Latest / The Scotchy Bourbon Boys / The Correction is Complete Bourbons Path Forward With Gregg Snyder A True Bourbon Master

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The Correction is Complete Bourbons Path Forward With Gregg Snyder A True Bourbon Master · The Scotchy Bourbon Boys

• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Middlewest Spirits was founded in 2008, focusing on elevating the distinct flavors of the Ohio River Valley.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Their spirits honor their roots and reflect their originality as makers, their integrity as producers, and their passion for crafting spirits from grain to glass.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Their Michelon reserve line reflects their story from the start to the bottle to your glass, with unique wheated and rye bourbons, and also rye and wheat whiskies, the Michelone brand is easy to sip.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: It might be a grain to glass experience, but I like to think of it as uncut and unfiltered from their family to yours.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I went back to count, and I'm like, after like 13, I'm like, you know what?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: We'll just say we lost count.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, welcome to the podcast.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_05: It's always a pleasure.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's great to have you on.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta turn up, I turned down the volume because that was so low, but I gotta turn up the volume because they're perfect.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so you know, being on the podcast, not only are you on the podcast, you know, as a guest, but you a lot of times you're right in straight into the the chat online.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes I feel like, you know, we probably now now with Randy Prasse and Alan Bishop who are right there with you, but I think this takes you way ahead of Randy now.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And really you and Alan have been really close as far as how many times being on, but then by no means, man, you've got them on how many times you've been watching and in the chat and in and enjoying the podcast.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: So we just it's just I just want to thank you for all that you help us out with, and you do.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_05: Appreciate that.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I I you know when I have the time, I like uh checking in and listening to what you got going that particular evening.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_05: And uh if I got something constructive to add, I'll you know me, I'll put it in there in the comments.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a lot of constructive stuff that you add to the the podcast because of the fact that a lot of the stuff that people are interested in, you're just you lived it.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you were a part of what we're talking about.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you know, from a standpoint of being in it, and Randy said, How do you have 48 years of experience since you're only 60?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's a very kind statement, Randy, to to Greg, right?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Would you say?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_05: But right, yeah.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: But how do you, I mean, is it like almost surreal at one point to see where the bourbon industry, you know, because when you first jumped in, you know, when you started at Seagrimm's way back in, I think it was 1978, if I'm not mistaken, but you you the bourbon industry wasn't this.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: By no means.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's people who like to drink bourbon.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's always, you know, people, it's not like everybody talks about when the bourbon, you know, kind of whatever, what, but I mean, we're only talking, I think like the 3% of the market, you know, it went down 3%.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like bourbon disappeared off the shelves completely.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it was adjustment, but at the same time, people weren't as interested in the history of bourbon as much as they are today.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, now people are just want as much information as they possibly can get about the history of bourbon.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: They like the history that's, you know, the real you're talking about where it started from in this country.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: But do you, I mean, did you when it was when you were in it, did you ever see this evolving into what it is today?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_05: You know, it's it's hard to predict the future.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_05: But you know, when I got into it in 1978, Jeff, you know, the bourbon industry was just on a real slow decline.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_05: Perfect example, you know.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_05: And there was a corrective adjustment made back then.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_05: I think in 1980, if I recall, there was in Kentucky, you know, there was right around five million barrels of bourbon.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_05: And today there's something a little over 16 million uh barrels of bourbon in Kentucky.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_05: But in 1978, it's a different phenomenon.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_05: You know, it's if you look back in history, everything's cyclical.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_05: Bourbon industry cyclical, you know, vodka cyclical, gin cyclical, whatever.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_05: And uh at that time period, 1978, people were shifting away from the dark goods, whiskies in general, to vodka's and and uh crumbs and the clear, clear spirits.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_05: And so that was one thing.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_05: But there was definitely an abundance of barrel whiskey in a warehouse.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_05: And cigars.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_05: Right before I started, they actually owned what they call four-country distilleries.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_05: They had a distillery in Cynthia, Kentucky, they had the Henry McKenna distillery in Fairfield, Kentucky, they owned the one one in Athertonville, Kentucky, and then they also had the one in the Old Prentice in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_05: Well, before I started there in June of 1978, the Cynthia distillery, the Fairfield distillery, and Athertonville distillery were all moffed all.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_05: They were shut down.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_05: The only one they had left, which in addition to the rural distillery, was the uh Lawrenceburg, the old Prentice distillery, which is today Four Roses.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_05: And so they were they were making an adjustment.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_05: They had a abundant surplus of a barrel of whiskey and the sales, you know, every year the sales was declined.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think four roses is now Julio and Gallo, Julio and Gallo, right?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_05: And now people were J EJ Gallo just took part, yeah.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_05: That's right.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, which is an American, if I'm not mistaken, that's an American company, is it, out of California?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Which before who sold it to them was a Japanese company, correct?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_05: So what happened in Seagram's maintained the brand, uh the Four Roses brand, and kept the distillery up until 2000 when Seagrams got bought out by Di Ageo and Fernau Ricard.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I was working at Wild Turkey at that time, it was owned by Prinor Ricard.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_05: But DiAgio and Brno Ricard formed an alliance and they bought Seeger's.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_05: Well, initially, the Four Roses, when they divided everything up, Preneur Ricard actually took ownership of the Four Roses distillery.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_05: But for whatever reason at that time, they didn't want it, so they turned around and sold it to Karen Brew, who currently owns it, and is in the process to kind of shift their I guess their uh their corporate uh philosophy, and they're selling it off to EJ Gallow.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_05: So I think the price tag was somewhere around 775 million.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_05: Was that a Japanese cunt company?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: The brewing company?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, so what I what I noticed was is that a lot of the they wanted it because a lot of four roses was going over there and Japanese, the Japanese love four roses.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Is that gonna still be part of the market pl plan, do you think?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_05: Oh no, it's hard to say.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_05: Uh you know, when when I worked for Segers, actually goes way back before I started working there.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_05: In World War II, Segers made a decision, they were only making bourbon, four roses bourbon, in the international market, primarily went to France and to Japan.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_05: And in the United States, they converted it to a blended whiskey, and the sales just plumped.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_05: And so it wasn't a very well high quality whiskey back in those days.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_05: And then later on, when it bourbon started picking up, you know, uh Jim Rubbish, who kind of managed the facility, you know, Jim convinced them to, hey, we gotta bring back bourbon in the United States.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_05: And they did, and Jim Jim worked tirelessly to make that happen.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_05: I give him full credit for where they've come to today.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I that was that transformation is kind of amazing.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, Brent Elliott there does a fantastic job, and they've really am just excited now that we're bringing the ownership back into the United States to see what happens.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think uh you don't buy it to kill it, right?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_05: It'll be interesting to see what Gallo does with it.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_05: Gallo's got a lot of strength in the industry.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_05: You know, they they started having wine and then they shifted into the the uh you know the the drinks or the uh wine coolers, you know, dabble in that.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_05: And of course they own high new and a lot of these uh uh canned beverages now.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_05: But they've gotten more and more into the spirit side of the business, and and uh they've got the financial backing to do do quite well with it.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, when I first was giving you a choice on what picture to take, I mean, I had a row of bourbons in front of uh that were that in front of you, and you've worked so you've worked at Wild Turkey, you've worked for Beam, you've worked for whisk oh my god, chicken cock, you've worked for four branches, I mean Seagram's, which is which at the time it was old Forester and also four so you've worked at so many different places.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna put you on the spot here.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: What was your favorite place to work?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I mean right today.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, when that's that's my answer when someone asks me as a podcaster, what's my favorite bourbon?
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: What you know, and I get that a lot from women who like friends, you know, of the family and whatever that know I'm doing this podcast and they kind of are intrigued by bourbon and they're not sure and they're like, what's your favorite?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I just said, I just tell them it's what's in my glass.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that simple, right?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, honestly, when you're when you're when you've been at so many different places, you've been at so many different places and and we taste so many different bourbons, and they're so good, it's not like you can well, I mean, it's hard for one.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: You what's in your glass right now, right, is exactly what I'm pouring here.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: The the the four branches continental, and that that we did the we we've done a podcast on it and everything.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: But for you, I mean that's very important to where you're working and what goes in your glass, and it's the same thing.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many different ones to choose from.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to isolate on anything else than what's in what what you have to be like either working on or not, because you don't have that luxury.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you started drinking based off of what you like, you we'd probab as far as what you, you know, the brand that you want that maybe other, you know, like when you're not working for anybody, you probably we probably get in trouble.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's only so much whiskey you can drink without becoming an alcoholic.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of what we do.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: We're right on it's like you do it, but you have to keep it under control.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like you don't, I don't, I don't actually have an ability to have a favorite because of the fact that what do you go to?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I uh it's it's whatever's on the podcast is what I'm going to.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's the same with you when you're tasting so much for so many in consulting, you have to taste it, and that's just kind of how it is, right?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_05: There's a lot of great bourbons out there as you know, Jeff.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_05: And so I I think that I don't have a don't have a particular favorite.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_05: There's a lot of them that I like, and and uh that's what I I stick with.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I am partial partial to what you made, and even though it's like what it's not politically correct at this moment, but I am partial to it because it what what you did and what you put down is pretty special.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I I give you that that section of time when you had control over what you were doing, it had to be a blast for you because that puts you in position that you weren't always in when you were going throughout your career, and to be able to do that had to be pretty spectacular, right?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_05: It is it's fun.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_05: Uh we talked about that a little bit earlier.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's fun for me.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, being able to take 48 years of of knowledge and experience and focus it on you know one or two brands, and and that's what I tell people.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_05: You know what I bring to the party hopefully is a level of of integrity and credibility.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I I'm trying to put the best whiskey out there I could possibly can.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_05: And that's you know, that's that's what I tell people, you know, you've done so much, and I'm just an old man trying to make good whiskey, you know.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_05: And that's that's what I do, you know, with core branches or any of the other consulting clients I've worked with.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_05: You know, that's that's my ultimate goal.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think you do it, I think you do it well.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think you have the knowledge that no matter what somebody's doing, you can add a quality to what they're doing.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: And as you know, the making of the whiskey is part of the business, the blending of the whiskey's part of the business, and then the marketing of the whiskey is part of the business, and the setup of everything's part of the business.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And all of those have to, these days, in my opinion, if you're doing those right, you should you should and you understand how money works, you should be able to still be able to produce a good product and get it out to the people.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: But if you don't understand that, that's where I think people are running into trouble at this point.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: I just, you know, I think that the bourbon boom, you could have called it even the bourbon nuclear bomb.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just a nuclear nuclear explosion because it's almost like you could have just it didn't matter.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: You just take a picture of somebody famous and stick it on uh crap, you could sell it.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not that way right now.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, that's why we had you on tonight.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's what's kind of happening right now.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, where the it's like you actually have to know what you're doing to be able to sell, but you but it's not like people who know what they're doing are you don't see those people going off to the off to the wayside, right?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, you know, it's it's interesting.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_05: I've I've done a couple of interviews with some various industry publications and and you know, and and and that was the topic we talked about about the state of the industry.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_05: You know, and if you if you read certain things or you listen to certain media podcasts or or you know anything out there that that talks about the industry, and it's you know, I call it the chicken little, you know, the the the sky is falling, you know, it's all collabs.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_05: And that's I don't think that's true at all.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_05: What's what's happened is as you we said earlier, it's it's kind of a correcting adjustment, basically.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_05: The growth that we experienced over the last gosh, 15 years, maybe roughly.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_05: Nobody really saw that coming.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_05: We knew burden was going to come back at some point in time, you know, when and exactly how fast.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_05: You know, that that nobody knew that.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_05: That's why there was a lot of uh burdens allocated early on, because you know the industry kind of got caught with their pants down.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_05: They they weren't expecting it, and they only had so much changed inventory.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_05: And when the boom took off and people started buying it left and right, they couldn't keep up with the demand.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_05: So that's a good problem to have.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_05: So, anyhow, that growth is kind of leveled up.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_05: Back, gosh, he was probably almost eight years ago when a man told you the story.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_05: I went and uh met with Steve Thompson.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know if you remember Steve.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_05: Steve was the one of the co-founders of uh Kentucky Artist Industries.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_05: Steve was my boss, he was the president of Brown Foreman Beverage Company when I worked at Brown Foreman.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: I did not know that.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_05: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_05: Steve's a great guy, very smart guy.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_05: And he looked at me with Greg, where where's this all gonna end?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_05: I said, What do you mean, Steve?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_05: He said, Look at here.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_05: So he showed me the growth.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_05: He showed me the sales forecast for the industry in general, and then he showed the production of what all these distilleries were producing and planned to produce with all the capital investments they were making.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_05: And it was easy to see the the production far exceeded the the future forecast, I guess, over the sales side.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_05: And so we knew it was gonna hit a wall at some point in time, and the growth was gonna level off.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_05: And now again, just like in the you know, 1970s and 80s, we've got a surplus of age whiskey now.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_05: Back then we had five million barrels, and in 1980 and five million barrels in Kentucky.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_05: We got over 16 million barrels in Kentucky.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_05: Looking at the sales back in 1980, worldwide, I believe bourbon sales were somewhere around 17 million cases.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_05: Today, they're around 30 million.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_05: Sales have grown 75 percent since the 1980s.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_05: But you know, we overtripled the amount of uh bourbon that we had.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_05: So again, it's got to balance out somehow.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_05: I mentioned back in 1978, the Seagrams shut down a lot of their distilleries and they just had the old Prentice and the Lowell plant in 1983.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_05: You know, they shut that little facility facility down.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_05: Actually, they shut down two different facilities, one in Maryland and uh one in Louisville, and it consolidated the production operations because it was just economically didn't make sense to have these these other facilities running when you didn't need them.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_05: You could easily absorb it and have it at the uh the other other locations.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: So well, the the one of the things I I which which is crazy the last couple years is the amount of distilleries that have come online that people have built to, you know, and then whatever what what people don't realize is there's 16 million barrels in Kentucky.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: But there's probably another 8 million barrels throughout the United States.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you that at the time that in the 70s, there just wasn't the same amount of production of bourbon throughout the country because you know they always said 95, 90%, probably back then it was 99% of all bourbon was being made in Kentucky.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now they, you know, it had dropped down as low as I've heard people say 93, 92%.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, with all these craft distilleries that popped up in it, especially the surrounding, you know, states of Kentucky.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're talking Indiana, what the production of of you know, of Ross and Squib.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's they they really stepped up to the plate.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: And when everybody else had a ster a shortage, they were able to to make meet the demands for people to be able to do something and create brands because they had enough at the time, right?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: They were they mu they had more because it was Whether it's because they were from Indiana, I don't know.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: But they had enough to meet that demand.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: MGP, which is GPA.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then, and then since then, they've really become a major player in the industry.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, purchasing Kentucky distilleries, you know, they've given with Blux Row and everything.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they I think they've done a fantastic job.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: But then you're also looking at, you know, in Ohio, we just put in Middle West Spirits, and that's a that's a distillery the size of 72,000 square foot distillery, with with their second still being, you know, get is has been purchased already.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's just not, you know, it takes a while to get a Ven Dome still of that size and get in line.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's so much more outside of that, too.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, what I've been seeing, if you really, really know and pay attention, everybody should be all right.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: And there's gonna, and and then I don't know why the consumer is so upset about this.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just like, you guys, this is the greatest thing that ever happened to us.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Prices will drop for come because they're all gonna have to compete because they'll have what whatever.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: There'll be to start a brand, like you won't have to just go to MGP.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can there's gonna be a surplus of barrels at one point on on to be able to purchase, and you'll be able to produce a whiskey that's unique, flavor profile, not like these 40 distilleries that all have the same MGP flavor profiles, you know.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see some of the distilleries starting to purchase barrels from other places, and that does show into their bourbon, you know, and that that also goes for blending, right?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like scotch.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: There'll be people who can buy multiple barrels from different places and then put them together to make their own bourbon that's gonna have a unique taste.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you might have somebody with beam, MGP, and wild turkey all in one, right?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, isn't that kind of exciting?
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, to some extent.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it it is.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's got a shift, the market has shift, you know, for for during that boom.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_05: You know, AIDS AIDS bourbon, age whiskey was so good for me.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it was it was hard to find, you know, when when I started working with chicken, you know, to bridge the gap until our whiskey that we were laying down became of a proper age.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I was out trying to find good quality whiskey that we could acquire and put under the label until the the whiskey became of age.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_05: Well, that wasn't that easy.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_05: You know, number one, I'm not gonna buy something that that that I'm not I wouldn't drink myself, okay?
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_05: And so finding good quality whiskey, if you didn't find it, it wasn't cheap.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_05: And so, you know, margins were tight, prices were high.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_05: But I think you're right.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_05: This this correction is gonna show that what's happening now.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_05: Prices for these whiskey have come weighted.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_05: And so a lot of the business philosophy, just like four branches, there's some great whiskey out there at reasonable prices.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_05: And doesn't it make sense to invest the millions and millions of dollars into a distillery to make your own when when you've got available whiskey out there that you can acquire, to make sure that we have a sufficient amount to sustain you know the business and the growth?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I hope there's you know, because kind of like the same thing, I agree with what you're saying.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's out there, it's available, and it's reasonably priced.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Even, you know, I I was talking with there, I was talking with Ricky from the great Midwest or Great West Virginia Barrel Company, and he was talking about how now, with all that whiskey out there, that even the Cooperages are having issues because they they don't need as much, they're not pulling the tree, they don't need to pull the trees out of the forest.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's at that point they're shutting down the stave-making places and everything.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what I think once again, there's still a demand for barrels, but it's not what it was, right?
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's correct, it is not what it was.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and if anything, this is really good for our forests.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: They can kind of catch up, you know what I mean?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because two years ago we were talking about making barrels with what trying to figure out different sizes and mass and steel and coming up with different because we were gonna run out of wood, right?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_05: No, we're not gonna run out of wood.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_05: I I you know when I worked, as you know, I 12, I worked for Brown Former 12 years.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_05: Nine of those 12 years, I manage a croopridge operation.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_05: So know a little bit about that side of the business as well.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_05: And every every month, I'd get a report from the uh U.S.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_05: Forestry Department.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_05: And every five years they do an inventory.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_05: And they they don't ask me how they do it, but they take a section, they'll go out, and they'll actually count different species of trees, and somehow they have uh formula they can calculate.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_05: And based on comparing to the previous five years, you know, had the population grown or diminished.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_05: And and essentially what happened was is that uh every five years, if you look back at these reports, these inventories extra, the inventory of white oak was growing about 15% every year, every five years.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_05: The reason that is you take a big old oak tree, it takes 80 to 125 years for an oak tree to really mature big enough to make barrels.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_05: Takes a long time.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_05: You got this big old tree, a lot of these acorns are falling out of that tree and starting to germinate.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_05: Well, once you cut that big old tree out of the pot and remove it, the canopy opens up.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_05: And all these you know smaller trees have an opportunity to grow because they're getting sunlight now, and they grow up, and that's where you're getting you know 15% growth, you know, every every five years.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_05: And so, you know, I've heard people, you know, blooming doom and environmentalists say, Oh no, we're running out of white oak.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, we've we've been harvesting more than what we had in a long time, but there's plenty of white oak in those forests.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so in other words, the management of the forests has been intelligently managed, right?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's some there they have actually properly managed it based off of what what you know 75, 80 years ago.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're talking about when you're talking about a tree 80 years ago, I mean, we're talking about 1940 something, right?
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: So 1940, when you think about that, I don't think they were thinking about 2026 management of of whiskey barrels.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: They put I think actually in the 40s, they that that's when they were still barreling barreling gasoline in those those oak barrels at that point.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, when you think about that, that's kind of it's kind of amazing.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, but the management of the oak forests makes sense because we make furniture, we make so much, it's used for so much thing in construction, you know, into home building and furniture, and then the barrels.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's a booming industry, right?
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was it must have been really booming, but you know, once again, nobody counted on, and nobody's forecast counted on COVID, right?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: The the pandemic is kind of what made this boom lose it lost control.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden, everybody had to stay at home, and now we're coming out of it, and they're starting to promote that drinking isn't we should we should cut down or you see it all the sudden.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're actually have a campaign to slow people from you know drinking.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's not healthy, it's got all these all this, and then they also you throw in the cannabis industry, and that kind of explains a little bit of what's happening right now, right?
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's leveling off, it's just not growing at the amount that it was growing at.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_05: That's right, it's leveled off, and that's that's the key thing.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_05: It's not going away anytime soon.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_05: Every year, you know, I remember back in the 70s.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_05: I would say, you know, younger generations drinking less.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_05: 1980s, younger generations drinking less.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_05: 1990s, younger generations drinking less.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_05: 2020s, you know, younger drinks drinking less.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_05: You know, it's just the same rhetoric, but yeah, sales as I said, suburban sales have gone from from uh what did I say 13 million to or 17 million to 30 million cases a year?
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_05: So somebody's drinking.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, obviously, I mean, you can even tell you can even have that thing in the 80s.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it used to be that you would go down and you would plop your cash down at the bar and buy a beer or buy a shot of whatever.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: And in the 80s, you took your credit card and you swiped it.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: And and when everybody was swiping their credit cards, they were all of a sudden, you could you weren't just buying a beer or or some whiskey, you were buying these exotic drinks.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, Alabama slammers or whatever, and that was, you know, you could do that and you could access your bank account, and that changed how people partied.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: There was no the young people, young people partied.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then once they grew up, once we grew up, then we were like, you know, like anybody else.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: When you grow up, you kind of like you've had your fun of hangovers and you all know what vodka, rum, and tequila will do to you.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: You look for something that you can kind of enjoy but not have to die.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: So all right.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, so what's your what you're looking at all these numbers?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: What's the outlook?
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, at this point, so last time the industry, there was no, there weren't these allocated, this allocated stuff.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was just bourbon, right?
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, your choice of what was, I mean, it's so funny because Jack Daniels was top shelf.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was 1999 in 1980, and when you bought Jack Daniels or you bought Jim Beam, you were buying a top shelf bourbon.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was, and now Jack Daniels and Jim Beam are still 18, 19, 99, and they are not considered top shelf.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: The top shelf has been taken over by allocated, right?
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: But they still are what everybody drinks at the bars.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the bars, people don't, you know, all I always try and tell everybody what happens at the bars, transfers to the shelves also, and there's just it's just outsells the allocated by so much, and you can't blame the distilleries for still wanting to sell the stuff that they sell 20-30 times more than the allocated stuff.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: But the allocated stuff kind of saved the bourbon industry, right?
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I mean, it had its place.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I I don't know that I would consider Jack Daniels Jim Beam top shelf back in the 80s, but it was it was good whiskey.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what top shelf top shelf was in the 80s was scotch.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying from a standpoint of bourbon.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: What was a higher what was higher than Jack Daniels or Jim Beam for bourbon in the 80s?
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Wild turkey.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: Wild turkey's right that's right there with it.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_05: Wild Turkey was yeah, it's it was actually uh if you look at the higher shelf stuff, Baker's Mark, you know, uh Wild Cherokee, those were some more of the top shelf stuff.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_05: But then like you said, within this boom, there was a lot of allocated stuff, a lot of very special limited edition type stuff that came out.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_05: So I think in today's society, if you look look at the industries as old, the growth is leveled up.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_05: There's an abundance, a surplus of based whiskey, but I think the demand for premium burden is still very strong.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_05: Still very strong.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_05: Uh huh.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_05: And as you said earlier, you know, with with the amount of surplus we have right now, that's gonna drive these prices down.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_05: You know, the the industry got saturated with so many different brands.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, you could go into a liquor store back 25, 30 years ago.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_05: And yeah, you may see you know a section, bourbon section.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_05: Well, today that same bourbon section is probably five, ten times as big because there's so many different now different offerings on the shelf.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_05: So I think the demand for Freeman bourbon is still strong and will be strong for a long time.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, so my giant eagle, which where I go for everything, they just recently, within the last two, three months, took the wall.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you would walk in and you would turn left and you'd walk by all the tequilas and the vodkas and then the rums, and then there was more other stuff on the back, and then when you came around to the back, three-quarters of the wall that that other wall was was bourbon.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: But what started happening is behind the counter and in the bottom shelf, all the bourbon started to fill out that, you know, behind.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: So they were putting the stuff that the little higher expensive stuff behind the cash register.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, one day I walked in and they had the whole wall filled with bourbon, the the main wall.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: So now when you talk when you go left, that's your bourbon, you know.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: So they took everything from behind the counter and put it there.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then they just had a select few.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: And now two, three months later, they're still starting to fill up behind behind the sh the you know the shelf.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: But they, you know, it's it it definitely, I'm like going, well, that doesn't that doesn't seem to be a bourbon problem that you just took the the store and added another quarter part of it for, you know, obviously if that was the case, they would be not doing that, they would be downsizing what they purchased, right?
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyways, all right.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about the four branches.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're at okay, how about this?
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Summarize it up, summarize what we just talked about for everybody.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: Just give us summarize where you think it's going, and then we'll get into the four branches.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_05: So again, you look back at history and you'll see the industry's like in this last cycle.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, the the uprise was quick and it was it was steep and it was fast.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_05: Well, it leveled off.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_05: And so once again, deja vu all over again.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_05: We have an abundance of Asian whiskey sitting in in in warehouse.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_05: So companies are are adjusting, you know, they're they're cranked itself just like the stock market.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_05: You know, you'll see it skyrocket one day, and the next couple days it'll crank itself a lot.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_05: Overall, I think the demand is still strong.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_05: It's leveled off.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_05: It's not like it's the growth factor, it's not like it has been over the last 10-15 years.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_05: It's just leveled off.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_05: The demand for good premium department is still very strong.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_05: And I think there's an opportunity.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_05: We see a lot of a number of companies that have gone bankrupt or in receivers.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_05: And I don't think that's it's a reflection on what's happened in the market.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_05: I think that's more a reflection of you know less inadequate financial management.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_05: You know, people talking, you should see right there when being an advantage.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: What happened?
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because when I bring it back up, it's it's actually back up.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: It started recording.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: So nobody on on the audio just got that.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that's really good.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so we'll just we can finish up now.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to stay on for a couple minutes while people take questions from Facebook, or do you guys gotta go?
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I can tell you just a few minutes, if you don't mind.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I'd be fine.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_05: All right, so here we go.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_05: I was showing it was recording the whole time, Jeff.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if it uh no you were you were recording.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what what happened was the audio was recording.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is just the audio that that did it, and so I just wanted so they don't they don't know uh the anything that just happened, put it that way.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I got it all set up, it's running.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: So let's just finish up.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: We'll finish up on audio and then everybody else.
• 41:18
  unknown: Why watch the Olympics?
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Susan just said, this is what Susan just said.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: Why watch the Olympics when we have two champions of bourbon?
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think Greg deserves a gold medal.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: All right, I think so too.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: Greg definitely deserves it, and Matt says, yes, he does.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, all right, so thanks everybody for joining us tonight.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: Facebook, YouTube, and everybody.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: Super appreciate it.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Greg, I think this was I think we got into a subject that a lot of people are thinking about, right?
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: And right afterwards we'll take questions, but remember www.scotchybourbonboys.com for all things scotchy bourbon boys, Glenn Karen's t-shirts.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna also, we are you going to New Orleans this year?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_05: No plans at this point, no.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be in New Orleans.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: The me and uh Matt Lisen are gonna fly out there and have a good time in New Orleans.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: Roxy's busy, so it's gonna be interesting to see what happens in New Orleans this year.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, but remember, we're on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X, along with TikTok and Patreon.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure that you become members, subscribe, join us on Patreon.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of good perks.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can end up with Glenn Karen's and other stuff.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: Then we're also on Apple, iHeart, and Spotify, and anywhere else you can we're the audio, you know, where anywhere else you can listen to us, but whether you listen to us or like us, just make sure that uh listen to us or watch us.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to us or like us.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: You always like us, right?
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or watch us, just make sure that you leave us good feedback, give us five-star reviews on Apple and all the good stuff, anything, but anything that you donate to the you know, through memberships and everything that goes to a good cause because we use it for where we stay when you we bring you good, you know, information.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyways, all right.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, remember good bourbon equals good times with good friends, and Greg, you are a really good friend.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, drink like this, drink responsibly, don't drink and drive, and make sure you live your life uncut and unfiltered.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: And our theme song is going to take us out, and we're gonna get a lot of people.