Ep. 116 - The History and Future of Distilling in Washington State

Transcript

Drew Hannush (00:02.156)
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, Drew Hanisch, the bestselling author of Whiskey Lore's travel guide to experiencing Irish whiskey, experiencing Kentucky bourbon and the brand new historical epic, the lost history of Tennessee whiskey. And today it is time for us to trek out to the Pacific Northwest, move away from our normal common themes in the world of whiskey history, where we're talking about Kentucky bourbon or Scotch whiskey. And instead we are going to jump into the history of Washington state.

Becky Garrison (00:22.862)
Thank you.

Drew Hannush (00:32.048)
Distilling. And this is a history that goes all the way back into the 1830s. And my guest, Becky Garrison is a journalist and the author of a brand new book entitled Distilling in Washington, a History. And she's going to join us here today on the podcast, digging into some of the great stories that she came across, uh, give us a little feel for that history. And, um, uh, we'll have some discussions in between on other things. I'm sure. Becky, welcome to the show.

Becky Garrison (01:00.654)
Thank you for having me. Much appreciated.

Drew Hannush (01:04.152)
It's when I first saw because, uh, your publicist sent me an email and I saw a distilling in Washington, I went, yes, because there are such great stories. And for people who've listened to the whiskey lore stories podcast, they know back in season five, episode seven, uh, I covered the story of blue ruin, which is a early.

Becky Garrison (01:11.972)
No.

Drew Hannush (01:26.68)
I really focused probably more in that conversation on Oregon because that was the Oregon territory at that time. And there was no Washington state. Um, but the reason I chased that story was because I was doing a story on Tennessee prohibition and I was reading this stuff that said Tennessee was the first in the prohibition and my probing mind goes, no, I'm not going to just take that at face value. I'm kind of interested in seeing.

Becky Garrison (01:31.694)
We can't.

Drew Hannush (01:55.24)
uh, if there are other cases. And what was interesting to me was when I stumbled upon something that said that, um, actually Oregon territory was the first one to go into prohibition. But then when I did the research on that, I come to find out Oregon territory didn't exist at the time that, uh, it was still a, uh, hadn't set up a provisional government, uh, so it was kind of a.

precursor, we can't say it was the United States because we don't know whether Britain owned it at that time or whether we owned it and it was still kind of all up in the air. So it's just a fascinating story. So what, what got you interested in Washington state's distilling history?

Becky Garrison (02:40.026)
Well, I moved here to the Pacific Northwest in 2014. I wanted to, I was excited by the Celtic spirituality here and what felt, this is a great place to go as an older person. Here, there's a very much appreciation for creatives. It's a beautiful, expressive place. I said, this is, this is where I want to go. I feel called to this region. It was a, I was a religion reporter prior to this, religious satirist. And

This was a chance to really see a Celtic spirituality, really embrace the outdoors, really embrace the culture. There was like a spiritual sense when I began to pick up and explore the spirits here. And I had originally gotten into Lagobula in 16, in the 90s, when I was doing fly fishing, cigars, that whole hipster movement. Pretty soon realized that's, that was probably one of the last times I traced the trend. I tend not to do that. It's, you know, everybody's doing something.

Drew Hannush (03:34.234)
Hehehe

Becky Garrison (03:37.502)
might give me an excuse not to, but here I came and I discovered these were whiskies that were informed by the Tuwar. These were spirits were made with local ingredients, the concept of regenerative agriculture. People would discuss where their grains came from. The Portlandia sketches are funny because they're true. This is, people here do want to know about these things, you know. You tend to go, as I say, this is Tuwar over trends. You know, if people get

Some people get really enamored by their wine enthusiast and wine spectator scores, but here people are asking, where does this come from? Where do you make this? What is your story? And it's the stories that got me interested because some people don't really have a story or their story is kind of Hollywood glitzy, but if you get like that here, it doesn't work. And I just, and the more I got to see the Washington State Distilleries, I realized that

distillery established solely directed for single malt, but the spirit originated in the Pacific Northwest with Clear Creek Distillery. You have Westland and Westward and Copperworks, Copperworks in Westland in Seattle, Westward in Portland, who are leading an American single malt revolution. And they're really developing whiskeys here based on towar.

and not trends as I said, it includes a lot of brewers getting into brewing their work. So many fascinating things happening. And yet, when you go to look for a map of where to find these distilleries, the Washington distillery's gild map is out of date. It's not their fault, it's COVID. And to just try to figure anything out is very complicated. And also there wasn't even a book on this history. And yet Washington State is third or fourth in terms of the largest number of distilleries. And it's like, this is ridiculous.

Why should Kentucky and Tennessee get all the love for the books? Why not this one?

Drew Hannush (05:36.344)
Yeah. And this is the thing that over time, I think this embracing of the craft movement is still such a recent thing that states like Tennessee, I was shocked to see that Tennessee didn't know their own history. They knew Jack Daniel's history, but they didn't really know any history beyond that. And to find so much more history behind that,

Becky Garrison (05:43.754)
Mm-hmm.

Becky Garrison (05:58.593)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (06:00.636)
I think one of the issues that I bumped into with Tennessee was it was such a prohibition state. It was a temperance state. Because it was a temperance state for so long, I think that kind of held people back from really digging in. Then by that time, by the time everybody wanted to know something about it, Kentucky, next door, was already telling all the stories. So what do we need out of Tennessee stories? It's just Jack Daniel. What else is it?

Becky Garrison (06:07.438)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (06:29.108)
And you have the further issue in Washington state that it's so far away from where all the whiskey writers who are focused on Kentucky bourbon are at. And so you kind of get that disconnect as well out there. So I was, I was shocked when I first saw that I was like, Oh, they were distilling back in the 18 thirties. I, I would have had no idea. You would figure there were people that brought stills with them, but, um,

Becky Garrison (06:33.99)
Mmm.

Becky Garrison (06:38.547)
Thank you.

Becky Garrison (06:44.951)
Eek.

Becky Garrison (06:53.812)
Okay.

Drew Hannush (06:57.)
not necessarily somebody trying to make a business out of it. So let's dive into that history a bit and we'll come back towards the end and we'll talk about the current scene in Washington state. But where did all of this whiskey distilling start from in Washington?

Becky Garrison (07:00.257)
Mm-hmm.

Becky Garrison (07:16.95)
Well, you can trace it back if you really want to, do the fur traders. Because when you would cross the west of the Mississippi, bear in mind, this is a DIY culture, there is nothing. I mean, it's hard for us to imagine this, but you start imagining when they're forming the colonies, when they're forming this, before it was a state, there was nothing. There's no grocery store, there's no railroad, there's...

no pasteurization, you do what you want to do. So the early fur traders would bring barrels with them. And you could say they were probably the first blenders in the West because they would then take this barrel and blend whatever they could, whether it was sagebrush, pepper, tobacco, whatever they could to make this whiskey extend itself a bit longer. And because they were fur traders and nomadic, they didn't really bother setting up stills. A few people might've tried to along the way.

make something, but it's kind of whatever I need to drink, I need to drink. So this started at the beginning. The Hudson Bay Company, I think later was established in Fort Vancouver because they did not like Fort Astoria. Fort Astoria was not good enough for the Hudson Bay Company. So they said, we're gonna set up Fort Vancouver. And that was in 1825. They first, there were a few grapevines planted. Some people say it's generally established that was the first wine grown. However, there were not that many wine.

So exactly how much wine is produced is a little bit questionable. They did find early signs of distilling, and there was reference to a distillery open there from 1833 to 1836. And the natives asked them to close it. You would ask yourself, why would the natives care? Well, they did care because fur traders discovered that you could sell, not sell, you could give whiskey to the natives and they would do the fur.

They would get the furs for you. Now fur trading is a very dangerous business. This is, if you get somebody else to do it and make the money by giving them garbage whiskey, then you would do it. And the natives, as they did with smallpox and other European, they had no tolerance for alcohol and it decimated the tribes. And the tribes asked them to please stop doing the distillery. This was one of the first instances where they actually listened to the tribe.

Becky Garrison (09:31.826)
and close it because they needed their fur trading abilities more than they needed the distillery open. So whiskey has always been seen as a form of commerce and consumption in the West from the get-go because bear in mind there's no currency. This is how you trade it. You would trade barrels of whiskey for every other thing that you needed.

Drew Hannush (09:53.344)
There's also, I just was kind of interested in the idea of the Washington apple. Because when we think of Washington, we think of apples, but the apples were actually not indigenous to the area. They were brought there. And I guess the Hudson Bay Company was responsible for that as well. It makes you wonder if in those early days, they were distilling brandy as well as distilling the molasses they were getting from the Hawaiian Islands. And you know.

Becky Garrison (10:16.352)
Thank you.

Drew Hannush (10:22.712)
as well as whatever they could grow in terms of grain.

Becky Garrison (10:25.842)
It's unsure. We don't have evidence of when they were making brandy. We do have evidence throughout of certain farmers I mean the European farmers style of a farmer having a still on his property To distill the grains and the fruits because as I said without Pasturization that was your only option was to they were gonna rot otherwise So that was a very common practice. In fact, it was often the woman who would be the home distiller. So there's some evidence of that

Most people here wanted whiskey. I mean, whiskey was what was served in a lot of the saloons. If you had money, you would get the imported European products. So if you're the railroad magnet, let's say, you would probably be getting your liquor from highly reputable sources. Everybody else would get them from wherever the local saloon is, so they would distill it at home or get it from someone else who was distilling it. It was a very much, there were no laws to be enforced. You really couldn't.

And it was also definitely take your chances. What we don't realize is people say, why is whiskey so carefully regulated in other spirits? Well, the answer is pretty simple. You're not gonna die if you make a bad batch of whiskey and beer. You might be sick, you might not feel comfortable, but these people are not doing cuts. Why would you do a cut? You have very limited supply of whiskey. You are distilling something. You're gonna take every ounce of that, including the methanol that is probably going to blind, if not kill you.

Drew Hannush (11:54.072)
It is crazy to think of these different time periods and different ways that people thought and where their scruples were at.

Becky Garrison (11:54.406)
Yeah.

Becky Garrison (12:02.566)
We also have to look at how alcoholic we were in the country. I was reading multiple books, the Susan Cheever's Drinking in America, Mark Forrestyte's A Short History of Drunkenness, A.R. Rowenbach wrote a book called The Alcoholic Republic, because what I wanted to find out is, are these people more knackered, wasted, whatever, than the rest of the country? And the answer is no. America went from 4.5 gallons to over 9 gallons of liquor per man, woman, child. Now a lot of this was

as we know due to lack of pasteurization, lack of good water, you would drink one to three percent ABB beer or cider on an ongoing basis. And you might have your homemade dandelion wine or grape wine as well. But these are not like they're drinking high ABB products. But we did note that when Americans, as far as wine, they wanted their wine fortified. They liked, they wanted their liquor when it came to drinking. They were going for the hard stuff. They were going for, you know,

In addition, when they were drinking for their normal consumption of the beer and cider, it was they wanted their liquor. They wanted the higher ABB, the better.

Drew Hannush (13:10.744)
Yeah, you think about, I was going to say you think about that time period and the fact that as long as it's an agrarian society that they're living in, they're not probably going to the tavern. They probably have a barrel of cider by the door. When they come in from a hard day's work, the first thing you're probably going to do is grab a ladle of hard cider and knock that back because you know you can trust it.

Becky Garrison (13:37.792)
Yeah, definitely. And I think that's what we... So we have to look into this context from this situation that people were drinking a lot more than they did today. So when we take into consideration, you know, not having whiskey was a very big deal back then, because not just for their own... They really needed to consume it, but also, as I said, they had nothing else to trade with.

Drew Hannush (14:00.708)
So there's a interesting early distiller, if you could tell us a little bit of the story of this, named James Connor. And James had a particular potion that he created. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Becky Garrison (14:18.422)
Oh, he created he was an ex-HBC employee and he was based down in the Oregon City area, which is Not I mean, it's a good haul that area from Fort Vancouver. It's a good drive, but it was close enough that he was preparing this concoction made from a molasses called Blue Ruin and it was basically It wasn't rum. It was I would say it's it sound like a distilled, you know, it's still spirit but made with sugar instead of

grains, but I wouldn't quite call it rum. I would call it raunchy, rancid. I mean it was, it was, and HBC kept trying to get him to stop, kept trying to get him to stop, and there was this kind of pompous gentleman called Dr. Elijah White that came along and frankly nobody liked him. He was basically like the school marm who wants to enforce everything. He was trying to play the role of enforcer, but there was no enforcement.

Drew Hannush (14:50.58)
A mess. Yeah.

Becky Garrison (15:11.67)
You know, the only laws back then that they would ever pass, that would ever enacted were to discriminate against the natives as far as their selling of liquor. There was always, if you sell to the natives, you're gonna get fined. Short of that, you're not gonna do anything. But so Elijah White was determined to get rid of this tavern. So he went and, you know, challenged Connor to a duel and...

As a result of that, you know, he, I guess you say he tattled on Connor. Connor got, you know, arrested. The thing was closed down. And basically, Elijah White kind of fails from the history books after that. We don't really know what happened to him. Um, we don't really know what happened to Connor. It was significant. And then it was one of the few instances where somebody was actually arrested and he was arrested more for the fight, I would say, you know, because, you know, that was, then he was arrested for the actual consumption just got off a product.

But for some reason, because Oregon, I think, was more established, there were a longer history of other distilleries forming, you know, during this timeframe. So Oregon had a more solid, quote unquote, commercial distilling. But for most people, it was either you bought it from an importer or now your saloon operator kind of became your blender. And he would then take the barrels and do whatever he wanted to do with them. And as I described in the book, a couple of the recipes, some of the results were really not very savory.

Thank you.

Drew Hannush (16:39.984)
Yeah, well, and this goes to the idea, which I've covered in the Tennessee book and in that episode as well, of whiskey being used as a weapon really in trade negotiations to disarm the people you're negotiating with. And when you have the tribes not really being able to have the tolerance for alcohol or understand how to drink it, because they were drinking it like water. And it's...

Becky Garrison (16:51.276)
Is it?

Becky Garrison (16:55.574)
You think?

Becky Garrison (17:06.826)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (17:07.384)
No wonder they called it fire water. If you're trying to drink something that's first of all, that rough. And second of all, you're drinking it that fast. Um, it, it's going to have some pretty quick effects and the stories of them having to, uh, you know, basically being chased out, it's kind of this vicious circle where you have them doing this underhanded trade negotiation, then when they're retaliated against.

Becky Garrison (17:14.711)
Mm.

Drew Hannush (17:33.86)
they come up with this theme of the drunken Indian and you have to, you know, so, um, uh, it's like say, it's just this little vicious cycle, but, um, one of the ones that caught me was when, uh, you were talking about this, uh, Teddy blue Abbott and his, uh, recipe, because he really was using this thing as, as a weapon.

Becky Garrison (17:36.566)
Mm-hmm.

Becky Garrison (17:41.742)
Thank you.

Becky Garrison (17:54.518)
Yeah, let me describe that. I got that from one of my, let me try to read what Teddy says here in the book. This is, let me put on, yeah, he was a frontiersman, and he describes the kind of, what we would call frontier whiskey. You take one barrel of Missouri River water and two gallons of alcohol. Then you add two ounces of Strick Night to make them crazy, because Strick Night is the greatest stymulant in the world.

Drew Hannush (18:01.04)
Hehehe

Becky Garrison (18:21.61)
Add three plugs of tobacco and make him sick. And Indian wouldn't figure out it was whiskey unless it made him sick. And five bars of soap to give it a head. And half a pound of red pepper. Then you put in some sagebrush and boil it till it's brown. Straight into a barrel, you've got your Indian whiskey. Then one bottle calls for one buffalo road. And when the Indian got it drunk, it was two roads. And that's how some of the traders made their fortune.

Drew Hannush (18:46.36)
It's really crazy. That one caught me because as I was, you know, as I'd done the research on the William Johnson story in Blue Ruin, it just seemed like, you know, it wasn't, they knew the whiskey was going to be hard on them, but they didn't really have such an evil intent as that recipe sounds. Just the way he describes it, it's basically saying, here it is. I am, I'm trying to make you sick so that you can't retaliate against me.

Becky Garrison (19:14.47)
Mm-hmm. Well, that, yes, unfortunately, that was, I mean, that was one of the harder things. I mean, in fact, they had to halt the expansion because there was, in the 1840s, there was this uprising among the Yakama Indians, the natives, I mean, and I think if you want to read an interesting book, it's called Murdered at the Mission by Blaine Harden. He pretty much debunks that whole story. So you're finding out here in history.

We're now reading some, we're really realizing the kind of sanitized versions we were told in school about the noble savages and this horrible stuff is all getting debunked, thank goodness. Because I think what Blaine hardened us here is an excellent job of saying, no, these natives were pushed to the edge. They didn't murder him. He basically forced them off their land and did everything possible. They finally just said, we cannot take it anymore. You must stop. And.

So I think that is a story that I think that the history of how alcohol impacted the natives is just now starting to get unpacked. And we'll talk about it later. But Washington State made one small step by being the first nation, sorry, the first state in the U.S. to have a distillery on tribal lands. So that's so I mean, I there's so much more that needs to be done in terms of unpacking that story. We have just we haven't even begun to discuss how horrible we were.

Drew Hannush (20:26.096)
Wow. Okay. Yeah.

Drew Hannush (20:37.732)
Well, and this is what adds layers to the conversation because when we focus in on just one state, we get a certain perspective on things, but we don't get a national perspective. And to me, the story of whiskey is the story of us in many ways. So you can tell a lot about an area by how they consume their whiskey. It seems that Washington State, from the way I was reading it in your book early on,

Becky Garrison (20:52.302)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (21:07.18)
didn't have that great of a drinking culture. Am I picking that up correctly, that in the 19th century, it wasn't probably as aggressive?

Becky Garrison (21:18.006)
I would say the first thing set up was a tent saloon. It was the first thing set up with a church and a saloon. So from the beginning, you've seen this conflict between the church and the saloon. And to give you an idea of, like, they would set up a saloon for one saloon with service, let's say, 400 railroad workers. So the saloons evolved into a place where the people from the saw mills, the...

So they didn't have a cowboy culture of the saloon. So the whole notion of this, it was more farmhands, people working the saw mills, people working the railroads. And those were the kind of people that you would see frequenting the saloons. It became such a nasty culture that I describe in my book, an instance of a saloon in Spokane where a monkey escaped from a circus. And they didn't discover the monkey until a year later when they were renovating the saloon, because apparently the...

saloon smelled so bad that the side of a dike, you know, they couldn't smell the dead carcass. So it was a place that I think the Alta, Hollywood completely ignores. This was not gun smoke. This was not a place where you could take children into, even though parents would often send their kids to the saloon with a pail of water to pick up their beer, kids would walk in. It was basically rated X, rated.

Drew Hannush (22:16.824)
You couldn't smell the dead carcass. Yeah.

Becky Garrison (22:41.17)
NC 17, possibly R. This was not, these were not pleasant places. I mean, these were really raucous. If you have to realize this was a part of the culture they wanted to get rid of. I mean, think of Times Square on steroids. You know, this was not a safe place to be. This would be, these were not safe. People, you know, drunks would be rolling off the streets. They would be coming in. Because the towns built so quickly, they often didn't have roads built, streets built, but they had the saloon built. That had to be.

Drew Hannush (22:54.594)
Hmm.

Becky Garrison (23:10.626)
first and foremost. So I think if you look at what people build when they first get into a town, drinking was very high on their priority list. These guys had really what we would describe as horrible, not the best existence of a lot of these people. I mean, they would go out there for better jobs. They were not paupers. These were opportunities to get a lot of land to really make something of yourself. But it was not an easy, the go of it.

Drew Hannush (23:38.008)
Yeah, I think that's an interesting point you bring up in the book about the idea that these weren't poor people that were going out there. We sort of see this concept that people who were pioneers were destitute and they're trying to live off the land as best they can and barely making a living. But when you're going out to a mining community, it is a hard life and you may have to be...

Becky Garrison (23:58.88)
it.

Drew Hannush (24:03.86)
moving to the next mining town as soon as things dry up where you're at. But they were making money by doing this mining. Not everyone, but there were definitely the affluent in those. Virginia City did a research into Virginia City, and it's really interesting to watch the evolution of a mining town go from being these makeshift saloons that are basically a tent to all of a sudden

Becky Garrison (24:18.185)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (24:33.24)
developing into a town and then the mining goes and so goes the town. So you had, you had that, you had logging going on up there. So I'm sure also the different towns probably gave it a little different personality to their saloons as well.

Becky Garrison (24:35.54)
Mm-hmm.

Becky Garrison (24:39.594)
Mm-hmm.

Becky Garrison (24:50.834)
It would depend, because also people don't realize Walla was the epicenter of the state until the railroad came along. It was when the railroad came along, followed by, because your first gold rush was 1848. When that first came in, the lobby went through Walla as they were traveling to California. So that was, but then once the railroad came in and you had the second gold rush and the Klondike gold rush, that's where Tacoma, Seattle.

really started to emerge as the major hubs and Walla became this little small town that has now re-emerged as an epicenter for producing wine and it now has a Distilled spirits culture as well, but I think if you look at how towns evolved in the role that the railroad You know, where did people choose to place a railroad? had a major impact for who was going to develop and who was going to I Don't say be left behind but who didn't develop. I mean

Walla could have been the state capital at one point.

Drew Hannush (25:47.888)
And it probably would have made sense because in most cases, the capital is put in the middle of the state, not on an edge somewhere. Yeah. So you brought up a couple of interesting terms in the book, and I always love etymology and sort of the inception of these words as they come about. So let's kind of talk about those. One is hooch.

Becky Garrison (25:52.27)
Thank you.

It is on an edge, yeah.

Becky Garrison (26:10.926)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (26:14.316)
So, uh, you give an explanation of where the term hooch came from. Can you go through that?

Becky Garrison (26:18.398)
Mm-hmm. Yes, if you, people who are venturing up in the Yukon territory, it's debatable who started this, the soldiers or the natives. They were making a version of rum called huchina, which was about as deadly as blue rum ruined. These people, it was not, but you had nothing else to drink. I mean, you're in the Yukon territory. This is even more desolate to drink. And they would end up drinking this stuff, it would make the native.

They would try to outlaw it, but what do you do? It's Alaska, the Yukon territory. There's no way to enforce this. So you're kind of stuck and what do you want to do? So people began to call, Huchino then became short and term for Hooch, which now becomes any kind of basically bad liquor or not very good liquor, very low quality. I mean, you're just drinking to get drunk.

Drew Hannush (27:08.14)
Yeah, I think we kind of lost the negative connotation of that. Now it's now a playful word, I think that people use for, so it's funny to see how a word evolves like that. Uh, the other one relates to the logging, uh, industry up there and it's skid row.

Becky Garrison (27:14.475)
Yeah.

Becky Garrison (27:23.978)
Yeah, well, it's a very common practice here in the specific Northwest, was you take the logs and how you can get them down there. This is, you would skid them, you would create these large, you know, indentions in the road and you would just skid the logs down the road. So they would skid the logs down Westler, yes, their way. And there was this term, they would just call it, it's a skid row. It's a neutral term. But there was these people at this bar called our house who were

I'd say disreputable is a nice way to frame it. And so they would end up calling these people skid row. So skid row then became eventually known not as a neutral logging term, but as a term to describe a very degradated part of society where all kinds of vices, drinking, gambling, prostitution, whatnot are going on. And not in the high end area. We're talking about as low life as you can get.

Drew Hannush (27:54.884)
Hehehehe

Drew Hannush (28:19.38)
Yeah, well, the saloons, you know, again, we sort of, some movies have done a good job of kind of showing that the saloon was really kind of a three level affair where you had drinking on one level, gambling on another level, and then you had the brothel upstairs. And that was really prevalent in Tennessee. Um, I'm wondering how prevalent that was, uh, in terms of having the, the multiple floors or whether, you know, we watched the old Westerns, we see them gambling in the same room.

Becky Garrison (28:31.278)
Thank you.

Drew Hannush (28:49.216)
as they're drinking, but in Texas that was outlawed. You weren't allowed to gamble in the same room as you drank.

Becky Garrison (28:54.8)
From what I can tell, everything happened on the same floor and often without curtains. So a kid would walk in and he could see just about, it depended on the, I mean this was like, I mean you walk in the saloon and you see what you see. Now I have a, you do a depiction there of some people playing the violin. You know, some of the saloons were a bit more of the higher end level.

Drew Hannush (29:01.22)
Hahaha.

Becky Garrison (29:16.738)
they were never frequented by women. It's important to note that women did not go, if a child went, it's because he's picking up something for his parents, supposedly. But I did find a few pictures of saloons with kids out front. I'm like, okay, why is the kid posing for a photo? I mean, what kind of parent would let their kid pose for a photo in front of a saloon? You got to go. That's a bit highly questionable. But unless if you were in a saloon, you're either protesting it, you're a sex worker, or you might've been the saloon owner's wife.

Drew Hannush (29:31.396)
Hahaha

Becky Garrison (29:45.85)
But generally, a no proper woman, until prohibition, women did not drink in public. I mean, there might have, we just did not. I mean, it was a manly pursuit. Those private clubs, all male clubs. So this is across all social stratospheres. A woman was to sit at home and be this lovely, beatitude person who just sat at home and did her at-home work.

Drew Hannush (30:09.472)
Yeah. Well, you also mentioned that I find this funny that it was the back door. They, uh, they would boot that. We get the picture of somebody getting kicked out the front of a saloon through the butterfly doors. Uh, but, uh, you, you paint a picture of, um, uh, how they used to treat their, uh, rough customers or the ones that were too drunk that they would just toss them out the back door.

Becky Garrison (30:32.443)
Yeah, yeah, that was.

Drew Hannush (30:36.024)
The other thing is you had a picture in there of the, I guess it was the lattice saloon, which looks exactly like, the pictures are great in there. The lattice saloon, I laughed at because when I drove through South Dakota, I stopped at the corn palace. And these are structures that are built that when you hear corn palace, it's a building built out of corn. And here we have a saloon that's built out of lattice.

Becky Garrison (30:41.346)
Mm-hmm.

Becky Garrison (31:10.356)
I don't know if you've heard of the The

is still a bit of a dark secret. Like I've had a few people say they don't want to admit that their relatives are involved in illicit activities. We're still not at a level where people are willing to come forth and always tell their stories. So you do have a little bit of that, please don't tell this story. And people will come at me and whisper, you know, my great grandpa did this and this. I'm like, I'd love to get to the day where you just say, look, your grandma was a sex worker. She did what she had to do. There's nothing wrong, I mean, to demystify the fact that your parents led

Drew Hannush (31:28.432)
I'm sorry.

Becky Garrison (31:42.482)
a life for your grandparents, your great grandparents, you have ancestors in your family that led a kind of pirated past. And to embrace that, that this is what they did. This was part of that culture. And not to be like embarrassed and full of shame because that just is gonna keep you back and keep you repressed. I'd love to see people just like, let your family's freak flag fly. I mean, your relatives, it's a really interesting wild stuff. And why not, you know, look at that. I mean, look what they went through.

Drew Hannush (32:04.816)
Hehehe

Becky Garrison (32:10.526)
It's also important, I think, to think about this. And, you know, when I'm sitting in a very nice, refined tasting room going, my gosh, look at the history of this bottle. Look where all this came from that let me have this. Look at how many people sacrificed so much and did so much just so I could sit there in this tasting room and have this lovely drink. I mean, there's a huge history behind it that we just don't quite understand all that went on, all the nuancing, all the lives that were sacrificed just so we could sit and.

and enjoy a lovely craft spirit.

Drew Hannush (32:40.748)
Yeah. I mean, as you started going in and doing this research, was a lot of this just like a very eye opening for you in terms of seeing how people lived back then and getting that sense?

Becky Garrison (32:56.054)
Well, yes, because I hadn't seen, I mean, I was reading, I basically started reading a whole lot of books. First, the history of liquor, then the history of bourbon. And what really surprised me was the extent to which, just looking at this from the eyes of women, looking at this from the eyes of children, and just going, I cannot imagine what it would be like to be around during that time. And just to realize, you know, even in my own lifetime, I mean, I was going to technology.

technological inventions that have happened since I was born. And just to imagine what these people were going through, to live through a life where all of a sudden, for the first time, pasteurization becomes a reality and how that changed the beer industry in particular. And also to learn that certain brands that I thought were garbage actually started out beautiful. I mean, this is beyond Washington state, but I did not realize the story of Jack Daniels, that what his nephew did.

to change his recipe to try to sell as much as he could and how that used to be a respected brand. I quoted Mark Twain in the book and I had to look up and research it. Oh, Crowe was a good brand at one point. And to learn that a lot of these esteemed stuff that I look at it that are on the lower shelf used to be at the top shelf. And some stuff at the top shelf is now at the lower shelf. You know, and just to see the history of a...

A lot of this, but also because nobody had researched this. It was like having to go through and figure out where did people drink. And that's where I learned that the word saloon kept coming up. You know, you didn't, and that nobody was getting arrested for distilling, but yet I couldn't find any information about distilling because there were no distilleries. So I was like, where are they getting the liquor from? And it was importing and they don't really talk about it. I mean, Lewis and Clark don't discuss the six barrels of whiskey that they brought with them on the trip.

is you go to the Klondike Museum in Seattle, they do not list whiskey in the massive list of provisions that they're including. There was this, I began to realize, why are they not talking? It's like, nobody wants to talk about, you know, the fact that there's, you know, a House of Bill Repute supposedly next door. It's like nobody wanted to discuss whiskey. It was an off subject, you know? And also the stories of the sex workers we had heard, like the good girls of Seattle.

Becky Garrison (35:16.726)
were the ones that were a success. There's the Nellie in Seattle, and she's actually, there's a beer named after her at Pike's Pub, and Pike's Pub actually has a room dedicated to her, because they're at the side of her former house that she ran. And those are the successful ones. Those are the ones that were entertaining the men in the opera boxes. Those are the higher class escorts. We've always had courtesans and escorts. It's just how it is in life.

Drew Hannush (35:19.323)
Mmm.

Becky Garrison (35:46.166)
But to see what happened to your average pioneer woman, to get a story of a woman, a man whose grandmother was trafficked at 14 to a saloon that served as 400 guys. You know, when you start to realize there's this huge story that we haven't told about what was really going on in that life. I mean, what would make a man so destitute that he felt he had to sell his daughter? You know, so yes, the people came out there.

Drew Hannush (35:59.076)
Hmm

Becky Garrison (36:15.582)
Seeking prosperity, but it didn't work out for everybody, you know They but it also wasn't working out the East Coast either I mean we had a lot of rural poverty that we just don't Talk about and you start looking at it's like how did you manage to survive? they did and I don't know how they did it because we look at ourselves our modern conveniences and you know, the internet goes out for two days and we're all ready to have a conniption fit and you know, and you're really You know, you realize that just how much of this was

Drew Hannush (36:38.507)
Two minutes.

Becky Garrison (36:45.338)
And you also realize to what extent liquor is informed how we garm. It's at its best, it's a social glue that keeps us together and gives us a way to form community. You know, it's just sometimes the community being formed at the saloon was not what I would call a healthy community compared to what I see happening at today's brew pubs and tasting rooms.

Drew Hannush (37:05.484)
Well, something you pointed to in the book, and I don't know that you were specifically making this point, but it just was really interesting to see the juxtaposition of this in 1883, um, Washington, um, votes for women's suffrage at the same time, the local option comes into play at the same time that they now strike down women's suffrage is the same time that the local option.

Becky Garrison (37:22.381)
Mm-hmm.

Becky Garrison (37:27.88)
Oops.

Drew Hannush (37:34.904)
goes away, which I think clearly shows the influence that women had on politics at that time and the strength in their ability to vote during those five years.

Becky Garrison (37:38.295)
Mm-hmm.

Becky Garrison (37:43.958)
Yeah.

Becky Garrison (37:48.254)
Oh yeah, and then in 1910, when women got the right to vote again, that's when the local option law went into place. And at that point, 42% of the state voted to become dry. So people, and you can look at it on a city rule divide almost. I mean, the most Spokane, Seattle, Tacoma, they all went wet. They stayed as wet as all get out. Some of the rural areas it depended, went voted to go dry. If you look at who was,

Drew Hannush (38:00.208)
Hehehe

Becky Garrison (38:16.082)
in these areas you would find where did you find the more church going communities where did you find you know the Irish the immigrants they brought within their and the Germans they brought within their drinking traditions the Scandinavians they did have aqua beat but they were more state and religious and they were more likely to be devout and go to church that said I did cover the Nesset family of Norwegian family of devout followers in western Washington who to make some extra money

produce some very fine, high quality moonshine. You know, so you did have some people who were, back then, I mean, I'm gonna say it's the early craft boom, but you did have some farmers who took pride in their produce, and they would produce brandies, they would produce whiskies, similar to the European style of having a still on the farm, it's just that it was not legal. I mean, it was, I mean, the distilling has never been legal. The question has been, did they wanna enforce it? How do they wanna enforce it? And...

Drew Hannush (39:05.049)
Yeah.

Becky Garrison (39:14.09)
A lot of that was left up to the local jurisdiction. You know, did the local sheriff care, you know? You found one town where I put, where I noted in the book where somebody was hung for selling liquor pre-prohibition because the town had voted to go dry. So they kind of hung them in effigy, not actually hung them, but they were harassing this store owner because he continued to sell even after the town went dry. So it wasn't so much everybody going against evil liquor. It was...

Drew Hannush (39:30.201)
Mm.

Becky Garrison (39:44.106)
very much more nuanced than that for, you know, where could you go? It's kind of similar to when they legalize cannabis here. You know, some places said no, some places said yes, some place, you kind of knew where to go.

Drew Hannush (39:55.604)
Yeah, I found that in Tennessee, usually in the cities. In fact, their strategy was to shut down rural Tennessee first. And because they knew they could get rural Tennessee to agree with shutting out whiskey, it was Memphis and Nashville and Chattanooga that had no intention of shutting down. They had to be forced down. So, um, so it is interesting to see those, those pockets and the religious pieces too, because in Kentucky, um,

You know, you don't think, oh, it's a bourbon country. They wouldn't have any dry counties. They do. Those are more the Protestant counties, whereas the Catholic counties are where all the whiskey was being made. So you had those kinds of lines being drawn as well. Um, there weren't a lot of distilleries that, uh, in fact, it seemed like every time they tried to set up a distillery, it was shut down pretty quickly for it failed, uh, not, not long after throughout the 19th century, um,

Becky Garrison (40:26.251)
Thank you.

Becky Garrison (40:35.499)
Mmm.

Drew Hannush (40:54.648)
What really shocked me was that they didn't really, you mentioned the first case of illicit distilling and the feds coming in and shutting somebody down, wasn't until 1899, which would have been 30 years after the excise law went in force. Why do you think it took so long for them to finally catch somebody?

Becky Garrison (41:03.831)
Mm-hmm.

Becky Garrison (41:11.819)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Becky Garrison (41:16.846)
Okay, Washington State was not a state until 1989, is my simple answer. I'd have to go back to the record books to find out why, but I think a lot of it depends on where do you want to put your priorities? Prior to Washington becoming a state, their primary concern was to try to keep some semblance of order. So the biggest issue was the saloons were not creating order and to prohibit liquor sales to the natives.

Drew Hannush (41:20.733)
Oh.

Becky Garrison (41:45.75)
There really wasn't, if they were aware of really bad liquor being distributed, they might have tried to do something, but Washington wasn't a state. Who was going to enforce this? I mean, there was territorial law, but who was going to enforce it? Once Washington became a state, you now had state laws and federal laws that you could then apply. But you have to realize, 1889 is when it became a state, Prohibition became into effect in 1920. So, there wasn't really a whole lot of...

a long lag period where a comprehensive set of reasonable legislation around the use of liquor could have been established because the moment the state was founded there was already pressure to prohibit liquor. So a lot of their efforts were now being spent on prohibiting and also I think back then people don't realize that the brewers distillers and you know the winemaker were doing their own

on a very much local level, but they were not getting along with each other. The brewers, the large-scale breweries, basically owned the saloons. They bought all the furnishings, they bought everything. And meanwhile, the saloon owners were, you know, taking the barrels and mixing them. So someone's spirit was not tasting like what it should have been tasting. You know, the distillers were at odds with the brewers, feeling they were kind of...

Muscling in on their territory. They were not all agreeing with each other There were not there was a lot of kind of corruption within their own ranks The wets were never as organized as the dries if you look it out. There was a lot of debating over taxes that whole issue with you know, the whiskey tax trust and how are you gonna tax whiskey and I Didn't get into that in the book because that was that did not impact Washington distilling except those who wanted to buy the bottles and the bottling bond act didn't come into effect till the end of the

end of the century, turn of that century. The Food and Drug Act was in effect 1906. So laws were just still very slowly being developed. We didn't even have a classification of bourbon until the Taft decision of what constituted whiskey. So we're still, I would say this was, we were in a process of kind of working things out. There wasn't a lot of time between when it became a state and when it was now illegal.

Drew Hannush (44:03.936)
Yeah, so it's another state and we get this idea in our mind that prohibition happened everywhere in the country at the same time. But then there are these states that you start reading about and go, oh wait, the whole South was basically in prohibition by 1910. And you guys went into prohibition early as well.

Becky Garrison (44:24.014)
It was, Oregon was 1912 and Seattle was final in 1960. Prior to that, it became a lot very restrictive, which is one reason why people say there's so many distilleries couldn't get started. You know, you started a distillery and now they've made it, people can only purchase X amount of booze. Well, that's not enough booze, even if everybody in the town bought that booze, it's not enough booze to sustain your distillery. So I just think it's, it was, it was, it's kind of like trying to launch a business during COVID.

There's just way too many regulations. You just can't make a go of it. And also, as I reported in the book, and the bottle on the cover is an example of this, a lot of the saloons were in their own liquor, distilling business. A lot of them would have their own method of going to distilling. You know, these guys, they would learn, some of them learned the bartender's techniques, which, you know, for how to mask subpar whiskey, which was not very good, but some would actually produce some very high quality, nice spirits. And...

You know, so you did have distilling, they just were not commercial. I mean, where would you get the license? How would you license a distillery when it's not a state?

Drew Hannush (45:27.96)
Yeah, yeah. That would be interesting to dive into because as a territory, you are part of the United States, but you're under a whole different set of guidelines. So yeah. And then when you guys went into Prohibition, you went all in. It was the bone dry law, which is something that, Tennessee played with for a while, and then all of a sudden they went full force into the bone dry law, which basically means nothing.

Becky Garrison (45:39.126)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (45:57.28)
You can't, you can't buy it. It also prohibited the consumption or was that still, if you had some leftover, you could still drink it.

Becky Garrison (45:57.294)
Mm.

Becky Garrison (46:06.022)
Basically, from what I understand, I did not encounter instances of people being busted for consumption. You were charged for broke. What was also unclear is medicinal was always still kind of allowed with an increase of doctors applying for prescriptions. I mean, as I noted, even veterinarians, dentists, anybody who thought they could try to get a prescription. And those prescription pads were...

Drew Hannush (46:14.242)
Yeah.

Becky Garrison (46:34.962)
I don't know how widespread there was as far as duplicating them, you know, passing them off. Some people that became pharmacists were kind of, kind of dubious. And people don't realize the whole soda fountain concept was designed to disperse booze, first opioids, and then it was how the person mixed the medicinal liquor. So this whole 1950s image of the soda shop is about as accurate as the Hollywood depiction of the saloon. Neither one was.

Drew Hannush (47:01.414)
Hehehe

Yeah, it's fun to see how all these saloons in the South suddenly started turning into soda shops. And it's like, oh, that sounds so innocent.

Becky Garrison (47:10.836)
Yeah.

Yeah, but then I think they also did allow home winemaking. And the Sacramento winemaking is just such a small market that was taken, they had certain vineyards that were handling that for the Jewish, liturgical Protestant and Catholic population. But home making, I mean, home winemaking was permitted. You did have a few wineries every now and then you would hear who were either illicitly selling it. I mean, but.

The focus had to be on liquor because beer and wine was too low ABV to even bother making illegally. I mean, nobody wants to commercially... you are very hard to find commercially made beer and wine during that period. It's just not worth getting arrested for that.

Drew Hannush (47:54.688)
Yeah. So talk about the Billingsleys cause this is a interesting, it's a good bridge into this era of prohibition because they kind of, they kind of ran the gamut from starting in one end of, uh, being able to sell liquor to, uh, to the other end of it.

Becky Garrison (48:02.911)
Oh yeah.

Becky Garrison (48:13.238)
Yeah, this was what happened is there was two in Seattle. There was the Marquettes and it was a former Jack Marquette, a former Seattle policeman and the Billings League. They were in charge of the black market. And this is before, what she's saying is about to go dry, but not completely dry because the more and more they're making it restricted, it got to the point where people are just like, okay, we're just gonna make her, we're gonna start making our own because we're not able to get enough to ourselves. And these people, the...

But after they went completely dry, the Billingsland set up a pharmacy. This is an example of a pharmacist, and it was not a pharmacy. It was a walking joke. I mean, and then, well, what they ended up doing was what did them in is one night they thought that Marquette's men were after them and gonna get them. It turned out they were two Seattle police officers. And Billingsland's men shot the police officers.

oops, and then an investigation of this discovered this was not a pharmacy. This was not a, this is a warehouse, there was not a huge warehouse operation making liquor. They then got arrested and um later Marquette also got arrested on larceny and sex trafficking and he went to jail as well. So there, this was the beginning and probably the only, until Roy Olmstead, they were one of the few people that actually got arrested. I mean most of the times in Seattle

especially when the new mayor Brown came along, he didn't really care. His only concern was I don't want bad liquor around. I don't want my population getting drunk, otherwise I don't care. You know, and there were a lot of wild parties. It was also very much a class distinction because people of means, I mean the way the Prohibition Act was in place, you could, any liquor you bought prior to January 19th, 2020, you could keep it home.

Drew Hannush (49:50.84)
Yeah.

Becky Garrison (50:07.902)
So people who lived in places that had large wine cabinets, if you were a member of the private club, like the Yale club, Rainier club, one of those clubs, they were well stocked. I mean, it was just well reported. So the people who were of the 1%, so there's nothing wrong with me coming home and just getting completely knackered on fortified wine or my fine brandies, my imported whatever, but those riffraffs down in the saloon do not have the right to drink.

Drew Hannush (50:18.329)
Hmm

Becky Garrison (50:37.11)
The people under, you know, so there was this huge class distinction where, I mean, people come out and say that we, and you find this with a lot of other, you know, undesirable kind of awful legislation. We have the right to drink because we are a refined and we know how to handle it. Those people in the saloons don't know how to handle it. Setting aside the fact that these people were being served stuff that made them crazy. People were being served stuff that made them sick. You know, they were, so.

Drew Hannush (51:01.646)
Yeah.

Becky Garrison (51:04.038)
Yes, of course, and also discounting the fact that these wealthy people could afford to hide their alcoholism because their servants would come and clean up whatever they were doing. So you begin to, I mean, liquor to me has always been an interesting class division. I mean, I can always, I can almost tell somebody's class by what they're drinking, which is kind of interesting and unusual.

Drew Hannush (51:25.548)
Yeah. Well, and this goes all the way back through temperance because we can go back to Massachusetts and when they did their 15 gallon law, the 15 gallon law was basically saying you can't buy less than 15 gallons of whiskey. Well, who can afford to buy 15 gallons of whiskey except rich people? So it really was seen as class warfare and, uh, and, and it was pointed at trying to get the Irish to not be able to, um, buy liquor.

Becky Garrison (51:44.155)
Yeah.

Becky Garrison (51:54.424)
Thank you.

Drew Hannush (51:54.588)
Uh, and so, um, yeah, there's a lot of truth behind it.

Becky Garrison (51:56.97)
Yeah, and the distillers were able to take advantage of the anti-German sentiment because after World War I, there was such an anti-German bias and that really helped lead... I mean, people had to look at the different factors. It wasn't just prohibition that led to the demise of breweries. I mean, some of them, you know, were able to reformat, a number of them were not. In fact, I believe there's only one legal distillery open during prohibition that was...

Drew Hannush (52:18.831)
Yeah.

Becky Garrison (52:24.246)
producing medicinal whiskey, it was a distillery in Kentucky. They're the ones that just released their Prohibition series of all, you know, the whole Prohibition series with, and I mean, that is, but there were other people who were making, you know, medicinal whiskey. In my book, I pointed a gentleman's grandparents were doctors and they had grown a juniper bush and they were making gin that they sold medicinally during Prohibition. And as doctors, they were able to somehow,

Drew Hannush (52:29.602)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (52:49.885)
Huh. Okay.

Becky Garrison (52:53.206)
That's how they circumvented selling their medicinal gin, so to speak.

Drew Hannush (52:58.668)
Yeah, yeah, the, uh, the, the story goes that it was Stitzel distillery that was the one in, uh, Kentucky that, um, basically they had a distiller's holiday because they, they were running out of medicinal whiskey. And so the government said, well, we'll, we'll let a few places start back up. Nobody could because they'd all gotten rid of their equipment. I mean, it's, it's a constitutional amendment and no constitutional amendment had ever been repealed.

Becky Garrison (53:08.974)
Thank you.

Drew Hannush (53:26.328)
So what's the use of hanging on to your equipment if you're still considering being legitimate because there's no chance to be legitimate. So they all just started selling their stuff off for scrap. I think one of the other things that I found curious, cause I grew up near the Canadian border. And so when I think about prohibition and Canada, I always think about what the traffic that was going across from

Becky Garrison (53:26.35)
Thanks.

Becky Garrison (53:35.104)
Hehehe

Drew Hannush (53:56.804)
Windsor, Ontario into Detroit. But this whole, as you start digging into Canadian history and I'm going, because I've had Davin de Curgamot, who's a Canadian whiskey historian on the podcast. And he was talking about how in 1930, they had finally shut down the government. The US government said, please shut this down.

Becky Garrison (54:12.737)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (54:25.632)
And I'm going, well, I mean, what was going on in Detroit wasn't that, um, there was a lot going on, but it seemed semi harmless. What was going on in, um, Vancouver though, from what I read in your book was pretty brazen that they were, they weren't even trying to hide what they were doing, bringing that, that whiskey across.

Becky Garrison (54:47.018)
Well, there was, it was an interesting loophole in the ad, and the way a lot of this came about, we had the, if you ever look at the Washington coast, it is very rocky, very easy to get, it's kind of like the North Carolina Outer Banks, as far as, or the Florida Keys, as far as for drug smuggling. It is ideal ways to hide a lot of places. You could do jump off points. We had a rum runner, Johnny Schar, who was so good at this that he, there was a 25,

back then a $25,000 bounty put on catching him and no one could catch him. And his story will be tied to the Canadians. We also had Al Hubbard, who was an engineer for Royal Olmsted, who was a former police officer, turned gentleman bootlegger. The reason for that is that Al Hubbard went to Boeing and Boeing was selling, I don't know why, they were selling World War I airplane parts for like next to nothing. Now, think about this, you know, selling...

But bear in mind, airplanes back then was not an industry. There was nothing there. So it wasn't quite, people just weren't thinking that, oh, I'm gonna sell military grade equipment too. So, but by doing that, Al Hart was able to put these engines in his speedboat and he could outrun the Coast Guard. They would also run a really difficult night. It's really dark, it's really cold. The Coast Guard's like, screw this, I am not going out that night. That's the night they would go out.

and they would end up going to Canada, bring this equipment back. I also was the first one to report on, we had four instances that I found so far of pilots who would take their little plane, and bear in mind, crop dusting got started in 1927, Lindbergh's flight, sorry, crop dusting was 1924, Lindbergh's flight was 1927. These are new, there's no regulation for anything in the air. They would just take a look, they'd go there like, these like basically dirt airplane, dirt strips, you know,

Drew Hannush (56:39.888)
Hmm.

Becky Garrison (56:45.922)
where the crop duster planes would go, go up there, go from Everett, go from Tacoma, go from Spokane, boop, boop. And if you had to come back down and you saw there was a police officer there, all you had to do was boop, I'll just stay in the air, I'll go somewhere else. And then you would find local neighbors, they're like, hey, yeah, give me a little bit of booze and I'll help you out and help you transport it. So this was a very, this became a common practice. Now eventually over time, this did get a little too much. So...

the Canadian government kind of put a kibosh on this. They tried to change the laws. In exchange, the Canadian importers got together this group called Consolidated Exporters. They formed a big giant ship out in international waters. It would stay there. And then the bootleggers would then come to them in international waters. And to give you an idea of how significant this was, Johnny Shars needed a bigger boat. His boat wasn't big enough.

Drew Hannush (57:34.572)
Nice.

Becky Garrison (57:44.098)
to make this journey. So the consolidated exporters bottom of both. So this is another example. And people don't realize like how many brands like Seagrams would not, I wonder if Seagrams would be the big brand it was in order to the fact that they were exporting all this stuff during prohibition. I mean, look at how many liquor brands. I mean, this was also the era where it didn't always work, but people would start to request, instead of saying I want a whisky and soda, I want a Dewar's and soda. People started requesting brand names.

Drew Hannush (57:48.961)
Wow.

Becky Garrison (58:13.59)
Now depending on your bartender, you may get doers, you may get brand X, but there was this beginning of I want to care where my brand comes from a safety standpoint. And again, depending on the speakeasy and how well you knew the person and if the bartender liked you, you might get a doers, you might get done. Something really dank and nasty, you know, it depends on where it was. But Canada was not really...

Drew Hannush (58:38.994)
Yeah.

Becky Garrison (58:41.962)
it became a very interesting experiment. And just look at how many distilleries now exist because of this interesting operation.

Drew Hannush (58:49.932)
Yeah, absolutely. Then Roy Olmsted, where I first heard about him was in the Ken Burns Prohibition series, which he did a really good job of covering Roy Olmsted. The idea here of, what was his position? What was he serving as?

Becky Garrison (59:00.1)
Thank you.

Becky Garrison (59:11.858)
I'm sure you've heard of the former Seattle Police Officer. What was his name? He was a Seattle Police Officer and he was involved, he soon, he got involved as a number of people did on discovering how easy it was to make money by, you know, liquor trafficking and eventually got caught, lost his job, but he didn't get sent to jail. He then decided

Drew Hannush (59:14.838)
Okay.

Becky Garrison (59:33.29)
that he knew what they were doing was wrong. He felt they were being very inefficient. They were not doing this correctly. So he streamlined how to do this. And in doing so, he's a gentleman bootlegger because unlike Al Capone and John Dillinger, no guns. His people brought cash, buy everybody off, do not kill anybody. And that made him pretty...

pretty well established. In fact, he had an office in Smith Tower, and I didn't even notice, I first went to Smith Tower in 2017, and I miss this completely, because I did not study prohibition. And Roy Olmsted is not a figure that is highly well known in the city. He's known if you look into him. But he had his office there, Al Harbour had an office there, his lawyer did, and his wife did, in the most elite building in Seattle. This is how open it was.

Drew Hannush (01:00:15.214)
Yeah.

Becky Garrison (01:00:25.526)
I mean, this is the equivalent of having, you know, the Sears tower in Chicago, the Chrysler building in New York. This is an iconic building. This is, you do not, it's very public. I mean, this was like the front of the first buildings to have an elevator. It was a huge deal when it opened and he is open. And that's even where he even had a recording studio where his wife would record. He also had a recording studio in his house. And one of the first,

you know, innovators of radio, because this was Al Hubbard doing this, and his wife would tell bedtime stories. And we don't know, we can't prove for certain if she was inserting coded messages into this. But yeah, yeah. But what got Roy Olmsted in the end was the effects. Now the mayor of Seattle said, I'm not going after this. There's even rumors that the mayor of Seattle, Ed Brown,

Drew Hannush (01:01:06.547)
Alerting her bootleggers.

Becky Garrison (01:01:20.682)
Roy Olmsted kept it still at his house. There's a rumor, it's not proven, it's not proven, but this was just such an open secret. I mean, even Boeing bought, William Boeing bought from Roy Olmsted. He testified in his trial. Did not go to jail. We do not, there's no, we cannot provide a connection yet if Roy Olmsted and Boeing had any connection as far as the purchase of the parts, because they were available for anybody who could have purchased it. So we don't know to the extent of if Boeing knew what was going on other than he purchased liquor.

Drew Hannush (01:01:32.88)
Hehehe

Becky Garrison (01:01:50.71)
But the reason the trial went to place was the first time they were putting on trial for wiretapping. Because Roy Olmes had thought he's gonna be fine. They can't use wiretapping. It was illegal. This went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court decided wiretapping was legal. Roy Olmes was sent to jail. He came out a born again Christian and he decided he left the industry. And I tried to contact one of his relatives and nobody wants to, he's done with this part of his head. The Olmes says, do not.

Drew Hannush (01:02:17.04)
Mm. Ha ha ha.

Becky Garrison (01:02:19.862)
discuss that part of his history anymore.

Drew Hannush (01:02:23.216)
I guess I understand that. As I say, you get these families who, I mean, even you have families who have just distilling in their background, legal distilling, and sometimes it's hard to get them to talk about it because it's kind of, oh yeah, that's something that we kind of ignore in our history. And which is sad because what it does is it makes it harder for us in terms of doing historical research because if they weren't.

Becky Garrison (01:02:47.421)
Thank you.

Drew Hannush (01:02:49.456)
keeping notes or they, which most of them weren't, but even if they did and the family didn't care to have that stuff around, then it was gonna get tossed out. And what loss to history?

Becky Garrison (01:03:06.422)
I don't know if you've ever seen a moonshiner. I've never seen a moonshiner.

Becky Garrison (01:03:25.234)
I then said to them, well, you might want to tell the family to ask to have this photo taken off the website because it's pretty obvious anybody who's researching, but a lot of people don't want to talk about it. Also, I think I met some to several distillers. They said that because the craft distilling is only about 10 years old in Washington state. And we're just now with South Pacific SP.

SCC Community College is now offering a brewing distilling program, but prior to that you learn from your dad You learn from your grandpa you learn from reading Foxfire books You do not learn legally and a number of distillers don't tell me they don't want to talk about that because they don't want to Have the TTB breathing down their butt, you know and So but yeah, generally now a distiller can work for another distiller You know you can or you can go to a school like this and really learn the art of distilling you can

Drew Hannush (01:04:01.316)
Yeah.

Becky Garrison (01:04:19.178)
But prior to that, you would either learn on your own or like Jason Parker, you go and you get a degree in chemistry or science, you know, in the form of the hard sciences and you then learn that way. But it can be quite difficult. How do you learn how to do this? And it's getting people to talk about the past in a way that is shame free has proven to be, it's going to be a difficult challenge.

Drew Hannush (01:04:42.444)
Yeah, I always get that moment of watching somebody squirm on the other end when I'm doing an interview with a distiller who has done some moonshining in the past to learn their craft, which, you know, that's just a fact of life. And very interesting to note that West Virginia has just passed home distilling. So maybe this will be something that will change with the future that will have a few more states opening up.

allowing home distilling.

Becky Garrison (01:05:13.546)
I think it's going to be like cannabis. You can distill in Washington, you can distill in West Virginia. My guess is they cannot take it out of West Virginia. My guess is they're very, for grown home use, I think they're going to start seeing some of that happening. And the question is, with a lot of the liquor laws, is how big does the sheriff care about this? It really boils down to does the sheriff care? You know, did you tick off the sheriff? Or do you have neighbors that care?

Drew Hannush (01:05:21.096)
And it's for your own use. Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:05:38.383)
Yeah.

Becky Garrison (01:05:43.41)
If you're just doing something by yourself, they might not care. But I would be very concerned to be living next to a distillery just knowing what he's doing is like living next door to a meth house. It could blow up at any time. I mean, we are not joking when we say that this... I mean, I started reporting on this one instance in some distillery break they did out in Eastern Washington, and it took them two days to dynamite the entire operation. And they said it would have been much worse, but the...

Drew Hannush (01:05:55.37)
Yeah.

Becky Garrison (01:06:12.802)
Feds removed all the animals before they started detonating. But you know, so you start looking at the actual destruction of some of these stills. And I mentioned this one that had a woman, Black Mary in the Black Diamond Raid. It took them, there were four giant things, four giant areas. And when the Feds were smashing one, the patrons in the other ones were just starting to smash their bottles ahead of time, knowing this is up. We've lost the battle and that's this.

you know, the nature of the beast. And it was also actually, Black Mary was only 26. And also the largest auxiliary raid in Seattle was by another 20 something woman, Teresa Jones. And that was the case where she just had a large still. She just walked in, the police officer walked in. She was obviously a well-to-do lady on her way to a party.

She just said, oh, there's still there. And she pointed to it. And I guess I presume they confiscated it. They gave her $500 fine and she went to the party because she was lucky. Well, her operation was also smaller than Black Mary's, but she lived in an area where they didn't care. And a lot of that really devolved into, did you really care? And that's because people went to great lengths. I've described this guy named Frank Gann, who set up an operation in a dairy farm because he figured that this cow's smell is gonna be so foul that...

Drew Hannush (01:07:18.316)
Yeah.

Becky Garrison (01:07:34.058)
No one's gonna detect the smell of what I'm growing. And another distiller I mentioned in there, in this book, John Wolfcrot, his grandparents ran a bakery in upstate New York, which is a three-story house that was obviously distilling. And they discovered this, because he was, as a child, was given any accurate information as to why the house blew up one day. And he then went back and discovered that

Drew Hannush (01:07:53.634)
Hahaha

Drew Hannush (01:08:01.522)
Oh wow.

Becky Garrison (01:08:04.022)
It was a family secret. Nobody wanted to tell them. It was not a bakery. Just to get out of this, you don't realize, you see pictures of your relatives, you realize they were badasses. We see them in their quieter, older, more refined days. We don't see them when they were honest to God, badasses.

Drew Hannush (01:08:16.452)
Hahaha

Drew Hannush (01:08:26.124)
Wild and crazy. Yeah, exactly. Well, we didn't take a lot in the days before Instagram and everything else people weren't normally taking pictures of their wild and crazy days too much in the past either for us. So

Becky Garrison (01:08:38.967)
And a lot of stuff doesn't, as you said, a lot of stuff doesn't get written down like the Nesset family that I mentioned. This man took meticulous records of everything and yet when they were renovating the farm, because it's one of the few intact family farms in Whatcom County and they're looking to, it's a Norwegian style farm, it's a historical thing, you're looking to preserve it. They found the still, they found the coil, they never found their recipe.

Drew Hannush (01:08:45.853)
Mmm.

Becky Garrison (01:09:02.626)
They think it was a barley because they think that's what he was growing was barley and not corn. So they're presuming it was a barley based whiskey, but we can't be certain. The only thing we can be certain of is that it wasn't sugarcane because he would not have had the money to afford the sugarcane. Because he was producing what he grew. He was doing this to make extra money to help his family make ends meet.

Drew Hannush (01:09:27.5)
Yeah, and Washington state is a big barley growing. Is it still? It was, I know, for a long time.

Becky Garrison (01:09:32.75)
Oh, and in fact, the Skagit Valley is becoming the breadbasket of the world. You're starting to find a number of distillers, and Copperworks is one of the ones leading this, where they are now contracting with farmers directly to produce specialty grains. Because you know a farmer is going to grow whatever he can make the most money selling, which makes sense. And also what's good for his soil. I mean, if a farmer needs to make a profit. And so instead of saying, I'm going to sell you per bushel.

Drew Hannush (01:09:52.622)
Yeah.

Becky Garrison (01:10:01.158)
he's a great to sell it per acre. And by doing this, the farmer's getting the same money and Jason is now getting the all the varieties and other specialty grains that he wants to make specialty whiskey. So this is a new shift. And I think for whiskey drinkers, they're gonna be really surprised. Westland is coming out with a whole range of different grain reserves. So is Copperworth, so is Westworth. A number of Pacific Northwest distilleries are really taking advantage of sourcing out specialty grains.

And this is going to be very exciting for how this produces different varieties of whiskeys.

Drew Hannush (01:10:34.84)
Well, this is one of the things that I was kind of looking forward to, and I don't know whether they've released it yet or not, but there was supposed to be a Pete experiment going on with Westland that they were going out to the Pete bogs, uh, or finding American Pete basically, and, uh, distilling whiskey using American Pete.

Becky Garrison (01:10:51.246)
Thank you.

I've had one of their, I've had their peated version at proof before they had a, this was the Washington Stillers Guild annual festival pre-COVID. It was 2019 and I had one of their peated whiskeys there. And I do think that they are doing a lot of experimentation. I think you're gonna see more and more peated things coming out. I mean, we are the same parallel as the Scottish Highlands, you know, the same latitude as Bordeaux, which is why you see more Bordeaux.

Rome varieties here and then Oregon's 45th parallel, which is why you see more burgundies there. It's kind of, some people say that's bogus, it doesn't really matter, but it does make sense that in many ways the Tuar of the Skaggott Valley does parallel a lot of that of the Scottish Highlands. But it's also newer soil, so it's producing different varieties, different experimentations, and you're also having a lot of our distillers come from the beer background, so they are distilling their warts.

you know, Copperworks just bought, the pipe brewery just moved to a new place and Copperworks just bought, is buying their facility and they're gonna brew their wort there because that produces a much more flavorful whiskey. It's, so they're going for flavor, not yield and consistency. And I think a lot of other distilleries go for consistency and that's perfectly fine. Your bottle of Lagerbullen is never gonna taste different. It's always gonna taste the same.

Drew Hannush (01:11:53.061)
Mm.

Becky Garrison (01:12:20.478)
and people pay a small fortune to ensure that. These guys are the exact opposite. Let's just take this brain and see what the heck we can produce with it. Let's try this barrel finish. Let's throw this sherry cast finish. There's a lot of barrel sharing programs that go along here. A lot of collaborations with local brewers, local wineries. It's very much a collaborative spirit that's emerged here. And I'm hoping that it can continue. The biggest obstacles I can see here are remain taxes. It's not a cheap.

These spirits cost more than if you buy them elsewhere. And so to convince people it's worth trying these, even though they're taxed off the wazoo.

Drew Hannush (01:12:59.692)
Yeah, this is the challenge. And it's one of those things that when you're going to your store shelf and you see an American single malt and you see a Scotch and you're like, well, they're around the same price. You know, which one should I buy? But this, this idea of terroir to me is what really I think is going to set the U S apart in all types of whiskey, because, um, we have such a diversity of climates and soil conditions. And, um,

Becky Garrison (01:13:25.934)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (01:13:29.32)
You know, aging is going to happen different in different areas. And the thing that's different about our industry versus the Scotts industry is that they have very rigid rules and our rules are a little bit more open. In fact, American single malt still, I don't think as the, uh, they still haven't completely solidified those rules yet, although they have a direction for them. Um, and so that leaves open a lot of opportunity for us to try some interesting thing.

Becky Garrison (01:14:04.168)
and I think that's a key to the idea of the

Becky Garrison (01:14:14.514)
You're going to find that there are some people who just want a whiskey just to get drunk. And there's plenty of opportunities for that. But these are whiskeys for people who want an elevated experience. And I think there's increasing interest in people that want an elevated experience. They don't want to just throw back whatever whiskey that they have so they can get drunk and forget about their day. They really want to have what I would describe as an

an elevated craft experience. And they want to support local farmers. I mean, we're now having initiatives like Salmon Save, where they're growing grain in a way, how do you grow your grain in a way that is proving to be not harmful to the salmon? You know, we have a number of distilleries in this area that are B-Corp certified. That's becoming a value that is becoming increasingly. Westland just became B-Corp certified. It's not easy, but it's a way to show that I care for the environment, I care for my employees, and I care about my product.

This is becoming a huge, a lot of people here grow using organic and sustainable and biodynamic means, even if they're not certified that way. So people start asking questions, where does this product come from? Am I drinking a quality product? You know, this is, you know, if you're drinking Budweiser, you don't care. I mean, which, but by the way, Budweiser was another example of a product that went from being high end, one of the best beers in the country to being something we all make fun of.

You know, and I think sometimes this is marketing. We don't have a Pappy Van Winkle in Washington State. We have more collaborative community. We don't have anybody who can market to that extent. I mean, that was just brilliant marketing. The way Kentucky has marketed itself is just absolutely brilliant. I mean, I have to give them...

Drew Hannush (01:15:58.508)
Yeah, we all take our hats off to them because they really do. You feel the pride in what they're doing. And I think other states, Washington, Colorado, Texas, these are all states that have not been traditional, uh, traditionally thought as distilling states, but they are states that are doing some amazing whiskeys and really adding to the story of what American whiskey can be. And, um, you know, I think

to your point, we talked earlier about the idea that the saloon and when we look at the saloon imagery from Hollywood and you see, you know, them knocking back whiskey and doing all that. And then you watch a current show. I was watching the show billions and they're drinking Johnny Walker blue, but they're just knocking it back. And I'm going, they,

They need to understand that's not really the drinking culture anymore. That our drinking culture is changing. We are more interested in tasting flavors and enjoying more of the story behind the, the whiskey rather than just getting something to get inebriated off.

Becky Garrison (01:16:52.741)
So, I'm going to take a moment to thank you for your time. I'm going to take a moment to thank you for your time.

Becky Garrison (01:17:08.59)
I think it depends on, there's still, cause I was at Seattle Cocktail Week, the Carnival Cocktails, and they had nine Pacific West, they had everything from Jack Daniels to, I was, you know, a Westland was there. I mean, it was a full range of what you could get. And there are some people that walk in there, they take their 12 tokens and just hammer back. The first five, you know, it's like they run around looking for the highest ABV mini cocktails and just slam them down and then.

There's some people and there's other people that want to sit and talk and have a discussion. I think you have different camps of viewers. I mean, there's a reason why McDonald's exists. McDonald's wouldn't exist if people didn't want to just eat food for fuel. There's, there's always going to be people that have the whole wine is mommy juice. You know, the whole, you know, that's just don't even, you know, you're going to have people, you know, the, the whole, you know, party, party kind of.

Let's have, I mean, White Claw for a while disrupted the craft cider market, but now people realize, I think it's, you know, enough people kind of start, that is the return of the craft cider. You know, could the RTD market, I'm hoping it'll start to die down. I've yet to have a really good one, you know, but I think people are, you have different divisions. You have different tribes and different silos. And there's enough people that like mommy juice that, you know, Bethany Frankel's not gonna run out of.

business, you know, but up here a key difference would be people make fun of Ryan Reynolds for opening Aviation Gin in Portland. It is a Hollywood experience. You walk in there and he has an escape room. They make fun of the fact that his wife, who doesn't drink, sells a line of canned cocktails. She does so while insulting the Princess, you know, Princess Catherine, which I think is absolutely...

got off, but you know, that's an anomaly. People do that. You know, if you're one of these, you know, wine people and you all you're talking about is your wine spectator scores, your wine enthusiast scores, people go, give me a break. You know, it's just, oh come on. I mean, they'll laugh at you, they'll look at you, but you're like, you know, we just don't, we don't take, nobody takes Ryan Reynolds seriously. I mean, he says he bought aviation from Christian Krogs, from, you know, the people that now make Westward, you know.

Becky Garrison (01:19:28.502)
they change the recipe, it's now become a party hearty scene. And there's a certain group of 20 somethings, and maybe even men who want to pick up younger women or whatever, there is that culture. There is always going to be this party hearty drinking culture. You know, Jack Daniels is not going to go off the shelf any time in the near future. Enough people want Jack and Coke. Enough people want Tito's handmade vodka, and they think it's actually good vodka. You can't.

That's just what some people like and you know if they want that kind of party atmosphere They you know they like they're the people that they like to wear the glow-in-the-dark Chains and they're the ones who are always putting on the swag that people give them and they love to be photographed And they like to be looking like they're having a party You know that's some people are like that you know and you go to a large-scale alcohol festival, and you're gonna run into those people But but that's not

Drew Hannush (01:20:17.988)
Hehehehe

Becky Garrison (01:20:21.482)
That is the antithesis of this craft culture. I'm seeing people coming together for trivia nights, music events, they're coming together for community fundraisers. These tasting rooms and brew pubs are becoming like the church in the Pacific Northwest. It's where people gather for the community connection. You go to a local beer festival and it's not just a drunken beer festival. It's where beer is connecting. They're eating local food, they're having local connections, they're meeting up with their local brewers.

You know, same with, you know, distillery festivals. They're much more localized and you find very few people here are owned by big brands. And even someone like Wessel is owned by a big brand is still a craft player. They still play and still show up at the craft event. So you don't, I mean, except for aviation, I can't think of a distillery that really, like, is like kind of operating by itself and producing a subpar product. You know, that's just isn't that the,

Converting, you know, can selling to the masses is not what's done up here. And if people want it, they want it I mean people don't have a lot of good taste look at I mean the Applebee's and McDonald's all those places wouldn't be in existence If people had taste

Drew Hannush (01:21:25.263)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:21:34.328)
Well, this is what we say about why, you know, if you look at the bottom shelf, the reason there's a bottom shelf is because there's an audience for that. And you can find some gems down there, but for the most part, it's gonna be the stuff that is produced in high amounts so that people can either mix it or just get drunk on it or whatever it may be. And so everything has a purpose. If it didn't, it wouldn't be there. So...

Becky Garrison (01:21:43.521)
in.

Drew Hannush (01:22:02.776)
So let's talk just and dive in, cause I'm gonna let people really get into reading your book to get some more of that later history after prohibition and the rest, cause it's an interesting story as well. But you also spend a lot of time in the book covering each of the individual craft distilleries that are around the state now and giving a little background on them as well. If somebody is coming to Washington state and they have, let's say,

Becky Garrison (01:22:22.638)
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush (01:22:31.693)
four days. How would they best conquer this trail?

Becky Garrison (01:22:38.794)
I would say that your first day would be starting your day in Seattle. There's a number of distilleries in Seattle. The two, the ones, they're all offer unique opportunities for you to kind of see different things, I think. And in that sense, I would look at Copperworks and Westland definitely. They're two of the single malt distilleries. This is from a whiskey perspective.

Drew Hannush (01:23:04.458)
Mm-hmm.

Becky Garrison (01:23:05.294)
Two Bar Spirits has the first one to distill 100% organic corn with their bourbons, a very excellent selection of bourbons. Old Law Cabin is now taking over an old recipe. They took over the 206 Bastillerie location and they're now doing, revising an old recipe called Old Law Cabin 1840s, which is a very interesting story.

lovely space worth going to. And just, there's also, and not that far from them is Fast Penny Spirits, a woman owned distillery that does Amaro, which is a, normally I'm not a huge fan of liqueurs, but these are very nice and smooth. There's also letterpress distilling. Fremont Mischief has a very nice view if you wanna go for a place for a restaurant. And also next to Fast Penny is Big Gin if you want a nice tour of a gin distillery. And I think,

just think so I would start there then if you wanted to do a short day trip to Edmonds's scratch distillery another distillery owned by a woman which is very new and she does her whiskies are very smooth very delicious and in Linwood is Temple Distilling they're starting with their gin but they've started their first bourbon and they're going to be doing a single malt shortly if you wanted to I think you could go to a day trip on Whidbey Island which is nearby

There you have another, the third women owned distillery, Cutlass Bay Distillery and Whidbey Island Distillery. It's a very lovely day trip. If you wanted to go up the coast further, I list some coastal distilleries. There's some in Bellingham. You could, it would be an overnight, but you could go to San Juan Islands and see Orcas Island Distillery, San Island, the other, or San Juan Island Distillery. And then further up, you can go as far up as like Arlington. So if you wanted to just go up the coast, you could do that.

Venturing out, that would be that you decide if you want to go venturing out I think venturing to what the Walla Yakima area would produce another very good round. Oh and I forgot to mention Wildridge has a absolutely gorgeous wine bar and they also sell their brandy. They're one of the wineries turned distilleries. They're definitely worth visiting. So I think if you go out west there you'll find

Drew Hannush (01:25:25.419)
OK.

Becky Garrison (01:25:29.47)
Yakima has a good collection of distilleries, as does Walla Walla. The, as you go further, and if you also want to go south to Seattle, so you may want to, instead of going east, if you want to go south, there's a number of distilleries along the corridor as you get down to Portland. So I would say that would be, that the first day would definitely be Seattle. You decide for yourself if you want to go north and explore the northern coast, or do you want to go south and head down towards Portland.

If you have limited time, if you have more time venturing out further east, the further east you get, you have more isolated distilleries. You know, but, but for example, you can hit up the Olympic Peninsula and hit up for three or four distilleries, you know, or you could hit, I would say, look at the book and see to yourself. What region outside of, I mean, Seattle would be a must see because there's so many there, you know, and then from there, you decide where do I want to take my day trips? There's a day trip to Bainbridge Island would be Bainbridge Island.

or Bangor's organic distillers is an amazing stop. And the man is a whiskey librarian. The photo of my book is, Keith Barnes took that photo. I mean, he has a library, if you can just ever get in there, if you're a whiskey fan, you go, oh my, I mean, it's pretty spectacular. And he's also does very good organic whiskies. And he need a single grain, but not American single malt. He does like single grain wheat and other.

Drew Hannush (01:26:46.256)
Hmm

Becky Garrison (01:26:58.514)
And then there's high side distilling which is another one that also does a very good single ball and also number ranges of Italian liqueurs So it depends I would say it depends on me Do you like going on fairies if you like going on fairies and that kind of stuff? San Juan Islands Bay Bridge Island, Whidbey Island have some interesting day trips. You could combine that with some interesting fun It also depends on how much driving you want to do. I think going up down the Seattle coast is beautiful going

Drew Hannush (01:27:21.636)
Heh heh.

Becky Garrison (01:27:25.094)
Southland I-85 is not the most scenic route, but if you want to head down towards Portland, there's a lot of distilleries along the way that would be just fun for like little quick stop-offs.

Drew Hannush (01:27:36.296)
Yes, I had actually plotted out a trip because I was part of, before I started Whiskey Lore, Travel Feels Life was my travel podcast. There was a travel conference that was in the Tri-Cities. I was scheduled to go to a winery there.

Becky Garrison (01:27:52.302)
Thank you.

Drew Hannush (01:27:59.028)
And I was looking at them like, well, there's distilleries around here too. So you can kind of pair up going to a winery, go to a couple of distilleries and even sneak across the border into Oregon and you got clear Creek. Isn't, isn't that far across the border and, uh, some other options like that. And Oregon has its own trail as well. So, um, yeah, lots of, lots of options. If you get up in that area.

Becky Garrison (01:28:22.41)
If somebody's a real single and all fanatic, another thing you could do is the Northwest Whiskey Trail, which starts in Portland and ends at British Columbia. That would be another four-day option. But a lot of it depends to me what else you want to see in an area. To me, I love going on ferries. So I'd love going to Whidbey Island. I love just walking on the beach and San Juan Islands and Bay Bridge Islands. Someone who's not so island-oriented and wants a more urban scene might not care for that.

You know, because some of the distilleries are a little harder to get to. And you get to the tasting room and you're like, this is tiny. This is little. This isn't, you know, the whiskey is so big, but the tasting room is so little, you know, and it can be a little, you know, a little out of the way of a fair amount of driving. Cause this is a very long state. It takes about a full day to drive from one end to the other. So it depends. But the reason I started in Seattle is

Drew Hannush (01:28:51.661)
Right.

Drew Hannush (01:28:59.256)
Hehehehehehe

Becky Garrison (01:29:18.85)
there's only two distilleries in Spokane, Dry Fly and Brown Family Spirits. So if you went from the Spokane to Seattle, I mean, that would take you like, I did a press trip of that once, it took 10 days to get from one end of the state to the other. I mean, you could visit a lot of them, but it would take you probably two weeks, about a month I would say, probably, in order, just the sheer amount of driving, in order to not have a rushed experience. Because you need to...

look at the towar, take time to absorb the ethos of the place. You don't want to just like, oh, here's an island. It's like walking into the festivals, I said, just grabbing the first thing you say and leaving. What is the feel of this space like? What is the towar where they're coming from? You can feel the island breeze. Now I see why your whiskey has a bit of a salty flavor to it. Now I see this because you can really experience the towar for some of these places. Now some of them are just, you know.

located in an industrial park. It's like going to Woodinville for wine tasting. You're not going to get a sense of the terroir per se, but you know that's an area where you can watch how the wineries and the distilleries interact with each other. So that's another option I just thought of for someone who if you want to combine wine and whiskey you could easily go to Woodinville and have that in the context of a day trip. There's a number of different

So I think it depends on what kind of experience do you want to have and how much driving do you want to do?

Drew Hannush (01:30:47.34)
Yeah, I'm a driver, so I have no qualms with going. In fact, I think there was a lot of driving on my trip, and I actually think I was driving down into Oregon on that trip as well. So yeah, I mean, that is very true. And Seattle, they're all gonna be close together, so you may not even have to rent a car or do anything like that to get from one to the next.

Becky Garrison (01:31:07.618)
You could see all the Seattle distilleries and the one in Edmonds and Linwood by public transportation. You could get to a couple of the distilleries in Tacoma and that area by public transportation now beyond Tacoma and Olympia. Now, now you're talking a little bit dicey. Like you want to spend, you know, the entire day on public transportation to get to one distillery, you know, and you know,

Drew Hannush (01:31:17.454)
Okay.

Drew Hannush (01:31:34.432)
Yeah.

Becky Garrison (01:31:35.862)
But there's some areas that if you didn't have a car, let's say you could do Seattle and slightly north and slightly south. Yes, you could definitely have an enjoyable time.

Drew Hannush (01:31:46.488)
Very good. Well, Becky, tell me how can people get a hold of your book? Is it available on Amazon, other places?

Becky Garrison (01:31:56.298)
Basically a number of bookstores, a surprising number of bookstores are carrying it and it's available on Amazon, the publisher Arcadia Publishing's website. My website BeckyGarrison.com has information about the book. My future news about this is posted to my Instagram account Becky underscore Garrison or my Facebook page Becky Garrison writer. So that's how they can find out more about the book and find out more about me if they're interested.

Drew Hannush (01:32:24.824)
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for going through and talking through so much history. We've only scratched the surface, but we've got some good teasers in there for some of the stories that are in there. You did a nice job in researching that. As with all whiskey history, we're going to continue to learn and more things will be uncovered over time. So it's definitely worth following authors on Instagram and Facebook and other places to keep up with all of that.

Thank you again for being on the podcast and best of luck in moving forward.

Becky Garrison (01:32:59.714)
Thank you very much, you too.