Ep. 123 - Exploring Atlanta Georgia's Forgotten Whiskey History

Transcript

 

Drew | Whiskey Lore (00:00.323)
So give me your family's background in making spirits because you actually have some history behind you.

ANDY SUDDERTH (00:12.302)
Yes, when I was a kid growing up my dad always made moonshine you know and I was around it from when I was eight nine years old on up till I was older and It was just part of our family tradition. I mean that's we had to make a living and and This went from there and then I I got up I never did

I never did make it like he did to sale, but he sold it made a living. I just, I just love to make it and the process. I love the smell of the mansion stuff like that. And so, it's been in our family and you know, we was, I was always in the construction work and I said, you know, I think it's 2012. I said, well, I'm going to get in the distilling business, go back to what Dan's doing and,

Drew | Whiskey Lore (00:41.498)
Mm-hmm.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:07.886)
That's what I did and it's a the alcohol business is a tough business. It's really tough Because you got all the big people that gets first choice on all the distributors and all that but you just got to get in there and swing with them and swing and go it's what I did and and

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:14.479)
Mm.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:25.709)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:30.67)
I was always a big collector of RM Rose whiskey jugs. And my cousin got me involved in that when I was younger. I said, you know, when we got up, I said, you know, I'm going go ahead and incorporate a name. And so I met with my lawyers in Atlanta and I said, I've been doing research on RM Rose.

And they went out, they filed bankruptcy in 1917. Can I use that name? They said, sure. So they re-trademarked everything, got everything situated, and we brought back the name and the history. And like I say, I'm still doing the history on it. But it's kind of interesting. A lot of good history. A lot of good. Once you start digging, you know that. Once you start digging, it's just, I've been digging for 20 years. OK.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (02:14.245)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (02:21.603)
Yeah. Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (02:22.222)
So now I see more stuff keep popping up. I see more articles I get on these, I'm gonna subscribe to these old Vinnies newspapers and stuff like that. And once while I get on there and type in stuff and hunt stuff and it's just you, you know, if you type in RM Rose or Rufus Rose, something new comes up all the time. And it just amazes me when it does. But you know, back before Google and all come out, you couldn't find a light.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (02:43.567)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (02:52.002)
But now these newspapers are getting it out pretty well. like the article you found, I mean, that's a good article. they was, R.M. Rose was tied in with a couple of more people in Atlanta, like Joseph Thompson and the Cox Hill Distillery and stuff like that.

and a lot of good history, a lot of good history. And I just liked the history. I'm a history. I like history. I don't care what it is. If it's good old Southern history, you know, it's just, can read this stuff and I can visualize it, what it looked like back in the day.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (03:21.444)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (03:39.566)
when you're reading it, sort of, you probably the same way you can visualize what, you know, I've looked and read enough articles and it's just, it's amazing to me. So that's, that's my therapy having to read all this stuff. And you never forget some of this stuff when you read it, but it's amazing what, and you get to think about it back in these days.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (03:52.537)
Yeah, go to

Drew | Whiskey Lore (03:59.322)
Yeah.

They were, they were, they were.

ANDY SUDDERTH (04:05.634)
You know, there was no electricity. was horse and buggies. was, you had no, you know, real. It was crazy. All they had to do was drink back in the day, you know.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (04:18.299)
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting how you just, continually keep pulling on threads and the story keeps expanding and the writing was so much different back then. And that's part of what I loved about that article that I ran into is that the first two columns of that article are writing about Monte Carlo and he's like talking about what Monte Carlo and why this

ANDY SUDDERTH (04:42.211)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (04:45.177)
this beautiful, little cove there with the, buildings all there. And suddenly he blends that into, then I went to Atlanta and I'm going through this distillery and then he's like going into the full. And this is what shocked me. And it shocked me when I was going into the history of Jack Daniels is that with Jack Daniels, there were people that went to the distillery that were newspaper people that wrote.

ANDY SUDDERTH (04:55.598)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (05:14.195)
all about their process and what they were doing and how they were doing it. And so it doesn't surprise me at all that, you know, we ran into the same thing with this RM Rose story that that article. And I found two other articles that also are like snapshots in time. That it's like the modern day people go to distilleries and they're filming stuff and they're taking pictures and they're trying to tell the story. Back then you had a newspaper. So

You weren't going to be able to take a film of anything. So you really had to, tell people how it all was and visually paint a picture for them.

ANDY SUDDERTH (05:54.572)
Yeah, it was amazing. It's amazing really what you find.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (05:59.641)
Yeah. So we'll talk a bit about that as we're, as we're diving in. and I also noticed that mountain Springs distillery, which was the name of the distillery that he ran in Gilmore, is also a name that you have attached to your own spirits. Mountain spring. I'm sorry. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (06:10.243)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (06:14.35)
Yes, it's Mountain Spring and there was no ads on it. Mountain Spring Distillery. That was the name of it. Now when they bought that, they bought that in 1890, I think. They incorporated in 1890. I think they ended up in 1891, they ended up buying that old Gilmore. I think it was bought from the Brown family, but it had went out.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (06:37.22)
Okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (06:39.21)
stuff like that and they and really about I think there was four investors it went in Rufus Rose was one of them and I think eventually he bought them out but and you know the place is still the old remnants they say you can find old remnants of the old distillery still there go down and I've been by there

Drew | Whiskey Lore (06:48.312)
Okay. Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (06:58.496)
okay. Yeah.

Yeah. It's just south of where the new Braves ballpark is. I think. Yeah. Okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (07:06.766)
Yes, yes. And actually, there was a good article, forgot what it was in, the Vining's area, the Vining's, yeah. It's a good article, you know, the Canoe Restaurant. It's in the Vining's, the Canoe Restaurant. If you go to it, when the Robinson family built that back in the 40s, I think, in the 40s,

Drew | Whiskey Lore (07:22.414)
No, I'm not familiar. Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (07:32.77)
They had torn down the old warehouses in the distillery right down the road at Gilmore. So they used the brick off of the old distillery to build a canoe restaurant and it's still there.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (07:43.57)
Ah, okay, yeah that's cool. Nice little, how did you discover that?

ANDY SUDDERTH (07:46.136)
Yeah.

I read about the Vining's had an article on that. The Robinson family had an article about that and who built the original, I believe it was Robinson Tropical Gardens years ago. It was that famous restaurant there. So they had an article about it that they did. So, you know, I just got to believe what they say, you know, but I went and looked at the brick. It's just old brick and

Drew | Whiskey Lore (08:05.348)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (08:13.292)
You know, the restaurant when the Chattahoochee River comes up sometimes it floods the bottom part of the restaurant. So, but yeah, it's kind of interesting story about that. So.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (08:19.556)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (08:23.407)
So Rufus is an interesting character because he was born in Connecticut, yet he fought for the Confederacy. So do we know how all that kind of worked out?

ANDY SUDDERTH (08:30.958)
Yes, we do. He had come down south from Connecticut. First, went to, I believe he went to a college up in New York to learn how to be a doctor, you know. So when he did, his, and a pharmacist. So when he got out, he moved to Hawkinsville, Georgia.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (08:45.253)
Mm-hmm.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (08:54.158)
Okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (08:54.286)
His mother's brother owned a pharmacy over there. So he went to work in Hawkinsville at the pharmacy He was a young man at the time. I forgot what year he's born, but I think he come to the pharmacy about 18

1858, somewhere right in there at 1859. So he was working at the pharmacy, ended up getting married and had a child. And his wife passed away and then the war between the states broke out. And so he just listed in the Confederate, you know. And at the first when he enlisted, when he listed,

Drew | Whiskey Lore (09:30.864)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (09:38.478)
They didn't know he was a doctor or know anything about medical. So then when they did find out, I think he ended up getting sick and he was on leave for a while. And then when he went back, they sent him to Macon to work in a medical hospital and making medicine for the Confederates.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (09:58.912)
Okay, I see. see also maybe spent his time convalescing at William and Mary college. Cause I think that was actually converted. Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (10:06.254)
Yes. Yes. That was, that was in making, I think. Yeah. No, no, no. William and Mary. Yeah. William. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. He did. So I forgot about that and, uh, but he was smart guy. And like I say, when he, uh, uh, low key good guy, uh, and he also had brothers and stuff like that. come down after he did. Uh,

Drew | Whiskey Lore (10:10.209)
Okay. Is in Williamsburg, Virginia. Yeah. Yep. And then, yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (10:35.026)
And then his brother was a, they was two different people. Rufus was the kind of a businessman and his brother was kind of the rebel rouser. You know, he was the wild child. So they had a lot of problems out of him. They went in business and they couldn't put up with each other. one of them kept, anyway, his brother's name was Origin Rose.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (10:46.293)
Yeah, yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (11:01.263)
Hmm. Okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (11:02.274)
They called him O-A-V. So I can't, I can't spell the right, I can't even pronounce the rest of his name. It was Origen, Origen Vespicious Rose. And they called him O-A-V for some reason. But anyway, he was a rough child and he got lots of trouble. yeah, but Rufus, kept everything going.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (11:08.123)
Ha ha ha.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (11:12.718)
Wow.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (11:22.799)
He

Drew | Whiskey Lore (11:26.351)
Well, I would think that because there's a lot of focus on medicinal whiskey with him. And I would imagine that if he went to pharmacy school and maybe even, you know, worked in, in that field for any amount of time, makes sense that, he probably was around lots of bottles of spirits that were being sold for cures. Yeah. So.

ANDY SUDDERTH (11:48.392)
Exactly. And you know, when you got wounded in the war too, they just make you take a big old drink and then pour you some on your wound and went on with the daily routines. But yeah, that was the thing back in the day.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (11:56.792)
Drew | Whiskey Lore (12:05.231)
Yeah. No, that's, that's the time period. would not want to have been in, in war and had any kind of injury, man. Yeah. So, about 1867, this is I love about, whiskey history is that you will find that later on brands will talk about how they started in 1866, 1867.

ANDY SUDDERTH (12:14.509)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (12:32.549)
JW Kelly and Chattanooga put their date as 1866 and Jack Daniel put his date. We've heard that is 1866. None of those are true. What is true is that JW Kelly became a grocer in 1866. So that was actually the first business he owned. So he wasn't making whiskey in 1866.

ANDY SUDDERTH (12:55.991)
Okay.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (12:58.979)
And I think that sort of follows suit with RM Rose in that it more started out as a wholesale house than it did as a distillery. that correct?

ANDY SUDDERTH (13:09.774)
That's correct. He actually worked for the Cox Hill Distillery. This was in 18, right after the war in 1865, 1866. He actually worked for the Cox and Hill Distillery. And I got all the history on it too. So he was a sales guy. So then he got to where

Drew | Whiskey Lore (13:27.001)
Okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (13:34.85)
This was before 1867 and then when 1867, he started branding his own out of the Cox and Hill distillery. And that's when he opened his retails in Atlanta. And he had his own jugs, they put in his own jugs and shipped it on train to, actually they would ship barrels on the train into Atlanta.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (13:45.145)
Okay.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (13:59.193)
Okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (14:01.874)
and he had his bottling facility in his retail and wholesale places. you know, the buildings in Atlanta was two and three stories. I think the bottom floor in the back was a bottling facility and he had storage in top of the barrels, you know, but everything was bought and bottled right in Atlanta and sold there. So, and then, far as I can tell, there was another little distillery that opened in the Vining's.

after, you know, trying to think of the date.

But yeah, he bought a lot of his stuff back when he first started from the Cox and Hill. And then he opened up a little distillery from what I can understand in the bindings. And then in 1890, it was going so good, he purchased Old Brown Distillery right there at Gilmore. And it was there. But yeah, they did, it was like everybody else. He bought and bottled it and shipped it in.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (15:01.035)
Okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (15:09.486)
and then he'll embezzle it and bottle it and brand it his own name, you know.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (15:14.039)
It's interesting to note because as I was doing research in Robertson County, Tennessee, that I bumped into a wholesale house that also partially owned a distillery. And so what they would do is they would bring the whiskey over and then they would bottle it. And this was in 1868. Now we hear that old foresters, the first bottled bourbon and that happened in,

1870, but here I have somebody who was doing it two years before that. and then I read that in 1860, there was actually a Kentucky distillery that was actually bottling their own stuff, which was, the suit distillery. And they were actually sending their medicinal whiskey in bottles to New York. And this is all fascinating to me because, really the history of the bottle.

shows us that they were still using semi-automatic methods back then. So bottling whiskey was expensive to do. And thus the reason that most of them were either putting it in jugs or shipping it around in barrels. there seemed to be a real focus with RM Rose to go direct to consumer.

And to avoid sending things around in barrels because of all the adulterated whiskey that was going around at that time. You put it into somebody else's hands. You go to a middleman and you don't know what's going to happen with your spirits before it. It gets into the bottle. they, they really kept control over everything. The question being how early were they potentially bottling? Do you have any kind of, any kind of sense of that?

ANDY SUDDERTH (16:55.948)
They do

Drew | Whiskey Lore (17:05.947)
Because usually that was a point of bragging if you were actually putting it into bottles. But it was more the 1890s before that started to become...

ANDY SUDDERTH (17:14.892)
Well, but yeah, you know the bottles didn't come out, you know, there was a few bottles that come out in the early You know, I mean in the late 1800s, but you know, think when did the glass bottle start? From what I've got all the rose Bottles I've got is 1900 And then you are so but basically you just walk down the street we jug went into the

Drew | Whiskey Lore (17:23.195)
Mm-hmm.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (17:33.43)
on. Okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (17:44.993)
retail store and they just had a barrel there and they put you filled it up and you walked on down the street and paid for it. You know that's what they do with growlers today I think in beer but they won't let no liquor do that these days you know. know, go in fill it up. Now I got some of the back in the day when you'd go in there they had funnels. The RFO's funnels.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (17:49.21)
Fill it up.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (18:01.507)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (18:12.396)
It's got their name on them and asked the revenue officer. I've got four of them. They put the funnel in the jug and set it under the spigot and let it go down in there. So I've got some them old vintage funnels.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (18:16.597)
Okay.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (18:24.741)
really interesting.

Did you see the term ask the revenue or cause that was their slogan. Did you see that term before 1904? Cause one of the articles I read said that the incidents that happened occurred about 1904 where somebody unsolicited came in and said, you know, this is really high quality, spirit. And this is the cleanest distillery I've ever seen. Have you seen that quote before? Have you seen that ask the revenue earlier?

ANDY SUDDERTH (18:33.57)
Yes.

ANDY SUDDERTH (18:56.758)
Yes. Yes. And then I've seen another quote too. It come out is right around that time. I got something that says, you know, that they had like 27,000 gallons of whiskey stored in the warehouses.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (19:06.586)
Mm-hmm.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (19:22.938)
Mm.

ANDY SUDDERTH (19:23.342)
Somebody come up and they didn't believe him and he said well just go ask the revenue officer. They can tell you how much I got here So I've heard that story too and I've read that In an article that they had from the revenue had an article about the revenue So that's where that come then they started branding everything as the revenue officer. So I think he was around probably 19 19

Drew | Whiskey Lore (19:29.435)
okay.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (19:38.074)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (19:52.675)
in 1904 or something. The government made them take that off of the jug. Yes, they did.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (19:54.402)
Okay.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (19:58.459)
did they? Okay. But interesting that your funnel has that written on it. So it kind of helps us figure out when they were that they were still using funnels to fill up those jugs as late as 1904. Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (20:14.518)
Yes. Yes. And,

is after they quit using it then, I've got the article on there where they made them take it off. And then, you know, I put it on my, I re-trademarked, they re-trademarked all that and I put it on my whiskey bottles and they had a question about it, but they went ahead and approved it. So it's approved on our bottles and whatever. And I'm thinking about coming out with a commemorative jug if I can get somebody to make it.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (20:32.59)
Okay.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (20:37.924)
Nice?

ANDY SUDDERTH (20:49.184)
and put all that back on it and just sell the little 750. I did it one time, the little jugs and I mean, I think I made a hundred of them and I mean, they sold out within two or three days, people buying them.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (20:49.22)
Mmm.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (20:59.908)
Wow.

That's a lot of fun. Yeah. I mean, that's a piece of, that's a slice of history that you really don't see associated with it anymore. You see it associated with moonshine with the three X's on the, from the old Bugs Bunny cartoons, but

ANDY SUDDERTH (21:14.732)
Well, go back to it. I think Rhodes is bottling his own stuff in really 1866. You know, before he come out with with the ads, I've got some 18, think I've got 1867 ads in Atlanta Journal or one of the papers with his, with his first advertisement on it.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (21:23.033)
Okay.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (21:36.455)
Okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (21:38.145)
And

Drew | Whiskey Lore (21:39.575)
interesting to piece that all together. Another little myth that surrounds this, because the only person I knew that was a wholesaler in Atlanta before I bumped into the RM Rose name was Paul Jones. And Paul Jones is the man who when Atlanta went.

ANDY SUDDERTH (21:41.656)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (22:02.939)
dry in 1886, uh, decided to go up to Louisville, Kentucky. And then the four roses brand developed out of his family. There is a myth that floats around that says that the four roses has some kind of a tie to RM Rose. I'm guessing since, uh, uh, since he was only one rose, that that's probably not necessarily true.

ANDY SUDDERTH (22:28.579)
Yeah.

Well, no and and and rm rose never owned for rose's brand never did From and and paul jones. He was a well-known guy in atlanta. Okay. He was single man. He never got married Never got married. he was single man

Drew | Whiskey Lore (22:37.38)
Yeah. Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (22:47.097)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (22:50.67)
And he really had a big empire in Atlanta and him and Rose had probably the biggest empires of the liquor business in Atlanta. Paul Jones, he put 100 % into everything he done and R.M. Rose did too. like say when Atlanta went dry in I think 1885, that's when...

Drew | Whiskey Lore (23:12.384)
okay, okay. Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (23:15.66)
Paul Jones, I think it was 1885, 1884, Atlanta went dry and done away with all the liquor.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (23:20.311)
It, it, it may be 84 because that I think is the year the Louisville, exposition was going on. And that was what brought Paul Jones to the area. got very interested in Louisville at that time.

ANDY SUDDERTH (23:33.326)
Right? And when it did, Paul Jones kept his buildings in Atlanta, but he couldn't sell no alcohol and Rufus and them, they just closed down. But Paul Jones decided, well, you know, I got to keep going. So he went to Louisville and I forgot the name of the company he bought, but he had Frankfurt Distilling Company. So he done real well.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (23:48.186)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (23:56.291)
Right, he bought that one in the...

Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (24:01.842)
And he was actually from Atlanta. And they wanted to, when he passed away, I think he passed away pretty young. He passed away. had no, he had just had nieces and nephews. He didn't have no kids, never married. And, but.

They didn't bring him back to Atlanta and him. They buried him in Louisville. But anyway, him and Rufus know each other from way I can tell. So they was big empires in Atlanta. And Paul, I think Atlanta stayed dry for two years. I think it was two years and they finally decided, well, we going broke. We gotta open this back up. So they did, I think in 1880.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (24:26.777)
Okay.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (24:46.925)
Mmm.

ANDY SUDDERTH (24:51.694)
six or 87, might've been 87. So the arm rows in them, they opened back up in that way. I think they moved to Chattanooga at the time for a short period of time back in that time too. But a lot of good.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (25:07.937)
Okay. Yeah. Hard to have to heart back then transportation. Well, you had a train route that was going between Atlanta and Chattanooga. So you, they, could have just hopped the train and managed two businesses like that, but probably still wasn't very easy to do in that time period. I would imagine. Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (25:16.29)
Yeah. Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (25:25.742)
It was hard. It like say, it take a day to get to on the train from Atlanta to Chattanooga, going up through the country, probably, I don't know how long, I guess it would, yeah. And then, know, they did move. Okay, I'm getting off subject. I mean, they did move to Cincinnati to Newport. Then, you know, from there, they went on to Manhattan, New York, RM Roast did.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (25:49.987)
Yeah, yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (25:55.587)
okay. It's, it's almost like you have to, every time you go somewhere, they bring prohibition on, then you gotta go somewhere else and they bring prohibition on, then he goes somewhere else is kind of, what it looked like with, with them. So, so let's talk about the spirit because were there any things when you were reading through how he made his whiskey, that, kind of made you go, wow. Cause those newspapers are very.

ANDY SUDDERTH (26:09.292)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (26:23.771)
specific about exactly how he was producing that whiskey.

ANDY SUDDERTH (26:28.758)
Yeah, he made some, he talked, made the finest whiskey around because he done it, he didn't do it. He done it on copper pot steels. And you know, back in the day, the column steels was already the coffee steels. They called them back then. They was already come out and a lot of few of them was still mass producing, but he was still advertising, you know, I make it on copper pot steels. I make it on low volume. I make it

I don't put yeast in mine. I let it natural ferment. It takes longer. The process is longer. He uses a natural spring water instead of pulling water out of the river and stuff like that. And it was kind of, and I think then that article, it tells a little bit about how he done it, but.

But he was kind of, made it on a lower volume, which say the big distillers got 10 gallons of alcohol out of a batch or whatever. He only got four gallons. he advertised it. Mine's better. I make less out of it, but I'm getting better, better product. And like say from what I can tell too, he used, he used a lot of corn and most of it. Yep.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (27:37.85)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (27:44.281)
He was malting, he had a malting floor, he was malting his barley and malting his corn, which I thought was interesting.

ANDY SUDDERTH (27:49.89)
Yes, yes. And he used at least, think he used from what I can tell, it was mostly over 80 % corn in all his products because corn is a dominant over making whiskey. It's got more sugars in it than the barley malt, the rye and all that. But you gotta have some of that to alter the taste just a little bit.

And I've made a lot of my stuff with at least 81 % corn and I've had good results out of it. And it's a good bourbon. It's a good whiskey. So.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (28:23.941)
Yeah. So he's, he's using white corn. Is that, are you using white corn?

ANDY SUDDERTH (28:27.948)
Yes.

Yes, I use local white corn around the area here and also use a yellow corn.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (28:35.681)
Okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (28:37.642)
And I've also mixed it together too. And then I get about the same yield.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (28:40.089)
Have you? Okay. Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (28:46.415)
Taste difference between them?

ANDY SUDDERTH (28:48.262)
No, not really. It's just the white corn has got a little more starch in it. And yeah, it's you get a little bit more sugars out of it than you do the yellow corn. But it all makes good whiskey. It does. You get a little more out of the white corn than you do the yellow corn. So, let's go.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (28:52.814)
Okay.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (28:56.441)
Yeah, easier to work with.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (29:02.299)
Mm-hmm.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (29:12.175)
Yeah. So the, the thing that stands out to me is the fact that he is using fire underneath these stills. How is he keeping from scorching the grain is my question. and did you find any thing where they kind of talk about that at all?

ANDY SUDDERTH (29:29.824)
No, but in my experience, you can keep stirring. It's hard to do back in the day. You can stir your mash and you got to control your temperatures. And once it gets to boiling, once the mash gets to boiling, it will not stick. You might get a little stickage in the copper, but...

Drew | Whiskey Lore (29:51.493)
Mmm.

ANDY SUDDERTH (29:56.436)
once he gets to boiling before you put the cow bone in it won't stick his bad then and that's the way they done it and they did not strain none of their grains back in the day so I distill the same way I distill my grains all in with the mash so but

That's the only way you can keep it from sticking back in the day, especially with the fire. you had to, and that's something I want to do. My next steel project is going to be run with fire. I'm going to it fashioned way. Like they done it. And you just got to control your heat. got to, you got, it takes longer. And that's another deal. He said it takes longer for me to fire.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (30:28.045)
Okay,

ANDY SUDDERTH (30:42.518)
My steels, I don't use gas or nothing like that. I don't know if they had gas back in the day. I guess, I don't know if they had any natural gas anything back in that day, but I doubt it.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (30:48.442)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (30:51.973)
Well,

What that, what that, what that photo reminded me of was the George Washington distillery that they're bricking cased pot stills with a little, you know, slot underneath for you to, start your fire and keep things cooking there, which I think what was interesting about going to the George Washington distillery is after you spend about four or five hours there,

ANDY SUDDERTH (31:01.386)
Yes, exactly.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (31:23.107)
you walk out smelling like a chimney. And it's like, there is this smoky character that's going to get added to the whiskey while you're making it. It has to, because to be that surrounded by that odor and what's coming in would be a completely different type of whiskey than probably we think of today.

ANDY SUDDERTH (31:26.635)
Yep.

ANDY SUDDERTH (31:32.162)
Okay.

Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (31:44.856)
Yeah, and another thing they had to watch out for, you got to watch out, you had to use, I know a lot of them used oak and hickory and stuff like that, but you couldn't just cut down a tree and inspect to cook nothing with a green piece of wood. You know, had to let your wood cure so long because if didn't, you couldn't control your heat right. So you had to have your wood right too to control your heat. So.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (32:06.554)
Mmm.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (32:11.44)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (32:12.192)
It was kind of difficult and really once you got it going, you got to start your fire off slow. Like say if you didn't, it'll stick. And then you want to know how to beef it up and just keep adding the wood to it to keep it going. It was a process. It's a process. But that's something I want to do is just making it the old fashioned way.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (32:18.842)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (32:38.604)
You can get more for the product if I make a product like it today. Put it down.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (32:42.425)
Yeah. Well, the question is, would you go through all the process of doing natural fermentation as well? Nice. Talk about that process a little bit, because it's something I wrote about in the book. but you know, the information that they put that it's not really distillers telling you these stories. It's newspaper people that are, that are writing that. And between old crow, which the story was that they had 30

ANDY SUDDERTH (32:48.972)
Yes, I will. I know how to do that.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (33:12.055)
small vessels that they were doing the, fermentation in before they joined it all together into a larger vessel. So the idea being they would hand stir, which is why they would call it, you know, handmade sour mash whiskey was the idea that you were doing the hand stirring and then putting it all together. All the way through to the idea that you are that a crow said that they made it, by slow distilling.

ANDY SUDDERTH (33:14.126)
.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (33:41.209)
which tells me what you're talking about with stirring and the rest and trying to control the heat from the fire. How do you control the heat from a fire? How do you get, mean, you really have to be on that fire all the time just to make sure that it doesn't get too out of control.

ANDY SUDDERTH (33:57.358)
Well, they could tell back in the day the old timers could tell you need thermometers today, but They could tell exactly once once that steel runs once they got their steel running and it and Say run it three or four times They know in their mind how that steel runs and it's gonna run the same every time

Drew | Whiskey Lore (34:21.017)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (34:21.216)
and you get it in your head, you know, I got to have this much heat and you can tell, you can tell exactly. It's just like when we run our steels, I know we do put yeast in them, like say the natural fermentation though with the the sourmache, I do say back after I distill, I say back about four gallons out of ever.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (34:28.527)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (34:50.974)
and I keep it in a five gallon bucket in the nearly freezing temperatures. And then when I do a new mash, I mix that in with it. And it's called sour mash. Most everybody does a sour mash method these days. It helps you control the pH. You get a better product and it's sweet mash is good too. There's a lot of people doing sweet mash. I've done both of them, but I always use a sour mash method.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (35:03.344)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (35:16.432)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (35:19.662)
because you got to control your pH. You got to have it right for right fermentation.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (35:25.867)
Okay, so when you're doing that initial fermentation, how long does it take? you do anything to it other than putting the back set in, to get the pH level right? Are you doing anything else to draw the wild yeast in?

ANDY SUDDERTH (35:42.412)
Yes, you can, what you do is we save back some of our liquid. It's got yeast in it. So we grow a little bit of our own stuff and you just put a little bit in it. And mother nature, if you don't put enough of yeast in your batch, it just takes longer. What happens is say it calls for four ounces of yeast and you don't.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (36:03.492)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (36:11.598)
To do the batch you put the four ounces in it's already calculated that it takes four ounces to to fermentate that in in in four days Four days. Okay, if you don't put enough of yeast in it say two ounces or an ounce it is still ferment but Mother Nature knows

Drew | Whiskey Lore (36:26.106)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (36:35.018)
It's got to make its own yeast to get up to the mount to ferment that. So it might take a day longer for it to make enough yeast to ferment that batch. So that's where it takes longer. So it might take two more days longer to grow extra, for Mother Nature to grow the yeast in the mash to get it to where to start fermenting right.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (36:46.778)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (36:57.467)
Yeah. So this is what was interesting. The entire Tennessee whiskey, uh, industry basically shut down in 1870 because when the federal laws came out, they said, you can't do more than three days worth of fermentation. And they said, that's not how we make our whiskey. have to have five days. We can't do it in three days with our natural fermentation. yeah. Interesting. Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (37:12.534)
Yes.

ANDY SUDDERTH (37:19.778)
Great.

They try to control it like that to keep you from making so much and selling it on in the black market, you know, but like say that that that's really hard to do. You can't make a natural mash in three days. It don't work. You can barely make with the yeast now, you know, in three, three to four days, you can, you can really do it somewhere right in there. But if you want to grow your own yeast in your mash,

Drew | Whiskey Lore (37:39.834)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (37:51.028)
It might take five or six or seven days. And then you can get, sometimes you get some wild yeast coming in from somewhere and it'll ferment a little bit different and you'll know when you get that. You'll know exactly. But it's good bourbon, good whiskey.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (37:53.786)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (37:59.556)
Mm-hmm.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (38:06.49)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (38:11.831)
Okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (38:13.452)
The wild yeast, it really don't matter now. If you're making beer or something like that, it would. But like say when you're making whiskey and bourbons, it's good to do.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (38:21.786)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (38:25.251)
Well, another thing that he talked about was that they double distilled and then they would actually twice filter it during distillation and they were using charcoal and sand. So any idea how they were doing that as it's running through, maybe they just have a small bit of charcoal and, and sand that they're running it through.

ANDY SUDDERTH (38:38.603)
Yes.

ANDY SUDDERTH (38:51.394)
That's what I don't, I would say they done it after it was distilled into a canister and it had sand and charcoal in it. But you know, I don't know if they, I don't know. It's hard to tell if they, I don't think back in the days they used a thumper steel, one thumper keg like we do. They might've did. Thumper keg or a gin basket or something like that.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (39:00.922)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (39:19.212)
You can put your charcoal and sand in it, charcoal in that and let it go through it. Let the steam go through it and come out. I have tried that and it works real well. But it's hard to tell how they said they do it back in the day. I mean, you don't know if they filtered it after or filtered it like that.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (39:41.593)
Yeah. Well, then they said that they went on and filtered it again when it went in the cistern room. So before it got in the barrel, it actually was filtered three times. And the, the idea here being that they're putting out a medicinal whiskey. So they want something that doesn't have anything that's going to cause headaches or create any kind of, and, and that probably tastes very pure. The question is, do you, by filtering it three times,

ANDY SUDDERTH (39:51.842)
Yeah. Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (40:06.371)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (40:11.503)
basically suck all the interesting character out of it. Yeah. Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (40:15.15)
You do, you do. You gotta watch how you do that. You don't even, if you keep filtering and filtering, it's like making vodka. You keep filtering and filtering it. You got no smell, no taste. Just the effect when you drink it. You can't even tell you're drinking nothing but water. But yeah, you gotta watch how many you filter it to pull. And then, you know, this is like Tennessee whiskey. I don't know what kind of charcoal they used back in the day. You know.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (40:30.96)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (40:44.494)
Sugar maple is what Jack Daniels and George Dickel and all them use so I don't know what they use down here. I don't know if they used cherry trees or What to filter to it don't I've got no I've got no feedback on that I've never seen what kind of charcoal they hadn't said so it'd be a cotton interest if you find article and see what kind how they made their charcoal I Know I know gives you

Drew | Whiskey Lore (41:04.112)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (41:08.387)
Yeah, why didn't these people write this stuff down? But then we wouldn't have such fun investigating it.

ANDY SUDDERTH (41:15.66)
Yeah, I've filtered stuff through charcoal and I've used sugar maple and I've also got a good product I filtered with a limestone rock. Nobody's ever done that. I have. And I got a good product. So this coming out. So.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (41:26.987)
okay. interesting. Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (41:34.703)
Well, I saw by your bottle collection that he was also making an apple brandy.

ANDY SUDDERTH (41:41.132)
Yes, he made an apple brandy and a peach brandy. think I got an either. I think I got an apple brandy bottle with the label still on it.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (41:49.611)
Okay, yeah. I mean, this is what we kind of

ANDY SUDDERTH (41:52.054)
And I've got some. Yeah, I think it's I think they from Chattanooga too. We can got Chattanooga on, but I'm not sure I have to pull them back out and see.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (41:57.475)
Are they okay?

Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (42:04.219)
I think because we have gotten into a era where people don't really drink that much brandy anymore that everybody hears distillery. And the first thing they're going to think of is that they were just making whiskey. And yet I find that Kentucky, Tennessee, and now here with Georgia that, know, there are fruit trees around. You've got fruit trees around. can do something with that fruit when you're done with it.

ANDY SUDDERTH (42:17.964)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (42:30.626)
That's right. You know, we got plenty of apples and you know, Georgia is a peach state. So, but I think South Carolina grows more peaches in Georgia. but yeah, I made peach brandy, apple brandy, and it's kind of tough making, you got to watch it close. It's a whole different, whole different character. But I've done it all.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (42:39.546)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (42:54.199)
I have never been, I have never been around while somebody has, I just haven't dived that much into the making of brandy, but do you actually put the fruit, does the fruit end up in the still or do you drain the liquid off before it goes in the still?

ANDY SUDDERTH (43:07.19)
Yes, I've done it both ways. If I was manufacturing, you know, Brandy, I would buy press to press all to separate the seeds and press all the stuff out and just get the juice later on. But I've done it. I've done it in the copper pot still that I built.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (43:25.71)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (43:35.102)
It's got a stirring, it's got a actually stirring arm and it keeps it all stirred so it don't stick. So, so still I built, we're out at 90 % efficient, you know.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (43:41.071)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (43:46.625)
Okay. How did you, how did you decide how you were going to design that? I've seen what the still looks like and through pictures. And, it reminds me of those stills I keep seeing around, like at the Oscar gets museum, Tennessee Hills distillery in Tennessee had one that looked like that. That's kind of got kind of the copper rivets on it that everybody keeps claiming as a George Washington still.

ANDY SUDDERTH (44:07.32)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (44:11.342)
No, I was a little different than a George Washington steel. But anyway, yeah, I hand built all that. Well, I had people to help me. It's the bottoms, the bottoms is it's a runs off steam.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (44:15.866)
Yeah.

Okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (44:28.308)
It's the bottoms are made out of 316 stick copper. I mean, that's heavy copper. So you gotta have heavy, but that little steel is, I've run that little steel over 650 times and it's still plugging right along. That's the best thing I ever built. you know, it's a good little steel. So.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (44:33.359)
Okay.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (44:49.399)
Okay, and you got two barrels next to it, and I see the worm coil in one of them. So what is the rest of the setup?

ANDY SUDDERTH (44:53.581)
Yep.

You got a thumper barrel, it comes over and if you look at my steels, I make mine a little different than everybody else. So people can't tell what I've done, but I make my arms coming off of the top different than, that's got a lot to do with the character of your whiskey. And then it goes into the thumper and the thumper.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (44:58.063)
Okay.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (45:16.539)
Mm-hmm.

ANDY SUDDERTH (45:21.834)
is used for, I put backings in it from the day before that I've had leftover, like the low winds and the high winds I will put in the thumper. And it just, I'm recycling it all. I'm not wasting nothing. I run my steel on down to 20 proof and I use that to go back in the steel to up the proof on the rest of the batches. And then it goes through the worm and I think in that coal, there's like 40 foot of copper in that coal.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (45:30.416)
Mm-hmm.

ANDY SUDDERTH (45:51.53)
and goes down to learning and coos it off. It comes out clear, clear whiskey or clear bourbon, you know. Then we put it in the barrels, the charred barrels and let it sit at least two years for straight bourbon. And we bottled some yesterday that was some of my stuff that was right at eight years old. So we sell barrel picks too.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (45:57.349)
Well...

Drew | Whiskey Lore (46:13.24)
Okay.

Yeah. All right. So it's a, it's called a thumper. This is a, something I've been talking with some distilleries. It's amazing how some will call their thing a thumper and some a doubler and they don't really know what the difference is. The question is, does yours actually thump with that steam coming into it? Okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (46:36.524)
Yes, it will. If you got it turned up, that's where you got to turn it. That's where the old timers come up with that thumper back in the day. could hear if they had their heat a little too high and you take the steam coming over into the thumper with the thumper. The steam has to heat the thumper up. So you take a hot and mix them with a cold, it starts a bumping and thumping. Boom, boom, boom, boom till it gets to temperature. You got to the steam, you got to turn the heat down just a little bit.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (46:59.545)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (47:06.53)
to get it to not do that. But back in the days, you know, if you walked up on a steel and it just had started, you could hear it thumping and making booming noise and make a big booming noise. It makes a big noise. But I've called it a thumper and a doubler. you know, when we give tours, I just tell people it's a thumper and it gives them, them ask questions, you know, so you can start telling them stories.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (47:19.994)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (47:28.974)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (47:32.923)
Well, it's my understanding that the doubler, have to run it through. actually is going to heat it back up again, like a pot still. And that, and that you're condensing before it goes in too. And so it's doing liquid rather than doing steam. Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (47:40.94)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (47:45.293)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (47:49.03)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, see, that's what I do. And I pour the backends, the low wines band and then in the doubler, I call it a double or a thumper. You pour it in there. It recycles all that for me. The low wines, you, cause you can't, you don't throw it away. Cause all the low, low proof alcohol, I run it down to 20 proof. You've got all your taste. You got all your taste in that. So there's no taste in the high proof, but I mix the high proof with that.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (47:55.715)
Yeah. Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (48:12.496)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (48:16.974)
and put it back in the dubber and then it recycles it and then my proof of my alcohol coming out of the steel then it ups the proof of it.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (48:25.717)
Okay. It is, you really are truly running it as a doubler thumper. It's going through both different, that's really interesting. Yeah. As I say, I learned something new every time I talk to a distiller. It just keeps growing the knowledge in my head. So let's talk about, cause we talked about this offline actually beforehand, but I wanted to cover kind of.

ANDY SUDDERTH (48:30.22)
Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (48:50.651)
towards the end of the history of RM Rose. so Rufus retires in 1905, Georgia goes dry in 1908. So what happens with the RM Rose company at that point?

ANDY SUDDERTH (49:06.988)
Well, Rufus, when he retired, he went into real estate. He owned a bunch of land and buildings in Atlanta. So his son took it over, but he did see, he said, he's seen all this Rufus, seen all this tempers movement and all that. And he said, you know, it's time for me to retire. So he let his son have it.

And then I say 1908, he run in Atlanta until 1908, till the last day. And he had already been set up in Chattanooga to go to Chattanooga. But it was kind of rough for all of them back in the day, know, having to pack up and move. I mean, you figure all them, I think they were six or seven of the major ones.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (49:44.48)
Mmm. Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (49:53.026)
in Atlanta, they had to move. I know him and Joseph Thompson did and Joseph Thompson, he ended up with the Cox and Hill distillery. So, but they all had to move and it was kind of rough on all of them. mean, you know, it's just, but.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (50:11.772)
And then once you get to Chattanooga, then Tennessee goes dry.

ANDY SUDDERTH (50:15.808)
And the seagulls drive. Well, I can't remember the year they went with it. Nineteen. That's it. Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (50:19.259)
It was 1909. So he didn't have much time, but now the wholesalers stayed open for a while because the law was kind of sketchy as to what they could do. they, and what a lot of them did was they took their wholesale businesses straight across the straight state line and were shipping whiskey back into Tennessee because it was legal to ship in until 1912 when

ANDY SUDDERTH (50:27.788)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (50:40.449)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (50:45.403)
the feds got involved and basically said, no, but Congress passed a law that basically said you can't ship into a dry county across state lines. So that shut all that down. So here we are 19, we'll go ahead. Well, I said, so here we are in 1912, now where do you go?

ANDY SUDDERTH (50:58.318)
Go ahead.

ANDY SUDDERTH (51:06.754)
That's when he went to Newport. And then, then at the time he went to Chattanooga, he did open a retail in Jacksonville, Florida.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (51:08.953)
Okay.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (51:16.523)
Okay. Well, and the other thing we didn't talk about was the fact that when he arrived in 1908, he also bought into the F H Wakeman. Distillery as well. And I find that interesting. Cause in my Tennessee book, I talk about it used to be known as the lookout distillery. It was, it was the second distillery built in Chattanooga and it was, it was started by, John Dean Tully and JS cannon and John D Tully is.

ANDY SUDDERTH (51:25.996)
Yes. Yes.

ANDY SUDDERTH (51:33.24)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (51:45.381)
part of the Tolly and Eaton family, families that were legendary Lincoln County distillers who have, who were competition to Jack Daniel, but also, Alfred Eaton was, some had said, you know, that he, taught Jack how to make whiskey. really interesting to have these, these tie-ins, but I thought you would find this interesting. I love fun little stories around sometimes newspapers will post something.

about these distilleries. And there was a story around the lookout distillery that, or it was the Wakeman distillery at that time. They had a, they had a marketing guy, basically. He was an owner who liked to do creative marketing. So he got these two Angora goats and he had them stuffed and put out in front of the distillery. And as the newspaper said, they were placed there in a belligerent manner. And so.

People would come by to see these goats, but the thing was that they said they couldn't keep the dogs from attacking them. So they eventually had to take them down. So I thought you'd find that to be a fun little anecdote that went on with that, but interesting to see how all these, you know, distilleries and stories tie in together. And you talk about Newport and so it was the old 76 distillery that, that he bought half interest in.

ANDY SUDDERTH (52:49.806)
and

ANDY SUDDERTH (53:08.472)
Yep.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (53:11.779)
And I was just talking to New Rift Distillery and lo and behold, they are using one of the warehouses of the old 76 distillery. So now you have this tie into...

ANDY SUDDERTH (53:21.92)
I'm gonna have to go see that. That's interesting. got, and I still, wanna know about, I wanna know a little bit about the guys that started the Waichman Distilling Company too. You said it was the Cannons and all that. what'd you say, the Tolly family?

Drew | Whiskey Lore (53:35.727)
Yeah.

So was the Tully family, the Tully and Eaton.

ANDY SUDDERTH (53:42.252)
Yeah, totally neat. Now I want to know a little history about them.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (53:45.499)
Yeah, they're, they're a fascinating family and forgotten really for the most part, other than Alfred Eaton's name gets brought up every once in while. And he started distilling around the 1830s, uh, in Lincoln County, but they were making whiskey very much. The reason why I probably bought that distillery or bought into that distillery was because they were also doing things the old fashioned way. So, um, that was a Lincoln County style of thing to do, although they usually use the log still steam log still.

ANDY SUDDERTH (54:06.584)
video.

ANDY SUDDERTH (54:15.362)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, did you ever hear of the RH Kate distilling company up there? Yes. Just wondered. never had. Now, we actually own the name to that. Yes. So I was planning on two or three years. Now, products are in Tennessee this year.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (54:15.405)
rather than the old flame method.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (54:23.245)
Yes, out of Knoxville. Yes, and then...

Drew | Whiskey Lore (54:33.735)
do you? Okay.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (54:44.909)
OK.

ANDY SUDDERTH (54:45.094)
and I wanted to do something in Tennessee so we ended up with the rights to the RHK, the Freestone whiskies. So I wanted and they done the filtering process, the Lincoln County process too. They didn't advertise it but they did charcoal, they did filter through sugar maple. So I always wanted to do a Tennessee whiskey so we might do something with that later on.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (54:59.321)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (55:04.9)
Yes.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (55:11.515)
Well, I was going to say, if you get around to triple distilling or triple filtering your whiskey, could call that a Georgia style whiskey for our RM Rose. Cause we got, we got documentation for it now. So, he's got to figure out that sand and charcoal combination that he's, that he's working on. Yeah. So that's fun. I mean, it's, it's a really interesting history and the RH Kate would be interesting. I've got, pictures and some stuff I could probably share with you that I've.

ANDY SUDDERTH (55:17.622)
Yeah, that's

ANDY SUDDERTH (55:26.442)
Yep. Yep.

ANDY SUDDERTH (55:38.86)
Yeah, he's he's an instrument. I think he was in Knoxville. And. I forgot what did he go to Nashville to? I can't I can't remember, but.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (55:48.903)
Well, then he ended up actually, his son, retired and moved to Chattanooga and his son actually, when Tennessee went into prohibition, he went north into Kentucky right across the border. So he was like, just across the board. there was a story that came out in one of the newspapers that said, R H Kate is, done something or other illegal, blah, blah, blah. was, they were talking about, they thought, why is he in Chattanooga?

ANDY SUDDERTH (55:53.825)
Yes.

ANDY SUDDERTH (56:03.245)
Thanks.

ANDY SUDDERTH (56:14.315)
Thank

Drew | Whiskey Lore (56:18.091)
And also is doing this in, in Tennessee or in Kentucky. And so whatever the confusion was, was basically, no, the father has moved to Chattanooga. He's not making whiskey. Don't, don't confuse it. It's his son and he's up in Kentucky. So he's still legal. So yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (56:33.644)
Yeah. Well, you know, they, they, they found loopholes in everything to try to get through all this back in the day from state to state to state, you know, I mean, they had to another, another interesting is, is Alabama was interesting too, around the, don't know if you've done anything that, that the Phoenix city, Alabama.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (56:39.028)
Drew | Whiskey Lore (56:43.632)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (56:55.097)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (56:56.686)
It's called Gerard, Alabama or something like it. I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right, but you know, it's called the wicked city back in the day Rufus Randolph had Opened a retail down there and when you somebody down there him and Joseph Thompson, but they just shit everybody had to win all this Prohibition he had they had to just shift around and shift around to To try to make it before it was all ended

Drew | Whiskey Lore (57:11.186)
okay.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (57:26.211)
Yeah. It's a, it's interesting because one of the Talley brothers moved from Lincoln County to Memphis or no, the one, Eaton brothers, one of the Eaton brothers moved to Memphis and opened really the only Memphis distillery of note before everything shut down. and he left because in Lincoln County and around that area, they were burning, distillery warehouses down. Nobody knew who was doing it, but arsonists were going around burning these things down.

ANDY SUDDERTH (57:26.414)
You know.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (57:55.141)
probably in the name of temperance. So they were dealing with all of that as well. So it was definitely tough times. And I do remember there was a distillery that was on the Georgia, Alabama line that used to send whiskey up into Tennessee. And it was almost like a sourcing, know, a lot of people sourced their whiskey from that particular distillery.

ANDY SUDDERTH (57:57.293)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (58:20.192)
Yeah, that was in phoenix city. What was the name of that that was called?

Drew | Whiskey Lore (58:26.681)
like Big Springs or something like that, or I can't remember. Seemed like it had a longer name, but yeah. So many distilleries floating around in my head.

ANDY SUDDERTH (58:33.548)
Everywhere.

I've a bottle. I've got it. I got a whiskey bottle from her. It's got garage. Yeah. seem like it. I don't know if it's RM Rose or Joseph Thompson, but I was trying to think of the guy that owned that.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (58:40.058)
do you really? Okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (58:55.886)
I'm forgetting some of my stuff.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (58:58.873)
Well, there's so, so many things. got so many names floating around in my head. I'm surprised sometimes I can call them up, but, well, let's, let's get into your, families, and, some of the whiskies that are in moonshines that you have. cause there's names around those as well. So you have the, George Sutterth corn whiskies that still your, your dad's recipe.

ANDY SUDDERTH (59:03.723)
Me too.

ANDY SUDDERTH (59:21.986)
That's my dad. Yeah, that's his recipe and it's made with 100 % corn. He's still alive today. He's 88 years old. And I made that this. Yeah, we still make it. Yeah. No, no. He'll come in health every now and then, but he still think the revenue is going to get him.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (59:30.295)
Okay. Still making it. Is he, I mean, is he still making it? Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (59:43.177)
okay. All right. He's, he's probably not the warm into that. Ask the revenue or a tag on your. Yeah. So then, another thing that I bump into, cause I've been to kiln Mississippi and I know there's a town in North Carolina that claims this too. And you have, Dawsonville as being the moonshine capital. So is that, you're making.

ANDY SUDDERTH (59:48.268)
Yeah

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:00:07.31)
That's basically true, I think. I've got a lot of good friends in Dawsonville. I mean, it was a hub. They shipped alcohol. My daddy worked up there with all of his friends and worked from there to Forsyth County to Gwinnett County. It was shipped out of there, plumb on up into Asheville, on up north. I mean, they shipped moonshine out of there, even into Atlanta.

You know, it was tons of it going into Atlanta. And to me, yes, the moonshine capital of the world, I believe. you know, that's, it was this day and, and, you know, that's where, you know, NASCAR really got started in Dawsonville, Georgia, too. So, I know lot of history. Was that?

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:00:56.155)
Okay, home of awesome bill. I said the home of awesome awesome bill.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:01:02.048)
Yeah, well, you know, Raymond Parks, he was from there. And he was, he moved to Atlanta as a young, young fellow and opened filling stations and then had to, and made moonshine all his life and sold it. And he had the first NASCAR team of history, you know, right there. And he funded, he funded all NASCAR, but never got to Rick and you know, all the never did get part of it. But

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:01:21.228)
Okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:01:31.042)
But it all started right there, you know, with all the racers, hauling moonshine and then they was going to see which one could outrun. that's way it got started. So. Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:01:33.595)
Wow.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:01:43.919)
Yeah. So it's called Felton's Finest is the one that you made. So what's the story behind Felton?

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:01:49.578)
Story behind that, Felton's finest, that's my wife, that was her grandpa, Felton Looper, he was from Dawsonville, Georgia. And she's got moonshining in her family too, so probably a lot of rich moonshining up there, but yeah, we decided to come out with his.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:02:04.707)
Okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:02:12.936)
and recognize him a little bit and it's a good seller too. His name Felton Looper and we got a picture of his steals and all that in Dawsonville and from there I mean you know we just tried I'm just trying to keep history alive for the future you know.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:02:31.685)
Yeah. Did, was there any particular kind of recipe you wanted to do for that? Any?

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:02:38.094)
He uh I used like a 90 % corn recipe on his and I changed the proof a little bit I can't remember I think his is 105 or and and uh George Suddeth is like 105 I think I think Felton's 102 and his is 105 so I sort of changed the proof on it a little bit so I really didn't know his recipes

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:02:59.864)
Okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:03:05.729)
felton's but I'm sure they used all corn and multi-corn. I mean, that's all they had back in the day. know, it was hard to get a hold of rye or barley or anything back in the day. They had plenty of corn though, for the farm. So, and I don't know back in them days about, I guess it was right around 1900.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:03:10.636)
Okay.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:03:18.703)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:03:30.033)
1910, 1920. I guess they had sugar back then too, you know, to put in their product, but I don't know how exactly they done it. Yeah, Dawsonville is a good town. It's a moonshine capital of the world, in my opinion. And I know a lot of people says, what, you got Mount Airy, North Carolina, and you got, what's the other town up there? Junior Johnson was from, you

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:03:39.599)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:03:57.975)
Wilkes-Barreau? Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:03:59.532)
North Wilkes-Barre. They say it's the most uncapital of the world. you know, it's just a, it's a battle between them two. So I don't know how to battle it out. We need to find out a way to battle it out and see which one, you know.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:04:10.245)
There you go. Yeah, absolutely. Well, then, the last, moonshine that you, that you have has much more of a modern kind of a name to it. love to know the story behind this one. Deliverance moonshine.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:04:25.774)
Okay, yeah, I come up with that one day I said I'm just gonna make a deliverance moonshine and this is kind of We was in Dillard, Georgia. That's where we started our distillery in Rabin County, Georgia And that's where the movie deliverance was made Right there Yep Right there in 1970 they all come up there and made it and you know, it's just something I

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:04:41.835)
Okay. Down the Nana Hala river. it? Okay. Yep.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:04:53.314)
decided to do and it is a hot seller and you know Billy Redding the banjo player I know him real well he's he's not getting around he's a little older than me so he'd come up there and sign a bottle and we'd have people coming from everywhere wanting to sign bottle with his name on it you know it's all in the marketing and and I've done it I still make some of it you know

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:04:54.721)
You

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:05:02.178)
Okay.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:05:12.397)
Wow.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:05:20.468)
And it's a good product. think it's like 115 proof. I got the proof on up our own net. Give it a little juice, know. We have some younger people coming in there. They'll look at it and say, deliverance. What is that? They don't know what these young people. No. I said, you going to watch movies? Yeah. Take this. it.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:05:25.507)
Wow. Okay.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:05:40.181)
They don't even know the movie. Whereas I'd see it. That start laughing.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:05:48.952)
Go take your drink of it and sit down and watch a movie, you know.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:05:54.199)
Wake, wake up to the world there. Yeah. Oh man. So, um, now you've moved the distillery because the distillery used to be in Dillard or you're actually, as I understand it, you're in the process of, of moving the equipment down now. So, um, what is that? What is that like? I mean, and the thought that not only are you moving what maybe 20 miles or so south of where you were, but you.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:05:56.588)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:06:11.096)
Yep.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:06:19.82)
Yeah. Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:06:21.391)
but you're also, do you have to change your DSP numbers and all that as well?

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:06:26.574)
Yes, we got, when I ended up the building, we had to end, we had to leave out of Dillard December 31st of 24. So I had bought this building three years prior to that and started moving a little stuff down there because I know one day that the Dillard,

It was kind of confusing up there. They wouldn't let me do a lot of stuff. But I did have a good run up there. Anyway, I got everything moved. It's a hard process of moving. You got to turn down the steels, process setting the copper steel back up. And the building we did buy had copper steels and stuff in it, they don't make whiskey to my specs. I'm picky. So if I'm not going to make it right, I'm not going to make it at all.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:07:13.721)
Yeah. Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:07:19.78)
Nice.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:07:19.83)
You know, so I got to use my steel and you know, we in a little town called Mount Airy, Georgia. It's not North Carolina, it's Mount Airy, Georgia. Yep. So it was a little history about Mount Airy. It's a good little town, small town. The train used to come through town. It was, it's really the highest point on the Southern railway, between, I can't remember the

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:07:29.502)
Okay, you making it the new moonshine capital.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:07:48.526)
from Atlanta on up to New York. I mean, it's a high spot. Good little town. It used to be a rough little town. mean, if you wanted to get in a fight, went to Mount Airy, Georgia. So they had little honky tonks and stuff like that, you So you really didn't mess around back in old days. they've been changing, and it ain't been like that in 20 or 30 years.

We trying to beef the town up a little bit and get it. It's just a small little place, you know, and it's a good place. It's got Lake Russell in behind it and a lot of good history, a lot of good moonshine history in Mount Airy, Georgia about the Chief of Police. used to be the police. was the Chief of Police and the moonshiner in town back in the day. yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:08:40.591)
No. You gotta love that. Yeah. That's how you keep the law off your back is become the law.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:08:48.556)
That's that's true. That's true. And Lonnie's little towns is like him. My buddy up Raven County. He's old. He's about a little older than me. His dad, him and his dad got caught in Raven County when he was 16. And they had to go to Gainesville to do the hearings and they spent time and when his dad got out, he become the sheriff of Raven County. So.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:09:14.991)
No.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:09:16.622)
And you know, it's just a flop game.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:09:20.187)
Little communities. Yeah. Little communities. It was, it was very interesting because I went up to Pennsylvania not long ago and I was driving through some of the little towns trying to avoid the turnpikes as much as I possibly could. And man, having lived in the South for so long, I go North and I forget the fact that, mean, these little town squares are, you know, just something I've gotten so used to.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:09:24.002)
Yeah?

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:09:48.091)
that when you're, grew up in, Asheville, North Carolina. So, you know, if you're going to Hendersonville or you're going to, uh, you know, any of little communities, it's like, you got the circle down there. You got the courthouse in the middle. You got, uh, you know, a bunch of businesses around and then you go up North. You don't really see that, uh, quite as much, um, in, States like Pennsylvania. So, um, this is really interesting. And to think that, you know, if you're using that as your hub for your little, uh,

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:09:48.355)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:10:17.519)
community that you are going to have that, everybody knows everybody. Everybody's coming to the same, same spot, kind of a feel to the place. So.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:10:29.772)
Yeah, it's changing, but like I I still like the little town. We can do more advertisement in the town, put up signs and do what we like. We're a little bit off the interstate, but people drive. If we give them experience.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:10:46.265)
Yeah. Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:10:48.514)
They will drive. We get this thing built up and we're opening up two other locations too. yeah, I had to get a different DSP for the one in Mount Airy than the DSP in Diller. You asked that.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:11:03.329)
Okay, yeah, so what's your number there? Cause you were six or something I think before that? you were nine, okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:11:06.51)
It's it was number nine in Dillard. Yeah, we was number one. And you know, that was kind of funny. We was zero, zero, zero nine DSP in Georgia. And if you look on that article, number nine, that was kind of strange when I, they just, they just give that to me. didn't ask for it.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:11:22.681)
Yep. It says it's registered distillery nine for whatever that district was. Yep.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:11:31.707)
Serendipity, man.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:11:34.668)
So we're 15, we're 15-008 in Mount Airy. So basically I'm keeping that, I'm keeping that DSP-0009 and we're opening a place in Hiawassee, Georgia and this, we're gonna transfer it up there. So.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:11:41.324)
Okay.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:11:55.243)
Okay. Yeah. It's a beautiful area. I love, I love driving through there. It's my, it's my how to get to Tennessee from Greenville, South Carolina without dealing with Atlanta.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:11:59.447)
Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:12:03.699)
yeah, Yeah, yeah, you just cut across country. That's yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:12:09.327)
Yeah, it's gorgeous up through there. Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:12:11.138)
Yeah, and we actually opening morning, my daughter is opening. We have done a license agreement to my daughter and son-in-law. They're opening morning in Helen, Georgia. Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:12:22.007)
Okay. Which is another great little town. Very, German, sort of Scandinavian kind of a influence in that town. Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:12:29.932)
Yeah, yeah, well, we're gonna try to expand out. I wanna retire and slow down a little bit and let them take over,

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:12:38.329)
Yeah, there you go. There you go. So when people come to the distillery, what kind of experience will they get?

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:12:46.956)
We've got a gift shop inside. We can show them our bottling facility, our storage facility, our barrels. And where we store our finished products. You know, we got a tasting room and they can come in there and taste all they want is free. We don't charge nothing for tasting.

Now you can buy a bottle, they can buy up to three bottles a piece per day, each person that comes in. The laws in Georgia is changing a little bit, so they finally got us to that about four or five years ago. We couldn't sell nothing up till then. Yeah, and you know, we can't ship nothing out of Georgia to, know, but people can ship stuff into Georgia, but.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:13:21.401)
Wow.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:13:32.443)
Ha ha.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:13:32.8)
We're trying to get that changed. It's you know how these laws are. you seen it? Every state's got different laws.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:13:39.307)
Yeah. I could tell you that by just over the last two weeks, I've been contacting distilleries in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. And my head's about to explode from trying to figure out what you can do in each state and what you can't do in each state. because they're not just straight ahead laws there, you know, you have to know the fine print. And if somebody's going to go to, Georgia to go to a distillery and then they find out, well,

Jeez, I was going to buy 10 bottles of spirits and you can only buy three. That's something you probably should know before you get down there and not blame the distiller. Cause the distiller would love to sell you 10 bottles of whiskey. Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:14:15.682)
man.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:14:20.076)
That's true. It's not the state of Georgia when you find a distributor and we we tied with that distributor for life. We cannot pull away from them in Georgia. So Tennessee is the same way. We signed a deal with Tennessee. But now you figure South Carolina is not, Florida is not. We just we just done the paperwork for Illinois. It's not so we can.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:14:28.735)
wow. Wow.

Okay, yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:14:46.766)
We can do, you know, it's just Everstate. Like I say, Everstate is a little different on everything.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:14:52.261)
Yeah. So do you have people coming in doing a comparison tastings of the different moonshines? Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:14:58.254)
Yes, we do. And a lot of them with our bourbons, we got, I got what you call a founder's bourbon I've had out for about two years. And we do in barrel picks on it. They'll come in and said there'll be 10 or 12 people at a table and they'll pick a barrel. And it mostly be like a package store. They'll pick a barrel, but they've got their customers that come and taste it in our.

And then they'll pick a barrel, we'll bottle it ship it to their store and their customers can come and buy it. We do a lot of that too, so it's working more or well.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:15:28.764)
very nice. Okay.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:15:37.371)
Well, good. Well, Andy, I really appreciate you going in, diving deep into the history. I'm sure as you keep finding more stuff, I now have RM Rose on my radar. So when I see the name pop up, I definitely have a connection now. And I love watching and learning about these distillers who's tried desperately to stick to the old fashioned way of making whiskey even into the 20th century. So thanks so much.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:16:02.23)
Yeah. Well, that's what I like. I, you know, I wanted to build my own steel. I built my daddy's some back in the day and built us some, you know, but I really wanted to build a nice, took me about a year to build that steel. So I really want to build me a bigger one. I just got to

I used to do welding and stuff like that, but I can't see good enough to do that no more and stuff like that. I just have, I still got all my equipment to do it with. I just gotta have some younger people to help me. I can design it all. I've designed everything you see, I design on CAD. Okay, I do CAD. I draw everything out to the T on CAD and give it to the fabricators. They cut it out and...

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:16:34.171)
Yeah.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:16:39.701)
Okay, okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:16:50.606)
and then we just weld it together.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:16:52.441)
Yeah. Well, I'm going to keep my eyes out for when you start working on doing your natural fermentation and, and coming out with it. Cause that will be fascinating. Something I've wanted to see somebody do for quite a while. And I've almost gotten to a point where I said, I don't know if anybody can do it anymore. So

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:16:59.821)
Yes.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:17:10.06)
Yeah, it just takes longer, which you know, the longer it takes a better product you're going to have the way I see it. You know, I mean, it's just like wine aging, you know. So, but yeah, I want to do a product. I want to do it with fire and I want to build my stills just like, you know, encased in the brick deals and do it to show people.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:17:17.467)
There you go.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:17:23.663)
Yeah, there you go.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:17:37.396)
And basically too, I would just like to, I've come up with another deal. I would just like to run it at night and see how many people I can get to tour it at night.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:17:47.323)
okay. Well, it'd be, I bet you with those fires going, cause I've walked into distilleries that have the old Portuguese pot stills that have the flame underneath and it's beautiful when you walk in, everything's glowing. Yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:18:01.356)
Yeah, and then it is nothing to be put on label this way. This whiskey was made at night after You know under the moon, you know, it's made it in this

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:18:08.335)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, George Dickles, president went out and bought the cascade distillery in, Tullahoma, Tennessee, because the distiller there was making his whiskey at night that mellowed by moonlight was their tagline. So yeah.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:18:25.688)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I think it's a whole different avenue, a whole different marketing avenue, because you never know, open at night, and all tours coming in at night, see how you make it. It's just something different. People want some experience today. If you can give them experience, you got it. If you can be pegged for that, you got it.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:18:46.597)
They do.

Yep.

Drew | Whiskey Lore (01:18:53.307)
Absolutely. Well, thank you, Andy. I appreciate it. And, uh, I'm sure we will talk again and dig into some history. So cheers.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:18:55.864)
Okay.

ANDY SUDDERTH (01:19:01.218)
Sounds good. Thank you. Have a good.