gotta get a master distiller. So we hired on our current day master distiller, his name's Greg Snyder. And Greg has been in the industry for almost 45 years, roughly.

and has had a long, really, really amazing rich trajectory throughout the whiskey industry. But when Greg came on, he developed his own consultation company. He kind of wanted to avoid the corporate world, but he still wanted to make whiskey and help people, you know, different brands out. So Chickencock was actually his first customer.

And initially, Greg was brought on to really just help us with supply chain. But eventually, we got to the point where we wanted him actually making the whiskey. And that point in time, if you want to build your own brick and mortar distillery, as James A. Miller can attest to, it costs a lot of money to do. It's a lot of overhead. And not that it can't be done, but we really wanted to start kicking this brand off and reviving it in the 21st century. So Greg.

wanted to have a hand in making this whiskey. He wanted to be involved in every single touch point and you can't do that necessarily when you're simply just picking out one set whiskey mash bill in a specific amount of barrels and then calling it your own. So what we wanted to do was have a much more hands-on approach and Greg has a great relationship with the folks over at Bardsound Burbing Company. Him and Steve Nally go way back from Steve's Makers Mark Days and everything.

And we developed a collaborative distillation program with them. So that means that Greg has oversight from bark to barrel to bourbon to bottle is what he likes to say. Greg is he's got a super elevated wood selection process that we go through. We're using our own proprietary grains, enzymes, cooking times, temperatures. And he's overseeing that whole distillation process from start to finish when we make our whiskey at Bardstown Bourbon Company. So we utilize their employees.

Will Woodington (47:44.519)
wonderful equipment, their storage facilities, to make chicken cock in the 21st century. But it's a wonderful partnership that we have with them.

Drew Hannush (47:53.625)
I feel like in some ways I'm kind of throwing the line out there and hooking in the answers I'm kind of looking for, which is this idea that Bardstown Bourbon Company, if you ever do a tour of the place, it's like amazing how many different recipes that they're working with. And as I understand it, you know, MGP is now growing the list of mash bills that they're working with.

But a real advantage to be able to have that level of control over the whiskey that's going to basically be your reputation going down the road.

Will Woodington (48:31.419)
Yeah, that's definitely something that Greg and even our founder, Marty, you know, we wanted to make sure that we did right by this brand because we are we are, you know, the

the stewards of it in the 21st century is a couple things that Greg wanted to do. One of the biggest things that he wanted to do, I should say, is uphold the quality reputation that the brand was known for a very, very long time. Because again, come around 1950, right before the brand went into the shadows, they were not upholding that quality reputation. They were making it as a blended sort of whiskey and selling it for super cheap. And we didn't want to go that route. We wanted to do right by the brand. And the only way you can do that is

on touch points to ensure quality and all of your measures that you want to do are upheld.

Drew Hannush (49:20.853)
So let's talk about this Double Oak, because this is a very interesting whiskey. As I only know a little bit about it, I've tasted some, and we're gonna taste some here in a moment, but kind of talk through this barrel aging process that you're doing, because as I understand it, somewhere along the line you're using used barrels for this.

Will Woodington (49:41.063)
Yeah, so this whiskey has a really interesting story behind it. So go back to 2014, there was a bit of a white oak, American white oak logging shortage that was going on in the industry. Basically, the ground was oversaturated that year with rainwater and snow runoff and whatever else. And to get heavy mining equipment in there to get to the logs, they just couldn't do it. It was very hard. They had to wait for the ground to dry up. So you had.

bourbon producers, whiskey producers that, you know, nine times out of 10 are gonna throw their whiskey into specifically white American oak barrels, didn't have new barrels to put this whiskey in. So they had to throw it back into a used barrel. That's why it's called the Kentucky Whiskey on the label versus a bourbon. It was made with a bourbon mash bill, but because of that used barrel factor, can't call it that. So it sat in a used cask for the first seven years of its life. You know,

once you get up to the seven year mark, you're really not gonna be able to extract much more flavor out of that barrel. You know, it's like trying to squeeze blood from a rock at a certain point. So what we wanted to do was take this whiskey and elevate it in many different ways, give it a better finish, more flavor, better color, more depth, more complexity. And the only way you can do that is by further aging it. Well, so we cooked up a brand new batch of white American oak barrels, and they had a level four char.

Drew Hannush (50:48.836)
Hmm

Will Woodington (51:06.519)
And we dumped this whiskey back into those brand new casks. And Greg strategically placed them at the very top parts of the rick houses at Bardstown Bourbon Company. And if you toured a distillery, I mean, in the summer, it can get pretty warm even on the first floor. But you go up to that top part of the rick house if you ever have an opportunity. And it's over 100 degrees.

And so that's going to cause your barrels to expand at a very high rate and then contract at a high rate in the winter. So your whiskey is going to be flowing in and out of that wood and therefore exuding a lot of that great flavor you want to pick up. So it ages those used casks for another 18 months or a year and a half. And once we pulled this out, man, this is one of my favorite sippers in our whole lineup. It's bottled at ninety two proof.

Drew Hannush (51:50.984)
Mm-hmm.

Will Woodington (51:51.819)
It's got a mash bill of 80% corn, 11.5% rye, and 8.5% multi-barley. So a high corn content whiskey. Between that and the double maturation on this, plus the age that it went through, it's got a lot of sweeter, richer, sort of deserty flavors to it, which I love. Lots of vanillas, some berries, some waffle cone. Beautiful finish, great mouthfeel. It's, yeah, it just.

We knocked it out of the park in this one and again, it takes someone with Greg's sort of knowledge to know how to strategically age this whiskey to pull this kind of flavor out.

Drew Hannush (52:27.869)
Well, you're kind of taking from the way the Irish and the Scots make whiskey and the idea that it starts out in the used barrel, but then they've gotten into the habit of using virgin barrel oak for finishing whiskies.

Will Woodington (52:40.191)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And their goal is to maybe make a little bit of a different whiskey than we do here in America. American whiskeys typically are very dark, rich, really robust, high in spice, everything like that. And you have a lot of different climate over in Scotland, Ireland, Japan, wherever they may use barrels, and then finish in brand new. They want a delicate touch. They want a lot of lighter flavor. It's a lower proof whiskey than we typically have here in America.

But for the trajectory that this whiskey went through, man, it is just delicious, in my opinion.

Drew Hannush (53:14.889)
What's interesting about this whiskey, and I'm trying to figure out where these flavors might be coming from, is that I pull out, I get a cola note, which sometimes I get more in like weeded whiskies, but I'm pulling a little of that out. It's got a pepper spice that lays on the palate like it's a high rye, but it's not a high rye, and then I get dark chocolate on the finish of this whiskey.

Will Woodington (53:37.503)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. You hit all the great touch points. And some of my favorite whiskeys out there have these sort of richer, darker, deserty flavors. And cola syrup is actually one of my favorite notes. If I can pull that out of a whiskey, I love it. It's just really luscious. It's rich. Coats your palate.

Drew Hannush (53:52.895)
Mm.

Drew Hannush (54:01.353)
Nice, nice. All right, so let's talk a little bit about the straight rye, because I have straight rye here as well. I've been enjoying that. I will say, I'll tell you how I got this bottle. I was doing a program trying to turn people on at a bourbon festival to Scotch whiskey.

And so I was having them drink Port Charlotte heavily peated. So here I am getting bourbon fans to drink Smokey Scotch. But Chicken Cock was at the booth right next to me. And when the, when the event was over, uh, we were chatting back and forth and we ended up swapping the bottle. So this is how I ended up with a, with a Kentucky straight rye. Um, but this is, um, this is an interesting one because I get a lot of tropical fruit notes on this, almost like a juicy fruit on the nose.

Will Woodington (54:55.915)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, our rye is really tremendous. Similar to what you were just speaking about, trying to get bourbon drinkers.

to enjoy scotch, right? Which sometimes can be a tough thing to do. Some people just don't like that smokiness, right? I've run into the same issue when it comes to rye whiskey. Some people that really like bourbon don't like rye. And especially people that don't drink whiskey often tend to shy away from rye as well. Typically, because rye whiskey has that gripping sort of flavor profile to it.

Drew Hannush (55:23.434)
Mm-hmm.

Will Woodington (55:29.543)
It can be really spicy. It can be really earthy. It can be challenging to your palate in some ways. And it really is usually a whiskey that takes time to really appreciate. But the more that I found that I drank it throughout the years, the more I started really, really loving Rye's because they were just full of great complexity. And our Rye whiskey, I cannot tell you how many people that have come to me and said, I don't usually drink Rye. I usually drink bourbon. How many people I've been able to convert with this bottle.

So the story on this is, you know, it's got a 95-5 mash bill. So 95% rye, 5% malted barley. And again, Greg goes through the very elevated wood selection process. We do a medium plus toasting plus a level three char in each barrel that we do to maximize flavor during maturation. And this rye has just great flavor. But what I love.

is that it's very palatable still. It's got sort of sweeter accentuations to it. So on that nose, you get a little bit of that citrus or maybe that juicy fruit, some of those brighter tropical fruit notes. And then on the palate, I get like, you get that spearmint or sweet mint. I get some peach, I get some honey, some oak, right? And it is just a delicious rye that we've been able to convert to the rye side quite a few times with, so.

Drew Hannush (56:24.434)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (56:50.525)
I get a lot of lemon and vanilla in this as well. And it's not aggressive in terms of the pepper on the pallet or on the finish, which I think is something that would.

probably help somebody, because I think the biggest issue that people have with rye whiskey is that aggressiveness, unless they just don't like the flavor of rye. I look at people when they tell me, I don't like rye bread, and I go, who are you? And why do you not like that? Because I love it so much, but I understand. There are people that it's just not going to hit their palate quite the same way, and so they're going to look for something different.

Will Woodington (57:15.144)
Ha ha!

Drew Hannush (57:27.325)
But the complexity, as you say, in rye is so interesting. And I think the fact that you say that this has kind of a medium char on it instead of a higher char would create a little less of the barrel influence. And to me, that's what really makes rye sing when you get more of the distillate that you're tasting rather than too much of the barrel influence.

Will Woodington (57:51.803)
Yeah, to your point, I haven't drank a ton of moonshine, right? Or white dog, distill it, because it's just, I mean, usually it's way too alcohol forward and all that stuff. But I always do enjoy trying it because it's unadulterated, untouched by a barrel. And it's really cool to kind of see how just the distill it tastes before it actually enters. And

Some of my favorite white dogs or distillates that I've tasted have actually been rye whiskies because the distillate just on its own before it even goes in that barrel just has really great flavor. The bourbon ones that I've tasted not as much they really do depend a little bit more heavily on that wood which is why rye maturates at a much faster rate than bourbon does. It doesn't need as much time in the barrel. So you know that's why we're picking up a lot of great flavor with just doing a level three char and a medium plus toast versus having to get a ton of

Drew Hannush (58:22.623)
Mm.

Will Woodington (58:46.042)
influence on maturation.

Drew Hannush (58:49.289)
Does this go two, three, four years? Do you have a time period on it?

Will Woodington (58:53.915)
Yeah, so if you look at the back of our label, it's aged a minimum of two years.

You know, we're steadily trying to get more age, right? But we haven't been at the distillation game for a terribly long time. I will say this is that if you set this glass in front of most people and had them estimate how old this rye was, they would probably estimate that it's a lot older than it is. Because again, of that elevated wood selection process and just the amazing job that Greg has done over at Barts South Burbank Company to make a really outstanding rye.

Drew Hannush (59:16.939)
Hmm.

Drew Hannush (59:27.637)
Will there ever be a day when there's a chicken cock whiskey distillery again in Bourbon County, Kentucky?

Will Woodington (59:33.491)
Man, I hope. I hope so. I would love to see the rooster proudly crowing down there in Paris. But maybe one day right now, we're really hitting our stride. We're the fourth largest growing ultra-premium whiskey brand in the nation right now. And we're winning awards left and right on this whiskey as it is. I think the further down the road that we go, the more creative we're going to be, the bigger things you're going to see come out of this brand. So maybe one day.

Drew Hannush (59:35.945)
Heheheheh

Will Woodington (01:00:01.991)
And what we do, we'll make sure to put a bottle into the foundation.

Drew Hannush (01:00:02.685)
Nice. Do you have any special additions?

There you go. Absolutely, absolutely. Put a timestamp on it too, so people know. Nice, nice. So any special additions that we should be looking out for coming up?

Will Woodington (01:00:12.316)
Yeah, right.

Will Woodington (01:00:22.151)
Yeah, so kind of going back to the limited time offering spectrum. Like I said, one of our first ones was called Cotton Club that we put into a tin can, obviously, to commemorate the Cotton Club history, the pure Canadian rye history, all that good stuff. And then after that, we did another tin can whiskey called Chanticleer, which is just one double gold at San Francisco Spirits Competition. It's a Cognac barrel finished bourbon.

and it's really outstanding. And so this year, come around, you know, fall time, maybe October timeframe or so, we're going to have our third tin can edition. It's a really outstanding bourbon. I can't spill the beans just yet, but I'm very excited for it. So definitely be looking out for our third limited edition tin can series coming out this fall.

Drew Hannush (01:01:07.753)
Very nice. Okay. An interesting question that just popped in my head about double oak. That's an interesting way of making a whiskey. Is double oak a, um, one time only kind of thing or is this something that you guys are going to be doing down the road?

Will Woodington (01:01:22.599)
Yeah, unfortunately, I mean, it's while it's not impossible to recreate the circumstances that this whiskey went through, it's not necessarily something we're looking to recreate. So, you know, it all happened because of that white American Oak logging shortage and once double oak is gone, it'll be gone. You know, we may make another double oak whiskey in the future. But once we run out of these, you know, it shouldn't be for a little bit of time. But once this is gone, yeah, we'll be moving on from this product. So.

Drew Hannush (01:01:30.032)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:01:50.117)
It's an interesting experiment and I love seeing it because it's interesting, not too long ago I had the Tomaten Distillery from Scotland on and we were talking about the idea that they're, back then they were basically making whiskey for blends and so they made all of this whiskey in used barrels. And so, and these used barrels, some of them were very tired used barrels because they will use a barrel up to 100 years.

in Scotland. So you get a third fill barrel, it's probably not got a lot that is going to affect the whiskey. But they were using a lot of tired barrels there. But he said what was interesting was that after 20 years, it's like, wow, I can still taste what some of this original distillate tastes like, which brings a completely different character to it. And so it's just interesting because...

we're not going to have that opportunity. There's not going to be a lot of distillers that are going to say, I want to commit to aging in a used barrel for seven years, and then finish this thing off with a little time at the top of a rick house in a new barrel.

Will Woodington (01:02:57.703)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the circumstances again, while we technically could recreate them possibly again, are just super unique, but that's what I love about it is that this whiskey took a really oddball trajectory of being aged in that used cast for seven years and another 18 months in brand new and finished at the top parts of the Rick houses, right? All those unique circumstances. We had a touch point into making this whiskey what it was in the end. So the biggest touch point obviously. So...

Yeah, like I said, you know, maybe in the future we'll do another double oak edition. Double oak is a super popular subcategory in whiskey. It's really delicious whiskey, nine times out of 10. And maybe we'll do that in the future. But yeah, for now, I just love holding onto this and being like, these are unique circumstances that made what's in the glass right here and just kind of cherish it that way.

Drew Hannush (01:03:51.189)
This is where we have to get into that mindset that they weren't in 150 years ago where they said somebody in the future is gonna wanna know what this whiskey was like and we should preserve in some way to the side so that people could enjoy that. And that's a very unique way of making a whiskey that again, not a lot of people are gonna do. So maybe you need to buy yourself a bottle of it and not open it and just keep it up on the.

shelf next to your other bottle there. So, because they'll, I mean, again, 100 years from now, somebody may be going, hmm, I wonder what chicken cock whiskey was like back in the second decade of, third decade of the 20th, 21st century.

Will Woodington (01:04:32.719)
Yeah, and 100 years from now, somebody's going to be doing a podcast just like this about it. And my recommendation is don't buy one bottle, buy two. Buy one to drink, because it's fantastic.

Drew Hannush (01:04:38.165)
Hehehehehehe

Drew Hannush (01:04:43.673)
There you go. Well, thank you so much for taking the time today and talking about chicken cock and its history and also telling us about the current goings on and going through the, I appreciate the opportunity to taste the double oak. I will treasure that one since it is going to be a rarity. And again, thank you so much. I have to say this before we close that I really appreciate whiskey brands that want to know.

their real history and not just run off of fable and lore, but actually want to go out and dig in and do the research to figure out who they are. So I appreciate you guys for doing that.

Will Woodington (01:05:27.428)
Yeah, I want to.

Give a big thank you to you as well, Drew. It's been a pleasure kind of unhashing this. I usually don't get to take as deep a dive in the chicken cock history as I did today. And of course, appreciate all of the historical research that you do, not just with the chicken cock brand, but with all brands out there. Because I think that history needs to be told. And I think it's a fascinating story and it's part of American history too. So thank you for taking the time

Drew Hannush (01:05:37.641)
Hmm

Will Woodington (01:05:58.865)
me on.

Drew Hannush (01:06:01.59)
Cheers.

Will Woodington (01:06:02.795)
Cheers.