Ep. 66 - The Whiskey That Made the Crowned Heads of Europe Turn From Scotch to Bourbon

Transcript

Drew (00:09):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, Drew Hannush, the Amazon best-selling author of Whiskey Lores Travel Guide to Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon. And today we're going to turn the clock back to the 19th century and learn about a whiskey that was famous the world over, but one that you may not have heard of. But that's something we're going to change today with my guest, bill McBrayer of McBrayer Legacy Spirits. And about 10 years ago, he stumbled into a family legacy and distilling that was even bigger than he probably imagined it was. And it all started with a man who was nicknamed the judge. And we're going to learn all about him and Cedarbrook, which was the brand that he made famous. And we'll also find out how Bill is honoring the legacy of this one time Whiskey Baron. And we're going to taste some of his spirits. So we've got lots of history, little family dispute and tie into the whiskey trust and the tasting. So let's go ahead and dive right into my conversation with Bill McBrayer. Bill, welcome to the show,

Bill (01:11):
Drew. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here today.

Drew (01:14):
As I look across Kentucky and I see new brands coming up and you know, start going, okay, that looks like a legacy brand, I wonder what the story is behind that. That's how I bumped into w h McBrayer. And you look at the packaging and you think, yes, there's definitely gotta be a story back here. Or did we do George Dickel and just kind of come up with a face on a package, although there was a man behind that as well. But talk about how you discovered this family legacy.

Bill (01:50):
Yeah, thank you. It was about nine, almost 10 years ago, as you had mentioned. I had a daughter, she was looking to go to college and I was looking at Center College in Danville for her to look at it. And I was telling my dad about, and he said, well, the M Brayers gave some money to that college. And I said, well, who are you talking about? And he said it was the M Brayer in the whiskey business. Well, I remember when I was a kid in the seventies, my dad was a sales guy and there was a brand called Old Mc Brayer that we had all heard of. And he said he would give it to his customers at Christmas time and he turned around next time he saw him and they'd give it back to him and said, this is really bad, don't give us this anymore.

(02:28):
And as a family member, I just knew there was a brand called Old Mc Brayer and it was not very good. And at that time it was made by National Distillers, but it was a blended whiskey. And I've seen some of those bottles from the seventies. It was like 65% neutral grain spirits. It was really bad stuff. So anyways, my dad, when he had said that somebody had given money to the university, he said it was a guy in the whiskey business. I'm looking for the McBrayer Scholarship at Center College. I was just like, Hey, there's a scholarship here. My kid's going to really take a good serious look at this cuz she's going to apply for it. Well, there wasn't one. And I just so happened to be home that weekend by myself and I looked up MBR whiskey and I came across a blog post by Jack Sullivan on pre-pro dot com and it was the story of William Harris and Mc Brayer the judge.

(03:21):
And I read this story and I was like, oh my gosh, this guy was awesome, right? And how he had won the gold medal a couple times around the world. There was family lawsuits and all these other things. And I had literally just became obsessed with the story. I don't think I worked for about six weeks. I was just on the internet <laugh> new and research. And we are very fortunate as a family, we've been studying our genealogy as a family for multiple generations. And I met with some family historians, like I said, I was probably on page 200 on Google or something, looked it up, different things and there was so much history out there, I just got obsessed with it and started this business with the goal of just reintroducing William Harris Mcir, the judge, one of Kentucky's most iconic distillers to the bourbon community. And so that's how I got started.

Drew (04:16):
So it was interesting when I was out in California chasing after the Leonis story, we were looking through the bottles of pre-prohibition whiskey that they had hidden the way in the vault for a century. And as we're going through, I saw the kind of paper packaging around the Cedarbrook brand, I looked closely at it and I said, oh, this is interesting. I've never seen this before. And I don't know whether that bottle, cuz they had added some additional bottles to that collection over the years. But I mean, I think this was actually a bottle that came from just after Prohibition or somewhere around that time. So how long did that brand stay around?

Bill (05:00):
Well, the Cedarbrook brand was probably introduced somewhere in the 1850s. William Harrison McBrayer, he started his distillery in 1844, and it is on the Cedar Creek property. It is a nice windy brook through there. And it was called Cedar Creek or Cedar Run. I've seen it different ways. But his wife urged him to change the name from, it used to be the W h Mc Distillery. It was number 44 to Cedarbrook. And they said they called it Cedarbrook because the river had this audible babbling sound like a poet, so they called it a brook. So it started in 1850s was the brand came out known as Cedarbrook, formerly w h McBrayer. And the brands actually survived into the 1960s, 1970s. I don't know exactly when Cedarbrook stopped. I do know older McBrayer stopped somewhere in the 1980s. But the family got out of the business and it sold to the whiskey trust in the late early 19 hundreds. But what really was interesting to me was when Julius Kessler was selling the brand, it was sold as the most famous brand in the world. And it said it right on the bottles and some of his ads. And it really prompted me to understand more. I'm like, wow, how is something that we've never heard of as bras? Yeah. That famous, I need to retell this story. And that's really what happened.

Drew (06:35):
So w h McBrayer, he was not a first generation American. Sometimes we hear these distillers, they came over from Ireland or Scotland and then started up their business, but he actually was born in America. And how many generations back, do you know? Yeah. Does the family go? Yes.

Bill (06:58):
Well yeah. I'm a ninth generation McBrayer here. William Harris, and he was a third generation. So three brothers came over here they fought in the Revolutionary War. They were based out of Pennsylvania. His grandfather was James. James' brother was William, I'm from the William brother. And James is, so, he's a distant cousin, I would say. Right. William Harrison is a distant cousin of mine. Don't, not that good to tell you. Yeah,

Drew (07:26):
How

Bill (07:26):
Many 17th removed or whatever it is. But we're definitely on the same family tree, there's no doubt about it. And his uncle, his dad's brothers was older and he was a surveyor and he came over in the James Harold settlement, surveyed the wilderness trail and really fell in love with it went back and got his family. And they all settled there in the Lawrenceburg, one of the first settling families in the Lawrenceburg community. I've read, I haven't found the papers. They were granted a couple hundred acres due to their service in the war. And they started their family farm there, and that's how the mc bras ended up in Lawrenceburg.

Drew (08:06):
Nice. And they also had a mercantile, did they not, a general store or something?

Bill (08:12):
Yeah, that's an interesting story there. So H's sister, her name was Mary, she was about 10 years older. He was one of 11 children back then. He was, I think the seventh one. And his sister she was about 10 years older. And her husband, Andrew C, he was a merchant and he actually passed away when he was 35 years old. But he was very successful at an early age. And William Harrison and his brothers helped his sister by taking over the merchant store. And so he then took over the store from his brothers and he was a merchant and he was a merchant for the rest of his life in that area, in that timeframe. And you have to know in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky at that time it was their store and maybe another store. Okay. There wasn't that many people. And so he had his merchant store, he got into it when he was 18 years old, around 1844 or so. It was a few years later he bought his property to put his distillery on out there at the Cedarbrook property. And it was just a little very primitive hut that they started with. And he had his distilling businesses as well.

Drew (09:28):
And whiskey was such an important piece of life on the frontier at that time. And you just wonder, we associate in the late 19th century grocers with rectifying whiskey and you wonder if he was potentially rectifying whiskey. And that's what prompted him to say, Hey, maybe I should go out and get my own farm.

Bill (09:52):
We don't know that. We do know that a lot of times people drank whiskey instead of water back then just because it was cleaner. But as he built up his distillery, I mean he used probably the most best ingredients. He was known for the quality of his product. And it was an interesting journey. Just learning that and getting to understand all that was just a fascinating story for me to learn.

Drew (10:20):
Yeah. So how did he end up with a nickname, the judge?

Bill (10:24):
Sure. So he became the first judge in Anderson County in 1851, and they called him the judge. And that moniker just stuck with him the rest of his life. And about five years later, around 1856, he became a state senator for the state of Kentucky. Their family was real involved in the politics of the area and the community did that to the early NI 1860s. And then he started to start to pay attention more to his distilling business started and started to grow that. And then around obviously in the 1860s to 65 when we had our civil war. And so many people came to Kentucky and drank the whiskey and then they went back to their home states and was like, man, I really missed that whiskey from Kentucky and Kentucky Whiskey started to build this reputation as a great spirit around the 1860s. And the McBrayer name between him and his cousin, JH McBrayer it became known as they made great whiskey back then.

Drew (11:30):
Yeah, so talk about his cousin, because he had a different farm. Hammond Creek, as I say,

Bill (11:37):
He was over on John Henry, we call him JH McBrayer. We had w h and jh he started his first distillery in 1848 around Hammett's Creek. He did not ever get real scalable and big, but he was involved in different distilleries throughout his lifetime. I'm not sure what happened much with the Hammets Creek location other than it was started by him. He came back up later in 1870 when he bought distillery over New Market Kentucky from Howard Barnes and Company and named at the old Mcir Distillery. And so it was Distillery number 17. And so he owned that for a little while and then it was a handful of years later, not sure why William Harrison ended up buying that from him as well. And so he had the old Mcir Distillery and he also had the Cedarbrook distillery there for a short

Drew (12:32):
Time. And so that's where it gets a little confusing because you have old McBrayer whiskey, but that wasn't originally associated with w h McBrayer, it was with his second cousin.

Bill (12:43):
It was with his second cousin. And that brand had an interesting history upon itself with different owners and different distilleries or different distributors. The distributors for both Old McBrayer as well as Cedarbrook. Were actually here in Cincinnati where I live today. And WW Johnson was the distributor for Old McBrayer and they ended up buying the distillery from William Harrison McBrayer. And then they sold it and then they bought it back. And eventually that one actually got purchased by Taylor. And so that was in the 18, like 85 or so. And so Taylor's been connected to our brands. And then we have a long history of legacy people that have been part of the McBrayer family in the whiskey business.

Drew (13:35):
So one of the names that ties in, and the reason why after a while I said I gotta get you on the show, was because we had Thomas Rippy the show not too long ago, and he was talking about a lot of the Lawrenceburg families and of course he is. And the rips were the forerunners to Wild Turkey. And yet when you look back at that time period, there was actually a connection between the McBrayer and the rips. So kind of go over that. Yeah.

Bill (14:09):
Well first off, Tom is such a wealth of knowledge. What a great person to still be involved in the bourbon community there at the Rippy House in Lawrenceburg with their bourbon sessions they have put on. They were nice. They've been super nice to us knowing that we're families are from Lawrenceburg. We had the opportunity to speak down there at when we introduced our first batch of whiskey last April. And so TB Rippy actually worked for McBrayer in the 1860s. And then William Harrison actually helped him buy his first distillery in 1869. And then TB bought him out a year later. And obviously that distillery became a big company and which is now today Wild Turkey. And I've read different things along the way. He probably had the biggest distillery in Lawrenceburg at that time, but they said Cedarbrook was by far the most famous. So again, we're looking at a lot of different history. We're talking about how trying to find stuff from 150 years ago or 170 years ago or whatever it is, and the records aren't the best, but the Rippy family and what they've done and the McBrayer, what they had done in the whiskey business down there. And there was others, bond and Lillard, and then some of the other folks that had come from the different distilleries. Lawrenceburg was a pretty big spot for whiskey. They're in Anderson County, they were all making great products.

Drew (15:44):
There was even a tie-in actually to what is Now for Roses, which the old apprentice distillery, I don't know if you've seen this or not, but I came across it the other day, a postcard that is a picture of the Spanish mission architecture of Four Roses. It's a postcard from about 1915. And the location is McBrayer Kentucky.

Bill (16:09):
That was another rabbit hole. I went down in our research <laugh>, when you actually drive into Four Roses, when you go over the railroad tracks, if you look to the left, there's the McBrayer sign is there. Oh, still today. Wow. And that was considered McBrayer crossing cuz Mc w h as part of his influence in the government he was part of having the railroad come through Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. And when you read some of his things, it actually, most people think that's one of his major accomplishments that he did for the community putting the railroad through there. And later on they named that little section McBrayer Kentucky. It no longer is considered a city, it's now part of Lawrenceburg. And what's really interesting to me is that when you are at Four Roses across the street, there are three old Rick houses. They're actually owned by the Wild Turkey folks, but those are known as the McBrayer Rick houses. Are they? Okay? And they say it's, they're some of the oldest, I mean Kentucky's still standing today.

Drew (17:16):
So we know that the brand grew large, but it also had a great reputation because Taylor even talked about how great the whiskey was. He ended up buying into it. So that says something. But also it had won some awards including in Europe.

Bill (17:39):
It took a little while to find this one. There was actually an old book I found in the Lawrenceburg library that started in 1888 or something like that, finished in 19 19 14. And it talked about how Cedarbrook won the gold medal in Vienna Austrian 1873 for the gold medal for the best whiskey in the world. And at that time it said it turned to crown heads in Europe from Scotch to Kentucky whiskey or bourbon. And they say it put bourbon Kentucky bourbon on the international map. And his spirits really helped with that. They also, in some of the ads that Julius Kes Kessler had in the early 19 hundreds, it was the drink, the aristocrats drank. Right. Was and I, I've not found the evidence, although I've had people tell me this, that King George wanted it for his inauguration, the Cedarbrook brand, that stuff from Kentucky. So that was pretty amazing. But we had heard more so was how he won the gold medal at the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876. And so he was making some great products and it was amazing to me that very few people really knew

Drew (18:55):
About it. What would be fascinating, but we can never do it, is taste what that whiskey was like. My guess is at that time they were still probably transporting it in barrels and it wasn't being bottled because bottling was still something that was fairly new around the 1870s in terms of mass production of whiskey with bottles. So yeah, no telling what a whiskey would taste like after it's been in the barrel for a hundred and it would be gone.

Bill (19:27):
Well, we were very fortunate enough over at the Bardstown Bourbon Company in their vintage collection, they have some Cedar Brook from 1896. And so it isn't this 1873 product and it was great. Mean it was sweet on the front, had a little bite on the back, I think it was a higher corn Nashville. And they talked about aging it eight years versus four years. So they said they aged it twice as long than the average distiller. So they said it tasted twice as good. Yeah. But I mean to see what he did with his brands and to groan those brands. And it was always about quality for him being really conscious about putting out quality products. And a lot of times back then the rectifier and things, they were pirating the McBrayer name as well. And so he got involved in, it was in 1882 in the Bamford Wine and Spirits publication, he wrote a three paragraph publication about how unscrupulous people were putting the McBrayer name on stuff that wasn't his. And so he actually went back to adding his name to all the bottles. So it was W h Mc Breyer's Cedar Brook whiskey. And to make sure that that was the best he could at that time to make sure people knew that it was his. And it is interesting to see how the name has been used over the years.

Drew (21:04):
Yeah, it makes you wonder when they did start bottling, cuz obviously they were bottling during his lifetime.

Bill (21:11):
Yeah, I think we think know that it was Old Forester was maybe around 1870 when they 18 first started bottling whiskey. Right. So probably not much longer after that. We have some pictures of some old bottles. They're not great pictures around those. It had to be around that 1870 timeframe.

Drew (21:29):
Okay. Well the one that you tasted, I think that's a great time period to taste it because it was around 18 99, 19 0 1 that the Whiskey Trust started to rise back up again. And after it had been tamped down and it had split into multiple different branches, and one of those branches was the Julius Kessler branch, the Kentucky, I forget what they called it, the Kentucky Warehouse Association or something like that. Yeah. And so you tasted it before the Whiskey Trust took it over. Now the thing about the original whiskey trust is that they were probably more interested in grain spirits than they were in producing rye whiskey and producing bourbon. And so I'm sure with all the brands that Kessler took over, they probably weren't messing too much with it then. But that you got a chance to taste it before that I think is, yeah,

Bill (22:34):
Important. Think so DL Moore his son-in-law, took over the distillery with his grandchildren and he passed away in 1888 w h did. And so he held onto it until 1898 or 19 18 99. So I believe that was DL Moore's bottling before the Whiskey Trust purchased it. And that's a whole other story. Yeah. When he took over the distillery and his grandchildren and all the other folks that were involved with him at that time. So that was Mc Breyer's stuff through his son-in-law. Yeah, right before then. So, well, let's

Drew (23:17):
Talk about, before we jump into the family scandal that went on, I guess it's not really a scandal, more of a lawsuit, but Judge McBrayer actually helped get a couple of other brands that we know kicked up and running as well. So maybe give a little story behind those two.

Bill (23:36):
Yeah, so obviously we talked about tv, Rippy working for him WB sel, he was his master distiller for I think 25 years. And as he was getting to the end of his career William Harrison was, they started another distillery together. It started out as the w h McRay Distillery in the mid 1880s. And it was meant for WB SEL to take over. So that became the WB SLE distillery right there in Lawrenceburg as well. And then he willed his Cedarbrook distillery to his grandchildren when he passed away. Now whether he knew he was going to pass away or not, I'm not really sure, but he also, he was involved in another distillery for his adopted his adopted son. So as I had mentioned his sister Mary, she was a widow and she had remarried a doctor there in LA in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. And it was Dr. Dixon Deadman and they had a child together and it was Charles Morr Deadman. His father Dixon had passed away a year later after he was born. And then Mary passed away when he was about six years old. And he was orphaned and then he was adopted by his uncle, the judge William Harris. And he raised him as a son his entire life. And for his wedding present he gave him the money and land to start his distillery, which we know today as Kentucky wl.

Drew (25:02):
Wow. Yeah, lots of names. And again, when you're looking back and you're seeing that you owned the Cedarbrook brand to see the branches kind of passed off to other brands. And it'd be interesting to get into the mind of somebody like w h and how giving he was in getting all of these different people started. He must have had a great reputation.

Bill (25:31):
He did. A lot of people have told me that he was Taylor of his time before Taylor, because Taylor really got started, I don't know, 1870s or so. I mean he was significantly younger than w h McBrayer. And so he was a generation behind a lot of the brands that you hear today. He was way earlier. And so when talk people talk about, oh yeah, this brand started in 1870. I'm like, yeah, that was <laugh>, we got you by a whole generation. And so he was the H Taylor for h Taylor, he was very charitable man. They were a very giving family. There was a university that was started Central College and they had given $25,000 at that time to help start that university. That's what that became merged with Center College. So that's how we ended up, that's how I went down my rabbit hole. The whole center experience was thrown through that donation at that time. And he was known for doing all kinds of good deeds. He was a political figure in the community. They helped start basically the Presbyterian church at the time. They were very involved in their community. His daughter who had three children had passed away and they were raising their three grandchildren as well as his adopted son.

(26:57):
So that was pretty interesting to learn that. And just what it was like back then as families had to just pull together to help each other and how unselfish people were or they were, at least at that time. Yeah,

Drew (27:11):
There's a McBrayer Cemetery there. Is that where he's

Bill (27:15):
Buried? There is a McBrayer Cemetery in Lawrenceburg. I have not been to it. It's up on the hill. Had some people said that they get up there, take me up there to it. And some of the old property that McBrayer had, obviously it's been split up today. I have tried to go out and see the Cedarbrook distillery, but it's on some private property. And I was told, you don't want to really walk out there by yourself. You might not make it out. And so yeah, he was very charitable, if you will, and really far seeing, right. They said he talked about his far seeing looking ahead of things and being involved in the whiskey and being able to build those brands and but there was also some controversy that came with our family too, which also just added to the story.

(28:06):
So when he passed away his will said he wanted his name stricken from the brands three years after his use, even though he given the distillery to his grandchildren and he helped his son and build a distillery or giving money he didn't want his name associated with, if you read it literally. Right. And we have to remember when you read these things from the 1860s and seventies and eighties, they spoke differently than we speak today. But there was a lawsuit about that. So after three years his son-in-law who was married to Henrietta, his daughter he was a distiller. He had the DL Moore Distillery over around the Harrisburg area. He sold that came over, ran the Cedarbrook Distillery for 10 years. And after three years there was a lawsuit with him and his wife Mary, about the use of the McBrayer name to the brands.

(29:05):
And she was a very devout Presbyterian they very involved in church. And that was a contentious time with the rise of the tempers movement. It was starting to happen and some other things were happening, so she didn't want his name associated with it. However, Dion Morris said that's not what he wanted. <laugh>. What he had meant was that my estate has nothing to do with the distillery after three years. So if this something happened to the distillery or whatever, they wouldn't come after his estate and his wife. And so at least that's how it was presented by DL Moore in the lawsuit. It took a couple of iterations and a couple, it got contested a couple times. But the state Senate rule in D Elmore's favor he had argued that the brands at that time were worth over $200,000. Just the use of his name and the Cedarbrook, which I was like, oh my gosh, that's a, yeah, a

Drew (30:01):
Big deal. Translated today's money,

Bill (30:04):
Several millions of dollars today, just the brand itself. So he was able to continue to use the McBrayer name associated with the brands. And I'm so happy he won that case because who knows what we would've found today.

Drew (30:19):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, and then after that, he held onto it for about 10 years before it went on to the Whiskey Trust. But did he have both Cedarbrook and the old McBrayer name going at the same time? Do we know

Bill (30:36):
N Yeah. No. So the old McBrayer brand, like I said around 1870, or I'm sorry, 1885 is when Taylor had purchased that brand. And then he ran the new Market distillery for a long time. And then eventually he built the old, well, the Taylor, the Old Taylor, what is now Castle on Key Distillery there in Frankfurt. Yeah. And I have records of actually JH McBrayer working for Taylor in Frankfurt, Kentucky. So I'm pretty sure the old McBrayer brand was made at, but is now the Castle Key Distillery in the early 19 hundreds. Okay. So they had owned the brand in the 19 early 19 hundreds. The Whiskey Truss owned the Cedarbrook brand. And after Prohibition, well during Prohibition old McRay was a big, big brand. It was sold during Prohibition been very fortunate to have some whiskey from the, that was bottled bought Barreled in 19, like 15, and then sold in 9 19 30 something. And it was fantastic. And so it was great. And then it became National Distillers and National Distillers owned the brands for a long time. It's just as that they started diluting the brands like in the seventies and things, and it became a bottom shelf brand. Now I'm fairly confident that National Distillers also owned Cedarbrook for a long time. I just don't know when it went out of use.

Drew (32:07):
Yeah, well I had read somewhere that there was a massive fire at the Cedarbrook Distillery in 1922. And then I'd also heard that Cedarbrook Distillery had just stopped producing in 1922, but then it couldn't have been producing in 1922 cuz they had to stop production in 1919. And this is what makes history so difficult. And then all of a sudden I found another article that actually, it was a legal document that I ran across where I think it was Julius Kessler was involved in a suit where he had lost barrels of cedarbrook whiskey in a fire. And he was trying, and the problem was that, and that this might have been the 1922 thing, and that basically the reason why he was in a lawsuit was because it wasn't insured, but he had been told that it was insured, but because of prohibition, they weren't allowed toure it. And so he thought it was insured, but it wasn't, and then it was destroyed. And then he was all frustrated about that.

Bill (33:15):
Well I don't believe there was a fire when that I know of at Cedarbrook, actually, we're getting ready to write a blog post here about an article that I found talked about when they did the expansion and when they dismantled the distillery there was a block, brick block in the distillery. And when they opened the block, it had the old newspapers from the 1880s it had some empty bottles, a little bit of change. It also had the list of all the people that worked at the distillery, which is a fascinating list of names to meet WB sel. There was a crow, I don't know which crow it was that worked there and I'm getting ready to publish that here, hopefully the next month or so to tell that story. But from what I understand Julius Kessler loved the Cedarbrook Distillery. I believe he held onto that distillery after they sold everything for his personal use.

(34:12):
Might be what you're talking about with the other article you found during Prohibition. And it was his crown jewel of the things that he had sold it as the most expensive brand in the portfolio. Talked about it. Like I said remember an ad from 1910 it talked about how it was by far the best distillery of its time even his competitors admittedly. And he said it had stood the test time for 62 years, and this is in 1910. And like I said, I found the story just so amazing that, well, I had to figure out to do something right. So the first thing I did was I reregistered the brands. I reregistered the trademarks which wasn't easy, by the way, <laugh> the first one. So I did try to do Cedarbrook, which I had to change that one. And it took me a little while to figure out how to change that.

(35:07):
One is W h McBrayer Cedarbrook Bourbon. And then we can only make bourbon. We started out with the w h trademark just because he had, his first brand was W H W H Mcbriar. And so we felt like to honor him and to honor his beginning, our beginning needed to start with the w h brand and his story and just reintroducing him to the whiskey community. What was really interesting to me was I registered the old McBrayer brand and that trademark had expired and that got contested. And it got contested by the Scotch Whiskey Association. Really? And I was like, that's what I said, really? And they, I said, well what is that about? This brand's been made in the us it's been around for a long time. And they said, well, McBrayer is a Scottish name and if you put Mick Brayer whiskey on a bottle, you're going to mislead the public and this, that and the other. And I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. So that is definitely a USA made product made in Kentucky now for sure. And that's what we plan to do with all our products and we were able to work that out. But I was shocked how difficult that was at the time.

Drew (36:23):
Well, if anything I've learned about the Scotch Whiskey Association, they are very protective. And I guess if it hits a fringe and they're a little worried about it, cuz of course Virginia Distillery got in trouble for using Highland in their name. And so even just a region name coming over with, and I get that in a way. I mean, we're trying to protect the name bourbon in the United States and Y you're codifying all these laws to how you can make something and what the restrictions are. There was a story about a Canadian distiller that used the word bourbon or something like that, and they got in trouble for it. And so it all makes sense, but you just kind of hope that they're not going to commandeer last names just because, I mean, America is a melting pot and we got a lot of different nationalities here and definitely a lot of whiskey makers with scotch backgrounds.

Bill (37:21):
Well, I can't just tell you that how happy I am. We've been able to secure these brands and put the McBride name back on some Kentucky bourbon and reintroduce our story of our family's history to the industry and what a great industry to be part of. I mean, it's a lot of fun. I mean we're very small but we're working on getting a little bigger anyways. Yeah, it's still small, but it's a lot of fun. And what a great time to be in the business, even though it took me several years to finally launch a product once I learned the story. But I hope it's something I get to do the rest of my life.

Drew (38:06):
Well, we haven't even talked about my favorite part of this story yet, which is we always wonder about mash bills with these old distillers. And if you're going to bring back a family brand to see and get a mash bill with the Nelson Brothers, when they dug into Charles Nelson and the Nelson's Greenbrier and they found out that he was making Tennessee whiskey, but he was making a weeded Tennessee whiskey, what a surprise that was. And that they had access to be able to find that old recipe. Well, you found your old recipe, but you found it in the most interesting of places. Can you describe that?

Bill (38:49):
Yeah, yeah. So as I'd mentioned to you, I was really deep on the Google looking for family, just pictures and notes and things about the distilleries. And I came across a blog post, and this was from 2005 bourbon enthusiasts. Well, if there was blogging back then was not blogging today. Right. And it was just like an open forum where you would write notes or whatever. And it was with Michael Veach on it, and he had talked about how he had a letter with the McBrayer MASH bill on it. And I was like, do what? So this was a letter it's down at the Philson Historical Center in Louisville. And that's when Michael Veach had spent his time down there and he was going through the old Taylor files and he had a letter, handwritten letter from William Harrison, MC Blair to Taylor from 1870. And Taylor was buying some of his whiskey.

(39:47):
He needed some to sell, some to pay some of his whiskey taxes, which were pretty new back then as well. And how that was going. And on the back of that letter, he had his mash bill and it was handwritten and they talked about him and Chuck Crowder and some other pretty important people in the bourbon community were talking about this mash bill. And it was an 88% corn mash bill. And they talked about wow, somebody needs to make this at a low barrel entry proof and do some low temperature cooking. And I was like, huh, all right. I guess that's what I know how I'm going to get in the bourbon business, right? Yeah. We're going to recreate this Nashville. So I was working and I had all these ideas that my dad was getting ready to retire. He said, hurry up and retire, dad. We need to figure out how to get in the, I need to figure out how to make this. And I was just going to put a still in my warehouse here in Ohio. And I realized how that wasn't very easy.

(40:52):
I started looking around and he had knew a guy that grew bloody butcher red corn and how tasty the kernels were in some different things they were making. And he said, man, that might make some really good whiskey. So we found a distiller in Kentucky to partner with and took him this letter and said, Hey, we'd like to make this with some bloody butcher red corn. We want to do a low barrel entry proof. It talks about here. That's a big thing for Michael Veach. He loves that low barrel entry proof. So we used bloody butcher corn went in the barrel at 105 proof. And I said, mean, it was so new to me. I was like, well, can you make me one barrel so we can know if it tastes good? And they kind of laughed at me. They said, listen, the minimum run we can do is somewhere between 10 and 12 and we got 10 out of it.

(41:45):
And so our first batch was 10 barrels and then I needed to wait a year and a day and I bottled some one year old bourbon and sold it to all my friends and family so I could use it. The trademarks at the time, we had to put the trademarks in use and when we were bottling it, there was some other folks walking around at the story that day some pretty well known folks in the bourbon community. And they said, Hey, I said, you wanna try it? They kind of smelled it and looked at us really funny and said, you know, what'd do to this? And we said nothing. And he said, well, how'd you filter it? We said, we didn't. It just came right outta the barrel. We just used the cheese cot to make sure we got all the barrel out of it.

(42:27):
And he tried it and he said, man, this is some really fantastic whiskey. This is some of the best one year old whiskey I've ever had. Mm-hmm. And we kind of thought it tasted good. So then we had to wait, we waited to till it got to be over four years old. And last April we finally introduced batch one of w h McBrayer. It was five barrels. So we had 1,075 bottles and we did it at Barrel Strength. So we didn't add any water to it. It came out at 103 proof, 103.6 proof. And then just a couple weeks ago here this April we released six barrels. We had one barrel of our five year old, we had some five barrels of a, our four year-old three month whiskey. And we just did batch two and it was 1300 bottles. We released it to our legacy club that you can get on our website.

(43:19):
We have a DC retailer that ships it to us for us to 43 states. The Legacy Club those 1300 bottles were purchased in less than three hours on Saturday morning. And so we were so excited about that. We're so happy with the people that had tried batch one and they really liked it, got batch two we've had good reviews on it. They are a little different. Yeah. Because when you have so few barrels, just depends on how those things age that year we've made a little more every year. Once we knew it tasted good, I went really big time. We made 24 barrels the following year.

Drew (43:58):
Okay. All

Bill (43:59):
Right. But last year we made a couple hundred. So I think we have 350 barrels of this product aging now we're continue to add more to that. And we're also working on products for our other brands. Old mc and Cedarbrook.

Drew (44:15):
Yeah. Okay. So a friend of mine Todd Ritter from Kentucky, and I think Todd actually, he sent me a sample of batch one a while ago and then you sent me a little extra here for me to dive into it. And you also sent me batch two. So we'll go through and do a nosing and tasting on the two of these. But talk about that moment when you're about to have somebody taste even that one year barrel. I is there a shiver down your spine like, oh man, I hope this is good.

Bill (44:54):
I get it still every time I see somebody drinking it, I hope they really like it. We're really proud of what we're putting in the product. We think it tastes great and hopefully our goal is to just put out something that everybody can trust that that is a good product. Everybody has different pallets, everybody has different things. They, this is a high corn, but it's a bloody butcher corn. So it's got a different unique flavor to it. But that's what we wanted. We wanted to do something that honored William Harris McBrayer reintroduced him to the bourbon community of who he was. Something that for what we could do of what we know today that honored some of the traditions back then, we know they didn't have number two yellow dent corn back in the 18 hundreds, but they had some kind of heirloom corn whether oza red corn, which they grew a lot of in Kentucky at the time, whether it was a white corn or maybe it was a combination.

(45:56):
All of 'em at that time, we don't know. But we did something that was an heirloom corn. We have some heirloom heritage rye in there that goes for it. So it's 5.8% rye, 5.8% barley. We knew it would have a low yield to it at that timeframe. So it was a little more grain, a lot more grainy flavors to it. Obviously today we did add an enzyme to it to get a little more yield, but we think that was okay, but we haven't cut it. We just, that's how they did it back then. They drank it from the bear. And so we're very happy that we were able to do that.

Drew (46:37):
Well on the batch one, the main notes, I guess like a combo of butterscotch and toffy but as I kept dragging on it, I was pulling in even I kept going there. There's a little bit of oak on this, but it's not really out front but maybe a slight tobacco kind of a note that I was picking up on the nose. But ano, it's a little bit sweeter I think, than batch two, which batch two to me seemed to have a little bit more of the oak standing out in it. Yeah. So was there a surprise that the two of them, the differences that you were finding in the two of them

Bill (47:28):
A little bit obviously they're both the same Nashville, but that's just how bourbon is. That barrel might have been a little bit different the way it aged. It was same rickhouse, different location. Couple things could have changed but we got a lot more fruit flavors on batch two the butterscotch and that little bit of maybe a chocolate covered cherry little bit there in batch one. But couple of those barrels in batch two, we were like, oh my gosh, this is phenomenal. And so we wanted to blend them together and maybe those barrels need to get a little bit older, but mean we did add in a five and a five year, three old month in the to batch two and you're drinking batch one now. But the nos on both of them are just phenomenal. We think they're phenomenal. I mean sit there and smell that all day long.

Drew (48:29):
Did you have a moment there cuz you had to make a decision as to whether you were going to batch them all together or maybe do single barrels? Did you have a couple of barrels that you went, maybe we should hold these aside and do 'em as single barrels?

Bill (48:43):
That's interesting that you talk about that. So we had a gentleman help us on batch one and batch two, same person. So we took the best five barrels of batch one and we blended 'em together and then we took the second five and we blended 'em together. And obviously the first batch tasted better than the second batch. But the blender we had with us, he took two from the other batch and that took two away from this. And every time that we did that, it tasted better combined than any of them did by themselves. And so that was the first time I'd ever gone through that process. So I'm really happy that we have people that are able to help us. And that is where bourbon is such a unique thing, how people are able to blend barrels together to get a consistent profile or to have unique profiles based on different batches. To me the art of blending these barrels together is just phenomenal.

Drew (49:48):
And it's funny that you mentioned the cherry and then of course whether it's power of suggestion or not, suddenly there I'm tasting it on batch one and then into a char to this, but it kind of mixes with the hers of the rye, which makes a really interesting flavor combination

Bill (50:13):
Again is that was only four year old product. I mean, we're excited to see what could happen as this gets to 5, 6, 7, 8 years old. We don't know what it'll tastes like after eight years old if that low bear under proof, if that gets to be too much or not. But we hope it's just going to continue to just get better, even though we think it tastes great today over the next few years, we're excited to see what will happen to this whiskey as it ages.

Drew (50:43):
I think that it's inspired that you decided to go outside of standard forms of corn and that you found something. Cuz when you have 88% of your mash bill is corn, it's going to have a lot of influence on your final product. And it's what fascinated me about that little bit of rice spice coming in there is that even with just 5.8% rye, it's still enough to bring some of that hers to compliment what else is going on in the whiskey.

Bill (51:18):
I did find that the mash bill to be very interesting even for its time, because today that's more of a Tennessee whiskey type of mash bill, a really high corn. I mean we have a couple high corn ones out there now on the bourbon bourbon front. But again, it was unique, it was different and that's what we were going for. It would've been easy to go down the street, just buy some barrels and throw your name on it. But we wanted to do something. It was a little bit more risky. It's not like I started with a plot of gold to start this thing. It was grassroots effort, but we're so happy in of how it turned

Drew (51:56):
Out. Yeah, I batch two, I get more fruit notes I think on it

Bill (52:01):
A lot more fruit

Drew (52:02):
Notes and it's again, everything just kind of blends in together to create one nice nose on it. Nothing is really overly standing out. Whereas on the first one, that butterscotch note is really kind of strong here. It kind of sits back in there and plays nice with all the other sense that they're trying to come through.

Bill (52:27):
I tell you, we opened up a bottle of batch two the other day and I could just keep drinking. It is kind of dangerous.

Drew (52:38):
It has a little earthiness to it too, which I find interesting. And I think that kind of goes with that Herbally and Char character that is on batch two also. But yeah, it's really nice and amazing to think here's your first real effort at getting a whiskey out to the market. And so you've got other whiskeys also that are either in the works or are out. So what else have you been working on?

Bill (53:11):
Yeah, thank you. So last fall part of our trademarks we talked about I have to show usage of those trademarks, right? So I did source suburban from the Bardstown Bourbon Company a handful of barrels that we use for the old McBrayer product. And so we did release that in the fall. It was five barrels of a 70 18, 12 mash bill. However what we have been doing is we've been putting to back a high rye mash bill, a 24% rye standard corn mash spill. But we're going into the barrel at 105 proof on those. Okay. So we're really trying to do that low barrel entry proof more like they did back in the early days to try to honor those brands. And we're excited of where that's going to go. So we're excited about that brand and that brand. I get a lot of notoriety from that brand, that brand.

(54:08):
The bottle was in the movie Untouchables as well as Deadwood. We have pictures of that on our website under our blog post there about that brand. And again, most people know of that brand but our most famous brand, as we talked about this evening, was Cedarbrook. And so we've created that label. We're going to talk about that hopefully soon. Probably with over the next year, we're going to do something under that label and get that out to our community. And we're real excited just to have all three labels and how they're all turning out and using things on the label that really honor our past the monogram that we use on the w h bottle. I know this is a podcast, but I have a picture of it here. So that monogram, that monogram was used on his bottles back in the 18 hundreds. The old McBrayer product has the state of Kentucky seal on the label. And that bottle was from the early 19 hundreds that were recreated. And so we're really trying to bring back old looking labels, doing some old processes when they make the product and just trying to do something that's unique that maybe separates us from everybody else.

Drew (55:33):
Yeah, I wanna see somebody do this again because when I saw the Leonis collection and the pictures that they had at those old bottles, they used to put them in crate paper with the logo on the crate paper. Do you think you'd ever experiment with that maybe and see if it could be done?

Bill (55:50):
Well, there's a gentleman that has brought back some of the plankton reserve bottles that were made at Cedarbrook. So it was Plankton Reserve Hotel and it's got that old crate paper wrapping the bottles in the case. And maybe I've seen some of the old decanters that had, they were beautiful glass decanters that had cedarbrook on 'em. And I actually have picked up a couple recently at some vintage shops and those are fascinating to me too. And so I hope I have a long time, knock on wood to mess around with this and play with this and just have a lot of fun with it. And hopefully it, it'll go from a hobby to maybe something I can spend most of my time

Drew (56:37):
Doing. Yeah, absolutely. Well you're in a great industry, as you said, so this it, it's fun to chat with you and, cause we're kind of in the same situation where we have our day jobs but here we are dipping our toe into the world of whiskey and it's very enticing.

Bill (56:53):
Yes. Well, and as I said, I mean the history for the McBrayer family to me just needed to be retold, rather whatever we make out of our business here, we wanted to get back in the bourbon community and retell who the Mc Brayers were. Yeah, JH McBrayer, obviously the famous w h McBrayer. I don't know how they do the whole Bourbon Hall of Fame thing, but I think he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. But we'll see. We'll work on that over the next generation as

Drew (57:28):
Well. Yeah, absolutely. Well Bill, thank you so much for being on the show and giving us a lot of that history and letting me get a taste of your first two batches. And I am definitely looking forward to seeing what you produce here in the future.

Bill (57:41):
Drew, it's been a real pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Drew (57:45):
If you wanna learn more about W h McBrayer, just head to McBrayer legacy spirits.com and for show notes, transcripts and links to Whiskey lores, social media, and much more, head to whiskey-lore.com. And if you enjoy today's episode, make sure to dig a little deeper into Lawrenceburg Distilling history with the Tom Rippy Wild Turkey Origins episode number 36. If you can't get enough whiskey history, then make sure that you join the official whiskey lore community and get some behind the scenes, take part in community events and also make some new history loving friends. That's the official whiskey lore community on Facebook. I'm your host, Hanish, and until next time, cheers and SL JVA Whiskey Lores of production of Travel Fuel's Life, L L C.