Ep. 12 - 291 Distillery Founder Michael Myers

Transcript

DREW (00:00:14):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the Interviews. I'm your host Drew Hannush the Amazon best-selling author of Whiskey Lore's Travel Guide to Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon. And I want to welcome you in on an encore interview that I recorded on Zoom back in 2020 with the founder of Colorado's 291 distillery, Michael Myers and Michael well, he's had a fascinating life. He grew up in rural Georgia, went off to New York to become a fashion photographer and ended up ultimately chasing his love for the old Western whiskey in the mountains of Colorado. And in this episode, we're going to hear a little bit more about how he built his own still and started up his own distillery. Pretty much running the whole thing by himself at the beginning, talking about some of the crazy situations he got himself into. We'll talk about the not so secret ingredient that makes his whiskey different.

DREW (00:01:08):
We'll also discuss how he used his art background to craft the beautiful Old West inspired statuesque bottles that the whiskey is sold in. And also get a chance to sample two of the whiskeys that Michael's team sent to me to taste during the interview and to kind of set things up here. When we had this discussion, he was still at his old distillery and hadn't quite moved into his new space yet. And he was actually showing me around the distillery using his laptop. And I of course forgot to hit record when we got started. So we're going to slide into this interview. Didn't miss too much. And we'll talk about his cool still. And one of the special features about that still that nobody else has. I, I'm pretty sure of that when you hear what is a design element is in that still. I think you'll agree with me.

DREW (00:02:05):
And I had the honor actually, when I went out to Los Angeles and then drove back to South Carolina earlier this year to actually get to stop by his larger facility. Now the new one in Colorado Springs and then Emily showed me around there and I got the chance to meet Michael. And I think you're going to enjoy this conversation. He's a really great guy and he's had a lot of fun experiences in putting this distillery together. So we're gonna talk a little process, a little marketing, little Old West, and there's no better time than the present. Let's dive in with Michael Myers of Colorado's 291 distillery.

MICHAEL (00:02:49):
Wait, that's some corn local root chute, corn from Loveland, Colorado are rye malt comes from Germany, except for, we do have some rye malt from root shoot. When I started th the only Reimar was out of Germany or other parts of North America, and I liked the German rye malt, and then they started malting some in Colorado. And so we've shifted to use some of that, but not for our bourbon and our ride yet, because we're just making sure that the flavor profile is still the same. Right. And then these are fresh bottles that came in. And then this is our corn cooker, 1500 gallon Latina tank. I had customized to be a cooker. It has a steam coil in it. So it's all steam powered by our new boiler. We move in, we moved in January and two months ago, the boiler went down as a 29 year old boiler, and I had to put a brand new one in for three months. So yeah,

DREW (00:04:06):
I could tell, by the way you said that, that there was a story behind that somewhere.

MICHAEL (00:04:12):
Yeah. so Latina tank mash tun corn cooker, 1500 gallons. We cook in about a thousand gallons a little more, and then cooler in there and we transfer it to our fermentation tank. We pitch yeast for five days. Ferments are five to six. Once it's done in there, we transferred to the stripping still. And another Latina tank that I had customized into a stripping spill. So those were all customized here in Colorado Springs. The, the condenser is of Mendham condenser. I kind of stepped up to a big boy. My homemade condenser couldn't handle 1500 gallons of boiling mash to cool it down fast enough to our collection tank into, into our low wines. But so 50, you know, a thousand gallons stripped down to a 35% low wine. We get about 250 gallons at that point. And then we bring it over here into our finished spill. And this still, I had built here in the Springs. The company that builds stills for me here are DOD contractors. And they build things for nuclear subs and like, like titanium ball valves, nickel press rings for propulsion tubes, things like that, prays and stuff. So they like, we love whiskey. We'd love to build you a still. So I gave them the plans of my original, still this 45 gallon still. And they mimic it and made it larger.

DREW (00:05:53):
Yeah. So they're, they're like twins. It's like mini me next to next to the full size. Yeah.

MICHAEL (00:06:01):
So what's special about my original still is it's 45 gallons I designed and had it built myself found the guy that could TIG weld copper here in the Springs about 10 years ago. And I took photograph of your plates. So right there, that's that rock in that mountain formation that I showed you on that. Okay. Very cool. So there's seven plates on the, still are six plates on this still, and they're all different photograveur plates. So they were at one point flat and had a chemical edge on him of a photograph. And then you put ink on it. You put a piece of paper with it, you run it through a press and you get an ink photograph. So I took six plates, seven plates. I have an extra column that is made out of one of the plates and I had water jet cut. Then I took them to a place and we rolled them through a metal roller. And then I took them to Al Novak and he, he TIG welded it together for me and built my spill. And it is now the thump keg of my large finished still. But the thump keg for this one when I was in the 300 square foot space was a five and 10 gallon barrel. The change, the size changed as my barrel size changed, but and it worked, it worked really well.

DREW (00:07:34):
So what would your, what would you say your difference is between the Irish triple distilled set up? They have an intermediate still in between, are you basically going through the same process?

MICHAEL (00:07:48):
I think so it's three times distilled. So the strip still the finished still, and then the sub keg is a distillation as well. When I started this, I really liked the having a thump keg, and I knew that I wanted to strip. And so I, I realized it was a three times distilled whiskey. So yeah. And that's from the beginning, like, so one of those 55 gallon tanks was at one point, my mash tun. The coil has been cut out of it now, but my mash time and it would, I would convert it. I had a top that was cut out and had a six inch tri clamp top on it that would take the column. There's another column, similar to the one on my finish though. I'm my, some kegs, their original spill, and it would go on there and I had a condenser and I would strip with that and I could make about 60 gallons a month. I would mash in six permutations. So they were Pepsi, plastic gallon, 55 gallon drums that I do six of them. They ferment over a week. And then I would strip and I could strip two a day. So take me three days to do that. I'd have about 45 gallons, which would finish out to be about 15 gallons finished. Wow. so I could do it four times. It took literally a 15 hour day, seven days a week. And it was a lot of work, was a lot of work.

DREW (00:09:30):
Were you doing this 100% by yourself at that point?

MICHAEL (00:09:33):
Yeah, sorta I had somebody that was helping me every once in a while for a little bit, or somebody might come in and put some labels on, but truly can making it and selling it, opening accounts, all that stuff. But the best is everything was steam heated in that space. And I had my DSP DSP CEO, which is Colorado 1, 5 0 2, 3. So I had my DSP in the space. But the funny thing is I, I steam heated everything. And so I used a steam generator for a steam shower, home steam shower, and had it all hooked up. And the first time I turned it on, I hit the button. I had already mashed, I had mashed in, on a cookie fryer. So I already had a mash that was converted and I needed to strip it. So I was stripping it. And so when I, I hit the button, turned on, it started working really well.

MICHAEL (00:10:33):
About an hour later, I heard a click and I went over to the, still, it was warm. Like this is working what happened. So I pushed the button on it and it came back on. I'm like, all right, about an hour later, it clicked off again. And I'm like, it, it's a home unit. It has an automatic, oh man for two and a half years, 15 hours a day. I reset that button every 45 minutes. Wow. So, and I'm not kidding. I mean, there's people around here that I would sit at the bar and I'd be drinking after like 12 hours having a cocktail, talking about whiskey or whatever. And I just get up and walk away from the bar. The bar was right next door. And everybody knew that I was going to push that button. Oh man. And I'd be right back. Oh, that was so labor of love.

DREW (00:11:24):
Yeah. That's a, that's on a working scale, the same way, the same frustration I have with coffee makers that, you know, I'll put on a pot of coffee and I'll drink coffee for six hours out of that pot, but it keeps shutting off every two hours. So I had to keep going over and hit the button again. And I'm like, ah, it's cold coffee. Yeah. How does a person who has not distilled whiskey in the past? And now you have this idea that you're going to start a distillery. Do you apply for your DSP or do you, do you do a little bit of on the side testing to see if you can actually make this thing work?

MICHAEL (00:12:03):
I had a friend, Mike Bristol, Bristol brewing company. I told him, you know, I was interested and he's like, get your license. I'll try and help. I can brew beer, but I don't understand distillation. And I said, okay, I'll figure it out. And I reached out to Vendome for a spill and they sent me, there's a picture. I forget 50 gallon still for $50,000. And I was like, I can't afford that. I don't even know what I'm doing. I don't know how to work. So that's what made me think I could build a still I'm from Georgia. They make it in the woods. It can't be that hard. You know, I grew up on a farm, I'm an artist. I'm like, I can figure this out. I had 11 quarters of drafting, mechanical drafting in high school. I can mechanical draft to some extent.

MICHAEL (00:12:55):
You know, so I'm like, I'll figure it out. And I did. And I brewed, I came over to this space when Bristol was in here. And for one day his head brewer kind of showed me how the brew and like temperatures and stuff. And I, and then I had read everything and, and bill Owens had a book out about starting craft distilling, and that you could pair with a brewery that could brew your wash and then you'd just have to have the still, and I started down that road in, in theory and I just was ready to do it on my own. Like one weekend when I, when I, this still was being built and what, so I wanted to mash in on my own. So I went and bought corn a hundred pounds or actually a hundred pound bag of corn came from a 50 pound bag of corn, came from my Bristol.

MICHAEL (00:13:53):
And he said, you can have this if you want it. And I went and got malted rye from the home brew shop. And that is my first recipe was 80% corn, not a 20% rye and mashed. And it came off the spill. Actually this, this one was on a little five liter envelope still, right. That I had bought. And I that's the only one, one mash that I didn't do. And that was the one test that I did. I mean, only one in that still, that was the only mash I ran, you know, in that still was one time. And then I moved to my 45 gallon still that I had built. And that first run was September 11th, 2011. But that is my bourbon. That is my bourbon recipe with one change. And the one changes, I took out a percent of the malt and the added a percent of malt barley.

MICHAEL (00:14:54):
But so the bourbon that you have sitting there is 80% corn, 19% Maul rye, 1% malt barley. And that was my very first recipe. I, so I have handwritten notes and notebooks of, of from day one, so I can prove it to anybody that's anybody right now. I literally, and the notebooks are funny cause I, I, you know, whatever was going on outside of the distillery on that day, like my son running cross country or something, I wrote it in the, you know, in the margins, I'm like, oh, I got to go to cross country today or, you know, different things. So it's actually really cool to go back and look at, I did the other day looking for something and reading that, you know, there was a part in there where it was like, I had just got a pallet of bottles, which was like 1200 bottles. And I was at the point selling five cases. So 12 pack cases, so more or less 10, six pack case a month. And I, I wrote in there, I'm like, that's a lot to go through. It's going to take me a long time to go through that palette and more or less about a year. I've changed that quite a bit now, but.

DREW (00:16:11):
So how did you come about your recipe first and then was there ever a time when you went, let me experiment and see if maybe I should alter this or did you just kind of roll with it and say, you know, what, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

MICHAEL (00:16:29):
So yeah, so the bourbon, I just felt that originally the bourbon, I started out to make a 2 91 fresh, which is an un-aged corn whiskey to take the place of vodka, rum,, tequila and mixed drinks to have cashflow in a sense the 80 20 was good, but I just felt it needed something on the end. And I thought that malt barley would help that. So that's why that has a percent of malt barley in there. The rye whiskey is 61% malt ride, 39% corn. That is the second recipe. It, it is has not changed. It's based loosely on Thomas Handy, which is a high corn rye whiskey ride whiskey. So it's like, I think Thomas Handy is somewhere around 60%, but it has malt, barley, malt, barley in it, and mine does not.

MICHAEL (00:17:33):
But I, that was my favorite rye whiskey before I made my own whiskey. And then the third recipe, and that's what I was looking at the other day, actually, that's what I was reading or wanted to see is 2 91 bad guy and it's a four grain wheated bourbon. And the funny story about that is I was telling the restaurant that they could buy their own barrel, you know, I'd bottle it for them and they had their own label and it was a different recipe and, you know, and so I had to rest restaurants take that, take me up on that. I told him, you know, the restaurant tour to show, it will take me about six weeks to get a full barrel. And so I had experimented for the fresh and I did this for grain corn, 59, corn, 29 malt wheat nine malt rye, and three malt barley.

MICHAEL (00:18:32):
And I ran it and it came off and it was phenomenal white dog, but it, it, it didn't have it, wasn't fresh. It wasn't 2 91 fresh. And so I'm like, this is really good. This has got way too much flavor for, for clean, fresh whiskey, you know? And so I put it in a carboy and was going doing my stuff. And I was like, oh my God, it's been five weeks. And I didn't make a new mash for that restaurant. And I need the cash because I paid half upfront. And so I just called him up. I said, you know, I got a whiskey down here to put it in the barrel and come down, hammer the bunk. And so he did, and during that, he called his son and was like, you know, I'm putting whiskey in a barrel with friend, what, what should I call it?

MICHAEL (00:19:23):
And his son, young three-year-old or something Bad Guy. And I wrote bad. I wrote bad guy on the barrel and a year later, cause I'm aging in 10 gallon barrels. And a year later it came to harvest, you know, are we need to do a Cola first? So maybe not a full year, but I've talked to him and I'm like, so what are you going to call it? And he goes, oh, I don't know. And I'm like, you're not going to call it bad guy. He goes, no, I don't think so. I don't think I don't really like that now. I'm like, I'm like call it Bad Guy. He's like, all right.

DREW (00:20:01):
I was going to say for you, you you're a fan of the Old West. So it seems like bad guy is a very appropriate name for something that you would produce.

MICHAEL (00:20:10):
And I live in Colorado. I mean, come on people,

DREW (00:20:14):
I make Colorado whiskey talk about this, this idea of Colorado whiskey, because I went to I went to Texas and in Texas, they're really trying to maybe unintentionally at first, but now it seems more intentional that they're trying to create something like Kentucky bourbon, Tennessee whiskey and Texas whiskey kind of has its own personality. Is that something that, that is kind of an intention for where Colorado is going with whiskey? Or is it just a name right now? And everybody's kind of wild west doing their own thing or

MICHAEL (00:20:52):
Or so Colorado is interesting in that way. And with me, I did set out to make a Colorado Western whiskey, you know I I'm from Georgia born and raised. We raised Tennessee walking horses. I had chickens when I was 12. My dad, it was a gentleman's farm. My dad had, you know, 70 had a black Angus and, and we had 40 head of horses on and off. But we had a farm in Tennessee, which was seven miles from Jack Daniels, seven miles to George stucco as well. And so I wanted, I lived, I had the only Western saddle in our barn and I loved the west. I watched all the westerns as good bait, you know, like at four and up. And I just was like, I want to make a Western whiskey that, you know, a cowboy walks into a bar and give me a whiskey and the bartender just puts a bottle down, you know?

MICHAEL (00:21:45):
And, and, and but what is that whiskey big bowl. Beautiful. And I, you know, I'm not traditional, but I wanted to stick to tradition in a sense. And I love, I love Kentucky bourbon. I love Tennessee whiskey Jeff Arnett the past distiller of Jack Daniels. He's now starting his own thing, I believe. Dear friend you know, I, so Colorado let's make Colorado whiskey. What was already happening in Colorado because of the brew breweries, you know, that were 20, 25 years old in Colorado. Because of that industry, there were a lot of brewers that were looking to make whiskey. And one of them is like Stranahans. And so they started making malt whiskey. And so like nobody defined it. I think, I think Stranahan's was trying to define Colorado whiskey, but that's a hard thing to do legally. Right. You kind of have to make you kind of have to make, you know, like Jack Daniels kind of have to be making good whiskey for a long time.

MICHAEL (00:22:59):
Yeah, absolutely. So there's there's for awhile. Nobody was really, I mean, peach street was making a bourbon before Stranahan's or about the same time they go back and forth about that, about who was first. So there was bourbon being made, but it was still not a lot of people making. And now there are a lot more distilleries making bourbon. Most of them were working around the, the malt barley style whiskey. And, and I just, I S I was going down that route, like, cause of the bill Owens book, you know, Mike Bristol could brew my wash and, but I really coming from Georgia growing up on Jack loving bourbon, I was like, I got to also make American whiskey in that way. And to me that was an American whiskey where malt barley is more scotch style or, or Irish whiskey.

MICHAEL (00:24:01):
So yeah, so I, and then I mashed in, and that first, that first mash was good. And and then my ride was great as well. The white dog was phenomenal and I literally mashed in distilled and a month later, went to a tasting and Stranahan's for the distillers Guild of Colorado. And I actually met who's my distiller now, then, and I hired him about three years after that. But you know, I put my white dog up there and seven guys from Stranahans came with with the Rob Dietrich, their head distiller at the time and they paced my white dog. And they're like, this is phenomenal. And they're like, you should, you should put this in a bottle. And that's why I have two white whiskeys in a bottle because of that. But yeah, so it kind of was like, okay, I'm going down this American whiskey route I kind of was pushed that way and, and love it.

DREW (00:25:04):
So when did you decide to experiment and put Aspen staves now how are you doing the Aspen stays first of all, are you are you dropping them into your barrels or how, how are you marrying that influence into your whiskey?

MICHAEL (00:25:25):
Yeah, so that's what these barrels are here. These are single-barrel they we've popped the bungs on them. We take toasted pieces of Aspen and we just put it in a couple of them in a barrel and they sit for about three weeks and then we harvest it. So you have small batch right there, right? Yeah, small batch. So we we've just started last January, started marrying. Thank you. Started marriage marrying barrels together for our small batch. It was just too hard to, to harvest a 10 gallon barrel, excuse me harvest 10 gallon barrel, cut it to proof in a bottle proof and then bottle it. So we just efficiency as we grew as a company we started batching and we take about, excuse me, 20 barrels 20 barrels, a batch, and we put them in a stainless tank and then we take these and these are a little smaller, usually a little bigger. And we put them a bunch of them in the batch, in the, in the stainless for about three weeks and then omelet. So

DREW (00:26:45):
Do you toast them? Is that what you do or do you charge them?

MICHAEL (00:26:47):
Yeah, we have a Weber grill in the back and we just grill them up. I'm not, I'm not kidding. We have auto Weber and, and we use we use whiskey and other Aspen, fresh Aspen as the fire. So we're getting, you know, the smoke and everything is still Aspen. It's not like we're using charcoal. And then, and then, you know, toasting the Aspen overcharged with lighter fluid, you know, or grilling fluid it's whiskey, we light it with,

DREW (00:27:23):
What do you think the Aspen does to the whiskey? Because you've obviously tasted it before and tasted it after, what do you think it does to the woods?

MICHAEL (00:27:33):
Yeah, so it's very slight what it does. It, it pushes are some of the caramel notes to maple, a little more maple note. They add a little more spice to the whiskey and it adds a little more smoke. People, it also adds an Aspen note to the whiskey. And I only know that because people will taste my whiskey early on. And they would just be like, you know, there's a, there's a note there that I can taste and I it's really familiar and I don't understand it or whatever. And that was before, like they knew Aspen or whatever. And I'm like, are you from Colorado? Yeah. I grew up in Colorado and they're like, you ever been around the campfire? And they're like, oh my God, Aspen campfire really comes through, you know, I mean differently for different people, but yeah. But, but I, I wanted Aspen on the label. I was making Colorado whiskey, what's more Colorado Aspen. And, and so I, I sticking to tradition, you know, whiskeys are finished in Oak barrels with wine or whatever. And I thought, well, why don't I finish it on Aspen? What's that like? And so I did one experiment, loved it. And here we are today.

DREW (00:28:52):
Very nice. So I had the pleasure actually last fall of planning a trip through the four corners and I drove through your area and I went down to Royal Gorge bridge and then down into Taos, New Mexico and across right in the middle of Aspen fall yellow. I mean, it was gorgeous that entire drive. When you say Aspen, I immediately get this beautiful picture of, of Colorado in my mind. So it's a, it's gorgeous country around there.

MICHAEL (00:29:22):
It is really beautiful.

DREW (00:29:25):
So should we dive in then taste a couple of these and, and

MICHAEL (00:29:29):
Yeah. I I'm, I, I have I was tasting already a little bit, but I have the bourbon with me. I can probably get the rye if but I, I know what it takes. Like we'll, we can talk, we'll start with the, I like your questions more than me. Okay.

DREW (00:29:48):
And talk about this bottle a little bit, because the first thing I'm going to say about this bottle is I love the leather look of the label and the shape of the, of the bottle. I actually had these sitting up on the counter yesterday and the sun was kind of poking through them and just that nice dark whiskey color with just the elegant shape of that bottle. And then the semi rugged look of the of the label on the front. And this nice little topper that you have here, which is interesting. I have you explain it's like a little wire twist cage over the top of the cork. How did you come up with that idea?

MICHAEL (00:30:31):
So yeah, I, you hit all the fine points of what my bottle's about and what what I set out to do. So 2 91 we'll start, there was the very first photo gallery ever in the world gallery 2 91, Alfred Stieglitz and New York city 2 91 fifth avenue in 1907, somewhere in there. And so my dorm room in college was 2 91. I was a freshman photo major, found out about the distillery, meant to be, I mean, how the studio of the gallery and meant to be a photographer. I have the key to this day. And, and and then when it came to this, the process of distillation and my still remind me of the dark room. So that's where 291 comes from the writing on the label is my handwriting into a font. Okay. So that is that that's actually how I write, except for it's spaced out worse than, you know, so I, I have it in a font where it can be current and fixed and stuff like that, but and then you hit it on the nose.

MICHAEL (00:31:45):
I worked out a pattern that is xeroxed onto that paper to look like leather. And I spent time doing that. I designed all my labels. My art background is where all that comes from. And when I started out, I went for a bottle that's very similar to the Taylor whiskey bottle and Stranahan's bottle to very Western bottle like you. Right. But everybody had that bottle. And I, I really, I knew I couldn't afford to do my own bottle. And I knew I literally bootstrapped this whole thing. So I, you know, you got to buy 30,000 bottles and it's back then it was a hundred grand. I'm like so I stuck with the Stranahans for awhile or the tailor bottle, and it's a nice bottle, but it wasn't as elegant as I wanted. And Bruni glass I think it's, Bruning somebody came to me with this bottle in a 700 and I was like, that's so beautiful.

MICHAEL (00:32:50):
And they're like, you know, you need to do a day's production. I'm like, how long has the dates, how many years day's production? They're like 30,000. Yeah. That'll be, that'll be a few years before I get that. Wow. but I, I kept it and waited and got to a point, I think, I think we've been in this bottle three years. And one day we could afford it and we called them up and they shipped pallets and they ship pallets to us all the time. And there, I love that bottle. It's very feminine with a very masculine whiskey.

DREW (00:33:28):
Yeah. well I, yeah, it's got really nice curves to it. It has that it's, it's tall statuesque. But it, it does sort of remind me of a bottle you might see in a Western movie, you know, it's not quite as, quite as round. Those are usually, you know, this is, this is a square type shape. I, I sometimes when you say Jack Daniels, I think it does, it does a little bit of that square influence come from your growing up with, with Jack Daniels.

MICHAEL (00:33:57):
Yeah. I mean maybe what the bottle, like when I was, before I figured out that it cost a hundred grand to do your own bottle I had designed, I took a Macallan top and put it on another bottle. I liked the Macallan top. It's a little shorter, it's very similar to that, but it's a little shorter. And, and so when the, I was really attracted to this bottle because of that, because I had already gone through the steps of what I really wanted. And so yeah, this one just fit the bill and I love it. I love it to this day. They drink my whiskey on Ozarks season three, episode three, and they don't ever really show the front label, but, you know, it's my wisdom because of the shape of the bottle.

DREW (00:34:45):
That's awesome. Yeah. If you, if you can accomplish that with, with a bottle, that's a, that's great because actually I was watching a right when COVID hit, they were doing in Scotland, a online quiz. And one of the parts of the quiz was they would show you the silhouette of a bottle and you had to guess what type of whiskey it was. And it really drew your attention to the fact that the shape of a bottle really does. Sometimes it's its own. It is its own brand. And, and it can really well. Jack Daniels will tell you that, you know, they they saw a bourbon advertisement one time in Kentucky that had a square bottle on it. And it didn't have a label on it or anything, but it was saying bourbon and then it had the square bottle and they said, that's Jack Daniels. The square bubble is Jack Daniels. So yeah,

MICHAEL (00:35:44):
I mean, yeah, like, like Maker's Mark, you know, what in that bottle absolutely. You know, without, without the wax on it, you know, what that bottle looks like. So yeah, so the cage and the cork the K the cork, I wanted a natural cork. I, you know, I started out with the traditional stopper cork that like scientists use or whatever, and those just didn't fit whatever they sit for a while. But, and so then I I went to have my own cork made and I designed the cork. And they, they matched it. And then just lately we've started branding the top of the cork. Yeah. And it's, it's a nice cork, but that is my design. I, I drew it up and everything. And so it's awesome to be able to do that and have that

DREW (00:36:35):
The only cork I've ever seen with a, with a beveled you know, from the top of the bottle down to where the actual cork is that it's kind of beveled in

MICHAEL (00:36:46):
Yeah. The shaft. So yeah, I wanted the Babel cause I wanted it to look like you know a traditional stopper court, but to make it seal better and all like that, the shaft needed to be straight. And so that's why, that's why I designed it that way. And then the cage, the cage is interesting. The cage is a champagne cage. But when I was a kid watching, I thought watching Western movies, but I've found out lately that it's not a Western movie that it was in, but it's a Little House on the Prairie episodes. Wow. I think it's called the longest day and they are transporting nitroglycerin in a wagon and it's a really hard day, you know, they're really sweating it out. And the wa the nitro is in glass bottles and it's all wired into the, to the wagon, so that if there's any balance, it just kind of floats and doesn't jolt because it it'll blow up.

MICHAEL (00:37:46):
So when I was making high proof whiskey, I'm like, you got to wire it in somehow. And so that's where the cage comes from. Wow. That's really cool. And, and the, the cage is, it's interesting. My dear friend, Sam Elliot pointed this out one night at dinner. My mother drinks, champagne, and that's really all she drinks a little of my whiskey every once in a while, but Champaign, since I was little, that's what she's dragging. And Sam like was like the cage. Wow. Is that homage to your mother drinking champagne? And I'm like, oh, not really, but you know, maybe subconsciously. And so

DREW (00:38:26):
Since you've been out west, have you, have you bumped into any fun stories that you've heard or are there some really haunts that you've bumped into out there that kind of have that Old West feel to them like bars and restaurants, places to check out when you're out there?

MICHAEL (00:38:46):
There's a couple not many. It's, it's kind of interesting cause it is the last and I think things get remade and fall apart and people don't protect them as much as you wish they would, but there's a, there's a bar and I, it's weird because it's in such since silver plume, Colorado. So it's on 70 going towards the mountains out of Denver. And there's a bar called the bread bar and it's this old bar. I don't even know what it originally was. Maybe even a mill flour mill. But somebody went in there and it was a pasta carry for a little while. And then somebody bought it from her and, and they turned it into a bar and it's open like Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I mean, you know, and so I don't even know if it's open still. Now. I haven't been there in a while.

MICHAEL (00:39:42):
It's a great place to go. If they're open, it's this tiny town it's awesome to drive through. I mean, literally it's, it's right off the highway. And then there's a, you know, there's a few the Stanley has an amazing whiskey bar Stanley hotel in Estes park. And it's an amazing hotel. So there, you know, and then the Oxford hotel downtown Denver is amazing. There's some stuff in Telluride. There's a great old hot Springs in Dunton hot Springs. That's amazing. And Dolores is beautiful there and there's old buildings. And so yeah, I, I try, you know, and there's a new bar, new hotel, and one of us on south main, that's very Old West feeling and it's really pretty and modern, but Old West, not kitschy called the surf hotel. That's amazing. I hope I haven't left anybody out that sells a ton of my whiskey, the surf sells and kind of my whiskey, so, yeah. But yeah Colorado, I mean there, and there's the oldest bar in Colorado. I haven't ever been there. I've driven by the sign many times. You know, and there's some funky little spots but it's very gold mineresque a lot of it.

DREW (00:41:03):
So you're right on the edge of a Pike's Peak there, your Colorado Springs, right?

MICHAEL (00:41:07):
Exactly. America's mountain. Yes. Pikes Peak and yeah. And then there's Cripple Creek up there up on Cripple Creek and there's gambling there and, you know, it's, it's fun. It's a little kitschy. But it's fun.

DREW (00:41:25):
So you have a, you have a whiskey that says pre-prohibition, I was checking your website and you have one that says pre-prohibition. So I always like to get sort of an idea of what people consider to be pre-prohibition. Cause as I, as I started researching whiskey history pre-prohibition is the time period when they were having problems with whiskey rectifiers, doing all sorts of things they shouldn't have been doing and barrels being, you know, people spitting tobacco in them to get color into them, to show that they're aged, even though they are and all that sort of stuff. And so whenever I hear that, yeah. So you're not spinning tobacco in your in your so, so, so what classifies as a, as a pre-prohibition whiskey.

MICHAEL (00:42:16):
So I have a dear friend, Nate Wyndham that was bartending in the restaurant next door to me when I started this and before I started it, and he's an amazing bartender, he's been bartending forever and he can make any cocktail traditional he's, he's not great at you saying here, just making something, make it up. But traditional cocktail, he can put it, make it amazing best cocktail you ever had best size or access old-fashioned tastes like sweet tea. And, and we were talking and he has incredible extensive knowledge from books he's found on Amazon or whatever old books, you know, and read about cocktails and all that. So, and whiskey. And so we just came to the fact, or, or he helped me come to the fact that a pre-prohibition style whiskey would be something that wasn't aged very long because it was put in a barrel just to be transported.

MICHAEL (00:43:15):
Right. And then, and then sold. So yeah, some of it got, it was older, you know, because it stayed in the barrel as they were transporting it longer distances and stuff like that. But, so that's what I went on. And so it is 2 91 American whiskey. It is the, it is the bourbon mashville so 80% corn, 20 19% malt rye, 1% malt, barley, we age it now in use 2 91 barrels for somewhere around about five months. And it, it just has a very, I call it my summer whiskey. I call it my training whiskey. It's 90 proof. It's really easy to drink. It's really good, but it's different. It's not, you know, it doesn't have the deep caramel notes and, and the, you know, the, the spiciness of the rye or whatever, it it's very different. But incredibly good. And so I, it also came about for me with Leopold's put out a small batch American whiskey that was light aged. And, and I liked what they were doing. And so I wanted to experiment that way. And so that was probably one of my first experimentations with whiskey was, you know, just light aging. And I started out in like 30, 30 gallon barrel for three months or something like that. Not very long.

DREW (00:44:52):
So what is Colorado like in terms of weather? Cause I would imagine that you're probably don't have very long hot summers, but how hot does it actually get? I mean, we talk about if I were thinking about it, I would think it'd be like you've got Scotland in the except dryer. But, but kind of like a Scotland kind of a situation temperature wise, maybe in the summer where it doesn't get extremely hot, but then your winners are going to be really cold.

MICHAEL (00:45:22):
You, you ha you haven't been to Colorado in the summer then. We get, we get extremely hot. Okay. we do I don't know how many days of the year, but we're at a hundred, 105. Wow. A few days a year, we are 90 and up a lot of days in the summer. Long, the difference is, is with the mountains and stuff. The evenings are usually cooler, a lot cooler, so it's drastic shifts, so it can be, you know, it can be 90 degrees and then it'd be 75 at night, 70 with dry temperature, you know, no humidity. So it's, it's cool and feels good. And, and the other thing is those 90 degree days are those a hundred degree days are hot and you're standing in the sun and you're just sweating. But all you have to do is stand under a tree and your natural, you know, cooling of your body works because the sweat dries off you.

MICHAEL (00:46:28):
Cool. It's not like the south where I'm from Georgia, where you're just hot and you, it doesn't matter if you're in shade or not. It is just hot. You know so we have a lot of swings and, and so our barrels shift quite a bit because of that. We are temperature controlled, meaning there is air conditioner in the building that we're in now and there is heat. But I pretty much make it where w when we're working here, it's, you know, temperate. So it's 68 degrees about the guys in the back. Hate it. Cause they're sweating. Cause they're moving around, but us up in front or a little chili. But it was really hot this summer for all of us. So, but I let it at night drop or go hot. The air gets turned down or turned up or whatever, so that it changes. So the barrels are moving.

DREW (00:47:29):
Then you age everything right there on sight, then?

MICHAEL (00:47:34):
Yeah, well, we do have an offsite warehouse at the moment we grew out. We, we move in January, we're going from 7,500 square feet to 12,000 square room to, to double another 12, 13,000 square feet, which will take over in the next couple of years. And most of that's for barrel storage. So we grew out of this probably a, almost a year ago and for storage and, and bottling and stuff. So we have an offsite storage. That's got about 2000 barrels in it right now. And, and we'll move January and then everything will be on the same. On-Site

DREW (00:48:16):
I've been, I've been nosing your whiskey and I, and this it's hard to believe that this is the bourbon because there is so much rye coming out of this for me. I mean, the drill it's got, it's got kind of a sweet verbally kind of wry thing right out front on it. That's really interesting. And you said, this is, this is 19% malted rye. Do you think malted rye has a different effect than just standard unmalted rye?

MICHAEL (00:48:50):
I do. It makes the whiskey sweeter in a different way. Malt rye is a very sweet whiskey. We are doing a hundred percent malt, right. It hasn't been released yet, but we have it in barrels. And I learned that we did, we have an experimental label called the label. So every batch is totally different, totally different recipe, things like that. And I did do a batch three was a hundred percent malt rye, and it's incredibly sweet. Like where there's original, like you just drop that in your mouth. I mean, it's, it's incredible. So that's what I think malt ride does. I think, I think raw rye is a little are a lot spicier. A lot of that also comes from this Aspen stave picks up the spice just a little bit.

DREW (00:49:48):
It's interesting because when I knows this, I think I'm a, I'm a scotch drinker also, and I love peated scotch and I think smoky peated scotch. And so when I hear the word smoky, I always think peat, but there's like a heat. It's almost like a perceived heat coming off of this whiskey. It's like a, it's a smoke experience. It's really, really interesting, very different from from smoky ILO whiskey

MICHAEL (00:50:15):
With me just smoke just barbecue, but not in the Texas way. You know, a lot of that Texas whiskey you're talking about, and I love Texas whiskey. A lot of my friends down there iron root Jared at Balcones the Garrison brothers. I, they're making good whiskey in Texas and, and it's definitely different, which I love. I love that. And that's the thing. Jeff Arnett pointed out to me when I first met him, I met him at world whiskey awards. He won in 2017 distiller of the year from whiskey magazine. And I met him that night. I was there cause I, the year previous I had won America's best rye first-time presented. And he I introduced myself cause I live or had a family farm right at Lynchburg and flat Creek Tennessee. And we got talking and we're good friends. He's my age, nicest man on the planet. And so we, he talked about me naming it being Colorado whiskey and trying to help define what that was. And, and that's because he comes from Tennessee whiskey and I understand that and it was nice, you know, of him pointing that out and just supporting that for me,

DREW (00:51:36):
It's interesting because I just went to Iron Root and talked to Robert Likorice down there and he was, yeah. And he's taken me through and let me taste all these different things. And we talked for probably five hours. I mean, just as going through there and talking about his philosophy and then what they're doing and how they kind of talk back and forth with balconies and, and that whole kind of close knit relationship that those distillers all have down there. And that there are, there seems to be a commonality that maybe it comes from the yeast. Maybe it comes from the corn, but there's something that sort of gives a Texas whiskey, a certain personality, but they're all very different. They still, I told them, I said, the first time I tasted Balcones, I went, there's a, there's a funk to this and I don't know what it is.

DREW (00:52:25):
And then I tasted another Texas whiskey and I went, Ooh, that's interesting that that same funk is in there and iron rude. I could taste the little bit of that same sort of person. It's like just this one little thing. And, and, you know, from from branding that if you can find that one thing that maybe you don't necessarily it's not obvious, but there's a perception. There's something you come up with. It's a way back when I used to, I was doing web design and I used to say, you always know a Microsoft product, if you, if you're around it, because there's a commonality in the branding, that's always their target. I can see a target commercial come on. They don't have to put the logo up. I can tell by the feel of it that it's a Target commercial. And so the same in whiskey, if you can find that little subtle, something that ties them all together, or even in your own whiskey. And that's what Robert was talking about. He said, man, that's what I really look forward to as a day when people go that's Iron Root just tasted, I know that's an Iron Root Whiskey.

MICHAEL (00:53:27):
Right, right. You know, that says a lot. Yeah. And, and Kentucky bourbon, I mean, there's a note in Kentucky bourbon, you know, when it's Kentucky bourbon, you know, when you taste something that's been sourced and labeled, you know, some other state's whiskey and it's been sourced from Kentucky or Indiana, you know, it's got a sweetness to it. It's got, it's just, I don't know what it is, but it, you know, it's made in that part of the country. And, and like my, my Colorado whiskey is, is nothing like Kentucky bourbon and it's big, bold, beautiful. It's got, it's got a viscous mouthfeel. So you know, my, one of my things is rugged, refined, rebellious. And that's who I am the what, you know, how I drive, how I do everything in life. The clothes I wear. I mean, I, you know, my fashion background, stuff like that.

MICHAEL (00:54:27):
But, and I think my whiskey really says that is rugged, refined, and rebellious and all, all those ways. And to be able to, you know, have your whiskey that way. And hopefully the state starts, you know, wrapping itself around that and not tasting like Kentucky bourbon, because there's some, there's some people going and getting recipes or getting consultation from which you should from Kentucky, but their whiskeys they're making tend to taste like Kentucky. And, you know, if you're making in Utah or in Colorado or Texas, you want it to taste, you know, terroir in a sense from that, from that area. And I think Texas does that really well. Colorado's not cohesive as much with that I think right now, but hopefully it will. So yeah, we'll see. Well,

DREW (00:55:23):
It's sometimes I think we try to push towards labels and because of familiarity, but the question is if you do something that makes a whiskey better, but you can't put bourbon on it on the label because you did something that keeps it from being called bourbon. Is that necessarily a bad thing?

MICHAEL (00:55:46):
No. I mean, you know, Maker's Mark kind of did that, you know, they have straight bourbon they're there. Maker's 46 is you know, if you look at the label, it says straight Kentucky bourbon finished or something and, you know, it's that extra finishing. And so they have to say it the same with mine, where it says Colorado rye, whiskey finished with Aspen wood staves. You, you know, and when you do it straight, it has to say that it doesn't, it's not it's whiskey finished and can't say, and that's all legal stuff, but yeah, I mean, Tennessee whiskey is the same way. But, but yeah, you want it to taste better or consistency. You just don't wanna, you wanna use grain, water and barrel, you know, no coloring, no, no flavoring, nothing like that, unless you're making a flavored whiskey, that's a whole nother story.

MICHAEL (00:56:52):
You know, but yeah, but I think, you know, Colorado has been interesting because, like I said world whiskey awards, 2016, I won America's best rye whiskey. And then didn't win world's best in 2018. I won world's best, but I think in 2017 laws won a world's best rye whiskey. And, and then 20, 20, 19, they want it, I want it in 2018. They want it again. And then I didn't win raw, I mean, I'm up like number four, something with the rye in 2020. But there's something going on in Colorado with Ryde whiskey that we are winning those many, many awards. There's, there's something about altitude or something going on. And I think the same with, with Kentucky, I mean, with Texas, you know, Robert and Balcones is when those awards all the time with their bourbons. And there's something going on. I mean, it's also that we're shaking it up, you know, we're making whiskey, that's very different than what they're used to tasting. And so when that, when a nice whiskey shows up that doesn't taste like Kentucky, they're like, that's pretty good. I'm like anything I've ever tasted, but it's good.

DREW (00:58:17):
Well, what's interesting is that I'm a big fan of Reubens. And so when I taste this, I'm thinking all I'm missing is the corn beef, because it, it, it really has, the rye really stands out. It, I, you get, I was trying to put my finger on what exactly it is that I'm tasting. It's like when you bite into one of those caraway seeds in a while, you're eating rye bread, that it seems like that whole experience is there. And I even had a little hint of what I would call like a Swiss cheese note. And I don't know if that just is that, I don't know if that's just coming through because my brain is saying, man, I really am craving a a Reuben right now.

MICHAEL (00:59:01):
I love Reuben sandwiches. I love Reubens. I mean, and I just lately a year and a half ago started being gluten free because my body is allergic to gluten. I learned, and I love Reubens. So, you know, I can't have bread, but so what I do and that gets rid of the rye, which is a shame, but I, I take and have French fries and then put all the insides of the Reuben on top of French fries. So that helps satisfy it a little bit and then a little ride whiskey along with it, you know, I'm good. But I mean, we, our notes Eric jet does most of our notes. My distiller that I met long ago and started working for me about three years after I had started this. And he was, I, when I met him, I was like, he's going to be my first hire.

DREW (00:59:55):
And he was, and he makes all the whiskey now and, you know, we consult each other and talk about stuff, but he has an amazing palette, but he also has an amazing recall, so he can taste something, smell it, and he can name what he tastes like. He just did with cheese, you know, and the caraway seeds. I mean, he's like that, he's like, Hmm, I smell, you know, I mean, we joke he will have his tasting notes on something was, there's a hint of like a dusty poncho. We're just like, okay, you're talking Dustin and heat, you know, and yeah. And it wasn't a bad note, but it, you know, when you, when you visualize that you're like in New Mexico and this guy's riding up, but you know, with that, you've gotta have a little bad with a little good, you know, you got to have a little of the dirt. Like you talked about a little of the funk. It's gotta be there with the good, make good whiskey.

DREW (01:00:52):
It gives it personality. I mean, what's interesting about this one. Is it the, the rye is that like I've had Canadian ryes and I think Canadian rise probably hit too much on the maple side of things. There are almost too sweet for me. They, some of them lose that bite that I like in rye. Yours has the bite in it, but it's not an aggressive bite. It's not like a black pepper hit me in the, in the face. It's just a nice little zing before it gets to the, to the finish. But I wasn't even getting like dark chocolate in there and maybe a little espresso in there. It was really, really interesting where that goes. And that's what I love is when you find a whiskey that actually tells multiple stories, you can drink it one day. It's going to, it's going to say one thing, whatever mood you're in, you're going to pull out that particular flavor. And then the next day you're in another mood and you're going to pick out another, another flavor.

MICHAEL (01:01:54):
Yeah. So exactly. And I love that about whiskey too. And, and you, you spoke on this a little earlier, which is amazing that people don't know is, is whiskeys are like, like a good red wine Cabernet where, you know, you open that thing poured out and you let it open up, you know, let it sit for 10, 20 minutes. Maybe not that long. I mean, but still it's to open up. And, and a lot of that just sometimes the ethanol will drift away, you know all whiskeys are made of ethanol. So there is ethanol that you taste and if you let it open up and all of a sudden the flavors just start coming out of it. And it's amazing. I love that about whiskey and people don't talk about that enough. And I also, when I'm tasting, you know, once I've finished this, you know, I've got a lot in there and I it's barrel proof that I'm drinking so much down it, but I still have a work day.

MICHAEL (01:02:53):
I still have it. If I let the glass dry, you know, so finished the whiskey. And for about 10 minutes, I will sit there and smell the glass. And throughout those 10 minutes, you will smell every note that you ever taste in a whiskey. And you add the end. The last note you will smell is tales. And every whiskey, and you can always smell the funk at the end, what funk is there. And, and I love to teach people that because a lot of times people taste them and they're like, I don't, I taste cherry Carmel, I taste Carmel Carmel, but we got a problem. But but if you teach them that way, then, then they, you know, you get so many notes and people, and it just keeps changing every 30 seconds or so. And I love tasting whiskey that way.

DREW (01:03:55):
So it's the first time I've ever heard somebody actually talk about the whiskey changing in the glass as you're drinking it in, in Scotland? I w I was told, let the whiskey sit in the glass one minute for every year that it sat in the cask. And what's interesting, is it really, if you have a 15 year old scotch and you put it in the glass and you let it sit 15 minutes, it really does change a lot. And it feels, it feels like it's, it needs that time to settle in. I don't know if it's just maybe the weight of the whiskey is heavier at that time. So it, you know, the calculation is, is that it's going to take a little longer for those oils to settle in or, or what that philosophy is.

MICHAEL (01:04:42):
Well, yeah, well, they make, they make old whiskey there. So, you know it's six to 15 minutes. And so I would say more, you know, let at least let a whiskey sit in a glass for five minutes, 10 minutes before you ever drink it. Because it's gonna open up, it's just going to end if you don't believe me, you know, put, you know, there's not a lot of whiskey, that's a little more, maybe half that amount in a glass set it next to your bedside. And in the morning it will have, well, at least in Colorado, it evaporate too. It's dry. And, you know, and it, I mean, so if that much water is being evaporated out of it, you're just condensing the flavors and the air oxidizes. And it just really makes the whiskey better. I mean, it can, it can go too far, you know, you can wake up and do this much and you wake up and there's half that much in there and you drink it. And you're like, whoa, that's a bomb of wood. I don't want that. You know, but you can always add a little bit of water back and drink it, and it's still good. You know, I mean, it's probably less alcohol and stuff like that. But

DREW (01:05:56):
The other thing that I bumped into every once in a while is a whiskey. I have a bottle of Aberlour 12 year I bought at Christmas time and I, I opened it. I tasted it. I had gone to the distillery and loved the whiskey, tasted it from the bottle. I'm like, are we just not getting the good stuff over here in the states? Or, or what's the deal? And that's been in my cabinet for almost a year now. And when I taste it now I love it. Oh yeah. Something has happened to that whiskey in that, that year that it's been. And, you know, I know the aging process really stops, but oxidization maybe the whiskey having time to settle down in the bottle after air hits it for the first time, I don't know what that is.

DREW (01:06:39):
And maybe your memory just kinda, you know, of, of that time changed as well and not, you know, I mean, those kinds of things happened, you know, and I learned that early on, I went to Europe in college for summer, you know, summer school. And, and there were times we had bad experiences, right. You know, somebody got robbed or whatever. And we had a great experience, you know, year later, two years later, three, five years later, we never remember the bad experiences. It's just like, wow, I remember Italy. We should go back. Your brain's really funny about bad experiences. It kind of gets rid of them and only remembers the good stuff. But yeah, we, I was going to say that earlier we don't mash in every day yet. But when we're mashing in, we try not to taste whiskey because the smells and stuff going on really changes your palette really changes what you're tasting.

MICHAEL (01:07:39):
So, you know, and, and Jim Murray's really famous about that. Like he, he hibernates in his house and he doesn't cook when he tastes, he like for weeks, months, he doesn't do anything in his house. And, you know, he won't let anybody come to his house because he's worried somebody is going to have some cologne on or something like that and changes his palette. It's true. I mean, you can be your, your house smells a certain way. And, and, and I, the best way to do this is take a bourbon and eat, eat tortilla chips, and then drink your bourbon. Cause they're all corn and you won't taste any corn notes and that bourbon and that bourbon will paste totally different. Wow. Amazing. First time I did that, I was like, yeah. I mean, things influence your palette. Big time. I had

DREW (01:08:36):
Somebody, I had bought a bottle of a Macintosh in 12, which is triple distilled in the, in the Irish tradition. But it's a scotch whiskey and I loved it until it got to the finish. It was like this toffee caramel. And then all of a sudden it went to this citrus really heavy lemon citrus note. And it just clashed for me for some reason. And somebody said well, go get some lemon juice a little bit on your on your finger, dab some on your tongue. Now drink the whiskey, see what happens. I'm like no lemon at the end. This is great. It's like you, I don't know if it's changing your brain or if it, what it is, but for whatever is occurring there, it's a really cool technique to get that flavor that you're not liking or that you want to avoid and taste something that has it at least has an influence of it. And then come back and you know, drink the whiskey you, you want to,

MICHAEL (01:09:41):
And Auchentoshan. I love Auchentoshan. Yeah. I love them. Good stuff though. Well all Right. So I have to ask this question before I let you go. What is, since you love the Old West and wild west, what is your favorite Western movie?

MICHAEL (01:09:58):
Oh. so it's not a traditional Western movie. My favorite movie, I'm not sure if this movie, because I'm a very visual person. This is a movie. And I don't know if the visual in the movie inspired me my vision, or I just related to my vision. But it is Thunderbolt and Lightfoot Clint Eastwood. Michael Samino's first movie, Jeff Jeff Bridges.

DREW (01:10:35):
That was one of his first Movie

MICHAEL (01:10:38):
Jeff Bridges is on fire when he feels that Camaro. I mean, he is the best Jeff Bridges ever. You know, that movie, I saw it, I literally saw it when it came into the theaters. My mom took me because she lived in California. I was visiting her and she's like, I'm supposed to go to this movie. You're coming. And I mean, I, I think I was seven years old. I'm not kidding, but that movie really I love that movie. It's classic. It is classic Clint Eastwood, and it's very Western, but modern or at least at that time was modern. And then my favorite actor at all Sam Elliott, who I met 30 years ago has been, is a dear friend. Catherine Ross is his wife. She is my wife, my mother's soul sister. They are best friends. We've been friends, family, friends for 30 years. He drinks my bourbon on the ranch, the ranch. Yeah. Yeah. he's a dear friend. I'm. I might be in California this weekend. And if I am, I will have dinner with him, which I'm excited about. So,

DREW (01:11:55):
I'll ask you this question then, because I was in radio for, for a long time. And I remember the first time I ever walked up to somebody who had really deep pipes, as, as we like to say in radio, you just had that really resonant kind of voice that when he talked to you, you felt like you were feeling him talking in your chest is Sam Elliott that way. Cause you guys a really deep voice, does he kind of resonate?

MICHAEL (01:12:22):
His voice is very distinct and very beautiful. But it's not, he doesn't talk loud. He he's, he's very humble, man. He's a very incredible person incredibly talented. And but when he turns and goes, Hey, Michael, I mean, it's just like, oh my God, you know,

DREW (01:12:50):
It'd be like being buds with Morgan Freeman turns around and says something to your ear. Like, whoa,

MICHAEL (01:12:57):
It's Sam, he's a dear friend and Catherine Ross, amazing woman. Amazing. They're amazing people. Amazing couple. I love them to death. And they've been very good to me and my family. And, but yeah, he's been really good to me.

DREW (01:13:13):
So where because I haven't seen 291 in my local stores here in South Carolina. W how, how much of the nation are you covering at this point?

MICHAEL (01:13:23):
So we are not in South Carolina. We are in 12 states may be 13 soon. We might open Georgia before the end of the year. Hopefully that's my home state. But if you go on two 90 one.com, 291Coloradowhiskey.com distillery two 90 one.com. Both of those you can order and it's through the three tier, but so you can order all our, our flagship whiskeys, you can't order special releases or R E but you can order them and they'll be delivered to your door. And they cover 43 states. So there are some states that we can't deliver to through bark park. But, but that's the latest just been launched over the last couple of weeks. But if you're in let's see if I can name them, California Oregon let's see Colorado Wisconsin, Illinois Kentucky, Texas Florida, New York BC, Virginia somewhere else.

MICHAEL (01:14:39):
You can, you can talk to your local liquor store. Most of us states Kentucky and Texas are the distribution is, are in DC. The other states that are not controlled states are through lib liberation distribution. They're really great, but you can talk to your store and they'll bring us in. Perfect. So, but the easiest way is our e-commerce on our own site. It goes through a three third party vendor that ships it direct to your door. Perfect. It may take a week or two to get it, but yeah,

DREW (01:15:16):
it's worth the wait it's worth the wait.

MICHAEL (01:15:18):
Thank you.

DREW (01:15:19):
Good Stuff. Well, excellent. Well, I thank you so much.

MICHAEL (01:15:22):
Thank you. Hopefully we'll meet in person soon. Absolutely.

DREW (01:15:25):
I'm a traveler. So I got to see those Aspen trees again.

MICHAEL (01:15:29):
Yeah, good. I'm a traveler too. So, all right, Drew take care. Cheers.

DREW (01:15:35):
Oh, he's a lot of fun to find out how somebody went from starting a distillery to the success that Michael is right now with 291 distillery. If you want to see those Aspen staves, by the way, the ones that come off, the Weber grill, all you have to do is go to instagram.com/Whiskey Lore or facebook.com/Whiskey Lore, and follow me there. And I am your host Drew Hannush until next time. Cheers and slainte mhath Whiskey Lore's a production of Travel Fuels Life LLC