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Frank August KBF Single Barrel: Does It Taste as Good as It Looks? · Aussie Bourbon Lovers

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  Incredible flavors, even better stories. One Pour,
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  10 Minutes. Aussie bourbon lovers sharing bourbon with Australia.
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  Oh, nice clean pop, Tave. What are we drinking? Thank you. Oh,
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  what a good question. We're gonna have a Frank August.
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  Can I tell you how long I've wished to pour you a Frank August?
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  I've wished to pour you a Frank August Well, maybe almost as long as I've
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  known about them, which almost might be as long as they've been in existence.
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  This is a Frank August Kentucky Bourbon— Kentucky Bourbon
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  Festival Barrel Pick. It is such a beautiful
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  bottle. It's like stylish and like it's strikingly
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  clean. Like the only label is a little tiny bit around the
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  bottle head. Oh, bottleneck. Sorry, bottleneck. Have a look at that.
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  Yeah. Hey, hey, hey, look at this. So the barrel number is KBF01.
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  We got bottle number 2 of 186.
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  I've never had such a low bottle number in my whole life. Dave's excited.
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  You witnessed it. Oh, bottle number 2. But it's a beautiful bottle.
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  Hey everyone, bottle number 2. I reckon bottle number 1 is at the Frank August
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  Distillery. We might have number 2. How good is that? You might have been the
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  first person to buy one, Dave. Oh, at the festival.
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  That makes me nervous. We might be the only one who thinks
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  this is any good. No, it could have been the last one too. You know,
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  when they pack them the other way and they get them out. Let's say that
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  we got the last— we did get the last bottle of some of these ones,
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  didn't we? We did. We did. Cheers to a really incredible
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  bottle of— I do. I had a rush of adrenaline with bottle number 2.
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  Is that weird? Well, it's like the label is— you can't even see it.
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  The label around the neck of the bottle is pretty much all there is on
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  it. And then a very clear label on the back. But it's just like no
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  label on the front other than the tiny gold word that says Frank August.
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  And can I confess, Dave, when I read that, I thought there was a guy
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  called Frank August. I thought that was You know, like, well, some people
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  still think that. True. But it's such a cool name,
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  Frank August. And I bought a Frank August hat. Actually, it's up there because
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  I quite like the brand. But it also sounds like someone who'd be like,
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  I think, a musician and like play the trumpet or trombone or saxophone or
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  something. Like Frank Ocean? Yeah, kind of that kind of vibe. Are you thinking
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  of Frank Ocean? But even like that. Yeah. You're thinking of Frank Ocean.
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  Yeah. But it made me think of like even the top of the bottle
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  lid's like a trumpet musical thing. It's just very
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  classy is what I'll say. It's a very classy bottle. When I travel for work,
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  here we go, from time to time, if I've got— if I'm stuck in an
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  airport or something and I'm kind of meandering between flights, or I'm
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  a little bit early from a finished business meeting or something, and I'm at the
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  airport early, I'll be in like a, like a newsagent or one of those bookshops.
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  Yes. And I'll be looking at the magazines, and every now and again I might
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  buy one of those magazines that is interesting to me. Where are
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  we going with this? Bear with me. And sometimes they are like business magazines,
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  like, you know, read about this profile of this business person.
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  Shut up. No, don't shut up. You're wonderful. But this
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  is where I first saw Frank August. He's in one of these magazines, and I
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  think it was a write-up about it. But you didn't see— you saw Frank August.
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  I saw the bottle, not the person. When you say you saw Frank August,
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  it makes me think of a person. You keep thinking of Frank Ocean. No,
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  no, no. This is— that's where I first saw the bottle. And this incredibly beautiful
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  bottle. And I immediately— this— and I've always had a link in my
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  mind between New York and Frank August. I always thought it was
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  a New York whiskey brand. Isn't it? Wasn't it started by a fashion designer or
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  someone who worked in fashion, which would account for how, like,
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  classy and cool it is and stylish? So there's almost no
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  information about Frank August that we can find online.
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  3 guys started it: Jonathan Crocker, Luke Detella, and Thompson
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  Harrell. Apparently 3 people founded it. Jonathan Crocker is the CEO,
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  co-founder. He has a fashion background. Yeah. And he's a New Yorker. Explains how—
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  why it's so stunning. Luke DiTella had been a professional surfer. He's based in New
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  York. So I think they're 3 mates from New York, drank whiskey together. I'm making
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  this up, so don't, don't call us out if we're wrong about this. Dave's making
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  things up again. That's unusual. So these guys all came together and went, you know,
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  we want to create a whiskey. Reasonably recent too. It was like during COVID 2022,
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  they launched. All sourced whisky. Apparently they've kind of done some contract
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  distillation where they've kind of instructed what they want made, but I don't think that's
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  it. That's definitely not in here. This is 8-year-old. So this is— and the names,
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  Frank is one of their dads and August is one of their sons or
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  something along those lines. It's like a fusion of names. Yeah. Yeah. To try and
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  like marry the past with the future kind of vibe, I think is what they
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  were going for. But I really like that it's like stylish and
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  clean and How does it taste, Dave? It's a lovely— bottle can
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  look good, but what does it taste like is the most important bit. It's a
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  lovely bourbon, almost a bit nutty, kind of caramel nuts
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  or something, like caramelized. I'm always like getting— what's
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  that gonna be like? A, like a, oh, what, uh,
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  nut brittle? What's that? Peanut brittle kind of thing? Peanut brittle? Or like an almond
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  brittle? Yeah, I'm getting more of like an almondy with
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  some good oranges or something in there as well. And I was going
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  to say like an almond apricot. You know, the cakes you get that got the
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  fruit in them, like the apricot kind of through the— it's like
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  a tea cake or something. And then it's got the dried apricots
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  kind of sunk in on the top of the cake. That's what I'm thinking,
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  like a fruity and a few almonds or maybe even like pecan.
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  Yeah. Okay. Like a pecan. It's just— yeah, that's really nice.
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  But me thinking it was a New York brand is absolutely wrong. It's all
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  Kentucky whiskey and it's bottled in Bardstown. Yeah, but the guys were from
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  New York. Yeah, I know, but I just had it wrong. You associate it with
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  New York because it's so stylish, Dave. But I think it's stylish. But I think
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  as well, this is the great thing, is that they created a bourbon brand for—
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  in, in the fashion world. I discovered it in a magazine
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  that was about business and probably it might have been CEO Magazine, one of these
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  ones. Yeah. And it's they positioned
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  it in this way. That is exactly what was on
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  the, on the, that kind of audience. Yeah. But it's also
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  that thing of like, they're not— there's a lot of bottles you look at and
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  it's like you instantly, there's like a rich history and there's,
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  you know, hundreds of years of this or goes back family
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  generations or like there's a lot of stuff.
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  Whereas this, it like is kind of new and you
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  know, stylish and delicious. And it—
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  like, the brand, like, they're really clear with their branding.
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  I agree. An incredibly distinct bottle. I listened— the Pursuit
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  guys interviewed some bottle guys on their podcast last week,
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  and the way a bottle looks is so amazing and
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  tells such a story. And this is a great example of that. I don't— the
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  no label on the front, to me, it's just like, it's just glass. Absolutely understated.
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  Yeah. So simple. Looks so good on a shelf. And if you only have one
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  or two bottles on your shelf, you'd want this one to be one of them.
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  Yeah. From the way it looks, I mean. Yeah, obviously it looks and tastes like—
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  I don't like it when there's a really pretty bottle and you're like, oh,
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  I don't really want to drink what's in it. But this, I really want to
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  get like some pretzels and nuts and eat them with
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  it. Oh yeah. I'm getting like some prunes and dates as well. Some of that
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  kind of like dried fruit. Yeah, like it's very— both the things I said were
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  dried fruit. Yeah. Prunes and dates. Dried fruit.
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  Yeah. Yeah, I think we do that. You know, it's a list of things.
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  What did you say? You said the other night you said something about that,
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  that like a burnt sugar. And I was like, it's the top of a
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  crème brûlée. And I was like, it was my own idea, but you'd already said
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  it. We just reword. That's how we fill 10 minutes,
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  Dave. Is it all right? Is it all right that we go Sometimes we
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  just buy it for the bottle. Is it okay that sometimes that happens, that the
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  packaging wins us? We did taste it. No, no, sorry. I know that. But like,
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  sometimes is it okay if it tasted absolutely rubbish? I would not be
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  happy about that. No, no, no. But we taste it, we like it, and then
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  we're like, oh, if it's a nice bottle, it's— we don't kind of hesitate.
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  That's, I think, the thing is, is the bottle gets you over the line when
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  you're umming and ahhing about which bottles to pick out of all
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  the ones you like. You go for the pretty bottles because they look good on
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  the shelf, and then you can use them for something fun afterwards. I think— I'm
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  not sure if everybody who listens to this will be the same as us in
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  terms of having a silly amount of bottles on a shelf somewhere. I hope not.
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  I hope not, for their sake. But do you think
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  that if you have a nice— we have a couple of bottles like
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  this where the design of the bottle is minimalistic and beautiful, and if
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  you could choose I reckon if you and I got to choose 3 or 4
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  bottles on, on based on how bottles look to
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  put on one shelf in one place. Oh yeah. You could pick some absolute
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  belters to create this unbelievably cool looking shelf. Yeah.
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  There's a downside to that though, because sometimes the bottles don't
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  look as good when they're not full. And so I will look at
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  a really pretty bottle and go, oh, I'd like some of that tonight, and then
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  be like, oh, but that'll lower the bourbon level and it won't look as
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  nice. I would like to contend that every
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  bottle of bourbon looks worse as
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  soon as you start drinking some out of it. Yeah, but if it's not a
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  pretty bottle, who cares? But it's a really pretty bottle and your eyes are drawn
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  to it and the bottle looks really pretty. You— there's one exception
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  to that rule, actually. I want to go back on that. Oh, NewRiff have done
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  a great job of letting you drink almost all of it before it starts to
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  look anything other than brand new because it's all kind of painted black. Yeah,
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  that's true. Good on you, NewRiff. You make your bottles easier to
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  drink because— yeah, yeah, they're easy to drink. They still look full.
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  But this one here particularly, like, it's like that thing of like, it's so beautiful,
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  full. It's like, oh, kind of. But I mean, I have that with
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  every bottle. I don't really want it to empty because they taste so good and
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  then you're never going to get another one that tastes exactly like it. In my
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  real job, I make videos. You know that there's, there's been almost
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  until the last maybe 12 months or something, everyone used to come to us and
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  say, we want you to make us a video like the Dollar Shave Club,
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  which was a video that's maybe 15, 20 years old
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  now, but yeah, I'll show you later. But it's like this one standard video
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  that had huge viral success for a business. I feel like
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  people who make bottles must get the, can you please make me a bottle that's
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  like Frank August? Because it's such a cool bottle.
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  There's so many bottles out there now. It's like, how do you make
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  yours different? Like the shape, the wax,
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  the lid, the labels. Like there's lots to mix up,
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  but there are also a lot. And like
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  to have something that's so stunningly different and tastes so good,
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  that does a good job. Well, here's to Frank and being frank.
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  Be frank. Be frank. Cheers.
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