Ep. 30 - Gobbler Springs' Founder John Hatcher

Transcript

Drew (00:14):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, drew Hennish, the Amazon bestselling author of Whiskey Laura's Travel Guide to Experience in Kentucky Bourbon. And it's time to head back into the hills of Tennessee for one of the most unique distillery experiences that I have ever had. How unique? Well, let's just say I had to meet the founder over at a local hardware store. We got some sandwiches there. Then we rode off to a spot in a road where I parked my car, and then he took me in a four by four over to the distillery because the road is a little rough. And so once we got there, we had our lunch. We talked a lot about history and talked a lot about his family and how he does his deciling. And then we had some moonshine, some gin, a little sweet mash whiskey, and then made our way over to the house slash cabin where we had a chance to finally sit down and do the interview.

Drew (01:26):
So let me tell you which distillery this is. It is Gobbler Springs Distillery, and the owner and distiller is John Hatcher. And John is doing some really creative stuff out at this distillery that is out in the woods. And we got a chance to talk a little bit about not only his distilling processes, including one that he has named after the county that he's in, but we also got a chance to talk a lot about history. And so we're going to cover a lot of the history. In the front end of this conversation. We'll talk about a pioneer whose name has been changed, and we have been actually saying it wrong all of these years, so we're going to cover that. Early on, there was also a famous road that connected New Orleans to Nashville that ran right by where this property is. So we want to talk a little bit about that as well. But I also want to talk about those special processes that John's using. And one of the benefits that he gets out of this process is really kind of conservation of his wood source, but also bringing more consistency to his whiskey. It's a fun conversation. So let's jump right in with John Hatcher of Gobler Springs Distillery. Well, John, welcome to the show.

John (02:54):
Thank you.

Drew (02:56):
Well, very fascinating tour that you gave

Drew (02:58):
Me of the distillery. You called it The world's smallest distillery. I don't know if I would agree with that, but it is small and it is out in the country. And taking the road to get up here, you gave me a lift up the hill, which was nice because I've been to some on some rough roads, but we actually had to cross a natural spring that was crossing the road,

John (03:22):
But the old terminology that would be forwarding the creek,

Drew (03:25):
Forwarding the creek. So we forwarded the creek we got here, and you gave me a chance to taste some of your moonshine and also your gin, which you referred to, or I think I referred to as the gin for people who don't like gin.

John (03:40):
Exactly,

Drew (03:41):
Exactly. Because it has its own character to it, and it's really nice. And so one of the things that I didn't know about Gobbler Springs and about you and all of this by just taking a initial peek of the website is all the history that kind of surrounds your family. And also one of your products uses the day 1821, which is your moonshine and the significance of that date. And so it's a interesting thing that sometimes we learn bits of history we had no idea existed or something that we've learned our whole life we find out is wrong. So when I say Davy Crockett, what do you say?

John (04:33):
That's not how they say it here. Dave Davey Crockett came from the Mind of Walt Disney. Okay. And I'm not a native from here either. I'm from Kentucky originally. I've lived here 30 some years, almost 40 now. And one of the first things I learned that it's David Crockett Park. There was no Davey Crockett at the Alamo. That was David Crockett. So

Drew (04:59):
Davey was just a friendly way to feed it to kids.

John (05:02):
Guess it just fed it into the narrative. Nice.

Drew (05:05):
Yes. So it's like me saying Louisville and you said, ah, you got that. Right. Exactly. It's it. It's being in the know. But when I first saw David Crockett State Park, I had to go look it up because I thought, are they talking about Davy Crockett?

John (05:24):
Exactly, yeah.

Drew (05:25):
So it's so ingrained in my brain

John (05:28):
As in everyone's, yeah, it is.

Drew (05:31):
Yeah. So how did you end up finding out about that story? Well,

John (05:37):
When I moved here, I've always wanted to experience myself in the local history. And I've worked at a newspaper for a few years. My background is a commercial photographer, and I've delved into the history. And if you go to David Crockett State Park, you will actually learn where the grist mill was in the powder mill and the distillery. He had all three industries that actually washed away in the year 1821. So we're coming upon, and actually it was in September, which will be next month. Yeah. So it'll be the 200th anniversary of the Shoal Creek flood. I guess that took two or three industries out of Lawrence County, Tennessee.

Drew (06:16):
And my question is, did you watch the old Davey Crockett movie?

John (06:20):
Oh,

Drew (06:21):
Most definitely movies. Okay. Was he distilling in any of those? No.

John (06:23):
No, I don't think so. That I don't. So that was my brother. He grew up in that era, so he really loved Davy Crockett. Yeah, me, I came a bit later. I was watching reruns. But it was funny, back in the day, I guess when there was federal money and the parks were running a little bit or state money for Tennessee, you could actually go and see the grist mill. They have a grist mill that actually would work and turn, and then they had a mini theater that would show Davey Crockett,

Drew (06:50):
The movie, the

John (06:51):
Movies and things in the show.

Drew (06:52):
So they're basically showing you a piece of replicated history, but then giving you the wrong history.

John (06:59):
Exactly. Well, I don't know that the state park is as concerned about Davy and David as the locals. The ones actually from Lawrence County are the interesting ones, and he did a lot of things as he was, I think as he left Lawrence County, he wasn't well liked because he didn't like to pay his bills, I think. And he left owning a little bit of money, which I guess you would if you'd been devastated with a flood and had nothing there. But I think he introduced some of the first legislation and helped develop Lawrence County itself. And I hope you get a chance to talk to the local historian, because he can give you a lot of facts about David Crockett and how influential he was in the area in the town.

Drew (07:44):
Fascinating. Because he's not somebody that we would initially think of as a distiller. We take these heroes and we go, okay, well, he's always out on the frontier somewhere killing, doing killing. So yeah, exactly. Kill the bar when he was only three. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I bet that's not true either.

John (08:02):
That was Davey, not David. That

Drew (08:04):
Was Davey. Okay. That's the fictional character. So everybody needs to make sure they get that right. So I learned a lot about this area just by reading some of the notes that you sent to me that I wasn't really aware of. And on the podcast, we haven't really talked much about the war of 1812 and the battle that happened at New Orleans a couple years, or, well, 1815 when the whole thing was over. But I didn't realize that the Natchez Trace has always been what I've known as the path to the South, and that right through this area, they actually had a road called the Jackson

John (08:50):
Road Military

Drew (08:51):
Road. Military Road, yeah. Yeah. And so the idea of that was basically to get access between New Orleans and Nashville

John (09:02):
Civilization and Nashville

Drew (09:04):
For military purposes. It was

John (09:07):
A shortcut. It was actually a shorter distance, I think, to the area than the NIUs trays. Yeah.

Drew (09:13):
Makes you wonder how much of that area still could be mapped out and see, you can still follow

John (09:20):
The old trace, you can still follow the old military road. You can still follow pieces of that.

Drew (09:25):
Okay. Yeah. It kind of starts and stops.

John (09:27):
It does. It's a little bit east of here. The road that comes through here would be, it was more important way to get to Shiloh and the river. So if you got to this area, you're getting off of the Jackson Road and headed more towards the river in Shiloh in that area.

Drew (09:48):
So what drew you to this area?

John (09:51):
Purely accident. Yeah. Well, there's two things. I guess the question would be in to this area in living here or starting a distillery

Drew (09:59):
In starting a distillery here. Yeah, because you were originally from Kentucky.

John (10:03):
Kentucky, exactly. Yeah. I grew up in a little, I was born in Glasgow, which is around Bowling Green, east of Bowling Green a little bit. And actually, I'm from a little farming community called Smiths Grove, and it's a small town of 900 population, I guess. Very small town. But I moved to this area as a photographer. I shot school pictures and the gentleman, Henry Harris was his name, and he lived in Lawrenceburg. And my wife and I married my high school sweetheart, and we both married, and she was midway through college and decided just to run off with me and live in Tennessee. We've been here ever since. Nice. But we found the area here, and it's a lot like home. Middle Tennessee and middle Kentucky are very similar in all mannerisms and ways. And the people, yeah, they're very well receptive here. We've made great friends here and just become home.

Drew (11:01):
It's so out in the middle of nowhere it feels like because you're, well, to get here, I was very happy that it's a pretty modern highway coming out through. And then you get into, and you're going to have to say the name of the town where I met you.

John (11:18):
Well, most folks call it, if you look at it at first glance, but if you live here, it's called Henryville.

Drew (11:25):
Okay. You

John (11:26):
Got to drop the Y. So if you're around here in Henryville, it's kind of funny. One of the guys told me, he said, you can always tell the, that we wanted to pick on the folks in Summertown. There was always a rivalry. And he said, if you wanted to make fun of 'em, you cut, you say Henryville, but if you want 'em to fight, you call it Hooterville. Nice. And I kind of look at Henryville. If you look on our bottles and the distilling practices, we have to actually label ourselves from Lawrenceburg because that's the closest, that's our post office address. Oh, okay. So Henryville is unincorporated. Yeah. So we're actually in the community of Henryville, but we're actually have to say that we're in, we're distilled and bottled in Lawrenceburg. And so I feel that most of the folks that come to Ville and you tell 'em where we are, I've always kind of catered to say that, well, when you get to Henryville, think you're in the middle of nowhere. And most people think that. And I said, the people in Henryville think our distillery is in the middle of nowhere. So that kind of tells you as to how far we are away from Ville. We're another couple of miles north in very remote.

Drew (12:36):
When we were talking about the place that we met, it's funny because we were texting back and forth and we're going to meet at Clark's Hardware, and we were going to have lunch there. And so I thought, I picture a restaurant, and so I texted you and said, look for the tall guy. I'll be wearing a blue shirt. You were so polite. Now, this did not send back a message going, sorry, but I'm not going to need to know what you look like. Because when I walked in, it is a hardware store. And one of those that I remember when I was growing up as a kid, and one of those kind of places that you probably go to and you ask the proprietor for something you would never in a million years think you'd find at a hardware store, and they'll find it on a dusty shelf somewhere in the back.

John (13:27):
Exactly what it is. Yes, yes, yes. It's wonderful people, it's, it's just rural America and it's vanishing. When I was a kid, I love to go the stores like that and get a sandwich and wrapped up in a paper towel and off you go. Unfortunately, it's all kind of disappearing, and it's a great part of Americana that we're losing.

Drew (13:50):
So when we are talking about your experience in the distilling industry and how you've gotten into all of this, it comes down to more your history, your family history. So talk a little bit about what are your earliest recollections of hearing about the family being in moonshine? Because you're a fourth generation, right?

John (14:16):
Exactly. Yeah. So my great-grandfather, he immigrated from Ireland in 1821, which coincidentally, it comes back to the name that we gave to our moonshine. So not only is it kind of in honor of David Crockett, but it's also coincidentally, the year my great grandfather immigrated here. So he immigrated here as a child that we can only assume that he was orphaned during the potato famine. And he came to Lexington Courthouse, Virginia, where he learned to distill alcohol. And as a young man, he migrated to Kentucky and got some land and started his own distillery. So that was growing up. I heard from both sides of my family, the hatcher side of my family consumed it, and my mother's side of the family actually made it. So that's kind of where we get on that. So nice. But as a kid, I heard my father talk about he would visit aunts and things, and he grew up in Kentucky and around Smith Grove.

John (15:18):
And every morning he'd look out and see the smoke of four or five stills running, and then the largest still in the country was from his best friend across the neighboring farm. And he was later when he, he actually lost his steel and went to prison and was banned from Warren County, Kentucky. I reckoned for quite a while. Oh man. But as a young man, my father would go get, my great-grandmother would get her some moonshine every afternoon before she went to bed. So she had to have a cup of moonshine before. Oh man. Before she went to bed every night. I guess that was her nightcap.

John (15:58):
But I remember as a child traveling to just various places we went to, I guess the most fascinating place I ever went to was a man named Jim Smith. And he lived over in on the Kentucky Tennessee line. And my father had heard about him when he went to work for Firestone Textiles, which he went to a public job during the seventies after we got out of farming. And this guy kept talking about this man that he lost his wife and his kids in a tragic way, and he just ended up at this little cave, and it was just this little dugout cave. And then 20 miles in the middle, if you think this is remote, this was really remote. And so if my father was wanted to go see him. And so we ended up, and he was a squatter, and the timber company that owned the land could never cut the timber because as long as he was alive, he got to live. And he had, you could see almost 10 or 15 miles across this beautiful valley. And he had become a hermit and basically had a little moonshine still and had a little garden and had in an old mule. And he'd ride to town occasionally about once a month. And he apparently made some of the best moonshine there was, because we'd spend a weekend and little one or two people would come TRAs and down. And so that was always fascinating to me as a kid

Drew (17:21):
Fueled on moonshine. Yes. What was he eating? Tree bark and moonshine.

John (17:28):
He had a very interesting, secluded life. And so it's just tales like that always just fascinated me as a child and all the neighbors at the local body shop and the hangouts and things, you could always go to the freezer and get a shot of moonshine. And so that was just something that was just part of the lore, I guess, as a child. And of course, I never got to partake in any of it, but I always got to watch those that did.

Drew (17:55):
So how long did you watch those?

John (17:58):
It was, I've always been fascinated in going to the distilleries, and chemistry's always been a passion of mine anyway, so I enjoy the fermentation. My mother, she was never in the distilling industry, but I go back to my great-grandfather. And then my grandfather also worked in the distillery as a child. And during prohibition, they had to shut the distillery down, and then afterwards they decided not to reapply for a license. Now, my mother knew a little bit about everything that was going on, but she knew nothing of the distillery, but the family still made wine and her brothers made wine. And so as a child, again, we would go visit them in Ohio, and they lived in Dayton. And it was always fascinating to me to see the wine and doing that. So my mother taught me to make wine as a child. It wasn't very good wine, but we learned fermentation, and of course we made pickles and anything. So fermentation's always been a curiosity to me as well.

Drew (18:59):
So then all of a sudden with prohibition and the rest, and we were talking about your mother's side of the family is the Tomi side. Exactly, yes. And so the first thing that I do in my research brain says is go find Tomi in the distilling industry and see if I can find them. But you actually have tried to hunt down

John (19:27):
The old steel numbers old

Drew (19:28):
And see if you can buy it.

John (19:30):
Apparently all the records in Frankfurt, there was a terrible fire, or I'm guess there's any such things, a good fire, but a fire burned all the records. So there are no records the best that we could tell that it may have been. So this, we've looked through all the records, and then it kind of dawned on me that he was the only Timmy male, and there was a couple of sisters named Shirley. So that it's entirely possible if you start asking folks about the Shirley still, but now we're looking at folks that are anybody that would know anything or long gone. So unfortunately, there's just no way to, I've visited some mache, I've tried to talk to the old ancestors, and there's just no tales

Drew (20:09):
There. It's something's going to be hidden in a wall or an attic somewhere.

John (20:13):
And probably not even that,

Speaker 5 (20:14):
I would say.

John (20:15):
I would almost venture to say that it's all gone.

Drew (20:18):
Yeah.

Drew (20:20):
So let's talk a little bit about what you're doing out here at Gobbler Springs. For me was, I actually first saw the distillery name pop up probably about a year and a half ago on Google Maps. And I was trying to find every distillery in Tennessee and map out what my journey was going to be, and there wasn't much information about it. And then here as I'm now rounding up and hitting the very last distillery that I know of in Tennessee, I go, oh, gobbler Springs. There's a website there. And so talk about getting the distillery started and your path to where you're at right now. Sure.

John (21:05):
We first started making whiskey or had our license in 2017. And from there we weren't really interested in attracting any visitors. We were just wanted to be low-key. And this was originally set up as a test distillery. We wanted to make sure that our recipes were solid, that our labels were solid, that everything as far as TTB was, everything was up and in line before we made a huge exorbitant investment in equipment and technology and so forth. And we really didn't aim to stay here. This was originally in 2017, we actually had looked at three other places to put the distillery. And for various reasons, it ends up that I guess we needed to be here. And I guess in the long run, I'm glad we had looked at being in possibly downtown Florence at downtown Columbia, Tennessee. And I look at the hustle and bustle and traffic and all that every day. And if you get back to Henryville, a traffic jam in Henryville is when two Amish buggies meet.

John (22:18):
So the peace and quiet out here has been a very good thing. You're in the center of 400 acres, even our closest neighbors are a mile away. And then we're on the backside. We've got a mile Buffalo river water frontage. So once you get here, you can't go any farther. I said, unless you want to swim. And then we still don't know what's going to transform here. We, we've talked about a barbecue cooking school. We've talked about possibly putting music on the river and having a venue there, but as you notice, coming in road's a difficult challenge. It takes an SUV or a truck to get here, and we'll overcome that. We may put a bridge in at some point. There's a lot of people that really say, no, don't do that. We enjoy coming back. And it's an adventure just getting here. Yeah.

Drew (23:13):
It's a distillery for people who own four by fours.

John (23:16):
Exactly. But we were accommodating. We will go pick you up the throat if we have to. So anything we can do, and I say we very lightly because it's me right now. Yeah.

Drew (23:25):
This is truly, if you're going to say the smallest distillery in the world, well, you can't get much smaller than one person.

John (23:32):
Exactly. Now we are the largest distillery in Lawrence County. Okay.

Drew (23:36):
All right. Well,

John (23:37):
Largest legal distillery in Lawrence County and say they us that Yes. Yeah, they joke at the store that the bootlegger down the road has a bigger still than I do, but ours is the largest legal still in Lawrence County. Yeah. So that's a good thing.

Drew (23:54):
So how did you start out in creating a whiskey?

John (24:00):
Well, it started out as just a hobby. Just wanted to figure out if I could do it. It's one thing that my brother had played around and I just looked and watched, and it's on TV and everybody talks about it. And I said, what? I believe I could do this? And it's not rocket science, and I've drank so much bad whiskey. Gosh. And I started out just wondering if I could do it or not. And I've made some mistakes. I, but in the years, I guess I've been playing around now for probably 10 years, 12 years. And I've made all the common mistakes, and I'm sure I still will continue to make mistakes. But I feel in it, there was a point that the stars aligned and everything came together for the business opportunity and the partnership. And I've got great partners. And that's when things materialized that said, you know what?

John (25:01):
We can make a good product. And unlike most distilleries, we're out to make a brand, not just, we'd rather this be a destination at some point and actually truly build a brand. And we're building it around people We love the people that visit us. Most of 'em are returning visitors. They bring somebody with them each time. And that's the way I look at success is to repeat customers. If they were just buying a bottle, taking a drink and leaving and never see 'em again, they'd be one thing. But when they come back and bring others, I think that's just a good benchmark that we can build on.

Drew (25:41):
Yeah. Well, this is the first tour where I've had somebody come pick me up. So

John (25:46):
We want to be hospitable if nothing happens.

Drew (25:49):
Well, you've definitely achieved that. So your bottle of whiskey says sweet mash. So in learning and trying to devise your own whiskey, what were the things that you thought were important to do in your own whiskey? If you're going to put sweet mash on the bottle, my assumption is that you feel that was pretty important to the way that you make your whiskey.

John (26:18):
Well, it actually, being a novice and walking into something with being naive and young and innocent into the industry is probably a good thing. In the long run. You have no preconceived ideas. And I've always been one to, I love history. I love the facts. I love the whole, everything about it is being genuine, but I'm also willing to jump outside the box. Anybody that knows me knows that anything I'm, I look at or anything I do, I want to know the rules. I want to know what's going on, but I get right to the edge. I want to see how far I can explore outside the box. And I think with that, I think by some of the equipment that I've built, some of the things that I've, you'll see are very unique in the fact that being poor helps out a lot too.

John (27:15):
It's the mother invention. Yes. So we didn't have engineers. We didn't have all that to start with. So it starts out with, I've got some very good welder friends. I've got some good people that say, well, here's what we needed to do. How are we going to do this? And how are we going to do that? So that's the way, and I've researched a lot of places and I've looked at different distilleries and I tried to find the good and the bad in all of them. And I tried to look at what can I do that's different? Everybody can follow, but it's hard to go out and blaze a new trail. And I look at that. I think that if you taste our whiskey little, all of our products are unique, that they're not just like everybody, and I think they're palatable. And I wanted to make something that I would drink myself. If I'm not going to drink it, I'm not going to make it.

Drew (28:08):
Well, the thing is, is that sometimes when you get new distillers and you taste their spirits, and one of the hardest things I think for me is going and sitting in front of a new distiller and they give something meat for me to taste. And then they say, give me your opinion. And then I taste it, and it's like all ethanol. It feels like it needs some time. And I was very happy with the fact that yours did not have that. I try to avoid using the word smooth because it's not overly descriptive beyond just an experience of drinking, but it, it's a very pleasant and easy to drink whiskey. And for something that you say, this was probably age three years, that the rough edges are off of it. So that's already a credit to what you're doing. Yeah. And I think that is the hardest thing at this point when people are trying to make money off of their whiskey to survive, is that they sort of feel this pressure to go out and sell it immediately or go to the gins and vodkas to survive. What was your thought when you first started out? Did you feel like you needed to go the gin and vodka route to No.

John (29:37):
No. Actually, gin and vodka was actually a second thought. We actually intend and fully intend to still stay with whiskey. We understand that to be our future. And I guess I've learned one thing through the years, and it's one of the old adages, A lot of people say You never get a second chance to make a first impression. That's true. And so I've heard of so many distilleries that come out, and they have to be so eager to get a product out that they do. And then if you ever taste a bad product, you're not going to come back. And so we wanted to make sure that the first product that we started in 2017, and so it's one of those things that we wanted to make sure that we had a palatable whiskey coming out. And I fully expect our whiskeys in the next two or three years to be even better in the ways that I have changed in refining the steel and the way the distillation processes is, process is, and the way the columns run.

John (30:35):
And so I think things will keep on improving. And so now I will say we stumbled across the gin that I think will probably become one of our best sellers. And whiskey is made with time. You can't be in a hurry with that. And I will say gin was something I didn't expect to make. The pandemic caused me to make gin, and everybody makes a vodka, so there's nothing special about that. And I hate gin. I had a bad experience with it when I was in my twenties, and I kept on telling myself, I said, well, I've got vodkas. I don't want to make gin. I don't like gin. And so I would get with folks, and I had 20 tasters at once, I guess the people that were aficionados. And so I made my gins. And so the group would tell me, well, that's half of 'em would say, well, that's too much juniper.

John (31:28):
And at the same time, the other half would say, well, that's not enough juniper. So finally after about, I guess it was about 10 different variations of gin I made that I finally said, you know what? I'm through with y'all. Yeah. I'm going to make one that I can drink. And so I started tasting different botanicals, and I had about 19 to 20 botanicals to start with. So I said, you know what? I'm just going to start back to square one. And so I would taste each botanical and I would kind of weigh 'em out as to what I liked and what I didn't like. And ended up with a, I probably should call it recipe number 14. It should be named 14 gin. That was my 14th recipe that we actually hit on what we thought was a good flavorful gin that I could actually, that I enjoy. And it's actually become my favorite drink now. And I would never say that 30 years ago.

Drew (32:21):
And it has that juniper in it, but it's not overpowering. It doesn't steal. It did not remind me of pinesol, which is what exactly. It was always the thing. I couldn't deal with

John (32:33):
Gin. And we've created a new drink and we haven't named it yet. Right now it's probably going to be called a blackberry slammer. And I was just thinking today, we may call it giggle juice. I was thinking that other, I don't know what the name is going to be. And my wife came across it, and it's Ocean spray makes a crayon blackberry juice. And we started with that, but then we can't get that, I guess during the pandemic. So now we've just sourced our own materials and we're going to create our own beverage now. But I never would've thought the, I'm not not a fan of tonic water. I don't like the quine. And so I've never been a gin martini kind of gin and tonic kind of guy. I've never done that. But this is a really pleasant drink. And most gin drinkers have, they like it and they say it's different that it's not as way out there that they normally expect. And then you've got other people that say, well, I don't like gin, but when they taste this, they'll say, wow, that's great. I like that. And I think I've accomplished another goal with our spirit in making something that, number one, I'm not going to make something that I don't like to drink. And then the other good thing about it is others find it pleasing as well.

Drew (33:48):
So you coined another name, which is the Lawrence County process. So describe to me what the Lawrence County process is.

John (34:01):
Well, again, not one to follow everyone else. The way Tennessee has the Lincoln County process, and we don't make a sour mash whiskey, and we don't use the same type of process from start to finish that any of the other distilleries do in making a sour match whiskey. So we figured we needed a new name and a new technology, and so we coined the word, the phrase Lawrence County process because it's similar to the Lincoln County process. We follow most of the same ideas of that principle. We just don't use the same things. Our charcoal and filterings a little different. We do, we charcoal filter twice we do before we put it into our barrels, and then we also filtered as it comes out.

Drew (34:50):
Okay. You also have a different way of aging.

John (34:52):
We do. We call it a inside out aging, and it's, as we look to the future and look to what all we hear about whether you believe in climate change, whether you look at how we need to be conservation minded, however you feel about that, I think that we need to leave the planet better than we found it. I don't see how anybody could disagree with that. We source our own white oak from the farm. I'm still working off the first tree we cut up, and so we actually charred the wood. And actually what barrel makers would typically throw away is what I love. I love the cracks. I love the knots. I love all that. I hand char every stick that goes into our barrels and it's done with care. I put an alligator char on probably two thirds of them. I kind of get my own feeling of what the char should look like, and we feel that what we're doing is by harvesting that one tree. I put 50 out in its place. So I think that there's an expected shortage of white oak in the next 20 years. I don't want that to happen here. We want to put back what we're taking away. So I think we're achieving that process, and I really don't see that it's the barrel itself that makes the whiskey. It's the charred white oak. And I think more people are going to start looking at other alternative ways to, I still use new charred white oak.

Drew (36:33):
Yeah, just you're just putting it into the liquid rather than surrounding the liquid. Exactly. With it, the

John (36:40):
Same circumference is there. Well,

Drew (36:42):
And when you first mentioned this to me, it was after I had made the comment about how barrels can have 44 staves around them, and you can have two barrels side by side and put the same whiskey into both of them, aged them the same amount of time, and they're going to taste different. The whole issue with buying a single barrel whiskey and expecting it to be the same as another is very tough because every single piece of wood surrounding that whiskey has been through a different, it may come from a different tree, may have gone through a different aging process, may come from a different section of the tree there. There's so many different elements just in those staves alone that can create a different flavor profile between the two barrels. And so you're actually kind of solving that issue by having one piece of wood that you're putting down into a barrel that is not made of wood, so that it's not getting any of the interaction with the vessel. It's in just that piece of wood. Well, you

John (37:54):
May have noticed there's more than one piece of wood in that barrel.

Drew (37:57):
Oh, is there? Okay.

John (37:58):
Yeah. There's enough to make the circumference Oh, of that barrel. Okay.

Drew (38:01):
Yeah.

John (38:01):
So it's the same amount of area. Yeah. That

Drew (38:05):
Take, we're all from barrel, same all from the same tree. In

John (38:07):
Fact, not only that one barrel, but every barrel of whiskey I have made so far is sourced from the same tree.

Drew (38:13):
Okay. So let me ask you,

John (38:16):
And the next two or 300 barrels will be too quite a few barrels out of a tree if you do the it. It's what I'm doing. Yeah.

Drew (38:23):
So let me ask you the question then that you probably get asked a lot on your tours and that I hear at other tours a lot. What do you do with the wood after you've finished using it? The one time

John (38:38):
That's going to be the next, right now we're just at the point of that's not a question that that's actually given the first two or three barrels that made our first whiskey, we gave it to a local winery and they're experimenting with their wine with it. Okay.

Drew (38:58):
Yeah.

John (38:59):
The next step is probably what I'm going to do with the next barrel, which will come off in about three months. And that's the worst thing that we are now, that since we are young is there's a very limited supply of our whiskey. I'll probably be taking a barrel off maybe once every three months for the next couple of years, and next year we'll kind of probably go into a little bit higher production. But I'm really thinking about aging, the gin. Okay. I'm thinking about taking the, once that barrel's empty, I'm thinking about putting some gin in there and see what it does.

Drew (39:30):
Okay.

John (39:31):
Yeah. I've heard a little bit about age gens, so hey, why not? And I hate to throw it away. Yeah. I hate to What could be done? Let's just say that God forbid there were no more white oak, I could actually drive it or dry it out, run it through a planter and reuse it. So it could be, because when you char that oak, it's only going down maybe an eighth of an inch.

Drew (39:56):
Well, yeah. I mean, I saw what these things look like and they look like post

John (40:02):
They're two by two.

Drew (40:03):
Yeah. Okay. So I mean, they're significant. So yeah, I could see. So they're

John (40:07):
Not staves as much as, because what I started to say, well, should I do it thinner? Then I ran into the charring aspect of it. So when I'm charring it, it's easier to do. As long as every side is the same dimension, then I'm getting, I can do the same char all the way around, and then the butt ends are really where I spend more time. That's where you can really get into the charring, because usually they're split and you can see some crevices. And so I really feel that as the whiskey gets on up, I may not live to see it, but I can't drinking it before it can get to be eight or 10 years old. But if I can ever get any to eight and 10 years old, and I just go about what people say early on, a very influential whiskey connoisseur. I guess when he first tasted what we were doing, his first reaction was this will one day be a world-class whiskey.

Drew (41:06):
Well, you can ask for more than that. So we were talking about the mash bill, which is 80% corn, 20% wheat. Exactly.

Drew (41:17):
And we got into the discussion about weeded whiskeys and how they tend to be able to do a little better with age, but you have actually put your whiskey in with some other whiskeys in the tasting, and you had some Pepy Van Winkle in there as well, which everybody seems to feel is the gold standard for whiskey or is worth paying? Used to be $800. Now, who knows? But I was really interested in your opinion and the results of that, because first thing was what your feeling was about Pappy. Now, what year was it? Was it 23 or was it 15 or,

John (42:08):
I don't know. Probably it was an older one. So whatever this was it. It was probably the 23. It was older, one of the rare bottles. So I guess that would be a 23.

Drew (42:22):
And so your opinion of that was,

John (42:25):
I thought it was a little woody. And I say in that group, I was invited to a whiskey tasting, and because they had heard of my whiskey, and ironically enough, it was the night they were, and it's actually a class on teaching people how to taste whiskey. And so it was an educational class, and it was actually Kentucky. We did whiskeys that night. And out of that, there was I think about 28 whiskeys that were tasted, which when I first went in, I'd never been to anything tasting that many whiskeys. I thought, my God, how am I going to get home? And so I did realize that you had a very small sampling, and then there were whiskeys you didn't have to taste. Yeah. So through the night, it was very interesting. And I will say it goes back to what my wife and I, we went out to dinner a few weeks ago and we went to a nice steakhouse, and then there's a regular place we go that is a lot more reasonable. They have a Saturday night rib by special for $14 and that she was taking me out to dinner this particular night, and our bill was 80 some dollars, I think, and it was a great steak. And we were talking about it. I said, let me ask you something. Would you rather go to the steakhouse? We'd normally go to four times, or would you rather go to this one once?

John (43:50):
And it kind of goes back to that same thing. Would you rather buy one bottle for $800 or would you rather buy drink nine for 30 bucks?

Drew (43:59):
Yeah, that same price.

John (44:01):
Yeah. And I understand there's all over the board, but it comes down to what you like. Yeah. And I will say during that night of tasting, mine wasn't the best whiskey, nor did I even expect it to be. And it was just, this is just a blind crowd that they had no expectations. They were just G grading the whiskeys, and they graded them on certain scales. And mine came up and it was graded just like the Pappy was, and the other things that we tested Weller and the different ones. And at the end of the night when all the scores were read out, I was in the middle and I said, well, it's pretty good.

Drew (44:40):
Three year whiskey up against a 23 year old whiskey that those $300 a bottle. Yeah.

John (44:46):
So I wasn't the best, but I wasn't the worst. And if I'd have been the worst, I may have had my feelings hurt a little bit, but my whiskey's never been into a judging yet. My moonshine and my gin were both entered in on competition year before last. I chose not to enter last year. I kind of thought last year would be a jaded, I just feel like the year 2020 won't exist in the record books. So I'd hate to

Drew (45:14):
Say has a bad name already.

John (45:17):
Say if I got a gold medal in 2020, they go, yeah, that's a pandemic. Nobody entered. So I chose not to enter last year, but the first year that we did enter, and we were with all the big name brands, and we ended up with Silver Metals with the moonshine and the gin. Nice. So for our first, we were looking for an unbiased opinion, and we wanted to get just some good positive feedback that your friends are going to tell you. It's good no matter what. But these are from the professionals and hey, the Silver Star, I'm silver medal. I'm pretty happy.

Drew (45:53):
Well, and especially since you are really, 2017 is your start, so you're learning. Yeah, exactly. And you're growing. So where do you go from here? What's your next hurdle, do you think?

John (46:11):
Well, it, it's hard to, yeah. What's the old adage that if you can't take the mountain to Mohamed, you got to take Mohamed to the mountain? Well, we can't really do that here. We can't really get people here. So I guess the next thing we've got to do, and it's one of those things I didn't realize, and skip being naive, is, Hey, I thought if you made whiskey, everybody'd buy it. And it's a struggle. It, it's a lot of competition. You're dealing with multimillion dollar corporations, and this isn't the first time I've had that challenge. My wife and I, we go back to, we're probably some of the first people that ever used McIntosh computers. We competed with multimillion dollar newspaper corp corporations with about $10,000 worth of the first McIntosh. Just came out and published our own newspaper. And again, we were 24 years old and didn't know any better, and we competed with the multimillion dollar presses.

John (47:15):
And I feel like here I am doing it again. So it's Gorilla War warfare, and any business, you just have to go out and beat the bushes, and you have to let people, the main thing is, and what I've noticed is once people taste my product, they're happy with it. And most people come back. And that's what I've said from the very beginning. And I've been to so many distilleries in tasting n nothing against all of them. And everybody thinks they've got the best product or they wouldn't be doing it, but some of 'em must go, yuck.

John (47:47):
And I don't have that experience here. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes I've noticed people that say they're whiskey drinkers, or I just kind of watch and learn, and I can tell some of the expressions are like, oh, didn't expect that. But yeah, they would've done that on anything. Yeah. It's not expecting an 80 or 90 proof alcohol and it being a hundred degrees outside and it's going to get you unless you're expecting it. Yeah. So I've tried to give people to at least be prepared and give them an experience, and hopefully they leave with a happy experience of, I want people to know as we grow, that we're always going to be a family business. We're always going to be welcoming, and we want people to leave with a good experience.

Drew (48:34):
So besides Henryville, where else can people go to get

John (48:39):
Your We are now in Tennessee, we are probably in about 10 or 12 liquor stores in Lawrence County. We're in almost to the Alabama line, which is in the community of Loretta very nice liquor store. It's called the Holland House, which is German, I think, for Dog house, I think. Oh, okay. It's called the Honda House. Yeah, I think that's the right name. Grit, one of the nicest liquor stores you'll ever go in. And then in Lawrenceburg, we're in A to Z. And then on the north end of the state, we're in Portland in a small liquor store there. And then we'll soon to be, we're in Nashville as far east as Cook Bull, and as far west as Fort Campbell. And so that's the nucleus. Years ago I heard a story about this man that he mine for diamonds, and I hate to tell you these old stories, but they have a lot to do with how I look at life, I guess. He was a diamond miner, and he traveled all over the world. He had this little plot of land that he'd always come back to, and he never was successful. He would go to the far reaches of Africa, he would go all these places and spend all this time and money looking for diamonds. And then after he died, they leveled his house and was digging and found the world's largest diamond.

John (50:02):
And so the moral of that story is always mine for diamonds in your own backyard first. Nice. So I feel it's important that we have the support of Lawrence County first and when they've been very supportive and the state of Tennessee. Secondly, and if we don't mind for our diamonds in Tennessee, there's no reason to go elsewhere. So very good. So our next move will be Alabama, and then we'll probably go farther east and west. I see no reason to go to Kentucky yet. That's where my ancestors, or my friends and family from years are years ago. And I could sell a lot there, but I just don't see the need to push into that. I think south is the best way we can go to Alabama next.

Drew (50:46):
Well, in Kentucky, you can just take a nice drive down into Tennessee.

John (50:50):
Exactly. So that's why we we're in Portland and soon to be Gallatin. And so in our next ventures, we're going to try to look at, and this week I'll going to explore the liquor laws in Tennessee. And they're different from state to state, and I wish the federal government would allow shipping of high proof alcohol. They do wine. It's just one of those things that it needs to be done in alcohol and even from state to state. The laws are different. But now we're going to explore with our new drink that we're real excited about, the gin and the cranberry and the blackberry juice. We're going to try to go to different festivals and fairs and sell that nice. And then bottle that eventually and sell it as eventually as a mixed drink.

Drew (51:36):
Very good. Well, thank you very much for a great day. This has been fun. I know you're outside

John (51:43):
The scope of your average day.

Drew (51:44):
You're like, yeah, yeah. These are kind of humble surroundings, and I hope you enjoyed here. I'm like, yeah. I mean, I feel like I could sit out on the porch and sit on some whiskey and really get comfortable here, which

John (51:55):
You're worn. Welcome to.

Speaker 5 (51:56):
Unfortunately,

Drew (51:57):
I have to get back to Nashville for more other stuff.

John (52:01):
Well, it's kind of funny that as we, we've kind of talked about tours, and that's the problem that we have when we do tours, that typically you want to bring folks in and show them the area and run a circle and they leave. And what we found is no matter what we do, people want to stay, which is fine, but it doesn't help when you've got just pile up and pile up. That's what we envision is, so that's our goal next. And again, if you go to the trouble to come here to visit us, we want to take the time to make sure you have a good time,

Drew (52:35):
But we also want to respect that you need some time to distill.

John (52:40):
I understand it. It's no worries. And this time of year, I, I'm willing to take a break because it's hot in it still. Yeah.

Drew (52:46):
Oh yeah. It was a little warm today, these nineties. I'm not a big fan of, Hey,

John (52:51):
I am really just humble by the fact that she even wanted to come see us and appreciate the opportunity.

Drew (52:57):
Yeah. Well, this is great. It's a treat. And I think the thing about doing distillery tours for me is everyone I go to find something else very interesting about it that makes me glad that I went. And this is I, the more unique, the better. And this is definitely a very unique experience. Well, let

John (53:16):
Me ask you a question. What did you find unique and what did you think the highlight of your day

Drew (53:20):
Was? Well, you talk about the hospitality, and that's a big piece of it. And being able to come out is the first time I've been picked up, other than if I'm over at Bullet doing a tour and they're driving me over from the visitor center to the distillery itself, just because it's too far to hoof it. But also just a chance to, well, we had lunch and got to enjoy chatting a bit before. Why during this entire interview I've been saying we talked about, because we probably spent a good two hours, I would say just chatting and having an enjoyable time doing that. So yeah, it's very comfortable and great. It does make you feel like it was worth a drive out here. Good. Yeah.

John (54:13):
Well, and again, any feedback we can get, we appreciate anything, any ideas. We're always open. So please feel free at any time. And if you get a thought, let me know. Yeah. Whatever ever I can do to improve things, I'm more than willing to do it.

Drew (54:27):
Very nice. Well, I appreciate you, John. I thank you for spending such a great day with me, and thank for sharing some with my audience. Great.

John (54:36):
Take care.

Drew (54:38):
And find out more about Gobler Springs by heading to gobler springs distillery.com. And if you enjoyed this interview, make sure that you subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast app and find show notes, transcripts, social media, links, books and swag@whiskeylore.com or support this independent podcast by joining the Whiskey Lore Society at patreon.com/whiskey. I'm your host, drew Hanish. And until next time, cheers and SL Ofk Whiskey Lores a production of Travel Fuel's Life, L L C.