Ep. 49 - "Texas Whiskey" Author Nico Martini

Transcript

Drew (00:00:09):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, Drew Hannush, the Amazon bestselling author of Whiskey Lores Travel Guide to Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon. And welcome to 2022. And for this year, I have all sorts of fun stuff planned for us. Going to make this an even bigger year of diving into distilleries and whiskey history. We'll meet some founders and legends along the way, and I really want to focus this year on expanding our pallets and our knowledge of a world of whiskeys. So we're going to not only travel to Kentucky and Tennessee, but also across the United States. We're going to head to Ireland, Scotland, and next week we're actually going to be talking to someone from Australia and learning a bit about their whiskey history. But for this week, we're going to head that west to learn a little bit more about whiskey from the land of cowboys, ropes and steer, and in a state that once was its own republic, then received some very generous terms when it joined the United States.

(00:01:17):
And if you don't know the place I'm talking about, you probably haven't been there because if you go, somebody's going to tell you about it. I'm talking about Texas. And if you're going to learn about Texas whiskey, then who better to talk to than the guy who actually wrote the book on Texas whiskey. And so we're going to be talking this week with Nico Martini, who is a native of the Dallas Fort Worth area, and spent the beginning of the pandemic traveling from distillery to distillery, meeting founders, collecting histories, making tasting notes, coming up with some cocktail recipes from bartenders across the state, and lots of great photographs too. This is a beautiful book. You've probably seen people posting pictures on Instagram of it. It's nice. It's a very substantial book and lots of great information in it. So we're going to talk a little bit about what is in that book. We're going to learn some history, although Texas's whiskey history is a little short, but we may try to dig in a little deeper beyond what has happened over the last 10, 15 years. And we'll also talk about Texas's climate, how that actually is a very interesting advantage and how that may actually make Texas whiskey some of the most diverse in the world. And so let's go ahead and jump right into my conversation here is Nico Martini. Nico, welcome to the show.

Nico (00:02:49):
Hey, drew. Thank you for having me. It's good to be

Drew (00:02:52):
Here. Well, this is going to be fun because I got to sew my Texas Oats for a short time, just a couple of years. I'm one of those, I guess, rarities people go to Texas and fall in love with it, and then they hang out. And me, I just ducktail and headed east again. But it's fun because it gives me a little bit of background on the Texas mentality and the kind of getting the whole feel of what Texas is all about and then relating that to whiskey as well. So

Nico (00:03:24):
Do you think we have our own vibe down here?

Drew (00:03:27):
You definitely kind of thing. You definitely have your own vibe. Actually, when I was 10 years old I met my best friend who came from the Fort Worth area, and this was in North Carolina where I met him and he glowed so much about Texas that I said, sooner or later I'm going to have to move to this marvelous place, because I've heard so many great things about it. It's like everything is better in Texas, so why am I in North Carolina?

Nico (00:03:54):
At least we think so, apparently. Yeah.

Drew (00:03:58):
So are you a native Texan?

Nico (00:04:00):
I am. Born and raised, as you say.

Drew (00:04:02):
Okay. All right. Very good. So

Nico (00:04:04):
Excluding about two years when I lived in New York City I've been here my entire life.

Drew (00:04:10):
Well, that had to be a culture shock into New York City.

Nico (00:04:13):
It was a lot. I mean, I was doing theater at the time, so it was the place that I had to go to in order to do that. But yeah, it was a lot it. I'm not saying that Dallas is not small by any means. Neither is Fort Worth. Right. But yeah, new York's its own beast entirely.

Drew (00:04:34):
Yeah. Well, and I moved from Philadelphia to Dallas, and I actually did it over a 24 hour period that I was driving from one place to the next. And I remember I got into Dallas at about 11 o'clock at night, and Philadelphia is old architecture, old world. And then all of a sudden I'm driving in and I see Reunion Arena and the Green Neon. It's like, wow, okay. I have arrived in a different world.

Nico (00:05:04):
So yeah, we like everything very, very shiny and new, at least down in Dallas. Funny, I was the director of industry outreach for the San Antonio Cocktail Conference for a while. And before doing that, I hadn't really spent a lot of time in San Antonio. San Antonio's the only place with history down here. I swear as we're on a history podcast, if you want the history, you go down there where they'll tell you all about how they used to be Mexico, and it's fantastic. And the buildings are spectacular, and the architecture's great. And here everything is brand new and very shiny, and we like to pull those things. But

Drew (00:05:41):
It's what my brother used to work in construction, and he said at one point it was a challenge between Fort Worth and Dallas who could build the taller building.

Nico (00:05:52):
Yeah. I think Dallas won pretty handily.

Drew (00:05:55):
Yeah. Well, and it's funny too, because when you go there, there's such a personality difference just within 30 miles to go from Dallas to Fort Worth, they're two different worlds.

Nico (00:06:06):
Yeah, absolutely. And it's even more extreme if you go 30 miles in any other direction, whether it's out east or north south or whatever. Yeah, yeah, a lot. It's funny because every time that politics come up in general, you take a look at these maps and they're these little blue bubbles all over this deep sea of red in general, which is Texas. And this sort of is what it is

Drew (00:06:40):
Funny, because you really can almost you go Fort Worth, you're going to get the stockyards and you're going to get that mm-hmm. Old West kind of feel. And then you head east to Dallas and all of a sudden you're in metropolitan. Yeah. <laugh> with deep bellum thrown in there just for entertainment purposes. Yeah,

Nico (00:07:02):
Absolutely.

Drew (00:07:03):
Lot of

Nico (00:07:04):
Fun. Yeah, absolutely.

Drew (00:07:05):
So

Nico (00:07:06):
It's a cool part of the world.

Drew (00:07:08):
So you have a word in your book that I thought was perfect, and I had never heard this word before, vain, glorious. So

Nico (00:07:17):
Yes, that came from a thesaurus because I was <laugh> trying to find, find the right word. And I'm like, what is this thing that we have? And man, if Van Glorious was just the perfect descriptor of the Texas attitude in general.

Drew (00:07:37):
Yes. So describe a Texan for people who are unfamiliar, especially. The thing is, once I got there Texans in Cowboy fans, Dallas Cowboy fans to me, if you were going to take a snapshot of the Texas personality, it's the Dallas Cowboy fan,

Nico (00:07:59):
Man. Okay. All right. You're from Philly

Drew (00:08:04):
For a short time.

Nico (00:08:06):
<laugh>. Right on. Yeah, Texas is very I feel like it genuinely kind of comes down to the history here, just because as soon as you hit probab, probably I'll ask my kindergartner, it's probably kindergarten, but the indoctrination of the Greatness of Texas begins every single year up until, I think my junior year of high school, we took Texas history, which is very cool. I mean, there is a lot of very, very interesting history here. And they will never let you forget that our flag can be at the same height as the American flag because we used to be our own country, and at any moment we could split into five states if we choose to. And just everything that is Texas is kind of wrapped around this identity of individualism. But at the same time, we're all in this together. And so it's kind of a weird mishmash of just this ultimate mean, we were sort of discussing before we got on here where this kind of about the Wild West and the cowboy thing, and inherently cowboy culture, it's incredibly individualistic.

(00:09:35):
It's all about the solitary journey of that one person, the cowboy that does the thing. Cowboys don't hang out in packs. They do one thing and they do their own thing. But as a whole, there's also this massive sense of community here because it is Texas and it, we are sort of our own thing, and we have, it's a family. We have all sorts of infighting, but at the same time, it's, which is why I probably took offense to the idea of the stereotypical Texan, is the Dallas Cowboys fan. Cause he's kind of like, okay, all right. Listen, <laugh>, right? I am a Cowboys fan. I'm absolutely a Cowboys fan. I'm from here, but I also kind of hate Cowboys fans, but that sort of makes all of the sense in the world being a Texan. Yeah.

Drew (00:10:31):
Well, it's funny because living down in North Carolina for many years, and I'm originally from Detroit, so I'm a Wolverine fan. And for the first time I got to hang around a bunch of Wolverine fans during a football game, and I realized I didn't really Wolverine fans that much. I'm like, okay. And maybe I like rooting for these guys on my own and not being around a bunch of, there's just the bragging that goes on and all the rest is,

Nico (00:11:03):
I'm also in the middle of dealing with the fact that former greatness is the worst kind, because the Cowboys haven't done anything since I was in high school. But there's still a pervasive attitude of we're America's team. Okay, all right, cool. That marketing worked, and I'm glad. Good for them. Jerry made a lot of money, and now we have really big, nice stadiums and it's fun to go to the game, but we haven't done anything in a very long time.

Drew (00:11:35):
And so I can relate because the Wolverines haven't won a national championship since 1997, but they'll always talk about we were the greatest team. We have won more games than anybody else in history. But what have you done for me lately?

Nico (00:11:51):
Oh yeah, yeah. No, no. I'm very much in the middle of the same thing. Yeah, because man, yeah, just be, being a Texas guy, being a Longhorn fan, it is exactly the same. Thank God we had that magical man named Vince, and he managed to get them a title because otherwise it just would've been like, we're clinging to the fact that, well, we have more wins. We've been playing for a lot longer, but yeah, we have more wins. Yeah. Okay. All right. That's great. Again, ex glory is the worst kind of glory.

Drew (00:12:24):
But into that personality thing, it's funny because growing up in North Carolina there's about the area you're either in or you're out, whereas Texas, it has elements of that cliquishness, but they want you in, it's like everybody's selling you all the time on this is the place to be.

Nico (00:12:46):
Yeah. That's the thing I will say that I realized when I was living in New York was just the idea that coming from here, everybody told me that New Yorkers are rude. They, they're rude. They just, everybody's so rude up there. I'm like, okay. And I got up there and immediately I was kind of like, I don't know. What I eventually grew to know was they're not rude, they're just direct, and they have their own thing going on. And if you're in the way, please move. Cause I have my own thing going on or move. I have my own thing going on because you okay now, you've waited too long, no longer, please just move. And so it's not necessarily necessarily a rude thing, but coming from Texas where everyone is just overly friendly, and I swear my, our favorite insult is, bless your heart, our favorite insult down here. I mean, you could literally, no matter what the conversation is, no matter if you are as mad as you can possibly be at somebody you end it with, well, bless your heart. It's like the epitome of what we, it's the epitome of what we are, because at the end of it, we're still going to be friendly, and we're still going to treat everybody as well as we possibly can. And even if we hate your guts, we're going to tell you No, bless your heart.

Drew (00:14:14):
The soft jab is what it is. Yeah, yeah.

Nico (00:14:17):
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. No, it's very in inclusive. And I, that kind of plays into the whole whiskey thing, frankly. And the fact that we do know that we're all in this together, and there is an incredible sense of community in spirits in Texas. And the, while things started here in a very individualistic way, it very, very, very quickly, everyone other than Tito figured out that if we work together, we will do better than if we do not. And so a rising tide raises all ships. That's the thing we like to say down here a lot. Yeah, a

Drew (00:15:01):
Whole lot. Well, it's working because look how many different distilleries are popping up across Texas, and we'll definitely dive into all of that. And I love the fact that you wrote a book on Texas whiskey. Part of me was thinking, when I got done with my Kentucky book, I said, where else could I do a little travel guide for? And I thought, well, Texas is definitely growing, Tennessee's growing. But the book you put together is beautiful and Will gives a lot of the background on the distilleries. And so we'll talk a bit about how you got to that. But before you started working on the Texas Whiskey book, you had a book on cocktails. Yes. So how did you get into writing books about spirits in general and then end up into a Texas whiskey book?

Nico (00:15:52):
So incredibly long story, very shortened. Like I said, I'm a theater guy, so I come from theater, film, video. And when I left New York, I came back here in order to take a producer role at Shakespeare Dallas because I decided I wanted to produce Shakespeare for whatever reason. And came back here and was producing Shakespeare. And I found myself being in these marketing meetings with the Shakespeare team, and I kept raising my hand saying, Hey, listen, everybody that you're talking about that you want to come to see this, they live on MySpace now. Why don't you use MySpace? And they were like, well, we don't know how. I'm like, I don't either, but somebody should figure out how. And so I kind of dove into it and inadvertently made this digital marketing campaign for Shakespeare Dallas. And immediately I was kind of like, I really like this.

(00:16:50):
I think this is kind of what I want to do. And so I wound up, I felt like it was directing. And so I have a message, I have an audience, I have specific emotions that I'm trying to elicit out of them, and I have these tools to do it. But just very much felt like directing to me if you do it the right way, if you're doing it in a storytelling way. And so I wound up going back to the University of Texas at Dallas. I got my master's degree in emerging median communications, and I started a little digital marketing company. And my brother-in-law, now brother-in-law came to me and he was like, Hey man, how do I make my blog more popular? And he has a blog called cocktail enthusiast.com. And so it was March, and I was watching a lot of basketball.

(00:17:35):
I was like, you should do a bracket just, if you just want clicks, just do a, here's the best bartender in Dallas. Come and vote. Come to my website and vote, and we'll crown a winner at the end. And he's like, all right, cool. I'm like, you know what? I kind of like this idea. It exploded into a full on TV pilot. Wow. And so we shot this TV pilot called Cocktail Confidential. I got my buddy Michael, who was on an ABC sitcom at the time, to be the host, and came down, did the thing, and took it to his agent. His agent said, yeah, this is gorgeous. Absolutely. And then we took it out to LA and we start pitching this thing. So we take it to la, we start pitching this thing. The moment that I knew this wasn't going to sell was when we went and we went and talked to Spike and they said, oh, it's great, but we can't touch it because of the subject matter.

(00:18:25):
And we're like, we thought it would kind of go along with Bar Rescue. And they're like, oh, that's a renovation show. This is never going to happen. If you're calling Bar Rescue a renovation show, you're never going to talk about Liquor on tv. And that's fine. And so we all just kind of moved on but it sort of got me interested in cocktails. Cause I didn't know anything until that point. And so I just kind of took an interest to it. I wound up starting a different, starting different company with the guy that I was working on the show with. It's called Bar Draft. We do it's draft cocktail solutions. And so I just kind of kept in the cocktail thing. I randomly got asked to do a TED Talk. So I've done a TED Talk on cocktails, and that's what all led to the San Antonio Cocktail Conference.

(00:19:17):
And so they asked me to be the director of industry outreach for the San Antonio Cocktail Conference, which basically meant Nico seems to be traveling around the country. We should give him the authority to talk about our conference and invite people to come do seminars here. And so I said, yeah, sure. That sounds great. So I kind of helped head up the education the education and seminar program for San Antonio. And that's where Cider Mill Press found me. And I was on vacation. We were in Montreal, and I got a random call from John who owns Cider Mill Press, and basically he said we're a publishing company, we're working on a book. We wanted to see if you would be interested in talking to us. And so I did. And basically he said, so what we do is they have a series, they have a city series.

(00:20:14):
So their first one was New Orleans, their second one was New York. Now they've got Miami and Vegas and a whole bunch of others. But basically they said, so we have the IP for a book called Texas Cocktails. Somebody's going to write it. Do you want to? And I mean, at that point, I wasn't, hadn't written anything since grad school essentially, and was just kind of like, okay, let me think about it. So I kind of quickly didn't research on all of the classic cocktails that come from Texas. And I found both of them. And at that point I'm like, okay, guys, so this is going to be a hundred different bars and a hundred different bartenders around Texas and their cocktails. And they're like, yeah, that sounds great. I'm like, okay, cool. As long as I can crowdsource the cocktail book, then I'm absolutely down to do the cocktail book.

(00:21:09):
And so we put it together and it's actually, I just did an update on it, man. Oh, this industry. Here's the sad, one of the saddest things that has happened in the past couple of years is I got a call from John, he's like, Hey, we got to do an update on the book. I'm like, okay, let me go through the list and see what the deal is. There Were are 90 bars in the original version of Texas Cocktails, 26 of them close. And so he's like, okay, well then I'll start there. I'll replace the 26 and we'll just kind of go from there. And it's not all Covid, some of it's, but it's just the nature of the industry. So actually the next version of Texas Cocktails is coming out in

Drew (00:21:51):
June. Oh, nice. Very good. So yeah, what Texas's most famous cocktail be?

Nico (00:21:57):
Oh God, the ranch Water. No question. Okay. It's it. It's the thing that has blown up. It is a Texas cocktail. It is the one that is absolutely came from here. We invented the frozen margarita machine, which we are both You're welcome. And we're sorry, but you're also welcome. Cause frozen margaritas are fantastic. Yeah. So that did happen down here. But lots of people, this whole thing of like, oh yeah, the margarita came from Texas, and there's this whole origin story that's just wrong and not even remotely true. And even with the ranch water, the origin story is very Texan, and it's a West Texas cocktail. But at the same time, it's kind of like, okay, well, we used Topa Chico, which came from Mexico, and it's been around for a very long time. And then you stick lime in it, which comes from Mexico, and then you put tequila in there, which also comes from Mexico.

(00:22:55):
Sure. No one ever thought about this before. The dudes in West Texas, but we'll just call it the Texas cocktail, and we'll go with that. And that's fine. But yeah, the Ranch Water's the thing. Ranch Waters kind of had its moment over the past year and a half or so, and I will still get random emails from people saying, Hey, I saw your book and wanted to see if I could get a quote from you about the ranch water for this article that I'm writing. I'm like, okay, you and seven other people since last Thursday. But that's cool. Yeah, sure. <laugh>

Drew (00:23:26):
Nice. Well, you wouldn't have a whiskey cocktail because Texas didn't have a whiskey at the time. Probably.

Nico (00:23:32):
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No, we were very, very, were very young in the evolution of the whiskey thing. And so what wound up happening was as to go back to the cocktail draft company. So pandemic hits, and everybody stopped selling everything. And I'm just sitting here going, okay, well, what now? And I called my publisher and I was like, Hey man, you need to let me write a book about Texas whiskey. And he says, you're not going to believe this, but literally on my to-do list is to ask you if you would like to write a book about Texas whiskey. Wow. Nice. And I said, yeah, right now. Absolutely right now. And so the book saved my mental health during a pandemic. Cause as everything is crashing around me, I'm like, I got booked. You, I got stuff going on. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I had to laser focus on that. It was great.

Drew (00:24:28):
That's crazy. So when I was doing my Kentucky book, I was lucky enough that I got through all the distillery tours before the pandemic hit shut down. And so when I started doing Tennessee, I'm like, wow, this is very difficult. What was it like going around Texas? What procedure did you have to go through to line up these interviews and to go at least do some sort of a tour?

Nico (00:25:01):
Some of them, there were folks who were taking it incredibly seriously. And there were places that I had to have a negative Covid test within 24 hours in order to even step on the property. And I had to be masked up the entire time that we were there and that whole thing. And then there's others that are, oh yeah, come on, come on. Yeah, no one's around. Yeah, we're fine. Yeah. And it was literally like, okay. But I did manage to visit 34 distilleries across Texas and didn't end up with Covid, so I guess it went okay. Yeah, that works. As far as I know, I didn't give Covid to anybody, so it worked out fine. But yeah, it was kind of a process. There were definitely a couple that it came into play and I couldn't vent them the way that I wanted to.

(00:25:56):
And so we have a problem down here often that the word Texas and that little shape of Texas and flag all that stuff is incredibly marketable. And when you slap it on a bottle, people tend to go over and take a look at it and then, all right, Texas whiskey. But there's, for the most part, at least initially for the very good chunk of time, no, the Texas whiskey that was out on the market, most of it wasn't distilled here. It wasn't even from here. I mean, they're sourcing from mgp, they're sourcing from Dickel it, it's that kind of stuff. But man, there's Slap Austin, Texas, and an armadillo and boots on the thing. My favorite I host a podcast with my buddy Jimmy called Texas Whiskey. And basically it's just interviews with everybody that I talked to in the book. And we did this podcast on how to spot the differences.

(00:27:00):
And I came up with this term called Flag sack whiskey, which is this whiskey that's called Texas Crown that is from Canada. But the label, it's, it says Texas Crown, and there's an oil derrick on it, and it comes in a sack like crown, but it's the Texas flag, and it's just the epitome of the problem with that whole thing. It couldn't be more, not Texas, but man, all they got on the marketing end, and I mean, that's literally why the Texas Whiskey Association happened was because they're all of these whiskeys coming out that say, Texas, Texas, Texas. And then you flip it over and it says bottled or produced or made, and it doesn't say distilled. Yeah, it doesn't say aged. Yeah. I think mostly driven by the whiskey association, but people in Texas are finally starting to call people on their bull. And so a lot of, I remember when Belfor Whiskey came out, and God bless Eddie Belfor, he won the Stars a title, and it was awesome.

(00:28:14):
And I'm a massive hockey fan, and I love that man. But he came out with his whiskey and he kept talking about how it was Texas whiskey, and eventually he started kind of saying, okay, all right. Okay, it's actually from Kentucky, but we're going to open a distillery, which is fine. Yeah. Just be honest about the thing. Yeah. It's all about honesty. And I have no problem with sourced whiskey. I have a sourced whiskey, but it, it's just be honest about it and don't try to be shady about it. And so there were some whiskeys that were not included in the book that people have heard of, but they're just mad. I just did not agree with the practices that they were kind of known for. And I was like, nah, everybody in the book is at least going to be honest. There's some whiskeys in the book that are very much from mgp.

(00:29:10):
We've got Oak. Oak, and Eden is a great example. They're whiskey. They have this staves. So basically they make different staves and then they source whiskey. And it's a really cool experience. You walk in, you sort of tell them what kind of whiskey you're into, and then you end up with the, all right, here's the, we're going to go with the a hundred proof Frye. And so now you've got your a hundred proof Frye, what do you want it finished in? It's like, oh, what does that even mean? We've got Cabernet STAs, and we have Stout German stout beer staves, and we've got, or you can just go with a big charred oak stave and try to get more oak out of it. And there's a bunch of different ways to go about it, but they're very much like, no, no, no, no, no. We don't make whiskey.

(00:29:52):
You come here and you can have this experience. But no, we don't, are not a distillery. We get our, it's from Indiana, of course it's from Indiana. That's the only way this makes sense. And so there's plenty of those, and there's a lot of sourcing that's kind of happening down here. One of my favorite distilleries iron route is doing a project right now called Saints Alley. And basically Saints Alley is a blend of MGP and iron route that they then finish in a port barrel, an armac barrel. I think they got a Madeira barrel and just different ways, but the idea of it, the, it's intentionally not all iron roots, so there's nothing wrong with it. One of the most interesting distilleries down here is my lemon and green. And the way that Heather, Heather Green is, she's not the founder, but she's the one who comes on.

(00:30:47):
She came on and she's heading everything up now. And her approach to whiskey is incredibly interesting. When I was talking to her my favorite question was when I asked Heather, I was like, so you tell me what's a Texas whiskey? And she goes, well, it's interesting that you asked me that because let me toss this out at you. Let's say that I have corn, I have cornfield behind the distillery. I have corn, I grow corn, and we harvest the corn, but my seal's not working. But I've got friends over at Jim Beam, and they said that, yeah, I could totally come run it if I need to. So I load up all my corn, and then I drive it to Kentucky and I run it on the Jim Beam stills, and then I put it in a tote, not a barrel. Yeah, it's in a tote. And then I bring it back to Blanco, Texas, and then I put it in barrels, and then it sits there for four years. I don't know, Nico, is that a Texas whiskey? I'm like, man, I love you. <laugh>. A very, very interesting point. Not according to the Texas Whiskey Association, but I see what you're doing with this. So there's still, there's a long conversation about what Texas whiskey even is, and it's continuously evolving. But the thing that I like the most is that people are open to interpretation. If you're honest.

(00:32:19):
I think she's got at least two different whiskeys that they've literally distilled in Kentucky, stuck 'em in totes, brought 'em here, and they've aged here completely. And so it's a testament to, well the aging process is really kind of the differentiator here, or at least that's what we feel like. And so the corn from all of these facilities that are making Texas whiskey, not all of the corn is coming from here. So it's a fascinating conversation that's never going to end. Frankly.

Drew (00:32:51):
It's very interesting because in watching how they're now trying to codify American single malt and all the considerations that they're having to go through for that, I mean, you don't want to restrict too much because then you make it, then innovation goes out the window because you've now forced people to a certain set of rules. You can do that. Kentucky does that with bourbon. They say, here is what you can do. And they've been now getting into these discussions about, wait a second, what if we're finishing this in a different type of a barrel and can we still call it this? Can we still call it that? And so it makes you look at this time period where states are now getting their own personalities or trying to develop a personality for their whiskey or put a stamp on it. How far do you go? And do you strangle creativity at that point?

Nico (00:33:50):
There was a panel actually, that I saw last night with, oh, I forget his last name, Steve, who works at Westland and is the president of the American Single Malts Whiskey Commission. And they were talking about, somebody from the audience had a question about, well, why didn't put something about no color, no additives? Why isn't that whole thing part of your legal definition of American single malt? And basically, his answer, which I loved, was, that's not our responsibility. That's the TT B'S responsibility. And if you're going to have the TTB let them do their job, and if people are lying on their label, that should be their responsibility to, I mean, hell shut 'em down. I mean, frankly, if it's egregious enough. But yeah, I think we're trying to do is just, it's about honesty. It's literally about honesty. And I think that there's lots of ways that you can approach making whiskey, but when you are talking to your consumer and you are presenting yourself as being from Texas, then you better be able to explain why, other than, well, the tanker showed up and we stuck it in the bottling line, and now it's from Texas, and that's not, man, that's just not true.

(00:35:28):
If you, was it aged here? Is the corn from here? Did you blend it with stuff that was distilled here? What is it? But as long as you're kind of honest about it, I think that's all the people really, at the end of the day really looking for is just honesty. Yeah.

Drew (00:35:45):
Well a perfect example. We were talking about the JR Ewing, and if you watched that series, he drank Kentucky Bourbon.

Nico (00:35:55):
Well, we didn't have any Texas. Texas whiskey is 15 years old. Sorry, we buried the lead. Yeah, we've been doing this for 15 years.

Drew (00:36:03):
<laugh>

Nico (00:36:03):
Dallas came, I remember Dallas from watching it in elementary school. This is a very old show. There was literally no Texas bourbon or whiskey. There were no Texas spirits Right. At the time. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. No, but Prohibition is still working.

Drew (00:36:21):
<laugh>, no

Nico (00:36:22):
Question. Yeah. Prohibition worked.

Drew (00:36:24):
Yeah. So let's dive into the history a little bit, because when we first started conversing back and forth about doing this interview, my first thing was I saw the book Texas Whiskey, and I went, great. I can do a whole thing on teaching people about the history of Texas whiskey going back and because as you dig into the history of whiskey, there are some fascinating stories that come from prohibition and back. And when we think about Texas, we think about cowboys, we think about saloons, we think about, in fact I had read something about a law in Texas that was part of the reason that Doc Holiday left Dallas, which was that you could not have gambling and drinking in the same room. They had tried to curb the dangers that were going on around saloons. And so that was one of the things that kind of pushed him out of the Dallas area. But

Nico (00:37:27):
That's why we have poker in the back room. Yeah,

Drew (00:37:29):
<laugh>.

Nico (00:37:29):
Exactly. You get drunk up here and then go back and play poker

Drew (00:37:31):
And then go play. Yeah, exactly. And so we think about that history. And actually last time I went to Fort Worth, I went to the White Elephant Saloon which is a very interesting story in that is I believe that's the original saloon, but they actually moved it down the street.

Nico (00:37:54):
Yes. Well, so Fort Worth man, who the history of Fort Worth and the is a fascinating study. Back in the day, it was Hells half Acre was this particular part of town, and it was there for a very long time. They eventually bulldozed everything and built a convention center where it is literally to erase the history of the neighborhood. That was the intention. It was, oh, no, we don't need to talk about this. We have the stockyard that's nice and wholesome. We can get rid of this part of town. And so yeah, if you go to Fort Worth where the convention center is that sell half acres, and eventually, what eventually wound up happening in Fort Worth was going into, God, I feel like it was probably the thirties. During the thirties, it was the gambling mecca of the United States was just north of Fort Worth out Jacksboro Highway.

(00:38:58):
And what eventually wound up happening is they kept, man, they had, everybody there aren't articles about it because the, what's his name, Carter something, Carter who owned the Fort Worth Star Telegram, he was one of the major players in the whole thing. So the entity that would've been reporting on it didn't talk about it because Carter didn't let anybody talk about it, because you're not going to mess up my business. Why would I do that? And so there's this fascinating book that's just the driest thing ever called gamblers and Gangsters, and it's just a bunch of police reports of happening of what was happening in Fort Worth while this whole thing was changing. We got this sheriff who came in and just wielding a big stick. And then I think they offed him. And then we got another sheriff who was there to replace the guy that they offed, and he just sort of let things happen.

(00:39:59):
But somebody killed a gangster with a car bomb, and in the midst of the bombing, the battery of the car went out of the car, landed in somebody else's house and killed a baby. Wow. And at that point, he's like, okay, and just sweep. He's like, you're all out. And he completely cleared all of the illegal gambling halls, all of the illegal saloons, literally, this is where Jack Binion came from, Las Vegas happened because they left Northside Fort Worth. Oh, wow. They had to go somewhere. They went from here to Vegas. It's literally the precursors of Las Vegas. It's fascinating. The history of Fort Worth and the history of the saloons. There is a really, really cool study. We had a lot of whiskey, had a lot of whiskey, had a lot of tequilas. We did. We weren't making anything. We have haven't made anything.

(00:40:56):
It was Tito, literally, Tito in 1996, was the first guy to start making legally to first legally start making booze in the state of Texas. And when I did the cocktail book, I had a chance to chat with him, and he was telling me about how, it was just when he went to the state government and he's like, I want to make vodka. And they were like, we don't know what you mean. What do you mean? Why, how you can't do that? And he's like, well, no, I can. And they're like, well why? So show me that you can. And literally, he built out the T A B C for all intent purposes. Wow. In the state of Texas, because they didn't know what to do. Yeah. They're like, we have no idea. We know how to deal with it when it's here, but we don't know about making it.

(00:41:46):
We don't have the foggiest clue. And frankly, in the grand scheme, in the history of craft spirits in America, Tito Beverage is ridiculously important because he's the first one who made that transition from Yeah. Mean there was St. George and yeah, there were a handful of other craft distilleries before he got going in 96, but man, this whole craft thing wasn't, it wasn't happening. And I know it's, it's funny that he's making billions of dollars a year with his handcrafted <laugh> vodka now, but I mean, genuinely, he kicked this whole thing off. And it's pretty cool vodka, but it's pretty

Drew (00:42:31):
Cool. It's funny to see that in the other states that have had to try to get whiskey laws passed, allow them to be able to create whiskey. They all seem to gang up all at once. Tennessee's a good example. They all had to get together in 2009 and start saying, Hey, we're all thinking about making whiskey. And so there was a bit of a team effort, I guess, with Texas. It was much more, the law was already changed. They just needed somebody to come up with the idea.

Nico (00:43:04):
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. No, I mean, T Tito laid the path, and then once it was there, it would've been another God, I think that was in 96. And so we've been making whiskey here for about 16 years. And so come 2004, 2003, 2004 I, I think, I feel like Dan Garrison and Chip Tte were probably making some whiskey illegally before they actually opened their distillery just to practice, make sure they knew how to do it. Good to know. But we don't need to talk about that. But yeah, the path was there. They, Tito had laid the path. There was a Tito was the first one. There was a rum distillery called Rayan that happened shortly after that. There is another vodka called Dripping Springs that happened shortly after that Treaty. Oak, actually, who makes it was a fantastic whiskey distillery. Now, they started with Gin and Rome, and they started, I, I think they might have started before balconies and before Garrison Brothers, as far as actually distilling spirits. They were intending to age. But yeah, balconies and Garrison Brothers were the first two Texas whiskey distilleries that officially made Texas whiskey.

Drew (00:44:21):
There's a little controversy around who actually lays claims at first, right?

Nico (00:44:29):
Yes. So the story is Dan Garrison decided that he wanted to make, he became infatuated with bourbon. And so he went out to Kentucky and he just tried to meet everybody that he could. And he kept having these conver, man, he's talking to Freddy Johnson, he's talking to Fred. No, he's talking to all of the great bourbon makers. And basically what he decided was he kept talking to him. And the way that he puts it is they kept telling me about how there were these parts of this, parts of the warehouse that the whiskey was better. And what I finally figured out was that was the hot part. And so my first thought was, well, hell, it's all hot in Texas. Let's figure this out. And so he decided to come back here and start making whiskey. And so he came back here and he started making whiskey with the intention of he wasn't going to release a whiskey until it was two years old.

(00:45:27):
That was the goal. And so he started making his whiskey. And then Chip Tate, one of the founders of Balconies decided that he wanted to make whiskey as well. And so he went down to visit Dan, and he, Dan gave him a tour and just walking him around, showing him everything. And as Dan says Chip's getting in his car and driving away. And Dan turns to his partner and goes, he's about to go back to Waco and make whiskey. I don't know what he is doing, but he's about to do something. And thus, wow. He was right. And he went back to Waco. He studied the TTB bylaws and realized that you can have something that's called bourbon that doesn't have to be aged for more than anything in the new chart, American Oak, as long as it goes through there. Right. Then you've still hit the guidelines. So he made a whiskey, aged it for about a month, and then got one liquor store to sell it. And thus, the original Texas whiskey is Balcon. Oh, man. Which is not a lie, which is completely true. And Dan will fully admit it. He's like, yeah, he was for sale before I was <laugh>. I'm sitting here with a year and a half old whiskey and barrels almost ready to go. But yes. Yeah, chip definitely came out with whiskey before I did.

Drew (00:46:48):
Now, this is an interesting thing too, because I haven't had a chance to, I've been to balconies and I love those guys, but I had not had the chance to interview them for the show yet. But one of the things that you probably feel awkward is somebody interviewing about their history and going through that Yeah. Is that Chip is not there anymore. And that apparently is not a great breaking of a relationship.

Nico (00:47:18):
It's a sore subject, if you will. It was interesting because writing the book, it was kind of the elephant in the room the whole time. I knew I was going to have to tackle it. And Balcones was the last one that I wrote. Just knowing that I, okay, I'll get to that later. And what I wound up settling on was fairly early on, I decided that this book is going to be as positive a representation of Texas whiskey as I possibly can, because I'm far more interested in driving the category and introducing people to the idea of Texas whiskey than I am telling some tale that's been told by Texas monthly and been told by the New York Times and yada, yada, yada. And basically, I think in the description of Balcones I put something along the lines of, if you're interested in knowing what happened with Chip, you are more than happy to type in Chip take and lawsuits into Google, and you will find everything that you could possibly find about his relationship with balconies and how it ended.

(00:48:19):
But that's not what's important about this distillery. And then go on to talk about balconies and what they did and what they've done and what Jared's doing and the future of Texas whiskey. And I mean, to go back to the American single malt thing, I mean, balconies makes more American single malt than any other distillery in America. And the fact that I'm starting to kind of think that single malt might be the best thing for Texas it gives you the ability to work with different types of barrels and used barrels, and you don't, then now you're not fighting the fact that, man, if you stuck bourbon in a new charred American outcast here and left it for 10 years, it's just going to taste licking a tree by the end of it. It's not, there's so much in, and it's not all about the climate, but there's so much of the climate that impacts the whiskey down here that we we're actively finding ways to slow down the aging process as opposed to like, well, we got to wait till we get to 10 years.

(00:49:22):
It's like, man, some of our best whiskey is 18 months old, and it's be just because of the nature of the thing down here. And it's a very, it's different. It's really, really different making whiskey here as opposed to somewhere Tennessee, like Kentucky, like Scotland, where there's consistency in climate. And there's the moment in the middle of writing the book my family did our Covid vacation. We went to Colorado and we drove from Texas to Colorado, and we went through Amarillo on the way up there. And outside of Amarillo, there's this place called P Canyon, and it's a gorgeous canyon. Really cool. We went there and we stayed in Amarillo, got up the next day. I was like, let's go see the Canyon before we head out. So we go to Pall Canyon, we get to the canyon at one, and at one o'clock, it was 115 degrees in the canyon. And at that moment, I, all I was thinking about was, I remember weather maps as a kid where it said Amarillo was negative 10 degrees. I I totally remember seeing this. There's 125 degrees swing within a year. I really want somebody to age whiskey. Okay. Now, just to see what that's going to do to it. But just as an example, these are the types of things that we deal with here, not the temperateness of Kentucky.

Drew (00:50:51):
Yeah. Well because my brother lived in Amarillo for a while, I got to hear all the stories of the crazy temperature swings because it's right on the jet stream. So yeah, it can change in the day from 80 degrees to it's snowing. So

Nico (00:51:07):
We literally had a day here in Dallas two weeks ago. It changed 55 degrees in one day because a northerner came down, northern came down freaking blue, Northern, and yeah, all of a sudden it went from, it was like 75 and it dropped to 20. Yeah, that night below was 20. Yeah. Insane.

Drew (00:51:27):
Yeah. So when we're talking about American single malts and what we're talked about is that as a country, we have such an advantage over Scotland in that we do have all of these degrees of difference between humidity and temperature and elevation and all the rest. But in Texas, not, I was talking the whole United States, but when I started thinking about Texas, I started thinking, well, if you're in El Paso, you're going to have one type of weather. If you are going to go down to Houston, it's going to be hot and sweaty. And if you're going to go up to Amarillo, you're going to get everything. Denison is getting probably a little bit more, a little less extreme maybe than some of the other areas, but still it has its own extreme nature versus other places like Kentucky and Tennessee. So

Nico (00:52:23):
Yeah, absolutely. There are five, five certified climate regions within the state, and just the sheer difference between aging whiskey and the hill country, which is incredibly dry. It's a very, very, very dry part of the world, but they still get rain. It's still kind of it, it's but the basis of everything there is dry, and then you compare it to whiskey That's coming from the Gulf Coast where I've been told stories. I don't know if I'd buy 'em, but I've been told stories about how there was a year that there were a couple of hurricanes that hit Houston, and that year, that summer there, the whiskey that they were aging was actually going down in proof because they were losing alcohol faster than they were losing water because of the level of humidity. And I don't know if I buy that particularly, but the concepts a hundred percent. Yeah, I promise you, you were losing less water there than you were in the hill country for that summer. Yeah, there's no question about that. Yeah.

Drew (00:53:35):
Well, it's interesting too, because that's kind of a Scottish, the result of aging in Scotland that a B V starts going down, but then you're in an area that's very humid but also very hot. So yeah, you would think it might actually level out both of them, and it might actually end up evaporating both at an equal rate, just faster. Yeah.

Nico (00:54:02):
And they've seen some stats about that. They'll definitely have months where they're losing them both about at the same time. But yeah, I, that's kind of the basis of being annoyed by people who take all of Texas whiskey and throw it into one category and just sort of assume it's all exactly the same. And while I will say that I've sort of come to the realization that the different climates in Scotland, while they are, they do mean something. They don't mean everything, and they don't necessarily mean everything that is sort of implied by that. But the different climates in Texas are so much more extreme. And I mean, you cannot make the same whiskey in El Paso as you will in Houston. It will never be the same. And so Texas whiskey hater who randomly had a balconies seven years ago and didn't like it, and now everything in Texas must taste like that random balconies that you had seven years ago and you didn't like it.

(00:55:08):
No, man, so much going on here. And there's such a diversity here. And that was part of the reason why when I got asked to put together a whiskey with a couple of major league baseball players a couple of years ago it's called Grayson. It's a blended Texas bourbon. And my impetus going into it, I wanted to work with more than one distillery, but B, it was kind of like, everything is so different. You really, really have the ability to take different things and put them together in a certain way and create something that's unique. Yeah. That's completely unique. And if you do it as best as you can, maybe it's even greater than the sum of your parts. But the idea that you pulling a wheat whiskey out of 40, which is just outside of Dallas and adding it to, to a blue corn bourbon from Waco and adding it to, it's a bloody butcher corn bourbon from Denison, not only are you working with the different distilleries and the way that they approach everything, but you're literally working with the different climates. Yes. And yeah, I think the blends are going to be a massive part, not only in Texas, across the US period, but I think that the era of the blended whiskey, I think it started last year. I think it's going to be overwhelming by next year with the amount of blending things that are happening right now. Well,

(00:56:40):
And kind of fascinating,

Drew (00:56:42):
There has to be an education or a reeducation on whiskey, I think for people because they hear the word blended and mm-hmm. All of a sudden they think inferior or it's taking something and you're basically taking its personality out by blending it with a bunch of different things. But what they forget is that for the longest time, the Irish were renowned for their blending of whiskeys and the Scots as well. And we go through these different trends and phases, and it's just creating an acceptance and the knowledge of what is the difference between buying a blended whiskey versus buying a product that is a straight whiskey based on a particular mash bell. And I thought it was interesting because I saw that your first whiskey that you did for Grayson, the whiskey came from the three distilleries I've been to in Texas, lone Elm balconies and Iron Root. And so you're welcome. How did you end up landing on those three?

Nico (00:57:50):
So when it started, basically there was a distillery that they were working with here, and then they met me around the time that the distillery they were working with was kind of saying, Hey, we got some stuff going on. Let's revisit this in a couple of months. And they explained they were going to go, they were basically going to go source some barrels, throw it in a bottle, and here's your whiskey, here's your texted whiskey. And I was like, okay, well at least it is from Texas, so that's good but that seems kind of boring. I mean, it's fine, but it seems kind of boring. Why don't you do something interesting? And they said, what do you want to do? And I said, well, I think you should do a bourbon blend mean frankly, we don't have one. There's not a Texas blend of bourbon.

(00:58:34):
Why don't you work with more than one distillery? And they're like, okay, cool. How do we do that? Well, let me make some phone calls called. So I called Robert up at Iron Route because I think they're easily the best blenders in the state. I think that the way that they approach everything, the utilization of alibi, and the fact that the way that they blend their own whiskey is just fascinating. And so I started with Robert, and most importantly, everybody loves Robert, and everybody loves Iron Root and that family are incredible people, and I'm so blessed to be able to work with them and pitched him on the idea. He was like, yeah, that sounds fun. I'm like, okay. He's like, who do you want to work with? And I'm like, guys, man, I don't know. Dan won't do it. Balconies, that's stays, that's kind of the biggest name that we, cause Dan won't do it, but BS might.

(00:59:25):
And he's like, yeah, okay, let's start there. And so literally Jonathan went to the liquor store and just bought a bunch of bottles off the shelf and just kind of faked some blends. And what we wound up settling on was we liked the combination of the Iron Root, the balconies, and the Lone Elm. And it was funny because when he first put it out, he put it out and everybody tasted and we're like, okay, this is really good. He's like, okay, all right, well that's got this and this. And I turned to Robert and I'm like, Hey, that's not a straight bourbon. What do we just make? What is this? What is it? And he's like, well, it is either a blend of straight whiskeys, which seems a little cumbersome to say, or it's a blended bourbon. And I said, perfect, as long as we can have bourbon on there, because it's 85, I think there's only 15, 13 to 15% low elm in batch one. So I mean, it's bourbon. It's very much a bourbon. So cause Iris bourbon and bako is bourbon. And so

Drew (01:00:30):
Low nem, just so people know, is a wheat whiskey.

Nico (01:00:33):
It is a wheat whiskey. Yeah, it is a wheat whiskey. It's not a hundred percent, but I think it's like 90% wheat and then 10% barley. So I was like, okay, it is a blended bourbon. It's officially a blended bourbon. And at that point, my initial thought was like, oh, is everybody going to freak out because the we're blended on there. And then I was kind of like, you know what, now it is a blended bourbon. It's, that's what it is. It's a blended bourbon, so let's just go with it. And I'm like, okay, if nothing else, I'll help start the conversation about the art of blending and why we did it this way. And we try to be as transparent as we possibly can be with everything that we've got, we've got going on in there. And I mean I think that's the future of our brand, frankly.

(01:01:22):
We have batch one, batch one B came out in late December batch one B. It's the same distilleries, but it tastes a little bit different because we picked the barrels at a different time. They're slightly different ages, that kind of thing. Batch two will be coming out of March, and we're incorporating still Austin in that as well. So it'll again, have a different flavor profile. Batch three, who knows? It may be a malt, it may be a bie, who knows. It's just, but the idea of let's take this, let's take, let's put it together and let's create something original

Drew (01:01:57):
Fun. Because at home I've gotten into this practice of taking whiskeys that I'm like, I'm not quite sure on that, and then add a little bit of something else to it and I go, yeah, wow. This really mm-hmm. Improved it. I, I've been doing it more with scotch because I think my palate is more aligned with scotch or my understanding of scotch flavors tends to be better because whenever I've tried to blend a bourbon I'll grab a bottle of Bri and throw a little bit in there, and then it's like, okay, yeah, this is getting there. And then I put something else in there and then I'm like, oh boy, I've just completely messed this up. Yeah, totally. It's a challenge. You have to,

Nico (01:02:39):
Yeah, absolutely. No, there's, I love the other thing that's, that frankly is making it be a little bit easier on the discussion about blending is with this bourbon boom that we are still in the middle of. There's all of these bourbon groups and people talking about how they're doing their own blends. It's poor man's Pappy, it's Old Forester 1915, and just the idea of you can take all of these things and you do a certain little blend and it has a different flavor profile and sort of mimics that, but it's just the idea in general of playing with whiskey and it matters less now what you're getting from if the intention is to mess around with it. And I literally was telling my I do these little posts on Facebook that are shit my wife says, and last night she had a great one. She walked in and she goes, Hey, do you think this wilderness trail, single barrel rye would make a good old fashioned? And my response was, I liked it a lot better when you didn't like whiskey,

(01:03:52):
Which all of the whiskey nerds on my Facebook loved that, loved that response. And they got mad at me for even questioning. I'm like, she had the old fashioned calm down, but she was like, so wait, why'd you make such a big deal about that? And I was like, well, actually, what happened was that was a series of two club picks, and they're two different single barrels, and me and my buddy Driscoll, we each got a different barrel and I went over to his house to pick up the bottle, so we decided to do a blind. And so we blind tried 'em and we're kind of like, okay. And then both of the glasses kind of had the same amount, and so I just dumped, it was basically, I made a 50 50 blend and then poured two new ones. And so we did a blind of all three, and we both were like, we loved the 50 50 blend. And so we literally dumped both of the bottles into a pitcher and put them both. That's the bottle of whiskey that we came home with. And she's like, wow, so wait, it doesn't exist. I'm like, no, that bottle, it doesn't exist. That's its own. I mean, Driscoll has one, but, and he's probably done with this. So that, no, that whiskey's gone now. It's a it's own entity, but the idea of man, don't be afraid to do that. Mess around with it. Blending is fun.

Drew (01:05:08):
The hard part is when you've made the perfect mix and then you get finished with that bottle and you're like, how will I ever get that again? It's right. It's gone. It's like, take records, do something. But yeah, I mean, people make infinity bottles and there's no way you could keep records on that because you're constantly changing.

Nico (01:05:27):
Absolutely. No, man, I love playing around with whiskey. I love the future of, of blending in America. That's the biggest thing from European whiskey that hadn't made it over here. Because in a very American way, as soon as people started reading the TTT bylaws and realizing, oh wait, I can have 49% of not whiskey in this. Okay, I can make a lot more money doing it this way. Yeah, okay. But at the end of the day, if you have a blended bourbon like Grayson, and you're completely honest about, here it is, and this is who we're working with, and it's like, no, there's not NGS in this thing, this. It's literally, we are just doing a blend. And I think frankly, the concept of it is a little amusing to me. But I love what Maryann Eves is doing with her blind. Just the idea of she goes into a distillery and does a blend with their stuff, and then that's the bottle that comes out. That's fantastic. And if you taste one of her blends as opposed to what they're putting out on the shelf, it is going to taste different. And just the idea that Pete, to put it out there, that people have different flavor profiles and you can accomplish different things with the same tools, it goes back to directing. Yeah. I think that these are the tools that you have, and depending on how you put it together and at at what percentage you're going to, it'll elicit a different reaction now to people. Yeah.

Drew (01:06:53):
It's fascinating. Have

Nico (01:06:55):
We even talked about the book? I feel like we don't even, we're just talking about whiskey.

Drew (01:06:59):
We've covered bits about the book. Yeah, actually, I was going to jump into this whole idea of whiskey travel because we are now getting to a point where things are opening up again and we have an opportunity.

Nico (01:07:11):
We don't have covid down here. I don't know if you knew that. Texas,

Drew (01:07:13):
No. Covid down here. You

Nico (01:07:15):
Just do. Come on down. Y'all

Drew (01:07:16):
Do your own thing. Well, I'm in South Carolina, so we kind of have the same thing going on here, but when I was in Texas the last time and I was visiting Balcon, I pulled out the Texas Whiskey trail map, and I noticed something very, very interesting about it. You potentially, knowing Texas, that part of Texas as I do, you potentially could probably spend five, six days maybe and plot out and get a chance to go see all the distilleries, except for maybe the hours would be a problem because some of them I don't think are doing distillery tours all week like Kentucky does. But the other thing is that they're all, at that point, we're all centrally located, so mm-hmm. Almost like I 45 and 35, you could get to all the distilleries within not too much of a distance from there. Yep. Are there more distilleries now showing up in places like El Paso, Amarillo, say Odessa Midland, those kind of areas?

Nico (01:08:26):
There is a new distillery called Sun City Distillery. That's that, that's opened up in El Paso. I think they're making whiskey, but it's not ready yet. There's a new distillery that's opened up in Amarillo. There's a couple of new distilleries that have opened up in Marfa. We've kind of focusing on so tall right now, but I think they're going to end up moving into whiskey fairly quickly. The majority of the distilleries, if you want to do a whiskey trip to Texas the best way to go about it is to either, I think you either do North or you do Austin. And in Austin, in Austin proper, there's a couple of fantastic distilleries that are within the city or within one of the suburbs of the city. And then you go 45 minutes outside of it, and now you're in the Hill country. And in the Hill country you've got that's where Treaty Oak and Garrison Brothers and Milam and Green and Andalusia and Real Spirits. But in addition to all of that, there's a desert door. Sattal is out there, high Rum is out there Remington, Remington Vodka, and I think they've just started making whiskey is out there. It's, there's this town called Dripping Springs that now the nickname is Drinking Springs.

(01:09:56):
There's so many distilleries and breweries within that area. And most importantly, it's also our wine country. And so the Texas Wine Region is, I think it's the third most visited wine region in the US behind Napa, Sonoma, and I think Willamette Valley up in Oregon, I think. Then it's the Texas Hill country. And because of that, there's this infrastructure for tourism already. And so yeah, you can go have an incredible experience at an Airbnb that's on a 17 acre ranch with whatever, but you're around the corner from three different wineries and Garrison Brothers, and now you need a car because it's a lot of driving just in general. And every time you take a look at the map, you're like, oh, it's only an hour away. That's fine. Okay, cool. That's not too bad, actually.

(01:11:00):
But whiskey tourism in the Hill country is very, very easy. The other region that I would say is North Texas, and the reason that I say is North Texas, it's kind of DFW based, but if you also include Iron Roots, which is 45 minutes north of Dallas and Waco balconies, which is an hour south of Dallas, it's a lot. But at the same time, within Dallas, you have places like Bent, you have places like Black Land Distilling, you have Acre Distilling, which is in, what are we talking? Hell Tap Acre. They call it Acre because it's in hell. Tap Acre in Fort Worth. I don't know if it's my favorite, probably it might be my favorite distillery as far as visually in Texas is tx. Okay. The Firestone Robinson Distillery is stunning. What they did was they bought an old municipal golf course. This is a golf course. Do you golf at all? Have any

Drew (01:12:06):
I have golf in the past, but I'm a driving range kind of guy.

Nico (01:12:09):
I hear ya. Byron Nelson, Nelson and Ben Hogan learned how to play golf at this golf course. That was their home course was this old municipal course in Fort Worth, so tx. So they bought the course and they stuck their distillery in the middle on the top of a hill. You literally, you're in the middle of this gorgeous golf course, which they're keeping up. You can't play golf there because of things, but there's holes and it looks like a golf course. It's stunning. But then you overlook there's Fort Worth in the background, <laugh> the skyline of Fort Worth, and it's just gorgeous. And it's one of the types of things that once they get out of their infamy, which they're still in the midst of, but they're kind of trying to work their way out of that. Once they kind of get out of that and people start realizing that there's a lot of really interesting things that are happening at that distillery that have nothing to do with the TX blended bourbon but there's some very cool stuff happening there. One of the crown jewels of distilleries in Texas, frankly, it's one of the coolest distilleries I've been to, period. And I've been to lots of stuff in Kentucky, but it is just

Drew (01:13:27):
Beautiful. You got to let me know the infamy part because I don't not familiar with that story.

Nico (01:13:32):
So TX Linda Bourbon is not from Texas.

Drew (01:13:36):
There we go. Okay. It's mgp. Ah,

Nico (01:13:39):
It's a hundred percent mgp. They're challenging to talk about because they're so ridiculously important to the history of Texas whiskey because at a moment in which more than anything Texas needed people to know that we were doing stuff, they showed up and had a lot of money behind them and managed to get distributed very quickly. And now all of a sudden all across the US, there are these bottles in liquor stores and on and on back bars that say Texas whiskey. And no one at that point, everyone's like, I had, wait, I didn't even know you made, there's whiskey in Texas and those who are interested in it, they immediately dive in and they find balconies and they find Garrison Brothers and they find all of this stuff. It was this magical billboard for the industry as a whole on a whiskey that wasn't made here.

(01:14:44):
And they're kind of the epitome of what, bud, you're the problem. You're who I talk about. Right? You are flag whiskey to me, frankly. But it, it's funny because I, I know the former master distiller, Rob Arnold fantastic guy, one of the biggest braids in this industry, period. And he's a great guy and he knows, he knows, knew from the get-go. And frankly Firestone and Robinson, those who started the BA distillery, they're business guys, man, from the get-go, it was make it, grow it, sell it, take our money, go away. And that was the plan. And I am mad. I'm jealous, frankly. You pulled it off. Yeah, this is exactly what you wanted to do. You sold out to Bernau, you took your money, and you are just chilling now. But in the process of that, you managed to make the biggest example of why we have to clarify what Texas whiskey is because the bottle with the big T and DX on it, <laugh> is not from here.

(01:15:56):
And so they started making everything that you see, TX whiskey that is not the blended, they distill here. Their bourbon is from here, Thery is from here, everything else. It is distilled here. It's made with Texas Grains. Rob was a big, big advocate of heirloom. They started their own farm. They, it is very, very progressive on that end, except there's this cash cow over here that says TX blended bourbon, which still makes most of the money that why would we stop? Because it's just the money printer. And I know you don't like that guy, but he's still going to print money as long as you just leave him there. Yeah. So it's a tough one. Another book about Texas whiskey that's actually all about that stuff and about all of the, I would love to sit down and have a conversation with the founders of Rebecca Creek who decided to lean as hard as possible into the idea of our whiskey is from Texas with the whiskey that does not even remotely from Texas <laugh> and frankly is barely whiskey with the amount of NGS that they put in it. So it's like there's all of these things on top of the, that's that's just kind of under the surface.

(01:17:19):
But that's not what the book was about. The book was about, let me give you as good of an introduction as I possibly can to what is happening in the state that is of quality and people that are being very conscious about what they do, and most importantly, honest. And so if weren't honest, you weren't in the book.

Drew (01:17:34):
Nice. So when I did my book, one of the things I tried to push out about Kentucky Distilleries was try to give people a sense of if they're planning out a trip and they want to go to these different places, what's the personality of the particular distillery? So we know for go to a beautiful distillery, we're going to go to the TX distillery. If we are going to go to one where science or process is something that people are interested in, what would be the best distillery to put on their list?

Nico (01:18:09):
There is still, Austin is incredibly technology driven. Plaque Land distillery in Texas or in Fort Worth, they operate on an ice still, which is kind of interesting. Just seeing that process is really kind of cool. I hadn't experienced the set it and forget it distillery style before <laugh>, but their stuff's great. They do it well, and there's a reason that those things actually work and are successful. But yeah, as far as the technology, the sort of innovation things go I think that Treaty Oak is going to end up doing a lot of very interesting stuff. They have some big, I don't know if they're plans yet, but they're definitely ideas of creating ways to mimic different climates kind of within warehouses. And so I think that there's going to be a lot kind of driven by that.

(01:19:13):
To go back to still Austin, they're in the middle of Austin so if you just have a random trip to Austin, you don't even have to get out to the Hill country to have fantastic whiskey. Still is very, very good at what they do, and they're very innovative in their approach. They also work with, they distill everything that they're making, but they also work with in Blends, and they have I think you said it's the tallest, I think it's the tallest column still in the us huge, but it's also very, very small. But it's huge. Seven stories high. It's massive, but very interesting in the way that they approach it because they have to be, because they're in the middle of one of the most liberal and progressive cities in America. And so they have all of that stuff to deal with. So they have to be creative in the way that they approach everything so that they're kind of abiding by not only on a legal end, but also being true to the city of Austin because you know, have to talk about how your stuff is green and you have to talk about how not just siphoning things off of the land to make alcohol, to get people drunk.

(01:20:32):
That story doesn't fly in Austin. Right. So there's of there's a handful of those. There's some interesting stuff happening at Gulf Coast of Distillers down in Houston. Houston's an interesting part of the world. I'm curious to see if there's some new distilleries that are popping up in Houston that I think could be kind of interesting. Yeah, the thing that I like the most about as far as process goes in Texas is those who are using Elevage which is a French cognac technique where basically it's kind of proof. The layman's description is you proof and barrel, and so as the whiskey's aging, you're adding the water as opposed to dumping the water in at the end. So it's in incorporating as it moves on. And then it's an incredibly time consuming process still. Austin uses Lage iron Root uses, Lage Falcon's kind of uses some elements of it, but it's those type of things that we're having to figure out as far as different ways to deal with the climate here.

(01:21:35):
And balconies is they're incredibly progressive in the way that they approach their barrels because they have to be, they've these massive sherry butts that they're now aging in so that they're lessening the wood impact. Because when they started, frankly, they started with five gallon barrels, and now they've moved to, okay, everything's 54, and then it became, crap, can we get something bigger is we need to slow it down even more. Yeah. Because I mean, they're trying to get to a 10 year old whiskey, but they're not going to, you can't just set it and forget it. That's not going to work. So you're going to have to do something to it. So yeah, we're always trying to innovate in the way that we age things down here. And the cool part about it is that everybody talks. Yeah, everybody talks. Yeah. And so again, we're all in this together and we're all down to have the conversation to kind of, Hey, this is what's working for us. Maybe you should give that a try if you're in a particularly dry year or whatever.

Drew (01:22:40):
So in the world of Texas pride, we want to go to a place that is, because you go to all these distilleries, you're going to see Garrison

Nico (01:22:47):
Brothers,

Drew (01:22:47):
Garrison Brothers, Garrison Brothers. I had them in the back of my mind, who would be number two behind them. I know it's tough because everybody's got the lone star on their marketing material and the rest, but when you walk into that distillery, you're like, man, this is just down home Texas,

Nico (01:23:09):
Man. What I think in a different, all of them, I mean frankly, all of them, you walk into all of them and they're

Drew (01:23:22):
Texas pride is showing, by the way, by saying that.

Nico (01:23:26):
Yeah, I know. But it's true. I feel like there are so many distilleries down here that are smaller, and they kind of serve their community more than anything. And I mean, they're all working on distribution and getting it out there, and they'll get there eventually and whatever, but for the most part, they, they're there because that's where they were drawn to. One of my absolute favorite distilleries in Texas is called Andalusia, and they make this incredible single malt. They have a petta single malt. They have a wood I think it's cedar, a cedar smoke, cedar single malt. They have a triple distilled but it's 100, a hundred percent malt. And Ty used to be the head brewer at real ale, and he decided that he just found himself interested in distilling. So his distillery is in Blanco on his family farm, because that was the thing that made the most sense.

(01:24:31):
And when they're doing a peach tree, wood smoked single malts, they're getting it from the farmer across the street because he had a whole bunch of peach trees that he cleared, and he was about to burn 'em all. And Ty went over going, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Can I have that? And they like, yeah, sure, go ahead. Take haul it off. And they're literally dragging trees across the highway to go burn and make a single malt with it. But that type of stuff happens all the time around here. I like the trend of the urban distillery, but we don't have a ton of that in Texas. I mean, frankly, the majority of the distilleries, they're far more kind of in the community that they sort of feel like they belong. And a lot of them are out of the middle of nowhere.

(01:25:17):
It's all very Texas. It's all very Texas. And I mean, you can go and have a very innovative and modern experience. It's still Austin in the middle of Austin, Texas, which is one of the tech capitals of the us. Or you can go to Garrison Brothers and literally you're walking through the dust and there's tumbleweeds going by and there's barbed wire everywhere, because otherwise the cows will literally come in and eat the grain. Yeah. But it's all incredibly Texas. I want to get out to Martha. I want to see what they're doing. Those are the ones that I'm kind of like, all right, maybe those are the ones that are overly Texas

Drew (01:25:57):
That

Nico (01:25:57):
I think could be, that I would've a better answer to this question

Drew (01:26:01):
With. So this is your second edition when, this is the fun part about doing distillery books. As fast as the industry is growing, there's always going to be the opportunity that to add to it.

Nico (01:26:11):
Yeah. I think in the introduction, I wrote something along the lines of, my favorite part about writing this book is knowing that I'm going to have to rewrite it in five years.

Drew (01:26:18):
<laugh>

Nico (01:26:19):
Commune, dude, it is. I mean it, we've been doing this for 14 years, so yeah, it's kind of different than it was five years ago. And it's really different than it was 10 years ago and going to be, I mean, even now there are at least six distilleries that have opened since the book came out that would absolutely be in the book now that they weren't out yet. So

Drew (01:26:48):
You also feature tasting notes from some of the main whiskeys. Yes. So those will likely change over time too.

Nico (01:26:55):
Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Tasting notes. Man, that was a trip. That's the first time that I'd kind of sat down and really, I mean, there's probably 115 whiskeys in this book. And while I understand, I understand what I get when I read somebody's say notes. And I also understand how sort of dismissive people can be about them. And I wanted it to be real, but I wanted it to be interesting. And so you're going to have things that I promise you that I did. I absolutely smell burnt corn Tortilla from

Drew (01:27:38):
This,

Nico (01:27:40):
From this particular Blue corn bourbon. I promise you that. I get that. But I wasn't just going to say smoke and corn. It's very corn forward. Oh, is it? The corn whiskeys corn forward. Got it. Yeah. Okay,

Drew (01:27:52):
Cool. Yeah.

Nico (01:27:54):
Oh, you get

Drew (01:27:55):
Buttered popcorn.

Nico (01:27:55):
You get vanilla from the bourbon gray.

Drew (01:27:58):
Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, that's true. It's hard to find in some whiskeys though. I mean, there's some, you will taste a whiskey. I've had days actually where I've tasted whiskeys and I've gone tastes like whiskey. Yeah, yeah. I dunno what else to tell you about it, but

Nico (01:28:15):
Yeah, a hundred percent. And there were definitely days when I would sit down and be like, okay, I need to blow through these 10. And I taste the first one and be like, all right, I'm going to blow through these 10 in two hours. Cause this is not happening right now. <laugh> not feeling it at all. Yeah.

Drew (01:28:29):
Did you adapt any of your, because you have cocktails in the book also, did you adapt some of the ones from your other book into

Nico (01:28:38):
No, no. Those were crowdsourced as well. I wanted them to I essentially wanted to give there were a handful of folks that either they didn't make it in the cocktail book or wanted 'em to or whatever. And so I was just kind of like, Hey, here's yellow Rose outlaw bourbon. Can you make me a cocktail with this? That's interesting. And so those were all more about finding friends of mine who are bartenders who make something that highlights the actual taste of the whiskey, and they're much better at doing that than I am.

Drew (01:29:11):
Is it, I'm sure it's not lost on you, that somehow someone with the last name Martini got into doing a cocktail book.

Nico (01:29:20):
Yeah.

Drew (01:29:21):
Yes,

Nico (01:29:21):
It's it's my last name. I mean, it is my legal last name, my friend.

Drew (01:29:25):
You were pre-ordained to this. It

Nico (01:29:28):
Appears, I feel like every time I write my bio, the last line is always, and yes, his last name is actually Martini.

Drew (01:29:36):
Well, with your radio background, I would think maybe it was a radio name kind of an idea.

Nico (01:29:43):
Right? Right. Absolutely. Nice. No, man. Yeah, that's what I got. Funny how it happens.

Drew (01:29:50):
So

Nico (01:29:51):
It could have been Bourbon, who knows. That's

Drew (01:29:53):
True.

Nico (01:29:53):
That would made a little bit more sense. Or Cooper.

Drew (01:29:56):
So where can we get copies of your book?

Nico (01:30:01):
You can go to, if you would like it signed, you have to get it from me, which is fine. You go to Texas whiskey guide.com or Texas whiskey book.com. If you would like it fast, just go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble. All books are sold. So it's the big machine that is books now.

Drew (01:30:23):
And if people want to keep up with your travels and your cocktails and the rest you have some social media presence as I,

Nico (01:30:30):
Yeah, you can follow me at Dr. Nico Martini on Twitter. You can also follow me at Texas Whiskey book on Instagram. Those are kind of the ones that are the most active. I'm also on Facebook. I'm ridiculously easy to find. That comes back to the whole digital marketing thing,

Drew (01:30:44):
The

Nico (01:30:44):
Branding thing. So very nice. If anybody watching this would like to get ahold of me, I promise you, you can figure out how.

Drew (01:30:51):
Very nice. Very nice. Well, I appreciate you, Nico, for taking the time today and going through and talking about the book and giving us a little bit of an introduction for those who may not know Texas whiskey or they only know a couple of brands, that there's a whole lot more out there.

Nico (01:31:06):
The thing that I will say is that the two things, just to leave you with this, if you had Texas whiskey a long time ago and decided you didn't like it, please try it again because we're much better at making whiskey now. Secondly, not all of it tastes the same, and there's no way that you can just don't take everything and shove it into one spot because there's so much going on here that Texas whiskey is not one entity, it's a category. It's like, please don't tell me that you hate Scotch <laugh>, because that's just kind of silly.

Drew (01:31:49):
Doesn't make sense. It

Nico (01:31:50):
Means you haven't really tried enough scotch.

Drew (01:31:51):
Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, thank you, Nico.

Nico (01:31:54):
Thanks, man. This has been a lot

Drew (01:31:55):
Of fun. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And good luck, and maybe I'll see you on the Texas roadways one of these days.

Nico (01:32:01):
Absolutely. Let me know.

Drew (01:32:03):
All right. Well, I hope you enjoyed today's interview, and I wanted to give you a little update. If you're a whiskey lore fan and you've been wondering where the podcast is, I am right now working on a book on Tennessee whiskey history and talking about Tennessee Whiskey distilleries, kind of pairing those together. It's been a bigger challenge than I expected it to be. I am coming up with some great stories though, and I think it's going to be something you'll really enjoy. But I got to hunker down and get it done because I want this book out by March or April. And so Whiskey Lord will continue to be on hiatus. But if you want to hear some of the stuff that I'm coming up with for the Tennessee book, you can always become a member of the Whiskey Lore Society. Just head to patreon.com/whiskey and I will be sharing some of my information in snippets with you out there. Would you keep up with whiskey history and learning about distilleries by sticking with Whiskey Lorey interviews? This will be back next week and throughout the year. And if you want to find show notes, transcripts, social media links, books, or swag, head to whiskey-lore.com. I'm your host, Hanish. Until next time, cheers and Slung Ofk Whiskey, lores of production of Travel Fuels Life, L L C.