As Above, So Below Distillery

Drew H (00:08):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore's Whiskey Flights, your weekly home for discovering gr Craft distillery experiences around the Globe Highway travel guide Drew ish, the bestselling author, whiskey Lord's Travel Guide to Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon, the Lost History of Tennessee Whiskey, and the book that bust 24 of Whiskey's biggest myths Whiskey lore, volume one. And after leaving Boulder Spirits, I headed to the hotel Polaris in the shadow of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs at a seminar to do it was called The Myths of Whiskey. And during a power packed hour, I dispelled the Jack Daniel's oldest registered distillery myth, current EH Taylor's involvement with the Bottled and Bond Act and the legend of the tongue map and how we taste headed upstairs to join the full crowd at this whiskey festival. And about halfway through everybody enjoying food and drinks, we had someone come up to talk to the crowd who was from a Kentucky Bourbon Club.

(01:14):
And after he told us all about Kentucky Bourbon, he asked the crowd, would you like to hear some history? Well, I got to tell you, you don't want to follow me if you're going to be talking about bourbon history and filling it full of lore. My buddy Jeff, the Colorado whiskey guy who I've met through Instagram, he was over there serving drinks for 10th Mountain, and I could tell he was watching my face while this guy was going through all sorts of fantastical lores surrounding bourbon. And wasn't long before I also felt the eyes of the people who had just been in the seminar with me also kind of going, is that really true? Well, I got through that. It was a little painful to listen to some of it, but it was a great experience. I didn't taste too many whiskeys while I was there.

(02:11):
Unfortunately, I spent most of my time drawing about whiskey history and chatting with people and getting to know them. But Jeff was nice enough to put together a little Colorado sample pack, which I got to sample through the rest of my trip, and tasted some whiskeys in there from distilleries that I've heard of but had not really had any experience with. Like Bear Creek Minter 1847 as well as 10th Mountain, some really fantastic whiskeys in there and just continues to grow my feeling about the quality of Colorado Spirits. Then after having a great night's sleep with an elevated view of the Rockies off in the distance and the academy below them, I hit the road in the morning heading towards Santa Fe. And I always like to go off the beaten path if I can. I know the great scenery is not always on the freeway.

(03:05):
So I headed through Alamosa, drove past the San Louis Valley, which is where the rye comes from for one of my favorite Colorado whiskeys from laws and then pass through Tahoes, the Enchanted Circle. I have to say that is an incredible drive if you can get there in the fall when the aspens are at their full peak yellow. I did that a few years ago, incredible. Filled up my gas tank, grabbed a bite to eat before making my way into Santa Fe and my next destination, which is the spiritually named Distillery as Above So Below, if you haven't heard of it before, now you are about to discover this distillery along with me. They've done really well on my Instagram fan favorite craft distillery competition this year. So it was a place I definitely wanted to get to. I raced into town, found myself a parking spot, and Kaylee's Shoemaker, the founder of As Above So Below, was also racing in.

(04:07):
She was coming up from a meeting in Albuquerque now. She had her staff prepare some cocktails for us. She also pulled out her current whiskey selection and also dipped into her still aging barrel of single malt to give me a little sneak preview of what she hopes to release later on this year or early next year. And after a brief tour around, it was time to gather around the barrel where the drinks were all set up and the shadow of the stills behind us dig into Kaylee's background. So as I understand it, you actually started out at Stranahans, but not as a distiller, but actually as someone who was helping the tourists around?

Caley S (04:52):
Yeah, yeah. I started in the tour area. I actually started by giving tours as a part-time tour guide, and then I moved into working in the tasting room, then I moved into the administrative side. So I actually was in the operations administrative side pretty much my whole time at Strain of Hands, but we were small enough that someone got sick. I was a night shift distiller for a week, and so I ended up doing everything, but really managing sort of bottling in the administrative aspect of it was most of my job. So it was a big learning curve when I got cruising into Hangar because then I was distilling full time. But I did have the good background.

Drew H (05:25):
So it'd be interesting to get a sense of your evolution as you moved up into distilling at Strands. Did you have a mentor? What was the way that you first started getting into distilling at Strand of Hands?

Caley S (05:40):
Yeah, I mean, I was begging all the time. I thought it was so cool. I went to art school, I started working at the craft beer. I was into craft beer, so I was working at the craft beer bar next door and one day an old cowboy comes in and says, I want a glass of whiskey, whatever. And so I ended up giving him this lovely description of what turns out to be his own whiskey brand. And he was like, would you like a job? And five days later, I have keys to the building and I'm giving tours all the time. But as I got to start working with the distillers and really learning about the process, it fascinated me. I went to art school because I always thought I was really creative, but I'm finding that the problem solving and the taking of something and making it into something else that's different and cooler is what really engaged me in distilling.

(06:21):
And so I kept begging them, let me do this, let me do that. So then it would be like, well, on the Saturdays when you're here doing tours, we have no one here, so you need to check gravities on all the tanks. And I thought that was the biggest job that there ever was. It's like 21 years old, very seriously checking the gravities on the tanks. And just as time went on, they brought me more and more into things until I was covering shifts or I was handling a blend or I was doing this, that and the other thing. And being on the sort of operations side of things, I really saw kind of the backend business side a lot as well. And so I think it was a great sort of holistic way to get into the industry and to be able to spend, gosh, I think I was there six, seven years. It was a great amount of time to really kind of be in all aspects of what's happening at the distillery.

Drew H (07:06):
So how'd you end up at Hangar One, which is out in California?

Caley S (07:10):
Yeah, Alameda, California. So proximal spirits acquired strain of hands in 2010, and I believe they acquired the Hanger one brand shortly thereafter. And there was this plan that they were going to basically take Hanger One was started by St. George Spirits that they were going to take Hanger one and move it into its own facility. And so the opportunity came for me to do that. And when I heard about it, it was like, Hey, do you want to be the head distiller at Hanger one? I was like, hell yeah. And I had this picture in my mind and what it was was me alone in an empty aircraft hanger for a year and a half building a distillery. So it was like distillery school 1 0 1, me working with a consultant, sourcing all the materials, all the equipment, designing our process flow, getting the whole place built, building the tasting room, establishing the tour program.

(07:57):
It was the, again, accelerated experience of a lifetime. But once the distillery was built, I was distilling by myself for a year before we had another person. So I really, really got pushed into the deep end and it was great for me. I like to do that. But it was also a big shift going from making single malt whiskey and distilling this product from grain that's going to age for a long time to distilling vodka from grapes and then partnering with farmers to source really fresh fruit that we have to capture the essence of immediately to make these very unique flavored vodka. So it's just really two different sides of spirit making.

Drew H (08:33):
It seems like making vodka from grapes would sound like a really expensive way to make a vodka instead of using corn or other grains.

Caley S (08:42):
Yeah, totally. I mean, corn's kind of at the basis of a lot of what we do here in the US government subsidies have made corn very cheap for us, and vodka has a long history with grains and potatoes, but vodka can be made from anything. And in California there's a lot of grapes. And so working with different wineries and fascinatingly being able to taste terroir in vodka that's distilled from different wines, it is pretty mind blowing, but it does end up creating a little bit of a higher end product. Definitely cost wine.

Drew H (09:12):
So this is really interesting because the other day I had a brandy that was made from California Pinot Noir and it almost tasted like a spiked sparkling wine to me. So I'm wondering if there's just a different mouth feel to this or is it that it's giving it hints of fruit and citrus that make it worth experimenting with?

Caley S (09:35):
Honestly, it depends. We did a lot of blended white distilling for just the standard hanger one, which gave us, it was like a sweet sort of fruity flavor to the vodka. Obviously still very neutral vodka. We're at 95% pure alcohol. There's not a lot of esters that are going to sneak in there, so still very nuanced. But as we started getting into some of our special releases, especially, we had this vodka called Fog Point that was distilled from single wine varieties that was then cut to proof with water collected from fog nets. So as we started doing that, it was really interesting because I would distill a very minerally wine and I would taste minerality in the final spirit. And I know that there is no actual mineral content

Drew H (10:23):
In

Caley S (10:23):
The spirit. And so it's just really interesting how that sort of whisper of flavor would come through. I never did do a lot of distilling of big round reds, but I'd be really curious to see how those would turn out. But it was a nuance that changed from batch to batch. Depending on what type of grape varietal was used, you would get a little bit of hint of the wine experience

Drew H (10:42):
In each. You got me. How do you catch fog?

Caley S (10:48):
This one was also a mind boggler for me. They make these nets that are basically vertical and they get put on the hills where sort of fog flows through, and they're made of this specific type of shade cloth that's kind of in a V shaped weave. And so essentially as the fog passes through the net, all those little tiny water droplets collide with the net and condense on there, and that V-shaped weave just directs it down to the bottom of the net, and they literally put a trough with a little tube on there and collect fog. And this is a technology that was developed for drought ridden countries that had that nice sort of sea fog. So you'll see it a lot in South America and Africa and places like that. But there was a group out of Berkeley that was testing it in the San Francisco Bay area, and we thought, what is more the essence of the bay than the fog? And so this was a good opportunity for us to experiment with creating terre terroir in something like vodka using something other than approaching it from a different way, choosing our water uniquely like they do in Kentucky, that limestone water is, there's so many aspects. So yeah, let us do that. But then we also raised money for FOD Quest to expand their mission, and it was just a great way for us to talk about the process of making vodka and talk about what made the place, you're making it in so special,

Drew H (12:02):
But did you have room to experiment

Caley S (12:05):
A little bit? Yeah, yeah, I did a lot more experimentation with flavored spirits there. We were constantly releasing small batch vodka flavors. It was that time in the two thousands where people really liked stuff like that. Things have changed a little bit since then, but it gave me an opportunity to, I'd go out to the farmer's market, meet the farmers, taste the different fruits, herbs, botanicals I wanted to play with. I had a great 75 gallon pilot system that we could rip all kinds of stuff on, and we did a lot of flavored vodka experimentation. We did some brandy experimentation. We made some whiskey, some very, very scrappy whiskey. So it was great to be able to have that kind of latitude to start to experiment and really grow as a distiller.

Drew H (12:46):
Yeah. So what got you interested in owning your own distillery and why New Mexico?

Caley S (12:53):
Apparently I like pain and suffering. No, totally kidding. No, I've worked in craft my whole career and I was getting to a point with being at Hanger one where I really wanted to push myself and get my career to the next level, and I didn't want to move into a larger factory environment where I'd be in a more compartmentalized job. I didn't want to seek getting into sort of the leadership stuff that happens in an office every day. I like the very day of, I might be doing a marketing thing, I might be doing an events thing, I might be cleaning a still. I'm sort of all around doing stuff. And small business really seemed like a way to push myself while getting to have that varied day. My husband's also worked in craft beer since 97, and he's on the sales side. So we had this wild idea that Kaylee's used to running distillery operations and is a distiller, and Jeff can handle sales very beautifully, and we're a perfect pair. And so it's really worked well for us on that front. It was a terrible time to start a distillery, so I think we faced a lot more challenges as a small business than we may have had. We done it earlier, but for the cycle of our lives we were doing it in, it was the right time for us.

Drew H (14:02):
Yeah,

Caley S (14:03):
New Mexico on the second side of that question is this state has really hustled to create a very progressive legislation for manufacturing. So unlike many other states in the country as a craft distillery here, I can have up to four satellite tasting rooms. And in those tasting rooms I can sell unlimited bottles to the public, no cap, no max, no nothing. I can serve beer, wine, and any spirits made in the state so I can have a little bit more full bar program. I'm also allowed to layer a wholesaler's license on and self distribute statewide, and I get the privilege of I can pull a day license for 10 bucks anywhere in the state, as many as I want unlimited. So we actually have a pop-up cocktail catering division as well. So as a small business, it's given us the opportunity to really control our own distribution presentation to the public, given us a way to really sort of diversify what we are as a business. And in New Mexico, craft distilling was just legalized in 2011. So yeah, when we first started business planning here in downtown Santa Fe, still to today, we are the only distillery in walking distance from the plaza where all the tourists go, distillery, brewery, winery, any of those where you can walk here and saddle up at our bar and have a cocktail and watch us making spirits behind the window.

Drew H (15:16):
So you started out in Colorado, you're in an elevated climate, probably dry

Caley S (15:24):
A

Drew H (15:24):
Little more heat here or not.

Caley S (15:26):
Our climate's very similar to Denver. We have four seasons, much like Denver. And honestly, I find that when it's really freaking cold in Denver, it's medium cold here and when it's really hot there, so we're a little more tempered. I think the mountains kind of help to smooth those peaks and valleys out a bit.

Drew H (15:41):
So coming to an area that's not really known for making whiskey and craft spirits, what were you kind of thinking of carving out as your niche here?

Caley S (15:51):
Yeah, so I wanted to get back to making grain-based products. I really like working with the vast diversity of malt barley that's available in the Rocky Mountain region. The upstart of craft beer in Colorado has sort of pushed its way throughout the southwest and the mountain region. And what we've ended up with is a lot of craft malt houses, a wide range of barley types that are available. Quite honestly, you could probably talk all the way back to Adolf Coors really helping to get that started, but we have a wide range of grains available to us. And then here in New Mexico, I think people really underestimate the biodiversity that we have. And so we are in a state that has just juniper growing everywhere. We have all these really lovely fragrance sages and desert plants that I think have almost a more concentrated flavor because they're growing in this dry high altitude environment.

(16:46):
So I wanted to focus on a couple of things, two sides, botanical spirits. One, I'd always been dying to make a gin. And so looking at making different botanical spirits that we could create sense of place through sort of our ingredient selection was important to me. But I also wanted to get back to my roots in making American single malt and doing just experimental whiskeys. I'm not trying to build the big whiskey distillery of the southwest. Maybe someday, maybe someday. But here at as above, so below our brand mantra is really to think about the cultural threads that sort of go through spirits making and culinary experience. And as I'm looking at different botanicals, for example, Juniper has so much mythology behind it. So how can we create these really cool powerful expressions through botanical selection and how can we create these really interesting, unique experimental whiskeys and just create overall a unique and unexpected experience?

Drew H (17:42):
So a gin would definitely be in the works for having all these botanicals.

Caley S (17:47):
Absolutely.

Drew H (17:48):
First you got to kind of figure out what botanicals are out there and then figure out what the perfect blend of these is for the spirit you ultimately want to make.

Caley S (17:58):
Yeah, this is a challenge that I think as anyone making anything, and especially in food manufacturing or large scale manufacturing, which is we all like to talk about how sexy this is, but at the end of the day, we're in a factory and we want to make something consistent. So I tend to let the experience of our environment be an inspiration and then try to figure out how to create, encapsulate that in a way that can be repeated over and over again. And to do that, essentially, I would love to say, yeah, we wild forge all of our juniper, but that's not a realistic and it is not going to be very consistent or sanitary. So we use a little bit of local wild forged juniper. We use some local wild forged pinon sap in our gin, but then we use European juniper berries as well so that I can sort of balance and adjust each batch and make sure that we have that sort of consistent thread running through. What I'm looking to do is have a bottle of gin that when you open it up, it smells like Northern New Mexico and you taste it and you think, damn, I had a great time in Santa Fe.

(19:02):
And that requires selecting vendors and botanical supply channels that are going to give us the consistency that we're looking for.

Drew H (19:09):
It's really interesting. There's three different places that I've traveled to that have very distinctive sense to them. Hershey, Pennsylvania is one of them, of course, with the chocolate in the air, Charleston, South Carolina, the wonderful smell of Jasmine in the air.

Caley S (19:24):
Yeah, it's beautiful.

Drew H (19:25):
Back before I was a whiskey drinker and I visited this town, there was a scent in the air here too, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Do you also sense that smell and is that the sap that you're talking about? That's part of it.

Caley S (19:37):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it hits me in the face. When I first started visiting Santa Fe coming down from Denver, it really was strong to me. Now I get it a lot in the wintertime. In the summer we get a lot of sagey pinon. It's pinus ulu, it's edible pine is what the trees Latin name is because it creates those little pine nuts. So in the summertime we get sort of like a warm piney sagey smell. Sometimes it gets a little nuttier as we get into the fall. But a lot of the homes here are very, very old. This is the oldest capital city in the us and so they are heated with wood-fired stoves. And the wood that's most readily available is pinon wood. And that pinon wood is a very resonance, sappy wood. And so in the wintertime, especially on a crisp cold night, all you can smell is this really sexy incense that's just sort of floating through the air, and it's because the wood that's burning is so thickly resonance, that pinon smell just becomes sort of like this blanket over the town. And it's really a powerful experience of Santa Fe, I would say.

Drew H (20:41):
Yeah. So when you're doing the gin, is that something that's coming out very strongly?

Caley S (20:47):
Absolutely. The pinon is a very strong smell. We use a small amount of it. We actually work with a person from the Taos Pueblo, so this young indigenous man, and he forges it for us, and so we tell him how much we need, he goes in wild forges it and brings it in. And just that little bit of pinon added to the gin, it's piney like a juniper sort of expression, but in a way that has a little bit more of a depth to it that I think adds a nice botanical signature to the gin.

Drew H (21:13):
Yeah. So you have a very interesting name to your distillery. You're making spirits and you have a very spiritual name. Where did the inspiration for the name come from?

Caley S (21:25):
Yeah, I've always been fascinated with, I guess you could call it the occult, but I don't even know that that's the right way to term it. I think there's folklore and mythology in every culture, and the way that it overlaps I think is fascinating. And the way you can really sort of get steeped into that occult folkloric sort of vibe is to look at where people's, like medicine man, healer, shamanic, whatever, every culture has this sort of sect of the population that's making medicine, that's making these preparations. And I feel like spirit's really sort of descend from that. Spirits descend from alchemy, and they descend from medicine in this way that I think is inextricable from that sort of cultural thread. And so we basically said if we were going to weave witchcraft into distilling, which we are doing anyways, how can we bring that into a brand and make it really fun and make something that has a lot of ritual around it, how we're pouring, how we're nosing, all this stuff, feel even more ritualistic in a lighthearted way that can connect with people and be fun.

Drew H (22:29):
Yeah. Well, what's interesting to me is that through time and researching history, you find that women really did have the primary place in terms of distilling all the way up till the Salem witch hunts and all that was going on in the 16 hundreds. And then it seems like there was a move, at least from what I see, of women stepping back from that and maybe because they didn't want to stick their necks out too far and be seen as conjuring something.

Caley S (23:00):
Absolutely. I mean, original distilling was part of the household management. It's like making the food, preparing the food for the winter, managing, distilling the excess. It was a very female focused job. And I do think there's also something to be said for more modern times, distilling and liquor making, especially in the US being tied more towards business and capitalism that sort of has pulled it out of a feminine space. But what I think it's fascinating to lean back and talk about those roots. When I first started distilling, I was one of the only women in the room a lot, and people used to ask me about it all the time, and I was like, that's a weird question. And as I've gotten older, I'm like, I can see why that was a question a lot. Now, for the first time, I work on an all female team, so we have a couple in other aspects of the business, but all the distillers are women here and not on purpose.

(23:49):
It's just kind of happened that way, and it's been a different experience for me. And it's really sort of started a lot of conversations about the history of distilling and women's role in that. And I think witchcraft and feminism are so tightly tied together, and it's crazy to me that we're making spirits, which I think people think of distilleries and spirits tasting, especially whiskey tasting is a very male focused space. But when I look at our demographics, whether stuff is boring as the credit card information or Instagram analytics, we skew 70 30 women to men for people that come and engage with what we're doing in this brand. And so I think it's a fun way to maybe bring more people into this space that might not have been here in modern times.

Drew H (24:30):
And plus the fact that you've got a variety of things that you're making. I find what's interesting is that we've talked about the vodka, we've talked about the gin.

Caley S (24:38):
Yeah. You're here for the whiskey.

Drew H (24:40):
You haven't talked about the whiskey yet.

Caley S (24:41):
Yeah, the whiskey is a new thing for us.

Drew H (24:43):
So you've got a whiskey called the Astrologist. So kind of go into a little bit of bits of origin.

Caley S (24:50):
This particular iteration of the astrologist was actually made during my time at Hanger one.

(24:56):
There was a short period where we'd talked about sort of branching out the hanger one portfolio and adding a whiskey. And so I was sort of given a green light to do some crazy stuff and see where it landed. And we made a couple whiskeys. I mean, we did some single malts that came all the way from the farmer through the malt house where I was at the home brew shop with 50 gallon sacks grinding it there. But this specific one is a high rye bourbon. So we're looking at a 36% rye content in there, and it was four year aged in New Oak. And then we thought it would be lovely to tie it to California and wine making. And so we had some really sexy stags leap Cabernet barrels from Pine Ridge Vineyards that we put the whiskey in thinking we'll give this a six to eight month finish period, and we'll see where it's at.

(25:43):
Well, the whiskey program was sort of terminated and I left hangar not long after that. And so the barrels just were tucked away until I think 2023. I heard through my friends that still work with proximal that the barrels might, they were trying to kind of clean things up at Hanger and they had these barrels, they weren't sure what to do with, and I was like, I would love to make an offer. So I bought these barrels back and it ended up being five barrels that we turned into a very small initial release for us, sold out very quickly, but I made other things at Hanger and I've made other things here. And so what the astrologist is for us is it's an experimental line of whiskeys that will be different every time they're released. And we like to talk about the astrological conditions that were occurring when the whiskey was bottled. So this one is Pluto in Capricorn, if I remember correctly.

(26:31):
I lied. It's Pluto and Aquarius. We had a transit ride around then. I was like, oh, shoot, let me look. So yeah, we like to pick the different sort of interesting shifts that are occurring astrologically, and I like to think of whiskey divination. You're making it and you're kind of seeing the future and seeing what it's going to bring. But if anyone's ever watched a movie where there's psychics involved, you see a glimpse and it doesn't always, when the premonition comes to fruition, things are a little different and whiskey works the same, but there's also this beautiful taste of the past that you get when you taste whiskey. And so it's this really interesting thread that sort of binds us through time. And I love this idea of the astrological conditions when we made it and we barreled it and we bottled it all timed together to create this interesting one-time experience.

Drew H (27:14):
Yeah, it's interesting that you talk about astrology because I've always kind of considered astrology to be kind of the master clock of the universe,

Caley S (27:21):
And we're here talking on the black moon today, which is very cool. It's a big deal.

Drew H (27:27):
I guess why I was open to it a little bit more once I realized that it was more than just the sun sign that was part of astrology,

Caley S (27:35):
Everything.

Drew H (27:35):
There are other factors. If we're going to pay so much attention to the seasons, then why wouldn't we pay attention also to the astrological phenomena?

Caley S (27:45):
Absolutely. And this is a 96 proof bottling.

Drew H (27:50):
Very nice.

Caley S (27:51):
And I haven't tasted it in a minute, so I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

Drew H (27:55):
Are the casks bigger?

Caley S (27:57):
Yeah, so the stags leap casks, these were in, I think were Bordeaux. I always get my burgundy and Bordeauxs mixed up. I believe these are our Bordeaux casks. They were 63 gallons, 63 versus 66, but I know these were the 63 gallon size. So ever so slightly,

Drew H (28:14):
The flavor length on this is incredible.

Caley S (28:16):
Yeah, it does. It just keeps evolving.

Drew H (28:18):
It does. And yeah, it's different shades as it goes.

Caley S (28:21):
I think I expected it to be really, really fruity after all the time in the cask. I also expected, maybe I was a little bit scared when we first opened them because Virgin Oak and obviously a used wine barrel isn't going to be as harsh as Virgin Oak, but the length of time that this had spent in a barrel, most of my career I'm working with Virgin Oak, and there definitely is the possibility of aging something for too long. And so I thought this might be overly, I'm going to be really sad if these barrels aren't great. And I just was sort of shocked at how the French oak provided a lot of nuance and not as much fruit as I expected. Honestly, there's a little more nuttiness in there.

Drew H (28:58):
Yeah, that's exactly it. To be a bourbon had to spend, how long was

Caley S (29:03):
It? Four years in Virgin Oak? Yep. Four years in. What's

Drew H (29:06):
Interesting is that those things you expect out of a bourbon, kind of that vanilla caramel, not really overly present. I mean,

Caley S (29:14):
No. In fact, folks when we got this out constantly asked me if we're ever going to have the rye back. And I'm like, it's not a rye. It was a high rye bourbon. And they're like, oh, that's so interesting. But total of 10 years in oak, so four in virgin and six in the wine casks.

Drew H (29:29):
I was going to say the thing that was standing out to me and I couldn't figure out because I'm going bourbon and then I'm thinking molasses. I'm getting a molasses note, but that was probably coming from the rye, and that's just hung in. Do you remember the source of the rye where it came from?

Caley S (29:44):
To be brutally honest, I don't. Okay. No, I don't. We did so many fun experiments, and so I was kind of having to look back through my notes and go, what did we do here?

Drew H (29:55):
Yeah.

Caley S (29:56):
Yeah.

Drew H (29:56):
Very nice. So you've done some cocktails here.

Caley S (30:00):
Well,

Drew H (30:01):
And we're about to do a huge breaking moment for me, something I've never done before.

Caley S (30:08):
Oh yeah, we're going to go there too. We also have single malt.

Drew H (30:10):
Maybe we should dry the single

Caley S (30:11):
Mal. You want to do single malt first? Use the sweet. Yeah. All right. I'm just going to use my vodka glass for that. This is the thing that's really fun for me. So we've been distilling single malt since we opened, and we distill the single malt from the same wash that we use for our vodka. So we're essentially taking the exact same wash. We strip it, so we do a stripping run on it, and then it either gets a second distillation through the pot and then barrel ages, or it goes through a pot column distillation to become vodka. And so it's the same spirit or the same base material, I guess distilled two different ways, which is top-notch dork stuff for me.

Drew H (30:50):
And it's kind of interesting because a lot, it's not intuitive for anybody to use barley, which is an expensive grain for making vodka. So you really don't want to distill all the personality out of that vodka.

Caley S (31:03):
No, no. We want to have that whisper left.

Drew H (31:07):
And so when you're making the single malt, are you picking up some of the flavors in that single malt that are what are standing out in that vodka?

Caley S (31:17):
In the vodka, I find that it's a little grassy. It's a little creamy. You mentioned citrus early, and it does have a fruity esry note to it. This is the first time I've tasted this whiskey in about six months, so I'm getting it full on right now, and I'm kind of shocked at how there's a lot of fruit in there and then it drops off into this coffee. I think it needs more time. It still is a little disjointed, which I think is interesting.

Drew H (31:43):
Yeah. Is it a new barrel or is it

Caley S (31:46):
Yeah, this went into New American Oak. So this is actually barrel number one we're tasting that was filled on April 1st, 2022. So it has been in there a fair amount of time, but I just think it's crazy how explosively fruity it is and then how deep it is. And I think there's a middle part that with a little more time knit together

Drew H (32:04):
Goes to the bar for me.

Caley S (32:05):
Yeah, it's like a toffee coffee. How coffee?

Drew H (32:08):
Yeah. Really interesting.

Caley S (32:10):
Really bright too, which I think is fascinating. It's crazy. I was just distilling the wash into vodka this weekend, just looking at all the flavors that come through in the stripping run, and then how utterly fruity the heads cut on the vodka was. We're kind of cracking up like, man, you wouldn't think this from barley. I'm like, I don't know why this surprises me every time. So it's really fun to then taste it from the other side as well.

Drew H (32:32):
Nice. I look forward to that being released. You thinking maybe sometime in the next year or so?

Caley S (32:37):
I was hoping next, but I think the barrel's going to tell me. I also think tasting a single barrel versus tasting a section of barrels and intelligently blending is always picking 'em for their qualities is the fun part.

Drew H (32:54):
So what do I have here?

Caley S (32:56):
So you have a drink that is based off of a classic pairing. This is an absent and root beer. We call it the coven here.

(33:03):
We want to bring people into our little coven of botanical spirits tasting, but essentially we make an absent here that we distill along with the phases of the moon. So the current absent that we have, we basically throw all the wormwood in there on the full moon, let it macerate for 28 days, and on the next full moon we add more botanicals. And then on the third full moon, we distill it and our absent has just become one of those spirits we're sort of known for because it's unique and so many people have never had absent before. And so we discovered a classic absent pairing was absent and root beer. So we do a little angle store bitters, absent root beer and some saline spray. And we think it's a nice approachable way for people to taste absent for the first time. That's

Drew H (33:44):
Really interesting because it does have that. I love root beer. I've never had absent, so this is the first

Caley S (33:51):
I'm so happy. I'm so happy I get to feed you your first acid.

Drew H (33:53):
Yes. And then when you described it, I was going minty and just the way it was coming across, I was thinking of rye. Well, it sounds like I would like it because it seems to be hitting on some of the notes, so yeah.

Caley S (34:07):
Yeah. Rye always has that sort of like, I love rye too.

Drew H (34:12):
Yeah, very expressive grain. So you like rye. And both of those

Caley S (34:16):
I do

Drew H (34:17):
Are also very terroir based. To me,

Caley S (34:19):
I've always joked and I wish there was a market for it, but I would love to do some alternative grain vodka whiskey experiments where similarly we can make a whiskey, make a vodka, taste them next to each other. I just need to find people that are willing to pay for this kind of craziness. That would not be an inexpensive experiment.

Drew H (34:38):
This is very easy to drink.

Caley S (34:40):
It's a little scary too, because absent that 125 proof with two ounces of root beer in the top, it's a boozy drink. It is.

Drew H (34:47):
And it does not taste boozy at all.

Caley S (34:50):
We have a regular who the other day I just happened to be walking through the bar and I heard him order a double double tall coven. And I turned around and I saw the team pour it and I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. We are not giving anyone double. We're at 7,300 feet. Even though this person's I regular and I'm sure they're fine. If a tourist had a double absent anything, just please don't pour that ever again.

Drew H (35:12):
Somebody trying to show off.

Caley S (35:13):
I'm like, sir. Yeah.

Drew H (35:16):
And so this pretty drink at the end,

Caley S (35:18):
This one's a Pegu club, which is a classic cocktail that combines gin and dry carousel.

Drew H (35:24):
So

Caley S (35:24):
We recently released a dry carousel, which I thought would be a fun one to taste just simply because it starts with whiskey. So we use some source whiskey for it, but essentially we're macerating fresh orange and dried bitter orange peels, and then some dates, some vanilla, some cinnamon, a little bit of all spice. And after the maceration is complete, we strain it. We barrel age it for another 30 to 45 days and then sugar it to make a sort of age dry cure style product. And so this is a fun cocktail that combines two different spirits into something rather refreshing. I think

Drew H (35:56):
It's nice. It is. And I think what I like about these is that I don't have a huge sweet tube, and so they have that sweetness, but it's just not sweet.

Caley S (36:11):
It

Drew H (36:11):
Is just present.

Caley S (36:13):
It's interesting because I have found that in New Mexico, the average consumer's palate skews a little more sweet,

Drew H (36:20):
Especially

Caley S (36:20):
As you get into Albuquerque and then Southern New Mexico. In fact, most wineries make sweet wines, which to me, I'm like, what are you doing? I want the driest wine you can have. But folks really like sweet drinks. I'm a very spirit forward, either like a real whiskey forward drink. I also like negronis and bitter amaro type things. And so I've had to really put my personal preferences aside as the team crafts cocktails for the bar. And we always try to have a range from spirit forward to. We have a couple that I'm just like, there's no way I'm going to drink that. And they tend to be our bestsellers because they're really refreshing, they're really sweet. But Santa Fe is an international tourist city, so trying to figure out how to appeal to a wide range is always a challenge.

Drew H (37:00):
So people are coming to the area. Do you do tours?

Caley S (37:02):
Absolutely. Yeah. Our tour program is growing right now. Up until recently I've been the one doing them all, but we're at that point as in our small little distillery that could

Drew H (37:12):
The distiller. That's the fun part about having

Caley S (37:14):
You do it. Totally. Totally. So at this point, we've got a great team that's helping me expand them. I'll probably still be doing distiller tours monthly. Right now we're offering them on Thursdays. Saturdays are coming shortly after, but our lounge and bottle shop is open seven days a week. And so tasting and cocktails are always available. And during weekdays during the day, the folks that drop in usually get to taste whatever we're working on back here. We like to do that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Drew H (37:40):
I was going to say, I guess you got to step away a little bit from the tour side of things. As I understand it, you have a consulting business that's taking you quite far away from Santa Fe.

Caley S (37:48):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm on the board of a distillery in Rwanda that I helped to build that makes vodka from potatoes, which has been a blast. I've done some work in South America starting on another big project now. So yeah, it's been a challenge for me really to try to learn how to, I want to be really involved in everything. Like I said, I've always done all aspects of the job and worked through everything during the day, and I'm really having to learn how to hand things off in a way that doesn't feel like I'm dumping things on people and really mentor my team to grow with me so that I can keep expanding and also expand this business and learn how to do a wider range of things. So yeah, even though I love doing the tours and I loved, I bartended up until a year ago, my husband is like, you have to stop this. He's like, you need to sleep at some point. So I'm really trying to learn what are the opportunities for me to sort of step back and let the team run with it, because they're all wonderful and many of them have been with us since we started. So yeah,

Drew H (38:48):
So this is really a wonderful town and easy to walk around. First time I came here, that's all I did. I just walked around and looked at the art shops and galleries and checked out the different things on the street and the rest.

Drew H (39:02):
So

Drew H (39:02):
Normally I'll ask my guests what kind of things are there to do in the area? There's a lot to do here. I guess what kind of comes to top of mind in terms of things that people might pair nicely with a visit to as above, so below?

Caley S (39:17):
Yeah, so there's a couple things that Santa Fe is known for, and there's a couple things that I think don't get enough excitement. Obviously we're the third largest art market in the country, and there's the rail yards full of galleries. And so doing a little bit of music. We have world-class museums, so the museum gallery have a couple of cocktails. Makes a lot of sense. We also have an amazing culinary scene, especially for a town of our size. And so tasting especially new Mexican food, which is this amazing sort of cross between Mexican and indigenous food, really chili featured foods. That's the stuff you see a lot talked about when you come to Santa Fe. The stuff you don't see talked about as much that I think is really cool to do is our outdoors is amazing. We have beautiful hikes within a five minute drive just here in town with a little bit longer of drive.

(40:07):
You could literally climb a mountain within 45 minutes of here. And so if that's something that you're into, you can do that and come have drinks at the end, which is the best way to do hiking. But we also have world-class spas. So if you're in for a wellness retreat, there's a great opportunity to hit some of these lovely spas, 10,000 waves up the mountain is a Japanese style sen where you can soak or a little bit further out of town. We have a couple of mineral springs to soak in. And so there's this really powerful way to sort of relax and recharge here. And I think you could in a three or four day itinerary, you could be very, very busy if you tried to touch into all of those wonderful things. Well,

Drew H (40:42):
Fantastic. I thank you so much for coming in on a Saturday.

Caley S (40:46):
Yeah, no, I'm stoked

Drew H (40:47):
Letting me taste. There's some really amazing spirits here and my first taste of absolute.

Caley S (40:52):
I love it. I'm so happy. Thanks for being the one. I love it. No, thank you so much for having me, and we're stoked to be included on the podcast.

Drew H (41:00):
Cheers. Cheers. Well, I hope you enjoyed this trip to as above, so below in Santa Fe, and if I piqued your interest in visiting New Mexico and the distillery, but make sure to head to whiskey lore.org/flights where you'll find this and over 1300 other distilleries just waiting for you to add to your whiskey lore wishlist, just click the bookmark icon on the distilleries page, sign up for a free membership and when you're ready to travel, use the site's convenient planning tools, maps, tour dates, booking links and more. To make your perfect itinerary. Start your journey@whiskeylore.org slash flights as we've prepared to leave Santa Fe and travel out west before stepping out the door of as above, so below. If you are still on the fence about a visit to this distillery, let me give you my three reasons why I think you should put as above so below on your whiskey lore wishlist.

(41:57):
First, if you love the concept of mixing spirits with a little spiritual influence, we'll come enjoy some of the most uniquely planned whiskeys on the planet. Second, if you haven't tried absent yet and you're ready to dip your toe in, well this is a great distillery to do it, especially if you have a love like me for black licorice. And third, if you've not been to Santa Fe before and you love towns that invite strolling around views of unique architecture, incredible art, as well as mixing in tasty regional foods and a great shopping district along with of course cocktails as above. So below, it's time to book that flight to Santa Fe. And you might want to just plan out a week because there are plenty of things to do, not only in Santa Fe, but also around this hidden gem we call New Mexico. I hope you enjoyed this visit to as above, so below next week, I'm going to be heading towards Arizona and Utah, the famed four corners, and have so much more to share from this Western swing of the great 48 tour. Make sure you've got your ticket to ride along by smashing that subscribe button on your favorite podcast app or join us at patreon.com/whiskey lore. Catch up on some great bonus content. I'm your travel guide, drew Hanish. And until next time, cheers and Slava transcripts of travel information, including maps, distillery planning information and more. Head to whiskey lore.org/flights. Whiskey lore is a production of Travel Fuels Life. Lll C, welcome to some bonus content here. Actually, this is funny.

(43:48):
There's always a bugaboo that comes up it seems when it comes to audio. I am such a freak about wanting to get audio right on every episode. And you probably notice during this episode there are points where I'm way off in the background and then all of a sudden I'm closed and I'm off in the background again. And so what happened was I basically carry around two little handheld microphones. And the idea here is that we can kind of freely move around me and the guest and then we don't have to worry about being tied to a table to do our interview. So we were sitting there, actually, Kaylee and I at a barrel in the still house and all the whiskeys were all set up there. And the first thing I do is I hand her a microphone and I look at it and there's this moment of paranoia that always hits me.

(44:41):
It's like I was doing an interview with John Tilling long ago where I handed him the microphone and then come to find out, we're so far into the interview and the mic's not running. And I didn't know because the only way you know that their microphone is working is that if they are facing it towards you, the screen towards you, you see a little red dot on there that shows that it's actually recording and you can click a little hold button that makes sure that if they're fidgeting with the microphone, they don't shut it off somewhere in the middle of the podcast. So I felt like I had all that sorted. And in the audio, her audio, I can hear myself saying, okay, well, I just want to make sure that your microphone is on and that it is recording and I've locked it. Can you just show me?

(45:29):
And she says, yes. And I'm like, okay, great. This is going fantastic, and let's go ahead and have our interview. And what happens? We get to the end of the interview, I take the microphone back from her, I turn it off, I look at my microphone and I go, are you kidding me? My microphone was the one that wasn't recording and I thought I had hit record, but apparently I had just turned it on. And this is where it always gets me into trouble. There's two steps. You got to turn the microphone on, then you have to hit record. And so for the rest of the trip, I was very, very hyperfocused on the fact that I was recording and they were recording, and I double check it and make sure that it was getting done. So that's the reason why during this episode, you'll hear me occasionally come up close.

(46:17):
In fact, most of the full episode or most of the partial episode that I put out to the regular feed, you don't really hear me so much in the distance except when I'm making a small comment or something like that. But when I'm asking questions, I'm always close in on this episode because I'm giving you much more of the tasting. You're going to hear me off in the distance a little bit more. And the reason is, is that I wanted that natural feel to what I was saying. But the parts where you hear me really close in on this episode are actually rerecorded. I told her, she said, we can do this again if you want. And I'm like, well, we both fought to get here within a certain period of time, and you've got people that need to do stuff, and I just really feel like I'm taking up more of your time.

(47:06):
Let me see if I can patch this thing. And if not, we'll just do a zoom call and rerecord the whole thing. Well, it was such a good episode and the tasting, we can't really recreate that tasting. So I wanted to bring you the full interview this way. I figured I could restate my questions on the microphone and make it work, and I think it kind of pulled it off that way. I listen to it and I go, you sound like you're talking to a screen and not talking to a person because there's a natural inflection and a natural energy that comes about. It's kind of like what I talk about when I'm working with my friends and we're recording music together. And in the old days, what they used to do was get everybody into a studio and you really only had, because you only had so many tracks on a piece of tape to lay down, you had to do everything in the room.

(48:02):
And what was great about somebody like Sinatra was that even once multi-track recording came along, he still sat himself in the middle of an orchestra and then he would sing along with that band to get that natural kind of feel. And same thing happens when you're trying to recreate the energy in a live interview later on in a studio. It just does not feel natural. In fact, there's an album called Watertown that I think greatly demonstrates this. It was Sinatra's biggest flop album, and it is also the only album that Frank Sinatra ever did where he was actually singing to a tape rather than singing in a room with a band. So I truly think there is something about that, and as I say, if I could get my band mates together and we could all play naturally together, it would probably come out sounding a lot more natural than if you get into a studio and try to pull things off.

(49:02):
It really is an acting job to be able to pull it off and make it sound somewhat natural. And I think there were a couple of points in this interview that it does sound natural, but other places where I listen and I go, there it is. That's not it. So you're not going to hear any of that the rest of the way through because the record button was on for all the rest of my interviews, and I will be very diligent about making sure that that is something that I keep my eye on with any future interviews. Hope you enjoyed this little bit of bonus information at the end of the episode. I don't do this a whole lot, but would like to add some more of my own thoughts about some of the things that occur during these recording sessions in future episodes. So cheers, inva.