Ep. 26 - Jim Massey of Fugitives Spirits

Transcript

Drew (00:14):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, drew Hamish, the Amazon bestselling author of Whiskey Lores Travel Guide to Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon. And I want to welcome you to an encore interview that I conducted back in early 2021 with Jim Massey, who is the co-founder of Fugitive Spirits. And I'd like to thank Jim and his team for reaching out to me because I thought I had met every distiller or been to every distillery in Tennessee, and not all distillers have distilleries. And while a lot of brands look to outsourcing to get started, well, Jim has actually been distilling on another distiller's established equipment. So we're going to take the time here to learn a little bit more about Jim's brand, the whiskey that he's producing. I'll do a little tasting with some bottles that he sent to me, and we'll also hear about the legendary writer society that the brand is named after.

Drew (01:20):
So sit back, relax, and hear my conversation with Jim Massey of Fugitive Spirits. Thanks for sending me a couple bottles of whiskey. Always good to have an opportunity to taste and learn about something new. And I just recently did my trip across Tennessee and did the distillery trail as much as I could. I went to 24 distilleries this summer in Tennessee. So then when I got an email and saw Tennessee distiller, I thought, wait a second. I didn't see this one on my map. So give us a little bit of a background on fugitive spirits and who you guys are and what you're doing in the whiskey world.

Jim (02:11):
Yeah. Well, so I guess in the beer world, they call 'em gypsy brewers. I'm a bit of a gypsy distiller, so I want to distinguish that from someone that's just a contract brand. I actually go in and do my own distillations, but I go in on other folks' equipment. So we're invested in the land. I wanted to go out and really from the foundational perspective, highlight Tennessee Grain from a agricultural perspective. And so it is taken me a while to build a network of, and I felt doing that. We wanted to then grow specialty grains in Tennessee. It's like, it's not worth doing unless I can do it by emphasizing Tennessee agriculture, because growing up in the state, even as a little kid, my dad will tell you, I wasn't even a teenager. I think I was about 10 years old. And I said, well, why aren't we doing anything with a farm? He's like, well, we can't afford to grow anything. It's cheaper for us to put the fields in pick, which is basically where the government pays you not to grow anything to subsidize agricultural prices than it is to grow it and try to sell it. And I said, well, Jack Daniels right over there. They got, they're bringing in train cars of corn. Why would we sell them? And he's like, well, we can't grow it cheap enough. We can't. And I'm like, well, it's like, well, then why don't we build our own distillery?

Jim (03:42):
He's laughing about, he laughed about that. And

Drew (03:45):
So you're kind of coming from, because I'm doing research now on the whiskey rebellion, and of course we talk a lot about farmer distillers, and that really is the backbone of the whiskey industry. Started with those little farmer distillers who were trying to do something with that crop of corn. They couldn't either sell or get to market, whatever it may have been. So

Jim (04:08):
That's the thing that people miss. Whiskey's an agricultural product, and it should be celebrated as an agricultural product. And those farmers, if you put the corn in the bin, then the weevils will get to it and it'll ruin, and the cattle will still eat it, but it's not as good for 'em. And you know, can't want to make grits out of it when it gets too trashy. So how do you preserve it? The best way to preserve it, make whiskey out of it, and then you have something that actually appreciates in value now. So that's where you saw most of the original distillers were millers to begin with. So they had the extra grain. It's like, okay, well if we're not selling it for bread or for whatever uses there are outside of distilling, then they turn around, use that extra grain and distill it, and then that way it preserves the value.

Jim (04:59):
So it goes back, obviously centuries, not just in the United States, but you were talking about Scotland and Ireland, and even you can go back to distillations in ancient Egypt. So fermentations going on. But from American perspective, it is an agricultural enterprise. And that's where I feel like we got the most traction when we got the laws changed. I was one of the guys, when you see the picture of the governor signing the bill to allow for the distillery, the new craft distillers in Tennessee, you'll see my big face behind him. And when we got the bill signed, and I was really excited to be able to bring some bipartisan support in there to, that's a good thing about spirits. It's a nonpartisan, right?

Drew (05:51):
Yeah. Everybody likes to have a sip here. There. Yeah, we'll talk about that. Because you started doing this from what I understand, around 2016. Were you already in the thought process of getting a distillery up and running back in 2010 or so? When it goes way

Jim (06:09):
Back further than that, I saw an article, it may have been in New York Times, so the Wall Street Journal where my buddy Lance Winters out in California was making a bourbon, and I didn't know him at the time, so I flew out. I was like, oh, wow, somebody's making bourbon in California. Because I had, again, since I was 10 years old, I'm like, well, we need to make do our own whiskey. When my dad said, well, you can't compete with the big guys. And in the seventies and eighties bourbon and was not, there were distilleries closing in Kentucky.

Drew (06:42):
There was no craft distilling.

Jim (06:44):
There was no craft distillery. And so went to California, I was like, well, wow, if they're making bourbon and getting some momentum, I want to want to at least get on the sidelines to see what's going on. And at that point, the American Distillers Institute, there may have been 10 members at that point in time. I mean, weren't many. So I joined right there. It was mostly engineering type guys that were looking into it. It was off the radar for most people, but I wanted to get in and see what was happening there to get a ringside seat and see how can we do this in Tennessee. Now, the hurdles were really, really still high in Tennessee because the state law didn't allow for new distilleries to come in. So it's like, look, we can really make a business out of it. I can make a pitch to the legislature to make those changes happen.

Jim (07:40):
And I had worked at the Senate Finance Ways and Means Committee for Senator Henry from Nashville, who was the head of it. So I had some familiarity with the processes down at the legislature, and it didn't hurt. I've got family members, well, family member that's been in a lobbying group, and my dad actually was the head of the Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Association for over 25 years. Oh, okay. So I kind of grew up at the dining room table talking about what whiskey's selling and why, and he's all about scotch like, and again, as a little kid, I'm like, well, why can't we make Tennessee whiskey as good as scotch? He's like, oh, well, it's made different. It's not the same thing. I'm like, well, we should be able to make the best whiskey in the world here as well. So all these things over decades came together for me to then I was like, I'm going to go down and talk to some folks in the legislature about, let's look at getting a craft spirits bill going in terms of the opportunity that it'll give for Tennessee farmers.

Jim (08:49):
I looked at it as not just an economic impact, which obviously it's had or an employment impact, but really as an opportunity to help preserve the farmland. One of the things that breaks my heart is you, if you just did a recent trip in Tennessee, is you travel across the state, and we have lots of people moving here, and then all the farmland gets built on, because that's easier to build on for various reasons. And then it's like, wait, we're losing what's beautiful about Tennessee, and that just goes to my marrow of who I am as a person, and the Tennessee countryside is very important to me to say that the Tennessee Farm Agricultural aspect is in, I mean, it literally is worn into my hands and into my soul. So those things were important, but also from an entrepreneur entrepreneurial standpoint, I realized that there was some real opportunities for Tennessee as well.

Jim (09:46):
And of course, bourbon was getting all the play, because you can make bourbon in any of the lower 48, right? Bourbon was being made in California, then Michigan and then New York, and the Ralph and Gable Lorenzo, I got met before they had even started as they were getting up and going up at Tule Town in New York. Met them and we're still great friends. And I made some great friends in the industry, Wes and Lincoln Henderson that started Angels Envy. Wes and I are great buddies and met decades ago, and I enjoy, I actually was with them when they bottled the first bottles of Angels Envy. They I, oh,

Drew (10:29):
Wow, nice.

Jim (10:31):
I still had the Lincoln. Wes gave me the nose and glass we were using, and Lincoln's like, that's my nose and glass.

Drew (10:38):
Jim

Jim (10:39):
Came all the way. Jim came all the way up here, let him have that. I'm like, probably should give that back to Wes was like,

Drew (10:46):
So this all had to be in inspiring you even more, because while they were right around that same time here, what fascinates me is that you had people like Andy Nelson at Nelson's, Greenbrier and h Clark Distilling, and all of these different distillers all at the same time, kind of coming to this idea at the same time. It's almost like it was just meant to be, get it there. I mean, it's like all these people are sitting back there going, wait a second. We have this whole state that's known for whiskey. W w why are we not doing something?

Jim (11:24):
Well, that's interesting. I hear it. It just happened a minute ago. Charlie calling me up with a big baritone. I guess we're two big bearded guys as well. Charlie calling up going, Hey, so what's going on with this distillery? Heath played an integral part. He actually had the bill drafted for the craft distillery bill and got a senator to bring it into committee. Anyway, they're a whole nother podcast. So

Drew (11:52):
Yeah,

Jim (11:54):
It's interesting. Jack Daniels had actually tried to get the Brown foreman for Jack Daniels, had tried to get that law changed and allow for distillery to be able to come into Nashville a couple years before that. And it got shot down on committee the like, well, how did a bunch of guys that really aren't political and don't have the budget

Drew (12:18):
Around

Jim (12:18):
Foreman, how did they get it done when we didn't? Well, there were a whole bunch of little balls in air, and it's really intriguing from a political standpoint about how that actually got passed. But suffice it to say that Thelma Harper, Senator Thelma Harper, who was a legendary voice down there, she got behind it. I was able to get her to understand how the impact it could have on Nashville, and she was able to get behind it and brought the Black Caucus in to help support the bill. And then some folks out of the trucking industry, avert expressed as a trucking company. It's like, well, what do they have to do with whiskey that hadn't been for them? I'll just tell you, the bill wouldn't have gotten passed really. Cause they called it and said, Hey, look, we think this our will be a good thing for us.

Drew (13:11):
Nice. Yeah,

Jim (13:12):
There's some interesting other real juicy tidbits about some other guys in the industry that didn't want to see it happen. Yeah. Cause they didn't want competition. But the brand news was that the big guys like Jack Daniels and Diagio that owned Yeah, yeah. Very. We're very supportive of, so that helped as

Drew (13:29):
Well. That's great. Yeah. Well, it does nothing but bring more attention to the state in terms of whiskey. And I think everywhere I go these days, it seems that George Dickel is taking advantage of these distilleries opening up and taking some of their supplies of whiskey and helping them get started. So,

Jim (13:52):
Well, it's a farm team for them. It's free, free product development for the most part that they, it's like, oh, we don't have to invest in it. We'll let them do it. And when we talk, we'll, we'll just acquire it.

Drew (14:06):
Right. So I think part of your, what's interesting in your bottles is the name here, fugitive Spirits and me not actually being someone who is, I started reading up on the fugitives. I'm going to let you tell a little bit about who they are and how they inspired you. But we're going into the realm of poetry and I, it's just like, okay, this is the one thing where I have a blind spot, because I just really haven't dived that much into the idea of poetry. So it was really interesting when I started researching for this podcast, because I said, wait a second. Okay. All right. I am really out of my element here. So describe the fugitives to me, where that name comes from and how it inspired you to make that the name of your company.

Jim (15:05):
Well, the fugitives, first of all, were a group of folks around Vanderbilt University and the a hundred years ago, they consider primarily five core members. Robert Penn, Lauren, John Crow, ransom, Allen Tate, Donald Davidson, Laura writing Jackson. So they had a female member, the Fugitives, and in a men's group as poets and artists, they warned against the dehumanization of industrialization. They said, we want the makers, the farmers, the people doing the work. We need to celebrate them. That's where you find yourself. That's where, as a people, as a country can be bigger, because we need to have that. I sense of identity. A lot of the futures were known as the agrarian, because you look at, it's like, well, let's celebrate the efforts of the farmer as opposed to just industrial opportunism. So those people in the Fugees include some other great notaries in Nashville. I need to, certainly, Ridley Wills and Jesse Wills were members of the very well-known family here in Nashville.

Jim (16:25):
But you also had Sidney Hirsch, who was a flamboyant, an actor. So wasn't just poets, but these guys really wanted to celebrate the farmer that agrarian ate the makers. And they saw that as something is what to aspire to our identity. It's really about the creative aspect of who we are. And John Crow Ransom and Donald Davidson were from Giles County. So I grew up knowing about the Fugitives, cause it was a racy name. It's like the fugitives. It's like, oh, it sounds, oh, the future John Crow Ransom the church. Your grandfather knew him. Well, my grandfather used to quote, well, aligned from a poem, one of John Crow ransom's great poems, grand Grand Guc won one of his award-winning poem. But it was one that my grandfather liked to quote to me. So the Grand Gucci grant, Gucci is the hell you would say it anyway, so, well, I say that's where the name comes from, Ransom's poem. But what I saw, and in hindsight, I probably should have named the Whiskey Cup James Massey's whiskey, because everyone's like, well, who fugitives is that? What company is that? It sounds like some other entity. I'm like, no, it's It's me. Yeah. I'm like, that's my name on the ball.

Drew (17:47):
Where's the one armed man?

Jim (17:49):
That's right. Yeah. But I chose you, as we talked earlier, before we started the poet, who are the poets, who are the people who are our bar barometer on who we are as a people? And to me, when I moved to Nashville in the late eighties, back up here in the late eighties, and there's a core group of artists and creatives that I believe served as the foundation of what has made Nashville, now that it's Citi, you go, oh, well, is it the money that HCAs invested in downtown? Or the No, it's because we are a creative community. Jack White, the musician moved here. Cause there's a core creative community within the, and it's artists as well as musicians. And it's not a big group, but it gives us a sense of, I'm fortunate to be friends with a lot of those guys, and I really celebrate them.

Jim (19:02):
I thought, that's really what makes Nashville special. I said, it's kind of like the original fugitives, these poets that are lead-ins, that sense of creativity. And I was like, wow. So the confluence of those ideals, I thought I wanted to just name it the fugitives because they celebrated the farmer in an artistic, in poetry and in writing. And I want to celebrate the farmer and our creativity and how I make whiskey. And so I thought I probably shot above my fighting weight on that. That's the ideal I aspire to. And it's one of those things that very few people know who they are. They're like, most people see fusions. They think of the, because the moonshine thing took off so much, they're like, oh, it's an illusion to the moonshine. It's like, eh. It's kind of on the other end of the spectrum. It's the sophisticated farmer is who we're talking about, the guys that believe in, it's a sense of reflection on who we are and what has gone into this model. It's not just a flash in a pan marketing piece.

Drew (20:12):
So the fun part for me is that having lived in Nashville, I've seen that creative community, amazing. You can go into any coffee shop and hear talent that should be performing on a national stage. And I actually moved to Nashville with the idea back in 1995 of jumping into the music business because I had gotten a degree in music engineering. And I said, okay, you put up or shut up, go. I was doing some songwriting on the side, and I went to my first songwriters association meeting. And as if that weren't overwhelming enough, one of the guys that was playing his song up on stage was a song called Don't Laugh at Me. And it was maybe six months later, that song was number one on the country music charts. And they're getting up there and they're putting their heart out on the stage. And you see this artistic talent and the passion that they put behind it. I mean, you go from thinking of, oh, Nashville, it's just a center of country music to wow, there is really a lot of creative talent in that city. Talk a little bit about how you got your distillery set up, kind of the journey to get there.

Jim (21:40):
So we are currently using the facility at Corsair. Those guys are awesome. Just really, really cool. And let me come in and call it the big, got a big pot still 850 gallon pot, still called Papa Smurf down there.

Jim (21:56):
Yeah, it's great. I started at another place, outgrew them pretty quick. But again, I had to find that infrastructure for those heirloom grains that I wanted grown and then make it affordable. And then know that before we could start the brand. So I went in and help another farm family started distillery down in Louisiana and really proud of that. And it's still going and doing and doing well down there with that ethic of grain to glass. So with fugitives, of course, we aspire to go build our own facility. Well, what I want to do is establish that our grains could make a premium whiskey. The relationship with Corsair has been really good, and I don't see that changing for a while. Cause it's for me to go and build that and have that same facility and doesn't make a lot of sense,

Drew (22:58):
A lot of expense to get distilleries up. And so it sounds like your focus right now is on the grain that you're used. So talk about the corn and why this particular grain, what the grain is and why it drew you in. That

Jim (23:15):
Was a real hunt for me. And originally I wanted to go Tennessee Red Cob because it was something that grew up with my grandmother always kept Indian corn around. We always grew up in the garden. And so those heirloom corns were always intrigued me and it was like all the flavors are involved. And when I got in with the American distillers and 20 years ago back with those guys and looked at that, I'm like, wait, there are a lot of the congeners that can come through on the distillation. Nobody's talking about the, they want to talk about the, oh, it's a rye or a wheat. Just in those two big general terms. And then working with Lincoln, distilling with who Beared Jermaine Rub out of who does Brandy's and a number of other folks, Fred, no, from Beam that got me really, really was like, Hey, I'm really excited about this idea of let's find a great corn.

Jim (24:10):
One of the oldest varieties is that hickory cane, they call it dent corn. It is a white corn. It didn't need great soil to grow in the ears. Grew tall on the cubs so the deer couldn't get to it. It doesn't get quite the yield that modern hybrids do, or especially what a GMO hybrid would give, but it's got a great flavor and it makes great grits. So I found someone that was growing it and growing it sustainably without using pesticides and herbicides. And I'm like, wow, let's get it. So I had to pay a real premium for it. And so I was really excited to distill that. And then I had another, not, it's still an heirloom variety, but not an ancient heirloom variety that was grown by the late Alfred Ferris up at Wendy Eggerss as an organic farm. And the Ferris family's been a great friends of ours forever.

Jim (25:00):
And Alfred is a Joel Salatin type character. Or was he passed away this past year, but just a real way ahead of his time. A great organic farmer then. So we are used a variety of his corn for our number one mash. When I say airing, what I mean is open pollinated. So you can grow your corn and you got your corn seed. You don't have to go pay a corporation to get your corn seed. Yeah, corn was our first mash bill, our number one mash bill, and then the hickory cane. It's very interesting. So when I got the hickory cane, I was like, I really want to see what this will do. And so I did a high corn percentage on the mash bill just to see what the flavors were going to be, what cos would come through. And that first isolation was beautiful. And I was like, wow. I'm like, well, hey, there you have it. I tweaked it a little bit and then that's what became Grand Goating. Okay. Cause it was beautiful from the start, I sent a sample out to Anthony Diaz blue at the tasting panel that wasn't even a year old, and I scored a 93.

Drew (26:15):
Oh, nice. So this is a Tennessee whiskey, and from what you're describing when you say it's like 95% corn probably in that range and no rye or

Jim (26:28):
No no rye. I had one whiskey self acclaimed whiskey expert literally yell at me. He's like, there is Ryan this. I'm like, I know I made it. No, there's no right. Yeah. But it, I will tell you from the malted barley Tennessee, actually Tennessee's now getting the place where we could are getting some high quality barley growing. And so we may migrate to it, but when I was having to go get barley, I was like, well, if I'm going to get barley, let me get the best, what's my favorite drink barley? And I was like, well, I'm a real big red breast fan. Okay. So I actually imported my barley for that from the red breast region for red. So I used the Irish barley from that. So they're like, wait, you're not true Tennessee, because you're not. Well, I see us migrating there now. I'm working with a couple guys and we've got a new malting facility that's happening here where we're going to be able to then create a malt locally that can hit that quality. But for right now, we use the Irish malted barley. Well,

Drew (27:37):
I think that's what some people miss, is that to be a Tennessee whiskey, the rules don't say that all the grains have to come from Tennessee. So just like B Bourbon in Kentucky, if it's straight Kentucky bourbon, it can have grains coming from Minnesota. And that's fine. So this one really off of the nose has got a lot of, there's a lot of apple in this to me. And it's not like a sour apple that sometimes you get a lot of green apple, I think, in SCOs. But this one really comes with a sweet apple smell with a, I mean, it's got, the other thing that I sometimes have to relate first and say it almost has kind of a yeasty kind of smell to it. But then I hear a lot of people refer to that as biscuits, butter and biscuits. Well,

Jim (28:33):
There is a right butter biscuit kind of aspect, but you, it's like that fruit note. Where is that? And it's interesting because the first bottles we put out were younger. What you have there is four years over four years old,

Jim (28:53):
Those notes went from a persimmon sort of to a persimmon apple kind of thing happening. I don't know if you persimmon's more closer to a fig is a fruitier not as sweet as a sweet prune, but there's a tartness like the apple. Again, I can't claim that that's just what the corn did, right? Yeah. People asked me like, well, where are you going to go with it? I'm, I was sitting there talking to the dean of agriculture for one of the big universities here about, it's like, well, what would you do experiments? I was like, well, I was like, man, I said, in a month I could have a hundred barrels up here just with my one variety of corn, looking at different ways that we could distill it. And then we would need to age those for 10 years so that we can see exactly what those flavor profiles do at the bottom line.

Jim (29:43):
What we know is we're not going to make, it's be bad. It's going to be great whiskey no matter what. Is it just extraordinary. And so we're tweaking that. One of the great things I've been able to do at where I distill now is really control our fermentation temperatures and really lock that in. There's some give and take, you know, want to get some of those, that high caramel popcorn kind of notes that come through that you get that folks will pay for Papi Van Winkle that it's like, well wait. Or some of the guys that are releasing stuff, it's like, wow, that's really extraordinary. He's like, well, where do you get those notes? I really, like I said, go back to Hubbert and his distillations with Brandy and seeing the choices that he was making. And it's like, well wait, this is what this tastes like at two years, but look at what it did at five years and here's what it is at eight years. I'm like, oh my goodness. So then you're like, well how does that translate into the whiskey world? And that's something that folks, we got a number of brands, some by a lot of folks repackaging stuff, guys actually making unique whiskeys in Tennessee. There are a few here. I tell people, I mean, we could have 200 and nobody's really going to be you. You're competing with each other. But we can make that many varieties out of just a few heirloom corns. Yeah,

Drew (31:12):
Well, because you've got other grains that you may be working with to create your mash bills. It's how you treat it, whether you're doing it as a Tennessee whiskey, whether you're doing it as a bourbon. Yeah, there's so many different variables that you can add in. And then we're talking about pot stills and the different shapes of pot stills, or if you're using a column still to do it. So that's going to change some things, what you do with your barrels and how you're aging them, what types of barrels you may be using if you're going to do a finishing or something like that. So I mean, it does, it's amazing that you can really hand the same mash bill to two different people and you'll end up with two different types of whiskey just by their history, how they distill, whether they ferment the grains longer than somebody else does. So many variables, the yeast that you use it, it's just endless the different things that you can do. So

Jim (32:16):
A lot of fun. That's where the fun is.

Drew (32:18):
Yeah. Well, and then replicating that. So where do you get to the point where you say, Ooh, we nailed it now, did somebody write that down so that we can do that again?

Jim (32:31):
Well, I do have a profile for both that I want to hit. It was interesting. I actually, a really good friend, Larry Weibel, the Corneas Vanderbilt chair of research at Vanderbilt University. He's a great friend of mine, really, really smart. He knows words I can't pronounce, but one of his mentors was earned the Nobel Prize a few years back. And Larry said, well, you mind if we come down and walk through a distillation with you? And I'm like, sure, that'd be great. So I'm sitting here, this country boy from Tennessee talking to the Corneas Vanderbilt chair of research at Vanderbilt and the Nobel Prize winner. And I cut two more of their scientists for a couple of hours and I'm like, wait, how did I get here? Right? Yeah.

Drew (33:27):
Why are they asking me questions? I should be asking them questions.

Jim (33:32):
But interesting, one of Larry's specialties is researching congeners for taste, cos for insects, actually. And I said, well, I'm doing this distillation. I said, I'm tasting it as it's coming across. I know where the cut is. You guys probably have instruments and measurements that you can have. And I'm sitting here talking like, this is a big deal and you guys probably have instruments so you could measure where I'm doing the cut. You can go, okay, well we can mechanize that. And Michael, the Nobel Prize winner was said, he was like, no, no, no, no. He goes, the brain works way faster than we can. He goes, we can't replicate what we actually could do that. Yeah, it does have to be a hands-on process. And so it was good to get some affirmation from some of the top minds in the world saying, no, that's a real, that it does take a talent to do that and really approach that.

Jim (34:32):
And so I will say it is very interesting. There are dials and there are measurements on a still, you can look at the vapor temperature can look, certainly, you can look at what the proof is as it's coming off. But every ferment and every distillation are different. But what's interesting is by the time I combine the spirit run I am, and I look at my samples, I'm really, I've, I'm pretty darn consistent with it. So that's also doing some stuff that my, I've had some guys in the industry say we don't know anybody else that's doing that from an approach standpoint. I, we'll keep my cards close to much. So

Drew (35:21):
No secrets being revealed on today's episode.

Jim (35:23):
No secrets being revealed. So we have some real special, in hindsight, I wish I had more. Yeah. So for me right now, it is a real dance. Covid rocked everybody, rocked the world. I mean, the big guys ended up selling a lot more through people stocking up for us. Things were a little more uncertain. We sell more out of the airport than anywhere. And of course, airport traffic went from 14, 15 million people went through before covid for in the prior 12 months to nothing like 10%

Drew (35:59):
Out. And

Jim (36:01):
So the tourists were gone. So we really took a hit on where our cash flow was going. Anyway, so we got some other things that are happening as well. You were asking about location, we were talking with two different locations downtown to put in a tasting room to put in so that we can, not only do I need the access still that I'm currently using, but I could use more capacity. And so we would, in addition to that, create more capacity at a new location. And that, I'll knock on wood, but I feel by the end of the year we'll have that in place as well.

Drew (36:42):
Very nice. Another place mean Nashville's got a few things going on with distilleries downtown, but there are a lot of little tasting rooms and places. But Nashville is a great place to go downtown and hop from one place to the next walk around. Part of what I miss about Nashville now living in South Carolina is I live in the great town, Greenville, South Carolina, but Nashville is considered a big city. So you get big city events there and we get some events here, but not a ton of them. And you have all that talent floating around. So man, if you have entertainment dollars to spend, you can go downtown now and you can go sip some whiskey, then you can go to a club and watch some great musicians play and always feel comfortable walking downtown Nashville too. So it's just a fantastic spot to visit. So yeah. So what do you think you'll be right downtown or

Jim (37:50):
We'll be, we're looking at two locations right now. And then it's interesting, just yesterday I had some folks come, well, we got, there's some other spots. So Nashville was growing so much before like n to try to put a distillery in. Cause then it is production space, right? And so to look at the retail rates they wanted, it was like, okay, this is just that.

Drew (38:15):
Yeah.

Jim (38:16):
But the opportunities to come along are coming to us. I don't know, use this. Maybe somebody's on there. Well, I've got this building, I want you in there. There's some restrictions about, it's like, well wait, we were going here, but these guys are going to let us come in. So there's some minimum square footage that we need to actually put this still in. And then for what it's like, I want to give people an experience, a real whiskey experience, and let them enjoy some of the processes that we do. I've got friends that I've sent off all the experience, like Tennessee Waltz. I probably did a hundred different versions of that when we were originally, when I was really originally profiling that. And as I, I had friends, they'd come over, I'm like, well, here, just take this with you. The remnants of a bottle. I'm like, man, where can I get more of that? I don't don't even know what that was. Now,

Drew (39:11):
So talk about Tennessee Walls, because that's the one I'm nosing right now. And this one, you decided to go with a bourbon profile instead of running it through charcoal. What was your reasoning behind deciding to go bourbon on this one?

Jim (39:25):
So I had some whiskey that came from another distiller, and it was even, it was from a bourbon Nashville, and it was okay. It was okay. It was good, but there was nothing remarkable about it. And it had come to me, I was like, let me have a couple barrels and let's see what's going on with it. And our number one mash was so beautiful. Our Alfred Ferris Green, maybe Alfred's family might be looking at this, but love Alfred and hope I know you're doing well and smile down on us. I said, you know what? I had some extra spirit. I was like, let me just put this remnant, this extra spirit run. Typically we're keeping the tote and then the next spirit run, then we can use it putting the barrel. I'm like, look, let me put that in the barrel of this, the bourbon mash whiskey that we had, but just a small percentage of my heirloom grain whiskey going into that, going new into that barrel on top of that really, really rocked.

Jim (40:30):
I was like, it took this whiskey that was just, eh, it's okay. It's good. It was a decent whiskey. Yes to, whoa, how about that? And so from that I was like, well wait if I'm going to mess with it. Like, well man, those really danced together well. And then I said, well, yeah. And then as we got to the point, I was like, Hey, I got a product here. And I was like, I thought, whoa. Then that's where the reference was like, well, that's a really good Tennessee dance that we're doing there. I was like, what's the Tennessee dance? I was like, I'm wonder, I'm going to name this. I'm like, it's not a fugitives true, it's a fugitives product, but it is like, what's a Tennessee dance? Well, duh, the Tennessee wall. So the Tennessee the Waltz came from actually how taking two mash bills and dancing those together initially is how we do it. And then part of that mash bill is treated with the Lincoln County process. And by the way, we probably want to go back, I do want to talk about the Lincoln County process at some point with you, but then taking that with a bourbon mash. So I could call it bourbon, but I couldn't call it, it's not, wasn't Tennessee whiskey, because to be Tennessee whiskey, it needs to go through the maple charcoal prior at spirit proof prior to going into the barrel

Drew (41:49):
And you're on. And you're only doing that on one of the two mash bills. Oh, part of the, yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Jim (41:54):
So that's where it's a bourbon and that bourbon mash bill had gone in to use barrels, so it couldn't have been a bourbon anyway. Oh,

Drew (42:02):
Okay. Yeah.

Jim (42:04):
Cause then what I realized is that the maturity of the number one mash was really a beautiful thing. And I'm like, wait, I'm doing all this fancy stuff to it, and really I'm getting away from the true dance of the two whiskeys together. And while that's a lot of fun doing it the other way, I'm like, well, let's go to the essence of what this is. And so what you're drinking now, while I do want to go back, and that's one of the reasons I want to open a tasting room. It's not that I want to promote the, I'd say it's not gimmicky, but I do the profile work that I did. I'm excited about that. That's a lot of fun for me. And I think people enjoy it. But as a general rule, I'm like, well, it's a purist and everything. Let's go ahead and let's make the waltz just a bur.

Jim (42:55):
I don't want it to have to be a barrel stay. Let's just pull that out so it doesn't look like it's trying to be fancy with the age, with oak staves and stuff. But I will say the oak stave work I did for the original waltz was a lot of fun because literally I had a hundred varieties of that as we were looking probably close to it, of those experiments going together. So anyway, so the Wal You're Drinking now is a bourbon, but part of it has gone through the Lincoln County process. I go back to my fundamental foundations. Well, I really want to make the best Tennessee whiskey, and it's about Tennessee whiskey. And then this is a great segue back, and the Lincoln County process is important to me. The masses are from Lincoln County. My grandfather was mayor of Faye of All County. See, there's a monument to my family on the courthouse swan in Lincoln County. So to say that, and which goes back to me as a kid, it is like, well, we need to make our own whiskey. The thing it really motivated me was to try to make one of the best whiskeys in the world and for it to be a Tennessee whiskey. So our number one Nashville itself is single barrel. We still haven't released that.

Drew (44:12):
Okay.

Jim (44:13):
It's crazy. Good.

Drew (44:15):
Okay. You're ready? Yeah. You're ready to let that one loose when you can, huh?

Jim (44:20):
It's crazy good already. All right. So we'll probably release that under a, the waltz did. The waltz process gives me some volume to help build our infrastructure. So different than just true sourcing, but not quite as. And so I say, well taste it. Is it the same as the other?

Drew (44:43):
Yeah, it's very different to me. It still has the, there's still that apple that comes through on it got a little spiciness to it. I think part of what I pick up in this one is the wood. I get a little bit of that smell of the wood on the nose. And so that's one of the first things that stands out to you. The rye also, I get a rye off of this one.

Jim (45:13):
That number one mash is a rye mash.

Drew (45:15):
Okay. Yeah. So I definitely get the rye off. And

Jim (45:19):
The whiskey we get from down the road is also a rye mash as well, but not a full rye. But a is a corn rye in Bartlett.

Drew (45:27):
And the reason I thought maybe people were picking up rye off of the grand Gucci air was because it does have kind of a peppery finish to it. And we always, a lot of people I hear relating pepperiness to rye. But to me, the more I've experimented with rice, the more I've found that rye without corn isn't quite as peppery. It's more herbally to me. And it's

Jim (45:57):
Like making spices kind of stuff, right?

Drew (45:59):
Yeah. And it's that mix with corn and corn is what gives us that, what they call the Kentucky hug, I guess. Do we have a Tennessee term for that? Are you working on something? I need

Jim (46:10):
To make one though, don't I?

Drew (46:12):
Yeah, exactly. So you got a little bit of that, but

Jim (46:15):
Tennessee,

Drew (46:16):
But I think it's almost counterintuitive because the whole idea of the Lincoln County process is to mellow the whiskey down so that you don't get as much of that burn as it's going down or as you're drinking it. So maybe you're avoiding the Tennessee hug in, I mean, the Kentucky hug in some ways. Yeah, well,

Jim (46:39):
So it's interesting. I wanted to make a Tennessee whiskey, and as we looked at it, the guys that had started up, and especially the guys that are sourcing it and just repackaging it that were from the Indiana or wherever they were getting it from, you know, couldn't call it Tennessee whiskey to begin with because it didn't go through that process. But one of the other hurdles is, okay, where are you going to get your maple charcoal? And so as we looked at the maple charcoal aspect, I'm like, well wait. Okay, can't just go. It's like, oh, we'll go to the Maple Charcoal store. Or I did have a friend that's got a grill shot. I'm like, Hey, y'all have Maple, we can get it out of Canada. And then I called the guys in Canada and they were like, well, yeah, we have maple charcoal. That was actually an interesting exercise that they all spoke French. And so I was, had to get, I had a kid's soccer coach was from France. I said, can you come in interpret for us? Cause I need you the

Drew (47:39):
Man with a bottle of grand Gucci that's got to be French. I said,

Jim (47:45):
My French teacher from high school is probably rolling in her grade band.

Jim (47:50):
She was from France, actually. Like, no, you speak French. Well, I'm like, nah, I really don't. But their charcoal was fired. We needed a food grade charcoal. And so I'm like, well, you know what? I'm just going to make it myself and I'll make it so I have a proprietary, I'll call it proprietary process on how I actually make my charcoal and then the maple that I choose, what I found is actually making it the part of the tree that I use to make my charcoal matters as well. So a lot of the process that some of my flavor differences come in actually how I make that Lincoln County process. So not only is my charcoal do I honor the Lincoln County process, but I will tell you that I go down to our farm in Lincoln County just from St. I just am able to harvest storm damaged limbs off the maple trees on the farm to then make my charcoal from that. So the charcoal we use for the Lincoln County process is actually made with maple trees

Drew (48:57):
In Lincoln County, grown in

Jim (48:58):
Grown from Lincoln County. Now I didn't do that on purpose. I did that.

Drew (49:02):
Not even Jack Daniels is doing that. As far as we know, it's

Jim (49:05):
Free. It's free to me. Right.

Drew (49:08):
Yeah. Nice.

Jim (49:10):
Another interesting thing is, so the maple tree, my great-grandfather, great great grandfather, planted a number of ma or great-grandfather planted maple trees around our house at the farm on Massey Hollow Road in Lincoln County in honor of every child to all the kids. And those maple trees have since populated the hillside. And so that's why we just have a ton of maple trees. So for me, it's a little tip. Don't somebody that's drinking the Tennessee Waltz in New York probably doesn't care about that. But to me it's kind of fun to have that

Drew (49:47):
Happen. So one of the fugitives was Felix Massey. Is he a relative?

Jim (49:52):
No. Well no, actually, Felix was not a fugitive. Oh,

Drew (49:56):
Was he not? Okay.

Jim (49:56):
But he was a contemporary. Felix Massey is Colonel Felix Massey was ancestor of mine, and it was the dean at the University of Tennessee, but he was at Vanderbilt in the twenties and with Ransom and Donald Davidson and actually opened a school in Giles County, the Massey School, which is now part of Martin College, where that was Mar and the University of Tennessee has now acquired Martin College. So University of Tennessee's going to have a campus there, which is kind of full circle anyway, yada, yada.

Drew (50:39):
So the reason I brought that up is because I knew he was a dean of the University of Tennessee, but that he went to Vanderbilt. And so when I lived in Nashville, it always used to bug me a little bit that I was in the town that had Vanderbilt University. But if you walk into any store, there's a sea of orange for Tennessee everywhere. You would not know that Vanderbilt was actually in the town that it is.

Jim (51:09):
Yeah, it's interesting. The Vanderbilt, Tennessee games were the, well, because even though Felix was a graduate of Vanderbilt, because he was the dean at Tennessee, my father's generation, my father went Swanee, but uncles cousins went to Tennessee because Felix was up at Tennessee at the time. So we had, the masses are, the Massey side is migrated to now the more of a big orange family. But the Abernathy were all very much Vanderbilt people. So my mom and my mom and dad, we could not, when Tennessee played Vanderbilt, it was not a happy place.

Drew (51:52):
No, no. All right. Well tell where can we find fugitive spirits? Because I think at this point, if somebody was trying to seek out a bottle, you haven't spread out quite across the nation yet.

Jim (52:09):
So the quick answer is if you're outside of Tennessee, we have a relationship with a wholesaler club now where you can go online. We have a link on our website and you can buy online that, which is great. So people can order online outside of Tennessee through our affiliation with the barrel station. And then we're in Tennessee, we're in select stores in Tennessee. Again, we're a higher end product. Our price point on our seven 50 s is I think at Total Wine in Knoxville. They sell it for $67 and it can go up. We have some downtown stores that sell it for closer to $80 for the Grand Gucci. The Tennessee Waltz is ranges anywhere from 53 to $59. I got featured because of the Heir Grain I got featured in, well, mall Magazine and Masters of All, they wanted to talk to me. And then a guy had come through town and saw me in the airport and picked it up and he called and said, Hey, this, you made this.

Jim (53:20):
This is not just real. Of course I did. Well, I looked at this is you're using Air Graham? Yeah, man. It's like, my God. He's like, how did I not know about this? I'm like, well, we don't advertise. And now yet, I said, we're still trying to build our inventory up and I only putting the bottle when I'm willing to put my name on it. And so we are limited releases. But from that, I got a call from New York and some guys, so we're at a few stores in Manhattan, in Brooklyn. So those guys were like, well, I was like, well, it'd be kind of cool. That's a really condensed market. And I'm like, so we have a relationship with a great small wholesaler up there that's feeding us in. Again, this all happened right before Covid hit, and I was literally going to the airport when my wife called and said, I don't think you need to go to New York because, and we were going to do an introduction to the New York market to in Manhattan. And I turned around and came home and said, ah, I've been here ever. I've been here ever since.

Drew (54:29):
Well, thank you very much, Jim. I appreciate you walking us through everything and helping educate me on a little poetry. So little help with that. And let me tell you some really nice whiskey. It's fun to taste what each distiller thinks is going to be that hits your palate and that you think that is a good representation of what Tennessee whiskey is about, or what the whiskey from your region is about. So it's fantastic and I thank you for sharing it.

Jim (55:03):
Well, appreciate it. We're it, it's a lot of fun to watch the growth of the industry and see my friends that have come up and that are starting their own. One of the fears that I had was that some guys would, that were opportunists would get in it and make up, would not make very, their spirits wouldn't be very good. And then I didn't want people to associate craft made with inferior whiskey. So the guys doing the sourcing actually was a benefit in the long run to us because then it got the consumer used to looking for new products on and getting things that were consistently good. And it's allowed the guys that are actually making product to then have people interested in introducing themselves to new brands. And we're excited to do We have plans for growth. We are looking at opening a shop up in the airport as well. That should happen this summer. Right. So that's good. Yeah.

Drew (56:11):
Yeah. Absolutely. All right. Well that fantastic. Thank you, Jim. I appreciate it.

Jim (56:16):
Yeah, thank you.

Drew (56:18):
And if you'd like to learn more about Fugitive Spirits, you can go to fugitive spirits.com. And if you want show notes or you're looking for Whiskey lore swag, or you want to get a copy of my book, just head out to whiskey lord.com and also have lots of links to my social media out there as well. I am your host, drew Heen. Until next time, cheers and SL Whiskey Lores of Production of Travel Fuel's Life, L L C.