Ep. 36 - Tom Ripy and the Family Before Wild Turkey

Transcript

Drew (00:14):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, drew Hamish, the Amazon bestselling author of Whiskey Lord's Travel Guide to Experience in Kentucky Bourbon. And today I'm going to be taking you back to the very roots of what is known as the Wild Turkey Distillery. Yes. Before Jimmy and Eddie Russell. Well, there was a family known as the Rips, and in those old days they were bourbon royalty, in fact, before and after Prohibition. And Tom Rippy, who is the grandson of tb Rippy, the man who helped make that distillery so successful. He's my guest today and he has got a lot of stories to share, and he grew up around some of the great names in pre-prohibition, whiskey and some after prohibition. The Bonds, the Lillards. The SELs. And we're going to get a chance to talk a little bit about the origins of the family coming from Tyrone Ireland, and then the little town of Tyrone and how it sort of came and went.

Drew (01:27):
We'll talk about Lawrenceburg before Wild Turkey and Four Roses, and we're going to talk about the preservation of the old Rippy Mansion, a home that he remembers from his youth. And we'll talk about the bourbon sessions, which is a way that they are taking in donations to try to save this beautiful Gilded Age mansion. Now, I want to send a big thank you out to Jerry Daniels of Stone Fences Tours, because he was the guy that got me in touch with Mr. Rippy. And in fact, he's very involved in the bourbon sessions. So follow Stone Fences tours, or you can go on Facebook and follow the whiskey and history community that we have set up for whiskey lore. And you'll be able to see when those bourbon sessions are being held. But right now, let's go ahead and jump into the interview with Mr. Rippy. He is a fascinating man. He's got great stories to share, and you're going to learn a lot about bourbon history and even feel like you're back in the middle of it. And we're going to start this interview off with him telling a little bit about his family origins and their patriarchs travel over to the United States from Tyrone Ireland.

Tom (02:50):
Well, my great grandfather came from county Tyrone Ireland in 1831. And according to family history, he came through the Port of Philadelphia and worked for Wholesaler who supplied mercantile stores around the country. And eventually he moved to Bourbon County, Kentucky, worked for Merc, a merchant there, then came to what is now Anderson County. And in 1839, he renounced his allegiance to Queen Victoria and took his oath of citizenship in the Bourbon Circuit Court. He got married the same year,

Tom (03:51):
And he married a lady named Artese Walker. The Walkers were among the first families to come to Kentucky, and her family owned most of the land on both sides of the road between here and what is now Wild Turkey. Okay. Plus some more land down in Tyrone itself, I think. But it was a marriage of some prophet for him because he married into a well-to-do family, and they had a couple of children's, and he became basically a wholesaler. He bought whiskey. In those days, you'd buy whiskey and it might be stored at the distillery where it was made. And he bought and sold whiskey. Eventually he partnered with, I think it was his brother-in-law, Monroe Walker and another gentleman. And they built, or they rebuilt a distill in Tyrone and started to operate it, but they only operated it for about a year. And then it was sold to my great-grandfather and his partner, w h Mcbriar, who owned Cedarbrook, which is a famous bourbon from here in Anderson County. And he was about 21 when he went into the stealing business. He was

Drew (05:34):
In modern day, he would just be legal to drink.

Tom (05:37):
Well, he bought out Judge Mcbriar after one year, and he became the sole owner of the distillery in Tyron. And he enlarged it, enlarged it, enlarged it. Most distillers back then were like an extended farm operation. They had cattle lots associated with them and which was true of his distillery. And eventually he went into partnership with the owners of the Waterfall and Frazier Distillery, and they built another distillery right next to the one that he had in Tyrone.

Drew (06:26):
So this is Cliff Springs, and the other one is

Tom (06:31):
Tb Rippy Distillery, I think is,

Drew (06:33):
Was it? Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Tom (06:35):
He bought out the Waterfall and Frazier partners and kept enlarging and enlarging, enlarging it. Supposedly by the time he sold it, he was the largest sour mash distiller in the world. But it was a big plant for the time, very big plant. And I'm pretty sure his health was failing. He had what they call pernicious anemia, and they didn't know exactly how to treat it back then. And so he died in Battle Creek, Michigan at the Kellogg Clinic there. Oh, wow. After a few years after he sold out in 1899. He was like a lot of people in the whiskey business. He was either very rich or very poor, bankrupt or a millionaire. But today's a multimillionaire. But today's standard,

Drew (07:42):
It sounds like he ended pretty well.

Tom (07:45):
He ended up well enough for my great-grandmother to continue to live into the house in the house that he built long after he died. She outlived him by 45 or four odd years, and she had a staff for the house, a large staff at a cook and maids and yard man. And they had a butler or somebody who served the meals and whatnot. I remember him, he would come to this doors between the parlor and the dining room and open the sliding doors and ring the chimes, and he would say Dinner is being served. And that was a signal to come in and sit down. Okay.

Drew (08:41):
Yeah.

Tom (08:42):
And have dinner served. It was much more formal than it is now. Yeah. Much more formal.

Drew (08:50):
So that you remember that mansion and your great-grandmother as well?

Tom (08:57):
Yes. Somewhere I've got a picture of myself with my great-grandmother. Yeah. It was taken down in front of the doors between the parlor and the dining room, but yeah. Oh, yes. I remember my great-grandmother, and I remember a lot of my great aunts and uncles. Now, some of them were dead before I was born, but I knew some of them anyway. And it was a big extended family, and it was very comfortable. Yes. I knew everybody on South Main Street from downtown area all the way out to the cemetery, and I was kin to most of them.

Drew (09:42):
Well, and there's a lot of distilling names around this area, and you see them when you drive down the street because you see the street names Bon Affel as you're going along.

Tom (09:55):
Well, you do, and I can tell you, I Bon Wf Bon was my great-great grandfather, and his daughter was married, Jesse Johnson. And the Johnson House is on that bourbon trail. His son was open to distill, react to prohibition. Okay. And on the Salt River, across the river from what's now four roses across the street from where my grandparents, great grandparents lived is Dowling Hall. And that was John and Mary Dowling. She was originally a Murphy from somewhere in western Kentucky. And he came here from Ireland. He and his brother operated a distillery in Bergen called Dowling Brothers Distilling Company. And then he was part owner and eventually, basically the sole owner of what is Waterfall and Frazier was Waterfall and Frazier Distillery was down in Tyrone as well. And he had interest in other distilleries around the county. And when he died, his wife, Mary Dowling, was executor of his will. Now, this was before women could vote,

Tom (11:33):
But she was a very shrewd business lady, and she was shrewder than her sons, I guess. I don't know. Anyway, she was the one that really ran the business. She took care of the, they sold some of the distilleries that, and they kept the Waterfall and Fraser Distillery and the Dowling Brothers distillery, but some of the others, the smaller distillers they disposed of. And when Prohibition came along, of course, everybody had to close down. Tyrone at that time, was almost as big as Lawrenceburg. It had a city council. Wow. It had a mayor, it had a police department. It had lawyers and doctors and all that kind of stuff, hotels and restaurants and whatnot. But Prohibition destroyed it because nearly everybody that lived in Tyro worked in distillery. Oh, wow. And is that because, yeah, there were Waterfront Frazier, Cedarbrook, the tb, Rippy distilleries, the Distill on the Hill, which is D Wild Turkey.

Tom (12:53):
I mean, that's where they were working. And so with Prohibition, there was nothing for them to do, just wiped them out. So Ty Tyrone pretty much disappeared with prohibition, but Mary Dowling didn't. Okay. She hired one of the beams and moved her distilling operation from Tyrone to Juarez, Mexico. Oh, okay. Yeah. And somewhere I have bar trays and stuff. It says Dowling DM distilling company. Well, that's Dowling in Mexico, distilling company. Interesting. And she had to have a Mexican involved in the ownership, which he did. And the beams operated the plant, I can't remember which one of the beams, but one of the beams operated the plant for, and they made whiskey in Mexico during prohibition. In fact, they were still making whiskey, I know, up until the 1960s in Juarez. But then that didn't. All she did, she had taken whiskey from the Dowling Distillery down in Tyrone and brought it up to her house. And it was stored in the basement in Gunnysacks. And revenue agents from Louisville trailed some suspected boot Lakers, then followed them from Louisville down to Lawrenceburg, and they pulled up at the Dowling house. Well, anyway, make a short story of it. There was raid. Oh, wow. And they seized all of her whiskey. Wow. And I don't know how, there was over 400 gunny sacks with whiskey in it anyway, quite a bit. Yeah. Some arrests were made with criminal charges and everything.

Tom (15:08):
She was charged. But her conviction was overturned on a technicality, basically. So she didn't, no time for that. But she brought suit to get her whiskey back. And she lost in the district court in Lexington. She lost in the Circuit court in Cincinnati. And she filed for a petition, a petition for rid of Sir Harari with the Supreme Court. But it turned it down. But she went clear to the Supreme Court. Wow. Trying to get her whiskey back. She was apparently quite a character. I don't know. I don't, but she was very prominent in local civic affairs and did a lot of good work with the women's groups here in town particularly. They were very active in health concerns, child health. And it was before there were all the kind of service you have now. We didn't have an EMS or anything like that. We had a horse and buggies back then.

Tom (16:22):
But they had a nurse that they hired the women's group to go around the county to survey the county for health concerns and TB and things like that. And she was very active in that. She had sons and daughters. One of them was Will Dowling, was a local attorney and very successful, served in the state legislature. One of her daughters, Mary Dowling, married my great-uncle Jim Bond. And they lived in the house right next to the Rippy House, which is now a funeral home. Gave his funeral home. And I used to go see Aunt Mary cause Oh, Jim died in, I don't know, in the forties. And she lived outlived him quite a number of years. And she was a real character too, like her mother. Yeah. So the two Bond and Lillard family and the Dowling family were at least united in marriage. Right next to them was the SLE home. And WB SLE had worked at Cedarbrook for Judge Mcbriar, and he was quite a successful businessman locally. He started his own distillery called the WB SLE Distillery. And it was out right off the bypass. It was located on the Hammonds Creek out there. And the quality of his bourbon was quite exceptional. His daughters lived in that house, which again, has become another funeral home. I don't know when they sold it. Probably in the early sixties.

Drew (18:27):
Is that what I saw on Broadway when I was driving down? It said SLE Funeral Home. Yes. Okay.

Tom (18:35):
SLE Funeral Home. And that was the WB SLE home. His daughters, some of his daughters were living there when I grew up here in town. And I used to go over there. They had a cook who was a wonderful, she made the best white cake with caramel icing that I ever ate in my life. And she made that for my birthdays occasionally for me.

Drew (19:04):
Very nice.

Tom (19:05):
So I had had a particular fondness for Josephine, and I got the recipe for her icing from one of the sample descendants. And I was glad to get it. But then if you move on out, SALs main, I guess the next house that's associated with bourbon is my grandparents' home, which is e w Rippy. And my grandfather was a distiller after prohibition. He organized the Rippy Brothers Distilling Company, was president of the Distilling Company until it was sold.

Drew (19:53):
He continued to work there after they sold it. Is that correct?

Tom (19:56):
No, his son, who was also e w Rippy. Oh, okay. Worked there after it, when he sold it, he retired. He retired. He was racing thoroughbreds. They were never very good, but he loved horses. And he did a little building around town and farming, mostly farming. He had farms scattered around all over the county. The first horseback ride I ever had, he took me, he was still riding, and I was little. And so he put me up in the saddle with him. But he was a very exceptional person, very generous. His wife was the granddaughter of WF bonds, although bonds and rips got, that's how they got tangled

Drew (20:55):
Up.

Tom (20:57):
And the house that they had there was built on some land that had been given originally to her mother as a wedding president by her Father W Spa. And there were a lot of bond children, and every one of them when they got married, got a gift of land somewhere. And sometimes they was land in a house, but they were all up and down South Main Street. And then right next to it was the Johnson Home. My uncle Bob Johnson built a distillery on Salt River across from Four Roses. It was later on by jts Brown and eventually by Wild Turkey. But it's been deserted. And the building caught on fire. But it was built, it was called a Bonds Mill distillery, because it was built where there was an old mill water with a water wheel and everything. And the distillery was built in the original building where the water wheel and everything were. And it was a very quaint little distillery. It bottled old Joe Whiskey for a long time. You may know of Old Joe. Yeah. And one of its famous brands was Joe Lewis Bourbon. Do you know who Joe Lewis is? I'm

Drew (22:36):
From Detroit. I know Joe Lewis. Yeah. Yep.

Tom (22:39):
Yes. Well, they bottled Joe Lewis whiskey and Baed it. And they had a little pair of boxing gloves tied to the bottles, and that was part of the promotion for it. And Four Roses was built originally by jts Brown's Sons.

Drew (23:05):
Okay.

Tom (23:05):
Yeah. Did you know that?

Drew (23:06):
Yeah. Didn't know that. Yeah. And it was actually known as the it, the Apprentice Distillery first, or the old Joe Distillery?

Tom (23:14):
It was the Apprentice Distillery.

Drew (23:16):
Apprentice Distillery. Okay.

Tom (23:17):
Now, I don't know how, but, and maybe you do. I don't know. Yeah. But Agnes Fiddler Brown ended up with title to the distillery and the mansion behind it.

Drew (23:39):
Okay.

Tom (23:39):
She had married one of the brown sons, and they were all in the distillery together. But how she ended up with it, I don't know.

Drew (23:52):
And this is the, what is now the Four Roses Distillery?

Tom (23:54):
It's now the Four Roses. Yeah. That's when it opened. After Prohibition, she'd gone in to make an arrangement with the distiller here called, his name was Graz Hawkins, a descendant of Granville Bourbon Hawkins.

Drew (24:15):
Okay. Love the nicknames. Yes.

Tom (24:18):
Yes. But he was doing old show down on Gilbert's Creek Road, and he was going to do old show at what's now the Four Roses Distillery. And so he moved in and they organized a corporation. They sold stock in it. I have a certificate for preferred stock in it. That's worth only what the papers were. But the problem was Grants hadn't registered the trademark. And another distillery, I think it was somewhere up in New England, registered the trademark and bought a trademark action against him. He lost, so they couldn't do old Joel there anymore. And she sold the distillery. And then it went through several hands. Seagram's had it for a long time. And then of course, it ended up when Seagram's was basically dissolved. Yeah. It ended up with a

Drew (25:28):
Japanese

Tom (25:30):
Karen brewing copies. Yeah. In Japan owns it. Now,

Drew (25:33):
It's interesting to see how, well, what I find fascinating is the jts Brown name bouncing from place to place, because it was actually, was it at the distillery where Wild Turkey is now? There was a distillery there. Did they do? Was that called jts Brown Distillery for some

Tom (25:56):
Time? Oh, yes. But after, when my grandfather sold it, he sold it to the Gould brothers from Cincinnati. Okay. Now, they were a Jewish family. They had some connections with Sheley. Okay. And Sheley, my grandfather had a contract with Sheley to sell it Whiskey. And Old Rippy back then was all made and bottled for Sheley. Basically. They bought it and they had the jts Brown name when they bought it. And it became their major distillery then. And they bought several other distilleries. They bought what had been the Bonds Mill Distillery. They bought what had been the Dowling Brothers distillery, I think, up in Bergen. I mean, they owned several distilleries. Yeah. But yes, it had been jts Brown. It was sold then by jts Brown. And it became Wild Turkey then.

Drew (27:08):
Okay. Yeah. It's interesting because there still was a Rippy Brothers distilling at the same time that there, that Wild Turkey came in. Is that not because who was making Ezra Brooks?

Tom (27:22):
Ezra Brooks was being made at Hoffman Distilling

Drew (27:25):
Huffman Hoffman distiller. Okay.

Tom (27:27):
Okay. And Hoffman was a Rippy brothers. My two of my great uncles owned and operated it. That was Ezra Fiddler and my uncle Robert, or Bob Johnson.

Drew (27:45):
Okay.

Tom (27:45):
Bob Rippy. Yeah. That was on 44. Julian Van Winkle was bottling down there until, I don't know, the early two thousands. Okay. Sometime, I'm not sure exactly when he closed 2001. 2002. That's

Drew (28:04):
The Hoffman, the Hoffman Distillery you're talking about. Yeah.

Tom (28:06):
Okay. Down that. But he was bottling his product down there. But they had, that's where Ezra Brooks started.

Drew (28:17):
And so in following the jts Brown name, which comes out of the George Garvin Brown, brown Foreman family, and now has kind of popped off into its own space. Now it's with Heaven Hill, I think is who has it now. But it's interesting that when you sell off something that has your name on it, how all of a sudden legally it becomes tougher to put out another product because with your name on it. Because Ezra Brooks, the story I hear behind that is that Brooks wasn't really a family name or anything like that, but the Ezra did come from the family.

Tom (29:00):
Well see, I see it. My uncle Ezra was one of the partners in Hoffman.

Drew (29:07):
And so it's his name. And then Brooks, any idea where that came from?

Tom (29:11):
Well, they were looking for something other than Fiddler. I think so. I mean, just something is a little snappier than Fiddler.

Drew (29:24):
So this area, when you were young, it must have just been a landscape of distilleries.

Tom (29:32):
Well, all this area back here was farmland.

Drew (29:37):
Okay. So all those old distilleries that went at Prohibition, the buildings just disappeared over time, or?

Tom (29:43):
Well, the only ones that reopened what had been the old apprentice plant as now Four Roses. Yeah. The Rippy Brothers distillery, the Still On The Hill, which is now Wild Turkey and Hoffman. Those were the only three that opened up. Now, my Uncle Bob basically built a new distillery in what had been the bonds mill, grain mill. But that was the new distillery wasn't what, it didn't exist before Prohibition.

Drew (30:17):
So what was Lawrenceburg like then when you were growing up? Did it feel like a place that had lost its history and was kind of just

Tom (30:29):
No, it hadn't lost its history because so many people were still living that had grown up before World War I.

Drew (30:40):
Okay. Yeah.

Tom (30:42):
I'm a little bit older than you are. Okay. So I, I knew people who had been in World War. I knew a lot of them. And although there was a vast difference in the community, for one thing, it was much smaller. The people who had been in the distilling business were still pretty well to do. And they lived mostly along South Main Street. I think a closeness would comes from being a very small community.

Tom (31:21):
I mean, everybody knew everything you did for one time. And if you were young, you had to be very careful. You didn't get in trouble. Cause if you got in trouble, your parents found out pretty quick. But to remember too, when I was young, at least I could walk down the street and not see a car. I might see a horse in buggy. But during World War ii, all the plants were under the supervision of war production board. And they were all producing stuff for the federal government. Well, all the distilleries here were too. Yeah. They were producing alcohol for the military, and it was used in explosive devices and whatnot. So it was really quite different. You had mail delivery twice a day. Let's see, I think it cost a penny for a postcard and 3 cents to mail a letter. Wow.

Drew (32:26):
Now you just look at dollar bill and stick it on there.

Tom (32:31):
Well, and it was very different. Yeah. Oh, well, the least when I started the school, Monday was saving stamps day. And the kids all brought their money. And you bought saving stamps after you got so many saving stamps, you turn your saving stamp book in and get a bond. And that was, say Monday was saving stamps day, everything was rationed. And they had scrap drives. And a lot of people were still using an ice box. Do you know what an ice

Drew (33:17):
Box is? You know what an ice box is? Yeah.

Tom (33:19):
Well, my grandparents had an ice box, my one set of my grandparents did. And the iceman would come a couple of times a week and deliver blocks of ice so they could keep their ice box cold. And it was just a different time altogether, a very different time.

Drew (33:42):
You were living almost in this area than some elements of the really early 20th century in terms of if you're still seeing horse and buggy going down the road.

Tom (33:55):
Well, there, because there are several reasons for it. One of which was they didn't make any cars during World War ii. The second was, even before World War ii, a lot of people didn't have a car. And finally, gas and tires were rationed. Now, my maternal grandfather was a physician and he got a special allowance. Cause back in those days, he didn't have an emergency management system to take people to the hospital. And a lot of the medical practice was done at their home. And he was the youngest doctor in town during World War ii. And he was a World War I veteran, but he was the youngest doctor practice in medicine here. Cause the very young ones were in the military. And it was very different. You didn't see TV news cause there wasn't any such thing. Yeah. We had our equivalent for, it was called Path News. Do you know what that is?

Drew (35:18):
I've heard the name before, but I'm not sure.

Tom (35:20):
Okay. Oh, path News. Oh

Drew (35:22):
Yeah. Okay. Kind of like a radio or a film reel at the movie. It was

Tom (35:28):
A film reel at the movie. And that was the closest thing you had to a TV kind of news. If you listen to the news on the radio, which most people did back then, that was the way you got your news, that reading the newspapers. But people didn't have so many diversion. Kids didn't play on cell phones and iPads and whatever. They got what you played with was your imagination a lot. And you made, or at least we made our own toys out of whatever it might be, tobacco sticks or whatever. But you made your own toys. And we did a lot of things like we go hiking. One of our favorite hiking spots was called Panther Rock, which was out in the county. There were all kinds of stories about the Panther back

Drew (36:39):
Tried to scare you into not going up there.

Tom (36:41):
But it was basically where there was a cliff limestone cliff and it was shear. And at the bottom, there was a cave and a stream that ran out of the cave. And the water was cold and clear. And we'd camp at the top and you could go down and, well, I guess you could drink the water. We did anyway,

Drew (37:15):
You're still here to tell about it.

Tom (37:16):
So

Drew (37:20):
Yeah.

Tom (37:20):
Yes. It was very different than the kind of life you have today.

Drew (37:26):
Yeah. And you kind of had to invent your own own fun. And there's the part of me that goes, all this technology is making us smarter, but in a way, it's making us less what refer to as street smart, not actually getting out and doing things. You're just book learning basically off the internet.

Tom (37:54):
Well, I think it's, my feeling about education is that it should stimulate your thought. And rote learning doesn't do that. And I think with the technology, what we're getting is more rote learning and it doesn't stimulate the brain cells very much.

Drew (38:19):
Well, and the other thing is, nobody really wonders anything anymore. We all can get the answer in two seconds off of Google.

Tom (38:27):
Well, you get an answer, not the answer yet.

Drew (38:30):
The answer. Yeah, exactly. Okay.

Tom (38:32):
And there is a difference.

Drew (38:35):
So thinking back to the stories you may have heard about Prohibition and what was going on there, we hear these fantastic tales of, they always focus on the Mafia and Al Capone and all that sort of stuff that was going on. What were some of the stories that were more local that you would've been hearing about here?

Tom (39:02):
Well, warehouses at the ripping plant down in Tyrone were robbed by, there was basically a large group of people, and they packed up trucks and everything and headed off with whiskey. Now, I think they caught them on their way to Chicago. But you did. I mean, there were cases of that sort of thing. I told you about Old Joe. Yeah. Back when I was working as a lawyer, I had a situation where I had to look at the reasons for the expulsion of a member of Congress. There was a case brought to expel him, actually, I think he resigned, but his name was Langley. And he was from Pikeville, Kentucky. And he was accused of violating the Volstead Act, which is the Prohibition law. And so I was reading that he had lost in the lower courts, and there was an appeal to the Supreme Court. And I was reading the records and briefs of the case, and there's a transcript of the testimony in the trial court. And I'm reading along and I see Graz Brown Hawkins is a witness. He was president of Old Joe. Oh, okay. We talked about him earlier being in partnership with Agnes Fiddler out here. But I knew the Brown, I knew of the Hawkins family. And in fact, they were close neighbors of ours down in South Maine. And so of course I was interested. Well, it turns out that among the whiskeys, he was alleged to a bootleg. Oh, one of them was old Joel.

Drew (41:17):
Okay.

Tom (41:18):
So wow. That's why Gras was called to testify. Oh, wow. So yes, there were some situations during prohibition where people in Anderson County were involved in one way or another, some of the things that were going on. But I'll tell you, one of the SLE ladies, and that was her name was Allie or LA is what grandmother always called her. She was a delightful person. And she said, I could have told them Prohibition wasn't going to work as long as I had a percolator. Oh. I said, she was saying that in jest, I think. But

Drew (42:00):
She was right. But yeah, we just need her up talking to Congress and get that all figured out. Oh, listen,

Tom (42:08):
I'll tell you. She could have said some straight. All right. Yeah. I, I'm avid crossword puzzle worker. And I started working crosswords with her younger sister, Todd Bartlett, who was one of WB Sal's daughter as well, because she subscribed to the New York Times and would do the New York Times Sunday crossword. And she'd bring it up to my grandmother's up here and they'd all work on it together. And I get where I like to work on it with them. And that got me started. I continued to this day, I subscribe to the Lexington Herald Newspaper because it has the New York Times crossword. Oh,

Drew (42:59):
Okay. Keeps the mind going.

Tom (43:02):
I think it helps. Yeah,

Drew (43:03):
It helps. Yeah. Absolutely. So are you shocked at all that after, because bourbon went through a long time period where it really was just selling to the loyal customers, but it really had lost its popularity and is now everywhere. It's like, it's just exploding right now. Does it surprise you how much it's caught on again?

Tom (43:32):
Well, I think it's like everything else. Liquor goes through cycles and this was one of the cycles. And right now it's very good for the bourbon. Yeah. How long it will last. I can't say, it was hard for me to believe, because I grew up in a bourbon family, that it was every ever out of fashion. I learned to make a Manhattan from my grandmother because her bridge group, which included a couple of the sap girls, would have bridge every Friday afternoon. And after Bridge was over at five o'clock, they had Manhattans. And so I was the bartender for a while.

Drew (44:34):
And how old were you when you were?

Tom (44:36):
I can't remember.

Drew (44:37):
I

Tom (44:37):
Can't remember. I can't remember. But I started in distilling business quite young.

Drew (44:43):
Yeah.

Tom (44:45):
I was not quite three when I first went to work out at Rippy Brothers in Warehouse a of what's now Wild Turk. There's a picture of me and I probably had it on the diaper still sitting on the barrel run. Yeah.

Drew (45:08):
Wow.

Tom (45:09):
Getting

Drew (45:10):
An early

Tom (45:11):
Start. This was, yeah, this was be before War, war two, so Wow. Yeah, it was early.

Drew (45:16):
Yeah. Yeah. So do you still have relationship with Wild Turkey? And did you, through the years

Tom (45:25):
It's been off and on. Yeah, it'd been off and on. Yeah. I like to keep a good relationship with all the bourbon people and that include, I loved Al Young. I don't know if Al Young at all.

Drew (45:40):
And he was my first interview and he died a month after that interview. And I had so many more questions I wanted to ask you.

Tom (45:47):
Well, Al Young was a wonderful person and one of my favorite people in the industry. Of course, he's with Four Roses and Yes. And I have some friends that work at different distilleries around. I have, well, I have a number of other friends that work out at Four Roses. I keep up with it and I try to taste different bourbons. And there's some I like better than others, I'd put it that way.

Drew (46:21):
Do you have a current favorite?

Tom (46:26):
Well, I think Dollar for Dollar. It is kind of hard to beat this Wild Turkey 1 0 1. Yeah. Dollar for Dollar. But Heaven Hill has one out that I think is pretty good. And they make the Henry McKenna. The McKenna is an excellent bourbon. So I, yeah, I say I taste them all. And we're fortunate. We've had a lot of very interesting people come to the old house, including members of the Beam family and others to talk to us. And I really enjoyed it.

Drew (47:14):
Yeah. Yeah.

Tom (47:15):
I really

Drew (47:15):
Have. So just talk about that a little bit. Where did the idea come up to start doing these bourbon sessions? To save the house?

Tom (47:25):
Well, when we bought the house, we didn't buy it to live in, but we wanted it to be rather a community asset. So we've been trying to do things to promote it as a community asset. And this was outro of our desire to, because it's a beautiful place. I don't know if you've been inside it or not. I'm

Drew (47:54):
Really looking forward to it.

Tom (47:56):
It's really, it's a work of art. It's not just a house. The stained glass in it is beautiful. The woodwork is unbelievable. I mean, even the door hinges Take a look at 'em. Yeah. Okay,

Drew (48:15):
Okay,

Tom (48:16):
Okay. You won't see door hinges like that anymore. Well, and you won't see doors that tall anymore either.

Drew (48:25):
And this was built in the 1870s, eighties,

Tom (48:29):
1880. It was fied in 1888. It cost $85,000 to build it in 1888. Wow. So that was a lot of money in 1888 and translated into today's dollars. It's in the millions, but it is a beautiful place. The woodwork is a lot of mahogany, and you couldn't replace it now you can't get the Philippine Mahogany anymore. And then there's cherry and walnut and oak as well, and the plasterwork. And when we bought it, a lot of that plaster was on the floor.

Drew (49:17):
Was it, how long was it out of the Rippy family hands?

Tom (49:23):
It was sold in 1965. And my father had some interest in buying it. And my mother said, you could, as long as I have a staff as big as repay, and that puts the kibosh on the idea of buy the house. She said, now I can't, there's no way I can take care of that house in that yard.

Drew (49:51):
When he built that house, TV must have been in one of his very prosperous times then.

Tom (49:57):
Well, I understand it. It didn't all get built in the day. Yeah. There were times when they had to stop cause there wasn't any money. But shortly after he finished the house, I know he was bankrupt again.

Drew (50:16):
Wow.

Tom (50:17):
And that was back, I was trying, because there was a whole idea of having a distillers association. He was part of the group of distillers who put the idea together and was on the group that drew up the proposals for it along with Colonel Colonel Taylor. He disappeared. He wasn't part of it. And the reason was he didn't have any money anymore. Oh, okay. Yeah. Now I have somewhere, a letter he wrote to the Bank of Springfield, Kentucky, wanting to settle these debts with them, with B barrels of bourbon. He had burrows of bourbon, but he didn't have any money.

Drew (51:05):
Okay. Well, that was the bartering chip in probably 50 years before that time.

Tom (51:11):
Well, his father supposedly had bought a farm out here on the highway. Now it's now a big subdivision. But yeah, he bought it with whiskey.

Drew (51:27):
Yeah.

Tom (51:28):
That was just was currency. Yeah, that was currency.

Drew (51:33):
So yeah, I am looking forward to seeing this. How long have you been doing the bourbon sessions?

Tom (51:38):
Well, we started about, I guess three years ago. Four. Okay. We had to take a break because of the virus. Yeah. But had, as I say, we've had some very good people. We're trying to do other things as well. We had a concert pianist, common play in the house, and it was a benefit for Alzheimer's Association. And we're trying to do things

Drew (52:06):
For the community as well,

Tom (52:07):
For the community as well. Yeah. We just had the church that's nearby the Christian Church, which is right there. They had a picnic on Milan, I guess, last weekend, I think. And so we're trying to make it available to people.

Drew (52:25):
That's great. And that's being from Detroit originally. And around that city, what, still standing there from when it was, they called it the Paris of the West back when the automotive industry was really kicking up. And they built all those beautiful art deco buildings down there. And I think people go down there and they don't get a chance to appreciate that because they're busy on their way to this or that, or they're come to town for some other reason. But towns like Louisville, Cincinnati, the architecture of those towns from that late 18 hundreds era is to me some of the most beautiful, some of the most beautiful designs, and also a lot of detail in those designs. So when you're talking about that house being built that way, it really was the way people were thinking back then is let's build something grand. Yeah. Have changed times change. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I appreciate you taking the time. Well, you're more than welcome. I hope it's useful. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, thank you.

Drew (53:38):
If you want to learn more about the bourbon sessions and seeing the TB Rippy Mansion, just head to tb rippy home.com. That's rippy spelled R I P y. And for whiskey, lower show notes, transcripts, hoodies, tasting kits, or links to whiskey lore, social media, just head to whiskey-lore.com. And if you're enjoying these interviews, make sure to tell a friend about whiskey lore. The interviews help the show grow. I'm your host, drew Hennish. Have a great week. And until next time, cheers. And SL Ofk Whiskey Lores a production of Travel Fuels Life. L L C.