Ep. 6 - The Dant Family of Log Still Distillery

Transcript

Drew (00:15):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, drew Hamish, the Amazon bestselling author of Whiskey Laura's Travel Guide to Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon. And this is an encore interview that was recorded back in 2019 with the members of the legendary Kentucky Distilling Family, the Dance. Now, if you read My Travel Guide, this is a distillery that does not show up in the book because it is brand new. And at the time of this interview, Wally Charles and Lynn Dance were just breaking ground on this concept they had for Log Still Distillery in Yosemite, Kentucky. And if you don't know where that is, it's near New Hope. And if you don't know where that is, it's south of Bardstown. And then if you know where Maker's Mark is, it is actually to the west of where Maker's Mark is. So it seems a little out of the way, but it's actually kind of nestled in there for a great day trip away from Bardstown.

(01:23):
And in this interview, I had a unique opportunity not only to learn about the history of the dance family who ties into Kentucky history with the Beam family and really goes back to the origins of the industry, but I also got to talk about New Hope, which was a town that I had been drawn to by a man named Mike Monahan who works with a preservation distillery in Bardstown. And he and I were chatting back and forth and I said, I really would like to do a podcast that talks about the effects of prohibition on a small town. And he said, well, I live in a town called New Hope that had a bunch of distilleries pre-prohibition, and they all kind of disappeared. And let me introduce you to this guy named Wally Dan, who is looking at bringing whiskey back to New Hope and bringing a distillery back to that area.

(02:25):
So this was a really fun opportunity to get in there at the inception of a distillery. And if you go to that area now, you're going to find that amazing things have happened. They've now got a visitor center that's open for tastings. They also have an amphitheater where they're holding concerts. There's a bed and breakfast. They still have much bigger plans for the grounds, and they've released a six year old Bourbon two gins. Those are under the name Monks Road, which you'll hear a little bit more about the history in this particular episode of where the family was. And Monks Road is the road that leads to the distillery. They have another whiskey or set of whiskeys called Rattle and Snap, and those are sourced Tennessee whiskey. So definitely come a long way since this interview. And so I may suggest to you that a good place to start before listening to this interview is to head to Whiskey Lore season two and listen to the last two episodes of that season because they're all about the story of New Hope.

(03:37):
And we'll give you some background on that. But you can also listen to this interview the way it is, and you're going to learn a lot about what I was learning about in doing the research for this because I learned a lot of stuff from this interview that helped me do further research to get those episodes completed. So that'll give you the opportunity to hear the story. This is going to give you the opportunity to meet the people behind the brand Log, still a brand that hearkens back to the distilling process used by Wally's great, great, great, great grandfather, Joseph Washington. Dan who distilled by using a hollowed out log. So walk back in time with me to late 2019 and my conversation with Wally Charles and Lynn Dan at the very beginning of their dream called Log Still Distillery. Here's Wally Dan.

Wally (04:38):
Our main product's going to be a high Rye bourbon, which is what the Dan family kind of started with originally was a high Rye bourbon. So back in 1836 when they began their production, it was and has always typically been a high-rise bourbon that they've produced. Now our families, the D Family sold out of this distillery that we're sitting at in 1940, and then the original JW Dent Distillery sold out in 1943. So our family at that point in time were no longer owners of the distillery company that bore their name. And so the JW Dan Distillery was then owned by First Armand Hammer and his company called National Distillers, which was a company of his. And then he sold this facility here and the JW Dan brand in 1953 to a company called Sheley. And you've, you've had to run across them. Yeah, I guess in your goings on. And then Sheley eventually sold back to United sometime, I think in the early nineties, which was then a few years later, United became Diagio. Right. But the Dan brand at that point in time in 1993 was then sold to Heaven Hill Distillers, which are here in Bargetown. So Heaven Hill owns the brand today.

Drew (06:14):
So how tough, or is it something you even want to pursue in trying to get that name?

Wally (06:21):
Yeah, yeah. I mean, no Heaven Hill, they've been gracious. We've had conversations, we've had a number of conversations with that as they tell me they're in the brand building business, not the brand selling business. And they've done a fantastic job with a number of their brands that they have. If you look at what they've done with Old Fitzgerald and Henry McKenna and some of the old distillery distiller names out there, they've done a nice job. And in bringing that around and bringing those brands into a national basis. All that being said, JW Dance, a bottom shelf brand today, not sold in many states, not sold in many quantities. And so if there's an opportunity for us to work with the Shapira family, open to it. Let me just put it that way. Yeah. Okay.

Drew (07:08):
Very good. So are you thinking of resurrecting any old names that are family names of, because this was, pronounce it for me, is it

Wally (07:22):
The, okay. I

Drew (07:23):
Knew I was going to get across.

Wally (07:25):
So, so this used to be have a post office here. So there used to be the Yosemite Post Office and associated with the Yosemite monastery that's about a mile up the road. And so I guess that's why they originally called it Yosemite. And so we are potentially looking at other names that have been in our family or in our family tree for a while in terms of brands that we could possibly sell some stuff under. But everybody would go through all our trademark process and make sure that they're all clean and able to use, right? Yeah. But we're actually in the process of discovering ourselves what we want to be called when we grow up and actually do something right. But our company today, and I don't know if you know the name, but it's called Log Still Distillery is what we're calling this place.

(08:24):
And that harkens, again, back to the original JW Dan, who started out distilling in a hollowed out log. And so he's one of those old, what they call the old time distillers, that actually they didn't have a whole lot of money to rub between their fingers by any sort of copper. And so he started out in a hollowed out oak log with tubes running up through the top of it. And so that was his column still and what they used to manufacture consistent product. And so prior to him having any money from making it, that's where he started. And so we called our company that to harken back to that history and legacy of our family being here. And quite frankly, we thought that it was a pretty cool little name for us to be able to utilize and riff on and make sure that our D Family heritage was included.

Drew (09:20):
And this is the point where I take the microphone and hand it over to Charles dance. And so you're going to hear him loud and clear. And from here on out, I apologize, I'm going to be off in the distance just a little bit, but you should be able to hear me hopefully without too much trouble. And I started off with Charles by asking him about his recollections of New Hope.

Charles (09:43):
I know there were a lot of distilleries in the area. I grew up half mile away in the old mansion. We used to come down, walk the track, visit my grandpa at the distillery, eat supper, and then go do the rounds with him. And always remember riding by through St. Francis, they had the old Blair Distillery and I guess the dance station where the JW Dance Distillery started the runs when I was a child. That's all I really remember about that. But I remember this place, long Steel Distillery very well as a child, grew up playing, running, climbing the Tire. New Hope was a great town to grow up in. Everybody knows everybody waves at you when you go by. Just a lot of great childhood memories. And I know a lot of people around here depended on the whiskey industry to feed their families and to relax at night when you got home.

Drew (10:40):
Yeah. Did you hear any stories of people who who've left and had then come back to say, oh, maybe I should come back here or that left, and they sort of feel regrets that they had to to go?

Charles (10:57):
Well, I know everybody bottom line someday wants to come home and ain't no place like home. And to me, I've lived in eyesight of this distillery or this tire. I live four or five miles up the road. There's no place like New Hope Kentucky. I'll never want to live anywhere else. Just a lot of great memories. And what of childhood? Riding horses running in the creek, fishing, swimming, and had one of the biggest playgrounds around. It was quite a bit of fun jumping the train. We used to have a train run through and we'd jump the train, ride the New Hope or just had a lot of fun back in the day in this area. And I wouldn't call any other place home.

Drew (11:44):
Is there still a train depot?

Charles (11:47):
I think there's one in the works, but I'm not for sure.

Wally (11:50):
We're going to build in an old replica of the original train depot that was down here. And New Hope had to stop at one point in time as well for us, if you look back at the history of New Hope, just like you said, there was three distilleries located here in the Yosemite, and then New Hope had 1, 2, 4 that were actually up into the town in New Hope. And so prior to Prohibition, all of those guys were kind of going full board. Now, from a production perspective, they were all pretty small, but once Prohibition hit, there was no more action in any of that part. If you look, go into the old church up there, which is St. Vincent DePaul and look around at all of the stained glass that's actually in the church, and actually in some of the other areas around the church, they've got names associated with people that have donated parts of the pieces of that church. And a number of them were distillers, right? Charles Charles's family on the Masters inside was an old distiller as well. And so when you're able to see all of those families and begin to draw Lineage back into the old distillers, a lot of it was all centered around that distilling operations that they had here in this part of the county.

Drew (13:29):
So farming all those industries as well would've been

Wally (13:33):
Hit. So farming, farming and distilling. And then New Hope had probably at that point in time, probably two banks, I believe from at least what I was told anyway. And none of that exists today. They had a number of hotels in that area. None of that exists today. Sulfur Springs, you can talk about Sulfur Springs, right?

Charles (13:56):
Yes. It was a big old house out back in New Hope. People used to come for miles just to soak in the water and drink the water. They thought it was good for your skin, good for your body if you got a big house. Now they're talking about renovating and making half of it a bed and breakfast in the near future. The farm just sold here about a year ago. The gentleman that owned it died and sold it at auction. But

Wally (14:21):
Didn't one of the presidents come? I want to say, I thought I heard this is just all folklore, but I thought a president had visited Sulfur Springs at one point in time.

Charles (14:31):
He may have. I know it was at a highly sought after place to go see Go Bill Roosevelt back of their day

Wally (14:37):
That had actually come here.

Charles (14:38):
But I'm about you. I can't drink su water. I can't get past the smell. Yeah, there's a lot of good childhood memories. I grew up right below the New Hope Church. My grandmother lived there. I went to school at St. Vincent DePaul for three years until it shut down, I guess, lack of funding. And not enough kids went on, moved to New Haven, St. Catherine. But I've grown up in this area and loved it my whole life and don't see any other place in the world that I would call home. And I'm just glad that Wally, Dan and the Dan families decided to come back and open this place up. You wouldn't believe the people in this area that are just the smiles on their face and the good feeling they have about something coming to New Hope. It's the best thing that's happened in a lot of people's lifetimes and everybody's just excited to see it all come together.

Wally (15:38):
Yeah, it was funny, we had somebody who had visiting, one of his uncles came in today and he was just talking to us about how many people this distillery employed at one point in time, which is around 200 in peak season, like Christmas season when you're doing all the gift packaging and things like that. And from a balling perspective. And then he said to see that all go away and see the financial impact that has on the families that were living here at the time. And of course, my grandfather was one of those. He worked here. He worked here all his life. And then his job was now up in Louisville, Kentucky. So eventually he moved up to Louisville, Kentucky and leaves and never to return. And so when you think about that impact just on my family alone, and then just replicate that over 200 families, right? With all, and we're good Catholics around here, we had big families in those states. And so then you begin to see that there's nothing left here for your kids to go work on, right? Yeah. So you know, begin to replicate that out. And you can see the ultimate dying off of a community that was once a thriving, thriving place.

Drew (16:57):
It started to shrink around 1910 it seemed, was a critical year because it seemed like there was downsizing going on, merging of companies, Taylor and Williams company merging with

Wally (17:11):
Cold Spring. Cold Spring.

Drew (17:13):
So I know it's very interesting that this area was very Catholic. Bardstown was a diocese, correct, one of only four in the entire country. So that influence being here, and then to see a state who made so much revenue off of whiskey actually have their own prohibition happen in 1918, a year before the country jumped into it. How can you fathom that

Wally (17:52):
Not having lived back in that era? You've got to think certainly what was happening collectively as a country at that point in time. And so to the extent that, you know, had a number of confluences that I think were going on back in that time, not the least of which World War I believe was beginning or in the throes at beginning at that point in time. So you had a country that was focused on what was happening there and you know, had a whole suffrage of movement and relative to probably organized crime and all of this other stuff that was probably going on that lent itself to creating an environment to where you would have prohibition occurring. Now, I would tell you that if you look and with the interesting thing is if you look out past prohibition and look at the state of Kentucky, for instance, and look at all of the quote wet and dry counties that were created coming out of that who wanted to have alcohol in their counties and who didn't want to have alcohol in their counties, and you draw yourself back to that original map of the wet and dry counties, you would naturally, Catholics never gave up alcohol, thank God.

(19:16):
And so if you look at the number of counties that were probably highly either urban and or big Catholic populations, you had those as the designated wet counties in Kentucky. Whereas the rest was a dry county, probably predominantly by the Protestant religions, Baptist probably being one of the biggest denominations outside of the Catholic religions here. And so it's been a big part of their faith that alcohol's not a part of that. And so from a voting block perspective, they had the voting block. And so it's not surprising that it happened, but with those were consequences to those actions, consequences of losing jobs and families having to move and leave Charles's family where they had to leave this area to go find work. I know my great-grandfather at the time was in the distilling business, and from 1920 to 1933, when he got back into it, again, you can look at the historical record of him trying to incorporate everything under the sun to try to make ends meet.

(20:34):
He was a own a carpet company, a furniture company. He started a garage for vehicles, just everything to try to make ends meet for his, what was then 13 kids, I think he was trying to take of, so a lot of miles to feed, a lot of miles to feed. So you begin to look at that and you can begin to get a feeling and an understanding of the impact that those decisions had on people. And not only that, but we had large whiskey stocks here, so you can read in the historic record anyway, a number of distilleries that were having barrels stolen out of them that were burned and the stock was not to be found because somebody had made off with it to go supply all the underground bars that were going on that time and organized crime really kicked in. So eventually it's just like, let's not draw akin to legal marijuana.

(21:37):
But when you legalize marijuana, it becomes out in the open and they're free. And when you don't have it, well, guess what? You have cornbread mafia here, I guess that started growing marijuana. So if you look cash crops wise, right? Tobacco, marijuana, all of those sort of things probably were a result of some other action that was taken earlier because people need to live. So now you got to figure out how you're going to live. So I'm going to live it on the legal side, or I'm going to live it on the illegal side. And if you look at what's happened to rural Kentucky in rural Tennessee or rural West Virginia where you know don't have a whole lot of manufacturing or jobs anymore because it's all moved offshore or it's all concentrated in the urban markets, people turn to other means and alternatives to live and all of those aren't necessarily good. Yeah. Now makes sense. Now get off my political soap box.

Drew (22:43):
Well, it is interesting, I mean, because sometimes we hear about prohibition, we don't really think about the overall repercussions, and this area went through two depressions because it had to first go through the loss of its industry, and then when it got to 1929, it had to join in with another one. Even there was a hope at that point that whiskey production might come back, but still there was this need to try to live somehow, right? What amazes me is that more distillers who were legit distillers didn't find a way to be take that knowledge and make money illegally. They all just hung out and waited and tried to do other things because they were, I think at the heart of it, they were business people and they always wanted to have that business back.

Wally (23:42):
If you, again just hearkening back to our history, I think everyone felt at some point in time it would come back. I know we had Charles, I think Charles mentioned it, but there's also some mention in the historic record about some of the Beam family moving up to Canada because they were allowed to distill up there in Canada as opposed to the United States. So you had a number of those folks that moved off to do other things. I think this plant here was actually turned into a ball bearing plant made ball bearings for a period of time. And that was probably more war related, but they made ball bearings at one point in time to at least get by and do something with the ground that they had here. The interesting thing is, if you really kind of look at the distilling industry and how it evolved to where it is necessarily today, a lot of it had to do with rail.

(24:45):
So most of the distilleries were on a rail line. Well, the reason they were on a rail line is because you could bring coal in to power the plant and you could bring all the grains in to make your stuff. And so with the advent of the interstate system and trucking, you didn't need the rail lines anymore. So because all of that was going into the big cities from an interstate perspective and all of those major lines were flowing into there. Well, from a distribution perspective, you want to be near where all of the distribution's going on. And so if you take another attribute of why rural Kentucky is the way it is, you can say it's the downfall of the rail lines and associated with the interstate lines. And so you just begin to lay out all of these different fact patterns out there that would begin to say, Hey, we're going to concentrate all our time, energy, and effort around where the big cities are and where industry is.

(25:50):
And logistically speaking, that's where it's cheaper. And as opposed to out here in little old New Hope or Yosemite, it's just because it was cheaper to do and produce up there than it would be here. I guess I'm just pontificating about what I consider to be the downfalls of our rural markets today and the concentration, if you will, of practices that lead to that downfall. And I think that's the reason I'm back here is from a legacy perspective, what we want to do is bring back our family name into this bourbon bake making business that we've been in since 1836. And I'm a sixth generation and the five generations that have gone before us have been in that industry. And so now for us to be able to bring that back and then bring it back into a rural community, that meant so much to my family, my parents and their parents.

(26:57):
And to be able to bring back good paying jobs back into this community, bring back tourism into this community, because Kentucky's done a great job with the bourbon trail and promoting that, having people from the outside visit us much like you would see in Napa out in California. We replicating that here on the bourbon side and being able to bring dollars back into this community to really reorient ourselves to being a thriving little community again. And I think those are the two primary reasons that I came here. Legacy and community and building a community again. And so that's why we're doing this.

Drew (27:42):
So have, as I understand it, you have the original plans.

Wally (27:48):
Yeah. So we actually have a government bonded book that dates from 1938 through 19 50 50, maybe 4 53 54. Yeah. And because all warehousing and production was overseen by the federal government every few years, they used to come out and inspect and say, okay, what was your production capability? What was your capacity? Where did you steal and hide stuff away from us? So we can't get taxes. And so they had to come out with these books that were showing the distillery layouts and what the production capability was, and the storage capability was on every single distillery. And we've got that for this place as well.

Drew (28:40):
So are you going to try to recreate it?

Wally (28:45):
No. So it would be too hard In part of this property is actually in a floodplain, and so under today's rules and regulations, we can't build in a floodplain right now, where you're sitting today is the old bottling house that was built in 1953. And so we're going to take that and convert this bottling house into our actual distilling operation. So we'll run our mash tanks and our column still and barreling all up in this facility that you're sitting in today. We'll have an homage, if you will, to our old distilling site, it's ruins down there and clean it all up, have people that want to walk through it safely, be able to walk through it safely, be able to tell what these old buildings were, they were actually down there, but technically since it's in, some of it's in floodplain, we can't do anything necessarily with that.

Drew (29:48):
No old barrels buried out there somewhere, are they?

Wally (29:52):
No, but we probably have 18 inches of glass somewhere sitting old glass piles from the dump here a long time ago. I can tell you that much. Wow. It would be nice to find some old aging barrels, but I'm guessing that those would be really musty smelling right about

Drew (30:14):
You'll never know. You never know. So go through the generations then that you remember the six. So that I kind of get a handle on that, so I know. Yeah,

Wally (30:27):
The original was a Joseph Washington D. Right. And so he began distilling in that 1836 sort of timeframe. At least that's what legend holds anyway, and we're sticking to that legend. And he would've been 16, by the way. Yes. I think that would've been the math that works out correctly on that one. So he had a number of children. One of those was a WW dance. So following his retirement, his son, which was a William Washington dance, became president of the JW Dan Distilling Company. And that would've been, I think in the late 1800 when JW retired. Now he had a short tenure because he actually died of typhoid in 1910, and then one of his brothers took over that business. So he's my, and then he had another son, which was another WW dance, which was my great-grandfather. And so my great-grandfather and Charles is, so he's fifth generation.

(31:43):
I'm sixth generation. So Charles' grandfather would've been brothers. So that's kind of how we're all related here. And so WW Dan had 13 kids, 10 of them lived to adult age. And so Lynn, who is our chief operations officer here for the company, WW Dan would've been her grandfather. So one of his sons is her dad, but j W's oldest son was named John Wallace, and he's my grandfather. And then of course he had the oldest grandchild, which was my dad, John another John Wallace. And I'm the third, and I've got a fourth that's followed behind me. So now all the pressure's on him to have a fifth.

Drew (32:36):
Nice. Let that family line

Wally (32:37):
Go. Right. So I'm the sixth generation, and then I think one of my children will actually be involved in bringing in the seventh generation into the distilling business.

Drew (32:49):
So I saw, as I was looking up information, I saw that in 1934, the Timkin roller bearing company bought it, but had it under the name Danton Head Distillery and that,

Wally (33:05):
So yeah, so Timkin was here before. Okay. So prior to prohibition ending, Timkin had this facility. Oh, okay. And so Danton Head bought it from Timkin. Okay. Which is really the way of that work now, I think owned a piece of it. So I think there was some financing done by Timkin to Danton Head and Danton Head, which was Will Dan, which is my great-grandfather he was a part of. So he was the Dan in the Danton head. Okay.

Drew (33:35):
And then there was a George, Dan that was the plant manager, it said, which I thought was interesting that it said plant manager because it sounded like they weren't making whiskey, they were manufacturing something.

Wally (33:48):
Yeah. So no, I think George, Dan was, so this is really kind of a convoluted history. So originally Cold Springs here eventually became Taylor Williams, and then he sold it to, it was then a beam and head company, right. And then Prohibition hit Timkin came in, and then Danton Head came in, Danton Head went through some financial investor issues. There's a couple lawsuits that you can actually look up historically and see people suing each other. And this would've been like 1938 sort of timeframe. So he opened this place in 35, 38. They all went into something bad happened to where they're suing one another from an investor perspective. They ended up selling this plant here in 1940 to Armand Hammer. Right. George, Dan, who was president, at least the George Dan, I know George. Dan was the president of the JW Dan Company, which is about six miles away from here going towards St.

(35:01):
Francis. So past New Hope, another three miles, basically, that was the original JW Dent Distillery. And that they were bought in 1943 by Armand Hammer, because this was the newer facility. The brand new facility, basically because there was a number of these new built all these buildings, a lot of them were built in that 35, 36, 37 timeframe. They took production of the JW Dan brand, shut that plant down, and moved all production over here to Yosemite. And so George was president of that company in 1943 when they sold to Sheley. And then another of the brothers became president just to carry on the lineage. But I think it was really a name only. So Sheley was running the whole show at some point in time. It

Drew (35:55):
Was interesting doing the research for this talk by looking at limestone branches. Yeah. Family Tree. Because Minor case was the owner of Yes. Taylor and

Wally (36:08):
Williams. Right.

Drew (36:09):
And he had had Mc Beam prior to that. And so when you're doing all of this stuff, I know the thing that I love about the whiskey industry, whether it's in Scotland or it's here, is that there, it's not like any other corporate situation that you see, it feels so less competitive and so much more like a network of different companies that are there to help each other out or are not aggressive towards each other. So is it interesting in looking at your history and seeing that the Yellowstone brand that was synonymous with this

Wally (36:49):
Location,

Drew (36:50):
Location and facility is with them, but there's family that's tied over from here to there. Right. And how all of that kind of works together. So do you interact at all with Steven Paul Beam over there in what you do, or?

Wally (37:08):
Well, they've been, I mean, really instrumental in helping me get to the right people to help put this place together. So Steve and Paul have offered their help and continue. We just looked at an email today right from Steve and continue to help us and give us advice on, here's the things you should look out for, here's the things that you should move forward with. Yeah. I, no, I think, and Lynn just came out of Moonshine University last week, and one, I think one of the comments that Lynn made to me today was somebody got up on their soapbox and was talking about, Hey, we all support one another in the business. This is not about who can beat out who sort of atmosphere. It's really about how can we help our brethren, because if we raise the boat, we all raise it together. And I think that's probably, and a lot of that might have to do, do with how we are all interconnected in many respects from a familial perspective. I mean, it's surprising that I have five fingers and five toes sometimes when I look back at that cousin tree of ours,

Drew (38:31):
There's what they say out of the original Kentucky Bourbon Trail, all but one had a beam running it. Oh,

Wally (38:38):
Yeah. At one point or another. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was a beam here. There was a distiller at one point in time.

Lynne (38:44):
Yeah. We're actually double cousins with the Steve and Paul.

Drew (38:48):
Are you?

Wally (38:49):
Yeah. Yeah.

Drew (38:50):
Okay.

Lynne (38:50):
Their grandmother married our grand, it's a bowling dance.

Wally (38:57):
It's a bowling Dan Dan community. Yeah. Yeah. So our

Lynne (39:00):
Grandfather, my grandfather, his great-grandfather married a bowling Mary Estelle Bowling, and Mary Estelle's brother married my grandfather's sister, Kathleen Dan. So

Wally (39:13):
Literally when we say we've got five fingers and five pillows, we mean it, keep

Drew (39:19):
It all in the family. Goodness. All right. Let's see. So I understand kind of the communities around here. I know New Haven isn't that far from here. It's probably, I mean, they had distilleries there as

Wally (39:35):
Well. They did, right, right.

Drew (39:37):
They shut down around the same time too. Just assuming that that probably only added to the pain.

Wally (39:44):
The pain and misery. Yes. That was going on

Drew (39:46):
Right in this area. When did the railroad stop running through here? Do you know

Wally (39:52):
Charles? You'd know that better than me, but it was probably in the

Charles (39:56):
Mid seventies, I'm

Drew (39:57):
Guessing. Oh, was it really?

Wally (39:58):
I'm mid eighties. I think it was still running through the mid eighties because my grandmother was right over here too. So they were still running through here probably, but that it was right around the time after I graduated from college. So don't mark me that old yet.

Drew (40:16):
Would they have been shift shipping whiskey back in from the twenties, thirties, forties, fifties? Because what I'm trying to figure out is there were stops at just about every distillery on that rail line. And then if we're going through depression and there, and we've had prohibition at the same time, why run a train? Because you're not going to have that much traffic going

Wally (40:42):
Through. I think this spur, and correct me if I'm wrong, ran into at least Lebanon. So as part of the l and n line, Louisville, Nashville Railroad at that point in time, I think, which is today's csx, so there were some plant operations that were still going on probably in some of the bigger town areas. So this spur here that this one's off of ran into Lebanon, and I don't know if it went on from there, it went on in Campbellsville or something like that. But I'm just thinking there was probably at least some manufacturing plants. I know there's been some man, a lot of manufacturing has continued to go on down in at least the Lebanon market. So at some point in time, L and n, it not worthy anymore from a line perspective and decided to shut it down. And now the nice thing is that we do have an operating rail line today because the Kentucky Railway Museum is in New Haven.

(41:48):
So that railway museum today runs trains, I think from New Haven up to Boston, Kentucky, not to be confused with Boston, Massachusetts, but up to Boston, Kentucky. And so we are currently working with them on making sure that that line runs from New Haven down here to Gase so that we can actually incorporate a working train depot that would allow for tourist their tourists to come visit Open Distillery. Nice. So I think we would be the only working distillery on a rail line with a stop. Right. And so that'll be part of our traction out to our campus out here, is having that incorporated into our experience.

Drew (42:43):
What would you consider New Hope is the town? Is it a post office box? Is it at this point in its existence?

Wally (42:54):
Well, I still refer to it as a town. I guess in my mind, I think when you go there, at least from what our memories were from when we were growing up, it was a lot bigger back then. And so if you look at the way the town is today and the number of folks that have actually moved out, if you look at the layout of the streets, you can see some semblance of order that they tried to order the town and in a certain way and had cross streets, but a lot of those houses are gone. That used to be on all of those corners up there. And to the extent that we can be a part of building our community back, I think that's what interests us the most, right, is because once you bring back commerce, then people come back and people follow commerce.

(43:52):
And so if you can bring back commerce into this market again and give people a reason for them to stay, and they see that there's a future, I really believe that we're going to see some great growth out here. I mean, because in reality, we're six eight miles away from Loretto, Kentucky, maker's Mark. So from a bourbon trail perspective right there, we're a mile away from the Travis Monastery here. We're two and a half miles away from New Haven and 15 miles away from Bardstown. So another major part of the Bourbon Trail. And so I think there's a number of reasons for people to come and visit with us. And as long as you give them a great experience and a place to not only have adult beverages, and that's what we're all about, is having adult beverages. But we're going to build a campus here that's going to be attractive to families. So this, we're going to have a 14 acre lake out here, so we want people to come and stay fish picnic. We're going to have a live music event, space Restaurant Visitor Center to really kind of make this a special place plus bed and breakfast, we'll have an event, space area for weddings, potentially corporate events, things like that.

Drew (45:15):
Beautiful. Yeah. Very nice.

Wally (45:17):
Yeah, we're pretty excited about it.

Drew (45:19):
Bring it back.

Charles (45:20):
Bring it back. Very

Drew (45:21):
Good.

Wally (45:22):
And I don't know if you had a chance, if you didn't see it when you walked in, but I didn't know if you noticed the water tower, right? I didn't see the water tower. So that water tower was, I think, constructed in 36, 37 sort of timeframe. And so that was kind of our initial first pass at saying, raising our hand and saying, Hey, we're back. We're here. And I think you're going to continue to see that as we move along. Nice.

Drew (45:48):
Yeah. So how long do you think, I know it's hard to put a timeframe on it.

Wally (45:52):
So she tells me that we're going to be doing it end of first quarter of 2021.

Lynne (45:59):
She tells him that because he told her that.

Drew (46:03):
I said, it's a chicken

Drew (46:06):
Egg sort of thing

Drew (46:07):
Going on here. Yeah.

Drew (46:10):
We won't hold it. You're not being helped to it. Do it. Do it. Right.

Wally (46:16):
That's right.

Drew (46:17):
Right. Perfect. Only other question I have is about the Little Town, or the reason I was asking about New Hope as a town is because there used to be a distillery in Ku Hollow. And is, what is ku, does it have a post office box? Is it just a township or something? Or what would you consider that to be?

Charles (46:36):
Don't blank or you'll miss it. It's no town. It's just a back road. Few houses, maybe 10, 12 houses on Coon Hollow Road. Yeah, just an old back road. And I don't even know where the distillery runs are on that road, but definitely not a town. Yeah.

Drew (46:57):
Yeah. We were know Dan

Lynne (46:58):
Kentucky. Was it town?

Drew (47:00):
Is it? Oh, is it? And it's not anymore. Yeah.

Wally (47:02):
The interesting thing for me is that there were two locations for Coon Hollow. You can look it up historically and see. So the original first location was where Charles is talking about, which is kind of that what they call Coon Hollow Road, which is where my mom was born and raised off of Coon Hollow Road. And Charles's wife was born and raised off of Coon Hollow Hollow Road. And so somewhere back in there, and I think it was kind of in that first part when you first go back on a Koon Hollow, that distillery was originally located, if I can remember what my great-grandfather was telling me at one point in time. And then they actually moved it to the other side of New Hope. And I'm not sure why that was done, but I believe it was because there was a fire at the original distillery location. And so then he picked up and moved and built it somewhere else. And I think that's the historic information that I remember at least reading about. But that's Koon Hollow, and if you ever want to go back Koon Hollow, yeah, we can always drive you back Koon Hollow Road.

(48:12):
You can actually get to it to the back of the distillery property that way.

Drew (48:17):
Well, it, it's funny because I was talking to somebody yesterday, he wasn't getting what I was meaning be, I guess, because I'm the only one that's interested in this sort of thing. But Peerless one, they used to be one of the biggest in the state at one point, but they were in Henderson, Kentucky,

Wally (48:33):
Henderson, Kentucky.

Drew (48:34):
And so I asked him, I said, are there any ruins of the old, or is the building still in existence for Peerless and Henderson? He said, there's no distilleries in Henderson. And I said, no, like a ruin or it is just a left a no, no distilleries. Is there any distilleries? Huh? No, there's no distilleries in Henderson, Kentucky. I'm like, ah, asking,

Wally (49:02):
I know over in, I want to say over in the Lexington area, Versailles area that they were doing some excavation around some of the old distillery sites over there. I know. Doing the same, same four Roses

Drew (49:18):
Wasn't right across the street from there. What's a distillery that they have the foundation of at least anyway?

Wally (49:23):
Right. And if you can go into Castle and Key and kind of see what they've done, and I think, I can't remember who the other one is right now, but a lot of them are using some of the old equipment, like an old ferment, fermentation tanks, which probably I think more looks like a pool, right? Than necessarily a tank, but you've got some of that. And so we've got the same thing down here. You could go just down over the hill, less than 200 yards, and you'd be on top of what the foundation of the old fermenting tanks. And you can see those. They're well made out. And actually, if you do a Google map on our location and then just zoom in, you can actually see some of those outlines of the fermenting tanks that were down there. And

Lynne (50:12):
That's where the floodplain is, so, okay. That's part of the reason why

Drew (50:16):
I've, you'll take people down there.

Wally (50:19):
We can't really build on anything. Right.

Drew (50:21):
Well, the other one that's interesting is the old Crow, if you go down Glen's Creek. Yeah. Because now it's Glen's Creek Distilling. Distilling.

Wally (50:29):
Right.

Drew (50:30):
But they said, well, you can walk out there, just don't go in any buildings. But it's so interesting to see that the way that, well,

Wally (50:39):
If there's another one that's literally right outside of New Haven, which is Atherton Ville, and Atherton had a big distillery owned by the Atherton family at one point in time. Which guy? It's called Atherton, but Seagram's owned it as well. But it's a big brick building. You can't not miss it. It's the only place, literally, it's two miles outside of New Haven and it's going towards Hodgenville where President Lincoln was born and raised. But right in Atherton, you can see a existing brick building that used to be the distillery there. And then behind it used to set a number of brick warehouses, and they're all gone now. But that old distillery is now repurposed for making bourbon barrels. Right, okay. And so it's called Zack Cooperage. And so they're actually making barrels for the bourbon industry. And if you walk through there, what you can do, they'll give you a tour and things like that. But it's interesting to see what the layout of it used to look like and how it's being repurposed today. Yeah, it's pretty building from the outside. You go, okay, what was that? It looks like an old distillery, right? Yeah. And then there we've repurposed it for the barrel making. Yeah.

Drew (52:02):
It's interesting seeing the pictures when you see what these old distilleries look like and there's not a lot of pictures.

Wally (52:09):
So I think we've been fortunate that for whatever reason, U of L archived a number of photos from here of the operating distillery in the 1960s. So there were actually aerial shots at that time. We've got, there's about five or six of them that actually take you through different views of the distillery. But it was an operation. You can actually see the boilers that were working at the time and the lake that was operating and the steam that was coming off the lake, because that's where they used to take and cool down the water coming off the boilers. So it's a pretty cool site then, you know, can overlay that with the ruins, and then you can begin to see, and our plans, then you can begin to see, okay, well here's what this building was used for hills'. Right. So it's pretty cool little thing.

Drew (53:04):
Right. Well thank you so much for

Wally (53:07):
No, perfect, drew. Thank you very much. Yeah, yeah. Thank

Drew (53:09):
You. Yeah, this is great. Like say it's fun. I've been on 50 plus distillery tours. This is the first distillery tour I've been on where there's not really a distillery this year. So all in good time. Yes. It's

Drew (53:25):
Also the only distillery where instead of whiskey to sip, I left with some fresh eggs, which was very nice of them to do for me. I did get to ride out to Koon Hollow with Charles and Lynn by the way. And we did look for some of the old distillery locations. I actually uncovered 10 distilleries in the area, but unfortunately not much to see beyond a foundation and the remains of what we saw over there at Log still. If you want to learn more about Log Still Distillery, then go to log still distillery.com. And I want to thank you for joining me in. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any of the new interviews when they come up. And until next time, I'm your host, drew Hamish. Cheers. And SL Whiskey Lords of Production of Travel Fuel's Life. L L C.