Around the Barrel - Transcript - Ep045/Re044 Kenny Coleman
Kenny Coleman: And I think that's what gives so much flexibility, especially with the type of stock that Jack Daniel's has, that they can continually innovate and can be able to do things more than just proof, but they can also latch onto the legacy of what's there.
Lucas Hendrickson: Want to know the key to getting better at something? Pay attention. No, really that's the key, pay attention. That's most assuredly the key to getting better at understanding the complex world of distilled spirits. If you pay attention to every drop of liquid that passes under your nose, over your palate and into your being, you'll begin to compile the knowledge and expertise that can only come through experience.
On this episode, we talk with Kenny Coleman, host of Bourbon Pursuit, the long running bourbon focused podcast, about the path he and his cohorts took to gain that knowledge, how listening to their audience encouraged them to share even more of it, and how the centuries long rivalry that can still inform interaction between Kentucky and Tennessee gets erased when you're sitting and sipping around the barrel.
Welcome back to Around the Barrel, the official podcast from the makers of Jack Daniel's. I'm your host, Lucas Hendrickson. It's amazing how often expertise emerges from enthusiasm. Kenny Coleman was working in the emerging field of podcasts when he started doing his personal deep dive into the world of bourbon almost a decade ago, and turned that initial interest into creating something relatively unique at the time. Sure, there were other whiskey focused podcasts already in motion, shout out to friend of the pod, Mark Gillespie of WhiskyCast, but Kenny decided to hone in even further, zooming in on the specific style of bourbon. Thus was born Bourbon Pursuit, first a podcast, now an entire bourbon lover's destination, including affinity programs, barrel selections, and a dedicated bourbon line, additional avenues that have grown alongside the burgeoning popularity of the spirit itself.
Alongside co-host Ryan Cecil, and another friend of the pod Fred Minnick, Kenny has found himself moving from engaged fan to experienced observer, guiding other people's interest in the spirits world while continuing to educate himself.
Kenny: Hi, I'm Kenny Coleman, I am the host of the Bourbon Pursuit podcast. I'm from Louisville, Kentucky, and today I also live in Louisville, Kentucky dealing with all things bourbon and bourbon culture and bourbon stuff like that.
Lucas: Kenny Coleman, welcome to Around the Barrel.
Kenny: Thank you for having me, I'm really excited to be able to do this. It's not too often I get to come on and talk bourbon on other bourbon podcasts. This is always a fascinating time.
Lucas: Sure. There's that a family rivalry, if you will. The Kentucky versus Tennessee and bourbon versus Tennessee whiskey, all that kind of stuff, but we'll leave a lot of that stuff for other people to talk about another day.
Kenny: They call it frenemies, right? Frenemies? Is that the way to put it?
Lucas: Exactly. But tell us a little bit about Bourbon Pursuit, how the podcast itself got started. What's your origin story for being involved in the whiskey and brown liquor commentary world, and we'll just go from there.
Kenny: You know, it's funny. We started this podcast back in March of 2015, but really getting into the commentary thing wasn't a goal for us by any means. It just sort of became a thing of recent few years that people actually cared about what we thought and that's because in the early days... We started back in March of 2015, and we knew that when we started the podcast, we couldn't just talk about bourbon because we're nobody. Who wants to listen to these guys in Kentucky that have never done anything talking...be authoritative on the subject. We knew that we couldn't necessarily do that, so we started off with a pretty unique thing at the time. Hats off to Mark Gillespie and WhiskyCast. He really paved the path for a lot of us.
His is really more business to business and it was focused on the entire whiskey category and there wasn't a whole lot of stuff that focused just on bourbon. So we took a note from my manager at the time, he was running his very successful tech podcast called the Cloudcast where he had startup CEOs and founders come on and talk about what they're doing in the technology space and cloud computing. And I said, "That's what's missing, a voice from inside the distillery." How do we make people connect with the brands that they're drinking? What you all are doing is a very good representation of what was missing back then, because nobody had access to the people and the ideas and the stories that we all now get... Well, there's a lot of out there.
But at the very beginning, that didn't really exist, so we reached out and we begged a lot of distilleries. I mean, I remember at the very beginning we were just cold emailing people and they're like, you do a what? You want to talk about... Sure. Come on down. We'll we'll have you in. And now I'm sure they get requests like that on a weekly basis.
But that was really the impetus on what started the podcast when really it was for us to kind of learn more ourselves. I was really getting into bourbon around 2012, 2013, and we launched in, I said March of 2015, but around that time is when I was really getting into it and trying to learn and soak up as much as possible. And Ryan, my cohost at the time, he was really just wanting to start a podcast. He was going to do it on his industry.
Long story short, we ended up figuring out, well, I think bourbon might be something that we should do. And we landed on that interview format because nobody was really doing anything like that at the time and really sharing those stories and helping people connect with the brands on a different level. And it's been a really good recipe for success. Since then, we've done 300 some odd episodes. We do events. We do all kinds of different things now, and oddly enough, we do whiskey reviews, which at the very beginning we told everybody we are never going to do whiskey reviews. We're not whiskey reviewers. You all shouldn't care what we think.
Then, I think it was in 2019, we were like, all right, well, I guess it's time to start doing whiskey reviews because people are asking for them. That's kind of been our Genesis. It was never really about us, it was about the people that we interviewed and sharing their stories. But over time, it's transformed a little bit and now people do care about what we think, and they want to know our thoughts on particular subjects. And I think it's really cool to end up being some sort of, as you would say, voice in bourbon, if you will.
Lucas: I know in talking with Mark Gillespie and Fred Minnick and others in this space, authoritative voice is frequently the hardest thing to try to build up over time, because you've got to want to be able to talk to that audience that you've worked really hard to gather and give them information and perspective that is only going to take time to develop. I have to imagine when you acquiesced to the feedback and said, okay, we'll start doing reviews, correct me if I'm wrong, you probably spent the previous four or five years also squirreling away your own vocabulary as far as tasting and reviewing and building up those descriptors for that. How was that process for you?
Kenny: I wish Ryan would be the one to answer that because he's so much better at doing notes and pulling out their descriptors and those flavors than I am. But you're totally right. For us, it was a long journey. It was a long process. We didn't come into this thinking we're going to be master tasters and people are going to care about what we think and in the future, we're going to launch our own bourbon. All of that just naturally progressed at some point. But I think a lot of people that get into bourbon, they start realizing very, very soon that they start buying all these bottles, and then they start tasting them, and then they actually start remembering what they tasted and they start looking at people like Fred Minnick.
They start looking at people like Peggy Noe Stevens, and they realize that this is fun. It's fun to sit there and drink something and figure out what note to compare that to or what does it remind you of. And none of this is just flavor additives, it's naturally happening, and it's all happening differently to everyone. If me and you tasted a Jack Daniel's barrel proof together, I could say it tastes like chocolate and you'd think it's smoky. It's just one of those things that everybody's a little different, and I think that's what makes it really unique in this. So our journey has been what a lot of people have done as well. At the very beginning, yes, we were interested in it, we liked bourbon, but we didn't consider ourselves authoritative. We didn't get her set ourselves professionals by any means either.
But over time, yes, we really harnessed a lot of that... Should I say, we were like sponges. We really were. We listened to everything that anybody ever said when they were on our podcast and we built that into the culmination of the product that we ended up putting out as well. But a lot of that is just through time and tasting and understanding what people are putting out and what they're trying to do differently.
If you're handed a bottle of something and somebody says, "What do you think of my bourbon?" And you say, "Okay, tell me about the mash bill. Tell me about the barrel process. Did you toast it? What was the char level?" And those are the things that you end up start thinking, oh, wow, this is... Now I know more about this whiskey and I can relate to it a little bit more as well because I understand really what went into the process.
Lucas: So if somebody hasn't spent much time with your podcast as of yet, and hopefully they will after they hear ours a little bit, tell us a little bit about the structure these days of your show. What are you trying to accomplish with each individual episode as they come out? Give us a little shape of how your show works.
Kenny: It's funny, we're always continually pivoting, too. At the very beginning, it was us finding master distillers or whomever to come on the show and tell their story, and we still do that today through an interview type of process. However, over time we've started adding in new things. We've started adding in a weekly news segment because we all know that press releases come out every week. There's a bunch of things that happen in the world of bourbon. Whether they're news or whether they're new bottles, people want to make sure that they're front and center, so we added a weekly news segment at the very beginning of the podcast, which we might be breaking that out into its own separate thing here in the future. Because the thing is, there's so much news. There's so much news every single week and it seems like our podcast doesn't even start until you're eight to 10 minutes into it. That might be a little too much intro. That's why we think we might break this out a little bit. We've also been very fortunate that Fred Minnick joined our show back in, I think, 2018-ish timeframe.
We do things a little bit differently. When we record, we record everything evergreen as possible and we record only four times a year. We wanted to get Fred involved really early, and the easiest way to do that is by having him have some little small segment and that's when we introduced Above the Char. It's his three to five minute period where he can field a question and give an answer about anything that's talking about American whiskey and culture and stuff like that. So we have those two segments that then lead into the podcast, and the podcast today, again, it can be anything from bringing on brand ambassadors to master distillers, to warehouse workers, to cooperages, but now we're also... Of course, authors and bloggers, but now we're also bringing in celebrities and TikTok people and whatever to talk about what's happening in bourbon culture.
Because funny enough, bourbon is so historic and it has this great legacy, but there's so many new mediums that are popping up on how people are relating to it and how they're getting information about it. I mean, I think Instagram is one of those things that I don't know if a lot of brands ever saw that really coming and there's Instagram influencers with a hundred thousand people that follow them, and all they do is want to look at pictures and that's amazing. It's amazing. So we talk about that as a topic and we bring on these Instagram influencers to talk about how they got into bourbon and what they think is wrong with other Instagram influencers and try to spark a little tension there. Those are the fun things that we like to do and try and find new and interesting ways to figure out how bourbon is central to a lot of these conversations.
Lucas: So that's a little bit about form. Let's talk about what the reality of the bourbon and the overall spirits world is right now. What kind of trends are you seeing emerging from the overall spirit industry as we move into, hopefully, a slightly less pandemic-y world? What has changed in the past 18 to 20 months in your mind, and what do you think are the emerging trends that are going to bring us out of all of this?
Kenny: Our podcast, we talk about all the time, we've been talking about it for years. We've always said that the three tier system... We put a few jabs at it and we've also praised at a time, but I will always say that the pandemic has probably been one of the best things that's ever happened for bourbon and for spirits in general because it made everything progress that much faster. Now we see the direct to consumer mindshare really starting to set a focus here. I think this is something that is going to completely change the way that distilleries can operate, that retailers can operate, and ultimately gives the consumer a ton more choice. This is great because a few things. I mean, if we want to talk about Jack Daniel's, I'm sure there's going to be some releases that aren't going to be in Tennessee that are in California versus maybe there's some bottles in Florida that ended up there that somebody in Kansas wants access to. This opens up so much potential for everybody to be on the same exact playing field.
I think that's one of the things that I see is a real big change and it's a real positive one in my experience and my opinion as well is that technology has revolutionized every single industry. It literally took a global pandemic for it's actually happened to spirits.
Lucas: Or at least clarify it certainly more than it had been in the past.
Kenny: Very true. You start seeing a lot of these distilleries that are now starting to do their own direct to consumer packages and their monthly whiskey of the month clubs or whatever it is. I think you're going to continue to see that trend grow, and I think that's really cool. I think it benefits the distillery. It creates a better all customer experience. A customer feels more engaged with their brand. They feel more tied to it and you create more lifelong customers by being able to deliver an enhanced experience on something like that as well. So honestly, I think that's probably one of the biggest things that I've seen come out of this that is trending in the right direction.
Lucas: On the flip side of that though, is there the potential for, a lack of a better alliteration, a bourbon bubble? Can there be too many brands? And I'm not just talking about bourbon, obviously they're all kinds of spirits. Can there be too many brands, too many expressions, too many micro-distilleries? For them, the customer, just to have way too many choices in the long run.
Kenny: Choice overload is a definite concern, and I think you're totally right. There are... And don't be wrong, we are on a good hockey stick trajectory right now. The only thing that makes me feel good about this... Because now, ourselves, as part of our offshoot of Pursuit Spirits, our own whiskey brand, we're putting down 1300 barrels a year. Granted that's very, very small in the grand scheme of things, I know Jack Daniels does more than that in a day. But it's one of those things that it makes me think like, if everybody else is going full boar, pedal to the metal, then we'll be okay. So we look at what everybody else is doing. If it wasn't for every distillery not dumping and investing tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars into their distillery to do more expansion, then we see that we're going to be in a good spot and I think whiskey is going to be in a good spot in a few years. So as long as people keep drinking, we'll be okay.
I think it'll actually be good for the consumer, having a lot of this potential of choosing different brands and what everybody's doing a little bit differently, and I think that's maybe the one thing that gets lost in craft. The big guys, the Heritage distilleries, they make a lot of great whiskey and they are also innovating, but they can't innovate at the same pace that a lot of other smaller ones do because if you want to do a run of something, you're doing a run of a couple 100 barrels. It's just not like, we'll do 10 barrels and see how it ends up. You can't do that.
So this really gives consumers something really interesting to be able to see that we're going to see a lot of variability in how the American whiskey category is going to grow over the next few years because of all these young craft distillers. Not only they're just coming online, but now they have products that have some age statements behind them.
Lucas: Speaking of age statements, obviously Jack Daniel's just released its first age-stated whiskey in more than 100 years with the new 10 years old expression. How important do you think those age-stated whiskeys from Legacy or Heritage sellers as you put it, how important are they to the overall whiskey and bourbon markets? Yeah, they're smaller batches. There's been some cases extremely limited availability on it, but having those major players in the game put out something that's age-stated and even into the double digits on those years, how important is that to the overall whiskey markets?
Kenny: I think it's super important. I think you have to have brands such as Jack Daniel's or any other Heritage distilleries continually try and figure out a way... A, you got to stay top of mind. You got to stay top of mind of your consumers. People are always chasing the shiny red ball. Even if you came out with Jack Daniel's 10 year and it was only a one-time release, and then the next year you came out with a 11 year, then people are like, oh my God, it's something that brand new. That's just what you have to do, and I truly, honestly feel that these distilleries and Jack Daniel. 's of course...
There's so much stock and there's so much that you can play around with that you can create a brand new type of label, a brand new type of flavor. And I think that's one of the things that gets lost in a lot of these conversations is, Jack Daniel's does a fantastic job of running the gamut of what does it look like to have a consistent mash bill, but utilize proofing as that ability to create these new product lines or as a way to create something that is different or unique. Because anybody that is not a true whiskey or bourbon nerd, if you have the same exact mash bill, or the same barrel, and you bottle it at 90 proof and you also bottle it at 110 proof, it's going to be wildly different.
Lucas: Very different.
Kenny: Exactly. I think that's what gives so much flexibility especially with the type of stock that Jack Daniels has that they can continually innovate and can be able to do things, more than just proof, but they can also latch on to the legacy of what's there. You said it best. It's the first time they released a ten-year age-stated in over a hundred years. I remember being on the press conference for it. I'm like, okay, well you did 100 years, so what are you going to do for the 200 year version?
Lucas: You got to think there, Chris Fletcher has probably decided which ones to squirrel away for that 200 year age-statement whiskey as well. There might be some stuff floating around the holler that it might make it another century or so. You never know.
Kenny: I think that, for Chris' benefit there, at least he could be like, eh, if I got it wrong, I'm dead and gone by now.
Lucas: It'll be his fairly new son's challenge at that point probably.
Kenny: Exactly.
Lucas: Things tend to run in the family around there. That said, have you personally traveled to Lynchburg and checked out everything Jack Daniel's down there?
Kenny: I have. I've eaten at Mary Bobo's.
Lucas: There you go.
Kenny: I've done that. Part of what we do as part of the podcast, I guess I mentioned before, we have our Patreon community and we have our own private barrel club in there as well, and so we do multiple Jack Daniel's barrel selections every single year. I always have to tip my hat to the people that led us down this path because man, I tell you what, it was one of those things that, you know, we're Kentucky boys. We're Kentucky boys and proud, but it was one of those things that people were like, you got to try this Jack Daniel's barrel proof. And I was like, what are you talking about? Then I tried it once and I was like, well, yeah, I guess I was wrong the entire time. Let's go and get... How many barrels of this can we get?
That really sent us down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out, okay, we love everything Jack Daniels now. And I tell you what, I can not wait until they allow us to do the barrel proof selections of the rye. I am floored and I love the barrel proof rye. I remember when I was down there doing a barrel selection in Lynchburg and they had a single barrel, barrel proof of the rye in a 375ML in the gift shop and they let us taste it and I was like, all right, well, I guess I'll take two of these because it is phenomenal.
Lucas: I was going to say, do you get some pushback from your Patreon community that thinks that you're going to hang on to the flag of bourbon and bourbon alone, and then you throw in a Tennessee whiskey in their radar as well. Was there pushback that was difficult to navigate for a while?
Kenny: I would say I'm fortunate in the fact that people trust us, maybe they almost trust us a little bit too much. We're always trying to pivot and find new ways to do things, whether it's through our format on the podcast or whether it's our reward system on Patreon or whether it's anything else we're doing, we're always trying to figure out how do we stay one step ahead. Going down the Jack Daniel's path seemed very natural for us. It's great whiskey, whether you call it Tennessee whiskey or whether you call it bourbon, I'm not going to get into that argument here. Again, going down and selecting something from Jack Daniel's was great, but we've also tried to figure out what else can we do. We all love whiskey, but we all know that whiskey is starting to get...
There's a lot of competition. Even though we would love to go and select 40 barrels of Jack Daniel's single barrel a year, we don't have that kind of allocation. We've got to figure out what else do we keep people interested in. We've done single barrels of armagnac. We're looking at doing rum and stuff like that too. So it's just something to let people experience something a little bit outside of this core bubble of the bourbon that they see on the shelf.
Lucas: And if you're bothering to dive into an affinity program like this anyway, you might as well expand beyond the realms of the single word itself. So it sounds like you've built or are building a very knowledgeable and active spirits consumer base, which is fantastic.
Kenny: Yeah. We call ourselves Bourbon Pursuit, but we're slowly venturing out of that and I would say that the only thing that works about Bourbon Pursuit now is just SEO, because bourbon is the hot word and that's what people are searching for. If it was Whiskey Pursuit or Spirits Pursuit, it probably wouldn't have had the same ring to it.
Lucas: Sure, sure. So on a personal level, what is your... I think I can probably already guess this, I think you mentioned it already. What's your favorite Jack product and then kind of a sideways to that, what's your favorite kind of a Tennessee whiskey cocktail, if you were to create one?
Kenny: I like that question. I'm a big fan of the barrel proof. There's just no way around it. I love going down there because... and if people don't know, even when you're drinking 135 proof whiskey, you can tell a lot of differences in it, even at barrel proof. I love selecting those. It's a unique opportunity, it's so much fun. Now, I'm not going to say for the average 90 proof drinker out there to be like, oh, you got to go try it and do it neat. No, no, no. Hold your horses. You don't want to do that on day one. But that is by far I think my favorite expression and I love the bottles they come in and the fact that they come in a box makes it even a better presentation for people and stuff like that.
Now, when it comes to the cocktail side, I have my favorite whiskey cocktail and I love to do it with barrel proof and that's Manhattan. I'm not the biggest old fashioned fan. I'm not. I think old fashioned is a little too sweet for me, but I love to do a Manhattan, and sometimes I do it with a rye, but sometimes I also do another bourbon, but I like to do... Maybe this is just because of... Maybe you're trying to tell me I'm going too far down, but I love doing all my cocktails with barrel proof because I really love the whiskey to stand out.
Lucas: There are those folks that would tell you that that's probably a waste of that whiskey. I'm not going to be one of them. I'm interested to hear what your Manhattan process is like on that.
Kenny: Yeah. I really love the whiskey to show through in a cocktail, because sometimes it does get lost. It gets lost by the other ingredients, it gets lost by... Whether it's a splash of lime or something like that. That's why I really like to have it stand out. Now for me, I've got a few little go-tos when I make my Manhattan. So first, I like to start off with a base of a great barrel proof bourbon. I'll take barrel proof Jack Daniel's in this case. Two ounces of that, and then I take one ounce of vermouth. Now it can't be any vermouth. I've had people, they're like, oh, you got to go Cocchi. And I was like, okay, I've tried Cocchi.
Oh, you've got to go and you've got to get Antica. And I was like, okay, I've tried Antica. But I'll tell you what, my favorite vermouth I've ever had actually comes from Italy, and it's called Starlino. They age their vermouth in ex-bourbon barrels. I love it. I absolutely adore it. I take an ounce of that and do a little bit of, of course, Angostura bitters. But I think the key here is the black walnut bitters from Fee Brothers. So add some black walnut bitters in there as well, stir it up, strain it, add a little bit of Luxardo cherry on top and there you have it.
Lucas: Very cool. Now, even though we're recording this in the middle of the day, now I want to go get a Manhattan. So mission accomplished there.
Kenny: Tell me about it.
Lucas: What do you think is the simplest tip for evaluating what a great spirit is that people look past? You talked about price a little bit and that's certainly a lot of people's determining factor, but what would be the one thing that you would point out to someone who's relatively new in this space to say, here's what you should look for in a quality bourbon or quality whiskey?
Kenny: Quality, it's so hard to determine. What you consider quality? I always tell people and this is one of the things that I have to tell people too is... When you start getting into bourbon... This is why they don't have bourbon somalias, because nobody knows where bourbon comes from, because there's so many sourced whiskeys that are on the market and there's so many different labels out there. It's not like wine and you can figure out, oh, it tastes like this. It's this grape from this region, this kind of label, this vineyard, whatever. Whiskey does not work like that. I think one of those things that, as you're getting into this bourbon journey and you're finding, oh, this tastes good. I really liked this label. I'll go try this.
Start reading the label and you got to start reading that small print and start looking at it and it says where it was distilled. They're not trying to fool you or anything, it's just that the consumer doesn't know. That gives us the ability to start educating consumers to say, okay, start reading the back of the label, figuring out where it's distilled in. That's going to start helping you decipher what's this coming from, is this something like I've had before, and that's going to help you grow and know stuff about that too.
Maybe I put too much trust in the system, too. I believe everybody wants to come out with a high quality product and everybody wants to have some high quality marketing story behind it as well. Those two things together are what consumers are going to gravitate and latch onto. We had a guest on previously, he ran a liquor store and we talked about the craft whiskey movement. We talked about how do you get people excited about new things? And he says, "You can always sell your first bottle on the story, but you can only sell your second bottle based on the taste."
Lucas: Unpack where people can find more about Bourbon Pursuit. What's the socials, the website, if they want to get involved in the Patreon program, give us a little bit of that elevator pitch on that side of things too.
Kenny: Sure. So if you're listening to this right now, make sure you go and you type in the word bourbon into your podcast app and hopefully we'll be the first result there, Bourbon Pursuit. Subscribe or follow us on any major platform, of course, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, iHeart Radio, you name it. It's all there. We're also on YouTube. We've got a few different video podcasts that are out there. And of course you had mentioned already Patreon. You can get all the information about Patreon, our private barrel club, anything like that on our website at bourbonpursuit.com. And if you're ever interested in learning more about our bourbon that we released called Pursuit Series, as well as Pursuit United, you can check that out at pursuitspirits.com.
Lucas: Very cool. Well, Kenny, thank you for joining us Around the Barrel.
Kenny: Well, thank you so much for having me. It was a real pleasure.
Lucas: Thanks for checking out this episode of Around the Barrel. For more voices from outside the day-to-day of the whiskey world, check out our conversation with lifestyle expert Marine Petroski from season two, episode six, and ESPN personality Marty Smith from season three, episode three.
You can find archived episodes of Around the Barrel on all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and more. Plus, on the web at jackdaniels.com/podcast. And if you like what you hear, please follow, rate, review, and share while you're at it.
Cheers y'all, and join us next time for more conversations Around the Barrel.
Your friends at Jack Daniels remind you to drink responsibly. Jack Daniels and Old No. 7 are registered trademarks, copyright 2021, Jack Daniels. Tennessee whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof, distilled and bottled by Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. Around the Barrel is intended for listeners 21 years of age and older.
