Latest / The Scotchy Bourbon Boys / How A Mexican Distillery Turns Native Corn Into World Class Whiskey with Master Distiller Douglas French Sierra Norte on Cinco De Mayo

Transcript

How A Mexican Distillery Turns Native Corn Into World Class Whiskey with Master Distiller Douglas French Sierra Norte on Cinco De Mayo · The Scotchy Bourbon Boys

• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here to tell you about Whitney Distilling Company and the New Open Tasting World.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you are up for a farm class distilling experience on the Three Boys Farm in Frankfurt, Kentucky, or an out of the 12th tasting experience in New York, 455, 535, 45, 55, 15, 15, 12, 5, 6, 5, 6, 5, 6, 5, 6, 10, 5, 5, 10, 15, 5, 4, 7, 5, 6, 12, 45, 10, 45, 15, 55, 6, 5, 6, 5, 6, 15, 5, 5, 5, 6, 10, 15, 5, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 7, 5, 4, 5, 5, 4, 7, 5, 4, 5, 10, 11, 15, 45, 15, 55, 55, 55, 55, 15, 15, 50, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 55, 15, 19, 15, 15, 15, 15, 19, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 19, 15, 19, 15, 19, 15, 19, 15, 19, 15, 19, 15, 19, 15, 19, 15, 19, 15, 19, 15, 19, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 000, 12, 12, 000, 12, 12, 12, 12, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 000, 12, 12, 000, 12, 12, 12, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 12,000.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to another podcast of the Scotchy Bourbon Boys.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Tonight we are leaving the states.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Tonight we're crossing borders.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Tonight, the Scotchy Bourbon Boys are bringing you one of the most unique whiskey experiences we've ever had on the show.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: We are celebrating Cinco de Mayo.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't just whiskey, this is culture, history, agriculture, and distilling all colliding in a gat glass.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: The way we know how, by bringing in world-class whiskey and world-class guests.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Tonight we welcome, of course, this is our whiskey without border segment.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: We welcome the whiskey doctor, Randy Ford.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, Randy.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then also, we are Doug French, is the master distiller of Sierra Norte Distillery in Mexico.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, Doug.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad to be here.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Bob, I only know you as Bob, so you can introduce yourself.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: What is your last name?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And what exactly do you do?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so my name is Bob Murphy, and I import and distribute alcohol in uh Florida.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: I started off with Mescal and then moved into tequila, and I carry uh Mexican whiskeys now as well.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's that is that is awesome.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've not up until this point had a Mexican whiskey, so I was excited.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: I, you know, I read up a little bit about what Doug is doing, and it's fantastic.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a lot of stuff that craft distillers here in the United States do that he does very similar, you know.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that's gonna be really cool.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna say, if you think bourbon and whiskey starts is just it in starts and ends in Kentucky, or it starts and ends in the United States tonight.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're just gonna blow your mind.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: So hang in there and I'm getting ready.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting ready for this.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And Randy, I'm gonna let you start off because you know, you're the whiskey doctor and you've got questions, and I really think you can take the lead on this to start off tonight.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_06: You know what?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_06: I really appreciate you guys coming on.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: The the whole industry balances between everybody like somebody like me, who's a drinker, and you have to go from us to retailers, and the retailers have to have somebody like Bob to get the product to them.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then you have to have that relationship, and then they also have to have the relationship with the distillers to be able to arrange that.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_06: And so we've got the whole gamut here tonight, and I really do appreciate that.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: This whiskey comes as one of the first I ever had out of Mexico.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think of Mexico is whiskey, but I think we all think of it as tequila.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I shared some of this with some friends uh last night, and they said, I get tequila on the nose.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'm curious though, uh we do we do in the US do some bourbons in that are finished in tequila barrels.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: But did you guys always produce whiskey or did you start with tequila?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we started with Mescal because I live in Oaxaca, and that's the denomination of origin that we're in.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: And one point I realized that the corn was origin uh originated in in Oaxaca 7,000 years ago.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: And that it has an exceptional history that nobody really knows, and a lot of the corns are in danger of extinction.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: So part of the program was to grow corns and revive as much as we as we can so it doesn't go into extinction.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: And what to do with the corn is make whiskey.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: What better use can you do?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: Because they they have the market for tacos and tamales and all that already set up and working.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: So part of our program is a social program to give work, to create new jobs so people can work here in their homes and in their businesses here and not have to immigrate to the United States to earn a decent living.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: So we support the farmers and the folks in the distillery so that they can work here in Oaxaca and lead uh proper life for themselves and their families.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, whiskey's a big part of it now.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: We see that in Kentucky too.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of small towns that basically are alive because of the whiskey business, the bourbon business.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: They wouldn't be there.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well I just think that's wonderful.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here in Ohio, I just this past weekend, there's a a whiskey brand called Black Diamond, and they they they started at the c at a college and they set up brewing a brewery and a distillery there to teach students how to distill and brew.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then when you start brewing and distilling, they're need they started producing and it started to catch on.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: So they started to do more and more.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so then they got together.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason why it's called Black Diamond is because Black Diamond's a coal is coal, and they go into all the old run-down, depressed coal mining towns that almost are non-existent, and they buy up some property, remodel it, whether it be a restaurant or they bought an old brewery, or they buy an old tavern and they remodel it, restore the building and put it in there, and then start serving the the beer and the whiskey.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: But the people who run it, they sell it back.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: They sell the it's kind of like they sell the business, which is to the people who are running it, and they use all the people in the town to have the business.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: So they're proud of what they what they're doing.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And just like that's exactly what you're doing.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: You you have all the workers are local, the corn's being grown local, and everybody has a sense of community, and they're proud of what, and you get so much better workers that way, don't you find that?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yes, I do find that.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: I have workers that have been with me, my family.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: My mother started the social program long before me for 50 years ago.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I have uh a worker that's been with me for 54, the family 54 years, the one since I moved to Mexico.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: Workers have been there for 26 years, down to the newest workers, probably about five years into it.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: They feel proud, they feel a sense of accomplishment, and so they're happy to do their job, and uh they're good about it.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: I totally agree.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Doug, how did you uh when and how did you su start C Norte?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Why you know what did when did it actually begin in your in your mind?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, well 2014.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: I was I was trying out different products uh to distill to supplement our mescal base because there was a flood of money and and the stories being uh pushed into the mascot faster than the sales were building.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: So I was looking at other things to do, and I I distilled some rum and decided no way to make any money on that.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so I went to the whiskey, and that's when I really dug in and saw that the different colors of whiskey of corn that were actually a reality down here, and started buying the corn and started experimenting with uh whiskey.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: I I made 42 recipes before I decided on the final recipe.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: So it took a little bit of time, and in 2016, we had we actually had brown spirits from the barrel, the whiskey brown spirits, so we can actually start presenting it to the marketplace.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: Now you brought up an interesting point.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: Where Bob comes in and his people.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: You brought up an interesting point.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: You said the corns.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: So you've got many varieties.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: I noticed this bottom look looks like a rain.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: Do you want to tell us a little bit a little bit about the different corns that are in this bottom?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: The uh the corns, we found out that depending on the color of the uh corn, it would give a different flavor.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: So we we started separating out well what was standard stuff that you could buy, and the mark was white and yellow, and a little bit of the black.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: So we started making corn with that, and we started growing to try and build seed bank.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that happens with the native corns is you get a cob and it's not all white, it's not all yellow, it's not all red.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's uh very frequently multicolors.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: So you have that we separate by hand as much as we can for a single color and separate in different batches the colors.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: And after and it comes to a point where you can't separate it.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: So you've got a pile of corn that's got all these colors in it, and we're kind of like, what do we do with this?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: And we just kind of put it aside, put it aside for for several years, a number of years.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then finally I said, Well, we've got so much of this, well, let's just make a batch and see what happens.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: So it has basically, you know, 50, 100 different shades of different colors of uh corn in it.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: And and so, well, what are we gonna call it?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's like a rainbow, you know, it's just got it's got every color in the rainbow in it.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: So so we called it the the rainbow corn.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: I've had your black corn whiskey.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think Bob, you I think I got some of the red corn.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so there are a number of other flavors.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: There are uh varietals with corn whiskey.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's a white corn, a yellow corn, a red, a purple, a black, and then the rainbow.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: And there's also a green that we were talking about uh before the show kicked off that is notoriously difficult to grow, but does quite uh does taste quite good.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like that Doug's people are working on growing some green corn to make a green corn batch, which would be great.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_06: Now, pardon my ignorance, I come from a family that's farmers, but we never grew corn.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_06: One one great-grandfather grew rice, and then my other grandfather had a dairy cow, a dairy farm.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: But this corn can be eaten just like corn prepared and eaten just like corn on the cob could be, correct or not?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: Well, um corn on a cob is a basically a hybrid, a GMO special, so that you have a wonderful, sweet, uh tender, tender corn.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: The native corn is a little bit tougher.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's not that that soft, and it's not that sweet on the on your taste.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: So basically it's grown to full maturity to where you have the hard kernels.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: You let the kernels mature, you don't eat it when it's still young.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: Although you can, and they do.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: It depends, you know, that's what they've got available.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's what you eat, the uh esquitas and the lotes, which is corn on the cob, or the kernels cut off when it's young, and you can you eat it like that.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: The rest of it is pretty much all grown to maturity where it's hard, hard kernels, and then you break it down for that, like into tortillas, into tamales, tostadas, gorditas, all that sort of food.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: In our case, into a mash.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: We make a mash out of it, and then distill the mash.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_06: So that would be like what we called the feed corn then.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe we would have fed the animals.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, or or even if you want to come down to seed corn, it's it's that's that's always taken to now, but but seed corn is treated diff differently during the growing process, if I'm not mistaken, correct?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm not sure what you mean.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: When you pick it, yeah.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: And the the rest of the corn.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm gonna dry corn.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: I was referring to if you're growing corn for seed.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's a there's a little different process of what you do to the corn so that you can replant it.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh no.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's pretty all we have to do is uh pick out the biggest, best kernels, and we do that by sifting the corn so that the smaller kernels fall out, and the bigger, healthier kernels are what we use for the seed.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: So what is what would you what would you say the terroa down in Mexico, opposed to in the United States, like in Kentucky, what what would be the main differences to the corn as far as how it's how the growing seasons and where where it's where you're growing it, you know, right now, where you're located?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh every everything's different about it.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: The the soil, the the minerals in the soil.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: We can only grow during the rainy season because there it's a very arid climate here and there's very little water.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: There's a scarce city of water, so there's virtually no irrigation possible.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: And and so all the conditions are different for farming than in Kentucky.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: So it's now Doug, when you when you grow the corn, is the corn grown in rows like what we would expect in the U.S., or is it sort of more wild and it's sort of just free-flowing corn that's grown out in fields that are you know mixed with other things like squash and beans and so forth?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a very good question.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'm glad you asked it.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: Traditionally, the corn has been grown with corn, squash, and beans, are three things that are grown together with the corn.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: And each of them has a different nutrients and that are pulled out or put back into the soil by the by the plant.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: So they work together to make a healthy plantation and dirt so that you don't have to use much fertilization or preferably none if you can get a keep your good balance going.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what the indigenous people did for for so many years.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: So it's standard to have crop where you we they they plant in rows.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: We plant in roads.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody plants in rows the corn.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: And they plant the squash and the and the with it.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_02: The beans will grow up the stalks, so that gives you uh beans, and they hold the stalks up.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: The squash has big leaves, so they keep the foliage down so the weeds don't grow too big, and they're all productive.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: The squash is edible, the beans are edible, and the corn is edible.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've seen I've seen a lot of farmers rotate, they'll have rows of agave, rows of corn, rows of squash, and rows of beans, and some take nutrients and some replace.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I I've heard you know, the sort of the Mexican cult refer to the corn, beans, and squash as the Trinity, where it's it's able to do a you don't have to do any soil remediation.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: The the the soil sustains itself by growing these three crops in it.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's what's been found historically over time.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's correct.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so your thousand of years.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: So your conditions also, like you were talking about the difficulty of farming.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's much, it sounds like it's much, much more of a challenge than to grow corn than it is to grow corn in the Midwest based off of you have to know, and then your seasons can't always be consistently the same, right?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Some some years it's really dry, and others you have a little bit more moisture.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's correct.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: We had three years of drought, and like most of the corn crop was lost.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: So we're on the edge of our seat to see what's gonna happen this year.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: Do you find do you find that the different colors of corn, like you said, some of them have multiple colors on the same stalk?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_06: But do you find that if you get a pure black or a pure purple or a pure red, that they grow better in different clients in different conditions, I should say.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_06: Not climates, but conditions.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_06: Like if you have a drier, a drier period, do you find that one of the crops will or one of the varieties will do better than the others?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: And if you have a wetter, maybe the reverse of that.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's so many different um factors and results from that it's it's hard to you know categorize it.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not an agriculture engineer, so all this stuff is by the seed of my past.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: And um of the things that's savier for us is that the native corns are a little bit shorter growing period than the TMO corns.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: So like our neighbors might lose their crop if there's a uh lack of rain for you know three, four weeks during the season, and our crops will hold on and and we'll get uh still get some yield out of it.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: So everything, everything changes between the types of crop and the which are the corns.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: We're having to revive the corns from extinction, which is a five-generation process, basically.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: You gotta do it to five Years before you have established a really solid seat bank.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that's what we've had to do with every single one of the colors.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: Our friend Alan Bishop is a distiller in the distilling business.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_06: And he was saying um on Facebook, he was talking about how the fact that you guys have literally had generations and generations and hundreds of years for these seeds to kind of develop and strengthen themselves and be basically the best they can.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_06: And that's that's a really cool thing.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's the history of Mexican agriculture, corn in particular, it's just phenomenal compared to what we see in our little 250-year-old country.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: Well, like I said, uh from 7,000 years ago.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we're we've been growing corn a little bit longer here, I think, than 250, but yeah.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: But it it it it it um whatever.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm uh it it I'm having a problem with the word, it just it came up naturally from from Mexico, correct?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's even even times when when Mexico was a little was part of the United States where they were growing corn here, you know, uh a long time ago.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: But now that we've talked about the agriculture, let's talk about what you're distilling on.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what what is your at your distillery, what what size, it you know, what kind of still are you using, or you know, and what what size and you know how are you going about it?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's not polite to ask a man you just met how big his still is.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_06: Go on, Bob.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_06: Sorry, I had to throw that.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, that's that's a good one.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh one thing that Doug has hit hit on, but uh his his distillery is essentially downtown Oaxaca.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: So anyone who visits Oaxaca, and there's a lot of tourists that visit, are can can reach out to the distillery and contact Doug or his team and get a tour.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the tour is pretty impressive.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: I I believe the the factory was uh was originally bought by your mother.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: Is that right, Doug?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's right.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: There's textile business with hand spinning and hand waving with the Sapotec uh indigenous people.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so you you can be in this distillery, and there's barrels along one wall, and there's like textile machines that are super old in another part of the factory, and then the a place to have some drinks, and then a bunch of pipes and sills and fermentation tanks, and then some people working, and there's another bottling areas.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's a garden outside that has uh a bunch of uh agave growing.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: There's a tasting room, barrel storage room.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a pretty impressive uh facility to go check out.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's not it's unique in every way, so it's a pretty impressive thing to see.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we built this steroid from scratch with one old small uh 60 gallon still and a hole in the ground to cook the agave, and we went from there.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: Now you use a box steel or a column still or combination?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's all pot steel.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: We use double distilling and pot still.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: The first distillation is in larger stainless steel vessels, pot stills are 5,000 liters, and the the second distillation is all in copper, and the copper stills are 350 to 500 liter uh stills.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah, that sounds um how much can you produce?
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_06: I'm sorry, go on.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good question.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_06: How much can you guys produce in a year?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: What's your what's your capacity?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: The the maximum capacity that we we've had, or the actual maximum production that we've actually done is a hundred thousand liters in one year.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's what about 9,000 cases?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I wish the market would uh revive and we'd get back to that.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: So you you distill on now.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: One thing being able to distill the mezcal, you basically do you don't have now.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Are you doing any aging in barrels of your mezcal?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, some people do that, or are you doing it pretty much right into the bottle?
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: I have, I believe from the verifiers, I have the only barrel warehouse that has uh 20-year-old barrels and 20 years all the way down to one year.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm doing it.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: Most people are not doing it, that they're not interested in putting the investment in.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: As you know, barrels are very cash intense.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: And in the whiskey, I think we're about to hit a 10-year-old couple of barrels coming into the 10-year range this year, and so I have barrels again sequentially being put aside all the time.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is the age on the rainbow?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: The the standard age on the basic uh Sierra Norte brand is two to five years old.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: For you for Europe, it's a requirement that be three-year-old to be called whiskey.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: And in the U.S., straight whiskey is two-year period.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: So that's kind of the the mentality for the the uh the US that it never goes under that.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, that's how high, what's the altitude of Oaxaca?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's about a mile high.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_06: Okay, so it's not gonna be as hot as say Mexico City or or some of the other places.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think Mexico City's that high, is it?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Mexico City's higher.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: Is it?
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: How'd you like it, Bob?
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_02: Was it pretty hot for you?
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: Is this hot season?
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's cool nights, hot during the day, you know, it's high desert.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's a it's an interesting climate.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and when you you know, when we're talking before about where the how the corn was growing or how well it can grow, you know, that's usually on the valley floor in Oaxaca.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: But as you go up into the mountains or over the mountain ranges that are there, you go into all these different climates.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so you'll see farmers growing literally on the side of the mountain, wild.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: It appears to be wild, but it's actually cultivated.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas in some places in Oaxaca near the central where Doug might be getting some of the corn, you'll see actual farm plots that you'd considered classic.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: But they're not large farm plots by any stretch of the imagination, a couple acres or a couple hectares, and that covers everything they need.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: But when you go up into the mountains, sometimes you'll see corn growing right next to squash, right next to coffee, right next to sugarcane, right next to agave, right next to every other creature and plant you can possibly imagine.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's in Oaxaca and it's all over the place.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it's an incredibly biodiverse area.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of hard to see because you're in the you're in, if you're interested in Oaxaca Central and you go out to see some polancas, like a lot of people do, you don't really have an appreciation for, hey, where in Oaxaca is all this biodiversity.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: It seems to be pretty dry and high desert here.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: But you go outside of that that main desert, which actually has a water table that's pretty high.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people have wells there, they get a fair amount of water from it.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: You you'll see an incredible amount of biodiversity elsewhere, and it's impressive to see.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_06: You know, we talk about sending whiskeys in that are aged in someplace like Scotland versus Kentucky versus say Texas or Florida.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_06: And we make the comment that, you know, if you get something from Florida or Texas or South Georgia and it ages three years, it it's got the same age as something aging like eight years maybe in Kentucky or maybe 12 or 15 years in Scotland.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_06: Is how does Mexico compare to that?
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: Being the high desert when you're at?
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: I I think we have an accelerated aging going on in the barrels.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: And uh we we age them for a certain amount of time in barrels, and we kick the point where we consider it's best to take it out of the uh the live barrels that I call and put it into dead barrels, where it'll quit getting more wood on it, and uh and they'll just like be a more neutral vessel, the wood, so the oxidation process it can go on and continue to let the whiskey develop over the years.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and also barrels being sorry, go on.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: What type of barrels do you do you use?
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: How easy is it to get barrels there?
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I use uh French limos barrels, I think that's how you pronounce it in English, and I I brought most of them myself from in containers from the Bordeaux and Borgonia area, where they were used once for for red wine, and and I have brought them to Mexico, so they're they're used barrels, and sometimes we have to rechar them, and most of the time the first two or three uses are just fine, but then we'd have to recharge them to pump up the uh well the charred layer, increase the the color and flavor from the the charcoal.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, you when you're when you're dealing with whiskey from Mexico, it's very similar.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: The rules, like you said, you're you follow the rules to be whiskey, but at the same time, when you're just talking about a Mexican whiskey or whatnot, there's not the rules of used barrels just like scotch or Irish whiskey.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can use those used barrels, which is, I think, very a smart thing because of the heat that you're dealing with in those areas.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you were using newer barrels, I really think not only would it be it would be infused by with too much flavor if you go too long, but also you would lose a lot more of the whiskey based off of the evaporation and the absorption of a new barrel that happens opposed to a used barrel where there's some whiskey still left in it.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a smart way to go.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's just talk about this this rainbow Sierra Norte.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is I found that I really like it.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell I could tell right away it's pot still.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Alan Bishop, who was the distiller that was on, I don't know if he's still on, but he's been a distiller at two different distilleries where he's been pot distilling.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: And this has a lot of flavor that he's always shooting for.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the corn that you're using is unique in the terroir, but also putting it out between two and five years, like you said, or using two and five year whiskies to do your blend, still maintains the flavor of the grain.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: The barrel hasn't influenced it to the point where it's overtaken, and some of those grain flavors are taken out.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: So my wife, who comes on the podcast from time to time, was planning on coming tonight, but she is a midwife and she is doing her job tonight.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: So she wasn't able to, but she tasted this last night and she was she was impressed, and she has a palette that is very picky.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I would have to say I do this is a very enjoyable whiskey.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's part of the uh the trick and part of the um the goal we have is to make something that is enjoyable to drink, and you can drink it all day long if you want to.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: We don't really never recommend that, but uh, but to give a mouthfill, uh feel and uh a soft flavoring on the palate is something that we work very hard at, which is done by slow distilling.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: We distill very slowly, and and that makes a and what I found with all the liquors that I make, um, mascal rum and whiskey, that gives uh the most enjoyable flavor for the for your palate.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: What what kind of what kind of wheat yeast do you use?
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: How do you get are you packaged because of the climate and it or are you actually capturing what how are you going about it?
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: Most of the yeast is is natural yeast that comes in from the atmosphere because our fermentation vats are open bats, and a lot of people don't know it, but there's yeast in the air almost everywhere that you are.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I like to have to go through a number of uh batches when we get started, so that a certain the the most dominant yeast will take over of the wild yeast, and that's usually a real good one and gives a good yield and good flavors.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_02: So it'll change a little bit for if we like shut down for a couple months and then start up again.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_02: We have to uh you know referment these yeasts to to develop and to prosper.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: How long is one of your fermentations fermentations?
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: How long?
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: The fermentations are three, maybe four days.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Randy, it's your turn, sorry.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_06: When I when I taste it, when I taste this, to start with on the nose, I get a what I say is almost like a white dog smell.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_06: A really corn forward, brand new, straight out of the still smell.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_06: When I drink it on the front, I get almost a graty flavor like I've gotten in some of the Irish whiskies that I've had.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_06: I get a really sweet, almost graty flavor on it.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_06: And I counts, you know, it's not super thick, but it counts very well.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_06: I don't get a solid hug like you get from some of the really high um proof stuff that we get out of Kentucky, but I get just a really nice, smooth velvety feel on my mouth and my cheeks.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_06: What kind of hug you get from your grandmother?
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, the grandmother hug.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_06: And then the finish is it's not super long, but it's long enough, definitely.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_06: I took that sip 35 seconds ago or 40.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_06: There's a lot of good stuff going on in this mom, in this class.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_06: I I will have you don't have any.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: I will have to say that I when you say you have a tenure, I would be very interested in somehow tasting that because that would be one of the things I love about distilleries and distilling, as you know, it's distilleries are journeys, and it's a journey that people take.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, when you put when you laid something down in a in a warehouse at when I first started, which was not, let's see, 28 years, eight years ago, really getting into whiskey.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: People were putting stuff in, and distillers were just starting out, or they were too had had two, three-year whiskey releases, and then they had bottled in bond, and then now they got a 10-year.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: And as you go, it's so much fun to follow that journey of a distillery.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: How they go about like you like what you're doing, they keep doing the you know, they might might have been doing two-year on something for a while, and now they're adding in three, four, and five year to change the to mature the flavor, still maintaining the grain.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, as they keep going and their their whiskey keeps or their stock, it allows them to do more things.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it's always so exciting to see that and to evolve with the person making it and getting to know it.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that's the status for me is if you started off at a distillery that just started off and you go five, six years, and they're just starting the stuff is starting to mature, and all of a sudden the person who was doing it goes someplace else.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that actually, in my opinion, changes the you know, the flavor of the whiskey, you know, meeting you and knowing what you did.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: And if let's say we come to Mexico and we we hang out and we share whiskey together and and other and your spirits, it it's what the whole industry is about.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's about the making of it, the community that makes it, the people who make it, the people who distill it, the people who sell it, the people who drink it, and the friends you drink it with.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that is why whiskey is such a great, in my opinion, spirit and has always been a great spirit because it's about people.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: Just my opinion.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this is very special tonight.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I'm gonna let him keep talking.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_06: He's I'm gonna let him talk, I'm gonna drink.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think I think that the rainbow corn whiskey is just a really grand representation of all the corn that comes out of that Oaxaca Valley, Guagan Valley, right there.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: And when you start drinking that one, if you're interested in trying the other corn varietals, there's the white, uh, there's a yellow, uh, the red, black, and a purple.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: And each corn has a different flavor profile that that is really truly unique.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like you're gonna miss it.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's right there.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: One of my favorites is the yellow corn.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: It just has this phenomenal mouthfeel, it's really good, smooth, uh rich corn flavor that's not overpowering, and it's just a phenomenal, phenomenal corn whiskey.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: The rainbow corn is also very good to me just because it captures so many different flavors and well-rounded and not sharp in any way.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it Doug, you said it.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like, and and and Randy acknowledged it as far as it's a 90 proof, it's not by no means a it's not by no means what would you say, a soft whiskey proof or a soft whiskey, but it drinks easy with flavor.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's not a lot, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't get too hot, and it's just something that is really nice to sip on.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it it would go well in some cocktails too.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: It does great in cocktails, and we find that some of these fantastic bartenders, mixologists, they're so good that they can blend the different colors and the different flavors and make unique cock cocktails, fantastic cocktails with all the different flavors.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's just amazing what they can do with cocktails, some of these guys.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: They're really very talented.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, have you found that I know you were talking about the Mazcal?
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: Aspect of not, you know, over the last couple years it kind of came on and now it's not, it's kind of peaking.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: Have you found the whiskey is still moving pretty good for the amount that you're producing?
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, well, for us, it's it's kind of uh a slow climb.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_02: Bob will tell you uh how difficult the market is.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: Right now, the market is way oversupplied with the all the large distilleries in the U.S.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: that have been pumping out production and have uh these huge rick houses.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's more barrels uh in the U.S.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_02: now than than there has ever been in in history.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a lot of tough competition.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of those guys are really good distillers.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_02: Some not so much, but uh we've got uh our specialty, which is the uh the uh natural colored corns and from Mexico.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so it has a place as a specialty niche product.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_02: And we call Bob and his guys our our warriors because they're on the the front of the battle where they have to uh sift through the crowd and find the people that want to drink something special and and make sure that they can get it to them.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's working well, it's it's it's going slow, but this is the nature of the game.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, since this segment is called whiskey without borders, would you talk for a second about whiskey drinking uh in Mexico?
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_06: Is it one of the do they drink Mexicans typically drink whiskey?
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_06: Do somehow are there's a segment that does, segment that doesn't.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_06: Do they drink American whiskeys, Mexican whiskeys, you know, Scott?
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_06: How does it work?
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_02: Mexico is not uh a big whiskey drinking country.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_02: It was that the the elite drank whiskey and Dr.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_02: Taylor Mazcal.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_02: That was for the peasants and the uh the poor people, but and so they drank whiskey.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_02: So whiskey was considered an expensive product, and it wasn't drinking in bulk.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: The two biggest whiskeys in Mexico are Buchanan's and uh Johnny Walker.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: And um I think these are Scotches, and uh now probably Jack Daniels is coming up uh alongside of them, I guess.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_02: But but the Mexicans they really don't know much about whiskey.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_02: So uh and it's still a little bit more expensive than tequila or mezcal, at least the silver stuff.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's it's uh a hard market to get into.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: There's not a very big market.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: Did you sell your whiskeys in Mexico or just in the US?
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: No, we sell some in Mexico also.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_02: We have some online stores, and in Oaxaca, we have a uh a group of restaurants that that buy it.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's very hard to get liquor stores to buy it.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_02: There aren't really many liquor stores, it's mostly the chains that have a liquor section.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_02: So that and you know how the chains are, they're very very demanding.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_02: They certainly are.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: Whiskey is always received well as a gift in Mexico.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: If you're giving a bottle of whiskey as a gift, it's always received quite well.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that makes so when you go to Mexico, you make sure you have enough whiskey, right?
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and then if you need to practice, you can send me some as a gift.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, just so you get in the habit of giving.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_02: Do you sell any in Europe?
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_02: We sell a bit in Europe and in a couple of countries, Italy and Holland.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: And the Hollish Holland Dutch vendor sells to uh some other countries too.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_02: So we're not sure where always goes all the time.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, we do sell a little bit there.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_02: The US is our our main market, and this is basically a bourbon, except for using uh used barrels.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_02: And if we were in the US, we would use used barrels and it would be a bourbon.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_02: But since we're in Mexico, we can't use uh the bourbon designation.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it's corn.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, and it's 100% corn.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the sweetness of it comes through.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the you know, that's what you're that's what you get when you're there's a there's a distiller that makes a uh expression that's all corn here called mellow corn.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: And mellow corn, this is this is not my my wife described it as not too sweet, well balanced.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the one thing you can get off of this right away is that there's a little bit of a smokiness to it, there's a little bit of sweetness, you could taste the corn, and it's all balanced.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like when it when once you take that sip, you you start to taste the sweetness on your tongue, and then there's an aspect of like like Randy said, of white dog or moonshine.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: And there's just a little bit of that, and when you take all of them and how you've balanced it in the bottle, you've done a nice job.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's not you're you're smart to do this this way, because you know what if you're gonna sell here in the United States, uh Mac, it shouldn't.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_00: They already know how to make bourbon and they all know how to make that type of a whiskey.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're gonna be making it, I mean, why why compete against it?
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: Just this is a very, very nice alternative or change to that type of whiskey, but it's not like a scotch.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's a familiarity of this type of whiskey, of the Mexican whiskey, to bourbon or a rye.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: But it that's there, it's it's definitely has familiar flavors, but it's its own, like you said, your its own terroir, but it's not so different as a malt whiskey like a Scotch or an Irish whiskey.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you've really done a nice job with it.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_06: It brings together flavors from basically almost all over the world.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_06: On my palette.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_02: And that puts us in the world whiskies.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_02: I think the French oak barrels probably help with that a little bit too.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_02: I really do.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_02: Well, like um like Bob was saying, we don't uh Tani was saying, we don't want to be like everybody else.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it does, it's not like a finished whiskey, it's not like uh the Scotch, it's not like an Irish.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's got I love your I love the commitment to the pot still.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's why you pot still, so you can get those grainy flavors.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: And if you leave it in the barrel for a real long time, a lot of times you pick up all the flavors of the barrel and you kind of start to lose that.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, good whiskey, and then you'll start picking up those caramel sugars and everything like that.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: But right now you have a really nice sweetness from the corn, not too much from the barrel.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: You're just doing a really good, like I said, it's it's well balanced, and you know, it's not easy, as you as I can tell, it's not easy to do this.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_01: One thing I I don't think Doug mentioned, I Doug wrong, but these are uh each bottle is part of a batch release, correct?
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: So you'll have different batches that are different flavor profiles from year to year as they come out.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: Is that correct?
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_02: We we do a batch and give it a number, production number, you know, X number of loads of black corn, per se.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_02: And then we put in the bottle, so it's all single in the barrel, so it's all single barrels.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_02: You've broken the batch down from however, and many from as little as one barrel to as many as 20 barrels for our batch sizes, and then we track these over time, and you have to track them individually because every barrel is slightly different because they're used barrels, and some of them will develop faster and some of them slower.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_02: So over the years, we can do some blending in the barrel, but basically every barrel is gonna come out as a single barrel.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_02: So when we harvest the barrels, every barrel is bottled separately.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so even though it's maybe the same batch, it's gonna be slightly different because of the uh the conditions of the barrel itself.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_02: And if we've done any blending to like bring it back into the favor flavor profile, if it had gone, say too far, like Tanya was saying, about you know, the wood taking over too much.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's a big, it's a big tracking game.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_02: We've got like 600 barrels approximately, and it's it's a big job for the few people we are uh we have at the distillery.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_02: We have about 20 employees now.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: And Doug, correct me if I'm wrong, but those barrels are for sale if someone wanted to come down and buy one.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_02: We do sell single barrels, and so like some of the some of the uh upper end bar chains or restaurant chains will come in and and buy one every once in a while.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_02: We might come down and use it.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: You you took you you speak your for yourself, Randy.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: You can buy it.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know the uh I I I can't imagine as a as a group or a person going to Mexico and buying a barrel and what kind of bringing that back to America.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_06: What kind of friend that you do can help me with that?
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's not uh what kind of crossing back over.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of what kind of liquor laws are on that?
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let me let me tell you Juan Pablo and I can help you bring a barrel back to the United States, no problem.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: Without without getting arrested.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_01: It crosses the border and it goes to whatever state it needs to go to.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, because like I'm in like I I've already been I'm in the state of Ohio, and I bought a barrel from uh with the with through the state of Ohio, and they wanted to arrest me.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh I live here.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um but but at the same time, yeah, that would be I would definitely that would be great to be able to come down and see what you're doing.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds sounds like it's you're such a you're in a really nice area that's gotta be beautiful.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Doug, one last question from me.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: Where where were you born and where have you lived throughout your career?
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um I was born in uh Brocksville, New York, outside of New York City.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_02: When I was uh young, my my folks moved to Beaumont, Texas, and we lived there until about third grade, and my parents got divorced, and my mother went on vacation to Mexico and decided to stay there in Guadalajara.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_06: Wow.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_02: We moved uh to Europe and and up through high school, I lived in five different countries: Mexico, U.S., and Spain, France, Switzerland.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_02: And went back to the U.S.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_02: for college, did my college in Wisconsin.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_06: Wow.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_02: And California.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_00: What part of Wisconsin?
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I worked with Beloit, Wisconsin.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm originally from the Milwaukee area, so I'm familiar with Beloit.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_02: I went to Beloit College there for a couple years.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_06: One of our bourbon boys, Martin Nash, asked, what type of rick houses do you use?
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_02: Rick house.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um we don't have a brick house.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_02: We have shelving in the distillery, and I've got a couple of underground cellars, but most of it's stored in the in the rims of the distillery.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's uh that's that is a diverse background.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then and then to to come and you know end up in Mexico, you know, saving extinct corn, you know, there, you know, extinct corns that you know, you're bringing back those corns.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's gotta be very satisfying.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_02: First it's terrifying.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, then we get to this stage where you're at and it's satisfying.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_02: A little bit of help from Bob and Juan Pablo.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of help from Bob and Monpablo.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_06: Now I've got batch three, barrel 218, and then bottle 184.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, I have 186.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and then the same.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's because Bob's got us.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we have the we the barrels each have their own number, which would be a barrel number.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_00: 218.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: 218.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_02: This one's 218.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_02: And then there'll be a batch number that'll let you know what batch it came out from.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_02: That is yeah, that's batch three.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_02: Is that from batch three of 2025?
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'm assuming.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_02: Or is that batch three from total?
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_02: Batch three from uh from total.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that batch three of Rainbow Corn?
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, each dollar will have its number sequence number battery.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_02: And and then there'll be X number of bottles per barrel.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_02: So the the number of bottles will never be very high.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um have you found a favorite out of the rainbow, a favorite batch or a favorite batch bottle combination that you just really, really like?
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_02: No, I don't think that we do enough volume and we're not close enough to the consumers to have that kind of relationship going.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_02: Oh no, I'm just about you personally.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_02: Is there is there a barrel or batch that you like?
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_02: Do you did you like batch one because it was your first one or improved on two or three?
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_02: Or what do you personally like?
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that that's a hard one.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not a taster, and I I told Bob, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna be a taster on the show.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_02: The way I work is I make my recipes and I make the product.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_02: If I like it, we'll make some more or make it into a product.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_02: If I don't like it, throw it aside and get on to something else.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, so my taste seems to be universal on the up from all my history and living and eating and drinking in so many different colors, countries that what I like, other people seem to like.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I can't drink enough whiskey to taste and get a memory of every single batch and every single color of the whiskeys.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_02: In general, my favorite is the uh purple whiskey.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I would kind of call that the most bizarre flavor of the different colors.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: Does that purple corn whiskey have like those anise notes that you sometimes get from a purple corn?
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_01: Do they have what notes?
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like anise, like uh licorice.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_02: Again, I'm not a taster.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna go there.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how to describe the flavors or language I should say it in.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_02: So so so Doug, what's child is your flavor?
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_00: So what you do, what you do when you're when you're making and you get it, and then it's the it's a batch and it's all ready and you dump or whatever, you take you don't taste it.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: You you have you drink it, and if you like it, that's what it is.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's about what you like.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're not looking, you're you it's not about the individual flavors or trying to describe what it is because you know what you like.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of how you work it.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and that's that's that's probably the way it should be done.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think a lot of a lot of people who blend whiskey or make batches or do stuff like that are very similar, would would love to be able to just do that.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they but there's marketing demands.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you've you've told the marketers that they're not getting that from you.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_00: They can come up with the notes that they need to come up with.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that makes sense.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_06: You know, we we've got another friend of the podcast, Mark Carter, who does little Carter whiskey.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_02: And he's kind of the same way he's like, I like it or I don't like it.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's delicious or it's not delicious.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's that's a delicious, that's the verb that uh that I look for, and I want people that drink my product to use that as their standard.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's gotta be delicious to every single one of those palettes out there, and everybody's different.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_02: So you better have a good product if you want that kind of uh following the loyalty.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, sir, and you have a good product, very good, and I have some very, very loyal people.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um well, I mean, for drinking, never drinking a Mexican whiskey, and then reading about what you're doing and how you went about doing it, I would definitely say we've tasted a lot of different type whiskeys from around the world.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_00: And as far as myself personally, I definitely like this whiskey.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: I I think as you keep going forward, the further you go, I think that it can only it it's not gonna go any other direction but better and up.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you gotta keep this is this is definitely keep doing what you're doing, and we love to promote what you're doing because you're doing it well, and and it's what everybody loves about how the the the commitment that you have to this and what you're doing with your community and then sharing throughout the rest of the world.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we've got a fair amount of folks in the uh Chicago area, and I'm sure they could find this somewhere up there.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, he said it's only in Chicago Chicago.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're right.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: He was in Illinois.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_02: Go on, Doug, you were saying something.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_02: Juan Pablo, the national distributor, is also a Illinois distributor, and he's in Chicago, right out uh outside of Chicago City.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_02: So he he's got his both on the market and is in a lot of the uh liquor stores.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_02: And obviously, if anybody goes and asks for it, they they they can demand it and he'll get it to them right away.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're in the I'll check and see if Lloyd's or Benny's either one has it.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_01: I believe Benny's has it.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, but I'm not sure about that.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_01: I I know if you're gonna state that uh is not a Florida or Illinois, you could look at uh Sierra Norway.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_01: And you can buy it there.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_01: You can also go to uh Mercado de Mescal and find it there or search on Google.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure there's a couple places you can find as well.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_06: Okay, so it can be you can buy it and have it shipped if your state has shipped if you have it shipped into your state.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_06: Correct.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_02: You can come from the US with the online sales when we don't have distributors.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_02: Good.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_00: So is there anything we miss that you would like to tell us?
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_02: There's one thing I'd like to ask.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_02: If corn was uh developed uh 7,000 years ago in Mexico, and they started exporting it with their trading partners going north and going south, they had corn was being grown and and and harvested all over the Americas when the Europeans arrived.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so in North America, they you know, we hear from the Thanksgiving tales, they were starving to death, and the indigenous people brought them turkeys and cornbread and stuff like that.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I think that those people, when they traveled and moved to the the New World, that some of them brought their stills, their little stills, especially those Irish guys.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_02: And and I think that they must have made whiskey from some of this native corn that uh the indigenous people were growing and trading.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_02: But I never seen anything to suggest that or to support that in the history that I read about whiskey.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_02: What what do you guys think about that idea?
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I met a guy whose family has ties back to the Mayflower.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_00: So there you go.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's like the the pilgrims that came here.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_00: And his family, he's in San Francisco right now, has been aging barrels for hundred hundreds of years in the caves.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And in the caves, what was well preserved was the the logs from the Mayflower.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_00: So he has his family logs from the Mayflower, and he also has they brought a still over on the Mayflower, and he has the mash mash bill that they tried on the first fermentation, which was unsuccessful after nine months.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't work.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_00: So they did the next one, and that fermentation worked, but they were distilling, even though they were a religious cult that was not supposed to drink.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I've heard.
• 1:11:01
  SPEAKER_00: So what about have you heard that before?
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_02: No, I haven't heard that before.
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_02: What would Ashville?
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_02: What were the grains?
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he had that.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_00: That was something that he was working on.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_00: I did not get it, but corn, I believe corn was part of it.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And just if you think about it, they basically just cooked a bunch of grains, put them in a container, whatever the container was, and let let uh nature have at it.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_02: Make sense?
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_06: They weren't age, you know, but George Washington was just selling rye in the morning and selling it in Washington DC in the afternoon.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Don't know specifically the history of corn other than no, they they definitely would have been yeah, that would have been I I guarantee you that that that that grain, you know, those those guys those guys used whatever they could.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_06: I'm sure they did.
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_06: I just don't know.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_02: I just don't personally have not researched that.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I've never found any uh information when I asked the internet that question, but I'm an old guy, I don't know how to use the internet very well.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean to I I I got to know the man that he's a distiller, so he kind of has told me some things, but I haven't gotten out to San Francisco.
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_00: He's invited me to come many times, and I have not gotten out there, you know, yet.
• 1:12:45
  SPEAKER_00: A full-time job and a f and running this this podcast keeps me busy.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_02: Do you guys happen to know if you're in Arizona?
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_02: Arizona, yeah, we we have a distributor in in Arizona, Pacific Edge.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_02: So it's available in Arizona.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, because we another friend of the podcast lives in Arizona.
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_02: And probably have to ask the store to get it.
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_02: Or the but it's at uh you know Stones Throw Away.
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's there.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, good.
• 1:13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so there we go.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to thank both Bob and Doug for coming on.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, you guys, for your time.
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_00: What time is it, by the way, in Mexico right now?
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Are you still are you on our time right now?
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's 7.46 here.
• 1:13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you're on 7.
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_02: So are you what are you in western Mexico then?
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_02: We're we're in southern Mexico, the same time frame as Mexico City.
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_00: So what I'm gonna do is I finish up, and then you guys, at any point, if you we we usually invite some people that were listening to come on with us, but if you I understand your time and everything, if you anytime you want to leave, once we finish up, you feel free just to say goodbye.
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you both for coming on.
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_00: This was a special podcast, and like I said, it's kind of cool having somebody.
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's the first time we've ever had an international guest.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate you being our first one.
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, all right, thank you.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_00: All right, everybody, you guys all make sure Bob tell everybody what what the website was for the Sierra Norte.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_01: I guess you can go you can go to Doug's website, which is Sierra NorteWiske.com, and you can order it there.
• 1:14:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's got a pretty fair price on it, which is great, and that's what you're gonna find out in the market.
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_01: So you you can buy it there.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_01: You can also go to Mercado de Mescal, I believe, and you can find it there as well, or you can just do a search on Google or your favorite AI tool for Sierra Norte Whiskey and and find one.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_00: So all right.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Whiskey Doctor.
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_00: We're the Scotchy Bourbon Boys, www.scotchybourbonboys.com for all things scotchy bourbon boys.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you check out all of our whiskey.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_00: We've got Glenn Karen's, we've got t-shirts, and also sometimes bourbon balls, if you know that's our swag.
• 1:15:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then we are on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and X along with Apple, iHeart, Spotify.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And no matter whether you listen to us or watch us, make sure that you leave us good feedback, become members.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_00: I want to shout out to Kirk for becoming one of our top shelf members tonight.
• 1:15:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's our first ever.
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for that.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then also, I think Darth Bader was asking a question about Weller 107 in Ohio.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, Weller107 in Ohio is always there.
• 1:16:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then also remember good bourbon equals good times and good friends.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you drink responsibly, don't drink and drive, and live your life like the scotchy bourbon boys, uncut and unfiltered.
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_00: And our AI theme song is going to take us out.