Around the Barrel Ep056/Re055 - Brad Japhe 

 

Lucas Hendrickson: If there's anything the last three years has taught us, it's never overlook the chance to spend a little time away from home. 

 

On this episode, we talk with travel and spirits writer Brad Japhe about the state of American whiskey across a variety of ponds, about how patience is paramount, whether it's waiting for whiskey, barbecue, or basketball, and about how both consistency and innovation are important pieces when it comes to what emerges from 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.

 

Brad Japhe: What's up everybody? Brad Japhe here. I am a freelance journalist, travel writer, whiskey expert from New York, and currently living in London in England, the United Kingdom.

 

Lucas: Brad Japhe, welcome to Around the Barrel.

 

Brad: Thanks so much for having me, Lucas. I appreciate it.

 

Lucas: So what has brought you across the pond to London currently, just experiencing the UK's whiskey scene or big and broader things we can't talk about.

 

Brad: Yeah, some things we can't talk about, there's NDAs involved, but no, I like to explore the world. Obviously, I love being closer to my friends over there in Scotland, and it's a big, bold, beautiful city with incredible energy and really eclectic and culturally vibrant. So just doing that for a little while, see where it takes me.

 

Lucas: Cool. That's a great jumping off point. What first got you interested in travel as a whole and also writing about it, and then also weaving the whiskey world into all of that as well?

 

Brad: After I graduated from college, I was in television production, in sports production, that involved a lot of travel, mainly around the United States. And at the time, I was really getting into craft beer, actually. And so just as a side hobby, just because I always into writing and I would just write for different blogs about craft beer and also a little bit of food blogging as well for places that certainly didn't pay enough to constitute a living wage or livable wage. So that was just kind of on the side there. Then I ramped up and built up a little bit of a portfolio and also started to develop a taste for beer after it is distilled into something glorious and barrel-aged into whiskey that we know and love.

 

So I started writing more about that as I became more knowledgeable and it was really just having this opportunity by having a day job that was taking me to all these different places. If I was going to a new part of the world, I made well sure that I was going to check out any craft brewery or any craft distillery that was in that area. And then I feel like if you have an inquisitive mind and you just keep exposing yourself to the process, you're going to pick up a lot of knowledge just through osmosis.

 

Lucas: Sure. And that's something that a lot of people, as they are kind of developing their own base of knowledge about the spirits world, you can't make good whiskey unless you know how to make good beer.

 

Brad: For sure.

 

Lucas: There's such an interweaving of those processes. Yeah, you're perfectly fine being a fan of both beer and whiskey as I am as well. So I totally get that.

 

Brad: And it wasn't even just an elongation of the technical process, but also at that time, craft beer was really starting to get into barrel-aged beers. And so I would taste beers that literally might have, that definitely did spend time in ex-Jack Daniel's barrels and you could taste the influence of Jack on the beer, and it's like, "Well, heck, I might as well go try the real deal, get to the source, as opposed to having this facsimile of a faint echo." It's like they say when you're drinking La Croix soda water like Pamplemousse, it's like somebody's whispering grapefruit into your ear and it's like, that's a lot of these barrel-aged beers. They're whispering Jack Daniel's in your ear and it's a great whisper to hear in your ear, but let's go actually get to the source.

 

Lucas: What tends to be your favorite part though about, especially as you travel and uncover these histories of these spirits and the companies themselves and the brands, what's been your favorite part about digging into those things?

 

Brad: I really like is for anybody out there that's been to multiple distillery tours and certainly get to the point where you go to dozens, it can start to feel kind of redundant. It's like, "Okay, we know what distillation is, we know–" But even still saying, having said that, there is real magic to me in the maturation process itself, where whenever you swing open that door to the rickhouse or to the dunnage warehouse or wherever it is that the barrels are being stored, and you just get that whiff of the booze that's literally hanging in the air, it's just such an incredible experience and it's such a primacy to that. That once I have that experience in any place, then wherever I am in the world and I order that bottle of booze, I know that I'll be able to be brought right back to that exact moment.

 

And so it's really kind of a way to teleport and I like having that superpower. There's only so much that you get from reading a label. I feel like personally, that I don't fully understand a brand or liquid as fully as I do as when I've been there and gotten on the ground, and certainly can't, I'm not equipped to tell those stories as a storyteller until I have had that experience. So in the modern age when, certainly in American whiskey, when we see a lot of craft upstarts that come onto the scene and they're sourcing their liquids, they could be producing some really great stuff, but you always know that they're trying, they're aiming and they're working towards actually having a home base and a home place. Because you need that place to be attached to. And what Jack does over there in Lynchburg, it's such an incredible example of that.

 

And I mean, I know we're going to touch upon this at some point, so jumping the gun, but–

 

Lucas: No, no, you're fine.

 

Brad: –Being there when The Jack is going on, and that's really, you feel all the eyes of Tennessee is on this one place and in the barbecue community, the entire world is focused on this one place, and it's just really, you get a special sense of the community that exists there. And it's not an artificial thing. It's not something that feels at all fake. It's super, super authentic, and it gave me a greater sense of appreciation for a brand and Jack that I already really, really appreciated.

 

Lucas: Well, and that's certainly not the first time we've heard that expressed that way that there's not an artificiality to it, and the legitimacy of it really does shine through when you are able to make that trip. And so that's certainly a testament to the work of a lot of people down there in Lynchburg. You mentioned The Jack, you were a first-time judge at the '22 version of the International invitational barbecue cook-off. What was that experience like for you? And now that you are a certified KCBS judge, has the judging bug bitten you in any other ways? Are you volunteering to judge any other competitions now that you've got The Jack under your belt?

 

Brad: I have not thus far, but I do very much appreciate having that certification. It's certainly a feather to have in your cap because they're serious and that is definitely one of the takeaways for me is in my mind I'm thinking, "Okay, this is barbecue competition at the Jack Daniel's Distillery. We're going to be drinking, we're going to be having a good time. And this is one big party."

 

Lucas: Oh no, no, no.

 

Brad: But no, this is super serious. And I went into a classroom for an entire day to get this certification. I felt like it was triggering. I felt like I was back in high school, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I thought that I would never have this experience again of being trapped in the classroom." But at the end of it, they bring out these different cuts of meat, different types of proteins, and you then approach it with a clinical type of accuracy.

 

You're not drinking. I think that we can be explicitly clear about that. That is a big no-no with the Kansas City Barbecue Society, that is not something that you can do while you're judging. You need to have your faculties fully intact. And so there's not even a pour of Jack or anything anywhere near you. You are sitting there, you're tasting this and you're being very, very methodical in your judging. So that is one thing that was very different for me, and I appreciate that. I think it's great. There's plenty of time to have Jack afterwards and throughout that entire weekend. So that was one moment where you're like, "Okay, we are very much focused, and we have a job to do here." And this is something that the people that came here and enter in these products are entering these dishes take very, very, very seriously. So you owe it to them to have that same degree of seriousness in terms of how you judge it.

 

Lucas: Yeah, I think for a lot of outsiders coming in, they can have this idea that it's just going to be a big fun time, but it's a marathon and it's actually a marathon of sprints with the different categories that are being brought to you across the course of what is a very long day. So yeah, you got to have your faculties and your palette cleared every time something new gets put in front of you.

 

Brad: Yeah. I also really loved how there's this contingent of weathermen, weather people, weather reporters that come every year and take things super seriously. They're from the Weather Channel or their local correspondents, but they're a crew and this is what they do, and they come and the really crazy thing for me was people coming with coolers, the judges, so that they could pack up some of the meat that weren't going to be eating during the competition and have it later in the day or for dinner that night.

 

Lucas: It's really one of the few events on the calendar that people don't get nervous when they see Jim Cantore come through. Usually if he's coming to your town, it's bad news, you're getting hit by a major weather event. But for The Jack, they're actually happy to see him.

 

Again, going back to the whiskey world and certainly the current state of it, we've seen a lot of newcomers to this space who are currently sourcing liquid and working on their own home places and trying to put liquid away and have it ready four to seven years down the road, et cetera, et cetera. But it may feel a little disingenuous to say this on a Jack Daniel's podcast, but are there too many whiskey brands in the world in this moment?

 

Brad: I think as long as we have a growth to support it, then I don't think that there's too much. But also, it's not just the growth, it's not the sheer numbers of drinkers that are out there so much as the disposition of those drinkers where they're curious and they want to try something different. There's still going to be brand loyalty, of course, you're still always going to come back to Jack if you're a Jack drinker, but maybe you want to try something different or maybe there's some place that's doing something completely different.

 

What I don't want to see is just a bunch of places that are just doing the same thing in some other place. I like to see some form of innovation and to my point of going to dozens of different distilleries and having it feel redundant, in my position as a whiskey writer, as a journalist, I go to these places and I say, "Hey, let's just cut straight to what you do differently than other places, whatever it may be."

 

Obviously, when you're there at Jack, there's many different examples of that. The Lincoln County Process and the way that you, specifically the way that Jack applies the Lincoln County and going out there and seeing that maple, or as say out there "char-co," I know that last L is kind of silent, but when you see that maple charcoal go up in flames and see it getting produced, that is really a very, very special thing. And getting to see the water source and seeing the way that the barrels are scored out for the Sinatra Select. And that's just an example of the many idiosyncrasies. So if you have other places that are going to do something and figure out some way that they can do things differently, then, yeah, but there's only so many different ways that you can do things differently.

 

So I hate to sound like a naysayer, a doomsayer, or anything like that, but any historian of whiskey will tell that there's cycles, obviously, that it doesn't always trend upwards forever. We'd like to think that it could. And as long as it keeps on the trajectory that it is right now, then it certainly seems like there's room for more. But in the past, unfortunately, people start to turn their attention to ghastly clear spirits and then that would be a problem for having more whiskey stories in the world.

 

Lucas: In the whiskey world, yeah. How do you think the whiskey world is reorienting itself in the post-pandemic world? There was a lot of business factors that came into play with tariffs and kind of things that happened over the past five years or so. How is that now shaking out in your view?

 

Brad: Well, I have a pretty interesting view on things that I am an American living in London right now, so I get to see UK/Europe. And from where I am sitting over there, I know that there's still so much more room for growth for American whiskey because it's not really as big as it should be. Jack definitely enjoys a nice footprint around the world. We know that globally, if not already soon, should be the number one selling whiskey in the world. But even still, these places that carry Jack, it's really just the flagship. And we know that there's tons of different Jack labels and Jack expressions out there these days and I just don't see them very much. And then from other brands of great American whiskeys, I don't see them at all. So I'd love for them to get a little bit more exposed to that side of things.

 

And for years they would make fun of– Europeans would make fun of American beer because it's very watery by their expectations or by how they discriminate against it. And it's like, "Well, I'm seeing what you're pouring. You're only pouring these macro lagers. We actually make a lot of other stuff out there and a lot of other different flavors that are very much not watery at all." In fact, our super hoppy beers that we're really into, they don't even want to drink those in Europe because they think that it's just too much flavor.

 

So I think with the tariff situation, specifically, I think that we've worked through that a little bit because some of those tariffs have been lessened in European markets. It looked like a full on trade war. I think it's eased a little bit, at least going in the right direction. So because of that, theoretically, it should stand to reason, that's one big hurdle that was preventing more American whiskey from going into European markets. I would like to see more, and I want to see tremendous growth for this liquid that I love in other parts of the world. I love it. And I know that they would love it too, if they were getting more of it.

 

Lucas: Sure. Over the past several years, what has been your thought about the expansion of the Jack Daniel's brand as branching off into a set of flavored expressions? Certainly, more recent things like the Bonded and Triple Mash products, the age statement stuff, the 10 to 12 years now, which is virtually impossible to find even for me, especially for me probably. But what has been your view of Jack Daniel's moving itself forward into the future?

 

Brad: Yeah, I think that there should be case studies about how Jack has approached things because I think they've just been genius in terms of, and I'm not just saying that because I'm on this particular podcast, but honestly I would say that to anybody who listens just because specifically for brands that have attained– the few brands out there that have attained the type of ubiquity that Jack Daniel's has in terms of just mass market appeal, they often end up being a victim of that success in the sense of, in the craft world, people are dismissive where it's like, "Oh, that's just mass market stuff. I wouldn't touch that." So Jack is like this rare brand today because of this expansion that you've talked about, where they're straddling both sides of that divide. They are able to still be the number one selling American whiskey in the world. And at the same time, anybody that I know that's really into "craft whiskeys" and whiskeys that appeal to more of the dorks like myself, I'm not saying that derisively, the spirit geeks–

 

Lucas: I'm right there with you.

 

Brad: –And the aficionados. There is something for us out there, particularly with these single barrel selects and, man, there's just been so many great releases over the past couple years that, like you say, unfortunately I can't really get my hands on it too often. Coy Hill being a great example of that. It's almost like a unicorn. It's the idea that Jack Daniel's and unicorn in the same sentence is bizarre, but they've done it and that's really, really impressive. And I can't commend them enough for being able to straddle both sides of that divide, as I said so that's great stuff. And it makes me excited to see what's the new small batch release or limited release that's going to come out next.

 

And if I can be really honest, I was never really a fan of flagship Jack Daniel's, not because it's mass market, but because specifically there's like the house style, to me, has always had a banana-y note to it with a specific ester that comes from fermentation, for a real geeks out there Isoamyl acetate, which is bananas. And I do not bananas. So Jack has always been something that when I drink it, I have it, sorry, with Coke or on the rocks with soda. But when these single barrels came out and the barrel strength stuff, it was a different flavor that they were mining. It was still true to the general house style, but it didn't have that banana to it. And I'm like, holy crap, I really love this stuff. And it opened my world to Jack Daniel's that are more to my personal palette and that was a great moment for me.

 

Lucas: You can often get sidetracked when you try to be all things to everybody. But I think you're exactly right. The ubiquity and the history and the availability of Old No. 7, now paired with the different expressions they've been able to pull from that exact same liquid is a pretty fascinating approach in the team down there with Chris Fletcher and Lexie Phillips and Byron Copeland and all those folks who are doing those things on the daily down there, it does make for some pretty great opportunities to expand one's palette in a lot of ways.

 

Brad: And it's just an exciting time in general, I would say, to be from the Volunteer State. Because just down the road in Nashville, it seems like Nashville is just on the tip of everybody's tongue these days.

 

Lucas: Yes.

 

Brad: It's really like this boom town. I think some locals probably don't appreciate that so much because it has been booming and–

 

Lucas: Well, being a 30-year resident of Nashville. Yeah, there are parts that I don't recognize, but at the same time it is super, it is a very exciting time to be here these days.

 

Brad: Exactly. So it's just like Tennessee is really having a moment right now and Jack is right there at the vanguard.

 

Lucas: Sure. We've talked with a lot of different spirits media folks over the years, your Mark Gillespie or Fred Minix and some others about how you develop your vocabulary when it comes to writing and talking about whiskey. And you just mentioned some stuff as far as the banana flavor and the much more technical terms on it, but what was your process to build up your tasting note and descriptor bank aside from just repetition?

 

Brad: Yeah, I mean, there are only so many adjectives out there unfortunately. And I am personally– it's a pet peeve of mine to in my writing, just see the same thing over and over again. It sucks, actually, when you're writing about restaurants or hotels or bars because there's only so many different ways that you can say restaurant, hotel or bar. And I don't want to have to say bar 17 times in a cocktail story and you end up saying things like drinking den and all these other things that seem really pretentious and you'd never say them in conversation, but it's just because, I don't want to say the same word bar 17 different times, but to that end, especially with American whiskey – caramel, vanilla, toffee, butterscotch, we know cinnamon, these types of things, we're always going to come back to them because they're familiar top notes to a liquid that ages in charred new oak. That's just the laws of physics.

 

So in order to break free from that and to open up your vocabulary a little bit, the more exciting thing to me has always been to, instead of calling upon just simple flavor notes, to actually draw upon experience. So it's, if something tastes has a leather tobacco note, you want to think about being in some sort of parlor in a smoking chair, something like that, and just evoke a sensory experience as opposed to just keeping it confined to just the actual flavors. So then, in that sense, it feels like you're taking something from a two-dimensional plain into something that you can actually close your eyes and see yourself there experiencing it. It's really easier to do that, not easier, but it's a pleasure to do that with some , that are out there that particularly like the peaty Scotches, because they just have this note, and obviously some people hate this.

 

It just calls to mind being on a rainy, windswept island and it's super, super cold and damp outside and you open up the door to this cabin and there's like a little fire going on and you're just sitting warming up by the fire. That's like what you get with certain Scotches. And so you want to try and find that, and you want to try and draw upon that experience. And the more you get to travel for whiskey, specifically, the more you'll find yourself having these types of experiences. I count myself very lucky to have these experiences and I try to convey them to readers in the stories that I retell in my writing.

 

Lucas: Alongside your journalism work, also been kind of a drinks and beer and spirits consultant and putting together events that craft pairing and educational side of things for groups and settings, festival kind of stuff. Talk about how you got into doing that and what kind of approach do you take for crafting these kinds of experiences for people and getting the totality of the experience in the midst of sipping on some really good liquid?

 

Brad: Yeah. Well, it's just that we live in this time period where, thankfully, people are super, super curious to want to know more about the things that they're drinking. So in the past, people drinking Jack is not anything new, but what is new is it's like, "Okay, well, man, where does that flavor come from? What's going into that?" And people are asking those questions. So it's a great time to have my role because I've spent the past decade of my life figuring out those things, where those flavors come from, how they're honed, et cetera, et cetera. So that, having that specialty and that focus, I am by trade a travel writer, but it's a travel writer with a very specific focus on food and beverage and even more specific focus on spirits. And by curating and manicuring this sense of having that specialty, then you start to have people knocking on your door.

 

I've lived most of my adult life in Los Angeles and also in San Francisco before that. So there's big industries there, whether it be the tech industry or the entertainment industry. And so there's people that you'll rub elbows with and they'll start to pick up that you're knowledgeable on a certain topic. In this case, alcohol, distilled spirits. And they're like, "Hey, we'd love to have, we're putting together some event or some–" Everybody always gets together around good spirits. We know that. That's a big reason why we love spirits is that it brings people together.

 

So when you can have somebody there that's an expert in that, people really dig that because not only are they getting to drink the stuff that they love, but they're getting to learn at the same time. So it's kind of a no-brainer and people are always looking for an excuse, I find, to have events like that, certainly in the corporate setting because we know that the corporations love to breed comradery amongst their workers, and that's a good way to do happy hours. And that's a lot of things that I've done during my time in Los Angeles is I would host happy hours at different corporate headquarters, and you'd get so many people asking questions and so many people that want your information afterwards, and then it snowballs because then they're like, "Okay, I want to do this with my other group of friends." And then they ask you, they call you up and you're doing it for another group of people.

 

So that is really how that came to be. And it's an organic process. It's not something that I necessarily go out and advertise that this is what I do. But as long as you keep your name out there as a booze writer specifically, I'd say that there, it's a pretty niche field like about– in the States, I'm not trying to throw shade or anything, but there's a dozen or so two dozen tops people that are really, really doing it well and doing it as a full-time job. So it's really not an overly competitive space. There's a few of us and there's good work for us out there that are keeping our name out there.

 

Lucas: What are the trends, overall spirits, business-wise do you see coming over the horizon for the rest of this year and into 2024? What are the things that you see as being the headlines that we can expect to see for the balance of this year?

 

Brad: Just in American whiskey, everybody still keeps, keeping their eye and waiting with bated breath for the TTB to codify American Single Malt. So that is something that I think, if that actually happens, or when it happens, we'll see even more growth in that space. And obviously we know that Jack was right there with actually creating a single malt, which is something that I think even four or five years ago, Jack fans would've been very surprised, if you told him that you would be able to drink a single malt from Jack Daniel's. And so we should see some pointed growth in that category.

 

I'm now seeing to that end, more peated American whiskeys. And that is an interesting trend. I remember a couple of years ago, there was a distillery in New York that had released a peated bourbon, which is really, really crazy because it's like a peat-smoked corn, which is, I don't even know. That's a funky process to think about.

 

So yeah, I think that that's going to be interesting and we'll continue to see just inventive finishes just because when it comes to American whiskey, specifically bourbon and Tennessee whiskey and rye, there's only so much that you can do because the parameters of production are so rigid, and that's for better or worse, it's a great thing because we always know what we're going to get, the quality that we're going to get with those categories. It's a bad thing because it does stifle a little bit of innovation as opposed to something that you could get in say, rum, which is kind of a free for all.

 

So barrel finishing has always been that kind of classic way, or not classic, but modern way to introduce new flavors. And so I don't think we've exhausted that yet, and I don't think we've even come close. So we're going to see some more stuff there. And then it's kind of funny just to see what can you do, because there's only so many different types of barrels that are out there. So what the heck is going to be next that we haven't seen when it comes to barrel finishing?

 

And then also maybe we get a little bit funkier with some of these aging and maturation techniques that some people would dismiss as novelties, whether it be pumping loud EDM into the barrel house, rolling your barrel down a hill to try and whatever it is, putting it on a ship. Anything, just different ways to get your liquid to interact with the barrel. Let's see where science can take that. And hopefully there's no way that AI can come in and muck it up, like it's going to muck up every other aspect of our lives.

 

Lucas: Right. You are talking to a fellow writer that is frightened by ChatGPT on the daily. So just to wrap up, we are talking mere days after your beloved New York Knicks won their first playoff series in a decade. The big question is, did you celebrate responsibly that night or are you hanging off for the big party, should they win the NBA finals?

 

Brad: Well, I am right currently on the opposite end of the world. I'm in Singapore right now, so I think it was like 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00 in the morning when they won. So I didn't do too much like proper celebrating. I was jumping up and down in my hotel room and it was very, very unexpected. But I never allow my hopes to get too high with the New York Knicks because I've been a New York Knicks fan my entire life. So this is great. But I don't have very high expectations.

 

Lucas: Brad, if folks have kind of been, their interests been peaked by our conversation, where else can they see some of your work online and elsewhere?

 

Brad: Right. So I am a spirits columnist for Bloomberg, for Forbes, for Men's Journal, but I freelance for so many different publications. So the best way to kind of keep on top of where my latest bylines are in the world of whiskey, spirits and beyond is following me on Instagram @journeys_with_japhe, J-A-P-H-E is how you spell that last name.

 

Lucas: Well, Brad, again, thank you for sharing a little bit of your knowledge with us, continued success and travel safely, and thanks for joining us Around the Barrel.

 

Thanks for checking out this episode of Around the Barrel. 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 and review while you're at it. Cheers, y'all, and join us next time for more conversations Around the Barrel.

 

Your friends at Jack Daniel's remind you to drink responsibly. Jack Daniel's and Old No. 7 are registered trademarks copyright 2023, Jack Daniel's. 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.